Chapter 28 - a long overdue weigh in

Red awoke early the next morning with a loud gurgling coming from his stomach, this time it was not hunger. He quickly slid out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom and locked the door behind him and dashed to the toilet.

It felt like an eternity in there, but he managed to get out eventually and he crept back to bed, quietly slipping under the sheets.

Carla grumbled woozily, rolled over onto her stomach and let out a deep fart. Red wondered if she was awake or asleep, either way she did not acknowledge the noise. Red ignored it and curled back up in the bed, he still felt rotten and hungover and knew it would be a long trip home, he closed his eyes and imagined being in his own bed.

The pair awoke to a knocking at the door, Red shot awake again, grabbed sweatpants and t shirt and answered to the landlady, who wanted to kick them out and get the key back.

He poked Carla awake and the two picked up their clothes as fast as possible, called a taxi and apologised to the old woman for the rest of the mess before leaving.

They reached the town, found the bicycles and returned them for the deposit and went to hide in a quaint cafe near the railway station until their train came.

"Oh man, I feel so bad, can you get us coffee?" Carla mumbled and lay her head on the vinyl tablecloth in front of her.

Red dutifully obliged and returned with two extra large bucket shaped mugs of black coffee. They silently waited for the coffee to cool and drink up, Red amused himself with the crossword on his phone and Carla seemed to be talking on social media.

A bing sound came from the station after a while and the pair trudged onto the train, this time Carla seemed to fall asleep in her seat judging, leaning up against Red, who had now moved onto the sudoku, although his brain felt too cloudy to solve it as quickly as he normally would.

The train pulled into their home town, which felt like a downer after the exciting escapism of the weekend. Carla seemed to recognise this and stirred awake, her hair was tangled and there was a small stream of drool coming from her mouth, Red looked at her and found this quite cute.

"Your place or mine? I don't care, so long as I can get a nap."

"Since you've still got clean clothes with you, then my place works."
She nodded, held his hand, dragged her luggage and took another taxi back to Red's apartment.

Carla hauled herself up the stairs, grumbling about it being too high up, Red opened the door and showed Carla back to the bedroom. The bed was pretty clean, but unmade although she did not care as she crawled under the sheets without taking her clothes off. Red was still more functional and sat alone in the living room and turned on his gaming console. He looked through the gaming store to see if there was anything new and spotted a role playing game set in an ancient greek themed land called "Wrath of the Hydra." He forked out the money for it somewhat reluctantly and watched the downloading bar tick down from 11GB. He stared at it for a few minutes, hoping it would somehow speed up, but in the end gave up. He knew he needed to get some food in for tonight even though he really was not hungry.

He returned from the shop an hour later with noodles, vegetables and tofu and some fresh milk, he peeked in on Carla who was lying naked, face down, sprawled across the whole bed, snoring quietly. He shut the door again and went to the bathroom again.

Red had fallen asleep on the sofa, whilst waiting for the download to finish. It was now after six, the game had installed and was ready to play. He felt better now, there was a more empty feeling to his stomach and no residual queasiness or hangover.

He pressed the start button on the game and was taken to the character creation screen and selected gender male and was presented with a muscular Greek hero type wearing generic white underpants, with white skin, long blonde hair. He used the customisation options to pick out his own hairstyle and facial features. On the body type options he could select from height, muscularity and body fat, he played around with the sliders, laughing as he made himself go from Mr Universe to Sumo Wrestler.

"Leave it like that." Carla said, leaning against the door.

"How long have you been standing there?" He asked.

"Just a moment. I like the fat one. The body builder type just grosses me out."

"I don't think either look like me."

"Not yet!" She said, putting on an evil laugh.

Red slid the body fat slider down a little bit so the character was less comically huge, but still chubby. "Happy enough?"

"I suppose, you're no fun sometimes."

"I'm supposed to be a noble Spartan warrior, born of the Gods, not Shrek."

"I liked Shrek! He's a sexy green beast. I dreamed of being Princess Fiona when I was a teen."

"Should I be worried about that? I thought teen girls liked Brad Pitt, back then."

She shook her head. "I'm joking, mostly. You going to make us dinner?"

"In a bit, I want to get into this and I'm not hungry yet."

"Wow, you're not hungry? I never thought I'd hear that."

"Everyone needs a day off. Come, sit for a bit."

Carla jumped onto the sofa and watched Red play. The chubby hero ran through a grassy valley cutting the heads off giant snakes, whilst a smoky shadow of the Hydra, with six heads loomed over the mountains spitting rocks of lava. Carla was yelling at Red as to what he should make the character do. Eventually he made it to a cut scene where the character did a dive into a cave and an old man with ragged robes and white beard started talking exposition about mythical swords.

"Okay, dinner time?" Carla looked pleadingly at Red.

"Oh, okay, its vegan stir fry tonight, I need a detox."

Carla shrugged. "Sounds fine babe."

Red turned on the stove and started flipping the carved up water chestnuts and onions in bubbling oil, when he heard "YOU HAVE DIED" boom from the living room. He sighed and tried to ignore Carla obviously ruining his character's progression and turned to chop up the peppers and pressed tofu.

He served up the sizzling food on a bed of noodles and brought them to the strangely quiet living room. Carla was on her phone and the game was back on the menu screen. He dished the food up on the table, with chopsticks.

"Don't ask." She said looking guiltily at the game screen.

Red turned the game off and put on a television series instead and the two had their healthy dinner.

Red finished quickly, it felt a little relieving to eat a meal and not end up being painfully over full. Carla thanked him appreciatively and lay on his shoulder and watched the show quietly.

"I think i've put on weight with you." She said after a while, interrupting a quiet part of the show.

"Oh? I haven't noticed."

She lifted up her t shirt and grabbed a small handful of belly roll, which was resting over her trousers. "This used to be smaller im sure of it. And my butt feels more bootylicious."

Red shrugged. "You've always looked like that."

"Yeah, i've had that roll for years, but now I think its got a friend." She leaned forwards a bit and a second, little roll formed above her navel.

Red stopped her from poking her own belly and took off his shirt, not knowing what to expect to see now he had recovered from the stuffing. He looked down and he saw his belly had changed shape, over his waistband lay a soft layer of fat that sat over an inch onto his lap which rounded out towards his navel where it curved in. Above his navel it became flatter as it tapered in a little to a tiny shadow of a roll forming on his ribs, which was sandwiched by a softer looking pectoral area.

Carla blinked at this in amazement. "Okay, that was not there when we met."

Red nodded. "Yeah, I think I have you beat there."

Carla grinned. "Can we. You know. Weigh you?"

"Okay, sure." He stood up and started walking to the bathroom, Carla came too. He felt his heart beating, wondering what the scales would say.

"You were 190 before the weekend, right?"

Red nodded and took a step towards the scale, his pulse quickened, he was excited to see her reaction, but knew to brace himself for a change. He stepped on an watched the numbers climb.

"201." He said.

Carla twisted around him and gaped down. "That's can't be real!"

Red nodded, trembling a little.

"You're eleven pounds fatter after the weekend?"

Red nodded again.

"I thought that was impossible."

Red shook his head.

Carla kissed his cheek and led him off the scale. "I love you, babe." She then got up herself.

"Well, did you?"

Carla turned to him and scowled. "Shut up! It's your fault."

Red looked down and around her legs, he saw the number 211 flash before disappearing, this dampened the shock of his own number and he smiled a little. "Thought your profile said 205."

"Well maybe your scales are broken."

Red kissed her on the cheek. "I love you too, babe." He paused. "At any size."

Carla pulled a series of faces which seemed to run the gamut of emotions, before settling on a grin. "Well, maybe my fat ass needs to fuck your fat ass some more if im not getting enough exercise."

Red let out a little yelp as Carla barged him through into the bedroom where she stripped down to her socks and dived naked onto the bed. "Go on top, I want to see you jiggle." She bit her lip and wiggled her finger to summon him. Red stripped and crawled on top of her.