At around midnight, Erin passed out on Ray's bed thinking it was Sora's, pulled the blankets over her head, and ceased to exist for the night. Not only that, but she raided Ray's clothes and, considering most of his old clothes were oversized to hide his body, they fit her swimmingly.

Sora and Ray stared in absolute dismay at Erin completely passed out in Ray's bedroom before Sora reached over for the door handle and gently closed the door.

The moment it was closed, he closed his eyes and steadied himself against the doorframe. "I'm... so sorry about this," he said.

Ray crossed his arms with a smirk and said, "Did... Did you just apologize? To me? The Great Sora Ikeda apologizing—"

As if Sora's stuffy head wasn't already throbbing, it abruptly rendered him useless. He couldn't speak, much less defend himself—not when he was this exhausted and fed up with life.

He went to his room and disappeared behind the door. Ray bit his lip and looked away, rubbing a hand beneath his chin as he wondered aloud, "Maybe that was a bit harsh..." in a hushed voice.

A moment later, though, Sora emerged again, this time with his arms full of blankets.

He dropped them next to the kotatsu, brushed his hands off, and said, "In case she wakes up, we should both sleep out here—since she doesn't know about my actual room."

"R-Right," Ray agreed. He blinked, speechless for a moment, before he realized what they were doing. He gasped. "Like a slumber party?!"

Sora frowned. "No—"

"I can't remember the last time I had a slumber party," Ray said, thrilled. He ran to get ready for bed, at which point, Sora gave up trying to fight it and instead set to work unfolding the blankets into makeshift sleeping bags.

When they were both ready for sleep, the two of them settled under the covers, their backs turned to one another. Ray, facing the window, and Sora, facing the kitchen. It was a dreadful period of silence, one that sent Ray's anxiety into overdrive.

How could he say something so hurtful, even to Sora? He had no excuses for treating Sora like that, no matter how rude Sora tended to be. Ray clenched his fists into the blanket and pulled his knees up, tense and frustrated with himself for always blurting out the first thing on his mind.

Ray heard the blankets rustle several feet away from him. He heard Sora turn onto his back before sighing, the covers pulled up to his chin. Still awake, Ray thought, hesitant to look over his shoulder.

After a moment of silence, Ray cleared his throat and said, quietly, "I thought you were working tonight."

"In a way," Sora whispered, eyes on the ceiling.

Intrigued, Ray really did look over his shoulder. Sora's face was enshrouded in moonlight. "What does that mean?" Ray asked. He really didn't understand the club business, and his imagination tended to run wild.

Sora glanced at Ray before looking away. Ray turned away. He wasn't sure why he expected Sora to answer him. Sora's work is off limits, Ray reminded himself, and he'd just have to be happy with knowing what, exactly, Sora's work even was.

But then, Sora said, "I've been hired to be an escort. For one of my regulars."

Ray's brow furrowed. He pushed up onto his elbow and turned back to Sora, an eyebrow raised. Sora looked at him out of the corner of his eyes and said, "You don't know what an escort is, do you."

"Not at all," Ray confessed, slumping with a sigh. He flopped back onto his pillow. "What do you do?"

He shrugged. "I'm basically... arm candy to a sugar daddy."

"Amazing. For how long?"

"Just a night. We're going to an event and that's it. My fitting was today."

"For, like... a suit?"

"Yeah."

"Wow."

"I guess."

"And it's all paid for?"

"Yeah."

"Do you get to keep the suit afterwards?"

"Yeah, I think so."

"Damn. That sounds nice."

They fell silent for as long as it took Ray's brain to wrap back around to Erin. Ray turned to Sora and whispered, "Hey, you never mentioned that your sister was trans, too."

Sora scoffed. "You never asked," he said, borderline snickering like the devil he was. Ray wrestled his pillow out from under his head to swing it around to smack Sora. Sora punched it off to the side as Ray sat up, throwing the pillow down onto his lap.

"Your sister is incredible," Ray said. He looked down at his lap, pinching the hem on his pillow case. "I'm glad I got to meet her. And that she's okay with me."

"Chances are she's just thrilled at the prospect of me dating," Sora said as he turned onto his side. Ray frowned as Sora said, "I'm going to sleep."

"'Kay," Ray whispered, dejectedly, and returned to his padded mound of blankets for the night. It would take an hour before he was able to fully fall asleep, but he felt content knowing that in the morning, he'd get to talk to Erin one last time.

____

Wednesday came swiftly after a weekend of writing papers and practicing for his date with destiny (the coffee shop). That previous Sunday, he had treated Charlie to a chai there and as the two of them sat together at the window, Ray explained that he would be playing there that week.

Charlie had leant against the counter, propped his chin on his fist, and smiled at Ray as he said, "Tell me what time and I'll be there." It made Ray almost too flustered to answer, but he did, and now he had to expect that Charlie would follow through. He'd be performing for everyone in San Francisco that mattered to him—Charlie, Leo, Huey, and Barry.

He considered asking Sora to come as well, but the chances of that happening were slim to none. Little did he know, however, that Charlie had already asked Sora on his behalf.

"I'm gonna be in the Design District on Wednesday," Charlie said off-handedly that same Sunday night at Bandaids.

Sora squinted at him. It was a slow night, and so the two of them decided to share the first stage in the club—a long stretch that connected two poles by a walkway. Beneath them, the tiles on the stage glowed in bubbles of pinks and blues.

"Why the Design District?" Sora asked. Charlie had no reason to suspect that Sora even lived near there.

"There's this coffee shop de Lucía is performing at. I didn't realize he played guitar," Charlie explained. Sora's brain left the station, only to arrive once again as Charlie concluded, "You should come with me."

"No. No way," Sora said, shaking his head.

Charlie groaned, slumping down the pole like Sora's rejection was too much to bear. "He knows though. About the club and shit. Are you really still mad at me?" Charlie whined, but Sora was already halfway back to his own pole. "Come on! I don't want to go alone!"

Charlie continued to badger him from that moment onwards at every opportunity he could. From the bar to the VIP rooms to the goddamn bathroom, Charlie was there begging Sora to come with him. His reasoning: That Ray was worth Sora's time, if only for half an hour at the puniest café on the block.

By the end of the night, Sora was too tipsy and tired to bother arguing. "Fine. Alright, fuck it. I'll go or whatever," he said, pouting off to the side as Charlie threw his fists in the air and yelled, "FUCK YEAH!"

"What's going on?" David prompted from behind the bar, a hand on his hip and the other on the bar top.

Sora took a seat and started with, "You, getting me a drink, that's what's going on—" while Charlie said, "Silver's coming with me to see the guy I'm gonna fuck."

The way in which Sora's brain and heart stopped.

Sora looked, bewildered, over at Charlie. Charlie was shimmying in a little premature-celebratory jive while Sora's brain revolved around "they guy he's gonna fuck—the guy he's gonna fuck—the guy he's—"

"Wait, hold up, you never mentioned that," Sora said, acutely aware that his voice nearly cracked just like his patience. He cleared his throat before that could happen.

"You know how Charlie works, dude," David said, gesturing to the state of Charlie in all his sexy glory.

Charlie jabbed a finger in Sora's face, a smug grin on his lips as he said, "Suck it. I get dibs."

"I—I never asked for dibs," Sora said, alarmed. "I just think—I mean, he seems like the long-term type of guy—" He didn't want to say it out loud, but he had his suspicions about the "energy" de Lucía excluded, and it all read in fine print: "virgin".

And while Sora didn't care one way or the other about virginity as a social construct, he did care—very, very little—about Charlie's preferences. Something told him that handcuffs and the like weren't on de Lucía' radar.

"He seems kinda vanilla, dude," Sora tried uselessly, but Charlie said, "They're all vanilla before I bring the chocolate, you know what I'm saying?"

Sora slapped a hand over his forehead. He accepted the drink David passed him and blindly took a sip of it.

"I'm sure it will be fine. What's this meetup about, though? Can't be serious enough for you to start introducing friends," David commented, and Sora thought the same.

"Silver already knows the guy," Charlie said, cautious to use Sora's stage name since they were within earshot of customers chatting down the bar.

"Really?" David said, and Sora spared a second to peer between his fingers at the guy. Sora grumbled to himself furiously, looking off to the side. "Is this the guy from the theater?"

"Hell yes," Charlie said.

"I'm just saying," Sora started again, and the instant he did, he heard the alcohol slurring his voice. He couldn't stop, though. "That you shouldn't be seeing de Lucía if you're just looking to fuck, bro. That's all I'm saying."

"Oh, right, because you two are such great friends," Charlie teased. "You barely know the guy."

"But can't you tell!" Sora cried, exasperated. "He's too—too—"

"Is he a prude?" David suggested with a grimace. "He's a prude, huh."

"No, he's just too—too—wholesome," Sora finished anticlimactically and with a tired, sad pout on his face. It was too early in the morning for him to talk about this, or even think about de Lucía' voice through the studio door. He couldn't stop thinking about it, no matter how much he convinced himself that the Daily Grind would banish it from his brain.

Drunk Sora wondered if de Lucía would be singing at the café down the street.

Thankfully, Charlie was too wound up to read into it. Instead, he declared that his mind wouldn't be changed, and that Sora would just have to suck it up. When Sora looked hopelessly at David to intervene, David shrugged and said, "Sorry, dude. No changing his mind."