Chapter 2: The First Catcall
The city air hit them like a wet towel. It was thick with summer heat, exhaust, and the greasy scent of food trucks. Neon signs bled color onto the sidewalk. A group of girls in matching pink tank tops laughed hysterically, taking selfies under the flickering streetlamp, their world untouched and simple.
Jake—Jasmine, he had to remember—stood on the curb, his new height giving him a vantage point that now felt exposed. The leggings hugged his legs, a strange, smooth sensation. Every slight breeze against his neck, where the blonde hair fell, was a distinct, tickling event.
“We need to get to my place,” Marc said, his—her—voice a tiny, breathless thing swallowed by a bass thump from a passing car. “My laptop. I can run analyses, search for localized paranormal event logs, maybe cross-reference with…” She trailed off, clutching the oversized sweater sleeves over her hands.
Derek just stared at his own reflection in a dark bakery window. The figure staring back was a stranger, all dangerous curves and dark eyes. “My place is closer,” he said, the husky, feminine voice laced with a frustration that somehow made it smokier. “It’s a fortress. And I’ve got beer.”
“Beer?” Jake snapped, the melodic tone undermining his annoyance. “We’re dealing with a metaphysical catastrophe and you’re thinking about beer?”
“I’m thinking about not thinking!” Derek shot back, turning. The motion made his new hair swing dramatically. He hated the flourish of it. “So yeah, beer. To shut my brain up.”
They started walking. Or tried to.
Marc’s walk was a disaster. Each step was a calculated, stiff-legged march, an attempt to override the natural, subtle sway his new pelvis seemed to insist upon. He looked like a marionette with tangled strings, perpetually off-balance.
“You look like you’re trying to hold in a fart,” Derek observed, his own gait an awkward, wide-stanced stomp that fought against the inherent roll of his hips.
“Screw you,” Marc hissed, but it sounded like a plea.
Jake, by some cruel joke, found the walking easiest. The long legs, the low center of gravity—it translated. He focused on the muscle memory of a power walk, shoulders back, chin up. But the rhythm was different. The sway was there, a metronome ticking in his bones he couldn’t silence. It felt… efficient. Graceful. A part of him admired the mechanics of it even as another part recoiled.
They turned the corner onto a brighter avenue, where a half-finished office building sat behind a chain-link fence. It was past regular hours, but a crew was still packing up. Three men in dusty jeans and sweat-stained tee shirts were loading tools into a pickup.
The first whistle cut through the humid air like a physical slap.
It was high, piercing, followed by a low, appreciative “Damn.”
Jake froze. His old self surged forward, a hot column of pure, undiluted anger. He knew this script. He’d been the one to do it, to nod at his boys and make a comment about a passing woman’s assets. It was just noise. Just fun.
This wasn’t noise. It was a laser.
All three pairs of eyes were locked onto them. No, onto Derek. Delilah. The raven hair, the impossible curves in the tight clothes—she was a magnet.
“Hey sweetheart, you lost?” one called, leaning on the fence. He was grinning, missing a tooth.
“Need some directions? We got a map in the truck,” another added, his voice a gravelly chuckle.
Derek’s face, the beautiful, smoldering face, flushed a deep, rosy red. The heat spread down his neck, visible even in the bad light. His old mind screamed: Punch. Go over there and slam that grinning head into the fence. But his body… his body did something else. His shoulders drew in slightly, making his chest more prominent. One hand rose, a nervous, fluttery gesture to tuck a strand of that perfect black hair behind a delicate ear. A traitorous, instinctive preen.
“Ignore them,” Jake commanded, but his own voice lacked its intended force. He felt a jittery flutter in his own stomach, a primal alarm that was somehow… performative. It demanded he be aware of the eyes, of his posture.
“Just keep walking,” Marc whispered, his petite frame trying to vanish between Jake and Derek. He felt his heart hammering against his ribs, a frantic bird. The fear was logical—they were vulnerable. But the shape of the fear was new. It wasn’t just about a fight. It was a specific, chilling dread of being chosen, of those eyes picking him out of the group. He had an overwhelming urge to make himself smaller, to let the bigger, blonder Jake shield him.
They quickened their pace. The men’s laughter followed them.
“C’mon, don’t be like that!”
“We’re just being friendly!”
The words wrapped around Derek, and a terrifying thing happened. Beneath the rage and the humiliation, a thin, wire-sharp thread of pleasure sparked and fizzed. The attention was crude, objectifying—everything he’d ever practiced. But the new nervous system it landed on translated it differently. It registered as validation. The flush wasn’t just anger; it was a thrilling, shameful warmth. His walk, despite his efforts, developed an extra, unconscious sway, a direct response to the audience.
“You see that?” Jake muttered, shooting a glance at Derek. “You’re leaning into it.”
“I am not!” Derek snarled, but the voice cracked, unsure.
“Your hips are practically writing an invitation,” Jake shot back, his own face hot.
“At least I’m not walking like I’m on a damn runway!” Derek countered.
“Will you both shut up?” Marc’s breathy voice was tight with panic. “Don’t you get it? It’s not us. It’s the hardware. My legs are shorter. My center of gravity is lower in my torso. The sway is a biomechanical efficiency for this skeletal structure. And the fear… the adrenaline response is being filtered through a different hormonal baseline. It’s not a choice. It’s a system override.”
They fell silent for a block, the truth of it hanging between them, more oppressive than the heat.
Jake’s fingers itched for his phone, for the solid, masculine weight of it in his palm. Instead, he found his hand drifting to his own hip, resting on the curve there as if to steady himself. The curve was firm, smooth. An achievement. He snatched his hand away.
Derek kept seeing the missing-tooth grin in his mind. The look wasn’t one of challenge, the way a guy would look at him before a bar fight. It was hungry. Possessive. And the worst part was, a sliver of him deep down, a part he didn’t recognize, had wanted to stop. Had wanted to see what happened next.
Marc’s analytical mind was a tornado of panic. System override. Somatic feedback loops. The mind is the software, but the body is the hardware, and the hardware has its own firmware, its own instinctual programs that are now running on a default feminine setting—
“My apartment’s next block,” Derek said finally, his voice subdued. The fight was gone from it.
They turned into the dimmer, quieter street. The confrontation had lasted less than a minute. It changed everything. The curse wasn’t just a suit they were wearing. It was in the wiring. It was in the flinch, the flush, the sway they couldn’t command away.
The battle line wasn’t drawn out there on the street with the construction workers. It was drawn here, inside the storm of their own heartbeats, in the gap between what they thought and how their body reacted. Twenty-four hours had felt like an eternity in the sterile apartment.
Now, it felt like a countdown to surrender.