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Derek meets his first drag queen when he’s nineteen years old. He’s seen some gifs from that show, the name of which he can never remember, and he understands the concept, but when his friends bring him to an 18-and-over night at a local gay club, he gets his first look at drag queens up close and personal.
The show is—something else. Derek can’t really explain what it is he’s feeling throughout it, doesn’t know that there are words to describe how lost he is in the music, the performances, the outfits. And yet, he also feels remarkably at home, comfortable, surrounded by people who get it, who love it, who need it.
He thinks about it a lot. Maybe too much. He goes back every month—he spends wads of dollar bills on performances that make him feel lightheaded and breathless. And he always goes home and jerks off imagining his hands under tight dresses, imagining the feeling of lipstick on his skin, imagining sucking the dick of a guy in a dress. It turns out it’s kind of a thing; the internet says it’s mostly normal, or at least not the weirdest kink a guy can have. (Kink is sort of on a subjective scale, though, Derek suspects.)
Given his predilections, it’s probably not a surprise that he loses his virginity to a drag queen on his twenty-first birthday. That night, Derek shows up at his favorite place with a group of his friends and the legal right to drink. Everyone there knows him, since he’s a regular now; the bartenders know his name, know that he’s respectful and quiet and doesn’t try to trick them into serving him alcohol; and the queens know he’s a good tipper. So his birthday is a pretty big deal, a night where every guy in the place wants to buy him a drink, a night where even before the show gets started, queens are coming around from backstage and kissing him hello, wishing him a happy birthday.
Derek loves it here. Derek never wants to leave.
But he leaves hand-in-hand with a sweet, tastefully-adorned lady called Olive Green who covers him in lipstick marks and rides him while she’s still wearing her dress, tights long abandoned and makeup smeared. Even in the haze of sex, in the midst of tugging on clothes and kissing each other stupid, the illusion is still there. An illusion Derek certainly doesn’t need, but one that really really turns him on.
It becomes a thing after that. Olive is gorgeous and funny and they hook up several more times, almost all of them after a show, when Olive is still painted and gorgeous. She says she likes it, says that it works for her too, that Derek makes her feel good with how much attention he gives her when she’s on stage, that Derek doesn’t have to feel weird about it. She’s not the only one, though. Derek hooks up with most of the regular girls who come through that club, at least once, usually twice or three times; he gets so used to finding makeup on his clothes that he starts to carry around detergent pens.
After college, Derek gets a job in San Francisco. He’s going to grad school, working on his Master’s, but the gallery he works at pays well and really likes him. He has connections through his alma mater and he’s happy where he’s at. It helps that the city has everything he wants: good food, good views, and a fantastic drag scene.
By the time he’s finished his degree and secured his job at the gallery, he’s a well-known regular at a few spots in town. Same as it was in college, he’s friendly and polite and a good tipper. But now he’s developed even more of a reputation for himself, one that his nineteen-year-old self would probably blush at. His twenty-six-year-old self, however, couldn’t give a shit. Because he’s happy and he’s having a lot of fun.
So fine—it gets him hot. He likes fucking guys in drag. He likes getting chalky lipstick everywhere. He likes putting his hands everywhere, feeling everything, likes the way it feels when those wigs brush against his skin, likes the sound of the heels clattering to the ground as they stumble into backrooms or motel rooms or Derek’s apartment. He loves the illusion, loves the artistry, loves the passion in it all, and he isn’t going to apologize for that.
There are a lot of queens at Jungle, which is one of Derek’s favorite haunts, who are in relationships. Derek isn’t a creep, he doesn’t try to put the moves on every man in a dress, but there is one—just one—queen Derek is probably going to lose his mind over. In fact, he basically already has. The first night Derek saw her perform, he’s pretty sure at least half of his brain (and most of his heart) crawled out of his body and surrendered to her within minutes of seeing her on stage. And Derek tried, that first night, mere weeks after he’d arrived in San Francisco—he tried to talk to her, to flirt with her. They made eye contact several times while she was on stage and Derek was certain that they had a connection, that they had had some kind of silent communication. But when he went backstage to try to meet her, she was with someone. A guy. Her boyfriend.
They’re friendly now, three years later. They exchange pleasantries when they see each other, but it’s not as easy to be around her as it is the other people at Jungle—what with her very serious boyfriend and Derek’s less-serious reputation. Even though Derek knows he should leave her alone and let her be, he can’t help but show up every time she hosts just so that he can watch her.
Her name is Mia Raw and she looks devastating in red. On Halloween last year, she did a whole Little Red Riding Hood bit and Derek was so turned on he had to jerk off in the bathroom before he left, too riled up to make it through a cab ride home. She’s gorgeous and talented and so fucking funny with a microphone in her hand that Derek doesn’t know what she’s doing in a club like this when she could be on TV or in New York, somewhere doing something else for more money.
He’s glad she’s here though, because Derek doesn’t know what he would do if she actually ever left.
Tonight, Derek sits at the bar while Mia starts the show, welcoming the crowd of people who came to watch. Sometimes he’s right up front, but he’s feeling particularly fragile tonight, frustrated from work, exhausted, and he just wants to drink and watch a drag show and go to bed. Mia is doing her newcomers bit—she picks out the youngest face in the crowd to embarrass—when the bartender leans over to Derek and says, “Danny’s here tonight.”
Derek doesn’t let his expression give anything away. “He is sometimes.”
“Just wanted to give you a heads up.”
Derek sighs. “Xay, can I just have a drink without having to convince you that I don’t care about Danny?”
Xavier gives him a look that blatantly says they’re not buying it. Derek would like to think that Xay is really the only person at Jungle who knows how Derek feels about Mia, but the bartender is a gossip and if they know, then certainly everyone else does too. Xay’s just the only one brave enough to talk about it to Derek’s face.
“So I guess you don’t care about all the gossip I have about them,” Xay says haughtily as they reach toward the back of the bar, grabbing a bottle of scotch.
Derek bites the inside of his mouth.
“Apparently, they’ve been talking about getting more serious. You know what that means.”
Derek imagines he does. The next “serious” step in a years-long relationship is surely engagement, isn’t it? The thought is vaguely nauseating, even though Derek knows he doesn’t have a right to feel any type of way about Mia’s private life.
Xay continues, “Anyway, one of the girls said Mia’s not in a hurry to get down the aisle and it’s got Danny feeling ten types of insecure. So he’s been coming to all of her shows lately, keeping a closer eye on her. And on all the hands in the bar.” They glance pointedly at Derek’s hands as they set his drink down in front of him.
“Don’t say that as if I’m a threat,” Derek says, and picks up his glass.
“Please,” Xay laughs, “you know you are. You know every guy in here who came to watch their partner on stage is trembling in fear that you’ll snatch up their queen with your stupidly hot cheekbones and your magic dick.”
Derek frowns slightly. “I don’t hit on people in relationships. I’m not an asshole.”
“No, you’re not. But sometimes you wish you were.”
He wishes. He wishes a lot of things.
-0-
Reina—that’s just her name, like Cher or Zendaya—has been performing at Jungle for a few weeks. She’s fresh and a little bit awkward but she tries really hard and she’s unbelievably pretty, and so when one of the security guys finds Derek at the bar and tells him she’s asked if he wants to head on back to the dressing room, he goes.
They met once before, on a night she wasn’t performing. She sat at the bar with him out of drag and maybe they would have gone home together anyway, but she was shy and it didn’t happen. Now, though, Derek is surrounded by a dozen queens and their various post-show visitors, which includes Danny and Mia over in a corner, talking quietly.
The queens seem to keep their eyes on Derek as he finds Reina, but he doesn’t mind the attention. They know what he’s doing back there anyway. Nothing to be embarrassed about now.
“Hey,” Reina says, slipping off her heels. “I wasn’t sure if you’d come back.”
One of the other girls scoffs.
“Don’t be rude, Patty,” Reina says. “Ignore her. Are you heading out soon?”
Derek shrugs. “Probably, now that the show’s over.”
“Mind if I go with you?”
“No. I wouldn’t mind.”
Most of the girls de-drag before they leave Jungle, but people who leave with Derek never do. It’s funny, everyone knowing what he wants, what he likes—maybe it’s a little weird, invasive, but it gets him where he wants to be, so he has trouble caring all that much.
“Do you want to go get a drink somewhere?” Derek asks her as they’re heading out the back. “Or…”
“Your place is fine,” she says with a smile. “If that works for you.”
Derek smirks. “Yeah, that works for me.”
-0-
Derek’s a grown man. He had a demanding job. He likes blowing off steam, likes the way watching drag performers makes him feel. And he’s not hurting anyone—he doesn’t make any promises of exclusivity and no one asks him to. Everywhere he’s a regular, the girls know exactly who he is and what he can offer them, and no one has any complaints.
Sometimes it’s a little embarrassing, knowing that people are talking about him, about his sex life. Not embarrassing enough to stop, though.
“Do you actually have a magic dick?” Xay asks one night.
“Shut up,” Derek scoffs.
“No, seriously—it can’t just be how unreasonably hot you are. What do you do to make all these queens want you so bad?”
Derek rolls his eyes, shooting Xavier a look he hopes communicates just how stupid of a conversation he thinks this is. “You’d know better than I would. People don’t gossip about me to me.”
“That’s true,” Xay acknowledges with a nod.
“What’s true?” a familiar voice asks, and Derek’s heart lurches into his throat—beating double time—as Mia leans against the bar next to him. She’s in full drag already, wig in place, wearing a dress so tight and so short that Derek’s mouth is watering as he rakes his eyes up and down her legs. He’s well aware (and doesn’t care) that she’s wearing flesh-colored tights; the suggestion of skin is enough to make his blood rush in his ears.
“That Derek doesn’t hear any of the gossip about himself,” Xay helpfully answers. “Whaddya need, hon?”
“Jack and Coke,” Mia tells them. “A double, if you please.” She elbows Derek playfully, shooting him a friendly smile. “I’ll tell you some gossip about you if you buy my drink.”
Honestly Derek was going to do that anyway. “Sure,” he agrees as casually as he can. “Enlighten me.”
“It’s all good stuff,” Mia says, still smiling.
Derek can’t help but notice how white her teeth look against the dark red of her lipstick, which is overdrawn to make her lips look sort of cartoonishly big. (The drama of her look has always appealed to Derek. Sort of clownish but beautiful, like an exaggerated woman in a comic strip or something from The Powerpuff Girls. She’s so clearly not the gender she’s playing at, and yet that’s part of what makes her play so fun—the fuckery of it, the falseness, the tongue-in-cheek awareness that she’s a man in a dress.) Derek is momentarily distracted by the thought of what that lipstick would look like on his dick, so he misses some of what she says, only clicking back in after Xay slides a drink her way.
“—don’t use very romantic language,” Mia is saying, an amused look on her face. “Mostly it’s stuff about your rugged good looks and manly muscles. For a while, some of the girls thought you had a secret wife somewhere and you were keeping a separate apartment for illicit hookups.”
Xay laughs, head tilted back to the ceiling. “A secret wife,” they chuckle. “That’s a good one.”
“They’re a little club,” Mia informs him. “You know, all the girls you’ve been with—they brag to each other. I imagine some of it is real and some of it’s exaggerated, but nobody has anything bad to say. If you ever want to feel like a stud bull up for auction, just ask Tootie and Daring to recount their apparently very memorable evenings with you.”
Derek can feel the back of his neck heating with a gentle embarrassment. Talking about sex with Xay is one thing—it’s a totally different thing with Mia.
“I knew it,” Xay says with a nod. “Magic dick. I was right all along.”
Mia laughs delightedly, stirring her drink with the straw. “You should put that on business cards. Or a T-shirt. I gotta run—thanks for the drink, Der.”
Derek watches her go, body thrumming with interest. He has to shift on the barstool when he realizes just how turned on he is from the simple act of talking to her.
“Dude,” Xay says.
“I know,” Derek grumbles.
“She’s got you wrapped around her fucking—”
“I know,” he huffs. He looks mournfully at his beer. “You think she knows?”
Xay hesitates. “Should I lie to spare your feelings?”
Derek winces. “Fuck.”
“Relax,” Xay says with a shrug. “You’re not the only one who comes here because they wanna fuck her. And she has to hang out backstage and listen to those queens talk about how good you are in bed, so you’re doing a lot better than most of the guys here.”
That’s a pretty good consolation prize, Derek knows. Even if he never makes it into her bed, he knows he’s been on her mind. She’s heard gossip—stories. Real or exaggerated, it doesn’t really matter. Maybe it’s childish, maybe it’s stupid, but that does actually make him feel better.
That night, after the show—after 2 AM when his skin is too tight and he’s itching for something to dig his teeth into—he goes home with a queen called Dyna Moan, and he doesn’t think about Mia.
-0-
Mia’s boyfriend Danny is a really nice guy. Like really, really nice. That’s hard for Derek, who already feels like a jerk most of the time he’s watching Mia—he feels especially jerkish when Danny is sitting next to him at the bar, making friendly conversation.
They met in college, Danny and Mia. (Sometimes Danny stutters over her name, like he’s not used to calling her that. Derek selfishly wishes he knew that secret, wishes he knew what the word was that Danny keeps on the tip of his tongue.) Derek feels weird asking questions, so he just—lets Danny talk. And when Derek does talk, mostly they talk about drag, not about Mia specifically; that would be too weird.
Derek doesn’t think of Danny as his friend. But they know each other’s names and they belong to the same community (and they’re in love with the same person). So sometimes Danny is his (victorious) enemy but most of the time they’re just two guys at a bar, watching a drag show. When Derek first started coming to Jungle, he was always front and center by the stage, trying to get as much attention as he could; but now everyone knows who he is and the queens always make it off the stage to find him when he feels like sitting at the bar. Tonight is no exception.
Every single one of the half-dozen performing queens takes a detour through the crowd to come lipsync right at him. The attention used to make him blush, make him shrivel a little, but now he thinks about it with a fair amount of pride; these girls seek him out specifically to make him feel good, and he gets to repay them for that with fresh dollar bills and friendly flirting. Even Mia struts her long legs over on her ridiculous heels—she stops in front of Danny first, giving him a dramatic and very public grope—and then she trails her press-on nails over Derek’s shoulder, his chest, honey-colored eyes looking sultrily up through layers of thick, black lashes.
God, he’s pathetic. Drooling over a performance while her boyfriend is right there. He’s so fucking dick-whipped it’s not even funny. (Maybe Danny finds it funny, since he’s the one who gets to go home with her. Fuck.)
With other girls, single girls, the girls it’s okay to flirt with, Derek tries his luck more purposefully with the tipping. Dollar bills tucked directly into clothing, lingering handholding as he passes money. And the girls who like it, who like him, typically aren’t shy about it—Derek has been kissed right in the middle of a performance before, been grinded on, had hands boldly pushed under his shirt, been hauled out of his seat and forced to dance. But with Mia, it’s dollar bills held politely between two fingers, available for her to grab without risking molestation. He wishes he were bolder, wishes he didn’t have a fucking conscience, wishes everything were different. Maybe if Danny weren’t around so much, Derek would be less—respectful. (Not that he feels like he’s respecting Mia when he watches her. No, he’s definitely thinking incredibly disrespectful thoughts.)
One of the queens who performed tonight is called Tea-ana; Derek has hooked up with her a few times, and he doesn’t hesitate to seek her out when the show is over. She’s fun, beautiful, easygoing—they have good sex when they’re together, and Derek could use something familiar, someone who knows him, someone who knows exactly how pent up he’s feeling at this particular moment.
They end up in a back hallway, around the corner from the green room where the girls get ready and unready; it’s not actually private but it is far away enough from people that neither of them are particularly embarrassed. At least Derek isn’t. And the way T kisses him convinces him that she’s not shy, that she wants him too.
“Let’s get outta here,” Derek insists. They need to be alone in a room with a bed, somewhere with a locking door so he can strip her of all her layers, unwrap her like a present. He wants to fuck her until she’s crying, wants to unleash all of his neediness on her, wants an eager body underneath his.
“You’re so needy, baby,” she teases, deft fingers unbuttoning his jeans. “I’ll make it better.”
He should probably have more shame about it, about T sinking to her knees, about having his dick out in public. But this actually isn’t the first time he’s let temptation get the better of him at a club—he’s just usually had the wherewithal to at least make it into a lockable bathroom stall before his dick comes out. The truth is that Derek doesn’t feel bad about doing this right here and right now; he feels a little bad that he can’t stop thinking about Mia. Mia on her knees, Mia’s hands on him, Mia’s mouth, Mia moaning as she sucks him off.
T goes home with him later and he’s able to focus on her. Mostly.
-0-
Derek’s never had a boyfriend. He had a girlfriend in high school for all of two months. He likes women—people. He likes people, regardless of what’s between their legs or what words they use to describe themselves. And yes, he has a thing for “masculine” bodies underneath “feminine” decor but while drag queens are certainly the majority of his sexual experience, his kink doesn’t mean his bedroom is exclusionary.
But the point is—he’s never had a boyfriend. He doesn’t really date. He’s busy with work and he’s satisfied with his social life. There are a couple of people from his gallery that he would call his friends, and there are other regulars at his various bars and clubs that he gets along with, obviously Xay chief among them. But his best friends are actually a trio of people he did grad school with—Erica, Boyd, and Isaac. They get together every couple of weeks for a meal, drinks, maybe a concert or a movie or a round of bowling.
Tonight, while they’re sitting at dinner, Erica insists they go to Jungle for a nightcap.
“No,” Derek says automatically. “Definitely not.”
“Don’t be embarrassed,” she says with a grin. “We wanna see the place you’re always ditching us for.”
Drag shows at Jungle never start until midnight, and it’s not even ten o’clock. Derek would rather do literally anything else than let his friends hang out around Xavier for two fucking hours.
“Some other time,” Derek says.
“What were you gonna do after dinner?” Isaac asks with a smirk.
It’s a fair point. It’s a Friday night—it’s drag night at Jungle. (The other places he frequents host drag shows on Wednesdays and Thursdays, which means Derek sometimes gets to see Mia perform three days in a row if she’s booked and busy.)
“Okay,” Derek admits, “I was gonna go but—the show’s not for hours. You’ll be bored.”
“Is there a pool table?” Boyd asks.
There is, in fact, a pool table at Jungle. And a dart board and a ping pong table, because guys are guys and they may be queers who like drag but they also wanna compete with each other as often as possible.
“It’s okay, man. We won’t embarrass you,” Boyd assures him.
“I haven’t been to a drag show in years,” Erica coos. “Let’s run by the ATM.”
“I’m sure Derek can spot us some ones,” Isaac teases.
It’s not that painful, not really. Xavier flirts pretty conspicuously with all three of them, but that’s not out of character. They drink and play pool and his friends kindly refrain from mocking him with anything more than amused looks when various regulars come by to greet Derek.
Derek can see Danny sitting at the bar. He hasn’t seen Mia yet—but that’s not surprising, since she usually doesn’t appear until the show starts.
“Who’s that guy?” Erica asks, pointing Danny’s way. “Do you hate him or do you wanna fuck him?”
“He’s nobody,” Derek dismisses. “He dates one of the queens.”
“Ah,” she says. “You like his boyfriend.”
This is exactly why he didn’t want to bring them here. Erica, especially, was always going to figure it out.
“It’s not like that,” Derek tells her with a shrug. “I don’t even know her—him. The queen. Mia.”
“Mia,” Erica echoes. “Mia what?”
Skin going tight and warm, Derek admits, “Mia Raw.”
She laughs, head tilted back to the ceiling. “Shut the fuck up. That’s so good—can you picture her saying ‘do you wanna fuck me, uh, raw’?”
“Erica.”
“Sorry,” she says, still grinning. “I’m not kink-shaming.”
“I know.”
She takes a sip of her drink, eyes moving across the table to where Boyd and Isaac are speaking directly into each other’s ears to have a conversation over the music. “Boyd would look pretty good with some eyeliner, don’t you think?”
“Let’s move on.”
-0-
The fact of the matter is that Derek isn’t going to do anything about the ridiculous feeling he gets in his gut when he looks at Mia. (Looks at her, exists near her, thinks about her.) He’s going to suffer in silence and go home with other people and just want her from afar until one of them stops coming to Jungle one day. He doesn’t know when that day will come, but he knows that he’s not looking forward to it.
Occasionally, Derek doesn’t make it to the bar on a Friday night for one reason or another. It’s rare, sure, but it happens. (In the three years and change he’s been going there, he’s only missed a show because he was sick or out of town.) He always misses Jungle when he can’t make it, wonders what’s happening when he’s not there, even though it feels a little silly to be attached to the place. The people.
He goes to Los Angeles for business—he and his boss are talking about an art installation for the gallery that would involve a few muralists based in southern California, so they take ten days to explore the city, wine and dine the artists, and try to get a good feel for what everything would look like. It’s not a boring trip and Derek doesn’t mind not being home, even if he feels a bit wistful, wondering what’s going on at Jungle since he’s not there to see for himself.
When he gets back, things are a little different.
He doesn’t even make it in the door before he learns why. The bouncer, a big guy named Bruce who normally doesn’t say anything to Derek—just procedurally checks his ID and then waves him inside—stops him with wide eyes and asks, “Man, what the fuck happened with you and Mia?”
Stunned, Derek opens and closes his mouth a few times, unsure what to say. “I dunno what you mean,” he admits.
Bruce doesn’t look convinced, eyebrows arching. “Where’ve you been?”
“Out of town. What happened to Mia?”
“Yeah, right,” Bruce says, “like you don’t know.”
“I don’t know,” Derek insists. “Is she leaving or something?”
Eyes narrowed, Bruce tells him, “Everybody thinks you hooked up. That’s why you’ve been gone—you’re in hiding.”
“That’s crazy,” Derek dismisses. “She would never cheat on Danny.”
“Danny’s gone.”
Derek’s brain spins like a wheel without traction. “What?”
“They broke up,” Bruce informs him. “You seriously didn’t know?”
“I’ve been in LA,” Derek says numbly. “They really—he’s gone?”
Bruce smirks. “That’s what I heard,” he says. He gestures toward the door. “Go find out.”
Bruce isn’t the only one who wants to talk to Derek—he’s just the first. There are a dozen people on him almost instantaneously, eager to give and receive gossip. Each of them have a different story about why or how the relationship ended but the important part is that Bruce wasn’t kidding, and wasn’t mistaken: Danny and Mia broke up.
“Last week,” Xavier tells him as they pour his drink, “she came in looking weird and it didn’t take long for the girls to get it out of her.”
Derek suspects that the most reliable information is going to come from Xay, not just because Derek trusts them but also because everybody loves talking to them, including Mia. “So they’ve been apart for more than a week,” Derek says.
“Yup. And she won’t say why. Of course, everyone has their theories, chief among them being that you fucked her and Danny found out. And that’s why you were AWOL for two Fridays in a row.”
“I didn’t,” Derek says, heart pounding a little too hard at the thought. He can only imagine the nightmare that might arise if Danny heard—and believed—a story like that. “I was in Los Angeles.”
“Nobody’s gonna believe that,” Xay informs him with a smirk. “I mean, I obviously believe you because if you’d finally gotten her, you would’ve showed up with bells on.”
That’s…probably true. Derek doesn’t brag, doesn’t talk much about his hookups at all, but it would probably be hard to contain himself if he’d actually gotten anywhere with Mia. He at least would’ve told Xay. And he certainly wouldn’t have stayed away from the bar because of it.
“What do you think happened?” Derek asks. “With Danny?”
“No idea,” Xay says, wearing a disappointed expression. “Whatever it was, she’s really not interested in talking about it. But,” they add, a smile teasing at their lips, “she might talk about it with you.”
Derek is certainly enticed by the thought. Still—“She just got out of a long relationship,” Derek points out.
“So she’s probably looking for a rebound.” Xavier glances over Derek’s shoulder, their grin growing. “Speak of the devil.”
Oh fuck—Derek turns to look before he makes the conscious decision to do so, his hindbrain eagerly seeking Mia out. And he finds her in full drag: her ginger wig tonight, which piles curls atop her head, a terracotta shade of lipstick, contours and lines all perfect on her face and neck. She’s wearing a royal blue dress, which makes her skin look like it’s glowing, and matching heels, which draw Derek’s attention immediately. He’s obsessed with her legs, desperately grateful for the way she shows them off, always in short skirts.
“Hey, Mia,” Xavier greets her cheerily. “Jack and Coke?”
“Please,” she says, smiling gently. “I’m hosting and everybody finds me a lot funnier when I’ve been drinking.”
“You’re hosting?” Derek asks automatically. The longest running queen there, Tootie Fruitie, hosts most of the shows, and she was the announced host on the Instagram page earlier today.
Mia shoots him a friendly smile. “Sorry to disappoint you, Der. Tootie should be back next week.”
“No,” he dismisses, “I didn’t mean—I love it when you host.” He bites his tongue, cheeks flushing. Then again, it’s probably not a secret. He genuinely does love when Mia’s the scheduled host for the evening, because it means she performs two numbers, one to open and one to close the show, and she always has a laundry list of killer jokes about the other girls. (All in good fun.) He gets to enjoy her for longer, gets to drink her in, has even more of an excuse to stare at her when she’s hosting. She doesn’t just do her number and then wait backstage until the end—she pops out between every performer to crack jokes and introduce the girls. An hour of her instead of a mere seven minutes.
“Jack and Coke,” Xay says, setting the glass down on the bar next to Derek’s own drink. “We can establish a signal for when you want another one.”
“The signal will be me asking for another one,” Mia says dryly. “There’s no pockets in this dress, but I’ll get you later.”
“I’ve got it,” Derek says, already nodding toward Xay. “I’ve got all your drinks tonight.”
Mia laughs, a shy sort of smile on her face. “How sweet of you.”
“That’s our Derek,” Xavier says, throwing a towel over their shoulder. “Nicest guy around.”
Derek clears his throat, wishing he could kick Xay or otherwise communicate how badly his friend should shut the fuck up. Luckily he doesn’t have to worry about it for too long because Xay is beckoned off to another part of the bar.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Mia says, and Derek’s heart thuds a little harder in his chest. “Everybody was wondering if you’d abandoned us.”
“I was out of town,” Derek says. “I just got back.”
“Anywhere fun?”
“Los Angeles. For work.”
“You like the drag scene down there?”
Derek shrugs a shoulder. “I didn’t explore. Too busy.”
“That’s a bummer. Well—maybe next time.” She gestures toward him with her drink. “Thanks for this. I’ll see you in a bit.”
“Break a leg.”
“In these heels, I might!” She waves as she goes, leaving Derek slumped against the bar like a lovesick idiot.
Nothing is really different about the show tonight. Except—maybe Derek is imagining it, but he thinks maybe Mia keeps looking at him. Right at him. Every time she steps back on stage to announce another girl, her eyes find Derek’s. And every time, Derek feels sort of lightheaded, sort of stricken. Overwhelmed. Excited. Starving. Derek can hardly even pay attention to the other girls—he’s too busy wondering what Mia wants from him.
He thinks maybe he knows. Probably Xavier was right: Mia’s looking for a rebound. And she knows (has to know, at this point), that Derek wants her. She probably thinks of him as an easy guarantee, and he can’t even be upset by that because it’s true.
He’s not surprised when one of the security guys approaches him at the bar after the show and invites him back to the green room. Derek’s been back there several times, but guests at Jungle who aren’t performing have to be invited back by a queen; some girls will take him by the hand without any shyness at all, but most of the time they send a security guard to get him.
Tonight, the green room only has four other queens de-dragging at mirrors, chattering animatedly when he slips through the door.
“Look who it is!”
“Hands off, girls,” Mia announces, appearing at his side and taking his arm, guiding him through the room to her own little vanity setup. “Thanks for coming back,” she tells him, squeezing his elbow once before her hand drops away. “Are you—doing anything? Right now?”
Subtle. Careful. Derek’s eyes search hers for a hint of her thoughts and finds nothing but pools of honey gazing back at him. Fuck, she makes him breathless.
“No,” he tells her. “No plans.”
“Well, I was thinking,” she says, averting her gaze shyly, “maybe I could come over. If you wanted company. For a drink or something.”
Obviously Derek wants that, but—it also seems a little fast. He only just heard about Danny a few hours ago and he’s not trying to disrupt the grieving process. The last thing he wants is his one and only shot with Mia to be ruined by the spectre of her last boyfriend. (Then again, maybe this is his only chance to have her at all. Maybe she won’t want him once she’s over the breakup. And sure, it’s selfish to take advantage of that, but Derek isn’t enough of a gentleman to turn her down either.)
Derek glances over his shoulder, catches a few of the girls watching them before they drop their gazes. “Are you sure?” he asks Mia.
“Of course I’m sure,” she says, sounding a little indignant. “I wouldn’t offer if I weren’t sure.”
“Okay.” He nods. “Then yeah, I’d like that.”
“Good.” Her face brightens considerably. “Just let me grab my bag—”
“I don’t mind waiting if you want to change or something,” Derek tells her.
“No, no, that’s fine. I can touch up at yours.” She slips a jacket off the back of a nearby chair and over her shoulders, then grabs her duffle bag from the floor. “C’mon,” she says. “After you.”
-0-
The drive is quiet but not tense. They sit in the back of a cab together and say a few sentences to each other about the show, the night, the atmosphere. Mia doesn’t speak as they stroll through the lobby of Derek’s building, and is equally silent in the elevator. Derek, who has never felt the need to fill silence with anyone, doesn’t try to force anything.
He’s proud of his apartment; he put a lot of time and money into it, into making it the kind of place he’s excited to show to people. It has high ceilings and big windows, tasteful art that he picked out himself, a high-tech kitchen, and a big sectional, perfect for makeout sessions and hurried sex. Then there’s his bedroom, the entire east wall of which is just windows, granting a look out at the city from twenty stories up.
His entryway is dark when they arrive, and Derek flicks on the row of lightswitches that illuminates the hall toward the living room, and the short distance to the kitchen.
“Wow,” Mia says. “Nice place.”
“Thanks,” Derek says, closing the door with one hand while the other finds Mia’s hip. Now that they’re alone, he wants to touch, wants to feel her. And she smiles at him, leaning against his body, making his heart pound. But when he leans in to kiss her—
She squirms out of his grasp, an embarrassed laugh escaping her lips. “I need to fix myself up first,” she says, both hands holding onto the handle of her duffle.
Confused, Derek looks her up and down. “You look great.”
“No, really,” she insists, taking another step back. “Just point me towards a bathroom and you can go get comfortable.”
“It’s that easy, huh?” Derek asks, feeling increasingly like he’s missing something.
“For you?” Mia asks, smiling brightly. “Absolutely.”
He keeps his hands to himself while he leads her down the hall and into his bedroom. The curtains are up, and the lights from the city sparkle through the wall of windows, clearly drawing her attention as she steps into the room. She doesn’t say anything about it though, just stops and stares for a second before she scans the room and starts to step toward the en suite bathroom.
“I’ll be out in a jiff,” she assures him, shifting her bag to one hand as she shrugs out of her coat. He moves to help her, taking the jacket from her. “Go sit—I won’t be too long.”
“You look perfect like this, you know,” he says again. “You don’t have to change anything.”
She only smiles at him, and shakes her head as she closes the bathroom door.
So Derek kicks off his shoes and wanders around his own room, feeling a little bit lost. A few hours ago, this wasn’t even a possibility. A few hours ago, he thought she was still in a relationship. A few hours ago, he was thinking about work and maybe calling his sister—now, though. Now there’s someone he’s been thinking about for ages in his bathroom, someone who wants to have sex with him, someone who drives him absolutely crazy. He’s absolutely screwed. In the best way possible.
He lights a couple of candles, looking for something to do with his hands. They’re unscented, decorative, purely for the purpose of setting a mood. The extra lighting enables him to turn off the overly bright overhead lights, bathing the room in a gentle glow emanating from the bookshelves where the candles sit. It certainly feels more romantic like this, less stark.
When the bathroom door opens again, Derek is sitting at the edge of the bed, trying to be patient. But he can’t stop his eyes from going right to her, eagerly soaking up the image she makes in the doorway—bare feet, bare legs, a black, lacy nightie that falls at the midpoint of her strong thighs, with seemingly nothing underneath it, a hairless chest and biteable shoulders, and the familiar face that Derek has known and adored for three years now.
“Jesus,” Derek exhales, hands gripping the covers underneath him.
He’s fucking captivated by the sight of her bare legs—he’s pleased to find that she’s not hairless, and that the muscles of her thighs look so fucking delectable even without those sinful tights she’s usually wearing. She’s breathtaking, backlit like a fucking movie star, smiling at Derek like she knows just how enticing she is.
“You’re gorgeous,” he tells her as she approaches, hands clenched at his sides. “You’re so—can I kiss you now?”
“Yeah,” Mia says almost immediately, and Derek wastes no time in launching himself off the bed and taking her in his arms. He pulls her close selfishly, hungrily, and captures her mouth with an urgent, desperate kiss. There’s no time for patience, not when he’s been waiting years. She tastes like lipstick and gin, so sweet and hot that Derek literally couldn’t care if he ate an entire tube of lipstick at this point, as long as it meant he got to keep kissing her.
She arches against him receptively, arms going around his shoulders. Derek indulges in the freedom to touch, to drag his hands across her back, her waist, the firm roundness of her ass.
“Off,” she mutters as she tugs on his T-shirt. “Get this off.”
He discards the fabric easily, up over his head and tossed into some distant corner. And he smiles to himself as Mia’s eyes widen, hands trailing down his chest.
“Wow,” she sighs. “You should seriously be shirtless all the time.”
“Might get cold,” Derek quips, already walking her back toward the bed. “I wanna fuck you,” he admits, since being honest is typically the way he gets what he wants. “If you want that.”
“Definitely,” Mia says.
She laughs when Derek practically heaves her onto the mattress, bouncing on it once before she scoots herself backwards, finding the center of the bed. She looks fucking stunning like this, delectable, all made up and in that ridiculous fucking lingerie, so deliciously sexy that Derek wants to maul her.
Derek is—experienced. Really experienced. And yet right now he feels stupidly out of his depth. He wants—everything. He wants to smother her with his body, wants to bury her, wants to ruin her. As it is, all he can do right now is stand at the foot of the bed and drink her in, clenching and relaxing his hands a few times as he processes the urgent desire to touch every inch of her. He just can’t decide where to start.
“Take off your pants,” Mia instructs, eyes dark and hot. “Take it all off, actually.”
He can do that. He’s proud of the work he puts into his body, and he has a feeling he could become utterly addicted to the way Mia looks at it, at him. Especially when he shoves down his boxer briefs and her mouth drops open just barely.
Yeah. That’s a good feeling.
She’s eagerly receptive when he joins her in bed, arms going around him, one hand sinking into his hair. Kissing her is even better than he thought it would be, so delicious, so distracting that he could spend hours just doing this, rolling around and groping and indulging in the closeness.
He’s so captivated by it that he lets himself be rolled onto his back, finding Mia in his lap. The lacy fabric of the lingerie feels fucking amazing against his dick, and he doesn’t try to stop her from grinding against him while they kiss, bodies eagerly warming to each other. God—he knew it would be good with her. They have something, some kind of chemistry, that Derek didn’t imagine—it’s real.
“Can I ride you first?” Mia asks, mouth trailing down his throat. “You can fuck me however you want later, but I want to—I want to ride you until I come.”
“Yes, yeah—whatever you want, anything you want—”
“Anything?”
“Anything,” he promises her.
She did some amount of prep while she was in his bathroom, clearly—but when Derek retrieves lube from his bedside drawer, she readily accepts it, one hand firm in the middle of his chest while the other goes back to fingering herself open. Derek is content to watch her face, the flexing of her muscles; he’s deeply pleased by the way he can see her cock twitching under the nightie. She moans so sweetly when he brushes his knuckles over her erection, he doesn’t stop himself from pushing the fabric out of the way and lurching forward, holding his weight up on his hands while he sucks the tip of Mia’s cock into his mouth, just for a taste. The sound she makes is so fucking rewarding that Derek just goes for it, shifts his weight so that he can sit up and hold onto Mia’s thighs, drops his mouth further over her length and sucks.
“Oh my fuck,” she keens. “No, no, I can’t—I’m too close, you’ve gotta—” She shoves at his shoulder insistently and he backs off with a final slurp. “You stay there,” she says, shoving him onto his back again. “I can’t—I can’t deal with you right now. I’m gonna come all over your face if you even look at me.”
“That sounds good,” Derek tells her. “I wanna see you come.”
“Don’t say things like that,” she moans, and she closes her eyes so that she can finish prepping herself, giving Derek ample opportunity to just unabashedly stare at her.
He’s thought about it so many times, in so many different ways. He’s imagined her like this a lot, imagined her in his lap, imagined her riding him—but something tells him reality is going to be so much better than every single fantasy.
“Okay,” she says finally, moving closer on her knees. “You can—come here, let me—”
Her hands are too slippery to tear open the condom so Derek takes it from her and rolls it over his own length. Once it’s in place, she takes his cock in hand gently, tugging a few times to make sure the condom is on properly, and then she shifts forward again, lining him up against her opening. As she sinks down, Derek can’t do anything but stare, hands clenched tightly in the covers still on his bed.
She settles down onto him, holding him all the way inside, and sighs softly, head falling back. “God,” she says. “You feel so good.”
Derek chokes on nothing, hands finally moving desperately to her thighs, fingers digging into the muscle there.
“I’m gonna fuck myself on you for a little bit, okay?” she says. “Just—I need to take the edge off, and I need to just—I need to do this, okay?”
“Yeah,” he groans. “Yeah, please, I want you to.”
She’s not gentle about it. Now that he’s inside of her and they’re all warmed up and ready to go, she’s not subtle or careful or anything other than fiercely intense, rising and falling on his cock quickly. She has both hands flat and firm on Derek’s chest, using him for balance as she speeds up, and he trails his hands up and down her thighs to her waist, half-delirious with the feeling of her skin under his palms.
She bends to kiss him, mouth open and panting as she moves, and Derek takes the opportunity to flex his core and shove himself up to meet her mouth. It’s hotter, more desperate than before, but it’s kissing all the same, and Derek loves to kiss her, loves to taste her—he isn’t going to trade this for anything else.
She’s quiet. She makes little noises in the back of her throat as she changes the angle or when she comes crashing down and Derek is deep inside of her, but she doesn’t say anything, and that’s okay. There’s no need to fill the room with sound as far as Derek is concerned, especially because there’s a dull ringing in his ears, the sound of his own blood rushing, and he isn’t sure he’d be able to hear her over that anyway.
Mostly Derek just breathes against her, touches her, tries to memorize the shape of her against him, the way she feels under his hands, surrounding him. He’s undone by the fact that this is Mia, that he’s wanted her for so long, that he never thought he’d actually have a chance with her, and now he gets this. He gets her. For a little while at least.
She warns him, squeezes his shoulder tightly and says, “I’m gonna—I have to—”
He kisses her again urgently, and then encourages, “Yeah, c’mon, come for me.”
She moans weakly, dropping her weight one final time, and comes, head tilted back, face scrunched up adorably. Derek can’t help but follow, startled into his orgasm, trying desperately to keep his eyes open so that he can look at her while he comes, buried to the hilt inside her. But it’s so stupidly intense, so absolutely ruinous, that he groans like he’s dying, shuddering apart while her body pulls his pleasure out of him.
After, when he’s caught his breath and come back to himself, he carefully rolls her onto her back so that he can pull out and dispose of the condom. The nightie Mia’s wearing is scrunched up around her ribs, exposing her toned belly and the little line of hair that goes from her belly button to her groin. Derek wants to trace it with his tongue, but before he gets the chance she’s sitting up, pulling down the fabric.
“Sorry,” she says quietly, looking embarrassed.
Derek frowns. “Don’t be ridiculous—I sucked your dick earlier. I’m not under any illusions of what your body is like.”
She shrugs. “Still.”
“Still nothing,” he says, and he knocks her hand away. He pulls up the hem of the nightie and gets her into a sitting position so that he can pull it over her head. “You turn me on,” he tells her, coming in close to kiss her. “Everything about you turns me on—don’t hide any of it because you think it’s not what I want. I want all of it. Okay?”
He can see the tension drain from her shoulders, see the uncertainty in her eyes fade away. “Okay,” she says.
They lie back and kiss against the pillows for a long time. Derek needs a second before he can do anything else, and he wants to make sure Mia feels safe here, comfortable. So they kiss and touch and later, when kissing and touching has devolved, Derek slides between her legs.
-0-
The second time he fucks her, he blankets her with his body and sets a slow, purposeful pace. He buries his face in her neck and fucks her slow and deep, thrilling in the way her hands move over his back, how she digs her fingers in when it feels good, how she clings to him as she moans. She smells like perfume—something spiced and sensual—and sweat and alcohol, like the club, and it hits him all at once that she’s really his biggest fantasy. That he’s been waiting for this. Thinking about this. For years.
She’s different than he thought she would be. In his head, she was—well. She was a fantasy, a vehicle for all of his dirty thoughts. But now she’s real. Now he’s learning exactly what she likes, learning how she responds to his touch, learning the way her body moves, the way her voice sounds when she’s enjoying herself. That’s the most important thing, as far as Derek is concerned—that she has a good time. He doesn’t want her to regret it in the morning.
So when she asks for something, he doesn’t hesitate to give it. When she all but begs him to speed up, to fuck her like he means it, he hauls her knees up and resituates his weight so he can give her exactly what she needs. There’s no more erotic sight in the world, Derek is pretty sure—nothing hotter than Mia with her mouth open around a series of wordless moans, one hand tugging her pretty little dick, the other clenched desperately around a pillow, holding for dear life.
-0-
Derek pillows his head on Mia’s chest in the afterglow, careful not to crush her with his body as he relaxes into the bed again, weak with the effort of their coupling. (He wants to do it again—and again—and again. So he’ll take a break and get his strength back.) Mia’s hands stroke his hair, making Derek grin helplessly.
They lie there in a content silence for a long moment; then Mia shivers a little.
“Cold?” Derek asks, lifting his head to look at her. “We can get under the covers.”
“It’s okay,” she laughs. “You’re a good blanket.”
“I’ll turn the heat up,” Derek offers.
“Just relax,” she insists, still smiling as she brushes fingertips against his stubble-covered cheek. “You don’t need to take care of me.”
I want to, Derek thinks. “I want you to be comfortable,” he tells her.
“Trust me, I am,” she says. “I could stay like this all night.”
Good. That’s what he wants too.
He pushes forward and kisses her again. Her lipstick is gone now, smeared between them; it’s probably tinging his beard but he doesn’t give a fuck. Mia winds her arms around him and they roll together onto their sides, getting comfortable, settling in for what’s apparently going to be a long and lazy makeout session.
-0-
The third round is a little faster, although that probably depends on whether one considers foreplay part of the sex itself. They lounge and kiss, fingertips trailing over skin, for what feels like ages, until Derek’s so hard that he can feel his own heartbeat in his dick. And when she turns and beckons him behind her, leg propped just so, he wastes no time in retrieving a condom and giving her what she asks for.
He tries to be careful—he’s no stranger to sex marathons but usually there’s switching, and he’s keenly aware that Mia must be sensitive, even sore from the vigorous lovemaking they’ve already done. He’s not opposed to bottoming for her in theory, but he sort of has a one-track mind at the moment; he just wants to be inside her, wants to bury himself deep, wants to fill her up and stay there. So when he bottoms out, he nuzzles his nose behind her ear and just holds her for a moment, trying to match her breathing. The generous curls of her wig tickle his ear, his neck.
“What are you waiting for?” she asks, squirming against him.
“M’taking my time. Don’t wanna hurt you.”
“Don’t underestimate me,” she laughs. “I can take it, Der.”
God—the nickname. She calls him that sometimes, and it always feels like a generous flirtation, like she’s handing out a scrap of affection to keep him appeased. And he always gobbles it up gratefully, delighted by the attention, by the hint of their closeness—or at least at acknowledgement of the fact that they know each other. Derek isn’t just another nameless guy who comes to watch her; she knows him.
It also makes him sort of crazy because he doesn’t really know her. Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that “she” is all Derek knows—the character. The performance. Mia Raw, who cracks dirty jokes and wears ridiculous high heels and alternates between hilarious lipsyncs that have people doubled over in laughter and more seductive performances that bend people over in a decidedly different way. Derek would like to think that he can tell a lot about her from those performances, from the three years that he’s seen her on a stage nearly every week. He’d like to think that he knows who the person is underneath. And if he doesn’t already, then he’d like to learn.
“Der,” she sighs, arching against him, “give it to me.”
He’ll give her everything. Anything. All of it—whatever she wants. He’d do anything for her. So it’s faster, maybe even kind of relentless. Because she moans for it, babbles about how good it is, how much she loves his cock, and Derek can’t resist her when she’s like that. Not that he could resist her in any other form.
-0-
He tucks her under the covers while he goes to the bathroom. He relieves himself, runs a damp washcloth between his legs, under his pits, over his neck. He has makeup remover under the sink—obviously—but it’s easier just to pluck one of those annoyingly drying Neutrogena wipes from the package that sits in his medicine cabinet and drag it down his face, removing the last vestiges of Mia’s lipstick.
Back in his dimly lit bedroom, Mia is lounging under the covers, hair spilled across the pillows. Jesus. He’s already fucked her three times—it’s the middle of the night. He should be exhausted. They should both be exhausted. But Mia is looking at him with shining, curious eyes as she beckons him back to bed. And she kisses him as he settles close to her, arms going around each other.
“Mm,” she sighs, a thumb brushing over his lips, “you taste like a makeup wipe.”
“Sorry.”
“No,” she laughs, “it’s my fault. I got lipstick all over you.”
“I liked it,” he assures her.
She laughs again, softly and sweetly, not mocking. “You’d have to,” she tells him. “I’m sure you get lipstick all over you all the time.”
For the first time ever—or at least the first time in years—a sense of shame creeps into the back of Derek’s head. “Not all the time,” he defends, vaguely panicked at what image Mia has of him in her head.
“Oh, yeah?” she prompts with a teasing lilt to her voice. “Sometimes you don’t kiss?”
He must hesitate too long. Her eyes look back and forth between his, brow furrowing.
“What?” she asks. “What’d I say?”
“Nothing,” he dismisses.
“No, there was something,” she insists, holding his face purposefully now with two hands. “Tell me what you’re thinking.”
He wants to. He wants to be intimate with her in more ways than one, wants to spill his whole brain out for her, wants to dig his heart out of his chest and put it in her hands.
He isn’t sure how to phrase it, how to say—ask—what’s on his mind. After a minute of changing his mind a few times, he finally says, “Does my reputation bother you?”
Mia’s face split into a grin, a relieved laugh huffing out of her mouth. “You mean the fact that you’re such a stud everyone at Jungle wants to climb you like a tree?”
“You know what I mean,” he says.
He doesn’t always leave with a queen, but he usually leaves with someone. He’s easy. He likes sex—he’s not shy about getting it. And Jungle is the perfect place to pick people up, not just because he likes drag queens but also because everyone is there for one (or more) of three reasons: to drink, to dance, and to fuck. No one’s looking for a candlelit dinner and a serious conversation about their future. At this point, it’s basically a part of Derek’s routine, like his gym schedule and his weekly meal prep—Friday nights are the nights he goes out and gets laid. He’s never been puritan about it before, never felt guilty about it. Until now.
“I think if it bothered me,” Mia says calmly, “I wouldn’t have invited myself over.”
Well. That’s probably fair. They are here right now, together, because Mia made the first move.
“C’mere,” she insists, pulling him back in to kiss with a firm hand on the back of his neck.
They kiss like that for a long time, patient, unhurried. Despite just how thoroughly used his body is, his dick gives a valiant twitch at every sweet sound that comes out of Mia’s mouth, every stroke of her hand on his spine. It’s like she knows exactly how to turn him on, how to make him crazy. It isn’t long before he’s fully hard again, hand trailing down Mia’s tummy to search for proof of her own arousal.
She gasps when he touches her, hand wrapping carefully around her prick. “Again?” she mutters against his mouth.
“If you want.”
“Yeah,” she sighs, arching into his touch. “Just like this?”
“Yeah,” Derek agrees easily.
They shove the covers down so they can roll around more easily, touching each other greedily despite the hours they’ve already spent getting off. They push and shove and laugh into their kiss as they try to figure out how to position themselves; Derek lets her win their faux wrestling match, settling on his back with Mia between his legs, on top of him.
It doesn’t take long for the kissing to devolve into panting against each other’s faces, cheeks, jaws, necks, touching and stroking and thrusting. It shouldn’t be as good as it is, compared to everything else he’s gotten to do to her tonight, but her hand on him is so fucking perfect that it makes him feel boneless, like his spine has just melted, like every thought he’s ever had could just leak right out of his ears. He especially loves the way she plays with his foreskin, like she’s curious, like she has all the time in the world and nothing else to concern herself with; the tease of it is so delicious that it makes his toes curl.
He comes because she encourages him to, hand twisting meanly over the aching head of his cock, hot breath in his face as she whines, “Come for me, Der.” Just those simple words seem to hook his orgasm from his core and rip it out of him, until he’s groaning against her neck, hands clenching uselessly at her sides.
She squeaks adorably when he flips her, pinning her to the mattress. Her eyes are wide, mouth open in a perfect O. And he can see it on her face, a mixture of shock and delight, a hunger that he fully intends on satisfying. This time, when he sucks her down, she doesn’t push him away. She makes deeply affected noises, hands scrambling at his back, his shoulders, and she comes down his throat with his name on her tongue.
-0-
Derek is holding her a little while later—on his back with her strewn half on top of him—when he finally gets the guts to ask.
“Would you…” He clears his throat, blinking up at the ceiling. He really doesn’t know how to do this. It’s not polite to ask, but he doesn’t think he can stop himself. “Would you want to…”
Mia hums, eyes closed as she strokes her hand down Derek’s chest. “I’m gonna need more time to recover before round five.”
“That’s not—I meant.” He clears his throat, swallows his pride. “Would you want to tell me your name? Your real name?”
Mia’s hand stops in place and she lifts her head to look at him. She looks less devastating and more amusing now, lipstick nothing more than a vague stain around her mouth, wig a complete mess, but Derek is still completely blown away by her so it doesn’t even matter.
“You don’t have to,” he says. “I don’t expect you to—I know it’s a thing. The anonymity. I get it.”
“You don’t ask anyone else.”
“I never have, no.”
“Oh.”
“You’re different,” Derek admits. She must know that—she just has to. He can’t really put it into words right now, and he isn’t sure that the timing is appropriate, but it’s true. Mia is different. The way he feels about her is different.
She’s quiet for a moment. Then, “My name’s Stiles.”
It’s like a spell—a few simple words that completely change the energy in the room. Something shifts, something breaks in a wholly revitalizing way, newness bursting from destruction, and Derek has to hide his smile in the pillow, heart pounding in his chest. Wow.
“Hi, Stiles,” he says, feeling the word in his mouth.
“Hi, Derek.”
“That’s a great name.”
Stiles laughs. “You’re sweet.”
“I mean it.”
“It’s actually just a nickname—no one can pronounce my real one.”
“Teach me,” he insists. “I wanna know.”
Stiles huffs a gentle exhale, still wearing a smile. “Mee-chez-slav. Mieczysław. It’s Polish.”
Derek tries it, jumbles the syllables and then tries again, until Stiles is beaming.
“My mom was a sadist in the naming department,” Stiles tells him.
“Did you pick ‘Mia’ because of it?”
“Happy accident, actually.”
Stiles must be able to feel the shift too—the change from Mia to Stiles, the loss of any and all kinds of gender shields. Stiles is Stiles now, Mia consigned to a memory, and Stiles laughs at the ceiling as he sits up, stretching his arms.
“If you don’t mind, I think I better take off my wig now. My head’s a little tender.”
“Of course,” Derek says. “You don’t have to—you didn’t have to wait until you were in pain.”
“It’s okay,” Stiles tells him, smiling sweetly. “I’m fine. I’m just gonna…” He jerks his thumb towards the bathroom and rolls out of bed, disappearing behind the closed door.
Derek still isn’t all that tired, so it seems like a waste to go to sleep. He picks up his phone, scrolls through some emails, checks his Instagram account that he rarely uses. It’s a little while before Stiles is back, but when he emerges his face is devoid of makeup and he has short, soft-looking brown hair that he pushes back with one hand, stepping carefully towards the bed.
Derek sits up immediately to drink him in. He can see where Stiles would contour to get the effect he does when he paints on Mia, can see how he hides the firm line of his jaw and overdraws his soft mouth, makes his nose look smaller and more feminine. But Stiles himself is devastatingly handsome, and it’s as if Derek is seeing him for the first time, memorizing the arch of his eyebrows, the real shape of his cheeks; he soaks in every line, every angle, even the familiar slope of his collarbone and the curve of his shoulders.
“What?” Stiles asks, hesitating by the bed. “I—sorry—I looked a little bit crazy so I figured it was better to just take it off.”
“I like your nose,” Derek says, and it’s quite possibly the stupidest thing that’s ever come out of his mouth.
Stiles just laughs, crawls back into bed, slipping under the sheet. “You know,” he says through a smile, “everyone says you’re sweet but they really aren’t doing you justice. If I had a dollar for every time you’ve made me blush—well, I probably do. You’re a very good tipper too.”
Derek smiles, reaches out to brush his thumb across Stiles’ bared cheek. He’s learning so much—he wants to know even more. “What do you do when you’re not doing drag?”
“Guess,” Stiles taunts with a grin.
“Hm. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four.”
Younger than Derek assumed. Which means Stiles was freshly twenty-one when Derek started coming to Jungle, means he’s just about three years older than Stiles. But that’s not a big age gap at all.
Derek ponders everything he knows for a moment while he watches his own fingers move over Stiles’ face, his cheekbones, his lips. “You’re funny,” he says. “And you’re smart. So you’re—a writer. Maybe a journalist.”
“How would you know if I’m smart?”
“You graduated with honors from Berkeley,” Derek says.
“Stalker,” Stiles huffs, the tease obvious in his voice. “Danny told you that?”
The invocation of that particular name makes Derek’s smile twitch. The feeling is odd—jealousy and relief and anger in equal measure.
“Yeah,” Derek says with a nod. “Let’s not talk about him.”
“Sure,” Stiles agrees easily. “But I dumped him. Just so you know.”
Maybe that’s a relief—maybe it isn’t. It’s hard to know. Derek hasn’t had a lot of time to think about the breakup since learning that it happened.
“Are you a writer?” Derek asks, returning to the subject at hand.
“Not even close, I’m afraid,” Stiles informs him with a smirk. “You wanna guess again?”
“Tech, then,” Derek says confidently. “Something in STEM.”
“Ding ding ding.”
Derek tries to summon all the various tech companies in the city—but there are dozens. “Do you work somewhere I’ve heard of?”
“I’m doing grunt work for a research team at Cal,” Stiles tells him.
“Chemistry?”
“Computer science. It’s remote work, which rules, but I sit at a desk typing software all day. Lots of C++.”
“Do you like it?”
“It’s making a dent in the student loans,” he laughs.
“Hm. Is there something you’d rather do instead?”
“One day,” Stiles says with a half shrug. “But right now it’s pretty good. I have health insurance and lots of free time for—you know. My hobbies.”
Derek can’t help but grin. “How’d you start doing this? Drag, I mean.”
“The same way everyone else did,” Stiles laughs. “I dressed up for Halloween. I liked it. It stuck.” He presses a hand firmly against the back of Derek’s neck. “Your turn—what do you do when you’re not at Jungle?”
Instead of answering the question directly, Derek tells him, “I got my master’s at Berkeley too. Fine Arts.”
“You’re an artist?”
“I’m an assistant curator at an art gallery downtown.”
“No shit.”
Derek laughs. “Yeah.”
“I totally pictured you having, like, a super masculine job. Like a firefighter or surgeon or something.”
“Disappointed?”
“Shut up,” Stiles dismisses with a laugh. “The apartment makes a lot of sense now. You have an aesthetic eye. Also this place is so fucking nice—your gallery must be, like, for the uber wealthy.”
“Most galleries around here are,” Derek says. “The apartment’s a perk. We entertain clients and artists sometimes, so it’s important to look like you have just as much money as they do.” He clears his throat, eyes moving over Stiles’ face to try to read his expression. “And my parents left me and my sisters a pretty big inheritance, so. I’m not struggling.”
The corner of his mouth twitches, eyes softening sadly. “It’s cool you have sisters,” he says, changing the subject.
(Talking about money is probably impolite, not that Derek minds. He’s not stupid—he knows he’s part of a pool of customers who support Stiles in a venture that is both his hobby and a job. The fact that Derek buys him drinks and tips him anywhere from fifty to a hundred bucks in an evening has surprisingly little effect on Derek’s interest in him.)
“Do they live around here too?” Stiles asks.
“New York, actually.”
“Do you see them a lot?”
“Two or three times a year. Are you an only child?”
“Yup. Did you like growing up with sisters?”
“Not usually,” Derek admits, and smiles when Stiles laughs. “But it made me good at talking to people. Listening. And it meant when I went away to college, I wasn’t completely petrified at the thought of interacting with women.”
“Are you bi?”
“Sure,” Derek says. “I’m—whatever.”
“How nuanced of you.” He yawns, covering his mouth with a hand at the last second. “Shit, sorry. What time is it?”
“Late. I should blow out the candles.”
“See, you totally could’ve been a firefighter.”
-0-
In the morning, Derek is tempted to ask her to stay. Him. Stiles. Mia. Whoever—both.
He’s nudged awake early because of the sunrise, so he lowers the blackout curtains then rolls over and goes back to sleep. The second time he rouses, it’s to the sound of music coming from his bathroom. It’s nothing like the pop stuff they play at Jungle—it’s some alt-rock thing with a femme vocalist, and Stiles is singing along. Derek’s immediate thought is just how good it feels. It feels indulgent, lying here in the cool darkness of his bedroom on a lazy Saturday morning and listening to that voice.
Several minutes later, Stiles emerges with damp hair, dressed in a sweater and jeans. Derek sits up, holding his weight up on his hands.
“Hey,” Stiles greets him, smiling. “Sorry to wake you.”
“It’s okay,” Derek dismisses. “Are you leaving?”
“Funny story,” Stiles says in such a way that indicates it’s actually not going to be particularly entertaining, “I have to pick up all my shit from Danny’s place today—our old place. I overslept and he’s pissed and even though there’s nothing I’d rather do than get back in bed with you, I have to take off.”
Derek knows he should not invite himself along to move Stiles’ things out of his ex-boyfriend’s apartment. Even though he really, really wants to. “Where are you staying? Since you’re moving out.”
“My friend Lydia’s letting me crash for a bit.”
Derek wants to know more, but Stiles doesn’t volunteer any details, so—he doesn’t ask. He just slips out of bed and goes to kiss Stiles good morning, holding onto his shower-warmed skin.
“No time for coffee?” Derek asks.
“I wish.” Stiles kisses him again, and again. “I had a really good time last night.”
“Me too.”
“I’ll see you next weekend, right?”
Derek wants to say that Stiles can see him whenever he wants—tonight, tomorrow, every single day this week. But that’s probably too much for a guy who’s going to pick up his stuff from his ex-boyfriend’s apartment this morning.
“Yeah,” Derek says. “I’ll see you Friday.”
-0-
He should’ve asked for Stiles’ number. He knows that—he regrets it all week, thinking about how much easier it would be if they could just text. He keeps reaching for his phone and then stopping, because it’s too weird to message her on Instagram (from his locked account, which has a total of eighteen followers, just friends from college and grad school and his sisters), so he doesn’t have a realistic way to talk to her. He just has to wait.
When he turns up at Jungle on Friday night, he goes a little earlier than he normally does, sliding onto a barstool just before eleven. Xavier spots him after a minute and comes over with a bottle and a glass, which they set right in front of Derek before tipping a generous pour of scotch into it.
“What’s new, Derek?” they ask with a knowing look, a coy smile curling their lips.
Of course it wouldn’t be a secret—all the girls who were backstage last week know that Mia left with him. And they’re all very efficient gossipers.
“I’m not gonna talk about it,” Derek says.
“C’mon, man! I don’t need a porn reel, just gimme the normal bits—as your long-suffering friend, I deserve firsthand knowledge. You know once the girls get Mia’s story it all becomes distorted.”
Derek arches an eyebrow. “What have you heard?”
“Good things,” Xay says with a grin. “The show’s probably gonna be late tonight because they spent the first half hour backstage just talking about you.”
“They didn’t,” Derek protests.
“I went to bring them drinks and they were literally comparing notes, dude.”
Huh. He knows there have been plenty of moments where that back room has been full of people he’s slept with, and he knows the girls have talked about it, about him. He also knows it’s probably a recipe for disaster tonight, since he actually really cares what Stiles thinks of him. At the same time, he’s kind of—pleased. Because the thought of Mia bragging about him, about what they did last week, is the best type of ego boost.
“Does that freak you out?” Xay asks.
Derek takes a sip of his drink and shrugs one shoulder, noncommittal. “They can talk about whatever they want to talk about. Doesn’t bother me.”
“Uh huh.” Xay looks him up and down as if examining him for a crack in his armor. “She said four times. The girls are split between being incredibly jealous and insisting that she’s a liar.”
Derek hesitates, unsure if Xay is asking him to corroborate the story. Xavier is one of the people he doesn’t mind talking about this stuff with; he’s never worried that Xay is going to judge him. Still, something about it feels different—probably because it’s Mia. And if whatever he says to Xay gets back to the girls (which it will), he doesn’t want Mia to think that he’s going around sharing details. So he chooses his words carefully before he says, “It was probably four times. Something like that. She stayed until morning.”
“Dude.” Xay tips the bottle in their hand against the glass in Derek’s, an acknowledgment, a classier way of saying congratulations on getting the girl you wanted. “So what’s the deal? Is this gonna be a regular thing now that she’s done with Danny?”
Derek shrugs. “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about it.”
Xay gives him a serious look, almost accusatory. “You didn’t talk about it? You finally get her to come home with you after three years and you didn’t arrange a second date?”
“It didn’t come up,” Derek says defensively. “It’s not like I was never gonna see her again—I’m here, aren’t I?”
“You’re here early,” Xay points out. “You could go back and say hi.”
“I’m not in a hurry. We have all night.”
Derek really is content to sit and wait, to drink and say hi to the other regulars, killing time before the show starts. The show itself is just as exciting and entertaining as always; Derek is pleasantly tipsy by then, and captivated by various details, like the edits Tootie’s made to a track she did a couple times last year, and the way the lights shimmer on Daring Do’s new dress. But the thing he’s most focused on, in the end, is Mia. As usual.
She doesn’t pay Derek any more attention than she usually does, and Derek tries to be—normal. As normal as he can be anyway. He doesn’t touch her, doesn’t even say anything, just passes her dollar bills and enjoys every second that she spends looking at him. And the whole time, he’s thinking about her in that nightie, in his bedroom, bouncing on his dick.
When the show is over, Derek pays his tab, leaves his leftover cash for Xavier, and heads toward the green room. Bruce is at the door tonight, and he doesn’t even say anything to Derek, just opens the door for him and lets him in. There were a lot of girls performing tonight so the room is pretty packed, and Derek sticks to the wall as he makes his way toward Mia’s corner.
“Oh my gosh!” she coos when she notices him. “Did Bruce let you back here? What a sneak.” She pulls him in when he’s within grabbing distance, and he gratefully wraps an arm around her waist. He’s been thinking about it, about her, all week; holding her scratches an increasingly irritating itch. “God,” she says as she pushes a hand through Derek’s hair, “you look so good I could just eat you up. Did you like the show?”
“Yeah,” Derek says. “You were great. You always are.”
“Flatterer.”
He’s about to kiss her when she squirms away from him, grabbing her water bottle off her vanity. He glances around the room—nobody’s looking at them. Most of the girls are just touching up so they can go back out to the dance floor, probably grab a drink.
“You okay?” Derek asks, watching her take a long sip from her bottle.
“Of course,” she says.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
Mia smirks. “Normally I’d say yes, but I drove here tonight and I’m probably gonna be in the car for forty minutes, so I’m de-dragging and getting out of here.”
“Where are you going?”
“The friend I’m staying with lives in Berkeley.”
“You’re crashing in Berkeley?”
“I did the drive all the time when I was a student,” she dismisses, already dropping in a chair in front of the vanity. “And there’s nobody on the road this time of night.”
Fewer people, anyway. Derek watches as she sprays something on the hairline of her wig and begins to carefully peel back the lace front. He’s struck by how badly he wants to reach out and push his fingers through the short hair she reveals under the wig cap.
“What if you stayed with me instead?” Derek asks. “I have a parking spot I never use—you can stay the weekend.”
“That’s sweet,” she says, “but you don’t wanna waste your Friday night with me. I’m sure you have better things to do.”
As if on cue, Tootie strolls up behind him, hand dragging down his back. “Hiya, Der. Fancy seeing you here.”
Derek glances her way briefly. “Hey, Tootie—great show.”
“Thanks, hon. You and Mia heading out soon?”
“We’re not going together,” Mia says distractedly, eyes on the mirror as she removes her makeup. “I have to get back to Berkeley.”
“Oh, darn,” Tootie says, not sounding upset at all, and Derek suppresses an amused smirk.
“Sorry,” he tells her, “could I have a second with Mia, please?”
Tootie clomps away on her pumps and Derek stares while Mia becomes Stiles, makeup melting away to reveal his skin. Derek grabs an empty stool nearby and drops onto it, pulling it close so his knees bump into Stiles’ legs.
“I need to tell you something,” Derek says.
“You’re not gonna tell me you have gonorrhea, are you?”
“I don’t wanna go home with anyone else.”
Stiles glances at him briefly and then back at the mirror. “You can.”
“Sure. But I don’t want to. And I don’t want you to want me to.”
Stiles huffs a gentle sigh. “Well, I don’t want you to. But. It’s your life.”
It’s fast, Derek knows—she just got out of a serious relationship, a relationship that she’s been in the whole time they’ve known each other. But it seems like maybe that doesn’t bother her. It certainly doesn’t bother Derek.
Neither of them says anything for a while; Stiles finishes scrubbing layers of makeup off of his skin and Derek waits, watches, sort of fascinated while Stiles massages moisturizer into his face. He’s still wearing the black two-piece outfit he performed in tonight, and the contrast of his padded body with his boyish face is—striking. Derek wishes they were alone so he could do something about it.
“The only person I want to leave with is you,” Derek tells him. It’s true, and it feels like the right thing to say at this particular moment, given the way Mia had stiffened when Tootie approached. “And we can take things slow, if it’s easier. I know you’ve only been single for, like, two weeks. I just wanted you to know—I’m here if you want me. Because I want you. I’d like you to come home with me tonight, and I’d like to see you more often, outside of this place.”
Stiles blinks at him, hands frozen atop the vanity. “Seriously?”
“You think I’m joking?”
“I dunno—you’re Derek. You leave with someone new every week—”
“Hey,” Derek protests. It’s sort of true, but Stiles said he didn’t care about that—so does he? Derek tries to be reassuring instead of defensive: “I don’t want to do that if I can have you instead. I just—I don’t want last week to be a one-time thing.”
A smirk twitches at the corner of Stiles’ mouth. “More like four times.”
“Do you have to go back to Berkeley tonight?”
Stiles gets to his feet, turning his side to Derek. “Unzip me,” he instructs, and Derek does, fingers fumbling a little with the tiny zipper on the top of the skirt. There’s no good reason Stiles should need his help with that, but he indulges in the opportunity to touch anyway. “I don’t have to go back,” Stiles confesses. “If you really want me to come over.”
“I do,” Derek affirms.
“Even like this?” Stiles asks, gesturing to his own face.
“Especially like this,” Derek says. “You’re beautiful both ways.”
Someone behind Derek makes an “aww” sound and Stiles flips them the bird. To Derek, he says, “I might not be very good company. I’ve had a long day.”
“No pressure,” Derek says. “Like I said—we can take it slow.”
“Just kiss him, honey!” one of the other girls shouts, and Derek smiles at his shoes.
“Shut up, Patty!” Stiles calls back cheerily. “Okay, let me get changed.”
“I’ll be right outside,” Derek says, standing from his seat. He’s surprised but delighted that Stiles grabs two fistfuls of his shirt and pulls him in for a kiss—Derek’s arms go around him immediately, simultaneously soothed and aroused by the intimacy. The kiss itself is enthusiastic, encouraging, and Derek can’t help but grin into it.
He did it. He got her. He got Mia, got Stiles, got this. He’s not in a hurry to let go anytime soon.
-0-
Everyone at Jungle knows Mia Raw. They also know her big, burly boyfriend, who seems pretty intimidating on an average day—until they see the way he melts around Mia. The boyfriend always goes from furrowed brows and a clenched jaw to an expression of open-mouthed wonder. He stares at her unabashedly, and he’s the only guy in the room allowed to touch her.
Everyone at Jungle knows Mia Raw. They also know that Derek is the luckiest bastard in the world.