#only realized abby could be an anagram like three days after writing it lmao

[girlbossnezuko]

Stobin Mandalorian AU part 2

[part 1] [part 3]

The car ride back to the elevator is not pleasant, Steve needs to stop getting into situations where his brain’s melting too much to stop the kids from driving. Aba doesn’t seem to like it much either, but as long as Robin’s holding her she won’t cry. They narrowly avoid hitting a bunch of barrels right at the end — thank god for Erica. Car crashes can not be good for babies.

Steve and Robin sit huddled in the corner of the elevator the whole ride up, because it isn’t exactly stable either and if either of them drops the baby Steve is going to die. Dustin and Erica won’t stop bickering, but it’s fine because they’re alive and Robin’s alive and the baby’s alive and Steve’s alive to enjoy them all being alive, and they’re finally leaving that stupid Russian bunker.

“What is wrong with you two?” Erica demands.

“They seem drunk.” Dustin frowns, crouching down over Steve. He grabs Steve’s face by the bruises and pushes his eyelids up, which hurts a lot, thank you very much. “His pupils are super dilated, I think they might’ve been drugged. Were you drugged, Steve?”

“No, but they gave us goop,” Steve says helpfully.

He’s seen drugs — Munson keeps a bunch in his lunchbox to sell at parties — and they definitely aren’t blue or goopy. They’re usually like, green and dry. Or white and dry. Or—

“They gave you goop?”

“Yeah,” Steve says, and he doesn’t nod because the last time he did that it was really not fun. “And now I’m blue. And my bones are soup. Soupy. Not like yours, you have strong bones.”

“They’re definitely drugged,” Erica says, looking down at them with a little too much contempt for a ten-year-old.

“Steve, this is important,” Dustin says, and there’s a tightness around his eyes that Steve would definitely be able to interpret if his brain wasn’t soup. “I need to know where you parked your car.”

“Um,” Steve says. His head is really starting to hurt again. It stopped when they got the goop but the elevator’s bringing it back. “Uh oh.”

“What do you mean ‘uh oh’?”

“Keys are gone.”

He’d turn out his pockets to show Dustin but that would disturb Robin which would disturb the baby, and he really doesn’t want to disturb Aba. She’s too small and tiny and perfect.

“What do you mean the keys are gone?” Dustin grits out.

“The Russians took them, like, forever ago.”

“You stopped to get a whole baby but you didn’t think to get your keys!?”

That’s not even remotely the same thing.

Robin shushes him very loudly, “No shouting, you’ll wake the baby.”

“She’s already awake,” Dustin says, rolling his eyes.

Aba blinks her big brown eyes up at Dustin.

“I can’t believe you two managed to find some random white baby down there,” Erica says, crossing her arms. “I deserve extra ice cream for having to put up with this.”

“The baby is where you draw the line?” Dustin asks, exasperated.

“I can deal with bodily harm and the threat of imminent death,” Erica says. Which, wow. Okay. “What I can’t deal with is changing diapers. I have standards.”

The two of them start bickering again, and Steve takes the opportunity to stare at Aba’s perfect little face. She scrunches her nose at him but smiles when he brushes a finger over one of her soft little cheeks, the way Robin did earlier.

He doesn’t think he’s ever loved anyone this quickly before. His heart feels like it’s about to burst, growing and growing until it fills all the hollows in his chest. It chokes at his throat and makes his bruised ribs throb, but he wouldn’t give it up for anything.

The moment passes and Dustin’s dragging them all up and out of the elevator again, but his heart doesn’t get any smaller.

Aba makes the tiniest, cutest little gasp when they get out into the fresh air, and he knows exactly how she feels because the air outside tastes wonderful. He’s never appreciated air the way it deserves to be appreciated.

The few stars already out are bright, and Aba stares up at them like she’s never seen anything like them before, and it hits Steve that she might not have. She’s only what, a few months old? How many opportunities would she have gotten to go outside? Was she even born outside the bunker or did they make her as a science baby under Starcourt?

It hurts to have to bring her back inside again. When this is all over, he and Robin are going to take her outside and they’ll spend, like, a whole day out there just enjoying the air, and the sun, and the stars.

Dustin tries to make them sit in the theatre but he barely even cracks the doors open before Steve backs up, shaking his head. Ow.

“Not in there, it’s too loud.” Movie theatres are horrible places for babies. And headaches.

Dustin makes a sound somewhere between a sigh and a growl.

“Fine,” he says. “Just— sit out here, don’t move. I’ll be back in a minute. Erica, keep watch.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Erica says, but sneaks down to the hall to keep watch anyway.

Steve stares down at the baby again.

“Do you think Aba knows what flowers are?” he asks. Robin scrunches her nose at him.

“What?”

“She’s probably been down there for like, her whole life right? Would the Russians show her flowers?”

“That’s not—” Robin shakes her head, then winces. “What did you call the baby?”

“Aba?” He tilts his head. Robin squints at him. “It’s her name, see?”

He shows her the blanket, and Robin stares at the stitching for a long moment before her eyes go wide and then they go really sad.

“Steve,” she says softly, holding the baby closer, “that’s not her name, it’s a number. It’s pronounced dva, I think. It means ‘two’.”

“Oh.”

Dva. Two. Not Aba, not a name. Just a number, like Eleven.

But they don’t call her Eleven, do they? They call her El. A nickname.

“Abby,” Steve says decisively. Robin makes a questioning noise.

“She needs a nickname, like El, so she can be Abby.”

“Abby,” Robin says softly, looking down at the baby. Abby smiles.

[part 3]

#stobin WOULD accidentally name their baby an anagram for baby #<— bold words from the person who also did this #only realized abby could be an anagram like three days after writing it lmao #also thank you so much to everyone who left such nice comments on the first part?? #I wasn’t expecting the response it got but I guess we just all love stobin with babies #don’t worry steve WILL Hold That Baby I promise #stobin mandalorian au #the greatest qpr hawkins has ever seen #envy writes #stranger things #stranger things fic #stobin fanfic #stobin #steve harrington #robin buckley