Please r & r. Nothing belongs to me, except the musings and even then they probably belong to Disney too.
To him it is not just a job. Yes he gets paid, yes he is on the roll of the security. It was once just a job but now it is a vocation, a silent worship.
He watches her from afar every day, then sneaks like a braggart into her arms at night. If, he only thinks to himself sometimes, our stars had been different. If only she had been a girl in my town.
But she is not. She is his queen.
And he is her watcher.
And sometimes, only if he permits himself, he is a voyeur. However that is for a less honourable meandering of thought.
He feels like his life has started at the end. He is older and yet he is hoping for a life that she has already led once before and one that, because of his love for her, he has deprived himself of. He has no children to speak of and leaves nothing behind. She is free to marry, or at least she soon will be, when she shrugs the literal and metaphorical bonds of her royal role and yet neither have mentioned the subject. They have, instead, skirted around it as if it is vicious and dangerous. And for her it is, and for him even more so.
He knows that she does not want to say yes because Clarisse can promise nothing. Her whole life she has dealt, debated and bargained in every grey area and everywhere in between. Clarisse does not see in black and white, there are no extremes of anything in her life except duty.
And he is her opposite; her anchor in storms, the rope at the end of a rough day. He is infinitely, predictably there for her. If she says no to him, he will go. They both know this.
So instead they skirt around the issue, dragging it with infinitely delicious cruelty.
He watches her from afar always and yes, he desires her but it is more than that. He watches her because he knows no other way of life. He watches her because he has became that man who cannot tear his eyes away. Sometimes, when she is dismissive in that cruel way that she can be, he fills with rage. He wishes, against all good moral fibre in his body, that he had never known her.
And that is worst of all; because he can't tear his eyes – or his heart – away.
He notices everything; tired eyes, the agitation when she runs her hand over her hair, the lopsided smile, the slump of her shoulders when a dignitary leaves. They are more frequent now.
You are not superhuman, he thinks, you cannot go on like this forever. You cannot make me do this forever either.
He is not only a watcher, he is a custodian of her little known private history and her ungraciously exploited public one. He has held her up as she watched her son's coffin carried up steep steps, he has bolstered her after another blustering run-in with Rupert, he has watched her tire her patience with Mia and told her not to give up.
And he has defended her in every way he can. He is a guardian of everything she needs to make her world function. Does she need him really? He hopes, against hope, that she does. If she doesn't, he promises himself, he will go. then he reneges the silent promise and then he vows it again. He pleads with his own weakness to stop making that promise at all.
He will ask her tonight, when she has a moment alone. He will watch her from afar and then he will ask her if she will give him this one wish, after all of these years that he watched her, that he can make her his wife. It is all he will ask.
And she will say no but he will hope against hope and that has always been what has kept him here.
And watching her because despite the fact that he wishes he could, he can't stop. The watching him has rooted him to this place for eternity.
That is why it is so much more than just a job.