Chapter Text
“Are you sure this is such a good idea?” Robin asks for the 8th time from the passenger seat of Steve’s truck. “I mean, yes I get that this is a symbolic outing and all that, but when the kids said everyone I didn’t think they actually meant everyone.”
“I mean it’s not technically everyone.” Steve replies “Joyce and Hop aren’t coming. Or Murray, thank God.”
“Ok Everyone under the age of 30,” Robin says back. “Just admit it Steve, this is going to turn into a nightmare, and unlike you, I am not prepared to be a responsible child wrangler.”
“You do realize that half of them are in college. You know, like you are?”
“Okay, first of all, if I am the gold standard for responsibility on this trip then we are already beyond screwed. Second of all, even by those standards, the math is not on our side. There are only 10 of us and 13 of them! We are outnumbered, Steve.”
“Robin, this is a camping trip not Fort Wagner.”
“Hey! You watched it!” Robin grinned.
“I told you I would get around to it once the semester ended.” Steve said back innocently.
“So, what did you think? Personally, I think not enough people appreciate the impact that good war movies have in showing the inability to address systemic oppression in our society and the need to stand up against…”
Steve allows himself to half tune Robin out, smiling a little to himself. It would probably be a good 10 minutes or so before she actually needs a response out of him. Hopefully he could keep her occupied with movie analysis for the rest of the two hours they had left to get to their destination.
Certainly a safer topic than who all was coming with them on this trip.
He glances in the rear view where he can see the familiar car riding behind them. Nancy is in the driver's seat of course, smiling at whatever Holly is saying from the passenger seat beside her, and several other small heads poking out from the back seat.
Vickie, bless her patient heart, is somewhere behind that with another 4 of the kids in her car. (Although she banished Robin to the lead transport with Steve after confiding to him that she needed a break from any more conversations about the likelihood of anyone contracting rabies during this 3 day outing.) And in the very back Max, Lucas, and three more of the self proclaimed ‘Black Thing Brigade’ rounding out the end of the Caravan.
Everyone else is crammed inside Steve’s camper along with any of the equipment they weren’t able to fit in the assorted trunks or strapped to the roofs.
It had been Lucas’ idea originally. A multi-day camping trip to re-unite the Party after their first year in college. A convenient excuse to fly Will in from New York after the Byers/Hopper move out East. Of course this had all been overheard by Erica who insisted on being included, and who then invited Holly to ‘dilute the amount of male stupidity’ on the trip.
Holly, to Steve’s understanding of how this whole mess came to be, had mistaken the description of ‘a trip for the whole upside-down crew’ to include Derek, Mary, Debbie, and the rest of the kidnapped kids all of whom had eagerly latched onto the idea of a start of summer outing when invited.
However, this many people had added the complication of multiple parents insisting on an appropriate chaperone.
Dustin had been quick to offer up both Steve and Steve’s camper, (without actually asking of course), raving about his previous trip over Spring Break and assuming correctly that the parents, including the ever formidable Karen Wheeler, would be more accepting of the scheme knowing that their kids favorite teacher was spearheading said expedition.
Karen had then volunteered Nancy, who was back home temporarily after finishing her Internship at The Harold as an additional chaperone.
Nancy, figuring they might as well use this opportunity as their ‘monthly meet-up’ since everyone would be done with classes for the year anyways, and had reached out to Jonathan and the girls.
So now here they all were, packed like sardines into an assortment of cars headed out to Dunewood camp grounds, the much debated upon agreed location.
“... and I don’t care what Jonathan says, I think it is a crime, a crime I tell you, that it didn’t at least get a nomination for Best Picture. I mean, they did give an Oscar to Denzel, but honestly? The whole thing was kind of a mess, and not just because they didn’t give more awards to My Left Foot.”
“Totally,” Steve agrees by habit, giving his head a slight shake and thanking God that there will be more people around for him to talk to if Robin and Jonathan insist on continuing the argument about the ‘artistic integrity’ of this year's Oscars. It had consumed their entire meet up last month in New York, at one point getting so bad that he, Nancy, Vickie and Will who was with them at the new Byers/Hopper residence at the time had literally disappeared unnoticed on a shopping expedition for 5 hours and come back to find them still debating the finer points of Driving Miss Daisy. Not to mention several other times over the weekend where he and Nancy had been basically left alone to their own devices, which had been equal parts thrilling and terrifying.
“Steve?”
“Yeah?” he says, eyes still pointedly fixed on the road.
“You gonna tell me what you're thinking about? Because you are definitely doing that thing where you space out and think that I don’t notice.”
“I’m not spacing out,” Steve lies.
“Um, yeah, you totally are, and don’t think I haven’t seen you staring into the rear view mirror.”
“Yeah, because I’m driving!”
“Or is it because you’re about to spend 3 days and 4 nights alone in the woods with the reason for your three dozen or so failed relationships.”
“I have not had 38 failed relationships!”
“It’s 36 Dingus, if I was being literal, which I wasn’t. But seeing as you’ve barely had any relationships that amount to more than what you yourself call your ‘casual dating’ I didn't feel the need to make a distinction between the two.”
“I have not dated 36 different women either.”
“So if we travel back in time to the fall of 1985-”
“Wait, that doesn’t count.”
“For the purposes of my thesis statement as to the reason for your failed relationships it most definitely counts.”
Steve scowls. “And I hardly see how 23 people at a public campgrounds qualifies as alone.”
“Ah, but you have the potential to be alone. And I notice that you have not actually contradicted my thesis statement, which proves to me that I am, as per usual, right.” Robin says, leaning back in her seat and looking at him with a self satisfied smirk.
Steve shoots her a glare.
“You can’t avoid talking about it forever, you know.”
Steve actually felt that he had done a pretty admirable job of not talking about it aside from that one humiliating night over Thanksgiving break where after an obscene amount of alcohol he had apparently sobbed his heart out to an only slightly less intoxicated Robin and Jonathan. To be honest his recollection of that particular night is pretty fuzzy, although Vickie (who had come home late after an evening of volunteer work to find the three of them huddled together crying on the floor wrapped in blankets and wearing random hats from her collection) has a polaroid to memorialize the evening hanging on their fridge.
“I’ve told you a million times, there is nothing to talk about. Nance and I are just friends.”
“I believe that about as much as I believe that Tammy Thompson is going to land that singing career.”
“Muppet’s are really in this year,” Steve retorts sarcastically.
“Come on Steve, can you please just admit that you need to talk about this thing with Nance.”
“No, I don’t, because there is no ‘thing’.”
“Talk to me Steve, you know you want to.”
“Not happening.”
“We still have almost two hours of driving Stevie, and you’ve got nowhere to go, so you might as well start talking.”
He flashes her his fakest smile. “Did you know that raccoons can carry rabies?”
“OH MY GOD STEVE! What the hell is wrong with you!”
That should keep her busy for two hours.