Underwear Ch. 01

On the first floor they stepped out into a long, high-ceilinged room with tall, shuttered windows and peeling eau de nil paint-work. It was full of chromium-plated clothing rails, laden with randomly hung garments. Nothing seemed to be displayed in any kind of order, the rails simply occupied and and every available space. At the far end of the hall was a curtained area on a raised platform, which looked just like a small, art-deco stage. Half way along the back wall, facing the doors, there was a huge, walnut-veneered sales desk, fashioned like some vast church pulpit, overwhelmed by piles of plastic carrier bags. These were stacked haphazardly among heaps of paperwork and display boxes containing jewellery, trinkets and paperweights, and all kinds of miscellaneous tat. In the midst of this chaos sat an ancient cash register, its gilded flanks pitted and blackened with time and cigarette smoke.

Beside it, perched on the edge of the desk, in a cleared area, was a youngish man, quite long and skinny, like a human grasshopper. His white blond hair hung down limply around his face and he was wearing tight, faded, coral pink jeans and a lemon yellow bowling shirt with rolled back sleeves. He was industriously filing his nails with an emery board.

"Jesus Christ on a bike! The last living cliché in captivity!" Rayne whispered, near hysterically, leaning on Kevan's arm. "D'you think he could use a colour chart?"

"Sshhh...!" Kev grinned and looked around the room almost nervously.

A few others were browsing among the racks but it was quiet. Two young men in identical brown leather bombers and blue jeans giggled over a glittery sheath dress up in the corner by the 'stage'. Near the desk, a tall, auburn-wigged, rather obvious transvestite in a lilac twin-set tutted over the selection of stockings and complained that there was nothing in taupe. Kevan turned away thumbing solemnly through a rack of blouses as though this was some kind of initiation rite. Rayne followed him, feeling at a loose end. From time to time the Vampire scanned the room anxiously to be sure that they were not being stared at.

He felt physically uncomfortable. This was mostly due to Kevan's insistence on making out before they left the warehouse and that, of course, had been a ruse to get him into the black, lace-up bodice and silken French knickers he had bought his lover the week before. Which Rayne was still wearing, on Kevan's insistence.

"I feel like everyone knows," he whispered now, pushing his hands into the pockets of his black, cord hipsters and scowling like a child.

"Like they care!" Kev responded blithely, waving a hand around the room in general. He held up a black lace shirt with an open collar and a tailored waistline. "What about that?"

"'s okay I s'pose," muttered Rayne grudgingly, feeling very much as if he was a kid again, forced to shop with his mum. He had worn worse in his time, and the shirt was reasonably ambiguous.

"And this?" Kevan showed him a white chiffon number with a ruffled neckline and tight, fitted sleeves.

"I don't wear white," the Vampire told him.

"It's very sheer... imagine a black body under it. Or just a little black bra?" Kev winked at him.

"I'd look like a slapper!" his lover objected.

Kevan just smiled. "Try it on."

Ice green eyes widened at him. "Here?"

"You wanna know if it fits, don't you?" Kevan shook his head with a little sigh. He held out the hangers.

Rayne glared at him for a moment, then snatched them from his hand and flounced off theatrically towards the curtains. The misfit from the desk came to life and bounded after him like a Labrador puppy chasing a ball.

"You'll need a dithc for thothe!" he lisped imperiously.

Rayne looked up at the skinny creature disparagingly and made another 'check' on his mental cliché-spotter's tab.

"Dithc?" he repeated in his most withering tone.

Yellow Shirt returned to the desk and retrieved a blue plastic circle with a hole in it from an array of iron spikes by the till. He hooked it over one of Rayne's hangers like a calculated insult.

"That'th better," he pronounced, surveying Rayne with a critical eye. "Are you sure you've got the figure for thothe?"

The Vampire glared at him. Turning smartly, he yanked back one of the crimson, velour curtains, muttering; "Bitch!"

He was admiring his perfectly flat stomach in the deco mirror on the wall, stroking his fingers over the black lace of one of the shirts when Kev leaned in with something small, black and leathery in one hand.

"Looks good," he nodded, approvingly. "What about this, heh?"

Rayne took the garment and held it up with a critical expression on his sharp-edged, haughty face. As a miniskirt, he supposed, it was rather underdeveloped, but it would have made a generous belt! He told his lover as much. They were still arguing about it when the lisping lemon-shirt returned and remarked; "You'll need another dithc for that!"

"Yeah...?" said Kevan, unconcerned. "And stockings, I think. Since madam wouldn't wear them! Something dark, with a bit of a sheen, eh?"

Rayne glowered darkly at them both and wished a fiery hell on the pair of them.

"You need damned good legth for that," Lemon remarked, casting a scathing eye in the direction of the Rayne and the miniskirt.

"Oh... he's got the legs, don't worry," Kev assured him as if Rayne was immaterial to this discussion. "We'll need sussies though."

"Underwear'th upthtairth...." Lemon called out wearily on his way back to the desk.

"And shoes!" Kev added, whilst Rayne gave him a 'Paddington Bear' scowl from the cubicle. The burly detective grinned. "Eight an'alf, aren't you?"

"Get lost!"

"I thought you liked shoes!"

"Fuck off!" Rayne snapped the curtain shut.

Inside the changing cubicle he leaned back wearily against the mirror, wondering how the hell he had reached this impasse. Why was it that he just could not say 'No' to Kevan? It was impossible. For some reason he found it untenable to hurt the mortal. Maybe he sensed that Kev had already been hurt enough - and damned his Vampiric perception for that.

With the exception of this insane obsession, Kevan had shown him unparalleled kindness and warmth ever since they started to see one-another. Even when Rayne urged him to start running in the mornings again, and got him to visit the gym in the Village, Kev had complied with a good humoured tolerance. The mortal accepted that he was overweight and genuinely seemed to want to do something about it. If it would please Rayne to have him strip a little fitter; if it made him more sexually attractive to his lithe young mate, then Kevan would do whatever it took.

But this was a different matter, Rayne told himself unhappily. He wanted Kevan to get fit as much for his own good as for aesthetic reasons. This was just downright kinky!

The curtain twitched and Lemon peered in.

"Dithc!" he said impassively, passing Rayne a green plastic circle. "You gonna put that on or jutht thtand there holding it?"

Rayne snatched the disc and yanked the curtain shut again furiously. He was unbuttoning his fly when a limp, well-manicured hand thrust through the gap dangling something fine, black and gauzy from it's fingers.

"You'll want thethe?" a disembodied voice lisped irritatingly.

The Vampire hooked the stockings lightly between the little finger and thumb of his left hand and Lemon withdrew abruptly. For a moment, Rayne stared at the wispy undergarments, caught on the brink of hysteria, between tears and laughter. Then he unfastened the remaining buttons and toed off his boots, wriggling his pants down and pulling off his socks.

His legs were good. There was no denying it. He might curse the day those roadies ever got him drunk enough to surrender his consciousness, but the effects were startling. His body was boyishly lean, hard and hairless. In spite of the amount of drugs he had been doing when he was bitten, he had kept himself reasonably fit. The band had been in the middle of a nation-wide tour after all.

Kevan loved it. He had confessed that the first time they fucked he fantasised that Rayne was much younger. His lover was less than comfortable with that. When he explained the reason however, Kev was surprisingly sympathetic.

On his promotion to the Vice Squad, Kevan told him in turn, he had seen things done to kiddies that made his hair curl and his hackles rise. He also confessed, cryptically, that he saw patterns in Rayne's behaviour which made him suspect previous abuse. But he refused to elaborate on that, even when Rayne threatened him, demanding to know what the fuck he meant. The Vampire came to realise that Kevan felt genuinely awkward about what other men had done to his new boyfriend.

He had treated Rayne even more gently afterwards. But.... just occasionally... the truth surfaced for him and, furthermore, Rayne suspected that Kevan was secretly excited by it. More than once, of late, he had asked if Rayne would pretend to be virgin for him. The Vampire always complied, tacitly. Kevan never failed to be abjectly apologetic, once he had come inside his lover.

Now, Rayne rolled up the stockings slowly, feeling the silkiness against his guitar-string-callused fingertips. Kev had showed him, patiently, how to put them on. He liked to watch Rayne putting on stockings.

The Vampire sat down on the crimson plush covered stool in a corner of the cubicle and wrapped his toes in the shimmering gossamer, carefully unfolding the silken sheath, feeling it cling like cobweb to his calf and knee, then glide up over his slender thigh. It was a sensuous process and he lingered over it, glancing from time to time at his legs in the mirror as though they belonged to someone else. He was bewildered by the frail, boyish, alien reflected there, peering back through the veil of his long, dark hair almost shyly, as if caught in the perpetration of some major indecency.

Still sitting, he contemplated the skirt grimly. He never wore leather against his skin if he could help it. Kev knew that; knew that he hated it!

As if his angry thoughts had summoned his lover, the curtain twitched and Kev's flushed, enthusiastic face appeared there, framed by crimson velour, cut off eerily from his chunky body. The mortal's expression faltered slightly.

"All right?" he asked in a tentative voice.

"I dunno..." Rayne looked up at him helplessly.

"Can I come in?"

"I s'pose so," the Vampire sighed. "But you'll probably need a dithc!"

Kevan chuckled and withdrew. Moments later he returned with a white plastic disc, a pink paper slip and a box which he set down on the stool. Fishing in his jacket pocket, he produced something small, black and slinky-looking. Rayne's eyes followed it warily.

"Suspender belt," Kev explained. "Stand up, you'll need to put it on before the skirt."

Rayne let him fasten the band of elasticised silk around his midriff and closed his eyes briefly as Kevan's fingers slid into his pants, feeding the suspenders through and clipping them carefully to the stocking tops.

"I hate you with a passion," he proclaimed wearily and Kevan kissed the back of his neck in a fit of sudden, impulsive affection.

"You'll thank me darlin'! When you see what a beauty you can be...."

"Shut up, Kev!" Rayne tilted his head and glared at the other man. "I look like a fuckin' extra from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, I am never gonna forgive you for this!"

Kevan fished in another pocket of his jacket and deposited a crumpled paper bag in his lover's hand, making him look down, perplexed.

"Do those for me while I sort the skirt out," he said, unruffled by Rayne's hostility. "There's a good girl."

Rayne Wylde peered into the bag rather sceptically. There was a compact of pale, pressed powder there, which he did not need but had not got the energy to argue about. The tablet of eye shadow was called 'Bruise Pristine', a dusky aubergine colour, dusted with glitter. He touched a dab to his upper and lower eyelids so that his emotionless gaze seemed even more washed out and desolate then ever, then applied a streak beneath each cheekbone for good measure. The tried and tested junky look.

"Feet!" Kev prompted, crouching before him with the skirt.

Numbly he stepped into the garment and allowed the other man to draw it steadily up his thighs and wriggle it snugly over his lean hips. Kevan moved around behind him and wrestled with the zipper, whilst kissing the back of his neck. Rayne dabbed the powder puff on his nose and selected the expensive-looking lipstick with a sense of impending doom. It was called Hot Flush, and he felt as though he was beginning to have one!

Uncapping the stick he wound up the rouge slowly and examined it's rich, sanguine tip before touching it to his lips slowly and reluctantly. Rayne applied two coats, then a third until his sullen pout was the colour of a bloom of fresh, bright blood. He stared at his reflection and it gazed back with betrayed eyes, sunk deep in their shadowy sockets. Even when he was whoring for a living he had never felt this cheap.

After a time he became aware of other things again; of the heavy silence punctuated only by the clicking of hangers on the rails beyond his curtain screen. His eyes moved to find Kevan's face in the mirror, reading awe and tension in his pensive expression. Kev was not totally insensitive. He had picked up on his boyfriend's mood as he fastened the skirt. Now he crouched again, taking the lid off the white box carefully.

Briefly, Rayne's tortured gaze softened at he bent his head to watch and the other man held up one of the boots to him. It was the most elegant piece of footwear he had seen in a long while; supple black, patent leather, cut to just above the ankle, with a long, pointed winkle-picker toe and delicate, five-inch, diamante-encrusted stilleto heel. It had an inside zip and three buckled straps around the arch of the foot and the heel.

He took it in both hands, cradling it like a precious artefact.

"Eight and a half, exactly," Kevan told him gently. "Last pair, too. It's a sign from Camp Heaven, Ray."

"I'll need a nine in something that narrow," Rayne told him neutrally, his eyes never leaving the boot.

"Try it on, you forget how fine the stockings are. It's not like wearing socks." Kev's hand stroked his right calf affectionately.

Sad, liquid-green eyes stared down at him out of a sculpted, porcelain face. Sleek black locks framed a gaze like molten pain. The carmine lips parted, then closed again around a breathless sigh.

"I used to have a pair like these," said Rayne Wylde huskily, at long last. "Only they weren't so high. And they weren't all sparkly." He shook his head slowly and regretfully. "I'll break my neck if I try to walk in them, love."

Kevan's big, warm hand stroked his foot.

"Just try them," he whispered, stretching up to kiss his lover's thigh; the minute triangle of exposed flesh in the side-split of the skirt, just clear of his stocking top.

Shrugging slightly, the young Vampire handed back his prize and let Kevan slip his foot into the soft, warm leather, then zip and buckle him in dextrously. Rayne wobbled slightly, one heel suddenly so much farther from the ground than the other. He put a hand on Kevan's arm to steady himself & Kev turned his head, kissing Rayne's fingers tenderly.

"I love you, Ray," he murmured, wriggling the other boot onto his lover's left foot. "You are making me so fuckin' hard right now!"

He fastened the buckles and rose to his feet, unbuttoning the blouse without another word. Rayne reached for him, suddenly needing to be held, but Kev just made him turn around and face the mirror again. His hands slid over the black bodice which Rayne still had on under his shirt, mainly because it was such a bitch to get off. It fastened with hooks and eyes from his shoulder blades to just above his hips but the back was also laced. Rayne had thought this was for decoration. Kevan showed him otherwise when he unfastened the stays and pulled them tight, cinching him in at the belly & ribs until the Vampire gasped with pain. The effect, once Kev had slipped a hand into each padded cup, adjusting his companion carefully, was to give him a small, perfect cleavage.

Now Kev refastened the blouse to a point just beneath his lover's nipples and bent his head to kiss Rayne's painted lips, softly at first, becoming gradually rougher. Within moments they were locked together passionately, mouths and hips grinding with raw, needy ferocity. Kev's hands slid up his skirt and into the lining of his silk thong, caressing between his firm cheeks until Rayne's cock stiffened in spite of his original determination not to respond.

One strong, warm hand cupped and squeezed his balls through the fine, sensuous material, then eased upward to rub his rock hard shaft until Rayne was gasping into Kevan's mouth, unable to control himself.

The clink of the curtain rings sent them flying apart and Kevan turned defensively, his lips bloodied with his lover's rouge. The Lisping Lemon tilted his head shrewdly and said; "Thith ith fetish-wear, not a thex shop! I'll thank you not to cauthe offenthe to the other cuthtomerth!"

"We're behind the fucking curtain!" Kev growled at him softly.

Beyond him, wiping at his smudged lipstick with one hand, Rayne murmured; "We 'were'!"

Now the Lemon's colourless eyes met his and his white brows came together in a little frown of contemplation as he looked the Vampire up and down slowly.

"He'th right," he lisped at last. "You 'have' got good legth!"

He crooked a finger at Rayne. "Come out. Let'th have a look at you."

The Vampire glanced sidelong at Kev, who still looked rather disgruntled, but the big man nodded at last. A little nervously, Rayne stepped forward, moving carefully in the unfamiliar heels and tugging his skirt hem down conscious of the lingering semi in his panties. It felt strange to be this tall and he ran edgy fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his face, keeping his head held as high as he could manage. Obstinately, he refused to let them see how this humiliated him.

"Walk over to the other mirror and come back," Lemon told him in an odd, matronly tone of voice. He pointed to the freestanding glass at the far end of the changing cubicles.

Rayne looked at him askance, but did as he was told. He moved steadily and his heels clicked on the asphalt floor as he walked towards the mirror. The image he saw there in no way resembled him, he thought, amazed that he could look this different, this peculiar. He had half imagined that he would look into the mirror and see his sister, Skye, looking back at him, but he was not Skye Ann. The face that glowered back at him was sharper and more defensive. His hips were leaner and his legs longer. Skye would hate him if she ever found out about this.

Kevan had a point, he supposed. He 'was' pretty.

"Come on," Lemon commanded imperiously. "Come back. And try to keep your thighth together thith time. Ladieth put their feet inward when they walk, they don't thtamp around like navvieth!"

"Yeth mother!" Rayne muttered sarcastically. He sashayed a little as he came back towards them, putting one hand on his hip and coming to a halt in front of Kevan, an insolent pout on his painted face.

"God, you are fucking gorgeous!" Kev said softly.

"He hath potential," Lemon remarked in a contemplative tone of voice, still looking Rayne up and down with wondering eyes. "It would be better if he wath happy."

Rayne's acid gaze moved from Kevan's adoring expression to the assistant's almost sorrowful features and back again. Kev was looking at the skinny fellow with a critical scowl.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing..." Lemon responded automatically. "Nothing at all, only he hateth being drethed up like a dolly, and it showth in hith...." he hesitated, waving his hands for emphasis; "...in hith demeanour."