Gladys

by CliveLive49

'What – you want some big declaration of illicit love? Want to hear that he and me were plannin' to get married with the Munchkins as bridesmaids and skip off down the yellow brick road together? Hate to disappoint you.' Cross-dressing, gender play, lots of angst

Tuesday Evening

Alex had taken off her shoes an hour ago and kicked them underneath his chair.

''Ave you no sense of propriety?' he'd said. 'Luigi's payin' customers don't want to be stunk out to high heaven by your naked clod-hoppers, Bolly bare-toes.'

She suspected he'd said this to cover up the fact he was aroused by the sight of her bare feet.

Now it was half-past-ten. Between them they'd worked their way through four bottles of red in three hours. They were starting to slur, and the other few remaining customers were beginning to look at them disapprovingly.

It was time to make a move.

Gene wobbled to his feet, turning his jacket upside down and shaking it until his car keys fell from his pocket.

'Nnnn-na,' said Alex, making a swipe for the keys. 'You're not drivin'.' She tried to think of something biting and witty to follow that up with, but nothing bobbed to the surface of her mind.

'Never knew you cared, Gladys.'

He didn't even realised he'd said it. He continued to poke at his coat sleeve with his arm and miss repeatedly, like a bricklayer trying to thread a needle. It was only when he noticed that Alex had stopped struggling with her own coat that he stopped and said,

'What?'

Alex looked at him through narrowed eyes, as though she was studying a forensic photograph.

'What did you just call me?' she asked. She didn't ask it accusingly – just curiously.

'Dunno, Bolly-Knickers,' he said. 'Something suitably filthy, probly.'

'No,' she said, closing her eyes and chasing her train of thought. 'You called me another name.'

But she was too drunk to pursue it, and he'd fallen silent, standing stock still. His eyes were focused on something she couldn't see.

'You want to sleep on my sofa?' she asked, partly because she was concerned for his wellbeing, partly because she didn't want to be alone.

He was looking at Luigi, thoughtfully.

'In a bit,' he said, snapping out of his reverie. 'Gonna stay for another. You get y'self to bed.'

She was surprised and disappointed, but bone-tired. Unsure if her legs would hold her for another ten seconds. So she began to mount the stairs.

'Sofa'll be ready,' she tossed back over her shoulder, 'When you've had enough. 'Can't drive. Got your keys.'

'Mmm,' he said, absently, heading for the bar. Luigi had already poured him a double scotch.

1:30AM

Alex's cold feet woke her. She realised that she'd left her shoes in Luigi's.

Then she wondered where Gene was.

Perhaps he was still keeping Luigi up. Though he'd been three-sheets to the wind already when she'd left him. He'd barely be able to stand, now, if he was still drinking.

Her own head was still hazy with wine, or she might not have gone looking for him. As it was she pulled on a large white jumper, groped around for her door keys and made her way out into the night.

When she reached the pavement below her flat, she couldn't quite remember whether she was looking for Gene or for her shoes. Luigi's, she could see, was closed up and dark, the shadows of pillars and tables hovering behind the windows like sleeping monsters. She looked upwards, trying to make out the stars through the light pollution, and another light caught her eye.

It was a steady glow from one of the upper-floor windows in CID.

Gene's office.

The night duty sergeant barely batted an eyelid as she stumbled past him.

She was about to make a grand entrance through the office doors, berate him for preferring to sleep at work instead of on her couch.

Instead, she stopped short at the door, her breath misting the small square of window, peering in at Gene, and at what he was doing.

He was sitting at Alex's desk. In her chair. In the cold spot her arse had warmed five or so hours before. His jacket was on the back of her chair, and his shirt was hanging open, exposing his bare chest and belly, which were covered in a thin sheen of sweat. His chest was hairless, she noticed. His trousers were pulled down past his knees. There were no underpants in evidence.

The lights in the main office were off, but his personal office light was on, throwing beams of broken light through the blinds across the tables and floor.

He would've looked almost regal sitting there, resplendent and shameless, were it not for the quick, fervent movements of his arm – hard jerks from the elbow, angry and almost painful-looking. He was working his right hand up and down his cock, his middle finger and thumb looped tightly around it, the rest of his fingers spread, touching his cock but only lightly, glancing against it on every upward thrust. It was a strange technique – one she'd never seen before, but it seemed to be working wonderfully well for him.

Her initial shock and disgust was undercut by involuntary arousal and bizarre flattery – that he would do this on her desk, over her belongings and papers and photographs and name plaque.

Though there weren't any of her belongings on the desk, she noticed. It was populated instead by a collection of strange, masculine items.

A half-used bog roll – the cheap kind, clearly from the station toilets, its loose end trailing off the side of the desk. A half-empty bottle of whiskey, but no glass, and a burnt-out cigarette, the cherry eating into the filter, threatening to set the other butt ends in the ashtray on fire.

And Sam Tyler's leather jacket. Spread out carefully, neatly in the centre of the desk, with the red satin lining exposed. The arms were folded across the chest, crossed at the cuffs.

She let out a hard, astonished breath, clouding the glass completely. She brought her hand up and rubbed away the mist carefully with the tips of her fingers, watching him come slowly back into view, his image distorted slightly by the lingering moisture on the glass.

He was making low, rhythmic sounds. Grunts, coming from deep in his chest, and turning gradually but definitely into syllables, beginning as,

'Uh,' then forming into surprised-sounding 'oh,'s, bizarrely poncey, feminine-sounding for Gene Hunt. Alex supposed he only made these sounds when he was alone.

These continued for some time, and Alex wondered whether he was deliberately holding himself back, or simply too drunk to come.

Eventually, though, he folded his teeth over his bottom lip and came. As he did, he said,

'Fuck,' the 'f' drawn out for at least three seconds, his voice still disbelieving, surprised, as though he was outraged at his own hand for bringing him off.

Most of the semen landed in long white ribbons up over his belly and chest, but a little splattered forward onto the right sleeve of the leather jacket.

He lurched forward, fumbling to rip off a length of bog roll and scrubbing clumsily at the stain. As he scrubbed, his elbow caught the whiskey bottle and it fell over onto its side, the neck landing in the centre of the jacket lining. The liquid seeped into the red satin; a wide, quickly-spreading corona of deep red-brown. At this new disaster, Gene stopped, took a resigned breath and fell back down into Alex's chair. He reached for the bottle and righted it surprisingly slowly, resignedly. Only an inch or two of whiskey remained in the bottom of the bottle. Gene dropped his head into his hands. He worked his fingers through his hair roughly, scratching at his scalp as though it was crawling with an unbearable, fiery itch.

It was then that Alex stumbled forward, still half-cut, but caught herself before she fell entirely through the doors.

She made no sound, but he must have felt the gust of cold air from the corridor.

He snapped his head up and whipped it around to look directly at her.

For a second before his eyes focused on her face, the look in them was childish fright. Like she might've been a vampire, a flesh-eating monster, or a ghost from the past.

Then it was a strange look. Like he might've been horrified to be found like this, if he was sober, but the whiskey was weighing him down, trapping him in the seat, preventing his mortified clean-up operation.

His mouth fell open, and he seemed to be trying to dislodge words stuck in his throat, choking on them like chicken bones.

She came through the doors, closing them behind her and standing back against them, her palms pressed flat against their cool surface.

'Christ,' he said, eventually. 'Bolls.'

She tried to keep her expression neutral – un-judgmental.

'You've...' she struggled to find words, '...made a mess of yourself.'

He looked down at himself, as though he couldn't for the life of him remember how he'd got into this state. And she realised that he was a lot drunker than she'd first thought.

'Shit,' he said. His head lolled forward, his chin pressed into his neck. He made a swipe for the bog roll. 'Sorry.'

She was still dazed – still absorbing this bizarre tableau and all its implications. She took a few steps towards him.

'What,' he asked, forcing his words around a thick tongue, 'the hell're you doing here?'

She looked down unashamedly at his cock. And if there was any lingering doubt in her mind that this place was real, it was dispelled by the fact that it was slightly smaller than her ideal, with a strange little kink towards the tip, and he was uncircumcised, which had never appealed to her.

Despite all this, though, it was at once hilarious and beautiful to her.

She said the first thing that came into her mind.

'You said once...' she looked up at the ceiling, as if trying to pinpoint the memory on the black and white tiles, '...that Sam was a nutter. Like me.'

'Mmm,' said Gene, taking the sides of his shirt and dragging them together, apparently amazed when they didn't stick closed. 'Both of you. Nutters.'

'So I do remind you of him?'

He laughed – a strange, high laugh that almost set her laughing as well.

'Yes,' he said. 'Y'do.'

Alex was right beside him now, and he'd shifted around slightly in his chair to face her. The deep, burning smell of whiskey was rising from Sam's jacket lining. She looked down at him. He looked at her waist, down at his own hands, then back to her waist.

She leaned in to ask him,

'Did you ask to stamp his arse?'

His gaze couldn't seem to settle. He looked at Sam's jacket, then at his hands again, then down at himself, at his flaccid cock. Then he seemed to realise she'd asked him something that outraged him.

'You... watch it, Bols,' he said, slowly, almost threateningly. 'Really. You... just watch it.'

His expression, though, didn't look threatening. He hunched his shoulders and rubbed his palms against his thighs.

'Did you, though,' she asked.

'He...' said Gene. '...was a bloke. No. He was a bloke.'

'Yes,' she said, looking again at the piece of ruined clothing on the desk. 'And that's his jacket.'

5AM

She'd buttoned up his shirt carefully, let him tuck himself away and hauled him to his feet. It had taken them fifteen minutes to get to her flat, he leaning heavily against her, slurring occasional nonsense into her ear, some of it philosophical, some of it surreal, none of it about Sam.

After two hours dozing on the couch and four cups of coffee, he was coherent.

While he'd slept, she'd sat watching him in the chair opposite the sofa, unable to sleep herself, desperately tired but too amazed and vaguely uncomfortable.

Now he was sitting up fairly straight on the sofa, his long legs stretched out in front of him, his cooling coffee cup in his right hand.

'I know,' he said suddenly. 'I know your massive... psych-olo-scientist's brain is whirrin' away with all sorts of perverted thoughts. And all of them are a load of horse shit.'

She couldn't help it. Her tone became superior.

'You know, your very defensiveness in itself speaks volumes.'

'Your very gob in itself speaks a load of bollocks,' he shot back.

'You're very edgy all of a sudden.'

'Yes,' he said, 'because unfounded accusations tend to make me edgy.' He still couldn't manage his 's's properly.

She tucked her bare feet up beneath her.

'But you cared about him,' she said.

'He was always on at me,' he said, into his coffee cup. Alex could only just make out his words. 'Naggin'... chatterin'... rabbitin'... bleatin'.'

'The whole farmyard,' said Alex.

'Piss off,' said Gene. 'Sometimes I just wanted to smack 'im in the mouth because he talked so much. So much nonsense.'

'But you were friends.'

'He had small shoulders, though,' he said, ignoring her. 'Small shoulders.'

She remembered Sam's small shoulders. From the two times they'd met. They'd been covered by a smart grey suit jacket. Sam Tyler was a small man. Slender and almost skinny. She imagined him next to Gene.

'I'm sorry if I implied something that's offended you,' she said, managing to sound heartfelt and grudging all at once.

He took out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter from his pocket one-handed, put one in his mouth and lit it.

'Women,' he said. 'You, in particular.'

He was alternating swigs of coffee with drags on his cigarette.

'What?'

'Always have to turn things filthy.'

'I never said anything was filthy. You're the one using the word "filthy".'

'You're the one saying I was a poofter.'

'I never said anything of the sort.'

'What – you want some big declaration of illicit love? Want to hear that he and me were plannin' to get married with the Munchkins as bridesmaids and skip off down the yellow brick road together? Hate to disappoint you.' He was soliloquising now, and his drunkenness was falling away, the caffeine and the nicotine neutralising it, but making him edgy and restless. 'We were mates. He was a girly bastard and I was all man, but we weren't butch and femme, my lovely. We punched each other. Twisted each other's arms. That was the extent of our physical contact. You want to touch yourself up over that at night, feel free, but don't bother imagining anything more.'

'You want me though, don't you?' she asked.

Gene hesitated for a moment, looking at her.

When no answer seemed forthcoming, she sprang up from her chair.

'I'm going to the bathroom.'

He shrugged, and put his feet up on her coffee table. Sat back.

She wasn't expecting it, then, when she was reaching for the bathroom door handle, and he slammed her forward into the closed door. Pressed the length of his front all down her back.

'Makes your gusset moist, doesn't it?' he said into her ear. 'Thinkin' of it. That's why you're pesterin' me. Why you won't leave me alone. Nothin' to do with all your high-fa-lutin' concern for my feelings, or psychiatric curiosity, or 'owt like that. You just get off on it.'

'No!' said Alex. She tried to wriggle backwards, resenting being controlled physically. 'No. It is absolutely not like that.'

'Oh, but I think it is,' said Gene, and Alex felt his fingers close around her upper arms. 'You're just creamin' yourself over the idea of it, aren't ye?' He was dangerously close to her now. She could imagine the waves of anger radiating from him like an aura, along with the powerful smell of stale sweat and Old Spice.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' she said.

'Bollocks,' he replied. He grabbed her by the upper arms again and spun her around to face him. 'Did you want me to tell you all about it?' he said, his tone lowering, but not softening. 'Give you a blow-by-blow replay? Is that what you were hopin' for?'

'No – I...'

'-I could. I could tell you the truth. I could tell you about the first time.'

Alex's heart began beating fast. She became very aware of it beating, like a trapped live thing in her chest, hammering to get out.

'The first time the tension got too much for us,' said Gene, 'And we wanked each other off in the gents.'

A stab of arousal hit Alex directly below the waist and she drew in a sharp breath, afraid and electrified by Gene's proximity, anger and hot breath on her neck.

'Shall I tell you?' he said.

Alex felt unable to speak.

'Shall I tell you?' he said.

'Yes,' said Alex.

'We'd 'ad a fight about procedure,' he said, speaking into her forehead, his lips nearly touching her skin.

'Yes,' said Alex. 'Go on.'

Gene's voice was low, but loud enough to hear clearly, unfaltering, unbroken and firm.

'E was jabbering on about a proper investigative process,' he said. 'And I was shoutin' 'im down with all my common sense opinions on gut feelin', experience and intuition. I gave 'im a punch to the gut, and 'e said, "Come on then, have at me," so I followed 'im into the station gents, shoved 'im against the wall, and 'e shoved me back, and I shoved 'im, and suddenly the air changed, and 'e backed up slowly until 'e was in the far left cubicle, and this was so odd that I just looked at 'im.'

Alex felt her breathing quicken.

'After a second I figured out he was waitin' for me to go in after him, to fight 'im in that tiny space, and I was so wound up, wantin' so much to punch him again, I did, and I closed the door behind me. But instead of punchin' 'im, I just looked at him.'

Each breath sent tiny reverberations of sick excitement through her chest, up across her shoulders and down into her diaphragm.

'And then he was undoin' my trousers, and-'

Alex undid the front of Gene's trousers. Gene batted her hand away and tugged his trousers down to his knees, along with his y-fronts, and took his cock quickly in his hand, holding it up, almost presenting it to her, and she took it in her hand.

'-and 'e started to wank me off...'

Alex's hand was moving quickly right away, pumping with fast, steady strokes from the tip to the base, coaxing Gene's head to tilt back on his neck and his voice to slide down an octave.

'And his hand was as soft as a bird's,'

She began to twist her wrist, angling upwards, looking down to see the glistening pre-come seeping from the head,

'And small, stubby little fingers, but he was movin' his hand so fast, the sick, perverted little prick,'

He leant past her to press his forehead to the wall, bending down and curling in on himself, tucking his chin into the hollow of her neck, smelling her short hair. His voice was muffled.

'And God 'elp me, I was hard as a rock...'

'Aha,' said Alex. 'You're hard as a rock.'

'And then he-' His voice cut off with a choke.

'Then he what?' asked Alex, demanding. 'What? What did he do? Come on, Gene, tell me.'

'He got on 'is knees.'

And Alex let go of him and got down there, looking at his cock at eye-level, finding it somehow all the more daunting and dangerous from this angle.

She breathed on it.

He twitched.

'And what did he do?' she asked, her words ghosting over him, moving the hairs on his balls.

Gene said nothing.

'What did he do, once he got on his knees?'

Gene still had his forehead pressed to the wall, his form looming over her ominously, pressing the bumps of her spine painfully to the plaster, the hem of his shirt ticking her scalp.

'Guv!' she shouted, wanting to communicate that she wouldn't do anything more unless he said it out loud.

'He sucked me off,' said Gene, under his breath, grudgingly.

Alex lunged forward and took his cock deep into her throat. He let out an uncontrolled, unattractive sound, like someone finding that his bread had gone mouldy.

Then he was talking through deep, low grunts, turning himself and her on with his bizarre, lewd monologue.

'Took my – cock – in 'is mouth. And I bleedin' loved it. Had his mouth around me. He was usin' his... tongue, and suckin', and takin' me in deep, and runnin' his tongue around the head, and then movin'... movin' backwards and forwards, and makin' noises... Oh. Oh. Fuck.'

Alex began to make noises of her own.

She was groaning, from deep down in her stomach, the sounds pushed up from the base of her gut, trembling through Gene's dick and making her lips tingle. The tingles spread out slowly from the edges of her lips to her nose, chin and cheeks, until her entire face was resonating with unreal sensation, as though if she touched it it might dissolve away. Gene's fingers were threading through her hair, his fingernails making her scalp tingle, too.

She began to take him in so deeply she could feel him brush her epiglottis, and she opened her throat and swallowed back her gag reflex, sliding her hands up underneath his shirt and taking handfuls of the flesh at his waist, struggling to get air through her nose.

After a minute of this, she felt the muscles tense beneath the flesh she was clawing, and he shot off into her throat. Even though she'd been anticipating it, it shocked her, and she struggled to swallow it, pulling off him, coughing, sitting back against the opposite wall in the passage.

When she'd composed herself, she looked up at him and said,

'Clean yourself up. I'll be in the bedroom.'

When he came through the bedroom door, the lights were off. The glow from the streetlights was pressing gently against the back of the curtains. Her back was to him. The leather was looser on her – she was tall, but despite Sam's small shoulders, hers weren't nearly as broad as his had been. The sleeves, though, were just the right length. As she turned around, Gene saw that she'd fastened up the front of it. Its weight flattened her breasts and made the line of her chest almost masculine. And Sam had always been a slight, fine-boned man.

Gene hadn't even noticed that she'd brought the jacket back with her. He'd been too pissed at the time.

Her features were indistinct in the low light, but he was hardly looking at her face.

She took a step backwards, so that she was less real, more imaginary in the half-light.

'You can call me "Gladys" if you want,' she said.

'Christ,' he said, 'You're a nutcase.' He sounded, though, like he was talking to himself.

'I knew there was something,' she said. 'I knew it. I never thought it would be this, though.'

'I'm not queer,' he said.

'Never thought it for a second,' she replied.

He couldn't see her face, but she could see his, and his expression was awed, possessive. Ravenous.

'Been teasing me for too long,' he said, moving towards her. 'Kinky little sod.'

He kissed her.

It was a forceful kiss – bruising, violent – not how a man usually kissed a woman. Not how she imagined their first kiss would be.

She returned it.

He didn't put his hands on her head or in her hair – he had them on her shoulders, pressing down heavily.

The jacket was still damp inside from the spilt whiskey, and she could smell it, the fumes rising up past the collar, sharp and smoky, making her head swim. She was sweating.

He moved his hands to the front of the jacket and began to undo the buttons from the bottom to the top, then trailed his fingers up her neck to the hollow at the base of her throat and fingered the prominent bones there.

He looked down and seemed disappointed by the slinky blue feminine top beneath the jacket. He paused for a minute, as though weighing up whether to overlook it and press onwards, then he quickly undid his own shirt.

'Take off the jacket,' he said, and she did as she was told. 'And the top.'

She threw her top onto the bedroom floor and stood before him in just her white cotton bra – she wasn't modest, but she folded her arms to cover her chest until he'd taken off his shirt. He handed it to her and she put it on without hesitation, her breaths quickening as he did the buttons back up. It was far too big – billowing on her. The cuffs came down past her wrists, down to her knuckles. It smelled of male sweat and cigarettes. He stood back and looked at her.

'Put the jacket back on,' he said, and she did. His erection came up to half-mast. Then he walked back towards her, carefully reached beneath the collar of the jacket, pulled out the shirt collar and smoothed it down over the leather. He was breathing loudly, shakily.

'There,' he said. 'Smart as a soldier.'

He lunged forward and kissed her again. Then he reached down between her legs and cupped her roughly through her leggings, palming her outside of them.

She was still distracted by this when he turned her around, pressed her forward onto the bedclothes, pulled down her leggings and knickers and lifted up the back of the jacket to expose her arse.

'Christ,' he said again, pressing a palm to it. She tensed and shivered. 'Don't worry,' he said. 'Not gonna spank yer. Not a pervert.'

She wanted to laugh at this, but daren't. Instead she pressed her face into the duvet cover, not quite sure what to do with her hands. She bent her elbows, tucked her forearms underneath her biceps and clenched her hands into fists against either side of her face, bracing herself for something.

'Bloody hell, Gladys,' he said. 'You've got a fuckin' brilliant arse.' She'd never heard him use such foul language before this evening. He was a remarkable prude, for such a brute, really. To hear him spit out the word 'fuck' was thrilling – made her stomach clench. He put his other palm against the other cheek, but still didn't squeeze. Just let them rest there. She could feel the sweat from his palms making them damp.

Then she felt a small, insistent pressure in the small of her back, and heard him take a breath – deep, almost a moan, and realised he was leaning forward, smelling the back of the jacket.

Again she felt the urge to laugh, but knew that it would be a terrible idea.

'What am I going to do with yer, Gladys?' he asked. She thought it was a rhetorical question, but then realised he was waiting for an answer.

'I...' she said, then couldn't think of how to phrase it.

He helped her out.

'I'm goin' to fuck you,' he said, and she breathed out hard into the covers, suffusing her whole face in the warmth from her breath.

'Yes,' she said.

'I'm going to fuck you,' he said again, clearly liking the sound of it. 'I'm going to fuck you up the arse.'

'Oh shit,' said Alex.

He pulled away from her, and she turned her head to watch him. Her right ear was pressed against the bedclothes. She felt as though she was half-underwater, floating, peaceful and quiet but in danger of asphyxiating at any moment.

She watched him scramble in her bedside drawer – he found a diary, a lot of makeup, a Sony Walkman, several batteries, a small white vibrator and a tube of Vaseline she used as hand cream. This last he took out, uncapped and squeezed until half of its contents was filling his palm.

She watched him slick it over his cock, making it shine, his eyes falling closed as it thickened and stood up fully.

It knocked against his belly as he knelt on the edge of the bed and hoisted her arse up towards him, his hands underneath her stomach, and she couldn't keep her head at that angle any more – she had to drop it back down to look at the covers.

He didn't bother to ask her whether she'd done this before. He didn't put any fingers in first. Just held her buttocks apart and pushed in the head of his cock, hitting his target on the second try, forcing himself forwards slowly until he was halfway in. Then he paused, perhaps to let her take a breath, and pushed himself in the rest of the way.

'God,' he said. 'God. God. I'm fucking you.'

'Oh God,' she echoed.

'I'm fucking you up the arse.'

She made a tiny, impotent sound, reached out for something, but couldn't find anything to hang onto.

And he began to work himself in and out of her, slowly, and then more quickly, holding her waist tight, through the jacket.

'Gladys, you fucking nutcase,' he said.

'Ah,' she said. 'Ah. Guv.'

He seemed to like this. His pace quickened.

'Bloody...' he said, his rhythm faltering, 'Bloody... bloody nutcase.'

'Guv,' she said again. 'Guv.'

'Fuckin' you,' he said, ecstatically. 'Tell your Guv to fuck you.'

And she felt like she was in a bad porn film, but couldn't possibly stop now.

'Fuck me,' she said. 'Fuck me, Guv.'

She couldn't believe how lewd he was becoming. Her imagination had occasionally conjured dirty talk, but it was always circumspect. There was always a limit. Somehow she'd never imagined him being able to say,

'Gordon Bennett, Gladys, how does that feel? With my cock inside you? In your arse... Your... fuck... You goin' to shoot off? I am. I'm goin' to come. Any second. God. In your tight arse. Fuckin' Nora.'

Then it degenerated into almost laughable. Any rude word that came into his head seemed to spill from his lips, sentences dissolving into crude nonsense. And she couldn't help it – she was laughing, almost hysterically, and she could tell he was angry because he sped up, pounding her into the mattress, gripping her shoulders instead of her waist and growling, stubbornly refusing to stem his strange tirade of filth. But she couldn't stop laughing, and the convulsions brought him off, suddenly, milking him of three or four long squirts of semen, and the sensation was so strange that Alex was racked with a great shuddering shiver as he fell heavily onto her back, knocking the breath from her.

They lay there for a long, silent minute, before Gene roused himself, unpeeled himself from her back and pulled out of her gently.

She pushed herself up onto her arms, her hair falling over her face, and drew her knees up gingerly beneath her.

'Turn around,' he said, quietly.

She did, slowly, carefully, her behind aching beyond belief.

Then he took the jacket off her. Unwrapped it from her shoulders, gently, and dropped it down beside the bed.

'Lie back,' he told her. When she didn't move, he repeated himself. 'Lie back on the bed.'

She did as she was told, and he knelt between her legs, undoing his shirt again. She could still see the dried semen from earlier on his chest. He was looking at her face now.

She was amazed when he shuffled back awkwardly on the bed so that he was lying on his stomach, took his upper thighs in his hands and began to eat her out, his mouth wide open, his tongue moving in slow, languid circles, his teeth almost chewing. The suction from his mouth was forceful – incredible. He pulled back, rubbed his nose and his chin in her, and then took her in his mouth again, licking her with little finesse but amazing enthusiasm. He continued like this until she was so wet that he couldn't keep his tongue on her clitoris – it kept eluding him when he tried to tongue it, the tip of his tongue sliding in her juices. He held her open more firmly with his hands on her outer labia, but eventually gave up, groped upwards for one of her hands and dragged it down, separating her forefinger from the rest and pressing it to her clit. She caught on and began to finger herself as he spread her open again and forced his tongue right inside her, moving it in slow circles, thrusting it in and dragging it out, again and again.

When she looked down, past his crumpled shirt buttoned up over her breasts, the bottom hem brushing the top of her pubic hair, his cheeks and nose were shiny. His eyes were bright with excitement and she knew that her own must be too, at the wet, obscene sounds they were making.

Their arousal was working on a feedback loop.

He made a sound, muffled, helplessly turned-on, and she returned it. And they exchanged sounds like this, back and forth, working each other up to a frenzy, Gene's eyes becoming cloudier, more feral, and Alex growing impossibly wetter.

Her wetness began to drip down towards her anus, and she knew seconds before he did it what he was planning to do. He took the thumb of his right hand, smeared it in her juices and dragged them down and around the hole, circling it with his thumb tip and then finally dipping it inside. He continued to lick her as he pushed his whole thumb inside, working it around in the mixture of her moisture and the remnants of his semen, and she lifted her arse off the bed and came, making the strangest sound – low, rumbling, unreal.

4:45AM

'Do you sleep with all your DIs?' she asked, leaning back against the headboard.

'What a question,' he said.

'A valid one, I think,' she said.

He sighed, resigned to answering it.

'No,' he said. 'I don't sleep with all of my DIs.'

They fell silent for a few moments. They were sitting apart now, beneath the covers, keeping to their own sides of the bed. There was no post-coital cuddling.

'Is this how it was with Sam?' she asked. Pointedly. 'Afterwards?'

He glanced at her, but didn't reply.

Finally, she said.

'You never touched Sam, did you?'

He fixed his eyes on the standard lamp in the corner of the room.

'No,' he said. 'Never touched 'im. Never slept with 'im. Never saw the contents of his y-fronts. 'Part from when we used adjacent urinals.'

'But you wanted-'

'There might've been a time,' he interrupted, 'When it might've happened. But like I say. Not queer.'

She studied the contours of his face. His upper lip. His eyelashes. The corners of his mouth.

'It's a queer old world,' she said. 'I suppose we never really know entirely what we are.'

'I know what I am,' he said. In a tone that brooked no argument.

They lapsed again into silence.

'That's an awful name,' said Alex, at last. 'Gladys.'

'Good strong name,' said Gene. 'So's Doris. Mabel. Dorothy.' He looked at her, long and hard. 'You look a bit like a Dorothy, yourself.'

'Maybe I am,' she said. 'Maybe he went, and I came, and we're really the same person.'

'You're insane, Bols,' he said. He folded his hands across his chest. 'Mad as a box of frogs.'

'Yes,' she said. 'So was he.'