Archive of Our Own

The sun has long since set by the time Robin reaches the quarry ledge. She’s already mentally kicking herself for not bringing a jacket, dressed in only a dark sweater she’d pilfered from her father years ago, which doesn’t provide much resistance against the chill of an early December night. 

Truthfully, she hadn’t been thinking when she’d left her house. Everything had been too quiet. Her mom’s at work, won’t be back until early morning, and her father’s gone to visit her uncle for the week, leaving the house empty apart from her. Usually, she doesn’t mind the silence too much—she has endless cassettes, records and video tapes she can play to pretend she’s not so alone—but today… 

Well, Barbara Holland’s funeral was three days ago. 

She had been so, so entirely convinced that Barb had gotten out of Hawkins, that she’d ran away and left this small, shitty town behind. She’d envied her, been furious with her for leaving her behind again, even though they hadn’t had a single conversation in the past four years, so to learn that Barb was actually dead the whole time she’d been missing— 

Her fist clenches at her side, fingers red in the cold. Some small, sick part of her is glad she didn’t bring a jacket. She should be feeling the cold. The universe’s punishment for her, to come close to freezing at the quarry. 

Nobody comes out here this time of year; it’s the warmer seasons that has the quarry active in the evenings, bustling with horny teenagers trying to find a place to hook up or idiots daring each other to jump in. After the whole affair with the John Doe pulled from the quarry last year, the place has been even quieter. 

Maybe she’ll freeze out here. Maybe she’ll stand here so long that her body crystallises, and by the time anyone stumbles out here she’ll be no longer a girl but a sculpture. Maybe then, for the first time, she’ll be considered beautiful; something for her parents to take pride in. People would travel to Hawkins to see her, the girl with the heart so cold she froze, and she’d end up on postcards and she’d finally achieve of dream of travelling the world and never be forgotten, or left behind, and when she melts with the warmth of spring she’ll have left her mark on the world. 

“Hey—Don’t jump!” 

She startles at the sudden voice, stumbling backwards from the ledge and whipping around in one clumsy motion to see Steve Harrington of all people standing behind her.  

He must have misread the bafflement on her face because he continues, “It’s not worth it—Whatever you’re feeling will pass, I promise you, even if it feels like it won’t. It’s better to live. Think of all the things you’d be missing—I mean, Hawkins probably doesn’t feel like it has a lot, but—”

“I’m not trying to kill myself,” she snaps, sounding far more snippy than she means to, and immediately shuts her mouth.

He seems unphased, though, and she swears there’s snark in his tone when he replies, “Oh, sorry for assuming, Miss Standing-on-a-Ledge.” 

Huh. Maybe she’s not the only bitchy one here. 

“You know what they say about assuming,” she says instead, folding her arms. It’s meant to make her look defensive, but she shivers as she does, and she’s pretty sure it just makes her look colder, and not in the way she wants. “Besides, you’re one to talk. What are you doing out here on a ledge, sightseeing?” 

“Okay, firstly, I wasn’t on a ledge, I was sitting in my car until I saw you standing on a ledge and thought you were about to, like, throw yourself over the edge or something—”

“—I wasn’t—”

“—and secondly, I’m not here to kill myself, I’m here to scream.” 

He says it so nonchalantly that it disarms her completely, leaving her to just stare at him. As she watches, he digs through the pockets of his jacket—it stings a little that he was smarter than her in this instance and thought to bundle up—and produces a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. 

“Want one?” He holds out the packet to her.

Robin scrunches her nose up at him automatically. “I’ll pass.” 

Steve shrugs. “Suit yourself.” 

He takes a single cigarette, putting it between his lips and burying the rest of the pack back into his pockets. It’s a carefully practised motion as he raises the lighter, cupping one hand to protect against the gentle breeze that surrounds them, and the end of the cigarette lights up, the tiniest bead of marigold in the dim light. His face is illuminated by the soft yellow glow, making his features look softer. 

He takes a long drag, the embers glowing brighter and flaking, and holds it for a few seconds before blowing the smoke into the air. The wisps float around her, disappearing into the night, and she can’t help her look of disgust as the stench of cigarettes surrounds her. 

He pauses in his raising of the cigarette back to his lips, watching her. 

“Shit, you’re not, uh, what’s-it-called? Asymmetric?” He holds it away from her, as if that’ll stop the smoke from reaching her, but he looks almost worried, so the snarky response she was about to give him—some snide comment about not learning anything in English—dies on her tongue.

“Are you asking if I’m asthmatic?”

“Yeah. That.”

She shakes her head. “No. I just think smoking’s gross.” 

He seems to study her for a moment, looking curious, and a prickle of discomfort crawls down her spine. No, not discomfort exactly—not discomfort with him, oddly enough, just a vague sense of unease at being perceived. It’s rare that someone looks at her and sees her. It’s rarer still for someone to look at her and try. 

He drops the cigarette, stubbing it out beneath his sneaker, and then bends down and plucks it up once it stops emitting smoke. 

“So if you’re not out here to kill yourself, what are you doing out here at this time? You’re not exactly dressed for the occasion.” He says it like he’s interested, like it isn’t a completely batshit crazy notion for him to be having a conversation with her at all, let alone at the quarry on a chilly winter night. 

She shrugs, picking at the hem of her sweater sleeve and trying to ignore the way the cold bites at her knuckles. He keeps watching her expectantly, though, clearly awaiting an answer, and she sighs before responding. “I come out here to think sometimes.” 

“I haven’t seen you around here before.”

“What, you come here often?” she bites back, without meaning to. He doesn’t know her. He doesn’t know what she does and doesn’t do, and where she does and doesn’t go. She hates that he’s talking like he knows the facts, when he clearly doesn’t, because he’s just some stupid jock that doesn’t even care to notice other people, and—

“Yeah, whenever I need to get away for a little while,” he says easily. She squints at him, trying to tell whether he’s fucking with her, but he seems genuine. “Look, maybe we got off on the wrong foot. I’m Steve. You’re… Rachel, right? I think I’ve seen you around school a couple of times.” 

“It’s Robin,” she corrects, frowning. “And I know who you are, Harrington.” 

“Shit, sorry—My memory’s not great these days.” He offers her an apologetic smile. She thinks he’s flushing slightly, but it’s hard to tell in the darkness. “You’re in band, right? Or is that wrong too?” 

“I’m in band, yeah.” She pauses, narrowing her eyes again. “You don’t remember me from class?” 

Steve stills, staring at her. A beat passes and nothing happens except from his expression shifting to something guilty and almost… sad, she thinks, so she sighs again. 

“We were in Mrs. Click’s history class together last year.” He looks at her blankly and her frown deepens, just a little. “I sat behind you. Robin Buckley?” 

He shakes his head, looking distressed. “I’m sorry. I—Really, I am, I wasn’t very aware of myself or other people last year. I, uh, hope I wasn’t too much of a dick to you. I’m sorry if I was.” 

It’s weird. This is Steve Harrington, champion of the jocks, king of the school, and he looks like a kicked puppy, looking at her with sad brown eyes. And yet… Vaguely, she remembers the way he’d kept to himself after he’d showed up to school with a bruised face, his two lackeys running around after Billy Hargrove instead, Nancy Wheeler on Jonathan Byers’ arm instead of his. 

Maybe this isn’t Steve Harrington, asshole extraordinaire. Maybe this is just… Steve. 

“... You weren’t. Um, you didn’t really interact with me at all, aside from asking to borrow a pen a few times. Worst thing you did to me directly is chewing up the end of one of my favourite pens.” 

“You lent me one of your favourite pens?” He perks up, looking touched, as if she’s just revealed some great gift she’s bestowed on him.

Her face heats up, suddenly self-conscious and a little embarrassed, as if he can somehow lord this information over her. “It was fine. I mean, I always brought, like, four pens with me, but I was using my second favourite and the fourth one was nearly out of ink, and the third one was temperamental when it came to writing so I had it on hand as a spare to use up, and if I’d lent you one of those two they probably would’ve just messed up your work so I gave you the remaining one. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a pen. That you chewed up, by the way.” 

“Your favourite pen,” he says quietly, sounding more like it’s repeating it to himself than responding to her. He looks pleased, in a soft, vulnerable way. It’s something she would’ve expected to look foreign on him, but it doesn’t. It looks normal, natural, like this is his true state, hidden beneath the layers of popularity and assholery. 

It’s all suddenly a little too weird for her, like something she’s not meant to be witnessing, so she abruptly changes the subject. “What did you mean, you come out here to scream?”

“Oh, right. Sometimes when I feel like I need to get away, I drive out here and scream into the quarry. No one comes out here much anymore, especially this time of year, so it’s not like I need to worry about disturbing the neighbours.” 

“What kind of things does the king of Hawkins High need to get away from?” 

Steve meets her gaze, his expression unreadable. Maybe he’s trying to read her, too, or at least figure out her own deal; she didn’t answer his question properly, so why should he answer hers? 

Still, it’s hard to decipher what he could be thinking about. Before tonight, she’d thought of him as someone pretty easy to read. Not that she’d ever intended to read him, really, just… she notices things. He has this wounded expression when he’s upset, never crying, instead staring with clear hurt in his eyes. When he’s excited, he’s bouncier, loud and energetic, something that was often shown off after his team won a game. Then when he’s thinking hard, his brows furrow, a little crease in his forehead as he tries to focus. That one she’d noticed most in Click’s class, before he’d picked up the habit of chewing the end of his pens. 

This, though? His face is a careful mask, betraying nothing, just watching her. Studying her. 

“Do you want to hear a ghost story?” he asks bluntly. 

She blinks at him. “Uh, okay.”

He relaxes a little—she hadn’t even noticed he’d tensed up—and starts walking away, gesturing for her to follow him. 

She stays put, eyeing him warily. “Is this some kind of come-on, Harrington? Or—or murder attempt?” 

He turns back to look at her, one eyebrow raised, but when he sees she hasn’t moved he shakes his head. 

“No and no,” he says. “It’s just—It‘s warm in my car and you’re shivering.”

“I’m not,” she protests, but the wind whips around her and she shudders instinctively, trying to draw her arms closer to herself. Steve’s eyebrow raises higher. 

“If I wanted to murder you, all I’d have to do is push you,” he points out. “Besides, I tried talking you off the ledge, didn’t I?”

She purses her lips, squinting at him once more before curiosity wins out and she trails after him. She’s pretty sure he looks pleased again, just for a second, but he turns away from her too quickly for her to be sure. 

Steve’s car is surprisingly close by—the Beemer she’s seen around the school, and more recently hanging around the arcade. It’s unlocked when they reach it, something she notices when he jogs slightly ahead of her to open the passenger door for her. 

“You don’t lock your car?” she says, instead of thanking him, because she’s still not sure what to make of this Steve Harrington, and isn’t entirely sure she’s not dreaming somehow. It’s possible, she thinks, that maybe she has frozen, and this interaction is something her scrambled, dying brain has conjured up in her last moments. 

He pauses, one hand resting atop the car door, and this time she’s certain his face flushes because he suddenly can’t meet her eyes. 

“Of course I lock my car,” he mumbles. “I—It’s—I was parking when I saw you on the ledge.”

“Oh.” He’d gone straight to try and stop her from jumping. Her heart seems to stick in her throat at the realisation. Someone had cared, even if they’d misconstrued what she’d been doing. Someone had run to keep her alive. “Um, thanks.” 

She ducks into the car, self-conscious all over again, and he shuts the door behind her before jogging around the front to the driver’s side and sliding into the seat next to her. He starts the car but doesn’t make any move to drive away, leaning over and fiddling with the dials until she feels warm air start blowing out at her. She leans towards it without thinking, holding her frozen fingers and feeling goosebumps erupt down her skin as her body finally seems to realise just how cold she is. 

Steve flicks on the light, still deliberately not looking at her, and shrugs off his jacket. She watches him, confused—the car hasn’t entirely warmed up yet, it can’t be warm enough for him to lose a layer—only for him to hold it out to her. 

“You’ll warm up faster,” he says, dropping it into her lap. “You’re practically blue. You’re aware it’s December, right?” 

“I joined you for a ghost story, not a lecture,” she snipes, but she pulls the jacket over her shoulders anyway. It’s warm on the inside, smelling strongly of whatever cologne he wears and something else—hairspray, she thinks, she’s smelled something similar whenever her mom gets ready for an outing and does her hair up nice. “Alright, Harrington. I’m ready to get spooked.” 

He gives her a wry smile. “I’ll try not to disappoint.” 

She settles against the seat, tucking her legs up beneath her and then pausing, unsure if that’s something she should be doing in a car. Her mother hates it when she does it, says it’s improper, and this is an expensive car, but Steve doesn’t comment on it. Her shoes are clean—cleanish—at least. 

Steve talks. And talks. He talks about a monster lurking in the woods, a girl who could move objects with her mind and lights that flicker when touched in another dimension. He talks about a dead girl in a pool, a monster in the walls, and a trio of teenagers illuminated by Christmas lights as they fight for their lives. He talks about a boy who kept a creature from another dimension, a couple seeking justice for a covered up death, and three children nearly being eaten by more monsters, saved only by a teenager with a modified baseball bat. 

Robin stays quiet as he talks, watching his hand motions as Steve himself stares out of the windshield, staring into the darkness of the quarry. It’s almost pitch black around them now, no longer the greying sky when she’d first arrived. 

She’d seen Steve at Barb’s funeral, standing next to Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers, dressed in some fancy suit. She’d spotted him at the arcade just a few weeks ago, a group of young teenagers basically hanging off his arm, nagging him to take them to the diner once they’d beaten their high scores. She’d heard about Nancy and Steve’s fight last Halloween, whispers that had spread through the band room from those who had attended and seen Nancy taken home by Jonathan while Steve stewed outside, stony-faced, and their apparent break-up shortly afterwards. 

Although he’s named no names, it’s not hard to work out the identities of the characters in the stories. The way he’s talking, too… Something tells her that he’s not entirely talking in metaphors. 

“Wait, hold on,” she says, as he starts talking about the trio splitting up after reuniting once again. “I don’t understand.” 

“It’s just a scary story,” he says hastily. “Old folks tale, or whatever.” 

“No, not that.” Robin straightens up, shifting in her seat so that she’s sat cross-legged, facing him. “Why’d the trio split up?” 

He looks at her blankly. “What?”

“You said the trio of teenagers fought, trapped and killed a monster together,” she says. “And then in the next story, two of them are off together, and the other one’s off with a bunch of kids.” 

“Who said they’re the same people?” He frowns, readjusting himself so that he’s mirroring her, sitting cross-legged and facing her direction. 

“Uh, one of the boys in both of those stories fights monsters with a baseball bat with nails hammered into it, and the girl wanted justice for her friend in the pool, so it makes sense that she’s trying to bring down the people covering it up in the other story,” she points out. “The monsters have the same kind of similarities, from what you were saying, so it makes sense that these take place in the same universe, and the characters in the later stories clearly aren’t new to it since they know how to handle the monsters. So the original couple break up, the girl gets with the other boy and goes up against the government, while the first boy goes and defends a bunch of kids from the monsters. The bit I don’t understand is why the trio don’t stick together. I mean, fighting a monster together, just the three of them, and then having to try and adjust to their normal lives and interact with people who don’t know monsters are around, only to get thrown into it all again? It would be so isolating. Why wouldn’t the three of them want to band together afterwards? Doesn’t something like that change them?”

Steve gapes at her for a moment, then shuts his mouth, only to open and close it again several times before he frowns, his eyebrows knitting together.

She feels a little foolish, all of a sudden, putting her foot in her mouth once again, and awkwardly brushes a hand through her hair. “I mean, that’s just—That’s just my line of thinking.” 

“You’re on board with monsters, but not people drifting?” he asks weakly. 

“I just…” Robin trails off and shrugs half-heartedly. 

Steve’s watching her now, his dark eyes almost pleading as he seemingly waits for her to continue. It occurs to her that maybe he needs to hear her thoughts—that maybe he needs to hear someone say that it isn’t fair. That he didn’t deserve to be shut out by the other two. 

Something twists in her chest, a sudden rush of fierce protectiveness that surprises even her. She knows firsthand how it feels to be left behind, shut out by those you loved, but after—after all that? After surviving near-death experiences together, after going through all that trauma, he was left to cope alone? 

Secretly, she had always thought that Steve Harrington didn’t deserve Nancy Wheeler, that Nancy was too clever and skilled to be stuck in Hawkins and seen as his arm candy or the queen of Hawkins High, so when they’d broken up, she’d thought, good for her. She had waited for Steve to move onto the next girl without much care or thought. Instead, she saw him dethroned and alone, keeping to himself and no longer engaging as much as he’d used to. She’d seen him turn in worse and worse work in class. She’d written it up to recovering from the break-up—after all, Steve Harrington probably wasn’t used to being on the receiving end of a dumping—and frankly hadn’t cared enough to look into it beyond that.

This, though… Nobody deserved it. If she had been caught up in fighting monsters and protecting people only to be shut out the moment they returned to normalcy—or whatever they could call not being in active danger—well, she’d probably snap and go off the deep end. 

“I understand drifting, Harrington,” she says carefully. “I—Every time I think I have friends, people I can trust, I…” She takes a deep breath, trying to steady the shake in her voice. “Everyone always leaves. Every time. And that—that hurts enough by itself. If I went through events that traumatic with that few people and then those same people turned their back on me I’d—” She cuts herself off, flexing her fingers into a fist and out again. His gaze doesn’t leave her face. 

She takes another deep breath, starting again. “I had a friend who died,” she continues, focusing on Steve’s nose rather than his eyes when she sees his expression soften.  “Or—We weren’t friends when she died. She… A few years prior to her death, she left me for someone else. She never told me why, she just… stopped bothering with me, I suppose. No longer invited me to her house or called me, always seemed to have excuses and other plans when I asked to spend time with her. I don’t know if it was something I did, or if she just got tired of me like everyone else seemed to, or something else. But it hurt.

“And then she disappeared. Her new friend—the one she replaced me with—had been pulling away from her, wrapped up in someone else, and I remember seeing my former friend alone in the hallway, just a few days before she vanished, and thinking good. I wanted her to hurt the way I was hurting. And then she was gone, and I thought she’d left Hawkins, and it made me angry all over again, because—she got out. She escaped this shithole. We’d talked so often, while we were friends, about getting out of Hawkins and never looking back, and she’d gone and done it and left me behind, again. I hated her, and I loved her, and I missed her, all at once. I spent so long being angry at her. Then—then it came out that she’d died. All the time I’d spent hating her she’d been dead. And I just—I don’t know how to cope with it. It’s not my death to mourn, because we weren’t friends anymore, and her new friend doesn’t even know me, so… I don’t know. I still love her, and I still miss her, and I think I still hate her, too.” She barks out an empty laugh, digging her fingernails into her palms to prevent the tears she can feel threatening to start. There’s realisation dawning on Steve’s face, and she can’t quite handle that just yet, so she carries on: “Isn’t that so fucked up of me? She’s dead, she’s never going to grow up and live the life she was meant to, and I hate her. I hate her for dying, and I hate her for leaving, and I hate her for making me feel all screwed up inside and I have no one. I have no one. Just like—” She bites her tongue to stop herself saying you. “Like the guy in the story. Nobody wants me around. So I come out here, because then I’m choosing to be alone instead of being left alone. That’s why I’m here tonight, in this stupid sweater with no jacket. So I can pretend it’s my choice.”

Robin sniffles, wiping at her eyes furiously, because the last thing she’s going to do is cry in front of Steve Harrington. Something touches her shoulder and she starts, whipping her head back up. Steve’s resting his hand on her shoulder, looking at her with sympathy in his big brown eyes, and she wants to snap at him not to touch her, and she also wants him to pull her into his arms and let her cry, and she also wants to get out of his car and run away into the darkness. 

Instead, she doesn’t do anything, just lets his hand lay on her shoulder, letting the warmth of his palm ground her. 

He doesn’t break the quiet, letting her scrub at her eyes.

She lets the silence hang for a few seconds before she can finally bring herself to ask the question she doesn’t want the answer to. “Barb wasn’t killed by a chemical leak, was she?” 

His voice is gentle when he responds. “No.” 

The dam breaks. 

She lets out a small wail, shoving her fist against her mouth to muffle it, tears spurting freely down her cheeks in a rush. The hand on her shoulder disappears and she tries to turn away, whipping her head around to face the window next to her in such a quick movement that it hurts her neck. It’s hard to breathe. Her chest feels like it’s pulled so tightly that it aches, like her heart’s trying to claw its way out of her throat and throw itself down into the quarry, and her whole body shakes as her shoulders heave and she can’t breathe, only make these pathetic little gasping noises— 

Barb is dead, killed by a monster, her casket empty beneath the earth, and she’s gone. 

Steve rubs her back in a clumsy motion, so awkwardly that it occurs to her he probably hasn’t had to comfort someone before, and then it occurs to her that she’s having a very public breakdown in his front seat. She turns back to face him to choke out an apology for dripping tears all over his clean interior only to be greeted with the sight of him crying, too. 

It’s so bizarre that she snorts through her tears, almost choking. “Why are you crying?” 

“I don’t know,” he sobs, his voice cracking. “Everything’s just so fucked.”

“Everything’s so fucked!” 

He surges forward and for one alarming moment she thinks he’s going to try and kiss her and freezes, but he pushes his face into her shoulder instead, crying into his own jacket and clinging to her. His hair tickles her neck, and several things must be digging into him, and it’s the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to her but she wraps her arms around him and presses her face into his hair, letting herself cry with him. 

They stay that way for she doesn’t know how long, with her pressed awkwardly against the car door and him draped over the two front seats. They’re pressed together so closely that it’s hard to tell where she ends and he begins. What a sight they must make; from a distance, they would look like a normal couple who have snuck away for some privacy. She imagines a cop knocking on the window, shining his flashlight at them, and the two of them having to explain that oh, no, officer, you’ve got it all wrong, nothing inappropriate going on here, we’re just two teenagers crying together. She lets out a choked up giggle, but it comes out as another sob, and a fresh wave of tears start flowing into Steve’s meticulously maintained hair.

God, she’s so fucked up. 

But it looks like Steve is, too. 

Finally, she manages to get her breathing under control, hiccuping quietly, and Steve’s cries have reduced to the occasional quiet hitch of his breath. She pats his back, so gently that she surprises even herself, and he slowly pushes himself up, wiping at his eyes. 

“Sorry for crying on you,” he says, sniffling. 

“Sorry for crying into your hair,” she replies immediately, wincing at her own words. 

He offers her a watery smile. “S’okay. Needed a wash, anyway.” 

“No, it didn’t.”

“No, it didn’t,” he agrees, “but I don’t care.” 

They sit in companionable silence for another moment. They’re both red-eyed, and when she glances in the mirror she can see her mascara is streaked down her cheeks, making her look even more of a mess than she was to begin with, but she finds that she doesn’t care, either. 

“Come on,” she says suddenly. She opens the car door and awkwardly manoeuvres herself out of it. 

“Come on what?” Steve climbs out of the other side, the car going dark as he does. Out here, as he follows her back to the ledge, he’s illuminated by only moonlight, enveloping him in silver. He looks at her, confusion written on his face, and she thinks that he looks ethereal. She wonders if she does, too. 

Above them, the night is clear, the stars seeming to twinkle down on them. She picks out the small cluster of stars forming Orion’s belt instantly. When she was younger, she’d been obsessed with constellations, spending hours staring out of her window or lying down in the grass in her back garden. 

She’d loved the thought of stories being scattered amongst the stars. Orion the hunter, immortalised in the sky with his faithful dogs, and Scorpius, his killer and saviour of the animals, the two positioned such that they’ll never appear in the sky together. 

The nymph Callisto, turned into a bear by a jealous Hera, and her son Arcas, who had nearly hunted her. The myth says that the two were thrown into the stars by Zeus in an effort to save them, forming Ursa Major and Ursa Minor. 

Sometimes she wonders if she’s somehow the opposite; flung from space, made not from flesh and bone but stardust. A celestial girl. 

“Robin?” Steve says, and she’s abruptly brought back to herself, realising she’s been staring into the stars instead of answering him. It’s quiet out, the wind nothing but a slight breeze. It’s peaceful. As if nothing’s changed. As if there’s no monsters in the woods. 

She lets out a guttural scream. Steve, next to her, jumps out of his skin. He nearly loses his balance, but before the panic can even finish setting into his features she’s grabbing him and yanking him back.

“Oh-my-God-I’m-so-sorry,” she says in a rush, gripping onto his arms as if he might disappear. “I should’ve warned you, that was so stupid of me, God, I’m such an idiot—” 

“It’s fine,” he interrupts, though he’s holding onto her arms in just as tight a death-grip. “You’re fine. I just wasn’t prepared for it—”

“—I could’ve killed you, Jesus Christ, I’m so sorry Steve, I didn’t even think, I—” She cuts herself off as a dopey smile starts spreading across his face. “Why are you smiling?”

His eyes are warm as he meets her questioning look, letting go of her arms; as soon as she lets go of him, too, he runs one hand through his hair, but this isn’t him trying to woo her, this is—she isn’t sure what this is. He looks pleased, if not a little bashful. 

“You didn’t call me Harrington,” he says softly. 

She blinks. “Huh. That I didn’t.” 

His smile widens, just for a moment, and then he turns back to face the quarry. “You know something crazy?” 

“What?”

“My parents are never home anymore. Haven’t been for months now. Last I saw them, they came home for a weekend and went out for food with some business partner, and they left without saying goodbye the next morning. They don’t even bother to call anymore.” He shakes his head, staring down at the water. 

She hesitates, opening her mouth to speak, but Steve continues talking.

“And—And I know I dropped my only friends, ‘cause they were assholes, but they flocked straight to Billy Hargrove of all people, and Hargrove—Hargrove smashed a plate over my head, did you know? Tried to fuck up some kids and I wouldn’t let him, so he beat the shit out of me. Knocked me clean unconscious.” His voice rises, sounding bitter. “I woke up to his car being driven by a thirteen year old and then almost got mauled by demodogs, and when I went to school after everything all anyone could talk about the next day was how Hargrove kicked my ass. School. I fight monsters and I come back to whispers in the halls and my shitty grades are mounting up and I go home to an empty house and I just—I just—I’m not getting into college, Robin, I already know my grades are too bad and I just can’t grasp the subject matter, especially since I keep getting my fuckin’ head knocked about, so I’m gonna be stuck in Hawkins forever and my parents think I’m a failure and these fucking monsters keep coming back so—” 

He sucks in a deep breath and lets loose a scream of his own. It’s long, drawn-out, and when he finishes he’s panting, pushing his hair from his face once again. 

“My parents don’t care either,” she blurts out, suddenly desperate for him to know that maybe they have this in common, that they’re two lonely souls that maybe don’t have to be quite so alone. “They’re home physically some days, but they’re never there emotionally. They’re more like roommates than parents and they just don’t give a shit unless I’m bringing home something they can show off. I learnt—I learnt three other languages, I’m in band, I was the lead in one of the school plays and they just—they never care. They didn’t even show up to see me perform. I had nobody afterwards. Anna Jacobi got flowers from her parents and her boyfriend for playing a minor role and like, obviously she deserves them, she was great as Essie, but—I cycled home alone afterwards and that was it. That was my celebration, because nobody gives a shit, because nobody ever gives a shit!” 

She feels wild, unhinged, her voice louder and louder with every sentence until she screams too, letting the gentle breeze carry away her voice. She imagines her words being carried with it, the feelings she’s kept buried in her cavern of a heart returning to the stars. Orion will whisper her fears to his hounds and people will hear it as thunder; Callisto will weep, reaching for her son, and people will feel it as rain. 

She screams until her throat grows sore, Steve watching her wordlessly, and finally she has to stop to breathe, gasping for air so hard that it feels like it shudders in her lungs. 

“Feels good, right?” Steve says. 

She bursts out laughing. He startles, his brows furrowing together, which only makes her laugh harder. 

“I’m sorry,” she wheezes. “It’s just—This is so bizarre. I’m standing at the quarry with Steve Harrington, of all people, and I’m screaming into the darkness and telling him things I’ve never told anyone and I just—Maybe I’m dreaming. Or crazy. Or both.” 

“Not dreaming,” Steve says, a small smile tugging at his lips. “I can’t speak on the crazy, but, hey—if you are, I am too.” 

“How reassuring,” she says dryly, but she shoots him a smile to show she’s joking. “We can be roommates in Pennhurst.” 

“I’ve always hoped for a cool roommate.” She scoffs at that and he raises an eyebrow. “What?”

“It may have escaped your notice, but I’m not exactly cool, Steve.” 

“Well, I think you’re cool,” he says, voice suddenly serious. “I think maybe we were meant to meet tonight. Like star-crossed, uh, friends?” 

“Not star-crossed,” she replies automatically. His face immediately falls and she scrambles to recover. “No, not—I mean, star-crossed doesn’t mean that. Star-crossed is when two people are destined to be together and can’t be. Like, their meeting is written in the stars, but the stars are crossed, so it’s also fate for it to end in tragedy. Like Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare actually coined the term, you know, when—” She cuts herself off, flushing red as she realises she’s rambling again. “So, uh, it’s the opposite of what you’re trying to say. Not that—I wasn’t disagreeing with you.” 

“Oh,” he croaks, and he looks relieved, like her friendship is worth something, and something in her chest twists. “Maybe—Maybe just written in the stars, then? For us to meet. Maybe the universe wanted us to find each other.” 

“Like platonic soulmates,” she offers. “My soul and your soul are the same, and we’re destined to be friends. Some people believe soulmates are made from the same stardust, and that’s why they’re destined to always find each other, because it’s the stars trying to go home. And platonic is derived from the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who wrote about different types of love, because at the time it was considered insane to think of love and sex as separate feelings. There was a scholar who came up with it, amor platonicus, which means like a—a soul-connected, divine love, free from sexual desire.”

Steve stares at her. 

Her face heats up and she takes a step back, shoving her hands into the pockets of the jacket. She stumbles over her words as she hastily continues, “Not—God, sorry, not that we’re going to be friends, that’s—that’s presumptuous of me, you meant that we were meant to meet tonight and—we’re just two lonely people—” 

“I’d like to be friends,” Steve says, his voice sounding oddly strangled. “I didn’t—I didn’t think you’d want to be friends with me. It’s—it’s easy to talk to you, and I don’t know why but I like that it’s easy, and I like everything you just said, and—Well, you don’t deserve to be alone, and I don’t want to be alone, so maybe we could—we could be friends? We could try and be friends.”

She stares back at him for a moment, warmth flooding through her. 

“Yeah.” Her voice cracks. “Yeah, we—we can try and be friends. I’d like that.” 

He smiles, big and dopily, then says, “Is it weird if I hug you?”

“Absolutely insane,” she confirms, then opens her arms wide open. “Just like everything else tonight. Get over here.” 

Steve all but throws himself at her, pulling her into his arms. He nestles his head on her shoulder, and she notes with almost giddiness how easily they fit together, like they were made to hold each other. They’re their own constellation, she thinks, their stars clustered together, which is an crazy thought because yesterday if someone had told her she’s willingly take Steve Harrington into her arms in the next twenty-four hours she would’ve scoffed in their face but—it feels so right. She knows it, fiercely and wholly, that he is hers and she is his, even if they never talk again after tonight. 

What feels like an eternity later, they let go—she’s not sure who moves first, or if either of them do, but then they’re no longer a tangle of limbs and Steve is looking at his watch. 

“It’s late,” he says, his voice still soft. “We’ve—It feels so stupid to say we’ve got school tomorrow, but—”

“I get it.” Robin gives him a gentle smile, already missing the contact, and turns to leave. “I’ll, uh, see you at school?”

“Where are you going?” She turns back to see him squinting at her. 

“Oh!” Embarrassed, she starts shrugging off his jacket. “Sorry, I—”

“Not that,” he says, staring at her in disbelief. “I’m not letting you walk in the cold and dark when I can just drive you. What are you, nuts?”

“Oh,” she repeats, freezing in her tracks, already holding his jacket out to him. “I—Thanks.”

He shakes his head and steps towards her, reaching for what she thinks is his jacket only to loop his arm around hers instead so that they’re linked. He gives her a gentle tug. 

“Come on,” he says. “Let’s get out of the cold.”

Robin enters Steve’s car for the second time that evening, grateful once again for the warmth that starts blowing at her as he starts the car. 

“Can we put music on?” she asks, scratching at her neck self-consciously. 

“Tapes are in the glove compartment,” he replies, gesturing vaguely before returning his hand to the wheel. He doesn’t move the car yet, though, seemingly waiting patiently as she rifles through the sparse collection. She settles on an ABBA cassette, slotting it in and letting the quiet sound of The King Has Lost His Crown fill the car. It starts in the middle of the second verse and she knows that it’s not the first song on the album, but she doesn’t comment.

Steve starts driving as soon as the music starts up, and when the song fades out he reaches out and turns the tape around before slotting it back in. 

“That’s the last song on the first side,” he tells her as the familiar intro of Does Your Mother Know begins. 

“I didn’t take you for an ABBA fan,” she replies. 

“Who isn’t an ABBA fan?” he counters. She has no reply to that, so she just nods and stares out of the window, his jacket folded in her lap. He hums along softly to the music, then starts murmuring the lyrics when she doesn’t comment on it. 

She glances over at him, seeing how he’s trying to school his face into a controlled expression and completely failing at hiding his nerves, so when the chorus starts she thinks to hell with it.

“Well, I can dance with you, honey, if you think it’s funny,” she sings quietly, deliberately not looking back at him when he goes quiet. She sees him turn his head to her out of the corner of her eye. “Does your mother know that you’re out?” 

“And I can chat with you, baby, flirt a little maybe,” Steve sings, his voice growing stronger and louder as he continues, “Does your mother know that you’re out?”

“Take it easy—”

“—Take it easy—”

“Better slow down, girl, that’s no way to go.” She can’t stop her smile from spreading from her face, which widens further when Steve reaches over and shoves gently at her shoulder. 

“That second half should’ve been my line,” he complains, but there’s no real annoyance in his voice and he’s smiling, too. 

“You snooze, you lose.” She shrugs at him, snorting when he shoves at her again. 

They’re halfway through Lovers (Live A Little Longer) when her house comes into view, and Steve deliberately slows the car to a crawl until the song finishes and he finally parks. 

“Thanks,” she says, even though she thanked him earlier. When she gets out of the car, she leaves his jacket folded mostly-neatly on the passenger seat. Steve rolls down her window as she shuts the door. 

“No problem,” he replies. “See you at school tomorrow?”

“Yeah, if—if you want.” She shoves her hands into the pockets of her jeans, already feeling the cold settle into her bones despite it being only moments since she’s left the car. “We don’t have any classes together anymore, but I’ll be around at lunch?” 

He nods, looking pleased. 

She nods back, stepping away from the car, and he suddenly snaps his fingers and sits up straighter.

“You were Penelope,” he blurts out. “In the school play, I mean. The, uh, playwriter woman?”

“Playwright,” she corrects, then blinks at him, his words sinking in. “Yeah, I… I was.”

“You were great.” His voice is earnest, his eyes warm as he looks at her. “I didn’t realise that was you. Carol was all pissy because she’d wanted the lead. She was mad at me for, like, two weeks because I said you were really good.” 

“Oh,” she says, surprised. She knows she was good, Mrs. Jones had said as much to her the next day, privately, and she’d spent weeks and weeks memorising her lines, and to top it all off Carol had tripped her in the cafeteria even though she hadn’t even been her understudy. It had never occurred to her that other students thought she was good, too. Or that her performance had been memorable, let alone enough for Steve to comment on it months later. “... Thank you.” 

He beams at her. “Goodnight, Robin.”

“Goodnight, Steve.” 

She lets herself into her house, noting that he’s still watching her, and it’s only once her front door has closed that she sees the light of his car slowly pull away. 

The next day, Robin sits in the cafeteria for the first time in months, feeling stupidly self-conscious. Usually, she’ll grab her lunch and find an empty classroom to sit in, but she doesn’t want to miss Steve on the off-chance he’s looking for her. 

If he even is looking for her. She’s been sitting at the end of a table for fifteen minutes now, halfheartedly picking the cheese off her slice of pizza, with no sign of him. Honestly, she’s not convinced she didn’t dream up the whole encounter. Monsters being real and Steve Harrington being a real, genuine person? In the light of day, it’s feeling more and more like a concoction her brain mixed up, splicing the horror films she’d fallen asleep to days earlier with her own loneliness. She’d been thinking about how Steve had been at the funeral, and her head must’ve roped him in from there. 

Ten more minutes, she tells herself, and if he doesn’t show, she’ll go and eat elsewhere, somewhere she’ll look less pathetically alone. 

Six minutes pass of her fighting the urge to leave anyway when Steve finally does show up, plopping down into a seat opposite her. 

“Sorry I’m late,” he says, sounding weirdly breathless. He shoots her a grin, which falters when she just stares at him. “I—Were you not serious about hanging out today? Oh my God, of course you weren’t—I’m so sorry, I’m a moron—”

“Wait!” She reaches over and grabs his arm as he goes to get up. He freezes, looking back at her hopefully. “Sorry, you—I thought you weren’t being serious, like, why would you want to be friends with a loser like me, you know? You, uh, surprised me.” 

He looks surprised, too. “Of course I’m serious,” he says, sitting back down. “I meant it when I said you were cool. I’d like to stick around, if you’ll have me.” 

“I—Yeah, I’d like that.”

“Oh!” He grabs at his bag. “I almost forgot. The whole reason I was late—Here.” 

Steve produces a small cluster of chrysanthemums carefully tied together with some string. 

“A… posy?” She squints at the flowers in front of her. “What are they for?”

“They’re for you,” he says, like it’s obvious. “For your performance in the play. I know they’re hardly a bouquet, but I figured it would draw too much attention if I showed up with an armful of flowers and gave them to you. I had to look through my mom’s collection of books because I knew she had a book of flower meanings somewhere, and then I had to find somewhere to get chrysanthemums, because the book said they mean friendship and, uh, well-being or happiness or something, and then I had to ask Mr. Scott if I could keep them safe on his desk, and then he wasn’t there for lunch so I had to find the janitor to open the room so I could get them and it took so much time and I was worried you’d think I’d, like, forgotten about you or something—”

“Steve,” she interrupts, her heart pounding, because what the fuck. She wants to cry. He brought her flowers for her performance as Penelope months and months ago. 

“Sorry,” he says, taking a deep breath. “But, uh, yeah. They’re yours. Do you like them?” 

“I love them,” she says, which somehow feels too honest and like a lie all at once, because how does she capture the feeling of nobody has ever cared to pay attention to me before and even less so bother to think of my feelings, but here you are, going to all this trouble to get me flowers for something that happened ages ago, and it hasn’t even been a day since we’ve said we’re going to be friends.  

“I love them,” she repeats, more forcefully this time.

“I’d, uh, like to be someone who stays for once for you,” he says, looking serious again, and hopeful, and vulnerable all at once. “And maybe you can be the one who stays for me, too.”

“As long as you promise to fight away any wall monsters that come for me,” she jokes, because if she doesn’t laugh she’ll start bawling, and he breaks out into a grin. 

“Of course I will.” He reaches over and rests his hand on the table. She pauses, before letting her hand rest atop of his, and he carefully rotates his hand to interlock their fingers. “I’d never let anything happen to you. They’d have to kill me before anything lays a finger on you.” 

“Intense,” she says, and squeezes his hand, “but I fuck with it. I can’t promise to be any good at monster hunting, but I’ll have your back as long as you want me.” 

“Then you’ll be at my back forever,” he tells her, squeezing her hand in return. “And I’ll be at yours.”

“Those monsters won’t know what’s hit them.” She grins at him, feeling so unexplainably light and happy for the first time in—she doesn’t even know. A long, long time. “Centuries from now, people will see our stories in the stars, and they’ll pick out stars to represent the two of us, back to back. People will look to the sky at night and say, ‘See those stars? They’re Amici Optimi, the platonic soulmates, directly translated to best friends. They were cast to the stars to protect the world from monsters’, and even in a thousand years when we’re nothing but dust beneath the earth, we’ll be remembered.” 

He beams back at her, brighter than she’s ever seen him, and she looks back at their joined hands and thinks, This will be the moment that’s immortalised. When they look to the stars a hundred years from now, children will point out the stars that form our entwined fingers, the shapes of our bodies mirroring each other across the table. The platonic soulmates, sent to earth as punishment for loving too hard and condemned to lonely lives, but finding each other again despite it, they’ll say, because they’ll always find their way to each other. They returned home to the stars at the end, and now when you look up at the sky in the winter months, you can see them holding hands, smiling at each other.  

Steve squeezes her hand once more, looking inexplicably fond, and she thinks that she’ll remember this moment forever, too.