The kiss still burned on his lips when Chloe pulled away and stood, leaving him shirtless on the thrift-store couch, his hand cold where her chest had been. She crossed to her closet—a narrow thing wedged between a bookshelf and a stack of laundry—and pulled out two hangers. The fabric hanging from them was thin, cheap, the kind of thing that crinkled under fluorescent lights.
"Stand up," she said, not unkindly.
He stood. His jeans felt wrong now—too heavy, too rough against skin that remembered being touched. Chloe held out the crop top, a stretchy black thing with thin straps that looked like they'd snap if he breathed too hard. The skirt was worse: denim, but short, the kind that ended mid-thigh and left nothing to the imagination.
"Arms up."
He obeyed. The crop top slid over his head, and the fabric settled against his ribs like a second skin—thin, clinging, showing every line of his new body. The hem stopped just below his breasts, leaving a strip of bare skin above his belly button. He looked down and saw the curve of his chest, the way the fabric stretched over his nipples, the sharp line of his collarbone exposed. His breath caught.
"Jeans off," Chloe said. She held out the skirt.
He hesitated. The words stuck in his throat—I don't want to, I'm not ready—but his hands were already unbuckling his belt, pushing the denim down his hips. The jeans pooled at his ankles. He stepped out of them, standing in his underwear, and the air against his bare thighs made him shiver.
Chloe knelt and held the skirt open. "Step through."
He stepped. The denim rode up his thighs, cool and stiff, the hem brushing the sensitive skin just below the curve of his ass. Chloe pulled it up over his hips and fastened the button. It was snug, hugging his waist, and when he looked down, the skirt ended a hand's width above his knees. His legs looked long, bare, pale—a girl's legs, smooth and shaven from the clinic's prep work.
"Now the top." Chloe reached for the hem of the crop top and tugged it down an inch, smoothing it over his ribs. Her fingers brushed the underside of his breast, and he flinched—not from pain, from the wrongness of being touched there by someone who saw him as a girl. But she didn't react. Her hands were clinical, efficient, like a nurse adjusting a gown.
"Turn around."
He faced the full-length mirror propped against the wall, and the girl staring back at him made his stomach drop. Dark hair falling past her shoulders, a face that was softer than his had been, cheekbones and a jawline that curved instead of cut. Brown eyes—his eyes, still his eyes—looked out from a face that belonged to someone else. The crop top showed the swell of her breasts, the flat plane of her stomach, the curve of her hips above the short denim skirt. Her legs were bare and long, ending in the sneakers he'd worn to the clinic yesterday. Yesterday, when he'd been a man.
This was who he was now. A girl in a mirror, wearing clothes that made her look like she was asking for it.
The craving stirred, a low thrum beneath his ribs, like a second heartbeat waking up. It was quiet, still distant—maybe forty minutes left, maybe less—but it was there, a hollow ache that had nothing to do with hunger for food. His mouth watered, and he swallowed hard.
Chloe came up behind him, her reflection appearing over his shoulder. She was wearing a loose sweater and jeans, her curls pulled back in a messy ponytail, and she looked at the girl in the mirror like she was appraising a patient who needed to pass inspection.
"You look good," she said.
"I look like a slut." The words came out flat, not angry, just tired.
Chloe's hands settled on his shoulders, light, grounding. "You look like a girl wearing a crop top and a miniskirt. That's all. Clothes don't mean anything until someone decides they do."
He wanted to argue, but the craving pulsed again, sharper this time, and the thought of a man's hands on him—not a fantasy, not a fear, but a need—flooded through him so fast his knees went weak. He gripped the edge of the dresser and took a breath.
"The clock's ticking," he said, his voice thinner than he wanted it to be.
Chloe's reflection met his in the mirror. She didn't flinch at the thinness in his voice, didn't offer comfort or correction. She just nodded once, her hands dropping from his shoulders.
"Then let's go."
She grabbed her keys from a hook by the door—a chunky keychain shaped like a cartoon cat, the kind of thing a girl would own—and slipped on a pair of sandals. She didn't check her reflection. She didn't adjust her clothes. She was ready, and the gap between her readiness and his terror was a chasm he didn't know how to cross.
"I need—" He stopped. He didn't know what he needed. A jacket? A second of privacy to breathe? The craving pulsed again, a low ache deep in his gut, and his mouth watered with the thought of what waited at the address on the card. But that was tomorrow. Right now, the clock was still running, and Chloe had said she'd help him practice.
This was practice.
He followed her out the door, the damp towel on the bathroom tile catching his eye as he passed. It lay bunched and forgotten, a wet crescent on the linoleum, and he wanted to grab it—to wring it out, hang it up, do something normal with his hands. But the door was already closing behind him, and Chloe was already halfway down the hall, her keys jingling against her thigh.
The hallway smelled like someone else's dinner—garlic and onions, the comfort of a life he didn't have anymore. The radiator in Chloe's apartment hissed one last time as the lock clicked shut, and then the silence of the corridor swallowed him whole.
He wore the crop top and the denim skirt. The sneakers from the clinic. The only things that still felt like his were the shoes and the thrum of the craving beneath his ribs, a pulse he couldn't outrun.
Chloe held the stairwell door open, and he stepped through.
The air outside hit him first—cool, damp, carrying the smell of wet pavement and the distant rumble of traffic. It was late afternoon, the sun low and amber, throwing long shadows across the parking lot. A couple of guys were leaning against a car, maybe twenty yards away, smoking. They looked up when the stairwell door banged shut.
Marcus's chest tightened. The crop top's hem had ridden up an inch, showing a strip of bare skin above his belly button. The skirt was cool against his thighs, stiff and short, and he felt the air move across his legs in a way that made him want to pull down an invisible hem that didn't exist.
One of the guys said something low. The other laughed.
Marcus heard the word nice —or maybe tight —and the laughter that followed was the sound of being seen, being assessed, being judged for what a body could offer.
He'd done that. Before. He'd been the guy leaning against a car, smoking, making comments about a girl's skirt length while she walked past. He'd been the one who laughed.
The thought hit him like a punch to the throat, and his steps faltered.
Chloe didn't slow. She glanced back, her dark eyes catching his, and she said, "Keep walking. Eyes forward. You don't owe them anything."
He forced his legs to move. The sneakers scuffed against the asphalt, and he fixed his gaze on Chloe's back—her loose sweater, her messy ponytail, the curve of her curls against her neck. She was a fixed point in a world that had turned sideways, and he followed her like she was the only thing keeping him from falling.
The craving stirred again. Closer now. Thirty minutes, maybe less. He could feel it in the hollow of his stomach, a hunger that had nothing to do with food and everything to do with the body he was wearing. His mouth watered, and he swallowed hard, tasting nothing.
They crossed the parking lot and turned onto a side street lined with small shops—a laundromat, a bodega with a flickering neon sign, a coffee shop with a cracked wooden door propped open by a wedge of cardboard. The smell of brewed coffee and steamed milk reached him before they were ten feet away, and he realized how long it had been since he'd eaten anything real. The dose had filled the craving, but his stomach was empty, hollow, a secondary ache beneath the main one.
Chloe pushed open the coffee shop door and held it for him.
He stepped inside.
The warmth hit him first, then the noise—the hiss of an espresso machine, the clatter of cups, the low murmur of conversations layered over each other like overlapping radio signals. The place was busy, clusters of students hunched over laptops, couples sharing pastries, a guy in a corner booth nursing a drink, alone.
Marcus saw him instantly. The guy—early twenties, brown hair that curled over his ears, a jaw that looked like it hadn't seen a razor in two days. He was staring at his phone, one hand wrapped around a ceramic cup, the other scrolling with a thumb. He wore a flannel shirt over a plain white tee, sleeves rolled to his elbows, and his jeans had a rip across one knee that looked deliberate, not worn.
Chloe didn't pause. She crossed the room with the ease of someone who belonged here, weaving between tables without apologizing, and Marcus followed like a shadow she was dragging behind her. His heart hammered against his ribs. The crop top felt thinner than air. The denim skirt rode up as he walked, and he had to resist the urge to tug it down, to cover the stretch of thigh that felt like an invitation he hadn't meant to extend.
Chloe stopped at the guy's table.
He looked up. First at Chloe—a quick, automatic glance that dismissed her as not his type—and then at Marcus, and his eyes lingered.
Marcus felt the weight of that look like a physical thing. It traveled down his body, slow and deliberate, pausing at his chest where the crop top clung, at the exposed strip of his stomach, at the bare length of his thighs beneath the short skirt. The guy's gaze came back up, and there was something in it—curiosity, maybe, or hunger—that Marcus recognized because he'd worn that look himself, a hundred times, on a hundred girls.
The craving surged. Low, insistent, a pulse between his legs that made his knees weak.
Chloe leaned down, her hands resting on the back of the chair across from the guy. She was smiling—warm, easy, the kind of smile that disarmed strangers. "Hey," she said. "My friend wants to fuck you."
The guy's eyebrows went up. He looked at Chloe, then at Marcus, then back at Chloe. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Chloe straightened, her smile still in place, and she stepped back, leaving Marcus standing there, bare-legged and trembling, the crop top's hem riding up as his breath came shallow.
The guy set down his phone. His eyes found Marcus again, and this time the assessment was different—slower, more thorough, like he was taking inventory of what was being offered. "She serious?"
The question was directed at Chloe, but Marcus heard himself say, "Yes."
The word came out in a voice that wasn't his—lower than the squeak of his first words in the new body, but still feminine, still a girl's voice, carrying a tremor he couldn't hide. The guy heard it. Heard the fear in it, or the need, or both. His mouth curved into something that wasn't quite a smile.
"You're shaking," he said.
Marcus didn't answer. His hands were trembling at his sides, and he pressed them against his thighs to still them, felt the cool denim of the skirt against his palms. The craving pulsed again, harder, and the thought of this man's hands on him—not a fantasy, not a negotiation, but a biological certainty—made his stomach clench with a hunger that was almost painful.
He didn't know this man's name. He didn't know if he was kind or cruel, careful or rough. He only knew that the man was here, and the clock was running, and Chloe had already done what she'd promised.
The guy stood up. He was taller than Marcus, a few inches at least, and he had to look down to meet Marcus's eyes. His cup was still half-full, and he left it on the table, abandoned, along with his phone. He reached out and brushed a strand of Marcus's dark hair away from his face, the touch feather-light, barely there.
"Let's go," he said.
Marcus followed.
He didn't look back at Chloe. He didn't know if she was still watching, or if she'd already turned away, already moved on to the next part of her life. He just followed the man across the coffee shop, past the cluster of students at the counter, past the couple sharing a pastry, past the cracked wooden door held open by a wedge of cardboard.
The air outside hit him again, cool and damp, and he realized he'd been holding his breath. The man's hand found the small of his back—light, guiding, a touch that said this way without words—and Marcus let himself be steered down the sidewalk, past a bus stop and a fire hydrant, toward a row of apartment buildings that looked the same as the one he'd just left.
The man didn't speak. Marcus didn't either. The only sounds were their footsteps on the pavement, the distant hum of traffic, and the low, steady thrum of the craving beneath his ribs, counting down to zero.
They reached a door. The man pulled out a key, unlocked it, and held it open. Marcus stepped through into a dim hallway that smelled like old wood and stale air, and the door swung shut behind him, cutting off the amber light of the afternoon and the ambient noise of the street.
The silence was thick. No words. No negotiation. Just the sound of a zipper.
The man's hand was still on the small of his back, a warm pressure through the thin fabric of the crop top. Marcus stood in the dim hallway, his bare thighs pressed together, the denim skirt stiff against his skin. The door had clicked shut behind them, and the sound of the street—the traffic, the distant voices, the life he'd been living five minutes ago—was gone, replaced by the hollow quiet of a building that held its breath.
The man's zipper had stopped. He hadn't pulled it down. He'd just touched it, a reflexive gesture, like a smoker reaching for a pack they'd already finished. His hand dropped, and he looked at Marcus with an expression that was hard to read—curiosity, maybe, or the same uncertainty Marcus felt crawling up his spine.
"You okay?" the man asked.
The question caught him off guard. He'd been braced for something else—a command, a hand on his shoulder steering him toward a bedroom, the rough efficiency of a stranger who didn't care about names or feelings. But the man was just standing there, his flannel shirt loose over his shoulders, his brown eyes searching Marcus's face like he was trying to find a person behind the trembling girl in the crop top.
"I'm fine," Marcus said, and the lie tasted like copper on his tongue.
The man didn't look convinced. He shoved his hands in his pockets, a gesture that made him look younger, less sure of himself. "You don't have to do this. Your friend—she kind of put you on the spot back there."
Marcus shook his head. "She didn't. I wanted—" He stopped, the words catching in his throat. What did he want? The craving was a low thrum beneath his ribs, a hunger that made his mouth water and his thighs clench, but it wasn't the same as wanting. He didn't want this man. He wanted what this man could give him—the salt and heat, the relief that would quiet the ache for another hour, another day. But the wanting and the needing were tangled together now, and he couldn't tell where one ended and the other began.
"I need this," he said finally, and the truth of it made his stomach turn.
The man studied him for a long moment. The hallway was dim, lit by a single bulb at the far end that cast long shadows across the floorboards. A radiator hissed somewhere below them, the same sound as Chloe's apartment, the same wet heat rising through old pipes. The damp towel bunched on her bathroom tile flashed through Marcus's mind—a mundane detail from a life that felt like it belonged to someone else.
"What's your name?" the man asked.
Marcus opened his mouth to say Marcus, but the word stuck. He couldn't be Marcus here, not in this body, not in this skirt. Marcus was a guy who leaned against cars and made comments about girls' skirt lengths. Marcus was a guy who'd never had to beg for anything in his life.
"I don't—" He swallowed. "What's yours?"
The man's mouth curved into a half-smile. "Jake."
Jake. The name settled in Marcus's chest like a stone. A name meant he was a person, not just a body. A name made this harder, not easier.
"I don't have one," Marcus said. "Not one that fits."
Jake's eyebrows drew together. He pulled his hands out of his pockets and crossed his arms, the flannel stretching across his shoulders. "That's a weird thing to say."
"I know."
The craving pulsed again, sharper this time, and Marcus's knees buckled. He grabbed the wall to steady himself, his palm flat against the peeling wallpaper, and the rough texture bit into his skin. The crop top's hem rode up, exposing a strip of bare stomach, and he felt the cool air against his ribs like a whisper.
Jake stepped closer. "Hey—"
"I'm fine." Marcus's voice came out thin, breathless, and he hated how it sounded. "I just—the clock. I don't have much time."
"Time for what?"
Marcus looked up at him, and the hunger in his own eyes must have been visible, because Jake's expression shifted—from concern to something sharper, more aware. Marcus didn't know what he looked like in that moment, but he felt it: the desperation bleeding through his skin, the need that made his hands tremble and his mouth water. He was a girl in a crop top and a miniskirt, standing in a stranger's hallway, and every second that passed was a second closer to the craving taking over completely.
"I need you to fuck me," Marcus said.
The words hung in the air, raw and unpolished, stripped of any pretense. He hadn't meant to say it like that—blunt, crude, a demand instead of a request—but the craving didn't care about manners. It cared about the heat of a body and the taste of salt and the relief that came when a man finished inside him.
Jake's jaw tightened. He looked at Marcus—at the bare thighs, the exposed stomach, the trembling hands pressed against the wall—and something in his eyes went dark. "You sure?"
"Yes."
Jake didn't ask again. He reached out and took Marcus's wrist, his fingers wrapping around the delicate bones, and pulled him away from the wall. The touch was firm, guiding, and Marcus let himself be led down the hallway, past a coat rack with a single jacket hanging from it, past a pair of boots kicked off by the door, into a small living room that smelled like stale coffee and the faint musk of a body that lived alone.
The couch was worn, a faded brown thing with a blanket thrown over one arm. A laptop sat open on the coffee table, the screen dark. A mug with a ring of dried coffee at the bottom rested next to it, abandoned.
Jake stopped in the middle of the room and turned to face him. His hand was still on Marcus's wrist, and he didn't let go. "Last chance to change your mind."
Marcus shook his head. The craving was a fire now, licking up his spine, making his skin feel too tight. He could feel the wetness between his legs, a slick heat that had nothing to do with arousal and everything to do with biology—his body preparing itself for what it needed, whether he wanted it or not.
"I'm not going to change my mind."
Jake's eyes searched his face one last time. Then he let go of Marcus's wrist and reached for the hem of his own flannel shirt, pulling it over his head in one smooth motion. The white tee underneath was thin, clinging to his chest, and Marcus could see the outline of his collarbone, the curve of his shoulders, the way his breath moved through his ribs.
Marcus stood frozen, his hands at his sides, the crop top's hem riding up as his breath came shallow. The radiator hissed somewhere in the walls, a wet, rhythmic sound that matched the pulse in his throat. The damp towel on Chloe's bathroom tile flashed through his mind again—a crescent of wetness on linoleum, forgotten—and he clung to the image like a lifeline, something normal in a world that had stopped making sense.
Jake stepped closer. His hand found the bare skin of Marcus's waist, just above the hem of the skirt, and the touch sent a jolt through him—not pleasure, not fear, but something in between, a recognition that this was happening, that there was no turning back now.
"Tell me your name," Jake said, his voice low, almost a whisper. "Before we do this. I want to know who I'm fucking."
Marcus looked up at him, and the craving pulsed so hard his vision blurred at the edges. He opened his mouth, and the word that came out wasn't Marcus. It wasn't a name he'd ever chosen or worn. It was just a sound, a syllable that rose from somewhere deep in his chest, carried by the hunger that had hollowed him out.
"Lena," he said.
The name tasted wrong on his tongue, but Jake nodded like it made sense, like he'd always known the girl in the crop top was someone else.
"Okay, Lena," Jake said, his thumb tracing a slow circle against her hip. "Let's go."