(cw: temporary(?) character death, grief, haunting)
it starts with a polaroid.
robin doesn’t remember why she’d brought her polaroid camera to work that day, only that one of steve’s children had snagged it and had snapped a picture of her and steve for some reason.
she’d taken it home with her along with the other random pictures she’d taken that day and tossed them in a drawer and promptly forgot about it.
it wasn’t until after — after russians and monsters and starcourt crumbling to the ground, taking steve and chief hopper down with it — that she even remembered it existed.
when she found it, less than a week later, she cried so hard she almost convinced herself that she was dying.
and from that point on, she never left the house without it. it lived in the breast pocket of whatever she was wearing that day, never letting steve get too far from her heart.
it’s not until school starts back up that she thinks of using her camera again. she gets one glance of steve’s kids in the halls, somehow already looking more grown up than they did just a couple of months ago, and knows in her heart of hearts that steve would want pictures, would want to capture whatever moments he could.
so she starts bringing her camera to school with her.
that first day, she snaps a couple of pictures of the group at lunch, carefully putting the pictures in her backpack without really looking at them. she has a feeling that if she looks at them too hard, she’ll start crying, and she doesn’t want to do that in front of anyone, let alone any of the students of hawkins high.
so she waits until she’s in her room at home to pull them out and look at them. she does cry, because fuck— these are steve’s kids and how the hell is she supposed to be there for them when steve’s absence still feels like a knife in her ribs?
after she’s wiped away her tears, she gives them one last look over before moving to put them away.
except, something in the background catches her eye.
she brings the pictures closer, and fully stops being able to process anything because it almost looks like steve is in the background, bruised and bloody and wearing the same stained scoops ahoy uniform that he died in.
robin doesn’t know how long she sits there, staring uncomprehendingly until with trembling hands, she slowly puts them into the empty shoebox she’d prepared and closes the lid.
she mechanically goes through her bedtime routine existing somewhere out of her body and doesn’t remember falling asleep.
~
she convinces herself it’s grief.
grief is what’s causing her to see steve in the background of every picture she takes with her camera.
she doesn’t mention a word of it to anyone, knowing that she’ll sound just as crazy as she is.
at one point, she had shown one of the pictures to dustin, wordlessly handing it to him and feeling something inside her break when he’d smiled briefly at it before his expression crumpled into something sad. “this is a great picture, robin. st— he would’ve loved it”
she’d nodded, and he’d handed it back to her before walking away, and she’d known then that while they were all still grieving in one way or another, she was the only one who had gone well and truly crazy.
and so it goes for the next few months. the world keeps turning, and robin keeps taking pictures, and she pretends like her grief isn’t consuming her — like she isn’t spending night after night going over her shoebox full of polaroids and staring at a dead boy only she can see.
but then december hits, and she’s rushing out of the band room so she can try and find lucas and give him the scarf erika had left at her house when she runs right into someone, sending them both sprawling.
her folder slides across the floor, some of its contents spilling out, including some of the pictures she’d taken that day.
“shit, sorry, i wasn’t looking where i was going, and i’m such a klutz—“
“hey, it’s okay,” the person she’d bowled over interrupts. eddie munson, she realizes. steve’s kids’ latest obsession. “buckley, right?”
“y-yeah. sorry, munson.”
“like i said, it’s okay.”
he kindly starts picking up her mess where it had spread near him, and she thanks him as she starts picking up near her.
a few moment’s later, eddie’s horrified “what the fuck” has her snapping her gaze to him.
he’s half crouched, some of her papers in one hand and one of the polaroids in the other, and he’s staring at the picture with horror.
“buckley, what—“ his gaze shifts to hers. “is— why do you have a picture of a fucked-up harrington?”
robin thinks her lungs have stopped working.
“you… you can see him?”
.
.
.
{send me a 📷 and a one-word prompt and i’ll make you a moodboard and a lil concept to go with it!}
seasonal Stobin AU where they take jobs working as Elves/Santa's helpers in the newly rebuilt mall. Robin actually enjoys the job, and likes talking with the children, asking them about what they want for Christmas, and she especially loves when people bring in their dogs to have photos with Santa ("It was a tiny chihuahua wearing a Santa hat, Steve!")
On the other hand, Steve is grumbling about how yet again he's working in a minimum wage job where he has to wear a dumb hat that hides his glorious hair. And why did they have to make the uniform so goddamn itchy. And WHY was it company policy that he had to wear candy-cane striped tights and shoes with bells on them?
OKAY SO gonna preface this with this is a) very much a crack treated seriously sort of au and b) therefore not typically how I view the characters or relationships it was just fun to riff off of (aka i actually dont view stobin as having a sibling relationship normally and dont typically like secret sibling aus for a multitude of reasons)
WITH THAT OUT OF THE WAY
the concept of the au was what if steve and robin were actually twins separated at birth (mid summer birthday can easily explain the different grades) but were both adopted bc their mom was part of a similar set of experiments to what el's mom was a part of, several years before hers happened. the experiment ends before their mom is far enough along for anyone to really notice, and so she is able to give her twins up for adoption without the lab realizing what they missed out on.
so steve and robin both lowkey grow up with powers they dont quite realize they have? think the skywalker twins in star wars, both had incredible force powers, were able to read people, do great feats, etc. but didn't have any idea of their force abilities until they were adults and someone else flat out told them. they wouldnt be using the abilities every day like the numbers are too, so they don't get that powerful either until they learn about them.
not sure if i ever decided for sure what their powers would be, i like steve with empathy and intuition bc he is just that good at reading people. i think while steves is more mental, robin is more physical, like psychometry in star wars where she can touch things and get skill/memory transfer, or impressions, etc. they both have some sort of healing factor and low-grade telekinesis (i think even with practice they wouldn't individually be able to compete with el there, tho maybe together mas y menos style???), steve just uses his healing factor more fidjgsihs
i think, like the skywalker twins, they also had something of a mind-link but initially they were in different towns and then in different social circles they didn't realize it. they were each others imaginary friends as kids, and they were drawn to each other as they got older but didnt know WHY. robin thought she was fixated because she was jealous but really was just picking up wild vibes, steve, esp pre-s1 steve, was picking up vibes and just ignored it as hard as possible.
they don't even realize something is up until they start spending actual time together at scoops and even then i dont think they really realize WHAT it is thats weird until they find out they have the same birthday and are like.... wait a minute. probably sometime during the russian drama. a lot of things come to light during the russian debacle that leaves them both very confused and they have a lot to deal with in the days afterwards
idk, its not my normal type of au like i said but i love the potential for dumb stobin shenanigans and i think arguably giving both of stobin powers is a terrible idea in the best way <3
thinking about makeup artist robin and stunt double steve, both young and inexperienced and new to the area, maybe 19ish, who meet on the set of their first gig--a small commercial about auto insurance where steve has to pretend to crash a car and then robin has to cover him in fake bruises and blood--and become instant friends. robin and steve who are both sleeping on couches of a friend of a friend, who barely scrap together enough money to get an apartment together but they do it.
they work odd jobs to make rent in between gigs. steve refs basketball games on the weekends. robin does face paint at children's birthday parties. it's anything but glamorous, but they wouldn't trade this life for the world. not when they're booking one commercial every three months, not when they sign on to their first tv shows, not when they walk the red carpet together at steve's first leading role movie premiere and the internet goes crazy thinking they're a couple.
they keep living together long after they can both afford their own places--"we're both on locations half the year anyways, i feel like i barely see you enough as it is"--trading in grungy one bedroom spaces for a sold, stable two bedroom apartment big enough for a kitchen and a living room, then upgrading again a few years later to a deluxe sky view tenth floor apartment big enough for a guest room.
it's paradise, living with your best friend. until your best friend gets a boyfriend and falls stupidly in love.
"Robin," steve tries to reason with her. "I'm not leaving the building--hell, i'm not even leaving our floor. I'll be two doors down!"
steve moving in with eddie munson was not on robin's bingo card, but here they are, packing boxes and saying goodbye.
"For fuck's sake," Steve groans. "It's not goodbye--I'm literally coming over tomorrow to watch Bake Off with you."
"You better be."
and so, steve moves out, moves in down the hall with eddie, and robin has to wallow in her apartment all alone for another two weeks before her next job is set to start shooting in georgia. the two weeks are fine, she can live by herself for two weeks, but it's the knowing that she's always going to be coming back to an empty apartment that kills her.
until eddie gets a brilliant idea.
"I have a friend," he tells her one night, when steve is passed out with his head on eddie's lap and it's just eddie and robin watching this week's episode of survivor. "She's been living in Paris for the last year, shooting a handful of French indie films, but she's coming back to LA next month."
Robin raises a brow. "So?"
"So..." Eddie shrugs, running his hand through Steve's hair. "She has her own place in the hills, but she usually crashes in my guest room when she's in town. She'd never admit it, but I don't think she really likes living alone--and I don't blame her. But it's hard finding real fucking friends in our lines of work."
"Eddie, what the hell is your--"
"Have you ever considered getting another roommate?"
and that is how robin finds herself living with famed child/teen actress nancy wheeler, who wears choppy bangs and dark eye makeup that definitely do not go with the family-friendly sitcom star persona she wore for almost a decade.
robin thinks she likes this nancy better, even if she does smoke cigarettes like they're going out of style.
(how eddie munson and nancy wheeler ever became friends in the first place is story for another place and time, but as robin watches nancy smile for the first time in a week when eddie comes over, she makes a mental note to find steve tomorrow and get the full story.)
Robin is tentatively excited for her first internship: an archaeological dig in the Netherlands, where she has been studying. However, when she gets there, Steve is there too. The dick of their uni that she now has to work with. Great. But being stuck digging for six weeks makes people bond and maybe he isn’t too bad. Maybe he can be her friend.
AKA an archaeology interns, modern, enemies-to-friends stobin au
On AO3.
Ships: none
Warnings: referenced homophobia
~~~~
Chapter 1: Encounter
Of course.
Of fucking course.
Robin will never be rid of this fucking guy, she seethes as she glares daggers into the back of Steve Harrington’s head. He hasn’t done anything in particular, he just showed up. But that was enough for Robin.
Why must he also be here? She would have totally thought he’d be in the Caribbean sieving sand instead of being here with her in a random small town in the Netherlands for his internship. It doesn’t make any sense, but here he is anyway.
Robin herself couldn’t afford to go on a uni internship, you had to pay to excavate, no thanks. She couldn’t even really afford a plane ticket home for the summer break, so she stayed in the Netherlands for her internship. A paid one, albeit only if you can count 3 euro per hour paid. It isn’t much, but otherwise she’s not getting credit for it, so alas.
However, Steve very much has Caribbean internship money. Or even Greece internship money. He could be chilling somewhere in the sun, but instead he’s here as well. And Robin doesn’t fucking get it.
She knows Steve has money, because she has been forced into his proximity since the introduction in the first year. As the two Americans in their year, they have often been grouped together and Robin would rather the uni stop. She has made her own friends. Not many or very good ones, but friends.
Enough that she doesn’t want to be stuck with Steve, whose parents bought him a house – not an apartment, but a house – when he came to study here. A house he throws so many parties at with girls who all thrist over him. It’s fucking annoying. He’s fucking annoying. And none of the pretty girls realize it and Robin wants to scream.
And instead of being rid of him for the summer, they’re stuck together for six weeks, because apparently he is on the same excavation she is.
Robin herself is here out of desperation. She has more of an interest in archaeosteology and the illnesses you can find in human remains. However, no graveyard was being excavated, so she’s getting her six weeks experience at a random excavation instead. Fine enough.
She doesn’t know what Steve is interested in, but she expects it to be something stupid like the Romans or something. Or maybe he doesn’t care for any of it and is he just doing it, because his mommy and daddy told him he had to do something and he thought archaeology would be easy. Must be regretting that now with the big practical aspect of it.
Maybe he forgot about the internships and didn’t sign up, so this is a desperate last resort to get his credits? That seems pretty likely, so Robin accepts that as reality.
Not that knowing why will change anything. And Steve doesn’t even seem to realize how much he has just ruined her summer. He just greets her with a smile as he asks: “You also interning here?”
“Yup,” Robin says, not trying to be rude, but also not feeling like being friendly.
Luckily the project leader introduces himself to them as they introduce themselves back. His name is Jeroen and he shows them the trench they’ll be working in for the first week, week and a half. Together. Great.
The excavation has been going on for a while already, but it won’t be done soon, since they’re digging at a construction site where an entire new neighborhood is being built. Robin is unfamiliar with commercial archaeology, so she listens eagerly, glad everyone here seems to speak good English. She has picked up phrases here and there, but she is far from fluent.
They’re currently working in trench five or, in Dutch, put vijf, while next to it construction is already happening on what used to be trench four. Further along trench six is already being plotted and dug by the machine excavator.
In trench five – put, Robin reminds herself, wanting to be able to get the terms right for when they’re written down, since the excavation is in Dutch – they need to dig up and record all the features, sporen in Dutch.
The two have couped at their first fieldschool, so they’re given a shovel to go with their trowel and Jeroen explains how the admin system works, before setting them loose to coup the first half of all the features – no, sporen.
Robin is half tempted to wait and see where Steve starts, so she can dig at the other side of the put, but there are already a few people digging and she wants to be friendly with the people that are going to be her coworkers, so she follows after Steve.
With Jeroen, it’s a team of nine total, including her and Steve. Since they can only work one put at a time (not to mention it’s summer break) a bigger team isn’t necessary. Robin is grateful for it, because large groups of people have never been her thing, so this smaller crew seems a lot more manageable.
Maybe this internship wouldn’t be too bad.
One woman, Astrid, takes them under her wing a little, asking: “Have you dug many coups before already?”
Robin shares a look with Steve – it’s involuntary, she swears, but it happens. Their fieldschool wasn’t exciting with nothing being found.
So, while they did get the theoretical explanation that when people in the past dug holes to place things like poles or trash, those poles and organic trash decomposed and with the new layer of soil that formed a new color dirt filled the hole, which they could now see when they dug to the C horizon in the earth. Neither of them have dug out many of the features/sporen.
However, Robin doesn’t want to admit to her own inexperience so bluntly. Steve does not have that inhibition, easily shrugging: “Like one or two. This is my first internship.” And while Robin still doesn’t like Steve, she is glad that she can just nod along.
“Alright, but you know how to do it, right?” Astrid asks, before chuckling: “It’s luckily not that hard.”
Robin awkwardly chuckles too as the two of them nod.
“I’ll draw some-” Astrid stops her sentence and turns to one of the others, who is digging further down, yelling: “Bas, wat is een goede vertaling voor coupeerhaken?”
The man in question, Bas, looks up and thinks for a second. The he yells back: “Geen idee, iets van coup hooks?”
Robin’s Dutch isn’t amazing, but she’s pretty sure Astrid just asked Bas for a translation of the word and Bas had no clue either.
She turns back to them apologetically and says: “I’m going to call them coup hooks. The little thingies to indicate what part to dig out, you know what I mean right?”
“Yeah, I do,” Robin smiles, wanting to assure Astrid.
“I would have no clue what to call them otherwise,” Steve adds and Robin feels vaguely annoyed, because she is pretty sure Astrid’s smile back is directed at Steve, not her.
“Anyway,” Astrid moves on. “I’ll draw some for you until you get the hang of them. And just give a holler if you find anything, you’ll know because you’ll hear your shovel break it.”
Robin still finds the idea of breaking any finds horrifying, but it seems to be part of it. And she doesn’t want to pull attention to it, so she just thanks Astrid and follows after her with Steve to the first two sporen so they can start digging.
Astrid quickly explains: “The card with the… uh, spoornummer… Ah, featurenumber! When you’re done digging stick it in to the side, so we know it hasn’t been drawn in yet.”
“And photos?” Robin asks, proud at herself for managing to speak up and ask about something she’s confused about instead of being anxious about it in private. College is good her her. Growth and all that.
To answer her question, Astrid gets a company phone with a sturdy case that functions as a camera and explains the admin app for photos to them. She points to where the North arrow and folding ruler are, before leaving them to it.
Now couping can be a little boring, especially in put five where there is apparently nothing to be found in the sporen. So they’re just digging to find out what shape the discolored earth is in the hopes of figuring out what its function used to be.
She and Steve work in silence for most of it. He tries to start a few conversations, but she isn’t really in the mood to talk to him, more focused on creating a neat little square for a coup and not letting her vibe be ruined by Steve.
They have two breaks that day of half an hour, one is on the boss, but they have to pay for the other themselves. So after eight and a half hours, Robin says goodbye to the first day of her summer internship.
While it was kinda fun, she is glad to be done for the day. She still has two and a half hours in public transport ahead of her, before she’s home and can rinse off the dirt and sweat, something she is looking forward too. As she checks in, she sends a small thank you for free public transport for students to the sky, because she couldn’t afford the daily commute otherwise to this outer corner of the Netherlands.
The next day her alarm goes early in the morning and she’s glad she doesn’t have roommates in her student housing, because they would probably hate her with how she’s grumbling and stumbling around in her studio.
At the dig site, Steve looks way too chipper for the hour and she sends him a glare. He looks a little confused, maybe even hurt by it and she feels a bit bad. However, she stuffs the emotion away and grabs a shovel. Steve is an asshole, she probably just imagined it.
Again, they’re digging coups the whole day. The sun is burning and the ground is drying out, making it incredibly difficult to get through. So, they’re all sweaty and a bit burnt when the first break is finally here. Robin finds it quite funny how they’re all re-applying sunscreen together, sitting in a circle.
And so the days continue.
That first week Robin gets into a rhythm. She stumbles out of bed early in the morning, dozes in the train, dozes in the bus, before having to walk the last bit to the dig site. There they dig all day, putting on sunscreen during both breaks, before she takes the bus and train again, showering when she gets home and shoveling down an easy meal. Digging makes you hungry. Then she writes her daily reports, before falling into bed.
She also tries to make contact with the other people they work with. All of them are nice and their English is great – not an odd detail, considering most of them studied at the university in English, taking the same courses she is now.
However, they’ve worked in the field along other Dutch people since their graduation, so it’s habit to fall back in the language. Robin gets it, but she feels awkward reminding them that she can’t follow along. Her Dutch isn’t that great yet. So, she kind of fades to the background.
Steve is in the same boat as her, though he has less trouble reminding him he doesn’t speak Dutch, which Robin is reluctantly grateful for.
She knows she could be taking with Steve, since he won’t default to Dutch on accident, but she is holding on to her grudge. Not that Steve is making it easy. He seems perfectly nice and charming, which grates on her nerves.
And makes it very difficult to dislike him. Something that makes Robin dislike him even more and that only fuels her silence.
Not that it has deterred Steve from talking to her. He must have gotten tired of reminding people around Thursday that first week and has taken up talking to her during their breaks. It’s nothing interesting, just classes, professors, friends, parties, other shit he did. He doesn’t seem to mind her lack of replies.
Robin has to admit that Steve is funny too. Fucking annoying that is. But the jokes he makes are hilarious and she has to bite her lip not to laugh. She doesn’t like Steve, she reminds herself, she’s not giving him the satisfaction of laughing.
She breaks on Tuesday of week two. It’s about the stupidest joke too. Steve is telling her about how he got rejected for a date at a faculty party, groaning: “And she turned me down all because I told her that I dug her. You know, digging? Because we’re archaeologists. That’s a great joke, works on Argyle every-”
He cuts himself off in surprise, eyes growing wide as he looks at her. It’s only when he falls silent that she realizes she laughed.
An embarrassed blush covers her cheeks immediately and she looks away with a huff. “It’s a good pun,” she admits, as though under duress. It isn’t that good, but it’s funny.
For a second she regrets admitting that, until she chances a glance at Steve and sees him wearing a proud, self-satisfied grin. It almost looks as if trying to get her to laugh had been his goal all along and she doesn’t know how to feel about it.
The gesture is sweet, but for all she knows, he could be trying to get into her pants. She hates when guys try to do that.
“Thanks,” he smiles at her, oblivious to her inner musings. Then he blows her expectations out of the water when he laughs: “I should stop trying that line on girls, honestly. The only time it every worked was when I asked out Tommy, but that was never going to be more than a fling.”
“You’re… queer?” Robin asks, too surprised to hide it.
“Yeah, bi. Didn’t you know?” Steve asks in return, frowning a little. “I thought for sure we talked a little at that lgbtq hang out thing back in first year.”
They had, Robin remembers that and now she feels a little terrible for her bitter thoughts as she admits: “I thought you were only there to get into Tammy’s pants.”
Steve is quiet for a moment and just when Robin thinks he’s going to get mad or upset – neither of which are good since Robin gets anxious when people are mad and uncomfortable when they’re upset – Steve laughs again.
It surprises Robin almost more than the earlier revelation. He looks at her with a grin and says: “To be fair, I was trying to get into Tammy’s pants.”
He looks so kind as he says it, so nonjudgmental – unlike Robin had been – like he doesn’t care that she kinda erased his identity and called him performative. Maybe there is more to Steve than she had realized, she thinks, as she allows herself to smile back and say: “Sorry.”
Steve shrugs: “It’s okay. I try not to flaunt it too much anyway. Can’t have word coming back to my folks back home, you know.”
Robin flinches a little at that. Her own parents are cool and have always been, but she’s still forced into a dress whenever they go by her conservative grandmother, having to listen to all the advice about how to get a husband.
“That sucks,” she tells him genuinely, because they queers have to stick together.
“Tell me about it,” Steve chuckles, fortunately not sounding too bothered about the whole thing. “I guess it could be worse. My dad wanted me to be a legacy at Yale, then he would have heard all about what I’ve been doing from his old buddies. Now I got a whole ocean between us and no eyes on me at all. Just have to be careful about what I put online, but that’s it.”
It sounds like he’s underselling how much it sucks, but Robin isn’t going to push. If Steve is trying to undersell it, then he probably doesn’t want to talk about it. So, she just awkwardly goes: “That’s nice.”
Luckily, she is saved by the break ending and the two go out into the field again, digging even more coups.
They’re almost done with put five and put six has already being dug. There hasn’t been much inside the coups here, but they’re optimistic about more being found elsewhere, since they’re currently on the outer edge of what used to be a settlement instead of at the center.
This time, when they’re out digging, Robin actually talks back to Steve. She has decided that he can’t be all bad and digging in silence was kind of a bummer. So, she’s giving him a chance and hoping her faith isn’t misplaced. It would suck if Steve truly is a douche.
~~
A/N:
I wanted Robin to be interested in proto-languages and how you can trace migration and interaction through language, but idk enough about it, so I went with archaeosteology because it fits with Robin too and I know a little bit more of it, though not too much either lol (im planning on projecting my own interests onto Steve bc they fit him better)
Also rip Roman arch, u can be interesting, but ur also the normie archaeology that gets way too hyped for no reason xp
I’m 100% Astrid trying to translate subject specific lingo and struggling, though I manage to do it both ways lmaooo
Also I love couping, idc what people say, it’s not boring and while it might be hard work, it is quite fun when you get into it
(btw, I think international students sadly don’t get free public transport here, which is so sad, but I didn’t want to put Robin through actual public transport prices bc those are criminal (we love a private company having a monopoly on a public service))
