I just had a thought sorry for spilling it here but platonic stobin s5 steve death with orpheus & eurydice-style plotline of robin pulling some improbable scientific and supernatural strings to get steve back and hahahahah um surprise eddie is there too & he’s been helping steve survive in whatever underlayer of life/death they’ve found themselves in because he’s been navigating it for a bit now
hey anon. Anon don't apologize can u please elaborate I'm losing it????
god, robin loving Steve so much she rends apart the veil between life and death. Maybe Steve dies in the Upside-Down. Maybe she feels like some part of her died with him. Maybe she was screaming as the gate closed, reaching out desperately for the other half of her heart, maybe she had to be held back, had to be told, robin, you can't bring him back. Robin, please, he's dead already, please.
Maybe it's like Robin died. Maybe she's the one doing the haunting. Maybe she's being haunted. She hears him laugh in her ear as she fumbles a conversation. Hears him hum his favorite song when it comes on the radio. She smells his shampoo in the breeze. She can't sleep, because sometimes she feels the weight of him against her back, like they're lying back-to-back again, like they did in Starcourt. Back when they were giggling children waiting to die.
Maybe she looks drawn and pale and won't talk to anyone. No one sounds right. No one gets it. She has a Walkman, plays his favorite song on a loop, like she's been cursed.
She hears his voice on the radio instead of Dancing in the Dark. She follows his laughter in the wind, bad dad jokes and terrible puns, down to the scar where the gate was.
She doesn't know how she gets through. All she has is Springsteen and his bat. She can't sleep without either. She doesn't sleep much anyway.
She wanders this corpse of a world, empty without Henry to fuel it, and waits. Sings Total Eclipse of the Heart in a stupid muppet voice. Sings Springsteen. Narrates all the things that have happened since the gate closed, but only the funny bits. The happy bits. Not that she's been there for them, but.
She hears him sing back, croaky and amused. She doesn't dare look. She hears him laugh when she fumbles the words. She can't hear to turn her head to where the voice is coming from. Can't bear to see nothing at all.
Slowly, she gets up and walks to the gate. She hears footsteps, someone singing with her, and she can't bear to look, and she's shaking and she thinks she might've lost her mind.
You sit around getting older, she whispers, voice hoarse. It's been hours, she thinks. Days, maybe.
There's a joke here somewhere and it's on me, Steve sings back, and he sounds real. And then--
I'll shake this world off my shoulders, someone else joins in, and Robin shakes.
Come on, baby, the laugh's on me, they all sing, and they sound like home.
She makes it through the gate on unsteady legs. She stumbles forward, into the burning sunlight, into a world alive. Nearly plants on her face, but then strong, real arms catch her. Someone laughs in her ear, warm breath on her face.
"Oh, Rob," says Steve, and she can feels his tears on her shoulder, "Oh, bud. I gotcha. I got--"
She spins around and hugs him, a sob ripping out of her throat. Another pair of arms encircle them, and she looks up. Eddie Munson, haggard and worse for wear, grins down at her.
"Heya, Buckley," he says, "Hope you didn't mind me crashing your cute little lovers' reunion."
"Gross," she says, instead of bursting into further tears, "We're not like that."
"Yeah," says Steve, tucking her face into his neck, where she can smell salt and iron and dirt, "She's, like. The other half of my heart or whatever, doesn't mean we're dating."
"Oh, good," says Eddie, brightly, from where he's plastered to the pair of them like a gangly limpet, "Because I've spent all of our shared undeath sucking face with the other half of your heart, Buckley, and that might make things awkward."
Robin snorts out a laugh, and alright, now she's crying again. She tightens her grip on Steve, listens to his heartbeat, feels the pulse in the hollow of his throat, the rumble of his chest as he tells Eddie Munson to shut the fuck up.
Her Walkman's still playing. She's holding her heart, and his annoying boyfriend. She's no longer haunted, no longer haunting.