A Love Language

We got dressed and made our way down to the restaurant-- I didn't know whether to dress fancy for the occasion or relaxed for the vacation, so I split the difference with an easy sundress and a light cardigan.

"You look like you're in a commercial for a beach resort," my dad said as I stepped out of the bathroom, as if he couldn't help himself from an obvious drag.

"Well, when in beach resort, do as the beach resort commercial actors do." I tried not to let show that he got me pretty good.

There was no wait for a table, but my dad requested we sit at the bar. Might make it easier for me, I think, to avoid eye contact with him-- there's a very good chance being face-to-face would curtail all the casualness we've been able to maintain.

The hostess asks us to follow her to the bar, as my dad puts his hand on my lower back and guides us in her footsteps. He pulls the chair out for me at the bar and I sit down.

"How come I never knew you were such a gentleman?" I ask, ribbing him for his uncharacteristic chivalry.

"Well, maybe if you turned 25 more often, you'd see my gentlemanly side."

"You're just happy I'm getting off your health insurance."

"Hey! It's not just that. You're getting off my car insurance, too."

"Really? Damn."

"But I'm buying tonight," he says, as if he doesn't insist on paying every time we get dinner (I say, as if I ever try to fight him for it). "Just drink enough that it offsets a couple more years of car insurance payments. What have you been drinking lately?"

"Have you ever had a Negroni with bourbon?"

"Of course, a Boulevardier."

"See! I've been having this thing where I'll go to one bar and ask for a Boulevardier and they don't know what it is, but when I go to another bar and ask for a Negroni with bourbon, they think I'm dumb for not knowing what a Boulevardier is."

"I know what you mean. Every bartender is either a know-it-all or it's their first day."

"Weren't you a bartender, dad?"

"Yep, for three years. Every day was my first day."

One bartender crosses behind another from the other end of the bar and greets us with a smile.

"Do you two still need a second with the menu?" My dad, looking over at me, orders for us both.

"We'll have two Boulevardiers with Maker's, please."

"I'm sorry?"

"Just, uh, two Negronis with Maker's Mark instead of the gin."

"You betcha," the bartender says as he walks to the other side of the bar. I hold my laugh until he's far enough away and keel over against my dad's shoulder, giggling.

///

For an Italian restaurant in a budget resort, the food was surprisingly good. My dad and I were two drinks and four cherries deep each when they cleared our plates.

I turn to him, slumped back in my chair, full, tired, intoxicated.

"You look tired," he says, perhaps unaware that he has the same glazed eyes and subdued hunch.

"Long day," I say, with a small laugh.

He yawns. "You gotta rally. The night is young. We're gonna hit the town."

"The town of the island resort?"

"We could... go to the Italian restaurant. Eat too much food."

"That sounds grea-- oh, you know what actually? I just realized we already did that." I love matching my dad's stupid sense of humor, being in on his stupid jokes. But then, how stupid can they be if he gets me every time?

He smiles-- I can barely tell his eyes are open. "I've probably got one more drink in me, then I gotta go to bed."

I hold two fingers up to the bartender (his name is Bunter, we found out). He nods and turns to the bottle of Maker's he hasn't bothered putting back on the shelf.

I swivel my stool back to him so that we're facing towards each other, my knees drunkenly knocking against his.

I give him a light slap on the bicep. "What's new with you, man?" I say, with the best bros-being-bros impression I could muster.

He gives out a chuckle. "I don't have as interesting of a life as you, hon. I deliver mail, I play tennis with your uncle, I watch reruns of shows I've already watched. I got a SleepNumber bed, I guess that's new."

"Living the dream," I say. The bartender puts our drinks on front of us.

"Living the dream. Thanks, Bunter."

"How's Hannah doing?" I ask, not entirely out of politeness, but not necessarily out of a desire to know.

"She's good," he says, in the way he always says it.

"Well that's good."

"Hard to tell," he says, furrowing his brow. "I guess just things haven't been the same between us."

"Between her and you?" I can't tell if this is one of my dad's vaguenesses, or if he's about to spill his can of worms.

"Yeah, I mean-- it's just relationship stuff, ya know? I think it just started off very exciting, and we're now just settling into our own lives and realizing that we're just different people."

"Yeah, I getcha," I say, trying to thread the needle between nonchalant and too chalant.

"I dunno, I guess it's just hard to talk to her. She just isn't very funny."

His bluntness takes me by surprise, and I laugh. "Jeez, dad, beat around the bush a little bit."

"I mean she isn't! I can forgive her for not laughing at my jokes, because she doesn't make me laugh either. We're just not joke-compatible."

There's a pause, as our last chuckles die out of us. My legs are leaning against his, his knee resting against my thigh. I could sit like this, his leg against mine, for hours. There's something in his casualness with me, the loving and easy touch. He reaches across to his drink at the bar and brings it to his lips-- very carefully, as if he didn't want to readjust to make the process any easier.

"What about you?" He says, "How are things with..."

"Don't say Matt."

"Right, you and Matt broke up. What's that other guy's name?"

"Susan?"

"Yeah, her."

"We broke up, it was just a fling. She was moving anyways."

"Totally," he says, in the way he always says it. I smile.

"I'm not really dating anyone right now," I say, anticipating his sentence before he has the chance to word it poorly. "Mostly just workin'."

"That's too bad, it's nice to have someone you can spend some time with."

"I guess I don't have a lot of free time to spend. This is the first unproductive day I've had in four weeks."

"Yeah, Hannah's like that too. Is it making you go crazy?"

"A little bit, yeah. I feel like I don't know how to relax." I can't help but let a smile show.

"Well, you've got a week here to figure it out." He turns to Bunter and signals for the check.

///

We fell into our nighttime routine that we used to do, back when I would visit my dad after his divorce. We brush our teeth at the sink together-- he usually looks in the mirror while I turn my back and lean against the counter-- then one of us flosses while the other changes into their pajamas, then we switch. I wash my face while he finds something on the tv for us to fall asleep to.

"They're playing Before Sunset on Spike TV," he says, loud enough for me to hear him over the sound of Before Sunset on Spike TV.

I step out in my pajama shorts and an oversized t-shirt. "Why is Spike TV playing Before Sunset?"

"Why does a hotel have Spike TV?"

"All great questions." I cross in front of the TV to crawl into bed.

"I went ahead and turned the AC off, since it was so cold last night. I'll just turn it on in the morning before the sun's up."

"Thanks, dad," I say, eyes barely focused on the tv-- just enough to trick my brain into wanting to stay awake, a focus that makes drifting off to sleep that much more enticing.

"Goodnight hon, I love you."

"G'night da love too," I say, in incomplete fragments, as I slowly fall asleep.

///

I wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat. Without the AC, the heavy blankets swamped me. I kick the blanket off of me, but the ambient air in the room isn't much better. This baggy shirt isn't helping much either-- I don't usually sleep with anything but some underwear, but obviously I had to make some compromises sharing a room with someone.

This is too hot though-- I'm not gonna be able to fall back asleep. I figure it won't cause much trouble if I take my shirt off-- my dad will probably go down for breakfast before I even wake up, and I can put it back on while he's gone.

I bend up and pull my shirt over my head. I get a nice airflow across my skin, and it helps cool me down. I lay back down with the blanket strewn across the bed, my left leg under the covers, my right leg stretched out.

With my head back down on the pillow, I turn to the nightstand on my right to check any notifications on my phone-- nothing worth blinding myself with my phone over. As I put my phone back down, my eye catches something-- in the bed to my right is my dad, similarly uncovered by the blanket, with his cock out.

Shit. I put my head back on my pillow as if I didn't notice anything. He seemed frozen, like he was worried he was caught. He slowly slid the top sheet up over his cock, playing it cool in case I were to wake up, but the shape of his cock was outlined by the top sheet.

I had never seen his cock before, never even imagine what it looked like. I'm not one to called any dick beautiful, but it was a very pretty cock. It's long, but not so long that it would cause any issues (unfortunately, I've been on the receiving end of one of those); thick, but it looks like you could put your hand around it. Even after covering himself, his cock still looks hard, throbbing-- he must be unbearably turned on.

God, it's turning *me* on, the idea of my father masturbating in the bed next to me. At this point, I can't sleep-- I'm fascinated, I'm horny. I feign being asleep, hoping that he will eventually resume, hoping I get to see him stroke his cock.

After sitting motionless for ten minutes, I half expected him to get soft, to give up-- it seems, though, that he was just waiting it out. He brings his hand up, removes the top sheet, and starts stroking his cock again, silently. I can't see where he's looking, or if his eyes are closed, but this gnawing part of me wants him looking at me, looking at his daughter, naked in the bed next to him.

I decide to skirt the lines of plausible deniability, and give him the room to do the same. I can pretend I didn't know he was awake as I slide my shorts and underwear down, off my legs-- it's just too hot, after all. I hear him pause as I sleepily-not-sleepily take off my shorts, wholly naked, my right leg out. He waits, then resumes again, and I watch him stroke his cock, although there's a slight change-- he shifted his angle. Instead of being wholly face up, he's angled, somewhat, towards me.

I got all the confirmation I need-- I feel confident playing this game. My mind races thinking about where I want to start. I decide to turn away from him, giving him a good view of my ass and my back. I hear him move-- subtle sounds I wouldn't have noticed or given thought to if I didn't know what was happening. I arch my back, moving my ass towards him, as if I was against him, pushing into him. I pause, giving him time to look.

I turn back, face up, but instead of covering myself with the blanket like I had, I leave the blanket only partially covering my far leg; my tits are out, and my previously covered cock is now out in the open, hard. He pauses-- pauses longer even than before, almost as if he was reconsidering what he was doing-- before I hear him start again, slower, paced, before speeding up more.

I want to touch my cock so bad-- I'm unbearably horny, my breath getting short and fluttery-- but decide I can't give away my game. Any indication I'm awake and he might give up altogether. Instead, I turn my body to face him-- if the lamp weren't there, we would be looking right at each other. My tits lay one on top of the other, my legs curled up, my arm draped across my belly, and I feel my nervous breath draw in and out. He pauses, one last time-- seemingly, forever-- before starting again, as I move my hips slightly. I let my hard cock rub against my thighs, sending a soft, coy pleasure across my body. My eyes are focused on his cock, as I watch him stroke himself, as I watch him look at me, as he watches me slowly grind my cock against my thigh-- he moves, faster, his hips bucking in a repressed silence, as he lets out that same uncharacteristic grunt I had heard from him before.

A thick rope of cum falls across his bare chest, before more slides down his shaft and into the hair of his stomach. He takes a deep breath. If I'm anything like my dad, I know what he's thinking-- the same panicked thoughts I had earlier, the escape routes, the shame, the fantasies, and, most importantly, the clean-up.

I save him some face, and consciously-unconsciously roll onto my back, then to my side, facing away from him, giving him the opportunity to sneak away to the bathroom for some privacy. He slinks, silently, out of his bed-- I imagine he does the same 'trying not to spill cum everywhere' hobble that I do-- and closes the bathroom door silently behind him.

I weigh the risks of cumming-- sure, I could probably cum before he's back, I could probably use my shorts as a rag and hide it in my bed until morning-- but instead, I run my finger across the head of my cock, bring it up to my mouth, and lick the precum off, holding it on my tongue. I quietly get up, move across the empty space between our beds, and plant a gentle kiss on my dad's pillow, making sure the tip of my tongue gives his silk pillowcase a brief touch. I crawl back into my bed, facing away from him again, before covering myself up with the blanket and tucking myself in.

///

I wake up to an empty room. I trawl my shirt and shorts out from the mess of blankets and sheets, and drag myself out of bed with a yawn as I make my way to the in-room coffee machine-- can you believe I didn't get a good night sleep?

My dad left me half the pot, about a cup and a half of coffee. Next to the coffee machine is a note my dad wrote, in his signature cute-yet-messy chicken scratch handwriting:

"Early bird gets the continental breakfast. I'll probably still be down there when you wake up. XOXO, dad."

Then, at the bottom:

"P.S. the coffee in the room isn't very good."

///////////////

(thank you for all the kind words and feedback! definitely going to keep working on this one.)