Halloween came to the district the way it always did — cheap fog machines, cheaper cobwebs, and a bar on the market square leaking bass onto the wet cobbles. James walked fourth of four turtles: orange bandana, green paint already running down his neck. Behind the eyeholes of his full mask, his eyes shimmered every time the string lights caught them. Up front Benji yelled something over the music and laughed at his own joke; Kyle walked right beside him and laughed along. Behind them, Henry scanned the crowd like a man reading a menu.
The four of them shoved through the crowd toward the bar door, shoulders first, bandanas flapping. They were med students, all of them, third year — the kind who could name every bone in a hand and still spend an hour arguing about a girl's Instagram. Kyle had once held a human heart in his two palms and almost dropped it when his phone buzzed. Benji elbowed a plastic cup out of the way and got them to the door. The bouncer looked the four turtles over, decided they were too stupid to cause real trouble, and waved them through.
They stepped in. St. Louis in October smelled like wet brick and fried dough. In Soulard the same thing happened every year: the market square closed to cars, orange lights strung between the brick row houses, the same DJ dragging his rig up the same steps. Nobody remembered when the Halloween night had started, only that everyone showed up for it. The bar filled the ground floor of an old four-storey building — dark wood, low ceilings, back rooms dim and loud.
Benji got the first round in — four shots, because the punch was for children. They stood at the rail with their backs to the wood and did what they always did: graded the room out loud, like it was a case study. "Ten," Kyle said about a girl in a cop costume, then downgraded her to a seven when she turned around. Henry didn't use numbers; he just nodded slowly, like a man confirming a diagnosis. Benji knocked his back in one and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
Then Benji stopped mid-sentence and pointed with his glass. At the far end of the bar, alone, a woman stood in a long black blouse-dress — buttoned all the way to the throat, a straight unbroken line of small black buttons from collar to hem, pinched at the waist, the fabric pulled tight across a chest that had long stopped pretending to be twenty. A black lace mask sat over her eyes. Her dark hair was pinned up tight, not one strand loose. Fangs, if you looked close. Late forties, maybe, and she wore it like a dare. "Look at that," Benji said, slow and filthy. "Fuckable old whore. Bet that dress comes apart button by button and everything under it's a mess." He said it the way men describe a car.
Benji elbowed him in the ribs without looking away from her. "Think of the list." James didn't have to think; he knew the list by heart — four names, four boxes, and one still empty next to his, the one Benji had written in marker: MILF. "She's suitable," Benji said. "More than suitable. She's ideal." Kyle was already vibrating beside him. "Dude. Dude. If you don't walk over there right now, we're putting a zero next to your name. Forever." Henry just watched her over the rim of his glass and said nothing, which somehow made it worse.
James looked at her again and felt his ears go warm. "Fine," he said. "She's stupid hot. Happy?" Then the wobble: "But she's what, late forties? What if she's married? What if she thinks I'm a kid?" Benji grinned like a shark. Henry didn't bother answering any of it. He lifted two fingers at the bartender, and a minute later four shots slid down the rail, amber and mean. He pushed one at James. "You want to be a distinguished surgeon someday," he said. "Don't shit your pants over a woman."
James knocked the shot back, coughed once, and set the glass down hard. That was all Benji needed. He slung an arm around James's neck and steered him off the rail, slow and easy, the two turtles drifting across the floor like they had all night. "Look at her," Benji murmured into his ear, loud enough that everyone heard anyway. "You know she fucks like she means it. Late forties, married, bored — that's the recipe. She'll ride you till your legs give out and then ask for the next one." Kyle fell in behind them. "And she's buttoned," he hissed. "All the way up. That means something."
James frowned. "What's that supposed to mean? That she doesn't want sex?" Benji stopped walking and looked at him with real pity. "Bro." And then Benji did the thing. Before James could shine with another insecurity, he turned, marched the last few metres, planted himself in front of the woman in black, and announced it loud and cheerful, the way you introduce a dog: "Have you met James?" Then he stepped back and left James standing there alone in green paint, orange bandana and a mask, with nothing to do but look at her.
Diane looked at him. Behind the lace mask her mouth curved — not quite a smile, just the front of one — and she let it sit there while he died a little. James cleared his throat. It was a whole procedure: he did it the way he did before an oral exam, and when the sound came out it was half an octave lower than his real voice, a fact he was never aware of and everyone around him always was. "Hey. Hi. Ja—" he said, then panicked, and added, "—Michelangelo." The turtles had agreed weeks ago that they would introduce themselves by character name. Nobody had actually done it until now.
Diane liked it. She liked it more than she meant to — the stumble, the sudden deep voice, the way he said a cartoon name like it was a passport. So she played along. She lifted her chin, let the fangs show, and said, in a voice aiming for mysterious that landed somewhere near a school play: "The Vampire Queen." Then, because she was forty-seven with a teenager's vocabulary on loan: "Welcome to my lair. Or whatever." James blinked. Behind him Benji made a small dying sound into his beer. She didn't notice, or pretended not to.
Diane tilted her head at his bandana. "You're one of those… superhero turtles." It came out with the confidence of someone who'd seen exactly one poster, sometime in the nineties. "The ones in the sewers. With the pizza." James nodded, thrilled to be asked anything at all. "Yeah. Yeah — we're the good guys. We fight evil." He said it with the deep voice still running, which made it both worse and better. Then, before Benji could save him, he added: "So. Are you the evil?" He meant it flirty. It landed half flirty and half like a man checking a diagnosis.
Diane let the question hang, then answered it the way she answered most things — slowly. "No," she said. "I'm the one they send you to when the good guys fail." She picked up her glass, took a sip, and watched him over the rim of the lace mask, and James got the distinct feeling he'd walked into something. Then she nodded past the crowd, past the noise, toward the back of the room. "Come on, Michelangelo. Let's see if you're really the good one." She pushed off the table. Behind him Benji hissed a single word — "too easy" — and James followed her like a man who had already forgotten his own name.
He walked half a step behind her, which was a mistake, because now there was nothing to look at but her. She was a woman of forty-seven and her body had stopped apologising for it years ago: soft, full hips under the black fabric, a waist that had carried two children and made peace with it. "That dress," James said, and the deep voice switched itself back on. "It's… dangerous." She glanced over her shoulder. "It is..."
The corridor was dim and narrow and the music thinned to a thud behind them. Diane stopped at the toilet door, turned, and leaned her back against it. She just looked at him, unhurried, and let one hand rise to her throat, where the dress began. Slowly, button by button, she walked her fingers down the front of it — over her chest, past her ribs, to her waist — then stopped on the lowest one. "So," she said. "Is it too dangerous for you?" James heard himself swallow.
James stepped in. He was a head taller than her even in flat soles, and when he stopped, their bodies met, and his hands found her hips and stayed there. She had to tilt her head back to keep his eyes, and she did, and her lips came apart on their own, just a little. He bent down until his mouth hung above hers, close enough that she felt the warmth of it, and breathed out, slow and deliberate. Somewhere below a door opened and closed; neither of them looked. "Not too dangerous," he said, quiet. "Just enough."
"Good," she said, and it was teasing — a little reward for a good answer. Then her hand went back, found the door handle, and pushed. Her other hand hooked into his hip and pulled him through with her, and James stumbled half a step after her into the light and the smell of soap and spilled beer. Then they both looked sideways. At the sinks, a T-Rex had a cowgirl bent over a basin — her jeans pooled on the floor, her legs hoisted up over the dinosaur's shoulders, her arms trembling against the porcelain. The T-Rex had its head buried in her ass and was licking it like it owed him money. She was being very loud about it.
Diane pulled James back out into the corridor, one hand still hooked in his hip, and shut the toilet door behind them with a soft click. Then she laughed — one short, real laugh, nothing like the Vampire Queen — caught herself, straightened, and put the mask back on her face even though it had never left. "Not tonight's first," she said, by way of explanation. They walked on. At the end of the corridor, past the thud of the music, a second door waited, plain and grey, marked with a faded arrow. She pressed it open a crack and looked up the stairwell — cold air, bare concrete, nobody. She held it there, looking, and didn't let him pass.
She glanced back at him, and behind the lace the grin had gone properly dirty. "This'll do." Then she had him — a fist in his costume, a hard tug — and the door slammed shut behind them. Before James could set his feet she jumped, straight up, unhelped and unbothered, arms around his neck like a girl half her age. She was heavier than the jump suggested, and he was not strong enough to pretend otherwise. His heel caught the first step. They went down together, hard, her full weight landing square in his lap on the cold stone. His tailbone lit up like a struck match. "You good?" she asked. "Yeah," he said, and didn't let his face move.
Then they were kissing — properly, badly, both at once — her hands in the back of his mask, his in her hair, both breathing through their noses because neither wanted to stop long enough to come up for air. And Diane talked. God, she talked. "Mmmh. My little turtle," she murmured against his mouth, in a voice going for husky with a coupon for cringe. "My sewer hero. Gonna save me?" James should have laughed. Instead something in his chest did a slow roll. "Always," he said, which was more than the question deserved. She hummed, pleased with herself, and bit his lower lip, and the fangs caught. He made a sound he would deny later.
The kiss went dirtier. Diane kept talking straight into his mouth, but by now it had stopped being words — the fangs held the spit in, it pooled behind her teeth and came out of her in thick, warm, muffled little sounds that were half tongue and half nonsense. "Mmh — my — mmh." James caught every third thing and cared about none of it. His hands had found their way under the hem of her dress, up the backs of her thighs, and then onto her ass. He squeezed, hard, both cheeks, and it filled his palms like it had been waiting for him.
His mouth dropped to her throat and worked lower, and he kept talking, muffled into her skin. "You're so soft," he said. "Proper soft. Hips, belly — all of it. Built like a mom." She liked that word; he felt it in how her fingers tightened. Then her hand slid down between them, found the front of his costume, and closed around the shape already pushing at the fabric. She squeezed, a mean little squeeze, and laughed into his ear — the real laugh again, close and low. "Oh," she said. "Oh, sweetheart." She turned the squeeze into a slow stroke, once, twice. "You can't handle me at all, can you."
"I've tamed, like, dozens of crazy young girls," James said, and the deep voice came back for it, which he was privately proud of. "You think one vampire MILF's a problem?" He said it with his chest, the way a man says things he's about to disprove. Diane opened her mouth to answer. He didn't let her. His palm came down flat and loud on her ass, right through the dress, and the whole cheek moved under it — a soft, slow, generous wobble that took its time and gave everything away. She made a sound. Small, low, and clearly not meant for him to hear. He heard it. "Right," he said, quieter now. "Dozens."
Diane raised one eyebrow, slow and unimpressed. "Dozens," she repeated. "Sure, sweetheart." Then she went to work. Her hand slipped between them, found the zipper at the front of his costume, and pulled it down over the shape already pressing out of it — quick and impatient, like a woman opening a parcel she already knew was hers. Straight past the waistband, no hesitation, fingers closing around him through the thin cotton. He was hot and pulsing and far too ready. James groaned, honest this time, and the deep voice fell off him completely. She hummed. "There we go." She pulled him free of the fabric and held him out.
She started slow. Long, easy pulls from base to tip, her thumb dragging over the head every time, the way you handle something you're still deciding about. And she kept her eyes up on his the whole while. "Look at you," she said. "Big young man. Tall. So serious." She tightened her grip on the word 'serious' and James's knees came loose. "And such a sweet little costume, too. All green." A pause. A slow twist at the top. "Shame, really. All that, and you're still not a match for the Vampire Queen." She said the name like it was real. He was starting to believe it was.
"Milfy Queen," James said, and grinned under the mask, because he could feel it land. "Yeah. That's you." Her hand stuttered once — just once — and he caught it, and it made him brave. "Don't stop. Keep going." He rolled his hips up into her fist, slow, showing off. "Your hands. God. Your hands are—" He lost the word and gave up on it. "They're making me wild. That's what they're doing." She looked up at him through the lace, and for a second the mockery on her face softened into something with real appetite under it. Then she pumped him harder, faster, and squeezed on the downstroke, and said nothing at all.
She let him have his moment. Kept pumping, steady, watching him come apart by degrees. Then, right in the middle of a stroke, she let out a long, shaky breath and smiled at him with her teeth, fangs and all. "Milf," she said, tasting the word and finding it cheap. "You boys and your little letters. You made it up. Milf, gilf, whatever." She twisted her wrist and his hips jumped. "Tell you what, though. Since we're being honest." She leaned in until her mouth was at his ear, still working him, and dropped her voice. "If you're already saying it — you might as well just call me Mommy."
Mommy. He heard it once and something in his gut flipped over. He was close — too close, embarrassingly close — so he moved. He hooked an arm under her legs, braced, and stood, lifting her off his lap with a grunt. Her hand slid off him and he nearly sobbed about it. His legs shook under her weight, both of them wobbling on the step like a bad circus act. Then he turned her, walked her down two steps, and set her on the railing. She caught the wall behind her with both palms. He put a hand on her hip to hold her there. "Stay," he said, breathing hard.
She didn't answer. She just licked her lips, slow and deliberate, letting her tongue drag over the fangs, and let him do whatever he wanted. So he did. He knocked her knees apart with one hard motion, reached under the hem of the dress, and found her panties. They came down over her thighs, past one knee — and snagged on a heel. He fumbled, swore quietly, worked the lace loose, and dropped it. Then he shoved the dress up, over her thighs, all the way to her belly. And stopped. Her bush was dense — dark, thick, completely unmanaged, a real grown woman's tangle, nothing like the neat little strips he was used to. He reached in and dragged two fingers through it. "Fuck," he said. "Mommy's too old to shave, huh."
Diane rolled her eyes so hard he could see it through the lace. "Shaved," she said, like the word bored her. She shifted her hips forward on the railing, opening herself a little wider on purpose, and looked down at him where he crouched. Her voice went flat and hard and challenging. "So. Are you going to run off now and tell your little friends about the hairy old woman? Or are you going to shut up and finally fuck me?" She said 'fuck' like a verdict. James's mouth had gone dry.
James grinned under the mask. She couldn't see it, but he felt it, and it made his voice come out wrong and cocky. "I tell them after," he said. "First I'm eating you. Bush and all." Then he dropped. His knees cracked against the cold stone and the pain shot up both legs, and he didn't care, because he was already burying his face between her thighs. The hair hit him first — coarse, warm, musky, spread over his mouth and nose — and he breathed it in deep. Then his tongue found her, flat and slow, from the bottom of her slit to the top, and Diane's back came off the wall.
The sound she made was not small this time. It came out of her whole chest, low and filthy, and she let her head tip back against the wall. "Ohh — fuck. You little turtle," she gasped. "You surprised me." Then her hand went into the back of his mask, nails in, and pulled him harder against her. "Don't get clever now," she said. "Lick your wet Mommy. All of it. Until your tongue is sore and you can't feel your jaw." She rolled her hips against his mouth to make the point. "That's the job, sweetheart. Everything else waits." James answered by pushing his tongue as deep into her as it would go, and she gave him another of those sounds.
He stopped being polite about it. He sucked her — mouth wide, tongue working, nose buried in the hair. And every time she said it — "good boy," "come on, Mommy's boy" — something warm spilled through his chest and made him hungrier. She felt it and used it. "Yes, there. Don't stop. Don't you dare stop." Her thighs began to shake against his ears. Then they locked. Her heels crossed behind his skull and squeezed, pinning his face exactly where she wanted it, and she stopped pretending to be quiet. The stairwell took her voice and threw it back at them, twice as loud. She didn't care at all.
Her legs shook harder, wilder, her whole body sliding a little down the railing, heels scrabbling for grip. Her moans came faster now — faster than the bass still thudding through the wall, a hard, broken rhythm of "ah — ah — ohh" that filled the stairwell. Then it broke. She clawed both hands into his hair and hauled him up with everything she had, his mouth leaving her with a wet pop, his knees screaming. Her face was right in his, flushed and ruined behind the lace, the fangs showing. "NOW," she said, straight into his mouth. "Fuck me. Now." James got a hand on himself, lined up, and pushed in before the order had finished landing.
He fucked her without a warm-up, hard and fast from the first stroke, and the stairwell clapped it back at them. Diane loved it. "Yes — that's it — like that," she panted, mouth running, filthy and encouraging at once. He caught her wrists, crossed them, and shoved them high up the wall above her head until her arms stretched straight, her back arched, her chest pulled tight under the black dress. The position opened her up — and it opened something else too: two dark sweat patches, one in each armpit, blooming in the fabric. He drove in harder and leaned close. "Well?" he said, cocky now, into her ear. "Can you even take it, Mommy?"
Her face was properly red now, blotchy under the mask, and her breath came in ragged little hitches between his thrusts. She was forty-seven, and this was work, real work, the kind that showed. But she wasn't going to say so. Not to him. Not to a boy in a cartoon mask. So she looked him right in the eye and lied. "Harder," she said. "That's nothing. Harder. I want to feel you in my belly." James grunted and gave her what she asked for, hammering up into her. Her mouth fell open, and this time she had no breath left for anything clever.
Her eyes rolled back behind the lace and stayed there. Her body had gone loose and hot and stupid in a way it hadn't in years — she'd been fucked plenty, she was good at being fucked, but this was different, this was being taken, and her body had almost forgotten the difference. Then she looked at him properly. And something snagged. The height of him. The narrow shoulders. The low little grunts he made on every push. It was all so familiar it nearly hurt, like a song she knew the words to but couldn't name. She frowned for one heartbeat, then stopped caring. It made her wetter, whatever it was. "Don't slow down," she said, and pulled him back in with her heels.
He could feel it building now, low and tight, the warning. And he looked down at her while it built and saw her tits bouncing under the black dress, still buttoned, the buttons straining, the whole respectable front of it riding up and down with every thrust. Something came loose in his head. "Fuck," he panted, and started talking, properly talking. "That dress. That dress, Mom—" and the half word slipped out of him without his noticing. "How'd you even leave the shop in that? Buttoned up like that, holy. Goddess. How's every guy in there not just—" a hard thrust, "—not just throwing you on the counter?"
Diane hooked a heel into his back and used it to drag him in on every stroke, meeting him, her hips slamming up off the railing as hard as her tired body could manage. "Young guys and buttoned women. You're all the same," she gasped. A hard grind, a mean little laugh. "You see a blouse buttoned up and something in you just snaps. You want it neat. You want it buttoned. And then you want to ruin it." She bit down on a moan and kept going. "You want it like your own mother don't you. Say it. Say you want it like your Mommy!"
And James thought about his mother. He didn't mean to. But the word went in and his brain did the maths on its own — the height, the shape, the low way she talked, the grown-woman softness he was holding onto right now — and it lined up so fast and so neatly that it nearly threw him. He moaned, long and cracked, and his body twitched against hers, lips trembling under the mask. "Yeah," he managed. "Yeah. Like that. Exactly like that." He said it fast, before he could think about what it meant, and buried his face in her neck so he wouldn't have to.
That did it for her. Something in Diane's face went sharp and greedy, and she grabbed the back of his neck with both hands and pulled his ear to her mouth. "Yeah?" she said, low and fast. "Then give it to me. Give it to your Mommy. Like you mean it." She dug her heels in and lifted herself off the railing, opening up, taking every stroke to the root. "No tomorrow," she said. "There's no tomorrow, sweetheart. Just this. Fuck me like it." James understood about half of it and the half was enough. His grip on her hips went hard enough to bruise, and he started driving into her with everything he had left.
He got his arms under her, braced, lifted and she came off the railing entirely, hanging in the air in his grip, legs around him, her weight all in his forearms. He didn't notice his own limit; the adrenaline had switched that voice off. What he did notice was that he could hammer into her now, full strokes, nothing in the way — and he did, hard, fast, hellish, the wet slap of skin cracking off the bare stairwell walls. And because she hung there and slipped slowly down his arms with every bounce, the angle kept sliding, and neither of them could control it. Their bodies met frantic and clumsy and loud, half rhythm and half chaos, and she grabbed his shoulders just to stay on him at all.
And then she went. It started as a long, rising wail and broke into screams, real ones, the kind that filled the stairwell and probably reached the toilets. She thrashed in his arms, heels drumming against his back, and while it tore through her she talked — loud, broken, filthy, from somewhere deeper than words. "Yes — fuck — your buttoned Mommy, your buttoned fucking Mommy, all buttoned up and you're ruining me — oh God you're so good, so so good, don't stop, fuck your Mommy's old pussy, look at it, look what you did to it—" She grabbed a fistful of his mask, dragged his face to hers, and screamed the last of it straight into it. "My good boy. My fucking good boy!"
She kept screaming. Her body bucked on him, wild, useless, all control gone. It was too much, and there was no holding it. James's spine locked, then let go, and he came, deep, burying himself to the base and pumping into her in long hot pulses while she was still shaking around him. His own cracked voice now. "For you," he gasped into her hair. "That's for you, Mommy. All of it — take it!" She sobbed something back that wasn't quite a word. He held her there, arms trembling, refusing to let her slide, and emptied himself into her completely.
She slid off him with a wet little sound and her knees nearly folded, and she caught the wall behind her and leaned into it, breathing hard, the stairwell still tilting. James followed her down, one hand on the wall above her head, the other on her waist, until his body was a roof over hers. And they just stood there. Chest to chest. Foreheads close. Holding on. Neither said anything for a while. It was soft, and it was quiet, and it was familiar, in a way a stranger's hug has no right to be. They stayed. Longer than either of them noticed.
After a while Diane pulled back, tipped her head, and pressed a kiss to the front of his mask — right over where his mouth would be. "Good job, Michelangelo," she whispered against it, and it came out warm, almost fond. Then she pushed off the wall, straightened her dress with both hands, tugged it down over her hips, and swayed out toward the toilets, one hand trailing the wall the whole way. James watched her go until the door clicked. Then he looked down at himself and put his dick away. He fixed what he could. And he went back to the bar.
His friends were waiting exactly where he'd left them. Benji was rubbing his hands like a man about to be served food. Kyle was up on his toes. Henry had his phone out, the list open, thumb hovering. "So," Benji said, before James even reached them. "So? We saw you go. We both saw you both go. Don't you dare—" Kyle cut in. "Can we tick it? Can we tick the box? Say the word, just say it." James stopped in front of them, straightened his mask with both hands, and let them wait one second too long. Then he grinned under it, where they couldn't see. "Tick it," he said. And they lost their minds.
Benji grabbed him by the back of the neck and shook him, twice, the way you congratulate a dog that fetched something. "There he is. My boy." Kyle slapped his arm. Henry just looked at him with new respect, which from Henry was worth more than both. "So," Benji said, arm still around him, leaning in low, like it mattered. "How was she." And James didn't have to fake a word of it. He was still buzzing, still tasting her, still feeling the burn in his knees. It all came out at once. "Best," he said. "Best fuck of my life. Hands down." He shook his head slowly. "You don't get it. She was crazy. Not normal crazy — actually crazy. And she was—" he searched for it. "so goddamn hot."
And right then the corridor door opened, and Diane came back in. Her updo hung half down and crooked, the lace mask sat askew, the black dress was wrinkled in ways a dress does not wrinkle on its own, and she walked like her legs belonged to someone else. Kyle saw her first and pointed, mouth open. Benji followed the finger, stared, and then a slow, delighted grin spread across his face. "Oh," he said, low. "Oh, mate. Look at the state of her. You did a proper number on her, didn't you."
She crossed the room slowly, still catching her breath, and stopped at a table near the wall where two men sat talking. Neither of them looked up — one was mid-sentence, the other nodding along. The second one was dressed as Dracula: pot-bellied, collar crooked, cape half off his shoulders. Diane didn't sit. She reached over, took the drink out of Dracula's hand, and drank from it. Only then did she hook a thumb under the lace mask, peel it off her face and up over her forehead. She exhaled, long and loud, eyes closed, grateful for the air. And the four turtles went completely still. Kyle's mouth stayed open. Benji stopped grinning. Henry lowered his phone. James didn't move at all.
Henry said it first. Not loud — barely a whisper, but it cut through the whole bar anyway, because Henry never sounded like that. "Oh, shit." His phone hung forgotten in his hand. Benji turned to James, then back to the woman, then back to James, doing it twice like the third look would fix what the first two had shown him. Kyle made a small, strangled noise. And James just stood there and stared. He stared at her face — properly, for the first time all night, no lace in the way — and went through it piece by piece. The line of her nose. The arch of her brows. The mole by her ear. He'd seen all of it a thousand times across a dinner table. And it was her. His face drained all the way to the green paint.
"I fucked my mother," James said. Flat. Out loud, into the room. The bartender looked up from a glass, puzzled. Benji grabbed James by the arm and started hauling him toward the door. "Okay. Okay. We're going. We're going now." Kyle scrambled for his jacket, dropped it, grabbed it again. Henry was already outside. The four turtles made for the exit like the bar had caught fire. James let himself be dragged, feet mostly working. He was shocked — properly, deep-down shocked, the floor of his life had just tilted — but under the shock there was something else, warm and quiet, and it wasn't bad. It was the opposite of bad. He was still hard.