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theladycarpathia · 1 year

Text

All who wander

Prompt: Detective AUxLast Chance

The doorbell goes just as they’re about to close up for the day.

Robin pauses, her arms full of case files, and turns her head around. “Are you expecting anyone?”

Steve shakes his head. He’s been out all day today, working the Hess farm case. He got back just in time for a coffee with Robin, before they close up.

“Bit late for a walk in, surely?” Robin mutters, dumping the files onto Steve’s desk and sticking her tongue out at him when he makes a face.

“They’re your damn files,” she points out, strolling towards the door. “Put them away yourself for once.”

Steve stares miserably at the paperwork now sliding all over his desk. Damn. He really hopes that it is a client because he really doesn’t want to alphabetise this late in the day. No one mentioned all the boring jobs of being a private investigator. If they ever make enough to hire someone, then they can file and answer the phones and make the coffee.

He picks up the closest one, wondering if it’s an open or closed case, when he hears Robin’s startled exclamation at the door.

“Ro?” he calls, wondering if he should reach into his desk drawer for his gun. They’re both pretty capable with an assortment of weapons - they have to be, in their line of work - and keep a variety of hidden armaments around their office, just in case.

He can hear Robin’s voice rising just a little out in the front hall, proving that their guest is neither wanted nor being particularly pleasant about it. So Steve jolts to his feet, reaching for the key that keeps his gun drawer locked. But he never actually gets that far because someone comes storming in through the door, pushing it open with such force that it slams back into the wall. Robin comes hurrying up behind, looking flustered.

“Steve, I’m sorry,” she babbles, little spots of color rising in her cheeks. She shoots an annoyed little glare at their guest, who pays her absolutely no mind. “I tried to stop her but she insisted on coming in to speak to you. She wouldn’t talk to me, even though I said that this is a joint agency.”

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly, his hand falling away from the drawer, key still clutched loosely in his fingers. He can’t stop staring at the person he thought he’d never see again. “She does stuff like that.”

Maxine Mayfield is in his fucking office. But she’s nowhere near the little girl in pigtails, clutching a skateboard, that Steve used to know. She’s standing in front of him, nearly as tall as Robin is, with her striking red hair loose around her shoulders. But her expression is the same - stubborn, resolute, unyielding.

“Hi, Steve,” Max says, shifting uneasily from foot to foot. She at least has the grace to look a little embarrassed after so long. “Long time no see.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, sinking down into his desk chair again. Robin gives him a curious look and goes to close the door. “What has it been, ten years?”

“Something like that,” Max says, tugging out the chair reserved for clients. Something uneasy stirs in Steve’s gut. This isn’t just a social call and she wouldn’t come to Steve unless she was truly desperate.

And Steve can see it in her eyes when she brings her gaze up to meet his. She wouldn’t be here unless she had no other choice.

“What’s this about, Max?” Steve asks. Max’s eyes flick curiously around their office, which takes up most of the first floor of the building. Aside from the foyer, they have a bathroom, a small kitchen, a filing room and this for their main space to greet clients. The building was separate apartments before Steve bought it with some of his inheritance and they only changed the first floor. He and Robin live in the apartments above and the set up works for them. Everything Steve could ever want or need in one convenient location.

Well. Almost everything.

“Nice place,” she says and Steve snorts. He knows a deflection when he hears one.

“How did you afford it?” she asks, bluntly, because that’s always been how Max is. Steve sits back in his chair.

“My grandfather died a few years back,” he explains. Back then it had been pretty miserable, losing the one person who’d ever really felt like family to him. Coming on the heels of the Byers case, he’d felt pretty much like his whole world had been tipped upside down. No grandfather, no Nancy, and the unwanted added bonus of knowing what’s out there. “He had a stipulation in his will that I would inherit at twenty-five or when I was married. Whichever came first.” Max’s eyes flick curiously to his bare left hand, which he hurriedly jerks out of sight.

“And you’re not married?” she says, and there’s an interested lilt in her voice. Steve scowls and taps his fingers on the desk. Robin is watching everything from her chair and Steve knows that keeping quiet about this so far must be killing her.

“No,” Steve says shortly. “Why are you here, Maxine?” The smirk falls from Max’s face.

“I need to hire you,” she says and digs into her bag for a beige file that is all too similar to the ones currently littering Steve’s desk. “To find someone.”

“No,” Steve retorts, curling his hands into fists. He doesn’t even have to look in the file, he just knows that allowing Max - and everyone associated with her - back into his life is asking for trouble. “Absolutely not. Not you. Go home, Max.”

“No fucking way,” Max says, her eyes glittering. “It has to be you, Steve, no one else does what you do!”

“Hang on,” Robin interrupts, finally speaking up for the first time since Max sat down. “Are you saying that this is the kind of case we take? Are you sure?” Max nods, her face pale.

“Quite sure,” she says firmly and whips the file off the desk again to thrust it at Steve. He stares blankly at it in her fingers, refusing to reach out for it. He somehow just knows that if he takes the file and looks at it, he’ll take the case. And if he takes it, he’s just opening himself up to the same kind of heartache and pain he went through ten years ago. “Take it. I can pay.”

“I’m sure that you can but we’re no longer open for business,” Steve says, pointing at the large clock hanging on the wall. “It’s six, our working day is over. Please try again tomorrow. Or never. That suits me just fine.”

“Steve,” Robin says, sounding irritated, and great, now that’s two angry women in his office. And he’s terrified of both of them. “It’s a case. We don’t turn down cases. We still need to pay for lights and water and food, in case you forgot. Why are you so sure that it’s our type of case?” She asks this last question to Max, who pulls the file close to her chest.

“Lights flickering. Black goo. Running cold. Distortion. Those are the signs of dimensional possession, aren’t they?” Max says, turning her head between Robin and Steve. Robin’s mouth purses.

“Kid’s right,” she says, gently. “That does sound like one of our’s.”

Steve rubs his sweaty hands along his pant leg. He fucking knows it as well. And as hesitant as he is, he’s not sure he can let someone innocent suffer. A dimensional possession is fucking awful and offer ends in a pretty severe case of dead for the victim without intervention. It’s one of the nastier things that Robin and Steve deal with on a day to day basis.

“Can you take it?” Max asks, hopefully. Steve’s not sure if she expects their workload to be full. They get cases, sure, often referred discreetly by word of mouth from people they’ve helped. Trawling the local papers for weird also turns up a few leads and the local police chief also sends some clients their way, after he and Steve fell into the whole paranormal thing during the same incident four years ago.

So yeah, they get work. Not enough to afford name brand items yet, or to hire someone else to clean their office or sort their files, but they survive. Steve had been all for using the rest of his inheritance to live off but Robin had refused. They were paranormal detectives and damn it, they were going to suffer on instant ramen and dry toast like other badly paid PIs.

“We can take it,” Robin says carefully, perhaps so as not to let on that their current cases only include the rot at Hess farm and a case that Nancy bumped their way only yesterday. Steve still kinda thinks that maybe the old lady was just breathing in fertilizer fumes, but Nance swears it’s something. Unfortunately, given their history, he has to believe her.

“Max,” Steve says suddenly, because thinking of his history with Nancy has made him remember his history with Max. And there’s only one person she’d be desperate enough to seek him out for. “Maxine, who’s file is this?”

“Steve, please,” she says quietly. And that should be his first clue, because Max usually fights her battles with rage, and bite, and blazing eyes. Not this. “I know I shouldn’t be asking this of you. But I am out of options and I can’t find him. I have looked and looked and he’s gone and he’s not himself. He’s going to hurt himself. Or someone else. And you’re the only one who might be able to help him.”

“Who?” Robin asks curiously and Max wipes at her damp cheeks.

“My brother,” she says, gesturing towards the file. “He started acting strange ten days ago. And then three days ago, he vanished. He’s nowhere and the police won’t help me. They say given his history that…”

“He’s run away,” Steve finishes, feeling cold all over. Max nods mutely.

“But he didn’t take anything with him,” she protests. “Just his car, nothing else. And I know that he wouldn’t just leave everything behind. There’s things he’d take.”

“Such as?” Robin probes, dragging her desk chair over to sit next to Steve. He doesn’t reach out to take the file, which Steve is grateful for. He’s not ready for it yet.

“His mom’s lighter,” Max says, with a shrug. “Some of his tapes. There’s this box he has, that he thinks I don't know about. It has pictures and movie stubs and shit like that in. He’d never leave that behind.” Something about how she avoids Steve’s gaze when she says that makes suspicion stir in his gut.

He thinks about how he has a similar box.

“They might have known his family history too,” Steve says quietly. Max’s expression is grave.

“Yeah,” she says miserably. “I thought that too.”

Robin sighs loudly, full of impatience and irritation. “Okay, I’ve really had enough of this. Can someone please clue me in?” she says pointedly. Steve sighs and tips his head back

“You remember how I told you that I used to babysit the local kids?” he starts, because that’s the easiest. Robin raises her eyebrows.

“Wait, you were one of them?” she says, turning her head towards Max. Steve’s babysitting days are well known to her. Max, however, is not. Steve has taken care to never mention her. Anything about the Hargrove-Mayfields was better left off in a closed box.

“We moved from California when I was about eleven,” Max explains and Steve can still see it, the little girl in a red hoodie on his doorstep, skateboard clutched tightly in one hand.

“Neil, Susan, Billy and Max,” Steve says, before the figure in the jean jacket behind Max can become too clear. He wants to look at whatever picture is in the file, see what Billy looks like now. If he cut his hair. If he ever grew out his stubble. If his eyes can still make Steve’s heart stop.

“I didn’t know why we moved,” Max says, her expression grave. “Not until a few years ago. Billy’s mother vanished too, several years before his dad married my mom. People said she was flighty and just ran away. Neil certainly liked to help those rumors along.”

“But she didn’t?” Robin asks, and Steve closes his eyes. He saw a picture of Abigail Hargrove once. She was like the original that Billy was copied from. That might be hard enough for someone who’s wife abandoned them.

It would be even harder when your child looked like the woman you murdered.

“Not likely,” he answers. “The police were often called out for domestic disputes at the Hargroves back in California. Neil deflected every one and Abigail never pressed charges so…” Robin’s jaw is slack.

“But they should have done something,” she splutters, looking furious. “It’s normally the spouse, didn’t they even try?”

“No,” Steve says quietly, because he knows full well that they didn't. That Billy’s beloved mother just vanished and he was left behind with the man who is possibly the only one who knows where she was buried.

“Fuck,” Robin breathes, slumping back in her chair. “Assholes.”

Steve’s fingers tremble as he reaches out for the file, cool and smooth beneath his skin. He pretends to not see Max or Robin’s interested eyes as he pulls it in front of him.

He can’t leave it. He wants to walk away, because anything to do with Billy Hargrove is just going to cause him pain. Either they save Billy and Steve has to leave him again. Or they don’t and Steve has to deal with the fact that the man he was in love with isn’t coming back.

But he can’t leave Billy for dead and not even try. For the sake of Max, and Billy, and even Abigail, who never had anyone to look for her.

He doesn’t even see the rest of the file: the few scraps that the police put together, a report from Billy’s doctor, a list of symptoms and possible places that he might have gone to supplied by Max. The photograph is the only thing he sees.

“He missed you,” Max says in a whisper, so faint that Steve almost thinks that he didn’t hear her.

He did cut his hair, just enough to have the dark blonde curls gently frame his face. He’s older than the boy Steve had fallen in love with, all strong jaw and sharp cheekbones but the eyes are the same. It’s a candid shot, Billy half turned away, looking at something out of view. Steve maps every inch off him with his eyes, remembering those hands wrapped in his hair, Billy’s legs wound around Steve’s waist, how the curve of his bottom lip felt.

He’s still so beautiful. Steve stares and stares at the photo as though he can will Billy here by sheer want alone. But he can’t and in the end, it hurts too much to look. Steve hid all his photos of Billy a long time ago.

“He shouldn’t have,” Steve says bitterly and flicks the file shut. If he’d been Billy, he would have been furious.

“He did,” Max says, a little louder. “He knew why you did it.”

Steve freezes, stunned. Max’s gaze is cool, but there’s no blame behind it. He’d thought for sure that he’d ruined his relationship with her too. Out of all his kids, she’s the only one he hasn’t seen or spoken to, completely sure that her allegiance would lie with her brother.

“You…he knew?” Steve croaks and Max reaches across the table to pull one of his cold hands into her’s.

“Not at first,” she says. “But after a while it became pretty obvious that Neil had something to do with it. Am I right?”

Steve closes his eyes and clings onto her hand. Fuck, fuck. For nearly a decade Steve has held onto that secret like a block of lead in his chest - heavy and constantly threatening to drag him down. But if the choice was Billy being alive and safe or Steve hating himself every second for the rest of his life…that was an easy one.

“Please, Steve,” Max says, her fingers trembling in his. But her making a final pitch is pointless - there’s no going back now. He was lost the moment he looked into Billy’s eyes again, and he can see by Robin’s face that she’s in too. “He still loves you…and I think that you still love him. You didn’t stop, did you? That’s how I know you’re going to find him. You’re his last chance.”

#harringrove #harringroveweek #billy's birthday bonanza #private detective #prompt: detectivexlastchances #steve harrington #Max Mayfield #Billy Hargrove #robin buckley #mutual longing #idiots in love #mentions of jancy #jonathan and nancy work at the paper and help out where they can #sort of au?#the upside works kind of the same #but more in a Supernatural hauntings kind of way

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