Jordan, the brute - Chapter 1 (Patreon)

I had been lying on the couch for almost an hour with the TV on mute, not really watching anything.m, just scrolling on TikTok.

The apartment always felt different when Jordan wasn’t in it. Quieter. Smaller, somehow. Like the walls remembered the size of him even when he was gone. Two years we’d been splitting rent on this walk-up above the pizza place, and I still hadn’t gotten used to the way the whole space changed the second he walked through the door.

Jordan Hale. Twenty-seven. Six-three, maybe a little more in the work boots he never took off until he hit his bedroom. Broad through the shoulders and chest in that dense, heavy way that made every hallway look too narrow. Not gym-pretty. Not the kind of guy who counted macros. Just thick. Solid. The kind of body you get from hauling cases of ammo and standing behind a counter all day at the gun shop on the other side of town.

He had that beard. Dark, full, the kind that made him look older than he was. It covered most of his jaw and climbed high on his cheeks. Under the cheap hallway light it always looked even heavier. The rest of his face was all hard lines — thick brows, a slightly crooked nose from some old fight he never talked about, that permanently annoyed expression like the world had personally inconvenienced him.

And the caps. Always the same faded ball caps, pulled low. Everyone at the shop thought it was just his look. I knew better. The hair on top was already thinning in a wide patch he refused to admit existed. He kept the sides short and the beard full so nobody would notice unless they really looked. I’d noticed. I’d been noticing for two years.

He lived in the same three or four heavy metal shirts. Iron Maiden. Pantera. Slipknot. All of them stretched tight across his pecs and the heavy muscle of his upper arms. The sleeves were always a little too short, showing the dark hair on his forearms and the veins that stood out after a long shift. His jeans sat low on his hips. His boots were always scuffed. He smelled like the shop — gun oil, metal, cheap Axe deodorant that gave up halfway through the day — and underneath it, this warm, heavy, male sweat he never seemed to fully wash off…

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