dira | because, you know, hookerfic has just got to be linear, or there's no point.

strangecobwebs pointed out that it's been altogether too long since I posted hookerfic, and so: hookerfic. In which we see why I write epics. It's just that I hate leaving anything out. So yeah, still not porn.

Morning Lessons

Charlie's morning med check took barely twenty minutes, and Doc spent most of that grumbling over who had licensed barkeeps and bouncers to practice medicine while he wasn't looking. Charlie didn't point out that Don, and Megan, and he, all knew perfectly well how to identify minor cuts and bruises and apply a topical salve, and Doc wound himself down soon enough. There was still a minute to wait for the results of his twenty-minute swab test, so Charlie said, "Was anyone hurt badly last night?"

Sometimes the clinic was only busy due to volume, but Doc's mouth tightened. "Couple of specials," he said flatly. "Nothing that won't heal. House talent is all--"

The timer went off, and Doc walked to the other side of the small exam room. "All fine," he announced, turning around to wave the test kit at Charlie. "Negative. Off you go."

Charlie grinned and hopped down from the exam table, pulling his sweatshirt back on. Technically speaking it was Don's sweatshirt, but, apart from work clothes and whatever he happened to be actually wearing at any given moment, Don had long since stopped trying to enforce the distinction.

Charlie took the back way out of the clinic, past the firmly closed doors into surgery, through recovery. The curtains were drawn around two beds, and Charlie winced in sympathy and walked softly, and was careful not to let the door to the back stairs slam behind him.

Down one level and he was just outside the schoolroom, neatly evading the commissary, where someone had probably noticed by now that he'd only picked at his breakfast. Angie had been threatening lately to stand over him and watch him eat, and he had better things to do right now than choke down exactly eight hundred calories while she stared at him. The mail would be in by now.

Charlie stepped inside and did an automatic headcount. Gina, stalking around in cut-off sweatpants and stilettos, leading Johnny by the hand as he practiced in four-inch heels, wrinkling his nose like a kid with a plateful of broccoli. George was lying on the floor with six comic books and a much-scribbled-in notebook arrayed around him, pens in six different colors laid out ready to hand. Andy and Ellie and Jillie were all tangled up on the loveseat. All he could see of Jillie was her feet, but he'd recognize the pedicure anywhere. Andy was frowning into a book, a highlighter between his teeth, and Ellie was muttering under her breath in a sing-song rhythm.

That was everybody who hadn't been on late-late shift, except--

Amita, whose leather-clad leg appeared over the back of the sofa even as he thought it. Charlie stood watching for a moment as she slowly raised her leg to the vertical, then slowly flexed her knee: even from the door he could hear the creak of new pants being broken in. He walked over to lean against the back of the couch, looking down at her. She'd already claimed Wired, and when Charlie reached for it she smacked his hand without looking up.

"I've got Applied Mathematics down my shirt," she announced, turning a page, but Charlie knew that wasn't an invitation, even though everybody knew he got first dibs on math. Amita tilted her head back and gave him a sunny smile. "It's your week on sex tips patrol."

"Oh, no, come on, it was just my week--"

"Four months ago," Amita said patiently. "And now it's your week again. Go on."

Charlie sighed and walked around the couch to the stack of magazines on the floor beside Amita. He stretched his legs out, carefully out of the way of Jillie's tarot spread, and leaned his head back against Amita's hip as he started flipping through the first one. "Oh," he muttered, "here's a good one."

In his peripheral vision, Amita turned his head to watch, and Charlie cleared his throat and called out without looking up from the page, "Hey, everybody! News flash! Lubricant makes sex feel good!"

"Not by itself, it doesn't," Andy muttered rebelliously. "Some people need post-deconstructionist literary criticism."

"Well, they're sick bastards," Charlie assured him. "They should try wearing a sexy robe around the house or humming."

Charlie kept scanning the page until something hit the magazine he was holding--one of George's pens, the orange one he only used for whichever comic book held the week's dubious honor of making the least sense. He looked up, and everyone was watching him. Charlie gave them his best wide-eyed look and stage-whispered. "You know, humming. When you're down there."

He managed to wrestle a couch-cushion away from Amita when she smacked him with it, and sprawled out on the floor with the rest of the magazines, hunting down the inevitable sex tips (Men like oral sex! Vibrators are fun! Do it with the lights on! With the lights off! With the lights dimmed!) until he'd come up with ten to put on the whiteboard. He bounced to his feet to go and write them up, and was halfway through erasing them before he realized that they were all the same tips, in a different order and Gina's handwriting.

Charlie sighed, shook his head, and finished erasing them, writing up his own selections in their place. When he came back, Jillie was practicing a showy mid-air shuffle, and IMA Journal of Applied Mathematics was lying on top of Cosmo. The glossy pages still held a hint of body heat when he picked it up, and Charlie grinned and turned to the table of contents, scanning titles and names.

He'd just spotted M. Penfield when there was a disturbingly cheerful noise from the television, and he looked up blindly, the magazine hanging loose from his hands. Jillie was picking her cards up off the floor. George was already on his feet, and he and Gina just picked Johnny up between them and carried him over. "Ask not for whom the TiVo tolls," Andy grumbled, slamming his book shut and squirming down off the couch and into the quickly-forming heap on the floor. "It tolls for thee."

"Oh, shush," Ellie said, already navigating through the menus to the first of their required-viewing programs. "And you'd better not have your nose in that journal, Charlie, it's playoffs and you know I can't tell my one-timer from my five-hole."

"Yeah," Charlie said. He knew he was supposed to make a joke, but he dropped the journal and tugged Johnny half into his lap instead, propping one foot against Jillie's back and his head against Amita's hip. A hand squeezed his foot--George, he thought, because no one else's hands were that big--but Charlie didn't take his eyes off the opening credits of Sports Center. "Yeah, I know."