First Draft: Gero's Roadtrip

Gero kept his arms wrapped around Tyre’s stomach, as difficult as that was. His shiny blue flesh, badly concealed by his leather vest and ill fitting tank top, almost blinded Gero whenever it caught the sun’s glare. It was like clinging to an oversized exercise ball, except softer. Although his friend’s skin was ostensibly rubber, it rose and fell with his breathing, and it was as pliable as the fat of a regular human or anthromorph... to a degree. Gero felt a blush rise into his cheeks from thinking so intensely on the sensations and appearance of Tyre’s belly, but it couldn’t be helped. Not when they were forced to be so close for his own safety. There wasn’t really any other way for two people to ride a motorcycle without a sidecar after all.

“Alright back there!?” Tyre shouted to be heard over the din of his bike. It was a beastly thing, all fuel cylinders and black metal, suspended from the concrete road by a pair of wheels meant for a monster truck. To move those thick rubber tires, the engine had to be equally as cumbersome. Which meant noise, lots of noise. Gero gave a nod of affirmation to the primary rider, who flashed a small tusked grin back at him from the side mirror.

“Don’t worry,” Tyre continued. “There’s a gas station coming up in a few minutes, we can take a rest once we’re there!” And with that, the tusked, blue rider revved the engine and accelerated. Gero was surprised the metal beast could go any faster than it already had been the entire morning, but didn’t have enough time to finish his thoughts as he squeezed Tyre’s belly for safety.

True to his word, they found a gas station. Disembarked, and hooked Tyre’s motorcycle to a fuel pump. Standing firmly on the ground for the first time in hours, Gero nearly felt his legs give out when he put his full weight on them. A plump blue hand slapped at his back to steady him, followed by a boisterous laugh.

“You’re not at all used to this, are you?” Tyre smiled.

“No, uh. Long journeys across dusty plains first thing in the morning? I’m more of a stay-at-home and play video games type of monkey.” Gero’s tail made a quick arc, and swished around to his front. His short orange fur stood out in contrast to the steely blue sheen of Tyre’s skin, and the vibrancy of the clouds which were fixed to his crown and mimicked the shape of a pompadour. Gero’s friend was a half-giant, specifically the offspring of an orc and a ‘Sky Giant.’ He was head and shoulders above even the tallest humans, possessed thick and sturdy proportions, both traits exaggerated by his enormously fat belly, thighs, and face. When he smiled deeply enough, his tusks would sometimes press into his cheeks. Gero wondered if they could puncture him, he was practically a humanoid blimp... and exceedingly proud of it.

“If you want to go back then I could try and find you a mage, there’s usually one or two near stops like this on the lookout for lost travellers,” Tyre raised his hands to rest them behind his head, which had the unintended consequence of sticking his bouncing blue belly out and into Gero’s line of sight.

“Nah I’m fine. I just don’t get out much,” which was the understatement of Gero’s life. Tyre hadn’t just taken him on a road trip, he had crossed the threshold at the edge of the world and spirited him away to ‘his’ home. It looked astonishingly normal, and redolent of the dry desert roads someone might find in America. If it weren’t for the iridescent mountains in the distance, shining like continent sized jewels, a snapshot of the roadside might have fit comfortably under a google search of Route 66.

“Curious ‘bout the Cobalt Mountains?” Tyre asked.

“Yeah, just a bit.” Gero replied, mesmerized by the way smaller rock formations seemed to encircle the far-off peaks like so many satellites around the earth.

“Well that big one you’re staring at is Levinhearth, and it’s where my folks live.” Tyre walked around his bike while he talked, performing a few routine checks. The contrast between a gigantic motorcycle and a gas station to his left, and a fantasy mountain range to his right, nearly made Gero question whether he had just hit his head getting out of bed when Tyre came to pick him up this morning.

“Do you ever miss it?” Gero said. He gazed at the horizon with a childlike sense of wanderlust, visualizing the myriad wonders that could be waiting just over its peaks and sprawled out across the other side. Of course it could just be a cityscape, as plain as any he’d seen back home, but still he couldn’t suppress his curiosity. His tail swinging in betrayal of his hidden thoughts.

“Nah. My Dads call me often enough, I see them on holidays, and I crash there when I’m nearby. It’s like anywhere you grow up. Everyone else sees it differently to the way you do, and even if it ‘is’ some tourist spot or whatever... to you, it’s just home.” Tyre spoke while disconnecting the fuel pump from his bike. He arched a cloud-hair brow at Gero, unable to ignore the far-off expression he was making at Levinhearth’s apex.

“Yeah... guess so,” Gero responded in a lacklustre manner.

Tyre came up behind Gero. He put his hands on the monkey’s shoulders, and Gero straightened his spine reflexively at his touch. He looked up, to see Tyre’s chin pressed against his barrel-chest and moobs in order to look back down at him.

“Geeeeeeeeeeeero...” Tyre’s tusk-to-cheek grin reared itself, mischief bright in his glowing eyes. “Whatcha thinking about?”

Gero shuffled his feet. “Just... wondering what’s on the other side of your home, that’s all. Wondering what else there is to see.”

Tyre’s cloud-pompadour brightened, that usually meant he had an idea. That made Gero nervous.

“I’ve got a magic spell that can let you see what’s on the other side.” Tyre spun Gero round to face him.

“You do? But I thought you weren’t all that great at using magic... ?” Gero was curious, but his fur stood on end. His friend was up to something.

“Well it’s a real simple spell. Do you want to know what it is?” Tyre brought his face low, eye-level with Gero’s.

At least he was giving him a choice, Gero thought. “... yes,” he answered quietly.

And then Tyre pressed his lips against Gero’s. 

For having someone’s breath flood into him, he found it odd how his own seemed to be taken away. Tyre billowed a stream of air into him, his breath as forceful as a gale wind. It was strong enough to immediately fill out Gero’s frame, inflating him with such ease and simplicity that he might as well have been an ordinary balloon being blown up for a birthday party. Gero’s body was naturally elastic and compliant with the cartoonish act as a consequence of his fixation with inflation, and Tyre knew that, but still. It would have been nice to be asked first.

“There we go.” Tyre smirked, patting Gero’s bulging cheek. “Tyre’s super-secret magical spell: Kissing An Inflatable Monkey When He Least Expects It-cadabra.”

“That’s not an actual spell,” Gero bobbed in the air, his once slender tail now sticking straight out in the form of a tube balloon from the base of his spine... or the curve where his lower back used to be. Anatomy became increasingly distorted and irrelevant the more a person inflated. “And I still can’t see anything besides your fat arms holding me down,” Gero scowled. Or at least he tried to, he seemed to have become squeaky like latex when Tyre blew into him. Furrowing his brows just elicited an angry sounding creaking. “You’d better not let go of me.”

“But then how would you get to see what’s on the other side of Levinhearth?” Tyre cupped his fingers in the spaces between Gero’s, which has become thick and rubbery. He pulled him closer, and blew another ‘kiss’ into his mouth the moment Gero opened it to protest.

Gero couldn’t help release a very quiet whimper. The sensation of his inflatable form stretching under the stress of Tyre’s supernatural lung-power was immense, and it was pleasurable in the most esoteric way imaginable. How could he describe it to someone who had never experienced it? It would be like celebrating the vibrancy of the colour red to someone who could only see in black and white, or trying in vain to communicate the taste of a particular food to someone who had never tasted anything. Gero lost track of time, Tyre could have been blowing air into him for seconds, minutes, hours or days and the chronology would have been lost to Gero.

He just revelled in the feeling. His cheeks continued to bulge. They grew slowly, tougher to inflate than the rest of his body, the hollowed out core of his belly and chest becoming one grand orange sphere. His navel touching the asphalt, and the entire lower half of his body coming to rest and gently bounce against the ground. Tyre gripped Gero’s puffed up hands tighter, himself getting a bit lost in the process too. It wasn’t the first time he had inflated him and if it continued at its current pace, it wouldn’t be the first time he’d popped Gero by accident.

“MmmmphTyre...” Gero managed to speak out, despite the current voluminousness of his cheeks limiting his speech. “I’m getting... full,” speech became harder the bigger he got. It was like a state of intoxication. The more air, gas, water, whatever; the less coherent his thoughts became, and the more singular his drive became. He was still lucid enough to resist the urge to inhale air until he eclipsed the skyline, but he definitely, definitely didn’t want to deflate.

“Oops.” Tyre blinked. He had blown Gero to hot air balloon proportions, his spherical body so taut and stressed by his herculean breathing that it creaked in warning. He noticed that the corner of the gas station’s overhead roof was pressing a corner into Gero’s skin, threatening to pop him if the two grew any closer to one another. So he deftly bounced Gero away, and held him firmly by his round, charmingly useless orb-like hands.

“Nearly... popped...” was all about Gero could muster.

“Nearly went out with a bang, yeah. Anyway it’s time for your flight.” The half-giant began to swing Gero by his arms. A feat impossible by anyone who didn’t have a giant’s strength.

“Wh... no, wait what do you--” a burst of coherence returned to Gero just in time for him to be flung skyward. Tyre and the gas station shrunk rapidly as he ascended, and then a veil of white vapour eclipsed his vision. He blinked, then horrifyingly realized that he had been tossed above the clouds. Air pressure had already begun to thin as his buoyancy negated his harsh upward ascent, and he was met with the complex dichotomy of his pneumatic body squealing as it fought against the urge to rupture and pop; and the innate pleasure of inflation and its constant stretching satisfying that itch for becoming balloon-like in his brain.

Gero rotated in the air. All shiny orange and bloated with Tyre’s breath. He struggled to make sense what he was looking at. He blinked, and then blinked again. As he managed to spin and float upright, he clarified his vision and his breath was stolen for a second time.

An ocean, bluer than he had ever seen in his life. It stretched endlessly into the midday sunlight, with towers of naturally formed crystal jutting out of the water, dazzling glass spears threaded through an immaculate tapestry of water. There were whale like creatures with wings encircling those spears, and so many other mysterious animals that he would never have been offered the opportunity to glimpse if not for his inflated body.

He felt his body groan. It had reached the limit of its elasticity. He felt a familiar vibration begin at the tightest points of his ballooned body. It began at the belly button, and the opposite point where his back used to be, and from the sides. He felt it in the tips of his stubby toes and fingers, and then in his cheeks. His vision became unfocussed as his eyes went all crossed. No longer able to preserve its form with the thinning air pressure, he rapidly grew beyond his current size. Head, hands, feet and tail sinking into stretched, rubbery divots in an orange and tan sphere.

A small tear gave way to dozens of concurrent seams, and Gero exploded with enough force to part the clouds. Featureless scraps of latex rained down around the gas station, where Tyre was waiting.

“Alright, let’s get you back in one piece. You’ve got plenty more places to see, and get popped in before the trip is over.” He readied a patch kit and a bike pump, found the largest scrap of Gero he could find, and grinned. “Lets pump you back up, lil buddy...”