Chapter Text
Steve would appreciate this, if he were here.
Well, Robin guesses he will appreciate it, once he is.
She spreads the blueprints out on the bed in the guest room and uncaps a big red marker, appreciates the air of respect that she gets from Nancy and Murray, and the way Eddie looks at her like she’s a freaking genius.
“I’m guessing that the wall you were talking about is here.” She draws a line, cutting off the courtyard, and Eddie nods. “In which case, I think your best bet is to go around to the side door here, where the kitchen is. From there, you can get to the dorms if you go down this hall, right?”
“Got it.”
“Remember, if you get caught in there, you’re fucked. So don’t get caught. You’ll need to have your scent totally neutralized when you go in. They probably employ a beta staff, but we can’t afford dumb mistakes. If anyone follows you out to the cars, you’ll have backup, but when you’re inside, you’re on your own.”
“I’ll be okay.” He nods. “Total stealth.”
“Get out whoever you find, quiet. Load up the vans. Remember, when Murray asks for them to bring out any male omegas they have, they’ll probably take Steve to him and he’ll hand over the money and take him out the front. As soon as you have the other omegas in the cars, you drive, and you radio headquarters immediately, I’ll call the cops. I have both addresses.”
“Got it– Wait, they’ll bring him Steve?”
“Yes, dingus, what did you think?”
Eddie blinks, staring at her for a long moment. “I don’t– I don’t know. What I… what I thought. What if they take Murray two male omegas?”
“Are the odds of that very high?” Nancy points out.
“Well, I just– I think maybe…” Eddie fidgets with his rings.
“Okay, more importantly, can you get together this seriously shady counterfeit money.”
“Uhh… little bit of a snag but I’ll get it sorted out.”
“Eddie.”
“I’ll get it sorted out! Not a problem. I’ll get you the money. The probably fake money.”
“Probably?”
“I’ll figure it out!”
“Figure it out!” She smacks at his arm. “Get it together by this weekend, I’m not kidding. I will hurt you.”
“I believe you!”
"Where did you get the blueprints?” Murray asks, freeing Eddie from being Robin’s sole focus.
“City Hall. Same way we got the blueprints for the mall– that’s how Steve and Dustin and Erica and I got in.”
He barks out a laugh, and turns to translate to Alexei– faster than the recording Robin had been translating by ear, but she still picks out a couple words, she thinks. Planni, maybe, in which case she can figure it out. Dyeti? Starcourt, which is kind of a gimme. Anyway, it’s an amused retelling which leaves Alexei with a sour expression, and whatever he says back is too fast to follow, but it gets another laugh out of Murray, before he goes all soppy over the pouting and she does not even try to recognize any words out of what he whispers to him then.
-/-
The remainder of the week is… tense. Murray fusses over Alexei to an unnecessary degree, and Alexei allows it. Likes it, if he’s honest. Murray trusts him, to drive the van and to be honest about his capabilities with a firearm. But he worries about him, also. Wants him to get as much rest as he can in the lead-up, along with some gentle exercise to make sure his strength is returning. Certainly he’s feeding him up. That’s one of the parts Alexei likes best. Murray makes pasta one night, roast chicken and mashed potatoes the next, soup with dumplings after that… offers a mix of flavors and ingredients which are familiar and brand new to him, which Alexei appreciates. It’s great, being able to try things he’s never had, but there’s a comfort in the dishes that are not wholly unfamiliar.
He also takes Alexei to buy shoes, and Alexei goes for a plain-looking pair of sneakers. He no longer has a job for which to dress professionally, he may as well have comfort when he goes out.
But… now the weekend is nearly upon them, and the tension is at an all time high. Tomorrow night, Murray will take Joyce’s car and Alexei will take the van, and they’ll caravan first to the Harrington house, and then out to where the boy is being held…
Alexei thinks there’s one other thing that Murray understands, and that’s why he hasn’t protested Alexei’s involvement– that it’s personal for him in a way it isn’t for anyone else. Oh, Steve is personal to them, of course, and getting him back. But the rest of it isn’t. Not the way it is for Alexei. He needs to see this done for himself, too. He needs to rescue who he can, after he himself was rescued.
Tonight, though, he needs something else.
“Murray… make love to me?” He asks– pouts a little, because he’s learned Murray will indulge him endlessly if he does.
Murray is currently in the process of dressing them both for bed– not because Alexei needs the help, but because it’s nice to be fussed over, and Murray seems to enjoy doing it, likes buttoning his own pajama shirt onto Alexei, takes a little pride over draping him in his scent. Alexei wears the top, Murray wears the bottoms, and they have enough blankets to keep each other warm with just that, but tonight, he thinks perhaps they could keep each other warm without.
“I– You’re sure? You’re not–”
“Not made of glass.” He tugs up at the hem of Murray’s undershirt, smiling as his alpha goes suddenly shy, as if they have not been changing and showering around each other since Murray brought him home. As if this renders it so different. “I want you. I want to feel… I want to give you something, to remember what you are staying safe for tomorrow. And I want you.”
“Have you been with an alpha before?”
He shakes his head. “You don’t mind being my first?”
“No. No, definitely not.” He swallows, and finally allows Alexei to strip him to the waist, to run his hands over bared chest and stomach. Over his sides. “I, uh… I know I’m not exactly– I know I’m older…”
“Lucky me.” Alexei purrs, nuzzling along his jaw and reveling in the roughness of his beard. “That is how it should be, don’t you think? An omega should get to have their first time at the hands of an experienced lover… one who can make it good, yes?”
He winds a curl around one finger, feels as much as hears the slightly nervous chuckle, the note of pleasant surprise filling his scent as he runs his hands over Alexei’s body in return, skimming up his thighs, past his hips, pushing the pajama top up to stroke his way up to his ribcage, his hands warm and sure.
“I’ll try to make it very good for you, Lyoshen’ka… slow, gentle? Taking good care of you?” He nuzzles back, leaves Alexei’s throat tingling.
“Mm… I am lucky.” Alexei sighs, tugging him that last half step towards their bed. “More experienced, considerate, and handsome, too.”
“You don’t have to flatter me, darling, I’m already here.”
“I mean it.” He laughs, as Murray gently lowers him to the bed, as he begins undoing buttons. “Maybe… better word is ‘sexy’. Murray, you are blushing.”
“It’s been a long time since a handsome young man called me ‘sexy’, that’s all. You mean it?”
“Oh, yes.” He nods, arches up into the touch as one hand runs up his front, spreads over where the scar is before snaking up to feel his heart beating.
“Not a bald pig?” He teases.
“A man who is going bald can still be sexy. As long as he has enough hair everywhere else, the top of the head is not so important.” He scratches gently under Murray’s chin. “This fits the bill, I think. And your body– I like your body.”
“It used to be… more, uh…” He pinches at his own side critically, until Alexei chases that hand off with his own, grabs at both sides and squeezes. “Oh – you like that?”
“Yes. I want my hands full of you. I want you… nice to hold. Press close to. Feel. What good is a skinny man to me? Can I trust him to feed me a good meal, and keep me warm at night, and be my pillow? And be strong for me? Healthy for me? Besides… he would not be as nice to look at, in my opinion.”
“You’re doing wonders for my ego.” He hooks two fingers under the waistband of Alexei’s briefs. “Mm… you smell fantastic.”
“Oh?” He bites his lip, grinning, lifts his hips so Murray can get the briefs out of the way entirely.
“When I first found you, you were… tea with lemon– lemon and sugar. But… sick, stressed. Now it’s… less lemon, it’s oranges. You smell like strong tea, and oranges, and… honey. Spices. Cinnamon, mostly. That’s… that’s definitely you turned on.”
“Tea and oranges…” He chuckles. “Goes with yours. Coffee and cherries. This bed is going to smell like having fruit pastries for breakfast.”
“I have the day off tomorrow. I could stay in bed and have you for breakfast.”
He kisses his way down from Alexei’s throat, to his chest, to his belly– lower still. The tickle and burn and tingling, zinging pleasure that the beard leaves behind every tender spot it rubs against, the heat of his hands as they rub gently at Alexei’s thighs before parting them…
Alexei had imagined it would be good, but he hadn’t imagined this, Murray’s lips and tongue slowly taking him apart, the occasional nudge of his nose right up against the base of his cock– small, but he’s always felt more than respectable for an omega, and Murray doesn’t let him wonder for a single moment what he thinks of it, stroking him off slow and easy while he eats him out, only pulls his mouth from that task so he can get his mouth around Alexei there. Leaves him trembling on the verge just long enough to pull on a condom– when had he taken his pants off?-- and then he’s sliding home, rocking into him in gentle increments.
Alexei can feel the swelling of his knot against and then inside him, his own body responding, clamping down to keep him once it’s big enough. Murray kisses his throat, laps at his scent gland. Moans soft against him every time Alexei’s roaming hands find purchase, but especially when he grabs his ass with both hands and urges him to grind into him. It’s slow and deep and filthy and beautiful.
“See?” Alexei pants. “I told you… I needed an experienced older alpha to take good care of me.”
“It’s good?”
“So good.” He nods.
“Okay, good, ‘cause I’m gonna come.”
Alexei tilts his head to the side, in clear invitation.
-/-
“Okay, so here’s the thing.” Eddie says, hopping out of his van to meet the others outside Steve’s place Saturday night. “I actually need this money back.”
“This money is probably going to be evidence.”
“Okay, well I borrowed this from a guy who’s in jail right now and I can’t tell the difference between real and counterfeit, so it needs to be back in the fish sticks box in his freezer before he gets out.” He says.
If he hadn’t been desperate, he would have thought a lot better, but Rick just got hauled off this week, before Eddie could ask him for help, and he heavily suspects that the cash he’s holding is real, because otherwise it wouldn’t have been in ziplock baggies in a block of ice in a costco-sized fish sticks box.
Right?
Anyway, he had been going to just make fish sticks, because he figured anything in the fridge and freezer was fair game if Rick was going to be doing time, and he needed to do something to deal with the whole situation of not being able to ask him for help and if he had that stack of counterfeit bills lying around still. If he was planning on taking money, he’d have tried safecracking, not that he knows how to crack a safe. He knows Rick, though, so he feels like his combination probably has a sixty-nine in it. No, he was going to eat and regroup, when he found the cash, and made the dumbest decision of his life.
Which, to be fair, is exactly what his dad would have done. Dump the block of ice in Rick’s tub and plug in the hair dryer and go fucking nuts. Stuff the money in a duffel bag and run like his ass was on fire.
Eddie always thought he was better than that– even when he did start dealing for Rick, he thought he was better than that.
Only, if there are two male omegas trapped in the old school, and Murray can only afford one of them, this time he’s picking Steve, there’s no other way this goes. And he hadn’t even thought he had that much. Can’t exactly take out a loan for pulling a sting operation to bring down a human trafficking ring, you know? And Eddie’s still wrapping his head around Steve Harrington being an omega, which seems impossible.
He hadn’t been thinking straight. He couldn’t honestly say he was thinking at all. But if he could be said to have had a plan, it very much included putting all of the money back before Rick could miss it.
“We can’t– no.” Nancy starts pacing. “We can’t use that.
“Okay. Okay. Change of plans.” Murray does the same. “We’ll just… change the plan. I’ll prep the briefcase, you’ll put that money back before we all get dragged into even more crime…”
He switches into Russian about there, or maybe Eddie just fully loses it. He’s guessing Russian, though, because whatever it is, Alexei frowns and shakes his head about. Alexei is sporting a fresh bandage over his scent gland, so… good for him, he guesses. Every so often, Murray’s hand strays to his own neck, like he’s seeking something out that isn’t there.
“Wheeler– how do you feel about handling a shotgun?” Murray asks her, after his sidebar with Alexei.
“Good.” She says.
“All right. All right.” He goes to his van and gets out– yep!-- a shotgun, hands that and a box of ammunition to Nancy fucking Wheeler, who takes it like it’s nothing. “Give me the revolver.”
“Are you sure?”
“No. I’m really not. But I’d like to have something for when they figure out I’ve got nothing. Look, I can buy you some time, but– I think we all know no one in there is calling me an ambulance. So, you know, after I recover from a seizure, or whatever, I’m still going to have to make it out the front door with Steve, and if they figure out I handed them a briefcase of mostly singles, I’m going to need a little insurance.”
“I mean, we– we have time to get the money back, though, right? If we do give them money and then they get arrested?”
“No, then the money is linked to multiple crimes and the police keep it. Look… I’ll play it by ear. If I can’t get out safe with Steve without the money, I can say I didn’t bring enough, I’ll phone Robin, she’ll radio you, you will bring me the money that we need to return to your… Rick, and then we figure out how to do just that. But… this way, we just have more options.”
“Fuck.” Eddie kicks at the ground.
“Mm. Succinct.” Murray snorts. “All right, racers, start your engines– we’re going to go Eddie, Alexei, me, Nancy. Since I’m assuming you know the roads around here?”
“Pretty well. And I have a map in the car.” She nods.
“Good. Well… see you all on the other side.”
Eddie tosses off a salute and hops into his van again. He’s got the radio Robin had presented him with. He’s got the money he has to return to Rick’s before Rick is out of the joint. He has the tranq, also taken from Rick’s, which is his last ditch plan since there’s no way he’s carrying a gun and shooting someone.
Time to fucking roll.
-/-
Steve has had enough time here now to time out the check-ins, and they’re not random. He takes a nap when they send him to bed, and wakes up after the last check of the night. They’ll come back in the wee small hours of the morning, but he’ll be back in bed by then.
He doesn’t dare turn on any lights, when he gets to the kitchen. Has to rely on what comes in from the dimly-lit hallway and the narrow windows, the moon outside. Opens the pantry door painfully slowly, barely breathing until it doesn’t creak.
Inside the pantry it’s pitch black, but he moves slow, feels around until he finds what he thinks is a can of crushed tomatoes.
It’s something he can do reps with. Can hold it out straight ahead of himself during squats, or do some only slightly awkward curls with it.
He’s hit something of a wall in that he doesn’t know a damn thing about planning. He doesn’t have Dustin or Robin, they’d be the brains of the operation if he did. He only knows he needs to escape, not how. All he can do is keep preparing and wait for an opening, he guesses.
His opening turns out to be literal, in the form of the kitchen door swinging open during his workout.
He very nearly leaps into action then and there, the pieces all falling into place– step one, brain the guard with a can of crushed tomatoes, step two, run out the door and in the direction of cows. Step three… ask a dairy farmer to call the cops?
“Jesus christ holy fuck!” Gasps a long-haired shadowy figure not wearing the same nondescript uniform as all the guards, but a leather jacket and shoes that practically glow white against the black of the rest of his outfit.
“What the fuck?” Steve hisses back, nearly fumbling his can. “I could have killed you with this! What– How– Who–?
“Harrington?”
Oh.
Shit.
“Munson?”
“The one and only.” He whispers, giving a fancy-ass little bow like he had the one time… the one time they had been at a party. Steve had just been crowned keg stand king and Eddie had been there selling weed to Tommy, he thinks, but he’d… he’d done that dumb little bow and called Steve ‘your majesty’, and it… like, and it wasn’t him being an asshole, just being weird…
“What are you doing here?”
And then, Eddie Munson pulls Steve’s sock out of his pants pocket, with a little shrug.
“Thought you might need to get busted out of this joint.” He says, but Steve can’t concentrate. Because the sock he’d scented so thoroughly before throwing it over the wall doesn’t smell like him now, or not just, it smells like alpha. And the alpha it smells like is mouthwatering.
It smells like pumpkin pie, and spiced peaches, and mulled cider. It smells like cloves and nutmeg and sticks of cinnamon and a holiday in a warm, loving home.
Before Steve can formulate a plan, the light in the hallway clicks on, going from half to full, and he leaps into action again. He shoves Eddie into the pantry and then pushes the can into his hands, closing the door on him.
It’s not silent, but that’s fine. When a guard rushes into the room, Steve is pretending to be unable to open the ‘locked’ kitchen door, and when his arm is grabbed, he pretends to wake up, startled. He’s not a good actor, best he can hope is that this guy is stupid. Honestly, even if he’s promised a punishment tomorrow, he’ll be gone by then, he just needs the guy to buy it, that the door is totally still locked, and then if he gets in trouble, he gets in trouble.
“What’s going on? Where– how did I get here?” He flails a little, falls down just so the guy has to catch him.
“Matron’s gonna deal with you later.” The beta guard growls at him, yanking on his arm. “If you’re lucky. You’ve got an interested buyer, Omega. I heard this guy goes through ‘em. Bought an omega just a week ago and he’s already looking for fresh meat.”
Even in the half-dark, his grin is unpleasantly wolfish, and Steve feels sick. Not now. Not now, when the door is open!