#stobinmonth

The fourth year of platonic Stobin Month is almost upon us!

Platonic Stobin month is an event that runs from March 1st to March 31st centred on the duo of Steve and Robin from Stranger Things.

This blog will serve as the designated blog for the event, so posts will be reblogged to here!

Written for @stobinmonth and @corrodedcoffinfest.

It's Tradition

Stobin Month Prompt: Tradition & CCF Spring Break Prompt: Beach | Word Count: 1000 | Rating: T | POV: Robin | Pairing: Platonic Stobin, Steddie | CW: Mentions of Recreation Drug/Alcohol Use, Steve's Neglectful Parents | Tags: Childhood Friends AU, Reuniting

It's tradition. The annual week-long Buckley family trip to the beach. A highlight of the year, until her parents made it clear they didn't want to go anymore.

All good things must come to an end. 

They just couldn't understand Robin didn't want to go somewhere new. That Robin didn't want it to end. That she needed to go to the same house, on the same beach, where she spent a week each year of her childhood. 

That she wanted to go where she last saw Steve. At least one more time.

Even though Steve hasn't been there the last six years her family visited, and she heard the Harrington house sold when his parents divorced. That's the gossip around this small coastal town, anyway.

Either way, the Harringtons are long gone, taking Steve with them.

But he was the best friend she's ever had, and turning up for a week every spring and getting to see him was a staple of her childhood.

So, with her summer job savings she rented the same house her family always did, and sits on the screened-in porch.

Harrington's old house definitely doesn't have Steve in it, instead a family with a bunch of little kids that are loving their time on the water. On the other side, there's a rowdy group, loud at all hours, but closer to her age. She watches them, trying to not be sad that this last attempt was a bust. 

One of the guys is currently swinging his girlfriend around in circles as she screams, delighted. Two others are making s'mores. And the long-haired one is running around in circles like a maniac. Harassing his friends on a loop. At least they're having fun. She's seen them drink, smoke weed, and poke at a bonfire.

The third year of platonic Stobin Month is almost upon us!

Here are this year's prompts well ahead of time. I've included a bonus prompt for each week* based on this tweet:

(*ish. Every 8 days or so.)

As always, use the tags #stobinmonth and #stobinmonth2025 when posting your pieces. There will also be an ao3 collection that writers can add their works to. The previous collections can be found here.

Finally finished my entry for Stobin Month 2026. I was too late finishing it for Day 11 Scoops Troop so I changed it up for Day 29 Ice Cream since they already looked vaguely ice-cream-like and turned it into an employees of the month flavour. Of course Steve's has unnecessary fanciness. Who's decision was that?

Steve has one of those printed icecream popsicle bases with peanut butter filling beneath chocolate ice cream, with a sprinkle face and chocolate drizzle topped with sprinkles and a small novelty hat. His cone is chocolate dipped with gold leaf and a novelty sleeve. Adjusted for inflation $10 in 1985 becomes $18.22 in 2026

Day Five: Role Reversal

WC: 1,686

"You think it's all out of our system?" Robin asked, staring up at the ceiling, letting herself enjoy the fact that it had stopped spinning. She never thought that would be a relief. To be fair, none of what had happened was something she ever would have thought.

"Maybe. Ask me something. Uh-" he hesitated, then in a terrible Russian accent, he said, "interrogate me."

"Interrogate you, okay, I can do that," she ran through her mind of questions that Steve wouldn't answer unless forced. "When was the last time you… peed your pants?" she landed on.

"Today," Steve said, no hesitation.

"What?" A laugh bubbled up in her throat.

"When the Russian pulled out the pliers," he clarified.

"Oh my god!" She let the laugh out from somewhere deep in her gut.

"It was just a little bit, though, I swear."

"Yeah, it's definitely still in your system, hotshot."

They let their laughter fizzle out for a moment.

"Alright, my turn," Steve said.

"Okay."

"Have… you… ever been in love?" he asked in a much more sincere tone of voice. A genuine question, picking at something a little too sensitive, like poking at an injury still in the process of scabbing.

She forced down her automatic answer, practically choking on it. On the other side of the stall door, Steve had no idea what she was learning about their state. She could hold back the truth, aware enough to keep it hidden, but it was tough. Truth serum still in her system, but it was fading.

"No," she forced out. "I don't think so."

"Oh." He said it quietly, disappointed, for sure. "Do you… like anyone? Like, right now?"

And she thought about it, really letting herself sit with it. If there was anyone, any man in the whole wide world who she would want herself to fall in love with, it would be Steve Harrington. It would be so much easier, wouldn't it? If maybe she could have an exception or something? No fear of Small Town Hawkins, because she had a boyfriend! It would be so nice, wouldn't it? To be safe?

If she was to love any man, it would be Steve.

And maybe it was selfish, what she was convincing herself of. Because she knew Steve wouldn't be an exception, just a shield, but she had seen some of the looks he sent her way, and she had a pretty strong feeling he wouldn't turn her down.

She pried herself off the ground, and leaned back on the wall.

"Maybe," she said. "There is this guy."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," she agreed. "I used to hate him, you know. He was such an asshole and he spent all his time with people who were somehow even bigger assholes than him, and I couldn't stand him and the dumb questions he would ask in class, but… something happened and he changed." It came easier, words falling out smoother. She wasn't lying, exactly. "First of all, he's actually funny, like I have laughed more this summer than I have laughed in a really long time. He's perceptive. He can pinpoint the location of a Russian Transmission based on the music playing in the background. He is so unlike anything I could've expected of him."

Silence. Doubt pervaded after her little speech. He didn't respond at all. Then, as she listened, she found she couldn't hear him move. Or breathe.

"Steve?" She asked, knocking on the stall.

Oh god. His voice had been quiet before, and they still didn't know what the side effects of the Mystery Russian Drug were. Oh god, what if he was dead, what if he had internal bleeding they didn't know about, what if—?

"Steve, did you OD over there?"

"No," he said, voice barely above a whisper. "No, I'm still alive."

He didn't say anything else. Carefully, she peeled herself off the floor and stepped around into Steve's stall, setting herself onto the floor gently. Steve's face was unreadable, eyebrows pinched, mouth flat. His thinking face.

"So…" she started. "What do you think?"

"About?"

"This guy?"

Steve swallowed, then took a breath. "He sounds great."

"He is great. The greatest. It kind of shocked me to my core how great he is," she agreed. "What about… what about the girl?"

"I think she's on drugs," he said. "And she's not thinking straight."

That was true. In any other situation, at any other time, she wouldn't have even dreamed of it, but… she felt safe with Steve. Steve would keep her safe. So she pushed.

"I think she's thinking a lot clearer than usual."

"She's not," Steve insisted. "Look, she doesn't even know this guy. Not really. If she did, if she really knew him, then she wouldn't even want to be his friend."

"No way!" she argued. It didn't fit, what he was saying. He'd spent so much of the summer acting like the most confident person in the room, none of his flaws were his fault, it was the hat or it was the uniform, or it was something else, but Steve… this Steve, he was scared.

"That's not true at all."

"Robin," he said, and his tone was defeated, but she couldn't imagine what he was feeling defeated by.

"I wasn't ready for it at all, but I like you. I really like you, Robin, but there is still so much about me you don't know. I'm not— I'm nothing like I was. I am not King Steve," he told her, begging her to turn back.

"Steve," she said, desperate for him to see. "That's exactly why I like you."

He eyed her for a long moment, still wearing that unreadable expression. She didn't know what she expected him to say, but it definitely wasn't what came out of his mouth next.

"You know the You Suck/You Rule Board?" he asked. "How I couldn't get a single date?"

"Yeah," she said, a little thrown by the change of topic.

"I didn't want to succeed. I didn't want to get a date with any of them. I was just keeping up appearances. I did it because that's what I was supposed to do. I was supposed to want to get a date, to be a ladies' man. The person I wanted to date, the real one I wanted, didn't even come into Scoops. I never even talked to 'em."

Her heart dropped. She'd read it all wrong, and he was turning her down. Oh god, how embarrassing was that? Still, he thought she wouldn't want to be his friend. She ran through the conversation in her mind again and… oh. He thought she only liked him because he was hot, because he was romantically desirable. She had to fix that. She had to fix it right away.

She had to know. "Who?"

"Eddie Munson," he said, and Robin's whole world stopped. "He works at the record store across the mall, and I see him sometimes, passing through the food court. He never comes in to Scoops, but I always look. I just want him to look back."

She couldn't process what he was telling her. She couldn't seem to force the words into her mind, like trying to shove the square peg through the circle hole. It just didn't fit.

"Steve," she tried, "Eddie Munson is a boy."

She half expected him to take it back at the reminder, to tell her that he didn't mean it or that he only meant it platonically, but he just gave her a heartbroken expression.

"Robin." That was it, just her name, but it finally clicked into place. He was like her. She felt like an idiot. Or maybe a genius.

"Oh," she said. "Holy shit."

"Yeah," Steve agreed. "Holy shit."

She went quiet, processing. She should tell him. She knew she could. He was even safer than she ever knew, but… how? She had never said it out loud and just five minutes prior she was fully prepared to pretend to be straight for the rest of her life by marrying Steve Harrington and becoming Robin Harrington. She was out of her depth.

"Robin?" he broke the silence. "Did you OD over there?"

"No," she reassured. He sounded terrified. She had to fix that, too. Break the tension. Levity. She could do that, she could do levity.

"I'm just thinking," she said.

She took a deep breath and let it out.

"I mean, I guess Eddie Munson is cute, but… he's a total loser!"

His eyes widened in surprise, cutting through the fear there. "He is not!" he argued.

She nodded, getting into the momentum of it. "He totally is! He wants to be a musician! He's in a stupid metal band!"

"He has dreams!" he argued.

"He can't even sing! He's practically tone deaf! Have you heard him?" she summoned the memory of the middle school talent show, she was in sixth grade at the time, Munson in eigth.

She screeched out a few lines of Bonnie Tyler, making it obnoxious.

"He does not sound like that!" he insisted.

"He totally does!" she argued. "That is a fantastic impression of him!"

Steve rolled his eyes, but he was smiling. That look of fear had melted off his face and he was smiling and Robin felt like she won something.

"You sound like a muppet!" he told her.

"He sounds like a muppet!" She burst out. "He sounds and looks exactly like a muppet!" She could see it too. It was painfully accurate, she was kind of upset she didn't think of it herself.

She kept singing to prove the point and he rolled his eyes and he joined in.

Yeah, she definitely won something.

Days later. After flesh monsters and girls with superpowers. After Billy Hargrove died and they went home, Robin would tell him the truth. She would tell him about Tammy Thompson.