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5: FOURTEEN
Apollo really wishes that Clay hadn’t figured it out. Not now, not ever, but especially not now, not on Clay’s own birthday, the model rocket kit Apollo had gotten him still sitting pretty on Clay’s desk. He’d been so happy to get it, beaming at Apollo like a sun. Just what he had wanted, only the kit he’d been talking about for months, the miniature Saturn V that had sat in the window of the hobby shop they’d pass each day on the way to school. His favorite rocket, from his favorite space program—and it’s even named after you, Apollo!—now his. A dream come true. Apollo had been the one to give him that. He’d been so looking forward to it, to giving Clay this happiness. Been so proud of himself.
Been so proud, until it had collapsed around him. Until the brightness in Clay’s expression had morphed to something like he’d swallowed a treat that had turned sour and sad. Like a kicked puppy, eyes wide and so pained Apollo almost wishes that he had lied to Clay to salvage the moment. Or that Clay was a worse friend, that he hadn't promised to get Apollo something even better for his birthday, and then realized, like a plane crash in slow motion, that he didn’t know when Apollo’s birthday was. And that could have been fine, easily fixable, except Apollo didn’t know when his birthday was either.
Clay boggles underneath the visor. Incredulous, and Apollo feels his shoulders pull in and his voice go tight as he reminds him. Orphan. Who would have told him? How was he supposed to remember?
The face Clay makes in response to that declaration makes Apollo want to punch him. Instead, he insists they drop it. It isn’t a big deal, he says, and thinks he means it. His birthdays aren’t a part of his life—Dhurke had never bothered for him—the concept had never been important until Clay and his enthusiasm for them. And then they’d been fun.
Fun until now. Until Clay’s looking at him like something’s wrong. Until he’s agreeing to let the subject go but he’s lying, fiddling with the cuffs of his jacket the way he always does. Apollo doesn’t say anything. Just twists his bracelet around and changes the subject. Asks him about the rocket, Clay’s plans for painting it, and although Clay smiles again, this one is clouded over. Clouds that linger over the rest of that promised sunny day.
Clay had been lying, but he doesn't bring up Apollo’s birthday again for days. Weeks. For long enough that Apollo thinks he’s forgotten entirely, and that’s fine, he tells himself as they pass the hobby shop with its Saturn V in the window and Clay is telling him how he’s almost done assembling his own, just waiting for the glue to dry. He thanks Apollo again for the present, and Apollo waves it off, because, in that moment, saying anything more seems daunting than the steepest mountain or greatest height. And it hadn’t been a big deal. Not doing anything for his best friend would have been a bigger deal. Clay thanks him again, again, anyways, and then opens his mouth only to hesitate for so long Apollo waves a hand in his face. But he claims it’s nothing and Apollo looks away as Clay says it is.
February rolls into March and winter into spring. The first flowers start peaking out of their cracks of sidewalk, and Apollo is ready to bury this hurt with the rest of his roots, deep in the dirt to rot.
He listens to Clay’s stories about how his father had taken him to the Space Center—a much belated birthday gift—and he’d gotten to meet some of the astronauts and experts who worked there. Even gotten to try on one of the jackets, take a few pictures. He shows Apollo the best one, Clay, tall for his age and thrilled next to a bunch of cool-looking adults. They hang out at the park and the library, during lunch breaks and in class when they should be working. One week Apollo tells him about Phoenix Wright’s latest, the just concluded Engarde trial that had dominated the newspapers. It’s just so cool, and Clay lets him just keep talking, keeps asking him questions, and the moment washes away the last stings of his lack of a birthday and Clay’s reaction. Apollo’s buried it deep enough he’s practically forgotten it altogether.
But Clay had been lying. Lying, and lying in wait.
It’s an ordinary lunch when he strikes. The sky a clear blue, chilly but not a cloud in sight. Apollo’s sitting at one end of the usual table, eating his sandwich as the group argues about some movie he hasn’t seen. Apollo considers joining the conversation, picking a side just for the sake of the argument, but takes another bite of sandwich instead. Clay is five minutes late.
It is another five minutes before he arrives. Apollo’s finished the sandwich and the discussion has moved on to complaining about their history teacher again. Apollo happens to like him, but that’s because Apollo actually pays attention in class. So Apollo keeps quiet, and it doesn't matter anyways, because Clay finally shows up. His lunchbox is missing, but before Apollo can ask about it or ask about the delay, he’s grabbing Apollo’s hand and tugging him up.
“Come on,” he says, and Apollo goes easily, too caught up in the warm press of Clay’s hand in his to ask questions. Lets Clay lead him to a back corner of the the school, tucked away between some trees and a wall. There’s a picnic blanket laid out, blue and red plaid, Clay’s lunchbox and a brown paper shopping bag waiting on top.
Clay releases Apollo’s hand. “Sit.”
Apollo sits, crossing his legs neatly. Clay sits too, legs sprawled. He’s nervous, Apollo realizes with a start. A foot is jittering, a hand playing with his jacket cuff again, he’s not quite looking at Apollo. It’s disconcerting, this. Unfamiliar. Apollo twists his bracelet, and Clay doesn't say anything at all.
“What’s going on?”
“Well.” Clay hesitates before finally looking Apollo in the eye, face set. Like whatever nerves he’d had were now safely locked away. “I got you a birthday present.”
“It’s not my birthday,” Apollo says, like an idiot. Clay already knows that. They’d already not talked about it, and Clay knows that Apollo doesn’t want to talk about it. He has to. He had agreed to drop it. It had been fine.
He balls his fists in his jacket. He’s fine. He’s going to sound fine. “Why?”
“Because you’re my best friend,” Clay says, all tense, contained upsetness. “And I want to get my best friend a birthday present. What’s wrong with that?”
“I—” Apollo starts, a fight on the tip of his tongue. Pity, that’s what he wants to say. Wants to snap. He’s fine. He doesn’t need this. Never has. He doesn’t—the brown paper bag looks at him mockingly. The present, almost certainly. The mysterious present, picked out over a month after the fact, not some hasty, slapped-together thing but contemplated. And—he’s so curious. So, so curious.
“You got me a present,” Clay says, pressing the hesitation. Pointing out the obvious.
“That’s…different,” Apollo says. It sounds lame even to him. It is lame. He’s being lame, and his face is burning and he wishes the ground would swallow him whole, but it doesn’t and he’s still there and Clay is glaring at him like he’s the biggest, lamest, saddest moron on the planet. Which—Apollo walked into that one, and so he sighs and squares his shoulders and says. “No. Sorry. You’re right.”
“Duh,” Clay says, and it stings. He doesn’t need Clay to rub it in. But Clay’s grinning, beaming even, clearly so happy that Apollo finds himself smiling back, sting wiped away so easily. And so maybe he’s a little excited too. Maybe.
When he’d given Clay his present, Clay had torn through the recycled newspaper wrapping like a fiend in his eagerness. Apollo had laughed at him, and then they’d both spent five minutes picking all the pieces off the floor. It’d been fun, the birthday frenzy. But Apollo takes his time with his—carefully taking the red-wrapped item from the mess of tissue paper in the bag, carefully unpeeling the tape and unfolding the paper until Clay’s bouncing with anticipation.
“I have to savor the moment,” Apollo tells him, and Clay bounces faster. More impatient.
Inside is a binder. The label is handmade, Clay’s blocky writing. The Complete (as far as the Courthouse Library) Trials of Phoenix Wright. Apollo can feel his jaw drop. Ever since it started, he’s been keeping Clay up to date on his Phoenix Wright not-obsession—he’s just cool, okay? And…so cool—and Clay’s always listened loyally, but this? This is on some whole different level, up in the stratosphere where Apollo’s standing on solid ground.
The whole universe spins around him, and Apollo is so stupid and terrible and ashamed for assuming that it had been pity.
“I went to the courthouse,” Clay says, fast, fast, like he has to get the words out before the bomb goes off, before— “and I made copies of all the court records I could find from Phoenix Wright’s trials. You kept talking about how you would have loved to be in the galley for them and I know it’s not the same thing, but—Apollo?”
Apollo blinks. Blinks away tears. Oh.
“Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Apollo chokes out. “Better than fine. This—Clay—this is the best thing anyone’s ever done for me.”
“You…like it?”
Apollo nods frantically. He loves it. He doesn't know how to say it, how to say words that don’t feel trite and insignificant in th face of the magnitude they would have to convey. So he nods and beams and hopes Clay gets it, gets how much this means when Apollo’s spent his whole life wanting this without ever knowing he did. Words aren't enough. So Apollo gives into instinct, leans in and hugs Clay, heart thudding against his chest.
“I’m glad,” Clay whispers to him, and Apollo squeezes harder.
Eventually they break apart and Apollo sets the binder at his side, to take to the house tonight and treasure forever. He’s going to read it, cover to cover, pore over the pages, imagine what it would be like to be him, clever and brave and a champion of justice. He’s going to write down every moment of this day, preserve it his journal so he can never forget. He’s going to think of what to get Clay next year, something even better. He grins at Clay, but Clay’s rooting around in his lunchbox.
“Whatcha looking for?”
“This,” Clay says, pulling out a cupcake. And here Apollo thought the surprises were over. It’s an enormous cupcake with a red liner and a smushed tower of white sprinkled frosting on top. As Apollo watches, Clay sticks a single candle in, tall and proud, and sets the cupcake down on the blanket.
“I was going to bring all fourteen,” he says as he pulls out a lighter that Apollo is fairly certain is forbidden on school grounds. Possibly illegal entirely. “But it didn’t go very well with the practice cupcake.”
“What happened?”
“Melted,” Clay says as he lights the single candle, wielding the lighter like an expert. It flickers, warming the chill just the slightest of bits. The smell is one of candlelit dinners on dark winter nights, an old smell Apollo is about to blow away before Clay stops him. He wants to—has to, actually—sing. And sing he does, a whole birthday choir packed into his song as Apollo twists his bracelet around and around because, wow, it’s actually incredibly awkward being the one sung to. Yikes.
Clay finishes with a flourish, whooping and cheering as Apollo finally blows out the candle. As he makes his wish, less of a wish and more of a feeling. A want. More.
The cupcake is good. Overly sweet, with no real flavor other than cake and sugar, but Apollo doesn’t care, hardly notices. He splits it with Clay over Clay’s protests—it’s my birthday, I can do what I want, and Clay can’t argue with that—and savors every bite, every last minute of this lunch until the bell rings it to a close. Until they’re walking back to class, Clay’s arm thrown over Apollo’s shoulder, and only sweetness lingering on the tongue.
“Thank you for this. Really.”
“Of course,” Clay says. He’s smiling, the same smile he’d smiled on his own birthday, with his own present. “Happy birthday.”
Later, after school, they’re waiting at the light just past the hobby shop, Apollo’s new binder cradled in his arms, and Clay turns to him. He’s scheming, Apollo can tell, his expression one that has heralded many a prank and the occasional detention. Apollo asks about it, asks again when Clay tries to wave it off, asks a third time because he knows Clay’s hiding something and Apollo and secrets are like dogs and bones. They gnaw at him.
“Oh, fine,” Clay says, rolling his eyes. “I’ll ruin the surprise. Next year, you’re going to have a different birthday.”
“What? Why?”
“I’ve got to keep you on your toes,” he says. “And eventually I’m bound to pick the right day.”
Statistically, Apollo doubts it, although he supposes they’ll never know either way. The light turns green and they run across and he tells Clay about his statistical doubts anyways, the debate lasting the rest of their way to the bus stop. He’s playing it cool, causal, a silly argument with no consequences. But—next year. Apollo hadn’t been thinking about next year, hadn’t let himself think about next year. Had been preparing himself to bury the anticipation entirely, to not let himself think about the possibility of another birthday.
Next year. The bus comes and Apollo gets on to Clay’s final birthday shouts and Apollo laughs and waves and although he can’t find a seat and has to hold his binder and hope there aren’t any sudden stops, he doesn’t mind. He’s too happy to mind.
It is April 2nd, and Apollo Justice has just turned fourteen.
4: SIXTEEN
For his sixteenth birthday, Apollo is given advance notice. Clay claims it’s for the anticipation, for the birthday suspense, the slow excitement of waiting out the days. And he’s not wrong, exactly. As the autumn winds starts and the empty storefronts turn to Halloween, Apollo anticipates. He writes the countdown in his calender, crosses each day off with glee, spends chemistry daydreaming about whatever Clay might have planned for him and then has to get the notes from him afterwards. It’s a potent drug, and Clay snickers at him, too amused by Apollo’s first taste.
More practically, Apollo has to get the days off work.
He works now, since his legal birthday back in January. It’s part time, after school and on weekends at the convenience store. Justifies his emancipation, pays for his one room apartment and his entire grocery budget. He doesn’t like the work much, but doesn’t mind it either. The apartment—tiny and terrible and near devoid of furniture—is more than worth it. The loss of his free time—time once reserved for Clay: wandering around the city, doing homework at his kitchen table, group outings with friends, laughing till ribs hurt—is less worth it.
They make do. There’s school and then that summer Clay works at the Space Center—Space Camp counselor, herding gaggles of children just as obsessed as him—but on weekends he visits while Apollo’s on shift and hangs around the counter like Apollo’s life is some shoujo manga and they talk between customers. Clay will buy drinks and linger over checkout past all plausible deniability and Apollo will blush red but neither of them bring it up. And then school starts again, with its shared classes and lunches. There’s texting. Calling. All the moments in between.
And there’s this: two days set aside for Apollo’s birthday, the day before and day of.
Apollo had awaited these days with an eagerness bordering on frantic, but in truth he has no idea what he was expecting. Certainly not this, what actually, happens: after school, Clay drags him towards the student parking lot and his father’s pickup truck. He had to beg to borrow it, he admits on the way, his father having initially refused for no good reason. Apollo winces in sympathy. It’s what he does when Clay grouses about his father. It’s easier than saying actual words.
They pile in. Clay offers Apollo control of the aux—it’s your birthday! Not till tomorrow, Apollo counters out of instinct—and they spend the drive arguing about dumb manga theories over Apollo’s guitar ballad playlist. It’s Clay’s favorite of Apollo’s ‘terrible’ playlists. His visor is off and his head is bobbing and he’s smiling, and Apollo still has no idea where they’re going or what they’re doing but they could drive forever, endless spirals together and he’d still be happy.
But there is a destination.
It’s a flea market, the largest and best in all of Southern California according to realtor-voice Clay. No fleas, only deals on the couch Apollo’s been dreaming of. And Clay’s nervous as he says it, all pink faced and fidgety hands as he promises there’s an actual present waiting for tomorrow, but Apollo beams at him till he cracks a smile like ice in the sun. This is everything he could have asked for. A market, a couch to haggle for and a truck to carry it to the apartment. There’s hours ahead of them. Hundreds of couches before them, the right one just waiting to be found.
They browse, searching for treasure among the trash. Apollo drags his finger along one couch back, the rough fabric scraping against his skin. It’s crusty, almost. Like something’s dried in there, years of phlegm and spit, unmentionable bodily fluids and mold all coalesced into one nightmare of a textural biohazard. He shudders, involuntary and visceral, and then tells Clay to try touching it.
Clay does, and physically recoils, his face twisted in exaggerated disgust. Enough to laugh at, Clay joining in without a moment of hesitation. Horrible, they agree, but the fun kind of horrible. The kind they joke about as they keep moving through the rows and rows of flea market furniture, laughter warm and hazy in the mid-afternoon October sun.
Their prize is plush and red and barely fits in the back of the pickup truck, and they suffering hauling it up the stairs, but it sits in Apollo’s apartment like it was made to. They eat their takeout on it, trading stories and jokes and more terrible manga theories, a two-man slumber party.
The sun creeps down and they creep onto the roof at Clay’s prodding. Another surprise, he calls it, and Apollo acquiesces easily, picking the lock to the roof access while Clay stands watch. A round of applause—the admiration he gets for his rusty lockpicking job is dangerous. A goad. Later, he’ll wonder what else he’d do for Clay, Clay and his perfect smile. But in the moment he’s just grateful it’s dark, more grateful as Clay spreads the picnic blanket out and has Apollo lie close enough to huddle for warmth. They’re sharing a blanket, staring up at the night sky, the waning moon accompanied by faint stars. He can hear Clay’s breath, feel the heat radiating from him. Apollo could just—
Reach out. Their hands could brush, like they did at the flea market. Causal touches instigated by the circumstances of proximity. Underneath the stars, an entire cliché. Apollo thinks about doing it, and then he doesn’t. This is enough.
“Pollo?” Clay says eventually, so hushed Apollo can barely hear him. Apollo looks at him. He’s turned over, moved nearer, their faces now so close. Too close. Apollo takes a breath, too loud, too shaky.
“Yeah?”
Quiet, Clay caught up, his eyes darting down and up again, gaze fluttering like Apollo’s pulse. His breath close enough to warm Apollo’s, and for a shining instance, a golden second, Apollo thinks maybe. Now. And he’s going to, and then Clay is rolling away. Sudden and jerky and when he finally speaks, the opportunity has slipped away.
“Uh, well. When you’re an adult, what do you want to do?”
“To do?” Apollo echoes, faint and reeling. “Like, a job?”
“Yeah,” Clay says, sitting up with a rustling of limbs and fabric, his shadowy figure taking up half the sky. “My dad’s decided to start caring again. He keeps bothering me about my dream colleges and my career plans.”
“Do you have career plans?” Apollo asks, instead of asking anything else. Clay had complained about his father not caring. He’d never known what to say about that either.
“Maybe? I mean, I liked working at the Space Center, but that was just a summer high school thing, not a real job,” Clay heaves out a sigh. “It would be cool to be an astronaut, but getting accepted is really hard. I don’t know how I’d do it.”
“You’d be good at it. Also we’re in high school,” Apollo says. “You have time to figure it out.”
“Try telling my dad that,” Clay scoffs. Apollo really would rather not. “He won’t stop bothering me about this. Apparently I need a plan or something.”
“Well…have you thought about asking Mr. Starbuck for advice? He would probably know what to do. And he seemed nice.”
“Oh!” Clay says. He turns to look at him, smile unmistakable even in the night, and Apollo does not hide his face in the blanket. It’s a near thing. He settles for sitting up too. “Yeah! Apollo, you’re a genius! What would I do without you?”
“Flounder?” Apollo offers, floundering. Clay snickers. “No, you’d be fine.”
“Maybe. But it would suck.” Clay says, causal, as causally as he slings an arm around Apollo’s shoulder. It’s like static electricity, a jolt to Apollo’s system, big enough he nearly misses what comes next.
“Anyways! What about you? I bet you’re going to be a famous lawyer.”
“Haha. Sure,” Apollo says. “A lawyer? Why a lawyer?”
“Oh come on, you’re obsessed with lawyers.”
“I just think they’re neat,” Apollo says, twisting his bracelet as he tries to find the words. The right words, the way to explain it without Clay knowing the half of it. Without Apollo knowing what he’s even explaining, really. Lawyers, Justice. Think. Don’t say Justice, that’s stupid. Dhurke. Just— “You know. It’s cool how they fight for the truth, no matter the outcome. And how they stick by people who don’t really have anyone else to support them. Like, it’s all awesome, but. I don’t know. Me?”
“Yeah! You’d be great at it! You’re smart and determined and you can yell really loud. You’re perfect.”
“Yell loud?”
“For the objections!” Clay says. “Like your Phoenix Wright impressions. They’re good!”
“It’s not that good. Just loud. And I think there’s more to being a lawyer than yelling.”
“So? You’d be good at the rest too,” Clay says, so easily. “Do you want to?”
“I—” Apollo starts. He’s never really thought about it before. Never let himself consider the possibility, not as the years stretched out into nothing. Thought the idea was too tangled in his roots, in the overgrown fields of his childhood. But Clay’s arm is warm around him, as real as those memories are hazy. His belief as solid as a rock. And there’s all the stories that Apollo has read. The grainy illegal Youtube footage. The daydreams late at night, meant to be fantastical. Why? “Maybe. Yeah. It would be cool.”
“Yeah! You’re going to kick ass!” Clay says, and he sounds so determined Apollo’s heart just has to flip alongside him. He makes it sound so obvious, so easy, and maybe it is obvious. Maybe it is easy. Maybe Apollo can be a lawyer, forget his past and seize his future. He’s fine. Clay believes in him, and, oh. It’s better than fine.
“Thank you,” he says, and Clay squeezes him, a one-armed hug. “And—you too.”
“Duh,” Clay says. “We’ll do it together! I’ll be an astronaut and you’ll be a lawyer and—Apollo! Look!”
Above them, bright specks, are meteors. A parade of them hurtling through the night, an cosmic stream Apollo is washed away in. He gasps. They lie back down, unspoken agreement, Clay’s arm still wrapped around him, Apollo tucked into Clay’s side. He pulls the blanket over them, another fantastical daydream made manifest. Made better. He hadn’t imagined stars. Not like this.
They’re beautiful, and he whispers this to Clay, so close to Clay’s ear. Clay shivers and shifts, and then whispers back. It’s midnight. Happy birthday. He’s glad Apollo likes them, this shower to start off the day. Apollo loves them. They watch for what could be minutes, or hours, and Apollo does not mind either way.
Eventually, they will sneak back down to the apartment. Sleep, Clay on the couch and Apollo on the bed. And in the morning Apollo will make pancakes and Clay will give him his third present—his “real” present, a book on the lawyer who reformed Japan’s legal system, the inside cover inscribed with: for apollo. i’d follow you anywhere, in any cramped wardrobe—and Apollo will blubber his way through happiness. And they’ll do something, enjoy the day off, just the two of them. The arcade. Apollo will suggest the arcade, and Clay will go along with it, and if Apollo’s especially lucky he’ll win Clay a prize. They’ll get a cake, strawberry with sixteen haphazard candles crammed on and he’ll make a wish that might just come true. Have leftover cake the rest of the week, stale but delicious all the same. It will be a good birthday.
It already is a good birthday. The meteors are still hurtling overhead, en route towards the stars, just like them. And it is October 10th. Apollo Justice has just turned sixteen.
3: EIGHTEEN
It’s a bad present. Clay had saved it, the best, for last, for after the date and the cake and the birthday wishes. His best present yet, he’d called it, all excited anticipation, and Apollo had wondered what it could be. Had been sure that Clay was right, that it would be the best one yet, and then he’d opened it. And.
It’s bad.
Apollo doesn’t know what to do. He’s staring at it, and Clay’s watching him, waiting, and neither of them are saying anything and the park around them is surrounded with children and their families laughing and screaming, so loud and yet the loudest is still the thud of Apollo’s pulse.
He’s frozen there, dumbstruck, with the box still half-wrapped in his hands. The words, thick green print, still just as visible. RootDNA: Follow Your Roots. Apollo’s seen them before, flickering bold during television commercials, tucked away in the corners of webpages on clunky library computers. Glossy in magazine ads. But never like this: as real words that matter.
“It’s a DNA testing kit,” Clay says. He sounds like he wants to be excited. Not that he is. Apollo’s not looking at him, still staring at this… thing, but he can see Clay’s hands. They jitter, all nerves. They hadn’t been before, when he’d given Apollo the gift. When Apollo had been unwrapping it. “You send in your DNA and then they sequence it and see if they can find any relatives in their database and then—”
“Clay, I know how DNA testing kits work,” Apollo cuts in, sharp, sharper than he should. He glances up, finally, just in time to see Clay wince like Apollo’s drawn blood.
“Oh...I…well, anyways,” he says, a slow deflation from the puncture, “I was thinking that now that you’re eighteen, you could, you know, try it? Pollo. Babe. Just think about it! I know it’s a long shot, but what if it works out? You could find your family!”
“I—” Apollo starts, the response trailing off into the black box where he keeps those thoughts. “Clay, I don’t know about this.”
“Come on!” Clay says, all cautiously bolstered again. A quick patch job. “What’s the harm? I thought you’d want to.”
“Well—”
“I mean,” Clay continues, picking up enthusiastic steam. “You were the one who told me you wished you had a family! This could be it! Who knows, maybe they’ve been looking for you all this time? They’ll be so happy. And, and. Maybe they’re super rich and they’ll buy you a house and—”
“Clay!” Apollo snaps and Clay jolts. “Stop. Just…stop. It’s not going to happen like that. I’m not going to find shit.”
“You don’t like the gift.”
“No. No. Sorry. It’s just—”
“It’s fine.” He’s lying. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Sorry. The cake was good.”
“Are you mad?”
“No,” Apollo says, and he’s going to mean it. “I’m fine.”
He is fine. They pack up the picnic and Clay drives him back to his apartment and they kiss before he hops out of the car, a quick terrible peck, and everything is fine. Great. They’ll get past it, a blip in the rearview mirror, not even worthy of being a called a fight. No shouting or punching or declarations of rage. It had just been awkward. Awkward is fine.
And then next morning in homeroom, Clay gives him the box. Just in case, he says. And Apollo stares at him and at the fucking box and it isn’t fine. It is a fight. Why would you get me this and why aren’t you happy and I never asked for this and why wouldn’t you want a chance to meet your family? And, worst of all: I was trying to help you! It’s public and messy and Apollo is too busy bursting to care and Clay is giving as good as he gets and they both get detention for the trouble. It’s just the two of them in the classroom that afternoon, sitting there in stoney silence, a stalemate or a cold war. A new, horrible reality.
They graduate high school one week later. Apollo doesn’t attend the ceremony. No point. He gets the diploma mailed to him, a non-event in the days of his new life. Long achingly hot days of work, of summer classes for his associates. Of going to the library and then back to his forlorn apartment afterwards. Of trying to recreate the fried meat balls he’d loved as a kid and not quite managing it.
It’s fine. Great, he tells himself, over and over. He’s working towards a dream, and that’s enough. Enough until tonight, with the full moon glaring through his window.
Apollo sighs. He’s tired. His apartment is cold. Work had been long and class longer and he’d had to politely turn down an offer of drinks from a classmate he didn’t particularly like and who had to know that Apollo was underage anyways. He’d told her he already had a boyfriend, which felt like a lie even though they’d never officially broken up. And then he’d gone back to the empty apartment and the table where the kit still sits. Waits. He should throw it out. Instead he eats diner—reheated leftover takeout—and checks his phone again to find nothing again and rereads a chapter of his manga only to hurl the thing across the room. It hit the wall with a resolute crack. Slides to the floor to lie there, abandoned.
“I’m fine!” Apollo tells the wall and the moon, and then picks up his phone to text the work group chat. And then, after much typing and deleting, Clay.
The next morning, Mr. Terran is the one to open the door. He’s all dressed up, a button-down and slacks, far too nice for a Saturday morning. The glasses are new—or new to Apollo. The ever-present stubble is gone. Even his whole bearing is different, like a man no longer haunted.
“Hey Apollo,” he says, smiling. “It’s good to see you again. Been too long. Come on in. Clay’s in the shower, but he should be out soon.”
Apollo had arrived early. Nerves. He follows Mr. Terran into the house, into the kitchen, to sit at the table where he and Clay used to do their homework in middle school. To wait, as the water rumbles above. They make awkward small talk—Apollo’s been fine, thanks for asking, he’s taking classes for his associates, yes, he likes them, yes, the weather is lovely today—until Mr. Terran offers tea. A relief. A break. Apollo accepts gratefully.
It’s chai, what they always had as kids. Comforting, even as he’s well and truly trapped. He’s never been alone with Mr. Terran for any real stretch of time, not for years. Clay was their only real point of connection, and in those days Mr. Terran had been in some kind of grief-stricken daze, an ever-present but never present presence within the house. And then Apollo had gotten the apartment and Clay had always wanted to meet there. Or out. Or anywhere but his own house.
To be back is disconcerting. Mr. Terran sits with his own mug, one Apollo doesn’t remember, and eyes Apollo like he’s trying to solve some riddle. Clay’s same contemplative face, broadcast from thirty years in the future.
“Apollo,” he says at last, “Is everything okay?”
“I’m fine,” Apollo tells him.
“Apollo…” Mr. Terran starts, clearly dubious. Apollo braces himself for impact, but the water shuts off above and Mr. Terran just sighs. “You weren’t at graduation, and Clay’s been out of sorts for weeks. What’s going on?”
“I’ve just been busy.”
Mr. Terran sighs again, a bare finger tapping at his mug. “If you say so. But if you ever want to talk with someone, I’m here, you know that?”
Apollo nods. Thanks him. It’s nice of him to offer. Fatherly, even, Apollo thinks. Touching, that he’ll do this for his son’s boyfriend, one he’s not even particularly close to. And Apollo appreciates it, really, but Apollo also knows he’ll never take him up on the offer. Not ever. Instead he asks Mr. Terran about work and nods along politely to talk of incomprehensible financial investments even as his head swims.
It’s a relief when Clay appears in the kitchen, hair slicked back by the shower.
“Apollo?”
“Hey,” Apollo says, mouth dry. “You saw my text?”
“Ye-yeah,” Clay says, his eyes darting between Apollo and Mr. Terran. “Yeah, I did. Should we—”
“Well,” Mr. Terran interrupts, pushing up from the table with a creak and a scraping of his chair across the floor. “I should get going, get out of your hair. It was great to see you again Apollo. Remember what we talked about.”
Apollo doesn’t say anything. Mr. Terran leaves with his goodbyes, hand waving, and it hits Apollo. A sudden flash of awareness. A golden flash, like the one that’s missing. Mr. Terran’s wedding ring.
“Where’s he going?” he asks Clay, even as Apollo thinks he already knows the answer.
“Girlfriend’s,” Clay confirms, still standing there in the doorway. “He’s meeting her family today.”
“Wow. That’s…something. Do you like her?”
“She’s nice. And she makes him happy.” Clay crosses the room, sits down in the chair nearest to Apollo’s, his hands restless on his knees. His face is pale and nervous, the sight clenching at Apollo’s heart. “Look, Apollo. I know you want to talk to me, but can I just apologize first? Because. I am sorry. Really sorry. I was being an asshole.”
“Clay,” Apollo says, taking a hand in his and squeezing. “You don’t—”
“I was being stupid,” Clay continues, face set and determined. “I didn’t think and just—I kept pushing it. I didn’t just listen to you. I’m sorry. Can I make it up to you? Somehow?”
Yes. You already have.
Apollo hugs him rather than answer, and Clay hugs back, tight enough to squeeze the breath out of him, choked out gasps. Is he crying? He better not be, but he is, and he rubs his eyes with a fervor that doesn’t help. Silly. Silly. It’s fine. They’re fine.
“I’m sorry too,” he says, manages.“That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m sorry for flipping out instead of just talking to you. We could have avoided this whole mess.”
“I could have dropped it,” Clay says, and sighs into Apollo’s shoulder. “You know, my dad had to talk sense into me?.”
“He did?”
“Yeah. Sat me down last week and had a whole intervention. I ended up telling him the whole story—well, enough that he got the gist of it. I’d never heard him so disappointed in me before. It was so weird it shocked my whole brain out of being pigheaded”
“Wow.”
“Yeah,” Clay says, and pulls back to look Apollo in the eye. “Pollo, I’m going to say it again. I’m really sorry. I was too caught up in my gesture to realized it sucked.”
“It didn’t suck,” Apollo says, and Clay gives him a look. Deeply unimpressed. “Okay, it sucked, but you didn’t know it would suck. And stop apologizing. I forgive you. Okay?”
Before Clay can say anything, Apollo kisses him. Actions, not words. Clay kisses back. And it’s like a switch flipping, a satellite snapping into orbit, pieces of a puzzle falling into place. Tension smoothing out, conversation spilling in to take its place. Clay tells him about his father—dating again, active in Clay’s life again, happy again, and how Clay is so furious with him for moving on and yet so glad all the same and doesn’t know how to feel about it—and about graduation—hot, boring, miserable without you—and about interning at the Space Center again where he gets to help with the robots this time. Apollo tells him about his classes—legal history, he loves legal history, even though the professor speaks entirely in monotone—and work—boring, you should come visit again—and trying to teach himself to cook with mixed results. They scrounge for snacks in the kitchen and putter around the living room and migrate to the bedroom and make up again.
It isn’t until nightfall that Clay works up the nerve to ask, his head on Apollo’s chest as they lie in his bed.
“Pollo?” Apollo hums a go-ahead, a hand idly stroking his hair. “Just—out of curiosity. Why don’t you want to?”
“They’re just people,” Apollo says, careful. Practiced—he’d expected this, eventually. “Even if it did pan out, it’s not like I know them at all. I’d rather spend my time on the people I do know and love, rather than strangers.”
The bracelet is heavy on his arm as he pets Clay’s hair.
“I don’t want to get stuck in my past,” Apollo says. Not again. He’s spent so long, untangling from the roots of his childhood. “It doesn’t interest me.”
“Okay,” Clay says, after a too-long pause. “I guess that makes sense.”
He doesn’t sound convinced, but that makes two of them. And he doesn’t argue. Doesn't try to change Apollo’s mind. Just accepts it this time, and Apollo—Apollo is so grateful he could cry.
Before Apollo leaves that night, Clay gives him a gift. A better one, he explains, sheepish. He’d gotten it a few days ago, but hadn’t been sure that Apollo would even want it, even want to hear from him. He’d wrapped it while Apollo was using the bathroom, having been too nervous to do it before. Manga volumes, Apollo’s favorite series all in a box set, and Apollo swoons, just a bit.
“I love you,” he tells Clay, and they’ve said it before, but they’ve never fought like this before. It’s different now, in the aftermath. Apollo means it with a certainty redoubled, and when Clay says it back, it sounds like the most truthful thing he’s ever said.
It’s not Apollo’s birthday. That had been May 17th, a whole lifetime ago, and it had ended terribly. But Clay drives him back and they kiss outside his apartment—long, proper—and Apollo holds his new box in his hands and the real present in his heart. He’s excited for next year again. For his next birthday.
2: TWENTY
There is an instance when Apollo wakes up, when the mountain air is crisp and clear, where he thinks he is home. Home, with the gentle roaring of the river, the whispers of trees rustling in the morning breeze, the chatter of birds starting their day. The snores besides him, desperately sleeping in. Any second now, someone will crash through the door and start talking at them, promises of breakfast, a new day of adventure.
Bug-catching maybe, Apollo thinks, an idle dream, and then he blinks and the tent wall registers. The birdsong is wrong. Instead of Nahyuta in the other bed, there is the sleeping bag pressed against him and Clay’s arm over him, his breath warm on the back of Apollo’s neck. These are different mountains entirely, a whole ocean away. This is a different kind of home, years beyond the first one.
He sighs. He’s on vacation. A weekend getaway, an escape from this final summer of classes and Clay’s latest internship. Camping. Apollo had mentioned over takeout he missed the mountains, a casual slip and then they’d planned for months to make the time. Days oof from work and internships, borrowing the pickup truck, all the food and gear they could possibly need, and then some. One final hurrah before his last set of exams. Before Apollo starts working—a real job as a real legal assistant, the step before the bar and his badge. Before he’s a lawyer, Apollo Justice at last.
Of all times, now is not the one to be mired in the past. Not with so much possibility ahead. Apollo shakes his head clear—he’s good!--and rolls over, careful not to disturb Clay’s arm. Finds Clay already awake and gazing at him.
“Morning, Pollo,” he murmurs, and darts a peck. “Happy birthday.”
“It’s my birthday? When did you decide this?”
“A minute ago?” Clay says, snaking his other arm underneath to envelope Apollo completely. “I woke up and saw your beautiful head—don’t give me that look!—and it’s been such a good weekend that now just felt right, you know?”
“So you’re saying I feel like a Leo?”
“Noooo,” Clay groans, thumping his head against Apollo’s chest. “You know I don’t know what that means.”
“You think I’m passionate and determined,” Apollo tells Clay’s hair, as his face is still mushed in sleeping bag. “And dramatic. That’s a big one.”
“Well, I have heard your Chords of Steel.”
“Har har. You love them.”
“Whatever you say,” Clay says, laughter on the edge of spilling out. “It is a great phrase, I’ll give you that. Chords of Steel. Where’d it come from?”
A bird squawks, loudly raucous, its own Chords of Steel. The sound’s still not right, but almost right, close enough that Apollo could be misremembering it entirely. Would he even know? Does it really matter, the difference, after so long, this mirage he’s grasping for?
“It was from my first foster home. I don’t remember how it started. Probably Nahy—my foster brother trying to annoy me, and I guess the name stuck.”
“Your first foster family? I don’t think you’ve ever told me about them before.”
It’s an idle observation, Clay’s voice sleep-soft, like he could drift off again easy. Unconcerned.
“I don’t like thinking about them,” Apollo admits to the crisp air of his youth. “But—we used to live up in mountains just like these.”
“Wow. What was that like?”
“It was amazing,” Apollo says, another admission. Half-awake, surrounded by Clay’s arms, by familiar enough sounds, it’s too easy to say these things. If Clay looked up at him, he thinks it would be impossible. It always had been before, when conversations had meandered towards this direction. “We had a shack next to a river and spent all our time running around in the woods.”
“Living the dream,” Clay says, and Apollo laughs and then suggests breakfast. He’s hungry, and if it’s for a memory-mirage of meatballs rather than the powdered egg and sausages awaiting—well, they’re all the same hunger. Food, company, Clay’s laughter as they chase off chipmunks hankering for a bite, it all satisfies the same way. Apollo can breathe in the familiar crispness of mountain air and have it not sting. Can breath it out, every molecule of old festering hurt. This will be his birthday gift to himself, Apollo decides. Letting himself talk about it, trust Clay with this hollow secret he’s carried. Letting go of the hope and promises. He’ll exorcize it and move on, close the final chapter. Khurian will be a memory only.
They eat by the river, and Apollo tells Clay about almost drowning, the full story behind his apprehension for water. They pack up the tent and Apollo tells him about the shack, the faded paint and worn out boards. The bugs in the bathroom and the frog they’d tried to keep in the tub as a pet. They scramble up rocks to taste the view one last time, and Apollo talks about running wild in the woods, two kids who knew nothing but reckless abandon and the fervor of a cause.
They sit side by side among the grasses, stalling on the hike out. Clay makes Apollo a flower crown as a present—I have a better present at home, but I wasn’t planning on impulsive birthday decisions—and he listens to all of it, the real gift. Khurian and Dhurke, Nahyuta and Datz. Apollo’s childhood, an implausible tale that Clay swallows whole. It’s only the ending—Apollo being sent to America, too young and too trusting to question a thing—he objects to, vehement.
“And you haven’t seen them since?”
“Only on the news,” Apollo confirms. “But it’s fine, you know? I don’t care anymore.”
He packs as much of his newfound conviction in his voice as he can muster, and Clay frowns but lets him have it. No fight this time. He just takes Apollo’s hand and squeezes, warm and grounding, a tether to a real life as Apollo lets go of the old one. Apollo leans into it, leans against Clay's shoulder, and he is home. No longer longing for it, imagining the mirage, but it’s here in Clay’s solidness. In the warmth as he asks if Apollo’s ready to head back. In the strength of his grip as he helps Apollo up and the surety of his footsteps as he leads the way down the trail. In the surety of his silence, not prying for more information, just accepting what Apollo has given. Is giving, more snippets of his childhood let free as they walk.
And in turn Clay offers up glimpses of his mother, rare stories from before the gulf of grief. His own catharsis, his own life before Apollo knew anything substantial about him. She had loved birthdays, Clay tells him, and tells him all about these ordinary days transformed special each year. Once she’d made a solar system’s worth of cake, a decorative cake sculpture with enough post-party leftovers to last them the week. Another time, a private tour of the Space Museum, the start of it all. And for the last birthday, they’d driven out to the desert, following a winding road more dust than road, out far past his bedtime to lie in the back of the truck and see the cosmos free from light pollution. Told him all about the constellations, memories from a distant past still guiding them today. It had been her memory that had inspired Clay to celebrate Apollo's first birthday all those years ago, because she would have loved you, you know, and Apollo rubs at his eyes just a bit, bracelet glinting warm gold in the midafternoon sun.
They break at the lake they’d first passed on the hike in, the water rippling in ethereal sheets of silver-blue crystal. Clay plops his visor on Apollo’s head—untamed by the gel, front tufts battered down by heat and sweat—and jumps in. He beams as he reemerges, as bright as the sun. Apollo wades in after him, just to his calves, the water cool relief. Clay swims back to him, refreshed, dripping and laughing. They stand there in the shallow end, rocks prickling beneath their feet, fish darting around their toes, and skip stones until skin goes numb. Dhurke had taught Apollo how, once, and Clay’s father had taught him, and the thought is as clear and harmless as the water splashing.
After, they sit by the lake to dry off and eat their lunches. Apollo’s still wearing Clay’s visor, Clay’s hair free, slicked back and dripping, a sight to behold. He’s talking between gulps, quick and excited like each splash of a skipped stone, words bursting out of him. His internship, his classes for next year—real rocket science, Apollo!—how they should come back next year but for longer, the manga Apollo’s finally gotten him into, although he’s still catching up.
“It’s good,” he says, and Apollo kisses him, knocking the visor askew in the process. One of Clay’s hands snakes up, twists it around, out of the way, and pulls Apollo in deeper. Like he’s drowning again, but this time his savior is where he’s sinking. Or something. He pulls back for air, curling his braceletted hand in Clay’s free one.
“Thank you,” he says, and Clay frowns at him, eyebrows raising past where normally they’d be hidden.
“For?”
“You know… this trip? A great birthday? And, well. For believing me.”
“About your past?” Clay asks, brow wrinkled. “Is that why you never talked about it?”
“Yeah,” Apollo shrugs. “It is a ludicrous story. I won’t have blamed you if you’d just laughed in my face.”
Clay’s frown etches deeper, contemplative, and Apollo scratches at his bracelet as he waits. It’s hot again, the cool reprieve of the water lost to the drying sun. Annoying, but a familiar annoyance, it;s weight just as steadily reliable.
“I wouldn't have,” Clay eventually says. “You wouldn’t lie to me about something important like that. So of course I’d believe you, no matter how incredible you get.”
“Really?”
“Of course. You’re the love of my life, dingus. Trusting you is part of the job.”
“Dingus?” Apollo asks, blinking furiously. “Really? We were having a moment.”
“Dingus is a term of endearment,” Clay retorts, prim. Apollo rolls his eyes but then kisses Clay all the same, undermining the argument. Not that Clay presses it, instead leaning in with a fervor Apollo can only eagerly return. Lets Clay swallow up every last drop of gratitude, love, want, all the flavors intertwined, the action more potent than any words Apollo could conjure. This the only moment that matters.
It’s not till they’re finally leaving the lake, hand in hand, that Clay asks, his grip a shade too tight as he does.
“Why’d you decide to tell me now? You didn’t have to.”
“I was tired of holding onto it. And, you know. I love you and trust you and want for you to know everything about me,” Apollo says. Pauses. Grins. “Dingus.”
Clay’s laughing as he elbows him.
“Hey! Term of endearment!”
“No, Pollo, you were right. It ruins the moment,” Clay says. “Here I was, about to swoon, and you go and dingus-nify me. Swoon canceled. Over. Donezo.”
“Oh? Should I try again?”
“Hmm,” Apollo darts a glance as Clay hums, all mock consideration, his cheeks flushed with no visor shadow to hide them. “Tonight, when we get back. When we can do something about it.”
Even with the renewed vigor, they make it back to the truck far later than intended, the sun creeping near the horizon, the unfettered magic of the mountains fading with it. But Apollo doesn’t mind a bit. They stop at the first gas station and Clay buys him the largest, most overpriced cupcake and a pack of novelty candles and sings right out there in the parking lot, the strangers in the car the pump over joining in. It tastes of stale sugar, an energy rush for the drive to his apartment, carrying them all the way back with only a brief stop for takeout. Carries them through the night’s last birthday celebration, just as instinctual as the morning’s first.
Afterwards, they crash, curled up in Apollo’s too small, too hard bed. They both have work the next day—reality will fully topple back in—and Apollo sets his alarm an hour earlier than usual so Clay has time to make the drive. He doesn’t mind. The clock blinks red—11:56, August 4th—the last four minutes of his birthday slipping away. Two decades down, and a lifetime more ahead of them.
1: TWENTY-TWO
The phone on his desk rings with a sudden trill, and Apollo Justice nearly jumps out of his seat before slumping into it like the embarrassment might swallow him whole. He’s a wreck, this latest incident just another line of evidence in a record of not his finest moments. New job nerves, new badge nerves, nerves he wouldn’t have expected before but have found plaguing him all the same.
“Apollo Justice is fine,” he mutters to himself, not that any of his coworkers are currently in the office to overhear him, and picks up the phone. “Hello?”
“Mr. Justice,” says Birgit, the receptionist, and a thrill runs up Apollo’s spine, a different shot of adrenaline. He’s had his badge for all of a week and change, been a junior lawyer at the Gavin Law offices for just as long. Before he’d interned—fetching coffees and running errands while studying for the bar—but this is different. Better and stranger, here as actual lawyer, a “Mr. Justice” he’s still not used to being. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to it.
“There’s a man here asking for you,” Birgit continues, “A Mr. Clay Terran. He’s not scheduled for an appointment—would you like me to turn him away?”
Apollo could schedule client appointments now, if he had clients. He will have clients, even if right now he’s just doing case research. Not that he has anything against case research—it’s just not what he dreamed of. The paperwork already piling up his desk—someday it’ll be for his own trials. For now, he’ll take the wins—Mr. Justice—he can get.
“Oh, I uh know him. Um. Could you send him in?” Apollo says, cringing with every hesitant word. Get a grip, Justice. Birgit agrees, he thanks her, he puts down the phone and puts his head in his hands. Yikes. And—Clay? What’s Clay doing here? It’s the middle of the week, five past five on a Tuesday. He has class, a full courseload as he gears up for the screening exams in just a few months. They’ve barely had time to see each other since astronaut bootcamp started—Apollo took the train up the weekend he passed the bar and they had a celebratory lunch, but otherwise it’s been phone calls—and now…
“Clay?” he says as the man himself walks in and over to Apollo’s new desk, tucked near a once-empty corner of the open office. “You playing hooky?”
“Slander! We got a half day today,” Clay says, fingers fiddling with the cuffs of the spiffy new Space Center jacket draped over the shoulders of a rare button-up.. Apollo rubs at his bracelet idly. “I guess they were feeling nice?”
“Anyways,” Clay barrels on before Apollo can press for the full story. “Obviously, I had to come see your swanky new office for myself.”
“It’s not my office. I share it with the other junior lawyers,” Apollo protests for the sake of protesting. “And you’ve picked me up here back when I was an intern.”
“That’s different,” Clay says easily, grinning. “Now you’re a real lawyer, rocking the fancy suit and everything. It’s hot.”
“Shut up,” Apollo says, resisting the urge to pat his hair down like a loon. “What’s going on?”
“Dinner. I’ve gotten us reservations. Can’t tell you where. That’s a surprise.”
“What’s the occasion?”
“Also a surprise,” Clay says. Apollo’s birthday, then. Earlier than he would have expected—before Clay’s, even, and that’s never happened before—but it’s the only explanation that makes sense, all evidence considered. “But don’t worry. I promise it’s a good one.”
“I wasn’t going to worry,” Apollo tells him, just before the worry strikes. “Actually—uh. What time are these reservations for?”
“Hour and a half. Why?”
Apollo grimaces. He doesn’t want to ruin his own birthday, not before it’s even had the chance to start. But—the papers are still stacked up and it’s barely his second week and he doesn’t want to just be doing the bare minimum, he wants to be ahead, to make sure they don’t regret hiring him—and Clay’s frowning at him but Clay would get it the same way Apollo gets Clay’s jampacked schedule, his training and studying and all the snatches of phone calls and everything they haven’t had time for lately.
It still hurts, telling Clay he’s not sure he’ll finish up in time to make it. And Clay’s understanding smile, that’s the worst of it. Because he does get it, doesn’t even plead or ask if Apollo is really sure, just agrees with the belated, stilted explanations of professionalism and impressionism without protest. It’s fine, he says, and Apollo itches with the undertones, opens his mouth to change his mind even as Clay is promising to call the restaurant, see if they can be fit in later or—something. They’ll celebrate some other time.
“That won’t be needed,” a voice says. Not Apollo’s. It comes from the doorway, from his boss, Mr. Gavin himself, just lurking inside. Apollo swallows down his words, finds new ones. Introduces Clay, exchanges pleasantries, wills his heart rate to steady. He’s fine. He doesn’t need to be nervous. It’s the new job jitters, like anything he does here, now, could be some fatal mistake he hadn’t known about. And—what is Mr. Gavin doing here after five?
“Justice,” Mr. Gavin continues. “I happened to overheard some of your conversation with your friend, and I insist you leave on time to make your reservation. He’s right. You should be celebrating your new position.”
“But—” Apollo protests lamely, gesturing at the paperwork.
“Finish it tomorrow.”
“Yes—thank you, sir!” Apollo says, almost a squeak. Mr. Gavin simply nods, a benevolent boss, and disappears back out the doorway, leaving Clay grinning with the force of all the universe’s stars.
“He’s cool,” Clay says, and Apollo nods agreement. “You’ve got like, another twenty minutes to work before we should leave—mnd if I pull up a chair and study a bit? It’ll be like old times again.”
“Me working hard while you fool around?” Apollo teases. “Knock yourself out.”
“Hey, I worked hard too. Sometimes.”
Apollo snorts and returns to his paperwork. He has a report to do, research for one of the senior partner’s trials next week. Information that will (hopefully, he hopes) win the case. A lead that could break it wide open: a near dizzying array of past damages lawsuits all filed under pseudonyms all linked to one of the possible witnesses—a pattern Apollo is just beginning to sort out. Originally, he was going to stare at it all evening, but now he settles for finishing assembling a timeline to look over with fresh eyes in the morning. It has been—many hours.
Clay, for his part, doesn’t actually fool around, but instead conjures up a complicated looked physics textbook from his bag and starts reading, occasionally taking notes. Scrawling, head-spinning notes. His screening exams are soon, the real test after this initial training. Physical and mental trials spread over three days, a trial Apollo doesn’t one bit, even if Clay always says he’s having the time of his life preparing.
Even so, twenty minutes later on the dot, Clay shoves his book in his bag and starts poking around on Apollo’s desk.
“Pollo, you need more stuff on your desk. It’s so boring.”
“I have reports,” Apollo protests, as he setts aside his work to pack up. Clay’s right. His desk is boringly devoid of—anything, really. He has a mason jar from a jam splurge filled with pens, and that’s it. The other desks—elegantly cluttered with photos of family and catalog-worthy knickknacks—are intimidating by comparison. “And it’s only been a week. Decorating hasn’t been high on the list of priorities.”
“Boring.”
Apollo rolls his eyes. “Okay. What would you decorate with?”
“Easy. Pictures of me, of course. Some of your manga figurines—“ “—No—“ “—maybe a plant.”
“I can do a plant,” Apollo says, shouldering his bag. “Come on, let’s go. I’m hungry.”
They stop twice on the way out—once to thank Mr. Gavin again, who’s still working—and once for the restroom. Clay goes to get his car and Apollo his bike. They stash it in the trunk, back seat already lowered so it can fit, and Apollo asks about the restaurant and only gets cryptic evasions in response. Nervous evasions, Clay’s voice pitched unsteady, and Apollo diverts the subject like a stream, telling him all about the current case, the conspiracy he’s just starting to take ahold of. The explanations shaping as he talks, like the act of talking it through is enough to see sense in the nonsense. The inspiration he needed finally flashing through, goaded along by Clay’s questions. He thanks Clay for this—this break he didn’t even realize he needed—and Clay darts a grin, tells him to wait for the real surprise. Laughs when Apollo asks if the restaurant was just a cover story—so, a strong maybe.
Or a strong no because they pull into a parking space a timelessly long drive later and Apollo looks up to a flashing neon sign in Khur’ianese. A restaurant sign, and he must make some kind of sound—gasp some kind of emotion—because Clay starts talking, dam bursting.
“One of the people in my physics lab told me about this place a few weeks ago. They said it was really good and remember when you told me a while ago that you missed Khur’ianese food? So, uh, surprise!?”
It had been over a year ago, Apollo grumbling over the phone as he ate another failed attempt at meat balls—too doughy—and he’d let the idly profound wish slip free. Real Khur’ianese. A rare slip—Clay knows, but even so they don’t discuss Khur’ian much, not when there’s so little worth saying. Sometimes Apollo will slip, or there’ll be a story from his childhood or Clay will ask something he’s been wondering at, but like the rest of Khur’ian, Clay knowing about it has had little effect on Apollo’s real life. Usually—but now, Apollo’s tackle-hugging him back into his seat, seatbelt straining.
“You like it?”
“Yes!” Apollo says. “Thank you. Seriously. If I had known what you were planning, I never would have hesitated.”
The restaurant, a hole-in-the-wall type place with questionable lighting, is jam-packed, another surprise Apollo had not been expecting. But Clay has the reservations—Mr. Terran for two, please—and they’re led over to a cozy booth in the back corner, partially separated from the main room by a multi-colored curtain of prayer flags. They run the gamut: old, faded text in perfect Khur’ianese script, to crisp new fabrics adorned with a pidgin mixture of Khur’ianese and English. A living record, almost. Like Apollo’s journal—once in messy Khur’ianese, now an entirely English scrawl.
“These flags—can you read any of them?” Clay asks once they’ve been seated and the waitress has come around to take their orders and compliment Apollo’s pronunciation of the Khur’ianese for meat balls
Apollo squints at one flag, a dull gray that was once blue covered in the dim black swirl of words. A prayer for a swift return home, if he still remembers his Khur’ianese correctly.
“Some,” he says. “These are prayer flags. Mostly for family and friends, safety, those kinds of things. Anyone could make them; they were everywhere in the cities.”
“Did you ever make any?”
“Only once,” Apollo tells him. It been a hot summer day, the year before he’d been sent away. Nahyuta had wanted to do it, and Apollo remembers agreeing more for Nahyuta’s excitement than anything else. He doesn’t even remember what they wrote, or what happened to them. Just him and Nahyuta, both cursed with bad handwriting, carefully trying to be neat. “We weren’t very observant.”
Clay nods, slow and thoughtful, just as their waitress reappears through the curtains with waters and their plate of fried meat balls before disappearing just as swiftly, only a rustling of fabric to mark that she was ever there. Apollo takes a meatball, bites into it, lets the rich meaty tasty sweep through his mouth, savors every bit. They taste like home, like the meatballs Datz would fry on cool winter evenings; warm on the tongue and warmer on the stomach.
“Delicious,” he tells Clay, pops another meatball in his mouth. “Just like I remember.”
Clay beams and tries one for himself.
The dinner will stretch out, years worth of memory packed into each bite. They’ll swap entrees and Apollo will tell him about the time he lit his hair on fire trying to sneak food while Datz was cooking. Trade stories of work, all the words they’d stuffed into phone calls let free. Talk about the future, so bright—I’ll be making lawyer money now, so I was thinking of finding a better apartment next year and would you want to move in then?—and all the next steps—yes! We should get a cat—and the past, old stories from middle school that are only funny because they’re theirs. Split desert, a rice pudding with a haphazard candle stuck in, and Apollo won’t be able to think of a wish.
But for now Clay is raising a toast, to Apollo’s birthday and Apollo tells him this is the best present yet—you say that every year. Hey, I mean it every year—and it is February 3rd. He has just turned twenty-two, and he has made it. He is home here in this booth, a warm hand in his.
0: TWENTY-FOUR
Apollo Justice does not celebrate a twenty-fourth birthday.
-1: TWENTY-SIX
Apollo Justice turns twenty-six with all the fanfare of a birthday party. An August afternoon in the Khur’ian palace gardens, golden as could be. A small party, outsized in spectacle. The gardens strung up with streamers and balloons, festooned with flowers, tabled with a buffet vast enough to feed a small army, a literal pile of presents all wrapped and waiting.
This party had been many people’s idea, Apollo suspects, but Nahyuta had been the one to bring it up to him a few months ago, their lives calmed down enough for parties. Twenty-five had been a year of scrambling—reinventing a legal system, reconnecting with near-strangers he loved, rediscovering his old, now-new life—and Apollo had successfully avoided the whole birthday question altogether. He had considered picking a date to celebrate, would lie in bed twisting his ring around with his thoughts, and each time fail. Kept avoiding the idea, the old avoidance indulgence. And then the Wright Anything Agency had visited Khur’ian with Lamiroir in tow—except she was now Thalassa and Apollo had definitely had no idea what to do with that—and suddenly he’d had an actual birthdate. And a mother and sister and a piercing done in the Justice Law Office bathroom with a needle and Trucy’s steady hand.
His head could only spin so far. Compared to everything else, he hadn’t really registered the birthday, not until months later when Nahyuta came over for dinner—a regular occurrence Apollo still scrubbed the bathroom for—and broached the subject. It was coming up. They, and Apollo didn’t ask who they were, wanted to throw him a party on the day. Apollo had protested, futile. His birthday was on a Wednesday, a work day. They'd have a trial, or investigation, or both. A party would cut into that.
“Justice will wait,” Nahyuta had told him, so seriously that he was definitely poking fun.
Apollo had twisted the ring on his finger, muted gold in the lamplight, new rendition of old habit, and sighed. Once, Clay had asked if Apollo had wanted the big party and Apollo, turning fifteen at the time, had refused. Had again at twenty-one. Easy decisions, both times. He had Clay and hadn’t wanted the attention. Or that kind of attention, the orphan kind. Clay had accepted the refusal each time—he hadn’t liked parties either, he had confessed later. Liked that Apollo’s birthday was just for the two of them.
But he was gone. And that Apollo had gone with him.
The ring was warm with friction when Apollo had agreed to the birthday party, all the atoms within excited. Anticipatory. Nahyuta had smiled, wide and loose, free, and Apollo had found himself grinning back.
All his friends and family come, a great parade of people Apollo had not thought possible. Trucy hugged him, their earrings knocking together like chimes, the first in a line of well-wishers. They ate and danced and opened presents and Apollo thanked them all for coming, a speech marked by tears of joy. He tells them about Clay, his old birthdates—he was only three days off, isn’t that something—and the audience laughs and Apollo is reminded of the love in Clay’s voice as he’d talked about his mother. Funny to be on the other side of it, creating new beginnings. New rituals. New happiness.
Apollo Justice turns twenty-six on an August 7th, and he knows that somewhere, Clay Terran is celebrating too.