Chapter Text
Manipulation is an art.
That lesson comes in the form of seventeen years old, in a bar that she wasn’t supposed to be in. She was a rosy cheeked thing fighting her inexperience. Rebellion felt necessary. It was escape from small town boredom, from mourning. It’s the same reason she pushes Kyle to kiss her in the back of the church with tongue, the same reason she almost pushes his hand up under her skirt but he tells her he can’t do that there.
There in that bar, Kate finds out that men will defend your honour if you’re pretty enough.
Kate finds out that she’s pretty enough.
The man’s blood won’t wash out of her shirt so she burns it. She hadn't watched someone get a bottle smashed over their head before.
She learns that she can wield her body and words as brush to paint herself a better outcome, but it takes time.
The suggestion is just a joke. It’s something for a friend to say to her as she laughs through her frustration and wipes the grease of minimum wage work off her hands. Everyone knows that Kate hates her job, that her boss is a pervert on a permanent power trip. Everyone knows too that she needs the cash. Responsibility hangs heavy on her shoulders.
“Why don’t you get a sugar daddy?” Kate throws her napkin their way and takes the tray laying on the table, walking off. If she gets caught smiling she’ll never hear the end of it.
Back to work, focus, you have a purpose and that’s keeping yourself afloat. You want to go to college, don’t you? You want to make your momma proud, don’t you?
Fate blows Seth Gecko into her life. He doesn’t look how she expects him to, closer to a movie star than the grumpy, lonely man he reveals himself to be.
He isn’t looking for permanence. He’s not interested in a prostitute. He likes the purity in her. The preacher’s daughter label that she thought had come unstuck long ago, or at least partially, flapping in the wind as she lost more and more of the girl she was. He likes her and she knows that she has to take that between her two hands and run with it. It doesn’t matter if she likes him, it matters what he can give her.
And apparently Seth has a lot to give.
They go on a date, but it feels more formal than that. It’s a business meeting. He said he didn’t want a prostitute but she supposes this is just the more live-in kind. Her hands shake and she feels like she’s going to throw up. She steels herself to iron, she becomes determined. She wears red lipstick.
In the end it’s not hard to pretend to like him. There’s incentive, and he’s not bad to look at.
It’s awkward. She asks him if he’s in the mafia and he asks if she’s Catholic. They both say no. He doesn’t tell her what he does for a long, long time. By then, she doesn’t really fucking care what it is that he does.
Kate finds out that he’s the Catholic one. Raised Catholic, anyway and hasn’t been to church in years. She speaks briefly about her faith and wonders if that’s specifically what he’s into. She wonders if it gets him hard, or something. Her eyes dart down but his crotch is hidden by the table cloth. She pretends that’s what she was looking at.
They talk about other things, it becomes easier.
She sucks him off in the bathroom, and afterwards admits that’s the second time she’s done it – ever. Seth looks amused. She doesn’t admit how much she likes it. That seems a stretch too far, but she did like it. He didn’t finish in her mouth but she keeps it in mind. Maybe next time.
“You really are pure aren’t you, Katie?” Eyes move up and down her body, she doesn’t tug on her tank top to cower.
She shrugs.
He agrees to pay for college and she feels…. Calm. Better.
This isn’t perfect, this isn’t what her daddy would have wanted but it suits her just fine. She quits her job and makes sure to flip her boss off. It’s not viral video material, but it feels good.
The first time they fuck properly, Kate watches him in the mirror. The room is too lavish for her tastes. The gold is overbearing, like she’s drowning in it, but it’s a hotel room with a view and he fucks her up against the window later and she kind of likes that.
The mirror. It’s too big. His hair is a mess. He’s focused on her and she’s bent over. She can’t look at herself, her bare breasts and pale skin, the auburn hair hanging in waves over her shoulder. It’s easier to look at Seth, the way he groans and shuts his eyes, his hands on her waist are close to bruising. She had thought she wouldn’t like it. Eventually, she can no longer focus on his face and it comes down to the fact that he’s inside her, stretching her out.
She finishes herself off when he’s out of the room to dispose of the condom. He catches her and just kind of… stares. Not even at her fingers pumping in and out of her, at first. At her face, he’s watching her and she has to press it into pillow. He tells her next time he’ll make sure.
It’s just a means to an end. Seth. The sex. The money.
If this isn’t how it’s supposed to work, she doesn’t really care. They fuck and he pays for what she needs him to. They talk for hours and hours and she thinks maybe they’re like friends. She finds out about his brother and his uncle. She tentatively tells him about her brother and father.
Seth buys her pretty things, but Kate isn’t that materialistic a person. He buys her a dress in velvet and blood red and she hates it, but she wears it anyway.
She sits in his lap in the middle of a lavish restaurant and tells him to try pink next time.
He becomes an instrument to move, there are buttons to press to get her way. Playing Seth is easier than the church organ. She paints her nails red, her lips curve up into a smile. She’s sweet and gentle but whispers terrible things to him. He wants her innocence and he wants to rip it away. He wants it to return.
Seth isn’t an idiot, he knows what she does to him. This is what he asked for.
He develops some sort of fixation on her pussy. She points out that this whole thing was supposed to be about him. He insists, while looking up from between her thighs that it is. Tastes good, baby girl. She flushes. She burns underneath his tongue.
They learn to like fucking with limbs tangled together. They look at each other. They really look.
Sometimes when they’re in public she calls him daddy, he tries to shut her up by saying that he’s going to spank her. She tells him to do it with a Bible and he chokes up.
Kate keeps telling herself it’s just a means to an end.
She can stop at any time.
Seth tells her he loves her by accident as he comes in her mouth.
If she wanted to say it back, it’s not like she could.
For her nineteenth birthday he takes her away and they spend the whole trip pretending to be married. If it’s some sort of reward, she doesn’t know what she’s done besides for getting a year older. People stare, they stare back.
They get couples massages and sip alcoholic drinks by the pool even if she’s technically not supposed to be touching the stuff. Kate walks around in only bikinis and he revels in taking every single one off her. They go to the beach at night and realise it’s easier to fuck in the pool. They fuck in the pool.
Kate starts college with no idea what she wants to major in. She doesn’t even ask about the apartment, he just tells her to look for one a few weeks before orientation with her laying on his chest, hand palming his cock in his boxers.
He pretends she isn’t one of the only good things in his life. She bats her lashes more than she needs to and says please. They fuck on a bed covered in money and she wonders if there’s a metaphor in that. It leaves imprints in her back and a paper cut she can’t smooth her finger over to sooth.
She asks if she should dye her hair red. He shakes his head. She agrees.