Fandom Ventures

Eddie notices that Robin, every time he sees her, won’t shut up about- well, gay shit. It’s like she’s trying to catch him out and it makes Eddie want to turn tail and run. He thought she was cool, but maybe he should have known anyone who would date Steve Harrington isn’t that cool- or cool like THAT, anyway- although Eddie thought Steve had changed.. maybe he hadn’t. Maybe Robin was trying to get Eddie to slip and then she and her boy toy Harrington could play a rousing game of kick-the-queer. It wouldn’t be the first time someone Eddie thought was safe turned on him..

So, after the third time Robin loudly mentions that Rocky Horror Picture Show was rented out again, asking Eddie if he’d ever seen it (Eddie dodges the question every time) he does what he does best and turns tail and runs.

(Of course he has though- he’s driven the two hours to Indianapolis twice just for midnight viewings.)

And it sucks- it sucks a lot. It sucks when he drives Max to school and she asks why Eddie’s parking so far away from his usual spot- to avoid Harrington’s car, of course. It sucks when he sees Dustin in the hall and has to make up something about Hellfire prep with Garrett because he was invited to go out but fucking Buckley and Harrington are of course also coming. It sucks when Harrington himself approaches Eddie and he swears he sees Harrington’s hair deflate in disappointment when Eddie once again makes up some reason he can’t join in some movie night.

Eddie has to remind himself that if Harrington’s determined girlfriend catches him out, he’d be lucky just to be excluded. He’s become an outcast and stone-throwing target- and for everyone else it would be expected, but from Dustin? Max? Harrington? He doesn’t know if he could take it. So, distance it is.

And then Buckley corners him. In the parking lot, no less, of Hawkins High- after a late night Hellfire session, Eddie for once wasn’t driving anyone home and was the last out of the building, the street lights shining against the wet black pavement of the empty lot.

Or, empty he thought. He goes to open his car door and a hand reaches out and slams the door shut again. He almost pisses himself but then there she is- Robin Buckley, looking like she’s sharpening her homo-hunting knife right in front of him.

“Jesus H. CHRIST,” Eddie shouts, and his keys go up in the air but he manages to catch them, fumbling, bringing them close to his chest- and Robin doesn’t flinch.

“What is wrong with you?” She says.

“Excuse me? I’m not the one assaulting innocent people in parking lots, Buckley!”

“I’m not *assaulting* you,” she raises her eyebrows and then scrunches them up in her confused kinda way. “I’m calmly asking you why you’re avoiding me and Steve and everyone- it’s been like a month and I can’t help but feel like, I don’t know, maybe it has something to do with-“

He cuts her off- “Where the fuck were you hiding, anyway? Coming out of nowhere like a goddamn ghost!”

Her eyebrows go back up. “Eddie, Steve’s car is like, right behind you.”

He turns around slowly and sure as shit, there it is- headlights on and Harrington in the drivers’ seat, hand raised in an awkward hello. He could have sworn- well, he looks down when he walks a lot- whatever.

He turns back to Robin and she looks up at him, almost sheepish. “I just- listen I know I come on strong and I don’t know when to shut up- I mean if anyone could understand that I thought it would be you-“

He raises his own eyebrows. Not untrue.

“- but I didn’t mean to scare you off, I just thought, you know it would be really cool to have someone else around who- I mean, Steve is nice and all but he doesn’t *get it* get it, you know? So I was just trying to see if- I mean maybe I was wrong, I mean that happens, and if you’re mad at me for assuming, I’m really sorry- but also if you’re avoiding us because of me being gay that’s kind of an asshole move, like I’d expect that from a lot of people but not-“

What?

“You’re gay?” Eddie asks. And he just has to hear it again because.. what?

Robin looks at him like he grew a second head. “Uh. Yeah. Was it not obvious? I mean, not to everyone- most people don’t think girls even can be gay- but the Queen? The Bowie? Rocky Horror? I literally joked about Judy Garland being my good pal- I really thought that was laying it on thick.”

“Holy shit-“

Eddie’s brain floats away and his stomachs sinks into the ground. An epiphany. Holy shit.

“Listen, if I misread something, I’m sorry- but you can’t go around telling people-“

“I’m an idiot,” Eddie all but slams himself against his van, his head making a loud *bang* reverberate through the parking lot. It’s quiet for a minute, Robin staring at him. After a thought occurs to him, he whips his head back round to face her. “Wait, so you’re not dating Steve?”

Instant disgust as Robin twists her face, like Eddie forced her to eat a rotten lemon. “Steve? And ME? Good lord, no, we are platonic! The most platonic! Capitol P, pla-ton-ic!” She sounds it out for him like he’s a kindergartner. And for a second Eddie thinks maybe that’s where he belongs, because he is so *stupid.*

“You’re gay,” he says, his voice almost quiet with stupid disbelief. “And all this time I thought you were trying to pin me so you and Harrington could- I don’t know. Oh my God I’m so. Stupid.”

Robin looks like Christmas morning. “Wait, so- I wasn’t wrong? My sad attempts at gay bonding weren’t misplaced?”

“Gay bonding?!” Eddie has to laugh. And he does- Robin laughs too, mostly just following his lead.

And from there it’s easy. It’s hilarious, actually, how Eddie missed all the usual queues and how Robin overstepped every queue in the book in her haste to make a Real Gay Friend (unheard of in Hawkins). They talk and they double over, laughing, and talk some more, until Steve is honking his horn and yelling out the window. Robin and Eddie lock eyes and there’s still so much to say but it’s already almost 11. They don’t say anything to each other but Robin just knows, so she runs over to him and tells him he’s released from his duties as chauffeur.

Eddie drives her home, and they talk the whole way there. Robin tells Eddie about Steve confessing to her and how awful she felt, drugged up, beaten up, thinking she was going to lose Steve right there, sitting on the tile of that bathroom floor. But she told him, and it was one of the best things to ever happen to her. And when Eddie talks about trips to bars, close scrapes with some weirdos, his uncle finding dirty mags under his mattress and being so incredibly cool about it- she listens. And it’s so cool.

Eddie still can’t believe it, even as Robin waves goodnight from her porch and he’s pulling away.

Gay bonding. Something he never thought was something he would have- not in Hawkins. And over the next few days and weeks, Eddie is at Family Video more than ever; loud, obnoxious, comfortable. He leans over the counter and shares looks with Robin that confuses Steve until he has to throw his hands up. Eddie jokes about Robin getting a girlfriend who can decipher Robin Speak and she says he should be one to talk- who would date a guy who looks like he’s never met a brush in his life? And Steve laughs at that one, adding a point to the notebook he keeps that has “YOU RULE/YOU SUCK” written in big letters on one of the pages.

Eddie thinks his hair is a work of art, requiring a lot of complicated back combing techniques that Robin could never understand. Steve nods his approval and adds another point in a newly added column- “YOUR HAIR RULES/ YOUR HAIR SUCKS.” There’s two points in the “HAIR RULES” column and one point in the “HAIR SUCKS” column and no one has to question whose point is where.

Robin pencils in “FUCK YOU”