A/N: acb: here ya go, another one-shot. Everyone: Reviews are what make me stay up until two o'clock in the morning writing this inane crap, so don't be shy. I'm sorta thinking about making a whole bunch of one-shots about all the characters that are hiding something…not sure how well that would go over, so tell me what you think.
On Monday Ames White pulls over three blocks from home to strip off his shoulder holster. Wendy doesn't know he carries a gun. Wendy doesn't even know he has a gun.
He tucks it into his briefcase, and makes sure the combination locks engage. Wendy would never go poking through his things, but it never hurts to be safe.
When he gets home Ray runs to greet him at the door. He swoops his son up with one arm without pausing.
"Hey, big man, what'd you do today?"
While he listens with half an ear to Ray's excited babbling about a frog and the neighbor's cat, he notices Wendy in the door to the living room, looking at him oddly.
Ames curses himself: he shouldn't have grabbed Ray like that. An ordinary human adult male probably could have done it, but not with one arm full of briefcase and coat, and not with Ames' build.
He really has to be more careful.
"Honey, I'm home," he murmurs into her ear when she kisses him hello. She laughs a little, the incident already forgotten. Wendy is like that; anything she doesn't understand she tries to forget. It's part of the reason why she's still alive.
"We're having chicken," she says, smiling at her husband and son. "Both of you go wash your hands."
She's been waiting dinner for him, then. He always tells her not to, because he can never be sure when he'll get home, but she usually does.
The conversation at dinner is light, and consists mostly of Ray explaining his plans for building a better mouse trap. It's something Wendy said to him once when he complained of boredom, and it sunk in.
Ames decides it's a worthy ambition. Besides, it will keep Ray's mind occupied and give him a chance to use his genetically enhanced spatial awareness. What good is 5000 years of selective reproduction if it doesn't help occupy a seven year old?
It's always a hassle to get Ray to bed, his body doesn't require as much sleep as an ordinary child's would, and he's often still awake when Ames comes home. Wendy puts him in bed with a book and his solemn promise to go to sleep before nine. Ray learned to tell time when he was three.
Wendy comes into their bedroom as he's unbuttoning his shirt cuffs. He looks at her over his shoulder, and she smiles shyly at him.
They make love for about forty-five minutes. Wendy enjoys it; he knows this because in bed is pretty much the only place she lets go, if she was disappointed, he'd be able to tell.
He's very careful to be gentle with her. They've been married for eleven years, and by now she thinks it's just the way he is in bed.
It isn't.
He was never like this when he was younger, at the all-Familiar private high school his father sent him to as long as no one got pregnant, thus screwing up the breeding program, the administrators didn't care what the students did.
He is not a gentle lover at all.
He likes it far rougher than this. Harder, faster, so that it's more war than love.
He wants to shackle her wrists with one hand and wrap the other around her throat and just pound himself into her.
But he won't.
He could get away with that with another Familiar, when the smallest, most fragile of the girls could bench press a small car.
Wendy would just get hurt, maybe very seriously hurt. One thrust a little too hard could shatter her pelvis; a grip could break her wrist.
And then he'd have to kill her.
So he doesn't do any of the things he wants to. When they've finished he wraps an arm around her, and pulls her close against his side. She's asleep almost instantly, but he can't seem to follow.
He's not sure how much more of this he can take. He isn't human, but he has needs. In eleven years of marriage, he's had other women maybe five or six times. Always other Familiars, always being very careful about protection, and nothing else.
He needs it. He needs the release, the fulfillment. There are no Familiars in this area that are known to him, and he's gone without for a very long time, because only another Familiar could satisfy him, could enjoy it the way he wants it. Only another Familiar.
Or a transgenic.
But that thought makes him shudder in disgust.
Or at least he tells himself it's disgust.
In the morning, Wendy gets up while he's in the shower and goes down to the kitchen to start breakfast and coffee. He has to be at headquarters in fifteen minutes, but he never eats breakfast anyway, so it doesn't really matter that he doesn't have time.
When he comes down stairs with his briefcase and starts looking for his car keys, he hears Wendy make a frustrated sound. He goes into the kitchen for a cup of coffee, and finds her wrestling with a stubborn jar lid.
"Want some help there, baby?"
She gives him a mock-scowl. "You make one sexist comment, and you'll be wearing that coffee."
Ames grins at the empty threat, like she intended him to, sets his cup down, and moves over to the counter to watch her.
After two minutes of twisting and banging and running hot water over the lid she bangs it down in front of him. She's pretending to be in a very bad mood, but Ames knows the whole show was for his benefit.
So he drops his briefcase and jacket and his newly discovered car keys, and opens the jar with one very slight twist.
Wendy's jaw drops. Any other woman would have made indignant claims of "loosening it", but Wendy has a scientific college education and she knows better.
"How did you…" she trails off, stunned.
Ames gives himself a vicious mental reprimand. Why can't he ever fucking learn?
He makes a show of flexing his muscles, kisses her goodbye, and leaves the house.
He is such an idiot.
Within five minutes Wendy will have convinced herself that it was a fluke, or a trick of physics, but she isn't stupid, and deep down she'll know that isn't true, and she'll start to wonder.
She'll remember incidents like this one from over the years. Stuck jars, jammed doors, heavy home appliances that didn't give him any trouble.
He has to learn to hide it better, he should be good at this by now, but hiding at work, and hiding in the field and hiding at home have begun to take their toll on him. There's nowhere he can just let go, and it's eating at his sanity.
He needs an escape, a release.
Or one day, he's just going to snap.
With disastrous consequences.