Clancer is trying to get out of his shell best as he can, even if it just means going to a New Jersey boardwalk alone - unfortunately, Rhombos, who he has maybe the most tumultuous relationship possible with, decides to show up. Things turn.... weird? Cute? You decide!
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little cute story i wanted to get out before summer officially ends - pretty light on anything kinky beyond clancer being fat in a normal way, but come on. read it anyways, please? and tell me what, uh, you like. plaintext below, pdf has better formatting, you know tha drill. also of course Rhombos is owned by My Husband  boot
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Vibrant crowds lingered on the blanched-white boardwalk like bins of missorted saltwater taffy as the midday sun made itself known, balmy rays carving out diamonds along the sea. In the sea of jazzy shirts and windswept fur, flamboyant trunks and fun accessories, no one stood out quite as much as Clancer. This wasn’t by design. The dog - who happened to be a living, breathing, strikingly green pinata, but he preferred to emphasize the “dog” part of things - put some level of special care into looking as unspectacular as was possible. His tight swim briefs were plain black in lieu of the vivid patterned bottoms that surrounded him, his unbuttoned shirt was adorned with classic hickory stripe, the only accessory he wore was a thin silver chain around his neck. To his chagrin, no attempt at remaining incognito detracted from the way his bathing suit was surrounded by swathes of minty papier-mâché serving as skin, the wide frills of black and blue crepe paper thickly filling out his collar, rendering his necklace near-lost, and mapping out a happy trail on his thick tummy - this wasn’t even to speak of the bright white tufts of parchment topping his ears, the way his sharp claws were always stained pink, or the peppermint patterned nipples ornamenting the modest beginnings of breasts he hid beneath his open shirt. The pinata could dress in full gothic attire if he so desired and still be the most obnoxiously garish thing in the room, as he certainly was in the line for ice cream.

The queue was pitifully slow and Clancer was already sweating under the oppressive gaze of the sun, but he was determined to do something with his day. He’d been more of a shut-in than was healthy over the past few years. Friends had fallen out of contact, mostly driven to arms-length by Clancer’s quick-to-seethe temperament, and parties had largely been replaced by watching reruns of Iron Chef - one could only take so many tedious pinata jokes, after all. The most Clancer tended to expose himself to the world outside his dreary studio apartment was in the occasional walk down the street to the bodega, which took care of most of his dietary requirements, or work, which solely existed to enable him to continue going to the bodega.

Of course, a significant portion of his remaining time was spent dealing with the pest, Rhombos, a little sheepish monster who turned him into this cardboard thing years ago and upon remembering his handiwork chose not to apologize, but to dedicate time every week to showing up unannounced in Clancer’s abode and performing any manner of odd magical transformation on the canine. Even now, the excess adipose hanging on Clancer’s body, the pudgy tummy hanging over his swimsuit, the uncharacteristic-for-a-man-of-his-gruffness breasts, the thick thighs that rubbed together with each step and their attached rear end, the extra-padded paws spilling gently over his sandals, the emerging double chin that softened his chiseled jaw and harsh features, they were things the unknowing may associate with his mostly corner store based diet, but that wasn’t the case. It just so happened that every time Rhombos decided to pack a ton or two onto the pinata, something that happened more often than Clancer wanted to think about, some of that weight tended to linger once Rhombos had his fill of fun and deemed it time to return Clancer to form. But today was not about him. Today was about Clancer.

Rhombos was not the only individual Clancer had the pleasure - or displeasure, in the case of the wicked little sheep - of reconnecting with in recent memory. A certain bird he had grown up alongside had taken some initiative to track the pinata down and bid him a long overdue, or at least she said it was long overdue, hello. Carrie was always, in some ways, at least, Clancer’s better half - a little funny, given she was just as prone to frustration with whatever she deemed as “dumb” as he was, but at least she tended to be productive about it. Before the two ended their catch-up, she doled out what pained Clancer to admit was akin to wisdom.

“Just fucking… do something, Clancer. You’re gonna end up like some Grey Gardens freak if you keep sitting around, all mad at everything all the time. Exposure therapy, man, come on.”

So, here he was, lurking around the Jersey shore, waiting in line for ice cream like a real-life person. Worse than the line itself was the almost sinking realization that, despite his sweet-smelling sweat, it was nice out, that he felt pretty good, and that he had spent almost a decade opting to do very little besides staring irately at his own reflection and eating garbage when he could have done anything that wasn’t that. The pinata had expected nothing but frustration and grief, prying eyes and camera snaps, and although there was some minor outrage to be found in dodging hordes of crying children and stepping around wads of chewed gum, it was staggering how easy it was for him to sincerely enjoy himself.

Easy pleasure was derailed just as simply as it could be found. Clancer’s ears perked up at the sound of something like a gust of wind inches behind him. It was an odd upwards gust, like a little tornado had materialized in a fraction of a second and just as quickly subsided. Anyone else would likely not have noticed at all or would have found it odd and inexplicable, but for Clancer, it was rote. He twirled back and pointed a pastel claw at the sheep now standing behind him, plump and shirtless, a gaudily checkered pair of snug, shiny swim trunks painted onto his wide hips. Clancer was internally plummeting.

“No. Uh-uh. We are not doing this shit today,” he commanded, waggling his outstretched paw pad at the sheep, who stood with his hands behind his back in faux-innocence.

Rhombos whistled an off-kilter tune and shifted from hoof to hoof, his eyes, beady behind thick goggles, looking off to the side - at the blank wall neighboring him, to be precise. Clancer narrowed his gaze at the black and white devil and continued his stringent finger wagging. Rhombos, seemingly choosing to notice the pinata, slowed his whistling and turned his eyes forward.

“Huh? What? Me? I’m just waiting in line, just like you!”

“No the fuck you aren’t, get off it. You’re here to do some stupid shit to me again, right?”

“No way! You’re judging me!”

“Whatever. If you’re gonna do your usual routine, at least let me have a normal day out, first,” Clancer snarled, turning his back to the sheep and moving forwards in line, eager to get out of the sun and into the cool ice cream booth.

“What usual routine? I do a ton of stuff, y’know! More than you can even imagine. And… and what’s the big deal, anyways? You’re just standing here in a boring line, wasting your time,” Rhombos groused, toddling behind the tall pinata as fast as his short legs could manage.

“It’s less boring than what I’m doing most of the time, you know. Barring you showing up, which is… almost too not boring.”

“What!? What’re you talking about? Come on, remember the time I poofed in and you were… sitting on the couch… or that one time you were, uh… sitting on the couch drinking that nasty beer you can’t seem to get enough of.”

“Not nasty, but otherwise, yeah, that sounds right.”

“And there was that one time you were sitting on the couch, but you said you were about to go out and do something! That’s… well… I guess that all is kinda boring…”

“No shit. And you know you can go out and, like… bother someone else today, right? Doesn’t it bore you, nagging me all the time? Especially with my kind of routine?”

“Oh, I bother tons of people - buuuuut… I dunno! Maybe you just take well to it, I can hardly keep myself away!”

“Glad to leave an impression,” Clancer growled. “But all I’m going to do is boringly stand in a boring line and if you touch me I’m not gonna hold back on you just because we’re in public.”

“If I touch you? What, like this?” Rhombos asked, tilting his head, stupid grin on his face, slipping his hoof into Clancer’s slack paw.

“What do you think you’re doing?” Clancer shot back, snatching his paw away, swinging a thick arm across his cushiony chest.

“Being ‘normal,’ or whatever silly thing it is you’re so stressed about. I can be a good boy for just a little bit, you know! At least until I can think of something fun to spice things up with! We’re waiting in a,” Rhombos could not suppress a dramatic sigh preceding the word. “LINE, juuust the two of us! For ice cream! We don’t have that in Hell, you know. So that’s exciting! And waiting in liiiine with just someone else for something yummy, to me, sounds like… a date!”

“No, it doesn’t, and you sound fucking deranged. Touch my paw and you’re going to just get a hooffull of claw.”

“Awww, come on! I see you more than anyone else does - cut me some slack! N’fact - look - the line’s moving so slow, I can even do us a favor and just turn all these guys into ice cream, then, wow, we get ice cream right now AND we don’t have to wait in line!”

Clancer, noticing sets of eyes now looking in his direction thanks to Rhombos’s incoherent-to-an-outsider speech, clutched at his face. “Dude. Asshole. No. We’re waiting and your weird clinical impatience isn’t changing that.”

“Pshhh. What’s the big fat pinata going to do to stop me, huh? What if I just turn you into a little ice cream then? Then what?” Rhombos defiantly stuck his tongue out.

“First off, you saddle me with ten extra pounds every time you stop by to ‘visit.’ Second off, try it and know this tank you left me with can fit you twice over in it,” Clancer grumbled, flashing a hint of sharp teeth and lightly tapping his belly. “But I get it, I’ll hold your fucking hoof, fine.”

“You’re soooo sweet, Clancer! In, hehe, a few ways… I can smell the peppermint from here, y’know?” Rhombos giggled and daintily held a hoof out as if he expected the pinata to slide a ring onto it.

“Shut it,” Clancer opted to roughly grab it and immediately lowered his arm as far as he could, almost dragging Rhombos down, embarrassed at the thought of someone seeing him cozying up to his tormentor like that would mean anything to anyone outside of himself. “I’m doing this but you’re not going to get an ounce of reaction out of me. We are being normal.”

“Normal, sure! You mind your business, and I’ll mind mine, and everyone’ll think we’re - “

“On the world’s worst fucking date ever, yes.”

The wait went by faster than either one of the pair expected, maybe thanks to their persistent bickering, which seemed to somewhat keep Rhombos’s more destructive inclinations at bay, though the sheep couldn’t help but try and wander around in arbitrary fashion between the smallest gaps in conversation. Clancer had him by the hoof and was probably more rough than he needed to be when pulling him back, maybe out of annoyance that the little thing couldn’t stand still, maybe because he was simmering in frustration that holding someone’s hand, even someone who he could not say something positive about with a gun held to his head, was a little pleasant. He was even growing impressed by the little devil’s startlingly good behavior. He seemed perfectly happy holding Clancer’s paw a little too tightly, tipping back and forth on his dainty hooves, watching dayglo-armored beachgoers file out of the ice cream place mostly in pairs like some kind of treat-focused Noah’s Ark. Before he knew it, they were face to face with a bored looking zebra who couldn’t muster up a hint of interest in his “What’ll you have?”

“Yeah, uh, I’ll just get a scoop of, uh… Rocky Road. In a waffle cone,” Clancer answered, stumbling over himself, suddenly aware that he does not talk to anyone outside of his small cycle of routine nearly enough.

“And you?” the zebra practically snored at Rhombos, standing on his tiptoes, barely breaching the top of the counter.

“Oh! Wellll…” Rhombos started, shoving his face close against the glass flavor display case. Clancer already knew this was going to be a whole production.

“What’s that?”
“This one?”
“Is that color real?”
“I’ll try a sample, please…”

It seemed to never end and the zebra scoop slinger zombified more and more with each question. Clancer let go of the sheep’s hand and put it firm on his shoulder, taking some care not to dig his claws into its soft wool.

“No more of that, man, just… choose.”

“You know I only get out so often too, right? But, uh… okay, Superman, Rainbow, and Funfetti. Three scoops! On a sprinkle cone!” Rhombos urgently ordered, pointing at each choice like he was choosing a weapon from an armory. “And get my friiieend here two scoops! That tank can fit that, right, Clancer?” Rhombos continued, giving the pinata’s hanging gut a jostle.

Clancer groaned and grabbed Rhombos’s wandering hoof again just to keep it off the rest of him. “Fine, two scoops. I assume I’m paying?” he asked, looking down at the sheep, who only responded with an empty blink. “Here’s my card. Uh, tap here, right?”

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Rhombos rhythmically lapped at his frozen tower of neon while Clancer passively whacked his dripping empty cone against an open paw like a baseball bat, the two seated at the edge of the boardwalk, its planks lacquered with sandy footprints and saltwater. The kind of beyond-dated ragtime that only really makes sense playing in a place like this tinnily dirged from some storefront, struggling to overtake the natural soundscape of waves and people loitering around.

They had a quiet tract of deck all to themselves and Clancer felt irrepressibly weird. Rhombos was so close to the pinata that both of their respectively plush bottoms squeezed against each other just enough to feel unshakably intimate. The distinct jingling of Rhombos’s bell - an accessory he always wore, usually around his waist but today it was wrapped around his tail, presumably to go with his more summery garb - joined the choir of buoy bells as the sheep’s tail swung back and forth and something about its resonant tone made it hard for Clancer’s own papery tail to resist wagging in kind. Things were not supposed to be like this. They had a Tom & Jerry relationship and Clancer was unhesitatingly aware that he was Tom. Something was simmering and he didn’t know if it was the inexorability of Rhombos ditching his normal facade and turning him into a basketball or some stupid thing, or if he was building up some twisted carnal desire for the sheep despite his best efforts to keep the thing internally categorized with the likes of blisters and cockroaches.

Clancer sat and watched blonde sand turn to muddy caramel under foaming green waves, sat and watched his for the moment partner work on the melting Superman base of his ice cream while kicking his legs back and forth and back on the edge of the boardwalk, listened to the scratchy dixieland dirges fading in and out. “Just fucking do something,” Carrie had said, and he was doing something, and he was trying hard to enjoy the moment, but this all felt a little too exposing for his inaugural episode of Exposure Therapy. Out of approximately nowhere, Rhombos’s face bitterly scrunched up and Clancer irrationally worried that the demon had read his thoughts and was utterly displeased.

“AuOOUUGhhhh…” Rhombos wailed and sprang up to his hooves in the blink of an eye, tossing his remaining ice cream, cone and all, to the ground.

“This thing hurt me! It hurt my head!” he practically squawked. Before Clancer could digest the scene, he had already produced his staff from somewhere. Before Clancer could digest that, the staff had zapped Rhombos’s discarded treat. A flash of color followed and what was left behind was a small fish, its body all hypnotic swirling scales of red and yellow, its fins a toasty brown splattered with dots of color. It flopped uselessly on the wooden floor.

“Uh…” the sheep trailed off, staring, his handiwork’s conception evidently having come before any plans for its future.

Clancer rolled his eyes and grunted, dropped his battered waffle cone, and pushed himself up to his feet. He lumbered over to the brand-new sparkling, struggling lifeform and snatched it up with one big paw, pausing for just a moment to take it in. It was pretty and probably shouldn’t exist, but now it did, so Clancer treated it like he would treat anything; with another huffy groan he crouched down and gave it an underhand toss, just firm enough to get it into the water below. Turning back, he frowned and pointed a claw at Rhombos.

“You said you’d be normal.”

“And you didn’t tell me that ice cream was toxic to poor little guys like me! What was I supposed to do, huh?”

“Probably not… that. Jesus. Just eat it less fast, it’s called brain freeze and it isn’t something you turn food into fucking… fish… about. Now my paw’s all gross, so thanks.”

“Well, whatever! What’s done is done, thanks for saving the day! Even though I, for one, am shocked that the big bad pinata who does nothing but growl and grumble and show off what big teeth and sharp claws he has bothered to do anything at all! Are you getting soft in more ways than just one?” Rhombos laughed, strutting close to the canine.

“Trust me when I say I don’t really want to do anything with those claws to anyone other than you,” Clancer mumbled, standing up again, his wide shadow hanging over Rhombos, the sheep’s dark wool looking something blacker than black.

“Yeah, right! Hey, what’s that?” Rhombos trailed off, attention turned to someone playing darts at a game booth nearby.

“That’s darts and they’re probably just there to scam you and I’m not paying for you to get scammed. Listen, why do you even bother me so much? Like, just me? For real, too, no coy bullshit.”

“Why do you put up with it, huh?”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah, you do! If I popped up right now and said,” Rhombos waggled his staff to his side and conjured up a double of himself. Rhombos, the real one, covered his mouth and clearly talked while the double crudely opened and closed his mouth in time like a ventriloquist’s dummy.

“Hey, Clancer! I’m gonna poke you with my staff and your fat ass is gonna end up covering this boardwalk, and the beach, too, hehe!” The double disappeared in a cloud of smoke as Rhombos waggled his wand again. “You wouldn’t do anything! What’s up with that?”

“You’re supposed to be normal today.”

“I know, it’s just a, what do you call it? Hypothetical! I wouldn’t do something like that right now, I’ve already done it before! A lot! It’d be boring! Point is, you have to answer the question!”

“Okay, fine. What am I supposed to do, then? You say something like that, and what? I grab you by your stupid neck?”

“Yeah!”

As if on queue, Clancer reached down and did just that, though perhaps less violently than his tone implied. His pawpads pressed hard against the scruff of Rhombos’s neck but his claws did little besides graze his wool, and he lifted the sheep up with one burly arm.

“And then what? Do you actually think I should just eat you?” Clancer asked, pulling Rhombos’s face close to his.

“W-well, hehe, uhm…”

Clancer opened his mouth wide like he was presenting all his pearly whites to a dentist. A strand of drool drew a wiggly line from one of his sharp canines to his lower rack of teeth as he breathed hot, minty breath in Rhombos’s face, the sheep breaking into a light sweat between his thick wool and the warm sun and the even warmer haze of pinata breath. He pulled Rhombos in closer.

“You’re ‘ead ‘ould ‘it in ‘ere, no pole’m,” Clancer slurred with his mouth open, before snapping his jaws shut fast and hard like an alligator, a final puff of sweet lingering in the air.

“Y-yeah, uh, hmmehehe, but… you know! You’ve made that threat plenty of times before! And guess who’s whole and uneaten? You don’t have to guess, it’s me, Rhombos!”

Clancer squinted at the squirming sheep, the two backlit by the sun setting over the horizon, but he had nothing to say.

“See? So you do put up with it! So, y’know, whatever makes you do that, is prooobably why I, ahem, ‘bother you’” - the sheep deepened his voice in a token effort to sound like the pinata - “so much.”

“You’re annoying, you know that?”

“I’ve been told!”

“Now open your fucking mouth and kiss me like we’re on a date.”

“H-heymff!”

Clancer’s paw shifted from Rhombos’s neck to his back, the pinata’s other arm finally joining in, clutching him tight, his short body pressing against Clancer’s far taller form. He shoved his tongue into the sheep’s mouth and Rhombos reciprocated in short order, brimstone and peppermint combining to make something new and exciting and a little wrong. He felt Rhombos clutch him back, hooves wandering under the dog’s open shirt, idly squeezing and grabbing at whatever their short range could - Clancer’s side rolls and sloping breasts, the upper dome of his belly, his meaty shoulders and thick neck - maybe he was attention starved but the pinata couldn’t help but let off a gruff moan into the devil’s ever-active mouth. Clancer shifted both sets of paws, shuffling his heavy feet until Rhombos’s back faced the railing of the boardwalk and lowering one of his hands to the sheep’s wide ass, giving it a rough squeeze while pressing his full weight against his little body. Clancer could feel a harsh exhale escape Rhombos’s mouth and enter his and he drank it in deep, his claws poking through the sheep’s swimsuit as he gripped his haunch tight as if out of some deep-seated territorial instinct.

“Maybe next time you pop in to bother me, I’ll just do this,” Clancer growled into Rhombos’s ear as he parted the sheep’s lips from his. “Seems to do a good enough job shutting you up.”

“I-I, I mean…” Rhombos faltered, squirming, hooves still grabbing onto whatever bits of Clancer they could find.

Despite his papercraft veneer, Clancer’s canine senses were wholly intact, and his tail swished from side to side as he used them to their fullest. He dug his snout into Rhombos’s wool and indulged in his scent. He held everything from the day like a dreamcatcher, hellish but spackled with the coast, brine and popcorn, and all that was slowly eroding in the name of Clancer’s own overpoweringly sweet fragrance, something that stained everything he touched. He could lose himself like this, in Rhombos’s fleece coat, his claws digging in deeper and deeper around the sheep’s ass.

“Course, then you’d have to admit why you really bug me so much, huh?” the pinata murmured, nibbling Rhombos’s ear and wobbling one of his ass cheeks. “It’s fine, though… I’ll still leave you something to remember me by ‘till next time.”

With a firm grasp, Clancer tore ragged clawholes into Rhombos’s swimsuit, soft wool instantaneously billowing out from the canine’s marked territory. The demon’s face looked more red than white.

“W-well, what if I DO, hehe, leave your fat ass covering this boardwalk…?” Rhombos sputtered.

“Then you’d leave me with fifty extra pounds to shove your face into once you turn me back, little lamb,” Clancer huffed, paws both squeezing Rhombos’s ass, so close against him that nothing was visible on the sheep besides his increasingly distressed face poking out from under three hundred pounds of supple pinata. “Unless that’d be too boring.”

“N-no, or, yes, or, uh… I… don’t know!?”

It wasn’t anything that dignified a response, just rambling, but Clancer still cracked a smile, unstrained for once. He shifted his paws up to a more appropriate position, holding Rhombos by the underarms like a loose cat, backed up, and set him down on his hooves. The sheep stumbled back and forth, took a deep breath - maybe Clancer had squeezed too much air out of the little thing - and twirled around in some attempt to catch sight of his own torn swimsuit.

“You know,” he said, spinning. “You’re paying for this thing…! I swear!”

“Sure.”

“I was just starting to have fun, too! Now I have to go home and change and… next time I see you, I’m turning you into one of those things!” Rhombos told himself, pointing at one of the buoys off however far into the distance, all being eaten by daylight’s fading.

His tone was funny, not a hint of care behind any word. If anything, Rhombos sounded like he was on cloud nine, his threats carrying the same gravitas and depraved intent as someone opening a birthday present. Even his face betrayed itself, his cheeks still rosy and his mouth shifting constantly from a smile to a put-on expression that couldn’t be described as conveying any particular mood beyond not a smile. The red glow ever-present in his wool looked more burnt sienna under the sun’s transformation from white to orange and it was softening all his already soft features. Clancer kept smiling, puffing his ample chest out and wrapping his fingers into his tight waistband like some kind of western movie hero.

“Sure you will.”

“I mean it!”

“I know.”

“Now!“ Rhombos shouted, producing his staff - where did he keep that thing - and putting his hooves on his wide hips Clancer still wanted in his paws. “I… bye! Goodbye! And, uh, THANKSFORTHEDA-”

POOF!

He cut himself off, leaving nothing behind but a cloud of ever-familiar smoke. Clancer sighed and leaned back against the rail. He said he’d do something, and he did. Maybe he should get out more often.