Trifecta: St. Patrick's Day, part one

[frogs_of_war]

I have two weeks until Be My Queen is due, of which I work all but three days. I need to reread everything so I can do the obvious edits before I send it to other eyes. So that's probably why I cleaned the kitchen, deep cleaned half the living room and vacuumed all of it, cleaned and swept the back porch, and rearranged the first part of my middle child's bedroom which I use as a library/craft cupboard. A small bookshelf had sat in the slip of a space since my daughter rearranged her room a year ago.

At least my house is better off for my procrastinating. 

Title: Trifecta
Chapter: St. Partick's Day, part one
Status: WIP
Genre: Romance, Triple Slash, businessmen, jobs, friends, working
Length: 1.8k
Summary: Damien gets ready to meet Ty and Kenneth's friends

Masterlist


Damien sat in front of the vanity mirror in the spare room. Kylie rubbed his shoulders. "Are you ready?"

Damien took a deep breath. He had been out dancing in finery with Kenneth several times, but today he was going to meet Kenneth and Ty's friends all dressed up. Kylie was great and Flannigan was ok. What would their other friends be like? "As ready as I'll ever be."

Kylie grinned at him in the mirror. "Don't worry. You don't have to work for Jaron if you don't want to."

Damien turned to look at her. "Do you think he'll offer me the job?"

"I'm going to put my soul into it. But that's just me."

He was sure she would. Damien had known Flannigan's wife for less than a month, but he'd never seen her give less than her all.

"Off with the shirt."

Damien pulled off his tank top and tossed it on the bed. Kylie lifted it off the clothes she'd laid out and folded it. She draped a cloth around his shoulders to protect the lacy underthings he already wore. They were the foundation, Kylie said, and the makeup was the armor. The dress wouldn't go on until his face was complete.

He pulled the wig sock over his hair. "I'm not good at drag."

Kylie poured foundation into her palm and dabbed a triangle sponge into it. "You don't have to be."

"What if Jaron thinks I'm a girl?"

Kylie motioned for him to shut his mouth. The makeup went on wet but dried quickly to a powder. "I know women that would kill for that problem. Would that bug you?"

"I guess not." The other dancers at the place Kenneth took him thought he was female. Kenneth said that the polite thing was to dance with more than the person you came with. And while Kenneth was busy doing his duty, Damien never lacked male partners.

He was fine with that, but Ty didn't let his eyes linger on Damien or find excuses to touch him when Damien was in a dress. Kenneth, on the other hand, had seduced Damien the first time he'd tried on the thigh highs and corset with garter and the lacy underwear.

Ty hadn't joined them until Damien was bare.

Damien glanced in the mirror while Kylie wiped her hands and picked up the eye makeup. He didn't look like a woman yet.

Kylie touched his chin. He looked back at her.

"Are you worried that Jaron will hire you or that he won't?"

"I..." he licked his lips.

"Stop that!" She blotted his lips dry. "At least until I'm done. Then you can be as sexy as you like."

"I'm sexy in the way a girl is?

Kylie smiled. "Close your eyes. Or the way a gay boy is? I don't know as I'm not attracted to either. But when you're excited you act young, which can come off as feminine." Her brushes were feather soft, but boy were there a lot of them. "I'm done."

Damien looked in the mirror. His eyes looked bigger and brighter, but he was still him. "Am I supposed to look like a real girl?"

Maybe if he wore over-the-top makeup, Ty wouldn't avoid him.

"Jaron doesn't need another queen. He has plenty of those."

"But what about men my age who like to dress up?

"Do you?"

Damien pressed his lips together. "I don't hate it," except for Ty reaction to it, "but maybe someone would like it more. I don't want to put anyone out of a job."

The barista, whose job he'd taken over, was moving back to live with her mother. He had that job as long as he wanted it.

Kylie grinned. "Think about this as temporary. The moment someone asks for the job, you can step aside. Have you thought about your personae? Look up."

Damien complied. "I... I don't know."

Everything he'd thought up was just a caricature.

Kylie powered in his eye brows. "Flannigan will make something up if you don't. Tonight you aren't Damien Parzen. You are someone else. Like Halloween. I've been told it's freeing."

How could anything be considered freeing if it made his gut clinch? What if he came up with a bad story and had to live with it?

Kylie patted his shoulder. "Freedom is scary. All freedom is. Freedom to succeed is freedom to fail."

Or starve to death. "I don't want to fail."

"Neither do I. Flannigan's dream job relies on the theaters and clubs he works with being successful and Jaron's troupe is barely scraping by. But he rakes it in when he has a pretty ingénue."

That was going to be Damien if he could pull it off. "I want Ty to be happy too."

"So tell me your name."

Damien sucked in a breath. "I'm Deedee Pine and I'm eighteen years old. Or should I be nineteen?"

Kylie didn't know how young Damien was, only that he was under twenty-one. Ty and Flannigan had arranged the St. Patrick's Day party to start at a pizza place, go to a all ages dance, and move to a bar late in the evening. Damien would be tired of the heels by that time anyway.

Kylie cocked her lips. "Eighteen is best. Ingénues are very young."

"I can be," Damien winked slowly, "eighteen."

Kylie laughed. "That's perfect. Just on the edge of legal, but no one's quite sure which side."

"I from a small town, but just moved to the city and I'm on my own for the first time."

That was about as far from his own story as he could get.

"Say you have a roommate, so no one gets pushy or follows you home." She opened the cloth around his shoulders and put foundation on his neck and the parts of his chest that would show.

"Do you think that's likely?"

"Just say you're with someone and you'll be fine."

He hoped so. He hadn't had a problem when Kenneth took him dancing, but they'd obviously been together. Dancing in heels was actually easier than dancing in men's shoes. The man at the shoe store hadn't even batted an eye when Damien bought his pretty gold dancing shoes.

Damien glanced in the mirror. He was still Damien. His cheeks were more defined and he was totally symmetrical.

"Now the lips." Kylie dabbed on the color. "Deedee."

Kylie grinned. "Now turn toward the mirror. What does Deedee want to be when she grows up?"

He didn't look like himself. He was a girl. "I've always wanted to be on stage. I don't expect to ever star, but if I could just be one of the girls in the back, my life would be complete."

Damien put his palms together in front of his chest and filled his lungs with air.

"Perfect." Kylie pinned the curly black wig on Damien's head. The wig was to just below his shoulder blades and looked like a perm popular on TV show older than he was. Did women nowadays even wear their hair like this?

Maybe this would set him apart from real girls. He wasn't really trying to pass.

Kylie helped him into the petticoats then had him twirl to make sure they were lying correctly. She nodded. "Now the dress."

Because today was St. Patrick's Day, or would be at midnight, the dress was green. Like with everything else Kylie had done to get him ready for today, he hoped she knew what she was doing.

The neckline was low enough to show the hint of cleavage the undergarments were meant to promote. The first time Kylie had laced him in and adjusted him, she'd talked about duct tape and binding, and all the other things she'd worked with when she'd dolled up queens in high school. That comedy club's back room was where she'd met Flannigan.

The dress's skirt was full and the bodice fit over the corset like a second skin. Damien looked more like one of those debutantes from a fifties movie than a living breathing woman of today.

He spun. He couldn't help it. The petticoats flared, showing off the shamrocks on his thigh highs and the dark green petticoat under the light green one under the white. All that green fabric and white lace. "I'm beautiful."

Kylie grinned. "Of course you are. Now sit."

Damien reached for his street heels. Kylie brushed his hands away. "Don't touch anything. No buckles or straps until we get there. Not even then. Your nails have to stay perfect."

Kylie had insisted on taking him out to get them this morning. She said fingers and shoes made the woman.

"Now for a surprise."

Damien put his hands together and bounced on the chair like Deedee would if told of a surprise. And truthfully what Damien would do if Kenneth mentioned one. Ty's surprises could be anything from eating out to a new card trick, but Kenneth's surprises always ended in hours of pleasure and sleeping through the first ten minutes of his alarm.

Kylie sat a hat box on Damien's lap. He smiled up at her and opened it carefully, mindful of his fingernails.

He should have practiced eating in them.

The hat inside was beautiful. Kylie lifted it and set it at an angle on Damien's head. "How do you like it?"

"It's very pretty. How should I wear it?"

Kylie played with it, but settled on in the middle tilting back because it looked the most innocent that way and that was the look they were going for.

Damien got up and looked himself over in the full length mirror. Could he pretend to be someone else for hours at a time? Kenneth had confidence in Damien's acting ability since he could look happy and entertained by even boring drunks.

Ty had said acting ability had never been a factor in Jaron picking his cast. They were all good, but his income didn't rely on perfect acting.

Kylie pulled off her sweat pants and shirt and on the dress she was wearing to the party. Hers wasn't nearly was fancy as Damien's. She turned her back to him. "Could you-- no you can't. Not with those nails. I'll have Flannigan do my zipper."

She put her hand on the door. "He has the most outlandish views about my skin. Helping you into your underwear is totally understandable. You seeing my skin is a scandal."

Damien put his finger to his lips, careful not to touch them, and winked. Kylie laughed and ducked out the doorway. If she was pretending she'd changed in the bathroom, she should have taken her clothes with her.

Damien turned in place and bent his knees for greater skirt flair. Even if he didn't get offered the job, he was going to have fun tonight.