Reality is Different: Afterword

And then last night...god, his jaw clenched tighter with the thought of it, with an itching of frustration. After the date that he'd deliberately sent her out on, the one he'd prayed at least would bump her from this mood that she was in. Instead she'd come home whispering fantasies of domination, and he was forced to tell himself he didn't hear the quiet implications of her words. To act like everything was normal, commonplace, when she came down into his bedroom late that evening, stricken by a deeper keening of emotion than the circumstances seemed at all to justify. And certainly he could attempt to make himself believe that it was just the looming fear of moving out, of being on her own that made her almost beg for him to read to her, as though she were a little girl again. But it didn't solve the central problem, didn't tell him what the hell a man's supposed to do when it's his daughter looking at him with that slightly wide, expectant gaze, when it's her warm and slender body pressed against his own, her pretty little lips just barely touched against the upper corner of his chest while he tried to keep his focus fixed on reading from that stupid book he found. And after, when she lay there slack and unresponsive, though he was sure he'd felt her shift just half a minute prior. When he was almost certain that she was awake, but she was trying to pretend she wasn't, trying to deceive him, putting him in a position that a father shouldn't have to face...

Smack! His hand came crashing down with sudden force, the bubbling of his frustration boiled over into action. The stinging slap of impact on the bottom of her jeans followed by an almost instant yelp, a wordless cry of pain and of surprise. She flinched as well, her knees halfway collapsing underneath her in an instinct of escape. The second stroke came down upon the other side, without as great a fuss - she just let out a kind of grunt, a quick expulsion of her shallow breath. But when the third returned to strike again on her left cheek, it proved to be too much for her to take.

"Ow, ow, ow." A bit more words than whimpers, now - she twisted to the side beneath his palm, seeking to avoid another blow. Discomfort tightening her tone. "Stop, wait. Stop." Rolling over to her back, sitting up to face him for a moment while she caught her breath again, and while his right hand gradually lowered from its ready state. When she spoke again, her voice was injured, tangled with a touch of consternation. "That hurts."

The laugh was automatic. A little huff of it, at least, let out through his nose. "Well, that is pretty much the idea." His smile fixed and narrow, as he felt his heart still beating somewhat faster than it should.

"Yeah, but I just thought..." The flush crept slow upon her features, embarrassment amidst the quiet of her voice. "...it wouldn't be that hard, or...I don't know."

"No," he shook his head minutely, firm. "Whether it's for punishment or for - for something else, that's about how hard it goes." Swallowed, as his finger touched upon the table there beside her knee. Foolish. This was it, the outcome that he wanted, perfectly. But his stomach nagged at him, itched with irritation, with anticipation built up tall and then abruptly torn away. He felt the tingle of it in his palm, awakened, eager for the rest of what had been an old, familiar dance.

"It's about that hard I did it with your mom," he added, and then immediately wondered if it was information that he should have volunteered. "Anyway. You shouldn't be surprised to find that you don't like it. Most people don't, I don't think. Can't even really say I understand why anybody does, that side of it." Another pause that lingered, watching as she lay there halfway propped up on her elbows, a quietly conflicted look upon her face. Waiting for her to give him some response. Finally, he retreated for a step himself, gave a sweeping kind of gesture with his hand. "But. So. You found out spankings are unpleasant. Big surprise there." Finality inside his voice, just lightly spiced with humor. "C'mon. Hop down."

"...wait," she said again. A subtle struggle in her tone, her gaze downcast and searching as she breathed a slow and shallow pace. "I want - I mean, I think you ought to finish it, anyway."

His lips curled inward at that, pressing flat with brief exasperation. But he answered only quietly. "Why?" Leaning inward slightly with his palm upon the table's edge. "It hurts, remember? Pretty sure you just said that. And it's rather odd for me to do, at your age. And there isn't too much reason for it, anyway. I'll accept," he added somewhat dryly, "a simple apology for how you snooped around on my computer." And yet he couldn't quite deny the tickle there, the eager whisper in the beating of his heart, that she should offer up the rest of her chastisement.

"Because...I don't know. I deserve it?" She glanced up to meet his gaze, there, and the feeble smile that she wore was enough to tell him that she meant it by no more than half. "I did do something wrong. And I said that this should happen, and I mean, it's just..." A trace frustration flitted through her gently freckled features, searching for the words that could explain the impulse that she felt. "It means something. Anyone could just apologise, if they did something wrong. But for you to punish them like that, to punish me...it says I'm someone really close to you, you know? Someone you have the right to do that to. Your little girl." Still a tiny tremble to the phrase, a power in the way it drifted from her tightened throat. "And even if it hurts, I'd...that's what I'd rather be."

He didn't answer that a while, looking back at her bemused. It was a crazy thought, of course. Of course. But it had a distant harmony, as well, an almost-logic that he couldn't quite ignore. Maybe just because of his own worries. Silent musings when he lay awake in bed, contemplating how the world would be when finally she made her transfer to a proper college, moved out of the house. Left the nest, at last. The thought of it at best was bittersweet. A girl has to grow up sometime, surely, make a start to her own life, her path...but a father doesn't have to like it. You get to thinking, wishing you could have a little while longer, that there was something you could do to slow the ceaseless march of time, not give up the princess you've protected to the hostile world outside. His little girl...

"You would, huh?" It was a dry and inconclusive answer that he gave, a bid to simply fill the space before it grew too great. Little of his normal humor in his features as he looked down at her, at soft and skittish hazel eyes that met his own for just a little second before escaping lower with a blush. At the vulnerability that he felt pulsing from her pose, propped up halfway on her elbows in the middle of the dining table. Her long and slender legs pulled inward, just askew...and from the tangle of misgiving in his chest there tugged again that impulse of before, the insistent tingle in his hand, that he should finish what he'd started. Should punish her, assert himself, as though by doing so he could resolve those fears and worries lurking in the background of his mind. It was only what she asked for, what she wanted. What she very possibly deserved. And if it wasn't something she enjoyed, it almost seemed as though that spared him of the reason why he should refrain.

"Turn over." Harsher than his normal tone, the words came out. Darker, lower with the quarrel of his thoughts, and with the guilty touch of an excitement that he didn't dare acknowledge. And how rapidly she scurried to obey the words, squirming down and over, back to where she was before. Bent upon the table's edge...god. She did have a pleasant little tush on her, it had to be admitted. Not too big, of course, but nicely rounded, flaring outward tight and firm beneath the denim of those skinny jeans she liked to wear. Lifting up instinctive in reaction as he pressed his palm again upon the bottom of her back, holding her in place.

One. Even muffled by the clothes, the smack of impact seemed to echo in his ear. Aided by her little gasp of inhalation, the minute flinching of her body underneath the blow. Two. Again, the other side. A trifle gentler, perhaps, than what he'd done before her interruption - if he already knew it wasn't pleasant for her, he didn't have to try so hard to make her hate it. Three. He could fall more fully back upon the intuition that he felt in this, the subtle kind of satisfaction he remembered, striking only hard enough to barely feel the sting of it in his own palm. To see the ripple of reaction flash along her spine, her fingers curling into fists, her thighs pressed close against each other, helpless. Four. To hear her shallow breaths, her almost-whimpers, cries, and feel how his heartbeat quickened with the mingled sense of guilt and power they inspired. Five...

This was where he'd pause. If she were someone else, if this were how he'd done things with Elaine those years ago. He'd spare her for a little while any further blows, and stroke a gentle hand across her naked skin to soothe the hurt that he had caused. Probing fingers slippery and slow between the tremble of her thighs to tease along her slickness, to penetrate within. It was the probably the part that he most savored, the giving of relief, of pleasure in the midst of pain. Mercy sharpened to a razor's edge.

Not that anything like that was proper here, of course. It shouldn't even cross his mind. It wasn't he he had agreed to do this for her, do this to her, no...the sole relief the he could offer her instead was just to wait a little while, before he started with the other half. A couple seconds as he listened to the shallow and unsteady shudder of her breath, and felt the quiver of her tension through the hand he still held pressed upon the middle of her back. Trying to ignore the whisper of excitement tracing ticklish along his own, the silent stir of bodily awareness centered just below the waist.

"Six." The silence suddenly felt too expressive - he had to paper over its suggestion, hide it with his words. Another smack resounding through the dining room to punctuate the tally, counterpoint against the strangled sharpness of his tongue. "Seven." And more inside his mind, phrases bubbling from years before, from lashings he had given to Elaine. You naughty little thing, you should know better than to sneak around like that. Her body lurching forward on the table, struggling against the urge to get away. "Eight." You're not going to do that again, you hear me? You're mine, princess, and you will behave the way I tell you to. His thoughts infused with where he found himself, with whom, sketching out the words that he might growl down to her, if that had been the purpose of this punishment. You'll do exactly what I tell you. "Nine." You will obey. No matter what I have to do to you, I'm going to teach you to be good. "Ten." I'm going to make sure that you learn your place.

Stillness, then. Perhaps the seeming of an echo, in the quiet that came after that last blow. The only sound was of his heartbeat thumping in his ears, his breathing hissing quick and heavy through his nostrils. Sarah laid out there before him like an offering, shivering prostrate upon the table - and for a moment, just a moment, his eyes snatched up the shape of her, the signals of a woman's form that spark the deepest instincts of desire. Breasts and hips and bottom, begging to be touched. The core of her, between her thighs, demanding to be filled. Patterns printed on the animal of man, the scent that drives his hunger to possess, to claim, to drag his chosen mate into a private place where he could rut away the need that pulsed and thickened like a living thing inside him...

Then she moved, started to sit up, and his spell was broken with the tears that he saw glinting her eyes, that damply traced along her reddened cheek. "Oh, god." He barely groaned the words, crushed beneath a sudden avalanche of guilt at what he'd just been thinking. At the half-arousal that he now willed desperately to wither. "No, okay. Come here." Just senseless mutters as he took her hands to help her back up to her feet, as his heart was pummeled by the little sniffles that she made. The sight of Sarah's tears trumped all considerations, all other thoughts - he barely even hesitated before he threw his arms around her, held her close, as comforting as he was able. "Jesus, sweetheart. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." Apology as much for where his thoughts as travelled as it was for what he'd done.

She didn't answer that immediately. When she did, it was with a sound halfway between another sniffle and a sob, a slight shake of the head that bumped her nose against his jaw. The word came later still, faint and husky. "No." Her fingers clutching at his back - she tried again, a little stronger. "No, it's my fault. I deserved it, I'm..." Pulling back again to look into his eyes, a tiny quiver at her chin. "You were just - correcting me."

"Right. Well." His hands retreated to her shoulders, squeezing out an anxious try for reassurance. He didn't want to fight with her again about that. Didn't know what he should say or do at all, in truth. Good lord...

The silence didn't last too long before she spoke again to fill it. "Um." Another whisper faintly trembled from her tongue. "Is it okay if I go lie down?"

"...of course." He nodded far more confidently than he felt, his fingers trailing down her arms reluctantly to let her go. Grasping for a moment her smaller hands between his own, another little gesture of remorse. "Of course, yes. You go...do whatever you have to."

She didn't speak again. Just took a breath and nodded, stepped a pace away from him on legs that wobbled with the effort. Perhaps not quite as final as it might have been - she stood there for another beat, looking just beneath his face, as though she might in fact add something more. But finally she hesitantly flashed a brief and sodden smile, and teetered past him over towards the stairs.

For his own part, he found he couldn't quite let out his breath until she made her way around the landing. Couldn't find the will to move until a couple seconds after that, slowly gathering the dirty plates together to be taken to the kitchen sink. Gathering his thoughts, which moved like sullen soldiers through the mud. Jesus. What the hell had just come over him? No, that was an awful question. It was obvious, too obvious for him to even stomach. He'd clearly been too long alone. He'd gotten swept up in the moment, in the memories that it inspired. He'd hurt her...god, that was the worst of it, the only part that really mattered. Even if she'd asked him to, had wanted him to do it, it still was his responsibility to be the voice of reason, not let her cast off into folly.

Even if that same voice would say that this, in fact, was near as best as things could go. Was more or less what he'd intended at the start, in fact. To turn her off to the idea by the taste of its discomfort, of its pain...but whatever sensibility that held was nothing he could stomach now, not when he had to face her tears and know that he had caused them. That he had even found a thread of pleasure doing so, in feeling how she flinched and gasped and whimpered, underneath his hand.

A horrid thought. Unwelcome - he shook it from his mind enough to focus on the jar of pickles he'd been blindly holding onto, enough to think of where he was supposed to put it. Bad enough just dwelling on the hurt he'd given her, the image of her freckled features twisted up in pain. It had always been a kind of torture for him, unendurable, to see her hurt. When she was just a little girl, when she took a tumble from her bicycle, or found her goldfish floating upside down, he'd never hesitated for a moment before he moved to comfort her, to wrap his arms around her, hold her tight, to staunch her tears as best he could with whatever comfort he could hope his presence offered. It was an instinct for him, an automatic impulse from the center of his being. Even if you couldn't guarantee your daughter freedom from all sorrow, couldn't always shield her from the injuries that life seemed destined to inflict...dammit, well, you still could try, could do your best to stand before her when the thorns and brambles loomed, and to bandage any wound that you can see.

Some might say that that was going too far, that a girl might grow up stronger and more confident if she more often had to face her troubles by herself. Maybe there was even truth to it, a bit. But all he knew was that he could never stomach standing off from her like that, never bear the distance it would take to see her suffer and not rush to help.

He was fortunate in that regard, he knew. Lucky, that Sarah had been born with such an honest temperament, that she never really tried to win her way by by faking tears, or forcing them - he would have likely made an easy mark for such manipulations. It had been difficult enough for him to set up strictures in her middle teens, when she whined and pleaded, sometimes exploded with an adolescent anger that he should still enforce a bedtime for her, or insist that she clean up the counter after she made herself a snack. There had always been a kind of heartache there as well, in seeing her upset...but anger and annoyance were more bearable than sorrow, and he'd mostly managed to hold to his guns. Sometimes just bringing her an olive branch, an offering of ice cream afterward, once her temper had a chance to cool a bit.

There was a pleasant memory in that, the bittersweet of reminiscence. A sudden feeling, too, that the situation called for it again. Even if it wasn't quite a quarrel now between them, even if...hell, he didn't even know what you could call it, what it was to send your daughter off in tears with a spanking she'd requested, and all of the complexity that hung from that like jagged little hooks. But he still could try to soothe whatever injury it may have held, whatever hurt it may have done her, even if it was at her request.

A simple thing to set up, anyway. The tub of ice cream that rested in the freezer was a little older than ideal, maybe - he had to scrape away an overgrowth of frost before he piled up their portions in the large and rounded mugs he always used for this. But the triple chocolate fudge still looked like it would be enjoyable enough. There was a certain comfort just in the familiarity of it, reassurance as he made his way back to the living room and up the stairs, treading softly to her bedroom door. Stepping back into a territory that he felt he knew.

He couldn't say what made him pause, exactly. Perhaps a sound he barely heard, something on the very edge of his perception as he reached over for the knob. Or maybe it was just his thoughts, wondering if he should intrude upon her rest. Wondering exactly why she'd closed her door...either way, he hesitated there, edged a little closer as he strained his ear to listen near the crack for what he might just be imagining. His heartbeat kicking up again a trifle faster to discern the strangled sigh that drifted out to meet him, nearly silent.

There's always a distinctive sound to it. To sex. A melody that pricks peculiar at the ear. The rhythm of a creaking spring, the grunt, the cry that doesn't quite escape the throat - even if you question what you hear, you always know exactly what it is you're doubting. That was where he found himself, two cups of ice cream clutched against his chest a trifle awkward with one hand, trying to convince himself he had to be mistaken, he must be wrong about the heavy breathing and the whispered sound of hand on skin he heard beyond her door.