Chapter Text
The camcorder showed up at Family Video like a bad omen – or maybe just an odd item
left behind by the manager at some point. It was dusty, chunky, and definitely needed a clean VHS tape put in (only god knows what might have been on the current one, Steve and Robin saved it and hid it to watch and laugh at later). It was left in a cardboard box in the back, shoved between some old porn tapes and a stack of unstocked Babe: Pig in the City rentals.
Robin found it first, naturally, and immediately declared it her new emotional support project.
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On some slow Tuesday, Robin found herself rummaging through one of the back storage rooms of the family video, occasionally holding up some cringy soap opera and yelling about it to Steve (who had definitely not been snooping through the records of who rented what). At some point while looking through a box filled with what she could only assume to be bad porn tapes and a large stack of a completely unrented movie, she managed to pull out a chunky, VHS camcorder.
She stood up and wiped some of the dust off of it, peering at Steve on the computer.
Without much of a second thought, she walked up behind him, the camcorder propped up on her shoulder.
“Oh Stevie,” she teased, knowing he hated the nickname. Once he turned, leaning on the counter behind him, she tilted her head to the side so she was no longer covered by the bulk of the camcorder. “Look what I found, dingus.”
“Do we even sell those?” He asked, running a hand through his hair as he raised an eyebrow.
She shrugged. “Definitely not, if there was even an option to rent a camcorder like this instead of buying one – especially here – we’d probably be a little bit more busy.” She shifted so she was holding the camcorder with two hands in front of her, partially so Steve could get a better look at it. “It’s got a tape in it so I really doubt it's anything that's actually sellable. It was dusty too.”
He grabbed it from her and turned it over in his hands for a few minutes, looking over it. He’s owned camcorders before, well, he didn’t really own them, they were his parents. He’s at least used them before, though. This was a bit lighter than camcorders he’s owned, likely something from the JVC compact line. They’d been out for a few years now, two or three, and they were easy to use – he couldn’t really imagine why someone would just leave it behind. In the back of Family Video, no less.
“I was thinking,” her voice went slightly higher in pitch – a small habit she had that Steve had picked up on, it was typically a sign she was about to ramble. “Since it’s so dusty and was shoved between some shit movies – I don't think one of those stacks had ever even been rented out, or looked at for that matter – we should just keep it and like, play around with it. Since I think we could start like a little video diary thing and we can record some clips on a tape every so often and then we could look back on it later –”
Steve held up one of his hands. “Robs, you’re rambling again. Though,” he took a small pause, looking down at the camcorder again and contemplating her words. “You might actually be right. I mean, enough weird shit goes on in this town. Might be a good idea to have some stuff on record.”
With that, she grabbed him and yanked him into a backroom. Unless it was one of their friends coming in to harass them, not enough people came in for them to be worried about customer service issues.
Robin snatched the camcorder back from him, placing her hand through the strap on the side. “You’re getting recorded first,” she spoke as she looked through the viewfinder.
“Woah –” he moved to push it out of her face. “Take out whatever's in there before recording, Rob.”
“Shit you’re right, what if its like… murder footage, or something,” she said, lowering down the camcorder and popping open the space for a VHS tape. Steve immediately took it out and carefully placed it on a nearby shelf before grabbing a blank one.
“I’m definitely keeping it though, I wanna watch it later.”
“Yeah but like,” she started, placing a new tape in and shutting it. “What if it is footage of a murder, or like a sex tape, or –”
“Well yeah, that's the fun part,” he shrugged as he crossed his arms and leaned against the back wall. “I’m keeping it.”
Robin shook her head and readjusted the camcorder (again), making sure to line it up correctly as Steve ran his hands through his hair.
“Does my hair look good?”
“You look fine.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes – now shut up, I'm about to start recording, dingus.”
“I don't even know what I'm supposed to say –”
“Say whatever! 3,, 2,, 1,,”
When she hit record, the device made a few soft whirring and a few other vaguely mechanical sounds. Robin used her free hand to gesture at Steve to start talking.
“Shit, uhm..” he thought for a moment about what he was even supposed to say. “Hello, world. I am Steve Harrington.”
Robin moved the camera slightly while giggling, “Hello world? Really?” She lightly teased him.
“Oh shut up, I don’t know what to say.”
“Just anything!”
“Oh but apparently not ‘hello world’- “
“Just – keep going,” she urged him on. “Like… introduce Hawkins or something.”
“Shit, you might've had your first ever smart thought.” Robin threw a pencil at him from behind the camera, which he promptly flipped her off for. “Ignoring her, I am from a small town in the middle of Indiana called Hawkins.” He gestured at himself. “Me and my camera-man work together at a small place called family video where nothing interesting ever happens. Though, the town itself has portals to a complete other dimension that we call The Upside Down, which was first found by my friend with superpowers –”
“You realize you sound insane, right?” She cut him off.
“Well I'm not wrong. That’s literally been my life for the last few years.”
“You forgot the evil commies.”
“I was literally going to mention them.”
“No you weren’t.”
“Robs, shut up,” he said with a small laugh. “You put me on talking duty and then get mad when I’m talking.”
“I’m not mad, you’re just missing a few key parts to the story.”
“That is only because you cut me off from speaking.”
“Whatever, dingus.”
“If she will let me keep talking,” he gave a small pause to glare at Robin, who only shook her head in response. “A little over a year ago, we figured out that there were a bunch of Russians hiding out under our place of work who had been opening up tunnels to the upside down,” at some point as he monologued, he began to talk with his hands, putting a little bit more emphasis on his words and how insane the story was. “One of the kids who came in with us – this boy named Dustin Henderson, is an actual genius who intercepted one of their codes and helped us even find out about them.”
“Неделя длинная, серебряный кот кормится, когда синий встречается с желтым на западе,” Robin recited from behind the camera. “The week is long, the silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west.”
Steve gestured at Robin, “she helped me and Henderson translate.”
“I did not help,” she clarified. “I literally translated it for you, since neither of you understood that Russian has a completely different alphabet –”
“She helped because she is super smart and speaks a lot of languages.”
“I’m fluent in English, French, Italian, and Spanish. I know a good amount of Pig Latin, and I know enough Russian to translate simple phrases.”
“See,” he gestured again. “Super smart.”
“I’m only smart in comparison to you because you failed history and had to take it again.”
“I passed it the second time.”
“That literally does not count.”
“It definitely does.”
“Blah, blah, blah, whatever, dingus.”
Steve simply rolled his eyes and playfully shook his head.
Robin pointed the camera down and stopped the recording.
“That was good for the first test, right?” She asked him.
“I don’t know, I have no idea what the footage looks like.”
She ran out of the dingy backroom and in front of the counter. Robin placed the tape in the TV on the counter, watching through the first clip she had recorded.
Steve walked up behind her, crossing his arms as she shifted his weight to stand comfortably, watching as the film played back.
The footage was grainy, the audio quality definitely wasn’t the best, and the camera had been incredibly shaky from the way Robin’s hand had been quivering the whole time. Though, even with all the small imperfections in the video (such as the several times Robin forgot to point the camcorder at Steve during their banter), the video was almost perfect. It felt like them, raw and genuine. Neither of them were putting on some front, they were just two friends being stupid and having some fun together amidst all the chaos that had been going on in their lives for the past few years.
Part of both of them wished every day could feel as lighthearted and fun as that video felt. Most days when something insane wasn’t going on felt like that.
Robin paused the film right at the end of where they finished recording, so that it would pick up in the right spot when they went to film another segment. While home VHS tapes usually didn’t come with much film to record on, the video still wasn’t nearly enough to actually take up all of it. They still had a little bit of time to film before switching to a new tape. She set the camcorder on an inner shelf behind the counter.
“I’ll bring it home with me tonight and then we can film more tomorrow, yeah?”
“Only if I get to bring home the original tape and watch back whatever was on that thing and report it back to you tomorrow.”
“If that thing is a sex tape, I swear to god -”
“What if, it's a sex tape of one of our coworkers," he said in hypothetical.
“Ew! No!”
“But you’re a little curious, aren’t you?”
“Absolutely not.”
“You’re so boring.”
“You’re gross, Harrington.