Chapter Text
It was a terrible idea from the beginning.
Thomas Jopson had been in London for three months, and in that time he had acquired a job as an administrative assistant, a tiny bedsit, and an appointment to get on testosterone that was highlighted in red in his calendar.
He wasn't out at work but that was mostly ok, because his boss Mr Crozier didn't have any of the benevolent misogyny common in his generation - no calling Tom sweetheart, no holding doors open, no expecting him to act bubbly. Crozier ran the place as if he were a captain, and gender was completely irrevant to the high expections he had of everyone. Most people were terrified of him, but Tom would have followed him into battle.
He made a profile on Grindr one night, no photo, no description, just said he was transmasc. He kept getting a steady stream of 'sup' messages and dick pics and hadn't replied to anyone. Every time he opened the app up his stomach twisted with anxiety.
When he came to London it was with the intention of being out, but had found the process to be more complicated than he expected. There was an order to the steps in his mind, and for the first time (second time. but he wasn't thinking about that) he wanted to come out to someone safe. Someone who understood, someone who would be kind when he didn't have everything worked out yet. He would be ready to be out in the world after, ready to risk people being unkind sometimes. Just first he wanted something safe.
But before he could have that he had to make new friends, because the friends he had back home wouldn't have been able to be that for him. But he didn't have time to make friends because he had to make a living, because he couldn't go home any more. And around and around it went.
He did try going out and meeting people a couple of times, but he looked masc enough now that most guys thought he was a lesbian and weren't interested. Or worse, thought he was a lesbian and were interested.
He wasn't sure whether that was better or worse than before, when the sense of wrongness he felt hadn't come into quite so sharp clarity yet, when guys he liked would hit on him and slowly his heart would sink as he realised that they weren't interested in him, but some girl who didn't exist.
Either way it was lonely.
All of that is to say, Tom was a little bit drunk at the industry mixer his company was hosting, and Edward Little was hot and charming and awkward, and it had been a really long time since Tom had even flirted with a guy, and all the horniness he'd been sublimating into perfectionism came rushing back all at once, and that is how he made the absolutely terrible decision to hook up with a straight guy.
He wasn't going to pretend, never that, but maybe he could omit, he reasoned drunkenly. Just for a little while.
He took Ned to the alley out the back and kissed him against the wall. Ned let him take the lead easily, his long eyelashes fluttering shut when Tom carded his fingers through his shaggy hair. Tom slid his hand under Ned's shirt onto the warm expanse of skin underneath, and kissed him deep under the flickering streetlights. This was simple, and everything in Tom's life was complicated.
He pulled back to suggest heading back to Ned's, and Ned agreed, dazed and happy and none of that weird judgmental thing some guys got about women being too forward.
They barely made it inside Ned's apartment. Tom blew him against his front door, Ned making soft little gasps above him, his hands fluttering against the door as if he was looking for purchase.
Afterwards Ned kissed him sweetly, and pulled him close with a finger hooked into his belt and asked him how he could reciprocate. And Tom felt like a huge asshole when he extricated himself with the excuse of having an early start the next day. He left Ned leaning against a wall and looking like he was hit by a tornado, his lips kiss swollen, his jacket and boots still on, wiry hair in a v where his jeans weren't done up properly.
Tom went home, put on his harness and his strap and jerked off with fast quick strokes, swallowing around the phantom feel of Ned's cock in the back of his throat.
And he figured that would be the end of that.
But then a couple of days later he was doing damage control after Mr Crozier personally emailed a couple of clients, when he got a text from Ned asking him out for dinner at some little Italian place nearby. Tom stared at the message, and vaguely recalled that they swapped contact details earlier in the night at the mixer, during the networking part of the evening.
Tom checked his other messages. He had a reminder about a meeting for a transmasc social group he found. That he missed the last three sessions of because he had to work late. He had a stream of Grindr messages with guys showing off their bodies and asking for pics in return.
Tom mostly thought about his body only in a functional way. He loved to run, loved to work out, loved how it would clear his mind until there was nothing else but the burn in his lungs and his muscles. Loved how it would make him feel strong and capable and fast.
To have himself seen through only a photo, something he couldn't recognise himself in, made his stomach clench.
And Tom was good at doing the hard things, always had been. He was good at pushing through discomfort and making himself do what had to be done. But his inner voice repeated only imnotreadyimnotreadyimnotready, and he thought was probably right for him, for now.
In the end he texted Ned back. He said he had to work too late to get dinner, but maybe he could come by after if Ned was still up?
It continued to be a terrible idea to see him, but maybe if it was casual and not actually dating no one would get hurt.
This time Ned pulled him into his bedroom as they were making out. It was neat and clean and he had fresh sheets on the bed.
They kissed on the bed for a while, Tom pressing Ned down into the bed with Ned's legs wrapped around him. And Tom had to stop and take a few steadying breaths because he was so hard, but only in his mind, he wanted to grind down against Ned, to bring them both off holding their cocks in the one hand, and that was not how this was going to go.
He ended up holding Ned's wrist down above his head, his other hand down Ned's boxers so he could watch Ned's face as he squirmed and gasped as Tom brought him off while talking a steady stream of filth about how hot he was like this. Ned was so responsive and so open, and he arched under Tom as he spilled over his hand.
Afterwards, as they were lying on Ned's new clean sheets Ned turned to face Tom.
'I would really like to make you come, [redacted]. Can I? If there's things you don't like you could tell me, I'd just really like to, if you want me to.'
'This has been perfect Ned,' Tom said. 'I promise I'm having a good time.'
Ned looked like he wanted to say something more, but then just nodded. He leaned closer, nosing at the sweat damp hair at the nape of Tom's neck.
'Do you want to sleep here?' he asked. 'It's very late.'
It was very late, and Ned was warm and mostly asleep next to him, and it was a long rainy way back to Tom's bedsit.
He took off his jeans to sleep in his tshirt and boxers, and realised that that was the most undressed he had been around Ned.
Ned watched him sleepily, and lifted the covers to make space for him, but he didn't say anything when Tom climbed into the bed behind him instead, just settled into Tom's arms.
Tom didn't sleep for a long time, feeling Ned's chest rise and fall under his palm. He had missed this. It had been some time since he's last had a boyfriend, and while there was a lot of sweetness to those memories he couldn't separate them from the huge amounts of dysphoria they made him feel as well. He wanted to be someone's boyfriend next time, and that felt so very far away. This, here with Ned, it wasn't something he could have, but in the quiet of the night he could pretend for a little while.
They kind of fell into a routine after that. Tom really did work quite late most nights, and Ned had one of those tech jobs with flexible schedules, so going to Ned's late worked well for both of them. The terrible thing was, Tom really liked Ned. He was funny and nerdy and sweet. They would talk sometimes afterwards, about their jobs, or Ned's housemates whom Tom didn't see much of, or his dog, who would joyfully bound up to Tom every time he came over now. He slept over more often than not.
And Tom kept working on everything else. He blocked out the next transmasc meeting in his work calendar as 'personal appointment, absolutely do not contact'. He joined a gym, and went for walks in new parts of the city, and generally tried to not let work eat his entire life so much.
But everything moved so slow, and when he thought about going back to his cold bedsit and never seeing Ned again his heart clenched.
At work he went by Jopson, but that would have been too awkwardly formal with Ned, so he told him he'd been nicknamed Tom because [redacted] was too long and unwieldy. It wouldn't be a lie, if Ned started calling him Tom, if it wasn't just something that he called himself in his head.
Tom liked that his old name, his still used but not real name, had 'Thomas' within it. Like he could pare it away, until only the true parts remained. Like he was doing with his life.
'It suits you,' Ned said with a soft smile, and for a moment Tom was awash in euphoria, until Ned realised what he'd said and got embarassed and tried to walk it back.
Once upon a time Tom would have thought that these were not so much hints but blaring sirens that he was trans. But he had found that he could wear men's shirts and jeans, trans tape and boxers, get a cheap barber cut, and still not be read as a guy if he had soft features and sea blue eyes. Pretty, he was always called pretty, and how he hated that word.
He would stand in front of his bathroom mirror and search his face, trying to see strong jaws, five o'clock shadow, sideburns. To see himself.
He would forget himself with Ned sometimes. 'I really want to go down on you,' Ned would whisper in his ear, eyes dark, and he would feel weak at the thought of Ned on his knees, mouth on his cock, until he remembered that that's not what Ned meant. He had never spent so much time with his own hand.
So yes, Tom walked into this particular bad decisions with eyes wide open, but it took so long for the consequences to catch up with him that they still blindsided him when they did.
They were watching a bad late night horror movie in bed, and Ned was laughing, properly laughing, with the corner of his eyes crinkled up, and Tom felt something small and warm flutter in his chest.
And then Ned made a joke that kind of wasn't totally a joke about Tom being his girlfriend, and the emotional whiplash was so severe Tom physically recoiled.
By the time he got himself under control Ned was wearing a tight little self depracating smile.
'I'm sorry,' Ned said. Shit.
'I shouldn't have... I know you don't think about me that way.'
Ned furrowed his brows.
'I'm just, I think not very good at this casual thing.'
He looked up at Tom, and his eyes were soft and warm. Tom really, really liked him. Fuck.
'I would have liked to get to know you Tom, if you let me.'
And oh, it was far too late to get out of this without causing damage.
'Fuck,' Tom said, rubbing a hand over his face. 'Ned.'
'You know my friends keep joking that I'm dating a spy because they never met you - not dating, sorry' Ned said with a vague wave, and Tom felt an unexpected stab of... something at the thought of Ned talking about him to his friends. 'But that doesn't explain... I thought maybe you were asexual.'
He looked at Tom for confirmation. Tom stared at him in disbelief, given the very not asexual feelings he had for Ned.
'And that's totally cool!' Ned said, clearly misreading him. 'I just thought you'd tell me. I don't know what I've done to make you feel like you can't talk to me.'
'Ned,' Tom said, and stopped before 'it's not you' came out of his mouth, and tried again. 'You're lovely, but we want different things. And I knew that. I'm sorry, I should have ended this a while ago.'
Ned gave him a tight little nod.
'But you don't know what I want. You don't owe me an explanation Tom, but you can't say that you know what I want.'
'Yeah,' Tom said, leaning back against the wall, trying to gather his thoughts. 'Yeah, that's fair.'
And this was not the plan Tom had for coming out. He wanted safe, he wanted a space for himself that wasn't about someone else's feelings. Wasn't about how Tom was hurting them just by being who he was.
'I'm a guy,' he said, voice even and matter of fact, like it was something he said all the time. 'I like you Ned, but y'know in a gay way, and that seems like a pretty significant incompatibility.'
He was keeping his tone light, and shot a look at Ned. He would not let the way Ned responded get to him. It was just that he was so very new to being seen as himself, he hadn't built his armour up yet.
'Thank you for telling me,' Ned's smile was still watery, but genuine, and Tom could feel something unlock in his chest.
'I haven't really told anyone yet,' he said before he could think about it. 'I had a plan, but things keep getting complicated and messy and I don't know how to do any of this.'
'You don't have to have everything worked out Tom.'
'I can't let things get out of control. I can't. People get hurt.' Tom said and his voice felt small.
'I'm pretty sure that happens anyway,' Ned said and he sounded so kind Tom wanted to cry.
'The only person I came out to was my mum,' Tom said, like he couldn't stop himself any more. 'We've always been really close. She was, she was unwell for a long time, and I was there with her through it.'
Tom was trying to smile, but from the way Ned was looking at him it clearly wan't working.
'She didn't take it well,' he whispered, and it was a wildly inadequate summary, but he couldn't bear to repeat the things that were said. The things that were not said. (I'm your son. I have done everything to be a good son.)
'I'm so sorry Tom,' Ned said, and reached out in a tentative offer, and Tom just folded into his arms. There was something in him wound so tight it hurt, and he thought it might have been like that for a very long time without him realising. And with Ned's arms around him everything that Tom had been holding together just unravelled. He sobbed into Ned's shoulder, his stomach clenching painfully as he was still fighting it.
They stayed like that for a long time after Tom cried himself out, Tom breathing into Ned's shirt, Ned carding his fingers through his hair. Tom tried to gather his thoughts, but his mind felt empty and clean with all the tension gone.
'Y'know I don't really have a lot of bloke friends,' Ned said into the silence. 'Tozer I guess, and Irving and Hodge, sort of. Would you maybe want to..'
'Yes,' Tom said, too fast, too eager, warmth blooming in his chest. And then cringed at himself, because let's be friends was a brushoff not an offer. But Ned looked relieved, like he really meant it.
Sitting on Ned's bed with Ned's arm around his shoulder, Tom felt light, like something in the world had finally aligned with something inside him. Like he was taking the first steps into the future he had imagined for himself. And if that meant setting aside the fluttery feelings he had for Ned, surely that was such a small thing in comparison.