Chapter 4: Solo Experimentation
The click of the bathroom lock was the loudest sound Travis had ever heard. It sealed him into the fluorescent-buzzing silence, away from Kaylee’s sleeping form tangled in the sheets. Away from the evidence.
He leaned his forehead against the cool wood of the door. The scent of her vanilla shampoo still clung to his skin, mixed with something muskier, something new. His skin—her skin—this skin—prickled with residual heat. He could still feel the ghost of Kaylee’s mouth, her hands, her awe.
He pushed off the door and faced the mirror. It was already fogging at the edges from the steam of a neighbor’s shower. A distorted figure looked back. A stranger wearing the shadow of his own panic.
“Okay,” he whispered to the glass. The voice was a soft, melodic tremor. “Okay, just… look.”
His hands, slim and elegant with neat, short nails he’d never filed, went to the hem of the stolen t-shirt he wore—one of Kaylee’s, a soft band logo faded from washes. He pulled it up and over his head, the fabric catching for a moment on the new, fuller swell of his chest. It fell to the floor with a whisper.
The reflection showed a torso that was a study in soft contradiction. The lines were undoubtedly feminine: the gentle inward curve of a waist, the outward flare of hips that made his old straight-up-and-down frame feel like a chalk outline. But the muscle tone beneath was Travis’s, a familiar, lean definition now mapped onto an alien topography. A silver hoop glittered in the navel he’d never pierced.
His breath hitched. He turned slightly, watching the play of light and shadow over his shoulder, down the line of his spine. It was like admiring a sculpture of someone else.
He unsnapped his jeans—his own jeans, but they hung differently now, tight on the hips, loose at the waist. He shoved them down, along with the briefs, stepping out of the puddled denim. The air in the cramped bathroom was cool, raising goosebumps on his thighs.
He forced himself to look.
The body in the mirror was, as Kaylee had declared, perfect. A fantasy given flesh. The dark, trimmed hair. The thick, flaccid cock resting against the curve of his thigh. And beneath, the vulva, hidden and revealed all at once.
A dizzying wave of dual-nausea and arousal washed through him. It was beautiful. It was monstrous. It was his.
His hand rose, almost against his will. His fingertips—so sensitive now—brushed the inside of his thigh, then higher. They traced the length of his cock. A jolt, familiar yet profoundly intensified, sparked up his spine. The flesh thickened, began to rise under his own touch. He watched, mesmerized and horrified, as it hardened in the reflection, becoming the veiny, full erection Kaylee had worshipped.
A whimper escaped his throat. He bit it back, glancing at the door.
His other hand moved lower, fingers slipping through the curls to find the parted lips beneath. The touch there was a different kind of lightning—softer, deeper, a resonant hum compared to the sharp strum of the cock. He explored the folds, the new, hidden contours, his breath fogging the mirror in quick, ragged puffs.
He was touching himself. He was being touched. It was a feedback loop of sensation, each hand reporting to a brain struggling to map the inputs. He pressed a finger inside, just to the first knuckle. The tight, wet heat was shocking. His knees buckled. His other hand gripped his own cock, the pressure firm, almost desperate.
He leaned forward, bracing his free hand against the cool glass, forehead now pressed to its misty surface. The mirror clouded around his face, obscuring his expression. He didn’t need to see it. He could feel it—the overwhelmed, surrendering slackness of his jaw.
He began to move, a slow, confused rhythm. One hand stroked up and down the shaft, a motion his old muscle memory understood, even if the sensation was now richer, more layered. The other finger curled, searching, finding a spot inside that made his vision spark. A choked cry echoed off the tiles.
“This is me,” he whispered to the condensation on the glass. The words were a question. “This is me now.”
His hips stuttered against his hands. The duality wasn’t two separate things; it was a circuit, each sensation amplifying the other until they fused into a single, rising tide of need. It was nothing like the frantic, lonely release in his old body. This was a deep, pooling inevitability, pulling from two wells at once.
He thought of Kaylee’s face, alight with hungry discovery. He thought of her saying, “You’re perfect.” The memory didn’t bring the joy he’d spent a year dreaming of. It brought a sharp, lonely pang. She wasn’t seeing him. She was seeing Zara’s handiwork. She was seeing the fantasy.
The self-pity mixed with the physical urgency, creating a bitter, potent cocktail. His movements became faster, less exploratory, more driven. The slick sounds filled the tiny room. His breath came in sobs. He was chasing the feeling, trying to outrun the thought.
It built, this time slower, deeper than before. Not an explosion, but an unfolding. It started in the core of him, where the two sets of nerves seemed to braid together, and radiated outward in warm, pulsing waves. His stroking hand stilled, gripping tightly as his cock twitched, releasing in thin, pearling streaks against the lower part of the mirror. At the same time, his internal muscles clenched around his finger in rhythmic, fluttering contractions, a sweet, deep ache of release.
The tension bled out of him. He slid down the mirror, his back hitting the cold tile of the shower wall. He landed on the floor, knees drawn up, sitting in the puddle of his discarded clothes. He felt emptied out. Physically spent. Emotionally raw.
The humming silence of the bathroom returned, broken only by the drip of a faucet and the distant thump of bass from another room. The afterglow was tinged with a profound loneliness. He had just given himself the most intense physical experience of his life, and he had never felt more separate from his own body.
A soft knock at the door made him jump.
“Trav?” Kaylee’s voice was muffled, sleep-rough. “You okay in there? You’ve been awhile.”
He looked at the evidence on the mirror, already starting to slide down the glass in milky trails. He looked at his body, glistening with sweat in the fluorescent light. The perfect fantasy, curled up on a dirty bathroom floor.
He had to answer. He had to use this voice.
“Yeah,” he called out, his new voice cracking on the single syllable. He cleared his throat. “I’m… I’m okay. Just… washing up.”
“Okay.” A pause. He could almost hear her smiling through the door. “Hurry back. I’m cold.”
Travis rested his head back against the tiles, closing his eyes. The current had pulled him, just as Zara had said. It had pulled him right into the exact center of Kaylee’s deepest desire. And now, sitting in the cooling steam, he understood with perfect, chilling clarity that he had no idea how to swim back. Or if there was even a back to swim to.
The drip of the faucet counted the seconds. Travis dragged himself up, his new muscles protesting with unfamiliar aches. He avoided the smeared mirror, reaching instead for a wad of scratchy institutional toilet paper to wipe the glass clean, then himself.
A hot shower seemed like the next logical, human thing to do. He stepped under the spray, flinching at the initial blast. The water sluiced over slopes and curves that didn’t feel like his own geography. Washing was a reconnaissance mission. The soap slid over the swell of his chest, and he cataloged the sensitivity there, a tender echo of the more urgent nerves below.
His own hands felt like a stranger’s. He shampooed hair that now fell in soft, dark waves past his shoulders, not the tousled brown mop he’d washed for twenty-one years. The conditioner was Kaylee’s, smelling of peaches and cream. He used it anyway.
He turned off the water. The silence felt heavier. Wrapped in a towel that seemed smaller now, he faced the fogged mirror again. He wiped a clearing with his palm.
The face looking back was still his, but remixed. His own brown eyes, wider, framed by longer lashes. His nose, but softer. His jawline, less angular. It was a subtle, expert Photoshopping of his own features into someone dreamy and androgynously beautiful. It was the face of the person Kaylee had stared at with absolute rapture.
“Zara,” he said to the reflection. The name felt strange, a label for a state of being. “What did you do to me?”
There was no answer but the drip. He pulled on his briefs and jeans, struggling with the fit. Kaylee’s t-shirt he put back on; it smelled like her, and right now that was the only familiar anchor he had.
He opened the bathroom door. Her dorm room was dim, lit only by the swirling lava lamp. Kaylee was propped up on one elbow in bed, the sheets pulled to her waist. She’d put on a faded sleep shirt. Her pink hair was a messy corona against the pillow.
“Took you long enough,” she said, but her tone was warm, teasing. “I was about to send a search party.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled, hovering near the edge of the bed. The space between them felt charged, different. He was acutely aware of his body under the clothes, a secret he was now carrying.
“Come here,” she said, patting the mattress beside her. “You’re all steamed up like a dumpling.”
He managed a weak smile at that. He slid into the bed, keeping a few inches of space. The springs dipped. He was hyper-aware of every point where the fabric of his clothes touched his skin.
“So,” Kaylee said, rolling onto her side to face him. Her expression was soft, curious. “Freaking out a little?”
“A little?” He let out a shaky breath that was almost a laugh. “Kay, I have a… I’m a…”
“A gorgeous, impossible miracle?” she supplied, her grin wide in the low light.
“A problem.” The word came out harsher than he intended. He saw her smile falter. “My classes start in eighteen hours. My dorm is across campus. My ID, my clothes, my… everything is for a guy who doesn’t exist in the mirror anymore.”
The practicalities formed a cold, suffocating lump in his throat. The sheer logistics of no longer looking like his own identification photo felt insurmountable.
“Okay, okay, breathe.” Kaylee scooted closer, her hand finding his under the sheets. Her fingers laced with his—his new, slender fingers. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll call it a medical thing. A… hormonal imbalance. A crazy reaction to bad sushi. We’re art students, we can lie creatively.”
“It’s not just that.” He looked down at their joined hands. “My parents. My job at the library. Every single person who knows me.”
“We’ll handle it.” She squeezed his hand. “Together. Because you’re still you in here, right?” She tapped his temple with her free finger. “I can see him. It’s just the packaging that got… internationally shipped from Anime Wonderland.”
He wanted to believe her. He wanted to believe this was just new packaging. But the packaging had its own nerve endings, its own desires that hummed under his skin, independent of his swirling panic.
“Why this, Kaylee?” The question had been burning in him since the moment on the bed. “Why would my… my ideal form be this? It doesn’t make sense.”
He watched her. In the colored glow of the lamp, he saw a faint blush creep up her neck. She looked away, biting her lip. The confident, free-spirit facade cracked for just a second, revealing a girl who was embarrassed.
“It… it makes sense to me,” she said, her voice small.
“How?” He needed the answer. Maybe it would be a map back to himself.
She was silent for a long moment, playing with the edge of the sheet. “You know all my weird art,” she finally said. “The sketches in my private books. The stuff I never post online.”
He nodded. He’d seen glimpses. Exaggerated, beautiful feminine figures with unexpected, prominent anatomies. He’d always thought it was just a stylized quirk, a fantasy aesthetic.
“It’s not just art,” she whispered, the confession rushing out. “It’s… what I like. What I’m into. It’s my thing. I’ve never told anyone because it’s so out there, and guys either get creepy about it or think it’s a joke.” She looked at him, her eyes pleading for understanding. “You wished to be my ideal partner. My ideal. So, the… the genie, or Zara, or whatever… she didn’t just give you a makeover. She gave you the hardware.”
The truth landed with the weight of a stone. It wasn’t an accident or a mistake. It was a precise, targeted grant of his wish. He hadn’t just become generically handsome. He had become the very specific, living embodiment of Kaylee’s most private desire. The shame in her voice was for her own secret, not for what he’d become.
The loneliness deepened, a hollowed-out space beneath his ribs. He was a custom-built gift, assembled from her fantasies. Where did the factory-default Travis fit in?
“Oh,” was all he could say.
“I’m sorry,” she said quickly, misinterpreting his shock. “It’s a lot. It’s weird. I know it’s weird.”
“It’s not that.” He took a breath. “It’s just… you never told me.”
“You never asked,” she said, a defensive edge returning. Then it softened. “And you were just my best friend. I didn’t want to weird you out.”
Were. The past tense of it hung in the air, unsaid. He was something else now.
She moved suddenly, closing the distance he’d kept. She draped an arm over his waist, her head settling on the pillow next to his. Their faces were inches apart. In the dim, rhythmic light, her eyes searched his.
“But now you are my weird,” she said, her voice a mix of wonder and possession. “You’re my secret, brought to life. Do you have any idea how incredible that is?”
Her hand slipped under the hem of his—her—t-shirt, splaying on the flat plane of his stomach. Her skin was warm. His abdominal muscles jumped at the touch. The hum returned, a low-voltage buzz starting where her palm met his skin.
He was trapped between her awe and his own terror. Between the thrill of her touch and the grief for the self he could no longer grasp. He wanted to lean into her, to lose himself in the physical reality she found so perfect. He also wanted to run.
“Stay here tonight,” she murmured, her thumb making a slow arc. “Stay here tomorrow. We’ll skip. We’ll just… be. And figure it out.”
It was an escape hatch. A postponement of the inevitable collision with the world. He was so, so tired.
“Okay,” he whispered.
She smiled, and it was radiant. She leaned in and kissed him, not with the hungry fervor of before, but with a soft, lingering sweetness. It was a kiss for him, for the person she believed was still inside. The tenderness of it shattered something in his chest.
When she pulled back, she nestled closer, her body a warm line against his side. “G’night, Travis,” she sighed, already sounding half-asleep.
He stared at the ceiling, her breath evening out against his shoulder. The lava lamp bubbled silently. He was exactly where he had always dreamed of being: in Kaylee’s bed, held close, wanted.
And as he lay there in the dark, the terrifying, silent question finally took full, coherent shape. If being her ideal meant being Zara’s creation, then who got to love the parts of him she hadn’t wished for? And if the answer was no one, not even himself, then what exactly was left to love at all?