Archive of Our Own

Kate’s a little upset her dad didn’t tell her he was gay. Or queer, or whatever.

She doesn’t know why. It’s not like Daniel’s been in her life. It’s not like he’s important to her. She and Aimee agree, privately, that the best thing to come out of Daniel’s fatherhood is their friendship and their existence. And, if her opposition is to be believed, her political career.

She doubts that one. Daniel has never helped her get a leg up. He’s never helped her run, never written puff pieces about her, never even praised her publically. If anything, her dad having slandered so many politicians probably pulled her back in her goals.

The only thing her father has ever done in connection with her career was write a piece on her after she was elected. Her assistant sent her it, not because it was written by her father, but because her assistant was sending her all the good articles about her. Kate had spread it out on her desk and looked at the headline.

Kate Molloy: The New Governor of California Brings In a New Era. By Daniel Molloy.

He’d started the article with the line ‘It’s fair to say I may be biased’, which Kate had thought was a little bit much. He wasn’t in her life. They barely talked. Any bias was because he wouldn’t shittalk his daughter, not because he knew anything about her career.

She hadn’t known he knew she was a lesbian until she read the article.

Coming out was probably the hardest thing she’d ever done other than politics. Her mother had been supportive, but Kate hadn’t know. Kate liked to be sure. Kate liked to know that where she was stepping was fully solid before she moved. She’d hidden it for so long. And she hadn’t hidden it when she’d run, but she hadn’t been blaring it from the top of buildings.

And she sure as hell hadn’t come out to him. She still doesn’t know how he found out. Probably from her mom, but maybe not.

Most ‘first lesbians’ have wives. That’s not Kate. That’ll never be Kate. Kate was raised in the middle of a divorce.

Kate Molloy has the blood of Daniel Molloy coursing through her veins, and it is bad blood. Her father had a propensity for bad relationships, for never sacrificing things for love, for talking over his wives. Her father had a propensity for falling in love with taken women and ruining their relationships. Her father had left ruined marriages and girlfriends behind him.

And Kate is more like her father than she ever wants to admit. She’s a workaholic, hadn’t listened to every girlfriend she had before she swore off love. She never let herself give up goals for love, breaking the heart of her high school sweetheart. She had a propensity for falling for people she shouldn’t, like her opponent’s wife in her first ever election. She’s just smarter than Daniel: she doesn’t pursue them.

So Kate is not going to marry, so she’s unsure how Daniel ever figured out she was a lesbian. He’d probably known forever. And now everyone knows she’s a lesbian, because Daniel Molloy might be a horrible father and husband, but he’s an amazing reporter.

Maybe that’s how she’ll be known one day. A poor person, a great politician.

Anyways, she does actually know why she thinks her father should have told her he was queer: because she’s queer, and it would be nice to have one good thing in common with him.

But, honestly, if Daniel ever tried to have a good relationship with her and Aimee, it might be grounds for them to start looking into nursing homes. Rank them on how much they think he deserves. Make a best to worst list, knock him down a peg for each slight.

Still, Kate doesn’t want to learn that her dad has a boyfriend from a TikTok. Not a tabloid. Not because someone told her. Not even through Twitter (she’ll call it X when she’s dead), which could even be alright. No, through a TikTok.

She knows her father just published a book. She knows he’s claiming this fiction about vampires is nonfiction and throwing his career down the drain. Her and Aimee have been texting back and forth about if they need to get their moms involved and if they think they need to take him to a doctor. She knows the book is essentially gay vampire erotica, even if she hasn’t read it. Trust her, sharing a last name with the man makes people think they can say whatever about him to her.

So Kate’s almost not surprised when she sees her father in a TikTok. Like, he’s some internet microcelebrity now. She’s sure if she checked Archive of Our Own, which she tries not to do on government Wi-Fi, she could find fanfiction about him. Weird RPF about her dad and those damned gay vampire characters.

She is surprised when her dad, in the TikTok, is walking with a man about a third his age. The man is impeccably dressed in a leather trench coat, button up, and luxe dress shoes. Those jeans are so tight they look painted on. And she wouldn’t think my dad is dating a twenty year old twink, except Daniel smiles at him. Then he slides an arm around the twink’s whore waist and pulls him close. The twink smiles self satisfied.

The caption to the TikTok is some obnoxious ‘lmao imagine if thats armand from the novel’. All the comments are either going ‘OMG YEAH LMAO’ or ‘isnt it kind of racist to just assume a brown guy is armand like????’. Kate ignores all of these in favor of sending the TikTok to Aimee.

She accompanies it with “How fucking old do you think he is?”

She tries not to think about how she wishes he had told her he was queer. She tries not to feel upset that Daniel is being so careful with that twink in ways he never was with her mother. She tries not to wonder what life would be like if she and Daniel had the sort of relationship where she learned these things from her. She fails miserably.

Her assistant finds her with her face lying on her desk. Isobel stands at the door and coughs. Kate sits up. She thinks Isobel is so fucking hot it’s unfair, because Kate is her father’s daughter and will be that forty year old thinking that about her twenty-five year old intern. But she is a lot more sane than her father with that young twink, so there’s no way she’s going to pursue shit.

Isobel pauses. “Are you alright, Ms. Molloy?”

“Seriously,” Kate says, like she’s been saying to everyone who works for her, “call me Kate.” And then, because now’s probably the time to say it, “I don’t need to be associated with my father.”

“Are you alright, Ms. Molloy?” Isobel asks again, which is also hot, because Kate likes being rebuffed. She hopes it can’t show.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Kate shakes her head and massages the bridge of her nose. “Do I have a meeting?”

“No, actually, your work day is over. We were wondering why you were staying so late.”

Kate glances at the clock. How long was she staring at that damned TikTok, letting her cradle robber father and his sugar baby loop? “Dammit. Sorry to worry the interns.” She stands, gathering everything. Her phone buzzes, a text from Aimee popping up on the lockscreen of the two of them at Aimee’s bachelorette party.

WTF??????

He can’t be more than 25. Jesus

Kate grabs her phone and tucks it in her pocket. “Is my hair alright?” she asks Isobel, trying to make sure everything is falling where it should. Short hair, shockingly, also has problems. At least the curls tend to stay where they should.

She knows that with her short, curly hair she looks like her father. She’s seen pictures of her father young, sees how they share similarities. His hair, his smile, his face shape. She barely looks like her mother. All she has of Alice is her dark skin, and even then it looks like her young father has been racebent. It’s insulting.

Isobel nods, and Kate bids her goodbye. She leaves her office, out onto the busy city streets. Her phone keeps buzzing, Aimee doing what she does best and scouring the internet for more information on her father and his sinfully young arm candy.

OK so they’ve been spotted together a lot? There’s speculation they’re living together

He took the boy to some fancy publishing party + he’s been seen in the dressing rooms for a few interviews

[Video Attachment] Ew. Ew. Ew. Yeah they’re fucking

Kate stares at the video. It’s from some pulpy tabloid that seems to have latched onto Daniel Molloy’s tanking career because celebrities aren’t being problematic enough. It’s shot through a car window, which is… Well, it’s fucking invasive. This is the type of shit she hates, being she’s a politician and everything makes her think of ruined careers.

Aimee calls him the boy, but Kate thinks of him as the twink immediately. In the video, the twink climbs into Daniel’s lap. Daniel looks up at him, face glowing and adoring. He tangles his hand in the twink’s curls and brings him in for a long kiss. The twink is pliant in her father’s hands, letting him kiss down his neck. Kate looks away. She doesn’t need to see her father doing this, but she feels it’s somehow less invasive than the fights that she used to overhear.

She texts Aimee back, proposes calling him. Aimee responds right away.

I already texted him and proposed a meeting between the three of us. I know you’re in Cali and he’s in NYC and I’m in Maryland, but we can fly there.

Kate grins. She and Aimee are more friends than sisters, because they never lived together. Hard to live together when your father doesn’t have custody and you have different mothers. They’re linked by DNA and their dad’s sperm, but that’s not much. Not when Kate is very aware her father’s sperm’s been a lot of places. But Aimee is a good friend, the sort of person to read Kate’s mind and account for things Kate wouldn’t have. Like the fact she can’t take time off work because they’re about to get this trans healthcare bill passed so that California will always be safe, so Aimee (part-time accountant who works from home) and Daniel (already touring talk shows, and also owes them) can come to them.

God, I wish we grew up together, she texts, one handed, about to get to her apartment building.

I’m glad we didn’t. I’d be much worse as a sister than a friend, Aimee responds. Then:

He responded. This Thursday?

Kate frowns at her phone. Expensive flights?

He’s paying.

Then yeah, Thurs works after I’m off work. There’s a good restaurant, we can meet there. Kate sends Aimee the location. She unlocks the door, waves to the security guard, and enters the elevator. The thing with Aimee and her father settled, she tucks the phone into her pocket and watches the floors tick up, up, up.

She wants a drink. Everytime shit happens, she wants a drink. Her sponsor says this is normal for recovering addicts. She argues she’s not an addict, and also that she shouldn’t be in Alcoholics Anonymous. Because she has the best sponsor, her sponsor tells her to go fuck herself and then gives her wise advice.

She still doesn’t feel like an addict. It wasn’t like she was ever visibly drunk. She could do work. She did good work. She never got caught out, her career never got ruined.

It was her father’s memoir that fucked it up for her. She hadn’t read it, but it seemed like everyone on her social medias did. Screenshotted and highlighted paragraphs were everywhere. And then she saw the one that finally got to her.

I knew I was addicted. I was waking up in drug dens and doing whatever I could to get drugs. Sex, money, whatever. But it was easy to ignore that it was bad. Whenever my coworkers did pieces on drug addicts, I could separate myself from them. They did coke for different reasons, because I was special. Drugs helped me. I worked better, faster, harder when I was high. I found better stories. I made more connections than I did sober. And because I was high, everything seemed genius, even stuff that was shit when I came back sober. So much of my old work is unusable or I can’t look at it. I was a good drug addict. I was a functioning drug addict.

Kate had read that, known it was her father, and immediately found AA meetings that were actually anonymous enough that she wouldn’t be putting her political career at risk. So, every other Saturday, she drives two and a half hours to Nevada.

So she doesn’t drink. She pets her cat, named Louis, which is apparently really fucking ironic with her father’s gay vampire erotica. She pours herself a cup of root beet and puts on John Oliver so she feels less ashamed about being alone in her apartment. Always alone in her apartment.

John Oliver is talking about renowned journalist Daniel Molloy turning to writing fiction, because Kate can’t catch a fucking break.

“Can you believe this shit, Louis?” she mutters, drinking her root beer and pretending it’s real beer. “Five days till my father comes into town and he might have dementia.” John Oliver shows a picture of Daniel walking side by side by the twink. “Look how young that man is. My dad’s a sugar daddy and he’s better at that than being a husband or father.”

Louis meows. Kate stares at him and then bursts out crying.

It’s so fucking much. She wants to numb it all, and that’s not even original. Just another shitty thing she inherited from her shitty dad. Like being shit at love and her hair and her fucking crush on Isobel. Kate is copy-pasted, lesbian, mixed race Daniel Molloy.

And she will not fucking relapse because that’s what her father would.

Kate stands up, forces herself to get leftover Italian takeout from the fridge. She eats cold noodles sitting on her kitchen floor and batting Louis away. John Oliver talks in the other room, comfortingly British when she can’t hear much of what he says.

“Should I call Mom?” she asks Louis. He doesn’t say much of anything, given that he’s a cat. “I should probably call Mom.”

She’s not going to call her mother. She doesn’t know how she can. It’s hard for her, thinking about her mom and her dad side by side. They don’t talk. Both of them think she takes the other’s side too much. Her mom’s gonna hate it if she decides to call her to talk about her dad.

She looks to see if Aimee has sent her anything else. Just a thumbs up emoji and a heart. Her other notifications come from LinkedIn (an ad), TikTok (they just like sending her notifications), and Tinder, which she hasn’t used in years but never deletes. It’s begging her to come back to online dating.

She ignores it and opens up Duolingo. She drills French until she’s bored, because she hates French and she only does it because her sponsor says she needs hobbies. She claims she has hobbies, but she thinks her sponsor would be pretty damn annoyed about her being on her kitchen floor with cold noodles.

At least vodka would be more aesthetic.

She crawls into bed early. She dreams about vampires.

Her days go by with maddening repetitiveness. They’re no different than they usually are, but now that she can look forward to Aimee coming and dread Daniel coming, they bore her. She works to tighten up the bill so that there aren’t any cracks. She debates some Republican and destroys him easily. She texts her sponsor, which freaks him out. She scrolls TikTok.

Another video of her father and the twink pops up, because the algorithm hates her. This one is better shot. Her father stands on the subway at night (why?) with the twink beside him. His hand is looped in one of the little loops, and it doesn’t shake at all. She hates it, but she always checks for that. She wants to know just how bad it’s getting, how long she might have left with him. And she hates even caring. It’s not that it’s actually with him. They barely talk.

The new treatment must be working, then.

She watches as the twink cozies up to her father. She watches as the twink slips his hand into her father’s back pocket. She watches as they bend their faces into each other and have a low conversation.

They look happy. It’s disgusting.

It’s not that her mother isn’t happy. She embraced single life, and then she started dating Bobby. Bobby is the most boring man Kate has ever met, but her mother loves him. And he doesn’t have a drug addiction and he doesn’t cheat and he’s not an investigative journalist. Alice always lists these like they’re of the same importance.

But her mother hadn’t done much wrong. It had been Daniel, then Daniel again. Daniel who had cemented the divorce, both with Kate’s mother and Aimee’s mother. And here he was, happy dating a man far too young for him.

Come on. That twink can’t be more than thirty. Kate would barely believe he is thirty. Her father is seventy, for god’s sake. He’s way too old to be having sex at all, Kate personally thinks, let alone sex with a fucking child.

The kid is younger than her! Probably even younger than Aimee.

“Hey, Kate,” Salim, her lieutenant governor, says, sticking his head into her office. “Want to come out for drinks?”

Because I’m a recovering addict ruins careers, Kate just shakes her head. “No, I’ve got a thing. But, um, could a few of us go out this weekend? Not for drinks, just, dinner or something?”

“I knew you’d stop being so solitary at some point,” Sal says, grinning. They’ve been friends since they met, and he’s the only person she trusts. Unfortunately, he’s also in politics, so she doesn’t trust him that much. She misses their friendship before work.

She’d stop being governor, but she doesn’t know what she’d do next. She doesn’t know if there is a next she could pursue. “I’m so fucking bored, Sal.”

“Drinks?”

“I hate bars,” she lies. She likes bars too much.

“Got it, boss. We’ll miss you.” Sal’s head disappears. She thinks about tomorrow. She thinks about driving to the airport to pick up Aimee and Daniel. She thinks about making her father get an Uber and then remembers he’s seventy. So that might break the eighth amendment or something.

When does your flight get in? She texts Aimee.

7:40pm. Dad gets in at 8:35pm. Are you picking us up?

Yeah, I’ll leave work early

Can the gov do that?

I’m in charge. I can do what I want.

It’s never been true, but she likes saying that. She likes entertaining the idea. She likes thinking about being in charge, like she’s in charge of anything. She’s not even in charge of her own life. No matter how far she gets. No matter if she’s the first female governor of California, the first dyke governor of California, the first mixed-race governor of California. She still gets @ed on Twitter mainly because of her father. It’s one of the first things on her Wikipedia page. People at parties ask her about it.

‘Are you the daughter that sat in the backseat while your father bought drugs? Are you the daughter who cried in the other room while your father snorted coke? Are you the daughter that once ate cocaine because you thought it was sugar?’

Yes, she is. She’s also the governor of California.

She should have taken her mother’s surname when she had the chance.

Kate Molloy barely rolls off the tongue.

Aimee sends her a recipe for homemade Thin Mints and asks if Reagan and Colton would like them. Kate doesn’t know shit about kids, but she knows homemade Girl Scout cookies are never as good as the actual cookies.

And when tomorrow hits, she stands in front of her closet. She’ll have to go straight from work to the airport, so she needs an outfit that is both a governor outfit and a meeting your best friend/half sister and estranged dad outfit. She ends up with a jade blazer over a patterned black and white short sleeve button up. Her pants are the same jade.

She doesn’t have good fashion sense, but Lex put together thirty outfits out of her closet before he moved to Michigan. Her best friend she barely talks to, making sure she’d look good at parties and speeches. He’ll visit again, and then they’ll put together more outfits.

She combs out her curls, lets them group again. She makes sure they look refined, even if curls are always seen as a little too messy. She doesn’t put on much makeup, but she puts on concealer and a tiny bit of eyeliner.

And then she heads to work.

“Nice outfit,” Sal says, leaning on her door. “Got a hot date?”

“I don’t really date,” she says, scanning over a proposal. “My sister and dad are flying in today.”

“Ah.” Sal is an interesting case in people who know her dad. He’s an ex-journalist, and apparently Daniel Molloy was one of his favorites. He’s read all her dad’s books, probably including the vampire one. He’s got collections of her father’s stories. She’s pretty sure his copy of his memoir is signed.

But Kate didn’t learn this till they were already friends. He’d never made Kate be about her father. He listens, doesn’t ask questions. Barely ever brings it up.

“Is it hard? Your father, I mean. I’ve met your sister, she’s cool.” Yeah, that’s the other thing. He gets it when Kate hates talking about her father.

“Well, you probably know better than I the shit he’s been on recently. Vampire porn, being seen with a much younger man.”

Sal enters her office, closing the door behind them. It doesn’t offer them much privacy because the walls are thin as hell, but it gives them an iota. “Do you think he’s alright?”

Kate shrugs and sets down the proposal. “Aimes and I are worried. So, dinner and hopefully an explanation.”

“Well, good luck, boss,” Sal says. “Tell Aimee hi from me.”

Kate smiles at him. She misses when she didn’t guard herself around him so much. “I’m gonna leave a little early to pick them up from the airport.” She puts everything into stacks. Have to do, done, ignore, half-done. “That fine? I’ll tell Isobel too.”

“It’s your family.”

Kate chuckles. “Barely.”

Sal gives her a small, sad smile. He stands and rounds her desk. He reaches out and squeezes her bicep. “Remember, you’re a badass. Kicking Kate, Madwoman Molloy.”

“Those were smear articles.”

“Take the criticism well, boss. When they leave, you wanna go to the museum with me?”

God, yeah. She needs that. She needs a casual outing with Sal, removed from any responsibilities. “Sure.”

Sal grins and then flits out of the door. Kate carefully packs what she needs into her leather messenger bag. She takes less paperwork than usual because she doesn’t think she’s going to be doing paperwork at her kitchen table today. She tosses the bag on her shoulder and leaves her office.

She sticks her head into the interns’ shared space. “Isobel, I’m heading out. I have to pick up my father and sister from the airport.”

One of the interns, a little goth polisci major, perks up her head. “Is your father Daniel Molloy?”

Kate ignores her and heads out of the building.

She usually walks home, lucky to nab a decent apartment close to the capitol building. But she parked in the garage today, so that she could drive straight to the Sacramento Airport. She tosses her briefcase in the backseat and pulls out of the garage. In her Subaru. Because she’s that dyke apparently.

She ignores the radio, instead putting on her and Aimee’s Spotify blend. It’s a little incomprehensible and jumps from genre to genre, but it’s more for Aimee’s benefit than hers. Normally she’d put on a podcast, but she’s had too much with politics given her job. She’s updated. She knows current events. She’s good. She’s fighting.

At 7:46, right before Aimee texts that she’s deplaning, Kate parks and enters the airport by the baggage claim. She stands there until she sees Aimee. Her sister looks nothing like her. Kate looks like her father with her mother’s melanin. Aimee looks like her mother, who has blonde hair. The only thing Aimee shares with their father is her curls, and Aimee straightens those out.

They get mistaken for girlfriends more than sisters. And even though they don’t think of each other as sisters one hundred percent, they always respond with the same offended, “we’re sisters!”

Aimee sees her and jumps. She’s wearing a pink blouse that’s a little wrinkled from the flight and sensible white shows. She runs over, tossing her free arm around Kate’s shoulders. “Kate!” she says, voice high and excited.

Kate hugs her back. “Hey, Aimee.”

“I’ve gotta wait for my checked bags,” Aimee says as she pulls away from Kate. “Are we just gonna wait for Dad?”

Kate checks her watch. It’s almost eight. “Yeah, I figured we would. I can wait for your bag if you wanna run to the restroom.” Kate knows that usually Aimee wouldn’t wear a blouse on an eight hour flight. But it’s the same reason Kate is wearing a trendy pantsuit. So she’ll give Aimee the opportunity to work to unwrinkle her shirt and fix her hair.

“Thanks. It’s hot pink with a green ribbon tied on the handle, which is stupid, but it’s easier to find on the carousel. Uhh, I think it’s carousel six.”

“Got it.”

They part ways, Aimee to the lady’s room and Kate to carousel six. She stands there, watching the carousel on and off. There’s a woman with a chihuahua, and she keeps looking at the dog. It’s yipping, clearly having a terrible time standing her and waiting for whatever bag the lady had to check to have the dog on the airplane.

Then the hot pink bag with a green ribbon shows up and Kate grabs it. She sees someone eye her, the woman in an unrumpled suit grabbing luggage from an eight hour flight. But no one asks if she’s stealing it. She does hear two people whispering.

“Governor?” “Molloy?” “Book?” Only snatches reach her, but she knows exactly where their conversation is going. So she hauls Aimee’s bag to the corner to wait.

Aimee emerges soon enough, a little bit of water keeping her hair down and her blouse looking a little less wrinkled. With her blue jeans, she looks like a quintessential suburban mom. But that’s always been what Aimee loves. She’s not like Kate, and she’s not really like Daniel. She didn’t get that mess.

“How’re Reagan and Colton?” Kate asks, because Aimee loves her kids. And Aimee starts going into detail.

Reagan’s joined the debate team and “oh, by the way, idolizes you. She wants to be a politician like you”. She’s just come out as a lesbian, and Aimee thinks she might like STEM as much as politics. Colton’s been going by Cole, and his current career goals are acting. He was just cast in the school production of Midsummer’s Night’s Dream as Puck.

Aimee looks so proud of her kids. She’s really no Daniel Molloy.

Kate checks her watch – 8:02 – but not her phone. So, she misses the text from her father that says he’s deplaning and his flight is early in.

“Are you still smoking?” Aimee asks. They stand side by side, watching people move past them.

“No. Does this jacket smell of smoke?”

“No, that’s why I was asking. Have you read his new book?”

“I’ve never read any of Dad’s books. I don’t know, I just don’t care? I especially won’t read his memoir. I don’t need to see myself from his perspective.”

“Yeah, I get it. Same. I’ve seen the quotes from it.”

“Do people send you snippets about you? Because people send me snippets about me all the time, and I’m so sick of it.”

“Oh my God, yeah! How do people think that’s, like, okay?”

“People are fucking freaks man,” Kate says, and then, “oh god, I hope no one heard me say that. Can’t say shit without risking my career.”

They hear Daniel before they see him. At first they tune it out, almost unconsciously, because they’re both good at tuning out arguments their father is having. Especially the lowered voices in public even though everyone can still tell we’re fighting ones that he loves to do.

And then Kate registers that it’s not some random man. It’s their dad.

She looks over to where her dad is walking side by side with the twink. She elbows Aimee and nods at them.

“You can’t book the same flight as me without telling me, especially with my money,” their dad hisses at the twink. The twink looks smug and self satisfied. “It’s going to be hard enough to meet up with my daughters without you.”

“I did not want to let you go alone, nor stay home alone,” the twink says. His voice is unnervingly British.

“You know how this looks, Boss,” their Dad says. “I already barely talk to my daughters, I don’t need you there fucking it up.”

“You risked going on a plane during the day,” the twink says, which is crazy. Their dad isn’t that famous. He doesn’t have to stay inside during the day. “And an airport. I had to make sure you were alright.”

“You’re not my keeper.” Daniel’s voice is snippy. “You can’t just follow me everywhere.”

“Well, you perhaps need a keeper, so I will gladly fill that role.”

“I’m not fucking decrepit. You think, oh you can suck me off, and suddenly you get to be following me every damn where.”

“Well, where should I go, Daniel? I’ve been kicked out of my home, and who’s fault is that?”

“Yours, actually.”

Aimee clears her throat and calls out, “Dad!” Kate gets it, because every second of this conversation is making her think her dad’s a little bit more crazy. Daniel spins around, sees them, and grins.

Kate, quickly, before she needs to have a conversation, categorizes what their fight just told her.

One, the twink has easy access to their father’s money. And that he has money. Is the new book doing that well? Two, the twink thinks her father shouldn’t go out during the day or to airports. Is her father making it seem like he’s more famous than he is? Does the twink know something? Three, the twink is acting like he’s looking after her father. Honestly, it might be needed. Her father is a seventy year old with Parkinson’s. Daniel doesn’t think he needs this. Four, their relationship started sexually. Five, the twink’s been kicked out, and seems to think it’s Daniel’s fault. Kicked out of where? Kate can only hope it’s not his parents’ house.

Daniel approaches them, setting his bags down and pulling them into a group hug. It’s been years since he last hugged them and both Kate and Aimee freeze. “Katie, Aimes, it’s good to see you.” He pulls away smiling. “I’ve missed you girls.”

The twink approaches behind them. His hand unsurreptitiously slides into their father's back pocket as he stands next to them. “Hello, Governor Molloy, Mrs. Tyler. It’s wonderful to meet you.”

Daniel smiles affectionately at the twink, arm going around his waist even though they were just fighting. “I wasn’t hoping to do introductions this soon, but this is Armand.”

“I’m his assistant,” Armand says, which is absolutely unnecessary. Even if they weren’t holding each other, it’s clear just from the way they talk that they’re fucking.

“He’s my partner,” Daniel corrects. “Armand. Armand, I know you’ve googled them, but these are my daughters. Kate, my eldest, and Aimee, the youngest.”

“Pleasure,” Armand says with a sweet smile.

The name seems slightly familiar to Kate, but she doesn’t ask about it. She’s heard most names, she’d assume. She probably hasn’t even heard it in relation to her father.

“Nice to meet you,” Aimee says, clearly having prepared for maybe having to meet her father’s too young boyfriend.

“Yeah, great to meet you.” Kate reaches out and shakes Armand’s hand.

She looks between him and her dad. Her dad is wearing a leather jacket over a waistcoat over a shirt that says Théâtre des Vampires. His jeans are ripped. He’s way too old to be wearing that. Armand, despite the long flight, looks almost perfect. His black button up is almost too low, under a long wool coat. He smiles as she looks at him, like he knows what she’s thinking.

They’re also both wearing sunglasses indoors, like only assholes do. Her dad’s are Ray Bans, and Armand’s are little red tinted ones. They make him look like he could be a gay vampire.

Armand slides out his phone. He taps at it with his free hand for a second before saying, “the sun has set.”

Aimee glances over to Kate. Her thoughts are clear: how on Earth is that relevant?

“I found a good restaurant we can go to?” she says, half a question because Armand seems content to stand in the fluorescent lighting of the airport forever.

“Not your apartment?” Armand asks.

Kate thinks of the apartment, half cleaned and looking half a hovel. “You guys have hotel rooms, right?”

Armand smiles. “We certainly have a hotel room.”

“Stop acting like a pervert,” Daniel says.

Kate almost scoffs. Armand, this twenty-something year old, acting like a pervert? Her father’s the one dating him. Armand seems to agree, a teasing smile on his face. “No one here thinks I’m the pervert, Daniel.”

“Can we leave?” Aimee asks. “I hate airports.” She picks at nonexistent crud under her salmon nails. Kate nods and starts walking towards the parking garage, making them all follow her with their luggage. She knows she should turn around and ask her dad – her elderly father with Parkinson’s – if he needs her to carry his stuff. But she doesn’t want to.

It took Kate two failed relationships to decide dating wasn’t for her. And not big failures, just the sort of thing where you realize you’ve been a shitty partner all along. Daniel’s had two catastrophic failures (that she knows of), so he’s decided to up the ante and date a fucking child.

They stop at her Subaru and she lets them load their suitcases into the back. She was going to let Daniel ride up front, but he and the boytoy can go in the back while Aimee gets shotgun. She turns onto the road.

Aimee and Daniel talk about Reagan and Cole, rehashing the same conversations that Aimee and Kate had in the airport. Kate focuses on the road and glances back at her father and his boyfriend in the rearview mirror. They hold hands, which could be sweet if you ignored everything else. Her father’s thumb (and god, those fucking painted nails? what?) sweeps over the back of Armand’s palm. Armand smiles affectionately at her father.

The restaurant isn’t a long drive, especially after the sun’s gone down. Kate parks and leads them in, to a small table in the back. Away from everyone and private, in case someone wants to make note of Daniel Molloy and his daughter eating together.

Kate orders a mocktail, and so does Aimee. Armand sticks with water, and Daniel looks like he’s going to order a real drink before Armand stops him with a hand on his shoulder and a glance to Kate. Kate doesn’t like that. There’s no way in hell her father should miss that she’s a recovering alcoholic when this kid gets it right away.

“So, Dad,” Aimee says when her drink comes, electing to spin the straw instead of sip it, “how did you and Armand meet?”

That’s not the most pressing question. Kate has a lot of other ones, like why is he so young?, what's up with the vampire gay porn?, and do you possibly have dementia? But Aimee has always been better at polite conversation than her. Kate can only do polite conversation with the mantra don’t ruin your career on repeat in her head. So, republicans? She can deal. Her father? Not so much.

“I was interviewing his…” Daniel pauses and glances over to Armand.

“He was interviewing my husband,” Armand says succinctly and sweetly.

“Jesus Christ,” Kate says, burying her face in her hands, “Dad, did you homewreck Armand’s marriage?”

“I did not homewreck anything,” Daniel says, which would be a lie even if it was true of Armand’s marriage. He’s absolutely homewrecked other marriages. “It would have ended anyways.”

“No it wouldn’t have.” Armand frowns at him. “It would have stayed perfectly alright.”

“And loveless, and built on a lie, and full of secrets.”

“Two of which he never would have found out without you.”

Aimee takes her phone out under the table and types something in her note sapp, tilting it to show Kate. Dad’s dating the shitty husband?

Kate takes the phone and types out a response. I’m going to blow my fucking brains out. And maybe his.

“How old are you, Armand?” Aimee asks, thankfully shouldering the burden of talking for Kate.

Armand glances over to Daniel, who gives him a look. It’s an indecipherable look. “I am twenty-seven.”

Kate forgoes being polite and drops her head down onto the table. “Twenty-seven? Dad, you’d already divorced my mother when he was born! Aimee was alive!” She’s muffled by her arms and the table, but her voice still comes clear to everyone else at the table.

She’s starting to see where R. Budd Dwyer was coming from.

Joke. Joke. That’s a joke.

Kate pushes her head up and meets her dad’s eyes through his ugly shades. If she squints, they seem to be a different color. He looks steadily back in the eyes.

“I’m sorry, Kate,” he says.

Kate scoffs. “You’ve literally never said that to me before.”

“I owe you girls the truth.”

Armand’s head snaps around and he glares at Daniel. “Daniel, think very carefully about this,” he says, and suddenly he doesn’t seem twenty-seven. He seems ancient, eyes dark and powerful. He looks like he could do anything he wanted. Armand is a predator now, with predator’s eyes, fixed on their father.

“I know I shouldn’t,” Daniel says, and even though he doesn’t look away from his daughters, it’s clearly aimed at Armand, “but I’ve lied to you girls enough.”

“Like they will believe you.”

“Armand, I’ve ruined one of your marriages, don’t make me ruin this one.”

“You’re married?” Aimee nearly shrieks. Kate shushes her.

“No,” Daniel says.

“No,” Armand says.

“He’s just so clingy that calling him my boyfriend would make him have a panic attack and assume I plan to leave him.” Kate glances at Armand. He doesn’t protest. “Okay, girls, did you read my new book?”

Aimee and Kate glance at each other. “No,” they say, just a few seconds out of unison.

Daniel opens his mouth, but Armand slams his hand on the table. “Stop.” He says, voice animalistic. “If Daniel insists on having this foolish conversation, then I must be the one to insist we have it in private, not in the bar of some little restaurant because Kate is ashamed of her apartment.”

“Hey–” Kate protests.

“Fine,” Daniel says. He scrounges out a twenty and sets it on the table to cover Kate and Aimee’s mocktails. Aimee drains her drink. Kate takes a long sip of hers. And then they’re leaving the restaurant and heading to Kate’s Subaru.

Daniel and Armand lead the way, letting Kate and Aimee drop into sidestep beside each other. “Dad’s boyfriend…” Aimee says, and doesn’t finish.

“Yeah.” Kate nods, watching the two of them argue under their breath. “He’s…”

“Scary.”

“I was gonna say inhuman.”

“That works too.”

Armand and Daniel don’t speak in the car, and they ride in uncanny silence until Kate parks in her spot and leads them up the steps to her apartment. She unlocks the door and Louis jumps out at her. She catches him and holds him to her chest.

“Hello, Louis,” she coos.

Armand stares at her cat. “Your cat… his name is Louis?”

“Yeah.” Kate scratches Louis behind the ears. He curls into her, away from Daniel and Armand. Clearly he doesn’t like them. “After Louis Armstrong, I think? The old woman who gave him to me said something about that.”

“Can we talk now?”

Kate nods, putting Louis down. He scampers into her room, probably to go hide under her bed. The luggage stays by her door as they go to the couch. She splurged on one of those corner couches, thinking she might have people over more often. She doesn’t, but it makes the backing dramatic. She and Aimee sit on one part of it, her father and the scary twink on the other side.

Daniel looks at them.

“So, you didn’t read my book.”

“I’ve never read your books.” Kate fidgets with the button on her sleeve. “Aimee, have you?”

“Uh, one of them. One of the non-fiction, non-memoir ones. Not the vampire erotica.”

“It’s not erotica,” Daniel bitches, “It isn’t my fault Louis wouldn’t shut up about his damn sex life.”

“Yes it is. He thought you were hot.” Armand strokes the backs of his fingers over Daniel’s cheek. Kate suppresses a gag. “He wanted to see how receptive you were.”

“Yeah, maybe he thought I was hot in the seventies. Not now.”

“Hmm, he and I agreed. You’ve only gotten better with age.” Daniel looks over at Armand. They make long eye contact. It feels invasive to watch.

So Kate shouts, “What the fuck!”

The moment breaks and everyone’s heads turn to her. She stands, pacing over her living room rug that used to be green and is more brown now.

“What the fuck, Dad? What do you mean, oh you’re gonna tell us the truth, you can’t do it in a busy restaurant? What do you mean, Louis wouldn’t shut up about his sex life? Like you interviewed an actual damn vampire. What do you mean when you say Armand might have found you hot in the seventies. Armand wasn’t even a fucking fetus in the seventies!” Kate paces back and forth as she talks, hands going a mile a minute. “Have you well and fucking truely lost your goddamn mind? Is it dementia? Is this fucking twenty year old twink watching you break down and go fucking insane? You’re tanking your damn career! The only thing you’ve ever cared about. More than me, more than Aimee. More than our moms! What the fuck is wrong with you.”

“Katie–”

“I’m not your fucking Katie!” Kate screams. “My name is Kate and I am the fucking governor of California and I feel like a fucking child because I am just like you in all the worst ways! And I suffer and suffer and suffer for being your daughter and you’re fucking some twink and going around saying whatever on talk shows and I can’t even mention that I was an addict or I’ll lose my career. Not that it’s my fucking career. Half the questions I get are about my policies and the other half are about you!   You didn’t even tell me that you were queer! The one good thing we’ve got in common and I learned from a fucking TikTok!”

Daniel stares at her in silence. Aimee grins like she’s got a first row seat to a wrestling match. Armand studies her like a bug.

“And you’re wearing fucking stupid glasses and fucking a man a third your age and your hands aren’t even shaking anymore!” Kate wants to break down, but there’s one thing she’s learned from being a Black woman in politics: you don’t do that shit. So she stands, makes eye contact through those god awful shades, and waits.

Daniel isn’t able to keep eye contact for very long. He ducks his head. Armand keeps looking at her, though. He bites his lip and says, “you’re fascinating. You’re like… her.”

“No,” Daniel snaps. “You won’t compare my daughter to her, because you fucking killed her.”

“What the fuck,” Aime mutters.

“And what’s this shit?” Kate says, “acting like you and Mr. Twink over here are actually damn vampires?”

Armand grins. Daniel looks up. He takes his glasses in hand, and carefully takes them off. Kate doesn’t stop looking in his eyes. And then she gasps.

His eyes used to be a dark brown. She knows because she and Aimee have the same cocoa color in their irises. She’d seen those eyes, in him, in her sister, in the mirror. But they aren’t brown anymore. They’re a disturbing yellow-orange with dark rings around the iris. They look… they look like the eyes Armand has half hidden behind his red sunglasses.

“Fuck me,” Aimee says, and Kate can’t help but agree. “You–”

“I am a vampire.” Daniel opens his mouth and bares his teeth. Fangs appear along his canines. Armand rolls his eyes. Daniel tucks his fangs away. “So is Armand. So the age gap you need to worry about is the other way around, actually.”

“I am not a cradle robber, Daniel, I resent the accusation.”

“Four hundred and forty years would argue differently. Anyways, girls, I went to Dubai to interview Louis de Pointe du Lac, who is a vampire. Armand was his husband, also a vampire. Shit happened, shit you’d know if you read my book, and it ended with me needing to be turned into a vampire to save my life. Armand turned me.”

“I also wanted his immortal company.”

“That too.” Daniel lays his hand palm up on his thigh. Armand takes it and laces their fingers together. “You should probably read the book.”

Kate stands still for a second. Then she’s saying, “I need some air,” and stumbling onto her balcony. She fumbles in a flowerpot until she gets the cigarettes she had tried to swear off and an old novelty lighter. She pulls one out with trembling fingers and lights it. When the smoke fills her lungs, it feels like the kiss of an old love.

So, this is what’s real. Her world is… wrong. Her world in which vampires aren’t real, her father is straight, and people who have hurt her don’t get to live forever.

Her dad is going to live forever. Her dad, who destroyed himself with addiction and cheating and possibly selling his body for drugs. And she knows two of those things aren’t bad, she does. She’s an addict, she’s working on making sex work legal, she’s working on decriminalizing some drugs to help people. But it just doesn’t seem fair.

She taps her ash onto the balcony and lets out a shuddering sob.

She’s just like him. She’s better. She tries her damn best all of the time. And she’s going to grow old and die, probably alone. She’ll be an alcoholic for the rest of her life. She’ll be a Molloy for the rest of her life. She’ll make a difference, then she’ll go home, and she’ll feel like shit.

And her dad gets to be happy.

There’s the sliding sound of the door to the balcony. She assumes it’s Aimee, but then Armand is standing next to her.

“May I have one?” the five hundred year old vampire – fucking hell, vampire – asks her. Wordlessly, she pulls out a cigarette and hands it over. She flicks open the lighter and he holds it to the flame. After a long drag he says, “your father wanted to check on you. Aimee, very vocally, let him know it wouldn’t be appreciated.”

“How can you smoke? Like, I assume you can’t eat food.”

“We can eat food. It doesn’t taste very good. Have you ever eaten chalk?”

“No. But I’ve eaten cocaine.”

“It doesn’t taste anything like that.”

She and Armand look out over the slowly quieting city street. There are people walking and cars driving by. Windows are filled with light, people going through their day to day. People who don’t know vampires exist.

“He loves you.”

“Could do a lot better at showing it.”

“There was a girl, in our interviews. She came up a lot.”

“The one you killed.”

Armand pauses. He takes another drag of the cigarette, probably to avoid answering. “Yes. It was… a mistake. I regret it. But your father read her diaries, or rather what I would permit of her diaries.”

“Man, you seem really kind of controlling.”

“And vampires, we can see into minds.” Oh. That explains a lot about the looks Armand’s been giving her tonight. “Yes, it does. And I could see your father reading about Claudia, who always looked fourteen. And he didn’t know what she looked like, so when he pictured her, it was your preadolescent face.”

“That’s supposed to make me feel better?”

“Both Daniel and I will acknowledge that Claudia’s father was terrible. For him to see you in her… it’s an admission of guilt on his part.”

“Could this admission of guilt come with money?” Kate asks.

“I’ll impart that to him. Will you come back in?”

Kate looks over at his side profile. He looks so young. He looks so fragile. But underneath it all he looks like he could kill. He looks like a monster. And he’s smoking one of her cigarettes and dating her dad. “Do you love him?”

“Yes. More than anything.”

“Good.” She doesn’t know if her dad deserves to be happy. But she can live with him being happy. “I’ll be in in a minute.”

“Okay.” Armand drops the cigarette on her balcony and extinguishes it with his designer boot. And then he leaves her alone.