Lily had never been more ashamed of herself.

The two of them were still lying on the floor, the taste of Tom’s cum still in her mouth. She was on top of him, kissing him wherever her mouth could reach. Slowly, she came to her senses, and a shroud of guilt descended upon her. She looked up at Tom, and the feeling intensified when she saw his expression. She’d never seen him look so hurt.

“We… we had a deal,” he muttered. Lily pulled back, sitting up and scooting away from him, covering her mouth as she realized just how badly she’d screwed up.

“I didn’t… I didn’t complain one time, when it was my turn to give something up,” Tom continued, not even bothering to look her in the eye. “You didn’t go a single day before you went back on your word.”

Lily tried to speak, but nothing but a sob managed to escape her throat. She covered her mouth again and rose to her feet, her vision blurry with tears. She turned and ran upstairs into their bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Collapsing onto the bed, she buried her face in a pillow to dull the sound as she wailed in shame.

She was a terrible wife. She had completely violated her husband’s trust. She’d… she’d basically forced herself on him. He hadn’t really tried to stop her, but she knew full well that the magic’s effect on their sex drives meant that he couldn’t think straight one she’d rushed him. She knew that… and it hadn’t stopped her.

He’d given up so much for her, and all she could think about was taking even more. Her cries grew louder, her entire body wretching with each sob. She laid like that for hours, long enough for the sun to go down. Her weeping would subside, then violently resume as she once again thought about what she’d done.

Eventually, there was a knock at the bedroom door. Lily didn’t respond.

“Lily? Are you awake?” came a muffled voice. “I… I’d really like to talk to you.” Slowly, she pulled herself to her feet and trudged to the door, opening it with a slow creak.

Tom’s face turned into a deep frown of pity as soon as he saw her. I must look like a real wreck. She broke down again and threw herself against him. He staggered backwards and the two of them nearly fell to the ground before Lily realized her mistake. She was used to thinking of him like a big, padded wall, someone she could throw her entire weight against to no effect. That wasn’t the case anymore.

Now, she was technically bigger than him. Or she would be in the morning, at least. Her sobs intensified as she hugged him tight, blubbering “I’m sorries” into his shoulder.

Tom wrapped his arms around her, gently patting her back. He wordlessly held her like this until she managed to calm down. It was the first time she’d missed being so much smaller than him, being able to get lost in his embrace.

“I won’t pretend like I wasn’t hurt,” Tom finally said, his own voice cracking. “But… I love you, Lily. And… I forgive you.”

Lily breathed in sharply, desperately trying not to cry again. “You do?” she finally managed to squeak out.

Tom nodded. “I mean. You clearly regret what you did, you know that it wasn’t okay. And… you’re not gonna do it again, right?”

“No! God, no, Tom, I promise.” She backed away from him, crossing her arms in front of her. “It will never happen again. We are… celibate, from now on.” Something inside her scowled at the thought. She balled her hand into a fist, nearly punching herself in the stomach to quiet that part of her.

“Okay. Then, let’s just put this behind us, alright?” He smiled softly. “How about, you go get yourself cleaned up, while I head back downstairs and get started on some veggies to go with the steaks I’ve got in the oven?” For the first time, it dawned on Lily that Tom had long-since gotten dressed, while she was still basically naked, wearing nothing but her panties and an unfastened bra.

She smiled for the first time in hours, and felt herself once again fighting the urge to cry. Not in shame this time, but in love. She threw her arms around her husband again.

“I don’t deserve you,” she sighed.

“You deserve the world. And more.”

* * *

Tom felt awful.

Ever since that night, Lily had been in a deep depression. He was doing everything he could to cheer her up, and now and then he could get her to smile, but it never lasted long. She barely spoke and recoiled from his touch. He tried to suggest booking some gigs to get her mind off of things, but she just shrugged him off. It killed him to see his wife in this state, and it hurt even more to know that he was, in some sense, responsible for it.

Maybe that was overstating things. She wasn’t upset because of anything he’d done. She was upset because of something she’d done. No matter how many times he tried to reassure her that he’d forgiven her, it was clear that she hadn’t forgiven herself. 

If he had just… not said anything, if he’d gone along with it, she’d be happy. He’s her husband; isn’t making her happy the most important thing he could do?

No, no. He was allowed to have boundaries. They’d made a deal, and enforcing the terms they agreed on didn’t make him a bad guy.

So why did he feel like one?

It didn’t help that his libido had once again kicked into overdrive, just like before. His concern for his wife managed to overrule it, but whenever he wasn’t actively worrying, his entire body ached for her.

Stupid fucking curse. 

He’d taught himself some breathing exercises to keep cool when his arousal started spiking, something he especially had to use whenever he found himself around taller women. He still didn’t understand why that, of all things, turned him on so badly. Anytime he tried to think about it, he was overcome with shameful memories of the office bathroom, so he kept the topic as far out of mind as his circumstances would allow.

When he wasn’t fretting over his wife’s depression or trying to keep his own urges in check, he was slowly adapting to life at 5’6”. It wasn’t so bad, really. Higher shelves were out of reach for him now. The “big and tall” menswear store he’d shopped at for years no longer carried anything in his size. He had to be a lot more careful lifting heavy objects; he’d nearly hurt himself trying to lug a stack of file boxes to a storage closet at work, something he’d always done without a second thought. On the plus side, his coworkers had stopped pestering him with questions about his condition, once they realized he wasn’t going to give them any satisfying answers.

Sometimes, he couldn’t shake the vague feeling that people were looking down on him. In literal terms, they were, but he also couldn’t help but feel like he was being… dismissed. Ignored. It was harder to get a clerk’s attention at a store, or to get people to make room for him in a crowd—he’d gone grocery shopping this past weekend, and it had been absolutely exhausting to navigate the crowds, in a way that it never had been when he was his old self. He’d never noticed that back then, people would just reflexively get out of his way.

The hardest adjustment was the same thing it had always been: Lily herself. He was so used to the thin, diminutive woman he’d known for fifteen years. Every time he saw her, every time he looked directly into her eyes without looking down, it felt freshly disorienting (and freshly arousing; breathing exercises…). In some ways, it felt less like they’d met each other in the middle and more like he’d stayed the same while she’d grown to 6’3”.

She just seemed so big.

If he stepped back and looked objectively, Lily hadn’t filled out that much. She had modest breasts, and hips just wide enough to give her waistline a pleasant curve. She’d gained a tiny bit of weight all over, just enough to make everything a little smoother and rounder. Likewise, Tom still had plenty of meat on his bones. They both looked, you know. Average. Maybe Tom was on the skinny side of average, but still.

But for some reason, despite all of that, it often felt to Tom like Lily was… bigger than him. By more than just the extra millimeter she’d stolen.

Breathing exercises.

He couldn’t place what it was, exactly. She wasn’t (meaningfully) taller than him, she didn’t really seem thicker than him. She almost seemed… denser. Or, it was almost like she projected an aura that was larger than her physical form. Even as she was now, melancholy and devoid of energy, Tom still sometimes looked at her lying in bed or curled up on the sofa and felt vaguely… intimidated by her. The way a sleeping lion might still intimidate you if you were trapped in its den.

No, not a lion… When he looked at her, it was as if he could see… something else inside of her. When he thought about how she’d slammed him against the door with surprising force, how she’d torn his clothes open and literally sucked a little bit of the size out of him (breathing exercises, breathing exercises)... when he thought of how she was in that moment, and when he looked at her now, she sometimes appeared to him like… Like a titan. A titan imprisoned and confined, squeezed into a too-small body, her full power suppressed.

Didn’t he want…

Breathing—

Didn’t he want to set her free?

—Exercises.

He could do it. It wouldn’t be hard. In fact, it would feel great. All he wanted was to make Lily happy, right? He had the power to do exactly that. Were his “boundaries” really more important than his wife’s joy?

Of course, it would be a big sacrifice. Of course it would be! It would be awful to get any smaller. He hated the thought of the world rising up around him, of becoming more and more powerless. Of going from “short,” to “puny,” to… less. He hated all of that, and his hatred was exactly why he spent so much time every single day thinking about it.

But… for Lily’s sake, maybe he was willing to take on that burden.

* * *

Lily didn’t know what to do with herself. 

She was grateful beyond words that Tom had forgiven her so easily, but she didn’t deserve it. Even after everything that had happened, all she could think about was how desperately she wanted to keep growing. It had only been about ten days but she felt so sex-starved, absolutely famished for Tom’s cock and the size that would come with it. 

Shame was the only thing that seemed capable of dampening those feelings and, luckily for her, shame was something she had in no short supply. Tom had, once again, been kinder and more loving than anyone could ever ask of him, and once again, all she could think about was how she could take him for even more. The urge was so powerful that she didn’t even want to let him touch her, afraid that even the slightest gesture of affection would rob her of her self-control.

Last time, this had been excruciating. Now? She felt heartbroken. Was this going to be how it was for the rest of their lives? What was even the point of being married then? She couldn’t make love to him, couldn’t touch him, could barely even look at him, and every waking moment she had to confront the temptation to violate his trust.

She’d wondered before why the magic was blessing one of them and cursing the other. Now, she understood that they were both cursed, and she was actually worse off than him. Everything she ever wanted, everything she’d never known she wanted, was at her fingertips. But taking it would mean hurting the one person she loved more than anything. It would mean completely betraying her husband, betraying herself, abandoning any principles she might have for the sake of selfish gain.

So, she’d taken to largely lying in bed, staring at the wall. Or, lying on the sofa, staring at the wall. Chores around the house were piling up, and her already slow career had ground to a halt, but she couldn’t bring herself to care about any of that. She was fully enveloped in a cocoon of self-loathing, terrified of what would happen if she let herself out of it.

“Hey,” Tom’s voice suddenly made her more aware of the world around her. Her eyes looked up to meet his gaze briefly, but she otherwise didn’t react. He sat down on the edge of the bed and she immediately pulled her legs back away from him.

“Lily, I… I’ve been thinking a lot.” Great. He was probably thinking the same thing as her, that there was no sense staying together with things the way they were. “I love you so, so much and… it’s just breaking my heart to see you so upset.”

Here it comes.

“So, I… I’ve decided that…” he continued talking, but his voice diminished to a mumble that Lily couldn’t make sense of. She lifted her head off the pillow to look at him.

“What?”

“I… I said… I’ve decided that you can… you can have a little more of me. If you want.”

Lily’s breaths immediately grew loud and ragged, but she was quick to seize control of herself.

“No. No, Tom. We’re not doing that.”

“It’s okay, really! I don’t—”

“It’s not okay!” Lily shot upright. “I am not going to guilt-trip you into doing this again! I shouldn’t have made you do it the first time! N. O. No.” Tom opened and closed his mouth several times, but no words came to him, so Lily continued. “Besides, it wouldn’t fix anything. How much more would you give me, an inch? Six inches? A whole fucking foot?” Now it was Tom’s turn to start breathing more heavily. Lily felt bad that she was upsetting him like that, but she needed to make her point. “It wouldn’t matter! We’d hit whatever new limit you set, and then we’d be right back here, with me desperate for more and you even smaller. Long term, it’s all drawback and no gain.”

“I want to see you get big—better! I just want to see you get better, Lily. And I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen. I’m your husband, I made a vow to always put you above anything else.”

Lily decided to take the risk of grabbing Tom’s hand, clenching her teeth to beat back the wave of lust she felt as her skin touched his. “Tom. I know that you’re trying to help right now. But you need to listen: this is only making it harder for me. I can barely keep myself in check, and you’re adding fuel to the fire. I made a vow to you too, and I can’t let you hurt yourself for my sake. So please, please, just drop it.”

Tom pulled his hand back, nodding sadly as he got to his feet.

“Who knows,” Lily said. “Maybe the curse isn’t permanent. It showed up out of nowhere, maybe it’ll go away on its own, too. Maybe we just have to wait out the clock.” For some reason, Lily doubted that.

“Yeah… yeah.” So did Tom. He sullenly left the room, closing the door behind him. Lily laid back down.

Although she’d spoken harshly, she was touched that he was willing to give up more of his size for her sake. She wished she didn’t have to send him away like that. She wished that, at the very least, she could’ve held him in her arms.

…Wait a second.

Did he almost say he wanted to see her get bigger?

* * *

Tom was thinking more clearly.

It was the following morning. He’d gotten up early, wanting to spare Lily (and, to be honest, himself) the pain of them both being in bed together. It might be time to think about trading in our king-size for separate beds. He was sitting at the kitchen table, wearing pajama pants and one of his old t-shirts; it was way too big to wear outside, but it still worked well enough as a night shirt. He idly scrolled through his social media feed on his phone while munching a bowl of cereal, when he suddenly picked his head up, alerted by the sound of creaking steps.

He smiled hopefully as Lily appeared from the other room, and his spirits lifted when she smiled back. She… actually looked happy, for the first time in over a week.

“Morning,” she said as she entered the kitchen, sleep still hanging on her voice.

“Morning! Hey, about yesterday. I’m sorry that I poked the bear like that. You were totally right, feeding this thing isn’t going to solve our problems. I guess I was just… feeling a little desperate to find some way to help you.” 

Lily’s smile widened. “I know. You’re such a sweetheart. And pretty cute, too.” She punctuated her sentence with a wink. 

Tom blushed at the compliment, and blushed harder as Lily surprised him with a kiss on the cheek. He felt his heart-rate shoot up and floundered to gain control over himself.

“That’s um… kind of dangerous, isn’t it?” he asked.

“Maybe a little. But, I was up late last night thinking, and I’ve come to a decision. We’re not gonna beat this thing by dwelling on it or pouting about the things we can’t do anymore. I think we both need to just… learn to be content with the amount of contact we can get away with. Learn enough self-discipline that we can just stop before things get out of hand. And the only way to do that is by practicing, right?” Tom was surprised by how calm she seemed; Lily didn’t appear to be struggling against herself at all. Tom couldn’t say the same.

“I can maybe learn to live with never sleeping with you again,” she continued, “but I don’t think I can live with never kissing you again.” To prove her point, she leaned down once more, this time pressing her lips to his. He immediately grew hard and pulled away.

“Okay, okay, I…” he swallowed. “I see your point, and you might be right. But we need to be careful. It… could be easy to take things too far.”

“You’re right, sorry. Too much at once.” Lily smiled at him before heading to the refrigerator. He took a few deep breaths as she quietly rooted around for something to eat.

“Hey, I’m just curious,” she said from behind him. “What do you weigh these days, hon?”

“Um… Uh-wh… Well…”

“Sorry, I was just wondering. You’ve slimmed down so much! I always used to like how big and hunky you were, but…” she reappeared in front of him, sipping a glass of orange juice. “Honestly, I think I might like you even better this way. You look cute!”

…There was that word again. “Cute.” Tom couldn’t recall her ever using that word for him, and now she’d dropped it twice, back-to-back. He didn’t mind the compliment—if he minded anything, it was how intensely his body was reacting to such mild flirtation—but the shift in her vocabulary struck him as odd. In fact, everything about her behavior struck him as odd. What was going on?

“So?” she asked, placing her glass on the table as she sat down next to him. “How much do you weigh?”

Why was she so curious about this all of a sudden? 

“I dunno, um… about, 125, 130?” Lily’s mouth formed an O, and then spread into a big grin.

“No… Tom, that can’t be right. That’s so small!” There was something about the way that Lily emphasized the word “small” that sent a chill down his neck.

“No, I uh. I looked it up actually, that’s about average… for… my height.” Lily was the same height as him; why was she so surprised? She must weigh about the same, right?

“Well, I just don’t believe it. There’s no way! Come on, you’ve gotta come show me.” Lily got up from the table and headed toward the stairs, stopping to turn back to him when he didn’t follow. “Come on!”

“Uh, weren’t you getting breakfast?” 

“I’ll get something after, this’ll only take a sec. Come on!” She waved him toward her.

He was relieved that she was in such a better mood today, but something was off about her. There was a laugh in her voice, as if she was in on a joke that was going over his head. He couldn’t really see the harm in doing what she asked, but all the same, he was cautious as he got up to follow her to the upstairs bathroom.

Lily leaned against the sink and gestured for him to step onto the scale. “Go on. I bet you still weigh at least 160.”

Tom actually hadn’t weighed himself for several weeks, so he wasn’t sure exactly what he weighed anymore. He watched Lily with suspicion as he stepped onto the scale, and looked down as the dial settled into place. Lily stepped around and bent down to read the number it had landed on:

115.

“Oh my God, Tom! That’s even smaller than you said you were!” 

Tom started fidgeting. “Uh, yeah, um, I guess uh, yeah…”

Lily had been smiling this whole time, but now, with her eyes half-lidded, a tuft of red hair hanging over her face, there was something different about the way she was looking at him. It seemed almost… predatory.

“I mean, Tom… that’s less than half your old weight. I had no idea that you had shrunken so much.” He was just imagining that she had drawn out the word “shrunken,” as if she were savoring the taste of it, right? “I mean, I guess now that I’m really looking, that old shirt is pretty huge on you.”

“I mean, I, uh… uh!” Tom couldn’t seem to find a coherent thought.

“Here, let me show you something. Lily placed a hand on his shoulder, which sent an electric jolt through his nerves. She gently pushed him off the scale, then stepped onto it herself.

“What does it say for me, Tom?”

Tom didn’t move at first, instead just silently staring at her. The scale gave her just enough of a height advantage that Tom had to look up slightly to meet her eyes. She gave a small shrug as if to ask what the hold up was. He swallowed and turned his gaze down to the scale.

And then, he froze up again.

“Tom? Tom, what does the scale say?”

He opened his mouth to speak, lip trembling. Breathe. Breathe! “W-, wuh, one—”

“Wuh wuh wuh wuh wuh?” she parroted back at him in baby-talk. “Come on, quit joking around. How much do I weigh?”

“...I gotta go.” Tom moved to leave, but Lily blocked him.

“Whoa, whoa! What’s the matter, sweetie? What’s wrong?” 

“I have to go!” He forced his way past her, sprinted down the stairs, and locked himself in the other bathroom. Door locked, hand grasping his shaft through the soft fabric of his pajamas, he finally answered Lily’s question.

“155. 155 pounds.” About a full third heavier than him.

At least the pants were dark enough that they didn’t show the stain.