The Institute: Daddy Issues (2 page)

“Age Play is where one part­ner acts much younger than they ac­tu­ally are and the other part­ner as­sumes an older role.”

“Huh?” I said and Salt said,

“I do not un­der­stand.”

Cap­tain Douglas sighed. “Look, it’s not my area of ex­pert­ise either. But ba­sic­ally one of you will have to dress up as a little girl and the other one is the Daddy.”

“What?” I de­man­ded. “Cap­tain, you can’t be ser­i­ous! That’s
sick.
”

“I’m afraid I
am
ser­i­ous, Sug­ar­baker,” he said, frown­ing. “Look—it’s not what you think. It’s not about in­cest or pe­do­philia—it’s…ah, hell…” He sighed. “I’m mak­ing a mess of this. Let me get someone in here who can ex­plain it bet­ter than I can.” He picked up his phone and spoke into it while I sat fum­ing. I knew
ex­actly
who was go­ing to be the little girl and who was go­ing to be the Daddy. It wasn’t like Salt would look good in a sailor dress and knee socks!

There was a subtle rap at the Cap­tain’s door and then a middle aged man with thin­ning gray hair and spec­tacles poked his head in.

“Hi, ex­cuse me. I’m Pro­fessor Stevens and I was told to come back?”

“Come on in, Pro­fessor.” The Cap­tain made a wel­com­ing ges­ture and I thought I saw re­lief on his face. He was passing the buck—bring­ing in the ex­pert so he could sit on the side­lines and not have to take the fall for whatever hareb­rained scheme had been cooked up for me and my part­ner. I crossed my arms and tapped my fin­gers im­pa­tiently as the man came to sit in a chair be­side the Cap­tain, across from Salt and me.

“Hello.” He smiled at both of us but he didn’t seem en­cour­aged by our re­sponse. I was scowl­ing at him and Salt was giv­ing him that pat­en­ted blank Rus­sian stare that most people find so un­nerv­ing.

“Dr. Stevens holds a PhD in Psy­cho­logy with an em­phasis in Al­tern­ate Sexu­al­ity,” the cap­tain said, mak­ing the in­tro­duc­tions. “He’ll be con­sult­ing with us on this case. And Dr. Stevens, this is De­tect­ive Salt and De­tect­ive Sug­ar­baker.”

Pro­fessor Stevens looked sur­prised. “Are those your names? Really? ‘Salt’ and ‘Sugar?’”

“Ant­oinette Josephine Sugar
baker,
De­tect­ive First Class,” I said, em­phas­iz­ing the last part of my name. With a mouth­ful like that, is it any won­der I go by Andi? My mom read
way
too many ro­mance nov­els when she was preg­nant with me.

“And I am Viktor Pet­ro­vich Saltanov, also de­tect­ive,” Salt growled. “If you are here to ex­plain our as­sign­ment, please get on with it.”

“Uh—okay.” The pro­fessor cleared his throat.

“Ex­plain to them about Age Play,” the Cap­tain said en­cour­agingly. “Go on—just like you did for me, if you would, please Pro­fessor.”

“Of course.” The little man straightened his tie and as­sumed a lec­tur­ing air. I could al­most see him stand­ing in front of an aud­it­or­ium full of bored stu­dents with a pointer in one hand and a sheaf of notes in the other. “Age Play,” he began, “Par­tic­u­larly Age Play in­volving a per­son as­sum­ing the role of a younger child is of­ten widely mis­un­der­stood. Con­trary to what some people be­lieve, Age Play­ers are
not
pe­do­philes.”

“How can they
not
be?” I ob­jec­ted, break­ing into his lec­ture. “I mean, one of them is pre­tend­ing to be a kid and the other one is hav­ing sex with that one. It’s dis­gust­ing.”

“Age Play is not al­ways sexual,” the Pro­fessor answered smoothly. “Age Play­ers as­sume the roles of chil­dren be­cause they find com­fort in it. When they go into Little-space, they get to ex­press their most deeply bur­ied feel­ings from child­hood and re­lin­quish re­spons­ib­il­it­ies and in­deed, con­trol of their en­tire life to an­other per­son.”

“Num­ber one,” I said, “What is ‘Little-space’? And num­ber two,
why
would any­one want to give con­trol of their en­tire life to someone else?”

Pro­fessor Stevens laughed po­litely. “Surely you’re jok­ing my dear. Just ima­gine not hav­ing to worry about pay­ing the bills, do­ing the laun­dry, cook­ing the meals—ima­gine someone else do­ing all that for you. Just like when you were a child—wouldn’t that be worth the loss of con­trol?”

“I wouldn’t know,” I said bluntly. “My mom was an al­co­holic so I pretty much did all those things for my­self when I was a kid.”

“Andi is a very con­trolled per­son,” Salt put in, sur­pris­ing me. “She is not anxious to al­low any­one to help her—even when she needs the help.”

“Hey!” I frowned at my part­ner but he just gave me his best blank look as if to say,
You know it’s true.
After a minute, I dropped my eyes.

“I see,” the pro­fessor said. “Well, on to your second ques­tion, then. Little-space is the head­space or mind set an Age Player gets into when they re­gress. It’s al­most an altered state of con­scious­ness when they go into it deeply enough.”

“So—like some kind of drug?” I asked, frown­ing.

He nod­ded. “It can be, in a way. It changes your per­cep­tion and your judg­ment. For Littles, or the play­ers who be­come ‘younger,’ it’s of­ten a more open, simple place for them to be in. Again, many find it sooth­ing to be­come a child again and not have to think about adult prob­lems.”

“This sounds like a load of bull­shit to me,” I said, frown­ing. “But what about the other ones—the ones who play the adults? What do they get out of it, if it’s not sexual?”

“The ‘Bigs’ or ‘Dad­dies’ as they are some­times called, get the sat­is­fac­tion of teach­ing, caring for, and com­fort­ing their ‘younger’ part­ner.” Pro­fessor Stevens smiled. “Over­all, Age Play re­la­tion­ships are very warm and ful­filling for all parties in­volved.”

“Ooookay,” I said, not both­er­ing to try and hide my skep­ti­cism. “So the In­sti­tute is full of people who like to do this? This Age Play?”

“Ex­actly. And make no mis­take about it, De­tect­ive, Age Play
is
a form of BDSM.” Stevens raised a fin­ger. “In fact, it closely mir­rors the mas­ter/slave re­la­tion­ship of more tra­di­tional prac­tices. But there are subtle dif­fer­ences in the Daddy/Baby­girl re­la­tion­ship…”

“Okay, be­fore we get into all that…” I looked at Cap­tain Dou­glass again. “You ser­i­ously want us to do this? You want me to dress up like a little girl and Salt will be my Daddy? Be­cause I’m as­sum­ing it couldn’t go the other way around.”

“No,” Pro­fessor Stevens said, an­swer­ing for him. “No, there are other scenes where a male ‘Little girl’ or ‘Baby­girl’ would be wel­comed but
not
at the In­sti­tute. They are
very
tra­di­tional there.”

“You sound like you know the place,” I said, rais­ing an eye­brow at him.

Stevens cleared his throat, a bit un­com­fort­ably I thought.

“I
am
act­ive in the Tampa scene. I have been to one of their very rare open houses but it was some time ago.”

“Okay, whatever,” I said, turn­ing back to the Cap­tain. “The point is, you want Salt and me to go in un­der­cover to what is prob­ably the weird­est, kinki­est place I’ve ever heard of. Why us?”

He frowned. “You’ve done sting op­er­a­tions be­fore, Sug­ar­baker. Weren’t you un­der­cover as a pro once?”

“Yeah, but at least I was still act­ing as an adult, even if I
was
pre­tend­ing to be a pros­ti­tute,” I poin­ted out.

Salt looked sur­prised. “You went un­der­cover as a pros­ti­tute?”

“It was be­fore your time—when I was in Vice for a while,” I as­sured him. “Don’t worry—nobody touched me.”

He frowned pro­tect­ively. “They had bet­ter not.”

“And speak­ing of Vice,” I said to the Cap­tain. “Why aren’t they in on this? It’s def­in­itely more their wheel­house than ours. Why not pick two of
them
to do this crazy thing?”

“Be­cause none of the other de­tect­ives in your po­lice de­part­ment fit the very ex­act­ing cri­teria set by the In­sti­tute,” Pro­fessor Stevens said quietly. “I told you, they are very tra­di­tional—they only ad­mit male Bigs and fe­male Littles. And they prefer it when the Little in ques­tion is ex­tremely petite—it makes her seem more child­like.”

“Ugh…” I shivered. “So Salt and I are get­ting this honor be­cause I’m height chal­lenged? Gotta tell you Cap­tain, that hardly seems fair.”

“Sug­ar­baker…” He sighed and looked at me dir­ectly. “Have you
seen
what Please does to its users? Do you know how it got its name?”

I shrugged. “Sure, I heard about that viral video.”

“But have you
watched
it? Look…” The Cap­tain turned his large, flat com­puter mon­itor around and nod­ded at the pro­fessor. “Could you hit the lights? These over­head fluor­es­cents make it hard to see.”

The of­fice was plunged into semi-gloom and then the Cap­tain punched a but­ton. The mon­itor flickered to life, show­ing a blonde girl who looked to be in her early to mid twen­ties. She was down on the floor, on her hands and knees, crawl­ing to­wards a man wear­ing a dark gray suit and ex­pens­ive look­ing shoes. I didn’t know what his face looked like be­cause the shot didn’t go that high.

“See that?” the Cap­tain asked. “We be­lieve that man is the ori­ginal cre­ator of Please. If we could catch him, we could shut down a hell of a lot of pro­duc­tion.”

“Who is he?” Salt asked but the Cap­tain shook his head.

“Nobody knows. As you can see, they’re very care­ful not to show his face. But even if they did, I don’t think most people would be look­ing at it.
She’s
the in­ter­est­ing one.”

He nod­ded at the girl on the screen who was look­ing more and more dis­tressed.

“Please, Daddy,” she moaned, rub­bing against the man’s legs. “Please, I feel so empty in­side—it hurts—it
hurts.
Please fill me up with your big, hard cock!”

I glanced at Salt to see how he was tak­ing this. I didn’t know if he watched Amer­ican porn or, in­deed, if Rus­sian porn was any dif­fer­ent. His face was im­pass­ive, how­ever—it’s im­possible to read him some­times.

“Daddy,
please!”
The girl in the video flipped up her skirt, show­ing pink and white Hello Kitty panties. Her blonde hair was done in two curly pig­tails and she was wear­ing lacy white ankle socks and Mary Jane saddle shoes. I wondered un­eas­ily if her out­fit was an Age Play thing. Was I go­ing to have to dress like this and beg Salt to…

But I pushed the thought away. Pro­fessor Stevens had said that it didn’t have to be sexual. So it wouldn’t be—and that was that. Not that I didn’t find Salt at­tract­ive—I’d have to be blind not to. But sleep­ing with your part­ner was bad news—a one way ticket to com­plic­a­tions and messy emo­tions. I pre­ferred to keep my work life and my sex life sep­ar­ate.

Right, your
nonex­ist­ent
sex life,
whispered a little voice in my head. I hadn’t really dated any­one ser­i­ously since Salt and I had been partnered up. I didn’t really know why that was—prob­ably it was in­tim­id­at­ing for pro­spect­ive dates to meet my part­ner, which they some­how, al­ways in­vari­ably did. Pos­sibly Salt was giv­ing them a ‘don’t hurt my part­ner’ speech or maybe they were just scared of him.

For whatever reason, no guy I tried ever las­ted more than a couple of dates. And for the past few years, I had sort of stopped try­ing. Maybe I was get­ting too com­fort­able just be­ing on my own, or maybe I felt like I already had all the male com­pan­ion­ship I needed. After all, I spent some­thing like sev­enty-five per­cent of my time with Salt…

“Daddy…Daddy, I’m go­ing to
die
if you don’t
fuck
me!” the blonde girl in the video brayed. I had sort of tuned it out for a minute but now I real­ized she was pulling down the Hello Kitty panties to show her bare ass. She star­ted rub­bing her­self between her legs frantic­ally, cry­ing and pant­ing and moan­ing. Her pu­pils were dilated so wide I couldn’t even tell what color her eyes were and her breath­ing was ragged.

For the first time, the man on the screen spoke.

“Fuck or die, Baby­girl,” he said, his voice com­ing out in a lust­ful growl. I still couldn’t see his face, clearly he was tak­ing pains to keep his iden­tity secret. “You told me you’d rather die than let me fuck you be­fore. Is that still how you feel?”

“No, Daddy, no—I swear!” the blonde girl sobbed. “I’ll be your good little girl! So good—just give it to me,
please.”

Fi­nally, mer­ci­fully, the Cap­tain stopped the video.

“I think you can see why we need to get a handle on this,” he said quietly. “Please is not only dan­ger­ous, it’s shap­ing up to be the most ef­fect­ive date rape drug ever cre­ated. Can you ima­gine how dam­aging a video like this is to the vic­tim when it gets out? The girl is lit­er­ally
beg­ging
for it. And even though she’s un­der the in­flu­ence of the drug, a lot of people are go­ing to blame her be­cause…well, be­cause people are as­sholes. We all know that.”

“Isn’t there any way to get someone down once they take the Please other than to have sex?” I asked.