Tumgik
#yes i did the all lowercase title (with parentheses)
Text
leave a trail of burnt things in my wake (every single place I go)
For @bloodgulchblog - this work is also on ao3
Smell can trigger memories and tap into long buried emotions. John is an expert at burying emotions, but he hit his limits months ago. An introspective piece inspired by discussion of the smell of cigar smoke and old friends long gone.
It's late when John heads back to Blue Team's quarters. Briefings, reports, responsibilities; all the things Team Leader is used to shouldering seem to weigh a little heavier these days. Bad news pours in from all sides and allies seem fewer and far between these days. There are new lines on everyone’s faces. Tightness in the way they move, smiles that don’t reach the eyes. It feels like the whole ship is holding its breath, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for things to get worse, the next tragedy in the domino line of tragedies that humanity has been fighting for three decades.
Moving helps, he knows hypervigilance will be a drain in the long term, but thinking long term is new. It’s strange for aches to fade, scars to heal, joints to be sore and not in ignored agony. Living is a new kind of pain John is fighting to tolerate. It’s not something he’s sure he’ll get used to.
Restlessness is not a luxury he can usually afford, but aboard the Infinity is the closest he's felt to safe in a long time. The strange feeling coming from being surrounded by Spartans again. It still means he'll patrol if possible. It might garner him some extra looks from his team or even the captain when the man is able to corner him while they’re all aboard. The back to back missions dwindled only because John was overruled. He’s being watched - he knows it - spooks, Spartans, the brass, and anyone and everyone who recognizes the armor. His existence is an example, a beacon, and a warning.  
Yet they don’t stop his nighttime haunts. An olive branch perhaps, or maybe letting him have space - letting him walk through the nights with his ghosts. Even among his team, John doesn't want to spend any extra time in small rooms, and there's always work to be done.
He's not alone as he travels silently down gunmetal gray halls, but by this time most of the crew is changing shifts or used to Spartans moving. John's aware of how they look at him; the IIs move differently than the IVs but to the techs on their way to the hangars he's just another 7ft tall, 350 lbs of muscle to stay out of the way of.
Funny how being out of the armor helps him stay invisible.
There's movement down an auxiliary hallway that catches his eye, but he dismisses it when he sees troopers huddled together. It’s a familiar scene, one he’s witnessed time and again over his career in troop bays and shadowy corners, the handing off of contraband and the like. John pauses and notes the cameras, the vents, and the blindspots. Not amateurs then, though it's hard to tell these days. 
They all look so young.
John stills in the shadows and watches. There’s talking in low voices with some sporadic good natured bickering that gets shushed quickly. One of them shoves another off-balance; arms pinwheeling before they push back with a grin. His eyes catch flashes of packaging before it's shoved into pockets or down shirts and the group disperses. Tobacco gum, self-lighting cigarettes, and other nicotine sources disappear along with nondescript datachips and small flasks. They don't notice him - he would have lost his touch if they had - and the group splits off, nonchalance a little too forced. 
He'd make a comment, spook em a bit while he's this nameless Spartan who caught them. Pale as a ghost, mangled worse than some corpses. The old model, patched up over and over again. Some old, ugly sonuvabitch with weird eyes, too many scars popping out of the shadows wasn't a fun encounter, or so he'd been told.
At least he would have, if he didn't freeze in place as someone lit up and the too familiar smell of a Sweet William cigar hit his nose for the first time in over five years. 
The pungent odor - old boot-sock smoked over a dung-fire - hit him full force even if the marine smoking it was down the hall. The odor sat in his sinuses, and the scar on his chest hurt as he jerked away. It never felt like the skin grew back right, but then again it had never gotten the chance to fully heal; the Ark, the Dawn, and then everything after. 
It was like no time had passed. 
The squeak of the light cover flipping back, their thumb on the wheel. The ancient knowledge passed down to him that matches preserved the flavor more, but were hard to find and keep. Lighters were common - ceremonial - passed between brothers in arms or from father to son. John could still see Johnson’s engraved lighter in his mind’s eye.
He had known several people to have smoked those cigars - most of them were dead now. And with his luck, he was there when it happened.
There were a lot of memories tied up with that scent. Johnson, of course. He had always seemed to have them on him, always smoking so much John often considered commenting about him giving away their position with the stink of tobacco. He would have liked that; Johnson always liked when John pushed back. He’d smile around the cigar and raise his eyebrows, hum his approval, then return fire with a comment of his own. 
It was a scent that was tied to the man's presence, be it in a dropship, on the ground, or stopping by to drop off a tank. The first time John himself had tried one of the cigars, he had been 15 years old and ended up coughing so hard from the first draw that he reopened his neck wound. Butterfly bandages breaking under the strain as John wheezed and Avery laughed and took the cigar back, holding it away from his own oxygen cannula.
Johnson had shown him how to be a leader then - had backed him up and nodded when he got it right. John had carried those lessons with him for the rest of his life.
The smell of tobacco and dried flower was burned into his memory. Sweet William cigars had popped up throughout John’s service. Mendez had smoked them too, and Captain Keyes. 
Mendez had them in his desk drawer in his office on Reach. Halsey hadn't liked them, and like with most things, she would make her opinions clear. But that had been a lifetime ago. John didn't like to dwell on how he became what he was today. It was necessary, but the reminders of the human elements, the smoke drawing up old memories, made him uncomfortable.
He'd lived his whole life around foul-mouthed, paranoid, contraband-using marines and ODSTs. He had been honored to serve with those men and women. Tobacco was passed around as often as MREs no matter the campaign. It was familiar even after all this time.
Even Captain Keyes had his pipe, the lingering scent of tobacco on the bridge of the Autumn. Cigars weren't his main staple, but John had come to associate him among the men who smoked them.
It had been forever and only a few short months since he had been in the presence of a lit Sweet William.
His chest burns, something more than regrown skin over the burn scar. He leaves - as silently as he arrived.
The crewman continues to enjoy his contraband, smoke rising into the vent above, going to be scrubbed and recycled back.
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