Reality is Different: Afterword

It was a notion that he hardly could refute, refuse. He could too easily recall the opposite. When she slipped and fell into her early teens, and her once-eager, rambling accounts of what she'd done at school or with her friends had devolved to duller "nothings," "I don't knows." When he felt the faint, frustrated helplessness of being cut out of the details of her life, of her worries and her hopes. For her to say too much, instead - it was a happy problem to be given, surely. Even if it made a strain to hear her vague and bashful fantasies of domination when he had her nestled at his side, of punishment when he could easily recall the way she'd jerked and shuddered underneath his hand.

There was no repetition there, at least. No more spankings given, though as the weekend neared again, he did manage to joke about the subject, once or twice. "If you forget to close the door to the garage again, I'll tan your britches, missie" - said with an exaggerated accent, and she laughed and hopped to do it, even as her eyes lit up a little more than might be warranted simply by the jest. But that was it. Nothing improper done, on either of their parts. He felt a fragile sort of confidence at that, a victory that knows it really should be gladder. No hands that drifted up or down into a private place, no matter how the warm curve of her breast, her pale thigh now impressed themselves upon his consciousness when she sat down there beside him in her shirt and underthings. And despite her murmurs about girls climbing up into their fathers' laps, she didn't try it for herself. Just left an opening, a sweetly silken silence, in which he could have offered it to her. If he had a mind to.

In truth the thought of it did linger on his mind a little longer than it ought to have. And longer still, as the week wore on, as he found his blood unwillingly aroused by vaguely-sketched scenarios she whispered in his ear, and unable to be fully calmed again. He'd tried, the normal way. He'd booted up his old computer when he had some time alone, when he was certain that she'd gone to sleep, navigating to the carefully-concealed folder that she'd somehow found without a bit of trouble - but he could no longer stand to actually use his little pornographic trove. Not knowing that she'd rifled through it, that she'd sat there in that very chair and seen what he was watching, seen the girls stripped and spread and roughly pounded, painted white. When he'd opened up a video, it felt as though she were still there beside him, watching it as well, and that was more than he could bear. Nor did trying to find new material much improve the situation - particularly when he noticed, halfway down the page of trending videos, one entitled "Guy fucks horny stepdaughter." After that, he gave the matter up entirely, simply shoved the slowly-building urge of manhood back as far he could into the recesses of his skull...which probably was why he found the image of Sarah in his lap emerging from those depths, drifting in the twilight spaces of imagination that one can't entirely control. Other thoughts, as well. But they were no more than thoughts, nothing he would seek, nothing he pursued.

No, the only thing that happened...it hardly counted, really. Didn't count. Certainly it wasn't on that list of bases teenage boys set out to round. But there had been a certain power to that first evening, one that had been difficult to shake. And somehow on every one that followed, when he wished her a good night, or saw her to her bed, or sometimes even carried her to it himself, his palm would find a chance to seek the satin softness of her cheek. Her own hand would close upon it swiftly after, demanding his caress. And he could scarcely claim to be surprised when once again his thumb would end up snugly cosseted between her lips, bathed by the attentions of her delicate, devoted tongue. No matter his intentions in the sober light of day, he only sat there, let her lap and softly suck upon that chosen digit. Or in truth, sometimes a little more than 'let.' It was an action of his own to thrust his thumb a trifle deeper that she'd had it at the start, to see the way her eyes shot wide and white on his before they quickly closed again, embarrassed...and before her tongue attacked again with diligence so loving and complete it almost ached. To stroke his other fingers soft along her cheekbone while she worked, feeling how the blush burned just beneath her faintly freckled skin.

They didn't talk about it, after. Nor beforehand. Neither of them did. He because, whatever words he used inside his mind to minimize and to dismiss the meaning of these nightly intimacies, he was still too much aware how hard his heart was pounding when he left her room, the thrill of them that whispered in his soul. And she because - he didn't know. Perhaps she was indeed embarrassed, despite her other murmurs of confessing everything. Or perhaps she simply wanted it to keep occurring, and feared that any open mention might just snap him back to sensibility. Which might indeed be more or less the truth. If she did want it quite so much...lord, but it was a madness, wasn't it? Absurd, that he should think he had to fear the simple fact that she enjoyed something. Backwards, surely. Unacceptable. After all, he wasn't touching her, they weren't doing anything together that would earn a censor's blotter. She was sucking on his thumb, that's all. Indulging in a bit of play. Sublimating, probably, these fantasies of hers, of being small, submissive, having Daddy tell her what to do. If it took the edge from those, it was for the greater good.

Another thought occurred at that, not for the first time. The notion of that pretense. That maybe what she really needed, what would be best, would be for her to find someone with whom she could play out the fantasies in full, take on the role that grabbed her so. It hardly was unheard of, anyway, for a woman to call a lover 'daddy,' to play a little of that game, even if you didn't often dwell too long upon the implications. It would be a simple thing for her to find a boy, a man to be her opposite. He could suggest it to her, quietly...

But here reaction tightened at his throat, his fists, the way it had before. The burn of jealousy, protective or possessive; he wasn't quite sure which. No. Absolute, a certainty. Never - he could stomach that she'd grown into a woman now some years ago, that it was only natural for her to have a sex life, to experiment, even go a little wild. He didn't like to think about it, but it was the sort of thing a father always had to come to terms with. He could even manage to endure the broader implication of her fantasies of punishment and domination, to swallow back the bile that rose up hot inside him at the notion of her willingly abused, abased before some cocky fool who wasn't worth her slightest glance. But in this, there was a line. He was her father, no one else. It was a title that he treasured more than any other in his life, and he would not simply hand it off to someone else. Even just to the extent that he might have to share a little of its language, that she might call another man her 'daddy' - still his stomach curdled at the thought. He was the one who'd earned that name, who'd worked for it, had raised her, taught her, taken care of her when she was ill, laughed and wept and worried with her over all the long travails and the great and tiny struggles of her life. Who had loved her from the very moment she existed in the world. The name belonged to him, no other. There was no chance on this earth that he would willingly relinquish it.

"What do you think?"

The question woke him from his introspection, pulled his senses back to Sarah sitting at his side, and to the plate of steak and eggs that sat before him, half-consumed. Though he had missed whatever prompted it. "What?"

She gestured vaguely out the diner window, to the billboard down the block. It was Saturday, mid-morning; after all her labors in the week to cook for both of them, he'd hardly felt he could refuse her when she'd suggested going out somewhere for brunch. "The movie!" Answered brightly. "You saw the first couple of them, right? Do you think this one's going to be any good?"

"Hell, I don't know," he extemporized around a forkful of potatoes. Her eyes attentive on his face, with just a touch of shadow at their corners - he'd noticed but not spoken of the subtle makeup that she'd worn. "The original was decent enough, I thought, back when I first saw it. The third one was rather goofy, not that great. But it's been something like three decades since they made it. You can hardly call this new one a 'sequel' after that long, can you? It's just another remake. Trying to cash in on our nostalgia, like everything these days. Are any of the people from the first movies even involved?"

"I don't know." She was forced to echo his response, purse her lips for the admission. "Still, I kinda want to see it. I think the setting's interesting, any of that kind of post-apocalyptic world stuff." The bite she took from her french toast was slightly overlarge to be called 'dainty.'

"Eh." A noncommittal sound accompanied his minute shrug. "I read a magazine article once that said that wasn't very realistic. That is, the idea of a world turned to desert, dying altogether. If we actually killed each other off with nukes, or I suppose with almost anything, nature would just quickly sweep right in, grow over all the cities and any other signs of civilization that were left around. Give it a hundred years, and you'd really have to hunt around to figure out that we were even here."

"Well, that's just depressing." Her lips twitched downward, tapping fingers of her idle hand against the table. A thoughtful sip of her orange juice, the glass set down before she spoke again. "I mean, I guess the way it's normally presented should be depressing too, since almost everybody's dead, but it feels like they're close to being opposites. If it happened like you said, it'd basically mean that people didn't matter at all, didn't make a difference. And I feel like all these end-of-the-world movies and books and things use it to make people matter more."

She gestured grandly with both hands, encompassing the room, perhaps beyond - but her voice grew oddly quieter. "When you know there's seven billion other people out there, it's hard to feel like any one of them is that important. Not like presidents and movie stars, of course, but anybody real, who you actually know. The world's too big for you to register, and there's always someone out there so much better at anything you can try that it makes everything seem a little pointless. Like you're only there to take up space." She flashed a faint, half-hearted smile. "But if it all came crumbling down, and there were only like a couple dozen people that you were even sure were actually alive...then suddenly everybody makes a difference. And just surviving means you've done something important."

Sarah lapsed to silence, and he chewed a couple moments at a chunk of steak before deciding on a faintly chiding counterpoint. "That's awfully nihilistic, isn't it?" Soft enough, as she swirled a slice of her french toast around a little pond of syrup on her plate. "Worrying about all those other billions is a recipe to drive you crazy, I can tell you that right now. Like you said, it's just too big, too many. And anyway, what matters for your story, for you, are just those couple dozen people who have big roles in your life. Not the guys you see on TV, or who you only know about because of population counts."

"I know." She smiled again, abruptly wry. "I do, honestly. It's not like it really bothers me or anything. Just something I've thought about sometimes, that it would be exciting to be one of the survivors of a big atomic holocaust. Terrible, but exciting. Haven't you ever thought that?"

He laughed once, affectionately, and might have thrown an arm around her if it wasn't for the fork he clutched. "I suppose it's crossed my mind, a time or two. Certainly I've thought about what I would do if society collapsed somehow, which is pretty much the same thing." A beat slid past them as he gave his head a little shake. "Might have mentioned this to you before, but when your mom and I were looking for a house, I actually halfway considered one of those converted missile silos that happened to be on the market at the time."

"No!" Her eyes flashed bright with interest.

"Oh, yes. She wouldn't hear of it, of course, and the cost was pretty well outside our price range anyway. As well as being far away from everything. But the prospect of getting a bunker of your own really makes you think of all the reasons you might need it. Maybe another depression hits and the country falls apart. Maybe the dead start rising up to eat the living. Or, sure, maybe we start tossing nukes back and forth with China or somebody, everything goes to hell, and I really have to start fighting for my fill-up."

"You'd probably do great," Sarah answered swiftly, her food for now forgotten as her gaze stayed steadfast on his features. "In a world like that, I mean. You're big and strong, for when that matters, and you'd know how to fix pretty much anything that broke, which might be even more important. I bet you'd end up leading one of those post-apocalyptic towns, if you didn't do the whole 'wandering hero' thing the movies always show." She hesitated for a moment...and when she added more, it was with the subtle squeakiness of hastily-assembled nerve, a careful and self-conscious eagerness. "I don't think I'd do as good, myself. Probably I'd just get captured by one of those raider gangs. Get killed, or...something." A host of nasty outcomes in that final, lurking vagueness.

"Don't worry, sweetheart." Just a hint of humor in his tone, indulgent. "I'll make sure to protect you if the world comes to an end." Though somehow his amusement faded by the time that he was halfway through the sentence. He said the last with all sincerity. "I'll keep you safe."

It plainly was the answer she'd been fishing for - she wiggled happily beside him in the booth, rocking softly on her hips, and turned impulsively to clasp him in a little hug that lasted longer than it strictly needed to. "Thank you, daddy." Her voice pitched high again, melodic, while her eyes rose up to sparkle with that scintillation of adoring that he couldn't quite convince himself he didn't love. And perhaps his own quixotic quarter-smile was encouragement for what she offered next. "I guess another thing about a situation like that is that...well, all the ordinary rules don't really matter anymore. For what's normal, or what you're not supposed to do." Her tone drawn down a trifle, hushed and private.

"Oh?" He laid a knowing look at her, sidelong, but didn't openly address her not-so-subtle implication. "I'm not so sure about that. Seems like most often in those movies, the people who ignore the normal rules of right and wrong are going to be the bad guys."

"...well..." She offered weakly. A single interjection, trailing back to silence as she looked away and bit her lip, struggling to come up with a rejoinder of her own. "I just mean, nobody would really want to interfere in what a man does with his - property." A flutter in her voice, tentative flirtation of the sort that she'd increasingly been unafraid to show him as the week wore on, gaining confidence as he failed to rebuke her. "And any girl there would know that if she wants to stay alive, the most important thing for her is to obey the man who keeps her safe. To make him happy with her."

"Mm." He stifled his amusement with a brief and thoughtful hum, while marveling somewhere distantly inside himself that he had ceased to feel shock at her implicit placement of herself as property. The things that one gets used to. His tone of idle curiosity was lightly tinged with teasing. "You think so, huh?"

"Oh, definitely." Gazing wide-eyed at him - damn the little minx, she'd listened all too closely to the praise he'd given of her eyes. "I mean, he'd be her hero, her protector. Probably she'd owe her life to him about a hundred times over. And she'd know he really could do anything he wanted to her, too...I don't think that she could help but be in love with him, and be afraid of him. Both." A moment passed before she softly probed, "Do you think you'd want to have someone like that, if you were there?"

He dawdled for a while at that, looking at her careful from the corner of his eye, while she stared dutiful back up. A silly thing. A silly question, dangerous...but there was still that tickle of amusement in his chest, and he elected finally to play along. "I suppose there would be worse things than to have a beautiful young lady around who I could count on to fulfill my every whim."

The answer plainly pleased her here as well, though there was perhaps a trace of apprehension, too, uncertainty as she delayed to wet her lips. Glancing down and then back up to face him with a leading murmur on her tongue. "What, um. What do you think you'd do with her?"

His eyebrow rose a quarter-inch. Treacherous waters, these - but a tiny grin tugged briefly at his features as his gaze crossed over to the table, and the thought of how he should respond popped fully-formed into his mind, undeniable. A murmur of his own, thick and rich with sudden warning. "Are you sure you want to know that, Sarah?"

She answered him with just a nod, quick and nervously emphatic. Her widened eyes now feeling more sincere.

"Well." He smiled, faint and dangerous. What he hoped was dangerous, at least - he hadn't had much cause to practice such a look of late. "I suppose the first thing that I'd do is simply grab her, pull her close."

"Like this?" she breathed. With the restriction of the booth, she couldn't actually accomplish all that intimate of an approach - which perhaps was for the best. But she shifted towards him in the seat, sliding over until she was warmly pressed against his side, her lower leg touched bare upon the outside of his jeans. A subtle flush within her features, mischief mixing with excitement and with nerves.

"Yes, very much like that." He dropped a heavy hand to rest, to hold against the center of her back. Leaning down an inch or three, his mouth in the direction of her ear. "And I think I'd whisper one command for her to follow. An order I'd expect her to obey, without a moment's hesitation."

She swallowed, and he almost fancied he could feel her heart beating through her back, through the sleeveless summer blouse she wore. "What?"

Closer still, so that it truly was a whisper in her ear, his breath upon her skin. "I'd tell her..." A pause, a moment of anticipation before the denouement. "Finish your french toast."

She didn't understand immediately, glancing quizzically upward with a nearly-silent intonation. "Finish...?" But a look at his familiar, crooked grin, self-satisfied, was enough to make the joke apparent, and the slice that still sat mutely on her plate confirmed it.

"You...meanie!" She weakly slapped him on the chest, sliding in a huff back to her normal seat. A little pout upon her lips as they tried desperately to figure out if she should laugh or be upset. Settling eventually somewhere between - she glared at him, stuck out her rather cute and playful tongue, and didn't try too hard to keep the small, embarrassed smile from her face as she indeed began to work again upon her meal.

He chuckled softly to himself as well, returning to his plate. It was a relief to laugh, to show that they still could, that nothing was irrevocably broken by her revelations. Maybe slightly bent, but that could be survived. It took a little of the pressure off, as well, the tension that arose from thinking for too long about her offers and insinuations. Considering the notion of the two of them, together and alone, in a world too far gone to care what anybody did in private.