Zsa Zsa was propped up against the bin, one hand braced against the cold pavement and one clenching his side stringently. His face was beaten bloody, so viciously that my first instinct after dropping to my knees in front of him was to flinch away. His lip was busted open, his left eye quickly swelling shut and a bloody, open graze up his right cheek, likely from being dragged along the rough cement.

He was quivering, shaking from a combination of the cold – his coat had been torn off and tossed in a heap a few metres from us – and plain, petrified shock. His wig had been ripped off his head, nowhere to be seen, leaving his dark hair sticking up in tufts and an angry red compression line left behind from the hairnet that had gone with it. Mascara ran down his black and blue cheeks.

My first instinct was to swear, scream, or pursue the escaping assaulter. What I thought that would have achieved, I didn't know. But Zsa Zsa needed to take priority; Zsa Zsa, who looked broken, face slowly breaking out of solidified horror to sob. I held open my arms and let him fall forward, burying his face in my bare shoulder. Cold salt tears fell against my collarbones, as he heaved out a shuddering wail.

"Oh my god," I blathered, squeezing him tighter than I should have, based on the way he was favouring his ribs. "Oh my god. What happened? What the hell happened? Are you okay, can you talk?"

Zsa Zsa made a low, aching but affirmative noise. "Not so tight..."

I released him quickly, holding onto his shoulders. He ducked his head out of the light, but I could still see that his cheeks were wet; tears clinging to his false eyelashes. His teeth were bloody, and when he coughed, the residue that splattered against my white skirt was a dark crimson colour. His lungs rattled forcefully.

I struggled to keep my own emotions choked down because Zsa Zsa needed to take focus. "Fuck, Zsa. What happened?"

Fresh tears welled in his eyes. "Peter."

The alley swallowed all sound, making us pretty well imperceptible to passers-by, but I made out every venomous letter, and Zsa Zsa didn't need to say anymore. My blood ran hot and angry. I tensed up, fury blurring my vision. I must have clenched down on Zsa Zsa's shoulders because he grabbed my wrist immediately to stop me.

His lip quivered. "He... said he was going to return my key... I'm such a fucking... fuck."

He hissed in pain, returning a hand to his side. My chest felt like it had been hollowed out. A fine dusting of rain began prickling at my skin, a sensation I barely noticed against the burning vehemence searing from my core. I wanted to throw off my shoes and chase Peter down, however ridiculous and impractical that fantasy was. Zsa Zsa's laboured breathing only spurred me on.

What was I doing? My righteous anger wasn't helping him.

"I'll get Patrick. We need to call..." I fumbled for my phone, realising that the seconds of my call to Aaron were still ticking by. I hung up on his unceremoniously; given the circumstances, he would understand. I started dialling triple zero, but Zsa Zsa caught my wrist again.

"Don't," he pleaded.

"I'm just calling the cops," I assured him.

"Yeah. Don't," he insisted.

I was sure I looked mystified because he shut his eyes tight to avoid my scrutinising gaze.

"I just... need to think."

"What's there to think about?" I didn't mean it to sound so demanding. As tracks of tears began drifting down his cheeks, I instantly felt guilty. "Okay, we'll get you inside first. Fuck, you must be freezing. Can you stand?"

Zsa Zsa's fingers tightened on my wrist. "He told me he had my key."

"Hey, don't..."

"I believed him. I fucking followed him."

I moved my hand so I could catch his cheek in the cup of my hand, delicately as not to exacerbate the pain. "This isn't your fault."

Zsa Zsa used the hand that wasn't guarding his side to wipe his face, cringing as his fingertips grazed the swelling. I went to dial again, but he grabbed my phone out of my hand. "No. No police."

I felt my brow furrow in concern. "What do you mean?"

He dropped his head back against the bin, and the metal rattled like thunder. A group of people who passed by the alley glanced in, but without the context of Zsa Zsa's physical condition, I was just an underdressed clubber kneeling by a bin. Nothing anyone wanted to look at for too long.

"I mean, I don't know if I want to get the police involved," he snapped, along his condition made it difficult for him to do anything with conviction. He seemed distraught. "Just... help me up. Smells like shit down here."

I swallowed hard but did as he asked. Careful not to brush against his injured side, I looped an arm around his waist and helped him to his feet. He kicked off his shoes immediately, favouring one ankle. His bare legs were prickled with goose pimples, and his arm, locked tightly around my shoulder, was as cold as ice.

"Let's get you inside," I tempted, but he shook his head fervently.

"If Jamie... hell, if anyone sees me like this, they'll call the cops no matter what I want," he heaved out a sigh. "I just need to think."

My heart pounded as he let go of me to lean against the bin, eyes squeezed closed. I wonder if I should have called the cops despite his pleas; if it was what Jamie would have done, as Zsa Zsa's friend, maybe I should have taken the initiative. But his insistence worried me. Like there was something I didn't know.

"Grayson," I started, because I remembered what he said about knowing his real name for more serious occasions. "You can't let him get away with this."

He opened his eyes, but his blank stare gave nothing away. He took a cautionary step forwards and sagged immediately, hissing out air through his teeth. I rushed to his side, to keep him upright.

"I think my ribs might be broken," he wheezed. "He was wearing boots."

I nearly called for Patrick on the spot, despite Zsa Zsa's wishes. "Holy fuck. That... fuck. We need to get you to the hospital."

He shook his head ardently. "They'll ask questions."

"Yeah, obviously," I emphasised, but thought a calmer tactic might convince him. "Look, they can't make you report anything you don't want to. Can't we just go there, and you can think about it?"

He let out a sad wheeze of a laugh. "I think the hospital is the last place I want to be right now."

"Why?" He looked a state. I couldn't tell in the light whether anything else was injured beyond surface damage, but he was favouring his ankle like it might have been broken. The bloody grazing on his cheek continued down his adjacent bare arm and tore open the skin on his hip. There were phantom finger marks around his throat, leaving tentacle-like shadows imprinted there in the skin.

I wanted to track Peter down and ram his face through a strainer.

"Because Peter works the night shift," he laughed, sounding on the verge of hysterical. "I hate to think what would have happened if he hadn't realised he was running late... Miles, my ribs."

I released the instinctive pressure I'd be putting on his side. "Zsa... who do you want me to call? What do you need me to do?"

He hung his head, blinking up at the stars. "I don't know."

"The police will get him out of the hospital..." I started, only to be meet with Zsa Zsa breaking all semblance of composure.

"I don't want any fucking police. Alright?" he snapped. "I'm not going to the station looking like this, because I'll get laughed out of the precinct. I can't go to the hospital because Peter'll be there. I can't go home, because he still has a fucking key to my place and... I don't know, Miles. I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do."

I didn't know what to say. I couldn't conjure up a single solution, as Zsa Zsa wiped his eyes furiously, hunched over and spitting dark saliva onto the bricks.

Maybe if I had been the age he thought I was, an adult, I might have been able to come up with something. But I just stood, quiet and cold, by his side as he wiped blood shakily from his bottom lip. All my confidence abandoned me. Sephora was a sum of experiences I had never gone through; all her worldly wisdom was an act, inapplicable to real-life situations. I felt completely useless.

Just like the days, I had sat beside my mother's hospital bed, incompetent to the point of shame. So unsure of what to say that I just stayed silent. So out of my depth that I never hugged her when she was in the worst of it, for fear of tangling the tubes or disrupting her treatment.

Before I could vocalise my uncertainty, there was someone else calling out my name from nearby. Zsa Zsa shrunk back automatically, but the familiar voice put me at ease. Aaron had come to find me.

"Don't worry, it's my friend," I assured him, but Zsa Zsa didn't relax. I realised that a friend of mine was still a stranger to him.

"He's got a car," I told him, but Zsa Zsa didn't look convinced. "But I can tell him to wait..."

"Miles?"

I glanced up to see Aaron rounding the corner of the alleyway, peering at me with a perplexed expression. I started to shake my head, waving him back from the scene of the crime, but Zsa Zsa stopped me once again, with a hand on my padded chest.

"It's okay."

Aaron hesitated, before realising I wasn't alone and jogging over quickly. "Is everything alright? You said someone was..."

He trailed off as Zsa Zsa raised his head, mouth dropping open in a silent O. Zsa Zsa granted him a weak smile, which might have been comforting if his near-perfect teeth weren't tinted with red.

"Oh my god," Aaron was shrugging out of his jacket before he even finished his exclamation. He shoved it into my hand urgently, and I, in turn, draped it over Zsa Zsa's quivering shoulders. "Are the police on their way?"

I shook my head, and Aaron immediately went into crisis-management mode, fumbling for his phone. Zsa Zsa and I exchanged looks, and I stopped him with a hand over his screen. He glanced up with his brow furrowed, demanding my reasoning with his dark eyes. His cheeks were flushed red. "What? Have you called them yet?"

"No," I spoke up when Zsa Zsa didn't answer. "We don't know if we want to call the police, yet."

I said it carefully, not wanting Zsa Zsa to feel like I was singling him out or pressuring him to do what I thought would be best. I half-expected Aaron to tell me I was being ridiculous and bulldoze what Zsa Zsa wanted. It was almost what I wanted him to do because at least something would have been done about Peter without me needed to be the bad guy. The mere thought of him clocking into work while Zsa Zsa was in the state he was, because of him, had me fuming once again.

But Aaron put his phone away. His dark eyes softened, and he turned all his attention to Zsa Zsa.

"No cops?" he asked, earnestly. Zsa Zsa shook his head immediately. "Alright. No cops. What about an ambulance?"

Zsa Zsa shook his head again. Aaron looked to me for an explanation.

"His boyfr – ex, works in the ER," I clarified, and while Aaron looked confounded by this at first, the implication of my statement dawned on him slowly, like a storm cloud rolling across his features.

Never ignorant of irony, thunder rumbled above our heads and the rain really began pelting down, soaking through my outfit, and weighing down my wig. I watched Zsa Zsa's bare feet curl against the cement, as he tensed his fingers in Aaron's jacket, drawing it tightly around himself.

"Alright," Aaron's voice was strained, like staying rational was the last thing he wanted to do. He shut his eyes for a split second, and when he opened them, he was a picture of composure. When he spoke, his voice was soft and assuring, but somehow remaining completely sincere. "It's freezing. My car is parked around the block, do you want me to bring it around?"

"I can walk," Zsa Zsa insisted, but when he took an experimental step forward, he fell heavily against me. I shot Aaron a wordless plea, and he nodded jerkily, speed-walking out of the alleyway to fetch his car. Zsa Zsa let out an indecipherable sigh, sagging against my side.

"Put your weight on me," I advised him, and he did. "What about we wait on the path? There's coverage."

I could remember it from when Caleb and I had stood beneath, bargaining for one another's anonymity. It seemed like years ago.

Focus. I walked him to the opposite side of the alley, away from the bins, sat him down on an upturned milk crate. He collapsed in on himself, kneading his side with his face screwed up in pain.

"Looking like this?" he eventually wheezed, shaking his head. "Someone will call the cops."

Maybe that's for the best. I whispered as much.

Zsa Zsa sighed into his hand, and I felt like a child who'd pushed their parent too far.

"Miles... I appreciate that you might have had different experiences with the police, growing up," he said, the tears still fresh on his face. "But my experiences boil down to; unless I'm the one committing the crime, they have no interest in serving justice. I'm black. I'm gay. My parents were immigrants and if they asked me what I do for work, my answer options are waiter or dancer. Plus, I know how much I've had to drink tonight. Smoked a joint an hour ago, too. I didn't report Peter's harassment earlier, I brushed it off with anyone who could attest to it. You know he came to my apartment yesterday, and put a fist through my door? I invited him in. I bandaged him up and sent him on his way. I thought we were doing better, or I wouldn't have followed him out of the crowds tonight.

"There are too many things, Miles. Too many 'buts' and 'why didn't you's and... frankly, I could be carted in there in a body bag and Peter probably wouldn't serve any time. No one in his day-to-day life thinks he's gay, none of them know we were even together. They could say I lied, they could say he was defending himself from some creepy stalker... and fuck, I just can't handle that. I know what it will be like, being cross-examined and told I could have misremembered things and asked why I walked out of the club with him in the first place... and it makes me feel sick to my stomach.

"Honestly, I would feel better never having to see his face again. Can you understand that, at least?" he implored. "I just want him to stay out of my life... which he will now, because God knows he wouldn't last a day in prison... and the last thing I want to do is spend hours in a police station dressed like this, waiting for them to tell me there's nothing they can do."

I absorbed this information slowly, my knuckles white and my lips fixed in a tight line of frustration. Zsa Zsa petted my hair, which felt so wrong – him comforting me, despite everything – and changed the subject before I could even fathom a response.

"Can you help me find my phone? He threw it against the wall."

I nodded tightly and picked myself up, hands starting to go numb from the cold. Using the flashlight of my phone, I followed his direction to find his shattered smartphone, lying face down in a puddle. I fished it out and solemnly returned it to him.

"Shit," he breathed, clenching his fingers around the case. "This fucking thing was brand new."

"We can get you a new phone," I assured him. "What's important is that you're alright."

He nodded vaguely, burying his face in one hand. We sat in relative silence, the rain surely leaving my face a swirling mess of colours. My wig hung in unattractive clumps around my face, like tattered dreadlocks. Someone had shattered a crate of beer not two feet from us, leaving the dark bricks decorated with shards of brown glass, shifting in the patter of rain like the shards of a filthy mirror, throwing light from the nearby streetlight back in my face.

"Is your stuff inside?" I asked gently. "I can grab it for you."

He shook his head. "I put my bag in Jamie's office. I always do on busy nights."

"Ever since that flutist bitch with the lip ring stole your tips," I recalled. Zsa Zsa laughed, not completely without humour but it was a hollow sound. It probably hurt him to do so.

My backpack was still in the dressing room, but I was in two minds about fetching it. Ever since the Caleb incident, I'd been carrying my phone and wallet on my person at all times, no matter the length I had to go to hide them in my skin-tight, skimpy outfits. I was hesitant to leave Zsa Zsa alone for anything less.

"Who's your friend?" Zsa Zsa asked softly.

"Aaron," I told him. "I was looking for you before. To introduce you."

"He's kind," he mused, and ducking his face into the collar of Aaron's jacket. "He smells nice."

Right on cue, a familiar four-wheeler came to a screeching halt at the mouth of the alleyway, and Aaron jerked the horn fleetingly to alert us to his arrival. I helped Zsa Zsa back to his bare feet, gathering his undoubtedly expensive shoes in my free hand and we moved slowly through the rain, rounding to the passenger side. I opened the door for Zsa Zsa to climb in the front and then crawled across the backseat, mentally apologising to Aaron's upholstery as I dripped all over the place.

Aaron already had the heater on full blast. He drove quickly around the block, sweeping us away from Crescendo, and parking on a curb next to a dim apartment building. Rain began hitting the front windscreen full force, making me grateful for the shelter.

Aaron turned the ignition off but left the heater on. The rain had left his shirt plastered to his chest, and he'd removed the fake glasses and hung them off the rear-view mirror. He turned side on to face Zsa Zsa, who was awkwardly crammed in the front seat, which was adjusted to my height requirements specifically.

"Alright," he spoke self-assuredly as if he'd been in the exact situation a million times before. Radiating we're in this together and you can trust me, stranger energy. I hope Zsa Zsa felt he could. "Which hospital does your ex work at?"

I knew what Aaron was doing. One step at a time, rather than trying to coax an immediate decision out of someone who was traumatised and injured. I wanted to hit myself for not thinking that rationally. Get him somewhere safe, then ask about the next thing he wanted to do. It seemed so simple, but I'd frozen up the second I'd needed to take responsibility.

Zsa Zsa hesitated, apparently thrown off by Aaron's directness. Before I could insert myself between them, he answered. "Charles Gardiner."

"Cool. I can drive to a different hospital if you'd like," Aaron replied. "Because we're sure as hell not waiting for him to finish his shift to get those ribs checked out. Or we can go to your place first, get you a change of clothes. What do you think?"

Zsa Zsa swallowed obviously, mulling it over in his head. Aaron didn't cut in as he deliberated on the options given to him for a good few minutes.

"I need some clothes. But I can't go back to my place," he said softly, finally. "I don't know whether Peter went to work or went to my place. He could be at either. He has a key..."

"Can we take you anywhere else?" Aaron immediately asked, not dwelling on the can't-dos. "Friends house, parents house?"

Zsa Zsa's horrified bark of laughter quickly devolved into wheezing. "Parents house? No, no thank you." His eyes drifted closed as he thought. "Uhm... Miles?"

"Yeah?" I piped up, dreading the question he was about to ask.

"What about your place?"

My place was the last place Zsa Zsa wanted to be in his state. Reece was at home, probably fuming and pacing the halls since he had realised I had escaped his tyrannical lockdown. I'd blocked his number in anticipation of this.

But Zsa Zsa thought I lived alone.

"No," I cringed at my tone. "It's not free." To Aaron, I added, "Reece is home."

Aaron nodded understandingly, but Zsa Zsa looked perplexed. "Whose Reece? Your roommate?"

I rolled my sandpaper tongue around in my mouth to moisten it. "He's my... mother's boyfriend. I live with him. And he doesn't know about my night work. We can't go there."

Zsa Zsa frowned, and looked like he was about to bombard me with more questions, before Aaron cut in again. "What about my place? Would you feel comfortable going there?"

I was almost tempted to laugh, because of the ridiculousness of the suggestion. But silence encased all three of us, and Zsa Zsa seemed to be considering this as a viable option, so I cut in quickly. "Aaron. We can't go to your place."

He didn't even blink. "Why not?"

"Because..." Because your twin brother is throwing a teen kegger for your eighteenth birthday, with half our cohort in attendance, "... what about the party?"

"It's one. It's got to be winding down by now," Aaron said dismissively.

Zsa Zsa looked immediately, and thankfully, apprehensive. "Party?"

"It's my brother's birthday," he explained, and I noticed how he didn't expand to say it was his as well. Priorities, and all that. God. What a birthday gift I had bestowed on him. He probably hated my guts. "His eighteenth."

"You live at home?" Zsa Zsa looked surprised. Aaron did look older than me, after all. Because he was. But Zsa Zsa didn't know that. "What about your parents?"

"My aunt and uncle are away. Hence, the party," Aaron assured him. "We don't need to stop there for long. You can wash up, and I can lend you... both... some clothes. My brother won't even know we're there."

No. No, no, no, no, absolutely not, I wanted to plead. But the circumstances weren't exactly the kind in which my negative input would be appreciated. Zsa Zsa was hurt, and Aaron was handling it way better than I would have on my own. I felt like a child in the booster seat, with no say over the adult decisions in the front seats. I was just there for the ride.

After all, did I have a better idea?

Anything was a better idea than this.

"How far away do you live?" Zsa Zsa was asking.

No, no, no, no, no...

"Not far," Aaron assured him, and I wanted to barrel roll out of the car. Then Zsa Zsa hissed in pain as he tried to sit up, and Aaron caught my eye in the rear-view mirror and mouthed not good. I immediately felt a tidal wave of guilt, washing away my common sense.

I'd risked more for less when Caleb had gotten himself into trouble. Zsa Zsa was really hurt, and I had no idea how I would have reacted in his circumstances but taking the offer of a kind stranger – who smelled nice – was probably the more rational. He was scared and confused, and he didn't want to walk into a hospital lobby in lingerie. He didn't want to go to the police, for reasons he'd made extremely explicit to me, and the idea of going home made him visibly restless. What had he said, that Peter had put a hole through his front door? He had a key, and he clearly had no qualms about breaking the law.

All in all, Aaron's house was the safest of the options we'd gone through. I could have forced them to sit in Aaron's car and come up with a less risky solution, but wanting to avoid Aaron's house at all costs was a purely selfish intention. I swallowed my anxieties and reached over the seat to squeeze Zsa Zsa's shoulder reassuringly.

With a heavy, ragged sigh, he nodded almost microscopically. Aaron, clearly waiting for this response, dug his keys into the engine and the car roared to life.

"My place, it is."

a/n: what do you think will go down in the next chapter? and how do you feel about this one? i'd love to hear from you all ~