Note: Anything that is really adult happens off stage and is only inferred.
Rob and the Gymnast Part 2
Peter and Rob started practicing with Wendy’s gymnastics club but Peter soon loss interest and drifted into other things leaving Wendy and Rob to get to know each other better. Soon they had become nearly inseparable. They were always together at school and in the gym when they weren’t actively honing their skills. Rob and Alan had become close friends as well and had a friendly rivalry that had helped both of them both surpass Kurt’s skills. This didn’t endear either of them to Kurt. To make things worse, Wendy’s apparent relationship with Rob only served to feed Kurt’s contempt for Rob.
For the first time in his life Rob actually liked himself and the world in general. He was the person he had always wished he had been. His life was good and he couldn’t think of any way it could be any better. He was popular and respected as a student, an athlete, and a person. People wanted his company and valued his opinions. Rob was truly happy or at least he thought he should be.
Rob still lifted weights with Dustin four times a week in addition to his daily gymnastics practice. And he was running 10 miles each morning before breakfast. Dustin had become much bigger and bulkier than Rob but Rob had long since surpassed Dustin in strength. And Rob’s body fat had dropped to the point that he could just stand relaxed and his body looked like an anatomy chart and striations were visible in every muscle.
Peter had given Rob the body of an athletic teenager when he regressed him but Rob had worked his body far beyond what Peter had thought possible. “All Rob needed was a second chance and a break,” Peter would muse to himself with a smile sometimes when he would see Rob and thing of his change since their first meeting.
Although Rob and Wendy were inseparable they weren’t a couple, or rather Rob didn’t think of their relationship in those terms. She was a buddy with whom he shared several interests. Despite seeing Wendy as one of the most attractive girls he had ever met, Rob thought of Wendy in the same way he thought of Peter, Dustin, and even Ty (at least when he wasn’t being obnoxious) not as brothers but blood brothers. Rob did find it a bit disturbing that on occasion he would catch himself having adolescent sexual fantasies about her, Rob dismiss those feelings as the product of hormones raging in his teen body. About the only time they actually spent “alone” was when they would study together. When they did go out it was generally with Dustin and his girlfriend of the week, Peter, Ty, Alan from the gym, Peter’s Allen the captain of the swim team, or some of the other that were part the group that seemed to center around Ty and Peter.
As time passed Wendy started to suggest to Rob that it might be fun for them to once and a while do something alone, just the two them. This seemed a reasonable thing to Rob, Dustin and he generally worked out alone and Rob would disappear with Peter, once for almost a week. So Rob and Wendy started spending more time on their own.
One weekend Rob and Wendy decide to see “The Grudge,” the US remake of Takashi Shimizu’s “Ju-On.” Rob had been impressed by “The Ring,” which was a remake of Shimizu’s “Ringu.” And Wendy was willing to see it with him because she had been a fan of “Buffy: The Vampire Slayer,” and “The Grudge” featured Sarah Michelle Geller from “Buffy…”
Rob went to Wendy’s house to pick her up. When he got there Wendy was still getting ready and Wendy’s mom ushers Rob to the living room to wait. Where Wendy’s dad was reading the paper. Rob smiled to himself, “This is straight out of ‘Leave it to Beaver,’ or ‘The Brady Bunch.” Rob quickly learned he couldn’t have been more right with the assessment. Rob sat down and Wendy’s mom excuses herself. As she leaves her dad folds the paper and looks at Rob… Rob had met and talked to Wendy’s folks numerous times at the Gym and he had been over countless times. Rob and Wendy frequently did their homework and studied together and they often went out during the day. But this was the first nighttime “date.” After grilling Rob for about 10 minutes that felt like hours, Wendy came in to rescue Rob from her Dad and they headed for the Cineplex. On the way to the car Wendy hugged Rob’s arm and said, “I hope he didn’t make you too uncomfortable.” Shaking his head Rob replied with a chuckle, “No, it wasn’t too bad. I just thought I was having flashbacks to an old ‘Brady Bunch’ episode.” Wendy laughed and squeezed his arm.
They got to the Cineplex in time to get good seats. And Wendy snuggled into Rob’s side, using his chest and shoulder as a pillow. At first Rob found Wendy’s grabbing him and burying her face in his chest with a quiet squeal at all the “scary or disturbing” parts annoying. But he also felt that his body found it enjoyable, and after a while Rob put his arm around Wendy and held her in return and she snuggled closer. Rob grinned with contentment, feeling warm and good in ways he hadn’t felt before. After the movie they stopped at a coffee shop and over a couple of lattes and chocolate-chip cookies they held hands. Rob then drove Wendy home where he walked her to the door, where they said good night. Wendy gave him a hug and pulled his head down to her level and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. Rob grinned all the way back to the car and drove home with a major chubby, that wouldn’t let him get to sleep until he finally serviced it.
The regional gymnastic meet was coming and Alan, Rob, Wendy and the rest of the team were doing the final polishing of their routines. For Rob this would be his first competition. He was nervous, but some thing else that he couldn’t quite identify was troubling him. He tried to keep it pushed to the back of his mind, and concentrate on his training, but it was always there.
Rob and Alan had been working hard to perfect some new skills that they wanted to show off in their routines at the regional meet. For weeks they had been working late every day and finally Coach Martin got tired of staying late with them and gave them a key to the gym and let them lock up when they had enough for the night. One evening, a week before the meet, Wendy stays to watch Alan and Rob practice. She had done this a few times but this was the first time in the weeks since Coach Martin had let them have the key.
Alan was spotting for Rob on the High Bar when Wendy went to Alan and whispers in his ear. Alan got a goofy grin on his face nods, whispers back and quickly and quietly departs. The move Rob and Alan had involved releasing the bar at the apex of a reverse giant, then do a tucked one and a half flip with a half twist over the bar grab the bar and continue the swing as a front giant. Being focused on his routine Rob doesn’t notice Alan leaving. Rob gets to the release move, the release and flip go fine but Rob doesn’t get a secure grip on the bar and he loses his grip at the bottom of the swing. The inertia from the swing carries Rob nearly 10 feet horizontally before he lands flat on his back with a thud.
Stunned, in pain and with the wind knocked out of him, Rob lay there as Wendy runs over to him. Rob opens his eyes to find Wendy kneeling over him, one hand on his bare chest, the other brushing his sweat soaked hair out of his eyes. He starts to try to sit up, moans and Wendy pushes him back down saying, “Just lay still for a bit you took a bad fall.” With a pained laugh and grin Rob gasps, “I know… Believe me, I am acutely aware of that fact.” Rob tries to sit up again and with a groan succeeds this time. Wendy helps him crawl over to a pile of mats that were nearby and lay back on them. “Are you going to be alright??? Should I get help???” asked Wendy with genuine concern in her voice. “I’ll be okay,” Rob said as his mind cleared a bit and realized his muscles had protected him well. He would be bruised and sore for a few days but the only thing really hurt was his pride. “Where’s Alan???” Rob continued, having just noticed his absence. Wendy answered, “I asked him to go home so I could have some time alone with you in private.” A bit confused from the fall but more so from Wendy’s admission that she had engineered them being alone in the gym now, Rob asked, “Why would you do that?” “I needed to talk to you about our relationship and how you feel about me,” said Wendy. Now thoroughly confused Rob replied, “I’m not sure I understand what you mean… I like you very much you’re one of my closest friends, closer in many ways then Alan, Dustin and even Peter.” Wendy moved closer to him and replied, “I know that, what I want to know is could we be more than ‘just’ friends,” as she said this she reached out and began to stroke his body that was still moist with sweat. As Wendy caressed his chest and traced the ridges of his abs, Rob could feel his body start to respond and he understood were this was leading. Part of him like this and wanted it to continue because to his body it felt so right, but another part of him knew it wasn’t right, he thought of this girl as a sister. Then, in his mind, the pieces fell into place, he did want Wendy in the same way she wanted him. “But she didn’t know his past and truth about the teen stud she was trying to seduce,” Rob thought. As the teenage boy part of him struggles with the middle-aged man, old enough to be her father or even grandfather, he grabbed her hand to stop her and he felt her other hand moving up his quads.
Rob was quickly on his feet backing away while saying, “Wendy, I’m flattered, and there is no one I would rather do this with than you, but you don’t really know me or what I am inside.” “I don’t care I want you,” said Wendy. “I’m not ready for this, you’re a child,” said Rob. “If anyone is a child it’s you,” snapped Wendy. “That’s where you’re wrong and I need for you to understand something before this goes further. But you would never believe me if I just told you. You will need to see it, and for that I will need some help from Peter. So please just relax for a bit.” Wendy, now confused, complied and Rob continued, “I need to warn you that I’m about to take you on a little walk through the Twilight Zone but this is real.” Rob closed his eyes and concentrated for several seconds, after which he looked up and said, “Peter will be here shortly and this will start to make sense.” Then there was a dull rumbling that shook the building and Wendy with concern asked, “What’s happening.” Puzzled himself Rob said, “I’m… not… quite… sure…”
The rumbling ended with a flash and a bang and Peter and Ty stood a few foot from them. Peter spoke to Rob, “Sorry about that, I told him that you only wanted me and not to come, but he insisted and you know how Ty likes to make an entrance.” At which point Ty chimes in saying, “We heard you needed some help. So…” With another bang and flash, Rob finds himself transformed in to a hulking muscled bound parody of himself with his shorts being tented by a preposterously large member. Clearly annoyed but trying to contain his anger said, “Good Ty, but this isn’t quite the help I had in mind… I’m not planning to slay any dragons or impale any one. So, now if you will kindly put me back to the way I was and leave, I will play this game with you some other time but not now.” There was another flash and bang, and Rob was back to normal and Ty had vanished. Peter walked over to Rob and put his arm over Rob’s shoulder and said, “Okay my man, what is it I can do for you and your companion here.” Rob replied, “I need for Wendy to understand who and what I am and was before. So I would like you to turn me back to the person you met on the treadmill, just for a little while.” “Okay, if that’s what you want,” said Peter and he closed his eyes for a second or two and said,
“Okay all you need to do is make like Santa and touch your index finger to the side of your nose and instead of going up the chimney, you’ll morph back to the way you were when we met. Touch the other index finger to the other side of your nose and you’ll go back to the way you are now. I think you may have a few surprise in store for you. So I think I should let you guys have some privacy for this” and with an obvious wink and nod to Wendy and a big grin added, “Both of you have a nice trip.” And he quietly vanished leaving Rob and Wendy alone again.
“Okay,” Rob began, “a year ago I wasn’t the teenage jock stud I am now… I was a short overweight fifty year old engineer working for a company that wasn’t paying me regularly and owed me more than twenty thousand dollars… the water and lights had been shut off for non payment and I couldn’t pay the rent… to say I was depress is an under statement. I still had a gym membership that I had bought back when I was being paid most of the time. It gave me a place to take a shower and give me something better to do than sit in the dark. Well, I was doing my forty minutes of fast walking on the treadmill when a kid gets on the next treadmill rather than one of the others that were open and starts talking to me.” As Rob is talking he taps the side of his nose. Almost immediately his body starts to look softer and the striation in his muscles quickly vanish and his muscles began to deflate. Soon his once cut body started to take on a flabby appearance and he grew shorter. As hair sprouted over where his washboard abs had been moments before, now buried under a thickening layer of fat. Hairs sprouted across his now soft and approaching flabby chest and turned white. His hair grayed at his temples and flecks of white and gray became more numerous in the dark brown hair that still thickly covered his head. Wrinkles formed at the corners of his eyes and circles darkened around them. The frown lines deepened and worry lines formed on his brow and the skin of his jaw and neck started to sag a little. And it was over, looking past Wendy at the mirrored wall behind her, Rob saw a familiar face and build, one he really did not want to see again looking back at him, and tears came to his eyes.
Wendy crossed the room to Rob and took his hands in hers and kissed his cheek where a tear had passed. She said, “You apparently don’t believe it but you are an attractive man and you have no reason to be ashamed. I understand why you felt you needed to show me this and the courage it took and the pain it has caused you,” and she again kissed his cheek. And she continued, “You’re courage and honor shame me. You could have kept your secret, but you felt compelled to let me know the truth, that’s a choice I would not have made, but since you did I must reveal a secret of my own. If I understood Peter correctly…” and Wendy stepped back from Rob and tapped the side of her nose. As her lithe body and youth faded, she smiled to Rob saying; “I think we both felt a kinship when we first met. We have more in common than either of us could have imagined. Two years ago I met a girl named Petra Athena, a bit younger but very much like your friend Peter. And she granted me one of my most heartfelt dreams as Peter did for you. It’s really quite ironic that we should come together like this. I thought I was all but seducing a teenage boy and couldn’t figure out why he was resisting my advances. And you, thinking as an adult, were trying not to encourage the advances of a teenage girl that had a crush on an older man.” As Wendy’s transformation progressed her already petite frame grew a bit shorter and started to twist and contort, as she grew older. Rob immediately recognized the effects of severe scoliosis. Rob wanted to look away but he knew that to do so would hurt Wendy badly. Instead Rob went to her and held her hand and gently caressed her cheek, wiping away her tears. He then led her to the pile of mats where Rob and Wendy sat holding hands, telling each other about the lives they had kept secret from the other, into the wee hours of Saturday morning.
When Coach Martin came to open up in the morning he found a pair of teens sleeping on a mat. He shook his head and grinned. Chuckling quietly he walked over to Rob and nudged Rob’s foot with the toe of his shoe. Rob stirred a bit and then realizing where he is and what was happening, he bolted up right and grabbed his gym shorts. His sudden motion awakened Wendy, who quickly covered herself with the towel they had been laying on as Rob stands to pull on his shorts. The coach scowled shaking his head as he looked back and forth between the two teens he had caught “red handed.” Rob started to stammer while he tried to think of an explanation but Coach Martin cut him off saying, “I don’t want to hear it… just get cleaned up and dressed while I figure out what to do with the two of you.” Rob and Wendy looked a bit sheepish for a while before collecting their clothes and heading for their respective locker rooms. Coach Martin turned and headed for his office still shaking his head but now with a big grin on his face. He went in and closed the door, but as he was about to sit down at his desk he saw Wendy clutching her street clothes scamper into the boy’s locker room. The coach started to laugh out loud as he thought to himself, “Well, he is a good looking boy and he’s packing quite a piece of meat in his shorts… Oh the joys of being young and foolish.” After about 20 minutes Wendy and Rob knocked on Coach Martin’s office door. The coach put the scowl back on and yelled to come in. “Well, it took you long enough,” said the coach. Rob and Wendy looked doubly sheepish. Then he continued, “I’m going to try to forget what I saw this morning but if any thing remotely like this happens again I’ll bounce the both of you out of here so fast you won’t have time to grab your clothes. Now get yourselves home before you worry your folks any more then you have already.” Coach Martin walked them to his office door and watched as they walked to the outside door. Rob opened the door for Wendy and as she walked out he looked back at the coach who grinned briefly and flipped him a quick thumbs up, and Rob smiles back. Just as quickly the coach returned to the scowl and Rob nodded as he left, understanding that the coach was saying, “Good for you, but don’t let me catch you doing it again.” Rob grinned like the “Cheshire Cat” and wrapped his arm around Wendy, gently pulling her to face him. And holding her close he leaned down and kissed her deeply on the mouth.