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When Robin Buckley is born to Melissa and Richard Buckley. The doctor took her to the backroom to get her bloodwork done. Her parents, former flower children who settled in Hawkins, of all places, protest. They don’t like the idea of their small daughter being taken to a back room, but they do know that nothing is going to actually happen to her. So, they don’t make too much of a fuss.
It takes a few minutes, but the doctor comes back with a happy little girl in her arms. She gives Melissa and Richard a smile and helps Richard take the baby from her arms. Richard looks down at his beautiful girl and smiles. “Hello, Robin,” he smiles, and the baby coos.
“Mr. and Mrs. Buckley,” the doctor says. She has a smile on her face so melissa tries to remind herself that there’s no reason to panic. “Your daughter tested positive for the PSG”.
Melissa gasps. They weren’t expecting that at all. “Are you familiar with this gene?” the doctor asks, and if Melissa shakes her head, it’s only because it is really all she can muster at that moment.
The doctor sits down, motioning for Richard to take a sit as well. She waits until he does, and then she explains everything.
“PSG stands for Platonic Soulmate Gene. It used to be very common in the late 1800s, but by the time the Spanish Flu hit and wiped a big percentage of the population, it became very uncommon. Nowadays, it is estimated that only one percent of the world’s population tests positive for this gene. And as such, we don’t have much of the latest data on it”.
“Is it dangerous?” Richard asks, looking down at his baby girl.
“Not at all,” the doctor smiles at him. “Some parts of this bond are still unknown to us, that’s true, kept secret by those who possess them, probably. What it means is that somewhere out there, there is a girl or a boy who will be your daughter’s platonic soulmate. They will share a unique bond, and from what we’ve come to know, it’s a very good one”.
The doctor takes a breath, her smile growing a little smaller. “There is, however, one thing that is a bit unfortunate. The way soulmates find each other is by sharing their injuries”.
“Injuries?” Melissa asks, worried.
“Yes,” the doctor nods softly. “Whenever one gets hurt, the injury will appear on the other’s body”.
Both parents look at the sleepy baby in her father’s arms. Their special one-percent baby. They will have to keep an extra eye on her.
*
Robin is a happy baby. She sleeps through the night and doesn’t cry much. An easy baby, her parent say sometimes. Melissa suspects that her soulmate is a bit older, because even though Robin is a calm baby, she sometimes finds that her knees are scraped, like the knees of a baby who is just learning how to walk.
Their little girl crawls backward at some point. It makes them both chuckle at how clumsy she is, pushing back and hitting her tiny legs on the furniture. But Robin is a very giggly baby.
When Robin finally learns how to walk, Melissa and Richard make sure to remind her daily to watch her step. “Be careful darling, watch your step. We don’t want you and your soulmate to get hurt”. They hope her soulmate’s parents are doing the same.
When she is two, Robin begins to mumble “watch your step, watch your step,” whenever she walks. Melissa and Richard realize they might have said it a bit too much, so they stop, hoping she does too. She does, eventually. But sometimes they’ll catch her mumbling it to herself like a mantra. Usually when she needs a little more concentration.
Their daughter’s mind is a messy one, but they manage to teach her some safety chants. “These injuries aren’t my fault,” she repeats clumsily, “I am PSG Positive, I don’t know what happened”.
It comes in handy the first time they get a call from Robin’s school. The girl on the phone says that they’d called on an ambulance for their five-year-old girl. “It appears that her soulmate has hurt their arm,” the girl says to Melissa over the phone. Melissa thinks she might faint.
It is Robin’s first broken bone, but it’s definitely not her last one. Within a year she breaks a finger and sprains her ankle twice. She takes her injuries with a stride. Their amazing brave girl.
When Robin is seven, she learns to hide. She hides her bruises behind shirts and pants and scarves. She hides her messiness by staying quiet. She hides her babbles by not speaking. She hides everything she manages to hide.
She hates the hospital – who doesn’t – but she finds herself rushed into the ER a few times over the years. Another broken wrist, another broken nose.
It’s agonizing, really. Black eyes on a random Tuesday, strangulation marks on a Friday afternoon. Robin wonders sometimes if her soulmate is just clumsy. Or maybe they aren’t safe, wherever they are.
She goes through the first couple of years of high school hiding black eyes behind makeup she takes from her mother, and slap marks as well. She gets really good at covering it all up. She also keeps her positive status to herself as much as possible. She tries to stay invisible.
On a couple of occasions, Robin finds herself in the nurse’s office with a concussion. One of those times she wakes up there after fainting in the hall because it felt like something crashed on her head. It’s not something she expects to happen during band practice.
Robin would love to be able to say that she got used to it, getting up in the morning to discover yet another injury, but it would be a lie. There is not really a lot of getting used to being hurt out of nowhere.
She really does not get the hype around PSG Positives. She gets that there’s a mystery effect that gets everyone jealous, but as someone who actually tested positive, she can safely say that there is nothing exciting about being hurt out of nowhere.
Robin doesn’t say it out loud. She doesn’t want to worry her parents, so she pulls on a brave face. But she lets herself have those feeling while everyone else, her parents and their hippie friends included, let themselves feel relieved that there is someone out there who will love her unconditionally. She doesn’t remind them that the chances of her finding that soulmate are slim, at best. She has never even met another Positive in her life.
*
On her first day at Scoops Ahoy as an employee, the manager – Ned – is busy hiring Steve Harrington. Ned doesn’t care about the seven perfectly good reasons she gives him as to why not to hire Steve Harrington. He hires him and Robin tries her hardest to be as nice as she can, even if she hates the asshole.
This play pretend lasts for a bit, until she realizes she doesn’t have to pretend anymore. That somehow, God knows how, Steve Harrington has grown on her.
She is also injury free for a couple of weeks. It’s an added bonus, really, not having to explain herself to Ned, Steve, or any customer. She dreads the moment she’ll have to explain why she showed up to work one morning looking like she lost a fist fight. Her soulmate is great at losing in a fist fight.
Steve carries a lot of secrets on his shoulders. Robin can’t say how exactly she knows it, it’s not like Steve told her. But she does. He feels so different from the asshole that was in her Click class when he was a senior.
He doesn’t share much, but she can see it in his eyes when he shows up in the mornings. She also realizes that he shows up earlier whenever his dad shows up at the house.
One Monday, Robin wakes up to find out that her father finished the last of the milk. She does’t have the energy to fight any of her parents, to remind them that while she’s usually the supervising adult, they still need to be responsible enough to leave some milk for her stupid cereal. She also has zero desire to eat dry cereal, so, she decides to go to work early, hoping to put the waffle iron to good use before her shift starts.
When she gets to the mall, the light in Scoops is already on. She walks in and crosses into the staff room, where she finds a tired Steve with his head resting on the table and his eyes closed.
“Morning,” she says quietly, trying not to startle him too much. ”You’re early”.
Steve lifts his head to look at her. “Woke up early,” he shrugs
Robin shakes her bag off her shoulder and into the chair next to Steve. She turns to open the connecting window, then crosses to the front of the shop. “Well,” she says, lifting the bottle of waffle mix and waving it in front of the window for him to see, “I’m planning on making some waffles. You want one?”
She looks at him. Steve just shrugs again, looking very tired. “Sure”.
She turns around, pressing the button on the iron to get it to heat up. “Your dad home?”
“Yeah,” he answers weakly behind her. She turns back to look at him while they wait. “They woke me up at five, fighting about his secretary again”. He lifts his eyes and nods at the iron. “It’s hot”.
Robin wants to say something. Anything to help Steve feel a little better. She is distracted trying to think of something when she turns to pour the mix into the iron, and her palm brushes against the burning metal.
She hisses, grabbing her hand. She takes a step back. “Son of a—” Steve screams behind her, surprised. Robin turns to on her heal, rushing to get to the sink to put her hand under cold water but somehow Steve beats her to it. She is confused for a second when they bump into each other before she realizes that she is staring at both their palms, sporting identical red burns.
They both stare for a second before Steve apparently registers what is happening. He goes to the cabinet and rummages until he finds the first aid kit. He opens it and pulls an ointment, pouring some on his palm before throwing it in Robin’s direction. She puts some on her own palm, and then she sits down. Steve does the same.
It takes them a second to catch their breath. After they both relax, Robin looks up at Steve.
“You’re PSG Positive,” he says dumbly.
Robin feels so dizzy she thinks for a second that she might faint. “Thanks for stating the obvious,” she snorts.
Steve blushes. And maybe Robin is going completely nuts but she thinks she can feel the heat in her own cheeks. She pinches herself, just to make sure she is not dreaming. To try to ground herself again.
“Ow, stop it,” Steve complains. She isn’t too sure if the heat in her cheeks is his or hers at this point anymore.
“Sorry,” she smiles.
They are quiet for a bit when Steve’s eyes go big with realization. “I am so sorry I got us hurt so many times over the years,” he says. It is the most genuine she had ever heard him.
Robin chuckles. “Yeah,” she smiles. “So, um, what happens now?”
Steve just shrugs.
*
They spend their shift asking each other questions about their experiences sharing each other’s injuries. Steve laughs at Robin’s ‘Watch your step’ story, Robin hurts at Steve’s neglecting parents.
When they are done with work Robin asks if Steve wants to come home with her. “It’ll give us a chance to talk more, and it’ll delay your return home where your father is,” she smiles.
Steve agrees, of course. They manage to shove her bike in his trunk and drive together to Robin’s house, Robin guiding Steve through the turns.
“Hi,” Robin screams when they walk through the front door. She catches Steve wince as she does.
“Robin, inside voice please,” her father says from the other room. Steve chuckles.
“I brought company,” she replies, much quieter.
Robin leads the way to the kitchen, where both her parents are weirdly sitting at the table. “This is Steve,” she says.
Her parents share a funny look, so Robin panics a little. “He’s not—We’re not… He’s my soulmate,” she blabbers.
“Oh!” her mother claps her hands excitedly. “How—”
“Robin burnt our palms touching a hot waffle iron,” Steve supplies. He smirks at her. She blushes.
“Oh Robin,” her father chuckles. “Well, it’s nice to finally meet you, Steve”. He sends his hand forward for Steve to shake. So formal.
“Thank you, sir,” Steve answers politely. Robin rolls her eyes.
“You are welcomed to stay for dinner, darling,” Robin’s mother smiles at him. “Stay the night even”.
When they go upstairs, Robin apologizes for the awkward encounter but insists that Steve does in fact stay the night. They close the door to her bedroom, sitting on her bed, and it amazes Robin just how natural it all feels.
They share a bed at night. That is how they discover that Steve sleeps like a log and Robin like an octopus, hands going everywhere, limbs tangled with Steve. They get to bed side by side and wake up with Robin very much in Steve’s personal space. Neither of them minds.
“This was the best sleep I’ve had in a very long time,” Steve admits. “Although your mattress is shitty”. Robin completely agrees with both statements.
Her parents insist that Steve stays the night whenever he visits. They send her to his house with food whenever he doesn’t. Pretty soon they become inseparable.
*
The communist fiasco of melting flesh monsters leaves them with both physical and mental traumas. Their bond, however, is stronger than ever after Robin shares her biggest secret on a bathroom floor.
This is also when all their friends inevitably realize that they are soulmates when Steve’s injuries magically appear on Robin’s face. They are unable to hide their shared injuries. As they heal together, quite literally, something shifts in the way they experience those shared injuries though.
What once was a nuisance becomes a tool for taking care of each other. Robin knows when Steve needs medical attention. Steve knows when Robin is in pain. Even if he acts cool. Even if she doesn’t mention it.
It feels weird sometimes for Robin to have someone remind her to take a pill for a headache she mentioned nothing about. But at the same time, it’s the best feeling in the world, knowing that there’s someone who gets her like that. Like no other.
They sit together, curled on Steve’s couch one night when he looks at her in confusion. “Rob, have you had anything to eat today?
“I think, like, a sandwich for lunch? I’m actually starving,” she realizes. “Why?” her head is on his chest and she smiles at how it vibrates when he starts to speak.
“Because I have half a pizza right before you came”. He paused to think. “I think I’m feeling your hunger?”
Robin lifts her head to look at him. “Is that a thing?” she asks.
“No idea,” he admits. “I guess we can test it?”
He pushes her off his chest gently and walks to the kitchen. When he returns, he has in his hands what is probably the leftover pizza. “Here,” he says.
Robin eats too fast. She knows because her stomach starts hurting the second she’s done. “Well,” Steve winces, “I was definitely feeling your hunger, and I am definitely feeling your stomach ache. Why did you eat so fast”.
She knows Steve doesn’t enjoy this one. Mostly, because Robin is always hungry. Steve has to beg her to eat something at least four times a day. Robin, in response, constantly promises to try to do better. But, she forgets. So, Steve ends up always carrying a couple of snacks with him that he can throw at her head and scream until she eats them.
*
Robin wakes up one night in a panic that is not quite hers. Her eyes snap open and she feels around the bed for Steve. When she can’t find him, the panic is finally a little bit hers. She turns on the light on her bedside table, blinking a couple of times. She waits for her eyes to adjust to the light and locates Steve hunched in a corner of her room on the floor. His panic is eating at her and it’s getting hard to breathe.
“Hey,” she says, sitting next to him on the floor. She gives a little squeeze to his knee, feeling the pressure on her own, “What happened?”
“I’m fine,” Steve mumbles. She would laugh, but she is too busy choking.
“Right, don’t bullshit me here. You panic is what woke me up. It’s literally stressing me out. I can feel you’re out of breath”.
Steve gives her an apologetic smile. “sorry”.
“Hey,” she whispers, squeezing his knee again. Her voice is soft. “It’s all good. Just, tell me what happened?”
Robin watches him take a deep breath. He tells her about the nightmare that woke him up and she can feel the panic melting away as he shares with her. It’s an amazing privilege, Robin thinks. She had always known how sharing helped her. But there’s something different about actually feeling how it’s helping Steve. It’s an eye-opening experience that she never expected to have.
They sit together in silence and experience their emotions together. It’s maybe fifteen minutes later that Steve realizes they are falling asleep and pulls them back up to the bed.
In the morning, Robin wakes up to Steve shaking her. “Rob, wake up,” his voice is bordering on a whine.
She thinks she might smack him with her pillow, but then she remembers it will hurt her too. “What, Steve, stop”.
“You’re starving,” he whines, and shit she is. She winces, whispering an apology. “Just get up so we can have breakfast,” Steve sighs.
She sighs back but sits down. She gives him a look through heavy eyelids and a warm and a fuzzy feeling bubbles in her stomach. “What’s with that feeling, dingus?” she asks him with a chuckle.
Steve blinks at her, cheeks going pink. “I’m just… happy. That we found each other”.
Robin smiles at him, blinking back tears. She can see in his eyes that he just caught her feelings too. “Me too,” she says, sure he can feel it. “Now let’s go eat”.
By the time they get used to sharing emotions, they think they finally figured the PSG thing out. Robin can point out Steve’s emotions before he even registers them. Steve can pinpoint exactly when Robin gets in close proximity to Vickie, even if he is at work and Robin is at school. Robin even gets better at eating on time before Steve goes mental.
But then something new happens.
Their friends all know about their bond, so no one bats an eye anymore when they sit on top of each other, touching non-stop. They’re all sitting in the Wheelers’ basement divided into tiny groups. Nancy and Max are talking in a corner, while the boys are hunched in the middle with Erica, discussing a movie.
Robin and Steve share a couch, Robin’s head on Steve’s shoulder. It’s relatively quiet. “I’d kill for a strawberry milkshake,” Steve says suddenly, and it’s so random that Robin has to laugh out loud.
Everyone, including Steve, turn to look at her. “What,” she says defensively, her hands going up in surrender, “it was funny!”
“What was?” Dustin asks pointedly.
“What Steve said,” Robin replied, because duh. Everyone around her looks genuinely confused.
“He didn’t say anything,” Erica points out.
Robin turns to Steve. His eyes are big. “You can hear me?” he asks, except his mouth isn’t even moving.
Robin squints her eyes, and breaths in. Finally understanding. “Yes,” she says out loud. “What the actual fuck”.
Steve looks at her like he isn’t quite sure what to say. This is fair, because, and this shouldn’t even come as a surprise anymore, she feels the same.
“How did you do that?” she thinks.
Steve smiles at her. “I think you just figured it out,” he thinks.
Max coughs, looking at them. They turn to look at her at the same time. She gives them an annoyed look. “Care to share what’s going on?”
“No,” they reply in unison, then burst out laughing.
“Soulmates,” Max mutters, rolling her eyes. “Idiots.”
*
This one takes more getting used to. There’s a lot of trial and error before they understand the scope of sharing their thought.
At first, it’s a little too much. It feels like they have too many thoughts in their heads. It gets so loud that Robin actually cries in his arms at one point.
She tells him after a while that she thinks she can finally distinguish between her thoughts to his. It’s still a little too much but it starts to feel a little bit better. Especially when he tells her that he learned to do it too. It still drives them crazy.
It’s not until Eddie disappears that they finally figure it out. Dustin and max are in the store, trying to get leads on where Eddie is when Robin turns to Steve with a smile. She looks at him, concentrating when suddenly their minds go blank. It’s so silent it’s deafening.
“How—” Steve starts.
Robin shrugs. “I think I figured it out,” she thinks, and it echoes in the space between their minds like she’s talking into a microphone. “Want to try?”
She let’s go – of what, she is not too sure – and the overwhelming abundance of thought hits them again. She nods at Steve with tiny encouragement. Somehow, she can feel him try.
Their heads go silent. “Oh my god,” he thinks. “It’s like a private phone line”. Robin bursts out laughing. Steve, in response, loses concentration. He lets go of their invisible something, their heads loud again, Max gives them a dirty look.
By the time they find Eddie, their heads are mostly quiet.
*
When Steve jumps into the water at Lover’s Lake, is when they discover shared sensations. The water is damn cold. Robin knows it without even touching it. She starts shivering the second he hits the water.
When Steve emerges back to tell them he found it, he has exactly enough time to understand and give her a knowing smile. His whispered ‘sorry’ is drowned by her scream when she feels something tug at their legs.
It’s less then two minutes later when she screams again and starts bleeding. Something is definitely hurting Steve. Nancy only needs one look at her before she jumps. “Put something on her to stop the bleeding,” she screams before her head hits the water.
Eddie tries to help her but Steve’s voice is calling her in her head. “Please come, please come,” he screams. So, she jumps.
By the time she reaches the surface she is too hurt to walk. She wants to go help Steve but she manages one step forward before a bat – or, what are these things even? – wraps itself around Steve’s neck. Robin falls to the ground.
She can’t breathe. She’s losing blood. Help. Everything goes black.
*
When she opens her eyes, they are in the middle of the forest. She has some fabric wrapped around her waist, her whole body leaning against Steve, his torso covered in fabric as well. Steve’s hold on her is tight. They’re both shaking with adrenaline. “Hi,” he says quietly.
“It hurts,” she says. It’s not a question. She turns her head until she can look into his eyes. His nod is so small, it’s only for her to see. She wonders who carried her all the way here.
“Eddie did,” Steve thinks in the space between their minds.
“We’ll be okay,” she returns. Because it hurts, but they’ve had worse. Steve nods.
She is cold again, and she thinks that maybe this time it’s her sensation, because Steve looks caught by surprise when he catches it,
He pulls her impossibly closer on instinct. Robin leans in. She thinks he is trying to share his body heat, not that he has much of it anyways.
“Are you okay?” Nancy breathes in their direction, her eyes falling on Steve.
“Yeah, we are,” he gives her a reassuring smile.
It isn’t surprising to anyone anymore when Steve and Robin speak for both of them. Nancy nods and bites her lip like she isn’t buying it. Robin isn’t even sure if the question was directed at both of them, but at this point asking one of them is the same as asking both.
*
They share so much it feels like nothing is missing. They realize at some point that there is always something new to discover with their bond.
Robin is happy. The happiest she has ever been. And she knows Steve is too because she can feel it.
They still hurt together, but mostly they heal together. They share so much and rarely separate. It's how they both prefer it anyways. They hate being apart.
Robin realizes that she finally gets the hype about the Platonic Soulmate Gene.