The train lurches and I nearly lose my balance.
I catch myself against the pole with a sharp breath, both hands gripping the cold metal while my belly drags heavily forward beneath the thick pullover I'm wearing. The movement makes my babies shift all at once inside me. Dense rolling pressure under impossibly stretched skin, bodies pressing against bodies, nowhere left for them to go.
I grab the pole hard enough that my wrist aches.
My pullover has ridden up almost to the curve of my navel again.
I yank it down instantly, heart pounding, but the fabric only clings tighter across the enormous shape underneath. There's no disguising it anymore. The sweater outlines everything - the impossible roundness, the stretched-tight mass, even the uneven movements shifting beneath my skin.
I can feel people noticing.
Another painful roll moves through my belly. One baby drags heavily across my side while another pushes low enough to make my breath catch. The pressure inside me is unbearable now, packed so tightly that every movement feels trapped beneath my skin.
My whole stomach visibly ripples.
I clamp a hand under my belly, rubbing the sensitive skin under my sweater like I can calm them, calm myself, calm the awful pressure dragging lower and lower inside me.
Too full. Too swollen. Too obvious.
The train windows throw my reflection back at me in dark smears between station lights: flushed face, hunched shoulders, both hands cradling a belly so huge it dominates the rest of my body completely. I look indecent. Like something private exposed under fluorescent lights.
A contraction starts low in my back.
The tightness spreads through my abdomen with brutal force, pulling my stomach hard and high until it becomes almost perfectly round beneath the sweater. I gasp softly and lean into the pole before I can stop myself.
The babies react immediately.
They're squirming inside of me during the contraction, heavy movement trapped inside the rigid tightness of my body. One presses outward so sharply near my ribs that I actually see the bulge through the wool.
Someone nearby notices. I hear the sharp inhale.
Humiliation crashes through me so hard my eyes sting.
I rub my belly faster now, desperate circles beneath the strained underside, trying to ease the crushing downward pressure between my small hips. My legs are trembling. I can feel how low they are now - all that weight pressing into my pelvis with terrifying insistence.
I just need to make it home. I just need to hold them in.
Then suddenly there's a body behind me. A man.
Before I can move, a big hand slides around my side and cups the underside of my pulsing belly.
His palm spreads beneath the huge weight almost possessively, fingers pressing deep into the oversensitive underside where I've been rubbing myself raw for weeks trying to relieve the strain.
“Oh wow,” he says quietly behind me. “You're ready to pop, hm? ”
Heat floods my entire face.
I try to pull away instinctively, but another contraction hits at the exact same moment and my body folds helplessly instead, a broken sound escaping my throat.
“There you go,” he murmurs. “You're so ripe.”
My belly clenches rock hard beneath both our hands.
The babies shove violently during the contraction, trapped movement rolling visibly across the front of my stomach. My pullover lifts higher again as I arch involuntarily, exposing the full strained curve of my belly to everyone nearby.
But the man behind me doesn't move away.
His other hand settles over the front of my aching stomach, broad palm spread over the tightest part like he's testing the firmness of it. Then he starts rubbing slowly downward over the curve while I stand there shaking against the pole, whimpering quietly.
“Easy,” he says near my ear. “Everyone's noticing. ”
I can barely breathe from shame.
His hands are everywhere now - under the belly, across the front, massaging the tight stretched skin while strangers pretend not to stare. My body betrays me completely by responding to the relief. The upward support eases the dragging agony in my back enough that my knees nearly buckle.
“Oh my God,” I whisper before I can stop myself.
He chuckles softly behind me.
The babies roll heavily beneath his hands as though reacting to the pressure. One pushes outward in a slow hard sweep across the front of my stomach, visibly distorting the sweater. Another drives down low enough to make me gasp and widen my legs for balance.
I feel overwhelmed. Animalistic. Insane.
The man keeps rubbing my belly like it belongs to him now.
“So round,” he murmurs. “Must be ready to burst.”
The words hit me like a slap.
Because that's exactly how I feel.
My stomach feels stretched beyond endurance, skin tight and aching over too much life packed inside me. Every contraction squeezes the babies downward harder, and every movement inside me feels lower now, heavier, unbearably urgent.
The train rocks again and I clutch the pole desperately while his hands continue roaming over the massive curve of my belly in full view of everyone.
