This is my version of a sequel to "Do As I Say" called "Not As I Do," with kind permission (and effusive praise) from Ventrego. We see our heroes a few months down the road and things have a taken a definite different turn.
I want to thank Ventrego for his kind permission in reimagining the world of his incredible original tale. (I sound like a DVD commentary track.) I took some liberties but tried to keep them to their original characterizations. I know Ventrego approves; his first email back to me started with "Wow."
This story also fulfills a literary fantasy of mine: to use the phrase "a scintillating explosion of light and energy" in context. You'll see.
This story is dedicated to Tony, a very good friend who was sent overseas at a time when no one should have to go. I will always be honored to have him as a friend. He has been woven into this world as one of the prominent supporting characters. I'll let you guess which one.
- Flashpoint
______________________________
Pete was in a bad mood. Of course he usually was nowadays.
He tightened the clamps on the Yamaha he’d been working on the past three days like he wanted to rip them off the bike. He had no reason to complain, really... in the four months since he’d started there, things were going great at the shop, he’d earned enough money to pay for the next two semesters, and the fringe benefits were fun for everyone. He had no reason to complain. Only he was and he had no idea why. Something wasn’t right and he didn’t know what it was. There was a problem with Woody, but that wasn’t the only problem.
He cringed a little. He hadn’t spoken to or even seen Woody for almost a month gone now, and it had been sparse for two weeks before that. Six weeks total. He had a sinking feeling he knew what that meant, but it was a raindrop compared to the ocean he had on his mind. There is a hole in your mind. He shoved the thought away, but it would not go.
“Hey... kid...,” Miguel called a little breathlessly from the office, leaning out just enough through the door to show his bare torso. “When you’re...” he paused, gasping a little, “When you’re done with ah fuck that’s good the Accord, go drop off the suck. I mean the suction hole. Hoses! At Bruce's shop! Shit, here it comes baby! Aaah...!” He leaned back around the corner and gave a bitten-off cry as he unloaded for the, what was it, sixth time that day? Pete couldn’t even remember who it was Miguel had under the desk today. He thought it was Todd. Ritchie, Mark, and Green were regulars too, some of his regulars, there were about a dozen more, but Miguel said that Todd had the best throat of the bunch.
Pete very nearly threw the wrench. It wasn’t jealousy. He and Mig had come to an understanding about each other: they were fun in the sack and but they’d kill each other if they “got involved that way.” Besides which, Pete had never seriously considered it anyway. Miguel didn’t like being tied down. And it wasn’t that because of Pete’s “enhancements” Miguel was usually busy fucking or getting sucked and Pete had to do most of the work around the shop. He was good at what he did, liked the work well enough, and the arrangement that employees always got was that the one that did the repair got the half the cash from the repair on top of his salary, the rest going to the shop. It was one way to pay his tuition. He’d actually paid the last year off, and was ready to go even deeper into debt.
Yup. Ready. Any day now.
It was September and he was supposed to be heading back to school within the next two weeks. The problem was he hadn’t said anything to Miguel about quitting. Worse, he hadn't enrolled. This might be a problem. Advanced Thermodynamic Theory supposedly had a waiting list and Digital Technology Seminar required three instructor referrals. Yeah, these were important things. He wished he knew why he couldn’t make himself do anything about it. So in other words, he was angry because he was lazy. Somehow, when he reasoned it out, it didn’t make sense.
But there was something else there. Fear. Buried so deeply he was barely aware of it. But it was there.
Shaking his head, he said, “Got it, Mig.” Trying to muster a good mood, he added with a humorous undertone, “You gonna need any cleanup in there?” It wasn’t really a joke; unless Miguel’s bottom boy swallowed it all, which wasn’t easy, he could shoot enough to cover his entire office. It didn’t seem too funny though.
The back of Miguel’s head said, “Funny, amigo. Really funny. Whoo... you okay, baby?” The question was aimed at the desk in front of him, around the corner where Pete couldn’t see. Fun as it was to watch sometimes, he wasn’t interested at the moment. There was a garbled response Pete couldn’t make out and he could see Miguel nodding. “Let’s get you up. I need to get some work done around here.” About fucking time! It’s only three o’clock! Pete thought, but kept it to himself. So much for simmering down.
Miguel stood up and hiked his coveralls up, swinging his still half-hard monster out of view. Since Pete started there he’d taken to wearing them almost exclusively, unzipped almost down to his crotch all the time. Pete couldn’t complain as he liked the show, and apparently none of the customers complained either as he saw all of them, male and female, straight or gay, trying to catch quick glimpses of what he had (almost) hidden. The bulge down his pant leg had grown steadily larger over the past four months, soft or hard. Miguel certainly had no complaints about any of it.
Once he was as covered as he was going to get, Miguel leaned forward and grabbed the hands of the guy on his knees on the floor, hauling him into view. Pete shook his head when he saw Todd. Pete couldn’t believe how much Todd had changed since meeting Miguel at the bar. He’d been just another clone hanging out at the bar, with perfect blond hair, the right clothes, the right cologne, the right look, all of that. After one night with Miguel, he’d fallen into whatever Miguel wanted, just like all of them did. The next night, Miguel brought him to see Pete.
As Todd stood up, unsteady on his feet, Pete saw the changes that he’d made to him. At first it was at Miguel’s direction – Miguel remembered them being requests – but after the first time, Todd asked Pete to make them permanent. Pete did, with the proviso that they’d only last as long as Todd wanted them to. They’d all agreed.
Todd’s trendy haircut had been shorn into a severe buzzcut long since, the cologne had been trashed (“it’s not a man’s smell, baby,” Miguel said), and he now wore jeans and t-shirts and boots instead of A&F and Old Navy. And those were just the changes that Miguel told him to make.
Todd’s former 6’1” height had shrunk down to a compact 5’8”, making Miguel tower over him. Miguel liked that, and now Todd did too. What Miguel wanted, though, was for Todd to shrink down and not lose any body mass. He’d been lean as a tall guy, but thickened considerably as he’d shrunk. He hadn’t been in bad shape, but hadn’t been unusually athletic either. Miguel, however, as a lot of Hispanics Pete knew did, liked “a guy with meat on his bones,” so the next change had been to give Todd a bigger appetite and a tendency to put on weight in all the right places – that is, the places Miguel liked to see it. Now Todd had the look of a college wrestler that spent half his time training and the other half with a fork in his hand. He had a round, firm belly, solid chest and arms, thick legs, and an ass that was disproportionately large for his body. Miguel liked that best of all, especially when plowing it.
Todd wobbled and nearly fell over as he reached to get his clothes, his rock-hard six-incher stabbing forward. Another small change... he was always hard around Miguel, even if he’d cum. Strangely, he didn’t like to cum while servicing Miguel, although his precum flowed freely. Pete couldn’t figure out why, but it was what got him off. Once he was dressed, Miguel swatted him on his denim-clad ass and said, “Be here on Friday, baby.” He leaned in to give him a quick kiss. Todd’s cheeks bulged outward obscenely, still full of some of the last load, so he couldn’t respond, but he smiled and nodded. Pete rolled his eyes, glancing down at Todd’s round belly. His t-shirt was riding up much farther than it had when he’d gotten there earlier. If he hadn’t swallowed the last of the load, that meant he was full. Miguel had wanted bigger loads, which meant Todd had wanted to be able to swallow all of them no matter how big they got. Todd hadn’t realized how much that could become until he’d seen his own middle start to swell.
Todd trotted off out the front, nodding to Pete as he went. He didn’t say anything as his throat was clogged with cum. “Have a good time?” Pete asked Miguel once Todd had gone. He tried to keep the acid out of his voice but he didn’t fully succeed.
Miguel didn’t seem to notice. “You know it, amigo,” Miguel said, patting the telephone pole sticking forward in his coveralls. It was always half-hard now, not a change Pete had made, and the girth matched the fourteen-inch length. “You know, if you got laid yourself once in a while you wouldn’t be in such a bad mood.” All right, maybe he did notice.
Pete flared up but managed to keep his voice level. “And if you weren’t busy fucking all the time, I’d have time to get laid.” That was completely untrue, but he didn’t care.
Miguel glared at him. “Just because things with Woody...!” He bit his tongue. He’d just started an argument he did not want to be involved in.
Not realizing that Miguel had stopped in midsentence, Pete cut him off. “That has nothing to do with it!” The words were out of Pete’s mouth before he could stop them. Self-evident or not, this was the first he’d admitted out loud that something was wrong.
It wasn’t Woodward’s fault. Not really. They’d dated for a few weeks, had fun, of course given Woody a change or two, not including his new height, and... and Pete had started to feel something. Really feel something. That had never happened before. He’d been surprised at how nice it felt.
And that was when it started. Woody started getting more serious and Pete found himself following without question and not bothered by it a bit. But along with the pleasant feeling, Pete started feeling a growing sense of uneasiness. And naturally, fearing that it had to do with Woody, Pete refused to talk to him about it. There was that faulty logic again. He was supposed to be an engineering major... applied logic was the first thing they taught. It didn’t seem to be working though.
And why supposed to be?
Things with Woody got tense very quickly after that. Pete started getting irritable and unpleasant to be around, so naturally Woody saw him less often. Woody wouldn’t see him, Pete got more irritated and felt abandoned and didn’t want to see Woody either. Then Woody got the night beat and...
Miguel tensed, his own anger rising. “Pete, I have been putting up with your PMS for six weeks now! What the fuck is wrong with you?!”
Six weeks. There was that number again. Pete started to say it was nothing, but Miguel had turned into more than an employer and occasional fuckbuddy. He was a good friend too. He deserved the truth, whatever that was. “It’s... I just...” He shrugged.
Miguel made a superhuman effort to calm his voice. “You know you can confide in me, hermano.” He really was just trying to help.
“I know.” Whatever it is, Pete added silently. Before Miguel could open his mouth again, he said, “I... need to get those hoses to Bruce.” He put the wrench down on the bike’s seat and all but ran out the door, not really wanting to head into a busy tattoo shop. Miguel watched him leave, looking concerned.
It was an hour before he got back to the shop, and it was quiet. For once, Miguel was not being serviced by one of his many regulars. He was intent on paperwork, as evidenced by his occasional cursing in Spanish. Doing paperwork was the chore he dreaded most, which was why he’d tried to put a lot of it off on Pete at first, until he realized that Pete was no accountant. It took Pete overpaying the business taxes by $350 dollars and overdrawing the bank account twice to convince Miguel he needed to do it himself. “I’m back,” Pete called out. He started to go back to the Yamaha, but Miguel called to him. “Come in here,” he said, sounding distracted.
Expecting the worst, Pete did. “Yeah?” he said, sitting in the other chair. There was no cum on it... this time.
Miguel kept working on the ledger without looking up. “Woody called.”
Pete felt his stomach drop. Definitely the worst. “What did he want?”
“Needs to talk to you about something. Didn’t say what.” Pete nodded, but Miguel continued. “Same message he left a week ago, four days ago, and yesterday.” Pete felt his spine start to sag, but Miguel paid his reaction no mind whatsoever. “Anything you want to talk to me about?” Pete didn’t answer. “You want to tell me what really happened between you two?”
Pete started hedging, not wanting to answer directly, not sure he even could. “Nothing. I mean... well, he got put on nights and...”
“He was only on nights for a month, Pete. He’s been back on days since the end of August.”
“He is?” Pete said uncomfortably. He hadn’t bothered to find that out. Shit. This was bad. Very bad.
“Woodward’s been a good man to me, Pete. Don’t treat him this way. Things could get ugly around here.”
Pete’s temper flared up with no warning. He completely forgot about their earlier conversation. “And just what is that supposed to mean?”
Miguel’s temper went to match Pete’s. “All right, that’s it!” He slammed the pen down. “I’ve been putting up with your shit for too long as it is! If you were anyone else I would have canned your ass weeks ago! I don’t give a good god damn how good you are with the bikes,” and Miguel had to admit to himself that Pete had a knack, “if you don’t pull the cactus out of your ass I’ll fuck it up in a way you won’t like!” He sounded as though he meant every word exactly.
Pete knew Miguel had a good point, but his absolute fury wouldn’t let him admit it.. “Oh, I get it! All I’m good for is what I can do for you, is that it?! I give you what you want no matter what it is. I do all the work around here. Jesus, I give you a giant cock and you’re still nothing but a little man! I don’t need this job and I don’t need you!” And with that he stormed out, slamming the door shut behind him, not noticing the click as it locked itself behind him. With the garage door down due to the temperature, the crash echoed all around.
Miguel, torn between wanting to reassure Pete and wanting to rip his head off, stood up the moment Pete was out of the office, ready to pursue. The decision between which he was going to do, however, was taken out of his hands. He couldn’t. At the first step, Miguel’s center of gravity changed and he stumbled before the second. Oh crap, he thought, realizing that his coveralls were growing larger on him...
Pete was across the parking lot before the anger faded and panic set in. He’d not only just fucked off a job he liked and needed, he’d also fucked off probably his only friend. He elected against going back in. If Miguel wanted to talk, he would have followed Pete out. It might be a good time to get away and let him cool off for a few hours before he came back. Like, say, at dawn. Or the next day. He let out a long breath, looking at the bike on top of the shop that Miguel used as the business' sign. It was a full size Harley Softail, painted white and with a sign proclaiming “Miguel’s Machines” and “Máquinas de los Miguel.” He couldn't even see that it was there.
What was happening to him?
“Hi, Pete!” came a cheerful woman’s voice across the lot. Pete looked up and saw Deanna, the Sandwich Lady. She was just a couple of years older than he was, a little plump, more than pretty, and always cheerful. “How’s the chop shop doing?” she teased.
“Hey Sandra Dee,” he said dryly, swallowing his upset behind a tight smile. She gave him a look but smiled. She hated being called that but took it as the good-natured teasing it was. “How’s the botulism business?” The words were again out of his mouth before he could stop them. Dammit! Dee blinked, not sure whether to be offended or not. “I didn’t mean that!” Pete amended, raising his hands. “I’m sorry. I’m just... I don’t know...” he trailed off, embarrassed. This was the first time he’d taken it out on someone other than Miguel, but if he was that meant that the problem was more serious than he thought.
Dee brought her umbrella cart up to his car and parked it. “Miguel mentioned you seemed upset lately. I thought it was just the tuna salad talking.” She always joked about her sandwiches, even though she was the one who made them. They were actually pretty good. “What is it?”
For some reason it seemed easier talking to her than it did to Miguel. He wasn’t sure why. “I don’t know exactly,” he said truthfully. “I’ve just been feeling, I don’t know... sort of trapped lately. Like I’m not going anywhere.”
“Well, you’re getting ready to head back to school, right?”
Something about that sentence didn’t sound right to him. “Yeah, I’m supposed to soon.” She frowned at the phrasing of that sentence but wasn’t sure why it bothered her. “I don’t know why I feel trapped. I’m going to get out of here soon.” And that didn’t sound right either.
“Have you talked to Miguel?” His look told her the answer. “He’s your friend, Pete, not just your boss or, uh,” She faltered, not sure what to call that. Her own brother was gay, but she was no expert at the parlance. “Um, playmate,” she ended uncertainly. Pete refrained from saying “fuck buddy” to her face. She was just too darned nice for that kind of language, even though he’d heard her use much saltier.
“I will, I promise,” he said, not sure if he could. Talking to Miguel about this bothered him for some reason he couldn’t name either.
Dee took his hands into hers and gave him a comforting look. She was only a year or so older than he was but she had a way of making everyone she talked to feel mothered, in a good way. “Look, I understand, I really do.” She looked a little sad. “Hey, I don’t want to make sandwiches for the rest of my life. The money’s good and all, but I want to meet Mr. Right and settle down. Yes, I know I’m not being PC. I’m supposed to have it all, home, career, family, all that. Well, right now all I want to do is settle down. After that I can...” She trailed off.
“What?” Pete said, his curiosity piqued.
“You’ll laugh.”
“No I won’t,” he said, meaning it. “Come on, I unloaded on you.”
“Well... I always wanted to sculpt. I loved doing it back in school and was actually pretty good. I won a couple of awards for some of my pieces. I just had to put it aside to start making a living once my folks died and I was on my own.” She shrugged. “Silly dream.”
“No it isn’t,” Pete said. Something about that struck a chord in him. Not the sculpting part, but... “You’ll start sculpting again when you’re ready and become extremely successful at it.” He had to keep his grin from showing. Dee was one of the few who did not know about Pete’s power.
Dee gave him a droll look. “Fine, but I still want to meet Mr. Right first. I want to feel settled before I take off on a new career.”
Pete thought about it before he said the words. “Describe Mr. Right.”
Dee laughed a little, sounding a bit sad. “Mr. Right doesn’t exist, not the way I want him. He has to be tall, good looking, successful without being a workaholic, rich would be nice but well off would do, no mental problems,” she rolled her eyes and Pete had to too, “and love children. I’d love to adopt.” Pete nodded, not wanting to say anything. Dee had scarring that prevented her carrying a child to term, but it never bothered her unduly. She felt that there were plenty of children in the world who needed loving parents. She was bighearted. “Oh, yes, and it would be nice if we fell in love too.”
“Dee, you’ll run into Mr. Right. Or he’ll run into you, either one.” He wasn’t sure it would work that way, but it couldn’t hurt. She really was sweet and like a big sister to him in a lot of ways. “I promise. And you’ll fall in love and live happily ever after.”
She gave him a rueful grin. “You know what the saddest words in the world are?” Pete shook his head. “If only.” He wasn’t sure what to say in response. “I need to get going, Pete. I have to get all these delivered before 4.” She gestured to the cart. “Talk to Miguel, Pete. Or Woody. He’d be willing to listen too.” She knew something about their troubles, as Woodward and Matchen’s car was on her route, but also knew that they got on well. He nodded and she started pushing the cart back across the lot, back to the businesses. As he unlocked his car, she called out, “Oh, yeah, one more thing!” Pete looked back and she added, “Mr. Right has to like chunky broads!” He burst out laughing. It was just what he needed. She laughed as she went back to work.