Captain of the Party
Read from the beginning at I Don’t Own My Likeness 1.
The bar’s back door swung open with a creak and a gust of Indiana humidity. Vince stepped onto the patio still in costume, the spandex suit clinging to him like it had been airbrushed on. The Omega Corps insignia on his chest caught the shimmer of a thousand tangled Christmas lights strong across a series of haphazardly arranged trellises. A pair of tiki torches illuminated the DJ in the corner.
The music shifted like they’d been waiting for him. The beat dipped into something smoother and funkier, with a pulse timed for his entrance. Someone shrieked, the pitched glee of a fan spotting royalty in the wild.
Heads turned. Laughter and chatter fell back just a notch. Applause started, light and scattered at first before expanding in a ripple that moved outward like he’d tossed a stone into the middle of the crowd.
“The Captain has landed!” a voice near the bar shouted.
Vince couldn’t help it. He grinned. Two fingers rose in a casual salute. The motion came without thinking now. It was muscle memory.
He walked forward through the crowd like parting a sea of sweat and denim and leather. This bar’s clientele skewed older and bulkier—bears in harnesses and tank tops, bandanas tucked into back pockets, grizzled drag queens holding court in sequins that drank up the patio lights. But everyone clocked him, and everyone made room.
A man stepped in front of him. Younger, maybe late twenties, with glitter-streaked cheeks, lashes like sails, and a mesh tank that did nothing to hide his gym membership or his steroid habit. He looked Vince up and down like a cocktail menu.
“Can I buy you a drink, sir?” the man asked, the word sir sliding out like a dare.
Vince shook his head like he was still standing on a bridge set under studio lights, making command decisions. “Only synthale when I’m on duty,” the character answered for him.
The man grinned and disappeared. Vince turned slightly, just enough to let the crowd catch a full view of the insignia on his chest.
Someone behind him murmured, “Jesus, it really is him.”
It wasn’t, of course. Not really. But no one seemed to care.
They swarmed fast. A clutch of younger men converged around Vince, grinning, shirtless, and glossy with sweat. Two wore tight jeans rolled high above the ankle, and a third had on leather shorts that barely contained him. The fourth was encased from neck to ankles in a rubber bodysuit styled in Spacedock Omega’s signature charcoal and silver, complete with a high collar, gold shoulder stripes, and a molded badge across the sternum.
“Oh my God,” the rubber one said, clutching Vince’s forearm like it might detach and float away. “I used to jerk off to you in college.”
The others cackled. Vince gave a laugh too, short and reflexive, like a cough you pass off as a chuckle.
“I hope I performed well,” he said. It came out smoothly, but his face betrayed the faintest flinch. No one noticed, or if they did, they didn’t care.
Phones came out. Angles were checked. Filters toggled.
“Can we get one with the line?”
He hesitated, blinking as flashes already popped without warning. Then he lifted one hand, slowly and palm out like a Roman centurion. Bedroom eyes, square jaw, and the faintest smirk that launched a thousand GIFs.
“Activate the Hyperspace Nexus,” he purred into the nearest camera lens.
The rubber one squealed. Shutters clicked, and pictures were taken. Maybe three. Maybe five.
And then, as if the scene had ended and someone backstage had yelled ‘cut,’ they moved on. No thank yous. No names. No follow-up. Hands that had been on his pecs slid away. A thumb grazed his ass and then vanished. The crowd swallowed them whole, already metabolizing them into the dancefloor.
A low, pulsing synth track beat through the patio. The scent of sweat, beer, and leather musk hung heavy in the night air. Someone passed behind Vince, brushing the back of his shoulder without stopping.
He looked around, vaguely disoriented, like someone waking up on the wrong set.
The men hadn’t wanted him. They wanted the image. The suit. The voice. The idea of him from a time they remembered more fondly than he did. He adjusted his collar with fingers that suddenly felt too warm inside the gloves. The spandex tugged at his hips with every breath.
A new figure emerged from the blur, stockier than the last foursome and older, too, but hot in that deliberate, beard-oil-and-boot-polish way. He wore a tight red tank top stretched across his wrestler’s gut, tiny gym shorts, and boots with the laces undone. His salt-and-pepper beard was sculpted like a prop from a better-budgeted show.
Vince squinted. Recognition buzzed. “I know you,” he said before he could stop himself.
The man grinned. “Probably. I’m in your DMs. Kidding. Kinda.”
It clicked: some gay bear podcaster-slash-vanlifer who did political commentary in cut-offs while showing off his husband’s sourdough. They’d started out in a tiny home near Joshua Tree and traveled the country, ambling from one gay festival to the next. Vince had stumbled across one of their videos during a late-night scroll spiral. They had half a million followers. Probably more now.
“Big fan,” the guy said. “Hey, mind going live for like 30 seconds? Just say hi to the followers.”
Vince opened his mouth, but the phone was already up, the red recording dot already blinking. A notification pinged: LIVE.
He shifted his weight and found the light. Hands went to his hips, gloves catching the glint of blue LEDs strung across the bar patio. He angled slightly so the Omega Corps badge on his left breast shimmered.
“Say hi to the one and only Derek Vesta,” the influencer announced in his host voice. “Live from Fort Wayne PrideNight. Still looking like a whole damn galaxy.”
Vince gave the camera a nod. Not too broad, not too needy. Just a rehearsed tilt that said, I know I’m the reason you logged on.
The comment flood began almost instantly:
HE’S STILL HOT.
Captain Daddy.
That SUIT tho.
OMG I had the action figure with the ripcord backpack.
Space DILF confirmed.
The bear chuckled, angling the phone to capture Vince’s pecs, torso, and thighs in rapid succession. “You’re gonna blow up again, dude,” he said quietly, off camera but close enough Vince could feel the heat on his shoulder. “This generation’s obsessed with uniforms. Symbols. Discipline. Especially when it’s a little…” He made a vague gesture around Vince’s bulge. “Authoritarian.”
Vince kept his eyes on the lens. He wasn’t sure which camera it was. They all looked the same. Every eye, the same little glass god.
“Discipline’s back in fashion, I guess,” he said. The smile he gave was soft around the edges, a little sad, a lot aroused.
The influencer drifted off into the thicket of bodies, leaving Vince orbiting alone at the center of his own universe. He began to move across the patio as if surveying new terrain on some distant planet, where the air was humid with pheromones and the native species hoarded admiration like heat. A throuple of leather bears woofed at him from the shadow of a Ficus. Someone near the beer trough gave him a crisp little salute, and a shirtless guy with glow-in-the-dark suspenders lifted his drink in quiet worship.
Two mid-fifties men in leather garrison caps, matching, polished, clearly married, stopped him with polite reverence. One clapped him on the shoulder with the solemnity of a flag ceremony. “We just want to say how proud we are of you, son,” he said. “It means a lot, you showing up for your gay fanbase.”
Vince gave a measured nod, voice pitched in his commanding register. “It’s an honor to serve.”
He kept moving. The crowd gave way like mist. A man with eyeliner and a white harness stepped up and offered his palm. Nestled within was a tiny pill, neon pink and shaped like a lightning bolt. “It’s clean. I got it from Baltimore.” His voice was low, confidential. “Help you relax a little.”
Vince took it with two fingers, nodding gravely. “Appreciate that.” He held it in his palm until the man turned away, then slipped it into the inner seam of his glove.
He wasn’t going to take it, but it felt good to be offered.
Then the DJ scratched the track. Static jerked through the speakers. Music dropped out, and a voice rang out over a mic somewhere by the bar.
“I’ll bet we can get our special guest, Space Daddy Derek Vesta, to say a few words, right?”
The response was immediate. “VES-TA. VES-TA. VES-TA.” The chant rolled over itself, not ironic or detached. Sincere and rhythmic, if slightly unhinged.
Vince found the riser. Just a wooden pallet stacked with LED ropes and discarded beer cups. He stepped up and raised both arms.
The noise exploded. Hands reached for him, some to touch, some to steady him. Fingers grazed the suit’s stretched seams, his thighs, his ass. Someone boldly palmed the shape of his groin. The modesty insert held its ground.
He stood still, eyes closed. He breathed in the heat, the noise, the hunger.
Then he opened them and looked out over the patio as if it were a command deck.
“You’re all the finest crew this Captain could ask for.”
He meant it.
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