Contains: instant weight gain, behind-the-scenes encouraging.
I got this idea for a story as I was lying in bed this morning, and banged it out between opening presents and eat lunch. It’s a quick little story about two boyfriends to go to a Build-a-Bear-esque shop, where one makes a teddy bear that looks like the other. He then discovers that the more stuffing he puts in his teddy bear’s belly, the fatter his boyfriend gets. Enjoy, and Merry Christmas to those who celebrate!
“Hey look, it’s you,” Dan said, holding up the teddy bear he was working on. It had glasses, red hair, and a red flannel shirt waiting to be put on when it was done.
“Aw, babe,” Sean said, leaning in to give Dan a kiss on the cheek, before he continued working on his own teddy bear. It was a more traditional one, albeit in rainbow colors rather than brown.
Going to Build-a-Friend together had been Sean’s idea, but Dan knew immediately whom he’d be modeling his bear after. Though Sean was wearing a green flannel shirt that day, he couldn’t deny that it was an uncanny likeness. In spite of not being a very bearish or rugged individual himself, Sean loved him some flannel, which was why Dan had already bought three flannel shirts to give him for Christmas. The Build-a-Friend trip was their Christmas Eve date, before a quiet Christmas spent home together.
With the finishing touches put on his bear, all that was left was for Dan to stuff it. Of course, the bear came with the standard amount of stuffing already inside, but Dan was the type who was inclined to add a little more. With the bear’s stomach open, he took some stuffing from the bin and put it inside.
The sound of fabric straining prompted Dan to look over to Sean. The sight of the buttons of his flannel shirt struggling to stay closed compelled him to keep staring. For Sean’s shirt now wrapped around an impressively sized belly, impressive compared to his previously svelte figure anyway. In the grand scheme of bellies, it was on the wider end of dadbod size. But on a man who’d previously sported no pudge at all, it was quite a sight to see.
“You okay, babe?” Sean asked. Looking up to meet his gaze, Dan saw that Sean’s sharp edges had been smoothed over, making for a rounder, friendlier face. A face that now bore a concerned expression.
“I’m… fine. Are you okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be okay?”
After peering down at Sean’s pudged out belly again, Dan looked back to his teddy bear. “No reason.”
Looking at the bear made in his boyfriend’s likeness, Dan pondered seeing just how far he could take this apparent connection between the bear’s belly and his boyfriend’s. The question of how far he should take it soon followed, as he wondered whether it was right to fatten up his boyfriend like that, when he seemed to have no idea it was happening. But the whole situation had a dreamlike quality, the kind that suggested that anything goes. So he grabbed another handful of the stuffing from the bin, and shoved it into the bear’s belly.
The sound of fabric ripping, followed by something plastic skittering across the table, let Dan know he’d done something right.
Looking back to Sean, Dan was a little less surprised to see that his belly had grown big enough to burst out of his flannel shirt. Though the buttons by his chest were hanging on for dear life, the sides of the shirt by his belly had lost the fight, and were now hanging on either side of his impressively rotund gut. Sean’s belly had grown to about the size of a beach ball, the only thing that could remind Dan of summer in that cold weather. It also had the shape of a beach ball, so impressively round and protuberant that it seemed unaware of gravity.
Once Dan had gotten his fill of staring at his boyfriend’s new’d gut, he looked around the shop, realizing the staff and other customers might not react so appreciatively. But they were still going about their business, as if nothing unusual were going on in the store that day. Even the couple across the table from them were still happily working on their bears and chatting about their Christmas plans. It seemed Sean’s flying buttons had missed them entirely.
Taken aback by just how surreal the whole situation was, Dan wanted to see how far he could push it. He took one last look at Sean, still working on his bear while completely unaware of his growth. He then looked to the bin of stuffing and pulled out the biggest handful he could, before stuffing it into the bear’s stomach.
The sounds of more fabric ripping and plastic skittering across the table preceded Sean’s voice saying, “Hey babe, can you pass me a few buttons? I can’t reach them.”
Dan was almost nervous to look over and see how big his boyfriend had become. But his curiosity was stronger than his trepidations. He braced himself for what he might see, and then turned to look at Sean. To Dan’s surprise, Sean was about as big as he expected. Which surprised him because he’d tried to set his expectations extra wide so he wouldn’t look shocked.
Sean’s belly had grown so much that Dan was amazed Sean hadn’t been hurt in the process. His shirt had been ripped entirely open, the sides of it now hanging on either side of him, like a curtain framing his new mass. The lobes of his chest were almost big enough to rival his dadbod belly in size, while his belly dwarfed them easily. Having grown to the size of a yoga ball, Sean’s belly forced him to lean back to counteract the shifting of his center of gravity. It still did not succumb to gravity’s pull, although at its size, it seemed more like active defiance of gravity than unawareness. And indeed, as Sean tried to reach for the buttons in the center of the table, Dan saw that his arms couldn’t quite extend past his belly.
“Sure, babe,” Dan said, reaching over to grab some buttons. Grazing Sean’s belly along the way, he took a sharp inhalation as he felt his arm sink into Sean’s exposed heft. The warmth and softness of it made him almost forget what he’d reached over for in the first place, until his hands came to rest on the tub of buttons. “How many do you want?”
“Just three,” Sean said. Passing the buttons to him, Dan was taken by just how happy Sean’s smile looked when it was wrapped in an added layer of flab. His cheeks were connected by the double chin that hung beneath his jaw, while his eyes seemed just a bit smaller as the flab of his face encroached upon them. It was a change that Dan could get used to.
As Sean continued working on his bear, Dan was happy with the state of his. He brought it to the center station so one of the employees could sew all the details on, and stitch the stomach shut. “All set,” he said.
“Great!” the young employee exclaimed. “He looks adorable! Although, um… I’m not sure we’ll be able to sew him shut with this much stuffing inside.”
Looking back to Sean, Dan wondered if removing the stuffing from the bear would cause him to return to his normal weight. It was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. “I’m sure you can find a way.”
Dan and Sean walked through the mall with their Build-a-Friend bags in hand. Dan’s bear had required another piece of cloth to sew the stomach shut, but they’d done it. And it seemed whatever force had caused his boyfriend to fatten up persisted beyond the store.
Perplexingly, no one seemed to notice anything strange about Sean outside of the store either. Even though his flannel shirt had come completely undone, allowing his mountainous belly to stick out for all to see, the other shoppers didn’t seem to stare at all. Nor did they avert their eyes, as Dan had expected. The two passed several mall security guards, and none of them stopped them to tell Sean he had to have a proper shirt on.
When enough time had passed, Dan felt comfortable that no one was going to spoil his fun. He squeezed Sean’s soft hand a little harder, enjoying the warmth as Sean’s hand enveloped his. He watched Sean’s belly bounce as they walked, the stalwart sphere seemingly not quite as immune the shockwaves of Sean’s steps as it was to the pull of gravity. He looked forward immensely to going home and being able to rest his head on Sean’s belly as they lay on the couch together.
But Dan knew that would have to wait. For he had to return those flannel shirts he’d bought and trade them in for a much bigger size.
The Plot Thickens 