The Former Subordinate’s Wife (Patreon)

Slowly running his fingers over the fabric of the thin nightgown and trying not to look down, Daniel stood in front of the mirror, trying to put the time while he was alone to at least some use. The thin straps dug into his freckled shoulders, the fabric patterned with tiny pink flowers barely contained his breasts and fell away almost immediately toward his hips, while the long copper red strands kept getting into his face every time he raised his head. He finally looked at his reflection, the narrow waist, the heavy breasts, his fingers clasping themselves low over his belly as if checking what he was wearing, and quietly said in a high voice that still felt foreign to him, "I’m still Daniel Mercer." His throat produced the words immediately, without his voice breaking, and that only made it worse.

Something thudded behind the wooden wardrobe door in the next room. He flinched, his knees drawing closer together on their own, his feet pressing into the worn carpet, while his mouth was already opening automatically, preparing for his "husband" to arrive.

Daniel stood frozen like that for several seconds before realizing that something had merely fallen behind the door. Just two months ago, a reaction like that would have seemed so ridiculous to him that he would have been the first to mock anyone who jumped at every sound in their own apartment. But now Erin’s body had learned Jake’s routine better than Daniel himself had: the sound of the key, the heavy footsteps in the hallway, the familiar movement of the door, and he would already be straightening his nightgown, pulling his hair away from his face into a ponytail, wanting to get down on his knees as soon as possible before going to the kitchen, and making sure that the managerial tone did not slip into his voice, the one that invariably made Jake force him to start the sentence over.

No one was there.

Daniel took a heavy breath. His breasts slowly rose with the movement, swaying beneath the thin nightgown, and he squeezed his eyes shut for a second, feeling the fabric stretch tight over his nipples again. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his lips were still slightly parted, and headed toward the refrigerator, already keeping his feet a little closer together than he would have liked out of habit. His heavy breasts swayed with every step, the straps slipped down his shoulders, and the hem barely covered his hips. The hallway smelled of yesterday’s beer and something fried; an open pack of Jake’s cigarettes and an empty can sat on the table.

He opened the refrigerator, bent down, the nightgown immediately rode up in the back, and took out the water.

He froze.

His gaze slowly, very slowly, shifted from the bottle of water to his own hand, which he had instinctively used to support his breasts. Daniel stared at that hand longer than necessary: short nails, freckles all the way down to the fingers, a slender wrist that had still seemed foreign yesterday but now already knew where to go on its own. The water burbled quietly in the bottle as he straightened up.

"Perfect," he muttered, straightening up and letting go of his breasts. "I don’t even notice anymore."

He took several gulps straight from the bottle and looked at the clock above the door. Almost two hours remained before Jake came home. Two hours without his voice, without the clipped "Erin" he could now use to end any argument, and without that calm look that made Daniel remember one simple fact every time: the apartment was not in his name, he had no money, his documents were in Jake’s drawer, and the person with his old face now lived on the other side of the city and had not answered him for three days.

He was just Erin. Just the wife of a former employee from the company that used to be his. While the real "Erin" was handling his former life quite well.

That thought was the worst of all. Daniel slammed the refrigerator shut harder than he had intended and stared at its peeling door for several seconds as if it were somehow responsible for what was happening. Somewhere right now, Erin was waking up in his apartment, putting on his shirts, answering his phone and had probably already learned to speak in that same clipped tone to the people who, just two months ago, had snapped to attention in front of Daniel Mercer.

While he stood barefoot in the middle of Jake Harlan’s kitchen, wearing a floral nightgown and thinking about what he could get cooked before Jake returned, as well as how he needed to put cushions under his knees for the "after work" blowjob.

"No," Daniel said quietly and set the bottle on the table. "I’m not going to put up with all of this for the rest of my life."

He spun abruptly toward the refrigerator and, with the cold, determined look he used to have, took out a bottle of beer.

For several seconds, Daniel simply stared at the dark glass in his hand, then picked up the bottle opener lying right there on the table and pried off the cap with his thumb. The click sounded unexpectedly loud.

"Two hours," he said to himself and took a long drink. "Then I’ll brush my teeth..."

He took the beer into the other room, deliberately leaving the fallen strap where it was. If he had two hours, he would at least spend them however he wanted.

Daniel lowered himself onto the old brown sofa and almost immediately caught himself sitting far too neatly: knees together, back straight, nightgown pulled down. He gave an irritated smirk, leaned back and deliberately spread his legs wider, reclaiming his old familiar posture. The hem immediately crept up his thighs, his breasts shifted heavily beneath the thin fabric, and one strap slipped all the way down his arm.

"That’s more like it," he growled, taking another drink. "Daniel Mercer at least sits like Daniel Mercer."

The taste of beer, he had completely forgotten what it was like in this body. Daniel managed to take two big gulps before his face twisted on its own, his tongue pressed against the roof of his mouth, and the hand holding the bottle moved farther away.

"No," Daniel said out loud even though he was alone, "I love beer. I’ve always loved it."

He stubbornly raised the bottle and took another drink, this time forcing himself not to grimace. The cold bitterness rolled over his tongue, and almost immediately his stomach clenched unpleasantly, his lips pursed on their own, and such an expression of disgust appeared on his face that Daniel gave a bitter smirk.

"Oh, fuck!"

This time Daniel nearly hurled the bottle onto the table, but managed to hold on to it and irritably set it down between the bag of chips and the remote. A few drops of beer remained on his lips, and he instinctively licked them away, immediately grimacing again.

"This tastes like shit," he muttered, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

His own voice made the complaint sound even more ridiculous. Daniel leaned back against the sofa, absentmindedly fixing his hair and the strap, and immediately remembered that tomorrow he needed to go to the hairdresser, and before that it would be a good idea to make it to the gynecologist, his period was already four days late, the pads in the bathroom were almost gone, and Erin’s app had reminded him for the second time since morning that it was time to buy another pack and log his symptoms. He also needed to pick up the painkillers from the pharmacy that she usually took during the first two days, and somehow not forget all of that among the truly important things, as Daniel still liked to call them.

He stared at the television for several seconds, then slowly lowered his gaze to his own bare knees.

"Hairdresser. Gynecologist. Pads," he listed in his high voice and rubbed the bridge of his nose irritably. "Great to do list, Mercer."

Something clicked outside the door again, this time the lock of the neighboring apartment very clearly turned, followed by someone’s boots stomping across the landing.

Daniel managed to get scared before he even realized it. His knees snapped together, the hem of the nightgown was yanked down as far as it would go, the beer bottle disappeared behind a sofa cushion, and an instant plan had already formed in his mind: if it was Jake, meet him at the door, immediately hug him, kiss him not on the lips but on the neck so he would not smell the beer, and give him no time at all to take a closer look. He could also press himself closer, run his hands down Jake’s back, squeeze his ass, anything, as long as Harlan decided his wife had simply missed him instead of trying to find out what she smelled like.

His neatly manicured hand was already frantically feeling for the bottle’s neck while his eyes just as frantically searched for another place to hide it, when he suddenly froze. The door did not open. His heart continued pounding frantically. His nipples beneath the thin nightgown hardened on their own along with the traitorous warmth between his legs. But his mind suddenly realized that in that single second, completely effortlessly, as if this were some meeting with a particularly unpleasant client, it had already managed to construct an entire plan for greeting Jake specifically in the role of Erin.

He slowly pulled his hand away from the bottle and looked at his knees pressed together.

"God," he said quietly.

The neighbor’s door slammed behind the wall, and the footsteps began receding down the stairs. There was no danger, yet for some reason Daniel was in no hurry to sprawl out again. He sat with his palms pressed against his thighs, feeling the thin fabric of the nightgown beneath his fingers, and tried to explain it to himself the same way he had many times before. These were not his thoughts, this was merely a temporary adaptation to a temporary life. Agreeing to all of Jake’s terms, when Jake had both him and his wife in his hands, was a way for Daniel to get his life back.

Of course, as soon as he woke up in the body of Erin, the wife of the man he himself had cruelly fired the previous day, Daniel had no intention of doing any of it. For the first two days he argued with Jake about everything, demanded a phone, documents and money, tried calling the office, and walked out of the apartment three times with the completely serious intention of never coming back. Three times he returned. The last time, soaked by the rain, with no money and Erin’s phone dead, he stood outside the building entrance for almost twenty minutes before forcing himself to press the intercom button, understanding that to everyone in this world he was, at best, some crazy redheaded girl, Jake Harlan’s wife.

And of course, when he saw Jake’s list of demands: cleaning, cooking, sex, blowjobs and the other "basics of a normal family life," as Harlan mockingly called them, Daniel laughed in his face. Back then, it really had seemed funny. He, Daniel Mercer, the man to whom Jake had been mumbling excuses about missed deadlines that very morning, would ask him for money for pads, cook him dinner and greet him after his shift in his wife’s nightgown.

On the fourth day, he cooked dinner for the first time.

On the sixth, he stopped demanding his documents back every single time.

On the ninth, he caught himself checking the weather forecast in advance and texting Jake to tell him to take a jacket.

And on the fourteenth, as he got down on his knees and unzipped Jake’s fly for the third time in the past three days, he caught himself thinking that he should not take it deep into his mouth right away, but should first run his tongue over the head, otherwise Jake would stop him with a palm on the back of his head and calmly say, "Again. Properly." The thought came on its own and came quickly, and only when he was already ready to do it did he realize that it was humiliating, but he did it anyway. Then at some point, after a while, he suddenly realized that he had started enjoying it, relieving the "stress" afterward with his fingers in the bathroom or, even worse, during sex with Jake.

"Dinner," he said firmly, if his new high voice could even be called firm. "I’ll make dinner. Clean up. Do my hair."

He rose resolutely from the sofa but stopped on his second step, frowning: the list spoken aloud had somehow not sounded like a plan to temporarily play along with Jake. It sounded more like Erin Harlan’s ordinary tasks for that evening.

"No. That’s not it," Daniel muttered and irritably tucked his hair behind his ear. "I’m not playing along. I just need to distract myself. And think. Do something routine. Yes." He nodded once more to himself as though he had just approved his own decision at a meeting, and headed toward the kitchen with what seemed to him like a firm stride, never even considering that from the outside he looked nothing like the company executive everyone feared and instead looked like a frightened girl. His bare feet slapped softly against the linoleum, his breasts swayed heavily beneath the nightgown, his hair fell into his face again, and Daniel irritably gathered it at the back of his head with both hands.

He quickly found a hair tie in the bathroom beside Erin’s hairbrush and the almost empty package of cotton pads. Daniel pulled his hair into a high ponytail, redid it twice because the long ginger strands kept getting into his eyes, and only then returned to the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator, studied its contents for several seconds, took out the chicken, vegetables and a bag of rice, then instinctively reached into the lower drawer for the cutting board.

The knife began its familiar tapping against the board. Onion, pepper, tomatoes. Daniel moved quickly, hardly thinking, occasionally flicking loose strands of hair back with his shoulder and glancing at the clock. Jake liked his meat well cooked but not dry; for some reason he could not stand mushy rice, and he preferred the onion finely chopped. In two months, Daniel had memorized all of this so well that now he did not even think before turning down the heat beneath the pan and reaching for that particular jar of seasoning that Jake usually added himself.

He had already twisted off the lid when his hand stopped above the pan.

Daniel slowly looked first at the jar, then at the neatly chopped vegetables, then through the doorway into the other room.

The neck of the hidden beer bottle protruded from behind the back of the sofa.

He froze there with the seasoning in his hand.

No one had forced him in here. Jake was not home. More than an hour remained before he returned. The phone was lying on the table, the door was open, and the beer was only a few steps away. He could turn off the stove right now, go back to the sofa, turn on the television and spend at least the next sixty minutes doing exactly what he wanted.

Daniel looked at the pan.

Then at the bottle again.

And realized with unexpected irritation that he had absolutely no desire to go back to it.

"No," he said, frowning. "No, no, wait."

He set the seasoning on the table and braced his palms against the edge of the counter. The short nightgown stretched over his hips, the ponytail tickled his bare back, and in front of him the chicken that he himself, entirely consciously, had decided to cook for Jake’s return sizzled calmly.

"I had two hours of free time," Daniel slowly said to himself. "I took a beer. Sat in front of the television. And then got up on my own to make him dinner."

He fell silent.

The television continued murmuring softly from the other room.

Daniel stared that way for several more seconds, as if the bottle might offer some more acceptable explanation, then looked back at the pan and discovered with an almost offended expression that the meat already needed flipping.

"Damn it..."

He grabbed the spatula.

And flipped it.