Chapter 4: Supplemental Worship
The metallic aftertaste lingered for days. It was in my saliva when I woke up, a faint coppery tang at the back of my throat that water couldn’t wash away. My dreams were vivid, saturated with the cool blue light of the clinic and the rhythmic, insistent pressure of Ben’s mouth. I’d jerk awake, hard and aching, my sheets tangled around my legs, the memory so visceral it felt less like a memory and more like a phantom limb.
The gym became a different kind of temple. Every rep, every set of dumbbell curls, was performed with a new focus. I wasn’t just pushing weight; I was forging the reward. Ben’s words played on a loop in my head: Your muscles will grow even faster soaked in this cocktail. I watched my reflection in the weight room mirror, the sweep of my biceps when I flexed, the definition in my shoulders that hadn’t been there a month ago. It was working. The proof was in the measurably tighter fit of my t-shirts, in the slight strain across my back. The proof was in the hungry look in Ben’s eyes when he measured me.
I found myself scheduling my life around our sessions. A 6 PM slot meant I’d skip the post-work coffee with colleagues. A midday appointment required a fabricated dentist visit. The lies came easily, fluidly, because the truth was an impossible constellation of shame, confusion, and a craving that was becoming cellular.
“You’re looking tightened up, Stu,” Ben said, his voice a casual observation as I lay back on the familiar leather. The red dot on the monitor pulsed steadily. He wasn’t in his white coat today, just a fitted grey henley and dark trousers. It made him seem less like a doctor, more like something else entirely.
“Thanks,” I said, my voice slightly tight. “Feels different. Solid.”
“It is.” He snapped on latex gloves with a practiced flick. “The base supplements have done their job priming the system. Your hormone levels are optimal. Your tissue saturation is… impressive.” He wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my bicep, his fingers cool and professional. “Today, we escalate.”
A thrill, sharp and electric, shot down my spine. “Escalate?”
“The passive intake through the seminal delivery was Phase One,” he explained, his eyes on the gauge as it tightened. “We’ve maximized that pathway. Now we move to direct intramuscular injection. A tailored serum. My own formulation.”
The word injection should have triggered alarm. Instead, a perverse curiosity bloomed. “Into the muscle?”
“Precisely. Post-workout, the muscle fibers are hungry, permeable. It’s the perfect delivery window. We’ll start with the pectorals today. It’ll localize the growth, create more dramatic symmetry.” He released the cuff, his fingertips brushing the inside of my elbow. “Trust the process, Stu. You’ve seen it work.”
I had. God, I had. I nodded, my throat dry. “Okay.”
“Good.” He turned to a small, locked refrigerator I hadn’t noticed before, embedded in the cabinetry. He retrieved a small vial of a viscous, amber-colored liquid and a sealed syringe. The snap of the plastic cap, the drawing of the serum into the barrel, was performed with a chilling, surgical grace.
“Just relax,” he said, swabbing a patch of my chest with an antiseptic wipe. The chill evaporated instantly under the heat of my skin. He placed his free hand flat on my sternum, a stabilizing weight. “Deep breath in.”
I inhaled the sterile, antiseptic air.
He pushed the needle in. It was a brief, hot sting, immediately swallowed by a deep, spreading warmth as he depressed the plunger. It wasn’t painful. It was intensely intimate, a foreign heat blooming inside me, placed there by him. He withdrew the needle, placing a small cotton ball over the tiny puncture.
“And now the other side, for balance.” He repeated the process, his hand splayed across my chest. The warmth grew, a pleasant, heavy sensation like a powerful internal blush. My pecs felt full, alive.
“There,” Ben murmured, discarding the syringe. He peeled off his gloves. “Now, the neuro-chemical reward must still be anchored. The mind and body are one system.” His gaze dropped, and I was already straining against the fabric of my shorts. The serum seemed to be pulsing directly there, a hot, insistent tide.
He didn’t use the sleeve this time. His hands, bare now, were warm and dry. He freed me, his touch both clinical and reverent. “Look at the monitor,” he commanded, his voice low.
My eyes snapped to the screen. The red dot pulsed, then began to streak in jagged, upward arcs, mirroring my skyrocketing heart rate.
“See that?” Ben said, his breath close. “That’s your hypothalamus lighting up. Pure need. Pure reward.” Then his mouth was on me, and the world dissolved into sensation.
The warmth from the injection seemed to fuse with the heat of his mouth, creating a feedback loop of sheer, shocking pleasure. I cried out, a ragged sound I didn’t recognize. His technique was relentless, perfectly synchronized with the frantic lines racing across the monitor. I couldn’t tell where my body ended and his control began. It was a consumption. When the release hit me, it was volcanic, a culmination of every rep in the gym, every metallic-tasting supplement, every secret, shameful thought I’d had lying on this table.
It went on and on. The monitor screamed with light.
Finally, I collapsed back, spent, the leather cold against my sweat-slicked skin. Ben sat back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He looked up at the monitor, studying the fading patterns with a satisfied, almost predatory focus.
“Perfect,” he breathed. Then he looked at me, his eyes bright and clear. “How do the injection sites feel?”
I touched my chest. The skin was warm, slightly tender. Beneath it, the muscle felt dense, swollen. “Full,” I managed to say.
“Good.” He stood, offering me a towel. “That’s the satellite cells activating. You’ll feel remarkable soreness tomorrow. And remarkable growth by the end of the week.” He helped me sit up, his hand firm under my elbow. “Same time Thursday? We’ll hit the deltoids.”
I dressed with clumsy hands, my mind a swirl of endorphins and confusion. The craving was gone, sated for now, replaced by a deep, muscular lethargy that was almost peaceful. I looked at myself in the reflective surface of a medical cabinet. My chest did look different. Fuller. More defined.
“Yeah,” I heard myself say, my voice echoing from far away. “Thursday.”
As I walked out into the bland normality of the evening, the city lights blurring around me, I understood two things with absolute clarity. The first was that Ben Smith was rewriting my body, cell by cell. The second, more terrifying, was that I was starting to forget what the original blueprint had even looked like. The metallic taste in my mouth, I realized, wasn’t just from the zinc.
It was the taste of the hook, and I was swallowing it deeper every time.