𝐖𝐇𝐎: Robin Buckley + @jackforeman​ ! 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄: Outside Of The Foreman Residence

eddiemcnson​:

+++

“huh? what was that?”, he called out, even louder, a wide, toothy, teasing grin on his face. he’d turned up his stereo real loud, not loud enough to cause any of the neigbours to call the cops on him but loud enough so that the muffled sounds of the latest ‘ratt’ record were audible in the living room.

eddie grimaced as she mentioned the mattress, resisted the urge to pull his hair over his face to hide behind it, seeing as he wasn’t particularly keen on having it go up in flames. “oh my god, robin, just let it go. please. i give you plenty enough material for your mediocre jokes as is, let the fucking mattress go.”, he muttered around puffs, brows drawn together. 

but he loved it, their dynamic. hanging out with robin was always easy and comfortable, didn’t feel forced at all. their vibes just .. matched, it was hard to explain. after vecna, after everything had happened and they’d gotten closer, started to hang out more, eddie had often wondered why they hadn’t been friends in high school.

kicking his feet up on the coffee table, he passed the joint to her, eyed her with a frown. “bullshit.”, he said, crossed his arms over his chest. “what’s the matter, what’s going on?”

⚢

all robin seemed to be able to do when eddie spoke even louder was laugh. “you are so annoying.” she shook her head fondly, paying no real mind to the loud music coming from the bedroom. this was eddie they were talking about, and if there was one thing besides hellfire that he was known for, it was his love of music. which is why robin wasn’t fazed, and she was pretty used to it by now. it was just something that came with their friendship.

 “i will never forget that mattress in my life. the image is still carved into my eyelids.” robin hoped that somewhere along the line, eddie or at least his uncle had replaced the old thing. but until she received explicit confirmation, it was pretty likely that she would purposely stay well away from sitting on eddie’s bed. 

 taking the joint from eddie’s hand, robin took a long drag from it. “where do i even start?” another drag, just for good measure before passing it back to him. “do you ever feel like, something’s going on but you just can’t be too sure about it?”

zccming​:

.

“next time.” max nodded, signaling that at this point, robin had little say in the matter. her mind was set on the idea of teaching robin to skate, and she intended on following through on that come hell or high water. truthfully, at this point, the only thing robin could do was avoid showing up, but even then, max was likely to track her down. she stood at the ready, prepared to soothe any and all reservations robin might still be having. “i’m great at patching up.” she insisted, implying that this instance had been an outlier in her track record. “i had to do it to myself all the time when i was learning, it’s like, battle scars, and you get to show all the other skaters how tough and seasoned you are. doesn’t that sound fun?” max enthused, getting carried away with the idea of being able to spend time at the skate park with another girl and not just cole. 

max pulled her words and eager demeanor back in then sucked on her teeth. robin’s attempt had been pretty pathetic, but, “yeah, guess you did.” she had a hunch that robin wasn’t the type to learn well under tough love. she proceeded to nod, “of course i do, i mean, you’re kinda cool now and whatever…” robin definitely wasn’t the epitome of cool in the traditional sense, but max had always thought so, her words were genuine. “but think about how much cooler you’ll be when you can zip around town all effortlessly, like, vicki vickers or something!” 

⚢

“fine. but if you even think about telling anyone how bad i am, the deals off.” maybe it wouldn’t turn out to be so bad. after all, max was talented with a board — literally everyone and their mom knew that. in fact, a couple weeks back her own mother had gone grocery shopping and returned talking about the girl on the skateboard doing tricks and hanging around down there.

while she wasn’t the only girl that skated in hawkins, straight away robin knew it had to have been max and proudly said as much, and that she also happened to be her friend. so yeah, she was good. it was just relying on the fact now that max would be able to effortlessly pull off teaching someone who had trouble walking straight, let alone travelling on a physical moving object.

“do other skaters really care about that?” if they did robin would definitely end up being the toughest and most seasoned skater around. in that, she would probably be covered in hundreds of cuts and bruises way before that point. “you think i’m cool or whatever?” at this, she smiled widely. no one had ever called her cool before, being in band solidified being anything but cool. yet this felt sincere, and coming from literally the coolest kid robin knew too! “let’s not get ahead of ourselves, one step at a time please.”

zccming​:

WHO: max mayfield && open.

WHERE: outside of melvald’s general store.

this wasn’t max’s most…well-thought-out plan, but she had ransacked the trailer for anything she could bring to the wheeler’s barbecue. and she was pretty sure cereal or swanson’s tv dinners wouldn’t cut it.  as she skated her way downtown in hopes of a miracle, she brainstormed what she could bring that wouldn’t be too complicated. she came up with the likes of doritos or boxed pasta salad. of course, when max pulled up to melvald’s and tugged at the doors, they were locked.  melvald’s, like the hawk, and every other godforsaken business in this town just had to be closed. “shit…” she breathed out, scanning her surroundings. not a car in sight…not a person … but there was a rock. maybe if she just…she could get away with it…

max scooped it up from the ground and raised her arm to chuck it through the window, but she felt these eyes on her.  turning around, max initially jumped at the sight of another person.  hadn’t she checked for people? in a swift recovery, max rolled her eyes and frowned, “asshole. you can’t just sneak up on people like that.” as if to explain herself, she stepped forward and gripped the handles once more, “it’s locked.”  after chucking the rock out into the road, max placed her hands on her hips, then eyed the other, “i need in, like now.” then as a hint to help or get lost she asked, “got any better ideas?” 

⚢

“hey! i wasn’t sneaking up on anyone! and besides, if anything you’re the one being sketchy and technically speaking, i could totally call the cops down here in like, two minutes tops.”

though she wouldn’t and they both knew it. in reality max was a good kid and robin liked that certain spark within her. the spontaneity reminded her a lot of her younger self back in high school. heck, hadn’t she literally clambered in the band room window when refused entry to prom? yeah, she really had done that. it seemed so long ago and so insignificant and yet at the time it had been the most important thing in the world. 

robin remembered the days of endlessly longing to be seventeen so she could escape out into the world. she had wanted to travel to foreign countries and just exist. but now she was twenty-one and the furthest she’d ever travelled out of hawkins was to a top secret russian base underneath the mall. she hoped that for max and the rest of the younger crew that they’d get out. actually get out. escape from the monster that hawkins now truly had become. and this, max resorting to breaking and entering, was certainly not the way to do it. “what is it makes you want in so bad that you’d almost consider breaking a window for anyway? totally not worth it, by the way,” she paused eyes flickering up to the store’s sign then back to the younger woman. “look, i’ll try to get you what you want. but only on the condition that we do it in a somewhat semi-conventional way? please?”

melissaia​:

WHO: Melissa Armstrong + open WHERE: Outside City Hall WHAT: Community car wash

     There had never been a time when Melissa was so lost in her life. Waking up after her own death to find that three years had passed, head filled with foggy memories of the time between that felt false but with no way to prove it, she was just left…adrift. She had been accepted to university before she disappeared; now she was quite suddenly a twenty-one year old with no college credit, no career and no clue how to get back on track. Well, in all fairness it had only been a few days and she was bound to pull her shit back together soon enough, but in the meantime she clung to what was familiar, what came naturally. Community service. As long as she could be of use to her town, she wouldn’t be entirely unmoored.

     “It’s five dollars for a small to full-size car, ten for a truck or van,” she automatically listed the prices for the fund-raiser car wash as somebody approached their hopeful operation, looking up from her clipboard with a bright smile and squinting in the direct sunlight. “All proceeds go to rebuilding Benny’s Burgers. Or if you’re here to volunteer your time, we could always use more hands and we have plenty of sponges to go around.”

⚢

robin hadn’t initially intended to go to the community car wash down at city hall, but it just happened to be on the way home. don’t get her wrong it was for a great cause, but she didn’t have a car. though she had mentioned it to steve so he could take his down there, as compensation. that was, if he would even let anyone else touch his ‘precious baby’. and robin was just going to breeze on straight past, until the sound of a familiar voice drew robin’s attention, to which she walked directly through the commotion instead to locate the source. usually a familiar voice wouldn’t seem too odd, except- “…melissa?”

she would have said it was impossible, except there the other woman was. standing there, rallying the town together just like she had done back in high school. but she was supposed to be dead. “melissa, hi. it’s robin, we used to study together, we-“ kissed in the back of the library that one time right before you disappeared off the face of the earth, only to turn up dead not long after? oh, yeah. like she could say that. “what are you doing here?” voice barely above a whisper now, robin felt as if she could almost choke on thin air.

𝐖𝐇𝐎: robin buckley + @stevehharringtcns​​​​ ! 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄: the hospital  𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍: a couple days after steve wakes

last night had been the first time that robin slept at home since steve had initially arrived at the hospital. she wanted to stay but he had insisted that she go home to get a proper nights sleep and that he’d be okay, just for the night. and maybe he would be and while robin had agreed, she really didn’t want to be alone. she’d managed to avoid thinking too much about the house of mirrors by worrying about steve instead. but if she were alone, she knew it would only come rushing back.

luckily once she arrived home she’d been too exhausted for her mind to even bother replaying the events at the mirror maze for she fell asleep fairly quickly. and as soon as she woke that morning, robin changed probably faster than she ever had in her life so that she could hurry back. just to make sure he hadn’t gone back on his word or whatever.

walking to the hospital would admittedly be a little too far so she dug out her mom’s old bike (her own was way too busted!) from the garage and set off. but not before paying a visit to a grocery stores on the way to pick up some reese’s pieces — steve’s favorite. arriving at the hospital she signed in at the desk, security checked her backpack and she headed up to steve’s room.

“steve, can you believe i actually had to smuggle these in? it’s insane.” she entered the room with a quick glance at a sleeping cole, and pulled out the box of candy from the inside of her jacket, then gently placed it on steve’s lap. “how are you holding up?”

sinclairss​:

.

“did you know,” lucas said as he reached for the syrup and doused the leftover pancakes with it before taking another bite. he did have the manners to wait until he was done chewing to continue talking, so sue sinclair would be proud. or at least not pissed at him. “that guys can have growth spurts into their twenties? and our brains don’t stop developing ‘til we’re, like, twenty-five.” he tapped his temple as he took another bite. “brain food.”

he listened to robin talk and nodded along until holding up a hand and asking “cassie who?” he fell quiet for a few moments, picking at the rest of the pancakes and only settling back into the booth once he’d cleaned the plate. he’d dodged robin’s question before, but lucas found himself wanting to check in, make sure he was the only one having bizarre thoughts about that night. and if not…well, he was sure there was something they could do about it. there always was.

“so every time i walk through the gates it feels…cold. like it’s january not july.” he hesitated when the waitress walked over, flashing her a smile and offering her a thanks! before redirecting his attention back to robin. “and…okay, i’m not sure if i hit my head when i fell, too, but i saw this…vision? the other night, too, and it felt really real and every time i close my eyes i can see him.” 

fuck. he hadn’t meant to say anything specific about the dream. or hallucination. or whatever it was. but he just kept talking, hoping to keep things moving. “did you…see anything like that?”

⚢

listening to lucas’ whole spiel about ‘brain food’, robin couldn’t help but feel amused. “guess that explains why steve’s brain seems way smaller than it should be by now.” she wasn’t sure just how legitimate the explanation was, but she would definitely look it up at the library or ask someone who was likely to know about it later.

“cassie, nancy’s friend from college?” robin welcomed the momentary silence, for she was starting to feel genuinely concerned about lucas. maybe that blow to his shoulder had done way more damage than first thought. “that doesn’t sound… normal.” she didn’t really know what else to say in this situation. if he was uncomfortable going into the graveyard again then he definitely shouldn’t. not alone, at least. but then again, strength in numbers had proved not to be the case last time. maybe they should just avoid it altogether.

lucas mentioning a him made robin question who he could possibly be referring to. just like her own vision, had he seen someone relevant to him in some way? “yeah, i think i might have seen something like that.” then before she could stop herself blurted out, “i saw barb. the real barb, except she wasn’t real because i saw her in my own mind. but she felt real.” he would understand what she meant if he had seen something similar so she didn’t elaborate any more than that.

stevehharringtcns​:

after a few days in the hospital, while recovery was slow, steve could see some progress. he could actually sit up now without whining with pain and that was a victory for him. sure, he was a long way from actually make a full recovery, but he had to admit that it was getting better. it had to get better. plus, the company he had of his friends and eddie helped lift his spirits. the truth was that he wanted to get out of that hospital as soon as possible and go back to his normal life. the hospital life was way too slow for him.

for example, he was sitting up in his bed, looking up at the tv. he wasn’t necessarily paying attention to what he was watching, but it was a distraction. he had gotten another cup of jello from one of the nurses and was eating it, a bored look on his face until he heard robin walk in his room. now there was a better distraction than whatever was on tv. he smiled as he finished the cup of jello, placing it on the bedside table as robin placed the box of candy on his lap, letting out a laugh as she did so. “oh dude, i love reese’s pieces!” he said, his mouth still full of jello.

he didn’t waste any time as he grabbed a piece of candy, ripping the candy wrapper, steve smiled as he looked over at robin, shrugging his shoulders at the question. he was doing better. “i guess i’m good… you know, just bored out of my mind. i want to leave this hospital…” he said with a sigh as he took a bite out of the candy, nodding his head.

he looked over at his best friend, letting out a sigh. while steve and many others were in the hospital, he knew that things hadn’t been necessarily easy for anyone at the carnival. he reached for the remote to turn off the tv and looked over at robin, pursing his lips. “how are you? we haven’t really talked… about what happened. we don’t need to, but…” he said, shrugging his shoulders, showing himself available to talk about whatever had happened.

⚢

“ew steve gross. do you have to talk with your mouth full?” robin felt like they’d had this conversation at least a million times, and usually it was eye-roll inducing. but for whatever reason right now it felt nice… normal. because this was better than the other alternative, which she couldn’t bear to think about right now. steve was a pain in the ass and a total schmuck. but she didn’t know what she would do without him. robin didn’t want to admit it, but without steve around she most likely wouldn’t be able to function properly.

“you could always take up reading.” she shrugged her shoulders, flashing a small smile in his direction as she fell down into one of the chairs next to the bed. steve and books didn’t exactly go hand-in-hand. robin was pretty sure that he didn’t even read all that much when they were actually in high school and it was a basic requirement. then again, she had been much too busy staring between him, and gazing longingly at tammy.

“i’m just… trying to handle everything. it’s difficult.” a tentative answer, and she bit down on her lip to stop it from quivering. “this whole thing with you and the others just stuck in here, then vickie… and-“ did he have any idea? had max filled him in? if she hadn’t, robin guessed that it was a better time than any to drop the bombshell.

 “steve i-“ where to even start? “max and i, we were taken the night of the carnival. right before we all boarded the boat in the tunnel of love. at least i think that’s where it happened.” a pause, her voice catching in her throat. “i saw some things. horrible and awful things that i just can’t forget, and i thought that i was going to die.” she probably wasn’t making much sense but robin couldn’t stop herself from the words just spilling out.

jackforeman​:

Jack hadn’t really spoken to Robin Buckley much at all in his life before being at the Wheelers’ family barbecue. It was there that he learned she’d become friends with Steve, his coworker, even, and it was just another reminder of what he’d missed while he was now known to be dead, not just gone in a cult. He would have considered her presence on his front porch a threat, that she was here to chew him out about attacking their mutual friend at the carnival, even if it was something that Jack had no recollection of. 

Instead, it seemed that she was here in peace. It was nice to know that Steve’s condition had remained stable since he’d gone to visit, when he’d gotten the strength to face his friend to apologize for what he’d done. “Oh, that’s … great, actually. That’s good. I went by yesterday, just to say hi, and, well, I figured I owed him an apology.” He shifted, uncomfortable and embarrassed by what he’d done that he couldn’t even remember. “Do you want to come in?”

⚢

“oh, i uh, didn’t know you’d been by.” she felt a little sheepish now. suppose she’d been too caught up in her own thoughts to pay any real attention to whether steve had told her about jack visiting or not. the previous evening she’d paid a visit to vickie’s mom, to pay her respects and to apologise. the apology held way more weight than it should have done, but it felt necessary under the circumstances.

“anyway, they think he might be able to go come home soon.” and honestly, thank fucking god for that. while steve was definitely doing a whole lot better, it was still painful to see him in that hospital room. jack asking whether she wanted to come in admittedly caught her a little off guard, but she nodded her head anyway and followed him inside. “actually, there was something else i wanted to ask you. i don’t know how well you know steve’s parents but… have you seen them much? recently, i mean.” steve had said they’d been by the hospital once, maybe twice. robin thought that was insane, but knowing the harringtons, she wasn’t really all too surprised.

sinclairss​:

-

when robin discarded her silverware, lucas unrolled the set on his side of the table and leaned over to stab a piece of pancake. he was mid-bite when he shook his head, changed his mind halfway, and nodded instead. “i mean, probably? it’s just…” he paused to thank the waitress as she dropped off his chocolate shake and turned to take a long sip from it before continuing. “…it’s just that whenever i get to close to the fence i start feeling…weird.” he knew that didn’t make any sense. he knew that it was just a graveyard and that, logically, nothing was going to jump out and push him into a grave-

unless cole was there. then he might fall back into a grave. but there was probably a perfectly logical explanation to everything.

or…something was going on. lucas picked at the remains of robin’s pancakes. he took a bite and then pointed his empty fork at her, voice dropping just a bit. no one else probably cared what they were talking about, but it was habit from when they’d had to do all of their debriefing in the wheelers’ basement. “could be worse,” he said with a shrug, dropping his gaze to the table and clearing his throat. “why do you say that?” he wanted to know. did everyone see something strange that night? “did…” he decided to go another direction. “do you even remember what happened? because i don’t think i was that drunk but i can barely remember who else was even there.”

⚢

lucas basically attacking robin’s leftover pancakes only made her shake her head, a slightly amused look on her face. “jeez, do your parents just like, never feed you?” she took a sip from her own milkshake and listened as he talked about the cemetery, nails tapping against the table surface. when he finished, robin instinctively raised an eyebrow out of curiosity and ceasing the tapping in the process. “wait, weird how?” an interesting development, she wondered if the rest of their group would feel the same way when confronted with the cemetery. robin couldn’t really speak for herself on the matter, she hadn’t been back there since that night.

she really wanted to just brush it off. excuse it as just an anomaly, they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. maybe — just maybe, forget the whole thing all together! that would certainly make sleeping a whole lot easier, and cease her brain from putting two and two together to make ten. “i don’t know, maybe i’m just being paranoid.” a defeated sigh, none of this made any logical sense. “i remember some things.” to robin, she felt like she remembered quite a lot, although it was difficult to gauge because who knew what exactly was missing? “for starters, you and i were there. and steve, obviously. then cole, cassie and tessa. does that help jog your memory?”

backtowheeler​:

— ✎ —

There was almost no time to waste when Hawkins was in imminent danger. At least, that’s what Nancy was suspecting. There was no way everything that happened was pure coincidence. Even if it wasn’t Upside Down related, there was something afoot. 

As they passed through her house, Nancy turned back to Robin, her hand resting on the stairwell. “I guess she doesn’t have much else to do,” Nancy commented. It wasn’t a jab to her mom, but it wasn’t like she was running after any kids anymore other than Holly. Then again, even when she was younger Nancy couldn’t picture a time that their house looked anything other than perfect, save for the few times she had stepped on Mike’s Legos or Holly’s Lite Brite glow pegs. 

“Oh!” Nancy jerked her hand off the stairwell, a small smile on her face. She lead the charge upstairs to her bedroom. Nancy pushed the door open, leaving the door open wide enough to let Robin in. Her room hadn’t changed much since high school. Going off to college, Nancy made it abundantly clear that all things Hawkins would be left in Hawkins save for a handful of photo keepsakes. “You can close the door, if you want,” she said, sitting down on the edge of her bed. “My mom only cares if it’s a boy and…” she peeked her head around the corner to see if Holly, her dad, or her mom were snooping around the corner. “It’s probably better if no one hears this.”

Nancy flipped herself upside down on her bed, looking under her bed. “There it is!” She exclaimed, snatching a pink hat box. She resituated on the bed and popped open the box, filled with newspaper clippings from the last couple of Hawkins Post. They never reported anything truly newsworthy, in her journalistic opinion, but she did keep them on hand to jot down her own personal notes. “Can you tell me what happened to you? The weird shit that happened?”

⚢

standing in the doorway to the bedroom, the invitation to shut the door behind her made her throat slightly tighten. it didn’t make sense — why was she so nervous about this? it wasn’t as if nancy would think robin was insane, since they’d both experienced way worse. “imagine if that’s how your parents found out that living the dream in hawkins isn’t all it’s cut out to be.” despite the anxious thoughts, she closed the door anyway. following the other over to the bed, robin took a seat but making sure to leave a good foot or so between them. watching nancy effortlessly flip upside down only to return a few seconds later with a box in tow, she uttered a quick “smooth.”.

cassie had also been at the cemetery that evening so perhaps she’d already told nancy everything, but she was here now. it was too late to just back out. “some of us were down at the cemetery the same night as benny’s.” the why was a little less important. “our fire went out, some people fell into literal open graves and steve was… there! but he keeps insisting that he was out of town that night.”

a pause, looking up from fidgeting hands to make eye contact with nancy, robin would be lying if she said she wasn’t a little scared. “but then the strangest thing happened — i think i blacked out and had some kind of… vision or something. it was weird and creepy — but it felt like i was there, really there. except i wasn’t, i just woke up in the forest like nothing ever happened.” 

only now did it truly strike robin that the contents of such a vision would upset nancy just as much if not more than they had done herself. because it concerned barb, someone they had both once called their best friend. and if robin had to elaborate on it, should she… bend the truth? then again, she really didn’t want to hurt nancy’s feelings. “i’m either losing my mind with a capital l, or-” the alternative was way too daunting to even speak.