Kingsbury Harbor, ch. 9: Give and Take (Patreon)

“It isn’t stealing; not really.  And besides...none of this,” the man said, gesturing around the crowded, oak-paneled interior of the Harbor Inn, “actually exists anyway.  We’re just figments in a confused cloud of cosmic dust that hasn’t got the brains to realize the universe died ages ago.”  

Chad just blinked at the thin, ragged stranger.  He hadn’t initiated conversation or even looked at the man as he’d waited for Hazel to refill his glasses, and for the first time in his young life the boisterous blonde truly had nothing to say.  “Uh, yeah, that’s cool, man,” he finally stammered, rolling his eyes at the squat, fiery-haired woman behind the bar as he wedged the quartet of pint glasses between his large, meaty hands.  “I don’t know what any of that meant, but maybe slow it down? It’s still early, big guy.”

“Big guy?”  The man looked down at his slight, thin frame and back up at the towering wall of muscle next to him.  Chad not only stood a full head taller, the young blonde’s broad, solid shoulders were also nearly twice as wide.  The man threw back his head in a loud, manic laugh that died out when he fell forward against the bar and rubbed his stubble-covered face.  “Now THAT would be an interesting time,” he said, more to himself than anyone else.  He ran a hand through his salt and pepper hair and shook his head, sighing.  “No, no, see, I don’t keep what I take.  I redistribute it.  Make adjustments.  Balance or imbalance...whatever fancy takes me at the time.  That’s what makes it so frustrating when...” 

“Hey, friend, you gonna order anymore drinks or are you just takin’ up space at my bar?”  Hazel interrupted the man’s rambling and shot Chad a glance that now was his chance to escape.  The young man took it, knowing full well that Hazel had the situation under control.  There was a reason the Harbor Inn didn’t need a bouncer, and the young jock had learned the hard way not to mess with the compact powerhouse.  

The crowd at this hour was mostly fishermen and shop owners who’d closed up for the night.  Chad nodded at the familiar faces and tried to avoid making eye contact with those he didn’t recognize as he wound his way back to his three friends.  He wasn’t in the mood to put on a show for tourists and he wasn’t looking to get laid just yet.  “Someone else gets the drinks next time,” he said, letting out a slow breath as he set the glasses down.  

“Who’s your new friend?” Shayne asked, nodding back towards the bar.  The stocky young bulldog downed half his glass in a single gulp, following with a loud belch.  

“Classy,” Chad said, laughing at the proud look on his shorter friend’s face.  “Fuck if I know...dude just started talking to me while I was waiting.  He’s gotta be blasted...he was rambling about the universe being dead or something...some real crazy shit.”

Shayne raised an eyebrow, his thick, hairy forearm flexing as he rubbed his wide jaw.  He didn’t make any attempts at subtlety as he looked at the man’s ratty trenchcoat and disheveled appearance.  “Haven’t seen him around...doesn’t look like a tourist, though.  You think he came in on someone’s boat?”  

The stocky man winced when a heavy hand reached over and tousled his shaggy mop of chestnut hair.  “The fuck kinda question is that?”  Marco asked.  His position across the table from Chad was appropriate as the handsome pair were reflections of each other.  Where Chad was smooth, tanned and blonde, with a cocky, boy-next-door grin, Marco had an olive complexion and short, jet-black hair that covered his chiseled frame in a wiry dusting, along with brooding features that seemed dark and mysterious by comparison.  “What?  Someone found him floating out on the water?”  

“No, I mean someone could’a brought him up from Boston,” Shayne said, trying to pull his head away from Marco’s annoyingly long arm.  

While his friends stared at the stranger, Tucker just shrugged and sipped his beer.  The lean young man’s wiry, defined build looked tiny compared to his burly friends, even the shorter Shayne, his buzzed scalp and wolfish features accentuating his sharp, angular appearance.  “Makes more sense than someone drifting in,” he said, adjusting the black-rimmed glasses that rest on his prominent nose.  “That’s a lotta highway and forest to walk through.”  

Marco finally relented and pulled his hand away from Shayne’s messy hair.  “Could’a hitched.”  

“Don’t care how he got here, I just hope he doesn’t stick around.  Town’s weird enough.”  Chad looked over at the trio of sculpted, scantily clad men surveying the room to illustrate his point.  He’d been just as surprised as everyone else by Clay, Duncan and Seth’s new looks and attitudes.  While it provided more opportunities for him and his friends to pick up where the former ladies men had left off, it was a jarring transition.   Chad had talked to a couple guys at the gym who’d taken the trio up on their new outlook, and while they’d raved about the things those three could do with their mouths, he wasn’t hard up enough to take the plunge himself.  He’d messed around with Eric before, just about every guy in town knew the Siren, but that was enough for him.  

“That’s not very polite.”  

Chad started at the stranger’s voice and whirled on his stool, confused to find the man still sitting at the bar with his back turned.  

“Jesus...you okay, man?”  Shayne asked, surprised by Chad’s sudden burst of motion.  

The strapping blonde nodded and took a drink.  “Did any of you hear that?  I could’a swore someone was talking right behind me…”

“Ohhh, someone’s rattled,” Tucker laughed.  “Your boyfriend at the bar creep you out?”  

Chad’s muscled arm flexed as he clenched his pint glass and glared at his friend.  “Fuck off.  I just thought I heard something, that’s all.”  

“Jumpy, jumpy,” Marco grinned, shaking his head.  “I thought Kingsbury men were supposed to be harder to spook than that?”  

Chad held up a hand in surrender, having no interest in arguing.  “Alright, fine, whatever.  Can we please talk about anything else?”  He was relieved when Shayne piped up about his day on the water, talking about their haul and how good the fishing had been lately.  It was a common refrain for the burly little hunk who was never happier than when his furry chest was exposed to the sun and salty air on the open sea, but Chad was just happy to get the attention away from the man at the bar.  

“They can’t hear me.  No one else can.”  Chad jumped and spun on his stool again, a wave of dizziness nearly pulling him to the ground.  He thought he’d turned in his seat.  He could remember the sensation of motion, and he was looking back at the bar, but at the same time he could see and hear his friends as if he was still facing them.  The dueling points of view stabbed a nauseating spike of pain in his forehead as the athletic young man reeled.  “I told you...none of this is real.  The trick is in how we perceive it.  You see me sitting at the bar, yes?  Or am I over here?”  

Chad felt like he was falling as he looked at the man who was now sitting at the bar and simultaneously standing at the far end.  He could still see his friends, too, and hear his own voice happily engaging in their mundane conversation.  “How...did...did you put something in my drink?” he croaked, his voice coming out as a slurred, garbled mess as his overloaded brain struggled to find the proper mouth.  

The version of the stranger facing him from the far end of the bar looked disappointed.  “You really don’t get it, do you?  How could I put something in your drink when there is no drink?”  

“Who are…” Chad trailed off, his heart racing as he desperately tried to wrestle some semblance of control over his body.  Since turning in his seat and what appeared to be out of his very body, the muscled young man couldn’t quite find a way to get himself back in.  “What do you want?” 

“Nothing.”  The stranger shrugged and slowly paced down the length of the bar.  “I’m just building castles in the sand until the tide washes everything away.  Such a wonderful little town you have here...do you know how far your port stretches?”  Before Chad could answer, the stranger stopped behind a pair of men seated at the bar.  One was broad and brawny, with the thickly coiled muscles of a man who spent hours hauling nets and lines.  His arms were massive, crowding out a much smaller, slightly built man to his left and brushing against a fellow bruiser to his right.  Never taking his eyes off Chad, the stranger reached out and brushed a hand against one of the seated man’s hulking arms, his slight touch popping the muscle like a balloon.  

Or at least that’s how Chad’s addled brain perceived it.  One moment the man’s horseshoe triceps and bulging biceps strained against his t-shirt, and the next he had a pair of slender, shapeless arms that looked freakishly small hanging off his broad shoulders.  “What...what did you just…”  Chad broke off in a gasp when the stranger touched the smaller man to the left, his once-small arms ballooning with stolen muscle.  The warped pistons looked comically large compared to the man’s overall thin proportions, but neither of the altered duo acted as if anything had changed.  

“You needn’t look so shocked,” the stranger said, his pale face twisting with a slight grin.  “You see a horrifying alteration, but it’s all a matter of perception.  Did I change them?  Or did I change the filter through which the world perceives them?  Is there even any difference?”  The stranger made his way closer through the crowd, pausing at a group of men Chad recognized from the docks.  He knew Gus, the weathered, heavyset captain, but he didn’t know either of the scrappy young men that flanked him, just that they worked the older man’s boat.  

Though “older” was quickly becoming an inappropriate description.  At the strangers touch, Chad watched Gus’s thick frame quiver, the weathered skin becoming noticeably softer as the grey fur coating his meaty arms began to darken, the changes spreading up to take his silver hair to a deep, chocolate brown.  Wrinkles faded and smoothed and stubble receded until Gus’s rugged features had been replaced by a youthful baby face.  A similar transition had been taking place from the neck down, with the brawny man’s body dwindling and pulling inward until he was lithe and toned, going from a man in his mid-fifties to someone who looked barely old enough to drink in a matter of seconds.  

With Gus’s transformation complete, the stranger cocked his head and looked back and forth between the two young men on either side.  “Why not both?” he said to himself, reaching out and putting a hand on each of their shoulders.  

Chad wanted to scream as he watched the changes play out in reverse.  Both of the once-young men immediately began to balloon with muscle, their smooth skin taking on a hint of their former captain’s weathered texture.  Their hair became peppered with grey and their clothes strained around their expanding frames as they took on the shared weight of stolen decades.  The changes split between them, they each appeared to stop short of Gus’s age, topping out in what looked to be their early forties.  

“You...you can’t do that to them…” Chad stammered, not sure if he was about to start laughing or crying.  “You can’t just bump someone twenty years down the road!”  

“Age?  You think age is any more real than…” the stranger gave an exasperated sigh as he closed the distance to Chad’s table.  “Did you ever wonder why Gus always had such virile young men working his boat instead of a more experienced crew?  Now those two share that desire, just as he so enjoys the company of older men.”  

Chad couldn’t believe what he was seeing as he watched the now-young Gus bat his doe eyes at the rugged men on either side who’d suddenly become twice his age.  He’d heard the rumors about what the old man really got up to on his boat, and what he was really paying his crew for, but he’d never thought they were true until now.  

“I can trade much more than your husks, you know.  It’s actually more interesting to shift around what’s in here,” the stranger said, running a hand through the oblivious Shayne’s shaggy hair.  Chad didn’t know if he’d turned in his seat, or if his strange new vantage had simply shifted, but he gave an angry growl when he saw the man touching his friend.  

“Leave them alone,” he barked.  “I swear to god if you so much as…” 

“Don’t get me started on god,” the stranger interrupted, rolling his eyes.  “Now, let’s take your friend as an example.”  He began swirling a finger through Shayne’s hair, a glowing cloud forming at the tip of the slender digit.  “Ooof,” the stranger wrinkled his nose and gave a short laugh, “a bit rough around the edges, isn’t he?  A real man’s man.  But what happens if we swap that out with, say, this one.”  Chad could only stare as the stranger reached out in the opposite direction and began swirling his other hand through a flirting blonde’s long, silken mane, a similar cloud starting to form.  He’d been watching the scantily clad woman throw herself at the man next to her all night, adjusting her tube top and mini skirt to show off both of her prominent assets.  

Chad knew that was about to change as the glowing clouds swapped colors.  Instantly, Shayne’s body language softened, his wide, man-spread legs coming together as he hopped off the stool and leaned against the table, sticking his plump rear out and putting his arm flirtatiously over Marco’s.  As Shayne seemed to quickly settle into his new role, Chad watched the changes continue, a punch of bright red lipstick forming on his friend’s mouth as a mask of excessive makeup seeped out of the other man’s pores.  Even their clothes swapped, with Shayne’s straining t-shirt pulling up to reveal his hairy abs and bulging pecs as it settled into a tight tube top, while his jeans vanished altogether, his hairy cheeks hanging out the bottom of a too-short skirt while a prominent whale-tail escaped from the top.  Behind him, the woman had gone from eager and flirty to entirely disinterested, her attitude matching her bland outfit of fitted jeans and a plain t-shirt.  

“See?  Physically, he’s exactly the same.  Mentally, well, you can see that for yourself.”  The stranger sounded almost proud as he motioned down to the obvious lump in the front of Shayne’s new skirt as the stocky hunk threw himself at Marco.  “But now we have an imbalance...easy enough to correct.”  

Without another word, the stranger reached out and touched both Marco as well as the man with the suddenly-disinterested partner at the table next to them.  The changes weren’t nearly as dramatic, but Chad could tell they were more than just mental as he watched Marco’s sculpted body begin to expand.  The man at the table next to them wasn’t overweight, but he had a body that was thick and beefy, not cut and sculpted like Marco’s gym-built bulk.  But as the dark-haired young man’s expression changed from one of annoyance to one of eagerness, his body followed suit.  Chiseled pecs puffed outwards, tight abs ballooned into a prominent muscle gut, and sturdy thighs became tree trunks while Marco’s sculpted arms became meaty logs.  His handsome face filled out and his neck disappeared between the mountainous shoulders, but instead of looking horrified, the now-burly man grinned from ear to ear as he slung an arm around Shayne’s exposed waist and gripped the stocky man’s ample rear.  Next to them, the tomboy blonde slammed back her beer while the now-chiseled adonis with her laughed, no longer a potential couple but a pair of friends out for drinks.  

“No..no no no...please…” Chad moaned when the stranger turned his attention towards him.  

“I thought by now you’d understand,” the stranger said, his grin falling flat.  “This is always what happens when I try and explain myself.  It’s such a simple concept, but none, NONE of you, can ever grasp it.  I might as well be talking to a…” 

Chad didn’t like how the stranger’s grin returned as he walked away.  The terrified blonde couldn’t move like before, his attention stuck on Shayne’s hairy, stocky body as it spilled out of his revealing new outfit while the inflated Marco pawed at him.  He wanted to beg Tucker for help, but he was a passenger in his own body, helpless to do anything other than wait for the stranger’s return and whatever stolen life he would bring with him.  

When it happened, Chad barely had time to register the stranger’s touch before his world shifted.  If the stranger said anything to him he didn’t hear it, or at least he didn’t understand the words as the conversations around him became incomprehensible.  There was a sudden rush of air as his clothes vanished and he fell from the stool, landing on the worn floorboards in a naked heap.  Looking at his exposed, chiseled frame, Chad felt relieved without knowing why that nothing looked different.  There was a part of him that thought of the kneepads and bulky mitts on his hands, as well as the black jockstrap and padded collar, as strange, but he knew he had to wear them when Tucker took him for a walk.  

Just thinking about the lean man sent a thrill through him that made him wiggle his hips excitedly, the silicone tail sticking out of his hole vibrating pleasantly as it bounced against the ground.  He fought the urge to throw himself at the other man when Tucker reached down and absently scratched at his blonde hair, knowing that good boys needed to wait until they were home to do that. 

“You ready to go, big guy?  I think Marco and Shayne are ready for some alone time.”  Chad only vaguely understood what Tucker said, but he beamed up at his friend and nodded excitedly.  From his kneeling vantage point he could see that Shayne’s stocky cock had escaped from his skimpy thong and was snaking along a hairy thigh beneath the skin tight skirt.  An equally obvious lump was visible in Marco’s straining denim, but why Chad thought of it as thicker and shorter was confusing.  

The confusion only lasted as long as it took for Tucker to stand and tug on his leash.  Adam scurried along as best he could on all fours while they headed for the door, only stopping to stare at the unfamiliar man with Hazel behind the bar.  He was a burly redhead, just like she was, and Chad felt a stab or horror at the sudden memory of a dog named Red that Hazel always brought to work with her.  

“Hey, come on, stud, you can play with Red next time.”  

Tucker’s tone dripped with condescension, but it was music to Chad’s ears.  He gave one last look around the room, grinning back at all the people smiling down at him, especially the pale, disheveled man that gave his solid rear a quick pat as he passed the bar.