Steel Wings: Part 1
The attention of the local gym bully is the last thing Austin wants, but it may be just the thing he needs to take his training to the next level.
Marco leans way, way, waaaaaay over to leer directly into my eyes, beak to beak. If not for his long neck, the pectorals erupting out of the hyper muscled blue heron's chest like a pair of ballistic missiles would force him to glare at me from 6 feet away.
"I'm sorry, could you please repeat yourself?" He asks in a paternal tone that only makes me more aware of the stack of 45 lb weights, at least 10 plates high, he's carrying like a tray of dainty appetizers. "I couldn't hear you all the way up there."
My trainer, Liam, supportively bumps me with an elbow, the lion's hazel eyes cheering me forward as much as Marco's ludicrous bulk forces me back.
"I-I said, I'm n-not done using those... yet..."
"Well, if you needed to warm up, there should still be something around here a bit more appropriate to your size. Maybe some 2.5 lb weights?" His head disappears as he rears to his full height, concealed behind his shipping container-like chest, my vision left full of striations like rivulets that lead the eye naturally to his diamond cut abdominals.
"Some people have things they need to attend to outside the gym, Marco. We'll be done with those weights in a couple minutes, we're doing his three month evaluation." Liam stares impassively, his own arms bulging from the mere act of crossing them. Alongside anyone else, he would look like a motivational poster come to life ("You're getting stronger every day!" He would say); next to, or more accurately, beneath Marco, he merely looks like a larger version of normal.
"My one rep max is up to 175..." I offer, as if that will clear everything up.
Marco doesn't walk, so much as the room reorients around him. We have to take a couple steps back to avoid being swept aside by his lats when he turns back to his bench. His downy feathers do nothing to obscure his impossible definition, or soften his dominating demeanor, or impede his oppressive scent that seeps into every corner, enticing like a professional athlete's jockstrap after an ultra heavyweight boxing match.
"And what things does he need to attend to with all that strength?" He asks as he adds 90 lbs to his bar. "Opening milk jugs, perhaps?" He suggests as he adds 90 lbs more. "Holding open doors?" 90 lbs more. "Or maybe trying to catch someone's eye by being slightly less flabby?" Even his smirk is wide enough to encompass both me and Liam at once.
"Our barn owl friend here has got some pretty ambitious goals." Liam gently nudges me forward before I can retreat from the conversation and nods towards the avian hulk. "What are you going for, again?"
"I... I wanna get into a bodybuilding show..."The words have as much strength behind them as Marco seems to think I'm capable of.
"Good for you!" The heron lifts his bar single handedly, bowed with its accumulated 1,465 lbs of pilfered weights that shake like windchimes in an earthquake. A latticework of veins spreads over his bicep with each curl. "I always appreciate an extra set of eyes in the audience." His patronizing smile barely peeks over the ridge of his pecs.
"Austin here is a natural. He's dropped his body fat by 5%. He's increased the radius of his biceps by an inch and a half. And he's managed to do it without any supplements." Liam's voice gets imperceptibly louder. What creases there were around the shoulders of his robin's egg blue polo smooth over his rising hackles.
"Well, Mr. Owl, with that kind of talent for bulking, I guess you can afford to not be too choosy about your trainer." Marco drawls as he drops the weight. The shockwave from the dual stacks embedding themselves in the rubber coated floor knocks me to my knees. His blatant disregard for gym etiquette is only mildly less infuriating than the look of mock pity. "Still, do you just not try, or did Liam here give up on you?"
"Liam says I'm making remarkable progress!" One of the fluorescent bulbs hanging 12 feet above the floor breaks as Marco's head jerks up like he's just learned anyone could actually talk to him with anything but stupefied awe; Liam stands even straighter and beams at me; I am left momentarily dumbstruck, wondering if that bark actually came out of my beak.
"He's got a solid shot at being next year's winner, Marco." The pride and righteousness saturating Liam's purr give it more impetus than any increase in volume ever could. "He's going to blow your performance out of the sky, so maybe you should get on his good side now."
"Maybe I should." Marco rumbles as he finishes rubbing the back of his head. With one wing, the heron extracts the bar from the floor and starts the second half of his set; with the other, he sweeps me up and inserts me between his pectorals. Whatever Liam is saying in protest is drowned out by a pungent smell and Buick-sized pecs crushing me with moist heat like I'm being teased by a pressure cooker. "Come on little guy, you don't really want to go through all that just to be humiliated, do you?"
Whatever very important thing I could have said dissolves in the sweat that cascades down Marco and pools in my pursed open beak. My attempts to push myself out abate as my thoughts melt into the taste of salty beef jerky and lemon lime. Assaulted by the masculine musk and relentless mounds of muscle, my cock is all but commanded to pitch a tent in my athletic shorts.
"That's right little guy." His omnipresent cooing reverberates through his chest and into my brain. "Just let all those silly thoughts of being anywhere as impressive as me drip away. Why would you want to get any bigger yourself when you look so comfortable right there?" He makes an excellent point. I can't figure out how to articulate my agreement though. The only words that come to mind are 'lick' and 'sniff', though I get whispers of 'worship' if I concentrate hard enough. "Maybe I'll keep you around, let you be one of my groupies for a while. Maybe even give you a cute nickname?"
"Mr-ffm-mm." I don't think he got 'my name's Austin' from that, but there's a pressing part of me that will let him call me whatever he wants. An urgent tugging at one of my legs seems determined to pull me away from this muscular haven . My pre-dripping dick, conversely, makes a solid argument for staying right where I am.
"Mr-ffm-mm. I like it!" He pats me on the back, my cock plunged into the groove between his abs with each jarring slap. "See, Liam? You'll never help anyone achieve this level of physical apotheosis. You'll never train a HEMAN best in show, you can't even-"
Schlorp.
Next thing I know, Liam is scrubbing me as dry as I could hope to be, the towel drenched with Marco's savory fluids by the time he throws it into the hamper. A pang shoots through my stomach at the waste.
"Try anything like that again and I will have you banned from the facilities. Come on Austin." Liam helps me to my talons, my head still spinning from Marco's scent and an inopportune distribution of blood flow. "Your membership just got upgraded."
"But I don't have an extra $1,000 a month..." Words dribble out of my beak like language is a distant second to what my tongue should be used for.
"Good luck training my bulking buddy!" Marco snaps as Liam drags me towards the hallway. "You better take your job seriously, Doodles, or I'm going to eat him alive!"
Clarity returns seconds after we leave the room, the circulated air away from Marco relatively as fresh as a pristine Alpine peak. Liam makes sure I'm able to stand on my own, then takes off at a blistering power walk. I jog to keep up as we make our way towards what must be one room in particular.
"That was... Maybe I don't want to do bodybuilding after all." Trying to remember the last several minutes is the most difficult thing I've done all evening. All I get is a nagging feeling that something happened that was a clear sign I should just be happy with how I currently am, donut around the middle and all.
"You just got signed up for the Herculean Expo of Muscular Anthros National bodybuilding competition. I'm not letting you give up now." Liam pulls a key card from his pocket, and the door to room 1674 chirps and allows us entry.
"What?!" My legs lock in place, like things will stop with me as long as I stay in the hall. "When did that happen? Why? Just because that guy insulted your effectiveness as a trainer? Forget that guy, I think you're great!" I wave my wings at him, in case he was unclear of the 'you' I'm talking about.
"No, it's because... Marco and I have a history." He admits, hazel eyes wrenched in apology. "He's taken first place in the Ultra Beast division and Best in Show for the past three years, and is not the face that bodybuilding needs right now. At the very least, he's going to make himself your problem if you don't knock him off his perch."
"OK, then forget it, whatever beef you guys have going on? I want no part of it." I bare my palms between us and step back. "Let him have his spot. I'll just do more cardio, or change my diet or something."
"Austin, were you not listening?" He asks, seeming to forget where I was for a good portion of the conversation. "Did you not hear his 'bulking buddy' comment? You're already involved. If you don't beat him, or, heck, even if you try to run away now, it's just going to feed his ego and you're going to get vored."
"Vored? Wait, you mean, like..." He didn't say anything about- 'Or I'm gonna eat him alive.' Aw man, why do I remember that? "... no, that's just something people say, he didn't mean..." Liam waits in the doorway while I refuse to process my train of thought.
"Devouring smaller athletes is an increasingly popular bulking technique. It happens in any sport where size is an asset, but it's a silent epidemic in the weight lifting world." He lowers a hand toward my shoulder, only placing it on me when I don't back away. "And, truthfully, I think he'd go through with it for no reason other than I'm the one training you." My thoughts and heart rate jockey for the position of who can race faster, slowing only slightly when he raises my face to look him in the eye. "I meant what I said about you being a natural. Just give me a chance to convince you that you can do this?" He manages to nail a look that is both perfectly pleading and encouraging. How am I supposed to say no to that?
Room 1674 is a lavender lit cube of anatomical improvement. In addition to the bench and dumbbells ranging from 5 lbs to 300 lbs, there are at least two machines for every major muscle group. The only oddity is a glowing purple box about the size of a Honda Odyssey. One side shows happy little apples, grapes and strawberries cannonballing through waterfalls into the inviting mouth of a sultry, smiling jackal. Her vignette on the other side, coy smirk over a flexing bicep, assures that whatever this device dispenses will make the consumer 'feel all kinds of good' in bubbly yellow letters.
"Ideally, we'd be able to ease into this, but we need to take your training to the next level now." With practiced muscle memory, he pokes buttons on the front of the machine, each sporting a posing athlete and some cutesy flavor name: 'Gargantuan Grape', 'Sweet Bod Strawberry Banana', 'Rabbit', 'Fox'... wait, what? "Just a few questions to optimize your experience: do you prefer men or women?"
"Wait, what does that have to do with anything?" Thoughts of all the times I bench pressed myself to exhaustion so Liam would have to put his pecs in my face and lift the weight off me intrude into the front of my mind, so vivid that I worry Liam might be psychic and neglected to mention it.
"It doesn't change the practical result, just thought I'd ask." He says with a chuckle. "Any species preference?"
"I'm... flattered, but aren't there rules about dating your client?" He fails to cover a sound I am convinced is a snicker with a harder than necessary press of a button labeled 'mouse'. With a hum like a high efficiency washing machine, the box gets to work doing whatever it does.
"You've never tried AlphaMax." It isn't a question: No matter how adamantly he insisted it was 'scientifically proven to enhance muscle growth', I'd never purchased their in house nutritional supplement . He cocks his hips and holds his hands together, his classic 'this is why an exercise is supposed to be done a certain way' stance. "And I appreciate that all natural approach to fitness. It's the effort you put in that gets you results, but that doesn't mean you can't help yourself from the nutritional angle as well"
His speech wraps up just in time for the front of the machine to slide upwards and reveal a crouched figure, slightly translucent, with a smooth reflective body the color of grape candy. It rises like an activated automaton and looks at me with solid eyes that lack pupils.
"... I can't imagine eating a giant gummy counts as 'help from the nutritional angle.' " I say flatly. Liam rolls his eyes, then smacks the semi-liquid mouse on the rump, making its entire body jiggle for half a second.
"Go on, get in there!" The thing lights up in some ecstatic facsimile of life and bounds at me, its hands slipping effortlessly past my beak. With the consistency of an oily water balloon, it squeezes and distorts to conform exactly to the dimensions of my mouth and slips into my gullet. Admittedly gargantuan grape flavor and the surreality of what's happening distract me long enough for it to wiggle in up to its elbows, whereupon it plants a little kiss on my beak before diving in. Attempts to stop, or even slow it prove futile, my wings unable to find purchase on its malleable skin. It squirms down my throat like an energetic eel, and my midsection starts to bulge as it enters my stomach. The extra weight as its feet slip into me with a wet slurp is less than that of a full person, but still enough to bring me to my knees again. The thing writhes, churning my distended gut against my thighs with decidedly satisfied vigor.
"What the fuck was that?!" I cradle my belly as a curious tickle doubles me over.
"Your bulking buddy with the definite benefit that it literally only lives to help you get those gains."
I'm about to ask what he means when a sensation of lightness and warmth floods my muscles, inflating them in time with my rapidly shrinking stomach. My forewings flex all on their own as they expand by several centimeters in a matter of seconds.
"They increase muscle gains by over 700%, and make rest days a thing of the past. Now, you're going to feel a rush of a whole bunch of brain chemicals, and until you're experienced enough to handle-"
The rest of his explanation is lost as the mounting heat transmutes to burning pleasure, my entire body wrought with ecstatic explosions of muscle that quickly stretch my athletic attire to its breaking point. Body wants to lift heavy objects and run long distances; Brain wants to find something to stick my painfully hard dick in; . Unfortunately, neither of them can seem to reconcile these desires enough to remember how to move. I drift in and out of a mental miasma of giant pectorals, of widening my lats until I could fly without using my wings, of letting something strong and muscular dominate me, of consuming the strength of those beneath me, of performing squats and tightening my hole so I could be properly used...
Liam helps me once again to a standing position. He's saying something, but I can't hear him over a sound that's either inside my head or erupting from my throat. The absence of his polo, however, becomes quite noticeable when he kneels and pulls at the waistband of my shorts. Both of us gape at the size of my penis as it rips its way out of my shorts, tearing them cleanly in half. It wouldn't be unfair to say I've spent enough time with it to be intimately familiar with its size, but it has never before appeared to be such a massive thing of beauty. My mouth waters, envious of whoever would get to taste such a magnificent rod, the feeling quashed by gratitude and anticipation when Liam licks it with his rough and slimy tongue. He's saying something again, and my hips buck automatically, impatient with his decision to use his mouth for something other than me.
"The first.... training to handle.... comes naturally...be fine."
He pulls himself tightly against me and positions my cock in the groove between his pecs. With an amorous flex, his muscles swell, sealing my member between them, stroking me as I grind against him. My tip is rewarded with another slobbery lick at the peak of each thrust, the sensation flowing through my whole body in concert with bursts of additional muscle. Everything hardens to linebacker levels of mass with swimmer levels of body fat. Liam stares excitedly at my rod hotdogging his cleavage, mouth wide open and waiting for me to climax. The thought that someone could actually find me sexy is the last bit required to push me over the edge, and I scream as blinding euphoria shoots through my cock head and into Liam's eager smile.
I return to my body, but I don't recognize the owl staring back at me in the mirror. I'm short and, to put it generously, the kind of stocky that either of the pairs of workout shorts I own don't really flatter. This fearsome predator has either been lifting weights for years, or considering the shredded tatters of clothing clinging to his frame, is half way through transforming into a werewolf. There's a thin layer of insulation that keeps the definition from looking painfully sharp, but there's no mistaking the power his size implies. He's almost as big as Liam. Not quite, but in the same league.
"What... what happened?"
"AlphaMax, QF formula." Liam licks errant globs of my seed off his lips. "How are you feeling? Do you want me to explain the science behind it? Do you still want to run away?" He extends a 50 lb dumbbell to me, not so much taller than me as he was a couple minutes ago. No less impressive, but somehow more... attainable. "Or do you want to finish your workout?"
How much strength I've gained in only a few minutes really dawns on me when he drops the weight and I catch it. It feels like the 15 lb weights; noticeable, but easily movable. It hovers, my grip not at all fatiguing as I keep it in place. This will be work. This will take effort. This will probably be difficult. But I can do it.
"Let's get this pump."