Not As I Do 6
by Flashpoint
“Ow!” Woodward clutched his wrapped forearm exactly 27 minutes after he and Matchen pulled away from Bruce's shop. It was throbbing, not surprising considering it had been done less than two hours ago, but it wasn’t at all like pain. It was just so alien that his mind could only activate the pain receptors of his brain to process the experience. What caught him by surprise was the sensory input he got. In his mind, for a split second, he had the sensation that he was the blip on the radar screen that the radar was searching for. There was no better way to describe it. It was like something out there was trying to find him. Weird. These things weren't supposed to do that kind of thing. Were they? He’d never had one before. But then, this wasn’t your typical one; who knew what it would do?
Matchen saw the movement as he swung the steering wheel around. “Leave that alone! You move that wrap and we’ll have blood all over this damn car! Do you want it to get infected?”
Woodward let his forearm go. “I’m not going to tear the damn thing off, dammit! It just hurt for a second is all.” Wait. It hurt for a second? It was at that moment that he realized that the pain was entirely gone. He was hardly an addict - yet - but he knew that couldn't be normal.
“I should fucking hope so! You only had the damn thing done...!” Before he could continue, however, his cell phone gave a very distinctive ring; it was a sound clip of a grizzly bear. Woodward, who hadn’t heard this particular ring before, started. “That would be Mack.”
“And you complain about mine!”
“That’s different,” Matchen said casually, flipping open the cell and completely ignoring the other man’s furious look. “Hi, baby.” His tone became all syrup and honey. Woodward felt nauseated. And a bit jealous. “What?” His tone shifted instantly; he'd just gone into the hyper-awareness a police officer goes into when he knows there's a perp with a gun right around the corner. He glanced at Woodward, who looked back with a curious look. “Yeah, of course he’s here. Why...? Oh crap. Tell me you’re kidding. Crap. When? You don’t know. Wait... how do you know? You weren’t there were you?” The last sentence was delivered with a definite tone of disapproval in case the wrong answer was given, making Woodward wonder even more what was going on. “Ah. Okay, that’s fine then. But if I ever find out you went to a place like that...” Whatever Mack’s response to this was, Woodward could hear his tone and volume abruptly increase enough that he could hear the buzzing from across the car. He was either lying through his teeth or trying to reassure his Daddy either one, and being rather vocal about it. “Okay, okay, I believe you. But remember what I said. We’ll take care of it. Okay, I’ll talk to you later. Yeah, me too." A pause. "I said me too.” There was a pause, and then, coloring in the face, he said, “I love you too.” He was almost hunching over trying to avoid Woodward’s amused look. “Talk to you later.” He clicked the phone off. “If you say one word...!”
Woodward went ahead and said the word. “Ha! He's got you by the...” he gave a slow, deliberate look down at Matchen's overpacked crotch, "balls!"
“Just couldn’t leave it alone, could you?” Matchen replied crossly. Stephen laughed, making the man even more irritable about it. “Well, laugh it up while you can ya brat, because we’ve got an even bigger mackerel to sauté. Guess who’s been at it again?”
Woodward’s laughter died instantly. “Oh no.”
“Oh yes. Ever been to a place called The Club?”
Without thinking, Steve said, "Yeah, lots of..." Matchen's face did not alter, but Woodward suddenly almost heard the distinct sound of the man's laughter. "I've heard of it." Then he added a couple of other things together... "Wait. Pete was at The Club? How do you know? Wait, what did he do?"
As he fumbled for more questions - he could only think of thirty or forty more - Matchen turned his attention back to the road. The car lurched forward as he leaned heavily on the gas. Ignoring the obvious sarcastic things he could say, he said, "Mack has a buddy, a former buddy" - Steve heard the subtext quite clearly; a former fuck buddy of Mack's that Matchen didn't like hearing about - "that works at the Club, Trent or something like that. Trent called Mack in a panic saying that things were 'getting weird there.' "
Steve reflected for just a moment that he should have been a firefighter instead of a police officer. It had nothing to do with not liking the enforcement of laws as a civil servant. It was because in dealing with Pete he’d been putting out fires all day long. Metaphorical fires of course, but that was neither here nor there. "You know, if nothing else I think we've successfully convinced that Miguel should forego the rule that his assistants all have tattoos. I think he's learned a little lesson." Mack, clearly unamused, said nothing. "And of course our ex-buddy-friend didn't bother to explain exactly what way things are 'weird.'" Too much to hope for.
"Only that he was having trouble moving around." Woodward blinked a couple of times, thinking unpleasantly of the implications of Matchen's statement. "Oh, yeah, and apparently he's got a bunch of freaked out customers there. I think the crying dwarf is my personal favorite." Woodward stared at him like he had suddenly sprouted tentacles. "Have you ever known me to exaggerate?" Woodward's face did not change.
"Asshole," Matchen muttered.
The sun wasn't quite setting when they pulled up in front of The Club, but from where Woodward was sitting things were already looking dark. The parking lot only had a handful of cars, very unusual for this time of day but not unheard of, but something gave him a feeling of tension in the air around the building, like he was aware of some sort of energy in the air. Matchen didn't seem to notice, but he did notice the change in Woodward's posture. Within a step, they became wary cats. Deadly wary cats as they eased 9mm's in their holsters almost as one.
Something was definitely wrong. There were peel marks on the parking lot exit, as though several cars had left at top speed. There was even evidence of a minor fender bender, but it must not have been severe enough to cripple either vehicle as they were gone except for various pieces of quarter panel. The outside speakers were devoid of their usual mindless thumping dance dreck, giving an eerie quiet on a street that was usually hopping with life. All this was nothing necessarily indicative of anything suspicious, but the front door frame deformed outward as though a giant had pressed each side made them glance at each other and draw their guns.
Woodward made a gesture to Matchen, who dropped and rolled across the entry landing on one knee, gun raised. Even though Woody rolled his eyes - Matchen could have just run around - it impressed him that despite how big Paul had become in various ways he'd retained the youthful energy of a rookie. It turned out there were some advantages to having magic change you with no permission. Woody just wished that Matchen wouldn't use every opportunity to show he can still drop and roll. It became quite annoying when they were just stopping somewhere for coffee. Their eyes met and as one they turned and pointed guns into the gaping maw of the broken door.
The frame was bent outward on both sides, making an almost perfect hexagon of broken steel and glass. The door itself was laying on the floor, having been crushed in the middle. The front desk looked like it had been pressed downward by a giant sledgehammer and the inner door was simply gone; the only thing that remained of it were the pieces of wood lodged into the deformed metal hinges.
After a moment of examining the scene, Woodward holstered his gun, followed a moment later by Matchen. "Well," Matchen said, "good to see things are normal here." There was only a small bit of sarcasm in his voice; he was more than half-serious. Woodward gave a tight nod, not really listening. Compared to some of the aftermath Pete had left behind this past summer at different times, this was mild. "I suppose we'd better see if anyone's still alive."
Woodward was so focused on the scene that he didn't consciously register the warmth in his forearm. It was not at all like the throbbing earlier. Without thinking he said, "There is. They're in the gym."
Matchen looked at him. "How do you know?"
Woodward, still not fully paying attention, opened his mouth to answer... and then slowly closed it, realizing the implications of what he'd said. He'd just known that there was someone in the gym. "Call it a lucky guess." Matchen nodded, but there was a suspicious look in his eye as they entered through the wreckage.
The interior of the Club was eerily quiet, not a soul in sight and background noise the only audible sounds. The anteroom had no damage, but practically every single thing not nailed down was thrown in one direction or another, another indicator of the implied exodus the parking lot had suggested. Woodward led the way to the gym but even as he did something made him look toward the sauna. The warmth in his forearm seemed to point the way there. He didn't know why, but he had the distinct feeling he was going to find something unpleasant there.
The continued silence seemed to make Matchen tense again, but Woodward couldn't make himself go into enforcer mode. He knew there were two of them, knew one of them was bigger than the other, knew they'd both been touched by Pete's power, knew one of them was heavily, almost entirely, changed by Pete, the other one only lightly and why only lightly. It was weird; it was like smelling the residue of smoke or some other thick smell that had only recented vacated the air.
And with every bit of insight he got, the tattoo danced in deep sympathy, a bizarre tango of magically connected psychically transmitted spirit and knowledge. He blinked; topically he was puzzled by this, but he was also, in a very deeply buried area, aware that he knew what he was experiencing and why. Wonderful, he thought, not entirely pleased to have a built-in searchlight permanently oriented to its nearest brother image, considering who happened to be carrying that brother image. This was going to make the talk that he had to have with Pete infinitely more difficult.
"Police," he said to the open door before they got there. He made a sharp gesture to Matchen to get him to relax his stance. Matchen gave him a look but automatically did it. His... years... of rigid police discipline were so deeply ingrained in him that he had almost a Marine-like obedience to a direct order. And it was almost Marine-like the way he came to rigid attention the second the scene inside came into view. The looks he and Woodward exchanged were mirror images of each other, and both said exactly the same thing. Oh, shit.
Steve Woodward, police officer, was registered on his personal records as being 7 foot, 3 inches tall. In reality he was nearer 7 foot 4 inches, but felt that the added inch would be excessively intimidating in a department where even the most arrogant men around him, many of them outranking officers, were cowed by his height, and Steve had always made a point of never trying to be alpha-male around the department even with subordinates. He'd grown like the proverbial weed since puberty, passing 6 foot 5 inches around age 25, getting his final growth spurt relatively late. At least that's what everyone else's revised memories of his life and career said.
Woodward hadn't had to look up into someone's eyes in a very long time.
It was almost comical the way his eyes met the sight directly in front of him, the bottom of an obscenely muscular sternum, and traveled up and up and up and up. The giant's eyes were at least a foot above his own eyes. It was definitely comical the way Woodward's mouth gaped open like a fish. Matchen, who took the sight right in stride, said rather dryly, "Jack, meet Beanstalk. Beanstalk, Jack." Woodward and the giant both gave him a droll look that slid right off his disingenuous expression.
Despite the other man's superior height, he looked much shorter than Woodward's own scale. But then, he was also a bulging mass of muscle as well, and the added breadth made him seem.. well, less high. He was the epitome of the musclebear, on a grossly exaggerated scale. His arms were such masses of muscle, his lats so beefy, that his arms were suspended out from his furry, rounded roid-like gut at nearly a 90-degree angle. His cannonball-like shoulders... well, capped... them off. His pecs jutted so far forward that they almost seemed like they could shelter someone under them from the rain. And being supported by redwood-size tree trunk thighs and calves big enough to be cows. Actually, furry was a pale word to describe him, although he wasn't as thick as a carpet. Dense runners of body hair ran strategically up and down his arms, across his chest, around the spherical expanse of his middle, and down his legs. He was not completely covered; it almost seemed sculpted the perfect ways in which the hair lay on his body. On his arms, not well hidden by the hair, he had several tattoos, on one forearm a Navy anchor resting on a heart, with a wraparound banner reading "While I Sail The Seas" on one half and "My Heart Rests With You" on the other; an abstract tribal knotwork design extending up the other forearm; a pair of traditional old school birds on either shoulder cap; and one right over his heart, a winged Valentine heart pierced by an arrow, with a large letter "T" boldly engraved across it. They did not look fresh, but Woodward knew instinctively that they had not been there that morning. Nor had this man been one of Bruce's, or any other tattoo artists', customers.
Despite this not really being his type, Woodward found himself becoming uncomfortably, and inappropriately, tumescent. "We got a call on a disturbance," he heard himself saying. This time the giant and Matchen were giving him the droll look. Well, despite it being a stupid thing to say, at least it proved that his police training was still ingrained.
The giant said, with no obvious sarcasm in his voice, "You mean Trent called Mack. Yeah, I know about that part. It's the last thing we got out of him before Garry had him wheeled out of here." Woodward did a small double-take and a half-glance at Matchen, who rolled his eyes and crossed his arms in a resigned sort of way. "Oh. Yeah. Shit. You don't know about that part yet, do you? Well, Trent couldn't move and Garry took him to this ware... house..." He trailed off, looking at both of their faces in turn and realizing that neither of them wanted to hear this particular part of the story. "Uh, right. Well, he was the, uh, big issue..." he winced at his own choice of words, "but we got a couple."
Woodward looked at him, looked at Matchen, looked at him, looked at Matchen again, then said to the giant "And who the hell are you?" All his training in interrogation and proper procedure went right out the window. It seemed appropriate in light of everything.
"Right. Shit. Sorry. I'm, uh..." he glanced toward the dark gym through the opening beyond him, "the new personal trainer."
Woodward was prepared to accept this at face value, except Matchen crossed his arms in a very familiar way, one that said (to those who knew him) 'I know you're lying.' "Bullshit," Matchen said bluntly. "Even if I hadn't been told what Taggart looks like, I'd know you ain't him. Name." The word was not short of command. It also said clearly that he had had quite enough.
The man raised himself to his full height, which was even more impressive, and said, "Darren Stevens." Matchen broke his serious expression by doing a double-take. "My parents liked Bewitched, okay?" His look challenged them to laugh at him, but neither of them quite knew what to say in response, so they simply blinked at each other a couple of times. Plus they really didn't feel like crossing a giant anyway. "Tag is in the back. He's... kind of upset right now." Woodward's posture changed slightly, and Darren hastily added, "Not because of all this. He's got some issues he's dealing with right now." He glanced at the dark gym again, a concerned look on his face. Very fatherly, in fact, as well as very loving.
Without missing a beat, Matchen asked, "When did Pete leave?"
"A couple of... hours..." Darren trailed off with a chagrined expression. "I take it you know Pete, then." He looked them both up and down and nodded. The signs were fairly obvious to anyone who knew first hand.
"I need a fire extinguisher," Woodward muttered, putting fingers to the bridge of his nose in a long-suffering expression, but only part of it was from sheer frustration. He was feeling a strong compulsion to go into the sauna and resisting was giving him the onset of a headache. At that moment, his cell phone chirped, indicating he had an incoming text message, but he reached down and hit the nearest button to silence it without looking at it. Suddenly he was aware the other two were staring at him for this non-sequitur, so he quickly added, "We've been dealing with Pete's... complications... a lot lately." Darren nodded slowly, his expression still puzzled. "We need to talk to the owner." He did not look forward to that conversation.
Darren let out an impressive breath - it was like a bellows - and said, "That would be Garry. I don't know when he's coming back and I don't have his cell either. But you need to see something else before you talk to him anyway." He was glancing at the wall next to the entrance the two of them had come in as he said those last words. Matchen looked at it but could see nothing unusual about it, except of course for the hole which had been obviously punched into it.
Woodward, however, needed no explanation. He had no idea where the words came from or even what they meant. "You mean the guys in the sauna." It was right beyond where Darren had glanced. The compulsion was stronger, the throbbing in his forearm almost a continuous buzz.
The other two blinked in surprise and asked almost as one, "How did you know that?" but by the time the third word had come out Woodward had left, almost running to the wet area.
It was only a few dozen feet across the deserted reception area, but it seemed to be a journey of miles for Woodward to make. He'd had to deal with several of Pete's "complications" over the past few months, but they'd never been too out of control. Many of Pete's recipients had come to like their abrupt changes, in fact. This time, however, he had the uncanny feeling that things had blown quite out of control. When he skidded to a halt only inches in the tiled area, he was unfortunately not disappointed.
All six men had drastically changed in the scant time since Pete had given his boon to the two men of his attention. When they’d gone in, they had been an average-height, average body hair chub in his late twenties with long hair and a taller lanky redhead. Now they were greatly mismatched. The redhead now towered over the others by at least two feet and was much thicker, but because of his new height he was height-weight proportionate. Also, his business-cut hair now curled around his shoulders freely and his somewhat darker reddish body hair had more than doubled in distribution and thickness. He had the look of a Scottish warrior of old, needing only a broadsword to complete the look.
His partner du jour hadn’t exactly had the same effect. Being the recipient of the redhead’s ministrations, he had indeed given it all. Eyes wide and horrified, he examined his new shrunken body. He’d wanted to lose weight, but this hadn’t been what he’d had in mind. He had lost over 200 pounds, but not just in excess flesh. A good portion of it had also been body mass. And height. And hair. His own scalp hair had been somewhat shaggy but not unmanageable. Now it was gone. Completely. A shiny dome now glared in the harsh lights of the outside room, and the rest of his body was just as smooth, including his eyebrows, eyelashes and even, if he’d wanted to check, his nose hair. At least the cilia in his lungs had been spared. He was no longer chubby, although nowhere near ripped. He hadn’t been happy with his weight and this, to his mind, was almost preferable. Almost. It was almost enough to make him ignore the fact that he was now a miniature human. Almost. He could not quite get over the fact that he was now under four feet tall, but so perfectly proportioned that without reference points it would impossible to tell his height simply by looking at a picture of him.
The other bystander pair had fared no differently, although the results were drastically different. The local musclehead who’d come in for a quick blowjob before going to meet his girlfriend – who couldn’t understand why he was never interested in sex and why he had so many other of his musclehead friends he hung out with – was running his hands over his emaciated body, too stunned to even react. Gone were the slabs of hard-earned muscle and heavy bones of a dedicated bodybuilder, leaving behind a shorter, gaunt waif that looked like he’d blow away in a stiff breeze. He could put his hand right around where his 19-inch biceps had been that morning and his chest had gone from nearly a D-cup to flat as a salt plain. His legs were sticks and his former bubble butt barely made a curve. Even his tan was gone! And he had already been shaved, but he would notice in a few days that the now-massive muscle giant next to him had also stolen his body hair.
The man in question had been a former high school wrestler who’d lost the competitive edge and the dedication to work out as hard as he had, but still kept a somewhat regular workout regimen, so while he hadn’t been ripped he’d still had serious muscle bulk hidden under a layer of fat. That had been before. Now he was swollen with so much muscle that he could barely move one leg to walk forward because of his immense thighs, and his arms were frozen at right angles to his torso because of the sheer size of his lats. He was ambling as fast as he could to the nearest mirror to see what had happened – typical musclehead behavior – but he was making little progress. He, unlike the others, could not examine himself, as his neck went in a straight line from beneath his ears to the caps of his cannonball shoulders, so wide with muscle that his still normal-sized head looked comically small and was frozen in place. He could not turn his head right or left or nod up and down. The best he could do was move his eyes, and they could not see much without him having to rotate his entire body. Even opening his jaw was arduous, although he could do it. He’d dreamed of muscle to this extent, but the reality was a bit more lurid than his fantasies.
But the pièce de résistance was the pair Pete had originally paid attention to, the ones he’d intended to benefit. The older daddy type had indeed given the boy orally servicing him all of his body hair – he was as smooth as glass from the top of his head to the bottom of his feet – but he had given more. Much more.
He had given his boy his maturity.
He had been until Pete’s arrival pushing the upper edge of his sixties, though he had kept in relatively good shape over the years. He’d never been anywhere near a bodybuilder, not even near a runner’s build, but he had had a naturally lean physique that had held up well against the ravages of time. But time had been taken away from him, or, more appropriately, been added to him. Nearly forty years had dropped away from him, giving him the youthful physiognomy of a twenty-something-year-old. In utter shock, he ran his hands over not his smooth, taut torso, but his unlined face, no longer showing decades of experience.
But the years that had fallen away from him had not simply landed on the young man. The former young man. The four decades of age, if directly applied, would have put him into his seventies himself, but an odd thing had happened in his case. Instead of simply adding to his age, a strange homogeneity had happened. His thirties and the added forty years had, instead of being additive, been strangely averaged. He had the look of a man of the world who had experienced life but was still young enough to know what being young felt like. Lines had added to his face but not deeply carved, and the signs of maturity showed on his body but not showing hard wear. He seemed to be the perfect age to be a daddy... and the other seemed to have become the perfect age to be a boy. They stared at each other, utterly taken aback at their altered circumstances, and then the now-younger man found himself wrapping his arms around the now-older man, seeking comfort. The now-older man put the now-younger man’s head on his shoulder and patted his back, whispering meaningless reassurances, but the look on his face was as utterly flabbergasted as the rest of the group as he stared past all of them toward the exit, seeming to look right past Woodward. He, like the rest of them, was terrified of what would happen once they left the safe walls of the Club and reentered the real world. Somehow, it seemed much more real, and harsh, than it ever had before.
"Oh, crap," Matchen said, stunned. Woodward hadn't even heard the two of them come up behind him. Darren's look was unsurprised but no less chagrined. "Oh, that little bastard has really done a number today! He has never given us so much shit at once as he has today!" Darren's eyebrows went into his hair. He obviously had no knowledge of Pete's history with the tattoo. Wisely, however, he kept his mouth shut for the moment.
Woodward closed his eyes, feeling distinctly like the world was falling around his ears. He'd been able to overlook the problems Pete had caused not just for the numerous innocent bystanders in the city he'd encountered over the past few months but for the department in general and him specifically. But now the buffer zone he'd had for that had eroded away, leaving nothing but a harsh, cracked desert of irritation.
Wow. Joe Metaphor.
He shook off the thought, feeling guilty and chagrined. Their meeting seemed less and less attractive with every passing moment. Just as he opened his mouth to respond, however - he had no idea what he was going to say - his cell phone chirped again with another reminder that he had a text message waiting. With an irritated growl he snatched it out of its holster and flipped it open, intending to erase it unread... and blinked. Instead of the name of the sender, it was a big flashing design. A certain Celtic design Woodward was only too familiar with. Almost without thinking about it, before he could make a conscious decision to avoid reading it, he hit "View Message."
It took two seconds to read the message and only three more to say, "Match, we need to get to Miguel's now!"