Freddy goes by Iris's next morning with breakfast. He woke up late and they were all out of pastries, so he's setting them both up with religieuse thick with chocolate cream. So named, if the rather eccentric old French dude who runs the place is to be believed, because the're good enough to have you believing in God.
Whereas Freddy's room is done up bold but homely, Iris gets something a little more dreamy and assertive. It's all in pink, like Sport did that just for her, as a special treat. Freddy knows her favourite colour's blue.
The trace elements of the bruises she sustained bringing back the bad client are still imprinted on the underside of her jaw, just below her right ear if you know where to look. Freddy passes her the bakery bag and catches her chin, tipping her head up to get a better look. "You're healing up real nice."
Iris scowls and swats his hand away. "Jeez, you sound like Sport."
Which maybe stings more than it should. Iris is still in the boy shorts and oversized tshirt she wears to bed when she doesn't have overnight company, her eyes prickly red as she comes down from whatever she took last night.
Something to keep her prancing around the damn room long past sociable hours. Freddy wouldn't mind so much if he didn't have his bed pressed up against their shared wall. He can't remember who's stationed right down stairs but they can't be Iris's biggest fan either.
There's plenty of whores in this town that hate Iris, but most of them don't work for Sport, as far as Freddy's aware.
She's slow and foggy, the way she always is on a comedown, the way they all are' So he makes the coffee and separates her religieuse into its component parts to try to trick her into getting it down in small bites.
A mouthful in and he can see what the baker was on about, it's awesome. The whole thing slips away from him before he can breathe. Fuck a pain au chocolat.
He keeps meaning to ask her about Travis, and every time he phrases the question in his head it sounds more and more like he's prying into shit that ain't his business. She doesn't grill him about the customers that he spends time with.
Then again, Freddy doesn't wind up in cheap diners with his clients for breakfast. He winds up in Iris's room, watching the bruises clearing from her skin and trying to decide if he should feel guilty about it at all.
"I been meaning to ask you-" He chances.
"Save it." Iris waves him down. She picks at her breakfast in silence, looking for all the world like a malformed zombie unsure what to do with the heads cracked open in her honour.
----------------------------------
"I think it's real nice that you're looking out for her like that." Sport murmurs into Freddy's hair. It's late, but there's a street light outside that hasn't packed it in yet and his room is cast in a dim red light. The planes of their bodies melt into one another, even before they slip below the sheets, done for the night. Now comes the small talk, the closeness. It's becoming routine. Two more days and that makes a solid week of this.
Freddy shrugs around the arm Sport has draped across his chest. "I mean, she's my friend. And she's a kid. What am I supposed to do?"
"Oh, ho, ho." Sport chuckles. "She may be young but she ain't no kid."
Disgusting. If Freddy put his mind to it he could kill this guy real easy, let him finish up then slide a knife between his ribs. Knives are easy enough to get hold of, and it's not like the place ever gets checked over for that sort of shit. For all Sport knows, Freddy's been gifted a pistol by one of his regulars and he's just waiting for an opportunity to use it.
Sport talks about his superiors in abstract terms that create an ever shifting picture of an organisation so used to having to hide itself that it doesn't know how to come into the foreground. He has a boss, somewhere, but Freddy wouldn't know where to find the guy. If Sport showed up dead one morning, or just didn't show up, he has no idea how long he would expect to wait before someone came along to pick up the pieces of his old job.
Maybe it would set Freddy free, maybe he has nothing left to do with that freedom. He could go sit at the south end of Central Park and pray that Larry kept looking for him after he so imperfectly blew him off the first time round, or he could go back to sixty fourth street and think about how nice it would be if he could afford the new apartments that will have inevitably sprung up in the wake of the fire.
"Don't make no plane for this weekend, alright?" Sport tells him. His voice is gentle and familiar and Freddy leans into it without thinking.
"Why not?"
"S'Iris's birthday."
Freddy frowns. "You were telling that guy the other day that she was twelve and a half."
"And I'm gonna keep telling guys she's twelve and a half till they don't believe me no more." Sport prods Freddy's side and laughs when he jumps. "How long have you been with me? Huh? How long have you known her? Everyone grows up sometime."
Part of the deal is that they're not supposed to be there when Sport negotiates the deal. It makes guys feel like they're trusted, even if they do all mostly know the rates they're supposed to be making. Freddy has no idea how old he is when Sport pitches his ass to potential investors.
"Where's the party?" Freddy asks.
"Giulio's, downtown. Nice place." Sport leans up on one arm and starts brushing hair out of Freddy's face that's never been within an inch of his eyes.
Freddy knows Giulio's. He's never been in but he's seen it, tucked away off Broadway, away from the shining lights and nudey cinemas. It's still all done up nice though, that's how you know it's really high end.
He raises his eyebrows. "Fancy."
"Yeah, well. Our girl deserves the best." Sport smiles at him, like it's a secret, like he's thinking about Iris but he's looking at Freddy so who's he really talking about here. "Plus, there's a few guys getting out of the slammer on Friday, so I figure we can show them a good time."
Freddy nods. "They get put away when the cops raided the Cabots?"
Sport tenses up ever so slightly, imperceptible, unless you really know what to look for. "Freddy, baby, what would a pretty little thing like you know about the Cabots?"
It's a test. Whores are generally pretty street smart, they have to be if they don't wanna get eaten up and spat straight back out again, but no one likes a smart whore. You gotta play dumb, and in the end, if you play it long enough, it becomes you. Freddy shakes his head. "Nothin'. Just...something a friend said."
"A friend?" That piques Sport's interest. "You ain't told me about any friends."
"This was before I came to you. I don't...I ain't seem him in a while."
"Hey, hey. Nothing to worry about, sweetheart." Sport purrs. "You're allowed to have friends, I'd just like to meet 'em so I can know you're not being taken advantage of."
Freddy shrugs. "Like I said, it was a while back. He probably don't wanna see me no more."
Giulio's is more than nice, it's fucking decadent. Sport brings in his best people from around the city and they arrive to champagne laid out just for them when they're setting up.
Freddy shuffles awkwardly through to the front of the crowd when they're being directed. He's one of the shorter people here, next to the statuesque blondes and transvestites that make up so much of the ensemble of the 'street team' as they're called. Sport has links to a whole lot more than the tenements on ninety second street if this stock is to be believed. Freddy recognises some of them the way you recognise old movie starts years after you've stopped wasting your time with midday re-runs of classic films over the school holidays. He forgets, sometimes, that he slept in a dumpster and counted himself lucky. After the sweltering heat of the summer and the luxuriant pliability of his mattress, he can no longer imagine what it must have been like to be that cold.
Aside from the whores, a handful of dumb muscle bulks out the ranks. They're here to help shift the heavy stuff, they don't have any kind of performance to worry about.
"Hey! All eyes on me!" Sport claps his hands and silences the twittering cloud. "We've got very big weekend ahead of us, and I want everyone to cut loose and have a little fun. But first we gotta set a few ground rules."
He holds up a finger. "One, this is a working holiday. Youse are expected to pull your weight the same as ever, and we're also gonna have to serving up some drinks and other treats to the guests, ok? Now, I know not a word of this is gonna leave this room, so I don't mind telling you that we're gonna have a few substances on offer. A little weed, some blow. The barstaff are gonna handle the stock." And here he winks at Freddy. "But otherwise you're gonna be serving."
"We gotta be serving and scouting for Johns all at once?" A thickset red head with the kind of curves an hourglass would kill for sneers. "I don't wait tables, Matthew!"
"Hey, hey, c'mon now!" Sport smiles, opening his hands wide and offering exactly nothing to placate her. "You'll be able to get yourself some drinks too. And you can always just stick to scouting for a while if it's wearing you down. I just don't want our distinguished guests on their feet all night having to fight to get a drink, y'know? Everyone's gonna get paid extra for this weekend, I'm not trying to stiff you here, honey."
Getting paid extra is enough to calm everyone down a notch. Freddy skipped right over the part of his life where he could have gotten a Saturday job waiting tables and jumped straight to begging his folks for money every few weeks. He doesn't see how he's got the experience to pull this all off, but he figures he can smile his way out of it if necessary.
"Ok, rule number two." Sport barks, sending up a second finger. "You are getting paid out of my pocket, no one has to pay up front. You meet a guy who wants to take you home with him, or wants to book in a date to see you some other time, you send him to me and I'll get it sorted. Ok?"
Nodding, silence.
The third finger comes up. "Third, I know my market well, I'm sure you lovely ladies know that." Sport smirks. He's probably fucked every last one of them half a dozen times or more. He probably tells them all he misses them. he probably calls them all 'baby'. "And I reckon I got the perfect demographics right here to make sure everyone's pleasures are taken care of. Some of you may have noticed that Freddy's the only guy here, and that's why. Now, I'm paying outta pocket, you understand, I'm trying not to overdo things, but there's a slight chance I may have miscalculated how many guys like a girl with a dick and how many just like a boy. So if you see my dear sweet Freddy getting overwhelmed at all I need you to go over and help him."
Sport blows Freddy a kiss, and maybe he doesn't say shit to any other hooker in all of Manhattan. The forth finger rises. "Fourth, and this is most important, Iris ain't to be taken out back by anyone. We're trying to impress but it's her birthday, she's off the cards."
"What if she wants it?" Someone barks from the back.
Everyone laughs, and Freddy tries to play along like he gets the joke.
Sport likes that shit a whole lot. "You know what? Stop her anyway. Tell her it's a gift from me, I'm teaching her some self restraint."
That's the joke of the evening. The shit that brings the fucking roof down. They move off to get changed, to get beautiful, to help hang banners and streamers around the tables ringing an old school dance floor with a raised stage. There's supposed to be a real live band coming, and a troop of bartenders who can make you any cocktail you ask for.
It's supposed to be a huge night. Hell, it's gonna stretch on till Sunday afternoon if it's gonna last an hour. Freddy stares down his reflection, applying kohl to his eyes and gloss to his lips in a vague attempt to tidy himself up. He's gonna be fine, he's sure of it. He's got the stamina, the looks, and the ability to slip into the background when the shit hits the fan. He's mister fucking cool.
Re: Sport/Orange - shady skeevey stuff - 27/?
---------------------------------------------------
Freddy goes by Iris's next morning with breakfast. He woke up late and they were all out of pastries, so he's setting them both up with religieuse thick with chocolate cream. So named, if the rather eccentric old French dude who runs the place is to be believed, because the're good enough to have you believing in God.
Whereas Freddy's room is done up bold but homely, Iris gets something a little more dreamy and assertive. It's all in pink, like Sport did that just for her, as a special treat. Freddy knows her favourite colour's blue.
The trace elements of the bruises she sustained bringing back the bad client are still imprinted on the underside of her jaw, just below her right ear if you know where to look. Freddy passes her the bakery bag and catches her chin, tipping her head up to get a better look. "You're healing up real nice."
Iris scowls and swats his hand away. "Jeez, you sound like Sport."
Which maybe stings more than it should. Iris is still in the boy shorts and oversized tshirt she wears to bed when she doesn't have overnight company, her eyes prickly red as she comes down from whatever she took last night.
Something to keep her prancing around the damn room long past sociable hours. Freddy wouldn't mind so much if he didn't have his bed pressed up against their shared wall. He can't remember who's stationed right down stairs but they can't be Iris's biggest fan either.
There's plenty of whores in this town that hate Iris, but most of them don't work for Sport, as far as Freddy's aware.
She's slow and foggy, the way she always is on a comedown, the way they all are' So he makes the coffee and separates her religieuse into its component parts to try to trick her into getting it down in small bites.
A mouthful in and he can see what the baker was on about, it's awesome. The whole thing slips away from him before he can breathe. Fuck a pain au chocolat.
He keeps meaning to ask her about Travis, and every time he phrases the question in his head it sounds more and more like he's prying into shit that ain't his business. She doesn't grill him about the customers that he spends time with.
Then again, Freddy doesn't wind up in cheap diners with his clients for breakfast. He winds up in Iris's room, watching the bruises clearing from her skin and trying to decide if he should feel guilty about it at all.
"I been meaning to ask you-" He chances.
"Save it." Iris waves him down. She picks at her breakfast in silence, looking for all the world like a malformed zombie unsure what to do with the heads cracked open in her honour.
----------------------------------
"I think it's real nice that you're looking out for her like that." Sport murmurs into Freddy's hair. It's late, but there's a street light outside that hasn't packed it in yet and his room is cast in a dim red light. The planes of their bodies melt into one another, even before they slip below the sheets, done for the night. Now comes the small talk, the closeness. It's becoming routine. Two more days and that makes a solid week of this.
Freddy shrugs around the arm Sport has draped across his chest. "I mean, she's my friend. And she's a kid. What am I supposed to do?"
"Oh, ho, ho." Sport chuckles. "She may be young but she ain't no kid."
Disgusting. If Freddy put his mind to it he could kill this guy real easy, let him finish up then slide a knife between his ribs. Knives are easy enough to get hold of, and it's not like the place ever gets checked over for that sort of shit. For all Sport knows, Freddy's been gifted a pistol by one of his regulars and he's just waiting for an opportunity to use it.
Sport talks about his superiors in abstract terms that create an ever shifting picture of an organisation so used to having to hide itself that it doesn't know how to come into the foreground. He has a boss, somewhere, but Freddy wouldn't know where to find the guy. If Sport showed up dead one morning, or just didn't show up, he has no idea how long he would expect to wait before someone came along to pick up the pieces of his old job.
Maybe it would set Freddy free, maybe he has nothing left to do with that freedom. He could go sit at the south end of Central Park and pray that Larry kept looking for him after he so imperfectly blew him off the first time round, or he could go back to sixty fourth street and think about how nice it would be if he could afford the new apartments that will have inevitably sprung up in the wake of the fire.
"Don't make no plane for this weekend, alright?" Sport tells him. His voice is gentle and familiar and Freddy leans into it without thinking.
"Why not?"
"S'Iris's birthday."
Freddy frowns. "You were telling that guy the other day that she was twelve and a half."
"And I'm gonna keep telling guys she's twelve and a half till they don't believe me no more." Sport prods Freddy's side and laughs when he jumps. "How long have you been with me? Huh? How long have you known her? Everyone grows up sometime."
Part of the deal is that they're not supposed to be there when Sport negotiates the deal. It makes guys feel like they're trusted, even if they do all mostly know the rates they're supposed to be making. Freddy has no idea how old he is when Sport pitches his ass to potential investors.
"Where's the party?" Freddy asks.
"Giulio's, downtown. Nice place." Sport leans up on one arm and starts brushing hair out of Freddy's face that's never been within an inch of his eyes.
Freddy knows Giulio's. He's never been in but he's seen it, tucked away off Broadway, away from the shining lights and nudey cinemas. It's still all done up nice though, that's how you know it's really high end.
He raises his eyebrows. "Fancy."
"Yeah, well. Our girl deserves the best." Sport smiles at him, like it's a secret, like he's thinking about Iris but he's looking at Freddy so who's he really talking about here. "Plus, there's a few guys getting out of the slammer on Friday, so I figure we can show them a good time."
Freddy nods. "They get put away when the cops raided the Cabots?"
Sport tenses up ever so slightly, imperceptible, unless you really know what to look for. "Freddy, baby, what would a pretty little thing like you know about the Cabots?"
It's a test. Whores are generally pretty street smart, they have to be if they don't wanna get eaten up and spat straight back out again, but no one likes a smart whore. You gotta play dumb, and in the end, if you play it long enough, it becomes you. Freddy shakes his head. "Nothin'. Just...something a friend said."
"A friend?" That piques Sport's interest. "You ain't told me about any friends."
"This was before I came to you. I don't...I ain't seem him in a while."
"Hey, hey. Nothing to worry about, sweetheart." Sport purrs. "You're allowed to have friends, I'd just like to meet 'em so I can know you're not being taken advantage of."
Freddy shrugs. "Like I said, it was a while back. He probably don't wanna see me no more."
--------------------------------------------------
Giulio's is more than nice, it's fucking decadent. Sport brings in his best people from around the city and they arrive to champagne laid out just for them when they're setting up.
Freddy shuffles awkwardly through to the front of the crowd when they're being directed. He's one of the shorter people here, next to the statuesque blondes and transvestites that make up so much of the ensemble of the 'street team' as they're called. Sport has links to a whole lot more than the tenements on ninety second street if this stock is to be believed. Freddy recognises some of them the way you recognise old movie starts years after you've stopped wasting your time with midday re-runs of classic films over the school holidays. He forgets, sometimes, that he slept in a dumpster and counted himself lucky. After the sweltering heat of the summer and the luxuriant pliability of his mattress, he can no longer imagine what it must have been like to be that cold.
Aside from the whores, a handful of dumb muscle bulks out the ranks. They're here to help shift the heavy stuff, they don't have any kind of performance to worry about.
"Hey! All eyes on me!" Sport claps his hands and silences the twittering cloud. "We've got very big weekend ahead of us, and I want everyone to cut loose and have a little fun. But first we gotta set a few ground rules."
He holds up a finger. "One, this is a working holiday. Youse are expected to pull your weight the same as ever, and we're also gonna have to serving up some drinks and other treats to the guests, ok? Now, I know not a word of this is gonna leave this room, so I don't mind telling you that we're gonna have a few substances on offer. A little weed, some blow. The barstaff are gonna handle the stock." And here he winks at Freddy. "But otherwise you're gonna be serving."
"We gotta be serving and scouting for Johns all at once?" A thickset red head with the kind of curves an hourglass would kill for sneers. "I don't wait tables, Matthew!"
"Hey, hey, c'mon now!" Sport smiles, opening his hands wide and offering exactly nothing to placate her. "You'll be able to get yourself some drinks too. And you can always just stick to scouting for a while if it's wearing you down. I just don't want our distinguished guests on their feet all night having to fight to get a drink, y'know? Everyone's gonna get paid extra for this weekend, I'm not trying to stiff you here, honey."
Getting paid extra is enough to calm everyone down a notch. Freddy skipped right over the part of his life where he could have gotten a Saturday job waiting tables and jumped straight to begging his folks for money every few weeks. He doesn't see how he's got the experience to pull this all off, but he figures he can smile his way out of it if necessary.
"Ok, rule number two." Sport barks, sending up a second finger. "You are getting paid out of my pocket, no one has to pay up front. You meet a guy who wants to take you home with him, or wants to book in a date to see you some other time, you send him to me and I'll get it sorted. Ok?"
Nodding, silence.
The third finger comes up. "Third, I know my market well, I'm sure you lovely ladies know that." Sport smirks. He's probably fucked every last one of them half a dozen times or more. He probably tells them all he misses them. he probably calls them all 'baby'. "And I reckon I got the perfect demographics right here to make sure everyone's pleasures are taken care of. Some of you may have noticed that Freddy's the only guy here, and that's why. Now, I'm paying outta pocket, you understand, I'm trying not to overdo things, but there's a slight chance I may have miscalculated how many guys like a girl with a dick and how many just like a boy. So if you see my dear sweet Freddy getting overwhelmed at all I need you to go over and help him."
Sport blows Freddy a kiss, and maybe he doesn't say shit to any other hooker in all of Manhattan. The forth finger rises. "Fourth, and this is most important, Iris ain't to be taken out back by anyone. We're trying to impress but it's her birthday, she's off the cards."
"What if she wants it?" Someone barks from the back.
Everyone laughs, and Freddy tries to play along like he gets the joke.
Sport likes that shit a whole lot. "You know what? Stop her anyway. Tell her it's a gift from me, I'm teaching her some self restraint."
That's the joke of the evening. The shit that brings the fucking roof down. They move off to get changed, to get beautiful, to help hang banners and streamers around the tables ringing an old school dance floor with a raised stage. There's supposed to be a real live band coming, and a troop of bartenders who can make you any cocktail you ask for.
It's supposed to be a huge night. Hell, it's gonna stretch on till Sunday afternoon if it's gonna last an hour. Freddy stares down his reflection, applying kohl to his eyes and gloss to his lips in a vague attempt to tidy himself up. He's gonna be fine, he's sure of it. He's got the stamina, the looks, and the ability to slip into the background when the shit hits the fan. He's mister fucking cool.