𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗻 𝗕𝘂𝗰𝗸𝗹𝗲𝘆 𝗶𝗺𝗮𝗴𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀

𝗪𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗻 𝗼𝗻 𝗺𝘆 𝗵𝗲𝗮𝗿𝘁

Author: strvngerrose

Summary: Starting when you turn 12, anything that your soulmate draws on their skin will show up on yours. Robin has waited years to see what her soulmate will draw.

Word count: 2,345

CW: questioning sexuality, brief implication of homophobia

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1980: 12 years old

On the morning of her twelfth birthday, Robin leapt out of bed and immediately ran to her bathroom to stare at her body in the mirror, searching for any sign of words or doodles sprawled across her skin. She rolled up both of her sleeves and put her foot on the bathroom counter to get a closer look at her legs. When it was clear that nothing was there, she huffed in disappointment, rolled down her sleeves and made her way downstairs for breakfast with a small frown.

Her mom was in the kitchen flipping her yearly birthday pancakes when Robin sunk into a seat at the kitchen table, only slightly sulking. Mrs. Buckley placed a plate stacked high with pancakes and topped with whipped cream and birthday sprinkles in front of her with a kiss on top of her sandy blonde head and a whispered happy birthday.

"What's got you so down?" Mrs. Buckley asked upon noticing her daughter's dejected nature, "It's your twelfth birthday! You're supposed to be excited."

"Not when your soulmate hasn't written anything on your skin yet," She grumbled as she shoveled a bite of pancake into her mouth, "I thought it was supposed to show up when you turned twelve!"

Mrs. Buckley chuckled as she sat down beside Robin with her own plate, "Be patient. I'm sure he'll draw something soon." She reassured with a smile, "Don't worry too much about the soulmate stuff. It'll come when it comes."

Robin tried to follow her mother's advice, but she found herself checking the back of her hands, glancing down at her legs, and rolling up her sleeves at school all day, getting more and more disappointed when she found bare skin. By the end of the school day, she was starting to think that she didn't have a soulmate, but she still checked for drawings anyway.

By the time her mother called her for dinner, she had given up on looking. When she went to wash her hands in the kitchen sink, she spotted a little heart drawn in purple ink on the back of her left palm. She squealed excitedly and turned the water off to examine it. She softly traced the shape with her index finger, relieved that she had a soulmate after all.

She couldn't help but think that it was weird that her soulmate drew a heart on himself. None of the boys that she knew from school would be caught dead with a tiny purple heart adorning their skin, but she decided not to think too much about it. Maybe her soulmate wasn't from Hawkins or maybe he was just sweeter than the boys she knew at school.

She thought about showing her purple heart to her parents, but she decided to keep it to herself for a little while longer. Instead, she grabbed a black pen from a drawer in the kitchen and doodled a heart similar in size right beside the one her soulmate drew, just to let him know she was there.

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1982: 14 years old

Robin awoke with a start when the sound of her alarm clock rang in her ears. It was her first day of high school, the day she'd been dreading for the entire two months of summer. Robin knew that she'd be spending the majority of her first day Hawkins High School alone due to her lack of friends in middle school that would follow her to high school. She was afraid that she'd get made fun of for sitting alone at lunch or not having anyone to partner with for the beginning of the year project sign ups. She was nervous that the teachers would be as mean as her 8th grade teachers said they'd be and scared of the upperclassmen and how they usually treated freshmen.