#apollo lunanoff

[kettlequills]

Tough It Out - Rise of the Guardians/Guardians of Childhood - Apollo and Koz (or Pitch)

sorry for the wait, this was oddly personal to write? ah, apollo my love. all the money in the world couldnt help you. tw: suicidal ideation, references to past child abuse, homophobia, and substance abuse. this is part one!

The skyscraper that housed Lunar Industries had a hundred and eight floors. Apollo stood on the hundredth-and-ninth – that being the roof, har-har, look how clever he was – looked down at the lights of the city blazing far below his boots, and contemplated taking the quick way down to the ground.

His phone jangled in his pocket. He flicked it open without looking at the caller ID and was still unsurprised to hear Selena on the other end. Who else would be calling Apollo, except his ex-wife? He didn’t have friends. He had even fewer no-friends after this morning. Redundant.

Fired from his own company. Suspected tax fraud. Excuses, really, to cover their asses. The words floated around him like clouds.

Like the actual clouds. Red tinted smog, nice and foul on the lungs, blazed through with gassy city lights blaring on down there in the dusk. Even the cars that chugged and coughed along between the flaring traffic lights, the gum-spitting and leather-pursed pedestrians that wove their way round them to be swallowed into huffing buses and sleek trains. Apollo's people, one and stinky pollutants all. He could make a nice big mess of himself down there among them, wet splat on the ashy pavement, just more trash to sucker up the clogged drains and heaving sewers. It'd be like coming home, maybe.

“Apollo,” said Selena, like exchanging words with him was like swallowing a pill and she had to spit through each one as quickly as possible to avoid the taste lingering on her tongue, “Are you busy?”

“Not really,” said Apollo, wondering how long, mathematically speaking, it would take to walk off the edge of the building he didn’t own any more instead of taking the elevator.

He'd never really paid attention in class. There was Koz, golden and glorious, to stare at back then. The way his dark hair curled at the nape of his neck was infinitely more transfixing than applied mathematics. Before today, Apollo could always pay someone for that.

“Can you take Mim this weekend, then?” she asked. “I’ve got this – thing on Saturday-“

“Can’t he stay at home on his own?” said Apollo. “He’s old enough now.”

“He’s a baby, Apollo,” Selena snapped. Ah, two weeks divorced and he could still make her sound as pissed off as if they’d said their marriage vows yesterday. There had to be some Hallmark card for that. “Deal with your son.”

“Fine,” said Apollo, since he really didn’t have anything to do that weekend other than, possibly, googling how much drugs he could take before he obliterated his brain and whether watching one’s father do that as a baby was the sort of foundational experience that required very costly therapy later in life. “How are you, anyway?”

Selena hung up on him.

Apollo sighed and walked away from the roof’s edge. God knew Selena was a nightmare if he was ever late to pickup.

Elevator it was.

---

“… my wife’s leaving me, I’ve lost my company, and I’m pretty sure my baby hates me,” Apollo told his therapist a day later, idly spinning the cord of the telephone around his finger.

He liked the creaking of its coil, and when he’d outfitted this office in his sleek downtown flat he’d had all the money to afford to go retro. This, like everything else, needed to go soon or else Apollo would run out of money to be able to convincingly fake that his life wasn’t completely shredded to shit to his ex-wife. Buyer lined up already.

Devil worked fast but Apollo worked faster.

“That sounds difficult,” the therapist said, because he was paid to sympathise with Apollo.

“Not really,” said Apollo, because he wasn’t.

“Have you been reaching out to your extended support networks?” said the therapist, who cost more than he was possibly worth.

Apollo wanted to laugh. “Sure,” he said.

“Mr Lunanoff,” the therapist began, but Apollo had already tuned him out. Extended support network. What a joke.

There’d only be one man who could ever qualify for that role, and they’d not spoken in years. Apollo was decently certain that Koz didn’t even remember they were friends on Facebook – probably had him muted – because every so often Koz’d post shitty memes about eating the rich that Apollo would reply to with winks and flirts that he never reacted to back. He hadn’t pushed it too much, though. Koz’s posts were the best parts of his week.

Get up, annoy his wife, stare puzzlingly at his gurgling son, read the newspaper, check the feed of his best friend that liked to pretend he didn’t exist. Perfect morning routine that’d spawned a multi-million dollar company and a therapy bill to match.

Still, his life was going to shit. Why not add this to the pile? Koz’s voicemail was vaguely hot, anyway. He always sounded kind of mad that someone would dare to ring him. It was familiar. People'd been sounding disappointed that Apollo remembered their numbers since he'd got his first phone at five. Soothing, in that way.

Unceremoniously, Apollo hung up on the therapist and typed a name into his phone that sprung to the top of his paltry contacts list, starred and favourited. He swiped. The dial tone made him more nervous than last week’s fistful of stimulants. It jangled into his ears, made him doubt himself. This was a stupid idea. He was going to push Koz away – further away, how much fucking further can he get?

Well, Apollo could get blocked. Still, there was always the hundred and ninth floor and the short way down.

“Pitch speaking,” the man’s voice was gruff and deep on the other end, sent shivers down Apollo’s spine. God. He was so hot. “Who’s this?”

“Kozmotis darling,” said Apollo, trying for upbeat and ending up gaudy and gay, “It’s me.”

“Who?”

“Apollo Lunanoff of course! Don’t tell me you didn’t save my number again.”

There was a beat of silence, then Koz cleared his throat and said, “Ah, new phone. Must have forgot.”

Bless his heart for lying. Koz's lies were thorny things, but they, blind belief and wilful misuse of drugs, were the way they'd stayed friends for so long after all, years after they'd left Apollo's father's estate and Koz's family's little house on the grounds far, far behind. Koz had, anyway. Some part of Apollo was still back there, according to his therapist. Apparently, violent repression was considered not therapeutic gold standard. Apollo reckoned it was fine. It was drugs, wasn't it, not men. That was what his father and he had agreed.

“Don’t worry,” said Apollo, “You can make it up to me. Do you know anything about taking care of babies?”

[eviesketchy]

“I wish you didn’t have to go away again!” he bursts out, all in a rush, and Nightlight swears he can feel his heart break in his chest.

He kneels down on the floor and opens his arms. Apollo hesitates, as if he has never been hugged before, then runs forward and throws his tiny arms around Nightlight’s armoured body, not quite big enough to reach all the way around. Apollo sobs into his shoulder when Nightlight rubs his back, and Nightlight begins to sing, softly, doing his best to ease Apollo’s pain.

“Nightlight, bright light, sweet dreams I bestow…” --Part Two: The Making of a Tsar @the-ink-addiction ((again I don’t know if this is how they should look but your Apollo and Nightlight are too precious.))

[kettlequills]

wip wednesday

“… my wife’s leaving me, I’ve lost my company, and I’m pretty sure my baby hates me,” Apollo told his therapist a day later, idly spinning the cord of the telephone around his finger. He liked the creaking of its coil, and when he’d outfitted this office in his sleek downtown flat he’d had all the money to afford to go retro.

This, like everything else, needed to go soon or else Apollo would run out of money to be able to convincingly fake that his life wasn’t completely shredded to shit to his ex-wife. Buyer lined up already.

Devil worked fast but Apollo worked faster.

“That sounds difficult, Mr Lunanoff,” the therapist said, because he was paid to sympathise with Apollo.

"Not really," said Apollo, because he wasn't.

-excerpt for a request fill for ksclaw!

[eviesketchy]

The boy’s face falls further with every line he reads, until he sits heavily on the floor. “So, father says I should stay here and mother’s too busy to see me-!” he declares, in a faltering voice that valiantly tries to cover the heartbreak in his eyes. “I’m sure – one day, he’s going to want me back. Isn’t he? Nightlight? He’s going to want me one day, won’t he?” Alysea crouches beside the bars in front of Apollo. She stretches her hand through, and after a moment, Apollo takes it. The children clutch onto each other, hard, and though Alysea does not say a word, Apollo seems to understand, though his small face is scrunched up and red from the effort of holding back tears, the strain of trying to keep a smile to mask it all. -- Part Two The Making of a Tsar @the-ink-addiction ((I don’t even know if this is how they are supposed to look but I tried!?  They are the most wonderful children and my heart can’t handle it.))