summer

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/42169764.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Fandom: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Relationship: Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington, Steve Harrington & Dustin
Henderson
Character: Robin Buckley, Steve Harrington, Dustin Henderson
Additional Tags: robins coming out scene, thats kinda it, but i wrote it, for a school
assignment so its not my best but i wanted to share, Lesbian, Lesbian
Character
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2022-10-05 Words: 2356

summer
by adhdsix

Summary

just a take on robins coming out scene! its not the smoothest because i wrote this for a
school assignment but hope its enjoyable

Robin Buckley was a lot of things. She was a bit of a loser. She was a band kid. She
was working in the mall at an ice cream shop, wearing a ridiculous sailors outfit, courtesy
of company policy. So the last thing she expected this summer was that she’d be
spending it with Steve Harrington as her co-worker. Sure, they were out of school now,
but his former status as “King Steve” was still somewhat intimidating.

Well, not really. He had obviously grown out of it; atleast, it looked like it to Robin.
His only friends were a group of 14 year olds – which she referred to as his “children”
every time they visited to sneak into the movies at the back of the shop – and the tallies
on the “ you suck ” side of her whiteboard were piling up, whereas she could practically
see the tumbleweeds rolling by the neatly drawn “ you rule” everytime he failed to get a
date; quite miserably , too.

What? It was important data. And it’s not like it was Robin’s idea to greet every lady
with a corny line about “ oceans of flavor .” She wishes it was though.

“And another one bites the dust!” Robin appeared at the back of the shop, Steve sighing
before he even turned around to face her. She pulled up her board, adding another tally.
“You are oh-for-six , Popeye.”

“Yeah, yeah, I can count.” He crossed his arms, making it clear he was unimpressed.

“You know that means you suck, right?”

“Yeah! I can read, too.”

“Since when?”

Steve rolled his eyes at her mockery as he began complaining, something about “ this
stupid hat.. ” and it “ blowing his best feature.” Robin set down her board, listening to him
babble. What a fun summer.

Little did she know it would get so much worse.

“What’s in there?”

This was crazy.

It was storming, hard, and there’s only so much a raincoat can do when you’re on top of
a building, spying on potential enemies of the state, accompanied by stupid and stupider.

“It’s just more boxes,” Dustin – one of Steve’s weird little child friends – insisted, still
holding the binoculars to his face. Robin turned to glare at Steve when he started
grabbing at them, desperate for a look. “Let me check it out.”

“No, I’m still looking!” Dustin hissed, keeping his grip.

“Just let me see !”

“Hang on!”

The two of them were ready to tackle each other, and before Robin could hush them,
the binoculars slammed against the railing in the midst of the chaos. BANG.

“ Duck !”

One step ahead of him, Steve and Robin whirled around and hid themselves, slumped
behind the ledge as they tried to steady their breaths.

Robin paused, her eyes wandering to her hand; intertwined with Steve’s, the two of them
holding on with a fierce grip. Apparently, she hadn’t been the only one to notice, and
both of them quickly untangled themselves, hands shooting back to their sides.

Robin frowned, an anxious knot forming in her stomach. She tried to shake it off, and
prayed Steve would do the same. It meant nothing. Right?

Robin wasn’t sure how she had gotten here. Sitting in a bathroom stall, dizzy and sick
and drugged, with Steve Harrington. What a summer. Was she still breathing?

She couldn’t quite remember what they were talking about, either, her consciousness
drifting as they exchanged ice breakers like giddy middle schoolers playing truth or dare.

“All right, my turn,” Robin insisted after answering a particularly humiliating question.

“Hit me.”

“Have you .. ever been in love?”

“Yup, Nancy Wheeler,” Steve responded with little hesitation. “First semester, senior year.”
“Oh my God, she’s such a priss ,” Robin giggled only for Steve to shoot back “turns out,
not really.”

“Are you still in love with Nancy?”

“No.” Little hesitation, again. It was almost scary.

“Why not?”

“.. I think … it’s because I found someone who’s a little bit better for me.”

Oh. Silence.

“You know, it’s crazy ..”

Robin shook her head lazily, even if Steve couldn’t see her. No, no. No. Suddenly he was
talking about Dustin, and Suzie, who even was Suzie?

“.. His girlfriend, from some summer camp. To be honest with you I’m not even 100%
sure she’s real.”

Apparently Robin had asked that out loud. She felt so numb, and so nervous at the same
time. She might be sick again. “But that’s not the point. This girl that I like, I didn’t
even talk to her in school ..”

Robin bit her lip, her head lolling back against the cold tile wall. She rubbed her hands
up and down her legs, trying to grasp at reality. This could not be happening. She was
about to lose everything.

Steve was still babbling, and Robin swears she tried to listen, but a thousand different
scenarios were running through her head and none of them had a happy ending.

“She’s funny, hilarious even. And she’s smart ..”

Robin smiled, but it was bittersweet and stuck to her face in all the wrong places. She
leaned forward, grimacing, bracing herself.

“You know, she’s honestly unlike anyone I’ve ever met before.”

Robin grabbed her head, running her stinging hands through her hair, still caked in blood.
She was silent for minutes, seconds, hours, she doesn’t know; too stuck in her own head.

This was it. Steve tapped against the stall barrier.

“Robin?”

Over the past 48 hours Robin Buckley had cracked a Russian spy code, participated in
child endangerment, gotten herself trapped in a huge, top secret elevator, been chased
down and interrogated and tortured by enemies of the state. Robin thought she was going
to die, and nobody was going to know.

“Robin, did you just OD in there?”

But this might be the most terrifying thing she’s had to face so far.

“No, I .. am still alive.”

At Robin’s response, she could hear Steve readjusting himself before sliding underneath
the barrier – which, ew. “The floor’s disgusting.”

Steve ignored her comment and sat across from her, his knees tucked in as opposed to
Robin who was still sprawled out and open and vulnerable. She felt so, so vulnerable.

“So, what do you think?”

“About?” Robin knew what he was talking about. She was trying to forget. To pretend,
like she always does.
“This girl.”

“She sounds awesome.”

“And what about the guy?”

“I think he’s on drugs and he’s not thinking straight.” Oh, the irony.

“Really? Cause I think he’s thinking a lot more clearly than usual.”

Robin was lost. She really was. She could risk everything, right now. Every day,
every month, every year spent of her life in Hawkins– normal, boring Hawkins, trying to
be normal, boring Robin Buckley.

Because in Hawkins, you had to be boring if you didn’t want to be noticed. People,
highschoolers especially, would jump at any chance to point out something abnormal. You
couldn’t stay silent and stare at your feet, but god forbid you look at anyone funny
either. So there goes every day spent trying to pretend there was nothing wrong with her.
Because there was.

She was the opposite of normal. She was cursed, maybe. Throughout her life, Robin just
couldn’t keep a friend, no matter how hard she tried. It was like something was driving
them away, and the only common factor in every scenario was Robin .

Robin, Robin, Robin and her rambling, her straight-forward tone, her inability to just
say the right thing at the right time. And the thought that she was meant to die alone
kept her awake at night. Tonight she had almost died, but she had been with Steve
Harrington. Her only friend.

It suddenly felt so stupid of her to even entertain the idea that maybe, just maybe, this
friendship would last.
She could just let him down easy, tell him she’s not interested; but then why would
he bother to stick around? It’d be too heartbreaking. Too awkward. Robin would be alone
again.

Or she could risk everything, right here, and tell him the truth. The full truth. What
would it change? Not much. He’d leave, and maybe he’d tell everybody. Her secret that
she’d toss and turn over while trying to shove it deep, deep down in her mind; but Robin
was messy and unorganized and her brain didn’t look much different. It was filled with
constant nonsense and TV static all at once and there was nowhere for her secret to run
and hide. Tonight she would wear her heart on her sleeve. It was only fair to him.
“He’s not.” Her heart was pounding. “Look, he .. doesn’t even know this girl. And if he
did know her, like really know her, I don’t think he’d even want to be her friend.”

“No. That’s not true, no way is that true.”

Dammit , Steve.

“ Listen to me Steve. It has shocked me, to my core, but I like you. I really like you.”

She could end it there. She could backtrack; “ I was just scaring you!” Jesting, having a
laugh, maybe the drugs weren’t out of her system yet. But if they were – out of her
system, that is – she wouldn’t have said what she said next.

“But I’m not like your other friends.”

“Robin, that’s why I like you.”

Robin loves Steve. So she says this with affection – he is not the brightest.

“Do you remember what I said about Click’s class? About me being jealous and, like,
obsessed?” She chuckled as Steve nodded. “It’s not because I had a crush on you. It’s
because .. she wouldn’t stop staring at you.”

There it was.

“Mrs. Click?”

Oh, Steve . She couldn’t even be angry at him. It was just kind of sad. So Robin kept
talking, as though she was reading a bedtime story about fairies to a child who only
wanted to hear about knights and vikings.

“ Tammy Thompson . I wanted her to look at me .”

Steve leaned his head back, looking as though he’d maybe just had his first ever thought.

“But she couldn’t pull her eyes away from you.” Something in Robin’s mind seemed to
kickstart. It was the familiar feeling of gears turning, suddenly working overtime. The
feeling she gets every time her infamous rambling starts, when she goes on and on and
on and just can’t stop.

But what else could she say to make this even worse? She was at her lowest. She let
the gears turn.

“You, and your stupid hair, and I didn’t understand. Because you would get .. bagel
crumbs. All over the floor.” She sounded faint and desperate, vulnerable.

“And you asked dumb questions, and you .. were a douchebag!” She hissed, but there
was no real venom in her voice. Just dumbfounded despair, as though she was reliving
those moments. In a way, she was.

“And– and you didn’t even like her, and I would go home .. and just scream. Into my
pillow.” She ended her rant with a defeated shrug, still shaking her head. Her arms landed
tiredly at her sides; she was an animated talker, and an even more animated rambler. So
much had happened and now it felt too silent.

“But .. Tammy Thompson’s a girl.”

“.. Steve .” Her voice was so soft, it almost shocked her.

“Yeah?”

For once, Robin Buckley was at a loss for words. The only thing she could think of
saying was a little too much for her. So she was silent and still, save for a slight shake
of her head.

Steve leaned back. His jaw seemed to drop, eyes widened almost cartoonishly. Robin
almost wanted to congratulate him on the realization.

“Oh.”
“ Oh,” Robin echoed. She was prepared for the worst. She opened her mouth, then shut
it, then opened it again, gaping like a fish out of water; a Robin with nothing to say.

This was the part where he got up, slammed the door. Maybe he’d kick her for good
measure. Or maybe he’d jump up in fear and go running, tail tucked between his legs like
she was a monster.

He said nothing.

“Steve,” she chuckled. “Did you OD over there?” May as well have a laugh in her final
moments.

“No, just .. thinking.”

That’s a first, Robin quipped. Only in her head, though. And then ..

“I mean, yeah. Tammy’s cute and all, but . .”

What? What was he on about?

“.. She’s a total dud .”

“She is not !” Robin gasped, mocking offense. Not the type of slander she was expecting.

“Yes, she is! She wants to be, like, a singer. Wants to move to Nashville and shit –”

“ She has dreams!” Robin continued to defend, letting out a laugh inbetween at the
bizarreness of this all. Steve grinned.

“She can barely hold a tune! She’s practically tone deaf, have you heard her? You see me
now tonight ..”

Okay, Robin takes it back. Steve singing is for sure the most terrifying thing she’s had
to endure tonight.
“Shut up !” She managed to wheeze out through her ever suffocating laughter.

“ You see me– ”

“She does not sound like that!” She leaned forward, whacking him on the knee at his
mockery.

“She does! She sounds exactly like that- that’s a great impression of her.”

“Is not . You sound like a muppet.”

“ She sounds like a muppet!” Steve shot back. “She sounds like a muppet .. giving birth,”
he insisted after deciding on a nonsensical combination of potentially insulting words.
Robin couldn’t help but cackle as he continued singing– if you could call it that. She
sighed. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

“We’ll be holdin’ on forever!” The duo sang, putting on their best muppet voices like
they had been waiting for this moment their whole lives. It was a miracle nobody had
walked in on them, they’d probably have called the cops. Rightfully so.

Robin was out of breath as their contagious laughter entangled and echoed through the
empty bathroom, tossing them into a never ending giddy loop. This was crazy. Robin had
been such an adult today, and now, sitting here on the bathroom floor with her best friend
as they mocked their first loves after sharing her deepest secret, she felt like a teenager
again.

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