Biff's mind began to clear of thoughts, almost as though following the example of the floor before him, as it slowly cleared of flotsam. He was in the moment, set only on the task at hand, without any worries about the outside world or the goings-on of his friends. For the briefest of moments, the echo of a memory of football practice came to his mind. But then he remembered that he had asthma now. Had always had asthma? However this worked, the thought of asthma overrode the thought of football very quickly, and the idea of Biff running in a field was simply buried into irrelevance.
This was where Biff belonged. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, doing simple domestic work with Bethany. He could feel his entire body hum in sympathetic resonance at the thoughts coming from his mind.
A buzzer sounded from elsewhere in the house, briefly distracting Biff from his task as Bethany commented: "Oh, it sounds like the dryer is done." But it was hardly an interruption, and the two went back to work until everything was properly put away.
"Come help me fold the laundry," Bethany grunted as she pushed her middle-aged body up off of the floor. It wasn't a request or a demand. She said it as though it was just something Biff was expected to do. Like it was something he'd done countless times before. The dryer finished, there was laundry to fold, and the natural course of action was that Biff would help Bethany to fold it.
And the remarkable thing was that Biff felt no resistance to this course of action. Like a small fish caught in a strong current, he found himself just naturally following Bethany's actions, following her back down the stairs, and seamlessly moving in tandem with her as the two collected heaps of clean clothes from the laundry room and deposited them onto the living room coffee table, before sitting on the sofa.
There was a small moment of dissonance as Biff prepared to fold this pile of laundry belonging to two women. Like it was crossing some line of intimacy. Like he shouldn't be allowed to be touching Karyn and Bethany's clothes like this.
But then he picked up a T-shirt, and the thought was gone. His hands folded the garment into a neat square, almost acting on their own, before placing it down on a clear section of the sofa. Hands that knew how to braid hair. Hands that knew how to crochet. Hands that knew how to sort out small objects. And now knew how to fold a girl's T-shirt.
Biff picked up the next item of clothing, and his hands began folding it even before he fully registered that it was one of Bethany's cardigans. Just like he had upstairs, Biff fell into a rhythm, and his body seemed to hum in harmony to the rhythm. And the more his body hummed, the more natural the motions felt.
The pile of clothes on the coffee table was shrinking, as little neat stacks of folded clothes grew across the sofa. And Biff melted into the routine of it. The increasingly-familiar motion of picking up a skirt or a sock or a scarf, and bringing it from a pile of chaos into a set of order. The increasingly-familiar feeling of sitting on the sofa next to Bethany, helping her with housework.
Biff had never helped with the housework at home. But he'd never been given scrambled eggs when he was having a bad morning at home. The idea suddenly felt as foreign as football practice. Of course he helped with the housework. Of course this was where he belonged.
Biff's hand reached into the pile once more, but paused briefly, imperceptibly, as his fingers wrapped themselves around an unexpectedly familiar strap. And a moment later, he was holding up a bra. Karyn's bra. The very same bra that Biff had worn, in Karyn's body, the day before.
A wave of consternation wrinkled itself through Biff, as he looked at the empty cups hanging from his own fingers. Like they were a reminder that this was temporary, that he didn't truly belong here. His connection to this place only existed because, for some unknown reason, he'd been in Karyn's body the day before. Sitting on this couch, sitting next to Bethany, sitting in the very bra that he was now holding in his hands. It was like a game of Tetris, and all of the blocks were lining up, except there was one gap in a line that Biff couldn't clear. And this bra was that gap.
All of this transpired in just a fraction of a second, too short for Bethany to pay any mind to, as she had fallen into her own rhythm of folding. But it was long enough for Biff's mind to override the instinctive motions of his hands. And instead of folding the bra and finding a place for it on the sofa, Biff hugged it to his chest.
This one thing that felt missing, this one hole in his new world that was suddenly more important to him than anything else. He crossed his arms over his chest and pressed the undergarment as tightly as he could into his shirt, as though the pressure could magically phase it through his own T-shirt and onto his own chest. This wasn't Karyn's bra, he told himself, it was his. It belonged to him. It belonged on him, and on nobody else. His mind decided that this was his bra.
And his body complied to match.
A swelling began in his chest, pressing back out against his folded arms, against the fabric of the bra that they held. At first it was just a small pressure, but soon Biff could feel it as his own flesh was pushed up, squished against his arms and forced to press itself slowly against his chin. He could feel his arms adjusting themselves, finding a new position as they slid down his frame, no longer across the front of his chest, but now just below his ribs, as they made room for flesh that was not only feeling increasingly familiar, but also increasingly correct. Like it belonged on Biff's chest. That it wasn't some anomaly of being in Karyn's body for a day, but that it was just the way things should have always been in the first place.
Then Biff felt a small snap. Like a rubber band rolling off the rounded edge of a soda bottle, but it was around his chest. And when he looked down, the bra was no longer held between his arms and his shirt. It was wrapped around him, underneath his shirt, strung up over his shoulders and holding up a pair of breasts. His breasts. Biff's breasts. Held up by Biff's bra.
Normal as ever. Just as normal as folding laundry.
