It's September 1st here, so from now until the 12th I'm gonna post 1 chapter a day of my entry for the Steve Harrington Big Bang! It's the Harringrove-themed "The Broken Hearts Gallery" AU that I've wanted to exist for two years and finally decided to write for myself! :3
*Stefon voice* This fic has everything: aspiring gallery curator Steve, hotel proprietor Billy, silly mementos, two guys dancing around each other, some platonic Stobin, some shenanigans, a karaoke night, gay guys being a mess, fluff, smut, a tiny bit of angst, a happy ending, messy blood families and messy-in-a-different-way chosen families, hummus, a rubber duckie, various secondary couples, and a few references to Disney movies.
My artist, @clairdeluneisgr8, will post her art and banner in a few days, by now I have the one @dragonflylady77 made me out of the blue because she's the best fandom bestie!
The Chloe Hotel
Rated E, it's gonna be 55k words by the end
No Major Archive Warnings
Main pairing: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Secondary pairings: Robin/Chrissy; Kali/Heather; Eddie/Jason; Max/El; past Steve/Nancy
Tags: Modern Day AU (no upside down stuff); strangers to business partners to friends to lovers; pansexual Steve Harrington; gay Billy Hargrove; implied/referenced child abuse and domestic violence; secondary character has memory issues; secondary character is pregnant; Steve Harrington has complicated parents; fluff; angst; smut; anal sex; oral sex.
Summary:
Steve's night is going the worst possible way.
After getting dumped by Nancy at a work event, he caught her kissing Jonathan Byers, drank a bit too much, and made an ass of himself in front of his boss, so he's pretty sure he's not only single and very tipsy, but also fired.
To top it off, this is not his Uber. The guy driving it doesn't look like "Angela", and the backseat is full of plastic sheets and hardware tools, oh, crap, he's gonna get killed, isn't he?
Or maybe, just maybe, this car ride is gonna change Steve's life.
Chapter one, "Not Angela" is here, on ao3, and it starts like this...
If Steve were feeling dramatic, which he is, he'd say this is the worst night of his life.
He jumps into his Uber while hanging up his drunken, sad, mopey call with Robin and tells the guy behind the wheel the address of his house. As soon as he's slammed the door closed, he plasters both hands on his face. He wants to hide from life so damn much, good god!
He finds himself shivering in embarrassment and anger at the memory of what just happened. He's feeling so fucking pathetic that it only makes him feel even more pathetic. It should be impossible. There should be a cap on how pathetic you can feel in life, because thisā¦ this is bullshit, that's what it is.
He snorts at the memory of Nancy's voice saying that word, we're bullshit, this has always been a bullshit relationship. We're not real, Steve! We're not.
The car jostles over a pothole.
The driver is saying something, but Steve is not listening, not even the smallest bit. He's not in a listening mood.
No, tonight, he's gonna mope to hell and back, thanks, he doesn't have time for anything else.
"Man, are you even listening?" the driver asks, louder than before, as if reading only the wrong parts of Steve's mind.
"No, man, I'm not," Steve mutters. "Listenā¦" He clears his throat a couple of times, so maybe the rest of what he says won't sound as plaintive as that listen just did. "My life just went up in flames, okay?, so I don't have bandwidth for chitchatting, whatever the subject, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry. Please, pretend I listened and talked, okay? And I'm still gonna give you those five stars, I swear, justā¦"
"Well, that solves everything and warms my fucking heart," the driver deadpans, and Steve casts him a glance, the first since he hopped in his car, and he frowns.
Steve's very tipsy, read this close to drunk, but he'd swear his Uber driver was supposed to be called Angela. Okay, maybe Angela is early in her transition, maybe all is good, exceptā
Steve blinks at what's on the backseat with him. A big roll of transparent plastic sheet, a bin full of hardware tools, and two containers of paint. The seatbelt is carefully pulled to keep them all safely in place.
Who the fuck seatbelts his tools?
"Dude?" Angela asks from the front seat.
"Why do you have all this stuff in the back?"
"It might confound you, pretty boy, but people sometimes use their cars to transport stuff."
Angela chuckles. "Why not now?"
"Because it's night and you'reā¦" Steve gestures at Angela, and the car, and the obvious concept of driving strangers around for money.
"Prepare to have your mind blown even more: people transport stuff in their cars at every hour of the day!"
Angela chuckles some more and Steve looks outside, and for some reason that's when his neurons start to fire on a couple more cylinders and put stuff together.
"You're not my driver," Steve whisper-shouts. "You're not Angela!"
"What gave me away?" not-Angela asks.
"This is not an Uber! You kidnapped me! Youā" A thought slams into the front of his awareness and freezes his tongue for a moment, before he's asking: "Are you gonna kill me?"
"The tools. You have tools. There's a saw, there! And a hammer! And all that plastic! You're gonna kill me and cut me into pieces and wrap me in the plasticā"
"Yeah, and give you a good varnish too. Dude! You jumped in my car!"
"No, I didn't!" Steve says, a bit slurred and so fast it turns into one big word, noIdidnt.
"Yes, I did," he whispers, eyes going big and worried. "Robin's gonna kill me if I get myself killed because I jumped in a serial killer's car."
