Reality is Different: Afterword

One liked to think that didn't matter, of course. That right was right, and wrong was wrong, no matter who your witnesses might be or how they would respond. But the idea, the scenario she'd sketched still lingered in his mind, clawing out a slice of his attention while he polished off his food. How much more critical the bond of family would be, indeed, if there were an even chance that any given person you'd encounter would gladly gut you for the contents of your luggage, and maybe eat you afterward as well. He wouldn't be preparing her to live an independent life away from him, if that were what they dealt with, wouldn't ever send her out to face that world alone. They would be bound together until death, for both their sakes, without any expectation that one day he'd hand her off, allow another man to be her guardian.

And without that expectation, without normalcy around and waiting...it wasn't quite as plain what damage it would do her, for them to spend a night in one another's arms. To relieve the needs that men and women share, seeking out a bit of joy, a moment's pleasure, with the only other person each of them could trust. Could love. Which it would come to be, of course. He could see it - not actually with them, no, no, but maybe as a pair of bit parts in a book. He'd read the Road, something like that. Describing for a page or so a relationship that would be, should be terrible and shocking, but which is rendered almost sweet, romantic in its contrast with the greater horrors of the setting, the shattered and barbaric remnants of what once was called society.

Irrelevant, naturally. The world hadn't ended quite yet. He shoved the thought aside as he paid the bill and drove them over to the park to play a couple rounds of tennis, as Sarah had suggested. Beginning at fifteen she'd shown a modicum of interest in the sport, and though her intervals of practice had drifted gradually upward from days to weeks to months between, she still asked him now and then to have a game with her...it was a pleasant thing, a diversion he enjoyed. He was by no means a master, but neither had she really worked enough to build up much skill of her own, and so today, like most occasions, he could afford to go a little easy on her. There was attention he could spare, to carry on a half-heard conversation, shouted across the court between their serves.

Or just to watch her. That was pleasant, too. A flitting of his eyes to where her legs stretched long and lithe beneath her pleated skirt, slightly bent in preparation for a dash to where the ball would strike. And yes, it likely was a bit improper of him, looking, but in truth that hardly seemed significant when he compared it to the things that she had talked about, had offered to him. It was innocent enough, by contrast, for him to muse a little to himself if that was really what she'd always worn when they had played together, if her skirt had been that short, had shown quite that much of her milky upper thighs. If it had always flipped around so readily when she would dash and turn, tantalizing with the promise that it might expose what it was intended to conceal. Her skin as minutes passed took on the subtle sheen of her exertion, the sparkling of perspiration gleaming in the light, which right now seemed an altogether normal thing for him to notice, to enjoy, a kindling of warmth inside him beyond that of his own athletic efforts. Human. What man didn't like to see a lovely woman's form, the slender shape of it in motion? It was a shock, certainly, to cast that gaze upon your daughter for the first time...but once the shock had faded, the simple truth of it remained.

They finished after half an hour with the score a little in his favor, despite his own attempts to let her have the win as they were nearing to the end. Sarah, though, seemed altogether satisfied with this outcome, a simper on her lips and a spark of energy still dancing on her eyes as she trod off the court beside him to the gently wooded section of the park adjoining. And somehow he was not a bit surprised to find her leaning in to rest her head against his shoulder while they walked. Nor did he feel any particular want for her to stop. Still, he cautioned with a quiet chuckle, "Watch out there, I'm a bit sweaty at the moment."

"I don't mind." She laughed a little too, the sound of it a silver tinkle in the air. "I'm..." She hesitated briefly, and then as if by sudden impulse tugged upon his hand. "Actually, can we sit down here for a while?"

A sidelong glance in her direction - but he felt no true resistance to the thought. None at all. "All right." He shrugged, and labored slightly to set down before the nearest of the trees. It was a maple, its trunk perhaps a foot across, scarcely any mighty specimen but more than serviceable to their needs. Sarah followed closely after, kneeling to the grass and squirming round to take up what was becoming a regular position at his arm. Close, the pose. Possessive, probably, when he in fact allowed himself to hold her there, to rest his hand upon her waist or hip, the way that he was doing now...yes, yes, of course it was. But what of it? A bit of the possessive was permitted, or expected, when it came to caring for one's children. And beside, despite the unseasonable warmth the day had brought, they were here almost alone. The only other people to be seen were clustered at the baseball diamond in the far corner of the park, too far away to see or care especially what they were up to.

"But yeah, I think I kinda like it," she continued once she'd settled to a comfortable position, softly murmuring into the private little sphere they shared. Her tone a thing of pleasant, happy rambling, with just a tinge of the abashed. "The way you smell when you're all sweaty. I mean, it's an, an acquired taste, you know. I didn't, always. Or at least I didn't think about it. But it's something else the stories had, sometimes. When a girl smelled her father's sweat, it made her want to..."

"Want to what?" he teased. Lord, but she was such a funny girl, carrying these perversions in her head that she couldn't bring herself to fully speak, that dissolved to silence or to euphemism.

The latter, this time. "It made her happy." She bit her lip and smiled, self-conscious. "It makes me happy, too."

"Hm. You think I ought to get it bottled, then?" He chuckled gently, pinched a moment at her hip. Playful. "Sell it as cologne? 'Eau de Electrician?'"

She just laughed, and squirmed at little at his prodding, warm and soft and pleasant. The scent of her own perspiration mild to the senses. "No. No, I'm not sure other girls would like it quite as much, since you're not their dad." The blouse she wore was open at the neck enough to show her upper chest, bare and pale skin just above the slight swell of her bosom. Mischief touching to her voice. "Besides, I wouldn't want to have to share it with anybody else."

"I see." Still amusement in his tone. "Didn't realize you were the jealous sort."

"Oh, I am," she theatrically rejoined - and then again, more sheepishly. "...I think I really am, actually." That lingered for a while in the air, while she fiddled with her fingers, gathering the will to speak an explanation. "Back a couple years ago, you know, when you and mom had broken up, and you started going out on dates sometimes...I didn't like it, really. I felt weird about it, every time you left, when I knew that was what you were doing."

His brow rose up a trace. "You never told me that."

"Didn't I?" She sounded mildly surprised. "I guess not. I mean, I knew it really hurt you, that whole thing with mom. I didn't want to be a jerk and tell you that you shouldn't try to find somebody new yourself, when she was...you know, and I didn't really feel like I was jealous then, of course." Her gaze rose up to his, flickering with soft, self-conscious humor. "Or maybe I shouldn't even say 'of course,' but I didn't, anyway. It just felt kind of anxious and unhappy. It was hard to think about how my dad was out there flirting with some woman that I didn't know. Or more than flirting. And if I'm totally logical about it I know it's probably just because it meant things could be changing again when I was trying to get used to it being just the two of us, but still." Her voice grew quieter, a husky note beside her slender fingers picking gently at his shirt. "Still, I sorta want to say now that, hm, maybe there was a part of me that just wanted it to stay that way. To keep you to myself. It could have been, I think. Unconsciously."

He laughed a little at that, faintly - though it was as much for want of any better answer as it was for actual amusement. "Well." Scarcely any meaning to the word, especially when he repeated it. "Well."

She continued, hardly seeming to have heard him. "There was another thing like that, too. Something else I read about, you know, that I...god."

The oath came out with sudden force, with a flush of quick embarrassment that paradoxically renewed his own assurance. Enough for him to quirk a smile down at her, at least, to ask a pleasant, probing "What?"

"Nothing. I don't know." She sighed and answered anyway, snuggling a little to his side. Her fingers curled at her cheek. "Just that I've been telling you about these dirty stories pretty much constantly, haven't I?"

His chuckle now was far more earnest. "Yes, I'd have to say you have." He let his other hand lift up for a moment in a errant little wave, indulgent. "But by the same token, I'm almost used to it by now, so go ahead. What great debauchery did this one talk about?" The weighty word intoned with but a light, facetious air.

"It's not really debauchery, I don't think," she reddened further. "But it's also...it's only partly from the stuff I read, just some of the idea. The other half is out of my own head, thinking about it. Because I really think that it makes sense, almost." She paused to breathe, to gather up her words, her head resting softly on his chest in search of comfort and of strength. Looking out across the park, her voice a hesitant and fitful murmur. "I told you how I haven't - been with anybody yet, you know. And I could have. I've had chances. Not a lot of them, I guess, but some, enough, and times I even kind of wanted to. But I always stopped before it got that far, because...I wanted my first time to mean something. To be with somebody special. You said that too, remember? That it should be someone that I really love, who doesn't give me any reservations. And how could I not have reservations, about almost everybody? Even if I thought I loved them right then, I'd know that it could easily be over in a couple months, or years, and I would have given myself to someone that now I didn't care about at all, or couldn't stand." From the bottom of his gaze, he could see her eyes rise up to meet him, tentative to touch. "And even if I waited until I got married...that doesn't last forever either, necessarily. I could regret that, too."

Her tone grew fainter, towards her now-familiar whisper of confession. "But so what I read, what I thought about, was the idea that - that a girl's first time should be with her dad. Even if it's only just that once, and nothing afterwards. Because that would be forever, that relationship, being special to each other. She'd know he'd never think of her as just another conquest, or as a mistake." Her hand rose gently upward, fingertips to lightly touch upon the bottom of his neck. A dulcet little tremble on her tongue as she shifted the perspective of her explanation. "I mean, I've had crushes on some boys, I've liked them. But you're the only man that I can say I know I'll love a year from now, or twenty years from now. You mean more to me, you're more important to my life, than any of those boys ever were, or ever could be, I think. And so you're the only one that it makes sense to be my first. To make me into a woman." Her eyes closed with the classic euphemism, biting at her lip, a while longer than a blink. "And that - I guess I'm thinking maybe that had crossed my mind subconsciously as well, when I decided I should wait. So that really, even though I didn't know it, I was saving myself for my daddy all along." Open once again, that angelic amber gaze, hesitant and hopeful on his own. Eager and embarrassed as it begged his tenderness, his love...

"That does make sense." He found the murmur on his lips without quite knowing how it got there. Save that at this instant, it was true. Absurd, of course, insane, but right now with her resting warm and soft and womanly against him, he somehow couldn't find the flaw in her approach - the only save he saw was just to slip into a playful tone and echo the diminishment she had spoken at the start. "...almost. Not quite."

"Hmph." A crooked smile tugged upon her delicate strawberry lips. After what he'd pulled at brunch, she seemed almost to have expected such a teasing answer, and was heartened by it more than disappointed. She even used the same complaint again. "You are such a meanie, daddy." And if the quietly flirtatious melody with which she answered didn't fully telegraph her satisfaction, if the childish names that she deployed weren't quite enough, there also was the way she grabbed his hand and brought it upward to her face, its back just close enough to let his knuckles brush against her lips. Tightening his arm around her slender waist. "But I love you anyway." And then a kiss there, tender and minute, feeling almost fragile for the moment it caressed upon his skin. The words that followed it purred ticklish amidst the fine hairs growing on the backside of his hand. "I really, really do. So much. More than I can honestly imagine loving anybody else."

"Sounds like quite a failure of imagination," he rumbled back - though somehow his tone slid more to banter than to disapproval.

"No, no," she turned to him a beat, wide-eyed - lord, she had to stop it with those eyes of hers. Particularly when he was so close, when she was wrapped up in his arms, to hit him with a look that shimmered so with liquid adoration...it wasn't fair, not in the least. "It's true. I mean, trust me, my imagination - it's been really busy lately." The scent of innuendo in that sheepish little smirk. "But I told you, I've had crushes, I've had boyfriends, I've even...I thought that I loved Tom for a while, if you remember him. The guy when I was seventeen. And it's different with this, with you." She rubbed her cheek against his hand, and dared another tiny kiss, this one at his wrist. "Because it's like I'm meant to love you. I'm supposed to, or I want to be supposed to, if that means anything, and if I stop and think about it the feeling only gets more powerful, instead of making me come up with problems and with doubts the way I do with almost everything."

Again, a kiss, a trifle now into his forearm - she had to twist around to plant it properly, squirming in his grasp so pleasantly he hardly thought to stop her. Words between it and the next that followed, the trail that she began to slowly build along his arm. "You raised me, daddy. You taught me, you protected me when I was small, and not so small, I guess." Another, just before the inside of his elbow. "You provided for me...god, forget all that, you made me, I exist because of you." Fervent, moistened lips for an emphatic moment at the bottom of his bicep, the eager whispers after running warm across his skin. "Half of me is you. So if I think about who I should love, who I should feel connected to, what other man could possibly come close?"

He ought to argue with the notion, to explain that his paternal love was very different than the other kind, to make her break this chain of tender little kisses. The thought of it was there at least, an altogether nasal note of caution somewhere in the background of his mind...but surely there were limits to the blandishment a man could be expected to ignore. Especially for something that was harmless. Mostly harmless. Her next kiss crossed the border to his sleeve, and though he scarcely felt the thing as more than just a moment's pressure, it still was pleasant, still aroused a warm and indolent emotion in his chest to feel so tangible a sign of daughterly affection. Whether, to be honest, hers was fully 'daughterly' or not. It was satisfying hearing sweetly textured nothings of devotion whispered soft and feminine into his shoulder, still half-abashed - or maybe it was just a quarter, now.

"You're my daddy, and I love you." Her voice delighted in the declaration's stark simplicity, distilling all she'd said before to merely seven words. "God, I could say it forever. I love you, I love you so, so much..." Another tiny kiss, planted ardent at the ball of his broad shoulder - the length of her young body rubbed against him as she inched fractionally higher, forging forward on her path. "If I'm your princess, that means you're my King. And that's forever, daddy, that's part of who we are, that no other man could ever be to me. Just you." Her lips against the collar of his shirt, her hair caressing ticklish against his jaw. Breathless, husky words. "Ever since this started I just get so excited when you're close to me, I get butterflies and tingles in my stomach, melty hot between my hips..."

The sensation of her kiss was magnified a hundredfold as it made contact with his flesh again, crossed over to his neck. Lingering far longer and more passionate than the little pecks she'd given at the start - the satin of her lips worked eager and insistent, drawing slow across his skin in one place, then another, higher, then a third as she pulled up still tighter to his chest, and he knew finally he had to say something. To try. "You know you're not supposed to do that, Sarah."

He'd tried to speak it firmly, full of reprimand - somehow, though, he hadn't found much to apply. The words emerged instead an echo of his feeling, warm and frivolous, and not a little pleased. Likely that was why she didn't flinch, didn't scurry to retreat, the way she had when he had cautioned her before. Instead she pulled back just enough to fix him with an impish grin, and teased back, "Why, daddy? Are you going to spank me?"

Nor could he restrain his own wry smile at this impudence, or the solid, forceful thumping of his heart. The playful answer was so near at hand, the tiny scowl he should wear before, while his right hand softly clutched upon her slender waist. "Don't you think I won't. You've been asking for it lately." True on several levels, that. Lord, the things that she'd been asking for...

"But I'm too big for you to spank now, daddy," she protested in a high, coquettish melody. Looking at him wide-eyed, as though surprised - but he could see the slight, delighted curl of her lips. "I'm all grown up, so you can't do that anymore." And after just the briefest pause, as if this weren't begging quite enough for contradiction, she boldly leaned to plant a final kiss upon his chin.

Which left no other choice, of course. "The hell I can't," he growled gladly, grabbing for her arms. Or trying to - she lithely squirmed out of his grasp, twisted free just far enough for him to try again with greater force and fervor, to snatch at her, his hands upon her thigh, beside her breast. Despite the bright, persistent glow of mischief in her eyes belying her continued protestations, she worked with force and effort at resistance; it took half a minute and a more-than-tiny fraction of his strength at last to wrestle her into submission, to pin her into place across his lap, her face down almost in the grass while her trim and shapely bottom was forced up to the air, mounted on his upturned knee. That pleated cotton skirt was a flimsy barrier indeed, flaring briefly up with every passing breeze, and with her body's jerks as she still struggled here and there to break away, and as he still held her tighter. One hand clutching both her wrists together at the small of her back, the other firm behind her neck.