The weight had been just one of the side effects that Mazaku hadn’t really thought about throughout college. Stress, free access to a cafeteria with things that most would consider to be tangential at best to food, and endless hours of sitting and studying rather than moving around had combined to allow the dragon to just balloon. The long hours in the library with his snout in a book or the longer hours up late in the twenty-four hour cafeteria doing the same had piled on weight at a steady, but almost unstoppable pace. The runner’s physique that Mazaku had entered college in barely lasted a semester before it had been coated over with a thin layer of heft, and by the time his first year was over? Well, the ‘Freshman 15” had some friends that had joined them on the short dragon. Maz hardly noticed this though, getting a little bit of ribbing from his older, taller, and much heavier brother when home from the holidays, but that was about it. School was stressful! This was the first time in his life that he was out on his own, and having to deal with things that had always been taken care of for him after all, so some changes to his weight and his habits were bound to happen, right?
Well, those changes continued until graduation, when what had been a slim, svelte dragon athlete graduated a heavily overweight, blubbery mound of dragon pudge. Mazaku had doubled his size at least, though anything resembling a scale had long been excluded from the little dorm room that Maz had spent his last four years of life in. The dragon had just been glad to get college done with, taking his diploma and waddling off the stage without a wave or even really a grin on his face; he just was glad the stress and constant work of the last four years were now behind him. He could get to work now and hopefully find some more time to get himself back into shape. To lose some of the weight that had slowed him down so much, had made stairs seem like mountains, and had taken his appetite and turned it into something of a monster that he was beholden to almost as much as his studies. Graduation was supposed to solve all of those things. The end of an era in the dragon’s life, one that had been filled with eating and late nights and sleepless weeks and anxiety and constant judgement and work and… Mazaku was ready for the real world, where he could get a break from it all.
The real world had other plans though.
Two months on from graduation, and Mazaku still had yet to land a real job. He’d gotten a couple small free-lance contracts, but a real, steady job? That was still something eluding the dragon like dieting seemed to be as well. Those changes after graduation? Of wanting to lose weight and finding the time to better himself now that he wasn’t exposed to the habits of college? Those efforts had lasted for all of one day. A single trip out to the park to go for a run had turned into a panting, sweating effort just to get back to the car so that he could go and get something to eat in under 15 minutes. The diet he had promised to change? That had somehow gotten even worse, with fast food being all the dragon could realistically afford thanks to the meager income he had gotten from his freelance work. The lack of stress and studying? The studying was gone, but that had been replaced by filling out applications, going to interviews, and even more anxiety about landing a job. The cycle of college had begun again, and even worse somehow, and it was leaving Mazaku stressed out beyond any measure of the word. The dragon now had to meet new people, get nice clothes that he hoped he would fit in for more than a few interviews, and drive himself around all over the city. College had prepared the dragon for a few things in real life, but the job hunting? Nothing could have prepared him for that… And he was really, really hating it.
Thankfully, Mazaku had his older brother to stay with. Vorax, a few years older and a solid couple feet taller, had a modest apartment in the city that Mazaku lived in rent-free while he looked for a job. Thankfully on the first floor, the place was big enough for both the brothers to not be on top of eachother, but small enough that Mazaku had to see Vorax pretty much every day. With seeing Vorax came food pretty much every time, and that combined with a diet of burgers and soda and fries meant that the weight that Mazaku had been piling on in college hadn’t slowed it’s incoming tide. If anything, the dragon was gaining even faster now, and had already needed to change out his wardrobe once in just the two months he had been with Vorax; and would need to again soon if the creaking of his pants was anything to go by. Vorax had never been a small dragon, always the chubby one in their relationship, but now Mazaku was definitely leading in the width and weight departments thanks to college and stress-eating. A few teasing words here and there were definitely handed down from the short dragon’s older brother, but never anything malicious or harsh. It still made Maz feel like he was doing something wrong though… But years of college had trained the younger dragon that eating would help him feel better. It was a cycle of eat to feel good, feel bad about eating, and then repeat that he was locked into from college and only worsening as his job prospects continued to look utterly hopeless.
“Any luck today?” Vorax said, snapping Maz out of his thoughts as he sat at the kitchen table. Mazaku had been dwelling on his lack of a job again, staring off into space above the screen of his laptop.
“Nothing again,” the younger dragon said with a sigh, running a paw through his lightly-greasy mop of curly hair; he needed a shower… “I got an interview over Noom later, but I’m not too hopeful on it.”
“Hey, you’ll kill it little bro,” Vorax said, moving on over and putting a bag of Rotund Rodeo on the table beside Maz’s computer. The usual was in it, no doubt; three double burgers, a large order of fries, and maybe some beef bits. “Eat on up, and you’ll get to feeling better.”
“That’s just it,” Mazaku sighed out, the younger dragon looking down at the table and then at his chubby paws. It was impossible not to see his pooching stomach from this angle too, the doughy mass of brown-green scales spilling fully into where a lap should have been and spreading out like a heavy dollop of yogurt. Maz slid his paws down to that sac of blubber, the one that he was filling again and again, and gripped two of the numerous rolls on either side of that table ‘muscle’, giving it a light wobble from his grip on the deep green scales framing it to either side. “I keep eating, and I’m just going to keep right on blimping up. How long until I’m too fat for someone to even bother employing me?”
“Well, I thought you were looking for remote jobs Maz, so that wouldn’t matter?” Vorax replied simply, looking almost a bit confused. “Have you only been applying to in-office jobs?”
“Well, yeah, I thought they were the ones that would help me lose some of this weight and finally get me out of the house and stuff…”
“Maz, you can do that with a work from home job. Probably better even, because you don’t have to drive to the office. You get like, a whole hour every day to just work out.”
“That’s a thing?” Mazaku said, looking almost quizzically at Vorax. “I can do work right here and everything?”
“You had those freelance gigs right? Same thing,” Vorax said, his mouth now full of Rotund Rodeo. The tan drake sat himself across from Maz and nodded, his own curly puff of hair bouncing lightly with the motion… As well as the prominent double chin under his nubs of chin-spikes. “Just more consistent work and everything. You don’t even have to put on pants for the work.”
“Huh… I didn’t really even think about all that. Thanks Vorax,” Maz said, and then got back to his search with some new energy. Not having to go into the office… Sure, that would leave the temptation of food around and with Vorax’s bad eating habits, he likely wouldn’t lose weight as fast as he wanted. Still, Mazaku could get into good habits if he stayed home and didn’t venture out into the world, right? He could just come up with his own plan, stick to it, and all that weight would fall off him nice and steady. He’d get back into shape, or at least not be such a ball of pudge, in no time.
That was what Mazaku hoped at least.
The search for a remote job went infinitely better than his search for something with an office. It turned out that artists who could do work from home and spread themselves throughout a design team based the world over were in somewhat high demand, and the dragon went from unemployed without any prospects to having a job that saw him drawing up concepts and logos and letterheads within a week. It was a change that took all the stress he had undergone over the last few years and made it seem worth it. He had work, he was doing well, and he had gotten to do just what he had been hoping for. Sure, the pay wasn’t as good as he wanted it to be and he was working all hours of the day, but he was working! It was something, and Mazaku took solace in that and was grateful for it. No longer was he relying on his brother for food and shelter; Mazaku could afford to help out around the house with bills and with food costs and everything like that. It wasn’t perfect, but it was so much better than where he had been that the dragon was contented.
Maz took a picture of himself the first day of his new job, having to really back up just to fit all of himself in the lens. The idea for this? To see where the job led him, and to document how much weight he could lose now that he was employed, out technically on his own, and could make his own choices. The picture was hardly flattering; the green and brown dragon had put on a downright impressive amount of weight, and it showed on every single inch of his frame. Cherubic, flabby cheeks that dimpled heavily when he smiled for the picture. A second and third chin under his first that made his fat face look even more round; not helped by the short, round horns atop his head. His messy mop of curled hair that nearly hung to his eyes from a lack of time to get it cut back. His eyes, lightly squinting from the sheer size of his cheeks. His glasses a little askew thanks to those same cheeks, making him look even more like a mess. The red tinge of a blush on those cheeks too; he had gotten winded setting up for the picture and it showed both in his blush of embarrassment, and from the exertion of having to do all that work.
And that was just his face.
The rest of Mazaku showed off what over four years of overindulgence could do to a dragon, and the image was hardly what one would call kind to him. Heavy moobs that rested on the shelf of a stomach below them. Rolls of fat coating both his sides, inches deep and looking more like a stack of pancakes than scaled flesh on a former runner. The large, greenish-tan scales of his stomach looking almost comically stretched to cover the flab that dominated his frontside, sagging well below his crotch and over halfway down his thighs. That alone would be his most dominating feature, had his hips not decided to spread even wider and make themselves known no matter what the dragon did. Pear-shaped enough to be the very definition of the term, the dragon had deep green hips that flared out to make him so wide that one wouldn’t be wrong to wonder how Mazaku made it through doors without getting stuck. Knees hidden under flab, paws with calf fat rolling over them lightly… The dragon was undeinably fat. Incredibly so, especially when Mazaku compared the picture he had taken next to the one he had taken before going off to college.
Looking at the two pictures next to one another, it seemed as though two dragons were having their picture taken. One was outside and smiling, holding up a medal for one of his many running accomplishments and swimming in the clothes he had been wearing at the time. The second? A dark room with a grimacing, massively fat drake standing there in just his boxers, though that was hard to tell because of just how fat he was. The two looked nothing alike, and it made Mazaku sigh as he looked from one image to another. Of course, the goal was to get back to that first image, and that would take work! He could do it though, and he’d already planned out a diet plan, exercise, a whole regimen in fact to get him back into shape. It was going to be work, but he could do it! He was going to do it! That first picture would be an image for him to look at with pride rather than embarrassment. How had that been him? Well, he would show that it had been him through working out and getting himself back into that shape. It would take salads and running and lots of trips to the gym, but Mazaku had a plan. Hell, he’d even already bought a membership to the local gym just a couple blocks away with his first paycheck. Pinning the two pictures next to one another in his bathroom on the mirror, the dragon gave a determined grin and looked on at the sight. He would get back to that before picture. He would do it
It took one week for that confidence to falter. Just one week, and Mazaku wasn’t as sure about losing even a pound of his newfound weight. He had tried to go to the gym, surely, but he had just not found the time. Sure he was working remote and staying home as he did that, but he just could find no time to do anything but work, sleep, and eat. Every time he tried to go to the gym, some new demand came through for work, or he was too tired from working overnight, or he was just too full from a meal to want to get changed. The cooling weather of fall wasn’t helping either, making the dragon dread going outside despite his very warm insulation; he was a dragon! It didn’t matter how much blubber he packed on, cold weather was still cold darnit! And so Mazaku just worked, ate, and slept as one did with a new job that they were trying to prove themselves at, and didn’t really put much thought into it all. He tried to eat better, and did accomplish that much. Salads were had more often than burgers, chicken replaced a lot of the red meat in his diet, chips were more often replaced with fruits… However, these changes weren’t all by themselves. That fruit? It was usually drowned in peanut butter as the dragon munched through five whole apples. Those salads? As much dressing as lettuce was in each of them. Chicken? Sure it could replace red meat, but sometimes in quantities that made for even more calories overall than the red meat it was replacing. Better eating habits weren’t that much better if the quantities and condiments were putting them right on par with what they were replacing, but Mazaku didn’t think on that. There was no point in trying to think on that; he had work to do.
This cycle continued all through fall; attempts to go the the gym falling through, diet plans being ruined by sauces and sizes, and Mazaku just busily working away. The dragon didn’t hate it, he liked being busy and getting to collab with his coworkers. In fact, he was really actually enjoying the job, even if it kept him busier than even college had. It was less about studying and trying to impress someone now, and more about flexing the creative muscles he had spent years honing. That was refreshing, so as his weight continued to climb and his body added on new layers of fat… Well, Mazaku wasn’t really thinking about the new pounds. No, instead he was thinking about how much he was enjoying working, the new foods he was trying that were ‘healthier’ in every sense but their portion sizes, and the fact that he was finally doing something all on his own.
That little bubble burst on the first day of winder, when Mazaku was due to take the next picture of himself. Three full months of working on himself, of working at his job, and of just letting his gym clothes and membership collect dust, and the dragon had to see reality. He just had to; it was captured in a four by six image and put on the mirror under the first one on his supposed weight loss journey. And what it showed? It wasn’t a weight loss in any respect.
It was weight gain.
That belly sagged lower, brushing the top of Maz’s knees now when he stood. The blush of his exertion and embarrassment was redder than before, and showed just how much his cheeks had grown when he smiled a happy, dimpled smile. His hips were wider, and a bit raw because of all the rubbing they had been doing on his bedroom door every day when he went out to get his third lunch or second midnight snack. His arms were further propped out, so bloated with tat now that they looked to have their own rolls over where his elbow had once been. His tail, actually visible this time in the picture, looked more like an overfilled sausage than the strong appendage of a land drake like him. His scales were even more absurdly stretched, looking almost strained to cover the new amount of Mazaku they were being asked to. New rolls had bloomed and grown deeper, his lovehandles looking more like spare tires now. His third chin was starting to give way to a fourth, and even those were looking like they wanted to merge into one large spare tire of pure fat. Even his paws looked fatter; that had been impacting his work just a bit. The dragon in the third picture even had his hair longer and messier, tied back into a ponytail to keep some of it from his face and neck… Well, what of a neck remained that hadn’t begun to turn into that tire of fat his chins were becoming.
Mazaku stared at the picture and frowned. He felt healthier than he had in years. Maz had cut soda from his diet, he’d switched fully to chicken whenever he ordered out, he’d even gotten salads almost every day! How had he put on even more weight now? It was a mystery to him, but when he thought about it for even a moment… Or really paid attention to everything around him, it was obvious. Outgrowing his office chair? He’d bought another. His mattress starting to really sag in the middle from his weight on it? He’d bought one especially for fat furs, picking the pachyderm model just because he wanted something extra comfortable. His clothes getting tight? He’d ordered new ones a couple sizes larger, figuring that it was water weight from all the seltzers and water he was drinking. He felt healthier and clearer than he had in ages, and yet he was still putting on weight. Sure, his portions sizes now were more akin to meals for a family of four, but he was eating better! He was even exercising more often, having brought in a set of weight for him to lift while he drew and some finger strengtheners to keep his digits nimble so that he could keep on drawing. And yet…
“’Ey Vorax, can you come here?” Maz called from the bathroom, still staring at the picture. A few moments later, the taller tan dragon was at the door of the room, peering in and looking over Maz from the doorway.
“Yeah?”
“I’m fat, right?”
“Uh… Yeah bro, you’re fat. Why?” Vorax asked, looking over Maz again with a bit of a bemused grin. “I thought you were going for a record or something with the way you’ve been packing it all in.”
“No, like… I was trying to lose the weight…” Maz said, quieter and with no small amount of blush on his cheeks as he said it. “You’ve seen what I’ve been ordering.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen it. You get a lot of orders though, so I only see some of it.” Vorax admitted. He had his own job after all, so he wasn’t home all the time like Maz was. It was enough that the two had debated selling Maz’s car just for some extra money; it was just sitting and collecting dust. “It’s a lot.”
“Too much a lot?”
“I ain’t gonna judge you on that Maz, you know that,” Vorax said with a shrug, looking at the younger and far rounder dragon. “You do you, and all that, you know that’s how I feel. Become a blimp for all I care, you’re still my brother and all.”
“But I don’t want to become a blimp… I want to try and lose some of this,” Maz said, taking his belly up into both paws, or rather what he could get of its gravid mass into them, and hefting it up with a strained grunt. “I can’t even see my knees anymore.”
“Well… Have you tried cutting back on how much you order?” Vorax asked, looking quizzically at Mazaku. “Like, I saw your order for Indian last night… That was enough for a full day of food for anyone.”
“Crap…” Maz said, frowning as he looked from the picture to Vorax and back again. “Can you help me with that? Like, make sure I order less and stuff?”
“Uhm… Maybe? I mean, you’re a full-blown adult now and stuff Maz, there’s only so much I can do. I mean, you’re not struggling with all that right?”
“Not really, I ju-“
“Then why worry about it, right? You’re not like gonna die from being a little fat or anything. So what if you’re fat. One of my friends is even fatter than you and he’s fine.” Maz took some solace in that, letting his stomach go and feeling it bounce a few times as his whole frame sloshed to keep up with the sudden shift in weight.
“You sure, I mean… I don’t even think I can drive anymore.”
“So we can sell your car finally and get some extra money right? We both want a new TV for the living room after all right?” Vorax said, already spinning that too into something positive. Maz just shrugged in reply, looking from the first picture to the second and frowning again.
“I just feel like I’m getting too fat you know?”
“Bah, you’re fine. I mean, you feel healthy and stuff right? You’re lifting weights and doing all those other things. Why don’t you get something to help keep your legs strong too?” Maz again shrugged, but was already starting to see things Vorax’s way. He was just fat, but he really wasn’t that unhealthy, was he? Sure stairs were out of the question and fitting through some doorways was becoming a challenge… But it wasn’t like he was out of breath all the time or struggling to move or anything. Mayve he just was meant to be fat? Or maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing? He didn’t really know… He did know he ate when he was hungry, which was most of the time, and that he could still get his work done. He did know that he could still get around fine, and that he could still fit into Vorax’s truck alright enough, even if that too was becoming a bit tight.
“I guess you’re right…” Maz finally relented, and then hung the picture up below the third with a bit of a sigh of resignation. Sure he could lose the weight, but it wasn’t hurting anyone if he didn’t lose that much of it. It just made him need to get clothes more often and maybe have to worry about doorways. That part didn’t seem normal, but what was normal, really?
“Big brother knows best Maz, don’t worry about it. So what you’re fat? You’re fine, just keep at it!”
Maz did, in fact, keep at it.
All throughout winter, his orders for food only grew bigger. Sure, they were the same healthy things he had been eating before, but they got more exotic and even larger as the weeks went on. It was only a few weeks after his last picture that he graduated from food for a family of four, to food for a family of five. His appetite was utterly out of control, and yet Maz didn’t really think it was all that bad. He could reign it in if he had to, but… Going hungry and feeling like he needed to eat more just was even more incomfortable. So instead he ate till he was good and full, and then whenever he needed something to top himself up. Which, for Maz, was often. Mazaku was an eating machine, and it was so common that he was starting to get to know the delivery drivers who brought food. They would even bring extra more often than not, with turned down orders or unpaid pickups coming in the afternoon for Maz to have as ‘extra food for being such a loyal customer’. That, again, didn’t set off alarm bells for the dragon. No, he just ate and worked and slept as he had before. No need to throw a wrench into things that were working well enough right?
With all of that working well enough, winter went on. Going out in winter for both Mazaku and Vorax was a tall order, and meant they both spent most of the season indoors. As such, less clothes were bought, and less attention was paid to the growing amount of X’s in Mazaku’s wardrobe. Had he been looking, the dragon would have seen a transition from simply buying from big and tall stores, to needing to go to custom boutiques that specialized in pachyderms and other such large species. But the dragon wasn’t paying attention. Work was busy with the holidays, stress-eating was up because of that work influx, and really he was just focused on what was in front of him, rather than what was growing around him. He played off the struggles he was starting to have getting out of bed with just being tired because of the weather. He ignored needing to turn sideways to shuffle through doorways as just not liking the chaffing his scales were getting on his hips. He pushed aside creaking from his office chair with excuses about its age, even though it was less than six months old. He just said his mattress was too big for the frame of his bed when he heard it start to crack and moved the mattress onto the floor instead. Excuses, thin rationales, and justifications born of denial abound during the winter, and so when spring came, the dragon was in for a surprise or three. Or rather, a harsh reality check.
Spring rolled in, and the next picture needed to be taken… And boy was it a picture. Mazaku looked like he had been stuck under a funnel of food for all of winter, so much had his weight gone up. Gone were his knees, the curtain of his low-hanging belly making sure that any real presence of those fat tree-trunk legs that held him up only came from the flaring hips which protruded out heavily from his sides. He was easily as wide as he was tall now, which wasn’t hard given his stature, but still spoke volumes about how much he had grown. His scales all looked stretched enough to be practically painted on, comically large and only seeming to be held together by biology struggling to stem the tide of fat pouring into the dragon. His arms never really hung by his sides now, buoyed up by the fat of his biceps as well as the large, heavy sacs of chest fat which made him look even more like a stack of pancakes than he had before. Gone were multiple chins, replaced by a spare tire of fat that rested under his muzzle comfortably and prevented him from looking down much more than a few degrees. His feet were almost hidden by the roll of flab from his calves, burying them up to his toes and making sure that Maz could feel every step he took with more than just the soles of his feet. He was a walking mountain of green scales with a whole peak of just greenish brown in front that dominated his figure. The only thing on him that looked to be maintained now was his hair, courtesy of a trim from Vorax the month prior after Maz had been complaining about his bangs getting into his eyes. Even his glasses were further askew, pressed up from his cheeks and forward because of them too. He needed to adjust them every time he ate; those face pillows of his making it hard to keep anything from moving around up there.
There was no more denying it, no more hiding from it… Maz had utterly ballooned.
He stood there and frowned again, but this time he didn’t call out for Vorax. Instead, the other dragon had been the one to take the picture, passing it to Maz after giving a light whistle as to the gains of his younger brother. “You’re just blowing up Maz, damn. I wasn’t really gonna say anything, but I think even you can see it next to that old picture, huh?” Vorax said, looking to the other photos with a small grin on his face. “Can’t call you my little brother anymore now… Haven’t been able to for a while, but I mean now? It feels like a joke.”
“But I’ve been eating so well, and lifting weights, and moving my hands, and exercising my legs…” Maz said, sounding almost defeated as he stood there and sighed. “How come I just keep growing?”
“Maybe a late growth spurt or something?” Vorax suggested, looking up and down at Maz. “I mean, you do look a bit taller?” Vorax almost seemed to be sizing up the dragon, a light smirk on his face as he did so. “Certainly are taller when you’re laying down. But hey, do you want to have a doctor come and look at you or something?” Vorax asked, his face still a smirk but concern clear in his tone. “I have my friend I can call if you want?”
“Yeah, I mean, I haven’t been to the doctor in a while. I don’t feel sick or anything though…” Maz said, still looking at the picture with a bit of a frown. “You can call them.”
“Okay Maz, I’ll give them a call for you. But really, you’re fine right? Nothing sore or anything hurting?”
“Well, my knees hurt.” Maz conceded, shifting a little as he stood in the living room in front of the couch; his newfound room of sorts after the third time he had gotten stuck in the doorway on his way out to get a delivery towards the end of the day. The dragon since had mostly just stayed on the couch; falling asleep on the couch was easier than the bed anyways since getting up had been an issue for a couple months now. In fact, Maz had a bit of a time remembering the last time he had fully gotten himself to standing without Vorax’s help. The delivery drivers at this point knew to bring things into him, the drivers who dropped off his new tablet had known the same… So Maz really didn’t need to stand. Sure he tried to get his lifting legs in, but really his belly just hung so low and his weight was so high that it was becoming an issue. Not a strength or endurance issue; he had to stand while Vorax would help him bathe after all. But really, just a size issue; there was only so much strength could work past inches, sometimes feet, of pure lard.
“Yeah… There’s a lot of you to hold up Maz,” Vorax said, looking the dragon up and down. “Go ahead and take a seat again. Want me to get you another order of that chicken salad you like so much?”
“Oh, and can you see if they have the new bread and everything?” Maz said, grinning happily. His mind had already moved on from concern about his growing problem, and onto the next meal. That was something good… And probably bad at the same time, but Mazaku didn’t worry about it. Vorax didn’t either honestly, since Maz was happy and the dragon was healthy enough. Standing may have been an issue, and bathing, and more often feeding himself after a long day of drawing… But hey, Maz was Vorax’s brother! Who wouldn’t help out their brother a little when they needed help?
And so, spring continued on without much at all changing. The doctor’s visit came and went without any fanfair, aside from the doctor almost fainting when seeing the sheer size of their patient, and again when they got Maz’s bloodwork back. His blood pressure was high, but not dangerously so by any means. His cholesterol; perfect. His sugars; well within where they needed to be. Every other factor that should have been in the danger zone for someone who had utterly dwindling mobility and a diet that would make most families scoff at the amount of food? Well within the normal limits. It was too good to be true, so another doctor came and found the same things. And then another after that. All in all; a month of doctors poking and prodding at Maz wasn’t exactly how the dragon wanted to spend a portion of his spring, but after all of that poking and prodding and lecturing and concern and then shock? The dragon knew without a shadow of a doubt that he was doing everything right! He was lifting his weights still, he was still gainfully employed, he still had a social life (even if that social life was the delivery drivers and exclusively them), and he even could exist alone because his phone had a very good voice-processing chip inside of it. It was a medical mystery, and there was no doubt in Vorax’s mind that there would be journals about Mazaku once all that prodding was done.
Once the clean bill of health was established and the doctors were done, other things took off in Maz’s life. He had been working for the company long enough, done well enough, and pushed hard enough to get promoted a few times already. Now though? This next promotion was a very big one. No longer was drawing needed; now the dragon would be correcting and checking things as a designer right before they were sent out. He had a whole team under him, and really just had to make sure that they did their jobs and that things were sent out in a timely manner, as well as to what the client wanted. As such, there was even less work for those paws which were fast becoming little more than mittens filled with fat. Gone were the days of chopsticks or utensils, now it was really just food that could be pushed into his face and eaten more like a trough than a dish. Sure it was still healthy enough, but soups and the like were much more common; why try and chew and make a mess when one could just chug their meals instead? So that meant Maz had even more time to eat, even easier food to eat, and even less work to do. It was quite the combo for him, and that combo saw fit to further his first problem; he grew even faster.
Spring continued on, and soon enough it was summer oncemore. A full year since all of this had begun. A full year since Maz had moved in with Vorax, had graduated from college, and had gone from the stresses of finding a job, finding a life, and really getting himself to be more than just a college graduate. And in that year? Well… Vorax had to be pressed against the back wall of the room in order to be far enough back to get an image of Mazaku. What had been a couch for the two was now a couch and bed and office chair and living space for just one, and it was starting to get a bit tight. The dragon could feel those armrests under his lovehandles, pressing his hips in like he was in a muffin tin. His belly was always lightly chilled, which was a godsend in the late spring thanks to the heat of the room. Why it was so chilled all the time? It had been resting on the floor for months now, just a little bit after Maz had decided to take up permanent residence on the sofa instead of trying to go back and forth to his bedroom. It hadn’t been an easy decision, and had further solidified that Maz was truly past normal fatass territory and into something new, but… It had been comfortable, easier, and it allowed for more of a social life than the dragon had seen in months.
Vorax sighed as he looked at the picture, the large polaroid camera the two had been using to document the dragon’s weight gain, instead of loss, held in one paw with the picture in the other. Maz’s older brother was looking a little larger, with some more heft around his middle and a bit more width to his hips. Not like Maz; nothing in the same zip code as Maz, but the elder dragon had been snacking a lot more since the delivery drivers that Maz had befriended on his tour of the city’s delivery services had been spending more time with the two of them. That was part of why Maz had exploded with weight so much after resigning himself to immobility, and been part of why the picture had been such an effort to take. Vorax continued to look at it for a moment longer, then lumbered on over to where Mazaku sat and turned the picture around.
Mazaku was colossal.
Utterly enormous.
Outrageously obese.
Laughably large.
No words could describe the green and tan dragon who was filling, and overflowing, the sofa in their living room. None could come close to capturing the sheer size of the belly which dominated the front of the drake, or the moobs that looked like smaller bellies and partially obscured the face of that dragon. Nothing would come close to painting a picture of the feet-thick rolls of fat that rose over the sides and back of the couch, trapping that dragon’s head in a divot of fat. Cheeks which could double as balloons obscured any vision below them, and fat from above forced Maz into a squint; so even seeing his enormity was a challenge. His glasses long abandoned for contacts, the dragon still struggled to see from outside himself some days; his tablet was on a swivel arm attached to the ceiling just so that he could use it at all. It was… Just one look at the dragon before him was utterly overwhelming. Maz began to pant lightly, his whole brain overwhelmed as he saw that.
“Vo-Vorax… I’m too big.”
“You’re still healthy though Maz… And your company is paying you even if you don’t do any work; something about feeling bad for getting you stuck like this.”
“B-But…”
“Do you want to lose the weight?” Vorax asked, simple and honest. There wasn’t malice, but concern in his voice as he reached a paw over and grasped around the heavy, useless mitt that was once a paw on the blob of dragon. “I’ll help you however I can, but Maz… You’re healthy, you’re fine. You may be too big, but… You’re not hurting, are you?”
“N-No, but… How can anyone be this big?”
“I dunno, something the doctor said about you just being built for it.” Vorax admitted, a light shrug from the dragon sending a couple ripples of the sea of lard that had once been an arm on Maz. “I’ll help however you want Maz, your big bro has you.” The older dragon finished, giving a squeeze to the younger drake’s paw.
“I… I am comfortable…” Mazaku said, his breathing already calming down as he started to see that there was nothing really wrong with him. His heart still thundered, but even that was calming down; another sign that there was something just naturally allowing him to be fatter than fat. “And I don’t feel like I’m sick or anything…” Maz sighed out loud and just took a few deep breaths, something that had been getting a little harder and sounded a touch like a wheeze, but nothing that even could concern someone mildly overweight. The whole thing made the young dragon’s head spin, but he just shut his eyes and took deep breaths to steady himself, just like he did when he was faced with an issue at work. “Okay, I’m okay… I’m okay.”
“Then do you want lunch?”
“Oh, lunch? I’ll have the chicken tandoori, with that naan, and some curry…”
Lunch was had, and the picture was forgotten by the time the last plate was scraped clean into the blobular dragon. One year, and Maz had gone from merely a heavily out of shape college student to a blob of dragon that would need heavy machinery to move. And yet, that was okay for Maz. He had Vorax, he had a few doctors who were around to study and monitor him because of the sheer oddity of his condition, he had a job that was taking care of him even as his responsibiltiies turned into phone calls and little else. One more year of this? Maz wasn’t sure he could sustain that… He was already losing vision and even the mobility of his arms. But he was comfortable, content, and strangely happy with what he had become. His life was full of food, friends, help, care, food, and more food. So what if he was the size of a small car? He had what he had wanted once he had gotten out of college, and that was the important part…
At least, until second lunch arrived.