Should I ask another question? Jacob almost felt as doing so would be pointless. He didn’t need a reason or an excuse to do anything with Aiden, the two of them were clearly both yearning for the same thing. Something much more intimate… and something they both needed now.
Jacob separated himself from Aiden and lowered his hands from the snow leopard’s face, bringing them closer to Aiden’s waistband. Trevor and Finnegan might have not been able to have fun in the bathroom, but the two of them DEFINITELY were about to.
Just as Jacob unbuttoned Aiden’s jeans and placed his hands in the waist of Aiden’s pants, the bathroom door swung open, revealing an angry bull and a confused-looking wolf on the other side.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TWO MORONS DOING IN HERE!?!!” Mark fumed, angry huffs of air escaping from his muzzle.
The question was clearly rhetorical, but as if it wasn’t obvious enough, Jacob’s hands were still inside of Aiden’s unbuttoned pants, in mid-effort to take them off.
“Don’t you two assholes know I’m on stall duty tonight!?” Mark yelled as he stared down at the two men furiously. Neither of them answered. Aiden was probably too scared to do so, but Jacob stayed silent because he could feel his old anger rising back up.
No wonder Trevor has been so pissed when they entered the bathroom earlier; Jacob felt like decking Mark in the face for getting in his way of having a good time with Aiden. Luckily, he was still too much in a good mood to give into aggression.
“Get out! And Jacob, you better give me a discount when I go the gym tomorrow.” Mark gave Jacob a hard and intimidating staredown, one which Jacob equally returned.
The two of them exited the bathroom before Mark slammed the door shut and walked away, his work shoes making loud clomps on the tiled floor as he stomped away.
Jacob crossed his arms and angrily glared in the direction Mark went. Here he was about to get laid and Mark just had to go and ruin it. Even in another reality, he was still a killjoy. Well, at least he wasn’t on stall duty anymore. Jacob smiled as he imagined Mark having to clean the bathrooms later.
“Guys, I thought you weren’t going to fool around in public anymore.” Jacob turned his head to see the same wolf he saw earlier talking to the two of them. He was a couple inches shorter than him and appeared to also be a Mexican gray wolf. The canine’s build was similar to Aiden’s, muscular but not overly so like Jacob was—just a hunky slim guy. The wolf was wearing a burgundy zip-up hoodie, khaki cargo shorts, and a black pair of sneakers. A red backpack was also hanging from his left shoulder.
“Sorry, Jasper. Originally we just went in there to make sure Jacob was ok after he fell. But, one thing led to another, and you know…” Aiden trailed off as he awkwardly rubbed his neck, casting his eyes away from Jasper.
“Jacob, Jadon’s been texting me nonstop about you. He even asked me to stop here after I got out of class. I think he’s really mad,” Jasper said with a strained expression.
Jacob shrugged his shoulders in a nonchalant manner. “He can deal with it. If I’m going to be stuck cleaning the whole gym tonight anyway, I might as well make the most of what I’m doing… or was about to.” Jacob gave Jasper an annoyed look. “Did you really have to fucking get Mark involved?”
Jasper placed his hands up, palm side forward, attempting to calm Jacob down with a gesture of peace. “When I got here, I couldn’t find either of you and only found Aiden’s belongings, so I went to the bathroom and knocked, but you didn’t answer. I previously heard a customer say something about someone falling and knew it might be related to the two of you, so I got worried and went and got Mark to unlock the door.”
Jacob placed his left thumb and index finger on the ridge of his muzzle—near his eyes—and closed his eyes before letting out an exasperated sigh. “Great. Now I have to give that jerk a discount.”
“I think thats the least of our problems. We better get to the gym before Jadon gets any madder than he already is,” Jasper said before turning to face the dining area. “Don’t worry, we can come up with a proper excuse on the walk there.”
The three of them then walked over to the dining area and Jacob looked in astonishment to see the entire restaurant flooded with anthropomorphic animals—not a single human in sight!
The lunch rush was in full swing now and all types of anthros could be seen working, ordering, or just eating their lunch. A small tiger child sprinted in front of the trio, chased by another tiger, presumably his mother, and Jacob had to stop himself from interfering. He didn’t work here anymore, so he couldn’t get involved. Well, he could, but there was no real reason to do so now that he wasn't getting paid for it.
“Thank goodness nobody took my stuff,” Aiden said as he walked over to the single-user table he had been sitting in before and shut his laptop. He then put the device inside of the laptop case he kept in his blue backpack… the same blue backpack Jacob had tripped on earlier. It was still too soon, just looking at the book bag was starting to make Jacob grimace.
After zipping his bag shut, Aiden grabbed the iron dumbbell off the table and began to do some bicep curls. “There’s always time for exercise, and right now I’m working on my upper arms, though they’re already pretty big.” The feline gave them a wink which only earned him a polite smile from Jasper and a raised eyebrow from Jacob—his face still in a scowl from viewing Aiden’s backpack.
Unbothered by their reactions, Aiden walked towards the entrance of the restaurant, still curling the dumbbell, as the two wolves followed behind.
***
“Let’s say that you fell down and Aiden offered to examine your entire body to make sure you weren’t hurt,” Jasper suggested.
“Just sounds like another way to say we had sex,” Aiden said with a chuckle.
“Hmm… I guess so.” Jasper furrowed his eyebrows and began to contemplate a new excuse for his brother and friend, the two individuals who were walking alongside him on the sidewalk in the city.
Jacob didn’t have anything to say. In fact, he hadn’t heard a word the two had said for the past two blocks they’ve walked. After leaving the burger joint, Jacob had been in awe to see anthropomorphic animals everywhere he looked.
There were still a few humans here and there, but whenever Jacob looked at them they would instantly get transformed. He could turn his head away for a second and look back to see a previous human man turned into an anthro crocodile or an anthro elephant. And as the three of them got closer to the gym, the amount of humans he saw was becoming scarcer and scarcer.
In just a matter of hours, the city had become infested with furries. And with how fast it was spreading, by the end of the week, the entire world would be.
This realization brought dread to Jacob. It wouldn’t be so bad if people just turned into animals, sure it was different but he could get used to it, it was the very fact that people were having something random about them changed into its opposite—altering a mental or physical trait and rewriting reality to accommodate for it.
By the end of the week, Jacob would be living in an entirely new world, not just because it would become a beastly world filled with furries, but because every human was going to be a completely different person than they once were. Worst of all, they would all assume it was normal, with Jacob being the only one aware to know how different everyone truly was from their original selves.
Jacob put his hands to his temples and massaged his head. Not only was thinking about all of this hurting his head, but it was also making him depressed. He needed to distract himself with something else. Oh yeah, what were Aiden and Jasper talking about again?
“Ok, it’s decided. We say Jacob fell and became delirious, and Aiden had to take him to the bathroom to calm him down,” Jasper stated, the lie sounding a little too real to how things actually played out if Jacob was being honest. He just hoped that his older brother, Jadon, would buy it.
Deciding to change the topic of conversation before he began thinking more about reality changing, Jacob said, “Hey, Jasper. You’re still in school, right?”
“Uh… yeah?” Jasper said and gave him a look of puzzlement.
“Could you tell me more about that?”
Jasper turned to Aiden in confusion, the snow leopard only shrugging his shoulders and encouraging the wolf to answer the question before curling his iron dumbbell.
“Well, I’m in my last year of college, but I plan to go to grad school after I graduate next year. Let’s see, what else… oh, I’m also majoring in Sports Medicine with Aiden.” Jasper pointed his thumb at Aiden, who gave a nod and another bicep curl in response.
College senior. That means Jasper and Aiden must be about 22 or 23. But when Jacob took a closer look at them, he could tell that Aiden was a bit older. So, Jasper must be 23 while Aiden was 24. That was only a few years younger than he was, or at least, what he used to be.
Jacob didn’t want to admit it, but he knew he wasn’t 26 anymore. He felt older. Not just from his new body telling him so, but also because he felt more mature—in a sense that he had lived through a lot more life experiences already. Now he just had to confirm it.
“Hey, Jasper, humor me and tell me how old I am,” Jacob said.
“Sure…” Jasper raised an eyebrow, “you’re 32.”
Ouch! Despite expecting it, Jacob was still unprepared and hurt by the flat-out truth. Thirty-two. That was a whole six years older than he used to be. And he had aged it in only a matter of minutes. Funny how much could change in a day.
Coming to terms with his new age, Jacob failed to notice Aiden and Jasper stop in their tracks and bumped into them. “What the hell!?”
“We’re here,” Jasper said as Jacob moved his head to look at the building they were standing in front of. It was a large three-story structure situated between two other buildings. A sign reading “Silvermoon Gym” hung right above the doors. The gym’s logo was positioned just above the text; the logo was a circle and in the circle was a medium shot black silhouette of a wolf lifting a large barbell over his head placed in front of a full moon. Fitting for a business owned and run by the Wolfe family.
Suddenly, a Mexican gray wolf texting on his phone walked out of the gym and leaned against the building. He looked to be a little older than Jasper, about 25 if Jacob had to guess. He also wore a green athletic shirt with a small logo of Silvermoon Gym on the left chest of the shirt, a light gray pair of athletic shorts, and a rugged pair of neon green sneakers. He looked buff, but only more muscular than Aiden and Jasper—he still didn’t hold a candle against Jacob’s body.
“Hey, Jax. We’re here,” Jasper said, grabbing the wolf’s attention as he turned his head up from his phone and saw the three anthros standing in front of him.
“Oh shit!” Jaxon, or Jax as he seemed to be called, blurted out in surprise before rubbing the fur on the top of his head back. “Jacob, Jadon’s looking for you.”
Jacob frowned and cocked his head to the side. “So I’ve heard.”
“Yeah, he’s extremely pissed off. I don’t think showing up with your boyfriend was a good idea,” Jax said as he gave Aiden a quick glance. The snow leopard only blushed in response to Jax’s statement.
“He came with us to help explain what happened at the restaurant. As a matter of fact, I’m also going to help explain things,” Jasper said with a hopeful smile.
Jax stared back at his younger brother with a neutral expression; he was definitely not convinced of the good outcome Jasper was expecting to happen. “Sure, whatever, just go meet Jadon in his office.”
The wolf returned to texting on his phone as Jasper gave Jacob a reassuring thumbs up before walking into the gym with a flustered Aiden following behind. Jacob glanced up at the gym and took a deep breath. Time to go meet up with his older brother for the first time in his life.