It always sucks to see my partner struggle so much with Father's Day. While my family is supportive that I came out, my partner's family hasn't been all that much. Doesn't help that he hasn't been all too close with his father, who clearly doesn't support our relationship. It sucks hearing my boyfriend wishing that he could be the type of son his father would be proud of. In reality, his father is kind of an asshole. Ex-jock, military kind of guy. Tharnis, I just wish my partner had the type of dad he deserves.
He sits next to you on the couch, hunched over slightly, his thumb frozen over the glowing screen of his phone. The name “Dad” sits there like a weight, like a ghost barely held inside the little glass window. You see it in his face, the tiny tremors in his jaw, the way his throat works as he tries to swallow down a lifetime of pain that still lingers behind his eyes. He doesn’t press call. He never does.
You want to help him. You wish you could undo all of it. You whisper so softly it barely escapes your lips.
"I wish you had the kind of father you deserved."
The air turns solid around you for half a second, like your breath is pushing against concrete, and then reality folds like paper. Sound distorts. Your ears pop. The living room is gone, your couch is gone, and your partner is no longer sitting beside you. You are standing behind him, and the sun is glaring in your eyes.
He stands in the driveway of a home you have never seen before. White siding. A perfect green lawn trimmed to military standards. An American flag flutters on the porch. The scent of fresh grass mixes with the sharp stink of motor oil and barbecue. Everything feels too clean, too symmetrical, like it was painted from memory.
A man approaches. Thick-necked, heavy-shouldered. Crew cut, square jaw. He’s wearing a navy-blue polo shirt stretched too tight across his broad chest. There’s something in the way he walks that makes your stomach twist, like a dog bristling at the smell of fire. His hand lands on your boyfriend’s shoulder with a loud slap.
“I’m so proud of you, son,” the man says, his voice gravelly and loud, full of fake affection that sounds rehearsed. “Can’t believe the Army let you visit me for Father’s Day.”
You blink. Your mouth falls open slightly. Something isn’t right.
Your boyfriend was never in the Army.
But he doesn’t flinch at the comment. He doesn’t correct the man. He doesn’t turn around to look at you. You watch as his hoodie begins to ripple. The fabric shivers. The color drains out of it, replaced by deep olive green. The sleeves tighten. The cotton stretches into something thicker, heavier. Pockets and patches materialize like water stains spreading outward. You hear the click of buttons forming, the snap of Velcro. A U.S. Army insignia forms above his heart.
You can’t move. You can only watch.
His body begins to change. His shoulders press outward, flesh and bone rearranging beneath the tightening fabric. The sound of it is sickening. His collarbones rise, sharpen. His chest swells beneath the uniform, pecs rounding and bulging, straining the tight seams of the camo shirt. His biceps pulse, suddenly alive with thick muscle. The veins across his arms swell and darken. He lifts one arm, flexing absentmindedly, and the sheer mass of it looks foreign, monstrous.
His stance widens. His thighs balloon, stretching the seams of his pants until you hear threads begin to strain. His waist narrows in contrast, forming the classic V-shape that looks sculpted rather than born. You recognize none of it.
He turns to you slowly, and you gasp.
His face has aged five years in seconds. The soft curve of his cheeks has vanished. His jaw is sharp now, squared with clean edges. His skin looks sun-hardened, taut over new bones. His eyes are darker. His eyebrows are more arched, more judgmental. The little imperfections that made him look human, the blemishes and scars and tiny freckles, are gone.
His expression is smug. You have seen it before, but never on him. It’s a mask. No. It’s not a mask. It is becoming his face.
His hair, once unruly and soft and always falling into his eyes, shortens with unnatural speed. It draws upward into a perfect military crop, so precise it looks drawn on with a ruler. Not a single strand is out of place. It gleams slightly with product or sweat or both.
“I’m proud of you, Logan,” the man says again. His voice is too loud. Too close. Your ears are ringing.
Your lips part, but no sound comes out. That is not his name. That has never been his name. You try to step forward, but your knees feel like they are locked in place.
Then the man says something else.
“If only your little brother Tyler would act a little more like you.”
Your vision tilts. The world seems to lurch, like a carousel gone off track. Little brother. Your boyfriend was an only child. You know this. You know this.
Logan turns his head slowly and looks directly at you.
You realize with a start that he is taller. He was six feet tall before, but now he is towering over you. You are staring at the middle of his chest. No. Lower. His height is still increasing. Inch by inch, like someone turning a dial. His legs stretch longer. His boots stomp against the concrete like anvils. He hits six foot six with terrifying ease.
Your own body, shrinking.
It is not an illusion. You feel your spine compress, vertebrae tightening like a coiled spring. Your limbs shorten, your shoulders narrow. The world grows taller around you. Your clothes shift, loosen. Your hands look smaller. The sleeves of your shirt hang too long over your wrists. You feel a pressure in your skull like your very identity is collapsing.
Logan stares down at you with something close to contempt. His smirk spreads.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice deeper now, older, crueler. “Why you gotta be such a pathetic little loser, Ty?”
You feel a cold knot form in your gut. Ty. That’s what he called you. It felt too casual. Too familiar. You realize it is a nickname. You realize he is not joking.
You look around. The house looks familiar now. Too familiar. You have been here before. Or maybe you have always been here. The memories in your head feel scrambled. You try to remember your real name. Your boyfriend’s name. Your apartment. What you were doing before this moment.
All of it feels soft. Blurry around the edges.
“You’re such a fucking loser, Ty,” Logan says again, his voice now full of mocking affection. His teeth gleam. He ruffles your hair like you are a child. You want to slap his hand away but your limbs feel too light, too slow. You look down and realize you are now five foot six and still shrinking. You are looking up at him like a kid looks up at an older brother.
But you don’t have a brother.
Something is deeply wrong.
You open your mouth to scream, but it gets caught in your throat. You look into Logan’s eyes and there is nothing familiar left in them. He looks at you the way a drill sergeant might look at a scared recruit. Or a predator might look at something already broken.
You made a wish. That was all. Just a wish.
And now reality has rebuilt itself around it. Rewritten you from the inside out.
The father wraps his arms around Logan’s massive frame, beaming with pride.
A strand of hair falls in front of your eyes, light and soft, brushing your cheek like a spiderweb. It shouldn’t be there. Your hair doesn’t do that. But when you reach up to brush it back, you feel more of it. Thicker now. Silkier. It flops over your forehead like it belongs there.
You push it back, and it falls forward again, just so. Casual. Perfect. Like it didn’t take twenty tries to look like this.
Your breath catches. Something's wrong.
You run your fingers through your hair again, but it slips through too easily, like it’s been straightened and styled a hundred times. It feels curated. You look down at your hands and they’re slim, almost delicate. Not feminine, not exactly. But definitely not yours.
Your skin is different now too soft, smooth, poreless. There’s a faint sheen across it, like you've just stepped out of a TikTok thirst trap. Then under the skin, like something crawling just beneath the surface. Your cheeks round out. Your lips swell, plush and pouty. The weight of them feels unnatural. You can feel them part just slightly, and there's already something smug curling at the corners, like your face knows it’s attractive and wants everyone else to know it too.
Your jaw softens. Your chin lifts. Your eyebrows tilt just a little higher, creating that wide-eyed look—naive, bratty, fuckable. Your lashes blink once, slow and dramatic, and when your eyes open again, there's something new behind them.
No. You look like the kind of guy who knows he's cute. Who lives off the attention. Who posts mirror selfies captioned "felt cute, might delete."
Your shoulders narrow, collarbones jutting out like decoration beneath the collar of your hoodie. It hangs differently now—too big, just enough to show skin without being obvious. You can feel your body reshaping underneath it. Your stomach tightens, flattens. You feel each muscle gently cinch into place, not chiseled, not hard, but lean and suggestive. Abs that are just visible enough to tease, like someone who does a couple pushups before going live.
Your arms aren’t bulky anymore. They’re defined but wiry. Thin strength. The kind of body that racks up thousands of likes from people who think it’s natural. Effortless. You know exactly how many filters it takes to make it look like that.
And then there’s the smell.
It hits you like a slap. The hoodie clings to your skin in all the wrong places. You’re sweating. You smell like deodorant that stopped working two days ago. There’s something sour under it—old sweat, greasy hair, a faint odor of vape juice and unwashed sheets. Your armpits are damp. Your waistband smells like you haven’t changed your underwear. You catch a whiff and feel your stomach twist in quiet revulsion.
But you don’t care. Not really.
You’re used to this. You live in it.
A heavy footstep behind you makes you turn. Logan. He’s still standing tall, arms crossed, face unreadable but laced with disgust. His jaw flexes. The camo uniform clings to every perfect inch of his bulked-out military body.
He glares at you like you’re something beneath him.
“No one gives a shit about your stupid TikToks and dumbass memes, Tyler.”
That name stings like a slap across the face. Tyler. Not you. But it is. It’s always been.
You try to tell yourself this is wrong. You try to remember something else—anything else—but the memories slip like soap through your fingers. Fading. Rotting. Reshaping.
You remember Logan always being like this. A real man. Big. Strong. Trained. Respected. Your dad used to watch him walk through the room like a goddamn parade float. Beaming. Clapping him on the back.
That sentence again. Always to him. Never you.
You remember going to church every Sunday, sitting through sermons you barely understood, Logan in full uniform on the holidays, your mom crying with pride while you slouched in the back row, phone glowing beneath your hoodie.
You remember laughing at Logan’s medals when he brought them home. “Cool tin stickers, bro,” you’d said. You remember how hard his eyes went flat. How he said, “You wouldn’t last ten minutes in my unit, Ty.”
He was right. You wouldn't.
You remember watching him lift in the backyard, shirt off, muscles like armor, sweat running down his back, and hating him for it. Hating him because you’d never be that. Because your own chest was soft, your arms narrow, your skin patchy from staying inside too long.
You remember scrolling through his Instagram and zooming in on photos just to make fun of them.
But you saved some of them.
You didn’t delete them even when your phone told you to clear space.
Now you're standing in the hallway, looking like you just finished filming a dumb lip-sync thirst trap. Your oversized hoodie clings to your back with sweat. Your breath smells like Monster energy drinks and cereal milk. Your boxers are riding up. You probably haven’t brushed your teeth. You feel disgusting and fake and completely yourself.
“You gonna sit around all day again?” Logan calls from the kitchen, where he’s drinking straight from a gallon jug of milk. “Get a job. Or a clue. Or some fucking deodorant.”
Your dad chimes in behind him, not even looking up from his phone.
“Maybe if you stopped trying to be internet-famous for five seconds, we wouldn’t be ashamed to introduce you to people.”
You feel it in your chest like a nail hammered under your sternum. But you cover it with a scoff, with the practiced eye-roll you’ve had since ninth grade.
“Whatever,” you mumble. “I’m going out. Hanging with my girlfriend. The one from—whatever, Sunday School.”
You can feel their eyes rolling even if you’re not looking.
“She the one who dumped you last month?” Logan asks. “Or the one who thought you were ‘deep’ because you quoted Bo Burnham?”
You were always jealous of him.
He was everything you weren’t. Disciplined. Focused. Masculine. Cool.
And you? You were just…Tyler. That dumbass little brother. Loud. Lazy. Always late. Never trying. The one who joked too much in Sunday School, got kicked out for talking, then asked the hot girl to “hang out” in the parking lot anyway.
She said yes. You bragged about it for a week.
You don’t remember what her name is now. But she had long brown hair and a silver cross necklace. You think.
You smell your own stench again. Your hoodie’s damp. Your hair’s a mess—but not messy in a good way anymore. Just gross. Your thighs are chafing. You haven’t washed your socks in two days.
“You’re a fucking embarrassment” he says.
Your dad joins in from behind him, his voice sharp and clipped.
“You think your little games are gonna get you anywhere? What are you even doing with your life, Tyler? Huh? You want to spend the next ten years dancing on camera like a clown?”
“I don’t dance,” you shoot back automatically. “I just—Jesus, why do you care? I’m going out, okay?"
They both start to say something, but you’re already storming toward the front door. The house feels too hot. Too loud. Their voices echo like knives inside your head. You shove the door open, hoodie riding high on your back, your sweat cooling in the summer air.
The world spins just a little. Not enough to fall.
You blink in the sunlight.
You’ve always been a pathetic 18 year old wanna-be TikTok star, Tyler.
