Premise: Cortana's reviewed the data time and time again. For all the chaos she wrought, Makee provided one undeniable benefit: John's most restful night of sleep happened in her arms. Short of John finding a partner, Cortana recommends professional help. You don't know a thing about Cortana. You don't even know who John really is.
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When his schedule allows for it, John comes to you on Wednesday nights. You’re not altogether confident that his name is John. He always looks momentarily startled when you say it, so you wonder if it sounds funny to his own ears. But he maintains the pretense, so you don’t question it. He pays double your going rate–a recurring point of contention–and hardly speaks. He’s well-groomed and polite and unobtrusive despite his size. He’s pleasant to look at and even nicer to listen to, on the rare occasions he uses his voice. He’s a perfect client, as clients go. You only wish his appointments were more regular.
New Alexandria is an ideal location for your line of work. For all the physicality that the UNSC demands, its various members are starved for the kind of touch humans need. They come to you desperate for a bit of comfort, some fazed and some unfazed by the prospect of paying for it. Some seem to prefer it like this. You’ve been at it long enough now that you’ve learned how to estimate their length of service–in the eyes and the cheeks and the hands. Some of them cry, and those are the clients you prefer. It takes a little bit out of you, so it feels more like they’re getting their money’s worth.
John doesn’t cry. And his cheeks are not hollow. His hands are massive, but not aged with sunspots. His hang-dog eyes hurt your heart, but you tuck that away to process some other time, once he’s stopped making appointments. His scars are so symmetrical in places, you long assumed that it was purposeful decoration, maybe a cultural thing. But then apropos of absolutely nothing, like the universe was just itching to correct your mistake, a friend mentions that Spartans have those scars. Those lay-lines of enhancement, demarcating the parts and portions of a human body like old butchering diagrams, only serve to emphasize the unnatural build of him. You look but you do not intentionally touch.
He maintains the same decorum that all long-term service members do–the even way he hangs his jacket on your coat rack, the military efficiency of removing his boots, the curt nods at each progressive step of the evening. You give your clients options: sofa or bed, clothes or underwear, quiet or conversational. Most of them prefer to be held, some of them like to do the holding. John has tried all of the permutations, excepting conversational. If it’s a routine sort of evening, he’ll stay clothed and play the big spoon. His hold is secure but not suffocating, and always respectful. Sometimes it feels like you’ll burst out crying if you don’t turn around and face him and ask him if his heart’s alright. But you never turn and you never cry and you never ask him about his feelings; it wouldn’t be professional.
If he’s been gone for a very long time, he’ll arrive, remove his boots, and peel his shirt off after. Sometimes he looks like he'd peel his skin off, if he could. On those nights, you lay down with his heavy head in your lap, fingers in the short fuzz of his hair, and scratch his scalp until he falls asleep.
John pays twice your going rate and he spends the whole night. It’s the best sleep you get, on or off the clock–you try not to look directly at that fact. You try not to look directly at him, if you can help it. With years’ of experience comes the certain knowledge of how quickly affection sneaks in through the gaps in professionalism. Too long spent staring at the right person’s sleeping face and the whole enterprise comes crumbling down. You limit yourself to three seconds at a time with him, and even that feels dangerous. But his money spends, and he’s a perfect client, so you soldier on.
He always smells of soap, those vaguely powdery notes that blend smoothly into whatever musk he naturally produces. Clean, old-fashioned, domestic. He runs hot as a furnace, and no matter how tidy he arrives, the perennial stubble on his cheek and chin grits against the fabric of your shirt when he lays in your arms. His hair’s soft velvet that buzzes against your nails and his heart pounds hard and steady as hoof beats. If he’s a Spartan, like you suspect, then he spends most of his life suited up like a machine. But stripped of it all, he’s more animal than man, burrowing for warmth and the touch of skin and you wonder what his mother was like. Did she cradle him in the dip of her elbow and sing sweet nothings? Did she know that she was raising a weapon? He’s so unfathomably large, enacts a gravity all by himself, that you almost laugh to imagine him as an infant. But then you see his lashes fanned out on his cheek while he sleeps and the little boy in him is clear as day.
These are more intimate thoughts than you’re owed, but you’ll not give them up for anything. Here, in the quiet sanctuary of your overstuffed, over-blanketed bed, no one can take away the secret yearning for things you can’t quite put a name to. It’s not about fucking, no matter how many winks and nudges are tossed your way when you mention what you do for a living. It’s not that you wouldn’t fuck him, if the circumstances were right, built for it as he is. But it’s an afterthought, if you’re honest, something off in the periphery of your heart’s desire. And it’s not that it’s professional, rather than personal. You’d do it for free, at this point, but it means no less to you just because it’s a business arrangement. The service is how he found you and all that matters is that he found you.
It’s in the keeping, you decide. You want to keep him. But that’s a sure road to heartbreak. He’s the last person you’re allowed to keep. He belongs to a duty that you can’t possibly understand. He is no one’s to keep, not even his own. He is vessel and implement and you must always give him back when playtime is over. Worst of all, he doesn’t even seem to mind. You want to see a lingering look in his eyes, a little bit of reluctance that he must leave the nest of sleep-warm sheets. But his stoicism is part of the charm. He will always leave and he will never complain.
But he must leave. So that he can come back. Smelling of soap and hot as a furnace, head heavy in your lap when he asks you if the song you're humming has any words.
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