Heading into the office after a couple days working at home was still strange. Nic had only been working at Synergy for three weeks, and attending the weekly Friday meetings was optional, depending on everyone’s project load.

This was his second meeting, and he already spotted a few new faces. Nic slid into the same chair he’d chosen last time, because everyone else had left it empty. The last thing he wanted was to choose someone’s traditional chair. That had the unfortunate effect of leaving him in the corner of the room, but only for a few moments.

A dark-haired woman approached and plopped into the seat next to him, then offered her handshake and a friendly smile. “Hello! You must be the new guy. The one who got sent out to the Plus project, right?”

“Hi. Yes.” Nic nodded and shook hands. “I’m Nic.”

“Evie. Good to meet you! Enjoying work so far?”

“Er, yes. I can’t complain,” Nic agreed, relaxing and smiling back at her. It didn’t seem like she had some office politics agenda underlying her friendly approach. “I’ve been head-down in coding this week, building the framework. I need a roughly functional prototype by next week.”

“Big piece of work for one guy,” Evie whistled. “Nice. Oh.” Greg had come in and rapped the table. She offered another smile, so Nic smiled back before pulling his notepad close. He hadn’t actually needed to take notes last week, but one never knew—this week could be important. It paid to be prepared. Evie had a notebook, too, so at least he wasn’t the only one.

“Good to see you all at the end of another week,” Greg greeted them. “So, let’s talk workloads and what projects are on the go right now.”

Nic tried to keep track of them. They had four major clients right now, and it sounded like his project was actually one of the smaller ones.

It was kind of exciting in a nerdy way to know that he was working somewhere he’d be forced to improve his skills in order to keep up. In fact, that was one of the reasons he’d taken the job, apart from being ready for a bigger city and more money.

“And we have Nic on the… um… who are they?”

“Plus,” Nic supplied with a smile.

“Yes. That, thanks,” Greg chuckled.

“What’s that?” someone—Nic wasn’t sure her name yet—asked.

“Gay men’s HIV charity,” Nic supplied. “I can give you the rundown on it now. Founded ’77 under another name, lots of amalgamations and splits and mandate changes. This iteration of the charity has been running for about a decade. Their software is from the last iteration, though, which was… ’98.”

“Before Y2K,” Hank whistled. He was one of the guys from another team—working on some kind of pharmaceutical chain project, if Nic remembered right. “Did you catch any bugs?” He smirked.

Nic felt Evie stiffen beside him. After a second, he realized why and caught his breath.

What an asshole.

It was just vague enough that he couldn’t ask for clarification—especially as the new guy. And Hank knew it. His expression was self-satisfied.

Fuck’s sake. I had no idea things were that bad. Well, in reality, Nic knew the stigma—some of it perpetuated by well-meaning people, some by assholes. He’d just never faced it directly himself. After facing transphobia and homophobia for this long, it was weird to find a whole new facet of hatred aimed at him… and he wasn’t even personally involved.

“Millennium bugs, I assume you meant,” Greg addressed Hank, with the edge of a reprimand in his voice. Hank nodded and glanced at Nic.

“Nah,” Nic said simply. “None of those.”

The conversation moved on, but Nic’s mind stayed on that comment—and Evie’s reaction, which had been as quick as his own. Others like Greg had taken longer, and many hadn’t seemed to catch it at all.

Once the meeting closed, Evie leaned back in the chair. “So, they picked a heck of a first project for you.”

“Yeah. I guess I had the right… aptitude,” Nic half-smiled.

Evie smiled. “Yeah, I heard you were a coding whiz kid. Word gets around. And willing to take on a charity project. Those are always trickier.”

Nic felt himself turning red. “I… thanks, I think?” he laughed. “A little late to be a whiz kid now, though.”

“I know,” Evie mournfully sighed. “I miss my participation trophies. My partner threatens to give me participation trophies for cooking, it’s that bad.”

The comment and word choice—partner—was just disjointed enough that it sounded like a deliberate attempt to throw the word out and read him. Nic played along.

“Yeah? Mine and I never really cooked. I do cook, but we ended up just ordering takeout all the time. God knows how—” don’t say he yet “—any of my exes survived, really. At least I can, you know?” Nic gathered his notebook and flipped it shut, pocketing his pen.

“Oh, yeah. I can burn rice as well as the next person.” Evie grinned at him. “So, you doing anything tonight?”

Nic’s heart soared. Oh, let this be a social invitation. It sounded sad, but he really was missing a friendship group. He’d at least known some people, even if some of them weren’t exactly the best people back in Minneapolis. “No, nothing fixed. Maybe going out somewhere.”

“You want to come along with us? There’s a group of us—my friends and me, not coworkers—who go to the Woody’s downtown most weeks,” Evie invited him, just as he’d hoped. Then, she dropped her voice. “Gotta stick together.”

And Woody’s was a gay bar. She was practically confirmed as one of us, then. “Yeah. I’d love that.” Nic glanced across the room at Hank, who was chatting with Greg, then back at her. “Thanks.”

“Thank you. Can’t wait to see you. We meet there around ten.” Evie looked satisfied with herself, but not in the same nasty way Hank had, as she pushed herself to her feet. “That all right?”

“I’ll try not to turn into a pumpkin,” Nic joked, heading out of the conference room and over to his desk to back up the work he’d done from home.

“Can’t wait!” Evie waved and headed across the office to her desk.

There we go. Friendship. You can do this, Nic.