Jason looked down at the waistband of his jeans and frowned. These were his favorite jeans; he'd had them since high school, and he'd never had any trouble with them before. Today, though...
His frown deepened as he gave the two sides of the button an experimental tug and, same as last time, button and button hole didn't quite meet. Releasing the pants, he padded over to the bathroom to examine his reflection critically. His pecs were still firm, his biceps still defined and his jawline still sharp, but there, at his navel...
His abs were still there, he was quick to reassure himself. Definitely. They were just...less defined than they had been. There was a definite softness to them, and a faint gathering of pudge at his belly-button area that definitely hadn't been there before, and definitely explained why he was having trouble buttoning his favorite jeans.
He turned from the bathroom mirror to the scale in the corner, shucking his jeans and walking over clad only in his briefs. Taking a deep breath, knowing he wasn't going to like what he saw, he stepped up on it and looked down.
It took a moment for the needle to stop wavering, but once it did it came to a stop not at its usual reading of 195, the way it had since he took up running and weight lifting in high school, but at 207. A full twelve pound gain. He stepped back of the scale, lip curling into a frustrated scowl. 'This is all Toshi's fault,' he thought to himself. The older officer had taken him to a different restaurant every day of their three week partnership, and every one of those places insisted on serving the pair enough food to feed a village. Jason tried to beg off every time, but Toshi was a relentless food pusher; everywhere they went he urged Jason to "Try a little of this," and "Give this a go, you'll love it!" Jason had tried time and again to insist that he was on a diet, but Toshi would just wave him off and tell him "Live a little, Jason! A few bites won't hurt."
And it might not, if a few bites didn't always turn into several. What was with the restaurants in this town? Every single one of them served food of the quality he'd expect to find in a 5-Star New York City joint, not a small town like Pancione, and once he'd had a little it was hard not to have a little more. He'd always viewed himself as having decent willpower, but evidently he'd overestimated himself.
And don't forget those cannolis. Almost every day Toshi found an excuse to go by Antonio's for a complimentary cannoli, and the smiling old man always gave Jason one as well for being such a good friend to Toshi. Those cannolis were probably responsible for half of the twelve pounds he'd gained.
'This is all Toshi's fault,' he thought again.
--
30 minutes later Jason was dressed. He'd held his breath and sucked it in to squeeze himself into his jeans before throwing on a favorite t-shirt (an old high school one celebrating the Pancione Wild Hogs), and with a sigh he sat down on his apartment's two-seater couch, drumming his fingers against the armrest as he thought.
Jason did not want to get fat. He liked the image of a trim and fit police officer he knew he gave off, and he had no intention of letting the curse get him now after resisting for over a year while partnered with Jeff.
It all came back to Toshi. The more experienced officer was the biggest (pun intended) foodie Jason had ever seen, and his habits were clearly rubbing off on Jason, however much he tried to resist. But what to do about it?
The obvious answer was to request a new partner. Once he had another partner, one who wasn't such a chow hound, he'd be able to go back to eating healthy and avoiding Pancione's many restaurants (seriously, why did the town have so many?). He'd lose the twelve pounds in no time with his regular runs and weekend lifts.
'Of course,' he mused, reaching down and adjusting the waistband of his jeans, which felt like they were trying to cut him in half, 'the problem with that is no more Toshi.'
And that was a problem. Because Jason actually liked Toshi. He liked him a lot. The older man was patient to a fault, never losing his temper with belligerent citizens no matter the situation. His calm, even-handed friendliness had been invaluable more than once, defusing situations ranging from snobbish Karens angry about parking tickets to the screaming couple who'd been the subject of a domestic disturbance call. It was a quality Jason very much wanted to learn to emulate, to say nothing of the man's relentlessly aggressive friendliness. If not for the food-pushing, he'd be the perfect partner.
He looked down at his midsection and lifted his t-shirt. His stomach had a little pooch to it; not enough to be visible under his shirt, but plain to see without one. The sight made up his mind. He liked Toshi a lot, but 3 weeks didn't outweigh the year he'd spent keeping himself trim. First thing tomorrow, he was going to ask the Chief for a new partner.
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