Chapter Text
People are kind of in love with love. Romance, grand gestures, chocolates and flowers, soulmates. We almost love the idea of it all more than the reality. In the real world, we have heartbreak and rejection and completely too-high expectations. That’s why people like the idea of soulmates.
Loving and being loved in equal measure, someone being obligated by the rules of the universe to care about you no matter what. It’s kind of the best possible scenario for a person. There have been countless ideas about soulmates posed over time, some more or less likely than others.
On the more-romantic and less-realistic side of things, we find the ‘red string of fate’ theory. Eternally tied to one person by an invisible string, unbreakable no matter how tangled it gets, always leading to the one person who’s meant to be in your life, all that. Then, at the other end of the spectrum, there’s the idea that soulmates are built, not found. The concept that true love is made out of fabricated love, that work is what makes a relationship.
Everyone kind of believes in soulmates, somehow. Romantic or platonic-
“What does platonic mean?” Tommy H asks, looking up from the paper Robin had spent an hour perfecting her messiest handwriting for.
“…At least a B- or you get half your money back,” Robin replies, thumbs hooked through the straps of her backpack. “Four pages, that’s ten bucks.”
“Jesus Christ, Buckley, that can’t be legal,” Tommy says, digging around his bag for cash anyway.
“This isn’t legal,” Robin deadpans, holding out a hand to take the slightly crumpled five dollar bills he offers her.
“Right.”
“Thank you for your business.” She waits for him to turn and leave the empty classroom they’d met in. Then, “Stupid fucking asshole.”
She carefully tucks the money into her wallet, counting a total of $125 made this week. Even with the hundred dollars she has to put aside for rent, it should be enough to cover gifts for the twins’ birthday on Sunday, at the very least. She makes a note to learn how one goes about making a cake in order to avoid paying for one, and deems it enough time since Tommy left.
As soon as she steps out, though, she runs directly into someone. Their books go flying, and Robin habitually stoops to pick them up. The first one she picks up is The Handmaid’s Tale. When she stands to hand it back, she finds Nancy Wheeler looking at her with an amused little smile.
“...I’m Robin,” she says, because it’s the only thing that comes to mind.
“I know,” Nancy responds, halfway between reassurance and a joke. “Our brothers are friends. And I gave your sister a ride home once when her bike broke.”
“Right! Sorry, yeah. Thank you for that, by the way. I, uh, can’t drive. I don’t know why I said that.” She realizes, then, that she’s still holding Nancy’s books. “I loved The Handmaid’s Tale. Or, um. It’s a good book, I mean. I didn’t love the… totalitarian, patriarchal hellscape thing.”
“No, I know what you mean,” Nancy laughs. “I bought it, like, a week ago and I’m already on my second read-through.”
Robin’s about to respond when Nancy checks her watch. “Oh, I’ve gotta get Mike home, sorry,” she says, and then disappears. Robin watches her go until she disappears around a corner, and then remembers that she also has to go home.
Weaving through her classmates, Robin keeps her eyes on the ground until she pushes out of the main doors. She tucks her backpack into the crate attached to the front of her bike, wrestles with the old bike lock looped through the front wheel, and stoops to push up the kickstand with her hands - it’s too rusty to actually kick at this point.
She pedals out of the Hawkins High parking lot, staying as far away from the cars as possible, and turns toward Melvald’s General Store. Dustin’s been begging for some book for his birthday, and Max had asked for a Kate Bush cassette, trying not to seem like she wanted it too much. Joyce Byers had called that morning letting her know that they’d both come in. Plus, she thinks Joyce will probably give her the recipe for the chocolate cupcakes they’d raved about after Will’s last birthday if she asks nicely enough.
She hopes a single book for Dustin, a new cassette tape for Max, and her best shot at cupcakes will be enough to celebrate their 15th birthday. For her fifteenth, she got $3.78 from her mom and a candy bar from each of the twins, and then she made them all dinner. So. It’ll probably be fine.
Robin hops off her bike before it’s completely stopped moving, leaning it against a sign outside Melvald’s and not even bothering to lock it. If someone decides to steal a bike that’s older than she is, complete with a milk crate and several battered textbooks, so be it.
She pulls the door open, rolling her eyes at the little bell jingling overhead. “Robin!” Joyce calls from the counter, grinning. “Come here, honey. I’ve got the twins’ gifts here, and I wrapped them for you,” she says, putting two wrapped presents on the counter.
“Oh, thank you, Ms. Byers,” Robin says, smiling. “Hang on one second.”
She wanders down the baking aisle, grabbing a pack of number candles, a bag of powdered sugar, and a container of cocoa powder before deciding she probably has everything else she needs. She carefully places them all on the counter, right next to the gifts.
“Alright, that looks like… $25.49,” Joyce says, tapping at the register. Robin grimaces, pulling out the twenty-five dollars she’d made that week, alongside her last two quarters.
Joyce tries to hand her a penny back, and Robin waves it off. “No, it’s fine,” she says. “But…”
“Uh oh,” Joyce jokes.
“Oh, ha ha. I was just going to ask if I could borrow your recipe for chocolate cupcakes. The ones you made for Will’s birthday? Max and Dustin were, like, obsessed,” she says, giving her best puppy dog eyes.
“Your mother doesn’t have her own recipe?”
“Um. She’s… not much of a baker,” Robin lies. Before their dad died, their mom made the best cupcakes whenever anyone asked. Now, she’s always knee-deep in debt and a bottle of vodka, and Robin doesn’t feel like asking.
Joyce Byers, saint that she is, doesn’t hesitate to pull a pen out of the cup by the register and scribble out the recipe on the back of Robin’s receipt in that cursive all mothers seem to use. She slides it across the counter with a soft smile. “I know you’re not doing a party this year, but do you think the kids would like to come over to our house Sunday night? I know Will and El would love to celebrate with them. All the kids can come, I’ll order a pizza, rent them a movie… They can stay over and I can make sure they get to school on Monday, if you want a night to yourself?”
“That…” Robin is so completely not going to cry. “That would be great, thank you so much.”
“Of course, honey. Is seven okay? I’ll pick them up.”
“That’s perfect, Ms. Byers. Thank you.”
“Call me Joyce, alright?”
“Alright,” Robin says, but still doesn’t call her ‘Joyce’. She tucks the receipt into her pocket, piling the gifts and groceries into her arms and waving off the plastic bag Ms. Byers tries to give her. “Have a good one!”
“You too!”
Her bike and backpack are, unsurprisingly, untouched when she gets outside, so she loads everything into the crate, tucking the powdered sugar and cocoa powder into her backpack. She’s almost reached her house on the outskirts of Hawkins, even further out than the trailer park when she hears it. Someone’s driving behind her, calling out to her. They’re not honking, which Robin takes as a small victory as she pedals faster.
“Hey, wait!” Jesus fucking Christ. She pedals faster still.
The car shows up in her peripheral vision, hitting the brakes right next to her. It’s not close enough to hit her by any means, but it startles her enough that she swerves, her bike spilling onto its side. She sprawls on the ground with an indignant squawk.
The book and cassette skid across the deserted road, the wrapping paper tearing almost completely off of both of them. She scoops up the closest thing to her - the package of candles - and unzips her backpack to put them in. To her delight, the groceries didn’t explode when the bag hit the ground.
When she turns around to pick up her other things, she’s reminded of why she’s on the ground in the first place. There, kneeling to pick up Hounds of Love and The Hobbit, is goddamn Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington. Clearly, the universe is out to get her today. The remaining wrapping paper falls off as soon as he picks it up, and Robin wants to punch him in the face.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she exclaims, scrambling to grab the book before Steve can.
“I- um, I’m sorry,” he says, offering her the tape. She takes it a little too aggressively, like she wants to minimize the amount of time he touches it for.
“Yeah, whatever.” Robin stands up, noticing the blood staining the knee of her jeans. “Oh, perfect. Did you need something?”
“I… I needed help with, um, writing-”
“You got me in a fucking bike wreck because you want me to do your homework ?”
“No! No,” Steve says, pulling an envelope out of his back pocket and presenting it to her.
There’s nothing written on the front. “What is this?”
“It’s a letter,” he says, bouncing on the tips of his toes a little bit. “It’s going to be a letter, I guess. If you help me write it.”
“For who, your long-lost lover?” Robin asks, pulling out the paper inside.
Dear Nancy Wheeler-
“Absolutely not,” Robin says, pushing the paper and envelope against his chest.
“Wait, but-”
“No.”
“I’ll pay-”
“I don’t care. I’m not writing a love letter to Nancy Wheeler. Just- send her an Emily Dickinson poem, or something.”
“I don’t want to do that,” Steve says quietly.
“Then make something up. Do whatever you want, lover boy.” With that, Robin picks up her bike and bag, and leaves King Steve standing on the side of the road, still holding his slightly crumpled letter.
—
Robin presents the cutting board, complete with a pepperoni Red Baron pizza (minus one slice) to the twins with a flourished curtsy. “Your dinner, children,” she says, grabbing two plates from the counter and placing them in front of the kids.
“Aren’t you going to eat with us?” Dustin asks.
“I’ve got homework, gremlin.”
“Other people’s homework, you mean,” Max says, grinning into her pizza.
Robin pulls her braid as she passes to settle in the ugly green chair in the living room. “Let me know when you start contributing to our finances.”
“Maybe I’ll be like you,” she says. “I’m sure there’s room in the plagiarized essay market for-”
“Okay, I meant, like, get a job at the arcade or something. Do not break the law. Either of you.”
“But I thought you said that sometimes you have to break rules,” Dustin says.
“Yeah, rules. Not laws. I will not be paying to bail your asses out of jail.”
“Okay, but what if we don’t get caught-” Max’s response is cut off by the phone ringing. Robin grumbles as she picks it up.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Miss Buckley?” a bored voice asks.
“Uh. Yes,” Robin says. It’s not, like, completely a lie.
“Hi, this is Elizabeth from Hawkins Utilities. You’re three months behind on your payments. If we don’t get a minimum payment of fifty dollars by Monday, we’ll be terminating your power. Have a good evening, Miss Buckley.”
“Wait, what-” Robin starts, cut off by the phone call ending. “...Fuck.”
“What?” Max asks, standing up to wash her plate in the sink.
“Nothing,” Robin insists, too quickly. Max raises an eyebrow. “Just, uh, forgot that I promised someone I’d have their Spanish essay done by tomorrow. It’s fine.”
“Right.”
“So!” Robin exclaims, eager to change the subject. “Your birthday is in three days. Obviously we’ll do cake and presents here, but what do y’all think about going over to the Byers’ house for the night? Everyone will be there.”
“On a school night?” Dustin asks excitedly.
“If you promise to listen to Ms. Byers when she tells you to go to bed, I don’t see why not.”
“We will,” he promises. “Plus, Hopper’s scary, dude.”
“Exactly. Do you have all of your homework done?”
“...Yes,” Dustin says, running his hands through his hair in that way he always does when he’s lying.
“Even Latin?” Robin asks, crossing her arms. Dustin holds her eye contact for a long moment before sighing and stalking up the stairs into his room. Robin turns to Max. “And you?”
“No,” she says plainly, still scrubbing at the pile of dishes in the sink. “I haven’t done any of it.”
“Well, I appreciate your honesty. And your audacity. Get to work, I’ll take care of the dishes.” Max nods, shaking her hands dry despite the towel sitting right next to her. She runs up the stairs, taking them two at a time. “And do not make Dustin do your math homework!”
“No promises!” Max calls back, followed by the telltale sound of her bedroom door shutting. Robin sighs, quickly finishing the dishes as she brainstorms ways to make fifty bucks in three days.
“I’ll pay,” Steve had said. He’s exactly the type of person who would probably fork over an exorbitant amount of money for a love letter. And, Robin realizes, she’s kind of exactly the type to write a love letter for some cash.
She dries her hands (on the dish towel, she’s not a heathen) and pulls their phonebook off the bookshelf in the living room. Flipping through the H section, she finds Harrington pretty quickly.
The phone rings for so long she almost decides to just cut her losses and hang up. “Harrington residence, this is Steve.”
“Oh my god, is that how you answer the phone?”
“...Who is this?”
“Robin. Buckley.”
“Oh. Oh!”
“Yeah. Listen, I’ll write you one letter. Fifty bucks. I’ll bring it with me to school tomorrow.”
“Wait, but I don’t want you to just write it!”
“...What?”
“We should talk first. About Nancy,” he says.
For fuck’s sake.
“Fine, whatever. Meet me in the band room at lunch. And bring the money.”
“Y-yeah, okay! Perfect, thank you so m-”
Robin hangs up the phone.
—
The linoleum in the music hallway squeaks under Robin’s feet as she walks, trying to put the pudding cup she’d stolen for Dustin in her backpack without actually taking it off.
“Big pudding fan?” Steve asks, leaning against the door to the band room. Robin blinks.
“It’s- No, dingus. It’s for my baby brother.” In her head, Max’s voice tells her that they’re not babies anymore.
“Did you just call me a dingus?” Steve asks, kicking the door open behind him and waiting to follow Robin inside.
“Yeah, it’s… force of habit. Sorry.” She tacks on the apology at the end, remembering that the power to their house all comes down to the money Steve stands to give her.
“All good,” he says, settling in an uncomfortable blue chair on one of the risers. He pulls the letter out of his bag. “So, you have siblings?”
“Uh, yeah. Max and Dustin, they’re twins.”
“I love kids,” Steve says, and it sounds like he means it. “How old are they?”
“They’re freshmen. They turn 15 on Sunday, actually.”
“Oh, fun! I love, uh, birthdays.” He’s quiet at the end, like he’s realized how stupid a thing that is to say.
“...Cool. So, do you have the money, or…?”
“Jesus, you make it sound like a drug deal,” Steve laughs, tossing her his wallet anyway. Robin pulls out the three twenty dollar bills inside.
“This is too much,” she says, not even knowing why she doesn’t just take his money.
“Oh, that’s fine,” Steve mumbles, already focused on the letter he’s reading over. “Do something fun for the kids’ birthday. Now, are you going to help me?”
Robin pockets the cash, handing him back his wallet as she sits next to him. “Here, let me see.”
Dear Nancy Wheeler,
I think your really pretty.
“You spelled ‘you’re’ wrong,” she mumbles, adding the e and apostrophe in bright red pen.
“Can you, like, read the whole thing before editing it?” Robin sighs. Whatever.
Dear Nancy Wheeler,
I think you’re really pretty. And nice. I wouldn’t mind if you weren’t pretty, but I think I’d mind if you were mean. And your smarter than I am, and I think that’s really cool. A lot of people are smarter than me, but I think your probably the smartest.
Right. About me. People call me the king of Hawkins High, but Im not sure why. I am popular and I have good hair and my own car. My favorite food is lasanga and I think Im pretty good at making it. I would make you lasanga if you want. Is that a weird thing to say? I hope not. Please let me know if you would like for me to make you lasanga some day. I have a car.
Sincerely,
Steve Harrington (co-captain of the swim team.)
(I also play basketball.)
“You missed a few apostrophes and commas, and spelled lasagna wrong.” Robin crosses out all of the spelling errors, and draws in all the missing punctuation.
“Okay, but what about, like, the actual words?”
Robin hums, skimming back over it. “So, you’re asking Nancy Wheeler to… eat lasagna with you?”
“I’m telling her I love her.”
“She’s dating Jonathan Byers, isn’t she?”
“Well, yeah, but I-”
“Love her?” Robin bites back a scoff.
“Yes!”
“And you know that… how?”
“I just… I’m always thinking about her. When I wake up, and when I swim and when I make dinner and-”
“Okay, Romeo, that doesn’t actually mean anything. You think about her, so what? I think about a lot of things, doesn’t mean I’m in love with all of them.”
“No, you don’t understand. She makes me, like, think about forever. You know what I mean?”
Robin ignores him, because she kind of does. Instead, she goes back to the letter. As she starts to cross out the unusable parts, she finds that their names are pretty much the only thing with any real meaning.
“Have you never been in love?” Steve asks. Robin just sighs, muttering something about sentence fragments. “You never have.”
“Yes, I have,” she snaps, immediately regretting it. “Or, I don’t-”
“With who?” he asks, eyes shining with excitement.
“It’s not important. It wasn’t… anything,” Robin says. “Let’s just… get this over with.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Unrequited love’s a bitch,” he says. Robin looks up from where she’s trying to think of a less-lame replacement for ‘I have good hair and my own car’. Maybe he really is in love with her. Maybe only love could make someone so tongue-tied.
“What makes you think…” she asks slowly, watching as he smiles warmly. He’s not making fun of her, and somehow that’s worse than if he were.
“I’m not great with words, but I’m not as stupid as everyone thinks I am.”
“People don’t think that, do they?”
“Sure they do,” he says with a shrug. “They just don’t say it to my face.”
“That sucks.”
Steve hums. “It’s fine. One too many concussions did a number on me.”
“Do I want to know?”
“Billy fucking Hargrove,” he grumbles, and Robin understands.
“Jesus, of course. I fucking rocked his shit a couple years ago,” she laughs.
“Wait, really?”
“Yeah, he’s my cousin. He drove Max home from the arcade one time when I couldn’t because Dustin had the flu. He threatened her and her boyfriend and drove so recklessly he almost fucking killed her. Max came home in tears and I got so mad I hit him over the head with a frying pan.”
“Shit, man. Remind me not to get on your bad side.” They laugh together for a few moments before Robin remembers what they’re doing.
“So,” she says. “Nancy. Tell me what you want to tell her.”
—
By the time Robin finishes, it reads less like an ad in the newspaper and more like an actual love letter. She sighs down at it, folds it in thirds, and hands it to Steve.
“Can I read it?” he asks.
Robin shrugs. “It’s your letter, I can’t stop you.”
Dear Nancy,
I’m not very good with words, but I’m pretty okay at writing. I guess that’s why I’m writing you a letter instead of saying all this to your face. It’s easier when I can read the things I want to say before I say them.
Honestly, I’m not good at a lot of things. I think I’m really not that good at love. I can never tell when it’s a good thing or a bad thing, a fact or a weapon. I can never decide if I like being in love or not, but I think I maybe am. With you. I’m not trying to steal you from Jonathan, or anything. I just thought you might like to know.
I just thought I might like to tell you.
It does this thing to me, where it feels like I’m splitting in half. Where I feel like I exist in two places - here and wherever you are. I hope you don’t mind me telling you this. I’m sorry if you do. You can burn this letter, if you want. You can tell me to fuck off or just not tell me anything at all.
You can also respond, if you’d like. I won’t take it as a come-on, or anything. I just think you’re interesting to talk to, and I wish I could do it more.
- Steve
When he looks up to thank her, Steve finds that Robin’s long gone, leaving him alone with the letter.
—
That evening, Robin gets home from depositing money for the bills to find Steve sitting on the ground in front of her front door. Max and Dustin are sitting with him, talking about god knows what.
“Hey,” she says slowly, dropping her bike in the front yard and walking up to them. “Did I miss the party, or something?”
“Steve was looking for you,” Dustin says.
“And it seemed weird to leave him out here alone,” Max tacks on.
“Sure,” Robin says, offering them each a hand to stand up. “Go do your homework.”
“Are you two da-” Robin glares at Dustin, shoving him through the front door.
“Sorry about them,” she says.
Steve just grins at her, standing up and pulling a folded up sheet of notebook paper out of his pocket. “Nancy responded!”
“What’d she say?”
“I don’t know, I wanted to read it with you.”
“...Okay,” Robin says. “So read it.”
He unfolds the paper, grin dropping as he reads it. “Doesn’t ‘plagiarism’ mean ‘stealing’?”
“What?” Robin asks, grabbing the paper.
Steve,
I love Margaret Atwood. Don’t love the plagiarism.
Nancy
“You stole from Margaret Atwood? Who even is that?”
“Um… I didn’t-”
“Then why would she-”
“Okay, I kind of did.”
“I paid you!” Steve shouts, throwing his hands up.
“No, but- but this is a good thing!” Robin exclaims, desperately grasping at straws.
“ How? ”
“...Because, uh.” She can’t think of a real answer. “Because! We- you said she didn’t have to respond, but she did! She doesn’t hate you! It’s- we’re in the game, now.”
“The… game?” Steve asks, kicking at dirt with the toe of his perfectly white sneakers.
Robin hands him back the paper. “It’s like, she made her move, now we make ours.”
“Right,” he says. “So… What’s our move?”
—
Dear Nancy,
So, you caught me. Sorry. It’s just that sometimes I get so lost in other people’s words that I think they’re my own. It’s easier, that way. Like, I don’t really have a lot of original things to say about love, but other people do. Love isn’t really my thing to speak on.
I’ve never really been in love, honestly. I’m a senior in high school, and I’ve never lived anywhere except for Hawkins-
“This is so depressing!” Steve exclaims, leaning across the back of the couch and reading over Robin’s shoulder as she writes.
“No it’s not!”
“Yes, it is! We have to ask her out!”
“Not yet! It doesn’t work like that!”
“How does it work?” Steve asks.
“Just… Let me work.”
“Ugh, fine. This better work, Buckley.”
“Hush.”
I have a lot of friends, but I don’t like very many of them. I go to parties but I don’t throw them, I do well enough in school but no one thinks I’m very smart. I think what I’m trying to say is that if I had more words for what love feels, I wouldn’t need to get lost in what other people say.
—
Robin finishes frosting the last cupcake with a lopsided little swirl. She doesn’t mind how uneven they all are, they’ll be gone in an instant anyway. There are somehow fourteen of them, despite the recipe only yielding a dozen. She hopes she didn’t fuck up too badly. She sticks a polka-dotted ‘1’ candle in one of them and a ‘5’ in the one next to it.
Just as she finishes rewrapping the book and tape, as well as the excessive amount of candy and snacks Steve’s extra ten dollars had bought (split between two perfectly equal bags, to avoid any brawls), Max and Dustin come bounding downstairs and into the kitchen.
“Happy birthday, gremlins,” she says, hugging each of them. Catching them eyeing the gifts on the table, Robin holds up a hand. “Hang on.”
She digs an old lighter out of the junk drawer, lighting both candles and turning around to present them to the twins. Max, being four minutes older, gets the one, while Dustin is handed the five. It’s been like this since they hit double digits, and they always switch cupcakes.
“Is Mom here?” Max asks, looking like she knows the answer.
“Working,” Robin says, even though she doesn’t really know if that’s true. Dustin sighs, almost hard enough to blow out the candle.
“Well, you’re here,” Max says.
“Always,” Robin promises. “Alright, ready?”
The twins nod. Just as she starts to count down, there’s a knock at the front door. Robin furrows her brows, telling them to wait a second as she goes to answer it. When she opens it, she finds Steve, signature hair and all. He’s grinning, a few gifts in various colors of wrapping paper under each arm.
“What are you doing here?”
“Rude,” Steve says, handing her some of the gifts to free his arms.
“Did Nancy write back? It’s Sunday.”
“No, Nancy didn’t write back. You said it was your siblings’ birthday, right?”
“So you decided to crash the party?” she asks incredulously.
“Doesn’t look like much of a party to me.”
“And all of this is…?” she asks, gesturing to the presents she’s now been forced to hold.
“Well, I didn’t know what they’d want - or what you already have - so there’s gift receipts and stuff, but,” he says, starting to point at individual gifts. “That’s a set of Lord of the Rings books, to go with The Hobbit. That’s a Dungeons and Dragons set? I don’t know what the hell it is, but the lady at the store said kids who like The Hobbit usually like things like that. The really big box is a skateboard, because Max mentioned wanting one when I met her the other day. The bag is a stuffed dog… because she said she wanted pets? I don’t really know, I kind of just went to the mall and blacked out. Oh, and then those are a Rubik’s cube and some Legos because, no offense, your siblings are total nerds.”
“Oh my God, Steve,” Robin says, looking up at him in disbelief. “How much did this all cost ?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, and it hits Robin that he has the kind of money that means he doesn’t have to calculate tax in his head on everything he buys. “Just think of it as payment for the second letter.”
“This is insane,” she mumbles, but lets him inside anyway. “Thank you.”
“No problem, it was fun. I love buying gifts,” he says cheerily, following her into the kitchen, where both twins have started eating one of the cupcakes Robin didn’t put a candle in.
Robin unceremoniously dumps the presents on the counter as Dustin cheers and Max gawks at them. Steve helps her separate them into two piles - one for each kid - except for the bag of Legos and the Rubik’s cube, which she resigns to let them fight over.
“What…?” Max starts, only to trail off when the largest gift gets sorted into her pile.
“Happy birthday!” Steve says. It’s quiet for a moment, and then Dustin is lunging at the table, fighting Max to get there first.
“Hey! Candles first,” Robin scolds. “You know the drill.”
Dustin is kind enough to look sorry, while Max just rolls her eyes and picks up the 5 cupcake, which is miraculously still lit.
“3,” she starts. “2, 1!” The twins pause to make their wishes, then blow out their candles in sync.
Robin claps happily as they take messy bites out of the cupcakes. Steve cheers, then makes sure to push Robin’s gifts toward the twins so they open them first. It’s kind of the least he could do, after stealing her thunder like that, but she murmurs her thanks anyway.
Steve goes home a few hours later, leaving behind Dustin on the front stoop, somehow already halfway through The Hobbit, and Max, wobbling on her skateboard in the driveway with Hounds of Love playing on her Walkman.
“Hey,” Robin says, grabbing him by the wrist. “Thanks, Steve.”
Steve smiles, nodding. “It’s no problem. I had fun today.”
“Yeah, so did the kids.” There’s a moment as he just looks at her, waiting. Then, “So did I.”
—
That night, with the kids safely at the Byers’ house, Robin finishes three people’s papers in one sitting. When her mom wanders in without a word just after midnight, Robin forges a ‘happy birthday’ note in her handwriting and leaves it on the kitchen table. Hundreds of faked essays have paid off, at least.
When she cries herself to sleep, she tells herself she doesn’t know why.
—
Dear Steve,
I have to remind myself sometimes that strangling Fred Benson is a bad plan. I know he’s been through a lot, and I get that he’s probably, like, traumatized. But he’s kind of the worst sometimes.
Yesterday, I was working on the layout for two hours and he spent the whole time trying to get me to break up with Jonathan. He has good intentions, I think. Regardless, I am approximately three days away from a jail sentence.
By the way, I know what you mean. I use other people’s words, too. It’s why I like being a reporter, I think. When I’m writing an article, the things I say don’t matter, because I’m not the one being quoted. Other people always seem to know what to say so much better than I do.
When I first started reporting, my editor told me that the only thing keeping me from being great was that I didn’t know when to stop. I think I still don’t.
I wish people didn’t expect me to have the right words all the time. I’m really smart, and I’m not trying to be arrogant, or anything. I get good grades, I’m good at reading people, and I help them with their homework whenever they ask. So, I’m relatively smart.
I’m ‘relatively’ a lot of things. Relatively smart, relatively pretty, relatively sweet.
Jack of all trades, master of none, I guess.
- Nancy
P.S. If I end up in jail for homicide, please burn this letter. And then maybe bail me out.
—
At lunch on Tuesday, Robin pulls a pen out of her bag to work on some sophomore’s history paper, only for it to immediately explode all over her hands. “Fuck,” she mumbles, looping her arm through the strap of her backpack so it hangs awkwardly off her elbow and picking up her lunch tray between her forearms.
She throws out all of her food, except for the sealed fruit cup, which she figures she can probably get ink on without poisoning herself. After clumsily depositing her lunch tray in the stack by the trash cans, she ducks into the nearest bathroom.
As she desperately scrubs at the red ink that seems to have now made its home in her skin, she vaguely overhears the girls in the two stalls behind her gossiping. They’re saying something about French class when Nancy walks in, leaning against the wall as she waits for one of the stalls to open. Robin smiles at her in the mirror, feeling a little bit like a bad person when she realizes that she knows way more about what Nancy’s thinking than she should.
“I’ll just get Robin Buckley to write it,” one of the voices says. Robin blushes when Nancy gives her an amused look.
“God, really?” the other girl - Carol Perkins, if Robin’s genius ears haven’t failed her - asks, giggling. “She is such a freak.”
Oh. Ouch.
“Whatever, she writes good papers.”
“She’ll probably, like, try to kiss you or something,” Carol says, and Robin’s heart stops for a split second.
“What does that even mean?”
“Everyone says she’s a lesbian.” The last word is hissed, like if Carol says it too loudly she’ll summon the lesbian fairy, or something. In the mirror, Nancy’s face falls. She shoots her an apologetic look, but doesn’t say anything as Robin pushes past her to get to the door. She’s so focused on skidding away from the bathroom that there are three things she doesn’t notice:
1) Nancy Wheeler following her for a few steps, before dejectedly returning to the bathroom.
2) Her English teacher, Mr. Clarke, stepping out of his classroom when he sees her pass.
3) The first draft of her next letter for Steve falling out of her bag, fluttering to the ground at Mr. Clarke’s feet.
—
The bell rings at the end of the day, signaling the end of English class. Everyone else rushes out of the classroom, but Robin stays seated at Mr. Clarke’s look. Once the rest of the students are gone, he puts an unfolded sheet of paper on her desk in front of her.
The letter. It’s addressed to Nancy, and Steve’s name is at the bottom. Fuck.
“I-”
“Robin,” Mr. Clarke says. “Essays are one thing, but this? You can’t be doing this.”
“It’s not- I’m just… I needed the money,” she says.
Mr. Clarke raises an eyebrow. “You wrote eight takes on soulmates last week, Robin. I’d say you’re making plenty of money.”
She doesn’t even bother pretending he’s wrong. “...Bills were due,” she mumbles, looking down at the paper on her desk. “And it was the twins’ birthday on Sunday.”
“And when this girl finds out it’s you writing these… letters?”
“She’s not gonna find out,” Robin huffs, putting the letter back in her backpack.
“So, what? You’re just going to be this Steve kid’s assistant your whole life?” he asks, turning around and opening one of his desk drawers.
“Well, for as long as it’s the best paying job I can get, sure.”
“It wouldn’t be, if you had a college degree.” An application to the University of Michigan appears in his hand, and he stands up to hand it to her.
“No,” Robin says, putting the application in a folder anyway, just so he won’t keep printing out copies. “I’m just gonna, like, get a job at Family Video, or something. Take care of the twins, try to keep them from breaking too many laws, watch ‘em graduate.”
“You know, you could probably come home for their graduation.” That’s not the point, and he knows it.
“I’ll think about it,” Robin lies, already standing up.
“No, you won’t. You’re too stubborn.”
She stops, one foot out the door, but doesn’t turn around. “Yeah,” she admits. “Probably not.”
—
Dear Nancy,
I don’t know when to stop, either. I’m always too afraid. What if, when I do stop, there’s still more to say? What if it could be better, but I’m settling for pretty good?
- Steve
P.S. Jack of all trades, master of none, better still than a master of one.
—
Dear Steve,
I don’t know, I think pretty good isn’t bad. Maybe better would just ruin everything.
- Nancy
—
Nancy,
Maybe it would. But maybe not.
- Steve
Robin staples a copy of Nancy’s latest article - something about how various seniors are tackling their last year of school - to the back of the letter. She’s scrawled notes in the margins, her own opinions on some of them.
Nancy sends it back with her next letter, having added quotes from their interviews that didn’t end up in the article. Robin draws a little crown on Tommy H’s photo, circling the sentence in which he admitted to hoping to ‘beat Steve Harrington for prom king’, and adds a little tiara on Carol, captioning her photo ‘Prom Queen Consort’. Nancy sends it back with her own blurb on what she wants to do in senior year.
Robin almost adds one for herself, before remembering what she’s doing. Instead, she pours the contents of her water bottle on it, watching the ink bleed into illegibility. She sends it back, attached to a note.
Sorry. All good things must come to an end.
Nancy writes back immediately. There will be other good things. That’s the key, isn’t it? That there will always be more good things, even if you ruin your ‘pretty good’.
—
“So, when do we go on a date?” Steve asks, looking up from where he’s flipping burgers on Robin’s stove.
She blinks. “That’s kind of what this is, isn’t it?”
“No! Like, with, um…” he gestures awkwardly to the pan he’s got one hand on. “Burgers and milkshakes and stuff.”
“Not yet,” Robin says. “We’re not there yet.”
“We are, like, there and then some!” Steve starts putting four burger patties on buns, one without cheese (per Dustin’s request). He pulls a tray of frozen tater tots out of the oven while Robin puts lettuce and tomatoes on all of the burgers, because Max won’t do it for herself, and ketchup does not count as a vegetable. “Listen, I can just take it from here, if you don’t-”
“No!” she exclaims. “No, it’s… Fine, let’s ask her out.”
She starts to look for a pen, but Steve stops her. “After dinner. It’ll get cold.”
“Dustin! Max!” she calls up the stairs. “Food!”
Matching sets of footsteps come rushing down the hallway before she can even finish speaking. They both reach for plates, and Robin pulls them away.
“Hey!” they chorus.
“Say ‘thank you’, gremlins,” she scolds. “I raised you better than that.”
The confused, sad look on Steve’s face at ‘I raised you’ melts into a smile when the kids offer him twin sets of thanks. “No problem,” he says, waving it off and carrying food to the table.
As Robin gives Max a stern look for trying to pick off her lettuce, she pretends not to feel Steve’s gaze on her.
—
On Friday night, Robin leans against the living room wall, phone tucked between her ear and shoulder as she flips through her notes. “If she starts talking about Margaret Atwood, tell her you love her books but her poetry is better. You couldn’t relate to The Handmaid’s Tale - for obvious reasons - but you thought it was-”
“What reasons?” Steve asks.
“For fuck’s sake, man. You can’t very well relate to a book about women in a dystopian, patriarchal society, can you?”
“I understood, like, most of those words.”
“Oh my god-”
“Robin, it’s fine! It’s a date, not a test!” It hits her right there, as she slides down the wall to sit on the floor, that Steve and Nancy are doomed. She catches herself hoping he doesn’t hate her when this all goes up in flames, and promptly stops thinking about being friends with Steve Harrington.
“No, but-” Steve hangs up on her, and she promises herself to smack him in the face for that.
—
When Nancy hands Steve an annotated copy of The Handmaid’s Tale, he grins and gives her a thumbs up.
“Thanks! I- I don’t relate to this book. Because of the… pastry-archy.”
—
Robin’s sitting in bed, doing her own homework for once, when Steve knocks on the front door. She bounds downstairs, talking even before she gets the door unlocked and open. “Fucking took you long enough, dingus, I’ve been-”
She swings the door open, and there’s Steve, standing in the rain she hadn’t noticed until now. She can’t tell, really, but something tells her it’s tears he’s wiping off his cheeks and not rain.
“I fucked it up,” he cries, and this is not how Robin expected the night would end.
“Just. Stay here,” she says, leaving the door open so he can watch her open one of the doors in the living room to pull out an old towel, splotched in purple stains from when Max had begged her to dye her hair a couple of years ago. She pauses, then grabs a few more, bringing them all back over to Steve and clumsily wrapping him in them.
She resigns herself to just mop up the water she can’t not get on the floor and ushers him inside. The towel she’d haphazardly draped over his shoulders falls almost immediately, so she drags it along with her foot, wiping up the trail of water he leaves in his wake.
He sits down on the couch, and Robin sits awkwardly next to him. “So…”
“God, it was such a wreck. I didn’t know anything she was talking about, and I just kept talking about how they make their ice cream in-house, and I’m pretty sure I called it the ‘pastry-archy’ at one point.”
“Yeah,” Robin agrees. “That’s bad. I’m sorry, Steve. We tried.”
“No, but… You can still teach me, right?”
“...What?” Steve angles himself to face her on the couch.
“You could teach me! About books and- and philosophy, and stuff!”
Robin’s eyes soften, and she sets a hand on his knee. “Yeah, no. This is… This is game over, okay? We’ve gotta let this go.
“But I-”
“If you want to learn, you can teach yourself, Steve. I’m sorry, but I can’t just… do this forever.”
—
It’s getting colder out, coming up on Halloween, and Robin is not looking forward to when it starts snowing. Biking on ice is her own personal hell, and she’s too afraid to get behind the wheel of her mom’s car.
She’s almost home from school, pedaling as hard as she can to break through the persistent rust ruining her twenty-year-old bike. Behind her, someone honks.
Billy fucking Hargrove.
She gave him a severe concussion two years back, and he’s still terrorizing her. She bikes faster, turning onto her street as he shouts at her. “Hey, lesbian!” she scoffs a little at the stupid name. It’s so lame that it wouldn’t hurt at all if it weren’t true, it would probably just be funny. “C’mon, Buckley, don’t be a priss!”
And, okay. That doesn’t even make any fucking sense.
Her house comes into view, and Steve is sitting on her front steps, holding a glass container of something. She barely has time to think that if that’s a casserole, she’s literally going to kill him before he’s on his feet and yelling.
“Hey, assholes!” he shouts, holding the container like he wants to throw it.
Please don’t, Robin thinks. Cleaning broken glass out of my lawn is so not what I want to spend my afternoon doing.
Instead, he sets it down and picks up a small rock from nearby. Well, that escalated quickly. “Don’t fucking call her that!”
“Oh, shit,” Tommy hisses from Billy’s passenger seat. Robin turns onto her driveway, dropping her bike and scooping up her bag before running up to Steve. He waits just long enough that it won’t actually hurt anyone, then throws the rock after them.
Miraculously, it crashes into Billy’s taillight, reminding Robin that Steve’s, like, a varsity athlete, or something. Billy flips him off, but seems to recall the frying pan incident when Robin glares after him, because he just speeds off.
Steve picks his container back up, and Robin realizes it’s a goddamn lasagna. She should’ve known. Steve hands it to her without preamble. “...The fuck?” she mutters, bringing it up the eye level to look at all the layers. “You came to my house to bring me a lasagna?”
“I, um… The other night, you said that you raised your siblings, and I just. I know you don’t want to do the letters thing anymore, but I thought you guys could use a warm meal every once in a while.”
If she couldn’t tell how genuine it was, she’d snap at him about how she’s not a charity case. But he’s smiling at her honestly, hands in his pockets, and she thinks she kind of loves Steve Harrington. Like, as friends.
Platonic, she thinks. With a capital P. She shifts her arms so she can unlock the front door, and turns around expectantly when he doesn’t follow her.
“Come on, dingus. This is way too much food for three people. Have dinner with us. And then we can talk about books.”
Steve grins, following her inside. “And philosophy?” he asks. She nods.
“And philosophy,” she confirms. “And stuff.”