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“Roland… may I inquire about something?”
The question cuts through the relative silence of Roland’s apartment, through the quiet sizzling of oil on the frying pan and the humming of mentioned Librarian that helps him keep up the mood. He looks up from the table and the onions he’s just finished cutting and tilts his head as he turns to face his partner. Hokma stands in the doorway, having walked from the bedroom where he was previously busy with dressing up. It’s not finished as his attire in front of Roland is only underwear and a loose unbuttoned shirt – this time, it’s not his own.
“Just be quick about it. Cooking doesn’t wait, you know?” His voice is relatively calm and lighthearted in sound but he freezes when he sees the object of Hokma’s question. There’s a dark blue lacey bra in his right hand, and it takes Hokma a great effort to stare at Roland as he talks, not the suspicious piece of lingerie.
“Is there additional context to this piece of garment being inside your closet?” He asks this question in a tone that Roland rarely hears him use – confusion and even some anxiety are not something frequent in Hokma’s voice. Yet they emerge.
Roland overcomes the initial shock of seeing Hokma holding a women’s bra with a straight face and allows himself to snort a laugh. “You’re not gonna believe me,” he starts with a nonchalant smile, and Hokma nods with the same amount of confusion in both his gaze and voice.
“Do try to explain still.”
“Haha… ohh… you know, I’ve once found it over my shoulder as I came back from a party.” Hokma’s eyes narrow at that, making Roland wave his hands hurriedly in attempt to soften the blow. “A long time ago! Even before we got together. I don’t remember coming home so wasted afterwards, ha ha… Anyway. I come to the bathroom, I look at myself in a mirror and there’s this… lovely gift from I don’t know who. But I don’t remember undressing anyone there – not because I was that drunk, I just didn’t do anything of the kind at parties, only drank and had fun.”
Hokma stares at him wordlessly, and Roland starts to feel uncomfortable. Does the older man not believe him?.. What’s so bad about his story that it causes such dumbfounded look on Hokma’s face? He opens his mouth to elaborate further and closes it as Hokma interrupts him.
“Why do you keep it at your personal belongings?”
A valid question. Roland sighs and averts his gaze for a moment. “I guess I just threw it there and forgot that it’s even present in my things.”
“You could have discarded it immediately by just disposing of it,” Hokma notes quietly. “Why did you not?”
“I forgot… gah, the fact that it’s even a thing that existed in my past came back to my memory just now when you showed it to me.”
Roland looks up at him with the closest thing he can make to a puppy eyes look. “Don’t you trust your boyfriend?”
His words make Hokma roll his eyes a little – a good sign which means his attitude is going back to the usual Roland-related behavior. “I am attempting. But I suppose you can imagine how unusual the situation looks and sounds for me.”
“Yeah, I can imagine. Don’t worry, I’ll get rid of the damn thing… later when I’m done with the meal.”
“I can do that for you,” Hokma notices, still somewhat confused. “Destroying objects is trivial in the Library, don’t you…”
“Yeah, right, I remember. Just…”
Roland gestures vaguely in the bra’s direction. “I prefer to handle things inside my flat myself, alright? Leave it… I dunno, put it back where you found it. Why did you even tuck your nose into my closet, by the way?” His voice becomes a little more pushy. “I thought you’ve got enough clothes to cover yourself. And your size is bigger than mine anyway!”
“Not by a big margin. This shirt is yours,” the other librarian responds without any remorse whatsoever. “You have ruined mine, in case you already forgot what happened half an hour ago.”
“If not for your habit of keeping it on, you wouldn’t have stained it with any organic fluids,” Roland mutters defensively. He does have to admit though that his shirt fits Hokma just fine this time. Maybe it’s one of those he picked in attempt to wear slight oversize. Thankfully, after this little exchange Hokma turns and walks back to the bedroom to return the scandalous piece of clothing to its original place, and Roland breathes out a deep sigh of relief. Not this time, it seems.
The next time Hokma ventures into the depths of Roland’s wardrobe is about two weeks after the lacey bra incident, and this time it’s not for his own sake but for the original owner’s. Unprecedented, but it is a morning they overslept – they never set an alarm clock because Roland joked about Hokma’s inner sense of time to be perfected and trusted his judgement on that. Indeed, with his usually poor resistance to insomniac late night musings and overall tendency for light sleep, Hokma woke up at early hours and never failed to wake his partner as well. Today something interfered with the mechanism in his head, not to say that it was for reasons unknown but however much reasonable it’s been – still, unpleasant. The two fumble through their clothes, trying not to mix up each other’s shirts and such, and at some point Hokma reaches into the cupboard to extract a fresh pair of boxers for Roland.
Instead, his fingers brush against something much more rubbery… leathery, even. He grabs the suspicious object and pulls out a fine red leather skirt. Judging by the size, this belonged someone with a nice set of hips. But Hokma doesn’t think of that too much, his thoughts interrupted by a flash of something searing hot in his chest. Jealousy.
“I thought your unusual afterparty findings stopped at the first time,” he mutters grimly, holding the skirt up in the air. Roland looks up from his attempts to put on socks and his face visibly pales. He curses under his breath and gives up attempts to put on the sock while standing, instead plopping down on the bed.
“They did. It’s… it’s not from a party, it’s a different thing.” His voice sounds tired already and it’s merely morning hours…
“I would very much prefer to hear the reason for this different thing,” Hokma speaks, relentless and already less warm in his tone. Not that he was most amiable on a daily basis… and it only makes the situation worse. Roland hasn’t heard Hokma turning outright hostile in a very long time. He’s not hostile yet but with the way it goes…
“…It’s for artistic reference.”
“Reference.”
“Yes… You see, I’ve been told to pick up some hobbies for free time, all that. Tried the fine arts. Drawing from life, you know. I’ve had a picture in my mind that I couldn’t get right without looking at how a real skirt would curve…”
“So you invited a model to your room,” Hokma spits out ahead of him. At this point, his trust is already rather thin. Roland hisses and shakes his head in slight panic.
“No, damn it. Pauline would never…” He sighs and runs a hand through his hair; Pauline, the only female assistant librarian among his crew, isn’t a total stranger to arts but posing for someone… not really her cup of tea. Though, he thinks for a moment, he never asked. “She gave me her skirt though. I didn’t need a specific kind of skirt, just any. She helped me out. Don’t stare at me like I’m some kind of a pervert asking for girls to donate clothing to me…”
On his last words, Hokma averts his gaze. Maybe he really is making Roland uncomfortable, but there is a damn good reason for it. Encountering one article of female clothing in the wardrobe of your partner, the man who only shares his bed with you at the moment, could be a weird incident; second time could be written off as a coincidence but Hokma really doesn’t feel like it’s one. There must be something else about these occurrences.
Out loud, he sighs and tries his best to keep a cool appearance. Like all of this, and especially Roland’s poor explanation, is nothing to dwell on. Like he believes and understands, even if it becomes progressively harder. Next time he’ll end up squeezing a camel through a needle’s eye.
“Did you enjoy painting, at least?” he finally asks, finding this question to be most appropriate among other bitter ones swarming in his mind.
Roland’s face lights up a little, hearing this question in place of others he expected. “Yeah… was an interesting experiment. Not something that speaks to my heart but was worth trying.”
Hokma nods quietly and slowly returns the skirt to its original place, knowing that Roland would unlikely do anything with the garment right away. The usual excuse of dealing with everything on his own, of course. When he fetches a new pair of boxers and tosses them into Roland’s hands, the younger man fails to catch them.
Third time’s the charm, as they say, and this proverb flares up in Hokma’s mind upon entering the small bedroom on this unremarkable evening. Other things flare up as well – a deeper, much more venomous sting of jealousy among them. First thought is that he’s not supposed to be here, that he’s breaching, trespassing on another’s territory, that he should have at least knocked on the door before entering. But he knocked several times before, and only then did he realize that the door’s unlocked. Not something he would usually expect from Roland’s apartment, so he entered out of pure worry over his lover’s wellbeing, for starters. The fact that he found Roland in the bedroom part behind another door – closed but not locked up – is simply an outcome of being in this relationship.
The fact of seeing long dark stockings on his bed, clearly just having been taking off someone’s legs due to their state, is another outcome as well. The damn pain of jealousy, too. And the weird fear – fear? – on Roland’s face as he turns and sees his partner is just a further proof of how mistaken he’s been, believing the younger man’s excuses.
Why does it have to be him believing and so horribly mutilating himself - again.
“I’ll explain,” Roland squeals but Hokma raises a hand at his words, shutting him up instantly. His gaze wanders over the nearby chair where the same damn red skirt resides. The image of red color already etches itself into his brain even when he closes his eyes to speak in the calmest voice he can muster up.
“Who is she?”
“Who… who are you talking about?”
“Stop finding excuses, Roland. If our relationship has ever been something meaningful to you, speak the truth no matter how much it will hurt both of us. Who are you seeing?”
Roland stares at him with round eyes, and only just now it hits him just how far Hokma came with his interpretation of the clues around. He lets out a painful breath, feeling his chest clench.
“I will. I… I’ll show you.”
Hokma watches him in cold silence, expecting the younger one to extract his other lover from a secret compartment in the room or something. Under the bed, inside the closet, anywhere. Instead Roland undoes his belt with trembling hands. The action looks so out of place in current situation that Hokma has to physically hold himself from a bitter laugh. Then Roland throws his dress pants on the bed and… grabs the fine silky stockings and fumbles with them to then slowly put them on himself, careful with the stretching fabric.
No matter how shocked he is by the course, Hokma finds out that he cannot protest the action. Not that he ever expected Roland to put on this sort of clothes, not willingly at least, but the sight is simply too… interesting. Attractive, even. The stockings do compliment the volume of Roland’s calves and thighs quite well; Hokma catches himself thinking that, perhaps, this is what his mind pointed out earlier on. That the mass of his leg would perhaps benefit from encasing it in something… tight-fitting. Still, he’d expect the first article of clothing in a row to be tight pants, not this.
While he’s deep in thought, Roland finishes the process of dressing up. The red skirt is gone when Hokma’s eyes dart to the chair and then to Roland’s hips, and of course where else does he expect to find it now? The leathery fabric glistens in the dim lights, tight enough around its wearer yet the size seems to be perfect. Just enough to bring the right effect. Roland exhales, watching the other’s reaction and mistaking it for disbelief.
“I’m not putting an act, okay? It’s… I have been doing this for a while.”
It comes as slight surprise to Roland, but Hokma doesn’t argue or disprove his words anyhow. On the contrary, his voice is much softer than his previous last words have been.
“You are a crossdresser, then.”
No judgement, no bitterness. The effect of realizing there was no woman is settling in. It doesn’t bring much relief to Roland though as he nods with a heavy heart and mind.
“Yes. All these clothes you’ve seen are mine. I never asked anyone for them, if that interests you.” He twists his ankles around, flexing them. The outfit lacks something obvious. “High heels are painful to walk in, but I’d add them here as well…”
He falls silent, not really sure how to continue. The cat’s out of the bag now, isn’t it? There is nothing to fix this. He’s not sure if Hokma’s suspicions of infidelity are worse than what actually transpires in front of him.
“…I don’t remember how it began. Just… came to me one day that it would be interesting to try out. And then it progressed to… all this here. I tried to give it up when we began dating, like… I know it’s all weird. I didn’t want you to become entangled with it just because I’m a freak who enjoys putting this on myself… and just because the said freak is someone you’re indifferent towards.” He huffs. Was indifferent, at least, until all this dirty laundry came out. “I failed.”
Hokma is silent for several long minutes after the confession. He can’t lie to himself and anyone, really – the sight in front of him is breathtaking. It’s as much surprise to him as the very fact of Roland indulging in activities of the kind. Then again… wasn’t he always kind of captivated by the sight of Roland as a whole? Hasn’t he meant exactly that when, during one night of tender confessions, he said that he can’t take his eyes off his lover?
What changed, now?
“And you never told me,” he mutters thoughtfully, his eyes still stuck to the leather material of the skirt bulging out a little at Roland’s groin. The other man sighs in defeat.
“I tried to set up reasons for that. Put my clothes in places you would see them and ask questions, and each time it happened I just became more and more tangled in nonsense. I thought I would gain courage to respond, and instead…”
“This was an unwise choice indeed,” Hokma nods. Something in Roland’s behavior and overall current image makes the gears stir inside him; he takes a careful step forward, closer into the younger librarian’s personal space. “I made wrong conclusions based on what I saw and heard.”
“It’s… yeah. I’m sorry,” Roland shrugs with a guilty lopsided smile that vanishes immediately. “It’s not your fault. Sure, you’ve just interpreted it the way anyone sane would… that I’m being secretive about something I don’t want to share with you. And turns out I’m just sick in the head. Heh…”
He slowly shakes his head all the while Hokma makes another step in his direction. “You have all rights to be angry at me, too. Here I am, chuntering on, looking like hell,” he mumbles but then Hokma places a hand at his chest, the warmth of human skin all too palpable through the white dress shirt.
“You look magnificent, Roland,” he begins quietly. “As in any other circumstances I have witnessed you. Perhaps excluding the times of extreme mental breakdown which I would prefer to omit from my mind.” Though, he notes wistfully, the moment Roland broke free from his Distortion’s overwhelming influence, the moment his frail humanity came together again, glued by whatever sense he could trust… was no less beautiful.
The soft thumping under his hand brings Hokma back from memories and into what he attempts to say. He closes his eyes with a faint smile. “No matter who you are, what clothes you choose to wear and what you want to present yourself as, I will admire you still.”
“You’re just as a freak as I am, huh?” Roland huffs in response. Then he realizes that must’ve sounded hurtful, actually, even though Hokma doesn’t show it by any actions. On the contrary, his hand on Roland’s chest presses in slightly. “Sorry, I mean… for liking me. Clearly we’re both not right in the head.”
Hokma tilts his head a little at that, the slightly amused expression not leaving his face still. “I don’t mind that,” he speaks in a low voice and allows his other hand to wander over Roland’s hip and the red leather of his skirt. “The sight shall never disappoint me, no matter the words you choose to describe it.”
“Such a tease,” Roland chuckles at the contact. He finally relaxes enough under the touch to allow himself to lean into the reverent touch of his partner, and it is honestly the first time he can feel someone’s hands on himself with clear admiration yet heavily restrained want. Oh, that outfit brought such a sweet reaction out of him, didn’t it?
“I must warn,” Hokma announces gingerly after a solid minute, “that it has been a very long time since I’ve removed a skirt from someone. Refrain from poking fun at me on that matter.”
It draws an endeared laugh out of Roland still, and he leans in to whisper in Hokma’s ear. “Oh, don’t you worry. You have plenty of time to practice on me… and you’re a fast learner.”