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Robin’s never been regular.
Her period, that is.
Not that she’s particularly ordinary herself either, but… well, that’s a subject for another day.
She was the very last girl in her grade to get her first period, and the only one who lasted all the way until freshman year. During the last week of eighth grade, Sabrina Martinez got a red stain on her white jeans and cried the whole way to the nurse’s office, and thus left Robin.
And Robin didn’t know how to feel about that.
Her friend Barb told her there was nothing wrong with being a late bloomer. And Barb’s friend Nancy told her that she was lucky, really, because Nancy got hers in fifth grade, and “the longer you can hold it off, the better.” They were nice about it.
Other girls weren’t so nice, though, and when freshman year began and somehow they found out Robin was the last girl standing, so to speak, they teased her mercilessly— until, that was, Robin finally lost her cool and smacked her science book over Jill Preston’s head.
Jill barely got a bruise, nothing even approaching a concussion, but it was a pretty thick book since Indiana had finally agreed to include the chapter on evolution. So Robin ended up in the principal’s office at nine a.m. with a ruby-red demerit her parents had to sign.
“Well,” Barb told her at lunch, “If it makes you feel any better, I hear Jill’s cramps are awful.”
Nancy scoffed.
“Please, she’s just whiny. She only says that to get out of running the mile.”
“I don’t even understand how everyone knows who’s gotten it!” Robin exclaimed through a mouthful of Jell-O, but Barb and Nancy ignored her.
Robin never did find out, but she did get her period a month later.
In a fate much luckier than poor Sabrina’s, she woke up to blood in her pajama shorts on a Saturday morning and her mother promptly cleared their weekend schedule “so Robin could settle into womanhood.” Her mom didn’t spill the beans to her dad, thank god, but she did push him rather forcefully out the door to go buy chocolate and ice cream while she and Robin curled up on the couch with a Cagney & Lacey box-set.
Eat your heart out, Jill.
As they passed a chocolate bar back and forth, her mother did her best to stumble through a biology lesson Robin had already learned from library books. Still, she appreciated the effort on her mother’s parts, and there were a few things that Robin hadn’t known yet.
Specifically, the potential for irregularity, which— well, if her mother only knew, y’know?
“Your body’s still getting used to itself, see,” her mom had explained. “So eventually you’ll settle into a regular, monthly cycle, but it might take a while. You might not get your next period for a few months! But you should always keep extra pads in your backpack in case it starts unexpectedly.”
That was sound advice, so Robin stuck to it.
It was true, too. Robin’s next period didn’t come until Thanksgiving, and the one after that didn’t come until Valentine’s Day. But around Easter, without another period in sight, Robin was beginning to wonder if her body was ever going to “settle in.”
The doctor didn’t seem too concerned about it when she brought it up at her check-up, and just said something about some women always being irregular.
“It’s not a real concern, pathologically speaking. Just a mild inconvenience,” the doctor said absently, not even looking up from her clipboard.
Robin rather heatedly thought to herself that science could probably be doing more to work on that rather than just building more bombs to race against the Soviets, but she knew better than to say that out loud; there was only one female doctor in all of Hawkins after all, and Robin would sooner die than talk about her period with a guy.
Years go by.
Things happen.
Robin gets crushes, gets crushed, loses hope in true love, loses some friends along the way, and then gains some better ones. She gets captured by Soviet scientists and then fights some monsters with firecrackers in a shopping mall, and she comes out to Steve fucking Harrington on the floor of a public bathroom while they’re both high out of their minds.
Still, through it all and onwards, her cycle is a bitch.
She finds herself telling Steve everything about herself, from the tiniest little things— “Did you know I’ve got a birthmark in the shape of a smiley-face on my left buttcheek?” — to the most devastating truths— “Am I just broken, you think? Fundamentally?”
And one day at work, she mentions, just in passing, really, how annoying her cycle is.
Steve didn’t recoil in disgust, which was a green flag for Robin, but he did make that sort of pouty, thoughtful face that meant he was confused.
“But I thought— aren’t cycles, like, cycles? They just repeat, right?” He asked blankly. “Can’t you predict ‘em, like the moon?”
He looked so lost, Robin almost felt bad for him, but that didn’t stop her from laughing.
“Well, if you’re lucky, yeah, but mine’s super irregular,” she’d told him. “Sometimes I don’t get my period for months, and then sometimes I have it for three weeks straight. I think I last had one around Christmas.”
The blood drained out of Steve’s face like he’d seen a ghost.
“Um, should you maybe talk to your doctor about that?” He asked in a strangled voice.
Robin cracked a grin and went back to re-shelving the comedies.
“Oh, I did. They just said to get used to it, basically. And I have. It just sucks always needing to be, like, super on top of things and always having supplies or clean pants at the ready wherever I go.”
Steve hummed and nodded, looking back at the cash register. He was quiet for a long moment.
“You know,” he said, “Mrs. Henderson said raspberry tea works wonders for—”
“Jesus Christ, Stephen— ”
“Okay, I get it! Shutting up now.”
And a few weeks went by. Autumn continued, briskly. A chilly October turned into a downright frigid November, and still Robin didn’t bleed.
She thought about what Nancy said back in eighth grade, about how lucky she was to not have periods as often as everyone else. But then she thought about the past two years since she first got it, how she’d only had about ten total and one had lasted a full, horrible, miserable month.
She thought about what Steve said, too, about talking to a doctor, and, sure, he didn’t exactly have the bona fides to comment, but Robin still decided to make an appointment over winter break. She didn’t really expect to get a different answer than the first time, but what was the harm in trying?
School let out on Wednesday for Thanksgiving break, and Steve picked her up to go straight to his house, where they’d need to rush and make pumpkin pie for the pre-Thanksgiving celebration being held at the Byers.
(Well, more accurately, Steve was going to make the pie while Robin lent entertainment and commentary, and then she would eat all the crumbs left on the counter like his personal vacuum cleaner. That was the more realistic vision.)
The car ride from Hawkins High to Steve’s place was normal. He lived a fair distance compared to other students, but Hawkins was small enough that it still only took fifteen minutes in “rush-hour” traffic. While they were waiting to turn onto the main road, Robin felt a dull ache in her stomach, but she brushed it off as being too busy not-staring-but-maybe-definitely-staring at Vickie to eat lunch. Besides, it was easy enough to be distracted by Steve’s detailed re-telling of his morning shift— not strictly necessary, but he always volunteered it honestly, so Robin knew how many tallies to put on her now-dubbed “dingus chart.”
It wasn’t until they were pulling to a stop in Steve’s driveway that Robin felt something was a bit… off.
He put the car in park and immediately hopped out, but when Robin went to do the same, there was an uncomfortable sensation between her thighs— sticky, she realized, with a growing sense of horror.
Because it was one thing to get trapped, drugged, and tortured in a secret Soviet military base beneath your local shopping mall with a guy. That was a best friend on a silver platter.
Suddenly getting your period— heavily, from the feel of it— in his BMW? That was very much not the same thing.
And in the same moment of dawning horror in which Robin realized this, she also remembered that she’d left her backpack (and pads) in her locker.
And to think that she’d been so jazzed when none of her teachers assigned homework over break.
Fuck.
A bad situation had become even worse, and though Steve’s car seats were dark-colored, Robin’s acid-wash jeans definitely were not. She didn't even want to imagine the size of the stain on her ass—
Steve was going to see.
And by the expression on his face, even as she sat frozen in his passenger seat, he’d already noticed something was up.
“What, did you forget something at school?” He asked blankly, leaning his head into the car. “We can go back if you want, but I think they’ve probably already locked up for break. Besides, we really need two hours for the pie to set—”
Robin didn’t even have a jacket to tie around her waist. All she had was her puffer coat because there’d been frost on the ground that morning, and the sleeves were too bulky to tie.
Fuck times two.
She began to pray that a hole would spontaneously open up and swallow her whole before Steve could see the stain on his seat or the one to match on her pants. If nothing else, maybe she’d burn to death thanks to the fire spreading across her cheeks that very moment.
Steve looked concerned now, and Robin realized she hadn’t said anything, nor made any move to get out of the car. He came around to open her door, but didn’t wait expectantly for her to get out; he crouched beside her instead, even though he’d left his coat at work.
(That was part of the story today.)
“Hey, Rob, you’re freaking me out,” he said, frank but quiet. “Are you sick? Did someone do something? Did… did I do something?”
And that was Robin’s final straw, her Kryptonite, because Steve Harrington was her poor, sad boy of a best friend, and she had already made up her mind ages ago to never make him feel bad about himself; he did enough of that on his own without his asshole bully parents adding to it like that did.
So this— Robin’s panic attack about bleeding through her pants onto his leather seats— suddenly mattered much less than the flash of panic which flitted across Steve’s face at the thought that he’d somehow hurt her.
“No, of course not! You didn’t do anything!” She blurted out. “I just don’t want you to get mad at me!”
Steve’s brows furrowed.
“About what?”
She squeezed her eyes shut.
“Um, maybe… bleeding through my pants and onto your fancy, rich-person car seats?” She whispered quickly, like the quieter she spoke, the less angry he’d be.
Steve was silent a moment, like his brain had short circuited.
“You bled on my—? Oh!” He leaned in a little closer, like the nearest neighbor wasn’t at least a half-mile down the road. “You got your period? Is that all?”
Robin sniffled. (When had she started crying?)
“What do you mean, ‘Is that all’?” She said, feeling a sudden rush of anger in her chest, though it died immediately when she met Steve’s eyes again— Steve, who’d marched through hell holding her hand and had stuck to her side like glue ever since.
Now the tears returned.
“I haven’t gotten my period in months and now it happens when I’m sitting on your nice leather seats and wearing my favorite jeans and don’t have my backpack with me, so I don’t even have a single pad,” she cried.
She wasn’t sure she’d ever felt more pathetic.
Steve’s hands found hers and squeezed.
“Robbie, hey, relax,” he soothed. “Do you know how much blood has been in this car? Hell, Dustin made me transport his stupid Demodog experiment thing in the backseat! You know how slimy that shit was? I was smelling it for weeks! A little blood is small potatoes, man.”
He gave her a gentle jostle for emphasis, and Robin couldn’t help but giggle, even if it was still a tearful one.
“But— my pads are in my backpack. And my jeans…” She tried to continue, but Steve was already shaking his head.
He untangled their hands and straightened up, and Robin thought he was about to go inside the house, but instead he circled around the car and popped the trunk. She heard him rummaging for a while—no doubt, trying to avoid cutting his hand open with his own nail bat— but then he apparently found his prize.
He swung the trunk shut and slipped back to her side, holding out something in each hand: a small green pouch, almost like a makeup bag, and a larger Ziploc bag labeled “ROBIN” that looked to hold— a change of clothes.
“Steve Harrington, you beautiful angel, you,” Robin said under her breath, almost startled when Steve actually heard it and threw his head back to laugh.
“I don’t know about angel, but beautiful, sure,” he teased, tossing his stupid, swoosh of hair with a wink. “They’re not your favorite jeans, but they should do fine. And there’s a shirt, and a jacket in there, too, if you need it. Oh, and the green bag has pads and tampons. Take as many as you want.”
Robin stared at him.
“Steve, why do you keep pads and tampons in your car?” She asked incredulously. “And do you have more than one change of clothes back there? Because this one is labeled Robin, which makes me think you’re kicking around with more platonic soulmates behind my back.”
She threw in a huff for show, and luckily Steve knew she was joking, because he grinned.
“No, Robin, you’re the only one for me,” he said dramatically, rolling his eyes. “There’s a bag of clothes back there for the whole Party. They kept having movie nights at my place and forgetting their clothes, or borrowing mine, and I started thinking about how that’s always kind of been an inconvenience whenever we’re— I dunno, fuckin’, saving the world all the time? We end up in the same gross, sweaty, bloody, torn up clothes for days on end, y’know? So I just started a little, like, failsafe closet in my trunk, just in case.”
“Just in case,” she repeated, trying to mull this over as quickly as possible. As usual, even months after she properly met him, everything about Steve Harrington felt like an enigma.
Steve gave her something of a sympathic look.
“It kinda happens a lot,” he said. “It’s not just clothes, I’m not that weird. Look for yourself, I’ve got a first aid kit, some canned food, and water bottles— oh, and extra batteries for the walkies, ‘cause the kids are so bad at remembering those—”
Robin hummed.
“And the pads?” She asked.
“And tampons,” he corrected. “To cover everyone’s preferences.”
“Right. What about those, then?”
Steve shrugged, sheepish.
“Well, we got Max. And then you. And then El was able to come out more, and sometimes Nancy would be with everyone, too—” He pushed both bags into her hands, avoiding her gaze. “I just wanted to be prepared for everything.”
Robin looked at Steve’s thick, choppy lettering on the baton. She could picture him at his kitchen counter, a fresh box of Ziplocs at the ready and a Sharpie cap between his teeth as he carefully wrote every single Party member’s name on their own bag. She felt a warmth in her chest, and cracked a grin.
“You know something, Steve?” She said, finally unbuckling her seat belt to climb out of the car. “You’re a real good guy.”
Steve lit up with a smile of his own, though he seemed a bit embarrassed by the explicit praise, if the blush on his cheeks was anything to go by.
“Go inside and get changed,” he said, pushing his key ring into her hand, too. “Look, it’s not a big stain at all. I’ll just use the wipes in the glove compartment, and I’ll be done in a minute.”
Robin clucked her tongue, holding everything in her arms close to her chest.
“Wipes, too? You’re so prepared,” she teased, turning to head inside as instructed.
(She decided she didn’t care if Steve saw the stain on her jeans. He was her best friend, after all. Besides, he was too nice to not be looking pointedly elsewhere, she thought.)
“Well, I was a Boy Scout!” He called, a smile in his voice.
She laughed back, even if made it harder to fumble the key into the door lock. After all, they had pie to make, and they were running short on time if Robin wanted to eat the crumbs; she might need to settle for the ice cream in the freezer for the “a la mode” part.
As she stepped inside the large house with all of its too-clean furniture and too-empty rooms, she glanced back to check on Steve. As expected, he was diligently scrubbing the passenger seat of his Beamer with a wipe, brow furrowed in concentration; he was even poking his tongue out a little.
She shook her head fondly and headed to the nearest bathroom to change.
Steve Harrington— sometimes still a dingus, and always a total enigma, to be sure, but Robin couldn’t have asked for a better best friend.