Chapter 10: One More Round
The sound of the front door closing was a period at the end of a brutal sentence. It echoed through the silent house, a final note that should have meant it was over.
Marcus sat on the edge of the bed, the childhood comforter scratchy under his bare thighs. The hollow feeling yawned wider, a vacuum threatening to swallow the last of his pride. He heard the engine turn over, saw the headlights sweep the room once more through the thin curtains. Chad was leaving. Just like that. A transaction completed.
The vacuum needed filling. Anything was better than this silence, than the memory of his own sobs stifled into a pillow. A frantic, illogical thought seized him: If it ends like this, it means nothing. If he walks away that easily, then I really was just a thing.
He couldn’t let it end on Chad’s terms.
He moved before the thought fully formed. He was at the bedroom window, yanking the curtain aside. Chad’s truck, a lifted black monstrosity, was still idling at the curb, brake lights glowing like demon eyes in the dark.
Marcus didn’t think. He let the persona, Lexi, flood back in, a costume he could wear to do the unspeakable. He shoved the window open, the old frame protesting with a screech. The cool night air hit his flushed face.
“Hey!” The word came out in that high, carrying pitch. Chad’s head turned, a silhouette behind the wheel. “Big guy! Wait up!”
The truck’s passenger window slid down electronically. “Yeah?”
Marcus leaned on the sill, letting the oversized sweatshirt gape open. He manufactured a pout, pushing his lower lip out. “You’re not just gonna leave me like this, are you? I’m all… wound up.” He injected a giggle, a light, airy sound that felt like throwing up in his mouth. “My hamstring is still so tight. I don’t think you finished the job.”
Through the dark, he saw Chad’s white teeth appear in a grin. The brake lights flicked off. The driver’s door opened.
The victory was instant and poisonous. He’d summoned him back. He had that power. As Chad’s heavy footsteps re-ascended the porch stairs, Marcus felt a tremor that wasn’t entirely horror. It was a sick, thrilling buzz. The door opened and closed quietly downstairs. A moment later, Chad filled the doorway of the bedroom again, his expression a mix of curiosity and renewed appetite.
“Changed your mind, Lexi?”
“Just realized I didn’t get my money’s worth,” Marcus said, slinking toward him. He let his hips swing, a motion that was becoming less alien with every forced performance. He stopped inches away, looking up at the square jaw, the neck thicker than his thigh. In his old life, he’d have assessed Chad’s physique with a critical, competitive eye—lat width, pec symmetry. Now, the assessment was different. It was purely visceral. The sheer mass of him was impressive. Daunting. Arousing.
The arousal was a quiet, subcutaneous hum, a biological response that had nothing to do with Marcus Vance. It was Lexi’s body appreciating the raw, physical specimen before it. And for a fleeting second, Marcus didn’t fight it. He let it in. He marveled at the solid wall of Chad’s torso, the way his jeans hung low on his hips. A strange, detached thought floated through him: I built a body like that once. Now I get to appreciate it from the other side.
It was a betrayal so profound it felt like freedom.
“You wanna see strong?” Chad murmured, his voice a low rumble. He flexed his arm, the bicep swelling into a perfect, vascular globe.
Marcus reached out and touched it, squeezing. The muscle was rock-hard. A genuine, surprised laugh bubbled out of him—the first real sound he’d made all night. It was light, feminine, and utterly enchanted. “Wow. It’s like a boulder.”
“Anything else you wanna inspect?” Chad asked, his grin turning wolfish.
“Maybe.” Marcus’s heart was pounding a chaotic rhythm. Fear, shame, and that new, unwelcome thrill were a tangled knot in his chest. He dropped his gaze coyly, then let it travel back up, meeting Chad’s eyes. He was playing a part, but the lines were blurring. The admiration wasn’t entirely fake. The power he felt in this moment—the power to hold this Adonis here, to command his attention—was intoxicating. It was a different kind of strength. Softer, more manipulative, brutally effective.
He sank to his knees on the worn carpet. The posture was submissive, but in his mind, it felt like a coronation. He was choosing this. He was in control of the degradation. His fingers went to Chad’s belt buckle, working it with a theatrical eagerness. The sweatshirt fell open completely as he leaned forward.
Chad’s hand came down, not gentle, tangling in the blonde hair—hair that still felt like a costume wig to Marcus. The grip was firm, possessive. It should have filled him with rage. Instead, a shiver raced through him, a direct line from his scalp to the base of his spine. His body arched slightly, pushing his chest forward, an instinctual offering.
He looked up, making his eyes wide and innocent, the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling reflecting in his tears. “Show me,” he whispered, the Valley girl affectation gone, replaced by something huskier, more real.
As Chad guided his head forward, Marcus stopped fighting the feedback loop between his body and his mind. The gag reflex was there, sharp and physical, but he pushed past it. The tears still streamed, hot and silent, but they were no longer just tears of shame. They were tears of release. Of horrifying, exhilarating surrender.
In the muffled, rhythmic darkness, a new awareness dawned, bright and terrible as a supernova. This was womanhood. This complex, awful, powerful thing. It wasn’t softness or weakness. It was this: the capacity to hold devastation and pleasure in the same nerve ending. The strategic use of vulnerability as a weapon. The terrifying, biological authority of a form that could stop a man like Chad in his tracks and make him beg for more with just a glance and a pout.
He had built a temple to masculinity in his old life. Now he was worshipping at the altar of his own newfound femininity, and the hymn was a choked gasp. The body he hated was speaking a language he was just beginning to understand, and the message was irrevocable. He loved it. He loved the power it gave him. He loved the way Chad’s hands felt on his skin, rough and worshipful all at once. He loved the dizzying, subversive thrill of being the object of such intense, simple desire.
He loved being her.
He loved being her. The realization didn’t arrive as a thought, but as a full-body shudder that had nothing to do with the chill in the room. It was a seismic click in his deepest wiring. The tears on his cheeks were no longer just salt and regret; they were the baptismal water for a darker, more fascinating faith.
Chad’s grip in his hair was an anchor, holding him in the present, in this body. Marcus leaned into it, letting the slight pain sharpen the dizzying array of other sensations. A low moan vibrated in his throat, uninterrupted, honest. He pulled back for a gasp of air, looking up the immense landscape of Chad’s torso.
“See something you like?” Chad breathed, his earlier bravado softened by genuine awe.
Marcus answered with his hands. He pushed the sweatshirt off his shoulders completely, letting it puddle around his elbows. The cool air pebbled his skin. He looked down at his own chest, the full curves he’d avoided examining in mirrors, and a wild, giggling impulse took over. It was a release of tension, a surrender to absurdity.
He cupped himself, his new hands familiar yet foreign on the soft weight. He gave an experimental squeeze, and another breathy laugh escaped him. “Yeah,” he said, his voice thick but clear of the forced Valley girl act. “Yeah, I guess I do.” He looked back up at Chad, a mischievous, challenging glint in his wet eyes. “You like them?”
“Fuck yeah,” Chad said, the words reverent.
“Then come here and do something about it,” Marcus commanded, his tone dropping to a whisper that was all the more powerful for its quietness. He wasn’t asking. He was granting permission.
Chad didn’t need to be told twice. He sank to his knees too, a seismic event on the worn carpet, crowding Marcus back against the side of the bed. His large, calloused hands replaced Marcus’s, his touch surprisingly tentative at first. When Marcus arched into that touch with another deep, approving moan, Chad’s hesitation vanished.
Marcus threw his head back, the glow-in-the-dark stars swimming in his vision. Each touch, each rough caress from Chad’s practiced hands, lit up a new neural pathway. This wasn’t happening to him. He was conducting it. He was the architect of this pleasure, using this new form as both blueprint and material. The power was narcotic.
He guided Chad’s head down, tangling his fingers in the short hair. The sensation of a mouth on his skin, the scrape of stubble, sent a jolt of pure lightning to his core. His giggle morphed into a sharp, surprised cry. “Oh, god. Right there.”
Everything narrowed to feeling. The scratchy wool of the carpet under his knees, the solid heat of Chad against him, the overwhelming, consuming focus of sensation centered on his own responsive body. The shame was still there, a smoldering pile of wreckage in the back of his mind, but it was distant now, overshadowed by the brilliant, immediate fire of physical discovery. He wasn’t accepting this body. He was celebrating it. He was, for these stolen, profane minutes, worshipping it.
He lost track of whose sounds were whose, lost track of everything but the building pressure. It crested without warning, a wave that shattered the last of his resistance. He convulsed, a raw, wordless shout torn from his throat, his fingers clawing at Chad’s broad shoulders.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of ragged breathing in the dark room. The phantom scent of gym chalk and protein powder was gone, replaced by something muskier, more intimately human. Marcus slumped forward, his forehead coming to rest against Chad’s collarbone. The sweat on their skin mingled.
Chad stirred first, pressing a clumsy, final kiss to his shoulder. “Holy shit, Lexi,” he mumbled into Marcus’s skin.
The name was a bucket of cold water. Lexi. The phantom. The lie.
The euphoria began to recede, leaving a strange, numb flatness in its wake. The emotional whiplash was brutal. One second he was ascended, the next he was crashing back into the cheap set of his own childhood, covered in the evidence of a performance that had gotten too real.
“You should go,” Marcus said, the words muffled against Chad’s skin. There was no force behind them, just a hollow exhaustion.
Chad pulled back, studying his face. He looked sated, confused, a little triumphant. “You sure? I can—”
“I’m sure.” Marcus found the strength to push at his chest, a weak gesture that somehow worked. He needed the space. He needed the weight of him gone. He needed to parse what the hell had just happened in the silent, judging dark.
This time, Chad listened. He stood, moving with the slow, spent grace of a large predator. He dressed in silence while Marcus pulled the sweatshirt back on, wrapping himself in the thin, stained cotton like a shield.
At the door, Chad paused. “So… I’ll see you around?”
Marcus looked at him from the floor, a small, ruined blonde thing amid the discarded pillows. He mustered a ghost of Lexi’s smirk. It felt like a death rattle. “Maybe.”
The door closed. The footsteps descended. The engine roared to life outside, and this time, the headlights didn’t sweep the room as the truck pulled away for good.
Silence, deeper than before, rushed in to fill the space Chad had occupied. It was a physical presence, thick and suffocating. Marcus didn’t move from the floor. The numbness was fading, and in its place, a torrent of conflicting realities began to clash.
He felt raw, used, hollowed out. He also felt alive in a way he hadn’t since the transformation, every nerve ending still singing a faded, electric hymn. The disgust was there, a familiar companion, but it was now intertwined with a guilty, thrilling thread of awe. His body, the prison, had just shown him a secret escape hatch—a way to feel powerful, desired, real.
It was a power born entirely from being perceived as something else. As Lexi. As a woman. The contradiction was a knot he couldn’t untangle. He crawled onto the bed, curling into a tight ball, his mind racing in sickening circles around the memory of his own giggles, his own commanding whispers, his own surrender that felt like a victory.
Down the hall, behind another closed door, Leo was still, his back against the wall where Lara had left him. The ghost of her kiss was a brand on his mouth. The muffled, crescendoing sounds from Marcus’s room had finally stopped, leaving a silence that was somehow worse. He stared at his own hands, the hands that had so carefully held Lara’s waist, and felt like a stranger was wearing his skin.
Two transformations, one room apart. Neither one knew what they had become.