October 2022
Boston, Massachusetts
"How do I look?"
Sören peeks into Anthony's bedroom door. Anthony makes a "come in" gesture, then spins his desk chair around to glance up and down at Sören once he steps in.
"You look good," Anthony says.
The truth is, Sören could be wearing a Snuggie and a fart cloud and Anthony would probably still find him irresistible, but Anthony keeps that thought to himself - again - and he smiles reassuringly, pretending that it doesn't hurt to see Sören is head over heels for someone else. Someone who isn't him.
Sören is wearing a black Icelandic lopapeysa with a white and blue triangle design at the chest and upper sleeves, and a pair of faded indigo jeans that almost exactly match the blue of his sweater, with his usual Doc Martens. Sören's wild black curls tumble down over his shoulders. With his long curly hair, his beard, his brown eyes and full lips, he gets told he looks like Jon Snow a lot, but there are some differences - under the shirt Anthony knows Sören has full-sleeve tattoos - ocean waves down his left arm, flames up his right arm, leading out to a fire phoenix and a water phoenix on his back; Sören also has pierced nipples. And faint top surgery scars.
Anthony and Sören met six years ago, in 2016, when Sören began an online program that paired pre-transition guys with older, more experienced trans men as mentors through their transition. Anthony had come out in 2010 and was matched with Sören. They became close friends, a friendship that has lasted since then. When Sören needed to leave Iceland to escape his abusive aunt and uncle, Anthony offered to let Sören stay with him in Boston and help with his work visa, and they were still living together. Anthony was himself an expat from the UK, who practiced civil rights law for the American Civil Liberties Union. He's been single since the end of Obama's second term and while he's had feelings for Sören since he was Sören's mentor, he didn't think they were returned and he was afraid to say anything about it in case it ruined their friendship, and destabilized their living situation.
Six months ago, Sören had met Jayden aka Jayde at a sci-fi/fantasy convention in New York City. They became friends, bonding over mutually living in Boston, sharing Star Trek and other common fandoms, and hobbies like hiking, as well as both being transmasc. While Anthony didn't feel replaced, Sören was spending a lot of time with Jayde and Sören had confessed he had a crush on Jayde. For months Sören had been keeping it to himself...
...but tonight, Sören had resolved to say something, while he and Jayde are on a "friends date" at Starbucks and then going to see Hellraiser. So he was more concerned than usual about how he looked, and Anthony was even letting him borrow some cologne for the occasion, which he watches Sören spritz on now. If all goes well, Sören will probably be spending the night with Jayde, whether they go back to his studio or come here to Sören's bedroom, while Anthony tries not to listen and hides his pain.
Sören leans in to give Anthony a hug. "Wish me luck," he says.
Anthony gives him a squeeze. "Good luck. Hope you get laid," he lies. Anthony breathes in - he likes the way his cologne smells on Sören. Bitterly he thinks to himself, At least you'll smell like me when he fucks you, then he pulls back, mortified. Bloody hell, I sound like an Alpha from one of those smutty Omegaverse fics Sören is always reading.
Sören beams at him and Anthony feels that wistful ache again. Then there's a knock at the door and Anthony's heart sinks even further. There he fucking is.
Anthony comes out to be polite while Sören answers the door. That twinky little shit, Anthony thinks to himself. At five-ten Sören and Anthony both tower over Jayde, who is maybe five-four at the most, with an auburn undercut and brown eyes behind wire-rim glasses, delicate fine-boned features, a slight build. The sort of guy who looks like a stereotypical nerd, today wearing a neon green Pac-Man hoodie and faded, scuffed jeans.
"Hi," Sören says and gives Jayde a hug. "Want to come in? Want a drink?"
"Sure," Jayde says. He looks at Anthony. "Can you make tea?"
Anthony glares then quickly corrects his facial language into a fake smile. "Sure." He walks off to the kitchen and thinks to himself, I'm not your bloody maid. He knows it's hospitality to offer guests things, but he feels put off by Jayde just asking him when Sören is his host. Sören and Jayde take a seat on the couch and as Anthony makes tea, he zones out - the sound of Jayde's voice annoys him, the mere existence of Jayde annoys him - but then he hears the TV and Jayde saying, "Yeah! Yeah! Put it on True Crimes!"
Anthony watches over his shoulder - tonight's episode is about the serial killer and rapist Gavin Geoffries, who was known as "The Howler" because he would howl in a particular fashion when he was raping a victim, and howled like that again during his time in a psychiatric prison after sentencing.
"When I was master sergeant in the Navy," Jayde says, "and we were in Afghanistan on a special mission, there was this guy who made noises just like that and I had to be the one to tell him shut the fuck up. We were already getting shot at all the time and we didn't need to tell everyone where the fuck we were."
Jayde looks like he can't even lift a six-pack of soda cans, never mind having been in the Navy with its requirements for physical conditioning. Anthony gives Jayde the side-eye but continues making the tea. Sören listens without questioning anything, while Anthony wonders what the United States Navy was doing in Afghanistan, a landlocked country.
Jayde goes on. "So he kicked my ass, and I had to explain to my second husband what happened and I was very, very drunk to deal with the pain, so then I started howling like that to demonstrate..." Jayde begins imitating the way The Howler howls, and Sören laughs.
Anthony rolls his eyes. Something about this is rubbing him the wrong way. He tries to tell himself as he serves their tea that it's just because Sören is going to confess his feelings and he's jealous. But after they leave, he knows it's more than that.
He feels genuinely concerned. Not about losing Sören, but for Sören.
Sören told Anthony that Jayde is a fifth grade teacher at Warwick Elementary. Anthony sits back down at his desk, opens up a new tab on his laptop, and pulls up the website for the school. He checks the personnel for someone named Jayden and sure enough, Jayden Roberts-Hortler teaches fifth grade and there's a picture of him, wearing a brown button-down T-shirt with an ugly brown paisley tie.
One of his contacts - a gay private investigator he fought for in court, who'd been refused service at a restaurant - had offered him use of his investigation services. Even though it's evening and Anthony feels guilty about bothering him, he calls anyway, expecting voice mail. When he gets the person in question after the third ring, he explains that he needs to do a background check on someone "to protect a friend", and "no rush". To his surprise and delight the PI tells him it'll be "easy" and to expect a PDF in an hour.
Anthony tries to distract himself with Tetris while he waits, but every ten minutes or so he gets up and paces around, feeling antsy. When an hour passes and there's nothing in his inbox, Anthony feels discouraged, thinking it won't come tonight if at all, but then ten minutes later there it is.
Anthony opens the file.
Jayden Theodore Roberts-Hortler was in December 1995 - a month behind Sören; when Anthony was fifteen - born Jayne Dorothea Roberts-Hortler to Juniper June Roberts and Laurentius "Larry" James Hortler. It seemed that Jayde spent his childhood in Florida rather than Texas like he'd claimed, and then the rabbit hole went even deeper.
The PI had even found Jayde's parents' social media accounts, and Anthony starts with screenshots from those - as recently as a month ago Juniper was whining about missing her "daughter", who'd been "deceived by the trans agenda," which confirmed that Jayde wasn't lying about being estranged from his parents. That also seemed to be the beginning and end of what Jayde had told the truth about.
On Jayde's own socials, Anthony sees screenshot evidence of Jayde joining the military two years later than claimed, and being stationed in entirely different locations than claimed - bases in the US, not Afghanistan. Jayde talks about being an E-3 months before his discharge - certainly not master sergeant, which the PI notes in the file takes eight years minimum.
There are also no marriage records that the PI could find, which are public. Jayde hasn't been married once, let alone twice. No mention of a partner on his socials, either.
Alarm bells go off in Anthony's head. He realizes sometimes people lie about minor details of their life for opsec reasons, like a changed birthday or hometown. There's that and then there's this, inventing a whole new persona from wholecloth, and keeping that lie going for months of friendship with Sören. But then, Sören doesn't use social media, since he has social anxiety and has experienced online bullying, and Jayde knows this, so he's not expecting Sören to check his socials and easily find out much of what he's saying is a verifiable lie, and with Sören being an Icelander he wouldn't know much about the US military - as it is, Anthony didn't know either, apart from the Navy being in Afghanistan smelled like bullshit but maybe they had needed all branches to fight Al-Qaeda. Anthony knows Jayde probably isn't expecting Sören to do a background check on where he's from or whether or not he's been married either, even though Sören could with being able to find out his legal name on his employer's website.
The question is not if Jayde has been lying, and what about, but why. And that's the big wild card. Anthony thinks about Jayde's enthusiasm for the True Crimes show and - from what he knows from Sören - Jayde's interest in true crime in general. He knows that not everyone interested in true crime is glamorizing it, condoning the crimes, or is a criminal themselves, but Anthony starts to wonder if Jayde is making a false bread crumb trail for a reason.
Anthony tells himself, Maybe it's because Jayde doesn't want Sören to find pictures of when he was female-facing, maybe he's ashamed. He studies the older photos from Jayde's socials again, the longer hair, the lipstick, the clear unhappiness in the stern expression. He wants to believe that might be why - maybe Jayde thinks Sören is naive enough to see a Jayden from Florida-not-Texas who's never been married and think he's got the wrong guy - but it doesn't make sense.
Jayde being up to... some kind of no good... makes more sense. Anthony's stomach lurches. He remembers what he was told during his time at law school. You'd make a good prosecutor.
But this time, Anthony doesn't want to be right.
And he's from Florida, too. Anthony makes a face. Fuck.
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