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“You really are an idiot.”
“Yeah… the universe’s number one firefighting idiot!”
The world very nearly spins apart, and then it doesn’t.
Galo’s processing this... pretty damn well actually, considering. He’s always thought of himself as a hands-on learner, the kind that starts with history class and ends with hurtling out the top of a fire truck at an incredibly high speed with nothing but his wits and 1:1 replica matoi about him. When you’re the one piloting a mecha the size of the Earth that runs on the power of interdimensional aliens and the bonds of friendship, and punching the ground so hard the entire solar system lights on fire, it kind of does add up in a way that it probably never will for most other people.
Lio’s hand is warm and strong against his, as the two of them share a private grin. The sun rises over the city they’re going to rebuild together. The music swells –
And Lio sort of keels over, falling toward the ground for one interminable second before Galo jumps forward and catches him clumsily by the armpits like he’s a cat.
“Lio? Lio!” Galo shouts, shaking him slightly. He shifts Lio’s slack body to one arm so he can use his free hand to tilt up his face. His eyes are shut, the slight, perpetual crease of focus and rage between his eyebrows smoothed out. And he’s breathing, faint but sure. Galo sags in relief, but only just. He turns to find the rest of Burning Rescue clustered together several meters away, down the wreckage. “Guys, what’s wrong with him?”
“He has to be exhausted,” Ignis calls back. “How you’re not in the same state, I will literally never know.”
“What’d ya mean? I feel great!” Galo says, and slings Lio over his shoulders on his way down to prove it.
Ignis just shakes his head once and smiles with the corners of his eyes. He thumps Galo’s arm with one firm palm. “Get him to a medic and come find us after. We’ve got a lot of work to do.”
They stay busy into the night, lifting collapsed buildings, clearing rubble, and, strangest of all, fighting fires: regular fires, fires that spew dark, acrid clouds of smoke and stay out and aren’t the colors of neon and static. Galo gets steered well away from the engine of the Parnassus, where other rescue teams have begun prying open the cells, but between tasks he manages to get close enough to see freed Burnish stumbling away from the debris, supported by workers or lying on stretchers but alive and whole.
A hand settles on his shoulder. Galo turns and tries to school his expression into neutrality, but he must fail miserably because Ignis says, “Go home and rest, son. Don’t let me see you until Monday.”
“What? I already told you, I’m fine!” Galo says. “I’m just getting started!”
“I know you are, Galo,” Ignis says, “and that’s why I can’t have you burning out without knowing it. The city’s out of immediate danger, but there’s still a long way to go.”
“But –” Galo drags his hands through his hair, pulling at the ends until he feels the fight go out of him. “Can’t it be just one day, at least? What about everyone else?”
“You think we can’t manage for one weekend?” Ignis says. “I’m ordering you to take four days. Pretty sure I’ve asked a whole lot more of you before.”
“Fine,” Galo grouses. “But I’ll be right here Monday, first thing!”
“I don’t doubt it,” Ignis says. “Lucia’s got your bike in the truck. Go and get some sleep.”
Galo’s halfway to Burning Rescue HQ before he realizes that spending the night in an armchair or the locker room, like he usually does, is probably off the table on this particular occasion. Contrary to what everyone else seems to believe, he does have an apartment that – fine, is more like a place he’d dumped all his stuff in after moving out of his college dorm. In his defense, it’s almost on the edge of town where rent is cheapest, too out of the way to be anything practical.
It turns out, though, that being on the edge of town means the rickety brick building has made it through the past few days largely intact, and he clatters his way up several flights of unlit stairs and slams open his apartment door to something not all that different from his usual mess. In the three steps it takes to reach the light switch, Galo stumbles over two upturned cardboard boxes, and he blinks downward in the dim yellow lamplight at a scattering of papers and clothes and trinkets. The rest of the room isn’t in much better condition, and he carves a gradual path to the kitchen, righting boxes and putting things back to their proper places as he goes (who needs shelves?). With some effort, he pries open a window to let in the humid summer air.
The fridge is empty, save for about a third of a garlic head, several packets of takeout sauce, and an empty egg carton. Maybe the old man from the ground floor convenience store will open shop if he asks nicely.
One weekend? Just you watch him.
Galo dreams in bursts of fitful greens and pinks and wakes in his clothes, but also in his bed, so he counts it as a win. He needs to see Lio, has to, a compulsion so strong it’s like there’s a thread strung through his ribs, pulling him in.
The table’s still set with his unfinished late dinner – he’d accidentally rehydrated the entire bag of wakame, and then made enough soup to compensate – so he eats it cold in place of his usual coffee and rides back to the central relief site.
He makes a beeline for the med tent where he’d left Lio and almost makes it without a hitch, right up until he gets caught by the back of his collar, spun around, and deposited in front of an aggravated-looking Aina.
“Look, Galo,” she says, and takes a deep breath, “I know you’re itching to get going again. But what part of ‘come back Monday’ didn’t make sense to you?”
“I’m not trying to sneak in, I swear!” Galo says, palms out. Aina raises her eyebrows. “Really. I just wanted to check up on Lio.”
“Oh! Why didn’t you just say so?” Aina says.
“If I’d gotten the chance,” Galo starts, and then he’s being dragged forward by his collar again. “Aina, what gives!”
“C’mon, I’ll walk you over,” Aina says. “We can’t have anyone else stopping you.”
“Right,” Galo says, distant. “Thanks.”
The med tent is hectic, to say the least, the air a strange mix of sterility and concrete dust. Aina strides among the camp beds and personnel with a purpose, but Galo feels too big for the space, constantly in the way, stepping nervously around the chaos until he bumps into her where she’s stopped.
Lio lies prone in a low cot, washed out in a shapeless hospital gown. Galo plops down on his knees next to him, resting his elbows on the side of the bed, watches the way his pale eyelashes fan shadows over his cheekbones without moving.
“Has he… did he wake up at all?” he asks.
“Not since he arrived,” a harried-looking nurse sighs, stopping next to them. “But there weren’t any signs of injury or sickness. It must be fatigue, but I haven’t seen anything quite like it.”
Once, early enough in Galo’s time at Burning Rescue that staying the night at HQ was less of a habit and more illicit and new, Galo had asked Lucia how long a person could stay asleep. Why don’t we find out, she’d said, and Galo had curled up in a corner of the lab right then and lasted just barely under 20 hours, which he’s still pretty peeved about. For Lio to have him beat, he must be more tired than Galo thought.
“If you’re saying he’s okay,” Galo says, faster than he’s forming the idea, “would it be better if he stays somewhere else until he wakes up? Since you’re short on space and all?”
“Are you suggesting you’ll take him in?” the nurse asks. “I’m not sure if that’s –”
“Galo’s been EMT certified for years,” Aina says. “If anyone can do it, he can.”
“In that case,” the nurse says, considering. “That would be for the best. I'll see if I can get you signed off, but we could really use the help.”
Aina’s ship is always a tight fit, but she and Galo have had tons of practice making it work, and Lio really doesn’t take up that much extra space besides. It’s a comfortingly familiar situation, with everything that’s happened, and Galo tips his head back to feel the soft rumble of the glass as they lift off.
“Y’know, back there, I really thought you were gonna agree with her,” Galo says. “About this being a bad idea.”
“What makes you say that all of a sudden?” Aina frowns. “When have I not had your back?”
“Well, when you were gonna kick me off the site this morning, for starters,” Galo begins, and Aina reaches back and smacks him without looking. “Hey!”
“Seriously, though,” Aina says. “Something on your mind?”
“I guess I thought you’d question it more,” Galo says after a moment. “Usually you push back on things. Always make me go with plan B.”
“Huh,” Aina says. “I don’t really know. You seemed different, back there. Seem different, in a good way.”
“Aina?”
“Yeah?”
“You feeling alright? You got a fever or something?”
“Hey! I’m not gonna say it again!”
Even though they’d bundled Lio up in both their Burning Rescue jackets for the flight to Galo’s, he’s shivering by the time they get him through the door.
“I’ve got ‘im from here,” Galo says, taking a well-worn route through the box maze in his living room to set Lio up in his bed.
“So this is what you’ve… I’d say I don’t want to ask,” Aina says, hovering by the front door, “but I think I already know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Galo whines. He’s wrangling Lio into a second sweater and the shortest pair of sweatpants he can find, but he still needs to double knot the tie at the front. “Wait, how much time has it been?”
“How much time since what?” Aina asks innocently.
“Since – shit! Did you tell them where you went? I kept you out too long!” Galo says, running back to see her out.
“It’s fine, Galo, I’ll tell them I took my lunch break,” Aina says, and presses a quick kiss to his cheek. “See you Monday! Don’t show up again!”
It’s a bit too quiet in the apartment, after the hum of her ship fades downtown. He can see Lio through the open bedroom door, the way his face is a little scrunched from the cold. He has to have something else – he goes through all his boxes and comes up with two more blankets, one frayed yellow and orange, the other impossibly linty but hopefully warmer, both smelling kind of weird.
The laundromat across the street is completely empty, but the machines are lit up and work just fine when he feeds them his coins. He scuffs the toe of his boot on the blue tiling, and slumps onto a washing machine hard enough to send the polyester fern beside it wobbling in its saucer.
Just fine? Lio should have more than just fine.
As soon as the dryer stops he’s running back down the street and up the stairs with his arms full of warm blankets. He tucks them carefully around Lio’s shoulders and down to his feet, watching until he finally stops shivering, and pulls up the window blinds only to release a massive cloud of dust. Frowning, Galo runs a finger over the baseboard for it to come away gray, too, leaving behind a significantly darker trail on the wood.
From there it’s dusting the bed and wiping the floor and tucking in the sheet corners, then lifting Lio up and remaking the bed altogether. By the time Lio’s resettled on clean sheets and fluffed-up pillows, in a surprisingly light and airy room, it’s definitely better, but his name wouldn’t be Galo Thymos if he could call his work here finished.
The next order of business – once Galo can work out this crick in his neck, from spending the night on the floor – is breakfast, of course. By his count, Lio’s been out of commission for almost 48 hours, and there’s no way he won’t be starving when he wakes up.
(And another part of him, the part that hums as he sets a pan on the stove, taps a rhythm on the countertop with one hand while he flips the eggs with the other – that part just knows there’s really nothing else he wants to do more for Lio, at least for the moment.)
There are things that Galo was just about born to be good at, and a whole lot more that he works hard for, but cooking isn’t really either of those. He thinks it might be something in the cutting and mixing and making things change that never fails to make his head settle down, drawing out something he doesn’t really have to follow to the end.
He thinks about Lio, and about particulars, and then the table – the one piece of furniture he’d gotten other than the bed, when he’d first moved in – is creaking under the weight of dishes and dishes of toast and eggs, hotcakes and melon and thick, smoking slices of ham and bacon.
The bedroom is dark when he nudges the door open.
“Lio,” Galo whispers. He draws up the blinds and moves in close to gently shake Lio by the shoulder. “Lio, it’s time to wake up. I didn’t know what you’d want to eat so I made – everything?”
Lio doesn’t turn over, doesn’t squint his face or yawn, doesn’t shy away from the sun on his closed eyes. His breaths stay even and long.
Galo shakes him some more, and pats his cheek for good measure. Lio would be awake now if he could, he’s sure, but neither of them can help it if he isn’t. Maybe Ignis had a point – after everything they’ve already done, the world won’t fall apart if they stay away for a few days. Lio can take his time, and Galo will just need to wait for him.
That doesn’t exactly do anything about the breakfast spread, though. Galo’s no quitter, clearly, but he resigns himself to saving the rest when he gets around to his fifth serving, which is when he begins to think that he won’t get much done for the day if he keeps going. That, and he’s out of breakfast ingredients.
In fits and starts, but surely, everyday life returns to Promepolis. It begins with the first-floor convenience store, which is properly open when Galo walks his bike past it today, after barging in two nights ago. Then there are the civilian cars on the road alongside emergency vehicles, and as many people going about their lives in the midday sun as there are repairing storefronts and sidewalks: business men in their business suits and kids out of uniform alike.
No one’s parked out front at Burning Rescue HQ, to which Galo breathes a sigh of relief. The automatic lights blink on one after another as he walks down the echoing hallway – he’s no stranger to being here after hours, but it’s never been this empty in the day. He creaks open the lab door into a familiar, cavernous metal and plasterboard room, illuminated in greens and blues.
“Lucia? Did you need something?” Galo calls, waving his phone around like she can see it, wherever she is, which she probably does.
“Sure did,” Lucia says from behind a pile of scrap and tubes, and there’s a drawn-out clattering sound like she’s clearing a space to sit. “Come hang out. Boss can’t say you’re clocked in if you’re here with me!”
Now this is more like it. Grinning widely, Galo fords his way through until he can see Lucia, hunched between five monitors with her leg up on a second rolling chair. Vinny’s stuck partway out of her coat pocket, curled and asleep.
“Unstable beams on 5th Street and Main, Remi,” Lucia says, and pushes away the mic so she can turn and smile at Galo. “You got here fast.”
“You kidding? If you hadn’t messaged me I would’ve walked a hole into the floor or something.”
“Now you’re gettin’ it,” Lucia says, then pulls down a monitor in one quick motion as she begins to type furiously.
Lucia can be direct, even abrasive at times, but she’s never wrapped up in double meanings or saying things she doesn’t truly believe. That’s part of why Galo absolutely loves spending time with her – she can speak with anything, even if that anything is more often machine than human, and she also takes the time to understand anything. She’ll work out what Galo’s thinking two steps before he does, but doesn’t ever discourage it.
“Heard you got a Mad Burnish at your place,” Lucia says. She takes one hand off the keyboard to stick a lollipop in her mouth, and seamlessly transitions back to typing with both.
“He still hasn’t woken up,” Galo says. “Everyone keeps saying that’s normal, but it has to stop being normal at some point, right?”
“Well,” Lucia says, “he did do something no human has ever done before, so it’s probably normal for him. Dr. Prometh and I are keeping track.”
“Dr. Prometh?” Galo starts. “I thought he died! Or turned off, or something?”
“Aina took me and Dr. Ardebit to his lab yesterday,” Lucia says. “He won’t let me mess with his artificial consciousness yet so I can’t tell you how, exactly, but he’s definitely still there.” One of the screens flashes meaningfully. “Oh, and here, too.”
“Here?! He was here the whole time and –”
“So Lio,” Lucia interrupts cheerfully, and turns the Deus Prometh screen so it faces the wall like that takes care of things, “he won’t respond to any form of stimuli? How’s his condition?”
“I mean,” Galo says, “I’m not gonna pour water on him or anything, but I don’t think he’s reacting to things? He was shivering pretty bad when we first got him back, though.”
“That’s consistent with what I’ve been hearing about the ex-Burnish,” Lucia says. “As warm as he is now, keep him warmer. And change his position now and then to relieve the pressure on his back.”
“Sounds good,” Galo says. “How’d you know all that?”
“It’s my job,” Lucia says, waving expansively at her setup.
“Isn’t there something more I can do for him, though?” Galo asks. “I know we’re just waiting, but it doesn’t feel like enough.”
“Well, I’ve got a pretty easy fix for some of that,” Lucia says. Galo leans in with excitement. “Aina was telling me about your apartment –”
“She didn’t.”
“Get some actual furniture and unpack your boxes,” Lucia finishes triumphantly. “He could use a comfortable living environment, somewhere stable to wake up in. And you could use a place someone will believe you’ve been living at for years.”
That gives Galo some pause. As far as he’s been concerned, his own living space has never been anything he’d felt the need to worry or even think particularly hard about. He can’t remember a time he wasn’t hitting the ground running, but being in the present, no matter when or where, had been enough until now.
“You might have a point,” Galo says. “My boxes are perfectly functional though! Practical and inexpensive! Don’t knock them till you’ve tried them!”
Lucia just sticks her tongue out at him. They settle into their equivalent of a comfortable silence, Galo trying not to eavesdrop on what his team’s getting up to in the field. He leans back in the chair, stretching expansively, and a muffled chime sounds from somewhere in the vicinity of his head.
“Lucia, ‘s that your phone?” Galo says, squinting at an illuminated patch of paper in the shelf above him. “How’d it get up there?”
“Wait, don’t get it,” Lucia says, a note of panic in her voice, but it’s too late – Galo fishes it out and catches a glimpse of a sweet candid photo of Heris Ardebit.
“Lucia, why didn’t you tell me?” Galo says, a beam spreading across his face. “This is awesome!”
“Because you didn’t ask!” Lucia says, and snatches the phone from Galo’s hand. Her face is two shades of red away from steaming.
“Oh my god, does Aina know? Did you tell Aina before telling me?”
“She extra didn’t ask, now get out of my house!” Lucia shouts and pushes Galo on his rolling chair bodily out the door, though her face isn’t tipped away enough to hide her bright, wobbly smile.
bro
✓ 10:56 AM
IMG_0523
IMG_0524
✓ 10:56 AM
blue couch or stripes?
✓ 10:57 AM
dude where u at? it’s my day off ill be there in 15
10:57 AM
NO TAKE YOUR DAY OFF
✓ 10:58 AM
VARYS
10:59 AM
VARYS!!!
11:04 AM
Galo and Varys are competent adults, heroes of their brigade, world-savers who meet eyes across a dusty little consignment shop and go absolutely wild with the admittedly bizarre selection of home decor products. An hour of mutual enabling, four trips up Galo’s apartment stairs, a fresh coat of wall paint, and a veritable tower of pizza boxes later, Varys heads out with a promise to actually spend the rest of the day off, and Galo’s prepared to melt into the (striped) couch and never again resurface.
It turns out that never again, according to the chipped glow-in-the-dark clock newly hanging on the kitchen wall, takes approximately eighteen minutes, which is when what sounds like two heavyweight boxers giving their all to the front door shakes Galo off the lumpy cushions and onto the ground.
“Galo Thymos!” an oddly familiar voice booms. “We know you’re in there! If you don’t open up in the next five seconds we’re breaking in!”
“Yeah, don’t think we won’t!” a second person adds. The door looks just about ready to rattle out of its frame.
“Okay, okay,” Galo says, stumbling to his feet. “Just hold on –”
He fumbles with the lock for a second and wrenches the door open to Lio’s Mad Burnish seconds, decked out in garishly purple blood drive t-shirts but somehow no less larger than life than when they were in full armor, fighting Galo atop a skyscraper. They just stare at Galo for a long moment, breathing hard, like they didn’t expect things to be so easy.
“They told us the boss was here,” Meis says.
Galo points them wordlessly to the bedroom. They brush past him and run right in, wearing twin expressions of stricken wildness, and while Galo can’t pretend to know exactly what it is they’re feeling, he thinks he kind of gets the idea.
There isn’t much left to do, then, but wait. He can’t go back to loafing on the couch, but he steers his hovering clear of the bedroom door to give them as much privacy as he can.
By his third time rearranging his dishware, he can’t take it anymore. He knocks twice and peeks inside to find Gueira and Meis sitting together with their backs against the closet door. The edges of the blankets covering Lio are slightly rumpled, but he’s motionless as ever. Galo tries to clear his throat and coughs a little on the exhale.
“You guys hungry?” he manages.
Gueira blinks up at him for a second, reorienting himself, and breaks out into a grin.
“Thymos, you are the best,” he says, standing up and pulling Meis with him.
Despite the surrealness, Galo shows them to the table and starts the process of pulling Lio’s wrapped-up breakfast out of the fridge.
“If I’m being completely honest here,” Galo says, “I thought you’d be more mad at me.”
“Mad about what?” Gueira asks. Galo sets the first batch of toast in front of him and Meis, and his wry smile smooths out into something a bit more unguarded.
“Y’know,” Galo says, “the whole… kicking your ass thing?”
That finally gets a reaction from Meis, who slaps the table with a loud laugh. “The nerve of this kid! Insulting us while being humble.” Galo’s foot-in-mouth feeling’s probably projecting crystal clear on his face, because Meis adds, “Nah, you’re a good guy. You’ve got guts. Plus the boss likes you, and if I can’t trust that, I can’t trust anything.”
“And Lio, he just drives up outta nowhere!” Gueira says, knocking over the empty fruit bowl with a broad sweep of his arm. “Tells us that we’re better than this, that we don’t need their world because we can make our own. Easy as that!”
“Hold on, hold on,” Galo says. His breakfast meat has long since gone cold. “You didn’t know him before that?”
“Nope!” Gueira says cheerfully. “We were angry and hurt and wanted to get back at them all. He was – funny enough – like a blast of cold air, but the minute he spoke we were ready to follow him to the ends of the earth.”
Galo nods along, enthralled.
“So Lio? He’s used to a life on the run,” Meis says, smiling conspiratorially. He dangles one of the embroidered table mats between two fingers. “I dunno if he’s gonna like all this kitschy stuff.”
“What?” Galo says.
“No, yeah, but I’m pretty sure he secretly will,” Gueira says. “He just needs a bit of a push to indulge in them.”
“But he’ll want things to be secure, too,” Meis says. “Everything he absolutely needs has to be an arm’s reach away.”
Galo briefly wonders if he should be taking notes, or something. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“Consider it a Mad Burnish’s intuition,” Meis says, unmoved by Galo’s confused frown.
Gueira and Meis take off as chaotically as they arrived, something about being late for an interview with Ignis of all people, and with a promise to come back to check on Lio. They never do explain what their loaded criticism of Galo’s taste in interior design was about, or what they’d wanted to do for Lio – if anyone should have any say about what’s best for him, it’s probably them. And for the time being, for better or for worse, they’ve entrusted him to Galo.
It might be unfair of Galo to say, but he’s glad they did. Doing what’s good and right has gotten him where he is in the first place, is what drives him to keep going: being the first one in and last one out of a burning building, chasing the searing tears of a dragon. Life is uncomplicated like that. Most days, his head is clear and easy.
But this isn’t so straightforward, now, this quiet. Maybe every effort he’s made for himself in the past days, at the behest of everyone he loves, has been him trying to fill in that silence, though he doesn’t even know what the sum of it all means.
It’s funny – there’s so much he can’t do, can’t know about Lio. Yet somehow, his presence in this little apartment Galo has never tried to think of as his own is unmistakable, everything coming together to revolve around him. That, at least, he can’t question. Lio is brave, and self-sacrificing, and good, and the best Galo can do is to do right by him.
Maybe it isn’t so complicated after all.
“Galo. Galo.”
He hears it like it’s through glass, or at the end of a long tunnel. He’s riding a sailboat in a storm, clinging to the mast, rainwater in his eyes and ocean spray soaking every inch of his body. His heart pounds with the thrill of it. The next wave crests higher, and higher, and the raft, now, begins to shake back and forth, long and rolling –
“Galo!”
“Wuh,” Galo responds on the inhale, sitting up and smashing his forehead into something terribly solid. “Lio? Lio, is he…” He blinks away the ringing in his skull and feels his eyes adjust to the dark, zeroing in on the violet eyes inches away from his face.
“Are you, uh, okay?” Lio asks, awake and vivid in front of him, smoothing his thumb lightly across Galo’s forehead.
“Lio!” Galo shouts happily, which, ow, probably bad for their heads right now, throwing his arms around Lio in a tight we’re-alive embrace and pulling him back down onto the couch. Lio tenses on top of him at first, then goes limp.
“Where are we?” Lio asks, muffled by Galo’s shoulder. “What happened?”
“It’s over,” Galo says into the softness of his hair. “It’s over. We’re at my place, it’s been a couple days. You’re safe. We won, and Kray’s in custody.”
At that, Lio huffs a satisfied little laugh, and Galo runs a hand over his back, feeling so, so content.
“The Promare thing is gone, but the Burnish are safe, too,” Galo continues. “They’re recovering. We’re taking care of them, and they’re strong.”
“Good, that’s really good,” Lio says, his voice breaking just slightly with something strange and small. “Did you happen to see – ”
“Meis and Gueira were here earlier,” Galo says. “They’re doing great. I think they’re joining Burning Rescue, or something? They said they’d be back, I’ll get it out of them next time.”
“I’m… less surprised than I should be,” Lio says, finally. “But the Burnish, I need to go see them.”
“Of course,” Galo says. “Anything. First thing in the morning.”
Galo is immensely gratified when he finally gets to make Lio that post-sleep meal, and only a little put out that it isn’t exactly breakfast in the traditional sense, seeing as it’s two in the morning. Lio practically inhales the first bowl of noodles Galo sets in front of him, and proceeds to eat everything else in the fridge, almost as fast than Galo can heat them – he has to keep two pots of boiling water going on the stove at any one time, pouring things in and ladling them out at an alarming rate.
It’s beyond worth it, though, to watch Lio make short work of his cooking. With the last plate of dumplings set in front of Lio, Galo slumps against the cold wood of the table, eyes drooping. A hand cards through his hair, scritching lightly at his scalp.
“C’mon,” Lio says. “You should get to bed.”
Galo flails into an upright position at that, slightly more alert. “Bed? No, it’s okay,” he trails off, and then shakes his head so his eyes stay open. “I’m good on the couch. You keep it.”
“No, Galo,” Lio says, looking amused. “I’ve been asleep for, like, a hundred hours. There’s no way I’m going back to sleep right now.”
“A hundred?” Galo asks. “Has it been that many?”
“I think so?” Lio says, frowning slightly. “It sounded right at the time.”
“I guess I am kinda tired,” Galo says after they spend a minute thinking it through, heads bowed together across the dining table. “We’ll count it in the morning.”
“Let’s do that,” Lio says, his voice curling around the hint of a laugh, and extends a hand to pull Galo up.
“You need anything before I knock out?” Galo asks when they reach the door. He fights back a yawn, rubbing his eyes with a balled fist.
“Actually, do you have something I can use to read the news?” Lio says.
“Oh! Yeah, hold on,” Galo says, fishing in his pocket and pulling out his phone. “There’s no passcode, use it as much as you want.”
“I see,” Lio says, though he doesn’t entirely look like he sees. Having instant phone access is efficient. “Thank you. For everything.”
“'s the least I can do,” Galo says. He’s not sure if it’s what Lio needs to hear, but his bed is a step away and he’s increasingly feeling the need to fall over on it immediately.
The rest of the night passes in a haze, but at some point he thinks he hears the shower running. When the sliver of sky visible through the blinds starts turning from pitch black to a deep blue, one side of the bed dips down with the weight of something that smells clean and sweet and has extremely cold toes that brush up against Galo’s shins. He rolls toward it without any deeper thought, and holds fast.
When Galo turns back, the setting sun has painted City Hall in orange and gold, and he can almost imagine it’s the same as it always was – not a shell of itself, held up from the inside with emergency scaffolding and filled with mismatched folding furniture in an echoing approximation of a conference room. In the distance, the Parnassus looks more hollow than when they’d parked in its shadow in the morning, huge parts of the hull melted off and carried away to be reshaped into city. A cold breeze sweeps past that wasn’t there before.
Of course everything’s changed. There was never any doubt about that, but following Lio through med tents, through shelters and reconstruction sites and into the middle of a city council meeting, it’s clearer now than ever to Galo that it’s only the beginning: things will never go back, but the changes they need to make as Promepolis, as a people, maybe even more than that – are far bigger than just rebuilding.
“What the hell were they going to do if we hadn’t been there, make the Burnish wards of the state?” Lio is saying, incensed. A tattered piece of railing breaks off easily in his tight grip, and he drops it with a clatter at the bottom of the steps. “Pretend to forget and move on?”
“So we’ll keep showing up,” Galo says. “We’ll make it hard for them and make sure they do it the right way, or we’ll do it ourselves.”
“You’re right, Galo, but – I don’t know,” Lio says. Galo turns back to him in surprise, but he knows Lio needs to talk it out for himself. “It’s just, we will. I know we will. I’ll find a way, I have to, but I’m not the same.”
“What do you mean?” Galo asks.
“I don’t think I’ve caught up with myself yet,” Lio says, and pauses like he hadn’t meant to.
“That's okay,” Galo says. He reaches out and places his hand over Lio’s heart, and feels his sharp breath. “Your burning passion is here, right? Like always.”
Lio’s hand comes up to wrap around his wrist, holding Galo in place. His head tips down to where their hands connect, but his eyes are unfocused, and all Galo can do is stand beside him until his grip loosens.
“C’mon, we’re joining the reconstruction tomorrow,” Galo says. “Let’s go home and rest up.”
Lio makes a sound like a cat being tossed in the air.
“Lio?!” Galo takes a step forward, but Lio stays planted where he is, fists clenched, not meeting Galo’s eyes. “Lio, what’s wrong?”
“Home?” Lio chokes out, strangled. There’s a frantic look in his eyes. “How can you just say that so easily?”
“Because that’s where we can go,” Galo says, feeling like he’s missing something essential.
“This doesn’t just happen,” Lio says, desperate. He takes a few steps away, then turns back. “I can’t keep going with this! You don’t know me! You don’t know where I’m from, or what I’ve done, anything!”
“That doesn’t matter!” Galo cuts in, and then he realizes what he’s said. “No, Lio, I didn’t mean that. It does matter, and I want to know all of it, if you’ll let me. But all that’s – in front of us. We can start here.”
“That’s,” Lio says, after a quiet that drags just long enough to border on suffocating. “That’s good, actually. That's really good. But you’re talking about this, here, and it’s too much and I can’t – ”
“Lio,” Galo says. “I have been off duty for three days, and I’ve been doing so much thinking I might lose it.”
“We can’t have that now, can we,” Lio says around an exhale of a laugh, quiet and wet.
“You deserve everything,” Galo says, so honest that he feels his chest lifting off, free of something he didn’t even know was weighing it down. “We were in the Galo de Lion, and then you were gone, except you were still here, and I wanted to do so much for you and I’m still trying to understand what everything is. But we woke up today, and for a moment it made sense, and I want to keep doing it until I’m sure. If that’s what you want, too.”
“Galo,” Lio says.
“I don’t know if this just happens, or if there’s a normal way to do it,” Galo says, the words just tumbling out now. “But I don’t think that's important. I don’t think something in the universe put us right here. I think we put us right here.”
An emergency light flickers to life in the dusk, casting Lio in an unearthly fluorescence. Then Galo blinks, and Lio is still there.
“Is that – too much?” Galo asks. “Is that okay?”
“Yes,” Lio says. Soft, and then certain. “Galo, yes. Let’s go home.”