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john had been a fool. again . no matter quite how hard he tried, it seemed he could never stop being a fool. he always said the wrong thing, or did the wrong thing - or sometimes, didn’t do the thing he was meant to do at all. it was almost impressive, the way that he consistently managed to fuck everything up just as it would start to get good.
he’d really been putting in the effort to bond with the boy as of late. it didn’t come naturally to john, on account of him never having had a role model to show him how a father ought to behave. but he had been stepping up, working to earn his son’s trust. abigail had been real pleased too. she had been awful sweet on him, had been telling him - in her own way - just how proud she was of him. maybe john should have realised sooner that it was only a matter of time before he ruined it all as usual, but a hopeful part of him was sure that it was going to be different this time. and maybe it was that naive hope more than anything else that meant he was a fool.
it began, as it always did, with a plan. planning was never john’s strong point, but that sure as hell had never stopped him before. it was a simple plan, in theory. abigail had told him she was going to be staying with sadie for the weekend - a girls night, with tilly and mary-beth and karen, she had said. seemed to john like the perfect opportunity for him to introduce his boy to the wonders of the great outdoors. jack had grumbled at first, but when john told him they could take the dog too, he begrudgingly acquiesced. they had followed the montana upstream to owanjila and, with john’s instruction, jack had set up a pretty decent camp for them both. john tried to teach him about the stars, about the difference between an elk and a moose, and about how to fish. he hadn’t much taken to fishing, and john did his best to hide his disappointment. jack had always been a perceptive kid though, and the easy atmosphere they had cultivated quickly soured.
the final nail in the coffin came when rufus, evidently bored with all the standing around as they attempted to catch a muskie big enough to bring home, wandered off into the forest. john, oblivious as he was, hadn’t even realised that the dog had gone missing till jack’s panicked shouts shook him from his reverie. he had tried to calm the boy at first, but it only seemed to rile jack up more. sighing, john had packed his rod back into his tackle box and followed after his son. he found him wild-eyed and trembling on the forest floor, hunched over rufus. the dog was convulsing and whimpering - he’d been snake-bit. john had sucked the venom out, spitting the bitter poison out onto the ground next to jack’s feet. he was sure the dog would make a full recovery, and had tried to reassure his son to that effect, but he was stubborn and hot-headed (the spitting image of his father) and didn’t believe him.
“we should never have come out here, pa.” jack had said, his voice muffled as he sobbed into rufus’ fur.
“it ain’t the outdoors that’s the problem, son. it’s that you’ve been brought up too soft.” he had said, mouth working too fast for his idiot brain to catch up and stop him.
he cursed himself as he watched jack’s body go tense and his face go blank. his son scooped up rufus, who eclipsed his lanky frame, and walked off without a word. john would have been impressed that jack had paid enough attention to the landmarks he’d pointed out on the way up to their fishing spot to find his way back to the trail if he hadn’t been too busy hating himself. he tried to apologise, but jack ignored him, his eyes firmly fixed ahead. john wished they’d driven out here in his beat-up old ‘67 ford pickup. at least then he could have shoved a tape into the deck and drowned out the awful silence.
when they finally made it back to beecher’s hope, the sun setting low over the ranch, abigail was there waiting for them on the porch. she hopped up out of her favourite rocking chair and ran over to them, excited to see what her boys had managed to catch for her. her excitement was quickly snuffed out when she saw the look on jack’s face as he pushed past her without so much as a hello and slammed the screen door shut behind him.
“what have you gone and done now, john marston?” abigail hissed, marching over to him like a stormcloud rolling over the horizon. she had that little crease between her brows that she would always get when she was angry with him, and john knew he probably shouldn’t, but he found it awfully cute.
“darlin’, i-” john had started, but quickly cut himself off when the screen door slammed shut again.
jack had returned, his backpack slung over one shoulder and pierce the veil blasting from his shitty headphones. he addressed abigail only, doing everything in his power to ignore john’s presence altogether. “i’m gonna stay with uncle arthur and uncle charles tonight, mama. i’ll be back after school tomorrow. keep an eye on rufus for me.”
abigail put her anger to the side, motherly concern conquering over all other emotions. “alright, jack. you best remember to text me when you get there or i’ll be up all night worryin’, you hear me?” she blew him a kiss and waited until he disappeared down the dirt track off of their property before she turned her attention back to john. if she’d been mad at him before, her rage was flat-out biblical by this point.
“god damn it, john! what did you do ?” although abigail was only 5’1”, she cut an intimidating figure when she wanted to.
“i didn’t mean it, sweetheart. i…. you know i ain’t always so good at…..” at talking, at being a father, at existing altogether, he could have said. clearly any of these would have been the wrong thing to say, as abigail abruptly interrupted him.
“i didn’t ask what you meant to do, john. i asked you what you did . i won’t ask again. tell me what you did to our son.” the crease between her eyebrows had deepened and a slight flush had formed on her cheeks.
“rufus got snake-bit,” john broke eye contact and started kicking at the ground, guilt washing over him as he reflected on how he handled the situation, “jack, er, started crying. said he wished we had never gone up to owanjila. i said that it weren’t the outdoors that was at fault, but that he had been brought up too…. soft.”
abigail’s eyes widened in horror. “soft?! you told our son that he was too soft ?! for what, gettin’ upset over his dog?” it was a good thing that their nearest neighbour was three fields away, as she was yelling loud enough to disturb the crows roosting on their grain silo, “soft? jesus christ, john! you want him to grow up tough like you did, that it? want him out on the streets, runnin’ drugs and gettin’ shot at for a man that don’t even love him? soft?! you’re pathetic! genuinely pathetic!”
“i’m sorry, darlin’. i’m real sorry. i’ll make it up to you.” john was ashamed to admit it, but abigail calling him pathetic was doing things to him. he shifted uncomfortably on the spot, trying to subtly adjust his jeans.
he wasn’t as subtle as he thought, evidently, as abigail let out a sharp laugh of disbelief. “right now? really, john? that’s what does it for you?!”
humiliated, john felt the tips of his ears burn red hot. he found he didn’t have anything to say to that.
“you’re a sick man, john marston.” abigail grabbed him by the wrist, just the right side of rough, and dragged him back towards the house.
“abigail, i’m sorry, i swear. i’m a fool. i know i am.” john protested weakly as she led him down the hallway towards their bedroom. his heart thumped against his ribs in anticipation.
“save it, john. i don’t want to hear it.” she manoeuvred him with ease, pushing him through the open door until the backs of his legs hit the foot of the bed. he went willingly, sitting patiently on the edge of the mattress as he waited for abigail to tell him what she needed from him. his legs spread open instinctively, and even though she was still angry with him, she found that she couldn’t stop the brief smile that appeared on her face. quickly regaining control of her expression, she walked over to her bedside table and rummaged around in the drawers. john made sure to keep his gaze fixed firmly on the closed door directly in front of him, his hands resting on his knees. even in all his anticipation and curiosity, he knew better than to move without verbal instruction.
abigail pushed the drawer closed and returned to the foot of the bed, placing a selection of items down next to john on the mattress - her lilac harness, favourite strap, and a half-empty bottle of water-based lube. she had taken her hair down from the loose bun it had been tied up in, the front strands framing her face perfectly. not for the first time that week, john internally asked himself how he had managed to get so lucky. he could feel his heart rate quicken as abigail took his chin between her index and her thumb and lifted his head up towards her. she leaned down, closing the distance between their faces painfully slowly until john could feel her breath across his lips. she stopped just short of kissing him before suddenly pulling away and dropping his chin from her grasp. he let out a barely audible whimper at the absence of her touch.
abigail tried her best to regard him with disapproval, but seeing him so desperate for her after such little physical contact made it hard to think straight. nevertheless, she gave it her best show. “think i oughtta remind you what it really means to be soft . don’t you, john?”
john nodded eagerly, his voice hoarser than usual when he answered, “yes ma’am.”
“that’s my boy. nice to see you ain’t forgotten your manners, even if you have forgotten how to be a half-decent father,” abigail kept her distance as she praised him and mocked him in equal measure, hands on her hips (god, how he loved her hips), “now, take your pants off.”
john hesitated for a moment before reaching down to unbuckle his belt. the belt was the only thing he kept that had belonged to his father. it was a grand thing with an intricately detailed bull engraved on the buckle - a prize he had received at some rodeo back in ‘74, before he drank himself into the grave. though his father had never done right by him, it remained one of john’s most precious possessions. that was all forgotten as he hastily pulled the belt through the loops on the waistband of his faded old black 501s and threw it somewhere into the corner of the room. he undid the top button of his jeans and unzipped the fly, then lifted his hips off the bed just enough to pull them down. he let out a sigh of contentment as he was finally freed from the stiff confines of his denim pants. when they had pooled on the floor at the foot of the bed, he kicked them vaguely in the direction of where his belt had landed.
abigail found, yet again, that she couldn’t contain the smile threatening to bloom on her face at john’s obedience. she tapped her perfectly manicured nails against her hipbone with false impatience, “take off your shirt.”
john immediately grabbed hold of the hem of his white t-shirt and pulled it up over his stomach, inelegantly wiggling his way out of the arm holes before finally pulling it over his head. it swiftly joined his jeans and belt on the floor. he shivered slightly, either from the cooler air hitting his skin, or from abigail's undivided attention - he wasn’t quite sure which. she reached out to touch him with one hand, skimming it lightly across the thick dark hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his boxers. john felt the muscles in his lower abdomen tense with arousal. abigail’s hand shifted up slowly across the expanse of his stomach to his chest. she leaned in to kiss him briefly, before firmly pushing him down onto the bed. more familiar with this little routine of theirs than he cared to divulge, john moved up until his head bumped against their pillows.
“wait there.” abigail instructed him with a sternness that left no room for argument. she stepped backwards a couple of paces then started to unbutton her dress. it was a cornflower blue button-down tea dress with an elegant low v neckline that accentuated her cleavage tastefully. john always thought she looked just as good in her clothes as she did out of them. when she had unbuttoned the dress to her waist, she slipped the sleeves down off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. unlike her husband, she quickly picked it up and hung it over the back of the chair at their shared vanity before she returned to the foot of the bed.
she was the most beautiful person on the planet, and every day john cursed himself for wasting so many of the years they could have had together being a stubborn idiot. he never really understood religion, but when he looked over at abigail fastening the harness over her sheer black lingerie, he felt as though he had a revelation. she was his very own mother of mercy, and he would gladly get down on his knees to worship before her. the evening light streaming in through the window caught the stretchmarks on abigail’s thighs and her soft stomach, illuminating them like silver threads woven by god himself. john reached down to palm himself through his underwear, but one pointed look from his radiant wife stopped him in his tracks - it was clear that he hadn’t earned the right to that kind of relief yet. harness firmly secured in place, abigail attached the toy to the steel ring in the middle of it. though she and john used it quite regularly, she still felt a rush of excitement every time she wore it.
abigail settled down on the bed next to him and tucked a stray strand of hair behind his ear. “tell me how bad you want it, john. tell me how much you need my cock.” she moved her hand away from his face and brought it to the top of his boxers, refusing to go any further than that till he answered her.
“i need it.” john moaned quietly as abigail’s fingers started to slip under his waistband. “i need it real bad…. please, darlin’.”
“jesus, look at you. carryin’ on like that when i’ve hardly touched you.” she laughed as she pulled his underwear down over his thighs. “you’re a whore, john marston, you know that?”
“please…” john was too far gone to think clearly, begging desperately in lieu of a proper reply. he ached to be touched, already leaking precome despite the fact that he had been denied any kind of stimulation. abigail’s hands had moved to his hips, her thumbs pressing into the flesh there so hard that he hoped it would bruise. while she was smaller than him, her upper body strength almost surpassed his, so she turned him over with ease.
“on your knees. hands on the headboard.” abigail placed a brief kiss underneath his ear. she pulled back and knelt on the bed beside him, waiting for him to follow her command.
john, rather than obeying, had begun to rut against the mattress. the friction the sheets provided wasn’t quite what he was after, but at this point it felt bordering on divine.
“i ain’t got all day, john.” abigail chastised him, disappointment in her tone. she waited for him to get into the position she had instructed him to adopt before she slapped him on the ass. the sting that was left in the wake of her handprint felt so good that he was almost tempted to disobey her again, but more than anything, john wanted to behave for her. he repositioned himself a couple of times until he was comfortable, then flexed his fingers against the headboard.
“wish you could see the way you look right now. on your knees, beggin’ for it. and you called our son soft. it’s laughable.” john couldn’t see abigail - that was the one drawback to taking it from behind like this - but he could hear the distinct sound of a lid being uncapped as she spoke to him.
she slicked up her fingers and moved between his cheeks to find his hole. she ran her index finger around the edge of the muscle several times, enjoying the way john’s thighs had begun to tremble slightly already. time and time again she made a motion as if she was going to insert a finger, but pulled away at the last minute to continue teasing him.
“abigail….” john sounded wrecked already, his voice reedy and strained.
it was tempting to carry on playing with him like that, but frankly, abigail was just as desperate to be inside him as he was to have her at this point. she pressed a soothing kiss to the base of his spine before pouring some more lube over her fingers and onto his hole. slowly, she inserted her index in to the first knuckle. it had been quite a while since they had been afforded enough privacy to do this, so john was quite tight. she let him adjust to the intrusion, paying attention to the way his shoulders relaxed and his legs spread further apart, then she started to move again.
she massaged his walls for a while, before working the finger in to where it joined with her palm. she worked on opening him up as best as she could with just the one finger for what seemed like an age, then she pulled out entirely. john made a pitiful noise at the loss of fullness, which quickly turned into something else as abigail re-entered him with her index and her middle finger - freshly slicked up. she repeated her earlier motions, beginning by gently crooking just the tips of her fingers into his opening. this time, however, she was much quicker to press further into him. she fingered him with the kind of intimate knowledge that only comes from having known someone for as long as they had. abigail knew she had found his prostate from the way john jolted forward, one hand leaving the bedframe to grip his neglected, weeping cock. with her free hand, abigail batted it away.
“hands on the headboard, john.” she scolded him earnestly, not relenting in the slightest as she continued to apply pressure to his prostate.
“christ…darlin’, i can’t….” john felt as though he could cry. he needed to come so bad and they had hardly even started.
“‘course you can,” the forced nonchalance in abigail’s tone was betrayed only by her slight breathlessness, “think you can take a third?”
john nodded his head vaguely, then, worried that abigail wouldn’t be able to see from back there, responded hoarsely, “…please.”
the hard work abigail had put into opening him up coupled with the liberal amount of lube she had been using paid off as she slipped a third finger into him with ease. “so wet for me, ain’t you? takin’ my fingers so well... god, you do need it real bad, don’t you, baby?”
“i do, sweetheart,” he paused to focus on his breathing as abigail twisted her fingers just right, “need it… need you .”
after several more minutes of expert work, abigail deemed john ready. she removed her fingers, brushing against that sensitive spot inside him one final time, then wiped them clean on their sheets - they would be due a change after this anyway. reaching for the bottle of lube once more, abigail squeezed a generous sized amount of product first onto her hand and then again directly onto the toy. she worked it over her cock, wishing - not for the first time and certainly not for the last - that she could really feel it. she gave it one final tug to test that it was securely in place, and when satisfied, grabbed at johns ass with her free hand. her thumb swiped upwards over his perineum to his hole before it veered off to the left to pull his cheeks apart slightly.
with one hand at the base of her cock, she lined herself up and began to push in. abigail prided herself on her preparation skills, and this occasion wasn’t any different. john opened up for her with no resistance, taking the tip of the strap-on as though it were no different from her fingers. bringing her other hand around to john’s hip for stability, abigail pressed forward till her hips were flush against his ass. rather than pulling back as he expected her to, abigail stayed as still as possible, her cock unmoving deep within him. john tried to buck his hips forward, craving more, but abigail’s grip held him firmly in place. minutes seemed to turn into hours as she kept him there, the sensation of being filled and helpless driving him wild.
“fuck...” he groaned, eyes squeezed tightly shut and chest heaving.
“that’s the idea, john.” abigail laughed warmly and dug her fingers into his flesh a little harder, the bite of her short nails adding a pleasurable edge of pain to the experience. despite the implication of her reply, she still made no move to fuck him in earnest.
“please, i…i’ve been good. i’ve been real good. i-i’m sorry. i’ll tell the boy i’m sorry. i’ll take him to that book signin’’ in the city he’s been on about, i swear. please, sweetheart… need your cock, need you to move.” john was surprisingly coherent - almost disappointingly so - but abigail couldn’t deny that hearing him plead with her like that was making her head spin.
still, she wanted to have one last bit of fun with him before she gave in. “you promise me that you’ll take him?” to punctuate the end of her question, abigail drew her hips back gradually, pulling out till nothing but the tip of the strap was left inside him. she stilled once more.
john could hardly see through the tears clouding his vision. a choked noise vaguely resembling a sob caught in his throat. “i promise. i’ll do anythin’ - for you, for him. hell, i’d even take uncle to atlantic city and leave him there if you asked me to. just… please, darlin’. please fuck me, i’m beggin’ you.”
“good boy.” abigail soothed him, running the hand previously holding the base of the strap across john’s flank, before bringing it down to his other hip.
she pushed back in, keeping the pace as slow as physically possible. the muscles in her thighs and core had begun to ache already from the exertion of the position they were in, but she retained perfect control over each movement she made. with each thrust, she increased her speed incrementally, the bed creaking as john’s weight shifted forwards and backwards. every now and then when she got the angle just right, abigail’s strap would brush against his prostate, making him moan shamelessly. she felt drunk on the sound of it. john’s right hand left the headboard again, hoping that abigail would be too preoccupied to notice it’s absence. he had no such luck.
“no. i won’t say it again.” the strictness of her reprimand was undermined somewhat by the way her breath had started coming in short pants. john cursed as she stilled again, then whimpered pathetically as she pulled out of him entirely.
an apology was on the tip of john’s tongue, but before he could get his thoughts in order, abigail issued him another command. it was one that he had been hoping to hear for a while now - “turn over.”
john did as he was told, stretching out the stiffness in his neck and shoulders as he went. he adjusted the pillows underneath his head to protect it from the wooden bed frame, then lay back down, unsure what to do with his hands. he wanted to touch himself so badly, he was burning up inside with need. not wanting to let abigail down again, he gripped the bedding down by his waist instead, focusing on the feeling of tension in his knuckles. he watched as abigail uncapped the lid from the bottle of lube, squeezed it into her palm and stroked her cock till it was slick once more. john’s pulse seemed to quicken till it was audible inside his own head as he watched her, completely enthralled by the sight. she smirked, then - just as she had done before - wiped the excess product onto their topsheet. she slipped her hands underneath his knees and lifted his legs up, giving her better access to his hole.
whether or not this new angle truly felt better than it had in their previous position, he wasn’t sure, but john felt as though every nerve ending in his body was singing out with pleasure. perhaps it was simply the fact that he could see abigail now that did it for him. quite strangely for a man as fucked out of his mind as he was right now, he found himself thinking of a passage from the odyssey jack had read to them all at the dinner table one day. it was about calypso, a goddess so beautiful that odysseus abandoned his household and his journey just to share her bed and bask in her divine presence. john wasn’t much of a reader himself - hell, he never even got his GED - but it was moments like this, with his wife on top of him, her hair plastered to her face with sweat, glowing and flushed, that made him think that maybe, just maybe, he understood what it was all about.
abigail moved the hand she had behind john’s left knee, trusting him to diligently keep his legs still, and ran it across his chest until it came to a stop over one of his nipples. she dragged her thumb over it, delighting in the way it hardened under her touch. john’s legs had started trembling. his grasp on the sheets tightened and twisted until his knuckles turned white from the force of it. abigail thrust into him with an increased urgency, her pace just short of too fast. she pulled almost all the way out, then pressed all the way back in, over and over.
when abigail brushed against his prostate this time, john felt as though he had left his body. everything sounded muffled and strange, like the world had been plunged underwater. quite frankly he was half worried that he had died and, by some miracle, gone to heaven. an intense pleasure, the likes of which he had never felt before, despite the frequency with which abigail had him in this way, washed over his body. through the haze of it all, he was vaguely aware of something warm hitting his stomach. it wasn’t until abigail pulled out of him, sat back on her heels and began detaching the strap-on from the harness that he realised exactly what had happened, though.
“shit…” john groaned, swiping a finger through the mess he had made of himself. for the first time in his life, he had come entirely untouched. his cheeks burned from embarrassment. reluctantly, he looked up to find abigail wandering over to their adjoined bathroom, likely placing the toy on the cabinet by the sink to remind them to wash it later.
when she returned - rather than joining him back on the bed as he hoped she might - abigail stood by their bedside table and removed the harness, returning it to the drawer. as she turned to walk away, john caught her wrist loosely with his clean hand. she looked at him expectantly, a silent question hanging in the air.
though he was exhausted and functionally boneless in his rolling wave of post-orgasmic bliss, john longed to taste her. he would be the happiest man in the world if only he could bury his face into her sweet cunt till he had her dripping down his chin.
“can i…? d’you want me to….?” he asked, voice sounding foreign to his own ears. though he hadn’t fully finished his question, he knew that she would understand exactly what he meant.
much to his dismay, abigail pulled her hand out of his grasp and shook her head. she walked over to their vanity, brushed her hair through a few times before putting it back up into her usual effortlessly loose bun. she picked her dress up from the back of the chair and pulled it on over her head. when she turned around, she found him looking at her with a pitiable expression on his face.
“no, john. i’ve got to go check on the dog,” abigail threaded the top button on her dress back through its buttonhole, then smoothed down the fabric of the skirt before continuing, “go clean yourself up. and put the sheets in the wash when you’re done.”