Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/12598516.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Underage
  Category:
      F/M
  Fandom:
      Shingeki_no_Kyojin_|_Attack_on_Titan
  Relationship:
      Nanaba/Mike_Zacharias
  Character:
      Mike_Zacharias, Nanaba_(Shingeki_no_Kyojin), Lynne_(Shingeki_no_Kyojin),
      Nile_Dok, Rene_(Shingeki_no_Kyojin), Gelgar_(Shingeki_no_Kyojin), Hange
      Zoë
  Additional Tags:
      Alternate_Universe_-_Modern_Setting, Loss_of_Parent(s), Orphan_Nanaba,
      Godfather_Mike, Abuse_of_Authority, Manipulation, Emotional_Manipulation,
      Domestic_Violence, Ephebophilia, Menstruation, Puberty, Panic_Attacks,
      Adolescent_Sexuality, Teenage_Drama, Loneliness, Military_Background,
      Post-Traumatic_Stress_Disorder_-_PTSD, Burns, Teasing, First_Kiss,
      Underage_Kissing, Loss_of_Virginity, Cunnilingus, Fingerfucking,
      Statutory_Rape, Spanking, Brief_Mentions_of_Porn, Biting,
      Overstimulation, Light_daddy_kink, Heavy_Angst
  Stats:
      Published: 2017-11-02 Completed: 2018-02-27 Chapters: 4/4 Words: 29404
****** godfather ******
by eruriotica_(minxiebutt)
Summary
     Nanaba had seen pictures of Mike Zacharias in her parents’ photo
     albums, but she'd never seen him in person. Her newborn christening-
     - where he had taken the oath as godfather to lead and guide her
     spiritually according to the Catholic church-- didn’t count. She
     wanted to ask, if he'd been best friends with her father, why he’d
     never come around. Instead, she’d kept quiet and nodded and watched
     the caskets descend.
***** love, in, falling *****
Chapter Summary
     Fall upon your knees saying
     "This is my body and soul here"
     Fall and begging, pleading
     "You’ve got the power and control"
     listen
“You were Dad’s best man at his wedding,” was the first thing she said to him.
 
“I was. I was his best friend,” was what he said back.
 
Nanaba had seen pictures of Mike Zacharias in her parents’ photo albums, but
she'd never seen him in person. Her newborn christening-- where he had taken
the oath as godfather to lead and guide her spiritually according to the
Catholic church-- didn’t count. She wanted to ask, if he'd been best friends
with her father, why he’d never come around. Instead, she’d kept quiet and
nodded and watched the caskets descend.
 
The lawyers had taken her wishes into consideration, whether she wanted to live
with Mike Zacharias or her current foster family, and she’d chosen him, because
it felt like holding on to the last piece of her father. The role of godfather
bore no legal binding between herself and Mike, but Mike had initially
expressed the willingness to take her on. In a time like that, fresh grief and
loneliness and uncertainty, his choice had made her feel wanted.
 
Moving in with Mike is a quiet affair. He comes to the foster home early in the
morning and picks her up, and then they drive to her old house to get some more
of her stuff. Her dad had originally left everything to her mom, and his backup
plan, should her mom not be around, meant everything would be taken over by
Mike. Little did her parents know, on that rainy night last month, that her
dad’s old and outdated will would be dug up and utilised, that Mike would deal
with everything including now raising Nanaba.
 
Mike lives in a small shack-like house out in the countryside, with two
bedrooms and a bathroom at the end of the hallway between them. He brings in
her suitcase and then he leaves her alone in her new room. There are dogs
everywhere but it's not a very messy kind of dogs everywhere, more like that
there's always a few around no matter where in the house she wanders off to.
They seem always eager for attention, and as if by magic, they suck the bad
thoughts from her head with their curious tongues and soft fur.
 
The heaters wrap around her room at the baseboards. She has blinds over her
windows covered with dark blue, threadbare curtains. There is a dresser that
sits along under the window, three drawers on each side of it. Her new bed is
tiny but the frame looks really nice. It's real wood with little carvings of
ivy, like an antique. The mattress is bare but a set of plain green bedding
sits folded on the foot of the bed. The headboard sits on the wall shared with
the bathroom. The closet is right across from the window. It's filled with bare
hangers. Everything feels so suddenly hollow and pointless now that the
transition is complete, and she curls up on the mattress just the way it is and
cries.
 
Mike knocks on her door later, and she expects him to just enter like her mom
does--did,but he waits and eventually knocks again.
 
“Come in?” She says in uncertainty.
 
Mike cracks the door enough to lean his head in. “Do you like pizza?”
 
She frowns. “Yeah, who doesn't?”
 
Mike chuckles once through his nose and she feels sourly mocked by it. He
doesn't say anything mean, like she thinks he might, only wants to know,
“Pepperoni or anchovy?”
 
“Anchovy,” she says without hesitation.
 
“Yeah,” Mike says, then more to himself, "You're his kid, alright.”
 
They watch television and eat pizza and drink soda in awkward silence for an
hour until Nanaba falls asleep on the sofa. She wakes up on her bed with a
golden retriever lying in the floor nearest her later that afternoon-- she
hasn't been carried since she was a small child, but she thinks to herself that
it's sort of nice.

.

This is her last month of junior high, so she will be allowed to complete the
school year before starting at the county high school in September. The bus
picks her up on the main road about a mile from the house. Mike drops her off
at the bus stop on Monday morning and promises to be there when she gets back
from school.
 
He's not.
 
So she spends a couple hours sitting on the porch doing homework, and when Mike
finally shows up, her stomach is growling. He offers a stunted apology but she
shrugs, "At least you came back.”
 
The words are out of her mouth before she can think of, and they stop Mike in
his tracks.
 
It's the next afternoon that he gives her both a key to the front door and a
cellphone with his information already set as a contact.
 
“I’m sorry I didn't think of that, guess I'm out of touch,” he tells her
quietly.
 
“It's fine,” she tells him and takes the offered items.

.

“That's your dad?” The brunette asks Nanaba and she frowns, looks over at Mike
as he gets out of his truck to collect her from practice.
 
“Oh, no. My real parents are dead. He's my godfather.”
 
The brunette looks at her like she's grown a third eyeball between the two she
already has, exclaiming, “Aren't you afraid?!”
 
Nanaba leans back from this girl and shakes her head slowly, thinking of how
often she falls asleep in the sofa and wakes up tucked into bed, pushing that
aside quickly.
 
“OMG,” she says every letter instead of the words they stand for, “that's the
guy that was in the Marines. My dad says he went crazy in the war and that's
why he lives alone in the woods. Like a crazy person.”
 
It's curiosity that keeps Nanaba from bristling at the brunette's words. “What
do you mean?”
 
“Wow,” the brunette drawls, like Nanaba’s stupid for not knowing already, but
she leans in to give Nanaba answers as quickly as possible before Mike is
within earshot. “Like, he was apparently the only survivor of some big mission
that killed a bunch of terrorists and when he came back he had like super bad
PTSD and he had to retire or whatever and like now he has a bunch of dogs and
lives alone in the middle of nowhere because he's crazy.”
 
The girl gasps for breath as soon as she's done speaking, but Mike is close
enough to scare her away by then, so she waves goodbye and darts out back up
into the bleachers.
 
“Ready to go?” He asks her, reaching out to take the strap of her sports bag
and slinging it over his own shoulder.
 
Nanaba looks over her shoulder at the brunette and waves, but the girl turns
around quickly at being caught watching.
 
“Yeah,” she sighs out. “I am.”
 
Only when they get back in the truck does Mike say, “Make a new friend?”
 
“I guess not. She didn't tell me her name.”
 
“Ask her next time,” he tells her reassuringly with a strange upturn of his
lips, not quite a smile. In that moment, Nana tries to imagine him killing
people, tries to think of a reason that she might have to be afraid, but
nothing comes to mind.
 
.

She observes him closely over the next week. Every morning, before she really
wakes up, he goes out with all of the dogs, and she watches from her bedroom
window, peeking between the blinds, as they dart off further into the vast
expanse of the property. About an hour later, they return, the dogs’ tongues
all flopping quickly with their panting and Mike looking just as exhausted. As
hairy as he is, it's easy to imagine him as a werewolf leading his pack on a
run. If he was really a Marine, then he’s used to exercising a lot, and she
doesn't see this activity as unusual.
 
Spring is coming in slowly this year, as her dad would say, and it keeps them
both wrapped up in sweatshirts and cozy pants, but sometimes when they're
watching television late at night, Mike will stretch out on the sofa and she'll
get a glimpse of what lies beneath his clothing. One time, as he shifts during
a commercial break, his top rides up and exposes the planes low on his flat
abdomen. Thick, dark hair is all there is to be seen before his large hand is
grasping fabric to cover himself again.
 
Showing emotion doesn't seem to be a priority to him but more often than not,
he smiles when he first sees Nanaba after school in the afternoons. Otherwise,
he's so serious looking. But whenever his attention is on her, she has all of
it, and nothing about his attention feels threatening or malicious. She
dismisses the brunette's gossip.

.

“Do you want to sell the house?”
 
Nanaba shrugs, picks through her spaghetti and twirls her fork. Dinner had been
silent until now. “Aren't you the one who decides that?”
 
Mike lays his hand on the table within her line of sight, palm up, to get her
attention and she looks at his face, not his eyes. “It was your house, you're
mature enough to help decide.”
 
There's a thrill that he says this to her, this acknowledgement makes her have
to hide a smile between tucked lips. She only looks down, shrugs again.
Blushes.

.

She cries when her first period comes. Physically, it is painless, but it
reminds her of the talk her mother gave her only a few months ago, and it hurts
her in a way she can't describe.
 
Nanaba gets out of bed and goes straight to the bathroom and into the shower.
Over the running water, she hears a knock on the door; it goes unacknowledged.
After she rinses thoroughly, she gets out, dries off, dresses, and slinks back
to her room, finding the light on and her bed stripped.
 
Even though her door is open, Mike knocks and waits permission before entering
again. He's rustled with sleep, wearing maroon sweatpants, and a black t-shirt
that says USMCon the front in blocky, well-faded red letters. His toes peek out
at her and she's distracted by them, realising she's never seen them until now.
His bluntness makes it awkward for her when he asks, “Do you have what you need
for your period?”
 
Nanaba can feel the blood rushing into her cheeks, but the answer is that she's
wholly unprepared for this, so she shakes her head, looking anywhere but him.
“It’s my first.”
 
The only place open in the middle of the night is the CVS halfway to the high
school. When they enter, Mike grabs a handcart and leads her to the correct
aisle. He explains each of the products to her with clinical expertise and she
stands there, blushing down to her toes, nodding and focusing as best as she
can. He gets her one of each different product available, tells her that it's
best to find what she likes. He doesn't act like she's gross or dirty or that
what's happening is something to be ashamed of. Still, the whole experience is
embarrassing for her, and as soon as they're out of the store, she apologises.
 
“Sorry you have to deal with this,” she says, trying to make a joke of it like
all the boys at school do. Right after spring break, a girl started her period
during gym class and subsequently bloomed red through her shorts, and the boys
still call her ‘ bloody Mary’ even now.
 
Mike doesn't pick up on her jest. “Why would you be sorry? It's necessary. Part
of becoming a woman.”
 
Nanaba snaps her mouth shut and looks down at her feet as she walks. She hated
that phrase from her parents when they told her about the bird and the bees and
menstruation, but from Mike, it's weirdly… tolerable.

.

The gossipy brunette is named Lynne Dok. Her parents just bought a nice
countryside estate and she'll be going to the county high school with Nanaba in
the autumn, and she tells Nanaba this on the last day of the school year.
 
“It will be nice not to be the only new kid there,” Nanaba says kindly.
 
“Yeah, whatever,” Lynne agrees, not entirely malicious, just brash. “Hey, are
you staying for the school fair tonight or what?”
 
“Uhh.” Nanaba is aware of the fair happening on the football field, game stands
with prizes and the promise of fried foods, but she'd much rather sit on the
sofa with Mike watching television… but it feels like Lynne is inviting her, so
she says, “Let me call Mike.”
 
Lynne rolls her eyes. “Really, permission? Aren’t you like fourteen?”
 
“Not until the end of this month,” Nanaba says, feeling a little inferior by
it. She’s always one of the youngest people in her classes. Digging her mobile
from her pocket, she steps off to the side and calls Mike, but it goes to
voicemail after a minute. He’s probably driving.
 
“He didn’t answer?” Lynne grabs Nanaba’s wrist and tugs it. “Come on, then,
let’s go.”
 
Nanaba stands still as Lynne moves away, and her wrist falls from the
brunette’s grip that way. “I didn’t ask, I shouldn't go.”
 
“OMG,” her new friend huffs in exasperation. “It’s just a stupid school thing.
It’s not like we’re doing drugs or having sex.”
 
“Nanaba,” the call comes from behind her, a gentle calling of her name without
any negative inflection, but Lynne’s words make her jump and turn around like
she’s guilty. Mike is climbing from his truck. “You ready?”
 
“Actually,” Lynne interjects, “there’s a fair tonight and she’s going with me.”
 
Mike does not take his eyes from Nanaba as Lynne speaks, and she thinks he
didn’t hear it at all until he asks her pointedly, “Do you want to go, Nanaba?”
 
Nanaba freezes, put on the spot like that, a deer in the headlights. She looks
to Lynne then back at Mike. “Ah, I guess so-- if that’s okay.”
 
“Of course.” Mike climbs all the way from his truck and shuts the door. “I’ll
be around. Just find me when you’re ready to go.”
 
“Yeah, okay,” Lynne answers for both of them, taking Nanaba’s upper arm in a
punishing grip and practically dragging her off.
 
The fair is fun, but Nanaba can’t stop looking around for Mike, hoping to see
him in the gathering crowd of parents sitting in the football field bleachers.
And somehow, just when she's done mingling with all the people and noise, she
spots him for the first time.
 
“I'm leaving,” she tells Lynne, who dismisses her with a wave of her hand.
“I’ll… text you.”
 
“Yeah, you have my number, okay,” Lynne says with a sad smile. “If you ever
feel like something bad is going to happen… call the police, okay?”
 
Nanaba blanks on anything to say, taken off guard, and in the end stays silent
before turning and leaving the beanbag-toss game.
 
Mike sees her approach and doesn't ask the obvious, something she appreciates
after Lynne’s comment. They walk to the parking lot, the distance between their
bodies a conscious effort on Nanaba’s part, feeling too aware, too afraid that
everyone thinks Mike is a crazy person, that everyone is looking at them,
thinks she's in trouble.
 
It must really get deep in her brain, because when she falls asleep on the sofa
that night, she jerks awake at the shuffling of Mike picking her up. The
television is turned off and so are most of the lights throughout the house,
the hallway light being the only one left now. It illuminates Mike from behind
but she can make out the worried expression on his face, something
understandable as she’s never woken up in all the times he’s moved her.
 
One of his strong arms is already hooked below her knees, and the other behind
her shoulders, pulling her into his chest but not yet holding her weight. It’s
the closest she’s ever been to him, the first time she can ever remember them
touching.
 
“Hey,” he whispers, then shushes her. “Shhh. You're safe. I wouldn't hurt you.”
 
Nanaba nods dumbly, and then Mike is lifting her, swinging her around to carry
her down the hallway and to her bedroom. Her covers have already been turned
back so Mike lays her down without preamble. Light from the hallway barely
makes it through her doorway.
 
“Thank you,” she whispers, quiet only because she does not want to spoil the
sleepiness settling over the house. Three german shepherds are nestled happily
on the foot of her bed already.
 
Mike pushes her bangs back with a single stroke of his calloused hand, and then
he leans forward and kisses her newly exposed forehead. “Goodnight, Nanaba
Rose.”
 
Her eyes widen as something inside of her tightens pleasurably, but then Mike
is pulling the covers up high on her chin, tucking her in. When she’s alone,
she lets out a breath that she didn't realise she held.

.

Sleep evades her after being woken up, so when the house falls quiet and the
hallway light gets turned out, she gets up for a glass of water. Not even the
floorboards give her away but she moves slowly, quietly nonetheless. Closer to
the living room, she can see the telltale flashing lights of the television,
but there’s no accompanying sound.
 
Curious, feeling a little devious for being out of bed after being tucked in,
she carefully looks around the corner at the television. What she sees
registers in her brain and makes her snap back into the safety of the hallway.
Heat rises in her cheeks and she darts back down the hallway, slams her door
shut loudly enough to be heard throughout the whole house.
 
She feels so stupid for not thinking that Mike would do something like this,
and she feels even more stupid for the bright flare of envy that she sweeps
under the rug in her mind. Mike is a man.Very much a man. Under the safety of
her bedcovers, she imagines him, the arms blanketed in fine hairs, arms like
steel cables covered with skin. And his legs, from what she sees if she catches
him wearing shorts for his morning run, are also laden with thick, blonde
fluff. Mike keeps his hair in a decently neat undercut, and he’s modestly
bearded. It’s trimmed and kept short, but full across his face and neck and it
looks like it would be baby-soft to touch. He’ll move, sometimes, and all of
his muscles will jump to attention, like when he’s got to pick up one of the
dogs and move them. Sometimes, then too, his shirt will get caught and she can
peek at his abdomen in its carved glory, or spy the dipping valleys of his
back.
 
She’s not going to admit that he’s handsome, absolutely not. Not even as her
fingers make a curious trek over her skin while she imagines his body in her
mind. Briefly, her hand skims down between her legs to the light smattering of
curls, strokes a finger over her sex a few unarousing times, and then she rolls
over and goes to sleep.

.

Neither of them speak of it the next day, but they both know that Nanaba saw
Mike watching porn. Within a week, the incident is less embarrassing for both
of them and they settle into a routine for Nanaba’s summer break. Without
school, Mike gives her a few extra chores to keep her busy while he goes into
the city for around six hours, some days even twelve hours, other days, not at
all. He’s a welder, she learns. His specific type of work is based on demand.
On those long days, when it’s obvious that he won’t be home in the early
afternoon, she puts on a jacket and wanders his property alone.
 
It’s big. That’s all she knows. It was a month or so ago, he showed her an
aerial view with a neat red line drawn to mark his land where it borders his
distant neighbours. She’s never come to the cattle wire perimeter, not yet. She
wants to find it, if she has a day that’s long enough, wants to head straight
from the house and find the fencing and follow it around the entire way, one
big loop that takes her back home.

.

After a few weeks running around Mike’s property from midday to sundown, she
still doesn’t have the lay-out memorised, and she regrets it the evening that
an unexpected thunderstorm rolls through. She can’t call Mike because her
mobile is at home on the kitchen counter, but apparently she doesn’t have to.
Echoing dog barking alerts her to the homestead rescue team over the sound of
thunder and rain.
 
The saint bernard finds her first, taking his time prancing up to her, his wet
fur flopping heavily underneath his body, and the three german shepherds are
right on his haunches, pouncing on her where she sits under a half-toppled
tree. The rest of the dogs arrive on Mike’s heels. She’s happy to see him but
he looks frustrated.
 
“Godammit, Nanaba,” he swears, kneeling beside her and pressing the back of his
hand to her forehead. She suddenly remembers the night he tucked her in. “Do
you know how far out here you are?”
 
He scoops her up like it’s nothing and puts her on her feet. “You’re going to
hold on to me,” he orders sternly, leaving no room for disagreement. He
piggybacks her to get her out of the brush, to where his truck sits running,
headlights beaming. He must have followed the dogs this far. The pack jump the
tailgate as Mike all but tosses her inside the cab of the truck, and when all
his dogs are secure, he closes the tail and gets back in. The drive is easy for
him, he knows his land. She's too dizzy and sleepy to pay attention.
 
He doesn’t say anything to her the entire way, but she has a feeling he wants
to throttle her for getting lost in the woods on today of all days. But even
when she thinks that he’s mad at her, that he might yell at her or ground her,
she’s not afraid of him; she knows, innately, that he’s not going to hurt her,
because if he’d really wanted to, he would have done it by now. The bumpy truck
ride warms her up and her thoughts slowly stop echoing in her brain.
 
“You’re going to help dry these dogs,” he tells her as they park in front of
the house. “Then you’ll get a hot bath and dinner, and you won't come out of
your room until I tell you.”
 
That’s exactly how the night goes. Morning of the next day comes and goes
before she stirs, and she wakes in the afternoon feeling strangely suspended
between frozen to death and boiled alive. Next to her side lays the saint
bernard, and he chuffs at her before scrabbling off her bed, out of her room,
and down the hallway, returns a few minutes later with Mike just as Nanaba is
slipping into a feverish dream. Something is chasing her through her old house,
she can feel it about to trample her.
 
She jolts back into consciousness with a sharp cry of perceived pain from her
dream, expecting to be in her old bedroom but no, she's at Mike’s, that much is
reality. Mike is saying something to her but it can't cut through the ringing
fear in her head-- the sounds of his words reverberate off the walls of her
skull and run out of steam before comprehension can make anything of them.
 
And he's so close, leaning over her like this in concern, and all she can think
about is the night he carried her to bed and kissed her forehead and called her
by her first and middle names.
 
“Kiss me,” she whispers suddenly, still idiotic and sleep-hazy, so overcome by
too many things that she can't name.
 
Mike doesn't move back from her or look disgusted by her, maybe just the
opposite. He comes closer, enough for her to feel the heat of his exhales and
something new and tight evolves within her, makes her want to be touched, to be
kissed. With a serious gaze, he watches her, and she feels cut open by his
eyes, but she wants that, wants him to open her up and explain what this
madness is in her blood and in her brain.
 
“Kiss you,” Mike croons, one of his hands pushing her bangs back and he's so
close, he's right there and her heart hammers out of her chest with
anticipation, and then he's closing the distance between them and she's too
stunned to react. His mouth, open and hot and wet, ghosts over hers like a
phantom, before he pecks at the corner of her mouth. Nanaba lays back in
disbelief because she asked for it and he gave it to her, he gave it to her.
 
There's an upturn in his lips and then he's kissing her again, for real this
time, like she sees the other teenagers at school do when no teachers are
around. She's desperate to meet his effort, but he makes no rush of their
kisses. Hot and sweet at first, and then one of his hands is cradling the back
of her head, lifting her toward him as he enjoys her mouth. Every time she
surges to meet him, to reciprocate, he nips her and it stings as it teaches her
to be still and lethim.
 
“You're so beautiful,” he murmurs into her cheek before kissing it, too. “The
first time I saw you, you were beautiful.”
 
“Really?” She asks quietly, feeling that pleasurable tightening once again.
 
“Yes,” he breathes like it overwhelms him and he kisses her again, forces her
mouth open this time and steals the breath right from her lungs. She wilts
under him, surrendering to him because it feels good, kissing him feels so
good, she doesn't want this to stop.
 
His beard feels so good on the sensitive skin under her jaw and he nuzzles her
like he’s burrowing into her skin before he drags a fair chunk between his
teeth and bites. There’s a screaming moan held hostage in her body as he pulls
at her skin relentlessly, growling, the bulk of him nearly overbearing. Her
stomach flips around, caught in that sweet tightening as it squeezes down on
her and then-- it eases and makes her see clouds of shimmering gold, makes her
release a weak, warbling moan. And then suddenly he lets go, he is licking her
abused flesh, praising her, “Good girl, good girl.”
 
She feels so loose, so tired, so good and Mike is looking down at her with a
satisfied smirk. Unable to form the question, to ask him what happened, he says
for her, “That’s all it takes for you to cum… good girl.”
 
Horror settles over her and she covers her face, rolls sideways under his
weight to hide her shame. Mike chuckles and pries her hands back, gently kisses
the welt. In sex education, they had called it ‘orgasm’ but Mike’s word for it
is so much better, makes her feel even hotter.
 
“You should be proud,” he murmurs. “You’re becoming a woman, Nanaba Rose.”
 
She nods but she can’t look at him, not while blushing this badly. With one
more gentle, parting kiss, Mike leaves and tells her to come out whenever she’s
ready.

.

“Are you upset?” They’re on the couch, awake way too late that night.
 
Nanaba looks across the empty space between them, not quite meeting his eyes,
and shakes her head. She’s still so embarrassed, though she feels unsatisfied,
wants to do their kissing all over again.
 
“C’mere,” he orders and she meets his eyes then. They’re soft, unthreatening.
She takes the chance and slides between his legs, hoping she looks good doing
it, lays on his chest and tucks the top of her head under his chin. Strong arms
immediately cage her. One of his massive legs rides up between her smaller
ones, bent at the knee, a perch.
 
The heartbeat inside her chest hammers, makes the welt throb. Seeing that mark
on her neck in the mirror had spurred confliction. One part of her was proud of
it like Mike told her to be, but the louder part of her reminded her the
situation. She’s only almost fourteen and Mike is over twenty years older than
her… and he thinks she’s beautiful even with her boyish body; she doesn’t even
wear a bra yet. And he wants her, anyway.
 
But… this is supposed to be wrong. How can it be, though? He makes her feel
special and wanted, her tells her how mature she is for her age. He respects
her in ways that the boys her age don’t. Something that feels right cannot be
wrong. And they’re laying here together and he’s not touching her like earlier,
he's not a predator… they’re just together watching television innocently. No,
she decides. It can’t be wrong. This must be fine. If there were something
really bad about her being with Mike, then she would feel like she’s in danger,
and she doesn’t. She feels so overwhelmingly safe, remembers the way he sounded
when he whispered, “I wouldn’t hurt you.”
 
She trusts him.

.

sleepover @ mine? Lynne sends while Mike is running with the dogs. She came out
of her bedroom to find a box of Lucky Charms with a balloon taped to it, ‘happy
birthday’ written in permanent marker. Nanaba eats a bowl of cereal sitting on
the kitchen counter.
 
Let me ask.
 
OMG U R 14 NOW!!
 
Nanaba rolls her eyes and types out k. text later.
 
It’s not the first thing she asks when Mike gets back. He spares her a tired
glance in his way through the house, but she’s too busy looking at the way his
hair lays plastered to his forehead with sweat, the same on his arms and legs.
Wet spots soak his shirt down his chest and under his arms.
 
The dogs all flop down as soon as they get into the house, creating a maze of
panting bodies when Nanaba goes to take the trash out to the bin, after washing
her spoon and bowl. When she comes back inside, Mike is standing at the kitchen
sink, only part way dressed; his jeans are on, his shirt is over his head but
left sitting around his neck like a scarf instead of pulled down. Under his
left shoulder, the skin is blotchy and raised, as if it had once been bubbles.
She's not aware of her stare until Mike says, “Touch it.”
 
“What is it?” She asks, watching the floor to navigate the furry, heaving
bodies.
 
“Burns,” is all the explanation she receives but she's not eager for more. Up
close, she can see how mottled the skin is, shiny and stretched-looking,
silvery in some places, brown in others. No hair grows there, and as she
follows the burn’s trail that wraps around his ribs, she finds it extends over
part of his nipple, now a mangled remain.
 
She can't understand then, his occupation, and she asks him why he chose it.
 
“That fire I could not control.” Mike puts his glass down and pushes his arms
through his shirt sleeves, tugs it down. “When I weld, I'm in control of it,
making it useful.”
 
Nanaba doesn't understand. If she'd been burned like that-- just the memory of
stray wrists in hot skillets makes her wince-- she would never want to see
another flame in her life. And Mike is a professional welder now, it's
baffling.
 
“Lynne Dok wants to have a sleepover,” she says. “I want to go. Is that okay?”
 
“Of course, I will drop you off.” But there's something disappointed in his
tone. For an instant, she wants to take her request back and ask Mike what he
wants to do today instead, but her mobile chirps loudly on be counter. Mike
picks it up and reads the message awaiting in the lock screen. With a faint
chuckle, he asks, “Spoiled little kid, isn't she?”
 
WELL??? sits there, demanding attention. It seems so immature to Nanaba,
especially considering Lynne will turn fifteen when the school year starts.
Mike is right, Nanaba is mature for her age, and she grins as she types back
yeah what time?

.

Mike has to pick Nanaba up sometime near midnight. She sits on the Dok’s front
porch with her knees to her chest in a rocking chair, a sniffling mess. Mrs Dok
keeps trying to check on her and soothe her, to apologise for Lynne’s upsetting
words, and Nanaba accepts the kindness because it's expected for her to do so.
 
Both of Lynne’s parents come out into the porch when Mike pulls up in their
driveway; they're filling the still night air with tension and stress. Nanaba
stays where she's at.
 
Mike’s eyes are in her as he approaches, but he stops to speak with the Doks
first. “Nile, Renee, everything alright? Nanaba sounded upset when she called.”
 
She smushes her face into the bony tops of her knees in frustration at him
being so polite. When she had stormed out here ten minutes ago, she had been
crying and nearly incoherent until Mike had calmed her enough to make her ask
for him to pick her up in a shaky voice. Right now, she just wants him to
defend her, to defend himself, and instead he's acting like this is no big
deal.
 
The Doks recount their daughter’s crass words in a repentant monologue, and
Mike only nods calmly, understandingly, and when he's done talking, he walks
across the porch to Nanaba and stands in front of her until she cranes her neck
to meet his gaze.
 
“Ready to go home?”
 
She nods.
 
“Thank Mr and Mrs Dok for their hospitality.”
 
Nanaba balks at that, but she just wants to go home, so she says thank you and
stands there while Mrs Dok gives her an annoyingly tight hug.
 
In the truck, she lets the hot angry tears wash over her cheeks; Mike leaves
her to her emotion storm and that only makes it stir. They're home and on the
sofa when she finally snaps, “Why didn't you stand up for me?”
 
Mike looks at her from the corner of his eye. “I did.”
 
“All you did was stand there, like my feelings don't matter!”
 
“I don't have the same benefit for losing my composure as other people,
Nanaba.”
 
“Why? Huh?” She feels so out of control of herself that she can't stop the rush
of words. “Is it because you were in the Marines and now you're crazy? So you
have to just let people say whatever they want about you now? Lynne said she
wouldn't come to my funeral if you killed me and ate me!”
 
“Lynne is a child!” Mike bellows, the sound shaking her eardrums and making
several of the dogs jump up anxiously. He presses his fingers to the bridge of
his nose, closing his eyes on a deep inhale before he says, quietly, “Lynne
says ridiculous things because she is a kid, Nanaba. You're better than she is.
You have to be the bigger person here.”
 
“That's not fair!” Nanaba screams at him, can’t stop herself, can’t stop the
way everything narrows down to her emotions. “She's a fucking bitch and you
should have stood up for me!”
 
The dam of his self-control splits and she sees the way his own anger floods
his brain, the way it twists his face into an unrecognisable snarl. The
backhand sends her from the sofa to the floor. As she collects herself in
shock, Mike says nothing.
 
When she rolls onto her bottom and sits up, holding her cheek and tears
blurring her vision, Mike says slowly, “I can't lose my composure around other
adults. One wrong move and you'll be right back in foster care. I can't lose
you, Nanaba Rose, not now. I have to protect you.”
 
“I…,” she tries, and though it feels like she can't say it, she wants to try,
“I’m….” A sob chokes her, then another and another, and Mike stays nearby,
silent and uncomforting, while she cries at the unfairness of it all.

.

For breakfast, he makes her a stack of pancakes, ‘sorry’ written in frilly
whipped cream on the top. There's no appetite in her, but she eats them anyway
while Mike explains himself.
 
“Nile-- Mr Dok, was friends with your dad and me growing up,” he starts, then
tells her about the rift that separated them in high school, and eventually
college. All three of them promised to become officers in the Marine Corps
together, but when the other two found women to settle down with early on, only
Mike stuck to the plan. He wanted to stay in touch with them, but there was too
much difference between them all, and every time he came home, they seemed
further apart.
 
“Your christening was the last time I came back until….” Absentmindedly, he
scratches the shoulder where the skin is burned. “I got medically discharged,
couldn't serve anymore. And I got here and your dad had fallen out with Nile
so… I kept to myself.”
 
“Why didn't you come around?” Nanaba pushes pieces of her food around in her
plate. She wishes she could have known him before her parents died, could have
discovered a relationship with him back then… but she knows anything that may
have formed between them would not be like it is now. The thought is double-
sided. “You're in the family photo albums.”
 
“Didn't want to be a bother.” Mike shifts like it pains him to admit so much.
“He made good for himself, I didn’t wanna ruin that, too.”

.

Lynne’s apology comes a few days later as Nanaba is picking up after the dogs,
asking if she wants to go to watch fireworks for the fourth of July. Mike
declines, and Nanaba doesn’t press on the issue even though she doesn’t
understand why. But he drops her off and promises that he’s only a phone call
away. It’s awkward at first, but Lynne buys her a snow cone for remedy. Nanaba
remembers how it hurt Mike to tell her about the distance between himself and
her dad and Mr Dok, so she figures being friends with Lynne is one way to be
the bigger person.

.

“I’ve got something to show you,” Mike had said that afternoon, and so he took
her out into the property, to a workshed she’d seen several times in her
wanderings. It’s not very far from the house, but easy to miss, with a close
nestling of trees protecting it.
 
“This is what I wanted to show you,” he says now, unlocking the door and
holding it open for her to enter first. The space is neat and clean, and it’s
not any present hazard that makes her stop in her tracks, it’s what she sees.
 
“Don’t be shy,” he urges, moving in next to her, but she feels a little too
terrified to do anything except stuff her face into his chest. One hand comes
to cradle the back of her head, the other splayed out on her lower back.
“What?”
 
Nanaba shakes her head against him. “What is all this?”
 
“These are things I want us to do together, one day.” He strokes her back like
it’s supposed to be reassuring but it makes her tense.
 
“I don’t want to,” she blurts, then tries to fix it, “At least right now.
Please.”
 
“I won’t bring you back if you don’t want.”
 
She nods into his shirt. “I’ll tell you when I’m ready.”
 
Now, Mike’s arms cocoon safely around her. “You will be, someday. I know it.”

.

Over the second half of the summer, Nanaba gets more comfortable around Mike.
The night that he hit her eventually leaves the surface of her mind, sinks
below the water, new boats of affection claiming her attention. Mike’s got a
new habit of dragging her to her bed instead of letting her fall asleep on the
sofa, tucks her in only to throw half his weight on her like he's trying to
drown her. He doesn't touch her under her pajamas, but he'll lay there and kiss
her until her head spins, and he'll hold her to his chest until she falls
asleep.
 
High school is rapidly approaching when her boobs begin to develop. Her chest
is sore at first, then her nipples are terribly tender to the point that
running around and exploring becomes unbearable. Despite how well Mike dealt
with the onset of her periods, she can't bring herself to approach him about
this, but it seems she doesn't have to.
 
“Hurt yourself?” One of his calloused hands rests on her sternum. “You keep
rubbing.”
 
“It's sore,” she murmurs, hiding her mouth behind her fist. Nanaba turns away
to say, “I think I'm getting boobs.”
 
Mike’s fingers splay, his thumb brushing right over an extremely delicate
nipple under her shirt. A pause while she flinches, and then, “Show me.”
 
Nanaba blanks, mouth open and eyebrows furrowed, spell broken only when Mike
presses his thumb in and she gasps. He leans in, watching her face curiously,
nuzzles the sore spot he's discovered with a smirk, inhales long and deep.
 
With more authority, “Show me, Nanaba Rose.”
 
“O-okay.” Heavy heat rises in her face, its flow exacerbated by the rapid
pumping of her heart. With sweating hands, she grips the seam of her t-shirt
and lifts it. Mike sits back to study the revealed flesh with a serious look.
 
Nanaba hangs her head, waiting and nervous. Her boobs aren't even boobs yet,
just puffy and inflamed, or something like that.
 
“Your breasts are cute,” he tells her, his breath tickling.
 
Tugging her shirt down, Nanaba halfheartedly hides a smile by pressing her
cheek into her shoulder. Every word he uses in these instances are so mature,
but he makes it sound so hot, too. Breasts. The boys at school would giggle
over something like that, but he's not a boy, he's a man, and it shows. And
it's her that he wants. Someone older and more mature like him recognises her
own maturity and he likes her for it, and that feels good to her.

.

The county high school is a thirty minute walk from the house. Mike is off work
the first day of classes and escorts her, holding her hand while they’re in the
privacy of his property, then letting go once they’re on the main road that
leads to the township proper. It’s a fairly new redbrick building, a boring
three-story rectangle with a detached gymnasium connected by a covered walkway.
Mike hangs back as they get closer, and by the time Nanaba realises he is
absent from her side, she is several paces ahead. She knows he can’t be
affectionate with her in public, but she yearns for a kiss. Mike puts his hands
in the pockets of his jeans and says, “You’ll do fine.”
 
Nanaba nods and smiles, turns and follows the flow of foot traffic. The opening
assembly reveals the student population to be just a couple hundred in number.
Schedules had been mailed out the week prior, and Nanaba stumbles her way
through the corridors until she gets to her homeroom.
 
It’s a lazy day for studies. Her teachers pass out their year’s syllabi and
drone on about the responsibilities of high school, how different it is from
junior high. She stops listening by third period. During lunch hour, she hunts
for her assigned locker and eats her peanut butter sandwich sitting alone.
 
At the end of the day, she loads all of her new textbooks into her backpack,
grunting with the weight, and starts for the trek home. Mike and the dogs meet
her at the junction of his private road with the main one, Mike taking hold of
her with a hand cupping the back of her neck, bending her backward for a kiss.
Her backpack thumps down onto the pavement when she throws her arms out to
catch herself. The dogs’ only interests are the new smells she carries, and
they eagerly fight to get their noses pressed against her.
 
“I missed you,” she blurts as soon as they part.
 
“I missed you, too,” Mike rumbles out. With her standing back on her own two
feet, his hands are free to slide down her back and settle on her hips, his
thumbs meeting around the front and his fingertips together at the base of her
spine. “Make any new friends?”
 
Nanaba nuzzles into his chest and shakes her head. “I have half my classes with
Lynne.”
 
Mike leans down to kiss the top of her head. Hand in hand, they walk back home.
Nanaba spreads her books and papers out on her bed and organises them
accordingly. She can hear something frying in the kitchen. Soon after, Mike
knocks on her door.
 
“I want to sign up for the home economics club after school, but there’s weekly
dues,” she says at dinner. She pushes the last meatball around on her plate
before cutting it in half with her fork. “And I’d like to continue with field
hockey this year.”
 
“Home ec’ club, that’s a good idea.” Mike motions about the house in general
with his fork. “Could use a woman’s touch around here. Go for it.”
 
Nanaba tucks her chin against her chest and smiles.

.

Despite the sensitivity of her nipples, Nanaba still doesn’t have boobs yet,
something glaringly apparent at gym class, when she’s the only one without a
pretty bra to hang up in her locker in the girls’ changing room. She pulls the
tight tanktop down over her torso and then puts her jersey over top of it.
Meanwhile, Lynne stands next to her, caging her bountiful chest up. They’ve
texted some over the remainder of the summer, but Nanaba hasn’t really been in
the mood to hang out with her. After class, when everyone’s getting dressed in
street clothes once more, Nanaba buries her head in her locker to try and quiet
her jealousy.

.

Nanaba is washing their dishes when Mike hugs her from behind. She leans her
head back to get a forehead kiss as his hands snake their way under her shirt,
his thumbs finding her nipples and pressing them into her chest.
 
“We should get you a bra,” he suggests. “Want to do that this weekend? We’ll go
into the city.”
 
She hasn’t been into the city since moving out here, and that thought brings a
vicious, nostalgic desire. “Oh, yeah, can we go by the house, too?”
 
“Of course.”

.

The saleslady measures Nanaba over her clothing and then shows her the
appropriate section for her size. Mike waits outside of the nauseatingly pink
store, scrolling through something in his mobile as he sits on a bench. Nanaba
picks out a few cute things, concerned only by Mike’s opinion, and she gets
matching panties, too. She daydreams about the look he'll have on his face when
they get home. The saleslady takes everything to the checkout for her while she
retrieves Mike to pay for her stuff.
 
“All ready,” Nanaba says cheerfully.
 
“Good girl,” he murmurs in passing, unable to give her too much affection in
such a crowded, public place. “Get one more thing, a thong in the smallest
size.”
 
Nanaba pulls her lips between her teeth and does so.
 
“You're so confident,” their cashier says, taking the new addition and scanning
it before dropping it into the bag with everything else. “Most dads squirm when
they come in with their daughters.”
 
It's an easy mistake to make. Mike is a giant while Nanaba is the tallest girl
her age, they're both blonde, and there's a sizeable difference between their
ages. Her heart rate spikes and she doesn't hesitate between thinking of an
idea and acting on it.
 
“Because I have the best daddy,” Nanaba beams. She looks up at Mike and her
smile infects him.
 
“You do,” he murmurs and, still smiling, shifts his attention to his wallet.
 
“Aww,” the cashier coos, interloping on their private teasing. Mike gives the
cashier a shadow of a smile and takes the receipt and pink paper bag when
offered, and they depart.
 
“Thank you,” Nanaba says. The dying thrill makes her self-conscious. “Is it
okay that I called you ‘daddy’?”
 
“Baby girl,” Mike threatens low, “don't get bent over my knee and spanked.”
 
Something tells her that it’s playful, that he means it in a good way, yet the
thought of his huge hands slapping on her bottom make her feel like her
behaviour is frowned upon. Nanaba withdraws, or at least tries to. Mike loops
one arm around her shoulder for a brief embrace.
 
“I’m not upset,” he clarifies, walking them through the shopping mall toward a
frozen yogurt stall at the edge of the food court.
 
“Why would you...” She doesn’t think she can say it outloud, so instead, she
finishes, “do that to me?”
 
“As a reward,” Mike says as if it’s plain to see. He walks them to the end of
the line. “How about something else for now?”

.

It’s weird to be in the old house as it is. The furniture is covered with white
sheets. Every electronic is unplugged. Dishes sit in neat stacks in the
cabinets. It feels dead and sterile.
 
There’s a fine layer of dust on the bookshelves when she takes down the family
photo albums. Initially, she’d left them here, the pain of her parents death
still too fresh to look in the face. Now, it feels so far away. It’s been four
months. She hadn’t thought that four months would make it seem so far away, and
the guilt for that overwhelms her. How could she let it get pushed to the back
of her mind? It should still be on the forefront, it should be the only thing
that she can think about, but she’s hardly given it the time.
 
After a quiet walk through the house, she comes to her old bedroom, but she
can’t twist the knob and open the door. She stands frozen there in the upstairs
hallway, dark without sunlight.
 
It’s all so familiar but it’s wrong, her parents are dead. Erwin and Marie
Smith lay in the ground, side by side, dead, and they’re not in their bedroom
at the end of the hallway, they’re not going to come out and ruffle her hair
and pick her up and make her feel less alone, like the whole world is caving
in, collapsing in on her in this darkness.
 
“Nanaba?” Mike is peeking over the top stair at her.
 
Only then does she realise that she’s crying on her knees in front of her
bedroom door. When a hitching inhale emerges from her, Mike darts up the
remaining stairs.
 
“Hey,” he croons, settling behind her to hug her, his knees up around her side,
pulling her back flush against his chest. His arms are iron bars across her
stomach, forcing her to breathe in time with him. “Hey, it’s alright.”
 
“They’re dead,” she murmurs, looking toward her parents’ bedroom. “They’re….”
 
Mike’s chin hooks over her shoulder to block her view, tugs it back. His breath
is soft on her neck. “It’s alright. I’ve got you. Don’t think about it, you’re
in a panic.”
 
“They’re dead. They,” she sucks in a wet sob, feeling something heavy and
hopeless and foreboding galloping into her mind, “died, they died and I’ll die,
too, I’ll die, I won’t exist, I--”
 
Cobra-quick, one of Mike’s hands grip her throat, his thumb finding a painful
point under her jaw. “Don’t,” he hisses directly into her ear, “think about
it.”
 
Nanaba gasps but her mind is on a runaway train, the panic falling on her so
completely. “I’ll die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die like they did,
they’re dead, they’re dead--”
 
Mike forces her head around to kiss her, but she can’t jump off the train, she
can’t focus on anything except the continuous stream of fear and anxiety. A nip
pierces her tongue and her eyes fly open, she finds Mike looking at her with a
purely predatory stare, and she feels so vulnerable, so exposed, but it works
to pull her out of her head.

.

“Sell the house,” she says on the drive home, because Mike’s home is her home
now. That empty house in the city, it’s nothing but a coffin for memories.
 
“We can do that.” Mike takes her hand from her lap and lifts it to his mouth.

.

Breakfast and lunch on Sunday go by before she leaves her bed. She feels
weighed down, too close to the verge of panic again. The whole week, she feels
that way, even though Mike does his best to distract her with kisses. Life
continues on as normal, and by the end of September, the panic begins to edge
its way from her mind until it vacates altogether.
 
She’s gotten used to wearing a bra everyday now, and though it’s still
unnecessary for her to do so, she feels less freakish at gym class with it.
Mike insists on taking it off for her when she gets home and she lets him,
because the attention he gives her breasts is nice. Their whole routine is
nice.
 
Lynne invites her to hang out several times and Mike coaxes her to agree with
the promise of kisses when she gets home.
 
“But I’m too mature for the other kids my age,” she likes to pout, because he
never denies that she’s right.

.

The work shed looms in the back of her mind, an ever-present hum of curiosity,
until one day it grows in intensity, makes her hot and squirmy with thoughts of
Mike, his hands and his mouth and the cock she has felt but has not seen. She’s
noticed that halfway through her monthly cycle, this sort of warm, insatiable
hunger nestles into her gut. It makes her want to touch herself past the thin
curls on her mons pubis, but she’s always too shy to go lower. This is the
worst that her hunger has ever felt. It’s unignorable, it’s overwhelming. It
needs to be filled.
 
She hears Mike gathering the dogs for his morning run. Her heart pounds as she
rolls out of bed, trudges to her door and opens it. Directly across the
hallway, Mike’s door is ajar, giving her the barest glimpse into his room, the
only one in the house she hasn’t been in. The saint bernard trots through the
doorway and into the hall, followed by Mike, who raises his brow at seeing
Nanaba up so early on a Sunday.
 
He opens his mouth to ask her something, but she beats him, blurting, “I want
to do the stuff you showed me in the work shed.”
 
Mike snaps his mouth shut, his expression smoothes out, he stares. Just when
she’s afraid that she said the wrong thing, he nods and closes his bedroom door
behind himself.
 
“I’ll be back,” he says and the gravel of his unused voice makes her press her
knees together. “Take another shower. Get one of the shirts from my dresser.”
 
“Okay,” she whispers, suddenly shy with the anticipation rising. “Have a good
run.”
 
Closing the distance between them, Mike kisses her forehead. “You’re a good
girl.”

.

The panties are snug when she puts them on, and when Mike pulls them up a
little higher, she has to grip his shoulders to stay on her feet. He sits on
the edge of his bed, knees spread for her to stand between them, studying her
sex intently. She watches as he grips the lips of it and pulls them apart, and
the thong rides up even further. The warbling, whining sound that leaves her
mouth makes him smile.
 
He rubs the tops of her thighs and then pinches them. “Relax.”
 
She nods silently, biting the t-shirt she holds up between her teeth. Rough
hands encircle her hips. Lace rubs her with every tiny movement, makes her
twitch, which rubs her more, makes her twitch more.
 
“Does it feel good on your clit?” Mike’s thumb slides down and pokes her in
exactly the right place to make her jerk backward, only to have the onslaught
of friction make her wiggle in search of relief from the stimulation.
 
It’s too embarrassing to answer, especially with her body responding in a way
she can’t control. Barely, she manages to whimper around cotton, “Yes.”
 
“Over my knee, now,” he croons, his hands helping position her. Nanaba’s face
must be the colour of cherries by the time her bottom is up in the air. Mike
grips her by the back of the neck but it feels safe this way, it feels like he
can tune in to her mind like this. “Such a pretty little ass, Nana. I’m going
to spank you until you cum.”
 
Every callous of his hand can be felt as he passes it over her bottom once,
twice. It takes everything in her control not to move. That control does not
last long. Not when he’s slapping her, lighting her hind on fire and every
movement makes her jerk against the lace. Ten minutes later, he nestles her
into his bed and she lets him handcuff her to the frame. She’s hazy with
endorphins and orgasm, but she spreads her legs when he tells her to, and she
lets him lick her thoroughly until she cums again, lets him impale her on his
fingers until she cums in hoarse cries, lets him lash the insides of her thighs
with a crop until unconsciousness looms. She gives everything to him because
she wants him to own this part of her, she wants him to be her first and her
only.
 
After it’s all done, she’s a sweaty mess but he trails kisses over all of her
skin, tells her how much he loves her. Nanaba follows her base instincts,
whimpering, “hold me” and seeking his generously given warmth. They sleep
together in his bed for a little while.












***** love, in, scalding *****
Chapter Summary
     those are the days
     that bind us
     together, forever
     and those little things
     define us
     forever, forever
     listen
Chapter Notes
     This chapter contains heavy sexual content.
With autumn demands coming in, Mike begins to go into work on the weekends for
a few hours. It’s not much time, but Nanaba cannot stand being alone in the
house without him now, and he doesn’t seem bothered that she tags along to the
city with him. There’s a library branch close enough to his work that she can
walk to and hang out for a few hours. She misses the busy city atmosphere some
days, but a nice and lazy life in the country grows on her.

.
 

Gelgar scratches the back of his head and then shoves his hands in the back
pockets of his jeans. “Hey, um, I was wondering if I, um, can I have your
number?”

“Yeah, okay.” She doesn’t think anything of it, writes the digits down on a
slip of paper and hands it to him before leaving homeroom. The significance of
the interaction buzzes in later that afternoon with Lynne’s message as Nanaba
sits on the kitchen counter at home and eats cereal.

how could u?!, Lynne sends with four little angry faces. Nanaba reads the
message once, anxiety rising in her chest. There’s no context, and Lynne had
seemed fine after school. Carefully, she sends back a question mark. Faster
than she thought possible, Lynne sends a big block of text, explaining her
crush on Gelgar and accusing Nanaba of trying to take him for herself.

Appetite thoroughly spoiled now, all that she can send back is, i don’t want
him, sorry.

“SORRY”??!! UR such a liar

It’s only fair, Nanaba thinks, because she’s called Lynne the same thing to
Mike. Something so stupid and immature as this made-up drama isn’t even worth
replying to. She leaves her phone on the counter and washes her bowl, something
more important waiting for her. In her backpack, she has a neat stack of
papers, recipes she printed at the school library so that she could ask
questions about them at club.

With cooking club meeting on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Nanaba is feeling fairly
confident by her dad’s birthday. She shows Mike the recipe of what she wants to
make for dinner that night, and while she’s at school, he picks up what she
asks for at the store. She’s been getting bolder in the kitchen, and while she
doesn’t think she’s ready to cook totally from scratch yet, she’s going to try
tonight. She’s never made anything by herself and she feels confident with Mike
taking an interest in her growing skills. They watch foodie television and look
up copycat recipes to their favourite restaurants, and he calls her to help him
prepare every meal that they’re together for.

“Your father would be proud of the woman you’re becoming,” he tells her after
dinner, taking their plates to the sink to be washed.

Ratatouille was the first meal she prepared completely by herself, from
chopping the vegetables and following the recipe very precisely, to frying some
eggs over easy on the side. It’s not exactly like her mom used to make, but she
thinks that maybe her dad would have still enjoyed it. The smell of his
favourite Saturday breakfast brings a sad nostalgia, one that Mike chooses to
banish with something to look forward to instead.

“We’re going to my family’s Thanksgiving,” Mike tells her. “They’re gonna love
you. Having a helpful teenager will be a nice change.”

“When?” She rushes to ask, then kicks herself for not thinking straight in the
wake of his compliment. Mike pats her head with a soapy hand and smiles down at
her.

“You know. There’s a place in the city. Does all kinds of instructional classes
for couples and kids.” Mike quiets for a moment, chewing over his words, his
jaw clenched. When he speaks, it almost sounds worried. “I can’t take you on
real dates like I want. But, there’s a father-daughter class for making bread
next week.”

Nanaba looks up at him and then tucks her lips between her teeth to hide her
smile. Mike nudges his elbow into her shoulder, chuckling when he asks, “What?”

“Are you… asking me out?” Nanaba says shyly, putting way too much focus on
stacking the last rinsed dishes in the drying rack.

“Yes.”

Hunching her shoulders up, she tries to shrug out the excitement. “Yeah, I
mean, I guess. But….” When she can’t form the question, she bites her bottom
lip and pulls the stopper out of the bottom of the sink. Mike’s hand comes to
rest on the back of her neck, kneading his fingers like a feline. They’re hot
from washing dishes, and it works to soothe her tension, makes her lower her
shoulders and finally ask, “What am I? To you. Like, am I your girlfriend, or--
”

Mike’s fingers slide up and into her hair, taking it in his fist and pulling
her head back to expose her throat and prevent her from speaking. Her mouth
opens with strain, and he plants a kiss where her lips part. Against them, he
breathes with possessiveness, “You’re mine, that's what you are.”

Nanaba tries to swallow but instead can only whimper, and Mike eases his hold,
kissing one of the cheeks that she feels burning.

.
 

The release bell rings at the end of a long Friday, and Nanaba loiters, aiming
to catch Lynne and apologise for her misunderstanding at the beginning of the
week, but Mike sends her a text that he’s out in the parking lot and she
abandons her mission gleefully. She watches the way he watches her weave around
the moving vehicles, upperclassmen anxious to leave the school property for
their own personal reasons. He doesn’t start the truck when she climbs in and
closes the door.

“Come here,” he murmurs, patting the side of his thigh gently. Once she is in
the middle seat on the bench where he wants her, Mike drops his hand to her
crotch and punishingly grips it.

She’s too surprised to gasp. All she can do is hide her face in her shoulder
away from him, which seems to only make him dig his fingers into her sex
through the denim. As a whimper escapes from her throat, he eases up, rubs his
hand down her thigh, and then removes his touch completely to drive them home.

As they approach the turn off the main road and onto his private one, he says,
“Unbutton your pants.”

Pleasurable tightening makes her press her knees together, but she obeys, and
watches in wonder as Mike slips his middle and ring fingers into his mouth.
Those same fingers, now wet with saliva, skate down her belly and disappear
into her jeans, their destination making her gasp. Nanaba arches her back and
her heads thunks against the headrest. She holds a moan hostage.

“I want to hear you,” Mike growls, penetrating her with one of the fingers.
“Don’t be quiet.”

Nanaba groans. It’s suddenly so hot and she feels like her spine is on fire.
Her hips jerk in the effort to keep from moving as Mike nudges the tip of his
second finger in, the stretch burning. He doesn’t push them in further or move
them, they only sit there, tempting her, making body light aflame with the need
for her to move down on them.

“Moan, don’t move,” Mike orders and she can’t help but obey, overwhelmed.
They’ve only done something like this once before, and it was in his bed, not
his truck. She can feel hot impatience down in her toes.

Mike manoeuvres the truck and parks one-handed, and when he opens his door, he
finally pulls out of her, but not away from her. He drags her with him, pulls
her against his chest until she has to wrap her legs around his waist to let
him carry her. Her arms snake around his neck and she buries her face in his
chest, panting and squirming to alleviate the wetness he left behind.

He doesn’t bother shutting the front door behind them, only carries her to the
couch and sits them down.

“Turn around.” His voice is low, threatening. She rocks her hips up against his
stomach and he grips her around the middle, his hands encircling her waist
entirely, and he forces her around the other way in his lap. He spreads his
legs and then sets her legs to hook over his on the outer side, tells her,
“Hook your ankles around my calves.”

She’s spread as wide as her baggy jeans will allow, and she obeys, curling her
toes, too. Even in his lap like this, he’s so much larger, practically able to
hunch over her. With one hand on her chest, he holds her up; with his dominant
hand, he slips into her jeans again to finish his work. There’s nothing but
whimpers, high-pitched and pathetic, until he pushes those two thick fingers
into her wholly without resistance, his earlier teasing having prepared the
way. Nanaba’s whine catches and flutters down into a moan, and then finally a
long, breathy sigh. It feels so good and she feels so hot and embarrassed and
proud to have his fingers inside of her. Her body remembers last Sunday,
loosens to accept more of him.

“That’s it. Good girl,” Mike praises, his beard tickling her ear. “So wet
already.”

In unison, his fingers rub at a blinding spot within her and her hips grind
down on him for more, her body answering an instinctual need. Spreading her
wide in his lap like this, he easily coaxes three orgasms from her, then forces
two more, and by the end, she’s a sweating, shaking, panting deadweight held
against his chest, her head thrown back over his shoulder and a trail of drool
connecting her mouth to his ear. Mike lays her down on the sofa and kisses her
forehead, but she passes out before she can say anything.

.
 

She wakes to dogs growling, and a reluctant knock on the front door. Everything
sounds muffled, and she opens her eyes to find Mike has taken her clothes and
in exchange, draped a thick quilt over her.

“Don’t get up,” he mutters in passing on his way to answering his unannounced
visitor. The dogs, all laying around the living room, lift their heads
curiously, but he orders them to stay. The wall of the mudroom blocks her view,
but Nanaba picks up Lynne’s voice after the door opens.

Mike steps back into the living room and Lynne follows him, Mr Dok trailing
behind her. Her dad looks unimpressed to be here, but he offers Mike a firm
handshake and a grasp on the shoulder, the one Nanaba knows is burned.

“So, like, sorry or whatever,” Lynne says, crossing her arms over her chest and
rolling her eyes. “It’s not your fault that Gelgar liked you, but we’re dating
now. I wanted to, just, like, clear up the air.”

Nanaba watches her for a moment, unsure of what to say. She doesn’t
particularly care for this needless drama, but she wants to be friends with
Lynne for the sake of Mike and Mr Dok, so she dismisses it. If Mike wants her
to be the bigger person, she will be that, she will make him proud. Sighing,
she says, “It’s okay. I’m sorry that I hurt you.”

Lynne looks at Nanaba as if the words are unexpected and it seems, to Nanaba’s
great satisfaction, that it keeps any more mean words from tumbling out of
Lynne’s mouth.

“Are we still friends?”

Lynne shrugs and then nods. “Yeah. We are. Sorry… too.” She hesitates as if
she’s not used to being wrong, that maybe she never sees herself as the person
transgressing.

After Mike sees them out, he comes back and sits on the arm of the sofa near
her head. Reaching down to pet her, he praises, “You’re so mature. How do you
get through the school day?”

Nanaba pulls the quilt up to cover her smile and subsequent blush.
 

.
 

Their bread-making class is in an hour, but Nanaba does not want to go. She
comes home from school to find Mike digging a large hole in the dark soil under
the bur oak. A lump wrapped in a white sheet waits patiently.

“Old dog’s heart gave out,” Mike tells her. He doesn’t look at her, not even
when she kneels beside it and draws a corner of the sheet back, rubbing her
fingers over the cold snout. The panic is vacant this time. She feels tears
welling in her eyes, so she goes into the house without saying anything. The
saint bernard’s red collar sits on the kitchen counter, a rabies tag and a home
address.

“Do you name any of them?” She asks when Mike insists on dragging her to the
class anyway. The truck’s radio buzzes out the news between them.

“No.”

“Do you want to?”

“No.”

Nanaba turns away from him and looks out of the window; she doesn’t understand
why that answer makes her want to cry again.

They make a cute loaf of cinnamon bread at the class. The saint bernard’s death
is a weight on their moods, but working together for a goal unites them. The
other daughters are all much younger children, so the instructions are tailored
to their level of understanding, but Nanaba appreciates the simplified recipe.
 

.
 

When Mike has to go into the city that Saturday, she sits at the library and
reads through a book that boasts of being a bread bible. There’s a certain
birthday in a few days and she wants to do something special, but it still
feels like a whole cake with decoration would be too far out of her skill
range. Mike texts her and beckons her back to his work before she can finish
the book, and she thinks about sliding it onto a red shelf, but she decides to
check it out anyway in the hope that Mike won’t mind returning it later.

Mike is waiting in the truck for her, and when she slides up into her seat, he
sets something heavy in her lap. The full weight of it surprises her when she
picks it up the exam it, because it’s no wider than her finger. It looks like a
large fish hook, but a smooth sphere sits on the point instead of something
sharp for piercing. The shank is as long as her forearm, and the eye is bigger
than her fist.

“When we get home. Put that in your dresser with your panties,” he tells her. A
dark inkling breezes through her, but she’s too afraid to ask.
 

.
 

The high school is allowing students to dress up for Halloween so long as
costumes fit the dress code. Nanaba hadn’t given any thought to it until Lynne
sent her an inquiry the night before, but she has a pair of white cat ears from
Halloween three years ago when she was Marie from The Aristocats. The saint
bernard’s red collar is hanging on her doorknob, so she tells Lynne, i’ll be a
puppy.

Throughout the next day, Lynne tries to convince her to go to the party that
one of the seniors is throwing. There’s going to be music and alcohol and fun,
but none of those things interest Nanaba, not when there’s a weird hook in her
bedroom that Mike told her to keep hold of. Gelgar is taking Lynne tonight, and
they’re going to go all the way.

“I mean, he’s like, fingered me or whatever, but that doesn’t count,” Lynne
says excitedly. She stands by while Nanaba organises her locker at the end of
the day, deciding what to take home. “We’re finally really having sex. He even
got a condom.”

Nanaba rubs her nose. Fingering counts, but she’s not going to tell her friend
that. Her and Mike… that’s private. It’s not something she can talk about, not
without getting him in trouble and her never getting to live with him again.
“Okay.”

“Do you even like boys?” Lynne asks her suddenly.

Nanaba bites her lips together between her teeth and shrugs.

“Wait, Nan, are you…,” Lynne trails off, leaning in to whisper, “gay?”

All she can do is shrug again. “I don’t really think about that kind of stuff.”
Which is not exactly a lie, because when she thinks about sex, all she sees is
Mike behind her eyelids. He’s not a boy, he’s a man.

“OMG, Nan!” Lynne squeals. “You have to go to the party!”

“I don’t want to,” Nanaba says, shutting her locker. She bends over to zip her
backpack and then hoists it over her shoulders when she’s upright once more. By
then, Gelgar has finally shown up.

“Babyyy,” Lynne pouts, drawing out the last vowel. “Tell Nan she has to go with
us tonight.”

Gelgar looks down at his girlfriend and then at Nanaba. “I dunno, babe, Nan’s a
total straight edge.”

Lynne balks and slaps his shoulder. “Excuse me, she’s just sheltered. I bet
she’s really fun at parties.”

“I’ve never been to a house party,” Nanaba says in her own defense. “It’s not
really my thing.”

The brunette groans and grabs Nanaba’s hand, tugging it like a pouting child.
“OMG, you totally have to come tonight! I want to see you have fun! Ask your
godfather if you can go. Right now.”

“I’m not interested in going.”

“Don’t be a party pooper,” Lynne whines.

“Okay, fine! I’ll ask when I get home and then I’ll text you.” Nanaba is fed up
with this. She just wants to get Lynne off her back. The whole walk home, she
stews in frustration, alleviated only by Mike’s greeting kiss and unclasping of
her bra. When he presses his nose into one of the cups, she forgets all about
Lynne and her stupid house party.
 

.
 

It’s Gelgar asking her politely via text that makes her go to Mike. He sniffs
out her apprehension and agrees to drop her off at Lynne’s house only if she’s
absolutely sure that this is something she wants to do. She readjusts her ears
and collar nervously but tells him that she wants to go.

The house party is in full swing by the time Lynne, Gelgar, and Nanaba walk
there together from Lynne’s house. It’s dark and cold on the way, and she’s
thankful that Mike draped one of his large sweaters on her shoulders before
letting her leave. Inside the house, though, it’s hot enough to make her want
to shed the extra clothing, but it feels like a layer of protection against the
crowd of rowdy teenagers and young adults.

An eager host tries to persuade her for a cup of the bright red punch but she
opts to get a glass from the cabinet and fill it with water from the tap. She
watches the people around her move fluidly to the music, nonsense which sounds
like bass accompanied by noise. After finishing her water, she puts her hands
in her pockets and, startling, takes out the package she finds there. Ear
plugs. Of course Mike would give her some.

Lynne and Gelgar disappeared together as soon as they were over the threshold,
so Nanaba weathers through the party alone. A few guys offer to fetch her cups
of the punch, but she turns them down.

After a long while standing in the kitchen, watching people slowly drink
themselves into a state of dishevel, she wanders through the rest of the house.
People are starting to split off into pairs and suck face, and there’s a few
larger groups of people attempting games. In the dining room, a heated match of
beer pong is nearing an end, all the bystanders looking half-drowned.

“Heyyy,” a guy slurs somewhere behind her, but she ignores it as she makes her
way up the stairs, hoping to find her friends. All of the doors are shut and
locked, so she goes back downstairs, luckily finding an empty armchair to sit
in. When she pulls out her mobile, she’s surprised at the late hour.

...this kinda sucks, she texts to Mike.

His reply is immediate. Are you ready for me to come get you?

I’ll call you when i find lynne.

But when she does call him, it’s not because she found her friends; instead,
it’s because some jerk didn’t like the way she turned down his advances and
decided to slam her against the wall with his elbow in her chest. With everyone
around drunk and engrossed in their own doings, Nanaba had been truly terrified
that the aggression would go unstopped, but another stepped in.

“Mike,” she cries into her phone now, sitting on the street curb with the guy
who pushed the jerk back and tucked her under his arm protectively. “Please,
come and get me.”

His concern is sharp. “What happened? Are you alone?”

“I’m not alone… I’m scared, I just want you to come and get me.”

“Who are you with? Is it Lynne?” At the question, Nanaba looks sideways at the
heavily-decorated letterman jacket worn by her rescuer. Mike tolerates a moment
of her silence before demanding, “Let me speak to them.”

Without a word, Nanaba passes her phone to the guy next to her, and he takes to
the conversation with Mike in an informative tone. Turns out, she’s in the
company of Hans Zoe, a senior, and this is his home and his party, and he’s
deeply sorry that Nanaba was involved in an altercation. When he passes the
phone back to her, Mike tells her, “Stay put. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

She spends the short span of time talking to Hans. Tonight’s party is a subject
of his social research for a paper he’s writing, so he’s been observing the
crowd all night. He offers to call the police. She shakes her head. Everyone
already saw what happened, she’s already embarrassed, so the last thing she
wants to do is make a bigger deal out of it. Hans is kind yet blunt when he
asks if he may include what happened to her in his writing later.

Nanaba looks at all the patches on his jacket, all academics-related awards,
and she says, “Yeah.”

Mike pulls up along the street and gets out of the truck to hug her and she
melts into his embrace, wanting so badly to kiss him, barely satisfied by the
press of his lips into her hair. He helps her into the truck and then loiters
to have a few quiet words with Hans.

“He’s a good guy,” Mike says on the drive back. His hands are stiff on the
steering wheel and nowhere near her body. “Glad you weren’t alone. But I think
it's best if you didn't go to anymore parties.”

There’s an undercurrent to what he says, but she doesn’t care to pursue it.
 

.
 

Despite staying up late to exhaust her emotions and tell Mike everything that
happened at the party, and despite Mike telling her that she can stay home from
school the next day, Nanaba climbs from his warm bed in early morning to let
the dogs out and make the bread for his fortieth birthday. She wants to
surprise him with it but he joins her in the kitchen as the dough is rising in
a glass bowl on the oven, spoiling her plan.

Mike chuckles and pulls her into a tight embrace. “Thank you, Nanaba Rose.
You’re the best girl I could ask for.”

She makes him two eggs over easy and slides them onto a piece of buttered
toast, and it’s not fancy, but she makes it for him, and he thanks her with a
deep kiss. The bread dough goes into the oven after she washes the dishes, and
she sets a loud timer on her mobile for when it should be done.

“Lynne or Gelgar haven’t text me,” she says absently. It sort of bothers her.
Maybe they heard from Hans that Mike came and picked her up, but why wouldn’t
they message her themselves to make sure she’s alright?

“I’ll take your mind off that,” Mike tells her and she shivers at the low set
of his voice. He pats one of his thighs and she sits without needing to be
told. “You remember that hook I gave you?”

Nanaba swallows all the remaining melancholy from the party at the thought of
the hook. Mike grins at her, pushes her bangs back from her forehead and kisses
there, then kisses her nose, her mouth, her chin. He trails his lips along her
jaw, the soft hairs of his beard tickling her and making her stifle giggles. At
her ear, he breathily murmurs, “I’m going to watch you fuck your pretty little
pussy with it.”

Nanaba whines, pressing her face into his shoulder. There’s a fierce rush of
blood to her face and neck, hearing such sexy words coming from him.
 

.
 

He watches her with an intense focus that pushes her past her humility and
makes her willing to do anything to please him. Nestled in his bed, she
obediently spreads her legs for him to insert the hook, letting him hear her
every sound, freely giving him her moans. He wraps her fingers around the eye,
gives her an order and she obeys, shyly at first until his flowing praises give
her confidence. Her knees snap shut and her back arches off the bed when she
orgasms, and Mike gently pries her open again to remove the hook, licking it
clean with long laps of his tongue and she whimpers at how the sight makes her
throb through the sensitivity. Somehow, she’s expecting it when he tells her to
cum again for him, because once is never enough; when she can’t get herself to
three orgasms, he takes over, wringing the pleasure from her body like water
from a rag, so easily. Each time her vision explodes with shimmering gold, Mike
removes the hook and licks it clean, groaning like it’s a blessing to taste.

Mike brings her to tears and then leads her further, until she’s crying that
she’ll die, that it feels good enough to kill her.
 

.
 
 

Hans seems to be everywhere in the school now that Nanaba knows who he is.
Lynne brushes off her faux pas about not checking on Nanaba, Gelgar sheepishly
apologises, but says that if she had her own boyfriend to go to parties with it
would have never happened. At lunch, Lynne goes through the long list of what
she deems are the eligible freshmen bachelors. However, Nanaba spots Hans’
auburn ponytail and dark blue letterman in the crowd, so she doesn’t hear
anything Lynne says.

At Thursday’s cooking club, Hans pokes his head into the food science lab, the
scent of chocolate chip cookies having lured him from the biology room down the
hallway. Of all the people to pester, he comes to Nanaba, and Gelgar tries not
to obviously watch as Hans snags a cookie with a roguish grin and departs.

“That’s that super smart senior, right? Did he come to see you?” Gelgar asks in
awe. Nanaba is glad that Lynne isn’t here to give her disparaging insight.
She’d probably say something about Hans pitying her for getting hurt at his
Halloween party.

“He came for cookies,” Nanaba dismisses.
 

.
 

OMG do u really think hans is into you??

Nanaba groans at Lynne’s text. Gelgar must have told her. no and i don’t care.

Lynne’s replies are usually quick, so when nothing comes for a few minutes, she
is relieved and puts her mobile in her back pocket. She can see home coming
nearer and she walks faster to get out of the chilly autumn air. It’s going to
snow tonight. When Lynne replies, it’s a big text that fills Nanaba with dread.
She waits until she’s in the warm house and kissed by Mike, tucked into his
side on the sofa watching television before she reads it.

uh yeah good bcuz he’s doing the thing where he graduates with his university
degree and diploma at the same time, idk what that program is called. but he
wouldnt have time for you and tbh he’s out of your league anyway :/

She reads it twice and then taps Mike’s knee, wordlessly showing him. She
doesn’t care about whether Hans likes her or not, but Lynne’s words hurt her.
Mike doesn’t ask questions, only pulls her into his lap, her back against his
chest, and fingers her until she can’t think straight.
 

.
 

She goes from no breasts to a-cups almost overnight, finally filling out her
bra. Mike lavishes his attentions on them when she gets home from the last day
of school before Thanksgiving break. There’s only an hour before they leave and
as much as she wants to spend it in his bed, she acquiesces his order to get
her things packed for the trip.

They drop the dogs off at a boarding kennel in the city before driving into the
night to reach the Washington coast. Nanaba doesn’t know what she is expecting,
but it is not the large pacific lodge sitting lakefront. They arrive at
midnight to a quiet estate, greeted by a man of similar description to Mike.
Awkwardly, Nanaba watches as the two embrace, complete with back slaps, and
after they part, Mike is pushing her forward and introducing her.
 

.
 

The combination of sleeping in a new environment and sleeping without Mike
makes her grouchy come morning. Mike’s mother, Adele, introduces her to
everyone at the pancake breakfast but she only offers a half-smile on her way
over to the children’s table. It seems like everyone her age has their mobile
out at the table, something against the unspoken rule at Mike’s house, so she
boredly looks into her breakfast with every bite. A few times, one of Mike’s
sisters-in-law tries to persuade the teenagers to mingle, but it’s only met
with eye rolling from the others. Nanaba can feel Mike’s stare in the fine
hairs on her neck, and she can almost hear him scolding her in her head, it’s
up to you to be the mature one.

So, after breakfast, Nanaba voluntarily gathers the plates and takes them to
the sink, inquiring to Adele what she can do to help. The pleased smile she
receives gives her resolve.

The senior Zacharias parents are both dentists in private practice, and so the
mundane household chores are given to hired help; but during the holidays when
the house is full of their descendants, chores are meant to be a bonding
experience. For Nanaba and Adele, it is. She learns that Mike is the oldest of
four boys, all born in November, a year between each (and that he’s the only
one unmarried and without children). Adele jokingly tells Nanaba that it took
her longer than it should have to realise that she was doing something wrong to
end up with her boys so close together. Adele also has stories of Nanaba’s
father when he was a boy with Mike, how they were an inseparable pair for years
and years. When one of the teenagers walks into the kitchen, Adele pauses the
conversation to say, “Rico, sweetheart, can you get me the photo album with the
green cover?”

Rico rolls her eyes but comes back a few minutes later, after the dishes are
all finished, with the requested item.

Adele shares condolences for the loss of Erwin Smith, says that she loved him
like another son, and shows Nanaba pictures of her father she’s never seen.
Mike’s there, too, and so it’s twice as endearing.

“You look so much like him when he was this age. Mike loved your father very
much, and I’m glad he’s honouring Erwin by taking care of you,” Adele says, and
it twists a knife through Nanaba’s heart.
 
 
 
 
 

Adele allows each teenager a glass of wine at dinner, and then another during
family games. Nanaba is genuinely having fun, and she loosely shows off for
Mike, knowing that he’s keeping her within his peripheral vision at all times.
After games, everyone settles into the movie den. The alcohol makes the sleepy
mood so much more effective on her, and she excuses herself to bed just after
the film’s opening credits. When she stumbles and trips through the doorway,
Mike is quickly at her side, taking hold of her elbow and letting everyone know
he’ll be right back.

They’re the only ones in the room she’s sharing with the other girls, so Mike
makes quick work of licking his two longest fingers clean and slipping them
down her pants, into her hot sex. One massive hand slaps over her mouth and
Mike hisses, “Not a sound. I need to hear anyone getting close.”

He pumps his fingers in and out of her mercilessly, and in the pleasant haze of
alcohol, she’s gushing cum down his forearm in just a few moments. He licks
himself clean and kisses her cheek goodnight, turning off the light and closing
the door on his way back to the movie. She feels wound up because he never
gives her a single, solitary orgasm-- it’s always him taking her to the edge of
control. Being left unexhausted is a first, she doesn't know how to feel about
it.
 

.
 

They pack up to go home early on Saturday, both feeling content with the last
several days filled by food and games and family time. Nanaba sleeps for most
of the way back. It’s early afternoon when they get to the kennel and pick up
the dogs, and dealing with nine excited canines helps dispel some of her
restless energy.

At home in the quiet country forests, melancholy awaits.

.
 

“Wanna name them?” Mike asks, tilting his head toward the dogs as they wait
patiently for Nanaba to finish filling their individual bowls with dinner.

She shrugs, silent for a long time. After she sets the bowls down in a neat
line and the dogs begin to crunch the kibbles loudly, she finally says, “Sure.”

“I’m asking ‘cause,” but Mike stops and shifts, leaning against the kitchen
counter beside her. “I thought… you might like one of your own, and I figured
you’d name it, so… let’s name them all.”

“Together?” She asks quickly, hopefully. Immediately, she bites her lips
between her teeth to stifle the grin. Mike only smiles at her.

“Together.”
 

.
 

Going back to school is difficult on Monday. There’s a hollowness in her chest
that persists and drives her away from interactions with her peers, and at
lunch time, she calls Mike to see if he will pick her up early because she
doesn’t think she’ll last the whole day.

“Be a good girl, stay for all of your classes.” There’s the sound of a circular
saw piercing metal in the background. When he speaks next, his voice is low.
“I’ll make it worthwhile.”

So, she stays, but she hates every moment of it, spends most of the afternoon
daydreaming. At the end of the day, she passes Hans in the hallway and he waves
at her with a beaming smile on his face, but she waves back much less
enthusiastically. Over her shoulder, she hears Lynne scoff. Once they're at
Nanaba’s locker, Lynne puts her hands on her hips and says, sternly, “He’s way
out of your league, you know.”

“Shut up,” Nanaba snaps, slamming her locker door open against the front of its
neighbour. “I don’t like him like that! People can be friends, you know.”

Lynne scoffs again, this time like a laugh, and walks away, throwing back a
casual, “Whatever.”

Nanaba tries to hold in the angry tears but they’re too stubborn, so she dips
her head and lets them soak into her shirt. Everything is overwhelming and she
doesn’t understand why. All she can do is let it consume her, and when she
comes home to nothing but wagging tails, she can’t help but throw herself on
the sofa in a fit.

Turns out, she’s only beat Mike home by a couple of minutes because he was
picking up dinner, yet he still apologises for his absence. Neat boxes of food
sit on the table to patiently wait as he drapes a quilt over her shoulders and
holds her to his chest, successfully coaxing all of her negative emotions out
within an hour. Their food is cold by then, but they eat anyway without
reheating it.
 

.
 

The rest of the week goes without incident. Lynne acts like nothing happened
and Gelgar follows her cue, but Nanaba does not mind all that much. A winter
storm is projected to roll in late Friday night, so Mike picks her up from
school that afternoon and they go grocery shopping at the small store in the
township instead of a supermarket in the city. The first flurries of snow are
beginning to fall as they unload the bags from the truck, and after they put
everything away, Mike takes her hand.

“Any homework?”

“Uh, no, no, I did it at study hour.” Nanaba watches the way a small grin parts
his lips. “Why?”

“I was thinking we could spend a few hours in the work shed.”

Her heart thumps in her chest, nervous. She hasn’t been back since he showed it
to her that first time, but still, she tucks her lips together and nods. “Yeah,
let’s do that.”

Mike pulls on a canvas coat and then drapes a thick wool sweater over her head,
drags a space heater and extension cord from the hallway closet. The walk to
the shed is short but freezing, and Nanaba is glad when Mike shuts the door
behind them, turns on the fluorescent lights, and plugs in the heater.

“Nothing to worry about, long as the cable connecting us to the house’s power
line doesn’t snap.” He gives her a reassuring kiss on the forehead then points
to a five-gallon bucket in the corner. “You can sit on that, if you want.”

She does so. Mike wastes no time turning his attention to a project that looks
to be partially complete, but she can’t really judge it because she’s not sure
what it is. As he works, her gaze finds his hands and lingers.

She watches curiously, coming closer to inspect as time passes, but he only
tells her exactly what he’s made when they’re back inside their home. Eagerly,
she asks him to show her how the spreader bar is used.
 

.
 

“Nanaba?”

She looks up from changing out of her gym clothing to Lynne pointing at her
inner thigh.

“What happened?”

“Oh.” Nanaba inspects her skin, feigning surprise at the large red bruise
blooming up from her knee. “One of the dogs jumped on me.”

“No way, that looks like….” Lynne holds her fingers close to Nanaba’s thigh for
comparison. “Nuh-uh, that’s a hand-- Nanaba, did he-- does he hit you?”

She jerks away from her friend and shakes her head. “No, I’m serious. It was
one of the dogs. It jumped on my bed and landed on me.”

Whatever belief Lynne pretends to have is proven false when Nanaba gets called
to visit the school’s councillor from her last class of the day. There’s only
ten minutes before the release bell, so she packs all of her things into her
backpack, all too aware of the eyes on her, the curiosity as to why she is
being summoned.

“Miss Smith,” the councillor greets and extends a welcoming hand to the chair
on the other side of her desk. “Please, sit.”

Nanaba refuses to be the first to speak. She feels betrayed and she knows
exactly who to blame for this. Louder than the betrayal, fear screams at her.
She’s afraid of saying the wrong thing, she’s afraid of slipping up and getting
Mike in trouble, because it was Mike who bruised her thigh when he gripped it
and hooked it over his shoulder, but he wasn’t hurting her when he did that, he
was making her feel so good. But she can't tell anyone that, and she's
terrified that she will have to let them assume Lynne was right.

Finally, the councillor offers, “Is there anything you would like to talk to me
about? Anything going on at home?”

Nanaba bites her lips together and shakes her head, looking down in her lap.
She just wants this to be over so that she can leave. But of course, the woman
across from her wants to draw this out, wants there to be something admitted,
as if by making this as painful as possible, she receives a sick self-
fulfilment.

“Do you feel safe at home?” “Are you comfortable telling me?” “Would you like
to have another adult in the room?” “If you’ve been told that you can’t tell
anyone--”

“Nothing,” Nanaba rasps, refusing to look up from her lap, “happened.”

Nanaba only realises that she is crying when a manicured hand pushes a box of
tissues within her line of sight, and that show of weakness has her standing,
sends her roaring out of the office like a hellhound. On the way out, she slams
the door hard enough that she hears the glass rattle.

Even though she practically runs the whole way home, Mike is waiting for her on
the front porch, his hands in the pockets of his jeans and a very unpleasant
look across his face. The dogs rush down to swarm her, but he calls them back
with a sharp whistle. They slink back up the steps and disappear inside.

“What the hell did you do?” Mike asks, his tone void of judgement, but it’s
hard enough to make her cringe.

“Lynne, she--”

“You,” he interrupts. “I asked what you did, not Lynne.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she mutters.

“Well, we’re gonna.” Mike is down the steps in large strides, grabbing her
upperarm roughly and dragging her to his truck, where he opens the door and
throws her inside. She scrabbles against the passenger side door, her legs up
on the bench between her and Mike. She’s not afraid of him; not even right now,
with the anger rolling off his body is tangible waves. All she wants is space-
- from him, from Lynne, from the councillor, from existing.
 

.
 

Mike grounds her for her outburst at the school. He drags her to the
councillor, who had called him when Nanaba left unexcused, and makes her
apologise for her behaviour. He takes away what few privileges she has, and
even though she initially expects to spend seven days miserable, she’s
actually… grateful for the way it dispels her melancholy.
 

.
 

The week of her punishment comes to an end and Mike marks it by taking her to
the work shed again. She watches him put the finishing touches on a muzzle; she
patiently offers her head for his measurements and adjustments, biting her
bottom lip to hide her curious enthusiasm. When it’s done, he fastens the
straps around her head and pats her hair, crooning, “Good girl.”

They don’t stay in the shed for long. Mike tells her that he wants to run an
errand in the city, wants her to come along, too. He lets her wear the muzzle
the whole walk back to the house, and then she puts it in her dresser with the
hook after he undoes the straps.

She stays muted as they walk along the kennels at the animal rescue, watching
Mike’s back and following his sure lead. In front of a kennel at the end of its
row, he stops and turns and motions with his hand for her to inspect. Two
energetic sheepdogs prance in place as she glances over the information clipped
to the from of their enclosure. Mike rambles, uncertain, “They’re a bonded pair
so they have to go together, and they’ve been here too long because of that.
Marlene called me about them. Didn’t want to see ‘em put down. I want them to
be yours, and you can name them. We’ll name all the dogs, if you still want.”

“Yeah,” Nanaba says without turning to look at him. “Yeah. Let’s do that.”

She knows how couples will often get a pet together when the relationship is
serious. Mike hasn’t given them a label, only claimed her as ‘mine’,but she
thinks, maybe, he’s trying to show her. Still, she can remember Lynne’s
flippant “fingering doesn’t count”and she suddenly wants something more.

It takes an hour to engrave all the name tags. Their newest additions, she
calls Buns and Breadroll. Mike quirks an eyebrow at her but doesn’t crack any
jokes, and then they decide on names for all the dogs waiting at home.
 

.
 

Over the week, she watches him adjust to calling them by names, and the dogs
adjust to being called by names, more than whistles or a hand patting a thigh.
The sheepdogs settle into the pack easily after a few shows of dominance.
Christmas break comes closer and Mike still calls the wrong name from time to
time, has to swear and kneel and get a look at the name tags before scratching
the dog behind its ear and apologising. But, he’s trying for her, and that’s
what she finds heartwarming.
 

.
 

Lynne hangs on Gelgar’s arm at the last cooking club before Christmas break.
It’s a little annoying, but he doesn’t seem to mind having to explain things to
her-- in fact, Nanaba thinks he might take some satisfaction from it.

“My parents are leaving me home alone while they go on vacation. They finally
decided that I can be trusted,” Lynne beams with devious excitement. “And OMG,
and Gelgar is gonna come over and we’re going to have sex again.”

“Oh boy,” Nanaba says nonchalantly, washing out the pan she used to make her
friend an omelette. She’s immediately distracted by the wonder why Mike hasn’t
had sex with her yet, something apparent by the way Lynne waves a hand in front
of Nanaba’s eyes to get her attention.

“Sorry, should I not talk about it in front of you? I mean, since you’re… you
know, a virgin.”

Nanaba would like nothing better than to make Lynne eat those words, but she
knows that a moment of pride is not worth all the trouble it would bring, so
she only shrugs, “I don’t really care.” Because she shouldn’t really care. She
shouldn’t, because Mike kisses her forehead and says she’s becoming such a
lovely woman and they got two new dogs together and named all the rest and why
should it matter if he hasn’t put his dick inside of her?
 

.
 

“Why haven't we had sex?” She asks on Christmas Eve, tucked into his side with
the holiday edition of her favourite baking show playing on the television.
They're bathed and dressed in pajamas already, but she wouldn't mind getting
sweaty with him.

“There's no rush,” he says, sliding one large hand along her scalp and
scratching it.

“But I haven't even seen your…,” Nanaba isn't brave enough to say it aloud, and
in her head, she thinks about all the vulgar names for it.

“My what?” Mike teases, his hand now actively roughing up her hair.

She groans and covers her mouth and cheeks with her hands but he pries them
back, pulls her into his lap by her hips and kisses her forehead.

“If you can ask me nicely, I'll let you see it.”

Nanaba looks at him and then hides her face in the side of his neck. Muffled,
she exclaims, “I can't say it!”

“Be a good girl. Say: ‘Daddy, can I see your cock?’”

Hidden safely from view, she squeals in embarrassment and shakes her head,
remembers the way she'd dared to call him that in the lingerie store. Mike’s
fingers are patient as they knead into her skinny bottom, and after a few deep
breaths, she leans her lips against his ear and proves her obedience in a
breathy whisper.

His dick, his cock-- it's big. Sex education teaches that penises are usually
two to five inches long and not very wide, but she can't wrap her fingers
around his girth and even with both hands on him, the head pokes out.

“It feels weird,” she giggles, not sure how to describe it. She bends over
between his spread legs and gets a good look at the vein on the underside. “I
thought it would be… slimy.”

Mike chuckles and takes control of her hands, moving her fingers up to the head
of his cock and pulling back the thin skin to expose the shiny tip. “If I get
hard, it'll get wet with precum.”

Her eyes widen and she blushes, but Mike is patient with her and shows her, his
hands over hers, how to stroke a cock to make it hard. It gets bigger and she
can't help but ask, “Would this… fit?”

“Inside of you, yes.” Mike touches her lips. “Here.” His hand travels down her
front and presses against her sex over her pajamas. “Here.” And then it slides
a little further back, between her butt cheeks. “And here.”

The last one causes her to pale.
 

.
 

When she goes back to school after the new year, they still haven't had sex,
but she's becoming very familiar with his cock. She likes to touch it when it's
hard, when it becomes hotter than any other part of Mike's body, and she likes
the salty taste of the clear precum when it gathers. Mike explained that
ejaculate tastes quite bad in comparison, and when she’d asked to have it
regardless, he'd ruffled her hair and told her, “Let me make you something for
taking my cock down your throat first.”

Thinking of his words at school sends shivers down her spine that pool in her
gut all day long. It doesn't help that Lynne spends half of gym class going
into vivid detail about her own Christmas break, so by the time Nanaba gets
home that afternoon, she feels frenzied.

Nothing feeds that frenzy for a whole month. Mike takes her out more, daring to
sit with her in restaurants and movie theatres, and while he still kisses her
sweetly, he keeps his hands to himself. It feels like they're dating now, like
a shift from lust to love; something fluffy that leaves her feeling warm and
appreciated and cherished, something that satisfies her desire to know that he
wants her. This change, she feels like it fosters an intimacy between them, and
she hopes that he feels it, too.
 

.
 

“It's a ring gag,” he explains early on a snowy Saturday morning. “I told you,
my cum doesn't taste as good as yours. You're not gonna like it, but if you're
gonna have any, then you'll take all of it.”

Nanaba folds the omelette in half as his threatening promise wriggles a
pleasant, tight ball in her belly. When she goes to slide his breakfast onto
his plate, she catches him watching her, no doubt waiting for her reaction to
his promise, so she nods and tells him, “I’d like that.”
 

.
 

He handles her gently, pressing his fingers into her jaw lightly to have her
relax, and then he lets her start in his soft cock. Mike coaches her through
slow, unsure movements, tells her when the breathe to avoid feeling choked,
tells her how to stifle her gag reflex when the tip pushes past her tonsils.
She's sweating in no time, the combination of thrill and desire and new
physical discipline mingling. Drool pools in the cavern of her mouth when the
gag doesn't let her swallow it down, and it slides down her chin with a drag
off his cock. She raises her hand to wipe it away but Mike grabs her wrist and
entwines their fingers.

“It looks good on you,” he murmurs, cock twitching in her mouth. “God, you feel
so good, Nanaba Rose.”

His compliment makes her feel vulnerable and proud, and she bravely takes down
his whole length, daring to press her nose into the thick, silky hair at the
base. Above her, he swears. Even though he said he would try not to get hard
too fast, she can feel him rapidly swelling, and when she pulls back and lets
him fall from her mouth, he's half-hard already. She safely goes slow,
following the guiding press of his hand on the back of her head, remembering to
breathe and stifle, and soon she is bringing him to climax.

Mike is right, his cum does taste terrible. Most of it, he sends straight down
her throat, but he paints some across her tongue and face, making her sputter
with the foul flavour, her stomach lurching to expel. Quickly, Mike relieves
her, lapping his tongue onto hers to clean it, doing the same on her face. By
the underarms, he pulls her up from the floor and onto his thighs.

“My good girl,” he coos, latching his teeth into her neck and then licking the
tiny imprints. “Good girl, letting me fuck your pretty little face like that.”

When his nips turn into muscle-deep bites, she feels the eager heat rising up
her spine, darting into her brain where it explodes into gold. With his rough
fingers, he pushes her to cum over and over in the way that she craves; she
craves the way he exhausts her, melts her down and drinks her up.
 

.
 

They take turns giving and receiving pleasure, but they never take part
together. She wants to have sex with him, but he said that there was no rush
and that's exactly how he's acting. She does not want to be so patient, yet he
forces it onto her and the boundary feels good.
 

.
 
 

The school year is coming to a close, prom being the last event before
graduation, and Hans asks her to be his date. Initially, she feels terrible in
accepting-- she just wanted something to rub in Lynne’s face, as prom is an
event solely for upperclassmen and their plus-one, freshmen cannot attend
otherwise. When she tells Mike what she's done, she hides her face behind her
hands. But Mike coaxes her out of the insecurity and hugs her tight, tells her
that going to prom will be a good experience for her, that he's happy she has a
date that she can trust.

“When I talked to him on Halloween,” Mike says, following her between long rows
of formal dresses, “I could tell he was a good kid.”

Hans says it is easier for him to match whatever colour she picks, so with
Mike’s approval, she decides on a long tent dress made of extraordinarily pale
blue satin. Mike uses her phone to take of a picture when she tries it on, and
she sends that to Hans to let him know what colour she chose.

Instead of leaving the shopping mall like she expects, Mike takes them on a
detour to one of the jewellers, parking her on a bench and promising to come
right back. She has a clear view of his back and she can see the simpering
expression of the saleswoman as she shows Mike something in a small case. He
nods, accepts the neat foil package that she wraps for him, and shakes her
hand. When he turns around to leave, Nanaba spies the remains of a smile on his
face. As much as she wants to ask him about it, she wants to show off her new-
found patience more.
 

.
 

On the first anniversary of her parents’ death, and she asks to go to the old
house. There's hesitation before Mike agrees. A few families have come to look
at the house but no offers have been made on it yet, and Mike wonders aloud, on
the drive, if Nanaba wants to reconsider selling it.

This time, the panic does not overwhelm her. The dead air and the frozen
memories don’t snake into her lungs and choke her with their nostalgia. She can
do more than touch the spines of the family photo albums, she can take them
down and walk them out to Mike’s truck. She opens the china cabinet in the
dining room and blows the dust from her mother’s favourite set of teacups but
leaves them hanging on their delicate hooks.

This time, the door of her bedroom does not petrify her with ignored grief. It
still hurts to be face-to-face with the knowledge, but she has the strength to
twist the knob and enter. This was her nursery as a baby, this has always been
her room, but it does not feel like home the way that the room in Mike’s tiny
house feels.

This time, she has the courage to stand in her parents’ room, to run her
fingers over her mother’s jewellery and her father’s ties, to remember them
wholly and let her love for them crawl out of the depths of her heart where
she’s been hiding it.

When she comes full circle and turns to leave, Mike is leaning against the
doorjamb watching her.

She speaks first. “It doesn’t hurt now.”

“I was worried,” Mike admits, and she finds a small thrill in having recognised
that worry within him. She’s learning him, she’s finally understanding what all
of his little tells proclaim. And it’s so strange, for that to be the thing to
overwhelm her and bring tears welling in her eyes. Mike is to her in a moment,
cupping her face between his hands and searching her eyes for the answer that
he needs.

“Fuck me,” she blurts, unsurprised with herself, wrapping her hands around
Mike’s wrists. “Take it, take it.”

Mike leans in to kiss her slowly, keeping his eyes open and on hers as he does,
and she watches him right back, refusing to stand down. She wants this, she
wants to give it to him, she wants him to take it.

“Okay,” he decides finally. His hands slide from her face to her shoulders and
squeeze.

He doesn’t ask where or how she wants it. He takes the lead and she’s willing,
she so willing to do whatever he asks of her that she doesn’t care when he
pushes her down into her parents’ bed, she doesn’t care about anything as he
moves inside her, as he fucks her--
 

.
 
 

There’s a few hours between getting out of school and Hans coming to pick her
up for prom, so she attends cooking club as usual. Lynne is hanging on Gelgar’s
arm when Nanaba walks into the food science lab, pretending to ignore Nanaba
like she's been doing for weeks now. In her head, she can hear Mike telling her
to be the bigger person.

“I’m sorry,” she says, standing in front of her friends. It’s not clear what
she’s apologising for, maybe even just for hurting Lynne’s feelings.

“It’s whatever,” Lynne dismisses, the closest she ever gets to accepting an
apology. “It’s, like, fine since you have that ‘cute virgin’ thing going for
you.”

“I’m not a,” she starts but snaps her mouth shut too late. Lynne’s jaw drops
and Gelgar’s eyebrows raise, and Nanaba feels frustrated, she’s scared now.
“I’m not cute,” she says instead, wanting to run and hide from the troubles
she’s just created by speaking without thinking.

“Wait. Who did you have sex with?” Lynne hounds anyway, unwilling to let this
information go without snatching.

“No,” Nanaba shakes her head. “I just meant, I’m not cute.”

She gives it a moment before she turns to go to her station, and as she turns
her back, Lynne says, “Mike didn’t… hit you.”

Nanaba freezes for a moment, feeling all the eyes on the room on her, everyone
now curious with what’s unfolding. This school is so small, everyone knows
everyone and everything. Gossip burns like London.

“Oh, Nanaba,” Lynne murmurs, filled with pity.

“He never touched me,” Nanaba snaps. “He never did anything to me, Lynne, stop
trying to make stuff up.”

“Oh my god, it was him,” Lynne breathes, clearly not believing Nanaba once
again, and even though she would be correct, Nanaba will deny it until she
dies.

“If you want to believe stuff that’s not true, be my guest.” Nanaba settles
into her work station. She’s content to pretend that this didn’t happen, that
the whole school won’t be on fire with a rumour that could end her life, but
the frustration and fear manifests physically. She stubbornly wipes at the
silent tears before they can leave trails on her cheeks.

The next time she looks up, Lynne is gone. Anxiety spikes in her chest, sends
her heart into her throat. She has to leave, she can’t handle a confrontation
with the councillor again. Rushing, she slings her backpack over her shoulder
and makes a break for it. She doesn’t look down the hallway but she feels the
fine hairs on her neck standing even before she hears the sharp, expectant,
“Miss Smith!”

She doesn’t stop, doesn’t look back. She can claim she didn't hear it, but then
Lynne’s loud mouth is begging, “Please, Nan, this is serious!”

The doors to the parking lot are just ahead, and she’s intent on running away,
when hands grasp her shoulders. Her first instinct is to push away the
unwelcome touch, but then Hans is crooning, “Hey, talk to me.”

She twists in his grip and pushes her whole body into his arms, too afraid to
care, too desperate to say anything coherent. Hans shucks his letterman and
drapes it over her shoulders like he did at the party.

“Nan, tell the truth,” Lynne demands when she catches up to them. “Did Mike
make you have sex with him?”

“No!” She shouts, can’t hold it back.

“Miss Smith, there’s no need to shout--”

“NO!” She screams then, muffled by Hans pressing her against his chest. She’s
working up into a panic, but she doesn’t fight him.

“You said you're not a virgin now. Who was it? Who?” Lynne insists like a
barking dog and Nanaba wants to hit her until she bleeds for causing all this
trouble.

“Me,” Hans says, stroking the back of Nanaba’s neck convincingly. “It was me.
Now, I’d really appreciate if you leave Nan alone about it.”
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
***** love, out, running *****
Chapter Summary
     so this is where you are
     and this is where i am
     so this is where you are
     and this is where i've been
     somewhere between unsure
     and a hundred
     listen
Chapter Notes
     If you would rather see Nanaba move on and become an independent
     adult, this is your ending. For the dark ending, continue to chapter
     four after this one.


Nanaba leans her head back until it rests against Mike’s shoulder and then she
turns her face slightly to nuzzle into his neck. His hands continue to elicit
breathy sighs as he washes her body, the callouses scratching her in so many
sensitive places. He washes her hair, gentle in the way he turns her head
about, and when they get out, he dries her, covers every inch of her with
scented lotion, brushes out her damp hair. She stands naked while he puts on
his clothes, fruitlessly hoping that he will not force her to go to prom after
all. Just the sight of the gown makes her upset all over again.
 
“You’re mine,” he reminds her after he’s buttoned up the collar of her dress.
“Nanaba Rose, there is nothing shameful in our secrets, and one day, it won’t
be a secret anymore.”
 
“I know,” she says. Mike’s been reminding her all afternoon. “I just… when
Lynne, she’s so nosy, I don’t… I wanted to be friends with her, for you,
because of you and her dad, but, I don’t want to be, anymore. And I know that
we have to keep this a secret, but I… I don’t want people to think I slept with
Hans. They’re going to call me a slut.”
 
Mike is quiet behind her for an unnerving pause, and then he comes around to
face her, holding her pair of shoes for tonight. In a stern rumble, he tells
her, “Look at me.”
 
She does, her eyes darting up from the mary janes in his hands and to his face.
As Mike goes to kneel, he keeps their gazes locked.
 
“Nanaba Rose, I’m sorry that I couldn’t be there to protect you.” He holds one
shoe out for her, and finally she breaks eye contact to slide into the shoe.
The same for the other. “Put this behind you. Hold your head up. Be proud. Go
and have fun tonight.”
 
Tears instantly well in her eyes. “But, I don’t want to go.”
 
“It’s all you can do right now,” he tells her, and it’s so stern that she tucks
her lips between her teeth to stifle her cries. He rises and cups her round
cheeks and kisses her nose. “Shhh, baby girl. You're gonna have a good time. In
September, no one will even remember this.”
 
“How do you know that, huh?” She whines. Her face is scrunched and ugly with
crying, she can feel it.
 
“It's high school,” Mike says like that's the only explanation she should need.
“It's all drama, one thing after the other. The only thing that will matter in
five years are your friends.”
 
“This is so stupid,” she murmurs and swats off his touch, buries the heels of
her palms in her eye sockets. She scrubs them over her face in frustration.


.




It’s an awkward slow dance. Nanaba tries not to look at all the people around
them, to see the accusative glances. She fidgets with the ring on her finger
and focuses on staying in step with Hans. Afterward, they take a terrible prom
photo, standing facing one another and clasping hands, and she tries not to
think about the rumours.
 
Hans’ attention is split between her and their surroundings, probably observing
the behaviour of their peers, and it helps her feel less conscious, until he
curiously asks, “He... gave you that ring?”
 
“Oh.” Nanaba fists her hands and twists the band until the stone is hidden in
her palm. “Yeah. It’s alexandrite, since I was born in June.”
 
“A birthstone ring, huh?” Hans asks, too knowingly, and that makes her blush.
“It’s a good cover.”
 
“When did you know?”
 
“At Halloween, I suspected.” Hans scans the dance floor before turning his
imperceptive gaze solely onto her. “He looks at you, he talks about you, like a
lover, not a father. Oh, well, I mean, there’s the different kinds of love.
Like, perhaps, he would be possessive-- there’s a possessive father, and then
there’s a possessive lover, in terms of behaviour, yeah?”
 
Nanaba pauses to let his words sink in but most slide off her back. “Yeah?”
 
“Well,” Hans says, settling in close to her, illustrating his point with his
hands. “He said ‘she’s  mine  to care to for’ and yeah, that could just be
taken as-is, but he had aggressive body language, not like a father might.”
 
“Okay.” Nanaba looks away for a moment, trying her hardest not to smile at the
mental image of Mike being protective of her like that.
 
“Yeah, so, he-- Mike, he was,” Hans trails off for a moment in thought, “very…
like a lion guarding a kill, like ‘this is mine and no one else can take it.’
Which, like, yeah I totally get that.”
 
Nanaba shrugs her shoulders.
 
“Does it… bother you? That I know.” Hans steps back but turns toward her fully.
 
“Yeah,” she says without hesitation, then wants to take it back, but Hans
reassures her with an arm snaking around her shoulders. “Sorry, it’s nothing
personal.”
 
“Yeah, I know, this is super illegal and he’d go to prisoner forever; I know
it’s scary but I’m serious.” Hans squeezes her into his side and leans his head
on top of hers. “I will never tell anyone, ever.”
 
“Thank you,” she murmurs.
 
“Now, don't be so glum,” Hans says just as an upbeat song starts up. His hands
find hers and he laces their fingers together, raising them in a shimmy. “Let’s
dance, lover.”



.




Hans brings her home by midnight, just like Mike told him. He hugs Nanaba tight
and tells her to text him anytime, and she promises to do so. She likes Hans,
in the platonic way. He knows a lot, and he’s accomplished a lot, and most
importantly, he’s nice to her.
 
Mike waits on the porch for her but he doesn't follow her into the house. He's
still sitting on the same step when she comes back in her pajamas, so she
invites herself into his lap. The night sky is clear, the moon and all its
stars are bright enough to cause shadows-- bright enough to show her the
shadows under Mike’s eyes.
 
“Goodnight,” she whispers into the cocoon of his arms.
 
“Goodnight, baby,” he murmurs with a kiss to her hair.


.


i need a ride to the city,  Lynne texts on Tuesday morning. Nanaba ignores it
and continues walking to school. It’s the final day of classes, and Mike has a
surprise for her tonight.
 
Thinking of the city reminds her that Hans invited her to come to his
university graduation. He has one summer course to finish so that he receives
his bachelor's degree, and there are administrators that he wants to introduce
her to. She’d asked how she could earn a letterman jacket as decorated as his
own, and he’d smiled and promised to present her to someone that can make it
possible.
 
Lynne corners her right outside of home room. It’s been four days but Nanaba’s
heart thumps instantly with anxiety. “Hey, I texted you.”
 
“Yeah, I know.” Last week’s pain is still fresh in her nerves. Nanaba tries to
step around her but when Lynne steps into the way, she inhales deeply and asks,
“What is it?”
 
“I need a ride, but you can’t tell anyone.” Lynne raises her eyebrows, an
expectant pinkie finger between their chests. Just like that, as if she’s never
caused Nanaba any trouble or made her cry or put her in danger.
 
“Okay, fine, I won’t tell anyone.” Nanaba rolls her eyes but pinkie promises
anyway.
 
“I just need a ride to and from my doctor’s office.”
 
“Why can’t your parents take you?”
 
“Umm,” Lynne drawls. She pauses for a moment and then decides to divulge the
information. “My parents don’t know I’m sexually active and they don’t want me
to get birth control, but, like, IDK, I’m obviously lying about being a virgin
so I just wanna make sure I don’t get, ya know, knocked up.”
 
“You’re getting birth control?”
 
Lynne shushes her violently and pushes her further away from the door as
several of their peers squeeze past them. “OMG, shh!”
 
“Okay, fine, I’ll ask Mike,” Nanaba grumbles.
 
“Don’t tell him why, though, okay?”
 
“Okay,” Nanaba agrees. Lynne smiles at her and pulls her into a tight embrace,
snaking her strong arms around Nanaba’s middle and making her squeak
uncomfortably.
 
“Thank you, Nan,” Lynne whispers, and then they enter homeroom together.
 
Nanaba calls Mike at lunch, since he's picking her up after school and it’d be
easiest to head straight to the city, and when he asks why Lynne needs a ride,
she does not hesitate to tell Lynne's secret. His answer is a swift negative;
it makes Lynne grovel to Nanaba in the hopes that she'll eventually get her
way. After a steady stream of denial, Nanaba actually begins to feel like
they’re maybe a little bit even now. Lynne won’t be upset for too long, she
hopes. They’ve had their ups and downs, and if Lynne is upset, she can redirect
her anger at Mike, anyway. It is his decision. Besides, Nanaba thinks, maybe
she should respect for her parents’ authority, because at least she still has
them around.  
 
She returns her textbooks in exchange for her final report card, during which
the librarian compliments her ring, inquiring the meaning of such an
interesting stone. It leaves her feeling out of sorts for a moment before she
can relax enough to explain the birthstone. It makes her think of Hans, of him
telling her it's a good cover story, and when the librarian believes her, she
feels a twinge of guilt for lying.
 
Mike is waiting for her in the parking lot, and he takes the report card that
she offers without opening it. He levels his serious gaze on her. “Let's make a
deal.”
 
She bites her bottom lip before asking, “What kind of deal?”
 
“For every ‘A’ you got, I'll let you pick one thing to buy, but only if all
your grades are passing.”
 
“Okay but what store?” Nanaba draws one leg onto the bench, tucking it beneath
her so that she can face him entirely. She leans forward and settles her hands
on his thigh. “Where are you taking me?”
 
“That place you been eyeballing,” he smirks. “That cooking supply warehouse.”
 
She grins wide. “And I can pick anything I want?”
 
“If  all  your grades are passing,” he stresses, then holds out his hand, which
she readily shakes, all smug satisfaction. She gets to choose six things,
narrowly missing the last two grades by just a few points. Still, there's so
much at the warehouse, and six items feels impossibly small in comparison.
 
It’s that night, after she oils the cast iron skillet and sets it upside down
in the oven, that she trusts Mike with her secret jealousies and desires.
 
“It’s good to wanna accomplish that,” Mike tells her. He leans back against the
kitchen counter that she is sitting on, resting his spread hand on her thigh.
“I had a letter jacket in high school. Ma probably has it, still.”
 
“What for?” She leans forward, interest piqued and burning. She imagines
wearing Mike’s jacket, the year on the shoulder predating the one of her birth,
and it feels like a scandal waiting to happen.
 
“JROTC.”
 
“Oh.”
 
“You were thinking a sport?”
 
Nanaba shrugs and pushes her bangs sideways out of her eyes. “I guess.”
 
“That was your dad’s thing.”
 
“Yeah, and Mom was a cheerleader-- they were typical sweethearts or whatever.”
 
Mike turns his gaze onto her and she bites her bottom lip between her teeth at
the intensity of it. When his hand squeezes her thigh, she lets her eyes rest
there instead. “What about you, Nanaba Rose, what’ll you be?”
 
She shrugs again, suddenly sour. “Maybe everyone will remember me as the slut.”
 
“Hey now.” He twists to slide between her knees, pushing them open to accept
him, and though he is only cupping her cheeks to make her look at him, her mind
flashes with the heated memory of Mike sliding between her legs and inside of
her, their bodies sweaty and mingling and one.
 
“What,” she mumbles, trying to avoid his eyes until he tilts her chin upward.
 
“You’re gonna get rid of that idea right now. No one will care, not even in a
week, let alone after summer break.” A kiss on her forehead before he lays his
own against it. “You’ll get that letter in family science and whatever else you
put your mind to. You got your dad’s spirit. And I’ll do everything I need to,
to guarantee that you get more letters than your jacket can hold.”


.


The first day of summer break, she finds the property perimeter and follows it
all the way around to where it deposits her on the main road into town on the
far side, four miles from the house. She follows the road past the corner
grocery store, the high school, the CVS, toward home, where a pack of rescues
rushes her as soon as she comes into view. Mike’s truck is parked off to the
side. It feels like the same routine of a school day.
 
He’s stretching out on the sofa, reading, when she comes in through the mud
room, opening his arm to beckon her join. “Where’d you go?”
 
“I followed the property markers all the way.” She doesn’t realise how tired
she is until she presses down into Mike’s side. “My birthday’s in a couple
weeks.”
 
“Fifteen already.” Mike’s arm loops around her so that he can settle his hand
along the side of her head, twining through her hair.
 
“You’ll be forty-one this year.”
 
“Mhm.” He puts his book face-down on the arm of the sofa. With his newly free
hand, he takes her left, spreading the fingers and toying with the ring on her
middle finger. “Ma called while you were out.”
 
“Oh, yeah?” Nanaba scoots in closer.
 
“She wants us to come for fourth of July this year. She’s having a big party
for her and Dad’s anniversary.”
 
“They got married on fourth of July?”
 
“Yeah. Free fireworks.” Mike scratches at her scalp. “I got a ton of vacation
days from work I can use, if you wanna go.”
 
“I wanna go... but what if we don’t? What if we just stay here and you take
time off?”
 
Mike growls and tugs her hair. “Then you won’t leave my bed for seven days.”
Nanaba squirms, presses her knees together and releases a shuddered breath at
the wet heat that blooms between her legs.
 
“You like that.” Warm breath fans over her neck, a tongue chasing its path.
“You wanna be used over and over again. You wanna to be my little slut.”
 
She can barely whine out, “Don’t call me that.” It lacks any conviction.
 
He can tell. “Really, don’t call you my little slut? When you’ve got that
greedy little pussy? Baby girl,” he coos with deceptive concern.
 
Knees press together hard enough to bruise, and her cunt draws up tight on its
own. Speaking is not safe. She shakes her head. That slur made her red with
shame when spoken by her peers, but Mike makes her red with a different kind of
embarrassment, and right there on the living room floor, he shows her exactly
how true his words are.


.


For her fifteenth birthday, they go into the city and get a booth in a dim
corner of a burger joint next to the movie theatre they'll go to afterward. He
orders a beer with his dinner and lets her taste some, smirking at the way she
scrunches her nose, before taking a long drink of it himself.
 
“You liked that wine Ma gave you.”
 
She shrugs, barely recalling that flavour outside of strong and distinct. “Yeah
but beer tastes too, I dunno, like soggy toast.”
 
“Oh,” Mike chuckles. “Guess I gotta you find something sweet.”
 
“I guess.”


.


Adele hugs her tight when they arrive so late at night. The next morning,
Nanaba gets up early to help with the pancake breakfast, excited to show off
some of her skills. She successfully impresses Adele, who raves to everyone
entering the kitchen at what a joy Nanaba is.
 
“You’re so much like your father. He was always a helpful boy.” Adele sighs
with a smile while Nanaba voluntarily scrubs dishes and Mike’s sisters-in-law
complain about their own leeching teenagers. “You have so much of his spirit.”
 
“Mom used to say the same thing,” Nanaba says absentmindedly. It's still hard
to allow herself the memories, though it doesn't actively hurt the way she
expects it to.
 
“Women always want their children to embody the one they've beared them for.
Or, at least, I always did.” Adele smiles fondly and runs a hand through her
cropped hair.
 
Nanaba thinks of Mike’s tenderness and imagines the impossibility of him having
a wife and family; it's an image she destroys every piece of. “Did you get your
wish?”
 
“No,” Adele chuckles. “But they turned out alright.”


.


Nanaba swallows too much lake water when they all go swimming and the resulting
illness knocks her on her butt for the entire next day. The brothers and their
wives and their children all escape for a movie and ice cream as planned. She
stays back, and so do Mike and his father.
 
Mr Zacharias still intimidates her with his stoic silences and sparse words.
She gets up from her fever bed and trudges to the kitchen with a fluffy
comforter sliding behind her, but she stills when she hears two voices in the
kitchen.
 
“... thought you'd never get over Erwin.”
 
“Had to. He got married, Pa. Had a kid.”
 
Nanaba grimaces but stays where she's at as if by some masochistic force. This
is not for her to hear but she can't stop herself from listening.
 
“But don't you think you should find a good man to help raise that girl? She
needs that influence of a stable relationship or else she’ll never understand
how to have one.”
 
“She can have whatever she likes, I don't mind much, ‘cause I know she's too
smart to get involved with some shitbag guy.”
 
“I know you're holding onto whatever piece of Erwin you can keep, but you need
to put her first. You told us she was going to live with you, and I thought for
sure that you'd start dating, maybe try and make a new family for her.”
 
“Erwin and Marie raised her for almost fourteen years. She don't need a second
family.”
 
“And you think you know what she needs? Did you ever ask her, Mike? Do you ever
ask her if she's happy? She just looks so sad.”
 
Silence. The clock on the wall clicks. Then, just as she's about to enter the
kitchen and interrupt, Mike surrenders a defeated, “No.”
 
“Look. You're doing alright, but you need to consider what's best for her.
Living out in the country, that was you and Erwin’s thing when you were kids,
and I'm glad you could have it when you got back. But, Michael, consider what
you can do that gives Nanaba the best opportunity. You want to be a parental
figure, then make some sacrifices.”
 
Nanaba picks up her comforter trail and goes back to bed, thirst unquenched.
 
She's replaying the overheard snippets for the tenth time when Mike knocks on
the door to the girls’ room and waits for her permission to enter. He offers a
glass of water, as if he'd sensed her thirst and sought to meet the need. She
drains it.
 
“You feel better?” He puts his hands in his jean pockets.
 
“Yeah, I’m starting to.”
 
“You look better,” he says.
 
“Because I feel better, yeah.” She plans to keep the secret of her
eavesdropping but it's so overbearingly awkward between them, she blurts, “You
and Dad were a thing?”
 
“Thought I smelled you wandering around,” Mike murmurs and she flushes deeply.
 
“ Were  you?”
 
Mike sits beside her in the bed. “When we were real young. It was a childhood
crush.”
 
She feels pitted, like he's gorged out her center and left her hollow, but that
masochistic urge only hums louder. “So… you were together?”
 
Mike gives her a long, serious look before he turns away and nods. “Your
grandparents, they were good folks, but they said we were inappropriately
close, we must've been eleven or twelve. Erwin went away for the summer and
when he came back, it wasn't the same.”
 
“You loved him,” she whispers. It shouldn't feel like betrayal but she feels
split in half under the glare of this revelation. She feels like a replacement,
like a lie, like a fool.
 
“Nanaba Rose,” Mike croons, leaning over and resting his forehead on the bed
next to her hand.
 
She pushes him away and sits up, ignoring the dizzy wave. “And me, I'm just,
you're using me to hold onto him.”
 
“I know you're young and you've never been in love before,” Mike starts and she
feels a wash of anger that he would patronise her this way, “but things aren't
so simple as you think.”
 
“Why didn't you tell me?” Her voice shakes to maintain a whisper.
 
He says nothing, reaching for her hand and lacing their fingers, kissing her
ring. She wants to vomit and run away and never live another day.
 
“Did you ever mean any of it? Were you just using me?”
 
“No,” Mike snaps. “I meant everything. I loved him then and I love you now.”
 
“Then why didn't you just tell me the truth?”
 
Mike stares at her and she stares back, until the tears well enough to
overflow.


.


That night, she sleeps like the dead and when she wakes before sunrise, the
illness and anger have passed. The house is quiet and so are her feet. The lake
glistens, ripples, beckons. She dips her toes and thinks of her parents. It's
the anniversary dinner today, and then they'll watch fireworks out on the
pontoon. She thinks of her parents’ last anniversary. She thinks about Mike and
the photos Adele gave her. She reanimates the memories, imagines Mike in high
school alongside her father, imagines herself in her father’s place, but all it
does is make her stomach sink. Twenty-five and a half years between them. She
is a fool.
 
At breakfast, she thinks about coming out and spilling her secrets, but it's a
petty desire. There's nothing to gain from exposing Mike. He avoids sitting
next to her and eats standing in the kitchen, out of her line of sight. He
avoids her the rest of the day, too, and she pretends it doesn’t matter.
 
The sisters-in-law orchestrate dinner preparations so that everyone helps,
except the guests of honour. Mike takes a place at the island next to Nanaba
and they cut fruits and vegetables for their respective salads. Their elbows
brush every so often, and at one point, he nudges his foot against the side of
hers. She leans a little heavier than necessary into his side, forgiving him.
She's not over it, far from peaceful about it, but she knows she doesn't want
to break off their relationship, so she thinks that there's no point in being
pissy about it. That’s too immature.
 
The dining room table has another small one pushed up against it so that
everyone can sit together, and she's quietly thrilled when Mike throws his arm
over the back of the chair next to his and pats it. As platters and serving
plates circle the table, Mike serves them both, and when he pours himself a
little sangria, she gets some without question. It's so sweet that she hardly
tastes the alcohol, but she definitely feels it when she stands after dinner.
Instead of helping with dishes, she curls up in her dining chair, pulling her
knees into her chest and wrapping her arms tightly to ward off the dizziness.
 
Mike comes to check on her, his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and his hands
warm and damp. He touches her forehead as if to gauge her temperature, and she
loses herself for a moment, butting her head further into his grasp, turning
her nose up to press into his palm. There's a momentary flash of fear for both.
Her, for the intimacy spoken of her action. And he's looking at her like he's
afraid she's lost the entire of her filter.
 
The tension is broken when Adele joins them not a moment later, laughing
cheerfully at their display. “Oh, dear, Nanaba, was it too much for you
tonight?”
 
She closes her eyes and smiles and nods once. When she looks back up at Adele,
the woman pats her cheek with soft affection.
 
“I'll get her some water,” Mike offers. Adele sits with her until he returns
and when she passes behind Nanaba on her way out, she grips the girl’s
shoulder.
 
The pleasant haze passes after some cake and ice cream, and she's got a little
headache by the time they all load onto the pontoon. She lays on her back along
the arm of the craft, and she can feel Mike’s watchful eye as he keeps tabs on
her wellbeing. Everyone's chatting and having a good time, and eventually the
fireworks drown it out with their booming.


.


It's never quite the same after that.
 
Mike’s house feels too quiet after a week with his family. She doesn't get out
of bed before lunchtime most days, and by that point, he's usually only halfway
through work. She doesn't pester him with messages. She doesn't text anyone.
She settles into teenage laziness too harshly, and she thinks belatedly, that
it's not laziness at all, but rather depression.
 
Mike’s family thinks he's still gay; or maybe he is gay, and Nanaba is the
exception, or maybe he's bisexual, or maybe his desire will wane when her
womanhood becomes too loud to be muted. For whatever reason, she can't ignore
the festering betrayal that zaps the colour out of her life.
 
Breadroll hardly leaves her side during the day. The sheepdog looks at her and
whimpers, nudging at her hand as if to go outside but refusing to go when
Nanaba hauls herself from bed and opens the door.
 
Mike picks up on it as well, and when he encourages her to spend a day with
Lynne, she only comes home feeling worse than before. Gelgar broke up with
Lynne, and she’s dyed her hair black and listens to emo music and talks about
how shitty it is to be alive. Mike doesn't bring up Lynne for the rest of the
summer.
 
Several times, Nanaba finds her thumb hovering over Hans’ number but she
refrains from pestering him, too. He's busy, he's got his education to worry
about, he doesn't need a kid with stupid questions distracting him.


.



“Alright, you've moped around enough.” Mike leans against her doorjamb, all a
stubborn act because she denied him when he knocked and he's only respecting
that boundary  physically.
 
“I'm not getting up.” She pulls the covers up around her ears and rolls to
present her back. “Just go away.”
 
“C’mon, baby girl, I'll make it worth your while,” he tries to persuade.
 
She doesn't answer, doesn't turn to look until she hears his footsteps venture
away from her door. Biting her lips between her teeth, she throws her covers
back and rolls from bed, sidestepping her loyal sheepdog on the way out.
Carefully, she creeps around the corner, expecting to see him idle in one of
the living areas of the house. Hands squeeze her shoulders and she squeals when
she's lifted and tossed into a fireman’s carry over bulky shoulders.
 
“Mike!”
 
“Caught you.”
 
“No!” She whines loudly. “Put me down!”
 
“Nah.” He slaps her bottom. “Now, quiet.”
 
He takes them out onto the porch and ducks to roll her down. She watches from
where she’s been set on the stairs as he pulls his shirt off.
 
“Get undressed, baby.”
 
She is slow to match him, slow to please, expecting something she doesn’t want.
Instead of sex, he sits on the porch step behind her, tucks her against his
chest, and sets his chin in her hair. For a few blissful minutes, there's
nothing but the buzzing cicadas and Mike’s heart pounding through her, begging
hers to sync, and then she realises that this must have been his intent. He's
drawing her up from the rocks of a dry well with his skin on hers on a hot
summer’s evening and it reminds her that she is  alive .


.


School comes again before she's ready. It's been a lazy summer spent cooking
and eating, reading or watching television, fucking. It’s closing on a grumpy
note. The wild hormones that she’s used to are being evened out by birth
control and her body adjusts with a ruckus of protest, but feeling cum drip
down between her bruised thighs for the first time makes it all worthwhile.
 
She squeezes in two family science electives during the school’s zero hour,
rounding out her schedule with ten courses instead of the usual eight. It’ll be
another rough adjustment, but remembering Hans’ letterman drives her resolve.
Getting to see his college graduation left her motivated. Now, he’s moved to
the city with a graduate program and she won’t see him sneaking around through
cooking club and snatching snacks. And she sincerely hopes that Mike is right,
that no one remembers the gossip, the rumours.
 
Her first class starts around the same time Mike leaves for work, so he decides
to drop her off every day. They’re just settling into that routine when Lynne
texts her and offers, as a newly licensed driver, to drop her off at home every
afternoon. It feels like a truce.  
 
“That’s what we oughta do,” Mike says over dinner. They eat earlier now, like
senior citizens. She jokes that she’ll serve stewed prunes one of these days.
“Get your learners’ permit.”
 
.


Mike helps her prepare for the autumn state competition with as much dedication
as she needs from him. Her family science professor gives her an idea of what
to expect for when she competes in both food and homecare categories. Mike is
tireless in providing her with feedback and practice, and she comes back with
two silver medals, second places.
 
It’s a long weekend away from him and when she gets back in the early depths of
Sunday morning, she tucks into his side and spreads her legs for his prodding
hand on the drive home.


.
 
She orders the letterman jacket in November and receives it in January. It
feels good and heavy, fills her with pride as she wears it the remainder of the
school day and surprises Mike that afternoon with its arrival. He fingers the
patches on her sleeve, praising her, reminding her of what a wonderful job she
did back in October when she earned it.
 
Life is good and steady and stable. She's comfortable with Mike, living under
his commanding hands. Perhaps, she never wants to live any other way.
 
.


Learning to drive Mike’s truck usually ends in something entirely different,
but she accumulates the necessary practice hours to get her license on her
sixteenth birthday. She takes the crappy DMV photo wearing her letterman even
though she's sweating while wearing it.
 
Lynne goes with her and hugs her after she steps away from the blue wall,
almost knocking Nanaba over in her own glee, though Mike grips her shoulder to
keep her upright. His hands are quick to pull away. In a place like this, he's
quick to distance them, and even though it should be something she is used to
by now, she has to soothe the sting.
 
Back at home, she takes the dogs out. It's been a whole school year but she
doesn't know where the time has gone. It's gone  somewhere,  because she looks
at her sleeve, and under her graduation year are the two letter patches for
family science. She has studied and worked hard for nearly a year, but now, she
can hardly recall doing so.
 
There are times she is almost sure that she didn't exist if Mike wasn't
touching her.


.
 
“We’re like a married couple,” Mike says one summer night in his work shed.
 
“I guess,” she replies, delighted to still get butterflies after this long.
Nanaba never wants to lose the feeling. Their life has a routine of dates,
household tasks, sex, and genuinely given affection that makes her feel
cherished and safe, and to be married to him would change nothing between them,
but instead show everyone who she proudly belongs to. “Will we make it
official… one day?”
 
Mike grins and looks over at her. “Yeah.”


.


Thanksgiving of junior year, they go visit the family as usual. She drives part
of the way there and Mike’s hand doesn't leave her thigh, high on the inside,
nothing teasing about the touch but she feels desperate nonetheless. When she
passes a sign for a rest stop, she turns on her blinker and takes the exit,
drives through the whole lot to find a secluded corner that street lights won't
illuminate. There was school today so they couldn't leave until after, and it's
seven hours from Montana to the Washington coast, so night is settling well.
 
She wore the muzzle for him last night, figuring it'd be the last time they get
to fuck for the weekend, but it's not enough, not when she's in the peak
between her period, when the seam of her jeans have been rubbing against her
for two hours.
 
Mike’s hands hover at her hips as she swings her legs around to straddle him.
“Baby girl, what do you need?”
 
“You,” she purrs and presses her face into the curve where jaw meets neck. “I
need a little more before we get there.”
 
But instead of indulging her in her desire, he moves her out of his lap.
Sternly, he tells her, “No. Wait until we’re back home.”
 
Regardless of her pouting, Mike does not go back on his word.
 
At family dinner, his brothers nag him about finding someone to settle down
with, and even though she knows he's lying, hearing him say he's not interested
in commitment hurts her. Nanaba's stormy emotions are obvious to him and so he
sinks inside of her at the first rest stop, and every single one to follow, on
their way back home.


.


Hans is in town for Christmas and it’s the first time he sees her in over a
year. She wears her letterman because even though she sent pictures to him, it
doesn’t compare to real life. When he insists she twirl under his hand, she
obliges and laughs, feeling so light and free with his support, and she wonders
why she’s been avoiding him for so long.
 
They get back in touch after that, and he helps her rekindle her friendship
with Lynne and Gelgar.
 
“I worry about you isolating yourself.” Hans grips her shoulder and lets his
hand slide down the sleeve over the patches, then slots his fingers between
hers. “You've heard of codependency, right?”
 
.


A mild anxiety is reborn in the autumn of her senior year of high school-- has
it really come so fast? All anyone wants to know is,  where are you applying
for school?  There’s no regard for what she wants, if she wants to stay here,
because it is simply expected that she will pursue other things, because it’s
something that will make her  dead  parents proud, for her to be a successful
something-or-another.
 
It's all somewhat tolerable until Mike asks her, after dinner, laying together
on the couch, what she plans on doing after high school.
 
She turns his face into his ribs and burrows before shrugging. Very, very
quietly, she says, “I thought… maybe, I'll just stay here.”
 
Mike's hand comes and cups the back of her head. He's silent for too long, and
she gets nervous, blurts, “Everyone wants to know what college I'm applying to,
but I haven't even thought of one, or even looked at scholarships, because I
really just don't want to go.”
 
Fingers scrape along her scalp and Mike gives her nothing but a hum.
 
“Baby girl,” he starts carefully and she closes her eyes to listen. “Don't you
think it will be good for you to get some life experience?”
 
“No.” She shakes her head and pushes her nose between his ribs until he grunts
and tugs her head back by the hair, but she refuses to look at him. “I don't
want to go anywhere. I want to stay here with you.”
 
“Nanaba Rose.”
 
She pulls herself free of his hold and curls up into his side again.
 
“Nana, you consider working?”
 
She gives it only a spare thought and it's okay enough to nod, but she quickly
adds, “Here. Somewhere local.”
 
“The city,” Mike decides.
 
“No.”
 
“I work in the city.”
 
“It's different for you.”
 
“Baby, you're being unreasonable ‘bout this.”
 
“I'm not leaving.” Nanaba shakes her head and her body shakes, too, frustrated
and worried that Mike will put his foot down and decide something for her that
breaks them up. That idea gives her so much nervousness that she can't keep the
question inside. “Are you done with me?”
 
Mike is rough, bordering on violent, when he turns her onto her back. He bears
his weight with a hand to her sternum and it leaves her breathless, forces her
to listen. “Whatever you got in your head, you best get rid of it, and I mean
right  fucking  now.”
 
For the very first time, Mike looks at her like he doesn't understand her, as
he cups her face between his big palms and scrutinises her. She hides behind
her hands and for once, blessedly for  once,  he doesn't pry her hands back.
But she can't look at him right now, not when this fear is the first emotion
she has felt so strongly in so long.
 
Mike kisses the top of her hands, then each knuckle, before he speaks again.
When he does, it sounds like a great feat. “I just want to see you happy, baby
girl. I don't want you to feel suffocated.”
 
“I won't,” she promises, though really, she's begging him. “I won't ever feel
that way.”
 
Mike rests his forehead against the backs of her hands, the breaths as
comforting little rushes of air. “I want to make sure you won't, so will you do
something, baby girl? Will you go to college for me?”
 
I won't, don't make me leave. She’ll find a way to stay, she won’t let him push
her away like this, but she’ll lie for now, she’ll lie until she finds a way to
stay. Sliding her hands down, she looks up at him and leans her chin up to peck
his nose. As confidently as possible, she says, “I can. For you. And then I'm
coming right back here and you can't stop me.”
 
.


Lynne, for all her dyed-black hair and nihilism and punk music, is skilled with
mathematics, and she is applying early decision to a big name university in
Washington, close to Mike’s family, so Nanaba tags her application along. The
university has some sort of textiles program, and three state-level family
science competition wins makes her an attractive candidate. They get acceptance
letters in the mail on the same day. Nile and Renee call Mike to trade
congratulations in the fashion that all proud parents do.
 
Nanaba has a license but no car of her own. She's never needed to go anywhere
except with Mike, so standing in the used vehicle lot to choose feels too
real.  She's leaving home, the second home she's had in her whole, and she
doesn't actually want to go, but she's doing it for him, to show him that she
really does want to stay with him forever. No-- she needs to do something Mike
cannot refuse, and then she won’t have to leave at all, ever.
 
Mike pays cash for a cute little two-door hatchback that he says is sturdy.
It’s ten years old and less than fifty-thousand miles, whatever that means. The
stereo system sounds cool enough, so she won’t complain. Lynne drives her mom’s
old Camry now, so they’ll be pretty evenly matched when they go off to college-
-  if,  because Nanaba knows she needs to stay here with Mike. She won’t
survive without him.


.


It’s all an undecided jumble in her head until the reality of what she’s done
stares back at her. Suddenly, she feels like Mike can never know what she’s
done, yet at the same time, she has an overwhelming urge to call out for him.
In the end, flooding with panic, the latter wins.
 
The bathroom door opens slowly and Mike pokes his head in. When he sees what
she holds in her hands-- what she stole from the gas station because she didn’t
want anyone to suspect a thing-- Mike throws the door open.
 
She holds it out for him but the action stops him. The colour drains from him,
the air rushes out, and his chest seems to collapse.
 
“What have you done?” He whispers, eyes on the offered pregnancy test.
 
“It-- it was an-- it was an accident,” she stammers, barely having had time to
put her excuse together. “I must’ve just, I dunno, I guess I missed my pill
once or twice--”
 
“Don’t,” Mike growls and it shuts her up, “give me that  shit.”
 
“I’m not,” she tries to say but Mike interrupts her again.
 
“That excuse? That’s the shit you say when you do  this  on purpose.”
 
Nanaba feels caught in a web and she can feel a heavy flush rushing up from her
chest. She drops the test and takes a step back and to the side, her shoulders
finding the wall and she slides down without grace.
 
“Mike,” she whimpers. It’s all too real now, it’s all too much-- leaving, not
leaving, having a baby just to stay. Why is she so stupid? What has she
burdened him, them with? “Please….”
 
Mike squats next to her, having picked up the test, and examines it as he asks
her, “When did you start trying?”
 
“Three months ago,” she says without hesitation. She feels so ashamed, so
childish, and she wants to prove he can trust her again by giving him nothing
but the truth. “That’s when I stopped taking them.”
 
“When I made you promise?”
 
“Yeah.” Nanaba watches the way he stares, so disbelieving at the two pink
lines. She didn’t expect him to be happy, but this anger is frightening in its
calm quality.
 
Finally, Mike tells her, without room to argue, “You’re getting rid of it.”


.


He sports a set of scratches on his neck, and her eye is blackened, so they
avoid being seen together in public. The space feels good and Nanaba begins to
think that Mike is right, that she is feeling suffocated. Going away might
truly have been good for her, but she’s fucked it all up now.
 
Her letterman jacket hangs on her door knob and in its pocket, her phone chimes
with another voicemail from Adele. Mike tried twice to take her into the clinic
and twice, she fought him, but she knows he wants to deal with this quickly, so
she called Adele and made her pregnancy public. But Mike is still acting like
what she’s done isn’t enough, that she’s still going to go to college in the
autumn.
 
She rolls over and ignores her phone and all the world around her.
 
She just wants to stay, is that so bad? Is it really so wrong to want to stay
here, with him? Everyone is fighting her, telling her she’s too young to give
up on her education, that she doesn’t know enough yet, that she needs more life
experience-- but she knows that she loves Mike, and why is that not enough? His
rejection is a steadily burning thing pushing tears through her eyes, just so
hot and heavy and shameful. He won’t look at her, he won’t touch her, he’s ten-
thousand miles away from her.


.


Fate is on Mike’s side.
 
This floor of the hospital is kept warm for newborns, but there’s no bassinet
in her room. The nurses are kind about it, giving her gentle touches and gentle
words without judgement, giving her sympathy without sarcasm. She’s still
heavily drugged, but she feels extraordinarily weak underneath that, like a
soul-deep exhaustion on the edge of oblivion, and it beckons to her. She’s been
in the maternity ward for twenty-four hours, though she’s been conscious for
less than thirty minutes altogether. Mike is ever-present in the recliner
beside the window.
 
The whiteboard lists her nurses’ names, the most recent doses of her
medications, and the permanent section of the board that says  ‘happy birthday
to:’  remains blank.
 
She begged Fate for a human life just to stay with Mike, and Fate laughed at
her, gave her two little bundles of Death instead. One rooted in her tube, and
swelled as it grew, and then it burst, meaning to kill all three of them. She
remembers annoying twinges of pain, and then she remembers the explosion, the
collapsing, the shaking, the frantic paramedics, the helicopter. Doctors in
scrubs. They opened her up and scraped her out to save her life. Fate offers
her nothing but laughter. Death sneers for a lost charge.
 
Adele comes out to see her and help her transition back to home, and under the
matron’s supervision, she sleeps in her own bed for the first time in years.


.


She ends up spending a few more weeks in the hospital. An emergency surgery,
home, then an unexpected infection, another scraping at her uterus. The
infection proves too stubborn. It nearly kills her twice. Weeks of bedrest
follow. Nanaba misses finals and graduation, but Mike pulls some strings and
she gets to take summer school online in exchange for her diploma.
 
Her healing puts her dependent on him again, and though it was what she wanted
a few months ago, she loathes it now. Her periods balance out and her incision
heals in a keloid, just in time for her final preparations for college, and she
yearns to be away from him. But she won’t be thankful that Mike kept her on
track for college.
 
She will never be thankful to him for anything.
 
Mike loads her stuff into his truck, and she fills her car, too, and then they
drive out with the Doks toward the Washington coast.
 
Even though she feels so hurt by Mike, she asks him for a goodbye kiss, in a
moment of privacy after unpacking into her and Lynne’s dorm.
 
“Please,” she murmurs, though she refuses to look at him.
 
He takes her left hand and twines their fingers. First, he raises her hand to
his lips and kisses the alexandrite ring. “You’re doing the right thing, Nanaba
Rose.”
 
And even though it’s been awkward between them, she can’t help the beaming
pride that she has to crush to keep from showing. Mike tugs her close and
kisses her forehead.
 
“I’m proud of you.”
 
Nanaba’s heart squeezes like a venus fly trap around his words, leaves her
blinking back teardrops.
 
“Be a good girl, alright?”
 
She nods, closing her eyes to keep from crying. He kisses her chastely on the
mouth. It is goodbye.





***** 'love', weakened, desperate *****
Chapter Summary
     you're all that i am
     take me home
     i'm through fighting it
     listen
Chapter Notes
     thank you for sticking with this, thank you for reading. you can yell
     at me on tumblr anytime.
She's shy during her first semester. Lynne doesn't mind her clinging, because
Lynne now knows the truth. She's known since she saw the handprint bruise.
 
“I saw him kiss you before he left,” Lynne tells her quietly. “So, like… are
you guys done?”
 
Nanaba wipes the back of her hand across her eyes before any tears can fall. It
still makes her want to breakdown and run back home, but she knows she has to
be stronger. She knows she has to move on. “I think so. I haven't text him or
anything.”
 
“You said his family lives up north of here.”
 
“Yeah. But I don't want to see them right now.” Because she is stupid and she
told Adele the truth after she turned eighteen, and she feels more
embarrassment than she knows how to cope with.
 
“Let's have friendsgiving, yeah? The RAs said something about it last week.”
 
She nods along. “I'll go halves on a frozen pie, if you want.”
 
Lynne knocks her elbow into Nanaba’s side. “What? No famous home cooking? We
have a whole microwave.”
 
Nanaba smirks and shakes her head, not for the first time grateful for Lynne.


.


The two of them adjust to college life, learning to be adults with the freshmen
curfews and restrictions. Gelgar transfers in for their second year, and that's
when they start to adventure out. Fake IDs cost way too much of Nanaba's
stipend from Mike, but it's so well done that the doormen don't scrutinise too
hard, despite Lynne always reminding her that she looks twelve.
 
Parties and clubs are fun enough, but they make her think of Hans, which makes
her think of Mike, and all that does is make her lonely as soon as they leave
the music and alcohol behind. Sometimes, she'll end up in bed with Lynne and
Gelgar as they fuck, but she doesn't participate, she just likes to watch and
hold Lynne’s hands. They both offer to get her off, but it's not the same. It's
not what she wants that way.
 
She gets involved with a few fuckboys, because she thinks maybe she'll find a
way to push Mike from her mind if she finds a replacement. But they're all
boys, and Mike is a man, and these boys know nothing outside of the two minutes
it takes for them to get their jollies and leave. It makes her bitter. It makes
her feel tainted, to indulge in sex that isn't even worthwhile.
 
She brought the hook and the muzzle and everything else with her, but she knows
these boys can't handle anything but vanilla. It's not even worth asking.
 
She alternates two moods. One; light and carefree, where nothing hurts her and
nothing ever hurt her, where she is invincible and promiscuous and enjoys
everything around her. Two; dark, solitary, self-isolating in the most
dangerous of ways, utterly scraped out and gutted. And they switch at such
short notice sometimes, it leaves her friends bewildered. Through it all, her
grades remain steady, so no one worries too hard.


.


The first time she visits Adele, she goes a day before everyone else will
arrive for Thanksgiving, and she cries for two hours into an expensive blouse,
emptying out almost a year and a half’s worth of emotional anguish kept under
lock and key. There's wine after and Adele tries to apologise for her
blindness, wants to repent for not realising sooner that Mike--
 
But she stops Adele. She can't hear it, because it will feel too final, and
there's a tugging in her heart that draws her back to the woods of Montana.
 
She's back in the dorm by the time the first of the Zacharias family even show
up at the lodge, and late that night, Mike breaches the wall between them for
the first time in over a year.
 
ma said you stopped by
 
Nanaba hovers over the message for an hour before she replies.  i missed her
 
she missed you too , he sends back immediately, and then,  you still have
family, you're not alone
 
That's not something she can reply to. Not yet. Not when the longing explodes
in her chest like rupturing fallopian tubes.


.


She tries harder to push Mike from her mind. Drinks too much, goes out too
much, lets her grades slip. She'll fuck anything that shows interest in her.
It's mostly awful. But if she fucks a guy or a girl more than twice, she'll
start to vocalise what she wants-- harder, rougher, call me this name, praise
me, humiliate me, more more more; until they throw their hands up and back
away, her needs too much for them to handle.
 
And all the while, she texts Mike, her messages laced with a desperation that
he soothes in a way that is unique between them.
 
No one will ever be enough, not after him. He's ruined her. And he knows it.


.


Lynne watches it for a while before she intercedes by locking Nanaba out of her
phone.
 
“He's not good for you, Nan.” Lynne says, stern.
 
“Give me my phone back.” Nanaba holds her hand out.
 
“Promise you won't talk to him anymore.”
 
“Give me my phone.”
 
“Promise,  Nan.”
 
“Give it back.” She will not budge. She will not lie. She's done lying about
Mike. She is almost twenty. She has nothing to be ashamed of.
 
Lynne gives it back with a heavy sigh.


.


No one can soothe her like Mike, no one knows her like him, but he's not here
to fuck her, so she still fucks other people. By junior year, she's a sloppy
shadow of herself, that's what Mike calls her, along with a slew of other
derogatory terms, and the whole conversation brings her a pleasant
embarrassment.
 
“You're still mine,”  he reminds her possessively at the end of the phone calls
that become longer, more often.  “Get this out of your system while you can.”
 
She starts coming back around with his family, awkwardly at first, and then she
settles back in and finds a comfortable place in the order of things. Mike
makes sure not to come around when she's around. It's safest. It keeps the
peace for a little while.


.


She wants to go home for the summer preceding senior year, but she knows that
if she does, she will not go back to college. Instead, Mike comes out to see
her at Thanksgiving, and then again at Christmas, spring break, and Easter. His
family catches on and they're displeased with him, but Nanaba’s an adult now.
It doesn't matter what they think about it.
 
Still, everyone comes out to support her for graduation, and there are no snide
comments when Mike is the first one to hug her after the ceremony is over.
Holding balloons and bouquets, she stands still while Adele gets pictures of
her for the family photo albums. Two of the other grandchildren also graduated
today, so there's a few group shots, and she really doesn't mind. She's
actually really happy that they accept her after everything she's done. Nanaba
is selfish but she knows she has put everyone in a difficult position, so she
doesn't gloat or demand.


.


“Thank you,” she says when she finishes reading the employment offer. “This is
really nice, daddy.”
 
“I can't leave you unsupervised,” Mike says, and leans in to take a kiss.
“You're welcome, baby girl.”
 
She'll work at the same place as Mike, under the same schedule. She'll get to
spend every working moment under his hand, and then they'll go home together
every evening, and she'll get to spend her nights under his body. It's all
she's ever wanted, and it's hers. He is all that matters.
 
“I'm glad you're back home,” Mike murmurs with a nuzzle to the sensitive skin
under her ear. Lower, he licks at the metal necklace he sealed and soldered
around her throat. “I'm glad you're never leaving again.”
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