"Are you watching, baby?"

The garage hummed with that low, electric drone of fluorescent lights working overtime, casting everything in a clinical wash of white. Somewhere in the distance, a fan ticked against its housing. The air was thick with the smell of motor oil and chalk dust, mingling with something sweeter — the warm, salted scent of skin that had been working for hours.

Yuna shifted her weight on the cracked concrete, bare feet planted shoulder-width apart, toes spread wide for balance. The yellow bikini she'd picked out that morning clung to her in all the places it could still reach, which, admittedly, wasn't much anymore. The triangle top sat squeezed between two enormous round pillows of chest, the thin straps disappearing into the deep canyon between them. The bottoms had given up trying to cover anything substantial, the strings cutting into hips that flared out from a waist still impossibly tight.

She tilted her head, silver hair sliding across one flushed cheek, and looked toward the phone propped up on the workbench. The little red recording dot blinked back at her.

"Are you watching, baby?"

Her voice came out softer than she'd meant it to — a little breathless, a little shy. Red eyes flicked to the lens, half-lidded, lashes lowered just enough to give the look that particular weight she knew worked on him. The corner of her mouth pulled up. Not quite a smirk. Something gentler. Something that said this is for you, and only you.

She'd been planning this for weeks.

He'd said something offhand, months ago, about how he liked it when she really pushed herself. How the way her arms looked when she was straining drove him crazy. She'd filed it away the way she filed everything he said, turning it over in her mind at night, deciding how to give it back to him bigger.

So here she was. With a custom bar. With plates that read 1000KG on the outsides.

Yuna leaned down slowly, making sure to angle herself just right for the camera. The motion sent her chest swaying forward, the heavy pecs underneath those soft pillows shifting with weight that made the bikini top creak. Her shoulders rolled forward — and the delts, god, the delts capped her arms in three distinct rounded heads, each one bigger than her head, glossy with the faintest sheen of sweat. They swallowed the strings of her top entirely.

She wrapped her hands around the knurled grip.

And the bar gave up immediately.

It wasn't dramatic. It wasn't loud. The steel just sighed — that was the only word for it — and the knurling beneath her fingers compressed inward like soft clay. Her fingertips sank into the metal with a slow, deliberate squeeze, and when she lifted her hands away slightly to readjust, the bar held the impression of her grip. Four neat divots on the top. A clear thumbprint on the bottom. The chrome around each indentation had bunched into little ripples, like water frozen mid-splash.

Yuna blinked down at it, lips parting in a small "oh."

She glanced at the camera. The flush on her cheeks deepened.

"I didn't even mean to do that," she said quietly. A little laugh escaped her — embarrassed, pleased, knowing exactly what it would do to him. "I barely touched it."

She wrapped her hands back around the warped grip, this time letting her fingers settle into the indentations they'd already made. The fit was perfect. The steel had molded itself to her, the way everything seemed to lately.

"I've been practicing," she said, her voice dropping into something almost conspiratorial. A little softer. A little more for him. "Wanted to surprise you."

She bit her lower lip, the flush creeping higher.

The lift began.

Her back arched as she came up, and every muscle in her body inflated in slow, deliberate stages. The lats flared first, spreading out behind her in two enormous fanned wings that nearly tripled her width, the deep grooves between them dark with shadow. Her traps surged upward, climbing past her ears, framing her face in twin walls of rolling, twitching muscle. Her biceps swelled into ridiculous proportions — two, then three distinct peaks stacked like river stones, the skin stretched so tight the veins traced clear pathways across the surface.

And under her hands, the bar kept giving.

She felt it happen as much as she heard it. The knurled steel where her fingers wrapped slowly pinched inward, the diameter shrinking under the pressure of her grip alone, the metal at the very edges of her palms bulging outward in twin little crests where it had nowhere else to go. Her hands looked almost delicate by comparison — slender fingers, neatly trimmed nails — but every flex of her forearms sent another fractional collapse through the steel. The bar narrowed where she held it. Tapered. As if the metal were politely making room.

The lift came up to shoulder height. Then to her chin. Then overhead.

Yuna pressed it the rest of the way, arms locking out, and held.

She turned her face toward the camera again, lips parted, breath coming a little quicker now. Not from strain — the weight wasn't the problem. From him. From knowing he was watching. The red of her eyes had gone soft and warm, pupils wide.

"See?" she whispered, almost like she was telling him a secret. "I told you I'd get there."

Her chest rose and fell, the pecs flexing in slow, hypnotic pulses underneath the strained yellow fabric. She gave a little shift of her hips, the abs across her stomach — those six deeply-cut bricks, the obliques twisting down her sides like braided rope — all flexing in sequence. A bead of sweat traced its way down the deep center line of her stomach, disappearing into the yellow string of the bottoms.

Above her, the bar began its slow surrender between the plates. The center bowed downward in a gentle, patient arc, the 1000KG plates on either side tilting in toward each other like they were leaning closer to listen. The steel groaned — not the sharp crack of failure, but something softer, more pliant. Like it had decided, all on its own, that resisting her wasn't worth the effort.

And under her grip, the metal kept squeezing tighter, narrowing by another fraction with every slow pulse of her forearms. The original 50mm bar was probably 40mm now where she held it. Maybe less.

Yuna's lips curved into the smallest, most pleased smile.

"Stay on the phone, okay? Don't hang up yet." She tilted her head, hair falling across one shoulder. The triceps under her arms hung like enormous horseshoes, each head defined and sharp. "I've got something else I want to show you after this."

She held the lift a moment longer, just for him.