After the weird experience with both the guidance counselor and the Home Ec girls, Max made his way to a class that in the back of his mind he felt he should be dreading: PE. Yet, at the same time, he couldn’t help but feel a rising excitement in his mind, as if this was actually a highlight of his day. As he got closer to the gym and the locker room, he found himself striding through the bustling hallways with a new sense of grounding and purpose. Mrs. Comstock's wise words had helped him wrap his head around all the stuff that had been happening to him and now it didn't seem so scary anymore. He hadn't awoken to a vastly new reality after all. Lots of boys go through this exact same period of self-discovery. As he arrived at the locker room entrance, a boy in front of him pushed open the big heavy door, releasing a rush of the familiar, toxic air.
*If only there were a garage large enough to banish all the guys in school so I wouldn't have to smell THEIR teenage funk,* he mused to himself before realizing that, if there were such a place, he'd have to join them. He was a smelly teenage boy too... As much as he hated to admit it, he belonged with the rest of them. In fact, as he thought about it more, the locker room actually was a kind of shameful little corner of the school where the awkward, smelly boys were corralled and isolated from everyone else. Sure, the girls had their own similar room, but it smelled really good, like flowers and junk... peaches... You could get a nice big blast of their wonderful perfume scent whenever you walked by. And the girls’ room wasn't tucked away in some remote part of the school like the boys’ room was. It was right there across from the band room and the teachers’ lounge. The boys’ locker room, on the other hand, was at the very far end of the hallway next to the emergency exit and the industrial laundry room... No girl would ever even have any cause to walk past it if not for the semi-annual fire drill... It was almost as if the boys were purposefully distanced from the rest of society as undesirables, like the short-bus kids at the end of their hallway... It was too consistent to be an accident...
Max followed the guy in front of him into the locker room. He was suddenly assaulted from every angle by lean, sculpted, adolescent body parts. It was like nothing he had ever seen before. The abs, the pecs, the arms, the FEET! It was all too much for his mind to process. His eyes were darting around wildly, trying to find some place to rest that wouldn’t provoke yet another twinge of unwanted arousal in his pants, but there didn’t seem to be a single line of sight free of denuded teen boy flesh! Whenever he thought he’d found an unoccupied place where he could safely rest his eyes, they would immediately be drawn to a new, even more handsome specimen, and each time he found it harder and harder to look away.
Max couldn’t take it anymore. He was becoming entirely overwhelmed by the constant assault of gorgeous body parts. He couldn’t even tell who he was looking at or how many boys there were around him. All he could make sense of was the limbs and muscles and the adorable thatches of scruff and fuzz. He needed it to stop; he felt like he was about to pop! With all his might he willed his eyes shut and turned his face towards the ceiling. He cautiously cracked one eye open and proceeded to navigate the familiar space by following the emergency sprinkler pipes that branched outwards along the open walkways.
As he inched his way toward his locker on the other end of the room, he found himself almost hyperventilating. The rapid, shallow breathing was forcing endless torrents of the fusty gym stink straight to the core of his olfactory system.
“Hey Max! You alright?” he heard a voice say. Max looked down from the ceiling to see one of the football players, shirtless, as he walked out of one of the stalls…Bryce, if he recalled correctly. Max tried to keep his eyes focused on Bryce’s face, scared of what would happen if he let his eyes wander.
“Oh, uh…yeah, man,” Max said, trying to keep his composure. “I just had a nosebleed…need to get some toilet paper…”
“You know, in anime, nosebleeds are a sign that someone’s turned on!” Jeff Stevens, another guy in their PE class, stated as he walked by. “Come on, Warner! You know you can’t handle being around the utter pinnacle of manhood that I am!” he said with a smile on his face.
“Umm….no, that’s not it at all!” Max said, looking back at the ceiling to keep up the nosebleed façade, feeling his cheeks turn red in embarrassment.
“Lay off, Stevens!” Bryce said, patting Max on his back with one hand while he lightly punched Jeff in the shoulder with the other. “You’re just jealous cuz you’re not as fast a runner on the team as Warner is. Besides, Seth would pound you if he thought you were legitimately hitting on his boyfriend.”
There it was again…Seth as Max’s boyfriend…Yet here in the locker room, with all the smells of guy stink around him, the thought seemed to bring Max comfort and peace…It still freaked him out a bit, though.
Jeff shrugged. “Hey, no hate!” he said. “I respect both of you guys for being so open! You know I’m just messing with you, Max!”
“You’re cool, man,” Max replied. “Anyways, I’m going to take care of this nosebleed.” Max quickly walked into the stall that Bryce had come out of and closed and locked the door, glad to be away from the awkward conversation.
“Don’t be late, bro!” Bryce called out. “Coach said he had a big surprise that he thought you in particular would enjoy!” Max heard Bryce and Jeff walk away. Max breathed a sigh of relief and sat down on the toilet, trying to collect his thoughts. He had always avoided jocks like Bryce and Jeff. He had a vague memory of them picking on him, calling him names, but stronger memories seemed to be working their way into his mind…them playing football together, hanging out after games, and in all those memories, another constant was…Seth. The thought of the large muscular jock filled Max with raging hormones…He felt himself unconsciously drawn to pulling down his pants. His erect, uncut cock popped out, dripping precum. He slowly gripped his dick, beginning to stroke it. He stifled a moan…there were still some guys in the locker room, although the room was rapidly emptying.
He slowly rubbed his hand along his member, a feeling that in the back of his mind was very familiar and normal, even though he distinctly felt that he had never really had much desire for masturbation prior to that day. But again, conflicting memories seemed to tell him that he jacked off multiple times a day in order to keep himself from constantly walking around with a hardon.
“Ugh!!! What is happening to me?!” Max thought, even as he started to rub harder…however, before he could continue his action, he heard a knock on the stall door.
“Bae, Bryce and Jeff said you were in here with a nosebleed. Are you all right?” a familiar voice said from the other side of the stall door. Max recognized it instantly as Seth’s.
Max wasn’t sure how to respond. His dick was still hard in his hands, but he also knew that he needed to reply. What could he say, though? I’m struggling with memories of being an asexual, aromantic nerd who’s been placed in the body of a horny, hairy, stinky jock? One that has strong sexual desires for you in particular? He pulled up his underwear and pants, grimacing at the fact that the bulge of his erect cock was still fairly obvious in his pants. “I’m just feeling kind of off today,” Max replied truthfully. He flushed the toilet. Should he open the door and confront the jock on the other side?
“Yeah, man, I know you’ve been kind of off today. Is everything all right with your Mom? She seemed in kind of a bad mood when we stopped by your house this morning, and then you ran off right when we got to school. Have I upset you? Did I do something wrong?”
Max hesitated, then finally opened the stall door. Seth stood on the other side, wearing his PE clothes. With his tank top and shorts, his hairy chest and legs were on full display, and Max’s boner pulsed in his jeans at the sight of his apparent jock boyfriend. There was no doubt, at least in his physical body: Max definitely was attracted to this guy. He walked out of the stall, and Seth grabbed him into a hug. Max found himself returning the hug, a contented feeling covering him as he felt Seth’s closeness. Being this close to him, he could smell Seth’s distinctive BO, and Max was slightly ashamed to realize that the smell actually excited him. His dick throbbed in his pants.
“I just woke up this morning, and everything just felt off,” he found himself saying. “Like the world had changed all around me, and I was the last person to get the memo. I feel like my mind is struggling to remember things, and then my Mom yelled at me…I may have accidentally ruined her craft room, and a bunch of people saw me outside in my underwear on my way to the garage…then I got to class, and Lyle Redding called me a fag, and….”
“Wait, that bastard called you a fag? I’ll beat the shit out of that fucking nerd!” Seth pulled away from Max and looked at him in concern.
“No, no, it’s okay,” Max said. “I overreacted. I almost punched him myself. Mrs. Watley ended up sending me to the guidance counselor, Mrs. Comstock, and she really helped me get a grip on things. I’m okay now, really.”
“Still, it’s not okay for that asshole to call you a slur. I swear to God I’m going to beat him to a pulp the next time I see him,” Seth said, a frown across his face.
“Anyways, after talking to Mrs. Comstock I totally skipped my C++ class and ended up going to Home Ec with Renee Patterson…I actually had a great time! For the most part…Parker Romero is in that class, and he also called me gay and kept ragging on me…”
“Are you fucking kidding me?!” Seth said, punching the side of the bathroom stall in anger. “Fuckin’ Romero! Constantly trying to tear me down whenever. But attacking you is way out of line. What the fuck does he think he’s doing?!”
“It’s okay…Renee was actually able to diffuse the situation,” Max responded, rubbing his hand on Seth’s shoulders to calm him down. “Besides, Romero’s a total douchebag. I know the rest of the team has my back. I don’t want you getting suspended from the team just because Romero doesn’t know when to stop running his mouth.”
Seth growled in response, but ultimately nodded in agreement. “He’s trying to throw off our game. Anything that makes him look better. Arrogant asshole…”
“I was glad that Renee was there,” Max responded. “She handled him really well. She wants to hang out sometime, and I said yes.”
“I didn’t know she was so cool,” Seth replied. “I’ll have to personally thank her for being a good friend to you. Are you going to be okay, though?”
“Yeah…” Max said. “Sorry for worrying you. This day has just been off. I feel like my memories have been put into a blender…”
“Well, I have really good news,” Seth said, putting his arm around Max and guiding him away from the toilets to the lockers. “Coach is starting a new segment for PE for the next few weeks, and I think it’s going to be your time to shine.”
“What is it?” Max asked curiously.
Seth grinned at Max. “You’ll have to get changed and come and find out! We’re on the soccer field,” he said as they stopped at Max’s locker.
“Aw, man! All right. Tell coach I’ll be right out,” Max told Seth.
Seth leaned in and kissed Max, which Max found himself consciously returning. Being around Seth just felt right. It’s like the dumb jock could take away all of his concerns, all of his fears, and all of his problems…they just seemed to melt away in his presence. He only wished he could spend every moment of every day with him…Being around Seth made Max feel more at peace then he had all day long.
Seth pulled away, not before copping a feel of Max’s groin, which had softened somewhat over the past few minutes. “Mmm…I’m looking forward to having some fun time with THAT later today,” he said with a grin. “You’d better save yourself for me…Because I am totally willing to go down on that!”
Max blushed but nodded in response. “I love you, Hon,” he found himself saying. Even crazier, he realized he meant it as well.
“I love you too, Bae! Get changed, and I’ll cover for you with the coach!” Seth ran out of the locker room and back out onto the field.