Chapter Text
When he tells Dean about the situation at home, Cas almost can't believe that he's stuck in something like this at all. It's been two days since Mother banned him from drinking skim milk, and it all still seems so painfully surreal. Like this can't be happening to anyone, much less to Cas—and on the positive side of things, Dean seems to agree with Cas on the matter. Not that it really helps to fix things or make Mother's actions make any more sense, but it does soothe Cas somewhat. As much as anything can really soothe him, at the moment, which isn't all that much.
"She banned you from drinking skim milk because Anna put on your jeans by mistake and couldn't fucking zip them?" Dean's eyes nearly bulge out of his skull when Cas shrugs at him, and he goes on, "What's she even going so crazy about here? Last I checked, she's still pretty skinny. Maybe not as skinny as you, but…" Dean huffs and waves his hand in Cas's general direction, in a way that Cas supposes is meant to indicate that very few people in Lawrence are as skinny as Cas is. Which, in all fairness, is probably true.
Cas heaves a deep breath and sighs, burrowing further back into the Winchesters' sofa and folding his arms over his practically nonexistent stomach. "The only thing I want to know is," he says, "why is it my responsibility to suffer when Anna is the one who only drinks chocolate milk? Why do I need to give up my favorite kind of milk in order to somehow compensate for her gaining a few pounds?"
"Fuck if I know, man." Dean reaches over and ruffles Cas's hair. "Too bad you probably couldn't gain weight if you tried—if you could, I'd have the perfect solution for you. But anyway, you know you're always welcome here if you get sick of your mom trying to control everything you eat."
Cas shakes his head and sighs again. "Mother probably wouldn't notice if I ate ice cream for every meal, Dean. Father might notice if I really started getting chubby, but that's dependent on him actually being in the house. There aren't any control issues here—not really, anyway—and more importantly? I fail to see how making me get fat would actually do anything to fix the problem of Anna's outrageous reaction to putting on my jeans. At any rate, I'm sure this will all blow over soon enough."
"And if it doesn't? What if you're stuck dealing with this crap for the whole summer?" When Cas looks over at Dean, he gets the most painfully earnest expression that he's ever seen his best friend wearing—Dean's eyes are wide and he's pouting far too much. It would look insincere on anyone but Dean. "I mean, come on, Cas—summer break is coming up fast, and you can't honestly tell me that you're looking forward to seeing where all this could lead."
"I don't suppose that I am." Cas huffs and rolls his eyes, mostly in an affectionate manner. "But I also don't think there's too much cause for alarm. There certainly isn't cause for indulging Anna's ridiculous behavior by trying to make me fat instead. Not that I think I'd mind it any, but I simply don't see the connection between making me fat and making her stop."
"You wouldn't have to get that fat, if you didn't want to." Dean shrugs as though they have this kind of conversation every day, as though it's perfectly normal for them to talk about gaining weight in any kind of positive tones. Never in Cas's life has he heard someone talk about weight gain as anything but a negative—and yet, here's Dean, giving him an almost hopeful-looking smile and saying, "You'd just have to put on a few pounds—enough to make Anna definitely the skinny twin. Maybe then she'd back off, you could switch back to skim milk, and then you'd probably lose the weight like nothing."
"That's assuming I would still want to. You never know: putting on a little bit of weight could unleash some secret gluttonous tendencies in me." Cas chuckles and shakes his head—but once he gets over his own joke, he notices that Dean isn't laughing.
On the contrary, Dean's gone all wide-eyed again, and his mouth hangs open ever-so-slightly, and it takes two snaps of Cas's fingers to shake him around again. Never mind that: when Cas says that he was just joking, Dean mutters oh, right, yeah, of course and slumps into the sofa as though he was actually enjoying the idea of seeing Cas get chubby. Which is a ridiculous thought, entirely. For one thing, Dean and Cas are just friends—best friends, maybe, but nothing more and nothing less. For another, slightly more important thing, though… why would Dean enjoy watching Cas gain weight? There wouldn't be anything in it for him. It makes no sense.
And even so, Dean perks right up when Cas sighs and supposes that he could probably stand to gain a few pounds, anyway. His eyebrows nearly jump off his forehead when Cas says, "It would probably stop Mother and Anna and Grandmother Milton from worrying that I'm too skinny, at the very least. And considering that I can't make anything more complicated than coffee and microwave ramen, I… would appreciate it if you helped, Dean?"
******
According to Dean, the first thing they need to do, before anything else, is get a sense of what all they're working with, here. And something more than just, "Cas doesn't have that much fat on him to speak of" and, "Cas wears some super-skinny skinny jeans." According to Dean, if they're going to do this properly, they need to keep careful track of Cas's weight and measurements—and when he suggests this, Cas can't help but narrow his eyes and wrinkle his nose a little bit. He can't help but tilt his head slightly to the left and wonder how much of this is really necessary.
He's not opposed to any of Dean's suggestions, as such. He just thinks it's odd, the way Dean yanks him to the upstairs bathroom as though it's Christmas morning and Santa Claus hid the presents there.
In order to make the readings as accurate as possible, Cas has to undress and he does so without regard for whether or not Dean's watching. Really, it hardly matters if Dean's watching him or not. Dean's not interested in Cas, so he isn't going to get anything out of watching Cas strip out of his jeans and his cardigan, down to his baggy t-shirt and his low-slung boxers—besides, when Cas takes off his t-shirt, Dean's interest in getting Cas topless is entirely scientific. If any of this can really be called scientific. Dean's only interest lies in wrapping the measuring tape around Cas's slender waist (which barely measures twenty-eight inches) and his skinny hips (which barely check in at thirty).
"No wonder Anna's jealous of you, Pretty Boy," Dean says with a huff, smirking up at Cas like the Devil himself. "If I was your twin, I'd be pretty jealous of how skinny you are, too—seriously, you'd probably make anyone in our class look fat."
"Yes, well, hopefully that won't be the case for too much longer." Cas doesn't even try not to roll his eyes. It's really not a big deal, is it? He's always been this thin—surely, everyone in their class must be accustomed to Cas being so thin by now. And in the back of his mind, Cas can't help wondering what their reactions to him gaining weight might be—how might Meg, his ex-girlfriend, react to Cas getting chubby? How might Ruby, Meg's sister and Anna's girlfriend, look at him differently? He zones out for a moment, just trying to picture how he'd even look with any extra weight, much less with a tummy, with padding on his hips, with thighs that touch each other when he walks…
So, it's Dean's turn to snap his fingers in front of Cas's face in order to bring him back to reality, and when he does, Cas blushes bright pink. He doesn't tell Dean what he was thinking about—it would probably be awkward, and besides, Dean would probably think it's weird.
For all this shouldn't be any kind of awkward for him, Cas still sighs when the time comes for the moment of truth, when the time comes for him to face the scale. He brushes his palms down the skin of his torso, smoothes out nonexistent wrinkles in his shorts, and can't entirely make himself get up on the scale. He takes a series of deep breaths. He sighs and closes his eyes. He kicks the thing and it doesn't make him feel any better—Cas only manages to climb up on the platform when Dean threatens to come over there and push him onto it. Trembling slightly, he looks down at the screen and reads off the number…
"One-fifty, Dean," Cas says with a huff, trying to ignore the way his heart sinks in his chest as he looks over to Dean's perch on the edge of the tub. "I weigh one hundred and fifty pounds."
Scribbling the number down in his notebook next to Cas's measurements, Dean sighs as well, and it almost sounds like he wanted the number to be higher. Cas doesn't suppose he blames Dean for that—at his annual physical last summer, Cas weighed in at one-fifty-six, and to find that he's lost weight he didn't need to lose is… well, it's disheartening, more than just a little bit so—but on the other hand, Dean doesn't know about that fact. And Dean surely can't be getting anything out of this, because that wouldn't make any sense—but fortunately, before Cas can ponder this too much, Dean pipes up:
"So how much weight do you think you want to put on?" He twirls his pen around in his fingers and seems to smirk a bit too much as he says, "I mean… ten, fifteen pounds? Probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, really. That'd probably just get you up to Anna's size… so what do you think about setting your goal for twenty? Or how about twenty-five? Maybe even thirty pounds?"
"I think that we should set our sights small for now," Cas points out, furrowing his brow at Dean's increasingly nonsensical behavior. "Twenty-five pounds sounds good for a longer-term goal, but ten is probably fine to start with? Just in case this works and gets Anna to stop being so ridiculous before I end up getting too fat."
Dean actually laughs at that, and heartily. "Cas, with me as your feeder, I'll bet you twenty bucks I can get you up ten pounds before school's even out."
******
Cas takes that bet, in his own words, half out of desire to motivate Dean and half because he's certain that there's no way Dean can get him to put on ten pounds in three weeks. Little does he know what Dean has lurking up his sleeve.
Not that Dean's completely content with the scenario—in an ideal universe where they were doing this, Cas would be his boyfriend—but he's more than happy to just help Cas start putting on weight, no matter their relationship status. And to start Cas off, Dean institutes one simple rule: every day, at least once a day, Cas needs to have a huge glass of milkshake, cooked up from a recipe that Dean found online. There's something supposedly magic about the weight gain powder-cum-appetite stimulant that Dean mixes in with the ice cream and the heavy cream and the chocolate syrup.
Weekends are the best time for them to get to work on fattening Cas up, Dean finds, because Cas's parents are almost never home. Anna's usually off at Ruby's place and their other siblings are all out at college, so Dean and Cas have the Miltons' whole palatial house to themselves. Dean can break into his parents' impeccably stocked kitchen, making up all kinds of calorie-filled, fattening treats for Cas to work through: brownies and cakes, cookies and pies, ice cream sundaes with all the trimmings. No one's around to judge them for anything they do and Cas can just laze around in sweats and t-shirts, eating to his little heart's content.
Unfortunately, his heart's content needs some working on: even with the appetite stimulant going through his bloodstream, there's only so much that Cas can get down—every time Dean tries to get him to eat a whole medium pizza or a whole box of mac and cheese, made with a stick and a half of butter, Cas ends up complaining. He didn't complain about Dean taking snapshots at his first weigh-in, he didn't complain about this whole idea at first—but oh, he complains about the eating part.
"I can't eat any more, Dean," he insists one time, even as he dips a Dorito into the container of sour cream and shoves it in his mouth. And to his credit, Cas's stomach actually looks like it exists, right now. He's eaten enough to put a just barely detectable curve around his middle, and according to what Dean's scribbled in his notebook, that, "enough" really does mean a lot of food.
"Come on, man," Dean says with a sigh and flops down next to Cas on the sofa. "I know you can do it, and I've got some of those peanut butter brownies in the oven—just a few more chips and we'll call it good on these, okay?"
But all Cas does is sigh and shake his head, whine a little bit and mutter that no, really, Dean, he's full. Dean huffs. He's read about this kind of thing before, on all the forums that he has to hide in his Internet history, just in case Mom and Dad peek on his computer. Everyone who has anything to say about it says that there's no shame in a feedee needing some extra attention during a feeding session, especially if they're just starting off—their capacity will increase as they get gaining weight and get more used to stuffing themself like this. But until they get more used to it, there are tricks to help them out. Giving them more ice cream or high-calorie sodas, since they go down easier. Encouraging them as they eat.
And, more immediately important, rubbing their bellies so everything digests easier. Which is about all Dean can do, at this point. So, he reaches over and rests a hand on Cas's stomach. It's hard underneath his palm, almost solid, but it yields a little as he starts rubbing circles around Cas's bellybutton. Slouching back into the sofa some more, Cas lets his eyes slip shut and makes a contented, sighing noise—so Dean brings his other hand over and starts rubbing Cas down with both of them. Kneading his fingers into all the places where Cas's stomach is taut and stuffed to the brim. Working them into the hard curve, slowly, gently—which Cas doesn't really seem to mind. On the contrary, by the tim Dean's done? Cas is ready and mewling that he thinks he's hungry again.
Sometimes, his sighs get punctuated by burps and muttered excuse me's, but if anything, that just makes Dean want to rub his stomach more. It makes his heart do backflips and his own stomach growl not because he's hungry, but because he really, really wants to keep rubbing Cas's tummy forever. Just to see what other sorts of noises Cas has in him. And after Cas chows down on a 9x9 pan of brownies, Dean gets another chance.
Weekdays are harder, because they have to work around school, but to his credit, Cas is a trooper about it. He carries a huge thermos full of milkshake around with him and most days, he chugs it all by second period. Which is good, because Dean always comes to school with a second thermos and there's no way he could get away with drinking it himself—Dad's already pissy enough that Dean's a dancer, not a pitcher or a football player, and he would probably lose his shit if Dean started gaining weight. Never mind the way that Dean could never hide any kind of tummy in his leotards. Gotta stay slim enough for unforgiving spandex—Dean's already got it bad enough because no matter how hard he works, no matter how much he denies himself, he never gets visible abs.
Cas doesn't have any such worries, though, so he's free to eat whatever Dean puts in front of him. He always gets one of the school's lunches, because his parents pay for them anyway, but on top of the lasagna, or the cheeseburger, or the chicken fingers, he gets an extra lunch from Dean. Some kind of sandwich, some kind of soup (mixed up with some more of the weight gain powder), and at least two different kinds of treats. Most of the time, Cas grouses about how much food Dean expects him to eat, and he almost always ends up unbuttoning his jeans, but he inevitably finishes everything. Then, after school, it's back home to work on homework and keeping Cas well-fed.
And the results speak for themselves: by the time their junior year lets out for summer, Cas is drinking at least three of Dean's weight gain shakes daily. He's put on ten pounds and started slowly filling out in all the places he's concave, with his waist clocking in at thirty inches and his hips measuring a full thirty-three. Maybe it's not really noticeable yet, but the gain is there, ever so slightly visible—not so much underneath his t-shirts, but definitely when he slips out of his top to let Dean take his measurements. It's just a little bit of pudge, pooching out over the waistband of his skinny jeans because they happen to be suffocatingly fitted. It's nowhere near how big Dean wishes Cas would get, but it's definitely a start.
It doesn't even matter that Dean's up twenty bucks; he spends every last cent buying more stuff to mix up Cas's secret shakes.
******
Summertime's modus operandi appears to be for Cas to be as lazy as possible, while eating as much as he can and more—and for all he feigns protest about his stomach's paltry capacity, Cas is more than happy to go along with this.
Every morning, he mixes up two servings, sometimes three, of Dean's special milkshake, sometimes mixing in chocolate milk or some leftover treats, just to make sure that he gets extra calories. Sometimes, he'll eat the leftover treats without putting them into the milkshake, just sitting at the kitchen table and chowing down on whatever brownies or chocolate cake or Oreo cream pie he couldn't finish the day before. And sometimes, he splits everything up, putting half of his treats into the milkshake and eating the other half outright, just to make sure that his plates are clean by the time that Dean shows up to get to work.
Sure, they're not on the meal plans and food schedules that Dean whips up for him—which are just supposed to keep Cas busy while Dean's off at his dance sessions—but Cas has never been one to shy away from getting extra credit.
Even so, the milkshakes always take precedence. They get him ready for his full days of eating. He drinks his concoctions while watching cartoons and waiting for Dean to come over and make his proper breakfasts—eggs cooked up in butter and bacon fat, not to mention more bacon or sausage than Cas has ever eaten in his life. Then, it's out to the sofa to slouch around in a haze, a warm, happy rush that comes from being so full, that slows Cas down and sometimes makes him conk right out, only waking up when Dean informs him that it's snack time and brings over a plate of brownies or a bag of chips.
Aside from breakfast, though, meals are mostly irrelevant constructions: Cas's entire day revolves around eating. He's allowed to read, or write, or watch TV, or do whatever the Hell he wants, as long as it burns as few calories as possible and preferably as long as he can do it while he's stuffing his face with whatever thing Dean decides to throw at him. The only thing that meals really do is punctuate the monotony of constant eating by throwing more food than usual at him. Painful, yes—Cas's stomach aches when he has to choke down Dean's delicious lasagnas, or his stuffed pasta shells, or his macaroni and cheese—but it's a good sort of pain. And, besides, it's inevitably followed by a tummy-rub and a nap.
And then there's Dean. There's the way that Dean watches him eat, eyes wide and mouth hanging open just enough that Cas can see it. There's the way that this continues not to make any sense, because Dean isn't interested in Cas, not even a little bit. He must be living vicariously through Cas, it stands to reason. After all, Dean's dancing keeps him on a fairly strict diet—no milkshakes, no pizza, and definitely no pie, regardless of how much Dean loves it. Cas would certainly understand if Dean got something out of watching other people eat the things that he can't. It would just make sense—so much more sense than Dean wanting anything out of Cas but friendship.
Cas isn't sure why, but no matter what, whenever he thinks about this fact, he always feels hungrier. He'll tear through pints of Ben and Jerry's or whole slices of triple-layer chocolate fudge cake without regard for how full he thought he was, and certainly without thinking about the brain freeze that comes with the ice cream. It makes no sense for him to feel any kind of disappointment over this—he's known for ages that Dean isn't interested in him—but food makes sense. And eating makes sense. Everything makes more sense when Cas is stuffing his face.
It's a weigh-in day when Cas decides to investigate the effects that his eating's having on his body. Three weeks into summer and he's never once tried on his jeans, living out of sweatpants and loose pajamas because the elastic waistbands make it easier to eat his fill and then-some. But his t-shirts have started clinging to his middle–not riding up on him exactly (not yet, anyway), but straining a bit around his stomach, cleaving to his skin, stretching out whenever he wiggles into them. This can only mean good things for Cas's progress.
Cas definitely has a tummy, now, even when he isn't stuffed. When he looks down at his feet, his stomach protrudes ever so slightly and he can run his palm down a distinct curve. More than that, he can sink his fingers into flesh now—he can get his fingers around the rolls of flab that sit so comfortably on his midsection—which is more than he's ever been able to say for himself. There's a dip forming around his bellybutton, too—a place where his stomach's outward curve juts in a bit, before billowing out into a lower curve and the increasingly plush turns of his hips. Standing in his bedroom in just his underwear and a t-shirt, Cas even grabs at his own ass, just to confirm that it's fuller, softer, fatter than he remembers.
And his jeans, when he decides to try them on, are so much tighter than he remembers them being. Even with the ten pounds that he put on before school got out, he had no trouble getting his jeans on and zipped and buttoned—but today, they hit a snag around his thighs. It's the first the Cas has really noticed his thighs, and he gasps a bit at how much he has to work to get his jeans up over them, at how they jiggle just enough for him to see. For some reason, it didn't occur to him that gaining weight would mean gaining weight everywhere, and his legs have never been anything but toothpicks. Even just a little bit of pudge stands out, makes them look so much bigger than they did before.
When Cas finally gets his jeans up to his waist, he can't help smiling to himself: his tummy, no matter how small it really is, sticks out just enough to mean that there's no way Cas can button his jeans, much less zip them, without putting in some effort. So, he takes a deep breath, sucking in his stomach—it's barely good enough to get the button and its hole to meet, and as soon as he gets the button in, it pops back out. Cas sighs and rolls his eyes. These skinny jeans are absurdly small, yes, he admits that—but there's certainly no cause for them to make this so difficult. But he wants to see what they look like when they're done up right, so he flops back onto his mattress, sucks in again, and does the button up.
This time, it works. He gets the button to stay in place, and even gets the zipper up. But there's something waiting for him when he sits up, something that he didn't expect: Anna, slouching against the doorway with her arms folded across her chest and a playful smirk quirking her lips.
"Looks like somebody's put on weight," she teases. "Not so easy to stay skinny when you're not allowed to drink skim milk anymore, is it, Cas?"
Cas's cheeks flush, hot and pink—he can't help it and he drops his hands to his waist, impulsively tugging his t-shirt down, as though this would do anything to hide his tummy. "It's only a few pounds. Ten pounds, at the most," he lies, and swallows thickly. "Get out of my room."
"I'm not in your room," she points out, and she's technically correct. Her feet are definitely on the other side of the carpet. "Anyway, it's no big deal or anything, right? I mean, if you want to be the chubby twin, then go ahead and be the chubby twin. It looks good on you, the whole… not about to topple over in a strong breeze look. Now, if you'll excuse me, Tubby, I'm going on a run with Ruby."
As she leaves, Cas feels his cheeks flush even hotter, and if it wouldn't expend any extra calories, he'd chase after her and beg her to call him Tubby again—he doesn't even know why he likes the way she called him that, but he wants to hear it again. He wants everyone to call him Tubby. And he knows exactly what it means, too: he's making progress. People are noticing his gain—and before Dean makes it back from his dance session, Cas downs two milkshakes and three huge slices of cake in celebration.
******
The numbers reflect well on Cas's progress, too: when he steps on Dean's scale, he weighs in at one-hundred and seventy-five pounds—a staggering number, not least because Cas can hardly wrap his head around gaining fifteen pounds in three weeks. According to Dean's tape measure, his waist is up to thirty-two-and-a-half inches, while his hips check in at thirty-five.
He's running his palms down his newfound pudge and gently jostling it around—sinking his fingers into it and grabbing hold and shaking, just to remind himself that it's really there—when Dean pipes up at him, "So, how does it feel?"
Dean waits for Cas to answer, blinking up at him expectantly, and when all Cas can come up with to say is, what are you talking about?, he deflates a little. Sighs and says, "I just… I wanted to know how it feels. Gaining weight. Getting chubby. Eating like this… How does it feel? I just wanted to know because—"
"Because your diet means that you can't eat like this?" Cas blurts out before he can think to stop himself.
But at least Dean blushes, and nods, and says that of course that's what he meant—"It's a whole lot of living vicariously going on over here, and y'know, if it ever gets creepy or whatever, just tell me to stop and I will, but… what's it feel like, Cas?"
Cas wrinkles his nose—why would Dean lie about something that makes so much sense, that's so understandable? Moreover, why would Dean lie to his best friend? It doesn't make any sense, but no matter. Pondering emotional things is pointless when Cas is basically incompetent at them in the first place. So he shakes his head—just to shake some sense into himself—and huffs.
"I haven't honestly given much thought to how it feels, Dean," he says and rests his hand over the fullest part of his stomach, the part where his t-shirt's tightest. "I know enough about myself and my reactions to things to know that I'm enjoying this more than I thought I would, but… well. I suppose that it feels different? Not bad different, simply… different. Being perpetually full is nice, even when it hurts—and I do enjoy your cooking and your tummy-rubs very much."
"Well, that's good—I'd hate to feel like my efforts were going to waste with you or anything like that." With a sigh, Dean fusses around, scratching the back of his neck. And he looks so ridiculously disappointed as he says, "So how about another bet? My instructor wants me to lose a couple pounds. Nothing too much, just enough to tone up a little and not look so pudgy in the leotards—"
"But you don't look pudgy in your leotards." Cas furrows his brow and frowns down at Dean. He's watched Dean dance before, and if anything, Dean looks lean. Lithe. Perfect—like the work he puts into denying himself what he wants is actually amounting to something good.
Dean holds his hands up in mock surrender. "Hey, man, it's Alastair's words—not mine. He says I've got too much body fat and I don't want to get knocked out of the running for the Mouse King when we do The Nutcracker, so that's the way it is. You wanna hear the bet or are we just gonna bitch about my dance instructor all day?"
Cas rolls his eyes and supposes that they probably should get on to the bet, then—but, really, he'd prefer to rip Dean's instructor a cornucopia of new ones over his impossible, fascistic standards.
"They're not fascistic standards—they're just the standards that I have to live with as a dancer, okay? They suck, but I knew what I was in for when I wanted to keep dancing past second grade." He sighs, more irritatedly than Cas thinks he ought to sound. "Anyway, here's the deal: I weighed in at one-eighty-five yesterday, and Alastair wants me to drop ten to fifteen pounds. If you've got ten pounds on me by your next weigh-in, I'll get some calipers and we'll start measuring your body fat percentage, too. If you don't, then you've got to double your gain by the weigh-in after next. Sound like a deal?"
It sounds like a deal to Cas, but that doesn't make him any less right about how absurd Dean's dance instructor is.