Chapter Text
Mako flinched as his phone pinged. He deliberately ignored the phone’s bright screen as he typed out the rest of his thought, proving to himself that he cared more about the midterm essay than the little flame icon in his peripheral.
No more than a few hours ago the man had installed the app. He’d seen folks using it, watching over their shoulders in lecture halls as they swiped left or right, often rapidly, sometimes showing nearby friends particularly good- or funny-looking candidates. It wasn’t until he’d overheard a man in his class describe meeting a boyfriend over Tinder that Mako had felt curiosity start to nibble at his thumbs. But when he’d see people tittering over profile pictures or complain about being barraged by requests for hookups, he knew that the app wasn’t really made for people like him.
He was hard to look at--he knew, because he could hardly hold his own gaze in a mirror. His emotional guardedness had grown hand-in-hand with his physical, and he knew a lot of people found his fatness repulsive. They had let him know, repeatedly. The last time anyone had taken a photo of him was high school graduation, probably. And he had virtually no experience with relationships. His 9th grade girlfriend with whom he’d chastely kissed and only had gawky double-dates with, an awkward closeness with a boy a few grades up whose intimacy never showed itself outside of text messages. Mako cringed, humiliated by the memories and his own inexperience despite his age. It seemed like most people had had at least one steady relationship and some sexual experience by 22. Even his late blooming, the delayed realization he was gay felt like a small excuse when he saw the easy mingling of young queer people on campus.
But he didn’t look like them and he didn’t have the slick and practiced social movement most people seemed to have. He spent his time alone, preferred to be alone, but felt a desperate ache as well. Was this what he wanted? Forever?
So needing a distraction from midterm tensions, or maybe being distracted enough to push past his own shame, he downloaded the app, and created a simple profile for himself. Ticking each box and typing each character felt like walking into waves, embarrassment shoving his chest and setting his heart off again and again. His neglected facebook profile supplied the app with a photo but little else, forcing Mako to fill in gaps he’d kept intentionally blank for years. Is he looking for men, women? He had to answer, didn’t he?
The first few men he scrolled through carefully, clumsily learning the mechanics of the app and studying their profiles thoroughly. Did people really flip through like flashcards, just looking at faces? The images of the young men looking adventurous and lean or grinning with red cups and posing with local drag queens were nice, but. His leg jiggled nervously and he slowly slid each candidate to the left. The app refused the gray area of his slow retreat and blasted a large red ‘X’ over the screen with each refusal. There was YES and NO, and Mako nervously sweated the lack of “maybe”s, which had kept him nice and safe thus far.
Another man was presented for his appraisal. Scrolling to read his profile, Mako’s eyes were drawn to uppercase text:
NO FATS NO FEMS NO BLACKS
His vision lost focus for a moment, frustration and shame reworking themselves into his ribs, and he closed the app. This was why, he thought, he hated people after all. His loneliness and his hatred crushed him seemingly from both sides, leaving him in a silent tension that might drive him to punch through a wall if he could get himself to leave his chair. Blood rushing in his ears, he gazed instead at his laptop screen and reread the last few paragraphs he had written, hoping to ease himself back into his work.
And he’d gotten on pretty well, too. Throwing himself into a project helped him ignore the anxiety of “putting himself out there,” aware that his profile was still visible, not quite ready to retreat into deletion. But not ready to talk to someone, either. Ping.
Tinder was rife with spambots and folks looking for indiscriminate hookups. And anyway, the notification was probably just the app nagging for him to fill in some part of his profile or try the swiping thing again. No one could be sending him messages, he was pretty sure, because he hadn’t “liked” anyone. They had to both swipe right to talk, right? So it wasn’t anything to get excited over, and he would finish this paragraph before he checked anything.
He dragged his eyes slowly to the phone screen and tapped at it to display the notification.
“Someone has super-liked you!”
Mako’s heart blasted into full gear. As he processed the text--super like?-- his phone pinged again.
“Jamie has sent you a message!”
He quickly tapped his password in and clutched at the loading phone. The app’s main screen flipped over to an iMessage-looking speech bubble. He frowned as he read and reread the text.
“hey ive seen y around was excited accidental super like you. m kindof pissed want to meet up for drink im downtown bars”
He… what? Mako squinted at the profile picture. Who the fuck?