Work Text:
Apollo Justice was reasonably confident that he was, in all probability, the only person on the planet who could find himself standing on the outside balcony of his own private residence in a country's royal palace and say with complete honesty that he missed his cramped, single-tenant apartment.
The feeling didn't come from a place of any dislike for the Royal Palace of Khura'in, and least of all from any lack of gratitude for the lavish hospitality the young defence attorney had been granted by the kingdom's royal family for all he had done for them, of course. When he'd been a child, hearing of the palace in which his once-adoptive father had lived, his imagination had been filled with all the expected visions of servants and attendants ready and waiting to answer to any need of his at a moment's notice, and all the time in the world to enjoy the luxury of such a home. Like all of his other memories of those early years living with Dhurke Sahdmadhi, the teenage Apollo had chosen to discard such childish fantasies about how it might have felt to live in the very palace in which he now stood as years went by, and as the last promise Dhurke made to him before leaving him in his birth country of America seemed only to become increasingly hollow.
Even in the first two years of his legal career, Apollo had never entertained the idea that Dhurke might yet return to see him again. The world he'd known and heard of as a boy was gone, so far as he'd been concerned. It had been nothing more than the dream of a naïve child, worth no more than the hollow words of any other empty promise.
And yet, what had happened ten months ago had forced Apollo to once again change the outlook he'd spent more than half of his life piecing together. Dhurke had returned indeed, though hardly for a tearful and heartwarming reunion. The days that had followed Dhurke's sudden return were unlike anything Apollo ever would have expected to experience in his adult life.
Apollo didn't resent Dhurke. Not anymore, at least. It was certainly true that he had been uncomfortable with seeing the man again, and that their subsequent conversations had been tense at best, but with time, and his own willingness to accept that Dhurke had never expected to reconnect with him smoothly, he had gradually come to find that the hurt he'd once felt reflecting upon that long-ago promise to find him again was something he could, with some difficulty, put aside.
A dog barked several times, somewhere beyond the outside wall of the palace. Apollo blinked, stirred from his reflections.
He didn't know how many times he'd run these same thoughts through his head.
The number of times he'd looked out at the view from this balcony was something else he'd lost count of, since first being granted this private residence. It was… well, if he had to admit, it was incredible, but over time, he'd found that the view no longer held much appeal for him.
Resting his arms on the edge of the balcony and just staring out at the palace grounds and beyond was an easy way to lose himself in his thoughts and reflections for a while, at least.
Ten months had passed since Apollo had played his key role in the end of the corrupt regime that had ruled over the Kingdom of Khura'in for most of his life. Ten since he'd chosen not to accompany his friends – his family – as they returned home to America.
Home.
There was really no escaping it, not that he wished to try. Khura'in, for all of its beauty, wasn't home.
Apollo's home was a middle-of-the-road apartment in Los Angeles, a small and energetic cat prowling its cramped interior amidst neatly ordered boxes and whatever furniture Apollo could afford. Home was a bright and often chaotic talent agency that doubled as a law office, opened every morning by a quirky magician and her veteran attorney father.
Home was something that Apollo would just have to wait to see again.
Nothing. There was nothing she needed to do tonight.
Ema Skye couldn't name the last time she had been able to say such a thing.
Khura'in badly needed a modern resource for forensic investigation. Surely the prosecutor turned-regent currently ruling the kingdom understood that it was not normal to insistently fly the same overworked forensic scientist back and forth overseas again and again simply because he hadn't yet found anyone else able to provide her skillset?
If the homicide detective Ema Skye of two years prior had been asked whether she might like to add frequent jetlag to her regular working routine, the person posing the question would have found themselves dodging a prompt barrage of thrown chocolate snack food.
Of course Ema enjoyed the knowledge that her talents and education were valued, but she would be hard-pressed to find any way of agreeing with the idea of traveling across the whole world again and again every few weeks for that reason alone.
A certain face appeared in her mind, and Ema smiled, breaking for a moment from the weary expression she'd been wearing. Maybe there was, she reflected, one other thing to keep her returning to Khura'in with such regularity.
Ten months had passed now since her friend, the young defence attorney Apollo Justice, had fought the most challenging battle of his career to depose the tyrant that had ruled over Khura'in for more than twenty years. Ten months since Apollo had chosen to stay behind in the kingdom, reopening the law office formerly run by a man Apollo had once called his father.
Roughly five months, Ema counted, since the first time she had kissed Apollo.
It hadn't exactly been the kind of fairytale moment that her childhood imagination might have envisioned, but then, Ema saw less and less appeal in such a fantasy the more she reflected on it.
Of course she remembered the details surrounding the moment with great clarity. Following the conclusion of a trial, she had been slowly walking toward the marketplace nearest to the High Court. Leaving the court, she had passed by Apollo, who was engaged in conversation with his client, a woman named Kah T'lysst, if Ema remembered correctly. Apollo had just proven the woman's innocence – or relative innocence, more precisely – in the assault of a traveling merchant. Having been the first witness called upon and cross-examined in the trial, Ema had been left feeling quite frustrated by Apollo's discovery of several key mistakes in her investigation report for the case, and been eager to simply leave the High Court for the day and get away from work for a short while. When she had passed Apollo, he had given her a brief look that seemed to suggest he wanted to speak with her, but she hadn't felt like waiting around for his ongoing conversation to end.
He had caught up with her while she was on her way to the marketplace, sounding a bit out-of-breath as he offered to buy her something for lunch. Considering that the most likely alternative she saw herself sliding into was eating her way through an entire bag of Snackoos while beating herself up over her mistakes in the concluded case's investigation, she had agreed.
Sitting down together to eat some variety of noodles that Apollo had strongly recommended, the pair had gotten into a conversation of their own, initiated by the defence attorney giving an apology for potentially having embarrassed her in court. Ema's frustration regarding the cross-examination had been directed far more toward herself than to Apollo, but she'd appreciated his words, all the same. He was just so damn earnest about it, as if he worried that simply doing his job well and exposing the truth might have inadvertently done some level of damage to their friendship outside of work.
It wasn't as if Ema hadn't ever before taken personal note of how cute Apollo was. And maybe, on two or three of their past Friday nights out visiting a bar, she'd briefly entertained the idea of asking him out, once she was a couple of drinks in.
For one thing, Apollo's drive in his work was admirable, of course, but starting from some time a year or two after they'd first met, Ema noticed as he began to also display a recurrent tendency to fret over the stability of his friendships. She hadn't ever tried to ask him why he had developed the apparent habit. His behaviour sometimes seemed to suggest a lack of trust in himself not to do something that might upset those close to him.
The one part of the memory that didn't stick in her mind quite so clearly was whatever bit of conversation or banter they'd gotten into following his hasty apology. Whatever it had been, Ema had found the exchange abruptly halted by Apollo's face turning a noticeable shade of red. For a second, she'd thought he had swallowed a large chunk of the spice mixed into the noodles he'd ordered, but when she followed his eyes, which were shifting downward a touch, she'd been embarrassed for herself to find that down on the table, her right hand was resting on top of his left. She didn't remember moving it consciously.
The conversation had evaporated in an instant, Ema silently cursing in the back of her mind. The rate at which Apollo had clammed up might have made her laugh, as might the way his eyes continued to shift back and forth in the seconds that followed, if she hadn't also felt a blush of her own creeping its way up her cheeks.
She'd moved her hand, and quietly requested that Apollo stand up. He had done so. On her feet as well, Ema had stepped around the little table and placed her palm instead on Apollo's shoulder, moving in toward him to do the one thing her mind had been screaming at her to do since he'd first stopped talking.
Apollo was not the very first person Ema had ever kissed. He was, however, the first to respond by freezing up completely, his head's slight backward tilt the only movement of any kind that he seemed able to make in that instant. Thinking back, Ema idly wondered if perhaps the fact that she was taller than him by several inches might have also played some small part in how clearly caught off-guard he'd been. At any rate, within a second or two, Apollo had seemed to recover, and Ema had felt her mouth curving into a smile as he offered an enthusiastic response, pressing his own lips back against hers to match.
When they'd separated moments later, Ema spotted the owner of the stand where they'd bought their noodles giving her an amused look as he polished a cutting knife. She'd tipped him fairly generously, if memory served.
Five months since that day. Had it been so long already?
Still smiling to herself as she recalled the warm memory, Ema used her duplicate key to enter Apollo's private residence. Apollo wasn't the type to mistakenly leave lights on, so he had to be inside already. She set down her bag by the door, swapping her heeled shoes for the set of green slippers tucked underneath the coat rack. After hanging up her lab coat, she headed through the entryway and inside.
She kept quiet, wondering if Apollo might be asleep already. It wasn't that late, but just like she had, he'd been very busy with work this week, so it was easy for her to imagine that he might have turned in early.
She paused when she spotted him, standing out on the balcony. He was still wearing most of his work outfit, with only his shoes and vest missing.
Apollo didn't react with surprise when she walked up next to him. She wondered if he'd seen her approaching before she got inside.
"Hey." she said quietly.
Apollo's gaze was still fixed out across the impressive view the balcony offered, which covered a large portion of the Royal Palace grounds, as well as much of the populated space beyond.
"… Hey." he replied. The usual energy in his voice was absent. Ema joined him at the balcony's edge, resting her arms on it the same way that he was. "You sound tired."
She smirked, surprised. "What, and you don't?" she teased.
"No, I sound exhausted. It's subtle, but there's a distinction."
Ema moved half a step closer, sliding her arms along the railing. "So I guess you had a long day, too. Sorry that I didn't stop in at the office. I wanted to."
She spotted a faint smile.
"It's OK. If you're busy, you're busy."
Something was bothering him. Ema didn't need the hyper-sensitive hearing of their friend Athena Cykes to pick that much up. She had a fairly confident guess as to what it was, as well.
"Thinking about everyone back home?" she inquired. Apollo glanced in her direction, his brown eyes indicating slight surprise.
"Am I really that obvious?" he asked after a moment.
"Yeah." she said, offering a warm smile. "Rolling up your sleeves and wearing your heart on them aren't mutually exclusive, Apollo."
He laughed, slumping a bit on the handrail.
"How long have you been saving that line for me?" was his next question. Ema moved closer again, bringing her left arm around to hug at his side opposite.
"Well, when you spend as much time acting grumpy as I do, you learn not to waste good ones. Keep 'em boxed up and ready to go for when you need them."
Another chuckle, and Apollo leaned into her side a bit.
"… But yeah," he said after a quiet moment, "I was just thinking about… everything. It's not even anything specific, I just… miss everything at home."
Ema nodded, using her free hand to brush some of her lengthy brown hair off of Apollo's shoulder. She loved him, but didn't need any of his residual hair gel getting stuck to her.
"Trucy, Athena, Mr. Wright, the office…" Apollo went on. He smirked, adding, "Hell, even Prosecutor Gavin, occasionally."
"Only for a few seconds at a time, I hope." Ema replied.
"Yeah. It's just… it's been a long time, now. There hasn't even been a chance to visit."
Ema just listened, sensing that Apollo had wanted to get all of this out for a while today.
"Sometimes, right when I wake up, I still forget that I'm not in my apartment for a second. I know that sounds kinda weird, but..."
Ema smirked. "And what – the gorgeous brunette sleeping next to you doesn't clue you in? I've seen your apartment, Apollo. We wouldn't even fit in that bed."
"No, that's about the point that I usually remember." he answered, tilting his head a bit. "… Should get a bigger place, once I'm ready to go home."
Ema shrugged. "I don't think Lana would be upset if you moved in with us to start. She's always asking about you whenever I'm home."
Apollo rather sharply raised an eyebrow, glancing at her again. "You're telling her good things, I hope."
Ema leaned in to kiss him on the cheek. "I made sure not to undersell that my boyfriend is the same lawyer who deposed a tyrant queen. Pretty sure you're good, in her book."
"Mr. Wright helped…"
"And he's a friend of ours, too, but the lawyer that I love is named Apollo."
She never got tired of seeing him blush.
"Oh, wait-…" she added, "I haven't told her that we're sleeping together yet. I should do that."
"Wha- E-Ema…!"
"Kidding!" she laughed, enjoying the familiar sight of Apollo's eyes having gone wide in alarm. She stepped back from the railing, folding her arms just below her chest. Tilting her head to gesture toward Apollo's room back inside, she asked, "Think you're too tired for an episode or two of… something?"
Apollo managed a quiet laugh as well, his cheeks still a bit red.
"Sure, I can stay up for a bit. … Wait. Do you mind if we call Athena and everyone, instead?"
Ema tapped a fingertip against the underside of her elbow for a moment.
"Sounds good." she said. "It should be right about lunch time there, if all my flight time hasn't completely murdered my ability to remember time differences."
"Thanks." Apollo moved past her, heading into his room. "My laptop's still on. Could you set up the call? I should just head to the bathroom, first."
Ema nodded, following behind him. His computer was resting on his bed. She flopped down on her front, while Apollo disappeared from the room.
Hovering the cursor over the video-call program they used, she found herself thinking back again, this time to a certain call made to Athena at the Wright Anything Agency just a few days after their first date.
"So, how d'you wanna tell them?" she'd asked. "I was thinking I'd just drop into the frame and kiss you halfway through your greeting."
Apollo had laughed, sitting on the edge of the bed with his laptop.
"That could work. Thanks for not telling them without me, by the way." he'd said.
"No problem. You really think I'd deprive you of the chance to see Athena and Trucy's reactions?"
Almost wishing she'd recorded that same call, Ema went about setting up the program. She could hear Apollo washing his hands in the bathroom. Athena's name was flashing onscreen.
She was just initiating the video call when Apollo returned. Ema sat up on the bed, shuffling over a bit to give him some room to sit beside her.
"Apollo," she said, drawing his attention, "I know I can't pretend to have any idea how you're feeling, being so busy here all the time and not being able to visit home, but…"
She wasn't honestly sure of where she meant to go with the remark, but as she trailed off, Apollo seemed ready to pick up in her place.
"Well, right now I've got you, at least." he said, smiling. "That's still pretty great. Kinda like borrowing a little piece of home."
He met her eye, and this time, Apollo was the first to move in, pressing his lips to hers.
Ema had only just closed her eyes when she jerked in place, startled by the sound of Athena picking up their call. She sat back, her face tingling a bit.
Surrounded by the familiar sights of the Wright Anything Agency, Athena's familiar face was looking at them from the laptop's screen, her eyebrows raised about as high as they could go.
"You guys mean to call, or am I interrupting something…?"
