Freddy's mom always told him that getting a decent job was about working hard and having the right qualifications in your back pocket, and he always told her that he didn't need no qualifications for what he was trying to do. Straight to the local police academy, was his plan, just as soon as he got out of high school. But along the way he slipped and instead of a diploma he wound up on a bus out of town with all the pocket money and the Saturday job money he had managed to save over his short little life shoved into the back pocket of his jeans.
He's still trying to work out why he left. Some days he can't even remember the fight that he unilaterally decided was the last straw. His dad was all about football and weekends in the wilderness and all that shit to toughen Freddy up. His mom was more into ranting and raving about how much she hated her husband only to melt into docile domesticity as soon as he stepped into the room. All Freddy has to remember them by is the crooked little finger from his right hand from where they decided that he didn't need to go to hospital after a bad fall from his bike and a seething anger that doesn't feel like it belongs to him.
Mom was wrong though, hard work don't mean shit when it comes time to pay your own way in the world. What matters, is that you know the right people. Freddy doesn't wait a week to go back to Wacko Comics. He barely even manages twenty four hours. What he does manage is to sit through a rather unpleasant diatribe from Mr Brown on the xenosexual tendencies of Bruce Wayne and from there things fall into place.
A little 'kid you really know you're stuff' here. Some 'you know I could really use a hand around the place' there, and just like that he's keeping the stock room so Brown can sit on his ass all day, dreaming of stupid shit for superheros to do with their dicks. Freddy's pretty sure he could double business here in a week if he took over the cash register, if only because he wouldn't scare off all the kids.
"So, you found yourself a little job, all by yourself?" Holdaway grins at him.
Freddy narrows his eyes. "You don't like it?"
"I mean, I'm happy for you Freddy. I guess I just caught myself feeling a might tender towards you and figured I was gonna be all stress free once I knew you were back working for someone I trust."
"You trust the guy's at the cab company?" Freddy quirks en eyebrow.
"Sure!" Holdaway sits back, affronted. "Why, you got something you wanna say about those guys? Didn't they take you out and feed you a couple of times?"
"I'm just fooling with you." Freddy dives his line of site back towards his food. More burgers. This place does really good burgers, a hell of a lot nicer than Mexican food. The cab company really was fine, it's not the place's fault that he was too caught up in his own shit to really appreciate it.
"This is long term though." Holdaway continues. "You planning on staying up in Harlem?"
"I mean, I got a couple more days paid up at the hotel, but I don't see much point in staying. Mr Brown says him and his buddies have been looking for someone to help with the rent so I can go crash there. Ain't like I got too much stuff they need to make room for."
"Two days? That's no time."
"Relax." Freddy holds up his burger with a smile. "Food's too good for you to have seen the last of me. Don't take me off the Christmas card list just yet."
Holdaway tries to scowl, fumbling with some line about how he doesn't appreciate this disrespect, but it rings hollow. But the sad truth is that Freddy barely thinks about him when he's not in this diner. He wants Holdaway to be his friend because that means he's not so fucking alone in this city but he doesn't so much feel friendly towards him so much as indebted. Maybe that's all you get in New York, IOUs that never quite pay themselves off.
Freddy eats and Holdaway watches and Harlem strolls on by outside the diner. Soon to be lost to the clouds along with everything else above ninety sixth street.
---------
Weekends are prime selling time, so Freddy gets Mondays and Tuesdays off. He tried to barter Brown down to just the Monday but no fucking sale there. Not enough money in the bank to pay him for the sixth day.
"You might as well just take your cut of the rent straight off my paycheck when I move in." Freddy suggests.
Brown curls his mouth in bewildered disgust. "The fuck would I do that for? That's you're money. I don't give a fuck if I'm taking it out of your hand two seconds after I put it in there, but it's touching you're damn skin. Capice?"
Freddy holds up his hands, not prepared to argue. He's still not properly familiar with the difference between when Brown is properly angry and when he's just mildly riled up. Everything's more dramatic than it needs to be with him.
So Freddy stayed in Harlem a couple more days than he originally planned, slipping in and out of his room as quickly as possible, ears eternally pricked should Shaundra come tearing down the front door all over again.
She doesn't, though. She leaves him be. Only here for as long as it took Sport to track him down.
On the night he leaves, the rain comes thundering down and though he's finally got himself those boots he promised himself, Freddy's still waiting on the money for a raincoat to land in his pocket.
Yolanda watches him fill out the check out form with stubborn apathy. "Weren't you on't in here to get out of the rain, Freddy?"
Outside, the cracked seams of the city will have split open entirely, letting the trash wash out of the alleyways and clogging up the drains. No one calls it a flood because the water never gets high enough to seep across the threshold of any house with proper foundations, even the tenements.
The basements of New York are filled with the filthy and destitute, the last places anyone wants to wake up. Homeless people fight against the working girls who have sprung themselves free of their pimps for the night, just to get out of the weather. Freddy's seen them, emerging in the morning with nothing but shame between their teeth. He's sure it would be better to sleep on the street, at least if the pavement's flooded it kinda feels like getting soaked to your skin was inevitable.
He shrugs. "I got somewhere to be."
"Like a date?"
"Like an apartment."
"Oh." Yolanda looks completely nonplussed. "What was you staying here for if you can afford an apartment?"
He could explain that he's only just got himself a steady job, or that he was new to the area and needed a place to get started, or that he's a stupid little shit who didn't plan ahead for five minutes before crossing the country by himself because he couldn't stand to eat dinner in his parents' house for one more night.
So he smiles. "I like the place."
On his way out, Freddy can't hear the click of the door closing behind him for the torrent falling from the sky. Raindrops fall in golden curtains around streetlamps and for a moment, he's a small boy alone in a big city, holding up his head and praying he won't drown.
The boots hold up, not a single leakage. So some things at least, have changed. Freddy points his nose towards sixty fourth street and starts following it, hoping that the rain will wash the past few weeks away and let him start over.
-----------
By the time he gets to seventy ninth street, he's soaked, and the dim light coming from a misplaced banking tower has him rushing over to duck under the awnings. It doesn't do shit but remind him how cold the weather's getting, but as he watches water run off the sleeves of his leather jacket, he feels like the break is worth it.
The headlights of taxi's, somewhat dulled by the weather, crawl on by. Everything slows down in the rain. The cars, supposedly, so they don't send a tidal wave up and over any unsuspecting pedestrian but Freddy doesn't see why they would give a shit about anyone else's wellbeing over their own.
"What the fuck are you doing here?"
Freddy turns his head first, then lets his body follow when he sees who it is. "The fuck are you doing here?"
Clothes too thin for any season and hat collapsed in on itself from the downpour, Iris has tucked herself into the doorway of the bank, her face flat and defiant but her shoulders stooped.
She tries to toss her hair but it's too waterlogged to move like she wants it to. "I can be anywhere I wanna be."
"You sure? I don't think- I don't think that guy you were with would agree." Freddy swallows around Sport's name.
Iris's lips twitch nervously and she does something funny with her neck that isn't a bod or a shake. She's still wearing a pair of platforms, but even without them she'd be tall for her age. Right now her and Freddy are pretty much on par, and even if he's not exactly in a position to go joining any basketball teams he's still a few years older than her. He wants to ask her if she's really twelve years old, and then he wants to drag her to the nearest police station and demand that they get off their fucking asses and do something.
Instead he leans in and forces his voice to soften. "You sure about that?"
The light isn't enough to be sure, but up close it looks like she might have been crying. Her eyes slide away from his face as she shuffles and mumbles and fails to answer.
He can't even fucking imagine. He doesn't even know if she knows who he is, beyond him being some guy who has an idea of what she does. "You remember me, right? I used to come by your place on ninety second street."
Iris nods. "Yeah. Sport was real cut up that you stopped coming by." Freddy winces and she finds some of her usual grace to kick back into her posture. "He's not a bad guy, really. He likes you."
"If he's not a bad guy then why are you hiding from him?"
"I'm not hiding!"
"So he knows you're way out here, all on your own? Jesus, Iris, you're half way across the island from him."
"Screw you." She snarls. "It ain't none of your business what I'm doing here. What are you doing here?"
"Moving." Freddy gestures to his rucksack and immediately regrets it. Sport's gonna find her, and she'll tell him. No use pretending otherwise.
The shock of confusion and pity that mires her face hits him like a slug to the chest. "That all you got?"
"Don't see what else I'd need."
He's still got blocks and blocks to walk, and at the far end, some place he can be dry. But standing there under the awnings with Iris, he doesn't think he could leave her if he tried. They stand, dripping steadily on to the pavement, like that was what this place was built for.
When time has started to stagnate, Freddy scratches as his stupid sodden mop of hair and chivies his bag further up his shoulder. "You think you'll go back to him?"
"Who, Sport?" Iris laughs, and it doesn't sound too much like she's drowning. "Sure I will. It's not like I got anywhere else to go."
"Right."
Freddy waits with her until whatever dread she feels heading back to ninety second street is overridden by the goosebumps prickling up her arm. Bundling her into the back of a taxi, he stands back and lets the spray of water that picks up as it drives off pass him by.
Re: Sport/Orange - shady skeevey stuff - 6/?
He's still trying to work out why he left. Some days he can't even remember the fight that he unilaterally decided was the last straw. His dad was all about football and weekends in the wilderness and all that shit to toughen Freddy up. His mom was more into ranting and raving about how much she hated her husband only to melt into docile domesticity as soon as he stepped into the room. All Freddy has to remember them by is the crooked little finger from his right hand from where they decided that he didn't need to go to hospital after a bad fall from his bike and a seething anger that doesn't feel like it belongs to him.
Mom was wrong though, hard work don't mean shit when it comes time to pay your own way in the world. What matters, is that you know the right people. Freddy doesn't wait a week to go back to Wacko Comics. He barely even manages twenty four hours. What he does manage is to sit through a rather unpleasant diatribe from Mr Brown on the xenosexual tendencies of Bruce Wayne and from there things fall into place.
A little 'kid you really know you're stuff' here. Some 'you know I could really use a hand around the place' there, and just like that he's keeping the stock room so Brown can sit on his ass all day, dreaming of stupid shit for superheros to do with their dicks. Freddy's pretty sure he could double business here in a week if he took over the cash register, if only because he wouldn't scare off all the kids.
"So, you found yourself a little job, all by yourself?" Holdaway grins at him.
Freddy narrows his eyes. "You don't like it?"
"I mean, I'm happy for you Freddy. I guess I just caught myself feeling a might tender towards you and figured I was gonna be all stress free once I knew you were back working for someone I trust."
"You trust the guy's at the cab company?" Freddy quirks en eyebrow.
"Sure!" Holdaway sits back, affronted. "Why, you got something you wanna say about those guys? Didn't they take you out and feed you a couple of times?"
"I'm just fooling with you." Freddy dives his line of site back towards his food. More burgers. This place does really good burgers, a hell of a lot nicer than Mexican food. The cab company really was fine, it's not the place's fault that he was too caught up in his own shit to really appreciate it.
"This is long term though." Holdaway continues. "You planning on staying up in Harlem?"
"I mean, I got a couple more days paid up at the hotel, but I don't see much point in staying. Mr Brown says him and his buddies have been looking for someone to help with the rent so I can go crash there. Ain't like I got too much stuff they need to make room for."
"Two days? That's no time."
"Relax." Freddy holds up his burger with a smile. "Food's too good for you to have seen the last of me. Don't take me off the Christmas card list just yet."
Holdaway tries to scowl, fumbling with some line about how he doesn't appreciate this disrespect, but it rings hollow. But the sad truth is that Freddy barely thinks about him when he's not in this diner. He wants Holdaway to be his friend because that means he's not so fucking alone in this city but he doesn't so much feel friendly towards him so much as indebted. Maybe that's all you get in New York, IOUs that never quite pay themselves off.
Freddy eats and Holdaway watches and Harlem strolls on by outside the diner. Soon to be lost to the clouds along with everything else above ninety sixth street.
---------
Weekends are prime selling time, so Freddy gets Mondays and Tuesdays off. He tried to barter Brown down to just the Monday but no fucking sale there. Not enough money in the bank to pay him for the sixth day.
"You might as well just take your cut of the rent straight off my paycheck when I move in." Freddy suggests.
Brown curls his mouth in bewildered disgust. "The fuck would I do that for? That's you're money. I don't give a fuck if I'm taking it out of your hand two seconds after I put it in there, but it's touching you're damn skin. Capice?"
Freddy holds up his hands, not prepared to argue. He's still not properly familiar with the difference between when Brown is properly angry and when he's just mildly riled up. Everything's more dramatic than it needs to be with him.
So Freddy stayed in Harlem a couple more days than he originally planned, slipping in and out of his room as quickly as possible, ears eternally pricked should Shaundra come tearing down the front door all over again.
She doesn't, though. She leaves him be. Only here for as long as it took Sport to track him down.
On the night he leaves, the rain comes thundering down and though he's finally got himself those boots he promised himself, Freddy's still waiting on the money for a raincoat to land in his pocket.
Yolanda watches him fill out the check out form with stubborn apathy. "Weren't you on't in here to get out of the rain, Freddy?"
Outside, the cracked seams of the city will have split open entirely, letting the trash wash out of the alleyways and clogging up the drains. No one calls it a flood because the water never gets high enough to seep across the threshold of any house with proper foundations, even the tenements.
The basements of New York are filled with the filthy and destitute, the last places anyone wants to wake up. Homeless people fight against the working girls who have sprung themselves free of their pimps for the night, just to get out of the weather. Freddy's seen them, emerging in the morning with nothing but shame between their teeth. He's sure it would be better to sleep on the street, at least if the pavement's flooded it kinda feels like getting soaked to your skin was inevitable.
He shrugs. "I got somewhere to be."
"Like a date?"
"Like an apartment."
"Oh." Yolanda looks completely nonplussed. "What was you staying here for if you can afford an apartment?"
He could explain that he's only just got himself a steady job, or that he was new to the area and needed a place to get started, or that he's a stupid little shit who didn't plan ahead for five minutes before crossing the country by himself because he couldn't stand to eat dinner in his parents' house for one more night.
So he smiles. "I like the place."
On his way out, Freddy can't hear the click of the door closing behind him for the torrent falling from the sky. Raindrops fall in golden curtains around streetlamps and for a moment, he's a small boy alone in a big city, holding up his head and praying he won't drown.
The boots hold up, not a single leakage. So some things at least, have changed. Freddy points his nose towards sixty fourth street and starts following it, hoping that the rain will wash the past few weeks away and let him start over.
-----------
By the time he gets to seventy ninth street, he's soaked, and the dim light coming from a misplaced banking tower has him rushing over to duck under the awnings. It doesn't do shit but remind him how cold the weather's getting, but as he watches water run off the sleeves of his leather jacket, he feels like the break is worth it.
The headlights of taxi's, somewhat dulled by the weather, crawl on by. Everything slows down in the rain. The cars, supposedly, so they don't send a tidal wave up and over any unsuspecting pedestrian but Freddy doesn't see why they would give a shit about anyone else's wellbeing over their own.
"What the fuck are you doing here?"
Freddy turns his head first, then lets his body follow when he sees who it is. "The fuck are you doing here?"
Clothes too thin for any season and hat collapsed in on itself from the downpour, Iris has tucked herself into the doorway of the bank, her face flat and defiant but her shoulders stooped.
She tries to toss her hair but it's too waterlogged to move like she wants it to. "I can be anywhere I wanna be."
"You sure? I don't think- I don't think that guy you were with would agree." Freddy swallows around Sport's name.
Iris's lips twitch nervously and she does something funny with her neck that isn't a bod or a shake. She's still wearing a pair of platforms, but even without them she'd be tall for her age. Right now her and Freddy are pretty much on par, and even if he's not exactly in a position to go joining any basketball teams he's still a few years older than her. He wants to ask her if she's really twelve years old, and then he wants to drag her to the nearest police station and demand that they get off their fucking asses and do something.
Instead he leans in and forces his voice to soften. "You sure about that?"
The light isn't enough to be sure, but up close it looks like she might have been crying. Her eyes slide away from his face as she shuffles and mumbles and fails to answer.
He can't even fucking imagine. He doesn't even know if she knows who he is, beyond him being some guy who has an idea of what she does. "You remember me, right? I used to come by your place on ninety second street."
Iris nods. "Yeah. Sport was real cut up that you stopped coming by." Freddy winces and she finds some of her usual grace to kick back into her posture. "He's not a bad guy, really. He likes you."
"If he's not a bad guy then why are you hiding from him?"
"I'm not hiding!"
"So he knows you're way out here, all on your own? Jesus, Iris, you're half way across the island from him."
"Screw you." She snarls. "It ain't none of your business what I'm doing here. What are you doing here?"
"Moving." Freddy gestures to his rucksack and immediately regrets it. Sport's gonna find her, and she'll tell him. No use pretending otherwise.
The shock of confusion and pity that mires her face hits him like a slug to the chest. "That all you got?"
"Don't see what else I'd need."
He's still got blocks and blocks to walk, and at the far end, some place he can be dry. But standing there under the awnings with Iris, he doesn't think he could leave her if he tried. They stand, dripping steadily on to the pavement, like that was what this place was built for.
When time has started to stagnate, Freddy scratches as his stupid sodden mop of hair and chivies his bag further up his shoulder. "You think you'll go back to him?"
"Who, Sport?" Iris laughs, and it doesn't sound too much like she's drowning. "Sure I will. It's not like I got anywhere else to go."
"Right."
Freddy waits with her until whatever dread she feels heading back to ninety second street is overridden by the goosebumps prickling up her arm. Bundling her into the back of a taxi, he stands back and lets the spray of water that picks up as it drives off pass him by.