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"Isn't that cheating?"
Tamaki could feel sweat dripping down the back of his neck. It was the height of summer, and even in short sleeves he was on the edge of overheating. It didn't help that the fair was crowded. He would have sworn the rides gave off heat.
"It doesn't say anywhere that quirks aren't allowed," Mirio argued. "And think of the grand prize! But you don't have to if you don't want to. We can go on the zipper instead."
A hundred thousand yen was a lot to get your hands on in one afternoon. And nothing could be worse than going back to the rides. The annual Mustafu charity funfair was a distinctly American import, started by All Might after he'd come back from the US, and Americans didn't seem to have safety regulations for anything. The rickety, rattling pack-away park rides were scarier than any villain fight Tamaki had ever been in.
One thing they'd put a distinctly japanese twist on was the eating contest. Tamaki was pretty sure that in America they did hot dogs, not gyōza.
"No, I'll do it." he tried not to look too nervous. It was his best friend's birthday, and ruining it for him would haunt Tamaki for life. Putting the pork he'd had for breakfast to use wouldn't be nearly as bad as that.
When he actually got up on stage, though, he began to reconsider. There were a lot of people in the crowd. The competitors were sizing him up, too; mostly people with mutant quirks who towered over him. Tamaki felt childishly tiny in comparison— and the organizers had clearly been expecting that demographic. His feet didn't even touch their floor. The heap of steaming fried gyōza in front of him was so tall it obscured his view.
He wasn't so sure of his advantage, here. The stomach he'd picked was a pig's, with twice the capacity of the average human's, and it was already a little uncomfortable to have empty inside him, taking up more space. This was completely uncharted territory; the closest he'd got to this was gills , what had he even been thinking —
The bell rang and his mind went blank. The chaotic noise of rides and music and people yelling faded out.
It was almost like his mission mindset— he had one thing to do here, one thing to pour his whole will into.
Tamaki had to eat.
The first few mouthfuls were delicious, if a little too hot— crunchy and salty, beautifully rich on the inside. He didn't chew enough to swallow comfortably, the food both too hard and too hot as it went down his throat, but that didn't matter when he had a job to do.
20 , said the little LED screen counting up beside his plate. 30 . 40 .
That couldn't be enough to compete with a gorilla quirk, like one of the other contestants had.
55.
The woman to his left had distinctly moose-like antlers; she would have been nearly seven feet standing.
75 .
There was no way he was winning this. He was going to limp off stage to Mirio's poorly hidden disappointment, and it was going to hurt more than a stomachache ever could.
98.
A chiming bell startled him. The gyōza clock ticked up to 101 , and the beginnings of satiety set in. How many handfuls was a gallon of gyōza? His shapeshifted stomach could hold two.
110.
The first of four competitors tapped out, slumping back in his chair, groaning as he shoved a still-nearly-full plate away. Tamaki, certain he'd be next, burped into his fist and kept going.
120 .
It was starting to get harder, which wasn't surprising. Tamaki could feel his t-shirt tightening with every bite, the fabric straining. His stomach was starting to gurgle at the influx, getting noisily to work.
129.
He could suddenly see into the audience. See all the people watching him, his hands and face smeared with grease and gyōza filling.
140.
See Mirio. Front row, dead center. Smiling like the sun.
161.
His jeans were cutting in, now. Satiety was setting in; he wanted to curl up in the shade and sleep off what felt like a large meal. But it wasn't the death knell it would have been in his regular body. He could keep going.
183.
Mirio was cheering him on, beaming and flushed from the sun. Tamaki tried not to meet his eye. He didn't want to be distracted, and if he looked for too long, he would be.
200.
Tamaki burped again, louder and harder, interrupting his frantic chewing. He could feel the blush that crept up his neck, could feel the discomfort on the horizon. The next messy mouthful brought on a burbling feeling just beneath his ribs that was almost like complaint.
210 .
The man with the gorilla quirk tapped out, leaving just Tamaki and the moose woman. In the corner of his vision, he saw her nostrils flare in threat. He swallowed back another belch— pausing to burp slowed down his eating.
220.
Tamaki was going to lose if he didn't pick up the pace. He'd reached comfortable capacity even with his quirk advantage, and Mirio would do that thing where he smiled all sad like he didn't hate you forever, and it would crush him inside. His fingers brushed porcelain as he grabbed as many gyōza as possible, crushing them slightly to cram more into his mouth, forcing himself to swallow--
250.
A gong rang put of nowhere, making his heart race.
"We have a winner!" the announcer called, grabbing Tamaki's wrist and wrenching his hand into the air.
Tamaki blinked dumbly as party poppers went off far too close to his sensitive ears, showering him and the crumb-smattered plate with confetti. His shirt was riding up, and he tried and failed to tug it down over his swollen stomach as he eased himself out of his chair to accept his prize and be crowned with a ring of plastic gyōza.
" Wow ." Mirio's eyes were the size of saucers. He was grinning like a drunk person. "I didn't think you could actually…"
He fished a napkin out of his pocket and absently reached out with it to try and get some of the filling off Tamaki's face.
"That was awesome!" he said, tilting Tamaki's chin up, almost like he was going to kiss him. Tamaki wished he would. "Literally awesome. I'm in awe!"
"Um. Thank you? " Tamaki was keenly aware of the broad swathe of skin that was showing where his shirt was trying to achieve its dreams of being a crop top. He wanted to go home, but Mirio still seemed too keyed up for that, cheerily wiping his hands clean for him. "You helped motivate me."
It was an embarrassing thing to say, and Tamaki had to duck his head to get the words out, but Mirio glowed under even the faintest praise. It was all worth it, making him happy.
"Do you maybe want to find somewhere to sit?" Mirio asked. "They have all might cotton candy, but-"
"I'll come with." Mirio seemed startled by that.
"O-okay." he said, before recovering his composure. "Celebratory cotton candy, here we come!"
Tamaki was about to protest— he hadn't meant it like that— but decided against it. He was full, but not painfully, and cotton candy was almost all air. When they got to the stall, he accepted his stickful, and started tearing chunks off without complaint.
"Thank you for today." Mirio said, once they'd settled on a bench. Tamaki looked up at him in confusion , cheeks bulging with spun sugar. "I mean, for hanging out with me! I know you don't like busy places, and nobody our age even comes to these things anymore…"
Tamaki blushed, and was trying to think of a reply, when pain lanced through his stomach.
He dropped his cotton candy, groaning through the gradual shift back. He could feel his stomach struggling to shrink back to normal around the mass of 250 fried dumplings, and each jolting twitch smaller hurt .
"Are you okay?!" Mirio's hands hovered close to him, afraid to touch.
"Ah- yeah-" Tamaki huffed, trying to find room inside his body to breathe into. His stomach whined, loud and low, and a painful burp forced its way up. He pressed his hands to his stomach, feeling the muscles twitch as he tried and failed to rub the pain away.
"It's-" a sharp belch, testament to just how much air he'd swallowed. "it's fine, I just. Quirk wore off. Oh, owww …"
He shifted his weight, slumping down and arching his back, trying to find a comfortable position, in too much pain to care that it made his shirt slide up even further. He couldn't breathe, otherwise. The movement pushed his gyōza crown forward, and it began to fall over his eyes.
"I'll get Nejire to drive us home." Mirio said, regret clear on his face. "This is my fault, I shouldn't have made you do that-"
"You didn't!" it was the most snappish Tamaki had ever been with him. "don't-" another burp, low and sickly "-don't be sorry, please ."
They reached a stalemate, Mirio frowning in a way that was almost a pout.
"Well, if you're sure." he said, finally. "but we're going home as soon as Nejire gets here."
"Fine." Tamaki mumbled. Another burp rumbled out of him, completely out of his control. He could feel the sun warming his swollen stomach, and wondered, dazed, if it would split like a ripe fruit.
It looked like it might, so stretched it was going pink around the navel. The denim of his jeans was so tight it felt like it might fuse into his skin somehow. He reached for the button, hissing slightly at the movement— and found them suddenly undone.
"Sorry," Mirio said, which was ridiculous because the surge of relief he'd brought was something nobody should ever be sorry for. "I- you looked like they were hurting you."
"Thanks." Tamaki mumbled, blushing to the tips of his ears. This was not the situation he'd dreamed of Mirio undressing him in, but that didn't matter. He could sort of think straight again, but he was too warm and stuffed and sleepy for the shame to hit quite yet.
He wasn't lucky enough to avoid it, though. When Nejire pulled up at the entrance, Mirio quite literally swept him off his feet. It was terrible because 1) the jostling made him belch loud enough to turn heads, and 2) being princess carried through a carnival kept those eyes on him. By the time they got to Nejire's little blue car, he wanted to bury his face in Mirio's shoulder and hide like that forever.
"Woah," Nejire said, as Mirio tried to set Tamaki smoothly down in the backseat. "What have you been doing ?"
"I-" a stream of short burps cut Tamaki off before he could explain. He moaned in tandem with his stomach, wrapping his arms around his abdomen and trying to muffle the burping into his shoulder.
"Tamaki ate two hundred and fifty gyōza today." Mirio said, like the gluttony was an achievement. "He's got a gyōza crown. He's the gyōza king!"
"huh!" Nejire said, kneeling to look over the back of the driver's seat. "Well, if you rub his majesty's tummy he'll probably feel a bit better."
Tamaki bit his lip, waiting for Mirio to laugh it off and buckle up for the journey.
But he didn't.
Mirio's hands were hesitant on him at first.
"Am I hurting you?" he asked, his voice soft and low. Tamaki shook his head, speechless.
"Good." Mirio breathed, smiling that sunshine smile, before turning back to his work. He pressed a little with the heel of his hand, bringing up a loud, long burp that left Tamaki gasping for air.
It wasn't particularly safe to drive back to the dorms like they did, with Tamaki halfway into Mirio's lap, slumping onto his shoulder and letting out sleepy belches the whole way home, neither of them wearing seatbelts. But it was blissful like nothing else.
And, as Mirio would tell him later, it was still a great birthday.