Lotus was looking at her nails when she walked in the door. She strode in with dark sunglasses hiding her face like a mask, her long hair like a veil flowing free, but if she thought those things made her less recognizable they did not. Lotus recognized her. Was she not here every week, same time, same booking? Like clockwork. Like the hand cycling back around to the same marked place.
She took off her sunglasses and Lotus looked at her face, her innocent face, her guileless face. But that too was a disguise, though she wore it better. Lotus saw right through her, and she smiled. I know why you're here, her smile said.
Fluttershy smiled back, pure naive sunshine. I know you know, she smiled back, and I do not care.
Lotus waved her through with a lazy flick of the wrist, and her smile deepened, bled genuine. Good for you, girl.
-/-
Fluttershy's legs hung off the edge of the massage table. She swung them back and forth, the tips of her toes brushing against the cool floor. This place made her feel small. Everything in the spa was made for someone just a little bit bigger than her. She drowned in the fluffy white robes, they consuming her arms and hanging low enough to only leave a little of her calves to peek out below. She was wrapped nearly double in her towel. There was not much of her to fill it with. The only thing large of Fluttershy was her hair, bound away now but with one deft motion could be made to tumble past her bare shoulders, down her narrow back. She could let her hair fall down and her towel fall down and still be covered, she imagined. Were she so bold.
Something else that made her feel small manifested at the doorway: Bulk Biceps, the new masseur.
He was broad and tall as the door frame. He barely fit into the room and barely fit into the thin white shirt he wore, stretched tight as the skin of a drum over pectorals and deltoids and trapezii. He was a steer, a buck, a behemoth. Yet there was also a gentleness in him, a necessity to navigate this world of smaller and more delicate things.
His voice had two modes--primal bellow and grunted whisper--and with the latter he asked: "Back so soon?"
Fluttershy nodded her head and he nodded curtly, once, and that was that. It was time to begin.
She turned her back and opened her towel and settled on the table. This was the normal order of things. This is how it had always been: turn, towel, table. It wasn't how it always had to be, she imagined. She could change the order, if she wanted. Open her towel out of sequence. Were she so bold.
Strong hands pressed down on her, hands large enough to engulf her shoulders, and she gave an involuntary gasp as the hard fingers forced the air from her lungs. It always hurt a little, to begin with, though hurt wasn't the correct word for something so mild and neither was discomfort for something so sharply painful. It did hurt, but at the same time it also felt good, the loosening of knotted muscles, rigid fingers kneading pliant flesh. He and she would fall into a rhythm, Bulk with what felt like all his substantial weight bearing down upon her and Fluttershy rocking with each movement, breath expelled with each press and thrust, and it would not be lost on her just how much this intimate activity shared with another intimate activity and she would flush red, blood swelling and engorging capillaries. The parallels went on and on, down to the moment where he would find the source of tension buried deep within her back after quiet mumbled guidance of higher or lower or out a bit more and work it loose, and she would feel so much better, so more relaxed, and want to prolong that moment that came before getting up and wrapping herself in her towel again and donning her clothes and walking back out into the world. Always that moment did have to come.
And as Fluttershy felt the hands, those powerful gentle hands, leave her, that moment had come now.
She drew up and into her towel, her shield and shroud. She looked at Bulk and he looked back at her, their shared gaze laying the groundwork for the conversation they could have. He was a hulking brute on the surface, but she saw he was kind and soft beneath because she too was kind and soft, and she could also see--after many other failed conversations that could have been--something else in him they shared, which was shyness. Once again the silence between them, a deafening stillness that could so easily be filled by booking an appointment that was outside of work hours, an offer to get coffee, see a movie, take a walk around the block, anything.
Were they so bold.
-/-
One of her nails had chipped somehow. She'd have to redo the whole hand, Lotus thought, which meant she'd probably end up redoing both hands. There went tonight.
She sighed and as she did so Fluttershy walked past her. "Goodbye miss Fluttershy," she said, and smiled, and waved.
Fluttershy, she of the long long hair, glanced back to return the smile. It was genuine and it was fake, because she was happy and she was not. So she hadn't done it this time, either. Lotus had thought this might have been it. And so she'd be back, again. Every massage she got just rubbed that wound open again.
"Coming back again soon?" she asked while knowing the answer.
"I... I think so. Can you pencil me in for this--"
"This time next week?" And she mm-hmmed. "Of course."
And she thanked her, and put on her dark sunglasses, and left, and Lotus daydreamed of a shade that would look good on her fingers.
Author's Note
"I Can Make You a Man" is a remarkably silly song from The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Fluttershy, like Janet Weiss, seems like she could be a bit of a muscle fan. Also, I never thought I'd have much reason to do anything humanized outside of the Equestria Girls universe, so there you go.
