Ryan, My "Little" Brother (Rewrite) - Part 4

[tekuno]

This is a rewrite of BigBearMan94's original concept, done with his permission.

Original Story
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 4.5 | Part 5

This story is now complete. (Thanks for reading!) Each section ends with a link to the next section, but here are links to all the parts of the rewrite for handy navigation

Rewrite
One | Two | Three | Four | Five | Six | Seven | Eight | Nine | Ten | Eleven | Twelve | Thirteen | Epilogue

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Okay, here's Part 4. There's a lot more coming in this story; since the part numbers are determined by how fast I can write, I can't say how much more there will be, but I don't see any possibility that it will come to less than 7 parts, and probably more. (There is -- and has been all along -- a definite ending in mind, and a fixed general outline.) Part 5 is going to be a bit of a departure, for reasons which should be obvious when you finish this one.

Oh, incidentally, I'm basing Ryan's measurements on the first result I got when I did a search for "average height boys" (or something like that) the other day. If you think I'm not making Ryan big enough to be considered big, or have other objections, at least you know what I'm trying to compare him with.

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Ryan, My "Little" Brother
A Rewrite of BigBearMan94's Original Story (With Permission)
Part 4

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As I watched, Alex patted his shirt back into position, and as he approached the door, he deliberately started to slouch. By the time he came in, there was no way to be sure of his actual height at a glance. I was actually sort of impressed at his foresight; at least he had realized that I would pick up on some sort of change if he was noticeably taller. For someone who was leaving evidence of a massive protein intake around for anyone to see, that was actually quite smart.

"Alex, I'm home!"

There is a sing-song tone of voice which you only use at those times of your life when you're talking to someone with whom you're angry, but who does not yet know this. I employed it now.

"Oh, Ry-an? Could you come here for a minute?"

Ryan shuffled into the kitchen, looking scared but defiant.

"Sit down, Ryan. And please sit up straight this time." Ryan sat. "I just found the most interesting letter. It's from a doctor in Sweden, and he says he sent Dad a bottle of artificial aging pills. And here you are, suddenly bigger and growing peach fuzz on your upper lip." Ryan's hand shot to his face, and he gave a guilty grin. "Care to tell me something, Champ?"

"I just wanted to get big and strong like you so I could help out. I'm sorry!" Ryan's voice, now that he was emotional, was actually starting to break.

"Ryan, I don't know where to start!"

"I'm sorry! Don't be mad!"

"I'm not mad. Well, okay, I'm mad. But you're still my little brother and I love you." I had an inspiration. "Do you remember two years ago, when you threw your frisbee onto the roof and I climbed up on the roof to get it back for you?"

"Yes?"

"Do you remember what Dad did?"

Ryan sniggered. "He saw you stand up, lose your balance, and almost fall off the roof, and then he yelled at you for an hour. And then you were grounded for a week."

"Four days, actually. Now, do you remember why he was mad?"

"Well, yeah. He was worried about you, because you did something really stupid and... almost... died..."

"Ah, I see light is dawning."

"Aw, come on, this isn't dangerous! I'm healthy! I only took three doses, and I'm bigger and stronger than anyone else my age!"

"And what IS 'your age' now?"

"Huh?"

"You've been artificially aged, according to this letter. You're not really an 11-year-old any more, or at least not a normal one."

"I should be about 13."

"Oh?"

"I DID read the instructions, you know. Every dose is supposed to be six months. My last birthday was 8 months ago."

"Great." I took a deep breath. I wanted to take Ryan and shake him, or yell at him, but this was not a time when getting angry would help. "That's exactly what I was concerned about, how old you are. I'm not worried about your safety AT ALL. Are you freaking nuts?!

"First off, even if this stuff is working exactly as advertised, you just cut your own life short by a year and a half. That may not seem like a big deal, but wouldn't you have liked to have had Dad around for another year and a half, if you had the choice?" Ryan looked startled, and his eyes started to water. "You shouldn't be in such a hurry to get older, in the first place.

"I know you want to help out, but the motivation doesn't change the fact that what you're doing is insanely risky, even if it works.

"Moreover, we don't know if there are side effects or not. According to this letter, these pills are a big experiment to see whether or not the doctor is right about how they work. For all we know, they'll make your heart explode after the fifth dose, or kill your liver off, or something horrible like that. We don't even know what's in them! If you had some sort of medical emergency, what could we even tell the doctors at the hospital? That you're an 11-year-old on an unknown experimental drug? How would they even start to fix any problems without even knowing what kind of random stuff you've been taking?

"And that reminds me: that doctor is expecting you to send back data about the results of the pills. Are you even prepared to do that? If you aren't, you're hurting the doctor and possibly setting back his research in... whatever he's trying to find out.

"How did you even find out about this guy, anyway?"

Ryan had decided to trade full compliance for forgiveness; good. "I was in the basement when Dad was working last time, and he told me about it. It's in the magazine that was on top of his desk. I just wrote off and pretended to be Dad, and said I had a child who was a willing test subject. I wrote the letter the day you were cleaning out the bedroom, and then mailed it off when we went grocery shopping."

"And the pills obviously came last Friday, when you brought in the mail, because you haven't taken it in any other day, ever. Geez! Ryan, I know you want to help out, and I love you, but that was incredibly, intensely stupid! There are so many things which can go wrong as a result of this, I can't even begin to tell you..."

Ryan was looking really upset, so I stopped. "Aw, I'm sorry, Champ. I know you didn't mean any harm." I pulled Ryan up out of his chair -- he was a lot heavier than a few days ago -- and gave him another hug. "Bring me the bottle of pills, and I'll write a letter to the doctor explaining what happened, and asking for advice, and send it back to him. And if we're lucky that will be all."

Ryan shuffled off to his bedroom and came back with a large white plastic bottle, the kind vitamin tablets come in when you buy them in large quantities. The bottle had no seal or label. Inside the bottle there were a lot of tan two-piece gel capsules. I sealed the bottle up, and set it aside.

"Okay, Ryan, you can stop looking like you think I'm going to rip your throat out. It's upsetting that you did this, but kids do dumb things sometimes. You just happened to pick something really dangerous. If you really want to help me out, next time just start cleaning up after yourself. I'm spending way too much time cleaning up your messes. Just cleaning up after your protein shakes would be a step up."

"Okay, Alex."

"Now, sit up straight. In fact, take off those stinky sweats. I want to see what those pills did to you."

Ryan was suddenly happy, eager to show me the changes in his body. He stood up and stripped off the sweats. As I had suspected, he had basketball shorts on underneath the sweatpants. He must have been putting the sweats on when he came home each day. After, of course, he was all sweaty, as the smell proved.

"When we're done here, those are either going to be washed or burned. Yuck!"

Ryan grinned again. Clearly he was reassured because I wasn't throwing a fit. Good. It was taking a lot of self-control not to do just that.

The new and improved Ryan was an impressive sight. I had to remind myself that he was, in theory at least, 13. At 13, even after a couple of years of exercising, I hadn't been in as good shape as Ryan now was.

As mentioned, his stomach had become a well-defined six-pack -- the best one I've ever seen on anyone below the age of 16, really, and I've been exposed to fitness fanatics since I was 11. His pecs weren't developed like mine, but they were clearly visible in outline and sticking out just slightly, and his arms were probably a little over 14 inches. Just for a moment, I felt a pang of jealousy -- I had to work for years for my body, and Ryan gets to do a few workouts and suddenly he's Mr. Junior Bodybuilder. But this was not the time.

Combined with his good looks, he was definitely going to be a heartbreaker when he went back to school. He was still clearly a boy, but you could see what he was going to be in another year or two.

"Well, the stuff has definitely been effective."

"Yeah! I feel great! And I'm getting really, really strong! The instructions said that whatever you do during the three days after you take the pills determines how you age, so I've been lifting weights and jogging and playing basketball. Let me show you how strong I am!"

Ryan ran off down the stairs to the basement, and I followed. By the time I caught up, Ryan had put 200 pounds on the bar over the bench, and was getting underneath it. I hastened over to spot, but he pressed the weight with only minor difficulty. I was very impressed.

"Gah! This is too light! I can do more!" Ryan sat up and slapped another pair of 25-pound plates on the ends of the bar. Then he got under the bar. This time, he didn't quite make it, and I caught the bar for him.

"Okay, Ryan, that's good enough. But have you really been pressing this kind of weight while I was gone?"

Ryan was proud. "Yep! Well, okay, I only did 200 once yesterday, because it was so heavy."

"I saw. Remember how I said you needed to clean up after yourself? It's not good for the equipment for you to leave the weights on the bar. And, I might add, leaving the plates loose on the floor is asking for someone to trip and break their neck."

"Sorry, Alex. But look at this!"

With that, he grabbed a pair of 30-pound dumbbells and cranked out a series of hammer curls.

"Very impressive."

"I can actually handle 50 for one rep!" He got a dreamy look. "Actually, that was yesterday, I can probably do more now! Let me try!"

I stopped him. "I believe you, Ryan. No need to show me."

"And I'm getting really tall!"

"You sure are. Let's measure."

The gap between the previous mark and the new one on the column we used for Ryan's height was very significant. Ryan must have been curled up like a spring when he had been slouching; no wonder he had been hiding from me in his room!

"Four feet, eleven inches. Looks like you're still a little bit below average, if you're really supposed to be 13." Ryan was about to object, but I stopped him again. "Aw, don't worry about it, Champ. I was short at that age, myself, and every guy in our family has been tall when they grew up. You'll probably grow like a weed before long. Just be patient for once."

I also insisted on weighing him. He came in at a hefty -- for a 13-year old, let alone an 11-year-old -- 115 pounds, give or take a bit because he was constantly flexing at me and the scale reading bounced around.

"Okay, okay, you're a young Hercules. Very impressive. Now, let's have some dinner, and then I'll write that letter and pack up the pills."

Dinner was a lot more cheerful than it had been for the previous week. Now that he wasn't afraid of being punished, Ryan was full of a week's worth of talk. A lot of it was about how good he was getting at basketball. He was also very proud of looking so good while playing without a shirt.

I was torn three ways. Mainly, I was seething with anger which I was careful not to express. Ryan was my brother, my only family, he knew what it was like to lose a family member, and he had treated his own life like it was nothing. Maybe I should have been frightened, but mainly I was angry. I was even angry that I couldn't really even yell at Ryan, unless I wanted to alienate him just when -- even if he didn't realize it -- he needed a sympathetic family member the most.

I was also happy, though -- Ryan was opening up to me again. I hadn't realized how lonely I was until he had started disappearing all the time. Even if he had put on a huge amount of weight and height, he was still a little boy inside, a fact which was proved by the way he wandered off after dinner to play Pokemon again.

And finally, there was a mixture of hope and relief as I wrote a letter to accompany the pills, pushed a lump of cotton gauze padding from the first aid kit in the top of the bottle to keep them from rattling too much while in transit, put them in a box, put the box under my bed for the night, and forced myself to sleep.

In the morning, I took the box with me to the gym -- not that I didn't trust Ryan, but I checked to make sure the pills were still there. They were. I spent two hours taking out my frustrations on the weights. In some ways, it was probably the best arm workout I had had in months; I was so angry I actually raised the amount of weight I was lifting by 5 or 10 pounds on most exercises, and only noticed afterwards when the aches set in. When I got home, I was running a little late, but I had an extra protein shake and a full dose of all my post-workout supplements to make sure those heavy lifts wouldn't go to waste. As I drove off to the office, I reflected that it would be amusing if Ryan's transformation ended up motivating me into extra growth.

Work was once again horribly boring. I ended up playing receptionist for a few hours, which made me a prime flirting target, and in the afternoon my boss' boss made me his own personal gopher, apparently under the impression that having a big muscular guy as his personal slave would make him look better to the visiting clients. By this time, I was getting pretty proficient at reading facial expressions, and I am glad to say that the only thing it brought on were negative comparisons between my body and his.

On my lunch break, I went and shipped off the pills and the letter. Job done!

I came home tired but satisfied. Everything was back on track. I came in through the back door, looked in the fridge to decide what to make for dinner, noted with disgust that Ryan had once again made himself protein in the blender and left the mess for me to clean up, and took off the shirt I wore for work.

It was then that I heard a groan from the general direction of the bedrooms. Before I could even move, my mind conjured up a worst-case scenario: Ryan had had some kind of reaction to those drugs, and he had been dying slowly on his bedroom floor since the morning. I ran faster through the house than I had ever done while jogging and pounded on Ryan's door, yelling "Ryan, are you okay?"

Just then, I saw through the open bathroom door another unlabeled white bottle like the one I had just mailed off. It was lying on its side, with the cap next to it. At the same moment, Ryan's voice, much deeper than it had been before, moaned out "It feels ssssoooo gooooood!"

Part 5