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joanna-olson · 8 months ago

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Come and Knock on Our Door

also on A03

(this episode filmed in front of a live studio audience)

March, 1987

She hears them before she sees them, which means Steve has lost the battle for his car’s stereo for the three hundredth day in a row.

Robin is standing in the slush on the curb outside the Columbia campus bookstore with her chatty co-worker Francis, with her messenger bag clutched to her chest so she doesn’t do something insane like swing it full force into Francis' fucking face. Which wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t. Francis isn't the worst or anything. He’s just really jazzed about the philosophy classes he taking. And he loves the sound of his own voice. And he can’t take a hint or a subtle no, or a really fucking pointed no. And, okay, he kind of is the worst, but Robin needs the job, it accommodates her class schedule, and she’s rarely shares shifts with Francis. So Robin will just continue to tune him out while he blithely goes on and on about solipsism or whatever the fuck.

When the BWM rounds the corner and comes into view she sighs in relief.

Eddie’s got an arm hanging out his backseat window, drumming aggressively along to the aggressive song the beemer is blasting, when he spots her he sticks his head out too, “Buckley! This guy bothering you?” he hoots, as they pull up to the curb. Her body language must be more starkly uncomfortable than she realized.

Before she can deny it, Billy is crawling out the fucking passenger window like someone who doesn’t know how doors work, sitting himself on the ledge, and slinging his arms over the roof of the car to glare silently at Francis.

Steve turns down the music to a bearable volume, “Problem, Robin?” he slides his ray-bans down to the tip of his nose to give Francis an unimpressed once over like he’s still King of Hawkins High, like anyone in New York should give a shit about him. It’s an attitude that’s depressingly really effective in a lot of situations. When he’s in a good mood Steve says it’s all about confidence, when he’s being a moody butthead he says it’s all just bullshit. Either way, it does the trick.

Francis is bug-eyed and slack jawed, and blessedly silent for the first time all day, staring at the spectacle that is Robin’s day to day life.

“Well,” she says with cheery a smile and a smack to his shoulder, “That’s my ride. See ya, Frank.”

She rounds the car and Billy climbs the rest of the way out the front window before he opens the door for her, shuts it behind her, and then drops himself in the back seat behind her, through the actual door this time, at least. And he does it all while maintaining extremely hostile eye contact with Francis over the roof of the car.

Robin gets shotgun, always , is the only car rule Steve has been able to consistently enforce so far in their time as a unit. She’s not sure how or why.

She's also not sure how or why this is how her life is turning out. If anyone asked her to recount the story of how she came to be sharing a house in New York, with this particular array of boys she could probably lay out the steps one by one pretty easily, and coherently, but it wouldn’t really clear anything up.

The short answer is Steve Harrington suddenly started collecting strays after high school. Which no one who knew him for the first eighteen years of his life could have predicted, Robin can confidently say that as someone who did know him then, or at least knew of him. So its Steve's fault, basically. He collected the three of them like weird dogs, and he found the house they're renting too.

Just before they peel out Steve turns to her and says, “Who's the clown?” maybe loud enough for Francis to hear, maybe on purpose.

“He's a turd,” Robin says dismissively once they’re on the road. “Listen, I need to talk to you guys.”

Because she does, and she's been putting it off since the phone call on Tuesday. Told herself it could wait a day, and then Steve had a jam-packed work schedule, and then Billy was cramming for a big test he was stressed about, and then Eddie's hours were so odd she just couldn’t find a good time to sit them all down, and if she really put her mind to it she could just delay, delay, delay until the bomb dropped in their laps and they all exploded in a giant mess.

She wasn’t sure why that seemed kind of appealing, but she figured it was probably a bad sign.

Billy leans forward, hand gripping the headrest of her seat, “That guy bothering you?” it’s the same question Eddie asked before, but with a wildly different tone of menace behind it.

Eddie tries to wedge his face in next to Billy, “You need us to talk to him Robbie? Lean on him a little? Scare him into backing off?” Eddie says like a parody of a tough guy. Billy shoves him back over to his side of the back seat with an annoyed grunt, but his grip on Robin’s seat relaxes a bit too.

“The only people who find you scary are people who have never had a conversation with you,” Steve snorts, “Not even a whole conversation. Just a passing interaction. You're a scarecrow.”

Eddie squawks.

“Pretty sure Buckley’s packing bigger guns than you, dude,” Billy says and Eddie squawks again, louder and more dramatic.

“Untrue! Buckley, flex real quick.” He demands, as he tries to shake an arm loose from his permanent leather jacket/denim vest combo.

“No,” she says. “Listen-.”

“There's more than one way to scare a square,” Eddie goes on, “Just because I'm slender and svelte, doesn’t mean I can't be intimidating.”

“Sure. But you're not intimidating though,” Billy drawls.

“This is character assassination!” Eddie’s too loud for the confined space of the car, “I terrorized Hawkins High! They thought I worshiped the devil!”

“And they kicked your ass on the regular. No one was scared of you, dude.”

“Guys!” Robin tries to interject, desperate to get this conversation on track.

“You know,” Steve says, hand peeling off the wheel to gesture at Eddie, “If you wanted to bulk up you could try working out with us sometime.”

“What about any interaction we’ve ever had makes you think I would want to do that?” Eddie asks.

“You were literally just complaining about being a scrawny little weakling,” Billy says.

More (mostly) mock outrage from Eddie, “Not any of the words I used actually. I’m lithe . Like Mick Jagger, you meathead.”

Billy snorts.

“Shut up!” she finally shouts them down. All three of them give her sidelong looks like that was a little uncalled for. She takes a deep breath and gets right to the point, “My mother is coming. This weekend. She is very concerned about my living situation.”

“Little late outta the gate, isn't it. It’s been, like, months,” Billy’s right, except for one thing.

“Yeah,” Robin tugs at her bangs, “She was not aware that I was living with three boys until now. She thought I was rooming with my cousin April.” Who, when caught out by her own mother that she was not attending Columbia with Robin, but was in fact trying to make it as an actress in New York, had sung like a canary, trying to deflect some heat off herself. It hadn't worked, incidentally, Aunt Janine was also headed for the Big Apple to lay down the law. “The fact that I have been lying to my parents for months didn't really help matters.”

“Your dad’s not coming up though?” Billy checks.

She shakes her head, “Couldn’t get time off. Just my mom, taking the Greyhound up tomorrow to assess how far I’ve fallen.”

“You want one of us to pretend to be your boyfriend?” Eddie offers, “We're all single, you can take your pick.” He strikes a pinup pose, nearly elbowing Billy in the face by accident. Billy elbows him in the ribs on purpose.

“God no! Absolutely not. Any hint of impropriety, forget it. She’ll tie me up in a sack and ship me to a women’s college. I have barely negotiated a stay of execution pending a visit. She cannot under any circumstances think I'm involved with any of you,” she pauses to gag at the thought, “So, you guys need to be on your very best behaviour. Okay?” she pleads

“Okay,” Steve says dubiously, “But, she spent your whole senior year convinced I was going to get you pregnant. And I’m pretty sure I did nothing to deserve that.”

That’s true. Steve worked very hard to project good respectful boy who is not trying to have sex with your daughter. But, even though it was the truth, it never did him any good with Sharon Buckley. The fact that he is one of the three boys Robin now lives with definitely didn’t help her mother’s freak out.

“We're just going to have to make it work, okay?” She can already tell that she sounds panicky about it, she doesn’t need Steve awkwardly patting her knee to make the point to her.

“We'll make it work,” he parrots back. “We’ll be on our best behaviour, we’ll clean the whole house-“

“Real clean,” she butts in, “Not teenage boy clean.”

Eddie says, “Hey I’m twenty-one, remember.”

“All the more reason you should know how to wash a fucking dish by now.” Billy mutters. Eddie smacks him and it devolves from there. Billy quickly gets him in a headlock.

Eddie squeaks, “Uncle! Uncle!”

“Uncle Wayne can’t save you now dipshit,” Billy laughs.

Steve throws an arm back blindly to smack either or both of them, “Stop kicking my seat you assholes. I swear to God I will crash this car and kill us all!”

It has to go well with her mother. She really doesn’t want to lose this.

“Wouldn’t it be better,” Eddie says, as he's carting another load of laundry down from his room (Robin's got him doing a preliminary clean before she goes in there to help. She categorically refuses to deal with any or their dirty undies, and she will never compromise on that), “If my room looked really lived in? Since were trying to prove everything is above board and nobody is a bed hopping harlot?” He’s been kind of vaguely complaining all afternoon, but he hasn’t actually been slacking off.

The house they share in the Bronx is tall, narrow, and a little rundown, in a neighborhood full of tall, narrow, rundown houses. Eddie's room is just the whole third floor all to himself. Which is ideal, because he's a rabid collector of junk and it gives maximum room for his knickknacks and oddities to spread out without taking over shared spaces.

The second floor has Billy and Steve's rooms and the boy's bathroom, which they squabble over constantly.

Robin’s room is on the ground floor, along with the living room, kitchen, laundry room, and her own bathroom, which Steve is not allowed to use for his hair routine, no matter how much he bitches about Billy hogging their sink. If she gives an inch she'll be drowning in hairspray in no time.

“There's a fine line between ‘lived in’ and ‘biohazard,’” Steve says. Robin has him vacuuming, which right now means he's cross-legged on the ground trying to extract a sock that was under the sofa and is now tangled up in the beater-bar of their second-hand machine. She told him to move the sofa first, but did he listen?

“Easy for you to say, rich boy. Missing your maid yet?”

“For the millionth time, we didn’t have a maid!” and they're off on that we’ll tread track, Robin tunes out the millionth go ‘round of Steve insisting a cleaning lady is different than a maid, because she only came once a week, not every day.

Billy's been tasked with deep cleaning the kitchen, because he's the only one who can be trusted to do it undirected.

Robin's been trash bagging anything that she deems Not Mom Safe, saucy albums and posters, cheeky mugs and the like. She's not actually going to throw their stuff out (she quite likes a few of those posters), but she is going to stash it all under the porch for the weekend.

She's made all three of them swear on their lives that their porn is locked down like Fort Knox. Which will have to be good enough. She’d rather die than have first hand knowledge of any of their jerkoff material.

She's peeling down their calendar that's purportedly advertising power tools, but is covered front to back in bikini babes, when Eddie exits the laundry room and asks, “Is all this really necessary?”

“Yes,” Robin says without hesitation, “She's like a dog with a bone. Anything could set her off.”

Billy pauses in the kitchen, “Set her off like how?”

“Lectures. Endless ones about all the dangers of sex, and how sex is everywhere, and you need to be prepared, and the urges and dangers, and dangerous urges, and on and on until you just wish the earth would swallow you whole.”

“You know,” Eddie says speculatively, “There’s an easy fix, if she's so worried us dirty boys are gonna compromise your genteel virtue.”

“Oh yeah? What's that, Casanova?” Billy asks, turning back to the sink he was scrubbing.

“We could pull a triple-Tripper.”

Steve scrunches up his face, looks around to check he’s not the only one who’s lost, then asks, “A what now?”

“Jack Tripper. Three's Company?” Eddie clarifies, then, when that clarifies nothing (obviously), he singsongs like a grade school teacher trying to lead the class to an obvious answer, “We pretend to be homosexuals.”

Robin freezes. Trash bag full of half naked babes in her hand.

“Is that what went on on that show?” Steve wonders out loud before his eyes drift to Robin and he notices her deer in the headlights routine, “Uh, would that be… bad?” he asks her tentatively.

Because Steve knows. Steve’s the only one that knows. Since they got accidentally way to high after a shift at the mall the summer they started hanging out and she word vomited all over him (she also real vomited on him that night, but that was incidental).

In her frozen prey animal state she cannot answer him, of course. What she can do, is clock the other body that has gone unnaturally still. Standing in the kitchen with a sponge clenched in his fist. In stark contrast to her wide-eyed panic, Billy’s face is entirely blank. Eerily blank.

A year ago she wouldn't have hesitated to say he was angry, disgusted by the very concept. He'll, even just a couple months ago. Now though…

No, though. That's an insane thought. Surely.

Probably.

Definitely.

On the bright side, the insane thought (quickly dismissed, not at all camped out in her brain for later obsessing over, no sir) knocks her out of her torpor enough to choke out, “Uhhhh, we’re not hatching any hi-jinks, okay. We're just going to show her that I have my own room, and my own bathroom, and very plainly show her that no one here is having any kind of sex!” She swings her arm like she’s axing that idea, which only calls attention to the soft-core calendar still clutched in her hand. She hastily stuff it in the trash bag.

Steve nods slowly at her and mimes taking a deep breath, she copies.

Billy silently goes backs to scrubbing the sink somewhat more aggressively than he had been.

Saturday, after her morning shift, Robin goes to the bus depot alone to collect her mom. Steve had offered to drive her, but the car is almost never worth the hassle honestly, they've been using it less and less the longer they've been in New York. He should maybe just sell it, like Billy sold his before the move, but she knows Steve feels better having it just in case. Anyway, it’s good for when they go back to Hawkins on breaks.

Honestly the main reason she says no to the lift is… she just wants a chance to see her mom alone for a second. Maybe she can prime her a little, really try to sell that everything is fine and dandy, but mostly… she just wants to see her mom just the two of them. She hasn't seen her since Christmas and she misses her. Sue her!

When her mom steps of the Greyhound it’s easy to forget for a second all the stress this visit dumped on her head. She’s got the same mousy brown hair as Robin, swept half up to keep it off her face, and she’s wearing the same pea-green puffy coat she’s had for a decade. Robin can’t help smiling.

It seems like Mom’s in the same boat, big reflexive smile that it takes her a second to lock down into Concerned Mom Mode as she drops her bag by Robin’s feet. “Let me get a look at you,” she squishes Robin's face between her palms and manually bobbles her head around, this way and that way, like maybe she’ll be able to see the debauchery if she catches it in the right light.

“Hi Mom. How was the bus?”

“Smelled like grass. I think it was that guy,” she lets go of one of Robin’s cheeks to point unsubtly at guy with a long gray ponytail, “Toking up at ever rest stop.”

Robin smacks her hand down, “Mom! You can’t just point at people.” she hisses, mortified. Some of those warm fuzzy mom’s here feelings instantly evaporating in the heat of her embarrassment.

“Oh, I can’t point out pot heads, but you can shack up with a bunch of boys? Is that how it is in the big city?”

So that lasted about thirty whole seconds.

“Mom,” she huffs, flapping her hands, “We are not ‘shacked up.’ We’re just four people in a house. It’s nothing scandalous.”

“Then why hide it from us?” Mom swipes.

“Because you would have been worried.” Robin parries.

“Because it’s worrying, sweetheart. We don’t want you throwing your life away for some boy. Three boys? It’s a minefield, this could derail you so easily.”

“I’m not going to throw my life away.” Robin rolls her eyes, grabs her mom’s bag and starts leading her to their subway stop, “They’re friends. Good ones! They support me. Billy’s at Columbia too!”

“Your education is not less important than your boyfriend’s-”

“Oh my God, I am not dating Billy!”

“-You can’t drop out, even if he-”

“Who the hell is dropping out?!”

“Robin Caroline Buckley, do not curse at me!”

It goes about like that the whole ride home.

It's bedlam in the middle of the living room when they get home. Because of course it is. Because that is the house she lives in.

Billy’s got Eddie by the arms and Steve’s got his ankles and they’re swinging him like a sack of potatoes between them. Steve and Billy are both obviously post run, sweaty and a little ripe. Eddie is screeching, “I’ll be Mick Jagger! I’m Mick Jagger!” over and over. He’s the only one of the three of them with a shirt on. It’s got a girl in a metal bikini on it.

“You are no Jagger, jack-ass,” Billy snorts.

Eddie notices the Buckleys in the entryway first, says, “Oh fuck, what time is it?”

When Steve looks their way his eyes go wide and he immediately drops Eddie’s legs, letting him thump down with an oof and enough force to nearly bring Billy down on top of him.

Steve gamely smiles his goodest good boy smile, as he hustles over, hand outstretched, “Mrs. Buckley, so good to see you again. How was your trip?”

Mom looks at his hand, looks over his shoulder at Eddie struggling to his feet and Billy climbing over the sofa instead of walking around it like a normal human being.

Steve forces a laugh, “We were just, uh…”

“Trying to entice Munson to join us in some calisthenics,” Billy cuts in, “Physical fitness is so important.” He thrusts out a hand same as Steve did, but a good boy smile is nowhere to be found. His smile is distinctly smarmy, Robin hates it on sight. “Hi, Mrs. Buckley, nice to meet you. Billy Hargrove.”

Climbing to his feet Eddie is out of breath, despite the fact that he was not the one hauling a whole person’s body weight around. “I successfully dodged gym class for six years I refuse to be pressganged into it now just because you two are masochistic, meatheads. Hello Mrs. Buckley, it is my sincere pleasure to meet you.” Robin thinks he might be aiming for good boy but the smile comes off a little… insane.

Rather than just sticking a hand out to be ignored, Eddie grabs one of her Mom's in both of his and gives it a very earnest looking shake. Then he gestures expansively with one hand, the other keeping hers trapped, “Welcome to our home.”

Her mom definitely doesn’t know what to make of Eddie, a common reaction. But she's got a long standing opinion of Steve: Risky. And she's clearly formed a quick opinion of Billy based on, just, everything about him: Risky Squared. She’s tightlipped, observing their bare chests like a pair of sweaty time bombs. The hand Eddie hasn’t claimed is wrapped tightly around Robin’s wrist like she's thinking about running all the way back to Indiana with her daughter in tow.

Robin turns big, doleful eyes over to Steve. He grimaces and mouths ‘ Sorry.’

“Mom-“

Ripping her hand out of Eddie's, her mom whirls on her, finger pointed firmly in Robin's face, “No, no. How can you possibly expect me to just leave it alone? I cannot just pretend that there’s nothing going on here.”

“Nothing is going on though, I swear,” Robin pleads.

Her mother scoffs, “I am not naïve, Robin. I am a nurse, I know what young people get up to, I see the fallout of it every single day.”

“Mrs. Buckley-“ Steve tries.

“Put a shirt on, for Christ sake!” she snaps at him.

Steve yelps, “Yep,” and hightail it to the laundry room. Comes back with a shirt on and a spare that he lobs at Billy’s head. All three of them are just standing there, looking so goddamn awkward, obviously wanting to help and with no idea how to.

They spent their whole Friday cleaning. Today’s the first day of spring break technically. They were planning to get drunk, watch a bunch of horror movies, and throw gummy bears at Steve every time he had a bad movie opinion.

Instead, this is happening.

“Sweetheart,” Mom entreats, “I know you never want to listen when I try to talk to you about boys and sex, because you think it’s icky,” and Robin tries desperately not to squirm or cringe, “But you can’t stick your head in the sand. Condoms can fail, and you're not on the pill, god knows I tried when you first got your period-”

Robin loses the battle and cringes away, but the boys are right there , shuffling around awkwardly. She’s pretty sure she heard Steve whisper a horrified, “They can?” when her mom mentioned condoms. She really doesn’t want to talk about any of this.

“-No! Listen to me! I know you want to just, la-la-la,” Mom sticks her fingers in her ears, just when Robin is embarrassingly close to doing that exact thing, “And not think about it, because it grosses you out. But you have to think about it! Because if you get pregnant-“

“I'm not going to get pregnant!” she protests.

“You might!”

“I won’t!”

“ Robin ,” her mom sighs, beyond exasperated.

“I'm a lesbian!”

Sharon Buckley is, for perhaps the first time in Robin's entire life, at a loss for words.

In the silence, Eddie gasps quietly, “A reverse-Tripper.”

Steve thumps the back of his hand into Eddies gut, hisses, “No, dumbass, she's just gay.”

“Oh shit, for real? Right on,” Eddie whispers.

Billy’s face is carefully blank again.

Steve clears his throat, “We should, uh,” he points to the ceiling and raises his eyebrows at her, asking silently if she wants them to clear out. She’s not sure she does, but she nods anyway.

Steve herds them up the stairs. He’ll probably lay down the law while they’re up there. Necessary or not.

Once they’re gone the first thing her mom says is, “What on earth is a reverse-Tripper?” eyes unfocused, sounding slightly perturbed.

“It’s not a thing,” Robin says, “Eddie makes up his own things a lot and they’re mostly, you know, nonsense.”

Her mom blinks, refocuses on her, searching her face like she’s looking for a sign of it. “Robin, are you- You're not just trying to shut me up, are you?”

Robin tucks her elbows in, folds her arms around herself tight. “No. Mom, I’m gay.”

“Okay, we should- let's sit down,” her mom says, gesturing to Robin’s own sofa like she’s the host and Robin’s the guest. They should sit, that’s a good idea.

But then once they’re seated, knees angled towards each other, Robin can barely look at her mom she’s so tense. She focuses on the green coat, she’s still wearing her coat. Robin is too, no wonder she feels overheated.

“Sweetheart,” they’ve been sitting in silence for... who knows how long, days maybe, when Mom speaks, “I hope you know that all I have ever wanted, all I have tried to do, is give you the best chance to make it. To get you to adulthood, to a point where you could go out into the world and have the opportunity to do... whatever you wanted to do.”

Robin nods, because it seems like she should.

Mom’s eyes are shiny when she takes Robin’s face between her hands, “So if you’re out in the world now, well, not if, you are, you’re out in the world now- and I am so proud of you, sweetheart- and if you’re telling me that what you want is a... a girlfriend?” Robin nods again, a tiny nod, barely a nod at all. “Then I am thrilled you have the opportunity to want that. I love you.”

Robin launches herself at her mother, smothering her and her puffy green coat in a hug, “I love you too, Mom.”

“It can’t be all you want though,” Mom keeps talking, even all choked up, “You have to finish school.”

“Mom!” Robin laughs.

They reset.

She calls the boys back downstairs, and they creep down all unsure until they see her mom smiling on the couch. Billy and Steve have both cleaned themselves up in the interim (Eddie has not changed his shirt). They all get real handshakes and a much more gracious intro, they give her a tour of the house.

She catches her mom having a quiet, concerningly earnest conversation with Steve at one point. When she asks him what it was about he says, “She asked me if I knew all last year, and then she wanted to thank me for having your back.” Then, after a pause, “Also she wanted to make sure i understood that even if condoms aren’t infallible I should still always use them. She had stats.”

“Well, she is a nurse,” Robin tells him.

Eddie snitches about the stuff hidden under the porch, so her mom gets a cup of coffee in a mug with a sunbathing pinup girl’s butt prominently displayed and Bottoms Up! in a cheerful font on it.

Billy waffles wildly all day between being weirdly flirty with her mom and being even more weirdly awkward and quiet, like he can’t figure out how to act. Robin corners him in the kitchen eventually and pokes his ribs until he snarls at her. “You’re being super weird,” she informs him.

“I know.” He tilts his head back against the cupboards, closes his eyes, and doesn’t elaborate.

Out in the living room Eddie’s telling some story, arms waving wildly and face gleeful. Her mom is laughing.

“She’s really nice,” Billy says eventually, eyes still closed.

“Yeah, she’s pretty okay,” Robin replies, leaning her head on his shoulder.

On Sunday Robin and her mom meet up with aunt Janine and April in Manhattan for lunch and a debrief. They also seem to have come to some kind of agreement. April apologizes to her about ninety times, and Robin lets her grovel a bit, even though it worked out alright in the end.

Aunt Janine tries to stir the pot at one point, says something about Robin’s living situation with pointedly raised eyebrows over her mimosa. Mom looks at Robin, pats her hand, and says mildly, “Well, they’re nice boys.”

Robin smiles so big her cheeks hurt.

After lunch Robin takes her to the bookshop, to show her where she works, and lets her terrorize Francis for a little while.

Monday morning Mom goes home. The boys all get big hugs at the bus stop, their reception ranging from enthusiastic to baffled with Steve falling somewhere in the middle. Robin gets the biggest hug, and her mom cradles her cheeks between her hands for a long moment. She says, “Be safe,” and gives her a kiss on the forehead.

They all wave until the Greyhound is out of sight.

And so ends the Mom Visit.

Monday night they get down to their briefly delayed spring break plans. Steve and Eddie aren’t students, of course, and all four of them still have work this week, so it’s not much of a break. But for tonight they have a stack of movies, a stock of adult beverages, and a pile of very childish snacks.

Robin, Billy, and Eddie are in the kitchen dumping various configurations of sugar and salt into many bowls, Steve is in the living room setting up the VCR.

“I can't believe you had us convinced your mom was a total prude, when, all along, t’was you.” Eddie pokes a finger right up in her face, which she slaps away. He does it again, and again, switching hands each time she smacks one down, and cooing, “You the prude,” each time.

“I'm not a prude,” she protests.

“Oh yeah? Then instead of Poltergeist you wanna watch some porn?”

She gives a heartfelt, “Ewwww,” to that thought.

Billy tosses a handful of skittles at Eddie as he leaves the kitchen, studding his dark hair with colorful little pellets.

Robin fiddles with a bag of chips, “It just- It was never relevant. It was never going to be relevant, even- even if there were girls like that around, it’s not like I would be, you know,” Eddie waggles his eyebrows as if to say prude because she can’t even say it, “It’s not like they’d be interested in me.” If she just keeps staring at this bag of chips she won’t have to see whatever stupid face Eddie is making.

“What are you talking about? Robin, you’re great!” he says.

“I’m not exactly a hot commodity,” she tells her bag of chips.

Eddie spins her around by the shoulders to make her face him, “Look, Buckles-“

“Don't call me that.”

“-Hawkins was a stupidly small pond. It was a puddle. No one’s thriving in a puddle, not many fish in a puddle. But we’re in the ocean now, baby! And when we do find some fish ladies of your persuasion-”

“Gross.” Robin interrupts again, because she has too.

“-When we do find them,” he continues on louder, “You will be an irresistible lure to them.”

“That metaphor was strained dude.”

“Yeah, yeah. You wanna talk problems?” He asks, leaning back against the counter beside her, “My actual, pretty much twenty-four-seven, standing right beside me competition is Steve ‘The Hair’ Harrington, and Billy ‘Hard-Body’ Hargrove. Okay? I am the one who is screwed.”

She just sips her beer and absolutely does not share her suspicions that Billy’s not in any kind of competition with Eddie for dates.

Robin can see Billy and Steve in the living room, sitting at opposite ends of the couch, chucking candy at each other's open mouths. They’re already getting competitive about it, she can tell. Someone’s going to end up with a corneal abrasion from a skittle tonight.

“But then again, who knows?” Eddie tilts his bottle towards hers, “It’s New York City, baby. Anything can happen.”

She’ll drink to that.

#this was so much fun to read!#i'd read full novels about the shenanigans those four get up to #fic rec #robin buckley #billy hargrove #steve harrington #eddie munson

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