This Street I Walk Upon [Fic, PG-13, Stefan/Erik]

[clandestine_terrors]

Title: This Street I Walk Upon
Author: sphinxofthenile 
Fandom: Original fiction
Pairing: Stefan/Erik
Rating: PG-13
Warning: angst, implied violance, mutilation
Summary: The Second World War ended. It's time for Stefan Münzer to go home and try to find his peace of mind.
A/N: The guys are mine. The story is mine. No stealing.

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It felt so awkward, standing there in the windy street in the coarse, oversized clothing so unlike him, his hands clutching a soiled piece of paper. The very street that had seen him grow up. Play. Laugh. For him, it hadn’t changed at all.

 

The green fence of their house, the petunias of the old lady in the neighbourhood, they were still there. Just like the yard where he used to play tag with the other children. He remembered Lotte, all smiles and huge blue eyes in a blue-white checked dress. The sun shone. Their parents drank tea. It was summer…

 

He wandered deeper into the street, his footsteps heavy and uncertain. The wind blew right through the borrowed coat hanging down his screwny shoulders, carrying the chill of winter.

 

It all felt like a dream now. Like he knew this place somehow. Like sometime, long, long ago, he’d been here. In another life. And the young man he remembered himself to be only three years ago also felt like a stranger. He didn’t know the things this man knew, didn’t see the things this man saw...

 

He stopped and stared at the old locust-tree that had seen him fall in love. Had seen his first kiss. It was a beautiful summer night… The last summer before the madness.

 

He continued down the street, the very street that had seen him walk hand-in-hand. Then march. Returning to the family every time he had a leave. Returning to find the place in the far corner of the park where they used to meet empty.

 

He sat there for hours. He waited. He cried. But the other never came.

 

He thought him dead.

 

Then in the camp of prisoners of war he received the letter. That had been one and a half years ago, and here he was, standing before the familiar house after so long, clutching the tear-stained paper in his hands.

 

He hesitated before knocking, his arm frozen for a moment in mid-air before gently rapping at the door. There was no movement, no sound coming from inside, and he turned to leave, the paper now creased in his hand.

 

He was quite a few steps away when he heard the door open and light cut through the dimness of the approaching dusk. He turned slowly, dreading the sight that awaited him, heart frozen with fear over whom he’d see there…

 

In the doorframe there was a skinny young man around the age of twenty-four, his short hair like gold painted by the last rays of the setting sun, blue eyes sad and weary. He was leaning on a crutch for support, his right leg cut off just above the knee.

 

„Stefan?” Came his voice in a soft, trembling whisper, and they just stood there, frozen to the spot, watching and trying to believe their eyes.

 

He didn’t notice when the snow started to fall. He felt tears stinging his eyes, but there was no force in this life that could’ve made him avert his gaze. Nevermind the leg, for him, the other looked just the way he remembered, a little worse for the wear, the youthful light gone from those sky blue eyes, but he was there, and it was all that mattered.

 

He started moving as if in a dream, climbing the few stairs leading to the door, and when he reached the top, his mouth came crashing down on those soft lips, devouring them with a desperation so great he didn’t even know existed.

 

And when his kiss was returned, it made him forget the nights he spent on plank-beds shivering, the nightmares of his own death and the sight of so much blood, so much red it hurt his eyes... It made him forget the tears he cried when he was alone, the times when he sang the Lili Marlene thinking of him.

 

Around them, the snow kept on covering the world in white.