A.N: "Matters of Trust" will be done (relatively) soon, so I needed something to alternate with 'MVAD.' You know, something with a little less bodily harm, to take the edge off. So I started this. 'Cause it's not like I have a really important research project I'm supposed to be doing or anything. *sigh*
Disclaimer: All of my knowledge of prostitution comes from popular culture and Wikipedia articles. I sincerely hope I don't offend anyone; please let me know if I do, or if this story contains any inaccuracies, and I will do my best to fix them while retaining the basic plot I have in mind. Oh yes, and still not claiming any credit or trying to make any money. Of course, that doesn't mean everyone's happy about it…
Eames: She's writing *WHAT?*
Goren: An AU fic where you're a hooker.
Eames: Does she *want* me to kill her?
Goren: Apparently so.
Eames: (sigh) So what're you? A gigolo? A rent-boy? My pimp?
Goren: Oh, I'm a librarian.
Eames: What?! How come you get to be the librarian?
Goren: You want to be the librarian?
Eames: I'd rather be the librarian than the hooker!
Goren: So you'd rather I be the hooker? Wow, I'm flattered.
Eames: Bite me.
Goren: Okay, but it'll cost you extra…
Eames: Shut up. Just shut up.
On February 26, 2009, a crazy man gave Dutton a coat.
And everything changed.
xxxxx
The wind whipped around the edge of the charcoal buildings, each snowflake like a shard of glass scouring the concrete facades. It let out a flat, remorseless howling as it lashed out at the world, scraped alongside the street-faces of the buildings and slammed into the alley where a small form huddled against the icy brick.
Dutton blew on her fingers, the digits red and raw and stiff and shaking, then stuck her hands back under her armpits and hugged herself against the cold.
"Fuck!"
You really had to admire the versatility of that word. The economy. A single syllable, capable of being infused with the extreme of almost any emotion. A word for all occasions.
Fuck: it's not just for breakfast anymore.
…and when the cold got to the point where you were stranded in an alley mentally rhapsodizing about the word 'fuck' instead of actually, you know, fucking someone, it was probably time to admit that it was just too fucking (see! there, again!) cold for any john to risk freezing his dick off for some strange.
Cherry and Lara and Tawny—and that actually was her real name, you had to wonder, did her parents want her to become a hooker?—had split long ago. Cherry was the only one who did so for a client; Tawny had had to get home to her kids, and Lara had given up first of all. The girl was nineteen but looked younger: junkie-thin, the searing frost in the air had cut straight to her bones—not a long trip—and made them shiver so violently that she couldn't speak, her limbs jerking back and forth until she resembled nothing so much as an animated tangle of coat hangers.
Yeah, and you're such a sparkling picture of fitness and vigor yourself, Dutton thought. At least Lara has an excuse.
It was time to get out, Dutton knew that. Average run for a working girl was five years, give or take. Then you died, or accepted the fact that you were stuck until you died.
Fuck.
It had been time to get out for a little over two years now, at least. Ever since the Gage incident. And it had never been time to get in.
A particularly vicious gust of wind rushed around the corner into the alley, stabbing past the scanty protection of the faux-fur coat and mini-skirt and nearly sweeping her feet out from under her.
If I ever find a john who gets turned on by snow pants and a parka, I think I'll do him for free.
The wind slammed into Dutton again, this time hard enough to knock her into a nearby snowdrift.
"Fuck!"
Seriously, who needs an expanded vocabulary when you have a word that can multitask like this? She struggled to her feet, heels slipping against the purchaseless ground. I could never use another word in any conversation again. Fuck fuck fuckity fuck fucking fucker fuck fucked fucks. I'm a regular fucktastic linguistic genius.
And now she was soaked. Great. Because there was nothing a john found sexier than pneumonia.
Okay, options. She wasn't too far from the rat hole she was currently calling home, but the heating system there was spotty at best. Dutton briefly considered making the seven-block trek down to where a painfully obvious undercover Vice sting was going on, and blatantly soliciting someone just for a chance to spend the night in a warm cell. But there was no way she was throwing away her hard-earned money on bail. Especially since—she did some quick mental calculations and, yep, that was right—the team on duty tonight would include Detectives Moran Junior and Copeland, who were total pigs, and would not include Jeffries, who liked to act like a hardass but who shared her sandwiches and coffee and could generally be persuaded to conveniently lose processing paperwork and let her go in the morning.
Alright, then, the library. It wouldn't close till ten, so if she snuck in—and that'll be a piece of cake, because nothing says discretion like black leather and four inch heels—she could use the hand-dryer in the bathroom to thaw out somewhat and then catch a nap on one of the upper-level reading room couches. By the time she had to leave—unless someone found her first and threatened to call the cops—she should be warmed up enough to brave the rest of the trek home.
The library it was, then.
xxxxx
"Do you have someplace to go?"
Two very large sideways brown eyes no more than three inches from her own greeted Dutton as she awoke. She jerked away instinctively, her head hitting the back of the couch with a loud whumpf, her hands scrabbling against the fabric as she tried to sit up. It took a second to fit her first glimpse into a bigger picture: a very large man in a long black coat, foot swept behind him for balance as he tilted his upper body nearly ninety degrees to his left, staring at her as intently as if she were one of those Magic Eye puzzles.
"Do you have someplace to go?" he repeated, his voice soft. He acted as though he hadn't even noticed her freak-out—although, Dutton admitted as her heartbeat began to slow, when you went around impersonating Inspector Gumby you probably learned not to comment on the appropriateness of anyone else's behavior—
"I'll go," she said, swinging her legs off the couch. "I didn't mean to sleep so long—I don't do this often, it was just really cold, but I'll be going—"
"You don't have to." He'd backed up a little bit, but he was still crowding her. Dutton fought the slow wave of panic rising in her chest. "I…I know eighty-seven percent of streetwalking…commercial sex workers are homeless, or, or unstably housed—and if you do have a place, it's really storming out there—radio's saying a low of negative three Fahrenheit and you're, uh…not exactly dressed for…" he gestured vaguely at her get-up.
Dutton chanced a look away from the behemoth to the window. He wasn't lying. Shit. "My apartment's only a few blocks away. I can make it."
"Oh. Okay. Okay. But…you don't have to. If you don't want."
Shit shit shit. Alright, play along, and maybe this wouldn't be too bad. "I don't?"
"I mean, if you want, you can leave. I just…I mean, I'm sure you can, can take care of yourself, I just—this building's heated all night—we have to, for the books—and the couches in the staff room are a lot more comfortable. If you want to stay, you should hide in my office until Mrs. McGreer leaves—she's my boss—and then I can take you there. If you want."
Dutton looked at him for a moment, sizing up her options. She was alone in a building with him and an employer who would doubtless believe his version of events in any conflict; if she tried to run away he'd probably rape her and throw her out into the storm. At least this way it was still something like a business transaction.
At least this way she'd have some measure of control.
"Okay."
He smiled then, a bright little-boy smile, and her stomach churned.
He held out his hand. "My name's Robert, uh, well, Bobby. Bobby Goren."
She took it. "Dutton."
xxxxx
Dutton ran her fingers along the spines of the books in Robert Goren's office. Forgotten English. The Lost City of Z. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Simulcra & Simulcrum.
Life is Elsewhere.
You could say that again.
"Do you want one?"
She hadn't heard him come up behind her and she jumped and cursed, startled.
"Sorry," he said. "I didn't mean to scare you."
"You surprised me, that's all," Dutton said, pasting a smile on her face.
"I should've walked louder—I—do you want one? I mean, I've finished them, so if you do—nights like this are probably slow for, um, commercial sex workers—"
"Why do you keep saying that?" she asked, as much to stem the flow of words as from actual curiosity. Just take me to the couch, fuck me, and leave. "Commercial sex workers, I mean."
"Oh." He rubbed the back of his neck. "I don't know. I guess it just—it just sounded nicer than most of the alternatives."
"'Prostitute' is fine. 'Hooker' is fine. 'Whore' is less than fine, but it's honest, and it doesn't make me sound like a goddamn robot on an assembly line."
He studied her face very seriously. "I'll keep that in mind."
xxxxx
He hadn't been lying about the couch, at least. Dutton sunk back into the downy blue cushions while Bobby ransacked the cabinets and staff lockers for suitable blankets. A girl could get used to this. If he wasn't too rough maybe she could see about making this a deal on a regular basis…
"And there were specialized categories, each with their own proper name: the chamaitypa'i—outdoor workers like you—"
On the other hand, she already really wanted to kill him.
"—the perepatetikes who met their customers while walking, and then worked in their houses, the gephyrides, who worked near the bridges…actually, I guess those could also apply to—I mean, anyway--"
It was insane. He was insane. She didn't know if it was a particularly geeky way of working himself up or what, but it was really getting on her nerves. If she did not shut his fucking mouth soon then—
Whoa, girl. Remember how he's three times your size. The customer is always right.
"—now, the term devadasi originally described a religious practice of Hinduism in which girls were 'married' to a deity, and they enjoyed high social status, but with the declining status of Hindu temples they were gradually forced into a life of—"
In addition to being annoying as fuck, it was also a little…okay, she'd admit it, alarming. They were alone now. She didn't know the exact statistics—she was sure he did—but she did know hookers got more than their fair share of serial killings. And she'd already had that close call two years ago but sometimes lightning did strike twice, and Robert Goren knew way too many details about completely obscure aspects of the history of prostitution to be entirely normal.
"—and even in countries where it's legal, it's often illegal to advertise, like in Germany and—"
Well, she was stuck now. Dutton opened her eyes to stare at the ceiling, and spread her legs slightly.
"—while brothels and street soliciting are illegal in Rhode Island, but prostitution itself isn't considered—"
He seemed harmless. Isn't that what they always say when it comes out? "He was quiet and kept to himself. He seemed harmless." Fuck. But he really did seem nonthreatening, just distressingly big and rather annoying and probably the kind of guy who'd start crying about his high school girlfriend after he came.
Hopefully she was right, and she'd get out of this with nothing more than a slight limp, a worn copy of The Mabinogi and Other Tales, and a ridiculous, ridiculous amount of knowledge about the history of all the different words ever devised for a person who fucked strangers for money.
"—widely legal in the United States until 1910 to 1915, when largely due to the influence of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union—"
It was all the more—well, impressive, if you wanted to be nice about it—given that he hadn't stopped talking since they left his office. And because it wasn't really in her best interests to piss him off, she'd smiled and nodded and done her best to seem interested in the fact that Civil War soldiers called the women they paid for 'hookers' to mock General Joseph Hooker, who had forbidden them to consort with ladies of the evening; that 'to prostitute' was derived from the Latin preposition pro and the verb statuere, making a literal translation of 'to expose' or 'to place up front;' that 'whore' came from the Old English hōra, which in turn came from the Indo-European root kā meaning 'desire;' that in Germany most hookers preferred Hure (whore) since they felt 'prostitute' was too bureaucratic sounding; that the word 'porn' actually came from the Greek word for prostitute, porne, derived from the verb for 'to sell,' pernemi. And on and on and on and—
"—technically illegal, but tolerated by the Deadwood residents and officials until 1980—are you hungry?"
It took a moment to register that he had shifted gears from The Complete Goren Encyclopedia of Whore-dom. "Uh, a little." She was fucking starving.
"Well, if you want anything, there's stuff in the fridge—anything with a blue sticker is for the any of the staff, so you can help yourself to that…and anything with my name on it." Bobby smiled. "I hope you like pastrami."
Finally finishing his search, he handed her two tablecloths and a foot blanket. "I'm sorry…will this—"
"It'll be fine," Dutton said. She set them down at the edge of the couch and reclined again.
He looked at her a moment longer, his face unreadable, and then began to unbutton his coat. She took a deep breath. Hopefully he wasn't a breast man. One of her johns had gotten…overenthusiastic…last night, and her tits were still bruised and aching and sore.
Deep breath, breathe slow and float away. You are not here. You are not here. No one can hurt you because you are not here.
He handed the coat to her.
She looked up at him, confused and jarred out of her mindset, and he began to gesticulate. "For a, another blanket. You can keep it, I have others at home and you…I mean, I know you can't streetwalk in it, but if there isn't any traffic you can wear it—keep warm…"
She gaped at him. "What are you wearing home?"
He shrugged. "My building's just next door, it'll take me thirty seconds to be back inside again—oh!" He swooped down at her, and Dutton felt her whole body lock together as she braced herself—and then he straightened up, pulling something from one of the coat pockets as he went. "Keys! Could be kind of important." He whirled them around his finger with a self-deprecating smile. "Uh—clock's over there, it has an alarm you can set—staff gets in at six, you can hide in my office again…library opens at seven but you could slip out before then…um, my room number's 308 if you need anything—oh, and bathrooms are just around the corner."
And with that, he raised his hand, gave an awkward little wave, and left.
Dutton stared at the door. "Well," she told it after a moment, "that was unexpected."
xxxxx
The alarm woke her at five-thirty, and she didn't even mind because fuck, she was full and warm and she couldn't even fucking remember the last time those two things had coincided, so she was just going to take a moment to appreciate it, okay?
She folded the tablecloths and foot blanket and put them back in basically the same general area she'd seen Bobby get them from. She wrapped herself in the coat and padded over to the fridge, deciding to grab a few more of his sandwiches for the road. She was cramming them into the coat pockets when she felt it.
A wallet.
She pulled it out. Brooks Brothers, brown leather, practically mint condition. Worth a couple hundred on the black market easy.
She opened it. Driver's license. Social security card. A gift card to Target. Over a hundred dollars in cash. Two credit cards. What appeared to be an antique ring.
…and all of it legally belonging to the one guy who'd actually been decent to her in recent memory.
"Aw, fuck."
God, that word was useful.
