Sex in C Major

"Why? Seems like you would have done."

Stefan shrugged. "They-they didn't want to fuck a-me."

"A you?"

"You know. They wanted dick. Real dick."

"Ah, so you presented as male."

"Yeah. I just when I started, I'd tell them I was a girl, but then it was all pretty and bitch and slut and I hated it, I hated all those words, so I switched to saying I was a man and then that stopped but they'd always back out of hooking up the minute I admitted it. And it just kept happening and happening and before I started buying hormones, it was manageable, I could just masturbate, but after, I was desperate."

"Which is why you drunkenly spilled your guts to Darian that night in the bar."

"Yeah. I don't suppose you know what that's like."

"No, not that part," Yannis admitted frankly. "So you've been more or less alone since you were nineteen?"

"Yeah."

"Why didn't you do anything about it?"

"What?"

"Why didn't you get on the waiting lists at nineteen? You obviously knew what you were if you came out."

Stefan fidgeted. "The the porn."

"The porn?"

"I was I watch straight porn. Not gay porn. And I was only into men. And gay men don't watch straight porn."

"You've been asking the wrong gay men then."

"I know that now. I think. But then..."

"You didn't."

"Yeah."

"And you had nobody to tell you that this was all normal before."

"No."

"Well, lucky you ran into Darian and not somebody else."

"I guess."

"Lucky for me as well."

Stefan frowned. "Why?"

"My experiments."

Stefan shifted on his feet as they waited for the lights to change. "What are they?"

"A side project. My main project is scientific composition using science and maths to construct music, rather than creativity or art."

"What does any of that mean?"

"Well, music is about eliciting an emotional response. So effectively, if you compose music from a rational source, can you still generate an emotional response? And can you predict what emotional response, and who will have it, with mathematical modelling?"

Stefan blinked at the snowflakes.

"I still don't know what any of that means."

"Assign one musical note to a number-A is one, B is two, etc. and can a mathematical equation produce beautiful, emotional music? Can, say, the speed of light create a song?"

"Can it?"

"I don't know yet, I'm only in the first year of the project."

"How long is it?"

"Three years. It's a doctorate."

"I thought you were an engineer?"

"No, I'm using some of their facilities."

"For what?"

Yannis paused. When Stefan looked up from sifting his boots through the snow, he found himself being watched by those dark, calculating eyes.

A thrill whispered down his spine.

"Maybe you'll find out," Yannis said slowly. Then he seemed to shake himself, and nodded towards a cafe on the corner. "Pause. Let's get some tea or something."

"I'm not supposed to ask for detours."

"You're not. I am. Now do as you're damn well told." 38

Whatever Yannis intended, it didn't happen immediately.

For the rest of the day, Stefan was merely locked back to the mantelpiece and left to his own devices. Yannis went to class in the afternoon. Daz seemed to be making a food explosion in the kitchen. Someone came to the door, and went away again.

Stefan, by now a little more used to his restricted lifestyle, dozed on the rug and hoped for some use in the evening. He wanted to celebrate the referrals, but knew better than to ask Daz for anything special.

So he dozed, and waited, and held onto the excitement and the hope until it could find an outlet.

But it gave way to nerves when Yannis finally came home.

He arrived in a car, and there was another person-a woman, by the high tone-helping bang things in the hall. Then she left, and the front door closed. For a while, Yannis and Daz simply talked in the kitchen-English, nothing of importance from what Stefan could overhear-and then Yannis began to shift boxes into the living room. One enormous box that he was barely able to lift alone. And several smaller ones, shoeboxes and the like. One spilled, and a clump of tangled wires exploded over the carpet.

"What's going on?" Stefan asked when Daz deposited plates of chicken enchiladas on the table and unhooked the chain from Stefan's collar.

"One of Yannis' experiments," Daz said. "Go and eat. Yan! Yan, leave your decorating and have your tea."

Yannis threw them both an absolutely disgusting look, and audibly huffed. Daz cuffed him around the head, caught him in a headlock, and kissed his ear before shoving him towards the table. But Yannis didn't so much as look at Stefan, or explain his project. He simply inhaled his enchiladas and retreated back to the mess by the piano.