Zef calls his dad back.

"I got the job."

"Wait— You're shitting me. But you said you didn't?"

"Well, I guess I didn't balls it up half as bad as I thought."

A moment of quiet on the other end and the smallest noise. Definitely a sniffle.

"Are you crying?"

A wobble in his dad's voice, "I'm just so damn proud of you, son."

"You helped."

"Listen." Some determined throat clearing. "You listen, that money I sent? You keep it, but you promise me you'll take that money out on the town and celebrate."

"Dad—"

"Not done! You deserve this. You worked so damn hard for it. Live a little and see the city. Maybe revisit old haunts from uni."

Zef doesn't really have those, unless you count study halls. "I don't know. Should save it, just in ca—"

"No! Listen to your old man. You're the hardest working man I know, and so talented, and you're gonna do great things. But you never let yourself have much fun."

"I don't even know where I'd go."

"Well, use that fancy McGuffin you planted in your head and find somewhere! Have a drink. Maybe pick up a nice boy—"

"DAD."

"Or a bad boy, but only if he's temporary! Only the best for you. I'm gonna hang up, but you'd better celebrate, you hear?"

Zef feels a sharp, keen tug in his breastbone. Maybe he's the age most grown men wouldn't want to go out drinking with their dad, but he is the first person Zef would choose to celebrate with. If Zef drank at all. "Okay. I'll try. For you."

"I appreciate it. All right, I'll talk to you later. Love you."

"Love you, too."

The comm line drops. Zef looks at the half-emptied aircon unit and his dreary flat. His dad's dead right. No way to celebrate in this dump.

He doesn't even notice the bloodstain on his way out.

~***~

The Gilded Road attracts a certain kind of clientele. Primarily? Tattooed leather daddies, chain-smokers and drag queens. The odd criminal. And people like Zef who couldn't afford to go elsewhere.

It meets his needs though. Queer? Check. Affordable? Check. Filled with the sort of fags he'd like to one day fuck? Very check.

In the bayou, there weren't really gay bars. There was the car charging station on the hill where queers went dogging, and there was the diner owned by a crew cut lesbian with a sawed off shotgun behind the counter. Not that she needed it much anymore, but she said it worked to keep dickheads from poking their heads out of the cesspits they occupied.

So, The Gilded Road is Zef's first gay bar.

The interior has that French art nouveau thing going on, but in a gay, big city way. Lots of neon lights and pride flags. And the floor's all gold brick, like he's Dorothy on his way to Oz. The bathroom sink has faucets shaped like dicks. Zef ducks in to adjust his binder and see if the humidity made his hair marshmallow-in-a-microwave big. Luckily, it's fine. As he adjusts his curls, a burly guy comes over to wash his hands after using the urinals. Doesn't even blink at Zef's presence in the gents, and it's a special kind of moment. A helium balloon in the chest moment. One Zef earmarks to think about later. 'Cause he's used the gents for a while, even if he doesn't pass, and no one's told him not to. But he does get The Looks. The double takes. The 'oh, sorry, I thought this was the men's!' from blokes who saw Zef before they saw the urinals and toilet papered floor.

Not here, though.

Zef emerges from the bathroom. Best thing would be to order a drink and loosen up, but Zef doesn't drink and prefers to people-watch, so he finds one of those tall tables full of empty glasses near the door.

First up, a fat bear with a t-shirt proclaiming 'spank me.' Second, an I-just-turned-twenty-one guy with acne. Two girls in snapbacks holding each other up like they've been pre-drinking since noon.

All of them are wildly different, yet, Zef feels a stir of kinship. Or something like it.

Then he walks in.

He looks like a rockstar. Like a sewer rat. Dark, sleepless smears under his eyes. Choppy, black hair. Black everything else, too. Turtleneck under a leather, studded half-jacket. Jeans with torn knees and the scabs to prove they're not artfully distressed. Boots built for curb-stomping.

He looks like a car crash. Like bad news. Might as well be wearing a neon sign that says, 'Run.'

There's a certain kind of person you avoid in the big city. Zef learned well during his college days. Came up with some ground rules to keep himself off any lists.

Rule number one: Stay out of trouble.

Rule number two: Don't take unnecessary risks.

Rule number three: Don't trust anyone you wouldn't take home.

This man looks more than rough around the edges. He's the torn edge of an aluminium can. Touch him, and you might cut yourself.

And Zef can't look away.

Bad News leans his elbows on the bar, heart-shaped ass just right out and hip cocked. He orders something from the bartender, then looks over his shoulder. Looks over it right at Zef.

Zef is used to getting clocked. Kind of unavoidable. His public profile shows his pronouns, but he almost never passes. Which sucks sometimes, but it's whatever.

This guy, this bit of Bad News, looks Zef up and down, smiles—smirks? —and nods his chin. It's the best kind of clock. That smile says, Nice. That nod says, Me too.

Zef absolutely should not cross the space between them. It's up-and-down a bad idea to talk to someone like that. So he just nods and smiles back and stares determinedly at the door.

There's movement in his periphery. Zef stares at the door harder, but his attention drifts to the left, where all five-foot-nothing of Bad News sidles up to Zef's table and places his drink between them.

He says, "Should I order another?" in the softest Southern accent.

Zef swallows the obscenely prominent lump in his throat. "Uh."

Before Zef can say more, Bad News holds up two fingers to the bartender, nails painted slate grey. The bartender pours a second shot of something thick and inky dark. He slides it down the bar top without spilling, his mechanical arm calculating the exact force necessary. Bad News retrieves it.

"I don't— I don't really drink." Zef says. "Sorry."

Bad News laughs like Zef is joking. When Zef doesn't join in, "Wait, you serious?"

Zef shrugs. He never quite liked the idea of it. Booze. Being drunk. Losing control.

"You must be new. This city? Best way to survive it's at the bottom of a bottle."

"Went to college here," Zef says. Just a little defensively. A smidge.

"Ahh, college. The insulated life. Though, also, usually a place for getting pissed. So you never...?"

Zef feels like he's being asked if he's a virgin. And he's that, too. Kind of difficult to overcome the dysphoric elephant in the room when most of the men who made eyes at him were straight, and their gaze took in all the wrong things. Not that his body is wrong. But the way those straight men saw it? Saw him? Wrong all over.

"Never been drunk, no," Zef says.

"Do you wanna be?"

"Not really."

Gray grins at him. It's a bit sharp, but not in a judge-y way. "More for me, then." He reaches for one of the shots.

On impulse, Zef says, "I'll try it." A sip won't tank him. Zef's not interested in getting drunk, sure, but this stranger bought it for him. This really hot stranger. This really hot, queer, man-shaped stranger who smiles at him in approval.

Zef likes the attention of hot, queer, man-shaped stranger. So sue him.

He holds the shot under his nose and sniffs. It doesn't smell good. "What's in it?"

"Might as well be last century's gasoline. Bottom's up." Gray clinks their shots together and downs his.

Zef takes a tiny sip. A miracle, really, 'cause whatever it is, it's revolting. Bitter. Burns all the way down. Leaves his lips feeling tingly like he just slurped vindaloo curry straight. He experiences the five stages of grief, and it must show on his face, because Bad News laughs.

"Not for everyone."

Not for anyone. "I repeat. What the frick is it?"

"Frick? Oh boy. It's an unholy union of tequila, coffee and pureed ghost chillies."

"And you like it?"

"Nah. I drink this just to feel something."

Zef might as well be a bull charging towards that huge, red flag, but he's gotta know— "What's your name?"

"Gray."

"Is that your real name or short for something?"

"Grayson, but it's just Gray to most folks. What's yours?"

"I'm Zeffir. Zef."

"Okay, Zef. What brings you to Neorleans?"

"Was it that obvious I'm not from here?"

Gray tilts his head this way and that. "You're not giving tourist, but you're a bit buttoned up for a local." His eyes crinkle at the corners. The smallest thing of a smile. "And I know anyone who's anyone in this city, and I'd remember you."

A flash of warm flattery cooks Zef's insides, but he tries to keep his cool. "You know all thirty million Neorleans residents?"

"Ey, you didn't answer my question, yet. What brings you here?"

The words come with surprising ease. "Needed a good paying job. Transition isn't cheap."

Gray nods in understanding. Just that nod makes Zef's shoulders unbunch. He's talked to plenty of trans guys online—how else was he meant to figure himself out in the run-down boonies where he grew up? But otherwise, bringing it up with people was hard. Saying it out loud? Like dredging a polluted lake. It always churned up all the internalised sludge built up from twenty-eight years in the closet. But this?

This is easy.

Gray says, "I hear that. How's the job hunt?"

"Good. I just got one."

"Where?"

"Bionic Capital. Cybernetics engineer."

Gray makes the face Zef did when he drank that shot. Some of the warmth in the conversation goes cold.

Gray says, "Wouldn't be my first choice."

Zef bristles a bit. "It was them or CyberSuite, so I went for the lesser evil."

"They're the lesser, huh?"

"It's just temporary, anyway. I'll take their money. Hoping I can engineer something that'll actually help people."

"You think they'll let you?"

"I'm not giving them the choice."

Gray barks a laugh. The brief icicle wedged into their conversation melts. "Aw, now I would love to see that. I won't hold my breath, but if you can blow it all to hell? Their patents and repair subs and all the rest? Shit, if you decide to stick dynamite under HQ, give me a call. I'd help you light the fuse."

Zef says, "You'd have to give me your number for that."

He said it as a joke, but out loud it doesn't sound like one. It sounds like flirting. His heart pounds in his throat. Not just from the accidental flirting, but because they live in a world of surveillance, and it only occurs to Zef a second too late that Gray might not have meant metaphorical dynamite. He looks like the sort to homebrew explosives... If anyone heard them talking like this about a mega corporation, it could cost Zef his job, could get him fined or worse.

Should have just asked Gray if he wanted to make out. Not for his number. But Zef's just a touch of the old-fashioned, and it's too late. He asked.

Gray hesitates. His teeth—a little crooked, not something Zef sees much in these days of body mods—grit together. Still wearing a smile, but the clenched version. After a deliberation that feels like an age, Gray reaches across the bar top and slips two fingers under the sleeve of Zef's suit. The touch is gentle, but Zef's pulse is not. Hopefully Gray can't feel it ticking against the pads of his fingers. The subdermal implant in his temple glows—a tiny red square with microfilament circuitry flashing under his skin, transferring data. Zef's HUD flashes up with a request for that data transfer, which he accepts, and Gray's number downloads into his contact list.

Most of the time, data transfer like this is possible remotely. Gray must have his touch-locked, making it harder to access or hack remotely. Not a bad idea. Reduces spam mail. But most people just have filters for that.

Not Gray. He removes his hand, but Zef feels like the touch left prints at the scene of a crime.

"Thanks," he says.

Gray smiles. A bit crooked. The flash of a canine. For a moment, his eyes flick over Zef's shoulder and the quality of his expression changes. Zef glances back, but there's just a gaggle of gym rat gays in v-necks and a masked Amazon of a woman walking through the door. When Zef turns back around, Gray studies him, renewed interest in the tilt of his head. There's a hairline scar on his upper lip that vanishes and reappears at the bottom of his chin. The glance of a knife? A tattoo peeks out the top of his turtleneck—some kind of filigree or leafy florals, black and a little red.

He's hot. Like, undeniably hot. Melting polar ice caps hot. Hotter than that disgusting drink still burning on Zef's tongue.

He's also a bad idea. Zef came to this city with a goal. Get a good job. Make bank. Buy all the cybernetics needed to transition so Leo back home might finally look at him in a gay way. So anyone might.

Everything—from Gray's appearance, to his choice in alcohol, to the broken glass edge in his throaty T voice—marks him as a mistake waiting to happen. Car crash, Zef first thought when he walked in, and he's done nothing since to disabuse him of the notion.

Rule number one: stay out of trouble.

But when Gray says, "Wanna get out of here?"

Zef replies, "Yeah. Why not?"