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Before Robin ever knew Steve Harrington, she knew of him. There’s a difference.
Knowing of someone is like knowing the outline of a building without ever stepping inside. You think you understand the structure, but you’ve never heard the sounds inside the walls, never smelled the old wood or the dust, never really felt the place. The building stands there, and you make assumptions.
The assumptions she made about Steve were… not flattering.
In high school, you can’t escape a person like him. He was a beacon, not necessarily because he was smart or talented or particularly interesting, but because he glowed with the kind of effortless confidence that only comes from having never once been told the world doesn’t revolve around you. The kind of confidence that comes from being liked without trying. He walked like someone who expected rooms to part for him, and unfortunately, they usually did.
Meanwhile, Robin was in band.
Actually no, that’s not fair. She was the band.
The kind of person who spent lunch in practice rooms because they were the only places that didn’t feel like a stage. The kind of person who carried sheet music around like it was a shield. The kind of person who could play four different instruments but couldn’t figure out how much eye contact is too much eye contact.
If high school was a hierarchy, then he was one of the golden chosen and she was… well, one of the extras. A background character.
And then there was Tammy Thompson.
Let’s be clear right now: you’re expecting a tragedy. The closeted band girl pining quietly after the unattainable, milquetoast straight girl. But Robin doesn't fall into clichés easily. She’s complicated and many-layered, like an onion, or a lasagna.
But yes, Robin Buckley liked Tammy Thompson. And yes, she giggled like a malfunctioning vacuum cleaner. And yes, at the time she thought she was the most beautiful thing that had ever walked, even though now Robin looks back and thinks she must have had a concussion.
She spent entire semesters composing orchestral fantasies in her head in which Tammy would realize that Robin, the weird girl two seats over in woodwinds, was actually the perfect romantic match for her. They could have been a duet. But reality doesn’t care about musical metaphors.
Reality was: Tammy had a crush on Steve Harrington.
So no, Robin didn’t like him.
Or rather: she didn’t think about him. He was a character in somebody else's story. An obstacle. A dumb, midpoint romantic complication for a girl who would never notice her anyway. So why waste emotional energy on him?
Fast forward one town-wide trauma nobody actually talked about, and she finds herself behind the counter at Scoops Ahoy, wearing a sailor hat and pretending the smell of artificial vanilla is not something she will still be scrubbing out of her hair ten years later.
And there was Steve.
Older. Slightly wilted. Like a house plant someone forgot to water for a month.
You could tell he had been knocked down a few pegs. The arrogance had rounded out. There was still some charm there, sure, he couldn’t help that, it was baked in, but there was a new layer: something thoughtful, something bruised.
He had failed.
College. Basketball. Popularity. Whatever throne he once sat on had been quietly disassembled by time and reality.
And in the rubble of that, there he was, trading shifts with Robin, fighting with children in the food court, and asking customers if they wanted to try a sample of a new flavor called "Chunky Monkey Madness."
She’s not going to lie: she was smug at first. There was some satisfaction in seeing the king of Hawkins High reduced to employee-of-the-month performance targets.
But it didn’t take long to realize he wasn’t bitter.
He was trying.
Trying hard, actually. More than anyone she’d met their age.
He tried to get customers to laugh. He tried to be useful. He tried to be friendly even when people were rude. There was this earnestness to him that she had never seen before. Like he was rebuilding himself out of clay and goodwill. But maybe it was always there, just simmering, being used up by Tommy H. and Carol Perkins.
That’s how they became friends: repetition. Forced proximity. Endless summer afternoons of restocking napkins and arguing about dumb movies. Laughing over nothing. Complaining about management. Singing the Scoops Ahoy jingle with increasing sarcasm until their manager threatened to dock their pay.
And somewhere in there, Robin realized she was talking to him. Really talking to him. Saying things she doesn’t say. Noticing things Robin didn’t think anyone noticed about her.
Instead of thinking about how Steve Harrington had once been the guy who stood between her and Tammy Thompson, she started thinking about how he always held the door for old ladies without making a show of it. How he remembered her coffee order after hearing it once. How he listened, not like he was waiting for his turn to speak, but like he cared where the sentence went.
That was when Robin realized she liked him.
Not like that. Don’t be gross.
But in the way you like someone who is unexpectedly and quietly becoming a foundational part of your life.
Of course, mid-bonding, the universe decided Hawkins needed to fall apart again. Russians. Secret bunkers. Truth serum. Monsters. You know, just small-town Midwest things.
Knees knocking on the bathroom floor, Steve confesses to her. It would be so easy to be in love with him. Robin’s parents would be ecstatic. Her band friends would be impressed.
She’s almost tempted to reciprocate. To lie. To make her life easier. Instead Robin tells him.
And Steve, kind Steve, laughs, makes fun of her taste in women.
After they spill out through the mall doors, glass crunching underfoot, smoke still clinging to the air, Steve makes it exactly three steps before his legs give out.
One second he’s upright, swaying like he’s trying to pretend gravity isn’t real, and the next he’s on his knees, palms slapping against the pavement too hard. The sound makes something sharp twist in Robin’s chest.
“Oh, no, no, no, nope,” she says. She’s at his side instantly, hands hovering because she doesn’t know where it’s safe to touch him. He looks pale now.
“Hey, hey, stay with me,” she says, which feels like a stupid thing to say because he’s looking right at her, blinking slowly like each one takes effort.
There’s ambulances, people everywhere, paramedics with gloves snapping on, voices overlapping, calm in that terrifyingly professional way.
They’re good. Robin knows that. She knows they’ve probably seen worse. That knowledge does absolutely nothing to help.
They lower Steve carefully, asking questions she can’t track fast enough.
“Can you breathe?”
“Any pain in your chest?”
Steve answers through clenched teeth, stubborn even now. Of course he is. Of course Steve Harrington would still be trying to be brave while actively collapsing.
Robin stays kneeling beside him, until someone gently but firmly nudges her back.
“Miss, we need some room.”
She moves because she’s told to, but every inch away from him feels wrong, like she’s violating some unspoken rule of physics.
The words don’t make sense right away. They float. Disconnected syllables. Her brain catches on punctured first, which is a violent word, and then lung, which is important. Necessary. Like something you probably shouldn’t be poking holes in.
Her stomach hurts. She thinks she might throw up again
They’re laying Steve down fully now. One of them is opening a kit, another getting an IV needle ready. Robin notices the flash of metal and hates herself for flinching.
“Okay, Steve, we’re going to need you to relax-”
“I don’t need-” Steve snaps, then gasps, hand clawing weakly at the stretcher. “Robin.”
The way he says her name isn’t loud, but it cuts through everything. Robin moves before anyone finishes a sentence.
She’s back inside the ambulance almost immediately, ignoring the protest she hears distantly, because Steve is thrashing now, not violently, just desperately, adrenaline finally burning out and leaving fear behind in its place.
“He won’t calm down,” one of the paramedics says, tight and clipped.
“I got it,” Robin blurts, because obviously this is the moment her mouth works perfectly.
They let her closer.
The second she’s within arm’s length, Steve’s hand comes up and grips hers with surprising strength. His fingers are shaking. Really his whole body is shaking which she recognizes as a symptom of shock.
“Robin,” he says again, like it’s a lifeline.
“I know,” she says quickly, squeezing his hand back, grounding herself through him instead of the other way around. She brushes his hair off his forehead, fingers gentle, repetitive, something she can do that feels useful. “I know. They’re helping. You’re okay, well, not okay-okay, but handled. You’re being handled by professionals.”
She hears herself talking and can’t stop. Words pour out because silence feels dangerous. She can see one of the paramedics getting the drip into his arm. Another is cutting through the uniform to look at his chest.
“Just calm down, alright? We’re going to the hospital. That’s where they have the good stuff. Like machines. And beds. And people who went to school for this. Which we did not.”
Steve’s breathing stutters, then steadies just a little. His grip loosens enough that she can feel it working. The ambulance starts moving. “Robin.”
He looks at her, eyes unfocused but searching, like he’s anchoring himself to her face.
“You okay?” he asks.
The question hits her like a physical thing.
Robin stares at him.
She thinks about the smoke, the noise, the blood she scrubbed off her hands earlier without realizing whose it was. She thinks about the word punctured echoing in her head. She thinks about the fact that Steve Harrington is lying on a stretcher, broken open by a world that keeps asking him to stand in front of danger.
She thinks about how he’s the one asking her if she’s okay.
And for once, just once, there is nothing in her head. No joke. No tangent. No frantic monologue racing to fill the space.
Because Steve Harrington is an idiot.
And she fucking loves him.
It’s one of those dead-hour shifts where time feels like it’s melting sideways. The overhead lights buzz, the air smells faintly like warm plastic and discounted carpet cleaner, and there are zero customers because everyone in Hawkins has apparently decided to do anything else today.
Steve is restocking horror movies. Again. He does this thing where he reorganizes the shelves to cope with boredom, only to un-organize them later because the manager complains that they’re “too alphabetical.” Which, in Robin’s opinion, is like complaining water is too wet, but whatever.
She’s leaning on the counter, chin in hand, watching him.
He doesn’t notice; he’s humming something under his breath. Something soft. Something without a name. He hums like that when he’s tired.
Robin says, “You know we could be doing anything else, but you decided reorganizing the tapes is better than me.”
Steve glances over his shoulder. “Maybe they are.”
“You think the cover of The Lost Boys is more interesting than me?”
“Well,” he says, slotting in Carrie, “it doesn’t make fun of me.”
She snorts. The joke lands, but something feels heavy today. Not sad, exactly. Just heavier. Like everything she wants to say is going to cut too deep.
It always feels like this with him around the holidays.
He laughed, actually laughed, about eating cereal for Christmas one year because they “forgot” the holiday until December 27th.
Or the way he once mentioned, during a 2AM grilled-cheese session, that he didn’t have baby pictures. His mom didn’t like keeping “clutter.”
There are these little pieces of him she’s collected without meaning to. Like loose puzzle pieces left in a drawer. On their own, they don’t mean much.
Together, well, it’s a giant puzzle of ‘my parents fucking hate me’. But she can’t just say that. Steve probably knows deep down that they don’t love him. But Robin knows he won’t care because she can tell Steve loves them.
She watches him now. The slope of his shoulders. The way he stands like he’s bracing for someone to tell him he’s in the way.
And her chest hurts.
He turns, catches her staring.
“What?” he says.
“Nothing,” she says, too quickly.
He squints. “No, that’s your face that means something is happening in your head, and I should prepare myself.”
She sighs.
“Do you ever think,” she starts, and immediately regrets how that sounds, “that you didn’t get the things you deserve?”
Steve blinks. Then looks down at the tape in his hand. Turns it over once. Twice.
“Sometimes,” he says quietly.
She wants to say that twelve year old Steve deserved a birthday party with confetti and cake and not a frozen pizza and silence.
That fifteen year old Steve should have had someone come to his games.
That eight year old little Steven deserved presents despite his performance at dinner parties.
That he should have had parents who knew his friends.
That he deserved to be loved, that love didn’t have to be earned.
She picks at a sticker peeling on the countertop.
“You ever get angry about it?” she asks.
Steve exhales through his nose. Not a laugh. Just a release of air.
“I used to,” he says. “But… I don’t know. At some point it just turned into this kind of… background noise? Like… that’s just how it was. It is what it is.”
Robin’s throat burns.
Because he thinks that’s enough.
She crosses the room before her brain catches up to her feet. She stands in front of him. Close. Closer than normal. Enough that he looks confused but not alarmed.
“Hey,” she says.
He raises one eyebrow. “Hey.”
She tries to say something smart, something thoughtful, something that will explain the feeling expanding in her chest like a balloon about to burst.
Instead, her voice goes soft.
“I love you.”
Steve freezes.
He blinks at her.
Then again.
Then his expression changes, not into a grin, not into something big or theatrical but into something warm. Something gentle. Something that reaches his eyes, softening every line in his face.
“Love you too, Rob.”
He says it like it’s easy.
Like it’s always been true.
Which, she realizes, it has.
Robin nods once, sharp, like that’s that. Like her eyes aren’t stinging. Like her ribcage isn’t rearranging itself into a new shape.
Then Steve nudges her shoulder lightly with his.
“So, uh,” he says, voice returning to its normal dopey register, “are we having a moment or do you want to help me move the entire romance section because somebody put Pretty in Pink in comedy again-“
“Oh my god,” she groans, wiping her face even though there's nothing to wipe, “one day I’m going to kill you.”
“But Robin, you love me.”
“Tragically.”