A Future Problem
Thomas liked Nate almost immediately, which embarrassed him a little. He was usually more measured. At thirty, Thomas had accumulated enough bad dates to know that immediate chemistry often meant nothing more than two people being good at first impressions - and sometimes good in bed for one night. He knew not to confuse charm with compatibility or intensity with intimacy. He had repeated those lessons to friends often enough that they had become part of his public identity: Thomas, the sensible one. Thomas, the engineer. Thomas, who could turn almost anything—including his own romantic disappointments—into a problem with measurable causes and manageable outcomes.
Then Nate arrived at the restaurant five minutes late, carrying the faint scent of tobacco and rain, and Thomas forgot to be sensible.
Nate was forty-four. His hair was cropped short and touched with gray, particularly around the temples. A heavy brown mustache covered his upper lip, giving his face an old-fashioned severity that softened whenever he smiled. He was broad through the chest, in good shape without looking sculpted, and wore a dark green shirt with the sleeves rolled neatly to the elbows.
Thomas had always had a weakness for older men who looked as though they belonged beside a fireplace with a whiskey glass in one hand and a pipe in the other. Nate looked precisely like that. Exactly what Thomas found appealing.
“You’re even better-looking than your pictures online,” Nate said.
It was not an unusual first-date compliment, but he delivered it without the nervous laughter or exaggerated enthusiasm Thomas was accustomed to. Nate looked directly at him as he said it, his pale blue eyes moving once over Thomas’s face before settling on his.
Thomas smiled. “That’s a dangerous way to start a first date.”
“I'm nothing if not a little dangerous.”
That should have sounded rehearsed. Instead, it worked.
Their date lasted three hours. Nate asked good questions and listened carefully to the answers. He wanted to know what kind of engineering Thomas did, not merely whether he liked his job. He remembered the name of Thomas’s sister after hearing it once. When Thomas mentioned that he had moved twice as a child because of his father’s work, Nate asked which house still appeared in his dreams. No one had ever asked him that.
Thomas told him about the narrow brick house in Ohio, the maple tree beyond his bedroom window, the hollow knocking sound the furnace made at night.
Nate leaned forward, one hand resting beneath his mustache. “What color was your room?”
“Blue.”
“Dark blue?”
“No. Almost gray.”
“And the curtains?”
Thomas laughed. “Why?”
“I’m picturing it.”
There was something flattering about the concentration on Nate’s face. Thomas answered.
After dinner, they walked beneath a row of wet sycamores. Nate produced a narrow leather cigar case from inside his coat.
“Do you mind?”
Thomas shook his head. “Actually, I kind of like it.”
Nate looked pleased. He cut the end of the cigar with deliberate care, turning it between thick fingers before lighting it. The ember briefly illuminated the underside of his mustache. Thomas watched smoke drift around Nate’s face and felt a small, adolescent thrill you only get when in the company of an older man.
“You really do have a type,” Nate said.
Thomas looked away. “Is it that obvious?”
“Only because you’ve been staring at me for most of the evening.”
“You’ve been staring too.”
“Yes,” Nate said. “But I have a better excuse.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m trying to remember everything about you.”
At the time, Thomas thought it was romantic.
⸻
They did not see each other again for almost three weeks. Nate traveled for work, though he remained vague about exactly what the work involved and where he was going. Consulting, he said. Private clients. Short contracts. He sent Thomas a photograph from an airport lounge, his mustache visible above a cup of coffee, and another from a hotel balcony overlooking a city Thomas could not identify.
Most of their courtship happened through messages. Nate did not text constantly. He appeared at deliberate intervals, often just as Thomas was beginning to wonder whether the connection had faded.
What are you wearing to your big presentation tomorrow?
Thomas sent him a photograph in the bathroom mirror: navy suit, pale shirt, no tie.
Nate replied almost instantly.
Blue suits you. Turn sideways. I want to see the fit.
Thomas did, laughing at himself as he took the second photograph.
Perfect - Nate wrote.
Later that afternoon:
Oh, btw did you get the promotion?
Thomas had forgotten telling him about that opportunity.
He sent voice messages while driving home, describing the presentation and imitating his manager’s habit of pausing too long before delivering good news. Nate responded with a voice message of his own, his tone low and amused.
Do that laugh again. The one at the end.
Thomas listened to the request twice before recording another.
Nate remembered everything. Thomas’s coffee order. His gym schedule. The name of the project coordinator he disliked. The brand of shirts that fit his shoulders without billowing around the waist. Thomas mentioned once that his mother called him Tommy only when she was worried, and Nate never forgot it.
Sometimes, Nate repeated Thomas’s own phrases back to him.
Thomas wrote: That’s a future problem whenever he did not want to make a decision. A week later, Nate used it.
Thomas often ended voice messages with Anyway, you get the idea. Soon Nate did too. It felt intimate, like the development of a private dialect.
Once, after Thomas sent a photograph from the gym, Nate replied:
You take very good care of yourself.
Thomas wrote back:
Trying to. Thirty isn’t ancient, but the warranty is definitely expiring.
There was a long pause before Nate answered.
Thirty is the perfect age. Old enough to know who you are. Young enough to do something with it.
Then, after another minute:
You have no idea what some men would give to look like you.
Thomas read the message while standing beneath the locker-room lights, his hair still damp from the shower. He felt heat rise beneath the dark hair covering his chest.
You seem to like how you look - Thomas replied.
I know how I look. That’s different.
Thomas assumed he was being modest.
⸻
Their second date was at a small Italian restaurant Nate had chosen because Thomas once mentioned liking quiet intimate places where the tables were spaced far apart.
When Thomas arrived, Nate stood to greet him. His hand settled briefly at Thomas’s waist, firm and warm. “You changed your hair.”
Thomas touched it self-consciously. “Just a trim.”
“Shorter at the sides.”
“You noticed?”
“I notice everything about you.”
Nate smiled after saying it, transforming the words into flirtation. During dinner, he asked Thomas about his apartment.
Not whether he liked the neighborhood or how much he paid—questions Thomas expected—but which floor he lived on, whether the windows faced east or west, whether the building used keys or electronic access.
“Electronic downstairs,” Thomas said. “Regular lock on the apartment.”
“Facial recognition?”
“For the building app? No. Just a code.”
Nate swirled wine in his glass. “And your phone?”
“Face ID.”
“Of course.”
“What does that mean?” Thomas inquired.
Nate looked at him over the rim of the glass. “It would be criminal not to put that face to work.”
Thomas laughed. Later, after joking about taking bad photos, Nate asked to see Thomas’s driver’s-license photograph.
“No one looks good in those,” Thomas said.
“I want proof.”
Thomas took out his wallet and handed over the license. Nate studied it longer than the joke required.
“You were twenty-six here?” Nate asked.
“Twenty-five.”
“Same address?”
“No. That was my old place.”
Nate’s thumb passed lightly over the date of birth, then across the small holographic image.
“You always photograph well, I see” he said with a smile, returning it.
After dinner they went to a cigar bar. Nate chose a leather chair in the darkest corner, cut a cigar, and showed Thomas how to toast the end without setting it fully alight.
Thomas did not really enjoy smoking, but he liked watching Nate do it. There was something ceremonial about the way the older man handled tobacco. Mature. Controlled. Slightly erotic.
“You’d look good with a pipe,” Thomas said.
Nate raised an eyebrow. “Would I?”
“Very distinguished.”
“Older, you mean?” Nate replied.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to.” There was no smile on Nate’s face.
Thomas hesitated. “I like that you’re older.”
The severity disappeared. Nate reached across the small table and touched Thomas’s wrist. “I know you do. Someday soon, before you know it, you’ll be my exact age too and maybe you’ll look good with a pipe.”
His fingers remained there while Thomas’s pulse beat against them.
⸻
The third date took place at Thomas’s apartment. He cooked. Nate watched from a stool at the kitchen island, asking questions about every object within reach. The framed photograph of Thomas and his sister at a lake. The ceramic bowl his mother had made. The narrow wooden box where Thomas kept his spare keys.
“Organized,” Nate said.
“I’m an engineer, after all.”
“You always say that like it explains everything.”
“It explains a lot.”
Nate opened the wooden box and looked inside. Thomas glanced over from the stove. “Planning to rob me?”
“Only taking inventory.”
He closed the lid and smiled.
After dinner, Nate wandered through the living room while Thomas cleared the plates. He paused before a shelf of old photographs, lifting them one at a time.
In one, Thomas was twenty-two and standing outside his university dorm, thinner in the face but unmistakably himself.
“You had more hair,” Nate said.
“I have plenty of hair now.”
“I meant on your head” Nate said with a laugh.
Thomas threw a dish towel at him. Nate caught it. “I’m kidding.”
He returned to the photograph.
“You were beautiful.”
“Were?” Thomas retorted.
“You are. But differently.”
Thomas leaned against the bookcase beside him. “You analyze people this much for work?”
“Sometimes.”
“What exactly do you consult about?”
Nate set the photograph down. “Transitions.”
“That clears it up.”
“I help people become who they need to become.”
The answer sounded manufactured, but Nate kissed him before Thomas could ask another question.
Later, in bed, Nate rested his hand against Thomas’s chest. His fingers moved slowly through the dense hair between Thomas’s pecs, tracing the path down his stomach.
“You ever think about shaving this?” Nate asked.
“I did actually. Once in college.”
“And?”
“Hated it.”
“Good.”
Thomas laughed softly. “Strong opinion.”
Nate’s hand stopped. “I wouldn’t change it if I were you.”
Something in his voice made Thomas look at him. Nate was staring at Thomas’s chest, his expression distant and strangely tense. Then he seemed to notice Thomas watching and smiled.
“It suits you,” he said.
Nate’s hand remained against Thomas’s chest, his fingertips moving slowly through the dark hair as if memorizing its texture. For a moment the intensity in his face made Thomas uneasy, but then Nate smiled and leaned in, and the unease dissolved beneath the warmth of his mouth. Thomas drew him closer, attracted all over again to the contrast between them—the roughness of Nate’s mustache, the mature weight of his body, the quiet confidence with which he had guided Thomas back toward the bed. Nate took his time, watching Thomas’s reactions with an attentiveness that felt flattering, almost reverent. Each touch seemed to ask permission, and Thomas answered by pulling him nearer.
It wasn’t long before Nate was fucking Thomas from behind observing how Thomas reacted - the younger man on all fours with his back arched as Nate’s mature dick tickled his prostate.
“Let me see how you move while being fucked” Nate said. “I think I know your body better every time I touch it.”
Thomas turned his head around with a grin, wrapped in the pleasure of being filled by the sexy older man. “You like what you see?”
Nate gave a deep seductive smirk and replied, “One day you’ll understand exactly what I see when I look at you.”
A couple of minutes later, Thomas - overstimulated from penetration, sweat, and the feeling of Nate’s testicles slapping against his ass - replied with soft moans and an “I’m getting close.”
“Turn around I want to see the face you make when you cum” Nate responded.
Thomas turned around, lying on his back while Nate reinserted his dick hard and quick into Thomas. Thomas grimaced then grabbed his own perky uncut dick and began vigorously jerking off while staring deeply at Nate’s handsome older face. Within a few seconds Thomas began to loudly moan as cum splattered on his abs and chest. Nate followed suit by ejaculating deep into Thomas then collapsing on his chest - leaving his dick inside.
Nate looked deeply into Thomas’s eyes and began to lick up Thomas’s cum. “I knew you’d taste sweet. Sometimes I look at you and think you were made for me.”
Thomas blushed at the kinky behavior and comments made by a man he was both enamored with and enchanted by. The attention to detail and the way Nate worshipped him made him feel seen, important, in a way no man had ever made him feel.
Later, the room had gone quiet except for their breathing. Thomas lay against the pillows while Nate rested beside him, one hand still spread over his chest. Thomas assumed the older man was savoring the closeness, but Nate’s gaze kept traveling: across Thomas’s face, down the shape of his shoulders, along the body he had already begun to covet. When Thomas caught him staring again, Nate softened his expression and brushed a kiss beneath his jaw. Thomas smiled, mistaking possession for affection, and closed his eyes while Nate continued studying him in the dark.
In the morning, Thomas found Nate in the bathroom wearing only his undershirt and trousers.
He stood close to the mirror, one hand resting on the sink. For a moment Thomas assumed he was washing his face, but then he realized Nate was not looking at himself. He was holding his phone. On the screen was a photograph Thomas had sent from the gym weeks earlier.
Nate raised his eyes to the mirror and saw Thomas in the doorway.
“You caught me,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Admiring you.”
He turned the phone around. The photograph showed Thomas shirtless, smiling.
Nate looked from the image to the living man.
“You make being you look very easy.”
Thomas smiled. “I’ve had thirty years of practice.”
“Lucky you.”
Nate slipped the phone onto the counter and kissed him.
⸻
Two more weeks passed before their fourth date.
By then Thomas had grown accustomed to Nate appearing in his days. A morning message. A photograph. A voice note late at night. Sometimes Nate asked questions Thomas found oddly specific.
What did his signature look like when he was rushing? Did his coworkers call him Thomas or Tom? Which side of the bed did he always sleep on? What was the first car he owned? Which knee had he injured playing soccer in college?
Nate remembered the answers better than Thomas did. Once, during a video call, Nate imitated the way Thomas tilted his head when skeptical.
“Do I really do that?” Thomas asked.
“Constantly.”
“Show me again.”
Nate repeated the gesture perfectly. Thomas laughed. Nate repeated the laugh and for one disorienting second, it sounded almost identical.
“You’ve been studying me,” Thomas said.
Nate’s eyes remained fixed on the screen. “Yes.” Then he smiled. “You’re interesting to study.”
The fourth date was the best one. Nate planned everything around small details Thomas had mentioned in passing: dinner at a restaurant with a rooftop greenhouse, a walk through a neighborhood of old brick homes, then drinks at a hotel bar with dark wood walls and brass lamps.
Nate prepared for the night of a lifetime. He wore charcoal trousers and a cream shirt beneath a brown jacket. His mustache had been freshly trimmed. A silver band gleamed on his right hand.
Thomas noticed it while Nate ordered two whiskeys from the bartender. “That’s new” he said while playfully tapping a finger on Nate’s ring.
Nate looked down. The ring was broad and old, made from two metals twisted together—one dark and new looking , one older and pale. “It belonged to someone important.”
Thomas waited. Nate rarely discussed his past. Whenever he did, the stories had soft edges: a former boyfriend without a name, a family he no longer spoke to, a mentor who had taught him to smoke a pipe. Thomas had decided not to press. At forty-four, people were allowed to contain rooms they kept locked.
“My uncle gave it to me,” Nate said finally. “Though he wasn’t really my uncle. More like a father, for a while.”
“That sounds complicated. What happened to him?”
“He started over.”
Nate rotated the ring around his finger. “He believed people spent too much of their lives trapped inside themselves. Their fears. Their bodies. The stories everyone else told about them.”
Thomas smiled faintly. “He sounds… cheerful.”
“He said two people could never truly understand one another until they had seen the world through the other person’s eyes.”
Nate slid the ring free. The skin beneath it was pale.“He gave me this when I was younger. Told me I’d know when I met someone capable of understanding.”
He placed the band in Thomas’s palm. It was heavier than expected and warm from Nate’s hand.
“You’re giving it to me?”
“Only for tonight.”
Thomas looked up. For the first time since meeting him, Nate appeared genuinely uncertain. His confidence had dropped away, leaving something naked behind it.
“I want you to wear it,” Nate said.
Nate pushed the ring onto Thomas’s right index finger. It fit snugly, though not uncomfortably.
Nate inhaled. His eyes followed the band as it passed over Thomas’s knuckle and settled against the base of the finger. “There,” he whispered.
Thomas raised his hand. “How do I look?”
Nate looked at the ring. Then at Thomas’s face. “Exactly right.”
⸻
After their final round of drinks they returned to Thomas’s apartment shortly before midnight. Rain tapped lightly against the windows. Nate opened one of the balcony doors and stood beside it smoking a pipe he had brought in a leather case since Thomas said it would suit him.
Thomas watched him from the couch. The older man’s face appeared carved in the low light: gray at the temples, heavy mustache, blue eyes reflecting the ember in the pipe bowl. Thomas thought again that Nate looked like someone from another time.
“You’re staring,” Nate said.
“I’m allowed.”
Nate smiled around the pipe stem. “Come here.”
Thomas joined him beside the open door. Nate rested one hand at the back of his neck and kissed his forehead.
For a moment, neither man spoke. “What are you thinking about?” Thomas asked.
“That I’m going to miss this.”
Thomas leaned back. “Miss what?”
Nate removed the pipe. “This night.”
“We could have another one.”
“Yes,” Nate said. “I suppose we could.”
He turned away and emptied the pipe into a small ceramic dish. Thomas felt suddenly tired. It had arrived as a pleasant heaviness, the consequence of two much alcohol and a long week. He sat on the edge of the couch.
Nate closed the balcony door. “You all right?”
“Just hit a wall.”
“I’ll get you some water.”
Nate went into the kitchen. Thomas heard a cabinet open, then the tap. He looked down at the antique ring. The two metals seemed almost to move against each other in the dim light. Nate returned with a glass. “Drink.”
Thomas took it. The water had a faint bitter taste beneath the lemon slice floating at the surface.
“You put something in this?”
“Just something to help with a hangover.”
“You carry anti-hangover medicine on dates?”
“At forty-four you’ll always travel prepared.”
Thomas laughed, though the sound came out sluggish. By the time he reached the bedroom, the carpet seemed unusually soft beneath his feet. Nate helped him remove his outer shirt and slacks. “You don’t have to baby me,” Thomas said.
“I know, but I’ve made a considerable investment in you and I want to ensure you don’t hurt yourself.”
Nate’s hand rested against Thomas’s chest. His fingers spread across a grey t-shirt, pressing lightly over Thomas’s heartbeat.
“You really are remarkable,” Nate said.
Thomas’s eyes were closing. “That’s a strange thing to say to someone passing out at the end of a date.”
“You’re not passing out. You’re falling asleep. Don't worry, when you wake up you'll feel like a new man.”
Thomas tried to focus on Nate’s face, but the features blurred. The pale eyes. The mustache. The thin gray at the temples.
Nate lifted Thomas’s right hand. The ring seemed to tighten around his finger. “Does this hurt?” Nate asked.
“No.”
His thumb stroked the band. “Good…”
Thomas’s body felt distant now, as though the bed were lowering him slowly into deep water. “Nate?”
“I’m here.”
“What was your uncle’s name?”
Nate smiled. “That’s a future problem.”
Thomas recognized the phrase. He wanted to laugh. Instead, darkness moved quietly across the room and covered him. The last sensation he felt before drifting to sleep was Nate removing his own button up and laying beside him on the bed.
⸻
The ring grew cold. Not cool, but impossibly cold, a small circle of winter clamped around Thomas’s finger.
Nate watched the unconscious man’s face. The sleeping expression was softer than the one Thomas wore in photographs. His mouth rested slightly open. A strand of dark hair had fallen across his forehead. Beneath the collar of his undershirt, dense chest hair curled against his throat.
Nate had imagined this moment so many times that the reality of it seemed strangely subdued. No thunder. No flash of light. Only the cold tightening of the ring and a sensation like his body dropping through the floor.
For an instant he could not breathe. Then he inhaled. The breath came easily. Too easily. The lungs drawing it were younger and deeper than his own had been. Nate opened his eyes. The ceiling looked different. Closer, somehow, though he knew that was impossible.
He raised one hand. Thomas’s hand. Broad palm. Long fingers. A faint white scar across the knuckle from the childhood bicycle accident Nate had heard about on their second date. Dark hair dusted the wrist and forearm. The ring was gone.
Across the bed lay Nate’s old body, unconscious and slack. Nate stared at it as if he were looking into a mirror. The gray hair at the temples. The heavy mustache. The chest that required more effort each year to keep firm. The softening around the waist that Thomas had never seemed to mind but he had grown to resent.
He felt no affection for it. Only relief. Nate sat up. The motion was startlingly fluid. No stiffness in the lower back. No familiar pressure in the neck from an old weightlifting injury. He rolled Thomas’s shoulders once, then again. A laugh escaped him. Thomas’s laugh.
Nate froze. He placed a hand against his throat. “Hello,” he said. The voice was clear, warm and younger than the one he had used for forty-four years.
“Hello,” he repeated, lowering the pitch. He stood. The body rose with effortless balance. Strong legs. Firm stomach. Weight distributed in ways Nate had studied through photographs and clothing but could never tottally imagine.
He pulled off his grey shirt and underwear and crossed the bedroom naked, leaving his old body discarded asleep beneath the sheets. At the bathroom door, he stopped. His heart was racing. Thomas’s heart. Nate stepped inside and switched on the lights. The mirror gave him exactly what he had wanted.
Thomas stared back. For several seconds Nate did nothing. He simply absorbed the face. Thick dark-brown hair, slightly disordered from lying in bed. Strong brows. Clear hazel-brown eyes. Straight nose. Firm jaw darkened with short stubble. Smooth forehead without the permanent horizontal lines Nate had begun noticing in photographs of himself.
He moved closer. Thomas moved closer. Nate touched the glass with two fingers. Then he touched his face.
The skin beneath his eyes was firm. He pulled gently at one lower lid, examining the unlined surface. Turned his head left. Right. Lifted his chin. Pressed his tongue behind his perfect teeth.
He opened his mouth and inspected the even white smile. “Thomas,” he said. The name sounded natural in the stolen voice. He said it again. “My name is Thomas.”
A smile spread across the reflection. It was Nate’s smile at first—small, private and cold. He erased it. Thomas smiled differently. More openly. One corner of the mouth lifted first. His eyebrows softened. His eyes narrowed slightly when the expression was genuine. Nate had catalogued it from dozens of photographs. He tried again. This time Thomas smiled back. “There you are,” Nate whispered.
He ran both hands through the thick hair, pushing it away from the forehead, then allowing it to fall naturally. He tested different parts, remembering how Thomas wore it at work, at the gym, on weekends.
He turned sideways. Thomas’s jaw was even better in profile. Nate traced it from the ear to the chin, feeling the rough stubble beneath his fingertips. He examined the ears, the hairline, the shape of the neck. He lifted each eyebrow separately. Frowned. Looked surprised. Concerned. Amused. He practiced Thomas’s skeptical head tilt. Perfect.
Nate stepped back from the sink. His eyes moved downward to take in the entirety of himself. Thomas’s body was everything he had hoped for and more. Athletic without being exaggerated. Wide shoulders. Defined arms. A flat stomach softened just enough to look natural. Dark hair spread thickly across the chest, densest between the pecs, narrowing into a line down the abdomen.
Nate pressed both palms against his chest. The muscle beneath the hair was warm and firm. He inhaled deeply and watched it rise. Once. Twice. He curled his fingers into the dense hair, then smoothed it back into place with almost ceremonial care.
“Don’t change it,” he murmured, repeating what he had told Thomas weeks earlier. Now it belonged to him.
He lifted one arm, studying the hair beneath it and along the forearm. Flexed the biceps. Rotated the wrist. Spread the fingers. He bent forward and touched his toes. Another laugh escaped him.
On the way down he got a good look at his new dick. He and Thomas had already had sex, but the lights were dim and Thomas a little modest. He stood up and wrapped a hairy young hand around his new dick. Lifting it up to feel its weight. Cupping a hand around his new testicles - noting their sensitivity. He reached a hand around to his asshole and fingered the outside before pushing two fingers in a bit deeper - the sensation making plain to him why Thomas had enjoyed bottoming so much. Why he would enjoy bottoming.
Nate began to rub his new shaft slowly. It responded with the enthusiasm of youth - the head sliding out of the foreskin. Nate continued to slide his foreskin over the head while looking at his new face in the mirror. He practiced his new smile, mimicked the seductive faces he’d seen Thomas make when they fucked, he touched his stubble and ran his hand through his chest hair, tweaking his sensitive nipples.
Before long Nate could feel the heat begin to rise in his body as Thomas’s dick stiffened and his testicles pulled up close and tight as a rush of heat passed through his new younger body. He climaxed shooting ropes of thick white cum onto the sink and vanity mirror. “I guess we’re a shooter now, aren’t we Thomas?” He muttered in Thomas’s lighter voice.
Nate straightened his back and studied the reflection again. Thirty. Not pretending to be younger. Not flattering lighting. Not an app smoothing away age. Thirty. Fourteen years returned in a single night.
He thought of every room he would enter in this body. Every man who would look twice. Every opportunity that would no longer feel belated. He imagined Thomas’s coworkers greeting him by name, Thomas’s mother hearing this voice on the phone, Thomas’s friends leaning in for hugs.
All of them would see what the mirror saw. None of them would see Nate. He reached for Thomas’s phone. Facial recognition opened it immediately. The lock symbol disappeared.
Nate stared at the screen, then at the mirror. The world had already accepted him. He opened the photo library. Thousands of images. Thomas at work. Thomas running beside the river. Thomas shirtless at a lake. Thomas with his sister. Thomas laughing beside a birthday cake, head tilted back.
Nate selected the photograph from the university dorm, the one he had studied during their third date.
He held the phone beside the mirror. The younger Thomas had been leaner, almost boyish. The current face was better. More complete.
Nate swiped forward. He found a recent selfie and mimicked it: chin slightly down, mouth relaxed, eyes warm but confident. He adjusted. Again. Again. The third attempt was exact.
Next came the voice messages. Thomas’s cadence. The slight upward inflection at the end of a teasing question. The relaxed rhythm when talking about work. The laugh that began in the throat and ended breathlessly.
Nate played one. Then repeated it. “Anyway, you get the idea.” Too slow. Again. “Anyway, you get the idea.” Better.
He replayed another message. “That’s a future problem.” Nate watched his stolen mouth form the stolen phrase. “That’s a future problem.” Perfect.
He left the bathroom and dressed with equal care. Dark boxer briefs from the second drawer. Gray trousers. White undershirt. The navy shirt Thomas wore when he wanted to look polished without appearing formal.
Nate buttoned it, then stopped. He opened the top two buttons again, exposing a deliberate triangle of chest hair. Thomas often wore it that way. Nate remembered watching him adjust the collar on their first date. He copied the gesture in the closet mirror.
Then he tried Thomas’s posture: shoulders relaxed, weight resting slightly more on the right leg, one hand casually in a pocket.
The handsome engineer in the mirror looked friendly, outgoing and entirely at ease with himself.
Then Nate practiced a mild expression of concern.
“What if Nate contacts anyone?” he asked the reflection.
A crease appeared between Thomas’s brows. “He’s been acting strangely. I think he may be having some kind of breakdown.”
Too clinical. Too prepared. Nate relaxed Thomas’s shoulders and softened the stolen face. He imagined his old body arriving at Thomas’s office, wild-eyed and desperate, insisting that the handsome man standing before them was an impostor. Telling them about the ring. Demanding that Thomas’s friends believe an impossible story.
“Nate became fixated on me,” he tried. “I didn’t realize how bad it had gotten until last night.”
Better, but not enough. He let uncertainty enter Thomas’s hazel eyes, followed by reluctant fear.
“He thinks he’s me,” Nate whispered. “I know how crazy that sounds, but that’s what he keeps saying. He knows things about my life because I trusted him. Now he’s using them to convince people.”
The reflection looked frightened rather than defensive. Sympathetic. Believable. Nate held the expression for several seconds, memorizing it. Then he smiled.
He packed methodically - knowing he would need to vanish for a few days until the real Thomas cleared out of the apartment and the dust settled. He took everything that could be tied to his new identity. Thomas’s wallet. Driver’s license. Credit cards. Work identification. Passport from the locked desk drawer. Social Security card from the small fireproof box in the closet. Birth certificate. Laptop. Backup phone. Keys - so when Thomas left he couldn’t return. The folder containing tax documents and employment records. Thomas’s life fit neatly into two bags.
Before leaving, Nate returned to the bedroom. His old body remained unconscious on the bed. The mustached face looked older from this height. Smaller. Less formidable.
Thomas had desired that face. The thought almost made Nate laugh. He leaned over and removed the silver ring from his old body’s clenched hand. Nate slipped it into his pocket. He studied his former self one last time. The chest hair. The broad shoulders. The graying hair and thick mustache Thomas had found so mature, so masculine, so dangerous. Discarded packaging.
Before he turned away Nate leaned into his old face and whispered into his ear “Don’t worry, Thomas, no one will notice the difference.”
With that Nate walked into the bathroom and placed a folded note beneath the bathroom mirror. Then he left the apartment carrying everything that proved he was Thomas.
⸻
Pain returned first. A dull pressure behind the eyes. A bitter coating on the tongue. A heavy pulse beating inside the skull.
Thomas opened his eyes. The room was too bright. He closed them again and tried to remember how much he had drunk. Wine at the restaurant. Whiskey at the bar. Something at home maybe?
Water. Nate had given him water. Thomas shifted beneath the sheets. His body felt wrong. Not painful exactly. Misaligned.
His legs seemed heavier. His stomach rested against the mattress in an unfamiliar way. There was stiffness in his lower back and a faint ache in one knee.
He lifted a hand to his face. Hair brushed his fingertips. Not stubble. A mustache. Thomas opened his eyes fully in a state of panic.
The hand before him was broader and rougher than his own. Pale hairs crossed the knuckles. A small dark spot marked the back near the thumb. He stared at it without comprehension.
“Nate are you here?” The voice that emerged was deep. Older. Nate’s voice. Thomas jerked upright.
The sudden motion made the room tilt violently. He gripped the mattress and waited for it to settle.
“Nate!?” The same voice answered him from his own throat.
He touched his face again. Heavy mustache. Deeper lines beside the mouth. Short hair at the temples.
Thomas threw back the sheets.
A broad, mature chest greeted him, covered in dark hair flecked faintly with gray. The stomach beneath it was solid but heavier than his own. His hands moved over the unfamiliar torso in frantic disbelief.
“No.” Thomas stumbled from the bed. “Nate!”
Empty apartment. The living room had been disturbed so subtly that he did not understand at first. The laptop was gone from the desk. The charging cable remained, curled uselessly beside an empty space.
His phone was not on the kitchen counter. His wallet was gone. The wooden box stood open. No spare keys.
Thomas pulled at drawers with shaking hands. Documents missing. Passport missing. Work badge missing. The fireproof box open and empty. Every object that connected his name to his life had vanished.
He rushed back toward the bedroom, catching one shoulder against the doorway because the body was wider than he expected.
The bathroom light was still on. Thomas entered. He looked up. Nate stared back at him from the mirror.
Pale blue eyes widened beneath a lined forehead. Short gray-brown hair stood unevenly from sleep. The heavy mustache shifted as Thomas’s mouth fell open.
The face he had admired across candlelit tables. The face he had watched behind curling pipe smoke. The face he had believed was dangerous only in the ways he wanted.
Thomas raised one hand. Nate raised his. The reflection touched its mustache, then its cheeks, then the creases beside its eyes. Thomas tried to find himself somewhere inside it. There was nothing.
A folded piece of paper rested beneath the mirror. He opened it. Four lines had been written in his own familiar handwriting:
