It Still Fits 

Read from the beginning at I Don’t Own My Likeness 1.

Vince knelt over the plastic storage bin like a man digging up his own coffin. His knees cracked audibly as he crouched, and he muttered under his breath. “Forty-five and falling apart.” His fingers fumbled with the lid for a moment before he pried it off and set it aside. The inside smelled like melted plastic and dryer sheets—a unique combination of scents that only clung to forgotten costumes and boxed-up lives. 

He cast a glance toward the linen closet in the hall. In the back, sealed away in a double-lined garment bag for posterity, lay the original Derek Vesta suit, the one from the Spacedock Omega pilot, back when everything had been fresh, promising, and of cinema quality. He didn’t dare slip into that one. That suit was sacred. A museum piece. He was headed to Fort Wayne Pride, not the Smithsonian. 

The one in the bin from Randy’s storage unit was the TV seasons workhorse, version 6.3 of the Omega Corps uniform. Cheaper fabric, mass produced, with reinforced seams to hold up under weeks of grueling second-unit action shots and planet hell nonsense. It was the one he’d worn most often, especially in the last two seasons when the budgets tightened, and they stopped designing new variants. That version had seen the most press photos, the most convention panels, and the most fan selfies. 

He tugged the plastic garment bag out of the bin. It was wrapped in another bag, sealed tightly, like a prophylactic. His thumb traced the edge of the zipper, and for a second he considered closing the bin back up. But his other hand moved on its own, gripping the tab and pulling it slowly down. 

The sound of the zipper was surprisingly loud in the quiet bedroom. A soft fffwwip, like air escaping from a pressurized space pod. Inside, the spandex glimmered faintly in the amber of the bedside lamp. He hadn’t turned on the overhead light, maybe because this moment felt too intimate, too strange. Too close to undressing. The suit looked exactly as he remembered it. Charcoal body, cobalt trim, the angular metallic insignia still sharp-edged and untouched by time. No runs. No snags. No signs of decay. 

He lifted it out by the shoulders carefully, as if he were helping someone to their feet. It had weight to it, not heavy, exactly, but dense, meant to keep its shape whether worn or not. 

Then came the smell. Faint but unmistakable: the ghost of stage light burn, old makeup powder, and hours of performance sweat. Time collapsed in on itself. 

The suit was still perfect. 

He stripped slowly, more like he was undressing someone else than peeling off his own clothes. Each item came off with the faint rustle of fabric against skin and the slight stiffness of unlaundered cotton. His bare chest, visible in the bedroom’s standing mirror, still held definition, but it had softened somewhat as discipline became more of a memory than a practice. He didn’t hate how he looked, exactly. But he didn’t recognize it as “Derek Vesta” fit, either. 

The hum of the air conditioner was the only sound. Even the traffic outside seemed muted, like the world knew to leave him alone for this. A man and a uniform. A body and the idea it used to represent. 

He stepped into the suit one leg at a time, careful not to rush. The spandex clung to his thighs, tight and elastic, then to his hips, hugging each curve like it had been waiting for him. The sensation made him pause. He hadn’t remembered how intimate it felt. How tactile. The inside of the suit was smooth and slightly cool, but it warmed fast against his skin as he tugged it higher. 

He adjusted the material over his hips, then slowly zipped the front halfway. The fabric gave, but it never lost its trademark tension, like the thing had a memory of its own. His breath caught, not from motion or effort, but from how it felt. Like being held by something—someone—that knew him and had missed him. 

He rolled his shoulders back and smoothed the fabric down across his torso. The collar snapped neatly into place and brushed against the uneven edges of his haggard beard. He thumbed the insignia on the chest, still intact, the metal slightly dulled from wear but no less commanding. Once, millions of viewers had known what the Omega Corps crest represented. Some still did, but only superfans and convention devotees. 

Then the feeling shifted. There was a twinge in his pelvis. The clinging suit stretched over his groin and his ass in a way that was unmistakably… erotic. Vince stood still. He blinked. 

“That’s never happened before,” he muttered aloud, eyebrows raised. His voice was neutral and curious, not ashamed. “Weird.” 

He turned, studying the fit in the mirror. It wasn’t obscene, not quite. But the smooth spandex reflected light and exaggerated everything. The tightness in the butt. The subtle outline at the crotch. He didn’t look like a man; he looked like a sculpted icon of one. 

And he was responding to it. 

He blinked again, then shook his head. “Nope,” he said, half to himself. “Sorry, Fort Wayne gays, not this captain.” 

He crossed to the garment bag and unzipped a side pouch. Tucked in beside a backup pair of gloves and a spare insignia badge was the old stage trick—the modesty insert. Flesh toned foam, vaguely anatomical, like a ballet belt with aspirations. 

“This oughta do the trick.” 

He unzipped the suit, slid the insert into place, adjusted himself a few times, and then zipped back up. The difference was immediate. The tension at his groin faded slightly, the pressure disguised and reshaped into a clean, idealized bulge—manly, but inoffensive, like the suit had always been meant to display masculinity, just not… his. 

He stared at his reflection again, this time at the asymmetry between what he felt and what the world would see. Internally a mess of nerves and arousal, externally a smooth, commanding hero. He tilted his hips slightly, adjusting the view. 

“Jesus,” he whispered. But he didn’t look away. He stepped back from the mirror. For a second, it wasn’t him looking. It wasn’t Vince Karros, 45, washed-up, a man who hadn’t booked a job in months and lived on freezer meals and false hopes. 

It was the suit. The suit stared back first. It filled the mirror with confidence. Its lines curved over his body like they’d been engineered out of something much smarter than cloth and thread. The insignia on his chest caught the dying afternoon light and gleamed. The high collar framed his neck. His shoulders stood higher than they had in weeks. 

And then… there was Vince. He blinked, and the man came into focus. His face, his eyes, his expression under the weight of the thing that remembered him better than he remembered himself. Was it a trick of the light? Or maybe the tailoring. Something about the way the suit compressed him and sculpted his torso, the way the artificial bulge corrected his silhouette. He looked untouched, as if no time had passed. 

He looked like Vesta. 

Not the Vesta from the final season, tired and cynical from galactic war. No, this was season four Vesta, a lean-jawed sentinel. He was a man whose enemies respected him, whose lovers pined for him, and whose crew believed in him even when the stars turned against them all. 

Vince studied his own reflection for flaws, but the mirror kept lying kindly. His hand drifted toward his jawline, cheeks shaded with stubble and chin bedraggled with untamed beard. He almost shaved right then and there. Instead, he adjusted the collar. The fabric snapped neatly back into place with a practiced flick of his fingers. Muscle memory from years ago. 

He leaned forward, resting both hands on the dresser, squinting at the face in the mirror. The eyes weren’t quite the same. A little darker, maybe. A little more tired. But everything else was there. 

He straightened again. Shoulders back. Chin raised. 

“Well, Captain,” he addressed to the man in the mirror. “Let’s get this over with.” 

The voice wasn’t quite his own. Not the casual, slightly husky drawl he used in everyday life. This voice was deeper. More precise. It carried gravity. It was practiced. It was familiar. It had been trained into him with 12-hour shoots and a dialect coach and months of hitting the same 10 lines over and over until they burned into his vocal cords. 

It was Derek Vesta’s voice. 

He held the gaze. No smile. No smirk. Then, quietly, he nodded once, like an officer being handed his orders. The mirror nodded back. 

He leaned in to check his hair. It was a little wild at the crown. He ran his fingers through it, flattening the worst of the flyaways, but he didn’t reach for product. Not yet. There wasn’t a camera waiting or a PA counting the minutes of downtime, just a window and a few late sunbeams. But he wanted it right, anyway. 

As he stepped back from the mirror, his expression shifted. The smile that found its way to his face wasn’t crooked or smug. It wasn’t for show or asking for applause. It just settled there, quiet and small, like a warm coin dropped into a jacket pocket. 

There was a trace of pride. A trace of something he hadn’t felt in a long time. 

It felt right. 

He reached for the zipper at his neck, fingers brushing the collar. Then he paused and let his hand fall away. 

He looked down at the smooth geometry of the uniform, the matte gleam of the synthetic fiber, the way the light picked up the faint silver threading around the shoulder seams. He flexed a bit at the waist. No pull. No sag. It fit like a second skin. Better, maybe. It made everything look purposeful and contained. 

“Might as well keep it on,” he said to no one. Not out of vanity or nostalgia. But because it felt safe. 

The suit gave him structure and direction. Like a role, at last, that didn’t need to be auditioned for. No casting director could take this one away. No network note could replace him midseason. 

He crossed the room and pulled open the blinds. The light outside had gone gold. Apartment buildings across the street threw long shadows. Cars drifted beneath on slow, familiar routes. There was nothing remarkable about the view. 

And yet he stood there in full uniform, arms relaxed at his sides, the chest insignia catching the sunset. It shimmered faintly in the dimming light. He didn’t move or speak. He just watched the sun go down, breathing slowly and rhythmically, almost like the suit was doing it for him. 

He didn’t even think about taking it off. He stayed there, watching. 

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