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A Jock & Nerd Out Of Water [Part Two]
🕑 Added 2022-11-29 22:01:57 +0000 UTCMake sure you read part one first. A PDF featuring both parts one and two is attached below!
When Nick caught sight of somebody walking down the street on their own in the middle of the night, he could never have predicted that it would be the quarterback of his college’s football team. Earlier that evening, the British nerd had been struck by a sudden case of homesickness and his solution was to go for a late night drive and play some of his favorite chill vibe songs through the vehicle’s sound system. After turning the street corner, Nick was quick to identify that the lone pedestrian had a particularly spectacular behind, with his glutes filling out the back of his jeans nicely.
Then the pedestrian had turned to look in his direction and Nick had immediately identified him as not just one of his classmates but the certified superstar of their college campus. Nick had heard about Logan almost as soon as he’d arrived in the college town and not even from other students but the cashier at the local grocery store! Apparently Logan was all but guaranteed to end up as a first round pick in the NFL draft and even though the Brit’s knowledge of American football was incredibly slim (for obvious reasons), he knew enough to infer that it was high praise.
Although they ran in completely different social spheres and had never so much as said a word to each other, Nick had watched Logan from a distance whenever they were in one of the classes they shared together. The quarterback defied all of his expectations of how an All-American jock might behave as he was actually rather attentive in the classes and seemed to be one of the only jocks actually taking notes as the lecturers taught. Nick had also seen flashes of confusion over the other boy’s face at times and despite wanting to offer his help, the Brit had never been able to work up the courage until they crossed paths on that quiet street. He had half expected Logan to laugh and brush him off but to his great delight, that hadn’t happened.
Unfortunately what actually did end up happening was actually much worse, as just a few short minutes later the vehicle had spun out of control and they had ended up making a hard collision with a sturdy oak tree.
The very last thing Nick had expected to see when he finally pried his eyes open was his own face but there it was, eyes closed and slumped over the wheel of the car along with the rest of his slender body. Nick could do little other than stare as he attempted to comprehend how he could possibly be witnessing such a sight - was he dead? Had his spirit left his body and this would be the last thing he saw before disappearing off to whatever afterlife would be greeting him? That didn’t seem to be right though because he could very clearly still feel his heart beating in his chest! If that wasn’t it then what? He was definitely missing something; a puzzle piece refusing to manifest until…
Logan! Remembering that he hadn’t been driving on his own, Nick craned his neck to the right only to find himself looking out the window at the dark street. This forced him to acknowledge the fact that he was sitting in the front passenger seat, but that couldn’t possibly be right, could it? After all, Logan had been sitting there while Nick had been in front of the wheel, so if he was now in the passenger seat then… He was in Logan’s body, wasn’t he?!
Glancing down at his lap was enough to confirm that this bizarre notion was true, because the meaty thighs that he saw below him were definitely not the ones that he was used to seeing. No, these legs appeared to be packed with strong muscle and the jeans he was wearing were wrapped tightly around the thick quads, as well as a quite prominent bulge. Before he could get too distracted though, a stirring to his left pulled Nick’s attention back to his original body and his heart began to race as he anticipated how the superstar jock would react to the fact that he’d switched bodies with a British nerd without an athletic bone in his body. Oh god, I bet this is his version of Hell!
“Hey, so… please don’t freak out,” Nick began, flinching in response to the unfamiliar American drawl that spoke his words. “This is weird for me too but we… Well, it looks like we switched bodies.” In total honesty, the Brit was actually surprised by how calm he himself was remaining. Anybody would be forgiven for having a complete mental breakdown under such impossible (or apparently not so impossible) circumstances but somehow Nick was managing to keep his relative cool.
The same could not be said for the other college student who had begun to hyperventilate the moment that he’d locked eyes with - well, himself. “Shit, shit, shit,” the transplant student cursed under his breath, recognising the first signs of an asthma attack. He’d suffered from them his whole life, although they’d been fewer and further between since his sixteenth birthday. Despite their rarity, Nick wasn’t stupid enough to go anywhere without an inhaler and so he was able to fish one out of the glove compartment and thrust it into the other boy’s hands in a manner of moments.
Nick could only watch as Logan brought the medicinal dispenser up to his mouth and pushed down on the top of the canister. The Brit felt confident in his guess that it was the first that Logan had ever had to use an inhaler - after all, wouldn’t playing American football be rather difficult with such a condition? As if he didn’t feel bad for the other guy already, Nick now had another reason to feel even worse! He knew that was silly - it wasn’t like he’d willingly stolen Logan’s body or anything - but he’d always been the sensitive type and felt immense guilt for things that were out of his control. This was no different, in fact it was unarguably the most out of control things had ever been in Nick’s entire life!
As soon as the other’s breathing eased, Nick let out a sigh of relief. “Sorry about that, asthma’s a bitch,” he remarked lamely, offering an apologetic look as the other boy met his eyes once more. “And, uh, welcome to Freaky Friday I guess?” Of all the reactions Nick had been anticipating Logan to have, laughter was hardly near the top of the list. Within moments though the laughter had turned hysterical, to the extent that there were tears brewing in the other’s eyes. “Hey, hey! Do you wanna have another asthma attack? Chill out, man!”
“I’m dead, right?” Logan asked as soon as his hysterical laughter had died down. “We hit that tree and died, didn’t we?” As the first tear rolled down onto his cheek, the body-swapped quarterback hastily wiped it away with the back of his hand.
“I… don’t think we are,” Nick replied, shifting uncomfortably in the passenger seat. Just as I said: this is his version of Hell. Even though he’d known it was coming, it stung to have it all but confirmed out loud. “That shooting star we saw right before the crash,” he recalled, hoping to quell his anxieties through some good old investigation work. “That was unusual, right? Could that have caused this?”
“You think a shooting star caused us to switch bodies?” Logan retorted, disbelief coating the British accent that he was speaking in. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Do you?” Nick fired back. “That’s my voice you’re using right now, you can’t deny that! I know the idea of body swapping sounds crazy but it quite clearly happened, so let’s throw out everything we thought was impossible and look at this with an open mind, shall we?” As he spoke, his volume rose and an icy edge formed in his voice. That was unlike Nick for more than just the American accent he was forced to use; he was rarely the type to let his temper flare and yet if there was ever a situation that called for it, this was that situation!
Turning away from the other college student, Nick gingerly removed himself from the passenger seat and circled the vehicle to get a look at the damage caused by their collision. “It’s not so bad. I think it should still run. Turn it on, will you?” he suggested, keeping his attention focused on the left hand side of the car, where the impact with the tree had been the most severe. The indicator was broken and part of the front was crumpled but it wasn’t nearly as bad as it could have been. Logan turned the key and the engine roared to life, providing another shred of relief for the pair. Guess I should be thankful for small mercies, Nick thought to himself as he climbed back into the car. “Can you drive?” Logan nodded. “Good. We should talk somewhere that isn’t the middle of the street. We’re lucky nobody came out and phoned emergency services.”
“Are you in a dorm? We really shouldn’t go to the frat house,” Logan replied as he put the car into reverse, backing out into the road. “If anybody’s there, they’ll try and drag you away the moment we get through the door.”
“Good point. Okay, do you know where Mathison Hall is? That’s where my dorm is,” Nick replied, finally beginning to feel the aches and pains that came from a vehicular collision, even one as mercifully light as theirs had been. Logan was perhaps beginning to feel it too, as they undertook the drive in complete silence. Questions and theories raced around Nick’s mind during the journey but absolutely no answers began to form. How could they? He was so unbelievably out of his depth! The mental distress was almost as bothersome as the physical pains Nick was suffering from and the grimace on the other’s face (his face) suggested that he was experiencing much the same.
Even once they were back in the relative safety of Nick’s dorm room, the unease that had populated his brain refused to subside. While he had remained calm and resolute in the immediate aftermath of the swap, that was finally beginning to wear off as the reality of the situation sunk in. He was trapped in the body of the college quarterback, who was not only the most popular guy on campus but would also be expected to show up at football training come Monday. That meant they only had two days to work out how the hell they were going to swap back because Nick was one-thousand percent certain that if he was to go to training in Logan’s place, he’d be exposed immediately and that was the last thing they wanted. They’d end up locked in a crazy house for their supposed shared delusion or in the unlikely chance that anybody believed them, they would become the centerpieces in some unethical science experiment! No, they couldn’t let anybody else know. They would have to work this out themselves.
“Where the hell do we even start?” Logan exclaimed, dropping down onto the bed and immediately throwing himself onto his back. “Do we just google ‘real body swaps’ or something?” The frustration was evident in his tone and Nick couldn’t exactly blame him either. The other boy had definitely got the short end of the stick in this exchange. Call it self-deprecating but Nick firmly believed there was very little to celebrate about his looks and his body, whereas the limited exposure he’d had to Logan’s body suggested that the jock could easily make a fortune doing underwear modeling!
Don’t think about Logan in his underwear, that path can only lead to severe distraction, Nick reprimanded himself. He was supposed to be focused on the issue at hand, not mentally undressing the body he was currently trapped in. After letting out a heavy sigh, the body-swapped nerd shrugged his new broad shoulders. “What else can we do?” he countered, sitting himself at his desk and opening up his laptop while he spoke. “It might be a needle in a haystack kinda situation but it’s better than nothing, right?” As he waited for his web browser to load up, Nick fired a suggestion back at his counterpart: “Hey, why don’t you look into body swap movies and stuff? See how they swapped back, maybe one of them was onto something?”
“Seriously? We’re gonna rely on trashy B-movies for our solution?” the jock asked in exasperation, shaking his head softly. “Fuck it, I guess it’s something.” Following that, the pair researched in silence for almost an hour, only breaking that silence to share their disbelief at how many people online actually seemed excited by the prospect of switching bodies. “I feel like commenting to say all they need to do is get in a car crash might give bad optics,” Logan joked, laughing grimly to himself as he navigated to the next relevant webpage.
Initially Nick wasn’t having much luck either but on the thirty-seventh page of his Google search, he finally came across something that seemed promising enough for a more thorough inspection. “Hey, come look at this,” he called over his shoulder, scrolling back up the page to allow Logan to see the site’s banner. “Madame Cavanaugh. She’s apparently some witch for hire who can help remove curses and hexes,” he explained, slowly clicking through the website’s various pages. “Look, there’s even customer reviews! Here’s one: Finally got my junk back after my ex cursed me for cheating. Cost an arm and a leg (not literally) but so worth it to get my prized goods back! Blimey, that sounds rough.”
“She could totally be faking all those reviews,” Logan pointed out, his brow creased with concern. “But if she’s not…” He sighed and shook his head. “Where’s she based?”
After clicking through a few more pages, Nick had his answer. “We’ve lucked out! She’s only in Foxboro. That’s what, an hour from here?” Although he knew that it was potentially foolish to give into the hope that was building inside of him, the Brit also knew that it was potentially as good of an avenue for them to explore as they were going to get.
“Maybe forty-five minutes if you put your foot down,” Logan replied, managing to smile for the first time since their unfortunate collision and the resulting swap. “Let’s hope she does night calls, shall we?”
The drive from the college campus over to Foxboro was spent mostly in uncomfortable silence. Aside from the extraordinary situation that they had been forced into, the two young men were still technically strangers who weren’t just from different countries but may as well have been from different worlds. As he glanced into the rearview mirror and caught sight of Logan’s handsome face looking back at him, Nick felt completely fraudulent. It simply wasn’t right for him to be occupying the other’s muscular body and to possess such good looks - he was supposed to be skinny and awkward, as much as he loathed both of those things.
Mercifully they arrived at their destination in just under an hour, although both individuals were rather complexed as they took in the sight before them. Their drive had taken them onto an easily missed back road that led through a heavily wooded area and at the end of that road was a single building, modern in its architectural style with large white and silver panels reaching varying heights. In Nick’s humble opinion it was ugly as hell but if the so-called witch inside was able to help them then he’d be more than happy to forgive the bizarre aesthetic of the building’s exterior.
Upon leaving the battered vehicle, the pair stood at the tall black door in apprehension for a few moments as if waiting for the other to make the first move. Unsurprisingly it was Logan that summed up the courage first and he pounded on the door with his fist a few times, perhaps more aggressively than Nick himself would have done. What a pair we probably look like: the passive jock and the aggressive nerd. After no more than three seconds, the door swung open and a long hallway was revealed, at the end of which Nick could see an open doorway from which light was pouring out of.
“Who opened the door?” Logan whispered as he led the way inside, checking the back of the door in the process to confirm that there were no visible electronics that might explain its sudden opening. “Whatever. That’s not exactly the strangest thing I’ve seen tonight. Just… be careful.”
The pair apprehensively progressed down the corridor until they were a few steps away slightly ajar door, when a voice called out to them from beyond: “Come right in, boys. I’ve been expecting you.” Although the distinctively female voice was pleasant in its tone, a shiver of fear rippled down Nick’s spine in response. He’d never seriously considered that there might actually be such a thing as magic but given what was happening to him and Logan, he was very quickly being forced into believing. That opened up a whole host of terrifying possibilities though and walking right into the den of a self-proclaimed witch suddenly didn’t seem like the safest option. Hadn’t he learned anything from Hansel & Gretel?
Following Logan through the doorway, Nick was immediately caught by surprise at both the room’s decor and its lone occupant. On the topic of the former, there was a sharp contrast to the modern exterior of the building, so much so that it was rather jarring. The room they now stood in was a windowless old-fashioned office with large fully-stacked bookcases, a bronze chandelier hanging from a high ceiling and a large mahogany desk at the center of it all. Behind that desk sat a dark-skinned woman with shimmering silver hair pulled back into a high ponytail and eyes as blue as the morning sky. The corners of her red lips were pulled up into a slight smirk as she waved them towards the two unoccupied chairs across from here. “Please, make yourselves comfortable,” she welcomed, her voice filled with warmth. Despite this, there was still something lingering under the surface of the words that left Nick’s skin crawling. “I am Madame Cavanaugh, although you were perhaps observant enough to work that out yourselves,” she continued, her smirk growing wider. “Now, would you like to tell me what brings you to my door at such a late hour?”
“If you’re magic, why don’t you tell us?” Logan retorted before Nick could so much as open his mouth. Working with a hothead here I guess… just great! To his great relief, Madame Cavanaugh didn’t appear to be put out by the slightly aggressive tone of the other’s voice - well, Nick’s voice that Logan was currently using. This is all so confusing!
“The cliffnotes version is that we saw a shooting star, our car got into a fight with a tree and then we woke up in each other’s bodies,” Nick explained, unconsciously squeezing his hands into fists at his sides. “We were hoping you would be able to switch us back. Right now, preferably.”
“Whatever the cost,” Logan chimed in, less combative this time. Despite that, Nick still winced. He wasn’t exactly rolling in money and the reviews on the website had suggested that Madame Cavanaugh’s assistance came at a steep price. If they were going to be expected to pay several thousands of dollars (or even more) then he was severely hoping that Logan had enough in the bank to cover it because Nick sure as hell didn’t!
“Both of you hold out a hand,” the witch instructed, “Palms up.” Nick immediately did as requested, with Logan following just a second later. The boys watched in curiosity as Madame Cavanaugh ran a finger across each of their palms and closed her eyes. She continued to trace the lines on their palms for almost a full minute before she sighed and opened her eyes once more. “Well, it’s as I expected. This is cosmic magic and that isn’t so easily undone. In fact, unraveling a spell like this is beyond me - or anyone on this continent, possibly anyone alive.” As she continued her explanation, emergency sirens blared in Nick’s mind. Was she really telling them that they were stuck that way?
“There’s gotta be someone,” Logan pushed, his breathing starting to get heavy again.
Madame Cavanaugh smiled, a small twinkle in her eyes. “Each of you has the ability to unweave yourselves from this spell,” she explained, “The fix must be internal rather than external which is why I can’t help you. What I can do is tell you what you need in order to safely find your ways back into your true bodies.”
“What is it?” Nick urged, nervously glancing over towards his own body. He was both eager to get back into the more familiar form and concerned that Logan might be on the edge of another asthma attack. “We’ll do anything!”
Their clear desperation prompted Madame Cavanaugh to chuckle, leaving them in suspense for several seconds. “Oh, it’s an old classic. Should be simple enough if you put both your heads and hearts to good use,” she declared, now wearing a delighted smile as she imparted her final piece of advice upon them: “This can all be solved with True Love’s Kiss…”
