Chapter 6 - issue 1.1: round rivals

Cinnamon awoke to gurgling. The sounds of hardworking digestion. A grumble loud enough to waken her from her rest. As she slowly came to, she started to notice other sounds. A distant radio with a sensationalized host ranting about some strange occurrence. The whirling of a disparate ceiling fan. That was what finally encouraged to open her eyes. She didn't have a ceiling fan. It was one thing to lazily sleep in while you knew where you were. It was a whole other thing to do so while in a strange place . Slowly she cracked her eyes open and drank in an unfamiliar sight. The ceiling wasn't that of her bedroom, nor was the bed she felt herself laying on as comfortable as her one at home. She was in a stranger's room. With that full revelation it all came flooding back to her. Brought on by the panic of the unknown surroundings.

"I wasn't dreaming...which means that weight on my stomach is..." Cinnamon thought to herself tossing the unfamiliar covers. The process revealed two important facts. Firstly, she was seemingly only wearing her underwear. Secondly that her gut looked bloated enough for her to be construed as pregnant. It was hard to deny the evidence she was literally staring in the face. But nevertheless, she found herself reaching out towards the dome of her soccer ball sized stomach. The food critic had overeaten her fair share, but never to the degree of fullness her gut seemed to be in that moment. She was almost surprised when she placed her hand on it and felt it. There was a thin layer of flab of course. The work of prior nights stuffing her face. But beneath that she could feel the tight hard interior of a gut packed to the brim. It wasn't particularly sore anymore and yet she did feel full. Ironic given how much she knew she actually fit in it. She just stared at it for a while coming to terms with it. Gently rubbing it in circles. It felt kind of good when she did that. It was still far too early after waking up for Cinnamon to conceptualize what any of it meant. But her sleepy unawareness was soon to be interrupted.

"I'm sure this is a *** question, given the circumstance, but are you alright?" A male voice called out with hints of the Italian accent she found familiar. "Uh..I mean kin-" Cinnamon started to say before reality hit her like a cheese fridge. Immediately Cinnamon snapped her head around to the source. While her head was seeking the person speaking her hands went for the covers. As she yanked them back onto her chubby body, she found the person in question. It was the pizza boy of course, still with a few cheesy stains on his uniform. "Uh, uh" Cinnamon said fumbling the words immediately. Regular conversations had been hard enough with her emerald eyed crush. How could she even begin to discuss what had happened. Particularly when she hardly understood it herself.

A sort of silence held with the pizza boy awaited her finding her footing in the social situation. With that quiet came an obnoxious cringe inducing sort of awkwardness. Cinnamon was pretty well familiar with it, but it still felt bad. It was worse than usual given her embarrassment and the crush she held on her silent acquaintance. So, succumbing to the pressure she opened her mouth to talk. She wasn't even fully sure what she was going to say. She just needed to break silence. "Those stains will be hard to get out" She informed the recently nearly drowned pizza boy. Obviously referring to the marks peppering his clothes. Half way through saying it her embarrassment had been pre-firing. Once it was actually said she was blushing like a pizza oven. He just tilted his head curiously in response. In an "Are you okay in the head" sort of way. Before nodding as if realizing the answer to his own question.

"It's a kitchen we get a lot of stains...not too many situations like that though" he said making obvious reference to the prior incident. "Yeah, I don't...it's not you know a common thing for me either...I'm just still sort of processing slash digesting" Cinnamon said this time the words pouring out of her mouth weren't completely embarrassing. Though the stutter and the fact she was looking at the ceiling wasn't helping the situation. "Both very difficult tasks I'd imagine, you were as big as a house" The boy informed her with a playful chuckle. It was almost certainly meant to be a playful jab. To defuse some of the tension in the room and make her laugh a little. Unfortunately for him, he hit just a little too close to home on both accounts. She had been quite massive the day prior and was still huge by the standards of her usual figure. The covers she was half hiding behind made that perfectly clear in how they hugged the overly round dome of her overstuffed belly. "Haha, yeah at least I can probably walk by now" Cinnamon interjected in a downright self-defeating tone. She hadn't meant for it to come out quite as self-pitying as it did. But then again expressing herself had never been her strong suite.

"Hey I'm sorry that was...let's say a little tone deaf...I'm not really used to serious things happening" He said with an awkward wince of his own running his hand through his air. Obviously feeling bad about his attempted one liner. "No, it was actually kind of funny" Cinnamon cut him off attempting to lie and doing a poor job of it. She could tell by the look in his eyes he knew she was lying to making him feel better, but he didn't bring it up. Instead of doing so a repeated silence began to form. Both young adults awkwardly trying not to look at each other while grasping for things to say. He could only think of jokes, she couldn't think of anything except for the fact he had seen her glut herself like a total hog. Between them a social stalemate formed, until Cinnamon noticed something strange about her recent acquaintance.

Namely the fact that he seemed to be trying to desperately look at everything in the room except for her. She hadn't exactly examined her surroundings, but she was fairly sure she was easier on the eyes than a lamp post. She wasn't fat enough to be physically repelling the male gaze, or at least she didn't think so. There was a certain irony to her overanalyzing his lack of eye contact. Given she hadn't stolen so much as a glance at his youthful features till she noticed him avoiding her. But whether they were his motives or not Cinnamon after a moment of thought figured out why. He was a young man with a half-naked girl in what could well have been in his own bed. Under normal circumstances being in that situation would've set off fireworks in Cinnamons brain and panties, but these weren't exactly the usual circumstances. "Why...where are my clothes anyways" Cinnamon couldn't help but pry with a hint of poorly suppressed worry in her voice.

He blinked a few times at the question as even he in all his attempts to be cool started to blush a bit. "Well back on the earlier topic...when you overate, they didn't take it well, I doubt they'd fit right now" he said in a casual sort of tone in spite of the embarrassing nature of the topic. All Cinnamon could do for her part was let out a groan of discontent and frustration. Before tossing the covers over her face in shame. Of all the additional things to go wrong a wardrobe malfunction wasn't the most terrible. But it served as an annoying reminder of her absolutely terrible luck. She'd need to renew her subscription to Murphy's Law Monthly Magazine. "But hey, I'm not a total imbecile so I actually have some spare clothes that'll probably hopefully fit you, maybe" The pizza boy offered up, his voice slightly muffled by the bed sheets covering Cinnamon's ears. Her immediate emotions we're basically split down the middle.

On one hand, she could do with some clothes. On the other that'd require to be an actually functioning human being around her crush. Along with coping with him seeing her with a food baby that'd put thanksgiving meals to shame. It wasn't until she actually considered the size of her gut at that point that inspiration truly struck for her. She was barely a fraction as overstuffed as she had previously. Compared to what he had seen earlier she was currently adorably small really. Most people might've considered the fact that she had saved his life would net her a certain amount of social leeway. But Cinnamon as always was going to try and spin a negative into a positive before paying attention to the positive that was already there.

So fueled a little a little by that particular social mind trick she slowly pulled the covers down enough to look at him. "Okay, but uh, no peaking please" she warned him in a decidedly shy tone. He had never really fancied himself much of a gentleman, if anything he had thought the opposite. But he obliged all the same and turned away to look at the door frame as Cinnamon pulled the sheets around her body. Doing so did basically nothing to keep her chastity. If anything, having them draped over her body only made her look a bit bigger. The pulled tight fabric only managing to accentuate the decidedly round curve of her packed gullet. Cinnamon did her best to ignore that fact and clung tightly to the sheet like a comforter. Once more seeking solace in the fact that it was probably more clothed than he had seen her earlier. "Actually, come to think of it, you guys don't do name tags, or that whole...modern internet thing where they say your name on the app, actually you guys don't even have an app... or a website" Cinnamon began to ramble awkwardly, one more feeling heat rising in her cheeks. It was a rather long-winded way to ask someone for their names. "Name's Robbie, I already know yours for obvious reasons..." he explained. While he didn't explicitly say the regularity of her stuffing her face with pizza was something worth remembering, it was certainly the vibe that Cinnamon got. It only served to enhance her embarrassment further as he began to lead her through his room