If These Thin Walls Could Talk (“The Blue Stain”) [2/2]

[TF protagonist] [WLW character] [TF/F] [2nd storyline] [time jump] [1990s] [corporate setting] [The Office, but make it gayer] [slow burn]

CW: deadname; suggestion of lesbophobic sexual violence; queer as a slur; misogyny; racist microaggressions; sexual harassment; transphobia; mentions of cigarettes, alcohol, the Desiree Washington rape case, Mike Tyson, Donald Trump

(Author’s note: I swear there are lighthearted and tender and sexy moments in this despite the content warning. I am also a ~cis~ woman; I have questioned and continue to question the mystery that is my gender, and this secondary storyline mirrors my own perspective as someone who’s naturally androgynous.

I’d planned to finish this sooner, but I couldn’t stop adding to the story. Warning- the page count in the doc is almost 20. Also, the Olympics have been distracting me…Whoops.)

—-Start of Part 2—-

I was heartbroken to have had to leave her. I’d just lied to Dan and said that I was quitting because I was offered a job elsewhere. I told Celia the real reason why I was going back to San Antonio. She accepted my truth immediately and asked me, “What should I call you now?” I hadn’t even chosen a new name at that point. To be honest, I’d never hated the name “John”- just its masculine coding. In that brief pause I decided who I wanted to be. “Joan,” I said. After Joan Chen, who played my favorite character Jocelyn aka “Josie” on Twin Peaks.

While I was gone, we’d exchange emails back and forth, keeping each other updated on our lives. Heather had broken up with me after she couldn’t accept me as a woman. The only woman I’ve been with since coming out was a well-to-do client who was also trans. Celia was dating again, casually for the most part. She was still working at the company. On July 22nd when I turned 30, I decided to end my time as a sex worker. I’d managed to save up a bit of money, and I could pass in public now. The day that I moved back, I messaged Celia over AIM and told her the news.

Josiepackard1969: Celia, how are you? I’ve missed you so much. But I have great news! I’m back in Ohio and found a place with a few roommates. And Dan re-hired me, this time as Joan. Luckily he didn’t recognize me, but you would think he’d put two and two together

Celia_anderson2: AH THAT’S SO EXCITING

Celia_anderson2: Doesn’t surprise me- the man doesn’t think of anyone but himself

Celia_anderson2: But I’m good! The other night I met a bartender at- well- a bar…Her name’s Maria. Anyway, we hit it off but can’t find the time to go on a proper date outside her work.

Josiepackard1969: Aw good luck, hey maybe ask her to brunch before she goes into her shift?

Celia_anderson2: I was thinking more dinner and “dessert.” Joan, she’s so handsome. You know I’ve got a thing for strong eyebrows.

Josiepackard1969: If I could do a smooth eyebrow wiggle I would }:)

Celia_anderson2: LOL I can’t wait to see you again, Joan. Welcome back to Hellhole Tech, Inc.

Celia_anderson2: Oh, and happy belated birthday!

Josiepackard1969: Thank you!

Josiepackard1969: Ah, is that what we’re calling it now? I guess as sinners we’ve been destined for hell in life, not just in death.

Celia_anderson2: Let’s just hope we’re not damned to work there for eternity. I have to be honest, I’ve been thinking about some sort of change. I don’t know when or even what exactly, but I can table it for now- you’re back to keep me company and that’s all that matters right now.

Josiepackard1969: Yeah, I hope not. And let’s figure it out together!

Celia_anderson2: I’d like that. Love you, Joan :)

Josiepackard1969: Love you too :)

It didn’t take long at all for Dan to give me first-hand experience of his misogyny. First, it’s a comment about the length of my skirt. Then it’s not letting me finish speaking during meetings. One day I became hyper aware of the “Eat My Shorts” Bart Simpson mug on my desk where I stored my writing utensils. I turned it around to hide the design- I could picture him saying, “I’ll eat your shorts” in a pervy way. The other women in the office were also miserable to work under him, I’d come to learn. Celia told me that she swore she saw Dan follow our coworker Lauren to her car the other night, but he played dumb when she confronted him. We anonymously submitted separate complaints about it to human resources, but when I checked in on Celia again she said that nothing was done to hold him accountable, if the complaint was even looked into in the first place.

Celia said that she started keeping a pen in her pants pocket to use as a weapon in case Dan tries any funny business. I thought that I should do the same, and started wearing my old slacks again; Celia generously offered to pay to have them tailored to fit my fuller, curvier body. My weapon of choice: a $12 fountain pen with a pointed metal nib; I stored it upside down so that I could pull it out of my pocket and use my thumb to quickly pop off the cap.

I had been silently taking whatever Dan threw at me. I needed this job to survive. But one can only take so many jabs from a sexist white man. One Thursday when he’s hovering over me at my computer, I see his eyes linger on my chest and tell him to quit ogling. “Whoa whoa whoa, that time of the month, Joan? I just thought I saw a stain on your shirt there.” His hand moves towards me in a groping gesture. I grab his middle finger and begin to twist it in my grasp, making him wince.

“Tell me why I shouldn’t break your finger right now.”

Dan’s wince slowly turns into a sinister grin. He leans down and hisses into my ear, “I own HR. It’s my word against yours.” The reminder of his power sends me a shudder down my spine. I let his hand drop from my grip.

He ponders something for a moment and then says, “We used to have this other Asian- ‘Chon’, was it? Now, he was a real hard worker. Knew how to keep quiet.” So much for thinking he wasn’t racist.

I can’t believe he still hasn’t recognized me. Am I just a walking pair of tits to him? Even my last name is the same: Kieu, like the Vietnamese epic poem The Tale of Kiều.

5pm draws near, meaning it’s almost time to clock out of hell. But Dan once again approaches my cubicle, now dropping a weighty stack of manila folders onto my desk.

“I was gonna wait until next week to give these to you, but I’ve decided to give you a head start.” Motherfu-
“And I want it all done by the end of tomorrow.”

I hang my head in utter resignation as he turns to leave. I stare at the pile of data waiting to be logged and organized and spit back out into digestible charts and graphs.

I managed to catch Celia as she was headed out and tell her about the heap of files that’d be keeping me company tonight. Outraged, Celia says that we should go directly to HR.

“No, don’t bother,” I told her. “I’m just gonna work through the night, see what I can finish.”

“That man is the devil incarnate. I wish I could stay with you but I’m supposed to be going on a date with that bartender I told you about.”

“Oh yeah! And about time. Kris, right?” Celia nodded with an air of guilt. “Don’t worry about me. You go enjoy your date.”

Before I dive into the pile, and after everyone has left- I go to the bathroom to untuck. I was in for a long night so I wanted to be as comfortable as possible.

At around 7, two janitors come in- startled when they see me working- and make their way through the office; emptying and changing trash bins, vacuuming the carpet, and mopping the linoleum kitchen floor.

At 8, I go into the kitchen- the floor sufficiently dry- to look for snacks and find some Goldfish crackers in the cabinet.

9pm rolls arounds and I’ve managed to make a small dent in the stack of folders. My stomach rumbles, signalling the need for real food. I think about what I want to order from Jing Chuan, the only place that’s still open for takeout, when my cell phone starts ringing. I flip open my Motorola StarTAC and see Celia’s name on the screen. I pull out the antenna and press “talk” to answer her.

Glancing at the time, I say, “Hey, it’s kinda early. How’d the date go?”

“Um, the food was good? What I had of it anyway. She took me to Oliver House on Broadway. So the conversation was actually going really well. Until it took a hard left.”

“Oh no, what happened?”

Celia sighs before she goes on, “She said her coworker came out to her as a trans guy today and that she flat-out told him that he was just a confused lesbian. And then expected me to agree with her!”

I said, “That’s awful! She’s awful…I’m sorry, that’s such a shame.”

“Yeah, I was at a loss for words- lost my appetite, too. I just asked the waiter for a to-go box and left. Are you hungry? I don’t want this roast duck to go to waste. It came with an orange sauce.”

“I am starving and thats sounds fucking delicious right now. Guess that means I’ll see you soon?”

“I’m on my way over now. Meet me downstairs in ten?”

“Mhm, see you soon.”

Glad to move and stretch my legs, I take the stairs down to the lobby. Taking the elevator alone at this time also creeped me out. I figured I’d have a better chance against an attacker on the stairs; Kevin McCallister sure used them to his advantage- too bad I couldn’t rig up some heavy paint cans. I reach the lobby and pace around for a bit until I’m bored and stop to lean against the front desk. I don’t know what time Gary or the other security guard typically clock out, but it’s clearly before 9. Must be one of the ways this company tries to save on payroll.

It’s not long before I see a pair of headlights illuminate the parking lot. I jog over to the door and hold it open for her. She’s wearing a silk button down shirt- maroon to match her dark red lipstick; striped high-rise black pants that taper at the bottom; and high heels that now give her some height over me. In my field of vision I can see her nipples poking through her shirt but I keep my eyes up. I tell her, “You look stunning.”

“Thanks.” She smiles and flashes her gap teeth.

We take the elevator up and walk back to my cubicle. Celia goes to find another chair, and I hardly miss a beat before I start untying the bag of leftovers. She reappears from around the corner already seated and rolls up next to me.

I say, “Excuse the carnage I’m about to inflict on this duck.”

“No, please. Be my guest.” I open the styrofoam box as Celia kicks off her heels.

I can tell that most of the skin is no longer crispy except for a corner that had curled up and gotten a bit of char from the broiler- this bit I’ll save for last. I take the plastic fork- I don’t bother with the knife- and stab the duck breast. I dip the meat into the pool of sauce at the bottom of the container and take a large bite. My teeth sink into the flesh, met by the slightly chewy resistance of the fatty skin. The citrus from the sauce cuts through the fat- its glossy sweetness envelopes the inside of my mouth. After that first taste, I’m no longer inclined to wolf it all down and instead properly savor every bite, chew, and swallow.

I take the last piece and drag it across what’s left of the sauce. I close my eyes as I remove it from the plastic tines. The salty crackle of skin crumbles and the fat melts and spreads ,across my tongue leaving me satisfied and reinvigorated.

I realize that Celia has been watching me the whole time.

“Joan…I want someone to fuck me the way you just ate that.”

I snort through my nose, floored by her response. I say, “If only your date tonight wasn’t such an ass.”

“Right! And she doesn’t deserve to walk around with that set of brows. They’re not as great as yours, though.”

All of a sudden my face feels hot. I reach up and brush a finger along my eyebrow, hoping to hide my blush. I try to keep it together and reply, “Thanks, oh I really need to pluck them.”

“What? They’re fine just as they are. Oh my god, remember that time I over-plucked mine for that one Christmas party. It must’ve been in ‘94…Yeah, the year after Nicole left. Now that was a bad look.”

“And then you thought you could trust ME to fill them in? I kept going back to either side with your brow pencil trying to even them out.”

“Yeah, and I looked like Shin Chan by the end of it.”

I cackle and say, “That’s riiight. I wish I could say I was sorry, but that was hilarious.”

We take a moment to revel in that silly memory before I tell Celia that I should get back to work.

She asks, “Can I do anything to help?”

Oh, accounting skills!

“Ooh yes- uh let me just remember where I put them- but there’s some revenue and expense reports from January through June. You’re probably the one who filed them now that I think about it.”

“Yeah, don’t worry about finding them- I have them all saved on my computer.”

“Cool, so I just need those added up for an income statement. Then I can compare those to last year’s numbers and start a profit projection on my end.”

“I can draw up a comparison chart in Excel for you.”

I could cry. “Celia, you are sweeter than a LifeSaver.”

“You know it!” she says, giving me a cheesy wink.

The stack of folders gradually shrinks as we work nonstopnonstop for the next few hours.

It’s nearly 1am, and my eyelids keep falling as I log the figures Celia calculated for me into the profit projection for the rest of the fiscal year.

I need something else to keep my brain awake.

I reach into my right side pocket to hold the fountain pen then use my thumb to slide the cap open before clicking it shut again. I think about that moment with Dan earlier, that oh-so-brief moment when I had him in my clutches. I try to picture how I’d use the pen for self defense against him- I think a stab to the thigh. Just a quick, powerful jab. I pull out the pen and bring it up to point at an imaginary Dan. Ready to take a stab in the air, I push the cap propelling it forward. Blue ink immediately gushes and runs down my fingers and onto the gray carpet.

Well, fuckity-fuck-fuck-fuck. Guess you shouldn’t keep an ass-cheap fountain pen upside down in your pocket all day.

I turn my arm up towards the ceiling to prevent any more ink from dripping onto the carpet, but the damage is already done. Then, I feel the ink run down my forearm and grab my tissue box- I pull out a fistful of sheets to dab at the dark blue trails.

Now what to do about the carpet…

I rush over to Celia who stares at me wide-eyed in confused horror.

I spit out rapid-fire, “So-my-pen-exploded-in-my-hand-then-the-ink-dripped-onto-the-carpet-and-my-arm-is-all-blue-now-but-anyway-I-need-your-help-to-figure-out-how-to-clean-up-the-mess.”

Celia takes a long pause before she takes my left (non-inked) hand and leads me to the kitchen.

She stops at the sink and wets some paper towels. She tells me, “You can stay here to try to wash the ink off your arm. I’ll try to blot up the ink on the carpet.”

I nod and look at her as she heads back to my cubicle in determination.

My attempts at scrubbing the ink off are pretty much fruitless. Half of my hand is blotted blue and there’s still distinct lines of barely faded streaks along my arm.

Celia comes back and the look on her face says it all.

I want to see it for myself. We go back and I see that the stain is slightly less dark than it initially was, but nowhere near gone. I see the mountain of paper towels in the otherwise clean trash bin. I pull one out and try to rub away at the stain, but quickly see that that was a mistake. I only make the stain bigger.

“Joan, there’s nothing more we can do.”

“I know…Fuck, Dan is gonna be livid when he sees this.”

“Here, let’s just hide it under the trash bin. That way we can at least stall him.”

The bottom of the bin is just big enough to cover the stain. My mind is somewhat at ease.

We sit back on our chairs and decide to call it a night. There’s still over half the stack that hasn’t been touched. Even if Celia helped me again tomorrow, I don’t know if the stack could disappear by 5 tomorrow- today, technically.

Celia picks up my stained hand, and uses her fingers to follow the trails of ink up my arm. She says, “It looks kinda cool, you know? Like a powerful force is coursing through your veins.”

“Yeah, or poison? I really hope that thing about ink and skin cancer is a myth.”

“Pfft, you’ll be fiiine.” She places her hand on my thigh. I look down to see her grazing her thumb back and forth.

I try to gulp and feel how dry my throat is. I stammer, “Um, I-I think I need some water.”

“I’ll grab one from the fridge, sit tight.”

She comes back and hands me a frosty water bottle. The condensation feels nice against my palm. I open it, but as I go to take a swig my hand starts to quiver.

“Joan, you’re shaking.” She points to the bottle and asks, “Can I?” I nod my head yes. She stands up and takes the bottle from my hand- I hang onto the bottle cap with a gently closed fist. She nudges my chin upward and rests the lip of the bottle against my own; she tips the bottle and pours a gentle cascade of water into my mouth. I swallow and feel a cool rush swim down my throat and esophagus. I look back into her dark brown, almost black, hooded eyes- I can barely see the whites of them with her face in shadow. Her pupils have always had a softness to them, but now I see a look of hunger- a look that pierces right through me.

Celia brings the water bottle up to her mouth this time. She takes a careful sip, and I can see that she hasn’t swallowed. Her face closes in on mine and I part my lips, ready to receive her gift. Her lips make contact and the water spills into me. She repeats this once more, satiating my thirst.

Unfurling my fingers she takes the cap from me- she closes and sets the bottle down on the desk. Then, she grabs the chair to swivel me around and pushes me into the desk.

She turns her back to me and lowers herself onto my lap, taking hold of each armrest. I take my right hand and place it over hers, interlocking our fingers. I then use my left to rub up and down her thigh while she rolls her hips, shifting her weight against my semi-hard cock. A low guttural moan escapes my mouth- the first in years.

In the early days of my transition I had multiple clients- insecure straight guys- who’d clamp a hand over my mouth when I let out a husky grunt or sigh. Normally that move would be hot but for them it was a way to shut me up- my voice was a reminder of my assigned gender. Even as my voice became slightly feminized I would artificially raise my tone as a default.

The friction between our bodies is enough to start a fire. Deep, smoky moans flow freely out of the both of us.

I move my hand to the apex of her thighs and adjoin my fingers to rub Celia’s cunt. As I press directly to her clit she turns her head and sighs into me, “Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought you were right-handed?”

I say, “I’m one of the lucky few endowed with ambidexterity.” My fingers migrate to her belt buckle- I unfasten it and her pants with no trouble. As I pull her zipper down, she brings a hand up to caress my face before she kisses me with urgency. Our lips merge and mold each other into shapeless yet complementary forms. Our saliva melds and becomes indistinct- I can taste the faintest hint of lipstick on my mouth.

I reach down inside her lace panties and rest the meat of my palm against her pubic mound. I use my middle finger to part through her thick, trimmed bush and press it to her bud. I feel a throb from her clit almost immediately; my fingertip orbits around it, slowly.

She looks forward and regains her grip on the armrest. I slide my finger down to her slit as if to enter- my finger moistens against her wet opening. I go back to her clit, spreading a thin layer of cum, and begin to pump her with two fingers. I let go of her right hand and raise my palm to lightly graze against her hard nipple, sheathed only by thin silk. I reach under her shirt and grab her breasts, massaging and squeezing her flesh. Her buttocks begin to clench- the hard muscle makes my cock swell against the newly taught fabric of my pants.

I pick up the pace rubbing her clit, and. I use a single fingertip to flutter against the swollen bud. Celia sharply exhales and raises her hips off of me. I see her bare heels dig into the carpet as her center is pulled upward, as though her body is longer bound by gravity. Celia whines my name, “Fuck, Joan…Mmm fuck, Joan!” My fluttering accelerates and her entire body shudders as she screams in orgasm.

She collapses back onto me, her chest heaving. I grab the water bottle from behind me and hand it to her.

“Th…thank you.” She takes a few large gulps and gives it back- I take a sip myself before screwing the lid shut.

After a minute Celia’s breathing returns to normal. She climbs off of me and turns to lean over me. She moves her hand up my thigh to my aching cock. “Now let me take care of you.”

Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/ougfto/if_these_thin_walls_could_talk_the_blue_stain_22