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The words tumbling from Will’s mouth weren’t exactly surprising, not to Steve’s ears anyway. Heavy as they were, thudding through the dead-silent room, surprise didn’t describe it. Impossible to say where he’d taken the certainty in his head from – if it was his own or rather Robin’s influence on how he viewed others and caught on to what she called signs.
To be honest, Steve felt a little out of place now, listening to it all, slightly misaligned with the scene. Great, the kid was gay – that was cool, honestly, good for him, no worries about that. He meant that, obviously. But out of all the kids Will was probably also the one he knew the least, so. And, also – the world as they knew it literally might be ending soon. Timing wasn’t exactly on Will’s side. But everyone else seemed drawn in, into that tear-drenched speech and of course he wouldn’t be the one to crash the kid’s earned moment now.
So he stood still, waited, hands shoved into the back pockets of his pants. His heels nudged a rack of dusty vinyl and coiled cables. He was only torn out of that listening trance when Will’s shaky, teary voice mentioned, croaked, barely as a side clause – Tammy.
Could have been a coincidence, sure, but that would’ve been pretty random, right?
His gaze dropped automatically; it landed on Robin, who’d folded herself onto the edge of a chair in front of him, sweater sleeves bunched around the wrists wriggling in her lap. He couldn’t see her face from this angle, but her shoulders were shaking with these tiny, uneven movements, probably unnoticeable to anyone because everyone else was staring holes into poor Will’s head.
Steve settled a palm on her shoulder, gave it a small squeeze, then left it there. After a second, Robin’s fingers reciprocated, reaching up blindly and clinging to the tips of his fingers. Her grip was tight. Was she crying? Hard to tell from here. Maybe. Her voice sounded as though she was.
Matching the wobbly motions of her head and the faint, muffled sounds from her, Steve’s jumbled mind summoned the memory of her younger, anxious face on that bathroom floor years ago. And of course he didn’t know if all confessions looked the same when they mattered this much – but he definitely felt like Will’s torn features mirrored at least a portion of that, of Robin, that shame and fear and hope, all tangled – which then made his throat tighten, after all. His jaw clenched, teeth pressing down on each other.
No one should ever be so fucking terrified to say any of that.
Would’ve felt intrusive to walk over to Will afterward. To hug him even. Will disappeared fast anyway, swallowed by a crowd of arms from his mom and brother and closest friends.
Hugging Robin, though – that would have made sense. To him and probably, like, two other people in this room.
Except the second it was over, Robin jumped to her feet, vanishing among the others. One blink, and gone was she and her blue hair clip, dissolving into the mess of scattering bodies. God, there were definitely too many people in here. And Steve thought, fine, figuring that maybe she was looking for Vickie. Fair enough. And so for the next few moments all of Steve’s attention redirected to Henderson; Henderson who was starting to resemble him a little too much, all grim and stubborn and ready to bring it all to an end, no matter the cost. It weighted uneasily on Steve’s chest, seeing that look on someone so young.
He didn’t find her again until later, when they were all minutes away from loading the rest into Murray’s truck.
Everyone around the station had shifted into that restless, jittery pre-departure hum. Mike nearly ran him over carrying a crate of ammo.
He’d meant to go grab the duffel with the emergency radio gear from the basement when he spotted her upstairs inside the recording booth, the door left ajar. Sitting sideways on her usual swivel chair, one sneaker hooked around its base, she was pushing herself in one never-ending, lazy spin, staring off into nowhere. The booth’s glass reflected stray slices of the chaos from the main room around it, others rushing past – but she looked detached from it all, sealed behind the soundproof panes.
Steve nudged the door open with the tip of his shoe, poked his head into the booth. One hand grabbed the frame, knuckles whitening as he leaned his weight there. Though suddenly feeling like interrupting her now might be the wrong call – he did it anyway.
The mockingly golden late afternoon light cut inside, catching the moving blues and purples mottling the right half of her face in an uneven constellation of layers and shadows; he’d noticed them before, sure, in passing, what he’d thought was a paler version of them at the time – but up this close they were nothing but startling, frankly.
There was that vague memory of being told how Murray’s truck had come to look as demolished as it did now, and Steve supposed that when most people you knew had nearly died more than once over the course of a few years, you learned to blunt yourself somewhat to imagining how differently things could have gone. Or maybe not. Maybe that was just situational bullshit – what wasn’t?
The chair completed another slow rotation, bringing her eyes just short of meeting his.
"What kind of fight did you get into?"
The fact that Robin didn’t even flinch, didn’t break the slow, deliberate pace at which she swirled with her chair, either meant that she’d clocked his presence all along and decided to ignore it on principle, or that all the past events had deadened her perception, too. The chair squeaked faintly with each further, slow rotation.
She shrugged, waved a hand.
"One with a truck’s sidewall," she muttered, reaching out to pick at the corner of a faded sticker on the edge of the table, some long-outdated station logo, yellowed and peeling. Her nail scraped across the lacquered wood with an eerie, rasping squeak, one that he was so close to snapping at her to refrain from doing. She still didn’t look at him.
Come to think of it – neither had she when she’d poked fun at him earlier in the group.
"Are you pissed at me?"
Robin snorted, and so yeah – she definitely was. For some reason. Great.
"What gives you that idea?"
Arguments – true, bitter arguments – with Robin were such a rare occurrence, close to theoretical; something he wasn’t prepared for, though he’d claim to know her pretty well at this point. But this – this wasn’t ground as familiar, and so Steve floundered, her words so light, but her tone … almost as hostile – or no, icy, that was the right way to describe it – as when he’d first met her – well, met her as in being introduced as her new co-worker. When she’d purposefully held him at arm’s length, and he’d been too much of an oblivious idiot to realize that this wasn’t her.
He couldn’t tell whether she was giving him that same look now; she still didn’t let him see her eyes. All he saw was the vague reflection of her face in the surrounding glass, not nearly enough to pinpoint anything, just enough to recognise the details he didn’t need a reminder of.
"Listen," Steve said, then faltered.
He took a step into the booth, then stopped short, unsure where he was going. His palms skidded over the sides of his camo pants, then crossed them in front of himself in a reflexive, defensive knot. The chair slowed, just barely.
"No idea what’s going on with you, or what I did, but you’ve been weird ever since we came back." He swallowed, leaving enough pause for her to interject and tell him how wrong he was, to no avail. "I mean, come on – you haven’t looked at me once since I got back and then… then you pull that wildly out of place joke back there– Robin?"
In one fluid motion, Robin was on her feet, half of the peeled-off sticker still glued beneath her forefinger’s nail, wiped from existence in her mind, apparently. The abandoned chair shot backward as her weight left it, spinning once more, its rubber wheels grating across the grimy linoleum. She tilted her head, just enough for him to see something other than the bruised side of her face, though it wasn’t something that told him much.
"You’re really perceptive, aren’t you?"
Steve dragged a breath through his nose. "Just spit it out," he sighed. "C’mon. Considering there’s a chance we might–"
"What were you thinking just … just driving through that thing?"
Now, finally, Robin was staring straight at him, still so unnervingly calm, and yet quivering, just a tiny bit. Her fingers betrayed her a little, curling anxiously at her sides, knuckles paling as she flexed them. It took him an embarrassingly long second to connect her dots.
"I wasn’t–"
"Clearly," she scoffed, and then her pitch and volume plummeted, her next words a fierce and yet quiet string of something so close to a whisper, "You’re gonna get yourself killed, Steve."
"Jesus, not you too." Steve shook his head, pushing down the lurch within his chest, refusing – actively refusing – to see the water gathering along her lower lashes in those furious eyes. "Henderson already gave me the whole speech."
"Well, maybe that’s ’cause it’s true," Robin shot back, and as little as he liked being yelled at, her sudden lack of restraint soothed him, too, "and you’re being a reckless idiot!"
Behind her the chair completed another, slower rotation.
For half a second, Steve was tempted to agree with her, because she wasn’t wrong. Most likely, neither of them was, and if they were, if he let himself think that far ahead – he didn’t want to spend his – their? – last moments fighting with each other. But, then again, he’d never been a nice, gracious person when put under the pressure of an argument he couldn’t seem to win. Corner him long enough, and old reflexes surfaced – and apparently, as much as he’d believed he’d changed, that hadn’t changed a whole lot.
"You know what," he said, taking a step back, creating space, "you could just stay here with Vickie and Max. You don’t have to come."
Robin’s head snapped up.
"Oh," she said, more a bark than anything else. "Because you don’t think I can be of any help to you guys? Or so you have a clear path to pull another one of your super stupid, sacrificial stunts? Is that it?"
"Jesus, Robin, I’m not–"
He wasn’t, was he?
Steve reached up to drag a hand through his hair out of habit, forgot he was wearing a cap, and smacked it clean off his head. Impassively, he watched as it sailed down to the floor and landed near the shelf where he kept all of his background sound tapes, all sorted thanks to Robin’s nagging.
"I’m just trying to keep everyone as safe as I can, alright?"
"Right," Robin scoffed.
Her laugh was brittle, breaking off too soon, like it hurt her to let all of it out.
"Fine. Sure. Just say whatever you wanna say, Rob. Go right ahead. I’m–"
"You're selfish," she cut in. "There. I said it."
Steve blinked. "How – what part of me wanting to keep everyone alive makes me an egoist?"
She was trying to brush past him, then, upper lip trembling so slightly he almost missed it, chin pointed, decidedly not looking at him, and Steve grabbed her arm before thinking of what to do with it.
"Robin–"
She wrenched her arm out of his grip, twisting her shoulder hard, but he got a hold of it again; she responded by scratching her nails down his forearm.
"Hey, hey, hold on – wait. Wait."
This time he didn’t waste a second as he hauled her against his chest, arms locking around her before she could sidestep or duck away. He hissed and winced every time a nail of hers punched through fabric and then bit into his skin, little burning stings; one of her fists thudded against his back, hard enough that he almost choked on swallowing. How long it went on, Steve couldn’t have said. Robin’s attack on his back didn’t cease for maybe another minute, he wasn’t sure, it wasn’t like he was counting. Or maybe he was starting to halfway through, just to think that he should make it count in case–
"Let’s not go into this mad," he said into her hair, breath coming uneven. "Okay? You can hit me afterwards. All you want."
He didn’t know if it was his words or sheer exhaustion that made her stop, only that she did just as his own arms were starting to tingle from holding onto her so tight – pins-and-needles creeping down to his hands. He loosened his grip just a fraction, she sagged into him. Robin was a little taller than Dustin, and, surprisingly, much harder to hold onto. Her forehead slumped against his shoulder, and her fists sank into hiding in the back of his jacket.
"I’m not mad," he heard her mumble, utterly unconvincing. "Just – don’t die, dingus. Please."
"Rob–"
"I said please," she interrupted, tilting her head just enough for her voice to smear into the fabric of his jacket. "So technically you have to say yes."
Steve smiled into the crown of her head, threading the fingers of one hand through the loose sections of her hair, careful of where the hair clip pulled it tight. "Same goes for you, yeah?"
He tipped his head just enough for his temple to rest against hers, the not-bruised side.
"Yeah," Robin said after a beat, and he echoed it, softer, "Yeah."
Maybe they were both lying – who was to know that now.
"So," Steve leaned back far enough to get a good glimpse at her face, the smile on his lips now inevitable, tone shifting into something lighter, "you told him about Tammy?"
Laughter spilled out of her then, bright, folding her in half once more, for a whole different reason this time. And if a few tears hitched along with it he wouldn’t have pointed it out. Laughing alongside Robin had probably always been as natural as breathing.
"I told him about Tammy," she repeated, sounding half-delirious, pressing her forehead briefly into his shoulder.
Steve huffed out a soft laugh of his own, thumb brushing once over her vest.
"Guess that makes you the expert now."
"Damn right," Robin replied, though her voice stayed brittle enough to make sure he knew how little credit she gave herself for that. She sniffled once, then straightened, swiping the back of her hand beneath her eyes. Her smile lingered, though smaller now. Tapping a finger against his chest, she said, "Hey," and then, soft but oh so serious, "I meant it. No dying."
He exhaled, resting his forehead lightly against hers. "Yeah," he promised, even knowing he shouldn’t, he really shouldn’t promise her shit like that, "Got it. No dying."