Gray clears his throat. While he stands, Sami leads Zef to a table laid out with oils, incense sticks, candles, clean towels. There's a sink to wash his hands. In his periphery, he sees Gray tug his shirt off by bowing his head and grabbing the back of it. Zef can count the knobs of his bent spine.

Rubbing oil into his palms, he follows Sami's lead and stands next to the table while Gray lies across it, leanly clothed in denim, gilded ink and nothing else.

Zef does his best impression of a professional. "Okay. Where do I start?"

"We'll begin with a simple back massage. Gray, please inform us if the temperature of the room is not to your liking, if you require pressure adjustments, or if anything is too uncomfortable for you. Zef, rub the oil into your hands to warm it and begin at the lower back."

Zef places the heels of his hands over the two dimples bracketing Gray's spine, just above the hem of his jeans. He glides his hands up the valley of Gray's back to the prominent edges of his shoulder blades, fanning them in the shape of a Y, before dragging them down his waist to start over. It's a cyclical, repetitive motion, and Sami encourages him to lean some of his weight into it. She gives him a summary of what they're trying to do. Encourage blood flow, pushing tension out towards the lymphatic system, acclimatising Gray's body to the touch and pressure.

Gray stays silent, his face hidden in the headrest of the table. At first, his body tenses. Girding itself against pain. Particularly when Zef applies more pressure. Gradually, that tension unwinds. His muscles melt, pliant like candle wax warming to touch.

Sami teaches him a few more techniques. Ways to roll the muscle between his thumbs, to find knots and encourage them to release. At first, Zef worries a little about a layer of awkwardness. Perhaps this solves the issue regarding Gray's aversion to anyone else touching him, but it introduces a new problem: that lack of aversion is tied directly to the trust and affection brewing between them, and massages were...kinda sexy.

But Gray's gild mitigates the problem entirely. His neck is so tense that even gentle ministrations hurt. The tattoo of a ram's skull, framed by peonies with a serpent caught in its horns, takes up a portion of his back as knotted as the imagery. Sami tells him to breathe through it, to relax, but Zef still hears him hold his breath through the worst of it.

"You have the basics, now," Sami says. "I wouldn't advise going further just now. Massage can be quite intense, particularly with gild mistreating your body this badly. I'll teach you a few last techniques, Zef. They should only be pleasantly relaxing and not painful. Hopefully this will soothe and encourage your body to heal, Gray."

She instructs Gray to turn over onto his back, rolling towels to pillow his head. Zef sits in a stool, looking at Gray upside down. Sami guides him through a gentle scalp massage, fingers rubbing slow circles into Gray's temples.

After that, she tells him to follow the nasolabial fold.

The word 'labial' has Gray snorting. Zef says, "Shh, you're supposed to be relaxing."

"Didn't know it was that kind of massage," Gray jokes.

Zef slaps his shoulder lightly. He catches a look from Sami. It's a kindly considering look. Not displeased. He clears his throat and starts doing as asked, running his thumbs along the shallow groove from the sides of Gray's nose to the corners of his mouth. It pulls his lips down in a frown. Moulding his face like clay. Gray can't seem to help laughing.

It makes Zef chuckle, too. "Stop."

"Naw, can't. I probably look ridiculous."

He doesn't. His smile is gorgeous. Zef runs his thumbs along the dimple lines bracketing his perfect mouth. He runs his fingers through Gray's unfairly soft hair. He splays his hands, applying pressure to the pads of his fingertips like Sami says. It has an immediate effect. The worry lines in Gray's face smooth. His body slackens a little.

"Pressure okay?" Zef asks as he rubs the knot of bone behind Gray's ears.

"Yeaaaungh." His voice comes out in an involuntary purr. Sounds the right side of a sex moan. His cheeks turn abruptly scarlet. Zef nearly freezes mid-massage. Sami, uncompromisingly professional, says nothing, but one eyebrow twitches up.

Gray says, "Uh."

Sami says, "I was about to end the lesson here, anyway. I'll leave you two alone, in case you'd like to practise the techniques further."

The implications of that statement turn's Zef's inner thermostat to volcanic temperatures. The door clicks behind Sami. They're alone.

The snare of silence could trap a grizzly bear.

Zef's head blares with the discordant scream of old-fashioned dial up internet. The mental equivalent of a keyboard smash. He doesn't know whose face is hottest. Gray glows redder than his tattoos, and Zef—with his hands still on Gray's neck—can feel the heat radiating. Toasting his palms.

He stops rubbing Gray's head and awkwardly pats down his messy hair.

Gray doesn't get up. "Please pretend that didn't happen."

Zef says, "Sure. 'Course." Should he sweep it under the rug? Tell Gray it's okay?

Or be honest and tell Gray he'd like to show him the pleasure he's clearly been missing?

The silence draws on long enough it's too late. Gray clamps his eyes shut. "You can leave me here to die of embarrassment, darlin'."

It gives Zef an anxious premonition that Gray has the wrong impression. He thinks Zef's quiet because he's uncomfortable with the intimacy.

"Or, you know..." Zef stammers out the rest in a rush. "Y-you could keep, uh, expressing whatever comes— Happens!" Digging his own embarrassment grave right next to Gray's. "Maybe not in front of Sami, though."

Gray doesn't answer for so long, Zef wonders if he read the situation wrong.

Then Gray gives a little nod.

The awkwardness of their communal meal in the hotel lobby hours later is mitigated by the fact Damo is the reigning champion of holding a conversation by himself. Even so, Zef gets it in his head that he did something wrong by offering to take Gray's massage time from tender-loving-care TLC to today-let's-cum TLC. In the moment, it looked like the right idea. Now he's afraid he had horny goggles on.

Gray finishes half his dinner (better than most days) and slinks off early, probably for a cigarette, but when Zef gets to their room, light and the sound of water running filters under the bathroom door.

Zef already showered that morning. After changing into pyjamas, he faces a dilemma. Get into the bed he and Gray shared, or a different one. He doesn't want to draw assumptions. Particularly not after today's massage mishap. He also doesn't want to presume his company is no longer welcome, for fear Gray will perceive it as a rejection.

He sits on the edge of his bed and waits, sweating it. Maybe he will need a second shower, after all.

Gray emerges fully dressed. A clue Zef thinks might mean his company isn't welcome. They've seen each other nude. Gray had to consciously remember to take his pyjamas in with him to change.

Stop overthinking and just talk to him, you dickhead.

"I understand if you don't want to share a bed again after— you know."

Gray stops scrunching his hair dry in a towel. A sad, dry laugh comes out of him. "Why do you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Talk like... Fuck, I don't know. Like you're trying to read my mind. Anticipate what I want instead of askin'."

Zef hadn't realised he did that. Now it's pointed out, he knows the answer. Ties back to a fear he had all the way back when he'd been a freshly cracked egg. 'Cause life as a 'girl' hadn't offered a wholly optimistic view of men. Too many were threats. Even with the (slightly) healthier models of masculinity his dad and Leo offered, Zef was scared of becoming a predatory creep. A man who wielded his sexuality like a weapon.

What a fun cocktail all that was.

"I don't want to make you uncomfortable," he says.

"You don't."

Relief pours through him. "Oh. That's good."

Gray still looks perplexed, though. "Why are you the one afraid of that?"

"Huh?"

"I'm the one who up and—" Gray throws up a hand. "Moaned in the middle of a massage. Ain't I the one who should be asking you if I'm making you uncomfortable?"

"I'm not. You're not. It was fine." Wrong word. "Better than fine. Like. Fine as in... Damn, you're fine." Here lies Zef, taken too soon by the rare affliction of awkward bitchitis.

Gray stares at him. Then he bursts out laughing, so loud Zef's sure he hears a startled pigeon flap away outside. Clutching his side, Gray says, "I ain't never known a man who flirts worse than you."

"I'm trying!"

"Can see that."

Still laughing, though. Zef laughs, too, his heart dangerously buoyant and light. "No one gave me the gay flirting manual when I signed up."

"Okay," Gray says, laughter subsiding. "Then if you're still cool with sharin' my bed, I ain't kicking you out of it."

"Okay. I am. Cool with that, I mean." If by cool with it he means swinging from the chandelier.

"Cool." Imitating Zef's voice. "Get your fool ass in bed, darlin'."

"Gotta brush my teeth, first."

They brush their teeth together. Zef wondering if Gray rehearsed all that in the shower, or if it was a magic de-shaming shower that rinsed him free of any residual humiliation from their massage experience, or if something else is happening inside Gray's circuitous brain beyond Zef's reckoning.

Either way, he can't bring himself to question it as Gray slides into bed with him, taking Zef's hand and winding it around his waist. A slender little spoon tucked warmly in his arms.

Zef wakes when Gray stirs next to him with the twitch of a dream. Gone is the smooth look of peaceful contentment. Now his brow scrunches, an aborted whimper muffled in Zef's shoulder. He'd shifted in the night, no longer the little spoon but tucked against Zef's side, pinning one arm beneath him.

Which has gone completely dead. Pins and needles prickle through Zef's fingertips like they're filled with electricity. He wiggles them, trying to regain feeling gradually so he doesn't accidentally slap Gray awake in the midst of his nightmare. Zef's not even sure he should wake him or let him sleep through it in hopes the apparitions fade from memory.

Gray wakes before he can decide. His eyes flick open. He stiffens, takes in his surroundings, then bolts upright.

Zef follows, rubbing the static out of his arm. "Think you were dreaming."

Gray's chest inflates a few times with short breaths before he manages a deep one. "How long was I out?"

Zef glances at the clock. "It's nearly morning."

Gray's panting breaths stop.

He slept through the night.

~ * * * ~

The rest of the weekend passes quickly, Sami teaching Zef new massage techniques and even managing to prise a few conversations out of him about his upbringing in the bayou.

But before long, they're packing up and shipping out to the hotel venue where Katarina and Lina would be attending a work dinner with a bunch of bigshots at Bionic Capital.

They arrive in the alley outside the kitchens, dressed in black turtlenecks and ski masks like bank robbers. The material covers Gray head to toe—no threat of his gild giving them away. Their implants should scramble any camera footage, and at 3AM nobody will be around to catch sight of them.

Gray still cracks the door only a couple inches when he hacks the lock. He peeks inside while Zef adjusts the strap on their bag of supplies.

"Anybody there?" Zef whispers.

"Nope. Ready or not, here we come."

Gray slips inside.