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Klavier Gavin knew that a big part of being a rock star meant writing love songs. It came with the package more often than not. He knew he could do it, he definitely could. The problem was making the end result convincing. He'd never been in love before, and he didn't think he ever would be.
There is a critical factor here: in love. He loves and has loved people before. He loves his mother, who sends him red bean mochi every year on his birthday, because it was his favorite when he was a child. He loves his father, who took pictures of him in Munich and kept them on his work desk until he retired. He still doesn't know if he ever loved his brother, who would take his allowance and later tell him that he lost it. He's still thinking about that.
Another footnote: this is not to say that he hasn't been in relationships before. In fact, he has been in quite a few. He's held hands, he's kissed people, he's asked out and he's fucked people. But still yet he does not think he has ever loved any of them. People often use 'like' in this context, and he has deemed that appropriate. So he wrote his love songs, about fictional people and falsified feelings. Don't tell the press that, Klavier, you have an image to uphold. Some days he felt like he had to put that comment from his manager on a note above his bed, just so it soaked in. He has never liked entertainment magazine semantics, making up a persona to fit a collective public's imagination from interviews and promotional material. Klavier was a Gavinner because he liked to make music, and he liked for people to enjoy that music. That, however, required the knowledge that what people wanted was not always compliant with what he was able to authentically give.
All of this was why Apollo was so very, very strange to him.
He did not know Apollo as a person at first. He was just a face in newsprint, a supplementary visual for a headline about his disgraced older brother. All he had was the text and those wide, naive eyes staring up at him from a paper. Something in Klavier had latched onto that image, though. In all his years, no one had ever seen Kristoph in the way his brother had. Klavier had, at one point, begun to assume that his vision, his mind was lying to him. That headline changed things. Those eyes had seen what he had seen. It was as if he shared a secret with this stranger.
Something had been born that day, a yearning he'd never been acquainted with. Klavier didn't understand what it was just yet.
So he had to know. His bandmates weren't happy about the tour dates being canceled—man, come on, that's our paycheck too! He wasn't exactly thrilled about it either. He didn't like to upset his fans. But at that time, he had tunnel vision. He needed to meet this man. There was nothing else, in his mind, that was more important. Maybe it was foolhardy.
But that wasn't how he felt when he saw him for the first time. In person.
His eyes had stood out in the newspaper. They were big, almost scared in greyscale. Actually looking at them, right before you, is entirely different. Still large and curious, yes, but so very intense. Klavier couldn't help but comment on it—the first words he ever said to him. Maybe a ridiculous introduction, but what was said was said. He tried to be as he always was: relaxed, just relax. He's just a man.
(He is so much more than that.)
So they began to collaborate. Klavier tended to tease and laugh, but he couldn't bear to see him as an enemy.
There was disillusionment. Apollo was not impressed, he is never impressed. Maybe that only made the curious feeling tug more aggressively at Klavier's heartstrings. He pouted when Klavier made remarks and spoke of fame. At first, Klavier thought he'd made a fool of himself. That feeling in his chest had punched its way up into his throat, onto his face and in plain sight for the defense attorney's watchful eye. He had come on too strong, he thought, and Apollo likely wanted none of it.
But there were moments. Sometimes, he would lean forward and smile at him—that same way he always did—and something new would flash onto his face. Another mystery that Klavier couldn't decode: unblinking eyes, a rosy flush across his nose, lips slightly parted as if surprised, like Apollo was seeing him for the first time. And it struck Klavier, too, of course, though he tried his best to not let it show.
He couldn't tell him what he felt. Part of this was because he didn't even know what it was. As time went on, he began to consider that maybe...just maybe...No, it couldn't be. He could analyze evidence and write chord progressions, but he couldn't make out his own emotions. He had tried to view it in the most baseline, logical way possible, approaching his heart like an online quiz:
Do you want to spend time with this person? Yes.
Do you want to be intimate with this person? Yes, but don't tell anyone.
Can you see yourself in a relationship with this person? Nightly.
Do you want this person to feel the same way? 'Want' may not be sufficient anymore.
He had been frozen. He couldn't do anything about it. There was a byline from an article about him that gets stuck in his head. It referred to him as “audacious.” That, to him, was a boldfaced lie. Being undaunted did not mean wearing chains for accessories and knowing how to sing from the diaphragm. If he truly did live by these words, written on him by a person who knew nothing of who he was, he wouldn't be so terrified to meet Apollo's eyes, more than ten feet away from him in the courtroom.
He'd all but given up by the time Kristoph's trial ended. Apollo hadn't said a thing as he stood there at the prosecution bench, vulnerable as he'd ever been. This was what made it a bit unnerving when Apollo met him outside, after the press had finally dispersed.
“Are they gone?” he'd asked, face strained with anxiety.
Klavier was indeed shocked to see that he'd even remained, and he soon learned that he was in hiding away inside the building all the while. His experience the first time he put Kristoph away had taught him that he didn't want to deal with any of that again. “You should have seen the photo they took, Prosecutor Gavin. I looked like I'd been caught with my pants down.”
That wasn't what anywhere near Klavier had thought when he saw it. Or when he'd glanced at it again, and again that same week it was printed.
Klavier was atypically quiet that day, his eyes still uncomfortable from narrowly avoided tears that burned beneath his eyelids. Apollo pretended not to notice at first, but then, doesn't he always notice? He sees quite a lot, in fact. He's just too polite to bring it up most of the time. But when Klavier took a seat on the steps of the courthouse, no concern for onlookers in mind, Apollo sat alongside him.
Klavier had found in the past few weeks, even before Daryan's conviction, the band had taken a backseat. No, it wasn't even in the car anymore. At the forefront of his thoughts was his legal career. And Apollo Justice.
Before he could even ask where Trucy was, his rival had interrupted—a bit too loudly, natch: “Are you going to be okay?”
And there was something so deeply sincere about that one sentence, filled with a concern that he's never heard before in Apollo's voice, that Klavier almost cried again. How often did people even ask him that anymore?
“Ja,” was all he could manage, and if the defense attorney heard how strained it was, he didn't say anything about it. Regardless, Apollo didn't seem satisfied with that. But he didn't push any further. Some things were best discussed with time and tact. Anything sooner and less gracefully could force a rift between them.
“Thank you.” Apollo said then, tucking his knees up to his chest. This sentence was, perhaps, even more surprising than the last.
“For what?”
“I wouldn't have made it in there without you. He would have won.” He scratched the back of his neck. There was that shyness again, easing into his face like an afterthought. “I hope that doesn't sound weird,” he finished, those eyes turned away in embarrassment.
“Nein. But...you didn't need me. You could have handled it yourself. You're more than capable.” Apollo seemed to be thinking very carefully, his hands curled into tight fists. Klavier wondered if he ever relaxed.
“Everyone needs help sometimes,” Apollo said finally.
“You think so?”
“...You don't?”
Klavier was stumped by this. He definitely does subscribe to that belief. A part of him just wanted to test the attorney who had so suddenly seized his attention for the better part of the past year. It was easy to spout well-meaning truisms. It was more difficult to live by them.
But hadn't that been what Apollo had just done for him, in that courtroom? When Klavier could barely find the courage to speak, when that alleged audacity failed to show up, Apollo Justice had stepped in. He had done nothing to warrant suspicion. He was the real deal.
“Herr Justice-”
“What happened to Herr Forehead?” he butted in instantly, looking almost hurt by this. Klavier could have laughed if the situation didn't feel so weighed down.
“Apologies. Just know...I am very grateful for what you did for me today,” he said. He felt as if he was confessing.
“Oh...Oh, don't worry about it! I mean, it's my job, y'know? A-and I mean, we're friends now, right?” he asked. Klavier was slightly shocked by this, though in a pleasant sort of way. So all those moments where Apollo seemed to not mind him weren't just wishful thinking.
“Right,” Klavier said, with a firmness. Suddenly, without even understanding why he did it, Apollo smiled. The prosecutor was briefly stunned, but soon mirrored him.
Klavier Gavin is in love for the very first time.