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Two weeks ago, Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers came into Scoops Ahoy. She knows for a fact it was them because Steve had shot upright from his crouched position on the floor where he’d been refilling the cherry bin, smiled the biggest and brightest smile Robin had ever seen on him, and immediately dragged her over for introductions.
“This is Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers.” Steve had said, sounding thrilled to receive the honor of speaking their names. Without looking away from them, he gestured to Robin with a sloppy point of his thumb and told them, “This is Robin. She hates me.”
Robin doesn’t hate him. Maybe in that moment she did, a little bit, find him slightly irritating. But she can’t be blamed for that! Every day she had to hike in the burning summer heat from her car parked out by JC Penney's to reach her pastel-painted sugar-scented hellscape of a job. She had to wear an itchy sailor costume complete with knee-high socks that left imprints on her calves for hours after clocking out and a flimsy white hat that had to be pinned down. She had to spend hours with Steve Harrington behind a counter, only aware of him through stories passed around their high school of his basketball career and keg stands and long list of girls desperate to put their hands in the hair he cares too much about. So yeah maybe she wasn’t keen on Steve for awhile, but by the time Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers arrived they were mostly friends and she only started to find him annoying again by the end of the shift.
“I don’t hate him.” Robin had told Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers, only because Jonathan Byers was looking at her uncertainly as if he didn’t know whether or not Steve was kidding. Nancy Wheeler was looking at her like she might go slash her tires if he wasn’t. “He just thinks he’s oppressed because I made him refill the toppings.”
“I’m allergic to strawberries.” Steve complained.
“Your throat isn’t going to close up if you touch them. Especially if you’re wearing gloves.”
“You see what I mean?” Steve asked Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers, who were sporting identical amused grins customized especially for Steve. “She thinks she’s so much smarter than me.”
“Well if that’s how you define hating you then I have some bad news.” Jonathan Byers had said, giving Steve the most polite shit-eating grin Robin had ever seen. Steve couldn’t even manage to act all offended and weepy because he was too busy beaming at Jonathan Byers like that joke just invented all of comedy and blessed the world with eternal laughter. And it was a pretty good joke but Steve’s face had been so egregiously fond that Robin had to turn away to avoid being blinded.
After Steve scooped Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers one chocolate cone with chocolate sprinkles and one vanilla cone with caramel drizzle, he’d said goodbye to his objects of affection and they left. Robin had spotted their hands intertwined on their way out the door and wondered if it was weird for Steve to have his apparent best friends be in a relationship.
“Actually, Nancy is my ex.” Steve corrected her when she asked. It had been nearing the end of their shift and she’d yet to become annoyed with him yet, possibly because he’d been soaking in residual pleasantness since their visit and kept volunteering to wipe the counter.
“Wait, what?” She had briefly considered Steve’s supposedly mile-long list of exes and realized that the word probably didn’t carry much weight for him. “For like, a month or something?”
“A year.”
“A year?”
“Yeah. Well, I guess a little longer if you count the month or so before we broke up the first time. But she went through a lot of stuff last year, we all did, and she’s just a better fit with Jonathan. And I mean Jonathan is an awesome dude and he’s easy on the eyes so I’m happy for them.” He had tossed the rag he’d been using to wipe down the counter in the air and caught it, his face a mixture of so many emotions Robin couldn’t even begin to decipher one. “A true power couple.”
Not counting the time Steve had tried telling her that cars should use “train wheels” instead of inflatable tires because then they’d never leak, it was by far the most confusing conversation she’d ever had with him at that point. And then a few days later he and his little prepubescent sidekick started being secretive and sneaking around and generally acting creepy as hell until she confronted them, which led to the second most confusing conversation she’d ever had with Steve wherein he explained alternate dimensions and monsters and Russian encoded messages. Even that couldn’t hold a candle to Steve’s explanation of his relationship with Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers because the whole time she’d slightly doubted any of it was real.
It’s definitely real. Robin knows because she’s holding the red bandana part of her uniform against Steve’s neck while it bleeds in the very spot that someone had jabbed a needle in him while red light falls on them in staggered intervals from the emergency alarms on every wall, which she’d never noticed when walking into work for a month straight.
“We need to find my friends we--we need to find Dustin--I have to--” Steve can’t get through more than a few panicked words at a time because his chest is heaving with strangled attempts for breath. He also can’t stand up, but much like the speaking thing he isn’t going to stop trying.
“Just relax for a second.” Robin peels back the bandana and winces at the dark purple bruise that’s already beginning to bloom around the puncture wound. It’s stopped bleeding for the time being so she drapes the bandana over his shoulder and moves on.
“I can’t relax, Robin, my friends are out there and my--my bat is in the car and--”
She has no idea what he’s talking about. A baseball bat probably won’t help in this scenario and maybe he would realize that if his pupils weren’t blown to the size of nickels. Robin scans the rest of his face, the bloody nose and split lip and several bruises that are beginning to overlap as they set in, and decides that Steve may have done whatever the fuck this is before but she’s in charge right now.
“Look, we don’t know what they injected you with and you probably have a concussion. Getting up and dying because you can’t fight a monster like this won’t help your friends.”
She’s currently crouched in front of him while he mostly lays on the floor, only barely upright with his shoulder blades pressed to the wall. He looks up at her with wide, desperate eyes and she really wishes that it was two weeks ago and he was giving her this look in an exaggerated act of not wanting to sweep the floors. But this is real. She knows because now there’s an added emotion that she’s never seen on him before: fear.
“God.” He briefly squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again with fresh defeat on his face. “Every fucking year.”
Robin would like to know how the fuck this has happened twice before without her knowledge. The entire mall is blaring with deafening alarms and every so often they’ll hear a distant scream that makes them both tense up but makes Steve visibly flinch. Surely this will make national news, right? And God her mother has to be losing her mind right now. How has this happened to Steve and his friends every year for the past three years and no one knew?
There isn’t much more she can do to make Steve comfortable. She hadn’t thought to grab the first aid kit from Scoops Ahoy and now they’re situated right inside Waldenbooks, which doesn’t offer much in way of supplies. Robin decides to just settle against the wall beside him, her shoulder pressed to his shoulder, hoping he’ll feel some sort of solidarity from her presence. She isn’t one of his real friends, though. He’s probably wishing for Nancy Wheeler or Jonathan Byers or Dustin Something.
“Your friends will be okay.” She says after a few moments of painful silence. “Dustin will be okay. He’s a smart kid.”
“I know.” Steve murmurs. He shifts to look at her, searching her face. “Are you okay?”
“Well I didn’t get my face smashed in.”
“Oh, I’m used to it. Last year it was one of the kids’ asshole older brother and the year before that it was Jonathan--”
“Jonathan?”
“--but it was my fault that time. I was being, like, the worst.”
Another piece to the mind-numbingly confusing puzzle that is Steve’s relationship with these people. But she can’t figure out where this piece goes, or where any of them go, or what the picture is even supposed to look like.
And maybe it’s stupid to think about relationship drama at a time like this. The alarms are still blaring. Steve is shaking beside her. The sight of him strapped to a chair with a needle forced into his neck is going to be burned into her mind forever, as is the giant monster that rampaged through the narrow hallways beneath the mall and allowed for them to escape by making all the goons in black suits flee. She could very well die tonight in her stupid work uniform, and honestly she doesn’t want to dwell on it. So she’s going to make it her personal mission to figure out what’s up with Steve’s romantic life, and hopefully they don’t die before she solves the puzzle.
Here’s what she knows: Steve Harrington and Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers are three members of the very exclusive club of people in Hawkins who are aware of the whole monster situation and have been since the fall of 1983. Steve and Nancy dated, broke up, dated, and broke up one more time, leaving Steve a heartbroken mess. Now she dates Jonathan, who at one point apparently decked Steve in the face a few times because he was being, like, the worst. Now Steve looks at both people like they are personally responsible for the smell of the rain and the warmth of sunshine. He’s also friends with their little siblings. It’s definitely more interesting than most high school romances.
Robin considers that it might just be Steve being happy for his friends. Maybe he’s mature enough that while he was heartbroken after their break-up, he still wanted Nancy to be happy. And he must approve of Jonathan despite the punching and stealing his girlfriend. Even called him easy on the eyes. But that seems too cut and dry, too simple to explain all the emotions she’d seen on his face two weeks ago when he’d tossed the rag in the air and caught it. She suspects that maybe the monster drama has something to do with the complexity of it all.
“I’m still waiting to hear if you’re okay.” Steve says. He’s turned again to face the door, keeping watch while she’s lost in her side project, but she can hear the genuine concern in his voice without having to see it on his face. Maybe Steve just loves everyone in the world and wants them all to be happy?
“I’m okay.” She assures him. “Kind of worried about unemployment.”
“Maybe you could get a job here.”
“Waldenbooks?”
“Yeah, it seems to be holding up alright. And you’ve probably read all the classics so when a customer is like, excuse me ma’am could you tell me what happened in Romeo and Juliet you could just rattle it off.”
“Is that what you think people do at book stores?”
He seems to be struggling to explain his thought process but he’s miraculously saved from answering when outside, just a few feet beyond the double glass doors they’re peering through, a monster is launched from outside their view and crashes hard to the ground, seemingly lifeless. Its lack of movement doesn’t stop Steve and Robin from instantly startling upright and taking a few staggered steps back, which she has to help him with by acting as a human crutch.
His hyperventilating is back. She clutches the blue material of his shirt in her fist, both trying to keep him upright and keep herself upright as they stand and watch the creature outside twitch uselessly like an overturned roach. Then, darting into view with the shotgun that seems to have slayed the monster, Nancy Wheeler appears with Jonathan Byers only a few steps behind her to pound on the glass.
“I got them--” Robin tries to say, but Steve is already abandoning her support and staggering forward to unlock the door and immediately collapse in both of their arms.
Robin watches from a few feet away, feeling slightly out of place but understanding. This is their third time around and they’ve got to be tired. Nancy Wheeler’s face is smeared with make-up and tears while she buries it in Steve’s shoulder and reaches up to cradle the back of his head with a shaking hand. Jonathan Byers has various cuts littering his face, one above his eyebrow that’s bleeding pretty badly. He seems to be favoring one leg but he’s strong enough to stay upright under the added weight of Steve, who separates from them and immediately stumbles.
Robin feels comfortable in coming forward now. The end of the hug means the end of their personal reunion time, so she darts forward and grabs him by the arm to help steady him. That with the combined effort of Jonathan Byers, who has him by the other shoulder, keeps Steve upright for the time being but they all wordlessly agree that he should probably sit down.
“What’s going on with everyone? Are you guys okay? Are the kids okay I mean where are they? Where’s Dustin?” Steve doesn’t even wait for individual replies before rattling off his next question, his voice coming in waves of strength and shakiness because he’s now hellbent on talking rather than breathing.
“We’re okay.” Nancy says firmly. It’s all she says. Steve’s stomach must sink the same way Robin’s just did because he shuts up and allows them to drag him a good twenty feet from the door and ease him to the ground.
“What happened to you?” Jonathan asks, taking in the sight of Steve with wide eyes.
“I'm okay.”
“He was basically tortured.” Robin interjects. Steve flinches a little at the word, probably because he’s been avoiding labelling it as that. To someone experienced in fighting with guys his own age, Steve is probably happy to file it away as just another fight and move on. But Robin saw him in the chair with a bleeding neck and split open face. It counts as torture if they want something from you and you can’t fight back. She just thinks Nancy and Jonathan should probably know the severity of what they’re dealing with. “We broke into the facility thing downstairs, do you know what I’m talking about?”
“Yeah, the lab.” Jonathan nods.
“Sure.” It didn’t look much like a lab to her, but what the fuck does she know. “They grabbed Steve and took him somewhere, Dustin started calling for everyone on the radio, and eventually I sent Dustin back upstairs and went to find Steve. We only got out because one of those--things came through and everyone cleared out.”
“How long did they have him?”
“Not long, like fifteen minutes.”
“That’s long.” Nancy murmurs, looking back at Steve. Her entire face crumbles very suddenly and tears start slipping down her face remarkably fast considering how held together she was just a moment ago. Jonathan puts a comforting hand on her back and watches, completely unaffected, as she leans down and presses a kiss to Steve’s forehead. Completely unaffected despite that being his girlfriend.
Maybe it’s the circumstances. Maybe he’s letting Steve have this one because he’s currently shivering on the ground with his post-torture wounds on display for all of them. But that’s not it. There’s something else she’s missing.
“Please don’t cry, Nance.” Steve begs, wiping away a stray tear with his thumb. “I’m alive, okay? And at least it wasn’t either of you two, right? Those pretty faces would be ruined.”
They both laugh, slightly choked and tearful but genuine. These people are fucking weird.
Robin listens to a very long conversation peppered with names she doesn’t recognize and words she doesn’t understand. Apparently all of Steve’s children and a few other people (who she’s assuming and hoping aren’t children) are somewhere else in the mall, hiding from the monsters and presumed to be alright for now but really there’s no way of knowing. They all seem incredibly uneasy and it makes Robin think maybe they’ve never been split apart from their people at times of turmoil before. Or maybe they’d still be uneasy even if everyone was together because there are still monsters running around and ripping people apart.
Jonathan has a radio in his hands that matches the one Dustin was screaming into earlier, but this one is smashed into a mangled wreck of plastic and wiring. Robin doubts there’s any way it’ll still transmit or receive a signal, but Jonathan keeps fiddling with it every few minutes as if it might miraculously start working again. Without anyone announcing it officially, the plan has become sitting and waiting. That’s probably for the best, too, because it’s all Steve is really capable of doing right now.
It does help a lot to have two more people. Now Robin can gradually stop jumping out of her skin at every single noise that disrupts the otherwise dead silence, because Nancy and Jonathan seem to know which noises are monsters coming for them and which noises are just gunshots in the distance. She can choose to keep her eyes fixed on the door or fixed on Steve instead of frantically trying to split her time equally between the two just in case something starts breaking through or Steve starts convulsing from whatever substance was injected into him. She can stop glancing around to find a weapon amongst rows of books and tapes because Nancy has a fucking shotgun.
And she’s never been great at comforting people. She’s the youngest of two with a huge age gap between her and Daniel, her older brother, so basically she’s grown up an only child except on weekends and holidays when Daniel visits from school or work. Her mother is great but never really touchy-feely with her, mostly just focusing on verbal affirmations and instilling lessons of self-reliance so she never ends up with a prick like her father. When Robin fell off her bike as a kid, she didn’t get hugs and kisses and bandaids pressed on for her. She got instructions on how to clean the cut and dry it before pressing on the bandaid herself. It’s how she liked it, anyways, because touching and affection just isn’t in her DNA.
But it’s in Steve’s. Robin gave Nancy and Jonathan all the information that she knew at least three times, watching new creases appear in their faces every time she mentioned the injection, and assured them that she’d already checked for things like fever and concussion and internal bleeding. Nancy checked again. It wasn’t until they could all agree that he definitely has a concussion and they need to keep an eye out for any signs of the injection kicking in that Steve finally receives what he’s clearly been aching for the entire time.
“You should be a massage person.” Steve mumbles into his knees, which are currently pulled up to his chest to support his chin. Jonathan is idly rubbing his back with no real direction or strategy, just making circles with his hand, completely oblivious to the fact that it’s making Steve melt faster than the ice cream in Scoops Ahoy currently is without A/C.
“A masseuse.” Jonathan corrects.
“Yeah. Be one of those. Do they have masseuse degrees at NYU?”
“I don’t think you get a degree for that.”
Robin learns so much from a single interaction. Just now she’s learned that Steve knows where Jonathan presumably wants to go to college. She’s learned that it’s NYU, which indicates that Jonathan is probably the kind of person she’d like being around. She’s learned that Jonathan is willing to pass up the opportunity to relentlessly make fun of Steve’s utter lack of understanding about everything in the world and just continue making circles on his back.
And just now, as she glances at the small smile on Nancy’s face, she’s learned that just like Jonathan, Nancy doesn’t care if her significant other is physically affectionate with Steve.
“Robin, you’re going to college for art too, right?” Steve asks, keeping his tone interested and light despite suddenly squeezing his eyes shut. He’s obviously in pain but determined to continue maintaining the joviality of a wealthy socialite hosting their monthly dinner party to find potential business partners. It’s like they’re at a mixer, but one of them is dying. A murder mystery party but they’re just continuing on with the party and ignoring the murder.
“Uh, yeah. UC Berkeley hopefully.”
“Jonathan does photography.” Steve manages through grit teeth.
“Oh yeah? Are you on newspaper or yearbook or something?” She asks Jonathan without taking her eyes off Steve.
“Newspaper.” Jonathan replies without taking his eyes off Steve.
“I think I should go out there.” Nancy announces suddenly without taking her eyes off Steve.
Robin and Jonathan both snap to attention, sacrificing their careful watch over Steve to incredulously stare up at her. Honestly, if this were a movie Robin would probably trust that Nancy could make it out alive. She’s currently standing tall above them with her shoulders back, face determined, shotgun in both hands.
But this isn’t a movie. If one of them dies, it’s real.
“What?”
“No fucking way.”
“That’s a horrible idea.”
“Look, right now we’re just sitting ducks. So is everyone else. Mike. Joyce and Will. Dustin.” Nancy says each name with more force than the last, looking pointedly at Jonathan and Steve as if trying to drill the idea into their heads.
“We know their names!”
“You cannot be serious, oh my God.”
It isn’t working. Nancy obviously knows it isn’t working because her lips are pursing, which Robin is coming to understand is her primary way of indicating frustration. Jonathan and Steve are frustrated too, but that’s indicated by every aspect of their current expressions, posture, entire existences really. And Robin is frustrated because there’s nothing she’d love more than continuing to pretend the whole monster situation isn’t happening and the most important issue is these three near strangers’ relationship.
“Someone has to do something.” Nancy insists.
“How do you know someone isn’t already?” Jonathan reasons. “Hopper could be on his way here right now. My mom could be looking for us. Jane could be using her--”
He stops abruptly with a glance in Robin’s direction, like her presence prevents whatever he was about to say. She’s not even sure who Jane is. There are two girls who come into the shop sometimes to greet Steve, one with red hair and one who always tries eating the cone first for some reason. Either one of them could be Jane, or it could be a whole other child entirely. Robin still isn’t sure how many there are.
“He’s right.” Steve chimes in. Whatever bout of pain he was experiencing a few moments ago has either passed or been deemed not as important as Nancy’s announcement because he’s sitting upright now and no longer clutching at his ribs. “What if you go out there and get--and something bad happens? What are we supposed to tell Mike? Or your parents even?”
“Or any of them.” Jonathan says.
Nancy’s grip on the shotgun has loosened. She’s losing her resolve, which makes the boys’ resolve grow stronger. In other circumstances Robin would almost feel bad. Two against one is hard to overcome, especially when the two are basically begging on their knees at this point.
“Nance.” Steve reaches up and wraps a hand around the barrel of the gun. “Come on. I’m the only one allowed to be an idiot, right?”
“And I’m the only one allowed to get tackled by a Demogorgon.” Jonathan adds, laying his hand on the gun alongside Steve’s. Not alongside, actually, but on top of. His fingers grazing Steve’s knuckles, which are split open from trying to defend himself earlier. It must sting.
Nancy finally releases the gun with her left hand, allowing the barrel to tilt toward the ground. She kneels to join them on the tan carpet that must only provide a centimeter of cushion between the cement beneath it and their knees and, with her free hand, adds to their interlocked fingers and grazed knuckles and gently brushed palms.
Robin gets it now. She looks at them looking at each other and knows for a fact that the reason their relationship is so tangled is because it’s unheard of--three people all in love with each other at the same time.
“Okay.” Nancy says softly. “I’ll stay.”
Now Robin can continue with the side project. With this major development in place, her next course of action is determining whether or not these three are aware of the development themselves. Somehow she’s being fourth-wheeled, so now the project is about distracting herself from the monsters and the weird ache in her chest watching them all gaze at each other.
She studies them for the next fifteen minutes. Steve and Jonathan don’t let go of Nancy for a single second. They must think if they do, she might grab the gun again and bolt out the door. She doesn’t. She sits between them and leans her head against Jonathan’s shoulder while keeping a hand firmly on Steve’s knee. Robin is pretty sure a monster would have to actually bust down the door to get Nancy up now.
This could be a lot easier in a normal setting. Robin isn’t the type to beat around the bush or spare words. She could easily just flat out ask if they’re all romantically interested in each other and close this case once and for all. It just seems...inappropriate at a time like this.
Especially since Steve just doubled over with a strangled gasp.
Robin’s been leaning against a bookshelf and watching from a small distance until now, but Steve is her annoying preppy co-worker. They may be in love with him but she splits tips with him. She deserves a spot in front of him just as much as they do, so she takes it immediately and grabs at his shoulder maybe a tad bit too forcefully.
“What’s wrong?” She asks urgently, already trying to discern the problem for herself. Nancy is also scanning him for answers while Jonathan opts to just go back to rubbing Steve’s back in his signature circles.
It takes a minute of labored breathing and sweat gathering at his forehead alarmingly quickly before Steve can answer, and when he does it’s not very helpful. “Hurts.”
“Where does it hurt?” Nancy presses.
“Everywhere.” Steve gasps, blindly reaching his hand up. He grabs Robin’s wrist and squeezes. “I think--the injection maybe--”
“We thought it was just meant to drug him.” She says, sparing Nancy and Jonathan the quickest of glances before locking back in on Steve. “But it could just be fucking with his system now. I think they intended on keeping him for a long time, you know, so maybe it was supposed to make him talk.”
“Or maybe it was supposed to kill him.” Jonathan mutters. Steve groans.
“What should we do?” Nancy asks, sounding uncertain for the first time all night. Even when she’d been deciding whether or not to run out with her shotgun and enact some poorly assembled plan to save them, she’d gone from one absolute to the other relatively fast. Now she’s looking at Robin with wide eyes that are completely lost. And Robin is lost, too. She doesn’t know what was in the syringe or what Steve needs, just that this morning her and Steve Harrington both put on their stupid little sailor uniforms and now she’s watching him curl in on himself in agony.
She can’t believe she’s about to ask this. “Are they drawn by sound?”
“What?”
“The monsters, the demo-whatever things.” Robin looks at Nancy with what she hopes is firm determination. “Are they drawn by sound?”
“We don’t know for sure but I mean, probably? They’re like wild animals.”
“Why?” Jonathan asks. He’s giving her the wary look that means he already knows. Steve was right. He’s smart.
“You said your people could be out there looking for us.” Robin says. “But if they have to go store by store, they’ll never find us. This place is huge and we could be here all night if they’re thorough about it, which if Dustin is with them they will be. If I go out there and--”
“No, Robin.” Steve manages through wheezing inhales.
“I can go out there and make enough noise that maybe they’ll hear and come this way. Fire the shotgun, yell, whatever. And then with everyone in the group we could get out of here.”
It’s a perfectly good plan. Better than Nancy’s, in Robin’s humble opinion. Will the alarms drown her out? Maybe. Will a monster come eat her? Maybe. But will the group hear her and find them, get Steve out and fix whatever the substance is doing to his insides, get them home where her mother will commend her on being brave and fixing things like she’s always taught her? Also maybe.
She’s willing to risk it.
“I can go.” Nancy volunteers, which Robin was expecting.
“You need to stay with Steve.” Robin manages to detach Steve’s hand from her wrist (his determination doesn’t quite match up with the weakness of his grip) and guides it into Nancy’s. Nancy is still looking at her with confusion that’s melding into wonder, like Robin is communicating to her through a dream. “He needs you, okay? He needs both of you. You’ve all done this before and you love each other so if something happens to me it’s not--”
“No, come on.” Jonathan objects. She should’ve left that part of the argument out. Steve is looking at her with the most miserable expression she’s ever seen someone wear. The boys are too black and white, too right and wrong.
She appeals to her best shot, the consequential wielder of the gun. “Nancy. Minimum risk.”
Nancy knows. She knows that she has a little brother, that Jonathan does too, that Steve practically does with Dustin. Despite having met only once before she’s still so good that she sheds tears for Robin, swirling even more of the black eyeliner smudges around on her cheeks.
She’s good but she’s smart, too. She hands Robin the shotgun.
“Robin.” Steve chokes, trying to reach for her and pulling Nancy’s hand along with him. Both of their knuckles graze her arm when she stands up, slipping beyond Steve’s reach because it shouldn’t be harder than it has to be. But he’s Steve Harrington, so he has to make it hard. He looks up at her with tears cutting clean tracks through dried blood. “Please don’t. Please don’t.”
She looks at Jonathan’s hand, which occupies Steve’s. Steve’s nails are digging into the back of Jonathan’s palm hard enough to draw red half-moons from his skin, which Steve will profusely apologize for when he’s no longer being ripped apart by whatever those assholes stuck in him. His face is pale white, a stark opposite of his usual healthy glow that lasts throughout their whole shift regardless of how many assholes demand a discount on their cone. There are dark half-circles under his watering eyes. Maybe the worst thing is his hair, which is usually controlled and maintained but now hangs limply over his face and sticks to his forehead with sweat. She never thought his stupid hair would make her chest ache.
“I have to.” She looks at these three people who have done this before, probably clung to each other before like they’re doing now, and cocks the gun. “I’m not going back to work by myself.”
Robin realizes too late that she never asked which names to call. She’s beyond the doors now, soaked in red flashing light and vulnerable to the screaming sirens that echo from the high ceilings over her.
Robin fires the gun in the air and screams the names she does know. Dustin. Jane. Mike. Will. Lucas. Max. She can’t quite put a face to all of them, but she knows those names. Steve has spoken them to her so many times over the past few weeks that they’re burned into her brain now. Jane is coming to try her first banana split.
She fires.
Lucas has to get his tonsils out but he’s a tough kid, he’ll be fine. At least I can supply him with ice cream, right?
She fires again.
Mike and Jane are so stupidly in love for middle schoolers. More than my parents ever were, probably.
She fires a third time and an awful screeching mixes with the sound of the gunshot. About five stores down is a monster with enough teeth to rip her apart in one bite. It’s definitely big enough to smash through the Waldenbooks doors, so if she runs inside again all she’s doing is killing Steve and Nancy and Jonathan.
They don’t deserve to die. Robin doesn’t, either. She’s always had a healthy fear of death, maybe unhealthy when it delayed her earning her driver’s license by almost a year because she doesn’t trust anyone else on the road let alone herself to operate a giant moving deathtrap. The point is, she doesn’t want the monster currently barreling towards her to kill her. But she really doesn’t want Steve and his friends (his family, from how it sounds and looks to her) to be killed because they’ve done this so many times. To die now would be tragic. Especially when most people can’t even find love for themselves and a plus one, but Steve and Nancy and Jonathan have figured out how to split it between all three of them.
Robin fires the gun as many times as her sweaty hands can manage and then it clicks with a lack of ammo, so she squeezes her eyes shut and prepares.
There’s a crash. She opens her eyes hesitantly, ready to flinch, but all she finds is the monster on the floor with holes riddling its back and a man in a police uniform coming her way. And behind him, six children. One of which is sprinting ahead of the pack and crashing right into her.
“What the fuck are you doing!” Dustin yells into her shoulder while he attempts to snap her spine in half with the tightest hug she’s ever received. Robin reciprocates with the tightest hug she’s ever given.
“What you would have done.” She replies breathlessly. “Trying to help Steve.”
At the mention of Steve, the police guy and another adult woman and half of the children all start trying to get information out of her at once, which she handles by pointing in the direction of Waldenbooks. They stream in, except for the cop who pats her shoulder and asks if she’s alright. She nods and doesn’t mention that she’s probably going to throw up in the next few minutes.
“Steve needs help.” She tells him. “We need to get him out of here.”
“Way ahead of you.” The cop says, which Robin doesn’t question because she’s ready to let someone else come up with a plan for once. Evidently he already has one, which means her plan worked.
That’s not much of a comfort to Steve, who wakes up after five hours of being unconscious when Hopper’s experimental method of letting him “sweat out” the contents of the syringe proves to be the right call rather than a death sentence. He looks up at her with not even enough strength to lift his head and immediately announces,
“I knew you didn’t really hate me.”
“I keep telling you that I don’t hate you.” She argues, using exasperation to paper over the relief. Beside her, Jonathan relinquishes Steve’s hand as an offering. Robin rolls up the sleeve of one of Hopper’s sweaters, which he’s gracefully lent her and everyone else while they stay in his cabin for God knows how long. She’ll probably have to leave soon, now that Steve is awake. Dustin will have to find someone else to play dominoes with and Nancy and Jonathan will have to talk fondly about Steve with someone else. Those two problems can probably find a solution in each other.
She takes his hand, which is warm from holding Jonathan’s. He's still pale, still shadowy under the eyes, still not fully in control of his hair. But he's clean and alert and smiling. She doesn’t feel the ache anymore. She hasn’t since Dustin nearly cracked her ribs.
“Is everyone okay?” He asks, craning his neck in the other direction to look at Nancy. He smiles when he finds her eyes. “Hey.”
“Hey.” She smiles back. “Everyone is alright.”
“Are we dating?” Steve asks.
“All of us?”
“I’m good.” Robin says, maybe a little too quickly. “No offense. It’s just that the gender I’m actually attracted to is outnumbered in this particular group, so.”
“Ouch.” Steve grins, reopening his split lip in the process. Jonathan reflexively leans forward to wipe away the blood with the sleeve of his Hopper-lent sweater. “Well, Robin is out. Nancy, Jonathan?”
“I’m in.” Jonathan says distractedly as he dabs at Steve’s lip.
“I’m in on the condition that we stop having relationship epiphanies during monster attacks.” Nancy proclaims.
“But it wasn’t the monster this time that made us realize.” Steve says, squeezing Robin’s hand. She squeezes back. “It was Robin. And now I’m going to refill the toppings for her every day because she’s a badass.”
Six hours ago she’d been so baffled by the concept of three people being in love with all of each other at once. It seemed unlikely that such a situation could occur in nature without Robin ever knowing of it. But monsters apparently occur in nature, which Robin never knew about, so she’s willing to have faith.
Plus, it’s easy to see why these people love each other. She loves them too.