Chapter 18: Dual Devotion
The taste was salt and iron and something uniquely Tracy, a flavor Kaylee realized she’d been fantasizing about for years without a name for it. She swallowed, her own new body throbbing in synchronous ache with Tracy’s as the other girl’s cries softened into shaky whimpers.
For a long moment, the only sounds were their ragged breathing and the distant hum of the dorm’s HVAC. Kaylee rested her forehead against Tracy’s trembling thigh, the reality of what just happened crashing over her in a warm, embarrassing wave.
“Holy shit,” Tracy finally breathed, her voice wrecked.
Kaylee lifted her head. Tracy was a vision, flushed from chest to hairline, her brown eyes wide and glassy. One hand was splayed over her own stomach, as if checking she was still intact. The other gripped the rumpled sheets.
“Yeah,” Kaylee managed, her own voice oddly rough. She pushed herself up, wincing at the dull, needy ache between her own legs. Her skirt was hiked up, her own cock—her cock—lying heavy and slick against her thigh. It was still so impossibly, bewilderingly there. “That’s… one word for it.”
Tracy let out a wet, hysterical little laugh. “I think I saw stars. Actual, cartoon-style stars.” She pushed a sweaty strand of hair from her face, her gaze drifting down Kaylee’s body, lingering. “You’re really… I mean, you have one. We both…”
“We both do,” Kaylee finished, the statement hanging in the neon-tinted air. She reached down, not to touch herself, but just to feel the solid, warm weight of it. Her heart hammered against her ribs. This was the secret, shameful core of every hidden browser tab, every blush-inducing sketch tucked under her mattress. Given flesh. Given life. And it was on her best friend.
“Does it feel…” Tracy started, then chewed her lip. “Weird? Good? Both?”
“Mostly ‘oh my god what the actual fuck,’ with a side of ‘weirdly amazing,’” Kaylee admitted, a shaky grin breaking through. She leaned back on her heels, the fairy lights casting a constellation of gold across Tracy’s skin. “Your… everything. It’s… you’re beautiful, Trace.”
Tracy—Travis—blinked, and for a second, the old shyness was there in the downcast eyes. Then she looked back, a new, fragile confidence in her expression. “So are you. Pink hair suits you. The, uh, other new stuff does too.”
The casualness of it, the Tracy of it all, broke the last of the tension. Kaylee snorted, falling sideways onto the mattress beside her. They lay there shoulder to shoulder, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars plastered haphazardly on the ceiling.
“We need to talk about the magic space-cum thing,” Kaylee said after a while, her tone deliberately flat.
Tracy groaned, covering her face with her hands. “Don’t call it that. But yeah. My… wish. With Zara. It backfired. Or forward-fired. I don’t know.” She turned her head, her profile soft in the dim light. “I just wanted to be what you wanted. I didn’t know this was what you wanted.”
The confession lay bare between them. Kaylee felt a hot flush of shame, then defiance. “I didn’t either. Not like… this. It was just a stupid fantasy. I never told anyone.”
“You didn’t have to,” Tracy said softly. “I guess the universe heard you anyway.”
Silence stretched, but it was comfortable now, threaded with the intimacy of shared secrets and sticky skin. Kaylee’s mind, however, was racing. The practicalities were a nightmare. Classes. Bathrooms. Clothes. Her parents. Oh god, her parents.
“My hair is permanently pink, isn’t it?” she asked, tugging a strand in front of her eyes.
“Probably,” Tracy sighed. “And my… everything is permanently this. And if my, you know, fluids… if they got on someone else…” She trailed off, the implication clear. A chain reaction. A pandemic of their own making.
A pandemic of their own making. The words hung there, absurd and terrifying and weirdly thrilling. Kaylee rolled onto her side, propping her head up on one hand. She studied Tracy’s face, the delicate line of her jaw, the nervous pulse in her throat. The fairy light glinted off a stray drop of sweat on her collarbone.
Her own new anatomy gave a distinct, undeniable twitch.
“Okay, but,” Kaylee began, her voice low. “Let’s say hypothetically. One person turns another. And that person turns someone else.” She traced a meaningless pattern on Tracy’s bare shoulder with a fingertip. “It wouldn’t be a disease. It’d be more like a… a shared experience. A really, really specific one.”
Tracy turned her head slowly. “What are you saying?”
“I’m not saying anything.” Kaylee’s pulse kicked up a notch. The thought was a live wire in her brain, shocking and bright. She pictured a campus full of people, not monstrous, but altered like them. Beautiful like Tracy. Uninhibited. The secret that had defined her loneliness, suddenly becoming a common language. “I’m just… thinking out loud. About logistics.”
“Logistics.” Tracy’s voice was flat. “You’re thinking it would be kind of hot.”
Kaylee didn’t blush. She held Tracy’s gaze, the truth sitting between them like a third presence. The air smelled of sex and her lavender fabric spray, a surreal combination. “Wouldn’t it?” The question was barely a whisper. “No more hiding. Everyone just… understanding. No explanations.”
She saw Tracy swallow, her eyes darkening. A complex dance of fear and something else—arousal, curiosity—played across her features. This was the Travis she knew, wary and careful, now wrapped in a form that felt like a dare. “It’s irreversible. We can’t just… play with people’s lives, Kay.”
“I know.” Kaylee’s hand drifted lower, down Tracy’s arm, coming to rest on the dip of her waist. Her own breath felt tight. “But what if they wanted it? What if someone secretly, desperately wanted exactly this, and we could just… give it to them? No awkward conversation. Just a smile and a touch and then they’re in the club.” Her fingers flexed against Tracy’s skin. “It’s not playing. It’s granting a wish. Like Zara did for you.”
Tracy made a small, choked sound. “That’s a dangerous way to frame it.”
“It’s an honest way.” Kaylee leaned in, her pink hair falling like a curtain around them. The thrum of her own desire was a steady drumbeat now, drowning out the pragmatic fears. “You wished for me. And now here I am. Exactly what you wanted, even if you didn’t know the details.” She brushed her lips against Tracy’s earlobe. “What if there are others like me? Just waiting for their cock and pussy and a reason to stop feeling wrong?”
The dorm room seemed to shrink, the posters on the wall watching them with knowing, drawn-on eyes. Tracy was silent for a long time, her chest rising and falling. Finally, she spoke, her voice thick. “You really think that?”
Kaylee pulled back just enough to see her eyes. “I know it.” She let her hand slide from Tracy’s waist, trailing over her hip, until her fingertips grazed the warm, silken skin of Tracy’s inner thigh. A promise. A question. “I lived it.”