Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hawkins Memorial Hospital, 11:30 p.m.

Later, much later, during the long nights of standing vigil locked in a bras de fer with her brain, Robin will think that she should have noticed Nancy and Jonathan’s blood-drenched clothes first. But, no. When she and Will jump out of Joyce’s still moving car, all she can see when she looks at them is a terror staring back at her with eyes red around the rims. A terror that spells hopelessness. And maybe – just maybe – it is precisely the sight of these two looking anything but themselves that turns her legs to jelly.

Robin can actually feel her knees shaking.

Will’s hand is on her elbow. “Robin?”

“Yeah,” she says. Yeah.

“It was a demogorgon,” Jonathan says, combing his fingers through his hair in a gesture so trademarked that Robin almost scolds him, almost tells him he has no right. “It came out of nowhere.”

“Is he alive?” Thank any God that exists for Will. Thank any God that exists for someone asking the right questions.

Nancy nods. “He’s in surgery.”

“How bad is it?” Will again.

Nancy swallows. “Bad.”

***

The first time Robin knows she loves Steve it is a bit over three months after their little run-in with the evil Russians. It’s a Wednesday and the clock behind Steve’s shoulder says 7:15 a.m.. It doesn’t happen out of nowhere. They are already an extension of each other, a package deal. Robin and Steve, Steve and Robin, joined at the hip. But the Upside Down is still the stuff of legend for her, Eddie is still another freak from school, Max and Lucas’ breakup is fresh off the print, and Dustin – Dustin still looks at Steve like the sun shines out of his ass.

It goes like this:

She jerks awake in her own bed, cold and clammy and hyperventilating, sure that Steve is either in mortal danger or already dead. Otherwise, she would have never called him at 3 a.m., she wouldn’t have made a blubbering fool of herself as his sleepy brain played tag with her nonsense, and she would most certainly not have waited for the Beamer to pull up dressed in nothing but her pajamas and duffel coat. She would have never stood in the driveway in her slippers for fuck’s sake. But when the Beamer does pull up and she gets in the passenger’s seat ready to own up to a well-deserved mocking, what she finds behind the wheel is Steve ready to march to battle in teddy bear pajamas pants, armed with a messy bedhead and a look full of concern. She laughs her ass off and receives a mouthful for her efforts as he drives them to his place.

They spend the next hours on the bar stools of Steve’s kitchen, pouring their hearts out and teasing each other in turn, and her face hurts from grinning, and her irrational fear is all but forgotten as they bite down on their toasts. When she says, “Sorry I woke you up”, Steve replies, “Yeah… The phone in my bedroom is a personal line”, and it is one of those rare occasions that the subtext doesn’t disappear between the lines. Robin understands with stark clarity that he’s giving her a blank check to cash whenever she wants, even when his parents are in town, and she knows she loves him for that.

It changes everything, that knowledge. It changes the entire chemistry of her brain.

The next time she wakes up drenched in her own sweat, she tries to resist it. Social etiquette comes with clear red lines, as her mother loves to remind her, and Robin is certain that making a habit out of calling someone in the middle of the night to ask if they’re alive is trespassing each and every one of them by a landslide. So she tries. Instead of grabbing the phone, she makes her way to the bathroom to splash water in her face. She counts breaths, in through the nose, out through the mouth. She turns on every single light as she wanders around like the resident ghost of her house and opens the living room window to cool down on the biting breeze. She even stands on the stupid driveway, ludicrously, outrageously willing the Beamer to materialize out of thin air, until that niggling fear – What if this time is different? What if this is the night he’s in danger? What if he needs her and she doesn’t reach out and he dies in the name of social etiquette? – gets the better of her. Robin has never really cared about social etiquette anyway. Especially in regard to Steve Harrington. Especially after what they’d been through together.

So she calls, again.

And he comes, again. Of course he does. This time the pajamas pants have red airplanes on them and his parents are home, so they sneak in his bedroom, and she calls him ‘dingus’ and he calls her ‘trouble’, and they exchange nightmares and late night frights until Robin falls asleep draped all over him, grounded by the sensation of Steve’s fingers in her hair and the steady beat of his heart under her ear.

Robin milks the hell out of that proverbial blank check and Steve never disappoints. He comes the next time, too, and the time after that, and every time since. His presence becomes a constant, an indisputable fact. Like gravity. Like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west.

But even that is not enough to prepare them for the flurry of blows that comes next. For Vecna’s onslaught, Eddie’s death, Max’s coma. For the earth splitting open and the army rolling in. They aren’t ready for the fallout of Steve’s parents moving out of Hawkins and him refusing to follow, or for Dustin turning on him, glaring daggers and talking down on him every chance he gets. They aren’t ready for any of that. They couldn’t have been. And yet, Robin still wishes there was a way to hide Steve’s heart under layers and layers of bubble wrap, to hold it gently despite her clumsiness. To keep it from breaking.

The nightmares become worse. But reality outmatches them.

She knows there’s nothing healthy about this attachment, nothing sane about her insatiable need to make sure that he’s fine. She knows it even now, even as she punches numbers in the dial in the dead of the night, and it doesn’t stop her breath from hitching in her chest when the third ring goes unanswered.

“Rob?”

“Steve?”

“I’m up. I’m fine. Are you?” His voice is groggy and she can picture him stretched across his bed to grab the cordless phone.

She can picture him rubbing his eyes.

“I am now.” She doesn’t even bother to mask her relief. They’re so far past any semblance of pretense it might have very well never existed in the first place.

Steve exhales and they focus on each other’s breathing as it evens out. They have mastered the drill of keeping the panic contained, of stopping the other from spiraling. The next part is almost a ritual. The murmur of bedsheets when Steve drags himself out of bed and the soft rustling against the receiver as he pulls on a t-shirt. The slap of bare feet climbing down the stairs. The clink of glassware, the faucet running. The mouthful of water he swirls around before swallowing it in three parts.

“Sorry I woke you up,” Robin says when he’s done. “Again.”

“It’s alright. I was having one myself.”

“That’s twice this week.” In the last one, three nights ago, he wasn’t even in the room with her. He was locked up alone, pounding on a bolted door as she cried out for him. The ridiculousness of the Scoops Ahoy sailor suit was just the cherry on top.

On the other end of the line, Steve huffs. “Hate to be the one to break it to you, Rob, but we’re really, really fucked up.”

“You think? That’s such a novel thought,” she says and this time the low rumble of laughter through the receiver sounds much more genuine. “What was it about this time?”

The glass thuds on the counter. A shuddering breath. “Henderson.”

“He’s a stupid boy,” she says. “A brilliant, stupid boy. He loves you.”

The silence stretches and Robin knows she’s lost him. She can hear him closing off.

Steve clears his throat. “What about yours? Still in the Russian dungeon?”

“Technically, it’s a bunker, but, yeah. One too many punches. You didn’t get up.”

She’s screaming, in her nightmare. She’s tied up and can’t break free to reach him, and she’s screaming because his chest has stopped moving. It’s always the same no matter how many variations her brain inflicts on her. It always ends with Steve dying and her jerking awake to her own screams.

“I’m fine. I’m right here.”

“For now,” she says despite her better judgment.

“We’ll be fine, both of us. I promise.”

She loves him for making a promise he can’t possibly keep. She loves him for his conviction, for the unspoken vow that he will do everything in his power and then some to see them over to the other side of this.

“Wanna come over?”

She loves him even more for not making her ask. “Is our four-wheeled Falcon ready for takeoff?”

“You bet she is.”

“What about Solo? He’s not gonna fall asleep behind the wheel and wrap himself around a tree or something, is he?”

“Not a chance.”

“Then, yes. Please.”

“I’ll pick you up in ten.”

***

Hawkins Memorial Hospital, 11:43 p.m.

Robin finds Dustin in the ground floor waiting room, staring blankly out of the window, at the square outlines of the Hawkins Memorial’s parking lot arrayed neatly under the yellow lamppost light. His face looks older than it did two days ago. Stretched taut and shriveled at once. Under his jacket, the Hellfire t-shirt hangs in tatters on his chest. He’s covered in scrapes and bruises. His jaw is working overtime.

“I don’t understand,” he whispers. “It was coming for me.”

He places a hand flat on the window, reaching for something Robin can’t see. Dried blood clings under his fingernails. A part of her aches for the boy. For everything he’s lost and all the love he’s sheltered his heart from. For everything he stands to lose still. Another part resents him more than Vecna himself.

It’s all bullshit, really. This make-believe order, this fake idea of control and initiative they’ve been pushing to find a reason to get out of bed every morning. Their meticulously mapped out crawls, their attention to every detail. Smokes and mirrors, a childish hocus-pocus they chant in denial to recreate a long gone sense of safety. Chaos is all there is. Vecna and demodogs and death. So much death, lurking inside nooks and crannies, around every corner, tearing them apart. Taking everything.

“I don’t understand,” Dustin whispers again.

Outside the everyday grind of coded radio messages and Hopper’s crawls, they haven’t really spoken to each other for a while. Not since the cemetery incident. Dustin made sure to keep her at arm’s length after that and Robin had to bite her tongue because that’s what Steve wanted her to do.

But she will never forgive him, she knows it deep to the marrow of her bones. If Steve—If she loses Steve, she will never forgive Dustin. Maybe it’s unfair, but so what? Maybe Steve would hate her for that, but, again, so what? Right here and now generosity is entirely out of Robin’s reach. What else has their life become if not a lesson in injustice?

Too much tension is gathering around her nose and forehead. Something mad gnaws at her from the inside. Something dangerous. She wants to scream. She wants to burst through the doors and run. Keep running and never look back.

But she could never run away from Steve.

She draws a deep breath, fails spectacularly to let it out slowly. “Want some coffee?”

Dustin nods.

***

It is a long way back to Eddie’s trailer. They are exhausted, dejected. They are trying to convince themselves that Vecna is dead, that they got him even though there was no trace of him when they rushed out of the house. Steve lists slightly to the right but he leads the way, Nancy is still gripping the strap of her rifle like it holds the answers, and Robin trails behind them barely able to keep her eyes open.

Still, she hears it. They all do. A distant, howling cry.

They stop dead in their tracks, heeding with narrowed eyes. Robin can’t decide whether she hears the arching vowels of Steve’s name or she just thinks she does because he’s standing right there.

Then Steve’s head snaps up.

“Is that… Dustin?” Nancy says.

And, boy, Robin has never seen Steve run like that. Not holding anything back. Just tearing through the woods, leaping over fallen trunks, weaving his way through the maze of vines and undergrowth, risking injury with each careless landing. Skidding and stumbling and falling and scrambling up on his feet to rip forward again.

She and Nancy can’t possibly keep up but the closer they get the clearer the keening sound of Steve’s name becomes.

“Dustin!” he’s yelling back. “Dustin!”

Robin watches from the distance as Steve drags Dustin away from something. By the time she and Nancy reach them, panting, Steve and Dustin are a mass of limbs on the ground.

Nancy drops on her knees to press two fingers in Eddie’s neck, and Dustin is wailing, and Steve is pressing him against his chest as if this will stop the boy from leeching out himself. Robin takes in Eddie’s unseeing stare, the puddle of blood and bat goo around him. She meets Steve’s haunted gaze, and she knows that their best wasn’t good enough.

That they have lost.

That there’s no fixing this, ever.

***

Hawkins Memorial, later

Time as a concept seizes to exist. There’s only that clock across the waiting room and Robin following the brusque movement of the second hand as it ticks on – fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. She doesn’t know how many full circles she’s counted off. She stopped caring around the time Joyce cut off her caffeine supply and that was ten thousand years ago.

What needles her brain is that the clock is hanging crooked, tilting to the left. It’s maddening, really. How the hospital staff has allowed such an aberration. How no one else seems to notice or care. Clocks are supposed to be level, the straight line that connects the six and twelve markers forming a right angle with the floor. It’s all there is, that damn clock. The last lifeline. And it’s askew.

Forty-one, forty-two, forty-three.

She hasn’t even told Vickie yet. Vickie is working through her night shift somewhere in the internal medicine clinic and Robin has made precisely zero effort to alert her of her presence in the ER waiting room. She will have to say the words if she does, and these words can’t be spoken. Not out loud. Not by her. It’d be like daring fate.

Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.

Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

A vicious circle.

People around her come and go. They’re all here, every single member of their weird ragtag family, pacing in all directions, talking to each other in hushed voices, to her occasionally, asking if she’s okay, if she needs anything. They push water bottles in her hands and rub her back, whispering platitudes and empty reassurances, and she hears herself answering like a robot – yeah, and no, I’m fine, and okay – never tearing her gaze from the clock hanging slantwise across from her.

Twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four.

Steve is the only one missing. Steve is somewhere else, alone, and Robin knows all too well how much he hates being alone. She wonders if he’d be surprised to find them all worried sick about him, waiting with baited breath to see which side of the tightrope he lands on. She isn’t sure she ever quite managed to drill it in his thick head just how much loved he is.

Thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven.

It becomes too much eventually. The damn clock isn’t going to fix itself, which, she supposes, is fine. Since an entire group of several proactive doers has decided to dilly-dally around such an affront, Robin will have to take care of it herself. She crosses the waiting room and heaves herself up the plastic seat underneath the clock, ignoring the pain that shoots up her ankle. She adjusts the metal string until it’s evenly weighted on both sides, leans back to survey her handiwork. When she’s satisfied, she hops down and returns to her seat. There. At least something is how it’s supposed to be.

One, two, three.

Back to square one. Back to chasing her tail.

***

It starts like this:

During their second date, Robin and Vickie kiss in a dimly lit alley to the sound of stray cats fighting and the smell of garbage overflowing the bins. It’s haste and passionate, and they’re giggling in each other’s mouth. It’s perfect. Steve later drops her off home and Robin spends the small hours of the night grinning at the ceiling of her bedroom.

Then this happens:

Her parents sit her down for a talk over breakfast. They make her promise to never touch a homosexual no matter what. Ever. No skin to skin contact at all. The pamphlet they slip in her hands describes AIDS as the ‘gay plague’ and urges the law-abiding, God-fearing citizens of their nation to not die of ignorance. They look pleased at the stream of tears rolling down Robin’s face, certain that they have gotten their point across, and proceed with sipping their coffee like it’s business as usual. They chat about last night’s events in Chicago and Robin’s stinging eyes land on the Chicago Post headline that reads, FED UP CITIZENS TAKE MATTERS INTO THEIR OWN HANDS, which she finds pretty fucking rich considering that the entire front page details the particulars of a gay man being mobbed outside a bar. Her father mumbles, “About damn time.” Her mother nods.

Robin’s ears are ringing.

And then this:

The moment her parents are off to work, Robin storms out on an empty stomach and finds herself banging on Steve’s door with no memory of how she got there.

There are no words for the scene that follows. For the sobs and the screams and the incoherent blabbering right in the middle of his living room. For the wild gesticulations and the name-calling and the vicious kicking of furniture. For Steve’s terrified expression.

She hates him. She hates that all this vitriol against people like her is meant to be guzzled down by people like him, with his perfect face and his perfect house and his perfectly normal taste for the other sex.

“They say I’m a monster! I just don’t understand! Why is it so wrong? Why—If my own parents knew the truth—Why am I—Help me understand! Help me understand! What is it that is so wrong with me? Why is this the fault of people like me? They say I’m a monster! They say I’m a monster!”

“You’re not a mons—”

She flings the newspaper and the pamphlet at him.

“Well, the Chicago Post begs to differ, Steve! Public opinion begs to differ! My own parents beg to differ! There’s a nationwide witch hunt that—And I’m scared, okay? I’m scaaaared! I thought I was done being scared but I am! I’m scared for me, for Vickie, for every freak of nature like me that can’t seem to belong! I spent last night making out with a girl in an back alley for God’s sake! What if someone saw us? What then, huh? I’m a virgin! I haven’t even slept with anyone yet! I’m scared and it doesn’t matter if that makes me a coward because we’re fighting literal monsters and the world is hellbent on hunting down people like me!”

He makes to hug her at some point, her loving brave fool. He makes to hug her and she shoves him away so hard she sends him stumbling backwards.

“No, Steve! You’ll get AIDS, Steve! Protect yourself from the plague that is me, Steve! Don’t die of ignorance, Steve!”

It goes on and on. She cusses a lot. The world, her parents, herself. She cusses Steve every time he tries to get a word in edgeways. There is no beginning or end in the way she falls apart at the seams.

“Say it! Say that I’m a monster! A freak of nature! Say that your life would be better if you didn’t have to carry my secrets around 24/7! Say that people like me get what they deserve when they’re beaten down within an inch of their life! Say that you’d rather fight a thousand demodogs alone than share a glass with me! Say it! Why won’t you say it?”

Suddenly she’s doubled over, choking. There’s not enough oxygen to fill her lungs. The edges of the room go dark and the floor is spinning, and the punches on Steve’s chest when he wraps his arms around her have less strength behind them.

He holds her. He holds her even though she fights him with everything she’s got. His fingers thread through her hair and he holds her until her hands bunch around his sweater and she’s gasping for air against his chest. Until he is the only thing that keeps her standing on her feet.

But also this:

The sun is low in the sky when Robin opens her eyes to a splitting headache. She sits up to inspect the abstract design of her drool all over the couch cushions, the wreckage she’s made of this perpetually pristine living room. Trinkets are clattered around the floor, a million shards of something once shaped into… something. The gray armchair is toppled over and the second from last shelf of the bookcase titters on the bottom, volumes of Joyce’s encyclopedia tumbled haphazardly here and there. She doesn’t remember doing any of that. Her memory is one of imploding, not exploding.

Steve is talking on the kitchen phone, voice low, and when Robin turns his way, she finds his eyes trained on her.

She looks away.

The Chicago Post is folded up on the coffee table, the AIDS pamphlet set on top. Which means he knows. Which means he’s connected the dots. There’s also a toast that looks like it went cold hours ago, a bottle of painkillers, a glass of water. She takes a few sips, then wolfs down the toast in four huge bites because he went the extra mile to cut off the crust and because she’s embarrassed for inviting him center stage to the most epic meltdown in the history of meltdowns. She swallows down two painkillers with another sip of water, watches the ripples on the surface when she sets the glass back on the coffee table.

God, did she really hit him? Did she really hit Steve? Robin hugs her knees to her chest. If she starts apologizing right away she might be done by Christmas. He might even forgive her. Steve is forgiving like that.

In the kitchen, Steve hangs up the phone.

“I called Nance to let her know we’re not meeting them for dinner,” he says as he makes his way to the living room. Robin can’t hold his gaze when he takes a seat on the coffee table. “Also, that was our third no-show in Family Video. We’re officially fired.”

She should apologize. Why isn’t she apologizing? She should be grateful he’s so eager to overlook her outburst, move on and pretend it was just another addition in her long list of foolish antics. Why isn’t she grateful?

Steve puffs his cheeks. “Couldn’t have come at a better time, really. The sooner we get the Squawk up and running the better. We should meet up with the others tomorrow, check at least some of the equipment.”

Robin makes a noncommittal sound. She doesn’t know where she’s going to be tomorrow. She doesn’t know who she’s going to be tomorrow.

Steve’s brow furrows.

“Lucas got his hands on some new walkie-talkies,” he says but now his voice is halting, less confident. “They’re supposed to have better range.”

Robin stares at the wall behind him. It’s Steve’s fault, she thinks. That she wants more than acceptance. He gave it up too easily, too freely, made it feel like an afterthought. Now acceptance feels like sympathy, worse yet, tolerance. Now Robin demands fire, the pitchforks raised against her to be met with pitchforks in her defense. It’s the hill she will die on. Whether alone or with Steve on her side.

“This place looks like it was hit by a hurricane,” she says and her voice is hoarse, raspy. It doesn’t sound like her own.

Steve glances around. “Wasn’t it?”

It’s too much – his tight smile, the way the corners of his eyes crinkle with concern.

“Steve?”

“Yeah.”

“We can’t shove this under the rug. We just can’t.” Her gaze drops pointedly at the pamphlet, at the Post beneath. “I know you’ve read these. You need to say something.”

He has always been an expressive man, Steve, and Robin considers herself somewhat of an expert on the emotional journeys of his face. The openness and the avoidance, the guarded neutrality, all the imperceptible changes that go largely unnoticed, but not by her. Never by her. She sees the exact moment it hits him, her lack of trust. What it does to him. She sees the dent of surprise and the flash of hurt, the tenterhook of fear and the levee of defiance. The way his brain fiddles with doubt, the way it strives for command.

“Okay,” he says, and it’s weak. Wavering. “Yeah.”

But she won’t apologize. She won’t beg for love. She won’t settle for being tolerated. There is no Tammy Thompson cavalry to save them this time. No way to shrug this off. The stakes are simply too high. The only way is through.

Steve clears his throat and Robin holds her breath. He has no idea how hard she’s rooting for him. How hard she’s rooting for them.

“You’re not a monster, Rob. You’re a lesbian, not a fucking demodog,” he says carefully. “You’re just Rob, you know? I was next to you when we fought Vecna and his crazy killer bats so I know firsthand that you’re not a coward. You are the exact opposite of a coward. And as much of a pain in the ass as you can be – a pain in my ass – that hardly qualifies you for a freak of nature.”

He chews on his lower lip, grapples with what to say next. Whatever it is he’s searching for, he seems to find it because when he looks at the coffee table, his expression becomes one of steel. He scrunches up the pamphlet in his fist. “And this AIDS shit, by the way?”

Neither of them breaks eye contact as he grabs her half-empty glass and downs the water in great, loud gulps.

“There. Okay?” The glass clatters on the coffee table. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “It’s total bullshit, okay? You don’t get AIDS by touching a gay person or sharing a glass with them. You don’t even get AIDS because you’re gay. You get it because you’re vulnerable. It’s just a fact. It’s science! And instead of someone actually doing something about it, they’re putting the blame on—on—”

Robin’s mouth is dry. She can hear the wheels inside Steve’s head screeching. She doesn’t care if he finds the right words anymore. She doesn’t.

“… on marginalized people!”

A guttural sound escapes her, something stuck between a hiccup and a sob. Something triumphant.

Steve bolts upright. He starts pacing the length of the living room, waving the Post in the air.

“And this? Don’t even get me started with—No, you know what? This actually takes the cake! It’s – what do you call it – it’s a hate crime is what it is, okay? And it will never happen to you. I will never let anything like that happen to you! Anyone so much as looks at you the wrong way, I’m mowing them down with the Beamer! And the guys over at Post? Homophobic assholes! And people are stupid, Rob, what do you want me to say? Is this even up for debate? Who the fuck cares who has sex with whom as long as they’re safe and happy and have the time of their lives? How come it’s suddenly everyone’s business? People are fucking idiots, Rob! Your parents are fucking idiots!”

He stops then, chest heaving. He’s vibrating head to toe.

And Robin loves him. Her heart sings for him. She doesn’t know when she let go of her knees or when she slid on the edge of the couch. All she knows is that she loves him. She loves him for saying homophobic and for the mowing down part. She loves him for calling her parents idiots. She loves him even more for his rage, for putting it on full display, for barely containing it but containing it nonetheless.

“Actually, you know what?” Steve looks at the crumpled up papers in his hand. “They can all go shove their printers up their ass to watch the view. We don’t need this kind of bullshit here.”

He stalks off to the kitchen, has barely dunked the ‘bullshit’ in the bin when Robin lunges at him. Even off guard, he catches her. He always catches her.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbles in his neck. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“What the hell do you have to be sorry for?”

Her hand is in his hair, his in hers. They are clutching onto each other like their lives depend on it. She’s breathing him in as the tension seeps out of his shoulders. He’s not just her best friend. He’s not even just her platonic soulmate. There are no words for what he is to her. They will be ninety years old, wreaking havoc in some retirement home somewhere in the country, and that dreadful summer job at Scoops Ahoy will still be the best decision she’s ever made in her life.

Robin has no idea how long they’ve been standing there when Steve says, “I just want you to have all the boobies in the world,” and Robin chuckles, and he does, too. “The best boobies in the world. And if some of these boobies happen to not like boobies back, I will sweep in to take advantage of it.”

Somewhere, a clock is ticking.

Robin hugs him even tighter. “And I wish we could make more of you, you know? Like get you in a mold and clone you. Then put it in mass production to make an entire army of Steve Harringtons so that everyone could have their own. And the world would be a great place and Vecna and his zoo wouldn’t stand a chance.”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“But don’t you see? There’s nothing like being loved by the likes of Steve Harrington.”

***

Hawkins Memorial Hospital, 3 a.m.

It’s 3 a.m.. The time when Robin’s adventure in the Russian bunker often revives in her nightmares. The time she used to call Steve drenched in her own sweat, the time she makes her way down the hallway and into his bed ever since she moved in with him.

It’s the time she dreams of Steve dying.

Which is probably not unrelated with the fact that at 3 a.m. on the dot Robin has an out of body experience of walking up to the nurse behind the reception desk, asking her to let Vickie Dunne know that Robin Buckley is waiting for her at the emergency room.

It all happens very fast then. Vickie arrives in seconds and Robin says one word as the rest of the party looks on. She says: Steve. Vickie’s face twists, and Robin is screaming her lungs out: Steeeve! It’s Steve! Someone hauls her back and Vickie’s running, really running, rounding a corner that is off limits for the rest of them.

A few minutes later the reception desk phone rings. Disgruntled, the nurse leads them down a long grim corridor, a short trip with the elevator to the third floor, then another corridor, shorter but no less grim for it, into a different waiting room.

Robin finds herself inside a supply closet with Vickie. Any other time she’d have a lot to say about them being stuck in a closet together.

“He’s still in surgery,” Vickie says and Robin hears alive.

She hears that Steve is alive.

“He coded once when they brought him in.”

“Coded?”

“His heart stopped but—”

Black explodes in her vision. Vickie doesn’t understand. Steve’s heart can’t stop. That’s not part of their deal. Their deal is forever, no hearts stopping, ever. Their deal is—

“Robin! Robin, listen to me! They brought him back immediately, okay? He was in pretty bad shape but he hasn’t coded since which is great news.”

“Um… alright?”

“They had to remove his spleen. It was ruptured and—”

“His… spleen?”

“It’s not an issue, okay? People live long healthy lives without their spleen all the time.”

Robin’s brain stutters to process the information. It feels overactive and wrung out at once.

“The main issue now is the extensive blood loss. They’re trying to prevent his organs from shutting down. They’re doing everything they can. Dr. Hunt is a miracle worker. You couldn’t have asked for a better surgeon.”

“So, Steve, what—He’s gonna be fine? He needs a miracle? Which one is it?”

“They’re doing everything they can.”

“That’s not an answer, Vic! What does it mean?”

“You’re gonna have to stay calm and wait, okay? That’s what Steve needs you to do right now.”

***

Steve pulls the handbrake and Robin hands him his ice cream cup. Her nerves are on edge which means the odds of her mouth getting away from her are pretty high too. She pretends not to notice Steve’s glare when she leans back in her seat and crosses her feet on the dashboard.

Steve checks his watch. “Here we fucking go,” he says, and Robin shoves a spoonful of cream and cookies in her mouth.

It’s going to be a long two hours and they both know it.

“I hate it when Hopper goes incommunicado on us,” Robin says. “I know it’s only the second time we’re doing this but I don’t see how that helps with anything.”

Steve sets the walkie in the space between them, spoon hanging from his mouth. “He doesn’t trust the frequencies yet. We need time to get the details pinned down.”

He makes an appreciative sounds in the back of his throat, digs the spoon back in the cup again. She will never understand his taste for strawberry ice cream. To her it tastes like the antibiotic syrup her mother used to pushed down her throat every time she came down with a cold as a kid. She was a sickly kid, for no apparent reason. She grew out of it during middle school, for no apparent reason either.

“Doesn’t it bother you that we have to pay for something that used to be free?”

“It was never free, Rob. You just gobbled down a gallon of ice cream a day without paying for it.”

“Same difference. You’d think that something popular enough to have a National Month dedicated to it would be free anyway. God, it’s an insult to the face of how perfect ice cream is that Reagan has forever linked his name with cream and cookies in my head.”

Steve laughs. “Your head is a very weird place to be.”

“And I’m stuck in it all the time. Did you know Alexander the Great was a great lover of snow cones?”

“The ancient dude?”

“Uh-huh. This is how back in human history ice cream goes. The Greeks used honey and some other stuff as sweeteners. It was more like a sherbet back then, like flavored ice mostly. There are dozens of fun facts about ice cream, actually. Like it takes three gallons of milk for just one gallon of ice cream so it’s practically safe to assume that had the Mind Flayer not destroyed Starcourt, your toddler friends and I would have singlehandedly run the Scoops aground in a matter of months. We were really ripping that place off for all its worth.”

“Rob.”

“But, to get back to the fun facts, chocolate ice cream was actually invented before vanilla because vanilla – like, the vanilla pod – was way too expensive back in the day, did you know that? I find this so fascinating given modern standards. We all just take vanilla for granted nowadays, don’t we? And the cones as we know them today? They weren’t a thing until the early 1900s. It started in Louisiana, I think. A vendor ran out of dishes or whatever and started serving ice cream in rolled up waffles, something like that. Human resourcefulness knows no limits. It’s a testament to—”

“Earth to Robin!”

Robin blinks. “Sorry. Word diarrhea again?”

“The explosive kind.” Steve rolls his eyes but the corners of his mouth quirk upwards. “You’re stressed, okay? I get it. Let’s just—”

“Sit tight, I know. Yeah.” Robin nods to herself. “Get this over with. Right.” Then, “Wanna talk about your big Stacey date tomorrow?”

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose. “Do you wanna talk about my big Stacey date tomorrow?”

“Ha ha, you’re so funny, Steve! No wonder you’re such a heartthrob! No wonder the ladies—”

Between them, the walkie crackles. They sit up.

“Guys, do you read? Guys?” Dustin’s voice comes through warped. “This is a code red! I repeat, this a code red! Does anyone read?”

“Nancy and I are here,” Mike says.

Steve presses the button. “We’re here, too.”

“Have you watched the news? Tell me you’ve watched the news!”

Robin and Steve look at each other.

“We are as we speak,” Nancy says. “It’s going to be a problem.”

Steve frowns. “What is?”

“Steve, can you pass the walkie over to Robin, like, right now?” Dustin says. “Your baby brain is just as helpful as ever.”

Steve does as he’s told, angling his head away from Robin.

“That wasn’t very nice, Dustin,” she says in a tight voice.

“Well, I don’t have time for the children in the back right now, okay? We need to act fast!”

Robin watches the stiffness in Steves’s posture. How clenched his jaw is. She glares at the walkie. “I have no idea what this is about, either!”

“The military has announced an emergency curfew,” Nancy chips in. “They’re putting up new checkpoints as we speak. They will be patrolling the area around the old junkyard. I can’t get ahold of Jonathan and the others.”

Steve cusses under his breath. He shoves his cup back into Robin’s hand.

“Hop and El will be walking into a trap!” Mike, on the verge of panic. “We have less than fifteen minutes to stop them!”

“I’m riding to the cabin right now but I will never make it in time.” Dustin again. Out of breath.

“Buckle up!” Steve tells her. She doesn’t question him.

“I’m on my way too!” Mike.

The engine revs into life. Handbrake’s down. Steve’s foot slams on the gas pedal and the Beamer springs forward. Robin brings the walkie close to Steve’s mouth, her other hand wrapping around the grab handle.

“Turn back around, both of you!” Steve yells as the car makes a sharp turn to the left. “Don’t attract any attention to yourselves!”

“Steve, are you close?” Nancy’s voice is screechy. “Can you make it?”

“We’re near old Hayne’s grove. ETA’s seven minutes or so. We’ll go through the tunnel there, intercept Hopper at Hunter’s Crossing.”

Right, Robin thinks. Quick thinking. Brilliant. Except—

But Steve ignores the sign pointing to the Wellington checkpoint and Robin isn’t sure where they’re heading.

“God, Steve, I swear!” Dustin shouts. It’s clear that he hasn’t turned around. It’s clear that he’s pedaling as fast as he can. “There’s stupid, there’s dense, and then there’s you!”

“Dustin!” Robin exclaims.

The car swerves for a split second. Robin watches, shocked, as the blood drains from Steve’s face. He says nothing. Just his eyes blinking and his throat bobbing and his gaze glued on the road.

“You can’t get to Hayne’s grove without passing through the Wellington checkpoint, you idiot! There’s a curfew!” Dustin, the little shit. The little mean, ungrateful shit.

Robin is seething. She puts the hand holding the walkie on Steve’s shoulder, waiting for him to confirm what she already knows.

“The old cotton factory detour,” he says without looking at her. He sounds short-winded, as if trying to shake off a punch in the gut.

Robin presses the button. “We’re taking a detour around the old cotton factory. There’s an old dirt road there, isn’t there?”

“Oh, thank God, guys.” The relief in Nancy’s voice is palpable. “Completely forgot about that.”

“Are you sure—” Dustin starts but Robin’s heard enough.

This time she’s yelling too. “Mike, Dustin, just turn your goddamn bikes around, alright? Both of you! And get off the fucking radio! We’re almost there!”

“Let us know when you find them,” Mike says. “Over and out.”

Then Nancy, “Be careful, guys. Over and out.”

Robin stares at the walkie.

Static.

“Steve…”

“Hold on.”

Another sharp turn. The car lurches off road. All Robin can see in the headlights is sharp rocks, ragged chuckholes, a narrow, winding path not trodden for years. Steve is still driving as fast as humanly possible.

On the floorboard, melted ice cream is pooling around Robin’s shoes. She doesn’t remember dropping the cups.

“Couple of miles more,” Steve says. “Let’s hope the tires hold.”

“He didn’t mean it,” she hears herself say. “He never does. If you just let me talk to—”

“Grab the flashlights from the box in the backseat, will you? You’ll find extra batteries in the glove compartment.”

***

Hawkins Memorial Hospital, 3:27 a.m.

“What the hell happened anyway?”

Very few things would worth the effort Robin has to make to peel her gaze off the clock. This is one of them.

She likes Lucas. Of all the kids, he’s the one that reminds her most of Steve. She likes his pragmatic nature, too, his need for answers, for a rundown of the events to make sense of them.

Lucas’ eyes dart between Dustin, Nancy and Jonathan, and Robin finds she needs to know too.

What the hell happened anyway?

Nancy frowns at her hands. “There was a fifth one,” she whispers.

“A fifth what?” Lucas asks. “A fifth demodog?”

Jonathan nods. “We took cover in the old cotton factory. It wasn’t safe, glass windows all around. So we decided to make a run for the woods. But they were already inside.”

“They came from inside the building?”

“Yeah.”

“Steve was right,” Nancy says. “We should have never lingered there. We should have headed straight to the woods.”

“Then why didn’t you?” Lucas’ voice hardens a bit. Just a bit but it’s there.

“We—uh—We couldn’t agree. On how to proceed. There was also the idea that since we were already there…” Nancy bites her lower lip. “… that we should check out Creel’s house again. Because that’s where Vecna was last seen.”

Robin’s eyes travel around the waiting room. The last time Vecna was seen was the night Eddie died. The night Max ended up on the floor below them. No one says it but it’s in everyone’s mind.

“Nancy,” Joyce says. “Start from the beginning, sweetie. Please.”

“So Steve picked us up and we headed out to check that reported sighting of a rabid dog near your old house, okay? We didn’t expect to find anything. We’ve chased every lead and… It’s always been for nothing. We’d never found anything before. The woods seemed… We were ready to go back when we spotted the demogorgon. So we went after it. A gate opened up out of nowhere and we followed it through. We found ourselves in the Upside Down but the demogorgon was nowhere to be seen. It’d just vanished, and—We had no idea the gate would close behind us. We weren’t even where we were supposed to be. The old cotton factory is at the other side of the town. We were left…”

“… stranded,” Will finishes off her sentence.

“That place… It wasn’t dead, guys. It was nothing like it’s been for the last year. It was… alive. We could see the bats in the distance. The vines were moving. There were all these noises… From something… living. We couldn’t decide what to do. Between Steve insisting we made our way to the tunnels and that, um, idea about Creel’s house…”

“You were fighting?” Mike exclaims, voice reedy. “You were in the Upside Down and you were fighting?”

Nancy and Jonathan cast a furtive glance at Dustin. His head is tipped against the wall, eyes squeezed shut. A muscle is twitching in his jaw.

“Steve was right.” Nancy’s voice breaks. She wipes stray tears away. “We should have gotten the hell out of there. We weren’t prepared for a mission. We didn’t have enough supplies. Barely any weapons. Hop and El were too far to help if anything went wrong. But we couldn’t…”

Mike and Lucas look at each other, then at Dustin’s detached form.

Jonathan buries his face in his hands. “Nancy and Steve wanted to leave. Me and Dustin… we wanted to go to the Creel house.”

Lucas all but jumps to his feet. “We’ve checked out that place a dozen times! Armed to the teeth. With a plan A and a plan B and a plan C. With escape routes and cars on the standby. Why would you—”

“I know how stupid it sounds, okay?” Jonathan’s face is still buried in his hands. “I know.”

“So the demodog was nowhere to be seen, the gate had closed behind you and you just stood there fighting out in the open,” Mike says. “Like idiots.”

“Let’s not do this, guys, okay?” Joyce lifts two hands in a placating gesture. “Vecna would love to watch us turn on each other. Let’s not make it so easy for him. Every mission comes with a thousand decisions that have to be made on the spot. Sometimes things don’t work out.”

“But we weren’t on a mission,” Nancy says through gritted teeth. Her eyes land on Jonathan, impossibly hard. “We were just supposed to check out the woods. We weren’t prepared for a mission in the Upside Down. We didn’t even expect to find the demogorgon. There’s been dozens of sightings…”

“What happened next?” Lucas.

“Some bats spotted us,” Jonathan says. “We fought them off – barely – and took cover inside the building to regroup. Figure out our next move. But it wasn’t safe. We were sitting ducks. There were… noises coming from inside the building. Like… scratching… and screeching… We bolted the doors. Steve wanted to get out of there and… Dustin was trying to reach Hop on the radio.”

“After a while we decided to move,” Nancy says. “Make a run to the woods, head to the tunnels.”

“Steve came to me with a plan to use himself as bait to divert the attention of the bats,” Jonathan says.

Dustin’s eyes snap open. “What?”

Nancy turns to face Jonathan full on. “That wasn’t the plan.”

Jonathan sighs. “I was supposed to delay you and Dustin just enough for him to lure the bats away.”

“Lure the—the—” Dustin stammers. “Alone?”

“He knew you and Nancy would never agree. That’s why he came to me. The plan was: We head out in single file, keep our backs to the factory wall for as long as possible. First Dustin, then you, then me. Steve would be the last one in the row.” Jonathan turns his gaze to the ceiling, chest billowing. “You wouldn’t even know he wasn’t there until—”

“Until it’d be too late to stop him.” Nancy.

“It wasn’t a bad plan, okay? It’s what you did last time. Before Eddie went off script. It worked back then. There’s no reason it wouldn’t work again. I offered to do it myself but Steve—Steve said he’s faster than me. Which, you know, he is!”

“It was dangerous!”

“And staying there waiting for the monsters to pick us off wasn’t? Making a run with the bats swarming us from all sides us wasn’t? Look, this wasn’t some half-cocked macho shit to play hero, okay? It was a good plan. It was! He knew the area. He knew exactly where to take cover. He had the distances all figured out. It wasn’t—It was nothing like Eddie. I should have trusted his gut. I should have let him go through with it. Chances are we’d all still be alive if I had.”

Robin gasps.

“You are all still alive,” Lucas says. “You are.”

“So Steve and Jonathan were arguing at the entrance. Steve wanted to be the last to head out and Jonathan insisted for Steve to be at the head. I didn’t know what was happening back then. We were making too much noise.” Nancy pauses, sucking in air. “Then the demogorgons came. Four of them. They came from the back of the building. The doors just… I had the rifle. Jonathan had the axe. Steve had his bat and Dustin had his spear. We formed a circle to fight them. We had each other’s back. Steve killed the one he was up against first, then turned to the one attacking Dustin. I—I didn’t know there was another one. I didn’t see it coming.”

“Nancy’s demogorgon went down and…” Jonathan shakes his head.

“And then yours, like, what? A moment later? And then Steve just…” Nancy makes a motion with her hand like following a trajectory.

“He was flung across right in front of us,” Jonathan says. “A demogorgon was on top of him. I don’t know what happened. I didn’t see it coming either. We were all screaming. Nancy couldn’t shoot. Steve and that thing, they were rolling on the ground, fighting. She couldn’t risk shooting Steve. It… Uh, it bit him twice before we…”

Nancy presses her knitted hands on her forehead. “We didn’t see it coming.”

A dead silence spreads in the room, thick and oppressive.

“I did.”

Dustin’s voice is incredibly small, childlike. Tears roll down his face. He’s staring at a point far beyond the room, miles away from everyone else.

“Steve was finishing off the one we fought together when I saw it charging through the back doors. Really charging. The ones before it had torn the doors off their hinges and… Its momentum was just… And Steve had his back turned to it so I stepped between them. I wouldn’t let it… I would never let it…” The words are barely audible. “I don’t understand. He shoved me out of the way. He didn’t have time to get back into a fighting stance.”

Dustin closes his eyes again.

“Jesus,” Lucas whispers.

Joyce’s voice is fraught with tears. “That boy. That brave, brave boy.”

Mike says, “He saved your life.”

Dustin lets out a sob that convulses his whole body. He looks at Robin, his face breaking down in a series of ripples. “I don’t understand,” he says, choking.

But she feels nothing for him. Not a shred of compassion. Not a speck of mercy.

The scene plays out in her mind like a movie. The sticky, spore-infested air, the endless backdrop of gray. Steve, lifting his head from the demodog lying at his feet to find another one ready to pounce on Dustin. Robin can see every line of horror on Steve’s face, read every thought in his mind. The love, the desperation. The resolve. She can see him surging forward without hesitation, pushing Dustin out of the way just as that thing’s hind legs shoot off the ground. He has no time to plant his feet. No time to brace himself or lift the bat. He has no time to do anything.

***

No one moves when the screen fades to black and the credits roll. To her right, Vickie is still sobbing. To her left, Steve is blowing his nose. Sandwiched between them, Robin is a mess of snot and tears. Eventually, Steve gets up to flick on the lights.

“Oh, my God,” Vickie groans, face buried in her hands. “What the hell just happened?”

Steve pulls the tape out of the VCR. “You’re never, ev-er picking up a movie ever again,” he enunciates slowly.

Robin sits up on the couch. “Sophie’s Choice is a certified masterpiece, Steve! It’s a tragic tale of loss and sacrifice wrapped up in the performance of a lifetime, and it’s not my fault you wouldn’t know a masterpiece if it bit you in the ass!”

“Yeah, you keep telling yourself that!” The tape is already back in its case, the black-and-white Meryl Streep portrait on the back cover peering enigmatically in the distance. “All I know is that we’ve spent the last hour bawling our eyes out.”

“Because of how flawlessly, incandescently perfect this movie is! Vic?”

Vickie shakes her head. “Sorry.”

“Oh, come on! Seriously?”

“I’m with Steve on this one.”

“You always take Steve’s side!” Robin crosses her arms over her chest. “You two are always ganging up on me!”

Vickie splays her hands in a very professional, very nurse-like manner. “Thing is, Robin, we wanted a fun movie night and you got first pick and you blew it. No hard feelings, happens to everyone, we just have to move on now.”

“I didn’t blow it! Sophie’s Choice is a masterpiece, guys! A ma-ster-piece!”

Vickie and Steve share a look that Robin doesn’t like one bit.

“Told you,” Steve says. “Sore loser.”

“So, so sore.”

“And she calls me a brat.”

“I don’t call you a brat.” Robin pouts. “You are a brat.”

“Oh, my God!” Vic stands between them like a teacher bringing order in a rebellious classroom. Her eyes, however, are on Robin. And they are such beautiful eyes. “You two are bickering like an old married couple.”

Which, Robin thinks, is a pretty accurate description.

Steve blows his cheeks. “So, what are we watching next?”

Vickie and Steve reach for their plastic bags and Robin seizes the hesitation to jump in. “Out of Africa, obviously.”

“No!” Vickie and Steve shout in unison.

“Oh, come on, guys! The only thing better than Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep AND Robert Redford together. He’s so handsome in that movie!”

Vickie arches an eyebrow. Robin winks at her.

“Honestly, Rob,” Steve says, wearing his dead serious face. “Can you point at a single person in this room who cares about how handsome Robert Redford is?”

A collective laughter echoes in the room.

“The deal was we bring two movies each, then choose one of each,” Vickie says. “Sorry, babe, but it’s not your turn to choose.”

“Sorry, babe, but it’s not your turn to choose,” Robin echoes mockingly, and Vickie casts Steve an incredulous look.

“Such. A. Sore. Loser.”

“I know!”

Robin falls back on the couch. “Whatever. I don’t even care.”

“Sooo.” Vickie holds out proudly her pick of the bunch. “Halloween and Evil Dead. You just can’t go wrong with these two.”

Robin says Halloween the exact moment Steve says Evil Dead. They both turn to Vickie.

“You, guys! You’re really putting me on the spot here. It’s really a between a rock and a hard place kinda situation.” Vickie’s eyes flick between the tapes in her hands. “I think I’m leaning towards… Halloween?”

Steve groans. “Not the one with the goddamn babysitter!”

Robin thinks, Don’t worry, Stevie, Michael Myers doesn’t hold a candle to Vecna, and Halloween: A documentary based on Steve Harrington’s biography. A brave babysitter, determined to take on the world to protect her charges from supernatural evil, but she can’t say any of that in front of Vickie, so she claps her hands. “Huh! Who’s the loser now?”

“Bite me,” Steve shoots back.

“Steve!” Vickie swoops in. “What did you bring?”

“Alright. Okay.” He’s beaming as he reveals Return of the Jedi on his right hand and the Temple of Doom on the left. Ever so slowly, Steve’s left hand goes down and his right one comes up. His head is cocked to the side. The right side. “It’s the one with the teddy bears,” he says.

Robin’s face hurts from how hard she’s grinning.

“Ooooh!” Vickie makes a little bounce, tapping her fingers together. “I like the one with the teddy bears!”

“The only reason he even watches Star Wars is ‘cause he likes to pretend he’s Han Solo,” Robin says. “He even makes stupid whooshing jump-to-lightspeed noises when he’s driving.”

Steve glares at her. “You didn’t.”

“Pretty sure I just did.”

Vic’s mouth falls open. “Is that true?”

He jumps on the defensive. “Okay, Vickie, hear me out. Okay? I’m a great driver. Like, seriously, a great, great driver. And Solo is a top pilot. And the Beamer? Pheew! What a beauty, right? Absolutely special! Designed for the impossible! In a world full of spaceships—”

“Starships,” Robin interjects.

“– whatever – the Beamer is the Millennium Falcon, okay? Which makes me…”

“Not Solo,” croons Robin.

“Um, okay…” Vickie makes a face. “The Beamer, I can buy. But I need more on the Solo front.”

“Fine. Okay.” Steve drops the tapes on the TV stand. He combs his hair back with his fingers. Puffs his chest out, chin up, hands on the waist and all. “One, swagger for miles.”

Vickie pinches the bridge of her nose, shoulders shaking from laughter.

“And two, everyone thinks the guy’s a total prick when he’s really a sweetheart.”

Robin cups her hands around her mouth. “Oh, boo-hoo! You’re pulling the sweetheart card?”

“I’m pulling the sweetheart card!” Steve wriggles a finger at Vickie. “I’m totally pulling the sweetheart card!”

“You know what? I see it.”

“Yes!”

“Oh, come on, Vic!”

“What? He’s got a point. He does! I mean, I spent high school hating King Steve and now I can’t even remember why.”

“So, let me get this straight. Somehow…” Robin pushes herself off the couch, straightening down her pants. “Some-fucking-how, I end up with a girlfriend who’s a horror movie junkie and a platonic soulmate whose movie choices are dictated by his nerdy placeholder kids.”

Again, like well-oiled machines, they shrug in unison.

“Fine. So since you two savages are apparently allergic to art, I will admit defeat graciously and go make us some fresh popcorn.”

She makes her exit with a deep, deep curtsey as the sounds of laughter and small talk drift behind her.

When the lid is on the pot, Robin hoists herself on the counter, legs dangling. It grants her an unobstructed view to the living room, to Steve flailing his arms in a mimicry that looks suspiciously close to that time Robin found a spider on her window sill. To Vickie gasping for breath.

It’s a picture perfect moment. One she wishes she could keep frozen in time. This is her life now and she wants to protect it. Not just on principle but because she really wants to.

“—is that order matters,” Vickie’s saying as she and Steve make their way to the kitchen, “and we’ve already gotten the tear-jerker out of the way”.

“So Halloween first, Return of the Jedi next?” he asks.

“Uh-huh. To take off the edge.”

“I like the way your brain works.”

Steve grabs three beers from the fridge and when they all clink their bottles, Vickie’s eyes are shining and Steve is grinning, and Robin has all the love she needs.

Inside the pot, the corns start to pop.

There is no right way to live life, Robin thinks. All she can do is be brave, bury her teeth in the fruits it gives, find out what’s inside them. Some will turn out bitter, rotten to the core. Some will be sweet. Overwhelmingly sweet.

And in that moment, Robin is terrified of how easily this sweetness can be ripped away from her.

***

Hawkins Memorial Hospital, 4:32 a.m.

Robin doesn’t want any more water. Whatever has gotten into Joyce that makes her think that Robin can just keep peeing her troubles away, Robin has had enough of it. Staying hydrated is one thing and Robin is well-versed in the perks of water – the lubrication of joints, the regulation of body temperature, the moisturization of skin, the improvement of mood, you name it. But Joyce has forced her to guzzle down so much that Robin is sure she’s a sip away from water poisoning which is a real medical condition, a potentially fatal one, and just about the last thing everyone needs right now.

She doesn’t want to talk either. She has nothing to say. Shocker, sure, but that’s the knowledge she’s pocketed waiting for some news for the last three million years. Turns out, she’s talkative on her best day, a chatterbox on her average one and delirious on her worst, but when Steve’s life is hanging off of a thread, Robin’s affluent spring of words dries up for good. She prefers looking at the clock as it tick-tacks away. She’s rather not have her name on the tip of everyone’s tongue. She doesn’t want to speak unless she’s spoken to and she doesn’t want to be spoken to unless someone has something solid to tell her about Steve.

And that’s not even touching on the self-flagellation going around the waiting room. Jonathan has been beating himself up nonstop for not letting Steve go through with his plan – as if he hadn’t joined forces with Dustin to undermine Steve before that, as if hadn’t put all their lives in danger just to make a point, as if he hasn’t been at Steve’s throat since he came back from California. Nancy has been equally guilt-ridden – as if she hasn’t spent an entire year sitting on Steve’s confession, making heart eyes to him while in a relationship with Jonathan. And Dustin has been crying, mumbling ‘I don’t understand’ as if he doesn’t know he’s Steve’s favorite person in the entire world, as if Robin would somehow be in the wrong if she walked up to him screaming, Did you make sure he knew what a goddamn worthless idiot you think he is? One last round in case you don’t get another chance! It’s not like Robin doesn’t have plenty of ammunition stored away for each one of them.

But she doesn’t want to use it. She doesn’t want to point fingers. She doesn’t want the group to fall apart. She doesn’t want to give anyone the easy way out by making this about them. No, Robin doesn’t want any of that.

This is not the time for any of that.

What she wants, really wants, is to call Steve. For him to pick up –  I’m up. I’m fine. Are you? – and for her to tell him how her nightmares have finally graduated from the Russian bunker and moved straight into the tiled walls of Hawkins Memorial. Tell him how much she hates it here, how, somehow, it is so, so much worse. He will come get her then. Steve always comes. He will drive over the speed limit and blow through every red light and he will get her away from here. He will say, I’m fine, I’m right here, and they will hole up in the safe haven of his house where nothing bad can ever happen to either of them.

Please.

Please.

Please.

Let him come and get her.

***

The door slams shut behind her and Robin climbs the stairs two at a time. An agitated energy courses through her, something she can’t quite put her finger on. Going to the meeting was a waste of time – she couldn’t focus, barely heard anything at all, her contribution rounding up to a big fat zero. She only went because last night Steve had made her promise to. Their combined absence would raise questions, he’d said. It’d sounded true enough at the time, not that Robin would have found it inside her to deny him anything when he was heaving in a bucket. She’d made up some bullshit excuse for him, a leaky faucet flooding the cabinet, Steve waiting for the plumber – nobody had given it a second thought.

Nobody except Dustin, whose eyes were scanning the empty space where Steve would have normally walked up behind her. Who had been as sparse with his words as she had. Who hadn’t met her eyes once.

Outside the bedroom door, she pauses. Gathers herself, hand on the knob.

“I’m up,” Steve’s voice comes from the other side.

Robin steps in, drops her bag on the floor. The shutters are cracked open and Steve is lying on the bed, propped up on two pillows. The bucket is still at the same spot she left it that morning, empty and clean.

She doesn’t go to him. “Better?”

He nods. “I slept the worst of it off.”

“I know. I stayed up all night watching you.”

Steve huffs a laugh. “Jesus, you should really start listening to yourself.”

Teasing is good, Robin thinks. Teasing means he really is better which in turn means that she can stop being so goddamn scared. She can move on to anger.

“What I’m not listening is why this happened,” she says.

“It was a migraine, I told you.” Steve rubs his hands down his face. “Because of the concussions. Doctors said they’re bound to happen every once in a while.”

Robin bristles. “Right. And that was migraine number…”

“Four.”

“Right. Ever since the Russians.”

“Yeah.”

“So one every four or five months, give or take.”

“Give or take.”

“And it never crossed your mind to let me know that you get migraines. Not so much as, um, I don’t know, a ‘Hey, maybe Robin would like to know that sometimes my fucking head feels like it’s being split in half? That when this happens I can barely speak? That I end up fucking face down on the fucking stairs?’” God, he had tripped, hadn’t he? He had staggered inside, leaning wall to wall and insisting he was fine while she was losing her mind, and then he’d just… tripped midway to his bedroom and there wasn’t a single cool cell left in her body.

Robin shakes her head to push the image away. “I knew you took one too many punches! I knew my nightmares weren’t for nothing!”

“Yeah, except the Russians were concussion number three,” Steve bites out, eyes on the wall behind her, “so quit taking credit for everything.”

“But why now?”

He gives her a withering look. “Are you seriously asking me that right now?”

“You were fine when you left for the cemetery,” Robin says. “You came back looking like you had seen a ghost. You could barely stand and you scared the shit out of me. So unless you somehow had a little run-in with Eddie’s apparition, which I find highly unlikely and let me remind you that I have a surprisingly open mind about these stuff—” Steve’s gaze flicks back to the wall and it dawns on her, swift like an ambush. Like something she should have seen coming a mile away. “Dustin was there, wasn’t he?”

Of course Dustin was there. Where else would Dustin have been on the one-year anniversary of Eddie’s death? Steve sighs, rubs his hands up and down his face again. It feels that’s all he’s been doing since she walked inside the bedroom – avoiding and sighing and rubbing his stupid face.

Robin stomps her foot on the floor. “That little piece of shit! I’m gonna kill him!”

“No, you won’t,” he says, voice muffled behind his hands but no less curt for it.

“What did he say to you?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing doesn’t trigger a migraine, Steve! Goddamn it, I knew it! I knew some shit went down the moment I saw you. He has no right, okay? He’s grieving – fine! – but we need some boundaries here! He’s been using you as his punching bag since forever and you’ve been letting him, and now he’s gotten under your skin and there’s no way in hell I’m gonna let this shit slide! Not if we’ve reached the point that it’s physically hurting you!” Steve licks his lips, looking anywhere but at her. “You know what? That’s great. That’s just great, Steve! Let me argue with the wall here. Bottle it all up! Let me think I’m making this all up and sulk like the brat you are and go non-verbal on me! That’s gonna really help things!”

Steve shoots up. “Jesus fucking Christ, Robin!” he yells, swinging his legs off the bed. “You’re being verbal enough for both of us!”

He moves to stand too fast. He sways.

“Steve!”

He falls back on the bed, bracing his forehead on the heels of his hands. “Shit.”

She’s by his side instantly, an arm around his waist, a hand on his knee.

“I’m fine.”

“Thought you said the worst was behind us.”

“It is.”

“Then what—”

“Now it’s just a headache, okay? Caused by you.”

Robin deflates, all at once. She drops on the floor between Steve’s legs, fingers massaging his temples, dissolving the tension packed under his skin. He lets her, the furrowed lines of his face smoothening out as his mouth cracks open with relief. He exhales, head hanging loose, and her hands move to the nape of his neck where newly-formed knots have crept up. She hates these knots. She hates anything and anyone that causes him pain, herself included. Steve makes a sound in the back of his throat and Robin presses her lips on the crown of his head.

She’s worried. Scared. On the verge of tears. She regrets everything. This was not the time for her to rebel against him never opening up about Dustin. She should have waited. She should have been patient. She should have behaved like a normal fucking human being. Treated him like one too.

“Do you want me to leave?” Robin asks. Fear has set a crackle to her voice. She sounds like she’s swallowed glass.

Steve lifts his gaze off the floor. He opens his mouth. Closes it. Licks his lips again. He sounds defeated when he says, “I never want you to leave, Rob.”

“Good, ‘cause I wasn’t going to.”

“I do want to punch you sometimes.”

She laughs, and it’s not entirely real. Ιt not entirely fake either. She shifts back on the bed, rests her chin on his shoulder. “I know I can be… a lot. Really hard to be around all the time. Hands down insufferable. People always get sick of me sooner rather than later.”

Steve squints at her. “Who’s told you that? Your idiot mother?”

She laughs again. “Who’s told you that you don’t deserve to be loved? Your idiot father?”

“Not in those exact words.”

She keeps her mouth shut this time, slowly coaxing him back on the pillows. He needs time, she thinks. Time and space to recover. She shouldn’t suffocate him with the chaos she brings everywhere she goes. Still, she hovers, torn between the reasonable thing to do and her need to watch over him. Steve tugs on her elbow and Robin finds herself curled up on his side, her head undulating with the rise and fall of Steve’s chest. His heartbeat is strong. Steady. His hand buried in her hair.

“You didn’t cause the headache, okay? It was there since I woke up,” he says after a while. “Migraines are not a one size fits all kinda thing. Mine are really bad but they don’t last long. I’m always better the next day. In the meantime, I can’t stand bright lights or loud noises or the smell of bananas, whatever the fuck that means. I get nauseous, I throw up like I did last night. I’m very, very dizzy. But the next day, it’s mostly gone. Maybe a headache, feeling a bit tired, like my brain’s a bit foggy or something.”

Robin nods, making a mental note to throw out every single banana next time he so much as touches his head. Unscrew every single light bulb. They can walk around carrying candelabras like a couple of leftover Victorians for all she cares.

They don’t say much after that. What remains unspoken hangs heavy in the room. She knows Steve’s thoughts have drifted to the little shit, and she’d give her right hand to know what in hell Dustin had said that led to all this. But she’s pushed too hard already. She doesn’t want to hurt Steve anymore. She thinks about that weird stomach bug he’d come down with a bit after she’d moved in. How he hadn’t let her anywhere close. How the entire affair had been done and dusted overnight and the next day Steve had proclaimed himself up and good to go. The dark circles under his eyes. The wince in his face. She wonders if that stomach bug was even true. What would have happened last night if she wasn’t home, and how Steve is so used to going through this alone. Then—

“I told him I’m done.”

A pause.

“Did you mean it?”

Steve sighs. “No.”

She just squeezes him harder.

***

Hawkins Memorial Hospital, 5:18 a.m.

Robin’s still counting when someone calls for Mr. Harrington’s family and then she’s on her feet, pushing Dustin out of the way.

“I’m his wife,” she declares and nobody argues the point.

***

Robin spins around on the bar stool, shoving two more Pringles in her mouth.

“Did you know that, technically, they’re not even potato chips? They’re potato-based. I don’t even want to know what that means. But I can’t stop.” She stuffs another one in her mouth as she speaks. “Is it the flavor? Is it the shape? Is it how perfectly stacked they are on top of each other? Does it even matter?” And another. “Am I high on salt? Do you think I’m high on salt?”

Steve looks entirely unimpressed at the pains she’s gone to munch her way to the bottom. He puts the gloves in the backpack – always thorough, always making sure he’s not missing anything – and walks around the kitchen island.

“Jesus, will you stop with that shit?” He snatches the Pringles away over her protests. “Eat a banana or something. You’ll get scurvy one of these days, I swear.”

Robin glares at the bananas. Ever since Steve told her that they make him nauseous during his bouts of migraine, she’s been in open war with the entire banana family. They’re really walking on egg shells, those innocent-looking bananas. One wrong move, Robin dares them. One wrong move and they’ll get a taste of her unbridled fury.

She spins around on the stool again.

“Scurvy is caused by lack of vitamin C,” she says.

“Then eat an orange.”

“We don’t have any oranges.”

Steve rolls his eyes, ever-suffering. “Forget about the goddamn scurvy, okay?” He digs in the fruit bowl. “Here, eat an apple.”

Robin bites off a huge chunk, crunching on as he counts off the items in his head. The Swiss army knife and the bolt cutters are already in the backpack along with the first aid kit, only the granola bars and the flashlight still waiting on the counter.

“So the unbroken shall venture into the unknown to reap the glory while the invalids lie low in shame!” Robin says dramatically. “Let the injustice be known!”

Steve chuckles. “The woods over at the old Byers house is hardly the unknown and you are hardly an invalid.”

“Then let me come.” She leans across the kitchen island, extending her arms. “Please! Please, please, please! Otherwise I will die of boredom and you will never forgive yourself.”

Steve cocks an eyebrow, “Can you run?”, and Robin groans, on and on and on. “That’s what I thought.”

She bites off another chunk, frowning. Her ankle is almost fine now, all the swelling gone. She just needs to be mindful of not putting too much weight on it.

“And whose fault is that?” Steve goes on, relentless.

“The stove’s. I’m completely innocent.”

It was hardly a kitchen fire, okay? Hardly. The pancakes Robin had left unattended were probably the cause and maybe she’s not very proud of how she handled the rest but reaching for the fire extinguisher had been the right decision and screaming “Steve!” and “Help!” hadn’t been wrong either. It was partly his fault that he’d barreled down the staircase screaming too. He had distracted her just as she’d gotten the pin out, just as she’d readied herself to squeeze the lever. She had turned to him and – well, the nozzle had turned too. She hadn’t exactly doused him with the foam. The foam had barely caught him. But the released pressure had sent the extinguisher thrusting uncontrollably in Robin’s hands. She had doused the entire kitchen, to be fair. She’d even put the fire out by mistake. Then she’d slipped on the foam and ten minutes later her ankle was twice its normal size.

And now she would miss all the excitement because of the stupid pancakes.

Steve zips up the backpack. “This is a huge waste of time and you know it. You’re not gonna be missing out on anything.”

“Whatever.”

“I’ll bring pizza on my way back, okay?” he says, shrugging on his jacket.

“Extra mushrooms and bacon?”

Steve shoulders the backpack, tugs on the straps to check how secure they are. “What happened to caramelized onions?”

“Nothing. Just making sure you didn’t forget.” Robin shrugs.

“As if I’d ever live to hear the end of it if I did.”

He’s already at the door, hand on the handle.

“Don’t burn down the house while I’m gone!” he says, swinging the door open.

“Steve!”

He turns around. A faint smile is on his face.

“Be careful.”

“Always.”

***

Hawkins Memorial Hospital, 5:53 a.m.

Robin takes Steve’s hand in hers. She studies the bruises across his face, the fading yellows and the vibrant purples, and she hates him a bit because this is not where the damage is. That’s lower, at his midsection, at the wound the bandages keep out of sight. Under them, a tube is sticking out, draining anything that has no place being inside Steve’s body. It disappears at the other side of the bed where Dustin sits, deadly still, staring at Steve like he can see through him. Not that Steve cares. He’s undisposed at the moment, and Robin really does hate him just a little bit because this is a waiting game and she sucks at waiting games. She’d rather have a riddle to solve or a code to crack. A new language to learn. She’d even throw herself at some dreadful physical exercise. Anything, really. Anything but this.

There’s more damage, of course. Robin knows all about it now. She has the details. The penetrating wound that ruptured the femoral artery – the cause of the massive blood loss – is patched up, too, under the sheet folded up neatly below Steve’s belly button.

Several devices are spread on both sides of the bed, tracking his vitals. Beeps and dings and whirs. The smell of antiseptics is acrid. She didn’t take the ICU news well, the ventilator part in particular. Next to her Dustin had been composure personified, nodding silently as the doctor laid down the facts, frowning and asking questions with bloodshot eyes while Robin had to be supported by Nancy to stay standing. How the kid went from a sobbing mess to putting forward a straight face that gave away nothing was beyond her.

But the sedative Vickie slipped her must be working because Robin finds herself largely unaffected by the mechanical commotion surrounding Steve. She can ignore the tube attached to his neck, the rhythmic whooshing, the forced movement of his chest. She can focus on him.

“You huffy little brat,” she says, taken aback by how casual her voice is. She sounds about to remind him that they’re out of coffee. Which is true and also entirely irrelevant. “I leave you alone for five minutes and you go and do that.”

Her fingers hover lightly over the stitched up cut on his forehead. Oh, Steve, Steve, Steve, she thinks. Is there an inch of you left unhurt? “This is gonna scar. The ladies will love it.”

“He can’t hear you,” Dustin says in that aloof, pragmatic tone that suggests she’s an idiot for missing the obvious, and it takes both the sedative and all of Robin’s waning willpower not to grab one of the monitors and fling it at him.

She settles down on her chair, instead, brushes the back of her hand along Steve’s jawline. Everything’s fine, she thinks. He’s just sleeping. He’s a sucker for naps.

She tries not to obsess over how unresponsive the hand she holds in hers is.

“Go get some rest,” she says, tersely. She speaks to Dustin but her eyes are fixed on Steve. If everything is so fine, why is she almost afraid to touch him? If everything is so fine, why is he not squeezing her hand back? “There’s no point for both of us to stay here until he wakes up.”

Dustin inhales sharply. Holds his breath.

“If.”

Robin looks over to him. “What?”

“If he wakes up.”

“He’ll wake up.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do kn—”

“He might wake up or stay like that forever like Max, or—”

“Dustin.”

“What? He might just die, you know. People die all the time. One moment they’re there and next thing you know—”

“Shut up!”

Robin swallows around an impossible lump in her throat. She’s aware of crying, of pressing Steve’s hand to her neck as if this will make him stay. As if this will keep him tethered to the them.

“I have expressly forbidden him to die and he knows I can be a real pain in his ass if he disobeys me.”

Dustin raises an eyebrow, all sharp edges, no balm. “Why don’t you go then? What are you so afraid of?”

The offhand callousness lands square in Robin’s gut, knocking the air out of her lungs. It gives her pause. Pause to lick away the salty tears spilling over her lips. Pause to take in Dustin’s defiant stare. The needy desperation that seeps through his posture. The eagerness.

This is a trap, she realizes. He’s luring her into a trap.

Dustin Henderson sits next to a comatose Steve looking to pick a fight.

And he won’t back down. He doesn’t know how to. This façade is all he’s got left. Behind it, there’s nothing but a terrified little boy who doubles down to stay afloat. When the façade collapses, Dustin will be buried under the rumble. If Dustin loses Steve, there will nothing for Robin to forgive or not. There will be no Dustin.

“He loves you, you know.” Robin’s voice is shaking. “Even after all that crap you’ve pulled, you’re still the person he cares most in the world.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“So this is me drawing a line.” She straightens her back, wipes her eyes. “I’m at the end of my wits and I’m drawing a line, and if you so much as try to step on it, if you so much as think you might get a chance to try and step on it, I swear to fucking Frodo that I will turn this hospital into a boxing ring before you have the chance to say Steve’s name. Are we clear?”

Dustin’s lower lip is trembling. “You can’t make me leave,” he says, all the edges gone from his voice. “I won’t leave.”

Robin turns her attention back to Steve. It must be dawn outside. There’s no way to be sure under the fluorescent lights of the ICU but the pink horizon must be fading, the first rays of sun must be peeking through greenery. A Saturday.

“Movie night is cancelled, I suppose,” she whispers to Steve. Both her hands are wrapped around his. “A rain check but you don’t have to watch Dr. Zhivago again, okay? I promise. We can always watch Indiana Jones and Star Wars. We can watch Indiana Jones and Star Wars every Saturday for the rest of our lives. I will never complain about it again, okay? I promise. And we can finally try that pineapple pizza El loves so much, okay? I don’t care. I’ll give it a go. Just hang in there. Don’t go anywhere. I’m here. We are all here.”

Robin’s voice breaks. She’s vaguely aware of Dustin putting his hand of Steve’s, of his fingers curling around Steve’s wrist.

“I never understood why you two aren’t together,” Dustin says. The words are soft, quiet. Robin hears the tears in them.

She draws in a stabilizing breath. Everything she and Steve have kept tucked away feels unimportant now, her secrets ridiculous.

“It’s because I like girls,” she says, not tearing her gaze away from Steve.

“You what?”

“The reason Steve and I… It’s because I like girls.”

“You’re a lesbian?”

“That’s what liking girls means.”

“Does he know?”

“Ever since the Russians.”

She almost laughs at the memory of them sprawled all over Starcourt’s bathroom floor, at Steve mimicking Tammy’s off tune singing. His subtle way of telling her she deserved better. Her believing him. She had broken his heart that night. She had broken his heart and still he didn’t make it about himself. Jesus, it feels like a lifetime ago. It feels like yesterday.

“I told him right after we were done puking our guts out,” she says. “Something along the lines that if he knew who I really am he wouldn’t even want to be friends with me, and he said, No way that’s true. And I thought, No way that’s true my ass, right? So I told him. At first I thought it was some sort of subconscious, self-destructive challenge to make him laugh at me, make myself feel like crap, prove that he really was the douchebag he was supposed to be, I don’t know. It took me a long time to realize that I told him because I felt safe with him. The safest I’d ever felt. So, anyway, I told him, right there, on the bathroom floor, right next to the toilet. And it was such a make it or break it moment for me. It was the most vulnerable and open I’d ever been with another person. He could have crushed me with just a word. Not even a word. A look. He could have destroyed me, send me in a tailspin. But Steve “The Hair” Harrington had said, No way that’s true, and Steve “The Hair” Harrington is not a liar. He cares. He cares so much. Russian spies and end of the world aside, in the totally insignificant scale that is my life, that day is – right up there, you know? It was the first time in my entire life that all the scattered pieces fell into place, you know? The first time I felt valued and… and enough… Good enough just the way I am. No asterisks, no stipulations. And it was all because of him.”

She looks over at Dustin. Whose head is bowed. Whose shoulders are shaking. Whose sobs mingle with the monitoring sounds.

“So, please, Dustin. Please. Don’t try to drive me away from him either because it’s not going to work. I’m staying and there’s nothing you can do about it. He’s my soulmate with a capital S, and I’m staying right here where I am. However long it takes. No matter what happens in the end.”

***