A photo in the portfolio shows a pair of wrists held together. The skin of one is warm brown, the other bleach white. Twinned upon each are tattooed mugs of steaming coffee. Simple line drawings, endearing for their simplicity. There's nothing broadly moving about the art itself, so why do Zef's eyes burn with tears? Why does his throat feel like it's caught in an iron fist? Why does his stomach shake?

Gray comes over. Horrified at the idea of being seen, Zef tries to swallow the nameless feelings bubbling up but can't. They crowd his body, too big and full, making him feel like he'll vomit if he doesn't let them out.

Gray says, "Found something? Hey. Hey, what's the matter?"

"I'm fine," Zef says. It's a croak, but it comes out firm. Don't ask. Don't ask again, or I might—

To his horror, Kit comes over. "That work's not mine. My apprentice did those. If you want something from her, I can give her a call, though."

Zef doesn't trust himself to speak. He can't cry in front of this total stranger. Not in front of Gray, either. He brought Zef here to be kind. To fulfil a wish. Zef just hadn't really thought hard about what memories he might trip over.

Now he's looking at these two best friends with their best friend tattoos, and his heart screams Ollie, Ollie Ollie. But Ollie's dead. Ollie's ashes are in the bayou. Ollie doesn't have skin anymore. No canvas for a matching friendship tattoo.

Which means, really, Zef should be getting a memorial tattoo.

Then he thinks about the bruised soreness in his face from the fight that evening. About speeding down the highway at suicidal speeds. He considers all the moments he could have died since moving to Neorleans and that sharpens into a knife that twists in his heart with acute understanding. If he keeps this up, it's his Dad who'll be looking at pictures of memorial tattoos and friendship tattoos and wishing his son wasn't six feet under so they could get the latter.

The danger of Gray both attracts and repels Zef, draws him in and scares him. It makes a bit more sense than he'd like.

Where's the line between being reckless so you feel alive and being reckless 'cause you don't care if you die?

All this congeals in his stomach like bad dairy, and he can't look up at Gray or Kit, can't find an answer casual enough to make up for the long pause.

Gray rescues him from having to say anything. "We'll catch you later, Kit."

He takes the portfolio from Zef's lap and folds it on the coffee table. He pulls Zef up from the sofa by his sleeve. Zef, too far away to protest, still notices the look of genuine shock on Kit's features when he looks between them.

"Sure. Sure. Catch you later, Gray."

The humid night makes it even harder to breathe.

Gray asks, "Zef? What's wrong?"

It is of utmost importance that Zef not cry, but he's pretty sure if he lets out the breath he's holding it'll be a sob.

"Zef?" Gray stops. Pushes him gently onto a bus stop bench. "Talk to me."

Zef can't. He can't open his mouth, or it'll all pour out of him. Or he'll vomit. He shouldn't have drank so fast. Shouldn't have drank at all.

"Zef..." Gray's voice is impossibly soft. "You're scaring me."

Zef makes the mistake of meeting Gray's eyes. They're wide and worried and doe-like with his winged lashes, and it reminds Zef viscerally of the photo Rylan showed him of a younger, pre-T Gray soaked in the blood of some factory workers.

Zef opens his mouth, and the sob comes out. Loud and ugly and a thousand percent more mortifying than if he puked. Tears turn Gray's worried face to watercolours in the dim streetlights.

"I wanted a tattoo once," Zef says. "I was supposed to get friendship tattoos. But now he's dead. He's dead, and it's my fault."

"Zef. That's not true."

"How could you know what's true?"

"I just know, and you wouldn't. Not on purpose."

"You don't know. You don't know anything." Zef's thoughts are sharp enough to cut himself with. I might get you killed, too, and you're the closest thing I've had to a friend in so long, and isn't that sad? Doesn't that make me an awful person? "It is my fault. He more or less told me so in his goddamn suicide note. If I hadn't come out, if I'd explained better— So I can't even get a memorial tattoo, can I?"

"Slow down. You can—"

"I can't." A ragged swallow. "He's dead."

"What happened?" Gray whispers.

"He killed himself. He fucking hung himself in my goddamn trailer, all right? He stood on a stool with a belt wrapped around his chin and kicked the stool out and died there, and I found him." It feels a complex mix of agony and relief to say it. Like the burn of a blister lanced and the infection pouring out. He's never told anyone. Never said it out loud. It seemed very important not to give Leo any of the details.

Gray doesn't speak. For a long time, he stands in the space of that awkward, long pause. Just looking at Zef with a deep furrow between his eyebrows, lower lip caught hard between his teeth. Zef feels self-conscious of how loud his breathing is, how strangled the sobs and efforts to choke back tears. Gray looks both desperate to soothe him and aware of how impossible the task is.

Finally, he steps forward. He pulls on his sleeve so it's covering his hand and uses it to wipe at Zef's face. Zef pulls away. "Don't."

"Can't stop me."

"I'm disgusting."

Gray meets his eyes and says fiercely, "Ain't nothing disgusting about caring so much. C'mere." He finishes brushing the tears and snot off Zef's face. "Let's go."

"Huh? Where?"

"Ain't gonna find anything comforting here in a bus stop, but I think I've got the right spot."

He leads Zef back to the bike and hops on. The drive is far more solemn this time. Not only because of the creeping shame and anxiety over his meltdown, but because the scenery is that of buildings one thrown brick away from being condemned, shops so decrepit it looks like they can barely keep the lights on. Zef doesn't know how anything here could cheer him up, but Gray stops outside a sixty story apartment complex. He parks the bike halfway in a bush to (hopefully) prevent someone else seeing and jacking it like they did. Zef follows him silently inside.

"Where are we?"

"This was my place. For a bit," Gray says.

Maybe it's all a matter of perspective. After all, Zef's trailer park in the bayou isn't a five star hotel. But there's something far more desolate about this place. Voices bellow from the ground floor apartments. A baby wails. They get into the elevator. Gray hits the top floor. All the way up, then through a door to a fire escape. Gray leads Zef up onto the roof.

They might not have climbed the sixty stories on foot, but Zef still has to catch his breath at the sight laid out before him.

He can see for miles. Over the rooftops of the neighbourhood, across the black snake of the 'Sippi, all the way to the towering pillars of light in Neorleans. It's both quiet and loud. All the sirens and nightclub bass and crowds are like a burbling creek from this far away, but it's the lights that keeps Zef looking and looking. They shimmer and pop. The traffic is a golden stream. The skyscrapers are vast towers filled with gilded eyes. Zef can't name the feeling of looking at it. Like he loves that place and hates it, too.

"When I was having a bad day," Gray tells him, "I used to come up here and look out at that. It made everything seem...I dunno, smaller. Manageable."

"I get it."

Gray goes to the edge of the building and sits. Zef feels compelled to grab his arm, but holds back, still wary of the boundaries around touch, blurry as they've become. Gray swings his legs over the edge. He kicks his feet, looking down like heights don't make his belly flop. He pats the spot beside him. "It's prettier from here."

"I'll fall and go splat," says Zef.

"Won't let that happen. Look, I'll hold onto ya."

He holds out a hand. Zef, feeling something glittery and sharp like wet gravel in his lungs, takes the outstretched hand. Marvels at how soft Gray's skin is. Not rough like the rest of him. Gray helps him onto the ledge. His knees shake as he takes that first step up.

"Easy does it," says Gray.

The edge is broad, stable, but Zef still looks determinedly at the stone and not the very distant earth beyond as he crouches down and takes a seat. He feels more solidly grounded once he does, but his guts still swoop at the sense of gravity pulling on his sneakers.

His stomach does more than swoop when Gray puts a stabilising arm around his waist. "See? Prettier like this."

Zef looks at Gray instead of the city and says, "Sorry."

"Pfth. What for?"

"For ruining our da— night out."

"Huh?"

"With the crying. And being a big pussy about heights. You're— it's really nice what you're doing for me, and now I'm just wishing I was brave enough not to ruin it."

"You ain't ruining nothing." Gray gives the hold around Zef's waist a squeeze. "Sorry I brought you somewhere that brought up bad memories."

"You didn't know. And I still think I'd want a tattoo, just— Guess I never gave much thought to what I'd want, and when I did it was hard not to think of Ollie."

"I still think you could get something for 'im."

"Still don't know what."

Gray fixes him with a pensive look. After a beat, he raises his knee to roll up the cuffs of his pants. Zef briefly mourns the loss of contact. The anchoring warmth of Gray's arm around him made him feel more secure.

Gray's jeans are tight and can't be taken up more than a few inches, but it's enough to bare his ankles. There, on the knot of bone, is a fat doodle of a squirrel holding a balloon. On his shin is—a slice of pizza? They're faded and patchy. Hard to discern. Look like napkin doodles.

"I gave myself these. Stick and poke."

Zef can't help a grin. "What's the squirrel about?"

"Don't know. Would love to say there's a story. But I just like squirrels and pizza."

Something about that tickles Zef. The night air is chilly, but Gray seems to run hot. It's warm next to him. Zef leans in. "You like squirrels?"

"Yeah. Who doesn't like squirrels?"

"Lots of people think they're, like, pests."

"Lots of idiots. They're cute. They got fluffy tails. They store nuts for the winter and forget where they put 'em. They're relatable."

"You also store nuts for winter and forget where you put them?"

Gray bumps Zef's shoulder gently. "I got more dumb tattoos. Guess what I'm saying is, they don't have to mean something if you don't want. I did mine 'cause... Well, felt a bit like taking my body back. It's hard, this world. Harder for us. Our bodies don't get to feel like our own. We've got to pay for what cis people get for free. When we get it, we often don't own it. Like, companies still own those implants. Sometimes feels like we're born covered in red tape and spend the first twenty, thirty, sixty years of our lives peeling it off. And then..." He falls quiet, a grim slant to his mouth, casting his gaze over the edge of the building.

Zef leans closer. "Then?"

Gray looks at Zef a long moment, like he's considering whether to continue. Haltingly, he says, "Then I got these." He raises his hand and lets the glow of his tattoos shine past the leather of his gloves.

"You never said how."

Gray reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He lights up. Takes a smooth drag. "It weren't, like, easy for me to figure myself out. I didn't always know. Figured it out a bit at a time. I knew I didn't feel— right. But not in the way some of us folks describe? It ain't that my body felt wrong. It didn't hurt to be a girl. It just didn't feel right, neither."

Zef tilts his head. For him, it was different. It did hurt. Still does. But he relates anyway. It didn't matter they'd come to the same place from different angles.

Gray says, "We're not so different. By the time I decided what I wanted, I was feeling impatient. So I figured, what's a few years' of indentured servitude in exchange for the rest of my life lived as me?"

Zef's stomach turns. He can see where this is going.

"They wanted soldiers, and there's tech involved. So I go under the knife, and instead of waking up with the body I wanted, I woke up with a body that weren't mine no more." His wry smile tries to dismiss the pain of it. "I got a body they controlled. When I couldn't take it anymore, what they made me do, I ran. I found other ways to make this work for me." He taps his thumb to his chest. "Giving myself tattoos— it's like, they say your body is a temple, right? But temples are covered in art 'n paintings. I'm no good at drawing. But it felt...right."

Zef's brow scrunches. He feels those nerves stretched raw from years of trying to reclaim a body that used to be a prison.

"What I'm getting at is you don't need some kinda specific, symbolic image. It can be whatever and still mean a whole lot. It's not the picture, it's the act of altering yourself. Creation, you know? Getting a tattoo, we all get to be gods for a few hours. Recreate ourselves in an image we like."

Zef doesn't know how to respond. He'd never thought of it that way. He'd never ascribed much philosophical or spiritual meaning to his transition or getting a tattoo, but the way Gray says it? It makes sense to him. Speaks to him with the gravitas of a prayer. And it seems both a stroke of serendipity, of supreme good luck, that of all the trans men hidden in Neorleans, the one he met was Gray.

Good luck and bad because there's still the issue of what Zef has to do for Rylan. A task more odious and reprehensible by the minute. By the second.

Abruptly, he feels like crying again. Which is super embarrassing, but whatever.

He had a plan. Work this shitty job. Make some money. Get his transition underway. Get his dad some better, safer gild. Maybe even contribute something helpful to society before quitting and retiring to the bayou where he'd split time between tinkering with his dad and sucking Leo's soul out through his dick until he pops the question.

Nothing extravagant. No white picket fence. No pension plan. No offshore accounts with enough money to put two dozen crotch goblins through college. Not even kids. He wasn't asking much.

That was the plan.

None of this was the plan.

He looks into Gray's gorgeous face and feels a titanic elephant's foot of guilt step on him in all his tenderest places.

If he wants a future that looks anything like the one he planned, it's going to cost him the trust and care with which Gray is looking at him, now.

He can't do it. He knows beyond a shadow of a doubt. No matter how many bad things Gray's done, he's not bad, and Zef can't sentence him to imprisonment by the sort of people who imprisoned him already within his own body.

He doesn't know what that means for him. For his job. Can he convince Rylan that helping Gray helps her? Find a way out of this mess? Compromise? He doesn't know. Not yet.

All he knows is he has to tell Gray everything.

And hope like hell Gray will forgive him.