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It was strange seeing Graham like this: above him, in control, all sweet and tormenting all at once. And just as utterly ridiculous. If he’d any shame left, Liam would be humiliated.
He was sure he must look a right mess, lipstick in red smears over stubbled skin, clumpy mascara, crooked winged liner and sloppy glitter shadow (still lingering on the tips of his fingers—curse his lack of brushes—and now staining Graham’s pants at the thighs.) But a decent line could do wonders for anyone’s diminishing self confidence.
Graham reached down and ran the pads of his fingers over Liam’s bare, jutting collarbones. Liam shuddered under the touch, hardly bit back a whine as Graham’s thumb slipped under a fallen bra strap and slid it tenderly back into place, gently atop his shoulder.
Things were easier this way, Liam thought, whether it was the simple act of being a woman or the perhaps slightly more complex act of not being a man. He supposed it didn’t particularly matter which it was. He got what he wanted either way. Besides, it was wiser to not read too deeply into those sorts of things.
“You look lovely tonight, darling.” Graham’s voice hovered hardly above a whisper. His fingers slid around the back of his neck, danced just under his nape.
Liam tilted his head down, mumbled a hardly coherent “thank you” under his breath, not quite believing but nonetheless glad to hear it. He tugged the hem of his skirt down over his thigh, only for it to immediately pull right back up, dangerously and shamefully high.
He winced at a soft chuckle from Graham above him, fingers tightening in the hair at the back of his head. Graham tugged gently down, forced Liam’s eyes to meet his.
“Lovely girl,” he purred, head tilted and eyes soft.
Liam hummed and shifted, thighs sore where his bare heels dug up into the soft flesh. He felt somehow smaller than he ought to, like a naughty child or a dog doing its best to behave.
Masculinity came easy to Graham. He’d snatched it right from the hands of God, taken and twisted it all for himself and right to his own liking. Liam supposed that this—having him half-dressed in women’s clothes while Graham sat stoically above in his neat slacks and tie—was in and of itself some means of taking hold of manhood, taking control by playing at an almost tragicomedy of gender performance.
“Say it back to me, Liam.”
“I’m not a real girl.”
“To me you are.” He lifted a foot, dragged the toe of an Oxford down Liam’s bare chest. Cold leather sent a shiver over his skin, forced a trembling exhale from him when the end snagged at his bra, then sent the elastic snapping back hard against flat chest. He smirked as Liam jolted. “Look at yourself, doll.”
He watched as Graham’s shoe traced down over soft stomach, then down underneath his navel before pausing and digging in just above the burst of untameable hair above his crotch. Liam could feel himself heavy and twitching under thin, soft skirt fabric.
“What are you pouting like that for?” Graham murmured.
Liam’s eyes shot back up, lips parting. “Am not.”
“You were.” His fingers disentangled from his hair to rub gently over the disheveled top. “What’s the matter baby?”
He supposed that if anyone were to understand this feeling, this pit gnawing at his chest and the bottom of his stomach nearly to the point of nausea, it would be Graham. Graham with his twice-a-week injections, the pink half-moon scars across his chest, the noticeable lack of bulge between his legs where Liam sat.
“Tell me what you want.”
Acrid envy sat hot and sour, foreboding, at the base of Liam’s throat. Graham with his active effort, tangible results: products of an undenied acceptance for who—or what—he was.
He swallowed, bucked his hips up into the open air between himself and Graham’s shoe. His hand found its way around Graham’s shin. Too large, covered in fur, messily applied nail polish staining cracked cuticles. He let it fall limply back into his lap, back next to the glaring protrusion under his skirt.
“Touch me.”
Things were easier this way.
Before, standing by himself in front of the lonely bathroom mirror, he’d thought he may well have been the prettiest boy in the world in his little secondhand mini-skirt, purchased and paid for as he rambled continuously about how much his girlfriend would love it, how wonderful she’d look wearing it. In the dim yellowish light of buzzing overhead bulbs, through wide dilated eyes, his glittery makeup had seemed just about fit for the Queen herself, his painted nails a pleasant addition.
It hadn’t mattered then, that his leg and arm hair was so long, dark, or thick; that his skirt rode up for his height and the bulk of his masculine thighs; that his face was so angular and his shoulders so wide.
Yet somehow, under Graham’s unwavering stare, something had changed. Somehow, someplace between the bathroom and where he now sat whimpering as Graham pressed the hard tip of his shoe slowly against the bulge in his skirt, the notion that Liam was, in fact, no more than a pretty boy seemed entirely crushing. The idea that Graham didn’t really see him as any kind of a girl, that it was all pretend, that he was no more than a man in women’s costume.
Why, he wondered, should these things—these simple truths—bother him at all?
A dry sob tumbled from his lips as Graham’s other foot tapped at his knee, beckoned them to part, then dragged up his thigh and underneath the fabric onto aching, sensitive skin. Liam’s hips stuttered forward, cock dragging against the rubber bottom.
“There you go, darling,” Graham murmured. One hand remained firm on the side of his face as the other carded his fingers through his hair, short nails scraping lightly against his scalp. “Is that better?”
Liam nodded slowly, unconvinced. His bottom lip quivered. Graham pressed down harder. Liam rutted further up into the pressure, slid back and forth over the patterns of tread.
Graham’s palm slid down to his cheek, thumb toying at his glossed lower lip. “You’d make such a pretty girl.”
Liam’s movement stuttered to a halt.
He would. He would make such a pretty girl. If only he’d not been cursed with this man’s body, if only he’d the aptitude for acknowledgement and eventual change. If only he’d figured these feelings out earlier, when he could have plausibly made something of them—assuming such a time had ever existed.
He needed another bump, another rail, another then another until it fucking killed him, until he was put to rest in a body that was never his.
“Liam?”
His vision failed to focus. Through a haze of unfocused lazy-eye and wetness forming on lashes, he could just barely make out the shape of Graham leaning to hunch over him, brows furrowed as his unaffected facade dropped. The feel of leather and rubber left his skin, replaced by Graham’s heavy hands on his bare shoulders.
“I want a shirt,” he spoke. His eyes screwed shut. “And my underwear.”
With a feather-light kiss to the top of his ruffled hair, Graham was stood and gone in an instant, leaving Liam to stare ahead at the strange, empty space. Seconds stretched. His fingers brushed his as he took the ball of crumpled fabric when Graham returned. He stood and dressed without a word, then lowered himself slowly back to the floor, legs crossed. If he had ever, once in his life, had the capacity to apologize, he would have done so.
Still, Graham settled in beside him, unbothered and gentle. “Alright?”
He refused to make eye contact, refused to speak any further. His throat felt all too tight. If he opened his mouth, his resolute concentration on restraining the lump in his throat and the tears in his eyes would go all to hell.
Graham’s fingers found his chin, tilted his face up to meet his. Liam was somewhat disquieted by the tenderness in his gaze, the sparkle of some emotion he couldn’t quite place—understanding? recognition? kinship?
He swallowed, felt his Adam’s apple bob fluidly up and down with the motion.
“You’re alright,” Graham whispered. “I know. I meant every word.”
Liam exhaled, trembling and with a pathetic sort of whimper, and let Graham’s arms wrap around his back to pull him down against flat chest, hand holding him secure and petting silently over his aching head. His lip quivered as stray tears fought their way down his cheeks, a series of small half-strained sobs and whines from his throat. He dug his nails into Graham’s large biceps, rubbed a cheek into the surprisingly soft fabric of his shirt, and allowed his muscles to relax.