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You’re always trying to fix what ain’t broken. Your husband tells you this constantly, a fond smile on his face. But, there is no action taken, just the huff of amusement, the white of an eye, and you are left. Twitching hands, breaking and re-assembling the pieces. Fingertips constantly smoothing across smooth plains, searching for any crack. Relentless, like a starving dog.
You don’t know if this is some kind of strange and deep neurosis in your mind. Daughter of a soldier, set up to marry one. Cradle into the fire, or however that saying goes.
Your husband’s name is Arthur, and he is an upstanding citizen. He is beautiful, what women imagine when they picture marrying a soldier. He has his medals, and he is kind to you. You stood on the altar and it felt like something that was meant to happen. Thumb over the edge between walls. Not a crack but a bend. Meant to be.
Your life is a checklist that you complete with a straight back. Consistent, with results. Decent marks in school, a decent degree that gathers dust in a frame somewhere that you barely glance at. A decent job that was then surrendered for a good home. Suburbs, with Arthur, the two of you smiling out at yourselves from a picture frame. The image of yourself ten years before, happy as you watch the future from the fireplace.
Your marriage is quiet, if picturesque. The type of marriage that has your neighbours smiling at you even when you are not doing anything of note. The mental space that you take up with your beautiful life. Pretty wife, large house, a hero of a husband.
He leaves you alone for most of the year at times, abroad, leaving you alone in the house. You are probably due to have kids at some point. Soon, maybe. Mark this in the calendar next to the reminder to get more milk.
//
Androids are more a part of Arthur’s life than they are in yours. Human lives are so expendable but ultimately finite. Androids are, however, recyclable.
Toy soldiers, ones that no one feels bad about pointing a gun at and pulling the trigger. Target practice for one nation and enemies to another. Multi-purpose.
The entire thing makes you feel a little bit ill, but no one asks you for your opinion on it, so you don’t.
You had seen one of them once, one of the few times that Arthur had been in his office working in your home rather than his office on base. The picture of an android. They don’t build them with faces, just in the shape of man. Clear silicone skin, a blank head, military vest and trousers. Considering they are meant to be faceless, dressing them up seems pointless.
The photograph that Arthur has is of one that has been shot, mangled into pieces. Bullets like little black holes all over its body. Android’s faces look like the back of a baby’s head, smooth and delicate. Blasted to pieces in a war zone.
Arthur barely looks up as you pass him over his dinner to eat while he works, smooth a hand over his shoulder. Go to the bathroom and force yourself to be sick to be rid of that horrible feeling in your stomach.
//
Arthur comes back from a deployment more on edge than he usually is. There is the usual set structure to his return, the rumble of his car in the driveway, you stood on the porch. As if you had been sitting there since he left. Then he will come inside, bask in the home cooked meal that you made for him, compliments you and you tell him that you miss him. Then, off to bed, where you dig into the tense muscles of his back until he can sleep peacefully. In the morning he will tell you that this is the first good sleep he’s had in however long he had been away.
There is something wrong from the get-go. The rumble of his car, you on the porch. Arthur doesn’t smile as he gets out of the car, only a bone-wearied look. He picks at his dinner, listless. Half-here, half still at work.
You flutter around, nerves in response to his. Parallel lines that spark off of each other. Train tracks with a derailed train skidding across the top. Offer him a massage, which he declines. Offer to read to him, which he declines. You hustle around, a panicked bird caught in this house.
“I’m getting you some protection in the house,” Arthur announces as you get ready for bed. You blink at him, confusion settling in. You had been standing at your dresser, smoothing a light moisturiser into your hands. It’s the first words that he has spoken since dinner, retreated into his mind. Refusing to come out even as you tried to chase him up there.
“Why?” you ask. Settle your lotion next to the others with a faint click. Shift the bottle around and around until he answers.
Arthur rubs his eyes, tired. Mindlessly you grab some cream for the sensitive skin beneath his eyes. “There’s…I’m worried about something that happened. Out there. I don’t think it’ll come back here, but just in case.” He looks as if he is about to say more, but doesn’t. His skin is still so bloodless, like he has come back and physically left some part of himself somewhere else. A lung, a kidney, pulsing weakly, left behind.
You apply the cream for him and he lets you after an initial fuss. He’s always so put together and clear. Refusing to give away too much. Everything in code for you to decipher. You purse your lips and look at him. Nod just to see the worry drain out of him. “If you believe that this is the right thing to do,” you murmur.
“It is,” he answers. Question and response. Your thumb on the corner of his eye. The implicit trust that comes with knowing someone the way the two of you do. Physical intimacy in the familiar.
You nod and he lets it lie. Put the cream away next to the others. Kiss him goodnight just like you did on your wedding day, close-mouthed.
//
The protection detail is an android. He stands in the corner of your living room, waiting to be turned on. Arthur explains what he is, some kind of android that they were testing out. Completely humanoid, able to blend in if it wasn’t for the blinking metal on the side of his temple. Decommissioned, set to the side and never attempted again.
“What does he do?” you ask, staring at him. He’s massive, taking up the entire corner of your room. Tall, broad, dark bearded. In military fatigues, you can see the stretch of the fabric around his bicep. His eyes shut, the soft of his eyelashes at odds with the dirty tan he has. An unnecessary detail, you decide. Why include something to have you imagine his skin catching the sun and holding it?
“He’ll just stand guard, essentially,” Arthur muses, flicking through the old documents he has been sent. Half of them blacked out. “Make sure no one tries anything funny. Stop them if they do.” Gives you a half-smile, already looking back at his office.
You hum in response. “Why did he stop getting made?” You ask, approaching the android. Reach the centre of his chest, barely. He has hair on his chest, you can see it in the collar of his shirt, at your eye-level. Ridiculous detail. You suspect that whoever made him must have had more in mind from him than military grunt.
“A version of him got caught in an explosion,” Arthur explains, hands clasped neatly in front of him. “He was kind of meant to be some kind of…do everything soldier. Too much money for something that could blow up so easily, so they just went back to regular android soldiers. He was around base, useful for the paperwork and stuff. They were going to decommission him next week, but I offered to take him. Good to have someone here, make sure you’re alright while I’m away.”
You hum in response. Your husband at your back, you reach over and press your thumb to the android’s temple. Have to stretch up, the pull of the muscles in your calf to reach his head. The flicker of his eyes, glowing blue before they settle, dark and brown. A scan of the room before they settle on you, looking down the length of his nose.
“Hello,” you greet. You feel the strangest sensation of stepping into a bear trap. Feel the creak of metal and the jump of those sawed teeth into the delicate skin of your ankle.
“John,” the android - John - introduces. Sticks a hand out for you to shake. Your palm swallowed up in his. Tiny. “At your service ma’am.”
You can see your reflection in the metallic lens of his eye. A small version of yourself, trapped in a ring of brown. His fingers flex against yours.
//
John, you remind yourself to check where he got the name from, mostly helps you around the house. Used sometimes for administration, part of the android-does-all pitch, so he follows you around. Makes your life easier.
Lifts the corner of the couch for you to be able to hoover beneath it. Pulls the ham out of the oven for you, gloveless. You wonder if he’s starting to read your mind, predicting what you are thinking of doing so that he can half do it for you.
The first week it’s nice. The help soothes you, has you smiling and thanking him. Arthur is happy that this is working, slipping back into your regular routine now that there is someone else to watch the windows.
You need to clean the gutters, and come out the next morning and they are already done. You feel the ping of something metal and vital in the back of your brain break.
Arthur likes him, and seems at ease with him in the house. You don’t understand. There is a loaded gun in your kitchen, making sure your cutlery is in the right place, and your husband seems happier with it there. “His prime directive is to help you and protect you,” Arthur tells you over dinner, cooked salmon. John had done most of it while you tried to fry it yourself. Had given you a half-smile when you found him in the kitchen and had started to protest.
You hum in response. John is in the living room just now, at ease, soldier. The blinking scan on his temple is glowing faintly. Powering down, or up, or thinking in a foreign robotic way that you don’t understand.
“I thought that he specifically would help,” Arthur adds. At your questioning eyebrow, he elaborates. “Most of the androids don’t have any faces. I thought that would…unsettling for you. He’s the only type of android - so far, anyway - that they have tried to make human-like. I thought that would be more suitable for you.”
You twist your mouth, watch the parting of salmon around the prongs of your fork. Imagine a faceless being in your home, preparing your dinner. A blank head, lowered over your washing. You nod in agreement, and the next morning when John follows you around when you have your pruning scissors in hand, you imagine what it would be like if you couldn't see a glimpse of his beard in the corner of your eye. The idea makes you try to smile as he forces you to wear gloves, even though you want to shake him off.
//
“You don’t have to do everything around here,” you start, sticking a thermometer into the roast chicken. Your husband is away, not a full deployment, just for a month or so. Tradition, to make him a roast on his last night before he leaves. All the trimmings. The next morning, you will follow Arthur around the house as he gets ready to leave. A haunting that makes him laugh. You’ll walk him to his car and see him off. Stand on the same place as he did, as if you can soak up the warmth he leaves behind.
John makes a questioning sound beside you. He’s checking on the roast potatoes, making sure they are crusting just so.
“I mean, not that I’m not grateful,” you add, feeling the give of meat as you stab down, the tick of that little red hand on the thermometer. “I am, and I appreciate you helping. But, you’re not leaving me a whole lot left to do.” A joke, but it falls flat even before you drag it out of your mouth.
He considers you. It’s the strangest thing, given he is an android that your husband has given the instruction of helping you and defending you if the need arises. But you half-think that he is going to disagree with you. Like he’s about to tell you that he intended to leave you with barely anything to do.
An argument is unfamiliar to you, you don’t think you know the steps to one of those anymore. It’s really only your husband that you are familiar enough with to have a dispute with and he is barely here. There’s nothing to argue over when he is home, everything is in its place, you make sure of that.
You feel off-balance, a strange tension on the back of your neck. Hackles gone rusty starting to rise. Another beat. John, always studying you, nods his head. “I’ll do as you ask,” he replies, voice gruff. Like he doesn’t really want to. An absurd thought.
You shake your head. You’re the reason they don’t want androids in people’s homes yet. You’re thinking of him as a person, as someone who wants, instead of a robot that your husband has programmed to do as you say. Personifying him, turning him into something that he’s not.
“Thank you,” you add, and yank that stick out of the back of the chicken. It’s cooked perfectly, but your fingers twitch with the urge to put it back in the oven.
//
John does not do as you ask. Your husband leaves and John fills up the space. Every room that you walk into, always in the corner of your eye. Never far.
The porch is repainted, he cleans out the back of the fridge. You wake up in the morning, childishly thinking that if you get up earlier then you can do something while he is charging up as he does every night. Wrong, you get up and he already has the oven door off its hinges while he replaces the screws.
You stalk around the house, nose in the air, looking for something, anything. Fingers along the wall, as if you could feel any cracks that are deeper in the wall that you cannot see.
One evening, you think that you might just chip away all the paint on the walls with your nails to repaint it. As if John knows, the paint cans are tied away into the shed, locked. The key taunts you as it hangs from its hook. Metal already polished.
You feel like a child with its safety blanket snatched away. Arthur always indulged here, was never home enough to really take the time to actually complain about your restless hands. A smile, a roll of the eyes. You suspect he enjoyed being fussed over when he was home, a change to whatever it was that he dealt with when he was out there.
Off-kilter, having someone else change the oil in your car. You grit your teeth, resist the urge to bare them at him. Want to tell him to power off and sit in the corner. Then wonder if your husband would know, and feel ashamed all over again.
John is here to protect you, you remind yourself. You’re the one who is driving yourself crazy.
The next morning, as he fixes your creaky step - you hadn’t even noticed, and grind your teeth at the thought - you go out to speak with him.
“I can do that,” you tell him, stepping forward, half a mind to take the tools away from him.
He stands up, and you, three steps up, are finally on eye level with him. He furrows a bushy brow at you, like you have said something ridiculous. You feel the compulsive urge to smooth down the hair of his beard. “I have it under control,” he tells you, nodding his head back towards your house. Like you’re an overeager army cadet.
“I’ve misspoken,” you grit out. “I will be doing that.” You reach a hand out, intent to snatch the tools out of his hands. Get one step down, and he climbs the other. Chest bumping against his. Tools hidden behind his back, his other hand reaching up to catch your waist. The warmth of his palm, you feel it all up your side until you don’t think you would actually know where his hand is. “John-”
“Let me sort this, alright?” He murmurs, staring down at you. An immovable wall. “Go back in the house, relax.” He gives you a squeeze on your hip and you jolt, a foreign sensation. You work your jaw. His hand on your waist is firm, like if you try to move forward then you wouldn’t be able to move at all. His head ducks down, enters your vision. You imagine that you can hear the whir of his eyes as they dart between yours. “C’mon, sweetheart, why don’t you go run yourself a bath?”
The name baffles you, makes you malleable enough to usher you back inside. The door shuts again, deafening and final, he returns back to the porch steps.
You stand, blood in your ears before you head for your husband’s office, root through the shelves until you find the files on the android in your home.
Most of it is still redacted, but you attempt to decipher them anyway. Find the passages regarding why he was made. The-everything-soldier, able to command other androids, work with people. Blend in, almost indistinguishable from a human being. Admin, kill, protect.
You brush your fingers over the blackened lines, information shut off to you. Wonder if he could decipher it, grip the paper and feel the words that used to be there.
You try to do it yourself, end up tired, ink all over your hands before you sink into the bath. The edges have been resealed. You dunk your head under the water and scream.
//
The night before Arthur comes home, you try to sort yourself out. Routine is only another day away and you crave it so bad that your mouth waters with it. You decide you’re going to speak with Arthur when he gets back, tell him that you understand why he has left John with you, but it’s just not working out.
Standing at the kitchen sink, washing clean cups again. John sits at the island behind you, watching. You’re feeling petty, the thought of being rid of him soon is filling you with a specific type of bravery. It’s like he knows, you tell yourself. That’s why he’s being so quiet. Waiting for you to speak first rather than the usual, where he lets you know what he’s going to do, as if to forewarn you to not even try.
You hear him stand, turn around just to see him adjust himself in his trousers. You frown, confused. Perhaps stare a bit too intently at his crotch. He looks back at you, amused in the way that you imagine hunters are when they hear an animal yowl in pain from a shot. “Can I help you, ma’am?” he asks.
You flush but refuse to look away from him. “Is that just something to make you seem human? I can’t imagine you actually have -” Cut yourself off. Filthy words that have never been spoken in this house. Only the sweet back and forth of you and Arthur’s routine. Would feel like a betrayal of some kind, as if Arthur will come home and hear the echoing of your foul mouth hours after, bouncing off of the walls and settling into the grain of the wood.
“You asking if I have a cock, sweetheart?” John asks, steps closer. Slippery hands clench around glass. He looks like he’s scented blood, like he wants to dart forward and finally catch you in this elaborate game that you’ve been playing that only he knows the rules to.
“Why would you? What purpose would that have?” you return, frowning at him. Disapproving, a familiar role for you, even if it is relatively passive compared to how you feel now. You feel the absurd urge to hiss at him, poison in your mouth. Feel how it burns your gums.
“Most likely a function for bored housewives,” he drawls, dark eyes intent on you.
You freeze, stare at him. You know that he isn’t supposed to speak to you like that. Know that backchat must not be some certain part of his hardwiring. He seems to be challenging you as well, watching you with that half-smirk, half-scowl of his. You tilt your hand under the hot water, let the snapping burn of your skin pull your focus away.
He clicks his tongue, as if disappointed. Feel the point of his stare on the sink. You twist your hand, the squeak of flesh against glass, grating.
Your skin turns red under the water, the flow shattering against the nerves on the back of your palm before it is suddenly stopped. You startle, heat at your side suddenly as he pulls your hands out of the sink, dries them with a gentleness that quiets you.
The hair across his knuckles tickles against the smooth of your own. He holds them, as if he just wants to. Function done, the gap between one order and the next. You stay quiet, watch him. Study him for once.
He’s openly frowning now, thumb against the blotches of red. “Be careful,” he says, suddenly, as if the temperature reading he has just read on you is not to his liking. Body twisting with displeasure. Feel him run it through his synthetic surface and into your skin, running through wiring and into your blood vessels, becomes your own.
Open your mouth to snark back, silenced when he gives you a firm look. “It’s only water,” you mutter, sullen.
“Doesn’t matter,” he barks back. Culls you. “I don’t want you near the sink.” You bristle. “Or will you wear gloves next time?” He looms over you, a threat in the size of him. The urge to behave for someone bigger than you. The way he doesn’t have to throw you around, the shift of his bicep is implicit enough.
“I’ll wear gloves,” you give in, mullish. Desperate not to be banned from the sink in your own home.
He settles with that, one last smooth over the back of your hand, leaves you feeling like static. “Good girl,” he murmurs. You hear it like a gunshot, and spend the rest of the day with music blaring in the kitchen, hoping to drown that sound out before your husband comes home and finds it in the metal of the sink.
Or worse, hears the intake of breath you emitted. Guilty.
//
You and your husband love each other. You’re sure of it. Maybe the passion, the heady rush has gone, but there are still the bare facts. The connect of wood in your porch, slid together and stuck. It creaks under your feet in the morning but never gives. You barely glance down, the security in flush ground. Immovable.
You think over this when you are lying in bed, Arthur next to you. He always sleeps so still, you remember when you were first married, you used to wake him up with a hand on his pulse. You don’t even know what you were afraid of that made you catch your hand in the curve of his wrist.
John isn’t as forward with Arthur in the house. Back to android, and you find yourself asking if you had imagined the entire thing. Arthur thanks him absently for passing him a drink and you watch John’s face. Imagine that you can see the flicker of anger at his subservient role. But John’s face is still, and he blinks back at you. Slow, like a docile tiger. As if there was such a thing.
It’s somehow worse. At least when he was acting out, then there was something for you to be indignant about. Now, Arthur is listening to you complain about how the taps aren’t squeaking anymore with a raised eyebrow. “Sounds like he’s good for you, darling,” he says, at your hushed muttering. “Probably safer for him to touch the boiler rather than you.” Holds your hands in his and presses a chaste kiss to the back of your hand.
You grit your teeth, a mouthful of blood. And agree.
Lovemaking with Arthur has a purpose. Couples have sex. And so you two have sex. It is to the point, which you have always appreciated. On your back, hands on the back of Arthur’s neck as he huffs into your neck. Efficient. Meant to be done.
Not that it’s not enjoyable, you just think that it's something you don’t miss when Arthur is away. You miss another body in the bed, the ebb and flow of conversation. But, you married a military man for a reason. You were meant to be left alone, you were better left to your own devices, at least you thought so.
This night is much the same, Arthur smoothing his hands up your thighs, tugging your nightgown out of the way and groaning into the column of your throat. Lube is used, birth control always popped on your tongue in the morning and you imagine it in the acid of your stomach as Arthur thrusts between your legs.
A familiar routine, interrupted when you get that animal sense of being watched and look over Arthur’s shoulder, see John watching with dark eyes from the doorway. Everything in you tenses, cold water trickling down your spine.
Arthur is oblivious, focused as he pants with his sweaty forehead pressed to your sternum. You watch John, who seems to be glaring at you, as if you were doing something wrong. Shame, hot and horrible, you think you are going to throw that pill right back up, hours later.
John, hand clenched on the doorway. Eye contact like a point between the two of you, a fine line that you think you could reach out and cut yourself on, piano wire. You refuse to look away but nudge Arthur, trying to catch his attention.
John slinks away, lets you watch him leave. Arthur tilts his head back and sees nothing but an empty doorway, shushes you and gets back to work. You stare at the finger shaped holes in the doorway and come like that, head tilted away, eyes open until they become blurry.
You wake up the next morning and it’s fixed, a fresh set of paint over the caulked over holes. You smooth your thumb over it again and again until your skin is tacky with paint and the off white of the caulk is revealed. Leave it there, like a thread pulling at the back of your mind.
//
Arthur is only home for a week before he leaves again. Standing in the kitchen, prepping that roast chicken. John in the corner, chopping vegetables. You imagine he is chopping faster than usual, as if the faster that Arthur eats, the faster he will leave.
It feels like there is an anvil hanging over your head. Neck lowered to sustain the weight. You feel like the crackle in the air before a storm. You know that John is waiting for Arthur to leave. You don’t know what he is going to do. Feel the anticipation of it, a coil of muscle tightened beneath taut skin.
You imagine waking Arthur up, asking him to stay, asking him to take John with him. Asking him to shut John down maybe.
The thrum of Arthur’s pulse under your fingers, a habit that you thought you had kicked. You lay awake, holding onto the beat of his heart until the sun comes up.
He leaves in the morning and you haven’t said a word. A plea somewhere, dead in the house and stinking beneath the floorboards. Arthur gives John a nod, good boy, and gives you a kiss goodbye.
John at your back, Arthur waving you goodbye before the click of the door as it shuts. Silence layers over your home, the huff of your breathing. The unnatural stillness of John.
You tense, as if waiting for John to grab you, to throw you around. Maybe he’ll gut you, a ‘fuck you’ to his owner, for downgrading him to stay at home husband with his snippy wife. You imagine it, the red of your blood, all up the walls.
Standing, frozen, just a few steps before the door. Square your shoulders and turn, and find John is gone, wandered somewhere else in the house.
You stand until you remember that you didn’t walk Arthur to his car like you always do when he leaves. Inhale a shaky breath in and storm around the house until you find John.
On his knees, bringing up the flooring in the living room. “What are you doing?” You snap.
“These weren’t laid down correctly,” John tells you, giving you an unimpressed look. “I’m going to re-lay them. Why don’t you go read on the hammock, sweetheart?”
You lunge at him, hand trying to seek out that blue circle on the side of his temple. “I am not doing this anymore, I’m shutting you down, and Arthur can switch you back on when he’s home if he wants -”
John catches you by the waist, lets you rant in his face, catches your hands in one of his, thumb and forefinger locked around your wrists. “That is not what is best for you,” he informs you, impossibly smug.
“I think I can decide that,” you snarl. House kitten that is caught in the corner of a cage, hissing and spitting.
John frowns down at you, considering. You kick at his knees and he sighs, like you’re inconveniencing him. Shifts your hands before he hauls you over his shoulder. You squawk, indignant, and try to kick him again, knees bouncing off of his stomach - he doesn’t even pause.
“Where are you taking me?” You ask, now trying to pull yourself forward and maybe topple out of his arms this way. His arm is a metal band around your waist, and he gives you a warning squeeze.
“You need to calm down,” John grunts. Carts you upstairs and throws you on your bed. You thump onto the mattress, impact almost throwing you back off. Perfectly starched sheets wrinkle underneath you. You think he’s going to do what he wants to you now, going to hike your skirt up and grab you between your thighs. He doesn’t do either of these things. He reaches a hand out and catches your jaw, firm and it stills you. “Are you going to be good for me?”
Your mind almost blanks out. A dog reacting to a treat rather than a firm backhand. You try to glare up at him, but you think it must come out silly because he just blinks back at you, unyielding. “Why are you doing this?” you whisper.
John regards you, head tilted to the side. You think he may actually answer you, but he doesn’t. Squeezes your jaw as if to feel all of the teeth that you hold in there. “Are you going to be good for me?” he repeats.
You are shaken by how much you want to be. How you want him to tell you that you’re being good, that you’re doing what you’re meant to be doing. You try to tell yourself that this is some kind of survival instinct, that you’re doing this out of some kind of self-preservation. You nod, barely able to move with his hand so firm on your face. He gives you another long look, mouth twisting beneath his moustache. You tremble beneath it, hand shaking as you reach up and hold his wrist. Thick, in your hand. Fingers barely able to connect. “Yes,” you add, realising he won’t move until you speak.
He gives you a smile and it warms you, fire after a long winter. “There we are,” he murmurs, hand shifting so he’s not locking your jaw in place anymore, but cupping your cheek. You lean into it, brain underwater and clogged with the sight of him. “There we are, honey. You can be good can’t you? You just need to be shown how to be sweet.”
He reaches down the buttons of your dress, undoes them. Shushes you when you twitch feebly, the start of a frown from him is enough to settle you down. Tugs your dress beneath your breasts, cups them in his palms. He runs so hot, a searing heat on your nipples as he runs his thumb over them.
They decommissioned him, and you think you are starting to understand why. His desire is an ugly thing, you can see it in the way he huffs a breath as he fondles your chest, presses a smarting kiss on your sternum before he shifts back on his haunches and lifts the skirt of your dress up to your waist.
“There we are, sweetheart,” he coos, a thumb down the length of your underwear, feel it on your slit and it makes you whimper. Your underwear is sticky, something that doesn’t come to your attention until he is petting at the damp. Aware of yourself as he notices it, sections of yourself are forced into the spotlight. Front row seat, you and John.
He leans back, considers you, thumb still idly stroking up and down the gusset of your underwear. You shake under his gaze, as he seems to come to some kind of decision. He reaches beneath you, both hands on the small of your back and lifts. No effort at all. Lands you on your feet and makes efficient work of undressing you. Smooths a hand down your naked side when you start to shake again, shushes you with a sweet kiss on your temple.
“Oh, aren’t you so pretty,” he murmurs and you feel a flush work its way down your chest. He smirks and guides you to lie flat on your back again, legs hanging over the side as he pulls them over his shoulder. “My pretty girl,” he adds, gaze hot between your legs in a way that makes your legs flex with the need to shut them.
Eyes on yours, he leans down and presses a kiss to the open seam of your cunt. His hands are hot brands on the back of your thighs and you feel them shake as he kisses your cunt like a second mouth, tongue laving at you. He can generate spit, you realise when he pulls back and spits on your clit and you jump like you’ve been shot. A moment later, and he’s sucking your clit out from under its hood as if to soothe the hurt.
“Oh, fuck,” you whine, chest hitching as he eats you out slowly. He doesn’t eat, doesn’t need to, so you would’ve thought that he would be so fast, force his tongue into your and devour you from the outside. But instead it’s almost sweet. Mouths at you, a wet noise as his eyes slip shut. Thumb pulling back the hood of your clit so that he can rub at it completely as he laps at your entrance which makes your leg kick out. His beard scratches at you and you take the burn of it with the soft of his tongue, hips hitching into the feeling.
It’s slow, a building of heat before you feel it start to spread, voice getting higher until the band of tension doesn’t snap as you come but rather undoes, a button at a time. He drinks it down, until you sob, back bowing under his attention.
He comes back up, a kiss to the curve of your belly before he shifts you up the bed and kneels between your legs. Your hands are on his arms, fingers gripping the sleeves of his shirt. You’re eaten up in the shadow of him, overcome. Blink up at him, tears beading in the corner of your eye. He smooths a thumb over them, catches them. His face is sticky and shiny, your fluids caught in his beard. “Please,” you whisper, unsure what it is you’re asking for.
John interprets. Gives you another smile, and leans down, hands hot on your thighs as he gives you a kiss. You part beneath him, let him dig into your skin, tongue in your mouth and drag over the points of your teeth. Your face comes back slick because of him, but you barely care. Watch him with heavy eyes as he reaches down and unbuckles his belt, tugs them down and fishes out his cock.
It’s human looking, feels the same as the rest of his flesh as he taps it against your clit to watch you jump while he chuckles. “Why do you -” you start to ask, about to rehash an old argument but he ignores you, catches the head of his cock on your entrance. It’s bigger than Arthur is, everything is. He starts to press into you and you feel a whine start to build up in your throat, feeling how your flesh parts for him. “It’s too much,” you hiccup, leg kicking again as he holds it against his waist.
“You can take it,” he tells you, words turned into truths as he speaks them. He presses into you insistently, laying his weight on you to push further. You can feel him in your throat, half clawing at his arms, breathing shaky. You wonder what he’s even getting from this, surely he doesn’t need to do this, there cannot be a function for this. But his eyes are reverent as they watch your pussy swallow him up, mouth parted as he watches it. “There we are, you’re doing so good sweetheart.”
You nod, mindlessly, barely able to stand it. Gun loaded, safety clicked off and shot into the direction of any sanity that you had left. He fucks like he was meant to, legs hitched around his waist, a smack of his hips against the back of your thighs. You think if you were more in your mind then you might count the space between them, know it must be some perfect round number. But you aren’t, so you can’t.
Yowl like a cat when he drops his thumb back onto your clit, watches you with measured eyes as your chest starts heaving again. Measured stokes in and out of you, hypnotic like a palindrome. The coiling of another orgasm building in you. You sob with it, back arching as your mind splits, two halves of a pomegranate in his hands.
He murmurs to you through it, until you’re listless. He keeps going, lifting one of your hands to his temple. He isolates your thumb, digs the nail of it into the catch around the metal that is his power source. He snarls, suddenly real on top of you. He’s not a human, you think distantly, your other fingers stroking the hair that starts at his temple, thumb digging in further just to feel him buck up into you savagely. He’s not a human, he’s an animal.
He slumps, catches himself on you. A weight on you that digs you into the bed. Soothes a hand down your flank, sparking a pleased sound in your chest. He echoes it, feeling the looseness of your muscles. “There we are,” he mutters, teeth catching on the hinge of your jaw, giving you a bristly kiss after.
You barely respond, muttering faintly. His smile consumes you, chews you up to spit you back out, turns you over and hikes your ass in the air.
//
It spirals out of control, a rope that you could use to claw your way out of this, severed in your hands when you finally snatch it on your freefall.
He’s insatiable. You wake up one morning, roll your head to the side after sleeping on it funny, and John has you back on your pillows as he laps at you from behind until your muscles can’t retain pain because they have been reduced to liquid.
Bends you over the kitchen island when you even attempt to make your own dinner. Tells you to stay like that while he dishes up, only letting you move when everything is done and all you have to do is eat. You can barely stop him from feeding you himself.
Walk outside to check on the grass, and he has your knees braced over his forearms as he fucks you against the wall of the patio. Barely just out of sight of your neighbours, which has you squirming until he drops a rough thumb to your clit and your eyes roll back in your head.
Every boundary you attempt to set up is overturned. You tell him that you’re married, and he gives you a bored look like that is entirely irrelevant to him. You try to shut him off one night, sneak downstairs and stand over him. You are the grim reaper, but when you reach for that hidden button on his temple, he’s catching your wrist and his eyes are flickering on.
“Not enough for my hungry girl?” he coos like you’re a brat stomping your foot. When you try to protest, he splits you across his wide lap, noses at your cheek. “I’m sorry, honey, you should have told you that you still had an itch to scratch before I put you to bed.”
Bounces you on his cock until you’re truly senseless, tucks you back into bed but climbs in with you instead now.
You try to protest, slurred as your words are. “Don’t want my sweet girl to have to climb those stairs in the dark,” he explains, settling on his back with you draped over his chest. You sink into him, imagining yourself caught up in the wires that make him up. A rough kiss on your temple and you barely have it in you to do more than sigh.
You wonder if he’s playing house, if he plans on killing your husband when he comes home. But, there doesn’t seem to be any planning. You bring Arthur up after eating dinner, John’s eyes intent on your mouth as if to make sure that you have swallowed every bite. He doesn’t respond, so you start to frown.
“Is there something you’re wanting to ask me, honey?” he burrs, raising an eyebrow at you.
“I’m asking if you think that this is going to continue when Arthur comes home,” you repeat. It’s not even really a question, more a demand.
John seems amused by you. Like a moth trapped in a house that is bouncing off of the walls. “I’m sure he’ll thank me for keeping his wife happy while he was away,” he informs you.
Your face twists further, and apparently satisfied that you have eaten enough, John kicks your chair out and lifts you bodily. Fucked against the pale paint of your kitchen wall, he tells you to settle down after a few minutes of futile struggle. Held by the scruff of your neck, you lift your head looking for a kiss. Always happy to indulge you, he grants you one.
//
John pulls you over the curve of his torso, letting you dig your chin into the soft of his pec. It always startles you how real he feels, running hot beneath your hands.
Arthur is back tomorrow. You wonder if you will remember the muscle memory of his welcome home. You’re sure you have to be on the porch, but you can’t remember what happens after that, a roll of film that has been snapped in half. Half an image, projected out and shaking in that beam of light.
Unable to help yourself, you smooth your hands over John. Habit, routine, addiction. Fingers seeking a crack. Let you fix the fixed.
He huffs, catches both of your wrists in the paw of one of his. Mouth on the crown of your head. “Go to sleep, woman,” he murmurs, words hot on your scalp.
Your hands give a feeble twitch in his, then still. Caught.