Years ago, when she had been on the outside looking in, she had thought the whole idea of being an 'exotic dancer' was glamorous; you're basically using makeup and alcohol and tricks of light to sucker gross townies out of their money. It would make her feel beautiful and sexy, and confident in all the ways that getting off the Greyhound at Lawrence's one and only bus station decidedly hadn't. Plus it seemed like easy money and if she worked late then hey, that just meant she got to sleep in every day afterwards.

The reality turned out to be pretty different from what she had seen on Secret Diary of a Call Girl.

Here backstage, on the inside of the dressing room surrounded by girls and a few boys who were using their contouring and shading skills to hide bruises from clients who got too rough or significant others who got too jealous and the wrinkles from their boss who didn't care that they had three kids to support when she ripped up their employment contracts in their faces, Lexi could almost laugh at the naivety of her 18-year old self.

The alcohol was the rubbing kind, used to get the adhesive from the duct tape used to hold pleather skirts and breasts alike up against the force of gravity off of sensitive skin. And back here the lighting was harsh and bright to give the security cameras clear views to the employee lockers so that Eve could make sure her customers weren't getting rolled in any way unless it was in the hay.

Out on the main floor, the presentation was at least good enough to draw in the mismatched crowd of rambunctious bachelor parties just looking for a few lap dances and loyal regulars with tastes that ran from particular to downright kinky. It looked like any run of the mill strip club you might have seen in the movies and unless you were in the know, that's really all it was.

Dim, seductive lighting that was smokey from actual cigars and cigarettes that waitresses in low-cut sequined dresses sold out of trays that hung from around their necks made it easy for the performers like Lexi to pass as younger or older or less strung out as the case may be. And the loud music helped keep the conversation and tedious routine of flirt-drink-caress-proposition down to its minimum so that all the 'talent' had to do was smile and nod any interested parties in the direction of Eve who routinely set herself up in the secluded corner booth next to the hallway that led to the private rooms.

The rooms themselves weren't terrible. The Ikea-grade furnishings were functional and easy to clean, exactly like they had been designed to be and the bland, animosity of it all made the blur of night after night even harder to separate. But really, when you calculated exactly how much money Eve made every time a customer asked for a jaunt with one of her "children" (which, what the ever-loving hell was wrong with that woman? Every single one of her employees agreed that the whole mommy-dearest complex their boss had was creepy as shit.), decorating was really the least that Eve could do to try to improve the facilities.

Each girl and boy had a room all their own for the nights they worked and the mousy Mexican women who Eve paid under the table to come in to clean between customers made sure that no one was having to fu-er...perform on filthy sheets. The deceptively small bedside table was stocked with every kind of lube imaginable and even a few of the more run of the mill sex toys (padded handcuffs, dildos, at least one vibrator, and depending on the night usually a paddle or two). Lexi was mildly impressed that she had yet to see any of the three psuedo-maids mutter so much as a Hail Mary in the direction of some of the things they had seen and subsequently cleaned up.

Drugs, however, were a less common thing in those rooms, but Lexi would be lying if she tried to claim that she hadn't done line of coke or popped a pill in those early days before she realized how hard Eve would come down on someone for showing up to work strung out. Plus getting loaded with a customer, especially one you'd never been with before was always a risk; Lexi had learned that when she had finally asked Ambyr about the scars on her neck. Staving off the general boredom that came from faking four or five orgasms a night by taking some E was certainly not worth the risk of being out of control.

And being in control was something that Lexi desperately needed in her life again. But on the nights that Benny came to see her….well, her control on those nights was as hard to hold onto as a slippery eel, no pun intended.

Luckily it happened sporadically enough that the man had only earned the title of being her 'regular' because he refused to see anyone else when she wasn't there; he just came and went after asking around for her, not even lingering for a drink at the bar. And wasn't it just stupid that the whole routine made her heart quicken just a little?

However that might have had something to do with the fact that out of all the things that had happened between her and Benny none of it had ever been mundane enough to be called 'routine'.

Not since that first night when he had dubbed her Andrea after Lexi had given her whole 'it's whatever you want it to be' spiel that she had picked up from Ambyr (Chavon to her customers) and Abbie (who preferred Josie) as a way to keep her real self separate from what her Eden-self had to do to every night. He'd said it was because she looked like an Andrea, whatever that meant, but the moniker was even further from her real name than Lexi was so she had thought it might make it even easier to repress whatever this new john was about to ask her to do.

But Benny had thrown her all out of whack that night when he had stopped her as she went in for a coy kiss that was just as well-rehearsed as everything else about "Lexi" was and just asked her to sit on the bed with him, hand held gently in his much larger one as his calloused thumb brushed across her pulse point over and over. That night, Benny had just rumbled on in his slow Southern drawl about what had brought him to Lawrence.

It had been Katrina, the hurricane not some woman, and the story had been roundabout and rambling enough for it to have taken the ex-New Orleans native almost four years for him to end up working in his cousin Lenore's bar here in Kansas. Benny had done a lot of living in those years and Lexi had found it hard at first to not envy the other man's freedom, but now after having gotten to know him better, Lexi knew that for Benny freedom meant something entirely different.

For her freedom still kinda meant the same thing now that it had three years ago when she had turned 18 and promptly packed a bag so she could leave the prison that her childhood home had become ever since her uncle had moved in after her father had lost his job. It meant getting away, getting anywhere that wasn't a place where she couldn't sleep for fear of something bad happening to her again. Only then of course she had run right into the arms of someone far worse than who she had been trying to get away from.

Benny's concept of freedom was a lot more traditional; the simple picturesque image of a house with a white-picket fence and a yard that was so big it had to be mowed once a week could've been ripped out a Norman Rockwell painting. It was shocking to Lexi because of how genetically whitebread it was, when she had just been expecting something more after hearing about all of Benny's other adventures.

Don't get her wrong, it wasn't disappointing; not in the slightest. Just...unexpected. Sort of like everything else she had learned about Benny so far.

Benny who had a drawl as slow as molasses and a smile like light glancing off a river as the sun comes up. Benny who claimed to know his Mama's secret recipe for jambalaya and his granddaddy's even more secret recipe for moonshine. Benny who'd brought her a poinsettia at the beginning of December 'just because'. Benny who'd never taken off more than his boots and his coat when he was with her and had asked her permission before he finally went in for a kiss the last time he had visited her even though he had paid for so much more.

Benny who was just another john and a weird one at that.

None of the others came to her just to talk or cuddle and call her beautiful, not unless they wanted something from her anyway. So when Eve's favorite thug-of-the-week, Stefan, came to find her in the dressing room after her last dance, saying that Lexi's favorite regular was there to her...well, Lexi had to stomp down the excitement that welled up in her chest before it somehow got back to Eve that Benny was maybe, sorta more important to her than every other run of the mill smirk n' jerk that paid to get off with her.

Throwing on a mostly pointless black and white kimono jacket over the silvery purple hot pants and dark green vaguely shell-shaped demi cup bra that she was wearing allowed Lexi at least a little bit of anonymity from the evening's customers who were now watching Abbie twirl around a pole as she discarded bits and pieces of the 'naughty secretary' outfit that she was wearing tonight. The bachelor party sitting close to the stage and hooting encouragement at her seemed to be enjoying her coworker's dance much more than they had liked Lexi's awkward shuffle out of the mermaid getup that Eve had thrust at her. Sometimes it felt like her boss just lived to torture her in any way that she possibly could.

Benny reaction though, the way he barked out a short chuckle when she opened the door to her usual room before quickly covering his mouth with his hand and shaking his head apologetically at her, that kinda made the way the skin-tight scale patterned skirt had cut off the circulation to her feet before she had struggled her way out of it, worth it just a little bit.

"Go ahead," Lexi encouraged, doing a slow turn before gesturing at the ridiculous get up that she was wearing today. "I'm sure you caught at least some of my dance so laugh it up, get it out of your system."

The man started to shake his head, his lips pressed together in a thin line before a snort came forcing its way out of his nose followed quickly by a burst of giggles any other person would think was entirely at odds with the large, muscled man wiping tears of mirth from the corners of his eyes on a bed in the one and only brothel in Lawrence, Kansas. But Lexi had seen the many and varied facets of Benny and his laughter over her outfit didn't carry the same mocking sting that it would have had if it had been coming from anyone else. No, this teasing coming from the man who had rubbed her aching feet during their last encounter when he had showed up later into her shift than usual felt sort of...comfortable.

It felt kind of sort of what a real friendship might feel like or maybe something...nope, that line of thinking was too dangerous. Even if Lexi liked the way Benny's stubble had felt when he had kissed her soft and shy before they had last parted ways, she wasn't about todo anything about it.

Nu-uh, not gonna happen; not unless it involved her getting her way out of Eden at any rate and she's gotten to the point where she was ready to scrap that whole stupid plan anyway. Especially after everything with that kid and his psycho dad, it just didn't seem fair to drag another person into this with her. It'd be better just to finish out her contract with Eve and then try to make a life after that, what was seven more years in the whole scheme of things anyway?

"Andrea, darlin'," Benny's voice drawled, pulling her out of her guilt-ridden thoughts that she had started to drown in again. She focused back in to find that her regular had abandoned the bed and approached her to take her hand, the laughter on his face having morphed into a mask of concern. "I was only foolin'. You looked real nice dancin' up there, like the Little Mermaid come right to life."

"Oh god," Lexi choked out, shaking her head as she had a vivid flashback of her mother reading her the original tale that her favorite Disney film had been based on and warning her of the limbo she would be trapped in if she let love blind her to the faults of others. "That's so much worse, I'm going to burn this friggin' costume later. Eve can just take it out of my check for all I care."

"Well that's a strange way to take a compliment," Benny replied with a beamused smirk, a look that Lexi was heart wrenchingly used to seeing on the other man's face. It was like he thought everything she did was adorable; in fact she knew that what that look was, Benny had told her so. "But whatever makes you happy, sweetheart. I still don't understand why you don't just put on normal clothes when you know it's me come to see you."

"I've told you a million times; I'm at work and this is my uniform, Benny," Lexi said snapping the strap of her bra in an agitated way that inadvertently drew Benny's eyes to her breasts and god damnit there was the blush. That awkward, self-conscious blush that the regular did when he accidentally ogled her, the blush that was usually accompanied by…

"I-I-I'm sorry," Benny stuttered, ducking his head and gesturing towards the bed where his black pea coat and his hat had already been tossed off. "S-s-sit. I bet y-y-your dogs are barkin'."

Yea, Lexi was pretty sure that stutter was probably going to be what eventually made her have to stop seeing Benny. It was just too endearing.

"Yea," Lexi acquiesced softly, kicking off the strappy platforms she was wearing and making her way towards the headboard of the bed where she snagged a pillow for her lap before settling against it. "I'll never get used to those shoes."

"I could rub your feet if you want," Benny offered, taking a seat on the bed next to her legs where he hesitated with a hand over her calf before just setting it on the bedspread between them instead. "Or we could just sit n' talk, you can take it easy for a coupla hours."

"A couple of hours?" Lexi asked, sitting forward to put her hand out onto Benny's forearm. She didn't even mean to do it and after mentally chastising the appendage for a moment, the woman soldiered on. "Christ, Benny how much money did you drop tonight just so you could rub my feet?"

The man shrugged before looking up at her from underneath his eyelashes, his expression taking on that slightly guilty look that Lexi had only seen once before when Benny had initially turned down her advances the the first time that he had come to see her. It has been surprising in more ways than one since guys usually just pushed her against the wall or onto the bed as soon as she made it in the door, but Benny had been sincerely remorseful when she started to sashay towards him; worried that he had hurt her feelings by turning her down for meaningless sex.

"I jus' wanted to spend more time with you is all," Benny admitted, scooting down the bed as he spoke so that he could take up the dainty, aching foot nearest to him and begin to soothe the angry red marks from Lexi's heavy shoes away. "I don't know when I'll get the chance to come see you again."

"Oh," Lexi said, her shoulders slumping unconsciously as she thought of all the things that could mean for Benny's life outside Eden's four, smokey walls. "Why's that? Did you uh...did you meet someone?"

"Meet someone?" Benny asked, his confusion evident on his face as he spoke. "Hell, no. You know I ain't got time for stuff like that, plus I'm no good with women…"

"So what am I, a duck?" Lexi teased, setting the pillow in her lap aside as she spoke. It allowed her to lean back against the headboard again, putting her body on display as her kimono fell open to reveal her bra and short shorts again.

It was a low blow that she would use with other johns, a tease that usually made her mouth taste like bile and ash, but seeing Benny's eyes flicker over her form before he blushed all the way up to his ears again made her stomach roil in a weirdly pleasant way.

"Y-y-you're dif'rent," the man replied brokenly, his eyes closing for a second as he took a deep breath to calm himself before he began to speak again. "You don't laugh at me when I start sputtering and you don't think it's queer that I'm a bit ol' fashioned."

"Sugar, if you any more old fashioned then you'd be muddled with bitters and have a lemon twist," Lexi joked, nudging at Benny's hands that had stilled on her foot so that he would return to his previous ministrations. "But seriously, if all my clients treated me as good as you do then I'd feel more like a courtesan than a moderately priced hooker."

And somehow that innocuous little comment made Benny blush even harder, though this time his mouth stayed shut as he continued to ease the soreness out of her stiff bones.

Lexi could still feel the dull thumpthumpthump of the main room's music in her bones and every now and then a voice, either slurred or sultry depending on who it belonged to, would wander past the sole door in the private room but despite that she still managed to let herself be lulled into a comfortable near-doze.

Maybe it was exhaustion because she hadn't really been able to sleep with Brick or Thad or any other one of Eve's interchangeable assholes camped out on her couch making sure she wouldn't freak out and run to the cops about last week's house-call debacle (again Eve's turn of phrase was nauseating even when her boss was at least feigning sympathy). Quite possibly it was just the sense of safety and peace she found in the simple, uncomplicated skin to skin contact that Benny offered her; contact that she hadn't known she was missing until the soft-spoken Southerner had walked nervously into her private room at Eden with his hat twisted in his large, gentle hands.

Either option could be the reason for why she didn't quite catch what Benny mumbled into her hair after he had finished rubbing her feet and moved up to recline beside her on the bed; opening his arms out of habit so she could tuck herself against his chest like she had practically every time Benny had come to see her.

"Hmm?" Lexi hummed, keeping her eyes closed as she fumbled for Benny's right hand with her left so that she could squeeze it and let him know that she was listening.

Okay, maybe she was only halfway listening because even after Benny repeated himself a second time Lexi just had to sit up and ask, "Come again?"

"I-i-i said we should c-c-court," Benny sputtered, his wide blue eyes blinking owlishly up from where he was reclined back against the mountain of small, useless decorative pillows that Eve had seemed to favor when she decorated all the private rooms. "I wh-want to c-c-c-"

"Court me?" Lexi asked incredulously as a sudden jolt of electricity shot down her spine, making her nerve ending feel overwrought and hyper-sensitive. Even the bit of skin on her knee that was still pressed up against Benny's grey slacks felt like it had ants crawling all it, only they weren't biting yet. The biting came later, it always came later. "What? Like...you want to date me?"

The other man's mouth opened and closed a couple of times before he gave a helpless sort of nod that had Lexi jumping off the bed and clutching the sides of her kimono tight around her body. She suddenly felt way too underdressed to be having this conversation, in fact; everything about this whole scenario was just backwards and wrong and-

"No," Lexi said shutting her eyes and shaking her head so she could just stop that train of thought. It was pointless to dwell on the fact that her life wasn't her own anymore because there really wasn't anything she could do about it right fucking now.

"Al-al-al-," Benny tried to start and when Lexi opened her eyes to look at him again she saw that he had moved to sit on the edge of the bed again, his hands almost but not quite reaching out to touch her.

"Al-a-al-shit, okay!" He finally spat. "I-i didn't mean t' upset ya. I-i-i can leave. You can just have the room to yerself n' I won't bother you again, Andrea."

"Ugh don't go," Lexi replied, frustrated. "That's not what I meant, I just...Jesus, Benny, you don't even know my name and you want to take me out to dinner and a movie? I'm a fucking whore, okay? You could do so much better."

At some point during her speech she had started to pace, but she wasn't exactly sure when and at another, probably different, point Benny had stood up to start gathering his coat and his boots that had been haphazardly removed earlier only to stop upon hearing Lexi's words.

"Don't say that," Benny said without a trace of a stutter, dropping his coat on the foot of the bed when Lexi just scoffed and continued to pace around the room before he took a few hesitant steps in her direction. "Listen to me, Andr-"

The silence was awkward enough that it was physically palpable and Lexi had to grit her teeth to keep from blurting out her name -her real name -for Benny just so that the other man would have one genuine piece of her, just fucking one. It felt sort of like a fair tradeoff for all the money he had paid all those times just to see her.

"You're more than a wh-" Benny started again, his voice faltering on the less than pleasant word for Lexi's profession only to strengthen again when he stopped firmly in front of her. "You're not a whore. You were never that to me, alright?"

"That's sweet and all," Lexi said, trying to sound flippant and dismissive because she needed to end this whatever with Benny before they-before he got his heart broken. "But it doesn't change the fact that you don't know anything about me. I could be a murderer and this is just my hobby on the side."

The corner of Benny's mouth quirked up at that, but he sobered again quickly once he realized that woman in front of him was being completely serious.

He nodded and took another slow step towards where Lexi had paused in the corner of the room before putting his hands out towards her in a placating gesture.

"Alright, I'll admit it. You could be the next Lizzie Borden," Benny began, only for his mouth to quirk again when Lexi just scoffed and shook her head at him. "But I highly doubt it. Now, I may not know much abou' you but everything I do know I like."

"That's because it's all an act," Lexi said, feeling a little hysterical because everything that she had said and did since meeting Benny really really had not been part of the usual rigmarole that she put on for her other clients. "You paid Eve for a service and I provide that service."

"You're right, about the paying part," Benny agreed as he finally edged close enough touch the other woman, he didn't, but the fact that he left the decision to initiate contact up to Lexi kind of meant everything. "We didn't exactly meet usin' normal means. But if you were just actin' then I wouldn't know that your favorite flowers are tulips or that your sister couldn't stand the smell of cinnamon when she was pregnant with your niece or that you've always wanted a dog named Stanley, but your pop wouldn't let you have one."

"Lots of people like tulips," Lexi mumbled, hugging her arms tighter around herself as she fought the urge to smile and cry. Yea, both at the same time. Because sometimes she had rambled when she and Benny were cuddling, but she hadn't thought the man was actually listening and she could not fucking handle this right now. "And even more people like dogs. I don't understand what your angle is here, Benny. If you wanted you could already be fucking me however you want, why do you want to try to pretend like there is something else here that there isn't?"

"Because there is something else here," Benny said his voice taking on a frustrated edge as he hand a hand through his close cropped hair. "I can- I can feel it right here," the man continued slapping a hand over his heart. "And I think that you can feel it too. I just...I don't know what I'm supposed to do here, honey."

"Well, you're not supposed to meet women in fucking strip clubs!" Lexi shouted, reaching out a hand to push hard at Benny's shoulder even though the gesture barely rocked the larger man's body. "And you're not supposed to be a perfect fucking gentleman when you're paying to get your rocks off! And you're not supposed to be so...damn...just damnit, Benny!"

"I-I'm sorry?" Benny replied questioningly as the smaller woman continued to bat ineffectually at his chest with her clenched fists. If he was being honest it hurt more than a little bit, but not as much as seeing the tears that were threatening to spill down his companion's face caused him.

So he gathered her in his arms, this woman that he didn't really know, but couldn't stop thinking about regardless and let her curse at him and hit him until she ran out of steam and was just muttering and sniffling against his chest. Words had never been his thing, for a myriad of reasons, so Benny just kept quiet; letting the curses become less harsh and the rationalizations about why this, them, was a bad idea fall silent after several long minutes.

"You don't even know my name," came the whisper of the other woman, sounding small and defeated and broken in a way that made Benny just want to gather up the pieces of this girl he barely knew and glue them back together even if it meant he cut himself to bits doing it.

"Then why don't you tell me?" Benny asked, the question seeming entirely rational given the direction of their conversation, but the woman in his arms just scoffed against his chest and buried her face in closer to his shirt that was probably getting smeared with tears and makeup. Not that that he could find it in himself to care. "Or I can try to guess it if you want. Over coffee or supper or...jus'...give this a chance, darlin'. Please."

Lexi sighed heavily, turning her face so that she could press her ear against the place where Benny's heart was thumping a wild tattoo that matched her own rapidly beating heart. As much as she wanted this, just this simply being held by someone who she believed would never take advantage of her, it just seemed to wildly impossible. Eve would never let her have this, especially with a client. Especially not while her boss was keeping such a watchful eye on her after last week's house-call debacle.

"Don't say no right now," Benny blurted when Lexi drew in the breath that she would need to turn him down. "Jus' wait til I get back. Lenore n' I need to go take care of some family business down south. I'll just be gone for a coupla weeks, but as soon as I get home I'll come see ya and you can let me down nice and gentle like."

Lexi shut her eyes against the emotions that threatened to overwhelm her and fought against the urge to fist her hands in the fabric of Benny's shirt so that she wouldn't feel like a clingy, weepy nutcase.

"You shouldn't come back here."

The words slipped out of Lexi's mouth along with a rush of breath, surprising the both of them if the way that Benny suddenly tensed was any indication. The woman's eyes flew open once she had registered what she said and her head whipped up to see Benny clenching his jaw and staring at her with a resigned sort of look on his face.

"I understand," Benny replied with a nod, his hands beginning their retreat from where they had settled naturally on Lexi's waist as he had held her. He cleared his throat abruptly and took a step back, moving in the direction of his coat that he had abandoned earlier. "I'll be goin' th-"

"No," Lexi said quickly, reaching out to snatch the other man's coat up before he could get a chance to pick it up and clutching it to her chest. "I didn't mean that you should leave."

"Then explain it to me, sugar," Benny sighed, his hand flopping down to his side when Lexi took another step away from him in an effort to dodge his attempt at retrieving his coat so he could leave. "Because I'll admit I'm real out of my depth here."

If Lexi's heart could have melted any more it would have been a puddle on the floor.

"I want you to stay," Lexi started, watching Benny warily as he moved just in case he decided to be all noble and leave without his coat because he thought that's what she wanted him to do. The other man put up his hands in surrender and just took a seat on the foot of the bed, letting Lexi nod in approval and start to pace before he folded his hands in his lap. "Good. Stay, right there. Don't move."

"Wouldn't dream of it," Benny replied, fighting the urge to smile as the woman in front of him started to pace with his coat still in her arms. He was probably about to be turned down by the only woman who had ever made him feel something, but he would still be happy for as long as he got to be here with her. However short that time might be.

"Okay, you see, it's really complicated," Lexi began, deciding that it would be easier to wear Benny's coat than hold it as she paced so she slid it on even though it was too big and the sleeves extended way past her fingertips. It smelled like freshly turned earth and the sandalwood cologne that Benny always wore when he came to see her. "I need you to know that the person that I have to be while I'm here is different than the person I really am. I can't take this shit home with me Benny, I have to compartmentalize. Y'know?"

On the bed, Benny nodded seriously when the woman in front of him stopped and looked sharply in his direction before resuming her pacing a moment later; gesticulating wildly as she spoke even though she had to keep pushing the sleeves of his coat up on her elbows lest they flop about comically.

"And so this girl that you like, the Andrea you know here, is not really me. Parts of her are me," Lexi continued, gesturing down her body as if to say that was all of herself that she had revealed to Benny; even though they both knew that was a lie. "Just like parts of me are also Chastity or Roxi or Lola."

"Lola?" Benny asked, stifling his Barry Manilow-induced grin behind his hand when the woman in front of him leveled an unamused glare in his direction.

"I wore yellow feathers one time, okay? Once." Lexi insisted, waiting for Benny's nod before she continued. "Anyway, my point is that I'm whoever I need to be depending on the night. I play so many characters that I hardly even know who I am anymore. Hell, I don't even know if all the things I told you were true or just bits and piece of Roxi and Lexi that I haven't been able to shake off. So do you see why this isn't a good idea, Benny?"

"Not particularly," Benny said calmly, putting up his hand to stop the woman in front of him when she started to continue with her protestations. "Now wait a minute 'fore you go getting all worked up again. What I mean is, I can see why you think us seeing each other isn't smart, but you're not exactly convincin' me of that. Now I've seen you up on that stage and I've seen you be those other girls for those other fellas, but if you're telling me that those men care about just listening to your talk even half as much as I do then we'll call the matter settled and I won't bring it up again."

Lexi frowned at Benny, mostly because it had made her cringe when he had said that he had seen her interacting with other johns. How could he still want her after seeing her act like that? How could he be okay with the things she did to stay afloat on her own?

"Hey now," Benny said gently, getting to his feet and bundling this nameless woman that he couldn't help but care about in his arms. "No more cryin' tonight. I'm sorry, darlin'. That all came out better in my head, I don't owe me or any other bastard that walks into this place nothin'. Hell, I'll keep comin' to see you just so you can get some peace every now n' then. I'll never expect anything from you other than what you want to give me."

Lexi scoffed and it was supposed to mean something along the lines of 'How are you even real?', but since both her and Benny seemed to be having trouble with communication tonight, of course that's not how the other man took it.

"I'm serious," Benny said firmly, tipping Lexi's head back so that she had to look him straight in the eye; not that she could have missed how earnest his voice was as he spoke his next words. "I don't care what you do to make your livin', And-. I will never judge you for your past, everyone does what they have to do to get by. You may even love this job and I'd never ask you to quit, but just give me a chance to get to know more of the real you. Even if that happens here, in these four walls, and not out at a coffee shop or somethin'."

"You uh...gotta pen or something?" Lexi asked, making Benny's eyebrows furrow in confusion. "For my phone number, my cell."

"Inside pocket," Benny said dazedly, pointing at his coat that the woman was still wearing. "Prob'ly got a receipt or something in there to write on too."

Lexi nodded, rummaging around in the deep pockets on the other man's coat until she came up with a rumpled gas receipt and a ballpoint pen. Heading over to the nightstand next to the bed, Lexi hastily scrawled her number across the back of the receipt and then turned and held it out to Benny, biting her lip so that she had something else to focus on besides the way her hand was shaking with nerves. There were a lot of things in her life that Lexi could say she wouldn't mind taking back, but this didn't feel like one of them.

"Y-you s-s-sure 'bout this?" Benny asked, his voice trembling just as much as Lexi's hand as he carefully took the number from her.

Lexi nodded quickly, pulling Benny's coat even more tightly around her body like it could protect her from Eve's wrath when her boss found out about this. As long as she finally had something that was hers, Lexi could hardly even find it in herself to care about the consequences.

"You go do your family thing," Lexi explained, talking herself through this insanity just as much as she was Benny. "Give yourself time to talk yourself out of this and if you haven't by the time you get back, call me and ask me for my name."

"S-so if I asked you r-righ' now?" Benny asked hesitantly, folding up Lexi's number and sticking it in the front pocket of his button down shirt.

"Right now I just want to lay here with you til our time is up," Lexi said as she slid across the bed, making room for Benny in the process. "Can we do that tonight, Benny?"

The other man nodded, toeing his shoes off again before he moved towards the bed, "Whatever you want, sugar."

"Got anymore sugar?" Bobby asked the girl who had been steadily refilling his cups of coffee at the small truck stop that he had stopped at to consult his map.

The girl nodded, popping her gum idly as she reached beneath the counter to grab a full sugar shaker to replace the one that the older man had emptied over the course of night and early morning hours. She plopped it down on the corner of Bobby's map that was acting as more of a placemat than a a guide at this point and continued down the line of tired truckers sharing the counter, asking if they needed anything.

The other man sighed, scratching an 'X' onto the map over Oakley since he had just finished scouring the small town's two whole hotel rooms for any sign of Dean or John. Bobby sighed heavily and rubbed a hand over the week's worth of stubble that he had grown while driving literally all over Kansas looking for his nephew before sparing a glance towards the clock on the wall above the truck stop's outdated and broken jukebox.

Yea, he could probably call now.

Fishing a couple of tens out along with his cell phone, Bobby settled up the bill that had not so subtly been slipped onto the counter by his elbow at around 6am by his waitress and made his way out of the diner. Sidling up to his rust speckled Chevelle, Bobby tossed his mostly useless map of Kansas in through the passenger side window before propping his elbows up onto the top of the car and frowning irritably at his phone as he pulled up the number of the one person in Lawrence that he least wanted to talk to.

"Lawrence Police Department," A groggy sounding male voice answered a couple of rings after Bobby had connected the call. "This is Officer Daniels, how can I help you this morning?"

"I need t' speak t' Sheriff Mills," Bobby replied, rolling his eyes heavenward when the officer immediately turned down his request with a rote sounding excuse about the sheriff not being in yet. "Listen, kid. I've known that woman for goin' on twenty years now n' if she ain't at least an hour early for work then somethin's wrong. Now tell her Bobby Singer's on the line n' don't take it personal when she starts cussin' at ya."

The rookie cop stammered something that sounded like a 'Sir, yes, Sir.' and Bobby had to allow himself a grin as the hold music for the police station kicked on, a Muzak version of almost the entire Top Gun soundtrack.

After a couple of long minutes, where Bobby was sure Jody was either throwing a stapler at the hapless cop who had to tell her she had a call or demanding that the kid get her a cup of coffee, the hold music abruptly cut out and a sharp female voice took its place.

"Singer, tell me what you got," Jody declared, forgoing the formalities that she would use in any other instance because her patience was probably wearing pretty thin.

Before leaving Lawrence, Bobby had stopped by the sheriff's department to fill Jody in on what was going on with the more volatile members of his little patchwork family; glossing over the parts about John's rampant homophobia (not that Jody wasn't well-familiar with it herself) and convincing the other woman to treat it as a missing person's report for a while until Bobby was certain that he couldn't track John and Dean down himself.

He told her that he didn't have proof that Dean hadn't gone with John himself, to "reconnect" or some other type of outdated Dr. Spock-era parenting bullshit, and while she hadn't seemed entirely satisfied with that reasoning; Dean was eighteen now. And there wasn't much she could do besides put out a BOLO for John's truck and hope for the best.

"Well, hello to you too," Bobby replied sarcastically, sighing when the silence stretched between them it that way it always seemed to do when Jody didn't think he was being very funny. "A'right Jody, I give. You were righ', I was never gonna find them on my own."

She had also told him that he was going to end up driving all over the state trying to track them down, but since it was a week later and he had been giving her updates with each progressive county he passed through that part could probably go unsaid.

"You're a moron, Bobby," Jody's voice sighed at him through the line and Bobby nodded in agreement even though she couldn't see him. "I'm going to get my boys over to the Winchester's, collect any evidence that didn't get trampled on by your dumb ass, and we'll get John and Dean's pictures out to the news stations so people can call into the tipline if they spot them. Can you get me a recent picture of them?"

"I'll get Sam or Cas to bring something down to the station for you," Bobby offered since he was over halfway across the state from Lawrence and the quicker they started handling this right, the sooner Dean could come home.

"Cas?" Jody asked, her voice sounding thoughtful in that off-putting way she only used when she was trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes. "That's Dean's boyfriend, right?"

"Been datin' a coupla months," Bobby confirmed carefully, not wanting to make the other boy relive all the trauma that John had put him through when he was already worrying himself sick over Dean. "Why'd ya ask?"

"No reason," the woman replied briskly, which did nothing to relieve the sinking feeling that Bobby had in his stomach. "I'll get Dean's face and pertinents out there, come by the station when you get back and we'll go over where you looked so the state troopers don't have to cover the same ground twice."

"Will do, Sherrif," Bobby said resignedly, rattled by the fact that maybe he'd misjudged how unhealthy John's projection of self-hatred had become to resort to kidnapping his own son. He'd once thought his love for John was unshakeable, but those foundations had been well and truly rocked. "And give that lovely lady of yours my love, will ya?'

"I'll tell Donna you said hi, Bobby," Jody's amused voice returned, though it didn't sound quite as genuine as it usually did.

As he coaxed his beat up Chevelle to life for the return trip to Lawerence, Bobby had to concede that Jody Mills probably already knew way more about what had happened with John and Dean and Cas than he himself could ever hope to tell her.

Author Note: Sorry this has been forever and a day coming. Good news! I got a new job that will give me tons more time to work on. Better news! It will mean I will not be so f'n exhausted all the time! Best news! I'm going to start working on updates for Deep in the Heart and Its Kind of a Funny Story now! So comment or come visit me on tumblr (itspronounceddeathsteel), lets talk fic and music.