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“I still do not think this is wise of us to do,” Zane whispered as they stood in the kitchen. “The tea’s properties vary based on a number of factors…”
“Aw come on. I was an octopus last time and it was awesome. I wanna see if I can find the one that makes me fly. That looked fun.” Jay looked over at Zane. “Plus, you know they don’t have an effect on you, so you have no risk of anything happening.
Zane sighed at that, taking the tea kettle off of the burner on the stove before it could whistle. His sensors indicated that it was hot enough to steep tea in at this point. “Still…I wish you wouldn’t do things like this.”
He frowned as Jay took the kettle and popped the lid off before dumping a few scoops of the tea they’d chosen at random inside. “Like what?” Jay asked curiously, putting the lid back on.
“You don’t think this is at all dangerous?” Zane hummed, crossing his arms over his chest. He realized that answering Jay’s question with another question was considered rude, but he didn’t really have an answer for Jay. The other man was intelligent for sure, but he kept doing stupid things as of late. Just that morning, he’d accidentally zapped himself by shooting off lightning while standing in a puddle of water. It hadn’t affected him like it would had it been anyone else, but it still left new Lichtenberg scars up and down his extremities that Zane had to treat.
“If you’re so worried, why don’t you just take a sip with me,” Jay huffed, pushing Zane’s shoulder playfully. “It can’t be poison, otherwise Wu would have labeled it with one of those skull stickers he has lying around in the shop.
“Did it occur to you that perhaps he forgot to label it,” Zane raised an eyebrow.
“Nahhh,” Jay waved a hand, “Wu’s too much of a worrywart to do that.” He reached up into the cabinets above the countertops and pulled out two teacups. “Now, am I going to have to drink this myself or are you going to join me?” Jay gave Zane a cheesy smile.
Around the time they’d gotten him back from Chen’s island, when he’d come back to life as they put it, Zane noticed his feelings for the shortest ninja had changed. At first he’d thought it was a kind of brotherly love; affection for the man he fought beside daily, but as the days rolled on, he found himself thinking of Jay often.
Jay had put him on the worktable in the garage when they’d gotten back to the monastery. He was determined to discover if Zane’s new body had any sort of damage done to it in the events following the Tournament, and to make a blueprint plan in case anything ever did get damaged. It wasn’t the first time Jay had his hands all up in Zane’s chest cavity, but it was the first time the act felt almost…intimate. To bare one’s body to another in that way - the very gears and circuit boards that made Zane himself... He felt extremely vulnerable, but he trusted Jay fully. Jay’s hands were small and soft, always careful in their ministrations, even when he got frustrated. He was gentle with Zane, like he was something to be treasured, and Zane was starting to appreciate Jay in ways he hadn’t before.
But maybe that trust and affection had been misplaced.
Zane huffed, but took the teacup that was offered to him once Jay was done pouring the tea. “I just want it on the record that I think this is a bad idea…”
“Your concern is noted. Now c’mon!” Jay knocked back his tea like it was a shot. He wasn’t one for the taste, preferring coffee or energy drinks that Zane believed tasted like battery acid.
Zane took a tentative sip of his own cup, figuring if Jay was going to get sick from this, maybe he could analyze the makeup and create an antidote before it was too late. He’d tried scanning for the tea in his database, but his search yielded no results. Even Pixal couldn't find anything on it, which wasn’t entirely surprising. Wu had been around for a long time and some of the tea he possessed was made from extinct plants.
As his body went to work on the tea, analyzing its chemical makeup, Zane studied Jay for any signs he was going into anaphylactic shock or about to keel over and die.
The shorter man just smacked his lips and looked down at his now-empty cup. “Am I floating now? WAIT, NO!” He whisper-yelled. “I WANT SUPER SPEED! Could you imagine all the things I could do with super speed?! And it totally fits my element. If Cole gets super strength, I should get super speed.” Jay set his cup in the sink. “Hold on lemme try,” he said, before jumping up and down a few times and running across the kitchen on socked feet.
He didn’t make it more than a couple of steps before his socks slipped on the floor and he went tumbling to the ground with a thud.
“Jay!” Zane called out, coming over hastily to his friend’s side. “Are you alright?”
Jay just huffed as he maneuvered himself into a sitting position on the floor. He looked disappointed. “I guess that one’s a dud…”
Something pinged across Zane’s interface and Pixal read the diagnostic. “It doesn’t appear that there is anything special about the tea you both ingested,” she said. “Perhaps it was just normal green tea. Would you like me to run further tests?”
Yes, he sent back. But, looking at Jay who got to his feet using one of the drawers as a crutch, he didn’t think there was any cause for alarm. If it hadn’t affected him yet, it probably wouldn’t a few hours from now.
Zane sighed in relief. They’d gotten lucky. Jay’s recklessness was going to be the death of him one day, but it wouldn’t be tonight. “Okay, Jay, we truly should go to sleep now,” he urged.
“Yeah,” Jay pouted but agreed. “I really wanted some cool powers…”
“You can shoot lightning out of your hands,” Zane reminded him softly.
“It’s not the saaaame.”
Jay woke to a blaring alarm. He reached over to his nightstand and tried to whack his alarm clock to get it to shut up, but his hand hit empty air. He pawed around for a little bit in a futile attempt to find the source of the noise, but when he just succeeded in knocking something to the floor, he groaned and rolled over, opening his eyes.
He immediately froze. Instead of his usual vision, he saw a heads up display, analyzing his surroundings with pinpoint precision. The alarm stopped once he opened his eyes, and in the corner of his vision, a tiny image of Pixal appeared.
She smiled kindly. “Good morning, Zane. I hope you-”
“I’m not Zane,” Jay managed to squeak out in a voice that was not his own. His mind was struggling to fit the pieces together of just why exactly he was seeing what he was seeing. And why was he in Zane’s room?!
Pixal’s expression turned confused. “Would you prefer me to call you the Titanium Ninja?”
At that, Jay’s sleepy brain finally processed what on earth was going on, and he jumped out of bed and ran for the mirror Zane had on the back of his door. What he saw just confirmed it.
Zane was staring back at him…or rather Zane’s body was. Jay waved his arms up and down, testing the reflection, but Zane’s body moved with his own.
He was dreaming. He had to be dreaming… Unless…
“Is something wrong?” Pixal asked, concern in her voice.
“Pix…I’m not Zane,” Jay said again, hearing Zane’s voice come out of his mouth. “I think…the tea from last night…”
“I’m not quite sure I follow. Remember, the diagnostic said it was normal tea.”
The gears were still turning in Jay’s head - he supposed literally now. If he was here in Zane’s room, and he was in Zane’s body…
Then was Zane in…?
He bolted for the door, sliding it open so hard it rattled dangerously on the track. It was still dark outside and everyone else was still in bed. Zane usually got up first to make breakfast for everyone. But Jay didn’t care if he woke anyone up. He was freaking out.
“Pix,” he said, shakily, holding himself up on the door frame. He was dangerously close to blacking out in shock. “Can you check my elemental source?” He figured that was the easiest way to fill her in on what was going on. Despite being in Zane’s body, Jay could still feel the hum of electricity sparking up and down his limbs and settling like a basking lizard in his soul. Whatever had happened, he was still the master of lightning.
“Of course, but I don’t-” She paused as energy readings flitted across Jay’s field of vision. The electric power scale was absurdly off the charts. “...Jay?” she asked, disbelieving. “Is that…are you…?”
“Yeah, Pix it’s me. I don’t get it either but I don’t think that tea last night was as normal as we thought it was.”
“Then is Zane…?”
“I think so,” Jay said. “I’m gonna go find out.”
He stumbled into the hallways, unused to weighing as much as Zane did. Each step was much louder than it should have been for a ninja as Jay adjusted to Zane’s gait. This whole thing was surreal. Body swapping was one thing. They'd gone through weirder shit than that. But did it have to be with the guy he had a massive crush on?
The stupid tea.
He finally made it to his door and opened it more gently than he had Zane’s door.
There was a lump in his bed with a tuft of auburn hair poking out from beneath the covers. He walked into the room to get a closer look, taking care to step around his laundry piles. “Zane,” he called, more calm than he felt. “Zane!”
The body in his bed sighed and rolled over. Squinted blue eyes found Jay’s, and then immediately turned into saucers. He shot upright, looking at Jay, critical but shocked. “Who are you?” He asked then frowned as Jay’s tenor came out of him instead of his usual voice.
“Zane…it’s me.” Jay said the freak out he’d been suppressing this entire time creeping up on him.
Zane looked down at his body, taking in the blue pajamas, shorter stature, and decidedly organic body parts, before turning back up to look at Jay with horror. “Jay…?” He asked, tentatively terrified.
That did it, Jay finally let himself lose it. A shock of lightning surged through him, sending off little sparks from his new, metallic body. Unfortunately, as Pixal came up with a warning, that surge also meant he fried several vital systems in his body.
The last thing he remembered before collapsing in a pile of metallic limbs was Pixal saying she was transferring over to the main computer and Zane’s cry of “Jay!”
When Jay woke up next, or rather, when he came back online, his vision was blurry and he was laying down on something hard.
“Where…” His voice, Zane’s voice, sounded fuzzy to his audio receptors.
“Oh! Pixal, that did something!”
“Excellent. It appears as though you have reconnected the correct power circuits. Jay should be online again. Hello Jay.”
“Hey, Pix,” Jay hummed. “Where are we…?”
“I brought you down to the garage,” Zane said in his voice. “You were pretty damaged so Pixal talked me through replacing some of your…my parts. We were lucky you have a tendency to hold onto things.”
“I’m a packrat you mean,” Jay chuckled to himself, then groaned as something like pleasure lanced up his spine. “Z-Zane? What are you doing?” His vision cleared enough to lean up and catch Zane in his body leaning over him and fiddling with some cord coming out of his open chest. It was…a disconcerting sight to have someone poking around in his innards, even if he was currently a Nindroid. But then Zane clipped something into place and Jay let out a heavy breath. Yeah, he hadn’t imagined it. That was definitely feeling good…almost too good.
“Are you alright?” Zane asked, placing a cool hand on Jay’s metal wrist. “I understand if this feels odd but until we switch back, I need to keep you online.”
“No, it…hm…it feels good.” Jay shifted, feeling a little weird about getting this kind of pleasure in someone else’s body. Especially when said other person was wrist deep in his torso. “D-Does it always feel like this?”
Zane looked at him, and Jay watched as his own cheeks flushed, making the freckles stand out in relief. “Yes…” he murmured.
Jay studied his face for a moment, but Zane turned away, biting his lip and picked up a replacement circuit board. Jay thought he had gotten pretty good at reading Zane’s emotions, but when it was his own face, he wasn’t entirely sure.
It had been a bit since he realized he had a raging crush on Zane. It was as if Zane was built to be the perfect man to him. He was tall, muscular, and had a smile that could make flowers grow. (And since when did he have cheekbones that could cut glass?) But more than that, he was caring, smart as a whip, and endearingly adorkable. There were so many reasons to love Zane, that sometimes it was overwhelming for Jay to think about. Right now, though, he couldn’t think of anything else.
Losing Zane broke him when it happened. It not only made it more real to all of them how dangerous what they were doing was, but it felt like a cannonball to Jay's chest. He hadn't realized just how much he loved the other man until he was suddenly gone. Zane was the glue that held them all together and without him...life felt meaningless and empty. Jay had been kicking himself for months afterwards that he never told Zane how he felt. He buried himself in glitter and fake smiles, hoping that it would distract him from the grief. It never did, though. Every time he had to walk by that statue again...he was reminded of the man he still loved, even in death.
And now they had Zane back, and he still didn't have the balls to confess...
Zane was just...too good for him. Zane cared about everyone and everything; he had the kindest, most selfless soul that Jay had ever seen. It was so easy falling in love with him. Jay was hopelessly in love, and now, out of all the people that he could have swapped bodies with, it was Zane.
Jay sighed and closed his optics as Zane’s hand ran over another cable, almost caressing it, he was so gentle.
“I am…going to go check the perimeter cameras.” Pixal said tentatively.
“Is someone attacking the monastery?” Zane asked. Jay had to cover his mouth as Zane pulled on a piece of hardware to avoid making an embarrassing noise. The situation did not need to be any more weird than it already was.
“No, but…I believe Jay can walk you through the rest.”
“Oh…” Zane didn’t sound disappointed per se, but there was something under that one syllable that spoke volumes. “Alright. I will have Jay notify you when we are done here.”
With that Pixal left the garage supercomputer, leaving the two of them to their own devices.
“So um…how did you get me down here,” Jay asked, trying to make conversation to distract himself. “You’re pretty heavy and I know I don’t really have the strength to carry you…”
“Cole helped me,” Zane said before Jay heard a click and something flashed across his vision like an output reading.
“Mngh…” Jay let out a pathetic whine as more of his body came back online, flooding his systems with information. Zane, thankfully, ignored the noise. “So C-Cole knows that we…”
“I do not think so,” Zane said, squeezing Jay’s hand for reassurance. “I tried my best to act as I thought you might.”
Jay propped himself back up to look at Zane with a disbelieving stare.
“Sensei Wu knows, however,” Zane continued, once again ignoring him. “I had to ask him how long we would be stuck like this.”
“How long?”
“Until we, uh…pass the tea,” Zane was blushing again. “Once that is done, all we need to do is go to sleep for the night and it should take care of itself. I already took the liberty of dumping out the sample I took for analysis, so now I just…well, all we can do is wait. I consumed a few litres of water, so it should not take too long. We should be back in our own bodies by tomorrow.”
Jay slapped a hand over his face with a groan of annoyance and embarrassment. “So you’re going to have to…” he trailed off, hoping Zane would pick up what he was saying.
“I already have,” Zane said quietly, before adding, “But it is nothing to be ashamed of! It is a normal bodily function and you are of average si-”
“AAAA!” Jay screamed, feeling the electric energy in him surge dangerously. He did NOT need Zane to finish that sentence. Certainly not when he had a huge crush on the guy.
“Did I hurt you,” Zane asked, panic seeping into his voice as he pulled at something else in Jay’s torso. Jay could only respond by biting back a moan. This morning had been a rollercoaster of emotions and he wanted off. Zane was right. He shouldn’t have had that tea.
Jay’s hand reached down to grasp Zane’s wrist, stopping his exploration of Jay’s chest cavity. “Jus…jus gimme a second…fuck. I didn’t know it felt like this.”
“I apologized if I crossed a line…” Zane said. “I understand that the situation is not ideal and that maintenance on my body can feel…intimate. But as I said, we need you online for the moment. The switch happens in our sleep but being deactivated is not sleep.”
“No, no…” Jay breathed, trying to soothe Zane. “I just…huff…I never knew it felt like this. And you’re seriously okay with me doing this to you regularly?”
Zane paused for a moment, and Jay was worried he’d scared the other man off, but then Zane whispered, “I trust you. And I…” Jay’s eyes widened as he felt Zane’s fingers intertwine with his own. “I admit my feelings for you go beyond friendship. I apologize if that makes you uncomfortable or you wish someone else to do my updates and repairs but-”
“I feel the same way,” Jay said quickly, eyes huge. What was Zane saying? “I think that’s the reason it feels so…yeah.”
A slow smile started making its way onto Zane’s face, and he reached up into Jay’s body and traced a circle around the power source that was Zane’s heart. Jay’s entire body twitched, as sparks shot off of his metal limbs. His voice fizzled out into spurts of static.
“Okay, okay I get the point,” Jay huffed once his vision cleared of frantic alerts. He grinned at Zane brightly who was giving him a wry smirk. “Does that mean…you want to…”
“We’ll talk about it once we’re in our own bodies.” Zane said and patted his hand. “I have one more circuit board to replace. Will you talk me through it?”
“Yeah,” Jay leant back down onto the table. “But when I work on you in the future, I’m locking the door.”
Zane chuckled. “Of course.”