Max and his brother walked a few paces into the basement and stopped at the bed. Unlike what his parents suggested, Max did not want to rest in bed. He did not feel the least bit tired or drained despite the major procedure, and he figured that Kenneth was the same. He stared at his brother in an awkward silence for a few moments. It was clear that neither of them knew what to do now. "Lets get out of here." he stated aloud. "I don't want to spend anymore time in this dreary place." Max's leg shifted, but he kept himself from moving towards the stairs.
Kenneth seemed to hesitate, but nodded his head in agreement. "Mom and Dad did want us to rest up, and I guess we don't have to do that down here."
"Exactly." Max smiled.
They carefully walked to the stairs, and Kenneth commented, "We can head upstairs and get dressed, so we don't run around all day in boxers."
Max stopped at the foot of the stairs leading out of the basement. "This shouldn't be any different, right? Just one foot at a time." It unintentionally sounded like a bad joke, but his brother did not comment on it. "You step first, and I'll brace."
"Sure. And, I'll hold onto the railing, as an added precaution." Kenneth agreed.
Slowly, the brothers took turns stepping up while leaning into their sibling. It was clumsy, but they made it to the top without incident. Max opened the door, and Kenneth lead them through. "We're rocking sharing a body." Max smiled in spite of himself. In a matter of a few hours, they seemed to have accomplished a lot in his eyes. He still felt that his parents took advantage of the accident to make him and Kenneth a science experiment, but he and his brother seemed to be making the best of it. He extended his hand in front of them, and his brother slapped it without hesitation this time.
"It still feels..." Kenneth began to say and Max finished with him, "...like a clap."
His brother continued, "But still, I never thought we could make such a good... team?" He finished the statement more as a question, seemingly unsure if that was the right word.
"Neither did I..." Max admitted. A silence fell over them. "Not that we have a choice now..." Max ended the quiet. "But, we probably should have hung out more before this. You're actually a pretty cool guy."
Kenneth beamed, "You're not so bad yourself."
Max could not hide the smile that appeared on his face. "Alright... lets head up stairs and get dressed into something."
They walked down the hallway and carefully started up a second set of stairs. Upon reaching the upper landing, Max could hear his parents voices in his bedroom on the left. "You were right hun, this is perfect..." his father spoke just before he and his brother opened the door.
Max gawked upon him and Kenneth entering what used to be his room. Everything of his was gone. It had to have a fresh coat of grey painted walls, with a large mahogany desk facing the window. A few pictures of the family, and an image of some kind of cells lined the walls. An old grandfather clock ticked in the background. "What happened to my room?" Max exclaimed.
"We didn't expect you to be up and about so quickly." His mother said excitedly. She turned to look at her husband who was typing something on the computer. "We should make a note of how quickly the recovery process is going thanks to my serum."
"Already on it." His dad spoke cheerfully, his back to the brothers.
"What happened to my room?!" Max repeated his question, raising his voice.
"No shouting in the house Max; you know the rules." His mother scolded him, but before he could complain, she continued, "Since you and Kenneth are sharing a body indefinitely, there was really no point in you having separate rooms. It is not like you could sleep in separate beds." His mother spoke practically. "Since you only need one room, your father and I decided that this should be his home office."
"So you threw away all of his stuff." Kenneth spoke, surprising Max. He noted that his brother seemed to be angry too, angry for Max.
"Of course not." Their father spun around in his chair. He sounded more sensible then their mother. "We moved much of Max's stuff into your room." He then paused, as if catching himself saying something he should not have. "Sorry boys, I meant yours and your brother's room. You two were asleep for almost an entire day, giving us time to move things around. We hope you like what we did; we tried hard to balance your two styles."
Max and Kenneth shared a glance, and his brother whispered, "Lets take a look." He noted that his brother seemed to be struggling to contain his own anger.
They pivoted and walked to the opposite room, Kenneth's old bedroom. His brother opened the door, and the both gasped. The room was a hodgepodge of his and Kenneth's tastes, with various posters lining the walls. The closet seemed to have a mixture of their separate attires. On the opposite wall, his parents must have thrown out Kenneth's old, small desk and replaced it with Max's. The computer seemed to be Kenneth's self-built one, which was better than Max's old one, and there were two monitors. However, there was only one chair, one keyboard, and one mouse.
Pushed against the middle of the right-most wall, was presumably their single, new bed. Their parents must have hired a seamstress to stitch a blanket for them, a combination of the two separate blankets that their paternal grandmother had made them years ago. Originally, Max's was a sapphire blue, and Kenneth's was a ruby red. Their grandmother had painstakingly knitted their names, "Max" and "Ken", into the middle of each. Now, the blankets were augmented to be stitched together with the symbol "&" centered between their names.
"What do you boys think?" Their father asked, standing in the frame of the bedroom. "We thought sewing your old blankets together would be a nice touch, so you wouldn't have to argue over whose to use at night." Their father spoke proudly.
Max shared a glance with his brother, who seemed to have the same 'thrilled' expression as him. They turned around together and walked towards the door. "Thanks..." They both spoke at the same time as Max grabbed the edge of the door. "But we would really like some alone time, right now." Kenneth added before Max slammed the door shut.