Matt was suddenly battling something he hadn't had to in years - the urge to cry.
“No. I’m going to fix this.” he took a deep breath “if the ring can swap us, it can un-swap us”. He turned off the tap and considered his best course of action. Getting a proper look at the ring was obviously the first thing – but he shouldnt touch it, didn’t want to touch it.
Gloves should work though, “duh – there should be some in here” he rolled his eyes and opened the cabinet under the sink rifling around until he found the small cardboard box of medical examination gloves. Digging his fingers in the oval hole he managed to snag a pair and pull them loose, but before closing the small door to the storage space he also grabbed a translucent plastic bowl. If he was going to get a good look at this ring he’d need to rinse the dirt off.
Quickly part filling the small bowl with warm water, he grabbed a couple of q-tips from the holder by the sink as well as the gloves and headed back to his room.
There would be plenty of space on his desk to work if he put his laptop somewhere else, so he crossed the room and placed the items down; but before he could get to work there was the sound of someone pulling up outside. He could see out the window a small car with the pizza place decal, ‘Tim can deal with that, I want to look at this damned ring’.
But as soon as he had decided to ignore the arrival of food, his body made him aware it disagreed, his stomach grumbled louder this time and he sighed ‘I’ll eat up here I guess’.
With the urgency of a hungry teen he moved from the desk, out of his room and down the hall to the stairs – just as the doorbell rang. Mid way down the stairs he saw Tim walking towards the door. “Oh, the money for the pizza, mom left it-”
“Yeah, I know, I already got it”.
“Oh” Matt stopped abruptly near the bottom of the stairs, one foot partly hanging off the step and dangling. ‘Oh shit, he knew we were getting pizza and that she left money on the counter, he heard us earlier’. “Tim, I-” he tried to quickly entreat but was cut off as the front door was opened and on the other side stood a face he recognised.
“Pizza delivery for Tim Brown?” the high school delivery driver started but his face brightened in to a smile mid way. “Oh hey, Matt. I didn’t know you lived here?”. Jason casually held the pizza boxes in his arm bicep slightly bulging at the end of his short sleeve, the receipt clutched in his hand by his waist.
Seeing him there Matt nearly slipped down the last few remaining steps – ‘oh god, he cant see me like this, I'll be a laughing stock at school!’. This was awful, why the hell did one of his classmates have to be the pizza driver?
But before he could spiral in to despair, Matt had a second shock – Tim tipped his head up in acknowledgement “Hey, uh, dude. Yeah, for a few years now”. Matt was reeling as Jason nodded and handed the boxes over to the boy who had his body standing at the door. ‘He thinks Tim is me. He doesn’t know we swapped, oh thank fuck’.
“Oh cool. Is that your little brother?” Jason asked, looking past Tim to the figure of Matt standing on the stair case, still as an ornamental statue.
“Huh?” Tim half turned to look behind him, allowing Matt a full view of Jason standing there.
A couple of months younger than Matt, maybe an inch or two shorter, but broader – a natural wrestlers build, with short cropped light brown hair, and toned chest visible from the v of his pizza delivery uniform polo. He was a nice guy, Matt liked him, always joking around, but in this moment he was struck by the fact that he didn’t just look friendly and athletic, but attractive too.
“Oh yeah” reaching up over his shoulder with his free hand, pointing his thumb in Matt's general direction, “That's Timmy – say hi squirt!” the look on Tim’s face was smug enough Matt would normally want to punch him. But honestly its almost exactly what he would have said – how was Tim so calm right now?
‘Oh god, not again’ he could feel his ears burning, he knew he must be turning bright red – they were both staring at him. Jason with a kind smile, the sort you give to a shy child, and Tim like the cat who just got the canary. “Hey, uh hey, hi” Matt mumbled as loudly as he thought he could manage, whilst rubbing the top of his white socked foot against the back of his bare calf. ‘This is hell. I am in hell’.
“Nice to meet you little dude” Jason flashed an even brighter smile, and then looked to the teen boy standing before him, the person he knew as Matt. “Large pepperoni with jalapenos, and a small cheese, $24.93”. Tim passed him two notes “thanks, keep the change”.
“No problemo, have a good evening” as Tim went to close the door with his socked foot, Jason suddenly raised his arm and Tim paused confused. “Oh by the way, coach is doing warm up sessions for the team over the summer. I know you said you were thinking of joining the wrestling, you should come!”.
Matt wanted to answer but stopped himself, it was a great idea. His whole plan this summer was to try to get in better shape for sports. ‘I’ll totally come! Say yes Tim, say yes!’ he whined internally.
As it was, Tim seemed to consider it in the moment, then murmured “Hmmm, maybe, really sure if I want to do sports”. Jason's face comically fell, “Oh? Man, that's a shame you’d be great. Think about it though, offers open” he raised his arm to give Matt a little wave, then turned and left. Tim pushed the door fully closed with his foot whilst holding the pizzas in both hands.
When their eyes met Tim was grinning ear to ear again “Aww, was someone feeling shy? Didn't want to say hi to your boyfriend?”.
“Shut up!” Matt squealed, “he’s not my boyfriend, he isn't even really a friend, we have math together”. He stomped down the last few steps and glared up at Tim – who promptly burst in to laughter, enraging Matt. “Stop it you fuck! This isn't funny. I want to join the team!” he had to fight the urge to stamp his little ankle socked feet.
Still chuckling to himself Tim just waltzed past his reduced and furious sibling. “Come get pizza Matty, before I eat it all, I’m a growing boy”.
With a vicious pout on his face Matt was forced to concede defeat and followed towards the kitchen, he was getting pretty hungry and arguing was just giving Tim what he wanted, opportunities to humiliate him.
As Tim stomped in to the large room with kitchen on one side, traditional wooden dining table for 6 on the other, split by a large counter with barstools in the middle - he saw the pizza boxes already open and steaming on the table with Tim in the kitchen at the cupboards. He had the one above the counter open, where the plates were kept – honestly Matt would have happily eaten from the box, but Tim had better manners. Reaching up to get plates, extending his arm fully and stretching so the skin between t-shirt and jeans was visible, as was the bottom of the happy trail on his stomach.
Tim made a small pleased huff, “I can finally reach the top shelf – guess mom cant stop me having all the cookies I want now” there was a pause as he pulled two plates down and held them in his right hand, another small pleased huff “hell, I’m taller than mom now”.
‘He’s fucking enjoying this. I’m in hell and he’s having a great time’. “Can we eat now? I’m hungry”. Matt groused.
“What do you say?”
“What?” Matt's face unconsciously scrunched in confusion.
“It’s polite to say please young man” came the sing song reply.
“Fuck. You. Give me a fucking plate” Matt hissed, his fists balled at this side. “Stop being such a prick Tim”.
And Tim, the bastard, just smiled. “Now now potty mouth, don’t let mom hear you talking like that. Or dad, unless you want a spanking”. He casually walked over to the table and set the two plates down, leaving perspiration footprints of his path on the cold tile floor.
Matt tried to ignore the sudden embarrassing mental image of his dad spanking him years ago and reached over to the pepperoni, but wrinkled his nose as he moved it towards his face.
He loved pepperoni pizza, and pepperoni pizza with jalapenos was both his and his mom’s favourite. So why did it suddenly look unappealing, and smell worse than it looked. Did he get Tim's food preferences in the swap too?
He placed the pizza slice back in the box and attempted to pull a chair out from under the table – but his initial effort barely moved it. It was heavier than he expected, he needed to put effort in and the chair made a high pitched scraping noise as he dragged it out to sit down.
Tim meanwhile was looking between the two boxes of pizza, apparently trying to make up his mind. “You know I’m going to try something new”, he removed the slice Matt had put down and swiftly took a large bite. “Mmmm. tyis ish ... gud” he just about managed to say whilst simultaneously chewing and going for a second bite. Now having food Tim also went for a chair, directly next to the where Matt now sat - right on the edge of the wooden seat, balls of his feet just resting on the floor, tense.
But in Tim's case it was the opposite, instead of pulling the chair out he lifted it clear off the floor and bumped the table doing so – much easier than he was used to. Setting it down further back than Matt had his - close to the wall - Tim sat in a lounging position, with his back at a diagonal and his legs stretched out in front of him.
“I guess I’ll have cheese then, if you don’t want it” Matt quickly looked to Tim for a reaction, but just saw him lean across to grab another slice of pepperoni and then relax again. He was chewing happily, arm up one hand behind his head, feet crossed at the ankles, stretching his toes back and forth – apparently disinterested in what happened to his usual cheese pizza.
They sat in silence for a while, Tim practically inhaling the pizza, on his fourth large slice with no signs of slowing as Matt only finished his second small piece. Eventually, fingers on the edge of his plate Matt spoke “I’m going to try to clean the ring up, see if I can find anything out about it. About how we change back”.
There was only the sound of chewing so he continued “I don’t, uh, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to find much, or what we might need to do, so it might take, uh, I dunno, a day or two”.
“We cant tell them” Tim quickly but firmly spoke, pizza still in hand but lowered from his mouth.
“What?” Matt turned to look at him, confused by what he thought was the sudden change of topic. “Tell who what?”
“We cant tell mom, or dad, that we swapped” Tim said definitively, then went back to eating pizza.
Matt opened his mouth, but didn’t know what to say. ‘I hadn't even thought of telling people. I suppose I assumed they would just know’.
“But we cant hide it, they’ll know, they might be able to help!”. ‘Although Jason hadn't’ was tacked on to the end of that sentence in his head.
“Are you stupid? They’ll think we’re either playing a stupid prank or have gone nuts and send us off to be looked at. We cant tell them.” Now Tim was staring at him in disbelief.
“And if you try to, I’ll say I don’t know what you're talking about, as far as they will know Tim is just making up stories”.
Matts jaw dropped open, “What?!” he was flabbergasted. Not telling them was one thing, but to lie? Would Tim do that to him? What would happen? He could be stuck forever, no one would believe just him. His breathing suddenly hitched, he could feel his heart trying to beat out of his chest. ‘Oh god, I’m fucked’.
He pushed forward off the chair to stand, but suddenly swayed – ‘not again, not more changes?!’.
His ears were ringing, all the blood in his body going straight to his head. But then there was a large hand on his shoulder, a firm squeeze. He turned his head to look in the mirror, the concern on his face – but not his face now, it was Tim. “You need to breath, you're having a panic attack.” not-him-actually-Tim said calmly.
‘Panic attack? Oh fuck. This fucking body, what was it. I’m okay. I’m okay’
“You’re okay, this will pass. Hey, Matt – you’re okay” there was enough confidence in Tim's voice that Matt believed it. “Breath, in – out, in – out”.
He slowly sat back down on the hard chair, focusing on his breathing, and feeling better.
“This fucking sucks”.
“Yeah” Tim neutrally replied.
“No, well yeah, I mean. This whole fucking mess sucks - but I didn’t know how bad these attacks were. It’s really horrible” Matt turned to look at Tim, genuinely struck his younger brother had spent years regularly going through this, while he had more or less assumed it was attention seeking.
There was a small, thoughtful pause. “Yeah, fucking sucks - welcome to the club though” was all Tim said, half smile on his lips.
That coupled with relief at no longer feeling like his heart was going to explode got a small laugh out of Matt.
“I wouldn't do that to you, you know. But we really cant tell them” Tim's expression was earnest, and on reflection Matt actually agreed.
“Okay, we wont. But we need to swap back. I cant be stuck like this” almost the moment the words left his lips Matt knew his mistake, the kind look on Tim's face turned hard. “I didn’t – I. I didn’t mean it like that. Just, I need to be me. You need to be you”.
“Yeah, but in the meantime, we need to be each other. Mom is going to be home soon, and to her you're Tim, and I’m Matt. You need to act like it, okay?” the confidence was back in Tim's tone, and to an outside observer it would look like any older brother asserting control. It wasn't that Matt disagreed, could disagree, but he didn’t like being talked down to.
“Fine. Within reason. Don't forget, I’m still your older brother”
A small huff came from Tim as he stood up “Sure”. He piled another 3 slices of pizza on to his plate. And saw the look Matt shot him. “I’m hungry. There's enough left for mom, she only ever eats a couple of slices”.
Before Matt could even reply Tim was already walking away, “I’m going to watch TV, you better go look at the ring”.
‘I know that, idiot’, Matt thought as he scowled at the figure walking away from him and then stood up again, smaller feet now flat on the cold tiles, wishing he'd worn his sliders.
Tim had been right though, their mom would be home soon, and he wanted to find out everything he could about the ring. If possible get this fixed before she was back, but worst case before tomorrow.