There's a measured, practical reason for all things. A careful, logical explanation that makes things work and makes people do the things they do and makes problems appear and sometimes, though rarely in small, livewire towns in Indiana, makes them disappear.
Dustin Henderson knows this well.
Her name is Dustin, which is, traditionally, a “boy's name”, even though her mom insists, illogically, it’s not.
The Reason: Her mother’s favorite singer growing up was Dusty Springfield and she decided when she was just thirteen years old that she was going to have a baby girl and she was going to name her Dusty.
The Secondary Reason: Her dad said fuck that, we’re not naming our daughter Dusty, and they agreed on the much more sensible ‘Dustin’.
(A part of her is grateful. Dusty. Ew.)
Everything happens for a reason, even entirely unreasonable things. Example: her friend has super powers because of underground, highly illegal government medical experimentation. Example: there's a monster living in the inverse of her town… also most likely because of underground, highly illegal government medical experimentation.
But she can’t fucking figure out the measured, practical reason Robin Buckley doesn’t like Steve Harrington.
Well, she does like him, Dustin knows they’re friends (best friends, better friends than they are with Dustin, which is another very logical thing for a multitude of reasons; closer in age, drug-related-kidnap-trauma-bonding, etc…, even if the concept unearths a whole set of entirely precedented and entirely illogical feelings.) But they aren’t dating, they won’t even give it a shot, and Dustin can’t wrap her head around it. And not for bullshit girls-and-boys-can’t-be-friends reasons, she knows better than anyone thats stupid, it’s just that they would be fucking perfect together.
And if they date their relationship is objectively different from being friends. And maybe she prefers that. Maybe that makes her standing with each of them in the friend department feel that much more secure.
According to Steve they’ve discussed it, and decided it ‘just wouldn’t work’, and Dustin respects that.
Or, well, okay, she will respect that once she gets more information from someone who is less of an idiot.
So she’s made a plan. A patented, Dustin Henderson, P-L-A-N plan, hidden in her English notebook between crookedly penned notes where she pretended she read Jane Eyre and rushed as shit (because that's when she does her best work).
She’s pulled together her own painstakingly organized timetables of Steve and Robin’s work schedules she probably shouldn’t have access to, and on Saturday mornings Steve works for four hours before Robin comes in. So at 11:15 AM, Saturday morning, Dustin sneaks out of her window (because she can’t risk her mom asking questions) , bikes four blocks with her head down (just in case), hides her bike behind a tree two houses up the street (for security purposes), and ends up in front of Robin Buckley’s house.
She knows she doesn’t need to be treating this quite so much like an espionage mission, but it’s just more fun that way. Fun, and cut, clear, and simple. Step one of her plan is already complete, and soon she’ll have the peace of mind that she’s sure will come with Robin answering the ‘why the fuck isn’t she dating Steve’ question with any semblance of logic.
(Because it’s just not logical!)
Robin’s family locks their doors. Wisely. She’s not sure if they’ve always done it, before all this the general rule of Hawkins thumb was more ‘this is a nice friendly small town nothing bad could happen here keep the door open in case anyone drops by for a chat or your latch-key kid forgets their latch-key’, but then a lot of people got murdered and well… if you haven’t left you at least keep your doors shut tight.
(Robin’s family also keeps a key under the mat, too, though. Like suckers.)
Neither of her parents’ cars are in the driveway, so Dustin feels more than safe doing some light breaking and entering. She deserves it. (It’s not until she’s slamming her way up the stairs and slamming her way through Robin’s (unlocked) bedroom door that she considers that this might be considered, to most, a pretty deep invasion of privacy.)
She’s pre-prepped her statement, because she’s been told that a lot of the time she doesn’t make sense and/or is ‘rude as hell’ when she doesn’t; a ‘I respect the decision I just don’t understand it and I care about you both and want you to be happy blah blah blah’ sort of statement.
Correction: Dustin has a pre-prepped statement until the door bangs open and Robin and Nancy Fucking Wheeler stop making out long enough to both snap their heads to the door with their mouths open.
“Fuck,” says Nancy Fucking Wheeler.
Dustin slams the door shut.
Mmmm. Okay. Rerouting. That answers that question.
That creates… another question.
She slams the door back open just in time to watch a pair of sensible, Karen-Wheeler-Purchased loafers scramble over the window ledge.
“Are you fucking Nancy Wheeler?” She says. Because she didn’t take enough time to re-pre-plan what she was going to say and (once again) if you ask anyone who knows her well that’s usually a problem.
Robin, sitting oh-so-innocently criss-cross applesauce on top of her comforter, chokes on whatever is in the mug she was definitely not holding a minute ago, spilling a stream of dark brown down the front of her sweater. Hot chocolate. Nancy likes hot chocolate. Dustin is going to explode,“Pardon?”
“Are you. Fucking. Nancine Wheeler.”
“I really don’t think that's her full name, Dustin.” Robin says, very fast.
“It’s not. Answer the question.”
“I- I mean- what are you talking about, of course I’m not. That’s really ridiculous, Dustin, obviously, I’m not- why would-” Her hands work around the mug, anxiously, because she knows that she’s hiding something. A Nancy Wheeler Shaped Something.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Uh-huh. Mhm. Really.”
“Fascinating. Because I did just watch you make out with her and then her climb through the fucking window.”
Somehow her eyes go even wider- panic wide, frantic-shot-in-the-chest wide, wide enough that Dustin’s buzzy-brain slowly comes online just enough to consider the idea that maybe she should have approached this differently, “Not that I… care. Cool. Good… for you.”
Robin blinks, mouth chewing around words that aren’t actually reaching the ‘cohesive, voiced statement’ phase.
Dustin shuffles her feet into the hardwood, as if that's going to make this any less awkward, until Robin pats her bed for her to sit.
“Hi.”
Robin grins at her, a little wobbly, “Hi.”
“I should have… knocked.”
“After breaking into my house? Yeah, probably.”
“Your keys are, like, so easy to find, dude.”
She shoves a hand out and pushes Dustin’s hat over her eyes. She catches the corners of her smile twist its way into something more genuine before the brim completely cuts off her line of sight, “Horrible, horrible child.”
“Sorry. About that.” She beams, not pushing it back up.
“You’re forgiven so long as you aren’t going to like… hate crime me. Both of us. More specifically Nancy but I’d also prefer not to get hate crimed-”
“Jesus christ.”
“It’s a valid fear, dipshit!”
“I guess.”
They sit in the almost-comfortable-quiet sort of silence of the moment for a long second. Mostly because neither of them seem to know what the fuck to say. Dustin flops herself all the way back onto the bed first, but Robin follows very quickly after, precariously maneuvering the half-empty mug somewhere onto her nightstand. Dustin realizes, staring hard at the popcorn ceiling ridges, that she doesn’t know where to go from here. This isn’t… her normal MO. This would almost be easier if it was an interdimensional monster that needed killing.
At least she’s done that before. She knows the protocol.
“Y’know you could have told me,” She decides on, footing thoroughly off.
“Mmm?”
“That you and Nancy- or even that you know, you like girls. I would have gotten it.”
“Oh.”
“At least I would have stopped trying to fuckin’ set you up with Steve.”
Robin snorts, to Dustin’s overwhelming relief, “I dunno if that’s worth the aforementioned hate-criming, Dustin.”
She’s teasing, she knows that, but it still makes her stomach turn a little, “I wouldn’t though.”
“Dude, you’re friends with Mike, and we didn’t want to risk you reacting badly and then outing Nance-”
“See, see that’s valid because Mike’s a little asshole but-”
“Exactly!”
This is slightly more in Dustin’s wheelhouse. It’s genuine but it’s still ribbing, it’s still teasing, she knows how to navigate it, “Not ‘ exactly’, asshole! I wouldn’t tell him!”
“Like you aren’t all painfully codependent.”
“Oh please, that’s rich coming from you.”
Robin rolls her eyes and flips her off, waiting patiently for Dustin to do it back. It’s a sort of tradition between the two of them. Like her handshake with Steve.
“You can’t be mad at me for not telling you-”
“I’m not mad at you-”
“Shut up. I’m being serious,” She’s still casually flipping her off though, middle finger loosely curled out against her comforter, “You are very small-”
“I’m fourteen.”
“Small! And- and, and, and Hawkins isn’t particularly progressive and we weren’t about to tell any of you before we were sure you were no longer homophobia-indoctrinated and it would go okay. We were working on a plan.”
Dustin blinks.
Dustin blinks a second time.
Robin blinks back.
Dustin blinks a third time, “Robin. I am dating a woman.”
Her eyes go so wide Dustin’s worried she’ll burst a blood vessel, “What.”
“Suzie? You absolutely know about Suzie. We sang a duet and you literally all heard it.”
“She’s- I thought- what?”
“Robin.”
“No, shut up-”
“Robin.”
“Does Steve know about this?”
“I fucking thought so!”
He had to. Right? She tries to remember if he’d ever actually… asked questions or acknowledged it when she brought up Suzie. But she’d asked his advice about dating girls. More than once.
Oh god did he think she was talking about herself?
“Oh… my god, Dustin.”
“No, okay, no you don’t get to ‘oh my god, Dustin’ me. I was more than clear.”
“Clearly you weren’t!”
She rolls fully off the bed and screams hard into Robin’s carpet. Mostly because, apparently, Robin is right. She hadn’t thought she’d need to spell it out for them.
“Isn’t she like Mormon or something?” Robin asks, voice far away sounding, either because she hasn’t moved from where she was laying on the bed or because Dustin hasn’t totally stopped screaming yet.
“Yeah?”
“Jesus.”
She starts to roll over, slotting the frantic buzzing in her brain somewhere uncomfortably between the crease separating the rug and hardwood, “Exactly. Actually, did you know-”
“Hey Dustin?” Robin’s head pops over the edge of her bed, bangs hanging in a weird way that semi blocks her eyes. Dustins sort of appreciates it, there's been too much weird emotional bullshit in the past ten minutes than she’d prepared for and eye-contact isn’t high on her list of things she wants to deal with.
“Mhm?”
“I’m really not interested in the complexities of the Mormon belief system right now.”
“Noted.” She tilts her head enough that it's solidly on the wood part of the floor, considering, “So, Nancy Wheeler.”
“Yeah.”
“Fucking nice, dude.”
She sort of grins down at her and Dustin sort-of-grins right back. This is so much more interesting than if she was just dating Steve. It fits better, she thinks.
She briefly considers telling her that she was dating the woman who made her realize she likes girls the same way she likes boys. Would that make this smoother? Common ground? She’s not sure how that would actually go, is that a bad thing to say to someone about their girlfriend? Is it better when it’s their girlfriend? Certainly not.
(And also Dustin is pretty sure if she had to interact with Nancy Wheeler while knowing she knows Dustin used to be in love with her she’d launch herself out of Robin’s window too. What a literal nightmare.)
“Sorry. I was bein’ a dick.” She says instead.
Robin rolls her eyes, “You’re always a dick. It’s fine.”
“Hey!”
“Your father is Steve Harrington, you never stood a chance.”
“He is not!”
“Yeah, okay.”
Dustin sticks her tongue out up at her, “Am I forgiven if I let you watch Star Wars in, like, German and don’t complain about it?”
“Labyrinth in French and we’ve got a deal.” Robin offers with the know-it-all attitude of someone who knows Dustin knows every single word of every single Star Wars movie that’s ever been released regardless of the language it’s playing in.
“Ugh. Fine.”
(“No, Nancy she won’t tell. She’s- Okay one second- Dustin come here.”
“Hi Nancy.”
“Hello Dustin.”
“I won’t tell Mike, I promise.”
“Okay. Alright. Look-
“Oh. Robin is indicating for me to tell you that I also like women.”
“What.”
“Fucking come on!”)
Labyrinth is… confusing, Dustin’s decided. She thinks it probably would have been confusing even if it wasn’t in French, but it’s kind of fun to look at, at least. Neverending Story adjacent if just in how fucking weird it is to look at.
If anything it’s good background noise for her knees-pressed-against-her-chest-while-she-considers-today crisis. Coming out to Nancy Wheeler over the phone to the constant tik-tik-tik of jiffy pop on the stove isn’t how she pictured this day going. Mostly because she’d assumed Nancy Wheeler had already known, generally, from being Mike’s sister and Steve and Robin’s friend that Dustin was dating a girl.
Dustin should probably stop assuming a lot of things.
They don’t get particularly far in the movie, just to where the baby has been… kidnapped (?) (Dustin thinks. She has no fucking clue whats happening or how the Buckley’s already have a French edition of a movie has barely been out in English) before Robin tilts her head back against the couch cushions hard enough Dustin’s head is forcibly rolled to look her way.
“Y’know I kind of thought I was going to need to coach you through realizing you liked girls.”
She snorts so hard it hurts the back of her throat, “Fascinating.”
“No, actually though, you kept talking about how pretty Suzie was and I figured that it was going to be a crisis.”
“Nope.” It was, a little bit, mostly for Suzie, though. Dustin’s sort of been vaguely aware that she liked girls the same as boys since third grade. It just seemed to make sense, that girls could like girls the same way they could like boys. She was smart enough not to talk about it with anyone, but it's not like she’s ever needed validation to know she was right about something.
“You do realize you need to actually tell Steve you’ve got a girlfriend, right?”
“Why! It’s his fault for not realizing.”
She looks over at her, eyebrows flatted skeptically, in a way that's mostly familiar because it’s Robin, but also at least 20% the exact get-the-fuck-out-of-my-room glare that she was well acquainted with before Nancy Wheeler even had a real name in her head, and was still just ‘Mike-Wheeler’s-Big-Sister’.
Which is terrifying.
“It is.” She insists, though (despite being terrified).
“I’ll go with you to do it.” She offers, crossing her arms around the popcorn bowl and pointedly looking back to the incomprehensible screen.
“You just want to make fun of me.”
“Maybe.”
“I hate you.” She doesn’t seem to believe her, or at least she doesn’t seem to care. Dustin would be more offended if she had meant it, “Fine.”
If it’s a bullet that must be bitten anyway, she might as well get it over with.
Robin seems to agree, patting her too hard on the shoulder, “Now, be quiet, this is such a good part.”
“I do not know what's happening, Robin.”
“Seems like your fault.”
“How.”
She beans her in the forehead with a piece of popcorn, “Shhh.”
(“Hey Dustin?” Robin whispers, later, over the music of the credits.
“Yeah?”
“Thanks for being cool about this.”
“Ditto, I guess.” She grins, and Robin grins back.
She realizes in that moment, popcorn in her hair and happy, that even if everything didn’t go as expected- and she still doesn’t know what happens in Labyrinth- she technically got the answer to her initial question. So, s he decides, quietly, that she can consider today an absolute success.
It does, after all, just seem like the logical thing to do.)