Buffet night homage (Patreon)

So this is a fic retelling a story that I read on DA yeeeears ago at this point. It’s one of the fics that actually got me into fic writing in the first place.

I don’t know the name of the story nor the author since I can’t seem to find it anywhere, but I’m sure some of you other oldies from DA have read it too.

I tried to recreate the overall plot and flow of the fic faithfully while still adding my own style to it. Obviously, since I haven’t read the thing in years, I couldn’t remember every single detail, but I like to think I did a pretty good job with how much I did manage to recall. Oh, and thanks to the poll y’all did for me, I went with an ending of my own making instead of the original, which would have been something like ‘...and then she left. Can’t wait for next month!’

Happy 2024, everybody! Let’s learn from the tums of the past to make some glorious tums in the future~.

It was Tuesday night. Jenny was working the bar at Guy John’s, a dusty mid-western buffet that had been around for longer than she’d been alive. Her ma and aunt had worked here, her gramps and his two sisters had worked here, and if gramps had ever wanted to talk about his parents, Jenny would’ve bet that they’d worked here too. Their family didn’t own the place, nor were they particularly close with the owners. The parents never encouraged it either. Every generation, it just seemed to… happen.

For being old as hell, Guy John’s wasn’t a bad place to be stuck at four nights a week. The floors creaked and the windows were foggy, but the kitchen was practically new and the tables had a rustic charm to them that Jenny appreciated. The bathrooms were dim and cramped with flickering lights, but the jukebox had classics mixed with modern hits. The one thing that really sold Jenny on the place, though… was the food. More on that later, though. Trust- there’ll be plenty of time to talk food later.

The town Jenny had been holed up in her whole life was a small town on the outskirts of a big college town. It was just far enough away that most of the students didn’t want to work or live here if they could avoid it, but still close enough that they’d get crowds of twenty-something jack-offs passing through every weekend. Friday nights were especially bad, but the Wednesday night special made that day pretty awful too. Of course, out of the four nights Jenny worked, those had to be two of them. At least she didn’t work Saturdays as well. She’d heard that those could get pretty bad.

Still, Jenny couldn’t complain too much. The waves of college dweebs kept the buffet well in the green, and she made a pretty penny off of tips. She was a pretty young lady with booze and who was a pro at emptily flirting with drunk straight men - of course she got some tips~.

That was more of a Friday/Wednesday thing though. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, the nights were pretty much dead. They’d get a few regulars, a few travelers looking for something new, and a few drunkards at the bar. Besides that? Bupkis. Like she said; those college vagrants were keeping the buffet in the green.

Jenny was, for the most part, bored stiff on those nights. At least with the uni kids, she’d get to make some money and break some hearts. She wasn’t about to flirt with a forty-something man on his eighth shot of whiskey, though. That would be a mistake for everyone involved.

Oh, but there was one thing that made certain nights worth it, though…

The bells for the front door clanged. Jenny cast a quick glance at the door and then quickly looked away, though her pulse had picked up by a few beats. It was her favorite regular of all, though she doubted that anyone else would even recognize her as a regular. She only came in once a month - on the first Tuesday of that month. Tonight just happened to be Tuesday, though, and wouldn’t you know it - it was the second of March. In other words, the first Tuesday of the month.

Jenny washed and polished a beer glass while her favorite regular paid for her visit. Guy John’s, as mentioned, was a buffet. Customers would pay a flat amount up-front, then get to eat as much as they wanted for a few hours from a selection of food (as is buffet standard). The only exception here was that they had a separate bar for alcohol. Everything else was part of that one-time up-front payment.

After paying for her right to dine, the woman walked past the bar and to the stairs in the corner of the room. Guy Johns had a second-floor balcony with seating, though the food was all on the first floor. The only time the balcony ever had anyone sitting up there was when the place was extra busy during the holidays. No one wanted to have to climb stairs up and down and up and down to keep filling up plates of food, after all. At least… most people wouldn’t.

While the woman climbed the stairs, Jenny took a moment to check her out. Ah, yes, she looked just the same as always; like a total shut-in. She had on thick-framed glasses, a heavy sweater, some loose-fitting jeans, and some nondescript grey tennis shoes. Her brown hair was done up in a bun behind her head and she had no make-up on whatsoever. But hey, the fashion didn’t matter to Jenny - she liked the authentic look. Also, the woman had a really pretty face and a cute butt. Not that Jenny could see it right now with her sweater hanging down to her fingertips, but… she would. She most definitely would~.

This woman had been coming here for about a year now on the same Tuesday every month to do the same thing. Jenny was fairly sure that she was a college student, but she had never seen her around the campus at all (ok, so she was one of the jack-offs that went to the college as well - so what?) None of that really mattered, though, since Jenny had never spoken to her and likely never would. She was pretty sure that she would prefer to think that no one knew that she was coming here. Why ruin a good thing by scaring off her favorite customer?

Just like always, the woman went to set her hefty purse in the furthest back seat in the corner of the second story. Jenny knew this thanks to there being one spot in her little bar nook where, if she stood there, she got the perfect angle to see up through the banisters at the seat. Was it a little weird to watch someone in secret like that? Sure. Was Jenny going to stop because it was weird? Ha, nope. She was a little pervert and she knew it. Something as petty as morals wasn’t gonna stop her from peeping on her favorite lady customer once a month~.

After the woman set her purse down, she’d head back down the stairs to hit up the buffet for the first time. The buffet was a thing of beauty, by the way. It was loaded with all the fatty, tasty, most artery-clogging foods you could hope to find in a little American mid-western town. Jenny only let herself eat here once in a blue moon since every time she did, she went up a full pants size. Hell, she was still sporting a little muffin top from her last use of her employee discount…

Regardless of Jenny’s waist woes, the woman would get the same thing every time. Guy John’s rotated their buffet line based on the day, but since this regular only came in every Tuesday, she always had the same choices; fall-off-the-bone barbecue chicken, mashed potatoes with more butter than a quart of buttercream, the thickest, goopiest mac n’ cheese the world has ever seen, a seven-layer meat lasagna that can and will stop your heart if you swallow it wrong, and some salad that’s pretty ok. And, every month, Jenny’s favorite would eat the same things.

She’d start with a plate of salad. A full plate of salad. A plate so full that if it had a belt, the belt would’ve snapped. She’d drench the heaping haul of greenery with enough ranch to choke a horse, then carry it back up to her table on the second floor. Once there, she’d take her seat and start to eat.

She ate slowly and methodically. She never put too much in her mouth at once, nor did she ever go for onesie-twosie tiny bites. Every forkful was a deliberately gathered assortment that was carefully inserted into her waiting mouth. One might wonder why this information is important when our girl is just eating a salad; one needs to shut up and wait for when it is important.

It didn’t take long for her to finish the salad. Once she was done, she went back down, got another plate, and filled her plate up with another heaping pile - this time of the lasagna. She loaded her plate up with four hulking squares of the marinara-entrenched slabs of meaty pasty. Then she went all the way back up to her spot, sat down… and started to eat.

Honestly, Jenny couldn’t dream of trying to eat more than one square of the lasagna here. Don’t get her wrong, it was delicious - it was just so thick and heavy. The sheer amount of meat and pasta that was crammed into that slab was so dense that she felt like she’d swallowed a couple of rocks coated in cheese and sauce. Yet here was a woman calmly and methodically working her way through four of those squares - and after the massive pile of salad as well!

Even towards the end of the lasagna pile, the woman didn’t slow down once. Then, when she was done, she stacked her sauced plate on top of her ranched one, got up, and headed back down yet again. Jenny couldn’t help but notice that, despite her maintained eating speed, she was taking the stairs a little slower now. She had a pretty good idea of why that might be, though~.

After getting yet another plate, the woman moved on to her next target; the chicken. She piled up wing after leg after breast after thigh, creating a monument to our finger-lickin’ sins. She also, very carefully, got a cup this time and filled it with iced tea from a massive pitcher we had by the buffet. The iced tea was just like the salad; just ok. What was more impressive about the tea was how this woman managed to carry a cup of it upstairs while managing to hold that hulking haul of chicken with just one hand. She probably had some good arm muscles under that thick sweater of hers to be able to carry the plate like that. Jenny couldn’t help but wish she could get a look for herself at some point…

The plate of chicken didn’t fare any better at weathering the hungry storm that the other two plates had. Despite already having eaten so much food, the woman kept up her slow yet deliberate pace. One could think that she wasn’t even full yet, but on a closer look (like the one Jenny was having~), one could see that eating so much was having an effect on the woman. She was chewing more and more before each swallow, her face was starting to get a little red, and in the right light, Jenny could see the occasional drop of sweat starting to pop up on her forehead. She had also taken to resting her spare hand, which had formerly been lying on the table, on her middle. Her sweater was so bulky that it was still managing to hide the mysteries underneath, but the way her hand was resting on it betrayed that mystery.

It took slightly longer, but the woman did manage to clear her whole plate once again. She set the plate piled high with bones on top of her first two, then drained the rest of her cup of tea. Jenny got a treat when she saw the woman hide a small burp while she shuffled out of her seat. Then, once again… she descended the stairs.

It was clearly getting difficult for her to move around as she had before. The stairs were taken slowly, each step a chore, and the walk over to the buffet was closer to a waddle. Still, Jenny had to admit… that sweater was doing a lovely job, as always. The woman was three plates and likely twelve servings of food in and yet she didn’t look bloated at all. The only reason why Jenny knew this was a lie was thanks to how her sweater now rode a few inches higher than it had when she’d entered and since Jenny had literally watched her gorge herself on enough food to smother a small child.

With the journey made, the woman set out to make yet more mistakes. She got another plate and, this time, went to the mashed potatoes. Jenny started to count as the woman loaded up her plate with unloaded potatoes. One potato, two potato, three potato, four. She lost track somewhere around seven potatoes since the mashed variety is harder to track for quantity. Still, what was sure was that this was yet another plate packed to the very brim with tasty and heart-destroying food.

The trek back upstairs was difficult and slow, and it looked like the woman was panting a little by the time she finally settled back in at her table. Still, she didn’t let that deter her. She set into the potatoes without a moment’s hesitation, scooping up decent-sized spoonfuls of the heavy-yellow starch goop for her mouth to suck down.

Unfortunately, at this point in time, Jenny actually had to attend to a customer for once. It was some new-age dip from California on a journey of discovery or some shit. Jenny would normally milk this guy for every cent he had, but tonight, she just wanted the man gone. This night only came once a month and she was NOT going to miss it to get thirty bucks out of a hippie.

After getting the zesty-smelling bro-guy a White Russian and then practically snarling to get him to leave, Jenny turned her attention back to her favorite regular. Dammit, she was already back at the buffet! Jenny had missed a whole dish! SHIT! Still, it was ok. The last two were always the best, after all…

With all the other offerings tasted, the only food left for the woman to try was the mac n’ cheese, and boy was she getting a taste. It was hard to imagine that someone could get more cheesy noodles onto a plate than this woman just had as she turned to shuffle back up to her seat. While she did, Jenny let her eyes fall down her body. She gave a small smirk. There was that cute butt mentioned earlier~. The lower part of it, at least. She’d probably see the rest of it after this plate~.

Now, Jenny had said that she probably couldn’t eat more than a square of the lasagna, but she KNEW that she couldn’t eat more than one serving of this mac n’ cheese. This stuff was the richest, thickest, most artery-destroying pasta goop she had ever seen. Sometimes when she was on a diet, she’d walk over to the buffet and give the mac a good sniff just to feel full. She felt like if she ever ate a whole plate of the stuff, she’d probably pass out just from how heavy and full she’d feel.

All of this is to say that this woman was really, really something for managing to force down a whole casserole dish worth of the stuff on top of the mountain of buffet fare she’d already eaten.

Just as always, the woman was eating at her usual deliberate pace. Solid forkfuls of goopy, cheesy mac ended up in her mouth, got chewed up and swallowed, and then got replaced by another. Just as she wasn’t overfilling her mouth earlier despite likely being hungry, she wasn’t skimping on her mouthfuls now despite being clearly overstuffed. Her face was clearly red now and beads of sweat lined her neck. She was breathing hard at all times now, her chest working hard behind the thick cloth covering it.

Still, the best part of this dish - and of the night so far - was what her free hand was doing. It wasn’t just resting on top of a sweater bump now - it had moved her sweater up to access what was underneath. And what was underneath? A large, creamy swath of glistening skin that barely budged as the woman massaged it.

As mesmerizing as it was to watch the woman vainly try to soothe her likely furious gut, Jenny didn’t notice that she had finished her full plate of mac n’ cheese until she was slowly wobbling her way to her feet. Getting up was a task in and of itself at this point, which said nothing of the odyssey to get downstairs. Still, she did it - one step at a time.

Jenny found it hard not to stare at this point. Her eyes were glued to the woman’s sweater, watching every time it shifted and the dome of the behemoth underneath became outlined. Even this large and baggy sweater couldn’t hide everything forever. Still, it would have to hide just a little bit more since…

The woman wasn’t done yet.

She’d brought her cup down with her this time, which she refilled. Then she filled up her sixth and final plate with a second hulking portion of lasagna. How did Jenny know it was her final plate? It was because, as mentioned long earlier, this woman did this every month. She ate the exact same things every month, in the exact same order, in the exact same way. It was more certain than death or taxes at this point. Of course, having never spoken to the woman, Jenny didn’t know why she did any of this or why she got a second portion of lasagna instead of anything else. Maybe it was her favorite? Maybe it sat the heaviest in her gut? Maybe she needed more tomatoes in her diet? Who knows? Who cares? It was a pretty girl eating a sixth Thanksgiving-sized portion of food. Who needs a reason?

Just as before, Jenny marveled at how the woman managed to carry the massively overfull plate with one hand in order to carry her drink as well. It was even more impressive this time around thanks to her carrying what was likely close to twenty pounds of food in her gut. She managed to make it back to her table, breathing hard enough that Jenny could swear she could hear it. Then, just as before… she dug in.

This was definitely Jenny’s favorite part. She just couldn’t imagine how, after being that full, the woman could still manage to eat at the same pace as always. What seemed like light eating before now seemed like rapid eating as the woman seemed to struggle with every single bite. She’d completely pulled up her sweater now baring her belly to the world - and what a belly it was~. Large, tight, and shimmering with sweat, it stuck out from her slim frame like a dome. The upper part of her gut stuck out more, looking tense and a little pink, while her lower belly bulged out significantly less before getting cut off sharply by her jeans - which she hadn’t unbuttoned, by the way. She was entirely overglutting herself like this while her jeans cut harshly into her gut. Jenny felt sick if she didn’t pop her button after eating an extra pancake at breakfast, so to see someone muffin-top like THAT without getting sick was entrancing.

But, unfortunately, all good things must come to an end. She finished her final mouthful, set her fork down, and leaned back in her seat, panting and burping into her hand (assumedly, anyways - Jenny was too far away to what anything). She slowly and gingerly massaged her belly, as if worried rubbing it too quickly might make it burst. Then… she pulled down her shirt, stacked her final plate with the others, and made to stand up. She took her purse this time, signaling that this was, just like the other times… the end.

The final trip down the stairs seemed excruciating. She took a few seconds on every step, resting a hand on her middle as if to hold it. The sweater was doing its very best to hide her food baby, but it was clearly outmatched at this point. She finally made it to the bottom of the stairs, face red and out of breath. Then… to Jenny’s surprise, she turned to waddle over to the bar. She panicked a little, not expecting the sudden deviation from the script. She hurriedly looked away from the oncoming cutie and waited until…

“Um… excuse me?”

Oh lord, her voice was attractive too. So soft and cute! Jenny wasn’t ready for this. She glanced up at the woman and put on her best detached smile. “Hello! Can I get you something?”

The woman wouldn’t meet Jenny’s eyes, glancing away sheepishly. She mumbled quietly, barely audible over the 2000’s pop playing in the background, “C-Could I get two pints of beer, please…?”

Wha… What? “Sorry, did you say two pints of beer? Not shots or glasses or…?”

The bloated cutie just nodded, her face flushed pink as she refused to look at Jenny at all. The bartender swallowed hard. Well… the customer was always right, right? Sh-She might as well pour out… two whole pints of beer…

The woman waited for both pints to be done, fiddling with the hem of her now ill-fitting sweater. Once Jenny was done, though, she hurriedly picked one up. She took just one bashful glance at Jenny, seemed to brace herself, then… brought the glass to her lips.

Jenny could only stare, jaw slack, as the beer disappeared down the small woman’s throat. She could audibly hear her swallowing, could actually hear the angry gurgles coming from her overstuffed stomach as it was filled. With each passing gulp, it seemed like her sweater inched just a little higher as the bulge underneath widened bit by bit.

She finished the first glass within thirty seconds. Without even taking a breath, she set the glass down, grabbed the second one, and started to chug it as well. Jenny couldn’t even breathe. She couldn’t BELIEVE what she was seeing.

It seemed like the first pint had just been filling space inside her packed gut as the second one was making her gut swell almost visibly. The woman clutched the side of her stomach, grunting and wincing. Jenny could only imagine how tight her stomach was right now - how absurdly heavy and painful it must be to fill an already stretched taut gut past its limits. Jenny wanted this swelling and gurgling and moaning to go on forever and ever, but…

It ended. The woman slammed the empty pint glass down and leaned heavily on the counter, panting for breath and groaning. She hiccuped and her hand shot to her mouth. Jenny felt like she should go get a bucket or a trash can or something, but doing that felt like a betrayal - like she didn’t believe the girl could keep everything in after such a bold display. It was a dumb thought that would probably lead to her cleaning up hot girl vomit off the bar, stools, and floor like an idiot, but hey - it was better than gross depressed old-guy vomit, right?

Thanks to Jenny’s faith (probably), the cutie managed to stabilize her belly. She didn’t seem able to stand up straight anymore, but she still reached into her pocket and pulled out some money. She threw it on the counter, then, faster than Jenny thought she’d be able to when she was so heavily bloated, she waddled to the exit without a word.

The hopelessly gay bartender was left just standing there for a few minutes, wondering what the Hell had just happened. Finally, she managed to pull her brain back together enough to start functioning again. What had that even meant? Or did it mean anything? Had the woman just felt like drinking tonight and was shy about doing it while so full? Had she wanted to really push her limits but couldn’t do it with food? Or maybe-

The questions in Jenny’s head were pushed away when she picked up the money the woman had left behind and she noticed that there was a piece of paper slipped in with the bills. What was this? It looked like a note. Had she given it by accident in her rush to pay? Did the words ‘to the pretty bartender’ written on the outside mean anything to-

…Oh. Uh… m-maybe Jenny should have a quick read…

If you can see someone, odds are that they can see you too. Did you like watching up close this time? If you want, you can watch from even closer. You know the day and the table.

💕 Elaine 💕

…

It was a weird thing to say, but… Jenny had never looked more towards a Tuesday night in her life.