Jack's Big Return

Nick pushed his way through the crowd, shooting smiles and sorries as he went, occasionally tapping broader backs and shoulders to ask them to make room. Standing 5 foot 5, he had never done well in crowds, and even less so when he had to move through them.

Kez's house was beyond crowded. Bodies occupied whatever space they could: stairs, hallways, bathrooms. Most of the people knew Kez from school or college, although many didn't seem to know each other. Inhibitions between strangers had melted away under alcohol's influence, and everyone was pressed together as if they had known each other for life.

Nick, a bottle of wine clutched to his chest, continued his push, hoping the kitchen would be less crowded.

The kitchen, when Nick reached it, was indeed less chaotic. A few people jostled to put drinks in the fridge or get ice, but the door into the garden had attracted most of those looking to talk at a volume lower than a scream. Still not having seen any familiar faces, Nick pushed his way to the fridge, attempting non-chalance. This attempt fell apart when he found that he had to brace himself to heave the heavy fridge door open, bringing a bead of sweat to his forehead and a flush to his cheeks. He quickly found a space for his bottle of wine, slotted it in, closed the fridge, then stood empty-handed, realising he hadn't poured himself a drink. His blush deepening, he heaved the door open again, retrieved the wine, and spun around. In his embarrassment, he hadn't noticed a someone behind him, into whom he crashed immediately. Nick landed on the floor with a thud, and heard his glasses click-clack next to him. The wine bottle had flown from his hand but, bracing himself for its crash, he heard nothing.

He opened his eyes and, through a blur, saw an impossibly large hand extended to him. Fuck, he thought, my sight must be getting worse. He offered a stuttered apology and his own hand, which was swallowed by that of his rescuers, who plucked Nick off the floor as if he was a chihuahua.

Still dizzy from both the fall and the rise, Nick dumbly gaped as his glasses were placed back on his head, and he finally saw the giant of a man in front of him.

"Nick?", the giant said.

His head still ringing from the fall, squinting through his glasses, Nick attempted to figure out who had not only plucked him from the ground, but who knew his name. He blinked, thinking his vision was off, but the figure did not get smaller, and Nick realised the true enormity of the man in front of him. Clearing at least 7 foot, with shoulders broader than Nick was tall, the man was a explosion of muscle. The room seemed smaller for his being in it.

Nick's bottle of wine, evidently caught before it smashed, was swallowed by one massive hand, looking like a baby's bottle in its enormous grip. No one would ever have forgotten meeting a man of these proportions, so Nick was puzzled at hearing his name leave his lips.

"Um," Nick whispered.

"Nick, it's Jackson."

Nick stared closer at the giant's face. Standing below him, his view was almost blocked by massive, protruding pecs, thinly covered by the taught, black fabric of what must have been a quintuple XL shirt. Jackson's face was as broad as he was, with soot-dark stubble emphasising a jutting, square jaw and heavy, sensuous lips. Hair, equally dark, was tightly cropped, in a military look made even more masculine by the pale memory of a scar that extended from his temple to just above his ear. A notch cut out of one eyebrow made it seem as if the scar extended into it.

Recognition still did not come until Nick, distracted by bulging muscle and a marble-block jaw, looked into the bigger man's eyes, and saw that that they were different colours: one so deeply brown that it seemed, in the light, black; the other so lightly blue that it seemed grey.

"Oh my god," Nick gasped. "Its.. Jack.. you're Jack?" Flabbergasted, Nick gestured an open palm at the giant's body, sparking a snort of laughter from the body's owner. Stuttered gesticulations eventually combined into a single word: "How?"

"That," Jack said, "is a bit of a story. Which I can tell you, but yeah, it is me. Jack expanded into Jackson near the same time I expanded into..."

He mimicked Nick's mute gesture. "... this," he finished. But, of course, I guess I'm still little Jack still to you."

Both men were silent for a moment: Nick, still trying to encompass the scale of the man looming above him, and now trying to map his massive body onto that of Jack's, his childhood best friend; Jack, grinning, enjoying the baffled look on Nick's small, pale face.

Jack broke the silence. "I think we may be blocking access to the fridge, or at least I am. Grab a glass and let's catch up."

Without waiting for an answer, Jack turned, softly, Nick's wine battle still lost in his bear-like hands, the crowd making immediate room for his massive frame, though not without shy giggles and exclamations. Nick scrambled after him and the path he had cleared through the crowd, feeling like a dinghy in a battleship's wake.

Finally free of Jack's knowing gaze, and of the need to form coherent sentences, Nick ogled his giant body from behind. Jack towered over the other guests, to the extent that it was impossible to be in the same space as him without it becoming his space. Like a magnet, his massive body drew both gaze and conversation. His pace through the room spread a wave of immasculation, as even guys who towered over Nick, whose commitment to lifting heavy things showed in the taut shirt sleeves and boulder-broad shoulders, looked like playthings next to this calm behemoth.

Jack lead them to the far corner of the kitchen, his large hands pushing stacked pots of pans easily to the side, making space for him to lean against the countertop, which groaned in protest at his weight. Nick had followed numbly behind him.

"So," Nick began, gesturing at Jack's enormity, "... this." Jack laughed. "This. Yeah."

********

When Nick had first known Jack, he joined their middle school as a transfer student. Short and scrawny, he was barely able to see through the overgrown bangs that he hid behind. The pair had bonded in high school over the shared feeling of being left behind by puberty. While classmates shot up, sprouted hair, and dropped an octave or two, Jack and Nick's bodies poked feebly upward, shimmered with peach fuzz, and consigned them to years of pitchy, girlish tones. Nick remembered an entire summer where they both practiced deepening their voices, hoping to convince their classmates, on school's return, that their new gravelly tones were natural. No one bought it.

Nick had last seen Jack at 18. Puberty had begun to stretch Nick out the year before, earning him a few inches, straggles of body hair, and the beginnings of a man's voice. Jack had largely been forgotten by puberty, remaining painfully slim, soft and even girlish in comparison with his friends. At 5 foot 2, a mischievous streak, and outrageous daring, had kept him in trouble with adults, but out of trouble with his peers. Still, his stubbornly small body had bothered him, though Nick had been the only one he had ever confided in.

Jack ended up leaving their school at the start of their final year, leaving the entire United States. His parents were diplomats, and had been forced to take a remote placement somewhere in the Balkans, where Jack was to finish his last year of education in a small school that seemed to exclusively cater to lanky Eastern Europeans that, at the same age, looked like adult men with two kids. Jack had been terrified of leaving, worried endlessly that his size would make him a target to these blonde giants.

That, at least, is what he confessed to Nick the night before he left, lying on a hilltop, watching the stars, doing what they thought best friends were supposed to do before being separated by several continents. Jack had shown him images of the students from the school prospectus: bulky, towering teens, some sporting full beards, many clearly showing a musculature beyond what the two boys had thought possible at that age.

Even Nick, buoyed up by a small growth spurt, felt huge next to his small friend. He couldn't imagine how small he would look next to these blonde giants.

Emotions that night were muddled: sadness at the thought of leaving, fear, on Jack's side, of being an 18 year old in a new school while barely clearing 5 foot, and something else, something that had caused both of them to linger a little too long on those pages, with muscular Europeans scrumming in rugby, or jumping, arms taut and outsretched, pits dark with hair, to dunk a basketball.

That something had its first acknowledgement that night, in an awkward touching of bodies, and brushing of hands. Half touches evolved into full touches, and then into Nick swinging his larger frame over his friend, pushing him into the damp grass, and stealing a quick kiss from him, then another one, and then a deep, passionate mashing of lips. This evolved into Jack letting out a moan that he had wanted to keep in his head, and then into twin hardnesses suddenly pressed against jeans and pushing against each other. In a flush of lust and sudden confidence, Nick pressed down on Jack, grabbing the hands that had reached to cup his face and pinning them to the grass. Then, there was a whisper, delivered to Jack's ear, excited and foolish, about how hot this was, and how he had always fantasised about it, and that being so much bigger than him was hot, and that being with Jack made Nick, who had stopped growing at 5 foot 5, feel like a man.

With that, Jack had pushed his oldest friend off him, walked into the night, and had never seen Nick again. Both had wanted, at points, to call, or write, but neither could bring themselves to address that first touching of bodies, never mind what Nick had said.

********

Jack, never to be seen again, had returned as Jackson, sporting a body so obscenely big, so incredibly taut and bulging with heavy muscle, that Nick still hadn't allowed himself to believe that he wasn't hallucinating from his fall.

"So," Jack began, gesturing to himself, "this."

Staring now being permitted, Nick absorbed everything he could, afraid that the hallucination would end. Jack leaned his ass against the same cabinet that Nick was leaning his shoulder on. Even though it was less crowded than the rest of the house, Jack's massive body was still squashed by the space of the room and the crowd. His shoulders, must have been two metres wide, and had been frequently pressed against shelves or walls as he made room for passing people, the rounded domes of the muscle compressing slightly in each instance. His thighs, tightly defined by black denim that must have been uncomfortably tight, were thicker than Nick himself, must have been 50 inches around. His arms hung from his body in a way Nick had only seen on gorillas in the zoo, their sheer bulk looking impossible even on his godly frame. His pecs thrust out obscenely from his chest, but were cruelly hidden by a buttoned shirt straining to keep their weight contained. Nick found himself fantasising that Kez might cut the A.C., and maybe a button could be removed, and another one. He imagined a single button being undone, and then the weight of Jack's pecs burst through the rest of them, forcing the shirt open, bouncing heavily, shiny with sweat.

Jack clicked his fingers in front of Nick's face, breaking him from his trance.

"I'm not unused to this kind of reaction, but people usually shake out if it a bit faster than this."

Nick thought he detected a touch of annoyance under the humour, and he stumbled through an apology.

"It's not just the body," he stammered, "it's... you know ... what the body was."

Jack laughed. "What was it," he asked coyly.

Stammering, again, Nick's heart sank when he heard his answer come out as a squeak. "Small," he told Jack. "You were so small."

"Small? I was tiny," he said, "puny, minuscule, 18, a full man, and barely 5 foot 2."

"Well, you're certainly not that anymore."

Jack paused, looking down at himself, down at the shirt fabric clearly straining to contain his muscle-inflated hugeness, as if just noticing it for the first time. "No," he said, "I'm not small any more."

Nick downed his wine and poured himself another glass, hoping the alcohol would counter the tremor in his hand, in his voice.

"Careful," Jack offered, "that's a lot of booze to put into a small body."

Before embarrassment had time to flush his cheeks, a shovel-sized hand had fallen on his shoulder, bringing him into the joke, offering the opportunity to laugh instead of blush.

"Do you remember saying that to me," Jack asked.

Nick did not, and his facial expression showed as much.

"Remember, down at the quarry, we had stolen some of your dads' beers, one a week for weeks, until we had enough to invite all the guys down to try our first drinks. We were what, 15? I remember you saying that to me just after I downed my one little can."

Memory dawned on Nick, and he was suddenly back in the quarry, teasing his friend, really only targeting him so he the same joke wouldn't fall on him.

"I remember being so pissed at you, but just ... laughing. When you're small that's always your option: laugh along or leave the party."

Before Nick could even offer an apology, Jack was laughing again, a big booming sound that drew the room's attention to them. Nick was very conscious of how small he was next to him. They looked like different species.

"Relax," he eventually said, "it was all innocent. Most of the time you were sticking up for me. You and Kez always looked after me."

Nick blushed, this time with some sense of pride. Their last encounter had dominated Nick's memory of Jack, and he had forgotten a lot of the positives of their friendship. He wondered how Kez had managed to get in touch with him.

The warmth of the memory and the drink allowed Nick some confidence, and he found himself asking Jack about the elephant in the room, himself.

"Well," Jack began, "Remember those jacked guys from that school newsletter thing, the one we looked at on my last night? We thought they were like that because they were European. Most of them actually weren't, they were Russian. Aside from me and a few army brats, most of the students were, like, elite Russian athletes, who were only there to try to get sports scholarships in America. That's why it was the only English-speaking school in the area."

Realisation dawned on Nick. "Oh so they were...," he rummaged for the right word, "doping?"

"Oh no, or at least not that I knew of. I guess some were. But they had a really intense physical fitness programme, to the point that most of the academic stuff was self-directed. It was the entire point of the school, really, a front for rich athletes."

"So you dropped in, all of 5 foot 2, to a school made up entirely of elite Russian athletes?"

Jack grinned. "Exactly."

"And they bullied you into becoming a bodybuilder and growing two foot taller?"

"Not quite," he laughed, "they actually left me alone for the most part, everyone was too busy working on themselves. This is the result of... Well, I never quite got a diagnosis, but I have some suspicions. Basically, I had a really delayed puberty, and I think going from doing nothing but play video games and mope on the couch into a professional weight lifting routine... undelayed it. Within a few weeks my voice had dropped, I had grown half a foot, none of old clothes fit me and, well, muscle just started piling on. I didn't have many friends, and my parents weren't around, so it was all I did. I trained, ate, studied and slept. I think it was some interaction between finally getting 5 years worth of puberty in 5 months, while starting that routine, but ... I just blew up. Natural growth hormones from the puberty onslaught I guess, and then the testosterone from going to the gym, and both of them enhancing the other. I was tearing every muscle fibre in my body to shreds every day, and basically having it regrown by the next morning. Bigger and stronger hour by hour."

He paused, studying his massive body again, as if seeing it for the first time.

"By the time I finished that year, I was 6 foot 5. My parents' placement wasn't finished so I just enrolled for another year, took up some language and history classes, just the excuse to keep up their training programme really."

"So in one year you got to this?"

"Oh, god", he laughed, "no, definitely not. I got to this height over like 3 years. It was a super delayed puberty. Muscle-wise, I got to the half-way mark of this in the same time, everything else was much harder won."

To emphasise the point, with a grin, Jack raised his arm and quickly flexed. His bicep inflated, bigger than Nick had thought possible. Bigger, too, than the shirt could handle. A soft ripping sound announced that it had finally given up on trying to contain Jack's freakish body, in one place at least, as the fabric rent around the peak of his bicep, exposing the massive dome of pure muscle, and almost causing Nick to cum on the spot.

A blush, though not a particularly convincing one, rose to Jack's cheeks. Nick's lust-muddled brain understood that there were exclamations from partygoers behind him, and pointing, and that Jack was saying something. None of this, however, was truly going on, as he was completely paralysed by the sight of a shirt sleeve, ripped completely at the upper arm, exploding outward, and revealing the heaviest, most brutishly, thickly muscled arm Nick had ever seen. The moment replayed in his head over and over, locking it in his memory. A black shirt sleeve, tight against an expanding muscle, getting tighter, straining and snapping, renting, splitting like a an axe-hit log, and flowing down over the arm that it could no longer constrain. The suddenly- free bicep, emphasised by the overhead light, pulsing with thick veins, and still getting slowly bigger as Jack reached the apex of his flex.

Time slowed, then sped up, and Nick was suddenly back in the room, his cock pressing painfully against his pants, Jack fussing over his turn shirt sleeve.

"Fuck, man, this was expensive. This was tailor-made for me. He promised me at least 6 months before I grew out of it."

"You're ..., you're still growing?" Jack stammered.

Jack laughed. "Not from puberty, but I'm still growing in the gym. Never big enough. Sessions over the last few weeks have been crazy though, I think I broke through a few plateaus. And apparently a shirt sleeve too."

On anyone else, a single-armed shirt would look ridiculous. On Jack, his muscle-bloated, gorilla-like arm free to gaze at, it looked like fashion, like he had planned it. Nick glanced to his own short-sleeved short, his twig of an arm sticking out, the sleeve not even touching it, never mind being tight against it. He wondered what that would feel like, imagined his own arm growing, pressing against the sleeve, then pushing against it tightly, and the sleeve constricting his arm, fighting against it as it got bigger and bigger until it burst.

"Rip your other sleeve," Nick heard himself say.

"What?"

Think quickly. "You're going to have to even your shirt out. Rip the other sleeve at the same point so it looks even." Was that convincing?

"That ... makes sense, I suppose." Nick ran a finger along the frayed threads at the peak of his bicep. "No repairing this. Where does Kez keep her scissors?"

"Just rip it by flexing again, to make sure it's in the same place."

Jack raised an eyebrow, regarding the smaller man in front of him. From his height, his old friend barely looked like himself. He had been used to looking up at him, being so much smaller than him, once, that he had wondered how he had gotten so big. Now Nick was tiny beneath him, asking him to flex, a small boner clearly visible at the front of his pants, the party around him obviously forgotten. A bead of sweat had formed at his temple.