Archive of Our Own ^beta

Alexis exhales, sinking into the suede chaise in the living room of her apartment. The whole place looks like it’s been hit with a tornado by way of a Isabel Marant trunk sale, she’s been, like, so busy lately, but that doesn’t matter right now. She’s fresh out of the shower, slathered in the luxurious cream moisturizer David and Patrick sent her for her promotion last month, and she’s got a lychee-rose candle burning, and there’s a chilled glass of rosé at her fingertips. Tonight is for her and her only .

It’s Tuesday night, which is, like, really her Friday, honestly, since the giant marketing lunch for Intergalactic Snack , the new vampires-in-space movie Interflix just greenlit, went off without a hitch today, and now she is deliciously, gloriously free of obligations until at least the Bite Beauty collab meeting on Monday. But honestly, even that is going to be, like, such a piece of cake compared to this vampire lunch thing. 

She’s scrolling through streaming services she doesn’t work for, trying to decide if she’s, like, in a period romance kind of mood or more of a madcap rom-com sort of headspace, when her phone lights up with a text beside her. She almost tosses it onto the floofy little ottoman across the room — David tried so hard to talk her out of buying it, but whatever , she thinks it’s delightful — to better focus on herself, but she glances at the screen first, just to be sure no one in her family is in some kind of crisis.

Ted [8:53 PM]: Hey, just a hypothetical, but if I were going to be around New York this weekend, would you be around? 

Alexis bolts up off the chaise so fast she almost sends her glass of wine flying. 

Alexis [8:54 PM]: Um, YES, I’ll be around!!! When? Where?? What time???

She bunches herself back up on the chaise, her heartbeat thrumming through her like the (okay, slightly tacky, she knows!) massage chair Twyla has in her apartment. She and Ted have been talking as friends for a few years now, and at first, it had just been small stuff: someone on his research team had mentioned the Crows movie; she just had to show him the terrible pun on this subway ad. Then she’d frantically texted him after she’d seen people on Twitter talking about historic rainfalls and flooding in the Galapagos, and he’d assured her that he was okay, and from there their short text conversations had become strings of messages about their days and their jobs, and before she’d fully realized what was happening, she was telling Ted about people she was dating, and he was asking for her opinion on how to decorate his new apartment in the States, and it felt — okay. Good , even. Natural. 

But for the last — six months, even year, maybe? — it’s felt different. Less like they’re friends, and more like they’re sort of … keeping the door open, is how she likes to think of it. Like ... wide open. And maybe Ted is on her front steps. And maybe she’s, like, seriously thinking about inviting him in.

Ted [8:56 PM]: Wow, okay! I have a conference on Friday that will probably go pretty late. Livestock vets are some real party animals — they’re always horsing around! 😎👉🏻👉🏻

Ted [8:56 PM]: So maybe Saturday afternoon? I can meet you wherever. No pressure to do anything fancy or entertain me or anything like that! It would just be nice to see your face and catch up for a while.

She clutches her phone to her chest. It’s been five years since she last saw Ted. Not out of any ill will, it’s just — well, the crappy service in the Galapagos, for one thing, and they always seem to miss each other when she goes home to visit David and Patrick. She’s held herself to the promise she made after they ended things and hasn’t obsessed about his social media accounts, though admittedly that’s mostly because Ted only has a Facebook he hasn’t updated since 2014 and an Instagram that is, like, literally only animals. She’s done a good job of dating other people here and there, of getting to know herself as a single lady in the city, of building a life she’s content with on her own. She’s done a good job of not hanging on to what she had with Ted, even as they’ve exchanged emails and texts and learned about each other’s lives. 

But she’d really, really like to see his face.

Alexis [8:57 PM]: Yes yes yes!!! We could go get lunch somewhere? Or you could come over to mine and we could order in or something, there’s a place near me with SUCH good charcuterie boards, they’re super cute!! 

Ted [8:59 PM]: That sounds great! Let’s do your place, if you’re all right with that? The city is A LOT and I don’t want to waste time getting distracted by New York when I could be getting distracted by you.

Her eyes bug, and her chest gets all fluttery. Excuse me, Mr. Mullens, are you flirting with me??? she sends, and she hopes with all of her freshly moisturized, bergamot-and-orange-blossom-scented self that he is .

Ted [9:00 PM] : Is that okay? I don’t want to come on too strong.

Alexis [9:01 PM]: Oh it is SO okay omg

Alexis [9:01 PM]: I was really hoping you’d say yes, jsyk

Ted [9:02 PM]: Then yes, I am 100% flirting with you. 😉

It’s the little wink emoji that really sends her, and she feels helpless, gone in the fun, giddy way, as she grips her phone tight. God, she wishes she could wink back at him, show him just how thrilled she is at the turn this is taking.

Alexis [9:03 PM]: Mmm well okay in that case you’d better come straight to my apartment. Union Square is very distracting and we wouldn’t want it to get in the way!!

Ted [9:04 PM]: Union Square? More like RE-Union Square!

She feels like the candle on the coffee table, burning and melting all at once, beaming light into all the dark spots of her apartment. Can’t wait , she types sincerely, tacking a little kiss emoji onto the end, and yeah, she does squeal when Ted sends one back, because who’s gonna hear her?

Ted [9:06 PM]: Me either 😘

Thank god her week is so empty, she thinks, flinging herself off the chaise. She has a lot of tidying up to do.

💞

Saturday afternoon and she’s stressing, like had-to-blot-her-makeup-thrice-already-because-she’s-nervous-sweating-so-much stressing. It’s the middle of May and pleasantly warm out, not so hot that she needs to worry about actually sweating, but enough that, yeah, she can feel the prickle of nerves along her skin as she waits for Ted’s I’m here text. She’s so jittery that she even muted her work-friends group chat because every time a new message came in — nothing urgent, just Daelyn saying @Alexis, one of the guys from the scuba show thinks ur hot, do u want his number?? and Mara replying of course she doesn’t want it, those guys are all ripped to shit — she almost went through the ceiling hoping it was Ted.

She fusses with the angle of the lampshade in her little foyer, undoes the twist holding her hair back and fluffs it around her face instead. She’s halfway through mentally reconfiguring her entire outfit when her phone lights up, buzzes, and chimes — she turned on every possible notification because no way is she missing this message.

Ted [1:28 PM]: Hi! I’m in your lobby.

Alexis resists the urge to reply with something suggestive, but it’s not 2018 anymore and she isn’t dating Ted, remember, so she tells herself that’s off-limits until she has a clearer picture of their situation, no matter how flirty he was getting over text the other night. Be right down!! , she sends instead, and gives herself one final spritz of Delina for luck before heading downstairs.

She brings her phone with her, like she always does in case the elevator stalls, because she learned her lesson with the Skarsgård brothers in that haunted tenement in Edinburgh, thank you very much, and thank god she does, because she’s between floors when her phone lights up/buzzes/chimes again.

Ted [1:30 PM]: Also, uh, I look a little different.

She stares at her phone as the elevator ticks down floors. There’s barely time to panic, or wonder, or fantasize — does he mean, like, hair? Tattoos?? Scars??? Did the Galapagos turn him into, like, some kind of wilderness man?! — before the doors ding open in the lobby and she steps out, floaty with nerves, and —

Oh. 

Oh .

There’s Ted.

She blinks, heat flushing over her, her mouth opening and closing, trying to process. “Hel- lo ,” she manages, and she can only imagine that her pupils must be huge , like double-dose-of-molly-huge, and honestly, that’s not far from how she feels, because — oh my god .

Ted got fat.

Ted got, like, so fat.

“Hi!” beams Ted, stepping closer to her. “Oh, man, it’s so good to see you. I can’t believe it’s been so long. You look great!”

He’s as clean-cut as ever, eyes maybe a little more crinkly at the corners than they used to be. His beard is neatly trimmed, a little shorter than it was five years ago, around cheeks and a chin that are so much softer and rounder than she remembers. He’s wearing a nice T-shirt, a heathered gray that makes his eyes look blue enough to drown in, and he’s so round, holy shit, he’s got rolls .

“You look,” she starts, but her mouth is so dry with desire that it’s hard to get the words out. “You look amazing , Ted, oh my god.”

And Ted knows this about her. Like, it’s barely a secret anyway, she follows a whole host of open feedists and fat liberationists and models ranging from small fat to infinifat on Instagram, and all her friends here know, and she’s on a dating app or two where it’s either not really hidden or, it’s, like, the whole point of the app, but, like. Ted knows . They’ve been friends for years on top of being exes, of course he knows. And she can’t help but wonder if he ever maybe, you know. Thought of her. When he was poking extra holes into his belts or leaving his pants unbuttoned under his belly or anything.

Ted’s cheeks go pink, but his grin remains. “You think?” he asks, spreading his arms. His arms are so chubby, rosy stretch marks confettied along their undersides and cute little rolls starting to bulge over his elbows. 

“Yeah,” she says breathlessly. “I do.”

His grin widens, gets a little more fond. “I, uh. America comes at you fast, you know?” He drops his arms, and she realizes — almost numbly, except that she feels the realization in literally every nerve of her body — that he’s too fat for his plump arms to hang flat against his sides anymore, bowing out against the bulges of pudge at his chest instead.

It’s making her a little lightheaded, how perfect he looks. She’s suddenly very glad that she was so verklempt waiting for him upstairs that she forgot to switch out her fluffy house mules for heels.

“Um, come up, come up!” she manages, motioning him toward the elevator and punching the button. “I’m on the eighth floor and, um, the elevator is working today, so you don’t have to worry about that — um, I didn’t order lunch yet, I almost ordered for you, but I wanted to make sure you still wanted the charcuterie place, and — I didn’t want to assume I still knew what you liked, and —”

“Alexis,” he says, stepping into the elevator behind her. He takes up so much room in it, and she has fantasized so much about this moment in the past six months, and okay, yeah, in some of those fantasies, Ted is — three hundred or four hundred pounds, or whatever. And yeah, okay, she has thought exactly about how much room he’d take up in this teeny-tiny elevator.

“Yeah?” she squeaks, and his face softens into a smile. As the initial shock burns off, the static in her chest gives way to something closer to longing. Suddenly she’s twenty-eight again, young and skittish and almost foolishly hopeful, looking up from a matchmaking game to find Ted in front of her and feeling like the world has flipped into Technicolor.

“It’s okay,” says Ted now, and it is , because he’s here. “We can order together. Like we used to.”

She exhales. “Yeah,” she repeats. “Okay. Yes. Yes , Ted. I’m just — I’m so — it’s so — being with you. Seeing you. It’s a lot. Is it a lot for you?”

Ted’s smile turns a little bittersweet. “Yeah. It’s a lot. But in a good way, right?”

She nods, and he opens his arms, and the hug is just — oh . Oh, he’s so soft. Oh, she’s home.

It startles her a little. Home is a complicated word for her now, because there’s a simple answer and a much more convoluted one, and barely anyone gets the simple one, but Schitt’s Creek makes sense in the same way Ted does: affectionate, unassuming, a feeling as close and warm as his familiar arms around her. 

She stays in his arms all the way up to the eighth floor, the stubble on his soft chin prickling against her cheek. He smells the same, Old Spice deodorant and wintergreen soap, and she loves, loves that he’s wearing the same scent as he was five years ago, and so is she. That seems, like, cosmically aligned for them.

When the elevator doors open and he carefully removes his arms from her, there’s a tangible weight that goes with him. She’s dying to know how much he weighs now, how much he’s gained, what led to this. 

She leads him into her apartment, and the awkward trance over her shatters some once she’s back in her own space. “So, welcome,” she says, spinning in an exaggerated circle in the foyer. “It’s, like, so cute, right? The windows are literally to die for. Kitchen’s that way” — oh god, why did she tell him where the kitchen was?! — “bathroom’s through there, and, um, living room is right over here, so … come on in?”

Ted toes off his shoes before leaving the foyer, which she appreciates but is something he never used to do, which feels weird. She hugs herself as he takes it all in, his chubby cheeks appling sweetly as he grins. 

“This is so nice!” he exclaims, running a hand over the suede of the chaise. He rubs the fabric against the grain, and Alexis thinks in a sudden burst that he’ll leave a mark. One she could easily undo, of course, it’s not like the time James Blunt spilled sangria all over her at Diddy’s white party, but — that’s the thing. 

She kind of wants Ted to leave a mark. 

“It really feels like you,” he’s saying, picking up her rose-lychee candle to sniff it and smiling at the little knick-knacks Dad keeps sending her from LA where they’re lined up on her bookshelf. “It’s perfect. Like, exactly the place I was imagining you in.”

“Oh my god, really ?” she asks, and he nods, his double chin bobbing beneath his beard. “That’s so funny. Come on, sit. I want to hear all about this little jaunt to New York that you’re on.”

She perches on the loveseat instead of the chaise, tucking herself tight in one corner and watching intently as Ted lowers himself down on the other side. His gait is so different now — he moves belly-first, plump hips canted back in counterbalance, ample thighs rubbing together. His T-shirt fits, but the cotton clings to every curve and bulge of his enormous tummy, and the indent of his navel sits wide and deep, the soft shapes of his sides pressing against the fabric. 

He takes up almost half the loveseat, his weight sinking him deep into the cushion, and she gets momentarily tangled in the stupid, fleeting thought that if Ted were here more often, if he lived here with her, all their furniture would be adorned with impressions of him.

Somehow he looks even bigger sitting down, all of his rolls spreading out and crushing together, a thick new bulge squishing up where his side rolls meet his hips. His belly sits massive in his lap, spreading over his thighs and dipping between them. He adjusts his gut as he settles, and he. jiggles. so. much. Literally his entire belly ripples when he moves, like the water bed Mom used to have in the Hamptons house until David had that wild party during his mall-goth phase in high school and one of his spiked bracelets punctured it while doing literally who knows what with Christina Ricci.

Alexis tries to pull her gaze away, entranced, but Ted catches her. “Uh, my eyes are up here,” he jokes, and she feels herself go red.

“Oh my god, Ted, I know, I’m sorry. It’s just —” She shakes her head, flexing and curling her hands in her lap. “You’re just. I’m just —”

“Hey, it’s okay,” he says, and she raises his eyes to his. The look he gives her is familiar, encouraging, and she nods a little. “I know I kind of showed up like this out of nowhere, and I know that this is also, uh, probably very interesting to you —”

“ Interesting ?” she interrupts. “ Really ?”

He grins full-out. “I didn’t want to just say hot . Should I have just said hot ?”

“Oh my god , Ted,” she says, swatting his belly. The rolls piled in his lap quiver with the movement. “But also, like, yes , oh my effing god.”

“I love that you still say effing ,” says Ted fondly. “I really wondered whether the city would have hardened you at all, but — you’re still Alexis. And can I just say, I love that for you.”

Hearing him say love so many times sets a little fire in her belly, but she glows to hear him use her turn of phrase. “Okay, if I’m one thing, though, I’m consistent. Also very hot, but more importantly … consistent.”

“Yes,” says Ted, his eyes going soft. “You are.”

She bites her lip, holding his gaze for a second longer than just friends . “So, um, I guess life has been treating you well,” she ventures, scooting a tiny bit closer to him on the couch. “Montana really knows how to take care of you, mmm .”

Ted nods. “Minnesota, but yeah! It was kind of a shock to my system after the tropics, you know? But they’re really big on food there. Like really heavy food. I had, like, a whole coalition of moms and grandmas delivering me casseroles every week. People would come in and just drop off Tupperwares of desserts when they came to pick up their pets. Everyone kept telling me I was too skinny to keep warm in the winter. No matter how many times I told them that I’m Canadian!”

Alexis is having some difficulty processing. Also, swallowing and breathing. “So you gained all this in, like — two years ?”

“Uh, yeah?” says Ted, but he’s grinning. She thinks he might even be — proud ? “Most of it. You should see the stretch marks.”

She can’t help it: she whines, covering her face in her hands. “ Ted ! Most of it?!”

“Some of it was from missing you,” he allows, and she looks up at him through her lashes. “I had a healthy little gut when I left the Galapagos.” He pats the crest of his belly, and she swallows hard. “But mostly — I really like it in Minnesota. I feel good there, I’m comfortable, and I think when I’m happy I just …” He spreads his hands. “Well, balloon, apparently.”

Alexis bites back another distraught little sound. “That’s — that’s so good, Ted, oh my god. Like, really! Not just — physically. You deserve somewhere you’re happy, Ted. And I’m, so, so thrilled for you that you’ve found it.”

“Yeah,” he says, and his grin is so big, so genuine, that it makes her chest hurt a little. She wants so badly for Ted to be happy, like there’s a piece of her heart still attached to him, and it’s overwhelming in a way she doesn’t have words for. He’s good , she thinks gratefully. He’s doing so good . 

Maybe good enough, she dares, to have some room in his life for her.

“What about you?” he asks. “You said you were starting to get into modeling, or something?”

She gives her head a little shake, earrings jingling. “The agenting side of modeling, yes, and we will totally get to that, but I have, like, a million more questions for you, and you’re my guest, so, um, you get to talk first.”

Ted quirks an eyebrow. “How many of your questions are related to me being plus-size now?”

She scrunches up her nose. “Okay, you’re the one who sent some very flirty texts and then showed up here weighing four hundred pounds, not me. And please, plus-size? A, that term is, like, super outdated, and B, really? You’re, like, plus-plus-plus size.”

Okay, it’s bold, and four hundred is a total shot in the dark, but Ted’s eyebrows leap up. “You think I weigh four hundred pounds?”

Alexis fusses with her hair, tucking it behind her ears and fluffing it over her shoulders. “Well — do you?”

Ted laughs, big and full-bellied, and she laughs too, mesmerized by the heavy, seismic bounce of his rolls. “Just about. Maybe if you order enough lunch, I will. Which, speaking of — I’m so glad you didn’t order yet, because I’m starving .” He smirks. “And I think my appetite is probably a little bigger than you remember it being.”

“ Oh , my god, Ted, you can’t just say this stuff to me! We’ve been talking for, like, years. How did you not tell me this?!”

“I did!” Ted protests, his eyebrows pulling together, and Alexis stares at him, disbelieving. 

“Um, I think I’d remember if you told me you gained, like, two hundred pounds!”

His face goes sheepish. “Okay, maybe I didn’t tell you straight out, but I definitely dropped hints!”

Her mental search function whirs. They have a policy of not sending pictures of themselves, because that feels like a potentially slippery slope, so it’s not like she’s had visual evidence to analyze . Okay, there was the time last year that Ted had told her the car he’d been leasing was a tight fit , but she knows Ted, she could imagine him getting guilted into choosing one of those tiny shoebox environmental cars, like, super easily. And there was that Friday a few months ago that she’d asked if he had plans, just out of curiosity, and he’d said he had a stomachache so he was staying in. She’d felt that familiar jerk of interest in her belly, but it was Ted , after all! He’d probably just eaten too much dairy or something. Oh my god, and last week, when he was complaining that his back hurt from carrying so much around — she just thought he meant literally , like animals or weights at the gym or something! Ugh !! 

She covers her face again. “Oh my god , Ted,” she says quietly, and he scoots closer with a huff of effort and a sudden dip of the loveseat cushion to nudge at her shoulder with his. His hip bumps hers, Alexis’s slender and Ted’s thick with fat, and she wants so much to lean into him, sink into the pillowy rolls of his stomach and sides. 

So … she does. 

Ted looks to her immediately, and she meets his eyes, hopeful and wary all at once.

“Are we doing this?” she asks softly, and the corners of his mouth turn up.

“Do you want to?”

She bobs her head furiously. “So much, Ted. Like, for months . Not just because — not just because you’re fat now. Literally, like, for the better part of a year.”

“Me too,” he murmurs, still holding her gaze. Carefully, she braces a hand on the widest part of his belly, her hand sinking into him. She thrills, and his smile widens.

“Yeah?” he asks, low and a little rough, and she nods.

“Yeah.”

She can’t even tell who leans in first. It’s just Ted’s eyes on hers, and her hand on his thigh, and then they both blink and laugh a little, and then they’re kissing, Ted’s hands at her back, and her arms struggling to hold the gorgeous expanse of him. He nudges her back against the loveseat’s pillows, and the full weight of him rolls over her, impossibly heavy, impossibly plush.

“You okay like this?” he asks against her mouth, and she nods vigorously.

“Oh, my god, yeah. And you’re good with me, like … being into it, right?” she adds, before they get too far in and she starts grabbing or jostling. “Like … making a big deal of it? Because, like, I totally don’t have to if you aren’t cool with that.”

“Oh, no, I’m good!” he assures her. “Honestly? I’m into it too, Alexis. Maybe not exactly the same way you are, but … a different flavor, I guess?” He sits back from her a little, resting a hand on the crest of his stomach where its soft bulk piles up between them. “I like being big. I like how it feels, and I also, uh.” He shoots Alexis a sheepish look. “ Like how it feels. In the sexy way. Like, the eating, and the being big, and the having it all … played with? And talked about? And, uh, appreciated?”

He’s bright pink, and she’s so delighted by it that she pulls him in for a kiss before the words are even all the way out of his mouth. “So yeah,” he finishes when they pull away. “I am totally down for you to make a big deal of it. And I know you know how to appreciate it, with your … interests .”

“My interests are making my partners feel incredible,” she retorts playfully, grabbing at his belly rolls. “In bed and about themselves. I just happen to be, like, amazingly skilled at it for a wide variety of body shapes and sizes. Emphasis on wide .”

“Show me,” he murmurs before kissing her hard, and she grabs for the plump curve of his butt with one hand while she goes for his belt and zipper with the other, but there’s so much belly in the way that she needs Ted to pitch in and lift his gut so she can reach. Which is wildly hot in and of itself, and she rewards him with plenty of soft kisses and sharp bites to the hot, velvety skin of his underbelly. He groans, a low, jagged sound that undoes her almost as neatly as Ted is undoing the laces on the bodice of her dress, and she arches her hips against him, watching the movement ripple through his gut. 

It’s difficult to work his pants down his hips, and the amount that he jiggles while she does it is so unfairly distracting, ugh! She gasps involuntarily when she finally gets them off and gets a good eyeful of his thighs, wide and pebbled with cellulite, so helplessly chubby they’re pushing against each other. He’s bulging out of his boxers, the thin cotton stretched across his hips and butt. The heavy sag of his stomach and love handles obscures the waistband, and she rolls down the elastic to kiss at the red indentations encircling his waist. 

“Fuck, Ted,” she whispers between kisses. “I can’t believe how big you are.”

He leans down with a huff to pull her dress over her head, and she moans when the warm, soft curve of his lowest belly roll drags across her skin. “Me either,” he whispers back, pressing a kiss on her forehead. “But it feels right, you know?”

She nods adamantly, helping him out of his T-shirt. It takes more effort than she expects, the weight of his rolls pinning the fabric between them and bouncing when she tugs it free. He’s so soft, so decadent, his stomach folding and billowing out, jiggling with his every move. And he was not exaggerating about his stretch marks, oh my god. Some are silvery, sunk into his skin like tiny rivers, but most of them are still new, bright and red against the pale dough of his stomach. They burst over all the fattest parts of him, the tubby expanse of his belly and the thick curves of his love handles, the wide rounds of his hips and the chunky heft of his thighs, the wobbly dough of his upper arms and the cute little rolls starting beneath them. Even his pecs are getting them where they’ve plumped up into their own roll. Alexis kisses each and every one. 

“God, you look so good,” she whispers, running her hands down the lush curves of his sides, and he grins. 

“Probably gonna need to move to your bed if you want to go much further. I don’t —” He blushes. “I don’t want to break your couch.”

She groans, but she untangles herself from him to give him a hand up off the loveseat. It takes him a moment — he rocks his hips, the mass of his stomach bowing out between his thighs as he levers himself up. Alexis catches him in her arms only to stumble when his weight knocks her off-balance. 

“Oh my god, Ted !” she yelps, but she’s laughing, and he’s laughing, throwing a chubby arm around her waist to steady them both. He pulls her in for a long kiss, and she pushes against him, squishing his belly in on itself in her desperation to be close to him. Her arms barely fit around him — she can brush her fingertips together, but no more than that. Her reach stops at the wide dimple sunk deep into the small of his back, and she grabs at the thick rolls of his back fat, a whimper building in her throat. 

“You’re so big, Ted,” she whispers urgently into the thick padding over his collarbone, and he nods, bundling in her as close as the mound of his stomach will allow.

“I know,” he whispers back. “I know.”

He tries to scoop her into his arms, but there’s so much of him that it’s hard for her to find purchase around his waist — she keeps slipping as the soft dough of his love handles yields to the pressure of her thighs. But finally she manages to hook her legs around his hips, beneath his generous overhang, and she pushes herself against him, the friction of his big belly against the satin of her panties and the weight of his stomach on her skin flipping some electric switch in her brain, and he meets her mouth with his, swallowing the whine she lets out. He’s so fat, so soft, that it feels like his whole body wraps around her when she’s in his arms, and the silky press of his flab against her bare skin has every one of her nerves working overtime.

He’s a little out of breath when he sets her down on the bed, even though she can see the memory of his muscular arms in the shape of his chubby biceps, and she kisses him as he catches breath, stealing it a little more before rolling him back and focusing on the insides of his thighs instead. He pushes and grunts against her, exhaling in sweet bursts of exertion as he rolls on top of her and kisses at her neck, her breasts, her thighs. Ted has always, always been gentle with her, but there’s something a little different about his tenderness now, something surer about the way he moves against her. She whimpers and squirms as he works his mouth over her body, and he flicks soft, fond looks up at her whenever he shifts position or tries something new.

“Is this new?” he asks, pausing over the tattoo on the side of her thigh, and she raises her head, breathless. 

“Hmm? Oh , yes, it is,” she recovers, and she watches him carefully as he studies it.

The tattoo is simple: a vertical line of four tiny roses, each a step in the process of opening from bud to bloom. The lines are thin and pretty, touches of pale pinks and greens setting them off against her skin. She didn’t tell anyone after she got it, and it’s far enough up where her thigh meets her hip that it’s only really visible in the high-cut bikini she bought on a whim last summer. But that’s the whole point of it, sort of. It’s not meant for anyone else.

“It’s perfect,” says Ted, and he kisses each of the four little roses.

She lets him spend a while longer with her thighs, then hauls him back up to her face so she can kiss him properly. She’s not sure if it normally takes him this much effort to heft himself over onto his side or struggle up into a sit beneath the weight of the belly overflowing his lap, or if he’s playing it up for her benefit, but she’s not complaining either way. Ted is doing some, like, super stunning things to her body right now, and if he wants to enhance that by capitalizing on his stunning body, well, who is she to stop him?

He has to hold his belly out of the way again so she can roll a condom onto him, and she tops him because he says he gets winded too easily on top sometimes, and that knocks her out almost more than the sensation of all nearly-four-hundred pounds of Ted jiggling and lapping against her. Almost. 

When they finish, she orders two enormous charcuterie platters and a dessert sampler and feeds him with her hands as she entertains him with stories from work, and even though he claims he’s plenty full afterward, she can barely feel a difference in the softness of his stomach, because there’s so much of it. He’s as plush and wobbly as ever, and she buries her face in his belly fat, leaving wet open-mouthed kisses along his skin as he sighs and burps. She ordered champagne with lunch to celebrate their reunion, and Ted is still sipping his, hiccupping when it hits his overfull stomach at the wrong angle. God she wants to make a habit of this, filling him up, her affection piling up on his frame, watching him swell outward with each meal, each treat. 

“You ate so well for me, babe,” she gushes softly, stroking his hair with one hand and rubbing his belly with the other. “Mmm, look at you, all cute and overfed. Look how tubby you are, aww.” She jiggles the bottom of his belly gently, which makes the rest of his belly jiggle, plus his chest and his hips and the tops of his thighs, and she thumbs at one of the bruises she sucked into the peach cleft of his lowest tummy roll. “Oh, um, is that okay for you? ‘Tubby?’”

Ted nods, double chin bobbing softly. “Yeah, I — urrrrp — ooh, sorry. Yeah, I like that one. Most of the synonyms for fat are fine, like the, uh, mild-to-medium ones? Like, I wouldn’t like if you called me obese , but fat is fine, tubby or huge or whatever — fine. Oh, and I’m not into animal words. Those feel weird, you know, because — vet.”

She nods, filing it away. “Okay, well, I would never use that other word for you without your explicit permission, but I love this whole exploration for you! Look at you, figuring out what you like!”

He grins at her, a little bashfully. “I also  like, uh … understatement? Like, if you wanted to tell me I was, uh” — he flushes — “that I was a little overweight, or something? That would be good.”

A circuit shorts out in Alexis’s brain. “Um, yeah ,” she fumbles. “A little, mhmm.” She buries her hands in his belly, lifting it off his thighs and wobbling it gently. “You’re definitely getting, um, a little chubby, babe.”

Ted muffles a laugh in her shoulder at her floundering. “You’re gonna — urrp, oh man — gonna make me spoiled,” he teases, and Alexis boops him right above his belly button, scrunching her face up into a sexy little kitten smile.

“Okay, yes , but more importantly, I’m gonna make you fat.”

She puts on a sweet, sexy playlist, and they fuck again because Ted tells her that he likes how sex feels when he’s really full, and this time it’s the noises he makes that do it for her — heavy breaths, little gasps, burps and groans he’s too overcome to stifle, and his jagged, breathless whines when she says, Oh, look at you, you’re getting a little chubby, aren’t you? and Yeah, you’re a little overweight, honey, you look so sweet and Mmm, you feel so good with some extra, baby, I love how soft you are for me. He comes, and then, carefully, he rolls himself over and goes down on her, and he must have figured out from all her little noises that she’s super into his , because he lays with his overfull belly crushed against the mattress and pushes out all those tantalizing moans and burps and hiccups against her . 

Alexis has had, like, some absolutely mind-blowing sex in her time. Like, staggering, vision-whiting-out, head-in-the-stratosphere, legs-going-numb kinds of escapades. But Ted’s mouth against her, his heavy bulk weighing down her mattress and making her bedframe squeal and creak, his soft whine of overwhelm after he burps in the middle of eating her out — this is the first time she comes in a dynamite blast of kaleidoscopic color.

They catch their breath together, clean up together, and she fusses over him, kissing at the bruises she left and pressing her slender body to the hills and valleys of his. Her limbs feel like pudding after so much sex, and Ted’s whole body feels like pudding, luscious and fattening and sweet, and she soaks in the warm weight of his softness like it’s summer sun.

“So normally I would totally offer you a shower or something after that kind of, um, athletics ,” she murmurs, playing with one of his hands, their shape still familiar despite how pudgy they are. She runs her fingers down his plump forearm, thrilling at the fact that even his wrists are chubby now. “But, um, my shower is very small, and I don’t think we’re both going to fit.”

He laughs, a lazy, blissed-out little sound. “It’s okay, Alexis. I appreciate the thought.”

But she can’t stand the thought of not being able to accommodate him somehow — she wants to take care of him, pamper him, treat him like he’s something precious. “Is your back still sore?” she asks, following the line of a long stretch mark on his hip with the tip of her nail. “Because I could, like — I had a very weird little tryst with Mick Jagger's massage therapist for a while back in, like, 2011, so if you wanted, I could —?“

She looks at him meaningfully, and Ted’s smile goes even softer. “My back is always kind of sore, honestly,” he admits. “But also, there’s no way I’m going to turn down a massage from the prettiest girl in the world, especially if I can’t take her up on her offer to shower with me.”

And that means a little more, now that Ted’s world is wider than Schitt’s Creek and, like, Toronto. “Okay,” she says, disentangling herself from him. “Let me get some moisturizer or something, really spoil you, mmm. Can you — um, roll over for me, please?”

Ted makes a sleepy noise like it’s too much work, but he plants his hands on either side of his hips and slowly maneuvers himself onto his side, his stomach wobbling as it spills onto the bed beside him, pliant as bread dough. He heaves himself over onto his belly with a huff, the bed springs creaking beneath him as the mattress bounces with his weight, and settles on his elbows. Alexis bites her lip as he pulls his shoulders together, then arches his back as much as he can lying down. She can just see the muscles in his back move beneath the thick layer of fat, and for a moment she just watches, enthralled. 

“Comfy?” she asks, and he smiles at her over the curve of his shoulder. 

“Enough. I’ll be better when you come back.”

She throws on a little satin robe, changes her playlist to something slower, and fetches some of the massage oil she managed to negotiate into the swag bags for one of Interflix’s premiere parties last summer. The satin is cool against her damp skin, and after a moment’s thought, she turns her window unit on low, pleased that she remembered to wrestle it in last weekend when the temperature lapped up to eighty. She wishes she had something cozy to wrap Ted up in once they cool down, a robe or a hoodie or something, but nothing of hers will fit him, obviously, and the long, silky housecoat Harvey Guillen left at her place after their last movie-night-slash-sleepover probably won’t reach all the way around his waist, either. 

Maybe, she allows herself to think, she should snag Ted’s measurements so she can keep something around for him, you know, just in case he visits again. 

“Okay,” she says, settling back onto the bed and straddling his thick hips. He’s a little too wide for it to be comfortable, but she finds a position she can maintain for a while. Ted lays his head on his forearms as she warms a little of the oil in her hands, and he makes a contented little sound as she digs her thumbs into the plush fat of his back, starting at his shoulders. He’s so, so soft, and she sinks her hands into him again and again, working out knots of muscle and paying special attention to the places where he whines at her touch.

“Is that better?” she asks, kneading the heels of her hands into the small of his back, pausing to give the wide dimple there some extra love because it’s so adorable. If she hadn’t just slathered him with massage oil, she’d be tempted to lick it, like she used to do up the gentle crease of Ted’s spine before it got buried under his chub.

Ted rolls his hips just enough to make her yelp. “ So much better, oh man, thank you. Your hands are magic.”

“It’s probably the massage oil,” she demurs. “It always makes me feel, like, super relaxed and, like, expensive.”

“Mmm, I think it’s you,” says Ted, and she tweaks one of his hip rolls affectionately. “Can I hire you to come out to Minnesota every now and then? Because let me tell you, there is no good way to be a vet sitting down. I’ve been doing it long enough that my knees don’t get too sore from standing all day, and it helps that I can rest my stomach on the exam table, but man , this is the best my back has felt in months .”

Her heartbeat speeds up imagining the mound of his belly heaped on the exam table, but it turns heavy in her chest at his offer. Does that mean he wants her around more often, or does he just want, like, a chiropractor with benefits?

“I think we could arrange something,” she says carefully, tipping more oil into her hands. “Like, maybe I come out and give you massages, and you come here every now and then so I have a date to, like, whatever new movie Ryan Gosling is doing so I can prove to him that I was right and he would have been hotter if he’d kept his double chin.”

Ted laughs, the sound turning into a dreamy groan as she works the oil into his shoulders. “I’m up for the job,” he says. “We’d probably have to go shopping first, though. None of my suits have fit for, like, at least a hundred pounds.”

She comes down hard on his back, the thought yanking her breath away, and he stifles a burp into her pillow. “Sorry, sorry!” she yelps. “I’m just — yes , oh my god. Please let me take you shopping, I shudder to think about what your options are in Minnesota, ugh .”

“You’ve got a deal,” he says, still a little dreamy, and she finishes rubbing in the oil and gives him an awkward little pat on the butt. Ted’s always had a great butt, but it’s so much better now — plump and wide, curving out from his back like his belly shelves out over his waistband in front. Mmm, it’s going to be so much fun to shop for him. She’s got a few fat designers in her Rolex, or whatever it is her dad always says, and of course bespoke is always an option. God , Ted in a luxury three-piece, custom-tailored to all of his bulges and curves — ! A fitted vest hugging his bulky sides, a smooth cummerbund wrapped around his big belly, the sharp lines of a modern cut highlighting the breadth of his shoulders in contrast. A rich charcoal fabric, maybe, or a lighter gray with an undertone of green or blue. She lets out a longing breath, shakes her head when Ted glances back at her.

“All done,” she says with a little smile. “You can invoice me. Or, um, like, just write me a little IOU for that thing you did with your tongue earlier, that would also be fine.”

He pushes himself up on his hands and knees, and she catches her breath at how low and heavy his belly hangs. It’s not quite big enough to graze the mattress, but it’s only a couple of inches away. It sways as he repositions to sit on the bed beside her, then doubles and squishes deliciously as he leans forward to fish his boxers from where Alexis flung them onto the floor an hour and a half ago. 

Well. He tries to, anyway. But they’re a little too far away for him to reach with that much belly filling his lap, and Alexis lets him swipe valiantly at dead air for a moment before retrieving them herself. He huffs as he sits up, his stomach wobbling as it settles back onto his thighs, and she hands him the underwear and pops a little kiss on his forehead.

“Thanks,” he says wryly, his cheeks a little pink. “Sometimes it’s a little hard to judge.”

“That’s why you’ve got me,” she says, preening, and he kisses her nose in reply. “Need help getting them on?”

Ted smirks. “You just want another excuse to feel me up,” he says, and he rocks himself up off the mattress and leans down, his stomach tumbling forward as he shimmies his boxers up over his round calves. Everything jiggles and bounces as he works them higher on his hips, jostling and tugging at his waistband and belly, and he looks up at her, grinning like he knows exactly what this is doing to her.

“Um, duh ,” says Alexis, her mouth going dry. “Look at those thighs! Look at your cute chubby knees!” She reaches out and gives his thigh pudge a little wobble. “I can’t help that you’re super hot and I want a little piece of you while I can still have one.”

As soon as it’s out of her mouth, she worries that it’s too much, but Ted whump s back down onto the bed and reels her in with a soft, strong arm and a long, hard kiss, a take-your-breath-away-teen-movie-Michelle-Branch-playing-over-top kind of kiss, and the worry ebbs away. 

“Just a little piece?” he murmurs, hooking a strand of hair behind her ear. “And just one ? That seems at odds with your whole philosophy.” 

He brings one of her hands to his belly, and she draws in a sharp breath, a little disarmed and a lot thrilled by his self-assurance. “Where did you learn to be so smooth, Mr. Mullens?” 

His eyes crinkle with a smile. “Well, see, I used to date this girl who was pretty much the coolest person in the world, so, uh, I really rose to the occasion when I got to see her again.”

She tries not to smile as goofily as she wants to, but it’s hard . “Okay, but, like, how cool was she?”

Ted tips his head, blue eyes searching. “Gosh, I guess she was like — a Lamborghini, maybe? Or, or, uh, a Hollywood star?”

“ Ted !” she shrieks, mortified, as he beams. “I can’t believe you remember that!”

But she can’t keep from laughing, and that makes him start laughing, and she lets herself fall back onto the bed and pulls him down with her. He comes willingly, the mattress sinking and complaining beneath him, and they kiss for a while, hands wandering but not too far, the sounds of the city turning languid around them, the warm afternoon air streaming through her windows as hazy and gold as a dream.

“How long are you in New York?” she murmurs, tracing over the creases of his rolls, and he goes unexpectedly pink. 

“Yeah, well, uh. I was at a conference in Hoboken this week to brush up on my large animal care, but … I kinda need to rebook my flight home, because the one I got is full and I, uh. Definitely need to book two seats this time.”

Alexis props herself up on an elbow. “Oh my god, Ted ! First of all, ew, Hoboken, you poor thing. But — you didn’t get yourself two seats?! Why not ?”

Ted raises an eyebrow. “Wait, you know to do that? I mean, no offense, but, like … why?”

“Um, because I work with fat models, like, all the time? And I follow a ton of fat activists on social media? This stuff is important to know, Ted! Especially as a thin person. The last show I worked on was literally a reality thing about dating while fat and the whole crew was thin. I was literally the only person who thought to order robes for the dressing rooms larger than a 2X.” She pauses to let that sink in. “And I’m not trying to be, like, oh, look at me, I’m such a good ally ! I’m just saying. It’s super important to know this stuff so you can properly accommodate people. Especially when that’s, like, literally part of your job.”

Ted looks … super impressed, actually. “Hey, no, you’re right, that is important! Because, like, it really is a different world when you’re fat, you know? Not even just, like, buying clothes or fitting in movie theater seats — although those do suck , oh man, it took me so long to find scrubs that fit — but the way people look at you, I guess? And talk to you? Which seems, uh, really obvious in hindsight, but I think a lot of thin people just … don’t think about that stuff. I didn’t think about a lot of it before I got fat. Like, I had to ask for a seatbelt extender for the first time on the plane? But, you know, I don’t fly that often, and I’ve never had to think about that before, so it didn’t occur to me that it was even an option until I’d spent fifteen minutes trying to get my seatbelt over my gut.”

This is probably not the kind of thing she’s supposed to swoon at, but she swoons a little anyway because it’s so fucking hot. Literally few things could turn her on more than Ted, nearly four hundred pounds, wedged into an airplane seat, jostling and jiggling his tremendous belly around trying to belt himself in. Fuck. “Okay, you know what would be, like, super sexy?”

“What?” says Ted, sucking in when she grazes her fingers too lightly over the bottom curve of his stomach. He can’t suck in much , but his belly pulls away from her fingers, and she jiggles at the gentle cleft of his bottom belly roll instead. He’s fattest right here, an impossibly plump wealth of stomach crowning his hips, and she can’t get enough of its buttery softness. 

“If I, like, got to take you around for a few days, or a week, or whatever, and made all your accommodations like you were my client or something.” She grabs her phone off the nightstand and puts on her PR voice to demonstrate. “Like, yes , he needs two seats on this flight, thank you, and I would just love if you could tuck a seatbelt extender in with his seats. Please make sure he has an extra-wide office chair in his room, and a couch, not an armchair, and at least a queen bed. Oh, and a large shower, preferably with a detachable showerhead. No booth seating at restaurants, and no activities with a weight accommodation under four hundred pounds.” She lowers the phone, her voice softening. “Do you want a scale in your room, babe?” 

The endearment slips out, but Ted’s grip tightens on her waist. “That depends. Do you want a scale in my room, babe?”

Her heart flutters madly. “Duh.” Then, into her phone, PR voice back on: “And a scale in his room, weight accommodation no less than five hundred.”

“Don’t forget my bathrobe,” Ted stage-whispers. “I’m a 4X.”

“And he’ll need —” she starts, but then his words sink all the way in, and she falters. “A — uhhh — oh my god , Ted, really?”

He nods, a crooked smile pushing up his plump cheeks. “Oh yeah. Solidly a 4.”

“Fuck,” she moans, rolling him closer. “Oh my god, Ted. Okay, um, well, maybe we should size up for the robe, because I would, like, hate for you to get one that doesn’t totally wrap you up and make you feel, like, completely lavished.”

“Whatever you say,” Ted murmurs, scooting a little closer to kiss at the corners of her mouth. “You’re the expert, huh?”

He rolls half on top of her, and she thrills at the spill of softness as his big belly rolls over the flat plane of her own. “Not an expert ,” she manages in response, “I’m just good at my job,” and she feels his lips turn up in a smile. 

“I bet you are,” he says, brushing at her cheek with his thumb. “So, like — okay, I know what’s sexy about all of that for me , you know, getting to navigate the world like it’s actually designed for me, because — that’s different now, you know?  And it’s super sweet of you to want to take care of all that, I get that part, but what’s sexy about it for you ?”

She pulls him all the way on top of her, basking in the heavy crush of him, his enveloping softness. “I get to accommodate you,” she says, a little breathless. “I get to make you feel like the whole world is made for you, like you said. I can curate a whole experience where everything is designed and planned out for you and you never once have to worry or think about anything or feel like your body is anything less than perfect and — and — ideal. Does that make sense? It’s like — it’s about getting to make you feel like you’re the center of the universe.” 

“But, um,” she adds, burying her fingers in a roll of Ted’s back fat, “the sexy part is also that I’m doing it for you , and not my clients. Obviously I want them to feel like the center of the universe too, but —”

“But they’re not the ones lying on top of you on a Saturday afternoon,” Ted finishes, a mischievous look in his eyes, and she giggles, squishing his belly between them as she leans up to give him a sloppy kiss.

“And they’re definitely not letting me feed them, like, entire trays of charcuterie.” 

He ducks his head. “Is it weird that I don’t even feel full from that anymore?”

Arousal jerks in the pit of her belly. “No, it’s super hot . Do you want something else? I can order something else!”

“No, it’s okay,” he laughs. “But maybe we can get dinner later, if you want to …?”

“ Yes ,” she says instantly, and he nuzzles at her cheek, pressing a little kiss at the juncture of her jaw. “I’d say we could go for smoothies, like old times, but you might need something more substantial to fill you up, hmm?”

Ted raises an eyebrow. “Really? You’re nostalgic for Twyla’s smoothies?”

“Okay, well, maybe not the smoothies themselves ? But, like. The act of getting smoothies with you.” His weight is a lot to carry, which is, like, so good, but also, he’s getting kind of heavy on top of her, so she pats the side of his belly and motions him up. He hauls himself into a sitting position with a huff of effort, stomach swaying as it settles in his lap, and she sits up beside him, pulling a pillow behind her back.

She palms his belly, thrilling at the way it overflows her hands, too voluminous to hold. “Have you been, like … home, yet? Since … all this?”

“You mean to town?” She nods. “A couple of times. Not as much as I’d like, but it’s been slammed at my clinic, and this town has more feral cats than I have literally ever seen, so I’m becoming quite the worka- meow -lic . ” Alexis wrinkles her nose, and he laughs. “No? Okay. But, uh, yeah. I’ve been back to see my mom a few times, and she’s … she’s happy for me, but losing weight was a really empowering thing for her, you know, and I think she’s having a hard time understanding that gaining weight has been a really empowering thing for me. She’s, uh, very insistent that we should take a Zumba class together.”

“Okay, as hot as that would be in terms of, like, physics ” — she hefts his belly with one hand and lets it plop back onto his thighs with a doughy thwap — “I do not love that for you, ew . I’m sorry she doesn’t get it. But, like, maybe she’ll get better?”

Ted shrugs. “Maybe. It’s okay, though. Most people don’t get it. You’re a rare exception.”

“Okay, that is stunningly similar to what She’s All Fat ’s allyship episode called me a while back,” she says, and if she’s bragging a little, well — she kind of wants Ted to understand that not only is she good with this, she’s been good with this, and she could be good with it for him , too.

It’s taken a long time for people in her industry to take her seriously about this, to realize that she fucking means it when she advocates for clients, and that while there are some things she’s willing to compromise on, this isn’t one of them. Which is good and bad, of course — good because fat clients deserve someone who they can trust and who’s consistent in their advocacy, and bad because most of the thin people around her assume that she’s either joking or hasn’t thought about it past the surface level. And, like, she knows her affect can seem insincere, but it turns out that persistence is a good counterbalance, and little by little, she’s started to build a reputation for being Good About This in ways that other people in PR certainly aren’t.

Now, she continues, “They said I was an unexpected gem of fat-forward representation , which is, you know, obviously very flattering.” She gives her head a modest little shake. “Because, like, it’s one thing to try to be a good advocate as a thin person, but it’s, like, a whole other thing to have a fat lib podcast say that you’re actually doing okay at it, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah!” says Ted, and she beams. “That’s really cool, Alexis. And I think it’s awesome that you’re really leaning into that, because — I mean, I think it must mean a lot to people to realize they can trust you no matter what size they are. It means a lot to me , to know that you do actually think about this as a regular thing and not an afterthought.”

She nods, giving his hand an assuring little squeeze. “So, like, if you ever need someone in your corner with your mom — or, like, anyone, honestly — I am literally at your service, and, like, I did not do all that kickboxing with J-Law in 2011 not to throw down to, like, defend your honor or whatever.”

“You’ll be my first phone call,” he promises, leaning in for a gentle kiss. He twirls a strand of her hair around his index finger, which is a new move for him but feels very, like, softly-lit-artsy-indie-romance-film. 

“Am I the biggest person you’ve been with?” he asks, and she flips through her mental roster of past flames.

“Maybe? You’re definitely, like, top three. I think … no, I don’t think Oli was quiiiite as big as you are. But um, Ruby, a while back, I’m pretty sure I told you about her — I think you guys are probably close.”

“Oh, yeah, I remember Ruby!” says Ted. “She had the Scottish fold, right?”

Alexis blinks. “The what?”

“The cat!” says Ted. “The little gray one, with the ears? You sent me a ton of pictures!”

“ Oh , oh my god, yes . I can’t believe you remember that.”

“I never forget a pet,” says Ted proudly, and he somehow manages to make it sound completely dorky but also super adorable. 

He reaches for the half-empty bottle of champagne on her nightstand and raises it in a little mock toast. “To possibly being the biggest person in your life,” he says, and he gulps down a couple of mouthfuls before patting his belly and letting out a deep, satisfied burp. The grin he shoots her when she yelps is also deeply satisfied, and she pokes at his belly.

“And definitely the biggest tease,” she ribs, pressing a smooch to his pudgy shoulder. “I definitely don’t remember you being this, um … confident ? In bed when you were thin.”

“It’s so weird!” he says, and she takes the champagne from him and takes a long sip, motioning for him to elaborate. “Like, I thought I felt pretty good about my body then? I was working out, I was lifting a pretty decent weight, I had abs. But it always felt like … one wrong move, one cheat day too many, and all of that would be gone, and then I wouldn’t have anything.”

She squeezes his thigh. “Okay, incorrect . You’re way more than just your abs, Ted.”

“Yeah, a lot more, now,” he quips, grinning at her. “Because, like, once I started gaining weight? That feeling just sort of … went away. Like, it didn’t matter what I ate because I was already big. It didn’t matter if I skipped the gym to try a new recipe or to go to the restaurant my neighbor recommended. And that was just so freeing, I guess? Like I didn’t have to worry about my body anymore, because it didn’t feel so … precarious. It just felt comfortable. Like I could still count on it to be soft the next day no matter what I did.”

“Aw, Ted!” she says, touched. “That’s so sweet, I love that for you. And honestly, soft looks so good on you. It’s like … how you are on the inside, but on the outside.”

He laughs, pulling her back in his arms. “Thank you!” he says, grinning big and earnest, and she gives his gut an affectionate little tweak where it’s cushioned up against her back. 

“Of course , babe,” she flutters, and there’s a lull where they’re both quiet, Ted’s plump arms arranged around her, her hand resting on his pudgy knee, so soft and content she wants to wrap herself in this moment like one of those big super-chunky-knit blankets David used to have in his old studio before they got popular. 

She doesn’t want him to go, she realizes, and it isn’t surprising, but it still hits her hard, a bittersweet throb in her chest that makes her nestle closer to him. She doesn’t want the perfect pink bubble of this afternoon to pop. Because, like, duh, obviously he’ll go, Ted’s whole life is half a giant country away from her — but she doesn’t want this feeling to go with him. She wants to feel like she’s still in this rosy haze of reunion, whether Ted is a touch or a time zone away from her.

They’re quiet for a few moments longer, and then Ted says, “So … you’re kind of … venturing into that scene, then? Like, the kink scene?”

She tips her head to gauge his expression, and he adds, “Which, I mean, you’re obviously welcome to, it’s been five years. I’m just … curious, I guess. What that’s been like. Like, what do you even say on that dating profile?”

She reaches for her phone again and opens up Bellee. After a few years on and off the app, she, like, barely blushes at the name anymore. “Here, I’ll show you.” 

He props his soft chin on her shoulder, and she continues, “So like, this is my profile. And here’s where you put, like, if you’re an FFA or a BBW or whatever, and it also lets you put what you’re looking for, which is, like, super helpful. And your little bio goes here, like, mine says PR princess who’ll treat you like royalty. The sky’s my upper limit, so let me spoil you and see if we take flight . Isn’t that cute?”

“Very cute,” Ted agrees, kissing the spot where her shoulder meets the base of her neck.

“And I have some pictures” — she scrolls faster, remembering that the first one on her profile is one that Ted took in his kitchen back when they were together, where she’s beaming over her first (and only ) successful batch of chocolate-chip cookies — “and over here you can swipe like on Tinder or whatever, see?”

Ted motions to take her phone, and she lets him. He holds it where they both can see, studying the layout and swiping through a few people experimentally. “Leela,” he reads, swiping right. “Benji —”

“Oh, Benji!” Alexis exclaims. “We went out a couple of times. They’re super cute, but I kind of wanted someone I could experiment with, like, feeding and gaining and stuff? And they’d just gotten a modeling gig with Universal Standard, so they had to stay the size they were, so … it just didn’t work.”

“Aw,” says Ted, earnestly enough. “Tough luck, Benji. What about … Jeni?”

“Left!” says Alexis. “She’s adorable, oh my god. Left, Ted, left!”

“Okay, left,” he says, laughing. “Henry?”

“Um, Henry is only looking for gainers,” she points out, tapping the screen. “Also, I know him. He’s, like, such a darling.”

Ted dutifully swipes past Henry. “Yulia?”

“Okay, full disclosure, Yulia and I did hook up once, but she is way too committed to her acrylics. Pass.”

“Ouch,” says Ted with feeling. “Why am I not surprised you already know half the people we’ve seen already?”

She minces her hands against his thigh, her fingertips sinking into his pudge. “Um, because this city is very tiny, actually, and also, I have a very active social sphere.” 

She doesn’t tell him that there’s hardly been anyone lately. No one serious, and barely anyone else, either. As much as she thrives on social contact, the older she gets, the more exhausting the whole dating scene seems — an endless parade of interviews and awkward first encounters, and a not-insignificant number of incorrect people telling her she’s too pretty to date the people she’s attracted to. Part of her even feels like she wants to … settle down, at least a little. Find someone she can depend on, someone she doesn’t have to spend her time second-guessing or puzzling out, and keep them around. She’s even feeling more and more like maybe the right person for her is at least a few degrees removed from her scene in New York — someone more laid-back, who she can bitch to about work without worrying if they know anyone in the story and who can remind her that there’s a whole world outside her industry and none of it is actually as life-or-death as it sometimes feels. 

And, um, sometimes she feels like maybe the right person for her isn’t even in New York.

Ted hiccups softly, his stomach jiggling against her back, and she blinks, coming back to herself. 

“Okay, but what about you , Ted?” she asks, shifting in his lap to rub his belly. “Are you venturing into the scene? Because you would totally kill it, oh my god. You’re, like, the whole package.”

He goes a little pink. “Uh, not really? I mean — I’m not really dating much. Kinky or otherwise.”

She squints at him, combing her fingers through the ends of her hair. “Okay, well, how did you find out you like having stuffed sex, then?”

Now Ted’s really pink. “By accident?” he offers, and her eyes go wide as she smacks the meat of his thigh.

“Oh my god, Ted, dish .”

“It wasn’t that big of a deal,” he hedges as she spiders her fingers up the plump slope of his belly. “I went on a few dates with this girl in town — I wasn’t this big then, but, you know, I was getting there — and I had kinda already figured out that I liked overdoing it sometimes, and —”

“Okay, and how did you figure that out, by the way? When we broke up you were still doing, like, cheat days .”

He grins ruefully. “Remember all the casseroles and desserts and stuff people kept dropping off?”

She bobs her head, squishing his belly idly as he talks. 

“Well, as you may have noticed,” he goes on, “I’m only one guy, and, you know, I live alone, and this was, like, families’ worth of food. And it would be rude not to eat it, so I just … started seeing how much I could eat. I had a lot to get through,” he adds defensively, as Alexis gapes at him delightedly. “And I wasn’t trying to gain or anything, that just kind of happened” — she makes a wide-eyed face, like duh!!! — “But now, you know, I can put away pretty much a whole casserole on a good day!”

He looks adorably proud of this, and Alexis swoons at the idea of Ted alone in his little Minnesota apartment, blithely plowing through entire casseroles by himself for dinner. Maybe even challenging himself, slumping down on his couch or at his kitchen table or whatever to soothe his overstuffed belly afterward. Probably not stifling his burps and hiccups like he used to when they were dating, since there’s no one around to hear. 

“ Oh my God , Ted,” she whines, cupping the soft curve of his jaw and bringing his face close to hers. “No wonder you’re massive , oh my god! And no wonder all the grandmas love you, with that appetite.”

Ted grins against her mouth when she kisses him. “Yeah,” he says, smoothing her hair back affectionately. “It’s pretty cool.”

For a moment, she considers letting the conversation fall by the wayside so she can make out with him more, but — “Wait, I still want to hear about your, um, your stuffed sex thing, though.”

“Oh yeah!” says Ted. “So this girl and I went to this place with just — amazing Italian food. I think I gained five pounds just from the amount of risotto I ate, it was so good. But she came home with me, and, you know, we started getting into it, and I didn’t know how to tell her that I’d eaten way too much, but I also, uh, didn’t want to stop? So I just kept going.” He ducks his head, his double chin pooching out. “I kept moaning and saying her name to cover up the fact that my stomach was making so much noise. I thought I was gonna burst, but, like … in a good way?”

“ Ughhh ,” she groans, pressing herself against him. “Ted, that’s so hot ! And, also, like, definitely something I would be very into role-playing, if that wouldn’t be, like, super weird for you.”

The smile he gives her is soft and indulgent, and she smiles back, eyes drifting closed, running her fingers from his jaw down over the stubble covering his double chin. “I mean, I’m sure we could revise it,” he says. “Tonight, even, if we got shakes instead of smoothies. There’s this burger place up where I am that has these amazing milkshakes, and after a large one of those my stomach sounds like it’s on the spin cycle.”

“After a large one ?!” she yelps. “How large, Ted???” 

“I don’t know, I think a quart?” He laughs at the tortured face she makes. “They also have one that has a slice of cake blended into it. I really like those. Oh, and burgers stuffed with cheese! And fried cheese curds.” He pecks a kiss on her cheek as she squirms in his lap. “You should really come visit.”

She buries her face in his soft chest. “Ted, I adore you, but I think that might kill me, and, like, I cannot die in Minnesota.” Then, raising her head: “But also, I literally cannot believe that the girls up there aren’t, like, clamoring to feed you cake shakes every chance they get, oh my god.”

“Not entirely true!” says Ted, and she quirks an eyebrow at him. “They are, just … the ones over sixty, at least. They’re very dedicated to feeding me. I told one of the grandmas that I couldn’t button my pants anymore and the next day she brought me a gigantic tater tot casserole and offered to let out the waistband for me.”

Her eyes go wide. “Oh my god, Ted, are you getting cougared up there?!”

“No, no!” He laughs and kisses her shoulder. “Just, uh, definitely a smaller dating pool in Elmtree, Minnesota, than there is in New York City. And, uh, believe it or not, people aren’t exactly lining up to date the four-hundred-pound vet.”

“Why not ?” says Alexis, genuinely flummoxed, and Ted half-smiles.

“Well, you don’t live there, for one.”

Alexis goes quiet, and maybe she’s imagining it, but she thinks he leans into her a little more. 

“Ted,” she says, and he raises his chin in acknowledgment. “I’m going to say something, okay, and I just — I don’t want you to feel like you have to say anything back. Or agree, or anything. I just —” She pauses, flexing and curling her hands in her lap like she’s summoning her courage. “I just need to say it, for me.”

“Okay,” says Ted, as soft as his stomach against her, and she nods, once, brisk, businesslike.

“Okay. I — I really like the way we’ve been talking. The past few years, but, like, the past few months, specifically. The, like, leaving-the-door-open kind of talking. And I think it feels so good partly because we’ve proved that we’re important to each other. Like, not just when we’re in the same place, and not just when we’re — involved. We get each other. You’re the first person I want to tell about my day and the last person I want to stop talking to at night. And I just think … maybe we won’t be in the same place, maybe not for a while. Because it sounds like you have something really good in Minnesota, and I really like what I have here in New York, and I don’t think either of us is ready to pick up and start again somewhere new. I don’t think either of us wants to.”

She takes a deep breath. One of Ted’s hands moves gently to hers. “But I know that I want you to be a part of what I have here. In, like, a more permanent way. Because — I think we’re ready now, Ted. Like, yes , I think we would have crashed and burned if we’d kept doing long distance five years ago, it would have been so awful. But … I think I’m ready now. I think — I think the best thing I can imagine is doing what we’re doing now, except that we see each other more often, and I get to tell you, um, I get to tell you how much I love you, like, all the time without it being weird.”

Ted waits a respectful moment after she finishes, during which she weighs the possibility of fleeing the room and yanking the lid off the stupid decorative ottoman in the living room, folding herself up inside it, and never coming out. See, David was totally wrong when he told her not to buy it, it does serve a purpose and that purpose is hiding her from utter humiliation!!

Except Ted’s silence just feels like a million years and actually only lasts a second, and then he’s gathering her in his arms and saying, “ Yes , oh my god, Alexis, a thousand times, yes. I’ve been — I thought it was so stupid to hope for because it had been so long, but … you’re right. I don’t think we were ready then. But we’ve grown up some —”

“We’ve grown out some,” she adds, filling her hands with his belly. 

“— and we’ve grown out some,” he echoes, his mouth curving up at the corners. “And I’m ready too, Alexis. Because … I don’t want to leave Minnesota. Not yet, anyway. And no offense, but I don’t think I’m cut out for New York. Everything is so, uh … compact. And everyone is so aggressive! People don’t even lock their doors in Elmtree.” He clears his throat. “And you’re right: I love what I have there. But I love what I have here, too.” He presses a long kiss to her forehead, and Alexis tucks herself as close against him as she can, his stomach bulging against her in soft, comforting waves. “And I want both.”

“ Yes , Ted,” she whispers, and she grabs his chubby cheeks in her hands and kisses him hard. “I want everything with you. Even if you’re halfway across the country or whatever. Honestly, there are some weeks where I am literally only in this apartment for, like, three hours, so being five thousand miles apart might actually be better for us now.”

“Well, the good news is it’s only about a fifth of that distance from here to Minnesota,” says Ted cheerfully, and she swats at his stomach. “But, uh, yeah, you probably wouldn’t love the number of cats I’m fostering at the moment, either, so the distance might actually be a blessing in disguise. But! You know something I love about them?”

“About … the cats?” she asks, and he nods. “Um, are these the feral cats you mentioned?”

“Only some of them!” he says, undeterred. “And those mostly keep to themselves. But the regular house cats, they do that thing, right? Where they make biscuits?”

Alexis looks at him blankly. “What are they, Ted, like, little cookie elves?”

“No! You know, when cats do this?” He gently kneads at her thigh, and she shrugs, like, I guess?? “Well, they do that when they’re happy and comfortable. And a lot of them like to lay on my stomach and, you know, knead at it. And it reminds of your little —” He drops his wrists and minces his hands like Alexis does when she’s nervous or excited or trying to express something abstract. “Your little hand thing.”

She wrinkles her nose, smiling in spite of herself. “Oh my god, Ted. That’s kind of adorable, actually.”

“ You’re adorable,” he says, booping her nose. “Even if I am a hundred percent sure you’d hate my cats.”

“Okay, yes, well, I’m sure I could deal for, like, the length of a visit,” she allows, fluffing her hair. “But, um, they’re going to need to understand that while I’m around, I’m the only one who gets to play with your belly.”

Ted laughs, full-out and genuine. “I’m sure you can find a way to work it out!” he says encouragingly. “You’re very purr- suasive, after all.”

“Oh my god, Ted,” she moans playfully, and he grins and gives her a sloppy kiss. “You have got to be kitten me with this.”

Ted kisses her again, chuckling. “Now I wish I’d told you I love you before you said that, because now it’s going to sound like I’m just saying it because you made that pun.”

Her heart skips, and tucks her hair behind her ears and presents her face to him again, chin tipped up beatifically. “Solution: so you tell me now , and then you tell me again later, like, multiple times if you want, and also, maybe you whisper it to me tonight when you think I’m asleep, but actually I’m not and I’m, like, so thrilled to hear it but I don’t want to, like, embarrass you by being awake, so instead I wait until the next morning and whisper it to you to wake you up.”

Ted’s mouth is right on the edge of a smile, his starry eyes crinkling at the corners. “Okay, definitely more elaborate than I was expecting, but I’ll take any excuse to tell you I love you.”

Giddiness glows pink and buoyant in her chest. “You can start whenever you want.” 

Ted cups her cheek in a pudgy hand, and she holds herself so still as he whispers, “I love you, Alexis. And oh man, have I missed saying that.”

“I love you, too,” she breathes, and Ted’s smile splits his face, he’s grinning even as she kisses him, and even though this is, like, their millionth kiss today, this is the one that feels like it makes up for the five years between then and now, for all the time they’ve spent learning themselves, making worlds for themselves, and realizing that those worlds are incomplete without each other. This is the one that almost makes her cry. This is the one that makes her sure.

When they finally untangle from each other, the sun is setting, painting her bedroom in pink and peach and gold, and they bat dinner ideas back and forth as Ted pulls his shirt and jeans back on and Alexis flits around the room adding jewelry to her outfit from earlier. She wants to take him out, show him off and some of her favorite places and treat him a little before he finds a flight home, so she tasks him with combing through her Seamless history to see if anything catches his eye as she touches up her makeup.

“Electric Burrito,” he reads, his voice amused, and she glances at him in the mirror of her vanity as she dusts some blush onto her cheeks. “I thought you weren’t really a burrito person?”

“Oh, um, I’m still not, exactly?” She blushes under the blush. “But they put fries in all their burritos and they have one that’s, like, a breakfast sandwich but with carne asada and crema? So —”

“ Oh ,” he says, grinning at her reflection. “So it’s that kind of place.”

“ Yes ,” she says, grateful that he gets it and she doesn’t have to fumble through explaining further. “Exactly, yes. We can go, if you want to! I can get a bowl or something.”

“Nah, not tonight,” he says. “Maybe for breakfast tomorrow. Or, you know, second breakfast, because the first one should be something for both of us — you’ve gotta eat too! But I’ll be damned if I leave without eating one of these for you.”

She almost pokes herself in the eye with her mascara wand. “ Yes , Ted, oh my god, absolutely.”

He keeps scrolling, and she smiles at him in the mirror, at the way he looks in her space, the way his bulk fits among the slim lines and soft tones of her apartment. She can’t wait until there’s a dip in her bed marking his space, too, even if it doesn’t last after he leaves. Because soon enough, he’ll come back, and the marks he leaves will be new all over again, and what are she and Ted if not new beginning after new beginning?

She spritzes her face with setting spray and mists herself with perfume, then plunks herself down behind Ted on her bed, tucking her chin against his shoulder. “What looks good?” she asks. “Just let me know, and if I’m not sure if they have fat-friendly seating, I’ll call and find out.”

“You’re the best, babe,” he says, turning to peck a kiss onto her cheek, and she rubs at the soft expanse of his side idly as he studies the menu of the new fried-chicken-and-biscuit place in SoHo. He looks warm and dreamy in the evening light, and she taps him on the shoulder, suddenly taken with the impulse to capture the moment, the first night of their latest new start.

“So are we, like, Insta-official?” she asks, shifting so Ted can see her better, and he grins, gives her an easy shrug.

“If you want to be! I’ve got no problem heading up to your roof and telling everyone in New York right now, but I totally get it if you want to, you know, tell David or your parents or your friends before you tell the world.”

She considers it, but telling David is gonna be a whole thing, and he’ll end up calling her to demand details if she posts something about Ted anyway , and her parents are definitely going to have, like, a million questions about Ted and Minnesota and definitely his new figure, which is going to be, like, a total minefield. Besides, she didn’t even tell her friends — or anyone, tbh — that she was seeing Ted this weekend because she was so desperately afraid that something would go wrong and she’d have to deal with relaying the news to like twenty people on top of handling her own emotional fallout.

And honestly, right now, she’s okay with that. She’s ready to tell the world, prepared for all the explaining and graciously accepting congratulations and, undoubtedly, answering questions about how and why and whoa, when did he get so big?! And she’ll be more than happy to field those phone calls and texts and DMs and Insta comments — tomorrow . Tonight is for her and Ted, and she wants to enjoy it to the fullest.

Ted’s giving her an expectant look, and she takes her phone from him and fluffs her hair. “The light in here is just, like, so good right now, and I just thought — I know we’ll probably take a billion more pictures before you go, but I want one of us, you know … starting. You know?”

He nods, a smile beginning at the corners of his mouth. “Yeah, of course. Come here, we can take one. Where do you wanna be?”

She tucks herself close to him, a little behind him so the light hits them both. Ted’s arms are probably a little longer, but, no offense, she trusts herself to know their angles better than he does, so she holds the phone out in front of them until she’s satisfied. Ted grins, bright and blithe, and she does too, like there’s a newborn star inside her. He’s so lovely, his happiness etched into the crinkles near his eyes and blooming from the round apples of his cheeks as he smiles, radiating from the comfort padding every inch of him. He looks heavy and handsome, his bulk fully visible in the photo, the soft billow of his belly bumping up against the edge of the frame. He isn’t striking any of the poses people usually pull out when they’re trying to look slimmer, and she loves that for him.

He turns to kiss her as she takes another picture, and normally she doesn’t love her face in profile like that, but when she checks the photo, she’s actually kind of fond of it. She looks taken by surprise, her smile still a little visible as he kisses her, and she looks so genuinely delighted that she finds she can’t not like how she looks here. Like maybe that’s how she looks to Ted, and how can she not love that ?

So she posts them both once Ted approves, the smiling one swiping through to the kiss. She tags him and enters 💖💕💘 as the caption, and then she turns off notifications for the app. Without taking her work group chat off mute, she sends the picture there too, replying to Mara’s earlier message: Long version later but tl;dr, I don’t want the scuba guy’s number for, like, a million different reasons, but the #1 reason is my boyfriend, Ted! 😊🥰🤗

When she looks up from her phone, Ted is grinning at her, the forgotten bottle of champagne held aloft. It’s within his reach from where he’s sitting, but she must have been so engrossed in posting that she didn’t even feel him moving beside her. 

“To being official!” he toasts, raising the bottle and taking a sip before passing it to her. 

She beams at Ted, and he reflects her smile right back at her, a sunset rewinding into daylight. 

“To us,” she says, raising the bottle herself. “Again, and again, and again.”

🥂