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The R.V. had gone quiet, the adrenaline from the escape fading out and taking the kids with it. Nancy had gone up front to keep an eye on Steve, making sure the quiet wasn’t overriding whatever insane mind-over-matter bullshit kept him going when all logic said he should be dead or at least delirious with blood loss.
God, Robin hated that he would probably keep going even after they’d dealt with Henry. She hated him so much sometimes.
Hated that he still smelt good to her, even covered in Upside Down crap and blood and sweat. Hated that he’d been warm and solid and sympathetic as they watched Vicki and her stupid perfect man boyfriend. Hated that he didn’t have tits but did have a dick and wasn’t enough despite being absolutely everything. Hated that he had let her think about tomorrows and futures and happy ever afters when they were probably all going to die to a monster hell dimension. Hated that he was upright and calm and smiling when they could all smell his insides leaking out of him, Jesus freaking Christ, Harrington.
She couldn’t even burst into tears because he was so goddamn okay which would have made her falling apart look like a pathetic pile of garbage. She knew she’d annoyed them all a little in the Upside Down, talking about rabies when Steve was doing his give-me-a-second-to-act-human-before-I-choose-to-forget-I’m-injured shit.
Across the aisle, Eddie cleared his throat, apparently just to get her attention as he stretched out his legs. He was grimacing with wide eyes in that silent way people did when they wanted to broach an awkward conversation. Robin frowned at him, because she was on a roll with her sulking and had no intention of stopping until Steve could convince her that they would be okay even if they weren’t all going to be fine.
But Eddie apparently didn’t recognise her glare for what it was, just looking around at the dozing kids and up to the totally-not-still-in-love-with-each-other action heroes before refocussing on her. The only other normal person in this stupid R.V.. “So… Robin Buckley. From band.”
She raised her eyebrow, unimpressed. “Hi.”
“You,” he began, in that melodramatic asshole way he did, “are not,” god, did he have to pause like that every half-sentence? “like I thought you were.”
If Steve thought he was subtle in the way he shifted to peek back at them, he had another thing coming. She hated him so much sometimes.
“Hey,” Nancy called him back to the road gently, doing her job in keeping people on task. He obediently went back to driving, but they were obviously both listening. Jerks.
“And what did you think I was like?” Robin asked Eddie, who pursed his lips as he thought about it.
“Angrier. You always had this… vibe, you know? Like you wanted to punch everyone?” He lifted a hand, finger circling through the air twice before settling in a point. “Not so much now.”
“Oh really?” she asked. “Do I not look like I want to punch someone, Eddie?”
“I mean… I’m not really talking about the right now of it all,” he said, his head bouncing in a jittery nod. “More like a uh… before this week sorta thing.”
She continued scowling at him for a moment, before the fact she knew he was right overrode her ability to glare. She looked down at her lap, briefly glanced up at Steve’s shoulder, and then went back to her knees. “Yeah, well. Last year I found out about all this and realised it’s kinda hard to be pissed about high school shit when the world’s nearly ended like half a dozen times.”
Steve, the asshole, interjected, “Oh, no, more like… once. Maybe. The first two times were way more localised.”
“Steve,” Nancy hissed at him, and he spread his hands on the wheel.
“What? They were. The first time was just, you know, serial murder by monster, the second was like… dog-plague. No offence to El, but… yeah. They were pretty small-scale bullshit. And I mean, was the Mind-Flayer really a global threat? I mean, Russians aside, whatever, are you honestly telling me you think that thing would’ve survived the army that showed up late? The world was gonna be fine.”
“Steve,” she said again, smiling that I’m-so-annoyed-by-how-much-I-want-to-kiss-you smile she didn’t know she had.
Robin hated her too. But only right now. She’d be back to crushing on her in a few hours, she was sure. Steve she’d continue to hate forever.
At least Eddie was staring at them with just as much incredulous disgust as Robin felt. She’d caught glimpses of insane action hero in Steve all year, even when he was supposed to be a normal minimum wage loser, but Nancy was a whole other ballgame, and the two of them together were just stupid. It was weirdly comforting when Eddie turned back to Robin with a tilted head and wide eyes, and she rolled her eyes with a shrug. At least he didn’t have to deal with Jonathan I-can-perform-field-surgery-with-a-meat-cleaver Byers or that insane Rambo cop or the little girl with actual superpowers.
“Okay, it’s just… none of you,” Eddie said, gesturing to the three of them. “None of you are anything like I was led to believe over the last four years of knowing your asses, okay? The prissy bookworm has guns? The bitchy band geek is actually a klutzy motor mouth? King Steve isn’t actually an asshole? What world am I living in right now?”
Nancy and Steve exchanged one of their wry looks, and Robin glowered.
“Oh, no, Steve is totally an asshole. He’s just not the kind of asshole we thought he was,” she said, and Steve spread his hands on the wheel again in immediate objection.
“I literally paid for all that shit you guys just bought and am now driving a house for you jerks,” he said. “How am I an asshole?”
“You’re an asshole who gets beaten half to death at least once a year while your little sidekick mouths off like he knows everything,” she replied sharply, and he scoffed.
“I do not get beaten half to death every year. I haven’t even gotten punched this year!” he cried, and this time even Nancy joined them in staring at him incredulously. He held up a hand to ward them all off. “No. Okay? This doesn’t count. And for the record, Dustin is not my sidekick. I dare you to say that when he’s awake. I dare you.”
“Dustin would probably say you’re his sidekick, yeah,” Nancy agreed quietly, and Steve jerked his head in agreement.
“I was an asshole in high school, no one is denying that, but these days I am only an asshole like… thirty percent of the time, and I argue that is because I spend most of my life putting up with annoying dipshit teenagers,” he said, and then grimaced at the road before glancing at Nancy. “But Dustin has been pissing me off lately. So maybe it’s more like fifty percent.”
“Can’t blame you; they are bringing out such a bitch in me too,” she confessed, tone full of exasperation. “Have you been hearing about the crap Mike’s been pulling lately?”
“Probably not. I get my kid-gossip from Sinclair, and he’s been…” He glanced back over his shoulder toward the sleeping kids, and then gave Nancy a pointed grimace, and she nodded like she understood.
“Mike’s been letting his friendship with Will completely fall apart.”
“What? Mini-Byers? But they’re like –”
“I know, right? I’m so mad at him about it, because he says it’s because he wants to focus on his girlfriend, but you know that’s not what it’s about.”
“Goddamn insecure ass…”
“Seriously! You just want to shake them, right?”
Robin and Eddie stared silently at the two before coming back to each other. Putting aside that they were supposed to be exes, such a casual, normal conversation had no place happening when they were gearing up to go save the world. But Steve and Nancy had no sense of gravitas. In empathy to Eddie, Robin held up a hand. “Steve I knew about, but I’ve barely said like two words to Nancy before this whole thing. I cannot help you.”
“What?” both Steve and Nancy asked, glancing back at them, but they went unanswered.
Instead, Eddie hauled himself up, swinging over to sink down next to Robin, so he could lean into her shoulder and lower his voice below their action heroes’ hearing. “Is it messed up that those two have kinda been doing it for me since we got on that boat?”
Robin made a face, and he grinned shamelessly. “What? Not into guys that can tear monsters apart with his teeth?”
“Steve and I aren’t like that,” she whispered firmly. It was an easy out for them both, since the fact that Nancy being a brilliant badass was kinda doing it for her was beside the point.
He raised his eyebrows, looking back up at the cabin, then went back to her. “Henderson thinks you’re like that.”
“Henderson only thinks he knows everything,” she said harshly, and something about the last hour snapped something in her brain, causing her to keep talking – almost ranting. “And for the record, since he probably got in your ear about it too, Steve has actually asked me out, and I was the one who said no, okay? So just put whatever bullshit theory Dustin told you out of your mind. Of all the myriad reasons Steve is an asshole—” she added at a louder volume just to get the expected reaction, “—he is not an asshole because he thinks he’s too good for me. He is, but he doesn’t know that, and no one is going to tell him, okay? Because he is my best friend and the best thing that ever happened to me and I am keeping him, but if I have to hear you giving him shit like everyone else just because Dustin doesn’t know when he’s wrong, I will blow your freaking brain out all over your shitty Hellfire game board thingy and then scoop it back into your hollow head with a rusty fork.”
Eddie continued staring at her with his eyebrows raised, silently waiting for an explanation for the rant. She didn’t really have one.
Because she got it, okay? It was part of what pissed her off so much.
It would have been so much easier if she was straight. Because then she would be able to be with Steve, and she wouldn’t have to feel like this about Vickie, and all she’d actually have to worry about was Nancy hating her guts forever, but the problem was that Steve didn’t have some very important parts but did have some frankly disgusting parts that she had absolutely no interest in seeing again, especially because the one time she had seen them it was because she was scared he’d passed out in the shower and there was a lot of blood and bruising involved and he’d yelled at her a lot about learning to fucking knock, Robin, get the hell out of my bathroom, Jesus Christ, what are you even doing in my house, fuck me! If he’d had the right parts, he wouldn’t have been so supportive about her crush on Vickie, and she wouldn’t have let herself fall so hard for a straight woman.
And for god’s sake, it wasn’t even important; they were trying to save the world and they were maybe all gonna die and she shouldn’t give a shit but Vickie had looked so happy and soft and pretty and Robin wanted to be the one holding her like that. It wasn’t fair that Steve couldn’t be what she wanted and she was so broken and wrong and god damn it all.
But she couldn’t say any of that, so she just said, “He’s just not my type.” And then she paused, because she kind of felt like a straight girl would have more reason than that, and came up with, “The muscles are like… a lot, you know?”
“Oh, they sure are,” Eddie said quietly, with a tone that had her looking at him quickly. He grimaced and shifted in his seat, sucking in his lips in an attempt for casual disinterest that didn’t quite land. “Gotta say, little Steve Harrington has definitely grown up since high school. I mean, we all saw quite a lot of him in his swim team days, and I do not remember the chest being quite so…” He gestured to his own, head ducking like he was trying to say something without saying anything. “Most jocks, you know. Leave school, get jobs, turn to flab, not uh… not whatever King Steve has going on over there.”
She continued staring at him. A few stray glances and jokes were starting to rearrange themselves in her memory. She’d let a lot of it flutter past in the whole attempting not to die of it all, but in the quiet of the R.V., it felt different. But Eddie was looking at her with such faux-innocence and the world was kind of ending and there were kids behind them that thought Eddie was kind of a god and were too young to be properly open minded, so she didn’t ask.
“Trauma,” she explained instead. “Getting nearly beat to death by Russian soldiers apparently makes you want to bulk up. He works out like every morning, it’s insane.”
Eddie turned his head slightly. “Okay, this is the second time you’ve mentioned the Ruskies. I thought we were fighting demons.”
“Oh, yeah, but they’re also kind involved in like a – y’know. Way. They had a base under the mall, trying to find a way into the Upside Down,” she explained. “That’s how I got involved with all this. Got shot up with weird drugs and had to listen as they beat the shit out of my best friend. Only you know, at the time, he wasn’t my best friend, he was my co-worker, and I was only just coming around to the fact that he’s not a douchebag, which, you know, was its own layer of hell, realising that all the shit you care about in high school doesn’t mean anything, and you don’t actually know anyone you spend your whole life with and none of the things you’re scared of actually matter because it turns out there is so much bigger shit in this world than worrying about what someone will think of you because you’re not cool or pretty or straight or perfect, as if anyone is, and who the hell cares about girlfriends and stupid boyfriends in college when the whole world could be ending and –”
Apparently her voice had been rising, because Steve was looking around again, his face doing its sad puppy thing, and she had to stop. If she didn’t, she knew, Steve would pull them over so he could check in on her, and they didn’t have time for him to stop driving. She glared at him until he went back to the road, only exchanging worried glances with Nancy before refocussing properly.
Such an asshole.
Eddie had a look on his face. It was a complicated look. Like he wasn’t sure which part of her rant he wanted or was supposed to focus on. He took a breath, stopped, furrowed his brow, and she gave him an easy out by going back to the original point.
“The chest hair is just natural I think. The Hair Harrington, gotta grow up and get all manly or whatever,” she said, and then lowered her tone with a cheeky grin. “Nancy sure seemed to appreciate it, huh? Ex-girlfriend my ass.”
Eddie huffed a laugh, the both of them leaning around to look up at the driver’s cabin again before returning to each other with matching grins.
“He’s totally still in love with her, by the way,” she whispered. “It is absolutely sickening. He’s all like ‘she made her choice’ and ‘Jonathan’s a great guy’ and ‘they’re good together’ but he like, totally compares every girl he dates to her, I don’t care what he says. It’s so pathetic.”
“Jonathan?” Eddie squinted. “Not sure I know him.”
“Oh, sure you do, he’s um… he’s…” She gestured vaguely. Honestly, before the whole mall fiasco, she recognised Jonathan as a guy in town and that was about it. “The photographer? Used to do like, yearbook and shit?”
“Oh. Uh. Yeah. Yeah, uh… brown hair, quiet guy. Basically wallpaper. Think I sold to him a couple times.”
“I mean, I get why Steve wouldn’t want to piss him off. Jonathan’s actually kinda scary. Like Nancy only with knives instead of guns. He moved to California with his family, but they’re supposedly doing long-distance or something stupid like that. Gonna move in together in college and become like, the ultimate power couple or something. Probably become a reporting team like Superman and Lois Lane or whatever.”
“Huh.” Eddie shifted around, looking at Steve again, and this time it was Robin’s turn to squint. Because for all that Eddie claimed to be surprised by all of them, he was definitely doing most of his incredulous staring in one direction.
Nancy hadn’t been the only one who seemed a little distracted by Steve undressing on the boat.
And look, this was not the time.
This was so not the time.
The world was ending. There were kids behind them who might not be asleep. She had no idea how Nancy felt about… things. She didn’t actually know how Eddie felt about things and she did not want to get punched out just for suggesting something if he wasn’t totally on board about it all.
Because she didn’t know what that stare was. The flirting might not have been flirting. Guys thought gay people were funny. They joked around like that. Like playing chicken. Steve had told her about it on shift once, having a slow realisation that some of the shit he’d seen in locker rooms wasn’t quite as definitely heterosexual as he’d thought. He wasn’t yet on board with her theory that he’d probably been the gay awakening for a bunch of confused boys, because Steve was an idiot that divided the world into people-he-wanted-to-sleep-with and people-who-couldn’t-possibly-be-attracted-to-him but that was another reason Steve was an asshole. He didn’t even notice Max checking him out and she was downright blatant about it to try and piss off Lucas.
“He’s such a dumbass,” she confided. “Steve, I mean. He like… he has this view of the world that’s like… insane. He totally divides the world into these stupid-ass categories, including the people he’d think would be attracted to him. Anyone outside that category? Doesn’t even register. I’ve had single moms come into the store and basically strip themselves naked for him and he just does not see it. I swear to god, a guy could come in, get down on one knee and propose, and Steve would give him pointers on how to improve for his girlfriend. He literally thinks only women between the ages of seventeen and twenty-one could possibly find his ass attractive.”
Eddie looked at her sideways, and she shrugged a little.
“Which is… you know, a shame for anyone outside that demographic,” she added awkwardly.
He hesitated, eyes flicking over her face. “Yeah? Like uh. Like who?”
“Dunno. Just… anyone,” she said, and he jerked his head like it was interesting but not important information.
“And uh… if that outside demographic did try something more… I don’t know… extravagant? Maybe physical?” he asked, still all faux-casual and not interested at all. “King Steve, he’d react like you’d expect?”
“I dunno. How would you expect?” she asked, and for a very brief moment, Eddie wasn’t the cocksure, fiery, wild geek she’d always thought of him as. He didn’t answer her verbally, just shifted his head slightly, fingers twitching, gesturing to all the shit people like him and her were scared of. And Robin could only press her lips together at first, because god, it hurt to know someone was scared as you. It hurt so damn much.
She looked up at Steve again. He was calm and quiet, watching the road but probably still straining to try and hear their whispered conversation in case he needed to do something about it. Such. An. Asshole.
“Honestly?” she asked, glancing at Eddie. “Not as good as you might hope, but a lot better than you’d think. He’d mostly think you—they—were making fun of him. But I don’t know if you’ve had time to notice yet, but he sure as hell doesn’t react to that like I always thought he would, so who the hell knows.”
Eddie grunted, half-glancing back again before deciding to instead focus on the nothing in front of him instead. “Wouldn’t’ve guessed that.”
“No, he’s… surprising. Often,” she agreed. “Not what I expected either.”
“Yeah.” He looked at her again, eyes flicking over her face. “Did you have something to do with that? Him not being… what you expected?”
“No, I… I don’t know where that came from,” she said honestly. “When it came up, I… we were both high from Russian drug stuff, and he was beat to shit, and I was like…” She made a gesture, blowing fireworks in her brain with her hand. “But he just… let me laugh about it. Not the what, the who, so… it was like… it didn’t matter. This whole thing I’d spent my whole life panicking about, it just… wasn’t a thing, and I… did not expect it to go so well when I told anyone, let alone…” She gestured toward Steve and everything they’d both thought he was for so many years. And that made her think about how Eddie had started talking to her in the first place. “Honestly, I think it was what stopped me from being so angry all the time. That sarcastic bitch you thought I was. I… I thought if I was mean… if I was angry… no one could – no one would see me. Or… notice anything. That I could just… make it through alive, you know?”
Eddie’s eyes were soft and dark, watching her quietly. She could barely bring herself to glance at them.
“I haven’t… he’s still the only one I…” She shrugged helplessly. She was still so scared. “But I had someone, you know? Someone who knows, and doesn’t give a shit. Someone who knows me and thinks the worst thing about me is how I eat my pop tarts. And having that, it… I didn’t need to be such a bitch. I don’t need to hide. Or just – survive. You know? He makes me think I could maybe… live, one day.”
He nodded slowly, but then frowned, drawing back a little. “Not uh… not personally, I – I don’t know what it’s… to be known. You know? I don’t know that.”
“That sucks,” she whispered, and he nodded again.
This didn’t count, she knew. It didn’t count, this stupid whispered half-conversation. Because she didn’t know anything, and Eddie wasn’t telling her anything, and even the hints just said he could recognise Steve The Hair Harrington as objectively attractive, which everyone knew because he was so damn him.
“You know, it’s amazing what a little life and death can do for your perspective,” she said, a little louder. “Things that you think matter just don’t after you’ve almost died a couple times.”
“Amen to that,” Nancy said, and Eddie shifted, breaking the conversation open again to include the front of the R.V.. Nancy twisted around, exchanging brief grins with Steve before smiling back at them. “Let me tell you, when we finish this and go back to school after killing a demon creature from hell? Calculus is going to feel like such shit.”
“And yet you still bitched at me for not doing my homework that week,” Steve said pointedly, and she grinned at him again.
“I didn’t say it was shit, I just said it’s going to feel like it.”
“Still the end of the world to you though,” he deadpanned, and she giggled. Robin and Eddie gave each other the appropriate incredulous looks and didn’t comment. Steve shook his head like the oblivious idiot he was. “Seriously. We find out about superpowers and other dimensions, set a monster on fire, she points a goddamn gun at my head like the hottest Sigourney Weaver knock off you’ve ever seen—” Nancy was laughing now, blushing prettily. “—and she expects me to show up to my English class at eight o’clock the next day and talk about goddamn Catcher in the Rye or some shit.”
“It was Frankenstein,” she corrected playfully, and Steve scoffed. She was all but twirling her hair around a finger as she tittered at him. “As if you aren’t going to log into work the day after this is over and shelve videos for eight hours. I’ve heard all about your work ethic, Mister Salary Man.”
“That is different. That is a pay cheque.”
“So dedicated,” she teased, and he tilted his head away, unable to hide his stupid smile.
“Ugh, hetero mating dances, gag me,” Robin muttered, and Eddie snorted before raising his voice as well.
“So is that your plan when the world gets saved, Big Boy?” he asked. “Gonna rock up to Family Video on Monday morning like you’re not a badass?”
“I can be a badass and shelve videos,” Steve insisted. “Those two things are not mutually exclusive.”
“They sound pretty mutually exclusive,” Nancy said brightly, before jerking around to Robin with wide eyes. “No offence. You’re cool.”
“I know. I make it work,” she said with a grin, and Steve shook his head.
“The disrespect of you people, holy shit,” he said. “Why do I drive you people around? Why do I do this? I could be getting paid right now.”
“As if you would let any of your kids out on their own with a supernatural serial killer on the loose,” Robin pointed out, and he lifted a hand off the wheel to point back at her without taking his eyes off the road.
“Which reminds me, I am pissed at you specifically about all this.”
“Me?!”
“Yes, you. You – we could’ve gone to the police. We could have told somebody. But you had to help those little assholes take over our store –”
“Excuse me, if we hadn’t done that, we never would have found Eddie or learned about everything!”
“We could have called the Byers and gotten Eleven, we could have figured all this out without involving anyone else.”
“That is such bullshit and I cannot believe you would just skip over literally everything just so you don’t have to admit that I—” She pressed a hand to her chest, “—encourage your children to express themselves in ways you can’t.”
Steve made the appropriate scandalised noises, but the only thing he could actually argue was, “They are not my children! You all just turn me into the goddamn babysitter every goddamn time!”
“I’m pretty sure you do that by letting them walk all over you,” she pointed out, and Nancy nodded her apologetic agreement.
“You do kinda do that, Steve.”
“I mean, even I picked up on that just by listening to Henderson this year,” Eddie added.
“I hate all of you,” Stever replied bluntly. “You can all go to hell.”
“You’re driving us there already, Dad,” Robin pointed out, and the look of pure, unbridled frustration was solid gold.
“Dad? No. I take a lot of shit from all of you, but I am not taking ‘Dad’.”
“You should,” Eddie offered, and Robin could see him stretch, preparing himself just in case. “You have a very hot single dad thing going on, Harrington. You should lean into it.”
As expected, Steve’s only reaction was a mildly confused glance. “Dads aren’t hot. Where did anyone get the idea that dads are hot?” he demanded. “Babysitters I get. I can handle being the hot babysitter, that makes sense. But parents are not hot.”
Nancy sucked her lips into her mouth and met Robin’s gaze. Eddie, on the other hand, looked absolutely tickled by the response, so Robin quietly reached out to put a hand on his arm, hoping it would shut him up the way Steve could keep her occasional horniness in check.
“If you don’t like being the hot single dad, Steve, you should’ve kept the bare chest,” she advised. “At least then you looked more like a kick-ass monster hunter.”
“That makes even less sense,” he insisted. “Who fights monsters shirtless? That’s like, asking for someone to stab you. Monster hunting should be done in leather or that like, armour stuff that the kids talk about in their game.”
“Ohh, trust me, Harrington,” Eddie said, leaning over a little even as Robin tried to pinch him to stop. “Absolutely no one would have a problem with you wearing a full leather get up.”
Luckily, Steve remained oblivious, giving one of his patented mom-sighs. “Okay. I’m glad we could all have this time to discuss my emergency wardrobe choices. How about you all try and get some rest now, okay? We’re still a good twenty-minutes out from where I want to stop off for prep work and you could do with a power nap.”
“I think that’s a good idea,” Nancy agreed. “You guys have been through a lot. You should rest.”
That managed to rein in Eddie for a moment, his eyebrow quirking in scathing judgement, “Uh, yeah, okay. We need rest. Can we talk about how out of the four of us, the two of you have been through the most shit so far?”
“No,” they answered together, and didn’t even have the decency to look at each other as they did.
“Steve needs to keep driving,” Nancy explained, “and I’m planning.”
“Just take five, guys,” Steve advised. “Enjoy the quiet while it lasts.”
God, Robin hated them both. They were somewhere between over-responsible parents and literal action heroes and it was absolutely disgusting. “Assholes,” she muttered, and Eddie turned back to silently share in her frustration.
They were quiet for a minute, until Eddie shifted again, leaning a little closer. “So uh… Russians?”
“Um, yeah,” she said, and shook her head at the ridiculousness of it all. “Seriously. It’s way too long to get into, but like I said, they were trying to open a door to the Upside Down for some reason, and they had this base under the mall because like, where else, am I right?”
He huffed. “Totally. Best hiding place.”
“Me, Steve, Erica, and Dustin found it, and then me and Steve got captured for a little bit, because the Russians assumed we were like, covert agents or something,” she explained. “It was kind of a good news bad news shit show after that.”
“Bad news first,” he said. “Always.”
She grinned. She was quickly deciding she liked Eddie. She wanted to believe in Steve’s faith they’d make it to tomorrow so she could get to know him more. “Well. Bad news is that we got drugged, and not in the good way, and we ended up using fireworks to fight a big spidery monster, and said spidery monster killed Billy Hargrove. Like I said, way too much to get into right now, but it was… terrifying. And I dunno, you just… you don’t do something like that and come out of it like… normal, you know? Even if the good stuff hadn’t happened, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to come back from summer vacation the same. It really messed me up.”
He looked at her quietly for a few seconds, then nodded slowly. “Gotta say, seeing what I’ve seen, it’s uh…” He licked his bottom lip, then nodded again. “Kinda, I dunno, I just… not sure the D and D is quite gonna hit the same now I know what actual supernatural murder looks like.”
“Yeah. Spy movies are not as much fun as they used to be,” she admitted.
“So um… the good news?”
She silently gestured up front, then back toward the kids. “People. A person who loves me, and his… weird-ass kids. You’d be amazed how full life gets, suddenly, when you’ve got people that have seen you through shit like this.” She shrugged, hand flopping helplessly. “I mean, they’re not my kids, I am not a mom waiting to happen like some people, but I am kinda happy being the weird aunt. And now I think I’ll probably get to hang out with the super-hot ex-wife. She seems pretty cool. I figure you’ll fit in like the weird older brother or something. It’ll be a whole family thing, totally messed up and weirdly awesome. If you want.”
His smile was odd; twitchy and hesitant. “I don’t know if I actually fit in. I’m not exactly a fighter.”
She barked out a breath, gesturing toward herself. “And I am? God, no. No, you don’t… Eddie, I am not suited to this shit at all. I am clumsy and spazzy and not like that—” She nodded her head toward Nancy. “—at all, but like… I don’t have to be. You don’t have to be. Hell, I mean, half our team is made up of goddamn children, Eddie.”
His eyes flickered past her to the sleeping kids before coming back. He didn’t say anything.
“You know how Nancy and I got to talk to Victor Creel? By me spazzing out all over the doctor guy,” she said. “I did that. I was like, totally freaked out and a mess, and it was not cool or pretty but it worked. That’s what I have brought to this whole party, but let me tell you, Nancy was not getting anywhere on her own, and that’s Nancy. If anyone is made for this shit show, it is Nancy Wheeler, which I mean, like, I would not have picked before Steve told me all the shit she’s been through. I mean, could you? Prissy little Nancy Wheeler: actual action hero super sleuth with guns?”
“Seriously unbelievable,” he agreed, and she shrugged.
“Right? So like… if Nancy Wheeler can be like that, and I can be an incredible undercover operative with such smooth moves as I’ve pulled off lately?” She reached over, gently slapping his chest with the back of her hand. “Who knows what awesomeness you’ll bring?”
“I mean, I already hot-wired this R.V.,” he pointed out. “Maybe that’s all I’m good for.”
“I doubt it,” she said. “I don’t know if you noticed, but this whole plan kind of hinges on you and your music skills.”
He hesitated again, just eyeing her thoughtfully, then pursed his lips and sighed through his nose. “I guess every party needs a support class.”
“I have no idea what that means, but sure,” she said, and he smirked before shifting to rest his elbows on the back of the couch, leaning back in his seat.
“You do paint a pretty metal picture, Buckley. The oddballs, the freaks, the outcasts all coming together to save the day all with their own small, unexpected gifts?” He grinned at her. “Pretty wicked story. I can definitely handle being the bard of that tale. Maybe I’ll write a song about our adventure.”
She laughed. “I would like to hear someone sing about how awesome I am."
"I'll give you a kick-ass solo piece. Lots of uh…” He winked meaningfully, “good fingering in there.”
It took her a second, but when the entendre hit she blushed bright red and couldn’t help shrieking, “Eddie!”
The kids startled awake, Dustin jerking upright, but Steve didn’t even glance back as he snapped, “What happened to you two getting some rest?”
“What, you gonna come back here and spank us, Daddy?” Eddie asked playfully, and Steve sighed with every ounce of bitchy-mom he had in him, stretching his fingers against the wheel like he was actually considering it. Eddie grinned and turned back to Robin, who gaped at him, still blushing hotly.
“Dude!” she whispered. “You cannot just say stuff like that!”
He just laughed, settling back against his seat. “It’s a good time though. And you know… if we get through this, and the good outweighs the bad?” He looked up and down the R.V., his eyes lingering first on Steve, then down at the kids. His smile was soft despite his lazy, sardonic tone. “I’d be into sticking around. You and me can be the uh… impure bad influence together.”
She smirked, gently smacking him again, but as they settled down into companionable silence, she had to admit she kind of liked the idea. Steve was great, and everything she needed, but she had to admit there would be something nice about having someone who really understood. Someone she could really explore the scene with. Someone who knew what it was like to be scared, to have to think so hard about everything you said, just in case someone read into it and didn’t like what they heard. It would be nice to have someone like that in her team.
But first, she remembered, sighing softly as reality closed back in, they needed to get through tonight.
She wasn’t sure they would, but…
God, it could be nice if they did.