Winter's Warmth P.3 (Patreon)

Chloe waddled swiftly across the walkway, her pace quickening with each bite of chocolate covered strawberry while Auvie matched her stride. Sammy, still in self-imposed agony, lagged behind and watched as the two made for the alcove side-by-side.

It proved as tight a fit as Chloe’s dress.

Their hips caught, a shapely cherry tart squishing against a fat Christmas ham, but Auvie deftly caught herself and turned, giggling brightly as she gestured for Chloe to take the lead.

Sammy noticed the pixie’s flickering eyes, the lightness that came with her next pleasing breath. But it was hard to tell if Chloe had even noticed she’d nearly been stuck, simply taking the movement in stride as she plucked the next cocoa-covered fruit from her tray and tossed if wholly into her mouth.

They continued down the slim hallway, nearing the red light of a glowing sign. The emergency exit marker was the only illumination of the elevator and its tiny panel until Chloe, with the point of her elbow, depressed the button and turned it bright white. She turned sideways, leaning her rear against the wall and taking up most of the hallway with her belly. The elevator was on the right side, near the emergency exit.  She thunked the call button with the point of her elbow, turning back to Auvie.

“Ya know,” she spoke to the pixie, still loudly mashing another chewy strawberry. “I co’ld ge’ oosed to pwaches ‘ike this!” The big woman swallowed and her belly made a small noise of delight. “Gosh. I’ve met more people today than my whole college career.”

Auvie hummed, seemingly pleased. “Shows like this are more for networking than anything. I’m glad to have introduced you to so many new people.”

Chloe turned to Sammy, her face glowing pleasantly. “Auvie knows, like, everyone. Do you know the candy shop downtown, Raffie’s?”

The big blonde blinked at her. “Uhh… no, I mostly get snacks from, like, the grocery store.”

“Umph, yeah you do!” Chloe swallowed another strawberry. “I get stuff from there all the time. You and Nat always go through it, the boxes that I keep on the coffee table?”

“Oh.” Sammy recalled, “the chocolates?”

She had a very specific memory of Chloe telling her that she’d signed up for a subscription service to be delivered each month. She also remembered having maybe one truffle once, as the specialty chocolates very rarely lasted more than two days before the box would sit empty.

“Mhmm! They’re all gourmet!” Chloe beamed. “She’s here, and she’s super nice!”

“Ahh. That’s cool,” Sammy said.

“We also met with Mr. Dunkle, who runs Sweety’s Bakery, and Gracie Garland who run’s that café on Park Street. They offered me discounts next time I came in!”

The elevator dinged before Sammy could ask if she’d met anyone who wasn’t somehow involved with food, and the three girls filled in.

“Mpgh. Seriously, though,” Chloe groaned. “It’s been a really busy day. I hope they’ve got like coffee or something at the bar.”

Sammy paused hallway through the elevator door. The other two didn’t seem to notice, with Auvie continuing, “I doubt they do. But, we could get Cosmos! They’re super sugary, that’ll give you a good kick.”

“Oh, really?? I’ve never had one.”

“Mhmm! Ooo, or maybe Piña Coladas?”

“Oh I had one of those on vacation once!”

Slowly, Sammy came back to life, groaning and letting her head hang back as she fully came through. “Ahhh… shit.”

“Hmm? What’s wrong?”

Sammy raised an arm, brushing her hair back. “Ahh, I sent a server to get a drink for me. He probably took the stairs, might have delivered it to the table already.”

“What kind of drink was it?”

“Uhh, a Frappuccino,” Sammy shrugged. “Feeling kinda tired, thought I could really use a coffee.”

“Hmm~” Auvie grinned her irritating smile, her eyes falling towards Sammy’s stuffed stomach. “I hear those have lots of sugar in them. And chocolates~”

“Mph yeah, don’ ‘ou fink you’ve ha’ enuff choco’ate aready?” Chloe said through another juicy mouthful, flecks of melted syrup sticking to her lips.

Sammy glared at her before reaching out and taking a sample from the tray and thunking her fist against the elevator’s button. “Whatever.”

“I’m sheriosh!” Chloe continued to puff, but the conversation was stopped when, as soon as they closed, the elevator doors reopened.

A similar confused expression colored each girl, but they all became very different when, all at once, they looked up from the glowing number two to a tiny red light that flashed on the panel. Next to it was printed an even smaller three letter word that caused an immense reaction.

Max.

Sammy’s face became sour, a pained realization on an aching body.

Auvie had lifted a hand to cover her mouth, but a crack appeared in the mask to the sound of a stifled giggle.

And Chloe stood still, eyes wide and fluttering, frozen mid-bite of her sixth chocolate strawberry.

“Oh, gracious me,” Auvie breathed, her hand going from her mouth to just over her chest. “We’re too heavy to go up. We must be over the limit. What does it say?”

Sammy, her breathing more like a bull than a fatty, growled the script printed on the panel’s button. “For light use only. Load may not exceed… eight-hundred pounds.”

Nobody looked at one another, but Sammy could feel both herself and Auvie staring at Chloe from the corner of their eyes, still frozen solid with the strawberry stuck between her teeth, her chin tucked into a smooth, fatty roll.

Auvie spoke first, a shiver of delight trembling up her curvy frame. “Hooougghh…” she breathed. “Delicious.” She turned to Sammy and asked, “Do you remember how many confections you could fit onto each plate?”

Sammy’s teeth ground. The truth was, she had no idea how many plates she’d snapped down from the feast. But whether it was five plates or ten hardly mattered. She wasn’t half of the problem, here.

“Ahhhh,” Auvie’s eyes closed, her body shuddering with the long sigh in a way that made her own curviness shake. “How embarrassing this is. What about your weight? Do you have any idea what you look like on a scale?”

The beefy blonde’s fist closed tight enough to make her fingers crack.

Damn the niceties. Damn the smugness, the fake smiles and the wicked-

“Wait… no way that could be… Is it broken? It has to be… right?”

Sammy stopped, turning to look at Chloe. The pink blush that so normally colored her chubby cheeks was gone, her skin blanched as white as sugar. She still stared at the light, her bitten strawberry held between two fingers, squeezed so tight that the juice dripped now around Chloe’s finger and thumb.

For some reason, the image of the strawberry put a hole in Sammy’s stomach.

Every burst button, every torn thread, every outgrown outfit and overfed feast. Chloe had gone from a size five to what seemed more and more like a size fifty, all the while seemingly in this deep state of denial. The clothes she bought weren’t big enough, the portions she ordered were always too small. Stairs were too high, distance was too long. But she’d never stepped on a scale, never had herself pressed up to the numbers…

But the world had improvised one with a small elevator.

“It… it has to be sort of malfunction... but that doesn’t… It can’t… I can’t…” her chubby chin stammered, and her eyes began to lower to look towards herself.

They were caught, as was her chin, when they met the grin of the pixie who was pressed up to her belly.

“It’s my fault,” Auvie breathed, her hand coasting over her chest and down to her waist. “I had a very big breakfast today. You know how I can go… overboard~”

Chloe stared at the hand, the slim stomach, and Sammy felt the breath in her lungs go stale. Standing belly to belly, face to face, wearing the same exact dress. They couldn’t look any more different to Sammy.

But she could see the reflection in Chloe’s eyes.

“Y-yeah…” Chloe whispered the lie. “That makes sense.”

“It does, doesn’t it,” Auvie breathed, taking a step back, Chloe’s eyes holding directly to hers. She nodded, turning her false smile and false words over to Sammy. “It was five plates, wasn’t it?” she asked, turning to Sammy. “I didn’t miscount?”

The dead air in Sammy’s lungs strangled her throat. She mouthed the words but nothing came out.

Auvie dismissed the silence, a cat deciding not to play with it’s mouse. She looked back to Chloe. “Eight-hundred pounds isn’t that much. After all, I’m two-hundred pounds on an empty stomach...” She took another step forward, closing the distance until they were once more belly-to-belly. “And, like I said. I feel… ravenous today.”

Sammy’s eyes worked far better than her throat. She looked Auvie up, down, up, down. How her soft breasts bobbed, how one of her hands clutched her slim belly while the other pinched the single inch of weight on her hips. She was breathing heavy, the velvet of her dress skating against Chloe’s.

She wasn’t fat, she wasn’t even close. But she was glutting herself on this moment.

“Y-you are?” Chloe asked, then shook her head. “Oh, yeah… Yeah. Yeah! You do kinda… overdo it. Sometimes. So I guess that would match…”

Sammy’s eyes flashed, watching as Chloe’s chest began to move, her breathing begin to stabilize. There was a familiar look as her eyesight stabilized, and she let out a longer breath.

“Geez. Must have been a big breakfast,” she nodded.

Auvie’s smile belonged on a leopard. “The biggest,” she curtsied, her five-foot frame slim and dainty as she stepped back through the elevator and into the dark hallway. “I’ll take the stairs up. Meet me at the bar?”

“Okay. Yeah,” Chloe nodded. “I guess I can let you get me one.”

And then the elevator doors closed, the last thing showing was Auvie’s bright eyes atop of a smile, made all the more monstrous because it was genuine.

A click came, then a slow whirr, and the elevator began to climb.

Sammy didn’t know what to say. She stood there, still blinking, still trying to process everything that had happened. She felt her chest swell, and the pangs of pain and heat returned from her stomach with a deep, bubbling *auuoooouuggh* that made her squelch and lean out for the wall.

“Ah,” she heard Chloe move beside her. “Right. Knew I packed these for a reason.”

Sammy looked down, seeing a small tube inside of Chloe’s outstretched hand. She wordlessly took it, another stab from her stomach becoming a stifled belch of hot air. “What are these?” she asked, turning the tube over in her fingers. A button on the top seemed to open the other side.

“Antacids, obviously,” Chloe said as Sammy clicked the button. A tiny tablet, as big as a Skittle but flat and white, came out the top. “It’s a portable dispenser. The container’s too big to fit in my purse.”

“Oh…” Sammy said flatly, looking at the tablet.

“… Have you never had them before?” Chloe asked. “Ugh. What is with you two?? Nat had no idea either, and she’s a blimp!”

“What does that…” Sammy blinked at her.

“Ugggh,” Chloe groaned, her usual bluster returning. She came closer, her hand going down to poke Sammy’s gut. “When you eattoo many sweets, you’ll give yourself heartburn. Too much chocolate or caffeine, and it triggers acid reflex. Didn’t you ever go trick-or-treating as a kid?”

“Y-yeah…?”

Chloe rolled her eyes, taking the dispenser and clicking another tablet into Sammy’s hand. “Seriously. You think you’d be used to being a fatass by now.”

Sammy began to respond but Chloe touched a finger to her wrist, gesturing upwards.

“Go on. Try ‘em, you’ll feel better.”

“Yeah, you’re an expert then?”

“I just told you I’d go trick-or-treating. I started carrying these on me when I was like twelve, with bandages and pain killer,” the big woman jostled her purse. “It’s like you guys just never think, I swear.”

Another bubbling broil contested with Sammy’s response. She bit down on both, upending the tablets into her mouth, and felt a brief moment of surprise at the minty taste before, with a crunch and a swallow, an intense sense of relief immediately began to settle over her body.

“Oouugggh,” she breathed at the welcoming chill.

“Yeah, it’s fast isn’t it?”

“Very…” Sammy sighed, then coughed lightly, lifting herself up from the wall. “Huh. Thanks.”

Chloe shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. It’s why I got the thing. Just go easier for the rest of the night.”

“Sure. You too.”

“Pfft,” Chloe snorted. “I know my limits.”

A quiet air came back into the elevator with the two girls standing close together, the low whirr of the machine slowly lifting them.

Really… slowly…

Sammy was only beginning to notice just how slowly the machine seemed to be progressing when Chloe thumped her elbow.

“So, what’s in the box?”

“Eh?”

Sammy looked down. She hadn’t even realized she was still holding the giftbox until she saw herself holding on by the strap, the words ‘Open in case of chocolate emergency’ seeming to smile up at her.

“Oh. I don’t know. Nat and Halie gave it to me.”

“Open in case of… oooo,” Chloe lifted her hands, doing a light shake. “Do you think it’s cookies??”

Sammy thought for a moment before looking towards the bigger girl and her soft smile, and a slow chuckle rose inside of her. “Actually, it probably is, yeah.”

“You should open it!”

Sammy turned, leaning fully against the elevator wall and looking towards Chloe. “Don’t you have a tray full of… strawberries?”

Both of the girls looked at the emptied tray. Two dozen muffin wrappers sat emptied, small flecks of berry juice and melted chocolate scattered about.

“They never give you enough at these things,” Chloe puffed, turning the tray sideways. The wrappers tumbled to the floor and she placed the tray sideways, leaning against the rear wall. “It’s honestly kinda lame. I mean, I thought there was gonna be this huge show but you just walk around and, like, meet people. And it’s so shabby, too!!”

The blonde lifted an eyebrow. “Shabby?”

“Yeah. I mean, you saw the people all walking around in dress-up? I’ve seen better costumes at Santa’s Village at the Mall!” she leaned back, her belly flexing her dress as she laughed.

Sammy watched her laugh. How her skin hopped, how her breasts lifted and fell, how the red dress and tight belt made her jiggle like a bowl full of jelly. It filled the elevator with an infectious warmth. Not the bubbling acid of Sammy’s insides, Chloe’s laugh was like a warm blanket being placed on your shoulders, and she decided then that she liked her laugh.

Smiling, she felt herself shrug, and she began to undo the ribbon that topped the small gift. Sure enough, the scent of warm cookies wafted up from the box, bringing a delightfully hungry growl and a purr of excitement.

Sammy took out the first cookie, passing it to Chloe and then getting her own.

Why should they wait for something to go wrong?

Chocolate was best when everything was just right.

“Mhhhmmmm,” Chloe gushed, oozing against the rear wall of the elevator. “Halie’s baking is so good…”

“It’s only gotten better, too.”

“Mph! She’s getting a lot of practice!”

The two girls each lovingly chewed their cookies, thinking of their friends back at home.

“God, and what’s with this elevator??” Chloe asked. “Did they set the limit higher than it could handle??”

As if the mechanism itself could hear her, there was a loud click, a low hum, and the elevator came to a complete stop. Sammy felt a moment of dread before the doors clicked open and revealed Auvie standing there, grinning ear to ear and holding an extra-large iced Frappuccino.