Oh, yes, yes, this couldn't have been any more perfect. It's like he can taste her embarrassment in the air around her, he doesn't even need to see her coloring to know she's blushing. He'll drink in your humiliation like it's sustenance, Salome, and any time he needs to recharge he'll just watch the video again.
The cake is practically the size of her head--no shock there, going by the size of some of the other patrons of the fine establishment--and once the staff finishes singing and returns to their usual business, the lights come back up and Richard is left grinning ear-to-ear at his daughter.
"Now how could they have known it's your birthday! How strange." Richard attempts to assume a befuddled face but soon loses it to a spell of sniggering. Instead, he reaches across the table and plucks up her hand to draw her knuckles to his mouth for a lingering kiss. "Happy birthday, princess."
It's easier to be genuine before her, now. Richard may say that he feels as though he's learning all these new things about her, but it may simply be because, not only does he see her in a different light, but because she now has the chance to learn new things about him. Suddenly it's easier to relax around her, to give her glimpses of his true face, or a truer face than his usual. So it's easier to relax, easier to laugh genuinely, or as genuinely as it comes for him, anyway.
He is cruel, and vile, and completely irredeemable, but he has a soft spot for Salome that has expanded a great deal in the past week. This is a bad, horrible relationship, but that only makes it seem beyond good to him. After all--what love is purer, what relationship closer, more important, than that of a father and is daughter? He can't give her romance, no, and won't pretend to, but he can give her this. And having a father at this age is more important than receiving romantic closure.
Objectively, he is aware that he is a terrible bastard, a monster, a horrible father and a foul human being. But these are the opinions engrained in society, the mindset produced by slave morality, and he happily ignores them in favor of his own, far more enlightened moral perspectives.
In short: fuck the haters, he's never felt so close to his daughter in seventeen years. And that's something, because he always felt fairly close.
Grinning, Richard squeezes her hand, then releases it. "You're so adorable when you blush I can't even stand it."
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-08-13 12:39 am (UTC)The cake is practically the size of her head--no shock there, going by the size of some of the other patrons of the fine establishment--and once the staff finishes singing and returns to their usual business, the lights come back up and Richard is left grinning ear-to-ear at his daughter.
"Now how could they have known it's your birthday! How strange." Richard attempts to assume a befuddled face but soon loses it to a spell of sniggering. Instead, he reaches across the table and plucks up her hand to draw her knuckles to his mouth for a lingering kiss. "Happy birthday, princess."
It's easier to be genuine before her, now. Richard may say that he feels as though he's learning all these new things about her, but it may simply be because, not only does he see her in a different light, but because she now has the chance to learn new things about him. Suddenly it's easier to relax around her, to give her glimpses of his true face, or a truer face than his usual. So it's easier to relax, easier to laugh genuinely, or as genuinely as it comes for him, anyway.
He is cruel, and vile, and completely irredeemable, but he has a soft spot for Salome that has expanded a great deal in the past week. This is a bad, horrible relationship, but that only makes it seem beyond good to him. After all--what love is purer, what relationship closer, more important, than that of a father and is daughter? He can't give her romance, no, and won't pretend to, but he can give her this. And having a father at this age is more important than receiving romantic closure.
Objectively, he is aware that he is a terrible bastard, a monster, a horrible father and a foul human being. But these are the opinions engrained in society, the mindset produced by slave morality, and he happily ignores them in favor of his own, far more enlightened moral perspectives.
In short: fuck the haters, he's never felt so close to his daughter in seventeen years. And that's something, because he always felt fairly close.
Grinning, Richard squeezes her hand, then releases it. "You're so adorable when you blush I can't even stand it."