Reality is Different Ch. 05

And probably I couldn't really say or do a lot of that. Or even most of it. Not in those words, not half so picture-perfect as the scene that my imagination conjures up, that it sketches quick and eagerly for me to see. But I could do something, if it happened, even if it's just to stand my ground, not to dash away from him with all the shocked, disgusted noises of a girl advertising her dismay. The reaction that he might expect. I could show him that I'm anything but bothered by his sexuality, by his status as a man...even that would help, I think. It could. And so it's with an anxious, hopeful tingle running ticklish along my spine that I begin to turn the handle of the door, slow and silent. Watching where I know he sits at his computer, so that I won't miss a moment once it's opened up enough to see...

To see his chair, as it turns out. His monitor above it, staring blank and empty at me as I take the step inside that I was planning. Not there, not in the middle of a session's self-indulgence - the disappointment that I feel is tempered mainly by our long familiarity with one another, the many times it's visited before. A faint, unhappy tugging in my gullet, soured further with the knowledge of how foolish I was being, to expect what I was hoping for.

"Hey, sweetheart."

My gaze flits over somewhat guilty to his bed, finding him already looking up at me. Halfway underneath the covers, sitting propped up slightly on a pillow, a book held open in his hands. The same one that he had before, I think. His voice unruffled, even-tempered - just a subtle quirking of his lip could hint that he's surprised to see me sneaking down into his room this late at night. "What's up?"

"Um." I feel like I don't want to say it, not immediately. Standing awkward in the door. It feels suddenly so childish a thing for me to make a fuss about, heading down to bother him because he didn't wish me my goodnight. But there isn't really any other topic I can think of at the moment, nothing I can use to stall for time, to ease into it later as a kind of 'by the way.' And so after a couple seconds standing there uncertain, struggling for something clever, playful I could say, I eventually just give up. "You didn't go upstairs to say goodnight." The words emerging diffidently, less an accusation than a plea.

"Oh." He blinks, once. "Huh. I didn't, did I." A wrinkle at his brow, a tiny frown in his expression. Surprised at his own oversight. Perhaps...the answer would imply he is, the shape of it, the structure. But the way he says it is just flat and even, faintly cautious, as though it isn't any news at all. And I hardly have the time to think of what that means before he speaks again. "I guess I actually thought that...you might be getting too old for that these days, you know. Grown up. Don't exactly need me there to tuck you into bed."

"What?"

I barely even speak the word. A whisper, stunned and shattered at the bottom of my breath. A cry of quiet injury, of sudden hurt that aches like a betrayal. I'm not sure I said it loud enough for him to even hear...but I think that he must see the strength of my reaction printed plainly in my features, because he seems to reconsider almost instantly, his eyebrow lifting as he murmurs out a quick "...or not."

"It's not!" I almost stumble on the answer, urgent, desperate to make him comprehend what I don't really understand myself. "I'm not, I'm..." Trailing swiftly down to silence, as I stand still staring at him from the door, in my tattered yellow shirt. Emotion scratching raw upon my throat, heated at the corners of my eyes. There's so many rituals already I've outgrown, left in distant memory by the slow, relentless march of time. Being carried, being bathed, being held and guided by the hand. Losses that I didn't realize I'd suffered, or that I even willingly adopted as a proof of growing up. Only now to turn around and see how little that remains, how valuable the scraps that I have left.

"I miss it." The words emerging quiet, husky, with my gaze upon the bottom of his mattress. My arms crossed awkwardly about my chest, protection from my own uncertain fervency, and from the chill that faintly prickles in the room. "That kind of thing, I mean."

"You miss it." Another furrow on his brow. His intonation muted, probing.

"Yeah." I nod a little at him, subtly emphatic. The answer softly pleading as I risk a couple steps in his direction. Closer. "Like, just - the stuff we did when I was little, you know? I feel like it...it meant a lot to me. It means a lot to me. All those - those 'daddy things' you used to do." Hesitation just to call them that, to speak the word that's taken on so sexual a meaning in my mind. But that's what they are. That's the very heart of it.

He doesn't answer for a little while, squinting at me with a look that's subtly inquiring, confused. But when he speaks, his voice is only mild. "Like what, exactly?"

"Like..." Like when he'd greet me with an automatic hug on his arrival home from work. When he'd run his fingers through my hair, when he'd kiss me tenderly upon the forehead, and I'd glow with such belonging, such a feeling of his love...and he must miss it too, he must, to bring it back the other night, when he thought I was asleep. But that isn't something I'm supposed to know about. And simply knowing doesn't break the inhibition that I feel, to ask my father for a kiss, for an embrace. Even if it can be something innocent, paternal, there isn't any way to hide the other connotations of the words, to veil the meaning they could hold. That I'd want for them to hold, while pretending that it didn't even cross my mind.

It takes a little moment til I notice how my gaze has fallen to his hands. To the book he holds, half-closed, one finger thrust inside to keep his place. That long before the clear suggestion that it offers worms its way down to my desperate, searching tongue. "Like when you'd read to me, before I went to bed." I look up again to face him as I say it, hopeful, earnest. It's safe, it's chaste. It's even true. Nights when I would beg my favorite book for him to read, hurrying to brush my teeth so that I could have as long a span as possible before he'd say that it was time for me to go to sleep. Or when he made up the stories for me, those rambling accounts of princesses with magic powers, who learned to fly from talking birds, and scolded monsters for the wrongs they did. I was enthralled to listen to him speak, to hear the tales that he told...so many years ago, now. The memory is fuzzy, details worn away by time, but its feeling has a power of the sort I've come to crave. The thought of it, of laying at my father's side, attentive to his words. Of being once again his little girl, in any way I can.

He sounds more bemused, himself. Glancing at the book, his eyebrow higher when his gaze is touched to mine again. "You want me to read to you?"

"...yeah." It comes out almost shyly, nodding just a bit before I speak. Trying for a trace of the imploring in my eyes. "I think I do. I kinda would, I mean. If it's not too weird. If you don't mind..."

"No, no," The answer rumbles swiftly from the bottom of his throat, tasting faintly of bewilderment despite its reassurance. "No, I'm - that's something I could do, for sure. Not quite what I expected, but yeah, I..." A break, a beat before he shakes his head and speaks abruptly softer. Tender, with the kind of crooked, loving smile I know, that makes my heart thump faster, warmer in my chest. "I can do that. Absolutely."

The moment feels a faint relief of tension, a fracturing of the uncertainty, the awkwardness that held me halfway frozen, without the sense of having any purpose here that he would accept or understand. Just the naming of a reason, of a context to explain and justify and guide my actions - it frees my soul enough to smile softly back at him, to step up bravely to the corner of his bed. And such a rush of gratitude, as well, of gladness at the confirmation that those fragments of our history have meaning to him, too. If there's anything I can interpret from his words, from his reactions here, it's that. Whatever cause he had to talk about me growing up, not needing him to say goodnight before I sleep, it's not that he was sick of it. Not from the gently rueful look upon his face, the affection that I see.

"I'm not sure if this is really quite your speed, though, honestly." He eventually continues on in tones a bit more normal, calls attention to the novel with a flicker of his wrist, waving it at me. "I just found it in an alley, actually, with a box of other books that someone was throwing out. One of those airport thrillers, basically. 'The Omega Protocol.' I thought it sounded interesting, but you have to keep in mind that I have no taste."

Between the warmth of my reprieve and the continued tingle of my nerves, this earns a little laugh. A giggle, edging up beside the bed, my fingers trailing somewhat anxiously along the covers that I've climbed beneath so many times, when he was gone. Playful scolding in my voice, pitched a trifle higher with the eager clutch of feeling in my throat. "Dad, you do so. I'm sure it's fine." So many afternoons of busy digits rubbing quick upon my private places, imagining he was beside me. As he now promises to be. If I can stand the thrill and fear that ripples through me at the thought of joining him, of slipping in again between his sheets. "Anyway, it's not even about the book itself, so much. It's just...the whole thing, you know. Us doing stuff together." I force myself to look at him, to brave his eyes for just the couple moments I can bear. God, the notion just dissolves into my mind, like sugar on my tongue. I shouldn't say it, what I'm thinking. Maybe. Probably. But I can't resist to let it out, an almost murmur. "My daddy taking care of me."

He doesn't answer that directly. Just smiles again, a little bit, a twitching of his lips. Maybe half the handsome grin that he so often offers, and even that suffices to send tickles of delight along my spine, despite the trace again of his uncertainty. And if he'd told me to get on the bed, or if he'd lifted up the covers just a tiny bit to welcome me inside...I'm sure that I'd have done it. I am. I would, without a doubt. I'd only be obeying, then, to slip in soft beside him, to cuddle close against the man that I adore, the Daddy who means everything to me.

He doesn't, though. Instead he simply pats atop the blanket with his palm, advises me to just "Hop up." Not in. And so that's what I do, clambering a little awkwardly onto the bed to lay down on the covers, instead of underneath. But the beating of my heart is still a deep and pounding echo at the inside of my chest, feeling every drop of meaning I've attached to this, to being in his bed, every fantasy that had it as a place to start. An eager warmth upon my cheeks, beneath my stomach, as I scooch up there beside him, beside the shape of him at least that rises upward from the blankets, forest-green. Nervous. Thrilled.

I don't know how far I can take this, don't know how much I ought to listen to the voice inside of me that says to throw my arms around his chest, beneath his shoulder, to hold myself as tight and close against my Daddy as I can. After all, I'm only here so he can read to me. That's my reason, my excuse. But snuggling with him like this, it's a part of that, implicitly. It was, when I was little. Even if it can carry other meanings now. And so it feels a kind of compromise to only nestle gently at his side, laying on my own. Halfway curled, with my arms bent back against themselves in something like the posture of a prayer, while my cheek is laid upon the very corner of his chest. Loving. God, I hope it is, that it's how it feels to him. Obedient, attentive, as he coughs a little, shuffles backward through the book. Speaks a murmur, almost to himself. "Guess I should start from the beginning, hm?"

"Mmh." Faint negation in the sound, denial. I barely shake my head. I wouldn't want to be an inconvenience to him, make him reread a bunch of it again. Even if I cared about the story in itself. "You can start wherever, really." Murmured softly to his side. "I just like listening to you."

"You do, huh?" Just a distant touch of laughter in his voice, surprised. Restrained. "Well. Probably the first time in recorded history a girl's told her father that." And maybe thinner than it might have been, the joke. But he speaks again more simply as he navigates the pages to the place where he left off. "Anyway. Well. The gist of what's happened so far is that this guy, Jack Decker, is a freelance reporter, and somebody in the NSA was going to reveal some kind of awful secret, but gets shot in front of him before he can say anything. Now Jack is being followed, and he's just used the NSA guy's badge to get into a top-secret government facility underground. And don't ask me how he found the place, because that part kinda got glossed over."

He clears his throat in preparation, the book held open on his stomach so that I can read along, if I were so inclined. About the same way that he did when I was just beginning to learn how. "The metal door let out a long, protesting creak as Decker pushed his way inside, a crack of the illumination from the hallway spearing deep into the darkened room. The footsteps now weren't far behind, and they sounded like they might be coming faster, breaking near a run. He could be trapped in there, if they figured out which way he went. But the options for escape were looking shorter all the time, particularly if he hoped to find the truth. So he quickly slipped inside the room and let the door fall closed behind him with a deep, climactic slam, scrabbling to find and turn the lock before the men in suits who'd followed after him dash up on the other side and give the knob a yank - and then continue moving, when it only rattled in their hand."

It continues on like that. Warm, the way he reads it, rich, dramatic, giving meaning to the words that wouldn't be there otherwise. And I couldn't name the feeling that I have here as the seconds, minutes start to pass, as he seems to settle rather swiftly to the rhythm and routine of this old habit that we used to share. Laying at my father's side, allowing every word he speaks to wash across my consciousness, to soak into my soul. Imagining that I can feel them humming deep inside his chest, vibrating past the clothes and covers that are keeping us apart.

Familiar. That's a part of it, at least. A memory of times before, aching bittersweet inside, an echo of the way it truly felt to be the little girl that I was so long ago, when I could be so thoroughly enraptured by the stories that he spun, or just by listening again to those that I'd already heard before. But there's a pang of loss in it as well, because it isn't quite the same. Not as truly, perfectly as I might like. It can't be. I'm older now, I'm maybe smarter, my mind grown large and deep enough that it refuses to be occupied completely by the reading of a book. Even if it's pleasant, the simplicity I feel here, even if it gives a gentle glow of warmth inside, it doesn't draw me in as fully as I think it did, once. My mind drifts on to other thoughts, to other daydreams, wishes. And I wish...

God, I wish so many things. The painful tug of longing in my stomach, of wild and errant wants, clutching for a million different dreams. No matter if they make the slightest bit of sense together, no matter if they're possible at all. I wish it was a decade and a half ago, that I was still that little girl, raptly listening to every word my father speaks, my heart and echo of his voice. I wish we were alone, the only people in the world, that there was never any question of the man that I would spend my life with. Only of the things that we would do. I wish that he would run his fingers through my hair, or stroke his thumb again across my cheek, that he would assure me with a touch that I belong to him, I'm his, his own, that nothing's ever going to take me from his side. I wish that we were in that other world, the one I thought about before. Where a man might slide an idle hand along his daughter's body as he read to her like this, gently teasing. Caressing soft across her stomach, barely squeezing at her breasts. Mixing into one another different flavors of delight, the warm, familiar ways of childhood commingled with the thrill of sex and of surrender.

I'm jealous of that girl. The other Sarah. Jealous of a figment of my own imagination...because it wouldn't be the first occasion that it happened, not for her. She wouldn't have to worry what he thought, or if he wanted her at all. She'd know exactly how to wriggle there beside him, how to squirm and sigh beneath his touch to spur his own desires higher, hotter. Egging on his lusts enough that when he finished reading, when he set aside the book, he wouldn't send her up to sleep in her own bed. Instead he'd only hold her closer, his arm behind her back, effortlessly lifting her to lay on top of him so she was staring suddenly into his handsome honey eyes. He'd kiss her - maybe gently at the start, a peck upon her brow that barely lingered, but soon enough those finely weathered lips would trace along her features, trailing soft between her eyes, beside her nose. Kissing her so deep and hungry on the mouth, so powerful, devouring for ageless moments all the pleasured moans and murmurs she would make, before he finally dipped lower still to softly bite her jaw, to nibble on her tender neck. Teasing, tasting of her body, her readiness to serve his will.

He wouldn't have to tell her what to do. Not with the crudity of words, at least. No more than she would have to tell him how she felt, how much her daddy meant to her, how much she needed him, in every way...it would be better like that, anyway. Words just make things harder, in a case like this. I feel like they do. Painful, awkward, frightening. Coming up with explanations, with excuses for the things I do, if he should ever ask. Trying to come up with something I could ever hope to say to him, to hint a little at my fantasies, to divine his own desires. Language speaks too plainly for this kind of circumstance.

I'd be better off without it, almost. If I didn't have to face the possibility of questions, didn't have to name my reasons or my wants. If we were cavemen of the sort that he pretends to be so often, communicating just in touch, in a gaze or an embrace. If I could make my offer just by nestling beside him on a night like this, by shrugging off my clothes and pressing close, my body his to take - and if he didn't want it, if he left me there alone, then of course it would still hurt. But at least it would be over then, finished in that moment, without all the humiliation that would follow in reality, all the questions and the troubled remonstrations. The quiet wincing of revulsion I might hear inside his voice. And if it went the other way, if he thought instead that I would make a worthy mate, a woman he would want to share his bed...

Such a wave of helpless feeling washes through me, in the wake of these imaginings. Another anguished stab of yearning though my heart to simply think about him wanting me, about my daddy seeing me as someone to desire. I can't restrain my arm from reaching out across his chest to hold myself a little tighter to him, while he continues reading softly from his book. To rub my cheek a trace against his side, desperate to attain whatever fragment I can manage of the contact that I dream about. His touch. His warmth. His presence.

If I could be that other Sarah, if I could only jump into her skin...he'd be stripping off her clothes right now, my clothes, his strong and sturdy fingers peeling all the wrappings from my unresisting limbs, revealing my body for the pleasure of his eyes. The image of it makes me tremble, makes my heartbeat flutter like a hummingbird inside my chest. The chill of autumn kissing softly to my heated skin, tingling in every inch that he's unveiled. His gaze upon my nakedness, stroking powerful across the body that belongs to no one else, and there's nothing more fulfilling than to see the animal desire in his eyes, the smirking sense of ownership, of hunger and of pride. The look that tells me that I'm his, his own, that he isn't ever going to give me up, never going to let me go. That I'll belong to him forever. I'll always be his perfect princess, always be his little slut. His angel and his whore, his beloved baby girl - and even if I truly had a choice, I wouldn't dream to turn it down. I'd answer with a look as well, a gaze of need into his eyes, of pleading and of worship. Begging that he take me, that he fuck me, that my daddy claim my innocence at last. As rough or gentle as he wants me, as he thinks that I deserve...