Informed Consent caption (v1) - part 1 (free version) (Patreon)

See part two here.

The sheets are stiff with dried sweat, clinging to my calves and the small of my back in cold patches. Morning light glows through the window. I push the cotton duvet down to my ankles and lie flat on the mattress, staring at the ceiling. The fever broke sometime in the last hour. My skin is finally cool. The heat is gone. My limbs feel heavy. Beside me, Vicky breathes in an even rhythm, her back turned to me, her dark hair pooling on the pillowcase. She spent the last few days bringing me tap water and generic ibuprofen, her palm resting against my forehead.

I know what the sudden drop in temperature signals. I waited for this threshold, tracking the metabolic burn in my own bloodstream.

I slide my legs over the edge of the mattress and stand up. My bare feet hit the hardwood floor.

The physical shift registers the second I put weight on my heels. I take a step toward the bedroom door, and my center of gravity is relocated. It dropped dramatically overnight, settling lower in the pelvis and forcing an automatic correction in my spine. I stand wider. I take another step into the hallway. My gait has shortened. My knees brush closer together with the movement. The base of my spine absorbs the brunt of the changed bone structure, aching steadily.

I'm wearing gray boxer shorts. The coarse weave of the fabric moves against my thighs.

The weight that used to hang there is gone. In its place is a slick heat. The cotton catches and rubs against a swollen shape that sits flush against the base of my groin. I don't need to look in a mirror to know the transformation crossed the threshold. The friction is a sharp shock. A baseline wetness coats the inner thighs, present, elevated, unmistakable.

I step onto the hexagonal tile of the bathroom floor. The grout is devoid of warmth. I stand in front of the porcelain toilet bowl. The air conditioning vent above the shower cycles on, pushing a cold draft over my shoulders. My upper body is unaltered. The secondary metabolic shifts haven't reached my ribcage yet. My chest is flat, the collarbones and sternum set in their original architecture.

I hook my right thumb under the elastic waistband of the boxers. I pull the dark cotton forward to clear my hips. I charted the progression in symptomatic patients at the endocrinology clinic, and I am desperate for the visual confirmation of what I am feeling in my hips. And yet, I stubbornly anticipate the familiar landscape, the routine of guiding myself to urinate.

I look down into the gap.

The flat terrain is gone. The skin of my lower abdomen pulls taut across a broadened pelvic bone. The boxer shorts hang loosely around my upper thighs, exposing a flushed fold of pink tissue. A fully developed vulva sits right at the junction of my legs.

I let the elastic go. The fabric snaps back. I drop the boxers down to my ankles. The cool morning air hits the slick skin directly. I stare at the new flesh. It is dense with localized blood flow.

I stole a lavender-top vial of infected blood from the clinic supply closet. I took a clean syringe, stood under the fluorescent light of the closet, and pushed the needle into my vein. The injection took four seconds.

The pressure in my bladder spikes, a sharp ache localized against the lower quadrant of my abdomen.

I step closer to the bowl. For a fraction of a second, I assume I can remain standing. I stop. The plumbing is gone.

"Morning."

Vicky's voice crosses the hallway. Her tone is bright, laced with a familiar cadence.

"You've been in there a while," she calls out. The bedsprings groan slightly as she shifts her weight on the mattress. "Are you figuring out how to use the toilet? You know you're not allowed to stand up anymore."

We've played this game in that bed for two years.

"Don't try to stand and make a mess," she says, her voice carrying a practiced edge. "I want you to remember what you are. You can't stand to pee. You don't have the equipment for it anymore. You sit down like a good girl now. Back it up to the seat and sit down."

She initiates it constantly. She doesn't know there are strains of a virus in this city that rewrite human phenotypes. To her, transformation is a bedroom game.

I turn around and lower myself onto the toilet.

The plastic seat is hard against the back of my thighs. The angle of my pelvis requires a wider spread of my knees. I rest my elbows on my thighs and drop my head forward.

I relax the muscles of the pelvic floor. The release is immediate. Without a urethra running through an external appendage, the flow of urine is a broad wash of warmth. It happens flush against the body, spreading over the tissue of the inner labia before falling away into the bowl beneath me. The sound is different, a heavier rush hitting the water. I sit there and let it happen, staring at the white bath mat between my bare feet.

"I can hear you," Vicky calls out. Her voice settles into the raspy register she uses when she's already turned on. "It sounds different when a girl pees. It sounds exactly like that. Just a heavy rush straight down into the water. Are your thighs pressed together? You have to open your legs a little bit to let it out."

I miss the thoughtlessness of the male body I used to wear.

Now, every single sensation is loud. The heat, the friction of the thighs meeting without anything between them to create a gap, the slickness of the tissue pressing against itself. Hearing the fantasy map onto the permanent reality sends a jolt of adrenaline through my system.

"Make sure you wipe yourself clean," Vicky says, her voice filtering easily through the open door. "You have to reach front to back now. You don't want to get a UTI. Wipe that sweet little cunt for me."

The flow stops. I reach up and pull a length of toilet paper from the metal roller on the vanity. The cardboard tube rattles. I fold the thin paper twice.

I reach down and pat myself dry.

The contact makes my breath catch in my throat. The tissue yields instantly under the slight pressure. Every nerve ending sits right at the surface. The harsh friction of the paper sends a sharp jolt straight up into my lower abdomen.

"I'm going to pull those boxers off when you get back in here," Vicky says. I hear the rustle of the sheets as she props herself up.

I drop the damp paper into the bowl. I reach down and pull the dark boxer shorts back up my legs. The elastic catches slightly on the new flare of my hips before settling around my waist.

"You're going to open up for me and let me touch you exactly where you need it."

I stand up. I push the chrome lever. The water rushes through the pipes, chaotic for a few seconds before the tank begins its steady refill. I step over to the sink and turn the cold water on. I wash my hands under the stream.

I look through the open doorway.

The bedroom is washed in the morning light. Vicky is lying in the center of the mattress. She is propped up against the headboard, a pair of stacked pillows behind her back. The blanket is pushed entirely to the floor. Her dark hair is pulled over one shoulder, resting against her collarbone. She looks relaxed. Her gaze is directed straight through the doorway, locked onto me. Her expression is expectant and thick with affection.

She smiles. She shifts her legs, crossing them loosely at the ankles.

"Come here," she says softly, patting the mattress next to her hip. "Thirty seconds. Let me see what you've got down there. I want to touch it."

I look at her. I take in the line of her throat, the familiar curve of her waist. My throat is dry.

We never talked about the lived reality of female anatomy outside the bounds of our bedroom script. She likes the humiliation, the heat of pretending I'm changing. I'm hoping she'll look at the blood and tissue between my legs and feel the heat she feels for the idea of it.

She thinks I'm standing in here stalling to build the tension. She thinks I'm going to walk back into that room, climb onto the mattress, and let her pull my clothes off to find a male groin that she can pretend is something else.

I turn the faucet off. The water stops. The apartment is silent.

I let go of the edge of the sink. I step onto the bath mat, the cotton fibers soft under my cold feet. I have to walk across the carpet. I have to stand at the edge of the bed and show her what I've done.