10:00 PM

He lasted six days on Instagram.

That was how he thought about it — not as a choice he’d made but as a duration he’d survived. Six days of telling himself that X was where the Spaces happened, and he wasn’t going back to that, so Instagram was fine. Instagram was just photos. He could look at photos.

He checked Mason’s profile eleven times on Saturday. He knew because he caught himself doing it at 11 PM and scrolled back through his screen time report with a feeling he didn’t examine closely. Eleven times. He’d been in meetings, in the shower, eating lunch standing at his kitchen counter, and each time his thumb had found its way to the same profile with the efficiency of long habit, except it wasn’t a long habit. It was six days old. Which meant it had installed itself very quickly.

The photos were the same photos. Mason didn’t post every day. When he did it was gym content — a video of a lat pulldown, a mirror selfie in a gray t-shirt that fit the way gray t-shirts fit when you were nineteen and had been training seriously for three years. One photo from what looked like a house party, Mason in the background of someone else’s shot, red cup, laughing at something off-camera, completely unaware of being watched by a forty-one-year-old financial services manager lying in bed in River North at 11:30 on a Tuesday night.

James put his phone down and looked at the ceiling.

He picked it up again.

Sunday through Friday had a rhythm to it. He checked in the morning before coffee, the way he used to check the news. He checked during his commute, thumb moving before he could think about it. He checked at his desk between calls, the phone angled away from the door. He checked before bed every night, always telling himself it was the last time, always meaning it.

Mason’s bio hadn’t changed. Getting my lifestyle funded. DMs open to serious inquiries only. Tributes accepted.

James did not DM him. He did not look up the tribute link. He stayed on Instagram and told himself this was the controlled version of whatever this was. He could look. Looking was fine.

By Thursday he’d stopped believing that.

Friday night he watched television. A documentary about something — he couldn’t have said what, afterward. He was on the couch with a beer going flat on the table, phone face-down beside him, because he’d made a rule about the phone. Phone stays down. You’re watching television.

At 9:47 his phone lit up face-down and he didn’t touch it.

At 9:52 he turned it over. An email. Work. Nothing.

At 9:58 he was aware that his knee was bouncing.

At 10:01 he picked up the phone and opened Instagram.

Mason had posted three hours ago. No photo — just text on a plain background, the kind Instagram generates when you want to make a statement:

See you all at 10. You know where.

James stared at it. Put the phone down. Picked it up.

He told himself he was just going to listen. He wasn’t going to touch himself and he certainly wasn’t going to send anything, and if those two conditions held then there was nothing wrong with listening to a stranger talk on the internet. People listened to podcasts. People listened to things.

He opened X.

There were twenty-two listeners this time.

James noticed that immediately — more than last week, new icons clustered in the display, a few with photos, most anonymous. He found himself looking at the other silhouettes and wondering who they were, what they did, whether any of them were sitting in a dark apartment on a Friday night with a flat beer on the table feeling the specific combination of things James was currently feeling, which he was not going to name.

Mason was already talking when James joined. His voice came through the speakers and James felt something in his chest settle and tighten at the same time, which was a contradiction, but there it was.

For the first forty minutes James kept his hands on his laptop.

Mason held court the way he had the week before — unhurried, certain, completely indifferent to whether anyone found him interesting, which made James and apparently twenty-one other people find him extremely interesting. He talked about his training. A watch he wanted. A weekend trip to Michigan with friends, expenses he expected covered. Not asked for. Expected. The distinction landed every time.

The chat moved constantly.

piglet_chicago: Whatever Sir needs. Ready to send.

devoted_atm: Michigan trip fund — just sent $50 toward it Sir.

Mason: Good. That covers gas. Someone cover the Airbnb.

Three different users volunteered within thirty seconds, each bidding higher than the last. Mason acknowledged the winner with a single word and moved on without ceremony, the way you’d check something off a list.

Mason: Who’s new tonight? I can always tell. There are tells.

James’s hands went still.

Mason: The new ones always go quiet when I say something that hits. The regulars keep typing. The new ones go quiet and start breathing differently.

Several anonymous accounts had appeared in the chat. None of them were typing now.

Mason: That’s fine. Stay quiet. Listen. That’s actually the right move — don’t talk yet. You’re not ready to talk yet.

James had at some point in the previous five minutes stopped keeping his hands on the laptop. He wasn’t sure exactly when. Only that he had, and that he was not going to stop, and that the decision had been made somewhere below the level of conscious thought. His sweatpants were pushed down. His cock was already hard — had been for a while, in the vague way you realize weather has changed while you’ve been inside.

He told himself he was just going to take care of himself. He wasn’t going to send anything.

The chat kept moving.

worship_only: Sir, I’ve been saving up. What do you need this week?

Mason: I don’t need anything. You need to give. There’s a difference. Don’t make it about what I need. It’s about what you are.

James stroked slowly, trying to keep it that way. His whole body felt like a wire pulled very tight.

piglet_chicago: Sir can I ask something

Mason: You just did.

piglet_chicago: lol Sir. I meant — how do you know who’s going to stay?

A pause. Mason seemed to actually consider it.

Mason: The ones who stay are the ones who can’t leave. Simple as that. They try. Some of them try really hard. They stay off X for a week, tell themselves they’re done with it. Then they come back. They always come back. Because it’s not something you decide. You either are this or you aren’t. And if you are, you already know. You’ve known for a while.

The chat erupted — affirmations, payment notifications, a cascade of yes Sir scrolling faster than James could read. His hand had gone still. He was on the edge, had been for well over an hour. The particular concentrated agony of that was doing things to his thinking.

He breathed. He held.