Denial isn't a weight loss technique, and our pair is really starting to wish it was...

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Maz © & Artwork:

Clyde ©, Riley © & Writing:

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“I swear to the Gods Riley, if y-“

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“Riley, you didn’t…” Maz said, looking both shocked and annoyed at the vibrant roo. This same kangaroo had just taken a picture of Clyde and Maz sitting at their sizable ‘lunches’, though it was more of a buffet in table form if anyone was honest. The first round of a buffet, that is… Since we’re being honest and all. Clyde was glaring, a look that could set houses aflame from miles away. Maz was starting to glare too, the tiredness of the weeks of school making him cranky… Not to mention hating just how he looked in all of the candid shots Riley insisted on taking over the last year. “You did, didn’t you?”

“Of course he did, Mazaku,” Clyde replied coolly, leaning over to the side of the table and scooping up Riley’s bag. The roo had forgotten it in his haste to get a picture, and with the way Clyde was glaring at him… This might have been a larger mistake than he thought. “Now I will not stoop to your level Riley, but I want to; badly. Do that again, and you will find your bag… Missing.” Clyde said, his glare and tone showing that the llama was not kidding.

“Yeah, yeah…” Riley said, rushing on over to Clyde and scooping the bag out of the llama’s paw. He rather tried to, but Clyde still had some strength in his paw, and held the strap firm, much to the chagrin of the bright kangaroo trying to escape from the situation. “What? Clyde, I have class. Come on, let me go.”

“I’m not kidding Riley. Do that again, and we will have a problem.” Clyde said, his tone still cold and angry, but his glare serious. This wasn’t the usual annoyance… No, this was actual anger from Clyde. A rarer occurrence than it had been, but Riley knew it when he saw it. Giving a swallow and a light nod, Riley nearly fell over when Clyde let go of his bag suddenly, all that pressure just about sending him sprawling. “You should probably avoid Mazaku and myself for a few days.”

“Yeah, Riley… Maybe give us some space, okay? You keep taking those pictures and we have tests to study for. Clyde can’t always be mad, and I can’t always be looking out for a camera…” Maz agreed, too at the roo.

“I can always be mad about paparazzi Mazaku. Quite easily, in fact.” Clyde cut in, still glaring at Riley.

“Fine, sorry, jeez… You two are no fun,” Riley just shrugged and then bounded off to class. He would apologize properly later; he always did, but in that moment? It just felt like the pair were overreacting to what was just a harmless picture. Riley was always taking them after all, and had been pretty much since the start of the second year of school. No one ever saw the pictures aside from Riley’s roommate, but even that one extra set of eyes was enough to make Clyde blanche, and Maz… Well, Maz wasn’t too far off from reacting that same way too. The reasoning for that reaction was as plain as day if you were Maz or Clyde… Or if you saw them, and remembered what they looked like a couple years ago.

The two had gotten fat.

Now they weren’t the biggest or the fastest growing, not by any stretch of the imagination. Nowhere near it. However, they were growing a lot more than they had thought they would be, which was at all. There was no denying it; that ship sailed at the start of the second year when Maz and Clyde had come back from their summer break having not lost an ounce, and with whole new wardrobes at that. Now in the spring of their second year of college, with time and experience allowing them a bit more time leeway with their studies, there were less excuses for not hitting the gym than there had been in the hell of the first year. Sure classes weren’t easy and there were plenty of sleepless nights of studying till the wee hours of the morning. But still, it wasn’t enough to stop them from having a free day now and then, as well as time to keep their suite clean and even to cook now and then. None of that mattered though, as the pounds were still finding their way onto the pair, and at a faster rate than they had the year prior. Nothing they did; eating healthier, trying to work out in their apartment, even just not eating as much, nothing worked. It was fruitless, because a year of stress eating and binging during study sessions had gotten them used to it, and there was no breaking that habit now. Habits were part of making it through college after all, and a habit like eating the ‘garbage’, at least by Clyde’s standards, they had been? That wasn’t going to be broken easily.

“I swear… You made a mistake with Riley, Mazaku. He is nothing but a pain.” Clyde said after a minute, reaching for his first sandwich and taking a large bite of it after he spoke. Clyde was stress eating again, of course, as he had a test coming up in a couple days and he was worried about it. Maz didn’t reply right away to that, as he too was eating; he had that same test and he wasn’t exactly comfortable with that fact! Stress eating was their combined coping mechanism now, and studying while eating had become something of a habit. They both did it; much like many in the school did. A quick look around the cafeteria showed how many did as they did… And the results it was having on them. “He is never going to stop snapping those pictures, is he?”

“I don’t think you could stop Riley from doing anything…” Maz said, a shrug on his voice as he began pouring over his notes once again, trying to cram in all that knowledge he had written down once again so that he could hope to pass the tough test in just a couple days. “Like, Riley is just a force of nature. Kind of, I guess, uhm…”

“Like our appetites have been, maybe?” Clyde said, a forlorn chuckle on his voice as he did. Maz let out a light chuckle too, though he was just about as upset about that joke being more fact than humor. “At least we haven’t hit Dustin levels of losing control, right? I heard that he finally got removed from the football team after getting stuck in the locker room door.”

“Seriously? He got that fat?” Maz said, looking up from his notes in shock.

“That is what I heard, yes,” Clyde replied, nodding. “I believe it too. Take a look around and see the others here.” Clyde continued, nodding towards the cafeteria. Maz complied and looked around… And saw that he and Clyde were far, far from the only ones bloating up thanks to two years at NSU. Tight clothes, peeking stomachs, and plumber’s cracks abound all over the cafeteria, and those were just the freshman. Once you got to juniors, and seniors like Dustin… Well, things were looking somewhat dire. Wobbling stomachs, bouncing chests, double and sometimes triple chins, clothes with more X’s on them than Maz dare count; all of that was common. It was almost normal at the school, once one reached junior year, to have gone through a few wardrobe changes. Clyde and Maz had sworn they would avoid this, separately of course, but they were going down the same road as so many around them. Slower, thankfully, and with a lot more resistance than some of their classmates; a bear Maz remembered from their freshman orientation looked more like an elephant now, having totally gone to seed. That, however, was just NSU, or so it was said.

New SaggingTon University. The school was arguably the best in the world for game design, architecture, and engineering, but it was in the fattest town on the entire planet. The average, average, citizen of New SaggingTon weighed over 400 pounds, and things just spiraled heavily from there. Of course, the town was also one of the top 3 wealthiest in the world, as well as a tourist destination that was on the bucket list of countless furs around the world. To own a restaurant in the town was to show true success; there was a waiting list that was over a decade long just for a permit there. NSU was somewhat separated from the obese mecca of New SaggingTon proper, in between the seaside town and the closest major city about 50 miles away, but it was still more New SaggingTon than metropolitan. After all, all the food of the school came from the port town, as did the teachers, staff, and most of the students there too. Out of towners weren’t very common, but they were there… And every single one wound up blending in with the natives by the end of their second year. So the story went, and so the story was playing out in real time for Clyde and Maz. There was no denying that fact either; it just was happening, and neither were really capable of, or trying anymore, to stop it.

“Yeah, uhm… Shit Clyde, it really is just as they said when we got here huh?” Maz said after a few moments of silence, looking around the room some more. Dustin was there, as always, the Clydesdale sitting and hogging out while surrounded by the football team as they all watched the hog of a horse eat. He was always there; he had a table all his own and the football team was always around him, egging him on to eat more. Eat more he always did, right along with the other big ‘Senior Eaters’ as the younger classes called the truly fat seniors of NSU. Heavy moobs spilling out of a tank-top bounced with every movement of his arms, slabs of fat that looked more like rolled out dough than biceps rubbing along them to bring more foot to that fat, long snout. His belly was resting on the table today; there was a game that night for the football team, and that meant lots of rubbing on Dustin’s stomach for good luck. Superstition, sure, but the team believed in it… And many of the ‘Senior Eaters’ were all part of this ritual for the team. So that meant on game days, there were over a dozen furred or scaled stomach resting on tables on one side of the cafeteria, all being crammed full of food by an eager sports team and rubbed on by the ones not feeding those guts for good luck. Maz had thought the tradition was odd and kind of weird the first time he had seen it, but now a year on? Understanding that the school was beside a town where weight was status and fat was more than normal, but expected? Well… It made a lot more sense, and it really, really, really made him want to diet. No way he would wind up being one of those by senior year… Not a chance.

“Yes, it was as they said…” Clyde replied, spotting where Maz’s eyes had wandered and following them. The llama made a face as he saw the ritual, shaking his head and then returning to his studies as though he had seen an awkward moment of affection between a showy couple rather than something a sports team did to prep for a game. “And honestly? I blame all of this common food for it. Nothing like this would have dared to be on my plate before coming here. Now though, with you influencing my tastes… Mazaku, part of this is your fault, I think.”

“Wait, what?” Maz said, turning to Clyde with a frown. “You can’t be serious man. How could any of this by my fault?”

“Well, I did tell you that I wanted not to stay with anyone for my suite, and that I planned on cooking, yes?” Clyde replied, his voice not angry but his tone… Showing that there was annoyance, and deep-seated annoyance at that, behind his words. “You showed me all of this commoner food, and kept on bringing it around. I would have never known about it were it not for your interference, nor Riley’s for that matter…” Clyde continued on, still sounding annoyed but a bit less sure of his point as he continued to speak. “I would have stayed eating my salads and ignored all of this… Riff-raff up in the suite without anything interrupting my studies. I could have continued to wear my shirts, my previous jacket, my lovely skinny jeans… And yet here I am, now with this,” Clyde said, his paws going down to what had firmly become a gut and giving it a shake. The fat there, pure fat, wobbled heavily in his paws, bouncing up and down with every shake and making his chair creak lightly under his weight. He had to have put on at least 50 pounds by now, same as Maz, and it was showing in a big way. Gone were his truly designer outfits now; he was wearing just the fanciest larges that he could find, and getting tailored clothes adjusted to fit his increasing size fairly regularly. It showed, of course, but the llama was more angry about his ruined style than the weight if he was completely honest. He had loved to dress nicely, and that was being ruined by all of this peasant food! “And it is because you gave me so much of all this peasant food.”

“Well, Clyde,” Maz said, his voice annoyed just a little. The dragon had been talked down to like this for two years now, and it was really grating every time it happened. It was less frequent, but… Maz wasn’t in the mood for it right now. He hadn’t slept enough, the test was coming, and he just wanted a weekend of games and some time to relax. “That ‘peasant’ food you keep complaining about, and have been for weeks now… You keep getting it. I’m not putting it in front of you, so it’s your fault.”

“But you showed it to me, Mazaku,” Clyde replied, his annoyance rising as he turned on the dragon. “I can understand you having it, a dragon who couldn’t even keep his bloodline clean… Bu-“

“Wait, wait, what did you just say?” Maz said, his voice spiking a bit in anger and stunned shock as he heard that. Clyde had always been a pompous ass, but purist like this? That was a new one, for sure.... “You did not just say what I think you said, did you?”

“Uh… Shit,” Clyde said, and then lowered his head and sighing. “I did, I can admit that.”

“You really just said that?” Maz said flatly, almost disappointment in his voice now that the initial flare of anger had ebbed. There was a bit of sadness in his eyes as he looked at Clyde, trying to read just what had been said. “Like, you really just said that? I can’t believe that…”

“I did, I did, and I apologize for it.” Clyde said, not making any excuses. He really was sorry; he hadn’t meant to say that out loud. He wasn’t a purist, not in the least, but when raised by parents who were… Sometimes that part of his upbringing came out when he was angry, and he hated that it did. It had cost him a couple potential friends earlier in life, but he had kept talking like that in check. Why it had slipped now, he didn’t know… But he really, really, really didn’t think like that. He hated thinking that it was even possible he could. It was just a habit from being around his parents… A bad one that he really wanted to break. “Really, I am truly sorry. My parents talk like that a lot, and it just… It slips out of me sometimes because of them. I have not and will not think like that.”

“But you still said it,” Maz continued on, looking at Clyde with almost studying eyes. There was anger behind them, of course, but more there was almost pity. How Clyde had come to think that was okay, or even could be uttered, without repercussions. “That was messed up Clyde, like really messed up. How can you think that’s okay to say?”

“Yes, I know… And I’m sorry. I don’t think it’s okay, really,” Clyde said, still keeping his head down in submission. “I really… I’m sorry Mazaku, promise. I’m trying to get away from their influence and by my own llama, but erasing all of that is hard. You should hear them when they see hybrids on the street…”

“I don’t think I want to, thanks,” Maz replied coolly, still staring at Clyde. He did pause a bit when he heard the part about Clyde’s parents however, looking almost thoughtful when that little bit of knowledge was shared. “Your parents really think like that?”

“Why do you think I am a pure llama?” Clye responded, and Maz… Well, Maz understood that much. “I really, truly don’t think like that Mazaku… Uhm… Maz. I’m sorry, truly. If I can do something to make that right, please let me know and I will do it.”

“Well, you can do two things to make it up to me, maybe three. Stop complaining about the commoner food you’re shoveling down; it’s exhausting. Give me space for a bit too please, just for a bit.” Maz said, pulling out a pair of headphones so that he could be alone with his thoughts. He was just hurt and upset with Clyde now, not angry. Sure, most of the blame lie with Clyde’s parents in this, and the dragon knew that. However, it still stung… And that wasn’t going to just magically vanish. “That… You hit a nerve there Clyde, that was really not okay of you. You want to apologize and make things right, and that’s fine, but I can’t just be okay right away. That I can’t keep my bloodline clean? That was a really low blow.”

“I…” Clyde started, and then sighed and shrugged. “Yes, you are right. It was a low blow, and it does need something to make it right. Okay, Maza-… Maz, I’ll give you all the space you want. I have a friend I can room with for a little while. The suite is all yours.”

“Wait, you’re giving me the suite?” Maz said, his headphones nearly in his ears, music already going, but something about that sentence made him take pause.

“That is what you want, right? Space? That seems to be the best way to give it. You get the suite.” Clyde responded matter-of-factly, seeing nothing wrong with that offering. “I really am sorry, and that should show it right?”

“Uh… Yeah, that shows it a lot. That suite… You paid for that whole thing, and you’re just gonna give it to me to apologize? For as long as I want it? I couldn’t take that from you; that’s totally not fair… I just meant don’t talk to me for a bit today so I can think and get over it. Not like, you leave or anything… Besides, you’re calling me Maz all the sudden. That’s a big deal right there.”

“Well, I wanted to show you that I really am sorry,” Clyde said, nodding. “My parents may think that way, and I may say things that way sometimes when I am angry because of all my time with them breathing down my neck… But I do not share their way of thinking, and I want to make that clear to you. I’m no purist, and certainly not speciest like they are. I mean, you have… As much as your influence has been a detriment to my waistline, you have been… Not terrible company.” This… A compliment from Clyde. A compliment from the llama who saw himself above all of the other students in the school. It was a shock that nearly made Maz faint on the spot. “So I would like to keep that company. You, at the very least, can handle Riley better than I can. And as much as I do blame you for showing me commoner food… Most of it has been so good I haven’t been able to put it down. I still do not understand your obsession with burgers, but meat pies? Pizza? Macaroni and cheese? You showed me all these things, and I would have never seen those. Plus, you have helped me adjust to life outside of being so… Coddled, as you called me the other week. So I would prefer to not have you hate me.”

“I don’t… Crap.” Maz said, putting headphones back down onto the table and looking right at Clyde. There was plenty the dragon wanted to say, to ask, but he figured that Clyde would share in good time. He’d shared plenty today after all; more than ever before. Maybe this was him softening, and a mistake or two… Maz could forgive that. Eventually. “Don’t ever say that to me, or anyone, ever again. I don’t care how mad you get, don’t do that.”

“I promise, never again. I was talking to my mother last night, and she went on a rant about how I was sharing a room with an ‘unclean’ like you… And it was just still in my head. I really, truly am sorry.”

“Your mom said that? Seriously?”

“Yes, she did…” Clyde said, looking down at the table with a sigh. “Her and my dad have been on my case, and the dean’s, to get you out. The dean has stood fast, and I did against her too last night. I have no idea why I said that… It just came out.”

“You defended me to your mom? Seriously? Like… Seriously?”

“I did, yes,” Clyde said, nodding once more. “She wanted me to lie to say that you were stealing, because… Well, I won’t repeat what she said, but I told her no. We got into a fight, and it ended with us agreeing not to speak for a while.”

“Jeez, uhm…” Maz said, and now wasn’t sure how upset he should be with Clyde. The llama had said something fairly reprehensible, sure, but he had been parroting his parents. Parroting parents that Maz had actually never heard anything about really; this was the most he had learned about Clyde in the two years nearly they had lived together. “You really have parents like that?”

“Worse, actually. I have been… Well, my complaints about the commoner food? Honestly, I see it just as food normal furs eat, but I have no idea what else to call it but commoner food. My anger when we first roomed together? Not because you were who you were, but because I was promised a room alone and told by them for months I would be alone. My need to just be the best? A lifetime of being told I was the best, that money bought everything…” Clyde sighed after he finished that little bit and then shrugged, looking out over the cafeteria. “We are products of our environments after all, and mine was not… Not the best.”

“I didn’t know all that Clyde, jeez… Uhm, well, look. You can call ‘commoner food’ just food you know. And don’t bring up stuff about hybrids.”

“You aren’t the first time I’ve had my foot in my mouth about that, actually… Not by far. I just never did it to someone I liked before.”

“Wait, liked?”

“Well, I think we are friends by this point, right?”

“Uhm… Are we?” Maz asked, not sure if he knew the answer himself.

“I would consider you a friend after two years, Maz. If you do not feel the same, that is okay. I know I am not exactly easy to get along with.” Clyde said, just shrugging as he spoke before taking another bite of his sandwich. Oh he was going to be stress eating for the next few days after this one…

“I mean, yeah, I would think so. But you’re not exactly like… The friendly type Clyde. Like, you just sorta are always very harsh and blunt and stuff.”

“I’m trying to not be. You got me to say Maz, after all.” Clyde said, a bit of a grin on his face. “Granted, it took be parroting a purist to do it, but you did it.”

“Yeah, I did… And you did. Look, don’t do that shit,” Maz said, and sighed himself. “Don’t leave the suite, you can stay. Just… Spit purist bullshit like that again and you really will have a solo suite like you wanted.”

“I won’t, I can promise that. I’m staying here for all breaks from now on after the conversation last night, That, and seeing how much it hurt you… I never get the chance to see what those words do, so as much as it hurt you, you taught me something else new today. So thank you, and I am again, sorry for saying what I did.”

“Fine, fine… Just get good notes for me from Jameson tomorrow.” Maz said with a bit of sarcasm in his voice.

“Seriously? You said you’d do t-“ Clyde replied, panic in his voice… Sarcasm was not one of his strong suits, and Maz knew that very, very well.

“Clyde…”

“Fine, fine…”