WORTH NOTING: THIS FIC IS ON HIATUS WHILE I REPLAY ALL OF AA — 2/4 COMPLETE AS OF MAY 2021
fun fact: i'm going through and rewriting all my old klavema fics; some are already done!
ones left to revamp: karma, a muffin for a boyfriend, a simple misconception
It's a game.
It's a really, really dumb game.
It's a game that could get them both fired.
But it's a game that she will win.
It starts out like this:
From the very second that detective Ema Skye had been forced to shake hands with her newest boss, Klavier Gavin, she had hated him. Loathed him. Despised him.
Really, she could keep going, but frankly it's a long list of synonyms and it gets exhausting.
Klavier, on the other hand, seemed to be quite comfortable with her immediately—
a little too comfortable. He playfully flirts with her all the time, and he often pokes fun to get a rise out of her.
She's not stupid— she's well aware that he makes a point of getting under her skin intentionally, just to flash her that stupid smug smirk and to enjoy her reaction.
So, after weighing some turbulent thoughts in her head for days, Ema topples the first domino and begins it all.
Klavier is in the copy room scanning his own papers for once instead of having some peon do it for him. Honestly, the menial task is mostly an excuse for him to get out of his office, walk around, and stand on his two feet— sitting all day isn't pleasant.
The door opens and shuts behind him, and when he sees who it is, he grins in a cocky manner.
Ema scowls openly at him, turns to the copier/printer combination opposite him, and shoves her flash drive into it. She's carrying a huge mug of coffee (as usual) and her hair is all let down— no ponytail today.
She begins selecting the files she wants printed on the poorly maintained touch screen and the repeated mechanical sound of the copier behind her buzzes in her ears. Innocently, she turns towards him and rocks back and forth gently on her heels, before finally speaking (somewhat mockingly).
"What are you doing down here? I always figured that you'd send someone like Meekins to do shit like this."
"And have half my paperwork printed entirely in cyan again? No thank you, fräulein detective." Klavier's eyes finally meet hers directly and they're full of laughter.
Playing it cool, she just groans and brings her right hand to lightly smack her forehead, "Doesn't he know that if the fucking printer is 'low on cyan' it won't shut the fuck up or print any damn thing at all?"
Klavier laughs melodically.
"Nein. Definitely not."
There's a few more moments of silence that follow the brief conversation, during which Ema pretends to pick at some kind of nonexistent scum under her nails and Klavier opts to just stare blankly at the copier as it spits out paper after paper. It isn't until he hears a loud cry of pain that he whirls around.
Ema, in going to take a huge sip of her drink, had apparently lost the lid at the last moment and as a result had managed to douse herself in boiling hot coffee. Klavier panics for just a moment before he runs over and rips off both her scarf and her vest (the buttons pop open, but he figures he'll apologize for it later), which are soaked with the scalding hot liquid.
She hisses loudly in pain, and it's easy to see why— he can see a bright red hue blossoming on her skin where the coffee had landed— but as bad as that is, it's not the real subject of his gaze right now. Without her vest and scarf, all that remains covering Ema's entire torso is her usual somewhat pink blouse, which had always been deemed "work appropriate" solely because it was perpetually covered by her green vest. The fabric is somewhat thin, and since the bra underneath it is black, it's extremely visible.
For a moment he's completely dumbfounded— something that does not happen to him often.
A split second later his eyes dart up to meet hers, and upon seeing her face, he's incredibly surprised that this time she's the one smirking.
Ema shifts slightly, and since she's hunched over, her cleavage moves with the rest of her, visible and obviously aesthetically pleasing.
"Let's make a bet."
His brow furrows in confusion, but then he nods, silently signaling for her to continue.
"Let's see who cracks first." Her eyes flash suggestively at him.
"'Cracks first'?" Klavier seems to be unsure of the meaning of the slang term, which she can't really blame him for given that English is not his first language.
"What I'm asking is that we see how far we can get away with shit at work," Ema says bluntly before continuing with, "and who can hold out the longest."
Klavier's eyes smolder, and he stares her down with very curious gaze:
"Why?"
She flashes him a self-righteous grin and says in a totally un-Ema-like sing-songy voice:
"Because it's my turn to get under your skin."
"You're fucking joking," Klavier can barely choke the words out, clearly blindsided.
"About which part?" She asks, feigning innocence.
"The part where you just doused yourself in boiling hot liquid to say that, Ema."
"Small price to pay to get the undivided attention that I needed at the time." Ema shrugs her shoulders in a completely nonchalant manner, and automatically his eyes are tempted to wander down towards her chest again—
But instead Klavier chooses to just stare at her in disbelief, and then shakes his head. He moves to return her scarf and (now destroyed) vest, both soaked in coffee. She reaches out to accept them, but at the last second he yanks them backward and grabs her wrist with his other hand, pulling her closer and into a vice grip.
When her eyes snap upward to look at his face, he's smiling incredibly sweetly, but for once the grin is unreadable— which surprises her.
"I'll take that bet, fräulein."
Ema despises when he calls her that, but she lets it slide and then laughs anyway— and it's not a cutesy giggle at all— but more of a mocking kind of laughter:
"You know, there's an old saying about gambling."
"Oh?" He quirks a brow, the beginning of a smile forming on his lips.
"'If you're just goofing around, don't gamble. If you're going to gamble, don't goof around.'"
"Dark, but accurate."
The Ema's free hand suddenly grabs onto the arm he had captured her wrist with, and she does so with just as tight a grasp. His blue eyes shoot up to clash head on with her green ones, which are somehow wild and dangerous, and she proceeds to ask the obvious:
"So, Klavier, are you goofing around?"
There's a very brief pause, and then:
"Nein."
Another smug look graces her face, and she's moving to get up when he interrupts any thoughts she had been having—
"But some ground rules are probably a good idea for a bet so risky, no?"
Once Ema is back on her feet, she leans against the printer behind her and places one foot in front of the other, silent for a moment as she thinks, and then finally makes an annoyed expression when she is forced to concede the point. "I suppose that's true. We could both lose our jobs."
Klavier stands up and makes a noise of acknowledgment, but not dissent.
Ema sighs before starting, "Okay, ground rules, here we come. What's number one?"
"Absolutely no one else can know, see, or hear us— I mean, unless we're trying to get at each other in public," he pauses briefly to make sure she's hearing the blatant suggestiveness in his voice— "but even then it HAS to stay secret."
"Of course, dumbass."
Klavier chuckles in somewhat hidden delight— Ema has been snippy with him in the past, but never so brazen. He would be lying entirely if he were to claim that he disliked the new shift in demeanor. Finally, he releases her wrist and asks:
"Number two?"
She takes her hand off his arm when he lets her go, stops, thinks for a moment once more, and then says, "Well, honestly, the only real necessary rule is the first one."
Klavier looks at her curiously, silently urging her to continue with his gaze.
"Look, we both know there's no way to play this game and win without playing dirty or breaking any 'rules' we would set," Ema says while shrugging again, "so that's the rule. Number one is the only rule that matters."
Klavier, a prosecutor, can't really argue with that logic.
He takes a moment, allowing himself to briefly glance back down to her chest before his eyes wander back upwards to reach her face, the sides of his mouth curving upwards into a smirk.
Ema notices his expression shifting, and she gives him the iciest smile that he's possibly ever received, and what comes after surprises him:
"You won't win this."
Klavier appears to reel for a moment internally at her intensely blunt statement, but is quick to snap back with a very self assured, "Don't be so sure, fräulein."
She looks him right in the eyes a final time, and her cold smile melts into a look of immense pride and clear self-confidence before she speaks:
"No holds barred, I suppose."
The printer that Ema had been utilizing spits out the last of her selected documents so she removes her flash drive, takes the neat stack of papers, and walks out without another word or any type of acknowledgment at all.
Turning back to his copier, Klavier smiles to himself before proceeding to hum the chorus of one of the songs played by his band, and then says to no one in particular:
"Oh, I know how to get creative."