Laurrrr

Settling into his chair, he’s ready to be a productive employee for the afternoon, avoid eating any more that he already has, and finish out the day.

Except he can’t help that the lovingly-packed lunchbox sitting on his desk is drawing his attention. Pretty soon there’s a lull in his work and a hunger in his belly. He opens it up and finds a lovely, tempting assortment of treats. A bag of chips that he can’t help but tear open to have just a few, then munch away on the whole thing. Then there’s some chocolates. A bagel. Some cookies.

Before he realizes, the lunchbox is empty and his belly is uncomfortably full. He pulls at his belt a little, trying to adjust his bulk beneath the bloat. He decides to take a walk from his desk since he’s reached a good stopping point. Ease his digestion a bit.

But the walk from his office leads him right past the cafeteria where he talks himself into picking up a rather large blueberry muffin that he’s finished off before even making it back to his office. Brushing crumbs from his front as he reaches his chair, plopping down a little more heavily than he means to and wincing at the groan it makes beneath him.

He’s too full to manage any more excursions for the afternoon, more than content to stay stationary in his office for the remaining work hours. It’s an easy drive home, he changes into his joggers and a t-shirt, noticing his still-bloated belly is peeking out from below the latter despite his attempts to tug it back down.

When his girlfriend arrives home, her eyes dart towards his middle and he just knows his belly must be spilling out again.

“Good first day?” she asks.

“Yeah, not very busy. I’ve gotta eat way less or else you’re gonna have to roll me to the office in a few months,” he says with a half-hearted chuckle, some small part of him genuinely worrying he’ll put on a bunch of extra weight with this job if he doesn't manage to keep himself in check more than he did on this first day.

She smiles warmly and starts getting their dinner ready in the kitchen, her mind swimming with thoughts about how he’d look and feel with more than a few extra pounds softening him up.

Dinner is sauced pasta. It’s heavy and filling and though he doesn’t want to ask, he’s very appreciative when she takes his bowl and refills it for him. Garlic bread, the plate resting between them in the couch, disappears between bites of sauce. He’s rolled onto his side by the end of the meal, his belly oozing out in a thick slab onto the couch cushion as he stifles a belch and complains how much he’s overeaten already that day.

But when she brings a package of cookies over for dessert, those complaints seem to melt away and his hand is drifting between his mouth and the next sugary bite. She watches on, marveling at the visible size of his stuffed belly and how he. Just. Keeps. Eating.

She offers him a hand to heave him off the couch, patting his swollen belly affectionately as he grumbles something about not making a habit of eating like this.

Except the habits are already forming.

He winds up ravenously hungry upon arriving at the office if he doesn’t eat something before leaving home. And he usually takes himself for a mid-morning cafeteria meal, telling himself he’ll eat less at lunch if he’s not starving at midday. But he always manages to eat a full lunch anyways. Then he’s grabbing extra snacks or diving into the lunchbox when he’s bored or between tasks, which happens quite often. His dinner portions get bigger, too, and he’s never been one to resist sweets after dinner. All while spending most of his day planted at his desk or on the couch, hardly moving beyond his steps to and from the car and cafeteria.

Inevitably, he starts putting on a few pounds.

He can feel the extra effort it takes to fasten the buttons on his shirt. She can see the extra fullness on his belly and sides and chest. After a few weeks, he moves to the next hole on his belt. A couple weeks after that she suggests he gets a couple new pairs of work pants with some of the extra money coming in and it's unspoken between them that they'll need to be a size up. He sheepishly puts in a request for company-issued shirts in the next size, thinking they look huge until he puts them on and finds they fit rather well.

Every extra bit of space his clothes allow for, his body slowly grows to fill. Within a couple of months, she sees the red indentation lines from the tight squeeze of his pants starting to reappear on his hips when he changes after work. He's too stubborn to admit his home clothes need upsizing too, but his shirts are undoubtedly riding higher and higher up his rounding belly and his joggers are struggling to stretch over his thighs while straining against his ass.

The buttons on his work shirts are pulled taut against his middle, even at the start of the day. He's approaching the last hole of his belt. He's adjusted the seat in his car back further to accommodate the extra space his belly needs.

The inescapable evidence that he's slowly ballooning does get to him sometimes. He'll try to cut back for a day, managing to limit himself to only four meals, but his appetite returns with a vengeance shortly after and he eats himself out of anything approaching a calorie deficit. He feels his office chair slowly sinking lower each week and finds it harder to heave himself back to his feet at the end of the day, but hasn't bothered to find out if the gas lift can manage to hold him any higher with his extra weight.

His next concession to his growing corpulence is his belt. There aren't any holes left that can make it larger. He can squeeze it on at the beginning of the day, but it's pinching him under his belly by his mid-morning meal. When he sits down after lunch, it's uncomfortably tight. When he finally gives in and fumbles under his shirt-clad belly to undo his belt at his desk after lunch the first time, it's a relief to feel the pressure subside as his bulk rolls forward, unrestrained into his lap. Snacking that afternoon comes even more easily, and though he's tempted to just fully undo the button of his pants, he doesn't bother.

Within a couple weeks, he genuinely needs to undo that button when he sits to avoid his pants bursting open entirely. His belly sits firmly in his lap anyways, even if someone comes in to meet with him they won't be able to tell. And he hardly moves from his chair after lunch, so he rationalizes to himself that he can just unbutton until he's digested lunch, then refasten everything into place before he commutes home.

It all works fine until the first time he really can't seem to get them buttoned up again, even with a bit more effort than his usual struggle entails. Then he ends up more flustered than usual when it takes a couple tries to even heave himself out of his office chair, which has sunk to the lowest height and fails to hold up any higher for more than a few minutes if he’s sitting in it. Fortunately his pants are tight enough on his hips that he makes it to his car without them slipping down.

Arriving home, he's ready to curse out pants entirely when he can't seem to get his joggers up over his thighs. He foregoes pants and makes his way to the kitchen in just an ill-fitting shirt and his underwear, rummaging around the cabinets for his pre-dinner snacks, reaching up so his belly is firmly resting as a stack of rolls on the counter. He goes for the chocolate cookies that he's tried to keep from himself on the top shelf, knowing he'll devour the whole package.

His girlfriend comes in and gets a fresh view of him: the stretch marks dappling his sides and middle, the width of his back, the heft of his thighs. Every inch of him full and heavy; all before she's gotten a chance to make her growing guy his dinner. He's snacking right before a meal, but that's become a normal part of the routine over these few months as he's gotten a bit bigger.

A bit bigger, she admits, might be underselling it.

She pretty sure he's buying at least a few extra meals every day at work to have gotten so much heavier so quickly; it's been six months since he got promoted and he's easily put on fifty pounds, which added to his already-bigger frame has made him rather huge. She knows he works hard, she wants him to be happy eating as he pleases, and she certainly doesn't mind how the extra weight looks on him (or feels when he's on her). She allows herself to take in the dimpled hang of his belly, the fullness of his face, the way his chest and sides pull against his shirt to complement his every pound.

She walks up and gives him a peck on his cheek, her hand resting naturally against the side of his belly.

"Long day?" she asks.

"Mmmm, you could say that," he says. He gobbles up another cookie. "Couldn't quite get my pants buttoned after lunch," he admits, his face flushing as if his climbing weight wouldn't have been evident enough without this latest event. "It's been a real workout to button them at all actually. I've gotten too fat for them, I think…"

"We should just get you some new pants, I've been telling you it's silly to try and fight with your clothes like this," she says, leaning on the counter next to him, knowing his uncertainty about his size deserves to be handled with caution and care. "Let's get some dinner in you, then we can order some."

He pops another cookie in his mouth, shrugging. "At this rate, between your cooking and my job, I'm going to end up weighing a thousand pounds," he says, chuckling, as he heads for the couch with his snacks in-hand. They both know if he gets bigger pants, he’s nearly guaranteed to end up filling them out in no time.

She makes him a lovely dinner and he eats a little too much of it. He once again can't help himself at dessert and gratefully accepts her hands on his middle to soothe his aching belly after the meal, groaning as she affectionately feels up every pound that his new job has added to him; her fingers affectionately working across the rolls that his raise has gone into growing.

Soon enough his new pants arrive and she punctures an additional hole in his belt. He knows he’s bigger than ever, but for the first time in weeks nothing he's wearing feels too tight.

And the extra space only seems to give him more of an appetite. He doubles up on cafeteria breakfast, taking the overfilled tray back to his office and pushing his chair in close enough that his belly is pressed against the edge of his desk while he leans in and eats.

The double portion doesn’t even feel like that much when it’s gone, but his chair creaks beneath him like it knows how much he's eaten. He can feel the edges of his butt sagging over the sides of the seat, the arms of the chair more snug against his waist, but he’s not one to worry until something actually becomes a problem.

Eating double helpings, however, seems to bring the next problem on twice as fast. He’s having an impromptu with one of his team members one morning the following week, leaning back and eyeing the clock and deciding if 10:30 is too early for his first lunch, when the usual creak from his chair beneath him rings out as more of a strained groan…

The person across from him doesn’t say anything, but they’ve watched their boss balloon since getting this job so it’s no surprise he’s straining the limits of his office furniture.

“Did you notice if they had the cinnamon rolls out when you walked by?” he asks, trying not to notice the way his team member’s eyes drifted towards his belly before saying they weren’t certain. It’s when he goes to stand up and find that the chair doesn’t let go of his sides that he knows he’s in trouble. He makes it only an inch off the seat, his hips hitching on the arms, before landing back down, hard, his body wobbling within the .

The tearing of a seam comes first, as he feels his bottommost shirt button give way just below his bellybutton. Then there’s a sharp crack as the impact of his weight proves too much for the chair and he’s sent tumbling backwards, landing on his back, still wedged in the seat that’s come completely detached from the base of the chair. He's stunned for a moment, still feeling himself wobbling from the impact of his landing.

The crash is loud enough that others come running in to help, and it does take a couple extra set of hands to get him freed from the clutches of his seat and back onto his feet. He does his best to tuck his belly back in, but that’s mostly a lost cause with the missing button.

He’s treated very apologetically by the people in management who show up next, and he’s assured that a more study, suitable chair for him has been ordered. In the meantime, it’s suggested he works from home for the next couple of weeks until it arrives.

All things considered, he’s quite pleased at the idea of working from home for a bit. He heads to pick up some lunch, having a laugh with a couple coworkers about his bit of furniture drama that morning. After eating his fill (and allowing himself a couple extra sides in light of recent events) he returns to his office to gather his things and sends a picture of the destroyed chair to his girlfriend:

Looks like I’m working from home for a couple weeks. Any chance you put in with your boss for some remote days to join me?

Her response is swift and affirmative, her mind swirling with relief that he’s not hurt and something like pride that he’s managed to outgrow something so sturdy as an office chair.

She can hardly wait to have whole days to spoil him and watch his appetite in action. She's spent months wondering how much eating he gets up to during the day, but now she'll get to spend extra time with him and see first-hand how much he can really put away when he's got hours uninterrupted to indulge.

She can’t help herself from wondering what he might outgrow next if this trend with his weight continues…

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