TF enthusiast

This story is inspired by @rowdy317 Enjoy it!

Mark pushed up his round glasses, feeling beads of nervous sweat gather on the bridge of his nose. As a PhD anthropology student, he was accustomed to silently observing from the sidelines, so he wondered why this assignment should be any different. He wore an oversized, itchy wool sweater and brown corduroy pants that nearly engulfed his hunched figure. His dull, academic attire acted as armor, helping him blend into the library and remain unnoticed among the archives, but today he must do a field work.

He pushed open the heavy wooden door of the pub "Bear Town". The air hit him like a physical wall—scents of hops, cedarwood, and the unmistakable, muskier aroma of men. Everywhere he looked, there were "bears": massive, bearded men in flannel and leather. Clutching his leather notebook to his chest like a shield, Mark felt painfully small. He wasn't just an outsider; he felt like a different species entirely.

He navigated the sea of denim and fur to the bar. "A pint of lager, please," he squeaked, his voice barely audible over the deep rumble of laughter. As the bartender poured, Mark gathered his courage. "I'm... I’m doing research on the local gay bear community. Do you know anyone who might be willing to talk to me? For science?"

The bartender offered a knowing, slightly amused grin. "Research, huh? I'll see who’s feeling talkative. I’ll send it to you."

Most people digging through the back shelves of a nearly abandoned barber supply store would have looked for something sealed, unexpired, and safe. Owen did the opposite. He crouched in the dusty corner until he found the old brown bottle with the plain cream label: HAIR TONIC. No flashy promises, no modern branding. Just a faded list of directions, a date long expired, and one warning printed near the bottom: Store in a cool, dry place.

He smiled when he read that. That was exactly why he wanted it. Owen had read stories about men using expired tonic. He knew it could cause male-pattern baldness and grey your hair - but he was hoping to push it to the limit.

Owen had spent too long pretending he only admired older men from a distance or, preferably, from underneath them during one-night stands; taking in the smell of their sweaty hairy bodies as they plowed his tight twink college frat boy hole. The rugged ones - the men in their forties with thicker necks, weathered smiles, graying beards, and heavy hair curling out of open collars drove him insane. Men who looked settled into themselves. Men who didn’t seem boyish or polished, but solid. Masculine. Hairy. He wanted that look with a private, aching intensity he’d never said out loud but burned to his core. He was willing to give up everything to pursue that ideal image.

So when Owen found an expired bottle of Hair Tonic, he didn’t just buy it - he took it home, set it on the windowsill of his apartment, and left it there for three full days, baking in the hot afternoon sun until the liquid inside turned darker, thicker and slightly cloudy.

On the fourth night, he uncapped it in his bathroom. The tonic smelled sharp and old-fashioned, herbal and medicinal with something almost metallic underneath. Owen rubbed the first splash into his scalp, especially at the temples and crown, then worked more over his cheeks, jaw, and upper lip. He hesitated only a second before pouring some into his palm again and dragging it down the center of his chest, across his stomach, over his shoulders, and along his arms, legs and back. He thought for a brief second before deciding to apply the tonic to his pubes, cock and balls as well. “In for a penny in for a pound” he thought to himself as his dick chubbed at the thought of the daddy he might become - if all went to plan.

His skin tingled instantly. By the time he rinsed his hands, the tingling had deepened into heat - a steady, invasive warmth that seemed to seep down into the roots of every soft, nearly invisible hair on his body.

It was a couple of hours before he saw the first changes, while preparing for bed. The faint scruff on his face thickened visibly as he watched, turning from a dusty shadow into real growth: coarse, dense, dark at first, then already streaked with silver around the chin and along the sides. He touched his cheeks with a longing fascination as he felt the beard pushing out fast, filling in until it framed his jaw in a broad salt-and-pepper shape. His mustache thickened too, heavier and darker through the middle, silvering at the edges. He reached a hand to his face to admire the beginning of his journey to real manhood.

Before long his attention shifted to the top of his head. His scalp tightened. He watched, wide-eyed, as his hairline began to creep back from his forehead. Not dramatically all at once, but decisively - his temples drawing back, the hair above them shortening and refining itself into something more mature, touched with gray. He looked older within minutes. Not sick older - not ruined. Just undeniably more grown, more masculine, the youth draining out of his face and leaving behind stronger lines, faint crow’s feet, a rougher, handsomer structure.

Then his body hair began to grow in. It spread in rippling waves. Soft brown fuzz across his chest thickened and darkened, then turned coarse and dense, covering him in a heavy pelt that matched the collection of photos he had in his liked images folder on his TUMBLR page. Hair crowded across his pecs first, curling thickly and high, then met in the center and poured downward in a dark trail over his sternum and stomach. More kept coming—across his ribs, around his navel, down his abdomen, along his shoulders and upper arms. He gasped in delight as he watched the color shift: mostly dark brown, but feathered through with gray, less silver than his beard yet unmistakably mature. His forearms grew shaggy. Fine hair climbed the backs of his hands. He stared, breathing hard, as his body took on that older, masculine density he’d always wanted— thick, textured, unapologetically leaping towards middle age.

Owen reached a newly hairy hand down to his dick. It too had started to change. Hi pubic hair was increasing in density and coarseness at the base, with a couple flecks of grey in the mix. His nut sack was now coated in thick dark hair. He gave his cock a little tug, noticing it felt less sensitive, more mature, than his 23 years of actual age should suggest.

Owen was so overwhelmed by the start of his transformation into a daddy that he couldn’t hold back. He grabbed his dick and began to masturbate while watching his beard hair continue to lengthen, new lines form on his face and hair continue to spread across his chest, arms, and up on his shoulders.

His pace quickened as his breathing grew deeper. Images of what he would look like by morning flooding his mind. Thoughts about the man he would become and how he’d use his new body to dominate younger, smaller, less masculine men - men like he used to be. As he approached climax, imagining his conquests to come, he began to talk to himself in his new gruffer voice: "You like daddy's cock, don't you boy?! Daddy worked real hard for this body for you, so be a good son and take it deep inside your twink hole." Just as he finished the thought he felt his entire body tingle and tense up at the moment of orgasm - shooting cum all over the bathroom vanity. After glowing in the afterlight of his virtual conquest for a few minutes, he cleaned up the mess, gave himself one last once over, and turned in for the night - drifting to sleep with his entire body lightly tingling as the Hair Tonic continued to reconfigure him.

By morning, the transformation had settled completely. Owen woke heavier through the chest and shoulders, his features subtly matured into the kind of handsome that didn’t belong to a man in his twenties anymore. In the bathroom mirror, the young fresh-faced guy he’d been was gone. Looking back at him was a man in his forties - a true daddy: shorter, receded hair brushed neatly back; gray at the temples; a full salt-and-pepper beard shaping his face; stronger smile lines; a calmer, steadier gaze.

His torso was lavish with hair — dense over the chest, tapering down the stomach, thick at the shoulders and arms, exactly as he’d imagined but somehow better because it was his. The beard had gone grayer than the rest, giving his face the distinguished look he’d secretly craved, while the body hair stayed darker, richer, and more virile.

He stood there for a long time, palm spread over the new weight of hair on his chest, thumb brushing through the beard at his jaw.

The bottle sat on the sink in front of him, half-empty, its faded label curling at the edges. HAIR TONIC. Innocent words for something that had known exactly what to do with him. Owen smiled at his reflection - not embarrassed, not startled now, but quietly thrilled. He hadn’t ruined himself. He hadn’t made a mistake. He had made himself into the man he’d been longing to become - the perfect daddy.

As he updated his dating profile apps the messages started pouring in. Owen had worked hard and gambled big - and now it was daddy’s time to play with all of the young eager twinks in the greater Atlanta area.

The build was not supposed to be in his hands. It was an internal beta, one of those strange vanity projects the studio’s creative director liked to throw at the programmers after midnight, when everyone was too tired to argue. A character creator for a game that did not yet have a title attached to it. Upload a photograph, let the software generate a full-body avatar, adjust the sliders, export the model. That was the pitch. The next wave of interactive media - put yourself directly in the game. The first thing José changed was meant to be a joke. At least, that was how he would explain it later, if he ever explained it to anyone, which he knew he would not.

José had been testing it from his apartment in Madrid for hours, barefoot under his desk, wearing an old powder blue T-shirt and the same round glasses he had been meaning to replace for three years. His balcony door was open a crack. Somewhere below, a scooter whined through the narrow street. On his second monitor, a bug tracker waited with the patience of a priest hearing confession from a young unmarried man.

The first monitor showed him. Not a stylized version. Not a handsome approximation. Him. Bald head, dark brows, mustache, glasses, slightly tired eyes, ordinary shoulders, a patch of chest hair visible at the collar of his shirt. The avatar stood in a neutral pose, rotating slowly beneath cold digital light. José leaned back and grimaced.

“Ok,” he said to the empty room. “That’s a bit much.” The face and scalp shine were too accurate. The uncertain half-smile was unforgivable. He clicked through the sliders. Height, weight, muscle mass, age, hair, facial hair, posture, skin texture, body hair, voice profile. Most of it was absurdly detailed. There were fantasy presets too: elf, vampire, demon, wolf-man.

José snorted when he saw the last category. Then he grinned and he clicked wolf-man.

The avatar hunched forward. Its shoulders broadened. Dark hair crawled up its neck and across its cheeks. The mustache thickened into something feral. The nose pushed forward. The ears sharpened. Claws slid from the fingers. The creature on-screen still looked, horribly, like him. Like a version of José after being dragged through an old German fairy tale and then thrown into jeans and a t-shirt.

He laughed once, low in his throat. “Perfect,” he said. A warning appeared.

APPLY CHANGES TO ACTIVE MODEL? PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.

José rolled his eyes. “Yes, yes.” He hit Enter.

For half a second, nothing happened. Then his teeth hurt. It was not pain exactly. It was pressure. A deep, intimate pressure, as if invisible hands had reached into his gums and were pushing each tooth into a new place. José lurched upright so violently his chair rolled backward and hit the bookshelf behind him.

His glasses slid down his nose. The room seemed too bright. Too loud. He could hear his own breath catching, the hum of the computer fan, the traffic below, the click of pipes in the wall, a woman yelling at her husband somewhere across the courtyard, two men having sex a floor below.

Hair prickled along the backs of his hands. He looked down. Dark fur was blooming from his wrists - his fingers distorting and elongating.

“What?!” he whispered. The word came out rougher than it should have - almost more like a snarl.

He stumbled toward the bathroom, painfully knocking his hip against the desk in his haste. His shoulders strained against his T-shirt. His nails darkened, thickened. The sides of his scalp tingled, then burned as hair pushed from skin that had been bare for years. The mirror caught him mid-change: José's own frightened eyes behind thick glasses, José’s mustache spreading onto his cheeks and down his neck, José’s jaw widening under skin that seemed to ripple.

As the changes finished José made a sound he had never made before - somewhere between a howl and a bark. Back at the desk, the monitor waited, a little light flashing: CHANGES APPLIED.

After the pain passed, José stared at himself in the mirror, at his pointy wolf-like ears, at the fur matted across his entire body, at his impossibly thick neck and the bulge in his jeans that the fabric was barely able to contain - and he was too afraid to examine. "What the fuck...how is this possible - why is there hair everywhere but I’m still bald?!" was all that he could mumble out, barely intelligible with his reconstructed mouth, teeth and lupine anatomy.

Just then he remembered his avatar on the screen in the other room. He dashed back across the apartment on a mix of two and four limbs. He looked at the monitor and saw the same face and body from the bathroom mirror staring back at him. His hands were now too large for the keyboard. He jabbed at the mouse, missed, tried again. The cursor skittered over the screen. There. A button.

REVERT.

He clicked it. The second transformation was worse because he knew it was real. His body folded back into itself. Fur retreated. Bones softened. Teeth shrank. His body went cold and bare again. When it was over, José was on the floor under his desk, shaking, his stretched out T-shirt damp against his chest, his glasses hanging on the bottom of his nose.

He did not move for a long time. Then, because he was a programmer, because terror and curiosity lived closer together in him than he liked to admit, he pulled himself back into the chair and looked at the screen. The avatar had returned to its original shape. Bald. Mustached. Middle-aged. Familiar. José stared at himself... Then he had an idea.

⸻

For three days, he told himself he would report the bug. He wrote the email in his head several times.

“There appears to be an unexpected physiological feedback loop with the avatar editor.”

No. Insane.

“The build is interacting with the user in a way that may pose health and safety concerns.”

Also insane.

“I turned into a wolf-man in my bathroom at 1:17 a.m. Please advise.”

He deleted that thought before it could become language. Instead, José did what he did best - he tested. Carefully, at first. Scientifically, he told himself, though he did not write anything down because writing it down would make it evidence.

He adjusted his mustache by twenty percent. Thicker, longer, cleaner, more deliberate, a handlebar. When he hit Enter, his upper lip warmed. The hair shifted under his fingers, filling in at the corners, becoming heavier and better shaped. He stared in the mirror for ten minutes afterward, turning his face left and right.

It looked good. Not young. Not fake. Hot. The next night, he tried the hair slider. He did not give himself teenage hair. That would be ridiculous. He chose “mature density,” then “temple restoration,” then lowered the hairline only a little. He selected dark brown, with a touch of natural variation. When he hit Enter, he gripped the sides of the desk until his knuckles went white.

The sensation was almost sensual this time - like a head massage. A warm pressure under the scalp. A spreading fullness. Thousands of tiny awakenings. In the bathroom mirror, a man he recognized and did not recognize looked back at him. Not bald - still José. Still forty-something. Still the same nose, the same eyes behind the glasses, the same thick mustache. But his head was framed now by short, dark hair that made his face look less exposed, less apologetic. He quickly hit revert - it would be too noticeable…

After that came posture. A slight correction to his shoulders. A little muscle through the chest and arms. Not a model’s body, not a fantasy warrior from Street Fighter 6, just the version of himself he might have had if he had slept better, eaten better, gone swimming more, walked into rooms as if he belonged there. The changes were addictive precisely because they were reasonable - believable.

No one on the studio call noticed except Marta, who squinted at him through Zoom and said, “You look rested.”

“I slept,” José lied.

“You never sleep" she retorted so quickly it gave José pause.

“I experimented.”

“With what?”

José touched his mustache. “Being less melancholistic.”

Marta laughed and moved on.

That night, José updated his dating profile. He used a new photo taken on his balcony at golden hour. Same glasses, same smile, improved mustache, stronger neck, shirt open one button farther than usual. He stared at the picture too long before posting it. For years, apps had felt like standing under fluorescent lights while strangers silently decided what parts of him were worth loving. He had come out later in life, at thirty-eight, and though no one had said the words directly, José had carried the private conviction that he had arrived late to a party where all the best rooms were already full.

Then Pedro messaged him.

The first message was about a video game José mentioned in his profile. Not his body. Not his age. A game.

You have suspiciously good taste in RPGs for someone who also lists debugging as a hobby.

José smiled despite himself and responded:

And you have a suspiciously good mustache for someone in their twenties.

Pedro was twenty-six, a sweet-looking redhead with a messy auburn mustache, broad shoulders, and the sort of hairy, muscular body that made José immediately distrust the possibility of sincerity. But Pedro wrote like someone who listened. He sent long messages, funny ones, slightly awkward ones. He liked old video games, bad horror movies, tortilla with extra onion, and arguing about whether Roegadyn or Midlander Hyur were the hotter race selection in Final Fantasy XIV.

José tried to be normal. He failed miserably. He waited too long between replies so he would not seem desperate. Then he reread Pedro’s messages until they became scripture. When Pedro sent a selfie from bed, shirtless and smiling sleepily, José put the phone face down on the table and walked around his apartment twice.

“You are a grown man,” he told himself, "get a hold of yourself."

The phone buzzed.

Coffee this weekend? No pressure. But maybe a little pressure.

José stared at it. His first instinct was delight. His second was suspicion. His third was arithmetic.

Twenty-six. Forty-five. Nineteen years difference.

He typed, deleted, typed again.

Coffee sounds good.

Pedro answered with a string of victorious emojis so earnest that José laughed alone in his kitchen. For the rest of the week, José did not touch the game. Almost. On Friday night, he opened it just to look. The avatar stood waiting. It had become his secret twin: the man who did not hesitate, the man who walked through Madrid with his shoulders back, the man whose mustache curled at the edges in that special way that made José feel hot. José rotated the model slowly.

There was an age slider. He had avoided it. Not because he lacked curiosity, but because he had too much. He slid it down bit by bit. 40 - the avatar softened and its skin brightened. 35 - the jaw sharpened in that unfair way youth sharpened everything and hair reappeared on his scalp. 30 - the eyes looked clearer. Then 25 appeared in the box beside the slider - younger than Pedro even.

José felt something open in him. Not desire, exactly. Grief. There he was: the man he might have been if fear and confusion had not eaten fifteen years from the center of his life.

He imagined meeting Pedro like that. No arithmetic. No apology hidden in the first hello. No waiting for the younger man’s expression to flicker with disappointment when he realized what 45 year old men actually look like outside of carefully considered lighting and camera positioning. Just two men in the same decade, laughing over coffee, and nerding-out over Zelda or the next season of the anime "Delicious in Dungeon." He looked at the prompt on the screen:

APPLY CHANGES TO ACTIVE MODEL? PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.

He shook his head and closed the program.

⸻

Pedro chose a café near Antón Martín, bright and narrow, with plants in the window and little tables too close together. José arrived early and stood outside sweating through a clean shirt, then cursed himself for arriving early, then cursed himself for sweating.

His mustache was perfect, thick and dark and shaped with care. His body felt quietly stronger under his clothes. He had even taken his glasses off and put them back on three times before leaving, finally deciding they were part of him and he should stop acting like his own face was a negotiation.

Pedro came around the corner in a green jacket, red hair messy from the wind, smiling before he reached him.

“José?”

The sound of his name in Pedro’s voice did something unreasonable to his chest.

“Yes,” José said, and then, because his brain had become a useless decorative object, “Your hair is redder in person.”

Pedro blinked, then laughed. “Good red or traffic cone red?”

“Good red. I like red heads...I mean, I like it!” José said embarrassed at himself.

“Strong start.” Pedro said with a grin.

The date was not perfect. That was why José trusted it later. There were awkward pauses. José talked too much about procedural animation in gaming and mustache grooming. Pedro admitted he had stalked José’s profile twice before sending a hello. José spilled coffee on the saucer, not on himself, which he considered a small triumph.

But Pedro watched him with open interest. Not politeness. Legitimate interest. When they walked afterward, their shoulders brushed once. Pedro did not move away. José’s whole body registered the contact like a system alert.

At the Metro entrance, Pedro looked at him with a softness that made José afraid.

“I’d like to see you again,” Pedro said as he stepped closer to José.

José heard himself answer, “Me too.”

Pedro smiled. “Good. Because I already planned three possible second dates.”

“Only three?”

“I didn’t want to scare you off.”

José could have kissed him then. He wanted to. Pedro looked as if he would allow it. Instead José nodded, smiled, and let the moment pass like so many others.

That night, happiness curdled into panic. He replayed every second, searching for the hidden mistakes. Pedro’s smile. Pedro’s hand brushing his arm. Pedro’s eyes dropping once to José’s mustache-covered mouth. It had been real. It had been real, and that made it exciting but also disturbing. Because now there was something to lose.

At 2:03 a.m., José opened the game. The apartment was dark except for the monitor. The avatar waited, patient and merciless.

José clicked the age slider. “This is just to see,” he said. Twenty-five. The body on-screen became youthful, beautiful to José's eyes, in a way he hadn't felt in years.

APPLY CHANGES TO ACTIVE MODEL? PRESS ANY KEY TO CONTINUE.

José paused for a second...then he hit Enter before he could stop himself. Youth returned to him like a theft in reverse.

His skin tightened. His back straightened beyond the posture correction. The small aches in his knees vanished. The hair on his head erupted and thickened into a dark, careless fullness. His beard shadow lightened. His chest and arms firmed, his waist narrowing, his face smoothing until the man in the black mirror of the monitor was not older or younger but alternate.

José stumbled to the bathroom. A handsome young man stared back at him with José’s eyes. He touched his face. His throat. His hair. Then he smiled. “Surely Pedro would prefer this version of me.” The thought frightened him before he finished putting words to it.

⸻

A few days passed before their second date. José had called in sick to work to avoid explaining his new impossible appearance. Pedro decided a museum trip in central Madrid would be the perfect spot. José was eager and nervous. When he arrived he saw Pedro waiting - Pedro did not recognize him at first. That was the part José had not allowed into the fantasy. He had imagined surprise, desire, laughter, maybe disbelief followed by wonder. He imagined a delighted Pedro instantly drawn to a version of himself he thought was better. He had not imagined Pedro standing outside the Reina Sofía with his brow furrowed, looking past him for the middle-aged man he was supposed to meet.

“Pedro,” José said.

Pedro turned politely. “Yes?”

“It’s me, José.”

A cautious smile. “Sorry?”

“José, this is our second date.”

The name landed badly. Pedro’s expression changed, first into disbelief, then into recognition that the 40-something year old nerdy goofball he had been messaging and who he had met just a few days ago was replaced by someone his own age, someone familiar yet not. Pedro’s face shifted - not into recognition but into guardedness.

José rushed. “I know how this looks. I can explain. Something happened. The game I told you about, the beta—”

“Is this a joke? Are you José’s younger brother?”

“No. I swear. It’s me.”

Pedro looked him up and down. Young face. Young body. Same glasses…same eyes. Impossible - yet there was too much proof and none of it usable.

“Who are you really?” Pedro asked, sounding increasingly annoyed and embarrassed. “Why would José put you up to this?”

The hurt in his voice stopped José cold.

“I’m José...we met a few days ago for coffee. We talked about video games and mustache grooming, I almost kissed you in front of the metro but chickened out…”

Pedro shook his head in disbelief. “No. You’re some guy who knows things José told you.”

“I can prove it!” José yelped.

“That’s not the point.” Pedro stepped back. His red brows drew together. “The point is I was meeting him.”

Him. José felt the word strike harder than rejection. Pedro looked angry now, but under it, embarrassed. Maybe frightened. “Tell José that this was cruel.” And with that Pedro walked away.

José followed two steps and stopped. People moved around him. Couples, tourists, students, old women with shopping bags. The city continued with offensive ease while Jose’s fantasy came crumbling down all around him.

Just then his phone buzzed. A message from Pedro.

I don’t know what this was, but please don’t contact me again.

José stood there, dejected, until the screen went dark.

Then José did what men have done for hundreds of years when handed the exact lesson they asked for - and refused to understand. He went out looking for a release.

⸻

José’s young body knew how to be wanted and he had a missed youth to make up for. That was the worst and best part. At the first bar, men looked at him before he reached the counter. At the second, someone bought him a drink. At the third, in Chueca, a handsome man with silver in his beard touched Jose’s arm and asked if he was waiting for someone.

“No,” José said.

“Good...”

The man’s name was Luis. His husband was Andrés. They were both in their late forties, both confident in a way José never felt he was and had always mistaken for arrogance until he saw the kindness underneath it. Luis had a thick head of hair and a salt-and-pepper beard. Andrés had soft eyes, a heavy mustache, and the calm smile of someone who had survived himself.

They flirted with José shamelessly, but not carelessly. They made him laugh. They made him feel seen. Even though he knew they were seeing the wrong body, and with Pedro’s hurt still buzzing in his head, Jose latched onto the moment - at the opportunity to be young and the object of desire.

Later, in their apartment, the night became warm and blurred at the edges: they sat for a while in the living room with José in the middle, moonlight leaking through curtains, the rough familiar comfort of older hands caressing the cheek and thighs of a younger body, laughter against young soft skin, the strange ache of being desired while feeling absent from oneself. Making up for missed opportunities of a youth Jose never openly acknowledged to anyone, let alone himself.

It didn’t take long before Luis seized the opportunity and leaned in for a forceful kiss which lead to shirts and pants scattered on the apartment floor.

The older men were more than happy to take the lead and José was more than happy to let them. Andrés rose to his feet and took Jose’s hand and led him towards the bedroom.

Andrés took his turn kissing José before pushing him back on the bed and removing his underwear while Luis watched. Andrés crawled up the bed kissing Jose’s body. His mustache tickling José while he slid up from his inner thigh, around his engorging member, across his stomach to his neck - where he lingered. Andrés lifted his body to the side and laid beside José, nibbling at his ear and running his hand through his hair while Luis approached from the front and lifted Jose’s legs, wrapping them around his neck.

Luis began to suck on José’s perky young cock and licked his testicles making his way down to his ass. He licked around the hole then put two fingers in his mouth before shoving them deep in Jose’s throbbing ass. This sent a little jolt through his young body and the two older men shared a knowing glance.

Luis flipped José onto his stomach and pulled him towards the edge of the bed. José responded by rising to all fours and arching his back - exactly what Luis was hoping for. Luis then spit on his dick, and pressed it against Jose’s tight hole - teasing the opening while Andrés slid in front of José and presented his engorged 8” hairy uncut dick sporting a large metal cock ring to José’s mouth.

José responded by leaning into the moment and taking the entirety of Andrés into his mouth just as Luis pushed into him from behind - slowly at first, then with increasing force. José’s skin crawled with energy at the sight and sensation of the two older men lusting after what José had become - what the game had let him be - even if only for a while.

Within a few minutes Luis’s pace quickened and his grunting intensified as he edged closer - José still found the wherewithal to suck on Andrés’s dick as he was being plowed from behind - his prostate overstimulated. Then, from behind Jose heard Luis say to Andrés “Are you ready? I’m going to cum!” to which Andrés replied “whenever you are!” and both men suddenly pulled out of José. Andrés released thick ropes of cum on José’s arched back while Andrés came all over José’s face - cum splattering and sticking to his mustache.

After cuming, Luis flipped José onto his stomach and stuck his dick back into his ass. Andrés approached from the side and deep throated Jose’s dick. It didn’t take long for his youthful hormones and sensitive young dick to respond to the stimuli and José came deep down Andrés mouth. Fully spent and satisfied, José sat up briefly before excusing himself to the bathroom to shower and clean himself up.

As he turned on the shower and stepped in, José reflected on how he spent his evening dealing with his mix of grief and lust. Not with Pedro at the Reina Sofia. Not talking about video games or Star Wars. Not looking into Pedro’s soft eyes or pinning for how his thick auburn mustache twitched when he cracked a small smile. But instead by being skewered and sucked-off by two daddies in a random apartment in central Madrid.

As the warm water ran across his skin, José was overcome with a flood of emotions:

At the excitement of meeting Pedro and the disappointment of ruining it all by not being himself.

At the relief of avoiding being overly attached to a young man that surely wouldn’t really love the forty-five year old version of himself and the grief of never really giving it a chance.

At the thrill of being young again and at the simultaneous anxiety of being middle-aged with the accompanying fear of wondering how much longer he had to find love.

At the overwhelming desire to just be seen by other people - to be known and understood.

It was all more than José could bear and he collapsed into a ball of tears under the warm running water before regaining his composure and rejoining the men in their bedroom.

José sat on the edge of the couples’ bed wearing one of Andrés’s shirts, too large for his younger frame. Luis was already asleep. Andrés came back from the kitchen with water and handed him a glass.

“You look like a man who has successfully made himself miserable,” Andrés said.

José laughed because it was easier than answering. Andrés sat beside him. “Bad breakup?”

“Bad decisions.”

“Those are more common.”

José drank the water and paused a few seconds. “Would you go back?”

“To what?” Andrés said.

“Being twenty-five.”

Andrés looked the young man over and considered the question. “For a weekend? Maybe. Permanently? God, no.”

“You say that because you were probably happy at twenty-five. You seem so confident, so sure of yourself and your decisions.”

Andrés laughed “I was an idiot at twenty-five. Beautiful, dramatic, and completely convinced every closed door was the end of my life.”

José looked down at his hands. Young hands. Smooth hands. A stranger’s hands. “I came out late,” he said.

Andrés did not answer too quickly. So José kept talking. “I spent years thinking there would be time later. Then later came, and everyone already knew the rules. Everyone had stories. Exes. Confidence. Bodies they understood. I felt like I had arrived at my own life after the credits.”

Andrés nodded. “And now?”

José gave a small, bitter smile. “Now I look like someone who didn’t.”

“But you still feel like someone who did.”

The sentence settled between them.

From the bed, Luis murmured something in his sleep and rolled over. Andrés smiled at him with such ordinary affection that José had to look away.

“Younger men are not free of shame,” Andrés said. “They just have smoother skin while they learn it.”

José laughed softly.

“And older men are not expired,” Andrés continued. “Some of us are just finally ripe enough to stop apologizing for being touched.”

José swallowed.

Andrés nudged his shoulder. “Whatever you’re running from, cariño, don’t run so far you leave yourself behind.”

In the morning, José kissed them both goodbye at the door. Luis gave him a look so knowing it felt almost indecent.

“You’re welcome back,” Luis said, “but only if you arrive as the person you actually are.”

José stared at him half wandering if Luis had figured out his secret.

⸻

Later that morning the beta build was still open when José came home.

Of course it was. He had not closed it. Some part of him must have known he would return like this: exhausted, ashamed, smelling faintly of another apartment, carrying his shoes in one hand because his young feet had developed a blister anyway.

On the screen, the twenty-five-year-old avatar stood under perfect light. José sat down. For a long time, he did not touch the mouse. Then he clicked Revert to Original Scan. The avatar changed back.

Bald head. Glasses. Thick mustache, though less shaped than he now preferred. Average shoulders. Softness at the middle. Chest hair at the collar. A man in his forties who looked tired and kind and uncertain.

José looked at him and felt no lightning of acceptance, no internal music, no sudden healing from his conversation with Andrés.

He felt grief. Then fondness for his old body. Then, unexpectedly, amusement. “Oh, come on,” he told the screen. “We can do better than that.” He opened the settings.

Age: forty-five.

He left it there.

Hair: restored, but with a mature density.

Yes. He was keeping that. He had suffered enough.

Mustache: improved, full, deliberate.

Obviously a no-brainer.

Muscle: plus twelve percent.

He reduced it to eight, then raised it to ten.

“Don’t be a coward,” he muttered.

Skin: natural.

Glasses: yes.

He selected the final avatar.

It was him. Not the boy he had tried to become. Not the man he had feared was unlovable. A mid-forties José with dark hair, a thick confident mustache, stronger shoulders, soft eyes behind round glasses, and a face that had lived long enough to know what it wanted, even if sometimes he felt like he didn't.

The game asked:

PRESS ANY KEY TO APPLY CHANGES TO ACTIVE MODEL?

José hovered over Enter.

His phone buzzed. Pedro.

For one wild second José thought it might be forgiveness, but the message was shorter than that.

I’m still angry. But I keep thinking about you. Was that really you yesterday? I don’t understand what happened. I don’t know if I want to. But if there is something honest to say, say it tomorrow. In person. As yourself.

José read it three times. Then he typed:

I’m sorry. You were right. You came to meet me, and I didn’t trust that I was enough, so I made myself into what I thought you’d want. Tomorrow, I’ll come as myself.

He stared at the words. Then he added:

Possibly with better hair. It’s a long story.

For almost a minute, nothing. Then Pedro replied:

That part I noticed ;)

José laughed so hard he had to take off his glasses and wipe away a tear. When he put them back on, the screen was still waiting.

He pressed Enter.

The change moved through him not like invasion this time, not like escape, but like tailoring. His body warmed, adjusted, settled. Hair returned to his scalp in soft dark thickness. His mustache filled and shaped itself. His shoulders strengthened under his shirt. His face remained lined where it should be lined. His eyes stayed his own.

When it was over, José went to the bathroom. The man in the mirror was forty-five - smoother around the edges but obviously him.

He looked nervous. He looked ridiculous. He looked handsome. Most importantly, he looked present.

José touched his hair, then his mustache, then laughed at himself because of course he had kept both. Self-acceptance, he decided, did not require theatrical suffering. If the universe handed you a miracle beta build, you were allowed to fix a few things just as much as you were allowed to work out to improve your fitness, take a GLP-1 to lose weight or fly to Turkey if you wanted hair.

He returned to the computer and closed the program. For the first time all week, the room went dark. Outside, Madrid was beginning to brighten toward noon. Somewhere below, a delivery truck rattled over the stones. Jose stood at the balcony door in his bare feet, older than he had wanted to be, younger than he had feared he was, and very much alive.

Tomorrow he would meet Pedro again. As José - more or less.

John had heard rumors for a few weeks now of what people were just calling “The Change”—a “magic pill” that could give you the body you always wanted. That’s how he found himself standing in a back alley with a guy who said he could hook him up with the pill. Just a single pill that could change his life. The man was beautiful, so despite his concerns, the chance of having a body like stranger's won out and he took the shiny black pill from the man. 

A street hero eventually falls into the trap of the city's underworld boss. Fortunately but also unfortunately, the boss does not intend to kill him, because he is attracted to his excellent physique and believes that it is the most suitable vessel for his hellish servant to come to the mortal world.

The leader's true identity is a lord of the demon realm, in charge of demonic plants. His servants are all powerful beings "planted." To bring them to the human world, one only needs to plant seeds in suitable "earth," that is, strong flesh, and they will merge with it.

Since the Earth government revealed the existence of extraterrestrials, the interstellar empire decided to no longer conceal the truth: Earth was their warrior farm, and humanity was their most ferocious and perfect weapon.

The empire destroyed the Earth government overnight, revealing their true identity and mission to humanity. Those with the Y chromosome were immediately hunted down and sent to newly built arsenals across the globe, where they were stripped of their biological essence.

Their bodies were enhanced, covered in rubber, and their brains were programmed, leaving them only with loyalty, obedience, and fighting instincts—making them the empire's perfect soldiers.

A/N: Hey there, so this is actually the last story from that original stockpile I had. Since then I've written a few more, but wanted to make a note of it.

Ever played a prank before? Mac had. Lots of times. It ran in the Grogan men DNA. Never mean or cruel, just things that would make both father and son laugh or give a good freight. That’s why Mac hid under his dad’s bed, there was enough space and behind the dresser was too obvious. The closet? Too uninventive. In truth, he had hidden everywhere at this point, but the bed just couldn’t be beat. Under the bed he could pop out, scare his dad and run out before he was caught. It was procedural at this point. 

As he crawled under this time, getting into position, pajamas dragging on the wood floor, he spotted it. Laying there under his dad’s bed, on the opposite side of where his dad usually slept, was grey fabric. Mac grabbed at it but couldn't quite make it out. For all the talk his dad gave him about keeping a clean bedroom, it turned out his dad could be messy and forgetful too. He waited and listened. Didn’t sound like his dad was coming. He slowly got from under the bed to see the item in the light. 

Underwear.

That was obvious, but it didn’t look like any underwear he’d seen. He wore briefs. His dad wore boxers. What was in his hands felt like briefs but looked like his dad’s boxers. As was a son’s right, he had rummaged through his dad’s drawers multiple times, whether playing or just being nosey. He’d never once spotted these. Did his dad keep them hidden? Well, Mac had seen them now. The longer he held the underwear, the more curious he got. What did it feel like to have them on? He had played in his dad’s boxers before; nothing special. But these felt different. Mac let his curiosity guide him, taking off his pajama bottoms to slide into them.

Once he got them on, Mac felt good, really good. Better than he ever did in his briefs and better than his dad’s boxers. He didn’t need to hold them up like he did with his dad’s boxers. The elastic waistband on them snapped to his waist even if the rest was roomy. A strange warmth flowed out from the underwear into him. There was a pop then a crack, Mac thought his dad was coming in, but the door was still closed. It wasn’t until his viewpoint was yanked up that he realized the sounds were coming from him. His body was changing—growing—rapidly. It started with a few inches in height, then got his muscles in on the action. Mac wasn’t just growing up; he was growing out. The drifting of his shoulders further started it, broadening his back allowing them to round as his traps grew stronger. Then his pecs bubbled out, spilling into the open, no longer one cohesive unit with the rest of his torso. His pajama shirt was split open, two tragic halves dangling on to his sides. It wasn't enough, abs ingrained their own importance onto his body further disrupting its unity for preference of grooves and divides.

The valley between Mac’s pecs grew deeper as his arms bulked, feeding directly from the shoulders. The pajama halves fell off. Light brown hair cropped up over his forearms and his legs’ and spine pushed him higher into the air. The same hair migrated to his legs before his thighs doubled, then quadrupled in size. His calves were no different, experiencing the same changes, expanding with newfound power. The change in his feet was undeniable, stretched across the floor, morphing into true heavy stompers, supporting his new weight. A tension in his neck released, a thickness had taken over. “GUH!” the first sounds of his new voice escaped. Far richer and deeper than any sound he made before. Mac’s face was restructured, soft and rounded features removed for solid harder edges. A beard emerged, dark brown chocolate, that swallowed up his lower jaw and upper lip and yet made his jawline appear all the harsher.

The boardwalk stretched forever beneath a bruised purple sky.

Neon lights buzzed overhead in sickly rainbow colors, flickering through the sea mist rolling in from the black ocean beyond. Music thundered in the distance where crowds gathered for the coming Pride parade — laughter, dancing, celebration, freedom.

Oberon hated every second of it.

He sat upon his throne at the center of the carnival pier, enormous and still, carved from warped black wood and twisted amusement park metal. Rusted carousel horses jutted from its back like screaming gargoyles, their painted smiles cracked wide with rot. Above him glowed seven dying neon signs:

PRIDE. GREED. LUST. ENVY. GLUTTONY. WRATH. SLOTH.

Each pulsed with its own color, together forming a poisoned rainbow over the boardwalk.

The King of the Dark Fair Folk rested one clawed hand against his cheek, his long fingers stained with ash and gold dust. His antlered crown scraped sparks from the neon overhead whenever he moved. Around his throne skittered imps and chaos demons, creatures with too many teeth and eyes, scampering between arcade machines and overturned cotton candy carts.

Every city belonged to him eventually.

New York. Miami. San Francisco. Chicago. London. Berlin. Seoul.

Humanity believed cities changed with time. Oberon knew better. Cities only changed masks.

And Pride…

Pride was simply the doorway.

Greed.

Lust.

Envy.

Gluttony.

Wrath.

Sloth.

The Seven walked behind Pride like wolves behind a parade float.

And tonight, Oberon would feed them.

A grin slowly spread across his pale face.

“Bring me the lucky seven,” he whispered.

The imps shrieked with delight and scattered into the city streets.

Somewhere, seven men would soon receive messages. A free drink. A private invitation. A chance encounter beneath carnival lights. Each would think themselves chosen by luck.

But Oberon never chose at random.

He chose the lonely.

The bitter.

The insecure.

The angry.

The hungry.

The vain.

The exhausted.

He would ask each man a single question:

What sin have you committed?

And mortals, desperate to confess themselves while pretending not to, always answered honestly.

One would admit envy of stronger men.

Another would confess endless lust.

Another his greed for status and wealth.

Another his pride.

Another his rage.

Another his gluttony.

Another his laziness.

And Oberon, smiling kindly like a false god beneath neon halos, would raise one elegant hand.

Then he would help them.

A jealous man would awaken beautiful beyond imagination, adored by everyone around him until admiration became narcotic.

A wrathful man would become powerful enough to never fear weakness again.

A slothful man would never need effort because the world itself would bend around him.

A prideful man would become the center of every room he entered.

Every gift perfect.

Every transformation tailored.

Every desire fulfilled so completely it hollowed them out from within.

Because Oberon understood something humanity never did:

The worst punishments were the ones people begged for.

Down the boardwalk, the parade lights began to glow brighter.

Music roared.

Crowds cheered.

And upon his throne of rust and neon, the dark fairy king smiled as seven drinks rolled from seven waiting machines across the city.

June approaches, and Oberon, the dark king beneath the neon boardwalk, seeks seven brave souls willing to bare their sins.

Come off anon. Confess honestly.

Tell me the worst parts of yourself — your pride, your greed, your lust, your envy, your wrath, your gluttony, your sloth. CHOOSE ONE. The quiet thoughts. The ugly desires. The flaws you hide behind smiles and screens.

The seven most interesting confessions will have their fates rewritten for the month of June.

A gift. A curse. A transformation tailored perfectly to the sin that defines you.

Consider this my last little send-off before I take a short break from writing.

Make them good.

Pride, unclaimed

Greed. unclaimed

Lust. unclaimed

Envy (Body of a God)

Gluttony. unclaimed

Wrath. Claimed

Now a regular occurrence, the strange phenomenon continues to spontaneously change people…

Chris had only ducked into the alley to get away from the noise for a minute. The music from the mix of gay and straight bars still thudded through the brick walls, and laughter spilled out every time a door opened at the end of the block. After finishing college in the Spring, Chris had felt detached and out of his element - finding it difficult to adjust to a new life with more rigid rules and timelines. Sometimes he longed for the days when people would just tell him how to live his life.

He loosened his collar, checked his reflection in the dark phone screen, and smiled to himself. Despite his current listlessness in life he looked exactly the way he liked to look—young, polished, blond, untouchable.

Then he noticed a man leaning against a nearby wall staring the way a lion watches a zebra… He was older, thick through the torso in a way that suggested strength, his open leather vest showing a dense spread of chest hair under the glow of the streetlamp. A cigar rested between his fingers, and his heavy mustache gave his half-smile a strange authority. He looked like he belonged to the night in a way Chris suddenly felt he did not.

“You look lost,” the older man said. “My name’s Jeff. Maybe there’s something we can do to help each other.”

Chris opened his mouth ready to interject with some quick, sharp reply - but the older man had already stepped closer - pinning Chris to the alley wall.

The cigar slipped from Jeff’s fingers and hissed out on the damp pavement. He drew Chris close with startling ease, one hand settling against his shoulder, and kissed him. It was not tentative. It was deliberate. The kind of kiss that made the rest of the alley seem to fall away into the darkness and puddles.

Chris stiffened at first, startled by the force of the moment—but before he could even decide what to do, heat ran through his face and down his throat. His heart pounded so hard it made his vision shake. He broke away just enough to stare at Jeff, breathing fast, one hand flying to his mouth.

“Why did you do that!?” Chris shouted.

“I’m doing you a favor kid. You have the air of a man looking for something more. Someone to guide you.” Jeff smiled beneath that thick mustache.

Just then Chris felt a surge of heat course through his body. His muscles all began to cramp and his skin began to crawl. He doubled over in pain briefly before regaining his composure.

Chris staggered toward a darkened shop window and froze at the stranger looking back. His neat blonde side-part was breaking apart, the hair at his temples pulling backward as if erased by an invisible hand. A shadow had appeared over his lip — thicker by the second, darkening into the beginnings of a broad mustache. His jaw looked heavier. Older. His shoulders strained strangely against his blazer, as though his frame had decided it wanted to occupy more space than it had a moment ago. Even his clothes were changing - fleece and denim being replaced with black leather. The smell and touch both intoxicating and arousing to Chris’s shifting mind.

“No,” he whispered, then louder: “No.”

He clawed at his fading hairline, felt the changed shape of his own face, the roughness gathering where his skin had been smooth and young. Beneath his sleeves, new hair prickled down his forearms. His breath came fast and shallow. He looked over at Jeff, who watched him not with surprise, but with knowing satisfaction.

“You’re fighting it,” Jeff said taking a drag of his newly lit cigar and blowing the smoke towards Chris and chuckling. “That’ll only make it worse.”

Chris backed away, but even his posture was changing - his panic caught inside a body that was already learning a different way to stand - a different way to exist.

The next wave was quieter. That terrified him more. The panic was still there in Chris’s eyes, but it had begun to fray at the edges, interrupted by flashes of something else - familiarity, confidence, a low simmering pride that did not belong to him and yet somehow did. A growing heat in his groin at the thought of men, leather, cigars.

His clothes had continued to change with him: the soft sweater gone, replaced by leather that creaked when he moved and fit as though it had always been tailored for him. His chest felt warmer, heavier, hairier, rougher beneath the vest. His arms looked thicker. His hands looked older.

His hand rose to his lip. The mustache was full now—broad, dark, authoritative. Perfectly at home on his face - as if it had always been there. “Hadn’t it always been there,” Chris briefly thought. “I’ve had it since my late 20s at least…”

He looked at Jeff, and for one strange second it was like looking forward in time and into a mirror at once. Their hairlines matched. Their builds matched. The set of their shoulders, the angle of their mouths, even the cool, assessing look in their eyes — everything was converging.

Memories began to blur at the edges. The bar. The frat brothers. His old laugh. His own name. They all seemed suddenly thin, flimsy, unimportant.

“Who am…” he started, but the question died halfway out. Instead a wide cocky smile formed across his mustached face.

Jeff reached up and adjusted the front of Chris’s vest with almost affectionate precision.

“There you are, Geoffrey” Jeff said. “I was hoping to catch you here in the alley - alone…” But before Jeff could finish the sentence the formerly young Geoffrey pulled him in for a deep kiss with the intensity of a man in the desert being led to an oasis.

Geoffrey’s hands roamed up and down Jeff’s body - relishing the feel of the leather and the scent of tobacco and bourbon on Jeff’s breath. He knew exactly what he was doing when he unzipped Jeff’s pants and reached a newly hairy paw into his underwear - releasing the man’s cock from its leather prison.

Between smoky kisses and tongues deep in each other’s mouths Jeff gave a soft smile - relishing his handiwork at creating a doppelgänger that would know how to satisfy him exactly like he wanted. Exactly as he would do.

Jeff reached into Geoffrey’s pants and pulled out an exact copy of his dick on the formerly young man. He then ran a thumb around the head, already peaking out from the heavy foreskin covered with precum. He reached in and pulled out two round testicles and let them rest free against the leather pants.

Jeff then pushed Geoffrey against the wall looking him up and down and said “Who’s the hottest fucker around?”

“We are” was the response.

“What do we do for fun?”

“Put on our leather and fuck in the alley.”

“Good answer,” Jeff smirked as he turned Geoffrey around and pressed his face against the cool damp brick wall - while simultaneously grabbing Geoffrey’s pants and lowering them just enough for his hairy ass cheeks to spread apart. He then spit on his hand and shoved three fingers deep into the former frat boy - who moaned and jumped like it was the first time he’d been penetrated - now in a body that was clearly more accustomed to giving than receiving.

Jeff then spit on his dick and shoved it deep into his doppelgänger’s tight ass. He put his cigar back into his mouth and took a deep drag while beginning to pump into “himself.”

“Do you like daddy’s dick” he whispered in Geoffrey’s ear while exhaling a cloud of smoke.

“Yes, daddy” Geoffrey replied.

“Would you like some of daddy’s cigar?” Jeff asked.

“Yes, sir” Geoffrey moaned between thrusts. Jeff took another drag and offered one to the former frat boy - who relished the opportunity.

Jeff’s pace quickened as Geoffrey reached a hand down to his own engorged dick and started jerking it. Just as Jeff reached climax and shot his load deep into the mirror image of his ass, Geoffrey followed suit - spewing rope after rope of cum on the alley wall.

After Jeff came down from his climax, he took another drag of his cigar and pulled out - replacing his cock and balls into their leather confines. He slapped Geoffrey on the ass spun the man back around and said “Good job, boy. I think I’ll keep you like this for a while. Daddy will have further use for your services.”

Geoffrey pulled up his pants, keeping Jeff’s load inside like a warm souvenir of some both special and simultaneously common-place event. He rolled his shoulders and felt the easy weight of his body settle into place, solid and undeniable. He reached up, smoothing a hand over his mustache with a gesture so natural it required no thought. Somewhere deep down, there was a fading impression that he had once been someone younger, softer, easier to impress. A man named Chris. But that life had the texture of a dream forgotten by noon.

When they stepped out of the alley together, the city seemed to welcome them differently.

What remained was certainty. He took the cigar Jeff offered him, fitted it between his fingers, and smiled when he caught his reflection in a passing window. The face that looked back at him was rugged, self-possessed, and undeniably handsome. More than that - it was right.

Jeff gave him a knowing glance. “You remember now?”

He did. Not the life he had lost. That had already dissolved into the night. He remembered who he was now.

Jeff and Geoffrey walked toward the glow of the bars, matching stride for matching stride, like they had been leaving alleys together for years.

Rob wanted to go, badly, but every time he looked down at himself, he felt like he’d been invited by mistake. His face was smooth. His chest was bare. His arms and stomach looked almost untouched. His look wouldn't fit the party.

Everyone knew hair tonic worked now; it wasn’t some weird underground thing anymore. Guys used the standard version before dates, beach trips, costume parties, even just a night out. Rub it in, wait a few minutes, and the first growth came through right there in the mirror. It was like make-up for men.

But Rob hadn’t bought the standard version. He’d paid extra for the overnight formula—the one marketed for men who wanted deeper, fuller, more permanent-looking results. The directions were simple: apply generously, massage into all target areas, sleep, and allow eight hours for maximum activation. So that night, with the pool party invitation still glowing on the bathroom counter beside him, Rob stripped down and went all in. He rubbed the tonic over his cheeks, jaw, upper lip, throat, chest, stomach, shoulders, arms, and legs. He didn’t want a little stubble or a polite dusting of hair. He wanted the kind of body that would walk into that party and belong there immediately.

At first, the change felt like a subtle heat under his skin. His jaw prickled. His chest tingled. The smooth skin over his stomach seemed almost too sensitive beneath his fingers. By the time he checked the mirror again, only minutes later, the overnight tonic was already giving him a preview. A dark shadow had formed along his jaw and upper lip, and faint curls were beginning to push across his chest. His body looked stronger somehow with the new hair sprouting, more solid and athletic, as if the tonic was improving the whole presentation while it prepared the real transformation underneath. He went to bed staring at the ceiling, feeling tiny sparks of growth across his body, wondering what he would look like by morning.

That night, while Rob slept, the changes continued apace. Hair sprouting on his chest, his beard growing in denser and longer, hair developing on his arms, and shoulders.

When he woke, he barely recognized himself.

His face had filled in with a dense beard and a heavy mustache, rugged and deliberate, the kind of facial hair that made his old smooth face seem like a forgotten draft. His chest was no longer bare; it was covered in a thick dark pelt, densest across the center and spreading over his pecs, down his stomach, and into a heavy trail. His arms and legs had grown coarse and masculine, and his shoulders—where he had applied extra tonic twice—now carried visible hair too, making the whole result look natural, powerful, and unmistakably intentional.

By the time he arrived at the pool party, towel over one shoulder and sunglasses on, he didn’t feel nervous anymore. He saw men glance at his beard first, then at the heavy hair across his chest and shoulders, and for the first time, he didn’t feel like he was trying to keep up. The invitation had promised confidence, but the tonic had given him the body to match it. He stepped into the sun, smiled under his new mustache, and knew he had used exactly the right amount.