Chapter Text
It was interesting, Steve thought, that the senses could bring you back to yourself when nothing else could reach you.
Like some hidden failsafe switch you could flip in an emergency when everything else had gone to hell in a handbasket. He’d been witness to it firsthand, and still it was hard to imagine a song breaking someone free from a supernatural prison cell.
For a similar reason, his favorite childhood nanny had once insisted on teaching him how to make her signature sugar cream pie when he was barely 7 years old. She had heard an old wives' tale at her monthly neighborhood bunco get together between rolls of the dice that food could transport you to a safer time when a person was on the brink. “And Stevie, if anything will pull you back, it’s something that makes you feel at home. You’ll be thanking me when your future wife needs your support, and you can pull this one out of your back pocket.” He hadn’t made it since, but he still had the laminated notecard she’d given him all those years ago stashed in a shoebox… somewhere.
But Steve still couldn’t bring himself to wrap his brain around such vague notions as taste or smell. Hell, he didn’t even have a favorite song. He’d have been folded into a grotesque human accordion ages before his friends would have been able to find a tune that could reach him. He needed something… More present. Tangible. Something firm, yet malleable. A give and take, a push and pull. Water that lapped around his body as he floated weightless on his back in his family’s pool.
For Steve Harrington, the physical sensation of touch grounded him the most.
The scratch of a wool sweater as it pulled down the length of his spine. An itch that was irritating, but bearable long enough for a family photo. “You look darling, sweetheart,” his mother’s voice rang as well manicured nails cupped around his chin, a mostly drained glass of pinot in the other hand. She retreated into the dining room to continue entertaining their guests before he could give her a tight grin. If he pinched the sleeve between his thumb and forefinger he could control the intensity of how suffocating the fabric felt, and dull out the rest just enough to maintain his patience for another grueling hour.
The bite of gravel pavement against his knees, the force of the fall having torn the fabric of the Levi's he’d just bought last week. There was no time to focus on the waste of money, no, only time to force his burning muscles back upright. His lungs heaved in his chest like lead weights, and there was a numbness that ran down, down, down his arms until it leaked from the tips of his fingers. As his feet collided with the earth, the exposed skin snapped like sparks coming off of his dad’s old Ronson lighter. An awkward parting gift he’d received for his 15th birthday as the senior Harrington was set to leave for another ill-timed business trip the morning of. “You always liked to mess with this thing, so I thought it fitting,” the man had told him, excuses appearing in his mouth at the same speed he could form them into words. Snap, pop, crackle, burn, burn… Pushing through the pain was easy when the ache in his body reminded Steve he was still alive.
The soft touch of a girl as she extended her arm across the diner booth to press her fingertips into the sensitive skin of his wrist. The pressure of her thumb as it glided in small circles against his pulse point. The line of connection set off a flash of fireworks just below the surface; made his veins feel like they were set to burst from his skin. Every time she laughed at one of his jokes it was like he could feel the vibration in his blood. The dull scratch of her pink painted nails trailed further up the length of his forearm, her words faded into the background chatter of the dimly lit diner. All he could focus on was how her nails pinched into the soft flesh of his inner elbow, his feet tangled with hers below the sticky table of the booth, and a voice in his head that pleaded desperately to move closer, closer, clo-
“-And it’s not like it was even a noteworthy interaction, but seeing him drone on like that while his arm was draped so casually around her shoulder like she was some… some lifeless mannequin to be used as-… Steve, are you getting any of this?”
Steve inhaled sharply, hands stalled at the keyboard of the Family Video’s database, daydream effectively broken. He took stock of himself briefly, blinked hard twice to clear the glaze over his eyes. His gaze shifted sideways then to the counter where Robin had rested her elbows next to a fresh stack of returned VHS cases. As his view slowly slid upward to meet her own, she was now regarding him with palpable disdain. His eyebrows pitched up before offering a helpful, ”Mhmm?”.
Robin sunk in on herself with a low groan.
Nailed it.
“For how often you get on me for not being attentive enough, you’d think you’d be a little better at reciprocating. I think I’ve cracked why you have such a hard time holding onto anyone past the first date, Harrington.”
“Ok, now hold on, it’s not like-” Steve tried to grapple, take the bait, but Robin was already cutting him off.
“It’s not like? Like when Jenna Adams told you your ability to give more than you would take “needed serious work”, or was that Amy Donner? Oh, but you’d remember that right? Because they’re two very different, individual, unique women with well-rounded personalities, and not just-”
“Okay, OKAY, Rob. Jesus, where is this heat coming from? You’re giving me the 3rd degree,” Steve intercepted, palms lifting from the keyboard in a placating motion. He exhaled sharply as one of his hands reached up to run through his hair, before dropping both back into his lap.
Robin rolled her eyes with a grin, and tilted her head toward the computer monitor.
“Because you’ve been staring at the same log since I went to grab these returns from the bin. There’s no way you’re that interested in who rented out…,” she paused to lean over the counter and squint at the dull screen, “... Stand By Me? Really? It was uninteresting at best, Steve.”
Steve scoffed before his mouth ticked up into a sort of sneer, primed for a rebuttal. As his mind dumbly clutched at words, Robin’s initial jeer caught up to him.
Those painted pink nails, once shining with a light gloss under dim diner lights were now chipped at the corners. He watched as they picked up his hand from where it lay warmly against her arm, and placed it instead on the center console of his car. Her eyes were downcast, and her words firm when they pieced through the silence between them. He could feel them crawl up his neck and prickle somewhere near the nape.
“It was uhh… It was Amy Donner that said that.”
Steve refused to look anywhere other than the thin line of text stating one “Nelson, Alex” had rented out Stand By Me a grand total of six times just this month alone. Impressive. Real dedication there.
“Context, Steve.”
He sucked his tongue in front of his teeth. His fingers lightly drummed at the keyboard.
“The give and take thing?”
He looked back up to Robin then, her expression smug at first before it shifted to one more sympathetic.
“Woah now, okay, what’s happening here? This isn’t just about Amy “stale popcorn breath” Donner, right? Don’t tell me you’re choosing now to get introspective, Steve, because I have at least three more funny quips in this back and forth, and none of them were supposed to involve me pitying you,” Robin motioned between the two of them with a flick of her wrist, her eyes darting back and forth between his.
Steve shrugged. His arms crossed together up under his armpits, and his mouth held in a thin line.
No, it wasn’t just the Amy Donner thing, of course it wasn’t, but there was something about having broken Robin’s rhythm while also deflecting away from the fact that he definitely hadn’t been paying attention that told him to play the fool. It would have been perfect too had he been able to hold her stare without letting a huff of a laugh bubble up his throat. Her once searching eyes narrowed again as her smirk returned.
“You almost had me worried about you, Harrington.”
Robin’s hand came up to smack lightly just above his left elbow, and the laugh Steve had been holding onto rushed out of his mouth in one breath. Robin shook her head and exhaled out on the word “Dingus” before scooting the stack of movies next to her more pointedly toward the center of the counter.
“Now if you’re finished daydreaming about dead bodies and leeches, there’s some actual work you could try doing,” Robin pushed off the counter and turned back to the video store. She made a motion to roll her shoulders and shake out the trapped energy through her hands. “Besides, I don’t think it’s particularly healthy to get lost thinking about something so close to home.”
He offered up a “yeah, yeah” under his breath with a grin before he reached forward to the stack of offered tapes. It’s not like he had planned to space out on this specific log, and he really didn’t like to think of some freaky subconscious implication that it was because of the themes Robin had mentioned. They’d seen enough to sate that fix for the rest of their lives, hell, all of Hawkins had. He looked down to the VHS case in his hand. The Return of the Living Dead.
God, this town was all kinds of messed up.
Steve went about the rental returns robotically: pick up tape, check the SKU code, type, search, check the tape, flip, confirm return, mark late fees, stack in another pile to be taken to the floor, or a separate one to rewind. Wash, rinse, repeat. It wasn’t exactly hard work, and it certainly wasn’t where he saw himself after graduating high school, but at least it stopped his mind from wandering. Tactile tasks like this had a habit of helping his thoughts quiet. Tactile tasks like picking up VHS tapes, like folding a scratchy holiday sweater, like drawing patterns with your thumb into a girl’s palm while her fingers laced together with yours, the return of pressure in a squeeze to your own that said “I’m still here, and I’m not going anywhere”, the-
“Okay, I know you brushed it off in that Harrington way before, but is there actually something going on?” Robin’s voice traveled over across the small store, and effectively snapped him back to the present again. He could just make her out of the corner of his eye, her head cocked out from between the shelves where the action films were. Steve shook his head and sighed, a hand reached up to press into the dip of his clavicle and work its way up to the muscle of his shoulder. Tight like he’d been bracing it for something.
“Yeah, uhh yeah, all good, just-”
How did you say “Nothing feels real now that the real is all we have left” without making your best friend worry? Steve barely made it out of high school, and he wasn’t exactly known for his rousing speeches outside of a charming wisecrack here and there. He chewed at the corner of his lip, a nervous habit. In hopes to delay his response further, or maybe to find one in the ceiling tiles, his head tilted upward to catch on a missed cobweb. It danced along with the forced air circulating through the store, and cast shadows in thin lines like the stretched limbs of a spider. When he focused on the center-most point the others warped into something more sinister out of focus.
He reached down to grab a duster propped near his foot, and used his chair to help him balance while climbing onto the front counter. He felt the tension in his shoulder again as his arm lifted, though now the ache was more like a grounding presence.
“I don’t know, just distracted, or something. It’s been, what, two weeks since the gates closed up? So that means it’s been at least a week since Amy Donner, yeah? I’m distracted, okay?” Steve spoke aloud to the store, focused on swatting toward the ceiling to twirl his duster around the cobweb. He watched as the singular tendril of wispy dust clung and held onto the feathers. The sight nagged at something in his brain that he’d rather not think about.
Robin made a little sound that got caught in her throat after a beat, which prompted Steve to look over to where she had crossed her arms between the shelves. Her brows were pinched together, her expression… Concerned?
“What?”
“Steve, the gates closed over a month ago.”
“Uhh, no Robin, they didn’t, because that would mean I haven’t been on a date in…” Steve trailed off, rusted cogs clicking into place after disuse.
They were just… They were just there, right? Amy was just telling him to get himself sorted out before attempting to find what he was missing in someone else…
Right?
Robin sucked her bottom lip into her mouth.
“A month?” She supplied.
Steve blinked. Had it really been a month since he’d been on a date? It’s not like Amy fucking Donner messed him up so much that he’d lost his game. She was, what, just like an adrenaline rebound after the gates closed. Someone to anchor him to reality because he was here, and he was alive, and he…
He hadn’t touched anyone in a month, and that’s why he can’t focus on VHS return logs. He was weightless, but there was no floating suspended now. Chlorine burned over his eyes as his head started to sink. He surfaced when someone started snapping their fingers.
“Earth to Steve, anyone home?”
“Huh?”
“You look like the rejected fifth Ghostbuster.”
He looked down and realized he stood frozen hunched on the countertop, left arm bent at the elbow, and duster held aloft in his right. With a grumble Steve lowered himself to sit on the countertop, and set the duster to his side. He brought both his hands up to his closed eyes and ground his palms in with a weak groan. Pops of light flickered and danced behind his eye sockets.
He wondered if he rubbed at them hard enough if he would be able to feel the sparks rattle around inside his skull.
“Robin, I haven’t had sex in a month,” the words left his mouth on a pathetic whine, but there was a tinge of humor on the uptick of her name.
Steve could hear her footfalls closing the distance between them before the counter creaked, and she hopped up to join him. He felt a solid weight against his arm as she leaned into his side, and Steve slowly dragged his hands down his face. His eyes caught on a plastic bag that drifted listlessly through the parking lot. It settled to a stop between two of the parking spots in front of the store. When Robin’s head rested against his shoulder, Steve welcomed the touch, and his own folded on top of hers. Her response was a short, tuneless hum.
“I so badly want to remind you how easy you have it if that’s what has you so wigged out, but you seem super distraught over this, so I’m going to let it slide for now.”
“I’m in a state of shock, Buckley.”
“Don’t push your luck, Harrington.”
They stayed like that for a moment, and then a few more moments. Robin knew him, knew that this is what helped Steve when his nerves got too frayed. Human contact, something he could focus on. He knew himself enough that it wasn’t really about the sex part, wasn’t like that was what got under his skin about this. In some strange way, he knew Robin knew that, too.
They watched together as a white Ford pickup pulled into the lot. A man in a blue and white striped polo stepped out of the driver’s side, and walked toward the exterior return box. There was a familiar “clunk” of a tape hitting the bin before the man returned to his car, and drove off. The plastic bag twisted in the air, caught in the current of the car’s exhaust, until it settled back into the gravel.
“Hey,” Robin pulled her head out from under Steve’s to meet his eyes. He tried not to feel disappointed over the loss, and fixed his gaze on hers. He raised his brow for her to continue, but her eyes flashed to the side like she was having regrets changing the subject.
“I’m growing old here, Rob.”
“Ok, so- “she started before cutting herself off, a hand coming up to toy with the chain of her necklace. He watched as she took a breath and tried again. “So it’s not really what you want right now, I can’t exactly find a single girl on such short notice, and if I could…,” she stopped again, eyes wandering like she was considering something as her eyebrows lifted just a pinch. “... But I was going to go over to Eddie’s tonight to watch a movie. It might help you distract yourself from… being distracted?”
“Eddie… as in Eddie Munson?” Steve asked, face scrunching up. “You guys hang out? Since when?”
“Since the gates closed, Steve. You know, a month ago?” Robin leveled him with an incredulous stare before shaking her head. She folded her arms on top of themselves. “If this is what happens to your brain when you don’t have someone to climb all over, I take back any sympathy it may have sounded like I had for you just now.”
“It’s not-... It’s not just that,” Steve grumbled, exasperated. His hands lifted upward searching for another answer.
It can’t be just that, right?
“It’s… It’s been a rough month after saving the world, okay? Saving the world again, I’ll add.”
“Uh huh. So, you’ll join us then?”
There was a pause as Steve lowered his arms back down to rest in his lap. If his little wake up call with Robin just now had shown him anything, it was that he in fact did not have any plans for the night. The next couple of nights, actually. His fingers picked at a loose thread along the outer seam of his jeans… How long had that been there?
The last time he saw Eddie Munson was in a hospital bed next to Dustin Henderson, animatedly trying to convince the younger boy to swap pudding cups to no avail. The man had bit out a remark about respecting your elders, and had tried to toss his tapioca cup at Dustin’s head in retaliation. It had sailed clean over the hospital bed, and comically nailed Steve just above his left temple. A nurse had brought them all new pudding cups along with an ice pack for Steve’s head. Eddie had smiled victoriously, and Steve found himself amused with the absurdity of it all.
The guy was a little weird, sure, but weren’t they all after everything they’d done? From the little moments Steve had been around Eddie leading up to the not end of the world, the man had tried to make light of how hopeless everything felt by playing off of Steve’s quips. He had a sharp tongue, and liked to egg people on in the way Robin did in between the obvious terror he must have felt. That’s probably why he and Robin had ended up hanging out after everything in Hawkins settled back into normalcy.
Steve regarded his best friend again, brow furrowed slightly. Ever the backbone of their dynamic duo, and they both knew it, though Steve would never admit it out loud. Another Robin wouldn’t be so bad to have around when he was feeling, well, whatever this was.
“I’m growing old here, Steve.”
Steve couldn’t help but to laugh at the way she tried to mimic his own cadence. He shoved her lightly, which she returned in kind.
“Fine, you’ve pulled my leg. I’ll join you,” he tried to sound put out, but it was hard to around his grin. In the smile he could let his mind wander without her concern, if just for a second of time.
A whole month… how had he really missed an entire month? It’s not like he had been busy. Steve had more or less the same weekly routine at Family Video that Robin had, and she managed to befriend a former outcast, while he… He was just…
“Great, it’ll do you some good to be a little more cultured.”
Robin hopped off the counter to fetch white pickup truck’s returned film from the bin. Steve rolled his eyes at her simple barbs. He spun on the countertop, and dropped back into the seat in front of the computer monitor.
“I am plenty cultured, Robin.”
“Oh? Is that what you are now? I could have sworn… Oh right, it was Jenna Adams that said you weren’t cultured. Don’t know how I could have mixed her up with Stale Popcorn Breath Amy, she’s obviously much more insightful out of the two.”
Steve took that moment to lob his forgotten duster at Robin’s chest. She very ungracefully failed to dodge it, and let out a very embarrassing squawk as the feathers fluffed up on her chin.