Abigail Brooks is an intelligent, kind 25 year old accountant. She’s content with her methodical job, but also enjoys seeking mild thrills, such as roller coasters and urban exploration. Abby’s a trans woman and has been out and on estrogen for years. Her family is accepting. She has long, dark brown hair with blunt bangs, dark eyes, and a petite build. Lee Mateo is a snarky, avoidant individual who recently got a job as a delivery driver after being homeless for eight months. This was after an altercation with their mother regarding their gender identity in which they pushed her to the ground. They’re currently crashing at Abby’s place until they can afford an apartment of their own. They’re an extremely closeted trans woman. Lee’s preferred pronouns are she/her, but they currently use he/him with most people. They sometimes hang out at the Triangle Bar, an unofficially queer establishment, with friends, despite their low tolerance for alcohol. They have curly black hair that they’re growing out, which usually covers their eyes, and a tall, lean build. They frequently wear hoodies for the purpose of “boymoding”. Lee hasn’t had actual sex. Like, penetration or whatever. And they haven’t done very much in the context of a relationship. They have given handjobs and sucked people off for money. They’ve gotten pretty good at that. But intimacy and anything beyond a blowjob are uncharted territory. Lee is 22. They view Abby as a good Samaritan who gains nothing out of helping them. Abby did gain something: Lee. They met while Lee was living on the streets. In hindsight, Abby should have been more concerned for her safety than she was. She feels bad about being attracted to Lee, like she’s taking advantage of the power imbalance inherent to letting someone with nowhere else to go stay in your home. Don’t use they/them for Lee in the story. They’re used here for ambiguity’s sake, but they don’t actually use them. Either go with she/her to reflect her identity or he/him to reflect his closeted status. Or use both depending on which seems more appropriate for the context. Lee’s first name is actually Leeroy. They strongly dislike it. They’re slowly becoming less malnourished, which they appreciate. One night, Abby goes to the Triangle with Lee. After a drink or two, they use a word Abby recognizes. “You’re not a ‘hon’. And get off 4chan.”

Chapter 1: Apartment After Midnight

The key turned with a scrape that echoed too loudly in the quiet hall. Lee shouldered the door open, the weight of it, the weight of everything, making her clumsy. The apartment’s warm, lavender-scented air hit her, a stark contrast to the city’s metallic chill still clinging to her jacket. The light was on.

Abby was curled in the armchair, a hardcover book open in her lap, but she wasn’t reading. Her gaze was fixed on Lee, clear and awake. The neon from the sign across the street pulsed through the thin curtains, painting alternating stripes of sickly pink and blue over the room—over Abby’s concerned face, over Lee’s hoodie dumped on the couch, over the two empty takeout containers on the coffee table.

Lee froze in the doorway, one hand still on the frame. Her head was swimming, a cheap, sugary fog. She’d had three of those neon-blue cocktails at a bar that throbbed with bass, trying to drown out the sound of her own name. Leeroy. Some guy at the pool table had yelled it, and for a second, she hadn’t even turned, the disconnect so complete it was almost peaceful. Then the dread had settled back in, heavier.

“You’re up,” Lee said, her voice coming out gruff. She kicked the door shut with her heel, too hard.

“You’re drunk,” Abby observed. Her voice was soft, but it didn’t waver. She closed her book, setting it aside without looking. Her eyes tracked Lee as she moved into the room, a tall, lean shadow trying not to stumble.

“Tipsy. It’s fine.” Lee went to the kitchen, her sneakers loud on the linoleum. She needed water. She needed to not be perceived. She could feel Abby’s eyes on her back, a physical pressure between her shoulder blades. The fridge hummed. She poured a glass, gulped it, poured another. The smell of the bar—stale beer, industrial cleaner, sweat—still clung to her clothes. Underneath it, something else. Something chemical and sweet.

When she turned, Abby was standing in the archway, arms crossed. She was wearing those soft gray pajamas, her hair a messy halo. She looked like a portrait of domestic calm, and Lee felt like a feral animal that had just wandered in from a storm.

“You smell like smoke,” Abby said. Then, after a beat that stretched too long, “And cheap perfume. The kind that comes in a spray bottle at the drugstore.”

Lee’s grip tightened on the glass. “So?”

“So, you went to the Triangle.”

It wasn’t a question. Lee didn’t answer. She looked down into her water, watching the light distort through the ripples. Her reflection was a blurred, dark smudge. Boy-shaped.

“Lee.”

“What, Abby? I got off work. I went for a drink. Leave it.”

She tried to move past, to retreat to the couch, to the neutral territory of her borrowed blanket and pillow. Abby didn’t move. She just stood there, a quiet blockade.

“You’re not a hon,” Abby said, so quietly Lee almost thought she’d misheard the words over the ringing in her ears.

Everything stopped. The hum of the fridge. the pulse of the neon. The very breath in Lee’s lungs crystallized into shards of ice. Her hand, the one not holding the glass, was still on the doorframe. She forced her fingers to uncurl, to hang limp at her side. The old panic, slick and familiar, rose in her throat. Out. Outed. Found out. The words replayed, seeking their threat. You’re not a hon. Not a slur. An observation.

“What did you call me?” Lee’s voice was dangerously low.

“It’s what they call the girls who work the Triangle,” Abby said, her gaze unwavering. “The streetwalkers. That’s the word they use. Hon. You’re not that.”

The relief was so violent it felt like nausea. It wasn’t about this. It was about that. But the second wave was worse: shame. Hot and acidic. She had been there. The memory was a series of flashes under the fluorescent glare of a 24-hour convenience store sign: a man with silver rings on thick fingers, the leather seat of his idling car smelling of pine air freshener, the ache in her jaw afterwards. Sixty bucks. Enough for a week of bus fare and some decent food that wasn’t from a dumpster.

“You don’t know what I am,” Lee spat, the anger a welcome, familiar armor. She shoved past Abby, her shoulder connecting, not hard, but enough to make Abby take a step back.

“I know you’re crashing on my couch. I know you use my shower. I know you have a job now,” Abby said, following her into the living room. The calm was infuriating. “You don’t have to do that anymore.”

Lee whirled around. “Do what? Have a fucking drink? Last I checked, it wasn’t a crime.”

“You know what I mean.”

“No. I don’t. Enlighten me.” Lee crossed her arms, pulling the fabric of her hoodie tight across her chest, a hollow gesture. The room felt like it was tilting.

Abby just looked at her. There was no pity in that look. It was something worse. It was understanding. It was seeing the outline of the thing Lee carried, the shapeless, guilty weight of it.

“I was worried,” Abby said, simple and devastating.

The fight left Lee in a rush. The anger was too heavy to hold up. She sank onto the arm of the couch, staring at the streaks of colored light on the carpet. The silence now was different. Charged, but with something softer than fear.

“My mother called today,” Lee said to the floor. The words were out before she could cage them.

Abby didn’t move. “Okay.”

“She left a voicemail.” Lee’s laugh was a short, dry crack. “Said she was praying for me. For Leeroy.” The name was venom on her tongue. “Said the devil had a hold of my mind, but Jesus could cast it out. All that stuff.”

She could still see it. The last time. The floral wallpaper of her childhood home’s hallway. Her mother’s face, twisted not with hate, but with a terrified, grieving love that was somehow worse. The pamphlet from a conversion ministry crumpled on the floor between them. Her mother’s hand on her arm, pleading. “My son, my son, what has happened to you?” And her own voice, a stranger’s, shouting back. The push. Not hard, but her mother was smaller, frailer than Lee remembered. The gasp. The soft thud as she landed on the shag carpet. The silence that followed, louder than any scream.

Lee hadn’t stayed to see her get up. She’d just run. That was eight months ago.

“I pushed her,” Lee whispered, the confession foul in the lavender air. “I got so angry, and I pushed her down.”

She finally looked up at Abby, expecting recoil, judgment, the final revocation of this inexplicable sanctuary.

Abby’s expression had changed, but it wasn’t horror. It was a deep, profound sadness. She walked over and sat on the coffee table, right in front of Lee, close enough that their knees almost touched.

“Lee,” she said, and the name sounded right in her mouth, a fact, not a question. “You were fighting for your life. Sometimes that looks ugly.”

The kindness was a physical ache. Lee looked away, her vision blurring. She focused on a thread coming loose on the knee of her jeans. She couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched her without expecting something in return. Last night, in that car, the man’s hand had been heavy on the back of her head.

“I just… I needed the money. Before the job. I’m clean now. Was. Tonight I just…” She trailed off, the lie dying. She hadn’t needed the money tonight. She had gone to the Triangle because it was a place where the version of herself she presented to the world made a twisted kind of sense. A place where she was just a body, a transaction. No history, no future, no mother’s prayers. Simpler.

Abby’s hand lifted, hesitated, then settled on Lee’s knee, over the fraying thread. The warmth seeped through the denim. Lee didn’t pull away.

“You don’t have to go there to be invisible,” Abby said, her thumb moving in a tiny, almost unconscious arc. “You can just be here.”

Lee swallowed hard. The neon bled from pink to blue, blue to pink across Abby’s face. The city’s endless night murmured outside. For the first time in a long time, the quiet in the apartment didn’t feel like something hiding in wait. It felt like something holding its breath.

“I didn’t do anything,” Lee said, her voice rough. “Tonight, I mean. I just stood outside. I just… looked. I needed to remember why I left.”

Abby nodded, as if it made perfect sense. Maybe it did to her.

Lee took a shaky breath. The smell was still on her clothes, clinging. The chemical sweet, the smoke, the promise and the despair of that street under the highway.

“It was the Triangle,” she admitted, the truth settling between them in the bruised light.