Reality Is Different Afterword

The following takes place immediately after chapter 5, and presumes that you've read it. It's intended less as a definite followup or sequel (since I'm still silly enough to think that the story's central concept requires an ambiguous ending), and more a pleasant "what could be" for those readers who were unhappy at said ambiguous ending.

*****

It was a hard thing to believe. Hard to accept, despite that he'd expected it, this very thing. When a woman seems to want to spend every moment of her time with you, when she touches you at every chance she gets, when you find her eyes engaging in that little dance, darting off as soon as you attempt to meet her gaze...the notion tends to leap to mind, that there might be an interest there. A crush, at least. If it's a younger woman. Not anything too serious, not necessarily. And even if it's nothing that you would pursue, it's still the sort of thing a man might swagger to himself about, might think that he's still "got it." He might even flirt a little back at her, winking at the girl to watch her swoon, and to enjoy the subtle, smirking satisfaction that you get from knowing that you're wanted.

Ah, but if the girl is your daughter...that's another animal entirely, a different question altogether. There's other explanations close at hand. She's being nice. She's buttering you up for something. She's lonely, in the ordinary sense of things, just wanting you to spend a little time with her. Or maybe she is flirting, but not

really

- it's only something playful, surely, light and jokey, meaningless. Sometimes people do that, after all. And it doesn't really seem her style, honestly, but people also change, from time to time. Perhaps that's all that's going on. You say it to yourself, while the uncertainty inside of you keeps growing larger. And even when the question builds into a crisis, even when you finally confront her, and she spills out a confession close to tears about the dreams she's had of you, the fantasies, your mind still reaches out for an excuse, for some other kind of reason. After all, it can't be true. A girl doesn't feel that way about her dad.

"Daddy?"

It was the touch, more than the word, that pulled him from the inward curve of his reflection. The feeling of her fingers hesitantly settling upon his knee. His daughter's fingers...his gaze refocused, and he looked at her, at hazel eyes that for a moment met his own. Red around their edges, signal of the strength of her emotion. Auburn hair still dampened darker, clinging to her skin, her cheek. Her slender lips were yet a trace apart, as though she were about to add a little more. Instead she only drifted closer, leaning over nearer to his chest, into his features, so haltingly he hardly realized what her intention was in time to hold her back - to raise a hand, and stop the kiss before it happened.

"Sarah..." He spoke it with a tone of quiet admonition, his fingers tight upon her arm. An automatic warning, trailing into silence for his lack of anything to follow it.

He might as well have slapped her. Almost instantly her shoulders slumped beneath the weight of his rejection, her features cracking with a fresh collapse of pain. A glistening of heartbreak blooming in her gaze...and for all of his uncertainty what he should say and do, he knew that this would take a softer touch.

"C'mere." Her fingers clasped beside her neck, lightly tugging her against him as he said it. Gentle - she resisted it, but only for a moment, a beat of aching hesitation. Then she flowed into his arms like water, allowing him to guide her to a chaste and comforting embrace. Her own arms dug fervently behind his back, her chin laid down upon the inner angle of his shoulder as his fingers slipped a little down to softly rub again along her spine, behind her neck, the ritual of childhood he hadn't yet been forced to leave behind. "It's okay." He murmured it, beside her ear. She was so often fragile, easy to be hurt, despite the smiling self-assurance in the manner that she wore. "You're okay."

She sniffled weakly, hugging tighter to his chest. Silent for a beat or two, just breathing quick and deep, until at last she spoke. If you could call it that. "I'm sorry." The words were almost a collapse themselves, a whisper keening from her lips. Repeated once again. "I'm sorry, I just..."

He heard the breath catch in her throat, the knotted cry of thoughts that struggled to be said. "I want it to be real. I do. The things I said. What I read about, I want...god, I want to make you happy, dad. I want to be your little girl, to know that I

belong

to you that way. Completely."

"Sweetheart..." His demurral was a careful thing, a sigh, his hand still resting gently on her back. "That's - you said yourself that it's impossible."

"It

isn't

, though." A burst of feeling strained impassioned from her tongue as she pulled back to look at him, to catch his eye. Plaintive fingers curled at the edges of his shirt. "Not really. Some people do it. Some girls and their dads. I talked to one of them, even, a guy who'd - he'd had that, with his daughter. It

happens

. And we could...I mean, if you wanted anything like that at all, if you've ever thought about me..."

Seconds drifted in this pregnant silence. His jaw held tight, his eyebrows low and troubled. When finally he spoke, it was with a tone of cautious reassurance, deliberately placed. "Sarah, you know I care about you. More than anything."

"Ugh, god, dad. Don't, just - don't." Bitter heartache pulsed inside her little groan, an interruption as she rolled off of his side again, curled tight in her own space upon the couch. Staring at her knees. "You don't have to patronize me. I know it's crazy. All of it. I don't know why I even feel this way. I read about these things, and then I think about how much I love you, how much you mean to me, and it's just like...it's like a fairytale, or like a fantasy, where I

know

it isn't true, but I still wish it were. That things were different, so it could be."

Her lips tugged briefly tighter to a feeble fragment of a smile, self-conscious. Perhaps a grimace. "It's stupid, too. Cause half the things I think about, they aren't even really...they're just stuff we used to do, you know? Or that you used to do, at least. Like reading to me. I wasn't lying, earlier - I really do miss it. And being close to you, beside you. Sleeping next to you. Even having you tell me what to do. Or back the other night, when you carried me upstairs to bed, when you kissed me on the forehead, and you held your hand against my cheek..."

He could almost see the shiver arching faintly up her spine, driven by the recollection. Her fingers twisted into one another in her lap - there was a deeper husk inside her voice as she continued, gently aching. "I know it's just the stuff you did when I was little, that there's nothing...sexual about it. I know that. But it's like it all gets mixed together in my head, that with all the other stuff I've read about. It made me feel so good to

have

that, even just a tiny bit, to feel like I really was your little girl again. Like I can just give myself to you, and you'll protect me, you'll take care of me, because you love me. Because I'm yours. And then the other part of that is where, if you wanted anything from me, you could just - take it, because I'm

yours,

and because a girl is supposed to listen to her daddy. And because you'd punish me for disobeying if I didn't do exactly what you said."

"That's what I was thinking about, yesterday." Murmured, as she shook her head a trace. "With Andrew, when I came home afterward. I guess it's not as innocent, exactly, but it's part of the same thing, I think. The idea that...that you're supposed to be in charge of me, that you'd spank me if I'm bad, or if I don't do what you tell me to." The flush of color on her cheeks had almost started to subside - but it flared up brighter once again as she admitted this. "And it doesn't make a lot of sense, because when I imagine this, I don't really feel like I would ever disobey you in the first place, but..."

"...yeah." Her father finally cut in again, a little dryly. One hand raised up to his face, two fingers touched against his temple as he nursed a shallow smile. "What you're talking about, you understand, it's play-acting, an excuse. It isn't really punishment for anything you've..." His lips pursed inward as he trailed off, a trace of sourness before he sighed and spoke again more gently. "Doesn't matter. Listen, sweetheart. I'm your dad. And there are maybe people in the world who do all kinds of crazy things, but that doesn't mean that what they do is right, or that it's healthy, or that it's even really possible for us. For who

we

are, you understand?"

Quiet lingered for a beat while he reached over, touched a hand against her own. Careful, comforting, the faintest tickle of a distant humor stubbornly persistent in his voice. "But hell, those smaller things...you

are

my little girl, Sarah. Always were and always will be, as far as I'm concerned. I've tried to give you space, as you've been growing up, because I thought you wanted it. I'm pretty sure you did, in fact." A tiny grin crossed brief and crooked through his features, tamped down into tenderness. "But maybe that was a mistake. If you feel like you miss the way things used to be, if you want me to try to dote on you again the way I used to - it doesn't need to have this other kind of baggage you've attached to it, you know? There's nothing wrong with it. You're getting close to being an adult, and you start to miss some of the things of childhood. That's normal, absolutely. It's maybe only if you keep that feeling bottled up that it would start to get these other quirks, be more...questionable." A lifted eyebrow spoke exactly what he meant. "If it would make you happy, princess, I would be glad to tuck you into bed again, or read to you, or give you a little kiss goodnight. And I think that hopefully, that might be all you really need."

It almost felt like it made sense, the way he said it. The thought that all of this was really something simple at its heart, a longing for her childhood comforts, grown twisted and confused without requital. Perhaps. "You'd really do that?" She hardly dared to look at him to answer, glancing upward only from the corner of her eye.

"Of course I would." His hand squeezed briefly tight on hers, warm with its assurance. "Honestly, I'd look forward to the chance to baby you again. A bit. I miss when you were little, too. And if there's something that I would have done when you were five, I don't see any reason why I shouldn't do it now, just because you've grown a little older."

She shook her head at that, a tiny snort of laughter, self-conscious and relieved. "God." It was a couple slowing breaths before she answered him more fully, her lips quirked up with half a joke. "Does that include spankings?" Her voice returning finally to something like its normal tones, shaking off a little of the tangled misery and longing that had taken her before.

His smile was more solid, hearing that. Soft and subtly sincere, despite the awkward question. "We'll see." He answered it just tolerantly; after everything, the last thing that he wanted now was to set her off again. And when the silence lingered for a while, he eventually added in another question. "You okay?"

"...yeah. I'm okay." She uttered wryly after a couple seconds' wait, a breath. "I'm sorry that I...well. Sorry I'm so crazy, I guess."

He chuckled quietly at that, and the sound of it felt somehow more a reassurance than all his careful soothing of before. "Hey, don't be sorry, sweetheart. A little bit of insanity just makes life more interesting. That's how I see it, anyway." Maybe half his standard grin, as well, tugging warm upon his lips before it settled down more serious again. A slightly pained expression as he caught her eye. "Listen, ah. I really hate to run off on you right now, considering, but there is some more work that I have scheduled today, that I'm already late for. Are you going to be all right if I head out?"

"Of course. Yeah." Her voice was somewhat weaker than the words, a little warble from the center of her throat. But she seemed to mean it, all the same. "I'm fine. I'm - I'll be okay. Don't worry about me."

"Mmm. It's my job to worry, though." His fingers squeezed upon her own again as he rose slowly to his feet, a gentle gesture before letting go. For her own part, she hardly moved, just watching as he swiftly slipped the heavy belt of tools around his waist, shrugged his way into the jacket that he wore - and hesitated afterward, one hand upon the door. A shadow of that worry in his gaze before he spoke. "I'll be back tonight, like usual, okay? And, ah. I love you, princess."

It took a beat before she answered that. But he waited dutifully to hear the obvious refrain, the words that cracked a bit as they emerged despite the practice that she'd had in shaping them. "I love you too, dad." And only with the ceremony of that echo spoken did he nod a trace, and smile, and turn the knob to leave.

--

Departing from the scene could hardly clear the morning or its meaning from his mind. It stayed with him at work, a dangerous distraction while he strung and twisted wires through the growing skeleton of an apartment building. Incredible. Unbelievable, almost, despite the plain confession that she'd given him. Whatever confidence he'd worn with her had been hardly more than a façade; he didn't know what caused a thing like that, or what a man in his position was meant to do about it. He hardly even knew the way he really felt about her strange infatuation. Even when he'd started to suspect that something like this might be the cause of her behavior, he hadn't really dwelled for long upon the possibility, hadn't worked himself through all the implications. Whenever it had lingered in his thoughts, he'd always shook his head and told himself he had to be mistaken, that something else was going on. It had to be. Sure, you might make jokes about a woman having 'daddy issues,' seeking out attention that her father didn't give her from any man to cross her path. A younger girl than Sarah might even have a phase of trying out her newfound sexuality, flirting faintly with the male figures she considers 'safe.' Even her own father. Maybe. But what she'd just confessed to him was worlds away from that. Offered fantasies of her submission, that he should see her as a woman to be wanted, to be taken, should treat her as a prize to be possessed...

He'd noticed when she started growing up, of course, back those half a dozen years ago, a decade. It's hardly possible to miss such things. When the girl you know begins to bloom with curves in new locations, when almost overnight she seems to shoot up several feet. When 'boys' loom suddenly far larger in her life, as both a promise and a threat. He'd had to learn to stifle the protective instinct that would rise up stubborn in him when she went out sometimes to parties with "some kids from school," even though she almost always came home when he told her to. Even though he knew her shyness, her reserve. In a way, they only made the situation worse; some young men will leap to take advantage of a girl's diffidence, plying her with drinks and easy compliments to try to dazzle her into an open bed. He'd been guilty of as much himself, back when. And how much harder they would work when she was someone honestly attractive, someone whom their eye would catch upon across the room, instead of only settling when all the better possibilities were gone.

He'd always thought that she was beautiful. Adorable, enchanting as a child, peering outward with her big brown eyes from beneath a mop of messy hair. And just as lovely in the blooming of adulthood, now, a woman settling into her form. She might not have the body of a model or a starlet, but to his eyes, her beauty was no less than theirs. Just different. Subtler, perhaps, a treasure gleaming from the shadows instead of shining in the sun. The legs that stretched up slender there into her modest skirts, the pleasant pinkness of her lips, the finely-crafted figure hinted by the shirts she wore around the house before she went to bed...he wasn't blind enough to miss them, even if he didn't really look.

And yes, if there were someone like her - perhaps it was a notion he could bring himself to contemplate. Some young woman that he knew, some friend of hers who came to him one day confessing dreams like this, who looked at him with that same gaze of pain and pleading, need and hope...he would have been tempted. More than tempted. God knew, it was almost a year since he gotten his relief from anything but his own hand, from videos on the computer. Before that, the scattered evenings he had spent, mediocre interludes with tired women who had largely failed to arouse his lusts. It made his blood stir faster, hotter to imagine that his arms might wrap again around a shapely waist, that he could hold a firm and youthful body tight against his own. That he could indulge again those instincts of desire with a girl something like his daughter, a flower still in bloom.

Like

her, though - not she herself. That was rather the important part of that idea, the caveat that had to hold. It was already vaguely frowned upon to dream of women half your age, even if it was an impropriety that many shared. And he'd admittedly allowed himself a couple glances at the friends that she'd had over, now and then, a moment's fantasy of what he'd like to do if life lacked all restraint. But it was Sarah that had offered this impossibility, not one of them, and his insides, his emotions tugged unsettled at each other, uncertain what he ought to do, or how he truly felt about her whispering confession. Afraid to even look within too deeply, for fear that he might find an answering temptation.

He took the drive back home that day a little longer than was usual. A longer route, a slower pace, watching out the window at the world as it passed. Not quite avoiding the reunion that he knew would be awaiting him, not entirely. Just delaying it a little, facing down the vague, conflicted feeling that itched inside his chest. By the time he pulled into their cracked and oil-spotted driveway, the sky had dimmed already nearly into twilight. It was just a couple moments longer sitting there with the ignition off, gathering his confidence, before he headed out and up the short few steps to the front door, preparing the expected, cheerful greeting for when he stepped inside. "I'm home!"

"Hey, dad."

He wasn't as surprised as perhaps he might have been to hear her answer him immediately, to see her standing over at the couch. An anxious look upon her face, a certain awkward stiffness to her pose that said she'd hurried down on hearing him pull up. She'd done this fairly often recently, met him at the door when he got home, a gesture that he'd thought was sweet of her before, but which now...well. Actually, it still felt rather sweet, to be quite honest. As did the slight, self-conscious half a smile she wore, the hopeful flitting of her hazel eyes into his own. It wasn't all that hard for him to crack a smile himself, let down at least a little of the guard that he'd unconsciously erected on his way back home from work. "Hey there, sweetheart." And after that, as she pushed upward fully to her feet and took a few small steps in his direction...he didn't understand what her intention was at first, the meaning of her slight, abortive gestures. Her palms turned out halfway to face him, lifting up her arms a moment at a time before she let them drop again. Not until it came to mind how he had always used to meet her with a hug when he came home, when she was young, and everything felt suddenly as clear as crystal.