Ok, I know I left it on a bit of a cliff-hanger again but it felt like a good place to finish last time. On with the story and as usual let me know what you think and remember to donate to Nifty http://donate.nifty.org/ to keep the site running.
Chapter 10
"GRAMPS!!!!" Josh called out as he burst into his grandparent's kitchen. When he'd found me on the floor in agony he scooped me up and ran straight home as fast as he could.
"What's going on?" Asked Lauren as Josh lay me on the kitchen table, she took one look at me and shared Josh's concern. "Oh shit! BRYAN!!!"
His grandpa came rushing in and saw me in the foetal position on the table. "What happened?"
"He's been acting weird all week; he's been eating more ever since the weekend and when I went to call for him this morning I found him like this." Josh explained while I lay there clutching my stomach.
"Grab me one of those shakes." Bryan ordered as he tried to sit me up. "Alex, I need you to drink this, it's going to taste horrible but it'll make you feel better ok?" He handed me one of the shakes that Josh had been taking and I grimaced at the thought of it. The smell hit me first as I raised it to my lips and I just kept reminding myself that it was food. The first couple of gulps were the worst, the taste was indescribable and it took every ounce of strength not to gag and throw it back up, but as more went down I started to feel a lot better and chugged away on it like a baby with a bottle. When it was all gone I sat back panting but definitely felt a lot better.
"Thank you." I smiled weakly then asked. "What's going on with me this week?"
"Did you say this started at the weekend?" He asked and I nodded. "I want you to tell me everything that happened at the weekend and don't leave any details out." I started to explain about how I'd felt weird on Sunday and he asked what we did when we were out the day before. I started to blush but decided to go for it and not be afraid. I told him what Josh had shown me, about the kiss and then all about me sucking Josh off, much to his embarrassment. Bryan didn't look ashamed or disgusted about what I'd told him but he was thinking about something for a long time.
"So is it something to do with me?" Josh asked. "Have I melted his insides or something?" He looked genuinely concerned that he'd hurt me even though I knew that if he had it wasn't intentional.
"I think it is to do with you Josh but I don't think you've hurt him, so don't worry." He said reassuringly. "It's strange though, I don't remember seeing anything like this before."
"Like what?" I asked, still feeling a little concerned about what was going on inside me.
"Remember how I said our condition was genetic?" He asked and we both nodded. "Well obviously it's passed down through the generations but there haven't been many family members on my side who have been gay. The only other one I remember was a great uncle of mine but nothing like this ever happened to him."
"Like what?" Josh asked getting a bit impatient.
"I think you might have transferred your abilities to Alex." He replied bluntly and we both sat there in shock. "Uncle George was, how shall we say, a little promiscuous in his time."
"From what I remember he tried to shag anything with a pulse." Lauren chimed in making us giggle.
"Maybe so, but he never transferred his abilities to anyone else so it can't be a gay sex thing. The only thing I can think of is maybe it's because of your age. My uncle wasn't sexually active until after puberty and his hormones had calmed down, so maybe that's got something to do with it." Bryan continued.
"What about my emotions?" Josh asked. "Everything seems to be tied in with them at the moment and I assume your uncle didn't really love the people he was messing around with. I know that when we were up there on Saturday I was falling madly in love with Alex at the time. And when I...y'know..." Josh made a gesture like an explosion with his hands. "I had this weird growth spurt that's never happened before." I sat there feeling really good about myself after Josh said he loved me but this time rather than the aches I'd been experiencing before when I'd been hungry, I felt a slight swelling in my body. Suddenly the gravity of what was happening hit me.
"Wait, so are you telling me I'll be able to do what Josh can do because of this?" I asked, not really believing it. Bryan tossed me the skillet/candle holder he'd made last time I was here and I tried to squeeze it. To my surprise I felt it yield slightly as my fingers left some shallow indentations in it. "HOLY CRAP!!" I dropped it on the table with a thud and marvelled at what I'd just done.
"We don't know how much this will affect you but you may not rival Josh when your body has adapted fully, we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, I'll give you some of these drinks to keep you going and I think we'll have to talk to your parents very soon otherwise things could get complicated." That was a conversation I wasn't looking forward to.
We set off for school and I was buzzing with questions as I kept asking Josh what I should expect or how long my body would take to change but he really didn't know, all he could tell me was what had happened to him and how he'd felt at the time. We split up and headed to our lessons and I was relieved to feel full up for the first time this week instead of craving food, I still found it difficult to concentrate in the lesson as my mind was still racing at the thought of my body changing.
At lunch I sat down with a reasonable amount of food for the first time this week. The twins and Josh joined me and it was Luke who was the first to notice my plate didn't have a small mountain of food on it today. "What's the matter; didn't your mum give you enough money today?" He asked.
"Nah, I'm on a diet." I lied.
"Thank fuck for that, I was beginning to think we'd have to haul you to school in a dump truck." Luke replied.
"That's ok, we've got one on the farm and I could drive him here in it." Josh smiled. We carried on chatting over lunch and tried to keep the conversation away from comics so that Luke could be involved, then Josh and I made our way to CDT. When we walked in I was dismayed to see Brandon had returned to school as his suspension had been lifted, and he fixed me with a scowl that I knew would cause me trouble later. We sat at the back and Mr Lomax told us our new project was entirely up to us, we could work alone or together to create anything we wanted, as long as it wasn't too elaborate. Josh was still finishing off the final coat of varnish on his bird house while I set to work brainstorming what we could build next. Josh suggested mundane items like letter racks while I went completely the other way and suggested catapults and siege towers for the cats to storm the bird fortress he'd been building at home.
As I was looking around for inspiration I noticed a nail sticking out of the bench we were working on and after quickly checking to see if the coast was clear I tried pushing it back into the bench with my thumb. I was surprised how easily the nail sank into the wood and I looked up at Josh with a huge smile on my face, but he looked back with wide eyes and shook his head as if to say `not here.' At the end of the lesson Josh had to dash off as he needed to get to the other side of the building, my next one was nearby though so I was able to take my time. As I left the room I noticed the halls were pretty quiet, at least until I heard Brandon call me.
"Hey Conway! I'm not finished with you yet!" He was alone this time and tried pushing me back towards the wall. This time I stood my ground and didn't move an inch as he tried to shove me again. I grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him off the ground, spinning him around and slamming him against the wall with a dull thud. Then I held him in place by his chest looking him straight in his terrified eyes.
"First of all my name is Alex, using last names to intimidate people is childish." I could see fear registering as he realised he'd made a mistake. "Secondly, you are finished with me, we have nothing more to say to each other and if you persist in harassing me, or anyone else here, I'll make you regret it, are we clear?" I emphasised the question by punching the wall next to his head and leaving a fist shaped dent plaster. He nodded his head and I dropped him to the ground, leaving him there to think about his life choices.
I served my last detention and felt like I was free from all the shit with Brandon after school. Meeting up with Josh at the gates I told him what had happened in the hallway and he didn't seem pleased. "You need to be careful right now, you don't know how quickly your strength will grow and you need to learn how to control it like I'm doing."
"I know, it's just...I wanted to put him in his place and it was probably better that I did it now rather than later, especially if I get to your levels." I started to get slightly excited at that thought. We went back to Josh's place after I stopped off at home to leave a note for my parents and change out of my uniform. Bryan greeted us when we got there and we filled him in on our day, although I did leave out the part about Brandon.
"So you're definitely getting stronger and your skin seems to be toughening up if you can push a nail through wood." He started then handed us another horrific shake each. "You'll probably need two of these a day for now like Josh but when things calm down you won't need them more than about once a week." That explained why I'd never seen Bryan drink them.
Josh then took me over to the barn and wanted to see how strong I was now. They had a small but pretty heavy trailer and he told me to see if I could lift it. When I tried I was surprised at how easy it felt, it must have weighed about five hundred pounds yet I could lift it like it was a plastic, kid's version. Even though I found I could lift it off the ground I still struggled a little to get it too high, Josh gave me a few tips on the proper technique for lifting and I was soon able to get it over my head. He had to help me put it down though as I felt like I was going to drop it but it felt great to be able to do that. After a few more tries lifting heavy things we could definitely see that my strength was increasing but there was something else I wanted to try now.
"Ok, so I'm obviously getting stronger but what about getting bigger, how do I do that?" I asked. We headed up to Josh's room to use the mirror so I could actually see if there was any progress there. His room was bigger than mine and very neat. I noticed there were a few small sculptures around and some small stones that he obviously used to shape into new works of art when he was up there alone. I was expecting posters of bodybuilders or superheroes all over the walls but he only had a couple of landscape photographs that he'd actually taken himself. On the wall nearest his bed though I saw some pictures I recognised. They were the ones I drawn for him both in school and the ones when we'd been for our walk a few weeks ago. They looked like they'd been given pride of place where he could see them easily from his bed. I thought about how happy they probably made him and I felt a tinge of pride that he'd kept them.
"I see emotions are affecting your size as well." He said looking at my reaction to the pictures, then he removed his shirt and asked me to do the same. I saw some more definition on my frame than what I'd had earlier this week but nothing great, Josh on the other hand had a classic swimmer's build with tight, but fairly small muscles. "It's not easy at first; you might find things go a little slow to begin with. The best way to start is to relax and try not to let your emotions get in the way. The hardest thing is when you start to see the change you might start to feel proud or happy and that might have an effect which then might worry you. Once that happens all hell breaks loose."
He reminded me about the panic attacks he'd had before and how they'd messed up his body until he calmed down. "So how do I keep my emotions in check when I'm obviously going to be happy that I'm a beefcake?" I asked with a big grin.
"I've found that you need a certain detachment from your emotions, like you just have to be satisfied with what you do rather than really happy with it." He made it sound easy but I knew he'd struggled with it himself. "Gramps said that once I've started to get a handle on it I'll be able to get happy, and maybe even turned on by my results without things spiralling out of control." I saw Josh relax a little and then his muscles started to fill out.
I watched in awe as his biceps and triceps were getting larger and more defined by the second. His shoulders were developing too, swelling into hard balls of muscle, like small pumpkins at the top of his arms. His traps flared, bringing two growing humps off his body to surround his thickening neck. His forearms became larger started bulging with power underneath the skin. His pecs started to enlarge and stand out further from his chest, the pen crushing cleft between the two slabs of muscle became deeper and his nipples hardened. I looked down to see his hardening abs, rippling from a hard 6, then 8, then finally a cobbled street of 10 hard abs. His narrow waist tightened up, highlighting his midsection even more. His back muscles became broader and more pronounced, pushing his arms further apart until his torso developed an incredible V-shape. His butt bubbled out, growing bigger by the second, stretching his shorts further out and becoming even more pert. His quads filled with rippling cords of strength and size; hardening and growing to unbelievable proportions, as his calves expanded outwards; the muscles becoming more defined like hardening diamonds, splitting and growing as the fought for room.
Finally the growth stopped and he stood there looking more amazing than I'd ever seen him look. He probably wasn't as big as he had been at the weekend but his body just had a look of perfection this time. "What do you think?" He asked, "Are you ready to try it?" He bounced his pecs a couple of times which nearly sent me wild.
"How the fuck am I supposed to keep my emotions in check when you look that sexy?" I had to ask. He blushed while I tried to focus but didn't know where to start. "So what do I do, imagine myself bigger or just give myself a mental command to grow?"
"It's hard to explain. The only way I can describe it would be like trying to get your body to do something without forcing it to do it. Like when you pull a face. You don't mean to look a certain way consciously but you do anyway." I was really confused now and he could see it in my face. "Yeah, like that." This could be tricky but I gave it a go. I relaxed as much as I could and then started to will my body to do my bidding. It was weird at first, almost like trying to flex your pecs when you've never trained them but I did feel a little swelling happening. I looked in the mirror and saw my body start to gain a little more muscle which then made me feel really good, and then things went wrong. I felt my skin tightening up like I was wrapped in plastic and I began to panic and start panting which made me fluctuate rapidly, scaring me even more. Suddenly I felt Josh grab me by the shoulders and look into my eyes.
"Alex!! Take deep breaths." He said reassuringly. "Calm down and focus on me. Forget what your body is doing and focus just on me." I felt myself calm down more and when I was finally breathing regularly I could feel that I was almost back to how I was but maybe with a little more size.
I hugged Josh tightly then and said, "I can't believe you had to go through all this. No wonder you tried so hard to keep your emotions in check." He hugged me harder and then kissed me on the lips.
"You did great, and you've managed to keep some size on. Now I want you to look at yourself in the mirror but try not to think about how great you might look, try to detach a bit study your body rather than enjoy it."
I turned to face the mirror and looked at the body ahead of me. The best way I could think of to detach was to look at it like I wanted to draw it. I analysed the shapes and contours of the muscles, looking at how they flowed and attached to each other. This would be a fine body to draw and I could almost imaging trying to sketch a diver as he was about to leap off the top board. I explained to Josh what I was doing and he said he'd done the same but thinking about sculpting his own body rather than drawing it and it seemed to work for him too.
"It definitely looks good, but will my parents notice when I get home?" Josh handed me my shirt and when I put it on I could tell there was a slight difference to how I'd looked before but I could probably pass it off as being a bit pumped from helping Josh with the horses. "I'd better get home anyway, it's getting late. Thank you for helping me with this, it actually makes me appreciate and love you more."
I saw Josh look really happy at this but strangely he didn't grow any more. I knew he hadn't reached his upper limits so I found it a bit curious but thought it could wait another day to find out more. "If you're going to play about with this tonight just remember to stay detached, don't panic and if you need me then call." Then he kissed me again and I headed home with a bag full of those horrible shakes.