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Stupid brass statue, with its proudly bulging orb of a stomach, shiny from the rub of previous fingers. It’s tucked into the corner of Room 14 of the bunker, where Sam has been in the midst of cataloguing the various books and whatnots and magical boxes but hasn’t quite gotten to this artifact yet. Dean just had to touch it, rub its belly, even.
They didn’t have a case on the near horizon and as was typical, Dean is wallowing in mind-numbing boredom. He’s already detailed Baby, watched TV, whacked off. How Sam always manages to find something of value to do amazes him. Sam never tires of working out or filling pages of ledgers or researching whatever tedious topic he’s fixating on. Sometimes Dean envies Sam’s obsession for neurotic record-keeping, but today, the bunker is brimming with weird shit and Dean has to poke at least some of it. Or rub or whatever.
He is quickly regretting this choices.
The second his fingertips brush across the cool surface of the fat figurine, the air shifts, charged by a bristle of static. It’s the feel of magic, Dean knows well from years of exposure to it. He jerks his hand back, but the damage is done.
A tingle washes up his arm as he bites back an “oh, shit.” The sensation settles into his chest and like a big swig of cheap whiskey, drops into his middle with a not-altogether unpleasantly warm burn. It continues, filling him up from boots to brain, and Dean’s more than a little worried about how much he likes it, how much it makes him eager with anticipation, a curious tease. Eventually, it seems to concentrate on his stomach, and Dean holds his breath, waiting for the inevitable fallout. He can hear the internal workings of the bunker in the quiet. And then a gurgle. And then a groaning “fwump” as his gut shudders and presses up against his t-shirt. He instantly winces at the pinch of his belt and his hands drop to his stomach. It happens again, a similar sound, and his t-shirt balloons out, filling with belly.
Dean shoves up his shirt and there it is: a gut. A doughy, squishy paunch that gives under his touch before shuddering and filling once more.
“What the—??” is all he can manage before his gut surges farther, on its own accord, flooding over the waist of his jeans.
Dean grabs the statuette and beats it for the library. Sam is going to give him so much shit for this but Dean can’t care; as he powerwalks away from the storeroom, the bounce of his belly keeps straining at his t-shirt and by the time rounds the corner, he has to undo his belt before it damn near cuts him in half.
Sam’s at a table behind a mound of books and his gaze cants upwards through his hair when he hears Dean thunder into the room. His face runs through a story of expressions, from annoyance to shock to understanding.
“What did you touch?” he says on a sigh.
“Dude, I didn’t…okay, I did.” He sets the statuette in front of Sam, on a stack of books beside a mug of cold coffee. “This.”
Sam pokes it with a pencil, turning it around. After a few seconds of study, he’s clicking away on his laptop, only pausing when Dean’s stomach gives a bold, squishy gurgle. Sam’s gaze shoots up, and his eyes widen as Dean widens.
With a quiver, Dean’s gut fills like a massive water balloon, swelling with a supple roll as his hands rush to support the new weight. It’s weird and warm, and Dean feels his cheeks flush with embarrassment. His t-shirt peels up over the bulge, suddenly tight and pulling.
“What do I do, Sam?!” he fairly squeaks.
“Gimme a minute,” Sam says, back to reading furiously.
Dean nervously reasons that this is what it must feel like to be eleven months pregnant, but all over. He senses it in his cheeks, both upper and lower, as they continue to puff and fill with blubber. He starts restlessly pacing, which doesn’t help; it only makes it more clear that he’s blowing the fuck up, his thighs rubbing together, and it’s getting more difficult to haul his ponderous middle around. So he sits, and the wooden chair creaks ominously.
“Okay, okay, I think I’ve got something,” Sam says, skimming the screen of his laptop. “Looks like it’s an ancient Mexican ritual totem, and if you touch it at just the right moment—which you obviously did—you become a sort of avatar for the god.”
“I’m becoming a god?” As appealing as that might’ve seemed at first blush, Dean is not exactly honored at the moment. He’s just barely tamping down a sweaty wash of panic.
“Dream on,” Sam snorts, glancing up. His eyes widen. “Holy shit, dude.”
“Not helping! When will this stop?” There’s a rip and a pop, and the seams of Dean’s jeans split at the sides, pillows of fat bubbling through the gaps.
Sam stares, blinks, and snaps back to business. “Uh, tomorrow? Maybe right after midnight, I can’t be sure…”
“You can’t be sure? You can’t be sure?”
“This isn’t exactly a precise science, Dean. It’s not like I’ve actually, you know, seen the ritual before. My guess is that you’ll grow to resemble this little guy here.” Sam pokes the statuette with his pencil again.
“And then?”
Sam shrugs. “I don’t know. You’ll return to normal? Well, as normal as you ever were.”
Another gurgle fills the room. Dean’s belly floods into his lap and his skin stretches and stings. The rapidly exposing flesh ripples with stretch marks. “What if it doesn’t stop? What if, Sam??”
“You, um, diet?”
This is not the advice Dean wants to hear. He’s never been overweight a day in his entire life. He could always eat what he wanted, pound beers, chase zombies through cemeteries like a champ. He didn’t even go through a chubby phase, like Sam did in middle school. Dean was always an easy athlete.
“Look,” Sam says, “from what I can gather, it’ll stop. This is just a temporary thing. I don’t even think we’ve got to do the ritual, but I’ll try to find some corroboration for that, just to make you feel better.”
Dean frowns and pokes the softness of his belly, watching it move like the proverbial giant bowl full of jelly.
“It’s magic, Dean. If it can be done, it can be undone.”
“All right.” Dean sulks.
“Hey, try not to stress out about it. We’ll fix this.” But Sam raises a finger in warning. “However, don’t touch anything else unless you know full well what it does.”
Dean sighs, and watches his moobs swell.
Dean knows Sam is trying not to stare, which of course makes it all the more obvious he’s staring. An hour has gone by and damned if Dean doesn’t look a lot like the statuette, with its globular middle and chipmunk cheeks and ass you could balance a glass on. Nothing fits, not even Sam’s baggiest borrowed sweatpants; they barely cover the parts they’re supposed to. Eventually, Dean insists Sam just go away. The bloating seems to have slowed, and he’s squirming under Sam’s supposed not-staring, as much as the sudden weight.
“You sure?” Sam asks, offering his patented worried face.
“So sure. Couldn’t be more sure if I tried.”
“Does it, uh, does it feel weird?”
Dean’s first instinct is to say, “No, Sam, it feels like Christmas morning. Of course it feels weird!” But he doesn’t, because in truth? While this is hardly business as usual, it feels not exactly like discomfort. But. Almost the opposite, somehow satisfying. Akin to a warm, soft blanket. Rightness. He figures this is likely a function of the spell but whatever the case, it’s close to comforting.
“It feels okay.” Dean shrugs, after having gotten himself situated in one of the La-Z-Boy recliners in his man cave. “Go. Get your run in.”
“I’d ask you to come with, but…”
“Ha ha. Very funny.”
Sam shrugs and feigns sincerity. Dean seldom if ever joined him on runs, even at his most spry. “Be back in an hour. Call if you need anything.”
“Lunch?” Dean suggests, realizing that despite the spell/curse/whatever, he hasn’t eaten anything since breakfast and he’s actually hungry. Apparently the magical weight didn’t thwart his appetite.
Sam ponders a moment. “I guess it shouldn’t change anything. You got it.”
And off he trots to get all gross and sweaty.
Dean waits until he hears the door to the outside world slam, then hauls himself from his seat (with no small amount of difficulty, given his fresh new girth) and waddles (oh my God, he’s legitimately waddling) towards the kitchen. The way his paunch sways and his ass jiggles is nothing short of bizarre, but also, dare he admit, kind of hot? He pauses by his bedroom, by his mirror, and stares. Stares at the soft, distended orb of his gut, the pocket of fat under his chin, the way rolls layer and lap over his flanks. Everything about his body is plush and supple, a living, breathing example of abundance, and he gets it, gets why this might be seen as an act of prosperity to whichever gang of ancient peoples fashioned the ritual.
“Well,” Dean says to himself, “in for a penny, in for a pound.” And continues his waddle to the ‘fridge.
He builds a couple sandwiches, grabs a bag of chips and a liter of pop. Should tide him over.
By the time Sam’s text arrives for lunch, however, Dean has eaten his way through that and all of their junk food. Every bit of it. When Sam mentions pizza, Dean’s stomach still gives an anticipatory growl. Whatever is going on with the spell, it’s apparently making him endlessly hungry despite the obviously overstuffed bloat at the top of his gut.
But hey, like Sam said: if it’s magic, it can be undone. This is just a temporary thing, why not enjoy it?
Sam shows up with a large meatlover’s, a medium veggie, an antipasto salad and a bag from the Goodwill in town. He lets out a low whistle when he sees the enormity of Dean’s…everything.
“Hope these fit,” he says, tossing the bag at Dean. “They didn’t have a ton of stuff in the 2X department.”
Yeah, fine, so Dean’s got a fair amount of skin ballooning beyond the limits of his current shirt. “I’ll change after lunch. I’m starving. Wasting away.”
Sam snorts and shakes his head, long-suffering. “Whatever you say, dude.”
In typical Sam fashion, he puts a hurt on the salad but only a discreet two slices of the veggie pizza before he gets distracted by the siren’s song of the laptop. He wanders off to the library, leaving Dean alone with the rest of the vittles. Sam’s loss.
Before Dean realizes it, he has consumed nearly the entire spread, leaving little but a scrap of crust. He might’ve just hit his max, a personal best. Under normal circumstances, he would be in a monstrous amount of pain but instead, he simply feels full. Like, massively full but content. Satiated. His hands roam over the now-taut, bloated enormity of his middle, hardly covered by his woefully stretched old t-shirt. With some difficulty, he wrangles out of the spent garment and shakes the contents of the Goodwill bag out on the commissary table. There’s sweatpants, a black t-shirt with some Pokémon character on it, a pair of shorts and a new pack of the largest boxerbriefs Sam could find. Dean appreciates Sam’s attention to detail; it’s true, his nuts are feeling the pinch.
Dean collects the clothes and groans to a stand, lumbers his way to the laundry room to throw the resale goods and his roomiest items into the washing machine. With a stretch and some kneading, he works out a couple of burps, providing an inch of relief. And while he’s waiting for the cycle to run, he dares to sit in one of the vintage Men of Letters chairs. Standing has become a bit of a challenge. Big mistake.
To say it was a squeeze is an understatement. His ass plumps out the sides under the chair’s arms, while his love handles flood over the tops. He’s wedged in, but good. And to make matters worse, Dean senses the now familiar buzz of magic, starting in his middle and shimmering out through his limbs, up to the very top of his head. With a tremor, his gut softens and swells again. Even his fingers chub up, like cocktail sausages. The arms of the chair dig painfully until they crack and split wide, his blubber filling in to fit the space. The chair isn’t even close to being prepared to take his weight, and it buckles. With a resounding thud that echoes down the hall, Dean breaks the chair and hits the floor, whooping out a “Whoa!”
He finds himself flat on his back, the mountainous bulge of his stomach swaying until it finally comes to a rest, but there’s no getting up from prone. Good thing he hears the pitterpatter of Sam’s little feet running down the hall.
Sam skids to a stop at the doorway to the laundry, mouth agape. “Dean! You okay??”
“Cheap fucking chair…” Dean says from behind his belly.
“You’re not hurt, are you?”
Dean sighs. “No. Just my pride.”
Sam rounds into Dean’s sightline. “You’ve split your pants too.”
“Thanks.”
“No problem.” Sam extends his hand. “Here. Let me help you up.”
It takes a couple of tries, with Sam pulling and Dean rocking, to get him standing again. Dean’s center of gravity is all thrown off and he has to lean back, hand on the wall, to stay upright. He’s winded with just this small bit of exertion.
“Um, how about you stay put the rest of the day, until this thing runs its course?” Sam suggests, looking more than a little concerned.
Dean nods, conceding breathlessly.
They decide bed is probably the best option to wait out the effects, as the man cave doesn’t have a seat big enough anymore. The Pokémon t-shirt looks ridiculous, but it suffices. Sam moves a TV into Dean’s bedroom, sets him up with some diet sodas, a laptop, a selection of boring, healthy snacks, and makes sure Dean can access his phone’s charger.
“If you need anything, call. Enjoy your ‘me’ time,” Sam says.
Dean pretends to pout, but as the simple act of moving around has become exhausting, he doesn’t exactly have the option to fuss. Sam wanders off to do Sam things, and Dean starts his soap opera binge. He catches up on ‘The Walking Dead’, rereads a little Palahniuk, polishes off the food Sam has left him, and manages to nearly outgrow the Pokémon shirt, in that order.
Boredom gives way to napping, but at least it kills time. He wakes up to find two hours have passed, and he’s very nearly expanded to fill the bed. Hesitantly and with very fat fingers, he texts Sam.
And as usual, when Sam shows up, he is nothing but eloquent. “Holy shit, Dean. You look like you’re gonna blow!”
“Fuck off, Sam.”
Sam turns to leave.
“No, no, come back!” Dean hurries to say, suddenly sweating.
Sam smiles, ever so smug. “If it’s any consolation at all, I’ve corroborated the lore and this really should be finished at the stroke of midnight. Hang in there.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“It really is.”
They make plans for the rest of the evening, which entails shoehorning Dean through the bedroom door for a bathroom break, Monopoly, and a classic monster movie marathon. Sam makes burgers and onion rings for dinner, they share a couple of beers, and it finally seems as though Dean has achieved the shape to satisfy the relic: he stops swelling. Good thing, too, because he realizes with no small amount of dissatisfaction that he can’t whack off at these dimensions.
That night, Dean dreams of flickering fires and shadows dancing on cave walls. He dreams of celebratory eating, drinking, and sacrificing animals to strange, serpentine gods. And then, as dreams do, things morph into illogical “Do not pass go, do not collect $200” and Sam sticking him with a pin like a giant parade balloon and squeezing him until he gradually deflates into a pile of skin.
He wakes up groggily to the smell of coffee, rolls over easily, and flicks on the light. He’s swimming in an oversized t-shirt, testifying that Sam’s research has come through again. Flopping back onto the pillow, Dean takes a moment to regroup. There’s a disconcerting sensation floating through his brain; despite any embarrassment he might’ve experienced yesterday, he’s feeling a sort of loss now. Less than. And it’s not just the literal body thing, either. It’s as if his old sense of being isn’t enough anymore.
Well, nothing to be done for it. Back to the grind.
Sighing, he drags himself out of bed and throws off the tent he’s wearing, stepping out of the jumbo boxerbriefs. Bare-ass naked, he assesses himself in the mirror again, confirmation of his return to a normal profile. Does a turn. Hums.
He prods at his belly, giving it a quick jiggle. Sure enough, there’s a smidge more padding than there had been before he touched the statuette, it’s true. He’s not imagining it. More softness to his cheeks, a residual meatiness to his arms.
He likes it.
“Dean, you up?” Sam hollers from the commissary. Must’ve seen the light down the hall.
“Yeah, I’m up.”
“You good?”
Dean grins. “Yeah, I’m good.”
“Want pancakes?”
He grins wider. “All the pancakes, Sammy…”