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Sometime while Apollo and Klavier were in Khura’in, Trucy must have passed her driver’s test, because she’s the one who comes to pick them up from the airport. And that, unfortunately, means that she is able to catch a glimpse of the two of them holding hands before they could realize she sees them. Apollo grimaces. It was a long, exhausting flight after a long, exhausting trip, and he really doesn’t feel like talking about his and Klavier’s relationship.
Klavier, being the fantastic boyfriend he is, looks over at Apollo’s face and realizes what he’s thinking immediately. “Before you ask us any questions, Trucy, do you think you could give us a day or two to rest? We’ve had a long day.”
“Of course.” Trucy grins and nods and helps them with their luggage, but she keeps giving Apollo questioning looks as though that’s enough to make him want to spill the beans. (It isn’t, and she knows that.)
Trucy must have matured at least a bit in the past year, because she doesn’t bring up their relationship for a full three days later. “So, guys, can I ask you about Khura’in now?”
Apollo knew this was coming the second she cornered the two of them, but he still sighs. “Go ahead.”
“You two are dating?!” Her eyes are comically large and she waves her hands around furiously. Maybe she didn’t mature as much as Apollo thought. “Seriously, I knew you two were in love with each other for like, ever, but I didn’t think you’d ever realize. When did it happen?!”
“Uh… The night before we left for the states.”
“Wait, really?” Trucy scrunches her eyebrows up. “I thought you guys had to have been dating for like… the entire time you were there. So, it’s only been, what, four days?”
“Ja.”
These two really are disasters. No point in harping on about this point, so Trucy moves on. “So, how did you two start dating? Finally?” She adds as much exasperation as her voice can muster on that last word.
“Not much to it,” Apollo says. “Klavier helped me out a lot in Khura’in and I realized maybe he isn’t as annoying as he seems.”
“What?!” Klavier exclaims, aghast. “There was more to it than that! So much more. The moment you confessed was so romantic.”
“Polly confessed?” Trucy, somehow, opens her eyes even wider.
“I wasn’t going to tell her that part,” Apollo grumbles, but Klavier sends him a pleading look and his resolve crumbles. “Fine, you can tell her.” It’s almost impossible for Trucy to hide her smile as she watches Apollo smile when Klavier lights up. She knew her brother liked Klavier already, but man, he has it bad.
“You’re never going to believe this, Trucy, but Apollo here”- Klavier pauses and actually swoons -”serenaded me.”
“What?”
“It was the night before we had to leave… We were talking, and Apollo said ‘Things have felt different between us in Khura’in-’”
“Do you really need that much detail?” Apollo asks, face burning. The rest of that statement, he knows, is ‘so I wanted to tell you something before we leave. I don’t want things to go back to the way they used to be,’ and this story is embarrassing enough without getting into how sappy Apollo was.
“Fine, fine. It was the night before we had to leave, and Apollo said he wanted to show me something. He began playing some music- the instrumentals of one of my slower ballads- and he sang every lyric perfectly.”
Apollo’s pretty certain he did not sing every lyric perfectly. His voice cracked at least once or twice. But there’s no reason to shatter Klavier’s rose-colored glasses.
“Once he was done, he asked me if I wanted to go out with him, and I, of course, said yes.”
“Wow!” Trucy gasps once Klavier finishes telling the story. “Polly, I didn’t know you were such a romantic! That’s so sweet.”
“It wasn’t that romantic. I mean…” Apollo drops his face into his hands for just a second. “Okay, yes, it sounds romantic when you put it that way, but it wasn’t really. It was just… See, at some point a few months ago, Klavier said something like ‘I would fall in love with any man who sang to me.’ If he ever heard me humming along to myself, he would ask if I was trying to make him fall in love with me or something. It was kind of an inside joke between us. So I figured it would be kind of fun to reference that joke while confessing. See? Not as romantic as it sounds.”
Trucy squints at her brother. He’s so stupid sometimes. “Polly, the fact that you were referencing a joke you two have means that it’s even sweeter. Sorry, but you’re officially romantic.”
“No, I’m-” Apollo, sensing that this is one argument he’s not about to win, decides to give up on this one. “Anyways, the only reason I did that at all was because Klavier practically already confessed to me, so I knew he wouldn’t say no.”
“I did?” Klavier asks, genuinely baffled. He was in love with Apollo for a while, and he’s sure he would remember confessing to Apollo.
“Yeah! It was that one night when we were dancing-”
“Dancing?!” Trucy interrupts, and Apollo flushes again at her wide-eyed surprise.
“Yes, dancing.”
“Ah, that night!” Klavier closes his eyes for a second in reminiscence. That time they spent dancing was something he would never forget, he’s sure. “We were talking late at night and the radio was playing, as it often did-”
“Unfortunately,” Apollo interrupts.
“-and a song came on that Apollo liked, so I invited him to dance and he said yes.” Klavier beams at the thought. Back then, he really didn’t think that Apollo would accept his invitation, and it still makes him unbelievably happy to remember that he did.
“Only because you were bragging about being such a good dancer! You said that you’d even be able to dance with me and my two left feet, so I figured… I’d put that to the test.”
That definitely wasn’t all there was to it, and both Klavier and Apollo know that, but Klavier just shrugs and moves on. “If you say so. But, more importantly, after the dance… I tried to kiss you. Is that the confession you’re talking about?”
“What?!” Apollo jerks his head to face Klavier so quickly his neck hurts. “You tried to kiss me?!”
Absolutely befuddled, Klavier raises his eyebrows. “Ja? It was right at the end of the dance. You didn’t let go of me right away, and it felt like the right moment, so I leaned in and… you pushed me away and sat back down, so I thought you didn’t like me in that way. What confession are you talking about?”
“Um, when we were talking after the dancing. I thanked you for helping me so much, and you said it was no problem, and I said something like ‘But you moved across the world to help me. Thanks.’ and you went all quiet. Then you said ‘Just followed my heart’ or something to yourself, and you thought I didn’t hear you, but… I did.”
“Oh.” Klavier holds Apollo’s hand a bit tighter. He didn’t realize he said that aloud back then. “Well… if you heard that, why didn’t you tell me you reciprocated my feelings?”
“I was afraid you didn’t mean that romantically.” Apollo runs his hand through his hair, sheepish.
Trucy takes this moment to slip away unseen. This seems like something they have to talk about on their own, and besides, it feels weird listening in. She’ll check up on them in a few minutes, and they’d better not be kissing then. Or fighting. Especially fighting.
Klavier actually snorts at that. “Wasn’t that five minutes after we slow-danced together? And after I tried to kiss you?”
“I didn’t know you tried to kiss me! I mean, I wish I did, but…”
There’s no way Klavier can stay annoyed with his boyfriend (the word sounds so good in his head. Boyfriend, boyfriend, boyfriend!), especially over a misunderstanding like this. He knew what he was getting into when he first began crushing on Apollo, the most oblivious person known to man.
“I wish you did, too.” Klavier sighs and lets his head drift onto Apollo’s shoulder to let him know that Klavier isn’t mad at him. “Honestly, I thought I would just have to pine away for you forever.”
“Wait, really? I mean, I know it seemed like I rejected your kiss, but I blushed pretty much every time I looked at you those last few months in Khura’in. You really didn’t realize?”
“No…? I noticed your blushing, of course, but you’ve blushed a lot ever since we first met, so it didn’t seem any different.” Klavier went out of his way to make Apollo blush several times, both in the past and very recently, and it seemed just as easy to make him blush back then as it is now. Not that Klavier is going to admit to having paid so much attention to how much he could fluster Apollo.
“...I did?”
“Ja.”
Apollo shrugs Klavier’s head off his shoulder so he can look at Klavier’s face as he talks to him. “Are you sure? Because I only started actually liking you in that way after you came to Khura’in.”
“Or maybe that’s just when you realized it?” Klavier suggests as cautiously as he can, but Apollo’s face still clouds over in annoyance.
“No way. Before you came to Khura’in, I thought you were… well, a bit obnoxious, since you kept doing your whole rock star schtick all the time. Sorry, I love you, but I think I would have liked you a lot sooner if you dropped the rock star act in front of me more.”
That stings. “Right. Sorry. But are you sure you didn’t have any romantic feelings for me at all? I mean… remember that time in the dressing room? I woke up and-”
“My head was just on your shoulder! That’s all. Nothing inherently romantic about it,” Apollo insists. He wonders if he can blame Klavier for falling asleep on the dressing room’s couch when he probably should have been investigating. It certainly wasn’t Apollo’s fault for doing the polite thing and sitting next to him rather than waking him up or leaving him there just hours after a murder was committed. (Okay, it was probably Apollo’s fault that he fell asleep, too, but the rest of it was Klavier’s fault.)
“That’s… not how I remember it,” Klavier says delicately. “You were cuddling with my arm, and when I woke you up, you said my name. Very cutely, I might add.” Apollo scowls at the word “cute,” so Klavier hastily adds, “I remember that moment because it was the first time you called me ‘Klavier’ and not ‘Prosecutor Gavin.’ I remember thinking that being near you was bad for my heart.”
Apollo has to pretend that he isn’t flustered by that last comment, but he’s gotten very used to that recently. (Pretending he isn’t flustered, to be clear. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever get used to the way his face burns even as he smiles whenever Klavier says anything sappy to him.) “I don’t remember the name part.”
“You were probably too asleep to realize. But that moment- and the several moments you spent afterwards, blushing- made me think that maybe you had feelings for me.”
“I just get embarrassed easily! Who wouldn’t be embarrassed waking up like that? It doesn’t mean I liked you.”
“I didn’t say it did,” Klavier says, trying to sound calm but immediately flinching at how patronizing his voice sounds. It really isn’t worth it to get in a fight over something like this. “I made a wrong assumption, that’s all. I’m not trying to tell you how you felt, just how I thought you did. But would it really be so bad if you did like me back then?”
Recognizing the effort Klavier is putting into avoiding conflict, Apollo takes a second to calm down. Whenever he gets angry, he typically has a fight-or-flight response, and unfortunately, he normally ends up fighting. (Although, perhaps that is better than if he just physically ran away every time someone teased him. That would be a lot of running.)
“It isn’t bad, I guess.” Apollo talks slowly, purposefully, hoping that Klavier will recognize that yes, he’s trying, too. “I dunno, I’ve just had enough of people assuming I liked you back then because I blushed every now and then. Everyone at the agency usually knows when to let up on the teasing, but, still, it gets annoying. That’s all.”
“I understand. I’m sorry I assumed that, and honestly, it might have just been wishful thinking on my part, because I really did have feelings for you back then. But I’ll never tease you about liking me, alright?” Klavier waits for Apollo to nod, then presses a kiss to Apollo’s forehead. When he leans back to look at Apollo, he’s grinning.
“Look at that!” Klavier exclaims. “We just solved our first argument as a couple. We’re such a functional couple already.”
Apollo laughs, any leftover trace of annoyance vanishing instantly. “Was that really an ‘argument’? That was barely a disagreement.”
“Mm, our first conflict as a couple, then.” Klavier pauses. “And, look, we compromised just now! We’re so good at this.”
Trucy finally pokes her head back in the room to see Apollo giggling and saying “You’re ridiculous” as he pulls Klavier in for a kiss. Goddammit. So they’re going to be that kind of couple.
