Apollo could see his reflection in the sideview mirror of Klavier's car, and he was suddenly very thankful for Klavier's tinted windows. Every muscle in his body ached, and even his emotions seemed to feel sore. Saying he looked hungover would be an understatement.
But his hair looked okay, at least. That was something.
He already regretted his decision to explain his dumb ringtone. When was the last time he'd talked about his parents? With Clay, probably…
But Klavier's expression was warm and inviting, even though his gaze was shifting between Apollo's face and the traffic light. It was hard to describe, but Apollo felt… safe.
Plus, in all honesty, Apollo kinda liked the story. It was the dramatic tale of an unlikely hero dying to protect his son. It was tragic, but it wasn't like he knew his dad. He didn't even know his real name.
He just wished that it had ended differently, with anyone but Dhurke. But he could leave that part out, right?
After all, Klavier wasn't the "If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk" type. He was more of the "If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for decisive evidence that it's actually a cookie" type.
"Well, my parents were traveling performers," Apollo began. "I'm not sure what my mom did… But I know my dad played guitar."
Klavier perked up at this; his excitement was a little comical. "Your parents were musicians?"
"Green light," Apollo pointed out. Klavier jerked the car back into motion. He was probably more used to his motorcycle, Apollo realized. "Probably? I know absolutely nothing about my mom."
The glint in Klavier's eyes faded, and his smile flattened. Apollo wondered if he had a mom. Probably; the average life expectancy was like, 80, right? Statistically, not everyone's moms could be dead or missing or whatever. "What happened to her?"
"I was one year old when… um…" He tried to think of a way to tell the story without involving Dhurke, because he really didn't want to think about him, let alone talk about him. "My dad was invited to play at a palace."
"Your father was that good?" Klavier seemed impressed.
Apollo shrugged. "I guess?" He wasn't sure how good Dhurke's taste in music was, but Apollo liked to think his dad was good at what he did. "Afterward, my dad and I were invited to stay the night. It would've been cool if there wasn't a coup d'état… scheduled for that night."
Klavier's eyes shot open, and his smile dropped again. "You're kidding."
"Nope. The entire palace went up in flames."
"Flames…" That seemed to strike a chord with Klavier. "Your father… Did he…?"
Apollo nodded again. "My dad died trying to save the queen and I. The queen didn't make it, but I guess I did." It was such an unbelievable story that Apollo had a hard time imagining himself in it.
Klavier seemed more upset than he was. "What happened to your mother?"
"Well… When the queen dies, nobody really cares about finding... a missing baby. She probably tried to find me, but she must've believed I was dead…"
"Ah…"
"If I haven't found her by now, I doubt I ever will." Apollo stared in the side view mirror again, looking himself in the eyes, and the car came to a stop.
Klavier pulled out a key card and swiped it like he did the last time. "Did you…" He closed his mouth, having thought better of the question. "It's unlike you to discount the possibility of the implausible."
"In a three day trial, maybe. But there's such a thing as too much hope, I think." It was a depressing thought, but a true one. Hope was exhausting, and hoping for things that would probably never happen could break a person.
He would know; the hope that Dhurke would come back for him had hurt worse than his abandonment ever had.
Klavier didn't argue.
Once they were inside, Apollo immediately collapsed onto Klavier's couch. Every thought and movement felt draped in a dense fog, and he was extremely tempted to sleep it off.
"Tired?" Klavier asked, smiling.
"I didn't get 20 hours of beauty sleep last night," Apollo muttered. He wasn't entirely sure what he'd gotten last night, but it only seemed to make him feel more tired than he was before.
It was as if he'd been sleeping with his eyes open for most of the night as the walls of Klavier's room slowly closed in on him.
He felt some strange mixture between terror and boredom the entire time, like he knew he was going to eventually be crushed to death, but if he was going to die, it might as well hurry up and kill him.
He'd texted Athena about it and she told him he was fever dreaming, should drink more water, and should feel better soon. And stop texting me at 2am.
"Ah ha ha. You do look like you've been hit by a truck." Dang, Klavier could go from sympathetic to savage in 0.6 seconds.
Fortunately, Apollo could too. "Nice to know I can get hit by a truck… And still have fewer flyaways than you do."
Klavier's hand immediately rose to fix his hair, and Apollo had to stop himself from laughing, because laughing hurt. Self-conscious wasn't exactly the first thing that came to mind when the name "Klavier Gavin" came up, but there he was, getting flustered over his hair.
The funny thing was that Klavier didn't actually have any flyaways.
Apollo closed his eyes and flopped over on the couch, taking care that his feet stayed on the ground. It was a strange thing, knowing that Klavier had insecurities. He always seemed so self-assured.
"You can lay down like a normal human being if you'd like. Unless, of course, your legs are on the ground because you can't move them," Klavier teased.
"Oh, shut up." Apollo realized that Klavier had a point when he tried to adjust his lying position, though- he was able to get his legs up on the couch, but he let out a garbled moan in the process.
"Would you like that hot water bottle?" Klavier asked.
"Yes," Apollo said, trying and failing to not sound desperate. It was the next best thing to his cat, who was usually curled up next to him while he slept.
He missed that cat. She was in good hands, but he felt as if he'd abandoned her, and that filled him with guilt.
He needed to take care of her, but here he was, in Klavier Gavin's house, being taken care of. It felt wrong, somehow. He felt like if he was going to give up Calico for her safety, it should be because he wasn't living in safety.
But here he was, in Klavier's weird ¾ modern minimalist ¼ obnoxiously glimmerous house, waiting for something he honestly didn't need.
He felt out-of-place, and the more he processed where he was, the more uncomfortable it made him.
He'd been lost in his thoughts for a few minutes when Klavier came back with an awkward smile.
He handed him the hot water bottle and a blanket, too. "I suppose falling asleep at 3pm is a bit better than 1pm," he said, settling onto an adjacent couch with a smirk and a laptop. "Although I wish I had a bed to offer you. I'd offer you mine, but I-"
"No."
"...My point exactly." He smirked and returned to looking pensively at his laptop.
The two couches made a V, and Apollo was angled inward so that he could see him without having to move. Which was fortunate, because he couldn't really do that.
"Prosecutor Gavin?" he asked after a few minutes of not being able to keep his eyes closed.
"Hm?"
"I… I can't shake the feeling that I shouldn't be here."
"It is a bit strange, admittedly," he replied with absolutely no hesitation. There was a ghost of a smile on Klavier's lips. "But where, exactly, do you feel that you should be?"
Part of him felt like he should be back in the homeless camp, but he knew he didn't really belong there, either. "I… I don't know. Where I was two months ago, I guess. Before everything happened."
Klavier gently closed the lid to his laptop. "If it's physically impossible for you to be somewhere, you probably shouldn't be there."
"But that's the last time I felt like I understood where I was."
"Like your circumstances were the consequences of your own actions?"
Apollo thought for a moment. "I wasn't really thinking about it that way, but… Yeah." Clay's death, the courtroom explosion, the attempted murder- even in hindsight, there was nothing Apollo could've done to change what happened.
Klavier smiled. "I'm familiar with the feeling. It's been a while since I was the captain of my own ship."
Apollo sighed, which made him cough. "At least you have a ship. I can't even swim."
"...Did Apollo Justice just admit that there's something he can't do?"
"I have some limits. Water is one of them."
"But bronchitis isn't?"
Apollo smirked. "If it can't stop a freight train, it can't stop me."
Klavier laughed, shoulders shaking. "That may be the most accurate comparison I've ever heard." He gave Apollo a careful smile. "Although I will say that self-doubt doesn't stop a freight train."
"Well… It might stop a trainwreck." Apollo frowned. He hadn't felt too unstoppable recently.
"...Sometimes you need to let yourself be a trainwreck. Because if you keep trying to go on as usual, you're going to derail yourself."
"I kinda already derailed."
Klavier smiled. "Then perhaps you should accept a bit of help in getting back on track."
"...How do you come up with metaphors so quickly?"
"Practice."
Apollo was going to say something sarcastic, but he wound up yawning instead. Klavier laughed and cracked his laptop back open. "Nice to know that even freight trains are mere mortals."
Apollo smiled. "Didn't think I was the one with questionable mortality."
Klavier smirked. "Despite popular belief, I'm not superhuman."
"...I don't know, that coma you were in last night was pretty impressive."
Klavier tapped his laptop with his fingernail. "That's the product of a pretty impressive caseload."
"...Oh, I didn't realize you were trying to work."
"No worries, it's a tax evasion case," he said dryly.
Apollo yawned again. "Sounds thrilling."
"Ja. I figured that if you were going to spend the day barely conscious, I should, as well."
"...Enjoy that." Apollo decided to let him work, and his body appreciated that decision. It wasn't even thirty seconds before he was asleep.
~O~
When Apollo woke up, it was dark outside, and Klavier had traded his laptop for his phone. He was smiling, but it was mostly in his eyes.
"You look happy," Apollo said in a sleepy stupor.
"Ah, you're awake." His eyes were full of life in a way Apollo had rarely seen from him before. Something had definitely changed since Apollo fell asleep.
"What have you been up to?" Apollo asked.
"I hit a wall on that case, so I asked my mother for advice."
He was that happy to be texting his mom? Man, that was cute. "Is she a lawyer?"
"A judge." He grinned. "Not in our congressional district, though. She lives close to Themis."
Apollo recalled Themis being too far to bike to, and he had a very high limit of how far he'd bike before taking a taxi. "It's hard for me to imagine a judge… without a beard and a bald head."
Klavier laughed. "Nein, my mother and His Honor are about as far as they come. Though I suppose she's just as easily excited…" He frowned. "Ah… This is probably a sore subject, ja?"
"N-no, not at all!" Apollo winced from the pain of speaking too loudly, trying very hard not to cough. "I mean, I'm only upset when I see people... taking their moms for granted. Which you're clearly not doing."
Klavier smiled. "It's hard not to feel fortunate. She's a wonderful woman."
"Is she a musician, too?" He wanted to keep Klavier talking, if only to keep that smile on his face. Was that weird? Probably. But seeing Klavier this happy was incredibly rare.
"Ja, she's a pianist." He glanced off to the side and grinned. "Don't ask her to sing, though. She has no sense of intonation."
Apollo smirked. "It's hard to play the piano out of tune."
"Is that swagger of yours implying that you can sing in tune?" Klavier looked amused.
"Not with bronchitis," Apollo mumbled. Klavier got an intrigued smile on his face. "O-or ever!" He'd put his foot in his mouth if he wasn't coughing. Dang it, his stupid throat was only allowed to betray him in one way at a time!
"I'll have to hear this sometime."
"Not. A. Chance." Apollo crossed his arms and settled back down. He was so tired of Klavier's crap that another 12 hours of sleep seemed feasible.
"Hold it," Klavier said.
Apollo opened his eyes, but just barely. "Don't steal my lines."
"If you're going back to sleep already, you should take your medicine first."
"Does that require moving?" Apollo asked, uncrossing his arms just enough to hold his stomach. He really didn't want to do that.
Klavier chuckled. "It's funny how fast you can switch between 'Leave me alone, I'm fine' and 'Help me, I'm dying.'"
Well, if he was going to be that way, Apollo could stand up on his own. Getting his feet from the arm of the couch to the ground required some abdominal muscles, but after that, if he moved slowly...
"Yes!" He was excited to get on his feet, even though getting up still hurt.
"Congratulations… But you've only really proven my point." Klavier smirked.
"I did?" Apollo thought about it for a moment- he'd just switched between "I'm dying" and "I'm fine" again, hadn't he? "...Oh."
Klavier laughed. "Come on, let's get your medicine."
Apollo had his temperature taken again- 99.7. "That's not 100!"
"It seems as if you won't need your fever reducer anymore," Klavier said. "I was only supposed to give you that if your fever was 100.4 or above."
100.4? That was oddly specific. "Mr. Wright said I could work once my fever was gone."
Klavier looked at him critically. "...We can have that conversation once your fever is actually gone. You still have a degree to go, ja?"
Apollo made the mistake of whining about his sore throat while swallowing his antibiotic, so Klavier made both of them tea. And although Apollo wouldn't have imagined sitting down for tea with Klavier Gavin a week ago, it was… nice.
They talked about some movie Apollo had never seen starring an actor Apollo had never heard of- "You've never seen The Great Moozilla vs. Gourdy?"- who Klavier apparently knew. "It's got the most ridiculous premise, but the acting is so good you believe it."
Then Apollo started talking about the show Trucy was working on- "It's got an Alice in Wonderland theme. All of her classes are online this semester... so she can prepare for it." It was honestly kind of fun talking to an insider of the entertainment world so casually.
But tea is sort of a finite thing, as is a human's ability to survive without sleep. "Are you sure you're all right on the couch?" Klavier asked.
"Yeah. It's better than the one at the agency… that's for sure." And the floor of Apollo's tent, but that went unsaid.
"I apologize again that I don't have a guest bedroom…"
"It's fine, Prosecutor Gavin," Apollo said, trying to sound reassuring. It really was kind of strange for him not to have a guest bedroom, but Apollo had already accepted the fact that this house was weird. "Now go sleep."
Klavier seemed sort of hesitant. "...OK," he finally said. "Sleep well."
"You too."
