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solarmorrigan · 4 months

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Hands Where I Can See Them, part 10

Pt 1 | Pt 2 | Pt 3 | Pt 4 | Pt 5 | Pt 6 | Pt 7 | Pt 8 | Pt 9 | Ao3

[Warning for reference to sexual activities, fairly brief]

Robin watches Steve walk past the “Action” section with an armful of Schwarzenegger films three times before she says anything.

“You’re distracted today.”

“Hm?” Steve looks up at her, snapping out of whatever vacant thought he’d slipped away into and entirely proving her point. “Sorry, what?”

“Distracted. You.” Robin points down the correct aisle. “The Terminator and his ilk go down there.”

Steve shakes his head. “Right, sorry.”

Following him over, Robin leans against the end of the shelf while Steve sorts through cases that Robin knows have already been organized. “So what’s got your head in the clouds?”

Steve is quiet for a moment longer. He doesn’t seem unhappy – he seems lighter, actually. He’s not in the same weirdly good mood he’s been in for the last week, but he’s a little more settled, so whatever it is, Robin figures it can’t be bad.

Finally, he glances around the store (it’s empty; Sunday nights hardly even require two employees once the afternoon rush has died out, but Robin won’t complain about being paid to sit around and do nothing for a while), and then says, “Eddie and I are dating. Like, for real this time. I think.”

The words come out in a bit of a rush, and it takes Robin a moment to decide that, yes, she’d heard them correctly.

“Excuse me?”

Her tone is exactly as pointed as she’d meant it to be, if the way Steve winces at the question is any indication.

“The last you told me, you two were ‘talking about it’ and ‘taking it slow.’” Air quotes are heavily employed to illustrate Robin’s new skepticism.

“And we were!” Steve says quickly.

“That was, like, two weeks ago, Steve!” Robin says. “That is not slow!”

“Well it’s not like we just jumped into it! We did talk, and we went on a couple of dates–”

“What? When? Why is this the first I’m hearing about it?”

“I mean, the first was last weekend, so–”

Robin gasps, jabbing a finger at Steve. “You lied to me!”

“I did not,” Steve insists, pointing a finger right back at her, though it doesn’t have quite the same effect with one arm still full of clunky plastic cases.

“You did! You asked me to take your shift because, and I quote, you were going to do something for yourself,” Robin shoots back.

“And I did! I gave myself the chance to see where this thing with Eddie was going,” Steve says.

“Or, you gave yourself the chance to fall right back into the same pattern that hurt you before,” Robin says.

Steve shakes his head. “It’s different this time,” he says, more quietly.

“How?” Robin demands. “Because ‘dating for real this time, I think,’ doesn’t sound that different.”

“I mean, we didn’t say the word dating, exactly, but…” Steve shifts a little on his feet, but stands firm. “He told me that he loves me.”

“Uh huh,” Robin drawls. “And was that before or after you slept together?”

She regrets it the moment she says it, regrets it the moment the words form and she knows they’re going to come out, but it’s too late. She can see the flash of genuine hurt on Steve’s face before he buries it beneath a layer of cool indifference.

“We didn’t actually have sex, but thanks for the vote of confidence,” he bites out, turning and rounding to the next aisle.

Shit.

No one who Robin has personally seen tear a monster in half with his bare hands (feet?) has any right to look as much like a kicked puppy as Steve does, but he somehow manages it.

And the thing is, she knows how important that is to him – for someone to say the words out loud. She’s learned about his parents in bits and pieces; she even eventually got the full scoop on Nancy. She just– she worries. And when she worries, she says things before she really thinks them through.

Sighing, Robin walks around to the next aisle, finding Steve kneeling and paying entirely too much attention to the stacks of cases in front of him. When her slow approach isn’t rebuffed, she sinks down on the floor next to him, cross-legged with her back facing the shelf.

“I’m sorry. That was a cheap shot,” she says.

Steve shrugs.

“If it helps, it wasn’t directed at you,” Robin goes on. “I just– I really don’t have any reason to trust Eddie’s motives, and I don’t like it when you’re sad, and it’s my job as your best friend to look out for you and be mad at people on your behalf. Especially if you’re not going to be mad at them yourself.”

“Isn’t it also your job as my best friend to trust me and my judgment? And, like, support me when I’m doing something that’ll make me happy?” Steve asks quietly, a little dry.

“I guess,” Robin groans, leaning to the side so that her cheek is pillowed on the round of Steve’s shoulder. “But come on. If some girl made me cry, are you telling me you’d get over it in a snap?”

Robin can feel Steve tense beneath her for a moment, and she absolutely knows he’s thinking about lying to her.

“That’s different,” he finally says.

“It really isn’t, you big goddamn hypocrite.” Robin doesn’t bother to hide her smile, even as she smacks Steve on the back, ignoring the whiny ‘ow’ he gives her for it. “So tell me about the date.”

“Which one?” Steve asks.

“The first one. Must’ve been pretty good for you to agree to another,” Robin says.

“It… really was, actually.” Steve shifts carefully out of his crouch, giving Robin enough time to sit up before he settles onto the floor in front of her, back to the opposite shelf. “I mean, it was weird at first. He took me out to some random neighborhood and then we walked a little ways into the woods.”

“Creepy,” Robin says.

“A little bit, yeah.” Steve nods. “And then we came to this little, like, forgotten park? Had some playground equipment and a gazebo. And when we got there, he told me to turn around, so I couldn’t see what he was doing.”

“Creepier.” Robin wrinkles her nose.

“Yeah, but I was curious, so I did it.” Steve shrugs and Robin snorts at him. “But when he let me turn back around, he’d uh – he had a bunch of candles lit up all around the gazebo? It was… really nice. And he brought dinner – something he cooked. Like, with one of the recipes I taught him.”

Robin’s brows go up, reluctantly impressed. “Damn, alright, point to Munson, that was pretty good,” she admits.

“It was,” Steve says with this dumb, smitten little grin that Robin will absolutely tease him about later.

“Okay, okay, so he picked up on you being a romantic, that’s great, but,” Robin holds her hands out in front of herself in an emphatic sort of ‘here’s the thing’ gesture, “where was all of this before?”

“Right?” Steve bursts out, flinging his arms out in front of himself, narrowly avoiding knocking into one of Robin’s hands. “Thank you! I’m not crazy for wondering that!”

“Of course you’re not,” Robin says, narrowing her eyes at him. “He didn’t tell you that you were, did he?”

“No, no, he– he didn’t.” Steve quickly shakes his head. “I just… I don’t know, I felt like I was being kind of unreasonable, I guess. Like, maybe for wanting any of that at all. Or wondering why he didn’t do it sooner.”

“You’re not,” Robin says again. “You deserve to get what you want, Steve.”

“Yeah, that’s what Eddie keeps saying.” Steve sighs, leaning his head back against the shelf.

“Well… good,” Robin says, a mildly reluctant concession. Maybe Eddie’s getting on the right page after all.

“He says he wants me to tell him when I need something,” Steve says. “Like… he wants me to talk to him.”

“What, about your feelings?” Robin asks, playfully wrinkling her nose. “Gross.”

“The worst,” Steve agrees drily, but he looks pleased, and a little thoughtful. Robin gives him the minute to think, before he says, “I did kind of blow up at him, though. Before that.”

“Good,” Robin laughs, nudging his knee with hers.

“It did sort of feel good,” Steve admits, glancing down through his lashes at Robin. “Just… to kinda get it all out.”

“What happened then?” Robin asks.

“Well, it’s – last night kind of went sideways,” Steve says. “It was supposed to be another date, but…”

“But…?”

“He just – when we were having dinner last weekend, he kept calling it our first date, and it was, but it also wasn’t? I kept thinking about what I thought was our first date.”

“Wait, was that the time in your car out by the quarry?”

Steve lifts his head up so he can shift the full brunt of his scrunched look of disapproval onto her. “No, hooking up in my car out by the quarry was not our first date. That didn’t happen until later.”

“Well it’s not like I have timestamps on these things, Steve!” Robin groans.

“It was that night at the diner,” Steve says, and Robin’s mouth falls into a little “oh” of recognition.

“The diner.” She nods.

It’s obvious in retrospect; Robin has heard everything about that night and then some, from the way Eddie had managed to get ketchup everywhere to “and he can do this thing with his tongue, even I didn’t know you could do that, but I’m gonna try and figure it out, it was so good–” (Robin had teasingly asked him if he’d need to practice on a peach or a banana, and he’d thrown a handful of balled-up receipts at her before deciding “both”).

“But he wanted me to tell him about it, so I did, and then last night, for our date, he took me to the diner,” Steve says, raising his eyebrows at Robin.

“What?” Robin’s eyebrows scrunch down in answer. “Did he think he just gets a do-over?”

“That’s what I asked!” Steve says, before subsiding a bit. “But I don’t… I really don’t think he thought that far ahead. I think he just wanted us both to have, like, some kind of special memory there.”

Robin hums, squinting at Steve skeptically.

“Anyway, I kinda yelled at him and I left, but then he actually came and found me,” Steve continues.

“Where did you go?” Robin asks.

“The lake.”

“Why were you all the way out there?”

Steve grimaces. “Mostly because I knew he doesn’t like going out there.”

Robin snorts, and Steve’s grimace shifts into a guilty sort of smile.

“But he came out there, anyway. And we talked, and– I really think he means it, Rob,” Steve says, looking at her like he needs her to believe it, too. Or at least like he needs her to believe him.

Robin sighs, letting her head fall back slowly, as if she’s deflating. “Fine,” she says eventually. “Munson is off death row. He can have a parole hearing.”

“I think you’re getting a little too into this whole execution metaphor,” Steve says.

“You’re both lucky I didn’t decide to make it literal,” Robin shoots back, and Steve laughs. “So, wait,” she looks back up, “you seriously haven’t had sex again? Since the whole…?”

“Oh my god, get this: he actually walked me to my door last weekend,” Steve says, halfway between incredulous and amused. “He didn’t even ask to come inside. Said the rule is to wait until the third date.”

“Oh, I bet you loved that,” Robin teases.

“I mean, I wouldn’t have said no if he had asked to come in,” Steve scoffs. “But I’m… kind of glad he didn’t. It was different.”

Robin smiles. “Different is promising,” she says, reaching out to pat Steve on the knee. “Now come on; we close in, like, half an hour and I don’t want to stay late cleaning.”

“Yeah, alright,” Steve agrees, hoisting himself off the floor before offering Robin a hand up.

“Also, you owe me dinner for all the secrecy,” Robin declares, heading back towards the front of the store with the intent of putting the counter back in order.

“What?” Steve groans. “I already spent, like, two weeks with literally no one to talk to about all of this. Haven’t I suffered enough?”

“Nope,” Robin says, and for all she can hear him grumbling, it only takes a minute before Steve is standing next to her again, wrapping an arm around her shoulders and pulling her close. “Sap,” she mutters, putting arm around his waist and squeezing him back.

“And yet, who agreed to be my best friend?” Steve asks.

Robin sighs. “I did,” she says, and she doesn’t even have to look to know that Steve’s grin mirrors hers.

Part 11

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#platonic stobin #stobin #steddie #robin buckley #steve harrington #stranger things #Robin and Steve have zero boundaries and they share a single brain cell #which they use to judge Eddie #solar wrote #eddiesteve

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