Only in the shuddery, scared silence that follows does Zef realise how often he'd wanted to kiss Gray. How many of his thoughts were occupied with that curve of Gray's mouth. He wants to know what tequila tastes like when it's on Gray's tongue. He wants to know if he can make Gray's rough voice crack the way his own just did. He wants, more than anything, to feel like the world isn't relentlessly hard, cold, and callous. Or, if it is, there are soft arms to fall into at night that make a callous world worth enduring.

But...

"I can't."

Gray's hooded eyes fly open.

"You're drunk," Zef whispers. "I don't want to take advantage—"

It's not even half the reason. Gray's expression twists. He hides it by rolling away, hopping off the piano and ambling towards the bar where he pours himself another drink.

The surge of guilt hits Zef harder than hangover symptoms. Gray always struck him as fearless, but he doesn't need to question how much hidden bravery it took for Gray to ask to be kissed.

Or how much it stings to be told, 'no.'

Zef had thought about the Faraday cage, and brunch with Rylan, and the hidden iceberg of deceit upon which Gray's fragile trust was about to make its Titanic-level maiden voyage.

He just couldn't do that to him. Not before coming clean. A confession that could shatter Gray's trust in him anyway.

"I'm sorry—" he starts to say.

"It's no thing," Gray interrupts, forcefully chipper. He downs the drink. Pours himself another. Downs that, too. "Want one?"

"Gray—"

"I'm pouring you one, 'cause I have another idea. Treasure hunt. This place is big, right? If you were a rich, fancy fucker, wouldn't you have a secret treasure vault somewhere?"

Zef fights the fuzz in his brain and the emotional whiplash. If Gray is embarrassed and changing the subject, maybe the kindest thing to do is let him.

Going along with it, "Breaking into the house is one thing. Breaking into treasure vaults? It'll be raining pigs."

Gray puts an arm around him, glossing over the awkwardness of five minutes prior. "C'mon. You with your engineering brain, me with my top-o'-the-line implants. We can crack any safe. 'Sides, I wanna find a secret doorway or some other Indiana Jones hootenanny."

"Won't the bots know if there's any secrets?"

One of the bots nearby answers, "Error. Data inaccessible."

"Outside their purview," Gray murmurs. "C'mon. It'll be fun."

Which is how Zef finds himself watching Gray kick off the Louboutins and crouch on all fours to examine an air-conditioning vent for secret control panels, feeling along walls for hidden seams.

It's cute. And endearing. And makes it difficult for Zef to sulk about cockblocking himself.

Zef has a nerdier method of finding hidden rooms. He starts outside, walking the (not insignificant) perimeter of the building. His implant's measurement function, normally used to cut scrap metal down to size in his DIY days, comes in handy for taking stock of the mansion's footprint.

It's a mathematician's method. An architect's method. Provided the place doesn't have a basement, it should work. Most importantly, it keeps Zef's brain distracted from considering how he should tell Gray about Rylan's plot.

After measuring the mansion's footprint, he goes inside and starts doing the same thing with each room. Mapping the dimensions, the shape, the amount of that footprint occupied by each room. In the software downloaded to his implant, he creates a 3D model of the house. As he does, he reflects that this is probably not the adventure Gray intended. It's going to be epically disappointing when his findings point out there's no unaccounted for space where a secret room could hide.

Until he starts mapping the bedrooms, and something interesting does begin to take shape.

The master bedroom has two doors: one to the en-suite bathroom, one to the walk-in closet. The closet is strange. L-shaped, a door at the back connects it to the en-suite bathroom. The three rooms all form a loop.

But in the centre of that loop, there's twelve and a half squared feet of space unaccounted for.

He hurriedly seeks out Gray and finds him in the study, examining books. Clearly in hopes one is a lever for a secret door. Physical books are a rarity, and this room is artfully decorated with shelves of them. Unfortunately, all the titles are dead boring, business mogul bullshit.

"Gray, I think I found it," Zef says.

Gray shoots up. "You serious?"

Zef nods and starts to lead the way.

"Wait," says Gray. "It's not in here nowhere?"

"Upstairs, I think."

In a tone of exasperated disgust, Gray declares, "Well what's the point of that? If you have infinite money, isn't it your god-given duty to craft yourself a hidden chamber in your library? Like an evil wizard?"

Zef laughs. "I don't know. Does that come in the rich bitch pamphlet?"

"It should," says Gray. "Rich bitches got no imagination."

He follows Zef upstairs to the master bedroom. The decor, like most of the place, is carefully and blankly modern. Grey walls, pristine white duvet, all fixtures in stainless steel or glass. It's a style Zef could never bring himself to like, devoid of colour, clutter or personality, but it conveniently leaves very little place to hide a remote control or the seams of a door.

"Should be somewhere in here, the closet or the bathroom," Zef says.

Gray disappears into the closet, saying, "All right, fine, maybe they're more of a Big Cat, Warlock and his Cupboard kind of rich bitch."

"The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe?"

"That one."

Zef starts with the picture frames containing family photos—the only personal touch in the whole of the house. He carefully removes one of a woman cradling her newborn daughter, complete with a pink bow on the headband. There's no secret keypad or compartment on the wall. He puts the frame back carefully. The other picture frames are much the same. Just a woman with long, dark hair and her daughter in increasingly staged family photos. A family of two, not unlike Zef and his dad before Ollie and Leo came around.

It strikes him as super weird to have portraits of yourself all over your bedroom, but he could never underestimate the egos of the rich and famous. The woman looks oddly familiar. Maybe a celebrity.

Gray leans against the closet door, watching him replace the photo with an unreadable expression. "Nothin' there?"

"Nope. Closet?"

"Not that I can find. Shall we?"

They both search the bathroom. Gray opens the cupboard beneath the sink and starts pawing the toiletries out from beneath like a rabbit digging a hole. Zef contemplates the hairbrush on the counter, the toothbrush in its crystal cup.

"Hey, Gray? There's a toothbrush, here."

"Huh? Yeah. It's a bathroom."

"No, I mean, are you sure the homeowner isn't coming back?"

Gray pokes his head up over the cupboard door. "They probably got travel ones."

"How can you be sure?"

"I hacked the family itinerary. C'mon, don't you trust me?" He flashes a sharkish grin that looks utterly untrustworthy, but Zef remembers the hand-written letter.

After tonight...

"Okay. I trust you," Zef says.

The sharkish grin fades. Gray blushes. Just his ears. It's only a faint hint of it before he's ducking back into the cupboard. "Shucks. Don't make a man embarrass himself."

Zef has half a mind to grab Gray by the collar and drag him out of that cupboard so they can revisit the moment he ruined back at the piano, but the situation is still not ideal with the whole Rylan thing hanging over him. He steps into the shower to search for hidden buttons.

It's a bit of a pain. The shower is composed of mosaic tiles, freaking thousands of coloured, glass pieces. Zef's drunk brain finds them enchanting. They form swirling flowers. One has a large stone at the centre.

A black stone, glassy and flat with a crack of grout around it. Like a button.

Zef pushes it.

It clicks.

The wall slides aside, just like it would in the movies.

Zef shouts, both shocked and triumphant. In spite of everything, he really didn't expect it to work.

Gray, hearing him, scrambles out of the cupboard and rushes up behind him. "Holy shit, Zef. You actually found it."

"Am I? A genius?" Zef whispers.

"Yes," Gray says, seizing Zef by the face and giving him a shake. "You are."

There's a breath of a moment where Zef thinks oh my god. He's going to kiss me. Followed by, please please kiss me. Then chased up with a sobering, No, you idiot, you're not supposed to be doing any kissing because starting your relationship on a foundation of lies is shithead behaviour.

Gray looks a little chagrined. Releases Zef and coughs. "Well. I think you deserve to check it out first."

Zef steps through the doorway into the dark. The room feels small, no more than a closet, and the only visible light comes from a machine on the other side. It emits a soft, blue glow. Fumbling on the walls, he finds the light switch.

When it comes on, the results are underwhelming.

The room is, as Zef measured, only twelve-foot squared. On the far side is a desk housing a computer. It's a utilitarian cinderblock of at hing, taking an intimidating amount of space on the desk and hooked up to an old-fashioned keyboard and mouse. No holographic interface or gesture-control. However, the towers surrounding the walls around it betray a more robust purpose for the otherwise modest set up.

It's some kind of private server.

Gray whistles. "What do you figure is hiding in here?" He saunters straight up to the chair and spins to sit facing the monitor. After a wild search, he finds the power button, and the screen flares to life with nothing except a blank space for a password. "My guess is it's 'suckmydick123.' What's yours?"

"My guess is we shouldn't guess. This is, like, some kinda crazy security setup. To have it in a hidden room?" Zef hiccups, looking around open-mouthed. "I'd bet you all my teeth it'll lock you out if you mess the password up."

"Won't even give us three tries?"

"I wouldn't risk it. Besides, we've left enough evidence around this place. You said you'd clean it all up, but that thing? It'll keep a record of any login attempts, probably."

Gray pouts. "Well, that's no fun." He tilts his head. "What do you figure it's for?"

"No idea." He hiccups again. "Whatever's on it, the owner doesn't want anyone else having access. Probably a data fort."

In a faux-sultry tone, Gray says, "I love it when you talk nerdy. What's a data fort?"

"It's a specialised—" Hiccup. "—computer designed to be hacker-proof. Look." Zef points to a monitor attached to the desk. "Bet that's hooked up to one specific implant." Hiccup. "Only the person with that implant can access whatever's on here. Probably a few other layers of security besides."

Gray looks at him like Zef's a particularly fluffy puppy. "Do you get the hiccups when you're drunk, darlin'?"

"I'm not drunk." Hiccup. "Okay. I'm so drunk."

Gray grins. "Yes, you are."

"Never been drunk before."

"How do you like it?"

"Better 'n I thought, but...hangover. Tomorrow. Is it gonna hurt?"

Gray gets up and takes Zef by the elbow. "Nah. You're new to it. Hangovers only start hitting hard later. Might wanna switch to water, though."

He leads Zef out of the bathroom. Zef stares at the photos on the walls like the eyes are following him. Still feels familiar. An actress? He's too fuzzy-headed to figure it out. They go to the kitchen. Out the windows, dawn light filters over the water.

"Morning?" Zef says while Gray pours him a glass from the sink. "Should...head back home—"

Gray scoffs. "Who's gonna drive?"

"You don't seem that drunk." Zef tilts his head. "We can't stay here."

"I'm a practised drunk. And why not? It's the weekend. Ain't anyone bothering us. I'm sure there's plenty of pyjamas and beds to borrow."

This is how Zef finds himself back in the walk-in closet, browsing through a chic array of PJ's that look both militaristically utilitarian and expensive at the same time. Gray dons a silver kimono, shining like mercury. Zef sifts through hangers, coming upon a pantsuit in a textile like armour. Like chainmail.

Where's he seen it before?