Untitled

He wore the same shirt as the day he was arrested, which used to fit loosely, but now it had surrendered. The fabric rode so high that a wide strip of stretched bare skin stayed exposed no matter how much he tried to tug it down.

Below, his old sweatpants stretched tight over wider hips and an ass that had become ridiculous. Mac had always been thick, but his butt looked absurdly huge now—perfectly round and so full that the fabric strained, and the seams looked like they were under active threat.

He walked slower—full on waddle—than he used to, with his legs set wider apart. One of his hands pressed on the small of his back before he even noticed—it was instinctual.

“Dad?” a female voice called as he walked outside, and Mac looked up.

Ruby, his 20-year-old daughter, stood near an old SUV at the curb, lifting one hand while the other rested against her pregnant belly. She looked so much like him it was almost funny, especially because she was 8 months pregnant with a baby boy.

“Wow, Dad,” she said, widening her eyes, pointing directly at his belly.

“What?” Mac snapped back, pretending not to know what she was talking about.

“You’re bigger than me,” Ruby added, gesturing between their bellies.

Mac rolled his eyes. “No, I’m not.”

Ruby laughed out loud. “You absolutely are.”

Mac then properly noticed Ethan, Ruby’s boyfriend, standing nearby, trying hard not to stare openly, even though he obviously was. Ethan was 24, tall, athletic, broad-shouldered, and handsome. Mac disliked him on instinct, even though the young man was great.

Ethan quickly looked up when Mac caught him staring.

“Problem?” Mac asked.

“No, sir,” Ethan replied.

“Don’t call him sir. He hates that.” Ruby snorted. “But seriously, what happened to you?”

“Prison food,” Mac responded quickly.

Ruby stared at his belly. “Prison fed you an entire family?”

Mac opened his mouth with a sharp comeback ready, but it died instantly when his abdomen seized so hard it felt like a steel band had cinched around his middle. The pain hit sharply, folding him forward before he could stop himself.

“Fuck—” Mac shouted breathlessly.

Ruby’s teasing vanished. “Dad? What’s wrong?”

Mac stayed bent, breathing through clenched teeth. When the pain eased, he forced himself upright, sweaty and furious at the fact that they had seen that. “Indigestion,” he said.

Ruby frowned. “That looked worse than indigestion.”

“Jail food,” Mac said, wiping a forearm over his face. “Everything in there tastes like punishment and regret.” Right after saying those words, something moved in his belly, stretching his exposed skin in a way that made Ethan’s expression change while Ruby missed it.

Mac yanked his shirt down over his middle, but it rolled right back up. “Damn it,” he said.

*

The ride home was miserable from the second he tried getting into the SUV. Ruby and Ethan exchanged a look while Mac wrestled himself into the back seat, grunting as he maneuvered his massive middle into a comfortable enough position. The seatbelt barely fit, and he argued about it. Then, Mac spent the next several minutes aggressively tugging the strap away from his belly as if it had attacked him.

By the time the car started moving, Mac was sitting with his knees spread wide. His belly took up a ridiculous amount of his lap, and he instinctively rested his hands at the top. He was in intense discomfort, groaning at every bump the car hit on the road.

“Gas,” he said, trying to explain the groans escaping his lips.

“You made that exact face when you had Braxton Hicks,” Ethan whispered, looking at Ruby but checking Mac’s face through the rearview mirror.

Mac groaned again, angrily this time. “Shut up! I’m not having contractions.”

Ruby smirked. “He didn’t mean it that way, Dad.”

Mac rolled his eyes, and without even realizing it, his hands started moving over his taut belly, caressing it almost tenderly. Ethan noticed Mac’s actions in the rearview mirror, and Mac was aware of Ethan watching him.

“Watch the road,” Mac said harshly.

Ethan cleared his throat. “Yes, sir. Sorry, Mac.”

By the time they got to Ruby and Ethan’s place, Mac was in an even worse mood. Getting out of the SUV took longer than getting into it, which only irritated him more. He planted one hand on the door frame, the other against his lower back, and levered himself upright with a grunt he immediately pretended nobody had heard.

He walked into the house, waddling heavily and grunting every other step.

*

Hours later, they sat at the table for dinner, and Ruby had apparently decided that welcoming her father home meant feeding him enough to make up for every miserable prison meal he’d had in the past 9 months. Mac complained about the amount of food, then sat down and started eating like a man who hadn’t eaten in years.

Mac tore through one plate, then another, then started building a third while barely slowing down. Mac didn’t seem to care that anyone was watching. His appetite had been strange for months, even if he’d never admitted that to himself. Some days, he wanted everything he could get his hands on. On other days, certain smells made him irrationally angry. 

“Do they not feed people in jail?” Ethan asked carefully.

“They feed you,” Mac said around a mouthful. “Whether that qualifies as food is another discussion. I haven’t had a good dinner, so don’t mess with a starving man.”

Ruby laughed harder, but after a while, even she started staring. Mac had eaten enough for three adults, then leaned back in his chair with a long groan and started rubbing his belly. His hands moved over the taut skin, instinctively soothing the discomfort while he breathed through a heavy fullness that looked extremely familiar.

Ruby froze for a second, then a grin spread across her face. “Oh, now I get it.”

Mac narrowed his eyes. “What now?”

“Couvade syndrome,” she explained, looking at Mac’s belly. “You missed me so much that you developed pregnancy symptoms.”

“Fake,” Mac replied quickly, groaning as his belly growled.

“Oh, come on. Let’s check. Exhibit A: emotional eating.” Ruby sat up straighter. “Exhibit B: belly rubbing,” she added, and Mac pulled his hand away from his middle. “Exhibit C, mood swings,” she continued, pointing at him.

“I do not have mood swings,” Mac responded, almost offended.

“Dad, you do,” she said, gesturing at Mac’s belly. “And you are literally bigger than the pregnant person in this room.”

Before Mac could respond, something moved within his belly, enough to form a visible bump on his skin. Ethan saw it, and Mac absolutely felt it. His face changed for half a second as his hand moved back to his belly.

“The food’s not settling in right,” he said. “It’s your fault for asking too many questions.”

*

Later that night, Mac lay in the bed in the guest room. The mattress felt like heaven, but Mac couldn’t sleep. Lying flat made it harder to breathe with his belly pressing upward into his chest. Lying on one side made his hips ache. Rolling over had become an irritating full-body effort. But the bigger problem was the so-called indigestion that refused to leave him alone.

The cramps kept coming in waves, deeply uncomfortable. Every time one hit, his belly hardened until it felt unnaturally firm. He blamed dinner, too much food in one sitting. He blamed prison food for ruining his digestion permanently.

Lying awake in the dark gave his brain time to think, and eventually his thoughts drifted somewhere he absolutely did not want them going: Darius, his cellmate.

The guy was younger by at least 10 years, maybe a little more, but built like he had been assembled specifically to make other men feel inadequate. Darious was huge, standing tall at 6’6” and so broad that everything seemed small beside him—broad shoulders, thick chest, powerful arms, dark skin, close-cropped hair, a sharp jaw, and a cocky expression that somehow made him look even more dangerous.

Mac had hated Darius immediately—that was the official version. But the unofficial version was a lot more complicated. The first night Mac stayed in prison, things had changed a lot as Darius came closer than Mac would’ve allowed in any other circumstances. But the young man had looked at Mac as if knowing how things were going to go. Within seconds, Darius’s massive black cock was fully hard, longer and thicker than anything Mac had seen.

Months later, Mac still remembered that first time—how Darius slowly pushed such a monster cock deep into Mac’s hole, stretching him beyond reason. Prison was weird, lines blurred, and needs got handled—it was what Mac told himself. But the same kept happening night after night, even more as Mac’s belly started growing.

Mac would still deny every second of that if asked directly. The other inmates had noticed more than enough to make his life miserable, but he insisted that he hated Darius and being with a man was not for him.

As the months passed, the inmates noticed Mac eating more, complaining about his stomach, and looking thicker around the middle. The jokes started then.

“King got you carrying his black baby, Callahan?” one tall guy asked one morning.

“Damn, Callahan, you sure that’s prison food?” another one said later.

“Go fuck yourself!” Mac had shouted in response after the teasing.

First, he knew men did not get pregnant, and even then, he insisted that nothing had happened between him and Darius. A pregnancy was impossible.

Months later, he still insisted on the same, even while turning in bed as he couldn’t fall asleep. Around 2 in the morning, the “indigestion” was worse, and another cramp hit hard enough that staying in bed became impossible. Mac sat up swearing and breathing through it until it passed, then forced himself out of bed. He headed for the kitchen, wearing nothing but tight underwear stretched across his exaggerated lower half.

Looking into the fridge, he found the milk, pulled the jug from the fridge, and stood there drinking straight from it while rubbing his belly with his free hand as if the motion helped.

Then, Ethan walked in, stopping suddenly at the sight.

“What?” Mac said, firmly.

Ethan tried not to stare at the nearly naked ex-con standing in his kitchen with a massive bare belly and obvious discomfort written all over him. “Ruby wanted strawberries,” he said, a little too quickly. “Cravings, you know.”

Before Mac could say anything else, another cramp slammed into him much harder than the others. The milk jug hit the counter with a heavy thunk. “Hell—” He bent forward sharply, wrapping his arms around his belly.

Ethan moved immediately, grabbing Mac’s arm in case he lost his balance.

Mac jerked his arm away on instinct—pride stronger than common sense. “I’m fine. It’s only a bad case of indigestion. Nothing else.”

Ethan stared at him in disbelief.

Mac straightened slowly, breathing harder than he wanted to, and grabbed the milk again as if reclaiming it somehow restored his dignity. He went back to bed and tried to sleep, but the so-called indigestion refused to leave him alone. The problem was that the cramps kept coming. Mac rolled from side to side trying to get comfortable, grunting into the pillow, shoving at blankets, sweating despite the cool room. His massive belly made every position miserable.

*

By morning, he looked awful. He was sweaty, exhausted, and in a filthy mood. He had barely gotten out of bed when another cramp hit hard enough to make him stop and grab the dresser. “Fuck–fuck,” he hissed.

It eased after a moment, leaving him breathing heavily. His belly felt strange—heavy in a different way, lower somehow, and restless at the same time. He blamed the food, so he headed for the bathroom to see if that could fix his issues.

The walk to the bathroom felt way too long. By the time he got inside and shut the door, he was sweating badly enough that his shirt stuck to him.

“Unbelievable,” he said through clenched teeth. “I eat one decent meal—”

Mac grabbed the counter as another cramp hit, breathing hard, then dropped onto the toilet. And then, things got worse in a way that made Mac understand that whatever this was, it was not normal indigestion.

Until that point, he had been stubbornly insisting the problem was his stomach. But sitting there on the toilet with sweat running down his face, he became aware of a different pressure building low in his body. It was heavy, deep, and wrong in a way he couldn’t explain.

“What the hell?” he whispered breathlessly.

Before he could think any further, a sharp pain spread through his belly, violent enough to rip a shout out of him before he could stop it. Mac grabbed his belly with both hands as the pressure inside him became overwhelming, and his vision blurred.

Then, something happened that made his entire brain seem to short-circuit. A sudden rush of warmth burst out of him. Mac physically jolted on the toilet. His whole body went rigid as liquid spilled out of his ass. He looked down in wild confusion, trying and completely failing to understand what had just happened. His exhausted brain kept reaching for explanations.

Another pain slammed into him immediately, stronger and more overwhelming than the last, and this time the terrifying pressure came with it. Something was moving low in his body—not gas, and not digestion.

“No,” he said again, louder as panic took over. “No. No, no, no—”

The next cry that came out of him was loud enough to wake the house.

Ruby was at the bathroom door within seconds. “Dad?”

Mac barely sounded like himself when he answered. “Something’s wrong!”

“Open the door!” Ruby shouted.

Another brutal pain hit him before he could answer. Mac shouted, gripping the side of the toilet until his knuckles went white. “Something’s coming out!”

There was a stunned silence on the other side of the door, as Ruby tried to understand.

Then, Ethan came with the key and Ruby opened the food, freezing when they saw Mac sitting on the toilet, looking ready to give up under the immense pressure. Ruby looked at him, confused and panicked. Ethan looked back at her with the expression of a man having the worst possible confirmation of something he had hoped he was wrong about.

“I told you,” he said. “I told you your dad was pregnant. I told you I wasn’t crazy.”

Ruby stared at him in shock.

Ethan pointed at Mac, who cried out again as another contraction visibly tightened his belly until it looked hard as stone. “He’s in labor,” the young man said.

“No, I am NOT!” Mac shouted, because somehow denial was still fighting for its life.

Another contraction hit him, and he felt something big moving deeper into his hips, while something else still moved in his belly. He tried to process the sensations, and even through his denial, some things started making sense. The word pregnant finally settled into his mind. And if he was indeed pregnant with Darius’ babies, it was more than one considering the size of his belly. So he had no option but to let his body do whatever it needed to do to give birth.