Robert stared quizzically at his reflection. It wasn't as if he was looking at a complete stranger, it was definitely him. Yet something seemed just a bit...off. He studied himself carefully, trying to put his finger on what was different, not realizing that the serum was surging through his system, still in the process of altering him both physically and mentally. If he had remained asleep ten minutes longer, he would have awoken with his new appearance and personality totally integrated. Instead, he would experience the final adjustments in real time, with his brain racing to catch up to and make logical sense of the substantial changes that had occurred to his body.
Robert had always prided himself on what he considered a healthy lack of vanity, which he attributed to being a late bloomer. Throughout most of high school, he'd been rather short, skinny and forgettable, so it was a major surprise when he finally sprouted between junior and senior years, effortlessly gaining enviable muscle and bone structure, not to mention a cock which he would eventually learn was far above average. When he returned to school in the fall, he was practically unrecognizable, and his classmates, who had barely registered his presence before, essentially treated him like a new arrival. Lanky, masculine-looking Robert was easily welcomed into the popular cliques, but he never took his newfound popularity seriously because he knew how these exact same people had ignored him for the previous twelve years of his existence.
Turning into an overnight heartthrob and seeing such a handsome guy in the mirror every morning had also confirmed what teenage Robert had long suspected about himself: he was gay. But he knew that fact wouldn't be easily accepted among his new peers, so he kept that secret hidden behind his stereotypically hetero facade. He tried not to lie about himself, and he always had some nit-picking excuse handy whenever someone tried to set him up with a girl. And he kept an eye out, hoping that he might detect some sign that one of his hunky new jock buddies was hiding a similar truth about himself and they could stumble their way out of the closet together, but Robert's gaydar was not yet finely tuned.
As Robert leaned close to the mirror, his brow furrowed in concentration, a spark flickered through his scrambled brain as he realized he had indeed seen this face before. Ten years before. Somehow overnight, his facial features had softened to more closely resemble his pre-growth-spurt teenage self. His sleek, dashingly crooked nose had retreated, the tip turning up a touch. His chiseled cheekbones were now obscured by a layer of baby fat, and in place of his usual morning stubble was a soft barely-noticeable coating of peachfuzz over a dusting of faint freckles. His eyes widened, sparkling green in the glare of the bathroom light. "Holy shit!", he whispered to himself with a wide smile as his brain struggled to recalibrate, fitfully accepting the possibility that he could have undergone a spontaneous rejuvenation while he slept.
A dizziness swept over Robert, so he steadied himself against the sink and lowered himself onto the toilet seat to regain his bearings. He closed his eyelids tightly and tried to remember where he was and how he'd gotten here. He seemed to recall hooking up with someone new on Grindr, pinning some cute boy to his bed and pounding his ass good and hard, but that memory was in conflict with Robert's solidifying identity as a strict bottom. He shivered, breaking out in gooseflesh at the very thought of mounting another boy, unconsciously rubbing his delicate hands up and down his arms to warm them. His brain experienced a tiny ripple of confusion, as if it expected his slim fingers to be grasping much beefier arms, but when he opened his eyes and looked down, he felt relieved to discover the toned, skinny limbs and hairless torso which matched his reconfigured self-image.
Robert wasn't even surprised to see that he was wearing a neon-purple silk bikini, the serum having eliminated the memory that he had been wearing black cotton boxers when he arrived the night before. He rubbed a palm across the hardening bulge inside his briefs, sending a surge of pleasure through his body which masked the flicker of sadness in the shrinking part of his brain which clung to the certainty that he was generously endowed. He stifled a giggle at the incongruous thought of some big honkin' dick hanging from his slender frame.
He took a deep breath and smiled. Whatever it was that had been causing him to feel ill at ease had passed. He rose to his feet, finding nothing strange about topping out at five-foot-eight, even though he'd been over six feet when he first walked in the door of this apartment last night. No, this body felt right to him, and it truly was his body. To be specific, it was the body he would have had if he hadn't gotten that major surge of testosterone during the summer that he was seventeen.
He turned to the mirror and pursed his soft lips as he worriedly inspected his smooth skin for even a hint of a blemish. The old Robert and his casual attitude toward his appearance were gone. He thought of himself as Robbie now, and he knew he was a cutie, preoccupied with always looking his absolute best, with being the object of desire. While his chronological age had remained unchanged at 26, he could now pass for years younger, and it was clear that he spared no expense to retain his eternally boyish appearance. His brain was now crammed with thorough knowledge of exfoliants and the subtle but effective uses of makeup, as well as the best places in town to get waxed. He brushed a hand through the tight honey-blond curls which had replaced his shaggier brown mane, and leaned close to his reflection as he pondered whether he was overdue to get his eyebrows reshaped. While Robert had been focused on his career and building a stock portfolio and hopefully settling down with a great guy, Robbie thought of little besides having a good time and being a hot piece of ass. From now on, Robbie would joke (only half-jokingly) that his chief goal in life was to never stop being carded when he entered a bar.
Robbie's forehead dimpled slightly as he struggled to remember whose apartment this was. He assumed he must have had too many drinks for his body weight to handle last night, which would account for that lingering fogginess in his brain (unaware that his current giddy, somewhat scatterbrained condition was being cemented into place by the serum as his new permanent state of mind). A nervous spasm shot through Robbie's gut as he hoped he would recognize whoever was waiting on the other side of the bathroom door...and he prayed that it wasn't some total uggo.
Robbie swung open the bathroom door and relaxed at the familiar sight of the tidy bedroom with its pink wallpaper and boy-band posters and the skinny lad sprawled face down on the bed, his pert untanned bare ass like a beacon beaming upward. If he hadn't known better, he'd have been forgiven for thinking he'd stumbled into the room of some defiantly out teenager, but somehow Robbie knew that backside. It was his bestie Jamie. The reality where the two men had only met via Grindr twelve hours ago had been obliterated, replaced by Robbie's absolute certainty that he had known Jamie for years. The serum drew upon what little Robbie knew about Jamie and used it to shape a completely plausible backstory in which he had shown up at Jamie's salon on his first day in a new city, and by the time Jamie had finished transforming Robbie's unruly locks into an explosion of NSync-era Timberlake spun gold, they knew they were going to be BFFs.
Robbie tiptoed across the room, careful to avoid squeaking the floorboards. As he gazed at Jamie's tight bubble butt, Robbie's brain flashed for a millisecond on the visual of his enormous cock plunging into and out of that ass crack, but Robbie shook his head briskly and that final detail from his previous existence flitted free from his brain and into the universe. In its place emerged a strobe-lit blur of random moments in which Robbie and Jamie danced and drank and flirted their way through a series of gay clubs before stumbling back here and collapsing onto Jamie's bed. For the moment, Robbie had only the vaguest idea of where he lived...while somewhere across town, reality was shifting to accommodate the new facts of Robbie's life.
As the story filled in further, Robbie realized that he and Jamie had shared a bed like that many times, but they had never fucked each other or even been tempted. They were too much alike, two boisterous bois on the prowl, egging each other on to be outrageous, sassy and superficial and totally proud of it. Luckily, their tastes in men diverged just enough that they could act as the other's wingman without ever getting jealous, and their standards were particular enough that they would rather return celibate to Jamie's bed than head off with some obnoxious jerk for a quick bang. But even if Robbie had no interest in poking his little dick into Jamie's ass, he could still appreciate its geometric perfection. Robbie's eyes lingered on Jamie's butt as he lowered his opened palm and gave him a quick swat. "Rise and shine, Sweetcheeks!", Robbie sang out in a chiming tone that Robert would have found jarringly queeny.
Grumbling, Jamie rolled over and rubbed his bleary eyes. The serum had spent the night tidying up the loose ends of Jamie's new identity, and now it suddenly had to kick into high gear to accommodate the apparent stranger looming at his bedside. The pleasant ache in his backside reminded him that his last memory before falling asleep was that he'd been fucked into a state of sheer bliss by a well-endowed, vaguely Italian-looking stud, but that didn't jibe with the reality of the cute blond grinning down at him, so reality had to be reorganized. As it had with Robbie, the serum reprogrammed Jamie to view this newcomer as an old friend rather than a sexual partner, causing him to instinctively reject the thought of fucking someone who was so clearly a fellow bottom when what he truly desired was an alpha male like...dammit, who WAS that guy from last night? Jamie could swear he had hooked up with a guy on Grindr. Now what the hell was his name? Without even realizing it, Jamie mumbled a befuddled "Robert?"
Robbie clucked his tongue and propped his hands on his hips, feigning outrage. "'Robert'? Who do you think you are, my mother? It's Robbie, for fuck's sake." He jumped onto the bed beside Jamie and playfully plunged his fingers into the unruly pink tangles of Jamie's bedhead.
Jamie backed to one corner of the mattress, knowing he didn't tolerate anyone, not even his best friend, messing with his coif. Yes, his brain now reassured him, this was his best friend, and his name apparently was Robbie. The serum gathered stray bits of Jamie's old memory and repurposed them, using them like spackle to fill in the blanks in the freshly installed boiler-plate "best friend" template. Within a minute, a complete history of their experiences together had been compiled, packed with enough specific familiar details that Jamie had no choice but to accept it as the truth. He relaxed slightly, but continued to shield his gelled hair from Robbie's continued assaults. "Cut it out, you cocksucker!", Jamie clucked, his purported annoyance undercut by delighted squeals.
Robbie stopped teasing Jamie and leaned back, annoyed. "'Cocksucker'? Who do you think you are, my dad?" He kept a sober expression for approximately half a second before bursting into laughter and flopping down beside Jamie. He felt so comfortable here, yet he still felt the need to look around the room to get his bearings.
On a chair beside the bed, Robbie saw a neatly folded pile consisting of a tank top, booty shorts and a pair of underwear even skimpier than the bright purple banana hammock he was sporting. He pondered whether those were his clothes. They certainly looked to be his size. Then he spotted a black fishnet muscle shirt draped over a lampshade. And a maroon cowboy boot resting on the keyboard of a desktop computer. And its mate resting on the conveyor belt of a treadmill. And silver lame short-shorts hanging from one blade of the ceiling fan lazily circling over their heads. The clothes may have morphed to fit Robbie's new reality, but they remained in the same spots where Robert had discarded them as he stripped before fucking the shit out of Jamie night before.
As he lay in bed, Robbie had an increasingly solid grasp of who he was and how he'd gotten here, but he had only a vague sense of what his future held. Rather than finding this disconcerting, Robbie was excited about not knowing what his life held for him. Life seemed filled with possibilities.
"So, Sweetcheeks," Robbie sighed, the term used with casual affection, as if he'd been calling Jamie that for years, "what should we do with this glorious day?"