Fic: On Watt Street (SV/SB Clark/Adam)
Title: On Watt Street
Chapter 1/?
Author: LadyJanelly
Fandom: Smallville/Sorority Boys
Disclaimer: I do not own the boys or the worlds they inhabit.
Rating: R
Warnings: Mentioned non-con, Slashy stuff, Adult content
Thanks to
roxymissrose for the OMG fast feedback.
Summary: Adam's weekend to get his head together takes a little longer than he thought it would.
"So, that night--you know," Adam makes the appropriate air quotes. "Our date," He can't believe he's asking this, it feels like he's openly admitting how much this is bothering him. "Nothing happened, right?"
Jimmy says no, but it's not a convincing no, and shit, shit, shit, Adam knows something happened. He takes a sip of his beer and keeps the bold grin on his face and lets the thought sink in. Something happened, but he doesn’t even remember, so how much could it matter?
He thinks he's alright with it, really. Just like he thinks he means it when he tells the guys he's going to go out driving on the weekend. That he'll be back in time for class on Monday. He doesn’t question himself as he packs a suitcase for Adam and an overnight bag for Adina.
Three weeks later, he stops the car on the rough side of Metropolis and isn't quite sure how he got there.
"It happened," he admits as he steps out of his car. The neighborhood is full of night clubs, harsh lines of neon make everything seem brighter, candy-colored cars and clothing. The bass line thuds out through open doors, past the lines of pretty people (and even Adam isn't blind to the fact that they're almost all men) waiting for a chance to get in.
It happened, and he had been too drugged to know what it felt like, if he hated it or enjoyed it, if he maybe, possibly felt connected to someone during sex, or if it was just the usual mix of exercise, conquest and orgasm that he had always known.
A man passes by, too-big teeth and his hair buzzed short to hide the receding hairline. He says...something. Talking.
"Not interested," doesn’t seem to be much of a deterrent. "Get the fuck away from me you God-damn freak," works much better, but it makes people look. Adam decides maybe it'd be safer to head a block over.
Well, probably not safer, but quieter at least. Men in cars cruise by, slow, and other men loiter in darkened doorways or lean against the telephone poles.
He'd never needed a woman bad enough to pick up a street-walker, but he knows whores when he sees them. Head down, hands in his pockets, he moves between the small groups, the solo workers.
An idea twists in his head. Wouldn't it be better to have something he could hold onto, some real memory instead of an idea? He still has almost a hundred dollars in cash on him, not a bad price to pay for a memory.
Even a bad one.
He keeps walking but lifts his head to start "shopping." It should be as easy as choosing a stripper for a lap dance (the sweet little Puerto-Rican with daisies on her garter or the raunchy Italian girl with the bleached pubes?) but it isn't.
Too young, too young, old enough but scary as shit. Too drag, too high, too worn-out. Too young, too young, too young.
He finds himself at the end of the strip. Beyond seems to be the beginning of a warehouse district. Not exactly safe. He stops and leans back against the brick wall, trying to decide what he wants to do next.
Someone moves past--he sees worn work boots and faded denim pass through his range of vision. The person stops a polite distance away as Adam tries to decide if he should make another pass down the strip or go back to his car or what.
There's a crinkle of plastic beside him.
"M&M?"
Adam is startled into looking up at his neighbor. Tall. Built. Dark hair and green eyes. Pretty for a guy but not in that "would make a cute girl" sort of way; his face is too hard, too angular for that. He has a hopeful smile, the first genuine smile Adam's seen in Metropolis.
"Um, yeah, thanks." He holds out his hand and the guy pours about a third of the bag into it. Adam watches him as he does, taking in the dark eyelashes, strong but careful hands. Not too young or old. Clean. Fit. Attractive. Sane-seeming. And yeah, this is more like it. Maybe there's something for Adam down here after all.
"First time on Watt Street?" The younger man asks, popping an M&M into his mouth.
"Where?" Adam looks around for a sign.
The guy grins, but it's not like he's laughing at Adam. "I'll take that as a yes." More candy-coated chocolates are consumed. "So whatcha think?"
Adam glances around at the cars and kids and the burn-outs that are barely still people.
"It's not as easy as I thought it'd be."
Something flashes behind the guy's eyes, but Adam's never been any good at reading people.
"It never is..." He pops the last of the M&Ms into his mouth. "I'm Clark, by the way." He offers his hand.
Adam takes the hand, gives it his most confident "meeting with the dean" shake. There's just something surreal about the moment, something off. "Adam."
Clark smiles that out-of-place, too-real smile again. "Pleasure to meet you, Adam. Want some coffee? There's a great place not far from here. It's cheap and not too terrible for a bottomless cup."
Adam wonders if the vice guys have been hitting the neighborhood hard, because that's nothing like the pick-up he was expecting. Still, it gives him more time to figure out exactly what he wants and if he has the nerve to go through with it.
"Sure. Coffee sounds great." And he really hopes that's not code for some crazy sex act or worse.
Clark leads the way to a little diner, and apparently a coffee is just a coffee. They know Clark there--the waitress confirms "The usual?" with him before taking Adam's order.
"So," Clark says after a fortifying sip of java. "You don't exactly seem like the Watt Street type. What were you hoping to find down here?"
Adam strips the paper wrapper off of a straw and crinkles it into a tiny ball. "It's complicated."
Clark just sits and waits, his unwavering attention on Adam, but not so intense that it's uncomfortable.
Clark sips from his cup.
Adam uses his straw to put a drop of coffee on the ball of paper, watches it unwind like a snake. The silence stretches too long and right. If he wants to purchase a service, he should probably describe it. Since he's not exactly sure what he wants done, he starts at the beginning.
"Okay. So. Like a month ago, right?" His voice is flippant, and why shouldn't it be? It's not like he can even remember it. "I let a guy think I'd sleep with him when I didn’t plan to. We went up to his room, he put something in my drink and I woke up the next morning with--" he struggles for a word for the first time, "--evidence."
Clark just listens, no disgust on his face. Waiting patiently because Adam still hasn't answered the question.
"I can't remember it. Any of it," Adam tries to explain. "If I could, maybe I'd be able to get my head together, you know?"
Clark looks dubious and shrugs. "Maybe." He finishes his coffee and drops a few bills on the table. "You have a place to go?"
Adam remembers a rest-stop the night before, the arm-rest of the back seat in his neck, the leather squeaking as he tried to get comfortable. He wouldn't try to fuck a hundred and ten pound sorority girl in there, much less a guy Clark's size. He could get them a hotel room but not without using his credit card, and for some reason he found himself reluctant to do that.
"Not exactly, no," he says at last, trying not to sound like a loser who sleeps in his car.
Clark nods like he's not surprised. "I've got a room nearby, if you're interested."
And shit, shit, shit, this is it. Room, bed, sex. He's too nervous to be hard, and he hopes he gets over that before he embarrasses himself.
They're on the dimly lit third floor hall of some run-down apartment building before he realizes how reckless this is. Warm smiles and easy conversation aside, he doesn’t know this guy. He could be five minutes from getting robbed or beaten up or...shit, with the size difference, anything Clark wants to do with him.
But when Clark leads the way into the tiny apartment, Adam follows.
The room...really is a dive. Smaller than the rooms at the frat house, grayish carpet, cracked plaster, a stain on one wall that looks a decade or more old. Hot plate on top of a mini-fridge. One door besides the front, and he hopes it's a bathroom and not a closet. The one window can't be much larger than the minimum legal fire escape. There's not much for furniture--a dresser with a small radio and a stack of library books on it. One twin-size mattress and box-springs sits on the floor by the window. Another set had been stored upright against the opposite wall, but Clark pulled it down, got sheets out of the dresser and started making the bed.
"Will it do?" Clark asks, and Adam can't blame him for not wanting to sleep where he works. There's something just a little too matter-of-fact about all this, but maybe guys are like that together. None of the pretending to be romantic or need to make shit up like there is with women.
"Yeah, great." And should he get naked now? Or will Clark do it for him? Uncharted territory and he's about to ask when there's a bright chirping sound and Clark scrambles in his pockets for his cell-phone. He checks the caller ID and looks annoyed. He gives Adam and apologetic glance and flips it open.
"Mikey, I'm with some one. You can't just..." his voice trails off, his face loses some of its color. "Oh Jesus, what've you done?" Another pause. "Hold on. I'll be right there. I'm going to hang up now, but I'll be right there."
He snaps the phone closed then open again. The number he dials is three digits long. Adam feels like a voyeur, listening to Clark order an ambulance and give an address. Finished with the call he grabs a duffle bag from another drawer and is almost out the door before he remembers Adam's still there.
"Will you be here when I get back?"
Adam shakes his head. "I need to go move my car before I get towed." It's as good an excuse as any. This isn't going to happen tonight; no point in sticking around and being in the way.
Clark frowns. "The door'll lock you out automatically. Here." Keys are tossed and Adam catches them.
"I'll be back as soon as I can," Clark says, and then he's rushing out the door.
The room's almost too quiet in the vacuum of Clark's absence.
Adam walks back to where he left his car, moves it to a lot near Clark's apartment and pulls the canvas cover over it. Things would have been so much easier if he'd just drove off instead, but he had Clark's keys. He might not think of himself as the nicest guy in the world, but he's better than that.
Clark comes back just after Adam does, and Adam almost doesn’t recognize him. It's the eyes more than anything--so much younger than when he'd left, and older too in some strange way.
"What the fuck, Clark?"
He reaches out for Clark's elbow, to steady him, bring him into the apartment. There's blood. On Clark's hands, his shirt, a smudge across one cheek.
Clark jerks back before Adam can touch him. "Don’t," he says, his tone warning. The next words take a second to process. "Mikey's positive."
"Positive? Sure? What...oh. Fuck." Adam backs off because he has no idea how to cope with this, none at all.
Clark relaxes a little, gestures to the bathroom door. "Can you turn on the shower? Full hot. I don't want to get blood on anything."
They don't talk much. Clark asks for things, like a garbage bag for his dirty clothes to go into, and Adam gets them from wherever they are in the tiny apartment.
Somehow it doesn’t really register that Clark's naked in the shower and Adam's still in the room. This stopped being about sex the moment Clark knocked on his own door. Adam isn’t sure what it's become, but he's thinking about something other than his own crisis. He doesn’t want to leave. He doesn’t want to be "that guy," the insensitive asshole, anymore.
On the other side of the shower curtain, Clark sinks down to the fiberglass floor of the shower stall.
"So, uh...what the hell happened out there" And see? This sensitive thing isn't so hard.
Clark's quiet for a bit, and Adam glances into check on him. Clark's sitting on the floor, water streaming off of his hair and down his shoulders. "That was my friend Mikey," he says at last. "He's always calling me for some stupid reason, like going out for donuts at 3am, even when he knows I’m doing something important. He used to work Watt Street, but he got out a few months ago and met somebody."
Clark rests his head on his knees. "His old pimp found him tonight and took what Mikey wouldn't sell. He thought Marc would think he'd cheated on him. He did something stupid."
The steam stops and Adam guesses the hot water is gone. Clark doesn’t seem up to doing anything about it, so Adam turns it off and tosses him a towel.
"Sorry I was gone so long," Clark said as he caught the towel and stood up to dry off. "I just had to go help him until the EMTs got there. Sometimes they're a little slow." He leaves "In this neighborhood" unsaid, but it's there.
Adam shrugs. "Not a problem, man." He's tired. Clark looks wiped. "Look, I'm gonna go. Let you get some sleep."
Clark gives him a funny look. "You're already here. The bed's already down and made. Just crash. It's fine."
And going out there and getting back in his car and finding a hotel isn't sounding like a good time. "If you're sure," Adam says.
In a moment of freakish modesty he goes into the bathroom to change while Clark gets into bed. The room's darker when he comes out, lit only by the street lamps outside.
He crawls into the spare bed, pulls the sheet up over his shoulders. There's nothing but quiet for a long time and he's almost ready to drift off when Clark calls his name across the empty space between them.
"Yeah, Clark?" It feels somehow nice to call Clark's name, safe and good.
"I was thinking. About what you said over coffee. What you're looking for--Adam, I don't think you're going to find it on Watt Street." His voice is silent for a moment, and Adam can almost feel Clark weighing his words. "Give it a little while. Just three weeks or so. If it's still what you want...If it's still what you want, I'll make sure it's as close to good as it can be, okay?"
"Okay," Adam says, not really believing it, not really thinking he'll take Clark up on the offer. Something has changed, and he's not sure exactly what, but he's pretty sure a quick fuck won't do what he needs. "Go to sleep."
"Good night," Clark says, and Adam lies awake listening until the younger man settles, until his breathing evens out.
"Shit." He whispers into the dark, because he'd been looking for simple, and he sure as hell hasn't found it.