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withacapitalp · 4 months

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Starry, Starry Night Pt 1

Happy birthday dear friend!!! @thefreakandthehair Lex you are a pillar of the fandom, an amazing writer, and just all around one of my most favorite human beings. I'm so so lucky to get to call you one of my best friends and I hope this fic puts a smile on your face!! @stevethehairington and @hbyrde36 thank you for betaing and for encouragement!!!!

Read it on ao3 instead here

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Steve was asleep at the counter.

Again.

Robin placed another VHS precariously on the top of the pile surrounding him, making sure to adjust it so it wouldn’t fall. A copy of Secret Admirer had toppled down half a dozen boxes when she placed it without care earlier, and Steve had almost woken up just from the sound. She had worked her way through all of the romantic comedy returns and was halfway through the horrors already, and the pile was up to Steve’s waist.

Her working theory was that she would be able to get all the way through the action movies before Steve was completely covered in tapes.

Part of her wanted to feel at least a little bad for fucking with him every single time he fell asleep. After all it wasn’t like Robin hadn’t fallen asleep on the job herself once or twice, and Family Video wasn’t exactly the hardest job in the world. Now that they lived in a veritable ghost town, the store was lucky to get even a handful of patrons every day.

Apart from her own boredom, there wasn’t really any reason to mess with him or try to wake him up.

But there lay the crux of the problem. Robin and Steve had gotten their jobs as one so they could spend time together. Not so Robin could get stuck watching her best friend drool on the counter she would inevitably be forced to clean before they closed tonight.

So, tape fort.

Robin’s theories were almost immediately dashed though, because just as she placed her fourth copy of Rosemary’s Baby down, Steve stretched out his arms, knocking directly into the wall in front of him and bringing that entire cluster of VHS cases down on his head.

“Ow! What! Why?!” Steve shouted, jerking upwards, startling as the rest of the tapes surrounding him began to tumble to the floor.

Robin snickered to herself as she watched the melee, hopping up onto the counter next to where he had been lying his head and beginning to gather up the failed remnants of her experiment.

“Good morning Dingus,” She sang, lightly tapping him on the top of the head with Ghostbusters, “Did you have a good rest?”

“Robin,” Steve groaned, covering his face with his hands and heaving an absolutely ginormous sigh, “Why?”

“Hey, this is your fault,” Robin protested, putting the stack of tapes to the side and sliding to the floor to start grabbing the rest.

“My fault?” Steve repeated, sliding his fingers away from his eyes so he could glare at her while still hiding his face.

“This is the fifth time you’ve fallen asleep on me this week, Dingus,” Robin said, giving him a look as she waved a VHS around her head, “Look at this place. Look at how boring it is. I need enrichment, I’m like a tiger in a zoo.”

Steve lowered his hands, raising a brow and silently judging her for a second before grumbling and joining her on the ground.

“What? Was making paper clip crowns and hiding M&Ms in my pockets not enriching enough anymore?” Steve asked rhetorically, referencing the other things she had done this week during his impromptu naps as he collected the rest of the rom-coms.

“Nope.” She replied, popping the p as she stood, tapes in hand, “Five times, Stevifer. Five.”

“So?”

“So, it’s only Wednesday!” Robin shouted, walking around the counter and towards the shelves, knowing Steve would be following close behind with his own stack. “Is Eddie really still that excited about getting you in his bed every night?”

“You would be the first person to know,” Steve said, wagging his eyebrows and looking far too smug for Robin’s tastes.

That much was true. Steve told Robin everything. What he had for breakfast, any weird customers that came in while she wasn’t scheduled, the stupid things the kids said, and, to the chagrin of both Eddie and Robin, anything and everything to do with his sex life.

And god damn it did her best friends have a lot of sex.

“Okay, so it’s not Eddie keeping you up,” Robin said, a small pit beginning to form in her stomach. She had hoped it was just them fucking like bunnies and Steve needing to recharge during the mornings, but now she was pretty sure it was the other thing, and that was a lot worse.

There was no quick fix for that particular problem.

“You wanna talk about it?” Robin asked softly, turning towards her best friend and trying to be as gentle as allowed.

“Not really,” Steve said, keeping his eyes on the shelves and avoiding her gaze.

Okay, so not gentle. Trying to get Steve to open up was a weird careful tightrope walk between being gentle enough to lower down his guard, while also being firm enough that he didn’t feel like he was being treated like a child. So far Robin was the only one who managed to succeed most of the time, but even she stumbled on occasion.

“You know I don’t mind covering for you, but you can’t keep this up, Dingus,” Robin tried, nudging their shoulders together as she did, hoping that a little extra physical contact would open Steve up even more, “It’s not healthy, and they’re not worth it.”

Wrong thing to say. It was like she could physically see the walls coming back up around him.

“I’ll be fine, Robin,” Steve said, the forced nonchalance in his tone hurting her almost as much as it was definitely hurting him.

“You’re not sleeping again,” She stated plainly, putting it out there for both of them to see. Steve flinched at her words as if she had physically struck him.

“I’m just…still adjusting,” He tried.

Adjusting was still figuring out how the oven worked at Eddie’s new trailer, or trying to find the best routine for sharing the bathroom in the morning. Adjusting was planning work schedules, learning how to live together, becoming used to each other's rhythms.

Whatever was happening here wasn’t adjusting.

“Steve, It’s been almost a month since…” Robin started, trailing off as she tried to find the right words to help him.

Steve already had them.

“Since what, Robin? Since my parents kicked me out?” Steve interrupted, his voice hard and angry as he forced himself to meet her eyes, as if challenging her to try and find a kinder way to say it.

That wasn’t a challenge she was planning to take on. There was no making this better.

“Yeah, since your parents kicked you out,” She repeated, refusing to meet his level of emotion, knowing that would only make Steve even angrier. Sure enough he pushed away from her, stalking over to the counter and furiously punching returns into the computer, a storm cloud of rage swirling around him.

“Steve-”

“God Robin, will you just drop it?!” Steve snapped.

Robin leaned ever so slightly back at his sudden shift and Steve let his eyes slip shut, hanging his head low and taking a slow deep breath. The anger drained from his face, leaving behind only barely there frustration, and a longing that his parents didn’t fucking deserve from a son that was far too good for them.

It wasn’t exactly a shock when Richard and Diane showed up and told their son to pack his shit and leave, but that didn’t make it any less painful for Steve. Robin had never had any faith in them, but for some reason Steve did. He expected his parents to love him just as much as he loved them, and he had deluded himself into thinking that they had only ever done the things they did to try and make him better.

Letting go of that couldn’t be easy, but it was also one of the few things about Steve that Robin felt she would probably never fully understand.

“Please.” Steve whispered, Robin’s heart breaking at the pain in his voice, “I just don’t wanna talk about it, Bobbin.”

Rather than answering she rounded the counter, pressing her body into his side and leaning her head against his shoulder. Steve adjusted to fit her automatically, two becoming one as she let Steve breathe into the pain instead of ignore it.

“Were you at least having a good dream?” Robin asked, her voice slightly muffled by the soft sweater Steve was wearing, wishing she had a way to help him.

“Oh yeah, it was great,” He said with a soft laugh, “I was lying back on a mountain of pillows while Eddie was using his massive thick-”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll be forced to smother you next time you fall asleep at work,” Robin groaned, sticking her tongue out and gagging as she pushed Steve away from her. She hammed it up for extra effect, but she couldn’t hide the smile on her lips as she listened to Steve’s laughter.

He hadn’t laughed as much in the last few weeks, and Robin hadn’t realized how much she missed the sound. It reminded her of everything good, all the stuff they hadn’t really been able to do since he moved in with Eddie. Burning breakfast together, dancing around the house in their socks, even trying to muffle their giggles in her bed so they wouldn’t wake her parents, looking through the skylight that was above her bed at the stars…

Huh. Maybe she did have an idea of how to help.

“Now that you’re awake, I’m going to take my break,” Robin said in a faux casual tone, stretching and trying to hide the Cheshire cat grin overtaking her face.

“You built a tape fort around me because you were annoyed I fell asleep and you were alone, so the first thing you do when I wake up is go hide in the back alone?” Steve complained, turning back to the computer and restarting the returns he had begun.

“Love you too,” Robin said, pecking his cheek as she practically skipped towards the breakroom. She closed and locked the door, pressing her ear to it for a second just to make sure Steve wasn’t eavesdropping before almost bolting over to the phone in the corner, punching in the number for the Thatcher’s Tires and bouncing in place as she listened to the dial tone.

This was a great idea. One of her best.

“Hey Pete, it’s Robin. Can you put Eddie on the phone?”

Part two is coming tomorrow!! If you want to be tagged say it in a reblog!!

#stwgdailyprompt #steve harrington #stranger things #st #eddie munson #steddie #steddie ficlet #st drabble #steve and eddie #robin buckley #stobin #Platonic stobin #robin and Steve are besties #and as besties #robin has an obligation to fuck with him

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