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To say that Robin was tired would be an understatement.
Nightmares keep her up most of the time, and they’re more jarring than they used to be. Almost every night she jolts herself awake to the sound of Steve screaming, a sound so horrific she doubts she’ll ever be able to forget it. The first three nights, Robin sobs so hard she throws up into the trashcan she’s started keeping beside her bed- she wasn’t so smart the first night- and dry heaves until she’s too tired to do much but slump against her bedside table. Robin’s had nightmares before (she used to see Him every time she closed her eyes), but even the violent death of her brother can’t compare to the sheer terror she feels when she hears Steve’s screaming stop.
She shouldn’t be this tired. From what Steve’s told her, this is only a fraction of what the kids had witnessed. He teaches her what they all know- she learns of the Demogorgon and the lab, the separation and isolation of the curly haired girl whose name seems to change depending on whoever’s speaking. Legally, she’s Jane, but her friends refer to her as El or Eleven, and Jonathan, her new brother, calls her Ellie. After all she’d lost, all she’s been through, a few nights ago, that girl lost her father.
Then there’s Max, the girl who lost her step-brother, no matter how complicated Steve tells her the situation is, a child still watched someone she grew up with get violently ripped to shreds. And then there’s Joyce, who’s been through hell and back each and every year since 1983. All Robin did was get kidnapped by Russians, listen to Steve get tortured and try to outrun what looked like an enlarged, demonic spider.
To anyone else, that would’ve seemed like a lot, but Robin will be damned if she lets slip how much it affected her to these kids who’ve had it tenfold worse than her. She’s positive that Steve feels the same, if the stupid sunglasses he wears to hide the bags under his eyes are any form of an indicator.
Some nights, the dreams feel different. She can’t see a thing, but she can feel it happening all at once. There’s a tightening in her chest, a ringing in her ears, moss in her throat that leaves her gasping for air when she wakes up. She’s all too jumpy the next day, her jacket hugging her skin in a way that reminds her of being tied to that chair, and every time someone brushes past her, it sends shockwaves through her system.
They’re all in Joyce’s living room- by all, she means the seven kids, Nancy, Jonathan, Steve, her and Joyce, who claims she’s only there to supervise, but Robin has a feeling that she just doesn’t want to be in a room alone. She knows the feeling all too well, with it being a large contributing factor as to why she’s stayed over at Steve’s so much.
But today, she almost wishes she had said solitude. Every laugh sounds grating, and she’s desperately trying to zone out, which at this point, has become her go to in situations that she doesn’t know how to handle.
She thinks it’s fine, but then Steve touches her on the shoulder to silently ask if she’s okay and she loses it. Her eyes plead with him- ‘get me out of here’ they say, and she’s never been so thankful in her life for Steve’s quick thinking as he herds her out of the room to ‘show her where the glasses are’. He opens the bathroom door adjacent to the kitchen, sitting her down on the toilet lid, crouching down to her level. It’s the same feeling- tightening chest, moss in throat, ringing in ears- and suddenly she can’t breathe.
It takes Steve a good thirty minutes to calm her down, and she’s so out of it by the end of it that it’s a miracle that he doesn’t have to carry her back to the sofa. Luckily, Joyce caught on and shooed all the kids outside, Jonathan disappearing with Nancy into his room,so now it’s just the three of them. Her head’s in Steve’s lap as he plays with her hair, half-heartedly watching the adverts playing on the TV. When she leaves with Steve, Joyce asks her if she’s okay, tries to convince her to stay a little longer. They both know that it’s a lie when she insists that she’s fine.
She and her new friend- her only friend, for that matter- end up at Tommy H’s dumb party that night, trying to forget their fucked up lives in the only way they knew how. They drink, they dance, and when Eddie offers them ‘something stronger’, neither of them say no. God, Robin knows from her father that no amount of drugs and drink can flush out a memory, but she can damn well try.
//
It's 11:32pm when Robin calls Steve to pick her up from a phone book, and it's raining.
He does, of course he does, drives until he finds her down the road from her house, drenched and barefooted, backpack over her shoulder. He pays no mind to the upholstery she's dampening, only hands her a towel he keeps on the backseat in case of emergencies, and doesn't say a word about the late hour.
And there, in the passenger seat of his car, it occurs to Steve that he's never seen Robin cry before. He'd seen her distressed, sure, talked her through a panic attack on the Byers' bathroom floor two weeks ago, but he couldn't recall a time where she'd physically cried. She hadn't when they'd been trapped between their exit and a giant flesh monster, or when the drugs started to wear off after Starcourt and the reality set in. But now, with her head pressed against the dashboard, he could see her shoulders start to shake, and he knew what was happening. Steve had seen far too many crying children to not know what was happening.
"Hey," he said softly, gently placing a hand on her shoulder, a little lost on how to help. Robin laughed bitterly, straightening up, causing concern to flicker across Steve's face.
"I'm not even wearing shoes ." It was such an offtopic sentence that Steve would've been caught off guard, were he not already accustomed to how she dealt with stress. "I left so fast that I didn't even think about shoes until I was standing in a puddle."
Steve gave a sympathetic smile, though it did little to mask his worry. His eyes flickered between her and the bag, scanning her for injuries or other signs of duress, finding nothing but wet hair and tear-stained cheeks.
"Rob,” he approached, voice still gentle, as though trying not to startle a wounded doe. “Robin, what happened?” He kept his hand on her shoulder, rubbing his thumb in a circular motion, trying to comfort her.
She shook her head, wiping away her tears with the back of her hand. She sniffed, nose red, water dripping from her hair to join the rest on her cheeks. “My mom,” she said, hiccupping slightly. “She kicked me out.”
There was a silence, the air so still that you could hear a pin drop. Outside of the car, the rain continued to pour, hitting the sidewalk with force, but inside, the world stopped.
It hit him then that he never really knew anything about Robin’s family, which wouldn’t have been usual, if it weren’t for the fact that Robin told him everything. She had no filter, no discernible boundaries- he knew about her crushes, the details of her periods, hell, he even knew when her boobs hurt. And yet, he knew nothing about her parents, her family, how they felt about her, how she felt about them.
Well, until now. It wasn’t difficult for him to decide that he hated them all.
“Oh,” he said. The hand on her shoulder moved to settle on her waist, offering a hug. She leant into it, awkwardly, lying half across the consol, but it barely mattered. “Why?”
“I think you know why,” she said, sniffling, and he did.
He held her as tightly as he could across the centre console, a gesture that he knew would never be enough. It came with a painstaking, familiar ache in his chest, a tightening at the thought neither of them had to say. He didn’t know how her parents knew, or why, but he imagined that this time, the conversation they had on the bathroom floor, inches from death, had gone worse than he cared to imagine.
“Come stay with me,” he said. Robin shook her head.
“But your dad,” she started, only to be abruptly cut off.
“We’ll figure it out,” Steve replied. He pressed a gentle kiss to her forehead, pulling away. She looked at him with teary eyes, so wrong, so impossibly out of place, and a nod. “We’ll figure something out.”
//
It takes Steve thirty-two days of living with Robin to find out that she has a family.
They were all moved in when it happened, only the second day they'd had any time alone. Between the unpacking and the kids that ran wild between the minuscule hallways of their rundown apartment, there had never been a moment of true quiet.
"I have siblings."
The words came out of nowhere, spoken by Robin into the unusual dead-silence of their apartment that they both hated so dearly. It was odd- there was usually something going on, whether it be the faint tune of Robin's clarinet or Steve knocking items off of a shelf.
"Siblings?" His words were carefully spoken, slow and unusually calm, like the way he talks Max down from a panic attack when he's trying not to frighten her any more than she already is. Robin only shrugged.
"Five. Three sisters, two brothers." She paused. "Had. I had siblings."
Steve gulped, not so curious anymore. He knows he should ask, but he also knows it was a question he would never want the answer to, because Steve knows Robin like the back of his hand. He knows every mark and imperfection, where the lines on his palms end and morph into calluses and old wounds. It's the mole below his index finger and the one on her cheek; the scar on his thumb and the one on her left collarbone. He knows her totally and utterly, back to front and inside out, how she works and how she doesn't. She makes him angry and jealous and excited and hopeful all at once, and he loves her all the same, because he decided a long time ago in a blood-stained bathroom that he would rather suffer through the bad times than have never known her at all.
And yet, maybe, there's a flaw to his logic, a crack in the foundation, because one of the most fundamental parts of her life was kept quiet, hidden, from him , and that could never mean anything good.
"What happened?" He asks. He doesn't want to know. He knows it doesn't matter.
What he wants has never truly mattered, but it certainly doesn't now.
"A year ago, Charlotte got sick," Robin started hesitantly, "really sick. It wasn't uncommon, I guess- we didn't get to eat much, and the house wasn't the cleanest. She wasn't doing well, but she was well enough when I left- I thought.."
She trailed off, Steve waiting patiently, face falling by the second. He was never as good at masking his emotions as he thought.
"When I came back, her fever was 107. I took her to the hospital and she nearly didn't make it. They said she had meningitis, that it never should've got that bad, and they called CPS. One things led to another and the next thing I know, Charlotte's being put into foster care."
"They could've got her back. My parents could've got her back but they didn't care enough to try. I was sixteen, I was old enough, but no one would listen to me when I tried and it just got worse. Jess blamed me, filed for custody of the other two and then took them and left. Left me behind."
Steve stared in disbelief, though Robin refused to meet his eye, staring firmly at her hands as she dug her nails into her leg.
"God," he muttered, hand over his mouth in a way that would've made her laugh if she wasn't so close to tears. "Rob, that's.."
"Yeah." She shifts in her seat on the couch, one leg outstretched, one tucked below her knee, turning to lean against him. Instinctive arms wrap around her, Steve's chin resting on the top of her head. She never liked hugs before they came from him.
There's a moment of silence that Steve allows to stray into the territory of discomfort, so much so that Robin can all but hear him thinking. "Did you OD over there?" She asked, for old times sake. "You know, if you think too hard, you might double down on that brain damage of yours."
"Hilarious," he deadpanned. "No, it's just-" There's a pause. There was something he didn't want to say. "That's four. You said you had five."
Robin quietens, and Steve cringes. Robin's pure inability to keep her mouth shut was apparently rubbing off on him. He's about to tell her not to worry about it, to forget he asked, ask if she'd like to talk about something else, before she interrupts.
"His name was Francis." There's a slowness to her voice, an unusual cadence that Steve is sure he never wants to hear again. "He would be twenty-four now."
"Would be?" There's a lump in his throat when he asks, and he feels her nod.
"He died when I was thirteen. Overdosed on the couch and just- never woke up."
A pit formed in Steve's stomach, as hollow as ever. How could he not have noticed? Why did she never say anything?
He wished he'd known her sooner.
"Did he do it on purpose?" He asked. Robin frowned.
"I don't know."
//
Five months in, they get a dog.
Correction, Steve gets a dog- entirely without Robin’s permission- and tries to name it Steve Jr.
Robin, of course, wasn’t having it, claiming partial ownership and naming rights the moment she sees it, only it doesn’t work out that way, because since when did it ever?
It’s ultimately Max who names the dog, settling on Blanket, after Diana, Max Jr. and Fuckass were quickly rejected. She’d been coming round a lot lately, picked up by Steve in the middle of the night with a new bruise, blinking back tears. She lied, and Steve was always clueless as to what he could do beyond offer her a safe place to sleep.
So that was what he did. He and Robin set up the couch a couple times a week, agreeing to keep their mouths shut about it. He made her breakfast in the morning- it wasn’t hard to double what he made for himself and Robin- and dropped them off at school before heading to his morning shift. It settled into a routine so quickly that the days when she wasn’t around were stranger than when she was.
That day was no different. He found her at the skatepark, sitting on a step without her board, a warning sign in itself. She was in her pyjamas, a green shirt and blue shorts, arms crossed in a feeble attempt to keep herself warm, despite the warmth of June. That was the thing about Max- she was always cold.
He stepped out of the car, sitting down beside her, keeping space between them, knowing too much contact could easily make things much, much worse. “So,” he started, amusement seeping into his tone, an attempt at lightening the mood.
She snorted. “ So ,” she repeated, swiping violently at the tears staining her cheeks, as red as her hair, blotchy. It’s a small laugh that she makes, but to Steve, it’s a win. Nowadays, it's a miracle.
“You come here often?” He asked, keeping his gaze far from her. Seeming confrontational was never something that worked in his favor. She shook her head at his antics.
“Yeah, I do actually.”
He exhales, a light laugh, pulling off his jacket to wrap around her shoulders. “What have I told you about jackets, Mayfield,” he said, chastising without genuine annoyance. That made her turn to him, finally, mock annoyance on her features, something Steve was eternally grateful. Hell, he’d take genuine annoyance, hatred even, if it meant that he never had to see her look of hollow misery again. “And don’t give me that bullshit about not needing it. You’re shaking.”
It wasn’t the only reason she was shaking, of course, but neither would bring attention to it. They both knew the drill. “Stay with us tonight?” It was phrased as a question, but they both knew that it was more of a request. A plea, a desperate beg, a please be safe, let me know that you’re safe.
It made her face drop, as it usually did, as though spending the night at someone’s was a weakness, an admission of failure. “I shouldn’t go running to you all the time,” she protested, though she wasn’t intent on putting up a fight, verbalised to protect her honour.
“Please. What do you think Robin’s doing?” Maybe it was mean, using her as the example when she was the one that had saved him, not the other way around. “And now she’s a permanent resident. You’ll never top that, kid, no matter how hard you try.”
“That’s different and you know it,” she pointed out. “She’s your friend or whatever.”
“I’m not your friend?” He feigned offence, at which she rolled her eyes. That was good enough. “Come on. I haven’t seen Blanket all day, and she’s probably thinking I’m dead. Gotta go let her down gently.”
And that was how it went. Max would go back to his and Robin’s apartment, curl up with a drink and Steve’s dog- our dog, Robin would remind him- and watch TV until she fell asleep. There were days she would turn up unannounced, teary, angry, excited, and ignore him entirely in favour of letting Blanket live up to her namesake.
Blanket was the third best decision that Steve had ever made- second being growing up, first being Robin, always- and Robin never found it in herself to disagree. Their apartment, their crappy, tiny, messy apartment had always had room for one more.
//
Robin tells him that she loves him.
It’s a new concept to him, one so alien that it takes him a month to start saying it back. She doesn’t seem to mind- honestly, he isn’t entirely sure that she noticed, whether that be that he doesn’t verbally reciprocate, or whether she knows that she’s saying it at all.
Steve’s only ever said ‘I love you’ to one person (Nancy Wheeler, junior year), and he’s only ever had one person reciprocate that notion (Nancy Wheeler, a lie). His parents were never loving people. His mom made him meals and kissed him on the forehead, but she was never around enough for the concept of love to stick. His father was never as kind.
He loves Robin enough that she knows it before he tells her. It shows in the way he makes her eat breakfast before school, reminds her to eat, sleep, shower, and doesn’t get mad when she forgets. He picks her up from school when it all gets too much, doesn’t judge her when she has a breakdown in the passenger seat of his car, because God knows how many people have done the exact same (Max Mayfield, Dustin Henderson, even Steve himself). He buys her favourite snacks, double checks them all for coconut because he knows she’s deathly allergic, and does the EpiPen for her because he knows that needles give her panic attacks, and that’s not helping anyone when her throat is closing up.
Twice, he drives her to the hospital, and thrice she calls him an ambulance that neither can afford, because despite Steve trying to teach her, she never quite got the hang of driving. Thursdays are movie nights, because Fridays are for getting high and dance around their living room, mainly to ABBA, and on Tuesdays they get takeout because the place down the road does discounts that day, and he always orders extra onion rings because he knows its all she’ll eat.
There’s a blanket in the living room that’s hers, not knitted, because she hates it when they scratch, soft and weighted, but not too warm. They go on roadtrips on their off days, driving until Robin’s so restless that she practically throws herself out of the car. He’s taking her to her Juilliard audition next week, and, twice a year, they make the drive up to the outskirts of Indiana to a small cemetery with a withering gravestone too close to the front, bearing an inscription that shares her last name.
He loves her and she knows it, more than anyone in the world, and he doesn’t need to say it, but it’s a mundane Thursday afternoon in November, and when she tells him that she loves him before she leaves, he tells her he loves her too.
He thinks that he sees her smile on her way out the door.