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It’s kind of unbelievable, Apollo would admit. That is, dating a celebrity.
The novelty of actually doing such a far-fetched thing had worn off around the time “becoming rich and famous” had lost its appeal as an ambition—which for Apollo, was early in his youth. Apollo’s development so far as aspirations were concerned had suffered the singularly remarkable whiplash of going from “stay alive” to “fight everyone you hate” to “become a lawyer and save people” in an almost comically short period of time. Needless to say, Apollo had never thought himself capable of his current success in the legal field, and certainly never even had a concept of having a romantic partner whom he had first met vicariously through magazine covers.
Nothing in his experience prepared him for it. That is, living with Klavier Gavin.
On self-indulgent whims, Apollo often finds himself wishing that tabloids read more like “care and keeping of” guides instead of expending so much effort in speculation of Klavier’s preferred brands of sunglasses. (He prefers them from the dollar store, Apollo learned. It’s the person behind them that makes them look expensive.) Their relationship’s trajectory had moved rather in retrograde from the start, Apollo recognizes in hindsight. They parsed weighty topics in equal measure with pleasantries due to the circumstances of their unusual courtship: grief and loss, crime and justice, death and life, truth and lies and love. A union through tragedy ensured they understood one another within and without. As a result, even years after the fact, the matters that would typically cleave a thriving relationship into unhappy halves are what come easily to Apollo and Klavier. It is the hands-on, practical, day-to-day Klavier Gavin that Apollo finds baffling.
Like this: Klavier is formal at work. He addresses Apollo in nicknames, but the pronouncements are no more significant than any other lighthearted tease characteristic of Klavier Gavin, serial flirt. There is nothing strange about the way Apollo refers to him as Prosecutor Gavin even when the name can still make his stomach twist, light and heavy at once, a warmly familiar paradox. They routinely face one another in court and it’s nice, predictable, a formal extension of their domesticity.
And this: When they are out in public, Klavier’s hands are in his pockets, or wrapped around a coffee cup, or on the steering wheel, but they are always busy and there is a space between him and Apollo that is so thick and deliberately placed, Apollo supposes he would have more of a chance getting his arms around that distance than Klavier himself. They speak in their home voices rather than those suited to the office, but the separation feels wider than a courtroom. Apollo almost forgets the person on the opposite end of that expanse, sometimes, until there comes a squeal and a cheer and a flash-flash-flash and a crescendo of excited voices, not the least of which is Klavier’s. He loves his fans, he really does. When he is the celebrity rock idol Klavier Gavin, no one notices the person standing beside him, Apollo Justice whose name circulates the legal world by virtue of novelty as much as by actual notoriety. He doesn’t mind it, honestly, but it troubles him a bit when Klavier purposefully dampens his own enthusiasm and Apollo’s bracelet constricts about his wrist.
And then this: At home, Klavier cannot keep his hands off of Apollo for a second. The entry door is barely closed and already he has Apollo tight in his arms; he’s talking a mile a minute about his day despite the fact that they are intimately aware of one another’s casework by professional obligation, asking questions about Apollo’s morning and his lunch and Fraulein Trucy and what-embarrassing-thing-about-my-boss-did-Mr-Wright-accidentally-reveal-today, and there are no effective means of stopping him until there is food in his mouth. Besides that, Klavier ensures that Apollo is already in bed and ready for cuddling by maintaining an agonizingly long evening bathroom routine, and seeing as Apollo knows that Klavier conveniently discovers casework to keep him up when Apollo says he will be working late, Apollo is reasonably confident that these practices are by design. Then, any given time of day, if Apollo remains stationary for a sufficient period, he has come to expect the telltale touch creeping up his spine, around his waist, slipping between his fingers.
This Klavier Gavin defies comprehension.
Still, sometimes Apollo thinks about the public Klavier Gavin, the plasticized smile and arresting eyes and effortless cool. He thinks about this Klavier Gavin and his, the irrepressible, hopelessly honest, hands-all-over person he calls his significant other, and smiles in spite of himself.
He’s a little in the mood to push his luck as far as the touchy Klavier Gavin is concerned one night when they’re up late lounging on the couch. They had determined early in the evening that neither of them was needed in their respective office in the morning, that their shared home desk remained blissfully free of unwanted work-related guests, and that nothing would be more pleasant on such a rare and illustrious occasion of unsolicited freedom than pure, unadulterated idleness. The true-crime show they had selected for purview had ceased to hold Apollo’s interest from the title card, but the sounds of raised voices and the occasional gunshot coalesce as a not wholly unwelcome tapestry of white noise. Besides, in his own exceptionally-qualified defense, Apollo is set up to be a little distracted. Klavier’s contribution to their evening plans had been a total and non-negotiable decision that he would only be comfortable with his head under Apollo’s chin, threaded bodily between his legs and summarily acting as complete a dead weight on Apollo as humanly possible. The light from the television screen softens the sharp lines of Klavier’s features in a muted blue, and from what Apollo can gather from his limited vantage given that Klavier’s cheek rests on his chest, he isn’t exactly captivated by the plot, either. Apollo does not mind the arrangement, not when a sleepy Klavier is warm and heavy and all but openly radiating affection, but he does miss having sensation in his left arm. A little bit.
“Klav.”
Apollo is forced to reevaluate his assessment of Klavier as being disinterested but conscious as Klavier starts at the sound of his name, and then grumbles noncommittally. It does not escape his notice that Klavier’s first reaction upon being startled from sleep is to tighten his grip on whatever he is holding.
“Klav, you fell asleep.” Apollo murmurs lowly, rubbing slow circles of reassurance into Klavier’s back. “Look, you missed the big reveal.”
“Hmm?” Klavier shifts—Apollo feels it all over his body, hyper-aware of every contact point—and lifts his head, blinking bleary-eyed at the television, and then at Apollo. “Who’s the killer?” he slurs, as if it actually matters.
Truthfully, Apollo had not been paying attention in the slightest, so he says, “It was the parrot all along,” with the straightest face he can muster.
Klavier squints at him, processes for a moment, one-two, and then— his face splits open wide in a breathless laugh, the sort he keeps coiled up in his stomach at the office, the sort he presses down in front of the cameras, a faint trace of a lie. At those times, he fears the accusation of honesty. This Klavier cannot possibly be too honest, not when every place his skin brushes Apollo’s is an earnest declaration, a promise and a seal.
(Apollo wants to gather it all up in his arms, to spill bare and beautiful for everyone in the world to see.)
“You weren’t paying attention, schatz,” Klavier accuses, biting out the words between spasms of laughter.
“You wouldn’t know,” Apollo shoots back, and despite the fact that he has only regained pins and needles of sensation in his arm, he is running his fingers down Klavier’s spine, a gentle echo of Klavier’s unconscious possessiveness, a muted indictment. I know how you are. “You could have missed the plot twist of the century.”
Klavier’s mouth curves into a lazy smile, offered like a fleeting miracle before he buries it in the hollow of Apollo’s throat. “How long was I asleep?”
“’M not sure,” Apollo replies, and he is so terribly susceptible to malleability in the late hour; without thinking, he settles a compliant hand on the back of Klavier’s head to keep him close. The teasing dance of Klavier’s lips on his skin is addicting. “I actually wasn’t paying attention.” He certainly had not paid any attention to the program. To Klavier, perhaps just enough to push his luck.
“You mean I didn’t keep your attention?” Klavier gasps, mock-scandalized.
Apollo frowns slightly. “It’s kind of hard not to pay attention to you when you are literally all over me. You’ve been especially touchy tonight.”
Klavier’s head pops up, his eyes wide and bright. “Achtung! You would accuse me of an ulterior motive?”
“I wasn’t making any accusations, but if you’re ready to confess, by all means, make my job easier.”
Klavier frowns. “I won’t say anything.”
Apollo quirks an eyebrow. “To avoid self-incrimination?”
“To avoid putting pressure on you,” Klavier replies, freeing his hand from somewhere to draw a tantalizing finger down the line of Apollo’s jaw. He sure wakes up fast, Apollo muses, and puts forth what he considers a laudable, if ill-fated effort to resist shivering at Klavier’s touch.
“Pressure?”
“Ja.” Klavier swallows. “Because, I was thinking, we don’t have to work early, we already know who committed the murder most foul in this show, and…”
“…and you’re all over me.” Apollo finishes curtly.
Klavier nods. “Literally and figuratively both, liebling.”
—Gotcha.
“Well, given your convincing case, I’m not opposed.” Apollo says, with the faintest touch of self-satisfied boldness that Klavier clearly mistakes for uncharacteristic forwardness, if the sparkle in his eyes is any indicator. Apollo, for his part, is merely pleased to have correctly guessed his way into some semblance of a position of control with domestic Klavier Gavin. “But I’d much rather move to the bedroom. Um, please.”
“Ach, schatzi,” Klavier fits his elbows at Apollo’s sides and presses some of his weight into them, granting Apollo a blissful reprieve and a tantalizing taste of freedom. His hair falls in a silky curtain around them, ensuring that Apollo’s vision is entirely consumed by Klavier. “But I do so like you right here.”
There are still a great many things Apollo does not understand, things he wants to understand, secrets he wants to pull free from the tight web that is Klavier Gavin and spin into a wholly new and all-encompassing truth. Something like that, he thinks, could probably be called love— until now, the relentless search for truth has been his sole motivator, the singular drive that has earned him everything he holds most dear. If that is to be taken as true then this, this feeling is its fullest realization, its sweeping actualization, the dream that so transfixed the young Apollo with the vision of a future brighter than every color could fill. This is the unmitigated force of a crashing tidal wave, and Apollo wants nothing more than to cry his heart aloud, to let the water rush in and fill his lungs.
A hypothesis: Klavier has probably been in love before. Apollo is reasonably sure of that.
A certainty: Klavier is unaccustomed to long-term relationships. He confessed as much to Apollo as something of a consolatory rejoinder to Apollo’s uninspiring revelation that his dating experience is frightfully limited. As such, Klavier is exceptionally talented in the early phases of romance, but less certain in how to continue them effectively. Apollo chalks up his embarrassingly affectionate behavior to this.
Still, there is anticipation and something far more vulnerable aglow in Klavier’s countenance that Apollo cannot bring himself to analyze. Allowing himself the meager indulgence of confidence in light of his tentative understandings has its payoffs, after all.
(If Apollo came to understand something like falling in love when he felt his life unraveling in his hands, then surely the details will find their places in these happier times.)
“Just this once,” Apollo says, knows that he is lying, and lets himself be happy about it.
*
(Apollo sits with every embarrassing hallmark of a sore back the next day at the Agency. Athena takes it upon herself to assemble such evidence as this, along with the fact that Apollo did not come in until the afternoon, to play prosecutor, attorney and judge and declare him guilty of being the old man of the office. Privately, Apollo curses himself, his old couch, and Klavier Gavin.
“What’s that weird smile about, anyways?” Athena asks. “To be honest with you, it’s kind of unsettling.”)
*
Apollo considers that for the sake of humility and rational scientific inquiry, it is only proper to define the sum total of his understandings as a theory. Theories may be amended with the advent of new information, tested in controlled spaces, and should it become necessary, tossed out as incorrect altogether.
He considers this when he makes breakfast on the weekends, and Klavier “helps”.
Predictably, Klavier’s presence has little to do with the preparation of the meal and far more to do with reliably supplying Apollo with a song in his ear, an embrace to keep him warm, and at least ten points of human contact at any given moment.
At times such as these, intrusive thoughts of Klavier at the office and Klavier in front of the cameras play incongruously upon his mind. The hands he keeps buried in his pockets, firmly on the handlebars of his bike, pounding fists into the courtroom walls—and presently thread themselves through Apollo’s fingers, sense of propriety be damned. Finally, Apollo heaves a sigh and moves the frying pan to the back burner. “Klav.” He intones, not without an ample dose of patience.
“Ja?”
Apollo takes another slow breath, considering how to broach this topic. Which tactic would be most effective? An emotional appeal to the sake of their omelets, which would suffer a gruesome fate simply because Klavier is inexplicably insatiable? A rational line of questioning regarding what exactly about Apollo in an old t-shirt and sweatpants makes Klavier think that now is an appropriate time to put the moves on him? An irrational line of questioning because this is nice and all but—
“This is nice,” he decides, “but I’m going to burn the omelets.”
“Es tut mir leid, I’ll free your hands.” Klavier says quickly, and moves his own firmly to Apollo’s hips. “Better?”
Not really, if Apollo is being honest, but he is also hungry and Klavier is warm, so he relents and returns the pan to the front burner.
When everything is finished, Apollo asks Klavier to make himself useful and set the table for them. He is deliberate in his use of loaded language, but he chooses not to think of it as setting a trap, but as testing a theory.
—and, entirely contrary to everything Apollo thinks he understands: Klavier happily detaches himself, gathers the dishes, and actually makes a halfway-decent place setting.
That’s fine. Theories may be amended. That is a natural part of the process of discovery.
As they eat, Klavier keeps one hand free to rest on Apollo’s knee, or his wrist, or just about any other piece of Apollo he can easily reach. Apollo cannot help but bring attention to the habit at the end of the meal—not that he is displeased with it, of course, but merely curious. For the sake of scientific pursuits.
When he asks, Klavier gazes at him in wonder and says, “Mein Apollo, did you know that you’re the most beautiful person in the world?”
(and, entirely contrary to everything Apollo thinks he understands: Klavier speaks with the confidence of someone in full and easy possession of the truth, as if discovery is something long left to the past, as if he has endured his trials and paid his penance and now basks in the abiding glow of enlightenment. Indeed, he dries and shelves the dishes, showers and dresses, sings his way through his morning routine and settles down in the living room with his guitar in hand to revise some compositions.)
It should make Apollo happy, should it not? Satisfy his every question with an answer and leave him with a newfound resolve in their relationship? Apollo tosses each one of his theories summarily out the window, to be replaced with one: Klavier must be some special brand of delusional.
(But there’s something in Klavier’s expression when Apollo bursts into the living room in the middle of the afternoon and asks, “What did you mean by what you said at breakfast?”
And there’s something in the ease with which Klavier replies, “The most beautiful person in the world made me breakfast today,” and he doesn’t sound smug about it at all.)
*
When they are alone, Klavier touches Apollo with the hands of a cartographer.
Klavier touches Apollo as if he intends to mark a memory in place with his fingers, something to be treasured and remembered, something beautiful to be tacked up on the wall and admired for years to come.
Even in exploration, his movements are slow, his motivation not so imperialist as to claim and pillage, but rather like a pilgrimage, like laying eyes on a holy land previously known only to the imagination. He explores Apollo like he wants to draw a map of these beloved places, his most precious memories, the unwritten stories in the lines and dips of his skin.
He kisses every mole he finds to note its place, pieces together the legends that build every little scar—where Apollo had fallen while playing an ill-fated game of catch with Clay at age eleven, where he had burned himself for the first time while cooking because how in the hell was he supposed to know what to do without having a guardian to model, where an intense fight had split him open and Apollo had watched himself, red and raw and gaping, pouring onto the asphalt all around him—and Apollo does not speak, does not weigh down this search with words, but quietly grants Klavier every access he desires.
“Do you know,” Klavier whispers into Apollo’s ribs, “how much I love you?”
And Apollo thinks first, of course I do. And Apollo says, “Tell me.”
(And Apollo thinks second, I don’t know.)
This is the manner in which Klavier tells him: in his hands, in the muted reverence of Apollo’s body in the dark, in the conscious way he takes things slow as if he will not be denied the experience of a single moment.
Apollo would almost think the matter simple—touchy Klavier is an affectionate Klavier, predictable for someone accustomed to relationships as based on physicality—if it weren’t for how Klavier catches his wrist as Apollo gets out of bed to wash up, how even when Klavier’s hair is mussed with knots looped by Apollo’s fingers, cheeks flushed and pupils blown wide, he will ask in his lovely and ruined voice, “Will you come right back and cuddle with me, bitte?”
And Apollo, red-faced and sticky and self-conscious and baffled, will always reply, “Of course.”
It would be simple if Klavier did not immediately latch on to Apollo the moment he returns with such a desperation as if he has been holding his breath for the duration of his absence. It would be simple if Klavier rolled over and fell asleep, satisfied with having his desires satiated, instead of tucking his head under Apollo’s chin and murmuring German nothings until he works his way up to something Apollo understands, like ich liebe dich. Apollo falls asleep and wakes up with Klavier all over him in one way or another, and he cannot help but wonder what makes Klavier so insatiable.
—not that he takes issue with it. Oh, he wouldn’t dream of it, not when Klavier’s hands are warm, his love hot and his body burning.
*
Sometimes, Apollo forgets that Klavier is famous.
There is nothing strange, after all, about the coffee shop they stop in after work. The air is thick and hot with the acrid smell of coffee, the metallic whir of the machines, the bustle of the workers. In another life, Apollo could see himself working in such an environment: he is suited to the pace, the intensity, the algorithmic precision of preparing the drinks just as the customer requests. As for him, his request is a plain black coffee (medium roast, as he does have limits) and Klavier orders a triple shot in the dark (because he does not).
There is nothing strange, either, about how Klavier casually places the order for them both with the clear intention to pay, to which Apollo offers perfunctory protestations that Klavier summarily ignores. The place is not of any reputable class, but is rather convenient and reliable—the sort of place Apollo could see himself, not someone of Klavier’s caliber. This is just their usual date, two ordinary people on their way home from their desk jobs, their hearts set on evenings of paperwork and falling asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillow. Glamour is an absurd and distant dream.
Apollo can forget when they’re waiting at the end of the bar for their drinks and Klavier snakes a hand around his waist, the gentle dance of idle fingers on his hip. He leans in to the touch without thought, without consideration for the barista’s wandering eyes, without weighing the value of the image should someone snap a picture. When he looks up, he notes that Klavier’s attention wanders aimlessly about the establishment, probably whipping up a melody in his mind. After a moment, he catches Apollo looking, and slides him a discreet smile that is as much a promise as is the meaningful squeeze he gives Apollo’s hip.
They are simply two people until a barista calls out their drinks, sliding the cups across the counter with a bright smile. “I have to say, my sister just loves your work, Mr. Gavin,” he says as if the words have been fighting for escape, and Klavier thanks him smoothly. Then, Apollo remembers.
Klavier slips his sunglasses on when they’re out the door, and his hands stay firmly occupied by his cardboard cup. Apollo tries not to mind, with one hand on his drink and one in his pocket, and wonders when he became so accustomed to being touchy.
*
Klavier is already lounging on the couch when Apollo gets home, idly flipping through channels with that frown of his that means he’s dead-set on wasting time. He perks right up when Apollo crosses in front of him to hang up his coat, however, and tosses the remote aside in favor of more interesting pursuits. The channel he lands on, perhaps not entirely without some design, shows a police procedural.
Apollo cranes his neck to get a glimpse of it. “Hey, Klavier. This again?”
“You’re late,” Klavier remarks helpfully. “The big reveal won’t mean anything now.”
Apollo gives him a flat look. “As if you ever make it all the way through one of these, really? And you got my text, didn’t you?”
“Ja,” Klavier says, pacified. He turns back to the television. “Rough day?”
It is not unusual for Apollo to have to stay late at the office—a predictable habit given the agency’s predilection for taking on the most hopeless cases they can find—but Klavier lands an unintentional glancing blow. Apollo drops his hands slowly from his coat, letting his hands hang limp at his sides.
“Well…”
This, however, is unusual. Apollo does not need to see himself to know that he is aglow with tells. Kept secrets. Klavier’s head snaps up in an instant. “Was ist los?”
Apollo bites his lip and nervously traces the edge of his pants pocket with his thumb. “I…” It’s not nothing. Don’t say nothing. When he turns to Klavier, the concern bright in his eyes, so plain and open, almost stops his speech altogether. He swallows thickly.
“Can we…” Apollo takes a breath to steady his resolve. Klavier’s brows knit together. “Can we just…um, cuddle for a while? I don’t want to do anything else, just… is that okay?”
Klavier nods, pauses, then nods again, and wordlessly opens his arms.
Apollo trails his way to Klavier’s waiting embrace, leaving his vest and tie on the floor beside the coat rack and his shoes by the couch. The television is turned low, but Apollo is grateful for the rattle of rapid-fire speech as background for his thoughts. If he weren’t so tired, so damn tired, he would laugh at the situational irony of threading himself through Klavier’s legs and collapsing bodily onto his chest. He is lighter relative to Klavier, at least—he can feel a bit less guilty about that.
They lapse into relative silence. Klavier provides the occasional quip about the procedural program, and Apollo blissfully loses himself in the rumble of Klavier’s voice and the warmth of his fingers.
Apollo does not talk about his day at the office. Athena and Mr. Wright had been off investigating a crime scene, so Apollo barely saw them after exchanging obligatory greetings in the morning. A few clients had circulated in and out, some interesting, some not. One of them had worked at the space center and mentioned that she recognized Apollo from when he had investigated a dramatic and high-profile murder there. She indicated that the lawyer she wanted to see was Athena, however, and not Apollo. That had not surprised him.
Klavier does not ask about his morning, or his lunch, or Fraulein Trucy, or his boss. “Obviously he was lying about the nightclub date,” he says instead, gesturing lazily at the screen.
“Hey,” Apollo says finally, shifting so he may at least catch Klavier’s eyes. “You aren’t… upset by this, are you?”
For once the bewildered one, Klavier raises an eyebrow. “Why would I be upset?”
“Because…” Apollo mumbles, suddenly shy, “I’m asking you to just… hold me while I mope. I mean, that’s not very fun. For you,” or me, he thinks, but that is less important.
“Schatzi,” Klavier’s features are stony, and he frees his hands to cup Apollo’s face, “I’m lucky to hold you anytime. As if I could possibly say no to you.”
Well, that wasn’t what Apollo was expecting. “What?” is his intelligent reply.
“I… don’t know what you mean?” Klavier cocks his head. “If you had a rough day, the least I can do is hold you. I like being able to touch you.”
Apollo frowns. He isn’t quite sure what he was thinking, other than perhaps that no matter how savvy he believes himself to be, Klavier Gavin will remain perpetually confounding to him.
There is so much he has yet to understand, and he is not troubled by that. Apollo has intimate knowledge of Klavier’s most quixotic aspirations, the nightmares that rob him of sleep, his future and past, and the way he tears down every bit of Apollo’s meticulously-constructed defenses with a single glance. He knows that Klavier talks to himself in German when he is distracted or thinks everyone else is. He knows that Klavier puts his hair up in a messy bun when he is working and lets it fall loose and long when he is not. These are truths, and Apollo loves each and every one of them.
He knows—loves—that Klavier is voraciously touchy, when they are alone at home, and sometimes when they are not.
“I know,” Apollo says quietly. “…Thanks.”
Klavier’s eyes roam over his face, looking for any edges of truth yet unturned, but he must be satisfied what his findings as he pulls Apollo close in a hug before speaking. Even if Apollo does not breathe a word of a question, Klavier gives an answer as if it is the most natural thing in the world. Almost as if he knows Apollo’s fears and insecurities, grief and loss, truth and lies and love—
And Klavier, internationally-famous rock star celebrity prosecutor and image of modern beauty, admits in his softest voice, “If I’m touching you, then I know you’re real.”
And Apollo, plain-faced, loud-mouthed foster-kid-turned-idealistic-defense-attorney, feels just a little unbelievable.