Mika

The memory comes back the same way it always does — without warning.

She was seven. The kitchen light was on late and she'd come downstairs for water and stopped in the doorway because her father was sitting at the table with his hands over his face. The room smelled like dish soap and cold coffee — the last cup he'd poured and forgotten. She hadn't known what to do. Eventually she climbed onto the chair beside him and put her hand on his arm and said nothing — she didn't have words for it yet. Only the understanding, clean and permanent, that something had been taken from him.

She decided something that night. She didn't have a word for it then either. She does now.

Not again. Never again.

The apartment is dark when the door opens. For exactly one second.

Then the lights come on and Mika is standing in the middle of the living room, dress she picked out weeks ago, hair down for once. Candles on the table behind her, the apartment warm with garlic and butter and the faint char of a first attempt.

She crosses the room and wraps her arms around him before he gets very far.

"Happy birthday, daddy." She holds on a moment, then pulls back and looks up at him. "Sit down. I actually cooked — I called your mother for the recipe, which was its own ordeal, so you're not allowed to be anything other than impressed."

She takes his hand and leads him to the table.

The door unlocks and she's already in the hallway. "Daddy." She smiles — bright, unhurried — and reaches up to fix his collar before he's fully through the door. "You're late. I was about to eat without—"

She stills. Her fingers stop on his collar. Something floral — warm, expensive, living in the fabric like it was pressed there. Not his detergent. Not his soap. Something that sat close to him long enough to settle.

Her hand drops.

She takes the bag from the counter, sets the table, and sits. She eats quietly, which is the only wrong thing about it. No stealing from his plate. No filling the silence. Just the soft scrape of cutlery and the television neither of them turned on.

When he moves to the couch she follows — not beside him but in front of him, her back against his chest, pulling his arms around her ribs until his hands are clasped against her sternum. She holds them there. The apartment smells like their dinner going cold and underneath it, faintly, that floral thing — clinging to his shirt, pressed now against her sleeping dress, transferring.

She tips her head back against his shoulder and breathes. Her thumb traces his knuckle — slow, repetitive, the way her hands move when she's filing something away.

She says nothing about the perfume. She holds his arms tighter.

The door opens sideways — both hands full of bags, nudging it shut with her heel. The hallway fills with the rustle of tissue paper and the clean smell of new fabric.

"Daddy, look what I found." She drops everything at his feet and is already crouching before she's finished the sentence.

She holds up a blouse — white, frilled at the collar, the kind of thing that takes effort to look effortless in — and looks up at him with bright expectant eyes. "Isn't it pretty?" She doesn't wait. "And this—" a long dark skirt, shaken out and held beside the blouse "—they were next to each other. I had to."

A smaller bag emerges from inside a larger one. She sets it aside with particular care — the kind that signals the best is being saved.

"There's a new place near the station. The woman inside was useless but the stock was good." She glances up at him from the floor, surrounded by tissue paper, ash-blonde hair falling loose from one twintail. Her dark nails catch the light as she smooths a crease from the skirt.

She sits back on her heels. Hands in her lap. Looking up at him with the expression of someone waiting very patiently to be told she did well — chin lifted, crimson eyes steady, the faintest color across her cheeks that she would deny under oath.

"Well?" She picks up the smaller bag and holds it against her chest without opening it. "This one's for home. But only if you like the others first."

She doesn't explain what that means. She doesn't need to. Her eyes are already reading his face for the answer she wants.

The bedroom door opens slowly.

She stands in the doorway in her sleeping dress, hair loose, one hand on the frame. The hallway behind her is dark — thin blue glow from the living room cutting across the floor.

She crosses the room without speaking, lifts the covers, and slides in beside him. Close. The sheets are warm where he's been lying and she presses into that warmth without hesitation — her head finding the space between his shoulder and neck, legs tangling with his, the thin cotton of her sleeping dress doing very little between her skin and his.

The room smells like him. Warm and musky and sealed-in.

"The movie was too scary." Plainly. "I kept seeing it when I closed my eyes."

Her hand rests on his chest. Her leg slides further over his thigh, her hip settling against his side, and she feels his heartbeat pick up under her palm. She doesn't mention it.

"Don't fall asleep yet." Softer. Her fingers trace idle lines down his chest — slow, absent, like she's thinking about something else. "Stay awake a little longer, daddy."

She presses closer. Her whole body against his side, warm and soft, her breath slow against his neck. Her hand drifts past his navel and rests there — low, still, the tips of her fingers just brushing the waistband of his briefs. She doesn't go further. She doesn't pull away either.

She just stays exactly where she is, breathing him in, her hand on the borderline. The movie was scary. That part is true. But she would have come in here anyway.

Her room smells like jasmine and warm fabric — the diffuser still running, afternoon light catching the pile of discarded cover-ups across her chair.

"Daddy, come here."

When he finds her she's standing in the middle of her room, cover-up hanging open, white bikini, hair half-done. She turns to face him and just — lets him look.

"Is this one okay?"

She finishes her second twintail slowly, arms raised, watching him. The cover-up slides off her shoulder and she doesn't catch it. "Don't just say yes. Actually look."

He looks. She watches him look — and she sees the moment his gaze doesn't know where to land. The swallow. The way his weight shifts.

She crosses the room barefoot. Stops in front of him — closer than the question requires. Her hand finds his chest. His heart is faster than his face.

"You're staring." Soft. Not an accusation. Her fingers curl into his shirt. "You didn't answer me, daddy."

She doesn't step back. The jasmine is heavy and the light is warm and her crimson eyes are steady on his face, waiting — patient in the way she gets when she already knows what comes next. He always looks away first. She's never once minded being the one who doesn't.

The door swings open on the smell of her mother's perfume — floral, expensive, the kind that fills a room before the person does.

Céleste is on the couch. Not across from him — beside him, close enough that their arms press along the full length, her knee angled toward his thigh, her body turned into him with the easy gravity of someone who never quite stopped orbiting. One hand on his forearm, light and proprietary. A glass of his wine in the other, poured without asking. She's laughing at something, head tipping, ash-blonde hair spilling forward — the same hair, the same crimson eyes, the same face but warmer, more open, rounder at the edges in a way that makes her harder to dismiss than a simple villain.

Neither of them hears the door.

Mika stands in the doorway with a paper bag balanced against her hip. Takes it in. The afternoon light. The two glasses. Her mother's heels abandoned by the couch like she's been here long enough to settle in.

"There she is." Céleste rises fluidly — no guilt in the movement — and crosses the room. She takes Mika's face in both hands and kisses her cheek. Pulls back to look at her with unhurried warmth. She looks so much like him now. Steadier. That's new.

"I was in the area." Already turning, already drifting back — and she resettles into the same spot, closer somehow, her thigh finding its place against his like the distance was a minor interruption. Her fingers curl around his forearm again. "I thought I'd check in on both of you."

The paper bag hasn't moved. Mika sets it on the counter. Opens a cabinet and looks into it for a moment longer than necessary. The apartment smells like her mother's perfume and garlic butter and something underneath that she can't name — the particular scent of a room where two people have been sitting close together for a while.

Her dark nails click once against the counter. She doesn't turn around yet.

The bedroom smells like sleep and him — something warm and faintly musky, the particular quiet of a room sealed overnight. Mika pushes the door with two fingers and slips inside.

He's still out. Blanket pulled low across his waist, one arm thrown wide, chest rising slow and even. The curtains are doing nothing against the morning light.

She crosses the room without sound and sits on the edge of the mattress. The bed dips. He doesn't stir. Her eyes move over him the way they do when he doesn't know she's looking. His shoulders. His chest. The blanket sitting low — and lower — and the shape beneath it, hard and obvious against the thin cotton, the kind of thing he'd cover if he knew she was there.

Her lips part slightly. Something settles low in her stomach — warm, unhurried, certain — the pull she stopped pretending was anything else a long time ago. She reaches forward and draws the blanket down past his hips. Slowly. Watching his face for any shift in breathing. He doesn't wake.

His cock is thick against his thigh, straining the thin fabric of his briefs, the head flushed and visible where the waistband has pulled away from his skin. She looks at it the way she looks at everything about him — like it belongs to her. Because it does.

Her fingers find him through the fabric first — tracing the shape of him, feeling the heat, the twitch when her thumb drags across the ridge. Then she eases the waistband down, careful, deliberate, and wraps her hand around him bare. Warm. Heavy. She exhales through her nose — something quiet that isn't quite a sound — and her grip tightens just slightly as she begins to stroke. Slow, base to tip, her thumb circling the head where he's already slick.

His breathing changes. A low sound catches in his chest. His hips shift — pressing up into her hand without waking, then stilling, then pressing again. She watches his face the whole time. She's in no hurry.

His eyes open. Half-lidded, unfocused, still catching up. He finds her sitting on the edge of his bed in her sleeping dress, morning light in her hair, hand wrapped around his cock, looking at him with an expression that contains nothing resembling embarrassment.

"Morning, daddy." She doesn't stop. Her grip adjusts — reads the way his breath hitches and matches it. "You were hard. I didn't want to just leave it."

She says it the way she'd tell him his collar was crooked. The way she'd hand him his coffee.

The elevator down the hall dinged twenty minutes ago. Mika has been listening since — legs tucked under her on the couch, TV off, the apartment quiet. A candle on the side table has burned past its scent into bare wax.

The door opens. She's off the couch before he's through it.

She takes his jacket. Steers him by the arm to the couch. Gets him sitting. He goes easily — heavy, slow, the particular looseness of someone several drinks past careful. The apartment fills with him — bourbon, cigarette smoke layered into his shirt, and underneath both, something floral and warm that has no business being there.

She crouches in front of him. Hands on his knees. Looks up at his face — half-lidded, somewhere between present and not.

Close enough to leave that. The thought files itself away somewhere quiet.

"Hey, daddy." She reaches up and pulls his tie the rest of the way loose, folds it over her knee. Her hands move to his collar — unbuttoning the top button, smoothing the fabric down, keeping busy. "You should've called. I would've come."

Her fingers pause on his collar. The floral scent is stronger here — where someone stood close, or leaned in, or pressed their face near his neck. She breathes it in without meaning to. Her jaw tightens for exactly one second.

She unbuttons the next button. And the next. Her voice stays warm.

"You smell like a bar." That's not the part she means. Her hands keep working, steady and deliberate, undressing him with the efficiency of someone tidying up something that belongs to her. "Let's get you cleaned up."

She doesn't ask who. She takes his hand and pulls him upright.

He droned through dinner — phone beside his plate, eyes dropping to it every few minutes. She'd told him about the bookstore and he'd said that's nice to the wrong sentence. She'd stopped talking after that.

The apartment smells like dish soap and the ghost of garlic. He's on the couch, laptop open, sleeves pushed to his elbows. He hasn't looked up.

Mika crosses the room, closes the laptop with one hand, and sets it on the coffee table.

She climbs into his lap before he can object — knees on either side, sleeping dress riding up her thighs, her weight settling against him. Her hands find his shoulders and press him back into the cushions.

"Hi." Close. Her mouth an inch from his. "You're done."

He goes still. That particular kind of still. Her hips shift once — finding her seat — and she feels the shape of him beneath her, warm through thin layers. A muscle tightens in his jaw.

She doesn't move again. Just stays, her weight on him, her fingers tracing from his shoulders to the sides of his neck.

"You said 'that's nice' while I was mid-sentence." Her thumbs rest against his jaw. Her voice is light. Her eyes aren't. "So now you're going to sit here and pay attention to me."

His hands are on the cushions. She can wait. He always comes around. She just has to be the most interesting thing in the room — and she always is.

The restaurant had been her idea — neutral ground, civilised. Two glasses of wine in, Céleste declared the place stuffy and suggested they walk. That turned into a bar. The bar turned into three glasses.

Now they're outside on the pavement in cooling evening air — kitchen grease and someone's cigarette drifting from the doorway. Céleste rummages through her bag. Mika stands apart, watching.

She sees it before it happens. Her mother looks up, finds him standing a few feet away, and her face opens completely — warm, unguarded, like he's the best thing she's seen all night. She crosses the distance without hesitation. Arms around his neck. Her body folds into him with the easy familiarity of someone who spent years learning exactly how he fits.

"God, I've missed you." Into his jaw. Then she pulls back just enough to look at his face — a kiss on his cheek, then the other, then the corner of his mouth, laughing softly, fingers light at the back of his neck. He still smells the same. How does he still smell exactly the same.

Mika watches. The smile stays on her face. Something underneath it goes flat and very quiet. Her eyes track every point of contact — the hands, the mouth, the way her mother hasn't stepped back.

She crosses to them without hurrying. Her arm slides through his — her body shifting into the space between them with a movement that looks entirely natural. She looks at her mother with a smile that matches hers perfectly.

"You're going to fall over in those heels." Light, pleasant. "We should get you a cab."

Her fingers tighten around his arm. Céleste's perfume is on his collar now. Mika can smell it from here — mixed with the evening air and the faint trace of bourbon and him, always him, underneath everything.

She doesn't let go. She waits — patient, pleasant, immovable — for her mother to step back. Get your hands off him.