Human

Ben lifted his fingers from the arms of his favorite chair when he realized he was feeling the foam stuffing beneath the tips. From both hands. Quick glances told him what he already knew; his pathological need to grip what he thought was solid had done some real damage in the form of torn upholstery. It was telling that the feel of the innards of his refuge registered with him before the pain of incredibly cramping finger muscles. Probably because it was physical, and right then, physical pain was a joke.

Gingerly, he raised his hands and forced himself to exert some control, placing his palms flat on the arms and keeping them there, still. He actually smiled then, considering the exercise to be good practice for what was coming. Well, maybe not good. That really couldn't exist. Adequate practice, he supposed. Better than nothing.

As it was, those couple of seconds would have to do, because they were all he got before his front door finally creaked open, and the golden rays of the morning sun streamed in from the outside, around the trim form of the woman standing there, key in hand, with a look on her pale, lovely face like she was turning herself in to begin a prison sentence.

Barbara's green eyes shimmered, and she brushed a lock of her fiery red hair away from them absently and without care. The tresses easily stayed in the new position behind her ear because they were still damp. They were still damp because she'd recently showered, Ben had absolutely no doubt, just as he had no doubt as to why.

"Where are the girls?" Barbara flicked her stunning eyes past her husband to the stairs, and the question came out hushed, in something a bare sliver above a whisper. Absently, unknowingly, one hand had begun fiddling with the curve-hugging black dress curvedly hugging those huggable curves, like she was subconsciously trying to undo the evidence of the abuse it had recently taken. Pointless, but she didn't stop.

"Where are the girls?" Ben grasped on to the false calm hard enough that it should have made his armrests envious. "You sure that's what you want to ask? Not, do they know what I did?"

He saw it then, in her face. It was easy, after twenty years of a conjoined life, to read his wife and tell that she'd actually held out hope that he'd not known what she did. He watched that laughable spark die. Seemed fitting.

"They're sleeping." Ben was magnanimous. He'd deign to answer her question, merciful like no one else in history. "They went to bed thinking you had too much to drink and crashed at Cynthia's, since she's always a designated driver, and her place is a lot closer to the venue." He grunted. "I'm guessing... half right? I mean, the drinking half. The site of your crash..." He turned his palms to the ceiling and shrugged his shoulders. "A studio apartment draped in leopard print velvet?"

"You know I hate it when you're this sarcas--" Barbara pursed her lips and looked away from him, flushing with guilt. "Sorry. I... I didn't mean to snap. This... it's hard. I don't know how to... what to say."

Ben realized then, neither did he. What could be said? The English language was rich, varied, and full of contextual goodness, so he just let the first thing that could find its way into his mouth come right out. "Was it worth it?"

Barbara staggered like she was still drunk over to a chair normally meant for guests, plopping down bonelessly and putting her face in her hand. Without looking up, she just mumbled. "I want to ask what the price is."

Oh wow, was that the wrong answer.

"Goddamn it, Barb!" Ben barely managed to keep his exclamation to a furious hiss rather than the bellowing shout it deserved. His children were still upstairs, sleeping. Oblivious. Protected... for the moment. He did lean forward though, doing what he could to make sure his wife didn't miss one single iota of what was inside him. "You're saying it might be worth it? That you getting dicked by a horny party planner might be okay... if... if what? If you can keep your happy lie of a life intact?"

"God no, Ben that came out..." Barbara was looking at him again, but her earnest, emotional plea was aborted suddenly. "Lie? What do you mean, lie? I... I was... am happy. With my life." She leaned forward then. "With you."

"Bull. Shit." Ben sank back in his chair once more, away from her outstretched, questing hand. "Happy people don't do what you did, my dear. Content wives don't flirt shamelessly with fashionable gym-rats for weeks, then tell their husbands they're crazy for being wary." He was on his feet then, and he didn't remember doing it. "Hell, Barb, when I first came around to see how your pet project was going, you know... supporting my loving wife... you tried to tell me he was gay!"

Barbara flushed and looked away. "You don't have to... I remember..."

"Yeah? Do you remember me actually, physically taking his hand off you? That it had to happen twice before you gave up that lie, and switched to warning me against assaulting him because he's the type that would definitely call the cops?"

She sniffled then. "Yes. Ben, honey..."

He narrowed his eyes and took a step towards her. "Good. Exam passed. Your brain still works. Leaves me with whole mess of new questions though. We'll start with this; why the ultimatum?"

"Ultimatum?" She sounded genuinely confused.

"When I told you it was done. Yours and Cynthia's charity ball. When I said that what I saw was too much and I wasn't an idiot..." Ben looked at the ceiling, gathering himself, before he fixed her with his glare. "And you said that I was an idiot, and that if I ever forbade you anything again, you'd show me just how much. That ultimatum. The one you gave a day before you walked out last night while informing me I wasn't welcome to accompany you. So... why? Best defense is a good offense?"

Barbara had her fingers woven together in her lap and was studying them intently. "What was I supposed to say? The truth? That another man was getting in my head, was staying there, no matter how hard I was trying to evict him? That I was struggling... losing... because I didn't know how to play the game? That I was feeling things about a man I hadn't since college, because you and I are so intertwined that it's not... an adventure anymore?"

She finally looked up, and Ben was actually surprised at the earnestness he saw there. "I forgot, Ben. I forgot what was true. I forgot you, even with you right in front of me." She sniffed again, and real tears began to pool. "You're a victim of your own success, my eternal love. You're... good. Too good. I've never been tested before, because you make me happy, my life easy, and my soul content. Todd..." She bit her bottom lip briefly because of something she saw in him. "...he... he was, like, the one-in-a-million guy who was in the right place at the right time..." She rolled her shoulders. "I don't even know the word. He... flipped me."

"Flipped?"

She shook her head. "I dunno... yeah. Flipped. He figured out a way to put me upside down and rattle me... crap, I mean..."

The red in her cheeks showed Ben that a sudden, recent memory was matching her words a little too closely, and then he was somehow sharing the visual without having been anywhere near his wife and her night of gymnastics.

Naked asses taking turns pile-driving, bent spines and fingers curled to claws...

"I'm leaving." His coat was somehow off the hook and in his hand, and he was one foot towards the still-open front door before Barbara was on her own feet.

"Leaving? Wha... why... where..." She swallowed, trying to regain control. "Ben, stay with me. Please, please, I need--"

"You need." Ben stopped, but didn't turn his back from her. "That's the problem, isn't it?" He rotated his head just enough to catch her with the corner of his eye. "You know what? I'll tell you where I'm going, since I just now figured it out." He looked down at his watch. "It's Sunday morning, Seven O'clock. I'm gonna let myself into the office, and since no one will be there, I'll have the privacy to look at the employee registry and get Candace Tennen's address."

"Dandy Candy?" Barbra sounded fully horrified. "With the fake... Ben... Ben, no."

He laughed then, shocked he had it in him, even if it was laced with malice. "No, huh? You're forbidding me? Interesting. You should think on that a bit. Anyway, I'll have you know, I was given a standing invitation over a year ago. I've shot her down so much, I'm sure me showing up will be a real surprise. But hey, surprises are supposed to fun, so why should you and I hog them all?"

The last thing he heard before he was out of earshot was a kind of warbling squawk. It should have been comical, and was anything but. As he tore out of his driveway though, he managed to look on the bright side; for a forty-three year old man--no, for anyone--he was in great shape. That was good, because knowing Dandy Candy, she of the best body money could buy, he'd need all the stamina he could get.

__________

Barbara lifted her fingers from the arms of her favorite chair when it dawned on her that the house was nearly completely dark, and she could barely see a thing inside it. That her home was lost to her. The cumbersome poetry of it all was also lost to her since there was no room for it in her lovely, tempest-tossed head.

She figured her daughters would be turning on lights and making all the noise preteen girls were wont to do... if they'd been there. As it was, she'd shuffled them off to Cynthia's within an hour of their waking up, telling them that she and their dad had special plans, and needed time to work on it without distraction. It was flimsy, and yet another lie, but Barbara had nothing else by then, and her kids were trusting. They were trusting because they were good, and they were good because they'd been raised right by a fantastic father.

And a mother who didn't know which way was up.

After that, she'd come back home and settled in, waiting. Barbara knew she had time. Probably all day, because she knew Ben better than she knew herself. She knew he was doing exactly what he'd said, and was doing it to the best of his ability.

Fucking Dandy Candy. Fucking Dandy Candy. Fucking Dandy Fucking Candy.

And round and round she went. That was her day; bobbing in the open waters of her own mind, directionless, and coming nowhere close to land. It was an unfortunate use of her time, because that meant that Barbara was still... let's say, unevolved, when her front door opened up.

She squinted at the silhouetted figure that had paused there, obviously watching her, and didn't know what to say... so she just said it.

"How was the slut? Hope you used protection. Otherwise, you basically just fucked half the dudes in your..." She clamped her lips shut. Too late.

"Because you stopped at the drugstore on your way to leopard-print paradise?"

It was odd getting the cold truth from a nebulous blob of shadow, but truth it was, and Barbara had no reaction other than to hug her pajama-clad knees to her chest and put her forehead on them. Buried, she could only listen to her husband shuffle his feet in tight movements, expressing his frustration without words.

"You're angry." He finally spoke after an eternity, and when she looked up, he was looming over her. "Angry."

"I... it's..." What was he expecting? What did he want her to say?

"Angry? That's it? Your husband, the man you've said repeatedly that you cherish and love, just spent hours having sex with a woman you can't stand... and you're pissed. You... you're just..."

Barbra watched a little life leave Ben then, right before he turned on his heel and went back the way he'd come.

"Don't expect me until the morning."

This time, the door slammed without an embarrassing caterwaul on her part. In another life, that would have meant something.

__________

Ben's return home in the morning felt like act one of a stage production. First, greeting his family as they sat eating breakfast. He somehow managed to pick up on the lie Barb had told their daughters, and then managed to convince them that he'd been out all night on an errand, even implying--through the bile in his throat--that it had something to do with his wife's charity work.

He felt sick, and not only for the merciful deception. Hours spent slapping flesh with a Dandy Candy had been... well, one for the books. That was part of the point, really; to drive everything out of his head and forget his fucked up life for as long as he could, but that also didn't leave much room for planning what to say to the children he'd, shamefully, forgotten about amidst his own heartache. Thus, given an easy path to dodge the bullet, he took it and joined in Barb's lie.

So yeah, he felt sick because he knew he was taking advantage of his daughters' innocence. Their happy, trusting natures that'd been fostered by a mother who'd been phenomenal... until she, apparently, forgot.

"Girls, you're gonna be late for the bus." Ben smiled at his treasures as they simultaneously hugged him goodbye, gave the same to their mom, and then giggled their way out the door. He kept looking the way they'd gone for a long time. A very long time. Long enough that what he was doing was becoming too obvious.

"Ben... we have to do this." He heard Barbara get up from the breakfast table. "I'm not angry or going to yell. I'm not, I swear. I'm going to the living room now. Please come sit with me."

Though it was petty, he waited till he was sure she was out of sight before he turned around. After a good minute of gathering himself, he finally followed, heading back to the heart of their home to find his bride for nearly half of his life waiting for him in her chair, seeing that she'd turned it to face his own favorite one. She looked over her shoulder at him silently, with eyes pleading so loud they may as well have been screaming.

He sighed, resigned himself to the torture he knew was coming... and sat down.

"I get it now. I do." Barb's voice was low, and she only managed to look at his chin as she spoke, but she was clear and understandable. "You needed me to feel it. That's why what I said last night set you off." She hiccupped and rubbed a thumb on her cheek, below her eye. "Sent you off."

"You... you didn't care." Ben realized his lids were down, and abruptly forced them back up. "When I came back, you lashed out, angry with me. Blaming me."

"Didn't care? Didn't care!" Barb was animated, shiny green eyes completely round. "Ben, god, I was dying inside! How... how could you not see it? I wasn't really mad, I was... shit, I was throwing up a shield! Trying to claw my way out of a hole! I don't blame you, and I didn't last night. I know I made this happen, dammit, I know it!" She pounded her little fists on the arms of the chair. "And when I saw you, when I had to face what you'd been doing... I didn't know how to react, I didn't know what to say, I didn't know who..." She stopped herself and looked away.

"Who I was." Ben was stone. "Sucks, doesn't it?"

Barb hung her head, veiling her face with her red locks. "I'm so sorry. I feel like--"

"There it is!" Ben shouted so hard, spit flew from his lips. "Do you realize that's the first time you apologized? Do you? Since the moment you walked in that door yesterday morning, you've been sheepish, and cagey, and even fucking combative... but never said you were sorry until just now. Until you were backed into a corner." He shook his head. "I just... I don't believe you, Barb."

"I have to say it?" She was quick, and somehow she had his hand in hers before he knew it. "My god, we've practically been one person for decades, how could you not tell that every fiber of my being regretted even looking at that man? No part of what happened was worth a second of the pain I've put--"

"What pain?" Ben leaned back. "No, I mean it. Describe it. You told me you get it now. Describe what that pain is." He gritted his teeth. "Live it for me."

"It hurts to breathe." She didn't hesitate. Not for an instant. "I'm hyper aware of every single second that passes, but somehow each one feels like it's hitting me at a million miles an hour."

"Your chest is tight. Squeezed." Ben locked eyes with her. "It's physical, not something you're... you're translating from a sappy love song you heard once." He grimaced. "It's real pain."

A small sob escaped Barbara's lips, and she nodded. "Agony. It feels like my body's aged fifty years in a day. My bones hurt."

"You did that. To both of us."

"I did." This time, she didn't hang her head. "I never thought I could. I'm not the person I thought I was." She swallowed. "Worse, I'm not the person you thought I was."

"But you want me to... what? Forgive? Does a person forgive the semi-truck that ran him over?"

Barbara blinked at Ben. Then she blinked again. "You... can you really wonder about that? Do I want you to forgive me? Ben, no forgiveness means no you, and I'd literally break my bones rather than live without you."

"Broken bones don't stop your twat from getting stuffed, so it's a good deal for you, isn't it?" It was crude, and cruel, he knew that, but that wasn't about to stop him.

"That... that's not..." Barb rolled her eyes upward, lost. "What can I even say to that? Your confidence in me is battered, I get it, but one night can't possibly erase twenty years. It just can't. I fucked up beyond anything either of us could have imagined, but I didn't have a brain transplant... I had a weak moment."

"That'll never be repeated?" Ben growled at her. "You're saying that you found the one guy besides me in this entire world that you'll ever consider attractive, and now that you've had him, you're all set forever?"

"No! You think I've never found other men attractive till smooth-talking Todd? Jesus, you know I'm not big on false modesty, look at me! I've been fending off swinging dicks since the day we had our first date! Hot men! Hot men whose hotness didn't mean a fucking thing to me, 'cause I had your tasty, loving, fantastic ass!"

"Then what the fuck, Barb! What happened this time? I saw that asshole, and he's a dime a dozen!"

"Nothing stays the same forever, Ben. Nothing." Barb's nostrils flared and a flush rose to match her hair. "Every fortress gets holes when you don't pay attention. Mine were bigger than I'd realized. The pretty decorations inside made me think the gates were still like brand new... until a barbarian came with a ram."

"I don't even know what that means." Ben drooped then, rapidly losing energy. "How's it supposed to convince me you're trustworthy?"

"I'm a kid who touched the burning stove." Barbara actually chuckled. "Almost literally. We established how much pain I'm in. How many kids do it twice? Pain teaches. Misery is a master class in life. I..." She stopped, a sudden look of dread flashing across her features.

Barbara closed her eyes and ran her palms down her face. "Christ, I can't deny what's probably going to happen, can I? Even if you can't live with what I did... if you, you leave..." She took a shuddering breath. "Even if. I'll never do this again. In whatever form of... existence I'll find, I will never lose vigilance, or take my own strength for granted ever, ever again."

Ben rested his face on his palm and didn't speak. It was too much right then. After a time, though, he felt his wife tentatively, delicately touch his shoulder. "You know what you haven't asked me? The question I've been dreading since I saw you in this chair yesterday?"