Well, I think this is the end for this particular fic, but I have no shortage of Things To Say About Dads, so I'll likely churn out some accompanying works alongside some newer stuff I've been working on. Hope you enjoy :)

April 1986

"Steve."

"Robin."

She's not sitting with him on the bed, but then again she usually doesn't for the first half hour or so that she's over. Instead, he'll sit cross-legged in the center of his awful plaid bedspread and track her movements back and forth across the room, the way she flits around like a moth in a chandelier store touching and picking up and putting down and occasionally breaking until she's tired herself still.

She's drawn herself up from Steve's desk chair, where she'd been spinning herself around with socked kicks to the baseboard, and is now kneeling at his bedside as though in prayer, head resting sideways on her crossed arms at the edge of the mattress while she lazily flips through an old yearbook she absolutely can't see clearly from the angle her head is at. Steve thinks she's probably just doing him a favor, not looking at him.

"Why don't you go somewhere?" Robin asks, not for the first time, as though she can pester a new answer out of him.

"My mom," he says, as he always does.

"Steve…"

"She's my mom." He sends her a small, sad smile and she meets his eyes, finally, to mirror the expression. She doesn't exactly get it, they both know this by now, but he also knows she'll recognize the explanation as her own the few times they've really talked about the things her own mother can't know about her heart.

He goes quiet again because there's still a rasp to his voice that comes out at certain volumes on account of the attempted strangulation by demonic bats, looks away quickly because grinning pulls at the bruise he can feel developing at the highest point of his cheekbone.

Robin looks away too, because she's perfect, but also because if she looks at him for too long she'll get angry all over again and it'll do neither of them any good for her to start stomping around twenty past midnight in the hundred-pound lace-up boots she insists on wearing to death in spite of Steve's offers to replace them with a shinier pair - least of all Steve.

It wouldn't normally be a problem, the stomping, only his parents are home.

That's how he'd posed the invitation to her: Hey, Rob? My parents are home.

Then: I think my wrist might be broken.

Then: I fell down the stairs. Over. Because he knows from experience neither Dustin nor Erica (nor any of the kids, really) are above eavesdropping on their private signal, no matter how many times he's lectured them to take boundaries as seriously as they take radio etiquette. Dustin insists it's only for the safety of the Party that he butts into all of Steve and Robin's conversations uninvited, whereas Erica unashamedly chimes in with bored commentary.

Steve's parents are home, and maybe he was feeling a little mouthy over dinner, all sharp edges and a blistered heart, having spent the afternoon at Eddie Munson's exclusive invite-only funeral where a smattering of fellow freaks tossed handfuls of Hawkins soil into a grave that would remain unmarked "until things died down a little." The casket was empty, despite Steve's best efforts, and if Henderson never looks at him the same again because of it he thinks he can live with that, having dragged the man's blood-slippery body halfway out of hell before Nancy turned her gun on him the way she had in '83 and said "leave him, Steve." The blood. He'd come rightside-up spent and sobbing and empty-handed.

Maybe there was an acidity to his voice, a too poorly thought-out explanation, a devastation sitting too close to the surface of his skin for the likes of a Harrington. Maybe his father was already on-edge because the house and pooldeck are a wreck and the insurance companies have been giving all of Hawkins the runaround and his son is the type of moron to flunk high school English and abandon a dead friend's body in an alternate dimension (he doesn't know either of these things about Steve in any concrete way, but maybe he can tell).

The first time he wore the imprint of Richard Harrington's wedding band beneath his eye (Steve is right-handed, like his mother) he was small enough that his father had to lean over to hit him, his mother had to crouch to press a wordless kiss to his forehead before sending him off to bed. Even then, tiny and bird-boned and bright-eyed, he'd played the maybe game. The rules changed over the years such that Steve never had the chance to really learn them, but he's familiar with the general shape of them.

Inviting someone in, however, is new to him.

Not long after nabbing their replacement jobs at Family Video and not 12 hours after an ill-fated family dinner, Steve had strode into work and Robin, upon seeing him, dropped a stack of VHS tapes, snapping a piece of the plastic off of Sixteen Candles, and had to be guided behind the counter to take a seat, her back pressed up against the knob of the store's safe, trembling all the way.

Sometimes Steve misses Tommy, who'd bite out something about "daddy issues" and poke at his bruises, in equal parts to aggravate them and to take inventory of the damage, but all in all never came close to a panic attack over the sight of him with a split lip. Then again, Tommy'd never heard his screams cut out from a room away under the earth, or begged to ride with him in an ambulance he called for when Steve had a seizure mid-movie night, or- anyway, it's not exactly an inappropriate reaction, coming from Robin, given everything between and behind them.

She'd begged, and he calls her every time now, lets her help him even if she's admitted to him it all feels a little bit selfish, demanding he make her feel useful whenever he's been hurt. He wasn't lucid for all of it, but he can imagine where it sends her, what it reminds her of. And she means well.

When she called "be there in a sec, love you. Over and out!" in a voice much louder than she'd allow herself with her parents asleep down the hall from her, he knew she'd been out the door within seconds of his first crackling transmission, biking full-speed, wind whipping through her pajamas and nest of hair, on her way to him. She'd come in through the window, as always, like a forbidden lover, and gone off on him for looking so guilty for doing exactly what she'd asked him to do. God, does he know she means well.

She's back to pretending to care about the members of the 1981 Hawkins High School Key Club. "Betsy Driver was a babe."

Steve snorts, which he knows was her intended reaction - Betsy Driver was decidedly not a babe, by any definition, and was a mean girl to boot - and Robin's smile starts to look a little more real at the sound. She feigns shock, "judging my taste in women again, Harrington?"

"Just not my type, I guess."

"More for me, then." She wiggles her eyebrows suggestively just to hear his laugh again, and he lets her, even if it's not all that funny.

"You're afraid of leaving her alone with him," she says.

"Betsy Driver?"

"Steve."

He takes in a long breath through his mouth, lets it out slowly through his nose, like Nancy taught him. Maybe it's supposed to be the opposite - in through the nose, out through the mouth - he can't remember. "Yeah, I mean. Yeah, yes."

"You know that's not your job, right? Protecting her." Robin speaks so softly, in every way it's possible to deliver cruel words kindly.

This is where Robin is wrong: Steve doesn't protect out of some sense of obligation. He isn't fulfilling a duty or repaying a debt or playing a role he thinks he ought to play. If he were, he thinks, he's not doing a great job of it.

In the past few years, Steve's been collecting kids and peers and parent-adjacent figures worth keeping safe. Steve protects because the alternative has become increasingly horrifying the more he learns about the worlds around them. If he can be that body, that nail-studded bat, that extra few seconds to run, how is he meant to turn that down?

He's always been pulled like a magnet to stand between the thing with teeth and claws and the people he loves, and he hasn't figured out how to stop loving his mom.

"Has she ever protected you?"

"Robin, stop ," he whispers. Her eyes scan his face for something before she nods like pressing a reset button on the moment, shoving the yearbook aside and finally hopping up onto the bed. She pulls the ice pack away from his swollen wrist and begins inspecting it with a twitchy gentleness that is so distinctly Robin that he feels bad all over again.

He's not chastising Robin, he's not, he just knows they both felt her stumble into unanswerable question territory, and neither of them are capable of wandering around in that particular desert for too long before withering. She'll get frustrated and he'll get mean and they'll have to wait until morning to forget about it and they both hate going to bed upset with one another.

"It's a sprain," Robin says, handing his wrist back to him like it's not attached to the rest of his body. She doesn't say, "it's just a sprain." Robin never says just, Steve notices. She spins to lean heavily off the side of the bed - doesn't topple over, but it's a near thing - and digs blindly through the tote bag behind her for an ACE bandage wrap she pulls out unrolled, hand-over-hand like she's doing a magic trick. "Soccer team didn't go great for me, but at least I can distinguish a break from a sprain. Gotta RICE it." RICE: rest, ice, compression, elevation - she's drilled this particular acronym into him.

Once she's upright, Robin takes his wrist again, turns it over, and begins wrapping.

"Yes, doctor," he nods, all faux severity.

He focuses his eyes on her hands. Robin is tactile in a way Steve has never been made used to. It made him uneasy at first, the casual touches and slouching, lanky hugs, but he's come to love the way she leans into his side when they share the same side of the booth at the diner, wraps her long fingers around his upper arm with a gentle squeeze when she has a thought she can't get out quick enough or doesn't want to have to say out loud at all. He doesn't always reciprocate as easily, but tangles his legs with hers now, and when she's finished wrapping pulls her hand away from the bandages with his good one to fidget with her fingers, tsk-ing at her cuticles, which are always picked raw but have been looking especially gnawed at lately.

"Where would you go?"

"Rob…"

"No, I mean -" without pulling her hand away, she readjusts them both so they're leaning against the headboard, side-by-side, her right leg thrown over his left. "Hypothetically, where would you want to go? Apocalypse and parents aside."

"I always figured I'd go to Community - and we both know how that turned out - and stick around here, maybe find an apartment in one of the complexes out by where Benny's used to be, work for my dad. I mean, I guess I haven't thought about it, uh, otherwise."

Robin rolls her eyes and knocks her knee against his. "Doesn't have to be the perfect answer, dingus. Just a game."

Steve frowns, shrugs. "I guess… I still wouldn't wanna be too far from Hawkins, for the kids, you know, assuming they'd want me to stick around. Maybe Indy? See how I'd do in the city, but still keep tabs on things around here. Plus I know Lucas has his eye on State and there's a basketball scholarship with his name written on it. Figure Dustin'll go to Princeton or something, but Mrs. Henderson will have him home so often we won't know the difference."

Robin's got a loose grip on his good forearm with her free hand, and she's trying to be subtle about it but he knows she's feeling for his pulse point under her fingertips, the way she does sometimes when they're close but not looking one another in the eye. She hums when she finds it. "You know where I would go?" He does. "California."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. Perfect weather, year round. Hollywood babes - and the beach! I think I'd love the beach. Maybe I'd finally let you teach me how to swim for real. Oh - you're there, in my fantasy, by the way. Hope that's okay."

He nods. "I think I'd like to learn to surf. Grow my hair out a little. Get a shitty two-bed by the shore and drive inland for the city all the time. I've always loved the water." Neither of them mention the covered pool in the backyard. "Plus I guess Max might go out there for school."

"Even if not, they could always visit. What about a cat?"

"You can get a cat, I'm getting a dog."

Robin leans forward to turn to him, a look of outrage on her face though a grin pulls at her dimples. "Steve, a cat needs two parents! Plus your dog will need a dad!"

"But I - oh, I'm the mom in this scenario?"

"In every scenario! Catch up, dingus," Robin giggles, leaning back again, this time settling her head on his shoulder.

He pulls two of her fingers straight as he speaks, "Okay, one cat and one dog. Anything else?"

"We already have six kids, think that might be all we can handle."

"True."

"Can't wait."

He can hear the smile in her voice and it's a little painful, but Steve is smiling too, wide and brazen and in spite of himself. He imagines a different life, one where he doesn't feel he's trapped in a hostage situation in his own home, unsure which of them is prisoner. One where he and Robin met but not because of monsters, and maybe a few years earlier, and get to be kids and then adults together. One where they live forever in Hawkins, or move to California, or Indianapolis, or wherever, and share a fridge and sometimes a bed and sometimes a toothbrush and mostly everything.

The thought of it all is a precious thing, and all at once it feels so crushingly possible, the latter bits at least, that Steve wants to cry, can feel himself getting choked up. Robin knows it, too, because she's started combing her fingers through his hair with a feather-light touch, humming something he can't recognize as if to herself, but really for him.

And maybe this was her plan all along, to poison his brain with this dream of a life he already missed out on, can never really have, and maybe he should be mad at her for it but he's not. Because maybe she can help him get it, or at least something close enough.

"I think we're cut out to be pretty good parents," Robin finally says. And when Steve doesn't respond, she asks, "what do you think?"

Steve thinks of his mother's wordless kiss and his father's wedding ring, of Robin's fingers and hypothetical questions, and thinks maybe nobody needs two parents so long as they have someone like her.

But he also thinks that he would have liked to attend one of Robin's soccer games, likes that he knows she's always wanted to move to California, if only for a while, and maybe that says something about him, too.

"Yeah," he finally breathes, but it's wobbly. "I think so too."

Robin looks at him, curiously, for a moment, before gently slapping his shoulder. "God, you are such a sap, Harrington. Put that ice pack back on your wrist before I duct tape it there." She squeezes a pillow into the invisible space between them and lowers Steve's wrist down onto it, sandwiching a now-damp dishtowel between it and the bag of blue goop.

Steve huffs out a laugh, but holds the position. "You should probably go," he says.

Robin turns to lay on her side, facing him. "Yeah, my parents'll freak if I'm not in bed when they check." Which they will, Steve knows. He likens Mrs. Buckley to a Ms. Henderson-type: warm and generous and overbearing, and Mr. Buckley too for that matter. The odd-hours bedcheck they take turns on is a holdover from the weeks following Starcourt, Robin would disappear sometimes, or her mom would find a kid or a Steve curled up at her feet when she opened Robin's bedroom door to wake her for school.

"You know I'd drive you if I could, but…"

"I know. It's okay, it's a nice night."

Neither of them move for a long while, though. Not until they're both on the precipice of sleep, breaths matches and long and even, does Robin startle a bit and reluctantly drag herself towards the window.

"Radio me when you get in?" Steve mumbles, half into his pillow.

"Always."

"Love you, Rob."

"Love you too, dingus."

I hope it's obvious how desperately I looooooooooove writing these two 33

It is bonkers to me to think that when I posted Chapter 1, my own dad was still alive. This piece has been soooo special to me in the aftermath and I hope it's been special to some of you as well :)

I am dying to hear your thoughts, so grateful for your feedback and patience thus far, and eager to keep writing for y'all!

Take care of yourselves!