Blimp Truckin' in the Snow

(CW: Inflation, Intimacy)

Commission for Glitch50

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Glitch alternated between standing at the edge of the pavement and sitting on the metal bus stop seat. When he stood up for too long his legs itched and his ankles hurt, but the cold weather had chilled the bus seat and when he rested on it for too long his cheeks and thighs became numb and sore. February was a good time to be bundled up at home, under the covers, with hot chocolate and a video game or a book; it was a terrible time to wait outside for a bus.

The sound of distant thunder roused his attention. He looked up expecting a storm, but was greeted by the painted side of an enormous hauler truck. He recognized the paintwork. A comically large blimp being ridden by a wolf with its tongue lolling out, rendered in reds and blues, the favourite colours of its painter. Once Glitch had an inkling who the truck belonged to, the voice which followed was a warm and familiar distraction from the cold he had been enduring for the last two hours.

“It’s mighty frigid to be waiting out in the middle of nowhere, buddy. Can I give you a ride?”

The voice belonged to a shiny, rubberised timber wolf. A friend of Glitch who he had met only a few months ago, who acted like they had been fast friends for decades. He was somewhere in his thirties, with a winning smile and a beautiful sheen. Glitch was friends with many inflatables, professionally and personally, but none of them were as captivating to look at as Brandon. By the time Glitch realized he had been staring, Brandon was already tilting his head to give him a quizzical stare in response.

“Can you hear me down there?” He called out from the truck cab. It was an enormous thing. A rectangular metal behemoth on wheels, burning through its fuel to belch out hot vapour and exhaust. It made sense for Brandon to drive a machine so big, he wouldn’t fit in anything else. But with the way he squeaked poking his upper torso to talk, body puffing over the rim of the rolled down window like bread puffing over the edge of a baking tin, Glitch wasn’t so sure he fit in the large truck either.

“I’m heading into the city, is that on your way?” Glitch asked.

Brandon opened the cap and helped Glitch inside. He was immediately struck by how spacious it was. Whenever Brandon talked about driving his truck, he always referred to how he struggled to fit in the seat, and how his puffy body would press into the steering wheel to flare the horn if he didn’t watch his body pressure carefully enough. To Glitch everything felt massive and overly spaced out, he might as well have been in a giant’s den.

“I never knew you took this route, but then again, I don’t know much about trucking,” Glitch confessed. He rubbed his arms to try and get some heat circulating through his body. The inside of the cab was heated, but the pervasiveness of the winter season kept a steady reminder and prevented him from fully warming up.

“Don’t usually, but some big spender wants me to haul a bunch of helium tanks to the big city. Must admit, I’ve been tempted to crack a few open and really get a good pump going. But then I’d lose my credibility as the best blimpin’ trucker there is. And I’m more interested in keeping my name good and shiny over a few thrills.” Brandon trailed off. “They look real good though, heavy duty stuff.”

Glitch nodded. He noticed Brandon wasn’t fazed by the cold. His flannel shirt was popped open and draped over his shoulders for decoration, like two tiny matador capes. His body was devoid of fur, or any texture really, besides the smooth of living latex. A brownish grey coloured his shoulders, reached down his back, and presumably covered his buttocks too. The rest was a pale grey, polished to a mirror sheen.

Glitch was lurid compared to the more monochromatic driver seated next to him. He was a short, potbellied hyena. With rust orange fur that shifted to brown at his forearms, calves, muzzle and paws. He had spots of a similar brown hue, and his hair was sunny reddish orange. He worked as a scientist for hire, jokingly referring to himself as a mad chemist, but most of his work was commercial inflation related. He provided chemical mixtures to make people into balloons, like Brandon was naturally, but he had a habit of trying them on himself. He envied the way balloons like Brandon could effortlessly pump up.

The snow had begun to fall again, harder than it had before Glitch left his house.

“Do you usually drive solo?” Glitch asked.

“I do,” Brandon replied with an odd smile.

“So it’s just you most of the time, alone?”

“When it’s just me on my lonesome driving long hours, hauling from A to B, I find a sort of peace in that. Y’know? I’m not sure if it’s because I genuinely like it, or if I’ve maybe made myself like it out of necessity, but there’s a certain calmness that comes to you when you’re by yourself, with the sound of a big engine and sixteen wheels as your only company for days on end.”

“So do you get lonely, then?”

“Doesn’t everyone?” He answered. “That’s not a real answer, uh... yeah, sure I do. I’ve got the radio; I’ve got my phone for keeping up with folks - usually just post pictures of weird things I see on the road though - and occasionally I... ‘meditate.’” His cheeks flushed, the grey rubber taking on a reddish hue. Glitch had never seen him blush. He didn’t know Brandon could blush, being a balloon and all. It made Glitch curious about what else the rubber wolf could do, and what he couldn’t.

“Why are you saying ‘meditate’ like that,” Glitch said with some force behind it.

Brandon drummed his dull rubber claws on the steering wheel. “Well it’s not exactly emptying out myself like those fancy meditation videos talk about, it’s the opposite,” he looked at Glitch out the corner of his eye, a nervous smile crept across his face. “You know I’m a balloon, always have been, and there’s certain things we airy folk like to do to de-stress... I call it meditation, but it’s basically just a long deep breath til I fill the cab.”

Glitch perked a brow. “Isn’t that dangerous?”

Brandon shook his head. “Nope, I’m pretty sturdy. You’d need to try real hard to pop someone like me.”

Glitch sighed. “What I meant was... isn’t it dangerous to blow up like that while you’re driving?”

He erupted into long, sustained laughter. The force of it nearly made Glitch’s fur run from his skin.

“No, you silly thing!” He slapped his belly with one hand, then returned it to the wheel. “I wait until I stop driving for the night or find a bay to stop in, then blow up in my downtime. I know I’m a strange guy, but I’m not stupid.” He paused. “Well, not stupid enough to puff while driving, I don’t even check my phone when I’m at the wheel. No sir, grade A professional trucker here.”

Glitch leaned against the dashboard, and leaned his cheeks into his palms. “I’ve blown up too, though not for long. Part of my experiments. I can make myself synthetic for about a half hour before something gives, and I explode myself back to normal. It’s not an unpleasant result, but I wish I could sustain the transformation for longer. It always feels like there’s something I’m missing.”

Brandon’s nose twitched. “Uh oh,” he slowed the truck, just as a flurry of snow whipped against the front window. His heavy-duty wipers were doing a passable job to keep enough of it away for Brandon to see the road, but the snow fell harder with each passing second, forcing him to locate a nearby truck bay at the side of the road. He pulled in and switched off the engine, leaving him and Glitch without its familiar hum.

“Sorry ‘bout this pal,” Brandon said with an apologetic pat on the shoulder. “If this snowstorm picks up anymore, we won’t be leaving this stretch of road any time soon, let alone be getting to the city. You’re stuck with me until things let up.”

Glitch shrugged; he did like the way Brandon’s rubber hand felt on his shoulder. He hadn’t removed it yet either, it was a comforting, surprisingly warm source of pressure. He wondered if the rest of him was as soft.

“Don’t apologize, Brandon,” Glitch said. “If you hadn’t picked me up, I would be stuck at a bus stop in the middle of a blizzard. Spending some time with you in your cab is miles more comfortable than becoming a frozen hyena on a stick.”

Brandon smiled again, but it was deeper than before. “So spending time with me is ‘comfortable,’ is it?”

“It... is, yeah,” Glitch shuddered, he felt anxious all of a sudden. There was an air of something between them. He noticed it the last time he took a ride from the rubber wolf, but it was still an unspoken thing, intangible. So long as he kept any of his private thoughts consigned to the lock and key of his imagination, he could avoid any potential awkwardness. Now there was a clammy feeling in his spine, and his tongue felt thick and clumsy. Like it was a foreign object that didn’t belong to him, making him unable to speak.

“Hey, Glitch,” Brandon had a weird look to his eyes. If Glitch had to guess what it was, then he would say it looked like fear. But what did a massive, nigh-indestructible blimp of a man like Brandon have to be afraid of?

“Yeah?”

Brandon made a swallowing motion even though he didn’t have any saliva to swallow. “I think you’re a real cutie, y’know that?”

Glitch’s eyes went wide.

“Ah sugar iced tea, I’m sorry. That was out of line, and when you’re stuck with me in the middle of nowhere too.”

Glitch shook his head. “I kind of... feel the same way, you drive me crazy you know. When we met at that stupid hot air balloon show, and you were showing off, flexing and pumping like no one’s business. It took everything I had not to flood the field with drool at how good you looked. It made me a little jealous.”

Brandon leaned closer. “What were you jealous of?”

He was so close, his rubbery chest was almost squashed against Glitch’s nose. There was an ozone smell, the clean, intoxicating scent of fresh latex. “I was jealous of how easily you could just... swell, and I was jealous of well, anyone who got to feel how good your body must have felt pumped up like that.”

Brandon yanked Glitch up by the arm and led him to the back of the cab, where a bed was laid out, along with a few amenities necessary for long-distance trucking. The timber wolf gently pressed Glitch to the bed, and looked him in the eye.

“I don’t want ya to feel jealous.” He said, then bit his thumb and blew.

Brandon’s cheeks puffed out, to the size of grapefruits, hard and shiny with intense pressure. That strain he placed on his own body caused it to swell up all over, taking his already impressively rounded form, and stretching it out like a parade balloon being pushed past the limits of a humanoid shape. He blew himself up like a balloon, his stomach and chest rounding out prominently. He had turned his midsection into a slowly encroaching grey orb of rubber, that bore down on Glitch, and pinned him up to his neck with its warmth and weight.

“Brandon you don’t have to...”

“You don’t to be warm?” Brandon huffed, inflation seemed to be the only thing which could exert the behemoth. If he was flesh and blood, Glitch was sure he would be sweating right now. “I don’t want you catching no hypothermia, and besides, you ‘said’ you were jealous of anyone who got to feel what my body was like when I was pumped up.” He bucked his hips; Glitch bit his lower lip. “Now no one’s felt this big balloon in a mighty long time, but... I want you to be the first in a while. So tell me, how does it feel?”

Glitch’s head was swimming. Electricity coursed through him, and his boxers tented with an erection he swore was capable of igniting and exploding with the amount of energy pent up inside of it. “It’s like being pinned down by the most amazing weight in the world, like... it’s keeping me from flying off and turning into nothing, y’know?”

Brandon laughed. He stuck his thumb back in his mouth and puffed, even harder, his form distorting to match the square corners of the room. His face appeared fatter, as his head sunk into the rubbery deposit that used to be his shoulders, and his neck had ballooned like a tyre to give the impression of a double chin.

“You were complaining your balloon formulas don’t last long enough, so I figured a little first-hand experience might help out with that.”

Glitch smiled. He was warm, toasty, and a little sweaty - but he could ignore that - he was lovingly consumed by a mountain of grey balloon. He couldn’t ask for anything more pleasant.

“Hey Brandon?” Glitch smiled drowsily. “Can we stay like this until the storm passes?”

Brandon puffed again, ensuring he filled as much of the cab as possible, and that Glitch would be secure beneath him until he deflated. “Yeah, we can. And it don’t look like the storm is letting up any time soon.”

They remained that way, talking and exchanging their pent-up feelings, for hours. The only sound besides their voices and the snow outside the bassoon rumblings of a giant grey balloon.