#3.23.25

Robin wanted to get out of Hawkins, Indiana. No, Robin needed to get out of Hawkins, Indiana. She needed to get out of soul-crushingly normal, Smalltown Americana before it devoured her whole and left a husk that she would never recognize.

Her first plan to get out – Operation Croissant, a whirlwind, runaway trip to Europe the summer after her sophomore year – was a complete and utter failure. But it had been a clear turning point, when she went from (hopefully) Invisible, Nerd Robin to Rebel, Loner Robin. She was going to be her true self – whoever that turned out to be – and stop trying to fly under the radar. She couldn’t let Hawkins scare out any of her individuality before she even had a chance to live a real life, to see the real world. And even if that meant there were some big changes in her life, even if sometimes it was scary as hell. It was the best feeling in the world.

She thought Before Rebel Robin and After Rebel Robin would be the only clear division in her life for a while. It was definitely the most significant division in her life up until then. And it was fifteen and a half years in the making. So, she was sure her next before and after would be something equally as life-changing. Like Before (Finally) Getting Out of Hawkins and After; or Before Kissing a Girl (!!!!) for the First Time and After.

But instead, her next big before and after became Before Starcourt and After Starcourt.

Or, just maybe, more accurately, Before Steve Harrington and After Steve Harrington.

God, what sophomore Robin would think if she saw herself now.

Starcourt was just supposed to be another step on her way to getting out, to becoming After-Leaving-Hawkins Robin. It was supposed to be another job to rebuild her depleted Operation Croissant fund. Instead, it dragged her head first into a Russian conspiracy, opened her eyes to the horrifying, other-world existing parallel to their own, and dropped her best friend, her platonic soulmate, her literal other half into her lap in the form of Steve Harrington – previously better known only as her nemesis in the (non-existent) fight for Tammy Thompson’s affections.

There was literally no way sophomore Robin, Before Robin, would have been friends with Steve Harrington. Hell, she had still been a little unsure of their “friend” status right up until he was offering himself up in her place to be literally tortured by Russian secret agents, but she couldn’t imagine what her life would be like without him now.

The first time Robin had told Steve about Operation Croissant, they were sitting in the dark in his en suite, a few months after Starcourt had burned to the ground. Steve had been suffering from a migraine he couldn’t kick for about four days and Robin still didn’t know fully how to help, but he never turned away her company. So, she had been calling in sick for him, and whenever she wasn’t already working or in school, she was slipping inside the eerily quiet, empty Harrington house to sit with him and keep the boredom away.

Today had been especially bad, Steve had admitted, his voice uncharacteristically quiet when she called over the walkie to see if he needed her to call in for him again. (She had been oddly touched when the kids insisted they wanted her to have a walkie as well, but she would never admit that to them. Or how helpful it really was.) And there was something in his voice she picked up immediately, even through the rough connection. Something vulnerable and low that tugged at a feeling in her gut she just couldn’t ignore. So, she called in sick for the both of them, ignoring Keith’s not-so-subtle disbelief, and a few hours later, for the third time in as many months, Robin found herself lying on a bathroom floor having a heart to heart with Steve Harrington.

They were side by side, their heads nearly pressed against the bathtub and their feet separated only by the base of the toilet. Through the door there was the muffled sound of Bruce Springsteen’s The River cassette playing quietly in Steve’s room. Anything much louder was too much for him when he was like this, but he once told her the house was too quiet without it.

She had found him already holed up in the bathroom, hoping the cool tile floor would help combat the uncharacteristic September heat and the pain. And that he wouldn’t have to go very far if the nausea took a turn for the worse. But she also knew that finding him like this first thing in the morning meant he most likely hadn’t done anything to take care of himself first. She refreshed his ice pack and made him take a few sips of both a water and a ginger ale. When he said the nausea had passed enough that he might be able to keep down some medicine, she made him eat a few crackers first, both as a test and so there was at least something in his system. He had rolled his eyes (or attempted to, the movement aborted half-way through when it still hurt too much) and made some comment about being able to take care of himself, but she had seen him smile into the water bottle and when they were sitting up, waiting to see if his nausea had really passed, he slipped down to rest his head on her shoulder. The grounding heat of his body pressed along her side and the reassuring feel of his breath against her neck was nearly enough to lull her back to sleep, and Steve did fall asleep like that, if only for a few minutes.

Eventually, he had to move back to lying on the floor. Robin wasn’t exactly sure when she moved to join him, or how long it had been since they had laid down, when she turned her head to watch him in the dark. The only light coming in was from the crack under the door and a night light plug-in by the sink Steve had had her throw a thin pillowcase over when she came in because it was still too bright for him by itself. He still had the icepack on his forehead and a second towel thrown over his face.

She wondered if that cover was what made it so easy to start the conversation, the same way the stalls separated them back in Starcourt’s public bathroom, the way a shower curtain had let her tell him how afraid she still was in the early hours of the morning after everything when he had snuck in through her bedroom window after she called him in tears because she couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop seeing the Mind Flayer climbing out of Starcourt to chase them down, couldn’t stop feeling the phantom weight of Steve going limp against her back.

“I was going to run away to Europe.”

Neither of them had said anything for so long, if she didn’t know better, she might have thought he had fallen asleep, but Steve inclined his head, ever so slightly, to let her know he was listening.

“I had this whole plan. I called it ‘Operation Croissant,’” Steve snorted at the name, but didn’t interrupt her. “That…the same year I realized…about Tammy. I wanted to ask her to go with me.”

Steve’s voice was hardly more than a whisper when he finally responded. “Did you?”

“No,” she sighed, remembering all her grand plans for the trip that would never be. How foolish she felt not realizing what all of those daydreams had meant back then. “I never found the right person to ask.”

“How come you didn’t just go by yourself?”

“I kind of got caught. And then depleted all my funds paying for damages after I sort-of crashed prom last year.”

Steve lifted the towel to look at her. There was a crease above his eyebrow and his expression was still pinched and small in a way that she knew meant he was still in pain, but his eyes were light.

“That was you?”

Robin shrugged, but she could feel the smile fighting to get out. Steve dropped the towel back over his face, but it couldn’t hide his quiet laugh. She was glad, now, his bimmer wasn’t part of the collateral damage. He probably wouldn’t have found it so funny now if she had run her father’s car into his precious baby back then.

“No wonder you don’t have your license yet,” he mused.

“Hey!” Robin smacked his arm, half-heartedly but she was already joining in on his laughter.

She let the quiet settle over them again before she rolled onto her side, inching closer to him. She had to bend her knees to lift her feet past the base of the toilet, but it was worth it to lay her head on his shoulder and feel some of the tension seep out of him with just a touch. Steve shifted slightly under her, and when she glanced down, he had flipped his hand around, palm up towards the ceiling. Her own hand slid easily into the cradle of his, calloused fingers intertwining with her own.

She squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden wave of affection she felt for this boy. Tried not to think about how close she could have been to never having this.

“Hey, Robs?” Steve was the one to break the silence this time, and that vulnerable, low tone was in his voice again. It made Robin want to hold him that much closer, to open her ribs and fit him into the Steve-shaped space he had carved out in her heart until he could soak up all the feelings she didn’t know how to put into words and made it so he never had to sound like that again.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

And, oh. Maybe…maybe it was just that easy to put into words.

“And not like-” Steve was rambling above her, probably a bad habit he picked up from her honestly, but she had missed most of what he was saying. “And not like that, obviously, but still I-”

“Shut up,” Robin said affectionately. She couldn’t seem to cut the softness from her voice even if she tried. “I love you too, dingus.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, oh.”

“I wish…” he trailed off, until she squeezed his hand, encouraging him to go on. “I wish past-Steve had you.”

Robin turned to glance up at him, but the towel was still over his face, blocking his expression from her. She turned back, tucking her face against his shirt, inhaling his familiar scent. The usual scent of the cologne he liked was faint, he likely hadn’t used any since his migraine started, but comforting. She thought about her fractured Odd Squad. The awkward waves she exchanged with Kate and Milton when they passed each other in the halls at school now and how little she missed Dash. She thought of how prepared After Robin was to be content alone and how that thought now made it feel like a pit was opening in her stomach.

“I wish past-Robin had you too.”

Steve squeezed her hand again. “I would have gone with you on Operation Croissant.”

Robin hid her smile against his shoulder. “No, you wouldn’t have.”

Even back then, Steve was already wrapped up too completely in the Upside Down, with the kids and with Nancy. She wouldn’t have been able to pull him away. And even as that thought filled her with a kind of overwhelming, affectionate warmth for Steve’s loyalty and dedication to his friends, she wondered if she would ever be able to pull him away from Hawkins.

Robin needed to get away from Hawkins. She couldn’t stay here forever. She couldn’t let the monster of Hawkins, the real or metaphorical one, consume her. But could she leave without Steve? Could she leave him behind if he couldn’t bring himself to leave Hawkins?

She didn’t know anymore.

“No,” Steve finally admitted. “I wouldn’t have. I would have wanted to, though.”

“I would have wanted you to, too,” she said quietly. I still want you to. “But I don’t think we were ready for each other yet, back then.”

“Yeah, I guess we both had some growing up to do.”

“Well,” Robin dragged it out until he huffed above her, his breath ruffling the top of her hair. “Some more than others.”