Chapter 561. I Confront Apollo... As Usual... Dense As Ever So I Had To Tell Him

He sat with it for a moment longer, in the quiet of the guest room, with Mireya’s breathing even and deep beside him.

Then he thought about the Underlayer and the shape of tomorrow and the way the two things connected.

The Underlayer could not wait indefinitely. Gelion’s intelligence network presented an ongoing challenge rather than a resolved issue.

The second-stratum contacts were still holding, but the standdown order he had relayed through Gelion’s network weeks ago was not a permanent state. It was a pause, and pauses had durations.

He needed to be in the Underlayer before the pause expired on its own terms.

’Tomorrow,’ he thought. ’Before the city woke up properly.’

He dressed without making noise and moved toward the door.

He stopped once, at the threshold, and looked back at Mireya’s sleeping form in the narrow guest bed.

He thought about Apollo waking up tomorrow morning, coming to find her, and discovering that she had spent the night in the guest room, which would lead him to draw his own conclusions from that situation.

He thought about what Apollo would do with that conclusion.

He thought about the specific quality of realizing something is wrong when you don’t yet have the full picture of how wrong it is.

’Heh... who fucking cares...’

’As usual... he’s going to act like a fucking virgin and dense about it.’

Rex turned and walked out, closing the door quietly behind him.

...

Surprisingly, Rex met with Apollo where he was in the hallway.

He was standing near the doorway to the bedroom with a cup in his hand, wearing the expression of someone who had woken up to find the household in a state they had not fully anticipated and was doing the quiet accounting of what that meant. His eyes tracked to Rex with the uncomplicated directness that was his natural mode.

For a moment, neither of them said anything.

Apollo looked at the closed door Rex had just come through. Then he looked at Rex.

"Hey," he said, a greeting that conveyed a lot of meaning in just two letters.

"Yo," Rex said. "Looks like someone’s finally awake from his slumber."

Apollo’s expression reflected his typical response when he was trying to work through a situation without having a clear framework for it yet. It was not angry, not betrayed, not even particularly surprised.

Just processing.

’There it is,’ Rex thought. ’The expression on his face resembled that of a man who has just discovered a piece of information that contradicts his understanding of the world and is contemplating whether to adjust his beliefs or the new information.’

’You’re going to revise the information, Apollo...’

’You always do...’

’It’s one of your most consistent qualities.’

"She’s okay?" Apollo said.

"She’s sleeping," Rex said. "I just moved her from the living room because we talked and she fell asleep."

Apollo nodded slowly, the nod of someone confirming something they had already worked out from available information. He looked at his cup.

’Look at him...’

’Standing in the hallway of his parents’ house at five in the evening with a cup of something warm, doing his best to be reasonable about a situation he doesn’t understand.’

’Earnest to the last...’

’The Apostle of Life, the hero at the center of his own story, standing in his socks on a cold stone floor and trying to be a decent person about something that would break a lesser man.’

’You’re not a lesser man, Apollo.’

’I’ll give you that... You’re genuinely not.’

’You’re just not the man you think you are.’

"You know," Apollo said, and his voice had the particular quality of someone who was choosing their words not to manage an impression but because they wanted to actually say something true, "I fell asleep in the middle of our date."

"Well... it’s not the word ’fell’ but more like ’want to’ because I was so tired..."

"I know," Rex said. "She told me."

"I screw up again... I keep doing that," Apollo said. "The residual from the ring, the healer says..."

"My designation is still recalibrating." He looked at Rex with the flat honesty of someone who has stopped performing competence on a subject they find difficult. "I know the medical explanation..."

"I’m not actually asking about the medical explanation."

"What are you asking?" Rex said.

"I don’t know," Apollo said, which was honest.

’I know,’ Rex thought. ’You’re asking whether you’re losing something without being able to name what it is.’

’You can feel the edge of it, the specific quality of a shape that isn’t quite there when you reach for it.’

’You’re asking because you trust me to tell you the truth, which is the funniest thing about this hallway and this conversation and everything that exists between us.’

’You trust me because I have never lied to you directly.’

’That’s technically still true.’

He looked at the closed door again. "She deserves better than falling asleep in the middle of time set aside for her."

"Yes," Rex said. "She does."

Apollo was quiet for a moment. "You’re not going to tell me anything useful about what happened?"

"Well... actually, I’m going to tell you something useful," Rex said. "It’s just not going to be what you’re expecting."

Apollo looked at him. His expression revealed a readiness, characteristic of someone who has resolved to accept information no matter its nature.

’That’s the thing about you that I’ve never been able to dismiss,’ Rex thought. ’You will stand in front of a conversation you don’t want to have and you will hold your ground.’

’You don’t run from hard things...’

’You walk directly into them with your chest open and your hands empty and your eyes forward.’

’It’s an admirable quality.’

’It’s also exactly why this approach is going to work.’

Rex held his gaze with the steady attention he gave to conversations that were worth having properly.

"You’re a good person," he said. "I mean that with the full weight of what I know about you, which is more than you probably think."

"Apollo." He paused. "You have women who are devoted to you."

"Women who have chosen to stay, who have watched you be exactly who you are through some genuinely difficult situations, and they have not left."

’Chosen,’ Rex thought, and the word sat in his mind with the specific weight of a word that is true in one reading and not in another. ’They have chosen.’

’That part is accurate...’

’The question of who they have chosen is not the question you’re asking, so I am not obligated to provide the answer.’

"Mireya is still here," Rex said. "Not because she has to be, but because she has decided to be."

"That decision is costing her..."

"You should know the cost is real and stop making it larger than it needs to be by treating the people around you like a support structure instead of like people who have their own requirements."

Apollo looked at him for a long moment.

"That’s the most direct thing you’ve ever said to me," he said.

"I have a schedule tomorrow," Rex said. "I don’t have time to work up to it."