DM Me When You Land novel · Chapter 1 of 6
Chapter 1: Lag
After an eighth raid clear, Pachas asks Apollo to meet him at Citrus LAN in Orlando; Apollo says yes, and gets a voice note: wear something you won't mind me ruining.
"Apollo, I swear on my headset, if you let me die on this mechanic again, I am deleting you from the static."
Pachas said it in the flat, bored voice he used when he was actually about to laugh.
Apollo had been hearing that voice through his headset for two years.
It came out of the left side of his skull.
"You're standing in the fire," Apollo said. "Again. I'm healing a man who stands in fire for fun."
"I'm tanking, chamo. The fire respects me."
"The fire doesn't respect anyone."
"It's a matter of tone."
On the monitor, Pachas's armored knight stepped out of the red circle with maybe a sliver of health left.
Apollo's white mage threw the heal on him before the boss finished the animation.
He hadn't even thought about it.
His thumbs just knew where Pachas was going to be.
The boss went down at 11:47 p.m., the eighth clear of the week.
The voice channel filled with the dumb noise of eight people screaming at once.
Apollo took his headset off one ear and sat in the blue light of his bedroom in Hialeah.
Outside his window a neighbor's radio was playing salsa, and a dog down the block was howling along with it.
He loved that sound.
He also lowered his own voice every time the raid ended, because it was nearly midnight and the walls of his apartment were thin.
"Good night, good night," the healer from Ohio was saying.
"GG, everybody."
One by one the others dropped out of the channel.
Then it was only the two of them, the way it always was, the way it had been on purpose for a long time.
Neither of them ever said so.
"You still there, Apollo?"
"Where would I go?"
"Bed. Like a person."
"Says the man who's online at midnight on a Tuesday."
"I'm an electrician. I get up at five. I'm making a choice every night to stay up for you, and I want credit."
Apollo smiled at the dark screen.
His heart did the thing it always did when Pachas said something like that, a little stumble.
"Credit given," he said. "Go sleep, viejo."
"I'm thirty-one."
"Like I said."
"Coño, listen to you. Twenty-five years old and so brave on voice chat."
There was a pause, and a clink of ice in a glass.
"Two years," Pachas said.
His voice had changed.
It was quieter now, and slower.
"Two years, and I don't know what your face looks like."
Apollo's stomach tightened.
"You've seen my avatar."
"I've seen a white mage in a pink hat. That's a mascot, not a face."
"I'm Cuban. I have a lot of faces."
"You have a Hialeah face. It's different."
Apollo laughed, and then he stopped, because Pachas was not laughing.
"Citrus LAN is in Orlando in three weeks," Pachas said.
"I know."
"I know you know. You've been reading the schedule for a month. You think I can't hear you scrolling?"
Apollo's face went hot.
He had been scrolling.
He had the hotel page open in another tab right now.
"It's a convention," he said. "There'll be, like, four thousand people. The vendors, the tournament. It's mostly guys in cargo shorts."
"I have cargo shorts."
"That doesn't surprise me."
"Apollo."
Pachas didn't say it like a joke.
He said it the way he said Heal me when the whole party was about to wipe.
It was a flat command with total confidence in the person on the other end.
Apollo had never admitted to anyone how much he liked being spoken to like that.
"I've booked a room," Pachas said. "Two beds, because I'm a gentleman. Friday to Sunday."
"Okay."
"I'm not asking for the room."
"Okay."
"I'm asking if you're going to come."
The line hummed.
Outside, the neighbor's radio switched to a slow bolero, and the dog gave up and went quiet.
Apollo looked at the little poster over his desk, the one his cousin had given him when he got into community college.
It showed a sunset over Havana he had never seen with his own eyes.
He was so tired of looking at things he'd never seen.
"What if I'm not what you think?" he said.
"What do I think?"
"That I'm funny."
"You are funny."
"That I'm, I don't know. Brave."
"You heal a boss with no health bar for forty minutes while a man screams at you in two languages. You're the bravest person I know."
"That's a video game."
"So is everything, chamo, and I'm still here."
Apollo shut his eyes.
He could feel the whole thing waiting on the other side of an answer.
It was a door he had been standing in front of for two years.
"If I come," he said, and his voice wasn't steady, "you can't be disappointed."
"I'll tell you what I'm going to be."
"What?"
Pachas was quiet for a second.
When he spoke again he was close to the mic.
"I'm going to be very, very patient for about a day. And then I'm going to stop being patient."
Apollo's whole body went still.
Heat rolled from his scalp to his knees.
He sat there with his mouth open, and his hand tight around the mouse.
"I can hear you breathing," Pachas said.
"Shut up."
"Say yes."
"Yes."
"Say it properly."
Apollo swallowed.
"Yes. I'm coming. I'll take the Brightline from Miami, I'll find the hotel."
"Good boy."
The headset was suddenly too loud, and too close, and way too warm.
Apollo dropped the controller, and it hit the carpet with a thud.
Through the wall, a neighbor yelled, "Oye! ¿Qué fue eso?"
"Nada! A game!"
On the screen, a message from Pachas flashed up in the private chat.
DM me when you land.
Underneath it, a second one came in.
Wear something you won't mind me ruining.
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