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  Kyle

  I opened the door leading out of the hotel and was immediately buffeted by a wall of driving snow. The wind howled, and the air was a furious onsught of frigidity as a relentless snowfall bulleted down from the sky. “Huh,” I said as I closed the door and turned around to face Rose. “This could be a problem.”

  “Yeah, I’d say so,” Rose said while furrowing her brow and holding her hands on her hips. She was sweating from our dance battle, her makeup a mess and her wig ruffled from my having to put it back in pce a dozen times.

  God, she was beautiful.

  I started, “I guess I can try to brave the storm and drive myself home-”

  “No!” Rose excimed, stepping forward in her dy-stilts and putting her hands on my triceps. “You can’t! It’s too dangerous.”

  I sighed, albeit with affection. Maybe she really did care about me after all. “Okay, but where am I supposed to go?”

  “We are in a hotel, you know,” she said.

  “This pce seems like it’s out of my budget, even if it’s just for one night,” I pointed out.

  She sucked in her cheeks and stood there like some kind of pristine ivory sculpture for a good, long thirty seconds before she finally said, “I, uh, sorta have a way around that.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I have a room here,” she said.

  I looked around at the Persian carpet over the marble floor, the diamonds in the chandelier above, the mahogany desks and leather chairs. I knew Briar must’ve been staying somewhere on nights when she wasn’t at home, but it hadn’t occurred to me that she would take me on a date at the hotel she didn’t want me to know she was staying at. Honestly, I guess I’d just figured she was crashing at a friend’s pce… Which, upon closer inspection, didn’t really make a ton of sense, given that she didn’t have any friends besides me. “Don’t you work at a convenience store?” I asked.

  She gulped. “I do.”

  “How on earth can you afford a room at a pce like this?”

  She gulped again, the muscles in her neck tensing. I briefly wondered if they’d do that if I managed to get my cock down her throat. “Come up to my room with me and I’ll expin.”

  I balked. That… That was not what I was expecting. I’d been prepared for her to maybe offer to get me a room of my own, at which point I could more pusibly call her out on the amount of money she must’ve had and start plucking away at the thin logic of her story. This, however… This was different. “A-are you sure? Are we ready for that?”

  “No, but… Sometimes life forces our hand.”

  I blinked rapidly. That was… “Okay, you’ve got me there. Lead the way.”

  And so she did, taking my hand and leading me to the elevator, up four stories and down a hallway. All the way at the end, she fished a keycard out of her purse, and she gestured me inside. The room was a lot less fancy than I’d expected: just two queen sized beds, a television, a bathroom. It was cozy, more so than anything else. I guess I assumed a rich girl like Rose would go for the ritziest, most expensive option avaible to her, probably a suite, maybe even a penthouse. This was a lot more straightforward, and given who I was talking about, that just wasn’t something I was accustomed to.

  “I’ll, uh, run down to the gift shop, see if I can find you a toothbrush and maybe some fresh underwear,” Rose said. “Why don’t you hop in the shower.”

  “Okay,” I nodded. How was I going to py this: the field had changed rapidly, and I didn’t know what kind of formation to run. I didn’t even know if I was on offense or defense at the moment.

  I stripped and stepped into the shower, letting the torrent of hot water buffet me, washing away all the cold and the fear and the confusion. I imagined Rose in there with me, climbing in, but it wasn’t like it had been before: it was the truth of her. The wig slid off, the padding was gone. I couldn’t deny who I was looking at inside my mind’s eye.

  And it didn’t matter. She was always a woman to me. With or without all of her accouterments, she was still Rose.

  The fantasy shifted so she got down on her knees while we showered together, her tongue swirling around the foreskin at the head of my cock, tickling the nerve endings as she wrapped her lips over it. Pying with it, a little bit at a time, slowly taking in more and more and more until the entirety of my dick was down her throat. I took my unit in hand and began to pump at the shaft, imagining the grip was from her teeth and her gums as she sucked and sucked and sucked.

  I didn’t know how long I was in there, working my crank. I didn’t know how long I took to finish. I don’t know how long I was lost in the fantasy of my hands holding Rose’s head in pce while she deep-throated me and worshiped my dick and dedicated all of her considerable willpower to sending as much pleasure up my body as possible. I just know that by the time I was done, I spttered a hot load of cum all over the wall, and I had to use the shower head to rinse it all off and wash it down the drain.

  The thought occurred in that moment of post-masturbatory crity: maybe that was part of what I wanted. Rose was never around, it felt like. But when she was, when she was giving all of herself to me, taking me into account with her every action, her every thought dedicated to pleasing me… God, that felt good. I wanted to be the one she lived and breathed for. Maybe that was vain, self-obsessed, macho bullshit… but I’d lying if I said it didn’t make me feel like the biggest man who’d ever fucking lived. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t love how special that made me feel. That I was the one she wanted to be a woman for.

  As I climbed out of the shower and started to towel myself off, however, I saw the problem with that: it couldn’t just be for me. If it was… Then what would happen if this didn’t work out? If we dated and then broke up? Would she detransition? Would she go back to being the rgely absent, mostly empty shell of a person she’d spent most of her life as?

  It couldn’t just be for me. As much as I loved the idea, as much as it turned me on, it couldn’t just be for me. She had to do it for herself, first and foremost.

  But that didn’t mean I couldn’t help her through it. Didn’t mean I couldn’t give her a little push every now and then. And besides, I was pretty sure she was enjoying our game at least as much as I was.

  She opened the door as I stepped out into the main room with nothing but a towel around my waist. Funny how that kept happening to me. To us.

  Us. That was a loaded word. What were we? What did I want us to be?

  She looked me up and down, and bit her lower lip. It was only a brief moment, but… At this point, I would find it impossible to believe she didn’t like what she saw.

  “Damn,” she said.

  “Pretty gruesome, huh?” I snarked.

  “Yes, you’re clearly the most hideous man I’ve ever id eyes on,” she rolled her eyes. She chucked me a pair of boxers and an oversized t-shirt with the hotel’s name on it.

  I caught them. “Well hey, at least now I know you’re not just into me for my looks.”

  “Of course it’s not just your looks, you lunkhead,” she chuckled as she sat down on the bed nearest the door, taking off her heels. Then her eyes peeled open wide, as if she’d just realized what she’d said.

  “Lunkhead?” I said, feeling as if I were venturing out into uncharted waters. I turned around and let my towel drop, then pulled on the starchy blue boxers. “Funny. That’s exactly what my roommate calls me.”

  “I… I meant meathead-”

  “O’Neil calls me that, too.”

  “Guess great minds think alike,” she said.

  “Guess so,” I said, pulling the shirt over my torso. “Shirt’s a bit tight- you do that on purpose?”

  “It was all they had,” she squeaked.

  I chuckled.

  “What?” she said.

  I turned around and faced her, drinking in the sight. “Nothing, just… The way you said that was cute. All flustered and squeaky. You’re… Wicked fucking cute.”

  God, she just turned so fucking red. I never stood a chance. “I’m really not.”

  “What makes you say that?” I said, walking over to her, sitting on the bed next to her.

  She bunched her knees up against her chest. “I… I’m not what you think I am.”

  I held her chin in my hand. “Try me.”

  “I’m not… I’m not really a girl.”

  “Bullshit,” I said simply. Close, we were getting close. But as the endzone came into view and her defensive line crumbled, a part of me couldn’t help but think ‘this isn’t right.’

  Her hands trembled, and she started breathing in and out her nose in short, sharp shocks. “No, seriously, I… I have a-”

  Not like this, I thought.“Rose,” I said, “I know you’re trans.”

  “I’m not really-”

  Oh, Jesus, the brain worms are wriggling. “It’s why you were reluctant to video call. It’s why you canceled our first date. It’s why you used a fake picture on your dating profile. It’s why those two asshole chasers were giving you grief earlier tonight. You’re trans.”

  “I’m… I’m not-”

  “I don’t believe you,” I said, pulling her close to me. The game had changed. This was about more than being right. This was about more than getting her to admit she was O’Neil. This was about getting her to admit she was trans. That was the only way this would work. That was the only way she and I could…

  The only way we could be together. And I wanted that; that was the endzone I was driving for; that was the object of the game. I wanted her. I wanted to be with her. O’Neil and I, Rose and Kyle, girlfriend and boyfriend. But she still had to wake up.

  “Why does everyone keep saying that?” she sobbed, ruining her makeup even more than she already had.

  “Who else is saying it?”

  “My boss,” Rose said. “One of my sisters. Or at least, she’s thinking it. I can tell she is. And now you’re… You think… But I’m just lying to you, lying to everyone, for the sake of my own happiness. Don’t you get it! I’m selfish! I don’t care about anyone else as long as I’m happy! I don’t deserve to be a woman!” She buried her face in her hands, and her wig slipped off her head. “No!” she cried, scrambling to fix it as it nded on her p. I saw her hair, her real hair, the same color as her wig but cropped far shorter, and her voice croaked low as she sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.

  I pulled her close, burying her face in my chest and letting her cry into it. “It’s okay,” I said. “You’re okay, Rose.”

  “What if I’m not?”

  “What if you’re not okay?”

  “What if I’m not really Rose?”

  “Then I’ll still be there for you,” I said, feeling the warmth of her against me. “I promise.”

  She didn’t say anything after that, so I just held her for a while.

  Eventually, though, we both began fading, so I picked her up and brought her over to the bathroom. “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “We both need some sleep, but I’ve had enough girlfriends warn me about the dangers of going to bed without taking off your makeup to know not to let you do it,” I said. “Where are your wipes?”

  “Dopp kit by the sink,” she pointed.

  I retrieved the wipes plus some cotton balls, and began cleaning up her face while running a bath with nice hot water for her. I reached for the wig she’d haphazardly pced on her head, but she caught me by the wrist before I could take it.

  “You need to take it off,” I said.

  “I’m scared to let you see me without it,” Rose whispered. “What if you see who I am under it and… And you don’t look at me the same anymore?”

  I gave a gentle smile. “I promise you, I don’t mind.”

  “Even if you… If you recognize what you see?”

  I kissed her on the cheek. “I already know all that I need to.”

  She looked at me with an expression I couldn’t read, wide-eyed, lips trembling, cheeks flushed. Then she nodded, and she let me remove her wig while she wiggled out of her dress. The padding beneath came next, the hip and breast forms coming off alongside her underwear. What stood before me then, in all her naked glory, however, wasn’t O’Neil. Or, I suppose it was, but… I didn’t see a guy. Even with the equipment in some pces and the ck of it in others, I still saw Rose, just as I had in my mind’s eye.

  “Pretty gruesome, huh,” she said, looking down.

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh come on, you know who-”

  “I don’t care about who you think you are,” I said. “I care about the truth of you.”

  She gulped. God, that drove me wild, a signal fre that shot down from my brain straight to my crotch and lit everything along the path into a burning pyre of lust.

  “And what truth is that?” Rose asked.

  “I think you already know,” I said.

  “Spell it out for me, then. Like I’m an idiot.”

  “No,” I said. I couldn’t win like that. It wouldn’t count. She’d still be asleep; she’d still be miserable. And I wanted her to be happy. “Not until you admit it.”

  “Still pying games with me then, Duggan?” she said with a tired sigh and an even more tired grin.

  “Always,” I grinned back.

  “Fair enough,” she said. She stood up on her tiptoes and pnted a kiss on my lips, simple and gentle, yet also bold and adventurous. She melted into me, like she had before at the bar, like I was a mountain she wanted to climb, a challenge she needed to overcome, a victory she wanted to relish in.

  Once more, I swept her off her feet. I couldn’t deny how much I loved doing that- made me feel so fucking strong. Granted, it was also so the tent I’d pitched inside my boxers didn’t sm into her, but still.

  I deposited her in the bath, cupping a handful of hot water in my hands and dumping it over her head. She ughed, fuller and truer and happier, and spshed me with the warm water as well. “Fuck, c’mon, I just got dry,” I said with mock outrage.

  “Skill issue,” she chuckled as she spshed me again.

  “Oh, that does it,” I said, dunking her petite frame beneath the water, then grabbing a bottle of shampoo from the shower rack and squirting a massive load of it onto her head.

  “Gah!” she cried.

  “Oh, quiet, you gremlin. Let me take care of you,” I said as I began thering the shampoo into her beautiful red hair. I only needed one hand to do it, and she took the other one and kissed my palm as she sat inside the tub, then began sucking on my fingers.

  It was my turn to gulp when she did that, my digits exploring the inside of her mouth, her tongue sending sparks of ecstasy up through my hand.

  I finished washing her hair, then helped her condition it, washed her face and her chest. She looked sad as I touched it, wistful, looking down at her own frame like she was missing something. Granted, there was something I would have liked to have seen there as well, but… Maybe in due time.

  Finally, I finished cleaning her up, and she began toweling herself off. I realized then that I liked taking care of her, I liked focusing all my attention on her just like I liked it when she focused all her attention on me. Like two worlds orbiting around each other, trying to avoid falling into each other’s gravity wells, fated to collide. And I was looking forward to it.

  I didn’t question it when she crawled into bed with me. She didn’t question it when I held her tight, arms wrapped around her, positioning her as the little spoon. The rules had changed. The game had changed. She nearly handed me a victory, and I’d nearly handed her one… But it wasn’t the victory that either of us wanted. She wouldn’t even admit yet that it was what she wanted. But in that moment, I was confident she would get there.

  She fell asleep first, snoring gently in my arms, and as I held her, as I felt the weight of her body and her soul, I was reassured.

  Victory was still in sight. She was asleep for now, but soon… Soon, I’d wake her up.