Sneak Peak: Interlude 2 - David and K (Patreon)

A little sneak peak at the week's writing: the scene I'd initially skipped over between K and David.  Chapter 5 ended with his arrival at Asklepios and K waiting for him in his room.  Here's that scene; it clocks in at about 2500 words, though some of those were stolen from chapter 1.  (I've killed the bit where K is sat at his bedside on awakening, and migrated some of that content to here.)

As always: this is first draft stuff and liable to change!

***

Who are you, Mr Sanders?

This was the question haunting Katherine as she observed the conversation with Crystal. This was the question haunting her two days previously, as she sat and waited in the solitude of the small apartment set aside for David Sanders at the Asklepios Clinic. This was the question at the front of her mind as she heard the subtle click of the door. He stepped into the room and tossed his handbag onto the sofa. He hadn’t noticed her yet.

Surprised, she was about to call out when his movement triggered the lighting of the room and he was suddenly bathed in a soft glow from above. A sudden surge of emotions whirlpooled through her, an exhilarating and terrifying sinking of the gut at the sight of the man. Katherine’s breath caught in her throat. The transformed man was pretty—very pretty, in the peach sundress and wedge heels she’d placed in the car for him, fingernails and earring flashing, long hair tousled from the extended drive.

She swallowed and called out from her seat in the dark corner: “Mr Saunders.”

Eyes instantly alert and wary, he stood silhouetted at the threshold of the room.

“We need to talk.”

He stared back at her for a long moment, features impassive. Spots of dried blood stood out like a dark constellation across the bodice and skirt of the dress. Slender fingers tucked a twist of stray hair back behind one ear, and he stood and stared at her for a long moment. He opened his mouth as though about to speak—but stopped, lips slighty parted, brow furrowed. Then he sagged and shook his head.

“Need a piss,” he grunted, and walked off.

Katherine waited, waited and contemplated the changes in her ward. The past six months had provided a steady stream of photos and videos of Mr Sanders’ ongoing transformation, but the physical reality was something entirely different. She remembered him as she’s last seen him, lying on his new bed, new curves veiled in a pale pink nightie, hair, makeup and nails freshly and lovingly done by the staff at the Clinic before transporting him unconscious to his new home. Even then, there’d still been a hint—much more than a hint, really—of the man beneath the surface.

But now? The most obvious were the physical changes, subtle but indelible evidence beyond the illusions of makeup and shapewear indicating the process of feminisation had continued. Subtle, but evident: a further softening and rounding of features once hard and sharp, seen in shoulder, chin and hands. Still slender, but with a definite curve to the hips absent before, an unmanly narrowing of the waist. And there was also a—she hesitated to call it a glow—an undeniable feminine property to his skin and hair, a vibrant sheen that spoke of girlish youth and vigor.

But most intriguing were the changes in behaviour: the hesitation in his response, an apparent nervousness, the unconscious ease with which he brushed back his hair and held his hands, fingers slightly splayed, at his side before turning away.

She heard the toilet flush but it was several minutes more before he returned. When he did, his hair was brushed straight and gleamed, and his lips glinted with a fresh coat of gloss. Smoothing down his dress, he sat opposite her with knees pressed together and to one side, poised at the edge of the sofa. Leaning down, he unbuckled his shoes and where his dress billowed open Katherine saw the soft swell of his chest. His breasts were larger, too.

Sighing with pleasure, he curled and uncurled his toes, nails glinting pink in the pale light. He glanced up, green eyes glittering through long lashes, and she saw there a spark of humour.

“Like what you see?”

“Yes,” she said.

He scowled. “You fucking bitch.” He straightened and the humour left as the spark flared into anger. “You fucking—you had no right!” He shook his head and swept the hair out of his eyes. “No fucking right to do this to me.”

She cocked her head to one side. “I saved your life.”

“You stole it,” he snarled.

“When I found you, Mr Sanders,” she said, “you were dead. Your heart had stopped. Your injuries were . . . they were terrible.” With the words came the memories. Desperate, rasping breath, her own, and pain and fear, scrabbling into the room, slipping, blood – her own, welling between fingers but then on the floor – so much blood – everywhere and the crushing sense of loss and failure.

“And it was my fault.” She accepted this, now even more than she had accepted it in those initial, frenzied moments in which she scrambled to save his life. The initial attempt to disguise him: not enough. The perceived protection of the Clinic: not enough. She had misjudged Steele’s determination to find him. She had underestimated the skill and resources of his agents. And when she thought back to those days at the Clinic, she could see now that leaving David alone had been her mistake. Blinded by her own arrogance, distracted by emotion and desire, she had failed in her duty. “It nearly cost you your life.” She shook her head, one hand drifting to her side. “It nearly cost me mine as well.”

Flinty steel scored her voice as she continued. “And I swore then that I would not fail again. I determined then that you would live, Mr Saunders, no matter the cost; and that cost would be great, as Steele’s grasp was closer than ever.”

“Cost?” David snorted. “Cost!”

“Yes, cost,” she answered. “You are not the only one who has suffered and lost,” she continued. “You are not the only one who has paid a cost these past six months. Cindy—”

“David,” he interrupted.

“I spoke to him, Cindy, on the phone we found clutched in your hand.” The conversation had been brief, intense, and she thought of it daily. So much hinged on those words exchanged with Steele. “Briefly. And I glimpsed the depth of this man’s obsession with you. It borders on madness, I think. And in that moment I understood that Steele’s very obsession to revenge himself against you could be made to work against him.

“But we needed time. And we didn’t have any. You’d given your location away. He knew with certainty where to find you and that your body was broken. It was a miracle you survived one attack,”—and again she wondered, how Mr Saunders? Who are you, Mr Sanders?—“but with arms and legs broken, a punctured lung, shattered ribs and a concussion? You were defenceless. You needed months of bed rest to heal, possibly a year or more of physiotherapy to regain full mobility. And in the meantime Steele would be searching for you.”

“Bullshit,” he said. “Fuck you,” he said. “You could’ve John Doe’d me in a hospital in the middle of butt-fuck nowhere and left me to recover.” His voice trembled with barely suppressed rage. “You could’ve of… tried, something, anything else.” His entire body tensed and for a moment it seemed he was about to launch himself at her, the angry lines of his form an incongruous contrast to the delicate fall of his dress, the lilt of his voice. “You could’ve left me to die,” he nearly whispered, and he sagged, suddenly, collapsing back into the sofa. “You didn’t even ask.”

Katherine cocked an eyebrow. “Ask a dead man for permission to save his life? No, Mr Saunders, I did not ask. No. Instead, I made the necessary arrangements to ensure your survival.”

“Survival?” Hefting the generous swell of his breasts with both hands, he presented their fullness to her as though on a platter. “Look at these thing! You gave me tits – real fucking tits!—and a life to go with them. What, exactly, of David Saunders’ life -survived-?”

Katherine pursed her lips. “Mr Saunders. The facility you were at is small: under two hundred patients with slow turnover; and nearly as many staff. We knew already that Steele had hacked the Clinic’s network and bypassed their security systems, infiltrating the Clinic with his own agents. He has the time and the resources; he now had patient names, staff names, addresses, medical records. What we didn’t know was whether he had linked -you- with the identity of Cindy Bellamy.

“Meanwhile, we could not risk moving you. You had to remain at the Clinic and heal. And by the time you could be moved—Steele could easily track the movement of everyone coming and going from Asklepios.”

Pinching at the bridge of her nose, she winced at the memory of the decisions made then, of Scooters offer and the risks involved. Fixing Mr Saunders with an angry glare, she continued. “What choice did I have, David? By the time we could move you—the movement of an unlisted male patient would not have gone unnoticed.

“So I made a choice.” A choice rooted in tragedy: the suicide of a young woman, a rare failure by the Clinic to heal and rehabilitate a patient. Cindy Bellamy, already a patient at the Clinic, already a month into her treatment with a digital record reaching even further back. A life, tragically cut short – but lost in secrecy—perfect, it turned out, for someone to adopt and continue.

Mr Saunders glared at her, bright green eyes smouldering with anger and hatred. She was struck by the beauty of the man’s face—the prettiness of his emotion—the way the delicate strap of his sundress slipped down his shoulder as he trembled with anger. “Choice? -Your- choice?” he hissed. “You took -everything- from me, K. I had… a life! A life, and a pretty damn good life, too, one I worked my ass off to build. You have any idea how hard—a job, K, I had a fucking job, a high-paying one, I was near the top, you know? You have any idea how hard I worked to get there? With interns and a free gym and, and… shit. I had my own office! And…”

Red-faced, he sputtered, reaching for more to add.

“And?”

“And…” He scowled. “I had a home, K! I was half-way through the goddam mortgage on my condo. And a brand new car. And I had… I had friends! Friends and a favourite bar and—they knew me by name down at the Clocktower.” He jabbed a finger at her. “They knew my -name-, K!”

For a moment his voice turned plaintiff, and he swallowed, and then he was yelling at her. “And… stores! I had a thing going with the girl behind the counter at the corner store, her name’s Kayla and…” He pounded one fist into his palm. “Girls! Getting laid every goddamn weekend, K!”

Watching and listening to his rant, Katherine noted how performative it was. Bemused, she saw this man from whom everything had been taken grasping for anything he truly cared about. The anger was genuine, but hollow: without any real sadness or loss, only outrage remained.

“And I had fucking muscles!” Slender fingers wrapped around his thin bicep as evidence. “I was… strong. And you—you gave me, what, in return? Tits! Skirts and heels and some shitty little apartment on the edge of town. A job as a, what, a goddamn secretary? And this—somehow—you call this a choice?”

“Yet here you are, Mr Saunders. Alive.”

“No.” He jumped to his feet and stalked up and down the narrow space of the lounge. “That’s not good enough! You could’ve found another way.” He stopped and shouted at the ceiling. “Fuck!” Resuming his pacing, he continued. “Do you have any idea what it was like, waking up in that apartment on my own? Waking up Cindy, with no idea of how I got there?”

“I am sorry,” she said.

“Sorry? I nearly went crazy, K! Nearly. And there I was in a body I didn’t recognize with clothes that weren’t mine and pictures of me I didn’t remember and then I realised—you’d betrayed me.” He stopped and spun and pointed a finger at her. “This was all you. You wanted this—me—you like it, don’t you, watching me prance around in these dresses like some fucking fairy, putting makeup on my face… degrading myself every fucking day, the shame and humiliation.”

“There is no shame to being female, Mr Saunders. It is not degrading.”

He returned to her, though even standing and with her sitting they were at equal height. “You don’t believe that,” he said.

Katherine stood. With her height , in her low heels and him barefooted, she nearly towered over the feminised man. “You say I take pleasure in seeing you like this?” With the back of one hand gentle stroked his cheek. She thrilled at the smoothness of the skin, at the way he seemed to unconsciously lean into her touch. “Yes,” she said. She leaned in and whispered in his ear. “Do you remember, Mr Saunders? You asked once me who Cindy was, and I told you: she is weaker, yes? Weaker than you were, and coy and demure. And so very soft.” She held his chin, gently, aware of how he trembled under her touch. “And so, yes, David, I do like you this, very much so.”

And her lips found his, in a single, deep kiss, fleeting yet passionate. She tasted his lipstick and felt the softness of his lips and wanted to run her fingers through his long hair and slide the other strap down his smooth shoulder and grab him by throat and pull him to her so that they crushed together and she could feel the rounded flesh of his chest against hers—Katherine wanted all this and more, much more; but she pulled away.

He stood there, swaying slightly, one finger held to his lip. “You bitch.”

“You are alive, David.” She sighed and sank back into the chair. “Six months, yet you remain alive despite the unfettered attention and efforts of one of the richest and most powerful men on the planet to revenge himself against you. Do I take pleasure in seeing you like this? Yes, Mr Saunders, because it worked; because there was no other alternative; because you are alive.

“And so, David– Cindy–I do not offer you an apology.”

He fell back into the sofa opposite, legs splayed as wide as the dress would allow, arms stretched across the back. He stared up at the ceiling. “And so now what?”

“Now?” Her eyes lingered over the slight frame of the man sat opposite. Katherine licked her lips and smiled. “You enjoy the hospitality of the Clinic.”

“Yeah, sure.” Still staring at the ceiling, he waved one arm to take in the room. “Whatever. But it’s not like this little face-to-face needed to be here, right? What’d you drag me out here for?”

“Ah. For that, you will have to speak to Jonathon.”

“He’s here?”

“Yes.”

“To undo all of… this?”

“That,” Katherine answered. “Is not my decision.”

***

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