Chapter Text
It had taken three months for Hardy to relent to their complaints that they needed another member of staff. Which was only after an additional two months of overworking themselves and barely scraping through the lunch and evening rushes that came with the steady flow of truckers and commuters stopping by after a day in the office in one of the larger cities out past the telephone lines. Hardy had bitched and moaned as well as he could, twirling a pencil around his fingers and giving them the soft line and then the hard line. But once Donnie had brought up the idea of a union, he crumbled like the small man that he was.
The listing went out to the appropriate places and an interview was held for a measly four candidates, of which three did not turn up. So, that was that.
Randy's first impression of the new boy, because he was a boy, was the memory that he was the same young man that he’d seen stabbing the end of a penknife into his thumb outside of the lonesome gas station where he filled up his car after work. He’d made brief eye contact with him and then scurried off because the smile he’d gotten in return had made the ends of his hair frizz and his stomach turn. The car he drove was old, a manual transmission, and after he’d fumbled with his keys and got the car going, he had stalled the engine twice with the thought of the tip of the knife slicing through the boy’s thumb.
“This is Benson—” Hardy said with a small wave of his hand towards the boy, the end of the sentence lingering as if he was waiting expectantly for Benson to fill in the blanks with his surname.
“Just Benson. Don’t worry about it," Benson muttered instead and Hardy breezed by it and continued on, showing him about the restaurant with a bored resignation that would only be cured by him disappearing into his office and locking the door. Randy had passed by it enough times throughout the day when it was quiet to know that Hardy very rarely did what could be considered real work. The smell of murky, foetid unpleasantness seeped from underneath the doorway regularly, as did the muffled, tinny sound of women moaning.
For the week, Benson was to be Randy’s “buddy”, following him around and learning the ropes so that he could feasibly be left alone by the end of the five days and Hardy would have yet another peon, someone else to suffer the wrath of his last-minute schedule changes, which he would never ask about prior to opening up the folder that housed the ratty bits of paper he scribbled them onto. Randy had missed at least three important life events in the last few years due to Hardy’s mismanagement and he looked at the back of Benson’s head and thought about the chance this kid might miss his own graduation due to that.
Although that was quickly squashed when Benson, while assisting Randy moving boxes and boxes of plastic soda cups and utensils into the front from the back, answered Randy’s feeble question of, “So, how come you took this job?”
“My mom lost her job. She’d been doing the same thing since she was about fifteen.” The stretch and pull of Benson’s arms didn’t go unnoticed and Randy physically turned himself away so as not to stare as the young man spoke. “Now she won’t get out of bed. I used to work down at Dean’s, the car shop. Done that since I was about seventeen. Wanted a change.”
“What about school?” Randy asked, the box in his arms heavy enough that it slipped down a fraction, almost tumbling out of his arms until Benson slid his hands underneath it and lifted it straight from Randy’s grip with none of the exertion that Randy had been huffing and puffing through. The back of his neck was boiling hot, hair on end from the nape all the way down to where the skin of his back met his underwear. The room could have been a sauna from the heat he was kicking out.
With the box in his arms and his cap hitched up high enough that Randy could see that his eyes were grey. Not like storms, but still dangerous water. Unmoved and bottomless, thriving on the people who dared to step foot into it. Randy was dangerously close to not emerging from the stunned lock that Benson had on him until the boy cleared his throat and said, “I don’t do school. No time. Too many bills.”
“Oh,” Randy said, his throat clogged up, as though he hadn’t swallowed lunch properly. “That’s alright. I dropped out of college.”
“When you were my age?” Benson looked up at him, only a few centimetres smaller than Randy where he stood. His grey eyes looked black.
It sounded like a jibe. A swift shot at the fact that Randy was in his mid-thirties and was stuck in the same dump that Benson was in but didn’t have the fallback of youth to compensate for that harrowing fact. It should have hurt to stare at the younger man, both of their feet sticking to the gummy floors of the restaurant as Randy twisted the fabric of his work shirt, buttoned up to his neck, around his shaking fingers.
Instead, it felt like Benson was toying with him. Testing the boundaries like livestock to an electric fence, seeing how hard his blunt teeth could clamp down before it became painful. Or a risk of death.
When Randy drove home that evening, the window open as far as it would go so that the interior of the car wouldn’t steam up with how hard he was breathing, it hit him that Benson might have even been flirting.
—————
Every morning was the same. Randy would ignore the pile of dishes that should have migrated the night before into the dishwasher and then stand by his sink to watch the birds in the garden as they hot-footed around the grubby patio tiles that wouldn’t be half as grubby if he used the power washer that his mother had bought him to clean them off. The scatter of birdseed that he’d toss with a closed palm across it looked unkempt and bothered his neighbours enough that they would complain endlessly, but it was the one moment of his day that he felt something that could be considered peace. His mug clasped in his hands and his hip bones resting on the edge of the counter.
He almost dropped the mug into the sink, letting it shatter into a selection of pieces, when he thought about a second day of Benson shadowing him. Trotting after Randy with a distinct air of disgust and amusement all mixed into something that made his smiles warp into sneers in Randy’s mind. It had been the same when he’d trained Chris and Jess; their blunt disappointment that they’d had to be the lackeys of the sopping wet stain on the restaurant that was Randy had been almost palpable. Their eyes rolling in opposite directions when he’d attempted to teach them anything. He’d been happy once Hardy had approved their training programmes and let them loose on their own for shifts. For the most part, Randy barely saw them, picking up the shifts that they refused to work and traipsing his way across the working weeks in order to keep his apartment and the poor attempt at a life he had been attempting recently.
The cash register used to terrify Randy, its mouth lurching open and smacking into his stomach as he continuously messed up the buttons and would have to manually work out the change as his palm sweated beneath the assortment of coins. It had taken years for him to become comfortable enough to step up to the counter and not even begin to feel the prickle of terror as he punched in his employee number into the register, but the sickly sensation of his guts turning appeared without much warning. Roiling Randy’s insides into a mess as he stuttered over his words and felt the heat of Benson’s gaze on the side of his face. He daren’t turn to look at him. Just stared ahead as customers approached, keeping his voice low as he bumbled his way through.
“I’ve worked a register before.” Benson’s shoulders rose in a stretch, then his head flopped back and forth as he worked out the knots. Beneath the material of his work shirt, the buttons of which were done up just far enough that Hardy wouldn’t object, but below it Randy could see the print of a band t-shirt. The logo was a blast of jagged, metallic lettering and it was only when Randy heard Benson’s feet shuffle against the floor that he realised that he had been staring at it. His eyes probably bugging out of his skull as he stood transfixed on the centre of Benson’s chest. He could just about see the swell of his breast.
Randy swallowed. The choking sensation was back and it only increased as Benson’s right hand hovered over to press a few buttons; the woman who was trying to order a meal stood looking perplexed as Randy could only twitch on the spot and prepare himself for the way that Benson’s fingers felt as they brushed against his own as he tapped in the woman’s order and apologised for Randy’s behaviour, passing it off as his “first day”.
Two hours later, Randy had not recovered. The pad of his thumb rubbed circles on the edges of his fingers as he imagined the rough smudge of Benson’s digits against his own. Dry and coarse, overworked for his age, just as Randy’s were underworked for his, despite the fact he’d been keeping himself afloat with a job since his mother had allowed him to. She’d almost passed out on the spot when he’d announced he was leaving home and moving into an apartment on the other side of town, determined to no longer be the grown adult living under his mother’s roof and rules.
The sandwich he’d made for his lunch was as unappetising as it had been when he’d made it the night before, the lettuce limp and the deli meat suspiciously warm as the staff fridge no longer worked. Randy chomped through the first half of it on autopilot, his eyes closed as he thought about the waft of heat that had emanated from Benson’s body as he leered closer to touch the register’s keypad.
Underneath his teeth, the food felt like nothing but mush and masticated slop as he leaned back against the pile of boxes behind him and tried not to linger on the fact that he’d all but forgotten what it was like for somebody to be close to you, that you could smell them. He could smell the way that Benson’s deodorant wasn’t quite up to scratch and the way the fabric softener he used almost masked it. He could smell the stale scent of old cigarettes and the coffee he’d drunk for breakfast when he spoke. The inside of his mouth probably tasted rich and hot.
“That looks pretty depressing, man.” Benson’s form towered above where Randy was sat atop a plastic crate, a brown paper bag in his hands as he did the worst thing he could do and pulled up another crate to plop himself down next to Randy, letting out a grunt of discomfort as he descended. “Stop eating that shit. Here, I’ll share.”
There was no time to object or push away the half of a sandwich that Benson pushed into Randy’s hands, his body in a state of rigid shock as Benson’s fingers bumped up against his own and then, mortifyingly, when Benson drew them back, he licked a few invisible crumbs from them. His tongue peeked out from the dark of his mouth and Randy would have liked to slip his entire fist into it, stretching Benson’s cheeks open wide, leaving raw cracks on the corners of his mouth.
“Eat that.” Benson nodded his head towards the sandwich in Randy’s shivering hand. “I made it; it’s actually good.” He shrugged. “Or don’t. Whatever.”
Randy ate it. Every bit. Just because Benson had told him to.
God, he was fucking pathetic.
The rest of the day was spent hovering behind Benson as he adeptly used the register, his mouth soft and kind as he spoke to customers with the prowess of someone who had over a decade of customer service experience and not a twenty-one year old who had been fired from the only mechanic’s in town that was still accepting faxes as a means of communication and charged women almost three times as much as men.
“He’s good,” Hardy said at the end of the second day as Randy locked the restaurant’s front doors. “That Benson kid. Fast learner. He’s making you look like a fucking chump.”
“Goodnight, Hardy.”
Randy rarely jerked off, but that evening he thought about Benson pressing his cheek into the cold lino of the register’s countertop so hard that his teeth cut into the inside of it and touched himself until he had made the sheet of his bed wet with sweat beneath him. No longer bound to his mother’s laundry plan, he planned to sleep in the stain for the rest of the week.
—————
When Randy was Benson’s age, Benson would have been seven. The thought made him feel sick as disinfectant seeped into the cuts on his fingers that perpetually lingered on the top layer of Randy’s skin from working in the world’s most deadly profession: food service. When Benson was thirty-five, then Randy could be just shy of turning fifty. Fingering the top edges of middle age. Probably grey and miserable. Meanwhile, Benson would still be in the throes of a young man’s life, taut and ready to snap at opportunities. Hot to the touch.
“I finished cleaning the bathrooms.” Benson appeared from nowhere, much in the same way he’d been doing all day after Randy had relented and allowed him to get on with a few tasks without him having to pad behind Randy like a puppy. It startled Randy enough that the plastic bottle of cleaning fluid in his hand almost fell to the floor, just like the box had almost done. This time, Benson tucked his palm around it and pressed the bottle into the middle of Randy’s belly, his eyes still that same alluring and dangerous grey. “I’m going outside to smoke. Is that okay?”
“It’s okay,” Randy croaked, sounding out of breath. Like he’d run a marathon. “It’s fine. It’s good, actually.”
“Good?” Benson’s eyebrow darted up in question.
“I mean—” Randy could hear how stupid he sounded. “It’s fine. I’ll allow it.”
“Right.” Benson stretched the vowel, then bit down on the last consonant. Hard. “I’m glad you’re allowing me to have a smoke. Thank you, sir.”
Randy must have been the colour of the bright red trays they served their food on, his face up to boiling point in a moment as Benson laughed raspily and shook his head like Randy was the stupidest fucking person on the planet, then wandered off to dig out his cigarettes from the locker he’d been assigned.
It was only when the fire exit door was in front of him that Randy realised he’d stomped all the way across the restaurant, his cleaning cloth still in his hand as he shoved open the door and listened as it slammed shut behind him after its initial shriek on the hinge. Before him, Benson stood with his shoulder blades against the brick wall of the building, his legs crossed and his fingers to his mouth as he sucked on a cigarette with an unreadable expression.
“Don’t call me that.” Randy’s fist tightened around the cleaning cloth, the disinfectant leaching into his skin even more.
Benson didn’t even turn his head. “What?”
“Sir. Don’t call me that. I’m not the kind of man who wants people to call me that.”
“Man?” Benson scoffed, then reeled back the sound and added, softer, “Fine. Sorry. I was only playing with you. Just a fucking joke.” The cigarette rose again and finally, Benson’s head lolled over to pierce Randy with his gaze. “You want one?”
Randy straightened up. “Huh?”
“A cigarette. I don’t mind sharing with you. You look like you’re on day two of quitting or something. You’ve been shaking like a leaf. Are you some sort of alcoholic, man?”
Randy’s feet had taken him closer before he could stop himself, the acidic smell of the trash wriggling into his sinuses as he tried to overpower it with the smell of Benson. Washed clothes and dirty man. It made him feel like he was floating on air.
“No.” Randy shook his head, his eyes magnetised to the way that Benson’s fingers were slightly yellowed at the end from all the cigarettes he smoked. Randy’s grandmother’s house had been stained cornmeal yellow from the decades of cigarettes she’d imbued into her walls. They’d wiped the outlets and the cloth had come away almost black, like bile. But still, Randy couldn’t help but admit that the smell was nostalgic to him. Stale cigarette smoke and sweet tea, two things that made Randy long for sticky summer days in the early 90s when he’d been fresh out of high school and no longer chained to the agony of his senior days. His grandmother would allow him to spend time in her nicotine-tarnished home, away from his mother, as he attempted to plot the path he was supposed to take.
Maybe to him, Benson smelled like home. Perhaps that was the draw. The big, gaping black hole that was only three days old and yet had already turned Randy into long strips of human spaghetti as it sucked him into some other world.
“What are you Jonesing for then?” Benson held out the cigarette packet and Randy fumbled to get one out until Benson tapped on the bottom of the carton and one flew up into his fingers. It was held awkwardly, Randy unsure of how to hold it and not seem like an alien. “People don’t shake unless they need something.”
“Need something?” Randy’s mouth felt dry. “I—uh—I—”
“How about a light? Do you need that?” Benson gestured him closer, not retrieving a lighter from his pocket, as Randy would have expected him to. Instead, he gestured yet again for Randy to creep closer, only stopping once he was within a hair’s breadth. Then, with a smirk that seemed to split his face even with the cigarette in between his lips, he manhandled Randy’s cigarette into his mouth and bumped the ends of them together. The paper of Benson’s cherry fizzled as he sucked on it, lighting the end of Randy’s as he breathed smoke from his nostrils, clogging up the air between them as Randy tried not to pass out right there on the spot.
Benson’s eyelashes were longer than Randy had ever seen on another man, kissing the tops of his cheeks until he batted them open to peer hotly at the man who should have been training him how to clean the bathroom or work the grill. Instead, Randy was becoming increasingly worse at denying the way that his stomach wanted to fall out of his ass when Benson’s mouth twitched into a smug smile.
“That’s it,” Benson murmured. “There you go.”
Everything was quiet for a moment. Then Randy coughed and Benson laughed in his face, his shoulders jumping as he let his head thump against the wall and for a second, Randy couldn’t do anything but laugh along with him.
“Shit, man. You really are just a nervous wreck, huh?” Benson waved the hand with his cigarette around, circling Randy with a ring of smoke. Like a salt ring on the floor of Randy’s great-grandmother’s cabin in the humidity of the bayou. If Randy knew how, he’d draw one around the both of them and hope that neither of them would cross that jagged, mystical circle. “No drugs or nothing. You’re just like that.”
“No. No drugs,” Randy said. He attempted another drag of the cigarette and it went down smoother this time, but he wouldn’t find himself doing it ever again if he had the choice. He hoped that he didn’t have the choice, though, if he was being honest with himself. He’d like for Benson to break into his apartment and hold cigarettes to his mouth under the threat of violence if he didn’t smoke the entire thing. Maybe even the whole pack. Until his lungs burned and Benson’s smile reached his ears.
“You should go back inside. Hardy seems to be a stickler for us not having real breaks.” Benson said. His cigarette was almost finished and Randy’s was still smouldering; his throat was hot from the effort of not coughing spittle onto himself. The muscles of his abdomen spasmed as he tried to keep himself calm in front of someone who he knew almost nothing about but still was doing a fantastic job at plaguing his every waking moment.
"Yeah." Randy's whole face seemed to ache with heat as he smoked the cigarette as efficiently as his lungs would allow, stamping it out beneath the rubber of his work shoe once it was about halfway done, much to the displeasure of Benson, if his pointed down eyebrows were anything to go by. “I’ll head back in.”
“Do you follow everyone’s orders as well as this, or just mine?”
The air felt like the moment before lightning struck. The hairs on his arms standing on end as he remained rooted to the spot, unable to come up with a retort because there was nothing that he could say that would distract Benson from the useless flap of his open mouth and the flush in his cheeks. It was more than likely that Benson thought he was a pervert. A degenerate who stood behind new, young employees and worked themselves into a frenzy at the way their sweat smelled and the stretch of their work pants across their thighs.
A dirty loser who hadn’t progressed in any way since their twenties and had never even lost their—
“I’m kidding, Randy. Another joke. Shit, don’t freak out on me. I need this job.” For the first time, Benson sounded legitimately worried. His own cigarette being ground beneath the heel of his steel-toed boot, the laces of which had come undone at some point. “We can go back in together. I’m done out here.”
“Sure. Sure thing.” Randy garbled, his heart pounding so hard that it felt like it might leap out of his mouth. “I need to show you the grill.”
“The grill, yeah. Yeah.” Benson wiped his hands onto the front of his pants, leaving the fabric just damp enough that Randy could notice the colour change.
That third evening, he didn’t just close his fist around his dick and fuck it, thinking about Benson’s eyes and mouth and thighs; he imagined him whispering into his ear as he chewed on the shell of it with impossibly sharp teeth. He thought about the things that Benson might say as he sneered at his ineptitude versus his age and then instructed him to bend at the waist. Allowing Benson to shuffle up behind him and fuck the pathetic, all-too-long-standing virginity right out of Randy with short, violent thrusts that shuddered Randy up the bed until the crown of his head almost smashed into the headboard. Until his neighbours could hear the racket. Until the bed frame splintered.
Until Benson took a fistful of curled, blonde hair and yanked so hard that Randy, in his mind, gasped and came so hard that his insides ached with the force of it.
The wet patch and stain only grew. Forming a meandering, vile salt circle, with Randy right in the centre.
