In Too Deep

The post alone wasn't enough of that. Panda had never seen so many notes on his posts before posting what he could salvage from his… journey inside Grizz. He'd been mulling this over for about a few weeks. The one-month anniversary of his social media renaissance was almost here and he wanted more. Before the notes would fizzle out, he needed to get more content. More to post! Fortunately, he had a big brother that could help him out. Also, he was prepared this time! Even though his phone managed to survive the last trip, this time he had a case, a selfie-stick, and a stabilizer. He'd thought of everything.

Phone in hand, Panda stepped out of his room. "Grizz?" He called out, though there were only maybe two places he could be. It wasn't a very big cave and he didn't do much when he was home.

"Over here bro-bro!" As expected, he was on the couch, watching some show. As his brother entered the room he turned and asked, "What's up? Oh, by the way, Ice went out. Hanging with Chloe, I think."

"Oh, okay. Just the two of us then, huh?" Grizz nodded. "Well, that's fine! He can see later." He wouldn't really be needed here either, since Panda would be doing all the recording and the polar bear's gut is supposedly "too strong".

Grizz noticed that his brother was holding his phone and what seemed like some lightweight film equipment. He perked up, instantly intrigued. "Whatcha got there? Gonna record a movie? Social media short films?"

Panda blushed and stuttered, "Uhhh… K-Kinda the last one."

"Alright, alright! What about? An anime thing? Or maybe… a girl you like?"

Panda blushed even harder. He angrily shouted, "No!" before coming back down to shyness and saying, "It's about um… remember that thing we did a month ago?"

The brown bear looked into the air for a bit, trying to remember something that would be significant to Panda. "Oh! The thing with Charlie and--"

"No!! The thing where I-- and you--" Rubbing over his belly, Grizz immediately understood.

"Oh! You should've just said so bro! Of course I'd be willing to eat you again. Anything for the internet!"

Panda sighed. "It's great that you're so enthusiastic about this but it's also a little bit creepy."

"Sorry! Just, you know, anything for my little bro," Grizz chuckled bashfully. "So, how're we doing it this time? Face-first again? Some role-play at the beginning there? Look, I've even been using some better mouthwash." He opened his maw as wide as he could, revealing round white teeth with strings of saliva connecting them to his pillowy tongue.

A few, then many seconds passed while Panda gazed into his brother's mouth. Last time he had stared so long, it scared him out of the whole attempt. But now he was going to have to swallow his fears for that sweet social media recognition. The trance broke when Grizz closed his maw, still ready to help. Panda shook his head. "No, um, this time's just gonna be a photoshoot. Well, maybe a little bit of recording but only in your…"

"Belly!"

"Yeeaaah." Panda sighed. "Okay, first up, I'm gonna pose all scared next to your mouth."

"Sounds good bro! C'mon over to The Maw." He slid aside as his brother came and sat on the couch with all his camera equipment. Grizz flexed his jaw around while Panda assembled his camera doohickey. Stabilized, secured, and ready to snap what the (new) followers love. Extending his camera out for the optimal angle and view, he leaned up on Grizz's chest for the perfect shot of him and the other bear's drooly mouth. For a good minute or so, Panda took pictures in various poses next to Grizz's mouth, alternating between shots of an unwilling Panda, willing Panda, and some more dubious levels of willingness.

Grizz had to take a moment to close and re-wet his mouth, during which Panda flipped over and said, "Okay Grizz, open wide!" He began trying to say something about already having been open for quite a while, when Panda suddenly jabbed the phone into his mouth. Light shined through his cheeks as rather dazzling pictures of the bear's mouth were taken. The photoset was turning out good so far!

Now it was time to start getting dirty. Panda retracted his camera out of Grizz's mouth, wiping some saliva off its case and pole. "For our next part, you're gonna have to stand up just… over there somewhere," he said, waving his arm out vaguely, "while I find a stepladder."

"Alright bro! Hey, this is going great so far. It'll be over before you know it and we'll both be popular on the internet!" Panda shook his head as he left to go dig in their cluttered closet. Grizz meanwhile decided it would be a good idea to do some more exercise to ready himself for his big meal. Well… not a meal, even if his brother was really tasty last time. But still. Stretches! He flexed around his jaw again, readying for a mouthful of bear. His neck too, that'd be pretty important for swallowing. He wasn't quite sure what to do for his stomach, though it seemed pretty stretchy. He wouldn't say fat, maybe cute 'n' chubby.

Panda walked back in with his stepladder to see his brother jiggling his gut around. "What are you doing?" He asked, though he wasn't sure he really wanted an answer.

"Oh, that was quick! Just some stretches for my lu--" Grizz caught himself and faked a very bad cough. "...Little bro! Bro."

"Are you sick? I don't really wanna be inside you if you're--"

"No, no! Just, um, choking on something. Ahead of time. To prepare. Aaaaaaaaah!" Stretching open his maw again, he tried to present some example swallows with saliva.

His little brother shivered and looked away, unfolding the stepladder. At the top of it, his feet were about level with Grizz's neck, giving him a rare height advantage. Extending out his selfie-stick and encased smart phone, he turned around to get another shot of him and 'The Maw' before he entered it himself. Grizz courteously opened his maw again in all its drooling glory. These pictures went slower, Panda starting to get nervous as he got closer to entering Grizz's gut. He asked, "Need me to pull you in again? Sometimes you just need a little help!"

Turning back to face his brother, Panda shook his head with some trepidation. "I just…" He took a deep breath and stuck a leg out. Grizz grinned and opened his mouth, ready to take in his brother. Much like wading into a cold pool, Panda carefully dipped his foot into the maw. Though in this case the 'pool' was very shallow, warm, and thicker than water. He could immediately feel all the differences and they shuddered through him. His paw squished against Grizz's tongue which seemed delighted to reunite with a familiar friend.

Trying to take pictures and at the same time awkwardly fit himself into Grizz's mouth was quite the task. Luckily, he was excellent at balancing both tasks. His camera actually helped a bit with carefully losing his balance and plunging deeper unexpectedly. Panda looked down as he felt himself fall. The stepladder was knocked away as all his balance shifted onto the leg now firmly seized by Grizz's throat. Grizz grunted and made a stifled glurk noise. Fortunately, he seemed more stable than Panda and gave a thumbs-up for continuing.

Panda kept attempting to take shots as he descended into the belly of the beast, but they looked awkward with his leg just dangling like it was. Carefully, but more than last time so he wouldn't fall out and hurt his brother, Panda bent in his leg and crammed it in next to the other. Grizz made some sort of muffled complaint again as he strained to hold his brother by the legs, with his throat, in such an awkward position. In fact, he was going to need to maybe speed up his little brother's schedule.

Some sort of muffled warning came out from Grizz, but even if Panda had heard it he wouldn't have understood it. While he was focused on perfecting the shot, a rather choked wet noise brought him lower. Looking down, he saw that the black-furred section of his body had disappeared behind that of brown fur. Grizz shrugged timidly, then pointed to his bulging throat. Panda twisted a bit to see it as another swallow dragged him down. "Wait wait wait I need to get the perfect mid-swallow shot!" Panda angled back up his phone, desperate to get what he believed to be the perfect shot.

As much as he wanted to please his little brother, he needed to speed up the whole swallowing process. Panda could get more pictures inside his belly, right? Grizz's throat started eagerly squeezing him down with ease. His legs were entering his stomach as well and with another gulp, they started to push out Grizz's gut. Panda was becoming more frantic with each gulp, unused to a time limit on his picture-taking. "Grizz, wait! I've almost-- euf!"

Panda's arms were suddenly caught by the corners of Grizz's mouth, limiting his ability to adjust. He looked up at his phone which showed an image of a rather distressed bear in way too deep another bear. It looked perfect. He managed to snap it just before another swallow restricted his arms to directly in front of him. White round teeth surrounded Panda's view. Those teeth made him realize that this was a perfect view, not the weird third-person shots he'd been doing. Looking in the camera, he could see Grizz's body distending with the rest of himself inside it and Grizz waving at the camera like a goofball.

Working quickly, Panda retracted the selfie-stick and detached it, throwing it out onto the floor somewhere. He only needed the phone for these next parts. Another muffled gulp left merely his face out, grizzly flesh up to his chin. The rest of his body was either being constricted by a tight throat or becoming cramped in a tight stomach. "Grizz just leave your mouth open for this last pic!" Grizz mumbled something around him as he quickly switched the perspective on the camera from selfie to forward-facing. Mirroring his own perspective, he was able to get a wonderful shot from the back of Grizz's throat. Flash illuminated the pink tongue, white teeth, and smooth fleshy walls. Slickness covered all of it and past it was the ceiling of their cave and almost a window outside.

Grizz spoke again, muffled, though Panda thought it sounded like "Sorry bro!" Moments after that, the lips closed between shots. The bear's tongue then lifted up and started to push back on Panda's face, separating his view from his phone. Panda started to complain, "Ack, Grizz, no! My--" but before he could finish, his head slipped into his brother's throat. One more quick gulp after that pulled in the rest of his arms, separating him from his phone. He panicked at the separation, since the whole point of getting swallowed again was social media. Fortunately, a gulp resounding around him told him his phone would be joining shortly. In the meantime, he had nothing to do but listen to the rhythmic heartbeat and swallows of his brother. It was more comforting than last time, but still, unnerving to be inside someone else.

On the outside, Grizz focused on swallowing his little brother (and his phone) so that he could breathe again. A paw felt the bear-shaped bulge heading down his throat. Panda's muzzle was rather neatly outlined by his furry skin as it moved on down. Finally, he could relax as Panda and his phone fully dropped into his belly. He took a deep breath and went to sigh but instead belched it back out. "Whoof, sorry little bro." He patted his stomach a few times, admiring how big it was with the bulges of said bro.

While Grizz licked his lips for the last of Panda's taste, Panda grabbed a hold of his phone and went back to taking pictures. It was easy, since coming in legs first already put him in a good position. Very dark in the stomach, but flash helped to awkwardly show the walls of flesh surrounding him. He thought to himself, it's fortunate that pictures didn't include the smell or all-permeating heat and humidity. Though maybe they'd like that? Whatever, he didn't really have a way to upload that.

There was a lot of nothing on the outside. Though Grizz enjoyed the feeling of having his little brother in his belly, it was very dull otherwise. He wasn't being recorded for his great acting this time and nobody else was around (outside of him), so he was just standing around in their cave with a massive stomach. "Pan-Pan… in my tum-tum…" He began to hum as he gently drummed on his gut, feeling his brother shift inside. Too much. His stomach practically turned over as Panda did, trying to get a marginally different perspective. This was enough to throw off a delicate balance Grizz had established. Helplessly flapping his arms, he shouted "W-Whoa!" while Panda became confused at the sudden jostling of his surroundings.

"Grizz, what is-- mph!" Both of the bears felt the impact as Grizz crashed onto the floor, stomach-first. The air knocked out came as an awkward burp while he rubbed his poor belly. Before Panda could even try and get settled, he flipped himself back over to have the stomach on top and sat up slightly. Annoyed by all the tossing, Panda passive-aggressively asked, "You gonna let me take the pics or not?"

Giving an apologetic look nobody could see, Grizz took the blame. "My bad bro! Just lost balance. Sitting on the ground now. Should be no more problems!" He went back to drumming and humming while intermittent digital shutter sounds and flashes continued to come from his belly, along with Panda shifting quite a bit. In addition to those sounds, his stomach was also growling quite a bit. It was ready for lunch and even though this wasn't the bear's normal food, it would make do. Grizz rubbed over his stomach as it made its noises, hoping to quell it. Sure, he was hungry, but Panda most definitely was not food. He's his little bro and he just needed a weird background for his shots.

Still, the stomach didn't care. There was a big chunk of meat in it and it knew Grizz was hungry. Inside, Panda could start to feel it. Muscles were pushing in on him and starting to restrict the movements of his arms. It didn't help when Grizz laid down on his back to get more comfortable. The flatness just made it seem tighter and he could feel some liquid around his chest and elbows. With the flash of his phone, he could see the pink walls getting some green on them as well as generally seeming more energetic. A small urp that could distantly be heard from his brother made him decide it was time to leave. Simply he told him, "Okay, you can let me out now… It's getting kinda tight in here!"

It was at this moment that it occurred to Grizz they might not have thought of everything. He swallowed nervously and muttered, "L-Let you out?"

There was a thump from inside his belly demonstrating some impatience. "Grizz? Are you gonna let me out?"

He nodded, though it's not like his brother could see that. "...Yes! Just let me…" Crawling awkwardly on his back, he made it over to a cave wall where he could try and prop himself up on two legs. Like last time, he started trying to gag and heave. Like last time, it did nothing. He slid down the wall saying, "Pan-Pan… I don't think I can get you out like this." Turning over on his stomach again (and drenching his brother in the process) he suggested, "Could you… crawl back out?"

"Crawl back out? Why do I have to…" An ominous growling around him convinced him to put his annoyances aside and do what Grizz suggested. Shaking his head, he held his phone in his mouth while using its light to locate the throat he came from. When he did, he tried to pry it open. The muscular ring didn't budge. Taking his phone back out, he said, "Grizz, it won't open back up!"

"Can you call our bro? He pulled you out last time!"

Panda looked down at his phone. Right as he did the screen displayed an empty battery icon, then transformed into a plastic brick. He shouted, "Augh no no no! My phone's dead!"

Grizz panicked, quickly running out of solutions to their problem. "My phone's in the shop… Uh…" He sat back up against the wall, rubbing on his belly. "I guess we just have to wait for him to get home?"

"How long will that be?! What time is it?"

A clock on the wall told Grizz it was barely past twelve, which he communicated to his occupant. "So maybe in like five or six hours?"

"What?! Grizz, I can't stay in here that long, it's gross and I don't have my phone. Plus…" A gurgle echoing around him filled in the next part. "...That."

Trying to comfort his little bro, Grizz patted roughly where he believed his head to be. "Don't worry! I'm sure we'll all be fine and then you can get a ton of followers and likes. Just relaaaaax." It didn't reassure either of them that Grizz punctuated that sentence with a rather long belch.

*/^\*

Many hours later, when the sun was starting to set, the fabled third brother arrived. Opening the door, he could immediately see a very fat Grizz sitting against the wall. He jerked awake at hearing the door open, then immediately went, "Hey brooooo," followed by a burp.

Eyes widened, Ice still responded in his trademark monotone voice. "What happened?"

"Well, funny story, you see, Panda wanted to do that go-inside-my-belly thing again and--"

Ice Bear dropped his groceries and walked over to Grizz. Stepping on his foot like a trash can pedal, he popped open his brother's mouth and shoved his paw down his throat. Ice's eyes widened again as all he found was something with a sludgy consistency and a solid rectangle inside it. He pulled out the rectangle, recovering Panda's phone with some black-and-white remnants of him on it. Holding the phone in his hand, he looked at his remaining brother and said, "You digested Panda."

Grizz threw his hands up. "It was an accident! He wanted more notes for his social media page and we forgot only you could get him out. So now…" He gripped his round gut, shaking a flab of it. "Pan-Pan's fat-fat on my tum-tum."

Ice Bear gave a very disapproving look to that choice of words.

"Well… At least it was for a good cause?" He smiled sheepishly.

*/^\*

Though it was his last posts, Panda's social media page blew up. It trended as much as it could in those weird niche circles, but it was way more than any of his other posts at least. Grizz knew he'd be proud. Grizz himself, despite the whole thing, was pretty proud of how much fat stuck around from his little brother. Like a memento. Not to mention, he was pretty popular as the predator in those images! Seemed like lots of people would love to get eaten by him. He wasn't sure if he could get to everyone, but, well… Normal food was feeling a bit unsatisfying after Panda. He licked his lips as he leaned back in his chair, dreaming of the future.