So it’s a little late for Christmas stories, but fuck it! A Patreon suggestion that I went with. Enjoy :)
“Why do I have to wear the stupid suit this year?” Barry asked, but he already knew the answer even as he was tossed the bright red jumpsuit.
“Two reasons,” countered Randal, “a): I’m your boss, and I said so, and b): because I did it last year. Besides, the kids loved you in that thing way more than they liked me.”
“But this thing is huge and I’ll look fucking ridiculous.”
“Hey, are you calling me fat?” Randal was a little on the portly side, even for mall security, but he too would be swimming in the red jumper were he to put it on.
“No,” Barry quipped, and then sat back defeated. They may have had a friendly relationship for being boss and employee, but it still didn’t pay to be on your boss’ bad side.
“Good,” Randal replied, crossing his arms and wearing a smug look of satisfaction he thankfully reserved for only the most inconsequential of triumphs. “Now go put it on and start doing the rounds. It’s Christmas Eve, after all.”
“Humbug,” Barry mumbled as he stomped off to the change room to get into the Santa suit.
Twenty minutes later and Barry was miserable. The phrase “fake it till you make it” simply did not apply to Barry, who couldn’t manage a jolly “ho ho ho” if his life depended on it. Not only that, the stupid Santa suit was more suited for the Arctic Tundra than an air-conditioned mall, and he was sweating his balls off.
It also looked like he was wearing an ill-fitting tent while he was stomping around in boots that likewise didn’t fit. At one point he nearly tripped and fell, which would have been mortifying on top of this already massive embarrassment.
“Santa? Can you help me?” Asked a small voice from behind Barry.
He turned and saw nothing. Then, realizing why the voice he’d heard was so high pitched, he peered down over the white beard that coated his face and saw a young boy - a boy far too young to be without his parents.
“Sure, kiddo, where’s your parents?”
“I don’t know, I’m lost and I’m scared,” said the boy, already on the verge of tears.
Barry may have been miserable, but he wasn’t as miserable as this hid. He took the little one by the hand and shuffled slowly to stay in sync with the boy’s tiny steps.
Five minutes later, after announcing the presence of the lost boy at the second-floor mall security kiosk, little Jeffrey was reunited with a mother so relieved she couldn’t help but squeeze Barry to within an inch of his life, even with the suit providing him a protective layer.
Once safe from the mother’s iron grip, Barry watched the pair of them go for a moment and felt good about his good deed for the day. It’s not often enough his job left him with a warm and fuzzy feeling, and he basked in it as long as it lasted.
Which was about 12 minutes until he was summoned to deal with a shoplifter at the record store. No good deed goes unpunished, he mused, but he counted his blessings. At least the stupid Santa suit wasn’t falling off his ass with each shuffling step anymore.
After spending the next half an hour directing mall guests to precisely which store sold the Christmas gifts they were after, Barry was feeling even better. The suit, miraculously, no longer itched or chafed and he didn’t need to constantly hike up his pants anymore.
The sudden comfort alone seemed to put him in a far better mood than he’d been an hour ago. Now his booming “ho ho ho” sounded like it was full of genuine mirth, if not quite authentically jolly. Still, he was actually enjoying himself for the first time in a very long time in his current profession.
Then he spotted a little girl staring at a store window. She was obviously yearning for the doll in the display, an expensive gift that her mother seemed reluctant to afford, given how she kept shooing her child to follow her and stop staring. Now that he looked, they seemed to be a family that wasn’t quite as middle-class as one would expect in a mall - both wearing threadbare clothes that didn’t quite fit. Without knowing how, Barry could see in his mind’s eye a small Christmas tree with very few gifts beneath it come Christmas morning. The thought made him tear up.
There was only one thing to do. Without thinking about how it would nearly eliminate his Christmas bonus, Barry marched into the store and bought the doll. He made sure the store gift wrapped it with as large a bow as they had, and then he ran out to find the little girl. She wasn’t there, and for a few minutes of panicked running Barry thought they may have already left the mall.
But then he spotted the girl and her mother just as he rounded a bend. They were about to leave, and he hustled over as quickly as he could, surprised by how heavy the suit suddenly felt as he could barely handle a fast jog. He made it to them, heaving for air, the mother’s expression one of startlement just short of fear.
Barry breathed in a few times and then handed the girl the box. “He… Here. Merry - *gasp* - Christmas.”
The girl’s eyes lit up at the gift and even the mom’s expression softened in a smile. “Thank you, Santa!” The girl practically screamed as they left the store.
Barry watched them go. He could again somehow knew that the child wouldn’t open the present until Christmas, and when she did it would make her the happiest she had ever been. It filled Barry with a joy he’d never felt before.
His booming “ho ho ho” filled the mall for the rest of the day.
Barry wore the suit for the rest of the day, even after he technically didn’t need to. He was still wearing it by the time all the stores had closed and he was busy locking the doors and making sure there weren’t any stragglers past closing time. He’d actually grown to like it, and by the end of the day, he could barely tell he was wearing an enormous Santa suit at all.
Eventually the mall was empty and quiet, and Barry lumbered back to the security office. Walking around a mall all day usually took it out of him, but today he felt especially drained. And especially hungry. He’d likely pick up a double order somewhere on the way home. And maybe some cookies, which he had an odd craving for.
He got to the locker room and took off the iconic red hat and then went to remove the fake beard, only to find that he couldn’t. It didn’t feel stuck - it felt like he was pulling his own beard. Alarmed, he went to the nearby wall mirror and was shocked by what he saw.
There, standing before him, was a practically different person. A much, much larger person. His round and bloated body now filled the suit so it fit like a glove, his massive belly barely contained by the suit’s oversized belt. His reflection could barely be contained by the mirror, and Barry dumbly placed his hands on his enormous tank as though for the first time.
How? How could this have happened without him even noticing? Then he thought over the day, so caught up in giving cheer and joy to everyone around him that he never realized what was happening. As he slowly shucked the jacket and unclasped the belt his belly surged forward, making it seem even larger than it was before, his white, sweat-stained undershirt not even coming close to covering the furthest extent of his drooping underbelly.
Dropping the suit’s trousers was simple now that the belt wasn’t holding them up. As they fell he noted powerful, trunk-like legs covered in dark hair. That was something different - he’d had his fair share of body hair before, but this was like a pelt that coated his thighs, knees, even calves. He even saw a dense treasure trail leading from his exposed belly button all the way to his boxers, which he couldn’t help but notice contained a much larger bulge than he ever remembered.
Storing that tidbit for later he struggled to remove his undershirt to reveal the rest of him, and saw that his torso was even furrier than his legs. Chest, shoulders, and even his back were covered in thick fur, while his belly had a sparser coating except for the very center where his treasure trail spread out across his impossibly broad chest. The twin peaks of his nipples pushed through the forest of hair on his sagging chest, a deep crease noting where an expansive belly collided with his breast to make the fat to settle beneath his arms, causing them to be held out at an angle and making him appear even broader.
Barry’s new pelt flowed into a bushy beard as white as snow, which caused him even more confusion. The rest of his hair was a dark colour, so why the white? And then, as though remembering a dream, he realized he’d dyed his beard that morning in preparation for the day’s festivities - a beard he never remembered growing until just now. A beard he somehow knew covered a double chin large enough that it seemed like he had no neck at all.
He vaguely remembered the old Barry weighing a trim 170 lbs. Now… he couldn’t even begin to guess. His scale had long since stopped providing a number other than “ERR”.
Barry stood before the mirror wearing nothing but his boxers and pawing at his newly fattened body for some time before a voice at the door interrupted him.
“Excuse me, but I believe that’s my suit.”
Barry turned and saw a large man at the door wearing a suit similar to the one he had recently shucked, but comically small for the man’s expansive girth. His belly hung out enough to expose a cavernous navel, the jacket appearing more like a vest. Trousers could barely contain his enormous thighs and left most of his calves exposed. In fact, the more Barry stared the more he realized that the man before him had a body very similar to his own. The only difference was the hair, which was uniformly white from head to toe, and his eyes which twinkled even in the dim light of the change room.
The outfit looked ridiculous, and yet oddly alluring. Barry felt a surge in his boxers as his newly enlarged package responded to the mysterious stranger’s presence.
“Thi- this suit is yours?” Barry managed.
The man nodded and hummed an affirmative. “Going to need it, especially a few days from now. People will be expecting me to wear something that’s a little more… fitting,” he said, finishing with a bellowing laugh that sounded oddly familiar.
“This suit… I don’t remember being like this,” Barry said, a look of confusion on his face.
“Yeah, it’ll do that. But you seemed like you needed some holiday spirit, so I let you borrow it for a day. Seems it got you in the right frame of mind, don’t you think?”
Barry thought about it a moment and realized what the stranger said was true. For the first time in a very long time he’d felt good, felt like he wanted to do good, to bring joy to everyone around him. He nodded back at the stranger, and then gathered up the suit from the floor to hand to him, ignoring the increasingly faint thought that bending over shouldn’t be quite the ordeal it was.
The stranger’s eyes seemed to twinkle even more as Barry handed him the suit back. He turned to leave, but then Barry reached out to grab the man’s shoulder. He turned back to see what Barry had to say.
“Um, would you… like to come back to my place?”
The stranger considered it. “It is awfully busy this time of year for me. Deliveries to make soon and all,” he said, and Barry’s heart sank.
“But… Christmas isn’t tomorrow. And what Mrs. Claus doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” the man added, before bringing Barry in for a passionate kiss.
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