Ty woke up around 8:30, took a deep breath and felt really good. He got out of bed stretched and grabbed clothes after taking a minute to admire his body in the mirror and gaze adoringly at the stubble he was able to grow since he shaved last night before dinner. So very cool.
Ty stepped out of his room and didn't hear anything, looking down the hallway he could see Markie's door and the master bedroom door were open meaning everyone was awake somewhere. Ty wished himself clean so he wouldn't need to take the time to shower but, being that it was his second time, he manually shaved enjoying the experience.
When he was finished he wiped his face down but despite how close he got or which direction he pulled the razor he could still see the little speckles of hairs in his skin, slightly shading his beard area. Ty liked it, it made him feel masculine and manly. He started to get an erection but quickly wished it away, he had bigger issues to deal with.
When Ty stepped out of the bathroom he could smell that someone was brewing coffee and headed for the kitchen. As he entered the kitchen he saw Dustin in sweat pants and a gray T-shirt wet with sweat. He must have gone for a morning run. "Good morning Da-ustin."
He was pouring himself coffee, "Good morning maggot mouth." he said cheerily. He picked up the coffee, looked at Ty and gave a warm smirk, "Should I take your lead and call you Tyson or will Ty be OK?" Dustin broke into a full smile and took a sip of coffee.
Ty laughed, embarrassed and relaxed a little, "Ty is fine."
"Good, then you can call me..." he paused for a second thinking, "yeah, you should probably just call me Dustin for now. Lets sit down."
Dustin sat down at the table and pushed a cup of coffee to Ty.
"Oh, Thank you but no, it smells great but I don't like the taste."
"Neither did I until last night, same as this." Dustin pulled out the mostly new pack of cigarettes. "Do you mind?"
Ty shook his head, Dad never smoked in the house, Dustin didn't like smoking, all the rules seem to have changed when the two halves met. Ty wanted to make the setting as comfortable as possible for them so he wished he liked coffee and made an ashtray appear on Dustin's side of the table.
Dustin jumped back in surprise as it appeared out of thin air dropping the unlit cigarette and lighter. Dustin picked up the ashtray in awe and looked at it, tapped it and eventually set it back down going back to his cigarette. "That is truly amazing son."
Ty just smiled and took a sip of his coffee. The bold and rich flavors danced on his tongue, but this time, in a good way.
"So Ty, I've done a lot of thinking and I want to make sure I have everything straight. Up until yesterday I was your 16 year old, self-absorbed, foster brother. You did your magic, and now I'm your 46 year old father, but to June and Markie I'm your 38 year old father and they are my sex toys, but I'm physically 21 and have a strange feeling that I have a class to attend at 10 and June is my widowed aunt. Is that what you set up?"
Ty was completely shocked, he hadn't realized he had left so many holes in reality. He had made a standing wish reality would repair itself based on Dustin and June's ages which had been changing throughout the night, in addition to that, he had further messed with the process by directly changing both of their ages and completely negating Dustin's planned role.
Ty immediately negated his reality changing wish and undid the role that Dustin was growing into. "I'm sorry, I never meant for you to be a college student. It was a standing wish impacting the followup wishes I made. I'll have to be more careful of that."
"Why don't you just put one on your side?"
Ty realized he had stood up and was standing over Dustin, who was gesturing to the ashtray. At that time he realized that he had been smoking a cigarette and in continuing to keep pace with Dustin he had just put his cigarette out.
Ty, negated his smoking wish and looked at the cigarettes, three quarters full. "How much did I smoke last night?"
"Well you kept pace with me, so 6-8."
Ty was shocked, he didn't realize he had more than one.
Dustin saw Ty getting upset and although he had his own issues with what Ty had done the father in him still loved Ty and wanted to guide him and the brother in Dustin wanted to use him for personal gain... so both sides of Dustin wanted to be on good terms with Ty.
"Ty, I can tell things are getting out of hand for you. Changing all of reality, multiple times no less, is a lot to keep track of. I can tell you didn't mean for some of these things to happen. I'm understanding the memories from the foster brother side of me through your fathers eyes and what I now know inherently about you. I forgive you for wanting to punish us. I'm sorry I treated you the way I did. I never thought of what I was doing to you."
"If I understand correctly there is a standing question of what I, want you, to do, to me. Leaving me as your foster brother seems out of the question because I was cruel to you. Being a Dad to you seemed like we were having fun but it must have been a little weird for you because here we are."
Ty looked up at Dustin who was smiling at him. "I... You... Just that we..." Ty gave up trying to explain how he felt and why he was doing this. He just felt it was the right thing to do. "How are you being so nice to me? I know that Dustin my brother wouldn't hesitate to attack me for what I did to him."
"We're being honest with each other right?"
"Yeah."
"You aren't going to turn me into an animal, monster, or person that I'd hate to be will you?"
"Not unless you give me reason to, no."
"I was angry with you Ty. You came into my life and I didn't get to say anything about it, my parents just did it. Then, for anything I wanted to do they made me take you along with me. I got interested in sports because you never seemed interested, weren't physically capable, and couldn't follow me onto the field. I was mean to you but it was our parents' fault not yours. I am able to keep calm despite my emotions because although I'm now 21, I am blessed with around 30 years of first hand management experience. Imagine that. In my experience, this is what we would call a fireside chat. In privacy me and someone else would just explain where we are coming from and say what do we do from here? Often the other person would just walk out because they had been abusing the system and couldn't get away with doing that any more. But sometimes people realized how they could change and wanted to stay. This process only worked with mutual respect and keeping emotions in check. That is what I'm doing. You aren't trying to fire me Ty, are you?"
Ty laughed at Dustin's joke, Dustin had an odd knack of addressing the issue but keeping the stress and intensity low.
Dustin continued, " As your brother I dreamed of being a star athlete, I was good at that and it was fun for me. From my new perspective I doubt I would have been able to keep up with the scholarship program. As your father, I had always wanted to make it big as a rockstar but being on the road touring isn't a good way to raise a family. Both of those things you could make happen but still, it would be pushing you away.
So really, your question isn't what I want from you, its more along the lines of, how can we work together in this. Am I right?"
Ty's dad was quite the problem solver, it was eerie how he was breaking Ty's private feelings apart and putting things together in a new way, without passing judgement.
"I guess so, I just don't know."
"So, really you created me to help you figure yourself out." Dustin lit up another cigarette and stared at it for a second. "Ty, are you God?"
Ty looked at Dustin and couldn't respond. Thinking back over the last two days he had created multiple realities, created things out of thin air, and completely altered several humans mentally and physically including himself. "I-I don't think so.", was all he could muster.
Dustin took a deep drag off the cigarette and continued, "I never liked cigarettes before yesterday, I think they are disgusting and putrid." He smiled, looked at Ty and took another drag. "But they are the most familiar thing I currently have in my life and I feel better when I'm smoking them. I have been smoking off and on for 30 years and its a tough habit to break. For me to help you figure out what to do, I need to know what you want to do. Then I can see if what you are doing is based off an opinion, a feeling, a habit, or sound reason."
Ty was at a loss, the question was too big. He wanted lots of things but the thoughts were all erratic in his brain. He wanted freedom from his family but he wanted a loving and supportive family. He wanted wild fun but also stability. He wanted to go out and try new things, have fun, but also...
"I just don't know. I want everything but nothing I can wish for."
At this Dustin raised his eyebrows, "Oh? You want real feelings to be shared. Not just them thinking its real, that's not enough for you. You need to have the experience of the relationship growing in order to be satisfied."
Dustin jerked back as if slapped by an invisible hand, "That's why you couldn't stand to have me as you father. We had been jerks to one another and me being your ideal dad felt like a lie." Ty noticed that Dustin almost seemed hurt by the realization though he wasn't sure if it was because Dustin was sad that he was a bad brother, not accepted as a father, or some weird mixture of both.
Dustin recollected himself, "So this tells us, you shouldn't be changing the roles of the people already in your life to bring them closer to you unless you change your memories to match theirs, which can also be dangerous."
Ty thought about it for a second and realized Dustin was right. He had made his uncaring foster brother into the most loving person in his life, OF COURSE he would have trouble adjusting to the role.
"But what should I do about you three? I absolutely hated the way I was treated and refuse to go back to it."
Dustin thought for a moment, "Mark is no longer controlling you, that doesn't really bring him closer to you. June is younger and obedient to me, that also doesn't directly change their relationship with you, so really, the only thing that needs to change is you and me."
Dustin looked up from the table with a scared look in his eyes "I really like existing Ty, please don't erase me."
For the first time, Ty could see how utterly terrified Dustin had been, probably since first realizing what Ty could do. Ty was hurt that Dustin suspected his destruction was something Ty wanted, "I don't want to erase you. I want you to be nice to me and look out for me. You were always a really big jerk and a problem in my life but it doesn't have to be that way. I just don't know what role you could play for me better than my Dad. But it's weird to have you as a father and you can't be a real person with three different realities playing out in your head. I think I can accept you being my father if you tell me that's what you want, otherwise we will need to find something else for you."