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A cellphone is such a bitter little thing.Simon can’t remember his life without one, not really. His entire existence may as well have started with the acquisition of his first small, electronic device, pocket-sized and full of truly infinite lore. He was twelve, maybe thirteen? This was before parents started getting strict about who should get a cell phone and when, or maybe after, fuck he didn’t actually know. All he knew is that once he hit fifth grade and everyone else had one, he had to have one.His mother agreed, for some reason. And then the tangled web of the internet was no longer restricted to that family computer in the middle of the living room that he had to climb off of promptly at 10PM, always looking over his shoulder to see if his father was distracted enough from the baseball game on the TV to notice he was reading fanfiction or researching the best way to make a boy like him. Instead, the internet became part of him, his constant companion. All he had to do was bring the little machine to life, and he could stay up all night, or talk on it all day, a hundred thousand million billion people and topics and forums and movies and links and …It’s honestly no surprise he eventually found other people like him.Did you know they’ve done studies? Studies that show when you look at your phone, your brain lights up as if it’s looking at a person you love. Perhaps Simon did love his cellphone. Perhaps it was the safest thing to love.He got the text from his dad at 8:30PM.Simon was surprised to hear from him so soon after their last big fight, which was on the phone while he was waiting in line for a coffee in front of the building where his Gender in Western Thought class was held. The conversation had been short – thirty minutes – but explosive. Simon had seen sides of his father that he didn’t even know existed. Sides that he, suspiciously, wondered how they had been hidden until the moment of Simon’s metamorphosis, a change which seemed to bring out only the worst in those that made up the messy constellation of his closest friends and relatives (well, the ones from before college, anyways). That was only a week ago, and Simon had expected to be ignored longer.This particular Saturday evening, Simon was sprawled across his bed, ice-blue silk boxers sliding down his hips, a thin white t-shirt stretched across his small chest. His bleached blond hair fell across his dark eyes. Within them were pale cyan reflections of the phone screen in his vanilla-lotion-scented hands.‘The devil has his hold on you. You’ve thrown in your lot with his. This isn’t the Samantha I know. We’ll be praying for you.’Some queer people had fathers that seemed as if they had been plucked out of a children’s horror novel. Heated, belligerent men who had severe buzzcuts and anger management issues. Men who ate mashed potatoes and steak with only salt on it, and didn’t know how to express their emotions. Caricatures of men. A manhood, a fatherhood, that represented nothing of what Simon wanted from being a man.His father was nothing like that.His father was weak-willed and fearful of the very ground he walked on. His father believed everything he saw on tv. His father had never stood up to anyone in his life except for those who drank too much, had premarital sex, or committed the sin of homosexuality.Simon supposed he had given him something new to worry about when he came out as transgender.His father made lumpia from scratch even though it was easier to buy them. His father bought all the groceries. His father sweet-talked the woman at the meat counter and came into the store right at closing every Thursday night so she’d give them extra meat. His father let his mother hit him with a frying pan once when the lumpia burned and came out wrong. His father never learned how to drive. His father painted watercolors at night in his living room and sold used car parts by day over the phone to people that had no idea what he looked like or who he was but he still had to make them like him regardless. His father lived in a two-bedroom apartment even though Simon had been in undergrad for two years and had no plans of coming home. Last he heard, his father was renting the room to some stray from his church, a girl whose parents didn’t love her enough.A previous text that his cellphone still remembered: ‘She’s not replacing you. She’s just using your room.’Simon’s bitter little phone buzzed weakly to alert him it was running low on battery, and he, with great annoyance, plugged it into a braided cord made of something (he didn’t know what they fucking made phone cords out of) hoping it would juice up enough that he would have at least half battery when the rest of the Troika arrived to collect him.He caught a glance of his favorite anonymous dating app as he plugged the device in. He kept going back and forth on if he’d uninstall it or not. He’d downloaded the app a few months ago, not long after he’d come out and only weeks after he’d started testosterone. His experiences on the app had been, well, mixed. There were a lot of strangers with rude opinions, a lot of hot femmes that didn’t want to fuck him but were happy to send him encouragement, and a few actual, decent matches. One of the most surprising was called ‘Romancandles’. The names on the app were often far more crass and less creative, but Simon never found out the reason for the name. His profile had made Simon suspicious at first. The self-disclosed description merely said ‘I’m not like other boys, I have a pussy’ followed by several scissor emojis.At first, Simon had assumed that maybe it was a lesbian using the app trying to catch cute femmes. He had been offended, actually, when the owner of the profile started messaging him. Romancandles was older, and hot, though. Romancandles never sent face pics, but his body was gorgeous. Simon had exchanged a few flirty texts with him, before realizing he actually enjoyed talking to the stranger.Whenever Simon asked him about himself, he always found a way to dance around the subject, instead asking Simon about his own life. Simon had uncharacteristically opened up – it was easy to be vulnerable to a stranger.He thought of days he’d gone to study in the library, sneaking pictures of his tits to the stranger, innocently pretending he was taking a photo of the iced coffee posed strategically between his chest.Romancandles would respond with a string of emojis – hearts, sparkles, flames.Romancandles never asked to meet up. And for some reason, Simon couldn’t push himself to make that first move. After two months of this – on and off flirting, at least every other day, talking about the music they enjoyed, the issues they had with their friends, how annoying their parents could be, and what freak shit got them off, Simon eventually got angry that the other man never made the first move when Simon clearly wasn’t going to, and had stopped responding.If Simon had a therapist, they would have had loads to say about this, but as it stood, Simon just had his own self-disrespect for company when it came to his shitty decisions.The thought of sending Romancandles a picture of his Halloween costume did cross his mind. Would he even respond after the silent treatment from Simon? He wasn’t sure.He had exactly an hour to get ready for the party his two best friends, Minnie and Gayle, had invited him to. Sixty minutes to overthink, and to ruminate on his poor dating choices and options, as well as his father’s anger.He managed to peel himself off his bed and stand in front of his floor length mirror, built into the door of his generously sized closet. The closet was so big someone could live there if they wanted, residing behind the mirror, lost among the clothes. But nobody would want to do that. Not here.There was no place to peek through the door and observe the animal that nestled in its den from his closet, no benefit at all, unless you liked dark spaces and being left alone.His body was changing, but the changes hadn’t really taken full hold of him yet. He had a bandaid on his leg of an animated red cartoon car from a movie made by an evil corporation that he wasn’t sure he could even name-drop without getting sued.“Look guys,” he’d say instead, getting Minnie or Gayle’s attention. “Vehicles! Che-prow!”Usually Minnie would double over laughing, and Gayle would groan and attempt to swat him on his sore thigh.Minnie and Gayle were both two years older than him, graduating this year, and he would be a sophomore going into junior year alone. That wasn’t for some time yet still, but he already felt it coming. Minnie and Gayle had dated once, but it didn’t work out. They remained best friends, until Simon came into their lives. Then they became the Troika. Three inseparable, insufferable transfag genderfucks who created enough heatdeath between the three of them to fuel an entire universe that needed absolutely nobody or anything else but would entertain the thought from time to time just to test the waters in order to reassure the triangle that ultimately, they were right about that fact all along.It was a Halloween party – Halloween! Simon had always loved this holiday, for all of the obvious reasons. It was the one night a year he was allowed to put on a mask; peel himself away and become a silly costume, or an idea. Some people made Halloween their whole personality, but Simon didn’t take it that far (though he’d say if you pressed him Gayle did, in fact, do that – and the only evidence he would need to prove it was the fact that she owned six pairs of black-and-white striped stockings and could tell them apart from each other just by looking at them).It was only his second Halloween in college, and he was still figuring out what exactly one did other than drink, dress like a slut, and hope someone noticed you. Maybe that’s all it actually was and all it would ever be; he wasn’t sure.Minnie didn’t smoke weed, and Gayle did not drink alcohol. Between them, he never got any straight answers or any good supervision when they went out together.“I’m Boston Sober,” Minnie would say, three cocktails deep.“I’m a California conservative,” Gayle would respond.Simon didn’t have a fucking clue what either of those phrases meant other than representing their mutual home states and their general state of being under the influence when it came from their lips.About a year ago, Gayle was the one that pulled Simon into the Troika that used to be a duet. Simon sat down at a meeting for some hippie bullshit club on campus that wanted to promote equality, and both Simon and Gayle admitted to only being there because of a longing desire to bang the club president which they admitted privately and only to each other somehow. (The club leader didn’t believe in bras, and her nipples were very good at convincing people to join her cause.)Gayle was the first transgender person Simon had ever met in real life. She took Simon under her wing, and then it was just Simon and Gayle and Minnie every day. Simon and Gayle and Minnie for life. SimoGayMin. Some gay men. It was a mouthful. Just like Minnie’s pussy.Gayle would slap Simon for that one.The slap would have to wait, though. He had plenty of time to make comments about Minnie’s cunt and cause the three of them to blush over little fruity drinks once he was actually dressed. He didn’t actually have much of a costume – he was too broke. He did have a big-ass leather jacket to pull on over his t-shirt, and a pair of dark jeans that were a hand-me-downs from Gayle to put over his boxers. He slipped on some dark Chelsea boots that were a size too small for Minnie and put a chain necklace against his throat that had been a present from his mother who dutifully bought him whatever he sent her the link to each year when it was his birthday.What made it a costume – a real costume – was the cheap plastic headband of devil horns he put amongst his dried-out strands.He considered snapping a picture of the final look – black smudged around his eyes and yellow-tinted sunglasses- as a response to his father’s concerned text, but didn’t.He had been a pretty mediocre daughter; he was now determined to be a pretty absent and unreachable son. He winced when he realized he was doing the same when it came to his courting rituals. He decided to send that quick picture of his costume after all – a poor apology for his vanishing, but it was something.When the rest of the Troika arrived to knock on his door, he grabbed his keys, wallet, and phone and shoved them deep into the pockets of his leather jacket. It was only a quick tumble out of his bedroom to the door that he swung open brightly, sucking in the cool autumn air as if it would fill his body and cleanse him of the anger and frustration that had slowly built over the past few hours as he gussied himself up for the social event of the season.“Good evening, do you have a moment to learn about our Lord and Savior?” Gayle asked.It was terrifying to see her in her costume. She was wearing neat pressed khakis and a dark blue button-up, and had her hair slicked back. Her usual black nail polish had been scrubbed off, and she was holding a Bible in one hand.The Gayle he was used to was constantly a mess, constantly falling apart, like a robot with leaky broken limbs that was always putting itself back together. Her long, stringy dyed-black hair was still pulled away from her angular face, but her muscular and surprisingly delicate shoulders that he was used to seeing covered in stick-and-pokes she couldn’t remember getting were covered now by a button-up that Simon didn’t think she owned.“You’re going to be the scariest thing at the party,” Simon said between laughter, barely containing himself at the sight. It almost washed away the pent-up rage and tension of the evening.Gayle merely smiled with quiet mischief.“And what about me?” Minnie cut in. Simon fumbled to close the door and lock it, trying desperately not to make eye contact with Minnie’s cleavage, but it was nearly impossible as he was 5’3″ and she was 6’1″ with heels.Minnie was a hipster and had baby bangs (but not in a TERF way). She studied political science but never brought it up in any conversation that Simon had ever seen her participate in. Tonight she was radiant.“Yeah, everyone’s afraid of big-boobie angels in thigh-highs,” Simon said, slipping his keys back into his pocket to rest next to his bitter little phone, now quiet and pressed securely in his jacket where it couldn’t cause any harm for the time being.“Should have been a youth pastor,” Gayle quipped.“Go to hell,” Minnie replied.Hell was, it turned out, not that far from Simon’s apartment.The club was called the Deep Blue. Simon had been a handful of times before; he wasn’t really what you’d call a clubbing person, but on Halloween, there was few places you’d want to be other than somewhere you could be seen.Tonight, the club had been closed to the public, bought out for a private-ish birthday party. Who had a birthday on Halloween? the actual Devil himself? He didn’t know the birthday boy, but Minnie did. Simon was sure it cost a decent amount of money to close the doors to the venue so that only those who managed to get into this sphere of influence, however wide it was appearing to be, could get wasted in public on Halloween. Probably while dancing to hyperpop at first, then later the Smiths when everyone got sad and drunk.Simon’s phone buzzed in his pocket, but he let it be.“So, what’s the story on the party?” He asked as they stood in the short line to get in, his ID ready and waiting in his hand. It still had an F on it and his deadname, but nobody gave him a hard time at the Deep Blue, and certainly wouldn’t give him a worse time at some gay man’s birthday bonzana. Simon expected to see nothing but frozen margaritas, unicorn costumes, and rail-thin philosophy students trying to beat each other to the bottom of a Tito’s bottle once he actually made it inside.“He’s my hairdresser,” Minnie explained, as if this explained absolutely everything.Gayle clucked at this, still holding her required costume prop. Simon refused to do costumes that required a required costume props. He had to give her credit, though. Without the Bible, she just looked like a california conservative.“Is he like ancient?” Simon asked, but maybe he shouldn’t have. This question came right as he was stepping up to show his ID, his party of three being checked off under the line on the invitation list that said ‘Minneapolis Kruise, plus two.’“He’s thirty-one as of this moment today,” Gayle said, wiggling her fingers as if to tell Simon a ghost story. “Imagine… aging.”His cheeks flushed hot for a moment, but only a moment. He ignored the strange looks from the person behind the check in table, and instead spilled into the club with Minnie and Gayle in tow. Gayle kept one hand around Minnie’s waist, awkwardly, trying not to bump into the cardboard and craft-store-feather amalgamation that was her angel wings.The entire space had been transformed. The walls, normally a pale blue-and-white tile as if to emulate the bottom and sides of a swimming pool, were drowning in the reflected glow of a strobing light. It only increased the overall effect of being underwater that the tiles already leant themself to. In the corners, the palm trees that normally seemed a bit tacky and out of place during other visits to the Deep Blue were suddenly bathed in a dark, purple-blue light, taking on an alien quality and standing ominous like silent watchers to the moshing, sloshing, pit of dancing, costumed bodies that filled up most of the floor of the club. Strings of pearls and fake seashells were draped over various surfaces, and the music wasn’t what he had been expecting at all. Instead of the usual club music he was used to, it was an almost dream-like, funky techno beat that seemed to ebb and flow. It was hard not to see the various dancers as a school of fish, clinging to and dancing around each other, one organism made up of several independently acting parts that just seemed to know how to flow with the other fish around them.On the stage, dressed in a very cheap mascot costume of a crab, was a DJ that Simon had never seen before, silently bopping to his own music while flashes of glitter and poorly constructed polyester shone through the sea of dancing bodies.“Good party!” Minnie called out, making her way explicitly and immediately to the bar. Simon followed, not excited about the crowded line. He had only been twenty-one for about three months, but he was pretty sure he had peaked in his drinking career in freshman year.“I want the rum with the giant octopus on the bottle,” he strategized to Gayle. “With just, like, a Pepsi.”“Respectable choice, my friend. Minnie, you’ll be having that unnaturally bright piña colada blue Curaçao freak show creation, I take it?”Gayle had promised to buy all the drinks tonight. Simon truly feared for the emotional and physical safety of her bank account.“You’re damn right I am,” Minnie responded with such conviction that Simon was reminded that she did in fact nearly have that degree in polisci.They got their drinks without much issue; Simon washed away his discomfort and that icky, rotten feeling that wanted to stick to the inside of his ribs with the taste. It was sweet but also bitter and boozy, and tonight, it tasted like validation. He was careful not to get too drunk – he didn’t want to get shitfaced and embarrassed, but he needed to loosen up a bit.There was a vibrant warmth to the bodies that surged around him. He felt swallowed in the blue and white lights that filled the space, his limbs wanting to splash and thrash and wiggle and wobble and churn in the sea of sweat and lust and noise. He could smell cheap cologne, strong drinks, and hairspray, a potent spell to keep him moving as one song blended into the next. He felt his muscles stretch and constrict like a snake undulating around a prey animal, his flesh winding around a feeling that he wanted to crush between his scales. Lucifer was a snake once, right?It was about an hour into the night when he was pulled from the school of dancing bodies onto a barstool next to a table in the corner of the dancefloor. Minnie was there, looking only slightly worse for wear. So was Gayle. And so was a stranger.“This is Roman!” Minnie emphasized, slinging one arm around Roman’s shoulders. Simon suddenly became hyper-aware of the seat beneath his ass, of the smudge of eyeliner at the corner of his eye, of the inadequacy of his costume that wasn’t really that much of a costume.Roman was a literal but figurative god. He was dressed as what Simon could only interpret as Posiedon, his gingery beard and square jawline framing a wry, twisted smile. He had a prominent hooked nose, round cheeks, and squinty, mischievous brown-gold eyes. His hair was shaved on the sides into a curly, ginger mullet, and dark blue eyeshadow had been smeared across his face. His muscular shoulders and calves peeked out seductively from between the swaths of white fabric that made up his costume. He had a plastic trident in the crook of his arm, having joined Gayle in costume prop servitude.“Hello, Simon,” Roman said. His smile reached his eyes; his hand stretched out over the table, and Simon felt frozen for a moment.“Hey…” he replied, limply reaching out to shake Roman’s hand. The brief contact sent a shock up him, as if their hands brushing against each other activated something inside him.It activated horny.“Are you Posiedon?” Simon asked.He provided a weak smile, one that looked quite faded next to the brilliant sun of Roman’s face.“I am!” Roman responded. Simon realized for the first time Roman had a drink nearby, sloshing as Roman grabbed it. He was a little taller than Simon, a little wider, and he crashed his drink into Minnie’s, laughing at a joke Simon didn’t quite catch because he was too busy staring at Roman’s man-tits. They were uncomfortably familiar, but he told himself it was just the name ‘Roman’ that was making him read things into this stranger’s situation that weren’t necessarily there. Were they? Fuck. Was this –?Simon didn’t function well around men he was attracted to. He’d learned this a long time ago. His dating history was sparse: a few boyfriends that started lukewarm and ended frozen solid. His fucking history was even worse. He’d had a few hookups from the online dating apps, all that were hotter in fantasy than they ever were in reality. Usually talking to the guy before the actual meetup was the best part of the experience; when there was chemistry and flirting and surprise and imagination and none of the awkwardness of in person encounters of the strange kind. If he had been any less tipsy and overwhelmed, he’d wonder if maybe that was why the uncertainty of meeting or not meeting Romancandles had bothered him so much. He didn’t want the spell to end, didn’t want to be let down.“Simon, you look familiar,” Roman interrupted Simon’s thoughts. He had tuned out of the chatter between Minnie, Gayle, and Roman, instead tracing patterns in the table with his fingertips.Simon glanced up at Roman, mouth parted slightly in surprise. “That’s funny,” he said. “I don’t recognize you at all.”Gayle laughed. Simon swallowed his heart that had started creeping into his throat. Fuck! This was going to be embarrassing if this actually was his ghosted acquaintance.“Where do you stay? What do you do?” Roman questioned, leaning forward against the bar table. His ample man-chest pressed into it, the fabric of his costume crinkling against the fake wood.“He lives near me,” Minnie said matter-of-factly. “Downtown.”“Simon’s a Creative Writing major,” Gayle offered. She was sitting serenely at the table, playing some kind of game on her phone while jumping in and out of conversation with her friends and the strangers that nudged her shoulder.“A writer?” Roman asked.“I haven’t written anything yet,” Simon protested. Certainly nothing he wanted Roman to read. He was still figuring out what kind of writer he wanted to be. He didn’t need Roman seeing his psyche like that. They’d just met, and Simon would rather think about Roman thinking about his body than his screwy little mind.“Patently untrue,” Minnie argued.“Speaking of content creators,” Simon saw a small opportunity for revenge. “Has Minnie showed you her little… hobby?”Minnie gussied herself up, shaking her tits in a way that was meant to emulate a particularly proud and pompous bird. “I’ll have you know that mr. birthday boy is quite the fan of VintagexTeddybears,” Minnie slapped her phone down on the table, open to her social media profile. Moody, blue-toned images of vintage teddybears, erotically posed, suddenly filled the screen.“I have a great respect for Minnie’s art,” Roman said, in just the right way that it was hard to gauge how serious he was or wasn’t about that.Minnie’s side project of making harnesses, lingerie, and sets for vintage teddybears to recreate various scenes from life and fantasy and then be photographed for internet consumption was something that Gayle and Simon had long been used to. It was always an interesting gauge of character though, to show the work to someone new and see their response. So far, Roman was passing the vibe check with flying colors.“However–” Gayle interrupted the discourse about teddybear erotica. “None of this answers why Roman finds you familiar, Simon. In fact, he seemed quite excited to meet you.”Minnie’s eyebrows knit together, and her lips pursed. She always got that look when there was a mystery to be solved, or she felt something was going on that she was being left out of. Minnie hated not being a part of something. Gayle, however, seemed to know exactly what was happening, but was delighting in not telling. That alone made the world close in on Simon. Gayle was frequently a good gauge of social situations. His mouth went dry despite all the drinking he’d been doing tonight.He was so embarrassed he almost didn’t register it was Roman’s birthday, that he was the one who had bought out the club for the night.“I feel cruel not showing you what I’m talking about,” Roman’s voice took on a sweeter quality, as he passed his own phone over. Simon took in the profile picture – a blurry profile of a face, hard to decipher fully. The name – ‘romancandles’.Simon’s face turned shades of red he didn’t know it could.“You’re Romancandles?” It sounded dumb as he was saying it.“And I think you are, if your face is to be believed, Simantics?” Roman asked.Simon’s smile didn’t reach his eyes this time. “Guilty as charged.” The fact that this exchange was happening in front of his two best friends was excruciating. The fact that the guy he’d been chatting up was Minnie’s hairdresser was almost worse. God only knew if she had talked about him while getting a trim. He tried to gauge both of their faces, but Gayle just had that same self-satisfied smirk, and Minnie was lost in thought trying to keep up. Poor thing, Simon thought, glancing at her. She was totally wasted.“I’d love to pick up our conversations where they left off,” Roman said. There was a suggestive undertone to his voice that was not missed by Simon, nor was it missed by Gayle as she wiggled her eyebrows in their direction.“Gay,” Minnie said, loudly. She seemed to be catching up.Gayle carefully picked herself up, grabbed her prop Bible, and took Minnie by the arm. “We should leave Simon and Roman to chat,” Gayle said. “It sounds like they have some unfinished business.”And just like that, his two best friends were gone into the blue. Now it was just Roman, still kind of leaning over the table, gazing down at Simon as if he were a small fish ready to be swallowed up.How do you say, I wanted you to ask me out but also I didn’t and so I just stopped talking to you for a while out of option paralysis and avoidance without sounding crazy? Simon didn’t know.“So why did you ghost me, el diablo?” Roman seemed to be enjoying this, much to Simon’s chagrin.A cellphone is a bitter, bitter, bitter little thing. Maybe if he had checked his, he would have caught that Roman was here.“I uh,” Simon started, not sure what words would work. “I’m an idiot that doesn’t know how to talk to people?”Roman laughed, bringing a hand up to scratch his beard. “Yeah, fair enough,” He seemed to give pause for Simon to say something, but Simon filled that space with trying to think of every fact he’d shared with the then stranger, every kink, every fantasy– Shit.“You’re quite handsome, Simon. And I don’t think you don’t know how to talk to people. I’ve enjoyed our talks,” Roman said.“Oh really?” Simon bantered back, putting just enough danger in his voice. Perhaps the small bit of booze in his body wanted to give him some liquid confidence. He felt himself warming up a bit in Poseideon’s – well, Roman’s – presence. Now that the shock and embarrassment of realizing who he was meeting had fully hit, there was room for something else. His face was still red, and his chest still felt tight, but at least he didn’t have an audience anymore.They’d only just met in person and already, the other man had started to stir something in him. He had a way of doing that – always bringing whatever Simon threw at him to some softer, gentler place. Calm. That was a word he associated with Roman. The Deep Blue was tumultuous, but Roman was in his element, in control and confident, and even more than that, in a building full of people, Roman was talking to him.Simon had been so worried that if they met in the flesh, the magic would be gone. That they would be awkward, or stifled, or uncomfortable. That neither would find the other as attractive as they had in their fantasies. Yet, Simon didn’t feel that way at all, he realized. Without the audience and moving past his mistakes, there was clear chemistry between them, desire that slipped out before he even noticed it leaving him.A surge of arousal washed through Simon as Roman pried the maraschino cherry off of Minnie’s abandoned drink and carefully plucked the fruit from the chemically red stem with his teeth.“I like your costume,” Roman said, flashing his smile again. “It suits you.”Something bold took ahold of Simon. He felt a pang of recognition in what Roman had said. After all, hadn’t the costume been an ironic rebellion in his mind? His father had cast the grasp of the devil onto him, and rejected him for it. Here, this man who had no reason to stay connected to him at all – not bound by blood or oaths – was seeing him and liking what he saw. Horns and all. Yet, he wasn’t in the space to think about his dad right now. Instead he thought about the pictures of Roman’s thighs that the other man had sent him, pale skin covered in soft, ginger curls.“Want to take it off me?” Simon said, sounding like he was messaging him on that godforsaken app, but this was meatspace, not the distance of a keyboard and screen.It was not the way he’d ever talked to another human being. Not in real life. It sounded cheesy – corny – fake – didn’t it?Roman didn’t seem to think so. “My salon isn’t far,” he offered. “I think I could do that for you.”He didn’t need to tell Simon twice.Simon sent a message to Gayle and Minnie, and followed Roman behind the bar. They were hardly two steps out of the building when Roman pinned Simon to the wall, his hands grabbing Simon by his hips, big warm palms against Simon’s protruding hip bones.Simon felt his back hit the brick and he gasped. None of his boyfriends or hookups had handled him like this.“Roman,” he moaned, surprising himself. He wasn’t usually the type to let out a guy’s name like that, especially when Roman had barely put his hands on him. Something about tonight was different though – maybe it was because it was Halloween? Maybe it was because Roman had said such filthy, degrading, horrible things to him when they were flirting online? Things that Simon had touched himself to at night, eating away at the pain with a good old orgasm, but assuming this Roman person didn’t really exist in real life?Roman’s lips and teeth found his throat, and he felt the weight of the other man pressing against him as he kissed along his jaw, over his jugular, biting the soft flesh and sending a flash of pain and pleasure up Simon’s sternum.“Fuck,” Simon whimpered.“You told me you like it rough?” Roman asked. Simon could feel the vibration of Roman’s voice in his throat as he kissed, and bit, and licked Simon.“Yeah.” Simon, for a writer, was really coming up short on words.He wouldn’t need them much longer, thankfully. Roman moved to cover his lips with his, and they kissed each other voraciously, all the pent-up sexual tension from their failed conversation and courtship spilling out in the way Roman’s tongue danced with his, exploring his mouth gently but assertively, making Simon melt in his grip. Roman handled Simon without any hesitation, experienced hands coaxing pleasure from sensitive spots that were awakened by the brush of his fingertips against his skin.He moaned into the kiss and felt Roman’s hands stroking up his sides to cup his breasts in his thin white t-shirt. Roman’s thumbs brushed over his nipples, sending waves of pleasure through his body. It was like the sensation went straight to his dick; every brush of Roman’s thumbs made him harder and wetter. The testosterone was making his dick so swollen on a good day. This was powerfully worse, and by worse he meant so, so much better.The fingers circled his nipple for a while, stroking over his areola. His nipples were tenting against the fabric, stroked and flicked and rubbed by Roman as he seemed determined to make Simon go completely limp in his arms.“You are sensitive,” Roman said, amused.Simon pawed at Roman’s chest, finding his chest scars. He ran his own fingertips over them, awed for a moment. He’d almost forgotten. Roman was the first transman he was going to hook up with. Roman smelled vaguely of sea salt and sage, like a perfume that Simon had smelled at the department store as he walked through the mall. He smelled expensive. He smelled like he had his life together.Roman moved one of his knees to be between Simon’s legs, and he ground himself into Roman, pressing their bodies together as much as he could get away with. His hands explored the other man’s chest, his belly, his sides, his hips, his ass. Roman’s lips never stopped attacking him. At one point, Simon’s pale white shirt was pulled up, exposing his breasts entirely. He sucked in a breath of cold night air, suddenly very aware they were in public.“What if there’s a camera?” he hissed, but his protests were quickly snuffed out when Roman leaned down to take Simon’s right nipple into his mouth, his tongue tracing the shape of it.He didn’t answer – he couldn’t, his mouth was too full of Simon – but his hands gave away his intent. He started unbuttoning Simon’s pants, pulling them down towards his ankles, as Simon moaned. Simon had a moment where he thought maybe he should stop Roman – should ask that they move somewhere more private. But then, in that same moment, he felt himself give up all control.He wanted to let Roman use him however he wanted. He was a handsome, hot, older, wiser, more mature, established, small business owner with enough money to rent out the Deep Blue and on his birthday, he was spending his time sucking off a twink in the alley and that twink just so happened to be Simon. This was truly the best Halloween ever.This submissive realization only made Simon wetter. His pussy was twitching in anticipation, his dick so hard it nearly hurt.After his pants were his boxers, similarly tugged down. Then Simon’s swollen dick and slick hole were on full display.“You smell so good,” Roman said. He nuzzled his cheek against Simon’s thigh, breathing in the scent of him.“Fuck me,” Simon half responded half demanded, twitching his hips towards Roman.“Gladly,” Roman barely got out before his lips were on Simon’s dick, enveloping him in his mouth.It was hot, it was wet, it was everything a mouth on his dick normally was, but somehow Roman was so much better. Maybe it was knowing how much they wanted each other, maybe it was because he was turned on by his exposure, he wasn’t sure. All he knew was that every sensation in his body suddenly seemed to live in his dick, which was being rolled across Roman’s talented tongue.It was enough to nearly drive Simon mad.Roman sucked and teased, his tongue circling his dick at times, then moving down to probe gently at his inner lips, and even his hole. Simon wasn’t sure how long they were out there; all he knew is that the music had begun to die down by the time they began to stop.He had no choice but to lose himself in the pleasure of the attention, as Roman fucked him up against the wall just outside the club, two thick fingers inside his greedy hole just inches away from everyone inside, celebrating a man who had stepped out for his own dessert.Simon felt so full, even more importantly, he felt so owned. The fingers inside him were almost too much for him to wrap his head around. He felt like suddenly he understood so many people so much better. Sex really was that good, actually, if you did it with someone you liked. Someone that was actually into what they were doing. Someone who told you you could do whatever you wanted and he’d match you freak for freak.This sense of psychological safety is surely what made Simon come.He crashed his hips against Roman’s face, bucking so hard he was surprised Roman didn’t get a nosebleed. Roman just held on for dear life, sucking and teasing Simon like his very life depended on it. By the time Simon was starting to come down from the intoxicating high of getting laid and laid by the birthday boy who just happened to be a hot trans man, it was almost too much for him to process all at once.Roman licked his lips, looked up at Simon from his position crouched next to Simon’s grateful cunt, and asked an innocent question: “Can I go again?”Before Simon could answer, his phone started ringing. His brain was still thick and soupy from all the fucking, and he fumbled with his jacket trying to grab his phone, worried it was Minnie or Gayle, looking for him. He barely caught the look of confusion on Roman’s face as he muttered “fuck, fuck, shit, okay,” and answered the call.It was Jennifer, the stray church girl that lived in Simon’s old room.“Jenny?” He rasped out. Why the fuck was she calling him?“Simon -” She began. Simon thought about hanging up, so irritated that he was being interrupted, but for a brief moment, a flash of worry hit him. Did something happen to his father?“What’s up, Jenny, I’m in the middle of something,” Simon said. He tried to keep as much of his irritation out of his voice as possible, but unfortunately, it just mixed with the horny and made him sound really, really drunk.“Your dad is really upset with you right now. I wanted to call to tell you how much you’re hurting him. You should come home, and reconcile. He’s really struggling,” Jenny explained. “He’s been in his room all night and keeps telling me to leave him alone when I try to check on him. I’ve never seen him like this.”Flashes of anger spread through Simon at this. His hand gripped the phone tighter, as if he could break it. He wanted to scream – to yell – to let out a series of curse words. Of course you haven’t seen him like that, Jenny. You’re not his real kid. You’re just a stranger playing pretend. You don’t see the real him because he’s a coward and he hides it from everyone. Stop telling me shit I already know! Fuck you! Fuck you for having the nerve to call me like this! Fuck –Before he could say anything, he felt warm hands gently prying the phone from his ear. He blinked, having missed the change in Roman’s standing in his internal rage spiral.“Hi, Jenny was it?” Roman said into the phone, with a practiced customer service voice. For a moment, Simon could imagine him talking to an angry customer at his salon just the same.“It’s very rude to call people this late, especially when it isn’t an emergency. Next time, send a text. Simon will discuss this with you when he feels like it,” Roman said.Then he hung up the call.“What the fuck,” Simon said, still processing the last sixty seconds.Roman slid Simon’s phone back into his jacket pocket.“I won’t make it a habit,” Roman promised, but he didn’t look particularly sorry. “She annoyed me. I remember you talking about her before. It’s very late, Simon. Nobody should be doing anything but sleeping and fucking at this hour.”Simon panted, not saying anything in return. Instead he just looked down at Roman. His beautiful face, his handsome nose. His curly mullet that Simon had been running his fingers through. His own naked body, stripped from the waist down.“Do you want my number?” Simon asked.Roman, in response to this, leaned his chin against Simon’s bare thigh and smiled.“Sure,” Roman replied. “But, can I go again?”