Chapter Text
Dan finds his daughter in the lab. She squints at the screen before her, and the scowl on her face only increases as she looks up at his arrival. It is clear that the latest tests on the toxin bonding are not going well.
"Don't even start," she says.
He holds up his hands peaceably. "Look, you've gotta sleep some time."
"There's no time."
"Muri," he says, soothingly, calmly, in the voice he once used to get a recalcitrant todder to put on her pajamas and climb into bed. "Muri, come on. That program still has two more hours to process before we can do anything. Be reasonable, Muri. Just take a little nap."
Muri is no longer a toddler; she is an adult woman fully capable of resisting a parent's placating voice. Dan sees the flicker of irritation and rebellion in her gaze as she looks back at him. Things are still a little raw between them and have been ever since she confronted him on the beach. They have been treating one another gingerly ever since.
"Come on, Muri," Dan says again, in that same patient-father voice. The second time is the charm, because Muri suddenly slumps her shoulders in defeat.
"Okay," she says. "Fine. But you've got to get some sleep too."
"Sure thing, chickpea," he says with a smile. "We'll be two little Sleeping Beauties together."
The base is full to bursting, and there is no room to find a grunt like Dan a bunk. Muri does have a room, since she has the rank and the importance to merit one, but it is on the other side of the base, and that walk is too much of a waste of time for Muri. Instead, there is a little utility closet on the side of the lab, and the two of them have made it into their makeshift sleep space: regulation sleeping bags spread out across the floor, thin blankets and hard pillows. The only light is a harsh florescent bar overhead, and they turn it off as soon as they can. Better to strip down to their T-shirts and underwear in the dark; better to lie down alongside one another in the dark.
It is a small utility closet. There is not much space, and so they must lie very close together.
Before this, they had napped in shifts, alone. This is the first time they have been together in this tight space. Even though Dan presses his back against the wall, he can still feel Muri's shoulder against his chest. They are packed as close as two sardines in a can.
It's like going on a camping trip, he tells himself. It's like sleeping in a tent with your daughter.
Muri moves slightly against him, and Dan briefly sees a little circular light as she moves her wrist up and sets her watch's alarm to vibrate in two hours. Then the light goes out, and they are once again left in the darkness.
His daughter is a small, compact woman, but she is still taller and broader than the little girl that Dan left at home. She always takes up more space than Dan expects. The way her muscled body fits against him in the darkness, the very physical shape of her, is the latest iteration of the weird surprise that hums behind all their interactions.
She is his baby girl. She is a total stranger. She looks so like her mother, and so unlike her as well.
He is a semi-stranger to her as well, he supposes. He is younger than the father she last knew. Maybe his body seems different to her as well: younger, thinner, stronger. Maybe he triggers a jangle of discordant association every time she looks at him.
Best not to think of it, Dan tells himself firmly. Best not to wade into that weird Freudian mine-field of a thought, since it will only lead to more deranged thoughts. The next thing you know, Dan will be wondering something insane like, Does my daughter think I'm hot? And coming along behind that idea on the same tracks, like a second runaway train, the even more unimaginable question of Do I think my daughter is hot?
Dan can feel himself grinding his teeth, and he forces himself to stop. He pushes those intrusive and uncomfortable thoughts away. He needs to sleep. He needs to sleep so he can help Muri with her work. They do not have much time. They are both so exhausted. The world ticks closer to complete catastrophe with every second.
Dan can hear Muri's breathing slow and grow steady as she falls asleep.
Good girl, he thinks fondly, feeling the exact same pride he felt when his tired toddler's eyes would flutter shut and she would give herself up to sleep. That's my good, good girl.
Some time later, Dan has finally managed to slip into a state of quasi-sleep when he feels Muri shift against him. She makes a low, guttural noise of distress.
"Hey," he says groggily. He reaches out to touch her shoulder. "Hey, Muri, you okay?"
She goes still. "It's all right. It's nothing."
Under his hand, Dan can feel her shoulder trembling.
"Muri," he says, and he can hear his patient-father voice coming out again: soothing and low and gentle. "What's wrong? You can tell me."
In the daylight, the woman lying alongside Dan is as tough as nails, hard and unyielding and unbreakable. But now, in the darkness, she is his little girl again. Her voice, when she speaks, is tremulous and uncertain.
"I had a dream. A nightmare. Just a stupid nightmare. Fuck."
Her shoulder shudders.
"Hey, it's all right," Dan says, and he releases her shoulder to stretch his arm around the whole of her. Now he is embracing her, his arm pressed against the T-shirt across her belly, his chest pressed against her back. "It's all right, chickpea."
She is still shivering, so he hugs her tighter. He murmurs comforting nonsense. He kisses the back of her head.
After this last action, Muri is still shivering, but the quality of her shivers has shifted in some way on which Dan cannot quite put his finger.
"I'm here," Dan says, and for some reason, he kisses the back of her head again. The ridges of her tightly braided hair are smooth against his lips. Her hair smells like soap. He kisses her a third time, in a lower spot: against the nape of her neck, her skin warm and soft. "I'm here, so don't worry about those nightmares, Muri. Nothing is going to happen to you while your Daddy is here."
He is still half-asleep, and he is not entirely conscious of all the things that he is doing: kissing his daughter's neck, pulling her torso against him, gripping the soft fabric of the T-shirt that is riding up over her stomach. He can feel her heartbeat thobbing throughout her body.
She makes a soft noise, half a gasp and half a moan. "Daddy."
"Muri," he mumbles back. He is still kissing the nape of her neck. Part of him is still dreaming. This woman. A stranger. My daughter. A woman.
His hands slide up the surface of her belly. He can feel her whole body trembling under his palm.
"Daddy," she says again, and the way she says it, gasping and breathless and eager, finally jolts Dan fully awake.
His hand freezes. He pulls his head back. "Muri," he says, dread uncurling in the pit of his stomach, "baby, I am so sorry—"
"Daddy, no," Muri says, her voice low and pleading, "Daddy, please, don't stop." She wriggles in his slack embrace, and Dan belatedly realizes that she is rubbing herself against him. "Daddy, please."
Shock floods Dan's body, and he pulls his arm free with a frantic motion. "Muri, chickpea, you're still dreaming—"
"No, I'm not," she growls. He can feel her moving beside him. He can feel her rolling over to face him. When she speaks again, he can feel the angry gust of her breath against his face. "I'm wide awake. And so are you."
"Muri, come on, we can't—"
"We can do anything," she hisses. She presses herself against him, and Dan feels himself caught in a vise: there's Muri on one side and the unyielding wall against his back on the other. "It's the end of the world, and nothing matters anymore. Nothing but you and me and the way we feel. Daddy, Daddy, please. You came back to me after all these years. I've missed you so much. I've been alone for so long. I don't want to be alone any more. Touch me, Daddy."
"You're my daughter," Dan says thickly. "This is so wrong."
She thrusts her hips against him and utters a humorless laugh. "It's wrong, but I don't care. You don't care either. Not really, Daddy. Not where it counts."
To his horror, Dan can feel himself growing hard. There's a palpable lump growing in the front of his boxers. Muri, rubbing herself against him, can feel it as well.
"Daddy," she purrs. "You want this too."
"I don't," he whispers, but it is a tone of shame, of defeat, of surrender. God forgive him, but he does want this. He wants to fuck his daughter. He has wanted to fuck her for a while. Maybe even from the moment he first saw her.
Muri reaches up and cradles the back of his head. "Daddy. I love you. Jesus Christ, I love you so much that it hurts."
She kisses him on the mouth, her hand locked against the back of his head. She is inescapable and inexorable.
Dan shudders and flinches, but he cannot resist her. Her mouth eagerly opens as he slides his tongue forward.
I'm going to hell, he thinks as he kisses her in the dark utility closet. I'm going to ruin my daughter, and then I will be going to hell.
"Daddy," she moans against his mouth. "Daddy, fuck me, please."
"Baby girl," he whispers back as he presses himself against her, the bulge in his boxers rubbing between her soft thighs. "Forgive me, baby, but I will."