Chapter 1
Joe did not know what hit him. As he stumbled out of his office into the empty hallway, his skin turned pale, but, at the same time, a healthy, pink undertone returned to his cheeks. His handsome but understandably worn out through nearly half a century face did not lose any of its attractive, chiseled features. But his cheeks did get fuller somehow.
He did not know this, but his eyes looked a bit larger. His lips were larger. Not excessively large, he still had a set of normal, perfectly masculine lips. But they did turn pouty, pink and soft like the inside of a rose about to bloom. And glossy. Invitingly glossy. Kissable.
Joe thought he was losing his mind as he saw his own body changing. He looked his own hands over. The few wrinkles he did have were disappearing. The rough skin turned maybe not delicate, but pleasantly smooth.
He did not lose any of his impressive, yet, once again, not excessive height. But he began sinking in his own clothes. Even more so than he already had, always having worn rather loose shirts and pants, and not showing off his handsome, slim body. His skinny built did not strike anyone as odd when he was still middle-aged, but now...
"Oh, my god!" Joe yelped and immediately covered his own mouth with both hands.
He looked into the hallway mirror, the one that went from the floor all the way up to the ceiling. And he saw... A student. A college student, twenty-one years of age... A young man bearing a startling resemblance to him. Like his younger self, like he remembered himself, except... He wasn't THIS beautiful.
His hair wasn't this thick. Or this lustrous. His eyes didn't shine so bright. And they didn't look so wide. His eyelashes, oh my god, he actually had striking eyelashes now... But nothing compared to his lips. Goodness, his lips... If he had lips like this when he still was a college student, he would've bit them just to not have people stare at his face...
"H-how may I help-" Joe tried speaking to the beautiful youth, but the man mouthed his words back at him.
And he covered his mouth the same way Joe did at the sound coming from his own throat. The sound Joe ignored the first time around, distracted by what was...
"Oh, my god..." he whimpered, reaching out towards the younger man... Only for his fingers to meet the cool, reflective surface of the mirror.
His voice. Even his voice, his voice that was enough of a headache as it was, whiny and breathy... Deep enough to be outright masculine, but high enough to "warrant" certain... comments and... reactions. Reactions like-
"Oh, my goodness!" someone bumped into Joe.
A deep, manly voice. A voice Joe knew from one of his classes. The voice of a student whose eyes always lingered on Joe. Scanned him up and down, just one time, but it was enough to make Joe feel like he was being stripped naked right then and there, and he couldn't utter a single word of protest.
That tall, muscular yet graceful, objectively rather handsome young man did not speak to him. He only greeted Joe the few times they saw each other on campus, making Joe look up from the ground. And Joe had not spoken to him. Not really.
Only once, when Joe had dropped his fountain pen. The young man swooped in and handed him the pen before Joe knew it. Their hands touched, and Joe whispered "th-thank you...". But the younger man only gave him half a nod. And a closed-lipped smile. And then, he walked off.
"P-pardon me, I am here to speak to doctor Hills..." his eyes did look Joe up and down in confusion and surprise, but... they did not linger.
Tom Stones, because that was the student's name, headed straight for the door Joe had just walked out of. The door to which... he did not have the key anymore!
Joe began frantically searching his pockets. He did not notice when the backpack strap appeared on his shoulder. He pulled out his wallet... His ID. It was still his name, but the picture, the date... This WASN'T him! He WASN'T twenty-one years old, he was more than double that, what the-
"What the..." he heard Tom say as the young man took a step back from the door and leaned in to get a closer look at the nameplate.
Joe had always been a quiet, timid man. A man who avoided confrontations even when doing so cost him quite a lot. So he just "asked around" for a doctor, an employee with the same name as his own. And no one, NO ONE on campus had ever heard of him.
There were no records of his existence. No colleagues who remembered him. The few students he was supervising this year had a different advisor each now. Joe locked himself in the bathroom stall and hyperventilated... Wait! His phone. There were no numbers there. But he still remembered the number of his ex-wife. And both of his kids, both adults, now studying at a different college.
With a trembling hand, he punched in his ex-wife's number. One signal. Two signals. Three signals. Oh, god, this couldn't be happening...
"Hello?" her voice! This was her voice, thank goodness...
"H-hello... ma'am," Joe knew she would not recognize his voice now. "Is doctor Joe Hills available...?"
"No, my EX-husband must've given you the wrong number... Typical, that forgetful good-for-...! Oh, my apologies, what I meant to say is, this is the wrong number. I cannot help you get in contact with him," she said, and Joe's heart dropped at that first remark.
He'd heard it a multitude of times before. But it still hurt. She did not treat their kids like this, thank goodness, she was a surprisingly good mother... But he, apparently, was a fair game. He wasn't perfect, mind you, and he knew it. And he was working on it. Perhaps he wasn't getting better fast enough. But he never called his wife names. Or raised his voice at her. Unlike she had done to him.
"I-I see, thank you," he said, and she hung up.
So, whatever it was... It was limited only to this campus. He did find records of himself online, thank goodness... Not at this university, but his doctoral thesis was there, date and all... But that was all.
He took a deep breath as he approached the campus gate. Maybe this would fix everything. He took that one step. And nothing had changed.
Chapter 2
Joe's head was hanging down low, his eyes brimming with tears. He did not know where he was going to. He did not know what to do. No one would believe him. All of his stuff was gone. His apartment was most likely still there, but not his keys. And he had no way of proving he was actually the owner.
"What am I supposed to- UGH!" he was the one to walk into someone this time.
"My goodness, I'm so sorry, I should've watched where I was- Oh!" it was that man again.
Tom Stones was twenty-seven years old. Doing his second master's degree, and trying to get into a PhD program. He'd given up on the notion of dating for the time being, with the women he came across being either so unappealing to him that he did not want to waste his time on them, or still unappealing to him specifically but so good in their own right that he did not want to waste their time on himself.
He had no interest in men. He could see himself naked just fine, but other than that, the naked male form filled him with anywhere from mild to violent disgust. So he did not even take other males into consideration, regardless of their personality. Until he had encountered doctor Joe Hills, that is.
A tall, slim... No, not simply "slim". Svelte. A tall, svelte, middle-aged man... He looked to be in his early forties at the most. Well-dressed, but not overly so. A nice shirt, long pants, all of it loose. As if to hide the thin form Tom had the chance to witness the few times Joe stretched at the desk during a break.
He had nice hair. His eyes had a color so calming, and yet, so unique, Tom couldn't ever imagine forgetting it. His voice was simply to die for. But, most of all... Joe had a wonderful personality. You can't actually get to know someone just seeing them at their job two to four hours a week for half a year. But, whatever little you can tell from such a thing... Joe was boding better than anyone Tom had ever met.
Having passed this man's course, with an A+, Tom wanted to finally speak to him. He'd been intentionally avoiding opening his mouth, not to make things awkward. Or inappropriate. Or both. Apart from dropping off a few papers at his office, he did not want to approach doctor Hills. Not while this man was still supposed to be grading him.
This was supposed to be his day. With his schedule filled only with work and studying, his life was painless. But not exactly enjoyable. This was supposed to be the highlight of his week. Something he'd been looking forward to for the last six months...
Only to find someone else's name on the door to doctor Hills' office. And to be told that no one under the name "Joe Hills" was working not just at this department, but also at this university. No one under this name has ever worked at this university.
It was bizarre. No one, absolutely no one had any idea who Tom was talking about. Forty people took the same lecture, and twenty of them took the same tutorial sessions as he did. With this very man. A man who was rather unique, both when it came to his looks and his voice. And NO ONE remembered him?
Tom checked his report card from last semester. He did not recognize the name assigned to the course he took. It was clearly a female name, and Joe Hills was clearly not a woman. He tried asking around for that woman, but she did not work at this university "anymore".
He was confused. He would've concluded he was going crazy. But he still had a picture. A picture on his desk, in his apartment off the campus. He had gone there after his search, and brought it back, to ask a few of his fellow students in the evening. He did not expect to get much information out of this. In fact, he could as well start asking random people-
That's where he bumped into that man again. That stunning, breathtaking young man. The young man who reminded him of doctor Hills. But he wasn't doctor Hills. So Tom, despite the immediate interest, did not give him a second thought.
Hey. Wait a moment. Maybe doctor Hills was a few years older than he looked. Or, maybe, he had children young. Or both. And, if anyone were to know where doctor Hills was...
"S-sorry," the young man whimpered in a melodious, whiny, breathy voice as he put his head down and bit his lips.
"Excuse me, sir," something inside told Tom to soften his tone and speak gently to this young man.
"Y-yes?" the beautiful thing glanced up at him again, the five inches of difference of height between them making the youth look even daintier and cuter. His eyes looked so shiny...
"...have you seen this man, sir?" Tom asked quietly, pulling out the picture he took while trying to get notes from the blackboard at the end of the lecture. Doctor Joe Hills happened to walk into view at just the wrong (or, for Tom, right) moment.
"A-a-ah...!" Joe's eyes went wide as he stared down at the picture of himself.
It was him. Him, the real him. If only he could...
"Doctor Joe-" Tom said, a bit perplexed by the young man's reaction.
"Hills!" Joe whimpered. "Doctor Joe Hills, it's m-"
