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]

“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?"