⋄∘-''  ⋄∘. .·∘⋄∘    .·**⋄   ';
.:·∘⋄;*, CHAPTER ONE: DINGUS .·'*⋄ ''
;'   ⋄**·.    ∘⋄∘·, . ∘⋄  ''-∘⋄

RAIN FURIOUSLY TRIED to brush her hair, applying shiny lip-gloss at the same time. Some peach hairclips adorned her hair. The girl pulled her white L.A. Gear sneakers as she hopped towards her goal, nearly tripping on the rug on the way out of her bedroom. She'd ironed her stupid uniform the day before—Rain had to make a good first impression, after all—and it already had a crease in the collar. Her fingers frantically smoothed it out as she leapt down the stairs and dashed into the kitchen to grab her backpack.

          The sun was already shining through the kitchen windows, illuminating her face, and the smell of eggs cooking hung in the air. Her mother stood at the stove and looked up when Rain dashed in, throwing things into her black backpack. "Oh, Rain! How are you feeling?" Before Rain even had the chance to respond—tired—her mother was fussing over her. Her mother straightened out the creases on her uniform. "Now, remember, don't look at those druggies that always wait on the corner by the cassette store. If they try to sell you anything, just walk away, okay sweetheart?" She pursed her lips, clear about her intentions for her daughter.

          "I know, Mama." She kissed her mother's cheek, adjusting her backpack on her shoulders. "I'll steer far away from them." She didn't want to ruin her mother's expectations for her, after all. Sorry Mama, your daughter's a raging homosexual. Damn, she was going to Hell.

           "I'm just so proud of you, baby," her mother said, holding Rain's face.

          The girl smiled, "I know, Mama. Thank you." She glanced at the ticking clock on the wall behind her mother and her eyes widened as she stepped back. "I'm gonna be late! Tell Dad I said goodbye! I'll be safe, I promise!" Rain flew outside, shutting the door carefully behind her.

          Warm summer air heated her bones and illuminated her face, creating glimmers on the street around her. Rain jumped on her bike, pedalling frantically as she tried to strap on her helmet. Shit, she was going to be late on her first day. She slid onto the road, waving at the cars which left her space and rode as fast as she could towards Starcourt Mall. The wind rushed against her and ruined the time and effort she'd put into doing her hair and straightening out her sailor's uniform. She screamed internally. If she didn't stick this job, she was practically screwed.

           The sunlight speckled over her in luminous gleams as Rain parked her bike outside the mall and locked it. She quickly ran into the centre, ducking around a couple holding hands and weaving between a group of teenagers, trying her absolute best not to get knocked to the ground. She held her helmet in one hand—in the other, that silly sailor's hat that employees were supposed to wear. When Rain made it to the Scoops Ahoy after what seemed an eternity of panic, a girl was already perched at the counter, looking bored out of her mind. She was tall, with long legs and blonde hair cropped at her shoulders. The girl watched the passers-by with a permanent look of slight contempt, as if she wanted to be anywhere else but here.

         She looked up as Rain reached her, recognising the matching outfit. "You're the new one?" the girl asked, leaning against the counter. "Hey, I'm Robin." She examined Rain's short form.

          Rain smiled, pointing at the badge on the girl's chest, "Yeah, I can see from your badge." She recognised the girl vaguely from high school—but never really talked to her. They'd had a few classes together, Rain thought. Robin's lips lifted at the edges. "Oh— I'm Rain!" She tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear, smiling sweetly at the tall girl.

          "Cool, well, welcome to the crew. And by that, I literally just mean three of us. I think people just don't want to wear these dumb uniforms." Robin nodded towards the parlour. "Come on, I'll show you around." Rain hopped over the counter into the serving area, following Robin's lead. The tall girl pointed out the different flavours of ice-cream and what to offer with each purchase. There were extra ice-cream stocks in the fridges out the back, and a service door to collect new supplies from. "You've worked retail before?" Robin asked, as she went over the mechanics of the sales register.

          Rain bounced on the balls of her feet and nodded quickly. Finally, something she actually felt she qualified for. "Yeah! I help fundraise for my church pretty often, so I know my way around a register—and how to deal with grumpy customers."

          Robin's face scrunched up, eyebrows raising, "You work in a church?"

          "Well, yeah." I'm like the biggest sinner there. "But it's not that intense. My father is the pastor, so I of course need to help out. And my mother is always the one organising the fundraisers. They're... super religious." Rain twisted her fingers together, somewhat nervously. She loved her church, and in many ways, she loved her religion, but she always felt like the odd one out there, like she never quite belonged. It made the whole situation a bit unpleasant.

          "That makes it easier then," Robin said, shutting the register. Her ocean eyes shone. "Right, so, to be honest, there's not much to do around here." She propped her elbows up on the counter, raising her eyebrows. "Just... scoop, serve and do the register. We get... really bored." She pursed her pink lips and looked over at Rain, who was suddenly feeling incredibly short.

          "We?" Rain asked. She hadn't met any of her co-workers before this—and kind of assumed Robin was the only one around at the moment.

          The blonde stretched out, adjusting the dumb sailor's hat on her head. "Oh, yeah, Harrington. He's out the back sneaking some of his children into the movie theatre." She pointed a thumb towards the area behind the parlour.

          "Steve Harrington works here?" Rain pushed a curl of her hair behind her ear. "Really? And his children?"

          Robin pursed her lips, as if she'd heard this all before and was a bit sick of it. "What, you have a crush on him or something? He joined a few weeks ago." She scrunched her nose, "And yeah, he's friends with a bunch of strange children. It's pretty weird. I think he babysits them or something."

          Rain made a face, shaking her head. She joined Robin and sat on the counter, hanging her legs over the edge. "No, I don't like him like that. I just didn't expect the former King of Hawkins High to be working at Scoops Ahoy."

          A joyous sailor's tune played in the shop's background as Robin shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah, it was as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. He's actually kind of an idiot now. Shocking, I know." She moved some of her short hair out of her face, blowing a strand that fell around her curved lips. She was distressingly pretty, thought Rain, with glossy blue eyes and a constellation of freckles to die for, and a voice that made Rain want to melt.

          "He used to be such a douchebag," Rain said, crossing her arms. He was a dick to her back in high school, because she'd gotten better grades than him, and as far as Hawkins knew, she was perfect in almost every way. If only he ever actually talked properly to her, she would have offered to tutor him.

          Robin nodded exasperatedly, eyebrows raised high on her pretty face. "You can say that again. I don't think he even knew I existed. I still don't think he remembers me. And I sat behind him in a class twice a week for an entire year."

          Rain dipped her head as she snickered, a warm smile gracing her face like sunshine, "That sounds like him."

          The service door burst open and none other than Steve Harrington strolled through. "They are so going to get caught." He stopped in his tracks, pushing a hand through his mass of brown hair, half-hidden by the sailor's hat. "Oh, hey, a new face! You're the newest employee?"

          "Yeah, we established that, Dingus," Robin said, leaning back on the table. Rain grinned. She liked this girl already. "Her name's Rain. She's gonna be working in this hellhole for a while."

          The short girl winced, still trying to straighten the collar of her uniform down. "Is it really that bad?" she asked, fiddling with one of the peach-coloured clips in her hair.

          Robin made a face, "Nah, it's just super boring. We just kind of do nothing half the time anyway, and the other time we're keeping children away from trying twenty samples over and over." She looked wholly unimpressed with the whole ordeal.

          Steve, who had been unnaturally quiet, undrew his eyebrows in recognition and looked towards Rain. "Oh, wait, I remember you from school!"

          Rain's eyebrows pulled together in surprise. "You do?" She thought she was a pretty forgettable person, even if she was Steve, Tommy and Carol's target more than once. She hadn't expected him to even recall her face, let alone know where he knew her from.

          "Yeah, we were in some classes together." He rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, avoiding her gaze. For a moment, he seemed to struggle in finding the words to say. "I— I was—"

          "An asshole," Rain finished for him, crossing her arms. She hadn't forgotten how horrible he'd been during his time there. She knew he'd stopped hanging out with his douchebag friends, but it didn't excuse any of what he'd done. "To me and everyone else." Robin glanced over at her, amused.

          The boy nodded, messing with his hair again. "Yeah, I know. I was." Steve paused and looked at her genuinely. "I'm sorry for what I did and said to you. All of it."

          Rain blinked slowly at him. She couldn't even begin to explain the amount of nights when she would go home and just cry beneath her duvet because of how Steve and his gang would treat her. She wasn't sure if he remembered what he'd said to her, the words he'd called her, or if he only remembered her face scrunching up with tears. And she knew he didn't know about how she would cry herself to sleep or half-scream into her fist until her throat was sore. It wasn't even what he said to her that made her feel this way. She could deal with being the target of awful comments, but she couldn't deal with what he did to Nancy Wheeler.

          He'd treated Nancy like shit, at least in the time Rain had really known him. And when he'd spray-painted those things about her on the movie showings board, after her friend went missing, God, that was one of the only times when Rain had really wanted to punch someone in the face. She'd liked Nancy, as in, really liked Nancy, even before Barb went missing and afterwards too. Nancy had deserved so much better than an asshole boyfriend like him, but she'd stayed with him, even though he was a douchebag. And Rain would see them together in the hallway and just slam her locker shut so loud that the whole corridor would turn to look at her. It was humiliating, frustrating and just straight-up upsetting. And that was the reason why Rain cried her eyes out most nights, not because of what he'd said to her, but because she was half in love with Nancy Wheeler and he treated her like absolute shit.

          But Nancy was with Jonathan Byers now, and they were happy, and Rain was no longer head-over-heels for the brunette girl. And Steve, as it appeared, had turned out to be a half-decent person. Even if she wasn't his number one fan.

          After a moment of silence, Rain said, "It's okay. High school's over now, so no hard feelings I guess." She offered him one of her sweet-as-honey smiles and he returned a relieved one. It would have been unpleasant for the both of them if she'd stayed mad at him throughout their whole summer job.

          "Great, well now that we're all introduced, do you want to help me put out the chairs and tables?" Robin offered to Rain. "Some of them are kind of heavy. Steve, you're on first scooping duty!" Steve groaned and Robin shot Rain a smile as she led her to help drag out the furniture.

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I CANNOT BELIEVE STRANGER THINGS HAS A CANON LESBIAN CHARACTER I'M SCREAMING. that scene where robin tells steve is one of my favourite stranger things scenes now.

i really don't like this chapter ahh so sorry if it's really bad, i'll come back and edit it later.

word count: 2,115

08.07.2019.