Chapter Text
“Adam,” Beth says, her face all scrunched up in a way Adam doesn’t understand, “What’s in Bucharest?”
They’re eating dinner in Central Park, waiting for the raccoons. It was Beth’s idea. She’d packed them both mac and cheese in Tupperware containers and pulled Adam out of his apartment, even though Adam had been reading a brand new book about black holes. Adam thinks he likes her more now that they aren’t dating anymore. He still loves her, and he misses the sex, but it is a lot easier to spend time with Beth when there’s no pressure to talk to her parents or understand all her friends’ little jokes. For her part, Beth seems much more relaxed around him now that she isn’t always trying to figure him out. Adam doesn’t like when people try to ‘figure him out,’ he doesn’t think he’s very complicated.
“My new job,” He tells her again, “Weren’t you listening?”
Beth sighs and gets that look she always gets when she’s about to tell him something she thinks he won’t like. Something like ‘you can’t always eat mac and cheese for dinner’ or ‘let’s go to the theater’ or ‘I’m sorry, Adam, I just don’t think I can do this anymore.’
“No, Adam, I understand that. You’re right, it’s a really good job,” It is. He’ll be engineering parts for rockets and satellites, parts that will actually end up in space, and he won’t have to talk to anyone if he doesn’t want to, “But what else is in Bucharest?”
Adam is prepared for this. He’s bought books, and spent hours pouring over Google search results. “There are many things in Bucharest. Bucharest is the capital city of Romania, and the largest. It is considered a cultural center for Romania, and there are many monuments, theaters, night clubs-”
“Adam. Adam!” Beth reaches out and squeezes her hand around his arm, like she always did when out with her friends or her parents. Adam trails to a stop and stares at her, waiting.
“For you, Adam,” She says, “What else is in Bucharest for you? Because I know you’re not harboring a secret desire to go clubbing.”
“I could do that here,” He points out, which only seems to make her more frustrated with him.
“Your friends are here,” She reminds him, “Me and Harlan, we’re both here. Your home.”
“I can’t afford the mortgage without a job,” He reminds her, but she pushes forward like he hasn’t even spoken.
“What about your routines, Adam? It’s Romania. It’s Eastern Europe. They’re not gonna have your favorite brand of macaroni, or your favorite rocks to set your telescope on.”
Adam frowns, staring at her. “Of course they won’t,” He says, confused. Why would she think he didn’t know that? He knows that Central Park is only in New York City, he knows that he will have to try and find new food. He is autistic. He is not stupid.
Beth sighs, and her shoulders sink down until she looks like she is going to start crying or hugging him again. He’s not sure which would be more alarming right now. “Then why are you going?” She says, looking at him with big wet eyes. Oh no. It’s the crying.
“Because they are going to pay me lots of money,” Adam explains patiently. Maybe if he rearranges the words, says them a little differently, she will understand him better.
Beth groans and hides her face in her hands.
-----
“The hell is in Bucharest, Adam?”
Adam sighs and zips his suitcase closed with more force than is probably necessary. “Have you been talking to Beth?”
Harlan frowns at him over a box marked for storage. “Why, did Beth try to talk some sense into you, too?”
Adam tucks the suitcase under the bed and reaches for a box. He isn’t bringing much. A suitcase of clothes and toiletries, a carry-on with his laptop, fidget cube, book, and gum for the plane. This box will be shipped over to his new apartment, filled with anything that he can’t cheaply replace, like his weighted blanket and the flag from Dad’s funeral. Everything else, Harlan is going to put into storage for him, so it will be ready when Adam one day moves back to New York. Because Harlan is very insistent that Adam will one day move back.
“You said I needed a job,” Adam says, tucking his photographs of Beth and Harlan and his parents into the box. “I got a job.”
“I meant a job here, Adam. Where you won’t be alone.”
“I already live alone.”
“But you have Beth upstairs and me within driving distance. Someone can come get you in an emergency. If you have an emergency in Romania, it’s at least 12 hours on a plane before we can get to you, and that’s not counting hours of airport nonsense.”
This is a much more valid argument than Romania’s lack of Amy’s Mac & Cheese, but it is also another thing Adam has already thought about.
“Beth said she would teach you to Skype,” He tells Harlan, sealing the box up with packing tape, “And I had to promise to locate the nearest ER and police station to my apartment as soon as I move in, although I told Beth I will probably be jet lagged and need to sleep first.” Beth had not been amused. Adam was going to be very tired his first few days in Romania.
Harlan places a hand on Adam’s shoulder. Adam tries not to flinch, even though Harlan knows Adam hates it when he can’t see people coming first. Adam looks up, staring at the bridge of Harlan’s nose like he and Beth have practiced.
“I just don’t think you’ve thought this through, Adam,” Harlan says in the gentle voice he uses for Adam’s meltdowns. Adam fidgets, hands twisting at his side.
“I’m going, Harlan.”
Harlan sighs. “Yeah, I know you are. You’re gonna be a stubborn old fool, just like me and your Dad.”
“I’m not even 30 yet.”
-----
Adam didn’t like planes, to begin with.
He hadn’t had much opportunity to fly before, but he remembered them being cramped and crowded, not enough room to stretch out his legs, nowhere to go when he got tense. And they smelled wrong, flat and artificial.
That was a regular flight, a few hours to visit family out of state. This was trans-continental, and between arriving early to get checked in, going through security, the flight itself, and going through customs, fifteen hours had passed before Adam could finally walk out of the airport. It’s 6PM, which means it’s 11AM in New York. Adam hadn’t slept well on the plane, cramped and missing his bed, but he still feels over-excited as he navigates the streets of Bucharest, jittery even. He drapes the strap of his carry-on over his shoulder, one hand pulling the wheeled suitcase behind him, while the other flaps against his thigh, rhythmic and soothing. He feels dirty and sweaty. He needs a shower. He needs dinner, which he would not be able to get in his apartment. He’s going to have to drop his things off and then eat out at a restaurant, and the thought makes him more anxious.
Adam knows, from studying maps with Beth, that the lab he’ll be working in is in a good part of the city, busy and bright, easily accessible by public transport, if he’s feeling brave, or by a good half hour walk, if he isn’t.
His apartment, on the other hand, is off a side street, in an area of the city Beth did not seem entirely pleased with. She’d bought him pepper spray, which he had not been able to carry on to the plane. It’s somewhere in his suitcase, tucked between pairs of socks, and therefor of no use to him right now.
The apartment is too far from the airport. Technically, Adam should take a cab. He doesn’t want to. It will mean digging out the Romanian phrasebook Beth bought him, fumbling through words where all the letters have little dots and slashes all over them and he can’t figure out what sounds he’s supposed to make. He has Google maps, and there are wheels on his suit case. He would rather walk.
His walk takes him far, past the street that will take him to the lab, past shops and a museum. A few blocks away from his apartment, people are spilling into a strip club, laughing and hollering, most of them already drunk even though it’s barely 6:30. Adam is, admittedly, curious about the concept of strippers. He likes sex, and he likes pretty women. But he doesn’t like either of those things enough to brave the lights and sounds, the constant press of bodies, or the fact that someone will undoubtedly attempt to talk to him and he will have to respond appropriately. Strippers will continue to be a foreign concept to Adam.
He can still hear the noise of the club several blocks later, although it might be the sound of people hollering in hostels and bars between there and his apartment. Adam’s block is covered in graffiti. One of the neighboring buildings looks like it was boarded up years ago, and a drunk man on the corner gives Adam a strange look when he walks by. Adam has to duck into a narrow alley to find the door to his building, fumbling with the keys to the building itself, then up three flights of stairs to the actual apartment.
It’s not a bad apartment, despite the location. The appliances are slightly outdated, but it’s clean, and the building across the street is only two stories, so his windows can actually give him a little bit of a view. Adam cares about very little else. He has his laptop, and his telescope will arrive in the mail sometime this week. He dislikes that he can’t plan it more carefully than ‘sometime’, but the mail is one of those things he could never properly work into his schedule.
Speaking of which, he has a dry erase marker and two magnetic calendars in his bag, one weekly and one monthly. He takes a few minutes to set them up now, carefully penning chores into the weekly slots. He’d prepared for this ahead of time, copying the schedule he’d once had with his father. Then he calls Harlan and Beth to reassure them that he has made it safely, which he has to do several times before either of them quite believe him, and he doesn’t look forward to the charges for international phone calls.
When that is done, he unpacks, hanging up clothes in his tiny closet and tucking his father’s flag away in a cabinet. He still has the picture of Beth she’d left on his shelf once, but he is fairly certain it would be inappropriate to hang up now that they are no longer sexually intimate. Instead, he tucks it into the photo album Beth had helped him set up, and that goes into his desk drawer. He’s supposed to look at it when he gets lonely, although that seems misguided and likely to make him feel more lonely.
His toothbrush and toiletries go into the bathroom. His laptop gets plugged in and set up on the desk. It is 9 o’clock, well past his normal dinner time, and Adam cannot procrastinate anymore. He grabs his wallet and his keys and heads out.
-----
The grocery store he’d looked up is within walking distance, yes, but not quite so late at night, when Adam is tired and jet lagged and just wants to eat and lay down. He’ll go grocery shopping tomorrow. In the meantime he looks for restaurants.
There are restaurants, of course. He’s in the country’s capital, it’s a big, busy city, there are restaurants everywhere. But he knows if he goes in, the menu will be in Romanian, and the people will speak Romanian, and he will have to struggle through an order and counting out his money, and Adam is just far too tired and hungry right now for any of that. Restaurants were bad enough in New York, where everyone spoke English and Beth would order for him when he got overwhelmed. There is no Beth to order for him now, and Adam can’t make himself walk into any of the buildings.
A pretty girl calls to him from a bar, dark haired in a way that reminds him of Beth. She smiles and bats her eyelashes in a way Adam knows means ‘flirting’, though he has no idea why she would do that. She calls to him again, this time in English, probably used to tourists, and offers him some ‘fun,’ a vague promise that Adam can’t parse. He could go. She speaks English, she could help him find some food. He thinks she might want to have sex with him, too, although he is admittedly not very good at distinguishing sexual excitement from drunken excitement. He doesn’t really want to have sex or conversation with her, though, not tonight, not ever, everything is too much and he’s only been in the country for a few hours. Adam gives up on food and heads for home, where his weighted blanket can press him down into the new (wrong) bed and he can panic until morning, when he has to brave the grocery store or starve to death.
His skin is crawling, hands flapping anxiously at his sides, wanting to tear at his tingling, itching body until the noise stops, and this is how he looks the first time he meets Nigel Lăzărescu.
The men pressed against the door to his apartment building do not set off any warning bells in Adam’s head, because Adam is too far gone to pay any real attention to them. One man is pressed back by the other. The dark-haired man against the door is bleeding, a thick, seeping trail down his cheek, and the taller blond man has him by the shirt collar, pinned in place by a harsh grip and a knife tight against his belly, just out of Adam’s line of sight. Adam will never see the dark-haired man again, because nobody will ever see the dark-haired man again, but as he is not currently making an effort to commit either man to memory, this fact will escape him entirely.
The blonde man is whispering to the other, harsh, staccato bursts of Romanian, aggressive in their tone. Adam understands none of them, and does not care to. His eyes are on the men’s feet, both men planted firmly on his doorstep, blocking him from his apartment building. Adam is rocking, impatient and agitated.
“You need to move,” Adam says, and is dimly aware that both men look up at him. The dark-haired man babbles at him, but Adam does not speak Romanian, and is too frustrated to focus, even if he did. “You need to move, you can’t stand here.”
“Is that right?” The blond man asks, straightening up and dragging the shorter man with him, “Says who?”
Adam frowns at the man’s feet. He has nice shoes, they’re shiny despite the dirt of the alleyway. “I did,” Adam says, wrapping his arms around himself, “Weren’t you listening?”
“And who the fuck put you in charge, smartass?”
Adam frowns again, his entire face clenching up into the motion. This is going badly, he knows it is going badly, he just can’t make himself care. “I’m not in charge of anything,” Adam babbles, scraping his nails against the skin of his arms, soothing himself with the burn, “But you can’t stand there, I need to get in my apartment, you need to move.”
“Are you fucking tweaking, kid?” The man says, and Adam cannot place the tone of voice, if he is disbelieving or angry or amused, Adam cannot place any of it without looking at his face, and Adam cannot stand the thought of looking at anyone’s face right now. “The fuck did you take?”
“I had Dramamine on the plane,” Adam babbles, confused as to why this man is asking him questions and not just moving, “But that was several hours ago and should no longer be in my system.”
“Fucking Dramamine,” The blond man snorts, “And after that?”
Adam frowns, shakes his head, rocks back and forth on his heels. “Most medication should not be taken on an empty stomach,” He recites, “Unless instructions state otherwise. I get nauseous if I take medication without food.”
“Drugs, kid, cocaine, heroin, fucking E. What the fuck are you on?”
“I’m not ‘on’ anything,” Adam growls, frustrated, “I just need to get into my apartment, I need you to move, you need to move...” He whines, low in his throat, and cups his hands over his ears. Everything is too loud, he can still hear the thrumming beat of the strip club, he can feel every speck of dirt in the alleyway crusting over his skin. Adam rocks again, back and forth and back and forth until the man- staring always staring everybody stares- finally speaks again.
“You just want to go home?”
“Yes!” Adam yelps, looking up in frantic desperation. The man catches his eyes. It’s too dark in the alley to see much, but Adam thinks he might have nice eyes. He thinks the man might be… Upset? Concerned, maybe? Adam doesn’t have enough function to practice reading faces right now, the man could be laughing at dumb, dumb Adam for all Adam can tell. “I need to be inside, I can’t be out here anymore.”
“Okay,” The man says slowly. He backs his way off of the front stoop, dragging the whimpering dark-haired man with him. “We’re moving. Me and my buddy will go do our business somewhere else, won’t we?”
The dark-haired man babbles something in Romanian. Adam doesn’t hear it, his focus has narrowed down to the door, to scrambling for his keys. He doesn’t thank the man for moving, doesn’t say anything at all, just struggles with the lock, hands shaking, missing the keyhole over and over again until a body slams into the wall next to him.
Adam startles, whimpers, but it’s just the blond man pinning the dark-haired man into place with one hand, the other covering Adam’s.
“Don’t touch!” Adam yelps, yanking his hand away, “Don’t touch me, you’re hurting me!”
“Hey, hey, easy kid,” The man says, grabbing Adam’s hand again, “Just trying to fucking help.” He guides Adam’s hand to the lock again, easily aiming the key for him until the tumblers give way with a click. “There you go, you’re in. You need...” He clears his throat, hesitates like the words are unfamiliar to him, “You need help getting into your apartment?”
“No,” Adam insists, snatching his hand and his keys back towards his chest, “No, I just need to be alone.” Again, he doesn’t thank the man, although his father had always been very clear about social graces. He can feel guilty about it later. For now, he stumbles towards the stairs.
Adam does not shut the door behind him, but nor does he look back at the blond man, and so he does not notice that the man watches him, listening for Adam’s footsteps until Adam is safely locked away in his apartment.
Then he turns back to his victim with a feral grin and gets back to business.
-----