Xander pulled up to the curb directly in front of his building and flicked his four-ways on. Campus safety could give him seventeen tickets, for all he cared - there was no way he was making the trek up the hill and then up the stairs just then. "I'll just be a few minutes," he said.
"Nah, I have explicit instructions to come up with you," Ken said boredly as he unbuckled his seatbelt. "You said that you saw that Fuom in your room once, so they obviously know where you live."
Xander felt his stomach clench, but said nothing. He emerged from his car into the mild, damp air and fumbled with his keys until he found the one for the front door. The bolt slid back with a loud "click" and they stepped inside the cozy parlor.
"This is a dorm?" Ken asked, glancing from the polished hardwood floors to the elaborate bronze sconces that lined the entryway. He ran his fingers over the velvet damask-patterned wallpaper and gave Xander a questioning look.
"Yeah, it's a historic building the college owns. It used to be a hotel. They turned the rooms into dorms, but restored the bottom floor so they can have small events here," Xander said as he glared at the steep old staircase.
"What floor are you on?"
"Third," he grunted. "You might as well go first."
Ken raised his eyebrow a bit but turned and bounded up the first flight of stairs. Xander let out a disgusted huff at the ease with which the small man conquered that which was so difficult for him, and, resigned to humiliating himself once again, began to plod up the steps.
Ken was waiting for him on the landing at the top of the second staircase. Xander could feel his heart thudding in his throat and his lungs begging him for air. He fought to suppress his breathing to a normal rate, even though he knew it was obvious that he was struggling to not gasp. Just from walking up the goddamned stairs, he thought as he pushed past an alarmed-looking Ken into the hallway. His room was the first one on the left. With shaking fingers he found his key and unlocked his door, and they stepped inside.
Ken looked around, and Xander knew he was silently appraising the numerous packages of food still scattered about his side of the room. "Um...sorry...for the...mess..."
"Nah, you should see my room. So this is where the infamous Adrian lives?"
"Yeah..." Xander started towards his bed to sit down and rest for a moment, but thought better of it and instead opened his closet door.
"Guess I'll stay far away from the bed," Ken chuckled.
Xander shoved a pile of outgrown clothes to one side of the top shelf and groped around for a bit before his fingers closed over rough canvas. "No, it's...safe...we changed the...sheets and...blankets...the other night...so Cee could...sleep there." He pulled the bag down and stood hidden behind the door for a few moments in an attempt to calm his breathing.
"Wait, Cee slept in Adrian's bed? Where'd you sleep?"
Xander stepped out of his closet with the duffel bag and gave Ken a quizzical look. "In my bed?"
Ken returned his expression with an equally confused one of his own as he flopped down on Adrian's bed. "Really? Wow. I didn't think you were gay, what with your crush on Adrian's girlfriend. Or was it actually a crush on Adrian?"
"What? No, I'm not...what are you even talking about?" Xander unzipped the bag and looked inside. His father had given it to him at the beginning of the previous semester, along with a few sets of too-small workout clothes, as a not-so-subtle hint to go to the gym. Apparently Xander had been using the bag to store his snow boots. He dumped them out onto his closet floor.
"Oh. Ace, then? Well, either way, you're depriving some chubby chasers out there."
Xander felt his cheeks heat up. "What?" He turned away from Ken to his dresser and started rifling through his clothes and stuffing the newest items into the bag.
"Dude, are you telling me you don't know what a chubby chaser is?" Ken laughed, but stopped when he noticed Xander's shoulders rise a few inches and tighten with tension at his repetition of the word "chubby." "Oh, shit, you really don't know. Have you ever, y'know, been on the internet? Well, I guess if you're not into guys, you wouldn't really have an opportunity to come across those particular kinds of sites, but I thought that was one of our terms that had gone mainstream."
Xander ignored him and silently cursed at himself as he opened his top drawer and realized that he'd never gone back to the store to get bigger boxers.
"I mean...it's pretty much what it sounds like."
"It sounds like an asshole who likes to chase fat people to make them exercise or something stupid like that," he muttered. "Look, can we not..."
He heard Ken sigh behind him. "Shit, she wasn't kidding. You are clueless."
Xander turned to look at him. "Who wasn't kidding?"
"I'm gonna stop talking now."
"No, for once would someone tell me what's actually going on? I know I'm not really part of your little club or whatever, but I'm getting tired of feeling like everyone's tiptoeing around me with all these big secrets that I'm not allowed to know about. I don't know why else you'd be putting up with me if you didn't believe it, but that prophecy thing has to be bullshit. All Darshan cares about is that I swing a fucking sword until I fall on my ass or puke, never mind if I have a clue why I'm doing it. Ling tells me stuff, but she's just...too nice to me and it doesn't make any sense. You treat me like I'm an idiot, which is warranted, because I am. And Cee..." Xander choked on her name, the sudden recollection of the feeling of her lips on his and her hands squeezing into his soft sides destroying all rational thought in his head. He let out a quick, shuddering breath and turned back to his dresser, away from Ken's sharp stare.
"Dude, are you okay?"
Xander closed his eyes and said nothing.
"Ling made you a diet tea, didn't she?"
He shook his head wearily, resigned to the fact that there would be no secrets he could keep from these people.
"Just sayin', 'cause you seem unreasonably paranoid right now, and that's one of the things Ling always says to look out for with certain herbs, so..."
"I'm not paranoid."
"Look, I'm sorry I said anything about anything, alright? Are you ready to go?"
Xander sighed. "No. I need to get my bathroom stuff. I'll be right back." He grabbed one of the plastic grocery bags that was shoved in the space between his dresser and his bed and left the room.
The lights were off in the bathroom. He'd thought he'd left them on yesterday, but supposed that maybe the cleaning people had been in that morning. He flicked the switch and heard a "pop!" as the bulb in the overhead fixture burst. Great, he thought, now I'll have to bring a flashlight. If I even get to come back here before the start of next semester. Geez, what if I don't? It was still early afternoon, though, so the small bathroom was partially illuminated by the weak sunlight streaming in through the frosted glass windows and reflecting off the dull green ceramic tiles of the floor and walls.
Xander walked over to the shelves set into one of the walls and squatted down to access the little cubby where he kept his things. He glanced at Adrian's cubby with a bitter sneer, noticing that his roommate had left his scale there over the break. He would bring it into their room every Tuesday evening, set it in the middle of the floor, and step on. And every Tuesday evening, Xander would hunch lower over his keyboard as the robotic voice intoned Adrian's stats. The last Tuesday before break, Adrian had brought the scale in right after he and August showed up to "watch a movie." He had told her that he needed to perform his weekly ritual to make sure that he was on track before they could begin.
"One. Hundred. Eighty. Seven. Eleven. Percent."
Xander had actually stumbled bending over for his laptop bag as he heard the numbers and realized that, at exactly two hundred pounds over that number, the only thing he'd get if he tried to step on that scale would be an error message. He'd fled the room quickly that night.
And now...
The bathroom door swung open. Xander caught an inexplicable whiff of what might have been sewage. Was the drain backed up again?
"I'm coming, okay?" He tossed his shampoo, body wash, toothbrush, and toothpaste into the bag and stood up to tell Ken that he was seriously impatient.
But it wasn't Ken. A small blonde woman stood at the doorway, her hands on her hips, her head tilted slightly to one side as she stared at him.
"Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know you were still..." But she didn't look like one of the college's cleaning staff. Her faded jeans hung low on her hips, allowing a few inches of toned abdomen to show between her waistband and the hem of her tight black top. Her pale hair tumbled down over her shoulder, and, though it was hard to tell in the shadows that collected near the door, she appeared to be wearing deep red lipstick.
Xander's heart thudded. "Wh-who are you?" The stench intensified, and he absently wondered if he had somehow missed people working on the sewers outside his building. Or...
The woman slowly strutted over to him, her hips swaying seductively from side to side. "You know who I am, Xander," she cooed in a familiar voice. August stepped into the light and smiled sweetly at him. "I missed you," she said, reaching out a warm hand to caress his cheek. "I realized how silly I was to reject you, so I came back to tell you how sorry I am and beg for your forgiveness." She wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself into his body.
Xander froze at the feeling of her tiny form squishing into his softness. He stared helplessly into her eyes - August's beautiful eyes, not the black eyes of an imposter - and whispered, "But...but you..."
"I made a mistake," she admitted softly, and he caught a cloying, fruity scent emanating from her hair. "You're the sweetest guy I've ever known, Xander, and you're so sexy..."
He grimaced.
Her eyes narrowed. "I see." And suddenly it was Cee standing there, all flame-colored hair and green-gold eyes, her lithe body pressing into his fat one. All his breath left him. "I'm what you really want, aren't I, Xander? It's okay, you don't have to say anything...you know I already know." She tapped her temple with a finger and grinned, and then her hand drifted down his torso, tracing delicate patterns until she reached the bottom of his belly where it hung over his pants. Xander shuddered as her fingers ran slowly back and forth over the soft blubber, teasing and tickling, and then sunk into his flesh, grabbing a huge handful of his fat. "This is what you want, isn't it? It's what I want, too. I want you...all of you...more of you..." She leaned in closer, her lips barely an inch from his own, and...
The door slammed open and he heard an inhuman shriek as Cee was ripped away from him. He blinked and saw that she was gone and Ken was on the floor straddling a grey and withered humanoid shape. A rusty orange ball of energy flamed in Ken's left hand, and he spoke a few words in that deep, rumbling tongue that vibrated Xander's teeth in their sockets, and slammed the energy into the thing's chest. A wave of heat that smelled of a grassy field baking in the sun blasted through the bathroom, and the thing was gone - no ashes, no dust, no nothing to show that it had ever been there.
Ken got to his feet. "Get your shit. We gotta go. Now."
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