Sneak Peek: Book 2, Chapter 1 (Patreon)

Well, I've sent the prologue off to TGStorytime for publishing - it takes a bit of time to get validated but should show up soon. I'm still not really happy with it, but it's time to move on, I think. Consequently, please find below the first half of the 'new' - mostly edited - Chapter 1. It's a significant departure from the original. Among other things, K is no longer there to ease David into wakefullness. There's also a new flashback, to a memory with Sakura.

Here's the first half of the chapter! Enjoy! I'll probably start publishing it, piece by piece, over the coming week.

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Constant in All Other Things 2

Chapter One

by

Fakeminsk (fakeminsk@gmail.com / https://www.patreon.com/fakeminsk)

“Friendship is constant in all other things

Save in the office and affairs of love:

Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;

Let every eye negotiate for itself

And trust no agent.”

Much Ado About Nothing

Synopsis:

Previously on Constant in All Other Things:

David Sanders, misogynistic corporate executive and womanizer, oversees his boss, pharmaceutical magnate Jeremiah Steele, kill the son of a known rival.  Against his better judgment, David decides to turn to the authorities and testifies in court.  A failed assassination attempt forces the woman assigned to protect him, Agent Katherine Smith, to relocate to a safe house.  There she convinces David that his best chance of survival is to disguise himself as a woman.  David reluctantly does so and adopts the identity of Cindy Bellamy.  They flee to the Asklepios Clinic, a secluded medical facility that promises safety; on the way they shake off their pursuer, Agent Fosters.  David and Katherine bond on the road trip, though he wonders at times where her loyalties really lie; and they share details of their past.

            At the clinic David settles into the role of Cindy and several weeks pass.  Cindy helps another patient, Harry Longman, an aging rock star David idolized as a teen, and soon after Agent K returns to relocate David through witness relocation into his promised new male life.  Just as he prepares to abandon Cindy forever, Agent Fosters catches up with him.  David reveals his past contains its own violent secrets and the two fight.  He kills Fosters but is critically injured in the fight.

One: The Babydoll Whispered Its Secrets

Gasping for air, clawing, struggling upwards towards a surface that couldn’t be seen, like a man drowning and lost at sea—I awoke.

            Stucco whorls and dappled spray of light: details of an unfamiliar ceiling.  A lamp with a pink lampshade.  The mattress beneath me was too soft.  Sheets, smooth and cool.  There were muffled voices, at first weak and indistinct, briefly raised in argument and then abruptly gone.  Bright sun slanted through a window accompanied by a gentle breeze.  A distant rumble of traffic.  Hints of familiar smells: a touch of vanilla, and flowers, and fading perfume.  And finally, a metallic aftertaste at the back of my throat. Licking my lips, I found them tacky and sweet.

            Where the fuck was I?

            Turning brought a painful tug at my scalp.  Hair, pinned beneath me.  I had long hair.  Reaching for it, the sight of my hand: shaped fingernails, smooth and glossy crescents extending a centimetre past the tip and painted a pearlescent pink, highlighted fingers that seemed long and slender.  I wiggled them bemusedly.  Their movement were mesmerising. The hand itself was slim and well-formed. The skin, unblemished as though never knowing blister or scar, bruise or split knuckle, blood or pain. They were very cute hands.

            Sharp pain lanced my temple and I winced.  This . . . wasn’t right.  My hands, they were . . .  strong?  Calloused.  They were violent hands: an image of them curled around a throat. I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath. 

            Pain receded; I opened my eyes.  Those unfamiliar hands led to a dainty wrist, up a lithe arm to a well-shaped shoulder.  A delicate blue strap made a pretty contrast against pale white skin, leading down to a billowing babydoll that draped off of well-proportioned, rounded tits.

            I thrashed and kicked and freed my legs from the bed sheets and struggled into a sitting position so quickly that I felt dizzy and saw stars.  Blood roared in my ears before I calmed enough for the vertigo to recede.  Reaching under the sheer fabric, and after a brief hesitation, I cupped the soft flesh that swelled my chest.  Breasts.  Soft and supple, topped by large nipples over dimpled and dark areola.  I squeezed and felt their warmth beneath my palm.  I felt the grip on my chest.  I stared dumbly at the mounds beneath my hands.  One nipple poked rudely between my fingers.  Slender fingers.  Pink nails.  Breasts.

            Huh.

            I had tits.

            The pain in my temple throbbed, ebbed.  None of this seemed right.  But why not?  Why the reaction of a moment ago?  Thoughts formed and dispersed, like clouds on a windy day. One arm fell limply at my side as I stared blankly across the room.  The other kept its uncertain grip on the mound that thrust perplexingly from my chest.

            The boob beneath my palm felt real. So did the nails that dug int the soft flesh. Nothing fake, no prosthetics. The presence of those tits was too vivid, the touch too immediate.

            Why wouldn’t they be real?

            My other hand drifted across my taut stomach.  The skin beneath that touch was soft, smooth.  Fingers crawled over rounded hips and slipped beneath the wispy hem of what I wore.  Searching, they found a pair of lacy panties and beneath—well, I’m not sure whether what I found there surprised me or not.

            With one hand cupping my tit and the other my cock, I felt a moment of profound confusion.

            Think!  I grappled for a name—for my own, which suddenly escaped me.  The first name that came to mind was—Persephone. I shivered. No; that name carried with it pain and shadows and though I knew the name was important, it was not my name.

            A moment later another name forced itself to my lips: Cindy, another girl’s name.  The name brought a flicker of pleasure and familiarity—a fleeting smile to my lips—but somehow it didn’t feel right.  The name was—like a Band-Aid placed over a wound.

            Sitting at the edge of the bed, I winced with the effort of thinking through the dullness that darkened the horizons of my mind.  Sleep threatened.  It would be easier to simply lie down and worry about this later.  It felt strange that the name of two women came first. Despite the cock between my legs, was I actually female? I stared down at those fine tits. The memory of nimbly hooking a bra behind my back, of supporting and nestling their weight in lacy padded cups, fluttered to mind.  So, too, the memory of those nails, of sitting back as an expert’s touch painted and shaped them.  The phantom arch of heels; the shadow of a corset at my waist. A women’s memories, surely?

            David.

            The name burned away those feminine impressions. Yes! But also: no.  No—for a moment, the name felt as wrong as Cindy’s did—almost more so at first—a hollow, empty name—a dark name, without light; and I was about to throw it aside in favour of something further back. Another name hovered just out of my mind’s reach, a brighter name beyond the horizon—but as I rolled David across the tongue—as I compared it against Cindy—it became comfortable. I decided the name would do.  David.

            A man’s name and, looking past those fleshy weights on my chest, a man’s parts; I was definitely male, after all.  So how the hell did I end up sitting here in this girl’s room with a girl’s curves, displayed in gauzy scraps of girl’s clothing?

            Pain: my hand gripped my thigh.  Nails dug into a slender but fleshy thigh.  Detachedly, I noticed my heavy breathing—nearly hyperventilating—but why?  Somewhere in the back of my mind a muted voice howled in rage and betrayal, and fear; and faded and slipped beneath an inexorable wave of apathy. The drugged haze—for what else could this foggy detachment be?—kept the strongest emotions at bay. 

            My fist unclenched.  The angry welts left in my skin would fade. 

            Gathering strength, I stood—wavered slightly—found my footing and stepped away from the bed.  Those tits—my breasts—settled into gravity’s embrace even as the babydoll clung to me like a dream, whispered around my thigh and ass like the breath of a lover.  Long hair tickled my neck and tumbled down the small of my back.  My gaze drifted around the room with faint curiosity: from rumpled bed to cluttered bedstand; a rickety wicker bookshelf creaking beneath spine-cracked romance and suspense novels, a scratched table, a mix of half-melted scented candles and LED tealights. Jewellery boxes erupted strings of cheap plastic treasures.  A closet door, decorated with a ripped and mended poster of water lilies, leaned half-open. Within, a mess of dresses, skirts and blouses lurked. A battered dresser, some drawers half open, erupted with a rainbow of underwear and hosiery, the surface lost beneath more half-melted candles, makeup jars and pots and vials and pencils.

            And in the corner, half-hidden beneath a pastel pink hoodie draped over its edge, a full body-length mirror. A moment’s hesitation and I took a step towards it. The hoodie joined the other clothes on the floor.

            I turned the mirror and stepped in front of it.

            Softness: the first, overwhelming impression was one of softness.  Soft shoulders, wide but their prettiness accentuated by the delicate strap of lingerie.  My skin held a youthful lustre in the early morning light.  Then those breasts, small but perfectly formed, the dark, round circle of areolas and the protuberant nipples pushing out from the center. They sat high and proud over a taut, smooth belly.  Lean hips led to sleek and smooth legs, hairless and bereft of any hard lines of definition or muscle.  And between those legs: a penis, also soft and hanging limp and small in its gauzy blue veil of mesh panties. 

            My hair tumbled in a straight, blonde wave past my shoulders to mid-back. Framed between this golden cascade, a small and slightly upturned nose and beneath, lips that were soft and full.  A narrow, weak chin. Thin, curved brows; long, dark lashes. Green eyes. A girl’s face. Not my face, but somehow familiar.

            My legs went weak. I gripped the mirror’s frame. Without its support I would have fallen to the floor. I stared into my reflection and sought to know myself.  The room started to spin.  The girl in the mirror was me; I was the girl in the mirror; but—

            Pain: like a steel bar slammed upside the head—recollected agony of a broken arm—ragged breaths—shattered leg.  I winced and sagged.  I remembered a punch to the face; a burst of fire in my side. Still gripping the mirror’s frame, I sank to my knees. The babydoll whispered its secrets against my thigh with every movement, every breath of the wind.  And staring into the glass, I saw this person, this not-me girl staring back, eyed wide with confusion yet also—beautiful.  Even in panic there was no denying the allure of those eyes, and the meticulous skill of the cosmetics that emphasised that innate beauty. Mascara, eyeliner, the delicate blending of rose and gold shades, all focused my attention on those expressive emerald depths.

            Deep breath. Release.  I leaned forward until my forehead felt the cool touch of the mirror. In leaning forward, I felt the wispy tickle of lace and the tug of gravity at—my breasts—pulling—me down, towards the floor. The room spun faster, tilted. Nausea rose.  I gulped in air. Fingers curled into the carpet. Nails—pretty nails—glittered. Hair tickled my neck and fell across my face.  My stomach lurched.

            Looking up, I saw this pretty young woman in the mirror on all fours, face a rictus grin of pain, but I focused on the eyes--green, with grey flecks—my eyes; not my face but those were my eyes; this was me.  This is me staring into the mirror.

            I am David Sanders.

            And I remembered.

Two: Don’t Die

They came to see me in the hospital.  It did not occur to me then that they came out of kindness or care, though years later it occurred to me that maybe they did.  But at that time, lying broken in that antiseptic bed with its crisp, pale green sheets, all I could imagine was that they came to confirm my failure. I served as memento mori to Sakura’s children—not that I knew the term back then—a just-living reminder of the cost of failure and disobedience.

            First, Sofiya, pinch-faced, alert-eyed and cold. She slouched into the hospital room and placed a potted purple orchid next to my bed. It was Persephone’s flower—her favourite—and somehow Sofiya knew; but then, she always did, she was the cleverest among us. 

            “You’re an idiot,” she said.  “A fucking idiot.”  She slouched against the far way, every line in her body exuding disdain; later, I understood she cared, deeply but lacked the means to express this.  She visited often, hours often spent in silence. “Don’t die,” she said the last time I saw her, and squeezed my hand. “You’ve got a favour to cash in.”

            Dimitrios also visited; he also owed me.  I remembered how he ducked, instinctively, entering the room and how his bulk filled the space.  He towered over the bed, huge hands curled around the bed’s frame, squeezing and releasing, squeezing and releasing. His concern was genuine, but also selfish.  “I’m not done with you,” he reminded me. “Best out of three, yes? You better get better, yes? Quickly.” I drifted in and out of consciousness often during those early days of recovery, often waking to find him in the room, standing by my side, eyes on the door. 

            The last visitor was Emma.

            “You’re an asshole,” she said. Despite my condition, she punched me in the shoulder, and she derived pleasure from my pain.  We’d had a short fling, once, which ended when I met Persephone.  “A stupid fucking asshole.” She didn’t hold my hand or smile or wink to soften her words; she meant what she said, always.  “And you’ve gone and fucked it up for all of us.” But when she sat with me, she leaned in close and whispered, “she knew, all along.” Another time, she said, “You were always her favourite.” And the last time I saw her, “She wants to talk to you.”

            Sakura was both the first and last to visit. I was unconscious as she watched over me as she arranged for my care and recovery in the hospital. Four months later, the day before being discharged, I awoke from a brief nap to find her standing at the foot of the bed. The door was closed and the curtains drawn. Even the security camera, with its ever-blinking red light, was stilled. We were alone.

            “L—,” Sakura said, and here she called me by my first name, a name long buried and left to the past. I remember her as colours: red lips and dress, black hair.

            I sat up in the bed. It hurt but I suppressed any outward expression of pain. Even then, I didn’t want to appear weak in front of her. I still yearned to please her. I still needed her approbation.

            Silently, eyes glittering, she watched. Sudden fear trilled through me as it occurred to me that she might be there to kill me. My fear was short lived. I realised I no longer cared. Or perhaps I also believe that I was hers to kill, if she wished it. I already owed her my life: once, when she took me in, and again, when she brought me here to heal.

            I opened my mouth to speak, closed it and stifled my first instinct to lie or deflect or deny any wrongdoing.  Instead, I took a deep breath and riding a surge of emotions, simply said, “I’m sorry.”

            She nodded, once.

            “I—betrayed you,” I said. “She was… an enemy.” I took a deep breath. It burned my chest. “I knew better but I did it anyway because—” I trailed off, grasping for an adequate justification for having disobeyed the woman whose approval still meant more to me than anyone else’s. For nearly a decade she’d trained me, sheltered me, taken care of me and yes—used me; but also made me part of something bigger, even if I hardly understood what we did.  And I threw it all away because….

            “You betrayed me because…?”

            Her soft, flat voice gave no indication of either anger or disappointment.

            “Because I loved her,” I said.  And saying it out loud was nearly too much. Something precious and terrible and rare shuddered within me, flailed once and died.  A cresting wave of overwhelming rage and sadness swept through me and went still, and in its wake I couldn’t meet her gaze. Staring at the bedsheets, I said, “I loved Persephone, and now she’s dead, and I nearly died too.”

            Sakura nodded, once. Her steps were a whisper bringing her to my side. With a precise and elegant motion of a single finger, she drew her long black hair back over her shoulder. She leaned forward and kissed me on the forehead. I remembered that her lips were surprisingly warm.

            “Farewell,” she said, and walked away from me.

            I cried out before she left the room. “Was it you?”

            She stopped at the door and looked back over her shoulder at me.

            “Did you send the man, the one who killed her, the one who nearly killed me?”

            Even with the distance between us and in the darkness of the room, I saw her thin, red lips curl into a smile.

            And then she was gone. I haven’t seen her since.

Three: Broken Fragments

Eventually I pulled away from the mirror, though I remained kneeling.  The girl in the mirror followed every movement.  I wanted to ignore her but refused to do so.  I had to see who she was—not in broken fragments but as a whole, as a fully cast person.

            Slowly rising to my feet, I turned and confronted the girl in the mirror once more.

            She was both the Cindy I remembered, and a complete stranger.  There’d always been a lot of David lurking beneath the girl’s heavy makeup and the undergarments that enforced her shape.  Now when I looked in the mirror I saw much of Cindy and very little of David.  The alteration was subtle but profound: this new Cindy showed none of the rough edges or strong features that she had before.  Her chin was small, the nose delicate.  My once thin lips were full and held a playful curve that seemed to naturally rest in a slight pout. There was an overall youthfulness to her face, an almost childish plumpness that effaced every masculine trace.  Her blonde hair was shorter than the previous wig but long enough to brush her shoulders, with a slight upward curl at the tips.  Small, almost elfin ears peeked out, each one glittering with a trio of golden studs, two in the lobe and one higher up.  Light makeup gently accentuated her natural beauty.

            Her face had a deeply unsettling effect on me, but the body nearly unmade me.  Slowly, studiously—a vain attempt at controlling the chaos churning within--I studied myself and felt the room tilt and roll vertiginously at the realization of just how much they had stolen from me.

            Decades of discipline and work; uncountable hours of running and weights, workouts in the gym and training in private; sweat and pain and the burn of muscles and lungs pushed to their limit—gone.  Everything that defined me—stripped away. 

            How?  Flimsy lingerie accentuated how once strong arms were now slender and smooth, hard pectorals melted away beneath soft breasts, legs turned lithe rather than powerful.  My stomach remained taut, but no longer held their masculine definition.  Though my shoulders remained wide and hips narrow, there’d be no need for the heavy boning of a corset to create curves; this new body held its feminine shape naturally.

            I was—weak.  This weakness was felt as an absence in the flesh as I grew into an awareness of my own physicality. I was acutely aware of the denial of power that penetrated to the bone—an inability to change the world around me as before. Even at rest, I felt conscious of this newfound delicateness of the flesh: I felt horribly exposed and vulnerable.  Everything about this girl’s body was soft and weak and defenceless. 

            And staring aghast at my new reflection, I had a glimpse of what could’ve been.  Take away the breasts and the smooth skin and the curve of the hip and there was a shadow of a young boy, a man who never was: a scrawny runt who never met Sakura, met Persephone, learned to kill.

            But I also saw what should have been: the suddenly, startling impression of a battered and broken man: ribcage gaping open, leg shattered, face half-pulped, skin torn to ribbon, the entire figure bathed in blood.

            And then both masculine visions disappeared and what remained in the mirror was a supple young woman, healthy and whole. She was beautiful and she was innocent and she was me. 

            She was too much: I fell away from myself, frantically clutching at—the floor, the chair, the bed—for stability as my world spin away, tits jiggling obscenely as I shakily struggled to rise on all fours.  My torso heaved, and again, and I gagged as an empty stomach tried to expel the terrible fear that squeezed and poisoned my gut.  Yellowish-green bile spattered the edge of the mirror and the carpet.

            Crawling towards the bed, I squeezed my eyes shut and curled into a tight ball, legs pulled to my chest.  I buried my face into my knees.  My thoughts were incoherent, racing wildly.  Something terrifying and powerful broke lose within and I felt a shuddering cry rise through the layers of my being.  I stuffed the edge of my hand into my mouth and bit down hard enough to break skin, stifling the howl that threatened to tear loose.  I shook terribly.  Nails dug deep into flesh. The pain focused me.  Deep breaths.  Force down the fear.  Take control.  Remember Sakura.  Focus.

            I couldn’t say how long I remained coiled around the pain and hollowness I felt, half-naked in a strange bedroom, shaking and lost, repeating snippets of lessons like a mantra. As much as I tried to detach myself from my own body, from the fleshiness of this new femininity, reality would not be denied.  The awareness of every twitch and shiver of my smoother skin—the breath of the babydoll at my thighs—and the press of knees against those soft pillows on my chest: every shift of these alien proportions ate away at my perception of my self.

            Layered over all this, an overwhelming rush of emotions threatened to tear my mind apart. Ouroboros-like, my brain twisted in amongst itself, the same primal emotions driving thoughts without purpose as empty thoughts sought to consume themselves in a cycle that had no end.

            Betrayal: I’d trusted her; I’d trusted that bitch. Agent K: she’d used my trust to twist my body into this caricature of revenge.

            Loss: everything I had worked for and built up these past two decades was gone. Wasted and thrown away for nothing: my body, my work, everything I owed and everybody I knew. 

            Fear: mind-numbing, stomach-lurching dear at what I’d become and the kind of life this body demanded; and the seeming permanency of it all.

            And confusion: How?  How the fuck was this even possible?  I’d been all but dead, body broken, bleeding out, Jeremiah-fucking-Steele’s mocking voice ringing in my ear, my assassin’s corpse laid out next to me.

            It was too much.  Too much, and still curled into that tight little ball I fell back into darkness.