The sun was bright and hot over the crowded beach. Rainbow pride flags were waving in the salty breeze. It was “Gay Day” at Brine Beach and people from across the state came to celebrate and party.
Sean was holding his boyfriend’s hand as they walked through the crowd, looking for a place to lay their towels. Sean couldn’t help but think his boyfriend, Aaron, looked cute in his bright yellow swim trunks - even though he was sporting a new mustache that he disapproved.
Aaron, in his blue trunks, and Sean showed off their fit bodies proudly. Their smooth skin shimmered with sunscreen under the shinning sun.
“Sean, this spot looks good,” Aaron said as he stopped and unfolded his towel.
“Yeah, just as good as anywhere else. Never seen the beach this crowded for Gay Day before,” Sean agreed as he unfolded his towel.
“That spot is taken,” a gruff voice said behind them.
The two young men turned around. There was an overweight, hairy, older man who was bald and had a bushy, greying goatee. He was sitting in a foldable beach chair while wearing nothing but pink swim trunks that were tight around his gut. A bear pride flag waved above him, set on his sun umbrella.
“Oh, sorry,” Aaron apologized, “It didn’t look like anyone was set up here.”
“They ain’t yet. I’m saving it for my buddies,” the older man said.
Sean, who was not as passive as his boyfriend, snarked, “Well if they ain’t here, they ain’t here. The rest of the beach is full.”
“Babe, we can move,” Aaron whispered to his boyfriend.
“Aaron, this old fat fuck doesn’t own the beach,” Sean responded, just loud enough for the man to hear, “We don’t have to move.”
Sean was more assertive, and sometimes short tempered, than Aaron. It sometimes made Aaron uncomfortable, but he also admired how Sean had no problem standing up for them. Aaron also found it attractive.
The old man huffed as the two young men sat on their beach towels. Sean and Aaron sat in the sun in silence. There were a bunch of hot guys walking around, which both Aaron and Sean admired together.
They were people watching and enjoying the fresh air, until the two of them caught a whiff of something pungent. They both turned around to see the old man smoking a fat cigar. The bearish man looked at them, grinned and then winked.
“Hey, do you mind?” Sean asked in an annoyed tone.
“No,” the man said flatly and continued to puff away at his cigar.
“Are you looking for trouble?” Sean aggressively asked, almost standing up.
“Babe, just ignore him,” Aaron whispered as he touched Sean’s arm, stopping him.
“Hard to with all that smoke,” Sean sneered as he was getting even angrier
“Let go stand by the water for a bit and take a pic,” Aaron suggested, trying to calm down his boyfriend.
“Sure, okay,” Sean agreed as the two of them stood up.
“Shit, I left my phone in the car,” Aaron frantically said as he checked his trunk pockets.
“It’s okay, I have mine,” Sean said as he pulled his out.
“Yeah, but yours is like three iPhone models behind. Mine takes better photos,” Aaron said as he was backing away, “I’m going to run to the car. Be right back.” He turned around and jogged through the crowd, dodging the beach goers.
Sean stood there and looked at the old man still smoking his cigar in disgust. The old man waved to him in a snarky way.
“Old fat fuck,” Sean whispered to himself as he walked away. He hated the smell of smoke, especially from a cigar. As a fitness and health nut, he didn’t understand why anyone would put something so putrid and harmful into their body.
As he marched across the sand, he saw the restrooms in the distance. He figured he might as well use it while he was near them.
The restrooms were not busy and not maintained. They were dirty and old. People were avoiding them and peeing in the ocean instead, which Sean realized was the better choice after opening the door to the men’s room.
Sean walked in with the door slamming shut behind him. There was graffiti on the walls and the light was dim and flickered. The smell of piss and shit filled the air. There were a few urinals and stalls.
“Yeah, fuck this,” Sean said allowed. The door slammed shut behind him, causing him to jump.
He quickly turned around and saw the old, bearish man standing behind him. He had his fat cigar still placed firmly in his jaw as he puffed away at it. The smoke was overpowering the smell of the dirty bathroom.
“Looks like ya found trouble,” the cigar smoking man said over the cigar in his mouth.
Sean, being alone and away from the crowd, started to feel intimidated. Seeing the man not sitting down, he was march larger than he appeared. Sean was not defending himself from this man if he had to.
“Look, we’ll move so your friends can sit there. Just leave me alone,” Sean sheepishly pleaded.
The man took his large cigar out of his mouth. “Not as tough as you make out to be,” the man said, speaking more clearly without the cigar in his teeth, as he approached Sean.
“Stay back you fat fu-” Sean yelled, only to be silenced by the man shoving the fat cigar in his open mouth.
The smoke filled Sean’s mouth as he bit down on it. He instantly grabbed it out of his mouth. He tossed it on the dirty floor and it rolled under the stalls. “What the fuck?” he yelled.
“Hey, that was a good cigar,” the man said in an annoyed tone, “But that’s okay, I have plenty more for us.”
Sean suddenly fell to the floor. His legs gave out, as if they were exhausted from holding up weight. He looked at his belly and noticed his abs were gone. A fatty gut was growing. Sean looked nervously at the man.
“Don’t worry, you’ll get use to the added weight,” the man smirked.
Sean struggled to stand with his new fat. He looked down at his belly as it hung below the waistband of his trunks. “What did you do to me?” he asked in a hurry.
“Turning you into…what did you call me? A fat old fuck?” the man answered with a grin.
“How? Why?” Sean asked as he watched all the hours he spent at the gym go to waste.
“My cigar,” the man said as he pulled out another large one from his swim trunks, “Just accept it. You’ll appreciate it soon enough.”
The man placed the cigar in his mouth and watched as Sean was transforming.
As Sean was touching his belly and man boobs, he felt hair sprouting from the skin. It was growing in thick and long. He then noticed it wasn’t only on his chest, but also his arms and legs. He couldn’t see it, but he could feel the itchiness of a short beard growing on his face.
The man lit his cigar. He took a hard puff as he his cheeks caved in, then blew the smoke towards Sean.
The smoke didn’t smell as rancid to him as it did before. A part of him found it pleasant. “You need to stop this!” he begged angrily, “I need to find Aaron.”
“I can’t stop it. This is who ya are now. Don’t ya worry about Aaron though. If he truly loved ya, he’ll love the ya even like this,” the man said as he approached Sean. During this exchange, Sean’s beard continued to grow even longer.
“No, he won’t. He is handsome and I look…like this…” Sean trailed off, sadness in his voice.
A few tears rolled down his cheeks. As they did, strands of hair were falling off from the dome of his head. His once thick hair was now sparse. Only a few individual hairs were on the top of his head, leaving a thick crown of hair on the sides and back.
Sean stood there, accepting his fate. His body was changing and there was nothing else that he could do. This was not only a punishment, but a lesson.
The man touched Sean’s long and thick beard, brushing it before grabbing it. Sean, defeated, didn’t fight back. He knew he couldn’t. It was his fate.
The man took a hard pull from his cigar once again, removed it from his mouth, and blew the smoke into Sean’s face.
The smoke now smelled nice to Sean. He breathed in the smoke and, as he did, he felt his back and right knee get a little sore. His body ached in ways he wasn’t use to.
He opened his eyes and saw the man looking back at him. He touched his face and felt that it was rougher with slight wrinkles. He touched his beard and lifted it enough to see slivers a grey in it.
“Guess I am an old fat fuck now,” Sean said aloud.
The man placed his hand on Sean’s shoulder. “Welcome to the club. It ain’t so bad,” he grinned.
Sean turned to look in the mirror above the only sink in the bathroom. He saw a 50 something year old man. A man who would be considered a bear in the community. A small smile appeared on his face. He actually liked what he saw.
He then looked at the man as he smoked his cigar. “Want one?” the man asked.
“Would love one,” Sean said. He never fully smoked a cigar before, but he desperately wanted one now. The man pulled out another cigar from his trunks and handed it to Sean.
He placed it in his mouth and the man flicked his lighter. Sean leaned in and started puffing while rotating the cigar, ensuring it was lit evenly. He had never done this before, but knew what he was doing. He took a hard pull and then exhaled the smoke. It tasted delightful.
“Looking good, Sean,” the man complimented on his fellow bear.
“Thanks. You too…umm…” Sean complimented back, not knowing the man’s name.
“Hank,” the man filled in the blank.
“Hank, you look good,” Sean said and fully meant it. He had never been attracted to bears before, especially older ones. Now, he thought Hank looked incredibly handsome.
“Now, let’s get back to the beach,” Hank suggested and the two bears left the smoky bathroom.
They moved through the crowds of the beach, not caring if their cigar smoke bothered the other beach goers.
The two cigar bears made it to their spot. Hank grabbed one of his folded up chairs and sat it next to him. Sean was looking at the two beach towels laid in front of him, remembering that Aaron would be coming back at anytime.
Hank sat down and cracked open a beer he had pulled from his ice chest. “Sit down, enjoy that cigar and relax old man,” Hank said, “I’m sure Aaron will still find you super attractive.”
“You think so?” Sean asked, hopeful.
“Oh yeah. We’ll make sure of it,” Hank assured his new bear buddy.
Sean smiled and the two men smoked their cigars under the summer sun.
Leo woke to the smell of linseed oil and a pain in his wrist. For several seconds, that was all he understood: oil, old wood, turpentine, dust, and the pain.
He jerked forward. Leather straps held his arms to a heavy wooden chair. He looked down and noticed he was wearing only the blue athletic shorts he had worn to the gym.
“What the fuck?” he mumbled still half-asleep.
He tried to move his legs to get up, but noticed that his ankles were bound too. Leo pulled against the bindings until the tendons stood out along his forearms and legs, the same legs that had carried him through weight sessions, soccer practices, winning seasons and rough matches. Nothing shifted.
He looked around. The room around him was enormous. North-facing windows rose almost to the ceiling - shedding pools of light throughout the room. Canvases leaned against exposed brick walls. Half-finished portraits watched from easels beneath white drop cloths. Shelves were crowded with brushes, solvents, pigments, jars. He was in an atelier.
And in the brightest pool of light stood a man. Mid-thirties, perhaps. White shirt rolled neatly to the elbows. Dark trousers. A short, carefully trimmed mustache. His face was hidden behind a black masquerade mask.
The masked man was arranging five glass bottles on a wheeled painter’s trolley. Each bottle was set beside a scrap of paper covered in careful handwriting.
Leo twisted violently. “Who are you? Where the hell am I?”
The man lifted the first bottle toward the light, turning it so the amber liquid caught the sun. “Good,” he said, almost to himself.
“Good? Good, what is?”
“The musculature. Solid groundwork.”
“Groundwork for what?” Leo said with a bit of trepidation in his voice.
The masked man stepped closer, head cocked, studying him the way a painter checks perspective before committing to a line. “An excellent foundation. Most bodies need three or four passes of buildup before they’ll hold a highlight. Yours will take paint like it was primed for it.”
“I’m not a canvas. Untie me.”
Instead, the man opened a leather notebook. He read silently. Leo could see handwriting covering the page - measurements, notes, small diagrams.
“Your shoulders stay,” the stranger murmured. “She was quite specific about that.”
“She? She who?!”
The man smiled faintly while selecting a broad sable brush. “My patron.”
Leo’s stomach tightened. “Somebody’s paying you to do this? To do what, exactly?”
The Painter dipped the brush into the amber serum. “The underpainting for my masterpiece. Every good portrait starts with one — a rough block-in of mass and shadow before anything else is allowed to happen. Consider this yours.”
“I didn’t commission a goddamn thing!” Leo retorted.
“No,” the Painter agreed. “You’re not the client.”
⸻
The first stroke crossed Leo’s abdomen. It was almost insultingly gentle. Warmth followed. Then pressure.
Leo sucked in his stomach instinctively, but his abdominal muscles seemed to soften beneath his skin. The hard divisions he had spent years carving into himself blurred, like wet paint dragged across a line that used to be crisp.
“No - stop. Stop it!” The words cracked halfway through.
The Painter stepped back to admire his first strokes, the way a man squints at a canvas from across a room.
Leo looked down. His waist was expanding. Not exploding, not swelling grotesquely—developing, as though invisible hands were rapidly revising his proportions, sketching over a figure that had already been finished.
His narrow athletic middle thickened. His obliques disappeared beneath heavier flesh. A belly began pushing outward over the waistband of his shorts.
“What did you do to me? What is this?” Leo’s voice had gone thin, disbelieving, the anger not yet catching up to the fear.
The Painter ignored him and proceeded with another stroke across Leo’s chest. His pecs broadened. Not softer exactly—heavier. Massive.
“Answer me!” Leo strained against the straps. They didn’t give an inch.
Then the Painter turned his attention to Leo's upper upper arms and thighs - spreading the amber fluid evenly with great attention to detail.
Leo felt them push outward, muscle and mass accumulating together. His upper arms thickened. His forearms swelled against the straps. His thighs grew dense and heavy until the athletic shorts tightened around them - constraining his dick between the two pieces of meat and the fabric.
It was strength, but not his strength. His body had been a machine built for speed and accuracy. This body looked built for moving refrigerators.
The Painter circled him, brush held loosely, considering. “Too narrow, still.”
He painted another line across Leo’s ribs. His torso widened.
“I swear to God, when I get out of this chair—” Leo didn’t finish the threat. He didn’t have an ending for it yet.
The Painter leaned back, thumb raised at arm’s length, measuring the way any painter checks a proportion against the model.
“Better.”
“It’s my body, you sick—”
“It had overly clean lines. No tension in the silhouette. My patron finds that sort of thing...boring for you.”
“I don't care what your patron finds boring!”
The Painter glanced down at his notebook, unbothered. “She disagrees.”
⸻
The second bottle was dark green.
Leo had stopped pulling constantly against the straps. Not because he’d surrendered—he told himself that, held onto it—but because the new body exhausted him differently. His belly rose and fell heavily beneath his chest with every breath.
The Painter switched to a smaller brush.
“What’s that one?” Leo's voice had dropped, wary now instead of furious.
“Texture.” The Painter turned the brush in the light, checking the bristles the way a man tests a blade. “You can’t render a man’s whole life in flat color. There has to be grain to him. Broken color. Something the eye can catch on - something appetizing to make him linger.”
“I don’t want grain. I don’t want any of this. You hear me?”
“Noted,” the Painter said, and touched the brush to the center of Leo’s chest.
At first, nothing happened. Then dark hairs pushed through his skin. Dozens. Hundreds.
Leo made a strangled sound as the hairs spread outward from the wet stroke, thickening into dense curls across his chest.
“No—no, get it off me, get it off—” His hands, still trapped, jerked uselessly at nothing.
The Painter studied the growth with the flat, professional attention of a man checking whether a wash had dried evenly.
“More.” He painted downward.
Hair erupted across Leo’s belly, curling densely around his navel before disappearing beneath his waistband.
The brush touched his forearm. Coarse dark hair thickened there too.
Then the Painter came around behind him. Leo felt the wet line across one shoulder. A prickling sensation raced over his back.
“You freak. What is wrong with you?”
The Painter returned to face him. His gaze settled on Leo’s jaw.
Leo froze. “Don’t. Don't you dare." He said it slower this time, like precision might reach whatever was left of reasonable in the man across from him.
A thin stroke traced his cheek. Stubble darkened immediately. Another stroke. It became beard. Leo could feel it crawling over his face—bristles lengthening along his jaw, chin, cheeks. The Painter painted beneath his lower lip, then along the other side, unhurried, the way a man finishes a passage he already knows will work.
Within seconds, a thick dark beard hung from Leo’s face. He could feel its weight when he moved his jaw.
The Painter gently pinched one side of Leo's beard between two fingers. “Good density. Holds the light well.”
Leo stared at him, breathing hard through his nose. “You’re out of your mind.”
“Art requires conviction, my boy.”
“This isn't art. This is kidnapping. Torture. Mutilation!”
The Painter almost smiled. “I call it commissioned work.”
⸻
The third serum was rust-colored.
Leo’s bravado faltered when he saw the Painter change brushes again, swapping to something wide and worn, bristles splayed like they'd seen decades of use.
“What does that one do?”
The Painter consulted his notes without looking up. “Patina.”
“What does that mean?!”
“It means age doesn’t sit on top of a man. It sinks in. Like a good glaze—thin, transparent, built up in passes until the whole surface reads differently, even though nothing underneath has changed.”
“Don’t. Please don’t do that one. You’ve done enough already. Whatever she’s paying you, I’ll—”
The Painter just grinned as he painted Leo’s temple.
Coldness replaced warmth. Leo flinched. The skin around his eyes tightened, then relaxed strangely. Fine lines appeared at their corners. The Painter added another stroke across his forehead. Leo felt years settle onto him.
His brow grew heavier. His cheeks roughened. The youthful fullness around his eyes disappeared.
“Stop. Please. I’m begging you to stop.” The words came more quietly now, stripped of the earlier fury.
The Painter brushed through Leo’s beard. Black became charcoal. Charcoal became gray. Silver spread through the thick hair in irregular streaks until the beard looked as though decades had passed through it.
Leo looked down. Gray appeared among the dark forest covering his chest.
“No. No, no—”
The Painter moved behind him. A brush touched Leo’s scalp. Nothing seemed to happen.
Then Leo felt hair sliding against his shoulders. Individual strands. He craned his neck. Dark hair littered the floor behind the chair.
“You’re making me bald. You’re actually making me bald.” It came out flat, stunned, like he’d run out of registers to be angry in.
The Painter continued calmly, working in small, circular passes, the way a man scumbles thin color over a dry ground to soften an edge.
Leo felt cool air reach parts of his scalp that had never felt air before. Hair withdrew from his forehead. The thick youthful hairline he had barely thought about receded dramatically. Then the crown thinned.
More hair fell. Eventually there was nothing left across the top. Only a fringe remained around the sides and back, dark gray threaded with silver.
“How old,” Leo said. Not quite a question yet.
The Painter looked at him, waiting.
Leo swallowed. “How old did you make me?”
“According to my patron’s wishes—approximately fifty.”
Leo stared straight ahead. Twenty-six years of his life had been taken in a few minutes.
The Painter dabbed one final trace of serum beside Leo’s eye.
“There.” He nodded, satisfied, the way a man checks a passage against the rest of the canvas. “The weathering was necessary. A masterpiece needs history in it, or it’s just an illustration.”
⸻
The fourth bottle was almost black. The brush was narrow.
Leo watched it approaching his throat. “No. Not that one. Whatever that is, no.”
The Painter stopped. For the first time, something almost resembling amusement appeared in his eyes. “You object to this layer specifically?”
“I object to all of it. I’ve objected to every single part of this!”
The brush touched Leo’s throat. “Of course you have.”
A burning sensation sank inward and Leo coughed… But the sound was wrong. Deeper.
He coughed again. A gravelly rumble came from his chest, rough as smoke scraped over stone.
Leo’s eyes widened. “What—what did you do to my—”
He stopped. The voice that came out sounded like a fifty year old man's. More than fifty even. Low, coarse, worn around the edges. There was even something unfamiliar in the vowels. A lazy Southern drag.
“Give me my voice back.” It came out a growl, unrecognizable to his own ears, and that seemed to frighten him worse than the beard had.
The Painter seemed satisfied. “A finished piece should stimulate every sense of the person looking at it. It should sound like it looks.”
⸻
Only one bottle remained. Clear glass. Clear liquid.
Leo looked at it. “That’s it? That's the last one!? What more could you change!?”
The Painter didn’t answer at first. The he lifted the liquid bottle carefully. Unlike the others, the liquid inside looked like water “Everything important about you, my boy - or should I say my good man.”
Leo pulled against the straps again, hard enough to rock the chair. “Don’t. Whatever it is, don’t.”
The Painter selected the softest brush yet. “This is the varnish. Every layer before this changed the surface—mass, texture, patina, voice. But on their own, they’re just studies. Separate passages sitting on top of each other, not agreeing with one another yet.”
Leo shook his head. “I don’t care what it does. I don’t want—”
“This makes them belong together,” the Painter said, and dipped the brush.
Leo screamed at him—a real scream, torn from the bottom of that new gravel voice.
The first stroke crossed his forehead. Nothing happened. Leo almost laughed, one raw, disbelieving bark. Then he lost the word he had been about to use.
Leo blinked as the Painter watched intently.
“What did you—” His thought wandered. He tried to remember what he had been studying. Finance? No. Exercise science? Something with numbers.
He knew he went to college. He could picture the campus. He could picture his textbooks. But when he tried to recall what had been inside them, the information seemed farther away than it should have been—like paint sinking into an unprimed canvas, there, technically, but no longer sitting on the surface where he could reach it.
The Painter painted another stroke across his temple.
Leo frowned. “Quit messin’ with me.”
The Southern edge had grown stronger. He noticed it. It bothered him. Then it didn’t.
The Painter painted the other temple. Leo remembered girlfriends. He remembered wanting women. He remembered the certainty of it.
And then he looked at the Painter. The rolled sleeves. The forearms. The short mustache beneath the masquerade mask. Something moved inside Leo that had never moved there before.
His stomach tightened. Not fear. Attraction. Leo jerked his eyes away. “No. No, that's not - I don't -”
The Painter paused, brush lifted, watching him. Leo forced himself to look back, almost testing it. The attraction became clearer. Male. Specific. Undeniable.
The knowledge arrived alongside another knowledge—more intimate, more disorienting—a certainty about the role he wanted with men, an instinctive submissiveness that had no place in his memories.
Leo breathed harder. “I’m not—I was never—”
He stopped. Not what? He remembered being straight. Clearly. He remembered that version of himself insisting it mattered. But the emotion attached to the memory was disappearing. Like paint being lifted from an old canvas with a rag and turpentine—the ghost of an image still faintly there under the new ground.
The Painter drew the final clear stroke down the center of Leo’s chest.
Leo watched him. His thoughts came slower now. Simpler.
He still knew what had happened. He still knew he was Leo. But twenty-four-year-old Leo felt increasingly like an old photograph of himself. Someone he had been once. Someone exhausting. Always training. Always proving something. Always chasing girls whose faces he could no longer quite picture.
Leo shifted in the chair, testing the new weight of himself, almost curious about it now. The Painter’s gaze met his. Leo gave him a long, unhurried look, down and back up, like he was the one doing the appraising for once.
"Huh."
The Painter tilted his head.
Leo felt heat rise beneath the gray beard, low and unfamiliar and not unwelcome. “You’re kinda handsome under that mask, you know that?”
The Painter capped the bottle. “The varnish has cured.”
⸻
The straps came off. Leo stood slowly. His balance had changed.
His belly pressed against the waistband of his shorts. His shoulders felt enormous. Gray hair covered his chest and arms. His beard brushed his sternum when he looked down.
The Painter brought out a full-length mirror. For the first time, Leo saw the finished work. He stared.
A fifty-year-old man stared back. Massive shoulders. Heavy arms. A powerful chest disappearing beneath dense gray-black hair. A thick belly. A huge salt-and-pepper beard. Bald scalp gleaming beneath the studio lights, with only a gray fringe remaining around the sides.
Leo touched his head. “Damn. Look at me.”
His own gravelly voice rolled through the atelier, and he said it again just to hear it, almost pleased with the sound now. He turned sideways. Studied himself.
The memory of his old body was perfectly intact. But instead of grief, Leo felt something disturbingly close to curiosity - and underneath that, something warmer he didn't examine too closely.
The Painter stood behind him in the reflection. Leo’s eyes lingered there - on the mask, the forearms, the careful hands that had done all of this to him.
“You did all this? All of it, yourself?”
“Yes.”
Leo rubbed his beard, slow, almost a stroke. “Hell of a job. You’ve got good hands.”
The atelier door opened and a young woman entered. Leo recognized her instantly. His ex, Melinda. She stopped several feet away.
For the first time that night, the Painter bowed. “My patron.”
Leo looked from him to her. Pieces connected slowly. The cheating. The fights. The last thing she had called him before she left for good.
She walked around Leo the way the Painter had, checking the composition from every angle. Her expression hardened when she met his eyes.
“You wanted to act like a dirty old man,” she said. “Now you can be one.”
Leo understood that he ought to hate her. Some distant version of him did. But the thought was complicated, and complicated thoughts seemed like too much work now.
He scratched his hairy belly. “Guess so.”
Her confidence faltered. Perhaps she had expected begging. Perhaps she had at least expected the masterpiece to understand its punishment.
Instead, Leo looked past her—at the Painter, at the mask, at those hands now cleaning brushes as if nothing had happened. Leo watched the movement of his fingers on the bristles and felt something low and shameless settle into him.
“She can see herself out,” Leo said, in that new gravel drawl, not even looking at Melinda anymore. “Me and you got unfinished business, don’t we?”
Whatever satisfaction had been on Melinda’s face disappeared.
The Painter glanced at him, and something in the set of his mouth suggested he was, despite himself, a little pleased.
“You closin’ up soon?” Leo asked, letting his eyes drop, slow and deliberate, down the Painter’s rolled sleeves to his hands. “Or does the model get a say in what happens to him next?”
A pause. Then the Painter understood. So did the ex. Whatever satisfaction had been on her face was long gone now, replaced by something closer to unease.
The Painter placed the clean brush carefully beside the five empty bottles.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m closing up.” A beat. “Don’t go far.”
Leo grinned, wide and unashamed beneath the enormous gray beard. “Wasn’t plannin’ on it.”
Leo took one last look in the mirror.
For just an instant he saw the athlete underneath—the sharp young man buried beneath layer after layer of someone else’s intention.
Then the image resolved. The older man rolled his shoulders, scratched his beard, and grinned.
Behind him, the Painter removed the portrait lamp from its stand. The commission was complete. And the canvas, horrifyingly, had begun to admire the work—and the man who’d made it.
Adam tried to take out his clothes but all those buttons and buckles made no sense anymore and trying to work them was making him angry. He could feel his muscles growing, specially his back and his belly muscles tearing his shirt apart. His hand was so big and the armas so hairy he couldn´t see skin.
“ JAMES PLEASE. MAKE ME NORMAL AGAIN !! “ shouted Adam with a voice so low it sounded like a growl.
“ No, you shaved evey hair of your body and I want my husband as hairy as a Gorilla. Now its literal. “ said his witch husband with so much lust in his eyes that Adam became hard among his shrinking stompy legs.
“ ME FEEL STRANGE ! I MEAN,,,, I .. ME HARD TO THINK, WHATS HAPPENING TO ME… * OOK* “ said Adam trying very hard to control his body and feeling. He stoped thinking with words, images and instincts became stronger. He need cock. Pleasure. No… he was Adam… a writer… books… fulll of things….
While Adam fought a losing battle against the primate mentality, his back became full of long dark hairs His husband hugged the gorillaman from behind licking the sweaty hairy back, he hold the hirsute ass with his hands crazy with so much pleasure.
“ No more a gentle hairless nerd. Now you will be a muscle beast, virile and dumb, only good to fuck, eat and sleep. HAHAHAHA !”
Adam was nomore, the hairy beast grabed James with his handlike foot like a toy mannequin, Adam could be under James spell, but now James was under Adam grasp forever.
Something wrong must have happened with my caveman serum. My boyfriend love hairy chests and I tried to unlock my hirsute genes with some neanderthal DNA. At the start, it was perfect, my chest became full of lustful hair. My legs and arms fur became dense, and even my back and shoulders had lots of hair. As a side effect my muscles grew and I gained 10 pounds in one week without stepping at the gym. But the serum is out of control and is affecting other things, my hands and feet grew over night, my posture sucks and I have been walking barefeet since yesterday and somehow I ain’t caring. It’s affect my mind now, damn, this fuckin serum is makin me horny… Me horny, me want ass ! *Lick lips*
No, me must focus… Go to the lab… Get the ante… Anto… The human serum! Mind foggy.. ook… road signs… reading hard…driving hard…. Ook ook… Which pedal-thing is … brake.. OOK EEK EEK *grunt*
Johnny fumbled his keys as he approached the door to his apartment. After a long day of shit going wrong, this was the straw that broke the camels back.
"Fuck!"
He already had to work on a stupid presentation for his master's program, then had a shift at his internship. It was like the world was collapsing in on him, and he still has to fit in a workout later on the day.
He managed to pull out his keys and unlocked his door. And just as he felt the cool air conditioning against his skin, he was suddenly thrown forward as a man tackled him to the ground. He tried fighting back using some bullshit he learned in a self defense class, but it was no use. It was like the attacker knew exactly what he was gonna do before he did it. After a few seconds of struggling, Johnny felt a prick against the back of his neck and it wasn't long before he was out.
...
"Ahhh fuck!" Johnny yelled as he came to.
He took a second to look around. He was sat on his couch, with a mysterious man standing in front of him. He was wearing business casual clothes and a mask covering most of his face. The man was also quite skinny compared to Johnny, which further confused him on how the man overpowered him.
Johnny lunged out of the chair, but was stopped by restraints that chained him to the couch.
The man scoffed, but didn't say anything.
"Who are you?"
No response.
"What do you want?"
The man ignores him, instead pulling something out of his backpack. It looked like some sort of powdery substance in an unlabeled container.
"What are you doing?"
The man walked over to Johnny's kitchen and rummaged through his fridge, pulling out a leftover chicken breast. He prepared it on a plate and sprinkled some of the powder onto it, as it was a seasoning.
"What the hell..." Johnny muttered under his breath.
The man approached him with the plate of chicken, cut off a piece, and started carrying towards Johnny's mouth.
"No! No!"
Johnny struggled, but he couldn't break his restraints. He tried keeping his mouth shut, but that proved ineffective as the man forced the chicken into his mouth and held it closed until he swallowed.
As much as he wanted to resist, he couldn't deny whatever that seasoning was, tasted amazing. It was sweet and savoury at the same time, it almost made the chicken taste like dessert.
"What the fuck was that for!?"
The man simply pointed at Johnny's stomach. He seemed confused for a moment, until he looked down at his own stomach and watched as a small belly formed under his shirt.
"Agh! What the fuck!"
His previously flat stomach started to rise like a loaf of bread, creating a mound of fat under his shirt. It continued to grow right in front of his eyes, throwing years of hard work down the drain as his abs became more and more buried.
He felt the fabric of his shirt tighten around his growing belly as it surpassed the size of a basketball. And unfortunately for Johnny, this was only the beginning. Unbeknownst to him, the rest of his body started to grow to match his ball belly. His hard pecs softened, losing most of their definition. His defined arms and legs grew a bit flabby as a layer of fat engulfed his muscles. He even felt a double chin forming under his once sharp jawline.
He leaned his head back and groaned as his pregnant looking belly gurgled. He wanted to rub it and quell the ache so bad, but his arms were still tied up.
As Johnny laid back, a strange noise caught his attention. The other man had started groaning, just like Johnny was moments earlier. Johnny looked up and was shocked to see the man's belly start to grow. Just like his, it started as a small bulge under the shirt, then escalated until the man was left with a round belly larger than Johnny's.
The man lost his balance and fell back onto a nearby chair as the rest of his body swelled. His skinny limbs filled out with fat, and Johnny could even see his face swell up a little bit under the mask.
The man took a moment to adjust before giving his new belly a satisfied pat.
The man spared no time in grabbing another piece of chicken and forcing it down Johnny's throat. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he knew he should have resisted, regardless of how pointless it was. But in reality, he couldn't be bothered to resist, so he just let it happen.
Almost immediately after swallowing the chicken, he felt his body swelling again, but this time he didn't even bother to look.
He felt his body sink further into his couch as more and more fat poured into his body. His shirt rid up his expanding belly as it spilled onto his lap. His chest swelled into moobs that nearby burst through his shirt and his arms became padded in a thick layer of fat. Hell, it even became harder to move his fingers as they fattened up too.
His legs thickened, his ass expanded, and his dick shrunk into a growing fat pad. He didn't even seem to care anymore when his chiselled face plumped up and rounded out.
Johnny thought he would freak out in this situation, but all he could feel in that moment was relief. Relief that he didn't have to go to the gym anymore, relief that he didn't have to eat chicken and rice everyday. He could do whatever the fuck he wanted now that he was fat.
A slight smile took over his face just as he noticed the man begin to grow as well. Just like last time, the man grew in the same ways as he did, just more.
The man's belly swelled into a massive ball gut that popped all of his buttons off one by one until his hairy belly was on full display. His already flabby chest grew into full on man tits that sagged onto his gut, with grey hairs weaving through the pelt of fur covering his chest.
He flexed as his arms and legs swelled with both muscle and fat. His sleeves tightened around his growing biceps and his pants tore clean in half due to his expanding ass. The once skinny guy now looked even stronger than Johnny, with big arms, thick legs, and a barrel sized chest. And with the way the man rubbed his thick hands across his expansive gut, he certainly didn't mind.
Finally, the man's face seemed to adjust to the extreme growth of his body. An obvious double chin formed below his beard, and his cheeks puffed out even more, rounding out his face. Johnny noticed the elastic on his mask strain slightly as his face grew before eventually giving out.
Johnny followed the mask with his eyes as it slowly fell to the ground, and when he looked up, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
It was himself. Or at least he thought so. Under the hundreds of pounds the man had gained, there was a vague resemblance to Johnny.
"You're... Me?" Johnny asked in utter shock.
The man sighed. "Yeah..."
"But... But... It doesn't make sense. You were skinnier than me, now you're fatter than me, and what's with the grey hairs?" Johnny stumbled over his words.
"Woah slow down. I am you, just, from the future. Just call me John."
Johnny didn't want to believe it, but the more he thought about it, the more it made sense.
"Why... Why would you do this to me? To us?"
"Well in about 20 years, you... well we, come up with a theoretical method of time traveling, but nobody believes in it enough to find it. Eventually I managed to convince a sad and lonely billionaire to fund my project under one condition. I make this for him."
He held up the container filled with the powder he used to fatten Johnny up.
"It causes the body to store much more energy as fat than usual, so when paired with food." He paused to point at Johnny's fattened body. "Voila."
"Can you get to the point!?" Johnny snapped.
"Right. Well neither of my projects would ever be approved for human trials, for obvious reasons, so I thought I would do it myself. I built a time machine, which I immediately used to come here with the fattening powder. Then, well, you know the rest. Looks like both of my inventions were a success."
"Why test it on us, why not find some random person to fatten up." Johnny asked.
"Well I needed to know this lasted. My client wants to use this powder as a form of revenge, to fatten up the people he doesn't like in Hollywood and ruin their careers. If people could just burn the fat off in a couple months, then it would be useless. But clearly the effects of this lasted over 20 years, so I'd say it's a success."
"It more than just lasted, I mean look at you. You clearly get even fatter over the next 20 years." Johnny taunted.
"Yeah..." John laughed. "Though something about making you fat also made it so you never stopped going to the gym." He flexed again, showing off his massive arms.
*Gurgle*
He only stopped flexing when Johnny's stomach let out a loud gurgling sound.
"You hungry?" He asked.
"Hell yeah." John responded with a pat on the belly. "But first I gotta get some measurements."
"Huh?"
"Well I have a sample size of one right now, so I'm getting all the data I can."
John untied his younger self, letting the young man finally move around in his larger body. After finding his balance, Johnny lifted up his shirt and scoffed as he looked at his massive belly.
*Gurgle*
Johnny's belly let out another, louder noise, begging for food.
"Can the measurements wait until after the food?"
"Fine." John rolled his eyes. "My results only look better the fatter you get, so I'll happily stuff you until you never want to eat again."
You had been messaging with this twink for a few weeks, ever since he moved back home from college into his parents house for the summer. The chats were annoyingly vanilla, but you knew he was very hungry for a hairy, muscled, older top man. But one evening things took a turn. He sent you a pic of him wearing nothing but a black jock strap. “Can you come over now? My parents are gone for two hours.” You didn’t have to be asked twice. Ten minutes later you were in his bedroom at his parents house, positioning him on all fours on the bed. You started lapping at his hairless pink hole, listening to him squeal with delight as your salt and pepper stubble tickled his pussy lips. He kept getting nervous though. “You have to leave before 9pm when my parents come back,” but it was nothing pushing you tongue deeper into his hole couldn’t make him forget. After he gave you some mediocre head, as college kids usually do, you put him back on all fours. “No condom, right?” His answer was clear, despite being muffled by the pillow. “Give me your raw load.” You smirked. “You’re not worried about what my sperm might do to you?” But before he could answer, you popped your enormous head in, and all he could do was moan. You knew he was a slutty bottom twink deep in heat, so you pushed the rest of your cock in fast and started pounding. Even though he wasn’t tracking, you purposely held back until 8:50pm, when you finally erupted inside of him, painting his inner walls with your transformative sperm. He was laying peacefully in the bed with a big smile, basking in the feeling of being used when he suddenly saw the time. “You have to leave right now!” You took a quick pic to document what was happening to his body in only the first two minutes. His formerly hairless body now had a nice, perky, hairy ass, hairy legs, and fur was starting to come in on his arms and lower back. It was too bad you wouldn’t be able to watch more changes, but he was panicking. You headed out to the driveway, shirtless and wearing underwear only, and waited in your car until you saw a car about to turn into the driveway. You backed out, rolled down your window as you passed his parents, both of whom were clearly younger than you, and waved. It seemed only right that they should know who their slutty son just got bred by, and lay eyes on the powerful, hairy, older man who just changed they son into a hairy man. Plus they would be seeing you again too, because that horny ex-twink is going to want regular breedings from you all summer long.
“Τι χαζή ιδέα,” Nikos muttered as he wandered beneath the bright red WRESTLER sign. What a stupid idea.
His American roommate had invited him to a costume party that evening, insisting everyone had to dress as something “completely unlike themselves.” Nikos was a twenty-one-year-old engineering student from Thessaloniki, not an actor, not a party animal, and certainly not a wrestler.
Still, he had promised to go. “Ένα απλό κοστούμι,” he told himself. Just a simple costume.
The shop was enormous, its walls crowded with plastic capes, rubber masks, and brightly colored uniforms. Nikos passed pirates, superheroes, and cowboys before stopping beside a black wrestling singlet trimmed in gold. A roaring lion decorated the chest.
The package read:
BECOME A LEGEND. ONE SIZE BECOMES ALL.
Nikos laughed. “Very American. Which is, thankfully, completely unlike myself. This’ll work.” He carried it into the fitting room.
The singlet felt heavier than ordinary fabric. He stepped into it, pulled it over his hips, then wrestled one strap onto his shoulder. The material tightened instantly.
“Πολύ μικρό,” he complained. Too small. Then the tightness vanished.
Nikos looked down. His shoulders seemed broader. The arms emerging from the singlet were thicker than they had been a moment ago, their familiar lean muscle swelling into heavy curves. Dark hair spread across his chest, creeping upward towards his shoulder.
He flexed experimentally. The muscle jumped beneath his skin. “Whoa.”
A warm pressure rolled through his stomach. His waist expanded against the costume, not becoming soft, but dense and solid. His thighs thickened until they pushed against the short legs of the singlet. He placed both hands on his middle as another surge made his entire body grow.
Nikos should have removed the costume. Instead, he stared. “Απίστευτο,” he whispered. Incredible.
His mustache prickled. Black stubble poured across his cheeks and jaw, gathering into a beard. His neck thickened beneath it. His chest pushed outward, forcing the lion emblem forward as his torso became barrel-shaped and enormous.
The fitting room suddenly seemed smaller. Nikos bent one arm. His biceps rose like a ball beneath a carpet of dark hair.
“Big,” he said, grinning despite himself. “I am getting very big.”
The next pulse shook the mirror. His hands became broad and callused. His shoulders swelled until the straps looked narrow against them. Hair further covered his arms, chest, stomach, back, and legs in thick curls. His beard grew longer and fuller, framing a face that had become older-looking, rougher, and heavier-browed.
Something else was changing too. Nikos tried to remember why he had come to the shop. “Party. College. Engineering.” He muttered these words under his breath then they floated away before he could arrange them properly.
He looked at the equations printed on the science-themed bag he had left on the bench. For a moment, he knew they should mean something. Then they just looked like little scratches.
“Numbers are dumb,” he decided before the final surge hit him like a bell ringing inside his skull.
His body ballooned into its completed shape: a massive, lumbering wrestler with tree-trunk legs, a broad hairy belly, enormous arms, and a chest like a wall. Black elbow pads appeared around his arms. Heavy knee pads wrapped themselves into place.
Nikos raised his chin at the mirror. The serious young student was gone. In his place stood a gigantic bearded bruiser squeezed into black and gold.
He searched for a Greek word to describe himself. “Μεγάλος,” he said slowly and with uncertainty. Big. That word was easier to find. He tried another sentence. “Εγώ είμαι…” He paused, brow furrowing painfully. I am…
The poster beside the mirror supplied the answer.
BECOME A LEGEND.
Nikos slapped the lion on his belly and laughed, a booming, empty sound. “I’m Nikos the legend!” But the name didn’t seem right anymore. His mind spun and he heard the word “Nick” roll off his tongue. “No,” Nikos said. “I’m Nick the legend!”
He stomped out of the fitting room without changing back. At the register, the cashier merely smiled and handed him a black shopping bag.
“Enjoy the costume.”
Nike scratched his beard. “Cost…ume?”
“Yes.”
He nodded as though he understood, though he clearly did not, then marched toward the exit, shoulders rolling with every heavy step.
Outside, he spotted his reflection in the glass doors and stopped to admire it.
“Ha! Nick the jumbo wrestler!” he declared. “Nick is the strongest! Nike will smash the party!”
He lumbered into the parking lot, completely forgetting the man he was - wholly lost to the costume shop and its unknowable desires.
Tom could not stop thinking about his brief experience as a middle-aged daddy that one fateful night he played Body Swap Roulette with his friends. He often returned to his online profile and looked at the man who had messaged him - the man he briefly became for one glorious evening.
The photograph waited beneath the username: a rugged man in his mid-forties, dark hair escaping beneath a baseball cap, salt-and-pepper beard, chest hair spreading across a broad, solid torso.
Brian - the name was not listed in the app, but instead it was seared into his mind from the experience - an indelible part of his own consciousness - and a side-effect of playing the game he had not anticipated. Brian was the body Tom had worn for one impossible night during the roulette.
He had hated changing back. For weeks afterward, Tom kept remembering the weight of Brian’s arms, the scrape of his beard, the confident way he felt when he hooked-up with a younger man in Brian's body - his new dick thicker, his urges keen, sharp, with a hint of closeted desperation. Even the softness around his waist had felt substantial rather than imperfect. He had occupied space without apologizing for it.
What Tom had not expected to miss were the other things Brian had left in his mind. A woman laughing somewhere behind him. Two children arguing over a television remote. A suburban kitchen glowing at dawn. The pressure of a wedding ring that had never actually appeared on his finger and never truthfully belonged there to begin with. They were not memories exactly. More like emotional bruises left behind by a life he had touched.
At nine thirty on a Friday night, Tom sat alone at his kitchen table wearing the same red polo he had worn during the first game. He stared at Brian’s photograph until the screen dimmed. He had debated revisiting Brian’s body for weeks - but it was against the rules of the game he had agreed to with his friends. Too risky to do alone. Too much a chance of losing yourself in the shuffle.
Tom couldn’t stand it anymore - he needed to feel Brian again. Needed to feel his weight. Wanted to rub a hand through his scruff. Wanted to see his pouty eyes looking back at him in the mirror. Wanted to feel the weight of his dick in his hand. Most of all - Tom wanted to better understand Brian. So against the rules and his better judgement, Tom waited for Brian’s name to appear with a green dot then he restored his profile and pinged Brian. As soon as Brian responded Tom knew he sealed the deal.
The change began in his hands. His fingers thickened against the phone. Dark hair rose over his knuckles and forearms. The sleeves of the polo tightened as his biceps grew heavier, less sculpted than Don’s gym-built arms but more naturally powerful. His shoulders widened. A warm pressure filled his chest, followed by the familiar prickling spread of hair beneath the fabric.
Tom stood too quickly. The kitchen tilted as several inches of youth seemed to settle downward into weight. His waist thickened. His stomach pressed against the polo, not huge, but unmistakably middle-aged. His thighs filled his khakis. His belt dug in.
Then his face began to pull. He gripped the counter while his jaw broadened and his cheeks roughened. Brown and gray whiskers pushed across his skin, forming the same dense beard he had admired the first time. His hairline shifted. Fine creases gathered beside his eyes.
When the transformation released him, Tom looked into the dark reflection of the kitchen window. Brian looked back.
“God, I’m so fucking hot.” Tom whispered, hearing the older man’s voice come from his throat.
A second voice answered inside him. Not words. Wanting. The thought of a quiet bar off the interstate. A corner booth. Whiskey ordered without checking the price. The certainty that Brian went there when he needed an hour no one in his family could account for. Tom knew where to find him.
⸻
Brian was alone when Tom entered the bar.
He sat beneath a muted television, wearing a navy button-down with the sleeves rolled neatly to his elbows. A pale mark circled the finger where he had removed his wedding band. Tom felt the sight of it before he understood it: guilt, relief, and an old practiced sadness.
Brian looked up. His glass stopped halfway to his mouth. For several seconds neither man moved. Then Brian lowered the drink and said, “What the fuck!?”
Tom slid into the opposite side of the booth. Up close, the resemblance was exact. The same brown eyes. The same gray threaded through the beard. The same vertical line appearing between their brows.
Brian stared as though he had found a crack in reality and was trying to decide whether looking directly into it would make things worse.
Tom offered a nervous wide smile.
Brian’s expression changed with it. “You have my teeth.”
“I have more than that” he said gesturing downward with a stupid grin.
Brian glanced toward the bartender, then leaned across the table. “Who are you?”
“My name is Tom.”
“That doesn’t answer fucking anything.”
“No. It’s just the easiest part.”
Tom explained the body swap roulette as plainly as he could. Four friends. Four profiles. One night in borrowed bodies. He did not mention every detail, especially how much he had enjoyed Brian’s shape, or that he had fucked another man with Brian’s dick, but Brian seemed to understand it anyway.
“You chose to do this again,” Brian said.
“Yes.”
“Why me?”
Tom looked down at his thick, hairy hands. “Because look at yourself! Because I missed having all of this” he said as he moved one hand across his scruff and the other down to his pants.
Brian gave a humorless laugh. “You missed being a married man with a mortgage and two teenagers?”
“I missed feeling like you.”
“You don’t know what that feels like.”
Tom met his eyes. “Your daughter pretends she hates the old songs you play in the car, but you caught her singing one in the kitchen last Tuesday.”
Brian went still.
“Your son only calls you ‘Dad’ when he wants something. The rest of the time it’s ‘Brian’ because he knows it annoys you.”
“Stop.”
“You keep your wedding ring in the coin pocket of your jeans when you come here. You tell yourself removing it is more honest than wearing it.”
Brian’s face drained of color. Tom felt fear flare through both of them.
“I didn’t go looking for those things,” Tom said quietly. “They came with you.”
Brian’s hand closed around his glass. “What else?”
“That you’ve stood outside three gay bars and never gone in.”
The silence between them changed. The television crowd cheered soundlessly overhead.
Brian looked toward the window. “You need to leave.”
Tom started to rise then Brian caught his wrist.
The contact startled them both. Brian’s fingers encircled a wrist identical to his own. He turned it over and felt the palm of Tom’s hand. Rough. With hair encroaching from the wrist and across the knuckles.
“Wait,” he said.
Tom sat again. Brian studied him with a concentration that felt almost intimate. His gaze traveled over Tom’s face, then lowered to the open collar of the red polo, where dark chest hair showed above the top button.
“I don’t wear red,” Brian said.
“I do,” Tom replied.
“It looks better on me than I expected.”
Tom smiled. “You’re welcome.”
Brian’s mouth twitched despite himself, and his forehead creased as he looked Tom over. “It’s so surreal seeing my body from the outside. Do I really carry myself like that?” His eyes moved over the familiar breadth of Tom’s shoulders, the thickness through his waist, the gray threaded unevenly through the beard. “I never realized how dark the skin around my eyes had become, or how tired I look. Back in college I ran track and played soccer. I was lean enough that I could eat whatever I wanted and still see every muscle in my stomach. Even after I got married, I kept it up for a while. Morning runs, weekend leagues, lifting in the garage.” He gave a small, embarrassed shrug. “Then work got busier. The kids came. There was always something more important than going for a run, and eventually I stopped pretending I’d start again on Monday. Now my knees ache, my stomach hangs over my belt when I sit, and half the hair on my body is turning gray.” He studied Tom’s borrowed face with open disbelief. “How could you find me attractive like this?”
Tom glanced down at the body he was wearing, not critically but almost fondly. He spread one of Brian’s broad hands over the slightly soft weight at his middle, then looked back up. “Because none of that looks like failure to me.” Brian’s expression tightened, but Tom continued. “You look lived-in. Solid. Like you’ve spent years becoming someone instead of trying to stay twenty-five forever. I like the gray in your beard. I like the lines around your eyes. I like that your body is strong without looking like you built it for strangers to admire.” He flexed Brian’s fingers once, watching the tendons move beneath the hair on the back of the hand. “And I’ve always been attracted to older men. Not just because they’re older, but because they usually seem more comfortable taking up space.”
Brian let out a quiet laugh. “Comfortable? You’ve been inside my head. You know better than that.”
“I know you don’t feel comfortable,” Tom said. “That’s different from how you look.” He leaned forward slightly. “When I became you, I felt heavier, but I also felt grounded. I didn’t feel like I had to prove I belonged in the room. People looked at me and assumed I knew what I was doing. And when I looked in the mirror…” Tom paused, almost shy now. “I liked what I saw. The chest hair, the beard, the thicker waist, your hairy dick…all of it. I didn’t see some washed-up version of who you used to be. I saw a handsome man in his forties who has no idea how much of him is still worth wanting.”
Brian’s eyes dropped to the table. “You make it sound better than it is.”
“Maybe you’ve been describing yourself badly for so long that hearing the truth sounds exaggerated.”
That small surrender loosened something. Brian asked questions. Some were practical—how long the change lasted, whether Tom could control it, whether anyone else knew. Others were harder.
“Do you feel what I’m feeling right now?”
“Pieces of it.”
“What pieces?”
Tom considered lying. “You’re frightened.”
“Obviously.”
“You’re angry that I know you.”
Brian nodded once.
“And you want to kiss me.”
Brian’s eyes snapped to his.
Tom leaned back. “That part is fairly loud.”
For a moment Brian appeared offended. Then he glanced at Tom’s mouth. “It would be like kissing myself,” he said.
“Not exactly…” Tom replied.
“But you look exactly like me!”
“Maybe but I’m still mostly another man.”
Brian rubbed a thumb along the condensation on his half empty glass. “Technically.”
Tom laughed. “Technically?”
“If you are me—”
“I’m not.”
“—or close enough to me, then it’s not exactly cheating.”
“You took off your wedding ring before I arrived. You were ready to cheat…”
Brian looked down at his bare finger and Tom felt the shame move through him like a cold draft. It belonged to Brian, but it hurt in Tom’s chest.
“I’m not here to judge you,” Tom said.
“That makes one of us.”
“You don’t have to do anything.”
Brian looked at the duplicate sitting across from him. “That’s the problem. I do.”
⸻
Brian followed Tom home in his own car. He had texted his wife from the parking lot, saying an early unexpected Saturday client meeting made it easier to stay near the office for the night.
At Tom’s house, Brian wandered through the rooms slowly while Tom got the two men a drink. There was nothing remarkable about Tom’s house. A mismatched couch. Framed photographs. Shoes kicked beneath a table. A picture of Tom with Phil, Don, and Ralph at Pride, all four men sunburned and grinning.
Brian picked it up. “You just leave this out?”
“It’s my house.”
“Someone could see it.”
“Who? And why would I care if they did?”
Brian had no answer.
Tom came closer. Their shoulders nearly touched. “There aren’t any hidden compartments in my life,” he said.
Brian returned the frame to the shelf with unusual care. “That must be nice.”
Tom felt the ache beneath the words because some of it still lived inside him. He touched Brian’s cheek. Brian did not pull away. Their first kiss was hesitant, almost absurdly cautious for two men wearing the same face. Then Brian gripped the back of Tom’s neck and kissed him again with a hunger that belonged entirely to himself.
Later, in the bedroom, Brian paused beside the bed. “You said you might change back.”
“While I’m asleep.”
“What will you look like?”
“Twenty-five. Brown hair. Clean-shaven.”
“Handsome?”
“Devastatingly.”
Brian rolled his eyes, but his nervousness remained.
Tom took his hand. “You pinged my profile on Scruff. Do you remember? I’m assuming that meant you were into me. You can still leave.”
Brian looked from their joined hands to Tom’s face - his own face. “I spent forty-six years leaving, tonight I’m going to stay” he said. “Besides. When else will a get a chance to fuck myself?” Then he planted a kiss deeply onto Tom’s mouth.
“So you think you’re the top tonight?” Tom replied smirking at the opportunity that presented itself.
“I have been my entire life” Tom scoffed in between kissing Tom.
“We’ll see” Tom said with a grin while he slowly began to unbutton Brian’s shirt - sliding it over his shoulders and exposing Brian’s chest. He ran his hands through the older man’s chest hair - pulling himself closer as they kissed.
Brian then reached over to Tom’s red polo and reciprocated by lifting it over his head and rubbing Tom’s chest. He then reached a hand down to Tom’s cock and grabbed it through his khakis before unbuckling the belt and lowering the zipper - letting the duplicate of Brian’s thick uncut cock flop out of Tom’s pants.
“Sorry,” Tom smirked. “No underwear.”
Brian looked down to the fully erect version of his dick staring at him on another man's body. He lowered to his knees - hungry for the intimacy he had long desired but never acted on. He smiled up at Tom.
Tom placed a hand on Brian’s head guiding the man onto his cock. Brian took the head into his mouth and placed a hand along the shaft. He slowly moved his hand up and down the base while sucking lightly on the head.
“Whoa,” Tom said. “Are you sure you haven’t done this before?”
Brian grinned and pulled his mouth off Tom’s dick while still pumping the shaft. “It’s my dick. You think I don’t know what it likes?”
“That’s fair…” Tom replied. “But I don’t recall giving you permission to stop.” He then grabbed Brian’s head with both hands and thrust his borrowed dick deep into Brian’s mouth.
What followed was not gentle. It was tender in flashes and anxious in others, charged by the knowledge of their shared body between them. Tom leaned into the fantasy with a kind of defiant intensity, letting Brian see and experience what he wanted, letting himself feel the strange power of being desired through another man’s outline.
Before long Tom had Brian naked on his back on the the bed taking a turning sucking his cock. He then spread Brian's cheeks and began to eat his asshole - the rough short beard scratching Brian and causing him to giggle.
“You think that’s funny?” Tom growled with the older man’s voice. Beginning to lose himself in the blur of desire. “Let’s see how you feel when I fuck you with your own dick, daddy.”
Brian stopped laughing and began to protest “Ohh, I don’t know about ….” but it was too late. Tom stood up, pulled Brian to the edge of the bed, lined up the tip of his older dick and began to push it into Brian’s tight virgin asshole.
“Uhhhh” was all Brian could get out before Tom pushed fully into his ass. Brian squeezed his eyes shut as the pain from penetration shook through his body.
After a few hard thrusts, Brian started to gently moan as Tom settled into a more steady rhythm. Tom pushed Brian further onto the bed and climbed on - leaning forward into missionary position so he could watch Brian’s face - but more importantly so that Brian could see as clear as day that he was being fucked by himself.
“Open your eyes” Tom commanded. “Do you like this? Do you like the feeling of getting fucked by your own big hairy dick?” Tom whispered.
Brian let out a soft moan as he scanned the man above him from bottom to top - his thick bush, his soft but still muscled midsection, his hairy chest, before settling into his own brown eyes. “Yes, sir” was all he could get out between the surge of pain and pleasure overwhelming his body.
“Good” Tom smirked. “Because I like fucking you with your own daddy cock. I like looking down on you beneath me, powerless, as I take your asshole’s virginity. I like you looking up at me and seeing yourself. And most of all, I like the idea of cumming so deep inside you you’ll carry it home with you tomorrow morning.”
Tom’s pace gradually quickened as Brian reached a hand down to his own dick and started jerking off. Just as Tom reached climax and shot his load deep into the mirror image of the ass he wore, Brian followed suit - spewing rope after rope of cum on his hairy chest.
The two men collapsed into a pile of sweat and testosterone. Brian’s sticky cum resting between their torsos. They stayed like that for several minutes listening as their breathing gradually slowed.
Tom pushed up into his hands and looked Brian in the eyes. “I told you we’d see if you were a top.” The two men then shared a brief laugh and kiss before settling into position to sleep - Brian getting to be the little spoon for the first time in his life.
As Brian drifted to sleep with Tom’s arms wrapped around him he felt overwhelmed with a feeling of fullness - both the fullness of having been filled by another man - cum still leaking out of his asshole - and the fullness of finally acting on a desire he had kept deep inside himself for 30 years. Where he would go from here remained to be seen...
⸻
Tom woke sometime in the night without opening his eyes. Brian’s borrowed body was dissolving. His beard receded into his skin. His jaw narrowed. The weight around his middle softened, then vanished. His chest contracted beneath Brian’s sleeping arm, the dense hair thinning to the lighter growth of his own body.
The strangest part was the silence inside him. Brian’s emotions loosened their hold. The family kitchen faded. The remembered pressure of a ring disappeared. Tom was left with sympathy rather than possession, knowledge without instinct. He became himself again and slipped back into sleep.
Later, morning light filled the room. Brian woke first. Tom surfaced to the sharp movement of the mattress and found Brian sitting upright, staring down at him.
The older man had pulled the sheet across his waist. Panic hardened his face.
Recognition arrived slowly. “Tom?”
“Still me.”
Brian stared at his real face. Tom suddenly felt very young beneath the inspection. Without Brian’s beard and bulk, he had lost the authority that had carried him through the previous night.
“You’re different,” Brian said.
“I warned you.”
“I know.”
“You can go if you want.”
Brian glanced toward the bedroom door, but he did not move.
Tom sat up, keeping a careful distance between them. “The man you came home with isn’t here anymore - not totally anyway.”
Brian looked down at his hands. “Last night, I told myself it wasn’t really another man.”
Tom waited.
“That was the excuse,” Brian said. “Not the reason.”
“What was the reason?”
Brian raised his eyes to Tom’s. “You looked at me like you already knew everything ugly about me and hadn’t decided to leave.”
“I didn’t think it was ugly.”
“You were wearing my face. That made it easier to believe you.”
Tom swallowed. “And now?”
Brian reached toward him, hesitated, then placed his palm against Tom’s smooth cheek.
“Now I have to believe you.”
He kissed Tom again. This kiss was quieter than the ones they had shared the night before. There was no mirror in it. No technical loophole. Brian touched a younger man with a different face and knew exactly what he was doing.
Afterward, still naked, except for a cap Tom had playfully put on his head before he left the bedroom because it “made him look like a baseball daddy,” Brian made coffee in the kitchen. Tom looked through his closet for a more comfortable shirt than the button-up Brian came in that might fit the larger man. Having failed, he gathered Brian's clothes from the night before.
When Tom entered the kitchen with Brian’s clothes he found Brian playfully flexing for him in the morning sunlight.
“Be honest,” Brian said. “In the light of day, without my face on you, do I still look good?”
Tom let his gaze linger. “Brian, I liked your body enough to borrow it twice. That should answer the question.”
The two men shared a laugh as Brian reached for his pants and his button up that Tom brought him.
Later at the kitchen counter while they were drinking their coffee, Brian folded a dish towel into a precise square.
“You always do that,” Tom said.
Brian looked down. “Do what?”
“Make yourself useful when you’re uncomfortable.”
“Did you learn that from becoming me?”
“Yes.”
“I’m beginning to resent how much you know.”
“You liked it last night," Tom replied with a wink.
“You were more respectful when you had my face.”
“I don’t think anything we did last night would be classified as respectful! But I also had your repression. It slowed the real me down. I was giving it like 50 percent.”
Brian laughed before he could stop himself. Then his phone buzzed on the counter and the laughter disappeared. Tom watched him read the message in silence.
“I need to go home,” Brian said.
“I know.”
At the front door, Brian hesitated. “Can you become me again?”
“Probably.”
“Can I see you again?”
Tom looked at the older man he had wanted so badly to inhabit. “Yes,” he said. “But I don’t want that to be the only version of me you’ll come here for.”
Brian’s gaze moved over Tom’s real face. “It isn’t. I mean, it won't be.”
You looked down at your friend in disbelief. He used to be a slender, rather handsome 18-year-old, now he was a fat, hairy old bear that smelled like a garbage truck. He still smiled up at you, “Hey bro,” he said with a grin, “Glad you made it!”.
You weren’t sure it was really him, “Jeez, Tim, is that you? And, ugh, what’s that smell?” You held your nose as he chuckled, “You like it? It’s my own natural scent. Smells pretty good, huh?” He seemed oblivious as you gagged on the stench, and gestured to the pool, “So, you gonna get in here or what?” You noticed that every guy in the pool was like Tim now was, hairy, fat, and reeking of musk, “In the pool…?” You muttered as he nodded, “C'mon bro, the water’s fine. Heated it up myself.” You saw another fat man standing by the edge of the pool, dick out, casually pissing into the water as Tim added, “Well, might’ve had a little help from the other guys.”, with a small chuckle. You turned up your nose in disgust. “If you want, we can make it a hot tub.” Tim said, suddenly focusing a bit, as bubbles began to rise up around his much wider rear, completely a muffled fart sound, leaving him sighing in relief and giggling as you caught a whiff of the putrid stench.
“No, you gotta get out of there. I’m definitely not going in.” You managed to say, as you turned, trying to escape. Tim was faster though, he suddenly grabbed your heel, “Aw, don’t be like that, man. C'mon, let me help you.” He grinned as he pulled. You lost your footing, and fell backwards into the pool, completely submerged. You rose up, drenched and gasping for air, but having nothing to breathe except Tim’s musk. You suddenly noticed how good it smelled, and the water, warmed by Tim and the other men’s piss, felt so amazing. Tim held you in his arms, observing your fattening features and burgeoning facial hair as your lips twisted into a grin, “Feels good, huh?” You nodded, “Smells good too.” You said, going in and kissing him, as you just relaxed, allowing your own farts to bubble out of your ass and adding your own warmth to the water, deciding you’d enjoy your own little ‘hot tub’ with Tim for a while.
Daniel had been told not to touch anything in Uncle Martin’s study.
That warning made the room irresistible.
Martin was not really his uncle, merely his father’s oldest friend: a broad, ageing man with a taste for whisky, heavy cigars and antique furniture. While Martin spent three months travelling abroad, Daniel had been asked to check the house twice a week.
On the third visit, he poured himself a glass from Martin’s best bottle, removed his shirt and stood before the great mirror in the study. Then he opened the humidor.
“One cigar,” he said to his reflection. “He’ll never notice.”
The first draw filled his lungs with dense, sweet smoke. Daniel coughed, laughed and admired himself in the mirror with the cigar between his teeth. For a moment he imagined how Martin would look standing there.
Then his stomach cramped.
He staggered into the bathroom and gripped the basin. Something moved beneath his skin—not inside his belly, but across his entire body. His smooth chest prickled. Dark hair pushed through it in a thickening mat. His shoulders softened, his abdomen lost its definition and began to swell.
Daniel stared as a heavy beard spilled across his jaw in seconds.
“No. No, stop.”
The beard vanished just as suddenly.
For one hopeful moment, his face was his own again. Then it returned thicker, rougher and streaked with grey. His stomach expanded farther, rounding over the waistband of his jeans. His arms grew softer and heavier. Years carved themselves into his face, first ten, then twenty, then more.
His hairline retreated while he watched.
Daniel clutched at it, but every touch pulled away another handful. The crown opened into a widening bald patch. Grey curls remained only around the sides and back, framing a scalp that looked decades older than the terrified man beneath it.
His beard turned almost entirely silver.
By the time the transformation stopped, a stout, balding man nearing sixty stared back from the mirror. His chest and stomach were thickly furred. A pendulous belly strained his jeans. The only thing unchanged was the horror in his eyes.
Daniel tried to call his father.
His phone no longer recognised his face. His voice, when he attempted the passcode, emerged deep, gravelly and disturbingly similar to Martin’s.
The doctors found nothing wrong. His fingerprints no longer matched his identification. His blood suggested a man three decades older. Every photograph Daniel showed them looked like someone else.
After weeks of failed examinations, he visited a barber and asked for anything that might make him look younger.
The barber studied the sparse horseshoe of hair.
“There’s not much worth saving.”
Daniel sat in silence as the remaining grey curls were shaved away. Then the beard followed, leaving only a heavy silver moustache. It did not help. Without the hair, the age in his face looked even more complete.
Months passed.
Martin never returned.
His emails stopped. His telephone number was disconnected. When Daniel finally searched the study properly, he discovered that every photograph of Martin had changed. The man beside Daniel’s father now had Daniel’s old face: young, handsome and smiling beneath a full head of dark hair.
The cigar had not simply aged Daniel.
It had traded their places.
Daniel began sitting alone in the park each afternoon, dressed in Martin’s old undershirts and loose jeans because none of his former clothes fitted. He had tried giving up the cigars, but the cravings grew painful enough to make his hands shake.
Eventually, he lit another.
The first draw calmed him immediately.
Across the ocean, somewhere under a borrowed young face, Martin was enjoying the life he had stolen. And on the park bench, Daniel slowly exhaled, his permanent new belly rising beneath his shirt as smoke curled past the moustache that now felt as though it had always belonged there.
Sucking on my daddy bear’s cock is completely addicting. I love how I feel when I’ve got his thick meat in my mouth, sliding my tongue up and down his shaft and burying my face in his musky balls. I love how he gently strokes my hair as I go down on him, and I love how big of a load I can entice them to shoot. The very first time I did it, I felt a little funny afterwards as he began talking to me. He told me I would become addicted to his loads, and what’s more, every time I sucked him off he would lose two pounds of fat and I would gain them. He also told me I would slowly start to like this, liking it more and more the bigger I got. He said that his cock had the power to hypnotize me, to change reality slightly so long as I kept sucking him off regularly. It all sort of went over my head, but I got the general gist of it. I should suck him off as much as I could, making sure that his fat bear dick was in my mouth whenever we were alone together. When I told him this, he laughed and patted the small bulge on my stomach, telling me I would make an amazing cub.
Now, by my account, I have sucked him off almost thirty times. I love how my gut grows wider and wider with each blowjob I give, and I love how my daddy bear is looking more and more in shape. He says that by the end of the year he will be back to his old muscle bear self, and once I have gone from otter into a chubby cub, he says he plans on fucking me hard and fast. He said something about once he blows his load in my ass, that the fat transfer will be permanent too, but he also said I would experience the greatest orgasm of my life as he did it. He mumbled something about the effect fading with time if I stopped, but I have no desire to stop. I want to grow bigger and bigger, and turn my daddy into the sexiest muscle bear ever. When he fucks me, he said I would shoot hands-free and I would be his chubby little bottom cub forever. I can’t fucking wait. I am pretty sure his dick would never leave my mouth if he didn’t have an above average refractory period, but that doesn’t mean I can’t go nurse on it a little bit.
By the time the fourth phone's Scruff profile was activated, none of the four friends sitting at the dining room table were laughing quite as naturally as before.
(Pictured Left to Right: Phil, Don, Ralph & Tom)
Tom’s house had always been their safest gathering place. It sat at the quiet end of a suburban street, comfortably furnished but still half-decorated, as though Tom had moved in months ago and had never committed to where everything belonged. The dining room opened directly into the living room, where a warm floor lamp cast amber light across the couch, the darkened windows, and the crowded wooden table.
There were cards, poker chips, bowls of pretzels and tortilla chips, four beers, and four phones displaying newly created Scruff profiles.
They all knew the rules. One current photograph. No filters. No false ages. No changing the location radius. Each player would transform into the first man that messaged them. Not just his face. Everything.
Age, height, weight, dick, voice, posture, health, mannerisms. Even personality would begin to bleed across, along with fragments of memory from the stranger’s life. The player’s own mind would remain underneath it all, but the longer the night went on, the harder it might become to tell where one man ended and the other began.
They were not allowed to answer the messages. The strangers would never know what had happened.
Phil had been the one to discover the game, or at least the instructions for it, buried in an old online TUMBLR called Hairy-Bothered, which was devoted to transformation stories that everyone insisted were fictional. He had brought it up as a joke months ago. Don had dared him to prove it was real. Ralph had spent two weeks researching every version of the ritual he could find, then concluded that it was probably fake. Tom had volunteered his house.
Now, with the profiles active, “fake” no longer felt like the right word.
“Last chance,” Don said.
At thirty, he was the oldest of the group and behaved as if that made him responsible for the others, despite the fact that he was usually the one pushing them toward bad decisions. His thick brown hair was styled into a deliberate wave, and his heavy mustache gave him an old-fashioned athletic confidence he clearly enjoyed. Even seated, he held himself like a man posing for a locker-room photograph—shoulders back, arms apart, gray T-shirt stretched neatly across his chest.
Phil glanced at him. “You were the one who said backing out would be pathetic.”
“I said backing out after uploading the picture would be pathetic.”
“That is where we are now, dummy!” Ralph reminded him.
Ralph, twenty-six, sat across from Don in a black short-sleeved shirt with NAUGHTY printed in large red letters across the chest. His dark hair was carefully styled and his mustache looked almost too precise, as though he had trimmed it immediately before coming over. He was normally the most cautious of them, the one who checked rideshare license plates and made sure everyone had charged phones.
Tom sat at the right end of the table, younger than all of them at twenty-five, wearing a red Lacoste polo and khakis. He was smiling at his phone in a way that made Don narrow his eyes.
“You’re hoping for somebody old,” Ralph said.
Tom shrugged. “Not old. Mature.”
“You have been saying that since you were twenty-one.”
“What can I say? I know what I like” Tom smirked.
Phil shifted in his chair. His blue henley made his fair skin and short blond hair look even lighter beneath the warm lamp. At twenty-seven, he was quiet, agreeable, and so conflict-averse that he sometimes apologized when someone else bumped into him - like any good Canadian immigrant to a sleepy American suburb.
Phil picked up his beer but did not drink. “What if the personality part doesn’t go away in the morning?” he asked.
Ralph looked toward him. “The instructions say everything reverses at sunrise.”
“The instructions were written by someone called Hairy-Bothered. Do we feel like he's a reliable source of information?”
“They were very specific.”
“But that doesn’t make them reliable.”
Don leaned over and tapped the table near Phil’s phone. “You wanted to know whether it was real.”
Phil opened his mouth to answer. His phone buzzed and all four men froze. The sound had been ordinary, almost disappointingly so. A short vibration against the wood. Phil looked at the screen.
A new message sat beneath the profile photograph of a heavyset man in his mid-thirties. He wore a dark cap and a bulky jacket. A massive brown beard covered most of his lower face.
The message contained three words.
How you doing?
Don whistled. “Well, Phil.”
Phil stared at the picture. “He’s large.”
“He’s a hot daddy redneck,” Tom said.
“He looks like he owns several guns...” Ralph added.
“I don’t think I want—”
Phil stopped. His breath caught sharply, and one hand flew to his stomach. The first sensation was pain. It began beneath his ribs and rolled outward, flooding his chest, shoulders, and abdomen. His blue shirt tightened gradually across his torso. The fabric did not change, but the body beneath it did, swelling into unfamiliar proportions.
“Is it happening?” Tom asked.
Phil blushed and nodded quickly. His stomach pushed forward, rounding heavily over the waistband of his jeans. His shoulders broadened, not with the balanced definition of a gym-trained body but with the solid weight of someone naturally large. His arms thickened against the sleeves. Blonde hair darkened at the roots and seemed to retreat beneath the shape of a cap that had not been there before.
Then his face began changing. Phil pressed both palms against his cheeks as his jaw widened beneath them. Light stubble darkened into coarse brown hair. His beard grew quickly, spreading over his chin, down his throat, and outward until his fingers vanished into it.
“Oh my God,” Don said, half laughing and half appalled.
Phil’s eyes widened. “My voice—”
The words came out deeper than before, dragged through a thick Southern accent. He went silent.
Something else had entered him alongside the voice. For one disorienting moment, the dining room disappeared. Phil smelled hot pavement, gasoline, tobacco and stale coffee. He remembered sitting behind the wheel of a truck he had never owned, watching miles of highway disappear beneath him. He remembered arguments conducted loudly and without apology. He remembered a father who believed silence was weakness and a string of roadside bars where no one had ever asked him to lower his voice.
The memories were incomplete, but the emotions attached to them were powerful. Confidence settled over Phil like another layer of muscle and fat. His usual urge was to make himself smaller when people stared. Now he found their attention satisfying.
He leaned back, spreading his legs comfortably beneath the table. His new stomach strained the blue henley. One hand moved through his enormous beard with instinctive familiarity.
“Well,” he said slowly, the Southern drawl now effortless. “Ain’t that something?”
Don stared at him. “Phil?”
Phil looked directly at him. The old Phil would have smiled nervously. This one lifted one eyebrow. “Who's Phil? He your faggy friend?”
Don blinked and Phil’s expression shifted into a broad grin. Then he laughed, a deep, booming sound none of them had ever heard from him before.
“I’m kidding,” he said. “It's me, Phil - mostly...”
Tom handed him a small tabletop mirror. Phil examined himself, turning his head from side to side. The more he looked, the more pleased he became.
“I look strong. Real strong-like.”
“You look like you could throw me through a window,” Ralph said.
Phil’s grin widened. “Maybe don’t test me on that, son.”
The change had taken less than two minutes. When it was over, there was nothing visibly left of the blonde, soft-spoken Canadian except the blue shirt and a faint uncertainty behind the stranger’s eyes.
Phil reached into a pocket and fished out a cigar that had appeared along with his cap. He picked it up naturally.
“I know how to smoke this,” he murmured.
“That’s the memory bleed,” Ralph said.
Phil rolled the cigar between his thick fingers, lit it carefully, and took a deep drag. “Feels more like remembering something I forgot.”
While the men were still dazed by what had just happened to Phil, all of a sudden Don’s phone buzzed. His confident smirk vanished.
The message came from a twenty-two-year-old with dark curly hair, a narrow face, a slim body and almost no visible facial hair.
Don shook his head immediately. “No. Nope. Nuh-uh. I'm not going to be some Twink. I don't want to play any more!”
Tom leaned over. “You can’t refuse after the message arrives.”
“I’m not refusing. I’m stating a fact. I’m out.”
But immediately after the last word slipped out of his mouth he felt his gray shirt begin to loosen across his chest. Don looked down.
The muscles he had spent years building began to soften and recede beneath the fabric. His broad shoulders narrowed. His arms slimmed against the sleeves, veins and body hair fading as his skin became smooth. He gripped both sides of the chair.
“Son of a bitch…”
His mustache thinned with every word until only a faint shadow remained. The strong lines of his face softened. His jaw narrowed, his nose changed shape, and his heavy brown hair curled forward in loose dark waves. Even his posture collapsed inward - more diminutive. More submissive.
Don had always sat as though he owned whatever room he entered. Now his knees drew together beneath the table. His hands looked too large for a moment, then became slim and youthful.
He glanced at Phil and immediately looked away, intimidated by the bear of a man Phil had become.
A rush of foreign memories hit him. A cramped first apartment with mismatched furniture. A phone held beneath restaurant tables while he waited for a daddy to answer. A nervous laugh used to smooth over awkward silences. Nights spent trying on three different shirts because he was afraid the first two made him look too big or too masculine.
The new personality did not erase Don’s confidence all at once. It undermined it from beneath. His anger remained, but the instinct to express it weakened. “I hate this,” he said. His voice was younger, lighter and less commanding.
Phil rested one enormous arm across the back of Don’s chair. “Aww, hey there buddy, you look cute.”
Don recoiled, his face flushing. “Don’t call me cute!” The words lacked their former force.
Phil laughed.
Don crossed his thin arms over his chest, but the gesture only emphasized how small he had become beside Phil.
“I’m twenty-two,” he muttered. “I’m younger than when I graduated.”
Tom smiled. “Some people would consider that lucky.”
“I don’t.”
Don caught his reflection in the black screen of his phone. For several seconds, he looked genuinely wounded. His mustache had always been part of the identity he projected—older, tougher, more established than he felt. Without it, and without the body that supported the image, he seemed exposed.
“I look like some dumb Twink bottom that I would take home and fuck, this is humiliating...” he said quietly.
Phil’s expression softened. “You’re still Don inside there, bud.”
Don looked at him.
Phil paused, as though searching through two personalities for the right thing to say. “At least underneath those cute baby cheeks and scrawny chicken arms.”
But before Don could respond with the appropriate level of vitriol, Ralph’s phone vibrated. Ralph looked down at his phone, blinked once then closed his eyes. “Of course...it’s always older men messaging me on three apps!”
The profile showed a man around 65 with a huge white beard, a bald crown, and a broad, heavy frame. Ralph’s face drained of color. “Come on, man, he's older than my grandfather!”
“Rules,” Don said, sounding almost pleased that someone else’s result was worse.
Ralph pushed himself to his feet. He paused as his balance shifted. His center of gravity settled lower, his stance naturally widening as his body grew broader.
The external changes began in his hands. His skin thickened, veins becoming more prominent beneath weathered flesh. Coarse gray hair spread across his forearms beneath the sleeves of the black NAUGHTY shirt.
His shoulders widened. His chest and stomach filled out into the solid build of a man who had spent decades carrying himself with quiet confidence. The chair groaned when he sat back down, now supporting considerably more weight.
His dark hair retreated rapidly from his forehead and crown. Gray swept through what remained before fading completely to white.
His neatly trimmed mustache blossomed into an enormous beard. It poured down his cheeks and over his chest until it formed a thick, brilliantly white curtain. Ralph instinctively combed it with his fingers, surprised by how soft it felt.
Deep lines settled around his eyes—not harsh ones, but the kind earned through decades of laughing - but at this moment his face rested in a grimace.
He blinked. A flood of memories slipped effortlessly into place. He knew exactly how to trim a beard this size without making a mess. He knew which reading glasses lived in the kitchen and which pair stayed in the car. He remembered the passwords to three different dating apps, which profile pictures got the most attention from younger men, and which local coffee shop was best for a first rendezvous.
His phone suddenly felt different in his hand—not unfamiliar, just... organized. He frowned. "Why do I have notifications turned on for everything?"
His thumb moved across the screen before he consciously decided to. Three settings changed. "That's better."
Tom laughed. "You just hacked your own phone."
"I didn't hack anything." Ralph kept scrolling. "This app keeps suggesting men forty miles away." He wrinkled his nose. "Absolutely not."
Phil leaned over. "What are you looking at?"
Ralph angled the phone away on instinct. "My business."
Phil grinned. "You weren't this private five minutes ago."
"In my 65 years I've learned that people online will absolutely waste your time." The words came out so naturally that Ralph stopped talking. "...Did I just say that?"
Don folded his arms. "You sound experienced."
"I am experienced. Well...he is?" The answer escaped before Ralph could think. He froze - lost between his former and current mind. Then, after another moment, he shrugged. "I suppose I am."
His posture shifted almost imperceptibly. Gone was the restless energy of a twenty-six-year-old. He settled comfortably into the chair, crossing one thick leg over the other with practiced ease.
His gaze drifted around the room, assessing everyone. Tom -still unchanged - looked exhausted. Phil desperately needed a haircut and a beard trim. Don's shirt fit poorly across the shoulders. Ralph noticed all of it in an instant.
"What?" Tom asked.
Ralph smiled. "Nothing. You boys just have no idea how you're presenting yourselves. People used to put more effort into such things.”
Phil burst out laughing. "There he is."
"There who is?"
"The old guy."
Ralph reached up, absentmindedly stroking his beard. "It is an exceptional beard."
"It is," Tom admitted.
Ralph caught his reflection in the darkened window. A large man stared back—sixty-five, bald on top, framed by a magnificent white beard. He expected horror. Instead... "Huh." He tilted his head. "I actually pull this off."
Phil stared. "Seriously?"
"What? I'm not saying I'd have picked sixty-five..." He turned his face from side to side. "...but I'm handsome...I mean he's handsome." Ralph rested one hand in his beard, surprisingly at ease. "I still know I'm Ralph," he said quietly. "But I also know who this man is."
Tom looked up. "What's he like?"
Ralph smiled—not sadly, but with unmistakable fondness. "Confident." He glanced at his reflection again." Comfortable in his own skin." A beat passed. "And apparently very picky."
Phil snorted. "That sounds about right."
Ralph laughed. "It really does."
For several minutes, they sat quietly. Then Tom’s phone buzzed. He looked down at the screen.
The man who had messaged him appeared to be in his mid-forties. Dark hair showed gray at the sides beneath a baseball cap. Salt-and-pepper scruff framed a tired but attractive face. His profile offered little information, but the photograph had been taken in a kitchen. A family calendar hung behind him, partially visible on the wall.
Tom smiled.
Don noticed. “You are far too happy.”
“I told you, this could be fun! I got a hot daddy!"
Tom’s red polo tightened first across his shoulders, then relaxed as his body settled into a broader, slightly softer maturity. Fine lines appeared around his eyes. His face lengthened, his jaw grew heavier, and dark stubble spread across his cheeks before turning gray in patches.
His hair darkened from sandy brown, then silver appeared at the temples. Tom held his phone in front of him throughout the change, studying every new line with fascination.
His hands aged around the device. The skin grew rougher, the knuckles more pronounced. Hair thickened along his forearms and beneath the open collar of the red polo.
He inhaled sharply when the memories arrived. A wife asleep upstairs while he stared at his phone in the kitchen, looking at pictures of men. A wedding ring slipped into a drawer before taking photographs. Children calling from another room. Years spent building a life that looked perfect from the outside and felt increasingly divided from within.
Tom’s smile faded as the stranger’s guilt settled into him alongside his attraction. He felt the practiced caution of a man who deleted conversations, cleared notifications, and always listened for footsteps. For the first time, the transformation frightened him.
“Tom?” Don asked.
Tom looked up. His face now belonged entirely to the middle-aged stranger. “He has a family,” Tom said.
Ralph frowned. “You knew that from the picture?”
“I remember them.” He closed his eyes. “A wife. Two kids. He tells himself this app doesn’t count if he never meets anyone in person. He just shares pictures and sexts men while jerking off.”
Don looked uncomfortable. “That’s dark.”
Tom rubbed his salt-and-pepper jaw. The texture fascinated him despite the sadness in his expression.
“He’s lonely,” Tom said. “And terrified. And he’s been both for so long that they feel like the same thing. He’s not sure how much longer he can keep up the façade before it comes crashing down.”
The older personality moved through him more subtly than the others. His posture became relaxed but watchful. His speech slowed. He checked the position of his phone before setting it face down.
Yet when he looked at his reflection in the window, pleasure returned. Tom touched the gray at his temples and smiled. “I still like this face and body…”
Don groaned. “Of course you do, and if I'm being honest from my new body yours is looking pretty good to me as well...but I'll never admit that again so soak it up.”
Tom laughed, now in the warm, slightly rough voice of a suburban father. “Sorry.”
“You don’t sound sorry...”
With all four transformations complete, the four friends - now unrecognizable - sat around the same table like strangers wearing evidence of a friendship no one else could see.
Phil lounged in his blue henley, cigar smoke curling from one hand, his large body relaxed with newfound authority. Don sat beside him in his loose gray shirt, slim and young, visibly annoyed whenever Phil’s arm drifted too close. Ralph occupied the center like an aging patriarch who had been dragged reluctantly from bed after 10pm white beard resting against the red NAUGHTY lettering across his chest. Tom on the right in his red polo, smiling at a touch of his salt and pepper beard or a glimpse of his older hands whenever he thought no one was watching.
They returned to the card game. It was not the same. Phil became competitive and loud. He slapped winning hands onto the table and accused Don of bluffing in a Southern drawl that grew thicker as the night continued and he had more to drink.
Don insisted he was not bluffing, then folded whenever Phil stared at him too long out of sheer intimidation.
Ralph complained about the quality of the beer, the temperature, and the way young gay men today can’t tell Tina Turner from Janet Jackson.
Tom quietly won three rounds in a row - reluctant to draw attention to himself or to the conversation he began with a now younger man on his phone on GRINDR.
By midnight, the new personalities settled more deeply, and fragments of the other lives slipped into their conversation.
Phil described rebuilding an engine, then stopped when he realized he had never done it.
Don mentioned a roommate named Evan and could not remember whether Evan was real or imagined.
Ralph began telling a story about a great niece’s birthday before his voice broke.
Tom reached automatically for a wedding ring that was not on his finger.
At around one in the morning, the game ended without anyone declaring a winner. They remained around the table, surrounded by empty bottles, cards and phones.
As they prepared to depart for their own homes, to give themselves a few hours to "explore" their new situations, Don asked "What happens when we wake up?”
“We go back...in theory.” Ralph said.
“That’s not what I meant.”
No one answered immediately. Phil looked down at his huge hands.
“I think I’m gonna miss this, y'all.”
Don curled his cute twenty-two-year-old nose and gave Phil a tired smile, “I won’t.”
“Maybe we keep some of it," Tom said.
“The memories?” Ralph asked.
“The perspective.”
The next morning Tom woke with his cheek pressed against his pillow - and an unfamiliar young man in the bed next to him. Someone who messaged him thirstily on GRINDR before his friends headed home for the evening.
For several seconds, he did not move. Then he lifted his head and saw his own young hands. His red polo laid on the floor next to the bed. The gray had vanished from his hair. His face felt smooth. "Ugh, this is going to be fun to explain to him."
In the back of his mind Tom also felt a sense of satisfaction. He was able to follow through on an action his middle-aged married counterpart was always too afraid to carry out.
After a couple minutes reflecting on his predicament, Tom reached for his phone and saw a chain of messages from his friends on the experience from last night culminating in a message from Phil:
So ... Same time next month?
Next to the message were 2 thumbs up. Tom smirked and typed:
Noah had watched Ethan Vale’s transformation live.
At first, he had assumed it was an elaborate stunt. Influencers faked everything—relationships, apartments, surprise gifts, even entire personalities. Transforming from a polished fitness model into an enormous bald bear during a livestream seemed only slightly more ridiculous.
Then Ethan posted the morning-after video.
There were no filters. No prosthetics. No convenient camera cuts.
Ethan stood in his kitchen with a colossal beard, a hairy chest and a belly that pressed against the counter. He spoke candidly about the Cosmic Bears, the sudden changes and his decision to stop searching for a cure.
Noah watched the video three times.
He was not sure whether he was horrified, fascinated or jealous.
Probably all three.
Unlike Ethan, Noah had never built a career around his appearance. Still, he was proud of his smooth chest, clean jaw and thick black hair. He spent far too much money on skincare and regularly complained when a haircut exposed even half an inch too much forehead.
But there was something undeniably attractive about Ethan’s new form.
The beard. The size. The confidence.
Ethan no longer looked like someone trying to appeal to everyone. He looked like someone who had finally stopped apologising for taking up space.
Late that evening, Noah noticed an advertisement beneath one of Ethan’s videos.
GUMMY BEAR JUICE — EXPERIENCE YOUR TRUE FLAVOUR
The bottle contained a deep purple liquid. Cartoon bears danced across the label.
Noah stared at the screen.
It could not possibly be related.
He clicked.
The bottle arrived two days later.
There was no return address.
No ingredient list.
No nutritional information.
Only a colourful label reading:
GUMMY BEAR JUICE
Below it, in very small letters:
One sip reveals the first truth.
The whole bottle reveals everything.
Noah held it up to the light.
The liquid shimmered faintly.
“This is how people die in horror films,” he muttered.
He opened the bottle anyway.
The scent was intensely sweet—blackberry, cherry and warm cinnamon. Beneath that was the same strange leathery aroma Ethan had described during his livestream.
Noah hesitated.
Then he took a small sip.
The drink was delicious.
Thick and cold, like a melted gummy bear blended with fruit juice.
He swallowed.
Nothing happened.
Noah waited another minute and laughed at himself.
“Of course.”
He took a longer drink.
A pleasant warmth spread through his chest.
Noah lowered the bottle and smirked.
Perhaps it was simply strong alcohol disguised as candy.
He checked the label again.
There was still no information.
The warmth travelled upward into his face. His jaw tingled. Noah scratched his cheek and felt the faint rasp of stubble.
That was odd.
He had shaved less than an hour earlier.
He walked toward the bathroom but stopped when he passed the hallway mirror.
A visible shadow covered his jaw.
Noah leaned closer.
The stubble darkened while he watched.
“Oh.”
Fine hairs emerged across his chin and upper lip. They thickened quickly, growing from an evening shadow into several days of beard growth.
Noah touched his face.
The sensation was real.
His heart began beating faster.
“No, no. That’s not possible.”
The bottle remained in his hand.
He looked at it.
Then at himself.
Then back at the bottle.
Instead of putting it down, Noah took another sip.
The change accelerated.
His stubble became a proper short beard, dense and dark around his jaw. A patch of hair appeared in the centre of his chest and slowly spread outward.
Noah stared down.
The smooth skin he had maintained for years disappeared beneath a widening pattern of dark curls. Hair travelled over his pectorals, down his stomach and across his shoulders.
His eyes widened.
“So it really is the same stuff.”
He should have been frightened.
Part of him was.
Another part remembered Ethan flexing beside his ruined gaming chair, grinning beneath his beard while the internet celebrated him.
Noah took another drink.
The bottle was already half empty.
The hair on his body thickened immediately. His forearms became visibly furrier. The patch on his chest expanded into a dense covering that continued down his abdomen.
His beard pushed outward from his face.
Noah raised his phone and opened the camera.
A stranger looked back at him.
Not an unattractive stranger.
A rugged one.
He turned his head from side to side, watching the beard sharpen the shape of his jaw.
A reluctant smile appeared.
“Okay,” he whispered. “This part isn’t terrible.”
A prickling sensation began across his scalp.
His smile vanished.
Noah ran his fingers through his hair.
Several strands came away.
He stared at them in horror.
“No.”
He touched his temples.
The hairline had moved backward.
Only slightly—but it was unmistakable.
“No, the beard can stay. The hair stays too.”
More strands slipped loose.
His forehead appeared broader. The corners of his hairline receded, forming deepening arcs above his temples.
Noah rushed into the bathroom.
Under the bright lights, the change looked even worse.
His thick black hair was thinning at the front. Pale scalp showed between the strands. His beard, meanwhile, continued growing fuller and longer.
The contrast was cruel.
Hair vanished from the one place he wanted it while multiplying everywhere else.
Noah grabbed the bottle.
“You could have mentioned that.”
The cartoon bears smiled cheerfully.
New writing appeared beneath them.
EVERY BEAR PAYS FOR HIS BEARD.
“You have got to be kidding me.”
He should have poured the remaining juice into the sink.
Instead, he took another drink.
His beard surged downward.
Dark curls spread over his throat and formed a thick mass beneath his chin. The hair covering his chest became extraordinarily dense, joining the beard at his neck and travelling across his stomach.
Noah watched the transformation with a mixture of panic and fascination.
His shoulders broadened.
His arms thickened.
His chest pushed outward beneath its new covering of hair.
He was not becoming enormous like Ethan—not yet—but his previously lean frame was gaining solidity. His pectorals became heavier. His neck thickened. His hands looked broader and rougher.
Noah placed the bottle on the counter.
“That’s enough.”
The warmth continued.
Apparently, enough had stopped being an option.
His hairline retreated farther. The front thinned into a sparse island. The crown began opening behind it, revealing more scalp with every passing second.
Noah grabbed the remaining hair and tried to pull it forward.
There was no longer enough to disguise anything.
He looked decades older from the forehead upward and aggressively masculine everywhere else.
His beard now covered the lower half of his face.
His chest resembled dark fur.
His eyes remained unmistakably his own—wide, blue and increasingly alarmed.
Noah stared at his reflection.
“I look like I own a motorcycle.”
His voice had deepened.
He swallowed.
“I sound like I own three motorcycles.”
The bottle tipped by itself.
It rolled toward the edge of the counter.
Noah caught it before it fell.
Only a mouthful remained.
The purple liquid shifted inside the bottle, glittering under the bathroom light.
Noah remembered the words:
The whole bottle reveals everything.
He should stop.
He knew he should stop.
But stopping now would leave him halfway between two versions of himself—too transformed to return to his former life, yet never knowing what waited at the end.
Noah raised the bottle.
“To bad decisions,” he said, borrowing Ethan’s words.
He drank the final mouthful.
Heat exploded through his body.
Noah gasped and gripped the sink.
His beard became enormous, extending several inches below his chin in a dense black mass. Hair erupted across his shoulders, upper arms, back and stomach until scarcely any smooth skin remained.
His torso expanded.
His chest became broad and heavy. His arms swelled with thick muscle. His waist widened, losing its narrow athletic shape and becoming sturdier.
His scalp tingled violently.
Noah watched the last substantial section of hair on top thin into almost nothing.
Within moments, only a sparse covering remained across the crown, surrounded by short dark hair at the sides.
He looked almost bald.
“No!”
He pressed both hands against his scalp.
The remaining hairs continued shrinking and receding beneath his fingers.
His forehead seemed endless.
Noah stared into the mirror, mouth hanging open.
The man looking back was broad, bearded, heavily furred and visibly balding. He looked older, rougher and far more physically imposing than Noah had ever imagined becoming.
Then his stomach growled.
The sound echoed through the bathroom.
Noah looked down nervously.
His abdomen pushed outward.
Not dramatically, but enough to soften his waist and create the beginning of a round belly beneath the dense hair. It settled naturally against the waistband of his shorts.
Noah placed both hands on it.
“You too?”
His reflection looked appalled.
Then, slowly, something changed in his expression.
He straightened.
He pulled his shoulders back.
The transformed body filled the mirror with a heavy, masculine presence. His beard framed his face. His broad chest and arms made him look powerful. Even the receding hair no longer seemed accidental. It completed the image.
Noah turned sideways.
The belly was unmistakable.
He rubbed it once.
Then again.
A reluctant grin appeared beneath the beard.
His phone vibrated.
A notification from Ethan’s channel appeared.
ETHAN VALE IS LIVE: COSMIC BEARS Q&A
Noah opened the stream.
Ethan sat behind a reinforced desk, enormous and relaxed, answering questions from thousands of viewers.
Noah typed:
I found Gummy Bear Juice. I drank the entire bottle.
The chat immediately responded.
SHOW US
NEW BEAR
VIDEO OR IT DIDN’T HAPPEN
Ethan noticed the message.
His expression became serious.
“Whoever just said they found the juice, don’t drink—”
A second message appeared.
Too late.
Ethan stared into the camera.
“Of course it is.”
Noah switched on his own camera and sent Ethan a photograph.
The reply came almost instantly.
Well. The beard is magnificent.
Noah laughed.
It was a deep, unfamiliar sound that filled the bathroom.
Ethan sent another message.
Welcome to the den.
Noah looked at himself one final time.
His old appearance was gone: the smooth chest, clean jaw and carefully styled hair had all disappeared. In their place stood a broad, hairy man with a colossal beard, a retreating hairline and the beginnings of a proud bear belly.
He was shocked.
He was nervous.
And, to his own surprise, he was smiling.
Noah returned to the livestream and typed:
So… does anyone know a barber who specialises in bears?
Ethan Vale had built an entire career around looking effortless.
His dark hair was always perfectly styled. His skin appeared flawless even under the unforgiving lights of his streaming studio. He had the lean, athletic body of a man who photographed every meal before eating it and considered twelve percent body fat an emergency.
More than two million followers watched his videos about fitness, fashion and gay nightlife. Brands paid him absurd amounts of money to hold products beside his face and say things like “Honestly, guys, I’m obsessed.”
That evening’s livestream was supposed to be particularly easy.
Ethan smiled into the camera and lifted a glittering purple packet.
“Okay, boys, tonight we’re trying something new.”
The words COSMIC BEARS — GALAXY GUMMIES stretched across the front in brightly coloured letters. Beneath them, cartoon bears floated among stars and tiny rockets.
Ethan pointed at the packet with his most marketable smile.
“They were delivered this afternoon. No company name, no contract, no instructions. Just a note saying, ‘Show your followers who you really are.’ Which is either brilliant marketing or the beginning of a documentary about my disappearance.”
The chat raced beside the camera.
EAT THE BLUE ONE
SHIRT OFF REVIEW
THE BLUE BEAR MATCHES YOUR EYES
Probably poisoned lol
Ethan laughed.
“Very reassuring.”
He pulled off his T-shirt. The chat immediately exploded with hearts, flames and several proposals of marriage.
“Fine. Apparently gummy bears taste better when I’m shirtless.”
He opened the packet.
A sweet, strangely powerful scent drifted out—blueberry, cinnamon and something darker that reminded him of warm leather.
Ethan frowned.
“That’s… surprisingly masculine for candy.”
He selected a blue bear and held it close to the camera. Its tiny translucent body seemed to shimmer from within.
“To bad decisions.”
He placed it between his teeth and bit down.
The flavour was intense.
Sweetness flooded his mouth, followed by heat that spread down his throat and across his chest.
Ethan chewed slowly.
“Oh.”
He looked at the packet.
“That is actually incredible.”
The chat demanded another.
Ethan reached inside, but before his fingers touched the remaining candy, a tingling sensation moved over his scalp.
He scratched his head.
A few strands of dark hair fell across his forehead.
Ethan stared at them.
“Did I just pull out my own hair?”
The chat accelerated.
YOUR HAIRLINE
BRO LOOK AT YOUR FOREHEAD
THE GUMMY ATE YOUR HAIR
Ethan leaned toward the monitor.
His hairline had shifted.
Only slightly, but enough for him to notice a thin strip of newly exposed skin along his temples.
“No, it hasn’t.”
He pushed his hair forward.
More strands came loose between his fingers.
His smile disappeared.
“Okay. That isn’t funny.”
A prickling sensation spread across his jaw.
Dark stubble emerged over his smooth cheeks as though several days were passing in seconds. Ethan rubbed his chin, staring into the camera as the stubble thickened beneath his fingertips.
The chat became unreadable.
BEARD
ETHAN YOU’RE TURNING INTO A DADDY
THE BEAR GUMMY IS MAKING HIM A BEAR
“Stop saying that.”
His voice came out deeper.
Ethan froze.
He touched his throat and tried again.
“Hello?”
The richer voice vibrated through his chest.
His beard continued growing, covering his cheeks, jaw and upper lip in dense brown hair. Within a minute it had become a full, heavy beard, perfectly connecting beneath his chin.
Meanwhile, the hair on top of his head continued retreating.
His temples opened into deep recessions. The front thinned rapidly, leaving short, sparse hair across an increasingly visible scalp.
Ethan stared directly into the lens, blue eyes enormous.
“What is happening to me?”
The warmth inside his chest intensified.
Fine hair appeared between his pectorals.
Ethan looked down.
“No.”
The thin line spread outward. Dark curls multiplied across his chest, travelled over his shoulders and continued down his stomach. His forearms became visibly hairier as he watched.
Within moments, the clean, carefully groomed influencer had become covered in thick body hair.
The chat loved it.
BEAR MODE ACTIVATED
KEEP EATING THEM
THIS IS YOUR BEST STREAM EVER
I HAVE NEVER BEEN MORE GAY
Ethan grabbed the packet.
“What did you do to me?”
The cartoon bears continued smiling.
A line of tiny silver writing had appeared beneath the logo.
COSMIC BEARS REVEAL THE BODY YOUR HEART HAS BEEN HIDING.
Ethan read it twice.
“My heart has not been hiding male-pattern baldness.”
His shoulders suddenly jerked backward.
A deep pressure built beneath his skin.
Ethan gasped as his collarbones widened. His shoulders pushed outward, becoming broader and rounder. Muscle thickened across his chest and arms, swelling with every panicked breath.
The transformation was not making him leaner.
It was making him larger.
Much larger.
His pectorals expanded beneath their covering of dark hair. His biceps grew until his upper arms were nearly twice their original size. His neck thickened, supporting a head that looked increasingly rugged beneath the beard and receding hair.
Ethan stared at his arms.
“Oh my God.”
For a moment, his fear was interrupted by fascination.
He flexed experimentally.
A huge biceps rose beneath the hair.
The chat responded with so many messages that the streaming software briefly froze.
Ethan’s mouth fell open.
Then his stomach growled.
It was not a normal sound. It was a deep, rolling demand that shook the desk microphone.
Ethan clutched his abdomen.
“I ate dinner.”
His waist pushed outward beneath his hands.
“No. No, no, no.”
His flat stomach softened. The carefully defined muscles vanished beneath a rapidly thickening layer of weight. His abdomen expanded forward, becoming round and heavy while the rest of his body continued growing muscular.
Ethan shot to his feet.
The gaming chair rolled backward.
His massive shoulders filled the camera frame. His broad, hairy chest rose above an increasingly prominent belly. He looked like a competitive strongman who had never refused dessert.
The chat found a new word for him.
MEGABEAR
DADDY ETHAN
HE’S PERFECT
DO NOT CHANGE BACK
Ethan pointed furiously at the screen.
“All of you are blocked.”
His finger was now thick and calloused.
He stared at it.
Then he noticed his hands had grown larger too.
“I’m going to the bathroom.”
He abandoned the livestream without turning it off.
Thousands of viewers watched the empty chair while distant footsteps thundered down the hallway.
Ethan switched on the bathroom light and stopped before the mirror.
The man staring back at him seemed at least ten years older.
His scalp was almost completely exposed across the top, leaving only short dark hair around the sides. His beard was enormous. Hair covered his chest, stomach, shoulders and arms so densely that his former grooming routine appeared to belong to another species.
He leaned closer to the glass.
“This cannot be me.”
His reflection possessed the same blue eyes, but everything surrounding them had changed.
The delicate influencer face had become broad and masculine. His brow was heavier. His nose looked stronger. His jaw appeared enormous beneath the beard.
Ethan placed both hands on the sink.
Another surge passed through him.
His back broadened.
His arms swelled.
His chest expanded until the countertop seemed unusually low beneath him. The floor creaked as his weight increased.
Then his belly pushed forward again.
It grew into a tremendous round dome, heavy but firm, covered in thick curling hair. Ethan stumbled backward, gripping it with both hands.
“You have got to be kidding me!”
His shout echoed throughout the apartment.
He turned sideways.
The belly projected farther than his chest, yet his shoulders and arms remained powerfully muscular. He looked less like a fitness influencer and more like the intimidating owner of a leather bar who could bench-press the furniture.
Ethan stared.
Then, despite himself, he flexed one arm.
It was enormous.
He flexed the other.
Equally enormous.
He straightened his posture.
The transformed man in the mirror looked shocked, but he did not look unattractive.
He looked commanding.
Warm.
Solid.
The sort of man Ethan had secretly stared at in crowded bars while insisting to his friends that he only dated smooth athletic guys.
A notification sounded from his phone.
The livestream was still running.
Ethan’s eyes widened.
“Oh, hell.”
He returned to the studio.
The chat erupted the moment his huge figure appeared in the doorway.
Ethan squeezed himself into the chair. It groaned beneath him.
His beard nearly touched the microphone.
He stared into the camera, breathing heavily.
“I would like everyone to remain calm.”
The chat did not remain calm.
His viewer count had increased from twelve thousand to nearly half a million.
Clips of the transformation were already spreading across social media. New hashtags appeared every second.
#CosmicBear
#DaddyEthan
#Bearfluencer
Ethan covered his face with both hands.
“This is the worst night of my life.”
A message from his manager appeared.
You’ve gained 300,000 followers in twenty minutes. Do not end the stream.
Ethan slowly lowered his hands.
Another message followed.
Also, personally? The beard works.
Ethan stared at it.
Then he looked at the packet.
One blue gummy remained inside.
The chat noticed.
EAT THE LAST ONE
FINAL FORM
BECOME THE ULTIMATE BEAR
“Absolutely not.”
His newly deep voice sounded firm and authoritative.
The gummy packet rustled by itself.
Ethan recoiled.
The final blue bear climbed over the edge.
It dropped onto the desk, bounced once and rolled directly toward him.
“No.”
It continued rolling.
Ethan trapped it beneath one large finger.
The gummy pulsed with blue light.
A whisper rose from it, quiet enough that only Ethan could hear.
You wanted them to see you.
Ethan looked into the camera.
His entire career had been based on perfection: perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect lighting, perfect body. He had spent years terrified that one wrong angle might make people lose interest.
Now half a million viewers were watching him bald, bearded, hairy and enormous.
And they had never seemed more interested.
He lifted the gummy.
“This is probably a terrible idea.”
The chat agreed enthusiastically.
Ethan ate it.
Nothing happened.
He waited.
The viewers waited.
Ethan released a relieved breath.
Then his chair collapsed.
He crashed toward the floor as his body surged larger one final time. His shoulders became mountainous. His arms thickened with another layer of powerful muscle. His belly swelled until it rested heavily against his thighs.
Ethan rose from the wreckage, towering over the desk.
The microphone now seemed tiny beside him.
His beard had become even denser. The remaining hair on his scalp vanished almost completely, leaving a smooth bald crown surrounded by only a dark shadow.
He looked directly into the camera.
For several seconds, there was silence.
Then Ethan began laughing.
It started as a confused chuckle, but quickly became a deep, booming roar that filled the room.
He placed both huge hands on his belly.
“Well,” he said, smiling beneath the beard, “I suppose the cutting phase is officially cancelled.”
The chat exploded.
Ethan flexed his massive arms. His round belly rose proudly beneath his hairy chest.
“And apparently,” he continued, “this channel has new branding.”
He picked up the empty Cosmic Bears packet and held it beside his face.
“Zero stars for accurate labelling.”
He paused.
“Ten stars for results.”
By morning, Ethan Vale was the most discussed influencer on the internet.
His sponsors expected him to panic.
Instead, he replaced his old profile photograph with an image of himself grinning, bald and bearded, one enormous arm curled around his belly.
Henry only wanted to be manly. When he heard about the Minoxidil+ pills on the web, he bought some only minutes before the website seemingly shut down. After getting them through mail, he took the recommended amount: one pill before sleep, but didn’t bother to read the instructions further. The pill gave him erotic dreams all night, of himself growing hairier and manlier in front of his coworkers. It was only when he woke up to a powerful orgasm that he realized he had become the hairy man of his dreams. He masturbated again a couple times before going to sleep. On the next day, he took another pill before going to work. People commented his new beard and each time he touched it or looked at himself in the mirror, Henry could swear it looked thicker, fuller, darker. He had to spend his lunch break in the toilets jacking off to abate the strong horniness assessing him. Only when he came home after work and went to the bathroom, he looked down at his still aching boner and furrier body, wondering if the pills should act that fast or that strong. If only he had read the instructions closley, he would have known that jacking off in the 12 hours after taking a pill made the growth all the more apparent and quicker… not that he would have minded though!
It was all fun and games, dressing up in a jock and leather uniform to go to the bar with friends. But little did he know that with each minutes in the Bear’s Den, the guy felt his leather uniform grow snugger. The more the evening progressed, the more a nauseous vertigo assailed him. Since when did everyone get so short? Why did his boots felt so cramped? Why was his jock torn apart? Why did this jacket felt so…. SNAP. Well, at least the fresh air felt relieving on his furry sweaty back. Might need a new uniform soon tho.
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