@apfelhalm the second half of your prompt ask (for this drabble game) <3
83. “I didn’t want you to see this.” + timsax | 820 words
It’s a ritual.
Close the bedroom door. Wait for silence. Undress mechanically, fold the clothes on the bed. Then, take the package out from the hidden drawer in his closet. Put them on, (ignore the tremor in his fingers), let the heady feeling wash over him, and slip through.
He’s got half an hour before his family comes back. Enough time.
As soon as he catches his reflection in the mirror, the shape it takes, the way his silhouette morphs, something deep within him unwinds. It loosens the lump constantly in his throat and wells up in his eyes. He breathes out softly, (ignores the voice that screams wrong, disgusting, freak, fag) and touches himself. Carefully. Over his hairy thighs, the dip where his love handles appear, meeting the fabric, then up his chest. Slow strokes. Ones that make this real. He turns around, pretends the mirror is an audience. All the while his head starts buzzing like it’s filled with cotton candy, he sways, dazed, and high on this feeling, disconnected, and too high, because he doesn’t notice the noise until it’s too late.
The distant, “Hey son, I forgot my wallet, did you see it by—”
The door to his bedroom door slams open.
Saxon freezes.
The world freezes.
His blood pulses loudly in his temples, so loud it’s deafening. Shame and disgust slam into him so violently he can barely stop himself from retching, his throat tied into a knot. His eyes screw shut on instinct, muscles stiffening. Tight enough to pretend this isn’t happening. (It isn’t.)
When the silence stretches on, he grits out, the words painfully stained humiliation, “I didn’t want you to see this.”
This. Easier to detach himself from it if it’s a this. It’s not him. It’s not him, can’t be him, he’s not that, he can’t be, because—he’s just not.
He doesn’t open his eyes. Can't.
Tentative footsteps get louder.
Saxon holds his breath. He wants the ground to swallow him open, to chew him up and digest him until he’s left in pieces, he wants the violence inside him to surge, to wreck him to pieces, he wants to stop feeling so wrong, and he wants to stop hating feeling so right. (Why can't he be normal?)
Heat curls around his hip, ghosting at his back, startling him to the present. His eyes snap open. Fear fires through his veins, but the scene he finds reflected in the mirror is not what he predicted, too close to something he couldn't have imagined in his wildest fantasies, it’s almost too much too bear.
He can’t breathe. It’s too much—not enough. It’s wrong, so wrong, so deliciously wrong, he can't get enough of it.
“Dad?” he asks, voice quiet, too quiet, scared to shatter the peace. They fit nicely together, he thinks. His packed frame is still relatively small compared to Tim's imposing one. The feminine underwear so sinful against the white shirt and black vest looming behind him.
Those rough fingers, worn out by life, wrinkled with power and grace, trace the curve of his body, going over the lace carefully. The touch is so reverent it sends cracks of heat down Saxon’s navel, makes his eyelashes flutter against his will. It takes everything not too lean into that hand.
“This is new,” his dad notes. Neutrally.
Saxon can’t speak. Can’t do anything but stand still, heart batting its wings. Wait for the shoe to drop.
Then, those knuckles take the strap of the bralette and let it slap against his skin. The sting of pain sparks a gasp out of Saxon, makes something stir within him that will be hard to hide in any second as his body reacts, so sensitive. His dad doesn’t back away, merely hums, like he’s pleased. (Proud?)
Then, his thumb catches over Saxon’s nipple, tickling it through the fabric until it hardens, and the dam bursts.
“Dad.” A broken moan, a plea.
“That’s my son.” Voice so deep and rough Saxon can barely recognize it, and it drenches his body with the wrong kind of acceptance, the one that has him pushing against his underwear for more, head falling back against a broad, firm chest—the one that has him no matter what, the pillar he's leaned against on all his life. He hangs there, like a willing sacrifice, bare for the taking.
His dad kisses his forehead, and holds him. (Possessively?)
Saxon breathes, and accepts this strangelike peace, this new feeling of wrongness he can’t resist. He's never been good at that, after all. But it feels okay giving it to it, to the one person can give him absolution. That does so, now.
It’s a ritual.
But from now on, he won’t have to pretend the mirror is an audience, for he has one that is drinking the sight of him with more hunger and praise than a piece of glass ever could.
