The small part of Jordan that could still move instinctively froze as she heard the footsteps approaching, a series of loud clunks against the floor that sounded like it came from someone wearing a pair of very heavy boots. She was trying to remember if there was anyone on their floor who dressed like that when she heard the voice.
“Jordan? You done yet?” That was definitely Katie, straining to be heard over the noise of rushing water. She didn’t sound any different - maybe she wasn’t affected. “You’ve been in there for like an hour already! And I know I told you to hurry it up this time!”
Frantically, Jordan tried to call out in reply, only to be reminded that she couldn’t make a sound right now. She felt like she probably could still speak - she didn’t think she’d be a mute forever - it was just the water filling her mouth that was blocking the sound out. If she could only turn herself off, then maybe...
But even if she could, there was no time. Katie stepped up and threw the shower curtain open - which now, to Jordan, felt like having somebody tear off all her clothes and leave her naked. And that was basically what happened. Her body, now made of porcelain and grout and metal pipes, was fully exposed. There was nothing that she could cover up in embarrassment, and nothing to cover it with.
“Ugh! Seriously?”, Katie exclaimed. “She just left it running and walked away? Well, I’m not letting that hot water go to waste,” the girl sighed as she started to strip down, already wearing only a bra and panties as she prepared for her shower.
Jordan’s mind was racing. Had Katie seriously not noticed that something was different about this shower now? Of course not, she realized - in the time they’d been roommates, Jordan had learned that the girl could be pretty slow on the uptake a lot of the time. When they’d moved in to their shared room, she remembered, Katie had left half her clothes back at her parents’ place and had to drive two hours back to get them. Plus, their conversation earlier had made it clear Katie wasn’t taking the whole Fusion Wave thing seriously...
There was nothing she could do now, though, as her roommate got fully naked and stepped under Jordan’s own stream! As the girl came closer, Jordan noticed that Katie actually had been affected by the Wave, judging by the wooden chair legs that now stuck out from her butt. In fact, her skin now seemed to have a wooden finish to it all over - Jordan could only tell up close because it was roughly the same color as her normal skin. As Katie closed her eyes and ran her shampooed fingers against her hair - inches away from Jordan’s gaping mouth - the hair turned out to be a single solid mass which didn’t change shape as the water splashed against it. Had the girl even noticed any of this? She certainly didn’t seem panicked about it.
Katie’s wooden skin wasn’t exactly getting washed clean as she ran it under Jordan. It looked more like it was absorbing the moisture, darkening in color as it got wet. It reminded Jordan of what her family’s back porch looked like when it rained back home - a home she wasn’t sure she could ever go back to now. She didn’t let herself dwell on that disturbing thought, being more fascinated by the body underneath her mouth. Katie’s clog-like feet thumped heavily against the drain, an opening that Jordan now realized felt sort of like her anus, even as it was taking in all that water. And the girl’s perky breasts looked like they’d been carved with the most delicate care...
Jordan felt even warmer than the constant flow of hot water already made her. This was a terrible time for her lingering bi-curiosity to show up. Katie gave a small yelp as the water temperature suddenly jumped up. She started blindly fumbling for the knobs on the wall, not wanting to let the soap get in her eyes by opening them. She was unknowingly fondling Jordan’s breasts, which only made the shower run hotter until she got her hand on the large metal nipple and twisted it back down.
Forced to suddenly cool off, Jordan let go of her rising arousal and started to think a little more clearly. For one thing, she realized, she had just changed her own temperature knobs with the power of thought alone. If she could just turn them that way on purpose, and keep turning them until the water went all the way off...
But something told her it would be wrong to interrupt Katie’s pleasant bathing experience. She’d never stopped the water on somebody before, and that wasn’t what a shower was supposed to do... Wait, what? She realized she had memories of being a shower fixture before this, deep-seated feelings about how to do her job properly that would be violated if she suddenly turned herself off. If an ordinary shower could be said to have a “mind”, that mind had been merged with hers just like the physical body had.
Angrily rejecting the idea that an inanimate object’s personality could be starting to replace her own, Jordan willed the knobs to turn off with all the mental force she had. And it worked! As the last drips of water fell from her mouth, she caught her breath, relieved that the rush of water through her pipes and the noise it made when it hit the floor had finally stopped. Before the chair-girl could react to the sudden shut-off, Jordan tried again to say something. “Katie!”, she cried out, the sound passing through the many little holes in her mouth like a reverberating speaker.
“What?”, Katie said, finally opening her eyes, then looking around in every direction except the right one for the source of the voice.
“It’s me, Jordan! I’m trapped in here! I need you to go get help!”
When she finally saw it, Katie staggered backwards in shock. She might have fallen over if she hadn’t landed on the tips of the chair legs that protruded from her backside. The girl could now easily take a seated position without having anything to sit on, her knees naturally bending at a rigid 90-degree angle to complete the shape of the chair she’d merged with. Jordan saw that Katie’s thighs had been flattened into a sort of concave shape, molded to comfort the butt of anyone who might sit on her lap now. Soap suds dripped down her wooden curves.
Katie looked up in shock from where she was sitting. Finally, she spoke. “C-can I at least finish rinsing off first?”