Every Single Pair

The alarm went off at 5:12 a.m.

Craig's hand shot out from beneath the blankets on instinct, slapping blindly at his phone until the sound cut off. Silence rushed back into the apartment. He lay still for a moment, listening.

No movement from Frank's room.

Good.

The early light hadn't fully arrived yet. The room was dim, washed in that bluish pre-dawn haze that made everything feel suspended and unreal. For a few seconds he simply lay there, suspended between sleep and obligation. The dream he'd been enjoying lingered only as a faint aftertaste, something warm, something bright, already dissolving under the weight of routine. Whatever it had been, it felt distant now. Silly, almost.

He wiggled his toes beneath the blankets. Rubbed both hands over his face. Let out a slow breath through his nose.

Six-thirty shift.

He swung his legs out of bed.

His underwear bunched uncomfortably as his feet hit the floor.

"God," he muttered under his breath, standing up and stretching.

He hated that. When the fabric twisted during the night and rode up in ways it shouldn't. He reached automatically to adjust himself, fingers slipping beneath the waistband to tug the material back into place.

His fingers froze.

That wasn't cotton.

He looked down.

Pink.

Satin.

The world narrowed.

Craig stared at the smooth, faintly glossy waistband hugging his hips. The fabric caught the dim light, soft and unmistakable. The cut was wrong: too narrow at the sides, too sleek across the front. There was no loose stretch, no practical pouch, no familiar structure. Just soft, feminine curve and shine.

He stopped breathing.

Slowly, carefully, as though sudden movement might detonate something, he pinched the waistband between two fingers and pulled it outward slightly.

They were panties. Pink satin panties.

His heart began pounding so loudly he was certain Frank would hear it through the wall.

"What the hell," he whispered.

His voice came out thin. He hadn't gone to bed wearing these. He knew he hadn't.

Standing frozen in the middle of his room, the cold floor biting at his bare feet, Craig's mind scrambled uselessly for explanation.

Prank. That was the first thought. It had to be. How else would he have ended up in a pair of panties overnight? Frank. It had to be Frank. But how...

He swallowed and lowered his voice even further, barely a breath.

"Okay. Okay."

Maybe he'd come in while Craig was asleep. Maybe he'd thought it would be funny. Maybe Craig had slept that deeply.

But even as the theory formed, it started to fall apart. Craig wasn't a heavy sleeper. He woke up to text notifications. To the hum of the furnace turning on. To the faint scrape of pipes in the walls. And even if Frank had somehow managed to undress him and redress him without waking him...

Why?

Frank wasn't cruel. He teased, sure. But this?

Craig pressed his lips together, heat crawling up his neck.

He moved quickly to his dresser and yanked open the top drawer.

He expected relief. Proof. A punchline.

Instead he saw colour.

Lace.

Silk.

An entire drawer of panties stared back at him. Not one or two pairs shoved in as a joke. Not a gag gift. The entire drawer was full.

There were a few soft cotton pairs in pale pink and baby blue. But the majority were what Craig would have found a lot more exciting, had they been in the drawer belonging to a woman he was dating, rather than his own. Seamless nude ones. Black lace with delicate scalloped edges. Deep red pairs that looked dangerous. Thongs... he shut the drawer halfway on instinct before slowly pulling it open again, as if it might rearrange itself into sanity.

It did not.

His boxer-briefs were gone. Every single pair.

He crouched and yanked open the second drawer. Socks. Normal. T-shirts. Normal.

Back to the top drawer. Panties.

His pulse thundered in his ears.

He moved to his laundry basket, kneeling beside it and digging through the week's dirty clothes. Jeans. Work shirt. Socks. Panties.

He dug deeper, more frantically now, clothes being tossed out unceremoniously. Lace. Silk. Satin. Every pair of men's underwear had been replaced with a pair of women's panties. Experimentally, he brought one up to his face and gave it a sniff.

It smelled like him.

Think.

Okay. If it was a prank, it was elaborate. Extremely elaborate. It would require access to his room, his laundry, a full replacement wardrobe, and the ability to somehow change what he had already been wearing while asleep. And he had not had that much to drink. Two beers. He would remember someone undressing him.

Wouldn't he?

His stomach tightened. He stood slowly. The satin shifted against him in a way that made him hyper-aware of every inch of himself. The fabric didn't accommodate him the way his usual underwear did. There was no structure. No separation. Just softness pressing and sliding in places that felt suddenly too exposed.

He crossed his arms over his chest, irrationally defensive.

"Okay," he whispered to himself. "Okay. You are not losing your mind."

He walked back to the dresser and looked again, more carefully this time. The drawer wasn't chaotic. It was organized. Folded neatly. As though it had always been this way. As though he had always owned them.

Which was impossible.

His alarm clock read 5:21. Only nine minutes before he absolutely had to start getting dressed.

Dragging his hand through his hair, Craig tried to calm himself down. Even if this was some bizarre, unexplainable thing, even if reality itself had glitched, he still had to go to work. He couldn't exactly call in and say, "Sorry, I've experienced a lingerie-based existential crisis."

He shut the drawer gently, then opened it again, scanning.

Cotton. He needed cotton.

There: a pale pink pair covered in tiny white hearts. Simple. High enough coverage that maybe, maybe, they wouldn't feel like he was wearing a dirty secret.

With a shaky exhale, he hooked his thumbs into the waistband of the satin pair and slid them down, stepping out of them quickly, tossing them into the hamper, muscle memory from years of laundry habits. He missed, and the pair joined the pile he'd made on the ground, looking disturbingly at home among the other worn feminine undergarments.

The cotton pair felt softer, less slippery. More breathable. He pulled them up cautiously, adjusting himself with clinical detachment, trying not to think about the unfamiliar containment, the way everything sat differently. It wasn't painful, just unfamiliar. Every step toward the bathroom made him aware of the fabric shifting lightly against his penis. The waistband hugging his hips. The absence of the familiar seams and structure he'd never consciously appreciated before.

He brushed his teeth quickly. Avoided looking at himself below the chest in the mirror.

Shower. Jeans. Work shirt. The knowledge of what he was hiding sat beneath everything like a live wire. Of course, nobody would ever know what kind of underwear he was wearing. In his entire adult life, Craig had never had to show his underwear to anyone. Still, the fear was there. Fear of exposure, fear of being called out, fear of humiliation.

5:36.

"Damn it."

He grabbed his backpack, shoved his feet into his shoes, and paused at his bedroom door. For a moment, he considered waking Frank. Demanding answers. Forcing him to explain himself.

But what would he say?

Hey, did you secretly replace all my underwear with women's lingerie and redress me in my sleep?

He closed his eyes briefly. No. He would go to work. He would act normal. He would come home and figure this out. Replacing underwear was easy. He could always go shopping after dinner.

It was a prank. It had to be! He just hadn't figured out the mechanics of it yet.

He stepped into the hallway quietly and slipped out the front door, locking it behind him with soft precision. The early morning air hit his face, sharp and bracing. As he walked toward the bus stop, every step carried the faintest whisper of cotton-soft awareness against his skin, a constant reminder that something had shifted.

It was only as the bus pulled up and he stepped on, the familiar smell of vinyl, dirt, and people hitting his nose that he remembered the dream he'd had on the commute home the day before.

Eros.