Sleepwalking into the open palm of the empty sky [August 4]

[hey_dingus]

"Are you okay?"

Is she okay? In the last twenty-four hours, she's hurtled who knows how far down underground to a Russian base beneath the mall, been drugged out of her mind, watched Alex P. Keaton try to bang his mom, spilled her literal and metaphorical guts, and watched a middle-schooler throw a car with her mind. And now they've just crashed the stolen Toddfather into another car on purpose and she's wondering if this is blunt force trauma because how is any of this real?

No. She is not okay. She's pretty sure this is going to fuck her up for life and the weirdest part is that Steve only barely seems fazed by mini-Carrie.

"Ask me tomorrow," she stumbles out, proud to at least sound kind of quippy about it given the circumstances.

It lasts approximately half a second before she's thrown for yet another loop by the sound of shattering glass as some kind of...something leaps up onto the ceiling. It's huge and toothy and has way too many legs and Robin thinks she's got to be hallucinating. "Oh shit!"

Scrambling to unfasten her seatbelt, Robin leaps gracelessly from the car. In the corner of her eye, she sees a station wagon pulling up and starts to run toward it–and nearly straight into a glass door.

It's suddenly bright and Robin's eyes go wide as she glances around, trying to process. It's daylight. The cars are gone. Through the glass door she almost smacked into, she can see the courtyard of a mall but it's definitely not Starcourt.

"Holy shit," she says again. "I'm in Hell."

Comments

[haplesshairpile]

"I mean, I wasn't going to say anything," Steve says with an amused smirk, watching their hands until she lets go of him. He stands up and then gives her a smile that's more genuine.

Friends. He does like the sound of that, even if it's nothing near what he would have expected.

"I like it too," he tells her, looking over his shoulder when the door buzzer sounds. "Go take a shower, nerd."

He answers the door as she disappears down the hall, grateful for the moment to just process everything that just happened. He sets the pizza on the coffee table and gathers some plates and napkins, trying not to wonder over how easily he settled into living on his own. Steve was a latchkey kid pretty much his whole life, so he's used to making his own food and cleaning up after himself. He's used to being on his own. This is just that, but on a bigger scale.

The shower is still running, and Steve goes into his room to change into a pair of sweats, because he feels pretty done with the day. He grabs another pair and stands awkwardly in front of the bathroom door before opening it just a crack and turning his head away.

"Robin!" He calls out as he slides his arm through the narrow crack to toss the pants in the direction of the counter. "I brought you comfy pants!"

[hey_dingus]

"I'm going, nerd!," Robin shoots back. "Don't eat all the pizza without me!" She disappears into the bathroom and is relieved to see that even though the decor taste has changed, everything still works like she'd expect. The faucet is just a faucet and the water comes out hot or cold.

She doesn't feel remotely guilty about the length of shower she takes, trying to get off as much grime as possible and stealing a generous portion of Steve's soap and shampoo (she'll replace it sometime, really). A rush of cold air slips through with Steve's voice and she makes a surprised noise, flinging a handful of soap foam at him on instinct.

They are, however, comfy. Robin had known she needed a shower but she hadn't realized just how badly she needed some clean clothes too.

"Sorry about the soap."

[haplesshairpile]

“Ah, what the hell,” Steve says, yanking his arm through the door when something wet splats against it. “I’m not gonna look. Shit, hold on.”

Steve goes back to retrieve a plain black tee and shoves it through the door, tossing it on the counter before pulling the door shut. He walks back to the kitchen to rinse his arm and thinks about how he really was off base on his feelings for Robin. If he really wanted her, like to be in a relationship with, it would be killing him to know that she’s naked in his bathroom right now.

Instead, he just wants her to get out before the pizza gets cold. He grabs a few cans of soda and sets then on the coffee table before flopping back onto the sofa. “Hurry up!” He calls out. “I want to blow your mind with some 2019 technology!”

[hey_dingus]

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" Robin says, although she can't really get herself to a speed above 'mosey.' Now that she's clean and not in imminent danger, her ability to hurry is pretty much gone. In a pretty good imitation of Steve, Robin flops down to join him, happily unconcerned about the fact that she's pretty much in pajamas with her hair all wet. Steve has now seen her in far worse and she's seen him in his Scoops Ahoy uniform.

"How mindblowing are we talking? Because I want you to know it's been a very long day and I'm not sure how prepared I am." Truthfully, Robin's tired but her mind is active, buzzing with all the new information she's had to taken in, both in Hawkins and Darrow. "But you know what they say. And knowing is half the battle!"

Grabbing a slice of pizza, Robin turns in her seat so that she's sitting crosslegged, facing Steve expectantly.

[haplesshairpile]

“Oh, your mind is gonna be so blown,” Steve promises as he loads up a plate with some pizza. He looks over at Robin and he’s filled with a sense of guilty relief. He hates that she’s going through this but he’s happy to have her here with him. Hopper’s cool, and so is Bev and a lot of other people he’s met, but this is his friend. Probably his first actual friend his own age, as sad as that shit may be.

“First, behold the television,” Steve says as he grabs the remote and thrusts it out towards the TV. “No thicker than that bullshit book from Click’s class.”

He hits the power button on the remote and checks to make sure it’s still on the background for the streaming service before he turns to face Robin. “But wait, there’s more. Television,” he says as he presses the voice command button on the side of the remote and brings it towards his mouth. “Play Back to the Future.”

A few moments later, the opening credits for the movie appear on the screen and Steve drops the remote before thrusting both hands in the air. “We live in the future!”

[hey_dingus]

Okay, that's kind of impressive. Robin had sort of understood it was a television, if only based on the fact that it had a screen and it was placed where a television should be, plus all the other unbelievably thin glass screens at the mall. It's still another thing to take a close look at it and another thing all over again as she takes in the picture quality. It's almost unbelievably crisp and clear, even from just the menu, which Steve moves around like he's playing an Atari.

And then he goes all Captain Kirk, talking right into the remote control and ordering it around.

"Holy shit," she agrees. "Okay, you were right. The future is even better for laziness. You didn't even have to get up to put in a video tape." Wait. "Does the future even still need videos?"

[haplesshairpile]

“Not really!” Steve laughs and kicks his bare feet up onto the coffee table as the movie starts, taking a big bite of pizza. This is the fun part, the look at all this cool stuff part, but he knows that he’ll have more to explain later, once Robin decides that she’s ready to start asking questions.

He’s never said out loud all that he’s been through thanks to the Upside Down, and he gets a small knot in his stomach just thinking about it. After a few weeks here, Steve no longer was of the mind that Darrow is connected to it. He can’t rule it out entirely, of course, but he thinks Darrow would be a lot more terrifying if it was.

“Oh, and pot? Totally legal,” Steve says with an amused huff, trying to delay the inevitable a little longer. “Well, for me it is. You’re still a baby.”

[hey_dingus]

The movie starts to play but Robin doesn't recognize any of the scenes yet. She thinks they must have come in at the beginning of the movie but she hadn't been lying when she said she couldn't really follow any of it. They definitely watched a significant portion but it's basically all new to her anyway.

"Didn't Nancy Reagan tell us to Just Say No?" Robin deadpans. Like she cares what they have to say. But what does she know? If there are actually drugs in Hawkins, Robin's never been invited to the parties that have them.

Steve seems as if he's ninety percent cool and collected but Robin thinks she can detect a little bit of uncertainty beneath his skin. Something she wouldn't even have known existed a few months ago. "Do I need to check your pupils?"

[haplesshairpile]

"I should have known that you'd be a narc," Steve says, but it's obvious that he's teasing. Robin never really struck him as the type to go to the parties where pot and beer were passed around freely, and that was sort of the only place to get weed in Hawkins. Steve didn't smoke very often, and when he did it came from a friend of a friend, or some other vague bullshit. It just blows his mind that he can walk into a shop and buy it here without having to deal with any shady people.

Robin's question makes him realize how tense he is, and be blows out a breath as he runs his fingers through his hair. "No, no, I'm fine. I've just never really had to tell anyone all this shit before, and I'm trying to figure out where to start."

He could just go into it, let himself ramble about Nancy and demogorgons and how he got wrapped up in all this drama with kids and monsters, but he realizes that he should probably start with the more pressing issue.

"Darrow first, yeah?" Steve asks as he lifts himself up to pull his wallet out of his pocket. "Unless you want to just watch the movie and eat pizza and let me off the hook for a bit, but I know you and don't really think that's an option."

[hey_dingus]

"If you actually think I'm going to ever take Nancy Reagan's advice, then it's like you don't know me at all." Not that she's a conspiracy nut or anything but Robin is pretty sure that there's got to be some kind of agenda if they're making it all about 'saying no' instead of actually doing something about there being drugs to say no to in the first place. Although maybe she should start believing in that kind of thing, given what she's seen.

"If it helps, here's what I already know. Eleven can move things with her mind. There's another dimension. It has monsters. And people keep thinking that trying to open it is a good idea." She raises her eyebrows, silently asking if that's about the jist of it.

Watching him and wondering what his wallet has to do with it, Robin pulls her legs up to her chest and wraps her arms around them. Not making herself small, exactly, just keeping herself a little bit protected. "We could let ourselves both off the hook. I'm not exactly having the best day either." Steve is right in that she wants answers but her normally dogged pursuit has lost some of its bark in the circumstances.

[haplesshairpile]

"Those are pretty much the highlights," Steve says once Robin is done talking. There's more to the story, including how he got wrapped up in it all, but Robin's suggestion doesn't sound like a bad one. They have time.

"You're right. It can wait until tomorrow," Steve tells her, scooting a bit closer and patting her knee before reaching over to grab a piece of pizza. "You can stay here tonight. Get some rest. And we'll figure it out together, yeah?"