#post-starcourt

and steve waking up half-present in a cold plain room alone? might as well be back in the bunker. and if theres doctors trying to run tests and examine his wounds? might as well be Russian soldiers standing over him and touching his injuries. hurting him again. possibly planning to hurt Robin next.

and now hospital staff are trying to deal with two screaming desperate teenagers who keep begging for the other in between rambles of nonsense and they can't run tests or do their jobs or even get answers from them because all these two seem to care about is the other teen

so they don't really have any practical choices other than moving them to a combined room. and they still freak out every now and then but having the other in the room keeps these outbursts much shorter and doctors are able to actually run tests and help these kids as long as they're close together. And when Robins blood tests and everything come back ok and shes able to be discharged, shes given special permission to stay in the room at all times

and the two little kids that came in with them? they're not exactly freaking out quite like the teens but they're certainly not making things easy either. Ericas testing the willpower of any doctor or nurse she can speak to and both kids stay as close as they can at all times and refuse to leave the hospital. visiting hours over? they're in the waiting room, even convinced a couple to move so they can have seats closest to the hall that teens room is in. try to call their parents? good luck getting a full name or number out of them. once their parents do come get them they're showing back up in an hour, bikes lodged in the bike rack and back in their seats. they've been stopped for sneaking in several times and caught hiding under one of the teens beds even more often. eventually staff just gets tired of spending half their shift wrangling two middle schoolers and it becomes an unspoken agreement to just ignore them hiding in the room.

And once Steve is discharged its the same thing all over again. Robins parents were worried about her spending all her time in the hospital with the boy from her summer job, but given the cover story about the fire and the pair getting trapped inside they convinced themselves its reasonable to want to stay by your friends side while they recover

but now that hes out, shes asking if she can spend the night at his house? and his parents won't be there? absolutely not. except robins in no mindset to accept leaving him alone for this long let alone overnight so she tried sneaking out to bike over to his before he can get the dumb idea to drive over in the middle of the night post-concussion. but the buckleys notice shes gone either because she makes too much noise sneaking out or they notice the severe lack of Robin-trying-to-be-quiet noises into the night (robin my tism queen definitely has bump-into-shit syndrome in the middle of the night but she also doesn't make any noise sneaking around the base with scoops troop so i think it's a 50/50 weather she can use the adrenaline to sneak out to see steve quietly)

so they put two and two together and drive over to the Harrington house. steve answers the door and calls robin over, both of them looking sheepish but not exactly guilty. they talk on steves couch (yes Steves there too) and stobin does their best to explain their separation anxiety that gets the severity across without getting them sent to a mental hospital all while making sure not to break any ndas (which ends up being a long conversation with stobin trying to translate their experience in the bunker to fit the cover story well enough, which is very different when the real story is kidnapping and the fake one is a building fire)

eventually they reach an understanding of "we're worried this is kinda unhealthy but its clearly more stressful to try and separate you right now and we're definitely not going to be able to stop you" so they compromise to let steve stay at the buckleys for a little bit so they can at least keep an eye on them. at first they try just letting steve sleep on the couch (which they agree to because steve worried about overstepping as the guest in their house) but one or both of them have nightmares the first night and robin ends up on the couch with him anyway.

after a few nights they get the gist of the stobin dynamic: attached so strongly its concerning but nothing... flirty. anything they do is always completely innocent. hand holding with no heart eyes, banter with no tension, hell even sharing a bed they resemble little kids in a sleepover pile more than lovers. and especially after nightmares they'll find robin holding steve like hes just one of her old teddy bears.

of course theyre still cautious and have their suspicions that theyre secretly dating and just really good at hiding it, they're paranoid parents after all and robins never shown this much attention to a boy ever. but they do relax a bit with it as they're more confident theres no... funny business.. going on. or at the very least nothing thats going to leave robin hurt. they'll have their talks and robin will promise its "nothing like that", but they've grown to like steve so they're sure robin will come to them when shes ready.

now if only there was a reasonable explanation for the middle schoolers that keep showing up. apparently they were also trapped in the fire with robin and steve which helps make some sense of it, but they also sat with them in the hospital. surely if they're having nightmares about the fire they'd go to their parents? they hadn't really talked much with the sinclairs but they seemed like very loving parents and robin follows steve to his little dinners with mrs Henderson pretty often so its not likely that they can't go to their parents about nightmares, but they seem to prefer going to steve specifically. like ringing the Buckley's doorbell at 1 in the morning asking if steves there. and of course they'll let them in and show them to robins room (after calling their parents first, do they even know their childs run off?) where steve was sleeping in a pallet on the floor but is now a glorified blanket pile robins hugging. on her bed, of course. because god forbid theres 2 feet of space between them.

and the kid just joins them in their sleepover pile, dustin usually clinging to steves other side like a baby koala and erica usually finding a spot leaning against robin or occasionally making room in between them

Maybe 3 weeks into his hospital stay, Billy has a very unplanned, impulsive, half-hearted ~un-alive~ attempt. Like one of the nurses is changing his gauze and Billy, like, grabs the scissors off the tray. 

It doesn’t work. Like, this nurse has amazing reflexes and as soon as he sees Billy grab the scissors, he’s like “oh HELL no” and is able to quickly take them back and call for assistance, so like four other nurses rush in and hold Billy down so they can inject him with a sedative. 

Billy isn’t suicidal. Not really. But Dr. Owens and the psychologist, Dr. Lisa Matthews, that comes in to evaluate him decide to put him on “watch,” meaning that he isn’t allowed to be unsupervised for 72 hours and then afterwards, a nurse comes into his room to do checks every 15 minutes, he’s not allowed to have unsupervised access to any sharp objects, etc. 

Dr. Owens tells Billy that since he’s a minor, he’s morally and ethically obligated to tell his parents (Neil and Susan) about this incident. To which Billy replies, “Oh, like you were morally and ethically obligated to tell my parents that I was possessed by a monster?”

“If you tell my parents about this, I’ll tell them the truth about what happened to me. Fuck that NDA, I don’t give a shit,” Billy threatens. 

“If you tell your parents that, they’ll beg me to put you on thorazine,” Dr. Owens says. He sees that Billy is about to start crying. He sighs and then adds, “Alright, look, kid. We’re putting you on watch and then taking precautions until we can be sure you won’t try to hurt yourself again. You’re going to be having regular sessions with Dr. Lisa to make sure we’re not going to have any more incidents like this. If you cooperate, we won’t tell mom and pop. Deal?”

They’re able to keep everything under wraps for a while. But then, Susan and Max are spending the day with Billy one Saturday. Everything is going fine. Billy and Max are playing a card game, sitting pretzel-style on Billy’s bed together while Susan sits in a chair and knits and chats with them. Max gets up at one point to get a snack from the cafeteria and Susan goes to join her. Susan leaves her knitting in Billy’s room. 

A nurse quickly goes into the room when she sees Susan leave. Susan notices how quickly the nurse rushes into Billy’s room and backtracks. 

“You okay?” Susan asks Billy, eying the nurse curiously as she moves her knitting further away from Billy’s bed. 

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Billy says as he picks at the hem of his sweatpants, trying to be casual. “I’m just...not allowed to be around sharp objects at the moment.”

He looks up at her, hoping that she understands enough so that he doesn’t have to go into it.

Susan does get it.

“Okay,” Susan says softly. “You’re...okay though?”