Without the looming reveal of any sort of ultimate prank, April first kind of just arrived unannounced and unanticipated. There had, of course, been idle musings between Penny and I of possibly, maybe throwing something together. But frankly we were both far too occupied with the day to day joys of living as our authentic selves and navigating promising new relationships to care about such things. For my part, I’d forgotten about the first entirely and literally scheduled a date with Rachel that day. Not that Penny seemed to be looking for my support in any mischief of her own. Admittedly, I hadn’t been spending as much time with her since she had started dating Will and I had started dating Rachel, but that sort of thing was sort of inevitable when relationships happened, right? Regardless, it had been, all things considered, a pretty chill few days.

And so, when all was said and done, on the first I found myself casually relaxing on the couch with Rachel, snuggled up to her with my head resting on her shoulder, idly passing by online lecture after online lecture and sustaining myself with her company. I was about halfway through not really paying attention to a lecture about like, rhetoric or something—I honestly wasn’t really paying attention; my university was one of those schools that required a certain amount of BS gen-ed courses regardless of one’s major and it was one such course—when I found myself about halfway to completely dozing off. Okay, to be fair I didn’t really find myself that way, Rachel found me that way; she then proceeded to oh so rudely jostle me awake. 

“Wha—?” I murmured, eyes fluttering open and head jerking up off of her shoulder.

“You were about to fall asleep,” Rachel giggled, gently prodding my ribs, making me squirm in my seat. 

“Alright, alright I’m up! Geez, this guy barely even teaches, he spends half of every class going off on random personal anecdotes, he’s so tenured he’s like twentyured.” I giggled furiously at my joke, possibly mainly just to hear more of my own voice, which I still couldn’t get enough of. 

“That one could have used more time in the oven, babe.” She rolled her eyes, and kissed me on the cheek.

“I coulda said the same thing to you last night, ammirite? Eyy! Pew pew!” I threw my best finger-guns her way as Rachel’s amused smile turned into an absolutely devilish smirk.

“Is that so?” she mused, dropping her voice to a low, breathy drawl and leaning in close enough for me to feel each exhale of breath. “Well, I guess in that case maybe I won’t bother with it tonight. Since I did such a poor job last time.” 

“Buh—no,” I whined. “That’s not fair.”

“Sorry babe, but the list of people who would absolutely love for me to spend some time in their ovens is pretty dang long. Maybe you should be more appreciative.” She lightly traced her nails along the back of my neck and upper back, leaving me shivering and trembling. 

“But I always have my oven preheated for you.” I said, averting my eyes and pressing my fingers together in an exaggerated gesture. 

The choking spit-take of a guffaw I elicited from Rachel broke my facade, “Christ, you’re getting a lot better at flirting, you know that? I think this metaphor has gone far enough, though.” She leaned back on the sofa, wrapping her arm around me and pulling me in close. “At least I got you awake and alert.” 

“Yeah yeah, can’t wait to hear about this guy’s years spent working in a fuckin’ fish cannery or whatever.” I returned my gaze to the screen to see that, yep, this man hadn’t changed the slide for the past like, twenty minutes or some shit.

“I’ll work in your fish cannery…?” Rachel said, shrugging, failing to provide even the basic pretense of actual flirtation.

“Damn, babe, that sounds like something I’d say.” I gently shoved her arm, and she scrunched her nose and pressed her lips together in this adorable little pout. Dang, how did I manage to land someone this awesome? With a teasing nibble on her neck, I cuddled close to her and lazily watched the remainder of my lecture in silence. 

At some point I must have actually drifted off, though it was definitely after the lecture had finished. The feeling of Rachel lightly tussling my hair woke me, my eyes opened to see her gazing down at me with an affectionate smile. “Hey so, I’m gonna have to go soon, remember? I’ve gotta help a friend move some shit around at her place. Are you good to just meet me at the restaurant?” 

Right, I actually had forgotten about that. And here I was hoping we could just cuddle on the couch ‘til date time, but oh well. I scooted myself off her lap and, with one last peck on the lips, Rachel stood and headed out. Our date wasn’t for a few more hours, so I had time to kill. Lucky for me, I knew exactly how to spend that time. Before this whole thing with the prank, whenever I had a date, I really wouldn’t expend much effort or worry on things like how I’d dress or look. Wild how much that changes when a person finds themself in a body they actually enjoy. Admittedly, I may have tried on way more outfits than were necessary, and a bunch I had no intention of actually wearing to our date, but I wanted to see myself in them, okay? I was pretty. Anyway, I wound up settling for this tight dark blue skater dress that stopped about midway down my thighs and hugged the sides of my breasts as the fabric pinched inward to form an almost choker-like neckline. The blue flowed down into a nice cream color at the skirt, which was decorated with a minimalist flower design. And yeah my legs looked hot, plus it showed off my shoulders and neck nicely. Rachel was gonna love it, she’d maybe even love it close to half as much as I loved wearing it.

Now, I may or may not have gotten a little carried away with the different looks and the whole staring endlessly at myself in the mirror thing. And that may or may not have resulted in me losing track of time. At the very least, the restaurant we were meeting at happened to be pretty close by. It was this new place, a lot of them had been cropping up lately to replace the ones that had closed during the pandemic. Apparently it was good, though. In a hurry, I threw on my shoes and practically launched myself out the front door, running as fast and as far as I could, which actually wasn’t very fast or far; I was both out of shape and in a completely new body that I still was very much getting used to. Not to mention the fact that I’d lost both height and muscle mass. Plus I didn’t want to show up sweaty and out of breath with my makeup running or anything like that. Still, I made it—mostly on time. Pretty much exactly when I stepped through the door, I got a text from Rachel, 

“Hey by the way, when you get here I’m in a booth at the back, wearing a burgundy beanie.” I scanned the booths along the wall toward the back of the place and, yep, there she was, facing away from me with her beanie just barely peeking out over the back of the booth. I casually strolled over, and took a seat across from her, only to see—

“Heather?” 

“Whu—Penny what the hell are you doing here?” Wait was this? Ah shit.

“Did they fucking—two years in a row? Seriously that’s just bad prank form, you don’t repeat pranks,” Penny huffed, leaning back and crossing her arms under her chest, which kind of maybe accentuated them, and oh no, that was a really low-cut top. With all my willpower, I tore my eyes away.

“God yeah, honestly, what were they thinking? That this would be funny now that we’re girls?” Okay, to be fair, it would definitely be pretty funny if Penny and I dated. Actually, wait a second... “You know what? We should totally prank them back by actually treating this like a date.” Wait, why was I so nervous all of a sudden?

“Shit, Heather that’s a great idea! They’re probably watching us right now, giggling to themselves about how hard they just pranked us, but we’ll show them! I’m gonna flirt extra hard and wine and dine the shit out of you, girl.” She immediately began poring over the menu with oddly intense fervor. Wait, she was actually down? Holy shit!

“Fer sure, and to really hammer it home, we gotta go all out here, no half measures if we want the prank to be real.” Suddenly I found myself stammering and trailing off as a bit of guilt crept in. “I um, that would probably upset Will though, wouldn’t it?”

Smiling broadly, Penny shook her head vigorously, “Nuh-uh! We actually had a talk about this when we first started dating, but Will doesn’t really do the whole monogamy thing, and yeah, typically we’d probably have a more open talk about this sort of thing before dating someone new, but I figure since he and Rach set us up like this and are probably watching us as we speak he’s got it coming. So we’re totally good on my end, although, actually, Rachel probably wouldn’t like that, would she?” The look of sheer disappointment on Penny’s face absolutely crushed me. Good thing I had the perfect thing to say to brighten her mood.

“Don’t worry about it Penny, Rachel and I had the exact same talk the night we got together properly! We’re totally in the clear to pull off this epic prank!” Victoriously, I pumped my fist and flashed a toothy smile at my—date—wow, just thinking that kind of made me feel all fluttery and excited; this was gonna be such a good prank. 

“Excuse me, ladies?” Oh shit it was the hostess, what did she want? “Do you think the two of you could keep it down a little? A few customers have complained.” 

“Oh.” I was absolutely mortified; Penny seemed to be as well, given the way her face matched her hat. “Yeah, s-sorry,” I squeaked. She gave a classic customer service smile, uttered a thanks, and left us to stew in our embarrassment. Silence fell between us, until Penny stood up out of the booth, and slid in next to me sitting very, very close, practically pinning me to the wall. 

“Um, this way we can like, hear each other without having to talk loud, or whatever.” Clearly she was still pretty embarrassed, because even this close her voice was barely audible and also she didn’t really seem to be able to look me in the eye? Or maybe that’s just because I was staring very intently at the empty table in front of me, searching desperately for anything interesting to focus on as I tried not to think about how her bare leg felt against mine.

From there, the night progressed pretty nicely, I was kind of still miffed at Rachel for setting us up on another date, but at the same time, she probably was still intending for her and I to go on an actual date. I kept waiting for her and Will to interrupt us, but they just weren’t doing it; maybe they were just too stunned by how great we’d done at turning their prank around on them. Besides, it’s not like I didn’t enjoy my time with Penny. She was my best friend, and also a surprisingly good flirt who basically took my initial blush from that absolutely devastating encounter with the hostess and ran with it, maintaining it for the whole damn night with her endless complements and innuendos. She also kept like, brushing up against me and touching my arm, which was totally definitely just to put on a show for Rachel and Will; obviously it was really funny, but also maybe had me melting a little inside. Just about when we had finished up our meals, and were discussing whether we had room for desert, I caught two familiar figures out of the corner of my eye, walking toward us. 

Will and Rachel sat on the empty bench across from us, wearing mixed expressions of surprised delight and smug satisfaction. “So,” Rachel began.

“Enjoying yourselves?” Will asked.

“Don’t give us that, Will,  we played you. We turned your little prank into an actual date and we’re having a great time. In fact, I think I might just take Heather here out for another date some time.” Leaning back, Penny started her boyfriend down with a satisfied half-smirk. And wait—

“Whu—?” I whirled around to face Penny. She wasn’t being serious right? This was just another part of the prank? In lieu of a response I just got an affectionate giggled and a peck on the lips. Oh no, look at that, I overheated. 

“I think you broke her.” Rachel offered, chuckling softly. “Since she doesn’t really seem in any place to have this conversation, let me ask you something, Penny, why do you think we set you up on this date to begin with?”

“Because you wanted to prank us again, but couldn’t come up with any new material,” she answered confidently. 

Rolling her eyes, Rachel pressed her palm to her forehead, “No, Penny. I mean, admittedly last year was more of an actual prank. But we set you up this year because you two are obviously into each other and too useless to do anything about it.” Both Penny and I looked from her, then to Will, who nodded, then to each other. 

“Wait, so this was what you wanted to happen?” I asked, not taking my eyes off Penny.

“Yes, sweetie. This is what we wanted, and it went better than either of us could have hoped; we expected this would have to be a fucking intervention, but next thing we know, you two are screaming at the top of your lungs about epic pranks or whatever.” She giggled, sharing a conspiratorial look with her partner in crime.

“Okay, well, you still re-used a prank, which is both dumb and lame,” I said. Hell yeah, take that.

Our two partners turned adversaries shared a look. “Do you wanna tell them, or should I?” Will asked.

“Go ahead,” Rachel replied.

Smirking, he turned to Penny. “Babe, don’t you think it’s kind of weird just how much I kept mentioning that I knew a wizard who specialized in gender treatment around you? Like, I kept mentioning it to you for a few days.”

“So?” she asked, arms crossed.

“And isn’t it kind of weird how we were both out the night you did your transformation?” Rachel added.

“Or how about how you didn’t even have to wait a full day between messaging Dylan and him both responding to you and having the serum ready?” Will cocked an eyebrow expectantly. 

“Wait, Penny, you never told me that,” I whispered to her.

“It didn’t seem important,” she replied in an equally hushed voice. “So what?” she asked. “You don’t honestly expect us to believe that you—”

“Realized that the two of you were trans, contacted Dylan through my cousin, told him to make the serums ahead of time for our trans roommates who would reach out to him, and then arranged to be away that night to give you two time to figure yourselves out?” Okay, when Rachel put it that way it sounded like they knew from the—

“There’s no possible way you both knew we were trans ahead of time.” Obviously Penny wasn’t having any of this story.

“Penny, before we did this, like literally every time you and Heather got drunk you would spend the entire night ‘whispering’ to each other about how cool it would be to be girls. You literally used to never shut up about it.” Holy shit, Rachel could hear us? What, did she have like super hearing?

“Yeah, it was honestly pretty adorable, but also a little sad ‘cause we could tell you two were way too dense to figure this out yourselves and every time we tried to talk to you about this sort of stuff you would just shut down.” Wait, Will could hear us too? Was it maybe possible that we were louder than we thought we were?

“So wait, you knew we would try to prank you both by turning into girls?” The idea that we had been so thoroughly outplayed left me absolutely dumbstruck. We were playing checkers all while they were out there playing fuckin’ 5-D gender chess.

“Actually no,” Rachel replied. “Even we couldn’t predict that level of denseness; we just figured Penny would latch on to the idea, you two would get your bodies, then you’d just kind of realize you wanted to stay that way. Next thing we knew you two were keeping us up all hours of the morning screaming about pranks.” Dammit, just how not-subtle were we? Had we ever actually managed to keep a secret from them?

“Yeah, we considered confronting the two of you about it, but honestly we figured—correctly all things considered—that you were both really happy and enjoying yourselves, and it was only a matter of time before you hatched. Then feelings got thrown into the mix and, well, here we are.” With a sweeping gesture, Will closed the book on he and Rachel’s entire ploy, setting the final nail in our coffin of defeat. Actually, though, as shameful as getting played so hard was, I actually didn’t seem to care? Like, I got an awesome new body and a gorgeous new girlfriend out of the deal. 

“Well, joke’s on you! We actually enjoyed every bit of it and are glad you pranked us, so there.” I shared a triumphant look with Penny, then turned back to Will and Rachel.

A perplexed look on her face, Rachel responded. “Uh, yeah? That was kind of the point all along? For you two to be happy?” Ah, shit, right, I forgot.

“So what happens now?” Penny asked. 

“Well, now we order dessert, enjoy the rest of the night, and hopefully the two of you finally fucking admit your feels for each other and start dating. Rachel keeps dating Heather, I keep dating Penny, we form ourselves a nice little polycule, go home to watch a movie, and put this prank nonsense behind us.” Damn, Will sure did know how to make a compelling argument. But he was obviously reading way too much into the whole me and Penny thing. I mean sure, I maybe, kind of, sort of, really really liked her. But Penny couldn’t like me, right? We were just platonic makeout and cuddle and date buddies, right? It was a real shame, but that probably just wasn’t going to work out. I cast a sideways glance at Penny, hoping she’d rescue me from this awkwardness and at least let me down gently. And wait—why was she blushing and looking at the floor? Were her hands trembling? And now she was cupping my face and looking into my eyes? Jeez, this is kind of a really intense and intimate way to tell someone you’re not into them. Fuck, how was she this pretty? And oh wait, her lips were moving, but I wasn’t hearing a word she was saying. 

“Huhwha?” I replied eloquently.

After a confused blink, Penny sighed and shook her head lightly. “Oh for fuck’s sake,” she muttered, then siezed me by the back of the head and pulled me in for a deep kiss.

SapphicSounds

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