shoulder to cry on | ronance

THREE

ROBIN WAS FIXING herself some breakfast the next morning since her mom was gone. robin didn't know where she was or who she was with- she had left sometime from after she went to sleep to before she woke up.

she flipped a pancake on the stove, checking her phone every 2 seconds for a text from vickie. they hadn't spoken since last night, but robin had sent her a 'good morning' text an hour ago.

robin heard a key in the door and the doorknob jiggle. she turned around to face the door as it opened. she expected her mom to walk in, but it wasn't. it was steve.

robin had given steve a key to her house a month after the whole mind flayer experience. robin had spent most of the nights waking up from nightmares. at first, she would sit there for hours crying to herself and afraid they would come back to get her.

that ended when one night, she decided to text steve. it was only a simple 'u up?' text. but still, it was progress. luckily for robin, he had been up and texted her back. she ended up opening up to him about her nightmares- mainly because of her rambling problem- and steve told her to text him anytime she needed to be calmed down.

that's when the two of them got closer. they made a code word that either of them could use when needed. it meant that the other person needed to drop everything and come to them. their code word was 'scoop', named after scoop's ahoy.

one night, robin woke up from a nightmare. it was worse than any nightmare she had experienced before. she was uncontrollably crying, barely able to see from any of the tears. she texted steve 'scoop' at 2:32am.

the normal drive from steve's to robin's was 15 minutes. however, this night, steve pulled up to robin's house at 2:37am. he rushed to the door, but it was locked. he tried texting robin, but got no reply. afraid of what to do, he broke the knob and ran inside.

robin's mom was very angry about the doorknob, and made robin pay for it out of her paycheck. when they got a new set of keys for the new doorknob, she gave one to steve to use if the door was ever locked again.

steve and robin are now a lot closer, so steve tends to come over and let himself in. which is what he wad doing in this situation.

"oh, hey rob. didn't think you'd be awake yet. it's 9am," steve commented, closing the door and going to the kitchen.

"so you were coming into my house thinking i was sleeping?"

"pretty much, yeah. why are you up so early?"

"just...couldn't sleep"

"are you having nightmares again?" steve said gently, standing a few feet away from her.

"no! i'm fine. just wasn't that tired"

"okay," he replied, not fully believing her. "did you make me a pancake?"

"yes, dingus. it's the one still cooking in the pan"

"woohoo!" steve cheered like a child, making robin laugh.

she flipped steve's pancake and checked her phone again. "ughhh, why won't vickie text me back?"

"it's 9am. she's probably still sleeping"

"no, she's a morning person"