Chapter 1: Daddy's Lap
The living room swam in the sickly, jerking light of the television. Some infomercial mumbled to an empty room, its glow carving jagged shadows out of the worn leather couch.The cushions sagged, defeated, their fabric cracked like dry earth. The air hung thick with the smells of the day gone by: stale beer, the ghost of burnt popcorn, the faint, musky undertone of a body at rest.
Toji Fushiguro slouched into that worn territory, a can of cheap beer sweating in his grip. At forty-three, his body was a map of old violence—corded muscle, scars like forgotten sentences. His green eyes, sharp as broken glass, were fixed on nothing. The quiet of the house was a physical thing, a weight he carried in his shoulders.Then a floorboard creaked.He didn’t turn. He knew the sound of her.
Megumi padded into the periphery of the flickering light, a soft sigh escaping her.She was wearing one of his old shirts. It drowned her, the gray fabric hanging to the middle of her thighs, the collar sliding off one pale shoulder. Her dark blue hair was a messy knot on top of her head. At nineteen, she still moved with a sleep-soft clumsiness that made his chest ache.
“Can’t sleep,” she murmured, her voice thick with the remains of a dream.
“Your own bed’s better,” he said, the words coming out rougher than he intended.He took a swig of beer, the liquid cold and bitter.
“It’s lonely.”
She didn’t wait for an invitation.She never did. She curled onto the couch beside him, a warm press against his side, and before he could shift away, she dropped her head onto his thigh. A sigh of contentment ruffled the thin fabric of his sweatpants.Toji went very still.The can in his hand felt alien.
Her head was a warm, undeniable weight.Through the fabric, he could feel the faint brush of her breath. It was innocent, unconscious.She was just finding a comfortable spot. But every point of contact sparked a dangerous current along his nerves. His free hand hung in the air for a moment, then, driven by a habit older than her, he let it come to rest on her head. His fingers, thick and calloused, sank into the messy bun.Her hair was soft.
She shifted, nuzzling against his leg. “Your hand’s cold, Daddy.”
The word, so casual from her lips, landed like a blow.He swallowed. His fingers flexed, twining deeper into her hair, almost against his own will. It was a possessive gesture, one that shamed him even as the heat of her scalp burned into his palm.
“Then move,” he grunted, but he didn’t push her.He couldn’t.
“M’comfortable.”
Her movement was catastrophic.As she settled, her cheek pressed firmly against the inside of his thigh. Her exhale washed, hot and damp, directly over the growing tightness in his sweatpants. A jolt, white-hot and horrifying, shot through him. He felt himself hardening, a traitorous, visceral response that flooded him with self-loathing.
He was rock solid, aching, pressed against the seam of his pants just inches from her oblivious face.
His grip in her hair tightened, a reflex of pure tension. The contrast was obscene: his brutal hand tangled in her innocence, his body betraying him in the most fundamental way.He looked down. The collar of his shirt gaped around her, revealing the sweeping curve of her breast, pale and heavy.Just like he liked them. The thought slammed into him, unbidden and filthy.This was his child. His sweet, clumsy, trustful girl who still sometimes cried when she skinned her knee.
“Megumi,” he said, his voice a strained rasp.
“Hmm?” She tilted her head back, her large blue-gray eyes blinking up at him. They were clear, trusting, still half-lost in a world where Daddy was just safety.Her lips were parted slightly.
From this angle, he could see everything.The shirt had ridden up. There was no hint of underwear, just the smooth, bare skin of her inner thighs, the shadowed dip where they met. She was completely bare under his clothes.A war raged inside his skull. The urge to haul her up, to press his mouth to that soft throat, to claim that trusting mouth with his own—it was a dark, roaring tide. The urge to lift her off him, to retreat to the bathroom and take this disgusting ache in his own fist until the shame washed him clean—it was just as strong.
His control was a thin wire, singing.He acted on neither. His hand, still buried in her hair, began to move.It was slow, rhythmical.A father soothing his daughter to sleep. But the feel of her, the heat, the sheer fucking proximity, turned the gesture into something else. A claiming.A simulation.His thumb stroked the shell of her ear.
“You should go back to bed,” he whispered, each word an effort.
“In a minute.” She closed her eyes, a small smile touching her lips.“This is nice.I missed you today.”
He was dying. The pressure against his fly was unbearable, a throbbing, explicit demand. He imagined, for a split second, guiding her hand.Showing her. Letting her small, soft fingers wrap around where only his own rough hand had been. The image was so vivid, so devastatingly wanted and reviled, that he jerked his own hand away from her hair as if burned.
The sudden movement made her eyes flutter open.“Daddy?”
He stood up, dislodging her. She made a soft sound of protest, sprawling on the couch where he’d been. He kept his back to her, staring blindly at the frantic, silent television. He adjusted himself roughly through the fabric, a quick, angry tug that was no relief at all.“Bed. Now.” The command was pure gravel.He heard the rustle as she sat up.Felt her confused gaze on his back. The shame was a acid bath, scouring him from the inside. He had to get out of this room.He had to put walls between them before the wire snapped.
“Okay,” she said softly, hurt tinting the word.“Goodnight.”
He didn’t reply.He couldn’t. He listened to the whisper of her bare feet on the floorboards, heading down the hall. Only when he heard the faint click of her bedroom door did he let out the breath he was holding. It shuddered from him, ragged and torn.
The living room was empty again, just him and the flickering shadows.But the air was different now.Charged.Ruined. The ghost of her warmth was still on his thigh, the imprint of her head a brand.
He looked down at his own hands, the tools of a lifetime of violence. They were trembling.