The Photo Booth: More Exercises in Transformation (musc)
by Aardvark
KEVIN
Kevin Cassidy was hard-pressed to think of a night that he had enjoyed less. As a man embarking on a career as a grade-school teacher, he knew he had to be extra careful around town. Men teaching kids were always closely scrutinized. Somedays, he felt like he might as well be entering the ministry.
So, he’d hesitated when he got invited to his friend Edgar’s bachelor party. Even though he was only going to the dinner, it was at a Mexican restaurant and that meant only one thing: booze. Kevin had never been drunk in his life - personal choice - and he wasn’t really big on socializing with strangers anyway. And that’s what everyone here was: strangers, because he’d been best friends with Edgar in junior high before Edgar moved away. They didn’t reconnect until after college, when Edgar moved back to work for his soon-to-be father-in-law. Edgar and Kevin had gone out to lunch a couple of times and Edgar had invited Kevin to his bachelor party, a sort of representative for that part of his childhood.
But, Kevin couldn’t lie to himself. He and Edgar were different people now, and they weren’t terribly close. He didn’t want to decline, so he went to the party. And boy, did it suck.
A half-hour into the dinner, everyone but Kevin was bombed off their asses. The group of men was loud and disruptive, cursing in full voice and making lewd comments to their waitresses. Kevin was miserable. These were a bunch of ex-jocks who would always start reliving their glory days when they got trashed. Kevin was neither an ex-jock - he’d been twiggy in high school, just as he was now - nor had he experienced anything that could be labeled “glory days.”
So, while everyone else was shouting and banging the table, Kevin politely excused himself to go to the men’s room. No one noticed as he walked right past it and entered the attached shopping mall. He’d go back to talk to Edgar for a bit, and then he’d leave.
He was hoping to walk around a couple stores and clear his head, but as he headed down the big open walkways of the mall, store after store was pulling its grate shut or locking its door. The only open things were a Frederick’s of Hollywood - which he avoided, to not remind himself that he had no woman in his life to buy lingerie for - and an old photo booth in the middle of a bunch of empty kiosks.
He looked back at the restaurant and saw two of the guys from the party walking out, probably on their way to smoke. To avoid being seen, Kevin popped into the booth and sat down.
Might as well get some use out of it. He dug around in his pocket for a quarter. He didn’t have one, but two dimes and a nickel would do fine. Kevin stuck his hand out through the curtain and deposited the change.
An immediate beeping got his attention. By now, Kevin wasn’t really putting much thought into the booth, so he placed his hand on its handprint scanner without considering why a photo booth would need one in the first place.
Kevin picked some lint off his polo shirt and waited for the screen to indicate it was time to smile. When the booth was filled up by a blindingly white light, he snapped his head back and blinked several times over. It confused him - for a second, he didn’t even realize there had been a flash at all. Did it really take my picture? What kind of scam...
Kevin kept blinking for a couple moments more, wondering if the booth was finished altogether. He almost stood up to leave when the TV screen suddenly came to life and he was faced with the picture that had just been taken.
It wasn’t a very good picture. His eyes were closed, for one, because the flash had been so sudden that the picture was taken mid-blink. And for a reason that Kevin couldn’t quite figure out, the flash had made his skin look darker, like he’d been in a tanning booth recently. His skin had a slight sheen to it, like he had on tanning oil, but that was probably just the flash.
Kevin didn’t even notice the way his polo shirt fit differently. The collar was bigger and sitting higher around his neck, and the Polo logo had disappeared off the left breast. The sleeves were no longer banded, and in fact now reached his elbows instead of just his small biceps. It was more fitted around his waist than it had been just moments before. The buttons were straining to stay fastened.
But Kevin was too focused on the shade of his skin to notice. And when the second flash went off, he began to really worry, because he was starting to look kind of orangey. He was definitely tan, and he could feel the oil sitting on his skin, mixing with his sweat and making him glisten like a human disco ball. He cleared his throat and tried not to worry about what color his skin was - it was an odd thought, he knew - but it was suddenly all he could think about. He tried to think about his job, but with a tinge of fear realized he couldn’t remember what his job was.
As the second picture materialized, Kevin could see that the shadows made his face look a little different. Well, not just his face...his entire body, actually. His head looked wider, set on top of a slightly shorter neck and much bulkier shoulders. What had once been a small, fleshy jawline was now thick and heavy. The lighting made his eyebrows look roughly three times as thick as they had been, and even his forehead looked flatter. And what was really weird, was that somehow, his light brown businessman’s cut was now a greasy black mop on top of his head. That had to just be a photo manipulation, he told himself, refraining from touching it.
He still was not realizing that the clothes he currently wore were increasingly different from the ones he had entered the booth in. Wayward threads were making their way into the weave of his polo, which by now wasn’t so much of a polo as it was a dress shirt. What had once been simple blue cotton mesh had become black, and bore small silver pinstripes all around, like tinsel woven within the fabric. His sleeves completely covered his arms and barrel cuffs were now around his wrists. Feeling a tightness in his chest, Kevin reached up and unbuttoned the top two buttons of the shirt, to make himself feel better. He didn’t notice how much heavier and meatier his pecs looked, or feel the rubbing of the fabric against his beefier arms. Feeling his warm skin breathe a little made Kevin smile, which made for a much better pose as the third flash popped.
“Ooof,” he groaned, still not used to the brightness. Vin was used to hearing a gentle tenor voice come out of his mouth, but the noises he was making sounded much basslier. But whatever. “You’re fine, ya mook,” he told himself, trying not to worry about the fact that his skin was now burnt to a crispy brownish-gold, the kind of shade that only dedicated tanning bed users can attain. He dripped with tanning oil and his charred flesh radiated heat.
He had heard two big rips, so he looked down and saw that his plain khakis were shredded around two very unfamiliar thighs. “Tha fuck?” Had his legs always been that thick? Looked like fuckin’ stone columns. He noticed that the stitching of the khakis was thick white thread, and it looked weird, but Vin thought nothing of it and moved his attention to the third picture’s appearance on the screen.
This thing was really going too far with the photo manipulating - he barely recognized himself. Vin was starting too look kind of...ethnic, or something. He could see in the two pictures before that he’d had the light brown haircut of a young professional, but the third picture had him sporting a shiny black fauxhawk, spiked about an inch above his head. The thickness of his eyebrows remained, but now they weren’t so bushy; in fact, their shape looked too perfect, like they’d been waxed. He kinda liked the look. His eyes were a dark brown that blended in with his deep, deep tan.
His neck was really thick now, though, and he reached up and pulled the collar of his shirt wider to give it some room. The fold of his collar had grown so high that it reached his jawline. The shirt felt slick as he touched it, but Vin was used to the feel of the cotton-polyester-lycra blend. All his shirts were like that. Looking down, Vin realized that his chest was mostly covered by the shiny club shirt. That was just no good - he’d worked hard for those pecs, and he was gonna show them off. His chest shook as he began to chuckle, and he confidently undid a third button right as another flash went off.
Muscle. Suddenly, it was everywhere. The fabric of his sleeves was pulled painfully tight over his monster arms and enormous shoulders, and he even arched his back a little as he felt his pecs grow out further through the unbuttoned part of his shirt. Sweat poured in between the little peaks and valleys of his overdeveloped, juiced-up muscles, accentuating the oil’s sheen. Vin placed one hand on his bare chest and started rubbing, moaning with joy as he felt the muscles rolling underneath his skin. The sensation of his thumb getting stuck between the two huge pecs sent him over the edge. Reaching down to caress his dick, he now saw a pair of dark blue True Religion jeans that looked painted onto his thunder thighs.
Before he had time to begin masturbating, the fourth picture stole his attention. A part of Vin knew it was a new face on there, but he liked it. His face was wide and square. His eyes had become rounder, and his nose was longer and much thinner, what was that called? “A Roman nose,” he said out loud in a low snarl, noticing right then the daily stubble that was visible under his clean-shaven cheeks. The shellacked fauxhawk looked plastic. Come to think of it, so did his skin, just a little...so dark and oily. Long sideburns framed his classic Italian features, and his once-thin lips had grown to kissable puffiness. His neck was as thick as his pendulous jawline, and his shoulders were nothing but solid mass, like a yoke strapped around his upper body. He had to hunch his back a little so that his shoulders fit inside the frame of the picture.
Despite the experience of four flashes already, the fifth hit him just as hard. “Affanculo, could we cool that shit a little?” he bellowed in a heavy Long Island accent. Enraged, he smashed two powerful fists into the bench of the booth, showing an almost-obnoxious alpha-male aggression that Kevin had never come close to. Any fat that had been left on his body seeped out, leaving two striated pectorals bursting through the open fabric. Still feeling discomfort from the shirt’s tightness, Vinnie reached down and undid another button to reveal the top of his ripped-up abs, and the sight of his well-earned muscles made him grin ear-to-ear. His teeth were so bleached out, they were almost as bright as the booth’s flash. Finally, the shirt fit right. He wore nothing but dress shirts, and bought them all online from Europe - they had to be D&G, Armani, Gucci or Prada, or they weren’t good enough for Vinnie. It was a Versace night for the shirt - he loved the way the thin silver threads played off the club’s lights; a True Religion night for the jeans, because he liked the way the hefty pockets showcased his powerful ass; and a D&G night for the treads, beautiful black sneakers that would’ve cost him $500, but he got ‘em online for $275. If he was ever low on funds, ‘cause of buying protein or whatever, Armani Exchange and Ed Hardy were enough to get by, as long as they were real fuckin’ tight and showed off his muscles, especially his chest. At the club the night before, some girl had called him Eurotrash, and by the end of the night she was begging him to fuck her harder. That’s how good he was.
Vinnie began to laugh at the fifth picture. His white teeth reflected off of his dark skin and shiny shirt. A thick gold chain had materialized around his brawny neck and rested on top of - and in between - his enormous pecs. He had felt a prick in his ears and checked out the big diamond studs that had appeared on each earlobe. A tickling on his upper arms made him remember the two armband tats he had on his mammoth biceps, although the shirt hid them from view. And just to be sure it was still there, he pulled down on the waistband of his D&G briefs to see a big Italian flag tattooed above his waxed pubic area.
Vinnie Cassarino was almost out of the booth already as the final, cementing flash went off. He aggressively yanked the picture strip out of the printer and put it in his leather wallet, attached to his jeans with a chunky chain. Despite being the same height as Kevin, the man now known as Vinnie had gained one-hundred pounds of muscle, putting him at a thick, juicy two-fifty - the perfect size for a professional doorman, which was exactly what Vinnie did for a living, in addition to some personal training on the side. He emerged from the mall and swaggered across the street to the nightclub he worked at. His boss told him about some fuckheads causing a ruckus, so Vinnie barged into their crowd and told them to cool the fuck down. They got rowdier, so he pushed his chest out and barked, in his deep guido voice, to get the fuck out.
“But I’m getting married tomorrow, man, this is my bachelor party!”
“Don’t give a faaaawck, get tha fuck out!” He only had to begin using physical force before the group of men, and Edgar the groom, left voluntarily, too afraid to start any shit with the massive Italian bouncer.
Vinnie chuckled as he watched the shitheads leave. “Fuckin’ douchebags.” He felt sorry for any woman that would marry one of those clowns. There were better guys out there.
He grabbed a bottle of water from behind the bar and took a few swigs. Then he joined the other doormen outside at the velvet rope, scoping out the hotties.
Clubbing, weights, sex, and basically getting paid for all three. It was a good life.
--------
ZACHARY & TIMOTHY
The two teens trudged through the mall. In one hand, they each carried shopping bags from Pac-Sun, Hot Topic and - deliciously - Mr. Bulky. In the other hand, they held corn-dogs on a stick, which they were eagerly devouring.
Zachary Musser and Timothy Mann were a couple of nice-looking, if not particularly extraordinary, kids. At 15 and 16 respectively, they were rail-thin from years of skateboarding and video-gaming together, being the only two boys close in age on their block. They went to the same school, had the same friends. Neither was particularly active. The only sports that they found interesting were virtual ones; skateboarding was really the only exception, although that was more of a hobby than a passion.
On this day, Zachary and Timothy were an hour away from being picked up, and had exhausted their options for shopping.
“Should we take the bus home?”
“Ugghhhh, I hate the bus. I’d rather sit on that bench for an hour than take the bus.”
They walked through a few stores and picked at stuff, but for the most part, their money was gone.
“Hey,” Zachary said with a point of his finger. “The photo booth’s only a quarter.”
“Seriously? The photo booth.” Timothy couldn’t raise a single eyebrow, so he just raised both. “Are you a ten-year-old girl?”
“Nahhh, they’re fun, seriously.” Zachary poked open the curtain and looked inside. “There might be room for two of us, but it’d be a tight squeeze.”
Timothy wrinkled his nose. “I’m not sitting on your lap.”
By now, Zachary was totally set on the idea. “Let’s take turns, then. I’ll jump in, then you, then me again until it’s done.”
Timothy still wasn’t very big on his friend’s proposal, but he shrugged, set down his bags and sat down inside the wooden interior. “I guess I’ll go first, then.”
Zachary shut the curtains and plopped in his quarter.
He heard Timothy groan a little. “The flash is BRIGHT,” his friend muttered from inside.
What a wuss. Zachary rolled his eyes. “Thanks for the warning.”
When Timothy emerged from the booth, he was moving a little too slow for Zachary’s taste. They kind of collided as Zachary tried to get in before the next flash went off, but even at contact, Zachary didn’t notice anything different about his friend. He got a quick glance at Timothy’s first picture on the screen, but that was blanked off and replaced with a blinking question mark.
The handprint scanner flashed red again, and beeped, and Zachary placed his hand on it, wondering if the booth could tell that they were switching out. Maybe it was supposed to be exclusive to one person or something?
As Zachary sat inside the booth, Timothy stood outside of it, feeling very strange. He’d only gotten a cursory peek at his first picture, but in that quick amount of time, he’d noticed that his hair looked kind of brownish. His hair wasn’t brown, it was bright blond, he was pretty sure. Not only that, the teenage peach fuzz around his mouth looked a little darker and thicker. Oddest of all was when he’d gotten OUT of the booth, he’d been taller than Zachary. Zachary must’ve been crouching or bent over, somehow, he reasoned, because Timothy knew he wasn’t markedly taller than his friend.
“Oonngh,” Timothy heard Zachary mutter.
“See? Bright.” Told ya so.
“Shit, yeah,” Zachary muttered from the inside. His voice sounded husky, kind of wrong, like he was getting sick. He opened the curtain and stumbled out, finding it hard to control his legs. They felt so long and unruly. Timothy was relieved to see they were the same height, which calmed him down a little as he stepped back inside. Zachary’s first picture was up on the screen, and in it, his hair was the same shade of brown as Timothy’s. Zachary had brown hair anyway, but really dark brown, almost black - in this picture, and Timothy’s, it looked far ruddier. There was a name for that combination, not brunet but not redhead either...what was it?
“Auburn,” he recalled correctly, right as he blinked from the flash.
The short auburn crewcut that Timmy had sported was now grown out a little; wavy brown-red tresses were neatly gelled on top of his head, little more than an inch in length. He felt a sudden rush of cool air and looked down to see a six-inch tear from the center of the neck of his tee to the base of his chest. And, a little bit confusingly, Timmy couldn’t remember seeing his chest ever look as big as it currently did. It almost felt like two huge pectorals had sprouted instantaneously out of a previously flat chest, making a perfect rip in his tee. He grabbed a handful of one of the massive muscles. It moved a little, but when he flexed it, it bounced further outward and was rock-solid.
“Dude, get out, it’s my turn,” Zackary demanded as he yanked Timmy out of the booth. In the back of his mind, Timmy noticed that Zackary’s once-long, thin strands of hair were no longer hanging around his face; in fact, they were the exact same length and style as Timmy’s. More surprisingly, Zackary’s shirt had the same rip in it as Timmy’s, the two torn sides flopping open to show off an unusually large pair of pectorals for boys their age - whatever age that was, since neither of them really knew. And, they both wondered, since when were they able to grow such great facial hair? Zackary noticed a ginger-brown mustache on Timmy’s upper lip, and a little soul patch sprouting out of the lower. Timmy could see the same style on Zackary’s face. Even their eyes were the same color, an intense green-flecked blue.
As Zackary settled in and waited patiently for the next flash, he began to adjust himself. Had the booth felt this uncomfortable originally? The seat felt smaller, and his knees and back felt very constrained. Looking at Timmy’s picture, Zackary knew his friend well enough to know that Timmy felt the same discomfort. He could just see it on his friend’s expression.
Man, Timmy’s really growing into his looks.
Flash.
Zack was positive that the booth hadn’t felt this small originally. Sure, he’d always been on the burlier side - really big shoulders, wide back, and pecs that looked like two throw pillows stuffed into his shirt - but wouldn’t he remember not fitting before? He popped his back and felt his chest heave out even further, actually hearing his skin stretching to fit all the muscle he was growing. “Mmmmg.”
And jiminy, his cock...Zack reached down and pulled on the fabric gathered up around his big dick. His undeniable erection, combined with having pants that were far too small, was causing him intense physical pain. He groaned and tried to stand, but he felt shooting pains in his back and sides and slumped back down on the bench for a moment of rest.
Those felt like growing pains...haven’t had those in a while...
Outside of the booth, Zack’s friend Jimmy was experiencing the same sensations. He was sore and achy all over. He couldn’t see over the jutting shelf that was his pectorals, so he was trying to blindly adjust his dick in his pants, and it wasn’t helping much. The jeans that Jimmy wore were now far too soft and smooth to be considered denim, and he knew that the fabric stuffed up his ass was abnormal. Why didn’t his pants fit at all?
As Zack teetered out of the booth, he fell forward and Jimmy caught him. “I have you, bro, I have you.”
“Shit, thank you,” Zack muttered in a rich timbre that was not at all right for his age.
Jimmy could only barely support Zack’s weight, since he was feeling so woozy himself. Neither young man was aware of the intense restructuring of their heights, having grown from Timothy’s 5-5 and Zackary’s 5-7, to a matching 6-2. Their wedgies and agonizing erections, along with their stretched-out legs, made their once-baggy jeans fit like legging capris. They each were yanking on their belts, feeling their thicker stomachs pressing into the leather.
But up top, their formerly-destroyed shirts looked much better. Now, three buttons were spaced out along the right side of the tear, and the neck of the t-shirt had folded itself into a crisp collar. The large brand logos and graphic designs that their t-shirts had bore were faded from view, leaving only bleached cotton that was lightening by the minute. Elastic had woven its way into the hems of the sleeves, banding them; and a little lycra was being added to the make-up of the fabric, tightening it in all the right places, accentuating their compact, carved waists. Most of all, it clung to their massive lateral muscles, making their backs look more brick wall than human. By now, the two males looked nothing like gamers - which made sense, since they couldn’t really remember what games they liked to play. Ataris had never really interested them, and that was all that had been around when they were kids, right?
“Can you stand on your own?”
“I...yeah...I think so,” Zack said as he shook his head from side-to-side, stretching his neck. Damn, Jimmy looked on in jealousy. Has his neck always been so thick?
Jimmy slid onto the bench, making sure that Zack could lean up against the booth for support. Poor Zack had one hand around his huge member, which was sticking straight out like a big white flag. Feeling intense pain and aware that he was undergoing some kind of change, his confused grimace was framed by a perfectly-trimmed goatee, the mustache having grown down on the sides to connect to the whiskers on his increasingly-square chin. Jimmy touched his own face and felt the same style of goatee. The feeling of the whiskers rubbing against his rough fingers was enough to make pre-cum start leaking, right as he blinked from the power of the light.
The man in the booth certainly was no teenager. His wide, flat forehead, bushy eyebrows, sharp nose and military jawline did not broadcast youth, but they certainly were powerful and masculine, which was exactly what he wanted to be. His skin was too thick, too deeply tanned and too coarse to be that of a young man’s, and the roughness of his cheeks marked a need to shave, and trim his goatee, daily.
With one very large, calloused hand, Jim tried to button up his cream-colored designer polo, but by now his muscles had grown too large and were stretching the lush weave to the maximum point of containment. Normally, Jim was used to seeing curls of chest hair poking out of his polo’s open collar, but his chest had just gotten waxed, so the tan skin was smooth. The movement of his arms, especially the juicy pop of his triceps, almost tore the sleeves.
Jim’s lower half felt much better now. His large endowment, wide, powerful ass and thick thighs were stuffed into a pair of khaki Dockers, and the Converse that his size 14 feet had exploded through were replaced by a pair of brown leather loafers, complete with tassels. The comfort of his clothes made Jim relax immediately.
It was only then, as he began to breathe normally, that he realized he had been holding Jack’s hand for the whole time. He got up out of the booth and stood next to his best friend in the whole world.
But they were obviously more than best friends. The two men, side-by-side, didn’t really consider how eerily similar they were becoming in looks. It was normal to them, looking at a face that was just like your own. Their goatees and hair color were the same. They stood at the same height, with the same measurements in their chests, necks, shoulders, arms and waists. Both powerful mesomorphic physiques were crammed into polo shirts and khakis that were the exact same wash. It made sense that their t-shirts had become polos, because that was all they could wear. Their inner pecs were naturally very large, and it made it almost impossible to separate one pectoral from the other - they pushed together like one huge unit, sort of like a car’s bumper. Since they had huge chests and perversely thick necks, the collars of t-shirts and v-necks usually had to be ripped to even get onto their bodies. That’s why they tried to only wear tanks, henleys or polos - just leave the collar totally unbuttoned, and it was possible to get it over your head without tearing it.
As Jack sat down in the booth, he got a look at the images in sequence, the transitioning of awkward teenaged unathletic Timothy into the confident adult bodybuilder Jim.
Puberty was so...awesome. The pictures showed all of it. The way the jaw squared off, and the shoulders filled out, and the whiskers grew, and the eyebrows thickened, and the clothing matured, and the small signs of aging appeared on Jim’s skin - it fascinated Jack.
And, as a grin spread across his face, the next flash gave him all of it.
Jack blinked and smiled wider, his teeth now free of braces, straight and white as could be and set off by his whiskers. He rubbed his chin and then his chest, loving the way his enormous muscles rolled around and the way the weave of his polo felt against them. Jack flexed his arm saw his big veins make visible creases in the sleeve of his shirt. He was hopelessly addicted to his body.
No longer tentative, the man stood on his two powerful legs and felt nothing but extreme confidence in himself. He saw Jim standing, all muscle and might. His workout partner, his best friend...his brother.
His identical twin.
They burst out laughing when they saw each other, the exact same laugh, and then they looked at each and said, in unison, “Shit, I can’t believe it,” and that accidental synchronicity made them laugh all the more.
Despite their thirty-seven years of being twins, they still weren’t entirely able to fathom how identical they truly were. They were, in fact, mirror twins. Jack was right-handed while Jim was a lefty. A mole above Jim’s lip was at the same place on Jack’s face, just on the opposite side. Having been blessed enough to never experience any hair loss, the twins still had reflecting cowlicks on the front of their hairlines, which was why they always had to use hair gel in the morning. Their resemblance was always stunning, but if they stood facing each other, it became downright confusing to observers who literally couldn’t tell them apart. “Thank God for those beauty marks,” their mother would say about the spot above their lips, “or we’d never be able to tell who was who!”
Jack and Jim finally stopped laughing long enough to speak. “I can’t believe you bought the same clothes as me!”
“I just bought them yesterday,” Jack responded, and Jim laughed all over again. “I just bought MINE yesterday! I was so excited to find a polo that actually fit, in a real bricks-and-mortar STORE.”
“So was I!”
“Well, we can’t dress the same in the picture, nobody will be able to tell us apart. You have to change,” Jim said with a smile. “I’m older.”
“Three minutes. I was born three fucking minutes later, and because of that, I always have to give in?”
“Yup.”
“Well, lucky for you I bought this sweater ten minutes ago, since I figured I might need something dressier for the picture.” Jack yanked a cashmere sweater over his bulk, stretching it out. The advantage of being so big was that, if you could find clothes that you could squeeze into at all, they looked tailor-made. The cashmere clung to his waist and showed off his astounding ‘V.’
The sweater had a shawl collar, so Jack was able to tuck the collar of his polo underneath and hide it completely. The collar of the sweater dipped low, into the middle of Jack’s chest, showing off how well he had trained his inner pectorals.
“Where’s the studio?”
“Third floor, up there.”
The twins picked up their shopping bags. Macy’s, Vitamin Shoppe and Men’s Wearhouse. Going to the mall was always an excuse to grab some workout clothes, out-of-the-gym clothes and vitamins. Having been successful fitness models in their twenties before becoming professional bodybuilders, they knew their supplementation through-and-through. Jack and Jim felt as if they had been born into their muscle. After all, in addition to having genetically great skeletal structure and muscle composition, they also had that great last name: Musselman. If you’re a mesomorphic man who was literally born with a workout partner, AND your last name is Musselman, then bodybuilding is just about the only option. The Musselmen, they had billed themselves. It was even on their business cards.
Today, they were getting their picture taken for their parents’ upcoming fortieth wedding anniversary. It had seemed like a good idea. Jack and Jim had no other siblings, which had made them all the more reliant on each other. A portrait to give their parents would show two men; two grown brothers who loved each other and were successful in their careers. What was a better anniversary gift than photographic proof of raising successful, handsome, well-rounded sons?
It took some work, but Jack slung his bulging arm around his twin as they walked toward the portrait studio, his muscles causing ripples in the fine texture of his sweater. “I’ve missed you.”
“We worked out together two days ago.”
“I know. Can’t a man miss his twin after 48 hours?”
Jim put his arm over Jack’s and across the burly shoulders, and smiled the exact same smile as the one on his twin’s face. “I missed you too.”
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JOSEPH
“Excuse me, I’m with the press,” the young journalist said rudely as he squeezed through gawking spectators, busy assistants and focused competitors. There was a smell, maybe of sweat, or of whatever these guys put on themselves - paint, was it? - but whatever it was, it was repugnant to him.
He interviewed some huge black guy named Dre Jenkins, but the whole time, Joseph Torneden was distracted by the way the man’s muscles moved. They twitched and vibrated as if they had a mind of their own. He talked to some other bodybuilders, got some info about “cutting” and “splits” and whatever their weird terminology was. It was a hobby that Joseph just couldn’t understand. He’d always been naturally skinny, even though in the past year his metabolism had kinda died and he’d packed on thirty pounds. The way the bodybuilders sized him up made him self-conscious, and one even made a joke about him being chubby! The nerve. Sure, he had a gut now, but it wasn’t like he was obese yet. I’ll hop on the treadmill soon, once work cools down.
Wanting to watch the actual show, Joseph began to make his way back to within view of the stage. The crowd made it really hard to see, so he headed up to the second level to look over a railing. After watching some, he realized it was too cramped for him to take notes. He looked around for a place to sit, but all the benches were taken.
The old photo booth though, that had possibilities. He could sit down there and jot down some things. Joseph opened up the curtain and grinned at the thought of a little rest. He was tired, so he took a seat.
“No place to...hmmm...” He placed his notebook on the fingerprint scanner and held it down with his left hand while writing with his right.
“The men at this competition reach a level of bodily perfection that most of us mortals can only dream about. Their dedication is evident with every movement they make,” he scribbled with his eyes boring into the paper, barely noticing the halo of white that briefly appeared.
That sounds too worshipful, he thought to himself, absently scratching under his oddly-itchy armpit. They’re not gods or anything, Joseph.
Joseph never lifted his eyes from the paper as he wrote, not even when the screen popped up with a picture of the top of his head. He couldn’t see the way his bald spot had filled in with silky hair, a deep black unlike the rest of his light brown crewcut. And since there was no pictorial evidence to speak of, Joseph wouldn’t ever be able to observe the centimeter-wide strip of hair that had grown from the base of his chin to the center of his lips. His habit of biting his tongue as he wrote even gave him a chance to feel the bristles under his lip, but he thought nothing of them. He just wrote frantically, pulling quotes out of his memory, trying to commit himself to accuracy.
A second flash didn’t even distract him.
“There dedication is aparent, because there muscles are really big,” he wrote over his first sentence. Joey couldn’t remember if apparent had two p’s or one, so he erased it and wrote “obvious” instead. He wrote down each thing that Dre Jenkins and the other bodybuilders had said, because everything they said was so useful and fascinating to him.
As he wrote, his pencil hit a small plastic button that was sitting on the page, and Joey brushed it off without realizing it was from his Oxford, which was now resting far more open than before. Joey didn’t see, but his chest was starting to really fill in - formerly drooping nipples were now pointing straight out as the space behind them was filled with muscle. Joey scratched under his armpit again, not considering why his shirt had torn under each arm. It definitely wasn’t because his arms, shoulders and chest had somehow doubled in size - that’d be absurd.
The second picture, still of just the top of Joey’s head, revealed a headful of short, but thick, black curls. The top of his forehead was visible, showing that his pasty white skin - untouched by the sun after years of writing indoors - had somehow begun to adopt a healthy tan. Even though his handwriting was getting kind of sloppy, Joey could read it better than ever, because his glasses had vanished. Wait, had he ever worn glasses?
A third flash brought even bigger changes to the young reporter, but he just turned a page in his notebook and continued to write, ignoring his sudden flagrant misspellings and grammatical errors. Joe used his left hand to flick the voluminous black curls out of his eyes, ignoring the way his hair now cascaded down to his shoulders and concealed the back of his unusually thick neck. A brief question in his mind wondered why his hands were so dark, but then it just went away when he used those hands to brush two more buttons off his paper.
His shirt hung open now, mostly in tatters. Each pectoral was now slightly larger than Joe’s own head, sagging from all the muscle. He adjusted his arms to write around his chest, barely hearing the rips caused by moving biceps that were rapidly outgrowing their confines. His arms bulked up fast, matched only in pace by his legs, which were now held inside translucent gray khaki fabric that was about to tear itself apart. Joe reached down and adjusted his cock in his underwear, smiling as he felt it move, internally marveling at its length. With his left hand, he fingered it out - easy, since the zipper had already split - and played with his foreskin, a foreskin he hadn’t had moments before.
The quotes in his mind confused him, now. He had to think very hard just to remember each word’s meaning, and he began to sound them out phonetically. Unfamiliar words filled his head, as if someone dumped a dictionary inside of his mind. As he mumbled to himself, Joe could feel his lips get weightier. He’d never had lips to even speak of – they were very thin – but his mouth felt like it’d been stung by a bee. In fact, all of him felt so heavy. It confused him a little, feeling like a desk jockey but looking like a laborer. The guys at the office would be so jealous of his size.
The third picture couldn’t reveal the leering arch his eyebrows had taken, reshaping themselves from thin straight lines into thick, forty-five degree angles that made him look almost permanently angry. Joe couldn’t see the way his formerly-smooth face had sprouted a tight chinstrap, as if a pencil had drawn the thinnest line possible tracing his jaw and around his lips. The manicured facial hair and tangled mane of curls didn’t at all match his Caucasian features and middle-class white background.
The fourth flash did nothing but frustrate Joe more. He began to erase and re-write some of the sentences in an odd combination of English and...some other language that he knew. He wanted to understand better and grunted in annoyance.
The hands that wrote were now a deep, smooth caramel color, like the inside of a delicious candy. His forearms had grown so impossibly huge that he had to keep moving them to see where he was writing. The dark black curls on his fingers hinted at copious body hair all over, had he not been shaved. Putting his long uncut cock away, Joe continued to scratch his now-hairless armpit. Shaving was so irritating. “Stupid itch,” he mumbled, in a voice as deep and smooth as his skin. Joe couldn’t help but notice how sexy it was. Did he have an accent? That’d be cool. He began to speak just so he could hear himself talk.
“I wonder if I do...hmmm, sexy...” he mumbled as he wrote, the accent asserting itself on his tongue and becoming increasingly thicker. ‘R’ sounds were developing a slight roll, vowels were getting shorter. The pace of Joe’s words quickened. Soon, his speech had gone from being clearly enunciated to being completely unintelligible. “So cool, so deep, I wonder what...hmmm…”
As the fourth picture of his head flashed up on the screen, Joe’s handwriting and speech flipped completely over to his native Spanish. It was nothing to him - normal. He readjusted his posture, feeling the fabric on the inside of his thighs beginning to give way. These pants were far too small for a powerful man like him - he felt like a grape trying to put its skin back on. Each adjustment brought more rips as his muscles continued to erupt, becoming so large that Joe began to actually outgrow the booth and push against the curtains. His back flared through tears on the sides of his shirt. Unreal arms continued to crawl through. Huge pecs, hanging like the world’s biggest set of tits, now were each twice as big as his head. His legs had grown so thick with muscle, it was like he’d had two oak trees transplanted in place of his lower half. Despite having biceps the size of his own head, his calves had still grown just as big. And his hair was just insane, like Troy Polamalu’s - there was so much of it, it made his head feel heavier.
As the last of his buttons popped off and he saw his dark brown nipples, Joe rubbed his fuzzy chin and wondered why the booth was feeling so small. For the first time, he looked up from his paper and met the booth’s fifth flash.
The stunned hulk’s dark brown eyes blinked rapidly at the brightness that shot through his brain. With curiosity, he looked at the sequence of four pictures. All he saw was a balding guy’s head with brown crewcut in the first picture, and it somehow transitioned into the picture of his own hair. José pulled the thick tresses back into a ponytail and secured it with a clear hair tie. The more he touched his head, the oilier it became. The substance soaked through the thick mat and slicked the curls down. He moved his hands rapidly back and forth, as more and more oil gushed onto his hair and tamed the locks. His hair glistened like a mirror ball, until all of it was pressed closely against his head and the ponytail hung limp down the back of his neck, the volume controlled by the oil that dribbled across his bare, huge back. The sheen magically spread around his massive body until he was covered head-to-toe with it, accenting his luscious Latin skin.
José began to struggle with the clothes that remained on his muscles. It took considerable work, since his muscles had grown so huge that it was impossible to reach a few spots on his body. As the tattered remains of his white shirt were torn off, he wondered why he was wearing such nerdy clothing in the first place. He liked his clothes flashy. That was, if he was wearing clothes at all...
His ass, once flat, had inflated into the biggest butt in the entire competition. His underwear struggled to contain it, and two inches of his crack was visible above the waistband. The more José picked at it, the darker the fabric became, changing to a sparkling purple poser. The waistband thinned on the sides until it was just a thin strand of fabric, leaving nothing to the imagination and barely concealing his ass crack and huge, very erect Latin cock.
The fifth picture’s appearance brought with it the revelation that, at some point, Joseph’s plain white features had completely transformed into José’s stunning Mexican ones. A cute, flat button nose sat above his thick, heavy lips. A once-sloping chin now jutted straight out with a dimple in its center that was covered by the line of beard. Underneath his threatening brow, smoldering eyes held an intensity that Joseph had never even dreamt of. Though he had actually remained the same age, he looked a few years older in his new form. His thin face had doubled in width and his teeth, despite being whiter, were now slightly crooked, not having had the benefit of braces. José didn’t even care, because he was so utterly gorgeous, born with both amazing muscles AND a manly face. He was so blessed. He began to bob and flex his muscles, caressing the eight-pack belly that pushed against the top of his poser. With considerable effort, he was able to contort his musclebound frame down to take off his shoes, which despite his shrinking three inches to 5-10, were now two sizes too small. José sat back up and smiled with comfort, and in a crowning glory, allowed his shoulders to widen so far that it made his thick waist look small. He inhaled in a deep breath and practically purred as he heard the collarbone crack wider, longer. His deltoids bulked outward until José Torres had the broadest, burliest shoulders of anyone he’d ever seen or met. Their mountainous bulk filled the entire booth.
Flash.
Memories soaked into his thick head. Growing up in Mexico, changing from a boy to a man, allowing his hair to grow long like Samson’s. He thought of walking in the heat to the small iron gym where he made himself big and strong. He became tough and passionate. José curled his biceps in and pointed his elbows to the top of the booth, bringing them close to give them each an affectionate kiss. The move to America had been a really good, beneficial decision, even though English was such a painfully hard language. All his friends said he was doing pretty well learning it, and that made him feel good, although using the wrong words and confusing people was so frustrating. Nevertheless, he was born for this: the bodybuilding, the nightly webcam shows, the photo shoots, the occasional dance on the side. None of it intimidated José. He loved it. He loved it so damned much that he had to smile every time he thought about how great his life was.
His smile was only broken when he realized that he was hearing the music for the guy ahead of him. In a panic, José stuck his workout journal underneath his arm, bolted out of the booth and pushed himself through the stunned crowd. The musclebound Mexican Goliath, built for complete mass, made it onstage just in time to give the posing routine of his life.
--------
KARL
It wasn’t that Karl Kowalczyk was a loser. That was a little harsh. It wasn’t that he had no friends, it was just that people hadn’t warmed up to him yet. It wasn’t that he had terrible acne, he just didn’t like washing his face. It wasn’t that he was fat, he just liked to eat.
Karl was the king of spin. In his mind, all of his troubles were not his fault, even though in reality, they all were. He really didn’t have any friends, and it wasn’t because people hadn’t caught on to his charming personality yet - Karl was not charming, he was weird and generally unpleasant, with a taste for the macabre and a complete naivete when it came to things that “normal” boys did. Not only that, he had lived in the same town for his whole life and gone to school with mostly the same people. All of his classmates had had plenty of chances to befriend him, and they hadn’t; not because they were mean, but because Karl was kind of repellent. He was just one of those strange kids who seems to revel in their own strangeness. The paste-eater.
The high school senior really did have awful, awful skin. He never washed it, and his parents - when they were around - never made him. His diet of potato chips, Mountain Dew, cigarettes and Cheez Whiz did no favors to his waistline, or his teeth.
On this day, Karl was killing some time after dropping far too much money at the game store. He walked inside Hot Topic and poked around, then he walked to the poster store and checked out Punisher decals.
Waddling out of the poster store, Karl was horrified to see his ex-friend turned mortal enemy, Peyton Schooler. Next-door neighbors growing up, Peyton and Karl had been friends - not besties, but regular playmates - until Peyton got good at sports and realized what a drag Karl was. The Kowalczyks moved, but Peyton and Karl still went to the same school. As they got older, Peyton got buffer and taller while Karl just got fatter.
Peyton had never been too terribly mean, but Karl did hear him saying things that weren’t necessarily nice - “That fat kid sits around his house all day and plays World of Warcraft online, he used to ask me all the time to play with him” - but also weren’t necessarily untrue. Because Karl didn’t like being confronted with the banality of his existence, he avoided Peyton like the plague. He didn’t need any more reminders that Peyton was a winner and that he, Karl, was a...y’know...
Peyton was with a group of guys and Karl scuttled away quickly, knowing that he’d been spotted. Instinctively, Karl pulled his baseball cap low, but he could just feel Peyton’s eyes boring into him. Although he didn’t run, he broke into what could be described as a brisk trot around the corner, trying to find a suitable hiding place.
He’d never seen the photo booth before, but the curtains hid everything. Karl was inside quickly.
He sat, breathing softly, hoping that nobody in Peyton’s group had seen him hide. As Karl looked down at the floor, he could see his moobs jiggle and his belly go in and out, breathless just from the little speed-walking he’d done. Pathetic.
“Check yourself out, Kowalczyk,” Karl heard a deep voice say, and he heard a clink of a coin going into the booth’s slot. Peyton had seen him, he knew, and as a final taunt, slipped in a quarter in order to make Karl endure a photo session. Peyton knew that while Karl hated looking at himself, he would also be scared to leave the booth. Either way, Peyton won.
Karl fingered the curtain open and saw Peyton’s broad frame walking back toward his buddies, who were all chuckling as they disappeared from sight.
“Assholes,” Karl muttered. Knowing that they could be waiting for him to emerge, Karl decided to wait it out in the booth. Besides, although Peyton didn’t know it, Karl had actually won - the booth apparently didn’t start without a handprint scan, and Karl wasn’t about to put his hand on it.
He laughed to himself, satisfied at his Pyrrhic victory. What Karl didn’t bank on was the booth accepting his vocal pattern as enough identification, and setting the flash off anyway.
“OW,” Karl yelped, stunned by the sudden pop of light that flooded his vision. Having been totally unprepared, his eyes had been wide open and now burned with patterns dancing across his vision. He rubbed them in pain.
When his eyesight finally cleared up, he saw a picture on the screen. He looked terrible. Shocked eyes, pasty white skin, three chins. “God, I’m hideous,” he muttered, suddenly feeling guilty about how far he’d let himself go. It was all his fault, he admitted. He was the reason he was fat and friendless. Time to stop blaming everyone else for his own problems.
As Karl looked at the picture, he noticed that his hair actually didn’t look half-bad. Sure, it was too long - not a very flattering cut - but its black color was really quite beautiful. He’d never noticed its luster and shine before. Maybe it was because his shirt was so white, that his hair looked so beautifully black. Except, wait, he always wore black...why was his shirt white? And his baseball cap was white now, too... “Wait a minute...”
Right as Karl reached up to feel his hat, he was surprised by the second picture being taken.
“Oooof,” he groaned as his hands dropped back down. Carl moved his shoulders back and sat up straighter - it felt better, somehow, although as soon as Carl saw his hands, he stopped thinking about his comfort. His hands were larger - much larger. Well-trimmed nails sat atop long, strong fingers. And his old nylon jacket now had a series of gold stripes around each sleeve, about where his wrists were. Despite his wearing a short-sleeved t-shirt to begin with, white sleeves stuck out from the cuffs of the jacket. Long sleeves? “Wh-what is...”
Carl was interrupted by the next picture coming into view. The first thing he noticed was that his hat looked weird. It wasn’t really a baseball cap anymore, the mesh had disappeared completely. The top of the cap flared out further, while the lower half sat tight around his head. Although the cap had been black before, it was now a stark white. Only the bill - which was now plastic, and wider - had stayed black.
But before Carl had time to consider how odd his hat looked, he noticed the rest of himself in the picture. His face looked tighter, more angular, and if his face looked like that...
He looked down and was greeted by the sight of his now-blindingly white shirt laying atop a flat stomach. With his unfamiliar hands, Carl grabbed the hem of his shirt and yanked it upward, seeing a sight that made him squeal with joy: abs, eight of them, taut and gorgeous and covered with a thin layer of dark hair.
I’m fit!
Flash.
Carl’s head shot back up in surprise. Suddenly, his shirt felt very fitted and tight, just like a tailored white dress shirt is supposed to feel. But Carl wasn’t used to wearing such nice, formal clothes, and he also wasn’t accustomed to the way the sat around areas like his chest and arms. He thumped his pecs and felt nothing but hard, tight muscle. Absolutely no flab to speak of. He unbuttoned one of the buttons on his shirt and slipped a strong hand inside, fondling the underside of a well-built pectoral muscle. “Oh, yeah...whoa...” Deep voice. Since when did he sound so adult?
When the third photo materialized, Carl understood why his voice was suddenly so mature: he was, too. The long greasy hair of his youth was now a short, neatly styled cut, mostly out of view underneath his white bell cap with the gold braided chin strap resting atop the black bill. Any remaining fat was gone, leaving a solid jawline and sharp cheeks in its place. His eyes had a slight crinkle around them and a strong twinkle inside them, indicating earned wisdom and knowledge. His lips had thinned a little, but their shape was much more winning. Carl realized, with growing joy, that he was actually quite handsome. But it didn’t make sense to him - he was only 17, but this man he was looking at...wasn’t. This man’s chiseled face matched the growing sense of justice, loyalty and servitude that Carl could now feel percolating within him, as his laziness and awkward social skills began to dissolve.
The increasingly-dapper Carl noticed a black tie laying around his neck, waiting to be tied. He flipped up the starched collar of his shirt and methodically knotted the tie, pushing the knot up to the top button right as another flash popped.
The tie was too tight around his densely-muscled neck, so Cal loosened the knot and undid the top button, just for the time being. “Warm in here,” he muttered in his pleasant, masculine baritone. Still, despite the heat, he didn’t remove his jacket. Karl had been wearing a ratty old black jacket that he’d found in a dumpster behind his school, but now the outerwear looked majestic on Cal’s broad-shouldered frame. Four gold stripes were wrapped around each of the jacket’s sleeves. The front zipper had disappeared to make way for six golden buttons that were fastened around Cal’s waist and shredded abdominals, and lapels had flipped down to complete the coat’s development into a navy double-breasted jacket.
His dick was getting caught up in his tailored pants, so Cal unzipped his fly and moved his rather large cock around until it was comfortable. Only then did he notice that he now wore navy dress pants with a very sharp crease down each leg, which only disappeared when his thick thighs pulled the crease tight. Cal smiled as he remembered all the squats he’d done to earn such powerful legs. He shifted his weight just to feel his high, round ass move with him. Feeling intense discomfort in his shoes, he reached down to untie them, but it was hard with the white gloves he wore.
He heard the picture appear, so he tried to ignore how much his Nikes hurt his feet - and how they didn’t at all go with the rest of his outfit - and just focused on the image at hand.
Any disconcertions about his looks were far gone now. Cal was almost comically handsome. His nose had become thinner while his jaw had somehow gotten even wider and more angular, and now the daily effects of stubble were on it, despite his being clean shaven. Since his hair was so dark, it just was visible underneath his tan skin. With his shapely brow, pointy cheekbones and oversized jaw, he looked like a human action figure. And when he talked, he sounded like one, too.
A smile revealed two rows of flawless teeth. The smile never faded as Cal began to adjust the golden rank insignia on his collars, or as he checked to make sure he had the American flag on his right shirt arm and the...the...uh...
Flash.
...oh yeah, the Fire Department patch on the left shirt arm, that was there too, but the dress uniform’s jacket covered them. Clark didn’t want to get his white gloves dirty, so he was relieved when he looked down and saw that the black hi-gloss dress shoes on his feet were unscuffed. He undid his gold belt buckle and tightened it another notch as his waist became even more defined, and then he sucked in a deep breath and grimaced as he felt his chest push further against his buttoned-up shirt. Clark would never know that his muscles were still growing larger, his arms rounding outward and his chest growing wider as he became a true stud, leaving behind the body of an average gym rat and assuming the form of a dedicated fitness addict. The man was a walking, breathing magazine cover. Even his jacket became more accommodating as his shoulders grew outward into a proud, heroic shape.
They matched what Clark knew he was - a hero. He felt like one, and as the picture came up, he could see he looked like one too. Utterly gorgeous and muscular, the strapping Deputy Chief Fireman didn’t care to observe the way he had aged twenty years since his entry into the booth. Despite being almost 40 now, Clark knew he had the kind of ageless beauty that most men only dream of; the ability to look good at any age was not earned, it was just bestowed at birth. He smiled at his unbelievable beauty, and the smile made his muscles flex underneath his dress uniform. With his amazing looks and rippling muscles, he had made quite the pin-up back in the day. The Fire Department calendars had flown off the shelves with him as their cover boy year after year. But, as he rose through the ranks, Clark knew that his time as the Fire Department’s #1 hunk was drawing to a close. When a man becomes a father, it’s time to cut that crap.
With his white-gloved hands, he reached up and buttoned his collar, then tightened the tie over it. Sitting up ramrod straight, Clark Coleman gave a huge smile as the sixth flash flooded through him.
The handsome fireman was a little surprised to suddenly find himself standing outside of the booth. Hadn’t he just been in it? And why would he be? Photo booths were for kids, yeah, for kids…
Pushing those thoughts out of the way, he gently cracked the curtain open with a gleaming smile.
“Hey, you guys done?”
“Done, Daddy!”, the two children answered as they emerged, film strip in hand. Clark smiled at his son and daughter and placed an affectionate hand on the back of each of their heads. “Hey, hey, not so fast, lemme see,” he said as he crouched down, being careful not to let his dress pants touch the mall’s presumably dirty floor.
“Oh, those are great pictures, guys,” Clark said sincerely. “Y’know, I bet you two are the best-looking kids in the world.”
His six-year-old daughter and four-year-old look-alike son grinned and nodded their agreement. “Did you guys like being in the parade with me?”
“Yeah, Dad!”
Clark took each of their hands as they walked, feeling the heat from their tiny hands through his gloves. “It’s fun riding on the truck, huh?”
“Yeah,” his son said in the high-pitched voice of a toddler. “I wanna be a big strong fireman just like you, Dad.”
“Aw, I bet you will one day, buddy. I bet you will.” Clark took off his white bell cap and placed it on his son’s small head. “Little big for you now, but it’ll fit great one day,” he said with a smile.
As Clark and his children walked toward the exit, they got caught up in a crowd of young men wearing high school letterman jackets. Clark talked to them as he walked. “You boys play football?”
“Yessir,” a tall one replied. His last name, Schooler, was emblazoned across the back of his jacket.
“Some of the best times of my life, playing high school football,” Clark said. “Got me addicted to the gym. You boys live it up, okay?”
“We will, sir,” the tall kid responded. “And thanks for all you do to, uh, protect us. You’re a fireman, right?”
“Uh-huh,” Clark confirmed with his winning smile. “We’re always looking for strong jocks, so keep it in mind, alright?”
The group of guys were all excited at the alpha-man’s invitation. Maybe one day, they could look like him, too. “We’ll definitely keep it in mind!”
Clark was now talking behind him as the exit drew near. “Have a good day, guys, good luck with the game this weekend.”
“Thanks!”
As Peyton Schooler watched the studly fireman and his two children depart the mall, he smiled. “Damn, that guy was cool,” one of his friends muttered, and Peyton agreed. “Maybe I should be a fireman.”
--------
JONATHAN
The young man fidgeted back and forth as he waited. Some of the stores in the mall were starting to close, so he couldn’t shop around much. Instead, he just sat on a bench and waited for his date to arrive.
It was their first date – actually, it was Jonathan’s first date ever. His Mom had picked out an argyle V-neck sweater for him, which he wore over a white dress shirt and ironed slacks. He had chained up his bicycle in front of the mall, toweled off his brow and sat on a bench, overlooking the restaurant where they were supposed to meet.
Tall and thin but not scrawny, Jonathan was a relatively normal kid. He got good grades, respected authority and didn’t get into trouble. Although he wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, nature had blessed him with a head of thick, wavy blond hair and skin that was naturally clear of acne. Despite looking pretty good for a high school junior, he didn’t date much because he was pretty shy and rather cerebral, even planning to major in creative writing once college rolled around.
Jonathan’s hipster tendencies resulted in a predisposition to things like photo booths, so he began to circle the wooden structure as he waited for his date to show. Only a quarter? Wow, what a deal, he thought without a hint of self-awareness.
Jonathan adjusted his white collar as he entered the dimly light booth. Since he was part of the technologically-adjusted generation, he barely considered how odd it was that he was supposed to scan his hand.
Jonathan DID consider it odd when the flash ripped through his head and blindsided him briefly. His eyes fluttered open and shut several times, regaining their vision. As the booth came back into view, Jonathan sucked in some air and felt…pain. His crotch was screaming in agony, all of a sudden, and the pants were all caught up around his equipment. With trembling hands, Jonathan desperately tried to loosen up his slacks before he got blue balls or something.
He was still struggling, and hurting, when he saw the first picture. Jonathan wrinkled his nose – he didn’t look very good; maybe his dick was already hurting when the flash went off, and that was why he looked so uncomfortable. As he undid the clasp on his slacks and opened his fly to give his crotch some breathing room, Jonathan noticed that his voluminous blond hair looked a little flat. Like it had been pressed down with a big glob of grease. Cautiously, Jonathan reached up to feel it, but the second flash happened before he could.
“Ow, okay, this isn’t fun,” he mumbled in a husky rasp. His dick was feeling much better, so Nathan stuffed it back into his pants – which took some work, because in the back of his mind, Nathan knew that he always been shockingly well-endowed. Sometimes it was hard to score because he was too big and thick and people thought it would hurt, like stuffing in two soda cans or something.
Wait…score? What?
He zipped up his fly and buttoned the top of his pants, not thinking much about how they had had a clasp moments before. The gesture gave him a moment to see his hands, and they looked…unfamiliar, sort of; although he had trimmed fingernails, his hands now had small tufts of dark black hair on them. And had he always had so many calluses? His hands were all cracked and rough, like wood before it gets sanded.
Nathan didn’t think much more about his hands, because soon he was staring at the second picture. Dammit, his hair had even less volume now; in fact, it was tightly greased back against his head, and the level of oil in it made it look a whole lot darker. His expression looked tougher and older, though Nathan couldn’t place a finger on why; in reality, his browbone had grown out into more of a ledge and now shadowed his eyes. Nathan was too caught up with his hair to notice that his white shirt had disappeared altogether, leaving bare skin visible through the V-neck of his sweater, which was starting to be pulled open wider. Gone, too, was his cell phone, and the text that said his date wasn’t coming.
“Aw, fuckin’ shit,” he growled as another flash surprised him. Nathan didn’t like surprises, so he didn’t like his voice much at the moment either, because it was unrecognizable as his own. Every word sounded like a snarl, no matter how much he tried to adjust it. He knew he wasn’t a mean person, but he sounded tough and no-nonsense and more than a little unpleasant. The deep husk also wasn’t going away from his tone, no matter how hard he tried to make his speech sound smooth and graceful. The gruff rasp now permanently engrained in his speech reminded Nathan of how he talked when he had a sore throat, or the way his old, chain-smoking uncle spoke. And smelled, actually, because the beguiling scent of smoke and sweat was dancing around Nathan’s nostrils, and the more he inhaled, the sweeter it tasted to his senses.
“Huh, fuck,” he barked as he looked at the third picture. Sometime in between the second and third frames, his hair had turned a deep, raven black. The flash was so bright that it reflected off the greasy shine of his scalp in the picture. Nathan didn’t need to shave much, but he was pretty sure he’d shaved before his…uh…whatever he was here to do…whatever. He didn’t understand why his cheeks and chin looked so dark, as if whiskers were lying in wait under the surface. Maybe it was because his hair was so black?
The hair was nothing compared to the way his pecs were starting to burst through the open V-neck of his sweater, a sweater that had lost its argyle pattern and was also beginning to look strangely black. A few swarthy black curls had grown on his chest, and provided a nice accent to the large pectorals that sat on his torso like a shelf. Nathan touched his stomach and felt a shredded column of abdominals, and it made him wonder if he’d been to a gym recently. He observed, correctly, that he now wore a pair of blue Levis, but his confusion was once again interrupted by the white light.
“FUCKIN’ SHIT,” he roared, once again busting out his favorite combination of profanities. Nath’s jeans now felt tight in all the right places. There was just the right amount of space for his horse-sized cock, and the denim clung tightly to his very large, thick thighs and even dipped into his ass crack a little, making his already-muscular derriere look even better. The thought of his tightly muscled ass made Nath grin, a smirk of deep satisfaction appearing on his mouth in an expression that Jonathan would’ve considered annoying and butch.
Nath’s toes wriggled in his shoes, but had almost no room to move. His shoes felt thick and heavy, and he leaned down to thump them. He felt leather, and around the toe, it got thicker – steel, maybe? Was he wearing steel-tipped shoes? Why did that seem out-of-character?
The fourth picture showed up and Nath’s simian brow dropped low, perplexed. The photo editing features on this booth were real state-of-the-art. He looked like a grown fuckin’ man. Tight lips, wide jaw, bushy brow and a big flat forehead. All were showcased by four days worth of five-o’clock shadow that was the color of charcoal, and as Nath inspected it, he could see where it was trimmed around his neck and cheeks. The neat stubble made him grin wider. It looked so good with his hair and thick eyebrows.
What really made him smile, though, was the brand new leather jacket he wore. The leather gleamed as jet-black as his hair. Nath reached and felt the small zipper in between his enormous fingers, and he yanked it down, revealing an enormous barrel chest covered in hair. His pecs were chiseled, yet huge, adorned by a lifetime of pullovers and presses. A broad back pulled the jacket tight and made him look all the wider, thanks to the pulldowns and pull-ups. But it was his arms, yeah, the arms being so tight in the sleeves, that was what really turned him on. This jacket was new because his arms had outgrown the old one. His biceps were full and thick, and his triceps were a good two-thirds of his arm mass. Although the muscles were covered, his outsized hands, covered with rips, bruises and calluses, were indicative of just how strong his arms were.
While placing one hand on each basketball-sized pec and flexing, another flash went off.
This time, Nash wasn’t nearly as annoyed, since he’d been looking down. He zipped his jacket to open right underneath his big chest, knowing it wouldn’t go up all the way because his shoulders were just too damn wide. The booth reeked of smoke and sweat and leathery musk, and Nash knew that was because of him. No matter how much he showered, he always smelled like that, as if it was his own personal cologne. In fact, shit, the smell was so overwhelming, Nash had to reach down into his knee-high, steel-toed leather boots to get his lighter so that he could have a cigar. A small part of him said that he shouldn’t smoke, but the way he effortlessly lit his stogie, in a manner that only true practitioners of the art could, said that he had smoked for years.
“Yup, years,” he growled as he looked at his picture. Lines of age had settled in nicely on his thirty-three-year-old face, coated with whiskery shadow and too masculine to be ignored. Should start shaving to make himself look younger, he thought, but then he chuckled and shook his head. The thought of his whiskers, leather and the big beautiful bike that waited for him brought a smile that was more of a cocky sneer.
The glorious sixth flash was all Nash needed to get him moving out of the booth and headed toward his bike. The black leather chaps, wrapped around his skintight jeans, rubbed against each other as he walked. He slung his gym bag over his shoulder and carried his motorcycle helmet in his free hand, longing to get riding and to feel the wind as he headed toward his workout and the bigger muscles he would get from it. Nash always loved a good workout, even though his chest so wide and barreled-out that he could see it peripherally as he walked. His buddies joked that it turned corners before he did.
“That your bike out there?” A security officer stood at the entrance to the mall.
“Yeah,” came the low, gruff response. “That’s mine.”
“Nice ride, but you can’t park it on the sidewalk.”
“When a man’s gotta piss, he’s gotta piss,” Nash rumbled, unrepentant.
“Yeah, well, don’t do it again.”
“Nope,” was all Nash said as he walked past, although the seductive smile on his face showed the security officer that he wasn’t mad. He could see the guard’s nose wrinkle when it smelled the smoke and the musk.
“Have a good night sir.”
“Oh, trust me,” the badass biker chuckled, “I intend to.”
The bike roared to life at its owner’s command, and the security officer watched the leather-covered muscleman rocket out into the night.