Swipe Right
Copyright© 2026 by Sci-FiTy1972
Chapter 1: Returning Gravity
The plane touched down with a soft violence Darius felt more than heard—a muted thump that traveled up through the soles of his boots and settled somewhere behind his ribs. Fort Wayne International Airport didn’t announce arrivals with spectacle. It didn’t pretend that every landing was a miracle. It simply existed—concrete, glass, fluorescent light, and the low hum of a place built for people coming back to lives already in motion.
He appreciated that.
Darius stayed seated a moment longer than necessary, watching other passengers stand too quickly, reach too eagerly for overhead bags. Civilians moved like time was already chasing them. Darius moved like time was something you negotiated with, not something that owned you.
Early thirties. Recently retired. E-6. Communications.
The uniform was gone—packed away carefully, folded with a respect that bordered on ritual—but the posture remained. That never left. You didn’t unlearn discipline. You learned when to soften it.
He exhaled slowly and stood.
The jet bridge smelled faintly of recycled air and industrial cleaner. A small American flag decal peeled from the wall near the terminal entrance, one corner stubbornly refusing to come loose. Someone had tried to remove it once and failed.
That felt about right.
Inside the terminal, the airport was calm in the way only regional airports could be. No chaos. No urgency. Just families, business travelers, and the soft echo of rolling luggage over tile.
He scanned the crowd without meaning to.
And then he saw them.
His mother spotted him first. She always did. It was like distance didn’t apply when it came to him. Her hand flew to her mouth, eyes already glassy. His father stood just behind her—taller, broader, pretending he needed to adjust his glasses instead of wiping his eyes.
Something tightened in Darius’s chest.
He hadn’t cried in years. Not when the marriage ended. Not when the paperwork finalized. Not when the last deployment concluded with more silence than ceremony.
But this—this came close.
They didn’t rush him. That mattered. His parents understood him well enough to know sudden movement could feel like pressure. His mother waited until he was close, then wrapped her arms around him with a strength that surprised him every time.
“You’re home,” she said, as if saying it made it real.
“Yeah,” he replied quietly. “I am.”
His father’s hug was firmer, brief. A statement rather than a question. When he pulled back, he clapped Darius on the shoulder—proud, contained, final.
They walked together without much talking. Words could come later. Outside, Indiana summer pressed in—warm, humid, familiar. The sky was wide and unapologetically blue.
The drive home passed in fragments.
Updates that didn’t matter. The neighbor’s new fence. A grocery store remodel. A distant cousin getting married. Darius listened, nodded, let the normalcy wash over him like a language he’d never forgotten but hadn’t spoken in years.
Cornfields gave way to neighborhoods. Roads unfolded beneath them with the certainty of memory.
This was home.
And somehow, it felt ... neutral.
Not painful. Not joyful.
Just unclaimed.
That night at his parents’ house, his old bedroom waited with quiet patience. The door was open, just as he’d left it years ago. His mother had resisted changing too much—new sheets, fresh paint, but the same scars on the desk where he’d once carved his initials with a pocketknife he hadn’t been allowed to have.
Dinner was warm and unforced. Conversation careful but honest. His parents didn’t press for stories. They understood silence wasn’t absence—it was processing.
Later, lying in bed, the ceiling fan hummed overhead, steady and mechanical. It reminded him of generators, of tents under foreign skies, of nights spent listening for sounds that never came.
Sleep arrived slowly, but it came.
The duplex came a week later.
It wasn’t really an apartment—not in the way strangers rented space from strangers. It was a two-bedroom, two-bath, two-story duplex his parents had owned for years. Practical people, his parents. Always thinking two moves ahead.
Darius took the left side.
His younger sister lived next door with her husband and their two boys. The sixteen-year-old was already tall enough to meet Darius eye-to-eye, all questions and guarded admiration. The eight-year-old still believed his uncle existed somewhere between superhero and mystery, especially when he wore that quiet, distant look.
The proximity mattered.
Close enough that he wasn’t alone. Far enough that no one hovered.
He paid rent anyway. That mattered too.
He carried his things up the stairs himself. A couch. A table. A bed. The second bedroom stayed empty—for now. The walls were clean. The space uncluttered. Intentional.
At night, he sometimes heard life through the shared wall—laughter, footsteps, the muffled chaos of a family still in motion. It grounded him in a way nothing else had.
He slept better because of it.
A job followed quickly—logistics coordination for a regional firm. Stable. Predictable. The kind of work that didn’t follow you home or ask you to be someone else after hours.
Weeks passed.
Routine set in.
And then boredom arrived.
Not the restless kind. The dangerous kind. The kind that asked questions when the world finally went quiet.
One evening, after dinner eaten alone and dishes washed immediately—because habits were hard to break—Darius sat on the edge of his couch and stared at his phone.
He hadn’t planned this.
But planning wasn’t the same as choosing.
He downloaded the app.
The setup was minimal. No embellishment. No bitterness. A few photos. A few lines. Honest, but guarded.
He hesitated before the final tap.
Then shrugged at the empty room.
“Why not.”
Worst case, he wasted a little time.
Best case ... He didn’t let himself finish the thought.
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