Chapter Text
The thing that first hits her, when Robin steps out of the plane, is the heat. It feels like a punch to the face, compared with the cool air conditioned plane she’s spent the last few hours in. Like being dropped in an ice bath, except the other way around. She’d read somewhere that Hell was actually supposed to be cold, so she guess this is Heaven welcoming her with open arms.
She doesn’t spend long outside, just enough time to get from the plane into the airport. Jonathan’s with her, and it’s the first time either of them have been on a plane, let alone an airport. Let alone California.
They get pulled along by the crowd of travellers exiting the plane with them, and Robin links her arm with his in order not to loose track of him. They get to the baggage reclaim and stand to the side while they wait for their baggage to appear. Steve explained it all to them over the phone, how they might have to wait a bit and to not panic if they missed their suitcases the first time they come out on the conveyor belt, because they’ll reappear in a minute.
As it is, their suitcases aren’t put together, so Robin has to separate from Jonathan to grab hers while he hurries the other way for his own. Their instruments come together, though, the only two on the plane, and Robin swings her guitar case up on her back.
They follow the crowd through the winding tunnel-like corridors of the airport until they emerge on the front of the building.
Robin lets out a gleeful shout that makes an older woman stare at her disapprovingly when her eyes land on Steve.
He’s holding a piece of cardboard with the words ‘Hawkins Former Losers Future Rockstars’ written on it in sharpie. He’s exchanged those preppy sweaters she’s gotten used to seeing him in for an unbuttoned waistcoat in at least twenty different colours over a white t-shirt.
And his hair is enormous.
She rushes up to him, leaving her suitcase to roll to a stop without her, and throws her arms around his neck. Steve hugs her back, laughing.
“Sorry I missed your graduation,” he says.
“Don’t worry about it,” Robin says, stepping back. “We’re just happy to be here. Right, Jonathan?”
“Yeah, man,” Jonathan says, coming up to them and pulling both of their suitcases along.
Robin reaches up with a hand to pat at Steve’s hair. He steps back with a, “Hey!”
“How much spray did you put in that, oh my god?” she says with a laugh.
“Listen,” Steve says, holding a finger up like a daycare teacher or a mum, the way Robin’s seen him do while babysitting Jonathan’s brother and his friends when they were younger. “This is the hair of a rockstar, and it’s taken me a year to get it to this point. No bad talking the hair. Just you two wait until you start looking the part.”
Robin muffles a laugh, and Jonathan grins. He’s generally been the quiet one in their friend group, only really letting his emotions show through when they’re too strong to keep inside or he feels safe. He reaches out and pulls Steve into an one armed hug. “Missed you, man.”
Steve leads them to his car, a new one his parents paid for when he first got to Los Angeles. Robin’s only met Steve’s parents a handful of times. They’ve always been distant, travelling a lot for work and leaving Steve by himself for months on end. It’s had its benefits, providing them a perfect place to practice where they wouldn’t bother anyone else, but Robin knows Steve’s been hurting for years because of his parents.
They’d had a big argument a little over a year ago, a few months before Steve’s high school graduation, where Steve finally stood up to them. Robin figures the guilt his parents felt is part of the reason why they decided to indulge their son’s rock star dreams.
They got him a new car, and paid for his apartment, sending his drum kit with a moving truck, on the condition that Steve would get a job and provide for himself without more of their help.
It’s not really the struggling musician background Robin would have found herself in, but it’s not like they’re that spoiled, either.
As they get in Steve’s car and he starts driving them to their new home, Robin watches palm trees zoom by against the backdrop of clouds painted purple by the setting sun.
Steve’s apartment is just off West Hollywood, close to the Strip. The building’s nice enough, and the location’s amazing, but the actual apartment is cramped. One bedroom, one tiny bathroom, a kitchen combined with the living room. Maybe they’ll have something akin to humble beginnings, after all.
The paint’s faded on one wall in the living room, where the sun’s rays must land from the kitchen windows, and Steve’s hasn’t got a kitchen table. What he does have is a countertop with bar stools, a pullout couch and a normal couch, a tiny TV and probably all the records he used to have in his bedroom in Hawkins set up on the only bookcase in the whole apartment. Most of the space is taken up by his drum set, squished into the corner of the main room. The place smells of air freshener and exhaust fumes. The floor’s carpeted, and Steve takes off his shoes as they step inside. She and Jonathan do the same.
“How we doing this, then?” Robin asks, leaning back against her suitcase and surveying the space in front of her.
“You’ll get the bedroom,” Steve says. “‘Cause you’re the girl.”
Robin huffs a laugh. “You and Jonathan gonna cuddle on the couch? Without me?”
“Nah, I was thinking I’d take the couch and Jonathan gets the pull-out.”
“Hey, no, it’s your place, dude. You take the bigger one.”
“This is your place as much as it is mine,” Steve says.
“Yeah, but your parents paid for it.”
“I’ve got an idea,” Robin interrupts them. “Shouldn’t Jonathan take the bedroom? I mean, Nancy’s going to be staying on campus, so...” she doesn’t finish the sentence, only wiggles her eyebrows to punctuate her meaning.
Jonathan groans. “I think her parents only let her accept her place because they knew she’d stay with a female roommate and I would be stuck with you two.”
“So I’m the only one that gets to bring girls home, got it,” Robin says, laughing. She’d come out to them years ago, and a few months back, Will, Jonathan’s little brother, had confided in her before anyone else. She’d given him a talk about condoms and safe sex and told him his mum and brother were among the kindest, most accepting people she knew, and not to worry. He’d hugged her before running along to come out to the rest of them.
“Hey, before I forget,” Steve says, and darts into the kitchen. He comes back with a newspaper, open on the page filled with job advertisements. “I saw this last week. What do you guys think?”
He points to a tiny section in the middle of the paper, and Jonathan takes it from him to read aloud, “‘Devilishly sexy singer with reasonable talent in rhythm guitar looking for work.’” He finishes with a chuckle.
“Well?” Steve says. “We need a singer. And a rhythm guitarist. Robin can’t do both all the time. It’s two birds with one stone.”
Robin thinks back to how at Prom, she ended up at the Quarry, in the backseat of Tammy Thompson’s car. Tammy had bunched her skirt up and kissed hickeys along Robin’s left breast and collarbone, whispering, ‘So you’re going to be a big rockstar, huh?’
‘Yeah,’ Robin had gasped, stroking up Tammy’s neck and tangling her hand in her hair. ‘I am.’
‘You and your boys haven’t got a singer, though. Care to bring me with you?’
Robin had counted herself lucky Tammy was busy with her face pressed against Robin’s chest, so she didn’t see how close she was to bursting out laughing at that. Everyone knew Tammy liked singing. Everyone - including Tammy, who almost seemed to take pleasure in it, although maybe Drunk Tammy had forgotten the fact - also knew she was a shit singer. As Robin later found out that night though, Tammy also had quite a way with her fingers. If she’d ever cared to pick up a guitar, she could’ve been really good.
But Robin didn’t say that. Instead, she reminded Tammy that she’d already accepted her place at a university in New York, and then she pulled her in for a kiss and most of the talking ended there.
“Yeah, I mean,” Jonathan says, effectively bringing Robin back to the present. “‘Devilishly sexy’, though?”
“That’s just the way they talk here,” Steve dismisses. “Gotta stand out, you know?”
“They’re confident.” Robin nods. “That’s good in a lead singer. Call ‘em.”
“Yeah, okay- Wait, now?”
She shrugs. “No time like the present.”
“Alright then,” Steve says, and takes the paper from Jonathan before going over to the phone on the edge of the kitchen counter. “Here goes nothing,” he says, and dials the number while she and Jonathan step further inside, sitting down on the couches.
They know someone’s answered when Steve’s face changes. But instead of the smile Robin expects, he frowns.
“Hi...” he says, sounding unsure. “I was calling about the advertisement? For the singer?” He’s quiet for a bit, listening to the person on the other end, and then nods. “Yes, thank you. That would be great. Uh huh. Yeah. Tomorrow, at... 3pm?” He rambles out their address. “Alright, thank you. Have a good one.”
“Why the face, Harrington?” Robin asks, turning around so she’s lying on her stomach with her chin in her hands.
Steve puts the phone back on the receiver and turns to look at them with a confused expression. “A... grandma, answered.”
Robin chokes on a laugh. “A grandma is the ‘devilishly handsome singer’ with guitar skills?”
“No, it turns out she knows the guy who put the advertisement in. Guess he’s her grandkid.”
“Are we assuming he’s our age and still living at home or is this some middle aged man living with his mother, though?” Jonathan says, furrowing his eyebrows and wrinkling his nose.
Steve looks a bit like a deer caught in headlights. “Didn’t think of that.”
“Well,” Robin says, flipping onto her back. “Guess we’ll find out tomorrow. I’m feeling like pizza. Anyone else? Guys, pizza, yes? Steve, s’there a good pizza place anywhere close by?”
—
Robin would like to say they’re productive the next day. That they wake up early, get all their papers in order now that they’ve moved states, that they eat a healthy breakfast and that she and Jonathan go looking for jobs, that Steve takes them down to Venice beach where Robin gets to swim in the ocean for the first time, that they spend the morning walking down Venice boardwalk, and that they get back to the apartment in time to spend a good two hours practicing together again before the singer comes to audition.
But that would be a lie.
The truth is, they stay awake for a while after getting the pizza, and they drink a couple of beers, and Robin wakes just before noon, just slightly hangover. The boys are still asleep, and she wakes them up by slamming the lid of a pot against the pan she uses to make scrambled eggs, cackling when they startle awake from the noise. Then, they take turns showering and unpacking their suitcases before meeting back up in the kitchen. They sip Steve’s shitty coffee while she and Jonathan press their heads together in order to both be able to look through the advertisements in the new newspaper, looking for someplace to work.
Her parents had been skeptical to letting her move out here when she’d told them her plans back in the winter of junior year, had said that she had no way to support herself or a place to live. Robin had told them Steve was going on ahead, that she’d get an apartment with him and Jonathan, which had then blown up into a shouting match of ‘Do you really think we’re going to let you live by yourself with two horny teenage boys miles away from home?!’ which had ended with Robin coming out to them.
She’d cried, her mum had cried, her dad had kissed both of their heads, the three of them had hugged it out, they’d told her they loved her, and then they hadn’t talked about it again.
They do still manage to get in about an hour of practice, a miracle if Robin ever heard of one.
“God, Stevie, we’ve got so much new material!” she says, reaching for her notebook. She and Jonathan write their songs, filling pages upon pages with discarded lyrics and planned out melodies until they fall upon something good. Back in Hawkins, they’d usually have her or Steve sing, but neither of them are really that good. They’re more fitting as backup singers, since neither of them have the powerful vocals they really need.
But Steve’s a master on the drums, always moving even when not at them, tapping a beat against his thigh or stomping his foot. Or clicking his lighter open and shut to the beat of We Will Rock You.
He falls into it almost at once, and it’s a relief to know they’ve still got it. That a year apart hasn’t made them deaf to each other’s cues and sound.
They’re busy going through the song she wrote with Jonathan on the plane, when Steve glances at the clock and lets out a shout, his drumsticks flying out of his hand and crashing into the wall.
“Jesus!” Jonathan says, jumping back.
“Stop playing!” Steve says. “He’ll be here in ten minutes, we can’t be playing when he gets here. We’ve gotta be professional.”
Jonathan shakes his head, eyes big and amused. “What the hell is wrong with you, man?”
“We haven’t even decided what he’s going to sing!”
“Shit, yeah. Okay.”
“What about Small Town Highway?” Steve asks, biting his lip.
Robin sighs, putting her guitar to the side so she can get Steve’s drum sticks for him. “No, please. It’s a crappy song. I wrote it, and even I think it’s crappy.”
“I don’t think it’s crappy!” Steve says, catching the sticks as she throws them to him, one at a time. “It’s good!”
“Please.”
“What about Atlantis Drowning?”
They both look over to Jonathan. He’s perched on the armrest of the couch, one of their notebooks in hand.
“I mean...” Steve glances over at her, meeting her gaze from behind his drums.
Robin smiles, looks back to Jonathan and grins. “It’s perfect.”
At exactly 3 o’clock, so perfectly timed Robin wonders if the guy’s been standing outside staring at his watch, there’s a knock on the door.
She’s closest, so Robin puts her guitar down and glances over at the guys. They both throw her smiles that are a mix of nervousness and excitement.
‘Play it cool,’ Steve mouths to her.
Robin nods, and goes over to open.
The guy on the other side is not some middle aged man living with his mother, that much is certain.
He’s young, her age, she thinks, with blue eyes that pop from the black eyeliner around them. His hair’s even bigger than Steve’s, curly and blonde, the front of it pulled into a topknot and the rest cascading to his shoulders. He’s wearing a leather jacket, which clues her in that he’s definitely from here, because Robin can’t imagine going outside in the heat in anything more than a t-shirt and shorts. There’s a cigarette between his lips, unlit, and he grins around it.
“Billy,” he introduces himself. “Heard you were looking for a singer.”