The Daddy

At twenty-five, Adrian had already decided what kind of man he was.

Not merely confident. Not merely masculine. He was, in his own words, a leather alpha daddy.

He said it with a crooked smile whenever someone asked about the black motorcycle jacket he wore even in summer, the heavy steel chain around his neck, or the leather trousers fitted so closely that sitting down required planning. His wardrobe was less a collection of clothes than a declaration. Everything was black, silver, or designed to make his shoulders appear broader.

The only problem was that Adrian did not look much like a daddy.

He was undeniably handsome: warm brown skin, lean muscle, a sharply defined face, and black curls that fell artfully over his forehead. But there was still an unmistakable youthfulness beneath the leather. When he tried to look intimidating, the dimple beside his mouth betrayed him. When he lowered his voice, it sounded like an actor delivering the first line of an audition.

His friends found the performance endearing.

Adrian did not.

He spent hours studying photographs of older men whose authority seemed effortless: bald heads, enormous shoulders, weathered faces, heavy mustaches, cigars held between thick fingers. They did not need to announce what they were. They entered a room and the room understood.

That was the look Adrian wanted.

The cigar was the final missing detail.

He found the shop on a rainy Thursday evening, squeezed between a tailor and a locksmith on a street he had walked a hundred times. Adrian was certain it had not been there before.

The sign above the door read:

MORROW & SONS — FINE TOBACCO

The windows were dark, displaying wooden boxes faded by sunlight. Inside, the air smelled of cedar, leather, spice, and the sweet, decaying warmth of dried leaves.

An old man stood behind the counter. He was completely bald except for a silver fringe above his ears. A vast gray mustache concealed his upper lip, and his dark waistcoat strained over a barrel-shaped chest.

He looked Adrian up and down.

Not admiringly. Not critically.

Knowingly.

“First cigar?” the man asked.

“Is it that obvious?”

“To me.”

Adrian slipped his hands into the pockets of his leather trousers. “I’ve been meaning to try one. I like the look.”

“The look?”

“You know.” Adrian gestured vaguely toward himself. “Leather. Cigar. Masculine. Powerful.”

The old man’s eyes lingered on Adrian’s curls, then moved to his narrow waist and carefully maintained stubble.

“I’m going for a daddy kind of thing,” Adrian added. “An alpha-daddy look.”

The shopkeeper remained silent.

Adrian felt himself blushing and compensated by standing straighter.

“Something bold,” he said. “The kind of cigar a real dominant man would smoke.”

The old man’s mustache twitched.

“Oh,” he said. “I have something.”

He disappeared through a curtain behind the counter.

Adrian heard a door open, although there could not have been room for another chamber behind the shop. Then came the sound of several locks being released, one after another.

The old man returned carrying a narrow black box.

It contained a single cigar.

The cigar was enormous—thicker than Adrian’s thumb and almost unnaturally straight. Its wrapper was so dark it absorbed the amber light around it. There was no label, only a small band of black leather embossed with one word:

PATRIARCH

Adrian smiled. “That’s a bit on the nose.”

“It usually is.”

“What blend?”

“Old.”

“I mean, where’s it from?”

“Many places.”

The shopkeeper closed the lid.

Adrian reached for his wallet. “How much?”

“For you? Twenty-five.”

“Twenty-five pounds?”

“Twenty-five years.”

Adrian laughed.

The shopkeeper did not.

After an uncomfortable pause, Adrian placed thirty pounds on the counter. The old man returned five and pushed the box toward him.

“You should smoke it at home,” he said.

“Why?”

“It dislikes an audience.”

Another joke, presumably.

Adrian tucked the box under his arm.

As he opened the door, the shopkeeper spoke again.

“One more thing.”

Adrian looked back.

“A cigar like that is not an accessory,” the old man said. “Once you light it, finish it. Otherwise, it may finish without you.”

At home, Adrian changed into his favorite leather.

Black biker jacket, unzipped over his bare chest. Black leather trousers. Heavy boots. Steel chain. Silver hoops in both ears.

He studied himself in the bedroom mirror.

Good, he thought.

Almost.

He carried the cigar onto the balcony. The rain had stopped, leaving the garden dark and dripping. Warm evening light filtered through the trees.

Adrian cut the cap using a kitchen knife, put the cigar between his lips, and lifted his lighter.

For a moment, he saw himself reflected in the glass door: young, sculpted, dressed in black, flame beneath his face.

This was the image he had wanted.

He drew in.

The tip ignited with a deep orange glow.

Smoke filled his mouth.

Adrian had expected bitterness. Instead, the flavor was rich and dark: cedar, pepper, coffee, leather, and something metallic beneath it all. The smoke felt unusually heavy. It did not merely enter his mouth; it pressed against his tongue, examining the shape of it.

He coughed.

The cigar remained between his fingers.

“Smooth,” he muttered sarcastically.

His voice sounded strange.

Not deeper, exactly. Doubled. Beneath his own voice was another one, lower and slower, repeating the word a fraction of a second later.

Smooth.

Adrian looked at the cigar.

Its ember pulsed.

He took another draw, smaller this time.

Heat traveled into his jaw.

He rubbed his chin, expecting to feel irritation from the smoke. Instead, he felt movement beneath the skin. The muscles along his jaw clenched by themselves. Pressure built near his ears.

There was a soft crack.

Adrian froze.

His jaw widened.

He watched it happen in the reflection of the glass door. The elegant lines of his face thickened. His chin pushed forward. The bones beneath his cheeks rearranged with slow, deliberate pops.

He dropped the cigar.

It did not reach the floor.

The cigar hung in the air beside his hand, trailing smoke. Then it rose neatly back between his fingers.

Adrian stared at it.

“No.”

His voice descended on the word.

No.

He grabbed the balcony railing as sudden pressure seized his scalp.

His curls tightened.

At first he thought the humid air was making them shrink. Then he saw individual strands withdrawing into his head. Each hair slipped backward through its follicle, vanishing root-first beneath the skin.

Adrian clawed at his hair.

Black curls came loose in his hands. Others retreated too quickly to catch. His hairline raced backward across his skull while his scalp tingled with thousands of tiny, cold bites.

Within seconds, only a few patches remained above his ears.

Then they, too, were gone.

Adrian ran both hands over his head.

Smooth skin met his palms.

Not freshly shaved. Not even stubbled.

Bald.

Completely, impossibly bald.

“What the hell?”

The voice that emerged was a resonant bass.

Adrian stumbled through the open door and hurried to the mirror. The cigar followed in his hand, though he had no memory of picking it up.

His reflection was still recognizably his, but harder. Older. The soft youthfulness had drained from his face. Fine lines appeared across his forehead. His eyebrows thickened. The faint stubble around his mouth darkened.

Something pricked his upper lip.

Adrian leaned closer to the glass.

A row of black hairs pushed through the skin.

“No, no, no—”

They grew as he watched. Thick bristles emerged rapidly, crawling over his lip and spreading toward the corners of his mouth. The hair formed not a fashionable mustache but a huge, uncompromising sweep of black.

Adrian seized it.

Pain shot through his gums.

The hairs were rooted too deeply. He could feel them beneath his lip, curling around the roots of his teeth.

The mustache continued growing. Its ends descended around his mouth, shaping themselves into the heavy horseshoe style Adrian had studied in photographs.

He opened his mouth.

Black roots were visible beneath the translucent flesh of his gums.

Adrian recoiled from the mirror.

The cigar lifted itself to his lips.

He clenched his jaw, but his mouth opened anyway.

Smoke poured in.

This time, the change struck his chest.

His back arched.

A tremendous heartbeat slammed against his ribs. Another followed, harder than the first. His pectoral muscles contracted and began to swell.

Adrian gripped the front of his jacket.

Muscle rolled beneath his skin in thick, rising slabs. His chest expanded, forcing the jacket apart. The leather creaked around his shoulders.

His breathing accelerated.

Each breath pulled more smoke into his lungs, even when the cigar was nowhere near his mouth. Gray streams entered through his nostrils, spiraled down his throat, and inflated him from within.

His collarbones disappeared beneath accumulating mass.

His shoulders widened.

The transformation spread into his arms. Biceps knotted and expanded, filling the jacket sleeves. Veins rose beneath his skin in branching cords. His forearms thickened until his silver bracelet snapped and struck the floor.

Adrian tore at the jacket zipper.

It was already open, but his panicked fingers needed something to do. His chest had become enormous, each breath lifting enough muscle to make the chain around his neck jump.

“What’s happening to me?”

The deeper voice filled the room.

The answer came from the smoke.

You wanted the look.

“No. I wanted to try a cigar.”

You wanted them to look at you and know.

His abdominal muscles cramped.

Adrian doubled over as his waist began to change. The lean definition of youth compacted into heavier, denser power. Each abdominal muscle thickened beneath the skin. His obliques pushed outward. His narrow hips broadened while his leather waistband groaned.

His entire skeleton was enlarging.

Vertebrae separated with loud, wet clicks. His torso lengthened. His thighs swelled inside his trousers, forcing the leather tight around muscles that had not existed seconds before.

His boots scraped backward across the floor as his feet grew.

Adrian tried to pull off the jacket, but his hands had changed. His fingers were thicker now, the knuckles enlarged and roughened. Dark hair spread across the backs of his hands and along his forearms.

He looked at them in horror.

They were not the hands of a twenty-five-year-old.

They were mature, powerful hands—scarred at the knuckles, veins raised beneath weathered skin. They looked as if they had spent decades repairing engines, lifting weights, and gripping the shoulders of men who knew better than to pull away.

Yet the leather did not tear.

It grew with him.

The jacket’s seams stretched and re-formed around his expanded frame. The leather thickened, becoming heavier and more worn. Silver zippers broadened. The trousers adjusted to his massive thighs and waist, fitting the new body with obscene precision.

Even the clothing was becoming more authentic.

Adrian reached for the cigar, intending to crush it.

His hand stopped.

The smell had changed.

It was no longer nauseating. Now it was magnificent: dark soil after rain, polished leather, charred oak, expensive spice. His altered lungs ached for it.

He brought the cigar to his mouth.

“No,” he whispered.

But the new voice turned protest into command.

He inhaled.

The final third of the cigar flared.

Heat flooded his skull.

Memories appeared.

Not false memories exactly, but possibilities hardened into fact. Adrian remembered buying his first motorcycle twenty years ago, though he had not been born then. He remembered leading men twice his age through rooms that fell silent when he entered. He remembered the weight of authority, the pleasure of speaking softly and being obeyed.

With each memory, his old self felt smaller.

His nervous jokes disappeared first.

Then the practiced poses.

Then the constant need to check whether anyone was watching.

A real alpha, something inside him understood, never asked for attention.

Attention came to him.

Adrian dragged himself to the mirror.

A giant stared back.

He stood well over six and a half feet tall. His head was perfectly bald, the smooth scalp shining in the warm light. His face had matured by nearly two decades: stronger nose, heavier brow, deep lines around eyes that no longer looked uncertain. The horseshoe mustache framed his mouth like a heraldic emblem.

His neck had become a pillar.

His shoulders seemed almost too broad for the mirror.

The leather jacket hung open over a torso built less like a fitness model and more like a fortress. Massive pectorals, a dense ridged abdomen, a waist thick with functional power. His arms filled the sleeves as though the leather had been painted over them.

Adrian touched his scalp.

The man in the mirror did the same.

“What am I?” he asked.

The stranger’s bass voice vibrated through the glass.

The final layer of fear vanished from his expression.

“You know what you are,” the smoke replied.

The cigar had burned almost to the band.

Adrian remembered the shopkeeper’s warning.

Once you light it, finish it.

He could still stop.

He could crush it into the ashtray. Run back to the shop. Beg the old man to change him into the lean, curly-haired young man he had been an hour ago.

He tried to picture that face.

It looked unfinished.

Small.

A costume waiting for someone to inhabit it.

The giant in the mirror lowered his hand from his scalp. His terror softened into curiosity, then recognition.

Finally, he smiled.

The expression transformed the face more completely than the cigar had.

Adrian returned to the living room and settled onto the leather sofa. It groaned beneath his weight. He poured two fingers of whiskey into a heavy glass, though he could not remember buying the bottle.

The room looked different now. Darker. Richer. The furniture heavier, the lamps warmer. A polished wooden cigar box rested on the table beside a wide stone ashtray.

The apartment was changing to fit its owner.

Adrian raised the cigar.

Only one draw remained.

For the briefest moment, the twenty-five-year-old inside him pressed his face against the back of his eyes.

Please.

Adrian paused.

“Still in there?” he asked.

His former voice answered from somewhere very far away.

I don’t want to disappear.

Adrian examined the burning cigar.

Then he studied the enormous hand holding it, the black leather stretched over his thighs, the powerful body reflected in the dark window.

“You said you wanted to be a daddy,” he murmured.

Not like this.

“You should have been more specific.”

He placed the cigar between his teeth and inhaled.

The ember consumed the black leather band.

Smoke filled his mouth, passed through his blood, and entered the last untouched chamber of his mind.

The young man screamed once.

Then his voice broke, deepened, and became Adrian’s laugh.

The giant leaned back.

He held the smoke in his lungs for a long time before releasing it in a slow, satisfied cloud. When it cleared, there was no fear left in his eyes.

There was no performance either.

The man on the sofa did not think he was an alpha daddy.

He did not need to think about it at all.

His phone vibrated on the table.

A message from one of Adrian’s friends appeared on the screen:

So? How was your first cigar? Did it complete the look?

The man picked up the phone. Face recognition accepted him immediately.

He opened the camera and regarded himself on the screen: bald head, monumental shoulders, black mustache, leather, smoke, and a smile full of absolute authority.

He took a photograph.

The look was never the point, boy, he typed.

He stared at the word boy. It felt natural.

Another message arrived:

Jesus. Adrian? Is that really you?

Adrian’s smile widened.

The doorbell rang.

He knew who was outside before he stood. The same friend who had mocked his leather wardrobe, called him “baby daddy,” and said no one under thirty could make a cigar look convincing.

Adrian crossed the room. His boots struck the floor with slow, heavy certainty.

When he opened the door, his friend looked up.

And farther up.

The young man’s mouth fell open.

“Adrian?”

Adrian rested one immense hand against the doorframe. Smoke drifted around his bald head. His jacket creaked as he leaned forward.

“That’s Daddy to you.”

The words were ridiculous.

They should have sounded like a joke.

But his friend immediately straightened.

“Yes, sir.”

Adrian felt the answer settle warmly inside his chest.

On the table behind him, the empty cigar box opened by itself.

There had been only one cigar inside when he bought it.

Now there were six.

Adrian looked at his visitor, at the boyish face and uncertain posture. Then he glanced back at the box.

A deep chuckle rolled through the apartment.

“So,” he said, stepping aside, “have you ever tried a cigar?”