#sometimes id visit mom and she'd make dinner.

[vile-wizard]

I know I haven't bought food groceries in like...? 2 months? And since I'm still alive logic dictates that I must have been eating something during that time. I just can't remember what exactly.

[spookysanta]

daddy’s girl. (e.d.)

Summary: he's been watching her and she knows it. He's yearning for her, and he’ll have her, but she has to finish high school first. 

Pairing: Ethan Dolan xReader

WARNINGS: age gap (38 vs 18), creep shit

SAY NOTHING IM WRITING A NEW SERIES JUST READ IT AND TELL ME IF IT SUCKS 

DISCLAIMER! PLEASE READ: in this, the girl (cairo) is of LEGAL age. he (ethan) refers to her as a child bc yanno.... he's almost 40 here. this isn't on any pedophile stuff, okay? just for clarification. AND as i was writing this i got jake gyllenhaal vibes from this, but then i figured ethan could be the “sexy dad” in the future (so to speak)—which is what i was kinda going for; like a man that’s older but is so irresistibly gorgeous, even young girls swoon over him.

UNEDITED

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******

She'd caught his eye. 

And he doesn't know how it came to be this way; he thought he was done messing around like this ages ago. But here he was, a thirty-eight-year-old man, watching an eighteen-year-old girl cheer at his neice's high school's football game. 

She sees him though; as if he's staring into her soul. As she finishes her tumbling routine in the halftime show, her eyes dart in his direction and his never leave her. She shivers slightly--

Who is that man? she wondered, walking away from the field to distract herself. 

**

She stands at the cash register, swiping his items across the scanner. "Did you find everything okay?" she asked in a monotone voice, looking at the clock on the register's screen. 

"Yes, I did. Thank you." the man responded, fishing in his wallet for cash as he already knew how much two bottles of red wine cost. "Do you need to see ID?"

"Yes, I--" she paused, looking at the man for the first time during their interaction. This was the man from the football game! She couldn't have forgotten those pearly eyes that bore into hers, and definitely didn't forget the way he ironically made her feel when their eyes locked. "I-I do."

"You okay?" he asked with a chuckle as he handed her his driver's license. He knew exactly who she was, and after a bit of research, he knows that she's what he wants. And, likewise, he knew that she remembered him. That in itself was exciting because now he knew where she was from 9-2 every Saturday--which meant he'd be seeing her a lot more. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

She glanced at the line forming behind him and shook her head at the idea of her confrontation. She took the card and read the birthdate carefully. "1980." she muttered, handing it back to him. "Your total's $18.20."

He handed her a $20, grabbing the bottles of wine by their necks and smirking. "Keep the change."

"Thank you." 

"You're welcome, Cairo. See you around."

**

She lay in her bed, wondering why this man clouded her thoughts. What was it about him that made him so intriguing? Yes, he was attractive, but he was more than twice her age--shouldn't that mean that he was repulsive to her? Should she shy away from this man and his beauty?

Ethan.

If there's anything she knew about men, it's that older men (well, boys, in her case) don't usually have the girl's best interest in mind. But no matter how many cons appear on this list, the only pro she seems to think of is the fact that he looked at her like he knew her already. His hazel eyes were almost magnetizing her brown ones to his gaze, and the energy was too strong to pull it away.

**

He's come to the realization that he's hooked on her.

He wants her, no--needs her. 

And he knows how crazy that sounds with all of the odds stacked against him (namely, her being a child by his comparison) but he'll admit they'd look absolutely perfect together. 

And there's nothing he won't do until they're in love.

**

day one.

She walked home from school every day. Three-fifteen on the dot, Monday through Friday. Sometimes, she takes the after-school bus after her cheer practices, and that drops her off on the same corner but at five-thirty. He sees her walk down Linden Avenue, then make a left on Conch Street, and then go into the tiny brick house at the end of the lively culdesac. Sometimes he sees her through her window at night, laying in her bed soundly. It takes everything in him each night to not climb up the big pine tree to the second floor, open the already unlocked window—she doesn't lock it anymore because the lock can get finicky at times and it can get quite hot in San Bernadino in May—and breathe in the same air as her.

Just once.

Just once, he wants to be there for her—hold her, kiss her, smell her, taste her.

Is that too much to ask?

Just one more month, he reminds himself as he perches himself on his porch chair, watching her walk into her home with her friend, Janelle.

He does not like Janelle.

Janelle has a tendency to be a bit manipulative when it comes to Cairo; she wants the best for her, of course. But she's always making Cairo go to parties that she doesn't want to go to, or do things that Cairo doesn't typically do.

Cairo's a good girl who doesn't need to be bombarded with social...ick.

"She's a good girl," he mumbled, palms set on his knees with white fingertips. "My good girl."

***

She continued her walk to the store like she usually does on Sunday mornings in the spring. Yes, she does work at the store, but why not stop by and visit her favorite co-workers while she picked up her favorite ice cream?

"Good morning, Edith!" she greeted to the elderly woman stood behind the customer service desk. She resembled Jane Goodall in a way; caring, generous, kind. "How are you today?"

"Hey, sweetie! I'm alright, hope you're doing well. Say 'hi' to Katherine for me!" she replied with a wave, going into the employee's lounge.

"Will do!" she wandered to the frozen food section, her coffee brown eyes set on the cookie dough ice cream in the freezer. With happy alarms blaring in her head, she grabbed a pint from the shelf, going immediately to the checkout line to pay for her dessert. "Hey Ricky." she said to the cashier.

"Hey, Cai." he responded, ringing up her ice cream and setting it on the counter. "$4.68. Got your employee ID on you?"

She fished through her wallet and came up emptyhanded. "Shoot. I must've left it at home." she sighed. "It's cool, I'll pay full price."

"Nah, I got you." he took a card out of his front pocket, swiped it, and put in his pin. "There ya go. $2.27."

"Thanks, Ky. I owe you one." She handed him a five dollar bill, keeping the cash fold of her wallet open so she could put her change in it.

"You know what you could do for me so we're even?" he opened the cash drawer, taking out her change and handing it to her.

"What?"

"Go to dinner with me." he wrote on her freshly printed receipt. "It doesn't have to be fancy, but if you're interested, you should hit me up sometime."

"Sure. I'd love to." she smiled, putting the receipt with her change and grabbing her ice cream off the counter. "We'll talk tonight?"

"Totally. See you around."

"See you!"

**

She entered the house again and put her ice cream in the fridge. "Ma!" she yelled into her mother's office as she passed it. "Ms. Edith at Ben's said 'hi'!"

"Aw, how sweet of her to think of me!" she said with a smile. "I'll have to send you by her house with a plate of cookies this week."

She groaned inwardly. Edith's a nice woman, but Cairo's mother, Katherine, does not conjure up her life-changing cookies on any given day. Which means that she would make a small batch—just enough for Edith and her husband, Clarke—and then, poof! No-one's going to see those cookies until Christmastime. Bounding up the staircase and into her bedroom, practically leaping onto her bed with a sigh.

Meanwhile, he was watching her still. He didn't even think to consider the idea of someone catching him stare at this girl, sat in the rocking chair on his front porch, watching her intently through a pair of zooming binoculars while she boredly scrolled through her phone. Quite frankly, he wouldn't care at all. If someone were to walk by and ask him what he was doing, he'd merely say: "Protecting my girl."

He doesn't give a damn if she took a glance out her window and saw a man—that man—staring back at her. Knowing her, which obviously he does, she'd probably scream for her mom and tell her mom to come and look because "there's a strange man" looking at her through her window. And then her mom would come and look but by then he'd be back in his home across the way from hers, in his bedroom, watching her panic through the telescope he'd set up.

That'd be a gift to himself, really. Because he knows deep within that she thinks about him. Even though maybe the thoughts are of worry or panic and not ones of admiration, all he cares about is the fact that he's invaded her thoughts just like she's invaded his.