When Apollo left the Wright Anything Agency after a full day's work, his throat was a little dry, though not quite to the point where it hurt to talk.

He told himself it must have just been from overdoing his Chords of Steel in the morning. Nothing to worry about.

As it turned out, he was very, very wrong.

The next morning, Apollo woke up feeling like death warmed over.

His head was pounding with pain, his body was drenched in sweat, and it felt like he'd swallowed broken glass in his sleep.

There was no possible way to avoid the truth: he was sick.

Apollo didn't fall ill very often. But when he did, it tended to be bad.

With a groan that sent a spike of pain through his throat, Apollo fumbled around in his bed, trying to find his phone, until one hand smacked into it at a bad angle. In addition to feeling sick, now his fingernails hurt. Awesome.

After grabbing his phone, Apollo sent a text message to Mr. Wright. 'It looks like I'm sick, can't come into work today. Will let you know when I'm feeling better.'

That task done, Apollo laid his head back on his pillows, and found the top one was damp. He rearranged them, trying to raise up the coolest and driest among the pillows, as he prepared to get more sleep.

Apollo had some friends who stressed about calling out sick, but despite his professionalist streak, he didn't suffer from that particular anxiety. The quickest way to get better was to get proper rest, and if his work didn't like it, too bad for them.

The rest of the morning and early afternoon were a blur. Apollo drifted in and out of sleep, occasionally getting up to stumble through his apartment in his underwear for a glass of water or to try swallowing some medication that would ease his symptoms.

He'd just barely fallen into an uneasy rest when the sharp sound of knocking at his front door woke him up.

"Apollo!" Even through several walls, Apollo could clearly make out Athena's voice. "We come bearing gifts!"

It didn't take a genius to figure out who she meant by 'we'.

His guess was confirmed when he heard Trucy saying, "Wait, he gave me a spare key, hold on..."

"Urrrgh," Apollo groaned, rising out of bed and going to greet his visitors. It would have been nice if his room would stop spinning...

By the time Apollo emerged into his living room/kitchen/dining room (What? It's a small apartment, he's still paying off his law school debts), his friends had already let themselves in, and they were indeed carrying bags of stuff with them.

When Trucy saw Apollo, she brightened up so much that it was almost enough to make him feel well. "Polly! We brought youuuuuuu..."

Her last syllable elongated, the rest of her sentence left unfinished, as she stared at Apollo, shock clearly written all over her usually great poker face. Athena was looking at him too.

It took Apollo a second to be able to tell that they weren't looking at his face...their eyes were centered on his chest. Apollo looked down, confused...and time stopped when he saw what they were seeing.

Apollo had never gotten dressed.

All he was wearing were his boxers

No binder.

Which meant his chest, and the things that still came with it, were out and about for his friends to see.

Quickly moving to cover up his chest with one arm, Apollo had no idea what to do. He wasn't even sure how he felt. His head was too muddled to really sort out any particular emotions, it was just a big glob of Ahhhhhhh.

Before he could even try to put together a response, Trucy recovered from her lapse in control, grabbed the bags Athena was carrying, and set them on Apollo's table. "We'll get out of your hair! There's fruit juice, medicine, and ice cream in the bag! Put it away before it melts!"

Then, she grabbed Athena, who was still slack-jawed, and pulled her out of the apartment with her.

After about a minute of trying to comprehend what had just happened, Apollo looked in the bags. He managed a smile through his brain haze. Trucy had gotten him his favorite flavor of ice cream.

He put away the ice cream, fixed himself a glass of orange juice to put by his bed, and went back to slumberland.

It ended up taking two and a half days of rest to beat the cold or flu or whatever the hell that infected Apollo, and by the time he was ready to go back to work, it was the weekend.

Which meant he didn't see either Trucy or Athena until the next Monday, almost a week after the strange incident had occurred. He'd actually forgotten about it...until he saw the looks his friends were giving him.

They weren't exactly new ones. He was being scrutinized. It happened when people found out he was trans. Their eyes kept going to his chest, no doubt wondering how he kept his breasts bound tight enough to have a flat chest, or to his face, wondering if he'd been taking testosterone, and if so, for how long.

Before Mr. Wright showed up, Apollo decided to just cut to the chase. "Yes, I'm transgender. Yes, I still have breasts. Yes, I've been on T for about seven years now. Any other questions?"

He didn't mean to come off as rude, but...this entire thing was so annoying.

A brief thought made his heart pang for Clay. He, at least, had taken the whole thing with aplomb.

It seemed that Trucy had one question, though she looked hesitant to ask it. "Um...why didn't you tell us?"

"Because," Apollo replied, raising an eyebrow. "It wasn't any of your business."

Athena didn't see it that way. "C'mon, Apollo! We're meilleurs amis! Compa?eros cercanos! This is like...a pretty big thing to hide from us!" She looked at the ground, her energy shifting into sadness. "I mean...you already know everything about me..."

That was a low blow.

Too bad it missed. "Yes, because a case brought it all up. You didn't exactly volunteer that sort of stuff to me when we first met."

Trucy was looking sad now, too. "Were you ever going to tell us?"

Apollo's head was in his hands. He wished he hadn't started this conversation. "Maybe? I don't know. But you know now, and-"

"Don't you trust us?"

"Yes, of course I trust you, but Athena it's..."

"Aren't we your friends?"

"Trucy, of course you're my friend. Both of you are. But..." Apollo groaned. "I have friends who know. And I have friends who don't. But you're both more than friends, you're coworkers. The fact that you two found out the way you did is honestly kind of inappropriate anyway, but there's nothing I can do about that now." He fixed them with serious stares. "Have either of you told Mr. Wright?"

They both shook their heads.

"Can you promise not to tell him, or anyone else?"

They nodded. He believed them, and let out a sigh of relief.

"I'm sorry, Polly. It's up to you who knows about that sort of stuff." Trucy smiled, and for a second he felt a little better about this whole thing. "Now that we know, though, I do want to tell you that I'm proud of you."

"Me too!" Athena chimed in. "Going through stuff like that..." She shook her head. "It's a lot. And if you ever need to talk, or vent, or need help, we're here for you!"

Apollo appreciated the sentiment, as much as he could.

He tried to forget the whole 'you're so brave' thing. Cis people meant well with it, but it was a platitude that rang just a bit hollow, at least for Apollo. He was who he was, and praising him for living as himself just felt strangely disingenuous.

The offer of support was good, though. Apollo had a few other friends he could lean on for support, but he couldn't deny having coworkers on hand who knew could be beneficial.

In the end, it didn't turn out to be as bad as he'd feared. The shock and scrutiny faded away as they started to just accept he was still the same Apollo Justice he'd always been. Now, they just knew more about him.

And hey, maybe next time a menstruation day came along for one of them, Apollo could commiserate with his friends about how shitty periods were.