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Sunday, Sunday, SUNDAY!
First off, a rec: I prompted ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
missmollyetc with Don/Charlie. Shoes. and she wrote this lovelyhot fic called Lazy Saturday which is very nice and good and did I mention hot? and will make you feel happy, quite possibly unlike the following.
Part the sixth of the hookerfic (holy crap, six? it's like an actual thing now, isn't it?).
Warning: sexual violence
It was always a fucking biohazard site.
Tonight's Special
Don stood in the corner of the call center, leaning against the wall and watching Terry. Nothing so far; she was sitting back in her seat, headset on, eyes moving from one monitor to the next in an easy rhythm. That would change once tonight's special got into his room. Specials required more monitoring and quick responses. She'd be glued to a screen once room six went live.
A punch on his shoulder--not hard, but not light, either--yanked Don's attention away from Terry. Billy was standing beside him, bouncing on his heels and grinning, and Don rolled his eyes and punched him back, feinting for his chest and twisting lower at the last second. Billy nearly dodged the blow completely, and Don's knuckles bounced off his ribs. "Not bad," Billy said, and faked a punch at Don's face, falling a few inches short of his chin. Don squared up and threw his own punch, and Billy caught the blow in his palm.
"Guys," Terry said, as Billy's fingers closed around Don's fist--it would turn into a twist and a hammerlock, and Don would jab with his opposite elbow and turn into the hold--"He's in. You're on notice."
Don looked over at Terry and Billy made his move, twisting him roughly and quickly into place, his arm locked tight against Billy's chest. Before Don could try anything, Terry said, "Knock it off, you two. Glove up."
Don tried to pull away, and got a sharp twinge through his shoulder as Billy held the lock. When Don turned his head to look at him, Billy let go and stepped back so fast Don stumbled, and Billy beat him to the boxes of gloves by the door. Don rolled his eyes and reached past Billy for a blue pair to put on first. Double gloves for safety, white over blue so tears and punctures would show up. They had to put them on now because there was never time to hesitate, going in hot to pull out a special, and it was always a fucking biohazard site. Everyone involved had to test clean beforehand, or they'd be going in in space suits, and as it was clean-up went through coveralls afterward like nobody's business.
Billy had his second pair of gloves on, letting the wrists snap loudly, and Don shoved him away from the box, earning a grin and then a smack on the ass as Billy walked away. Don shook his head, hiding his own smile, and got his second pair of gloves on before he glanced up at Terry.
There was a little line between her eyebrows, and her eyes lingered on the lowest monitor on her left, but they still moved around, checking the rest of the array. The special was just getting warmed up. Maybe it would be all right, anyway; about fifty percent of clients knew their limits, did nothing more to the special than the contract allowed. It could go either way.
Billy had moved over to the opposite corner of the room, where the regular ready-response team--David and Jack and Richie, tonight--were hanging out. Richie had been messing around with the darts; he was holding one like a syringe now, jabbing at Billy's gloved hands. Billy was dancing around, dodging while David grinned at him and Jack shook his head and made a show of looking bored before he caught Don watching. Jack winked, and Don grinned, walking over to lean against the wall next to him.
It was funny sometimes, how much this was like being on a team again. He hadn't been really good friends with anybody on the Rangers--he'd spent practically his whole career, if you could call it that, being distracted by Charlie--but he'd missed that more than he expected after he left baseball. And now here it was again: the guys, uniforms, locker rooms, fucking around before the game. Groupies. Gloves.
And thinking too much about Charlie to ever quite be one of the guys. Don settled his shoulders against the wall and looked down at his feet. He and Charlie hadn't seen much of each other since late Tuesday night, not more than a couple of minutes at a time. He'd woken up when Charlie crawled into bed, leaned over to kiss him goodbye on his way out the door. This morning's security briefing indicated that Charlie's two o'clock had been a total non-issue yesterday--as always--but it seemed like he'd been the only one who hadn't needed bailing out at some point. Don had been on the run all night, wound up drinking beer on the roof with Billy at five in the morning, trying to kill enough adrenaline to sleep. When he'd staggered down to bed, Charlie had been asleep at the desk with a pencil in his hand and his face in a notebook. Don had stood over him, blinking stupidly for a few minutes before he turned away and fell onto the bed. When he woke up, Charlie was curled against his back, and he'd bolted for the shower in order to make his floor shift on time.
Billy's laugh rang out, startling Don into looking up. He was shadowboxing again, with David this time, teasing him as he feinted, calling him a Fed. David just grinned and said, "Better a Fed than a pig," and something flashed in Billy's eyes--David had been FBI before, and Billy had been a cop, everybody knew that just like they knew Charlie did math and Don had played minor league ball. But Billy had gotten talkative last night on the roof, the way he did sometimes, leaning drunk and heavy against Don's side and muttering about his badge, his fucking badge. Don couldn’t remember now what the hell he'd been saying--he did remember running his fingers clumsily through Billy's short hair, red in the red light of sunrise, trying to comfort him--but he knew that Billy wasn't going to pull his next punch.
He bounced off the wall, got his palm out somehow so that Billy's fist smacked into it, stingingly hard, nearly knocking his knuckles back into David's face. David jumped away, and Jack was at Don's shoulder, a silent looming presence. Don pushed on Billy's fist, and Billy wouldn't meet his eyes. He turned away and Don followed on his heels, sat down next to him in the chairs by the door, and elbowed him a little without looking over. Billy elbowed him back hard; he still wanted to punch somebody, though he knew his job well enough to wait.
Don looked up at Terry. She had one hand over her ear, and her eyes were locked on the lower left monitor. Billy was going to get his chance to hit somebody, it was just a matter of time. Don leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the murmur of voices from the far side of the room as the others started talking again, the quiet sounds of Billy occasionally fidgeting beside him. Clicking keys from Terry's direction. There was no other sound; all the rooms were soundproofed to hell and back, so the call center could have been anywhere. The backside of a mall, the bowels of an office building, the basement of the house where he and Charlie had been kids.
Don looked down at his hands, palm up and then palm down, flexing his fingers and watching for tears, trying to shake the thought of that house, that basement. Charlie had had his chalkboards out in the garage, but Don had liked to hide downstairs, lying on the floor behind the boxes of Passover dishes with the sports section or a new pack of trading cards. The concrete floor had always been cool, and the boxes of stuff blocked out almost all sounds from upstairs.
Billy's knee bumped against his, and Don shook his head and looked up. Billy was watching him, a little line between his eyebrows just like Terry had. Don smiled, and then Terry said, "Guys." Don was on his feet even as she said, "Go, go." Billy was on his heels and he could hear Terry calling for medical as he hit the corridor running.
They kept the specials close; room six was the first door on the left from the call center. Don burst in yelling, "Security! Step away!"
The client kept moving--fucking the kid on the bed, and all he could hear was a low broken wail, an injured animal sound. Don was first through the door, he had to get between. The special was a blur of bloodied skin to Don's eyes, and he landed on one knee and one hand on the bed beside him; the client's head whipped up, and Don yelled, "Security!" again and then kicked him in the chest, knocking him backward toward Billy. His dick was hard, there was blood on his thighs, and he twisted as he stumbled back, swinging a fist at Billy.
Don turned his back. It was his job to be between. The special hadn't stopped crying, was staring up at Don with wide, terrified eyes, dark eyes fringed with long black lashes. Don reached out to touch his hair and then yanked his hand back; it was wet, matted with blood, but he could see it was dark, curly, long enough to almost fall into his eyes. For a moment he couldn't speak, but when he opened his mouth the words came automatically. "It's over," he whispered, even as Billy snarled, "Motherfucking stop that," behind him in a strained voice.
"It's over, you're done, Doc'll be here in a second." He wasn't sure if the special understood, and he couldn't see where to touch him without hurting him. His left arm lay at a bad angle, and under the smears of blood the skin was golden tan, dark beside Don's white-gloved hand. He was still crying, there were tears on his eyelashes, and Don was whispering, "Shh, shh," just as mindlessly, and where the hell was the medical team? He had to be in a bad way if Terry had sent them in. "You did fine," Don whispered, "it's all over now, it's all over."
The special shut his eyes and turned his head, and there was stubble on his cheek, and the line of his jaw was so familiar that Don had to turn his own head away. Billy had gotten the client to the floor, and a nurse was bolting through the door, waving Don away as she came. He moved toward Billy and the client, making sure they wouldn't obstruct the path of the medical team, just as Billy closed a cattle catch on the client, both of his arms pinned and his neck cranked forward so hard he couldn't breathe.
Don stood over them for a minute, listening to the ragged moaning of the special, the running footsteps of the medical team and the low reassuring murmur of their voices. The client's face was turning red, nearly purple, his lips drawn back in a terrible rictus grin, and Billy was watching Don. There was a red mark on the client's chest from Don's boot. There was blood on his thighs, his hands, splattered up his arms. He was still half-hard. Don stepped closer, raised his boot and brought it down low on the client's belly, the ball of his foot connecting with the pubic bone. Billy let him out of the neck crank just far enough for him to curl on his side and retch.
Don crouched and grabbed one wrist, twisting it up into a hammerlock and hauling the client to his feet by it, and Billy did the same on the other side, and zip-stripped his hands in place. If he wanted to fucking fight with security when they enforced the rules, he could walk naked and restrained down the corridor and all the way to the office. They marched him out--half dragged him, still wheezing and hunched over--leaving the medical team to stabilize the special before removing him from the scene.
They got him down the hallway to the elevator, and Billy did something Don didn't see that made the client let out a high-pitched gasp and drop to his knees. Don peeled off the outer glove from his left hand and punched the express button, and then the button for the office floor. He held the glove inside out in his right hand, and didn't look over at Billy or the client as the elevator dropped. There was blood on his knee. He could feel it going cold.
The doors opened and Ian was standing there, dressed in tight jeans and a button-down shirt just like Don's and Billy's, a blackjack strapped to his hip. Don gritted his teeth and didn't look at Billy. "I'll take it from here," Ian said, and reached for the client with a leather-gloved hand, grabbing him by the zip strip and hauling him out of the elevator. The doors shut on the sound of Ian dragging him down the corridor, and Don stared numbly at the keypad until Billy pulled off a glove with a snap and reached past him to press the button for the commissary floor. They'd both have to go to the locker room, get showered and changed before they could go back on duty.
Ian wasn't security. Ian was talent. One of his major niches was dressing as security, so clients could have the illusion of seducing the help. The actual help was off-limits. Ian was talent.
"It was all part of his scene," Don said as the doors opened, and Billy bumped him as he stepped past him out of the elevator. Don followed, hands closing into fists, but he kept his teeth gritted and his mouth shut until they were safely into the security locker room, stripping their gloves--and then everything else--off and into the biohazard bins. Don bent to unlace his boots. "It was part of his fucking scene."
"Yeah it was, Triple-A, and you gave him a few to remember you by. You'll get your tip, fair and square."
Don opened his mouth to say Single-A and then shut it, shaking his head. A tip. "We were just doing our job," Don muttered, yanking his boots off and tossing them into the salvage bag. "If anybody should get a tip it's the special."
Billy snorted, tossing his own boots after Don's with two heavy thuds as Don started unbuttoning his shirt. "Well, for starters you're not allowed to be righteously indignant for the special unless you know the special's name."
Don looked up and glared, tossing his shirt into the burn bag. Nobody ever learned specials' names; they only came in for one night, one client, and there was no time to learn their names unless they were stuck in the clinic recovering for a while. Billy just smirked at him, tossing his own shirt down and unbuckling his belt. "And second, you're right, we did our jobs, which means he didn't get hurt any worse than he agreed to in his contract, and he'll get paid a fuck of a lot of money for that. That's what specials are for, Donny-boy, I thought you'd learned that by now."
Don looked away, undoing his jeans. He had learned that, he knew that, he'd bailed out specials hurt a lot worse, he just--
"He looked like Charlie," Don muttered, trying to peel his jeans off without touching the special's blood.
"You always think they look like Charlie," Billy said, and there was something closer to actual disapproval than teasing in his voice. Don glanced up as Billy tossed his jeans and boxers into the bin, and Billy turned away toward the showers, claiming the last word. Don threw the rest of his own stuff in and followed grimly.
He didn't think they all looked like Charlie, because he wasn't blind. Sometimes he thought they all were like Charlie, because they were, but that wasn't the point. "Same height," he snapped, even as Billy turned the water on. "Same weight." He'd taken up just the same amount of space on that bed as Charlie would; there had been a terrible rightness about sharing a mattress with him for those few seconds. "Same hair, same eyes, same skin. He didn't just look like Charlie, he was a fucking Charlie doll."
"Well, fucking good," Billy snapped back. Don turned his own shower on, but it wasn't anywhere near loud enough to drown Billy out. "That's what specials are for, Don, do you ever listen? Clients can't do that shit to house talent, so they ask for a special order and that's what they get. That client wanted to do that to Charlie but he can't. He has to do it to a Charlie doll. And you have to pull him out when the time comes. That's how it works. Buy him some fucking flowers with your tip if it'll make you feel better."
Don couldn't say anything to that. It was all true, and Billy snapped his shower off the second he finished and stalked out. Don stayed put, scrubbing, until he heard the distant slam of the door and knew Billy was gone.
***
When Don got back to the call center, David was standing with his back to the door, throwing darts maybe a little more forcefully than necessary to get them to the wall. Terry was watching the monitors, and Jack was sitting in a chair by the door. Don looked down at him and opened his mouth to ask, but Jack just shook his head slightly, and Don shut it again. Billy would turn up; they had a full ready-response complement with Don there, and that had been the only gents'-side special tonight.
Don drifted over to the monitors, leaning over Terry's shoulder and watching as she cycled through, checking in on all the boys. Charlie appeared right after George, on the upper right monitor. He was sitting sideways on his client's lap, leaning his head against her shoulder and smiling. She had her hand on him, stroking him through the boxers that were all he wore, but Don's eyes stayed riveted to Charlie's face, Charlie's smile, until Terry said, "Okay, shoo, that's enough," and switched the monitor off.
missmollyetc with Don/Charlie. Shoes. and she wrote this lovelyhot fic called Lazy Saturday which is very nice and good and did I mention hot? and will make you feel happy, quite possibly unlike the following. Part the sixth of the hookerfic (holy crap, six? it's like an actual thing now, isn't it?).
Warning: sexual violence
It was always a fucking biohazard site.
Tonight's Special
Don stood in the corner of the call center, leaning against the wall and watching Terry. Nothing so far; she was sitting back in her seat, headset on, eyes moving from one monitor to the next in an easy rhythm. That would change once tonight's special got into his room. Specials required more monitoring and quick responses. She'd be glued to a screen once room six went live.
A punch on his shoulder--not hard, but not light, either--yanked Don's attention away from Terry. Billy was standing beside him, bouncing on his heels and grinning, and Don rolled his eyes and punched him back, feinting for his chest and twisting lower at the last second. Billy nearly dodged the blow completely, and Don's knuckles bounced off his ribs. "Not bad," Billy said, and faked a punch at Don's face, falling a few inches short of his chin. Don squared up and threw his own punch, and Billy caught the blow in his palm.
"Guys," Terry said, as Billy's fingers closed around Don's fist--it would turn into a twist and a hammerlock, and Don would jab with his opposite elbow and turn into the hold--"He's in. You're on notice."
Don looked over at Terry and Billy made his move, twisting him roughly and quickly into place, his arm locked tight against Billy's chest. Before Don could try anything, Terry said, "Knock it off, you two. Glove up."
Don tried to pull away, and got a sharp twinge through his shoulder as Billy held the lock. When Don turned his head to look at him, Billy let go and stepped back so fast Don stumbled, and Billy beat him to the boxes of gloves by the door. Don rolled his eyes and reached past Billy for a blue pair to put on first. Double gloves for safety, white over blue so tears and punctures would show up. They had to put them on now because there was never time to hesitate, going in hot to pull out a special, and it was always a fucking biohazard site. Everyone involved had to test clean beforehand, or they'd be going in in space suits, and as it was clean-up went through coveralls afterward like nobody's business.
Billy had his second pair of gloves on, letting the wrists snap loudly, and Don shoved him away from the box, earning a grin and then a smack on the ass as Billy walked away. Don shook his head, hiding his own smile, and got his second pair of gloves on before he glanced up at Terry.
There was a little line between her eyebrows, and her eyes lingered on the lowest monitor on her left, but they still moved around, checking the rest of the array. The special was just getting warmed up. Maybe it would be all right, anyway; about fifty percent of clients knew their limits, did nothing more to the special than the contract allowed. It could go either way.
Billy had moved over to the opposite corner of the room, where the regular ready-response team--David and Jack and Richie, tonight--were hanging out. Richie had been messing around with the darts; he was holding one like a syringe now, jabbing at Billy's gloved hands. Billy was dancing around, dodging while David grinned at him and Jack shook his head and made a show of looking bored before he caught Don watching. Jack winked, and Don grinned, walking over to lean against the wall next to him.
It was funny sometimes, how much this was like being on a team again. He hadn't been really good friends with anybody on the Rangers--he'd spent practically his whole career, if you could call it that, being distracted by Charlie--but he'd missed that more than he expected after he left baseball. And now here it was again: the guys, uniforms, locker rooms, fucking around before the game. Groupies. Gloves.
And thinking too much about Charlie to ever quite be one of the guys. Don settled his shoulders against the wall and looked down at his feet. He and Charlie hadn't seen much of each other since late Tuesday night, not more than a couple of minutes at a time. He'd woken up when Charlie crawled into bed, leaned over to kiss him goodbye on his way out the door. This morning's security briefing indicated that Charlie's two o'clock had been a total non-issue yesterday--as always--but it seemed like he'd been the only one who hadn't needed bailing out at some point. Don had been on the run all night, wound up drinking beer on the roof with Billy at five in the morning, trying to kill enough adrenaline to sleep. When he'd staggered down to bed, Charlie had been asleep at the desk with a pencil in his hand and his face in a notebook. Don had stood over him, blinking stupidly for a few minutes before he turned away and fell onto the bed. When he woke up, Charlie was curled against his back, and he'd bolted for the shower in order to make his floor shift on time.
Billy's laugh rang out, startling Don into looking up. He was shadowboxing again, with David this time, teasing him as he feinted, calling him a Fed. David just grinned and said, "Better a Fed than a pig," and something flashed in Billy's eyes--David had been FBI before, and Billy had been a cop, everybody knew that just like they knew Charlie did math and Don had played minor league ball. But Billy had gotten talkative last night on the roof, the way he did sometimes, leaning drunk and heavy against Don's side and muttering about his badge, his fucking badge. Don couldn’t remember now what the hell he'd been saying--he did remember running his fingers clumsily through Billy's short hair, red in the red light of sunrise, trying to comfort him--but he knew that Billy wasn't going to pull his next punch.
He bounced off the wall, got his palm out somehow so that Billy's fist smacked into it, stingingly hard, nearly knocking his knuckles back into David's face. David jumped away, and Jack was at Don's shoulder, a silent looming presence. Don pushed on Billy's fist, and Billy wouldn't meet his eyes. He turned away and Don followed on his heels, sat down next to him in the chairs by the door, and elbowed him a little without looking over. Billy elbowed him back hard; he still wanted to punch somebody, though he knew his job well enough to wait.
Don looked up at Terry. She had one hand over her ear, and her eyes were locked on the lower left monitor. Billy was going to get his chance to hit somebody, it was just a matter of time. Don leaned back and stared up at the ceiling, listening to the murmur of voices from the far side of the room as the others started talking again, the quiet sounds of Billy occasionally fidgeting beside him. Clicking keys from Terry's direction. There was no other sound; all the rooms were soundproofed to hell and back, so the call center could have been anywhere. The backside of a mall, the bowels of an office building, the basement of the house where he and Charlie had been kids.
Don looked down at his hands, palm up and then palm down, flexing his fingers and watching for tears, trying to shake the thought of that house, that basement. Charlie had had his chalkboards out in the garage, but Don had liked to hide downstairs, lying on the floor behind the boxes of Passover dishes with the sports section or a new pack of trading cards. The concrete floor had always been cool, and the boxes of stuff blocked out almost all sounds from upstairs.
Billy's knee bumped against his, and Don shook his head and looked up. Billy was watching him, a little line between his eyebrows just like Terry had. Don smiled, and then Terry said, "Guys." Don was on his feet even as she said, "Go, go." Billy was on his heels and he could hear Terry calling for medical as he hit the corridor running.
They kept the specials close; room six was the first door on the left from the call center. Don burst in yelling, "Security! Step away!"
The client kept moving--fucking the kid on the bed, and all he could hear was a low broken wail, an injured animal sound. Don was first through the door, he had to get between. The special was a blur of bloodied skin to Don's eyes, and he landed on one knee and one hand on the bed beside him; the client's head whipped up, and Don yelled, "Security!" again and then kicked him in the chest, knocking him backward toward Billy. His dick was hard, there was blood on his thighs, and he twisted as he stumbled back, swinging a fist at Billy.
Don turned his back. It was his job to be between. The special hadn't stopped crying, was staring up at Don with wide, terrified eyes, dark eyes fringed with long black lashes. Don reached out to touch his hair and then yanked his hand back; it was wet, matted with blood, but he could see it was dark, curly, long enough to almost fall into his eyes. For a moment he couldn't speak, but when he opened his mouth the words came automatically. "It's over," he whispered, even as Billy snarled, "Motherfucking stop that," behind him in a strained voice.
"It's over, you're done, Doc'll be here in a second." He wasn't sure if the special understood, and he couldn't see where to touch him without hurting him. His left arm lay at a bad angle, and under the smears of blood the skin was golden tan, dark beside Don's white-gloved hand. He was still crying, there were tears on his eyelashes, and Don was whispering, "Shh, shh," just as mindlessly, and where the hell was the medical team? He had to be in a bad way if Terry had sent them in. "You did fine," Don whispered, "it's all over now, it's all over."
The special shut his eyes and turned his head, and there was stubble on his cheek, and the line of his jaw was so familiar that Don had to turn his own head away. Billy had gotten the client to the floor, and a nurse was bolting through the door, waving Don away as she came. He moved toward Billy and the client, making sure they wouldn't obstruct the path of the medical team, just as Billy closed a cattle catch on the client, both of his arms pinned and his neck cranked forward so hard he couldn't breathe.
Don stood over them for a minute, listening to the ragged moaning of the special, the running footsteps of the medical team and the low reassuring murmur of their voices. The client's face was turning red, nearly purple, his lips drawn back in a terrible rictus grin, and Billy was watching Don. There was a red mark on the client's chest from Don's boot. There was blood on his thighs, his hands, splattered up his arms. He was still half-hard. Don stepped closer, raised his boot and brought it down low on the client's belly, the ball of his foot connecting with the pubic bone. Billy let him out of the neck crank just far enough for him to curl on his side and retch.
Don crouched and grabbed one wrist, twisting it up into a hammerlock and hauling the client to his feet by it, and Billy did the same on the other side, and zip-stripped his hands in place. If he wanted to fucking fight with security when they enforced the rules, he could walk naked and restrained down the corridor and all the way to the office. They marched him out--half dragged him, still wheezing and hunched over--leaving the medical team to stabilize the special before removing him from the scene.
They got him down the hallway to the elevator, and Billy did something Don didn't see that made the client let out a high-pitched gasp and drop to his knees. Don peeled off the outer glove from his left hand and punched the express button, and then the button for the office floor. He held the glove inside out in his right hand, and didn't look over at Billy or the client as the elevator dropped. There was blood on his knee. He could feel it going cold.
The doors opened and Ian was standing there, dressed in tight jeans and a button-down shirt just like Don's and Billy's, a blackjack strapped to his hip. Don gritted his teeth and didn't look at Billy. "I'll take it from here," Ian said, and reached for the client with a leather-gloved hand, grabbing him by the zip strip and hauling him out of the elevator. The doors shut on the sound of Ian dragging him down the corridor, and Don stared numbly at the keypad until Billy pulled off a glove with a snap and reached past him to press the button for the commissary floor. They'd both have to go to the locker room, get showered and changed before they could go back on duty.
Ian wasn't security. Ian was talent. One of his major niches was dressing as security, so clients could have the illusion of seducing the help. The actual help was off-limits. Ian was talent.
"It was all part of his scene," Don said as the doors opened, and Billy bumped him as he stepped past him out of the elevator. Don followed, hands closing into fists, but he kept his teeth gritted and his mouth shut until they were safely into the security locker room, stripping their gloves--and then everything else--off and into the biohazard bins. Don bent to unlace his boots. "It was part of his fucking scene."
"Yeah it was, Triple-A, and you gave him a few to remember you by. You'll get your tip, fair and square."
Don opened his mouth to say Single-A and then shut it, shaking his head. A tip. "We were just doing our job," Don muttered, yanking his boots off and tossing them into the salvage bag. "If anybody should get a tip it's the special."
Billy snorted, tossing his own boots after Don's with two heavy thuds as Don started unbuttoning his shirt. "Well, for starters you're not allowed to be righteously indignant for the special unless you know the special's name."
Don looked up and glared, tossing his shirt into the burn bag. Nobody ever learned specials' names; they only came in for one night, one client, and there was no time to learn their names unless they were stuck in the clinic recovering for a while. Billy just smirked at him, tossing his own shirt down and unbuckling his belt. "And second, you're right, we did our jobs, which means he didn't get hurt any worse than he agreed to in his contract, and he'll get paid a fuck of a lot of money for that. That's what specials are for, Donny-boy, I thought you'd learned that by now."
Don looked away, undoing his jeans. He had learned that, he knew that, he'd bailed out specials hurt a lot worse, he just--
"He looked like Charlie," Don muttered, trying to peel his jeans off without touching the special's blood.
"You always think they look like Charlie," Billy said, and there was something closer to actual disapproval than teasing in his voice. Don glanced up as Billy tossed his jeans and boxers into the bin, and Billy turned away toward the showers, claiming the last word. Don threw the rest of his own stuff in and followed grimly.
He didn't think they all looked like Charlie, because he wasn't blind. Sometimes he thought they all were like Charlie, because they were, but that wasn't the point. "Same height," he snapped, even as Billy turned the water on. "Same weight." He'd taken up just the same amount of space on that bed as Charlie would; there had been a terrible rightness about sharing a mattress with him for those few seconds. "Same hair, same eyes, same skin. He didn't just look like Charlie, he was a fucking Charlie doll."
"Well, fucking good," Billy snapped back. Don turned his own shower on, but it wasn't anywhere near loud enough to drown Billy out. "That's what specials are for, Don, do you ever listen? Clients can't do that shit to house talent, so they ask for a special order and that's what they get. That client wanted to do that to Charlie but he can't. He has to do it to a Charlie doll. And you have to pull him out when the time comes. That's how it works. Buy him some fucking flowers with your tip if it'll make you feel better."
Don couldn't say anything to that. It was all true, and Billy snapped his shower off the second he finished and stalked out. Don stayed put, scrubbing, until he heard the distant slam of the door and knew Billy was gone.
***
When Don got back to the call center, David was standing with his back to the door, throwing darts maybe a little more forcefully than necessary to get them to the wall. Terry was watching the monitors, and Jack was sitting in a chair by the door. Don looked down at him and opened his mouth to ask, but Jack just shook his head slightly, and Don shut it again. Billy would turn up; they had a full ready-response complement with Don there, and that had been the only gents'-side special tonight.
Don drifted over to the monitors, leaning over Terry's shoulder and watching as she cycled through, checking in on all the boys. Charlie appeared right after George, on the upper right monitor. He was sitting sideways on his client's lap, leaning his head against her shoulder and smiling. She had her hand on him, stroking him through the boxers that were all he wore, but Don's eyes stayed riveted to Charlie's face, Charlie's smile, until Terry said, "Okay, shoo, that's enough," and switched the monitor off.