Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I told you not to mess with the equipment!”

Robin groans, eyes rolled to the ceiling. There’s a supernatural threat banging on their door yet again, their hometown is barely operating at a functional capacity, and all Steve Harrington cares about is some radio equipment? Hel-lo?

“It’s not like it’s hurting anything,” she grumbles, fingers fidgeting with the on and off switch of the sound panel, back and forth, back and forth, clickclickclickclick–

Steve’s fingers grip her wrist and move her hand away from the panel and all its temptingly clickable buttons. The nervous energy immediately begins to coil inside Robin, and she can’t help but reach for the panel again, the irrepressible need to mess with one of the buttons overcoming her–

Steve shoves it to the far side of the desk, out of her reach.

With a sigh, Robin leans her hip against the desk and glares through her bangs at her best friend. Well, soon-to-be second best friend if he doesn’t loosen a few of his screws; with all the time Robin’s been spending with Nancy Wheeler, she might have to take first place, especially if Steve can’t manage to pull the stick out of his ass that he’s acquired from three months of employment at WSQK.

As if sensing her thoughts, Steve throws her an incredulous look and says, “What?”

Robin thrusts her hand at the sound panel and other miscellaneous bits of radio equipment surrounding them, the cold and half-evacuated room, the frosted windows that fail to obscure the current hellish landscape Hawkins has, once again, fallen into.

“What do you mean–?” Steven finishes his inquiry with a hand thrown out just like hers. He waves it around for emphasis.

“Your former employers left town a month ago, all of our lives are in danger, and you’re concerned about the sound panel they abandoned?”

“It’s important for the cause.”

“We use the transceiver for the ‘cause,’” she finishes in air quotes, nevermind the fact that it’s currently located in another room on the opposite side of the building, far and away from their current residency in what now amounts to an overglorified storage closet the size of a large classroom.

Steve’s mouth tilts down into a pout. “I’m just trying to take care of the place while we get all this sorted out.”

Robin wants to point out how much of a lost cause this is, what with the demogorgon blood graffiting the brick facade of WSQK and the fact that a not-insignificant remaining portion of Hawkins’ population now lives in its halls, but, she’s nothing if not perceptive, and she can sense that the state of survival for this sound panel is, quite possibly, Steve’s last anchor to this plane of reality.

So, instead of being a total killjoy, she does the best friend thing: she nods in understanding, relenting against her own need to fiddle with the nearest objects around her, and instead takes to scratching one of her nails against the side of her thumb.

“Ro-bin,” Steve sing-songs.

She catches his gaze again, and he points with his eyes down to her hand, where a thin line of blood has started to drip from her cuticle.

“Dammit,” she seethes, throwing her hands up as she pushes off the desk. Steve’s standing in front of her, and there’s the matter of the desk, of course, and the sound panel she can’t touch, and it’s just a few strides between Steve and the nearest window. That’s all the space she has to pace, to stomp around with her hands thrust into her hair, and to scream.

Steve, ever the expert in Robin’s fits of anxiety, takes this in stride.

“Look, I’m sorry, Rob, but you told me to let you know if you were picking–”

“I know,” Robin says through gritted teeth. She keeps her hands shoved in her hair as she paces, imagining the clickclickclick of the switch that she can’t mess with. “I just–I’m going insane being here, and it’s like, ah, gee, Robin, it’s the end of the world again! Also, your crush-slash-maybe-girlfriend is stationed miles away in a hospital, and everyone we know is suffering, and I just–”

“Hey, just take a deep breath–”

With a speed she didn’t know she possessed, Robin spins on her heel and juts her blood-stained finger at Steve’s nose and snaps, “Don’t tell me what to do!”

Steve holds up his hands, pleading innocence. “Okay, I know you’re stressed out because of everything, so I’m not going to hold that against you, but we gotta find a way to keep you sane until we all make it out of this.”

“If we make it out of this!” She emphasizes the point with a jab to the bridge of Steve’s nose.

His eyes nearly go cross looking down at her.

She heaves a frustrated sigh, then backs down, returning to her pacing once more. “What the hell are we supposed to do? I just feel like we sit around here for days, and then all of a sudden, bam, evil’s afoot! And it just takes and takes and takes, and then it stabilizes again, and it feels like nothing we do works, and it all only causes pain, and what if it is all pointless? And we’re doomed to fail anyway?”

“I mean, we don’t know that–”

“I just–I want to kill something! I want to commit a crime or cut all my hair off or–or get a tattoo! Something to help this feeling like I’m going to explode!”

Steve seems to consider the matter seriously, tilting his head back and forth. “Well, I mean, I feel like we crossed the whole crime bridge a while ago. I don’t even think we’re supposed to be here right now, so–”

“AUGH!” Robin shrieks, and without any foresight or attempt to consider the implications of her actions, she kicks the file cabinet nearest her.

It sends a jolt of pain straight from her toes and up to her brain. A deluge of black dots momentarily obscures her vision, and for a split second, the only thing she hears is the stream of curses emanating from her mouth as she bounces on her other foot.

“Shit, Robin–”

“I–” bounce, “–am–” bounce, “–so–”, bounce, “–STUPID!”

“Robin, here.” She feels a hand on her shoulder, trying to guide her back to the desk. Her vision has returned to normal, but she’s still got her eyes squinched up in pain.

Which is when a loud smack of metal against bone hits her ears, and Steve doubles over in pain next to her.

“What the fuck–!”

Leave it to her and Dingus! Who needs the Three Stooges when Robin and Steve can do the job just fine, and in the middle of the apocalypse, no less?

Robin tests putting weight on her foot, and when the numbness doesn’t give way to excruciating pain–no broken bones, thank God–she blinks her eyes open and stares at Steve, who is now bouncing on one leg, cupping a hand to his shin.

“Jesus Christ, that hurt–” he wails.

Just as Robin’s about to ask him why he took the lemming approach to life and kicked the same cabinet she did, she notices that, no, Steve’s leg injury is entirely accidental.

Because Robin’s kick and the sheer force of her frustration managed to pop open the bottom drawer. The locked drawer. The drawer that she knows is locked because she’d tried prying it open many, many times. She’d even tried bribing El into opening it, to which the younger girl had only given her a curious side-eye and then avoided her for two days.

“Steve?’ she asks, voice suddenly calm, cool, collected.

Steve quits his hobbling and grimaces as he brings his leg back to the ground–no broken bones for him either, but, boy, is it gonna leave a mark. “Yeah?”

He tilts his head as he examines the contents of the drawer.

“Oh, so that’s where they put all the CDs.”

It’s more CDs than Robin has ever seen in her life. Radio had skipped the world of eight-tracks and Walkmans that plebes like Robin had to subsist in and moved straight into CDs, of which WSQK appears to have been well and truly blessed. They look like they were hurriedly crammed into the cabinet, some of their cases cracked but the titles still neatly labelled across their clear fronts with masking tape: Remain in the Light, Heaven up Here, Purple Rain.

Excitement fizzes in Robin’s chest. She’s already done writing the pitch in her head when she grabs the sleeve of Steve’s sweater and shakes him. “Steve, can we–”

“No!”

“Nobody’s using any of this anyway! Nobody’s probably listening to the station at all!”

“All the more reason not to! Besides,” he crosses his arms over his chest, “I told the managers I’d keep an eye on the place, make sure it’s in good shape for when things go back to normal.”

Robin lowers her eyes into a glare. As if there was a normal this town could ever return to.

“And–and–what if somebody does listen, and they don’t like our song choices, or anything we put on the air?” Steve scoffs, running a hand over the back of his hair, insecurity blurring his edges; this truly is the only job she’s ever seen him remotely care about and take any amount of pride in. “And what if I mess up the sound panel–”

“And what if,” Robin interrupts, “we do something fun that will fill up all these empty hours of anxiety, and maybe, possibly, perhaps it makes someone out there smile? There’s still people here like us to listen, after all.”

Steve opens his mouth, then closes it.

Opens it again.

Tilts his head to the side. Considers it.

“I do really like manning the panel,” he concedes.

Robin claps her hands together, bouncing on the toes of her boots. In her head, she imagines the whiteboard she used at Scoops Ahoy to keep track of Steve’s romantic woes, and she revises it to a scoreboard: Steve - 0, Robin - 1.

They, finally, had something to look forward to.

Chapter Text

***

TRACK 1: Should I Stay or Should I Go?

***

STEVE: Welcome back to the next hour of commercial-free, non-stops tunes to jam to in the apocalypse! Sorry for the silence on the air for so long given the, you know, apocalypse. Anyways, it’s me, your loyal host, Steve “The Hair” Harrington and my newly-appointed but ever-trusty sidekick–

ROBIN: This was all my idea, again, actually. Which I’m now saying for, what, the fifth time?

STEVE: It’s only hour two of broadcasting, and you have mentioned it five times, yes.

ROBIN: So, I’m not your sidekick. This is an equal opportunity program.

STEVE: Well, anyway, Robin and I are both here, ready to guide you along on a tune-tastic journey–

ROBIN: [snorting with laughter] Tune-tastic?

STEVE: Yes, tune-tastic, Robin. This is radio. We use our own lingo.

ROBIN: You know what, Steve? I can respect that.

STEVE: Awesome, because there’s not much else you can do when the sun’s disappeared and the world is opening up at our feet!

[They both laugh. It sounds less like they’re laughing at a joke and more like they’re staving off hysteria.]

ROBIN: Well, anyway, to help brighten what is, undoubtedly, another gloomy day in a long string of gloomy days for this town, we’re excited to bring you a– [she hesitates, clicks her tongue] eclectic mix of music, chosen by yours truly and Dingus here.

STEVE: So, you’re not a sidekick, but I have to be Dingus?

ROBIN: [deep sigh] Anyway, here’s The Clash with “Should I Stay or Should I Go.”

[the music begins]

***

They take off their headphones as the opening chords of the song blast through. The signal sounds a bit crackley, but at least it works! Now she and Steve have something to do during all the empty hours of the day when they’re not needed, a task they can focus on and plan for, a small corner of the world that gives them some illusion of control. It helps that Steve also seems all too thrilled to be preoccupied with something other than the Upside Down, to go through the motions of the one job he’s had that, maybe, seemed to be working out for him.

“I’ll admit, Robin, I was a bit skeptical about this scheme of yours, but I do think this was the right call.”

Robin brushes a chunk of bangs out of her eyes and smiles, her fingers still. She feels no urge to start pressing random buttons or to pick at her skin now that there’s a task at hand, a list to order, a show to plan. “I am right a lot of the time, you know.”

“Except in your music taste,” Steve sighs, glancing at the paper between them. “How are you and Jonathan not best friends? You basically have the same taste in music.”

“Which is?”

“Bands that make songs for, like, exactly three people on earth.”

Robin scrunches her face up. “You think the internationally-renowned band The Clash makes music for three people?”

Steve rolls his eyes. “Whatever. You can leave all matters of music snobbery to Jonathan, okay? I’m a man of the people: I like my Duran Duran and Bruce Springsteen, things like that.”

Which would explain why “Born in the USA” was up next. Steve probably doesn’t even know it’s an anti-war song, just likes the vibes.

Robin swallows down the critiques that, sure, are probably very Jonathan Byers-esque in nature, and instead, she nods her head, a tight smile at the corners of her mouth. “Well, I guess that’s why we’re sharing the job of planning the songs, right?”

Steve winces as the drums grow louder from the headphones. “Mm, right.”

Their tastes in music might be from two completely different worlds, but Robin couldn’t care less at this point. She just needs something orderly and fun to help cut through all the gloom and despair and notable absence of the love of her life in, well, her life, and for the first time since the ground started rumbling with Vecna’s presence again, she doesn’t feel like everything is doomed.

That is, until the door to the broadcasting room slams open, revealing the hunched posture of one Jonathan Byers, eyes bugged out in anger.

The song plays from Steve and Robin’s headphones, but they can also hear it drifting faintly down the hallway: Should I stay or should I go now?

“Jonathan!” Steve tries, voice airy with politeness. “I take it you’ve tuned in to our show? You, uh, liking this song so far? I think I remember you liking it–”

“Turn it off,” Jonathan grits out from between clenched teeth.

Robin’s stomach clenches with anxiety. She looks between Jonathan, Steve, and the run time showing on the CD player, and her nails begin to dig into the desk’s laminate. “Oh, hey, Jonathan! Um, the song’s almost over–it’s got, like a minute left–and then it will–”

“Turn it off,” Jonathan repeats, stomping into the room. “Somebody said the station was back up again, and the first thing Will and I hear is this damn song–”

Steve holds up his hands. “Woah, man, hey, it’s just a song.”

“Nothing’s just a song anymore, Steve,” Jonathan spits back, arms crossed over his chest, eyes roving over the desk.

Robin realizes what he’s looking for and stands up, blocking his line of vision to the sound panel and CD player and offering a sheepish grin. “We won’t play it again, okay? Just–if you could just please let us have this–I picked the song, and–and I won’t do it again, scout’s honor–”

Some of the tension drains out of Jonathan, but he still looks disgruntled. “Just–please don’t play it. It makes Will upset.”

“It does?”

Jonathan, Robin, and Steve’s heads all snap to the doorway, where Will fills in its empty space. His nose is slightly scrunched up, and he looks at his older brother like he just caught him trying to sneak out after curfew.

Jonathan sighs, rubbing a hand over his face. “I mean, we haven’t really listened to it since…”

“But I like the song,” Will says matter-of-factly.

“See!” Steve says, hand thrown out to Will. “It’s not a problem with him, so–”

“Shut up, Steve,” Jonathan and Robin say in unison.

Will rolls his eyes. “God, it isn’t a problem.”

And before another word can be said, he melts back into the hallway, hooking a left to the door that leads to the back lot. It creaks open and then summarily cracks back into place.

Robin’s stomach twists, and her hands instinctively pull in front of her, her fingers wringing against each other. Will said it wasn’t a problem, but Jonathan’s acting like it is, so either Will’s lying, or Jonathan is just doing the whole protective brother thing, which is annoying Will, and either way, it means Will’s mad, which makes Robin anxious, because this was supposed to be fun–

The CD spins to a stop, its light flashing. Static buzzes through their headphones and down the hall.

“Shit,” Steve mutters. He throws his headphones on and clicks the microphone to life, giving some kind of half-assed intro to “Born in the USA,” but Robin can’t hear anything except the tight thrum of her heart in her eardrums.

“I’m sorry, Jonathan,” she whispers, praying he understands how dead-set sincere she is. She hasn’t been the closest to the Byers siblings, but who couldn’t have a soft spot for them, after all they’ve gone through? And Jonathan’s always been a weirdo, like her, and Will–well, Will, she just–

“It’s fine.” Jonathan pinches the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. “It’s not your fault. I was just being stupid.”

“I think you were trying to be a good brother,” she suggests.

Jonathan does one of his trademark self-deprecating scoffs. “Sure doesn’t feel like it.” With a grimace, he pulls away from the desk. “Sorry, I should go get him. You can just,” he waves his hands at the room, “ignore everything that happened here.”

“Or,” she offers, hands still wringing in front of her, “I could go get him.”

The opening chords to “Born in the USA” play from Robin’s headphones. Steve pulls his off, and, at the same time, he and Jonathan say, “What?”

Robin huffs, eyes scrunched closed. “I–I can go get him, okay? I was the one who picked the song, and you two,” she points between Jonathan and the hallway, an implicit Will unspoken but understood, “don’t seem to be getting along. He might react better to someone else.”

“Um, Robin?” She turns, and Steve’s looking intently at her, finger tapping their list. “You’re up next. ‘Just Like Heaven,’ whatever that is?”

“You don’t know ‘Just Like Heaven,’” Jonathan deadpans.

Steve sighs. “Robin needs to introduce it, because she picked it–”

“Have Jonathan guest DJ!” Robin claps her hands together, looking between the two guys.

“With Steve?” Jonathan spits at the same time Steve says, “With Jonathan?”

But Robin’s already out the door, calling a perfunctory Have fun! over her shoulder.

Regardless of either’s trepidations, she hears her empty chair slide out and Jonthan throw himself into it with much grumbling.

She swallows the knot of nerves that’s worked its way up her throat, making her question why she’s chosen to do this. When she pushes open the back door, she’s met with a faceful of cool night air.

***

“Jonathan, I don’t want to–”

The words die in Will’s mouth as Robin stands before him, her hands shoved in her vest’s pockets. She tries to get her forefinger to quit picking at the skin of her thumb, but with this much anxious energy coursing through her–well, she has to make compromises somewhere.

“Hi,” Robin tries, then grimaces.

“Oh. Hi, Robin.” Will says it politely, like he’s greeting a teacher or an old family friend from church.

Which, to be fair, Robin’s interactions with Will have been limited, but hey, she’s not the weird one who hangs around kids several years younger than her, like Steve. He and Dustin may be best friends, but Robin has a reputation to uphold. She got pulled into this whole mess by accident two years after it all began, and, ultimately, she knew of Will Byers as more of a concept than a person, the inciting incident for the hideous drama that had overtaken their lives for the remaining years of this decade. And, apart from some of her own suspicions that probably have more to do with personal biases than anything else, she hasn’t really thought about him much.

It’s neither of their faults and both their faults, and maybe it’s nobody’s fault at all. It simply just is.

Robin clears her throat, tilts her head to the side. She’s thankful for the chunk of bangs that falls across her vision. “So…you enjoying the weather?”

Will hesitates before finally saying, “What?”

“You’re right–not the best way to start this conversation.” She sighs, holds out her hand for a shake. “Hi, Will Byers, I’m Robin Buckley. What unparalleled levels of psychic trauma seem to be troubling you today?”

“If you ask Jonathan?” Will tilts his head against the brick wall, eyes boring into the dark blanket of night. “Enough for a lifetime.”

“And if you ask Will?”

He shrugs, sliding his hands into his jacket. “I don’t know. Not enough to still be treated like I’m a little kid.”

As she pulls her hand back into her own pocket, sympathy pinches Robin’s heart for both of the Byers boys. There’s Jonathan, trying his best to keep his family together and safe and constantly feeling like he can’t, and then there’s Will, seemingly always in danger and at the forefront of everyone’s attention, wanting to prove himself and being treated like a porcelain doll regardless.

“I’m sorry,” is all she can say. Her hands are now fisted in her pockets, her nails digging crescents into the palms of her hands. “That just–that sucks, Will. This all sucks. I’m so, so sorry.”

Will shakes his head, a sympathetic smile pushing up the corners of his mouth. “Nah, it’s okay. It’s not your fault, or Jonathan’s. Or anybody’s, really.”

“Except Vecna’s,” Robin adds.

Will lets out a small chuckle. “Yeah, except his, I guess.”

A few beats pass. If Robin had to guess, “Born in the USA” must have ended, and they’ve either moved on to her far-more sensible song choice, or Jonathan’s gone rogue and is giving Steve a veritable lesson in the finer points of punk culture.

Will’s eyes remain stuck on the sky, and hers follow up.

“It’s just like it was there,” Will finally says, half-under his breath.

Robin’s pretty sure she knows what there means, but she still says, “And there is…?”

“The Upside Down.” His Adam’s apple bobs in his throat, and the line of his jaw grows more tense. She remembers how young he looked in his missing posters from six years ago and wonders where all the time went, how someone can grow up so fast. How they all grew up so fast. “It looked like this. There were no stars, and there were clouds all over the sky.”

“Oh, yeah.” Slowly, as if he’s a small animal that might scurry off if she makes the wrong move, Robin turns, backs up to the wall of the station. She leans her head back to keep an eye on the sky, too. “Yeah, I kind of remember that from my time down there. Not that it was as bad as yours, of course,” she rushes to add, feeling like an idiot, and now she’s rambling, her words turning into a stream-of-consciousness soup. “I mean, obviously a few hours is nothing compared to a week, plus, we had fire! We had, like, actual light, so I guess it really wasn’t the same as you being down there. So it was kind of easy, actually–”

“It’s okay!” Will says with a soft laugh. “It’s not a competition for who’s had it worst.”

“But if it was, you would win,” Robin points out.

Will rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”

They share a quick laugh, and before silence can overtake them again, Robin clears her throat. “So, the song I was playing…Does it actually bother you, or was Jonathan really just overreacting?”

Will opens and shuts his mouth. His eyebrows knit together, and his gaze turns distant, as if he has to dig through the drawers of his mind for the correct answer.

“Or you don’t have to answer it, of course,” Robin adds.

“No, it’s…” Will sighs, shoulders slumping against the building. His eyes briefly flicker to Robin. “It’s complicated, I guess? It still means a lot to me because of Jonathan, but it was also one of the few things I remember from being down there. I just sang it to myself, over and over again, like it would save me, or something. And it did, kind of, because that’s how El and the rest of my friends found me.”

Robin nods slowly. She remembers this part in the run-down she got from Steve and Dustin a few years ago after battling the giant ball of flesh formerly known as the Mind Flayer in Starcourt, but there was no mention of music and The Clash and Will Byers all alone, singing a song that reminded him of his brother as he faced certain death.

“Do you listen to it much now?”

Will shakes his head. “No, not really. Partially because Jonathan got rid of the tape after everything, which is stupid.”

“But if you had a tape of it…?”

His shoulders pull up closer to his ears. “I’d probably get rid of it, too.”

A grin pokes up the corners of Robin’s mouth. “So, you were being contrarian?”

“You would too if you had a brother react like that over a song.” Will rolls his eyes. “I get it, but also, I’m not twelve anymore.”

Robin nods solemnly. Nobody’s right and nobody’s wrong: they’re all having to live in that awful grey space that Robin is quickly realizing occupies most of adulthood. “I think you both make good points.”

Will shrugs, the closest thing to a concession she’ll get in this conversation, she suspects.

Silence falls over them again. It’s peaceful outside, despite the chaos they know is roiling beneath them. It’s how Hawkins has always been, a serene facade wrapped over a core of rot and decay.

Neither of them make any efforts to move, an implicit understanding that the stillness of this moment is preferable to the churning waters of the station. Just because there’s a lot of space inside doesn’t mean it’s meant to house over a dozen people, and despite Robin’s blossoming love for manning the airwaves, she doesn’t quite want to walk into the middle of whatever spat Steve and Jonathan are bound to be in.

Worry creeps in through the silence, though: over the state of the world, over where Vecna is, over if Vickie is safe or not. She can admire Vickie’s drive and desire to help others, but it doesn’t mean it makes Robin feel any better. At least at the radio station, everybody’s together.

“Is there,” Will starts, “like, a reason you and Steve started broadcasting on the station again?”

Robin tilts her head back and forth, considering. “We were both going insane, me more-so than him. I accidentally kicked a cabinet open that had all the CDs in it, and since Dingus has worked here the past few months, we decided we could do something fun to fill the time, even if nobody listens.”

“People are,” Will says. “Once one person turned the radio on and heard music, a whole bunch of people started tuning in.”

Something shifts in Robin’s chest. It feels deeply unfamiliar yet strangely affirming–could it be, perhaps, pride?

“Really?” she asks.

Will nods. “Really.”

“Huh.” It feels like there’s a small flame alight near Robin’s heart; she wants to cup her hands around it, stoke it, make sure it never goes out. “This is so strange. I feel, like, actual hope for the first time in months.”

“Do you think your–”

Will bites his sentence off immediately, his cheekbones burning red.

Robin eyes him, confused. The flame’s still alive, but wavering. “Do I think my…?”

“It’s nothing.”

Robin sniffs. “It doesn’t quite feel like nothing, Byers.”

“I was just…” He clears his throat, slumps against the wall. His eyes stay glued to the sky. “I just didn’t know…”

Robin also doesn’t know. She can’t, not with only having fragmented sentences and indecipherable body language to go off of, seeing as Will has fully morphed into Jonathan in the span of a single social blunder.

“You can say it, whatever it is,” Robin assures. She’s heard enough from Steve and Dustin to know that Will can have a bit of a smartass streak, so she’s fully expecting to be dragged through the mud for her mussed hair or penchant for long-winded tangents. That, or if her suspicions about Will are wrong, maybe he’ll be like all of his other friends that think she and Steve are secretly dating. Just yesterday, Dustin had pulled her aside and asked why she and Steve didn’t just announce their ongoing torrid love affair in front of their friends and family already, just to clear the air for everyone involved.

Will hesitates. He catches her eyes and studies her face.

His tone is tentative, nervous. It sounds like hers from a few years ago, echoing in the men’s restroom at Starcourt’s movie theatre.

“I just didn’t know if you were playing the music for your–ah…your friend? Your…Vickie?” He cringes after the last sentence clunks out of his mouth, his hands sliding out of his jacket pockets and onto his knees. “Wait, no, sorry, I meant, like–”

Robin grins. “My Vickie?”

“Or whatever,” Will says from between his hunched shoulders. Even in the dark of the night, she can see red coloring his ears. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it in any way–”

Robin shakes her head. “Will. It’s fine. Vickie is…We’re…” The memories that once brought her comfort make barbs of fear spring to life in her chest. All the teasing and flirting and covert hand holding of the past just remind her that Vickie is across town, holed up in the hospital. It taunts her, reminds her that they’ve only had one quick, hurried kiss that she couldn’t even properly enjoy, because Robin had been so thoroughly stuck in the middle of a ramble trying to explain herself and her feelings that Vickie had grabbed her cheeks, pulled her close, and jammed their mouths together. Which, yes, did get the point across quite nicely, but also, it managed to stun Robin into oblivion.

And it was all right before Vickie had left for her shift in the ICU. The shift that had now stretched from twelve hours to three weeks and counting.

“I miss her,” Robin finally says. Her heart clenches, and her gaze focuses on the dead trees a few yards away. “I don’t know if she’ll ever turn the radio on. The station’s been silent for weeks, of course, but a part of me hopes that if Steve and I keep it up, maybe one day, she’ll turn it on and hear my voice, and she’ll know I’m okay.”

And maybe I can find a way to hear her voice again, too.

Will’s fingers curl against his thighs. “I’m so sorry, Robin.”

Robin waves him off. “I trust you, Byers. I would just appreciate some discretion in not blabbing to all your little friends. I’ve already sworn Steve to secrecy, and I don’t want to have to repeat the ritual with you.”

“No, not that. I mean, thank you for telling me, of course. But I meant…” Will looks over and shrugs. “It hurts being apart like that. I’m sorry you’re going through it.”

So, the pinching in Robin’s heart intensifies to a full on twist that nearly makes her slide against the wall and burst into tears, but it’s fine, really. She manages with a single sniff and a forearm swiped across her nose before she decides, what the hell, he’s already clocked me–what’s one more secret between maybe-friends?

“Thank you, Byers,” she says. Then, before she can stop her twitchy, nervous hands, she reaches out and awkwardly pats his shoulder. “Um, just based on how you were talking, do you, maybe, have anyone like that?”

Will immediately stiffens under her hand. She can feel the fear make his bones ram-rod straight, his muscles tense, his eyes go wide.

Robin’s non-specific pronoun was very intentional.

“Anyone like…?”

“Like Vickie?” Robin pins him with her gaze. “Like ‘your Vickie?’”

Eyes blown wide, Will watches her.

Robin realizes she’s still patting his arm in a mechanical rhythm. She pulls it away, wincing in apology.

“You don’t have to, of course–”

“Can you–” Will starts at the same time. He clears his throat once Robin stops talking, like he has something he can’t quite swallow past.

“Can I…?” Robin trails off.

Will’s eyes dart to hers again and lock onto her gaze. “Can you tell?” he asks in a still, quiet whisper.

He looks afraid.

Now, the thing is, Robin has had her suspicions. She’s not exactly been in the position to test whether gaydar is a real thing or not, but in her few interactions with Will, and with the snippets of him she’s gleaned from friends and family, she had thought that there was, perhaps, something there. There were plenty of students in the Hawkins school system in 1983 that were obscenely comfortable throwing around slurs to describe the missing twelve-year old and his loner older brother, but Robin couldn’t lend credence to those, of course. People just called anybody they didn’t like a queer and moved on.

But she remembers, after Starcourt, Dustin complaining that Will still wasn’t interested in dating like the rest of them. Their group could be going on quadruple dates, but nooo, Will was single, and no matter how many hot girls from their class Dustin pointed out as potential dates, Will declined. He wasn’t interested.

Which, yeah, is a big one. But after he, Mike, El, and Jonathan rolled into town in a pizza van a few years ago, Robin began to notice when his gaze would linger on others for too long, when he turned away, and who those looks were directed towards. A few months after that, Dustin was still complaining that Will wasn’t interested in dating, which was a weird fucking thing to be worried about after the world almost ended, but that was Dustin for you.

Robin’s never probed, though, because, quite frankly, it’s none of her business.

Until tonight, that is. Him asking about Vickie has made her feel like two conversations have been happening at once: the one at surface-level and the implicit one where he’s asking is it the same for you, too?

At a loss for words, Robin simply shrugs. She offers her most sincere, solace-offering smile. “I think it’s more of a like recognizes like thing, if it makes you feel any better. I mean, Dustin still thinks Steve and I are secretly dating. Actually,” she tilts her head to the side, “come to think of it, a lot of people think he and I are dating.”

“It’s so obvious you’re not, though,” Will counters.

Robin shoots him a knowing look, like: bingo.

Some of the tension slips out of Will’s posture. He scrubs a hand over his face. “Oh, thank God it’s only you and Jonathan.”

“Well, Jonathan makes sense.” Robin’s hands are in her pockets again, but she’s stopped picking at her thumb’s skin. “You know, not to rehash the whole he cares about you a lot because you’re his little brother thing.”

“Right.”

Unless something truly awful has occurred between the two manchildren she left in charge, Robin imagines they must be past several songs now.

“So,” she tries again, “since we both have a, uh, mutual understanding and plan to be as discrete as possible about such matters–”

Will quickly draws a cross over his heart. Cross my heart, hope to die.

“–do you care to share your answer to my question?”

Red rushes into Will’s face again. “If I have anyone? Like Vickie?”

Robin nods, studying his face. Now that they’ve all but said hello, fellow homosexual, her curiosity has turned into something more playful between friends. It’s that feeling she and Will haven’t gotten at the usual lunchroom talks: right now, there’s no having to make up a name for a crush and trying your best not to think about who you actually mean. Plus, she’s feeling that spark of hope! She feels a little fun and silly, and what’s one secret between two gay kids in the apocalypse?

Besides, he knows about Vickie. It’s only fair, she thinks, that she gets to know his crush-slash-maybe-boyfriend.

“Yeah. Like Vickie,” Robin repeats, a shit-eating grin pulling up the corners of her mouth.

Will hesitates, clearly stuck between two warring impulses. In all fairness, it’s how Robin felt the first time she came to Steve to tell him about an actual crush; there’s the fear of not deserving this for what it is and not wanting to be more open than you already are, but also, when does it get to be your turn, dammit?

“There is. Someone.” Will screws his jaw back up again as soon as the words leave his mouth,.

“O-kay,” Robin says, excitement making her heart pitter-patter in her chest like a puppy’s paws on hardwood floors. Before she can stop herself, her hands are back out of her pockets, and she’s rubbing them together, like she’s some big, evil, gay matchmaker. “And is this someone we both know?”

Will’s voice is so, so small when he says, “Yes.”

Robin leans in closer, looking up through her eyelashes, trying to catch Will’s gaze as he keeps it, decidedly, stuck on the toes of his sneakers. “I see.”

Will’s fingers drum on his knees. He opens his mouth, closes it again.

“So, you’re just gonna leave me hanging?” she teases.

“It’s not important.”

“I think it is! Besides, you know about Vickie.”

Will says nothing.

“If you don’t tell me, I’m going to start saying names until I land on the right one,” she threatens.

This causes Will to snap his eyes back up to hers. “Robin, I really don’t think–”

“Lucas,” she tries.

Will hesitates but doesn’t give much else. Robin decidedly translates it as would, if his interests didn’t lie elsewhere.

“Dustin,” she tries again.

“Robin–”

“Steve.”

“Ew.”

“Mike?”

Bingo.

Will opens and closes his mouth, and his face is beet red, and suddenly, it all makes so much sense. Robin runs through the rolodex of memories in her mind, all the moments she saw Will’s gaze resting on Mike, earnest and loving and loyal. How he tore it away whenever Mike turned to El, grabbed her hand, kissed her forehead.

But they’re broken up now. And Mike is single. And Will is single. And–

“Robin, no–”

“Ohmygod,” Robin breathes out. She puts a hand to her cheek, mouth gaping. “It makes so much sense.”

“Please please please don’t be weird about this,” Will begs. He’s now turned to face her. His hands curl up to his stomach just like hers do when she gets nervous, and he begins fidgeting, messing with his fingers. “It’s just a stupid crush, and it’ll go away–”

“A years-long crush? That’s just gonna go away like that?” She snaps for emphasis.

Will looks almost physically pained. “It’s bound to, right?”

The memories blow through her mind again with full force. She tries to remember how Mike acted with El, if he ever screamed I’m secretly attracted to men at all with his actions. She’d never concerned herself much with the younger Wheelers, though, and the most she can come up with for whatever Mike Wheeler feels towards the same sex is a big, burning question mark.

“But–but what if he feels the same?” Robin counters. “I mean, I thought Vickie was straight for like, the longest time, and it took her literally kissing me to realize she wasn’t, and what if Mike just needs that? Just a little push?” “A push?” Will stammers.

“The radio!” Robin bursts out. She turns to face Will, hands held out. “The radio, Byers!”

Will looks like he’s stuck between two states, one of confusion and horror, one of excitement and curiosity.

But mostly, his features just scream: HELP.

“We use the radio,” Robin explains, the words finally catching up with the thoughts in her brain. “I can be your wingman! The music’s already affecting everybody’s mood, like you said, so if I can play the right songs on the air, and you get Mike to listen to them, then maybe you’ll have, like, a moment–”

Will swallows. “But what if he doesn’t…”

Mike’s been glued to Will since all this supernatural nonsense started up again, that much Robin knows is true. She’s going to begin her monitoring of the middle Wheeler immediately following this conversation, just to observe him in the wild.

Plus, looking at Will, she wants this poor kid to be happy, to have one thing go right for him for once.

“You don’t know if you don’t try,” Robin says. She shrugs, a smile stretching across her face. “I mean, regardless, he’s always by your side, so as long as you have the radio on, he’ll hear it.”

Will rolls his eyes at that, but he seems to have calmed down and loosened up a bit. He rubs a hand over his face again before he lets out a short, “Fine.”

“Yes!” Robin squeals, clapping her hands together. Once she stops bouncing up and down, she holds her pinkie out. “C’mon, swear on it.”

“What is there to even swear on?”

“Just do it.”

With a great sigh that lets her know that, yes, this is a big inconvenience for him, actually, Will holds his own pinkie out, and they hook their fingers together.

“I solemnly swear,” Robin begins, “that I will never play ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ again, lest I incur the wrath of Jonathan Byers upon myself.”

Will lets out a snort.

“Instead of playing that song, I will strive to use my new disc jockey skills to bring about romantic bliss for the one person left in this town who really deserves a happy ending.”

Will clears his throat. He looks like he’s ready to cry. “And, um, what am I swearing?”

“You, younger Byers,” Robin says, “are swearing that you will be your truest self and not neglect your hard-won feelings, and that you will try to believe in a world where the boy you love loves you back. In the gay way, of course,” she adds.

“Of course,” Will sighs. “Well, then, I swear.”

Robin shakes their pinkies together, and it’s not a moment too soon as the back door swings open to reveal Jonathan, a stern look on his face.

“Are you guys done yet?” he grouses. “Because I’m going to kill Steve if I have to hear about the merits of Bruce Springsteen one more time.”

Robin and Will break their pinkies apart, and they both burst into laughter.

Chapter Text

***

TRACK 2: Time After Time

***

ROBIN: Happy nine o’clock, ladies and gentlemen of Hawkins!

STEVE: Otherwise known to our dear military overlords as twenty-one o’clock.

ROBIN: But we’re not focusing on that today. Right, Dingus?

STEVE: [whispering] Can you really not think of a new nickname for me?

ROBIN: [deep sigh] Well, regardless if you’re a dingus, or a recovering band kid such as myself – hello, nice to meet you – you’re sure to love this next track.

STEVE: Some might even call it a timely classic.

ROBIN: Ha-ha.

STEVE: Now, we appreciate the requests you all have submitted to us – reminder, we have a request box outside the studio – and, while we’ve been mixing those in with mine and my sidekick’s music choices, this next one was a special order put in by resident thorn in my side, Robin.

ROBIN: Thanks. You’re just full of joy today, Harrington.

STEVE: You’re welcome!

ROBIN: [deep breath] Anyway, yes, I used to look with scorn upon this song. But, the times they are a-changin’, I guess, and given the current circumstances of – well, everything, I’ve done some reevaluating, and you know what, Steve?

STEVE: What’s that?

ROBIN: Sometimes, a cheesy love ballad is just what you need to get you through the end of the world.

STEVE: Couldn’t agree more!

ROBIN: So without further ado, starting off tonight’s set, we have Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”!

[the music begins]

***

“So,” Steve says, slipping the headphones around his neck.

Robin slides hers down, too. She schools her features and reminds herself to act casual. “So…?”

Steve leans forward, one finger jammed onto the top of the list: there’s Robin’s name, right next to “Time After Time.” “Cyndi Lauper, Rob?”

She shrugs. “What’s wrong with Miss Lauper?”

“Um, nothing that I can think of? What’s wrong with you?”

“Touchy today, I see,” Robin notes, then quickly moves to put the headphones back over her ears. She wants to hum along and simply enjoy her time working the station this evening. In just the few days they’ve been doing this, they’ve gotten amazing feedback (even from the military goons haunting town, no less), and she and Steve have slipped into an easy rhythm. They take turns ordering the songs and picking requests to play, fetching CDs from the cabinet (all drawers now pried open), and making sure the equipment is kept in check. It’s been relaxing and fun, one small oasis of sanity in the midst of a complete meltdown of reality.

Robin also has her own unvoiced motivations, of course, but that is besides the point.

(Also, for the record, she had come around to Cyndi Lauper on this one issue. The other night, plagued by a bout of insomnia and her mind caught in an eddy of anxiety, trying to come up with the perfect song for Will to have his moment with Mike, she’d wandered in here, made sure the broadcast was turned off, and cycled through several CDs. She flicked through their sacred collection, stumbled across Cyndi Lauper, and within minutes, there she was, headphones on, hand pressed over her mouth to quiet her own sobs. All she could think about was Vickie so far away, how they were going so slow it felt like they were going backwards. When would she get to tell Vickie that if she’s lost, she could look, and she will find her?)

She doesn’t voice any of this, though, and Steve isn’t buying her silence. He looks at her another long moment before shaking his head and turning back to the sound panel. “I’m just confused.”

“About?”

“You’ve been giving out total Jonathan recommendations and now you’re, like, suddenly all into Cyndi Lauper.”

“It’s one song, Steve.”

“I just…” he sighs, eyes glancing at the sound panel. She realizes he’s making sure their mic is off when he leans over and says, “Is this about Vickie?”

Which, okay. Sure, Harrington–good eye, Robin does, in fact, miss her maybe-girlfriend?

But also, how dare he.

She’s not particularly thrilled to have to dive into any of those deep pockets of emotion she prefers to avoid. It really fuels her anxiety, and she’d rather be wound up over the coffee tasting weird or the potential destruction of all mankind than, you know, her love life, or the complete absence thereof. Then again, this diverts any attention away from Will, and by extension Mike, who are the real targets of this particular needle drop.

So, Robin Buckley swallows her pride, and she nods. Admits that, ah, yes, maybe it is an unending pain to be apart from those that you love.

Steve nods solemnly, a comforting hand patting her shoulder. “We’re all gonna make it through this, okay? And you’ll see her again.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yeah, well, I also didn't know what monster-slash-alien flesh tasted like, once upon a time, but here we are.”

Robin scoffs. He can be such a dork, and he really could get on her nerves sometimes, but she had to admit: Steve was a dime in a dozen. He’s the absolute last person on this earth she would have ever imagined being friends with, but in the end, she wouldn’t have it any other way.

And then, there’s a calm, quiet knock at the door.

“Well, at least that rules out Jonathan as our next unexpected guest,” Steve remarks. “He’d have the door off the hinges by now if it was him.”

Robin frowns, glancing down at the CD player. There’s still two minutes left to go.

Apart from Jonathan’s outburst their first night, they haven’t had any more in-person complaints, and they’d pretty much agreed that Jonathan was an anomaly for understandable reasons. Besides, apart from the reasons that a younger, more naive Robin had for disliking such a sappy love ballad, there isn’t anything inherently offensive in the song.

They share a glance, shrug, and both yell in unison, “Come in!”

The door slowly creaks open to reveal El. She’s half-covered by the door, one brown eye peeking around it.

Robin feels her eyes unintentionally go wide. Her first meeting with El involved Jonathan prying open her shin with a knife stolen from an Orange Julius, and since then, she hasn’t quite known how to approach the girl. How do you engage in polite small talk when you’ve watched a piece of the Mind Flayer worm its way inside the other’s leg?

If Robin’s being completely honest, she’s just never been sure how to handle her, or Mike and Will, for that matter. She’s at least spent time bonding over the horrors of Hawkins with Lucas, Dustin, and Max, but the remaining half of their friend group? Robin is completely lost.

“Oh, hello there!” She says it like she’s talking to a stray cat she found in an alleyway, which is not the vibe she wants at all, which, in turn, makes her wince.

“Hi,” El says, voice quiet and intent.

“Wanna come in?” Steve queries, nodding to the door. “You don’t have to stay out there.”

El carefully steps inside, then clicks the door shut behind her. She calmly walks to the single chair sitting in front of Steve and Robin’s makeshift booth and perches herself on the edge, hands immediately falling into her lap. She’s not in the wetsuit she’s been wearing to search the Upside Down, but her hair is damp; she must’ve just come out of another session of looking for Vecna.

Several beats of silence pass, each one counted off by the quick, soft fwicks of the CD rotating in the player.

Steve catches Robin’s eyes and shrugs.

Robin clears her throat and leans forward, momentarily feeling like a teacher speaking to a parent at a conference. “So–”

“Please do not play this song again,” El says.

Steve’s brows scrunch together, his lips slightly parted. He looks like a fish out of water.

Which, honestly, is about how Robin feels, too. Her and Steve’s strange, interconnecting web of friends and family sure have strange relationships to music, given that they are now on song number two that they’ve been told should never be played again.

“Uh,” Steve intelligently responds.

Robin wisely adds, “Oh.”

El nods thoughtfully, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. Several moments of silence pass before she politely says, “Thank you.”

Then, she stands up to walk out the door.

“Wait a second, El–”

El turns around. Robin’s right in front of her, her hands curled up in front of her and fidgeting, fingers wringing against each other in earnest.

“Yes?”

Robin can’t recall ever having an actual conversation with El, apart from the occasional hello, goodbye, or that one time she asked her to break open the file cabinets that she accidentally strong-armed herself into anyway. She feels like she owes it to El to try, though. “Um–sorry. Is there a reason?”

El dips her chin down, eyebrows raised. “For?”

Robin hooks her thumb over her shoulder. “For not liking the song? We won’t play it again, I swear, but I’m just a bit confused.”

El nods sagely, like this is a fair request on Robin’s part. “Wrong memories.”

Fair or not, Robin feels utterly lost.

“Mike and Max,” El adds in explanation.

Robin feels like she has more questions than answers, now, but given that El’s being even less talkative than usual, Robin doesn’t want to unintentionally wade into another minefield of trauma like she had with the Byers brothers. No, she might be missing Vickie so badly it converted her to Cyndi Lauper, but this is not a hill she’s willing to die on.

“Oh. Okay,” Robin says with a slow nod. “I see. I think?”

El offers a small, sad smile.

Blinking a couple of times, Robin nods to the door. “Have you requested anything yet?”

A light flush crosses El’s cheeks. “I did. ‘Material Girl,’ by Madonna.”

Robin shoots her a quick grin. “Cool. Cool, we’ll make sure it gets played tonight.”

Something sparks in El’s eyes, and her smile morphs from a pleasant necessity to an undeniable expression of happiness.

“Thank you, Robin,” she says, and as she slips back through the door, softly clicking it shut, Robin thinks, ohmygod, you know my name?

As she sits back down, she sees only thirty seconds remain of the track. They’ll be moving on to their first request, “Separate Ways,” next, but she scratches a line right below it, drawing an arrow to the margins where she pencils in “Material Girl.”

“So,” Steve starts, “do you, like, actually know what she was talking about, or…?”

“Not really, but who am I to deny someone the freedom to exist without Cyndi Lauper?” She shrugs, popping open the CD’s case, ready to stuff it in the same desk drawer they hid “Should I Stay or Should I Go?” in.

***

They very quickly learn what El meant by wrong memories and Mike and Max, emphasis on Mike.

Robin and Steve have been doing this whole disc jockey thing for a few days, but Robin already believes there’s a spectrum of unwanted guests and the entrances they decide to make. On one extreme is Jonathan, slamming the door open looking like hell warmed over, ready to tell them to both fuck off, and on the other extreme is El, with her gentle, quiet movements and requests thoughtfully expressed.

Mike exists on the Jonathan side of the spectrum. Or, at least, Robin feels like he does when the door slams open so hard that it immediately bounces back and hits the beanpole’s silhouette in the process, causing him to let out a sharp curse.

“Little Wheeler, hello!” Robin says in what she hopes is a nonchalant tone. “Aren’t you supposed to be hanging out with Will?”

Mike narrows his eyes. “How would you know?”

“C’mon, dude,” Steve scoffs. “Everybody knows you guys spend all your free time together.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Steve holds his hands up in a display of innocence. “It doesn’t have to mean anything! Can’t a guy hang out with his best friend without it being weird?”

Robin glances between the two before deciding she needs to intervene immediately. “That’s besides the point, Wheeler. We’re just–you know, curious as to why you’re here.”

“And not with Will,” Steve adds.

Robin pinches the bridge of her nose.

Meanwhile, Mike has a scowl on his face that makes him look like the Grinch.

“I don’t have to answer that,” he finally says after a standoff of several long, tense seconds. He doesn’t have a gun, but it still makes Robin feel a bit like she and Steve are being held up.

The guitar of “Separate Ways” is the only noise between the three of them. It echoes down the hallway and fizzes from Robin and Steve’s headphones.

Robin slants an eyebrow up at Mike.

“Ugh, fine,” Mike grouses, stepping into the room and shutting the door behind him. He shuffles over to the chair El was in no less than five minutes ago, shoulders hunched, and flops into it. Despite being taller than both of them, he’s sunk so low in the chair that this eyes are at the same height as their chins. “I need to talk to you guys.”

“About…?”

Mike bites the inside of his cheek. He whips his head around to look out the windows, and the soft yellow light of the desk lamp pools in the hollow of his cheek.

Steve clears his throat. “Listen, we’ve got, like, two minutes before the next song’s up, so unless you want this to be live on the air–”

“Could you please not play that song again?” Steve grabs at his chest in a lackluster imitation of what Robin would imagine is a Southern churchlady grasping at her pearls. “Journey? I can’t play Journey in my own place of employment?”

“Not so much fun when your request gets shot down,” Robin mutters under her breath, then, sighing, slumps in her chair as well. “Fine, I guess we can add it to the list of songs that inflict psychic damage upon our friends and family–”

“No, not this one. I don’t give a shit about this one,” Mike clarifies. He ticks his head to the side. “I meant the previous one.”

“‘Time After Time?’” Robin scrunches her face up, confused.

Mike nods, a no, duh look on his face.

“Oh, thank God,” Steve sighs, shoulders relaxing.

Robin lightly smacks his arm, then turns her attention back to Mike. She tries to embody the somewhat-sauve, holier-than-thou customer service persona she once deployed against him while working at Scoops Ahoy. “Don’t worry, little Wheeler, it’s already on the list. Someone else beat you to it.”

Concern injects itself into Mike’s features then: his eyes widen, his posture goes ramrod straight, and he leans forward, tense and serious. “Wait, who? Was it Will?”

“Again with Will,” Steve points out.

Mike rolls his eyes. “You said it shouldn’t be weird for guys to hang out with their best friends!” “And that’s what I implied, but you were the one that made it weird.”

Robin presses her fingers to her temples. A headache is already blooming behind her eyes, and she doesn’t foresee it stopping anytime soon.

“What do you mean weird?” Mike scoffs. “You’re the one making this weird. You dated my sister for, like, a year.”

“Okay, well,” Steve starts, “I just think you’re deflecting.”

“Bullshi–”

The CD spins to a stop.

Silence crackles from the pair of headphones on the desk.

Robin quickly springs into action, slipping a pair over her ears, flicking the mic on, fingers deftly clicking “Separate Ways” out of place and popping in “Material Girl” instead.

Her bump into it is brief, chipper, and coded enough for El to know it’s for her and no one else, and once the music begins, she tears the headphones off, glares Mike in the eye, and says, “It was El.”

Red floods Mike’s cheeks. It makes him look downright ashamed. “Oh.”

“Wait,” Steve holds a hand out, pointing at the door. “So, El tells us not to play the song.” He points to Mike. “Then you come here saying the same thing.”

Mike glares at him.

“And you two used to date.”

“What, exactly, are you getting at, Steve?” Robin whispers out of the corner of her mouth.

Mike’s eyes have gone hard. He looks like he could be the one that can blow stuff up with his mind.

“I’m just saying that there’s a story here.” Steve concludes.

Robin would cut this line of reasoning off where it stands if it weren’t for the fact that, well, Steve is right. Besides, this could be useful information for fine-tuning her assistance to Will. She’s already oh-for-one, and she’d prefer to not make any more missteps.

So it is with great and utter nerve and an extreme lack of tact that Robin says, “Yeah, what’s the story here?”

“It doesn’t matter anymore!” Mike says, nose scrunched up. “Besides, why do you two care so much?”

“We’re kind of stuck in this radio station for the foreseeable future. We’re bored, and gossip’s the only thing keeping the excitement up around here,” Steve responds.

Mike slides an eyebrow up. “The threat of the end of the world isn’t exciting enough for you?”

Steve waves a hand. “That’s small potatoes, at this point.”

“Besides!” Robin cuts in, clearing her throat, determined to reign this back in, dammit. “It’s good to get to know each other! And you can’t hide from me for too long, Wheeler. In case you don’t remember the finer details, your sister and I were the ones to finagle the entire sordid tale of Henry Creel from his father by sneaking our way through a long-term care facility.” She points a finger at him. “I have journalistic chops.”

“This is stupid,” Mike concludes, throwing himself out of the chair and stomping to the door. “I just don’t like the song, and please don’t play it again.”

“El already made sure of that, and she was a lot nicer about it, too,” Robin responds, the last part of her sentence tapering off the farther Mike gets from them.

“Say hi to Will for us!” Steve calls after him.

They’re both answered by the slamming of the door.

***

As the evening goes on, Steve and Robin forego the regular, snappy bumps between songs that they’d been doing. They had, unfortunately, recognized that the music tends to flow better if they aren’t interrupting the broadcast after each song to stroke their own egos, even if they are just trying to hone their craft. Everything in moderation, or whatever.

But also, they have an important matter to dissect. Robin especially does, since this story about Mike, El, and “Time After Time” could be of the utmost importance to her understanding of Mike, Will, and whatever ways she can manipulate the airwaves to bring them together.

“It had to be their song, right?” Steve posits.

Robin taps her chin with a piece of chalk, deep in thought. They had wheeled out the old dusty blackboard that was pushed against the back wall of their studio and are now trying to map out what they know of this situation. “I feel like a couple declaring a song to be ‘theirs’ is personal, though. Like, super personal and embarrassing. And nobody’s going to know if it was your song or not if you don’t own up to it.”

She scratches a line through the hastily scratched their song on the blackboard. It leaves a gap in between drunk and committed a crime–arson maybe??

“So, what, you think it’s a specific memory?”

Robin scans the list as the CD player clicks to the next disc. After confirming that the multidisc player wouldn’t completely shred their non-renewable CD supply, they’re fine to just let it run. “Definitely. And it has to be super embarrassing for Mike, because he was really worked up about it.”

And really concerned about Will’s reaction to it, too, she silently adds to herself.

Steve has been leaning against the front of the desk, but now he pulls away, one hand running through the back of his hair. “I mean, isn’t that just how he acts? He was always really loud about things he didn’t like whenever I was over to see Nance. And El’s not exactly one to blow her shit unless she really thinks it’s worth it.”

What Robin wants to say is: HE MIGHT BE IN LOVE WITH WILL, DINGUS, AND I NEED TO MAKE SURE THEY END UP TOGETHER!

But Robin made a solemn oath to be as discrete and discretionary as possible, so she has to suffice with, “I just think it was strange the way he acted.” She underscores her point, underlining the final item on their hasty blackboard list: romantic memory now overshadowed by angst.

Steve tilts his head to the side, considering. “Maybe? But I also think you just have a bias towards dramatics.”

“Trust me, Steve,” she taps her temple with the chalk. “When it comes to matters of love, I know.”

“You didn’t even know Vickie was into girls until she kissed y–”

The door opens, and Robin nearly snaps her chalk in half.

Steve, thankfully, has snapped his jaw shut and is already standing up, hands on hips. “Hey, have any of you little shits ever heard of knocking?”

“Sorry?”

A flood of relief hits Robin’s bones the second she recognizes Will’s voice, and she nearly slumps against the board. As Will fully enters the room, pulling the door shut behind him, Robin tugs at Steve’s arm to try and deactivate his no-nonsense mode. “Steve, it’s fine.”

“It’s actually not fine, Rob.” Steve gives her a no, duh look eerily similar to Mike’s from earlier. “Nobody in this building respects a closed door and private conversations, apparently.”

“No, Steve, it’s–” Robin sighs, pinching her nose. Her brain is moving too fast, trying to determine the calculus of what telling Steve that Will knows about her and Vickie means for everything else, namely: will this somehow make him figure out Will and his feelings towards Mike?

Unfortunately, the decision is carried swiftly out of her hands when Will, eyes wide with concern, assures Steve, “Sorry, were you guys talking about Vickie? Because Robin told me, so, like…I get it. I won’t tell anyone, either,” he adds hastily at the end, as if ito defuse Steve further.

Robin purses her lips, closes her eyes, and tries to keep her nails from instinctively picking at the skin of her thumb.

The first few moments are fine, truthfully. Steve’s mouth parts, and he nods slowly, brow furrowing.

Will’s face is stuck screwed into a sheepish grin. It screams I’m a good guy, I swear!

Robin tries to keep her breaths even and she thinks that maybe, maybe this is fine. They can all just move on from this, and she’ll find the right song for Mike and Will through trial and error, and nobody has to reveal anything about themselves that they don’t want to!

Suddenly, Steve sticks his hand out and gives a friendly, if awkward pat to Will’s shoulder. “All good, Byers. Just…yeah, don’t go blabbing it to your little friends. Hey, Rob, one question?” He swivels towards her and hooks his thumb over his shoulder at Will. “Why’d you tell one of the kids about this?”

Robin and Will’s eyes both grow wide at the same time. Their gazes catch against each other, and while they do try and have some kind of silent conversation, it’s downright useless. She might as well be speaking French and Will Cantonese.

“W-why does it matter?” Robin finally manages around a lump that’s suddenly materialized in her throat.

“I mean, it’s your prerogative,” Steve adds, holding his hands up. “It’s not like you can’t, I’m just confused, is all. You haven’t even told Nancy, but you told Will? Have you two even had a conversation before you told him you’re–you know–”

“A lesbian?” Robin offers.

Steve nods.

“I’m really sorry, I should go–” Will starts, but Steve and Robin whip around to him at the same time.

“Please don’t!” Robin cries.

“Nah, man, might as well stay,” Steve says.

Will looks downright uncomfortable. “It–It wasn’t anything serious. It just came up, and I asked a question I shouldn’t have, so Robin felt like she had to tell me–”

Well, now, this is just unacceptable. Robin shoots him an incredulous look. “No, no, no, we’re not doing any more of this martyr complex crap! And what happened to you swearing to be your truest self and to neglect your feelings?”

Will’s ears turn pink, and from her side, Steve says, “Wait, you guys swore? Like with pinkies, and everything?”

Shoving her hands into her hair, Robin thinks this must be punishment for trying to meddle in others’ affairs.

Which is made all the more apparent by Will suddenly pointing a finger at Robin and saying, “She made me.”

“Okay, not cool, Byers!” she whines.

“Hey, are you replacing me with Will? Will? He’s, like, a child.”

“I’m seventeen!” Will says at the same time Robin points out, “You’re close friends with Dustin!”

“It’s just,” Steve begins, ticking things off of his fingers, “first, you’re apparently totally cool with telling him this deep and personal thing about you that took you, what, months and surviving a secret Russian base for you to trust me enough to tell me? And now I find out you guys are making pinkie swears, which, come one–that’s one of our things–”

“Everyone pinkie swears,” Robin groans from behind her hands.

Steve holds his hands up, his precisely two pieces of evidence laid out before him. “I’m just confused, that's all.”

“And clearly insecure,” Will snipes under his breath.

Robin takes a deep, clarifying breath, trying to reset her nervous system and, if possible, this entire interaction. Realistically, she needs days to analyze what the best path forward would be for walking the line between Will’s gay and I’m helping him get the boy of his dreams and Steve can’t know a fucking thing.

“Steve,” she finally says, addressing him first. “It doesn’t matter how Will knows. I told him, he knows, now can we please move on?”

Steve sniffs, considering. “I mean, sure. But do I get one guess for how this transpired?”

Robin doesn’t miss Will’s eye roll from the corner of her vision. She nearly joins him before saying, “Sure. Why not?”

Eyes flicking between her and Will, Steve clicks his tongue and says, “Is it because of him and Mike?”

“Steve–!” Robin squeaks at the same time Will says, dumbfounded, “What the hell?”

A grin snaps across Steve’s features. “So I was right!”

Will, horrified, looks at Robin, his cheeks burning bright red now. “I thought you said only people like us can tell when someone is, you know, like us!”

“It’s not a damn superpower!” Robin whines. She stumbles over to the chair in front of the desk and puts her head in her hands. “And he wouldn’t know if you didn’t react like that.”

“Or,” Steve offers, “sometimes, I can be observant.”

Will’s hand moves to the back of his neck, usually a sign that something from the Upside Down is about to whammy them, but instead, he nervously begins to scratch at the nape of his neck. The redness in his face has not abated in the slightest. “Just…God, can you promise not to tell anyone?”

“I’ve kept Robin’s secret for years.” He holds out his pinkie and flexes it up and down. “That’s the power of a swear, my good friend.”

“I,” Robin finally says, feeling as if her soul is being sucked up through a bendy straw, “am so sorry, Will.”

With a forceful sigh, Will leans against the wall, hands shoving into his jacket. The tan sleeves bunch around his wrist where his hands disappear into his pockets. “It’s fine, I guess. Just as long as he doesn’t tell anybody.”

“I can attest to his excellent secret-keeping skills, actually.”

“And I’m sure Jonathan knows, right?” Steve asks.

Will closes his eyes and nods.

“Well, if Jonathan can be good at keeping your secret, then I can be just as good. Possibly even better.”

Robin gives Steve a withering glare. “This isn’t about you.”

“Ok, well, fair,” Steve concedes. “But neither of you have told me why you guys traded secrets.”

Will begins to slowly inch his way towards the door. “You know, I don’t even remember why I stopped by. I can just come by another time–”

Robin juts a finger at him, keeping her eyes locked on Steve. “You’re not going anywhere, Byers. And as for you, Harrington, need I remind you: it’s none of your business!”

“But you swore, Robin. You swore.”

Throwing her head back with a groan, Robin tries to focus on the blown-out fluorescent rods now uselessly bolted into the ceiling.

Will joins in with a sigh before finally saying, “Okay, fine, God, we’ll tell you.”

Robin tilts her eyes down, just barely able to catch Will’s gaze. “Are you positive you want him involved?”

“He’s not gonna leave us alone unless we tell him, clearly.”

For a moment, Robin considers giving Will the full disclaimer, that having Steve in on the secret means that he’ll be subjected to unsolicited romantic advice and opinions. Though, maybe that was just a function of she and Steve both being attracted to women; she’d like to think he’ll perhaps be less involved with Will considering the few years’ age difference and the fact Will is attracted to men, but, hey, she wouldn’t put it past Steve Harrington to suddenly stumble into a bi-awakening and decide Will deserves to partake of his wealth of knowledge in all matters of romance, love, and dating.

Steve, meanwhile, looks all too thrilled to be let in on the secret.

In the span of a week, the number of people who know about Will has tripled, and Robin can’t help but feel like this is all her fault.

“Enter at your own risk, then,” Robin sighs. She slumps back in the chair, resting her elbow on one of its arms. Her head droops against her hand, and she debates the merits of taking a fistful of ibuprofen or courting trouble with drinking a couple cups of coffee this late at night to halt the pounding behind her eyes.

Will, thankfully, keeps things brief. “Robin’s helping me since she knows what it’s like. She offered to put certain songs into your rotation and to let me know when they’d play so I could…” he clears his throat, chews on his next words. “So that I could…if I was hanging out with Mike…”

A metaphorical lightbulb dings to life about Steve’s head; the fluorescents, unfortunately, remain broken, useless things. “Ah, okay. Have a moment.”

“Bingo,” Robin deadpans.

A few beats of silence pass, with only the sound of one CD being exchanged for another filling the space.

“Wait,” Steve suddenly says, wheeling back to face Robin, hands planted on his hips. “Is that why you played ‘Time After Time?’ I knew you were being weird!”

Will snaps his fingers. “Wait, that’s why I came here!” He wheels to face Robin too. “You told me it’d be the first song, but I thought I’d made a mistake or something once I heard it was that.”

Oh, so on top of being an awful keeper of secrets, she’s also lousy at picking the right music for a confession of hormonal angst and undying love! The headache pulses once more behind her eyes, and Robin wilts further into the chair, eyes focusing on the smudged song lyrics still adorning the rubber of her shoes. “Yes, well, if it makes you feel any better, your prince charming and sister both stopped by on their own accord to tell me to never play it again.”

For a moment, she’s worried that any allusions to Mike and El in the same sentence might make everything categorically worse. Even though she’s a little bit older and wiser, Robin still feels like her heart is being dissected on a table before her very own eyes any time she thinks about Vickie having found somebody else at the hospital, somebody who’s actually there and not here. Ever full of surprises, though, Will instead lets out a snort of laughter, and he points to the blackboard. “Wait, is that what that’s all about?”

It is at this moment that Robin and Steve both remember the blackboard’s existence, and all the hasty scribbles that exist on it. Scribbles that they had put on it in an attempt to deduce what kind of sordid history existed between Mike, El, and “Time After Time.”

“Fucccckkkk,” Robin whines.

Steve immediately tries to go into damage control but fails spectacularly, namely because he says, “Hey, what else are we supposed to do around here? This was the first hint of gossip we’d heard in a weeks.”

Will approaches the board, avoiding Robin’s sprawled legs in the process. His eyes glance down the list that Robin and Steve’s active imaginations had cooked up, all the way from the hastily scratched out their song to the nigh implausible first concert together?

“Oh, my god.” He says it with a tone that lets Robin know his grin is wide and shit-eating.

“Robin said there was no way it was their song and presumptively took it off the list, as you can see,” Steve explains, approaching the board like a professor seeking to coax the correct answer out of his pupil. “But I still think that’s a more reasonable explanation than crime or a concert. And since you’re so closely tied up with both the people involved here, maybe you could clarify a couple of things for us…?”

Robin uses one of her sprawled legs to weakly kick at the back of Steve’s knee. He dodges, remaining laser-focused on the problem at hand.

Will scoffs. He turns to look at Robin and Steve, slants an eyebrow up, and says, “Are you sure you want to know? It’s not nearly as exciting as,” he glances back at the board and reads directly from it, “stuck in a time loop?”

“So, what, demogorgons exist but not time loops? Is that where we’re drawing the line?” Steve says.

Robin groans. “You might as well just end our misery now, Byers.”

To be fair, Will did warn them, and he was right: the answer is lackluster and mundane. Maybe cute, if Robin had had a fundamentally different life, experiences, and personality.

“It was the Snowball in eighth grade.”

Robin and Steve must both look confused trying to figure out which year that would be for him, because he clarifies, “Nineteen eighty-four.”

“Ah,” Robin says. It doesn’t matter which year it was: whatever corresponding dance Hawkins High was having to match the Snowball, Robin was decidedly not in attendance, but rather holed up in her room with a pile of movies from Family Video and a desperate desire to not think about Tammy Thompson dancing her way through the high school’s male population.

Steve snaps his fingers. “Wait a second–that’s the one I dropped Henderson off at!”

Will scrunches his nose up. “Wait, are you the reason his hair looked like that?”

“But anyway,” Robin cuts in, “the dance?”

To help formalize the final answer, Steve swipes an eraser over the blackboard, sending chalk dust clouding around the board, and hastily writes school dance across it as Will fills them in on the matter.

“Me, Mike, Dustin, Lucas, and Max all went. They started playing that song and everybody started pairing off: Lucas and Max, Dustin and Nancy–”

“Dustin and Nancy?” Steve squawks.

Will narrows his eyes at Steve in a look reminiscent of Jonathan, one that says, leave it alone, or I will bite.

“Sorry,” Steve coughs, then turns his focus intently on making sure that the s in school dance looks perfect.

“Anyway,” Will continues, “Mike didn’t have anyone to dance with and was just sitting there, but it turns out Hopper pulled some strings to let El go to the dance, so they danced together and kissed. The song had changed to ‘Every Breath You Take’ by then, though, so I’m not sure why they had such strong opinions about ‘Time After Time.’”

Robin replays the sentence in her head again, notices a gaping hole in the narrative. She jerks out of the chair so fast that she nearly gives herself whiplash. “And what were you doing, Byers?”

“I thought you just wanted to know about Mike and El,” Will needles.

“Yeah, we finally got our answer, Rob, what else is there?”

Robin takes a step closer to Will and pokes a finger in his face, eyes narrowed. “And where were you, Will Byers, when ‘Time After Time’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’ were playing in the middle school gym?”

His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. “Um, I was…dancing?”

“With whom?”

“I don’t remember! Just…some girl?” Will scrunches his brow up in remembrance, then adds, “I think she called me zombie boy?”

Something seizes in Robin’s chest. She sees the scenes playing out concurrently in her mind: her, curled up in a mound of blankets, eyes glued to Doctor Zhivago and stubbornly ignoring the feelings clawing at her chest; Will, swaying with a girl whose name he doesn’t even know, watching his crush fall head over heels for the new girl and wishing it was him.

She’s not sure which one hurts more. Maybe they just hurt the same.

“See? This is why I got involved!” Robin says, to both Steve and Will, and also no one in particular. Her hands have once again found their way into her hair, and she tugs. “That’s so sad! You deserve better than that! We deserve better than that!”

“Definitely better than ‘Time After Time,’” Will adds.

Steve winces. “Ouch.”

Robin makes the mature choice to ignore the snide comments. “You shouldn’t’ve had to have been, what, thirteen and already dealing with this stuff! Any of this stuff!” she adds, waving her arms around at the general state of everything. “You deserve some happiness!”

Some of the sarcastic armor falls away from Will, and his features soften. He shrugs, one hand working its way back to his neck, messing with the tufts of hair now long enough to curl off the back of his neck. “I appreciate it, but it was like, four years ago. It’s fine, really.”

“It’s not fine,” Robin seethes through clenched teeth. She doesn’t notice her hands are on Will’s shoulders and she’s lightly shaking him back and forth until he starts to go blurry in her vision. “We. Are. Going. To. Get. You. A. Happy. Ending!”

Steve gently pries Robin’s fingers off of Will and nudges her back a couple of inches.

Will looks more confused than anything. “I appreciate it, but…I don’t know. I mean, Mike probably doesn’t even like guys in that way.”

“You sure about that?” Steve queries.

For once in this entire conversation, she feels like she and Steve are on the same page. “Yeah, he acted pretty strange when he came by to demand we never play the song again.”

“I’m sure it was just because it meant something to him and El, and they’re not together anymore,” Will counters.

“He specifically mentioned you,” Steve counters back.

Will’s expression turns quizzical. “Why…?”

Excitement starts churning in Robin’s stomach, nearly making her forget about her headache. “He didn’t realize El was the first one to request the song not be played. He thought it was you.”

Will blinks a couple of times at her, his ears beginning to turn red.

Robin adds, “Maybe he asked because he was worried it gave you bad memories, since you two didn’t get to dance that night.”

The possibility sits heavy in the air. Robin knows she’s getting excited just at the mere thought of this all being reciprocal, but she can feel Steve perk up beside her.

And Will?

Well, his ears are as red as ever. His lips are pursed, and he appears to be stuck in that strange gap between full-fledged doubt and half-hearted belief.

“What she’s trying to say is,” Steve breaks in, ever the interpreter, “that your unrequited might not be so unrequited.”

“It might even be requited,” Robin emphasizes.

With a relenting sigh, Will shakes his sigh. All signs of flustered discomposure disappear from his person, and he pulls the mask back over his face. It’s a mask Robin knows well, all opaque and smooth, offering no indication that a real, messy, complicated person exists under it.

“Let’s just see how it goes,” Will offers. “At best, it works out, and at worst, I have to listen to more shitty music.”

Robin once again makes the very mature decision to ignore the insult, and she breathes a sigh of relief.

***

Happily assured that Will wants to continue with this insanity, they see him out the door and back into the halls of the station. Back to Mike, presumably.

“Don’t worry, Rob,” Steve assures, patting her shoulder. His hair has fallen a bit out of place, and a lock of it dangles across his left eye, making him look a bit insane. “Now that I’m working with you, we’ll have those two together in no time.”

Given the sorry state of her relationship with Vickie and Steve’s lack of any stable relationship since 1984, Robin thinks she has many, many reasons to worry.

But, she can’t help it: she wants to push forward, and she wants to believe there’s some happiness in store for Will and Mike.

Chapter Text

STEVE: Happy ten o’clock on another dark and stormy night in America’s very own hellscape, Hawkins, Indiana!

[canned cheering plays]

ROBIN: Yes, we did finally find the sound effects board our lovely overlords at WSQK left behind.

[a sad whomp-whomp-whommppp sound]

ROBIN: Well, it’s too bad, because it’s ours now!

STEVE: [hurriedly] That is, of course, as long as my employers don’t return–

ROBIN: Which is besides the point!

STEVE: [clearing his throat] Yes, of course! Because the point is the music, the reason all of you tune in, apparently, given the increased number of, ah, shall we say, formal critiques of our bumps and segments left in our request box.

ROBIN: Which, by the way, whoever said I have too much vocal fry, have you considered: no I don’t?

STEVE: And my insights into Journey are beloved by approximately three people, so.

[a clap – it’s a high five, of course]

ROBIN: [sighing] With that said, though, we do have a full hour of music ahead of us, including some old favorites and special selections.

STEVE: Despite one specific person’s request that we, and I quote, “Play the entirety of Remain in the Light or quit your jobs,” we will be starting off with something that actually brings joy and comfort to people.

[there’s a muffled cough - it sounds something like the name Jonathan]

ROBIN: [an eye roll you can hear over the airwaves] So, first up, we’ve got “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by the one and only Whitney Houston.

STEVE: Followed by a very special number for a very special someone. Stay tuned for more, folks!

[the synths of “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” begin with full force]

***

Having done her due diligence to Nancy by ensuring her request started off the hour, Robin is now in a harried rush. It’s time for her ten o’clock cup of coffee to stave off any wayward headaches, yes, but she also needs to play centurion to the studio door, lest anybody else decides to barge in during the broadcast and ban them from playing a song.

The only comfort Robin takes from this is that, if somebody does, at least it won’t be her song.

Yes, for better or for worse, Robin had relented when Steve asked–nay, begged–to pick the next needle drop for Will and Mike. Her anxiety and lack of self-confidence had kicked into full gear since she was oh-for-two with picking songs that specifically dealt psychic damage to Will and the object of his affections, and, unable to come up with any feasible options, had begrudgingly accepted Steve’s proffered help.

Even if his choice is–

Well–

The first word that comes to Robin’s mind is straight, and not straight in a derogatory way, but straight stated as a matter of fact. Only a straight man or someone putting on the guise of a straight man would choose this song and decide it’s an undying declaration of love, from the same bright mind that brought you Journey and Bruce Springsteen (from Robin’s perspective, at least).

Why should she intervene, though? Her idea of a heartwrenching romantic song is “Fast Car,” but maybe having Steve in on things could be useful, at least for probing the male mind. Maybe he can tap into something that Robin doesn’t quite understand, given that she is both a woman and a lover of women.

“I’m getting coffee. Want some?” she queries Steve, already halfway to the door.

“Yes, served with a side of I told you so!”

Robin turns and scowls at his shit-eating grin. “You haven’t even played it yet, Dingus. How would you know it worked if it hasn’t even happened yet?”

Steve sighs contentedly, leaning back in his chair, fingers threaded behind his head. “I just have a good feeling about this one.”

“So, coffee. Same as always?”

“You know it.”

The same, as in: a horrific cup of plain, acidic, black-as-night coffee.

Robin lets herself out of the room, and, thankfully, nobody’s milling about in the hallway to accost her for her music choices or request their song be played next. She flips open the lid of the request box and sees a few more have been dropped since dinnertime.

It does fill Robin with a strange sense of pride, even despite the few scraps of hate mail they’d received. She feels like she’s actually contributing to something bigger than herself that isn’t the usual averting-world-destruction antics; this feels more personal and fulfilling, being able to supply something as simple and life-giving as music to people during a dark, depressing time.

Trying to win a fellow gay person a happy ending does make her feel like she’s doing some good, but also, it fills her with pure dread and anxiety, because she barely has a handle on her own life.

This is the awful purgatory Robin led herself into but a week ago: feeling so fulfilled and happy about something while simultaneously feeling so utterly shitty about it.

As she pads down the hall, on the long trek from one end of the building (the studio) to the other (the break-slash-coffee room), she hears the station softly playing from multiple speakers throughout the building. There are some handheld radios softly humming out of open doorways, too, a boombox in the entryway thumping with the synths, a lone speaker drilled into the wall of the front office letting Whitney Houston’s sweet tones serenade the empty desk.

It's the soundtrack to her hallway trek under WSQK’s dim overhead lights. She winds her way through the building, humming along to the song while her finger absentmindedly scratches at her thumb, until she reaches the stretch of glass revealing the innards of the break room.

When their merry band of misfits had to relocate to WSQK, both for the sake of maintaining a central base of operations and for their own survival, Robin had pointedly asked Steve why, in the absolute hell, one wall of the break room was almost entirely made of windows. What, exactly, was the point of anyone in the hallway being able to see the breakroom on full display? Did their boss get his sick kicks off of employees brewing pots of coffee or scrubbing dishes clean?

“Oh, yeah, they said they did that just to keep an eye on employees. You know, make sure we aren’t spending too much time in there or talking about unionizing or anything,” Steve had said with a sip out of his mug.

Robin had gaped at him. “So they made the breakroom made of glass to union bust you guys?”

“Well, to be fair, the only person whose union ever got busted was my boss. I mean, you could literally hear him having sex with his secretary during lunch.” Steve had shuddered at the memory. “God, at least that room wasn’t made of glass.”

And while Robin, on principle, objects to the voyeuristic windows and the anti-labor stance they represent, she can’t help but thank Steve’s deadbeat boss for unintentionally helping validate her designs to aid Will Byers in getting the boy of his dreams.

It goes like this: Robin is at the end of the hallway on the other side of the building, and she has to walk past the windows to get to the breakroom door. As she takes that transitory step where the wall abruptly turns into glass, she instinctively looks up and turns to gaze inside, expecting, at most, Murray to be on his tip-toes, using a mug to measure out the perfect amount of water into the commercial-sized coffee maker.

Instead, her gaze falls upon two teenage boys crowded around the coffeemaker instead, close and clearly laughing. It’s one of those intimate moments that exist between people who love each other, whether family or friends or romantic partners. The kind where, for a moment, you think, Oh, another person knows me.

Robin feels a bit like she shouldn’t be watching through the window, but it’s not like she can go grab her coffee now! Mike and Will are joking and playfully shoving each other, and Will’s sitting to one side of the coffeemaker on the counter, heels kicking against the laminate cabinets below, and Mike’s on the other side, rolling his eyes as he tries to eye how much coffee grounds to pour into the filter.

(And Steve’s song will be playing any second now, which, who knows, could actually work–)

Whitney Houston fades out, and, speak of the devil, a familiar voice overtakes the radio.

A flurry of excitement and terror and anticipation overtakes Robin; it feels a little bit like she’s having a heart attack.

Inside the breakroom, Will and Mike’s eyes rise to the ceiling, heads tilted, listening intently to the speaker dangling from the corner.

Will, Robin notes, looks especially interested.

***

TRACK 3: Never Surrender

***

STEVE: That was a lovely song, requested by none other than the one and the only Nancy Wheeler.

[canned cheering from the soundboard]

STEVE: Anyway, I’m sure after five minutes of anticipation, you guys are dying to know tonight’s special song.

[a click of a CD being popped out of its case]

STEVE: Now, without revealing too much, let me just say: this song is for someone–you know who you are–who is one-hundred percent deserving of love. Don’t hold back. Go for it, kid.

***

From the cracked-open door of the breakroom, Robin hears Mike say:

“So, he’s definitely talking about himself, right.”

Robin throws a hand up to stifle her laugh. Will, from his perch on the counter, doubles over into a riot of snickers.

***

STEVE: To honor the tradition of going after what we want, please enjoy this challenge to [clearing his throat] stand your ground and, of course, “Never Surrender,” by Corey Hart!

***

“Oh, GOD!”

This is not the response Robin had been expecting from Mike Wheeler. Sure, she thought the song was kind of cheesy when Steve set it aside on the desk for his pick, but her own ambivalence towards traditional cheesy love ballads such as this one didn’t send her into a full-body spasm that left her with her head in her arms, hands in her hair, her ears burning bright red.

Which is precisely how Mike looks right now. From the opening bursts of synth on the track, Mike had gone through every stage of grief sans acceptance. He’d dropped the spoon he’d been using to measure out scoops of Folgers and pressed his palms to his temples, a sunburn-like flush spreading across his face. In one swift motion, he went from standing upright to being doubled over on the breakroom’s island, face buried in his arms and hands tugging at his mop of hair.

The thought briefly crosses Robin’s mind that, ah, maybe she should come back for her and Steve’s coffee later, and she should burn this from her memory.

But she can’t get her legs to move. She’s kind of in awe at how quickly Mike responded like he was in anaphylactic shock and folded himself up like an origami human.

She also feels a tug of war between thinking it’s hilarious Steve’s song has gone over like a lead balloon and feeling like she has, once again, miserably failed Will. She really should get out of the business of love, and yet, here she is!

Perhaps she’d feel a bit worse if it wasn’t for the fact that Will is laughing from his perch on the counter, heels still kicking against the cabinets. He leans back on his palms and tilts his head to the side, chunks of chestnut bangs falling across his eyes.

Through the cracked-open door, she hears him say, “I didn’t know you liked this song this much. I would have requested it from Steve and Robin ages ago.”

“Shut up,” Mike whines from behind his arms. He writhes a little against the counter, just to make sure his misery is properly emphasized.

“Okay, but seriously,” Will says, “why are you acting like this? I hate this song too, but I’m not, like, convulsing over it.”

“It’s stupid.”

“I mean, yeah, it is pretty shallow and unoriginal.”

Mike rolls slightly to the side, one eye peering out from between his bangs. “No, I mean, my reaction. It’s stupid.”

“Because…?”

Having flirted too close with that cliff’s edge of sincerity, Mike seems ready to retreat back from danger. He slams his face back down into his arms and muffles something from between them about singing and El and Hopper said three inches!

Which, to be fair: Robin is interpreting this all through a pane of glass and a cracked door when she should really be going back to their makeshift studio. Or, you know, getting the coffee she came here for. The nosy part of her, however, is quite fine to point out the fact that she has to wait for these two to make the coffee, stupid, and why interrupt what’s happening between them?

Because what if, despite the odds and all known laws of the universe, Steve Harrington’s cheesy song choice is what brings Will and Mike together?

And it just might be! Will seems to parse out whatever Mike is saying; he hops down from the counter and approaches the island, leaning over its countertop as well. Unlike Mike, Will only leans on his elbows, keeping his head upright and tilted in understanding.

“Ah, I see. So, this song reminds you of you making a fool of yourself,” he says with a sage nod.

Without looking up, Mike reaches a hand over and flicks Will’s arm.

Robin, who now feels a building pressure in her chest to either abandon the scene or work up the guts to walk in and brew some coffee, feels a spark of something in her chest. It’s a recognition, an understanding, something that makes her go, Ah, yes, I’ve seen this one before!

This whole endeavor doesn’t feel completely hopeless now, even if she and Steve seem to be doing everything in their power to make it so.

The two boys go back and forth in the breakroom, Mike hunched over and hiding his face, Will oozing sarcasm in such a way that, if it weren’t for him and Mike being best friends, would come across as rude and not the absolute flirtshow that it is in Robin’s eyes. Corey Hart’s still urging listeners that you can never su-RREND-errrrr, and Robin still kind of hates the song, but maybe she can learn to like it, especially if it helps bring two people together.

One of the wooden doors behind and to the right of Robin opens and shuts, but she hardly notices. In fact, she’s so lost in observing Mike and Will like they’re specimens to be studied that she doesn’t notice Jonathan Byers has entered the hallway.

Is walking right by her, in fact.

Is doing a double-take and stopping at the window, just a pace to Robin’s right.

Thankfully, Mike and Will seem lost in their own world. With Mike hiding his face and Will only having eyes for Mike, it makes sense that they haven’t noticed Robin yet, nor Jonathan, as he’s only just moved into the view of the glass.

Robin can tell she has a soft, dopey smile on her face. In the span of his double-take, Jonathan also goes from a querying scowl to a crooked, close-mouthed grin. He watches Will watch Mike with a sense of protective earnestness, a desire to give his brother the world and also protect him from all its dangers.

This makes Robin’s smile go wider.

Which makes Jonathan’s smile catch, then falter.

The corners of his mouth droop as he whips his head around to look at Robin.

Which is the moment that Robin realizes that Jonathan knows about Will, but he doesn’t know that she knows about Will, except now he very clearly does know that she knows.

“Wait,” Jonathan says, eyes narrowed and questioning.

“I can explain,” Robin whispers to him, holding the two empty mugs in front of her like they’re wards against evil spirits.

***

Thus, in the span of a week, Robin ends up outside the back door of WSQK, having a talk about severely personal matters with one of the Byers brothers.

Robin had heard whispers here and there about a burgeoning cigarette habit among the elder Byers son, but she sees it on full display now as Jonathan whips out a half-smashed pack of Marlboros and sparks one to life with a battered lighter. He does this all very methodically, strategically standing between Robin and the door back into the station, shoulders tense and his eyes focused on anything but her.

The air feels a bit chillier than even a week ago, but, hey, that’s just a byproduct of living in Hawkins while it’s actively being eaten alive by an alternate hell dimension! It makes the puff of smoke from Jonathan’s cigarette more opaque and her fingers shake so badly she stuffs them in her pants pockets.

And somebody, perhaps out of sheer boredom, or perhaps with the foresight that it would inflict psychic pain upon Robin, had hastily mounted a speaker above the door. Now, personal conversations among apocalypse survivalists get to be tinnily accompanied by whatever WSQK played which, in these truly unfortunate circumstances, is the Beatles’s “Rocky Raccoon.”

“So,” Jonathan says. He has a way of making single words sound like entire sentences.

“First of all, I did not hold him at gunpoint and force to tell me, and it wasn’t an accident.”

Jonathan pinches the cigarette between his fingers, then breathes out another cloud of smoke. Robin takes a half-step back to avoid any of that cancer-causing haze scientists had started going on about the past couple of years.

Several tense moments of silence pass between them. They’re accompanied only by occasional webs of lightning spidering across the sky, the hum of electricity coming from the building, and the low, tinny hum of Paul McCartney’s faux-country accent.

“I’m not mad,” Jonathan finally says. Leaning against the door, he continues, “I’m just, you know…”

“Abrasive?” Robin helpfully offers.

Jonathan scoffs. “He’s my little brother. What else am I supposed to do? He keeps his feelings to himself a lot of the time.”

With a sigh, Robin shuffles over to the wall and leans back against it, sliding down just a bit. To her right, Jonathan takes another puff on his cigarette. They both keep their eyes focused on the trees several yards in front of them, their half-dead bark shades of blue and grey in the night.

Jonathan takes to messing with the cuff of his shirt, cigarette dangling from his mouth. “Ok, but…How did he tell you? Or why?”

“Will can tell me things!” Robin defensively counters.

Jonathan studies her through his choppy bangs. “Yeah, of course. I just didn’t know you guys talked. Or ever interacted, for that matter. I mean, I know you talked to him after you guys played that song, but…” Jonathan trails off, eyes pinned on her, searching for an answer.

This is the truly unfortunate matter of trying to help Will in the way that she is, because the second it’s even implied she and Will had some kind of personal talk, suddenly everybody’s all, Um, but you guys never speak to each other? Could you even pick each other out of a police lineup?

Which, okay! She and Will hadn’t really interacted until their recent exile to WSQK, but why does everybody have to think it’s suspicious? Especially when the foundation for that first talk of theirs was the trauma of surviving a hell dimension and the mortifying ordeal of being gay in America.

Robin opens and closes her mouth several times, trying to scrape up a fitting lie. Her thoughts would probably be more focused if she’d had her coffee, but no, Jonathan’s questioning look had immediately called them into session the moment they locked eyes outside of the breakroom window. “Well, it just sort of came up.”

Jonathan nods slowly; she can’t tell if he’s unconvinced or if he just looks like he’s in a constant state of skepticism. “Okay.”

“Yeah.”

“Cool,” he concludes.

They continue to lean against the building, the chilly night air pressing in around them.

Something in Robin’s chest pops, then fizzes, like a shaken can of soda being pried open. The silence between them grows oppressive as she tries to quickly weigh the pros and cons of outing herself to Jonathan (in the admirable service of getting his younger brother the boy of his dreams, of course) or continuing to leave whatever connection she and Will have shrouded in mystery to him. She’s kept everything clear-cut for the younger kids so far, but with her, Steve, Jonathan, and Nancy being the only twenty-somethings here…

Well, she thinks it might be nice to have a couple more friends, and to engage in the act of trusting others. It would be nice to not have to carry this around with her for as long as she has, to tip-toe around any conversations of love and romance and dating.

Plus, it’s the end of the world, so even if she does regret this, they might all be dead by the new year, anyway!

She lets out a forceful sigh, trying to keep her mettle from abandoning her at this hour. “Fine. Can I tell you something?”

Jonathan narrows his eyes, one eyebrow slowly slanting upward. “Sure, I guess?”

Robin eyes him back. “And you promise not to tell anybody? Not even Nancy?”

Jonathan looks especially confused now.

And Robin, for the third time in her life, brings the subtext into the actual text. “He and I talked about him being–well, it came up because I’m–” she clears her throat, tries to find the right words and fails. “I’m not–I don’t date guys.”

“Okay,” Jonathan says, as if he’s merely agreeing to plans for later.

Robin gives him a knowing look, making her eyes go wide. “I like girls.”

“I figured, after you said you don’t date guys,” Jonathan deadpans back to her.

Robin studies him carefully. “So, you’re not, like, mad?”

Jonathan scrunches his nose up, offended. “Why would I be mad? My little brother’s gay, and, for the record, I haven’t told anybody about it, including Nancy.”

The fizzing in Robin’s chest settles, the adrenaline leaking out of her bloodstream and making her limbs go numb. Why does this always feel so scary, and then it turns out to be nothing? That the company she keeps is just totally fine with her being a girl-kisser?

“Oh, yeah. I guess that makes sense,” she murmurs, attention turning back to the trees.

Jonathan sighs, and there’s another opaque puff of smoke. “Listen, I get it. When I first tried to talk to Will about it, he looked horrified. So, I guess, thanks for letting me know, but, more importantly, thank you for talking to him and being there for him.”

Robin feels a bit mortified. Jonathan’s always seemed like this prickly, protective person that she’s been a bit afraid to talk to, admittedly. Seeing him go a bit soft around the edges and some of his surliness melting away makes her feel like she’s seeing something more personal and closely guarded by him. Like she’s been led from the heavily-fortified castle walls into the citadel.

With as much sincerity as she can muster up in the moment, she says, “Of course.” She bites the inside of her cheek, then adds, “He deserves some happiness, after all he’s been through.”

“You’re telling me,” Jonathan agrees with a huffed-out laugh.

And because she’s already come this far, she thinks, what the hell? and decides to let him in on her plan. “Yeah, so about that…”

Jonathan peers up at her again, confusion etching lines into his face.

Robin gives a nervous chuckle. “Well, you see, Steve and I have the newfound power of radio at our disposal.”

“I’ve unfortunately noticed.”

“Anyway,” Robin continues, “I told Will that, since I know where he’s coming from, I would try and use my newfound powers for good and help him win Mike over.”

Jonathan looks more confused than ever. “Wait, what?”

With a sheepish grin, Robin holds her arms out in some facsimile of jazz hands. “I’ve been trying to play music that he and Mike could, you know, have a moment to. Well, except, Steve kind of found out and tonight’s choice was his–I mean, who listens to Corey Hart anyway–”

The cigarette drops out of Jonathan’s mouth, and his hands fall to his knees. “What?”

When he doesn’t make any moves to ensure the cigarette’s embers have been smothered, Robin helpfully sticks her heel out to mash it into the dirt. “Yeah, so it hasn’t been too successful so far, but Will’s told us he wants to continue with it. And, sure, we both saw that Mike clearly has some trauma related to Corey Hart, but it still looks like he and Will were having a good time! I mean, did you see your little brother? He’s an absolute flirt.”

“Please,” Jonathan says, “do not call Will a flirt, ever again.”

Robin rolls her eyes. “Well, the point still stands–”

“Wait, no, hold on.” Jonathan pushes himself off the door and begins pacing in front of Robin. Watching his antisocial tendencies and weird fidgets and restless energy, it’s any wonder how he and Robin hadn’t managed to be friends in all their years at Hawkins High. “First of all, you’re helping Will by playing him some of the worst music known to mankind.”

“Not everybody thinks making out to the Velvet Underground or the Talking Heads is hot, Byers!”

Jonathan spins on his heel, beginning another round of pacing. One of his hands tugs at the back of his hair. “Also, on top of being an awful wingman in terms of music taste, you let Steve in on this?” He stops in his tracks suddenly, eyes growing wide. “Steve knows about Will?”

Robin covers her face with her hands. “Please believe me when I say that I did not tell him and that he actually kind of figured it out for himself.”

Jonathan wheels on her. Apparently unable to formulate any other coherent thoughts, he merely squawks out, “Steve?”

Peering through her fingers, Robin furiously nods. “He found out, and Will told him, and I only agreed to accept his help because, despite also being gay and feeling like that gives me some level of rapport with your brother, I also have one of the more miserable histories with love ever known in this town, and it turns out, that translates into what I think is good music!”

“Like what?”

“‘Fast Car,’ Jonathan.”

Jonathan tilts his head to the side in consideration. “I mean, it’s a good song. Just not for getting my little brother to fall in love!”

“Exactly!”

“So then you enlisted Steve?”

Robin throws her hands up. “I thought, hey, why not! Maybe he knows more since he’s a guy!”

“I’m a guy!” Jonathan whines. “God, Steve knows? Steve?”

“Say his name one more time for the people in the back,” Robin helpfully offers.

Jonathan stops his pacing and turns his attention to the door. He stomps over and flings it open, digging the cigarette butt further into the dirt in the process. “Nope. I’m talking with him right now.”

“You sure about that?”

Jonathan looks over his shoulder at her. “Thank you for your help and for caring about Will, Robin, but I need to talk to your fucking co-host about this.”

He stomps in, the door shutting behind him, before Robin can even warn him that Steve has planned to play the entirety of Born in the USA this evening.

***

“Robin.”

Mike says her name like it’s a threat, and it makes her startle so badly that she spills more Folgers onto the break room counter, which goes nicely with the Folgers that was already on the counter, due to Mike’s earlier outburst over “Never Surrender.”

When she spins around and eyes Mike (looking as happy as a wet cat) and Will (holding in laughter with the back of his hand to his mouth), she sighs, then leans the side of her head against the overhead cabinets.

She just came in here to hide and take her sweet, precious time brewing coffee while Jonathan and Steve had it out in the makeshift studio. When she’d walked by after her and Jonathan’s conversation’s abrupt cut-off, and all she heard were the two of them shouting at each other over the sounds of Bruce Springsteen, she’d decided it was best to clear the area for the time being. If anything, she could come back for the eleven o’clock bump, man the station until midnight, then set the airwaves to rest until they picked back up again bright and early at eight o’clock the following morning.

What Robin seems to have forgotten, though, is that she’s trapped in a radio station with a bunch of emotionally constipated meatheads, including herself.

“What is it now?” she finally asks with a whine. Her temples are throbbing, and all she wants to do is get her nightly cup of coffee brewed, goddammit.

Mike points up to the speaker in the corner, which is now playing “Glory Days.” “Never play that song again.”

“I don’t know how to get this across to you,” Robin starts, “but Steve has played the entirety of Born in the USA every other day this week, and I don’t think I’ll be able to get him to stop now–”

“Not this one,” Mike says, nose scrunched up. “I don’t even know what this is.”

“You’re not missing out,” Will says.

Robin looks between them. “Wait, do you mean ‘Never Surrender?’”

Mike’s face immediately flames red, and he looks like he’s about to be sick. “Yes, that one.”

Will pats a faux-consoling hand on Mike’s shoulder. “Clearly, it causes adverse side-effects in some people.”

Mike rolls his eyes, but his face remains as red as the setting sun.

With a slightly-manic chuckle, Robin shakes her head and returns to measuring out her coffee grounds. Satisfied, she slides the filter in its compartment, then takes to pouring mugfuls of water into the maker. “Okay, I’ll pass the message along to Steve. He picked that one for tonight.”

“Well, maybe he shouldn’t be picking out the music,” Mike offers.

“Don’t worry!” Robin says, looking up to catch Will’s eye. She stretches her mouth into a grin. “I’ll be sure I’m the one to pick next time.”

Will gives her a slight nod and a knowing smile, but still, he tilts his head and asks, “Maybe you guys could have Jonathan guest DJ again?”

Speak of the devil, the door to the break room bursts open, revealing one Jonathan Byers in the doorway, shoulders hunched and breathing ragged. His demeanor screams I went to war against Steve Harrington, and all I got was this headache and a twitch in my left eye.

Robin quirks an eyebrow up at him. She looks from him to Mike and Will and back again.

Jonathan glances between Mike and Will, then Mike again, then up to Robin.

Will glances between the two older teens, brow furrowed.

Mike, seemingly oblivious to all the mental calculus firing off between Robin and Jonathan and Will, shoots Jonathan a glare. “What’s wrong now?”

Shaking his head, Jonathan pinches the bridge of his nose. He takes two deep, shuddering breaths, then asks in as calm and even of a tone as he can manage, “Is the coffee done yet?”

Robin eyes Will and Mike again, a sly grin poking up the corners of her mouth. “Just getting started,” she confirms, slamming the lid to the water compartment down.

The coffeemaker gurgles to life, its light turning from red to green.

Chapter Text

***

TRACK 4: Africa

***

STEVE: Hello you lovely, demented humans of Hawkins, Indiana!

ROBIN: And all other non-human entities living below us, including, but not limited to: demogorgons, demobats, psychopathic manchildren who have taken over an entire hell dimension, and, of course, the cockroaches that refuse to take a hint and get out of here!

STEVE: [sighing] The power of music just brings us all together, doesn’t it, Robin?

ROBIN: It sure does, Steve!

JONATHAN: You guys devote airtime to this?

[a quiet smacking noise]

STEVE: Nice one, Robin. Also, yes. If you don’t give people the right mix of music or the right personalities, they’ll just switch over to the competition.

JONATHAN: What competition?

ROBIN: ANYWAY–

JONATHAN: [muttering under his breath] I can’t believe I agreed to this.

STEVE: Well, you did, so.

ROBIN: As always, we’ve got a mix of new requests and old favorites, put together by your trusted musical captains, as well as our special guest DJ, Jonathan! 

[canned cheering from the soundboard]

Jonathan: [sighing with just the right amount of force to ensure listeners that he is actually being held against his will] Hi. I’m Jonathan. 

STEVE: Jonathan here thinks he knows all there is to know about what good music is, so we want to see if he’s right! We’ll each be introducing our songs tonight so people know who selected what, and you guys can vote for whose songs are best! Ballots will be available at the request box, so just write in your favorite DJ, and we’ll announce the winner on our next 9 o’clock show.

ROBIN: That way we have statistically-sound evidence for if Jonathan does have the best taste in music or not.

JONATHAN: I never said that.

ROBIN: No, you just imply it.

STEVE: A lot. You imply it a lot.

JONATHAN: Well.

ROBIN: [pointed cough] So, as we were saying, don’t forget to vote for who picked your favorite songs! But we’ll get things kicked off with one of my own picks, dedicated to–well, someone out there. 

JONATHAN: Way to introduce a song you really believe in.

STEVE: Okay, porcupine.

[distant slapping noises]

ROBIN: [sighing] Anyway, here’s “Africa” by Toto.

***

When the door opens to reveal Nancy Wheeler, who heretofore had avoided the makeshift studio at all costs, the room looks like this:

The blackboard, only half-erased from the “Time After Time” fiasco, with random words like arson and moment still quite visible. 

Everything in a general state of disarray, including loads of coffee-stained ceramic mugs, crumpled sheets of past segments’ music choices, and CD cases stacked everywhere, flowing out of the file cabinets, stuck out of desk drawers.

Jonathan and Steve, hands fisted in each other’s shirts, each arguing over the other about the merits (or lack thereof) of Daryl Hall and John Oates’ catalogue.

And Robin, looking up sheepishly at Nancy–her friend, Jonathan’s current girlfriend, and Steve’s ex–with her own hands fisted in the two guys’ collars, trying to keep them apart like feral cats fighting over a dead bird.

“What,” Nancy says, “is going on?”

“Africa” is still playing loud and clear over the radio, ringing through the discarded headphones and echoing down the hallway.

“Nancy!” Robin chirps, her grin turning slightly manic. She lets go of Steve and Jonathan’s collars, letting the two fall into each other and bumping their heads in the process. 

Nancy looks at the two boys with her nose scrunched up ever-so-slightly; it makes her relation to Mike become all the more evident. “Hi, what is happening?”

“Nothing,” Jonathan grouses, hand rubbing at his right eyebrow, at the same time that Steve, rubbing his left temple, says, “Jonathan’s being a dick about music again.”

“We talked about this,” Nancy says, her voice taking on a hushed tone. She’s addressing only Jonathan despite Steve and Robin also being present.

Pointing at Steve, Jonathan counters, “To be fair, he started it.” He nods at Robin. “And she instigated.”

Robin frowns. “We politely let you onto our show as a guest DJ, and you have done nothing but act like you’re being held here for ransom.”

“You both grabbed me out of the breakroom and said, and I quote, ‘Will wants you to guest DJ, and you have to do it now, you have no choice.’”

“Well,” Steve says, throwing his hands up, “just use our own words against us, why don’t you?”

Jonathan rolls his eyes.

Nancy’s frown scratches deeper into her face. With a deep sigh, she presses a couple fingers to her temple, and she attempts to calm herself. It’s a look Robin knows well from the time she and Nancy have spent together over these past few years. While she and Nancy might get along better than they first did investigating Pennhurst in 1986, Robin is still very much used to her hyperactivity and neuroses evoking strained, polite smiles and ground-out words from Nancy.

“Okay, fine,” Nancy finally says. “I’m not here for whatever this,” she waves her hand between Jonathan and Steve, “is.”

“Barely contained homoeroticism?” Robin offers.

Steve and Jonathan both look at each other for a beat too long before they both make faces that seem to be a little too disgusted, as if putting on an act.

Nancy’s mouth flattens. Strained, polite, and screaming, Please, Lord, give me the strength to make it through this night. “Sure. But I’m here for something else.”

“Let me guess–” Robin starts.

“Please never play this song again?” Steve finishes.

Nancy purses her lips and tilts her head to the side. “Actually, yes. How did you guys know?”

“They get requests to not play music more than actual requests,” Jonathan says.

Steve sighs. “See, now that’s just not true.”

“You do get an awful lot of requests to not play music.”

Robin holds a defensive hand up. “To be fair, like, half of those requests have come from Mike.”

A quizzical look overtakes Nancy’s features. She looks over her shoulder, eyes scanning the hallway, before she closes the door behind her and approaches the desk. Arms crossed over her chest, she looks between Robin, Steve, and Jonathan. “What are you guys playing that’s bothering Mike so much?”

“It’s just been two songs, ‘Time After Time’ and ‘Never Surrender,’” Robin says, ticking them off on her fingers.

“El also requested we not play ‘Time After Time,’” Steve adds. 

“And I told them not to play ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go,’” Jonathan says.

“And now you don’t want to hear ‘Africa?’” Robin tilts her head to the side, bangs falling into her eyes. “Any particular reason?”

Nancy shifts, uncomfortable under the scrutiny of her fellow twenty-somethings. Undeterred, she begins with, “Well, I guess ‘Time After Time’ makes sense, but I don’t understand Mike’s aversion to ‘Never Surrender.’”

“Maybe because it’s a bad song?” Jonathan offers.

Steve smacks his leg. Jonathan returns the favor with a smack to the back of Steve’s head.

Nancy rolls her eyes. 

Robin claps her hands in front of Nancy’s face, trying to bring her attention back to the important matter at hand. “Focus, Wheeler! This isn’t about Mike. Why don’t you want to hear ‘Africa?’”

“I mean, why are you guys playing it?” An obvious deflection, of course, especially when a flush is starting to spread across her face. “You introduced the song, Robin, but I’ve never heard you listen to it.”

Robin offhandedly shrugs. “I’m, uh, trying to broaden my horizons.”

Steve snorts; Jonathan rubs a hand down his face.

For someone trying to play it cool and help a fellow queer person out, Robin sure feels like a completely unconvincing liar.

“Right,” Nancy drawls. “Well, if you could just…not play this again, I’d appreciate it.”

“But why?” Steve queries, holding up the empty CD case for the single. “We need it for our, uh, records.”

Nancy pointedly does not look at him; in fact, she suddenly seems very interested with the toes of her boots. “It just makes me feel weird. I don’t like it.”

Steve shrugs. “I don’t know, I think it’s a kind of okay song. I like it.”

Jonathan sighs deeply.

“...Anything else?” Robin tries. 

Nancy glances up, eyes only on Jonathan and Robin. “Nope. Just…please don’t play it again.”

Robin tries to look at Steve for any reaction, and while she can glean enough between the lines to realize that while Nancy has some kind of association between this song and her ex-boyfriend, apparently, Steve does not. His foot’s tapping to the beat of the song happily, and he’s taken to picking at a loose thread of his polo.

“Okay,” Jonathan says with a shrug, as if he’s the one running this joint.

Robin, with a sigh, narrows her eyes at him before turning back to Nancy. “Sure, Wheeler. We’ll add it to the list of forbidden songs.”

“Thank you,” she repeats, a soft smile for Robin poking up the corners of her mouth.

And, dammit, in another universe where Robin never met Vickie and Nancy Wheeler had ever shown a lick of interest in other women, Robin would be tongue-tied and falling over herself to earn that smile a hundred times over from Nancy. 

So instead of doing something stupid and following that train of thought, Robin simply nods, her own smile overtaking her features. She tries to ignore the pain throbbing in her chest at the thought of Vickie, still trapped and far away and possibly dead, who knew at this point? Focus, Robin, focus on the present–

“Of course,” she finally manages to say.

Just then, the CD spins to a stop, the song fading out from their headphones. With hurried movements, Steve rushes to put his headphones on and pops open the empty CD case, and although Jonathan likes to feign an air of general disinterest, he does hurriedly plop himself into the plastic chair Robin and Steve brought out for his hour of guest DJing, and he carefully pulls out his single of choice (“Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads) and rehearses his upcoming bump under his breath. I’m Jonathan, and up next, we have Psycho Killer. I’m Jonathan, and up next, we have Psycho Killer…

“I do have another question, though,” Nancy says, low enough just for Robin to hear as their two compatriots bravely set aside their differences to work together.

Stomach clenching with anxiety, Robin nods. “Sure.” She gently grasps Nancy by the elbow and leads her a couple paces away, over to the half-cleaned blackboard. “What is it?”

Nancy’s eyes roam around the room, taking it all in, lips pursed. She looks like she’s trying to carefully choose her words, but Robin can tell the journalistic intent is taking over. Nancy Wheeler sees a mystery afoot, and she is going to figure it all out, dammit.

“Is…something going on?” she finally asks. 

***

JONATHAN: Well, that was “Africa” by Toto.

STEVE: A lovely gem of a song.

JONATHAN: [disbelieving] Right.

STEVE: [pointedly clearing throat] Anyway, dearly beloved guest, what do we have coming up?

JONATHAN: I’m Jonathan, and up next, we have “Psycho Killer” by the Talking Heads.

STEVE: Ah, yeah, “Psycho Killer,” your nickname in high school.

JONATHAN: Your nickname was literally “The Hair.”

STEVE: Um, yeah, because my hair’s great.

JONATHAN: Your receding hairline says otherwise.

STEVE: What the fu–

JONATHAN: Here’s the song.

[the CD hurriedly clicks into place, and a thumping bass overtakes the airwaves]

***

Robin, temporarily distracted by the two manchildren she’s supposed to be manning the airwaves with, shakes her head, eyes scrunched up in confusion. “Wait, like between…us?” She points between herself and Jonathan and Steve and has to keep from choking down a surge of bile.

Nancy’s eyes grow wide, that flush returning to her face once more. “No, no! Not like that.” She seemingly shudders at the thought too. “No, I just…something feels off in here. Not like that, of course, but kind of off, you know?”

“W-what makes you say that?” Robin asks in a very calm and convincing manner. 

Eyes narrowing with curiosity, Nancy studies Robin. Her gaze flicks to the blackboard, then back to Robin. “All of your song choices make sense, for the most part, but every now and then, you pick one way out of left field. And you always dedicate it to someone special.”

“So?” Robin swallows.

Nancy turns, eyeing Steve, who is now, once again, engaged in a petty argument with Jonathan. She looks back to Robin. “Steve also dedicated a song to someone.”

“Uh-huh,” Robin says, unconvincingly.

“And ‘Time After Time’ and ‘Never Surrender,’ two songs dedicated to someone unnamed, are both the songs that Mike requested to not be played.”

Robin feels like an animal being cornered. She was so stupid to think she could sneak around and try and help Will, to make something happen, to bend the universe and those who inhabit it to her will, not while living in the same reality as Nancy Wheeler. 

“Well,” Robin starts, her palms turning sweaty, her finger instinctively beginning to pick at the skin of her thumb once more, “to be fair, you also just requested we never play ‘Africa–’”

“A song I’ve never heard you listen to before,” Nancy points out.

Throwing a palm to her face, trying to will away the throb behind her eyes and her sudden need for another mug of coffee, three creams and five sugars, Robin whines, “Just put me out of my misery, Nancy. What is it?”

With perfect timing, a lull overtakes Jonathan and Steve’s bickering, and Nancy says to the quiet of the room, “Is this about Mike?”

Robin can’t help it–her mouth gapes, and a shock of adrenaline rushes from her heart to the tips of her toes. Steve and Jonathan also tense, their heads whipping up to look at Nancy.

“So it is about Mike!” Nancy concludes.

“Not exactly?” Steve offers.

Which is more than Robin or Jonathan can muster; Robin wants to close her mouth, but her jaw seems unable to work, and Jonathan’s eye has developed a twitch again. 

Nancy throws her hands up. “Well, if it isn’t about Mike and his–you know, his feelings–”

“Wait,” Jonathan cuts in, “Mike has feelings?”

Robin gathers herself enough to say, “Clearly, Jonathan, he is a human being, after all.”

Jonathan pushes up from his chair, crossing his arms over his chest and approaching Nancy and Robin. “No, obviously that’s true, but I meant–” he softens his expression towards Nancy, questioning. “I mean, what kinds of feelings?”

Nancy shifts, defensive. “Just…feelings.”

Jonathan looks at her through his bangs. “Feelings?”

Robin clears her throat. “Any specific feelings? Perhaps towards a, uh, specific someone?”

Narrowing her eyes, Nancy looks between Robin and Jonathan. “Wait…what are you guys talking about?”

“What are you talking about?” Robin prods.

The three remain in a silent impasse. She and Jonathan briefly catch each other’s gaze, trying to gauge how to proceed, while Nancy studies them under a discerning gaze.

The unspoken phrase in the room is: Mike and Will like each other?

Steve finally decides to intervene, clearing his throat and approaching the other three. “Maybe we just clear the air? I mean, I feel like the four of us can trust each other. We’ve all travelled to hell together, after all.”

Nancy and Jonathan both bristle, their sibling protectiveness kicking in.

“Dingus has a point,” Robin agrees with a sigh. “We’re also the only four people our age stuck here. The only other people are old or babies.”

“The other kids are, like, seventeen,” Steve points out.

Robin shrugs. “Like I said, babies.”

Nancy and Jonathan sigh in tandem, looking knowingly in each other’s eyes, a silent agreement passing between them. 

“Okay,” Nancy says.

Jonathan nods.

“Great!” Steve says with a shrug. “Maybe we all say what we’re thinking this is about on three.”

He counts down, and after one, the picture becomes utterly clear to them all.

Robin, Jonathan, and Steve say, “Will likes Mike.”

At the same time, Nancy says, “Mike likes Will.”

Admittedly, the squeal Robin lets out is a bit shrill, and the annoyed glances from Steve and Nancy are, perhaps, warranted, but she couldn’t care less. She starts bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, her hands clapping together in front of her chest, and her mind’s flying faster than one of those demobats in the Upside Down. 

Jonathan looks a bit relieved, the tension leaking out of the line of his shoulders and a small grin pushing up the corners of his mouth. “Wait, really?”

Nancy nods. “And you’re sure about Will?”

“Positive.”

“That’s the weird energy you’ve been feeling, actually!” Robin continues. “We’ve been trying to help Will over the radio!”

Nancy slants a confused eyebrow up at her. 

Steve explains, “Robin made some deal with him that she’d help him win Mike over by playing songs they can have a moment to,” he says the two words with air quotes. “Except, I found out about it, and then Jonathan also already knew about Will, so he got dragged into it, and now all three of us are trying to engineer a moment between them.”

With an unconvincing nod, Nancy says, “Huh.”

“And, sure, our first couple picks haven’t been the best, but they also haven’t irreparably torn them apart, and we’re all committed to getting them the fireworks moment they deserve!” Robin adds.

Nancy continues to nod slowly. “So your next pick for this endeavor was ‘Africa?’”

“Unfortunately,” Jonathan mutters.

Robin waves him off. “Trial and error! Also, we don’t know if it worked yet. Maybe they already had their big moment.”

Nancy shakes her head. “I walked by them on my way over here. They were both complaining about the song.” She shrugs. “Now, I mean, they were bantering, and they looked happy to be together, but they weren’t like…”

“Making out,” Steve offers.

“Ew,” Nancy and Jonathan say at the same time.

Steve waves them off. “Aw, c’mon, you know they’ve said the same thing about you two.”

Jonathan scratches at the back of his neck as Nancy purses her lips; his ears turn the same shade of red as her cheeks.

Robin, focused on the matter at hand, shakes her head. “Well, if it didn’t work for that one, it’ll just have to work for the next one! You got any ideas, Steve?”

“Actually–”

“No,” Jonathan cuts him off. “Nancy or I should pick the next one, since they’re our siblings.”

“I,” Nancy says, “have no idea what kind of music Mike wants a moment to.”

“It’s definitely not ‘Never Surrender,’” Robin helpfully offers. “We learned that through process of elimination.”

“Besides,” Steve cuts in, “this is my and Robin’s gig. I’m the only WSQK employee here, and I only let Robin in on this because she was going to go insane if I didn’t.”

Nancy taps a finger to her chin. “Well, you guys have been DJing, and Jonathan got to guest DJ, so do I get a shot at it?”

Sighing, Robin says, “I guess we could pencil you in for tomorrow–”

“But tomorrow was supposed to be Bruce Springsteen night!” Steve whines.

Jonathan throws up his hands. “Every night is Bruce Springsteen night for you!”

“So? Can’t a guy like Bruce Springsteen anymore?”

“We’ve been over this–”

“Please, Robin,” Nancy turns to Robin, eyes pleading. “Could I just get one shot at it? It doesn’t even have to be for Mike and Will, I just want to see how you guys do this.”

“Um,” Robin helpfully says. “There’s just a lot going on right now–”

“Psycho Killer” clicks to a stop in the CD player, causing Steve and Jonathan to jump. Steve, in a great display of absolutely no chill whatsoever, throws himself across the desk, nearly knocking the sound panel off in the process, scrambling to stick the headphones back on his head to address the airwaves again.

As he babbles away, Robin looks between Jonathan and Nancy. “Maybe we focus on figuring out the next song for them before we decide who gets to guest DJ next?”

Nancy tilts her head to the side, wincing slightly. “I just think that…”

Jonathan sighs. “Maybe this whole thing is stupid? It’s like, the more we try to force the issue, the more they’ll probably avoid it.”

As if Jonathan’s words were a challenge, the door slams open. The familiar silhouettes of Mike and Will’s fill the doorway once more. 

“Avoid what?” Mike asks, eyes narrowed. 

With a great sigh, Steve signs off on his bump, clicks the CD single for “Rich Girl” into the player, and as it spins away, he turns to the two teenagers, hands on his hips. “I swear to God, is it really that hard for you two to knock?”

“Eat shit, Steve,” Mike fires back.

“Mike,” Nancy warns.

Mike throws a hand out to Steve. “He always acts like this!”

Will shakes his head, ears already turning red, just like his brother’s.

“He has a point, though. Why are you guys here?”

“We came to vote,” Will answers, waving a blank ballot in the air. “But we noticed a council meeting was happening.”

Robin quirks an eyebrow. “Council meeting?”

Mike holds a hand out to the four twenty-somethings. “Yeah, all the old people.”

Nancy pinches her nose.

Steve snaps, “Having lower back pain doesn’t make you old, it just means you’re growing up! It should be a badge of honor, like grey hair.”

“Then why do you keep dyeing yours,” Mike deadpans.

Steve’s mouth drops in offense. Robin, Jonathan, Nancy, and Will all look at Steve, suddenly intent on discerning if his dark-blonde look is truly natural or now coming from a box.

“Is that true, Steve?” Robin whispers to him.

Steve talks out of the corner of his mouth, “You’d be going prematurely grey too if you’d been involved with this since 1983.”

“Oh, my god,” Will murmurs.

“Anyway,” Mike continues, shuffling forward, hands in his jacket pockets, eyes specifically stuck on Nancy and Jonathan. “We still want to know why the four of you are fighting. Aren’t you supposed to just be playing lame music on the radio?”

“Do you like any music? Like, at all?” Steve sighs.

Jonathan quickly waves aside Steve’s question. “It’s not important, guys. We were just talking about adult stuff.”

“Like?” Will prods with a quirked, knowing eyebrow.

Jonathan gives him the trademarked, older-sibling I’m going to flick your nose, you little shit glare. “The economy,” he deadpans. 

“Ah, okay. That’s believable,” Will replies, cheery and utterly unconvinced. 

Mike crosses his arms. He catches Will’s eyes, the moment dilating, stretching, some unspoken conversation hanging in the air between the two boys. With a short nod, Mike turns back to the twenty-somethings and announces, “Well, we’re not leaving until you tell us what’s going on.”

“What do you mean what’s going on?” Robin defensively asks. She waves a dismissive hand between her, Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve. “Because, like, nothing is going on.”

Nancy sighs heavily, pinching the bridge of her nose harder. A tight smile overtakes her features once more. “Yes. Absolutely nothing.”

Mike’s frown only deepens. “You guys are terrible liars.”

“Fine, little Wheeler, you caught us,” Steve sighs, putting on an affected air. 

Robin, Nancy, and Jonathan all whip their heads around to stare at him, eyes wide and pleading to not give it all up now.

Steve continues, “We were just calmly discussing how we think you two should be our guests DJs tomorrow.”

Three lightbulbs flick on in quick succession above the other three’s heads. With slow nods and careful smiles, they turn around to face the two boys.

“Yes!” Robin confirms. “We were thinking it might be fun to have you guys try it out.”

“Then why were you arguing?” Mike fires back.

Nancy holds a hand out to him, playing along now. “I mean, because of this. You’re acting exactly how I thought you would, and I didn’t think it’d be good for the radio.”

Mike scowls.

Wanting to join in, Jonathan clears his throat and nods to Will. “And I said I thought you would have superior musical choices to Steve, and we started fighting about that.”

“Right,” Will says slowly at the same time that Steve mutters, “Good one, Byers.”

“But,” Robin continues, “I think we can all agree now that it would be interesting to see you two DJing with me and Steve.”

“And us!” Nancy adds, gesturing between her and Jonathan.

“Yeah, sure,” Steve sighs.

“Interesting,” Will repeats, eyes narrowed at Robin.

Robin purses her lips and nods excitedly. “Yes, little Byers. Interesting.”

Will nods slowly, though he looks unsure.

Mike looks between the four twenty-somethings, then at Will. He looks suspicious and untrusting, but he eventually assents, “Fine. What time do we need to be here?”

“Eight forty-five, sharp,” Robin says. “Come prepared with your best music recs.”

Mike and Will catch each other’s gaze again, twin grins stretching across their faces.

***

Having properly appeased the prying and curious minds of the younger teens and sending them on their way, the four twenty-somethings breathe a collective sigh of relief as the door clicks shut.

“Nice save, Steve,” Jonathan begrudgingly acknowledges, arms crossed over his chest.

Steve, half-joking, pats Jonathan’s shoulder.

Nancy twists her mouth to the side. “But how are we going to pick a song to play if they’re in here with us?”

“Maybe none of us should pick the next song,” Robin says slowly, eyes on the door as it still rattles in the frame from the force of Mike closing it. “Maybe one of them should.”

Nancy huffs out a breath, causing her permed bangs to fluff off her forehead. “Might as well.”

“What could possibly go wrong?” Steve asks.

Jonathan pinches the bridge of his nose. “Everything, actually.”

But Robin feels like she’s on the cusp of possibility, her toes on the edge of a cliff: either this project of theirs is going to crash land on the ground, or it’ll take flight, soaring high into the sky above all the cares of this earth and the hell that exists below it.

Chapter Text

***

ROBIN: Welcome back, Hawkins, and thank you for keeping democracy alive in these trying times!

[an eagle caw, clearly from the soundboard]

STEVE: Yes, thank you for using your ballots to declare that the possessor of superior music tastes is–drumroll please–

ROBIN: [drumming hands on desk; the soundboard goes unrecognized for this precious moment]

STEVE: …Robin.

ROBIN: HA!

JONATHAN: [far away from the mic] Whatever.

NANCY: [also in the background, clapping] 

STEVE: Well, anyway, thank you guys for voting, I guess, even though my feelings are deeply hurt.

[snickers in the background; these sound distinct from Nancy and Jonathan]

ROBIN: Anyway, as your democratically-elected god of music, I’ve decided to use my benevolent powers for good and have two very special guests with us today. 

STEVE: [an affected voice] Really, Robin?

ROBIN: [matching his energy] Really, Steve!

STEVE: And who might our guests be?

ROBIN: You’ll find out, after these first few songs! So, stick around, folks.

STEVE: Gotta hook listeners in, right?

ROBIN: Yep! While you lovely listeners ponder who our guests might be, here’s some musical commentary on the Polish Solidarity movement.

[the keyboard of U2’s “New Year’s Day” begins]

***

“So,” Mike begins as soon as Robin and Steve slip off their headphones, “you told us we get to be guest DJs, and we don’t even get to talk on the mics?”

Will is perched in the chair next to him, but he seems uninterested in Mike’s diatribe. In fact, he seems entirely too preoccupied by a stray thread on his jacket’s sleeve.

In an attempt to keep any and all excitement from unintentionally bursting out of her demeanor, Robin purses her lips and nods slowly. “Yep, that’s pretty much it.”

“But Jonathan got to talk the whole hour.”

“Jonathan used the better part of his hour physically assaulting me, so,” Steve points out.

Jonathan whips his head around from where it had been tilted down to Nancy’s, and he narrows his eyes at Steve. 

“Can we please not start this whole shtick again and just–I don’t know–enjoy each other’s company?” Robin pleads. To get her point more aptly across, she glares between Steve and Jonathan before pointing with her eyes to Mike and Will.

“Why are you guys acting weird?” Mike immediately asks. 

Shoulders slumping, Will rubs a hand over his face. From between his fingers, Robin can see his cheeks are beginning to turn pink.

Thankfully, Nancy comes to Robin’s rescue; she pushes off from the wall, plants a hand on the laminate next to Robin’s, and leans over the desk to address her brother. “Because, Mike, there are quadruple the usual number of people in this–this–”

“Studio,” Robin supplies.

Nancy winces, like she doesn’t quite believe her friend. “Yeah, this–this studio, and it’s all because Robin and Steve are feeling generous when, really, they don’t even have to be.”

Mike eyes her skeptically, but when his gaze flickers to Will, some of his edges soften, and his bristling tones down to the normal amount present in the average American teenager (which is to say, significantly lower, by Mike standards). Mouth twisting to the side, he settles back into his chair, fingers loosely draped over the arms of the chair, and he takes to scratching away at some of their faux-wood laminate. “Yeah, okay.”

“But if you guys don’t want to do this,” Jonathan adds, “I mean, you don’t have to–”

“We want to,” Will answers a bit too quickly.

Jonathan holds his gaze. “You’re sure?”

“It’s just music, Jonathan.” Will tries to straighten himself in the chair, and Robin watches that familiar mask of his fall into place. 

Mike scoffs. “Yeah, but some of their choices cause, like, atomic levels of psychic damage.”

Which, naturally, causes Will to snicker.

This elicits a grab-bag of reactions from the twenty-somethings in the room: Jonathan muffles a chortle, Nancy and Robin end up in a contest for who can glare at the two shithead teenagers the hardest, and Steve, quite helpfully, counters with, “Well, just remember that when Vecna’s squeezing your eyes out of your skull and snapping your bones because you’re too stubborn to listen to what we’ve got on hand.”

“El’s close to finding him, and the military’s doing all those burnings, so,” Mike says in what feels like a rapid refusal to contend with the fact that, really, Vecna could take any one of them at any point.

Will’s hand instinctively pulls up to his neck, where his fingers begin to mess with his hair. His gaze stays pinned to the CD player, watching the disc rotate around, and around, and around.

Mike screws his eyes up, nose scrunching in the process. “Shit, Will, I’m sorry–”

“It’s fine.” A terseness has coiled its way into Will’s tone, no matter how hard he tries to keep his mask shoved over his face. “You guys don’t have to keep walking on eggshells around me.”

“So does that mean ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ is back in the rotation?” Steve queries, pinching the CD case between his fingers and holding it up like a fresh-caught fish.

“No,” Robin, Jonathan, Nancy, and, surprisingly, Will, all say in unison.

Now with an object to direct his anger at (Steve) that isn’t himself, Mike’s blotchy-red face whips around to face Steve. “You played ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go?’ Really?”

“Robin did!”

Robin lets out a frustrated groan, hands shoving into her hair. “We don’t need a rehash, because we solved this problem, like, a week ago! Keep up, Wheeler.”

“A week?”

With a defeated sigh, Will slumps in his chair once more. “It really wasn’t a big deal.”

“So we can play it again?” 

Steve, finally, takes the hint as all remaining members of the room glare at him.

“Well, okay, then,” he mutters, dropping the CD case back into the desk drawer. There’s the sharp crack of the plastic snapping just as he shoves the drawer shut.

“Anyway,” Robin finally says with a huff–breathing in, breathing out, trying to refocus herself on the task at hand. “As your duly-elected music god of WSQK, I’m making the executive decision to let you two introduce one song apiece.”

“Generous,” Will notes.

Robin holds his gaze, eyebrows tilted up, and says, “Yes, Will. Generous. You two will be introducing your favorite songs.”

Mike shrugs his shoulders like this is no big deal.

The corners of Will’s mouth dip into a frown. “Our favorite songs?”

“Yes. This may or may not also be us poking around for information in case a Vecna attack was to occur–” she looks to Nancy, who quickly nods in affirmation, “but, in general, I feel like favorite songs shouldn’t be too hard.”

“Right,” Will murmurs.

Mike studies Will, mouth once again twisting to the side. “Is something–?”

“It’s fine.” Will catches Robin’s eye and asks, “Can I see the sheet?”

Without a second thought, Robin hands the paper over. All eyes are on Will as he intently scans it, his eyes snagging on a certain line. He grabs a stray pen from the desk and scribbles something on the paper, then tries to hand it to Mike, who brushes it off but keeps intently staring at Will.

For Mike’s own sake, Robin dutifully ignores the way his gaze continues to instinctively flick down to Will’s mouth. Right in front of the four twenty-somethings and the sound panel they are using to broadcast, no less. She hopes this whole thing can dispel any doubts in Will’s mind. She, Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan can all plainly see the love between these two, and Will deserves to know just how true it is, too.

“Got your songs in mind?” Robin finally asks as Will hands the sheet back to her.

“Yes,” the two boys say at the same time, Mike more nonchalant about the whole thing than Will.

Don’t you see how much he loves you? Robin wants to cry, but she does a very good job of keeping herself together, and, instead, she hands the sheet off to Steve. “Here, Dingus. We’ve got a show to run and a queue to manage.”

With a great, heaving sigh, Steve takes the paper and scans the list. “Yeah, well, if the listeners start rioting outside the door because of your choices, just know I’ve got Springsteen queued as a backup.”

“God,” Jonathan deadpans.

Nancy slants her mouth to the side, unintentionally doing an impression of her younger brother. She looks like she’s also two seconds away from adding Springsteen and anything Jonathan-esque to the no-play pile of discs exiled to the drawer.

***

TRACK 5: Boys Don’t Cry

***

ROBIN: As promised, me and Dingus are back, and we’re ready to introduce our very extra special guests!

STEVE: Introducing Will and Mike!

[canned cheering from the sound board; a wolf whistle sounds at the very end]

NANCY: [voice faint] Was that really necessary?

MIKE: When do we get to talk?

STEVE: Oh, you guys are on air now, actually.

ROBIN: Have been since we started talking!

WILL: Um.

MIKE: [a huff] Nice of you guys to tell us. 

STEVE: Well, we told you now, didn’t we? Ha-ha! Anyway.

ROBIN: As an inaugural part of you two making your radio debuts, the people want to know: what are your DJ names?

WILL: DJ names…?

STEVE: Yeah, like, your radio personas. 

ROBIN: He’s the Hair.

STEVE: And Jonathan’s Psycho Killer.

JONATHAN: [faintly] I swear to God.

MIKE: What are you, then, Robin?

ROBIN: Not the sidekick, that’s for sure.

[She and Steve share one of their slightly-manic laughing fits together]

[several moments pass]

STEVE: Ah, well, anyway, back to the matter at hand. We aren’t gonna get to play any of your tunes unless you give yourself radio personas.

MIKE: You didn’t tell us this beforehand! How were we supposed to plan? This is such bullshit–

WILL: I’m the Cleric.

[brief silence, and then: cheering from around the room, and from the soundboard]

ROBIN: Thank you, Cleric! Now, see, Mike? Was that too hard?

MIKE: [sighing] Fine. Well, if he’s the Cleric, then I’m the Paladin.

ROBIN: [fawning] Ohmygod, that’s actually so–

STEVE: Wait, is this from that board game you guys play with Dustin and Lucas?

WILL: Dungeons and Dragons.

MIKE: And it’s more than a board game.

STEVE: Ah, well, Paladin and Cleric, that would explain some of your music choices.

[booing from the soundboard]

[sounds of struggle, some brief slapping, a voice hissing Don’t touch that, Nancy!]

ROBIN: Not the segue I wanted, but it’s the segue we’ve got! So, Cleric and Paladin: what have you brought to the devout listeners of WSQK on this doom-and-gloom evening?

MIKE AND WILL: [slightly unintelligible muttering]

[several moments pass]

WILL: Um, I’ll go first, I guess.

ROBIN: [a slight squeal] Perfect! And what, pray tell, Cleric, are you bestowing upon us?

WILL: It’s just a song.

JONATHAN: [a deep sigh from the background]

STEVE: I mean, yeah, we kind of guessed.

WILL: It’s called “Boys Don’t Cry,” and it’s by The Cure. 

ROBIN: You are a wise young lad, Mr. Cleric. The Cure is an excellent group.

MIKE AND STEVE: [in unison] The Cure?

WILL: [sighing] The group doesn’t matter, okay? I mean, yes, they actually really do matter, but the point is just to pick our favorite songs, right? Well, this is one of my favorites. It has been for a while now, actually.

ROBIN: And why is that?

WILL: It just…It’s relatable, I guess?

ROBIN: And what more can we ask for from the arts? Cleric, hit us with the bump!

WILL: Um…yeah. Here’s “Boys Don’t Cry” by The Cure.

[the strumming intro of “Boys Don’t Cry” begins]

***

Will, immediately, sinks back into his chair, his eyes going distant, focusing on a spot on the wall just between Robin and Steve’s shoulders. Although, Robin isn’t quite sure how he could be getting a good look at this far-off point when, after Steve has the headphones only half off of one ear, Mike leans forward and begins to snatch them from him. What follows, naturally, is several moments of Steve getting tangled up in the wire, Mike anxiously tugging it away, and Robin helplessly trying to get the two to please shut the fuck up! This is supposed to be a moment, where Mike and Will’s eyes meet over the rotation of the CD, Will’s favorite song humming in the background, and they decide that they need to go, actually; maybe their fingers tangle while they leave the room, and they have just the right amount of time to make it out the back door before pressing into a long-awaited kiss.

(Or something!)

Mike, however, having won the fight against Steve for the headphones, slings them onto his ears at the end of the first verse, then seems to turn his full focus on: his fingers are gripped into the arms of his chair, mouth twisted to the side, eyes dead-set on the whirl of the CD in the player. 

It’s only when Robin peels her eyes away that she notices Will, whose gaze now rests solely on Mike. He’s leaning his head in his hand, his mouth covered, and he looks so intent, so vulnerable.

Robin’s heart aches.

***

I would tell you that I loved you

If I thought that you would stay

But I know that it's no use

And you've already gone away

Misjudged your limits

Pushed you too far

Took you for granted

Thought that you needed me more, more, more

***

The song plays on in the room’s silence, winding to its ending, and once it gets there, Steve, leaning towards the sound panel, says, “Well, since you have the headphones, then I guess you can handle the next bump–”

He flips the mics on.

Mike, immediately, flicks the switch off and hurriedly mashes the button for the next track, his face sheet-white.

Robin’s mouth parts in confusion. She can hear Mike’s pick for favorite song–”Smalltown Boy” by Bronski Beat, which is a cry of help to be forcibly ejected from the closet if she ever heard one–beginning through her headphones. She tries to rewind the last two-and-a-half minutes of her life for any offense that could have been made against Mike, but she comes up empty.

It worries her. A lot.

Will studies Mike carefully, head tilted to the side. “Is something…?”

“That song was depressing,” Mike decisively announces. His gaze is stuck on the spinning Bronski Beat disc, and even though he’s right across the desk from Robin, it feels like he’s in another universe.

Something twists in Robin’s stomach. The low-level headache she’s learned to live with this past month begins throbbing once more, warning her like a siren: danger, danger!

A slight crease forms between Will’s eyebrows, and he shrugs. “I mean, I guess it kind of is? I don’t know, I just listened to it a lot in California, and I couldn’t think of anything else, so…”

“In California?” Mike clarifies, peering up through his bangs at the other boy.

Robin has watched Will turn quiet and shifting, eyes cast downward under the attentions of so many people in this godforsaken radio station, but he holds Mike’s gaze steady now. The dim lamplight drapes a haze over the desk, but she can see red coloring Will’s ears, the way his jaw briefly goes tense. “Yeah, in California. I listened to it, like, all the time.”

Steve suddenly averts his eyes, standing up and meandering over to the file cabinet full of CDs. Nancy and Jonathan shift uncomfortably, an unspoken conversation passing between them, and Robin’s sitting there, watching Will and Mike, and she feels like she’s witnessing something that isn’t meant for her eyes. California? What about California? 

The music was supposed to lead to that big, fireworks-sparking moment for these two in the privacy of their own company, not prodding at some unhealed wound between the two in front of four pairs of prying eyes.

Robin clears her throat. “Um, actually, the four of us need to go and–ah–do something–”

“This is what you listened to all the time. This is your favorite song?” Mike, disregarding any of the twenty-somethings’ discomfort, clarifies. He’s shifted his whole body so his head, shoulders, legs are all facing Will, like the entire world has narrowed to just their two chairs and the fuzzy lamplight.

The furrow in Will’s brow deepens. “Is there something wrong with that?”

“No, but…”

Will rolls his eyes. “Well, the but just negates whatever you were going to say.”

“I’m trying.”

Robin is so lost, missing so much context, and she can’t believe she led these two to this point, handed them the weapons to destroy themselves and said she was doing it all in the name of love. “Hey, guys, it’s okay, we don’t have to play it again–”

“This isn’t about that,” Mike says, eyes still pinned on Will.

Will tilts his head, eyes slightly narrowed, and says, “Then what is it about?”

The room goes eerily still, the tension drawing out like a piano wire tuned to near-snapping. The terse, coded words between the two boys have managed to deafen even the ambient noise of the radio, and as much as Robin wants to jump between them like David Lean on a film set telling his actors to get back, no, take it from the top, she doesn’t think there’s anything she can do to stop the direction this is heading.

Which, to put it in mild terms, feels like an interstate-closing car crash. 

With a sharp intake of breath, Mike bites out a venomous, “Whatever,” shoves himself out of his chair, and storms out of the room. Robin and Nancy are only just beginning to untangle themselves from behind the desk when he throws the door open so hard that it smacks into the wall. It swings halfway back to the doorway just as the back exit door slams open with a metal squeak, then flies back into place.

All in a span of seconds.

“Holy fuck holy fuck holy fuck,” Robin begins muttering, her breaths growing tight. “Will, I’m so, so sorry–”

“No, I was stupid,” Will interrupts, waving off her apology. There are no tears, no real anger in his words, just tension and the weight of so many unspoken things. “I was just really stupid.”

“Mike’s just being an asshole, okay?” Nancy cuts in, shaking her head. “Look, I can go talk to him and tell him–”

“Please don’t.”

Jonathan approaches where Will sits, his voice taking on a soft tone Robin has only heard reserved for Will and, sometimes, El. “Did you guys ever talk about those months?” 

Will bristles, annoyance passing over his features. With the four twenty-somethings crowding around him now, he’s taken on the appearance of a cornered animal: shoulders hunched, gaze dropped, voice tense. “I didn’t see a point. It would just hurt more, and we felt fine. We just…we didn’t talk, and everything was fine.”

“Talk about what?” Robin automatically says, then, looking around at the occupants of the room, silently kicks herself. “I mean, of course, you don’t have to tell us–I just–I don’t know, Will, it might help to talk about whatever it is? Maybe?”

He holds her gaze for a moment that stretches to a needle-sharp point. It’s one that says thanks, but no thanks.

“I just need some alone time,” Will finally says with a dejected sigh. He gets up and, very pointedly, pushes through the twenty-somethings, parting them like the Red Sea. “Smalltown Boy” still plays from the headphones, but when Will opens the door, it drifts in crystal clarity from the untold number of handhelds and speakers tuning in to the station. In stark, ironic contrast to Will’s choice of favorite song, this one begs the listener to cry, boy, cry, boy, cry.

Unlike Mike’s slam from earlier, Will shuts the door quietly behind him, and it’s somehow much louder and worse.

Especially when she doesn’t hear the back door squeaking open, which means he’s not going after Mike.

A pit opens in Robin’s stomach, black and swallowing and utterly hopeless.

“Hey, so,” Steve says into the room’s gaping maw of silence, “what, exactly, is up with California?”

Jonathan and Nancy share a questioning glance with each other, one that makes Robin feel a hundred times worse than she already does, which shouldn’t have been possible, and yet.

Jonathan finally begins, “Us moving to California was hard on all of us, of course, but for Will, well…”

“Mike wasn’t reaching out like we thought he would,” Nancy adds. “Not a lot of calls to California, some letters to El, but not much else.”

“Which meant that he and Will weren’t really speaking to each other.”

Robin’s eyebrows knit together in confusion, trying to piece it all together with what little she’s been given. “So they just…weren’t really talking?”

“Well…” Jonathan hedges.

The corners of Nancy’s mouth pinch. “Everyone here already knows everything else. Might as well be all clear on this, right?”

With a defeated shrug, Jonathan assents.

“So…California,” he begins.

***

Which is how Robin and Steve learn the whole story. They’d already known pieces of it, of course, what with the road trip from hell across the American Southwest, El’s rescue from a top-secret military facility in Nevada, and how her first big head-to-head battle with Vecna occurred interdimensionally, one foot in a pizza dough freezer and another in the Upside Down.

What they hadn’t been made privy to was that the road trip from hell was also filled with enough gay yearning and pining that Jonathan, who heretofore hadn’t given much thought to Will’s love life or lack thereof, had the realization that his little brother is gay and in love with resident beanpole Mike Wheeler. This also led to many conferences between him and Nancy once they’d returned to Hawkins, comparing notes about their two younger siblings’ behaviors over the former six months, which solidified that the weirdness and tension between the two had been going on for quite some time, a long-distance tragedy of high school hormones playing out across states, silenced over telephone lines, written in letters that never got sent.

And by the end of the tale, when Jonathan and Nancy are done and getting up to go get some coffee to help ease the insanity of the night, and the music’s still playing, Robin feels an ache in her chest so urgent, so acute, that she briefly wonders if a heart attack is on her horizon.

She would never be so lucky, though; no, she’s still here, relegated to the land of the living, watching history repeat itself in her, in Will, in everyone out in the world who doesn’t fit in. 

She feels herself sinking down to where she was just a week ago: agitated and hopeless, and this time, the radio can’t comfort her. It had just been a distraction, of course. Robin shouldn’t have been so ignorant as to think happy endings could suddenly manifest with the power of a few well-placed songs and good intentions. 

Happy endings were for people who lived elsewhere, people who were something else than whatever she was.

Chapter Text

There’s a hand on her shoulder, gently shaking her.

“Robin,” Steve says. 

She doesn’t care, though–she’s face-down on the desk, arms stretched in front of her, trying to melt into the laminate and metal. Disappearing from reality would be far less miserable than this, because on top of her own love life being a mess, and Vickie still being stuck in the hospital, and nothing good working out for her, ever, Robin has also managed to ruin Will’s life! Instead of helping him, she’s as good as destroyed his chances with the love of his life because of her half-cocked scheming. She’s doomed to suffer forever, and she’s condemned Will to such a fate, too.

And the radio plays on, the CDs autoswitching with each preprogrammed track change, because Steve at least had the foresight to throw together a mix for the remaining hour. A-ha currently mocks her from the headphones next to her head.

Steve clears his throat and tries again. “Hey, Robin.”

“Whatttt,” she drawls, voice muffled against the desk. 

A headache throbs behind her eyes. It bounces between her skull and the desk, pounding into her brain.

“Um,” Steve tries, “I just wanted to say that–”

“I suck?” 

“Hey, no, that’s not what I think.”

“What is it, then?” Robin finally turns her head so her cheek rests against the desk. Her mussed hair cascades across her eyes, obscuring her vision. “That I’m miserable and doomed to be luckless in all matters of love forever?”

“No, of course not.” For the first time since this whole endeavor began, Steve takes in her demeanor and seems to truly believe one of Robin’s pitiful, self-effacing monologues. He huffs out a sigh, pulling out the other desk chair and carefully perching himself on the edge, always keeping a hand on her shoulder. “I get that things are hard right now, especially with Vickie so far away–”

Robin, embarrassingly, lets out a small whimper.

Steve smiles tightly at her. “But you’re not doomed to like, die alone. You know that, right? And Mike and Will having a disagreement doesn’t mean you destroyed any chances they have of being together.”

“I was so stupid.” Robin feels a hot tear sting down her cheek, pools against the cool laminate. “I did what I always do, and I inserted myself where I don’t belong. I meddled, and I made everything worse.”

“You don’t make everything worse.”

“Counterpoint,” Robin says, reaching down with a limp hand and throwing open the drawer of all the CDs their friends had forbidden them to play. All songs that she picked, or else let Steve pick on her watch.

And “Boys Don’t Cry” will be added to the collection, because Robin can’t do anything right–can’t pick the right song, the right time to get involved, the right people she’s supposed to like, the right way to even like somebody–

“I think,” Steve finally says, gently pushing the drawer closed, “that you’ve given a lot more meaning to this than what’s on the surface.”

“It’s like you and the radio,” Robin mutters. She turns her head back, forehead to the laminate, eyes scrunched closed against more tears. “This is the only thing that’s kept me sane the last week, and I couldn’t even do it right. Now I feel even worse.”

Mercifully, silence falls over them. She’s not really in the mood to be comforted or told anything other than the bare truth of the matter: she screwed up in the name of keeping herself busy, her mind off of things while the world caved in around them, and Will and Mike are the collateral damage.

And, if she’s being honest, Vickie is probably as good as dead! Or, she will be, if she keeps sticking around here in the name of helping defeat Vecna. Robin should break up with her before this becomes an even bigger shitshow than it already is, and she should live as she always had before: exiled and alone, dubious and demeaning of all things love, because such a concept was not made to fit a person like her. While she’s at it, since she’s such a blight to the eyes of the gods of love, apparently, she’ll leave Will alone. Any knowledge she’s gleaned from being gay over the years couldn’t possibly help him, especially when the results are as disastrous as this. No, he would be better off to just figure it out on his own and work his own way through the world. 

How could she have been so stupid?

Steve suddenly claps his hands together, sending a shock to Robin’s chest; she startles so badly that she bangs her head against the desk, which only makes her headache worse and the tears come faster.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Steve finally says matter-of-factly. He pushes his chair back from the desk and stands. “C’mon, Rob.”

“Noooo,” Robin whines. “Let me die in peace.”

There’s a deep sigh, and suddenly, Robin feels two hands looped under her arms, pulling her up into a reluctant standing position, her head lolling back to look up at Steve, hair a frazzled mess.

“Nope,” she affirms, shaking her head, trying to drop back into the chair.

“No no no,” Steve says, like a parent chiding a child. He holds her up and starts dragging her towards the door. “We’re stopping this pity party before it becomes a pity rager.”

“Too late for that,” Robin mutters. She feels like a feral cat being reluctantly dragged towards a bath. “I’m pitiful! The pity party comes part and parcel with me!”

“Nuh-uh,” Steve chides, shaking his head. “Nope, we’re gonna let the CD player man the board, and you and I are going to get you out of here.”

“And go where? Hell?” Robin scoffs, then gives a snotty sniff. “That’s the only place lower than I’m at, currently!”

With a sigh, Steve moves from dragging her under the arms to turning her around, facing him. He keeps his hands on her shoulders and lightly shakes her. “Robin. Come on. It’s not that bad.”

“But it is, Steve!” she shoots back, face going red with shame. “I’m cursed when it comes to love! I ruin anything I touch having to do with it, and this blowup with Mike and Will is just proof of that, not to mention Vickie being stuck in that godforsaken hospital, and–God, I didn’t even know if she truly liked me until a couple months ago! And then, oops, now she’s gone forever, and I’m doomed to be alone!”

Pity fills Steve’s eyes as he scans her face, his thumbs pressing into her flannel-clad shoulders. “Do you really think that?”

Robin nods, and she hates the way she feels her nose scrunching up and the tears stinging her face and the snot running out of her nostrils. “I’m just not meant for this. I’m not.”

Steve tilts his head to the side, considering. “Well, first of all–not that it does much good on the romance front–but it’s going to take a lot more than you having some bad luck to get rid of me.” Robin opens her mouth to argue, but he holds a finger up. “And, no, despite my own string of bad luck in love, if, for some reason, I do manage to find the perfect person for me, I’m not leaving you behind, okay? You’re my best friend, and that means I love you, and you can place that at whatever level of importance you think it warrants.”

Sure, Steve’s right–it doesn’t help much in the realm of romance, but it does make something unclench in her chest. For a moment, she thinks, Oh, I’m not alone, and then immediately dissolves into another round of sniffs and barely-restrained tears once more.

With a soft smile, Steve continues, “Second of all, Nancy and Jonathan are your friends, too, and they’re not going to leave you behind. And believe me, if Jonathan Byers can find love, then there’s got to be somebody out there for you. Maybe that’s Vickie, maybe it’s somebody else in some other place, but regardless, there’s someone.”

Robin wants to melt into the floor and stay there for three days. She wants to retreat to her childhood bedroom with a pile of blankets and a stack of rental movies, but instead of being alone, she wants Steve there. Maybe Nancy and Jonathan, too.

Steve gives a slight shake of her shoulders. “And, third of all: what’s between Mike and Will is between them, you know?” He nods towards the board on the desk. “I mean, you can lead a horse to great tunes, but you can’t make him confess his love to his best friend because of it.”

“Why,” Robin says through a sniff-laugh, “did you have to butcher that saying.”

With a shrug, Steve tries to give her a faux-bragadocious look. “It’s called being an excellent radio host, Robin. And I wouldn’t be anywhere close to being a good one if it wasn’t for my best friend.”

“Shut up,” Robin says, but for the first time this hour, she’s smiling, even if only just so. She finally swipes her sleeve across her nose, makes an attempt to wipe at her eyes.

“Ah, well, I see all sappiness levels for the day have been used up. We’re back to sarcastic banter now, right?”

Robin lamely cuffs him on the shoulder, swaying slightly. Despite the headache still looming behind her eyes, she feels like she can stand now, at least. And, sure, she has a truckload of emotional baggage to sort out because of this whole experience, but, hey, she has friends to go through it by her side. “Thank you, Dingus.”

“Of course, my trusty sidekick.”

Robin cuffs him again.

With a gentle laugh, Steve says, “Okay, so. How about we get out of here? Let the music run, go grab some coffee, and take a walk or something?”

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Robin nods. She rubs her hands over her face, trying to will away the red that undoubtedly rims her eyes and colors her nose, and she nods again. “Yes. Let’s get out of here.”

***

Given Robin’s general lack of coordination and Steve’s multiple head injuries over the years, it should be a given that walking around with hot mugs of coffee should be a horrible idea, but Robin simply can’t bring herself to care about the stains now coloring her clothes and the slight burn of the hot liquid on her skin. Besides, they ran out of foam cups and their corresponding lids in the breakroom the first week of being here, so it’s not like they have much of a choice. 

After brewing a fresh pot and Robin adding her usual creams and sugars, they stride down the halls of WSQK and towards the entryway. Steve pushes the door open with his backside, and Robin shuffles her way out into the cool night air.

The outside speakers still whine with their music choices, but Robin can’t bring herself to focus too much. She tries to ground herself in what’s around her in this moment: the opaque steam billowing out of her and Steve’s mugs, the warmth of the ceramic bleeding into her quickly-chilling fingers, the press of night air against her stinging eyes and nose.

She takes a sip of the coffee; it makes her feel a bit more tethered to this reality.

“Thanks,” she finally says as they slowly amble their way to the left; they aren’t technically allowed to venture into the woods, but the military said the perimeter of the building was okay to do laps around, given the stir-craziness of it all. “I just feel like the whole end of the world thing is exacerbating all the other baggage I have in my life.”

“No need to justify it to me,” Steve says with a sip from his mug. His other hand is stuffed into the pocket of his jacket. “I probably would have gone all Norman Bates by now if we hadn’t started broadcasting on the radio.”

Robin frowns. “You would’ve stabbed a woman to death in the shower?”

Steve frowns, too. “Wait, that’s what happens in that movie?”

“You’ve never seen Psycho?”

“Do I look like somebody who would watch Psycho?”

“Fair point,” Robin mutters. “Well, when all this apocalypse mess is done, we’re going to have a movie night, and I’m going to show you all the movies you need to know to win over the ladies.”

“Somehow,” Steve says, “I don’t think Psycho is real lady-winning material. You know, you and Jonathan should really hang out more. You guys are both into weird stuff and think it’s all, like, secretly super horny and good.”

Robin nearly spits out her next mouthful of coffee. 

Because, apart from Steve’s downright offensive comparison of her to Jonathan, they’ve just rounded the corner, where the back doorway near the makeshift studio leads out. There’s the dim orange light of the exit dangling above, and the speakers tinnily playing the song that was next in the queue, one of Robin’s secret favorites that Steve had stuck into the rotation, most likely to cheer her up. It’s all pounding keyboards and bouncy rhythms:

***

TRACK 6: WATERLOO

***

Waterloo, I was defeated, you won the war

Waterloo, promise to love you forevermore

Waterloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to

Waterloo, knowing my fate is to be with you

***

And right there, stuck in the amber light, are two teenage boys.

Mouth to mouth.

Kissing.

Robin quickly makes out the profiles of Mike–back pressed to the bricks, hand gently pressed against Will’s hip, one of his legs hooked around one of Will’s ankles–and Will, who has a hand fisted in Mike’s shirt, pushed ever-so-slightly up onto his toes, and his mouth undeniably pulled into a grin as he kisses Mike, and Mike kisses him, and they kiss.

It’s a miracle that Robin doesn’t black out, truly. After the despairing lows she’d reached tonight, she was certain nothing good could maybe ever happen again, but now, she’s here, and Steve’s here, and Mike and Will are kissing–

Steve gives a small, low whistle. “Way to go, Byers–”

“Shut up!” Robin hisses. She grabs the collar of his jacket and pulls him back around the corner with her, causing the coffee in their mugs to generously spill in the process. 

She would be more concerned about potential first degree burns if she wasn’t so happy.

They press their backs to the wall, trying to remain as quiet and still as possible, which is hard, given the fact that Robin is now vibrating with enough energy to power a small city, and Steve is desperately trying to lick up any stray drops of coffee around the rim of his mug. 

“I can’t believe it was ABBA,” Robin breathes out. “The power of ABBA brought them together.”

“In hindsight,” Steve whispers back, “we should’ve tried them first. Everybody loves ABBA.”

“We were so dumb!” Robin agrees. “Why didn’t we do ABBA first?”

“I mean, you were too focused on weird stuff.”

“Need I remind you of Corey Hart?”

Steve waves a dismissive hand between them. “Okay, well, regardless, I think Springsteen would have eventually worked.”

Robin lets out another small, quiet laugh. “But nothing can beat ABBA, Steve. I mean, clearly the power of Swedish pop is so immense it can help bridge whatever emotional divide existed between these two.”

“Do you hear something?”

Robin and Steve both startle, namely because neither of them said this last sentence. In fact, the voice sounded like Mike’s and it was coming from around the corner, approximately fifteen feet away.

“Maybe?” This voice is Will’s now, Robin can tell. “I mean, we can go check–”

At that moment, Robin and Steve do not need words to communicate–they merely catch each other’s eyes, then break into a run, spilling their coffee all along the dirt, dead leaves, and brick facade of WSQK.

***

“BINGO!” Robin can’t help but announce to their makeshift studio, one fist pumped in the air like she’s Bender from The Breakfast Club.

Steve, right by her side, slow claps, a cocky smile plastered across his face. “I can’t be-lieve that we did that!”

“But we did–”

“Did what?”

In the midst of their admittedly-overly-enthusiastic celebration of two teenagers kissing, Robin and Steve had failed to notice that their studio space was not, in fact, empty. Rather, Nancy and Jonathan had returned and were sitting perched in the chairs that Robin and Steve usually occupied during broadcasting hours. They both have their hands wrapped around their coffee mugs, as if to prevent them from being sucked into the conglomerate of old mugs Robin and Steve had accumulated over the past week. 

Both parties also have eyebrows slanted up, a thousand queries dancing across their faces; the only thing that seems to prevent them from asking them all at once is some timid sensibility that must come from being an older sibling, one that Robin and Steve did not possess in any capacity.

Clearly.

“You guys did what?” Nancy prods again.

“Well,” Steve hedges, “I mean, in the grand scheme of things, we didn’t, like, actually do anything–”

“Except,” Robin cuts in, “we provided the impetus, which led to the thing, so we did kind of did it?”

“Wait…” Jonathan trails off, a notch forming in between his eyebrows. 

A moment later, Nancy’s eyes grow wide, and she jolts out of the chair (without spilling a drop of coffee, which makes Robin stare in wonder). “Oh my god, you mean–”

Steve holds his hands out, a pleased smile on his face. “A homerun.”

Now, it’s Jonathan’s turn to jolt out of the chair. “Wait, a homerun–”

“Not that kind of home run!” Robin quickly assures, waving her mug around. What dregs did remain in her cup after her dash away from Will and Mike now fling out of the rim and onto the dreary carpet. 

“Yeah, I just meant a kiss.” Steve scoffs, giving Jonathan a disappointed look. “Get your head out of the gutter, Byers.”

“Oh, come on,” Jonathan seethes.

“The point is,” Nancy cuts in, thankfully, gently smiling, “they had their moment, right?”

“They did! And it was all thanks to our ingenious idea to play ABBA this late at night.”

Steve tilts his head back and forth. “Well, it was more like I let Robin queue it up because she was having a crisis about potentially ruining Mike and Will’s relationship by having them on the broadcast, and we just happened to stumble upon them having their moment by the back door, but still.”

“It’s a win in my book,” Robin grins. 

“What’s a win?”

The four twenty-somethines whirl around to find the two boys in the doorway. 

“Do you honestly not know how to knock?” Steve whines.

Will and Mike, slightly disheveled, stand in the doorway once more. Unlike previous times, both of them appear more tempered: Will isn’t nearly as fidgety and anxious, and Mike’s scowl has been replaced by a neutral, thin line.

“We just wanted to say that…everything’s fine. It’s cool. And, uh, thank you for having us on, I guess?” Mike bites on the inside of his cheek, thinking, and it’s then that the hallway fluorescents make it abundantly clear that a sunburn blush is starting to color across his face. The next words rush out of his mouth in feigned nonchalance. “Anyway, Will and I were just gonna go back and rest–”

“Right,” Jonathan deadpans, eyes flicking between Mike and Will. “Rest.”

Mike frowns. “Yeah.”

In unison, the four twenty-somethings stare between the two boys’ tousled hair and the wrinkles in their shirts near their necks and hips. Even if Robin hadn’t accidentally witnessed it with her own eyes, she feels like she’d be able to tell that something had occurred.

Will clears his throat, a flush similar to Mike’s coloring his cheeks and ears. “Anyway, we just wanted to say, um. Thanks. For everything, I guess.” He locks eyes with Robin, a soft, knowing grin poking up the corners of his mouth. 

Robin, feigning ignorance, tilts her head to the side. “I guess happy endings still happen in a place like this, huh?”

Confusion twists on Will’s face now, and a notch forms between Mike’s eyebrows.

“What are you talking about?” Mike asks.

The red in Will’s face deepens.

Robin and her compatriots share knowing looks before Robin turns back to the boys, casually shrugging. “Nothing. Just, uh, making an observation.”

“Well,” Mike says with a sniff, “there’s nothing to observe.”

“Right,” Steve drawls.

“Anyway!” Will says, clearing his throat. He reaches down for Mike’s hand, seems to realize what he’s doing, then quickly shakes his hand out, as if the action had been an odd muscle spasm. “We’re, uh, gonna go get started on that resting.”

And before another thing can be said, the two boys beat a hasty retreat, leaving the four twenty-somethings to share looks, and grins, and laughs.

It feels like the first good thing to happen in a while.

Chapter Text

***

Outro

***

It’s severely late at night, but Robin is still riding high on tonight’s victory and decides she’s deserving of a second cup of coffee. Will it calm her enough to grant her a few precious hours of sleep, or will it keep her up all night fidgeting and excited and so so happy? It’s a game of Russian roulette, and after tonight, she’s willing to take the risk.

She bounces into the break room to the beat of the current song, “Don’t You Forget About Me,” nudging the door open with her hip. By the grace of the caffeine gods, there’s a full, fresh carafe, its lid popped open and steam spilling out of it. For the first time in weeks, Robin actually feels hopeful, like the world can still go on, even when so much of what was once familiar has passed away. Sure, Hawkins might be a literal hellhole right now, but maybe from the ashes of the old can spring a new reality. One where, maybe, people like her and Will get happy endings.

Her heart pinches at the thought of Vickie, and while she is indelibly happy for Will and Mike, a small part of her wishes she could have this with Vickie, too. Hell, she’d push Vickie up against the back wall and make out with her to Cyndi Lauper, even. 

But overall, it’s a good night. Something good has happened because of her and Steve’s radio prowess (even if the winning song was unintentional, but still!). And if–nay, when she and Vickie are reunited, she can tell her all about it then.

“Hey, Robin–”

“Holy shit!” she exclaims, right in the middle of pumping a stream of coffee into her mug. The startle, unfortunately, causes her fingers to tense and her arm to tilt in just the right way so as to send a splash of hot coffee down the front of her shirt, which quickly slides down her torso and dribbles onto her black jeans.

Well.

With a huff, she knocks the half-filled mug onto the counter and spins around to find her ever-faithful partner in crime, Steve, standing in the doorway, one hand on the knob, an urgent look in his eyes but an undeniable smile quirking up his mouth. “Hey, are you busy?”

Robin plants one fist on her hip and gestures down her front with her other hand. “I don’t know, Steve. What does it look like I’m doing?”

“Being a pretty bad coffee drinker. You know it’s supposed to go in your mouth and not on your clothes, right?”

She makes a face at him. 

This is the part where, normally, he would return the favor, and they’d continue until they couldn’t contain their laughter, and then they’d decide that coffee-stained clothes could be the next big thing, and maybe that’s the business they should go into together!

Except, Steve isn’t following the script. Instead, he shakes his head slightly, like waking himself out of a fog, and takes to messing with the doorknob, twisting it back and forth and back and forth and– “Well, anyway, the coffee’s not ideal, but there’s something I need to show you. Like, right now.”

“While I am happy for the future bliss that is now being afforded to the younger Byers and Wheeler, and despite how excited I was to see them finally cut through the tension and kiss, I don’t actually want to be present every time it happens, because that would be fucking weird–”

“It’s not that!” Steve hisses under his breath. He throws a look over his shoulder, assuring the coast is clear, before he fully steps in and cracks the door behind him, hands crossed over his chest. “Please, Rob–it’s really important, and we’re also kind of on a time limit.”

Robin frowns. “Time limit? What, are you trying to trick me by playing a Weird Al song? Because Dustin did request Another One Rides the Bus’ again, and you know how much I hate it–”

“Robin!” Steve hisses again. “Please!”

“Ugh, fine.” She stares down at her shirt, lamely dabs at it with a stray paper towel before throwing it back on the counter. “I guess I’ll just walk around with coffee on my shirt like an idiot, then.”

“It adds to your quaint charm,” Steve says as he throws open the door. Before she can fire up a retort, he puts his hands on her shoulders and steers her down the hallway. “Which, you know, will come in handy real soon.”

“What–?”

“No time to talk, just keep walking!”

They power-walk past Jonathan and Nancy, sitting in a window alcove with a blanket wrapped around both of their shoulders. Upon their approach, Jonathan bolts to his feet, eyes locked on Steve. “So, is everything–”

“Perfect, Byers, actually, thank you! And you too, Nancy!”

Nancy offers a slightly-mischievous grin in return.

“What is going on?” Robin squawks as they roar by their two friends.

“A moment, perhaps!” Nancy shouts in response. 

***

Once at the makeshift-studio’s door, Steve tilts his head, checking the music with his watch before nodding once then turning to Robin. “So.”

“So,” Robin drolly replies back.

“Go inside.”

Robin tilts an eyebrow up.

“If you don’t go in there Robin,” Steve says, “I will not hesitate to shove you in there.”

“What’s so important after tonight that you feel the need to pull me away from my hard-won cup of coffee–”

“There’s no time!” Steve summarily announces, just as the current song begins to fade out. 

“What do you mean–”

Steve throws open the door, puts a light hand between her shoulderblades, and he makes good on his promise to push her in.

Despite her protests, Steve did manage to time everything perfectly, because the familiar keyboard and drums start up as Robin stumbles into the studio and the door slams shut behind her. Not only does “Waterloo” play from her and Steve’s discarded headphones, but a boombox is set up on one of the file cabinets, pulsing the song out at a sensible volume.

Which is a surprise, of course, because when did Steve have the time to find a boombox? 

“Robin?” 

The boombox and ABBA, it turns out, are not the main surprise of the night.

Robin finally turns to the rest of the room, and her heart shoots up into her throat as she looks in the middle of the room, and she’s there, and she’s real. She’s real and alive and–

“Vickie?” Robin barely manages to sputter out her name. 

Her frizzy hair is tied back in a messy knot, and there’s a long, bloody scratch across her left cheek that hides the constellations of freckles Robin’s been dreaming of counting for weeks now, and she looks so, so tired, but she still takes a tentative step forward and a smile tears across her face and she says, “I heard you’re in the business of radio now.” With a sniff, she adds, “I really like ‘Time After Time,’ too.”

What little remaining logic-processing centers in Robin’s brain recognize that Vickie is injured and tired and has probably gone through literal hell, but yet here she is, teasing and biting her lip and stepping closer and closer to Robin, and yet, she’s stunned. Dumbfounded. Confuddled, even. 

She makes several leaps and bounds in the conversation and, instead of responding to Vickie’s literal words, simply says, “I spilled coffee on my shirt.”

Vickie smirks. “It’s a good look on you, I think.”

***

Waterloo

I was defeated, you won the war

Waterloo

Promise to love you forevermore

***

“Oh, holy shit, Vickie,” Robin breathes out, tears filling in her eyes, and she hugs her, pulls her in, runs her fingers against Vickie’s hair, just to remind herself that she’s here and real.

And they have much catching up to do.

So Robin pulls away, and before Vickie can say anything, ask whatever question Robin sees sitting on the tip of her tongue, Robin decides to seize the moment, to finally do one of the many things she’s been dreaming of these past few weeks.

She puts one of her palms to Vickie’s unscratched cheek, the other to the small of her back, and she kisses her.

For once, she gets to have a happy ending, too.