#bc i can imagine that seeing Taako all skinny might be the first sign that her plan for him had not gone as well as she'd hoped

[mslullabies]

wrote a little fat-positive ficlet based on this headcanon – although note that this does not feature or discuss eating disorder!Taako, just stressed lonely and unhappy!Taako. do not read if you are not into fatness being portrayed as a good thing.

Magnus is on the bar stool on the opposite side of the kitchen counter, watching Taako make diplomat cream.

"Why diplomat cream?" Magnus had asked, making trouble on purpose, holding back a grin, "Why not just custard?"

"Excuuuuuuse me!?" Taako had all but shrieked, and banished Magnus to the bar stool, where he couldn't sneak fingerfulls of the cream he was so obviously unworthy of.

The banishment also got him out of Taako's personal space, which Magnus knows he's been encroaching on a little too much ever since they saved the world. He doesn’t mean to, it’s just -

He remembers everything in its proper order now, remembers all the people he loves and all the ways he grew to love them, but his sense memories still trip him up sometimes. His body doesn’t have it straight. For a while his ears held on to this timeline of Merle's voice - the warmth in it growing deeper over the course of a hundred years, and then his voice was gone entirely, and then it was filled instead with tired obstinacy, before slowly growing warmer, more affectionate, again. Magnus knew in his head why those changes happened, but it's like his ears couldn't let go of the strangeness. Ears don't know about interdimensional travel, they don't know about memories stolen and returned.

That, at least, had faded in the months that followed the almost-apocalypse, probably because Magnus hears Merle’s voice plenty often, but with Taako it’s different.

Magnus has had his arms around Taako exactly three times: there was the first time Lup died, and Taako had been... Magnus had carried him back to the Starblaster, and his weight in Magnus's arms had been a comfort of sorts - the heavy, tear-soaked reality of him, the shake of his girth as he sobbed, his pain and the ache Magnus felt for him marking them both as undeniably alive. Then there was the third time they'd lost Cap'nport, and lost him when he'd been right beside Magnus, not even six inches away. One of the only things Magnus can remember from the days that had followed is the sound of a put-upon sigh, and then a sturdy warmth all around him, the soft press of Taako's body against his chest, the way he had felt when Magnus finally managed to lift his arms and hold him in return – a thick comforting squish giving way to a solid core of strength.

And then most recently, after the destruction of Phandalin, he'd caught Taako in the moon base’s observatory - his slight shape silhouetted against the sunset, tendons showing in the back of his hand as he’d gripped the telescope and looked down at that crater of glass. Taako had immediately pretended to be looking at something else, and Magnus, unremembering, had looped an arm around his shoulders and squeezed him. He’d gotten a good second and a half in maybe before Taako had shrugged away. Taako had been skinny and sharp-edged then, and even pressed up against him, Magnus hadn’t thought anything of it, of what might have made Taako that way. His fingers could have met around Taako’s arm, and he’d had no idea what that actually meant.

Now Taako's got his nose in the air as he pointedly faces away from Magnus and vigorously whisks heavy cream into whipped cream. Magnus can see the muscles in his arm move, but the lines of them are diffuse and gentle. The reverberations of his stirring jiggle through his side. Now Taako is thick and hale and his skin is smooth and glowing and his eyes shine and Wonderland or no, he is as gorgeous as Magnus can ever remember him. Magnus understands what happened, how Taako got so thin and how he got chubby again, it makes sense in his brain - but his body cannot shake the feeling of the narrow ridge of Taako's shoulders against the underside of his arm. He can't get rid of this urge to put his arms around Taako and feel that he's well and happy and not alone and isn't afraid to cook or to eat anymore. He wants that feeling to overtake the memories his body made when neither of them were their whole selves.

"Ya know, I can get you an 8 by 10 if you want," Taako says without turning around, and Magnus realizes it’s been several minutes and he’s gone from watching Taako cook to just kind of staring at him.

"Yeah, you already gave me like a dozen," he answers, laughing.

"So then what's with the star gazing?" Taako asks as he tests the peaks of the cream. He sets the bowl down on the counter, apparently satisfied, and turns to face Magnus.

Magnus shrugs dismissively and looks away. Hugs aren’t exactly Taako’s jam, and he doesn’t want to make him feel weird or obligated about it.

Taako sighs.

“Listen, I’m normally all about just bottling that shit right up, but just this one time I think I’d rather you spat it out. Not that I don’t want you around, but you have kinda been right on my jock lately, and that real estate is in high demand. What gives, homeboy, what’s going on?”

Magnus debates internally for a split second, and then gives up the ghost. He doesn’t have it in him to give Taako the brush off, and there’s no law that says they have to get into details about it.

“I kinda want a hug,” he says, and smiles when Taako’s eyebrows shoot up. “But I know you’re not into that, so don’t worry about it. I’ll uh. I’ll bottle that shit right up.”

Magnus isn’t sure what he’s expecting Taako’s response to be, but what he gets is Taako whirling around, leaning halfway out of the window over the sink and looking left and right as if checking for intruders. He withdraws and pulls the shutters closed, then goes and performs the same comical look-around at the doorway leading to the dining room. Apparently satisfied, he turns around and shoots Magnus a conspiratorial look.

“Ok, you can’t go blabbing about this to everybody,” he says in a stage-whisper as he comes around the counter to Magnus’s bar stool. “Part of how I make sure the demand stays high is by keeping the supply low, ya feel me?”

“Uh, yeah?” Magnus guesses, still not sure where this is headed.

“Good,” Taako says firmly. Then he holds out his arms.

Magnus slides off the bar stool and into the hug Taako is offering on instinct or reflex or something, no conscious thought to it at all. It doesn’t even occur to him to laugh at how ridiculous Taako is until he’s already there, and then he’s too busy getting a little choked up.

Taako doesn’t feel the least bit fragile or sharp-edged, just sturdy and soft and substantial, so Magnus squeezes him tightly, and the circle his arms make around him is big and wide and right. He can feel something inside himself click back into proper alignment, like feeling a joint move more easily after it’s popped.

“You don’t have to be a fuckin creep about it, ok?” Taako says into Magnus’s neck. Magnus just nods, his throat too closed up to bother defending himself.

Taako allows the hug for another moment before patting Magnus’s back in that way that means ‘done now,’ and Magnus lets him go.

“I mean it,” Taako says immediately, pointing a finger in Magnus’s face, “Don’t go telling people about this.”

“Ok,” Magnus says, amused and still a little dazed with relief.

“I can’t have the likes of Kravitz and Ango thinking they can just get all up in here whenever they want.”

Magnus manages a laugh at that. “Not even Kravitz gets the unlimited hugs pass?”

“Especially not Kravitz, are you kidding me. He’s gotta earn it every time.”

Taako sashays back around the counter and reaches over the sink to open the shutters again, and although shutting them hadn’t made the kitchen dim by any means, the sunlight streaming in feels refreshingly bright and clean.