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Apollo has just sat back down on his couch, freshly made mug of tea in hand, when his phone rings. Setting down the mug on the coffee table, careful to not spill on the still-open laptop, Apollo pulls the phone out from his pockets and flips it open. It’s Clay, far later at night than he usually calls.
“Apollo,” Clay says the instant Apollo answers the phone, before Apollo can even say hello. “I need to talk to you about the launch.”
“Oh. Me too,” Apollo says. “I was going to call tomorrow, but—Anyways, I managed to to get a hotel room by the space center for the launch. I’m going to take the train down tomorrow morning; I know you’ll be busy getting ready, but I can visit on your lunch break. I made that tuna casserole you like. Or if not, I’ll definitely visit the morning of the launch—I’ll sneak into your locker room.”
The hotel room had been a pain to get. The launch dates hadn’t been announced till this morning, and all the space nerds and scalpers had snatched up nearby rooms like hotcakes. Apollo had been at work, and pickings had been slim by the time he’d gotten home to the computer. He’d ended up with a hotel halfway across town with questionable reviews. But, better than a youth hostel, and worth it to see Clay.
“Apollo,” Clay says, flat. “That’s why I’m calling. I don’t want you to come.”
Apollo has misheard him. He hasn’t seen Clay in months. Ever since he’d been picked as the second astronaut for the HAT-2 mission, he’d been worked to the bone getting ready. Not a single day off. Brief, exhausted conversations on the phone before bed.
I miss you, Clay said, every call. Apollo missed him too. Missed his face, his mouth, sleeping in the same bed, whispering about the stars and their dreams. Eating together in Apollo’s shitty apartment. His presence in Apollo’s daily life. Apollo missed Clay so much he was talking about him, inserting him into conversations on the filmiest of threads.
He’d told Clay this, last time they called, and Clay had laughed. I talk about you too, all the time, he said and his voice had dropped, low and weighted. I miss you. I want to touch you again, and Apollo had gone weak in the knees. Years in, and his reactions hadn’t changed. But now, Clay’s same low voice is not pulled down by desire, but by something that drags. Something that grinds Apollo’s excitement into dread.
“What?” Apollo says.
“Don’t come to the launch,” Clay repeats, firm. Dead serious. Apollo asks anyways.
“Are you pranking me?”
“Apollo!” Clay reproaches. “I wouldn’t! It wouldn’t be very funny.”
“Well, this isn’t funny,” Apollo says. His voice has gone high and reedy, and in any other circumstance, he thinks he’d be more embarrassed. “Clay, what on Earth are you—why on Earth would I not come?”
Clay doesn’t answer for a long moment and when he does, he no longer sounds so composed
“Apollo, please—just please. Don’t come.”
“I—Objection!” Apollo blurts. “That’s not an answer.”
Ordinarily Clay would tease him for the lawyer talk. Today, there isn’t even a snort. Only Clay’s voice, fraying at the seams.
“Just, trust me. Please.”
“Trust me? Trust me!” Apollo all-but yells down the line. “Clay, talk to me!”
“I can’t! There’s nothing to tell you!”
Apollo doesn’t need to see Clay to know. He doesn’t even need a magic bracelet.
“Bullshit,” he hisses. “You’re lying.”
“Just drop it!” The threads have snapped. Clay’s shouting now. “I know you want to support me, so support me! Don’t show up!”
Apollo flinches, involuntarily, and with nobody to see. Clay’s just a disembodied voice on the phone, and that’s never been enough, but now it’s no longer a balm for but rather salt in the wound. Apollo’s just alone on his couch, a plush red thing he’d found at a flea market. The woman who sold it to him said she was tired of it, and he’d haggled the price down to dirt cheap. Afterwards, Clay had helped him haul it up two flights of stairs and squeeze it through a doorway it never should have fit through. The same couch where they’d first kissed, weeks later, all awkward nerves.
“Apollo?” Clay says, and he sounds so worried. Apollo wants to throw his phone at the wall. He doesn’t. Instead he shouts, distills every emotion into volume.
“I’m fine! And fine! I won’t come! I won’t even watch!”
“Good!” Clay shouts back.
“Great! That’s great!”
“Good!” Clay says again, the remaining fire draining from his voice. It softens, from burning star to warm, approximating gentle. “Thank you Apollo. I just—I need you home to return to.”
Apollo puts his head in his hands, phone to forehead, fervor extinguished in a single splash. He’s heard this before, a lifetime ago.
“Oh,” he mumbles. “Okay.”
Clay already knows that story.
“Thank you,” Clay says, and he sounds so relieved that for a split second Apollo almost feels fine. Almost.
After Apollo’s first trial, after he had been fired, Clay had driven down in the middle of his screening exams to spend one night. He’d shown up at Apollo’s door late past midnight, hours after Apollo had called him to vent, a bag of takeout from the one and only Khurianese place in the city. The one Apollo had only gone to once, a special occasion. He’d talked Apollo from the edge, from giving up on the whole lawyer thing. We’re going to achieve our dreams. Together. Apollo had believed him, let those words and hope and the need to keep fighting carry him through months of rejected applications. Carry him here, to a non-refundable hotel room and train tickets too late to cancel.
“Apollo?” Again. The worried tone.
“Still here,” Apollo manages weakly, in every sense of the word.
“Great,” Clay says, too bright, forced, the leftover glow of an explosion. Of a supernova, a dying star. “So, uh. Anything new with you?”
Apollo almost laughs.
“Don’t,” he says instead, the black hole to Clay’s neutron star. “Just don’t even try. Not right now.”
“Sorry.”
Apollo’s head is still in his hands. He stares down at the table, at his mug of still-warm, still-untouched tea. A mug Clay had gotten for him a few birthdays ago, adorned with rabbits wearing ties. His apartment is filled with Clay, his presence leaking from every corner. From knickknacks and photos, from imprints left in seat cushions. A presence draining away through the void of the phone.
“I’m sorry,” Clay says again. “I—I should go. It’s late, and, well, yeah. Long day tomorrow.”
“Okay.” What’s Apollo going to do tomorrow? Brood?
“Okay,” Clay agrees. “I’ll call you after—I’ll call you later, okay? Love you.”
There’s a click. Apollo peels his head up, looks at his phone. The call’s ended.
“Love you too,” Apollo whispers to nobody, to the room, to the red box of the phone. It doesn’t matter. Clay is already gone.