Slice-of-life short. A sex worker takes his night’s rest on the chest of their bouncer.
1.5k, rated M. Some cis M/M. Just a bit of slice-of-life and quiet feelings with a port sexworker in the Age of Sail! Paris first appeared in Haughty Paris. Notes for some anti-sex work language throughout.
When Paris comes down from upstairs, his last client recently departed for the evening, the brothel is winding down — most all the other whores have retired to bed, and it’s only Charlie left up talking sleepily with an equally sleepy looking sailor in the corner, Mrs Hayward, the madam, and Mr Chain who remain awake downstairs. Paris is fairly certain that most of the johns upstairs are paying for the night — Paris never lets his men or his women stay, and they pay through the nose for his company nonetheless.
Mr Chain is picking up the chairs and folding them up onto the tables so that he can mop, and Paris starts from the opposite end of the room and picks up the chairs, turning them over and setting their seats down on the table tops.
Mr Chain has evidently already gone over them each with cloths, because all their candles have been removed and they’re all shining and smooth to the touch, no stickiness allowed at all. This is probably the cleanest brothel in the Caribbean, and that’s undoubtedly a factor in why Paris has stayed for so long, nearly five years now, even as other faces in the line-up have changed and rotated.
Whores have left to marry or to work elsewhere or gone to sea or have gotten ill or have died or have simply disappeared elsewhere, but Paris has changed. He’s part of the scenery, much like Mrs Hayward and Mr Chain, part of the fixtures and fittings.
“Your last man gone?” asks Mr Chain.
“Mm, out of the back door,” says Paris, stacking up the last of the chairs on one of the tables and then sitting on one of the benches to the side of the room, crossing his legs up underneath him so that they’re not on the floor as Mr Chain grabs a mop bucket. Mrs Hayward is in the backroom, the light on as she tocks up the last of the night’s figures; Charlie has his sailor by the hand and is leading him up the stairs.
Mr Chain is an older man, stout and a little below average height, balding on top — he’s got a thick, grizzled beard that’s more grey than it is black, and his eyes are a muddy green, his skin a warm brown with dusty olive undertones. He was a whaler man in his youth, but an injury to his thigh means he can’t run or climb any longer — and in any case, at the wrong side of fifty, he’s rather old for the profession anyway.
He grew up in this very brothel — he’s ten years younger than Mrs Hayward, who joined onto the staff when he was a young man and ended up staying long enough to be the madam, and the relationship between them is like a pair of siblings, it feels like to Paris.
Many of the other whores treat Mr Chain like an uncle, beloved and warm, and he’s avuncular in his nature, it seems to Paris: he’s friendly and affectionate at times, especially in the mornings before they’re going to work, and he teases, makes jokes. What with how Mr Chain tends to act as their bouncer and bodyguard, he’s a strong and comforting presence, and Paris has lost count of the number of whores he’s seen sobbing into his shoulder or his big, soft chest, dropping themselves into or draping themselves over his lap.
Not Paris.
Paris has a reputation in the brothel, in town, for being a cold and haughty fellow: he’s educated and distant and superior, looks like a statue of stone and enjoys being treated like one, being considered cold and untouchable. In many ways he is cold, and God knows he has no interest in the pretence many whores go to, feigning love or affection for one client or other, or even worse, actually feeling some sort of affection for them.
Mr Chain —
Paris likes the man, and appreciates him; he likes the old man’s body and takes comfort from the familiarity of his presence, the warmth and strength of his arms and his chest, the regular rhythm of his breathing on nights like this; Paris feels affection for him, likely more affection than he feels for anybody.
He doesn’t know that he would go so far as to call it love. Paris has yet to be convinced such a thing exists — if it does, it does not appear it exists for Paris’ pleasure.
Mr Chain mops the floor and sets the bucket and mop aside once the water’s been poured away, and Paris pads up the stairs and chews a piece of sponge to clean his teeth before he spits it out, then goes into Mr Chain’s room — it’s smaller than Paris’ bedroom, and as a result, it’s a good deal warmer. Paris has a few shelves with a collection of books on it, many of them gifts from clients, but Mr Chain doesn’t know how to read beyond the basics and cannot write at all; his room has pieces of wood and several tools he uses to accomplish the necessary maintenance and carpentry about the brothel, his clothes stacked up on one shelf, some sketches and maps and bits of carved tusk and bone on another.
Paris’ bed is made to accommodate two people — three, if he’s in for a particularly irritating night — but Mr Chain’s is a cot scarcely made to accommodate one. He pulls back the blanket to allow Paris to slide in with him, and Paris does, sliding one of his knees between Mr Chain’s legs and lying on top of his chest.
Paris is only wearing a loose shirt, and Mr Chain is naked but for his drawers — his chest is hairy and warm and soft, and Paris lays his cheek on one of Mr Chain’s tits, listens to the thump of his heartbeat under the skin.
“Do you want me to suck you off?” he asks.
“Not particularly,” says Mr Chain.
“Good,” says Paris. “I’m quite comfortable now, and the most you’d have gotten away with is a handjob.”
Mr Chain’s laugh makes Paris’ pillow shift and shudder underneath him, and Paris feels himself smile distantly. It’s the only time he’s smiled today, he thinks — he normally smiles or laughs at humorous prose, but he’s currently reading a rather depressing novel with no hint of wit within its pages.
“It’s your birthday a week hence,” says Mr Chain.
“Is it?” asks Paris. He rarely keeps track of a calendar — clients frequently tell him when they’ll next make port, but he doesn’t keep track of such things, and there’s no great onus on him to bother. The fact of the matter is that all of his clients find his cool and uncaring demeanour his greatest selling point, and apart from his skill in the bedroom, it’s very much what they pay for.
“You’re to be thirty years old.”
“I suppose,” says Paris.
“You can’t do this job forever.”
“I’ve yet to notice a shortage of clients.”
“Don’t you dislike it?”
“Not particularly. The work is lighter, easier labour than most of the rest I might find in a pirate port, the pay more lucrative than that harder, rougher labour at that. It is my intent that I should stay here until I lack the clientele to sustain myself.”
“And then?”
“The then seems a ways off to me,” says Paris. He has some money set by, and some more money invested — he would not call himself a keen or incredibly concentrated investor, but he has multiplied what money he has, and he’s comfortable in the knowledge he has more money to his name than anyone else in this brothel, and likely in this area of town. No one else needs to know that, Mr Chain included.
He lets people assume he purchases his books, and lets people assume, too, that they’re far more expensive than they in fact are.
He will purchase steadings somewhere, he expects. There’s no reason he should continue to live in a sail port, so perhaps he will move north to some city, or even go elsewhere entirely, depart from this extension of the New World to the Old One. He’s an educated man, and could likely find himself doing some sort of secretarial duty, or perhaps work in a library…
A library would be nice.
“But you think ill of it,” says Mr Chain, and Paris half-opens his sleepy eyes, wondering what that’s in reference to — had he still been talking? Paris isn’t sure.
“Hm?”
“Your work,” says Mr Chain. “You call yourself a whore, and the others too.”
“We are whores,” says Paris sleepily. “You call a spade a spade, do you not?”
“It seems a cold word to me, that’s all.”
“I’m a cold man.”
“So people say,” says Mr Chain idly, distantly. “So you tell me. But you’ve always stuck me as somewhat warm.” One of his hands settles on Paris’ lower back, stroking a circle there, and Paris’ stomach gives a strange and unfamiliar flip, a sort of flutter.
He chooses not to dignify that sort of sentiment with a response, and lets himself melt into a dreamless sleep on the other man’s chest.
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