Chapter Text
It's a Rite Aid tonight.
He rotates drugstores on evenings like this one. Also grocery stores, sundry shops, convenience stores (when it's not too bad) and pharmacies. He wonders whether he'll eventually resort to veterinary clinics, or whether one evening the same clerk will have seen him too many times and make a phone call that really, truly won't make anything better.
Of course, sometimes it's bad enough that pharmacies and drugstores are the only options. There are things grocery stores don't sell.
His head hurts.
Burn cream. Rubbing alcohol. He's found the first and is reaching for the second when a voice to his left says, softly, "What happened to you?"
He hadn't even heard the guy come up. Stupid, Justice, don't space out like that.
He turns around, prepared to give a smartass answer and march off to line up with all of the college students and their cases of beer, and gets such a shock from the face that he backs up straight into the shelf and knocks stuff everywhere.
"No! Sorry!"
The guy in the hoodie really looks horrified at himself, and as Apollo clambers out of the mess and registers, one loud heartbeat at a time, that this is somebody else - younger, browner, stronger chin, no scar - the blond is already on his hands and knees picking up boxes of band-aids.
Apollo joins him, out of embarrassment - he can't let someone else pick up after him just because he spazzed out in public - and grabs a bottle of peroxide that's rolling around on the linoleum to put it back, when the guy says, "Ah, wait -" and reaches for it and drops it into his own ugly grey plastic basket.
Apollo can be a jackass when he's nervous, he knows it, and that's probably part of the problem, but before he can make a crack about that blond hair not being natural he sees that the basket also contains gauze and tape and Neosporin. And for some reason a bag of marshmallows.
The guy follows his gaze and makes a face like he's about to say something all clever and cool, but stops, as though he's seeing the stuff he's buying for the first time, and just lets the unformed words out as a long, shallow sigh instead. And then he looks Apollo right in the eye, calm but at the same time sort of wild-sad, and Apollo can tell that his own face is also broadcasting no, not okay, not actually okay.
"Come with me."
"What?" He says that louder than he means to.
"I mean it. Come with me." And the guy kind of spreads his arms out at a forty-five degree angle, sort of like a statue of a saint, but twitchier. A saint shrugging. "Unless you want to go where you're going?"
Apartment. Home. Subsidized by that smile.
He tries to be sarcastic. "I was looking forward to it."
"I see...and your neck's still bleeding, did you know?"
He hadn't been able to see that in the mirror in the office bathroom.
"...Fuck. No."
"Come with me. I'll clean you up." Hoodie Blond Not Kristoph untangles himself into a standing position and reaches a hand down to Apollo, who takes it. Turns out the other guy's a lot taller, but then, who isn't.
"Actually, here." He takes Apollo's basket and tips it into his own, then hands the full one back, along with a fifty pinched between two of his knuckles.
"What?"
"Use that, buy it all. I'll catch up in a minute."
"I still need a coffee mug."
"No worries. Apparently I need marshmallows. Go get your mug, I'll find you." And off he goes down the aisle under the bright white lights. He's wearing motorcycle boots.
Apollo isn't paid enough to turn down a favor, if that's what this is, and if it isn't, he's sort of too tired to care. He finds a blue-striped mug with a big handle, lines up and pays for everything with the fifty, and ends up standing outside the automatic sliding door on the sidewalk with a double plastic bag in one hand and a wad of change in the other. He doesn't know what kind of fool he feels like.
And then Not Kristoph appears with an ice cream cone in each hand. It's a little cold for ice cream, but all the same Apollo takes one when it's offered in the middle of a surprisingly dextrous you-take-that-I'll-take-this involving giving the change back.
The blond guy makes a wait gesture and pulls out his cell and dials. His voice gets loud when the other person answers, so it must be loud wherever they are. "Daryan...I got spotted." The cocky tone in his voice is an interesting contrast to the faraway worry on his face. "Ja, from USC. Two of them. Which means that there aren't enough to go around, so don't show up." The other voice becomes almost audible, with a low buzz like an engine. "Don't worry, you'll still have all the Bruin girls to choose from." More buzzing. "It happens. I'll see you tomorrow...What are you saying? I never skip. Ja, sweet,sweet dreams."
He's even twitchier when he hangs up , but he's kind of smiling, too.
"A complete fabrication, in case you were curious."
"I can pretend."
Apollo doesn't even know what made him say that, but the blond's eyes do a whole appreciative laugh before his lungs get into it. "No need. Just finish that and we can get into the car." He pauses. "Rocky road."
---
The car is black, somewhere between nice and nondescript, although the stereo is aftermarket and expensive-looking. But the blond guy is driving in silence, and Apollo finds himself staring at the lights on the dash. The red ones - and most of them are red - make him think of magma. The glow. But being driven off to he doesn't know where by he doesn't know who is already making him feel stupid, so he doesn't mention his comparison out loud.
Even if he's not a kid anymore, he knows that just getting into a complete stranger's car isn't the best of ideas. But Kristoph is just about the only familiar face he has left, and he can't help feeling that he's probably better off with a stranger. Recklessness is different when what you know isn't any too safe.
They only drive for ten or fifteen minutes before parking in the side lot of a business hotel that Apollo sort of recognizes. This area is filled with them, and he's been to a few meetings at one that's down the street a block or so, following Kristoph around wordlessly with folders and legal pads and laptop chargers.
When they get out of the car, the air is full of the smell that he associates most with California - car exhaust and jasmine - and he discreetly takes a deep breath, trying to fill his lungs with it. He's developed a melancholy habit of grabbing at the tiniest of fleeting pleasures, and as he catches himself at it again, he just knows what was up with the ice cream and the marshmallows - and as he exhales, he hears his new blond who-knows-what doing the exact same thing.
Their eyes meet over the roof of the car, and he thinks, I get you.
It feels dangerous.
Inside, the decor is all white and brown and minimal. Big sloping vases hold arrangements of flowerless sticks, and the floor is part tile and part fuzzy carpet. As he's glancing around, he feels a pressure on his upper arm. "Wait here."
He almost wants to protest, because if anything Hoodie is the one who's underdressed, but he's already striding over and talking to one of the front desk clerks, a young woman. Apollo can't hear the exchange over the lobby music, but she seems to be all business at first, and objecting to something, until Not Kristoph bends down conspiratorially, leaning on his forearms, and she stops talking and hears him out. A minute and a half later, he's pulling out his wallet and she's typing on her computer and handing him a little keycard envelope.
They meet up in front of the elevators; the guy hands him one of the cards, and they get on the first one that comes. It's mirrored on both sides, so they stand in the middle of a long row of themselves. Whoever, he thinks, they are.
He's still holding the bag of stuff from Rite Aid, the narrow plastic handles stretching against his fingers. He has trouble imagining what might happen once they get to this hotel room.
This could be a rescue, or a respite. Or it could be a terrible mistake. He has to say something, he thinks, so he doesn't look (feel) so vulnerable, and his big mouth reflexes kick in and he looks at the bigger man and what comes out, in a nervous, squeaky way no less, is, "You know. I could be planning to kill you?"
The blond looks shocked and unhappy for only a second, and his expression moves to comprehension and then to incredulous, quiet laughter. As the chuckles dwindle, Not Kristoph slides down the mirrored wall a little and replies, "Oh, please do. Just so he doesn't get to be the one who does."
It's so sad that Apollo kisses him.
It's encouragement. It's a plea. It's pity and understanding and a shield. And he's kissed back, the same way, until the elevator dings and the doors open and they walk into the hall like the strangers they are.