Dispatched Into Duty
Jackson is a college student who has a crush on his best friend and roommate Patrick. It’s because of this overwhelming crush that the awkward nerd allows himself to be roped into going to a costume party at a local frat house. But after the two roommates get separated, the police-uniform-wearing Jackson begins a journey that has him growing and changing both physically and mentally into a man worthy of his costume and Patrick’s affection.
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Ugh, why did I agree to this?
The engine cut off with a mechanical sigh, causing Jackson to take a deep breath as he struggled to believe he was actually doing this. For a moment, he stayed frozen in the passenger seat, his skinny fingers gripping his knees hard enough that his knuckles had gone white. He was staring at the frat house through the windshield like it might devour him whole – which, given the absolute chaos visible through every window, didn't feel like an unreasonable fear. The building looked alive in the worst possible way, every window blazed with light that spilled out onto the lawn in a sea of flashing colors, and inside Jackson could see a mass of silhouettes moving in writhing masses that suggested the party had already reached critical density hours ago. Bodies were pressed together so tightly that individual people became indistinguishable from the crowd, a single organism of college students united in their pursuit of getting absolutely wasted on a Saturday night.
The bass from whatever rap song was currently playing thumped through the walls hard enough that Jackson could feel it all the way in the car, vibrating through the seat and into his chest in a pounding rhythm that perfectly matched the rapid beating of his own heart. The sound was physical, aggressive, and demanding attention in ways that made Jackson want to sink lower in his seat and pretend he'd never agreed to this terrible idea in the first place. Because he knew – with the kind of bone-deep certainty that came from twenty years of social anxiety and general awkwardness – that he absolutely did not belong here, at this party, with these people, in this world that seemed designed specifically to make him feel small and inadequate.
The only reason he was here at all was because Patrick had asked.
As he thought of his friend, Jackson turned to face him, watching as Patrick checked his hair in the rearview mirror with the kind of casual vanity that Jackson both envied and found mesmerizing. The dome light cast his roommate in soft gold, highlighting the sharp line of his jaw, the way his lips pursed as he adjusted a strand of hair that had fallen across his forehead. Patrick's costume – if you could even call it that – was absurd in the best possible way: an unbuttoned bright orange shirt that hung open to reveal his toned chest and abs, additionally adorned with a small patch across his left pec that declared him with the identification number of 696969. This top was then paired with tight orange booty shorts that left almost nothing to the imagination as it proudly showcased his toned and tanned quads in addition to his prominent bulge . Two plastic shackles and chains dangled from each wrist, completing the "sexy prisoner" look that Patrick wore with the kind of easy confidence that made Jackson's throat tight.
"Alright man, you ready to head in?" Patrick asked, catching Jackson's eye in the mirror. His grin was infectious, all white teeth and genuine excitement, the kind of smile that had made Jackson agree to this terrible idea in the first place.
After seeing how great his friend looked, Jackson glanced down at himself and felt his stomach immediately drop. The cop costume stared back at him in all its cheap, ill-fitting glory – a navy blue shirt that was simultaneously too tight across his shoulders and too loose everywhere else, and a pair of baggy pants held up by a flimsy belt laden with plastic accessories that rattled every time he moved. The fabric was some kind of polyester-velvet hybrid that felt like wearing a trash bag, and the plastic badge pinned to his chest looked like it had been a prize from a cereal box rather than a passable symbol of authority. He looked like a child playing dress-up, especially compared to how perfectly tailored Patrick’s outfit was despite him putting it on straight out of the bag.
"Yeah," Jackson lied, tugging at his collar. "Totally ready."
With a nod, Patrick’s body seemed to jump out of the car with how quickly Jackson suddenly heard the driver’s side door slam shut with a decisive thunk. He watched through the windshield as his roommate stretched, the movement making his orange shirt ride up to expose the sharp V of muscle that disappeared into those ridiculous yet highly arousing shorts. Jackson's eyes followed the line of Patrick's body automatically, a habit he'd developed over three years of living together, three years of stolen glances and careful distance along with the constant and exhausting work of pretending he didn't want what he knew he could never have.
Beyond his own physical beauty, Jackson found that the other most appealing thing about Patrick was that he made everything look effortless. Parties, classes, hookups, friendships – it all came to him as naturally as breathing, whereas Jackson had to white-knuckle his way through social interactions like they were calculus exams. They'd met three ago during freshman orientation, just two gay guys who'd somehow unconsciously recognized something familiar amongst a sea of unfamiliar faces. Soon enough, they reconnected at the LGBT campus club, ultimately becoming close friends and deciding to room together sophomore year. It had seemed like fate at the time, like the universe was giving Jackson exactly what he needed – a center of gravity that naturally stopped him from spiraling out of control amongst new surroundings and people by its mere presence.
Except what Jackson needed was for Patrick to look at him the way he looked at the guys his muscular friend brought home from the bars, the way he looked at his gym buddies when they flexed and joked around, or the way he definitely wasn't looking at Jackson right now as he waited impatiently by the hood of the car.
"Come on, man, let's go!" Patrick called, already moving toward the house with that easy, loping stride that made his shorts ride up even higher. "Everyone's already inside!"
Not wanting to be left alone, Jackson then forced himself out of the car, his plastic handcuffs clattering against his hip and the toy gun in his holster swinging awkwardly against his thigh. The night air was cool against his face, carrying the smell of beer and weed smoke that clung to college parties like a second skin. He caught his reflection in the car window as he closed the door - a skinny twenty-year-old with shaggy, unstyled hair and glasses that kept sliding down his nose, drowning in a costume that seemed designed to emphasize exactly how non-threatening he was.
Yet despite this fact, Jackson couldn’t deny that their outfits were quite fitting despite the pairing being pure coincidence. Patrick, who regularly showed up to their apartment at 3am drunk and giggling, who’d been written up twice in the past by their RA for noise violations, who treated rules like gentle suggestions – he was without a doubt the law-breaker between the two of them. And Jackson, who color-coded his class notes and had never been late to anything in his life, who said "excuse me" when he bumped into furniture – he was supposed to be the cop. It was the kind of costume pairing that would have been funny if it wasn't so painfully accurate.
"Dude," Patrick said, waiting at the edge of the driveway with his hands on his hips, "you good? Don’t tell me you’re second-guessing this again..."
"I'm fine," Jackson said, shaking his head to push away any second guessing or doubts before jogging to catch up. Yet, as he ran, he found that his belt was already trying to slide down his non-existent hips. "Just... adjusting."
"Stop worrying, you look fine," Patrick said, though his eyes barely grazed Jackson's costume before returning to the house. "It's Halloween, everyone looks silly. That's the point."
Except Patrick didn't look silly. Patrick looked like a personal wet dream that had gained sentience and decided to torture Jackson specifically. But Jackson just nodded and followed his roommate up the driveway, past clusters of people smoking on the lawn or making out against a tree towards the front door that pulsed with noise and heat like a living and breathing beast.
Unsurprisingly, inside was instantly overwhelming. The frat house was packed to capacity, a writhing mass of bodies pressed together in ways that made Jackson's anxiety spike immediately. The air was thick with sweat, cheap cologne, and the sickly-sweet smell of whatever punch was being served in the kitchen. Music pounded from speakers Jackson couldn't see, the bass now so heavy that it felt like being repeatedly punched in the chest. Out of nowhere, he suddenly jumped back in shock as someone in a gorilla costume rushed past them, their drink sloshing over the rim of their cup to splash against the vamp of his shoes.
On the flipside, Patrick, naturally, was in his element. His face lit up the moment they crossed the threshold, eyes scanning the crowd until he spotted someone he knew – which, knowing Patrick, was probably half the people here. "Yo!" he shouted over the music, waving at a group of guys near the stairs. He turned to Jackson and smiled. "There's Marcus!"
Jackson's stomach sank as Patrick immediately veered toward the group, his orange-clad body cutting through the crowd like he owned the place. Jackson followed in his wake, mumbling apologies to people he bumped into, his plastic handcuffs catching on someone's costume and nearly yanking him to the ground from how frail he was. By the time he got unhooked and reached Patrick, his roommate was already deep in conversation with four guys Jackson vaguely recognized from other parties - Marcus, tall and broad-shouldered in a basketball jersey; Devon, wearing a vampire cape that looked infinitely cooler than Jackson's cop getup; and two others whose names Jackson couldn't remember, both dressed as characters from some video game he'd never played.
"Bro, your costume is sick," Marcus was saying to Patrick, giving him an elaborate handshake that involved at least three separate hand positions. "Where'd you even find those shorts? Whores-R-Us?"
"Not exactly, but close," Patrick laughed, doing a little spin that made the shorts ride up even more much to Jackson’s chagrin. "I even got them a size too small to really sell it."
The group erupted in appreciative hoots, and Jackson stood there at Patrick's elbow, waiting for someone to acknowledge his existence. Patrick was gesturing animatedly now, telling some story about a recent hookup he had with some jock at the gym, and the guys were eating it up, laughing and interjecting and creating this bubble of camaraderie that Jackson desperately wanted to be part of but had no idea how to enter.
He shifted his weight, the movement making his belt slip another inch down his hips. He reached to hike it up, plastic accessories clattering as he anxiously tried to prevent causing too much of a ruckus. But as he looked up, he realized that no one noticed… or if they did, they just didn’t care.
"So you guys hitting up Fat Jack’s after this?" Devon asked, and Patrick immediately jumped in with opinions about which bar had better drink specials, which DJ was playing tonight, and what bar would most likely lead to them getting laid with either the hottest studs or the ladies for those who were of the more hetero-persuasion. Jackson tried to find an opening, some place where he could contribute, but the topics moved too fast. The conversation was flowing around Jackson like water around a stone, natural and effortless for everyone except him.
This was how it always went. Patrick would invite him along, genuinely wanting Jackson there because Patrick was a good person who cared about his roommate and friend, but once they arrived Patrick would get absorbed into his actual social circle and Jackson would become an afterthought. It definitely wasn’t malicious – Patrick would occasionally come back to check in on him, make sure he was okay, offer to get Jackson an Uber home if he wanted to head out early – but in the moment, Jackson felt like furniture. The friend who showed up as decoration but didn't actually make an impact to the point where people would remember him the next day, let alone a month from now.
He tried to care about the conversation, tried to laugh at the right moments, but his mind kept drifting to how Patrick's hand had brushed his arm when they were walking into the house, how Patrick had glanced at him and said "we" when talking about their plans for later with his friends, how for just a moment in the car it had felt like this was something they were doing together just for them. But that moment was gone now, dissolved in the reality of Patrick's actual life, the one where he was popular and desired and constantly surrounded by people who understood how to be the kind of person Jackson had never figured out how to be.
The worst part was that Jackson had no one to blame but himself. He'd been invited and he’d said yes. He'd known exactly how this would play out because it played out this way every single time, and yet he kept showing up anyway because the alternative – staying home while Patrick went out and had fun without him – felt worse. At least this way he got to be near Patrick, even if "near" meant standing silently at his elbow while Patrick lived his life.
Devon was talking about some girl now, someone he'd hooked up with at a different party. Marcus was giving him shit about it, remarking about how she wasn’t even a 6 on a foggy night, which left Patrick laughing so hard he had to lean against the wall. As Jackson watched them talk, he realized with sudden clarity that he could probably leave right now and no one would notice for at least an hour based on how invested they all were in this conversation.
The thought sat heavy in his chest, mixing with the anxiety that had been building since they'd parked the car. He needed air… or a drink… or… both? Yeah, definitely both, and preferably somewhere he could sit down and stop feeling like an imposter in a costume that kept trying to fall off his body.
"I'm gonna grab a beer," Jackson said, the words coming out louder than he'd intended but still somehow barely audible over the music.
No response. The conversation continued without pause.
"Hey," Jackson tried again, this time touching Patrick's arm. "Patrick. I'm going to get a drink."
Patrick turned, his face still mid-laugh from whatever Devon had just said. "Oh, yeah man, cool. I think Marcus mentioned that the keg's out back?"
"Okay," Jackson said, purposely pausing for a moment in hopes that Patrick would say he'd come with him, or to ask Jackson to grab him something, or literally anything that would suggest he'd registered Jackson's existence beyond this brief exchange.
But Patrick was already turning back to the group, Marcus pulling him into some new tangent about one of their business classes.
"Okay," Jackson repeated to no one in particular, adjusting his sliding belt one more time. The plastic handcuffs clinked against his hip as he turned away from the group, weaving back into the crowd and heading deeper into the party in search of the keg that was supposedly out back somewhere. His glasses slipped down his nose and he pushed them up with one hand, the other clutching his belt to keep his pants from falling down entirely.
Behind him, he could still hear Patrick's laugh cutting through the noise, stinging like a bee sting the way it was bright, unburdened, and aimed at someone other than him.
The path to the backyard required Jackson to navigate what felt like a gauntlet designed specifically to catalog his inadequacies – the constant barrage of elbows and shoulders, the hallway where bodies pressed together in configurations that forced Jackson to turn sideways and shuffle through like he was apologizing for his own molecular structure, and then the kitchen where people leaned against counters with the kind of casual ownership that suggested they'd been coming to parties like this since their youth. Once again, he found himself mumbling unheard apologies to strangers as his plastic handcuffs continued to snag on other people’s costumes and nearly yank him backwards into someone’s drink. By the time he finally burst through the back door of the kitchen and into the backyard, it was less a graceful exit and more a stumbled escape. Once outside though, he breathed a sigh of relief as the cool night air hit his face like benediction.
The backyard spread before him in a tableau that would have been almost beautiful if Jackson hadn't been so determined to hate it – string lights crisscrossed overhead like a net meant to catch falling stars, their warm glow painting everything in shades of amber and gold, while a fire pit at the far end sent up sparks that briefly rivaled those stars before winking out. The space was crowded but navigable, people clustered in distinct pods of social activity that Jackson's mind automatically categorized as he scanned for the keg: the beer pong table in the center where eight guys in various states of athletic undress shouted and chest-bumped with the kind of aggressive camaraderie that made Jackson's stomach clench, the fire pit where a cluster of girls in costumes that prioritized showing off skin over warmth huddled together with their phones out, a handful of smokers leaning near the doorway into the house passing around cigarettes along with something that definitely wasn't tobacco, and finally – thankfully – the keg itself, a dented silver barrel set up near the property line and guarded by two specimens of masculine excellence who looked like they'd been grown in a lab.
Both were tall – not freakishly so, but enough that Jackson would have to look up to make eye contact (which he absolutely would not be doing) – and both wore the standard frat uniform of backwards baseball caps, tank tops that showed off deltoids Jackson couldn't even locate on his own body, and the kind of easy, spread-legged stance that suggested they'd never once in their lives worried about taking up too much space. They were deep in conversation about something football-related when Jackson approached, his hand instinctively reaching up to push his glasses back up his nose even though they'd only slid a millimeter while the plastic accessories on his costume announced his presence with a symphony of cheap rattling that made one of the bros glance up mid-sentence.
"Yo," the bro said – his name tag declared him "CHAD" in aggressively sloppy Sharpie – and his eyes performed the kind of judgmental head-to-toe assessment that Jackson associated with airport security or doctors' visits. "You here for beer?"
Jackson wanted to respond with something casual, something that would establish he wasn't intimidated even though he absolutely was, but what came out was just "Yeah, if that's cool," delivered in a voice that managed to make a simple request sound like he was begging.
"Duh, man, it's a party." Chad gestured to a stack of red cups with the magnanimity of a king granting access to the peasantry. "Help yourself."
The second bro - KYLE, his tag proclaimed – was in the middle of using the tap with the kind of intense focus usually reserved for bomb disposal, angling his cup with consistent micro-adjustments to achieve the perfect ratio of liquid to foam. Jackson hovered nearby, very aware of how Chad's gaze had landed on his costume and stuck there like gum on a shoe. Unsurprisingly, the weight of that attention was making Jackson's skin prickle with preemptive humiliation.
"Dude," Chad said, and the grin that spread across his face had the particular quality of someone who'd just thought of something hilarious at someone else's expense. "Is that supposed to be a cop costume?"
The question hung in the air like smoke, and Jackson felt heat crawl up his neck in a way that had nothing to do with the nearby fire pit. "Yeah," he managed, trying to inject some confidence into his voice and failing spectacularly. "It's just... I mean, it was a last minute costume."
"No shit bro, it's pretty bad," Kyle offered as he turned to face Jackson, stepping aside from the tap with his perfectly poured beer and having no awareness about how his observation was delivered with an unintended casual cruelty. "Like, no offense, but it looks like you were playing around in your dad’s closet or some shit."
"No, it was uh… twenty bucks I think at this costume shop in town," Jackson said, moving toward the tap and pressing down on the lever with more force than necessary, beer immediately gushing out in a foam-heavy stream that threatened to overflow his cup before he'd managed to fill it even halfway. "It's whatever though, it’s just a costume."
"Right, but like..." Chad exchanged a glance with Kyle, the kind of wordless communication that Jackson had observed between Patrick and his friends countless times – a shorthand that suggested years of shared experience that Jackson would never be privy to. "A cop should be intimidating, you know? Manly. Someone who walks into a room and everyone shuts the fuck up because they know that guy could ruin their night if he wanted to."
"Authoritative," Kyle added, taking a long drink from his beer like he was doing a commercial. "Like, when you see a real cop, there's this immediate... respect, I guess? Fear? Something that makes you straighten up and act right."
"And you..." Chad's gesture encompassed Jackson's entire physical reality – the baggy shirt that hung off his narrow shoulders, the pants that required constant vigilance to stay on his hips, the plastic badge that looked like it could break with the smallest amount of pressure, the toy gun that swung with all the threatening presence of a pool noodle. "You don't really give off that vibe, man. You look like someone's little brother who got lost on the way to a church youth group."
Jackson's grip tightened on his cup hard enough that the plastic crinkled, foam sloshing over the rim and coating his fingers in sticky warmth. The worst part – the absolute worst part – was that they weren't wrong. They weren't even being particularly cruel about it, just stating observations that anyone with functioning eyes could have made. Jackson didn't look intimidating. He looked like exactly what he was: a scared twenty-year-old kid who'd never won a fight, never commanded respect, never walked into a room and had people straighten up and take notice. He was background noise made corporeal, and these two strangers had taken approximately thirty seconds to see through him completely.
"It's just a costume," he said again, hating the defensive edge that crept into his voice, it just made him loathe how small he sounded along with dreading the fact that he had somehow thought coming to this party was a good idea. "I don't even really like cops. My friend asked me to come last minute and I didn’t have a lot of money, so this was all that I could afford. Something is better than nothing…"
"Nah, you should've just gone shirtless," Chad suggested, speaking with the air of someone believing himself to be dispensing valuable wisdom. "Show off what you're working with. I mean, obviously you’re no gym rat, but not all chicks like that. I mean, there’s tons of girls who get wet looking at dudes like Timothee Chalamet right?"
Kyle snorted into his beer, foam catching on his upper lip. "Bro, don’t set him up like that. C’mon, look at him… he'd catch pneumonia before he caught anyone's attention!"
They laughed – not mean-spirited really, just amused in that frat bro level of intellect that believed themselves to be quite clever – as Jackson took a long drink of his beer. Unlike Kyle’s perfectly poured beer, Jackson’s foam-to-liquid ratio was approximately 80/20, making the taste quite bitter and wrong in ways that had more to do with user error rather than the keg being nearly kicked. With this one-two punch of disasters under his belt, Jackson turned and walked away. He didn't say goodbye or offer any parting words to the men, because really, what was there to say? Thanks for confirming every insecurity I've ever had about myself? Appreciate you taking time out of your evening to make me feel like shit? Instead he just kept walking away, moving toward the far corner of the backyard where a scattering of abandoned lawn chairs sat like a graveyard for party casualties.
"Don't take it personal, bro!" Chad yelled after him, his voice carrying across the yard with the confidence of someone who'd never been on the receiving end of comments like that. "I was just giving you shit!"
Jackson didn't respond or even look back. He just kept walking past the beer pong table, where someone scored and immediately got mobbed by teammates who lifted him up like he'd won the Super Bowl, and a couple making out against the oak tree, who were displaying enough tongue and frantic hand exploration that Jackson found himself blushing, until he reached the isle of vacant lawn chairs. He instantly let out a sigh of relief as he collapsed into a chair, his cheap costume crinkling and bunching awkwardly as the polyester-velvet hybrid fabric stuck to his skin despite the cool air.
The party continued around him in waves of sound and motion – the beer pong game reached a crescendo of masculine celebration, the fire pit girls shrieked at something on someone's phone, and a group near the fence passed around a joint that glowed orange in the darkness like a tiny lighthouse – but Jackson felt separate from it all, enclosed in his own bubble of misery. He took another drink of his foamy beer and let his mind spiral down the familiar drain of self-loathing.
Why did I even come here?
It was the same question he asked himself every time, and the answer was always the same: because Patrick had asked. Because Patrick had looked at him with those bright eyes and that easy smile and said "you should totally come, it'll be fun," and Jackson – who knew better after playing this exact scenario out dozens of times before, who understood deep down that Patrick's invitations were born from kindness rather than desire – had said yes anyway. He had forced himself to get dressed up in this humiliating costume, gotten into Patrick’s car, and walked into this house knowing exactly how it would end: with him alone in a corner, nursing a drink he didn't want while Patrick was off somewhere having fun with his actual friends somewhere inside.
The thing about hope, Jackson thought as he watched the gladiator guy at the beer pong table land his shot and do a victory lap, was that it was both incredibly resilient and incredibly stupid. Every time Patrick invited him out, some small, idiotic part of Jackson's brain whispered maybe this time will be different. Maybe this time Patrick would stay by his side and they’d actually hang out together instead of Jackson becoming an afterthought the moment they crossed the threshold. Maybe this time Patrick would look at him the way he looked at the guys he brought home from bars, with want instead of friendly obligation.
But it was never different, and Jackson remained a perpetual fool praying for the impossible.
He drained half his beer in one long pull, the taste somehow getting worse with each sip, and let his eyes wander over the assembled crowd with the detached observation of an anthropologist studying a foreign culture. Everyone else seemed to have figured out some fundamental secret that Jackson had missed – how to move through the world with confidence, how to take up space without apologizing, how to exist in your own body without constantly feeling like you were wearing someone else's skin. Jackson had spent twenty years feeling like he was always on the wrong side of a window, watching life happen to other people while he stood in the cold pressing his face against the glass. Even the couple making out against the tree, oblivious to their surroundings, had achieved something Jackson couldn't imagine – that basic human connection that included a certainty that someone wanted to touch you and be touched by you.
Wallowing in self-pity, Jackson went ahead and finished his beer, which, to his relief, was finally more liquid than foam. Upon setting his cup down, the man let his head fall back against the chair with a resigned sigh. The foam from his final swig had coated his upper lip in a thick, cool layer, clinging to his skin like a white mustache, but Jackson barely noticed it. He was too busy contemplating the logistics of getting absolutely sloshed without having to endure another round of Chad and Kyle's commentary on his general inadequacy as a human being.
Beneath the foam, invisible to Jackson and anyone who might have glanced his way, something was happening. The pale skin above his upper lip – smooth and bare as it had been since puberty had cruelly decided Jackson wasn't the kind of man who grew facial hair worth mentioning – was darkening. Not dramatically, not all at once, but in subtle gradations, like someone was brushing shadows across his skin with an invisible paintbrush. Tiny points of deeper pigmentation appeared, scattered across the flesh between his nose and mouth, each one the budding follicle of a hair that had no business existing.
The follicles multiplied rapidly, spreading from the center of his upper lip outward toward the corners of his mouth, the shadow they created deepening from faint suggestion to visible presence. Individual hairs began to push through the skin – wispy at first, fine and barely there, the kind of patchy facial hair that Jackson had managed to grow exactly twice in his life and had immediately shaved off out of embarrassment. But this time, these hairs didn't stay wispy. They thickened as they emerged, each strand gaining diameter and substance, transforming from the tentative peach fuzz of adolescence into something darker, coarser, and undoubtedly full.
Then, a sudden bout of tingling emerged.
Jackson felt it suddenly and distinctly – a prickling sensation against his upper lip that cut through his distracted thoughts about beer and Chad and Kyle and his general misery. It felt like the foam was fizzing against his skin, tiny bubbles popping and tickling in ways that made his nose want to twitch. He let out a small chuckle at the sensation, bringing his hand up to his face.
"Weird," he muttered to himself, wiping the back of his hand across his upper lip to clear away the foam that was apparently having some kind of delayed reaction against his skin.
His hand came away wet with beer residue, naturally assuming that the tingling sensation had stopped. But despite his attempts, it didn’t – it only lowered its intensity as facial hair continued to push out of his skin and emerge like window-dressing to spruce up his rather unimpressive face.
With the foam gone, Jackson’s mustache was now forming itself with rapid yet methodical precision, filling in gaps and achieving density as the individual hairs multiplied and lengthened until they created a solid strip of growth that ran the full width of Jackson's upper lip. It wasn’t overly long to the point of something dramatic or handlebar-worthy, but it was undoubtedly substantial. It looked dense yet trimmed, the kind of chevron-shaped mustache that seemed carefully maintained at exactly this length for years. Ironically, it looked like the kind of mustache that belonged on a cop in a 1970s crime drama.
Movement in his peripheral vision suddenly made him turn his head, and that's when he saw her.
A girl – young, maybe eighteen, wearing a witch hat that had gone askew and a black dress that had probably looked cute three hours and several drinks ago – was stumbling across the yard toward him with the kind of determined wobble that Jackson recognized immediately as a prelude to disaster. Her face had gone gray-pale in the firelight, one hand pressed to her stomach, her eyes unfocused and watering, and she was making a beeline directly for the patch of grass approximately two feet from where Jackson sat.
"Oh no," Jackson said aloud, the faint tingling upper lip immediately forgotten in the face of imminent vomit. He stood up so fast his chair nearly tipped backward, his belt immediately trying to escape his non-existent hips while the plastic accessories clattered against the chair like wind chimes. "Oh no no no—"
The girl lurched the final few steps, bent over at the waist with her hat falling forward, and vomited directly onto the grass with the kind of violent productivity that suggested this wasn't her first purge of the evening.
"What the hell," Jackson said, jumping backward and nearly tripping over his own chair, his hands instinctively going to his pants to make sure they remained held up and didn’t try to make a break for freedom at the most inopportune time. "Are you okay? Do you need… Should I get someone?"
The girl heaved again, the sound now reminiscent of wet machinery, and Jackson took several more steps back because he had exactly zero training in how to deal with drunk vomiting strangers and even less desire to be anywhere near the splash zone. The smell hit him immediately – acrid and sour, mixed with something that might have been fruity vodka or possibly actual fruit – and he had to breathe through his mouth to avoid contributing his own beer to the growing puddle.
"'m fine," the girl managed between heaves, one hand waving vaguely in his direction while the other clutched her stomach. "'s just shots. Too many shots. Sarah said– hhhhrrrk…"
"Okay, well, do you want water? Or I could find your friends, or–"
The girl straightened up suddenly, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand in a gesture that was somehow both disgusting and oddly dignified. She then turned and looked at Jackson for the first time. Her eyes, bloodshot and watering, went wide with a kind of drunken wonder that Jackson immediately distrusted.
"Dude," she said, her voice filled with the kind of awe usually reserved for sunsets or particularly good pizza. "Dope mustache!"
The words hit Jackson like cold water. "What?"
"Your mustache," the girl said, pointing at his face with a finger that couldn't quite find its target. "It's like... retro. Old school. Very…" She paused, her face doing something complicated. "Very chhhRRRK–"
And then she was vomiting again, doubling over as Jackson's brain was too busy short-circuiting to process anything except the word mustache echoing in his skull like a fire alarm. Mustache. She'd said mustache. But he didn't have a mustache. He'd never been able to grow facial hair that amounted to anything more than sad wisps that made him look like he'd glued cat fur to his face. His genetics had deemed him unworthy of the kind of masculine facial hair that Patrick could grow in a week, that Chad and Kyle probably had to shave once a day to maintain. Jackson's upper lip had been smooth since birth and was supposed to stay that way.
Except… when he reached up to touch his face, he suddenly found himself touching against what felt like a dense rug taped to his upper lip. Jackson's hand instantly froze, his mind trying to process what his nerve endings were reporting. You didn't just grow things on your face from drinking shitty keg beer. That wasn't how biology worked. And yet the sensation persisted, reaching across his upper lip like something that didn't belong there but was making itself at home anyway.
"I have to go," Jackson said to the vomiting girl who was definitely not listening. "I have to– inside. Mirror. I need a mirror…"
He backed away from the scene, moving with immense haste to avoid the smell and the sound of the horrible sounds that continued to spill out of the woman’s mouth. Jackson only made a few feet before he nearly collided with the fire pit girls who had apparently gotten up to investigate the commotion. They gave him looks that suggested snottiness from him almost bumping into them, but Jackson’s usual anxiety about others’ perceptions of him paled in comparison to the anxiety he felt towards his appearance. With each step he took, his mind raced as he could feel his upper lip still tingling with that impossible sensation of presence.
He wove through the backyard crowd, moving faster now, his plastic accessories rattling with each step like some kind of demented percussion section. The beer pong game was reaching its climax, people chanting and pounding the table, but Jackson barely registered it. He just needed to get inside, find a bathroom, look in a mirror and see his own familiar face staring back at him, smooth-lipped and facial-hair-free.
But as he walked – as he moved past the fire pit where the flames cast dancing shadows across the yard – he caught his reflection in one of the large glass windows that ran along the back wall of the frat house. It was just a glimpse of his face superimposed over the chaos of the party inside, but enough to make him stop dead in his tracks.
Much to his horror, that girl hadn’t been wrong.
There was something on his face. Something dark… something that definitely had not been there when he'd checked himself in the car mirror thirty minutes ago. His fingers traced the shape of it in horrified fascination – a solid strip of hair that ran the entire width of his upper lip, each individual follicle distinct beneath his fingertips, the texture coarse and masculine and completely foreign.
"What the fuck," Jackson whispered, staring at his reflection in the glass door.
His hand was still pressed to his upper lip, fingers tracing the impossible hair, when someone bumped into him from behind. The collision was hard enough to send Jackson stumbling back into the backyard, and then someone – a guy wearing a crown and a large royal mantle who clearly wasn't watching where he was going – went sprawling directly into the cluster of girls standing near the fire pit.
"Watch it!" one of the girls shrieked, but her warning came too late. The king stumbled, arms windmilling, and his billowing fabric swung through the flames of the fire pit like it was reaching for warmth. The fabric caught fire immediately, racing up the synthetic material with haste.
"Oh my god!" another girl screamed, her voice hitting a pitch that could probably shatter glass. "Brody, you're on fire! Your cape is on fire!"
And then the backyard exploded into chaos – the man named Brody struggling to untie the cape while the girls nearby were useless as all they could do was just scream louder. Across the yard, the beer pong game came grinding to a halt as everyone turned to watch the unfolding disaster, with someone yelling about stop-drop-and-rolling while someone else yelled about water. Yet, despite all of the chaos, Jackson stood frozen with his hand still pressed to his impossible mustache, his brain trying desperately to process two impossible things at once and failing at both.
Somewhere in the distance, cutting through the screaming and the panic and the general atmosphere of disaster, Jackson suddenly heard a sound he knew better than his own heartbeat.
Patrick's laugh.
That sound was what finally broke through Jackson's paralysis and reminded him that he needed to get the fuck out of here.
But before he could move, before he could find for his friend and get help, Kevin from the keg came sprinting around the side of the house with a garden hose in hand. The sound of water spraying caused Jackson to look and see Kevin beginning to point the nozzle directly at him. As he realized that he was partially in the line of fire, Jackson had just enough time to think “oh no” before the hose began to hit him.
He gasped - actually gasped like he was drowning on dry land - and stumbled backward with his arms raised in a gesture that was part surrender and part futile attempt at protection. The water streamed down his face and fogged his glasses until the world became a blur of fire-colored light and screaming shape. It hit Jackson with the force of divine retribution, the frat bro wielding the hose with the kind of aggressive enthusiasm that suggested he'd been waiting his entire life for an emergency that required him to spray things. By the time someone finally yelled "You got it, the fire’s out!" Jackson was completely, thoroughly, and embarrassingly drenched.
"Sorry bro!" Kyle called, already coiling up the hose with the satisfied air of a hero who'd saved the day. "Didn’t mean for you to be collateral damage!"
Jackson didn't respond because he was too busy trying to remember how to breathe, his lungs doing something complicated that felt like they were trying to simultaneously inhale and expel water. He pulled his glasses off with shaking hands – they were completely useless at the moment, covered in water droplets that turned the world into an impressionist painting – and that's when he looked down at himself and felt reality take another sickening lurch sideways.
Something was happening to his costume. It was different, it was… changing.
Not metaphorically. Not in some abstract, poetic sense. It was actually changing, right there in front of his eyes, the cheap fabric transforming with a speed that defied everything Jackson understood about how matter was supposed to behave. The water that had soaked through his shirt was evaporating – no, it wasn’t evaporating, it was actually being absorbed into the fabric like it was a sponge. As more and more of the water vanished into the material, Jackson felt how the clothing was not only dry but also thickening as the sad polyester-velvet grew stiff and structured. Jackson watched in mute horror as the wrinkles smoothed themselves out like invisible hands were ironing him, the light blue color of the fabric deepened to something richer and more authoritative, and the loose, baggy fit pulled taut across his shoulders and chest like it was becoming vacuum-sealed to Jackson’s body.
Not knowing what to do, Jackson’s hands subconsciously moved up towards his chest as it reached out to touch the plastic badge pinned to his chest. But when his trembling fingers made contact the plastic was already changing - warming, hardening, and growing heavier in a way that made his stomach drop. The cheap toy badge that had probably cost three cents to manufacture was becoming metal under his touch, real metal that caught the firelight and gleamed with official authority. Jackson's thumb traced the edges and felt them sharpen from rounded plastic to precise angles. As his fingers grazed the rest of the back, Jackson could feel the surface develop texture and engraving to the point where the badge no longer seemed like an afterthought but an essential part of this ensemble.
"What," Jackson whispered, his voice barely audible over the renewed chaos of the party – the guy with the cape was fine apparently, his friends clustered around him with the kind of dramatic concern that suggested this would be an incredible story tomorrow. The fire pit was now being carefully monitored by people who’d suddenly become extremely interested in fire safety while across the yard, the beer pong game had resumed with even more enthusiasm. "What is—"
A sudden breeze around his thighs caused Jackson to look down, discovering in horror that his pants had finally given up entirely. The waistband, which had been fighting a losing battle all evening despite having a belt, finally surrendered to the combined forces of gravity and whatever impossible transformation was occurring. His pants had dropped straight down his legs and pooled around his ankles, leaving him standing in the middle of the backyard in his boxers – faded gray things with a hole near the waistband that he'd been meaning to replace for months – while approximately forty people turned to stare.
The laughter was immediate and brutal, a wave of sound that crashed over Jackson with physical force. Someone wolf-whistled while another yelled encouragement for him to moon them with the kind of glee that suggested they'd been waiting all night for someone to humiliate themselves. The beer pong bros doubled over, one of them laughing so hard he dropped his cup. Even the fire pit girls, who'd been so concerned about the once on-fire man thirty seconds ago, were now pointing and giggling behind their hands.
"Oh my god," Jackson said, bending down to grab his pants with movements made clumsy by panic and mortification, his face burning with heat that had nothing to do with the nearby fire. "Oh my god oh my god–"
He yanked the pants up with enough force that he nearly lost his balance, hopping on one foot and then the other like some kind of demented flamingo. While this was happening, his glasses were still clutched in one hand and threatening to fall into the grass. The pants resisted for a moment – they felt oddly heavier than they should, denser like they'd gained mass during their brief encounter with the ground – but Jackson managed to haul them up over his hips and immediately reached for where his belt should be to secure them.
Except the belt was different now. Jackson's fingers encountered leather instead of cheap synthetic material, thick and heavy and real in a way that the costume belt definitely hadn't been. He looked down – squinting because his glasses were still off and everything was blurry – and saw not the flimsy thing he'd put on in his apartment but an actual utility belt, black leather studded with metal fixtures and weighted down with equipment that definitely had not been there a moment ago.
His pants were different too. The baggy, wrinkled polyester had transformed into proper uniform pants – heavy-duty material with a sharp crease down each leg, the kind of starchy pants that looked like they could withstand a natural disaster and still maintain their shape. They sat lower on his hips now, properly fitted instead of constantly sliding, held in place by the utility belt that Jackson was almost afraid to examine too closely because he could feel things attached to it – heavy things that shifted and pressed against his body with every movement.
"This isn't real," Jackson said aloud, his voice shaking. "This isn't– this can't be…"
But his fingers were already exploring the belt like they had a mind of their own, moving from fixture to fixture with growing dread. The plastic handcuffs that had been a nuisance the entire night were no more, replaced with cold, heavy, metal cuffs that suggested that they could actually restrain someone. On top of that, he discovered a radio holster with a piece clipped into it that ran up to his shoulders and was clipped into his epaulet along with a pepper spray canister, flashlight and a baton holder with an actual– no, he wasn't going to think about that. And then, worst of all, his fingers encountered the unmistakable shape of a gun holster.
Jackson's entire body went cold, a chill that started in his chest and radiated outward until his fingers were numb. Needing both hands for this, he set his glasses down on a nearby table before he grabbed the holster to confirm what his fingers were telling him. As he felt the snap release give way, the man reached inside and found that the weight there was substantial, real, and wrong in every possible way. He pulled it out slowly, every survival instinct screaming at him to put it back and pretend this wasn't happening.
The gun sat in his hands like an accusation. It was real – undeniably, impossibly real – metal and heft that spoke of lethality. Jackson had never held a real gun in his life, he’d had actively avoided them ever since his youth when his dad and uncle would try to take him hunting. As such, it was a complete nightmare to find himself standing in a frat house backyard with what appeared to be an actual loaded service weapon in his shaking hands.
"Oh fuck," he whispered, his mind immediately jumping to worst-case scenarios. Accidental discharge. Someone getting hurt. Him going to prison for a crime he didn't even understand how he'd committed. The gun in his hands felt like it was burning, like if he held it any longer it would somehow fuse to his palms and he'd be stuck with it forever. "Fuck fuck fuck…"
He shoved the gun back into its holster with fumbling, graceless movements, his fingers refusing to cooperate until he finally heard the snap click shut. His heart was hammering against his ribs hard enough to hurt, adrenaline flooding his system with the kind of fight-or-flight response that was one hundred percent choosing flight. He needed to leave – more specifically, he needed to find Patrick, get the fuck out of this house, and figure out what was happening because clearly something was very very wrong here.
Jackson grabbed his glasses off the table and, after drying them off with his now completely dry outfit, shoved them onto his face with enough force that they dug into the bridge of his nose. The world snapped back into focus, unfortunately, which meant he could now see in perfect clarity the dozens of people still staring at him, some giggling, some just confused, all of them witnessing what had to be the worst night of Jackson's entire life.
He started walking – not quite running, but close – toward the back door of the house. His pants stayed up this time, held in place by the tightened utility belt that seemed to weigh about forty pounds and made every step feel like wading through quicksand. The equipment rattled and shifted with each movement, the gun holster pressing into his hip as a persistent reminder that he was now apparently armed at a college party, which was either a terrible costume choice or grounds for immediate arrest and expulsion depending on whether any of this was actually real or he was having some insane psychotic break.
The problem was that it all felt real. The weight of the belt, the texture of the uniform pants, the cold metal of the badge on his chest – it all felt exactly how Jackson imagined real police equipment would feel, with none of the hollow plasticky cheapness of his original costume.
He was almost to the back door – he could see the kitchen through the glass, people clustered around the counter doing shots – when he had to pass by a cluster of smokers huddled near the house. Three guys, college-aged, shared what was definitely not only tobacco based on the slightly sweet, skunky smell that immediately made Jackson's eyes water. They were deep in conversation about something, passing both joints and cigarettes between each other in a practiced rotation, completely blocking the door Jackson desperately needed to get through.
Jackson tried to edge past them, mumbling "excuse me" in a voice that came out barely above a whisper, but they didn't even acknowledge him and thus didn’t move. They just kept talking and smoking and existing in Jackson's path like they were specifically placed there by a universe that had decided tonight was the night to make his life a living hell.
He cleared his throat and tried again. Nothing. Once again Jackson tried, this time louder. Still nothing. The smoke from the men was getting thicker, curling around his face in ways that made his throat itch and his eyes burn. In response, Jackson felt something shift in his chest – not quite anger, not quite frustration, but some combination of the two that was rapidly approaching a boiling point.
"Get out of the way, I’m trying to go inside," he said, but this time the words came out wrong.
It wasn’t as if he had said a completely different sentence. Rather, it was the way he said it which was wrong. Out of nowhere, his voice had dropped at least an octave, maybe two, shifting from his usual anxious tenor into something that sounded like it was being dragged across gravel.
The smokers turned to look at him with expressions that suggested they were seeing him for the first time, and Jackson watched their faces change – from casual indifference, surprise, and finally to something that looked oddly like respect.
"Oh shit, sorry officer," one of them said, immediately stepping aside and motioning for his friends to do the same. They scattered like Jackson had pulled his gun on them rather than simply speaking, the joint being snuffed out and disappearing into someone's pocket with practiced speed as the other two men stomped out their cigarettes.
Jackson stared at them, his hand going to his throat like he could physically grab his voice and pull it back to normal. "Huh–" he started to say, but the words came out in that same gravelly bass, each syllable reverberating in his chest in a way that felt fundamentally wrong. "I'm not a real cop, this is just–"
"It’s ok, officer," the same guy said, giving Jackson a nervous smile. "We were just leaving anyway. Have a good night."
They then fled, slipping past Jackson and disappearing into the party with the kind of speed that suggested they'd had practice avoiding law enforcement. Jackson stood there in the space they'd vacated, his hand still pressed to his throat, trying to reconcile the sound that had come out of his mouth with the voice he'd heard in his head. It hadn't felt different when he spoke. The words had formed normally, his vocal cords had vibrated the way they always did, but the sound that emerged had been completely foreign.
"No no no," he said, and the bass rumble that came out made his chest vibrate. "I don’t want this to change too, don't–"
But even as he said it he could feel it happening, something was in his throat – possibly his vocal cords thickening or lengthening or doing whatever biological impossibility was required to produce this new voice. It felt like he was undergoing a second puberty compressed into thirty seconds – that same sense of his body betraying him, becoming something he didn't recognize, transforming without his permission or input. Jackson tried to cough, to clear his throat, to do anything that might reset whatever was happening, but his voice stayed low and authoritative even as panic made his thoughts spiral higher and faster.
He needed to find Patrick now – before anything else changed, before he lost the ability to explain what was happening, before this nightmare escalated into something even worse than standing in a backyard with his pants down and a real gun sitting on his waist.
Jackson shoved through the back door and into the kitchen, the sudden noise and heat of the crowded indoor party hitting him like a physical wall. There were bodies everywhere, pressed together in ways that made navigation nearly impossible, the air thick with sweat and alcohol. He tried to move through the crowd towards where he vaguely remembered seeing Patrick earlier, but the utility belt made him clumsy – he wasn't used to the weight distribution and thus kept misjudging how much space his hips now took up. This in turn frequently left him bumping into people with the heavy equipment.
"Watch it!" someone yelled when Jackson's radio holster caught on their costume.
"Sorry," Jackson rumbled in his new voice, "I'm just trying to–"
Out of nowhere, a couple stumbled into his path – both of them making out with enough intensity that they were effectively blind – and Jackson had to stop short to avoid collision. He instinctively took a step backward to give them space, not thinking or paying attention to his surroundings, which caused him to grimace as his ass collided with the sharp corner of the kitchen island.
The impact sent a jolt through his entire lower body, pain blooming from the point of contact. Yet, that pain wasn’t the worst part of the situation, as another sensation followed – one of pressured warmth, one that made it clear that something was happening to Jackson’s body once more. His glutes, which had always been flat and unremarkable to the point that he'd sometimes looked at his profile in mirrors and wondered if he'd somehow been born without an ass, suddenly felt present in a way they never had before.
Jackson's hand flew to his backside automatically, some instinct driving him to assess the damage, where his palm suddenly made contact with his rear sooner than expected. His ass was growing, actually, physically growing, swelling outward with each passing second like someone was inflating it like a balloon. The sensation was bizarre and uncomfortable but undeniably real. There was a pressure building in his glutes as beneath the surface: muscle fibers multiplied impossibly fast, fat redistributed itself, and the entire structure of his posterior began rearranging itself into something that could charitably be called an ass and more accurately be called a fucking shelf.
"What is happening to me," Jackson whispered in his deep bassy voice, both hands now pressed to his expanding backside like he could somehow push the growth back in or make it stop through sheer force of will. But his ass kept growing and swelling until his uniform pants – which had been incredibly loose and ill-fitting moments ago - were suddenly painted on, the fabric stretched so tight across his new glutes that Jackson could feel every seam of the now-legitimate police uniform pressing into his skin.
The couple finally disentangled and stumbled away toward what Jackson assumed would be a bedroom, but he couldn't move in the wake of his newest transformation. To make matters worse, his center of gravity had clearly shifted with the addition of all this new mass to his backside, throwing off his balance in ways that made walking suddenly require conscious thought. He took a tentative step forward and immediately felt his ass move – not just shift with his gait the way it was supposed to, but actually bounce and jiggle with enough force that Jackson nearly tripped over his own feet from the vibration.
"Oh my god," he rumbled, taking another careful step and feeling his massive glutes sway. "Oh my god this is–"
He bumped into someone - a girl in a devil costume - and his ass pressed against her hip with enough force that she stumbled forward.
"Hey!" she yelled, whirling around to glare at him. "Watch where you're… oh." Her eyes widened as she took in his uniform, his badge, and the ill-fitting aura of newfound yet accidentally-acquired authority. "Sorry, officer. My bad."
"I'm not… I didn't mean to–" Jackson tried to apologize but she was already disappearing into the crowd, leaving him standing there with his still-sore ass jutting out behind him like it required its own zip code. He tried to turn, to navigate toward the front of the house in search of Patrick, but his ass swung with the movement once more and collided with someone's drink, sending it flying.
"Dude, what the fuck!" a guy in a zombie costume yelled, beer dripping down his front. "You just…" He looked up, saw Jackson's uniform and badge, and immediately backed down. "Sorry, dude. My fault. I wasn't looking."
Jackson wanted to explain that no, it was definitely his fault since he wasn't used to having an ass that could be registered as a lethal weapon, but the words died in his throat as he caught sight of his reflection in a mirror hanging near the kitchen entrance. His pants were obscenely tight now, the fabric molded to his glutes like a second skin, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. His ass looked like something you'd see on a porn star or a professional athlete – huge, round, muscular, and sitting high and proud instead of the flat nothing he was accustomed to.
He turned carefully this time, trying to account for his new dimensions, as he started making his way toward the front door. No matter how much he walked, each step felt like an adventure in physics – his ass swayed and bounced while his thighs had to spread wider to accommodate the mass. People parted for him without being asked, their eyes going wide when they saw his uniform and badge, giving him space that Jackson had never been granted in his entire life.
It should have felt good, it should have felt oddly powerful. Instead it just felt wrong, like the costume was wearing him and each consecutive change was removing a piece of whatever made him Jackson and replacing it with something else entirely...
If you're interested in reading the rest of the story, the entire 31,000 word novella has just been released on my Patreon. Click here if you'd like to check it out. I hope you enjoy if you do!