Sex in C Major

"Maybe I should stop taking them," he said aloud.

A guy standing next to him gave him an odd look.

"Sorry," Stefan said. "Talking to myself."

"Fair enough," the man said.

"I think I should stop taking them," Stefan repeated.

"Taking what?"

"My hormones."

The man frowned. "You take hormones?"

"Yeah. So I can be a guy. Only since I started, my sex drive's been crazy."

The man's frown deepened, and he glanced around.

Then, to Stefan's surprise, the man pulled up a bar stool and sat beside him.

"You're drunk."

Stefan shrugged. "Maybe." He did feel a bit floaty.

"You probably should stop."

"No. Need to forget about today."

"What happened today?"

"I got talking to this guy and it was going good and he was going to fuck me in the back seat of his car to pay for a date, only then-"

"Wait, to pay for a date?"

"Yeah. I've got these fantasies, see..."

"Okay," the man said, and tugged the shot glass away from Stefan. He downed it, and planted the empty glass upside down on the table. "So this guy, what, dumped you?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Cause he doesn't do women."

"Right..."

"Only I'm not, I'm a guy, I'm just not finished yet."

The man laughed.

"I'm not!" Stefan insisted. "Only I take these hormones and my sex drive is crazy and I wanked in a toilet earlier at the bus station."

"You wanked in a toilet?"

"Yeah."

The man laughed again, and waved away the bartender. "You're definitely drunk."

"I was sober then."

"Oh, wow."

"I just this guy dumped me and I thought if I'd told him face-to-face he might have dragged me into the toilets and fucked me to punish me, and I got off to that, I mean-"

"You might want to keep your voice down."

The man was suddenly closer. He smelled of cologne and aftershave and some kind of incense. He was dark in the low light, with thick, wavy black hair to his chin, but he had these bright blue eyes, like police lights in the dark.

"Why?" Stefan whispered.

"Because from what I gather, you're a little bit kinky. And that can be like a red rag to a bull in this place."

"Little bit."

"Mm. You like a man to hold you down and do what he wants with you?"

Stefan's breath caught. The room was suddenly too hot and too close, and the man's mouth was just inches away, and-

The kiss was sticky with alcohol, and full of promise.

Then a hand caught in Stefan's hair and tugged him back.

"Ah-ah,” the man said. "Getting ahead of yourself. You like tequila?"

"No."

"Have some anyway," he said, flagging down the barman again. "It's good for forgetting. Then perhaps we can take your mouth someplace else and get it under control, yeah?"

A hand slid over Stefan's thigh, hot through the denim, and squeezed.

Stefan's heart jumped, and his blood headed south. Rapidly.

"Yes," he breathed. "Sir." 2

The first thing Stefan knew was light.

Blinding, brilliant light. And it hurt.

In fact, everything hurt. His head was pounding. His stomach felt sore. His feet ached. And his jeans were digging uncomfortably into his skin.

Wait, his jeans?

Stefan unglued sticky eyes, and squinted through the blinding light. It was a wintry sun, streaming through a window above his head. He was in a small room, in a small bed, and completely alone.

For a brief moment, panic sliced through him. This wasn't his room. And how-

He raked his memory, and came up short. The bus station. Rubbing one out in the toilets to the fantasy of that guy hate-fucking him in the cubicle. Then he'd gone drinking. He had some hazy memory of vodka shots, and a lesbian couple having an argument, and bright blue eyes.

But he didn't know how he'd got here.

Gingerly, he levered himself out of the bed. He'd not had sex, he was pretty sure of that. And he was fully dressed the only things missing were his shoes and coat. He even had both socks on. And he stank like a nightclub toilet. Carefully, he cracked open the bedroom door. It only led onto a small landing, with two other closed doors and a flight of steep stairs disappearing downwards. The carpet was thin and the boards creaky. The window above the stairs showed a narrow street of terraced houses outside, bright red under a grey sky, and lined with badly parked cars. A bus was struggling to fit through the tiny stretch of road left available, and a couple of women in burkhas were pushing buggies single- file past closed front doors.