The boys found the shower stall crowded but not impossible; they had to help each other soap up though. After a moment or two in their together, they thought they really understood the phrase, 'elbow room.'

It felt very strange, being so close to another naked person. And experiencing skin on wet skin felt novel and exciting in a strange way. They tried hard not to think of that. It didn't work completely. But it failed in a very odd way. They became aware of each others bodies in a way they had never noticed another living person's actual person before. It wasn't a comfortable knowledge, exactly.

Both boys were thin to the point of skinniness with weedy arms and bony shoulders. They didn't quite have their full height yet, either. Willie was about average for his age, Dick a little under even though nearly a month older; he'd already turned fifteen. So they were both ten or fifteen pounds underweight for their height and age.

Narrow chests and hips, only their legs had any real muscle on them and that not overmuch. They seemed poised in that borderland between the androgyny of childhood and the burgeoning of secondary sex characteristics that is adolescence.

But without balls, would they even have an adolescence? Their situation restrained them, just exactly why they were where they were; they needed help to find out just what had happened to them and the first possible help they found turned out to have some very strange demands.

But none of that really explained the images that went through their minds.

Dick kept wondering what Willie would look like in a sailor fuku. Not that there was anything particularly feminine about Willie, except, well except that he had no balls. Still, Willie had a cute face with chubby cheeks and a turned up nose. Maybe a nurse uniform, Dick mused.

For Willie's part, he imagined Dick with a bit more -- up top. And maybe a pink bow in his black hair. A little gold bikini and some suntan oil, that would look really cute with Dick's skin tone. The image disturbed Willie even while it intrigued him. Sadly, Dick had no balls but he had no breasts, either.

Neither had ever thought of his friend that way before showering together. It was surreal, psychedelic, boggling, to have such thoughts -- even before they got to the shaving part.

Neither had much experience with shaving, though they had tried it on their faces. Shaving other places seemed -- grown-up but kinky.

They decided that each would shave his own armpits and groin but that they would shave each other's legs. They fetched razors, turned off the water and soaped up places to shave.

Willie had a bit of chest hair and after some internal debate, he shaved that too, fairly sure that Phil had ordered them to be smooth all over. While he shaved his pits and chest, Dick squatted down to shave Willie's legs, noting that they were shapely enough to look good below a skirt and trying very hard to pretend he wasn't thinking such things. But wouldn't they look even better in a cute pair of high heels?

It didn't take long and they soon switched places, Dick beginning on his own pits while Willie shaved his legs for him. Dick shaved his chest too, though it would have been more time efficient to pluck out the six or seven isolated hairs growing in their off center patch to the right of his breastbone.

Willie noted with some chagrin that while Dick had very little upper body muscle, his legs looked firm and nicely sculpted. In fact, they were the loveliest pair of legs he'd ever been so close to in his life. They were also the only pair of legs he'd ever been so close to. Nice legs were the second best thing about a girl, almost better than big breasts, Willie decided, knowing full well that his friend was not a girl. Still.

Shaving their groinal areas proved the most difficult job. For one thing, they couldn't see down there easily. For another, this caused them to confront their loss. The sacks that should have held family jewels seemed flat and shrunken and impoverished and both boys felt some paranoia about whether or not his namesake had not also shrunk.

Seeing what they were doing was a real problem but they hadn't gone so far into -- whatever had got them this far -- as for either to ask the other to do the shaving for him. They each did their own and that they didn't do themselves any injury is perhaps due to the extreme care they took in what was essentially a blind operation.

It took so long that Philomena called through the door. "I don't hear any water running in there. I'm going to shut it off in two minutes." She didn't sound threatening exactly, more like she enjoyed, the power, whatever, she had over the boys.

"We're almost done," Dick called back. "We just need to rinse and dry off."

"Yeah," said Willie, his voice breaking upward. "We'll be right out."

Their voices sounded odd, tense, out of tune. Philomena smiled, looking around the inside of her closet wondering what stuff of hers would fit them and just how she would manage to get them to wear it.

 
[next: Magic Words]