I fucking hate Christmas.

Don't start in on me. Keep your "most wonderful time of the year," "peace on Earth" bullshit to yourself. I've got no boyfriend, a family who'd sure like to see me but can't afford the plane ticket, and a good twenty-K in defaulted student loans for a degree I never even finished. Hard to roast chestnuts over an open fire in a shitty apartment complex in Ass-End-of-Nowhere, Kansas.

All Christmas means to me is sliding around on parking lot ice in heels, a freezing-cold dressing room, and a club full of the absolute finest specimens the community's got to offer. Just imagine what kind of guy spends Christmas Eve in a strip club. Yeah, go on, think about it. Uh huh.

Most of them are worse than that.

I oughta just stop working Christmas. But it's not like I've got anything better to do. Some of the creeps tip well, especially if you don't laugh when they ask you to marry them. And I'll be honest: part of me just likes to bitch. Ask my ex, he pointed that out plenty the last time we talked.

Money and bitching rights are my little Christmas present to myself, I guess.

So there I am, eleven-forty at night on the twenty-fourth, taking my break in the dressing room, coat on, heels off, wishing it was two already, when Ross comes in. I can tell he's got bad news before he ever even opens his mouth. He waits for me to finish groaning, then spills.

"Cherri, you got two in the champagne room."

"And?" I ask. "I got two minutes left. Can't one of the other girls do it?"

"Nope. They saw you dancing when they came in, asked specifically for you. Blonde in the red boots." I scowl. "Look on the bright side. There's two, but one of them bought the dance as a present for the other, so you only have to do one."

"Fine." I pause the timer on my phone, because I'm getting those two minutes one way or another. "What song?"

"Asked for Iron Butterfly."

"...what?" Didn't know they made dancing music. I think about the one song I know by them. "The Garden of Eden one?"

"Not the name," Ross replies, "but yeah."

"What the fuck, Ross, that's like a twenty-minute song."

"Seventeen, and yeah, I know. Guy was adamant, though. Said he 'wanted to make sure his buddy enjoyed himself for once.'" Ross does this whole little voice for the last part, all gruff and twangy, and it's immediately got me imagining a couple of hefty guys in their fifties, stained jeans and leering smiles, reeking of cheap dip and stale sweat. My head pounds. "You really, really want me to, slide me a third of what you've taken in so far tonight and I'll tell them you're puking. But he wants to pay you close to fifty dollars, and I don't think that's including tip."

And what am I supposed to say to that, right? God knows I need the money, and that I've done a whole lot worse for a whole lot less.

"Fine. Give me fifteen, then start the music."

So I put my boots back on, spritz down with perfume because I'm not smelling so fresh myself, and have Jasmine, who calls herself a "makeup artist," touch up my eyeliner. Then I head for the champagne room on aching feet and with goose bumps already cropping up.

Fucking Christmas.

I sweep through the bead curtain, go around the tiny curving slice of a hallway that gives the room some privacy. And then I almost stumble hard enough to break an ankle. 'Cause even in the low light, I can tell these guys, sitting close enough for their knees to casually touch on the wraparound couch, aren't what I was expecting. Hell, they're not what anybody would expect in a place like this. What are they even doing here?

They're younger than I thought, to start with. Slimmer. Taller. And if you shaved about ten years and four layers off each of them, could've walked off a pinup calendar. You know the type. Sexy fireman, sexy police officer, sexy blue-collar, hard-working ex-military guy, which is the vibe I'm somehow getting. The shorter one's got a brush cut and lips I'd just about kill to have on my own face, so full and pink, and he eyes me like you're supposed to look at a stripper. Head tilted back, approving, taking in everything I've got on display already and am gonna get out in the next...ugh, twenty minutes.

Although I'm minding that time slot less and less.

I think the taller one's maybe a little younger. I don't like his hair, way too long. But he's got wide cheekbones and wider shoulders, legs that, again, I'm jealous of: they run for miles. He's uncomfortable, though. Won't look at me for longer than half a second. Reminds me of the painfully-obvious virgins whose friends drag them in here for bachelor parties, except it's not that he's afraid of me. He just doesn't wanna be here.

I can respect that. I don't want to, either.

They're both a little drunk, I can tell, which will either make this a lot easier or a lot harder. I'm really hoping for the former.

"Hi, there," I say flirtily, once I start to realize I've let the silence go a little too long. "I'm Cherri. I understand I'm somebody's Christmas present?"

"You sure are, sweetheart." The short one leans forward, loose and confident, and winks at me. "Lemme tell you, you are exactly Sammy here's type."

"Dean," the tall one mumbles, a soft warning.

"I'm everybody's type, soon as the music starts playing." I stalk across the room, snapping my heels, swaying my hips, moving around the mirror-topped table. They've both got beers. Good. If I run out of ideas, the long neck of the bottle always makes for an excellent prop. "So. Which one of you handsome boys am I here to please?" I stop between the two of them, look back and forth expectantly.

"That'd be Sammy." Dean points. "He needs this."

"I really don't," Sammy cuts in, and Dean rolls his eyes.

"And try not to hurt yourself on the stick up his ass."

I titter. Dean smirks, and it only gets bigger when his friend glares at him.

"Are you gonna stay in the room?" I ask. I don't ask if he likes to watch. Some guys take that the wrong way.

He shrugs, easygoing, and scoots away, giving us some room and himself a good vantage point. Still close enough to make touching easy if he feels like it. "I paid for it, didn't I?"

When I look over at Sammy, he looks pained, swallowing hard.

"Relax, honey." I take a couple steps over, stop right in front of Sammy. "This is literally my job." I nudge his ankles gently apart, step in between his legs, and bend over to put my hands on his shoulders, letting my hair fall into his face. Soon as I do, the music starts, heavy rock thudding into the room. I have to put my mouth right next to his ear to make sure he hears it when I say, "You're gonna like this, I promise. We'll make it a white Christmas."

I straighten up, step back, begin to sway in time with the song. It's got a beat, but god, why did they choose this one? Why do we even have this one in the system? It's not dancing music.

I make do, though, as Sam blushes hard enough for me to pick up in the dark. Let him get a good view of my hips, tight wraparound skirt hung low on them, and my tits, barely contained in my tight breakaway blouse. Then I move in, knee up on the couch, in between his legs, just brushing against his groin, and...huh. Wow. He doesn't really feel hard. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's not.

Unless his dick's the size of a double-A battery which, given the hands and feet he's got on him, I really doubt.

Does he have a hard time getting going? I wonder as I lace my fingers together behind my head and smile down at him, chest forward, hips rocking. Or maybe it's the alcohol. Because I know it's not me, don't worry. Is it maybe a little tougher for him to get his engine running than other guys, either just in general or as he's getting older? Did he confide in his best friend about it and said friend brought him here so he could "enjoy himself for once?"

Suddenly, the twenty-minute song's making a lot more sense, and I'm starting to feel bad for the guy. Also like I'm doing something good here, helping somebody out, making a tiny bit of difference in the world. Kinda like what I went to school for.

I never get to feel like that anymore. I'm gonna go all out, and he's gonna have himself a good time if it kills both of us.

I push against Sammy with my knee, rubbing, and that answers my question: absolutely no problems there, I can feel him laying against one of his thighs and he's all kinds of proportional. I step back, leaning over so he can get an eyeful of cleavage and running my hands down his thighs. I wink up at him. Some guys want me to talk, some don't. I get the feeling that he's one of the ones that would prefer I talked. At least to put him at some kind of ease. He's still looking so damn uncomfortable. Every time I get close, he leans away, eyes aimed at something that's not me. I do a quick sniff test when I drop my head, but that's not the issue here.

"You know you can touch me, right?" I ask him. "You paid for it."

"Yep."

"...and you know you're definitely not gonna get kicked out if I touch you?"

"Yeah. I know." A pause. "Sorry."

I pause, too. Then, sympathetically, I ask, "This your first time in a strip club, Sammy?"

"Uh, no...and i-it's just Sam. He's…" His eyes cut to Dean, still on the other side of the couch, beer in hand and buzzed smile on his lips when I glance at him. "The only one who calls me that."

"Oop. Noted." Some of them like to be teased. Easy as Sam would be, I don't think he'd take well to it. "Can you tell me what you like?"

"Just. Whatever you normally do is fine." Jesus. He's gotta be in his thirties and he reminds me of a nineteen-year-old with a chastity ring on. "What's your name?"

"Cherri." I giggle. "I told you."

"No." He finally looks at me. "Your real name."

This isn't the first time somebody's asked for it, not by a long shot. Creeps always think knowing my real name makes it hotter. "Nice" guys think they're gonna be the big white knight who saves the stripper from herself. Normal customers seem to think of it as making conversation, and some think that if they do that, it'll somehow entitle them to a free handy. I've got two dozen responses locked and loaded in the barrel.

...but there's something about the way that he's looking at me. Furrowed brow, pinched lips, some kind of puppy-dog note around his eyes that makes me feel like he actually cares about the answer. He's got nice eyes. I can't tell what color they are, it's too dark, but there's some kind of rainbow hint in the depths of them. And they look like they're full of stars, light reflecting off the tiny mirrors all over the walls and the glitter on my boobs.

"Christina," I somehow find myself saying as I straddle his lean thighs.

He nods. I see him commit it to memory. "Is this the only thing you do?"

And usually, yeah, I know exactly where that's going. Guys ask girls, my kind of girls, that question all the goddamn time during lap dances. We can only hope it's gonna end with the two of us in a sleazy motel room and not our skin tacked to his bedroom wall. Again, I've got plenty of answers to that line of questioning, most of them to do with the fact I'm only down for hand stuff. I like not having very many STDs, and I guess that's an okay trade-off for my rent being two months late on a good day.

I don't think that's what Sam here wants, though. So I tell him, "Yeah, right now. But I used to be in school not too long ago." I bite my lower lip as I rock back and forth in time to the music on his lap, my crotch inches from his, my legs spread wide. We can hardly hear each other over the beat. "Innocent little college girl."

"You can go a little harder," Dean calls over the music. "He likes it rough."

I see tendons in Sam's neck stand out a little as he forces himself to ignore that. "What were you studying?"

I look down, thinking maybe he's trying to keep himself from busting five minutes in. But nope. Might be a little hard, might just be the lighting and his jeans pitching a fake tent.

What's the harm? "Nursing."

He nods, and pain lances through his eyes. "My, uh, girlfriend was in nursing school. Stanford. Good program."

Something happened there, obviously, but my mind latches on Stanford and I snort out a laugh before I can stop myself. "Yeah, I wasn't going to Stanford. Wichita State and even that was a stretch."

A little frown, head slightly cocked. There it is again, the actual caring. "Really?"

I flip myself around on his lap, ass right on top of his dick, and start grinding. I'm facing Dean when I rip my top off, tits bouncing, rhinestone-studded ruby bra glittering. At least he's actually receptive. My thighs are starting to hurt and I'm burning in my stomach, irritated. How long have I been at this already?

And we still haven't achieved liftoff, down there between Sam's long, long legs.

"D'you think your friend really shelled out as much as he did for us to talk?" I ask, probably just barely loud enough for him to hear. He doesn't answer, but we're looking at same place, I see when I happen to glance at him. In the general direction of Dean, who's more than enjoying the show. Should've just bought the dance for himself.

I get up. I take my skirt off. I shake my tits in Sam's face, my ass. I run my hands up his thighs again, a nail down his chest. I put the toe of one boot on his dick, because they did mention the boots when they asked for me, and Dean just said he likes it rough, so maybe that's what he's into. Not sure what does it, but I finally get some chub, and all it does is stiffen the rest of him up even more.

"Are you gay?" I ask him bluntly, when I sit back down on his lap mostly because I'm tired and sweaty. And usually, that's dangerous to ask, out here in flyover country where you can practically taste the fragile masculinity in the air. But he doesn't seem the type to put me through the mirrored table for it even if it's true, which I'm thinking it is because I know it's not me.

"No." He seems almost relieved I'm talking again.

"Then you got somebody." I don't see a ring, but that really tells me zip. "You feel bad about being here. You feel bad about liking this."

The pained expression on his face tells me I'm spot-on.

"Who is it?" I tease at the edges of my bra, but I'm really not trying anymore. Not like he cares. "Your girlfriend? The nurse?"

I already know it's not, and even asking is a shitty thing to do, but I'm a shitty person. Especially around Christmas.

The same pain I saw before, over a decade old but still sharp, comes marching back into his eyes. He swallows. "No. She's...gone."

And his eyes flick over my shoulder. Where, I realize, they've been going all night. I thought he was just looking off into the middle distance or whatever to avoid looking at me, but now I see he's focusing on something, and I might be a dropout, but it's not hard to figure out what. In fact, it's so obvious I can't believe I didn't peg it immediately.

"Oh." I get the little high that comes with unraveling somebody. It's usually a kink, though, a certain move they like, something about me specifically that turns them on. I think this is the first crush I've uncovered. Even if it feels wrong to call it a crush, because this thing I see in Sam's face all of a sudden...oh, boy. Somebody's in deep. "It's Dean, huh?"

I knew I was right, but I was not expecting the way he reacts to that. The half-panicked deer-in-the-headlights look, the full-body jerk, the downright fierce twitch from his cock against my thigh. Not to mention the lovesick, yawning ache that suddenly opens wide in him like a peony in sunlight.

Holy shit. All that just from a name?

Even with the way the booze has to have loosened him way up, he's in some serious trouble here. I stomp down a smile.

"Oh, wow, what was that?" Dean calls over to us, clearly having seen. I'm not surprised, you could've seen that from a satellite. "Go ahead and do that again, darlin'."

I smile and wink at him, then turn back to Sam, who's found his tongue after losing it for the past ten seconds.

"Uh, definitely not." Sam tries to state it firmly. "Seriously, if you knew - "

"It's okay. No judgment here."

"We're not - "

"I don't need an explanation, baby."

"I - "

"You don't gotta justify yourself."

He gives up, jaw clenched, lips pursed, and I can't classify his expression as anything but downright bitchy. I wanna laugh, but you don't get far in my line of work if you can't tuck that urge away.

"I'm gonna guess he doesn't know." It's really not a guess, and the way Sam looks down is the little confirmation I needed. "Why not?"

He clicks his tongue and looks away, shaking his head, and oh my god do I wish I was allowed to wear a watch. Or that there was a clock in here. Or that I knew this stupid fucking song well enough to figure out how long I've got left. Fifty bucks is fifty bucks, but I don't think I've ever done a routine this long before, and I'm in good shape and all, but not good enough to spend twenty minutes doing squats on the lap of the Tallest Guy in Lebanon. My legs are gonna fall off tomorrow morning.

Least Sam here could do's entertain me, way I see it. Since I'm obviously not entertaining him.

"Afraid he'd beat you up? You've gotta have six inches on him. You could take him...in more ways than one."

"I really don't wanna talk about this." He mumbles it so low I mostly read his lips.

"You made me talk about school."

"I didn't make you - "

I push off him. My bra snaps in the front, so I pull it open. And Sam's still looking at Dean. I look at him, too, and wink again.

"Wanna taste?" I ask the one guy in the room who's interested. "All natural." Not like I can afford implants, even if they'd get me better tips. "Cherri pie."

He licks those full lips, long, slow, then smirks and shakes his head.

"Much as I'd love to, sweetheart, this is all him." He nods to Sam, and - wait. Wait a minute. Has Dean actually been watching me at all this entire time? Or...I track his eyes, exactly how his head's angled, which view his position's meant to maximize. Has he been watching Sam's reaction? Sitting there with a very obvious and impressive boner?

Wow. Just wow. These fucking guys.

For a second, I wonder if they're actually a couple and I'm an unwitting toy in some weird-ass sex game. But that's definitely not it. Sam's heartache, Dean's overblown interest in me, the raw, stupid, brick-wall obliviousness on both of them. You can't fake any of that. They're just stuck in their own personal gay working-man romcom, and they're both too dumb to figure it out.

It is so not my job to educate them. Dragged me in here in the middle of the night, made me dance for twenty frigging minutes for a guy who doesn't want it, chose the world's longest, most repetitive rock song. They deserve to go on "ships in the night"-ing for the rest of their moron lives.

But somehow, when I sit back down on Sam's lap and he acts like my nipples will steal his soul if he looks at them, I find myself telling him, "You're a fucking idiot."

He looks up at me, brows drawing together, forehead furrowed. Puppy dog's back and my tip's probably gone.

"Never mind." I shake my head. "Just. Seriously. You need to tell him. Whatever bad thing you think is gonna happen, it won't. Trust me."

Air puffs out of his nose, a baby laugh. "Yeah, uh, no offense, Christina...Cherri...but I don't think you know what you're talking about."

Fondling my breasts, pinching my nipples, I shrug. "Okay, then. Don't tell him." I put a hand between my legs, cup my groin. "After all, what's the worst thing that could happen? He dies and you spend the rest of your life hurting, and hating yourself, and wishing you hadn't been such a coward?"

I expect him to just look away again. Or scowl. Maybe even shove me off his lap, won't be the first bruised tailbone I've picked up in this room. Instead, he makes eye contact with me, expression soft, and smiles a little.

"Why'd you leave school?" he asks, and I figure I owe him an answer after I was such a bitch.

"Money." I grind on his thigh. "And I wouldn't have been a good nurse, anyway."

"I don't think that's true."

I smile at him, tongue flicking out. The song's chorus, or I guess the only lyrics in the whole damn thing, return. "I'm a cunt."

"You don't put up with bullshit," he corrects me. "I think that's important, dealing with patients." He shrugs. "You saw right through me. And you don't even know me."

I don't say anything.

"You should go back to school," he says. "Really."

The song ends. The silence has my ears ringing. Slowly, I climb off Sam, muscles in my core and thighs trembling. Almost automatically, I look again, and no activity on the surface. At least not until Dean lets out a loud whoop. Then there's another twitch.

I roll my eyes. I know I need water, but I really want vodka.

"Thanks, sweetheart. And I'm real sorry Sammy's such a wet blanket, you were awesome." Dean gets up, starts counting bills out of his wallet as I pick up my bra, skirt, and blouse. "You are a consummate professional."

Sam snorts softly. I smile at his friend as I tuck the cash into one boot.

"Anytime." I make a show of eyeing him up and down. I am, after all, a consummate professional. "Feel free to ask for me again next time you come in, all right? In fact, I insist on it."

"I am gonna take you up on that offer." He levels a finger at me, and I smile at him as I turn away, buttoning everything up as I make my exit. Soon as I'm out of the room, the smile drops.

Idiots.

I'm snapping towards the dressing room when Sam calls out, "Chri - Cherri." I turn around and holy shit there he is. I almost fall flat on my ass. How in the hell is a guy that big, wearing those giant shitkickers he's got on, that quiet?

"Here. This is for you." He presses a thick wad of bills into my hand, and I don't even have to look at it to tell that it's a ton of money. At least a couple hundred. My mouth falls open.

"Wh - "

"You don't have to put it towards school, but I'd really like you to." He's so damn earnest. "You'd make a good nurse. Really. And I know that that's what you want."

My jaw's still on the floor, but I pick it back up, scrape everything together, and tell him, "Make you a deal. I'll stick it in savings, start looking at re-enrolling. But you gotta tell Dean how you feel about him."

He smiles, one side of his mouth higher than the other, glances down. This is the only time I've ever had a guy do that and known he's not looking at my tits.

"What's the deal with you guys, anyway?" I'm curious, all of a sudden. "Best friends, coworkers? You're not cops." Oh, shit, maybe I shouldn't have told him he could touch me. "Right?"

"No, uh…" He looks back up. "We're brothers. He's my big brother." He takes a few steps back. "Happy holidays."

He turns away, jogs to catch up with Dean, who's loudly telling him how embarrassing he is and that it's time to call it a night. My jaw's between my boots again but he's fucking with me, I know it. All kinds of asshole. Who does that?

But I'm watching them walking out the door, elbows bumping, walking in perfect sync, Dean asking if Sam enjoyed it even a little and Sam mumbling something back, Dean going "You spent the whole song trying to convince her to do what?" I see the same lines in their backs, the familiarity of decades weaving them tight together, and the sweat on me's gone so cold I'm surprised it's not frost.

It's past midnight, when I get back into the dressing room and take a look at my phone. Officially morning on the twenty-fifth of December, I'm still on the clock, there's four hundred and fifty dollars stuffed in my boot, and I feel like I should wanna go home and take a shower with steel wool and Clorox.

But you know what? I don't. I don't want that. You wanna know the most fucked up part?

I feel like I just saw something beautiful. Like maybe I helped something beautiful get a little closer to happening. Because I told a guy to go for it and bone his brother.

Yeah.

Fucking Christmas.