6 – Swing Swing
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This chapter is way too much fun not to share with y'all early. As a treat, of course. I couldn't just leave you on that cliffhanger, now could I? I mean yes I could but that would be mean.

 

This was the first time the ol’ Jerrod luck had a casualty that wasn’t myself and I’m not necessarily sure how I feel about it. 

It’s one thing when bad things happen to me because I’m clumsy, oblivious, or just an all around klutz. Stubbing my toe on the corner of our coffee table once a week, that I can handle because all that is is inflicting pain on myself. Falling down? Been there, done that, my knees have been scraped to hell, thanks. Falling in a toilet because some idiot forgot to put the seat down after they were down peeing? I could have a bathroom punch card for the number of times that’s happened to me. Redeem it for a free pair of pants at any participating location.

But because I’m an absolute moron, a fool, an idiot, I had cost my friend a chance at hir dream body, or at least immediate access to hir dream body.. The Jerrod luck had hit, and it hit hard. And not only that, but Kass had to watch me go through the whole process myself while I was just oblivious to everything. Running around the house like a little gremlin, squandering what could have been hirs on stupid self improvement. There’s only so much lipstick you can put on a pig, everyone’s going to still tell that there’s a pig under there. 

It’s me. I’m the pig. I’m the one that sucks, plus I got the depression.

These thoughts lingered in my brain for days, and even though I tried not to show it I sank into a funk. Funks were normal for me. I’d usually end up in a depression hole one or two times a month when all I wanted to do for a few days was lay around and sleep. Kass would be understanding, but we’d keep our distance since I didn’t want to be a complete bitch to hir. 

But also, what would I even say? What would I even do? Here’s how a hypothetical conversation would go. 

Kass: Hey JJ, it seems like you’re upset huh, what’s got you down teeny?

Me: Oh you know, just realized that by saving my life you made yours even worse. Sorry about that I guess, oh by the way Tilapia and Quinoa for dinner tonight, sounds good?

Kass: I don’t want to eat anything your dirty little paws touch you asshole. You’re right, you ruined my life and now I don’t even need to hide the fact that you disgust me anymore. Get out of my sight before I throw you into the garbage disposal. 

See!! There’s no way that situation is going to end positive! Every time zie sees me it’s probably like I’m rubbing a lemon on all of hir old wounds and frustrations about hir body. There’s no way to delicately bring up the subject. So in that case, the best thing to do is handle it in the same way I handle all of my problems. Push it down in my brain and focus on something else until I forget about the problem in the first place!

Or at least, I wish it could be that easy. After making this revelation I decided that the best thing to do would be to have a nap because I just couldn’t currently handle the world. Overwhelmed? Have a nap. Feeling sad? Have a nap. Ruin your friend’s chance of happiness by getting hit by a truck? Have a nap, dingus. It’s the miracle cure-all that’s going for a growing plush. 

Or at least, it was. Today, on the 9th day since my isekai-ification into a walking stuffed animal, the unthinkable happened. I felt like shit when I woke up from my nap. Not the normal ‘ugh I overslept and feel gross’ kind of feeling like shit. Instead I’m talking ‘just got the flu and don’t realize it’ kind of nasty. My little body was wracked by chills and no matter how many blankets I tried to snuggle under, nothing seemed to be working. It was too early in the morning to talk to Kass about it, so instead I settled for making a cup of tea and spending a little extra time on breakfast, since I still felt incredibly guilty towards Kass. 

Tea was new for me, and I had pretty quickly accumulated quite the collection, thank you again delivery services. I liked a nice Irish breakfast early in the morning, breathing in the rich heavy aroma of the black tea like it was the essence of life. Kass had joked that tea was merely a vessel for milk and sugar for me, but it’s not my fault that I liked it light and sweet! It just tastes better that way. In the afternoons I would settle for a calming green tea, or maybe something light and fruity that I would sip while I watched the world move outside our apartment window. It was the closest I had ever gotten to meditation. I had even joked with Kass about making some mixed drinks out of iced tea, which I may have researched a little more than one normally would for a goof. It didn’t hurt that I had lemon vodka and if I wanted to I could whip up a hell of a spiked Arnold Palmer if I wanted to. 

This morning though tea wasn’t just a part of my morning ritual, today it was an absolute necessity. My legs were jelly and I didn’t think I was capable of leaping up to the stove, so I had to take the extra time to drag a kitchen chair over and slowly climb it up like it was some kind of over-priced rock wall. My whole body was twitchy and wound up as I tapped my feet in exasperation while waiting for the kettle to boil and for the tea to take its goddamn sweet time steeping. 

After what felt like eternity, I was able to greedily slurp down my first cup of tea, which I quickly chased with a second. It didn’t hold off the creeping cold that caused me to shiver, but it definitely helped calm my nerves. Better, not as fatigued but still something was wrong with me. Was feeling like this normal? Did it reflect my mental state? These are questions that I just don’t really have the answers to. I asked Kass if I could look at hir magic stuff, but zie said that stuff was off limits to me. It was so unfair and all that train of thought brought me to was thinking about Kass and how I fucked my friend over. My thoughts were too much. Too overwhelming. I felt like just laying down and crying and spending the day face down on the floor.

I couldn’t though! Well I did. For a little bit. Like five minutes. I can’t even cry in this form no matter how much my body cried out that I wanted some kind of release, emotional or otherwise. It was like I was back in my old body, all of my emotions were jammed in some kind of 10-thought pile-up and all I could do was just sit there and frown. So I laid there, silent, in a dark room feeling gloomy and lost. At least for as long as I wanted to indulge myself in the feel bads. 

But enough of that! I had breakfast to make, or at least plan. It was super early so eggs were obviously out of the picture. . Climbing back up onto the stove I surveyed the ingredients that we had left over. There was some bread that was a few days away from being too stale to use for anything normal, which got me thinking about ways I could incorporate it into whatever I was making. 

A quick google search of “best uses for almost stale bread” brought up a plethora of recipes for me to sort through. Definitely not making croutons for breakfast, but I would put a pin on that for the future for a nice salad. There’s a lot of crunchy things and of course I’m so dumb I’ll just whip up some French toast. That’s the perfect tasty breakfast treat. And there should be some heavy cream too so I could whip up that pretty easily for some homemade whipped cream. 

With that I became a bit of a blur in the kitchen. What if I made breakfast just super duper special, then I can tell Kass about finding out hir secret. Something nice and special for an important conversation, so zie knows that I still have their back and want to make things right, well as much as I could. Right now it was what, 3 in the morning? Good, this recipe for french toast that I found requires it to chill and soak up the batter for a while. Perfect. Which means I need to gather the ingredients and think about what I want to do with the rest of the breakfast. 

Is there anyone delivering this late? I want to make sure I get some good syrup. I flicked around on my phone with a DS Stylus (it was the smallest touch stylus that we found that would still work with my phone) trying to check the times of delivery. Hmm, no, earliest grocery deliveries are at 7, that won’t do. Well, it will for bacon. God I know this is a rabbit hole, but let’s see if they have any local stuff. It’ll do much better than that packaged Oscar-Meyer stuff that we have sitting in the bottom of a drawer somewhere. Ooh a maple bourbon bacon from a farm outside of town? Yes please, all that’s going to have to do is fry so I can leave that alone. Well that and pay a little for it to be delivered with an ice pack so things stay fresh cool cool. Now where was I? Oh yeah Syrup. No wait I need to make the base for the French toast first, duh. 

It’s just so easy to get scattered in the kitchen, especially when I get so excited about what I want to make. Back as a human my brain was scattered like this, but also dulled. It was hard to get genuinely excited about things.Even though my body is protesting every single step I make right now, or shaking too hard when I leap and grab the fridge door to swing it open, I still feel good. All over the place, yeah, but still good. My previous bad mood is far in the distance, because all I want to do is make today a good day. A good day with hard conversations, sure, but at the end of the day we’ll be closer as friends. Or maybe zie will hate me forever as a reminder of what I stole from hir. Fifty-fifty odds, if you ask me. But regardless it was a conversation that needed to happen. Which means, of course, we need to make the toast. Again. Make the base for the toast. Syrup problems later. 

Rummaging around under the oven, I dislodge a casserole dish from under some cookie sheets and quickly get to work. A little milk, orange juice, cinnamon, vanilla, eggs, uh other things that the recipe called for, all mixed and whisked together and poured right into the bowl. Then for the bread, right, bread needs to soak for hours before you put the whole thing in the oven to bake. The last time I tried to make French toast for Kass all of it got stuck to the pan, but that was way back as Freshmen. Oh shit, that was also the last time I tried to cook something complicated by myself. I just wanna go back to freshy Jerrod and tell them “hey my dude you get better.” They’d probably be like “why is this toy talking to me” and really that’s not a conversation that I’d like to have, even as a hypothetical. 

It struck me that this was the first time since getting hit by a car that I had referred to myself as Jerrod, a name that fit me about as well now as any of my old clothes. I felt queasy, and not just because of my background KT fever or whatever this illness that I caught was. 

Anyway don’t dwell. It’s easy to push thoughts aside and not dwell. Instead of thinking about bad thoughts, I can just strain to stick the dish in the fridge so the toast had time to really absorb some flavor. When I first started cooking we both agreed that the bottom shelf of the fridge needed to be kept free in case I needed it, since it was hard for me to put heavy dishes like that anywhere else. In my kitchen clean I organized the fridge too, so we had plenty of space to just slide the toast in, no worries. 

Taking a moment I grabbed a magic eraser and some cleaning spray and made my cooking station tidy. There were stray spots of batter on the table since I strained to lift the bowl, and the sooner something like that gets cleaned the better. Satisfied, my attention turned to syrup!

We had about three-fourths of a bottle of syrup left in the fridge. Just the standard stuff that you could grab at any grocery store. Hmmmm, mehhh we can do better than that. What if I take one of these oranges that we have and slice it up just a little bit. It’s absolutely astounding how much better I’ve gotten with a knife just in this short time. Not going to be a sous chef anytime soon, but I wasn’t blundering around trying to figure out the right way to slice anymore. 

Plopping the oranges and the syrup into a saucepan, I turned the heat to low and just let it simmer. The flavors will mingle and give it a nice taste. Oh! Whipped cream! I needed to chill the whisk and bowl so it would be easy to whip, but opening the freezer without Kass is kind of out of the question so I guess I just have to settle for putting them in the fridge next to the whipping cream so I don’t forget what I’m doing with it. 

All I could do is sit back and relax now. The rest would wait til Kass woke up. Speaking of waking up though, all the energy that I used was catching up to me. My body began shaking and I decided that a nap was in the cards. I must have pushed myself way too hard with breakfast. The syrup could sit on the stove just fine, there was no shame with closing my eyes and taking just a little break. 

 

~~~

“Jerrod?” 

“Mmm” Reaching my two paws out I stretched over the table, my joints aching as if to remind me that I still had this feverish haze over my body. I looked up to see Kass looking down at me, hair unruly and wearing nothing but underwear and an old roller derby shirt.

“Jerrod, you’re sleeping on the kitchen table. And there’s uh, something brown and sweet smelling on the stove.”

“Ohh, hi Kass, g’morning,” I mumbled. “What time is it?”

“It’s 8, silly guy. Wow you were really passed out huh. Did you spend all night making mystery liquids?” Zie laughed and I blushed looking down to try to ignore Kass’s questioning stare. 

“It’s not liquid. It’s syrup…” I grumbled. The chills creeping back again as I visibly shivered. Death warmed over is a very charitable way to describe how my body was feeling. How was it worse than earlier? Was it some kind of plague that only impacted magical creatures? It felt like a fog had rolled into my head, all fuzzy and hazy. 

“Ooh, syrup? Jerrod I’m impressed!”

“Can you just STOP calling me Jerrod!?” I snapped, surprising both Kass and myself with both my volume and tone. My paws snapped up to my face to cover my mouth, where the fuck did that come from? I couldn’t be a complete bitch. Remember, this is to make hir feel better. “Sorry, I have no idea where that came from. I feel sick, and I guess it’s just grating me that you keep calling me Jerrod.”

“You don’t like your name?” Kass asked, single eyebrow raised.

“Well it’s not that I don’t like it. It fit me, well, it fit me fine before. That six foot dummy was a good Jerrod if I ever saw one. His sharp jaw, his gloomy eyes, total Jerrod. But me? I don’t know if Jerrod is a good name for this form.” 

Kass nodded, “hey trust me I understand. Remember the name that used to be on my school ID?”

“Oh my God, yeah. I can’t believe we both missed that you were trans when you went and fucking changed your name because it was too girly sounding.”

“Totally, just cis things over here,” shaking hir head Kass turned the tables on me by asking “well what do you want to be called then?”“Oh. . . I get to choose don’t I?”

Zie nodded, “Well you’re the one who thinks that Jerrod doesn’t really fit you, right? So it makes sense that you’d be the one who creates a new moniker. It can be whatever you want! Trust me, it’s fun.”

“Well…” I paused, I had so much power in my hands at this moment what would I even do with it. “I always like it when you call me JJ.”

“You hate it when I call you JJ.”

“Yeah that’s what I say so you will keep calling me JJ. It’s reverse psychology. I’m a brain genius.” I tapped the side of my head. “It’s a classic JJ scam, if someone does something teasingly that I like I lean into it and pretend I hate it so the teaser leans in and teases more. Win-win. Why do you think I grumbled super loudly every time someone at our old dorm called me an honorary girl?”

“Oh my God I’ve been mindfucked.”

I nodded, “A real mindfuck indeed, but since I like JJ how about we just go with Jay? My body is kind of neutral right now and Jay feels kind of neutral too. Does, uh, does that sound good to you?”

“What I like doesn’t matter, Jay! It’s your name. It’s personal for you.”

“Well yeah but, you’re my best friend and uh, your opinion means a lot to me y’know. You’re like, the person I’m closest with.” I shivered again, feeling almost nauseous. Maybe I was just hungry? Sometimes when I didn’t eat for a while I would feel kind of under the weather. “Uh Kass could you preheat the oven? I need to get the bacon started.”

“Bacon?? Oohh is my little KT treating me today?” the telltale beep of the oven preheating told me that it was set and I was ready to cook some more. Oh, the bacon!! Hopefully they remembered to pack it in the cooler. Kass, under my instruction, brought it in and fortunately it was preserved. 

“Jayyyy what is this?” Zie said, brandishing the hand-wrapped package of bacon. “Did you seriously spend this much on fancy bacon?”

“Mayyyyybe.”

“I feel spoiled.”

“You should!” I blurted, “Uh, I mean. You deserve a treat for being such a good friend. And I’ve been craving better meat than what we’ve got, so I said fuck it. Let’s be bougie, huh?”

“This is how the rich lives, huh?” Kass laughed. 

“Yep, they get real ass bacon with fat and crispy edges that aren’t burned. No char.” At that moment the oven started beeping and my attention immediately turned from the baking to getting the french toast popped into the heat. 

Pressing my luck, I leapt up to the top of the stove, banging my knee on the edge of the counter and almost falling off. I made it though, and instructed a worried Kass to bring me the bacon, a little bit of butter, and our nice no stick frying pan. Nothing too fancy for the bacon, just cook it all nice and slow. The nausea and chills continued in waves across my body and eventually I had to keep whispering to myself to just get it done. Just keep going. A few more minutes and then breakfast would be amazing. 

Leaning down, spatula in hand, I attempted to flip the bacon. The best intentions were interrupted with massive forehead and hip pain. The nausea roared and for a moment the room spun in dizzying circles. Push through it, I had to push. This was for Kass, this was for-

 

~~~

 

The next thing I remembered I was looking up into Kass’s face, the cold feeling of the linoleum pressed into my back. Hello floor, my old friend. I’m apparently laying on you again. 

“Holy shit, Jay, you can’t do that to me. I thought I lost you all over again.” Kass was on the brink of tears, “If I lost you I don’t know what I would do. I’d never forgive myself.”

“How’s.. The bacon.” 

Zie sniffed, “It’s fine, idiot. Whereas you’re not. What’s wrong today? Your body is behaving right?”

“It’s mean.”

“You have to be a little more specific than that, Jay.”

“It’s very mean.”

“You know what I mean,” zie put hir hands on hir hips and gave me that stern parent look that zie claims zie’s been practicing since zie was a little kid. 

“Everything feels.. Off.” I struggled to find the right words for how I was feeling. “It’s like, I have the flu, but also have a cold and a headache and my body is achy in different spots. Bad. Bad feel. I keep trying to push them away so I can do my normal stuff but it comes back worse than before.”

“Jay…” Kass frowned and motioned for me to sit in my chair that we had stacked a bunch of dictionaries and unused college textbooks on top of so I could eat at the table. “God I didn’t realize this was going to happen so soon, I’m the worst. You’re experiencing some growing pains.”

“I thought I was done with that with puberty. That’s rude of my body.” I blushed, memories of awful and invasive long talks from my parents, constant messages to man up just because my body decided to blanket me with hair.

“It’s not supposed to happen til about two weeks into your change, you’re a little early. I’m so sorry I should have warned you. You just need to take today easy. Your body is basically taking all of your energy that you have stored up and it’s shoving it into jumpstarting your first big change. That’s good though, it at least means your essence is taking to the KT super well. Like crazy well in fact. It’s like your soul was hungry for a change. Hmm.” Zie got a long off look in their eyes like zie was trying to figure out a puzzle. Whatever zie was thinking about got cut off by my phone’s alarm going off. The french toast was done! Which means that breakfast was ready. 

Except. Fuck, I forgot the whipped cream. “Shit.” I mumbled. “I’m so fucking dumb. It was right there. Stupid body.”

“What are you talking about Jay?” Kass pulled the french toast from the oven, filling the room with the delicious rich smell that accompanies extremely sugary breakfast food.

“I forgot to whip the cream, it was supposed to be all perfect for breakfast and now I’ve fucked up the entire meal because I got hurt and then fell off and it’s just not right because the whip cream was supposed to bring everything together, y’know. Its not special anymore.”

“You’re word avalanching again.”

“I know.”

“You’re really upset about no whipped cream huh.”

“Well more like it’s supposed to be perfect. And now it’s not perfect and I’ve fucked things up again.”

“Jay you haven't fucked anything else up. Unless you organized my record collection after I told you that I had it organized in my own way. I know it’s not alphabetical and it bothers you but I have a really important format.”

“No it’s just.” I sighed and bit my tongue. No. Not now. Not when my body was being all freaky and growing. I’d have to bring the whole KT business up to hir when zie’s not worried to death about me. “Y’know. I just want you to be happy.” I forced a weak smile but at that time I was wracked with the worst pain yet. My head felt like it was splitting open, and I let out a very not manly yelp. Well okay maybe it was more of a squeal but who’s going to judge me. 

After the pain cleared everything seemed sharper. If my hearing was good before, now it was in overdrive. The ambient noise of the house and our neighbors was almost overwhelming. The positive thing is, the pain and nausea left after this last change. Thank fucking God. Maybe, just maybe I’ve gotten a little taller. Looking around, everything seemed to be in proportion to how it was before so I definitely didn’t get taller. Well then what changed? Kass said it was going to be something big.

“Jay,” Kass gasped.

“Hmm?” 

“Jay. Oh my God Jay. You have cat ears.”

 

Okay, fine. You got me. I'm a basic girl, and I like catgirls. I think it's a law that trans authors have to write a story with a catgirl sometime in their history and here's mine. I 100% am stealing the thought of having a foxgirl or a beargirl in the future from the comments though, that'll be really fun. And oh gosh I guess I'll see you all on Friday! As always if you like it, leave me a comment to let me know so I can go yayyyy!

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