#tbh this is probably the basis of my springficchallenge (steve making his backyard his own)

[shares-a-vest]

Platonic Stobin Month, Day 6: Worms

Prompt List created by @lesbianancyy

My first post for Platonic Stobin Month (so annoyed that rl stuff has been tough and i couldn't get to this earlier). I have a few ideas for some prompts. Hopefully, i can incorporate Platonic Edancy as well bc i love them and need to write their dynamic more too.

'Nancy, There's Dirt on My Hands'

“So you really are just taking the house as your own now, huh?” Dustin wonders, his voice dripping with sarcasm and crackling over the radio Steve promptly snatches up.

“Can you just tell me when we can expect rain?” he shoots back in a rush, his soil-covered gardening gloves dirtying the radio.

And Robin hopes to whatever god is watching over the Harringtons’ ginormous backyard he doesn’t hand it to her. For one, she isn’t wearing gloves because her best friend failed to tell her to bring some. And then he’d had the audacity to offer his mother’s old floral pair, thinking it was perfectly acceptable for one to wear used, dirt-encrusted gloves.

And Dustin. One day, the kid invents a weather machine. The next, he’s radioing everyone with ‘The Henderson Report’. A week later, he narrows it down to the climate at everyone’s individual houses. And a few days after that, Steve’s outside with his signature Dad Pose, hands on his hips as he declares a bright and sunny day ahead, announcing his intentions to take up gardening.

Eddie, who’s being oh-so-helpful running around using a shovel as a weapon to swish around to the air, stops once again mid-manoeuvre to ogle at Steve. He's been stopping periodically all morning, just in time to watch Steve carry around bags of compost and potting mix in his gardening attire all morning.

Robin watches as Eddie watches Steve wipe sweat from his brow. She opens her mouth to tell the idiot of the not-so-hot origins of Steve’s clothing (being her old overalls) when Nancy emerges from the house in a white sundress.

Okay, so maybe she’s just as pathetic as Munson.

Nancy is carrying a tray of iced tea in a pitcher with some glasses and god damn it, Robin hates that she loves this.

“Ugh, Rob?” Steve asks, clicking gloved fingers in her face. “Are you actually going to help?”

Yeah, yeah, she technically hears him, but she hasn’t exactly broken out of her 1950s backyard dream life with Nancy Wheeler in a white sundress... Until she winks at her. And Eddie might have also dumped a load of dirt right next to Robin, effectively ruining her no-dirt-while-gardening policy.

“Huh?” Robin says, directing her grunt somewhere in Steve’s general direction as she looks down at her now brown-speckled oversized jeans.

That’s when she spots them, several sad little worms, squirming about in Eddie’s pile of dirt, flailing for their lives.

“Oh my god!” she screeches, making Steve jump on his haunches as she scoops up a handful of dirt.

“What is it?” he yells, sending Eddie into a fit of laughter.

“So,” Eddie sings, staking his shovel in the bare but pristine lawn and making Steve whimper. “You don’t want to get dirt on you at all… And yet, you’re over here saving the precious worms?”

“Don’t you remember dissecting these poor things in Biology?” she insists, shoving her worms as close to Steve as possible as if to beg him to show them mercy.

He recoils, stuttering, “Ye-yeah? Rob... they are fine in the garden.”

He shakes his head in that way he does when he thinks Robin is being utterly ridiculous and resumes scattering handfuls of potting mix over the turned-up soil.

“Didn’t you like, steal frogs from the science room or something?” Nancy asks Eddie, stepping cautiously down to the grassed area Steve has outlined for the garden.

“Nancy,” Eddie chides, dropping the shovel as he raises a hand to his chest in mock offence. “How dare you perpetuate one of the many untrue rumours associated with Eddie ‘The Freak’ Munson.”

Nancy just rolls her eyes.

Meanwhile, Steve wordlessly takes the worm family from Robin’s hands, shoulders stiffening up at the anecdote-slash-rumour. And Robin knows he’s probably racking his pea-brain trying to work out if he in fact started said rumour. Rolling her eyes at the inevitable analysis of Steve's past King-Steveness she'll have to endure later, Robin examines her now-empty hands.

Dirt. Dirt everywhere.

“Nancy, I have dirt on my hands!” she deadpans, standing up.

Nancy shrugs. “So? I’m going to give you a manicure later anyway.”

She reaches grabby-hands for her, but Nancy steps back.

That’s right. Her stupidly pretty and oh-so-perfection sundress.

“Nancyyy,” Eddie coos, stepping coyly across the dirt patch, sending Nancy into a panic.

“Yes?” she replies, echoing his singing tone through gritted teeth.

“Can I have some iced tea?” he asks with a devilish grin that always gets him exactly what he wants, even against Nancy, chief of the word ‘no’.

Robin watches as Nancy looks over the ever-spreading dirt and steps back, nodding. Eddie skips after her back up to the outdoor furniture by the pool.

“Alright, dingus, spill,” Robin says. “Planning on showering Munson with flower petals every day, are we?”

“Shut up!” Steve laughs.

After a moment he slumps back onto the ground and yeah, they’ve definitely gotten dirt everywhere at this point. And Steve is going to have to work out some sort of strategy to get them into the house and to the laundry without much mess.

“I just want some nice flowers,” he sighs, shrugging. “For this stupid house I’m stuck with. And it’s something to do, right? Out here in the sunshine...”

He waves a hand at the backyard, meaning Loch Nora in general, with its huge houses separated by patches of land that seem the size of Robin’s whole street.

He chews his lip and looks over his work before stealing a glance back at Eddie. Eddie who’s now laying back on the sunchair that should be Robin’s, sipping iced tea with Nancy in that damn white sundress. Setting aside the tinkling of ice and Munson’s loud talking that is jarring in the tranquil Loch Nora afternoon, Robin knows that lip bite and glace.

It’s a tell. Steve’s tell. A tell that he gets lonely when she can’t be here. That he’s pinning over the biggest dork of the century. And Robin knows Steve is thinking about his dumb parents and their never-ending vacation they’d continued to extend ever since Hawkins got ripped to shreds by an undead Zombie Wizard who was probably infected with rabies.

“What are you doing!” Steve chokes, freezing up as Robin hugs him, wrapping her arms tight to lock in his arms.

Okay, so maybe she hurled herself at him.

“Giving you a hug,” she says, squirming around so the position isn’t so awkward. “Because you need one.”

He sinks in, just a little. God forbid Steve ever gives into much-needed affection completely.

“I could buy you a worm farm,” he suggests, tugging his arm out from under her grip so he can loop it over Robin’s shoulder.

“You’d buy me a worm farm?”

“Sure, then you have to help me garden. Gotta save the worms.”