He returned to the gym and punched bags he named Gideon and Oresetes and Korinthia, though he was torn about that one. He filled himself with anger and rolled his eyes at Apolla as she passed, surprised and confused when Esther smiled at him with a small thumbs-up gesture, unsure what it meant. He cooked himself a dozen dinners and didn’t wonder what Adon would think, he bought three different colored wool coats and didn’t think about using the credits on a new one for Adon. He didn’t consider whether the coats would fit Adon when they arrived, and he tried them on and faced himself in the mirror, straight-backed and unflinching. They all suited him but none of them filled the empty space. They all matched the jewel-toned Mids and cut an impressive figure out of his brooding gait, and every single one of them made him look too much like who Gideon had wanted him to be: intimidating, authoritative, interesting. 

Lu torpedoed downwards in a tragic, desperate spiral, spinning himself into knots, then spending days trying to unravel them. Esther said he seemed more confident, Arez said his form had improved, his conditioning impressive, Phaios said he seemed different, and Nika teased that he must be happy about something, but still, Lu was an empty impression left behind. He wore the grey coat only, shoving the amethyst and emerald versions into the back of his closet. He woke up in the middle of the night, haunted by their presence, and logged the two coats in the Thrifted Asylum Database. He had three offers by morning, all of them from below the Mid-Gate. He accepted the lowest bids, snatched the printed tags, then tossed the coats into the nearest thrift bins on his way to the hub. He didn’t look for Adon in the crowd. 

Lu doubled back home to dump a can of food into Adon the Cat’s bowl with an apology, then skipped stopping by the office and headed straight to his scheduled client’s studio. 

☆

Lu trudged up the museum gallery entrance with several boxes and a tool bag and got to work uninstalling AIE’s art exhibit. It had been a success, he’d been praised, people had come in droves, and it had not covered up the Arcade Files scandal, which made him feel better. He was proud of his work for the first time in ages, but still numbly waiting. Still lacking substance.

He held the apple painting carefully, remembering bits of the old Adon, terrified that he was now in love with a ghost. The worry burrowed into him and Lu pulled out his phone, calling Adon for the hundredth time, still no answer. 

Lu was scared. Scared of so many things, the helpless waiting and the endless silence, his identity as an accessory, a coward, and of all the truths he didn’t know and might not want to. He was suspended in the air—he’d jumped but never landed, moving through life unattached. Gravity did not pull at him as he floated further and further away, trapped in a bubble of pending grief. He knew nothing of the Pit fights he couldn’t protect Adon from, of the monsters Adon would continue to face alone, the burden he shouldered, unreachable. Stray dogs were the only people Lu had learned to fight, but even those were Adon’s friends. 

At least Adon the Cat was waiting for Lu at home. 

Impatiently groaning at his aching hamstrings, Lu peered out the bank of windows on the other side of the gallery, past the entrance hall, checking for rain. He wanted to make it home before the rains started, before Adon the Cat was left alone while the pounding washed months of silt and smog and dirt and grime off the outsides of the Mid buildings and he curled in a corner for the night, thinking of drowning Grounders. 

But first, he had to wrap paintings, and fill nail holes, and disconnect light circuits, and repaint walls, and, apparently, entertain Aphy or she was going to pout and click her dumb heels down her stupid hall until he was curled in a corner batting at memories of Heranika telling Gideon he wasn’t strict enough with his eldest son. Lu pushed forward, busying his hands while his thoughts continued to circle the same currents: his till death would be whenever Adon decided to let him go, but Lu was starting to want more, to grip Adon’s hand back, to hold on despite the shame, and no matter how he looked at himself, he was a prisoner, an apple waiting to rot, a lover waiting to cry, an ungrateful survivor who wanted too much. He was trapped inside himself and he so badly wanted Adon’s forgiveness, Adon’s smile, Adon’s happiness, to be the key to all of it, but… he knew better. 

He’d stopped living on his own the day he’d decided to wait, to search, to survive, and he couldn’t remember how to grow or move into a new person. He was Lu-Waiting-For-Adon, because he didn’t know who else to be. There wasn’t anything else he wanted. He’d spent a spiteful decade thinking that was noble, but now he wondered if it wasn’t also cruel. He couldn’t be with Adon and also be waiting for him, besides, that would drive Adon nuts, to be waited for. 

They were both drowning, he chided himself, still hypnotized by the apple painting as he wrapped a third obscuring layer of plastic over it. They were both drowning, and Lu was waiting for Adon to save him, to prove he was alive, to prove he was forgiven, instead of swimming to safety himself. He was passive, because he was scared. He’d only known safety by hiding, and he wondered how long he’d hidden himself, if there had ever been a whole person inside Lu, or just the mimicry of who Gideon wanted, who Benny encouraged, who the Uncles cheered—no, there’d been that secret person, the one Adon had seen when they were barely adults. The one he’d tried to burn out of himself….

Aphy snatched the painting with a sigh, tucking the wrap with another sigh. 

Lu blinked at his empty hands, dropping his arms miserably and ignoring her impatience with a desperate croak, “what happened to him?” Aphy wouldn’t know. Aphy couldn’t know what Lu didn’t know. Even if Mess knew… Adon wouldn’t have told Aphrodite and not Lu first…. 

Aphy shrugged, “he disappeared, then came back broken.” She gestured to Lu to hold the tape, “when he killed—when someone died because of him, he didn’t even care. I didn’t have anything to threaten him with, but I wanted him to stay away. I told him he could only hurt us and I haven’t seen him since.” Her voice was stony, her regret hiding in stubbornness, convincing herself again that she was right. 

Lu chuckled, tearing the tape, “he saw your tour. Twice. He even knew the piece you did your thesis on.” He smiled kindly, thinking of Adon running away from guns but still making sure to comfort his brother, “he takes really good care of Mess too.”

“Mess? My Mess? Messenger? My brother?”

“Adon’s brother too,” Lu scowled, removing the wall hanger brackets and tossing them down to her because she wasn’t holding the ladder anyway.

“What do you mean?” Aphy glared up at him. 

Lu realized belatedly that he’d stepped into some family shit-puddle and tried to shake out of it with a vague shrug, “just… like, he got him a good job at a fancy restaurant.” Nyx’s was no restaurant, but Aphy wouldn’t know the difference, “and he—”

“Mess knows Adonis?”

Lu nodded slowly. He hadn’t heard Adon referred to as his full name in ages. He watched Aphy’s purple curls shiver in rage as the rest of her stilled with a long exhale. 

“He didn’t abandon you,” Lu admitted, chewing his lip, “I… I abandoned him first. It was because of me.” He glared down at her, all his softness hardening with the memory of Adon sobbing in his arms on their cracked floor after Aphy had ambushed him with their mother’s debt. He wanted to defend Adon, to make her understand how wrong she had always been, then and now. He hated the way her lip curled at the barest thought of him, while Adon had flopped on a hotel bed and listed a dozen facts about her education he’d paid for with fingers and ears. 

“And the person he killed?” Lu ventured carefully, trying to stop his voice from echoing too loud in the emptying hall, “Sias? He’s killed hundreds, he was beating his own brother to death—” in the middle of his explanation, Lu realized why Euri’s voice had sounded familiar. The video. Mess had said he was Sias’ brother, but Lu had still been reeling from the epiphany that it was Adon’s voice telling Sias to fuck off back to Gideon. He huffed at Aphy’s dramatic Midder fear, tossing the light cords down after he’d pulled them from the wall and started on the last painting he could reach without moving the ladder, “if the victim’s own brother can forgive—no, thank Adon, and be his friend, and follow him around like a puppy, who are you to judge?” He felt his chest tighten in annoyance and guilt.

Aphy huffed back at him, “the victim’s brother is probably stupid. I don’t want him near mine.”

Lu didn’t know if she knew Euri, but so far he hadn’t seen Mess without him. He didn’t want to cause them more problems when he didn’t know what games they were playing, so he simply snorted with an agreeing pout that yes, the victim’s brother was stupid, but it was out of jealousy that he had a chain matching Adon’s, “probably. But why does that mean Adon can’t come home? Why would he hurt you? He did everything for you. Both of you.”

“He’s unhinged, Lu,” she snapped, tossing the secured canvas to the growing pile. “Have you even seen him?” She gestured around her neck and face, where the scars weren’t hidden by his coat, “he’s a mess, and he’s dangerous.” She glanced at his sad eyes and rolled hers, hand on hip as she tossed the wrapped painting a little too carelessly, “it wasn’t just you. His anger was always simmering just below the surface, waiting for a reason. He was always cold and hungry, he just used to be pretty enough to hide it.” She gathered the pile, struggling against the awkward sizes, unable to stomp from the room as she so clearly wanted.

Lu gawked, inhaling a dozen retorts because Aphy had cost Adon his future first, he’d been hungry because he gave her his food, he’d been angry because she spent their credits without thinking and demanded materials they couldn’t afford, and he was only three years older than her, playing mom, dad, brother, and guardian. Instead of arguing, Lu called down the hall, “you know that’s not true.” He dared her to tell more willful lies, to continue to ignore all Adon had done so he could remind them both that Adon had been warm in quieter ways, but she must have heard the eagerness in his voice, because she simply shrugged at the door and continued to click down the marble hall toward the AIE vault. 

Lu sighed, ironically grateful because she’d at least roused his spite and frustration and reminded him that while Adon the Finder might not be a removable mask, but neither was it an incurable infection. Adonis Caldera had always been vicious, spiteful, prideful, and a little arrogant—how else would he have even imagined a future above the Wells? How else would a young Lu have looked at Adon and seen freedom? Remembering the sharp edges of even the younger Adon’s smile gave Lu the courage he needed to wait.

He finished pulling art and lights off walls and Aphy did not return to help. He left the inventory stacked in neat piles, wrapped and secured in their proper crates for the museum staff to take care of. And because he’d worked for Apolla long enough to raise his suspicions of everyone above the Mids, he made sure to take photo and video evidence of his job completed, time-stamped and attached to a friendly message to the museum director, confirming that they had finished up on their end and highlighting how absolutely wonderful their staff had been to work with. He read it through five times before he hit send to make sure he’d removed as much of the sarcasm as possible.

Lu returned home to Adon the Cat, ruminating over all the warnings the people around Adon had lobbed at him, matching them to their fears. To Aphy, Adon was unhinged, but she was scared of her own guilt, of all she owed him, she needed him to be dismissable. To Mess, he was powerfully cold, but he was ashamed of his own fear, he needed to believe Adon could protect him from every Grounder, and ashamed of his comforts Adon had provided at the same time. At least Messenger understood Adon hadn’t left them, at least Mess tried to understand Adon as he was. Lu sighed and ticked off the other people they both knew: to Phaios, Adon was… Lu couldn’t remember what Phaios had said, Adon reminded him of himself? Of what he might have become? That his raw brutality intimidated him? But Phaios was another person who had reasons to feel guilty. 

Everyone around Adon had wronged him, and Lu felt a feral, biting hatred for all their fears of their own failures disguised as fear of Adon instead. They were scared Adon wouldn’t forgive them if they stopped him. They were afraid of the mirror Adon could turn on them, of the reflection they would see if he ever thawed enough to smile back, the mourning they would have to face if he ever pulled up his sleeves and bore his scars and flexed all those tallies and demanded answers to what-ifs they didn’t have. And who more than Lu?

He didn’t want to be a coward. He wouldn’t make Adon swim to him alone, he wouldn’t get caught drowning in cold water and demand to be saved, or praise Adon only when he came to the rescue. He would meet him in a middle, a place between them. A place where Adon was safe and warm on the shore, urging Lu forward, stroke by stroke, through the waves that overshadowed him. He would be Lu-Moving-Toward-Adon.

Adon had left him with a kiss and a promise to keep returning until he couldn’t, and that was enough. For now, it was enough. Lu thought about Adon’s recent kisses, how they’d felt more like a taunting game or a challenge to himself, until Adon had apparently faced whatever he’d been fighting, because it was different that last time. Lu picked at his lip, remembering the warm rock by the river, Adon’s cool fingers softly following the lines of his hideous tattoo and kissing him anyway, not that dramatic collision of magnets drawn together and ripped apart, but the relaxing, stretching, confident expansion of flopping into his couch after a long day, of the oscillating fan in Arez’ sauna of a gym finally blowing over him after a set. It had been a slow relief, a victorious moment of finding, of seeing and being seen, despite every embarrassed and vulnerable shadow shifting uncomfortably in his mind, before him there had only been Adon, real, and fragile, and warm.

That was it. They treated Adon like he was unbreakable. Like they couldn’t see the cracks.

He held his cold hands to his burning cheeks, swatting away the memory and snatching up his phone to find no new messages. “Come home!” He yelled at it, like Adon might hear, “dinner’s ready!”