So...the first fanfic I've ever written for Fifty Shades of Grey.

This story is told in the viewpoint of Phoebe Grey, Ana and Christian's daughter. Over the past few days, this plot bunny absolutely refused to leave until I wrote it down - what would happen if Phoebe and Teddy discovered the red room.

Happy reading!

Disclaimer: I do not own Fifty Shades of Grey.

Everyone has their secrets.

I've always been curious by nature. I've always wanted to know.

But I've learned that there are some secrets that you're better off not knowing. Secrets that will change the way you look at things for the rest of your life.

It was too bad that I didn't learn this lesson before Teddy found the key.

It was always locked.

Always.

I'd tried the door numerous times out of curiosity and a vain hope that maybe this would be the one time I got lucky but nope. Never.

Every time I walked past it, I'd try to guess what was inside. I'd seen Mom and Dad come out of it, so they had to know what it contained. Teddy and I would come up with all sorts of ludicrous ideas...were they serial killers? Secret CIA agents? Aliens?

The older we grew, the crazier the theories became.

Eventually I shifted the mystery of the locked room to the back of my mind. Other things took up my attention - homework, grades, piano lessons, that cute boy in my math class.

It wasn't until that Saturday that the mystery resurfaced.

I was drinking lemonade when Teddy came down the stairs, a strange look on his face.

"What's wrong?" I asked, noting the expression on his face. "Did you break up with Alice or something?" Alice was his girlfriend as well as one of my best friends. We did nearly everything together, although she was a year older than me.

Teddy didn't reply but held out his hand. In his palm lay a single, silver key, now tarnished with age.

I snatched it from him, turning it over to examine it. "Where did you get this?"

"Dad's office," Teddy told me. "I went there to look for my biology textbook and it was just sitting there under a pile of papers. I think Dad must've forgotten to put it away like he normally does."

There was no need to ask which door it opened - both of us knew there was only one locked door in the whole house, one room that we were never allowed to venture into.

The real question was...should we?

I looked up at him, the same blend of nervousness and eagerness on his face that must have been present on mine. They said that curiosity killed the cat, but I didn't think about the consequences of my decision that day.

We were in agreement but as we walked down the hallway to that mysterious locked room, I knew Teddy was just as hesitant as I was.

In retrospect, I should have taken that as a sign. I should have walked away. Gone back to drinking lemonade and scrolling through Instagram. Remained blissfully unaware of my parents' darkest secret.

We stopped in front of the door but we didn't turn back.

The key fitted perfectly in the lock.

I opened the door.

At first, all I could see was red. Everything was in shadow, obscuring the contents of the room from us. There were no windows, nothing to let in the air. I wondered why Mom and Dad would want to spend time in this dark, airless place.

Teddy flicked the light switch.

The key dropped to the floor.

"What is this?"

Teddy was frozen, standing like a statue as his eyes travelled around the room. I reached out a hand to the array of lethal-looking instruments on the nearest wall - leather cuffs and whips, rope and cable ties.

A four-poster bed dominated the middle of the room, it's red drapes hanging down to conceal the satin sheets from view. "Teddy," I whispered. "What is this?"

My 16 year old brother would know the answer. It would be something perfectly harmless, something ordinary, something that could be explained away. It wouldn't curdle a mixture of disgust and shock in my stomach. It wouldn't be what I thought it was.

Teddy walked forward to stand beside the bed, sheets the colour of crimson, his eyes trailing down the array of whips and paddles on the far wall. There was a chest of drawers standing next to the bed and he pulled it open, inhaling sharply.

"Phoebe. You should take a look at this."

I went over to look and my breath caught in my throat. "Holy shit," I heard Teddy say quietly. "This...this looks like...BDSM."

I wanted to object, to protest but the evidence was in front of my eyes. Drawers full of vibrators and dildos, strange clamps and plugs...the rope and cable ties on the wall...the leather whips and cuffs...the floggers and paddles...

I may have been only fourteen but I knew what BDSM was. I may not have known all the details but I knew enough to understand what it entailed.

"You mean Dad ties Mom up and, and whips her? Beats her with these things?" I grabbed a whip from the selection next to me, and held it up, hating the way the smooth leather felt in my hand.

"Yes and no," Teddy said, his eyes still fixated on the room.

"What does that mean?" I demanded.

Teddy turned to meet my eyes. "It's a consenting relationship. It's not like sexual abuse, Pheebs. Mum..." He swallowed, trying to get the words out. "Mom agrees to it...she, she wants it."

My sweet, kind, gentle mother wanted this? Wanted to be tied up and whipped?

"But that means that Dad..." I stared at him, aghast. My father always had time for me, even though he was a CEO of one of the most enterprising companies in the world. He always had time to help me with homework, to give me piano lessons, to laugh and joke around with me. Sure, he could be firm and forceful when he wanted to but...a Dominant? And my mother...a sex slave?

It's funny how you think you know your parents when in reality, there's so much of them that they conceal from you.

Teddy's eyes roved around the room, moving from the ropes suspended in the ceiling, the metal buckles attached to the bed, the blindfolds hanging on a hook in the corner, the sex toys before us, the assortment of items laid out on racks and strapped to the wall.

The more I saw, the more the sick feeling in my stomach grew. I swallowed my nausea and asked the question that bothered me the most. "What exactly does Mum have to do for Dad?"

Teddy closed his eyes - the swirling pools of silver that looked exactly like Dad's - and answered. "She has to do whatever he wants. She can't answer back, can't argue, can't do anything for herself. Her every action must be his command. She has to do exactly what he orders. She has to obey him, submit herself to him. No matter what he does. Even...even if it hurts."

My knees felt weak and I grasped the wall to hold me up.

The whip was still in my hand. I lifted it up to eye level, trying to understand why my father would use it, why he would want to inflict pain - why my mother would welcome that same pain. What kind of sickos were they?

I raised my hand and brought the whip slashing down as hard as I could on the end of the bed, a loud crack sound echoing through the whole room. Teddy whirled around, staring wide eyed fro, the whip in my hand to my trembling frame.

He opened his mouth to say something but what it was, I never found out.

In our preoccupation, we hadn't heard the sound of the car drawing up in the driveway outside. We hadn't heard the footsteps down the hall, two pairs of footsteps that rapidly increased in pace.

We didn't realize that we'd left the door open until the shadow fell across the room.

I looked up to see my parents standing in the doorway.

For a minute, no one moved.

My mother's blue eyes - the same colour as mine - were wide and horrified, her hand covering her mouth. My father's grey eyes were steely, cold and hard.

"Exactly what do you think you are doing?" His voice was low and angry. "I expressly forbade you - the both of you - from entering this room. I told you it was strictly off-limits!"

I'd never expressly disobeyed my father before - or talked back to him either. But today, everything was different. I was different. Before I could think through my words, I'd spoken.

"I'm quite glad we did Dad," I retorted cuttingly. "Because we know the kind of people you both are. How long were you going to hide this from us? Letting everyone think you were so nice and respectable when in reality you're just sick."

Teddy stepped beside me, his own anger and disgust evident in his voice when he spoke. "Do you want us to leave, Dad? Then you and Mom can have a nice session in your little sex room."

My mother walked up to us, her expression pleading. "Phoebe, Teddy, please..."

"Don't touch me!" I snapped and my mother retracted her hand at once, a flash of hurt in her eyes. "How could you, Mom?" I raised my hand to indicate the contents of the room. "You want to be tied up and flogged, is that it? Huh? How long have you been doing this?"

I flung the whip away from me, and it scattered across the marble floor to come to a rest at my father's feet. His face was paler than I had ever seen it. "I can't believe you, Dad." My voice shook. "Why would you do this? What kind of thrill do you get?"

Teddy wrapped a protective hand around my shoulders. "You don't understand." My fathers voice was quiet, all trace of anger gone. "It's not what you think it is."

"Explain then," Teddy demanded. "Tell us."

My mother glanced back helplessly. "Christian, we don't have a choice. We have to tell them. We have to tell them everything."

Dad nodded. "I know, Ana." He walked up to her and kissed her hair. "It's okay," he told her. "They'll understand. In the end, they'll understand."

"You should sit down," Mom said. "It's a bit of long story."

Teddy and I exchanged a hesitant glance but sat, the bed firm under our weight. Our parents sat down on either side of us, Mom briefly squeezing my hand.

"It started when Aunt Kate fell sick and I had to go interview your father..."

Everyone has their secrets.

But the two hours my parents spent telling us their story in that room helped me to understand their secrets. Although I wouldn't have made the decisions and choices they had, I understood why they did.

I understood why my father still had nightmares, why he had turned to BDSM. I understood why my mother stayed with him, why she loved him, why she agreed to marry him. Even if they were my parents, they were still a couple in love - and the Red Room - as my mother called it - was just another way they expressed their love.

My parents had told Teddy and I their deepest secret.

No matter what, things would never go back to normal. I would always see Mom and Dad in a different light. After all, there are some things you never want to know about your parents, right?

I still wished that I had never opened that door that day, never seen the contents of that elusive mystery room. Sometimes, it's better to remain blissfully ignorant.

Sometimes, it's better that some things remain a mystery.