London, England.
London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
5 A.M.
Marc
Out of the darkness of his bedroom a pair of pale, blue eyes blazed confusion into his own. The pale face and dark, stupidly long eyelashes that rimmed them were soft, rounded in an undeniably feminine shape. Full red lips, lips that may have long ago described as the colour of blood, were frowning back at him, locked into an expression directly mimicking his own. Everything about this face was his, even the short-cropped black hair that framed it; everything except those eyes.
Those were her eyes, Marc thought as he sat up, tearing himself from the mirror. Those confused, haunted eyes he saw in every photograph that she’d ever allowed to be taken. But he was no longer that girl… was he? Still in bed, Marc pulled his knees up to his chin, naked elbows resting along their crests. One long-fingered, wide hand raked through the little hair he allowed himself to keep. The style was nigh impossible to tousle, which was what he liked about it. Unlike his roommate, he didn’t spend three hours in the bathroom getting his hair to cooperate or applying the concealer he pretended not to use. Which Adam would be doing right now, Marc realized, as he felt the thump of Adam’s radio begin to vibrate through the air.
A glance to the side told him what he’d already guessed; five a.m., time to get ready for work. Not for the first time Marc considered calling in. It wasn’t that his job was hard or even stressful, just that after the past, hellish week he was more than sick of being around others—Even Adam.
Pride, perhaps, swung his legs over the edge of the bed. Work ethic made him stand, and stubborn dignity forced him out of the room and into the hall bathroom he’d claimed as his own, rather than allowing exhaustion to tumble him back onto the mattress. Marc kicked the door shut and locked it, something he would never have bothered to do with just he and Adam in the house… had it not been for last week.
Hastily, almost as if it may have all been a dream–despite that he was standing in the flat they’d just moved into three days ago—Marc tugged the beater over his head and let his pajama pants fall to the floor. Fear struck him then, waking him fully through the haze of exhaustion, and he slowly turned to the full sized mirror that had been built into the bathroom wall.
Those eyes were there again—Mariah’s eyes. The blatant confusion poured from them, even as they trailed over his sculpted chest and arms. He’d spent years working for that body. Days, weeks and months spent training with the men at the gym had hardened his pecs and abs and arms into something reminiscent of those cheesy models in fashion magazines. Still, he knew as well as the other man in this flat that his body should have been lean and curvy. There should have been full, round breasts perking in the morning cold… but there weren’t.
Both he and Adam had pretended not to notice when the rack Mariah had carried had begun to dwindle. More and more they denied to themselves that this wasn’t possible; telling themselves that Marc’s gym routine was responsible. They knew it wasn’t, but they said that it was. When breasts had become pecs and when his hips had become slender, they still insisted it was normal. Since it was what he wanted, Marc had preferred to remain in denial and not look the so-called “gift horse” in the mouth. Now glee warred with fear, as the last of his dream had finally become a reality.
Hesitation gripped his hand even as it began the careful, slow journey down his body, following his line of sight. Over the naval, down the line of hair that had grown leading down between his legs. A shiver shot up his spine when his fingers trailed over the fully formed, half-aroused p***s now taking up residence there. The touching didn’t much help the situation, Marc realized as his face flushed despite no one being there to see. But there shouldn’t even be a situation! Some part of him yelled from the back of his mind—maybe some remnants of Mariah he’d yet to fully dampen.
As much as this was a dream come true, to have the body of a true man, Marc knew that it wasn’t rationally correct. For once he couldn’t deny that though he was not a woman, he’d been born with the body of one… and that situation had somehow managed to correct itself without a cut from the surgery he’d spent years saving money for. He let his hand explore the new territory, much as he had when he’d realized his chest was finally as firm as he’d always wanted it.
Last week he’d discovered that there was a ‘lump’ growing.
Looking back on it, Marc thought that perhaps the changes had been going on longer, unnoticed as he was wont to completely ignore “that” section of his body, save for purely hygienic purposes. Even then, cleaning was met with adverted eyes and washcloth- or paper-covered fingers, and so he’d never noticed… until that lump.
The memory of finding it still caused his pulse to race and heart to leap to his throat. Lumps, firm and “under” the skin like that usually weren’t a good sign in humans, no matter where they were. Finding one there was even less promising, especially as Marc had quite firmly refused gynecological visits since the day his foster parents had first offered to take “him.” The thought of another being touching him in such a place, or even looking at him was enough to make him pale and, quite often, run headlong for the nearest possible exit. After one miserably failed attempt at forcing him to the office, his foster mother had finally given up her case and taken him to a psychiatrist instead.
A transgender teen wasn’t something that set of foster parents had been ready to deal with, and so began the search for a new family or communal home.
Now he had no one to ask about what to do with this new “development.” Adam could always be trusted, of course; he was the one friend who’d stuck with Marc through the entire thing, beginning to end. A small smile touched the corner of his mouth. If this was… real… then that ending came a lot sooner than either of them had thought it could or would. Yet, Marc had been shy about sharing this new problem. Adam had a new a boyfriend about, plus classes and a reconciliation with his father to worry about… did he really need more of marc’s problems?
Unsure and scared, Marc had spent sleepless nights wondering what was happening to him. He’d begun exploring his body; he felt as things grew, closed, and rearranged themselves over the course of the past week. Last night he’d realized it was done. He was a true He; a man in body as well as mind as he stood before the mirror that morning, with Adam’s cheesy pop music thumping through the wall the two bathrooms shared. The realization was astounding.
Hands shaking, Marc slowly backed away to sit heavily upon the plush-covered toilet seat. Everything in this bathroom was black, and plushy. There was a strange, impractical mohair bathmat in sheer black, the tiling on the floor and bottom half of the walls were a mixed sort of gray and black shale-like substance. The top half was a shiny sort of faux-black marble, with a matching shower, toilet and counter. All in all, the place reeked of money, just like the rest of the apartment, just like Adam.
Ever since his reconciliation with his father, Adam’s penchant for the “sweet life” had returned. He’d quit his job to concentrate on his classes and was allowing his dad to pay for the flat and bills, as the Duke had offered. The family credit card was back in his wallet and he had the Jag he’d received for his sixteenth birthday parked across the street at the complex’s parking garage. Yet, the old, rich-boy attitude Adam had previously possessed had yet to return. For that Marc was thankful, but he wasn’t entirely certain it would last. How would his friend react to… this?
Forehead now resting in his hands, Marc stared down at the appendage resting between his legs. It had been the only part of him that had been wrong for a long time now; yet, now that it was finally “right,” there was something strange about it. Laughter bubbled up in his chest, and he closed his eyes. There was something strange all right! He’d had a v****a until a few days ago! He’d played witness and victim as the damn thing caved in on itself! When had he stepped into the twilight zone?
The door shook suddenly, knob rattling as something heavy thumped once against the wood. “Marc?” Adam’s voice asked from the other wide of the door. He sounded almost as confused as Marc was, albeit for different reasons. “Yo, man, you okay in there?”
For a moment Marc merely stared at the door, uncomprehending of this change in his environment. When had the music in the other bathroom gone off? How long had he been sitting there on the toilet? It was entirely possible he was going to be late for work, if Adam was already barging into see him before running off to class. Some people might have found it strange that they didn’t mind watching each other bathe or shower, but no one really knew about that. Jim didn’t, Marc added to his thoughts with a wry smile. He wondered, briefly, how Adam’s serious-seeming boyfriend would have taken to that news. Jim didn’t know that Marc wasn’t a boy, after all. In fact, none of their shared friends knew, and few of those who did know Marc’s secret were still inclined to speak with him. A week ago he’d been pondering if not telling those he’d become close to “the truth” was really lying to them or simply having his privacy. Now it wouldn’t matter, would it?
Adam knocked again, louder this time, jolting Marc once more out of his reverie. “Marc?” Adam really sounded worried this time and the doorknob shook again. “Did you hit your head or something?”
“I’m fine,” Marc answered. He got off the toilet and grabbed a towel to wrap around his waist before he unlocked and opened the door. The blonde on the other side stumbled slightly, one hand reaching for the doorjamb to steady himself. They were close to the same height, with Adam standing a mere half-inch taller, but few people could really see that. Beyond that, the two were as different as the moon and sun. Adam’s hair was bright blonde. Not that drab, muted sand colour, nor the fake, butter-yellow of dye-jobs; true, glistening, corn-stalk-coloured blonde. It was echoed by a slightly manufactured golden tan, which suited his equally sunny disposition, and green eyes that a more artistic person might have considered “sea foam”—Adam certainly did.
Where Marc was short and bulky, with a longer torso than leg, Adam was short and willowy. He defied the logic that a short person had to be proportionally short—no, his legs were model length and his torso short, but not too short. His fingers and hands were long, even girlishly, and matched the otherwise graceful, feminine form of his body. Adam didn’t seem to mind this, however. Actually, one could venture to say that Adam reveled in the fact that he was so naturally “gay.” There had been little doubt as to Adam’s persuasion since he was old enough for puberty. Even then, his mother argued that she’d had ideas about it since she’d caught him holding marriage ceremonies with his army figurines as a child, rather than playing war games.
“I’m fine,” Marc repeated. His mouth opened to add more to that untruthful statement as his brain suddenly refused to function. Apparently his newfound testicles came pre-dropped, because that was not the voice he’d gone to bed with the night before. It was a given, due to lack of hormone therapy and the general femaleness of his previous form that his voice had been high-pitched. He’d worked every day to make sure it stayed a seemingly reasonable tenor, though there had been times when upset or frightened he had broken into a soft soprano. The easy power of the rich, throaty voice he now possessed startled him almost more than his p***s had.
It was the amusement on Adam’s face that brought him back to reality. “What?” he frowned, not liking the way that Adam’s lips were twitching up into that bratty smirk of his, “Don’t you have a class to get to?”
Marc turned away from the door, crossing back to the sink where he loaded his toothbrush with toothpaste. Adam followed, shoulder against the doorjamb and pivoted into the room with a strange expression on his face. For as long as he could, which wasn’t very long in reality, Marc ignored him. He scrubbed his teeth and rinsed his mouth, and applied the kohl he always used to draw attention to his eyes rather than his girlish lips. They played these games many times, and patience always won out. Fortunately for Marc, Adam had little of it.
“Why are you deepening your voice for me?” The blonde asked in the end, head tipping to rest against the door with a light thump. His eyes narrowed as a shrewd sort of curiosity came across his features. Shrewd, that was, to those that didn’t know him. Marc snorted at the sight he caught from the corner of his eyes; Adam hadn’t the foggiest clue what this was about and it was eating him. “Though I have to admit this new tone is pretty good. Betchu can’t keep it up long, though, huh?”
“Actually, I think I can.” Marc wiped his wet lips on the back of his hand. As he stood up straight once more the towel slipped slightly around his waist. Adam lurched off of the doorjamb, and came around the counter’s edge with a dancer’s twirl Marc attributed to his association with Jim. The man was almost painfully stereotypical in his gayness, Marc could see why Adam was attracted to him. Clean cut, well mannered, strangely polite, and, of all things, a theatre dancer. Jim liked classical music, plays—well, anything remotely bohemian—and was a vegetarian. If God had carved a perfect mate for Adam he couldn’t have been less that Jim… Marc realized that he hadn’t a clue what Jim’s last name was, despite having been acquainted with him for several months. Despite this, he was no less happy for Adam’s luck in finding such a good match… no matter how annoyed with the man he currently was.
Conscious of the fact that his sour mood had more to do with his own confusion and uncertainty, Marc was making a valiant effort not to snap at his friend. This was made harder when those golden arms wrapped about his waist and a chin tucked itself over his shoulder. Their eyes met in the mirror, blue warring with green in a battle of the wits, or lack there of. “You,” Adam sing-songed in his ear, “Are not telling me something.”
A smirk twitched at Marc’s too-red lips. “I don’t have to tell you everything. It wasn’t required on the lease.”
In his ear Adam sniffed, drawing up one of those haughty looks that he had long since mastered. Marc could only assume that they were fake these days, meant to be mocking, but that small part of him still worried. While he and Adam had been friends back then, and undeniably close, there had been many things they couldn’t talk about. There had been more fights on the simple basis alone that Adam had little concept of the real world. He’d been raised in an environment where everything save school grades were handed to him and, even then, the resources were at his fingertips to make sure he got a top-notch education. Marc, meanwhile, had never had any “true,” parents. He’d been fostered out since before he could remember. The tattoos on his shoulder, the list of houses that he’d been turned away from, had grown down his arm by the time he was seventeen. Only the last house had remained faithful the longest, allowing him to stay on for rent so long as he kept to himself and wore dresses to “family” functions.
No, he didn’t want Adam to revert to that, nor did Marc think Jim would want that either. He frowned. Somehow he would have to find a way of explaining this to Adam. It wouldn’t be terribly difficult to prove, really, but Marc wasn’t certain that he could take having another friend run out screaming on him. Or that he could move back into his “parents” home, for that matter. It was at that moment of decision, when he’d opened his mouth to say something, that Adam interjected with an observation of his own.
“When did you grow this?” Cold fingertips grazed below Marc’s navel as he found his cheeks turning bright red. Though he had the mirror before him, it didn’t register at first that Adam meant the so-called “happy trail” of hair leading down between his legs, rather than the larger addition in the same area. His lips flapped in effort to find the words, and in his surprise he pushed back against the counter, and thus Adam, causing them both to stumble. “H-hey!”
Adam managed to grab the side of the counter again and leaned forward onto it. Adam caught Marc’s hip, stumbling a bit more before he lurched forward against Marc in a rather awkward position and his other hand caught bare skin dangling between….
The first rational thought Marc was aware of was “damn that towel,” which, considering the situation, probably wasn’t so rational a thought as those he could, or should, have been having. The offending object had slipped onto the floor as the makeshift wrap design wasn’t one made to last, leaving himself fully nude, staring at his best friend in the mirror. On second thought, he corrected himself, make that “fully nude sans the hand wrapped around my fledgling c**k.”
“Interesting place you went for, Bub,” Marc managed to choke out, still quite aware of Adam’s hips pressed firmly against his bare a** and the feel of another’s skin on his private areas. Despite the gruff words, his own face remained comically wide-eyed and scared; he hated that fact but it seemed as if it was frozen that way. His pride was appeased, partially, by the fact that Adam had yet to recover either.
“YOU’VE GOT A WANG.”
Marc winced. Not only was Adam’s voice strangely high-pitched and yelling directly into his ear, his hand had also forgotten how sensitive the organ he was manhandling could be. That forgetfulness didn’t last long, as it was now obvious how firmly attached Marc’s p***s was. Adam dropped it, let go of Marc entirely, and stumbled back across the room and into the shower where the wall stopped him from going any further. The way his mouth flapped may have been amusing at another time, but for Marc it was a cause of terror.
Slowly, for the lulling pain in his groin as much as the hesitance with which he faced his friend, Marc turned to look at him rather than at the mirror. He leaned his buttocks on the cold countertop, letting the temperature seep through his skin to give him a jolt of wakefulness and strength. “Adam…”
“How?” Adam blinked slowly; his eyes seemed more interesting in staring below Marc’s navel. It was interesting how much that made him uncomfortable—he’d never had an issue with Adam seeing him nude before. After a moment, Marc bent and gathered the towel from the floor to wrap once more about his waist. As if a spell had been broken, Adam peeled himself from the back wall as soon as the p***s was once again covered. He still blinked owlishly at the spot where it’d been, but the pure shock had melted off of his face into a sort of benign confusion.
The blond scratched his head slowly, with the air of one that didn’t really itch but wanted something to do with his hands. Marc was merely grateful that those hands were being kept away from his d**k, now, and once more leaned back against the countertop. He was definitely going to be late for work. “I don’t know,” He replied, and his eyes slid to the side where he suddenly found the linen closet extremely fascinating. Crossing his arms over his chest, Marc continued, “It just… happened.”
“You woke up with a d**k.” It might have been phrased like a question, but Adam’s tone kept it far from the realm of one. Actually, the little gay sprite had suddenly seemed to hit a second stage of puberty, in so far as the way his voice was cracking. Marc’s eyes roamed back to his friend’s form as the blonde stumbled sideways to lean against the tiled side of the shower he still resided in.
Marc sighed. “Not… exactly.” Marc ignored the accusing glare that Adam threw his way and instead chose to elaborate, “Its been growing for the past week.”
“Growing?”
“There was a lump.”
Another highly pregnant pause formed between the pair of them. Once more Adam’s cheerful green eyes had turned reminiscent of a deer caught in a truck’s headlights. The only real difference was that the deer in that situation didn’t normally look as if it were trying to decide whether to run or bash your face in. “There was a lump.” Adam repeated, his tone taking on a queer sort of snarl. Before Marc could interject, he continued on and finally stepped free of the shower unit, “There was a lump and you didn’t tell me?”
“Well it isn’t exactly the sort of thing one tosses around in daily conversation, is it?” The words tumbled from Marc’s lip before he really knew what he was saying. Even then, when he’d caught up and heard himself, he couldn’t quite disagree. “What did you expect, Adam? ‘Do you want bacon or toast with your eggs this morning and, by the way, there’s something growing out of my c**t?’”
“You didn’t know what it was!”
“Well no s**t,” Marc threw his hands up, unable to help the roll of his eyes. “Its perfectly normal for transvestites to switch genders just by hoping for it! I knew the fairy of d**k-dom would come and grant me a magical, mystical p***s if I only wished hard enough.”
Adam gaped at him like a fish in water which, Marc knew though he didn’t particularly care at this point, was what he always did when he’d run out of things to say. What did Marc want him to say anyway? The answer came more clearly than he’d thought it would, but even as it came to him he knew that Adam wouldn’t say it. In a second, he’d been proven right, for the blonde turned away from him and marched from the bathroom with the same sort of quick, concise step he’d taken out of his father’s home two years ago.
Marc winced as the door slammed shut elsewhere in the apartment. After the silence had had enough time to settle into the walls, he turned back around to once more face the mirror. There were those blasted eyes again, still confused, but also resigned. He couldn’t blame Adam, this he knew, for the other man had only done what Marc desperately wanted to. Perhaps that old adage was true. “Be careful what you wish for, or else you might just get it.”
