Happy Ficlet Friday. This one's for Queen of the Capes, who asked me to deliver on a scene I only hinted at in my last Inside Out Ficlet.
She also did the beta. Thank you very much.
Not For Lack Of Trying
The bar was dimly lit. Wood lined the walls, letting the interior appear darker than it probably was. Tin plate signs with old advertisements for various brands of beer were scattered all across the room. A flickering neon light above the bar added to Martha’s sense of discomfort. It was almost midnight and the bar was nearly empty. The local group of gamblers sat around a table close to the bar, playing poker and having too much to drink. They were laughing and joking, making lewd comments as Gwen passed them on her way to clear the tables.
Martha’s gaze drifted toward the bar where Bob, the owner, was drying glasses with a towel. As their gazes met, he greeted Martha with a nod. His face lit up and his lips split into a grin that once upon a time had had the girls fawn over him. Now, with his rapidly retreating hairline and an ever growing belly, they no longer flashed him a second glance.
Bob put the glass down and pointed toward a booth in a dark corner of the room, far from prying eyes. Bob’s smile crumbled and he gave her an apologetic shrug. She returned it in kind.
When Clark had still been a child, she’d figured this day might come. But he’d gone through his teens without any incident, and with his powers and a maturity well beyond his age, it had seemed like she'd never have to pick up her drunken son.
But here she was.
She let out a slow breath, hoping that she was going to be the right person for this. Clark was almost twice as heavy as a normal man and she barely came up to his chest. But she hadn’t had the heart to wake up Jonathan, who was nursing a nasty case of the flu and had turned in even earlier than usual.
With the next step, she reached the bar and from that new vantage point was able to see Clark, her tall and handsome son, who now looked decidedly disheveled. He was slouched in his seat, head resting on his arms and by the looks of it sleeping soundly. Her heart went out to him.
“I never thought I’d see him like this,” Bob remarked.
Martha swallowed. “Neither did I.”
“Need a hand to get him to your truck?” Bob asked.
Martha held her breath. The answer was probably yes. But Clark’s incredibly heavy frame might raise some questions she didn’t know how to answer. She closed her eyes. Why did he have to choose this day of all days to get his first alcohol intoxication? She’d figured that it might happen while he was out celebrating with his friends, not completely alone in a shady bar. That didn’t bode well for the reasons that had led him here.
“I’ll talk to him first,” she said.
“If you can get him to wake up,” Bob warned her. “The boy sure can hold his liquor. He had a lot of beer and I don’t know how much whiskey. I wanted to put a stop to it some time ago, but then we had a crisis in the kitchen; Gwen just started her shift and didn’t know the poor fella was already past his limit –” He took a deep breath. “I’m so sorry, Martha.”
She nodded, her lips tight. With Clark, there was certainly hope that it wasn’t as bad as it looked. He rarely drank more than a glass of beer, her chivalrous son usually offering to drive everyone home safely. But given his abilities, maybe he was better off than it seemed.
What had compelled him to drink himself into a stupor tonight? Martha blinked back a tear and straightened her shoulders. She knew he must have had a good reason, probably a painful one. Still, she wished he could have picked a day when Jonathan could have come to get him home.
Figuring there was no use trying to stall the inevitable, Martha crossed the room with a few purposeful steps and slipped onto the seat across from Clark. She reached out and squeezed his arm, ran her fingers through his dark curls and felt her heart clench in sympathy.
“Clark, wake up, honey.”
“Mom?” He sat up and blinked. His eyes were rimmed red, his face pale and drawn. He raised his brows in confusion. “What are you doing here?”
His speech wasn’t slurred, maybe sounding a bit groggy as if he hadn’t slept for days. He raked a hand through his hair, straightening the unruly mess.
“I came to bring you home, Clark.”
He furrowed his brows. “Why? It’s late, Mom. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“Well, someone drank himself into oblivion,” she said pointedly.
He snorted. “You needn’t have come. I’m not drunk.”
His lips curled in what appeared to be a wry smile, before he wrinkled his nose in disgust. Clark balled his hand into a fist until his knuckles turned white, but upon meeting her eyes, he pulled his hand back and hid it under the table in his lap.
He faced away. “Stone-cold sober, actually.” He laughed, brief, bitter and without any humor. “But it’s not for lack of trying.”
He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose, before he put them back on and met her gaze. Martha’s breath caught as she saw him anguished and forlorn.
“It would have been nice to forget, if only for a moment,” he said hoarsely.
“Forget about what?”
He heaved a long, heavy sigh. “Lana broke up with me, or I broke up with her. Same difference.”
His grief was palpable. He haphazardly pushed around the last empty glass on his table and stared into it as if he wished it was still full. She gave him time to sort his thoughts, to elaborate on what had happened between them that he wasn't sure who had broken up with whom. But the silence stretched awkwardly.
Perhaps he didn't want to talk about it. And what right did she have to dig in open wounds? Maybe what he needed was just someone who picked him up after a hard day and tucked him into bed. Maybe he’d prefer to be left alone, though she knew that was not an option after Bob had called her.
“I've known for a while this was going to happen,” Clark said softly.
Martha raised her brows. “You did? But you two seemed so happy together.”
“We were.” He pursed his lips. “Just recently, Lana told me she loves me for being so reliable. That I would never spring any crazy secrets on her, like Whitney who came out of the closet and admitted he was gay. She completely went off the handle, refusing to speak another word with him though they used to be so close in senior high. Or like Pete, who got a few tattoos and started talking about living as a dropout somewhere on the west coast.”
“Well, there’s little chance of you ever getting a tattoo.”
A wry smile played around his lips.
“Mo-om,” he said with a hint of exasperation. “The thing is, I can’t give her what she wants – a normal life, perhaps not even a family. How could I ever expect her to accept me for who I truly am?”
He kneaded his hands, avoiding her gaze. With his slumped shoulders and hanging head, he looked so small. Suddenly, she saw the scared child in him, hiding away in his Fortress of Solitude. She wanted to reach out, squeeze his hands and promise him that there was going to be that special someone for him who’d see his differences for the gifts they were, who’d recognize his tender heart and love him like he deserved to be loved.
But that was a promise she knew she couldn’t make.
“I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what was going on,” he mumbled. “So I started picking fights, getting angrier each time she would tell me about her picket fencing plans for our future until, finally, we broke up.” Clark leaned back and rubbed his eyes. “It’s strange really, because I also dream of having a family one day, of leading a normal life. But I’ll never belong with her.”
“Oh honey, you’ll find your place one day.” She gave his hand a soft squeeze. “However, I’m pretty sure it’s not inside this bar, between bottles of whiskey.”
He laughed. “Probably not.”
“The only problem now is to get you home.”
Clark raised his brows. “I told you, I’m sober, Mom. Alcohol doesn’t seem to affect me.” His lips curled in contempt. “Figures.”
“Ah, no, to Bob you’re certainly not sober,” Martha said. “He gave me a rough estimate of how much you’d had to drink and I tell you, you can’t walk a straight line.”
“I could even fly one,” Clark grumbled, good-naturedly.
She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Clark Jerome Kent, you'll let me drag you out of this bar now. And for your poor father's sake you better make it convincing.”
She stood up and came around to grab Clark's arm. “Bob, could you help me, please?”
Clark groaned. “Geez, Mom, did you have to do that?”
She glared at him. “Shush now. This is what you get for drinking more than you should!”
Clark rolled his eyes at that, but complied as Martha helped him up. “Isn't that supposed to be a hangover? Instead I only get to hang over your shoulder.”
“Trust me, you're not missing out on anything.”
“Uh, yeah, I do. The blackout."
