Work Text:
"Thank God, you're here," Robin shouted across the parking lot.
Steve had only heard her because his window was cracked. He hadn't even parked yet, and she was running to his car from the vestibule of her dorm building.
"I'm here, Robbie. I'm here." Steve said as he got out of the car.
Robin pulled him into a hug before he even had a chance to stretch the car ride out of his back.
Steve melted into the hug, letting his back curve and his chin rest on her shoulder. He was as relieved to touch her again as she was to touch him. It was about knowing she was okay because he could feel her breath against his cheek. Their rib cages made space for each other as they mixed their breaths, like they were twins born from the same mother and not some weird mix of soulmate and best friend.
It only took a few months for Steve and Robin to realize that no one wanted to drive to Philly every month for a meet up. A few times a year? Sure. That seemed to work for Nancy and Jonathan, but it wasn't enough for Steve and Robin. Steve’s brain started to itch after a week without Robin. He circled endlessly on the certainty that the world would end, and he'd never get a chance to tell her he loved her one last time. By the time a month had passed, Steve was noticeably off. Broken in a way even the kids he coached could see.
"I don't think I slept a full night all of the last week," Robin admitted into his shoulder.
They were still hugging, and Steve knew it was about to get awkward. For other people near them, never for them. Steve decided to break the hug by spinning her around just because he could, relishing her bird-light body pulling against him.
"I totally haven’t,” Steve admitted as he subtly tried to pull away. People were looking and Steve hated that now. “The kids were giving me grief about it yesterday."
"Even Darling Derrick?" Robin doubled down on the hug now that it had gone on longer than was acceptable.
"The only one brave enough to give me shit," Steve affirmed. "At first. Once he opened that door, all the other kids joined in with him." Steve held her tighter.
"Once a month isn't enough," Robin sighed as she finally pulled away from him.
"It isn't," Steve agreed, fighting his inclination to grab her into a hug again.
His nightmares stopped when they were together. Everything was better when they were together.
Usually, he came to her. Robin didn't want to go back to Hawkins unless she had to. As much as he gave people shit for it, he understood that everyone reacted differently. He had a shelf full of self-help books on tape in his trailer to help him. Robin needed to get out and away. To start over fresh somewhere else. He needed to reclaim Hawkins and make it safe for kids. Even if it turned him into an eternal guard.
"I feel like, I don't know, I went into the Upside Down that last time, and part of me never came back," Robin said as she grabbed his pillow from the passenger seat of his truck. "Or I came back wrong."
Steve had his duffel bag in one hand and the cooler of snacks and drinks he always brought in the other. "Like we're fundamentally fucked up, and part of us will always be stuck in a different dimension?" Steve asked. He felt that way late at night, lying alone in his bed and trying to think about anything but being eaten by monsters.
"Yeah." Robin's laugh covered a wobble of tears that threatened to spill.
"Well, I guess we're twins.” Steve bumped her leg with his duffel bag to let her know she wasn’t alone. Not right now.
"Again." This time her laugh was less waterlogged.
It was left unsaid that neither of them felt settled or right in their bodies. That would happen after a good night's sleep together.
"Let's go make your friends uncomfortable," he said, as Robin shuffled his pillow in her hands and unlocked the door to her dorm.
"God, they need to confront their biphobia or something. It's so gross. Thinking men and women can't be friends is dumb."
"It's super dumb. They're so invested in us having a romantic relationship. I know they’re not worse than Dustin, but it’s pretty fucking close.”
"We're platonic!" Robin agreed.
"I thought gay people were supposed to be more enlightened than that?" Steve asked as a woman Steve knew was an RA looked pointedly in the other direction as they walked down the hallway.
"I thought so, too. But get this, it turns out that gay people are human just like everyone else. Which means a bunch of us have stupid ideas about what is and is not allowed." Robin pushed open her door with her hip, having taped over the lock after the first time both she and her roommate left their keys in the room at the same time.
"Well, if they're not allowing you into their gay clique, they're idiots who lose out on a perfect lesbian addition."
Robin tossed Steve's pillow onto her bed. "I think it's worse that they wouldn't be different if you were gay, they'd just think we were both in denial, and simultaneously chasing gay clout."
"No offense, but what clout?" Steve dumped his duffel next to his pillow and handed the cooler to Robin.
"That's what I want to ask!" Robin peeked inside, pulling out a peach wine cooler with a grin.
"I can't believe they're still giving you a hard time, Robs. I will go bitchy queen on all of them if you need me to."
"Look at you using the lingo, Steve-o! And it's only Jessica at this point. Once my roommate told them about the toothbrush incident from last time, most of them realized we're just weird but harmless queers.”
"That's what convinced them?" Steve could believe it, knowing that crowd. It still seemed so odd to him that they wouldn't notice how broken Robin was, but they could harp on forever about her relationship with Steve.
"I know, they're the weird ones.”
"You're right, Robbie," Steve said with an honest grin. “They're the weird ones. Not us, never us."
"No, we're just weird in other ways. Like needing actual physical contact at least once a month, or we feel like we're going through withdrawals."
"I swear I get the shakes,” Steve agreed as he flopped onto her bed. It was stiff, and too narrow for the two of them, but it didn’t matter to him, or to her.
There was a party off campus that night, and they got toasted. Dancing together most of the night despite some lukewarm attempts at flirting with strangers from both of them.
It was too good to spend time with Robin - his soulmate and twin - to want to try to hook up with a hot college girl.
That night in bed, with his arms wrapped around her, Steve silently agreed that they'd come back wrong. They weren't the same people they would have been if Vecna hadn't wanted to destroy the world, but they were going to survive this. If that made them weird, alienated from everyone around them, even the community that should have understood, then they'd be weird together and they’d survive together.