The Institute: Daddy Issues (11 page)

“You—” I looked at my part­ner, feel­ing be­trayed. How dare he give me up to the en­emy like that?

He shrugged and there was an apo­lo­getic look in his eyes.

“For­give me,
mishka—
I had to say it.”

“And is this true?” Dr. Lucy asked, look­ing back at me. “Your father aban­doned you when you were nine years old?”

“Aban­doned? God,
there’s
a dra­matic word. Even bet­ter than ‘trau­mat­ized,’” I said an­grily. “But yeah, sure—why not? He
aban­doned
me and I never saw him again.” I poin­ted a fin­ger at Salt. “But at least he never
beat
me.”

I wanted to call the words back as soon as they left my mouth but it was too late—the dam­age was done and I could see the hurt in my part­ner’s eyes.

“I’m sorry—” I began but he shook his head.

“No, is all right. I de­served.”

“No you didn’t,” I said miser­ably. “I was just feel­ing…I don’t know.”

“De­fens­ive, maybe,” Dr. Lucy sug­ges­ted. “Angry be­cause you felt be­trayed.”

“Well, yeah—a little, I guess.” I shrugged.

She looked at Salt. “So this is true, Mr. Saltanov? Your father was phys­ic­ally ab­us­ive?”

“Yes,” Salt said shortly.

“Well, we seem to have a very in­ter­est­ing dy­namic go­ing on here.” Dr. Lucy tapped her stylus against her tab­let for a mo­ment, clearly deep in thought. She looked at me again. “Why are you here? Is it only to please your Daddy?”

“Don’t call him that,” I said ir­rit­ably. “That’s what I called my real father be­fore the son-of-a-bitch
aban­doned
me.”

“
Mishka
and I have agreed that she will call me ‘Papa’ in­stead,” Salt told her.

“I see.” She made an­other note and looked up at me. “So we come back to this again…the idea of sexu­al­iz­ing your play or call­ing your…
part­ner
for want of a bet­ter word—Daddy—makes you feel dis­gust?”

“Well,
yes
if I’m play­ing
this
age.” I nod­ded down at the pretty lace and rose­bud dress again. “That’s just…dis­gust­ing. Who would want to do that?”

“Many of our play­ers at the In­sti­tute choose to do so,” Dr. Lucy said blandly. “Of­ten they are ab­use sur­viv­ors. It can be help­ful and em­power­ing to re­gress to the bio­lo­gical age when the ab­use took place and re­play it, know­ing that you are in con­trol this time. Or, in the case of a Little, that you can give con­trol to a Big you can trust—someone who’s not go­ing to hurt you like you were hurt be­fore at that young, vul­ner­able age.” She leaned for­ward and looked at me in­tently. “Tell me if you can,
mishka,
be­fore your father left you, did he ini­ti­ate any kind of in­ap­pro­pri­ate sexual con­tact?”

“No!” I said quickly. “No, noth­ing like that. He just aban­doned
me. Isn’t that enough?”

She stared at me for a long mo­ment and I got the feel­ing she was de­cid­ing if she be­lieved me or not. At last she nod­ded.

“Well, if that’s the case, it’s one less is­sue to work through.”

“It
is
the case,” I said firmly.

“Very good.” She turned to Salt. “Mr. Saltanov, what do you feel you get out of play­ing like this? I think I heard you say­ing that you feel like it makes your part­ner more ap­proach­able in some way?”

Salt sighed. “
Mishka
is…very prickly at times. For which I do not blame her—in her job it is im­port­ant to ap­pear tough—in­vul­ner­able. But some­times I can see that she is hurt­ing and I want…I wish…”

“Say what you feel, Mr. Saltanov,” Dr. Lucy said softly. “There’s no judg­ment here.”

Salt blew out a frus­trated breath.

“I want to com­fort her—to
hold
her. Why is this so bad?”

“I don’t know.” The doc­tor looked at me with one eye­brow raised. “Why
is
it so bad,
mishka?
Why do you not want your Papa to hold you?”

“Be­cause it makes me weak, all right?” I spat at her. “And I don’t want to be weak. The last time I let my­self be that weak—” I stopped ab­ruptly.

“You got hurt,” Dr. Lucy fin­ished for me, softly. “Tell me,
miskha,
do you feel like you can trust your Papa?”

“I…” I looked at Salt—really looked at him. Here was a man who had come into the PD and taken me on as a part­ner with no com­plaints. And this was
after
the Cap­tain had pre­vi­ously tried to pair me with two other of­ficers—neither of which could stand me. I knew be­cause he’d told me so frankly. At the time I had told my­self I didn’t care—if they couldn’t deal with me, fuck ‘em. I worked bet­ter on my own any­way. I had a phe­nom­enal suc­cess rate on my cases which was prob­ably the only reason the Cap­tain had con­tin­ued to put up with me.

Then Salt had come into my life and quietly filled in the cracks. He be­came not just a part­ner but a pro­tector and a friend. Someone I could trust to watch my back on the streets and also hang out with on days off. Someone who was will­ing to help me out when I needed some­thing done around the house, too, which was nice. And with the ex­cep­tion of telling the doc­tor about my past trauma just now, he had never once be­trayed my trust or con­fid­ence.

“Yes,” I said at last. “I trust him. I trust him to get my back in a tough situ­ation—to save my ass if things go badly.”

“But do you trust him with your
heart?”
Dr. Lucy was still look­ing at me in­tently. “Do you trust him enough to let him love you and not hurt or aban­don you?”

“Hey,” I said un­eas­ily. “I thought this place was just about play­ing per­ver­ted sex games. Nobody said any­thing about hearts and flowers and ro­mance.”

“I’m not talk­ing about hearts and flowers and ro­mance,” Dr. Lucy said quietly. “Trust­ing someone enough to re­gress to an age where you were deeply hurt isn’t ro­mantic in the least. It’s fright­en­ing and con­fus­ing and it may be deeply trau­matic. So if you’re here just for cas­ual play, you should prob­ably find some­place else to go.”

“We do not wish to be any­where but here,” Salt said quickly.
“Mishka
and I wish to work through our dif­fi­culties. This is why we are talk­ing to you.”

“All right. And is that how you feel as well?” She looked at me.

“Of course,” I said, prob­ably a little too quickly. But I felt like I had to agree with Salt—oth­er­wise we were go­ing to get kicked out and the whole case would go down the drain.

“Very well.” She nod­ded again and looked at Salt. “Let’s talk about you for a while Mr. Saltanov. What drew you to Age Play? What made you want to be a Big?”

He sighed. “I do not know. I guess…my wish to pro­tect those that are help­less?”

“And what gave you this need?” she probed.

He sighed again. “This is…dif­fi­cult to say.”

“It’s all right,” she mur­mured. “As I said, there’s no judg­ment here.”

“Very well.” Salt looked at her. “My father—he liked his vodka. Some­times he would come home, drunk and angry, look­ing for someone to hit.” He shrugged. “It was either watch my mother get beaten or take the beat­ing my­self. And I loved my mother—very much.”

I sucked in a breath and clenched my fists. Was this true? Was this what Salt had re­fused to tell me the night be­fore? Some­how I was pretty sure it was.

“You
must
have loved her to take beat­ings for her,” Dr. Lucy said softly. “Did you have any sib­lings? Did they ex­per­i­ence this treat­ment too?”

“I had three younger sis­ters,” Salt said. “My mother would send them to bed as soon as we heard my father at the door. She tried to send me too but when I got old enough to know what was hap­pen­ing…” He shook his head. “I re­fused to go.”

“Oh, Salt…” I whispered, look­ing at him. “So…it wasn’t just once?” When I’d seen the marks on his back, I had hoped it was a sin­gu­lar oc­cur­rence or at least that it hadn’t happened more than a couple of times.

He looked back at me. “Once a week at least. Un­til I got old enough to stop him. Now you know. This is what I did not wish to tell you but now you know, Andi.”

If Dr. Lucy no­ticed his slip in us­ing my real name, she didn’t men­tion it. She was simply quiet while we looked at each other.

I didn’t know what to say. I had the sud­den urge to go to Salt and hug him, even though we really weren’t the hug­ging kind of part­ners. I star­ted to do it any­way but then I felt weird and stayed where I was.

“I wish I could have been there,” I said thickly. “I wish I could have shot the bas­tard right through the place where his cold, dead heart should have been.”

Salt smiled mirth­lessly and there was a chilly gleam in his pale eyes.

“This I took care of my­self when I was old enough. Not with a gun, though. With these.” He held out his big hands, the hands that had touched me so gently last night.

I shivered a little. I had seen Salt use deadly force be­fore, twice dur­ing our part­ner­ship. It al­ways bothered me a little how cold he was when he killed—how it didn’t seem to faze him a bit. Now I wondered if this was the reason why. If he’d really killed his own father, what other killing could or would bother him ever again? Everything after patri­cide is just kind of an­ti­cli­mactic.

“
Mishka,
how do you feel about what your Papa just told you?” Dr. Lucy asked quietly. “Are you frightened at all?”

“Of course not,” I said, still look­ing at Salt. “He would never hurt me.
Never.
”

“Then you
do
trust him. And I want you to no­tice some­thing else—some­thing that just happened. When he told you about his past trauma, your re­ac­tion was very pro­tect­ive—you wanted to shield him from harm and make him feel bet­ter.”

“Of course I did,” I said, look­ing at her. “What kind of per­son would I be if I didn’t feel that way?”

“But my point is—why is it all right for you to feel that way to­wards your Papa but not for him to feel that way to­wards you?”

“I…I don’t know,” I said, frown­ing.

“Be­cause it would make you weak?” she sug­ges­ted. “Vul­ner­able? These are your words I’m us­ing here, you know.”

“Yes, I know.” I shif­ted un­com­fort­ably. How much
had
she heard while Salt and I were sit­ting out­side her of­fice ar­guing?

“Think of what you’re miss­ing,” Dr. Lucy ar­gued softly. “After your father left you, I’m sure you missed him—missed sit­ting in his lap, feel­ing his af­fec­tion. This is what your Papa is of­fer­ing you now—all the things you missed as a child. The love, the nur­tur­ing, the un­con­di­tional af­fec­tion and the feel­ing that all of his at­ten­tion is centered just on you, his pre­cious little girl…” She spread her hands. “I’m cer­tain that your mother did the best she could to fill in the gaps but—”

“Not really,” I said bluntly. “My mom was a barely func­tion­ing al­co­holic. She was usu­ally way too deep into her wine bottle to bother with things like shop­ping for gro­cer­ies or wash­ing clothes. Let alone in­cid­ent­als like cud­dling or story time.”

“So cud­dling and story time—that kind of af­fec­tion was what you got from your bio­lo­gical father?” she asked.

I nod­ded, try­ing not to think about it. Try­ing not to re­mem­ber how hor­ribly lonely I’d been after Daddy left the pic­ture for good. He was the one who al­ways helped with my home­work, who made sure I had clean clothes to wear, and who cuddled me in his lap while he read me stor­ies at bed­time. After he left, there was a huge hole in my life that my mom hadn’t even
tried
to fill. Just think­ing about it made the hole open up again—a hole so deep and dark I felt like it might swal­low me forever.

“I don’t…don’t want to talk about this any­more.” My voice soun­ded strangled, even in my own ears.

Dr. Lucy ig­nored my plea.

“Maybe you’re res­ist­ing what your Papa of­fers be­cause you’re afraid,” she sug­ges­ted.

“Afraid of what?” I tried to scoff, but again my voice came out sound­ing strange and broken.

“Of be­ing hurt again. It’s scary to be Daddy’s little girl be­cause when Daddy leaves you, your whole life caves in,” Dr. Lucy said softly. “It’s the worst be­trayal you could en­dure. That’s how it feels when you’re a child, any­way. As adults, we get used to people we care about mov­ing in and out of our lives. But as a child…” She shook her head. “The sud­den loss of a par­ent… well, it might as well be the end of the world. That’s what it feels like.”

“It feels like death,” I whispered, put­ting my hand to my chest. “Like dy­ing a little more every day he doesn’t come back. And won­der­ing…won­der­ing what I did that made him go away.”

Then I shook my head. What was I talk­ing about? I was let­ting her get into my head again—I had to
stop
.

“But it’s over now,” I con­tin­ued, straight­en­ing up and wip­ing at my cheeks which were wet for some reason. “And I’m over it. So…”