Phillip Graves

Life was stressful enough without having to worry about going to bars for hookups. However, life was a bit too stressful to go through it without hookups as well. There had to be some sort of compromise, an easy solution. God bless America and its invention; The internet. (That was an American invention, right? If it wasn't, they'd definitely claim it was theirs either way.) Among mountains of bullshit, a hidden gem was to be found, even by someone like Commander Graves, who was used to vastly different interfaces on his technology.

Grindr was an awfully convenient application; Graves had used it for months now. At first; he'd been suspicious about some things. For example; The feature of sharing usually pricey information like location, body stats and everything just for free on an app with worryingly long terms of service. TOS that, by the way, also seemed to be different for every country in the European Union. Them and their stupid protection of data had made a few simple jobs a bit of a pain. But that was beside the point.

The feature Graves was hesitant about the most, turned out to be the greatest invention mankind had ever made (besides Texas). His private phone finally had a use other than the phone book having numbers of people he'd promised to give his "private number" to secure business. People were easy these days. The location thing made it easy as ever, his bio was straightforward and sure enough; People wrote him. After a couple of times he got into writing others as well, looking out for similar bios as to not annoy some poor bloke who, for some reason, tried to find something real on a platform such as this. It was a bit adorable, if not naive, to go on a platform where most usernames were "Want BJ" and try to go on a cute bookshop date.

Some of the tags he encountered were in fact worrying, and to this day Graves hoped that carplay meant sex in a car and not ... roleplaying as cars or some shit. He wouldn't put it above that guy though. Still, one of the best blowjobs of his life. Sure, the advertisements were annoying as well, but he could deal with them. Even if he did miss the x a couple times. God, he was getting old.

None of these civvies would ever encounter him again, not when he was always on the move and on deployments. They wouldn't even know he'd just killed someone with the same hands they were undressed with, could probably not even begin to imagine that the average white guy on grindr technically committed a couple war crimes in Mexico. Sometimes Graves struggled to grasp the concept of him being the same guy to burn down buildings to lure out targets and writing "U host?" to some guy named Brandon with a crappy torso pic.

Sporadically, however, he'd clock someone else with "discreet, DL, travel a lot" in their bio and just know they'd both done some morally questionable shit on foreign soil. But it was the kind of thing both parties just knew, and neither commented on. It was an easy solution to a non-issue, a luxury and comfort that came with having a second phone.

There were also issues with having a second phone. Like, for example, forgetting it was nestled safely in the pocket of jeans he chose to wear a second day in a row because it didn't smell yet. Then going to work as a Commander in those pants, and leaving the location setting turned on.

Graves stared at the phone in his hand, which he'd just fished out of his pants. The same one he'd worn yesterday. What a fucking idiot he was. Visibly, there's no reaction to all of this on Graves' face. He just takes the phone and opens the app to turn that location setting off when he receives a message. Thank god his phone is muted. About to dismiss it, his hand already hovers over the settings button when it strikes him. Ten feet away.

Of course it was a faceless account. Damn shame his wasn't. It was simply a lot easier to get chats with a picture but holy Mary this was bad. He's sitting in one of the common rooms, having just searched out a particular Shadow to discuss something. Ten feet. He slowly lifts his head and looks around, looking for someone who's obviously looking around.

The conversations around him blend together as he tries to make out a faint gasp, giggle, anything. Crap. He's giving himself away. Graves feels his heart racing a little, pocketing his phone quickly. Had they already spotted him? Graves himself sure as hell hadn't spotted them. He was fucked, wasn't he?