Thanks to everyone who read and thanks to the people who took the time to review. I really appreciate all opinions and advice.

Only one more chapter of Ste and Callum and then we'll get to the good bit ... Double B!

Hang in there with me.

HOLLYOAKS; DECEMBER 2013

Ste was out of options. The police were crawling all over him, all over his life. They weren't chasing him anymore, they were just waiting for him to come to them. They were waiting for him at the pub, waiting for him at the shops, at his home. It was different from all the other times he'd been in trouble with the police. Between his last run in with the pigs and this one, he'd turned eighteen. They weren't waiting to cart him off to juvie, with its well-meaning counsellors and fourteen-year-old hard knocks, they were going to take him to prison to do real, hard time with real, hard men. He couldn't do it. It would kill him, he was sure of it.

He was driving too fast, but it was only Hollyoaks. There weren't many people who lived here and as nosey as they were, not many of them liked to take their issues to the police. He couldn't imagine anyone calling to report him for speeding. But it wouldn't matter if they did. He'd be safe soon, back with old friends. He pulled into the carpark, abandoning the car across about four spaces. He didn't bother to lock it. It was hardly worth stealing anyway. Then he got out and walked up to the little block of flats.

He'd only been here once before, when he'd spent the day not helping the moving van driver, but he hadn't forgotten it. He knocked and waited. It was early evening, he knew they'd be in, even if there were taking forever to answer. He knocked again. The door opened and a blonde girl with a baby on her hip was beaming up at him. Or at least she was beaming until she realised who he was.

'What are you doing here!' she demanded, turning the baby slightly away from him. What was she expecting him to do? Eat it? He'd struggle, it was a fat, podgy creature with the eyes of a demon.

'Nice to see you too, Hannah,' he scorned, pushing his way inside the ugly little council flat. 'Callum in?'

The place was horrible, all browns with the occasional orange splodge. It was typical council décor; 70s flower power chic with a splodge of depression and a sprinkling of misplaced optimism. He didn't need to wait for Hannah to answer. He quickly found his friend. He was at the sink washing dishes. He looked like a pathetic little house-husband and Ste felt a bit sick. He'd always admired Callum, now look at him.

'Ste,' he gasped when he saw him, pulling off his marigolds. He ran a hand through his hair, but it was short now and Ste found it just didn't have the same cutesy boyish affect it had had when it was longer. Then he frowned and glanced suspiciously through the netted curtain to the horrible muddy gardgen, before turning back to Ste. 'What are you doing here?'

'Not bringing the police to your door, if that's what you think,' Ste sulked, jumping up and sitting on the side counter.

'Oh,' Callum bit his thumb a little. 'Could you not?' he said, pulling a bit at Ste's arm, forcing him to get down. 'I just cleaned it, and we've got to keep things clean for little Lexi.'

'Lexi,' Ste snorted suddenly. He couldn't help himself. 'You called your kid Lexi?'

'Yeah, it's a nice name.'

'It's a chav name.' There was an awkward pause. Ste filled it by looking around the kitchen. It was clean, tidy with little cookbooks entitled "feeding a family on a budget" and other similarly sickening things dotted around. There were a couple of pink toys scattered about as well as a dummy with a crown on it. It seemed Princess Lexi was in charge of this house. It was disgusting.

'Look,' Callum said eventually, and Ste knew he must have been getting the hurry up from his slut of a girlfriend. 'What are you doing here Ste?'

'Hiding out.' And without missing a beat: 'You know she's definitely going to become a stripper?'

'Who?'

'Lexi,' Ste answered. It was so obvious. 'It's a stripper name.'

The slap came as a surprise to Ste, but it probably really shouldn't have. He had just walked in to Hannah's house and then suggested her daughter was going to get a job in at the high end of the sex industry. Still, he hadn't anticipated it, which was why it stung like the bitch who'd delivered it.

'Hannah,' Callum warned under his breath, but she just beat him down with half a glare and he cowered to it.

'Aw, you've changed, you,' Ste scorned, rubbing his race a little.

'And you haven't changed at all,' Callum shot back, as though that was an insult.

'Because I haven't bent over backwards trying to please some bitch,' Ste shrugged.

He was vaguely aware of Hannah screaming and attempting to slap him again. He was also aware that Callum stepped in the way to stop her. He muttered something to her, something sweet probably. Back in the day it would have been a warning coupled with a threat. Those were the days when Ste had come first in Callum's life, but not anymore. Now Callum was no different to a McDonalds ice cream; soft and whipped.

Callum had taken Ste into his bedroom eventually. He'd sat him down at a small desk table and offered him a beer. He'd taken it, Callum had taken tea. It was all so wrong.

'What's happened to you?' Ste groaned, taking a long swig of the cheap piss Callum called beer.

'I've grown up,' Callum shrugged, smiling sheepishly. 'You should try it, it's fun.'

'Doesn't look fun,' Ste muttered, pointing to the dark circles appearing under Callum's eyes. 'Living with Hannah the spanner and some demon sprog has taken its toll on you.'

Callum sighed and took a sip of his tea. 'It's not so bad,' he said. 'Just yesterday, Lexi did the most adorable little burp.'

'Oh, well, do make sure you make a Facebook event if ever she does a fart,' Ste scorned.

He saw his old friend's face crumple. It was just a tiny insult, Callum used to be tougher than this. They'd go toe-to-toe for hours switching insults back and forth. Ste went back to drinking his beer and shuddered as the foul liquid drowned his taste buds. This was horrible for so many reasons.

'What are you doing here, Ste?' Callum asked eventually. He wasn't even drinking his tea, he was just stirring it slowly and staring at it like it might give him some life-affirming answers.

'I need somewhere to lay low for a while,' Ste answered. 'The pigs are all over me.'

'What did you do?'

'Nothing.'

Callum fixed him with a disbelieving stare, which made Ste smirk a bit.

'A tiny theft,' he admitted sheepishly. 'A few hundred quid out of the club's safe.'

'How did you get the combination?'

'The club owner,' he grinned. 'She was a right cougar. I could tell she fancied me, so I just kept hanging around in the office with her, drinking wine, telling her she was beautiful until I saw her put in the combination. It was just a matter of timing; and amazing sex.'

'Amazing?' Callum smirked, and for a second he looked like himself. 'How do you know it was amazing?'

'With me,' Ste winked. 'It's always amazing.'

'Arrogant son of a….' Callum trailed off, his eyes flicked towards the thin wall which was the only barrier between him and slag-Hannah and princess-Lexi. What was he afraid of? Did he think Lexi was going to have supersonic hearing and hear him swearing through walls? And even if she could here, she was about seven months old, she wasn't going to remember! What the hell had happened to Callum? Then he said something that destroyed Ste's world:

'You can't stay here.'

'What!' Ste almost exploded, slamming his bottle on to the table. 'What happened to us being best mates, eh? When you decided to be with Hannah, you said nothing was going to change.'

'I haven't seen you in over a year,' Callum protested. 'Every time I tried to contact you, I heard nothing back.'

'When!' Ste demanded. 'When did you try to contact me?'

'Erm, how about when I asked you to be Lexi's godfather?'

'Oh,' Ste muttered. 'That.'

He gulped his beer quickly. He had ignored that text, and the fifteen others asking if he'd received the first one. But it was laughable. Him. Godfather. When he didn't believe in God and he'd never had a father.

'I just assumed I wasn't going to see you again….' Callum whispered. 'And Hannah told me it was time to just forget you.'

'Hannah did, did she?' Ste almost laughed. He hadn't known it was possible to hate one person as much as he hated Hannah. She'd ruined everything.

'Don't be like that.' He sounded so weak. 'She's my fiancé.'

'What!' Ste shouted. This was all too domestic and perfect and disgusting. He was hating every single word that slithered its way out between Callum's traitorous teeth. 'How? Why?'

'Because I love her.'

'Oh,' Ste pulled a face of disgust and wondered for a second if he was going to vomit. He wouldn't ask for a bucket, he'd just throw up everywhere and pretend to be sorry about it later. He didn't throw up, and for a second he felt disappointed in himself. So instead, he took a deep breath and said:

'I can't believe this, you know.'

'Believe what?'

'You. You were like a brother to me. And now look at us. You won't even let me hide out here until the police get off my back.'

'I can't risk Lexi getting dragged into that world,' Callum insisted and the worst bit was that he sounded like he meant it.

Ste found himself hating Lexi. Why did she get to have a dad who loved her? A dad who'd give up his old life, a life he'd loved, to keep her safe when Ste's dad couldn't even give up sleeping around to turn up to one sodding sports game or parents evening.

'There's a place you could go though,' Callum muttered thoughtfully. 'I mean, somewhere I've heard about.'

'What?'

'Remember that guy from juvie, Joel.'

'The Scottish prick.'

'That's him,' Callum chuckled a little. They'd had very different opinions about Joel, but then Ste had only really like Callum at juvie. Callum was too trusting in his opinion, too willing to talk to other idiots. 'He used to talk about this place, some town of criminals.' Callum smiled a little. 'I think he was exaggerating a little bit.'

'He usually did,' Ste muttered.

'Buuuut,' Callum continued firmly as he got up and began rooting about in a draw. 'There really is a place, or at least a guy. Loads of people go there to get away from the police … apparently.' Callum found a scrap of paper with an address scrawled roughly on it and handed it over: 'Here.'

'What is this?' he almost laughed, staring down at the address. This was the most insane thing he'd ever heard. A safe haven for criminals. And then he read to the bottom of the address:

'Ireland!' he demanded.

'It's the perfect place for you to go,' Callum whispered, crouching down in front of Ste and putting his hands on his shoulders. 'You don't want to give up that lifestyle and that's fine, it is! But you need someone to watch your back, to hide you when you're on the run. I can't do that anymore but….' He pointed to the paper, which was hanging limply in Ste's hands. 'You'll find someone there who can.'

Ireland. It seemed like such a long way away and it would rain all the time, and he'd be surrounded by gingers and leprechauns and he'd have to leave his home. He'd have to leave Chester, leave Callum. He looked up at his friend. He'd been the only one who hadn't let him down, but he was letting him down now, pushing him away, kicking him out of his life. And Ste knew, he'd already lost Callum, his Callum. This wasn't his best friend, the one he'd worked with for years. This was some imposter using Callum's body to live this horrific version of a happy life. There was nothing left for him in England now. He may as well go….

'To Ireland,' he mumbled.

'That's the spirit, son' Callum grinned, squeezing his shoulder. 'You'll love it there.'

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