Fir Hollow, ch. 9: The Hive (Patreon)

“Come on, Pete,” Mike pleaded.  “You’ve seen what it did for Chuck, right?  Guy’s never looked better or stronger in his life!”  He’d been trying to talk the young man into volunteering for the past half hour, and he could tell he almost had him.  People didn’t technically need to be willing for the process to work, Mike’s buddy Rich had learned that the hard way, but the older man didn’t want to force people into it.  That wasn’t his management style.  After twenty five years, he’d learned that you get better results if people at least think they’re acting of their own volition.

True, he wasn’t telling Pete everything, only what he felt the young man needed to know, but that was a manager’s job.  The guys who worked for him didn’t need every detail about the day-to-day operations at the Mill Creek Mine, only what pertained to their respective positions.  In Pete’s case, that meant a better body with more muscle than his tight, wiry frame currently possessed.  The young man was single, it wasn’t like he had kids or a family to worry about, so Mike didn’t see the other information as relevant.  And by the time it was over, Pete wouldn’t care about the parts he’d left out.

Based on what Mike had seen so far, none of the guys worried too much about anything afterwards, which was just another benefit as far as he was concerned.  It also wasn’t as if his workers didn’t go through drastic changes on their own, either.  When the perpetually grumpy Jake suddenly shed a decade and started fucking all the guys on his shift, Mike’s first thought was that he’d stumbled across the idol, but something else was apparently at work there.  Same with Donny, who’d up and quit on him only to be seen working with that hippy at Misty Mountain, now looking as cheerful as he was tiny.  Mike would have been happy for him, but he was already behind the eight-ball and he didn’t have enough workers as it was.  That’s why this process was so important.  The guys who’d been changed weren’t just big and strong, they had stamina, and as long as certain, specific needs were met, they were happy to do whatever they were told.  Mike could do with a few less workers if the ones he had were all eager, compliant hulks.  There might be some logistical issues to deal with, but he could figure those out after he was back up to meeting his production quotas.

“I don’t know, Mike,” Pete said, shaking his head.  The scrappy brunette liked the part where he’d be making more money, and he’d always wished he could bulk up like some of his peers, he just thought it all sounded too good to be true.  Mike wasn’t exaggerating about Chuck’s appearance.  The formerly thick, beefy man now looked closer to twenty five, not forty five, with a body that was chiseled from granite.  Even Pete had to admit that Chuck had gone from barely average to stunning, a transition he’d always longed for.  As someone who actually was twenty five, Pete figured his current, leanly muscled build was the best he’d be able to do.  He had strong arms, and there wasn’t an ounce of fat on his shredded, whipcord frame, but despite being rock solid, he couldn’t get big.  He had a face that was handsome enough in a boy-next-door kind of way, and his long, wide cock made up for the size that the rest of his body lacked, though that was cold comfort most of the time.  Fir Hollow men were supposed to be rugged and strong, not thin and toned, a fact that was reinforced day after day as Pete toiled alongside his burly peers.  He felt like a kid, and he was ready to grow up.  “Chuck looks great and all, but he hasn’t been acting right since ya’ll did whatever it was that made him blow up like that.”

“Not acting right?  What?” Mike cried.  “You got it all wrong, Pete.  Chuck’s acting exactly how he should be.  Exactly how YOU would be, too.  That’s how a man acts when everything’s going his way and he doesn’t have a care in the world.”

Pete wanted to believe the older man.  “Still, there’s something off about him.  Chuck was never the best guy to talk to, but now he barely says more’n a few words at a time.  All he does is strut around and smile.”

“That’s ‘cause he’s letting his body do the talking.  You’ll be grinning too, stud.  The big guy gets more tail now than the rest of you combined.”  Mike didn’t think it wise to mention that Chuck’s tail was the one getting it.  In his mind, that piece of information wasn’t overly important.  The inflated man loved every second of it, and he really was putting his new body to use with every guy he could, so what did the position matter?  Pete might not love the idea of getting fucked by guys at the moment, but he absolutely would afterward, so why scare him off?

“And it doesn’t hurt?”  Pete looked over at his flexing arm as he ran a hand through his hair, picturing what it would look like at Chuck’s size.  “Is it a drug thing?”

Mike bit down on his triumphant expression.  He knew he’d won.  “Not at all!  From what the guys tell me, you’ll barely feel a tingle.  As for what it is…” he reached into his desk and pulled out the idol, letting the rough-hewn sculpture speak for itself.  The figure appeared to be some sort of anthropomorphized insect, bearing a vaguely humanoid outline, but with features that resembled no man or woman who’d ever walked the earth.  It was carved from a dark, purple crystal and had a presence that was more imposing than its eight-inch height would suggest, which was how Mike had found it in the first place.  He’d been down inspecting one of the newer tunnels, deeper than they’d ever dug before, when he’d seen it sticking out of the wall.  He’d felt it before he’d actually laid eyes on it.  He’d had the sensation of being watched, like someone, or something, was standing right behind him, towering over him, but whenever he looked back all he saw was an empty tunnel.  Until he found the idol.

His initial thought was that it might have some sort of archaeological value.  It was far too deep to be part of any tribal burial site, or any other civilization in human history given the hundreds of feet of solid rock above their heads, but Mike kept his mouth shut anyway, not wanting to risk a shutdown if word got out and the State investigated.  His buddy, Rich, was a history buff, so he’d start there.  If it was worthless, it was the sort of thing his friend would want to keep, and if it had value after all, the other man could quietly sell it for him somewhere out of town to keep his own hands clean.

As it turned out, Rich had never seen anything like it.  He’d told Mike that it wasn’t uncommon for ancient people to come up with hybrid deities like the one depicted by the idol, but where it had been found shouldn’t have been possible.  Rich was no expert, but he confirmed Mike’s suspicion that the depth of the tunnel would have put the figure’s age at a time when the whole area was under an ocean.  It was an incredible find, made all the moreso by what happened next.

As Rich was inspecting it, a loud buzzing filled the room.  The other man didn’t seem to hear it, but to Mike it was almost deafening.  He’d started to ask his friend where the noise was coming from, but it quickly became a moot point.  All at once, Rich began to inflate, his body swelling with muscle.  When their conversation had started, the other man had been a few years older than Mike, in his late fifties as opposed to just entering the decade.  A former mechanic who’d just retired after selling his shop, his frame was still broad and powerful, but starting to show signs of his age.  In a matter of seconds, all that changed.  Mike could only stare as the wrinkles melted away and Rich’s weathered skin became soft and smooth.  It was a transition occurring all over his expanding frame, a fact that Mike was able to witness when his friend’s clothes exploded against the surge of flesh.  The body revealed by the tattered cloth was unlike anything Rich had ever possessed.  Even when he’d been in his mid-twenties, as he now appeared, he’d never been a sculpted Adonis.  He’d never had broad, cannonball shoulders or pecs so big he could barely see over them.  His arms had never been as big as Mike’s thighs, and his thighs has never been as big as Mike’s waist.  Rich's own waist had become a tapering, shredded mass of abs, while he’d sprouted an ass that looked like two basketballs made of muscle had been strapped to his lower back.

He was stunning, with the body of a god and the youthful face of a model.  It was only the tiny, barely-visible remains of his cock that kept the scenario from being a dream come true.  The once-older man should have had a fat, hefty six inches, not a two-inch nub poking out from between his suddenly massive thighs.  They’d both panicked at the discovery, but as Rich prodded at his altered wall of muscle, another impulse began to take over.  He was wracked with a painful hunger, a need that, once discovered, he couldn’t deny.  It was as necessary as breathing, and the freshly-formed hunk was so desperate that Mike barely knew what was happening before his own thick rod was slipping in and out of Rich’s insatiable hole.

The other man calmed down once he was inside, a state he’d been in ever since.  It was as if the penetration was all that mattered.  Rich was never someone who could have been considered a stud, but Mike knew his friend should be more worried about his lack of endowment than he was, extra muscles and pretty face or not.  He also knew that Rich should be more concerned about the fucking he was receiving.  In the thirty years he’d known the other man, Mike never had any indication that Rich was anything other than entirely straight, yet he was somehow working his enlarged ass like a third hand in a matter of seconds.

Once the initial frenzy had faded, Mike kept expecting Rich to panic.  Now, several weeks later, it had yet to happen.  The age-regressed Adonis was perpetually cheerful, uninhibited, and horny.  He was like a puppy, eager to please and possessed of boundless energy.  Thankfully, Rich was divorced and didn’t have any kids, so it was easy enough for Mike to cover up what happened.  He put his friend to work at the mine mostly so he could keep an eye on him, but after a few weeks of watching Rich work like a machine, the idol’s true potential finally dawned on him.  He still had no idea what it was, how any of it worked, or why he wasn’t changed, but results were results.  A few more experiments confirmed that he could make the idol work on command.  The act of him presenting it to someone seemed to spark the change, as if he was partaking in some ritual that hadn’t been performed in millions of years.

The process was always the same, as was the outcome.  First there was a period of nothing, followed by a loud buzzing that only he could hear, and then the eventual growth spurt.  For the three men he experimented on after Rich, he’d turned to gay dating apps, thinking that if he advertised for a bottom he was actually doing them a favor, not hurting anyone.  And afterward, they all seemed to agree.  Like Rich, they were perfectly content to work in the mine, and he’d set the three of them up with his friend at the formerly-older man’s house.  They’d all been young and employed part-time at most, so this was technically a step up for them.  Just as it was for Chuck, and just as it would be for Pete.   Chuck was still in his own house, and Mike was already making plans for Pete to move out of his apartment and in with the other man.  If the bustling business up at the recently refurbished Newcomb Estate was any indication, there was just as much profit potential with the men outside of the mine as there was inside it.

Mike nodded down at the idol, the buzzing already growing in his ears.  “So?  What do you think?”

Pete raised an eyebrow, shifting in his chair.  “Uh…what am I looking at?”

“Good question,” Mike laughed.  “No clue what it is, I only know it’s the one that makes the changes.”

“Whoa, whoa…I thought this was some kind of steroid thing.  I’m not looking to fuck with no…magic…” Pete trailed off when he stood, his eyes going wide at the tightness of his clothes.

“Too late, son.  It’s already happening,” Mike said above the buzzing din in his head.  “You’ve still got time to take those clothes off if you don’t want ‘em to shred.  But it’s also kind of fun when they do, so that’s up to you.”

Panicked, Pete tore out of his rapidly-straining t-shirt and jeans just in time.  As soon as he’d kicked the now-tight denim free, his boxer-briefs exploded off his expanding thighs.  Looking down at his increasingly-prominent pecs and brawny arms, the growing hunk marveled at the amount of muscle he’d put on in only seconds.  Already he was twice the size he had been, and the growth hadn’t stopped.  Then he noticed his rigid cock.  “Wait…Mike…what’s…what’s happening to my dick…” he gasped.  Hard, he should have topped out at just under nine inches, but already he sported a rod that was barely five, and that was rapidly continuing to shrink.

“Most guys don’t notice until after, but with a club like that, I guess it makes sense you’d spot it right away.  Don’t worry…in a couple minutes you won’t miss it at all.”

“Miss it?!  What do you…I don’t want it to go anywhere!”  Pete yelped, craning his thickened neck to look over his heaping slab of a chest at the tiny mushroom nestled between his thighs.  The nub was minuscule compared to the rest of his massive, bodybuilder frame, which had finally settled at triple his former size.  He was broad, cut, and solid, his old body able to comfortably fit inside his new one.  “What is this?!  You lied to me,” he shrieked, his muscled stomach dropping when he reached down and swallowed his new acorn and vestigial balls with a widened palm.  It was too small to actually clutch, and he couldn’t bring himself to tweak it between a few fingers.

“I didn’t lie,” Mike said, his tone calm as he stepped around from behind his desk to inspect Pete’s new body.  “I just didn’t tell you about that part.  I didn’t tell you about this one, either,” he grinned, reaching around and giving the other man’s ample new rear a squeeze.  He laughed at Pete’s loud gasp, watching the dominoes topple all the way up the young man’s spine before finally connecting the ravenous hole with his addled brain.  The rewiring was almost instantaneous as it played out on Pete’s gorgeous new face.  The other man’s newly acquired lantern jaw hung slack, his brightened eyes going wide.

“Guh!” Pete grunted, grinding his tiny cock into his clutching palm at Mike’s squeeze.  It was like the older man had flipped a switch, turning off his fear and turning on something else entirely.  Pete still knew the desire was out of place as he reached around and began digging for his aching hole, and that Mike clearly hadn’t told him everything about the process.  He just didn’t care.  Instead of being confused or hesitant when he watched the beefy older man fish his cock free, all Pete felt was hunger.  He spun around and bent forward against Mike’s desk, his powerful new arms holding him up as he threw his massive globes back against the older man’s spit-slick rod.

And just like that, Pete understood it all.  With Mike’s blissful cock hammering in and out, he saw things, and his role in them, clearly for the first time.  Though they weren’t in the room, he could feel Rich and Chuck and the others that Mike had shown the idol to, and he knew why his coworker seemed so happy lately.  They weren’t working in a mine; they were building their hive.  And as with any colony it would continue to grow, just like the last one had.  The visions were hazy, but Pete had phantom memories of strange figures skittering in and out of the mountainside, building their tunnels and gathering their strength.  That’s what he was made for.  His cock had shrunk because he didn’t need it anymore.  His new body didn’t project and waste energy the way his old one did; it collected it.  He wasn’t being fucked, he was feeding.  That was Mike’s job, and the reason the older man hadn’t been changed, whether he knew it or not.  His role was to sprout the workers from their cocoons and give them the first taste they needed to set them on their path.  From now on, the guys Pete so vigorously took would all be adding to his collection.  And once he and the others had fed enough, they’d take everything they’d gathered down to the tunnels, the real ones, and give it over to their queen.  She’d been waiting down there for so long, ever since the newcomers had trapped her under that ocean, and she was so, so hungry.  He could feel her, too, guiding him on as he popped his hips and felt his excessive muscle bounce from the force of Mike’s thrusting.  There was a part of him that still felt like his fat cock should be flopping around, and that he shouldn’t have a pointless little mushroom, but the queen’s soothing buzz reminded him that everything was as it should be.

“OOHHHHHH!”  Pete roared when Mike came.  His shrunken cock didn’t erupt the way it used to, but the wave of euphoria that washed over him was more intense than any cum-spray ever could be.  As the older man’s warm fluid seeped into his insides, Pete was connected with it all.  He saw the Queen perched on her cosmic throne, holding court amongst the Ones Who Came Before, and he could feel the approving buzz of his hive mates even from a distance.  He had what everyone wanted: an unshakeable purpose to his life.  No more angst or worries, only a set path for him to gleefully follow.  Compared to that, a small dick was nothing.

“See?  Not so bad, is it,” Mike asked, giving Pete’s tiny nub a gentle squeeze.

The new wall of muscle stretched and batted his eyes, a broad grin on his face.  “Not at all,” Pete purred, no longer seeing himself as an angel faced hunk, but as something even more beautiful and terrible.  He’d become part of a lineage stretching back to worlds that were ancient before the Earth had even begun to form.

And he couldn’t wait to get to work.

****** Voting Options ******

Option 1: A man buys matching rings from a local jeweler as an anniversary present for him and his husband, only to discover that they allow each of them to change the other as they see fit.

Option 2: A group of friends discover a strange cave while out rock climbing and end up acquiring new openings of their own.

Option 3: After foraging in the forest for local ingredients, a would-be chef picks the wrong items and causes his dinner guests to pack on weight, growing thick and beefy.

Option 4: Out antiquing, an arrogant, handsome hunk buys a cursed mirror that causes him to adopt all the traits and behaviors that he judges other guys for.