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. Making out and grinding, probably, and that was a while ago. 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. Even without the gender stuff, they would strongly dislike it. They’re slowly becoming less malnourished, which they appreciate. Write in third person. Abby and Lee discuss how they met and what’s changed since.

Chapter 1: The Triangle's Dim Corner

The fluorescent light in the back booth of The Triangle Bar hummed like a dying insect. It cast a sickly yellow glow over the chipped Formica table, the vinyl seats cracked along their seams, weeping yellowish foam. The air was a permanent soup of stale beer and old cigarette smoke, though no one had legally smoked inside for a decade.

Abigail Brooks traced a finger through a ring of condensation left by her ginger ale. The neon sign outside flashed red, then blue, washing over Lee’s face in a slow, silent rhythm.

Lee was nursing a cheap pint, their eyes—dark and watchful—fixed on a point somewhere over Abby’s shoulder. Their curly black hair, grown out now but still awkward, fell across their forehead like a shield.

“You’re different now,” Abby said. Her voice was quiet, but it cut through the bar’s low thrum of classic rock and murmured conversation.

Lee’s shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. They took a slow drag from their beer, buying time. “Different how.”

“Less hollow.”

A snort. Lee’s fingers, long and slender, traced the dripping glass. The ghost of a smile flickered and died. “Yeah, well. Three meals a day’ll do that.” They finally met her eyes. “Your three meals a day, to be precise.”

The weight of it all sat between them. The eight months Lee spent sleeping in library bathrooms and under freeway overpasses. The handjobs given in parked cars for forty bucks and a lukewarm burger. The specific, brittle fear in their eyes when Abby had first offered her spare room. It all hung there, thick as the smoke in the air.

“It’s not transactional, Lee,” Abby said, the words coming out too fast. She’d practiced them in her head, a methodical list of reassurances. I don’t expect anything. You’re not a burden. They sounded flat now.

“Everything’s transactional.” Lee’s tone was final, a closed door. They looked back at the bar, where a couple of regulars were laughing too loud. “You just haven’t named your price yet.”

The words stung, because a secret part of Abby feared they were right. She wasn’t a saint. She’d invited a practically stranger, a beautiful, wounded stranger, into her home. She’d told herself it was simple human kindness. But sometimes, watching Lee fiddle with the radio, or smile softly at her cat, a complicated warmth spread in her chest that had nothing to do with charity.

She was an accountant. She audited feelings for a living, hunting for discrepancies. This one was glaring.

“My price is conversation,” she said, aiming for light. “And you not stealing my good yogurt.”

That earned another fleeting smirk. “The peach one’s vile anyway.”

A man stumbled past their booth, reeking of bourbon. His gaze, bleary and aimless, slid over Abby and stuck on Lee. He looked Lee up and down, a crude inventory. Lee went very still, their knuckles whitening around the pint glass. They dipped their chin, letting their hair curtain their face, their body language shifting into something smaller, harder.

Abby felt a surge of protective anger, hot and clean. She straightened up, fixing the man with a cold, unblinking stare she usually reserved for clients who tried to claim “business expenses” for Vegas trips. She didn’t say a word. Just stared. After a few seconds, the man grunted and shuffled away.

Lee let out a breath they’d been holding. “Thanks.”

“You don’t have to thank me for that.”

“Yeah, I do.” Lee took another drink. The red neon lit the curve of their cheekbone, the stubborn set of their jaw. “Most people just watch. Or join in.”

The music switched to a slower, grungier track. The conversation lulled, but the silence wasn’t entirely uncomfortable. It was full of the things they never said. Abby knew Lee used he/him out there, in the world. A suit of armor. She’d found a single, discarded eyeliner pencil in the bathroom trash a week after Lee moved in. She’d said nothing. It felt like finding a bird’s feather—something private, fragile, evidence of a secret life.

“You think about it much?” Lee asked suddenly, their voice lower. “What I did. To get by.”

Abby’s stomach clenched. She thought about it all the time. It haunted her. Not with judgment, but with a painful, aching clarity. She pictured Lee’s hands, those graceful fingers, on a steering wheel, on a beer bottle, and then elsewhere. She saw the mechanical distance they must have learned.

“I think,” she said carefully, choosing each word like stepping on stones across a river, “that you did what you needed to survive. And that it must have made touch feel… complicated.”

Lee barked a laugh, a short, sharp sound with no humor in it. “Complicated. That’s one word for it.” They spun their glass. “It’s not like the movies. There’s no… feeling. It’s just a job. You clock in, you clock out. You forget.”

“But you remember,” Abby said softly.

Lee’s eyes glistened under the fluorescent hum. They wiped at them with the back of a hand, angry at the display. “Yeah. I remember.”

Another pause. The drunk man was loudly arguing about a football game at the bar.

“Have you ever?” Lee asked, not looking at her. “You know. With someone you didn’t… plan to?”

Abby knew what they were really asking. Have you ever been that desperate? Have you ever been that lonely? “No,” she admitted. “I… my thrills are pretty mild. Roller coasters. Sneaking into abandoned buildings. The risk is calculated.” She smiled, trying to soften it. “I overthink everything. Especially my own motives.”

Lee finally looked at her again, a long, searching look. “Why’d you really let me stay, Abby?”

The question hung in the sticky air. Because you have curly hair and sad eyes and when you smile, it’s like the sun coming out. Because I’m lonely in my quiet, safe apartment and you fill the silence. Because I want to be the person who proves you wrong about the world.

“Because it was the right thing to do,” she said, and it was true. It just wasn’t the whole truth.

Lee studied her face, as if reading the footnotes. They nodded slowly, accepting the answer, or at least accepting her need to give it.

“I should get back,” Lee said, nudging the now-empty pint. “Early shift tomorrow.”

“Yeah. Of course.”

They slid out of the booth. As they stood, the blue neon flashed, outlining Lee’s tall, lean frame. The malnutrition hollows were slowly filling out. They looked less like a ghost.

They walked out into the cool night air, the bar’s noise swallowed by the city’s constant sigh. Side by side, not touching, towards the bus stop. Abby’s mind was racing, auditing the conversation, the looks, the charged silence.

At the stop, under the harsh white streetlight, Lee shivered in their thin jacket.

Without thinking, Abby reached out and took their hand.

Lee flinched. A full-body jolt, like they’d been shocked. Their hand was cold in hers, tense. For a terrible second, Abby thought she’d made a catastrophic mistake, that she’d become just another person making a claim on them.

But then, slowly, finger by finger, Lee’s hand relaxed. Their grip tightened, not much, but enough. Their thumb brushed once, tentatively, across Abby’s knuckle.

They stood there in the buzzing silence, holding hands as the distant headlights approached. Not speaking. The bus’s diesel growl grew louder, its lights washing over them. Lee didn’t let go until the doors hissed open.