Move Over Mommy

Mommy and Daddy were fighting.

Again.

It seemed like all they ever did any more was fight. During the last year since Mommy had gone back to work Paige had heard her parents argue and fight more than she could ever remember doing the whole rest of her life. Daddy would say something and Mommy would go off. Like go off go off and then there'd be shouting and hot looks, slammed doors and hurt feelings, and no place in the house that Paige felt happy. No place she wanted to be but where else could she go? Her friends could only put up with so many random drop ins before they, and their parents, started asking what was going on. The last thing Paige wanted was gossip getting around about her family and the girls, even the ones who were her friends, could be so mean about it.

As mean as Mommy.

Ever since she'd started working again it seemed like all Mommy did was find a reason to be a complete bitch to Daddy. To Paige as well, to some extent, but she and her mother had no more than the normal mother-daughter fights. But to Daddy? Nothing her father did made her mother happy. Nothing. He'd say something nice about her hair and she'd dismiss the compliment in a way that hurt her father's feelings. Daddy would come up to her in the living room and lean over the back of the couch to kiss the side of her neck like he'd always done and Mommy would push him away, tell him to get off. Once she'd even slapped at him. Gone were the days when that kind of kiss made Mommy giggle and tilt her head to the side to offer him more skin to kiss. Growing up she'd seen a lot of physical affection between her parents, teaching Paige that it was how two people who loved each other showed it. Mommy didn't even like Daddy to hug her any more, much less... what they were talking about in the bedroom.

A quirk of the duct work made it possible for Paige to hear her parents' conversations almost as well as if she'd been in the room with them. Not when the AC or heater was actually on but when it wasn't the sounds carried. It was weird because it didn't go the other way. She'd once put her phone on her bed with a song playing and gone into their bedroom and couldn't hear it at all. But if she reversed it and left it on their bed she could hear it in her room. Paige had never told her parents and had found it a very convenient thing to know what they were saying in presumed privacy. And if they got a little frisky she usually pulled up a playlist or binged something on Netflix without really watching it to not hear or have to think about her parents having sex.

Another night another fight. Paige sat on her bed, legs drawn up and with a pillow cradled on them that she hugged as if that could magically make them get along or at least make the knowledge of them fighting go away. When she heard the bed creak Paige knew her father was retreating from the master bedroom. There was the noise of his door opening and closing, a slight click the only sound that betrayed his departure from what was rightfully his bedroom. Daddy didn't slam doors, rarely raised his voice even and Paige knew he worried about waking Paige up. The few times she'd peeped out to see what was going on he'd looked at her in quiet dismay. Paige couldn't bear to see that expression on his face, to see her wonderful Daddy upset as if he was the one to blame. Mommy was the problem, not him. If Paige and Daddy could see it then why couldn't she? Why couldn't she just be happy!

Paige was still hugging the pillow when she heard Daddy come back upstairs. Creep back upstairs, like it wasn't his house. The house he'd bought for Mommy with all the money he'd earned writing his heart out in his books. Mommy took care of the house and Paige and school and everything but it was Daddy that made it all possible. He didn't even need to work but he still wrote and he was even going to be a professor. There was plenty of money and Mommy didn't even need to work. Very few of her friends' moms did so what made Elise so intent on going to a job she obviously hated, working so hard she was tired and moody all the time, and giving up - giving up Daddy! If Paige was Mommy there was no way she'd ever, ever be like that to her father. Daddy was just the best man ever and Mommy was stupid to treat him like she did. Stupid and mean and bitchy and - ugh!

Mommy better be careful or someone was going to take Daddy away from her.

Rolling onto her side, the pillow still held tightly as if it could shield her from the reality of her parents' marriage falling apart, Paige stared at the wall. A wall that went slowly blurry as unshed tears pooled in her eyes before running in hot streaks across her cheeks to dampen the duvet. As awful as she felt Paige knew it must be even worse for her father. There was no way she could let him know how it was affecting her, no way she could - would! - add that burden to Daddy. Closing her eyes Paige resolved to start Daddy's day on a cheerful note.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Good morning, Daddy!" Paige turned from where she was cooking, her iPad on the counter beside the stove showing a how to video to help her out. The table was already set, just two places, with a cup of coffee just how he liked it and some fresh orange juice by his plate, deep purple Concorde grape and a big glass of milk by her own.

Paige wore an old shirt of her father's, one she'd 'borrowed' out of his closet and never returned. It wasn't like he didn't have a dozen button downs anyway and it was big enough that it fell to mid-thigh, making it a perfect early morning around the house shirt. The coquettish effect was a little spoiled by the black fuzzy fleece shorts with little Grinch faces on them she wore under it but it did show off her coltishly long legs. Well long for her size anyway. Paige was all of five foot nuttin' but her legs looked long even if they didn't do much good to get her to the top, or even middle, shelves.

"I'm poaching you an egg. The trick is to swirl the water before you drop it in so that it doesn't get all the wispies around the edges."

"Ignore those," she said and pointed with a wooden spoon at several less than perfectly poached ones that sat on a plate off to the side. "They're like...sloppy copies when I write," she laughed. Paige came over and gave Dan a hug, burying the side of her face against his chest and reveling in the heat he gave off. "Love you," she said then let go and went back to the stove. Plates with toast, turkey sausage, and a few sliced up leftover strawberries had the poached eggs added to them, two for Daddy and one for her. Paige carried them over to the table and sat Dan's down in front of him then took her own to her seat off to his left hand side.

"Mommy didn't want breakfast," she said in a neutral tone that was quite different from the one she'd been using. Paige also didn't make eye contact with Dan. "Which is probably a good thing because she's starting to look a little fat." Paige's tone was still neutral but only an idiot, or a man, would fail to notice that she'd just hit her mother with a heavy slug.

"She had an early meeting," Dan explained, his tone apologetic and defensive. "Your mother is trying to nail down a big client. It's very important to her and could mean a promotion. She's worked really hard for this, Paige." Dan's brown eyes were full of complex, competing desires to protect both of the women in his life while also understanding that Elise's professional ambitions and Paige's teenage need for her mother's love and attention were in conflict. Or at least that was how Dan saw it, not understanding that his own happiness was the key to Paige's. He watched the top of Paige's head, bowed over her plate, as she pushed the egg around with her fork. When she lifted it up and fixed him with her hazel eyes, stormy with something he didn't quite understand, his heart gave a momentary stutter. A stutter that settled into a fast beat as Paige's lips relaxed from the thin line he'd glimpsed into a full mouthed smile.

What Daddy didn't know is that Paige's lips had almost betrayed her. They'd been on the verge of opening up and letting a string of complaints about her mother come across them. That they were true would not have changed Dan's instinctive reaction to defend his wife and to admonish Paige about respecting Mommy. It would have been another fight, a Mommy move, and there was no way Paige was going to mimic her mother.

"It's okay, Daddy," her words were light and loving. "I was really making it just for you. Mommy will probably make it up at lunch with her client. Daddy?" Her fork paused and she waited for him to answer, using the time to gauge how her seemingly innocent comment about Elise choosing another man over Dan, even for something as innocuous as a business lunch, made him feel. She almost missed it, almost didn't see the twitch of his lips as if he'd tasted something just a little bit off but it was there. More telling was the way he didn't acknowledge her, prompting Paige to again ask "Daddy?"

"Hmm? Oh, sorry. I was, uh, what is it?" The unease he'd felt at the edge of his consciousness backed off but only to find a place to hide in his heart and begin eating at him.

"What do you want to do today, Daddy?"

"Did you want to go somewhere, honey? I could probably remember how to get to the mall," he teased as it was a frequent destination of theirs.

"No. I mean, I do but not today. What I meant was, what do you want to do today? You. Not me." Paige continued before her father had a chance to object. "You're always taking care of Mommy and me, always doing what we want. I realized that you never get asked what you want. Or get to pick what is fun for you. Mommy always makes you go to what she likes to do or if she's busy there's always something written on the chore board for you. So I thought it would be nice if I took you out today for - well, whatever!" Paige's laugh disguised the way she'd painted Elise as selfish and uncaring of Dan's feelings.

"I- I don't know." At a loss for words, Dan realized just how long it had been since he'd had the opportunity to do something fun for himself. Not with the family, not something Elise wanted them to do, not something Paige wanted him to do, just time for Dan.

"Think about it," Paige said. "Please, Daddy? I want you to have fun doing something you like today. If it's something I can do with you that would be wonderful!" she enthused. "But if not, that's okay. I just want you to be happy, Daddy. You deserve it."

Breakfast was quiet after that and before long Paige hopped out of her chair to clean up. Just as Dan was about to stand, Paige leaned over and put one hand on his thigh just above the knee before her opposite arm went around her father's neck. "I love you, Daddy," she said, face inches from his so her warm breath washed his cheek before a damp kiss replaced it. A kiss that landed a mere thought from the edges of his lips. Her fingers tightened on his muscular thigh before she straightened up and left the kitchen, leaving a faint memory of her lips on his skin.

Just inside her bedroom, Paige carefully closed the door then turned and sagged against it. Beneath her chest her heart beat like a sparrow's, quick and frantic. The eighteen year old let out a shaky sigh that matched the sudden trembling of her hands. Part of what she'd done had been considered the night before and the rest of it made up as opportunity presented itself. Daddy was too loyal to Mommy, loved her too much, to let anyone just talk bad about her. The only way to get him to turn away from his blind devotion to Mommy was to make Daddy see for himself what a bitch she was. It was going to be a long process Paige knew and she'd almost messed up by trying to -

"I was really going to kiss him," she admitted to herself, breaking the quiet of her room. "Oh my God I was really going to kiss Daddy like Mommy would!" Paige's shaky hands covered her mouth and nose as if to keep the admission from being true. Even now she could imagine how the shape of the corner of his mouth would feel under her lips and how easy it would be to slide them across to the middle before opening her mouth to her father for the first time. Color crept across the teenager's cheeks and she felt hot and tight. A few rapid breaths came and went before she could force herself to slow down and get herself under control.

Paige straightened up and walked towards her bed. She was acutely aware of the pull of the normally soft feeling shirt across her breasts and the shivery heat it caused in her tummy. It wasn't a totally new sensation, Paige had explored her body and its responses to her self education in pleasure. She'd also been on enough dates with boys her own age who had all the subtlety of a bull in a china shop and fumbling, either too hard or too timid touches of Paige. She wasn't completely innocent but nothing had prepared her for the intensity of her reaction to what had just happened with Daddy. What was she thinking? That was - that wasn't what she'd planned. That wasn't what she wanted.

Was it?

The same pillow that had comforted her last night was once again pressed into duty. Tucked just under her chin as she sat cross legged on her bed, the pillow case crumpled under her fingers. Last night she'd resolved to give Daddy a cheerful start to the day, and she had, but -

But what? Confused by her emotions and her body's reaction, Paige clutched the pillow even tighter to her for the comfort of the pressure it provided. The bottom of it rested between her thighs as she sat on the bed. The tails of the button down shirt she'd taken from Daddy's closet last year brushed against the tops of her thighs and allowed her panties, yellow cotton with a cute little cartoon koala on the front of them, to play peekaboo.

Daddy deserved to be happy and wasn't. What Mommy was doing to him hurt Paige almost as much as it hurt Daddy. Mommy didn't make time for him any more, acted like she didn't even want to be touched by him. They hadn't had sex in months Paige knew, courtesy of her bedroom's AC vent. Thinking about her mother and father being intimate made Paige feel a little weird and she shifted, legs closing around the bottom of the pillow trapped between her thighs. Still clutching it she rolled onto her side and curled up around the pillow.

Mommy was so dumb. Daddy loved her, truly loved her, and did everything to make Elise's life happy and safe and fulfilled. She didn't know how lucky she was to have Dan and how much she was giving up every time she pulled back from him or pushed his hands, his lips, away from her. Several times in the past she'd caught her parents kissing, really kissing - making out - and had watched with guilty fascination. Daddy's hands had slid across Mommy's body, stroking soft moans out of her mouth that struggled to escape the kiss they shared. Paige had expected her first kiss with a boy to be the same and had been terribly disappointed. There had been no confidence, no finesse, only a crude parody of what she'd seen Daddy do and there had been way too much tongue and - yuck. Subsequent kisses with her first boyfriend and others had gotten a little better but nothing like she imagined it must feel for Mommy.

For how it could be if Daddy kissed her.

Unaware she was doing it, Paige's thighs flexed around the pillow between them. The bulk of it pressed comfortingly into her mons, smashing the koala's face into it. Breath came quicker as she continued to squeeze her legs together around the pillow then release them while she remembered Daddy kissing Mommy and how it might feel. How it might make her shiver to feel his big, warm palm on the side of her face, sweetly angling her face up to his in order to explore her mouth. The same hand drifting down the side of her neck - the back of Paige's own copied the fantasy, tracing across her neck and then turning to caress the slight swell of her small breast with the palm. A gasp escaped her lips, lips that she imagined were parted by her father's and that welcomed his tongue between them into the sweetness of her mouth. Caught up in the fantasy of it, confusing what she'd seen her parents do, what she'd done with her boyfriends, Paige curled tighter around the pillow and began to rock her hips. It slid between her thighs, dragging across her grinning koala face on her panties and stroking her slit beneath them.

The shirt was in the way, maddeningly in the way. Paige shakily slipped one button loose to allow her hand to steal inside of it. Again she groaned as her palm found and captured her now bare breast. Instead of her own small hand she imagined a much larger one, warm and slightly rough, big enough to fully cradle her youthful breast and squeeze it until the pleasure-pain of it sank down into her tummy.

Still rocking against the pillow, Paige shoved more of it between her legs to make a strong bolster that she could rock against. Suddenly she felt her arousal drop down inside of her, liquid silk seeming to fall out of nowhere and sink hot and wonderful into her body before beginning to draw a thin hint of dampness on her panties. "Daddy-" she whispered, then bit down hard on her knuckle as the forbidden word was enough to cause the teen to tighten up. Paige's legs tightened abruptly then her left one began to shake as her body fell under the spell of her orgasm. "Daddy!" she cried, word muffled by the pillow.

When it was over, Paige lay still, body occasionally twitching as a remnant of her release took her. She'd never done that before, never fantasized about her father. She'd also never come so quickly or so easily. Shame warred with the post-release joy that filled her and neither was willing to admit defeat. It was wrong, she knew. Wrong in so many ways but -

But... But Daddy deserved to be happy. And if Mommy wasn't going to make that happen, if she'd stopped loving him, then was it so bad that Paige loved Daddy enough to want to...

To take Mommy's place? To make Daddy happy?

Didn't he deserve it? Paige made her decision and voiced it as she sat up in bed.

"Move over Mommy."