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, however, 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 generally 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 probably 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. Abby asks if Lee’s mom lives in state. The question sets off a million red flags for Lee. Abby quickly clarifies, offering to “invite herself” into Lee’s mom’s house to retrieve the items and documents they left behind.

Chapter 1: The Spare Room

The air mattress sighed under Lee’s weight, a long, plastic whisper that mirrored the feeling in his own chest. The ceiling above Abby’s spare room was textured, a landscape of lumpy plaster he’d been studying for three weeks. In the dim glow from Abby’s desk lamp in the adjoining office nook, the shadows between the lumps looked like continents on a map of nowhere.

A soft knock at the doorframe. Not the door—it was always open, a rule—just knuckles on wood.

“Lee?”

He didn’t turn. “Yeah.”

Abby leaned in, her blunt bangs a dark line against the warm light behind her. She smelled like lavender soap and toner. “I was finishing up the quarterly reports and I had a thought. For the legal name change forms. We need a copy of your birth certificate.”

Lee went very still. The continents on the ceiling blurred.

“I know you said your mom has all that stuff. Do you… remember the address?”

The question hung in the air, thick as the humidity that curled the corners of the family photo on the bookshelf. Lee’s throat tightened. His mother’s face, twisted not in anger but in a hurt so profound it felt like a physical blow, flashed behind his eyes. The shove. The crack of her hip against the kitchen table. The silence after.

“No,” he said, the word scraping out. It was mostly true. He remembered the house, the peeling blue paint on the front steps, the constant smell of overcooked greens. The address was just numbers and a street name. The real address was the look in her eyes.

Abby hovered in the doorway. He could feel her concern like a physical pressure. “We need it, Lee. It’s the next step. I can help you write the letter, we can keep it super factual, just a request for documents—”

“She won’t send shit.” He finally rolled his head on the flat pillow to look at Abby. Her dark eyes were soft, earnest. It made something bitter rise in his gut. “You don’t get it. She’d rather burn them. She would burn them.”

“Then we circumvent her.” Abby took a step into the room, her socks silent on the wood floor. She gestured with the pen she was still holding. “If you give me the address, I can go. I can be a… a neutral third party. I can say I’m a friend helping with administrative stuff. It doesn’t have to come from you.”

Lee sat up slowly, the air mattress groaning. He pulled his knees to his chest, the too-big hoodie swallowing him. “You’d do that?”

“Of course I would.”

“Why?” The question was out, harsh and immediate. A defense mechanism. “Why are you doing any of this? Letting some random trash kid crash on your floor. Doing his paperwork. Now going to his shitty childhood home for him. What’s in it for you?”

Abby’s expression didn’t change, but her fingers tightened around the pen. “You’re not trash. And you’re not random. You’re a person who needs help with something I understand how to do. It’s not more complicated than that.”

It felt more complicated to Lee. Nothing was free. His experiences on the street had coded that truth into his bones. Favors had prices. Kindness was often just the down payment.

He studied her face. No guile. Just a quiet, stubborn determination. It was infuriating. It was the safest thing he’d seen in eight months.

“It’s 1427 Caldwell,” he mumbled into the knees of his sweatpants. “The Springs. It’s a dump. There’s probably a broken dryer on the porch.”

“Okay.” Abby didn’t write it down. She just nodded, committing it to memory. “I’ll go Saturday morning. Early. Get in and out.”

A new kind of tension coiled in Lee’s stomach. The thought of Abby, clean and kind and smelling of lavender, on that porch. Seeing the life he’d fled. It felt like an exposure more intimate than anything physical. “She might be nasty to you.”

“I’m an accountant, Lee. I deal with nasty for a living.” She offered a small, wry smile. It didn’t quite reach her eyes, which were already clouded with a planning focus. “I’ll just be polite and persistent. It’s a superpower.”

She turned to go back to her desk, then paused. “Are you going out tonight?”

Lee shrugged. “Triangle, maybe. For a bit.”

“Be safe.” It was her usual sign-off. Not a demand, just a wish left hanging in the air between them.

After she left, closing her laptop with a quiet click in the other room, Lee let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. He looked around the chaotic nest of this temporary home. The sagging futon, the tax forms next to dog-eared sci-fi paperbacks, the single happy family photo that wasn’t his. All curated by her.

He had given her the address. He had let her in another inch. The terror of that was a cold thread in his veins, but beneath it, woven through the fear, was something else entirely. A fragile, terrifying sense of trust. It felt more dangerous than any dark alley he’d slept in. Because this was a danger that came not from a place of harm, but from a place of care, and he had no armor for that at all.