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It’s the crash that wakes Apollo, wresting him from sleep: an unmistakable shatter—sharp and cracking.
He leaps from their bed—empty, now—and follows his gut to their bathroom, where Mikeko and Vongole have taken up vigil outside. With little preamble, Apollo shoves past them, through the door, and shouts, “Klavier, are you alright? Do I need to call 911?”
Their bathroom is as it always is, with its pink tiles and linoleum floor covered by a fuzzy rug in front of the sink, and the tall mirror hanging below a row of round, bright vanity bulbs. Everything is exactly the same, save for his kneeling husband in the center of it all, hunched over a sprawl of different face creams and the remains of what was once a hand mirror. It’s broken now in several gleaming, sharp fragments that catch the light and wink it back.
Apollo freezes. “Whoa.”
Klavier nearly looks up. Instead of meeting Apollo’s eyes, however, he quickly ducks away so that his long hair can hide his face from view. “Ach—I’m fine. I’m fine. Don’t worry yourself.”
Apollo’s hand falls away from the doorknob. “What, uh… what happened here?”
“Nothing.”
“A whole lot’s on the ground, Klav.” Including you.
“Ach, don’t mind me. I was just clumsy while getting ready this morning, Lieb. No need to worry your pretty face.”
“Funny how you say that when you’re not even looking at me.” Apollo frowns and casts a glance at his said pretty face in the mirror over the sink. He looks back at Klavier. “You don’t know what I look like. I just woke up.”
Klavier doesn’t answer.
But Apollo’s been married to him for enough years to know when his silence means I don’t want to talk about this, so he picks his battles. “Well, alright. Don’t move, then. At least let me clean this up.”
Apollo takes a single step forward, and immediately, Klavier’s voice bounces off the walls.
“Don’t come any closer!”
Apollo’s bracelet squeezes hard enough that his whole hand feels like it might fall off. Klavier still won’t look at him, which leaves them both at an awkward impasse. What exactly is going on here? “Okay, okay. I get it. So you don’t want your good morning kiss. Guess I’ll have to give it to Mikeko then—”
“Ach no, wait, come back—”
And there it is.
Apollo bites the inside of his cheek and spins on his heel. He sets his fists on either side of his waist and looks at the huddle of his thirty-three-year-old husband in the middle of their bathroom.
It is only 9:30 AM on a Saturday morning.
“That’s what I thought.” Apollo waves a hand towards the shower-tub at the end of their bathroom. “Well, if you’re gonna be weird, at least do it over there. I’m not gonna leave this glass here on the floor for either of us to step on—or for the pets to get into.”
Klavier sighs and finally, obediently—if reluctantly—rises from his crouch.
After Apollo finishes cleaning, he wanders to the tub where Klavier has relocated himself. Klavier is still a slumped, pathetic blot of indigo and blonde, stark against the white acrylic, with his face hidden in his forearms over his knees. Slowly, Apollo squats outside the tub and sets his chin in the crook of his palm. Mikeko weaves between his calves, inquisitively whining.
“Are you gonna tell me what’s wrong?”
Klavier sighs. His shoulders slump. When he speaks, his voice is muffled by his knees and the canopy of his hair.
Apollo has infamously better eyes than ears. “I’m sorry?”
“I said, do you promise you’ll still love me?”
Is it that serious? Apollo lifts his head from his hand. His ring glints as much as his bracelet does when the light hits it just right. “You do know that when I said ‘I do’ it was for all of our days. You know that.”
This seems to be the right thing to say, even if Klavier sighs over it.
But then, as if resigning himself to a grim and terrible fate, Klavier finally lifts his face. He points to the corner of his mouth, in his cheek, at a hairline wrinkle so thin that it’s barely there; even Apollo has to squint to see it. But as soon as he does, Apollo cracks up.
“Ach, and now he laughs at me.”
“Because that’s the second time this morning you’ve nearly given me a heart attack!” Apollo presses a hand to his stomach. “Here you had me worried it was actually something serious, Klav.”
“It is serious.”
“Local heartthrob Klavier Gavin has one tiny wrinkle… I’ve married the most dramatic man on the planet.”
Klavier scoffs deep in the back of his throat. It’s a great, offended, German sound. “I’m a rockstar, Lieb—”
“I know.”
“And I am on magazine covers! You know the young frauleins do not swoon over things like wrinkles and grey hairs—ach, you do not have to laugh quite that hard at me, my love—my face creams lied to me! They said they would prevent this kind of thing, and they haven’t.” Sharply, Klavier frowns. “Do face creams have an expiration date?”
Apollo sets his cheek in his hand. His laughter ebbs, settling warmly like Mikeko over his toes. “Is that all? Is that the only thing bothering you?”
Suddenly, Klavier pulls back. Forlornly, he adds, “No.”
“No?”
Klavier twists his fingers in his sweatpants and sighs. “You know as well as I do… we are getting older, Apollo.”
“That is kinda what people do.”
Klavier shakes his head. “You misunderstand me. We are getting older. And we may not be that old yet, but what happens as the years continue to pass us by? I am not so foolish to have thought I could always be young, but there is a certain…” His mouth twists.
Apollo lifts his head.
Klavier starts over. “Well. It all must seem rather shallow and silly to you. But when I saw my face this morning, I suppose that’s when it finally occurred to me: there will come a day I’m no longer relevant and people will no longer care about me. My name will mean nothing. I’ll outlive desirable-ness. And what do I do then, when I am no longer called for interviews and people no longer want to see me? What do I do when my hands are no longer be able to play guitar—and—and ach, now I have seven years of bad luck, in addition to all of that, and—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Apollo’s brows knit above the bridge of his nose. “Hey. Take it easy. You’re getting way ahead of yourself. All of those things are still a long way off. You know that, right?”
Absent-mindedly, Klavier hums. His fingers pick at the lint on his sweatpants.
“First of all, it’s just one wrinkle.” Apollo ticks up a finger. “You aren’t dying yet. And second of all… you’re going to be okay. Just because things will one day change, doesn’t mean you won’t be happy once they do.”
Klavier continues to hum.
Apollo can’t identify if his words are working or not, so he sighs and takes hold of Klavier’s wrists and rises to his feet. “Alright. C’mon. Up, up, up.”
“Must I?”
“Yeah, because you’re wallowing, and I’m not gonna let my husband wallow in our bathtub.” And then, over Klavier’s reluctant groan, Apollo adds: “Besides, there’s something I want to show him.”
When they stand in front of the mirror over the sink, Apollo loops an arm around Klavier’s neck. Side-by-side, the difference in their heights is more pronounced. There’s an uneven slant to the line of their shoulders. But in this rare moment, Apollo doesn’t mind. He rests his head against the side of Klavier’s shoulder, elbow jutting into the air at an odd angle, and he gives a big smile at their combined reflection. Mikeko, bored, finally abandons them in the bathroom. Vongole pads after him reluctantly, tail swaying.
“You know what I think this wrinkle means?” Apollo asks.
“What?”
“That you’ve been smiling an awful lot lately.” There’s something obnoxiously smug and proud in Apollo’s voice as he talks. He feels not unlike he’s finally found the turnabout he needs to turn Klavier’s thinking around. “I mean, that’s what it is, isn’t it? It’s a laugh line. And I don’t want to take too much credit or anything, but I mean, we have been married for the past few years, so maybe the reason you even have it is because—”
Klavier’s nose wrinkles as he laughs. It’s a quiet, breathy thing that shakes his shoulders, and Apollo’s relieved to feel it. Klavier’s laughs have deepened over the years; they sound handsomer and handsomer each time Apollo hears them.
Apollo straightens up. “Gotcha.” He gives the wrinkle a firm but gentle poke. “Thanks for proving my point.”
“Ach, but you made me walk into that one.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not right. And you know, I bet one of my Chords of Steel practices that you always make fun of me for would help, too. If there was ever a good time to do it, in the mirror after a quarter-life crisis is one of them.”
“So the suggested solution here is to yell at my reflection about how ‘fine’ I am—”
“Well, you are fine.”
“How charming and flattering you are this morning, Lieb; perhaps I should be woeful and anxious more often.” Klavier smiles, but it still seems like a fragment of what it should be, like it’s afraid of growing too wide.
Klavier takes a deep, deep breath, and Apollo slips his arm free, dropping his hand to settle it against the small of Klavier’s back. When Klavier releases whatever breath he had been holding, he leans forward and places both hands on the edge of the sink counter. “But how can you be so sure?”
“What?” Apollo leans into his side.
“How can you be so sure that I’ll be fine?”
The corner of Apollo’s mouth curls. He shakes his head and sighs, “C’mere,” and uses his free hand to cradle Klavier’s other cheek and tilt his head just right so he can place a gentle kiss against the wrinkle in question. “Look. It may be sappy to hear—believe me, it’s curdling my gut to say this—but if there’s anything my life has taught me… it’s that we say as many ‘goodbyes’ as we say ‘hello’s.’ I know life gave you in particular a whole bunch of goodbyes all right in a row, but don’t think everything that’s happened to you means you can jump to the conclusion that because of a single wrinkle, all you have left ahead of you are more ‘goodbyes’. There’s good stuff waiting for you, too, y’know.”
Klavier chuckles again. It is rich and deep and it makes Apollo’s heart somersault in his chest, especially when he leans into Apollo’s touch. “Like you?” Klavier’s hums bends around his soft and fond smile.
Apollo chuckles back. His cheeks are a hue darker. “Yeah, sure. Like me.” As he rises up onto his toes, Klavier leans down to meet him halfway. “And if I’m any indication, then that means you really will be fine,” he breathes against Klavier’s lips.
Klavier’s hand on the small of his back is as warm as his hearty murmur, “I suppose the defense makes a good argument.”
“I always do.”
