Reality is Different: Afterword

"Here." He spread his own arms wide and welcoming, and just the briefest beat of hesitation passed before she rushed to his embrace. Chaste, again. That's all it was, paternal, even if he felt a trifle conscious now of how her subtle bosom pressed against his chest, of just the pleasant warmth of contact as he held her tight enough to lift her up an inch or two into the air. The satisfying little sound she made, subvocalized, an almost gasp beneath her breath. Her smile was a firmer thing when he set her down again, though a touch of self-awareness lingered in her eyes.

"I was kind of afraid, um..." She spoke after a little pause, in tones of faint confession. "Or worried, you know, that you might not want to touch me. To hug me, I mean, after...finding out."

Suddenly he wondered if that might not have been a sensible precaution. But he didn't let the doubt find purchase in his features, evincing just his wry, familiar humor. "Don't be silly, sweetie. I don't think I'd last too long without a hug, myself." A beat, as he pulled back a step. "I see you've got that apron on again."

"Yeah." She grinned back crookedly, running fingers briefly down the well-used fabric. "I couldn't really start until you got here, but I went and got some stuff for hamburgers, and put it all together."

"Mm." He nodded with a certain quiet air, his broad arms crossing absent at his chest. It was another little wait before he offered, "You know, I actually had the idea that all this cooking you've been doing for me lately, or for us, that it might be related to your..." Still a struggle just to think of what he ought to call this whole concern that hovered over them. Her fantasies. Her phase. Her madness. "To what you talked about this morning." And the question afterward, carried with his eyes. Is this something you should still be doing?

"...I guess it kind of is." She answered with a shade of hesitation, her pupils touching briefly to his own before departing to the wall behind. "Or it was. Mostly it's just something nice that I can do for you, though." A breath. "Are you saying I should stop?"

"No. No, I suppose that would be somewhat overkill." His expression tumbled back to comfort, reassurance. "Tell you what, though, we can work together on it. Give me a minute first to put my stuff away, then I'll pop in to help you out. Okay?"

"Okay." Her lips tugged upward higher, to the slope of an obliging smile. Then she turned around, and he was left to watch a moment how the apron strings were neatly tied behind her slender waist, before he shook his head and moved to shed his own accoutrements.

--

The work of cooking was at least a fortunate distraction, for the while that it lasted. It gave him words to speak, a task to occupy his hands that didn't deal with the concern that hovered over them. He could act like everything was normal, still, cracking mediocre jokes about running out of thyme for seasonings. Something of a relief, as well, when Sarah asked him while they ate about his day at work; the monologue he gave her in response was drawn out more than usual, punctuated with extended periods of chewing while he tried to think of what else he could add, what else could put off the thing they had to talk about eventually. Presumably. Perhaps...if they couldn't just allow the whole affair to be forgotten, left unmentioned going forward. Like the time some years ago that he'd walked in on her as she was pleasuring herself in bed...

He hadn't seen that much. There hadn't been that much to see. She'd been laying with her back to him, propped up against a pile of her pillows; he might not even have noticed what she was doing, if it wasn't for the quick and rhythmic jiggle of her arm, or for the bare legs spread on either side of her, her knees up high enough for him to see. That, of course, and how she panicked when she heard him step inside, reaching out to yank a sheet across her body even as she craned her head around to look at him, the heat of her activity apparent on her face. Excitement blended with abrupt embarrassment, a subtle scarlet glow upon her skin, faintly shining with a touch of perspiration...

Eesh. Not the best thing he could think about right now, though. He shook his head, clearing off the memory, and pushed his emptied plate aside while reaching for another bit of nothing he could use to break the awkwardness of silence. But Sarah interrupted him before he could, offering a question of her own. "How was it?"

"Mm? Oh. The food was fine." He answered her a bit distractedly. "More than fine, in fact. You're turning into quite the good little cook."

"Thanks." She said it with a tiny smile, her gaze retreating for a moment to the safety of the tablecloth. A flash of feeling in her eyes as they rose up again, impulsive, bright, her lips apart to add in something more - but she got out just a single half-formed syllable before they shut again.

"What?" He had to ask, of course. For curiosity's sake, if nothing else.

"No." She shook her head. "It's stupid. Weird. Nevermind." And as though to emphasize the point, she rose up swiftly to her feet to gather up the plates and platters to be cleaned.

"You sure?" It was half amusement, half sincerity that tugged at his expression, his head cocked watchful to the side. Not hard to guess what this might be about, at least in general. But even if it was an awkward thing for them to talk about, it would probably be better that she get it off her chest than for her to bottle up again, and let her feelings fester. "You know me," he offered lightly. "I'm all about stupid."

She huffed a moment's laughter at that, glancing up at him again. The smile crooked on her lips, self-conscious. "Well." Spoken with a soft reluctance, a hesitancy slowly melting as he kept his gaze on hers. "You just kind of reminded me how, um. In the stories that I read, when someone did something that made her father...happy, or when she followed his commands, he'd tell her that she was a good girl. A good little girl. Sometimes, in some of them. It was one of the things that I thought was - was powerful, you know. The words."

The flush upon her cheeks was delicate enough to hardly even be apparent - though it did deepen somewhat as she drifted into quiet, and as he failed to answer her immediately, considering the sense of what she'd said. Approval. That was what it sounded like, certainly, the want that must lay underneath. The sort of thing for which a girl might hunger, if she felt uncertain of her place, if she didn't know that she was valued, loved...though he hardly thought that he had left her in such straits. But it didn't seem like it should hurt to offer her the words, if she felt they had such meaning.

"You are a good girl, Sarah." He spoke it with a quiet emphasis, the gravel gentle in his tone. A firmer cast to his expression, saying that there was no joke in this, no teasing, nothing to obscure the truth. "So many fathers have to worry that their kid will come home drunk, or high, or pregnant, or - or not at all. There are guys whose daughters steal from their wallets, who insult them to their face...I hear things from a friend of mine sometimes that I just, I don't know what I would do, if I was in his place." He shook his head a trace, emphatic. "I'm lucky. I know I am, to have you. You're level-headed, mostly, honest, you're - I don't want to say obedient." Half a chuckle at the bottom of his throat...though he did notice how her chin perked up, her eyes flashed faintly wider at the intonation of the word. "But I hardly have to fight with you, especially these last few years. You're my treasure, sweetheart. I don't think that I could ask to have a better daughter than I do."

Her turn now to let the moment linger - though the tiny, happy grin that curled on her lips was a fairly reassuring answer of its own. Leaning in and to the side across the dining table, with her head supported on her hand; it was a beat or two before she murmured modestly, "I don't know if I'm that good." A spark of something in her hazel eyes as they returned to his, apology commingled with a certain touch of energy, of eagerness. "There's something actually I didn't tell you, earlier. Something kind of bad, that I think I should have."

"Oh?" He arched an eyebrow, pursed his lips, uncertain what to make of this. Concerned. Christ, with what she'd told him that morning, the thought that there was something she'd held back was...unsettling. But he put on a bravely neutral face to ask, "What's that?"

"Well." Her hands dropped to the tablecloth, her fingers fiddling with one another there. "You remember at the park a couple days ago? When I guessed how you...um, how you prefer your women to be younger?"

"Yes...?" It came out just reluctantly, a tinge of dubious concern.

Another moment, hesitant before she spoke. "I wasn't really guessing." Her pupils rose to watch his face, his features, to see how he'd react. "I went...well, really for a while now, I've been going to your room, when you're away at work. I used your computer. I found that folder, where you keep...you know."

He didn't ask the question. But it was evident in his expression, his lips an inch apart, bewildered, and she answered anyway. "I was trying to find out what you liked. If you felt anything like I did. I thought there might be...I don't know, that you might have looked at stories like the ones I read, or videos with people pretending that they were were a dad and daughter. Or maybe even pictures that you took of me, that I didn't know about." Drifting downward to a murmur. His features twitched at the suggestion, ambiguously pained. "But there was just - your collection. All those videos of 'teens.'"

"Sarah, that is..." He briefly ground his teeth, frowning with a bitter blend of indignation and embarrassment that lent its sharpness to his tongue. "You should not have done that. I'm disappointed in you, honestly." Christ, the stuff he had in there...it might be nothing too extreme, at least not for the most part, but neither was it anything he'd want for her to see. Especially the rougher themes for which he'd sometimes looked. "I don't care what your reason is, that's personal, it's private. You have no right to nose around though someone's stuff like that, mine or anybody else's."

"I know." She spoke it simply, quietly, a halfway murmur of humility. Though not really as apologetic as he might expect, considering. "I knew when I was doing it that it was wrong, that I was invading your privacy. But I just felt...I did it anyway." Another breath, while she bit faintly at the inside of her lip. The offer afterward was almost whispered, her voice drawn higher with an ache of anxious feeling. "Do you think I should be punished?"

He blinked at that. Once, twice...and then he laughed. Something close to laughter, anyway, a brief and shallow thing forced from his chest by understanding's quick ascent. There was the other shoe, the reason. Why she had thought that she should tell him this at all. "You really want me to give you a spanking, don't you?" Spoken with a slight shake of his head, more bemused than disapproving.

"I don't know." The tiny spark of eagerness that he had seen in her retreated at the baldness of the question, shrugging, eyes escaping to the safety of the tablecloth again - but her denial had the feeling of a hedge, a way to keep from simply saying yes. It was another little wait before she offered more, a murmur threaded through with yearning. "I mean, it doesn't really make much sense to think about, I know. Why would I want for you to hit me, hurt me?" A breath. "But it's like...they had it pretty often, in those stories that I read. They made it sound like there was something special in it, like it was exciting to be - helpless. To be tamed, by someone so much stronger than I am, someone who's supposed to be in charge of me." Her lips pursed briefly, wry, her lashes fluttering to him and back. "Probably I'm pretty tame already, I guess. And I mean, I don't know if it would really be like that, or feel like that, for real, but...I kinda wish I could find out."

He was set to gently turn her down. That was the obvious response, of course. But something in her answer made him pause, the final moments, considering the question with a quiet distance to his eyes. It was true, after all. She hadn't done this, none of what she'd painted up so pretty for herself. It was just words to her, just phrases that she'd read, and just because she'd liked the way they sounded was far from any kind of guarantee that she'd also like the real thing. The pain that went with what she'd talked about, the humiliation - she could hate it, easily. And that had implications of its own...so much of what she'd told him sounded like it was bound up in some peculiar mythology, a wide and complicated fantasy of the way things were 'supposed' to be. A dream with its own rules and regulations. It didn't seem impossible that if a part of that collapsed, if she discovered that there wasn't any grand fulfillment in suffering his hand - well, that it might help to snap her out of it, a bit. Might wake her to the fact that none of this was something she would really like, would want.

Dangerous as well, of course. Dubious, to give in to her wishes on a thing like this. Even if it might not be an act directly sexual, even if a father could purport to spank his teenaged daughter for reasons that were wholly righteous and defensible...the implications of the thing were plain enough. Stated almost openly, in fact. To be helpless, to be tamed - you could scarcely even call it subtext, the emotions there behind the words. It was an erotic thrill that she was hoping for, and that clearly wasn't something he should seek to give.

But it wasn't his intention, either. The answer came back quickly, quarreling inside himself as he looked over at his daughter. At eyes that wouldn't meet his own, pale fingers twisted anxiously with one another. It wouldn't be. He'd be doing it to simply make her realize it wasn't what she thought it was, to rouse her from this foolish dream she entertained. There was probably a better chance than even that it was how things would turn out. Particularly if he didn't try to ease her into it at all, if he just...gave her what she asked for, nothing less. A punishment. Like a child caught with cigarettes, and made to smoke the pack. It didn't take a complicated remedy - it only took reality, to make her realize her own mistake.

"Fine." The nod came slightly after, briefly frowning as the rest of him reluctantly caught up with his decision. "You're right, you do need to be punished. Maybe a spanking would teach you not to poke into my things." The pretense at the end a trifle awkward, as he wondered why he bothered saying it.

"Really?" Sarah sounded more surprised than anything. Disbelieving, tangled with a shock of nerves and with a tiny sparkle of delight. Her subtle fidgeting abruptly ceased as she looked up at him again, wide-eyed, uncertain what to say. He could hear the closeness of her throat, anxious and excited , the quiet rasp it gave her breath as she exhaled...

"Yes." He spoke it flatly as he rose up to his feet, prompting her to do the same. Firm. That was probably the best approach. Get it over, done with in the quickest, most efficient way he could. Mechanical, rather than emotional. That was the goal...if he had any sense at all what he was doing here, at least. "Lay down on the table there, with your legs over the side. Face down. Keep your hands behind your back, or at your sides."

For a moment, Sarah scurried towards obedience, pushing back her chair to clear a space where she could lay as he commanded on the aging wood. But then she hesitated. One hand barely touched against the tablecloth, her fingers slightly spread. "Um." He had to strain to hear her murmur, even in the silence of the room. "You don't think that I should lay down on your lap?"

Lord. He only breathed a moment, pursed his lips, and wondered once again if this was actually a good idea. At least the situation offered him a ready way to turn the notion down. A tiny frown, a pointed tone. "Are you trying to tell me how I should punish you, Sarah?"

Her eyes grew wider as she swiftly shook her head, a flash of white around her pupils. "No," the answer rushed out, slightly squeaky with its emphasis. "Of course not." And then she clumsily continued as he'd told her, stretching forth to lower herself flat upon the tabletop, her cheek against the cloth.

Mostly flat, at least. The table wasn't tall enough to leave her legs to dangle, not quite; instead of hanging off the edge, her hips were slightly higher than the rest of her, her bottom held aloft to slightly sway with her unconscious shifts of weight and footing, while her lower back curved nicely down behind...it made a fairly lurid pose. Not that it mattered, obviously. Just something that he noticed, standing there, a thought that wandered through his mind as he reluctantly swung round behind her, and stepped up to her side.

"I think the standard number might be ten strokes," he extemporized after a pause, when she didn't seem inclined to speak up on her own again. His left hand touching gently near the bottom of her spine, an instinct that he still recalled from years before. "One for every other year. That's what misbehavior gets." He could feel her tension there, the breathlessness of it amidst the tightened muscles of her back. Her arms pressed close against her sides, hands curled up halfway into fists. Probably the better thing would be for him to simply start. But he couldn't keep himself from checking first, from throwing on a little more delay before this madness he'd agreed to. "Are you ready?"

She didn't answer that with words. Just nodded, quick and slight, quietly definitive above a little hiss of inhalation through her nose. Perhaps a braver face in that than what she felt inside. For his own part, the hesitation lingered, muttering a whisper of misgiving in his heart. There had always been a sort of struggle with this, getting started. He'd felt the same reluctance with Elaine - or near the same, at least. To strike someone you care about, to hurt her, even if she'd told you plainly it was something that she wanted, something she said made her feel alive. And god, probably he oughtn't even think of this as being similar, shouldn't dwell too long upon the link between what he was doing now and what he'd gotten up to in the bedroom. But the ambivalence that circled restless in his gut was undeniably alike. This was his daughter here, his little girl. No matter the necessity, no matter what she even might imagine that she wanted, there was still an ache upon his soul to think that he should cause her pain of any stripe.

He'd found a way before. With his ex-wife, at least. The irony of it was fairly bitter, even now - he'd often worked himself into the proper state of mind by dwelling on the fear that lurks somewhere inside the heart of almost every married man, that the woman who was pledged to him would prove unfaithful. That if he turned his back, she'd slip beneath the covers with whomever caught her eye...there are those who fetishize the thought of it, of course, but he was far from one of them. It was the anger that he needed, the jealousy that scoured at the inside of his chest, the blind possessiveness that surged up strong enough to overwhelm his tender hesitation. A deep and brutal instinct, wakened by the contemplation that another man might steal something he was sure belonged to him.

It didn't quite work here, of course. Not for his daughter. But there was perhaps another cause for anger he could name, could call upon to give the fire that he needed. Certainly she'd put him through enough, the past few weeks. The maddening uncertainty of what could possibly explain her strange behavior, could lie behind her sudden lapses into quiet, and the odd, evasive answers she would sometimes give. And what she did, no less - foremost in his mind was that peculiar movie she had found for them to watch, and the awkwardness that followed, feeling how she curled soft and close against him as the fairy-tale father on the screen looked as though he was about to test his daughter's snowy whiteness. It had taken most of the remaining hour of the film for him to finally convince himself, as that plotline failed to re-emerge, that there was no deeper meaning to her choice of entertainment, no connection to the way she'd draped herself across him in the dark.