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IT WAS NOT UNUSUAL FOR ROBIN BUCKLEY to be annoyed with Steve Harrington. The boy left crumbs all over the break room table, he never even leaves said break room, and he always made her wipe the cracked leather seats after closing. Yet, he still got half their tips.
But this, Robin didn't understand. And she was annoyed with him all the same.
"Why don't you just tell Valentina about this?" the girl asked, hands on her hips like a mother scolding her child. Dustin made that comparison about an hour ago, though, and she threatened to throw the Russian translation book at his head. He silently laughed about it now while watching Robin and Steve argue.
Steve sighed, like he did the last three times Robin asked about this. "Because I don't want her to know. She doesn't need to deal with this."
"And I do?" Robin groaned. "I have shit to do. And I want to go home."
Scoops Ahoy closed ten minutes ago. Steve insisted that this was more important than completing their closing tasks, though. He opened again the next morning, per usual, so he decided he's just do the tasks then. Or not, because it's not like their manager would stop by the store anyway.
Steve pointed a finger in the girl's face. "First of all, I didn't rope you into this. You eavesdropped on shit that doesn't involve you. And second, you can leave. We don't want you here anyway."
"Um, I want her here?" Dustin raised his hand. His eyes transferred between the two adults who were giving him contrasting looks, one glaring and one prideful.
"Dude, what?" Steve sounded offended.
Dustin shrugged. "She's managed to translate more than us in an hour. We've been working on this for two days."
Steve waved the boy off like he wasn't making a valid point.
The curly headed boy continued, with the same argument he'd been making for those two days, "We wouldn't need her if you just asked your genius best friend."
Robin actually liked this little boy. She didn't at first, because he was a friend of Steve and she hated Steve. But Dustin seemed to really value Robin's addition to their work, and he laughed at most of her jokes. Most people didn't do that.
Steve shook his head. "No, we're not asking her."
The thought of dragging Valentina into this sinkhole of Russian shit was a dreadful weight balancing on top of Steve's head, along with his tousled hair that had been pulled and ran through all day from his stress, and it was daring to topple over. He'd given up on his uniform's hat long ago.
He knew this wasn't the same ordeal that they'd been mixed up with in the past. The Russians were at least human, and they had a feasible solution to their problem: translation, no matter how difficult that be. It was possible and realistic, and most importantly it was from this dimension.
