Nick’s patience grew thin as he toiled away through the evening hours, working to restore everyone’s ages while a cacophony of laughter and playful shouting rang out from beyond his bedroom door. He appreciated that his best friend and their cranky neighbor were finally getting along and enjoying their new ages, but Nick knew that the novelty would wear off soon enough; while Clark was certainly a good sport about the whole ordeal at present, that was only because he believed Nick would soon fix him. Being a toddler was fun enough for a couple days, but a man as virile and sexually active as Clark had little interest in spending the next year or so in diapers. And besides that, all three of them had jobs to get back to. Sure, Wes might be fine at 18 fending for himself, but without a means to financially sustain themselves, Nick and Clark would have to entreat the aid of their parents in raising them again, an experience Nick was eager to avoid.
The rushing flurry of “what-ifs” proved too much, and Nick firmly placed the gun onto the workbench, realizing the late hour and regretting having passed up Wes’s offer to join them for dinner in the kitchen a couple hours ago. Nick felt as if his younger body couldn’t keep up with the demands he was mentally putting on himself, but there wasn’t any way around that until… or wait…
An idea occurred to Nick that might just help all of their situations, but he’d have to get Wes to agree.
Wes and Clark grew weary in the living room after hours of playtime and bonding, and Wes’s arms ached after all that time helping little Clark fly around the living room. The two were sitting on the couch, Clark’s padded rear atop Wes’s lap as the two watched a funny video on Wes’s phone, when the door to Nick’s bedroom opened suddenly, both Wes and Clark shocked to see Nick, or at least his head, finally emerge from his tireless pursuit.
“Wes, can you come in here for a second?” Nick pleaded, clearly exhausted from a hard day’s work.
Wes handed his phone to Clark and lifted the boy off his lap and onto the cushion next to them. “Of course,” he replied, “Is everything okay?”
Nick yawned before responding, “Kind of… but I need your help.”
Wes raised an inquisitive brow.
“You’ll see,” Nick said as he slunk back into his room.
Wes got up and turned to Clark. “I’ll be right back, little guy! Don’t move a muscle,” and little Clark beamed adorably up at the man before returning his attention to the video on Wes’s phone.
Nick didn’t have to wait too long, as Wes promptly entered his room and shut the door behind him, not wanting the sound of Clark’s video to interrupt their conversation. “So what’s—” Wes began, before Nick quickly interjected.
“I need to be older, Wes. When I was 11 the first time, I had a hard time focusing on schoolwork and stuff, and now it’s affecting my ability to get this done in a timely manner. After I got older, the problem got better, so I need to take some years from you, if you’re okay with that. I promise it’ll be beneficial for all of us because I’ll be able to fix this faster and without another mistake like last time,” Nick prattled off his request as fast as possible, wanting to get straight to the point without giving Wes too much time to debate whether or not he should agree.
“I mean… I guess,” Wes cautiously offered, “but how old do you need to get? Or really, how young do I need to get?”
“The closer I get back to 28, the better, but I can’t afford to have you at 2-years-old just so I can be 27 again, not while Clark still needs someone to change his diapers.” Clearly, Nick had given this ample thought before calling Wes into the meeting. “And we only have clothes to fit boys around 9-11, so if you could go back to 9, then I could get back up to 20, and I’m sure that should be enough to get me through the rest of this repair.”
Wes turned to Nick’s bedroom mirror, appreciating his ephemerally restored adulthood that he knew he was about to give up again with no guarantee of its swift return. He turned back to Nick and sighed, “Sure, Nick, but you better get this shit done, man. Not so sure I can keep growing up and down like this much longer.”
“Thank you, Wes. I promise I will,” Nick reassured him as he picked up the gun. “Oh, and I promise I’ve been making progress! I know it might not seem like it, since I’m effectively just using the last mistake I made on the gun to exchange years with you right now, but it’s too complicated to explain why I need to keep that accidental modification until later when I can adjust the—”
“It’s fine, Nick,” Wes smiled soothingly at the boy, “Just get this over with.”
With that, Nick stripped off his Avengers shirt, khaki shorts, and white briefs, adjusted the gun’s interface, aimed it at Wes, and pulled the trigger.
Before the process could start, each man had turned away from the other, wanting to afford the other as much privacy as possible in such an awkward moment.
Wes’s teenhood muscularity slipped away as his years were sapped into Nick’s body, which grew hairier and less soft by the second. Finally, Clark’s boxers fell off of Wes’s newly skinny frame, revealing a boyhood that was just ever smaller than what he had been sent back to earlier in the day. On the other side of the room, Nick very much enjoyed his newly revitalized mental acuity, as well as the obvious physical perks that come with being a capable man of 20 and not a boy of 11.
After a silent moment of self-inspection on each side of the room, Wes could hear Nick rummaging through a few things before he felt a soft thud on his back. He turned to investigate the source of the disturbance to find a pile of clothes at his feet and a fully naked, much taller Nick continuing to grab his own clothes from his dresser.
The two dressed themselves without addressing the other. Nick was happy to be pulling on his usual, more masculine, black boxer-briefs, while Wes resigned himself once more to the white boy’s briefs that he had adorned just hours ago. It was too late in the night for Wes to care about pants, so he finished his ensemble with a plain white tee Nick had thrown him. He peered over to the mirror again, realizing he looked not too different from Clark at this point, in his pantsless, all-white getup, but he could still appreciate that his odd ventures of this peculiar Saturday had at least spared him the humiliation of diapers. Turning back to Nick, who, as well, had forgone pants and merely thrown on a black tank top, Wes called out in his prepubescent voice, “You got this, Nick.”
By then, Nick had already returned to his workbench. “I promise,” Nick started, “no more age changing until this thing is ready to go. Should be Monday morning by the latest.”
“I’ll hold you to it,” the boy replied. “I’m gonna go see if Clark wants to get ready for bed now. You should get some sleep, too.”
“Yeah, just another hour and I’ll probably stop,” Nick tiredly assured him.