Quick Reads: June & Grant, Dating a Balloon

A gift for a friend featuring some characters we've come up with together, in a setting where people opt in to become human balloons to solve the helium crisis.

(If you recognize the artstyle, please don't out the artist, they'd like to remain private. Thank you!)
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June had never felt small before. He was an average height for a man in his late twenties. His beard and moustache were average length, he wore average clothes, had an average education; everything he had done culminated in an average life. The most un-average thing about him was his long hair. Which he took pride in. That said, he wasn't sure if his job qualified as 'normal'. June didn't know enough people to check whether being an "LB Maintenance Worker" was considered average.

 LB stood for Living Balloon. The miraculous solution to the helium shortage. For all the modern world understood, it might as well be magic. A flesh and blood human being signed up, then turned into a balloon overnight. Not an inanimate, gossamer-thin balloon though, no. A huge, looming, fully sentient parade float of a being. Indestructible, literally capable of reforming themselves if they ever burst, and able to generate almost infinite amounts of helium.

 Living Balloons were definitely not average.

 Neither was dating one.

 June shifted awkwardly at the edge of his bed. He watched his seven foot paramour navigate his bedroom, his body ostensibly human in proportions with a subtle thickness that hinted at his altered state. He had a particularly wide chest, and a globular belly to match. When he was fully inflated he was a site to behold, but June was just as content to watch him amble around the room in nothing but his boxers too.

 Grant laughed. It made his stomach bounce, June blushed.

 "Wow, you're a real airhead huh?" Grant asked. Airhead was the term for 'fans' of Living Balloons. "You have all the calendars," he rifled through June's collection with a mischievous smirk. "Official 'and' unofficial. I think I'm in one of the nudey ones. Heck, this is from my old blog. I didn't even know this was available. What did you think seeing me in the buff, pumped and primed? Just as cute for you without the dragon costume?"

 Grant struck a pose and willed his boxers to tighten. His bulge inflated, and June's heart sped up.

 "I uh, you're hot without it, and... with it, sorry, nervous," June's heart felt like it was about to explode. "You're not creeped out?"

 Grant lumbered toward him. He pushed June on to his back and crawled on the bed, and placed fat pressure-filled hands to either side of his face. June stared up and imagined his date puffed up to his working size, and that made 'his' bulge swell up to touch Grant's overinflated football sized genitals beneath his boxers.

 "What's wrong? You're nervous," Grant had a round, but masculine face. His hair was jet black, shiny like oil on water. With a pair of fluffy mutton chops that drove June wild. He leaned in and June could practically taste the candy-scented spray on his breath that he used to inflate himself after dinner.

 "I don't want to creep you out, you're... really beautiful," June stammered.

 Grant gave June a kiss, then smirked. "Look. I'm an egotistic blimp, so I'll take every last one of your compliments until I go off like the big bang. But I like 'you' as well, this isn't just about me. I can find a fan to pump me up and suck me off any day of the week - but you, June - I want to be 'your' blimp. That means I want you, for you, not just for how big you can pump me up."

 June's heart slowed, he felt better. So he threw his hands behind Grant's head and pulled his face against his. "W-well if you're my blimp, you n-need to be... bigger," he tried to emulate Grant's cocky grin, then kissed him, and blew.

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