Zoey hadn’t been looking for anything in particular, just making her way through Red’s cramped living unit with an armful of tools she’d been helping reorganize. The place always smelled faintly of oil and metal shavings, a mix of Red’s work and the rusting city air that seeped through every crack. She nudged the door open with her shoulder, expecting to find Red still half-buried in the mess of parts and wiring that passed for her workshop.
Instead, she caught a glimpse of pale spotted fur and the curve of Red’s back as she stepped out of the shower nook, drying her neck with a threadbare towel. For a split second Zoey registered only the fact that Red wasn’t wearing anything. Then her eyes slid lower, and froze.
That was… not what she expected.
She blinked hard, thinking her brain was misfiring, but the view didn’t change. It wasn’t the familiar humanoid shape, and it definitely wasn’t like her own body. What she was looking at resembled canine anatomy, the fur around it still damp from the shower.
Zoey felt her stomach flip, not out of disgust but out of sheer confusion. Every assumption she had about transhuman biology lined up neatly in her head, and this was outside of all of it.
Red, still rubbing the towel through her mane, hadn’t noticed yet.
Zoey’s mouth went dry. She considered just leaving the tools on the counter and backing out quietly, but the thought snagged her. She knew how private Red was. She also knew that if she left now, she’d never stop wondering.
Zoey cleared her throat. “Uh. Red…?”
Red stiffened, glanced over her shoulder, and her eyes widened when she realized what Zoey had seen. The towel dropped lower, hastily pulled around her waist. “Shit - dammit, Zoey - ” Her ears folded back tight.
Zoey raised her free hand, palm open, trying to look harmless. “Hey, I’m not- I didn’t mean to walk in on you. But… I just-” she paused, words catching up with her thoughts. “That’s not what I was expecting.”
Red’s jaw tightened. She didn’t answer, just turned away as if the wall might swallow her.
Zoey exhaled slowly. The blunt, observational part of her brain had already taken over. “It looked like a fortune cookie,” she muttered under her breath, then immediately regretted letting it slip out loud.
Red groaned.
Zoey winced, but curiosity was gnawing at her harder than embarrassment. “Red, I’ve seen others, even myself. All… normal humanoid parts. Yours is… different. Why?”
Red’s ears stayed pinned, her shoulders rigid. She didn’t answer Zoey right away, just kept the towel tight against her front like that might erase what had already been seen. Zoey set the tools down carefully on the counter, trying not to make it feel like she was pressing the issue, but her brain wouldn’t let go of the puzzle.
“I’m not trying to be a creep,” Zoey said, slower this time. “But I need to understand. That wasn’t what I thought I’d see. It looked like… I don’t even know how to describe it. Fortune cookie was the first thing that came to mind.”
Red squeezed her eyes shut and muttered something under her breath. When she turned, it was only her face, the rest of her hidden. “It’s not… normal, alright? Not by your standards. It’s just how I’m built.”
Zoey tilted her head, squinting. “So… It’s not… nothing. It’s something else. You’re female, I know that. So why does it look like… that?”
Red huffed, her tail flicking once in irritation. “Because I’m a hyena. Or close enough. Female hyenas don’t come with the parts you’re used to. We’ve got a pseudopenis. What you saw is it at rest.” She said it fast, clipped, like she was reading it out of a manual.
Zoey blinked at her. “A pseudopenis?”
“Yes.”
Zoey leaned back against the counter, folding her arms. She wanted to make it clear she wasn’t laughing, even though her mind was pinging with disbelief. “So when I saw that-”
“It was the external structure,” Red cut in. Her voice was tight, her cheeks dark under the fur. “Yes. That’s how I piss. That’s how I do everything. There’s no ‘inside-out’ or separate hole like you’re thinking.”
Zoey opened her mouth, shut it, then tried again. “Okay. That’s… fascinating. Weird as hell, but fascinating.”
Red’s ears twitched and she muttered, “Don’t call it weird.”
“Alright, not weird. Just different.” Zoey let the silence stretch for a beat. Then, inevitably, her curiosity forced another question out. “So does it… change? Like, depending on… uh-”
She didn’t even finish before Red hissed, “Don’t.” But her own body betrayed her. Zoey’s eyes widened as the fold shifted, lengthened, stiffened involuntarily right in the gap of towel she’d failed to keep closed.
Zoey’s voice shot up a notch. “Holy shit.”
Red yanked the towel tighter, baring her teeth, but it was too late. The display had happened.
Zoey, trying to keep her tone respectful but unable to keep the wonder out of her voice, asked, “So it really can change. Like, actually function both ways?”
Red glared daggers at her. “It’s not a trick, Zoey. It’s just how it works. And it’s not funny.”
Zoey held up her hands again, though her brain was firing with a dozen questions. “I’m not laughing. But you’ve got to admit, that’s… incredible.”
Red turned her face away, ears hot. “You’re impossible.”
Zoey was still trying to piece it together. Every time she thought she understood Red, another layer made her stop and reassess. She pushed off the counter and stepped closer, but not too close, keeping her voice even.
“Red, listen, I’m not trying to make you into a sideshow. But you’ve got to know how… different this is from what most people expect. I just need to understand. You said pseudopenis, enlarged clitoris, all that. Okay. But then it reacted when I asked about it. That means you can’t always control it.”
Red groaned and pressed the heel of her palm against her brow. “Zoey, I don’t want to talk about this.”
“I know you don’t,” Zoey said, softer now. “And I’ll shut up if you tell me to. But if I’m supposed to really understand you, I need to know what’s actually going on. Not just assume you’re built like me or like Voss. That’d be lying to myself.”
For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the distant hum of the city through cracked walls.
Then Red muttered, “Sometimes it… reacts on its own. Like you saw. Doesn’t mean anything. Just anatomy doing what it does.”
Zoey nodded slowly. “And other times?”
Red’s shoulders twitched. She turned, towel still clutched around her waist. “Other times, if I concentrate, I can make it… behave. Present one way or another. Hide it, or let it show.”
Zoey blinked. “Wait—you mean you can switch?”
Red’s eyes narrowed. “That’s one way of putting it.”
Zoey felt her pulse spike with interest. “Show me.”
“No.”
“C’mon, just once. You already kind of did by accident.”
Red glared at her like she was about to throw her out the door. But under the weight of Zoey’s expectant stare, she finally exhaled through her teeth and loosened her grip on the towel. “You don’t shut up, do you?”
“Not when science is involved,” Zoey said, dead serious.
Red gave a sharp flick of her wrist, letting the towel slip just enough. For a second the fortune-cookie fold was there, subdued, then with deliberate tension the structure shifted, elongating, stiffening, reshaping in a way Zoey’s brain could barely keep up with. Then, just as quickly, Red let it relax again.
Zoey’s jaw dropped. “Holy shit. You weren’t kidding.”
Red yanked the towel back in place, ears burning. “Happy now?”
Zoey was still staring, her hands half-raised like she’d just witnessed a magic trick. “That’s… I don’t even know what to say. You can just… toggle? At will? That’s insane.”
Red growled low in her throat. “It’s not insane. It’s biology. And it’s not something I want to put on display.”
Zoey snapped her mouth shut, realizing she was starting to sound like a kid in a zoo. But her head was spinning. She’d expected weird, sure, but this was a whole new category.
Red’s arms folded over the towel again, her body language closing up hard. “I shouldn’t have shown you.”
Zoey lifted her palms again, this time more gently. “I didn’t mean to push. I swear. I just...damn, Red. That’s… something else.”
Red didn’t answer, but the stiffness in her jaw said enough.
Zoey was still buzzing, pacing the small space like her brain was trying to catalog what she’d just seen. She kept glancing back at Red, who had gone rigid again with the towel clutched to her chest.
“I mean, I get it now,” Zoey said, her voice spilling out fast. “Hyena biology, pseudopenis, it all lines up. But the control? That’s wild. Do you have to train for that, or is it just… built-in?”
Red didn’t answer right away. She kept her gaze fixed somewhere over Zoey’s shoulder, jaw set tight. But her tail betrayed her, flicking once, then again, before she forced it still.
Zoey frowned. “Red… you okay?”
“I’m fine.” The words came out too sharp, and Red immediately winced.
Zoey slowed down, leaning against the counter again. She studied Red, the stiff posture, the way her ears wouldn’t stay still. Something was off.
“You’re not fine,” Zoey said softly. “You’re embarrassed, yeah, but that’s not all. You’re...” She cut herself off, the realization hitting a second too late.
Red’s claws dug into the towel, ears flattening hard. “Don’t.”
Zoey raised both hands again, but her eyes were already catching the small details: the way Red’s breathing had quickened, the way the towel wasn’t hiding the subtle shift in shape this time. She tried to look away, but curiosity was gnawing at her again.
Red’s face went hot under her fur, and she bared her teeth, more at herself than at Zoey. “It’s nothing. Just a reflex. Forget it.”
Zoey tilted her head, voice still respectful, but the question came out anyway. “You mean my questions did that?”
Red growled low in her throat, but it wasn’t the kind of growl that came with real threat. It sounded pained, cornered. “You don’t get it. It’s not... It doesn’t mean I want...” She stopped, biting down on the words.
Zoey stayed quiet this time, letting the silence hang. She could feel Red’s discomfort, the way she was caught between hiding and admitting, the way trauma and biology were colliding in real time.
Finally, Red snapped, “Yes, alright? You staring, you asking, It does things. And I hate that it does. So drop it.” Her voice cracked on the last word, not from weakness, but from the strain of holding the wall up.
Zoey’s chest tightened, guilt mixing with fascination. She nodded once. “Okay. I’ll drop it.”
Red turned away sharply, towel still clutched like armor. “Good.” But her tail twitched again, betraying what she didn’t want to admit.
Zoey looked down at her hands, chewing the inside of her cheek. She had a hundred more questions, a hundred things she wanted to say, but the set of Red’s shoulders told her this wasn’t the time.
So instead, she just said, “Thanks for trusting me enough to show me, even if it was a mistake.”
Red didn’t answer. But her ears flicked once, just barely, like she’d heard and it mattered more than she wanted to admit.
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