Make A Man Of Him - Part 1

[tekuno]

I haven't been writing lately. I just haven't felt like actually working on the stories I had planned, and I have a different side project which is absorbing a lot of time. But I came up with an idea yesterday night which I felt like writing right away, so I did. This will be fairly short, 3 or 4 parts. There will be some unpleasantness in this story, but everything turns out all right in the end, more or less. (Oh, and the story definitely contains sex, and will contain muscle growth eventually. It will also be just a bit past the "plausible" level, for those who care.)

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Make a Man of Him
Part 1

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It all began the summer I was 20.

Well, okay, not really. I mean, obviously if I was 20 there were 20 years of events before that, and actually some of that is relevant. But that opening sounds good, right?

My mother died of complications following an appendectomy when I was 12. I probably wouldn't have been able to stand it if my best friend hadn't been there -- Josh was almost three years younger than me, but he was precocious -- to put it mildly. He had skipped two grades and was looking into skipping a third. We had been practically inseparable for three years, and we were even moreso from that point on.

We were too busy with our own schemes to pay much attention to our parents, but it turned out that over the next couple of years, Josh's widowed mom and my newly-bereaved father were seeing more of each other -- *hem hem* -- than we realized. After about 21 months, they announced to the two of us that they were going to tie the knot, and Josh and I would officially be brothers. It was a wonderful time, although I felt a little guilty when I realized that Mom had had to die for me to have such a great time.

Josh and I were thrilled. Over the next 5 years, we did everything together. Since I had to keep up with Josh, my academic performance was excellent, and I had -- why deny it? -- excellent genes for athletics, so Josh's classmates quickly learned that the merest hint of bullying would carry with it some severe physical repercussions.

Not that there was a lot of that sort of thing. Josh was kind of scrawny -- even considering that he was surrounded by kids two years older than him -- but he was also sunny and good-natured and outgoing and helpful. The other kids instinctively knew that beating him up would serve no good purpose, in addition to annoying his gorilla of an older brother.

It was around the time that Josh hit puberty that I started to realize that I wasn't like the other boys in my class. I was so wrapped up in school and bodybuilding (the bug bit me at the age of 15) that I was terribly slow to figure out my own sexuality. And when I did, I received a double shock -- not only was I gay, but I was hopelessly in love with Josh, who by this time was growing taller every time you blinked.

I went off to college at 18 -- my grades were so good I got a scholarship -- and was heartbroken to be leaving Josh behind. He was now a tall, thin 16-year-old and it was probably for the best that I was going away because I would probably have ended up attacking him sooner or later; by that time I was 200 pounds of muscle (told you I had good genetics!) and would probably have ended up causing a regrettable incident, and maybe ended up in prison. Being over 500 miles away was enough of a barrier to keep me honest, if frustrated.

I came home whenever I could, and talked with the family at every opportunity. Josh continued to rack up the academic honors, and also continued to get more and more attractive every time I saw him. He had the most beautiful eyes, and the contours of his slim face were beautiful. He was oddly close-mouthed about dating, but Dad and Stepmom told me, privately, that they were worried about him. It seemed that he spent all his spare time reading or working on the computer. They hadn't even found any pornography, which was unusual (they found my stash when I was 14, although I didn't find out about that until years later).

They tried to get me to talk to him about it, but I just couldn't. I'd look at his face, and realize that if I tried to bring up sex I would have an erection within about half a second. And, not meaning to brag or anything, I've always been pretty hung. There was no way Josh wouldn't notice it, and he was far too smart not to draw the obvious conclusion. So Josh's sexuality remained an enigma, and I wanked off night after night to screenshots taken during our video chats.

I continued to get bigger; I was possibly the biggest guy my age in the state (no way I was going to compete, though -- another place where there would be an obvious erection right away) and practically owned the school weightroom. Josh was an enthusiastic supporter -- he insisted on devising all my workout plans and managing my diet from a distance. After doing a month of research, I realized that his advice was at least as good as anything I could come up with myself, and just obeyed his instructions. It wasn't long before he was ordering supplements for me to take -- I tried to stop him, but he laughed and said he was rolling in money. Stepmom and Dad confirmed this -- it seemed Josh was doing some kind of part-time work at a lab to pad his college applications, and they paid him so well that Dad was actually jealous. (So was I, actually, once I managed to worm out of him how much he was making.)

The disaster struck just as I arrived back at the dorm for the beginning of my senior year. I had dropped off my stuff at my room and then hit the gym, hit the showers, had dinner, and returned to a huge log of messages on the answering machine.

To make a long story short, my parents had just had a fatal car crash. There were messages from the hospital, from the school, from my parents' attorney -- who was sympathetic but seemed to have been called in to deal with things on his day off, so that there was an underlying substrate of annoyance -- and, finally, a message from my step-grandmother -- Stepmom's mother.

This was unusual; she and her husband lived in a trailer park in the next town over from us, and relations had always been a bit strained. Stepmom frankly hated them. They were a pair of the most bigoted rednecks anyone had ever met; had tried to stop her from marrying Josh's biological father because he was a skinny guy who worked with computers and "obviously a faggot". (They had actually welcomed her remarriage because my father -- though also pretty intellectual -- was a big manly guy; when Dad failed to mold Josh into their ideal of a grandson they had soured on the whole thing, and had cut off all relations.)

The message was brief and spiteful; you would never have guessed from the tone of her voice that less than two hours had passed since her only child had died. "Lissen up, kid, this is yer step-gramma. Guess ya've heard o' wass happen ta yer Dad an' step-ma. We're takin' yer brother in. Don't worry none. We're gonna make a man of him." That was all.

I was all for racing home right away -- but I didn't have a car, and it took time to arrange everything. (Heck, it took half an hour just to return calls!) I fired off e-mails to my professors, and took the next flight home.

The next week was exactly as unpleasant as you would expect, but also strangely surreal. Josh was gone; all his stuff, as far as I could tell, was still in the house. Josh's grandparents didn't answer the phone, and never answered their door when I went to their trailer in person. Mom and Dad had a beautiful funeral, attended only by Dad's side of the family, and I sat down with the attorney to figure out what to do next.

Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could do. The attorney explained to me that, under state law and thanks to the unusual conditions which prevailed, Josh's grandparents were Josh's guardians by default. Stepmom had foreseen this difficulty and had made sure that, if they attempted anything, they wouldn't receive any property from the estate, Josh's portion being held in trust, but there wasn't much we could do just yet.

I spent the school year terribly distracted; I had inherited more than enough money to finish my degree and keep the house, so those weren't worries, but I had every single possible avenue towards rescuing Josh -- or at least finding out where he was -- investigated, and spent every spare moment talking with lawyers and government functionaries. Josh's grandparents were no longer incommunicado, but they had a lawyer of their own, and the legal conditions under which they could be forced to produce Josh were constructed in such a way that he would turn 18 -- and no longer be under their control -- before the state would be willing to step in. The only consolation was that they had apparently sent him to a school somewhere rather than keeping him in their horrible trailer.

I graduated -- a few of Dad's relatives came to see the ceremony, and praised me for my now-280-pound physique (I mentioned good genes, right?) -- and came home. Josh's 18th birthday was in mid-August; I took the day off from looking for work and sat at home, hoping that he would take the opportunity to contact me. My name and address and phone number were plastered all over the Internet, at least. (In fact, I still had Dad and Stepmom's old number, in hopes that he would call home. It hadn't worked so far.) He didn't show up, and I went to bed disappointed. Maybe it was time to hire a detective?

It was the next day -- in fact, the next evening -- that there was a knock (more like a thunderous pounding) at the door. I jumped over two pieces of furniture racing to answer it.

Standing on the porch was an enormous figure. The porch light was barely as high up as its shoulder, leaving the face in shadow. What it illuminated was astonishing.

The figure's shoulders were wider than the door. In fact, the figure's chest was wider than the door. Muscle was piled on muscle everywhere to a degree which seemed almost impossible. I was, you understand, an impressive figure myself, but my legs were smaller than this guy's arms. The figure was wearing the largest shirt and pants I had ever seen, but even so the shirt failed to reach far enough to cover the enormous cobblestone abs -- and the pants were straining to contain the massive thighs and an impossibly large bulge where I presumed the giant's genitals were.

It didn't even occur to me, at first, to be afraid. Once I took in the size of the figure -- and my libido realized that the lump in front was probably a cock and balls -- I tended more towards "horny". This was dispelled when the figure spoke, in a deep, harsh voice in which supreme masculine confidence fought with mocking disdain.

"What's wrong, faggot? Aren't you happy to see me? It's me, Josh."

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Part 2