Chapter Text
He might be dating Klavier.
They never talked about it; Apollo still hadn't managed to figure out how he was supposed to bring it up. How did someone even start that conversation? “Hey, I know we kissed once, but I practically ran away two seconds later so I’m not really sure if it counts.”
As soon as the memory came back to him, he wanted to curl into an infinitely tight ball and roll into some infinitely small space to hide for some infinitely long period of time.
He hadn’t even meant to kiss him.
Not that he hadn’t wanted to – he had. Though maybe he hadn’t realized it until right then, when he’d been all of a foot away from him (if that) and staring at those damn well-moisturized lips of his like he was a rom-com love interest cliché. And then somewhere between the moment where he’d closed his eyes and dragged him down by his over-starched lapels, and the moment where Klavier had actually started kissing him back, he’d realized that this was a Very Very Bad Idea.
And then he’d run away.
But he had kissed him before the whole fleeing the scene part, and that had to mean that there were some…feelings involved. Somewhere. Maybe they had names. And if Klavier had kissed him back (at least for one glorious second before his frontal lobe had gotten the chance to reboot), that meant that they probably had some of those feelings in common.
But how was he supposed to talk about that?
He picked up his phone and scrolled through the contacts, all the way down to K, and sure enough, there he was, the contact picture that Apollo had off-handedly downloaded from Facebook smirking back up at him. Sure, he had options – a phone call (was that too impersonal?), a text (that was definitely too impersonal, maybe bordering on trashy), a hand-scrawled note reading Do you want to date me? Y/N (circle one).
He was making this too hard on himself; he knew that, but at the moment he was having trouble thinking straight. Once he’d mulled it over a little more, he wanted to bang his head against his desk for being so damn ridiculous. Of course they weren’t dating; one kiss did not a relationship make, and he hadn’t even talked to the guy since that kiss had happened. Dating involved candles, and flowers, and actual conversations that didn't involve one party asking the no-take-backsies rule applied to impulsive kisses.
He looked at his watch. One hour and nine minutes ago. It had happened one hour and nine minutes ago, and now he was home and he hadn’t even changed out of his starched formal wear.
Just as he wondered how much of a blow to his pride and reputation it would cause him to write into an anonymous advice column in the local paper, his phone buzzed in his hand. For one fleeting moment, his stomach jumped up into his chest and pushed his heart straight into his throat because if Klavier had beat him to the punch and dialed him before he got the chance to plan his next move – he had narrowed it down to either A) sucking it up and going to talk to Klavier in person about the whole thing the next day or B) crawling into the nearest hole and waiting until time and pressure slowly transformed him into a lump of coal – he might actually revert back to a flustered teenager and shove his phone between his mattress and the wall and shove a pillow over his ears until it stopped ringing. That or pick up and say something that would make him regret all this even more.
But that wasn’t Klavier’s ringtone, and it wasn’t his contact picture smirking at him from his screen. Instead, the first few lines of the chorus to Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion were accompanied by Athena’s smiling face against the backdrop of the courthouse doors. If she didn’t already know something was up, she would within a minute of talking to him now, but not answering after he’d beat such a hasty retreat tonight would inevitably only worry her more.
So he took a breath, pressed his thumb over the illuminated “Answer” button before bringing the phone to his ear. “Hey.”
“Apollo! What’s going on with you? We couldn’t figure out where you went after the reception. The boss said you weren’t feeling well or something.” She paused. “I thought I tasted strawberry in the icing of that cake. Should I have said something?”
He hid his face in the crook of one arm, feeling the tiniest hint of a smile tickling the corners of his mouth – as awful as he was feeling, Athena’s doting worry had a strange way of making him feel better. Maybe it just felt good to know someone cared. “Well, since my throat isn't closing up, I'm pretty sure the cake was fine. I’m fine.” It didn’t come out with nearly as much conviction as he had been hoping for. “I was just…tired.”
When Athena didn’t answer right away, he knew there was no use lying; he knew that silence, if it was possible for a silence to be familiar. “It was a nice wedding though, right?” He tone was gentle, and that made him drop his arm, that smile finally slipping onto his face.
“Yeah…it was pretty great. Mr. Wright cried.”
“I know! I always had him pegged as a wedding crier though. Mr. Edgeworth on the other hand…”
“Edgeworth?” He sat up. “He wasn’t-“
“He was. Barely. His eyes were watering like crazy. You’d think he was keeping the tears in by sheer force of will.”
He reached up and started to loosen his tie; he’d been dressed up for long enough. “Knowing the Chief Prosecutor, he probably was.” His tie fell on the foot of his bed. “Makes sense, though…Apparently he was pretty close with Detective Gumshoe back in the day.”
“Back in the day…you make it sound like he’s a washed up old rockstar.”
Apollo winced at that. “Rockstar, huh…” he mused.
There was that silence again, and this time, Athena sighed. “Alright, I promised myself I wouldn’t do this, because I know that people don’t always need or want the whole psychologist treatment, but your voice is-“
“Yeah, yeah, I know…discord and rampaging emotions and all that mumbo-jumbo-“ Before she had the chance to answer, he slapped a hand over his eyes. “Sorry. I snapped, didn’t I?”
“Just a little.” He didn’t have her hyper-sensitive hearing, but to him at least, she didn’t sound angry or even hurt. “Don’t worry, it’d take more than that to hurt my feelings. You though…Did something happen?”
“Is there any point in trying to lie to you?”
“Nope. But that doesn’t mean you have to tell me if you don’t want to.”
“It’s okay…” He toed off his socks. “Can you give me a minute? I want to change out of these formal clothes before I have this conversation.”
“Fair enough. It’ll give me a chance to do the same.”
“You’re home?”
“The party started winding down not long after you left. You actually had pretty good timing, all things considered.” That made him smile again. “Call back in ten minutes? It’ll give me a chance to change out of these clothes and brush my teeth.”
It sounded like a good plan, and once he’d hung up, he was down to his boxers in no time. He hadn’t realized just how stuffy those clothes were until he was out of them. Sure, he spent the better part of his time in his court attire, but those were familiar, well-worn and reasonably comfortable. His formal wear fit him well and wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but wearing a long-sleeved dress shirt and jacket in California summer, even if the wedding was indoors, wasn’t exactly the most pleasant.
At least Athena didn’t have to bother with pants.
By the time he’d pulled on a T-shirt, washed his face and brushed his teeth – and even reminded himself to floss – his phone was buzzing again on his bed. “Comfortable?” she asked him when he answered, and he rolled onto his back on the bed.
“Better.”
“So do you want to talk?” Her tone was casual, not pressing or clinical; his heart had begun to pound again at the thought of re-experiencing what had happened at the reception, but at the very least, that helped to put him a bit more at ease. “I mean, if you don’t want to-“
“I do. I mean, I don’t…not really, but I kind of have to. I mean, I don’t know what to do, and…” He rolled onto his stomach and buried his face into the pillow. “Mmhf mf mmf.”
“What?”
He turned his head to the side. “Don’t freak out.”
“You know you can’t lead with that and expect me to listen, right?”
“It’s nothing bad. Well, not objectively.”
“So you didn’t murder anyone. Good to know.”
Apollo raised an eyebrow. “Not at the reception.” That got a laugh out of her. “No, it’s…it’s something personal.”
“Okay,” said Athena. “How personal?”
“One to ten?”
“If it helps.”
He blew an apathetic raspberry into the receiver. “Six? Maybe closer to five. Five and a half?” He closed his eyes. There was no use running around it at this point; he’d made up his mind to tell her, so there was no getting out of it now. “I kissed Klavier.”
He was glad he’d moved the receiver a bit farther from his ear right after he spoke, because Athena’s response was immediate and nearly deafening: “You what now?”
“Don’t make me say it again,” he groaned, closing his eyes tightly as if he could keep the memory from playing over again in his mind. It started to sneak in again despite how hard he tried to fight it: the way Klavier’s lips felt against his, soft and eager; the way he smelled like rosemary and that expensive beeswax hand lotion; how warm firm his body had felt under that high quality jacket of his.
He shook his head to stop the playback, and Athena was speaking again: “Sorry, sorry…Didn’t mean to freak out there. But can you really blame me? I mean, you…you kissed him?”
“It just sort of happened. And he kissed me back…” The last part was mumbled, heat creeping onto his cheeks. He still couldn’t quite believe it himself. “But we’re not dating or anything.”
Of course we’re not. Why would we be dating? We only kissed once…
“Wait- hold on. Back up. I need details, Apollo. Details.”
“What other details do you need? That’s kind of the whole story.”
She let out an impatient noise. “Well where did it happen? How did it-“
“I needed some air, so I went to the foyer. He was there, and we started talking, and I just…suddenly, I just really wanted to…” He groaned. “So I did. Stupid…”
Athena didn’t say anything right away; even without seeing her, he could picture her playing with that earring of hers as she pondered his words. Finally, she asked, “Do you want me to come over?”
“No-“
“I could. I can hop in my car and be there in a few minutes if you want to talk in person.”
It wasn’t hard to figure out what she was doing; he’d always felt more at ease in conversation when he could see the person he was talking to. “No, it’s fine. I’m not in crisis or anything, I just…I have a lot on my mind.”
“I bet.” There was a rustling noise as she moved the phone from one ear to the other; she’d never liked stressing one for too long over the other. “Now I know this is kind of a predictable question, but have you talked to him?”
He made a small, frustrated noise. “I guess that’s a no, huh?”
“It’s a no,” he said. There was a moment of silence on the line as he considered what she would say if he told her the rest. He decided he was in for all or nothing. “I kind of ran away.”
“What do you mean you ran away?”
“I mean what I said. I kissed him, and then when I realized what the hell I was doing, I ran away.”
“But you said he kissed you back. Why did you run away if he-“
“Because I don’t understand any of this,” he snapped. “I’m not good at this kind of thing. I don’t know what…I don’t know how...” He let himself trail off, rubbing his eyes. It was late, and he had to be in the office at nine the next day. “I should go to bed, and so should you.”
“What are you, my dad? But you’re right.”
His tone softened. “Thanks for calling.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” He could hear her smile, as saccharine as that sounded. “Hey, I know you’re ready to stop talking about this, and I’ll drop it, but…Talk to Klavier, okay? When you’re ready.”
“You seem like you have an awful lot of confidence in me.”
“I’ve seen you in court enough to know that you always come through in the end.” There was something in those words that made a heady swirl of emotion boil up in his chest, memories of the UR-1 retrial fighting the events of the evening for space in his mind. He shook them off as best he could, because if he needed any more proof that she had been a big enough person to forgive him for his doubts, the fondness in her voice was more than enough evidence.
He managed a small smile. “I will…eventually. I’ll have to after all. I can’t just avoid facing him in the courtroom ever again.”
“True. G’night, Apollo.”
“Night, Athena.”
He put his phone on his nightstand, plugged into its charger for the night, and he reached over to switch off the light before settling down into bed. But sleep proved elusive; he watched the numbers on his digital clock tick by, red and taunting.
“Talk to Klavier,” Athena had said. Suddenly he found himself not only dreading it less with each passing minute, but actually starting to want to. He couldn’t avoid Klavier for the rest of his days, nor did he think he’d enjoy that in the least.
After all, he’d kissed him for a reason; he couldn’t deny that he liked him, in some way or another at least.
He picked up his phone, squinting against the sudden assault on his retinas, and he scrolled down to Klavier’s name and opened a new text message. It was almost one in the morning, but something told him that Klavier would still be awake despite that; the man had always struck him as a night owl.
He couldn’t bring up what had happened via text message, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t send one.
Had a good time tonight.
Delete. It carried too many potential hidden meanings. He wasn't propositioning the guy.
Let’s get dinner sometime.
Delete. It sounded too much like an invitation on a date, and he refused to extend such an invitation via a text in the middle of the night after running away from their first real kiss.
Lunch tomorrow?
He stared at it for a moment; it seemed alright…but the 1:08 AM timestamp carried something that felt too close to desperation. So he deleted that one too and put his phone back on the nightstand.
Late night texts led to regret too often, and he’d dealt with enough of that already in the past several hours. It could wait until morning.