It certainly wasn’t somewhere the three of them wanted to stop at for the night, but it was best they had seen for miles. Besides, this far from a city–not that they were really certain how far away from a city they were, at this point–a single story motel, an all-night diner and a small convenience store was obviously the best they would be getting this late at night. Bruce turned off the engine, exhausted after driving nearly the entire day–his two sons climbed out of the car, stiff and frustrated that their dad was so bullheaded when lost. They’d given up trying to get him to ask for directions, they’d just have to do it behind his back in the morning. Of course, for Bruce this was part of the fun of road trips. If you didn’t get at least a little lost, then how would you ever find something interesting?

Still, he was getting a bit too old for this, and his sons were a bit too old to keep humoring him for much longer. It had been fun, when they were little, to take these road trips–all three of them had sworn that they’d reach all forty-eight states together, but with college and internships and sports they’d been putting off this last leg for years–a trip through the upper midwest, from Iowa up through the Dakotas and Montana. It was clear to him, halfway, that he’d misjudged his now adult sons’ enthusiasm for the trip. They were just humoring him, really, and maybe he was just humoring himself too. Ever since Brianna had died a few years ago, he had to admit that he’d been in a funk. The road trip had seemed like…a way to get his old, younger self back. See something new, maybe. But in the end, he had to admit he was just fooling himself. They’d get back home in a week and a half, and she’d still be missing, the house too empty, his sons’ avoiding him.

“Do you want to get something to eat, Dad?” Nick asked. He was a year or two out of college, holding down a decent job. The younger son, Sean, was going to be a senior this year.

“You two go on and order me something, I’m gonna have a smoke.”

“Dad–”

“You won’t let me smoke in the car, so I’m gonna have a damn smoke.”

Sean was about to say something else, but Nick just dragged him along, knowing their dad well enough to let him be. The two of them had been trying to get him to stop smoking for years, especially after their mom died of cancer. Bruce knew he should quit, but he’d done it for so damn long–he was just happy his sons had never started–not that they’d taken after him much at all. He suspected that the reason he never saw them much was because neither of them had much love left for him, beyond that minimal amount that draws you back for the occasional holiday or two, with quiet dinners (quieter now, without Brie filling the vacuum with inane chatter he’d always hated, but which he now missed more every passing day) and this nagging expectation that things had always used to be better than this.

Nick and Sean stepped into the diner, he waited by the car for a moment, lighting one of his cigarettes. He only had a few left in the pack, so he might as well buy a few more. He walked towards the convenience store connected to the gas pumps, a few semis parked among them filling up, and a couple of rusted out, dirt crusted pickups, most likely owned by the farmers around here. As he walked, his nose caught a strange scent on the wind–it was smoke, but strangely sweet and floral. Curious, he began circling around to try and find the source of the smell, circling back behind the convenience store, where he found an older man smoking a large pipe.

The man had to be in his sixties or seventies, with a long white beard reaching town to his ample gut, his hair receding back into a overlong horseshoe of hair reaching the nape of his neck. He wasn’t particularly clean either–wearing just a grungy wife beater and a pair of jeans which had seen better days, and as he approached and got a better look at the short, fat man, he only grew more disgusted. Why was he even approaching him at all? The man had noticed him at this point, but paid Bruce’s approach little care, aside from a slight smile, revealing more than a few missing teeth.

“Howdy,” the man said when Bruce came close enough for a handshake, “Don’t see families like yours around here very often, that’s for sure.”

“I–I’m sorry,” Bruce said, “Who…are you?” His words felt silly and sluggish as the rolled out his mouth, and his cigarette tumbled from his slack lips. The old man stepped forward and put it out with a stomp of boot, coming closer to him.

“I just couldn’t help noticing what fine looking boys you have there,” the man said, “Handsome, strong. Always wanted boys like that of my own, you know. They don’t seem too fond of you. In fact, you don’t seem like a very good father figure at all, to me.”

Bruce wanted to storm off, get away, but the slackness had spread to the rest of his body, his mind increasingly numb. He was helpless as the old man unzipped each of their flies, reached in, and carefully freed both of their cocks. The old man was already hard, and with a few strokes Bruce was hard as well.

“It got me thinking–maybe you don’t deserve those boys. Maybe you can’t love those boys enough, the way they deserve to be loved. But I can, so why don’t I take things over from here?”

The old man pressed the heads of their cocks together, grabbed his long loose foreskin and stretched it out, so that it covered Bruce’s head, linking them together. Bruce had never felt anything like this before, and when the old man started stroking his cock, he felt…something start pumping from his balls, through his cock, directly into the old man’s sack. He tried to pull away, but the smoke had him tight within its clutch, and all he could do was watch as the old man’s face started to grow younger. No, more than younger, the more he pumped, the more he was certain that the old man was beginning to look like…him. That same broad nose, the man’s chin growing more angular. He was growing younger as well–his hair growing back in, though it remained the same semi-long, tangled mess as before–the same with the man’s beard, which turned to match Bruce’s own hair color, but remained just as long. All the while, Bruce was feeling weaker and weaker, smaller, like he was shrinking, his head…something was wrong with his head…

“Yeah, an old faggot like you, you don’t have sons. Hell, you don’t have anyone.”

Old…faggot? He tried to shake the words, but struck some odd, deep truth that he couldn’t avoid. Bruce shuddered, pumping the last of himself into the stranger’s heavy, full sack, and he stepped back, disconnecting them. When the man commanded him to strip, he did it without hesitation, putting on the man’s nasty clothes, which fit him better than the baggy things he’d been wearing. The man sucked on his pipe and examined the wallet he found in the back pocket of the jeans. “Bruce, eh? I can be a Bruce.”

“But…Bruce…my name.”

“Your name ain’t Bruce. Your name is Faggot. Now get out of here–go find some trucker dick to suck, and don’t come near me and my boys ever again, you hear me?”

Bruce watched the new old man, now nameless, totter off towards the trucks parked off by the gas pumps, and then walked towards the diner to join his new sons for dinner.