Sex in C Major
Chapter 92

"There are," he said flatly, "plenty of men who want to be smacked and made to crawl around on the floor and fucked until they're leaking. Go on Craigslist for ten minutes and you'll replace a hundred or so in Leeds alone."

Stefan was already shaking his head.

"It's not the same. They're they're men. But I'm-"

"A man."

"Not if I want-"

"Yes, you are," Daz said quietly.

Yannis nodded.

"I get why you feel like that," Yannis said. "Like"

"How could you possibly get that?" Stefan asked bitterly. "How could you possibly understand what this is like?"

There was a sudden pause.

Stefan shifted uncomfortably, glancing between Daz and Yannis uncertainly. Yannis was frowning. Daz was slowly darkening.

"Really, Darian?"

"I didn't-"

"Obviously," Yannis said waspishly. "When I said I don't want you telling everyone and their mother, I didn't mean your live-in new plaything."

"It's automatic!" Daz said defensively. "I'm in the habit of keeping it quiet-I mean, what if your dad found out where "

"I hardly think Stefan is going to go to mosque on Friday, get my dad's number, and ring him up."

"Sorry, what?" Stefan asked, utterly confused. He felt dizzy and adrift again.

Yannis sighed, and handed the bottle off to Daz. In one swift motion, he dropped his shorts and pants, and Stefan gulped as a long, sleek cock was left on show. Ignoring the circumstance completely, he felt his dick twitch.

"Focus, please?" Yannis asked tartly, then pointed to a thin white line on his abdomen. "See that?"

"Yeah..."

"It's my hysterectomy scar."

Stefan's brain stalled.

"Your-what?"

"You heard me."

"You-you had a-" Stefan stammered, then his brain restarted. "You're a "

"Yes," Yannis said, and pulled up his trousers. The dick disappeared.

"But-but you have a "

"I've had more surgeries than you. That's all."

"You remember I said Yannis' family weren't thrilled about me?" Daz asked quietly.

"Yeah..."

"It wasn't because they thought we were gay. It was because I'm the wrong type of Muslim. I'm mixed race and my father's Moroccan. They wanted their daughter to be going out with a nice Kurdish boy, not a mixed-race Moroccan lad who only showed up at mosque when his granddad dragged him there by the ear. They didn't know about this."

Stefan stared at Yannis, drinking his features in. The stubble. The wide shoulders. The chest-hell, Stefan had seen his bare chest. He had a cock and balls. Made of—

"That's why your arm is scarred," Stefan breathed.

Yannis nodded.

"Here."

Daz handed his phone over, a picture burning bright on the screen. It was a photo of a paper photograph, the colours and light a little dulled. A wedding or something similar. A teenage boy, obviously Daz from the bright blue eyes and crooked smile posing for a tasteful snap with a pretty Muslim girl in a red dress and a patterned headscarf.

A girl with the darkest eyes, and a familiar, slightly bent nose.

"That's you," Stefan whispered.

He could perhaps have mistaken her for Yannis' cousin. Maybe a sister, at a stretch, although perhaps that was age blurring the lines. But for Yannis? He didn't look anything like her.

And yet...it was all starting to make sense.

The Nebido in the cabinet. That was why Stefan had thought it sounded familiar-he'd seen it mentioned online when he'd been trying to figure out what to buy to transition on his own. The headscarves in the wardrobe upstairs, abandoned in a house belonging to two men. Daz's story about having had a pre-transition transgender partner-oh, Jesus. A Turkish one. Who liked headscarves and had kept them after his transition. The way Daz hadn't batted an eyelash at a transgender man crashing into his life because he already had one, didn't he? He'd been here before.

They'd both done this all before.

"Darian, get out."

"What?"

"I said out. Go away."

Daz made a noise like a kid whining for sweets, but left the room, pulling the door closed behind him.

Yannis casually turned on the TV, then turned it up, dropped onto the sofa and folded his legs into the lotus position.

"He's not part of this conversation."

"I-why didn't you say anything?"

"We've barely talked, I didn't know you didn't know," Yannis said with a shrug. "And I don't know what really goes on between you and Darian. I thought the same as him, that you were fine with the way you played."

Stefan shrugged.

"You do like what he does, don't you?"

"Yes-and no."

"Start with the yes."

"It feels good," Stefan whispered. "I enjoy it while he's doing it. I want it, even. It's only after, when I think about it-men don't want this."

"Some men do."

"But it's not the same for them."

"Because they were men from the very beginning, and you weren't?"

"Yeah," Stefan admitted.