zccming:
WHO: max mayfield & @rcbinbvckleys WHAT: a little trauma bond for the girls WHERE: buckley residence
morning or night, max was still functioning in survival mode. four hours of sleep was a good night, she ate her first meals around dinner time if she even remembered, she’d showered maybe once this week. between rounds at the hospital and going door to door for her other friends who hadn’t gotten hurt, there was hardly any time for those little things, let alone digesting what went down in the house of mirrors. but if there was anybody who would get it, it was robin.
with no regard for the hour, she skated to robin’s house, collected some pinecones from the yard, then began pelting her window with them. there was no easily scalable way in, so this would have to do. she hoped robin wasn’t a heavy sleeper, because she was reaching a breaking point. she had to talk about it. when the other finally opened the window to find the source of this commotion, max looked sheepishly up at her, “hey.” she started, dropping her pine cones, “are you busy? do you think…i could maybe like, come in or whatever?”
⚢
laying flat on her back robin just stared at the ceiling blankly, just like she had done most nights since that evening. ever since, the events of which had just replayed over and over in her mind like a retrospective bad omen. hell, she couldn’t even walk past a mirror without averting her eyes which made brushing her teeth rather difficult. however she’d managed to come up with a few rather unconventional methods to combat that hurdle.
in the times that she had managed to sleep, an ethereal version of vickie had appeared to robin in dream. the two of them embarked on the beginnings of their relationship, replaying their first conversation after the upside down, their first date, their first kiss… and that was where it always went wrong. after their lips separated, vickie reverted to nothing but a burning pile of ash. robin had awoken and cried and screamed into her pillow way too many times, so lying awake? yeah, that was better than sleep.
the tapping at the window made her jump with a start, disregarding any other thoughts and sitting bolt upright. leaning over to peer out of the window, robin began to brace herself for who or what was waiting for her on the other side. and as her eyes gradually adjusted, was relieved to find that it was just max. the one person who would definitely understand what she was going through.
opening the window, she leaned out slightly as max began to talk. “do you have any idea what time it is, mayfield?” she hissed, then began to contemplate the repercussions of allowing someone into their house this late. but what her parents didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. she slowly nodded her head before departing from the window. robin crept downstairs and opened the front door, ushering max in quickly. “follow me and just- don’t touch anything, okay?”
sinclairss:
who: lucas & @rcbinbvckleys what: lucas sinclair invented uber in the 1980s where: lucas’ car
lucas had spent some time at the hospital since the shit show that had been the mayor’s 4th of july carnival, but he’d also been respectful that there were actual family members who needed to spend time with their loved ones…and people who were basically family. so, he’d spent a decent amount of time since then driving people to and from the hospital because…there was a real lack of working vehicles among their group. and if lucas’ shitty little honda could help make sure people got safely to and from the hospital? well, that was the least he could do.
on this evening, he was parked in the fire lane waiting for robin to emerge from the hospital, assuring the security guard for the fifth time that “i’m sure she’s on her way. oh! there she is.” with a winning smile and a cheery wave, lucas rolled up the driver’s side window and leaned across the center console to manually unlock the passenger door for robin so that she’d be able to climb in. “hey.” he turned down the radio as she climbed inside. “how’s steve?” a pause. “nancy? you?” there were a lot of people to keep track of.
⚢
lucas offering to drive her from the hospital was something that robin was extremely grateful for. she’d been home and back a few times in the last few days, opting to make the journey either on bike or on foot. to be honest it was beginning to get a little tiring, especially when somewhere deep down inside she just wanted to hide herself away. and yet, she still wanted to be there for steve. robin hadn’t even gone back to work yet, not just because she had her own shit going on but it wouldn’t be the same without him there. even if he was a dingus and annoyed her to no end sometimes.
calling a quick sorry to the security guard, robin clambered into the vehicle and pulled the door shut behind her. “thanks for doing this lucas, really.” she meant it, lucas really didn’t have to go out of his way like this but here he was. “steve and nancy are both okay, and i think the rest of them are too. but me? i’m absolutely awful.” a mirthless laugh, knowing that she was being unbelievably selfish about her feelings. how could she even feel this way when her own best friend had almost died? when vickie and scott clarke and other beloved townsfolk actually had?
jofcreman:
where: the hawkins post
what: jo weighs the pro’s and con’s of murder
who: jo + open!
brows drawn together, jo blew a lock of hair out of her face, bent over her desk as she once again re-arranged tomorrow’s edition’s layout. cursed, threw her hands up in the air, fingers flexing, balling into fists. she let out a groan, tempted to simply throw everything off her desk and storm out.
however many times she tried she just simply couldn’t get the layout to look right. and her cramped little office felt extremely hot - she had a shitty little fan in a corner but doubted that actually did anything - and overall, it had been a long day. so yeah, jo was in a sour mood and not exactly jumping with joy when she heard someone enter, for, like, the twentieth time that day.
her back still turned to them, she took a deep breath. “listen, i get that you’re trying to be helpful or something, alright, but i thought i fucking told you to take your business down to ‘the weekly watcher’, didn’t i? i don’t care about whatever weird freaky shit you saw last night deep in the woods, alright? weekly watcher. down the street, sharp left, sharp right.”
⚢
it was somewhat of a rarity that keith would send robin home from work early — well, more like practically impossible. but he’d claimed to be having… all kinds of issues lately. first his mom quote unquote set fire to the kitchen, then they had to shut for a whole day because he said that their stock was low, which was a definite lie because she’d counted a whole bunch the day before. but robin and steve had their theories. and introducing the most plausible, could it be that keith finally had a real-life girlfriend?
it was a little inconvenient that his ‘love life’ was impacting on opening hours but then again, it was the height of summer. and it got incredibly hot at family video. working at scoops ahoy hadn’t been so bad, because you could just stick your head in the freezer for a minute or two and then you’d be good to go again. but this was something else, so it was actually a relief to get out of there.
so here she was, at hawkins post. robin felt a little out of place but it was all for a good cause, to visit a friend. “woah woah hey relax! i’m just here to… offer some assistance. thought you might need some company with all this heat we’re having.” leaning her body up against the door frame, robin crossed her arms over her chest. “and the weekly watcher, really? i don’t know anyone who reads that and takes it at face value.”
𝐖𝐇𝐎: robin buckley + @jackforeman ! 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄: outside of the foreman residence
initially, robin had been a little hesitant about going to see jack. the only thing that kept repeating in her mind was dustin talking about how the people from the tree commune had just snapped back at the carnival which resulted in hawkins being sent into total chaos. and it was no secret that jack was involved — was one of them.
but jack was also steve’s neighbour and his friend. robin had known him back in high school, and he had been different from the rest of his teammates. most of them had been jerks, they showed off and we’re just dicks in general. but jack, he was nice and he definitely wouldn’t hurt a fly even then. so what had happened to flip that switch? nothing good, that was for sure. “steve- he’s uh. he’s okay.” she’d agreed to update him on their mutual friends condition. “a little wiped out but mostly okay.”
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?”
elevcnhops:
xx
Thinking back, the idea of favorites was still a wild concept. How could you choose just one? Especially when one had nothing to begin with? There were those instances of flipping through channels casually beside Hop ( as they sat on the same musty couch she would return home to shortly ). The titles weren’t specified so she couldn’t tell Robin even if she wanted to. Biting her lower lip, chewing softly while continuing to think. “ Ralph Macchio? “
Aha, there was something! “ Max showed me a picture in a magazine. “ trying to remember the name of his movie, maybe the other would know? “ He’s a good kisser? “ reiterating the question Max once voiced. Concluding it must not be a big deal to mention, that was the only ’ fact ‘ she knew about the actor besides the title to his movie. “ Or yours? “ expectancy upon her question, El could fight off monsters sure, but Robin still had more ‘ real world ‘ knowledge. Finding that priceless. Her eyes widening, “ What is your favorite movie ever? “ echoing back with genuine interest.
⚢
“oh! give me just one minute.” now ralph macchio she could work with. the comment about him being a good kisser raised an eyebrow, it didn’t look anything special to her. not that she knew the slightest thing about what it was like to kiss a boy. but robin made a beeline straight for where she knew the video would be, for someone had just returned it a few days back. this she remembered specifically because they hadn’t rewound the damn thing and she’d had to do it herself.
returning back to el with it, robin handed it to her with a flourish. “i present to you, the karate kid.” then came the question and it was always a difficult one. there were a few niche ones that she doubted el would have heard of, so those were out of the question. robin did have a bit of a soft spot for back to the future owing to the summer of ‘85, then there was fast times at ridgemont high, but both of them felt too obvious. so instead she settled on, “escape from new york,” a pause, wondering if el had heard of it. “i actually do a great snake plissken impression.”
𝐖𝐇𝐎: robin buckley + @dvstybuns ! 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄: the hospital 𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐍: somewhere between 2-3 am
robin’s eyes felt both heavy and extremely puffy, a result of crying on and off as well as a lack of sleep. herself, max and dustin all sat at steve’s bedside and by this point, the hospital staff had pretty much given up on trying to move all of them out. especially given that max had decided to use a few… choice words which made even robin cringe.
the three of them had forged some kind of unspoken agreement that they each had to sleep, but that they would take it in shifts. just in the instance that steve woke up while they were out cold. she’d offered for her two companions to sleep first but max had excused herself in search of a vending machine for all their stomachs were rumbling, and robin only thought that dustin had actually took her up on her offer.
but now that she really looked at him, he was hunched over in his chair doing a very bad job at pretending to be asleep. robin supposed she couldn’t really blame him, steve had always been an important person in dustin’s life and none of them really wanted to sleep right now. “i can see you breathing heavily, dingus.” she spoke softly, the nickname rolling off her tongue with ease. it almost felt right calling dustin that — a sort of passing down the torch from steve to dustin type deal.
loverboymontgomery:
xx.
“Thanks,” he said, weak smile not quite meeting his eyes. The worst part, he thought, was that it felt like a fantasy first; he and Adam laying in bed, talking about the future, and then out of nowhere… Adam’s eyes changing, his body ablaze. It wasn’t a memory, so what was it? “I don’t think I made it up? But I don’t know.”
Cole let a breath go, shaking his head and watching Robin’s eyes. When her voice cracked, he put a hand on her knee, trying to reassure her. “I’m sorry, too. That’s… fucked,” he shook his head.
He’d thought his ‘vision’ was bad enough, but he couldn’t imagine someone trying to pull him down– kill him, presumably. If Robin was anything like him, she was hearing Barb’s cry for help over and over again in her mind. “I don’t know what happened to Barb, but… I’m sure there was nothing you could do,” he said. Cole paused, searching his hands for something to say. “Why do you think… we saw that?”
⚢
“i don’t think we made it up either. when i usually make up or think out scenarios in my brain they’re always just a little bit fuzzy and out of reach. but this was totally different. because i was there, and i felt everything. did you- have that?” robin had considered that maybe she’d just been thrown back into a memory from long ago which went completely haywire.
but herself and barb had only gone swimming when they were kids, and in this ‘vision’, barb had looked older. as in, the same age as when she first went missing. and it had been night time. and then there was the pool… “i just wish we’d still been friends. i wish i could have helped her.” although robin logically knew that there wasn’t much that she could have done. the two of them had still been friendly, but they had drifted apart. it wasn’t anyone’s fault, sometimes that just happened, right?
“i don’t know.” the only real running theory was one that she didn’t believe cole could possibly know — that the upside down stuff was happening again. “i think — we might have disturbed barb’s grave.” it was what robin had initially believed too, before realising everything had been far too much of a coincidence.
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.
# eddie is fed up with their lack of music culture
STRANGER THINGS | Papa (4.08)
❝ 𝗜 𝗙𝗘𝗘𝗟 𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘 𝗠𝗬 𝗪𝗛𝗢𝗟𝗘 𝗟𝗜𝗙𝗘 𝗛𝗔𝗦 𝗕𝗘𝗘𝗡 𝗢𝗡𝗘 𝗕𝗜𝗚 𝗘𝗥𝗥𝗢𝗥. ❞
𝗯𝗶𝗼 & 𝗺𝗶𝘅𝘁𝗮𝗽𝗲 & 𝗰𝗼𝗿𝗸𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱