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The first time Robin Buckley came over was a week after Starcourt. His parents aren't home, but his parents are never home.
The empty halls remind him of those in the underground lab. When his parents come home, they'll probably remind him of the Russians.
He hopes his parents don't come home for a while now. He doesn't want to explain the still healing bruises scattered across his face, or how he lost his job because of the fire at Starcourt just a few days ago.
He hopes he doesn't have to explain it to them, but he knows they don't care enough to ask.
He can now finally sit in front of the TV without the lights hurting his head. There's a chance he still has that concussion, but he just can't really remember what the doctors told him after everything.
If he shuts his eyes he still feels as if he's in that room. Windowless, dimly lit, Russians beating him until he wants to cry.He thinks about Tommy H and Carol. Do they think about him too? Probably not.
But he knows that if he had just sucked it up, he wouldn't be here. And really, maybe they were assholes, but he felt like they were the first people who really actually cared about him.
He knows better though. Maybe he can't think straight, maybe his head still feels fuzzy, but he knows better.He has other friends now. He has Dustin.
He still misses having friends his own age. He misses the days when he didn't have to be the 'parent' friend.
His hand is on the phone, subconsciously dialling Tommy's number, until someone knocks on his door, interrupting his thought process.
He puts the phone down, and instinctively grabs the nearest object, a knife from the kitchen counter. He's not expecting anyone, and for some reason, he feels vulnerable alone in a big empty house.
"Steve? I can see your silhouette,"
He sighs. It's a familiar voice. A little raspy, but one he finds familiarity in. He puts down the knife and twists the handle of the door.
"Hey, Robin,"
It's almost eight. On a normal day, he'd be at someone's party, or on a drive with Tommy and Carol. He's alone now.
"My parents are out of town-" she starts.
"Do you want to stay here?" He asks. Almost too quickly. He just doesn't want to be alone again.
She nods. "Sorry, it's just-" she starts. "I-"
She pauses again, before entering the house. It's bigger than hers, and she hears Steve shut the door behind her.
"You're the only one who knows what it was like,"
The words left her mouth so quickly she didn't really know what she was expecting from Steve, but he nods and sits on the bottom step.
"I'm still there," he says.
"Me too,"
"And I can still hear them. I feel like no matter how many times I tell the truth it'll never be the truth,"
Robin knows that Steve went through a lot down there. He was beaten and interrogated for hours.
"What do we do?" She asked.
She leaned her back against the door, letting it take her weight. She wanted to leave, and get away from Steve Harrington because she could've still been happily slinging ice cream, but at the same time, she knows him. She knows that she could've died down there, but she knows that he feels what she's been feeling.
He's scared. He hasn't been sleeping well, but at the same time, he just feels so tired all the time. Robin can tell he wants to forget it too.
The bruises on his face are still there. Fainter, but still visible. His hair, once streaked with highlights, now sat flat on his head. She knew he cared about his hair, so she would've been lying if she had said she hadn't been concerned when she saw him with his hair undone.
"Try to forget," he says. His voice is barely a whisper, but she nods.
They don't talk. Not really. Robin sleeps in Steve's bed, while he sleeps on a spare mattress on the ground.
They both dream, but somehow the presence of each other make it tolerable.
They finally talk about everything a week after that.
They're watching The Breakfast Club, except they barely watch. They're both too busy talking, venting, and listening to each other.
"My parents are never home, and if they are, they stay out of my business,"
"Really?" Robin asks. He nods. "I guess my parents are normal?"
Steve tells Robin about how his parents never really cared. He tells her things he hasn't told anyone else.
He rants about his past. Tommy and Carol, and how he knows he shouldn't miss them but there's a part of him that just craves validation from them.
They fall asleep on the couch. Both of them realize that they're kind of stuck with each other now.
Robin can't relate to Steve's problems, but she feels a kind of connection to him. One that makes her understand.
Steve feels the same way.
They both don't know why.
A month after Starcourt, Robin receives a phone call at one in the morning. Her hair is messy, and she still feels half asleep when she answers the phone.
"Hello?"
"Robin?" Its Steve. She recognizes his voice no matter how raspy and shaky it sounds over the receiver.
"Hi," she says. She leans her back against the wall, gripping the phone tighter in her hand.
"Are you ok?" He asks after a minute of silence.
"Yeah, are you?" She asks. His breaths have slowed, and she lets out a sigh of relief.
"Yeah, sorry. Just felt like I had to make sure,"
Steve leans against his wall too. He can hear Robin breathing, and that's all he needs to reassure himself that they're safe now.
He woke up soaked through his shirt, his hair sticking onto his neck and forehead.
He dreamed of the Russians again. Beating him up. He thought he was fine with that, but there was always the fear of them getting Robin.
It would've been his fault if she got beat worse than a slap across the face. He knows he should've sent her with Dustin and Erica instead of making her stay back with him.
It should've been just him.
But he's forced to live with dreams of them hurting her. He can hear her screams, and somehow that hurts more than the pain coming from his black eye and split lip.
"Robin?" He asks.
She nods. Steve can't see it, but he can sense she's still there. Even though her silence indicates she's just woken up, and she's still tired, Steve knows she still listening.
"I'm sorry,"
Robin takes note of the shake in his voice, and she's almost glad she's at home. In her hallway, so she won't have to see the boy cry, but if she shuts her eyes it's like he's beside her.
"Why?" She whispers.
"You could've been slinging ice cream tomorrow morning instead of-,"
"Trying to forget?" She asked.
Steve nods this time. Robin pictures him on the other side of the wall, leaning onto the wall, while she sits on the ground, her legs curled up to her chest.
He feels so close, but he's a twenty-minute walk away.
"I don't want to forget," she confesses. "I don't want to pretend everything is fine, because it's not Steve, and I feel like-like everyone wants us to move on,"
He stays silent on the other end. Robin can still hear his breaths, and she takes a shaky breath of her own.
"I want to" she starts, before cutting herself off. "I feel like there's something between us now that I can't- I don't want to let go of,"
She's crying now. Steve can hear her voice cracking, and how her voice shakes as she struggles to form that sentence.
Before Robin, there was this loneliness manifesting within Steve. Loneliness after he had lost his best friends and Nancy had dumped him.
A loneliness that he felt everywhere. In his house, at school. He had other friends, but they weren't his best friends. He wouldn't consider them friends now. Just acquaintances.
And then he had met Dustin and the kids, and he would be the first to admit that Dustin gave him a spark of something. Something to stop the loneliness from spreading. But Dustin was a kid. He wanted someone his own age.
He wanted someone he could be himself around, not just a babysitter.
And he met Robin.
He knows she's right. They're tied together by something now. Trauma and a secret that was shared on a bathroom floor. He should've known she wasn't going to let him go that quickly, especially after telling him her deepest secret.
"Steve?"
Her voice breaks him out of his thoughts.
"I wish you were here," he says.
She wants him here too. She wants to hold his hand, and let all her fears fade away in the safety of Steve Harrington.
She lightly thumps her head against the wall and bites her lip. Her eyes feel puffy and gross from tears that had spilled out moments earlier.
"Rob?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm coming over," he sighs. "And then we'll come back to my place,"
Her parents are still away, and she's thankful for once that they are.
"Ok,"
They both sniffle, and hang up the phone.
Robin's waiting outside when Steve comes, and she hurries into his car.
They're both in pyjamas, but the moment Robin enters the car both of them feel a sense of comfort.
Steve takes them back to his house, and she steps inside, immediately taken back to that first night she spent.
She had been taken back by the large house. The tall ceilings and large rooms. Her house had been the complete opposite. Cluttered surfaces, and small, cramped.
They sleep in the same bed this time, back to back, like how they were weeks ago. When their wrists were bound together, as they lay against the cold floors of the underground base.
Robin reaches back and meets Steve's hands searching for hers.
He squeezes, making sure she's still here, that she's real.
She squeezes back to let him know that she's right here.
She flips onto her back and stares at Steve's ceiling. He's still on his side, hand still clutching hers.
In the darkness of his bedroom, Steve finally lets go of Tommy and Carol, popularity, and everyone from school.
He's still holding onto Robin's hand when she flips onto her back. He stares at the walls in front of him. He doesn't know how to describe what he's feeling. Acceptance?
He had been searching for a girlfriend, but he got Robin instead. He got a best friend. Someone who understood everything he went through, someone who shared the same trauma as he did.
They don't need to speak to understand what they feel. Both of them have that same feeling in their chests. Warm. Like a glow spreading across their body, connecting them.
They understand it now.
They don't have to be dating to be soulmates. They can be platonic. Platonic with a capital P.