Chapter Text
Drip.
Drip.
Apollo turns the page of his textbook. The sound is growing louder, closer, but he ignores it best he can, same as he ignores the temperature in his room dropping lower and lower by the minute.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
He scribbles something down in his notebook. Mikeko grumbles in his lap as that awful dripping sound draws closer and closer, his ears flicking back and claws digging into Apollo’s thighs through his sweatpants. “I know,” Apollo mutters. “I know.”
He knows the sound by now. It’s nothing new - this incessant, rhythmic sound like water pooling at the mouth of a leaky faucet. Again and again and again, consistent as a metronome and with it comes the smell of something thick and metallic and sharp, filling Apollo’s nose if he focuses on it too closely. It’s not water, though. He knows it. Knows it without turning to see it, the constant leaky-faucet flow of incorporeal blood collecting in the open cavity of a dead boy’s chest, oozing through the dirty fabric of his disheveled shirt with one of the buttons missing and the others done up wrong, dripping down down down to pool on Apollo’s bedroom floor. There it gathers in the cracks in the old hardwood, filling the gaps and spaces before vanishing into nothingness only to be replaced, refilled, just a moment later because the blood never stops, not even in death.
Apollo dreams of it, sometimes. He dreams of death. It’s a symptom of living in this house, the walls flush with ghosts, their history spilling through the air unavoidable as a gas leak. If it were up to Apollo, if Apollo had a choice, he would dream of other things. Pleasant things. He would close his mind from the half-there memories of a person’s final moments on this earth - he doesn’t want to know, doesn’t want to see and, god, he doesn’t want to feel it. He would prefer if the scant memories of a ghost’s life stays rotting in the grave.
But Apollo doesn’t have a choice. With the house comes the ghosts, and with the ghosts comes the dreams - he dreams of the gunshot, loud and ringing in his ears like nothing he’s ever heard before, louder than the voices screaming and there’s that white-hot brilliant pain exploding in his chest like a dying star. And in that moment before everything stops, a sobbing woman with ornate black hair presses her warm, warm hand to the curve of his cheek and says something Apollo can never hear, can never make out from the red slash of her mouth in his fading vision before the world grows cold and dark.
If he has to dream of these things at all, though, he prefers that one. In that dream, his dream, at least the pain is over quickly. He wakes once the bullet takes his life, and though that explosive feeling lingers in his chest it only lasts for a few minutes before it’s gone.
It’s not like that with her.
Her dream haunts him, long after he wakes gasping for breath and drenched in cold sweat, his ears ringing with the ticking of watches and his hands scrabbling desperate at his aching jaw to catch the blood pouring in rivulets from his gums, down his chin and that one single tooth falling loose from his slack mouth, lying there in his hand (his hand with the fingernails glowing in the fading light) and the tooth is stark white as a freshwater pearl, as untouched snow, there in the dark and pooling blood.
When he wakes from that dream, of course, there is no blood. He frantically checks his mouth for teeth and finds them all there, but there’s a terrible taste on his tongue that he can’t get rid of for hours no matter what he does; he gargles five times with mouthwash but when he spits it out (half expecting it to come out bloody in the sink) the taste of the paint comes back and he just has to wait it out, wait until it fades until he catches her in the reflection of the window or the quiet TV, her ghost with her long hair and serious eyes and the memory of her death floods him once more.
So, yes, he would rather dream of the gunshot, but he doesn’t get that choice. He’s just grateful these dreams are few and far between.
That doesn’t stop the ghosts from bothering him when he’s awake, though. Here, now, in his haunted room in this haunted house, that telltale freezing cold grows ever stronger at his back and Apollo thinks a whole hour of undisturbed study time might be a new record.
A voice, loud in his ear: “The fuck is that thing?”
“It’s a dinosaur, Wocky.”
“A what now?” Wocky leans over Apollo’s shoulder, and Apollo resists the urge to wrench away from the sudden chill racing up and down his spine. He squints at the general biology textbook lying open on the desk to the chapter on evolution, the classic depiction of a T. rex roaring on the page. “No shot that’s real.”
Apollo sighs. It’s a deep sigh, one that rattles his lungs.
Vera doesn’t bother him like this. Vera is shy as sin and quieter than the grave she lies in; she wouldn’t bother Apollo unless it was extremely important, and even then she might not bother him at all. He’s been living in this house for almost half a year and can count the amount of times he’s had an actual conversation with Vera Misham on his hands - it’s like he’s the ghost, the way she looks at him when he talks to her. When she does speak her voice is quiet, gentle; it’s not hard to picture her as the soft-spoken watch painter with that bandana tied in her hair, spots of glowing paint on her hands.
Wocky told Apollo, once, that Vera’s teeth glow too. He said she’s insecure about it. Apollo wonders if that's why she hides her face when she talks.
Apollo twists in his chair, facing Wocky’s not-quite-there form head on. Wocky’s staring at the T. rex with a distinct look on his ghost-pale face like he’s wondering if he could take it in a fight. “Have you really never seen a dinosaur before?”
“I seen ‘em on your TV, yeah, but I thought they were somethin’ fake like dolphins or whatever,” Wocky replies. He flips upside down in the air, his curly hair and loose suspenders dangling. Mikeko growls in irritation. “Y’know. Shit made up by the feds.”
“I…you know what? I don’t have time to unpack all of that.”
Wocky makes a face. “You must got a lotta luggage lyin’ around ‘cause you tell me that all the damn time.”
Apollo ignores him. He’s gotten really, really good at ignoring Wocky over the past five months - someone should give him an award. He grabs his phone off the desk and types dinosaur into the search bar, pulling up the images page. He turns the screen to show Wocky, scrolling through the countless pictures of archeologists unearthing dinosaur bones and teeth, and the scientific reimagining of what dinosaurs may have looked like. “See? They lived a long time ago, before humans evolved. They’re extinct now so they aren’t around anymore.”
Wocky clicks his tongue, still upside down. “Okay, so they’re like big ass lizards.”
“Essentially, yes.”
“Wack,” Wocky mutters, squinting at Apollo’s phone. “Wait, that one’s got feathers. Lizards don’t got feathers.”
Apollo turns his phone back around, looking at the picture Wocky was referring to of a small, feathery dinosaur. He doesn’t know what species it is. He doesn’t know anything about dinosaurs; if he didn’t have to take biology and evolution as a general class requirement, he wouldn’t be taking it at all. He’s trying to be a lawyer, not a paleontologist.
Really, he’s the exact wrong person to be explaining evolution to a dead gangster from the 1920’s.
He doesn’t think there’s a right person for that, though.
“Oh, um…I think scientists proved that some dinosaurs had feathers? I mean, birds evolved from dinosaurs, so it makes sense.”
Wocky blinks. He flips right-side up, staring at Apollo with wide eyes. “What?”
“What?”
“The hell did you just say?”
“…Birds evolved from dinosaurs..?”
Wocky looks at the T. Rex in the textbook and then back to Apollo. “That thing?” He exclaims, pointing at the image. “You’re telling me that thing shot out a fucking pigeon? Like them wack motherfuckers I saw chokin’ on a stale hot dog bun the other day?”
“Wocky, I told you to stop feeding the pigeons, bread is bad for them-“
“That ain’t the damn point, Justice!”
Apollo sighs, pinching at the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Deep breaths, Apollo. This is just like training for dealing with unruly witnesses. “Didn’t they teach you about dinosaurs when you were alive? They were discovered by then, right?”
“You kiddin’ me?” Wocky scoffs, crossing his arms over the bleeding hole in his chest. “Do I look like the type of guy to sit around learnin’ whatever dumb shit you got in that boring ass book? I was busy.”
To Wocky’s credit, he does not, in fact, look like the type of guy you would find studying for a general biology test. He looks like the kind of guy you’d find selling cigarettes to students hand-rolled with cheap tobacco behind the med building that threatened to stab you if you snitched.
(But Apollo knows Wocky isn’t like that. Once, when he got up for a glass of water at four in the morning, he caught Wocky watching The Ultimatum: Queer Love and crying buckets. Apollo still isn’t sure how he managed to pull it up on the TV, but he’s definitely ruining the Netflix algorithm.)
Wocky plops on Apollo’s desk, the sunlight streaming in through the windows sending dusty rays through his skin. It’s disconcerting the way he just passes through the cup of pencils, leaving Apollo’s eraser and sticky tabs completely undisturbed. Mikeko hisses and bolts off Apollo’s lap, forever Wocky’s worst enemy. Wocky shoots him a disappointed look before turning back to Apollo’s textbook. “How many teeth you think that guy’s got, though?” He asks, pointing at the T. rex picture again. “Like, a thousand?”
“If you let me focus I could probably find out for you,” Apollo says pointedly, turning back to his studying.
Wocky doesn’t take the hint, though. Either that, or he does take the hint and is choosing to ignore it. “I dunno, maybe a thousand is too much,” he muses, propping his chin in his palm. “Kinda overkill. Hundred tops, maybe.”
Apollo doesn’t deign him with a reply. He works on taking a few more notes as Wocky yaps on, sticking his fingers in his own mouth and trying to figure out how many teeth he has (apparently he lost one in a fight against some guy named Big Tony) and somehow using that information to determine how many teeth a massive murder lizard (Wocky’s words, not Apollo’s) would have. In other words, absolute nonsense that Apollo isn’t paying attention to.
Wocky swings his feet back and forth as he talks. For a dead man he sure moves a hell of a lot, drumming his fingers soundlessly on the desk, messing with the diamond studs sparkling in his ears. When Wocky’s feet get too close to the desk drawers, his heels just pass harmlessly through the wood. He’s wearing black and white loafers that might’ve been shiny, once, but over the course of his life collected countless scuffs and nicks that remained in death. There’s a few spots of blood staining the fine white leather.
(Apollo does wonder, sometimes, why Wocky and Vera can’t move on. He wonders what keeps them tied to this house. He wonders if he searches their names, what he will find - the gangster and the watch-painter - but he doesn’t want to disrespect their privacy like that.)
Apollo turns to the next page.
“You think Vera knows about dinosaurs?” Wocky says suddenly.
“I don’t know,” Apollo says flatly. “Maybe you should ask her. That might involve talking to her for once, though, so maybe not.”
Wocky’s face flushes, and his eyebrows pinch together. “You shut the fuck up or I’ll shank you.”
“Did you even have shanks back then?”
“People been stabbin’ each other since the dawn of time, Justice,” Wocky says sagely. “Don’t make no difference whether it’s some animal bone or newspaper you roll up real tight and make a nice sharp point out of.”
“…Have you stabbed someone with a newspaper before?”
Wocky grins at Apollo, feral and crooked. “Take a guy out to dinner first before you ask him what he’s stabbin’ with.”
Apollo rolls his eyes. There’s someone in this house he’d like to take out to dinner but it isn’t Wocky Kitaki.
His phone buzzes on the desk a minute later from where it sits underneath Wocky’s thigh. The vibration causes Wocky’s form to flicker and blur for a second, and he shudders and promptly falls through the desk, arms and legs flailing.
“Fuckin’ hell, I hate it when that happens,” he mutters, but the sound comes out muffled because his head is inside Apollo’s desk drawer.
“Then stop sitting on my phone,” Apollo replies. He checks his phone to find three messages from Clay.
private message: Clay Terran
1:27 PM Clay: yo r we still on for the meteor shower festival next tuesday
1:27 PM Clay: i still think u should invite klavier! ill even give u permission to make it a date
1:28 PM Clay: not that i wanna third wheel on ur first date but as ur best friend i will make that sacrifice
Apollo’s mouth twists into a frown. He leans back in his chair as he types out a reply.
1:29 PM Apollo: I am not inviting Klavier
1:29 PM Clay: UGH WHAT WHY NOT
1:30 PM Clay: r u just gonna lust away for the rest of your life then
1:30 PM Apollo: I’m not lusting??
1:30 PM Clay: would u prefer PINING
1:31 PM Clay: perhaps…yearning?
1:31 PM Clay: longing
1:31 PM Clay: craving
1:31 PM Clay: hankering
1:32 PM Apollo: Jesus, Clay, put the thesaurus away
1:32 PM Clay: if I have to deal with ur constant hankering for ur hot roommate then I also get to bully u about it babe that’s how it works
1:33 PM Apollo: Stop saying hankering
1:34 PM Clay: i won’t!!
1:34 PM Clay: but srsly u should invite him even if its just a friend thing
1:35 PM Clay: prof starbuck thinks that it would be very romantic!!
1:35 PM Apollo: PLEASE STOP TALKING ABOUT MY LOVE LIFE TO YOUR ASTROPHYSICS PROFESSOR
He’s waiting for Clay’s response, watching those three little dots bounce on his phone screen, when a knock comes at his bedroom door so suddenly that Apollo nearly throws his phone across the room.
“Apollo?” comes that melodic, sing-song voice, drifting through the door, and Apollo feels his cheeks burn just hearing the sound of it. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Wocky snorts from the floor.
“Shut up!” Apollo hisses at him. “Get the fuck out of here. Phase through the floor or whatever.”
Wocky sticks out his tongue and decidedly does not phase through the floor. “It ain’t like he can see me.”
“I hate you.”
“Nah, you don’t.”
Apollo growls in his throat before getting to his feet. He runs his hands through his hair and pats down his shirt before opening the door - the sweatpants he’s wearing are a few days old but there’s nothing he can do about it now. They look clean, at least.
It’s been two months since Klavier Gavin moved in with Apollo Justice, and on particularly bad days, Apollo doesn’t know what’s worse: living with actual, literal ghosts, or living with him.
Apollo takes a breath and opens the door.
Klavier Gavin stands behind it. Apollo knew he would be behind it. There was plenty of evidence to point to this conclusion; the voice behind the door, the fact that there’s no one else in the house (no one living, anyway) and the general unlikelihood of a serial killer breaking into his house just to knock on the door and call him by name in the middle of the day. If it were a serial killer, he has a baseball bat and pepper spray to protect himself, but he has nothing to protect himself against a German music major that sings while he makes breakfast and takes an hour in the bathroom every morning. They don’t make self defense weapons against that.
Despite all the evidence screaming that Klavier is going to be behind that door, Apollo still has to force his heart to calm down when he sees him. It’s not fault that Klavier looks like that in a leather jacket with his hair down, his stupid long, pretty hair that looks soft to the touch and Apollo just knows it would be soft and silky because Klavier clearly takes very good care of himself because look at him.
Also, he takes an hour in the bathroom every morning. Apollo would honestly be pissed if Klavier managed to look like shit after that.
Klavier quirks a brow, and Apollo realizes he’s just been staring at him for thirty seconds. Fuck me.
“What,” Apollo says instead, eloquently, and then winces at how loudly that came out. “UM. I mean, hi?”
A smile tugs at Klavier’s perfect cupid’s-bow mouth and Wocky bursts into laughter behind him. “Hallo, Apollo.”
Apollo swallows. Oh, god. Jesus fuck. “Hey, Klavier.”
Klavier leans his arm on the doorframe above Apollo, tilting his head and this is the worst part about him, Apollo thinks. He’s flirty. He’s so fucking flirty and Apollo can’t handle it - he doesn’t know what it means or if it even means anything at all because as far as he can tell, Klavier flirts with everyone. Given the chance he’s pretty sure Klavier would flirt with a plant.
“I hope I’m not interrupting?” Klavier asks, in his rolling accent with that amused tilt to his mouth and Apollo is pissed about how pretty he is. It’s stupid. Yesterday he strode into the living room on his way to class with his hair twisted up in a clip shaped like a violet guitar, in black slacks and high heels and a flashy, patterned button-up shirt with just enough buttons undone to expose the fine lines of his collarbones, and he had the audacity to wink at Apollo on his way out.
Apollo might kill him. And then himself.
“Nope. I was just studying. I mean, I just got done studying, so you weren’t interrupting. Because I was done,” Apollo stammers out.
Wocky materializes above Apollo, folding his arms on Apollo’s head so he has to resist the sudden urge to shudder. He can feel Wocky’s perpetual leaky-faucet drip of blood like an ice trail burning down the back of his neck, slipping under the collar of his shirt. “Dude. That was fuckin’ rough.”
Shut the fuck up, Wocky.
“Ah,” Klavier says, his gaze raking over Apollo’s face as Wocky slips away. “I thought I had heard you talking on the phone - was I perhaps mistaken?”
“I was talking to Mikeko,” Apollo replies quickly - surely it’s not that weird to talk to your cat.
Klavier’s eyes crinkle at the corners. He leans a little heavier on the doorframe, practically standing right over Apollo at this point. “If you are done speaking with your katze, might I have your…undivided attention, then, bitte?”
Apollo’s face heats up. “YEAH SURE WHAT’S UP,” he forces out, and his voice is so loud Klavier winces and leans back, slightly. Face burning even more - probably akin to the surface of the sun, if Apollo had to guess - he swallows and tries again. “Sorry! Sorry. Um…w-what’s up?”
Klavier twirls a bit of hair around his index finger; Apollo locks in on the motion. If he weren’t so flustered, maybe he might read into that a little more, or the way Klavier’s gaze flickers away. “Ah…I had something to ask you, actually, if you had the time.”
“O-oh. Really? What is it?”
“I-“ Klavier begins, but Wocky, who has clearly grown bored of the conversation, drifts past him into the hallway. Klavier shudders, of course, as Wocky’s incorporeal body brushes against his arm. Apollo wants to glare at him but then it would look like he’s glaring at Klavier so he schools his expression into what he thinks is a normal one to have when talking to your ridiculously attractive roommate with an accent that you have a big fat crush on. “Ach, you always keep your room so cold!” Klavier remarks, theatrically running his hands up his arms. “I can feel it just from the door. I don’t know how you manage.”
“I just suffer through it,” Apollo says, pointedly.
Klavier quirks a brow. “…We could turn the heat up. The house is not that old where the radiators don’t work, surely. Or…” He says, tilting his head like a thought just struck him - and then he grins and it looks wicked on his face, bending down just a bit and Apollo stiffens, leaning back. “We could find other ways to keep you warm.”
Apollo promptly slams the door in his face.
Klavier sighs. That could’ve gone better. He can’t tell if Apollo actually likes him or hates him - the man sends him so many mixed messages.
He immediately hears Apollo fire up in hushed whispers once more - who on earth is he always talking to? Ghosts??? - as he walks back to the kitchen. Leaning on the counter, he pulls his phone out, opening up his group chat with Sebastian and Kay - which has been blowing up for the past twenty minutes despite the fact Klavier knows they’re both at their shared apartment right now.
group chat: Kay’s Minions
1:49 PM Sebastian: I just don’t think it’s that unreasonable to ask you to turn it off
1:49 PM Kay: nah
1:50 PM Sebastian: Kay please it’s been an hour :((
1:50 PM Kay: ok but it helps me study
1:50 PM Sebastian: DOES IT?
1:51 PM Kay: yeah dude the vengaboys support me in a way you clearly never have
1:51 PM Kay: you’re a terrible vengabrother
1:52 PM Sebastian: >:0 I’m VERY supportive what the heck
1:52 PM Sebastian: Did I not let you eat the rest of the dark chocolate dad got me yesterday because your cramps were bad
1:53 PM Kay: ok but do you take me on an intercity disco?? didn’t think so
1:53 PM Klavier: If you two are both home why do you feel the need to argue here
1:53 PM Sebastian: Klav help she’s torturing me :,(
1:53 PM Sebastian: NOOO DON’T TURN IT UPPP
1:54 PM Kay: honk honk bitch
1:54 PM Kay: also hey loverboy how did it go!!
1:55 PM Sebastian: Did you ask him?
1:57 PM Kay: klav???? you there??
1:58 PM Klavier: He may have slammed the door in my face before I could even bring it up
1:58 PM Kay: HAHAHAHA WHAT
1:59 PM Sebastian: Oh no :( I’m sorry, Klav
1:59 PM Kay: dude what did you SAY to him
2:00 PM Klavier: I was being perfectly polite
2:00 PM Kay: klav…
2:02 PM Klavier: Okay, fine, perhaps I came on a bit too strong and I think it freaked him out
2:03 PM Kay: dude I thought we learned our lesson last time, you gotta cool it with the flirting if you wanna actually ask him out to that meteor shower festival thingy
2:04 PM Klavier: I’m working on it! I don’t even know if we’ll be allowed to perform there yet
2:05 PM Kay: you better grow some tits and fucking ask him if you want him to watch you play
2:05 PM Sebastian: …Is that the expression..?
2:06 PM Klavier: I SAID IM WORKING ON IT
2:06 PM Kay: aww he’s crashing out <3
2:06 PM Kay: come over and we can work on a game plan
2:07 PM Kay: or should I say ANOTHER game plan
2:07 PM Klavier: …Thank you.
2:08 PM Sebastian: I’ll warn you she’s been playing vengabus on repeat for over an hour
Wocky sticks his head through the closed bedroom door. “Dude,” he says, with feeling.
“Shut up. Shut up, I don’t want to fucking hear it,” Apollo mutters, hiding his burning face in his hands. He stumbles over to his bed and flops backwards on it, screaming quietly into the palms of his hands. He can feel the heat from his cheeks. “I’m so stupid.”
Mikeko yawns on the pillows next to him, unaffected.
Wocky leans over Apollo, hands on his hips. His form flickers, the lines of his body half there, half not. Sometimes, when it’s especially bright out or when it’s golden hour, the light filters in through the living room windows in a way where Wocky and Vera almost disappear when standing in the midst of it. Kinda feels like finally goin’ to heaven, Wocky had said, once, holding his hand up in the light and watching the gold rays dance through his fingers. “So-“
“Don’t stand like that, you’re gonna get your ghost blood on me again. You know I hate it when you do that.”
With an exaggerated rolling of his eyes, Wocky straightens. “So are you gonna ask him out or what?”
“Ha,” Apollo breathes, staring at the popcorn ceiling through his fingers. “Like I’m gonna listen to your advice on relationships.”
He hears Wocky make an indignant, strangled sound and turns to look at him. “The fuck, man? You think I ain’t got experience?” Wocky scrunches his face at Apollo, a classic gangster sneer. “I ran with a girl real steady once. We almost got hitched and everything.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Wocky points meaningfully to the bullet hole in his heart.
“Ah,” Apollo says awkwardly. “That’ll…that’ll do it, yeah.”
“If that motherfucker hadn’t bumped me off we woulda had a gorgeous-ass wedding with flowers and fancy little cakes and shit like you wouldn’t believe,” Wocky snaps, voice high and defensive. “We were fuckin’ serious, Justice, so, yeah, I got plenty of experience, thank you very much.”
“Forgive me for not asking the guy who’s been living with a girl he likes for a hundred years and hasn’t done anything about it,” Apollo mutters, letting his hands flop to either side of his body on the bed. Mikeko yawns, indifferent.
“That’s - that’s different,” Wocky sputters.
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m not a fucking coward.”
“Never said you were.”
Wocky is silent for a moment, letting Apollo stew in his misery (or, more likely, stewing in his own offense) before he loudly clears his throat. “Okay. Here’s the deal: you wanna ask your guy out, yeah? To that meteor shower thing?”
Apollo swallows, feeling his face heat up. “Stop reading my texts,” he mutters.
“Answer the question, you fuckin’ palooka.”
“Yes, Wocky, that is the goal.”
“And I want to ask out Vera,” Wocky continues, and now his voice is starting to waver slightly.
Apollo sits up on the bed, frowning. “Where are you going with this, Wocky?”
Wocky crosses his arms, a crooked grin flitting across his face. If Apollo hadn’t been haunted by Wocky for nearly half a year, now, he might not recognize the nervous tremor to the ghost’s thick eyebrows, or the way he fidgets with his rings. “I’m proposin’ a wager, Justice-man. Between you and me. First one to land a date to that meteor shower festival wins.”
Absolutely fucking not. Apollo does not hesitate to shoot this idea down: “Absolutely fucking not, Wocky.”
“Oi! How ‘bout we give it a fuckin’ second of thought first before you get all damn high-hat about it, Jesus. It ain’t like I asked you to dip some ritzy croaker square in front of the fuzz.”
“You know I have no idea what the fuck you’re saying.”
Wocky narrows his eyes in a wicked smirk, the asshole. “Crab it, shyster.”
“Speak in English or I’m not considering it at all,” Apollo threatens. He hates when Wocky does this.
Wocky knows he hates it when he does this. It’s probably why he does it.
Wocky rolls his eyes, dropping down in Apollo’s abandoned desk chair. He sits in it backwards - folding his arms on the back so he can prop his chin on them. A curl of hair bounces at his forehead. “Come on - it’s the best idea ever. Clearly you ain’t gonna do shit without a little motivation, so consider this, y’know. A little nudge in the right direction. Unless you’re scared.”
“I’m not - Wocky, you can’t even go to the meteor shower festival.”
Wocky falters slightly - he’d clearly not thought that part through. He and Vera are tied to the house; there’s no way for them to leave to actually attend the festival on campus, but Wocky recovers quickly. “We can watch it on the roof.”
“…You can go on the roof?”
“Yeah, dude, Vera hangs out up there all the time.”
Apollo considers. Yeah, it’s a stupid idea. Like, really stupid - not because it’s dangerous or anything, but because a bet between friends is childish and dumb. But Wocky has a point in that it might be the nudge he needs. And it’s undeniable that Wocky needs less of a nudge and more of a shove off the cliff - the guy’s seriously been living with a girl he’s had a crush on for one hundred years and, as far as Apollo knows, hasn’t done a single thing about it. At least Apollo’s not that bad; he’s only been pining for two months.
He groans, loudly. “Ugh, okay, fine. Let’s do it.”
Wocky perks up, a crooked and boyish grin splitting his face so wide that Apollo can see that missing tooth he’d mentioned earlier. “Aw, hell yeah, Justice, I knew you’d come around!” He’s practically bouncing in the chair and Apollo reminds himself that even though Wocky’s been dead for this long, he’s still only nineteen.
“Okay, okay, calm down. If we’re going to do this, then we’re doing it right: we’re setting rules and terms.”
“Terms?”
“Terms. If I win, what’s in it for me?” Apollo crosses his arms, pinning Wocky with a glare. “What do I get out of it?”
Wocky hesitates for a second. His face scrunches up while he thinks. “Uh…I dunno. What do you want from me? I could possess someone for you, probably. I’ve never actually done that but I bet it ain’t hard. You just like…zoop in there.” He makes a swooping motion with one hand. “Y’know. Zoop.”
“Please don’t go around possessing people.”
“Okay, well, I dunno if you forgot because of my lively fuckin’ personality but I’m a ghost, Justice,” Wocky says sharply, a note of bitterness in his voice. “I can’t exactly go runnin’ around doin’ your errands for you when I’m dead as a doornail - there ain’t much else I can do here ‘cept flicker your lights all ominous-like and freak out your cat and drip ghost blood on you.”
Okay, clearly there’s a bit more sensitivity to Wocky’s…condition than Apollo originally thought. He files that information away for later and snaps his fingers as the solution comes to him. “I got it. If I win, you leave me alone for real whenever I have the sign on my door. You let me study in peace, and you don’t barge in here and wake me up when I’m sleeping. Actually, just consider my room off limits unless I explicitly tell you it’s fine.”
“Ugh, what? That takes like, most of the fun out of my life. Er, my death?”
Apollo gets to his feet. He puts his hands on his hips and fixes Wocky with the sternest stare he can muster. “I refuse to take part in this unless you accept my conditions,” he says seriously. “If you don’t agree to the terms I’ve clearly laid out for you, then this wager isn’t happening.”
Wocky stares at him for a second before snorting, leaning back in the chair. “Fuckin’ hell, lawyer-man, the courts ain’t ready for you,” he chuckles. “But yeah, sure, fine, you win and I don’t bug you when you don’t want me to. Easy,” he says, with the confidence of a ghost who knows he’s going to win this thing.
Apollo grabs his computer from the desk and sits back on the bed, opening up a new document. His fingers fly over the keys while Wocky stares at him curiously. When he’s done, he glances up at Wocky from the screen. “Okay, now name your terms.”
He doesn’t even take a second to think. “Full control of the TV forever - and I’m talkin’ full ass control. You gotta let me watch all the shit I want, whenever I want. And you have to bring me and Ver souvenirs from the festival.”
Apollo frowns, his fingers pausing on the keyboard. “Okay, the souvenir thing is fine, but you are not having control of the TV forever.”
“If I’m gonna be stuck as a ghost forever with a damn hole in my chest for the rest of time I think I deserve to have control over the TV.”
“I’m a living person and I don’t have full control of the TV,” Apollo rebuts swiftly. “We live in a shared space and it’s unfair to Klavier - and Vera - for you to be the sole person controlling what we watch.”
Wocky groans. “Ugh, fine, then buy me a TV!”
“What? No! I’m in college, do you seriously think I have enough money to buy a second TV just for the ghost that’s haunting me?”
“First off, I’m haunting the house, not you,” Wocky says shortly, ticking this point off his finger. “And secondly, I dunno, dude, just fuckin’ launder some cash or whatever, it’s not hard.”
Apollo scoffs. “I don’t think laundering money is going to earn me any extra credit towards my law degree.”
Wocky twirls a curl of hair around his finger, rolling his cheek onto his arm. “God, they make you damn lawyers so fuckin’ strait-laced these days, always playin’ shit by the book. Can’t do forever, then…” He clicks his tongue thoughtfully. “Two months.”
“Two weeks it is.”
Something flashes in Wocky’s eyes. He straightens in the chair, his brows drawing close together. When he speaks next it’s through his teeth in a sneer. “Seems you misheard, lawyer-man,” he says lowly, all measured out and slow. He makes a show out of cracking his knuckles using nothing but the thumb of each hand, making it look lazy. “I ain’t takin’ a day under two months and if you got a problem with that, maybe you’re forgettin’ who exactly you’re talkin’ to.”
It was probably effective back in his time alive, Apollo will give him that. But Apollo didn’t survive his childhood with his menace of a little sister for nothing - this is child’s play to him. He lifts his chin, crossing his arms over his chest. “If you won’t take two weeks, I’ll give you one month - and that’s being pretty generous, I think.”
“One-“ Wocky’s eye twitches, but before he can say anything else Apollo shrugs, closing his laptop with a snap.
“Well, clearly you don’t want to do this wager after all. I thought you were serious, but I guess not.” He rubs at the back of his neck, grinning his best sheepish grin. “Darn!”
Wocky jolts to his feet. If he were corporeal, he would’ve knocked the chair over. “What the - oi! I know what you’re tryin’ to do, here! You’re out here tryin’ to play me like a fuckin’ fiddle but I’ll be the first to tell you it ain’t gonna work, asshole. The Kitakis don’t fold so damn easy.”
He folds anyway.
Ten minutes later, Apollo’s sending the document to the printer - he has his own in his room so he can photocopy his notes (just in case they get damaged, it’s always good to have a backup). He grabs it off the printer the second it’s done and slams it down on the desk, loud. “Sign it.”
“…Dude,” Wocky says, staring at the paper. “You seriously wrote a contract?”
Apollo fills out his part of the contract before fixing Wocky with a serious stare. “I don’t fuck around, Wocky.”
“Clearly. Can’t you just sign it for me, though?” Wocky wiggles his translucent hands (and Apollo catches the way his brow pinches, just a bit, at the thought of not being able to sign it himself).
Apollo opens his mouth, then closes it. “It’s…more official if you sign it, though.”.
Wocky stares at him for a moment before snorting a laugh and rolling his eyes. “Damn, okay, sure. Got me there. Gonna have to sign it in pencil though, unless that gets your boxers in a twist. Pens are hard to lift.”
“That’s fine.”
Wocky bends over the desk, biting his lip as he urges himself to pick up the pencil. He quickly fills in the underlined spaces that Apollo points out for him - his signature gets a little sloppy because he loses control of the pencil at the end and it slips through his hand. “There,” he says, a note of satisfaction in his voice.
Apollo squints at the contract, trying to read through Wocky’s chicken scratch. He wonders how much of it is just Wocky’s handwriting and how much has to do with the difficulty of manipulating objects as a ghost.
Wait.
“Is that your real name?” Apollo says, astonished.
“Yeah, thought you wanted it official.” Wocky glares at him. “Don’t fuckin’ make fun of me, it’s my dad’s name, asshole.”
“I wasn’t going to!”
“You sure fuckin’ were, I could see it on your damn face.”
“Where did Wocky come from?”
Wocky’s face turns pink. “What, you never heard of a nickname?”
“Not one…uh…quite like yours.”
“THE FUCK IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN?”
And with that, the wager begins.
WAGERING CONTRACT
I. This Wagering Contract is hereby made on 2nd November 2022 by and between the following parties:
Party A: Apollo Justice
Affiliation: Japanifornia University, College of Law
hereinafter called “The Student”
Party B: Winfred Kitaki II
Affiliation: Kitaki family (posthumorously humously - AJ)
hereinafter called “The Ghost”
and as witnessed by Party C: Mikeko Justice
II. The Objective of the Wagering Contract is as follows:
- a) Both parties are tasked to invite their respective persons to attend the Taurids Meteor Shower Festival on the date of 5th November 2022 with the goal to succeed before the other party
- b) Whichever party fails in inviting their respective person before the other within the range of the Wagering Period (Nov 2nd - Nov 4th) must agree and uphold the Terms as outlined below
III. The Terms of this Wagering Contract are as follows:
The Student hereby swears that in the event of his failure he will uphold the following terms as agreed upon by both parties:
- a) The acquisition of souvenirs from the Taurids Meteor Shower Festival by The Student to be delivered to The Ghost promptly following the conclusion of said Festival
- b) Full control over the shared television at all hours of the day beginning at the termination of the Wagering Period and the following two weeks after (November 5th - November 19th), after which The Ghost will return rights to the television to The Student without complaint, bargaining or threat of murder
The Ghost hereby swears that in the event of his failure he will uphold the following terms as agreed upon between both parties:
- a) The Student’s room is declared off-limits to The Ghost at all hours of the day from the termination of the Wagering Period (Nov. 5th) until the end of time or heat death of the universe
- b) Only with permission from The Student may The Ghost enter the aforementioned room
Signed:
Apollo Justice
Winfred Kitaki II