Haven.
The strain in his muscles couldn’t compare to the exhaustion in his mind. Hentzau wanted to silence his brain just for a moment. Anything to help him sleep and forget all the shit that had happened during the day. It had been one bad report after the other. A train derailing. A bomb in the ammunition factory – again. Two of their generals murdered by human anarchists. These things came with the territory of his job…but for once, he just wanted one day of peace.
He hadn’t said anything when he’d entered their home. He hadn’t looked to where she sat by the window. He just made his way down into the cellar. Down into the soothing darkness that enveloped him like a warm blanket on a freezing night. When he had purchased this home for them – for her – he’d asked only for an office down here, but she had convinced him to make a bedroom as well. He needed a haven from the insanity outside their home, and he made a mental note to remember to thank her again for insisting on it.
Making his way to the large alcove he’d had carved out for a bed, he kicked his boots off and forced his aching body to lie down. It was days like this one that made him want to take his lover and run and forget all of this. Forget the stress. Forget the fighting. Forget the gray uniform that he knew better than his own skin.
He didn’t know how to be anything other than a soldier. Not anymore.
Quiet footsteps echoed in the room as her bare feet padded softly against the stone steps. He kept his back to her as she slid into his bed.
“Hentzau?” she whispered quietly as if she might break him if she spoke any louder.
“Hmm?” He didn’t have the strength for words.
Her fingers moved delicately against the rough fabric of his uniform. He hadn’t bothered to take it off. He’d just have to put it back on when he woke up. She rubbed circles along his back and sides and nuzzled her face between his shoulder blades.
“What can I do?” she asked. Her voice muffled.
He didn’t have an answer. She couldn’t bring back all the lives that were lost today. She couldn’t repair their transports. She couldn’t make the other humans see the Goyl as anything more than monsters.
He shook his head even though he knew she wouldn’t see it in the darkness, but his silence spoke loud enough. He couldn’t answer her any more than he could answer his king earlier. He just felt so tired.
Her arm slid around his waist as she propped her chin on his shoulder.
“Do you want to be alone?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No.”
He felt her nod against his shoulder. Her warmth spread through him as her heart beat steadily against his spine. He listened to its steady rhythm and let it lull him to sleep.
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Trailer Park Steve AU part 4
part 1 | part 2 | part 3
September
He doesn’t talk to the Munsons much. (Doesn’t talk to anyone, really, aside from his mom and Robin and that one older woman who keeps renting and returning Gone With The Wind as an excuse to leave her house.) He keeps his head down and his nose clean, doesn’t care to make friends with the neighbors; just wants to get by.
One day Eddie approaches their door, waving a gas bill that got mixed up in their mail, and Steve greets him pleasantly enough.
“Stab anyone today?”
“Eat glass, Harrington.”
So it goes.
Steve watches the world pass and the weather turn, lets the hours bleed into weeks and squeezes his eyes shut against the flashbacks when they threaten to overwhelm.
Things with his mom are weird.
They don’t really speak, preferring to shrug their way past each other with careful, tight-lipped nods, and his mom takes these pills the doctor gave her that keep her perfectly pleasant and calm. Silent. Physically present but not really here.
And he can’t imagine how it feels to be her: Florence Harrington, ripped from the comforts of the upper crust and left to rot in a tin can seven miles across town. She spends most of her time letting out weary little sighs as she swans from room to room, drifting like a shade on the banks of the River Styx. (He can make that reference now because Robin won’t shut up about mythology. “It’s so gay, Steve. The Greeks were literally so gay.”)
Anyway.
Shit’s weird with the kids, too. He still drives them around — lets them loiter at Family Video when it’s slow; hangs around when they need a ride to the arcade or the movies or the skating rink; and he’s still on the hook for ‘ice cream. for. life,’ so…
It’s just not the same.
Like. Not to be dramatic, but who the fuck is Steve Harrington without the house and the pool and the free-for-all fridge? Just some kid with a car and a bat and a punchable face. And he can barely afford to keep the car now, anyway, so pretty soon they won’t need him for that, either. They’ll learn to drive; they’ll get their own jobs. Maybe Lucas builds enough muscle to take over as the party tank.
Maybe it’s better if he shelfs himself now before they realize he’s become obsolete.
“Oh, my god, you’re being pathetic,” he groans to himself. His voice is muffled where he’s lying face down on the couch. Ridiculous behavior, because everything is fine; Steve is fine. In the grand scheme of things where there are monsters and melted corpses and all kinds of crazy, horrible shit?
Yeah.
He’s being obnoxious. It’s a lovely sunny Saturday afternoon with just the right Autumn breeze going — gentle but cool; long sleeve polo weather; his favorite kind — and he’s sitting inside throwing himself a pity party.
Fucking absurd.
…Five more minutes.
Just five more minutes, then he’s getting off this couch.
He gets to a minute and a half when he hears the crunch of tires against the gravel, the clanging of a little bell from the handlebar of a bike, and then:
“STEVE!!!”
And that’ll be Dustin, trying to bang the door off the hinges and piss off the whole park at the same time. Kid’s nothing if not a multitasker. Steve lets another aggrieved groan loose into the couch cushion.
His mom’s out with the car; the lights are all off. Maybe he can just play dead ‘til Dustin leaves? He loves the kid, he really does, but his left ear is full of static, and he just wants to fucking sleep. Or sulk. Or both.
“STEVEN CHRISTOPHER, I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE.”
Jeeeeesus Christ. “Okay, chill,” Steve grumbles as he hauls himself upright and throws open the front door. His limbs feel like lead; there’s drool on his chin. “Wake the whole goddamn neighborhood, why don’t you?”
“It’s two in the afternoon.”
“Yeah, and half the people here work nights.”
“Oh-kayy,” Dustin drags out the word, “but you don’t.”
Ugh. Whatever. He’s not gonna be shamed by a toothless teenager for his depressing loser tendencies. “Did you need something?”
Steve scratches at his belly hair through his shirt, feels a muscle twinge in his shoulder and send a spark of nerve pain skittering up to the base of his skull.
Dustin either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that Steve’s body is falling apart where he stands, because he just rolls his eyes and says, “Uh, yeah. I need to know why you’re avoiding everyone? Mom’s tried to invite you to dinner six times now.”
“I was working.”
“All six times?” Dustin glares. Steve feels a little pinned by it, feels guilt seeping through the cracks as he fidgets with his bad ear. This kid’s gonna be the scariest lawyer some day. “She’s worried.”
Goddammit.
Guilt squeezes hard behind his ribs; he knows Dustin uses his mom as a mouthpiece for the feelings he can’t express. “I’m fine,” he sighs, letting his eyes and voice go soft. “Honest.”
Dustin holds firm, gaze fierce and fists clenched. “Bullshit,” he insists.
“Man, don’t—”
“Bull. Shit.”
Suddenly, their impromptu interrogation gets interrupted by a crashing drum fill, a shriek of electric guitar as Munson’s van squeals into the lot. He’s blasting some melodramatic metal shit about wizards or whatever; Steve doesn’t know. He only knows that the skitter of nerve pain he felt is ramping up to a fullblown migraine now because this guy has to listen to his racket at full fucking volume, apparently, and isn’t this all just “fucking great.”
—
part 5
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