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

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

"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."

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"Uh. I stopped thinking Hopper was bullshitting me after I puked," I tell her, and then brighten as I sit down next to her on the bench. "Oh, Hopper is here. Have you met him? Police Chief, very burly. He's the only other person from home that I've seen, though."

Steve watches with concern as she speaks, only interjecting with a heartfelt ugh, the puking before letting her continue. Her story frightens him, and his stomach twists with worry when he finds out that the other kids were involved. If El was using her powers out where people could see it must have been something really bad. Like the fucking Mind Flayer.

"I always told you that I contain multitudes," Steve says, trying to joke, but the worry is obvious all over his face. "You wondered why I was friends with kids. And it's because we've been through shit together. Like, really heavy, almost end of the world shit. It forms a bond."

He's quiet for a minute, and then he looks over at Robin with concern. "Is everyone okay?"

"Your friends are officially weirder than mine," Robin says. The children were weird enough but the chief of police is still kind of hard to wrap her head around. "Yeah, he showed up at the mall with Jonathan Byers' mom and a guy who said he was a private investigator but..." Well, Erica hadn't been wrong with the whole Bum-Man thing.

"Also you were strangely calm about the fact that the Mind Flayer had apparently melted a bunch of people to make itself a body. Which...I saw? On the roof?" Robin lifts her head up to give Steve a long look, one in which she tries to compress every single emotion like some kind of laser beam.

It's weird now. Maybe it was the shock and adrenaline at the time but Steve had been so been-there-done-that about it before. The fact that he actually looks worried is actually kind of scary.

"I mean. Everyone was alive. The scary meat puppet was still a problem."

"Oh, not calm," Steve says with a bit of a self-deprecating laugh. "Probably just... unsurprised. It's not the first time the Mind Flayer was in Hawkins."

He lets out a relieved breath when Robin says that everyone is okay, but he can't really relax. It sounds like Robin was taken in the thick of it, and he has the terrifying realization that unless someone else shows up from later, he may never know what happened.

"Let's get you some clothes," Steve says as he stands up, because it's better to focus on something productive rather than the bad shit. "And we'll go to my place, because I have one now apparently, and I'll tell you everything."

He looks around and waves a hand to indicate their surroundings before putting his hands on his hips. "Most of all, let's get out of the goddamn mall."

"Not the first time." Robin stares at him like she might develop psychic powers of her own. Over the last couple of months working at Scoops, Robin thought she'd gotten to know Steve a little better. She'd seen him be an idiot in so many ways, desperately trying to look cool for strangers and then turning around and hissing embarrassed truths at her. She'd seen him be an absolute dingus whenever those middle schoolers showed up. Steve 'the Hair' Harrington had turned out to be actually kind of funny, weirdly loyal, and way too enthusiastic about the U.S.S. Butterscotch.

None of those hidden layers prepared her for the Steve Harrington who apparently has history with a telekinetic girl and experience with a Mind Flayer.

He makes a crack about going back to her place and Robin almost snipes back that she's just not into that and he knows it, except then she remembers that he doesn't. It's a lot more of a bummer than she realizes.

"Okay, we can get clothes but you're buying." She tugs on her uniform shorts to turn her pockets inside out. Just as empty as Steve's.

“Or the second,” Steve says, but then closes one eye and thinks about it for a second. “Or— the first time might have just been the demogorgons. I wasn’t really in the know for that one. Just sort of got swept up in it near the end. Anyway.”

Steve knows that he sort of doubled down on the goofiness, and the happy go lucky attitude that Robin saw from him most. It was easier to just lean away from the heartbreak and the near-death experiences, the beatings and the monsters. He didn’t want to think about all that shit every day, so he jumped headfirst into trying to be normal. It’s here, this place, that makes him think that’ll never actually be possible.

“Ah, not for long,” Steve says cryptically, and leads her over to a clothing store. “Do me a solid and check the clearance rack first, huh? Settling in really made a dent in my stipend.”

He might as well be speaking Russian at the moment because Robin's just lost. Actually, she'd probably have a much easier time if it was Russian. Demogorgons and Mind Flayers sound like something out of those fantasy games that people complain are promoting Satanism. Not her area of nerdy expertise.

"Later on, when my head's not spinning, you're going to need to sit down and spell all of this out for me because about twenty-four hours ago, the scariest thing in the world was that Russian guy with the really big gun. Which is still terrifying but..." But so much smaller than an interdimensional monster.

Stepping into the store, Robin can tell a few dirty looks are getting sent her way but she just tips her chin up and tries to look haughty. "Joke's on you, Harrington. I always check the clearance rack first." Glancing around, though, even the sale prices seem impossibly high.

"I'll tell you everything, but not here," Steve assures her, because if he's going to tell someone all about the Upside Down and its associated horrors, he wants them both to be sitting down somewhere relatively private.

Steve stands back to give Robin room, but around the third time she physically recoils from a price tag he realizes that he left out a pretty important piece of information.

"Uh, yeah. One more thing, no big," Steve says casually, sidling up next to her and resting his hands on his hips. "Inflation's a bitch. Because we're in 2019, here. Surprise, you're in the future!"

He laughs and the sound of is is tinged with an obvious edge of manic stress. "Robin, it's wild. Remember when the Walkman came out and people were like wow, this is the height of technology? Yeah, it wasn't."

Somehow, the fact that they're several years into the future is the easiest part to believe. Now that she lets herself observe the world around her, Robin can see all these tiny ways in which this mall is different from Starcourt in ways that have nothing to do with being in another world. It's all so much more...sleek in a way that feels distant, futuristic.

It doesn't make the pricing any less of a blow, especially when Steve sounds like he's about to crack. Or maybe she's just projecting how she feels.

"Please tell me that you mean this in a good way," she says. Robin's not proud of how her own voice sounds, all faintly alarmed, picking up on Steve's own anxiety. "Because I could really use some nice, happy news."

“There are upsides,” Steve says, thinking of cell phones and apps, about digital movie rentals and food delivery from pretty much anywhere. “It’s a lot easier to be lazy now.”

Steve wanders around the men’s clearance rack to give Robin some time to look and plucks a navy blue polo shirt out. He stares at for a second, looks over at Robin’s Scoops Ahoy uniform, and then puts it back to get a dark red one instead.

“Shit,” he says suddenly, remembering what Lois has told him. “You’re eighteen, right?”

"The whole point of being lazy is that it's easy," Robin counters, mostly out of a desire to be contrary than any other reason. Just looking around the store, she can see lights and screens everywhere, people holding little glass squares that are brighter and more colorful than any TV she's seen. Everyone is speaking English but half the words around her sound made up, like the kind of slang she'd hear in a science fiction movie about the future except it is the future.

Feeling sort of overwhelmed, she grabs the simplest thing she can that's in her size and not appallingly expensive–a black t-shirt with a ribcage printed on it–and hunts for a pair of jeans. Those, at least, can't be that different.

"I'm eighteen in January. Why?"

“You haven’t known lazy until you’ve experienced 2019,” Steve says as he heads for the counter. “I can turn my lights off with my voice. It’s real spaceship type shit.”

He takes Robin’s clothes as they wait behind the customer currently at the register, and then visibly winces when she says that she isn’t seventeen yet. He doubts that she’ll be thrilled with her living arrangements.

“Well, this place gives you an apartment,” Steve begins, and then turns his wince toward her. “If you’re eighteen.”

"I've always wanted to fly away in a spaceship," she says nonsensically. "Besides, don't they have that Clap on! Clap off! thing? I saw a commercial for it." She knows it's ridiculously beside the point but it's not the first time she's resorted to the inane under stress.

The impulse only strengthens at the way Steve looks at her. "And if I'm not eighteen?"

“You would, nerd,” Steve says, even as he instinctively claps along as Robin says the jingle, ending with a softly spoken, “the Clapper!”

For a moment he pretends like he didn’t hear the question, and then steps up to set all their clothes on the counter. The salesgirl starts ringing them up and Steve can feel Robin’s stars burning a hole in the side of his head, so he gives her a sideways glance.

“You have a place to stay,” he finally says, trying to sound casual as he digs his wallet out of his jeans. “But it’s kind of an orphanage type situation.”

Steve doesn't answer and Robin knows it's deliberate, just like the hundreds of times she's pretended not to hear out of annoyance, contrariness, or any number of reasons. When he does answer, he's not making eye contact, which only makes it worse.

"Orphanage situation," she repeats. Steve is so deadly serious about it that she wants to call bullshit, would have if this was the Steve she'd known at the beginning of summer. By now, she thinks she can tell when he's fucking with her.

Only now, it really sinks in and Robin grabs the edge of a display because she's not going to crumple now. "We can't leave, can we?"

The salesgirl looks between the two of them awkwardly and Steve hands over his weird Darrow debit card before giving Robin a pained look. Telling her that there’s no way out of this place is going to be harder than realizing it for himself, and he feels like such an asshole because there’s a large part of him that is so fucking glad to see her.

“Robin,” he says quietly, finally looking over at her as he reaches out to take the bag. “Let’s just get to my place, okay? I said I would tell you everything.”

She’s gripping the edge of the counter and Steve holds out his hand for her to take, and it’s not even a weird ploy to touch her or anything. He just wants to offer some support. He may not be the person she would go to in a bizarre, devastating situation like this, but he’s the one that’s here. “Robin, come on.”

Edited 2019-08-06 06:26 (UTC)

Robin can't help it. Her first instinct is to shoot the salesgirl a nasty look even though she probably doesn't deserve it. She doesn't want to call herself a mean-spirited person but she's had a hell of a day and it's just not stopping.

Steve holds out his hand and Robin's torn, unable to hide it. He has no idea. She's going to have to tell him all over again, a thought that's way more terrifying than it should be given all the actual terrifying things she's seen. If she takes his hand now, what's he going to think?

But also she's freaking out a little and she could really, really use her best friend right now. So she takes his hand and sighs.

"Can we at least get some food? The last time I ate, we were still at Scoops."

Food feels so normal right now.

Robin’s hand slips into his and Steve gives it a reassuring squeeze before leading her out of the store. It’s weird, because he should be excited, right? Sure, yeah, holding hands is little kid stuff, but he likes Robin. This should feel like the start of something. It should thrill him, shouldn’t it?

Instead it just feels comforting. Grounding, in a way, and to Steve that might almost be better. It gives him something to think about, at any rate.

“There’s food at my place,” Steve says, and then rolls his eyes at himself and lets the bag handle slide up his forearm so he can get his phone out of his pocket. “But obviously neither of us are in the mood to make something, so I’ll order a pizza.”

Bev showed him how to set up the food delivery app, so he concentrated on the little screen and puts through a quick order for the same thing he got last time, and then holds up the phone for Robin to see. “Beats the hell out of the Clapper.”

Steve doesn't make it weird and Robin feels a little better, even if her head is still spinning. And only spinning more when she watches the images and words flicker across the screen of the device in his hand. "That's...definitely more than a Walkman," she agrees, trying not to show that she's impressed. Except how can she not be? It even blows away the thirty minute guarantee.

"I'm going to have to do so much catching up," she laments. "I thought I was up on things when I learned how to program the VCR. But let me guess, the future doesn't even need those." Robin waves a hand to stop him from answering. She's not actually sure how she'd feel about confirmation of that right now.

"It doesn't even have buttons."

“Well, as you’re so fond of reminding me, you’re smart as hell,” Steve points out as he slides the phone back into his pocket. “I had to make kids show me how to use this crap like I was their tech-challenged grandfather.”

They leave the mall hand in hand and it still doesn’t feel weird. It just feels easy, and Steve kind of revels in the simplicity of it. He sort of never wants it to stop, because it just feels nice.

It isn’t a long walk to his apartment building and he leads her inside, finally letting go of her hand to fish out her keys and unlock the door. The space is pretty barren, all beige and generic looking, but it beats his bedroom at his parents’ place.

“Well, here it is. The place would be a mess but, uh, I don’t have any stuff.” He tosses his keys on the countertop and then fishes the stuff he bought out of the bag and hands it over to Robin. “Now, I remember how desperate I was for a shower when I first got here. All the mind blowing revelations can wait a few if you want to wash up. You kinda smell like USS Butterscotch and it’s freaking me out.”

"I mean, only because it's true," Robin shoots back. "But hey, look at you go with your future tech." This–teasing him–feels so blessedly normal in the midst of everything else being completely sideways. The last few days have messed with her worldview beyond what feels fair and it only promises to get weirder.

The apartment is pretty boring, like something out of a catalogue. Robin starts to imagine what she'd do with hers before abruptly reminding herself that she's apparently got a room at the orphanage instead. Not that she has much time to mourn. Whatever moment they're having is definitely ruined by the mention of the U.S.S. Butterscotch.

"You have some kind of sixth-sense for butterscotch now, Harrington? I'm surprised you can detect that under all the blood, sweat, and who knows what was on the bathroom floor I was lying on."

“I don’t know, man. I’ve got that thing— what’s it called?” Steve snaps his fingers and then points at her. “Stockholm Syndrome, or whatever. The smell is burned permanently into my brain.”

Ha ducks into the little laundry nook off of the kitchen and gets a towel from the dryer, because he’s an adult who does laundry now, and he’s surprisingly not terrible at it. Then he comes over to hand it to Robin before crossing his arms over his chest.

“First door on the left,” he says, tilting his head curiously. “Why the hell were you on a bathroom floor?”

"I worked there longer than you and I still have no love for the U.S.S. Butterscotch," Robin counters. It had honestly been one of her least favorite things to make with all the little components that slowed everything down, especially when there was a line, so she'd never gotten fond. Peanut Butter Ripple, however, was another story.

When Steve gets out a clean towel, Robin once again tries not to look too impressed, but it's hard when Steve is actually some kind of prepared grown up who has spare towels. It doesn't help that the washing machine looks like it has more buttons than a NASA console.

And Steve has to ask the million dollar question that Robin didn't even realize was worth so much.

"We left the movie theater to get water and you were looking at the ceiling and then it's all kind of a blur but I ended up with my head in a toilet, puking my guts out. And then we just kind of sat around, talking, because we still felt like shit."

“The ceiling is the last thing I remember,” Steve remarks, looking thoughtful for a moment. He hates that there are things that he doesn’t remember, things he was supposedly there for and has no knowledge of. “I puked my guts out in Hopper’s bathroom.”

Robin has kind of an intense look on her face and there’s a weird little emphasis on talking that has Steve’s stomach doing a nervous little flip. His weird feelings for Robin are something he’s mostly processed through in the month that he’s been apart from her, but who knows what he might have said.

“So, we sat on a bathroom floor talking?” Steve asks as he reaches up to rub at the back of his neck. “What, uh— did we talk about?”

"At least his place was probably cleaner." Robin tries not to think of the pervasively sticky texture that's on the back of her arms and the many culprits that could have caused it. The shower beckons but Steve gives her this weirdly serious look that freezes her in place and her stomach feels sour all over again.

He's had a month. A whole month. Robin swallows tightly wondering what scares her more; Steve still having feelings or Steve, when sober, being repulsed by who she is.

"Tammy Thompson," she says, looking at the empty space just left of Steve, not quite in his eyes. "We talked about Tammy Thompson."

“Tammy Thompson?” Steve asks, blinking in confusion and shaking his head. “The girl from Click’s class?”

Steve sits at the dining room table that sits in the small space off of the kitchen and looks up at Robin in vague confusion. That isn’t what he was expecting her to say at all, and it’s kind of thrown him through a loop.

“I though I might have—“ He cuts himself off and shakes his head. “Why were we talking about her?”

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