Measuring Up

I love my boss.

"He's in the middle of a cut," I tell her. "But I'll ask."

"Do it. He can be very important to us." She shakes her head. "I still can't believe it. Incredible!"

So I write to him at once, my fingers trembling on the keys. I tell him the situation, describe the remuneration, that his flight and hotel will be covered. His response?

Sure, I'm in. Send me the info when you've got it.

See you soon.

***

On the day of the photoshoot, I head straight to the local gym we've booked. It's late in the afternoon, and Nate's supposedly taken an Uber over directly from the airport. I'm in my best suit again, promising myself I'm going to keep cool, that I'm going to be professional, better behaved than last time. But everything flies out of my head when I enter the gym and see Nate already inside, dressed in a tank top with the logo of his gym on it and a pair of skin-hugging shorts like last time. He's talking with the photographer and doesn't see me come in.

It takes me a moment to understand it's him, although who else could it be? There are only about twenty people in the world with a build like this. And once I get past the fact that it's "Nate"--the same guy I saw a year ago--my mind still struggles to process the surreal sight of him.

The numbers couldn't prepare me for this, they were too impersonal: math, not flesh. Now here he is in front of me, and while he was already huge before, now he's an absolute hulk. His arms look twice the size they were, and thicker than his head; his pectorals and delts are cannonballs under his tank top, and--just like he said he wanted--the added inches to his lats and traps give him a truly freaky V-shape, funneling down to a slender waist, paved with the blocky cobblestones of his abs, clearly distinct under his stretched shirt. Turned away from me as he is, I can see that his shorts barely manage to stretch over the round globes of his glutes, and they rest high above the corded miles of his quads, each now as thick as my waist, while his calves look toned, round and flexed even when he's standing still.

This man could cause a traffic accident by walking down the street shirtless. It's like seeing a god among us, and I can barely believe it's him, but though his neck's thicker, his face is the same--still gorgeous, still with that bright grin, which he flashes at me as he notices I'm standing there like an idiot in my out-of-place suit, and he strides over on surprisingly light feet.

"Hey," he says. "Good to see you." And he pumps my hand, his grasp so warm and strong, his smile so welcoming. I smell the odour of his presence: a healthy sweat, robust and masculine. Summer beaches. Tanning lotion.

"I... you're incredible," I stammer. I can't hide my reaction; there's no point trying, and he doesn't want me to. "I can't believe that's your body, not some suit you can unzip or something."

He chuckles. "I feel that way myself too, sometimes. But it's still me. Remember this?"

And he cocks his right arm and fires off his guns--an explosion of muscle: the clear separation between the two footballs of his tris and bis, that tall peak created as the second head of the bicep mounds on top, his forearm thicker too and riddled with veins. I can't resist. I have to feel his hot hard brawn under my fingers again, but this time so much bigger than I could have imagined. So I step in close, into the heat of his body, the scent rising off his exposed flesh, and I press my trembling palm against the centre of his arm, try to wrap my fingers over the top of his flexed bicep, but I swear it's too tall; my fingers don't reach.

"It's still me," he whispers again, and flexes even harder, making his muscles jump. "All me," and he twists his wrist, making the bicep lengthen and shorten so it bulges up, up, up, taking my fingers with it. "In the flesh." And it's so intimate, so sensual, my head's swimming and I don't know if I'm going to pass out or shoot my nut all down the leg of my nice suit pants.

But then the photographer clears his throat behind us, and I draw back guiltily.

"It's okay. We'll catch up later." Nate grins, and he swaggers away, the wide muscled mass of him, lats projecting out the sides of his tank top, perfect ass-swells caressing each other in his shorts as he walks. Fuck, I need to sit down.

He goes through a series of exercises, doing just a few reps each time: this is a showcase, not a serious workout. The photographer snaps away as Nate pumps his arms, his chest, his legs, hangs from a bar and does chin-ups, lifts his knees to hit his lower abs. Needless to say, I remain seated. I could watch him all day, but before I know it they're done, finishing up with one last shot of Nate taking a Colossinth pill.

The photographer packs up and leaves, but I linger behind, finally composed enough to approach him. "Can I drive you to your hotel?" I ask.

He's packing his things in a duffel bag, but he looks up at me with surprise. "What hotel?"

"Didn't you get the info about your reservation?"

"No. Was I supposed to?"

"Shit." Someone screwed up, and it wasn't me. I don't make those arrangements. "You're not flying out till tomorrow, right? Uh... give me a sec, I'll see if I can find something. We'll pay, of course."

"It's no big deal. Really, man, don't worry about it. I just need a place to crash for the night." He zips up his bag. "You got a couch? That's good enough for me."

"What?" My mind goes blank at the thought of him in my apartment, on my tiny-ass couch. He'd probably break it. "Uh... yeah, but--"

"Great. Is that good with you? It's not a problem?"

"No, it's fine. All good." But I can't fathom how this will work. I'll have to be the one to take the couch, obviously. He can have the bed. But thinking about him lying in there, just a room away... and then tomorrow night, after he leaves, climbing into that very same spot, smelling him, imagining his bare skin against the sheets, the heat from his body--how will I ever get to sleep again?

No, stop thinking that way. I can do this. It's no big deal.

And as I think that, I remember his voice, that teasing rumble: "Not big, huh?"

Fuck, don't think about that now!

I fire off a complaint to my coworker about the mix-up, then we get in my car and drive off. There's nothing for him to eat back at my place, so we stop by a restaurant, and he's not as picky as I expected. "It's not like I'm really competing this year. I can cheat a little," he says, but I bet he never took cheat days before. After all, this is a guy who'd rather die than skip leg day.

It's absorbing to chat with him and to feel his attention on me when I nervously ramble about myself. I'd much rather hear his stories about his competition experiences. It's fascinating: such a different world from mine. A better one. I wonder what it's like, standing on a stage and knowing everyone's astonished at your body, gasping in awe as you squeeze those shined-up muscles--muscles so big that flexing them is itself a workout, forcing out the sweat on your brow and making your blood thrum. And getting into a pose-down with the other guys, competing to be the biggest, the best, flexing together and grunting as you push yourself to your brawny limits, craving the feel of eyes on your bare skin. Exposed. Vulnerable, yet so infinitely strong. Nothing can hurt you there.

He's still telling me about his past triumphs when we drive into the garage at my apartment complex. I'm a little embarrassed to take him up to my tiny apartment: just one bedroom, one bathroom, and a living room/kitchen. But at least it's clean and modern.

"I'll take the couch," I tell him when he gets the full reveal. "I'd... fit better."

"Huh?"

"You can have the bed tonight. I'll, uh, change the sheets. I didn't know you'd be coming...."

"Nah, don't worry about it. It's fine," he says, but I can hear the disappointment in his voice as he looks around. What a shabby little life I've got; that must be what he's thinking.

"It's not much..." I say.

"What? Hey, don't worry about it." He claps a hand on my shoulder and I stumble. The energy's back in his voice. "You're talking to a guy who lives out of his gym, remember?" It's not a fair comparison: he's a business owner, and that gym looked like it cost more than most houses. But he manages to make me smile. I always want to smile around him.

After he drops off his bag in the bedroom and washes up a little, I ask him again about his "natty" days. "Your last competition, the one before all this started--you won that one too, right? What was it, the Mr. Natural Olympia?"

"Yeah. You want to watch it? It's all on YouTube."

I've seen it before; I've watched everything about him I could find over the past year. But why spoil the mood? Hell yes, I want to see it! So he puts on the video and sits next to me on the couch, both of us watching the Nate of a year ago in his last routine as a natural bodybuilder, and I can't help comparing them, seeing how much bigger he's gotten.

"It's like a different person," I say in awe.

"I know, right? Check this out." And before I realize what's happening, he stands up, slides off his tank top so he's just standing there in his shorts, and strikes a side tricep pose just like the one onscreen--that same white grin, that same handsome face, but his shoulders and chest doubling his frame, his arm like one of those braided steel cables they use to haul ships.

He cranks out pose after pose to match his smaller self, even copies the way he clapped his hands, bounced on his surprisingly light feet, lifted his arms and encouraged the audience to cheer. He's dominating my tiny living room like he dominated that auditorium, and even without the oil, without the bronzer, without an hour in the pump-room beforehand, his veins bulge and roll, his shredded-as-fuck waist scrunches up with abdominals carved like train tracks, and when he bears down in a monstrous "most muscular," his entire body is one striated, bulging mass of brawn--and I realize I've got the biggest hard-on of my life, my cockhead dripping like a bad faucet.

Thankfully, the tent in my pants is concealed by my untucked shirt, but when the movie ends and the screen goes black, I see myself reflected in it, a look of begging reverence on my face, and I'm suddenly filled with disgust at myself. I might as well be drooling, eyeing up a hunk of meat.

I really need to take a hard look at myself, at what I've become. This is his profession, not some striptease for my benefit. To him, there's nothing erotic about a posing routine like this, no matter how guys like me eroticize them. The tan and the oil and the posing trunks are just equipment like cleats or a helmet to other athletes. And yet here I am, getting off on it while he unknowingly looks for nothing more than approval. If he knew what I was thinking, he'd feel like he's gotten trapped in some perv's apartment. This guy was married, for fuck's sake--to a woman. Get a grip, Jackson. Put a stop to this now.

I feel sick, my hard-on wilting. But I know this is the right thing to do. "Look," I say, boldly feigning a yawn. "Thanks for the show and all, but I've got work in the morning, so...."

"What?" The hurt in his face is obvious, and it crushes my soul. "Oh. Right. I get it."

"I'll be heading out around eight. Your flight's at noon, right? Can you take an Uber to the airport?"

"Yeah. Sure. It's no problem." He looks down at himself, shrugs as if he wonders why he's dressed that way, why he's been parading himself in front of me. "I guess I'll go change... get ready for bed. See you in the morning?"

"Sure. Good night."

And he leaves. I know what he's thinking. He thought he'd found a friend, someone who appreciated him and was interested in everything about him--his loves, his passions, even this seemingly out-of-character desire for change. Someone who didn't think of him as a middle-aged bum desperate to reclaim glory after losing his wife and getting stuck living out of a gym. And I do appreciate him, I am interested. I admire him more than I could ever say. I can't say it because it's way beyond what he truly wants from me. I can't just be his friend; it hurts too much. I haven't been able to think about any other guys since I met him. This has to stop. So it's better to end it this way now.

I thought I'd never get to sleep, knowing he's just a room away, in my bed. But when I climb onto the couch in my boxers and turn out the light, my lust for his body isn't what's on my mind. It's the expression on his face when I shut him out.

3.

I'm in the bathroom, looking at my own disappointingly average body in the mirror, the unforgiving light on my skin. I'm naked and my penis--the only part of me I'm actually happy with, though it's not like I had to work for it--hangs flaccid. I look pathetic. Ordinary. Why couldn't I be someone like Nate? A Hercules. An Adonis. A real man. He gets to look like that every moment of his life, everywhere he goes. While I just look like this.

My face in a snarl, I put up a sorry excuse of a double biceps pose, squeeze with all my might, but my biceps lie there like bean bags on my arms. Not good enough. Not good enough! I flex harder, bear down with all my regret and frustration, the intense desire bubbling in me, fighting to push it all into the muscles, fill them, blow them up--

And my biceps balloon out. A full inch. As if someone's done one press of a bicycle pump. It's true! I see it. It's still there--the growth. More. More! I squeeze even harder, suddenly full of confidence that I can do this, I can grow, I can make those arms fucking explode. And they do: the biceps and triceps swell out three, no, four times the size, the veins bulky and dark over them; my forearms thicken so my wrists look tiny now as I twist them, watch my new arms jump and roll. It feels good. It feels so fucking good!

I swing my brawny arms down and do my own "most muscular," give a roar and put all my force into the body-wringing flex. My chest inflates like rubber balls, my shoulders become rippling spheres; the skin over my stomach is sucked deep into new ravines of muscle. When I lift my arms, I see my obliques emerge like rocks at low tide, and the wide lats expand from my sides, giving me that insane, inhuman taper.

I turn around, check myself out over my shoulder, and I look even wider from the back, my traps piled up in slopes against my neck. I see the humps and dents of my back muscles, the line of my spine, and when I tighten my glutes, they swell and firm up: perky spheres with hollows on the sides that deepen when I flex them, the springy flesh round and full and rocking as I shift my weight--ballast for the heavy load I'm now carrying.

Yes! Fuck yes! I face the mirror again, put one leg forward, bend my arms behind my head, and bear down in a wrenching abs-and-thighs pose, letting out a roar of triumph: my quads explode into broad swaths of corded man-meat, and my cock hanging between them rises with hydraulic force beyond its usual seven inches until it's as big as Nate's, then even bigger, the cockhead a ripe plum, my nuts filling out so they're like flesh-coloured tennis balls. I feel the skin stretched to bursting all down my dick's colossal length, and I watch as it curves up so fucking hard, drooling a thick strand of nectar already down to my knees, wobbling with each throb of my engorged member.

It aches so much, congested with pent-up demand. I can't bear it. I wrap a hand around it and that tension explodes for a second of pure mind-altering relief before transforming into an even more unbearable need that pulsates as my hand moves, sliding up and down, up and down, swiping up the precum and lubricating the shaft, circling the cumslit with the pad of my thumb so it spits out more--

My entire cock is a meaty rod of vibrating tension, getting deeper and more intense as I witness my new body in the mirror, feel huge and powerful and perfect. And my heart's pounding under my beefed-up pecs, my arm muscles are bulging with my exertions, all of me getting pumped beyond belief, getting bigger and bigger and hotter and harder, and fuck it's like molten fire, like electricity running through me, my hand's a blur on my cock, my ball-sack tightening like purse strings; my cock's going to erupt, going to fucking hose down that mirror--no, not the mirror, my face! Mouth open, tongue out, give it to me, give it to me! Give me that fucking load!

I wake up on the couch in my dark little apartment and my dick's on fire, the skin so tight and giving a first tentative jerk--Shit! No, don't cum. Not now! Not like this!--and another jerk, another. No, don't do it, don't cum! Think about something else! I lie there completely still, like I'm eyeing down a bomb, like any move will set it off. But it's so sensitive even the thin fabric of my boxers is making it worse, drawing me closer to the edge. I move slowly, lift the waistband of my boxers, peel the precum-soaked fabric away from my glans. My dick hovers there, throbbing in the dark, oozing onto my stomach, my heart hammering--

And gradually the tide starts to go out. I'm safe. It's okay. I won't need to find some excuse for waking up Nate by taking a shower in the middle of the night. "Uh, I forgot to wash my hair." Yeah, right.

I should have known this would happen. It's no surprise after the blue balls I've had all day. I need to calm down, get through this. I can whack off once he's gone. I don't actually need to go to the office anyways. "Client relations"--that's what I'm supposed to be working on today.

To calm myself down, I take out my phone, scroll through the messages I missed. It's still only midnight, and there's one from the coworker I complained to about screwing up Nate's hotel room. "Not my fault," it says. "Looks like he cancelled it himself an hour after I booked it. Got us a full refund."

I turn my phone off, not able to process what I read. I'm still half-asleep and my brain's muddled with blurry impressions of my dream--something about Nate, I think. Something better than what I woke up to. But at least one thing's clear: I have to piss now that my erection's finally died down.

So I pad softly to the bathroom, stripping off my precum-slicked boxers and throwing them in the laundry hamper on the way. It's only when I'm emptying my bladder that I realize what I'd read and dread sinks through me.

He planned this. He lied to me. Tricked me. To get into my home. He's probably already run off along with my wallet and a few other choice items. Serves me right. I've been such a moron from beginning to end.

I stumble out of the bathroom, not caring that I'm fully naked--after all, there's no one to see it; I'm now convinced he's gone. And the open bedroom door confirms it. I stagger through, ready to see my room ransacked, the drawers emptied onto the floor, the mattress against the wall.

But everything's undisturbed. The deep rustling rhythm of his breath fills the hot air, his bulk spread out on the bed, no blankets over him in the summer night. The window's open and the moon fills the room with a subtle blue light that allows me to see how peacefully he's sleeping. He wore only a black pair of briefs to bed, and I think he must normally sleep in the nude, but he thought I wouldn't want him putting his bare ass all over my sheets. It's sweet, and my heart aches.

I feel terrible for doubting him. And very aware that I've snuck naked into his room in the middle of the night.

Shit! Don't wake up. Please don't wake up. If I can just get to the chest of drawers a few feet away, I can get a new pair of boxers, get out of here before he realizes....