But all that was retrospect and then, when he was in the middle of changing, he didn’t see it until the day he tried on every single pair of pants in his house, trying to find one that fit.

The first pair he could explain away as one of the guys fucking with him, switching his pants to make him think he’d grown or shrunk, either way, and when he finally went through most every pair of pants in the house, he was almost laughing at the elaborate nature of the joke. Almost laughing because he was really damning them under his breath.

His last pair of pants, though, couldn’t have been traded. They were his favorite pants, pants he’d kept since the middle of high school and only wore about once a year so they wouldn’t wear down. He hadn’t grown an inch since his sophomore year, and these pants had eventually conformed to his ass and thighs, hugging them like they were a second skin. That wasn’t the real reason he kept them around, though. All of his pants fit him perfectly because he had them made to fit him perfectly; he had no need for the sale racks anymore. But these pants he’d gotten with extra money from his first paycheck at that horrid little job at the bakery and he swore he’d always keep them, to remind himself.

He held them up, shook them out a little to get rid of wrinkles, and pulled them on. He kept his eyes closed as he snapped the button, not wanting to jinx anything, and slowly turned to the mirror at the back of his closet and opened his eyes.

“Fuck!” he said, and fell back against the wall.

The pants, his favorite pants, hit him right above the ankles, just like every other pair of pants he owned.

---

Joey stumbled in the direction of his front door, though he couldn’t really open his eyes enough to avoid smacking his hip into the table at the bottom of the stairs.

“Fuck!” he yelled as he rubbed his hip. “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

He fell against the door and propped himself against it as he fumbled with the locks and the chain and the security code on the little pad next to his front door. He was pretty sure that whoever was outside could hear him flipping all the locks, but the knocking never ceased.

“This better be good,” he mumbled as he flung open the door, and then, loudly, “What!?”

Chris stood on his front porch, clutching what looked like a pair of old jeans in one hand. “I want my pants back,” he growled, holding up the pair in his hand.

Joey fell against the doorjamb, his head in his hand and his eyes still mostly closed against the early morning glare. “What time is it?”

“1.”

Okay, early afternoon glare. “What do you want?”

“My pants! I want my pants!”

Joey peered out from between two of his fingers. “Your what? Where are they?”

“If I knew, I wouldn’t be interrupting your nap.”

“What are you wearing?”

Chris looked down at his clothing. “My swimsuit. It’s the only thing that fits.”

“Fits? What?”

“Are you going to let me in?”

Joey yawned. “Huh? Oh, sure.” He stepped back from the door and walked into his living room, knowing Chris would follow. He fell onto the nearest couch and shrugged when Chris continued past into the kitchen.

“Where’s your food?”

Joey wiggled further into the couch, mashing his face and shoulder against the back. “In there… somewhere.”

“I can’t find anything!”

Joey sighed and rolled over, staring at the ceiling. “Don’t you have food?”

“No.”

“Didn’t you just go shopping?”

“Yeah.”

“Where’d it all go?”

Chris appeared in the doorway with a spoon in one hand and a jar of crunchy peanut butter in the other. He shrugged. “I ate it.”

“All of it?”

“Well, I’m hungrier… or something. I just got hungry.”

“So you decided to come here.”

“Yeah.”

“When any number of places are open to serve you food.”

“Yeah.”

“Why, again?”

“Because I want my pants back.”

Joey threw his head back against the sofa pillow and groaned. “What pants?”

“My pants. All my pants. I know you fuckers took them and I was mad for a bit but then it was just funny. But I need my pants back now.”

“I don’t have your pants.”

“And I don’t know how you guys switched out my old pair,” he wiggled his arm, where the jeans were draped, as he spoke. “But that was pretty funny too. But I want them back.”

“I don’t have your pants.”

“You don’t?” Chris tried to say, but the second word came out on a squeak and then a deep rumble, and Chris stopped mid word to stare down at himself. “What was that?” He stared at Joey and Joey stared back and for a minute, neither of them spoke.

Joey broke the silence first. “How long have you been… hungry? Like, hungrier than normal?”

Chris shrugged.

“How long have your pants not fit?”

“Since this morning, when you fuckers stole them.”

Joey pulled himself slowly from the couch. “We didn’t steal them, Chris. C’mere.”

“What?”

But Joey didn’t wait; he walked over to Chris. “Stand up straight.”

Joey pushed Chris’s arms to his side and pulled him up so his back was straight. Normally, staring straight ahead, he had a perfect view of middle of Chris’s forehead, but this time he stared straight into Chris’s eyes.

“You’ve… grown.”

“Fuck you, I can’t grow. I’m thirty years old.”

“Okay, so you haven’t grown, and those are some thick ass platforms you’re wearing, because that’s really not the middle of your forehead, like it should be.”

“Yeah, well that’s not your nose, like it should be.”

“Chris?”

“I don’t know. I don’t… This is really fucking weird.”

“You’ve grown. Like, two inches.”

“Well, at least it explains the pants.”

Joey laughed and reached out to support himself on Chris before he stumbled. They still stood only two inches apart. “We need to call.”

“You get Lance and JC. I’ll call Justin.”

---

Justin stared at Chris in open-mouthed shock and JC reached out to solemnly pat him on the back. Lance had his cell phone out almost before Chris had finished his first sentence.

“So this is… what? Puberty?” Justin asked, staring at Chris like he’d grown… well… three inches in one month.

“Fuck you, Timberlake. I went through puberty.”

He caught Joey staring at him while JC studiously tried not to. Justin never stopped.

“Oh, fuck you all. So it was only a week’s worth, but I went through it.” He crossed his arms over his chest and pouted. Might have been more effective when Justin did it, but Chris couldn’t stop himself.

He could hear Lance murmuring into his cell phone and experienced a flash of annoyance that Lance wasn’t paying attention to him and his problems. “Who are you calling?” he muttered, poking Lance with his toe.

“My therapist,” Lance said. “Be quiet.”

“Be QUIET!?” Chris shrieked, his voice breaking and dipping over several octaves. “Be quiet!? I’m going through fucking PUBERTY fifteen years late and you’re calling your THERAPIST? For YOU?”

He experienced a moment’s satisfaction when Lance stopped talking and started staring, a perfect imitation of Justin’s open-mouthed shock on his face. He grabbed the phone and listened, for a few moments, as Dr. Dave continued on about changes and accepting people as they are and loving them for who they may grow to be.

“You try it,” he said, and snapped Lance’s phone shut. He handed it back to Lance and turned back to the others.

“We should probably call Johnny,” he said. Joey and JC nodded. Justin and Lance just stared.

---

Johnny required three phone calls and a house call from Chris before he believed anything they told him. Chris, by that point, had stolen a pair of pants from Joey’s closet so he didn’t have to wear his swimsuit anymore. Joey’s pants fit him perfectly- were actually a little short- where before his feet went swimming in the extra inches.

“I don’t want to say he cried,” Chris told Joey later. “But he did. Cried. A lot.”

Johnny cancelled everything for the next three months and had PR spread the rumor that Chris had run away to seek enlightenment in Tibet (“Dude, even the Dalai Lama isn’t allowed there anymore.”) or someplace friendlier, like Canada, but was unavailable for comments and photo ops.

“But what about the group?” Chris asked, his voice small and his posture deflated and he realized what a big, huge problem this was for everyone, not just for him.

Johnny sighed and ran his hand over his face, scrubbing at his eyes. “We’ll see. Let me know when your balls drop.”

Chris managed a weak smile. “You’ll be the first.”

---

So Chris moved in with Joey because his house had been staked out. The press, apparently, were eager for glimpses of the returning, newly-enlightened Chris Kirkpatrick. Chris didn’t think they’d settle for a slighter taller, less-enlightened version.

Joey had a Blues Clues growth chart against one wall in his kitchen, to chart Brianna’s growth. It only went to five feet, so Joey marked another foot and a half above it on the wall and started measuring Chris against it. Chris felt slightly stupid the first time Joey backed him up against the chart, and then the second time, but the third time, when he’d grown an inch and towered four feet and six inches over Brianna’s highest mark, he felt justified.

“Six feet,” Joey whispered.

Chris stepped away from the wall. “And one inch. I’m taller than Justin!”

“Six feet,” Joey said again.

Chris reached up and tapped on his head. “And one inch, fucker. Get it right.”

His eyes now met Joey’s forehead, and Joey had a nice view of his nose, and it was weird for a bit to have their positions reversed. Weird to have their smallest member their biggest so suddenly. But Chris still climbed all over him and Joey found that, because Chris was skinnier now that he’d stretched out, he could still pick up Chris over one shoulder and not hurt himself.

---

“Hey! Isn’t that…”

“Nah, he’s too tall.”

Chris smiled quietly to himself and kept walking. The perfect disguise, it seemed.

---

Joey thought that this should be the part where he confesses to a long-term crush on Chris, or the other way around. But he’d already done his confessing. Not to Chris, of course, but JC, who’s known him the longest and wouldn’t laugh quite as hard as Justin might and wouldn’t immediately call his therapist like Lance would.

JC had even offered to take Chris off of Joey’s hands, but Chris wouldn’t go to JC’s house because he didn’t want to “accidentally walk in on JC painting naked.”

Joey was folding the laundry one afternoon when JC called to check up on them.

“Nah, it’s a little weird, but nothing I can’t handle.”

Someone asked, “What’s a little weird?” behind him while JC said, “yeah” in a quiet and understanding tone. Joey didn’t talk to JC so much for his brilliant advise as for the fact that JC actually listened to what he had to say.

Joey turned to find Chris in the kitchen behind him. “You,” he said, tossing a clean pair of boxers at Chris’s head. They hit him in the neck, since his head wasn’t where it used to be.

“I’m not weird, I’m special.” Chris peeled them off his shirt and tossed them back.

“Well, you’re busy. I’ll call you later,” JC said.

Joey turned away from Chris. “Sorry. Yeah, C. I’ll catch you later.”

“You didn’t have to hang up.”

Joey shrugged and reached for another t-shirt. “S’ok. C wanted to paint some more anyway.”

“Oh eeeewww! Was he clothed?”

“Phone. You know the concept, you talk to people miles away and you can’t see them, but you can hear them just fine?”

“Smart ass fucker. Anyway. I bet he was naked.”

“Chris, I’m folding.”

“You can talk and fold.”

“Not if you want to talk about JC being naked.”

Chris dropped onto the sofa next to a pile of folded pants. “Oh! Hey! Look what I can do with my voice!” He paused a moment, drew several deep breaths, and then did a dead on impression of Lance’s porn voice, deep and vibrating and Joey shivered but hoped Chris didn’t notice. Chris’s voice had dropped a lot in the last month, so instead of Mighty Mouse, he was Mighty Mouse on steroids.

“Isn’t that cool?”

“Yeah, that’s great. What’s your singing voice sound like?”

Chris shrugged. “I haven’t tried it recently. It was cracking so much before.”

“Sing something.”

Three songs and many, many sets of scales later, Chris groaned into the couch. “A baritone? But we already HAVE a baritone! We don’t need two baritones!”

“We didn’t really need three tenors before. We’ll make do. I promise.”

“But how?”

“Does it matter? I’ll…” he faltered. “Um… we’ll always need you. Doesn’t matter what you sing.”

Joey offered a small, quivery smile and grabbed a stack of sheets and before Chris could say anything to stop him, he left the room.

Chris could have followed, of course, but he didn’t and Joey leaned against the wall outside the room and sighed.

---

Chris called Johnny because he promised he would, and Johnny made him sing over the phone.

“He cried again,” Chris told Joey. “It’s getting really strange.”

They got everyone together and Chris took Lance’s cell phone away so he couldn’t call his therapist and Justin stared in open-mouthed shock again but JC clapped his hands together and bounced.

“Two baritones!” he squealed. “We could do so many cool things with two baritones! And Justin and I can take the high lines and Joey can do the really high stuff in falsetto and Chris could do the baritone and Lance will do what he always did! It’ll be so cool!”

Justin clapped his hand over JC’s mouth. “Breath,” he said.

JC had to take several exaggerated breaths before Justin would let him go.

“Anyway,” Lance said. “How can this work?”

“Doesn’t matter. What are the alternatives, Lance?” Joey asked. “That we break up the group?”

Everyone stared at Lance and Chris silently gloated.

“No! No!” Lance held his hands up to ward off their stares and his eyes grew really big. “No! I didn’t mean…”

Chris decided to intervene. “It’s okay. We know. It could work, but we won’t know until we try.”

They hadn’t made it through one verse of Girlfriend before everyone started grinning. Chris knew it worked, would work, and almost sounded better than it had before. They piled together on the couch and called Johnny and Chris warned him not to cry because he was on speakerphone and they all sang again.

He laughed and he clapped but he didn’t cry until Chris picked up the phone to talk to him about faking Canadian enlightenment.

“Just… act short,” Johnny said, choking back tears. Chris nodded and tried not to laugh.

“Will do,” he said.

---

So they returned to their regularly scheduled lives and after a few weeks, no one really remembered when Chris was shorter, or when he sang in high, sweet tones, when he couldn’t do a Righteous Brothers impersonation with Lance.

Chris told himself he’d imposed enough on Joey. He was packing all his newly tailored clothes so he could move back into his house when he found, in the bottom of the bottom drawer of the dresser in Joey’s guest room, his favorite pair of jeans. They’d been lengthened with strips of leather sewn at intervals through out the leg and he tried them on, pulling them up over his longer legs and snapping them around his smaller waist.

They fit perfectly. The worn knee spot still hit his knees, the ends curled a little at the floor but he was barefoot so that was okay.

“I had Mandy work on them,” Joey said from the doorway.

Chris didn’t turn from the mirror for several moments. “They’re perfect,” he whispered. “Perfect.”

“I took the measurements from the wall, so I wasn’t sure if it’d turn out okay, but I guess it did.”

Chris reached down to rub his fingers over the leather and turned around to face Joey. “This is… God. This is going to sound cheesy. But you know how you said you’d always need me? And don’t lie to me, fucker, I know you said ‘I’ first.”

Joey didn’t say anything, just nodded.

“Well… I’ll always need you too. To do shit like this for me because you know no one else would ever think of it. And… because… well. Fuck. You know I’m gay, right?”

Joey nodded.

“I’ve loved you forever. Like, forever ever. And I didn’t think you’d ever…”

But Chris didn’t get to finish his sentence because Joey pushed away from the door, dove across the room, and kissed him.

“This is weird,” Joey said, pulling away a little after a few moments.

“What’s weird?”

“Kissing someone taller than me.”

“Watch what else I can do.” Chris spun Joey around and caught him against the wall, half onto the full-length mirror, and lifted him, just a bit, until his mouth was even with Chris’s again. “See? All better.”

“Mmmm…”

Chris kissed him again, humming and smiling and he could feel his voice resonating in his chest, against Joey’s. Joey kissed him back. Kissed him so much that Chris felt his limbs melting and reforming into Joey and he didn’t think he ever wanted to be separated again.