So the response to Part One of my Sad Steddie Scenario was overwhelming in the best way? Like, y’all. You said the nicest things. I read and squealed over everyone’s comments. Thank you so much for all the responses, reblogs, and likes. As one person said, I’m kissing you all platonically on the mouth right now (or high fiving you or smiling really big in your direction, pick your poison).
I never planned to write a part one the way I did (it was just going to be a quick couple paragraphs of summary, but here we are!), but so many people asked for a part two, I got motivated. Someone commented they were curious what Robin’s reaction would be, so this is some of that.
“I don’t know where I went wrong,” Steve groans, head buried in Robin’s pillow.
After he left The Hideout, he had no idea where to go. But his body decided for him and without intending to, he found himself tapping on Robin’s window. Despite the fact that he’d clearly woken her up, she opened it quickly as soon as she saw his face. “That bad, huh?”
Now he’s wallowing across her bed as she paces, awake and determined. Steve rolls to his side to watch her.
“Ok, let’s figure it out,” She says, snagging a pen and pad of paper from her desk. She opens the pad to a blank page and stands in front of him ready to take notes. Steve smiles at how Nancy-like she looks, even in an oversized Cure t-shirt and flannel pajama bottoms. Even when he’s aching, he can never be completely sad when he’s around her. “Tell me everything that happened from start to finish. Everything you said, everything they said. Any weird looks you can remember, anything.”
“Rob, I barely remember what I said to you five minutes ago.” He went over the entire night in his head a hundred times on the way over. Aside from when Eddie said...what he said, and the disaster that came after, the rest of the night was a blur.
“Ugh, Steve, can you just try? I need you and Eddie to work out. I can’t be the only adult friend you have!”
“Hey, that’s not fair! Nancy’s my friend.”
“Nancy’s your ex.”
“Tomato, to-mah-to.” Sure she’s his ex and they had that whole weird...thing in the Upside Down and now he’s with Eddie and she’s moving to Boston with Jonathan in the fall. But they still talk. Sometimes.
“Steve.”
Steve quirks his lips, but it’s resigned. “You gettin’ tired of me already?”
“No, dingus.” Robin’s face softens. She stops her pacing and sits next to him on the bed, bops him on the head with her pen. “I just want you to have people.” Steve catches her hand, smacks a kiss to her palm.
“Fine,” he sighs, scrubs a hand across his face, and tries to think. “I don’t know, I was late because of some stupid shit with my parents and that put me on edge--”
“I didn’t know your parents were home. Steve, why didn’t you call me?”
“They literally came home as I was leaving to see Eddie. There wasn’t time. Anyway, Eddie didn’t seem upset that I was late, at least after I explained. His friends gave me a little shit but I bought a round, and everything seemed fine.”
“Hmm.” Robin makes a note in her pad, then taps her pen to her lips, thinking. Her eyes widen and she points the pen at him. “You let them talk? You didn’t join in?”
“I mean, a little? But they were talking about their game the whole time, I didn’t have much to contribute.”
“Eddie talks to you about Dungeons and Dragons all the time and you always pay attention and ask him questions.”
“Yeah, But that’s because I’m talking to Eddie. I want to pay attention to everything he has to say.” Eddie gets so excited about things. He’s interested in things. Steve’s never excited. And Eddie’s the first thing he’s been interested in in a long time.
“God, Steve, you kill me.” Robin motions like she’s going to strangle him.
“What? What’d I do?”
“You’re the most emotionally unavailable guy I know and yet you come out of nowhere saying the most romantic shit.”
“Is that…bad?”
She smiles at him, mushes his forehead with her fingers. “No, it’s just very you.” She turns back to her paper, writes some more. “Now, is there anything else you remember about the conversation?”
“Not really? It was hard to hear everything they said over all the noise, so maybe I missed something. Oh.” Steve winces. “Eddie told me I called one of them the wrong name a couple of times.”
“Yikes. That’s not great.” Robin makes a face as she writes the new info down on her pad, including a few ominous underlines.
“Yeah,” he really did fuck that part up. He’s going to have to apologize to...Jeff. “But I don’t remember them correcting me, so that seems like it’s only partially my fault.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Robin says skeptically. “They definitely should have corrected you.” Steve knows she’s throwing him a bone. He should’ve remembered the guy’s name. Eddie was right, it was a douchebag thing he would have done in his other life.
Robin flips through the pad. Steve didn’t realize he’d said enough for multiple pages of notes, but it was a small pad, he guesses. “So far this doesn’t seem like you did anything to warrant a big blow up fight in the parking lot. When exactly did it start to go wrong?”
Dammit. Steve had been hoping they could figure out what happened without delving into why he lost his shit in the first place. “Well…”
Robin narrows her eyes. “Well?”
“I got mad at Eddie first. He said something that…pissed me off”--hurt him so badly he’s still struggling to fill his chest with air--“and I didn’t react well.”
“What did he say?”
“It’s not important, but it was something that I’d asked him never to say, and he promised that he wouldn’t.”
Robin gapes at him. Steve gets it. He’s told her literally everything about his life since Starcourt. He tells her about his dates, his encounters with his parents, hell, he tells her when he’s constipated. Not telling her that he’s asked his boyfriend never to say something to him is a big deal.
“Steve, what was it?”
“It was nothing, it doesn’t matter, but he’d promised, and then he said it anyway.”
Steve feels like a little kid, complaining about a broken promise. He feels like the first time his dad promised he’d be at Steve’s tee ball game, but stayed late at work for a meeting instead. But you promised you’d be there, he’d whined in his dad’s office later that night. He couldn’t stop crying even though he knew how much his dad hated it. Promises don’t mean shit, kid, unless you get ‘em in writing, his dad told him, not even looking up from his newspaper. Now pull yourself together, this is embarrassing.
Steve hadn’t believed a single promise from anyone since then. With one exception.
“Okay, so what did you do?”
“I may have snapped at his friends a couple of times, tried to drink too much, then he made us leave. But when we were in my car, he said it had been bad the whole night, and I swear, Rob, I thought I’d been doing okay up until he said what he said.”
Robin looks back over her sparse notes. “Yeah, Steve, I don’t know. Unless you remember more, I don’t think we’re solving this one.
Steve slams his head back on the pillow a couple of times. “Fuck.”
“You knoooww, you could always ask him.” Steve immediately shakes his head.
“You didn’t see him. He was pissed at first, but then it was like he was just…done. He called me ‘King Steve.’” Steve can tell her that. She knows how much he despises being called that, knows how much hearing it from Eddie would hurt. It’s easy to tell her things the hurtful things he knows she would never say. But how can he tell her what really happened without sending her on a spiral of guilt and shame? Or maybe she wouldn’t feel either of those things. Maybe she wouldn’t even recognize the behavior. He’s not sure which outcome would be worse. So best he keeps his mouth shut.
“Fuck, did he really?”
“Yeah.”
“That asshole. God, I could wring his neck for that alone,”
“Don’t do that, please. I don’t have enough cash to bail you out.”
Robin laughs, like he was hoping she would.
She studies him for a moment then reaches to turn off her nightstand lamp. She tosses the pad and pen in the vague direction of her desk and nudges Steve to the other side of the bed where he tugs her blankets over him. She slips under the covers too, snuggles into him Steve will end up on his stomach stretched away from her eventually, but they always start off with her head on his shoulder, his arm tucked under her, holding her close, sharing secrets as they fall asleep.
“What did he say to you, Steve?” Her voice is a whisper in the dark room. “What could have been so bad?”
Steve shakes his head, the burning behind his eyes starting up again now that things are dark and quiet.
“Do I need to kick his ass?” she asks, and he can feel her smile pressed to his neck.
He wants to laugh but it gets stuck in his throat. He simply pulls her tighter.
_________________________
Part Three
This part is finished! Wrote some of it drowsy on Benadryl so we’ll see when I wake up in the morning if everything made sense.
A bunch of people asked to tagged for part two, I don’t know if I’ll get everyone (the Benadryl is hitting me hard), but I’ll try, Please let me know if you’d like to be added or removed.
And finally, thank you all again for the warm reception for my first Steddie ficlet. Happy New Year!!
Tag list:
@thosemessyvibes @afewproblems @soulminyg @paperbackribs @ramyayaya @doilooklikebees @occasionalartthings @minjintea @kodaik97 @miss-hit @mydaroga47 @anunashamednerdgirl @lexyvey @theysherobinbuckley @hotluncheddie @sifutoph
4K notes
·
View notes