❝  𝗜  𝗙𝗘𝗘𝗟  𝗟𝗜𝗞𝗘  𝗠𝗬  𝗪𝗛𝗢𝗟𝗘  𝗟𝗜𝗙𝗘 

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.

willthewize​:

WHO: will byers + open

WHERE: you decide

     His drawing skills have only improved since those childhood days scribbling with crayons and colored pencils, but it still requires practice, a constant honing of his abilities to stay sharp. And anatomy, realistic human portraiture, is one of the hardest things to get right, because when it’s just a little off…well, it can get creepy fast. People have always been one of Will’s favorite subjects to draw, probably stemming from his interest in visualizing his and the party’s childhood DnD characters. It would just be a lot easier if…

     “Could you try not to move so much? Sorry, it just helps if you stay still.” He didn’t want to come across as impatient, but if his model was already fidgety, then sitting longer to finish the sketch wasn’t going to help matters.

⚢

when will had so kindly requested to draw her, robin admittedly had been completely taken aback. someone wanting to sketch another person was a detail that you saw in the pictures all the damn time and she had always thought that it was unrealistic, not to mention completely ridiculous and super unlikely. yet here they were, in the most unusual situation — well, to her at least. will was talented though, like really talented. he was probably just as good with his artistic ability as she was with band. so robin had decided to at least give it a shot.

“okay but i warned you before we started that sitting still is entirely not my forte. in fact, i don’t think i’ve ever sat completely still in my entire life. one of my limbs always has to be moving. can’t you just, i don’t know, look past it or something?” the request for limited movement, only made them more frantic, including accompanying hand motions along with this minuscule speech followed by gentle fluffing of short hair. “maybe we can take a break?” really, robin? they’d barely even started.

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.

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?”

Tammy Thompson, everybody.

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.”

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.”

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.

ROBIN BUCKLEY in CHAPTER THREE: THE MONSTER AND THE SUPERHERO

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?”