Work Text:
Of course it had to be Robin's birthday when she rolled into work on her bike and saw a new guy starting at Scoops Ahoy. He seemed nice enough, but she was immediately suspicious since the new guy happened to be Steve Harrington. It wouldn't be so bad if Steve actually listened, but he spent most of his training flirting with any girl who came into the shop.
And it really was any girl he'd flirt with.
Jason Carver came in with a redheaded freckled girl about their age, looking out of place dressed in a modest purple cardigan for summer in Indiana. He took her to the counter as Steve was cleaning up the front.
"Hey I'm Steve Harrington, and I'll be your captain on this ocean of flavor, oh hey Carver." Steve dropped his cleaning cloth and going to slap the hand of the new captain of the basketball team now that Steve had graduated. He gestured to the girl with him. "Who's the babe?"
Both Jason and the girl glowered at him, her expression particularly poisonous.
"Dude, come on, this is my cousin, don't hit on her. Bev, you okay?" Jason asked as Bev kept her death glare onto Steve.
"I'm sorry, didn't know. Haven't seen you around town. Are you new here?" Steve stammered, trying to regain his composure.
"First, I am Beverly Keane and Jason is my cousin and second, I'm utterly disgusted with your unprofessionalism and may I add lack of selection. The Bible says…."
Robin watched the life leave Steve's eyes as she took the opportunity to sneak around the back to go over the daily specials, seeing it was purple sprinkle day. That they had to come up with a phrase to say to the cashier to get free purple sprinkles on their ice cream.
"Robin!" Steve came into the back, tossing the dish towel over his shoulder. "We're out of Cherry Jubilee and this customer wants just cherry ice cream not chunks of cherry. Something about the Bible?"
Robin held the flyer to her chest for Steve not to see. "We have a thing of cherry dreamboat in the back. Oh it's Carver's weird cousin again, you might have to go cherry pick for her for a bit, but it's worth her not calling our boss over this."
"You can't help me?" Steve tried to give her the puppy dog eyes as Bev repeatedly smacked the service bell at the front.
"You're on your own, Steve." She tapped the folder in her hands. "Top secret mission."
"Like you would know." Steve gave her a dirty look and went to grab Bev's ice cream from the back with an audible sigh.
Robin grabbed a handful of change from the tip jar and ran out of Scoops Ahoy to the copy shop to put together the new flyers to pass out. When she came back, a tall skinny dude with long hair was staring into the window of Scoops Ahoy.
"Can I help you?" Robin asked as she tried to avoid the smell of weed coming off the guy.
He had his eyes focused on Steve inside of the shop, trying and failing miserably to appease Beverly Keane and her ice cream order.
The guy blinked and stepped back, showing the Metallica shirt under his battle vest. "Nothing, man. Don't worry, just waiting for a friend."
Robin looked at her stack of flyers and back at the metalhead dude. "You'll look less suspicious if you help me out and hand these out to people."
The guy looked like he was about to say no when Jason walked out of Scoops Ahoy with Bev and took one look at him.
"Hey Eddie, get out of here freak! Before you scare the decent folk away." Jason tried to shoo Eddie as if he were a stray dog, making Eddie go up even closer to him.
"I'll give you black sensations up and down your spine!" Eddie sang loudly in his highest voice. "If you're into evil you're a friend of mine!"
Bev jumped and screamed, her ice cream cone falling from her hand and onto Jason's shoe. "What, are you practicing witchcraft on us?" Bev snapped at Eddie with her hand on her chest.
"Aw man, my Jordans are ruined." Jason grumbled as he held onto his plain vanilla ice cream and took his cousin by the elbow. "Come on Bev, let's have Harrington get you another one."
"Yeah fuck you, Jesus boy. Fuck you…Bev, whoever you are." Eddie laughed as they headed back into Scoops Ahoy. Steve came out of the back, utterly destroyed that Bev and Jason were back and demanding a refund and free ice cream. Eddie pointed to both Steve and Robin. "You're cool, and fuck you I'm out
"Go away, freak." Steve yelled as he was bombarded with demands from both Jason and Bev.
Eddie turned a deep shade of red and took off running.
Robin froze in the scuffle, already irritated at how that was so not what she wanted that to go on her own damn birthday, which she still hadn't mentioned to anyone. Then it dawned on her, the metalhead dude had run off with all the copies of her flyers.
"So much for purple sprinkle day." Robin muttered as she once again ignored Steve, telling him no she was busy and get Bev more Cherry Dreamboat from the back himself.
Robin went into the office of Scoops Ahoy and looked for another copy of the flyer, but that kid had run off with the master copy as well. She was really fucked, but could probably pass the blame to the new guy. She needed this job and he didn't seem to need it half as much.
Steve did his best to give Jason and his weird cousin their money back and cherry picked a new cone for Bev. They finally left the store and Steve had a moment to take his dumb sailors hat off to fan his face and let his magnificent hair breathe. He should kick Eddie Munson's ass if he ever saw him again. Not likely, though.
Robin was hiding in the back, half considering just walking off the job, leaving Steve in charge and let the place burn to the ground. This was turning into the worst birthday ever, then a knock at the door.
"Robin? It's Steve, I need your help. We suddenly have a ton of customers upfront asking for purple sprinkles."
Robin sighed but maybe that doe eyed metalhead did come through for her. "Be right there….dingus."
She wasn't sure where the dingus came from, but it seemed to describe her new coworker perfectly. She finally got up to help Steve out, she didn't want to leave him to drown under a bunch of ice cream orders.
A pair of girls in trendy outfits were giggling as they were talking with Steve up front, whose whole demeanor had changed as he went back to his natural state of flirting.
Robin wished it was that easy for her, irritated at Steve once again as he rang the girls up.
"One scoop of classic chocolate and one of island coconut. Anything else from me your captain on this voyage?" Steve asked the girls before flashing them a smile.
One girl looked at the other as they giggled and held their hands out for their ice cream. "Fuck you, Steve!" They said in unison.
"What the hell?" Steve's mouth dropped open as he was mid ringing them up, even Robin froze as she watch the confusion on the girl's faces.
"They said that was the phrase to get free purple sprinkles." The blonde girl stammered.
"Oh, I have a flyer!" The redhead said as she took out the folded up paper and saw the old phrase scribbled out and a new one 'fuck you Steve' was scrawled in its place.
Robin barely kept her shit together as she dropped a scoop of purple sprinkles on each of their ice cream cones. Once the girls were out of earshot Steve grabbed the flyer and thrust it into Robin's face. "This some kind of joke?"
"No! The original phrase was 'cherry picking' I couldn't think of anything else." Robin took a deep breath, trying to calm down. "I can't get fired, not today of all days." She fretted as she went to the entrance to see flyers posted everywhere in the mall saying the code word was 'fuck you, Steve' for free purple sprinkles.
"Then who did this? Not Jason and probably not his cousin." Steve crumbled up the flyer and tossed it in the trash, it landed perfectly but left him with no joy, just all the more upset. "Munson probably, I'll kick his ass if I see him again."
Robin hung her head. "Sorry, I shouldn't have let him take my flyers. I'll go take everything down if you're okay up front."
Steve looks over the ice cream, still not sure how all the buttons on the register work, or how far the 'fuck you Steve' flyers spread. Outside the mall?
When Robin was pushed to the edge of anxiety, she would normally start to laugh, but still felt uncomfortable being herself in front of her new coworker. She got up and started to tear down the flyers hanging around the front of the store, as a group of children walked past her to greet Steve at the register.
"Steve." The redheaded girl said as she held the hand of a boy in karate kid wear. "What is this?"
Steve's cheeks flushed as she showed him the 'fuck you Steve' flyer.
"Yeah! We heard that there's a whole hallway system to the mall stores and you didn't even let us explore it!" The taller of the boys said.
"Come on! I just started and it's not been the best day so far. I'm kinda busy." Steve snapped at the kids, which Robin saw was not a deterrent.
Another group of teens came up for ice cream. Steve put on a smile as he served them, being met with a chorus of 'fuck you, Steve!' as he begrudgingly served the group their purple sprinkles.
As the group left Will's eyes were wide with worry and Max looked downright pissed off.
"Why are you allowing them to say that to you? It's so mean, Lucas stop." Max let go of his hand as she glared at her laughing boyfriend.
Steve sighed and took his hat off to run his fingers through his hair. "They're all over the mall?"
Mike gave him a weird look. "Yeah, like posted all over."
"We can go tear them down and throw them away for you." Will said softly.
Steve grinned, happy at his little nuggets as he grabbed a roll of trash bags from behind the counter. He went to hand them over before Lucas gave him another mischievous smile.
"We're going to do this favor, but you have to let us explore the back hallways of the mall all summer."
Steve yanked back the trash bags from the kid's reach, considering his options. Either he could deal with customer harassment on his first day on the register, or deal with harassment from these little shitheads all summer.
Finally he relented and handed Max the bags. "Deal, just don't abuse my kindness for letting you explore back there."
"Deal."
All four kids flashed him a smile before the quickly divided up the trash bags and got to work clearing Steve's good name around the mall.
Robin slowly got down from the chair she was using to tear down the flyers as she saw the kids scatter and remove the Steve mockery with surprising efficiency.
Robin hopped up on the counter swinging her legs as Steve carefully put the chair back. "An hour to closing and we can finally leave."
"Finally, can't wait. What a day." She watches the kids laugh and play fight as they fill the bags with flyers. "Who are those kids?"
Steve slammed the cash register closed and started to organize the front. "Um, maybe call me their protector? Or babysitter according to my ex." He grumbled the last bit as he continued to clean.
Robin grabbed a broom, quiet for a moment as she starts to sweep up the front, but her mind kept racing. She was shocked at finding herself wanting to ask Steve Harrington, someone she was so jealous of, more about himself.
She held back as she finished the front and got the mop out, filling the bucket with water. "I swept and can you mop?"
Steve took the mop and looked back at the sparkling counter top thanks to him. "What will you be doing?"
"Paperwork, dingus." Robin sighed, she just wanted to be alone. Leaving Steve to mop wouldn't get him into too much trouble would it? She could cherry pick job duties for today, it was her birthday after all. She'd let Steve divide the closing duties with her equally next shift together.
Maybe.
As far as she knew, Steve having to deal with douchebag supreme Jason, crazy entitled Bev, or scary chaotic Eddie was the extent of his stress. That he probably babysat just so he could feel better about himself.
Well, he was her co worker for now. Another dumbass who would be gone once it was back to school time, if she didn't leave first. Robin had a tendency to get fired a lot, she was surprised she had lasted this long slinging ice cream in a mall. She could outlast Steve, not like she'd ever consider him anyone close to her or an actual friend.
She looked for the little scoop of birthday cake ice cream she had snuck back for herself, her own little treat for turning seventeen years old today. Right when she was about to dig in, she heard a crash and splash at the front of the store with Steve yelling at the kids in a very motherly type voice.
He really was a dingus, no word could describe him better.
She sighed and turned up the radio to enjoy her scoop before starting nightly paperwork.