*Johar Town, Lahore**
Zain was twenty-two and a certified disappointment.
His mother had said it in those exact words, standing in the kitchen with a hand on her hip and a frying pan in the other, after he told her he'd failed his third-semester theory paper. "Nothing ever comes of you. No studies, no job, no marriage." Then she'd grabbed his ear and dragged him to the Suzuki, and forty minutes later he was sitting cross-legged on a filthy rope bed in the old walled city, in a courtyard that smelled of goats and stale rose petals, while a holy man with kohl in his eyes and a mouthful of missing teeth looked at him like he was a used car.
The old man gave him an amulet. Black thread, folded paper, a knot the size of a marble. "Your luck's shut, son," he said, spitting to the side. "Wear it backwards and it opens."
Zain wore it normal. Nothing happened. For eleven days, nothing happened, and his mother's face got longer and his marks didn't improve and his life stayed exactly as shit as it had always been.
Then Haider came over on a Friday with a six-pack of local beer in his father's beat-up hatchback and a plan to play FIFA until their eyes bled, and by eleven they were both wrecked on the roof and Zain was bitching about the amulet, and Haider — being Haider, being a bastard since the fourth grade — said, "You idiot, he said backwards, you wore it normal. Turn the fucking thing around."
So Zain, drunk and stupid, pulled the thread over his head and turned it around and put it back on.
They passed out at two.
—
He woke up because his chest was heavy.
Not heavy like a hangover. Heavy like two soft weights had been strapped to his sternum, and when he rolled over they shifted with a jiggle that did not belong to any chest he'd ever owned. He looked down. There were tits. Actual tits. Two of them, full and pale in the grey morning light, pressed together by gravity, nipples gone hard from the cold of the AC.
"Fuck," he whispered.
Then he sat up and the sheet slid down and he saw the rest — smooth shoulders, narrow waist, soft flare of hips, thighs that touched all the way down. He scrambled off the bed, tripped over his own too-long trousers, and his foot landed in the puddle he'd apparently made in the night, and only then did he notice the other thing.
He'd pissed himself. A little. Because he had a—
He put his hand down the front of his trousers and his fingers found warmth and folds and a soft damp cleft where his dick used to be.
He screamed. Loud. Like a bitch. Like a proper whore.
Then he ran to the bathroom mirror and stopped dead.
The face looking back was his and wasn't. Same eyebrows, too thick, same nose. But the jaw had softened, the cheeks had rounded out, the lips were fuller and pinker and stupidly pretty, and the hair that had always been a flat black mess had grown down past his shoulders in thick soft waves. Big dark eyes. Lashes he'd have killed for.
"Motherfucker," he breathed.
He grabbed his phone with a hand that was now small and slim with nails that looked manicured. Eleven missed calls from his mother. One from Haider. He hit Haider.
"I was asleep—"
"Haider. Haider, get over here. Now. Bring the car."
"What's wrong? Your voice sounds weird—"
"JUST GET HERE, YOU BASTARD."
—
Haider took twenty minutes. Zain spent nineteen of them pacing the lounge in a shirt that hung off him like a tent, trying not to cry, and the twentieth hiding behind the door when the car horn sounded in the street.
He opened it and Haider walked in saying, "Since when does your sister live here? Where's Zain—"
Then he saw her. Standing barefoot in the middle of the lounge, arms wrapped around herself, shirt slipping off one shoulder.
Haider's mouth opened. Closed. Opened.
"Hello," he said, in a completely different voice than his own.
Zain burst into tears.
It took a full hour and two cups of tea and a lot of yelling to convince him. He made Zain pull up his old ID photo and hold it next to his new face. He made Zain recite the name of the girl Haider had been in love with in ninth grade, which only Zain knew. He made Zain say the thing about Haider's father that only Zain was allowed to say.
By the end Haider was sitting on the arm of the sofa with his hands on his knees, staring at the floor, and Zain was cross-legged on the carpet, lashes clumped with crying, feeling like a total clown.
"So what now?" Haider said.
"I'm calling the old man. It's off. His shop's shut too. Whole neighbourhood's asleep."
"Is this permanent?"
"How the fuck should I know, Haider!" Zain threw a cushion. It bounced off Haider's shoulder and Haider — the prick — laughed.
"Can I say something?"
"Say it."
"You look good."
"Shut up."
"Honestly. Swear to God. Really good."
Zain threw the second cushion. It hit him in the face and he laughed harder, and somewhere in that laugh the panic cracked a little and let some air in.
—
Three days. The old man's phone off for three days.
Zain stopped leaving the house. Haider brought groceries, rice from the cart at the corner, a dress from his sister's cupboard that at least fit. He taught him to sit properly, to walk without stomping, to hold the scarf. Zain learned that a bra strap leaves a red groove by evening and that men look at you at traffic lights like you're meat hanging in a butcher's window and that the world has a completely different set of rules he'd never been told about.
And Haider kept looking at him.
Not staring, exactly. But every time Zain turned around, Haider's eyes were somewhere else, snapping away too fast.
On the fourth night the power went. Whole block, the fan dying mid-whirr, the AC gasping out. Zain lit a candle in the lounge and sat in front of it with his knees up, and Haider came in from the kitchen with two glasses of water and set them down and didn't sit on the sofa. He sat on the floor. Close.
"Haider."
"Hm."
"You're looking at me."
"You're looking at everybody."
"Prick. I'm looking at you."
The candle flame bent. Haider's face was all shadows and one lit cheekbone and his throat moving when he swallowed.
"Can I ask you something?" he said.
"Ask."
"Are you still my friend? Or—"
"Or what?"
"Or—" He stopped. Started again. "I'm going out of my mind. Three days without sleep. I can't tell if you're you or somebody else, and I just— I can't stop looking, and it's driving me fucking insane—"
Zain leaned over and kissed him.
It was clumsy. He'd never kissed anyone as a girl — never properly as a boy either, and now his mouth was a different shape and his lips were soft and Haider made a noise into it like he'd been punched. Then Haider's hand came up and cupped the back of his neck and pulled, and it stopped being clumsy.
Haider kissed like a hungry animal. Teeth on the lower lip, tongue pushing in, one hand sliding into Zain's hair and fisting it so Zain's head tipped back. The candle got knocked over and went out and neither of them cared. Haider shoved him back against the sofa and came down on top of him, knee between his thighs, and the weight of a man on top of him was so much better than he had any right to expect.
"Jesus," Haider breathed into his neck. "You smell—"
"Shut up. Just shut up—"
"Let me talk, you little bastard. Three days I've been drowning in how you smell."
He got Zain's shirt open. Buttons popping, one of them rolling away across the floor, and then Haider's mouth was on his throat, his collarbone, the soft swell above the bra cup. He dragged the strap down with his teeth, dragged the cup down, and put his whole mouth over a nipple and sucked.
Zain's back arched off the floor like he'd been electrocuted. His voice came out a register higher than it had any right to. "Oh fuck— Haider—"
Haider's tongue rolled it, then bit, and Zain's hips jerked up and the knee between his legs ground in and there was wetness in his trousers already, a lot of it, soaking through the thin cotton, and he was so embarrassed he could die.
"You're wet," Haider said against his skin. Delighted. Smug. The bastard.
"I know—"
"Soaking. Honestly." His hand slid down Zain's stomach, over the waistband, and the flat of his palm pressed against the whole of him through the fabric. Zain whined. Actually whined.
"Say it," Haider said. "Say it, you slut. What do you want?"
Zain put his arm over his eyes so he wouldn't have to look at him. "Want it."
"Want what?"
"Your fingers, you bastard. Inside."
Haider pulled the trousers down his legs and the air hit bare wet skin and Zain's knees came up instinctively and then Haider's fingers were there, sliding through the wet, spreading it, finding the tight little knot at the top and rubbing slow circles.
"Fuck, that's—" Zain's voice broke. His hand shot out and grabbed Haider's wrist and didn't pull it away, just held on.
Haider worked him like that, slow and mean, until Zain was shaking and slick to the thighs and begging. Then one finger pushed in.
Tight. Unbelievably tight. Zain gasped and clenched and Haider groaned like he was the one being touched. "Shit. Shit, you're so—" He pushed deeper. Crooked up. Found something that made Zain's whole body jolt and his mouth fall open.
"There," Zain choked. "There. Right there—"
"Here?" Haider did it again. Harder.
"YES—"
He added a second finger. Zain's nails dug into his wrist hard enough to leave marks and Haider just laughed, low and filthy, and kept going, thumb on the knot, two fingers curling up, until Zain's thighs were trembling and his heels were sliding on the floor and he was making noises with no words in them at all.
"Haider— Haider, stop— I'm gonna—"
"Don't hold it. Come on, let me watch."
And Zain came. Crushed down around Haider's fingers, back bowed, a long broken sound tearing out of him, wet flooding Haider's palm. Haider didn't stop until Zain grabbed his wrist and pushed it away, oversensitive, gasping at the ceiling.
"Fuck," Zain whispered. "Fuck, fuck, fuck."
Haider sat back on his heels and put his fingers in his mouth and licked them clean while looking at Zain the whole time.
Zain nearly died.
—
They got to the bed eventually. Haider's trousers went somewhere. When they came off, Zain looked and then looked away and then looked again, because it was right there, thick and flushed and curving up against Haider's belly, and it was going to be inside him.
"Scared?" Haider asked. Soft, suddenly, one hand on Zain's knee.
"A bit."
"Tell me and I'll stop."
"Shut up. Do it."
Haider pushed in slow. Even so, Zain's breath stopped. His body opened around it with a stretch that was almost pain and Haider held still halfway, shaking, forehead down on Zain's.
"All the way," Zain gritted.
"You're so tight—"
"ALL THE WAY, YOU BASTARD—"
Haider sank the rest of the way in and Zain's nails went into his back and both of them stopped breathing.
Then Haider moved. And it was like something switched on in the room. Wet, slapping, obscene — the sound of it filling the dark. Haider's hips snapping forward, his mouth open, his arms braced either side of Zain's head, and Zain underneath him with his knees up around Haider's ribs and his hands in Haider's hair, pulling, and his voice going to pieces.
"Ah— ah— fuck— Haider—"
"You're so tight. So fucking tight." Haider was sweating, dripping onto Zain's chest. "You'll be the death of me."
"Then die. Die, you bastard—"
He dropped his mouth onto Zain's and swallowed the noises, and his hand snaked down between them and found the knot again and rubbed it in fast tight circles while he fucked, and Zain's eyes rolled back.
Downstairs, a neighbour banged on the wall with a slipper.
Neither of them stopped.
"Don't scream," Haider panted against his mouth.
"Then make me—"
Haider pulled out and flipped him, and Zain went over onto his hands and knees like it was the most natural thing in the world, and Haider pushed back in from behind and it went deeper than it had any right to and Zain screamed into the pillow.
"She'll hear us," Haider said, and slapped his hip. Then again, harder.
"Let her—"
"Let her, then. Let her hear. Let her hear you're mine."
"I'm yours," Zain sobbed. "I'm yours, I'm yours, just harder—"
Haider lost it. Gave it to him hard and fast and mindless, one hand fisted in Zain's hair and the other clamped on his hip, grunting with every thrust like an animal, and Zain's arms gave out and his cheek went down to the mattress and he came a second time with his face pressed into the sheet and Haider came a few strokes later, buried to the root, shaking and swearing and holding him so tight it bruised.
They collapsed in a heap. Sweat cooling. The fan came back on and neither of them moved to cover up.
"Hey," Haider said finally, into Zain's shoulder blade.
"What."
"Take the amulet off."
"Why?"
"I can't go back to being a man. Just shut it down, or I'll be doing this every night until I die."
Zain laughed so hard he got a stitch.
—
They didn't stop. Weeks of it — on the sofa, in the shower, on the kitchen counter with the lentils burning, once in the car parked behind a shopping plaza with the windows fogged. Zain stopped bothering to hide the sounds. The neighbour started banging on the wall preemptively.
Then the old man's phone rang through. Zain asked. The old bastard cackled for a full minute.
"Son, you can take it off before the full moon passes. Or leave it on, and it stays for good. Forever."
Zain sat on the roof with the phone in his lap for a long time. Haider came up with two cups of tea and sat beside him and didn't ask anything, just waited, the way he had since the fourth grade.
"Do I take it off?" Zain said.
"Up to you."
"I'm asking you, Haider."
Haider looked at him. The smog-orange dusk was doing something stupid and beautiful to his face. "I didn't fall for this face," he said. "The face changed. Everything else is still you. So it makes no difference to me. But—" He shrugged. "Whatever you want."
Zain drank his tea. Watched the water tank on the next roof drip. Then he pulled the amulet over his head and turned it around and put it back on the wrong way, and never took it off again.
—
The wedding was in a small hall in Johar Town with fairy lights and plastic chairs and rice from the same cart.
Haider's mother cried all through it. Haider's father grumbled about the dowry and then quietly slipped Zain a gold chain anyway. Zain's mother spent the whole function squinting at her own son trying to figure out where she'd gone wrong, and by the end of it had decided she didn't care and told everyone at her table that he'd always been a soft boy anyway.
The cleric asked the questions. Zain said yes three times.
They moved into a two-room flat on the fourth floor, no lift, bad water pressure, and a bedroom window that faced the back wall of somebody's kitchen. They fought about bills and about whose turn it was to take out the trash and about Haider leaving his wet towel on the bed, and they made up every single time with the door locked and the fan on high.
The amulet hangs framed by the door now. Black thread, folded paper, a knot the size of a marble, worn on the wrong side.
Their friends still call them both by their old names. Zain still hasn't worked out how to reverse-park.
And every Friday night Haider comes home with a six-pack, and they still play FIFA until their eyes bleed, and Zain still loses, and then Haider drags him off the sofa by the ankle and says *come here, you slut* —
— and they live, God help them, happily fucking ever after.
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