Cooper and his housemates have had to deal with big adjustments as they keep getting hit by waves of re-infection. When the latest one starts, he can't help but express his frustration over feeling like the only one taking their growing predicament seriously.
[Another interlude as I try to figure out what I'm doing with the main storyline. I love a slice of life moment lol]
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“There's something up with Cooper.”
“I’m fine!”
“What’s wrong with Coop?”
“Nothing! Everything’s fine!”
“He’s deep cleaning again!”
“I thought we just did that.”
“I’m doing it again!” Cooper yelled more at the kitchen floor than at anyone in particular, his voice muffled by the surgical mask strung tight across his face. He groaned internally at the sound of lumbering footsteps approaching.
“Hey bud!” Claude’s beaming smile appeared over the counter above Cooper, his short locs catching the ambient light to form a halo around his face. “I see you finally gave up on those ugly sweats.”
“I didn’t give up on the–”
“He did what?” came another voice from a couple of rooms over.
“He stopped wearing pants!” Claude’s voice boomed back across the house.
“Oh dude, finally,” came an excited voice from the garage.
“I didn’t…” Cooper began. “It’s just that all my clean pairs of pants, um…”
“Ripped?” Claude offered, levering himself onto his elbows to get a better angle.
“...I suppose, yes,” Cooper sighed in frustration. He took a break from scrubbing the floor to rest his thong framed ass on the balls of his feet. “Look, I don’t want to freak anyone out, but I think I might be infected again, so I’m sanitizing all the shared spaces.”
When they’d all moved in together a little under a year ago, Cooper had been thrilled. The crew of grad students had been fast friends since orientation, but it was Cooper’s incessant prodding, ideating, planning, searching, and negotiating that had secured the lease on this cute, if somewhat disheveled, historic house. It was creaky but quaint, boasting an abundance of natural lighting through oversized windows that highlighted how cozy it was inside. There was just enough space for the lot of them, and although at first it felt like they were constantly in each other’s way, they had settled into a collective flow that enlivened the space. That is, until the first infection.
“Mmmm,” Claude intoned with a knowing smile, “we coulda told you that.”
“Told him what?” Brad’s mop of red hair caught the glow of the lava lamp behind him as he peeked out of his doorway.
“Infected again,” Claude answered before Cooper could pipe up.
“Mmmm,” Brad agreed. “Yeah dude, we thought you knew.”
Brad had been the first to test positive. Cooper had been dutifully following the news of the outbreak, and knew that when Brad’s lanky 6’4” frame had suddenly gone from pancake butt to bursting through every pair of pants he owned, it was more than just his new leg day routine. He resolved that they needed to nip this in the bud before things got too severe. He had seen the news coverage, online forum discussions, and even clips of the ‘rapid expansion events’ that he still didn’t fully believe were real. The over the counter meds seemed to be working at first, but as the rest of the house fell ill, it was as if the combined viral load of the group was too much for any form of treatment they sought. When they thought they were finally out of the woods with each wave of infection, the next was right around the corner. He didn’t know what to do, and was too overwhelmed by coursework, teaching, and research commitments to get a handle on the situation.
So when someone from Phantasy Labs reached out, Cooper was relieved. They were conducting a study on ‘group infection dynamics and possibilities for small scale herd immunity’ or somesuch, and said that their humble abode was an ideal test case. Cooper, ever the information nerd, jumped at the opportunity, coordinating data collection from the entire group in the hopes that the lab might come up with something useful. And the hefty participant stipends certainly sweetened the pot, bringing much needed financial assistance for dealing with this crisis on their meager grad student funding. But that was two months ago, and after multiple waves of re-infection with no helpful answers, Cooper was again losing hope.
“I wasn’t paying close enough attention, I guess,” said Cooper, reaching up to grab the bottle of heavy duty disinfectant wipes. “You know the symptoms are always mild for me.”
For whatever reason, the virus’s impact had been the most manageable for him. By the second infection, his perky glutes had inflated into the unmistakable bubble of those touched by the virus, but he never had it nearly as bad as his housemates. While he could get away with sizing up his pants and switching to loose sweats, everyone else had made the transition to foregoing bottoms altogether around the house and investing in the latest releases from nuBum’s specialty clothing line, the nB logo displayed visibly whenever they were out and about.
As conditions worsened, Cooper’s role as de facto house mother had taken on a new valence as he took on new and unexpected forms of care work for his friends, from mending seams to reinforcing chairs to switching rooms when Aiden was no longer able to make it up their narrow staircase without breaking the banister (again). He was fine with taking care of his friends. He just wished they would take the situation a little more seriously. As he emerged from the kitchen floor to do another once over across the countertops, he was met with a whistle of appreciation from Brad.
“Nothin’ mild about that, big dog,” said Brad, his head tucked against the top of the doorframe.
“I know right?” quipped Claude. He sent a conspiratorial wink in Brad’s direction as he climbed onto one of the stools stationed along the kitchen island, causing a light splintering sound to emanate from the wood as his bulbous cheeks completely smothered the seat. “You really didn’t notice all that?” He pointed to the pair of beach balls that ballooned from Cooper’s lower back, wobbling uncontrollably as he put more elbow grease into his cleaning project.
“I don’t know,” Cooper sighed. “I’ve been swamped all week. One of the postdocs had some huge dataset that he wanted me to clean up before we–I mean, they, all left for field work today, and it’s one of very few tasks I can actually do right now because they’re so concerned with lab safety and research travel liability whatever whatever.” They had all heard different versions of this rant from each other. Though they were in different fields, the virus was impacting their respective professional commitments and professional futures in ways that they couldn’t predict.
“Well you look great,” said Brad, giving Cooper a thumbs up as he let an arm droop across the top of the door.
“Thanks.” Cooper rolled his eyes, stripping off his rubber gloves. He warily eyed Brad’s bodacious buns framed by the soft ambience of his gaming setup and strip lights along the ceiling. “I need to get out of here and run to the pharmacy before this situation gets any worse.”
“Here, take my old running shorts,” said Brad, grunting with soft frustration as he tried to squeeze through his doorway. He had always been somewhat of a recluse, but in recent weeks had become even more of a hermit, and it didn't take long to figure out that the multiple waves of infection had made it difficult for Brad to comfortably navigate their home space. As his form emerged from the darkness of his room, he loomed over them, ducking his head and shoulders through before using his dinner plate size hands to push himself into the living room, his prodigious lower half steadily resisting. Cooper couldn't help but notice the worsening cracks around a doorframe that was never meant to facilitate anything resembling Brad's double wide posterior.
“Didn't we talk at the last house meeting about it being a good idea for you to move into the garage?” Cooper recalled in his most generous house mother tone.
“It's full,” Brad grunted, the muscles of his forearms and triceps straining with effort.
“What do you mean ‘full’? It's just Aiden and Dion in there, right?”
“Yeah, it's full of Aiden and Dion,” Claude chuckled.
Cooper could only groan in dismay, echoed by the sound of the house itself struggling against their growing bodies. How much longer could this go on?
“Don't worry, bud…” Brad muttered. “We'll figure…something…out.” After a minute of strained effort and multiple refusals of his housemates’ offers of help, Brad stumbled through, rising back to his full height, which seemed damn near close to the ceiling. He was definitely taller than the last time Cooper had really laid eyes on him, but he was more concerned about the cheeks filling more space behind him than a sleeper sofa. Brad held out the shorts with an encouraging smile. “They're nuBum, I think they should still fit you.”
Still fit? Cooper wondered with confusion as he gingerly accepted the crumpled silver fabric. “I don't think I need these,” he said, more to himself than anyone else in the room. “I still have some sweats somewhere that are an XXXL, I don't think the specialty brands would–”
“They might fit just right,” Claude interrupted. He laid his hands on either side of Cooper's round hips and gave his bubble butt a playful jiggle. They had all become naturally handsy out of necessity for maneuvering around each others’ voluptuous forms, but Cooper in particular appreciated how a casual caress helped him re-regulate in just the right way. “Besides, I need kitchen time to make my supp stack.”
Claude swung around the kitchen island and authoritatively used his hips to bump Cooper out of the way of the supplement cabinet. They had settled into a one-at-a-time rule in the kitchen out of spatial necessity with a de facto hierarchy based on whose cheeks were heaviest. Even with Cooper’s recent growth, Claude’s behemoth buns easily had him beat, in no small part because his workout routine had only become more relentless with each infection, and his exhibitionist tendencies only more eager. He was an early adopter of nuBum’s fitness line, rolling up to the gym in booty shorts bursting around a comically muscular posterior chain that looked powerful enough to push a city bus up a hill. So Cooper dutifully gave him the kitchen for fear of being accidentally bumped into the next room.
“...Fine.” He relented, waddled over to Brad, and stepped into each leg of the half tights with some trepidation. “But if they're Brad's old ones, they’ll be hanging…off…my…” he trailed off as the waistband was stopped in its tracks halfway up his backside, followed by his housemate’s strong hands peeling them up the rest of the way. Finally, the shorts snapped into place, fitting snugly around his waist and cradling his cheeks with a mix of comfort and support he realized he hadn't enjoyed in a while.
“They're perfect!” Brad exclaimed. “Keep ‘em.”
“No, I don't think I need–” Cooper caught himself in the full length mirror left leaning against a wall. His heart sank as he realized they did fit perfectly. Much better, he thought with dismay, then any pair of normal pants ever would again.
“No, for real, you look great,” said Brad, giving one of Cooper's cheeks an enthusiastic, full palm slap, which he knew would send a shiver of pleasure up his friend's spine.
Cooper cut him a playfully annoyed sideways glance as he turned this way and that to get a good look. It was hard to get his whole circumference in the mirror, but he had to admit they did look good. At first he was terrified to see how the athletic shorts emphasized his enormous bubbles rather than downplayed them, but that anxiety was mixed with a tenuous excitement.
“I just didn't know it had gotten this, um…” he started carefully, using both hands to jiggle his globular buns in the mirror.
“Bad?” Brad offered with a wry smile.
“Well…severe,” Cooper corrected.
“Yeah, dude, your ass like doubled in size since Monday,” Claude laughed.
“We thought you knew,” Brad repeated with a more empathetic tone.
“Guys, I thought we had a protocol for when we think a new wave of infection is starting,” Cooper sighed. “I’d just like us to take this more seriously.”
“Can we take it more seriously after the gym?” Claude asked innocently as he sent a hefty scoop of protein powder into his shaker bottle. “To which, by the way, you never go with me anymore.”
“And here I remember you being banned from the gym,” Brad teased. He took a seat on the floor by falling back onto his mammoth cheeks, chuckling to himself as the force of his posterior seemed to shake the creaky old house down to its foundations.
“Just from the squat racks and leg machines,” Claude replied with a roll of his eyes. “And the outdoor turf area during the busier times.”
“...And the sauna,” Brad reminded.
Claude scoffed, “You accidentally sit on one person…”
“Two people,” Cooper corrected.
“And not exactly an accident,” Brad clarified.
“They wanted to experience this lusciousness up close and personal. Now suddenly I'm the ‘safety hazard’ who almost ‘smothered the other members.’” The plastic scoop lolled in Claude’s fingers as he mimed dramatic air quotes.
“Which is a reputation I’m trying not to cultivate,” Cooper quipped, moseying towards the door.
“I think that ship has sailed, brochacho.” Brad gave a comical wince as Cooper turned sideways to shuffle awkwardly through the door, earning a death stare from his departing housemate.
“Looks like you're one of us now,” Claude called after him, eyes still glued to the ridiculous bubble stuffed into too tight shorts.
Cooper realized how real Claude's comment was as he walked to the pharmacy. For a long time, he had tried to get away with the illusion of normalcy, downplaying his growing posterior with all manner of fabric illusions and off hand comments about stress eating and weight fluctuation. He had convinced himself that his roommates’ fates wouldn't be his. That however chill they were about the situation, he would face it head on. He wouldn't end up like his friends who had allowed themselves to grow out of any expectation of a normal life.
Yet each wave of re-infection chipped away at that hope, and he found himself adjusting to the shift in his center of gravity as his cheeks switched back and forth, threatening to knock pedestrians off the sidewalk if they weren't already inclined to give him a very wide berth. He could feel the flow of foot traffic parting around him like an island in a stream. Tried to convince himself that he was just imagining the cars and cyclists slowing down to gawk at the oversized orbs jiggling wildly behind him. His normal neighborhood path to the pharmacy had taken on a decidedly abnormal dynamic, a clumsy dance of navigating unaccommodating urban space and mitigating unwanted visibility. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he had crossed some sort of threshold, and had no intention of seeing how far things could go.
—
“We’re all out of the OTC meds, you might want to try the clinic a few blocks down.”
“Well…good afternoon to you, too,” Cooper replied sarcastically, still processing the pharmacist’s dismissive comment before he had even made it ten feet into the establishment.
“Sorry,” said the mildly exasperated person behind the counter. “We’ve had a lot of requests for them lately and I just…assumed.”
You assumed right, Cooper moped to himself, turning to leave before the pharmacist gestured to pause.
“Actually,” he muttered, rubbing the scruff of his chin, “We may have just received our restock, if the delivery guys were actually on time today.”
Cooper could only answer with a pleading wave of his hands.
“Be right back,” the pharmacist sighed before disappearing into the stacks of pill bottles and paper bags.
Without the over the counter interaction to keep his focus, Cooper became acutely aware that the wagon he was draggin’ had become the center of attention as soon as he walked in. Arms crossed, he stood awkwardly waiting, trying to avoid the gazes of the other patrons raking across every curve of his excessively inflated cakes.
“Babe, those are those special pants I told you about,” came the voice of one half of a couple breezing by on his right. “Cute, right?”
The other half forced a loud guffaw, going so far as to slap one hand onto his belly while the other slid protectively across his girlfriend’s shoulders.
“Babe, I told you,” he drawled, performing a masculine reassurance, “I’m not gonna need those.”
“I don’t know, they’d look good on you, and you wouldn’t have to keep bringing extra pants for your wardrobe malfunctions at work and we need to get you new gym shorts anyways and–”
“You’re so cute when you worry,” he laughed, cutting her off with a peck on the cheek. He steered them out of Cooper’s line of sight as he steered their conversation elsewhere. As they turned a corner, he glanced furtively back over his shoulder and made accidental eye contact with Cooper. His intense, worried stare quickly returned forward as he disappeared into the dark, oversized hoodie that did nothing to mitigate the sight of the pair of basketballs bouncing back and forth in his visibly strained sweats.
Sounds about right. The corner of Cooper’s lip twitched up in an ironic smirk. He had always enjoyed the attention garnered by his bubble butt, and even in the early stages of the virus the novelty of his round cheeks earned a satisfying amount of appreciation. But now he felt like some sort of failed science experiment as people gawked openly at his monstrous cakes, their eyes betraying a mix of fascination and fear. Is this how my housemates have felt for weeks? he thought, realizing Aiden and Dion would probably have trouble getting through the automatic doors. Maybe I should go easier on them, he resolved. We’re all doing the best we can, all things considered.
“No luck,” said the pharmacist, materializing behind the counter with a look of genuine disappointment. “Was that all?” Which was a thinly veiled invitation for Cooper to clear out of the tight space in front of his humble kiosk.
“Yeah, thanks anyways,” Cooper said. He turned to leave, trying to affect some confidence in his exit, but only succeeding in knocking over a shelf of rapid tests and high filtration masks. “Oh fuck, sorry, I can get those,” he stammered. As he bent over to pick up the scattered items, the globes jutting behind him collided with a tower of reading glasses and pill organizers, filling the store with the sound of plastic packaging clattering across the floor.
“I got it, you’re fine,” said a store attendant swooping in to prevent any further damage.
“Yeah, it happens…all the time these days,” added the pharmacist with a wry smile. “It can take some time to adjust.”
“...right,” Cooper muttered. Having become the undisputed main attraction for the other store patrons, he carefully navigated his way to the exit, hyperaware of the visual noise of shelved and hanging goods at risk of being knocked loose with every swish of his hips. Even a run of the mill trip to the store was becoming a claustrophobic ordeal, he realized, still wondering just how much time and how many re-adjustments it would take when all was said and done.
—
“Give me a hand?” Brad asked, holding out a silver tube of ointment that had been just about rolled and crumpled into oblivion.
Cooper, having just shuffled back in through their front door empty handed, had planned to mope quietly in his room and catch up on work, but came face to face with Brad’s mountainous backside as he contorted himself in the too small mirror trying to trace the contours of a fresh set of stretch marks.
“Sure,” said Coop. He grabbed the tube, squirted a generous dollop in one hand, and got to work. Peer to peer skincare had become another normal part of their distressingly abnormal lives. Brad’s colossal cakes filled Cooper’s field of vision, wobbling back and forth as he laid flat on his belly and rested his head on his hands. He waited patiently as his housemate applied the cream like he was making sure his back didn’t get sunburnt at the beach. “Is Claude still at the gym? I just realized I should test everyone to be safe.”
“Came back early,” said Brad. “Something about one too many ‘dress code violations.’”
“Sounds about right,” Cooper said sarcastically, channeling his frustration into his hands as he massaged the expanse of soft, jiggly ass flesh before him. “I just don’t get how we’re supposed to deal with all this, you know?”
“Hey bud, we’re gonna be fine,” Brad answered. He peered over his shoulder to better address his friend but saw only the top of Cooper’s curls over his own prodigious mounds. “Always remember rule number one.” He pointed to a whiteboard on the wall that listed their ‘Community Agreements,’ the first and most emphasized reading ‘Good vibes ONLY.’
“Should’ve vetoed that when I had the chance,” muttered Cooper, his smoldering worry settling into a prickling sensation along the constricting waistband of his shorts. He finally understood why all his housemates preferred the freedom of a pantsless existence, and felt himself yearning for that same groove of chill positivity. He hadn’t given up hope that they’d get some relief from their shared predicament, but the super stretchy reinforced seat only felt tighter and tighter as the days wore on.
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