From the Archives - Crack the Code, ch. 21: Customized (Patreon)

“Bro…I thought you said this was a D&D game,” Ben laughed, raising an eyebrow as the “Dungeons & Daddies” title card flashed onto the screen.  The wiry ginger had never heard of it, even as someone who spent most of his time gaming, nor was he familiar with “Code Breaker Productions,” the studio behind the obscure release.

Derek shrugged at the other end of the couch.  “Isn’t that what this is?  It’s got wizards and elves and shit.”

“There’s a little more to it than that,” Ben said, as if it should have been obvious.

“Sorry, some of us outgrew this stuff when we hit 25,” Derek sighed.

Ben gave an exaggerated nod.  “Riiiiiight.  Please enlighten me, oh Wise Sage, on the valuable life lessons that the 27th year hath imparted.”

“Fuck off,” Derek laughed, kicking himself for having let his impatience show.  He didn’t want something as trivial as frustration to derail the plans he’d paid a literal fortune for, but Ben had a way of pushing his buttons.  They’d been on the same page once.  When they’d met nearly a decade prior, the beefy blonde had also spent just as much time playing video games and wasting time on the internet as his redheaded friend.  But as college had become more demanding, and his interests had shifted to match, there’d been a growing rift.  That schism had only deepened in the time since graduation, when Derek had gone on to start a fortunately lucrative career and Ben had continued to stay the exact same.  Literally.  Other than a few extra creases in the corners of his pointy features, the lean ginger sported the same unkempt mop, the same worn out t-shirts, the same mesh shorts, the same boxers, and the same build.  His hyperactive metabolism kept Ben tight and toned, his six-foot frame covered in a surprising amount of definition for someone whose annual workouts could be counted on one hand.

As time passed, that latter aspect had become an especially contentious point.  Though they were the same height, Derek had always struggled to keep himself fit and trim.  He’d been doughy and heavy set in his youth, but he’d managed to grow into his body as he reached adulthood, embracing his natural inclination towards bulk by focusing on lifting weights.  The burly bear’s efforts had gradually paid off, the stretch of sofa between himself and Ben looking like an actual scale as his broad bulk sat at one end and his lanky friend’s sharp edges sat at the other.

“For real though,” Ben continued, his attention still focused on the screen as a short wall of text scrolled by with the game’s backstory.  “What is this?  I’m some gay dude trying to rescue the captured prince?  What the fuck,” he scoffed before giving Derek a sheepish look.  “I mean, no offense man, it’s just…you know…weird.  Why does it have to be so in-your-face?”

It took every ounce of the blonde’s willpower to keep his expression neutral.  This had become the second point of contention in their relationship.  Ever since Derek had come out a few years prior, Ben had been less than supportive.  The immature ginger wasn’t antagonistic, but he acted the way a snotty teenager would have, asking rude questions, mocking Derek’s clothes, and generally embarrassing the hell out of him whenever he would bring home a partner.  The fact that Ben himself hadn’t been on a date in years never seemed to register for the oblivious man, and Derek had begun to suspect that the two of them might still have more in common than they realized.  He knew his friend well enough to recognize that there was an undercurrent of genuine curiosity to the other man’s questions, and more than anything, Ben seemed jealous.  Derek had offered to help.  He’d offered to take Ben out with him, to be a wingman regardless of who his friend was interested in, but the thin ginger always declined.  He was too anxious, too convinced that his lack of muscles and pale complexion would fail to attract attention.  Derek had tried to assure his friend otherwise, telling him how nicely he cleaned up when he put in some effort, but Ben would always just turn it into a gay joke and change the subject.  “Because there are just soooooo few games where the hero is a straight guy,” Derek said, rolling his eyes.  “And I think you can actually set your character’s orientation.”

“Okay, okay, I get it,” Ben nodded, holding out the controller to his friend.  “You sure you don’t want to take the first crack at this, then?”

Derek shook his head and folded his meaty arms across his chest, causing his plump, furry pecs to spill out of his loose muscle shirt.  “Nah, this is your thing,” he said, bringing up the third and final strike in their friendship.  While he’d finished his degree and gone on to an upwardly mobile career, Ben had failed out after skipping too many classes and couldn’t even keep a part-time job.  Again, Derek had offered to help get him set up with a steady gig, but his friend couldn’t be bothered.  All he wanted to do was stay home and play video games and stare at his phone.  At first, Derek had felt bad enough for his friend that his sympathy outweighed his frustrations and he’d let him move in, but as a few months turned into a few years, the bulky man had finally reached his limit.  He would have been able to tolerate it if Ben put forth even a token effort.  His large, luxurious townhouse had more than enough space for the two of them, but the lanky ginger wouldn’t help clean, or even pick up after himself.  Derek felt like he really was living with a petulant teenager, and he’d finally been about to kick his friend out when he’d instead stumbled across the Code Breaker.  The furry, fed up blonde told himself that he was actually doing Ben a favor, that if his friend wasn’t going to get his life together on his own, then he’d do it for him.

Though, technically, the redhead was the one about to make the decisions.  “Whoa…that’s, uh, awkward,” Ben whistled when the character creation screen loaded.  He blushed as he looked at the avatar, the digital proportions strikingly similar to his own.  To make matters more embarrassing, an almost perfect rendering of his face sat atop the nearly naked figure who was clad only in what looked like a blue jockstrap.  “Guess this really IS a gay game, isn’t it,” Ben laughed as he rotated the figure, revealing its long, lean frame and exposed, unremarkable rear.  “You guys just love your panties.”

‘Dude, it’s a jockstrap,” Derek barked.  “Can see why you might’ve gotten confused though,” he laughed, squinting his eyes and pointing to the figure’s small, but detailed, bulge.

“I’m surprised it didn’t ask me for my dick size,” Ben said, shaking his head.  “I’ve never had to upload a picture before, let alone input my height and weight and shit.  But, look, see,” he said, marking the box that left his character as gay, “I’m being inclusive.”

“How progressive,” Derek sighed.  “But I guess they said it’s supposed to be like building yourself a new body, not just a person in a game.  People were especially stoked about the character creation stuff from what I read,” he lied.

“Not sure why…these options are super old school.  Only three races?  Human, Elf, and Dwarf,” Ben said, switching between the three.  Selecting “human” left the figure as it was, while clicking on “Dwarf” and “Elf” caused it to either shrink or stretch, respectively.  “Human’s out…I mean, why bother?  Been there, done that,” Ben said, more to himself than anyone else.  He switched to “Elf”, scowling as his already-lanky frame became even taller and thinner.  There was a toggle next to the image that allowed the figure’s weight to be adjusted, but even maxing it out left the digital doppelganger only slightly more built than Ben already was.  “Eh, fuck it,” Ben grunted, switching to the “Dwarf” option.  “I hate using magic in these games anyway.”

Derek’s heart raced as he watched the height of the figure on screen get cut in half.  “Is there a big difference?”

Ben nodded, smirking as he toyed with the weight toggle.  “Too much resource management.  You’ve always gotta be worried about components or magic levels.  I’d rather swing a hammer and not worry about it,” he said, sliding the weight toggle back and forth.  The short little man on screen went from tiny to titanic, thin and waifish one second and a cumbersome meatball the next.

Derek shifted in his seat as he watched, hoping to obscure the twitching in the front of his tight nylon shorts as Ben settled on a size.  The toggle hadn’t been maxed out, but the squat, neck-less boulder on screen was nearly as wide as he was tall.  Broad, bowling ball shoulders, a heaping slab of a chest that rested on a beach ball muscle-gut, piston arms that hung at an angle, and meaty tree-trunk thighs attached to huge, ample globes left the stocky little stud with an impressively imposing physique despite topping out at no more than four feet in height.

“Alright, what’s next?  That face clearly isn’t going to work,” the redhead laughed as the camera zoomed in.  His sharp, pointed features looked entirely out of place on the squat stud, but already things were changing.  Ben shifted the various toggles like the practiced gamer he was, causing the pointed chin of the figure on screen to widen into a comically square jaw.  At the same time, the man’s thin lips filled out, his razor nose softened, and his forehead widened, making him look like a handsome, meathead model in miniature.  “Theeeere we go,” Ben whistled as he grinned over at Derek. “You’d hit that shit, right?”  He didn’t wait for a response before moving on to the cosmetic options, clicking through the array of hairstyles that ranged from bald to a wild mane.  “Too much hair isn’t good in a fight…never understood that in movies…” Ben muttered, quickly settling on a short, russet faux-hawk before switching to the facial hair options.  He wasted no time in settling on a scruffy horseshoe mustache, the ginger hair accentuating the plump lips and comically square shape of the little stud’s new jaw.  “Dude looks like a badass now,” Ben said, sounding proud.  “Wait…what the fuck is this?  Holy shit…are you serious?!”

Derek tried to sound casual.  “What?  Is that not normal in other games?”

“Bulge and body hair options?  Uh, no way, bro.  Very much not a normal thing in other games,” Ben chuckled, blushing as the pouch on screen went from nearly empty to obscenely stuffed.  “I mean…I feel like I gotta help my dude out here,” he said, the toggle hovering at the upper range.  “But, like, there’s such a thing as too much dick, right?  You’re the expert,” he said, turning to Derek.  “You tell me.”

It was the blonde’s turn to blush.  He’d made a promise to himself that he wasn’t going to point Ben in any direction.  That’s how he was justifying all of this.  He could have just paid the Code Breaker to change his friend however he’d wanted, but the only way Derek had been able to go forward with the plan was to leave it all as Ben’s choice.  The trappings of a video game’s character creation process seemed like the best route, though Derek knew he still wasn’t being anywhere near honest.  “Uh-uh, this is all you,” he said, holding his hands up in surrender.  “I’m staying out of it.”

“You’re no fun,” Ben pouted.  “Little dude’s got a great ass, so he’s probably a bottom?  Is that how this works?  Couldn’t hurt to have a big ol’ showpiece, then,” he said, a barely-concealed note of arousal in his voice as he set the toggle one click below the maximum.  As it was, that still left the mini, mustached muscle man with what looked like a small melon wedged into the front of his jockstrap.  “Hmmm…body hair…that might get annoying with armor and stuff,” Ben said, shifting the toggle up only a few clicks.  “And I don’t want my boy lookin’ like a teddy bear,” he grinned, giving an approving nod at the light dusting of russet hair that had replaced the meaty little man’s formerly smooth skin.  Ben let out a soft whistle and gestured at the screen with the controller.  “Come on, man.  Say it.  He’s hot, right?  Short or not, dude’s a fuckin’ stud.”

“You seem pretty excited for someone who didn’t want to play a “gay” game,” Derek pointed out.

“Never said I didn’t want to play it…I just said it was weird.  And, bro, this is super weird.  Weird can be fun, though,” Ben added, switching over to the last set of options.  “Ahhh…there it is.  Wondered when we’d get to the roleplay stuff.”

Derek bit back a groan at the options, more excited at the prospect of personality changes than he was at the physical alterations.  There were toggles for charisma, intelligence, arousal, and stress, with brief descriptions underneath.  “Is the game reading you right now,” Derek asked as he saw where each of the default levels sat.  It was a bending of his personal rules, an egging on of his friend that he didn’t consider an outright influence.  He knew full well that the game would be set to Ben’s actual, current status, just as he knew that, by giving a little poke, he could get his friend to swing hard.  He still wasn’t telling Ben what to select, merely setting the stage.

“Yeah, what the fuck?  This feels rude,” the redhead spat.  “My ‘stress’ is not that high.  Since when am I uptight and anxious?  Fuck that,” he said, sliding the toggle far in the other direction.  The figure on screen responded in kind, with the stocky stud’s stern expression softening into a laidback smirk.  “Same with arousal.  It’s weird that this isn’t lumped in with charisma, but I can be flirty and shit when I want to.”  He paused and looked over at the silent blonde, his face going red.  “Fuck you, bro!  I can!”

“Did I say anything,” Derek asked, his heart racing as Ben maxed out the scale.

The redhead shifted in his seat, his tone defensive.  “Not about me anyway.  It’s my dude here, who clearly isn’t going to have any problem charming the pants off anyone,” he said, maxing out that scale as well.  Based on the descriptions, the combination meant the diminutive beefcake would be an uninhibited, kind-hearted, horny little flirt.  All that left was intelligence.  “Wait…wasn’t that set in the middle before,” Ben asked when he saw that, as he’d shifted the other scales up, the intelligence had gone a few clicks lower.  He moved it back to the center, but immediately reversed course when it caused the other stats to drop.  It wasn’t as low as it could go, but instead sat squarely in the center of the lower half of the scale.

“Kinda makes sense though, right?  If you’re overthinking stuff, you’re not going to be relaxed or charming or whatever,” Derek said, dizzy from the anticipation.

“Solid point,” Ben nodded, moving the cursor over to the “save” button.  “Alright, let’s do…”

Ben’s sentence went unfinished as he was briefly blinded by a flash from the TV.  Derek, though, had his eyes fixed on his dazed friend, the stunned orbs going wide when the transformation rapidly unfolded.  The ginger’s clothes vanished, momentarily exposing his wiry frame for a final time as his t-shirt, shorts and boxers were replaced by a familiar blue jockstrap. The rest of the changes unfolded simultaneously, with Ben’s feet pulling up and away from the floor as his legs shortened and widened.  His arms followed a similar path while his expanding chest and bloating muscle gut pushed outward, his broad shoulders swallowing the shrinking man’s neck as they crept up towards an exaggeratedly wide jaw.  Just like on screen, the square-cut features were offset by a ruddy horseshoe that matched the light dusting sprouting across the rest of the colossally compact hunk, with the tight faux-hawk acting as the cherry on top.  A moment of silence lingered as Ben blinked in a daze and Derek stared at the other man’s imposing equipment.  His friend’s inflated balls spilled out the sides of the jockstrap’s pouch, while a thick cock wedged tenuously inside like a coiled snake.

“What…what just…” Ben stammered, his voice having both deepened considerably and taken on a slight squeak at the edges.  He wiggled the stubby toes adorning the wide feet that now just barely hung off the sofa cushion, his striking new face a mask of confusion as he prodded at the heaping pecs and rubbed his cresting muscle-gut with his shortened, thickened arms.  He opened and closed his mouth several more times without speaking, looking back and forth between the TV that was no longer on and the brawny blonde at the other end of the couch.  Ben had to look up to meet the other man’s gaze, and Derek was relieved when the smaller man finally found his voice again.  “Uh…why are we sitting on opposite ends of the couch like we don’t like each other?  And why are you still dressed?”

Derek could only stare as Ben shifted forward and hopped off the couch, his inflated pecs, inflated rear, and inflated package all bouncing in equal measure as he landed like a muscled anchor.  The blonde’s cock immediately surged at the shorter man’s new strut, a wide-armed waddle that simultaneously emphasized both how big, and how small, he was.  “What…what are we do…oh!” Derek’s stammering was cut off when Ben grabbed him by the wrists and pulled him up off the couch with surprising ease, making it clear just how strong his shrunken frame had actually become.

“I thooooouuuuuuught we had an agreement,” Ben pouted, roughly stripping the taller man of his shorts and briefs.  “You keep the big guy away from me all day while you’re at work, so I should get to play with him whenever you’re home.”

Derek gasped as Ben leaned in and immediately swallowed his spring-loaded cock.  His own head was still spinning as he struggled to process not only what it felt like to look down at his friend, but to be looking down at a buff, beefy version.  His wide, six-and-a-half inch cock was nowhere near the size of Ben’s twitching monster, but the shrunken stud’s mustached mouth fit it like a glove.  “Sorry…don’t know what I was thinking,” Derek sighed as he peeled out of his muscle shirt.

“Just don’t let it happen again,” Ben chided with a wink and a grin.  The shorter man’s cock had already escaped from the pouch of the jock, dangling halfway to his knees like a third forearm as it surged to life.

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he purred, unable to resist the urge to explore Ben’s new body.  He grabbed the dense little daddy and hefted him back onto the couch, dropping to his knees to begin lapping at the redhead’s thick log.  He couldn’t even come close to fitting the bulbous beast into his mouth, but his friend didn’t seem to mind based on the gasps and shivers that wracked his meaty frame.

Derek took his time, running his tongue along the massive thighs and churning balls as his head began to fill with new memories.  He still saw himself going off to work while Ben stayed at home, only now his friend was far from idle.  The shorter man still played video games, but he did so while streaming with his unique physique exposed, filling the space between gaming sessions with intimate, erotic displays.  The new Ben hardly ever wore anything more than the jockstrap that Derek just peeled off, even when company was over, seeming perfectly content with his bulk on display.  It was as if the shrunken stud couldn’t feel embarrassed or anxious, and although Derek had to sometimes prompt and remind him about things when his limited attention wandered, Ben was entirely at ease with both what he had and what he lacked.  The fact that he was a horny, horse-hung little muscle daddy didn’t appear to bother him in the slightest, regardless of the setting.  His stunning features certainly helped, but more than how he looked, it was how he made people feel.  The new Ben oozed a kind of confident charm, ready with a quick smile and a helping hand, or mouth, for whoever needed it.

“Okay…okay…apology accepted,” Ben laughed, running his stubby new fingers through Derek’s hair.  “I’m starting to get hungry.”

The beefy blonde knew his friend wasn’t talking about food.  In a flash, he had himself lubed and on the couch, with Ben’s fattened rear bouncing up and down on his lap.  The broad ginger’s meaty thighs straddled his waist as their lips and tongues met, the sensation of the other man’s squat, powerful frame driving him wild as he writhed in Derek’s arms.  Ben was driving him wild in other ways, too, having acquired an overabundance of knowledge in how to use his altered frame, a kind of knowledge that the lanky, awkward version never possessed.

It didn’t take long for Derek to blow, but Ben’s new body was insatiable.  With the bigger man’s hands clamped onto his plump cheeks he continued to squirm, grinding his girder of a cock against the blonde’s furry torso until the oozing obelisk neared the edge.  “Oh…oh fuck bro…gonna…cum…bro…fuck yes…gonna cum so hard…” Ben whimpered, continuing the incessant moaning, wailing and groaning that had started the moment Derek had slipped inside.  “Here…here it…” the tiny titan broke off in a cracking howl, his fat club erupting like a volcano.  The copious explosion shot nearly to the ceiling before raining back down, coating both men in the process.

“Holy…holy shit, dude,” Derek stammered when the pulsing blasts finally stopped.  “How much you got in there?”

Ben just grinned, his flushed face looking bashful.  “What can I say…you bring out the best in me,” he cooed, leaning in for another kiss.  His powerful arms and dense frame kept Derek in place until he was done, but the other man wasn’t in a hurry either way.  “Don’t worry, I’ll clean it up,” Ben said, his tone chipper when he hopped off the blonde’s lap with a loud thud.  “What do you want to do after that?  I know I get, uh, distracted…but I feel like we were just sitting down to play a game?”