Informed Consent (v2) - part 2 (Patreon)

The gray cotton of my t-shirt drags across my chest when I reach for the glass of water on the nightstand. The fabric catches on my nipples. I wince, freezing with my arm extended, then gently pull off the shirt. The tissue beneath the areolas has swollen into hard discs resting against the pectoral muscle. The secondary metabolic shifts have started. I take a sip of the room-temperature water and look at the man lying next to me.

Eli is on his back. The duvet is pushed down to his waist. The dark flush that kept him radiating heat for the last five days is gone. The fever broke sometime before dawn. He takes deep, even pulls of air.

He shifts his legs under the blanket.

His knees knock together. I know what that is because I lived it a week ago. The broadened pelvic bone forces the femurs inward.

Eli opens his eyes.

He blinks at the ceiling and rubs his face with his right hand. He smells like stale sweat and the sour tang of sickness. I haven't left this room except to refill the water pitcher or use the bathroom.

"Marcus," he says. His voice is a dry rasp.

"I'm here." I set the glass back on the nightstand.

He pushes his weight onto his elbows to sit up. His lower back bows. The breath goes out through his teeth, and he drops flat onto the pillow.

"My back," he says. He reaches a hand around to his lower spine.

"Don't move too fast. Your joints are inflamed."

He frowns. He pushes his elbows into the mattress again, slower this time, and manages to prop himself against the headboard. The blanket slides down to his thighs. He's wearing the blue boxers he put on when the chills started.

He shifts his hips. A furrow appears between his eyebrows. He tries to spread his knees, but they don't want to go.

He brings his hand to the front of his shorts and presses his palm flat against the fabric.

The material sinks in where it shouldn't. There's nothing to stop his hand.

He presses harder and drags his palm down. He looks at me.

"I'm swollen," he says. His voice lacks any inflection. "Something is wrong with the lymph nodes."

"Eli," I say.

He grips the waistband of the boxers and pulls them down.

The morning light from the window falls on his lap. The skin of his lower abdomen pulls taut across a widened bone structure. Resting flush against the new pelvic flare is a fully developed vulva. The tissue is pink, heavy with the initial rush of localized blood flow. It looks like mine.

He stares at the slick folds of skin resting against his upper thighs.

He reaches down and touches the outer edge of the labia with a shaking finger.

His thigh twitches.

"No," he says.

He scrambles backward on the bed until his spine hits the headboard, pulling his knees to his chest. The new angle of his hips forces his knees to splay outward.

"What is that?" He looks at my face. His breathing is shallow and fast. "Marcus, what is happening to me?"

"It's a viral strain," I say. My voice sounds too calm. "It causes a physical transformation."

"A transformation." He presses the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. "From a flu."

"It's not the flu."

"Then what did you give me?" He drops his hands. His eyes are wide, searching my face for a timeline or a cure. He thinks I brought something home on my scrubs by accident. "You were sick first."

I sit on the edge of the mattress. My own hips rest heavy against the sheets. I got the body I've wanted since I was a teenager, and I passed the active viral load to the man I love before I knew I was contagious.

"Yes," I say. "The same thing that happened to me."

"Fix it." He grabs my wrist. His grip is strong for someone who just burned through a five-day fever. "You work at the clinic. Tell me the treatment protocol. I need a hospital, Marcus."

"There is no treatment protocol, Eli. It doesn't reverse."

He stares at me. He lets go of my wrist.

Looking at the wall above the dresser, he lets out a sound that's half a gasp and half a dry heave. He curls onto his side facing away from me, pulling the duvet over his head.

I look at the shape of him. The curve of his waist is narrower. His hips push the duvet up higher than they did last week.

I reach out and put my hand on his shoulder through the cotton.

He flinches, sliding closer to the edge of the mattress.

"Don't," he says. The word is muffled.

I pull my hand back and listen to him breathe.

The afternoon light turns the bedroom a dusty orange. Eli hasn't moved. He drank half a glass of water at noon. He refused to go to the bathroom. I remember the ache of a full bladder against the new pelvic floor on my first day.

Eli sits up, his hair matted to his forehead. He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands.

He pitches forward.

He tries to walk from his shoulders, but he has more weight in his hips now. His knees knock together. He catches himself on the edge of the pine dresser and breathes hard through his nose. He holds onto it for a while before he lets go.

He walks to the bathroom, taking smaller steps. His bare feet slap the hardwood. He leaves the door open.

I hear him stop in front of the toilet.

The rustle of the boxer shorts dropping to the hexagonal tile.

He's looking down, trying to figure out how to stand, and he can't.

The plastic seat creaks as he sits down.

The flow of urine starts. It's a broad wash that hits the porcelain and the water at the same time.

The flow stops. The toilet paper roll rattles. He flushes the toilet.

I hear the water run in the sink. It runs for a long time.

When he walks back into the bedroom, his face is wet. He doesn't look at me. He climbs back into bed and lies flat on his back, pulling the sheet up to his chest.

"It got all over my thighs," he says to the ceiling.

I get up and sit on the edge of the bed near his hip. The mattress sinks under my weight.

"It takes practice," I say. "You have to spread your knees wider than you think."

He turns his head and looks at me. His eyes are bloodshot. "I don't want to practice."

Reaching a hand out from under the sheet, he rests his palm flat on the mattress between us. He looks at my face.

"Come here," he says.

I look at him.

"Lie down," he says.

I lie down next to him on top of the covers. The light goes out of the room. He doesn't turn the lamp on.

He turns on his side to face me and touches my waist. His hand follows the curve of my hip, looking for the straight lines of his boyfriend. He finds the wide flare of a woman's hips.

He slides his hand up to my chest. He rests his palm flat against my pectoral muscle.

The pressure hits the tender breast buds beneath the areolas. I flinch, sucking in a breath.

He pulls his hand back. "I hurt you."

"They're sore," I say. "The tissue is growing."

He stares at my chest. He looks down at his own flat chest. In a week his chest will start to ache the same way. He'll have to figure out how to wear a shirt without the fabric scraping the raw nerve endings.

He pushes the sheet off his lower half. He's still wearing the blue boxers. He scoots closer to me. He throws his leg over my thighs, pressing his groin against my hip.

He presses his hips forward.

He meets the swell of my vulva through his shorts.

He stops. He pushes again, adjusting his angle. There's nothing but the yielding tissue of two female bodies pressing together.

He drops his forehead against my shoulder. He breathes in ragged gasps.

I wrap my arms around his back, holding him. I feel the new flare of his hips against my forearm.

He slides his hand down between us. He grabs the waistband of his blue shorts and shoves them down.

Skin meets skin.

The wet labia of my anatomy press directly against his.

The contact is an electric shock. The nerve endings on the surface of both our bodies ignite. I gasp, my hips jerking upward instinctively.

Eli lets out a sharp sound. He starts to pull back, then leans back into the pressure. The slick moisture coating his inner labia smears against mine. His pelvic floor contracts, pulling a rush of blood into the tissue.

He arches his back, driving his hips down into mine.

The friction is blunt. The wet sound of the tissue sliding together is loud in the bedroom. I wrap my legs around his thigh, holding him in place.

"Marcus," he says. His voice shakes.

"I've got you," I say.

He grinds down again. The baseline dampness increases, heavy.

He rides my thigh, pushing himself down in desperate movements. Tears spill out of the corners of his eyes and run down onto my chest.

"I hate this," he says, a sob catching in his throat.

He pushes down hard, grinding his clitoris against my pubic bone. His hips snap up. He shudders against me, a long release that leaves him limp.

He collapses onto my chest. His breathing is harsh. The slick fluid coats the junction of our legs.

He rolls off me. He scrambles to the other side of the mattress, pulling his boxers back up over his thighs. He curls onto his side, knees up tight against his chest, arms around his legs.

I find my t-shirt on the floor and pull it on. The cotton drags over the sore tissue and I leave it. My hips still swing wrong on the way to the kitchen, and the spine ache is worse standing than it was lying down. I rinse out the pitcher and fill it and carry it back, and set it down on his side of the nightstand where he can reach it without sitting up. He did that for me for five days. I don't think I watched him do it once.

He's quieter now, or he has his face further into the pillow. I get into bed behind him, close enough that the mattress tips, and I don't put a hand on him.

"Fix it," he says into the pillow.

I could tell him. I lie there and don't.