He pretended that the hair wrapped in his fist was much longer and darker, that the eyes widening were almond and black. That her body pressed against his wasn't too warm. The hands not small enough, skin that flushed too pink, pale water eyes that were too round even when desperately closed against reality.
And don't let it be said that she didn't do her part. For her, his hands were larger, rougher, darker in her mind than they really were. His body wider, stronger, harder. He was always immaculate. Cheek smooth and hands impeccably clean. They did get dirty, horribly so. But blood rinses so easily away. They weren't like the ones moving over his shoulders and down his arm, like her own. Clean, but only if you didn't look too closely. Clean after scrubbing and soap and scrubbing again. Grease and dirt and little cuts. Cuts that he always wanted to put antiseptic on.
She pulled his weight against hers, he wasn't close enough. She could still see the outline of his perfectly gelled hair in the periphery of her vision. There now, better. Too close to see anything. A small noise from her mouth as his hands slipped into her coveralls. Pushing them deeper into the shadows of the engine, his mouth moved down her neck that wasn't as long as it should have been, wasn't as white. Breasts tipped with pink instead of brown.
She was conjuring up tall and tanned and gruff, and he was gentle and careful and trying to make her more delicate than she'd ever be. And then it didn't matter because things had gone too far. It didn't matter that his hair under her clenching hands was too fine or that to his ears the voice that moaned, not whispered, his name was the wrong one. It was just silence and breath and two people.
It was difficult to keep it up in those last moments. Cracks would appear in the illusion. Neither of them knew exactly how the fantasy was supposed to end. Because 14 was still a little girl and a line had had to be drawn somewhere. Because the chain of command kept intimacy at bay. But it did end. Then there was his hand on her cheek and a quick soft kiss pressed to her forehead and her kind smile and a comforting hug.