Chapter 1: The New Teammate
The water was too hot, but Tim kept it that way. It burned the day’s hits out of his muscles, the steam rising thick in the tiled room. Practice had been a goddamn grind. He braced his hands against the slick wall, letting the near-scalding spray pound the knotted strength of his shoulders. His body was a machine he understood—six-three, two-thirty, all solid, functional mass.
Something pricked his lower back.
He jerked upright, water sluicing down his spine. “The hell?” he muttered, his voice a low rumble lost in the shower’s roar. He swiped a hand over the spot, expecting a chip of tile or a wasp. Nothing.
Then the cramp hit.
It wasn’t a muscle cramp. It was deeper, a wrongness that seized his gut and pulled. He grunted, bending over, the water now feeling alien on his skin. It was cooling. No, he was heating up. A feverish, itchy heat spread under his skin, like his blood had been replaced with carbonated syrup. He looked down at his hands, splayed on the wet tile. The knuckles seemed to soften, the veins receding like slow tide.
“No.” The word came out wrong. Higher.
A wave of vertigo dropped him to his knees. The water beat down on his head, and he felt his hair… lengthen. It was a crawling, impossible sensation, strands of dark brown twisting and growing, slithering over his shoulders, down his back, lightening to a pale, unnatural gold. He tried to push himself up, but his arms shuddered. The deltoids, the proud caps of his shoulders, were melting, smoothing into a troubling, gentle slope.
Panic, cold and sharp, cut through the heat. He scrambled, slipping, until his back hit the shower wall. He stared down his own body, watching a nightmare unfold in real time.
His pectorals, once hard slabs, were softening, swelling. They didn’t just grow; they blossomed, heavy and full, tipping outward under the relentless spray. Nipples puckering, sensitive to the pounding water in a way that made his breath hitch. A choked sound escaped his throat—a whimper. His abs, the defined eight-pack he’d carved for years, dissolved into a soft, yielding plane that curved into a drastic, shocking narrowness at his waist before flaring out again into hips that popped with audible, cartilage creaks.
The worst was below.
He watched, hypnotized by horror, as his cock, half-hard from the strange sensations, began to shrink. It wasn’t just shrinking. It was being absorbed, retracting into a smooth, blank mound that then split, petals of flesh parting under the water. A new, wet heat throbbed there, an emptiness that clenched around nothing, aching with a sudden, devastating urgency.
He was panting, little gasps that echoed too high in the stall. He touched his face. His jawline, that chiseled edge he’d see in locker room mirrors, was gone. In its place was a smooth, heart-shaped curve leading to a pillowy, ridiculous mouth. His lips felt huge, foreign.
“Help.” It was a girl’s voice. Breathy, scared, dripping with a need that sickened him. It came from his mouth.
The shower curtain yanked back with a violent rattle of rings.
Steam billowed out. Damon Kane stood there, a towel slung low on his hips, his shaved head gleaming, chest a wall of tattooed muscle. He’d come to bitch about the hot water.
His mouth opened. Then it closed.
His eyes, usually so flat and focused, went wide, then dark. They dragged down the length of her—his—body, from the sopping blonde hair clinging to new, delicate shoulders, over the outrageous swell of breasts with tips turned pink from the heat, down the impossible hourglass, to where the water streamed over the neat, blonde triangle and between thighs that were now shaped for grip, not power.
Damon’s towel tented. Violently. A stark, obscene proof of his understanding. He didn’t move. He just stared, his breath coming faster.
“Damon,” Tim croaked, the feminine voice trembling. “It’s me. It’s Tim.”
Damon’s eyes snapped back to her face. Recognition warred with pure, animal instinct. “T-Bone?” The nickname sounded absurd.
Footsteps slapped on wet tile. Mack rounded the corner, shirtless, a lazy joke dying on his lips. “Yo, D, who’s using all the—” He saw her. Saw it.
His lean body froze. His eyes, usually crinkled with easy humor, turned black with shock, then a kind of hungry fury. His basketball shorts did nothing to hide the immediate, thick line of his erection. It jerked against the fabric, a stark, undeniable reaction.
“What the fuck,” Mack breathed, not a question, a statement of primal confusion. He took a step closer, nostrils flaring. “You smell… you smell like him. Like Tim’s soap. But you…” His gaze was a physical weight on her new skin.
Tim tried to cover himself, but one arm couldn’t hope to conceal the new landscape of his body. The gesture just lifted a breast, made the nipple pucker tighter. A fresh, unwilled throb pulsed between his legs, a slickness that had nothing to do with the shower. He whimpered.
The sound did something to them.
Damon took a heavy step forward, into the spray. Water soaked his towel, plastering it to the hard proof of his arousal. Mack was right behind him, crowding the space, his tattoos writhing on tense forearms.
“Explain.” Damon’s voice was gravel, lower than ever, strained.
“I don’t know!” Tim cried, his—her—voice breaking. “There was a thing… in my locker. A little doll. I poked it as a joke, I…” The memory was a haze. The doll. Its weird, button eyes. He’d found it amusing, a stupid trinket. He’d squeezed it, laughed, tossed it back. “It did this.”
“A doll.” Mack echoed, his eyes not leaving the junction of her thighs. “You’re telling me a voodoo doll turned our QB into a…”
“Into this,” Damon finished, his hand rising almost against his will, reaching to brush a strand of wet gold from her cheek. His touch was calloused, electric. Tim flinched, but a traitorous part of him arched into it, the new nerves screaming for contact.
“Stop,” Tim pleaded, but it sounded like an invitation.
The main locker room door banged open. “Harrison! Kane! You ladies planning on sleeping in here?” Coach DeMarco’s bark echoed off the lockers, getting closer. “We got film at seven AM, not a goddamn spa day!”
He stomped into the shower room entrance, his weathered face set in its usual permanent scowl. He saw the three figures in the stall—the massive, aroused linebacker, the lean, hungry receiver, and the woman between them.
Coach Lenny DeMarco, fifty-two years old, a man who’d seen every kind of locker room nonsense, froze solid.
His eyes took it in. The impossible curves. The terrified, familiar blue eyes in the unfamiliar face. The blatant, raging hard-ons of his two best defenders. His own body, a betrayal decades in the making, reacted before his mind could stop it. A thick, unfamiliar heat rushed south. His athletic pants, always loose, suddenly felt tight, constricting. A flush crept up his neck, visible even in the steam.
“Jesus Christ,” he whispered, all authority gone, replaced by a raw, shameful husk. His hand moved to adjust himself, a pathetic, instinctive gesture, before he clenched it into a fist. “Tim?”
Tim nodded, tears mixing with the shower spray. “Coach.”
The confirmation hung in the humid air. Four men. One transformed, trembling, dripping with a sexual need that was a foreign invader in his own mind. Three others, caught in a gravity well of desire so potent it overrode reason, team loyalty, everything.
No one moved.
The only sounds were the endless hiss of the water, their ragged breathing, and the faint, ticking hum of the fluorescents overhead. In Tim’s open locker, visible through the doorway, a crude little doll with needle-pricked eyes lay tumbled on the bench. Its yarn mouth seemed to curl into a smile.
Damon’s hand was still near Tim’s face. Mack’s breath was on her neck. Coach’s shame warred with a staring, hungry fixation on the water beading in her new cleavage.
Tim—trapped, horrified, feeling that deep, empty ache clench with a pulse that demanded to be filled—understood nothing except the terrifying new rules of the game. And the play clock was running down.
And the play clock was running down.
The silence stretched, a thin wire about to snap. Tim saw it in their eyes—the calculation, the crumbling denial, the hungry replacement of logic with a baser, simpler math.
“We need to… get you to a hospital,” Coach rasped, but he didn’t move. His eyes were fixed, tracking a droplet of water as it slid from her collarbone into the shadowed valley between her breasts.
“A hospital?” Mack laughed, a sharp, unhinged sound. “And say what? Our quarterback got sexy?” He took the final step, closing the distance. His hand, adorned with a knuckle tattoo that read ‘FAST’, rose and hovered beside her hip, not touching, just radiating heat. “You feel that, T-Bone? This is real. This is happening.”
“Don’t call me that,” Tim whispered. The old name was a slap. His mind was a screaming chorus of wrong, wrong, wrong, but his body… his body was singing a different tune. The cool air from the locker room kissed his wet skin, pebbling his nipples into tight, sensitive points. Every slight shift made him aware of the new weight on his chest, the sway, the unbelievable softness. And lower down, a persistent, empty throbbing had begun, a rhythm that matched his frantic heartbeat.
Damon’s control broke first. It was just a finger, tracing the line of her jaw. A touch so light it should have been nothing. But on this new nerve-packed skin, it was a live wire.
Tim gasped. His—her—head tipped back, a movement that was pure instinct, an offering. The sound that left her throat was a moan.
That did it.
The wire snapped.
THEY POUNCE ON HER.
Damon’s hand fisted in the long, wet gold of her hair, not to hurt, but to claim, to anchor. His mouth crashed down on hers, swallowing her next gasp. It wasn’t a kiss. It was consumption. His beard scraped the impossibly soft skin of her face, a brutal friction that made her toes curl against the slick tile. The taste of him—spearmint gum and male sweat—flooded her senses, familiar yet utterly foreign.
At the same time, Mack’s hands found her hips. His grip was possessive, fingers digging into the soft, newfound flesh of her waist, sliding around to cup the full, shocking curve of her backside. He pulled her into him, grinding the hard, denim-clad ridge of his erection against the sensitive, bare mound of her stomach. A raw, ragged sound tore from him. “Christ. You’re so soft.”
Tim’s mind fragmented. This is Damon. This is Mack. Stop. Stop! But her body arched, a bowstring pulled taut. Her arms, which had been trying to cover herself, snaked around Damon’s neck, pulling him deeper into the kiss. Her hips rolled against Mack, a instinctive, seeking motion that made them both groan.
Coach DeMarco stood frozen for one more second, a statue of warring generations. Then, with a strangled sound that was half agony, half surrender, he moved. His large, playbook-calloused hands, hands that had diagrammed a thousand plays, settled on her shoulders from behind. His thumbs rubbed circles into her skin, a trembling, gentle contrast to the younger men’s roughness. He bent his head, his breath hot and humid on the side of her neck.
“Tim,” he whispered, a plea and a curse. His lips brushed the shell of her ear, and she shuddered violently. The coarse fabric of his track pants pressed against the back of her thighs.
They were everywhere. Hands, mouths, heat, hardness. The steam closed around them like a shroud. The shower was still running, water cascading over the tangled knot of their bodies, mixing with the salt of skin. Tim was submerged in sensation, drowning in it. Damon’s tongue in her mouth. Mack’s teeth on her shoulder. Coach’s stubble on her neck. The aching, hollow need between her legs became a white-hot scream, clenching around a devastating emptiness.
One of Mack’s hands left her hip, sliding down, through the wet tangle of blonde curls, his fingers seeking, finding—
Tim’s world went white. Not a thought. Just a lightning strike of pure, electric feeling. A high, sharp cry ripped from her throat, echoed by the grunts of the men holding her. The sound was not masculine. It was not Tim. It was something new, something born in the steam, a sound of utter surrender.
It was the sound of the doll laughing.
The white noise of pleasure short-circuited her thoughts. It was a tidal wave, dragging Tim under, wiping clean the whiteboard of his mind where plays and patterns had been drawn. In its place was static, and heat, and a single, screaming nerve ending that Mack’s clever, exploring fingers had found.
Her back arched, a bridge of taut flesh between Damon’s mouth and Coach’s hands. The cry that tore from her was endless, shattering the steam.
It broke the spell.
Just for a second.
Damon pulled back from the kiss, breathing like he’d just run suicides. His eyes were wild, confused. He looked at his own hand, still tangled in her hair, as if it belonged to someone else.
Mack slowly withdrew his touch, holding his wet fingers up before his own face. He stared at them, transfixed.
Coach DeMarco stepped back as if electrocuted, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His face was a mask of utter shame, pale beneath his perpetual tan. “My God,” he breathed. “My God, what are we doing?”
Tim—the person, the mind—crashed back into the body. The sensations didn’t leave, they just gained context. Horror, profound and nausea-inducing, followed the pleasure. She stumbled back against the shower wall, the tiles cold against her overheated skin. She hugged herself, trying to compact the expansive, vulnerable new form into something smaller.
“Get out,” she whispered, her voice a ragged husk.
“Tim—” Damon started, his voice strained.
“Get OUT!” This time it was a shriek, laced with panic and a lingering, humiliating tremble of need.
The command, delivered in that high, desperate voice, shouldn’t have worked. But it did. Maybe it was the shock in Coach’s eyes, or the dawning horror on Mack’s face. Maybe it was the last vestige of Tim Harrison, team captain, echoing in the plea.
They retreated. Not gracefully. Damon fumbled for his towel, which was on the floor, soaked. Mack turned away, adjusting himself with a grimace of self-loathing. Coach just backed toward the doorway, his eyes glued to the floor, looking every one of his fifty-two years.
The shower curtain fell closed, but it was no barrier. It was a flimsy, flower-printed confession.
Alone, Tim slid down the wall, crumpling into a heap under the spray. The water was turning lukewarm. She—he—shook violently. He couldn’t stop. Every shudder made her breasts sway, a fresh reminder. He touched between his legs, a clinical, terrified probe. The architecture was all wrong. Gone. Replaced by soft, swollen folds and a persistent, aching pulse. He jerked his hand back like he’d been burned.
Okay. Okay. Think. The doll. It started with the doll.
With a strength born of pure terror, she pushed onto unsteady legs. New center of gravity. Hinps first. It felt like walking on a ship in a storm. She yanked a clean towel from a stack on a shelf, wrapping it tightly around her chest, tucking it securely. The terrycloth abraded her sensitive nipples. She grabbed another, winding it around her hips like a sarong.
She pushed past the curtain.
The main locker room was silent, charged. Damon was sitting on a bench, head in his hands. Mack was pacing by the lockers, running a hand over his short hair. Coach stood stiffly by the door, arms crossed, staring at the exit sign as if it held the answers.
None of them looked at her as she moved, barefoot and silent, toward her locker. Her locker. Number 12. HARRISON.
The air felt colder here. Her fingers, slender and delicate now, fumbled with the combination lock. The familiar right-left-right motion felt alien. The dial slipped.
Finally, it clicked.
She swung the metal door open.
Inside, everything was as she’d left it. The neatly hung polos, the playbook, a deodorant stick, a photo of his girlfriend, Ashley, tucked in the metal frame. She smiled in the photo, sunny and oblivious.
And on the bench, right where he’d tossed it, was the doll.
It was just a thing. Crudely stitched from what looked like an old practice jersey, dark green. Buttons for eyes. A few strands of what might have been brown yarn for hair. A simple ‘X’ for a mouth. It was kind of stupid-looking. Harmless.
Except it wasn’t.
He reached for it, his hand trembling. This little thing did this. This ridiculous fetish. Rage, hot and clean, cut through the fear. He would crush it. He would tear it to pieces and then maybe, just maybe, this nightmare would unravel.
His fingers closed around the rough fabric.
It felt… inert. Just cloth and stuffing.
He squeezed, hard, waiting for a snap, a pop, some sign of its power breaking.
Nothing.
He pulled it out, holding it up in the sterile fluorescent light. The button eyes seemed dull. The ‘X’ of the mouth was just stitches.
“You little piece of shit,” Tim whispered, his new voice thick with tears.
Damon looked up. Mack stopped pacing. Coach turned from the door.
They all watched as Tim, with a grunt of effort, began to pull at the doll’s limbs. He tugged an arm. The stitching held. He yanked at the head. It lolled, but didn’t rip.
“Just burn it,” Mack said, his voice hollow.
“It might not work that way,” Damon muttered, standing up. He took a step closer, but stopped a few feet away, as if repelled by an invisible force. “If it’s… you know. Magic. Or whatever.”
“There’s no such thing as magic,” Coach snapped, but the statement had no force. It was just something he felt he was supposed to say.
Frustration boiled over. Tim let out a strangled scream and slammed the doll down onto the bench. He picked up his metal combo lock, heavy in his small hand, and brought it down like a hammer.
Thwack.
The button eyes stared up.
Thwack.
The ‘X’ mouth seemed to smirk.
Thwack.
He was crying openly now, hot tears of rage and impotence streaking down his changed face. He raised the lock high for one more blow.
And stopped.
The doll was gone.
Not destroyed. Not under the lock. Just… gone.
The bench was empty. Just a faint indentation in the vinyl where it had been.
Tim stared. His breath hitched. He shuffled the lock back and forth. Nothing. He looked down at the floor. Nothing.
“Where…” he started.
Damon was beside him in two long strides, looking down. Mack crowded in. Coach approached slowly, peering over their shoulders.
The four of them stared at the empty space.
The only sound was the distant, dripping shower and the hum of the lights. The doll had vanished completely, leaving behind only the devastating proof of its work, wrapped in two white towels and shaking in the middle of the room.
The doll had vanished completely, leaving behind only the devastating proof of its work, wrapped in two white towels and shaking in the middle of the room.
Silence pressed in, thick and suffocating.
“Check your locker,” Damon finally said, his voice rough. He nudged Tim aside and shoved his hands into the dark cavity, pushing past hoodies and cleats. He came up empty, holding only a crumpled protein bar wrapper. “It’s not here.”
Mack dropped to his knees, scanning the floor under the benches. “Maybe it rolled. Things don’t just vanish.”
“That thing wasn’t a ‘thing,’” Tim whispered. The sound of his own voice—soft, melodic, utterly wrong—sent a fresh jolt of nausea through him. “It was… it did this. And now it’s gone so we can’t undo it.” The logic felt childish and terrifyingly solid.
Coach DeMarco cleared his throat, a harsh, grinding sound. He was still staring at the spot where the doll had been. “We need to… we need to get you to the campus clinic. Now. Tell them it’s a… severe allergic reaction. To a… a supplement. Something.”
Tim let out a wet, hysterical chuckle that bordered on a sob. “An allergic reaction, Coach? To what? Femininity?” He gestured wildly down his body. The motion made the towel around his chest slip. He grabbed it, his new, slender fingers clutching desperately at the terrycloth. The simple act of holding a towel closed was different. His grip was weaker. The awareness was a kick in the teeth.
“We have to say something,” Mack said, standing up. He wouldn’t look directly at Tim. His eyes kept skipping over her—his—shoulder, his jaw, anywhere but the center mass. “We can’t just stand here. People are gonna come looking.”
As if on cue, the heavy door to the outside hallway groaned open. The sound of sneakers squeaked on the tile.
“Yo, T-Bone! You hoarding the hot water or what?” a voice called. It was Jenkins, a freshman offensive lineman.
Panic, pure and electric, locked them all in place.
Tim’s mind blanked. Damon moved first. In one fluid motion, he stepped directly in front of Tim, his broad back blocking the entire view from the locker room entrance. He crossed his arms, a formidable wall of muscle and tattoo.
“He’s gone,” Damon barked, his tone leaving no room for argument. “Went out the side door. Said he had to meet Ashley.”
“Oh. Uh, okay,” Jenkins said, his voice fading as he presumably retreated. The door swung shut with a heavy thud.
The held breath left the room in a collective, ragged exhale.
“See?” Mack hissed. “We can’t stay here.”
“I can’t go out there,” Tim said, the fear concrete in his gut. “Not like this. Someone will see. Ashley will…” The thought of his girlfriend, her confused smile turning to horror, made his new stomach lurch. “My clothes won’t fit.” The statement was so ludicrous, so practical, it almost broke him.
Coach rubbed a hand over his face, the sound of his stubble like sandpaper. He looked ancient. “My office. It’s in the back, by the equipment room. No windows. You can stay there while we… while we figure this out.” He finally looked at Tim, his gaze flinching away from the damp blonde hair, settling somewhere near her clavicle. “Kane, grab the emergency blanket from the first aid kit. It’s silver. She can… he can wrap up in that. It’ll cover… everything.”
Damon nodded, moving to the wall-mounted red kit. He ripped it open and pulled out a crinkly, foil-like blanket. He handed it to Tim, his fingers brushing hers. They both froze at the contact. Damon snatched his hand back.
Tim let the towels fall.
He heard three sharp intakes of breath. He didn’t look at them. He focused on the mechanics, shaking out the blanket, wrapping the metallic sheet around his body. It was loud, insistent, and covered him from armpits to knees. He looked like a lost astronaut, or a particularly shaky baked potato.
“Let’s go,” Coach said, his voice all business now, a flimsy shield over the chaos. “Quick and quiet. Reed, you take point. Kane, you flank. I’ll bring up the rear.”
It was a play. Their favorite tunnel screen. Only now, the star quarterback was the precious, illegal package they were smuggling.
Mack peeked out the door, gave a sharp nod, and slipped into the hallway. Damon nudged Tim forward. The foil blanket rustled with every step, a deafening announcement. The fluorescent lights of the empty corridor felt like interrogation lamps.
The walk to Coach’s office was a hundred miles. Every distant shout from a field, every closing door, made Tim jump. His new balance was off; he felt top-heavy, unsteady. Damon’s hand hovered near his elbow, not touching, ready to catch.
They passed a polished trophy case. Tim couldn’t help it. He glanced.
The reflection was a stranger. A tall, stunningly voluptuous woman with wide, scared eyes and a mess of golden hair, shrouded in a survival blanket. A distorted parody of a sports poster. He tripped.
Damon’s hand caught his arm, firm. “Eyes forward,” he muttered, his voice low. His grip was hot, even through the foil.
They reached the unmarked door. Coach fumbled with his keys, unlocked it, and shoved them all inside. The office was a tomb—small, dark, smelling of old coffee, burnt microwave popcorn, and sweat. He flipped the lock.
The sudden, dim safety was worse. It made the reality in the room louder.
Tim slumped into the cheap leather visitor’s chair, the foil crunching in protest. The three men stood, awkward giants in the confined space, nowhere to look.
“Okay,” Coach said, leaning against his desk. “New rule. We don’t touch him. At all.”
“Her,” Mack corrected softly, then winced. “I mean, physically. It’s… her body now. Right?”
“I don’t know what it is!” Tim snapped, pulling the blanket tighter. “I’m me. In here.” He tapped his temple, the gesture familiar, the wrist too delicate. “But everything else… it’s like I’m piloting a stranger. And the controls are all wrong. And the… the engine is just running. Hot.” He swallowed, humiliation burning his cheeks. “All the time.”
The crude admission hung there. Damon shifted his weight, his jeans still uncomfortably tight. Mack studied a water stain on the ceiling tile.
“The doll’s gone. So what’s the play?” Damon asked, focusing on Coach. “We can’t keep him here. Campus clinic is a no-go. They’d call the news, not a doctor.”
“We need an expert,” Mack said, scrolling through his phone. “Not a doctor. Like… a witch doctor. A psychic. Something.”
“This is ridiculous,” Coach groaned.
“This is ridiculous?” Tim’s voice climbed, sharp and clear. “Which part, Coach? The magic doll part or the part where your star quarterback has tits?”
The bluntness shocked them into silence.
“Hey,” Damon said, his deep voice cutting the tension. He wasn’t looking at her with hunger now. It was something harder, more focused. The linebacker seeing a problem to solve. “We fix this. We find someone who knows about this stuff. There’s gotta be someone in the city. We go off-campus. Tonight.”
“In what?” Tim gestured at the blanket. “My car keys are in my locker. In my pants. Which I can’t wear.”
“We’ll get them,” Mack said. “And… clothes. From the lost and found. The women’s volleyball stuff sometimes ends up in our bin.”
The idea of putting on some stranger’s spandex and shorts was a new layer of surreal horror. Tim just nodded, defeated.
“Okay,” Coach said, decisively. “Kane, you’re the biggest. You go to the locker room, get Harrison’s keys, wallet, phone. Grab the biggest, baggiest sweatpants and hoodie you can find from the lost and found. Reed, you go to your car, bring it around to the loading dock behind the equipment bay. I’ll stay here with… with Tim.”
The use of his name, his real name, was a small anchor.
Damon and Mack moved to the door, a shared, grim determination on their faces. They were teammates again, on a messed-up, crucial secret mission.
The lock clicked behind them.
The silence in the office was total. Coach didn’t look at him. He busied himself straightening a stack of playbooks already perfectly straight.
The adrenaline began to ebb, and in its place, the raw, unnerving sensitivity returned. The rough texture of the chair against the backs of his thighs. The cool air on his neck. A deep, restless ache that had settled into his bones. Tim closed his eyes.
“Harrison,” Coach said after a long moment, his voice uncharacteristically quiet.
“Yeah, Coach.”
“When I was your age… hell, a few years ago even… I’d have given anything for a girl who looked like you to be in my office after hours.”
Tim opened his eyes. Coach was staring at his hands, his face a landscape of regret.
“Now,” Coach continued, “the only thing I want is for my quarterback to walk out of here looking like a line