From the Archives: Fruiting Bodies, ch. 12 (Patreon)

(hopefully this isn't too hard to follow if you haven't read the others!  Should still be some fun stuff regardless)

“Isn’t it a little late to be having this conversation?”  Tom ran a large hand through the hair on Dave’s burly gut.  He was back in a shape close to the one he’d started in all those years ago, his strapping frame thick with bulky muscle.  He wasn’t as big as his friend, but given the other man’s mood, Dave needed someone with enough size to really work him over.  Which also explained Tom’s thick club of a cock that wedged between them as their legs tangled together in a pleasant, post-coital haze.  “Also…you’re just NOW realizing how weird this place is?”

Dave sighed, unsure what to say.  His beefy arms were folded behind his head as Tom nestled against his shoulder, the stubby fingers laced to keep them from drifting around to his mouth.  Even after so much time had passed, there was still a part of him that remembered when he used to wonder what it would have been like to get with his friend, back when he was toned and tapering.  When he’d thought about it before Dave had always assumed it would be Tom with the hefty, hairy frame, not both of them, and for the first time in nearly a decade he was hit with a pang of nostalgia.  There’d always been a contented acceptance after their transformation.  There were times when Dave would be embarrassed or ashamed of his warped body and behavior, but he never felt true regret.  An unshakeable sense that everything was exactly as it should be had always pulled him back from the brink whenever he would start to stray or question, and it was only now that he was beginning to realize how odd that was.  Going all the way back to their initial meetings with Ethan when they’d been searching for the cave, Dave recognized how odd his blanket acceptance had been, even before they’d been exposed to the fungal forest inside.  “I don’t know how to explain it.  I’ve always known this place doesn’t make sense.  It never has.  The stuff that happens around here…the fact that we can do what we do…it’s impossible.  All of it.  I’ve just never been able to actually feel that.  I could look around and logically go ‘gee, that’s strange,’ but there’s always been this, I don’t know, disconnect in my brain that brushed it all aside.”

Tom’s hand slid up to Dave’s chest, his fingers lacing through the other man’s curly forest.  “So you think we’ve all been…what?  Brainwashed?”

“I don’t think it’s that simple.  You know what I keep dreaming about?  Waking up.  Night after night it’s the same thing.  I wake up, only to realize I’m still dreaming, and then I wake up again, but I’m still in a dream.  Over and over and over.  Sometimes I look like this, sometimes I look like my old self.  Sometimes I’m alone, other times Tyler’s there.  Or you.  Or Will.  Or all of us.  The only reason I know I’m not dreaming now is because the world in those dreams is…” Dave trailed off.  “I don’t think we’ve been brainwashed.  I think we’ve been cocooned.”

“What the fuck does that even mean,” Tom asked, propping himself up on an elbow so he could look his friend in the eye.

“What if this,” Dave said as he reached down to give the other man’s gargantuan cock a quick tug, “wasn’t the real change?  What if this is just the shell we’ve been wrapped up in?  Ten years in these bodies, in this building, going through the insane motions of running a corporation?  Sucking my thumb through board meetings while you fuck around out in the field and Will balloons and deflates down in the lab?”

“So you’re complaining that we somehow still managed to have something resembling a normal life after what happened?  Look at us!  Where would we be right now if not for HB&L?  This is what we…YOU…wanted, isn’t it?  Spore was your dream this whole time.  Yeah, sure, some of the stuff we put out is richy bullshit, but you’re still actually helping people.  You turned the understanding of what’s possible upside down with this place.”

“At what cost?  Breakthrough incidents are happening left and right down at the harvesting facility…adverse events are through the roof with the last few releases…I’ve done the digging.  Our safety standards haven’t slipped an inch, yet these things keep happening.  It’s all starting to feel like we’re losing control.  If we ever had it in the first place.”  Dave’s fingers dug into the back of his balding skull, the urge to slip a thumb into his mouth growing in time with his anxiety as he spoke.  “We should’ve known this wouldn’t end well after what happened to Auggie and Franco.  They were the first people who changed without entering the cave, and that should’ve told us everything we needed to know about how much we could really direct this.”

“Dude, they come out with me in the field all the time. They’re fine…perfectly happy with how things are going for them.  Do you think all of the people who DIDN’T have an adverse reaction would feel this way?  And HB&L bends over backwards for the ones who do.  I literally just had this conversation with Will.  I don’t know why you guys are suddenly so insistent that we’re ruining the world or something.  Is this all coming from that weird guilt where you think you and Tyler are responsible for affecting the cave by ‘genetically talking’ to it or whatever?  They ruled that out ages ago.”  Tom rolled over and draped himself across the other man, giving Dave a quick peck as he pumped his hips to work his cock between them.  “It’s alive like any plant, but it’s not sentient.  We were all just overwhelmed and caught up back when all this happened.  We didn’t know what to think, so of course we’d personify it.”

Dave swapped the back of his head for Tom’s plump cheeks as he continued.  “It’s not the fungus I’m worried about.  You’re right, we managed to rule that part out, but I’m not so certain that’s what we were talking to.  I’ve done some extra digging into Ethan and HB&L while I’ve been at it.  This company is…I don’t even know what to say.  But I know, at best, Ethan hasn’t told us nearly everything, and at worst he’s been lying to us this whole time.  Do you know how long it’s taken me to even muster the willpower to do that?  I’ve thought about it before, but every time I tried I’d always get…distracted.”  His heart was racing now, his cock feeling like it was about to explode off his body as his friend writhed on top of him.  Tom seemed to be experiencing the same as his rigid log was oozing a steady stream between them, but Dave did his best to focus.  “The world in the dreams I’ve been having is…overgrown.  I wake up in my room, only it looks like the cave.  Mushrooms and pods and stalks are everywhere, and when I look out at the city it’s the same thing.  Skyscraper-sized growths instead of buildings, twisting tendrils that cover the ground where the street should be…it’s all over everything.  Even the sky is hazy from all the spores, to the point where I can’t tell if it’s dark out or the air is just that thick.  It’s horrifying.  And behind it all is a voice.  It’s the same one we thought we heard talking to us in the cave, but it’s not the forest we were talking to.  I think it’s the thing that planted it.  That wrapped us up in these cocoons until it was ready for us.  And now…now…” Dave broke off in a gasp, his body on fire.  Tom’s ass had grown to impossible proportions in response, leaving him kneading a pair of supple pillows, while his friend’s cock had continued to stretch until it nearly reached his chin.

“Fuuuuuck…do you…do you feel that…” Tom groaned, his eyes going wide.

Dave could only nod, his voice having vanished against the surge of ecstasy.  It came out of nowhere, a consuming sensation of his body being turned inside out as he erupted.  Tom did the same on top of him, his friend’s impossible monster of a cock spraying like a fire hose.  Dave clenched his eyes shut to avoid the sticky shower, though for a moment he thought he still had them open.  He could feel the warm liquid against his eyelids, but he still saw the room around them.  Only now it was overgrown and full of turgid fungus, a haze of choking spores hanging thick and heavy in the air.

“No!” Dave cried, his eyes shooting open as a wave of unseen force exploded out from their sticky frames.  The invisible blast was strong enough to shake windows that withstood gale force winds and extreme cold, knocking frames from the walls and objects from shelves as it spread unimpeded through walls and floors alike.  As he lurched upright in bed, Dave thought he could see a sliver of that infested world through the outer edge of the shockwave, but in the time it took to blink a sticky eye it was gone.

Tom shook his head and looked at the debris scattered around the otherwise ordinary bedroom, his mammoth hose slowly returning to a size that bordered on normal.  The overwhelming swell of desire had passed, with only an exhausted haze to mark its passing.  “What the fuck just happened?”

********************

Staff on the floors below found out the hard way, a rumbling vibration the only warning that their normal afternoon was about to become anything but.  The Executive board room and offices directly below the upper suites were empty at the moment, but the same couldn’t be said for the IT team that kept them running.  With everyone off site or out at meetings the trio hoped for an easy day, and it had been until the ceiling started vibrating.  The shockwave ripped through them before anyone even knew something was happening.  It hit Scott first as the young blonde’s desk was in the corner closest to the epicenter, but even if he’d been able to quickly process his changing body there still wasn’t enough time to shout a warning.

He was a 6’3” tower of lean, pretty muscle, his handsome features just as chiseled and honed as the rest of him.  Scott watched what he ate and followed through on his workouts with a discipline that bordered on militaristic, taking pride in the ample attention his sculpted frame brought him.  Much to the annoyance of his two coworkers the golden-haired pretty boy never lacked for hookups, nor did he tire of bragging about them.  He loved to lord his superior looks and height over the more average duo, though he’d have a much harder time with that last one going forward.  One moment Scott was standing at his desk looking at his monitor, and the next he was blinking at the underside of the raised surface.

In his confused haze the first thing he noticed were the remains of his clothes dissolving.  Scott felt a breeze waft over parts of him that shouldn’t, his immediate concerns related to why he was suddenly naked.  He still thought he’d simply slipped and stumbled.  His current perspective was close to that of being on his knees, but the addled blonde began to notice holes in that theory.  His fingertips didn’t brush against the ground when he was on his knees, nor did the soles of his feet remain firmly planted when he knelt.  It had only been seconds, but the warped hunk felt like hours were passing as his bright brown eyes slowly lowered to reveal his disproportionate frame.

At first everything seemed as it should.  Though the lack of clothing was troubling, there was nothing out of place about his broad shoulders and prominent pecs, nor the granite arms that framed his tight washboard.  It was only when he reached his dangling cock, with its banana hang and heavy balls, that things started to look out of place.  The impressive package was unaltered, but it didn’t look that way.  Against the short, stubby legs that had somehow lost two-thirds of their toned length, the twitching organ looked massive as it reached down to his new knees.  Scott turned and stumbled, his center of gravity thrown by his new shape.  His head spun from the sensation of his palms being flat on the floor though his posture was still mostly upright, but as he awkwardly knuckle-walked around the corner he quickly realized why none of his team had reacted to the impossible transformation.

They were unrecognizable.  Jared should have been a bald, heavyset man in his late fifties.  In the two years that Scott had worked with him he’d never seen the older man so much as attempt to exercise or eat right.  Jared would run out of breath walking from one end of their office to the other, and, based on their conversations, physical activity had never been a priority even in his younger days.

That no longer looked to be the case.  Where a naked, doughy man pushing sixty should have stood was a firm young man who looked no more than twenty one.  Instead of bald, Jared had a full head of wavy, auburn hair sitting atop flawless, boyish features that were entirely wrinkle-free.  His bare shoulders were broad and strong, with smooth, toned arms connected on either side, and he had a set of modest, well-defined pecs hovering above his flat, tight stomach.

Though, like Scott, the most dramatic transformation occurred from the waist down.  Jared’s waist looked almost exaggeratedly pinched as his hips exploded outward, leaving his leanly muscled torso resting on an overly thick foundation.  What should have been a set of solid, perky little cheeks were heaping mounds of flesh, connected to thighs so wide and meaty they each looked bigger than the now-younger man’s waist.  In the opposite of his own experience, Scott couldn’t help but notice how small the fleshy pillars made Jared’s average cock seem by comparison as they thrust it forward, nor could he ignore the way his own surged at his new, eye-level perspective.

That same perspective gave Scott a unique view of Cameron’s transformation.  Looking past the bottom-heavy boy-next-door that Jared had become, the shrunken blonde couldn’t hold back a gasp.  His dark-haired coworker had always ridden the line between himself and Jared.  Cameron was in his mid-thirties, and while he worked out occasionally, he neither had the shape of an Adonis like Scott, nor the soft roundness of Jared.  His hairy, olive-hued body was squarely average.  He sported a bit of tone and definition around his chest and arms, and though he had the beginnings of a spare tire it still suited him, giving his otherwise sharp, angular features a bit of softness.

But there was nothing average about him anymore.  Cameron had the same high cheekbones, prominent nose, and razor jaw as always, and his pointed face bore the same scruffy stubble that framed his thin lips.  And though the rest of his naked body may have had its usual ebony dusting across his chest, on the back of his forearms, coating his legs, and down the center of his soft stomach, it was what connected that strip on his abdomen that now set him apart.  While Scott had never seen the other man naked before, he doubted that Cameron had always sported a vestigial nub of a cock.  There were barely any balls present, and the tiny organ couldn’t have been more than a pair of inches in length as it barely pushed out of the dusky bush surrounding it.  Scott was certain, however, that Cameron had never carried around a set of swollen, oversized pecs larger than his own.  As he watched the naked man frantically prod at himself, Scott saw those pecs swell even larger, a familiar, clear liquid starting to ooze from the rigid, nubby nipples.

There was stunned silence as the three altered men gawked between themselves and each other.  Scott’s rigid cock ached, his mouth watering while he craned his neck to look up at the other two, a position he’d have to get used to going forward.  Jared seemed to be equally aroused as he poked at his fattened thighs and plump cheeks, the confusing grin on his face making Scott wonder if more than years had been taken from the once-older man.  And though Cameron’s nub of a cock stayed small and soft, there was no question about how turned on he was as his pecs ballooned into a pair of engorged, juicy mountains.  The muscled slabs would have looked large on a power-lifter, but on the dark-haired man’s otherwise average frame they were obscenely oversized, the pre-cum flowing like a river as he squeezed and kneaded his demanding new pleasure centers.

It wasn’t long before they could hear a commotion outside.  A voice came over the building’s intercom telling everyone to stay calm and in place, and that help was on the way.  By that point they no longer thought they needed it.  Scott was sitting on Jared’s meaty lap, his unaltered torso leaving him eye-level with the other man even though his stubby legs poked out to either side as he straddled him.  His thick cock wedged between them while he himself writhed between Jared and Cameron, the bottom-heavy man’s smaller rod feeling huge as it stretched his virgin hole, while his back was soaked from the top-heavy man’s repeated spurts.  Jared busied his hands with milking the dark-haired man, and Scott already loved the sensation of heavy swelling against his back, followed by a loud groan and a series of warm sprays before the process started all over again.  They didn’t need to be told to stay in place.  They weren’t going anywhere.

********************

Across town, a similar disaster had barely been averted.  Will and Tyler were discussing the data that the heavyset man had smuggled out when a strange compulsion had come over both of them.  They became magnetically, irresistibly attracted to each other, the conversation, along with the other people in the room, entirely forgotten as their worlds narrowed.  It was only Shawn who, acting on instincts he’d honed since being rescued by the Learned, managed to leap forward in time.  His athletic frame, clad at the moment in nothing but a forest green sleeve around his girthy cock, slipped between Will and Tyler before they could connect.  Planting a foot on the bloating, dark-skinned stud’s stomach, Shawn kicked off and shoulder-checked the lithe blonde in the other direction.  Will had grown so large that the ballooning stud barely felt it, but Shawn did his best to wrap his arms around Tyler so he could absorb the blow when they hit the ground.

It still took all of the athletic man’s strength to keep the wiry blonde pinned, and only the combined mass of four people were able to keep Will at bay until the episode passed.  Both men went rigid and gasped after a few moments, their eyes going wide before they shuddered and sagged.

“Tyler!  Hey!  Tyler…come on, man.  Talk to me,” Shawn said, gently shaking the thinner man while cradling him in his arms.  “What just happened with you two?”

“I don’t…I don’t know…” Tyler stammered, looking over at Will.  “Did you just feel that?”

The bigger man swallowed hard, his frame slowly shrinking back to a manageable size.  “It was like an explosion,” he said, looking at the members of the Learned in the room.  “None of you felt that?”

Shawn shook his head along with the rest.  “You two went quiet and got real weird looks on your faces, and given our discussion I figured that was probably a bad sign.  Was this data trapped?”

“No…I don’t think it’s that.  I don’t think we’re that lucky,” Will spat, his eyes narrowing as he looked around the room.  They were in the basement of a Learned safehouse, which from the outside looked like a dilapidated brick building, but from the inside was an opulent library.  “You guys don’t see that?”

“I do,” Tyler said, his voice shaking as he looked at the spectral, neon fungus sprouting around the room.  It was translucent and ethereal, lacking a physical form, but also everywhere.  “We need to get outside.  Now.”  He pushed out of Shawn’s arms and scampered to his feet, his heart racing as he tore up the stairs.

Outside, the fungus was everywhere.  It sprouted from every crack and crevice, every dark corner and moist gutter.  They weren’t the towering spires that grew in the cave, but as Will and Tyler exchanged a terrified glance they knew it was only a matter of time.  No one else on the street seemed to be able to see it yet, just like they couldn’t see the swirling cloud of spores hovering around the top of a certain skyscraper on the other side of town.