I reiterate - Freddy's age is not going to be locked down in the text of this fic at any point. It's safe to assume he's between sixteen and twenty but exactly where he falls within that rage is kind of unimportant and kind of up to you. What you need to remember is that most people peg him as being a minor. Point being - this section contains a sliver of Freddy taking control of his own sexuality a character who is definitely a much older adult likes it, and if that sounds at all uncomfortable to you then you might wanna skip this chunk.

------------------------------------------------------


The clock on the back wall says it's two thirty in the morning and that Larry is late. Freddy's hands won't stay still, jumping through his hair and skipping rhythms out on his knees. He wants to sleep, but even silk sheets couldn't get him under tonight. The garage is nowhere near as frigid as the streets but it's a far sight off war, and his rain soaked jeans have him shivering, wondering when the hell they're supposed to dry off.

At least his feet are dry. He'll take wet legs over wet feet any day of the week. every now and then he thinks he catches a whiff of smoke and has to remind himself that he never got within a hundred metres of the fire, and the rain will have washed any trace of it down the street with the rest of the sewage.

Every second thought starts with him envisioning what he's going to say when he gets back to the apartment. Blue shaking his head, letting them all know that much as he doesn't like how it turned out, Brown sealed his own fate. Pink whinging about the smell of smoke now baked into the walls along with everything else. Brown shrugging and insisting that he meant for everything to go down the way it is, that he doesn't have anything resembling regrets. It's a physical effort to remind himself that none of that exists anymore, it can't. He stood up off that awful fucking sofa that morning and he will never sit back down.

A car comes rumbling into the garage, windscreen wipers still working a mile a minute. Freddy sits up, blinking fast to clear his head and get a read on who's driving as it pulls into an empty spot and the engine cuts.

"Fucking traffic." Larry hisses, slamming the door as he steps out of the car. "Whole city's backed up worse than a smackhead sailor."

Joe holds out a hand for the tin of cash that every cabbie carries with them. "That the rain?"

"Nah, it ain't the fucking rain. I know what rain traffic looks like. There's cop cars everywhere and you got crooks running scared up and down the island. I was having to play it real careful with who I picked up. Looks like some kinda bust."

"Who'd they bust? The blacks?"

"Nah, if it was Harlem it wouldn't have been a problem for me. Everyone I saw looking to head on the lamb was white."

Joe nods. "You reckon you picked up any crooks?"

Larry shakes his head. "Once I saw what was happening, I stayed away from white guys. Easy." His eyes flicker around the room, clocking which cars are in and out, the time, the girl on the switchboard, before finally settling on Freddy. "What the fuck?"

"Kid's been here for hours." Joe tells him. "Said he needs to speak to you."

Larry approaches cautiously, hunching over slightly even as Freddy rises to his feet to greet him. It's weird, seeing him compromise his posture like that. Not that Freddy knows him well enough to tell ass from elbow about how this guy looks on most of his days off.

"Hey, Freddy." Larry's brow is furrowed, the sweeping bow of his lips as flat as it ever gets. "What's up?"

This is possibly a very bad idea. Freddy smiles and can see by the apprehension that crosses Larry's face that it's weak at best. "Hey, Larry. Um...can we talk somewhere?"

"Uh..." Larry looks round at the clock again. It's late, he doesn't wanna be here. He never asked to have Freddy show up and demand some kind of mercy, but he's one of the few pieces of this city that seems capable of granting it. "Sure. Lemme get my coat."

The two of them scurry through the rain to a late night diner where Larry buys Freddy a milkshake and hustles him off to a far table at the back. They sit, and Freddy is uncomfortably aware of the dark circles under Larry's eyes and the slump of his shoulders. He's exhausted, he should be at home.

"Wish I could say it was good to see you, kid." Larry smiles a wry smile. "But I got this feeling that you ain't got no good news for me."

Freddy tries to laugh and a strangled sort of sound comes out of his mouth instead. He takes a gulp of milkshake and tries to focus on the sweet thud of milk against his tongue. "You know how you said that the cops were busting a whole lotta folk tonight?"

The fear that crosses Larry's face is momentary but it's profound. "You caught up in that?"

"I..." Freddy stops, clears his throat, breathes in deep and tries not to let the warmth of the diner have him thinking that he could start napping. "I think they went after the Cabots. And like...everyone who worked for them."

A long, slow exhale and Larry collapses back in his chair. "Yeah, I was kinda thinking the same thing."

"You know about the Cabots?"

"Know about the Cabots...sheesh, listen you yourself, kid. If you're below a certain pay grade in this town, you've heard of the Cabots, that's just how it is. They're always hiring, number one employers of the white working class in New York city. How were you involved?"

"I was working for this guy, and sleeping on his couch. He ran a comic shop. Thought it was all pretty normal but one time he left me in there alone and I found the log books out back and-"

"And those log books didn't have shit to do with the amount of product actually shifted." Larry finishes. "Fuck. You know who the main point of contact was, between your boss and the Cabots I mean."

"A guy called Vic Vega. Big, kinda quiet. He-" Freddy stops talking. Larry's mouth has gone very tight and his face very pale. He knows exactly who Vic Vega is.

"Shit."

"Yeah."

"So what happened?"

"So, the place this guy lived, where I was living with Blue, was right over this comic shop. I went out to get some stuff done before heading home this evening. When I left the shop everything was fine but when I got back..."

"Fire?" Larry raises an eyebrow. Freddy nods. "Yeah, that's how they work. The raids started sometime this afternoon, best as I can tell. So they send round guys scorching as much earth as possible before the cops arrive. Gives them an easier day in court."

Freddy takes a deep breath and hates how it shudders against his lungs. He tries another sip of his milkshake but it comes out tacky and gross. "I...um...I got there when they were arresting the guy I was working for. And everything was on fire. I figured...I don't know if my name was on anything official. I just..."

"You got out of there." Larry says, quietly. He leans in over the table, folding his arms in front of him and it feels so fucking kind. He's not yelling, not angry, not a bone of judgement in his body. Freddy once handed in a piece of homework late and his parents didn't speak to him for the rest of the day when he got back from detention. "That's smart. You don't wanna go to jail for that shit. Bet you didn't even realise what you were getting into when you took the job."

Freddy shakes his head. "I just...I really needed the money."

"Hey, I've been there. You know what they say, don't look a gift horse in the mouth." Larry's voice drops even lower, and the care he's taking makes Freddy's stomach start flip flopping. "So, why'd you come to see me?"

And there's the kicker. There should be friends, contacts, other places he could go. But there's something about the guy you first meet when you come to the big city, how he keeps cropping up in your life through no effort of your own. Freddy could have tried any number of different people, he could have tried to track down Travis fucking Bickle if the mood had taken him, and it would have felt like he was dragging the universe out of wack.

Freddy wants to tell Larry that he feels safe and stable in a way no one else in this city does to him, not even Blue. Instead he shrugs with one shoulder. "I don't got many friends here."

Larry hums. "I dunno why you decided to come to New York, Freddy, but I'm not sure if it's the right place for you."

It's the right place for anyone, it has to be. Freddy's eyes sting and air doesn't seem to be making it to his lungs properly. On the first sob, he panics, cramming his fist into his mouth for fear of doing it again.

It's not the reaction Larry was expecting. "Wow, kid. Slow down, it's alright, it's alright." He reaches over to lay a hand on Freddy's wrist, slowly prying his hand away from his face. Larry's hand are so big and so warm. Freddy wishes he wouldn't let go.

"I got...I lost all my shit, all my money." Freddy gasps. "I don't got no place to go. I...I can't go back to California."

Larry watches him, lips slightly parted as he breathes deep. He just looks solid, safe. He holds out his arms and beckons Freddy over. "C'mere, kid."

Freddy practically launches himself over the table, falling into Larry's arms and burying his face in the older man's shoulder. The terror of the night smacks him hard over the head and before he can reach for a handhold he's over the cliff and crying for things lost to the fire, for whatever shit he's going to have to do tomorrow to pull himself back into shape.

Larry doesn't tell him to stop, a kindness he's not used to. He pulls Freddy down to sit in his lap and doesn't complain when handfuls of his shirt start to stretch around the fists balled up in them. "It's alright. I got you. It's all gonna be alright."

The last person who properly hugged Freddy was his grandmother, some two weeks before he got the hell out of Bakersfield. He hadn't even realised he'd been missing human contact, but it rushes up at him so fast as to knock the wind out of him, as if he wasn't having enough trouble working out how to breathe.

He calms down in increments, and when he finally finds it in himself to stop his efforts to burrow into Larry's chest, he becomes uncomfortably aware that the attention of the diner is largely directed at the two of them. He tries to pull away from himself, imagining what the picture must look like, and he has too admit that it's close to damning.

"There, that better?" Larry fishes a handkerchief out of a pocket and starts wiping tears off Freddy's face. He's still got one arm looped loosely around Freddy's middle, and regardless of what anyone else might think is going on between the two of them, it feels nice.

Freddy nods. "I'm so fucked."

"We're gonna work this out." Larry's all business, deadly serious. No room for meaningless platitudes here. "I'm guessing you came to me to find out if I could put you up."

"Yeah."

"Well, you gotta let me level with you, alright?" Larry finishes up with the handkerchief and Freddy takes it as the signal to stand himself up and return to his own chair. "I got a history with the Cabot's myself, and it's a little stickier than yours."

Freddy's eyes widen. Larry's so straight edge it hurts, he can't imagine him putting a toe out of line without good cause. "No shit? Why?"

"I needed money, and I needed friends." Larry's mouth quirks, not quite a smile. "Sound familiar at all?"

"Yeah."

"Well, there you go. That's how I met your pal Blue, which is how I wound up living in that shitty apartment that you're running from. Honestly, if the two of youse weren't still trying to live out of that litter tray, I'd say it was a good riddance."

"Wait, Blue worked for the Cabots?" Freddy frowns.

"Oh yeah." Larry's eyes go wide and Freddy's almost sorry he asked. "Yeah...Blue's worked for all sorts of folks. He's good people, but he's done some shit, y'know?"

Freddy has no idea. "Sure."

"Anyway, me and him did a couple of jobs together, nothing I'm proud of. He snuck me out of the organisation through a back door and I've been home free since."

"That's pretty good luck."

"Eh, you can only use guy's so many times before the police learn to recognise you. I had maybe one good run left in me and the Cabots had enough people to not waste too much time on me. I paid my dues."

"You didn't ever think about getting out of town?" Freddy's learned a lot these past few months. Most importantly, what New York folk sound like. Larry's not from round these parts, he has something he could go back to, or something to keep running from.

Larry levels a stare at Freddy. "You thinking about getting out of town just now?"

That's all there is to it. Once you've got to New York, everything else feels like a downgrade. Freddy could go anywhere, but his mind was made up before he so much as saw the burning effigy of Wacko Comics. He's staying, he's gonna keep trying to swim no matter how many times he sinks.

"No." He replies in a quiet voice. He sucks on the straw of his milkshake and the thick gloop mixes with the seemingly endless quantities of snot that a good cry always gets out of him. His dad always said that was because his nose was too big.

Larry's eyes zero in on him, and that stupid uncomfortable giddiness that Freddy doesn't know what to do with strikes once again. He pretends he doesn't notice as he makes a big show of swallowing, wiping up a spare drop from his lips and sucking hard on the finger he uses for it.

"What I'm getting at here." Larry says, slowly. "Is that I'm not the best person for you to be staying with just now. I don't know how deep the cops have broken in with the Cabots and I don't know if my name would be on any pieces of paper. Right now you wanna stay away from anyone with any link to the Cabots. Vic Vega's got a reputation for not squealing, but if the whole organisation has gone down then all bets are off. Brown might have kept you off the books but Vega still knows who you are."

The calm that had started to settle over Freddy vanishes in an instant. He looks up sharply at Larry and anger starts to colour the hazy, mismatched fog of his brain. What the fuck are they doing here of Larry can't help him?

"What the fuck am I supposed to do?" Freddy snaps

Larry flips to a frown in an instant. "You know, I don't gotta talk this shit through with you at all if I don't want to. I should be at home, asleep right now."

"Ah yeah, that home you're not gonna let me in to."

Squaring his shoulders and setting his jaw, Larry's wide enough to blot out the fucking sun if he wanted to. He keeps his voice light, but for the first time Freddy can see how he might have made a decent criminal. "You wanna try that again?"

Chewing on his tongue, Freddy casts his eyes sideways. "Sorry, man."

"S'alright. You're in a tight spot. A guy can say shit he don't mean in the moment, but you gotta remember who's on your side here, kid."

He's right. The number of people Freddy has on his side are pretty minimal. even if Larry was a Grade A scumbag, he's not in a position to turn down his help, let alone sniff at it. Assuming Pink and Blue are out for the count for the time being, Joe will tolerate him and not much more, Travis is a fucking psycho who probably doesn't know how to help someone if he tried, Yolanda only helped him when he paid her and Iris is powerless to do shit, the bottom of his barrel of friends is starting to look pretty clear.

A voice in his head suggests that he might have other options. It sounds like Sport, it sounds like Shaundra. He doesn't want it.

"So, who else have you got apart from me?" Larry asks. "And I want you to be really sure that these folk don't have shit to do with the Cabots."

From the way Larry's been talking, that's ruling out half of New York City. Even the girls who work for Sport who might recognise him are caught up in Cabot shit, because Sport evidently had beef with them before they got taken down. He lets out a huff of laughter.