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1
The word is unfamiliar to John, but the looks on the Elites’ faces aren't hostile and the Arbiter doesn't break stride as they’re led to their quarters. So, John waits until the door shuts and they’re alone to ask about it.
“I thought my name around here was 'Demon’,” he says, “Not whatever the hell they said.”
The Arbiter repeats the word questioningly; a series of clicks followed by a thuh that is the only part John thinks is at all replicable by a human mouth.
“It does not translate for you?” the Arbiter asks.
John shakes his head. If he wasn't convinced the Arbiter didn't have a sense of humour, that would definitely be an alien smirk.
“Then it is not for you to understand,” the Arbiter declares.
It actually sounds like he's trying to joke. The world must be ending.
“I’d still like to know.”
“It is a reference to our bond. Some find it amusing that you are human.”
John doesn’t need to know more than that, so he drops the matter and sits on one of the two bunks. Normally Elite ships have several soldiers per room, crammed in wherever they fit, but bunking with the Arbiter has its perks.
The bed's still shaped oddly, meant for aliens with weirder physiology than John.
“It will not be a long trip.” The Arbiter opens the storage locker at the foot of the other bed and looks at the contents. “Rest. The Elites will welcome you on the training deck if you so choose.”
“They won't be welcoming for long.”
The Arbiter is used to John's boasts — not boasts if it's the truth — and doesn't deem him worthy of a response, choosing instead to dig further into the locker. He stops and brightens.
“Gulaugh!”
“Bless you.”
The Arbiter tosses a wrapped energy bar to John.
“Gulaugh,” he repeats, stressing the pronunciation, “A delicacy from my home planet. Or as close as we are likely to get this far out.”
He rips open an identical bar and bites into it with relish. John watches his mouth move in fascination. One day he'll get used to just how alien the Arbiter can be, but not today.
The Arbiter watches John in return and John realises he's being rude. His HUD isn’t detecting any threats, so he takes off his helmet and unwraps the bar. It's dark brown and smells nutty. He takes a bite.
The taste is somewhere between week-old seafood and sickly sweet honey. With many years of experience choking down MREs, John manages to swallow his mouthful without gagging.
“Not bad,” he forces out, hoping to hell his eyes aren't watering.
The Arbiter looks happy. “It is nothing compared to how it tastes fresh. You may be lucky enough one day to try it for yourself.”
“Sure,” John says, manfully taking another bite. “Remind me to get you to try steak when we're next on a human planet.”
The crooked smile the Arbiter sends him makes his stomach flutter, alien features and all. Or it could just be the gulaugh bar sitting weirdly.
Yeah, probably that.
2
True to the Arbiter’s words, John finds all the Elites on the ship are happy to train with him. He gets the feeling that they all want to be able to brag that they’ve defeated the Demon, even if it’s just in practice combat.
He doesn’t let them.
The training deck doubles as the canteen and the recreation room, but John only ever sees it full of practice weapons and fighting Elites. Either they like brawling more than marines do, or they’re trying to show off for the Demon.
A tournament is set up the second time John sets foot on the deck and he soon finds himself swept up in combat and cheering Elites. It’s similar to being amongst human marines.
Once, John misjudges his grapple because he expects his opponent’s centre of gravity to be lower. In another fight, he walks into a punch because he hasn’t calculated his opposition’s reach correctly.
He’s not used to being the shortest person in the room.
John catches the Arbiter watching at one point, through the circle of Elites marking the edge of the ring. He nearly takes another fist to the visor in his distraction.
There’s a lull in excitement as the combatants change and the gathered Elites spot the Arbiter too. Subconscious professionalism settling over the training deck. Looks like showing off for the Demon comes second to being respectful to the Arbiter.
The Arbiter watches the next two bouts. John goes over when the second winner is receiving his cheers.
“I trust you have represented your species well?” the Arbiter says.
“I haven’t been eliminated yet,” John says. “You should join in.”
“Not today. I only have a short amount of time to spare, but it was good to see you fight.”
It’s John’s turn in the ring again. He bids the Arbiter goodbye and jogs back to the rest of the Elites.
The Arbiter stays to watch John win that round, then is gone before John can speak with him again.
It’s only a few hours later that they reach their destination and have to get armed and ready. The Arbiter pauses before he enters the drop bay.
“Do you have a preference for your name on this mission?” he asks.
“I don't care, as long as it's clear that you're talking to me.” John secures the clip in his sniper rifle.
“Demon? Human? Master Chief?”
“Any of those will do fine.”
The Arbiter nods and opens the door to the drop bay of the Phantom. The other Elites are already waiting, professional as any marine John's worked with. There aren’t any seats — not that John likes sitting right before a mission — but at least the others aren’t constantly tripping over his legs like marines do when the Arbiter’s strapped into a Pelican.
It's as the Phantom approaches the ground that John thinks to ask.
“Should I be calling you something other than Arbiter for this?”
Out of the corner of his eye, he notices an Elite nudge another with a clicking noise. He chooses to ignore it for now.
“Arbiter is the only name I will have until my death,” the Arbiter says, “and even then it will only be used to distinguish my deeds from past Arbiters’.”
John knows that history will remember him as Master Chief, but at least he has John to lean on with those who know him well.
“Chief,” John says. “That's what marines call me in battle.” He adds for clarification.
“Chief then.” The Arbiter nods.
The ship touches down and the fight begins, leaving no more time for thought.
3
The mission goes as well as could be expected. They live, the enemy dies, intel is collected, several strategic places are blown up — the usual.
It's not the first time John's been injured — not by a long shot — but it's the first time the Arbiter's been this worried about it. He keeps hovering, no matter how many times John tells him he's fine.
“It's just a sprain.” John waves his wrapped wrist in the Arbiter's face. “It'll be healed by the time we're back with the fleet.”
The Arbiter catches his bare forearm in long alien fingers. His glove is rough, John can feel the fine mesh press against his skin hard enough to leave a mark.
“It could have been a break.” The Arbiter gives his arm a shake. “It could have been a dismemberment!”
“But it wasn't.”
John pulls his arm back. He feels naked without his familiar armour covering his left arm. The rest is still there, but missing pieces always make him feel on edge, vulnerable.
“I’m fine,” John says, “the mission was successful, and everyone did what they could to make that happen.”
“And your humans, your Cortana, they will be satisfied with your injury?” the Arbiter demands.
“They don't have to know,” John snaps, prickly for reasons he can't pin down, “it's not like they didn't know I was going to be getting shot at.”
The Arbiter curses in his clicky alien tongue.
“Why is this such a big thing?” John shoots back. “A banshee landed on one of yours and I don't see you hovering over his hospital bed.”
“He knew his duty —”
“And so do I! Master Chief is a job title for a very dangerous job. This is what I signed up for!”
The Arbiter backs off. It doesn't make John feel any better.
“I do not mean to imply that you are unskilled,” the Arbiter says, picking his words slowly. “If I were to express such concern to my Elites, they would take it poorly. I did not realise this is a way in which humans were similar.”
“You're worried about them too.” John realises.
“They are under my command, any misstep —”
“Is part of the job,” John interrupts. “No plan survives contact with the enemy. And if you hadn’t been there, they would’ve been worse off.”
The Arbiter looks away. John considers giving him a pat on the back but decides it wouldn’t be welcome.
“I do not think my concern is truly about your wellbeing, or the wellbeing of my followers,” the Arbiter says quietly. He touches the place where his heart would be if he was human. John can just make out a scar under the armour. “Last time I failed I was punished. It led to me finding the right path, but the memory of the pain is strong.”
“And you fear that pain more than you fear for the lives of your men,” John pushes.
“No!”
“So you’re just going to give up because you might get hurt if things don’t go perfectly.”
“No! Be silent, Demon!” The Arbiter shoves John back a step and tries to storm away.
John gets between the Arbiter and the door.
“Do you think that’ll happen again?”
“It happened before,” the Arbiter says grimly. “It can happen again. And I will not pay the price alone this time.”
“What happened was wrong. You know that,” John says, “The UNSC doesn’t do that. No one worth listening to will ask for that.”
The Arbiter says nothing. John takes a risk and puts his hand over the Arbiter’s scar.
“I won’t let anything like that happen to you again,” John says.
“You cannot guarantee that.”
“Watch me.” John shifts his hand to the Arbiter’s shoulder instead. “You trust me, right?”
The Arbiter nods.
“Then trust that I know what I’m talking about,” John says.
“A tall order,” the Arbiter says, his voice is lighter now. “But I will try.”
John takes his hand back, he'll be crossing a line if he keeps up the touching for too long.
“We’ll be back on the Dawn soon.”
“Is that supposed to be a comfort? Your marines dislike me, as they should,” the Arbiter says.
“Then you’ll be thinking about that and won’t have time to worry,” John says simply.
The Arbiter sighs. He holds John's helmet with one hand and leans forward to rest his forehead against John's visor.
“Somehow you are always able to calm me,” he says. “Thank you, Chief.”
“No problem.” John pushes down the sudden urge to give the Arbiter a hug.
The Arbiter pulls his head away and John swears he can feel the heat left behind through his visor, making his face warm.
They’ll be back on the Forward Unto Dawn in a few hours, things will start making more sense then.
4
The Arbiter always looks out of place on grey human ships amidst marines. The dirty looks and muttered comments happen less often when John's nearby, but he can't always be there.
It rankles, the least John could do for his friend is deflect some unnecessary xenophobia.
After another long meeting without the Arbiter by his side, John heads to the canteen, intent on grabbing something to go before heading to the training deck. The few marines who aren't scared shitless of the Arbiter have taken to challenging him to playful bouts, so he’ll likely be found there. It reminds John of training with the Elites.
Instead, John walks into the canteen and finds a not quite yet hostile cluster of marines watching the Arbiter stare at the snack section.
John had tended to avoid the Elites when eating, obviously the Arbiter has other ideas for what’s considered polite. Or maybe he wants to keep his stored food for when they hit the ground. Whatever the case, John doesn’t want to let things get out of hand if he can avoid it.
“What’re you looking for?” John drops a hand on the Arbiter's shoulder, glad to not be immediately shrugged off.
“Your language has an odd written form,” the Arbiter says, “and many of these words do not make sense to me.”
John looks over the display and decides he doesn't want to give a crash course in human branding terminology to an alien right now.
“I still haven't shown you the best human food going.” John steers the Arbiter over to the vending machine and punches in an order. “And we're not going to find it this far out, so it'll have to be the next best thing.”
If anything the crowd of marines has grown. This probably should've been more of a private thing, but there's no chance in hell either of them can back out now. Not without losing face in front of thirty — no forty — marines.
Their food comes and John grabs his tray. It’s not real burgers like the display on the machine promised, just nutrient paste prettied up. Marines do a lot better when their food looks and tastes better than bland grey goop, even if the base components are exactly the same. The Arbiter follows John's example and sits at a table. He's got a good face on, but John can read him well enough to know he's horribly out of his depth.
The Arbiter pokes at the burger on his tray. “It's dead.”
That gets a murmur from the surrounding marines. John pulls off his helmet and pops a fry into his mouth.
“Best way to have it,” he says.
The Arbiter is sceptical but gamely tries a fry. He doesn't immediately spit it out. John hears some money change hands.
“Now, the best way to eat this —” John picks up his burger, “— is to get as much in your mouth as possible.”
He demonstrates a bite, getting half the burger in. There's a couple of cheers from the marines. John grins through a mouthful of faux-beef and tomatoes. The Arbiter picks up his own burger carefully in four-fingered hands.
“You know my race often swallows its food whole,” he remarks casually, before somehow fitting the entire burger in his mouth and working it down his throat.
There's a louder cheer from the marines and someone slaps John on the back in commiseration.
John's focused on the Arbiter's face, because that is definitely disgust fighting to show. He doesn't like the burger. It isn’t a huge surprise, given what little John knows of the Elites’ usual food choices. If it hadn’t been fancy nutrient paste he might’ve been more worried about alien digestion too.
The Arbiter takes the bottle of water provided and downs half of it by shoving the bottle far enough back into his mouth to avoid spilling water and tipping his head back. Some more credits change hands somewhere in the crowd of marines.
“What’s gulaugh?” John asks, to help distract the marines away from more betting.
“A type of fish.” The Arbiter holds his hands about a foot apart to show the size. “They live in tropical shallows. Children often gain useful stealth skills while learning to catch them.”
“And you can swallow one whole?”
“Any Elite can, though some prefer them baked with spices. Seldom do I have time for such things these days.”
Luxuries are rare for both sides in this war.
5
The upside to the canteen incident is the rumour mill on the Forward Unto Dawn is insanely fast and the humans are liking the Arbiter a lot better because he participated in a stupid challenge, and marines like chatting about stupid challenges far more than they like doing regulation drills.
John should be glad that the Arbiter is finding life on the ship easier, but something hot and ugly stirs in his gut whenever marines come over to ask the Arbiter to come spar with them or offer to show him some new human food they think he’ll like.
The Arbiter accepts all the combat opportunities and rejects most of the food. He only joins in when the offer is to both of them and John's already accepted.
One memorable bet leads to John holding the Arbiter over the toilet as he expels the stuff that doesn’t agree with his physiology.
“You could’ve said no,” John says, as the Arbiter demonstrates his intolerance of caramel.
Chocolate had been fine, but not caramel.
”I do not like to back down from a challenge,” the Arbiter says. “Not from your marines.”
The way he says your marines makes John pause.
“I get that,” he says, and he does; it’s exactly what he’d been doing when they were on the Elite ship, but the Arbiter’s been working harder than he normally does in UNSC company and John suddenly isn’t sure why. “We’ll be arriving in a few days. I don’t want you too sick from bad eating when we’ve got a job to do.”
“The mission comes first, of course,” the Arbiter says. “I will decline future attempts.”
“Good.” John pats the Arbiter on the back. “You want to rest now?”
“I believe that would be wise,” the Arbiter stands and wobbles. John steadies him, but it looks like it was just the one wobble.
“C’mon then, let’s get you to bed.”
The Arbiter's armour is complicated to take off, so John gives him a hand to get him to bed faster. John puts the last pieces into the specialised crate the Arbiter had brought with him onto the ship as the Arbiter settles on the bed. A human bed. He seems to find it as comfortable as John found the beds on the Elite ship.
“I’ll see you at 0600 hours sharp,” John says.
“Goodnight —” the Arbiter makes that long clicking thuh sound again. It sounds warm, despite the harshness of his alien tongue, and makes John stop at the doorway for a moment.
“Goodnight, Arbiter.”
+1
John doesn't rush unless there's a fight, but he finds himself back at his own quarters sooner than he expected. He paces around the cramped space, uncertain if he wants to ask and worried he's reading too much into things.
“Something on your mind?” Cortana appears in the room, casting a blue light over everything.
“What does that mean?” John asks. He doesn’t have to clarify, Cortana always knows what he’s talking about.
“There’s no direct translation.”
“I know that,” John clenches his fists, “What does it mean.”
Cortana hesitates. That’s not like her.
“Once you know you can’t unlearn it,” she warns, gently. She's never gentle.
“I want to know.”
“Do you know that the number of marines asking me about alien sex has increased exponentially since you brought the Arbiter on board,” Cortana says.
“Don’t change the subject.”
“You know I’m not.”
“He's —” an alien, John doesn't finish.
“— interested in you.” Cortana does. “Not that I can blame him.”
John stops pacing and stares at the wall. A reference to our bond, the Arbiter had said, and John had taken that to mean friendship, nothing more.
“I don’t…”
“I know,” Cortana says, because she always does. “If you’re not interested back, I can let him down gently for you.”
It's tempting, but John's never hid behind anyone in battle and he's not going to start now.
“I'll do it myself if I have to,” John says.
“If?” Cortana's voice is laced with amusement.
“You know me,” John says, “always looking to try new things.”
The Arbiter is looking less ill when he opens his door to John's knocking.
“You know, it's usually polite to let someone know when you're dating them,” John says, leaning against the doorframe.
“Dating?”
John attempts to make the clicky thuh noise and can’t. The Arbiter just looks more confused.
“I think Master Chief means —” Cortana’s voice provides the Elite vocabulary for John's fumbling human mouth.
“Yeah, that,” John says.
A pair of marines round the corner of the corridor, chatting loudly. The Arbiter steps back to allow John inside for the small amount of privacy the bunks allow.
John's ranked high enough to get a room to himself. At this end of the ship, marines are put together. No one was willing to bunk with the Arbiter, so there are three unused beds folded into the walls. The room doesn't feel any bigger for it.
“Explain your confusion,” the Arbiter says.
John sees no reason to beat around the bush.
“Are we in some kind of relationship, more than just friends and comrades?”
“Yes,” the Arbiter says. “Did you not know this?”
“Not until just now.”
The Arbiter’s mandibles flex, but no words come out. Clearly, John’s stumped him.
“It would've been nice to know I was in a relationship this whole time,” John says, but he can't summon any real anger over it.
“I had thought it obvious,” the Arbiter says. “We spend a lot of time together for relaxation and experiencing one another's cultures. There is no one I would rather have at my back in a fight or a debate and I have said as much.”
“Every relationship I've been in has involved sex.” To be honest, John's not sure he's ever had a purely romantic relationship before.
“Our physiologies have significant differences,” the Arbiter says, waving a hand at John.
And yeah, that's not really a mouth John wants to kiss, and he's not even sure how the Arbiter's people have sex.
However.
“I never back down from a challenge.”
Sex can wait until the Arbiter’s feeling better and John’s had a chance to wrap his head around being in a relationship full stop. It feels like a good place to stop for now, but John's also certain leaving your boyfriend — partner? mate? — alone when they’re ill is a bit of a faux pas.
“Want to hear about the time I took down two Hornets and a Pelican during a surveillance-only mission?” John asks, sitting on the foot of the bunk.
The Arbiter settles back on the bunk, brushing a hand over John’s shoulders on his way. Even through his armour, it’s oddly intimate. Everything slots into place.
This is what John’s fought for, but never had.
He launches into his story and the Arbiter rests.