Déjà Vu

--choke

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

How had he been so stupid? He'd left Lukas all wired, all drugged up for absolutely anyone to take advantage of. And you know, maybe he was doubly stupid by just leaving Lukas there alone, but Matthias knew that he wouldn't even be able to look at Lukas without breaking down crying.

He slammed open the door to his house, tears streaming down his blotchy red face as his did so, unable to control the unhinged sobs escaping his lips. He was too drunk and too upset to have any sort of restraint. He didn't care if he woke up Maike.

Speaking of Maike, she was in fact asleep - on the couch in front of a TV playing Days of Our Lives reruns. Or at least, if she had been asleep, she sure wasn't now, not with Matthias practically tripping over himself and falling face first onto the couch.

"Matthias?" she asked, her voice groggy as she sat up and immediately pulled him close to her, holding him like he was a baby.

Unable to form coherent sentences or even coherent thoughts, Matthias immediately started babbling through his sobs. "Mamma...I hurt him. I hurt Lukas. I- Mamma...he's- he- it's my fault." He felt like the world was crashing down around him - he was so upset that he hadn't even noticed that he'd called Maike 'Mamma'.

"Shhh- hey, Matthias, lille skat, what happened at the party? Where's Lukas?" she asked softly.

That made him cry even more, however, and he buried his face in her shoulder. He knew she could probably smell the beer, the weed, the cigarette smoke on him, but he didn't even care. She didn't seem to care about that, either, as she stroked her fingers through his strawberry blonde curls and hummed a little lullaby to pacify him.

The last thing Matthias ever wanted to do was hurt Lukas, and yet he'd done it once again.

*

"Lukas?"

Lukas' eyelids fluttered open at the sound of his name and he glanced up. The lights were on in the room and a silhouette was hovering over him. Something odd was going on though, for some reason he couldn't open his other eye. It was swollen shut.

The figure was not Matthias, nor was it Alin. Instead, when the fog cleared, he could see it was Alfred, whose blue eyes were wide and concerned - almost scared. He let out a sigh of relief when Lukas met his gaze. "Lord. Lukas. Lukas, are you okay?"

"Huh?" Lukas tried to shift into a sitting position but his whole body chose that moment to start hurting. A sharp pain jolted through his arm and he quickly clutched it close, wincing at the feeling. "Alfred?"

"Oh boy. Can you get up?"

Lukas shook his head. His brain was still foggy from whatever he'd been drugged with, and his head was pounding. His mouth was bone dry.

"...Dammit...well, looks like I have to do this myself, then. Do you need water, anything?"

Lukas looked around the room slowly, trying his best not to strain anything. "Is Matthias here? How long has it been?"

"Matthias isn't here."

"Where is he?"

"He went home."

"He left me?"

"He- look, okay. Lukas, you're not okay right now, okay? I'll explain it to you later but you have to tell me if you're okay staying here for the night or not." With that, Alfred reached under Lukas and picked him up like he weighed nothing, but was very, very careful about it.

"Wait, but-"

"No buts. I'm a life-saving professional."

"You're a small-town lifeguard," Lukas chuckled softly, a little delirious.