#stobin forever <33333

[strawberryspence]

Part 1 / Part 2 (please read part 1 first)

Robin Buckley finds birthdays weird. The first one you ever have, all the people around you celebrate while you don’t understand anything. You don’t remember much of the next few ones, maybe your seventh, your eighth.

Robin’s favorite birthday from her childhood is her twelfth. It’s nothing special. But she remembers the day so clearly, her friends, grandparents and parents singing in the park as she blows out candles. She remembers playing at the park for the rest of the day with her friends and this one boy. Golden hair, brown wide eyes, and a toothy smile. She remembers telling him it’s her birthday and she remembers the boy softly singing three lines of Happy Birthday as her other friends play in the background. Robin watches him make a flower crown with daisies, before offering it to her, as a birthday present. Robin takes a few daisies, tucks it into his brown hair. Before he leaves, Robin asks him to keep the daisies, to remember her by, and Robin keeps the remnants of the flower crown tucked in an old book somewhere.

Robin’s best birthday ever is her nineteenth birthday. It’s the first of her birthdays that she and Steve celebrate together as bestfriends. Steve makes a big deal out of it. He bakes a chocolate cake, garnished with shaved chocolates on top just the way she likes it. Steve drives them to Indianapolis, takes her to her favorite stores, buys her a tiny rainbow pin and tucking it in her jean jacket with the softest smile. He buys one of his own, tucks it in the sleeve of his ridiculous wine red sweater.

They go home, and at home Steve shows her his room. He’s shy, doesn’t even want to show her. His room, even with dull and colorless wallpaper has never been dull when Steve Harrington is in it. But tonight, it’s filled with the brightest fairylights, stringed around the room, turning it into the smallest and most wonderful wonderland.

“It’s the closest thing to Paris I have right now.”

Because Paris is Robin Buckley’s dream destination. Because Steve Harrington knows her, like the back of his hand. Because Steve Harrington is his soulmate.

There Steve sings her a soft, quiet Happy Birthday and asks her to make a wish. They sit in bed all night, eating the cake with two forks in the same plate, wearing ridiculous party hats, as the lights surround them.

“Someday, we’re going to Paris, watch the lights, and eat some ridiculously expensive cake.” Steve announces.

Robin laughs, “All right. It’s a deal, Dingus.” She playfully puts out her pinky, and Steve laughs, looping his pinky into hers.

Steve gives her his gifts, an old pocket book for touring Europe and a black denim jacket, with sherpa collar. It has patches sewn all over it, carefully choosen and sewn together.

“Dude, did you make this!?” Steve laughs, shaking his head, no. “Well, I didn’t do everything. But I did this.” He takes the coat, flipping it inside out. In the right chest, just above the pocket is a rainbow sewn in patch.

“Steve.” She chokes out, hand shaking as she gently caresses the patch.

Steve smirks at her, “If you need anything, you will find the key here.”

Robin laughs, “Stop being so creepy!”

They laugh.

It’s Robin’s best birthday ever.

It’s Robin Buckley’s first birthday with Steve Harrington.

It’s Robin Buckley’s last birthday with Steve Harrington.

Her schmuck, her bestfriend, her soulmate, her Steve. Just gone.

All she has left is money, clothes and a box she can’t even fucking open.

She storms his closet, greedy for anything that had even the smallest hint of his smell, that ridiculous hairspray and some kind of fucking wood that she can’t name. She takes a box out, takes that ridiculous yellow sweater he threw at Eddie. The same sweater they went back for, the same one he cried over, the same one he was clutching as he admitted feeling that hint of electricity with Eddie. She sees the denim vest neatly folded in the bottom of his closet, and Robin knows she needs to give it to Dustin or Wayne or to anyone but she shucks it to the box. She takes his letterman jacket, takes the stripes polo she always made fun of, took some of his old Hawkins shirts, she knows she can’t take everything. Max and Dustin and Erica would want some, but she wants everything she can take, anything that has a smidge left of Steve Harrington. She wants— no, she needs it. Because her bestfriend is just gone.

The moment her hand furls against the familiar fabric, tears fills her eyes. Robin has cried so much in the last twenty-five days that she should be empty, she should be all cried out. But the moment her hand touches the wine red sweater, she breaks, her knees buckling as she falls to the floor with a thud. She touches the sleeves, and something prickly touches her, she knows what it is. But the sight of the raindow pin still tucked in the sleeve makes her scream, a scream stuck between a sob and a wail, as she hugs the sweater closer, Steve’s ridiculous fucking perfume sweeping her nostrils.

“I can’t fucking believe you, Steve Harrington!” She sobs, she hears the door swinging open, and she’s not even sure who’s comforting her, who’s hugging her, but they’re also shaking, chest sobbing. Robin crumples the sweater to her chest, as close as she can as if it’ll squeeze out the essence of her bestfriend.

“I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this without you, please, Steve."

Robin has never cried harder, she’s exhausted, her throat is hoarse, she hasn’t slept in the last twenty-five days and someone is holding her.

If she squeezes her eyes shot hard enough, holds the sweater close enough to smell and imagine. It’s just another day, just another day, she just woke up with a the worst nightmare and Steve is holding her in his familiar arms, lulling her back to sleep, to safety with his warmth.

Robin blacks out. It’s the first night she slept all through the night since Steve Harrington died.

Robin’s twentieth birthday is quiet. The kids, Nancy, Jon and Argyle baked her a cake. It’s not chocolate, but it tasted good. They sing, and Robin acts like she’s making a wish. She doesn't have the heart to tell them that no amount of candles, or birthday wishes, can ever bring back her wish. They watch more than three movies at the Wheeler basement, eat junk, eat cake and laugh, like there aren’t missing holes in their lives.

When the time comes, they all go home. Robin goes home, hangs her black denim jacket on the wall, and just like the days before the box on top of her desk taunts her. She hasn’t opened it yet, not that she knows where the key is. Her bestfriend only decided to be cryptic when he’s already six feet under the ground. Once, Dustin saw it and smiled at her, some kind of understanding flashing in his face, “You haven’t opened it too, huh?”

“How do you want me to open this, you fucking Dingus?” Robin whispers, shaking the box.

A thud makes her turn around, the hook where her jacket was hooked fell of the wall, leaving a dent and a few holes on the wall. Robin squints at it, the hook has been there since she was a child and has never went loose. She slowly moves closer to take the jacket off the floor, when she catches glimpse of the embroidered rainbow patch.

She smiles at it, slowly caressing it, and as if he’s just behind her, a whisper of voice in the back of her mind, “If you need anything, you will find the key here.”

“You fucking weirdo.” Robin laughs, tears starting to fill her eyes as she ransacks her room for a seam ripper. When she finds one, she’s laughing like a maniac as she tears a small part of it, not intending to remove the whole patch but just enough to take the key out. Robin squeezes just enough for the key to fall out. And there it is, in her hands, a small golden key.

She scrambles to reach for the box, falling to the floor as she tries to reach for it. She sits on the floor, criss-crossed as her hands shake and tears falls from her eyes. She opens the box.

It’s filled with white envelopes. A small note clipped on the lid:

If you’re opening this, I am sorry. I promise I am with you for every birthday. I tried my best to do as many as I can.

You are my soulmate, Robin Buckley. Maybe in some other universe, I will spend birthdays with you since day one. For this one, I hope this will do.

Happy Birthday. I love you.

- Dingus.

P.S. Go to Paris for the both of us, huh? Buy the most ridiculously expensive chocolate cake you can find.

Robin thumbs over the envelopes, numbering from 20 to 90. With shaky hands, she reaches for 20, gingerly opening it.

It’s a hallmark card, with three ice creams on the front. CONE-GRATULATIONS! It’s your birthday!

Robin chuckles as she opens it, her bestfriends familiar handwriting scribbled on the white card.

Happy 20th, Buckley! I hope to God you don’t get to read this card! I want to be there for your 20th and I sure as hell will be there!

In the off chance that you’re reading this, fuck, I am sorry. I must’ve done something stupid. I am sorry we don’t get to spend more birthdays together. I will be with you through a card every year.

I am so glad you were born, I was nothing without you.

Love you, Robs. Happy Birthday!

— Your schmuck, Steve Harrington

“And I am nothing without you, Steve Harrington.” She gasps, holding the card to her chest, sobs rocking her body as she slips into the red sweater she wears to bed every night.

She hasn’t washed it once and it barely smells like him anymore. She wonders when she’ll forget how he smelled like, wonders if she’ll ever find the perfect candle that smells just like him so she can light it up anytime she needs it, wonders if they’ll ever discontinue the Farrah Fawcet spray she uses in her hair even though she doesn’t need it.

Robin falls asleep with a card clutched in her hand and a sweater that barely smells like her bestfriend anymore.

Robin’s twenty-sixth birthday is when she finally goes to Paris.

She leaves everything in the hotel but the old pocket book Steve gave her and her 26th birthday card.

She buys the most expensive chocolate cake she can find, asks for two forks and finds a sit just in front the bright Eiffel Tower.

She opens her card, laughs, cries, and thinks about what Steve could have been doing beside her right now. Golden hair, brown wide eyes, and toothy smile, in a wine red sweater and a scarf around his neck.

She eats her cake. It’s good. But the best chocolate cake she’s ever had was in a bed, in a bedroom filled with lights, eaten with two forks in one plate.

She clutches her coat closer, the wine red sweater keeping her warm, like it always has in the past six years.

She opens the forgotten pocket book. The one Steve gave her on her nineteenth birthday. She’s never opened it, never wanted to face the fact that she’s going alone. The cover is battered, the pages yellowing as she flips the book slowly.

A single piece of picture falls from it. It lands face down. Robin can recognize the handwriting from anywhere.

“This is 12 year old Steve in front of the Eiffel Tower! In a few years, it’ll be you and me! Happy nineteenth birthday, Robs! P.S. Don’t mind the flower! I got it from a friend! Didn’t want to remove it because it’s really old and dry.”

Robin flips the picture, and there he was. Golden hair, brown eyes, and toothy smile. The same boy she played with, but in front of the same tower she’s in front of right now.

A single dried daisy is taped on the corner.

Robin laughs, smiling with tears at the picture.

Way before they both realized, way before they even properly met, way before they scooped ice creams together, way before blood and drugs made them close.

Way before everything, there were two kids, who played together in a park, daisies weaved into their hairs.

Robin Buckley spent her favorite birthday, her best birthday, and will continue to spend the rest of her birthdays with her soulmate.

Because even beyond the grave, her soulmate will never let her celebrate alone.

Steve Harrington will be there, one way or another.

(again, i am very sorry. if it helps u feel better i can barely see through the tears while writing this)