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formosusiniquis · 3 months ago

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twins of the heart

Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington; Robin Buckley/Carol Perkins wc: 2141 | T | tags & themes: Meeting the SO; No-longer Secret Relationships; Humor & the Tiniest Hint of Angst For @stobinmonth Day 11: matching | AO3

“I'm not changing.”

“We are not meeting my girlfriend for the first time matching, Steven.” Robin crosses her arms, ironically -- probably he's never really understood that -- matching his stance as she stands across from him.

Standing beside their selected arm chairs -- Robin's plaid with low arms and a springy cushion and Steve’s sunken and leather with the tall back -- he feels like Clint Eastwood. In a standoff with Robin, who's a second cowboy he doesn't know the name of even after weeks of watching spaghetti westerns with Wayne. She's got a smirk on her face.

She thinks he's going to give in.

“We're in agreement then,” he says, “you've got a closet full of other shirts go find one.”

Robin looks seconds from ripping his button up off his shoulders, like it's his fault she's finally realized how much fun the bright colors are instead of the neutral pattern clashing she used to do.

“Your closet is bigger, she's my girlfriend you go change.”

“No, I've got my whole outfit planned.”

“I don't care that you matched your shoes to your shirt.”

It’s true that he has done that. It's also true that he has a backup outfit that he could use instead. But something about the frazzled way she’s looking at him, the way she’s tugging at the ends of her hair is tapping into his inner need to be a problem.

So instead of going back to his room. Instead of continuing what could, without a doubt, be an hours long argument until she either gave up and went to change or they went to the restaurant matching. He takes a step forward, settles down into the embrace of his chair and crosses his leg over his knee.

“Let’s talk about why it’s so important this ‘first’ meeting goes well.” He puts the air quotes around first because he knows how much it annoys her. Clasping his fingers on his knee when he’s done. “Are you worried that this sincerity of matching with your soulmate will scare her away?”

“You’ve taken one psych class, and it was developmental psych. For children.”

“Is this hostility real, or is it an easier emotion to express than fear?”

“I hate you. I hate you. I don’t know why we’re doing this.”

It wouldn’t be hard to keep this bit going, but Robin’s stress is quickly moving from funny joke to actually concerning. “It’s Carol, babe. I probably know your girlfriend better than you do.”

“Great,” Robin claps her hands, spins in a circle like she’s about to go back to her room but thinks better of it. “You can stay home then and I can make that table for three a table for two instead.”

“Robs.”

“You have to change.”

“We’re meeting,” he says slowly repeating her question from earlier in the same cadence he uses with his daycare students, “because you want your two favorite people to get along and because you feel bad that you were secretly dating my old best friend for a whole month.”

“She’s changed.” Robin says.

“I’m sure she has,” he agrees. It would be stranger if she hadn’t. Of the three of them Carol had always been the smartest, the quickest to point out what they had missed. Picking at a stray cat hair his lint roller had missed, he wonders how long after he’d left that Carol realized he’d been right about them being dicks. Wondered how long before she stopped being so stubborn and did something about it too.

“You’ve changed.” She says slowly like she’s repeating the answer to a question he’s asked three times already.

That doesn’t feel fair to either of them, and he’s ready to say that, when Robin’s hand flapping distracts him. “Except you haven’t, you’re just Steve and you’ve always been Steve but what if she has changed and you all can’t stand each other.”

“Well you’ll have to break up with her then.” He uncrosses his legs, braces his arms on his knees, a mockery of that ‘I mean business’ pose that Hopper would take at the end of a lecture,

Only Robin doesn’t laugh. Her eyes drop down to her clasped, nervous hands instead.

“No.”

“I mean,” she starts to say the expression on her face almost as guilty as it was when he answered the phone just to be shot back in time at the sound of Carol’s complaining the second she hears the line open.

The snap of her gum and the, “Babe, you are not going to believe this.” Had been so jarring he’d had to check that he was in the shitty, smoke-stained kitchen in their apartment and not the white walls of his parent’s house. When he’d caught Robin’s eyes hers had been wide enough he could see the pink in the corners. Panic like he hadn’t even seen in the Upside Down.

“I’m sure I wouldn’t,” he had said, hearing the soft sound of Carol’s surprise through what’s passing for a connection. “I’ll pass you over to Robin now, Babe.”

That night she’d done what passes for grovelling: take out from the place he likes but she can’t stand, Some Like it Hot already playing on the TV.

They didn't like arguing and like apologies even less. Robin was sorry he was sure, even if he was less sure why she hadn't told him about Carol in the first place. She hadn't had any problem complaining about her when she realized they were sharing the same campus.

And now they were wearing matching shirts in their living room, minutes from being late to a dinner with a girlfriend she’s thinking about breaking up with. Maybe that's why she hadn't said anything last month or last week or any time in between when her “study sessions” at “the library” went late enough that they missed getting to see each other before work and bed.

Steve is fine being the voice of reason, even if hes not sure why he has to be. “You’re not going to break up with your girlfriend if we don’t get along.”

“I will break up with whoever I want to.”

“Robin.”

“Steve.” Her arms are crossed, pulled tight against her chest.

He thinks they’re going to have to actually talk about this. Not just bicker and tease and ignore the places where the hurt feelings come from. Because hurt feelings aren’t them, they aren’t something they do. They’re Steve and Robin. They don’t fight, disagree, or really argue -- because not wanting to get pizza from the place twenty minutes away that doesn’t deliver for the second time that week is none of those things.

“Were you ever going to tell me you were even seeing someone? Or should I just be glad I didn’t walk in on you eating out in the kitchen.”

“There wasn’t anything to tell.” Robin snaps like a rubber band pulled too far: sudden and it’s break more surprising than painful.

“At some point there was, and since we aren’t actually attached at the brain I really don’t know what you’re thinking.” He keeps his voice level but now that the words are leaving his mouth it’s like the slow peel of a scab coming up. Fresh blood following the sting of an unhappy, unhealed wound.

He wishes he were, wishes he could know everything about her, and she him, instantly. Wishes thoughts and extensions and meaning could just be there immediately and obvious.

But it isn't, they aren’t. Steve just has to deal with knowing there are things that will always be secret, meaning he may never even be aware he missed.

“You liked her and I didn't,” Robin says carefully, the first stuttering chugs of a train starting forward. It has to start before it can barrel on. “That’s how it started.”

Steve is still sitting, legs spread, and Robin’s hands are flicking back and forth, swaying in a miserable vogue as thoughts arrange themselves in her mind, she steps forward. Stepping and putting herself in that open space, ending the argument they still weren't really having through her proximity.

“Then we both hated her and that was good,” Robin continues. “What if now that I like her, you still don’t?

“If you never meet again it’s never a problem,” she continues. “I won’t have to end things. Cause that’s what I’ll do, Steve, there isn’t a choice between you and someone else. It’s always gonna be you. You’re my person.”

“It’s always gonna be you too, Rob.” He settles his hands on her waist in an almost hug, contact so he can keep looking her in the face when he asks. “But why are all you nerds so black and white?”

She scoffs, a total not-answer he knows means she doesn’t know what to say because he’s right.

“I didn’t hate Care, I still don’t. I was mad at her and Tommy. Mostly Tommy. But it wasn’t like she was dead to me. We talked in class and at games. She moved here for school, we were busy with fighting evil. We lost touch.”

“You don’t hate her?”

“I hate like three people and two of them are dead already. Everyone else is just annoying.”

“So you’ll change?”

She asks it gently, like it should be accompanied by an upset child’s sniffle. He almost feels bad about the way he knows he’s going to answer. Turning the hold on her waist into an actual hug, Steve rests his chin on the soft muscle of her stomach, looking up into her chin, and says, “No. We’re already late.”

He’s laughing too hard to keep his feet under him as Robin pulls him out of the chair. When he stumbles up to standing, she squeezes his hand, hard, a punishment for being mean to her.

“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you,” she chants.

She’s still muttering it down their apartment hall, in the car, and up to the restaurant where her mildly pissy face melts into something soft and gooey.

Carol is already waiting looking polished and pressed as she always has. The mid-length skirt and the chin length hair suit her. If the fashion is any indication, the 90’s seem like they’ll be kinder than the last few years have been.

Steve drops Robin’s hand as Carol walks up, gives them the space to greet one another. A warm hug: hands drifting. A kiss to the cheek: lip gloss sticky and possessive. Kind doesn’t mean they don’t still need to be careful, their greeting never slips beyond what could be friends meeting up.

And when they let go Carrie’s eyes, still soft, take on that sly pinch at the corner. She hugs him too: one arm, from the side, hands firmly in the zone of public decency. “This twin thing is cute.”

Robin groans so they can both hear all the ways that Steve has victimized her.

“I mean it, Birdie, “ she says. And Steve can hear the way age has sanded down some of her sharper edges. “Makes me hungry.”

Robin flushes, a deep red Steve can feel the heat of in his own face. “Really?

Some of her edges, not all. The look in her eyes revealing that sharp gleam he knows meant, at one point, that she and Tommy were going to disappear into a spare bedroom and leave him to fend for himself.

“I had meant literally.” If they disappear to fuck in the bathroom he’s leaving them with the bill.

But Carol shakes her head and puts the obviously dirty thoughts behind her. “I haven’t seen you two look this cute since the summer we graduated.”

Wait.

“You didn’t ever come into Scoops.” Steve accuses.

Carol’s complexion betrays her. “No, but Orange Julius was right across the food court.”

Robin is looking back and forth between them. And she was worried they wouldn’t get along. He’s about to give Rob the food to get Care riled up for weeks.

“You spend a lot of time in the food court that summer?”

“Freshman fifteen doesn’t count if it happens before the school year starts.”

“And the seats across from Scoops were the best in the room?”

“It had the best view, and I can remember more than a few freaks and geeks who would say the exact same thing.”

“Wait,” Robin says, “you were looking at…”

“Blue looks good on you,” Carol sways into Robin’s space, a leer on her face that suggests that Steve will have the apartment to himself tonight. Carol’s eyes cut up to him, a reminder that she hasn’t forgotten him or the purpose of tonight, “It looks alright on you, Stevie.”

“Yeah, big surprise who you think wore it better. You’ve always been easy.”

“We have that in common, looks like you match with both of us.”

#stobin month 2025 #stobin month #stobin #steve harrington #robin buckley #carol perkins #bubblescoops #steve and robin #platonic stobin #fun fact this was almost a buckingham/steddie fic #but then i realized how hilarious it would be to have robin introducing steve to someone he knows already #the tags make this sound intense it is very light #just the lightest of light sprinklings of emo to taste #like salt in a cookie

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