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"Coach, I don't think..." Johny stammered.

"I need you, Johny," Coach interrupted, his eyes locking onto the younger man with an intense, heavy gaze. "My best wrestler, Dane Mercer, just dropped out of tonight's intercollegiate match."

Johny’s eyes widened behind his invisible anxiety. "Dane Mercer? As Dane 'The Anvil' Mercer? Coach, he’s a beast! He competes in the heaviest weight class. How could I ever replace him? I weigh next to nothing."

Coach stood up, towering over Johny, casting a massive shadow. He placed a heavy, warm hand on Johny’s shoulder, sending an unexpected spark of heat straight down the boy's spine. "Don't worry about that. You can handle it. Go to the locker room, put it on. The match is about to start. Trust me." Dazed, Johny took the singlet and retreated to the locker room. He pulled off his baggy hoodie and jeans, feeling acutely vulnerable in the chill air. He stepped into the wrestling boots and pulled the red singlet up over his thin shoulders. The fabric hung loose, sagging against his flat chest and slender thighs. The boots felt like clunky buckets on his feet. He looked down at himself, feeling utterly ridiculous, his mind racing with panic about the humiliation awaiting him on the mat.

Then, a strange, suffocating heat flared in the center of his chest.

Johny gasped, clutching his stomach as a sudden, violent surge of raw energy ripped through his veins, hot as liquid fire. His vision blurred, the sterile grey tiles of the locker room swirling into streaks of light and shadow.

Thump. Thump. His heart hammered against his ribs like a heavy war drum, echoing in his ears, drowning out the distant ambient noise of the gym. It wasn't just a pulse; it felt like an engine turning over, pumping something potent, thick, and unfamiliar through his entire body.

Suddenly, the floor seemed to drop away as profound dizziness took hold. Johny gasped as his narrow, boyish skeletal frame began to violently stretch. It started with a deep, internal ache in his marrow. His joints popped, clicking loudly in the quiet room as his bones lengthened at an impossible speed. He watched, terrified yet mesmerized, as the lockers appeared to shrink around him. He was shooting upward, his perspective shifting rapidly as his head rose higher and higher toward the ceiling tiles, forcing him to look down at surroundings that suddenly felt incredibly small. He kept growing until he finally stabilized, a towering, giant shadow of his former self, looking down from a staggering new height.

Before he could even fully process this vertigo-inducing vertical growth, his flesh began to swell, responding to the immense new skeletal frame. It started as a deep, primal ache, a stretching of tissue that quickly turned into an intoxicating rush of fullness. Beneath the loose crimson spandex, his once non-existent muscles began to balloon with explosive power. Lean, sharply defined lines carved themselves into his torso, but they didn't stay slender for long; they were immediately buried under thick, dense slabs of hyper-masculine mass that seemed to pack themselves onto his frame by the second.

His collarbones elongated, forcing his shoulders out into a massive, wide V-shape that completely redefined his silhouette. His chest erupted outward, expanding exponentially to form huge, thick pecs that pushed hard against the thin fabric of the singlet until the seams groaned and cried out under the strain. Down his arms, the transformation was just as fierce. His biceps surged, knotting into hard, heavy peaks of solid muscle that flexed instinctively. Below his waist, his slender legs exploded with new mass; his thighs thickened into powerful, solid trunks, packed with heavy muscle that filled out the wrestling boots perfectly, stretching the leather until it gripped his ankles with absolute, unyielding support.

The singlet was no longer baggy. It was stretched to its absolute limit, plastered tight against his massive, muscular body, highlighting the absurd thickness of his new physique. He was a heavyweight titan.

Then sharp short headache hit him. His head started to feel different. He reached up, his large, newly calloused hand brushing against his hair. The floppy, unkempt nerd strands were gone, replaced by a sharp, aggressive, clean-cut fade. His hand slid down to his face, his fingers tracing a massive transformation—his soft, receded jawline had hardened into a heavy, square, ultra-masculine chin, thick and rock-solid.

But the physical transformation was only half of it. Inside his brain, something was being rewritten. The anxious thoughts, the library catalog numbers, the complex mathematical formulas – they were violently overwritten, burned away by a flood of pure, unadulterated adrenaline. In their place rushed an instinctive, flawless understanding of leverage, takedowns, pins, and physical dominance. His shy, submissive nature vanished entirely, evaporated by a sudden, intoxicating rush of supreme confidence.

He didn't feel like Johny the nerd anymore. He felt like a god. A cocky, dominant alpha predator.

A slow, arrogant smile spread across his newly chiseled face. He flexed his massive arms, feeling the terrifying, raw power coiling tightly in his chest. He looked down at his tightly clad, hyper-masculine body, his chest heaving with anticipation.

He knew exactly what he was going to do to his opponent out there. He knew how he was going to dominate him, pin him to the mat, and hear the crowd roar his name. Tonight's tournament wasn't going to be a disaster. It was going to be pure, thrilling fun.

But walking into a bar alone? Holding eye contact with a man with a thick beard and cowboy boots? Taking up space around the kinds of guys who seemed born knowing how to lean, laugh, lift, flirt, and fill a room? That was harder.

Texas was full of them. Frat boys in athletic shorts and backward caps crowding the coffee shop near campus. Fitness bros with damp hair and enormous gym bags crossing the street like traffic had agreed to wait for them just to see them cross in short shorts and tank tops. Cowboys who were mostly just men with good genes, expensive jeans and undeserved confidence, but who all seemed to possess the same relaxed certainty in their bodies.

Jake watched them more than he meant to. He watched their shoulders. Their forearms. The way chest hair curled out of an unbuttoned flannel. The way a mustache could make a man look older, rougher, more decisive. He watched the men who approached other men without the nervous pause Jake always felt in his stomach.

He wanted them - that part was obvious and easy to admit. The harder part was admitting he wanted to be them. Not literally them - but rather a version of himself more like them. And not forever - at least this is what he told himself. Just for long enough to know what it felt like to walk through the world with that kind of weight. Enough to know what it felt like for other men to look at him first. Enough to stop feeling like the thoughtful, slim, average grad student standing just outside the fantasy, with his sketchbook pressed to his chest, like a lost Disney princess before the inevitable glow-up and the arrival of the romantic prince.

Late one Thursday night, after a studio critique that had gone badly enough to make him skip dinner, Jake ended up on Tumblr. He had been following hairy-bothered for months.

The blog was exactly what the name promised: hairy men, transformations, captions about masculinity, frat boys, gym daddies, “before and after” edits that were just plausible enough to make Jake stare too long. The blog posted in a voice that felt teasing and patient at the same time. Daddy-ish, Jake thought once, then closed the app as if someone could see the word in his head.

That night, exhausted and irritated, he opened a message box to the author of the blog.

Jake: Weird question. Do you ever feel like you’re attracted to a type of guy because you wish you were that type of guy?

The answer came back fast enough to make him sit up.

hairy-bothered: Not weird, pup. That’s usually where it starts.

Jake stared at the word pup for a while before replying.

Jake: I’m not a pup.

hairy-bothered: Sure, if you say so. ;)

Jake laughed despite himself, embarrassed alone in his apartment. The conversation stretched past midnight. Jake told him more than he meant to. That he was twenty-five. That he studied architecture. That he painted, gamed, worked too much, hooked up too little, and lived mostly inside his own head. That he was single and tired of being nervous. That he liked frat boys and cowboys and men who looked like they knew what they wanted. Then, finally, after a long pause, he typed the thing he had not said out loud.

Jake: I wish I were hairier. Bigger, too, I guess. More masculine. More dominant. Like I could walk into a bar and actually do something instead of just hoping someone notices me and makes the first move.

There was no answer for almost a minute. Then:

hairy-bothered: Careful, Jake. Some boys get what they ask for and realize they were thinking too small.

Jake’s face warmed.

Jake: That sounds like a caption for one of your stories.

hairy-bothered: Maybe it was, maybe it will be, or maybe - just maybe - it’s advice you should listen to.

Three days later, the package arrived. It was small, plain, and addressed to Jake in blocky black handwriting. No return address. Jake opened it at his kitchen counter with his backpack still on one shoulder.

Inside was a padded black box and a folded note. The box held four glass vials, each nestled in dark foam. Two were filled with clear liquid and labeled RETURN. One held amber liquid and was labeled YEEHAW. The last one was cloudy pale blue and labeled BRO. Jake actually laughed out loud.

The note read:

Try one when you’re tired of imagining.

Return when you’re done pretending.

But don’t waste the version of yourself that finally fits.

He took a picture and sent it to Hairy-Bothered.

Jake: Okay, very funny.

hairy-bothered: You got them, I see.

Jake: Are these colored vodka shots? Am I supposed to drink mystery Tumblr alcohol from a stranger?

hairy-bothered: You wanted to know how it felt.

Jake: To be poisoned?

hairy-bothered: Drink the cowboy first. You’ve been staring at boots too long. Wouldn’t you like to fit into a pair of your own?

Jake put down his phone and closed the box.

For two days, he left it on his desk beside a stack of trace paper and pretended he was not looking at it every time he entered the room.

Then came Monday. His studio professor hated his revised concept. One of his basswood models snapped in his hands five minutes before review. A guy in his cohort, the kind of square-jawed ex-frat guy who called everyone “man” and somehow made it sound natural, offered help in a tone that made Jake feel twelve.

By the time Jake got home, he was hot with humiliation. He stood in his bathroom under the flat light, shirtless in loose shorts, staring at himself. Slim. Lightly cut. A little chest hair. A beard that was…fine, maybe even good, but not enough to change the shape of his face. He looked young in a way that irritated him.

On his phone, a message waited.

hairy-bothered: Bad day, cowboy?

Jake exhaled through his nose. He went to the desk, opened the black box, and picked up the amber vial.

“Not real,” he said to the room so that when nothing happened he’d feel less foolish. “Bottoms up…” he muttered to himself.

Then he drank YEEHAW.

It tasted smokey, with hints of honey, and lavender. For ten seconds, nothing happened. Jake sighed and let out a frustrated “of course not…”

Then heat gathered under his skin. Jake gripped the edge of the desk. “Oh,” he said, because it was the only word available.

The heat moved outward in waves. His shoulders ached first, a deep pressure pushing from inside the joints. The bones did not crack so much as settle into a wider arrangement, as if his body had been waiting for permission to take up more room. Muscle packed itself across his upper back and chest, not inflated or cartoonish, but dense and practical. His torso thickened. His waist stayed firm but sturdier, built less like a grad student who forgot meals and workouts and more like a man who carried heavy things because he could.

His shorts tightened at the hips. His thighs pressed against the fabric. His hands clenched on the desk, and Jake stared as they changed: broader palms, thicker fingers, veins rising, skin roughening faintly across the knuckles. They looked like hands that knew rope, tools, steering wheels, the feel of other men’s collars.

The thought made him swallow. The pain subsided enough for him to move to the bathroom - eager to see the changes he felt rippling through his body.

Hair spread next. It started as prickling across his sternum, then became an almost unbearable tickle. His light chest hair darkened and multiplied, filling outward across his pecs in a dense, natural mat. A thick line ran down the center of his torso where the hair was most dense, darker and heavier, pulling toward his navel and below.

Hair climbed his shoulders, dusted his upper arms, thickened on his forearms. He twisted toward the mirror and saw it wrapping around the tops of his shoulders, hinting at a back that was no longer smooth or boyish.

His skin deepened, taking on a sun-touched tan as if he had spent years outside instead of under fluorescent studio lights. His posture changed without his permission. His shoulders eased back. His stance widened. He stopped hovering over himself.

Then his face shifted. Jake felt it in the jaw first: a heavier set, a firmer line. His cheeks matured. The soft uncertainty around his eyes sharpened into something calmer. Lines etched lightly at the corners, crow’s feet that did not make him old so much as experienced. Laugh lines bracketed his mouth. His beard pulled back into rough stubble along his jaw while his mustache thickened, darkened, and settled heavily over his upper lip. His hair receded slightly at the front, sides tidying, top remaining short.

When it was done, Jake stood frozen in front of the mirror. The man staring back was him - sorta. That was the terrifying part.

He was still Jake in the softness around his eyes, still Jake in the angle of the mouth, still Jake somewhere under the stronger jaw and weathered skin. But he was Jake at thirty-five, maybe thirty-six. Jake after sun, work, confidence, years of being heard and seen. Shirtless, hairy, tanned, broad, with a thick mustache and hands that looked dangerous even resting at his sides.

“Cowboy Jake” he whispered in a deeper voice with a Texas drawl - flexing a swollen bicep.

He should have panicked. He did panic, technically. His heart hammered. His mouth went dry. He backed away from the mirror, then stepped forward again because he could not stop looking.

His phone buzzed.

hairy-bothered: Well?

Jake picked it up with his new massive hairy hand. The phone looked smaller.

Jake: What did you do to me?

hairy-bothered: I mailed you a choice. You drank it.

Jake: You didn’t say it would change my age! I look thirty-five!

hairy-bothered: You look like a man who doesn’t stand in the corner of bars watching the world dance by.

Jake looked back at the mirror. His mustache moved when he smiled.

He put down his phone and took a deep breath. “Moment of truth” he thought as he stretched the elastic of his grey shorts to see what had changed below his belt - hoping hairy-bothered had worked some magic on his average 5” cut dick. Jake peaked over his new pecs to see a massive bush of pubes and nestled within, like a snake in the grass, was an 8” semi-hard cock in his shorts. “Whoa…” was all he could mutter.

He picked up his phone.

Jake: BTW - thanks for the new 🍆

hairy-bothered: Don’t mention it. ;) Have fun! 🍆💦💦

Jake put down his phone, and as he pulled his shorts over his hairy bush his dick, slowly becoming visible, flopped out. “Yes…” Jake thought at the sight of his new member on full display. He reached a thick hairy hand down and gave his new dick a little tug, which coaxed his dick into a full erection at 9", thick, veiny with dense hair on the base.

He inspected how the weight of his new rod shifted, the way it responded. He reached behind and felt two golf ball sized nuts in a long dangling sack. He thought about how his new nuts were perfectly situated to slap against another man’s ass as he fucked them.

Jake grabbed his cock with one hand and started to pump his shaft. Softly, at first, but before long his pace shifted into a higher gear and he moved up to the head - sliding his new foreskin over his glans. It felt sensitive in a way his cut cock never did.

He looked at himself in the mirror. At his new muscles, at the hair coating his body, at the thick mustache above his lip that tickled when he pursed his lips. Gradually his pace quickened and he started thrusting into his hand.

He started visualizing the type of men he could dominate in this upgraded body. How they would worship his hairy pecs, dwell a moment longer sniffing his hairy pits, moan under the pressure of his new cock deep inside them.

After a couple of minutes visualizing himself fucking a twenty three year old frat boy from his design studio with a tight body and thick stubble, Jake felt the heat build up across his body and release in an instant with a deep moan as he ejaculated ropes of thick creamy cum on the bathroom mirror. “Whoa…” he muttered again before cleaning up. 

For the next few days, nobody noticed anything was wrong. That was almost worse than if they had screamed at the sight of him. Jake’s classmates greeted him like always. His professor called on him without hesitation. The barista wrote Jake on his coffee cup and did not blink at the fact that Jake’s wrist looked twice as thick and his mustache could have belonged on a rancher in a beer commercial. The world had edited itself around him.

His driver’s license and student ID showed his new face - and birthdate - July 12, 1990 putting him at nearly 36 years old. Photos on his phone had changed, too. There he was at a gallery opening with the mustache. There he was in a group project photo, broad-shouldered in a denim shirt. There he was on his couch holding a controller, looking like somebody’s hot older brother who had wandered into grad school by mistake.

Only Jake - and hairy-bothered - remembered him being smaller. Only they knew who Jake was in his core.

In studio, this new version of Jake was a problem. He did not fit at the narrow desks the same way - his knees bumped the underside. His fingers were thicker around the delicate knife he used to cut chipboard. His classmates looked briefly confused when he leaned over their models, not because they remembered him differently, but because the shirt stretched over his chest and forearms made him impossible not to notice.

Despite the litany of physical changes, the real change was Jake's voice - and not just his new drawl. He stopped apologizing for himself. He spoke with intention and confidence. He took space and started going after what he wanted.

When his professor questioned his structural logic for a project, Jake heard himself say, “No, that’s not the point of the load path,” and then calmly walked the room through it. His voice came out lower, slower, with no upward nervousness at the end. People listened. The ex-frat guy in his cohort nodded. His professor paused, then said, “That’s stronger.”

Jake should have been horrified. Instead, he wanted to laugh. He nailed the review. That night to celebrate he went to a bar. He told himself it was research. He told himself he needed to know how his new body moved in public, how people responded, whether the change held under pressure. Whether this was worth it. He put on jeans, boots, a white undershirt under an open plaid shirt, then stared at himself so long he forgot the excuse.

The shirt did not hide him. Muscles bulged. Hair showed at the collar. The mustache changed the weight and gravity of every expression. The jeans fit his hairy thighs in a way that made him understand why men leaned against bar counters.

At the bar - a gay western themed affair called the Rainbow Pony - he did not wait. He saw a man near the jukebox looking at him. Not glancing. Looking. Old Jake would have looked away and built an entire alternate life in his head. Cowboy Jake walked over.

“Evening,” Jake said.

The man smiled before answering. “Hi, I’m Dan.”

“Good to meet you, Dan. You here alone?”

“Yes,” he spit out before Jake even finished his thought, “Well...no. I’m here with some friends” he said pointing to a group of men at the other side of the bar.

“Ahh,” Jake replied. “Maybe I’ll catch you later his evening then?” And he made his way through the crowd.

That was new. Everything about the night felt new. Men moved around him differently. Some gave him space. Some stepped closer. He flirted without rehearsing. He made choices. He let his gaze linger and watched men react to being seen by him. His body seemed to know the timing of a slow smile, the weight of silence, the exact angle to lean so the hair at his open collar showed just enough to have men’s eyes linger.

The man from the jukebox had stayed close all night, laughing into his beer, glancing at Jake’s mouth whenever the mustache shifted with a smile. Old Jake would have spent the entire ride home wondering whether he was reading the signals correctly. This Jake did not wonder. When the Uber pulled up, he opened the door, gave the man one slow look, and said, “Get in, we're going to your place.”

The back seat was dark except for the passing streetlights. The second the door shut, the man turned toward him, still wearing that amused, challenging expression. Jake caught him by the front of his shirt and pulled him in. The kiss was not careful. It was warm, rough, confident — the kind of kiss Jake used to imagine other men giving. Now it came out of him naturally, like the new body had brought its own instructions.

The man made a small surprised sound against his mouth, then kissed him back harder. That was all the permission Jake needed. He shifted closer, one broad hand firm at the man’s jaw, thumb brushing the edge of his beard while the other settled against his waist, holding him there like Jake had already decided where the night was going. The man’s hat bumped the car window. Jake smiled into the kiss, not apologizing.

For a moment, the old Jake flickered somewhere under the heat of it — shocked by his own certainty, by the weight of his hands, by how easily he took control. Then the man’s fingers tightened in his open plaid shirt, pulling at the white undershirt beneath, and the cowboy in him pushed forward again. Jake broke the kiss only long enough to murmur, low and close, “You’ve been looking at me all night.”

The man swallowed, eyes bright in the passing neon. “Yeah,” he said. “You’re hard to miss.” Jake’s mustache lifted with a slow grin of self-satisfaction.

“Good,” he said, and kissed him again before the car had made it three blocks.

Dan lived on the third floor of an older apartment building above a quiet street, the kind with narrow stairs, fluorescent hallway light, and doors that looked like they had been painted too many times over the years. Jake followed him up without saying much. He didn’t need to. The whole way, Dan kept glancing back over his shoulder, smiling like he was daring Jake to do something before they even made it inside.

Jake waited until the apartment door shut. Then he moved. Dan barely had time to set his keys on the table before Jake crowded him back against the wall, one hand braced beside his head, the other catching him firmly at the waist. He kissed him again, deeper this time, slower but no less certain.

The old Jake might have asked if this was okay in a nervous voice that made the question smaller than it needed to be. Cowboy Jake asked differently. He paused just long enough to look Dan in the eyes - seeing them screaming for attention and the touch of Jake’s hands.

The apartment was dim except for a lamp near the couch. Jake walked him backward through it, kissing him between steps, making Dan laugh once when he bumped into the edge of a chair. The laugh died quickly when Jake’s hands settled on him again, confident and possessive, guiding instead of asking. He liked the way Dan responded to that — the way the teasing smile slipped, the way his breath changed, the way he stopped performing and started following.

Dan reached to pull off Jake’s plaid shirt, but Jake caught his wrist and pinned it gently against the wall. Dan’s eyes lifted.

Jake smiled under the mustache. “Not yet, cowboy.”

The words should have embarrassed him. Instead, they came out low and natural, like he had always been the kind of man who could say them and be obeyed.

Dan swallowed, then nodded.

Jake let go of his wrist and took his time with the shirt himself, sliding his outer shirt off leaving his white undershirt for Dan to see the dark hair at the collar, the new breadth of his chest and shoulders. Dan stared, and Jake felt that look move through him like confirmation. This was what he had wanted in the bar. This was what he had wanted on campus, in the mirror, in every late-night fantasy he had pretended was only attraction…to be the man someone else could not stop looking at.

He stepped closer again and kissed Dan until the back of Dan’s head touched the wall. Then he leaned near his ear and said, “Bedroom, now.”

Dan laughed once, breathless. “You always this bossy?”

Jake pulled back just enough for Dan to see his grin. “No,” he said honestly. Then, after a beat, he added, “But I’m learning fast.”

Dan took his hand and led him down the short hallway. Jake followed, but only because he chose to. At the bedroom door, he turned Dan around, kissed him again, and shut the door behind them with one broad hand.

Dan’s bedroom was tidy and organized, with a queen sized bed pushed against the window, two nightstand and some photos on the wall. Jake removed Dan’s cowboy hat and put it on his head. “Mind if I borrow this tonight, partner?” he grinned.

He then proceeded to unbutton Dan’s shirt. While Dan returned the favor by pulling off Jake’s undershirt - leaving him in jeans and the borrowed cowboy hat.

Dan gave Jake a good look and said “Wow, I love how hairy you are. It’s so hot.”

Old Jake was beaming on the inside. Cowboy Jake took the compliment in stride by simply pulling Dan towards him and whispering “I know you do” in his ear while simultaneously unbuttoning Dan's jeans and pushing him onto the bed.

Jake unbuttoned his own pants and climbed on top of Dan - grinding their eager cocks against their thigh-tight denim. They kissed heavily while dry humping before Dan reached into his nightstand and pulled out a bottle of lube.

“I want you to fuck me, cowboy” he whispered to Jake between heavy kisses with tongues intertwined.

“I was waiting for you to say that.”

Jake then pulled down his jeans and underwear releasing his dick, while Dan reciprocated by removing his pants and underwear.

“Hairy and hung” my favorite combination, Dan said.

Jake gave a little chuckle - remembering his former smaller dick and less hirsute body. He then lifted Dan’s legs and spit on his asshole before going in with his tongue - prepping him to take his 9" thick dick. Dan began to moan and writhe at the feeling of Jake lapping in and around his asshole - the bristles of his mustache teasing him.

Jake took the bottle of lube and rubbed some into Dan’s yearning hole with two then three fingers before smearing some over his own dick. He then pressed his cock again Dan’s asshole and slowly pushed in, the two men interlocked in missionary style, face-to-face.

“Mmm…” Dan moaned as Jake’s dick slide in further, stretching him out. "It's been a while since I've taken such a big dick."

"That's a boy, you're taking it like a champ" Jake whispered as he slide his dick further with each slow thrust.

Dan reached up and felt Jake’s hairy chest, kissed his mustached face, and then dug his hands into Jake’s hairy back - pulling him deeper into his ass. The attention drove Jake wild as he began to pump hungrily into Dan’s tight hole.

Jake began to lose himself in thought - here he was doing something old Jake would never have dared - fucking a stranger he met in a bar, being worshiped for his hairy body, stern broad face, and massive new cock.

Jake snapped back into the moment when he heard the tone of Dan’s moans shift. He felt Dan's tight hole begin to spasm around his cock as he came from the intensity of Jake's dick in his ass - cum splattering up on Jake’s hairy chest. Jake pulled his dick out, and pulled Dan to the edge of the bed - rising to his feet and reinserting his dick to get a deeper angle. He then rubbed his hand through cum-soaked chest and lifted it to his mouth - tasting it while increasing his pace.

“Where do you want me to cum?” he whispered to Dan.

“On me” Dan replied, still reeling from his orgasm and the feeling of Jake's dick still inside him.

Jake pumped a few more times into Dan then pulled out and jerked his rock-hard dick until he exploded all over Dan’s chest - with ropes of cum splattering all the way up to the man's face. Jake then collapsed onto Dan, his dick softening pressed against Dan’s cum-coated chest.

After wiping up the cum, Jake snuggled up next to Dan waiting for him to fall asleep so he could slip out before dawn. He did not become cruel. He did not become a caricature. He simply stopped asking permission to exist. He loved it - and that was the problem.

He loved the body. He loved the heft of it, the roughness, the way desire seemed to travel outward from him instead of trapping itself under his ribs. He loved how his own reflection every time he passed a mirror startled him and then satisfied him. He loved the mustache. He loved the hairy chest and shoulders. He loved being the man who approached what he wanted and took it.

But by the ninth day, unease crept in. At school, a first-year student called him “sir” and then flushed. Jake laughed it off, but it stuck. In the grocery store, a cashier guessed he was married. A guy at the gym asked if he had “been this built since he was a young man,” and Jake almost answered honestly.

At night, alone, he studied his face. Thirty-five looked good on him. Too good. But he was twenty-five. He had not earned those lines. He had not lived that decade. Somewhere under the tan, chest hair and steady gaze, the original Jake felt like he had borrowed a truck he did not know how to park.

He messaged Hairy-Bothered.

Jake: I like it.

hairy-bothered: I know, cowboy.

Jake: But it’s weird being this much older.

hairy-bothered: Older bothers you?

Jake: A little.

hairy-bothered: You wanted masculine. You didn’t say young. How many young men do you think are really that masculine? How many exude the confidence you now possess?

Jake looked at the black box. Two return vials. One blue vial.

Jake: The bro one makes me younger?

hairy-bothered: Younger. Louder. Fratty. Hairier than ever. Easier.

Jake: Easier - in what way?

The reply took longer this time.

hairy-bothered: Easier to stop overthinking.

Jake should have noticed the wording.

Instead, he thought about being younger, hairier and built. "Hairier than ever" - whatever that meant exactly. Hot in the way frat boys were hot: careless, physical, energetic, wanted. Maybe he could have the body and the confidence without feeling like he had jumped ahead ten years.

On Sunday morning, Jake drank one RETURN vial. The cowboy left him in reverse. His shoulders narrowed. His hands smoothed. The tan faded. The hair thinned and retreated from his shoulders, his arms, his stomach, his chest, leaving him with the familiar lighter pattern of pre-change Jake. His mustache softened back into his regular beard. The lines at his eyes vanished. His face became twenty-five again.

When it finished, Jake stood in the bathroom mirror looking exactly like himself. He should have felt saved. Instead, he felt reduced.

The bathroom looked bigger. His shorts hung looser. His hands looked delicate around the sink. Even his thoughts seemed quieter, less confident, less rooted in his body. Normal fit, but not comfortably.

His phone buzzed.

hairy-bothered: How’s normal feel?

Jake stared at himself then thought for a moment before replying:

Jake: Smaller.

A minute later:

hairy-bothered: Then maybe normal was never the goal.