Chapter 7: Dual Domination
The warmth of her through the lace was an electric brand against him. Travis’s hands, which had been hovering awkwardly at his sides, finally found purchase on her waist, the soft give of her skin beneath his fingers a new and terrifying anchor. Her whisper hung in the air between them, a promise that turned his new anatomy into a live wire.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Kaylee murmured, her breath warm against his neck. She rolled her hips again, a slow, deliberate grind that made his breath hitch. The sketchbook was still open on the floor beside them, a silent third party in the room. “I can hear the gears smoking.”
“I’m— It’s a lot,” Travis managed, his voice strained. The part of him that was still just Travis, the shy boy in love with his best friend, was screaming. The rest of him, the parts the brass lamp had so fundamentally rewired, thrummed with a demand that was quickly drowning out the panic. “Kaylee, are you sure? This is… me.”
She leaned back, just far enough to look him in the eyes. Her pink hair was a messy halo in the lamplight. “I’ve never been more sure of anything,” she said, and for the first time, he heard a tremor beneath the confidence. A raw, vulnerable edge. “You have no idea what it’s like, keeping a part of yourself locked in a sketchbook. And now… it’s not in a sketchbook. It’s you.”
Her fingers traced the line of his jaw, down his throat, coming to rest over the rapid flutter of his pulse. The touch was feather-light, exploratory. A artist studying a new subject.
“You wished to be my ideal partner,” she continued, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial hush. “Travis, my ideal partner gets this. Is this. You didn’t just become some random guy. You became…” She glanced at the drawing, then back at him, her smile widening. “You became the fantasy I was too scared to tell my best friend about.”
The word ‘fantasy’ did something to him. It cut through the last of his resistance. This wasn’t a mistake. It was an answer. A terrifying, magnificent, impossibly specific answer to a wish he’d made with only a vague, lovesick heart.
He surged up to kiss her.
It was nothing like their previous, chaste attempts. This was all hunger and revelation. Her mouth opened under his, and she tasted of cheap pizza and sugar-free energy drink and something uniquely, essentially Kaylee. A soft moan vibrated from her throat into his, and her hands tangled in his hair, pulling him closer.
The movement shifted her weight, pressing her down onto him more firmly. The friction through the layers of clothing was maddening. He could feel every inch of her, the heat of her, the dampness seeping through the lace that promised everything. His own body, so bewilderingly foreign and yet intimately his, responded with a painful, urgent throb.
He broke the kiss, gasping. “Kaylee… the clothes. They’re… in the way.”
A genuine, sparkling laugh burst from her. It was the most beautiful sound he’d ever heard. “Yeah, no kidding, genius.” She shifted, kneeling up on the bed to pull her thin tank top over her head in one swift motion. The sight stole the air from his lungs. She was pale and slight, her chest bare, her nipples peaked and flushed. She wasn’t a drawing. She was real, she was here, and she was watching him watch her with a look of triumphant shyness.
“Your turn,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
His hands fumbled at the hem of his own shirt, the fabric suddenly feeling like a prison. He yanked it off, the cooler air of the room raising goosebumps on his skin. Her gaze didn’t linger on his chest. It dropped lower, drawn magnetically to the conspicuous bulge straining against his jeans.
She bit her lower lip. “Okay,” she breathed, more to herself than to him. “Okay, wow.” She placed a hand flat on his stomach, her touch searing. “Can I…?”
He couldn’t speak. He just nodded, his head moving in a jerky, desperate motion.
Her fingers went to the button of his jeans, popping it open with a deftness that surprised him. The zipper sounded obscenely loud in the quiet room. She hooked her thumbs in the waistband of his jeans and briefs and pushed them down over his hips in one slow, excruciating motion.
And then he was free.
The air felt shockingly cool. He couldn’t look down. He could only watch Kaylee’s face.
Her eyes went wide, her lips parting in a soft ‘o’ of shock that quickly melted into unabashed, awe-struck hunger. “Holy shit, Travis.” The name sounded like a prayer on her lips. She didn’t touch him yet. She just stared, her gaze traveling the length of him with the intensity she usually reserved for a perfect line of ink.
“It’s… it’s really…” she trailed off, finally reaching out. Her fingertips brushed the sensitive head, a touch so light it was almost cruel. A full-body shiver racked him. “It’s just like I drew it,” she finished, her voice full of wonder.
The absurdity of it all—the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, the half-eaten pizza congealing in the box, the magical lamp on the desk, and this—hit him in a wave. He started to laugh, a breathless, slightly unhinged sound. “You drew me before I even existed.”
She grinned, that bright, familiar grin that had always been his sun. “I guess I did.” Her hand closed around him, finally, a firm, confident grip that made him see stars. “Theory versus practice, though.”
He groaned, his head falling back against her piled-up pillows. Her touch was nothing like his own frantic, shameful explorations in his old body. This was deliberate. Curious. Reverent. Her thumb swiped over the bead of moisture at the tip, spreading it slowly.
“Kaylee,” he gasped. “I’m not gonna last if you…”
“Shhh,” she soothed, leaning forward to kiss his collarbone. “It’s okay. We have all night. We have… we have whatever this is now.” She moved her hand, a slow, tightening stroke that had his hips bucking off the mattress. “I want to see,” she whispered against his skin. “I want to see what it feels like. For me.”
With that, she shifted, swinging her leg over him and kneeling upright. Her lace panties were the only thing left between them. She hooked her thumbs in the sides, her eyes locked on his, and peeled them down her thighs, letting them fall to the bed.
He had imagined this moment a thousand times in his old life. In none of those imaginings was he lying helpless beneath her, mesmerized as she reached between her own legs, her fingers sliding through her folds with a soft, wet sound that made his mouth go dry. She was already slick, ready. Her eyes were half-lidded, her breath coming in quick pants that matched his own.
She positioned herself above him, the head of him nudging against her entrance. The sensation was so acute, so overwhelmingly not what he was used to, that he cried out—a short, sharp sound.
“Tell me,” she breathed, pausing, her whole body trembling with anticipation. “Tell me this is okay.”
He forced his eyes open. He saw her—his best friend, the artist, the secret dreamer, her pink hair stuck to her damp temples, her expression open and vulnerable and wanting. Him. She wanted him.
“It’s more than okay,” he said, and the truth of it settled deep in his bones. He brought his hands back to her waist, holding her. “It’s everything.”
With a sigh that was both relief and surrender, she sank down, taking him inside her in one slow, inexorable, perfect glide.
The world fractured.
Sensation detonated along every nerve ending—the hot, tight clutch of her, the dizzying fullness, the visual of her arching above him, head thrown back in ecstasy. It was nothing like the passive pleasure he’d known before. This was active, a feedback loop of giving and taking that was rooted in the very core of his new being. He could feel her fluttering around him, could see the pleasure ripple across her face, and it fed him.
“Oh, god, Travis,” she moaned, her hands braced on his chest. She began to move, a slow, rolling rhythm that was pure instinct. “It’s… you’re… it’s so much.”
He could only hold on, his grip tightening on her hips, meeting her pace as he lost himself in the feel of her, the smell of her, the broken, beautiful sounds she made. The flickering lamp across the room painted her moving form in gold and shadow, a living masterpiece put to motion. Her secret and his wish were no longer separate things. They were here, in this dizzying, physical truth, in the sweat-slicked slide of their bodies, in the whispered, half-formed words against each other’s skin.
And as she began to ride him in earnest, her cries growing louder, more urgent, Travis knew one thing with absolute certainty. There was no going back. The boy who had made the wish was gone, fused forever with the embodiment of the desire he’d found in a fallen sketchbook. And as Kaylee chanted his name, her body clenching tightly around his, he found he didn’t want to go back at all.
Her chanting faded into a breathless, shuddering sigh as she collapsed forward onto his chest. The room was silent except for the rasp of their breathing and the distant hum of the dorm’s refrigerator. Travis’s hands drifted from her hips to the knobs of her spine, tracing them slowly. He felt boneless, emptied out, more real and more alien than ever.
He felt boneless, emptied out, more real and more alien than ever. Kaylee’s weight on his chest was the only thing tethering him to the planet. Her heartbeat thumped a frantic rhythm against his ribs, syncopated with his own.
“So,” she said into the quiet, her voice muffled against his skin. “That happened.”
A laugh shook through him, startling them both. “Yeah.” His fingers traced idle circles on her back. The sweat was cooling between them. “Your, uh. Your sketch was pretty anatomically accurate.”
She propped her chin on his sternum, her pink hair tickling his skin. Her grin was lazy, satisfied. “Artist’s eye.” She blinked slowly. “Does it… feel weird? I mean, obviously it felt…” She trailed off, cheeks flushing.
“Different isn’t the word.” He stared at the glow-in-the-dark stars on her ceiling, the ones they’d stuck up there during their first year. “It’s like I was hearing a song through a wall my whole life. And now I’m in the room where it’s playing.” He looked at her. “You’re the song.”
She kissed the spot over his heart. “That’s disgustingly sweet.” Her hand slid down his side, over his hip. He flinched. Everything was hypersensitive, a raw nerve end. “Still you in there, though?”
“I don’t know.” The truth felt like gravel in his throat. “The me that wished on that stupid lamp just wanted you to look at him. The way you look at your art.” He swallowed. “This feels like you’re looking at me. All of me. For the first time.”
“I am.” Her expression turned serious, a rare stillness coming over her. She shifted, wincing slightly as she lifted herself off him and settled beside him on the tangled sheets. They lay facing each other, knees touching. The desk lamp painted the slope of her shoulder in bronze. “It’s fucking terrifying.”
“For you?” He reached out, tucking a sweaty strand of hair behind her ear. “Kaylee, you’re not the one who got magically gender-bent.”
“No, I just got my deepest, weirdest, most secret kink handed to me on a silver plaster.” She let out a shaky breath. “My best friend. It’s a lot to put on a person. On you.”
He thought of the sketches, the meticulous detail, the desire poured into every line. The loneliness of it. “You didn’t put it on me. I wished for it. The lamp just… interpreted.” He hesitated. “Do you like it? Not just the… anatomy. Me. Like this.”
She didn’t answer with words. She leaned in and kissed him, soft and deep and slow. It was an answer that unspooled something tight in his chest. When she pulled back, her eyes were bright. “I’m crazy about you. It’s always been you. The packaging is just… a surprise update.”
He kissed her again, pouring every ounce of his confusion and gratitude into it. Her leg hooked over his hip, pulling him closer. The urgency was gone, replaced by a slow, simmering curiosity. His hand slid down the curve of her back, over the swell of her ass, learning her. She made a small, approving sound against his mouth.
After a minute, she pushed gently at his shoulder. “Roll over.”
He blinked at her, the afterglow still softening the edges of the room. “Huh?”
“Just do it.” She gave his shoulder another nudge, her smile playful but her eyes intensely focused. The lamplight caught the silver ring in her brow.
He rolled onto his stomach, the sheets cool and rumpled beneath him. The action felt strangely vulnerable, exposing the length of his back, the dip of his spine. He heard her move behind him, the shift of the mattress, then the soft clink of the lamp’s chain as she adjusted it. A warmer, more direct light spilled over his lower half.
Her hands, warm and sure, settled on the backs of his thighs, gently urging them apart. A fresh, different kind of heat flooded his face, pressing it into the pillow. This was a territory his old mind couldn’t even map. His breath hitched.
“Relax,” she murmured, her voice a low thrum. One hand smoothed over the curve of his ass, a soothing, possessive stroke. “I just want to look. To see all of it.” Her touch was clinical and worshipful all at once. “The lamp was thorough.”
He felt her studying him, the silence thick with her concentration. It was the same silence that filled her room when she was halfway through a complex drawing. He could almost hear her mental annotations. The warmth of her breath washed over his skin, and he jerked.
“Kaylee…”
“Shh. I’ve got you.” Then her mouth was on him, not where he expected, but lower, at the sensitive juncture of his thigh. She kissed a slow trail inward. Every nerve was alight, singing a wired, unfamiliar song. Her hands held his hips steady against the mattress when they tried to buck.
Her tongue traced a slow, teasing line. He choked on a gasp, fingers clawing at the sheets. It was too much. It was nowhere near enough. The sensation was alien, a direct line to a core of himself he was still learning existed. It was wet, and soft, and devastatingly precise.
Then her mouth found the center of that new, aching sensitivity, and his world dissolved into pure sensation. A broken sound, half-whimper, half-sob, ripped from his throat. Her hands tightened, holding him right where she wanted him.
She worked him with a devoted, curious rhythm, her tongue exploring every fold and contour with an artist’s attention to detail. He was trembling, utterly at her mercy, reduced to a series of shattered, pleading gasps. The pleasure was a riptide, pulling him under from a completely different shore.
She lifted her head just enough to speak, her lips brushing against him as she formed the words. “You know,” she said, her voice husky and muffled against his skin. “You’re not much of a Travis anymore.”
The words sliced through the sensory overload, clean and sharp.
They hung in the air, in the space between her mouth and his body. They weren’t cruel. They were observational, awed, final. A eulogy for the boy who had rummaged for a hoodie in her closet hours and a lifetime ago.
He went very still beneath her. The truth of it echoed in the hollowed-out place where his old anxiety lived. Travis was the shy friend, the nervous boy with perpetually sweating palms who loved a girl he couldn’t have. That boy wouldn’t be here, like this, feeling this.
He was something else now. Someone else. For her.
A shiver wracked him, but it wasn’t from the chill. It was recognition. He turned his head, cheek pressed into the pillow, and looked back at her over his shoulder. Her lipstick was smeared, her eyes dark and impossibly deep.
“Who am I, then?” he asked, the raw.
She leaned up, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, never breaking eye contact. A slow, possessive smile spread across her face. It was the same smile she got when a piece of art turned out perfectly.
“Tracy,” she said simply.
The name hung in the air like the buzz after a power cut. It wasn’t a question. It was a christening. Tracy. It felt foreign on his—on her—tongue, a slick, polished stone where a ragged piece of glass had been. She rolled it around in her mind. Travis was a name that always felt two sizes too big, borrowed from someone more confident. Tracy… Tracy fit the new lines of this body. It was a revelation that felt like a loss.
“Tracy,” she repeated, testing the sound. Her voice was hoarse.
Kaylee’s smile softened, a crack in her confident veneer. She crawled up beside her, the mattress dipping. “Too much?” She traced a finger along Tracy’s shoulder blade. “It just… came out. It fits. The way you move now. The way you feel.”
“It doesn’t feel wrong.” Tracy shifted onto her side, facing Kaylee. The movement was different, a new awareness of the weight and slide of her own hips. “That’s what’s freaking me out. Shouldn’t it feel wrong? I should be having a full-scale identity crisis right now. All I feel is… tired. And sticky.”
A genuine laugh burst from Kaylee. “Yeah, welcome to the aftermath.” She reached over to the nightstand, grabbing a half-empty water bottle. She took a swig and handed it over. The water was tepid and perfect. Tracy drank greedily, the physical act grounding her.
“So what now?” Tracy asked, wiping her mouth. “Do I… go back to my dorm? Pack up Travis’s stuff? What does that even look like?” The practicalities loomed, suddenly monstrous. Her class schedule, her ID, her parents. The lamp had changed her cellular structure, but not the bureaucratic nightmare of student records.
Kaylee flopped onto her back, staring at the ceiling stars. “I don’t know. One thing at a time?” She turned her head. “Stay here tonight. We can figure the rest out when the sun’s up. When the magic…” she gestured vaguely at the brass lamp, now dark on the desk, “…whatever, wears off a little.”
Magic. The word made it real in a way the physical changes hadn’t. A shudder, cold and deep, worked through Tracy’s gut. “It’s not going to wear off, is it?”
Kaylee didn’t answer for a long moment. “Do you want it to?”
The question was a trapdoor. Tracy saw the flash of fear in Kaylee’s eyes, quickly masked. She thought of the sketchbook, of the lonely desire hidden in those pages. She thought of the way Kaylee had looked at her—really looked—for the first time ever. The wish hadn’t just transformed her; it had unlocked a door in Kaylee, too.
“I don’t know,” Tracy said, because it was the truest answer. “I wanted you. I got… this. And I got you, but only because of this. It’s a loop.” She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. “My head is a fucking mess.”
“Come here.” Kaylee’s voice was gentle. She pulled Tracy against her, skin to skin in the crowded single bed. Tracy let herself be arranged, her head finding a spot on Kaylee’s shoulder. The scent of Kaylee’s sweat and her lavender shampoo was an immediate comfort. A baseline. Something the lamp hadn’t touched.
“We’re in the loop together,” Kaylee whispered into her hair. Her fingers carded through the tousled brown strands—Travis’s hair, but softer now, Tracy noticed absently. “However it goes. That was the wish, right? To be my ideal partner. The lamp did its part. Maybe the rest is just… us. Figuring out what that partnership is.”
The logic was flimsy, a paper shield against a storm of consequences, but Tracy clung to it. She focused on the steady beat of Kaylee’s heart under her ear. The afterglow was fading, replaced by a deep, aching soreness and a mind racing on a track with no end.
“Can I ask you something?” Tracy’s words were mumbled against Kaylee’s skin.
“Yeah.”
“Those drawings. Were you ever… were you drawing yourself? Or was it always someone else?”
Kaylee’s breathing hitched. Her hand stilled in Tracy’s hair. The silence stretched, filled only by the hum of the mini-fridge. When she finally spoke, her voice was small, a version of herself Tracy rarely heard. “Both, I guess. It was a fantasy. A body that felt powerful in a specific way. A body that could… give and take, you know? Not just one or the other.” She let out a shaky breath. “It was embarrassing. So I just drew it. And then I drew her with me. It was safer that way.”
Tracy lifted her head. In the low light, Kaylee’s eyes were glistening. “It’s not embarrassing,” Tracy said, and meant it. “It’s you.” She kissed Kaylee, softly, a seal on the confession. “And now I’m here. However that happened.”
“However it happened,” Kaylee echoed, kissing her back. It was slower now, weary and deep. A conversation without words. Tracy’s body responded, but lazily, a faint echo of the earlier storm. The exhaustion was winning.
They drifted, wrapped around each other, the questions hovering like dust in the lamplight. Tracy’s last conscious thought was of the lamp itself. Its brass base would be cool now. Inert. Had it merely been a catalyst, its job done? Or was it waiting, a silent judge, to see if the wish would hold under the weight of morning?
She didn’t dream. She fell into a black, velvet sleep where the names Travis and Tracy spun in a void, neither one sticking.
A shrill, persistent buzzing shattered the darkness.
Tracy jolted awake, disoriented. The room was grey with pre-dawn light. The buzzing was her phone, vibrating across the floor where her jeans were still tangled. Travis’s phone. The screen lit up the gloom: MOM.
Panic, cold and pure, lanced through her. She scrambled from the bed, the movement awkward, her body protesting. Kaylee groaned, pulling a pillow over her head.
“Ignore it,” she mumbled.
“I can’t,” Tracy hissed, stumbling on a discarded energy drink can. She snatched the jeans, fumbling the phone from the pocket. It stopped vibrating. A missed call. A notification for two voicemails from last night, likely when… when everything was happening.
She stood naked in the middle of the riotous room, the phone a live wire in her hand. The reality of the world outside this door came crashing down. Her mom. Her dad. Her chemistry midterm on Tuesday. Travis’s frat brother who expected him for a gaming session tomorrow night.
She looked at Kaylee, a lump under the blankets, and then at her own reflection in the dark window glass. A slim, feminine silhouette looked back, short hair sticking up in sleep-mussed waves. No. Not her reflection. Tracy’s reflection.
The phone buzzed again, a text this time.
Mom (6:07 AM): Hope you had a good night sweetie. Call me later. Dad says hi.
The mundane concern in the text was a gut-punch. Tracy’s—Travis’s—mother was a sweet, anxious woman who sent articles about campus safety and asked if he was eating enough vegetables. What would she see if she looked at Tracy now?
“Hey.” Kaylee’s voice was quiet. She was sitting up now, the sheet pooled around her waist, watching. “You’re shaking.”
Tracy looked down. Her hands were indeed trembling, the phone screen blurring in her vision. “It’s my mom,” she said, and the pronoun felt like a lie. “I have to… I have to figure out what to say. Who to be.”
Kaylee got out of bed, unconcerned with her nakedness, and walked over. She took the phone from Tracy’s trembling hand and placed it on the desk, next to the silent brass lamp. She then took Tracy’s face in her hands, forcing their eyes to meet.
“One thing at a time,” Kaylee said, her thumb stroking Tracy’s cheekbone. “You’re Tracy. You’re here, with me. That’s the only thing that’s true right this second. Breathe.”
Tracy breathed. The air felt thin.
“We’ll get through today,” Kaylee continued, her voice gaining a pragmatic edge. “You need clothes. I have stuff that might fit you now. We’ll get coffee. We’ll just… be. We don’t have to have all the answers by noon.”
It was a plan. A fragile, terrifying plan. Tracy nodded, her head moving stiffly. Clothes. Coffee. Be. She could maybe handle that.
Kaylee stepped back, opening her closet. She pulled out a pair of soft black leggings and an oversized band t-shirt. “Here,” she said, tossing them over. “These’ll be baggy on you, but they’ll work.”
The fabric of the leggings was strange against her new skin, a gentle pressure that felt both constricting and comforting. The t-shirt smelled like Kaylee’s detergent and hung loosely on Tracy’s narrower frame. Dressed, she felt marginally more contained. Less like a raw nerve exposed to the air.
Kaylee pulled on a pair of jeans and a hoodie, her pink hair a violent shock of color against the grey room. She looked at Tracy, a critical, artistic appraisal. “We’ll need to get you your own things. But for a walk to the café? You just look like a cute girl who borrowed her girlfriend’s clothes.”
Girlfriend. The word landed differently this time. It didn’t send a thrill of desperate hope. It settled, a heavy, complicated fact.
Kaylee shouldered her canvas bag and picked up the brass lamp. “I’m not leaving this here,” she said, matter-of-fact. “It’s coming with us.”
They slipped out of the dorm into the empty Sunday morning hallway. The fluorescent lights were brutal, exposing every scuff on the linoleum. Tracy kept her head down, her heart hammering against her ribs. Every footstep echoed. She felt like a ghost haunting her own life, a trespasser in a familiar building.
As they pushed through the heavy doors into the weak morning light, Tracy stopped. She looked back at the dorm, then at Kaylee, the lamp tucked under her arm like a strange, sacred artifact.
“What if it doesn’t work?” Tracy’s voice was barely a whisper. “What if the world looks at me and still sees Travis?”
Kaylee shifted the lamp, linking her free arm through Tracy’s. Her grip was firm. “Then we’ll deal,” she said. “But first, coffee. The world can wait for its coffee.”
She pulled Tracy forward, into the cool, uncertain dawn.