Page 1 of Bad Daddy

Chapter 1

“You look like shit,” Lily said in greeting when Danny finally stumbled into their designated study room in the library. “And you’re late.”

“Sorry,” Danny mumbled, hunching his shoulders. He hated being late and he knew he didn't look good, and having Lily point out both made things even worse. He liked Lily, he did, and he really, really appreciated that she had decided he was worth tutoring. But when you’re twenty-one and struggling in college, having a teenage prodigy tell you that you’ve wasted their time sucked on a number of levels.

“I mean, it isn’t like it’s a big deal,” Lily said hurriedly. For all that she was blunt to the point of painful sometimes, Lily’s heart was in the right place. She waved at her laptop. “I was just coding. Not like it makes a difference where I code.”

“Still, I’m sorry,” Danny said, falling into one of the chairs. He was exhausted from a late night and was trying not to think about said late night. “It’s not right to make you wait on me.”

“Whatever.” Lily shrugged, clearly done with the conversation. “Let’s get down to business.”

They got through most of an entire set of problems without trouble, which was, at least, gratifying. Proof that Danny’s hard work was actually paying off. Written math was… hard for him. It was annoying how hard it was, because he did kind of like math, sort of. He liked that there was one right answer to work toward. He just had a hell of a time showing how he got to said answer, and his teachers always wanted him to show his work.

With the way the numbers jumped around on the page, flipping upside-down or backwards, Danny usually just did math in his head because it was easier than trying to write it all down. That didn't get you good grades though. Teachers didn’t just want answers, you had to prove how you got there. He’d done so badly in high school because of it, and had been accused of cheating too many times.

Lily was easy to work with, thankfully. She got how frustrating it could be when you did stuff in your head because writing things down took too much time and energy. For Lily, it was because she was wicked smart and her brain worked too fast for other people, not because she was so dumb that trying to read letters and numbers gave her a headache, but still. She didn’t care that Danny had to take time to figure out where the numbers were supposed to be, where so many other people who’d tried to teach him had gotten frustrated with Danny staring at his work for too long.

Danny considered himself lucky at all that Lily happened to be doing volunteer work at the community college that Danny was stumbling his way through. She was here courtesy of her dad who did some moonlighting as an adjunct when he wasn't working as a literal rocket scientist. It had taken weeks to summon up the courage for Danny to venture his way into the tutoring center and be matched up, and he was so grateful to have clicked with Lily.

Lily, of course, was getting a full ride to some fancy-schmancy college come next fall, but her parents wanted her to “finish out the high school experience” before she got thrown into the deep end of kids just legal enough to get themselves in trouble. Danny was under the impression that Lily got into plenty of trouble already, but it was the “hacking into the Pentagon” kind rather than getting drunk or high.

He sort of understood where Lily’s parents were coming from. Lily was really booksmart, but also kind of naive. He got why her parents wanted her to have an extra year around other kids.

“Okay,” Lily said, flipping to the next page in Danny’s workbook. “A researcher wants to determine if there is a significant difference in the average test scores between two groups of students who used different study methods. Group A consists of thirty students who used Method A…”

Danny struggled to pay attention to the whole question, so tired it was hard to focus. He appreciated that Lily liked to read the questions out loud, because it meant he didn’t have to muddle through trying to read them first, but right now the words kept turning into a wash of sound.

He wished he wasn’t so tired. Wished Clint hadn’t kept up all hours of the night. Wished, far from the first time, that he wasn’t paying for his college classes with what little pride and self-dignity he had left.

Danny hadn’t entirely known what he was signing up for, when he’d submitted himself to a sugar baby website six months ago. All he’d known was that he was desperate for something to change. He’d wanted to go to college, to get a chance at getting a better job, a better life. He’d wanted to not worry about his bills for once in his life. He’d just wanted things to be a little bit easier. Just a little bit.

Instead, Danny had gotten Clint.

And things hadn’t gotten…easier.

Danny knew that he shouldn’t complain. He was well-aware that he'd been lucky Clint had taken an interest in him and offered him an arrangement. Clint had seen something in Danny, and had been willing to pay for Danny’s classes and rent in exchange for Danny being at his beck and call.

There were worse ways to eke out a living. Danny knew that well enough.

So now he was living the life where he’d gotten a text at ten o’clock last night that Clint was sending a car to pick him up because he wanted Danny’s help “arranging some new furniture.” Fuck his life, but if Clint said jump Danny had to say how high, so off he’d gone. He was just lucky that Clint hadn’t wanted Danny to spend the night, and instead had sent him home with a driver at two in the morning.

The only furniture Danny had seen was what Clint had bent him over.

Danny knew that Clint did stuff like that entirely because he could. Clint was the sort of guy who liked having all the power, and Danny was someone who had none. He was perfect for Clint, in a way.

But Clint had promised he wouldn’t interfere with school stuff. It was one of the only two rules Danny even had.

“Danny?” Lily’s voice asked. “Did you get that? Want me to read it again?”

“No,” Danny said quickly, forcing his brain to rewind and focus on what Lily had said. The question wanted him to conduct a hypothesis test at the 0.05 significance level to determine if there was a significant difference between the two groups. Right. That wasn’t so hard.

He played the numbers over in his mind, calculating the formulas for the two-sample t-test. According to the numbers, there was definitely sufficient evidence that there was a significant difference in the average test scores between the two groups at the .05 level.

Right. Okay.

He put his pencil to the paper and did his best to concentrate on writing out the formulas to show his work, trying not to scowl at the way the numbers jumped around on the page. He hated this, hated so much how stupid he was. How hard it was to write out simple formulas. Being so tired made it even harder to focus, and he hated that too.

Clint fucking knew that Danny had tutoring on Saturday mornings. He always kept an eye on Danny’s schedule. Danny needed to show Clint what he registered for each semester and explain what all his classes were as well as report in on grades. Clint sometimes even made Danny tell him about what he did in class on any given day.

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