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The truth - sad and debilitating and excruciating - is that, for all of his fame and fortune, for all of his connections, his fans, Klavier Gavin doesn’t have much in the way of friends.
Once upon a time, his bandmates had been his friends. At least, he had thought that they were. They had agreed to travel the world together, for God’s sake, penning sappy love songs and selling out stadiums and raking in millions of dollars that seventeen-year-old boys had no idea what to even do with, other than buy gaudy sports cars they shouldn’t have had and dine at restaurants they were never appropriately dressed for. For nearly a decade, they had been ‘all in’, as it were, nearly every waking moment for months at a time spent in such close quarters that they needed to at least TOLERATE one another, nevermind TRUST.
Klavier did. Trust them, that is. They argued over creative differences more times than he could ever properly remember, sure, and their heads were about as big as hot air balloons with how often their egos were so readily fed, but Klavier liked them. All of them. He enjoyed laughing with them, drinking with them, walking out on the town with them when they traveled to cities they’d not yet been to after shows that tore his throat raw and bruised the soles of his feet. He cherished careful memories of late nights spent sharing sleepy secrets, when they were too tired and too vulnerable to really mull over the reality of their honesties. When Klavier would lay bare his deepest fears of rejection and admit to his reluctance in having such a rabid fanbase, for all that he could say he loved being the center of attention.
But Daryan had been the closest, and so Dayran had dealt the hardest blow when he made the conscious choice to stand up in a court of law and confess under oath that he had never liked Klavier to begin with; that betrayal hadn’t been the question, for his partner, because Daryan didn’t care to consider what they had had as anything beyond co-working in the first place. The tough truth was that Klavier’s supposed best friend hated him enough that if the fire in his acoustic had somehow managed to kill him, too, Daryan professed later on that he might have even been pleased with himself. And, somehow, that glare in his eyes as his guilty verdict was handed down, the loud proclamation that Klavier was the manifestation of everything Daryan hated most in the world, hurt infinitely more than the fact that someone he’d shared enclosed hotel bedrooms with for eight years had so readily murdered someone he barely even knew.
To say nothing of the fact that Klavier could have, at any time, been a victim.
Kristoph quickly became an entirely different beast, and on most normal days, Klavier hadn’t the slightest confidence to so much as consider how deep all of that really went. Not after he had gotten over the initial shock, back then, and cried until he felt like his lungs would collapse. But his brother- his BROTHER was blood. Klavier didn’t get to choose his brother. Not like he got to choose his friends.
All that any of that had to show was that Klavier was horrible at picking them.
Daryan’s sentence killed the band as quickly as the caliber had killed LeTouse. One of the most popular musical sensations in the entire world, snuffed out over night. Klavier probably would have taken a leave of absence from music one way or another, that much is true, but his bandmates had gone scorched earth as soon as the results of Machi’s trial went public.
A part of him couldn’t blame them. How could any of them really trust each other, when their leading man could no longer say he had actually ever KNOWN his ‘best friend’? In any case, it was bad publicity, they said, and their image would never recover from the scandal. It would be better to pursue solo careers, they argued, because clearly a bond had been broken, now. Klavier didn’t have it in him to deny them what was no doubt a plea for his permission to break-up the band. Hell, at the end of the day, it wound up saving him the heartache of inevitably having to come to the conclusion himself anyway.
That didn’t mean it hurt any less to know that they wanted to leave, too. Even with the promises to keep in touch, the mutual reassurances that there was no ill will between them. Even when Klavier plastered on a smile and suggested they at least send around birthday wishes when the time came, or holiday cards in December, just to make sure they others are doing alright all on their own.
He should have known better than to think they would. Well over a year later, haunted by unread text messages and unanswered voicemails, Klavier still feels like a fool for hoping.
Absentmindedly thumbing the dulled ring on his middle finger, Klavier buried his nose deeper into the back of the couch cushion, chest pressed flush against the sofa, breathing in the now-permanent aromas of mild Axe deodorant and unscented two-in-one men’s shampoo from the grocery store and the rye-bread toast that he wakes up to every morning. His skull is pounding just behind his forehead and his cheeks itch and there’s nothing more comforting, now, than that stupid cheap shampoo clinging to his entire apartment like proof of life-
And, hell, it isn’t that Klavier can’t pick them, no- it’s that Klavier hasn’t proven himself good enough to DESERVE them.
THAT is what made him a fool; hoping that he was somehow good enough.
And if he’s not good enough to hold down friends, how can he be good enough for a boyfriend? For HIS boyfriend?
Something wet and hot and forbidden stings behind his eyes, and Klavier blinks, pleading quietly under his breath to an audience of nobody. “Bitte, bitte,” he whispers, squeezing his eyes shut and curling impossibly further into the couch, willing the floor to open up and swallow him whole before the unnamed emotion in his chest wins out against the proof of a struggle pooling against his eyelashes. “Nicht jetzt. Nicht heute, bitte-“
His phone vibrating suddenly against the coffee table does more to save his life in this moment than he’ll ever care to admit.
Klavier pushes himself up on the sofe just enough to free his arm from under his stomach and fumble for his phone when it vibrates in a short burst, a second time, with a string of incoming messages that he isn’t accustomed to at four-fifteen on a Thursday afternoon. He rolls over on his side, his left arm still hidden beneath him, picking his head up from the muted safety of his face in the pillows. His phone feels so unusually heavy in his hand, half-asleep from the pressure of his lost weight, yet he flips it open too quickly to mind the numbness at the tip of his fingers.
Six new messages, as it happens, as far back as half an hour ago, all of them from the same number.
3:43: ‘hi did you go home??’
3:44: ‘i called your office and sebastian said you left really early.’
3:47: ‘i’m just letting you know i’m also leaving a little early. trucy has a show, mr wright said to close up for the day.’
3:50: ‘stopping at the pharmacy on the way home, be there in a bit.’
4:11: ‘are you okay? sebastian said he didn’t know why you left.’
And then, finally, blessedly.
4:14: ‘love you, don’t forget.’
How Klavier missed all of them until now, he doesn’t know, but he grips his phone a little tighter as he catches up, taking in on big, shaky breath through his nose. Love you, love you, love you, attaches itself to the inside of his ear and Klavier bites down hard on his lip, the tears building in his eyes building FASTER, pushing HARDER against the rims and Klavier’s throat bobs and his head aches and Klavier stares at the name on the top of his screen, like it’s some sort of angel’s message (it is, to him. It always will be). APOLLO sits confidently in bold black letters and all capitals, a heart punctuating his name as if it were a part of the spelling. A long history of messages from the days before crowd his latest to the bottom by the keyboard. Love you, love you, love you, staring him in the face.
‘Don’t forget.’
How could he ever?
It takes him a particularly long moment to realize what Apollo is actually saying, to understand that his boyfriend was calling looking for him, to tell him that he’s on his way home earlier than usual, to inquire as to where it is that Klavier went off to, knowing in any case that of course, Klavier had gone home if he’d been out of the office as early as two on a weekday without having said anything about it. Reading Klavier like a book, laying out his own afternoon for Klavier to follow so that he knew, in no uncertain terms, when Apollo would be walking through the front door. Punctuating it all with love you, love you, love you, like it’s no big deal. Like it’s not the most important thing that anyone has ever said to him.
Klavier loves the way Apollo texts him. Apollo doesn’t use his phone for anything other than calls and messages and emails. He barely even uses it for that, not one for the internet in the way that Klavier used to be, but Klavier loves the way he texts. His auto-capitalization is off, but he insists on using proper punctuation in everything. He’s never once used any kind of emoticon, not even accidentally, and it sometimes feels like Klavier is texting with Herr Edgeworth, who barely understands how to text at all.
The emotion in Klavier’s chest tightens, and in total betrayal of the flash of love you, love you, love you fluttering in his stomach, he thinks that it’s the tiny little things like this that Klavier is the most afraid of losing when next he screws up.
4:17: ‘natürlich, liebling <3 love u way more ;) see u soon!!!’
His thumbs fly over the keyboard and it’s a miracle that he manages to throw on the accent without a typo that Apollo would tease him for, later. Not that he wouldn’t love that, but Klavier’s mind goes into overdrive; Apollo is going to be home any minute, now, and Klavier needs to clean himself up before Apollo gets home, scrub his face down and fluff up the couch cushions and dry his eyes out before his boyfriend walks in the front door to see the evidence of Klavier’s breakdown strewn haphazardly across the apartment, his shoes thrown next to the door and his jacket on the kitchen table and his work shirt ruffled and wrinkled by the sofa.
He tosses his phone back onto the table and breathes, looking for his composure again.
No sooner can he manage to put his feet on the floor and stand up off the couch, knees weak from the odd position he had been curled up in, begging him to sit back down and get his bearings first, does he hear the key turning in the front door, the lock clicking open and the telltale squeaking of the door being pushed open on hinges that Klavier has never bothered to oil in all the years he’s lived here.
The front door, attached directly to their living room, adjacent to the sofa.
The front door, and Apollo steps inside, and it would be utterly impossible for them to miss one another from the twelve feet in between them.
Klavier is a deer in the headlights of Apollo’s entirely unsuspecting gaze, unintentionally meeting his eyes as soon as he opens the door enough to be able to shuffle through the gap without his shoulder bag slamming into the doorframe. The back beige wall is already scuffed up from the last year of the pair of them coming and going with significantly more haste in the distraction of one another than Klavier had ever had living alone, yet Apollo always makes a conscious effort not to bang into anything whenever he can, clumsy as Apollo is, because ‘it makes me feel bad, it’s still technically your apartment.’
Maybe that’s why it comes as such a shock when Klavier sees that Apollo sees HIM, and Apollo trips over the doorframe, losing the grip on his bag heavy enough to thud against the wall with the weight of itself.
Or maybe it’s because he’s frozen in place, and flushed, and embarrassed, and the notion of being looked at in this state of duress makes him lightheaded.
“Klavier!” Apollo gapes, eyes wide, blinking quickly, shutting the door behind him with his heel. “Are- what’s-you-“ he sputters through nothing, looking his boyfriend up and down the way that he does a witness on the stand, taking in everything about them because there is something there that needs to be seen to be heard. Whatever he DOES see catches him off guard, clearly, in the way that he stumbles forward over the few too-far feet and his brows furrow with a concern that Klavier hates himself for causing, and his lips hang open as he tries to find the words before settling on, “You look like you’ve been crying.”
“I haven’t,” Klavier says quickly. Technically, it’s not a lie.
He couldn’t lie to Apollo even if he wanted to. He doesn’t want to. Not now, not ever. But he also doesn’t want Apollo to know how insecure and stupid he actually he, how he must look the picture perfect definition of disheveled right now, hair all mussed up and tangled, having been laying on the couch for two whole hours, wallowing in himself like a heathen. He doesn’t need to look at himself in the mirror to know that his eyes are red. He hadn’t exactly been able to blink those goddamn tears away in time.
“Please don’t try to shut me out, Klav,” Apollo says, because he knows Klavier far too well. It’s gentle and pleading, a far cry from angry, but Klavier almost wishes that he was. It wouldn’t be unjust if he was.
“Ach, I’m not lying, liebling,” Klavier goes on anyway, in spite of the aching guilt. “I wasn’t crying.”
Apollo brings his hand up to his chest to fiddle with the golden bracelet on his left wrist. Against his bright red suit, Klavier thinks it’s shines with the light of a star. “Then you were about to.”
Klavier was about to. He was. But he didn’t. He had stopped himself. And he was handling it. He just needed a moment to wash his face, and Apollo never would have been able to tell the difference once he had reapplied his eyeliner and freshened up his smile. It’s not that Klavier is afraid to cry, but he IS afraid to cry today. Because today is too important, and Klavier has messed up too many too important days for one lifetime, not to mention that today is the most important too important day of Klavier’s entire existence so far, and he doesn’t want to ruin it for Apollo, because it’s just as much Apollo’s day as it is his. And Klavier has cried, so many times in the past, when he shouldn’t have, when opening up and allowing himself the vulnerability had cost him everything he thought he had.
He cannot fathom a world where it costs him Apollo. Where Apollo is slipping through his fingers and it’s all his own fault.
Suddenly feeling very defensive, this sinking feeling in his gut deepens, like this is going to be when he messes up for good, when he loses Apollo’s deodorant in the couch cushions and his texts with lowercase and punctuations and the love you, love you, love you that has been nothing short of his air to breath for the last year.
Instead of communicating any of that, like he KNOWS deep down he should, Klavier says weakly, “And?”
“And?” Apollo echoes him immediately, stepping even closer until their noses COULD have been touching if he were just a few inches taller. “And I care about you, and if something is wrong I want to help you, and if someone said something to you I want to handle it, or if you’ve been beating yourself up-“
“I wasn’t,” Klavier doesn’t even sound convincing to himself this time. That’s his fault, too, for cutting Apollo off and giving it away. Not like Apollo wouldn’t have figured it out in another minute.
Apollo’s grip around his bracelet tightens. There’s a fire in his eyes that’s blazing with something fierce and yet still, STILL, it is not angry. “You WERE.”
He was, and it’s Apollo’s fault.
Apollo Justice is a mystery that Klavier cannot solve. Apollo is beautiful, for one, and the day they first met in People Park Klavier was so taken aback by how BEAUTIFUL he was that he hadn’t even been able to flirt properly despite every instinct in his body that had developed over the years for just such an occasions compelling him to CALL Apollo beautiful straight to his face. Then Apollo shows up across from him in court, and Klavier can barely focus long enough to form a rebuttal fitting of his opposition’s objections. It was like a spell, a trance fitting of a rockstar, perhaps, that he found his tongue tied merely in the presence of somehow so- so-
So APOLLO.
Of course Apollo had to be considerate and kind, on top of it, the most well-meaning and simultaneously nervous person that Klavier’s ever met. When they started getting together for coffee or tea, or stopping in the courthouse corridor to simply chat with one another after a case had been closed, or they just so happened to be there for their own trials on the same day, Klavier quickly realized that Apollo has a litany of nervous habits that are nothing short of endearing. Twisting his bracelet, biting his bottom lip, pulling at his earlobe. And yet every little tick punctuates an idea, a compliment of Klavier’s work for the prosecution, a response to Klavier’s own flood of compliments for Apollo that came and went faster than he could even realize he had been forming them. The way his dimples crack whenever he smiles to say hello. Always asking for everything, - ‘only if you’re free’, ‘only if you don’t mind’, ‘but only if you want to’ - never asserting in the way he does in court.
A week after Kristoph was officially convicted, Apollo invited Klavier to join him and Trucy for a late dinner, shyly expressing that he thought Klavier might like the company ‘with everything crazy going on, ya know?’ They spent the entire dinner laughing over nothing in particular, ribbing at the Judge’s expense, spitballing jurist potential and talking about where around the world they’ve visited, like close, casual, comfortable friends who had not just pooled a joint effort to expose Klavier’s only living family for murder under a pretense of sociopathy. Call him rash, but it was then that Klavier realized that he was in love with Apollo Justice, and nothing he has done or said since then has mattered nearly as much as the first time he accidentally slipped up with an ‘ich liebe dich’ tacked onto his ‘goodbye’ after a trial of Apollo’s that Klavier had been in the gallery for.
Klavier didn’t know back then that Apollo knew enough German to have a conversation. And before the look of mortification could settle on Klavier’s face over what he had said, Apollo had grabbed the back of his head and was kissing him with the same fervor that Klavier had fallen in love with him for.
Klavier swallowed his subsequent apologies, his flushed cheeks and startled eyes and red ears, with something deeper, longing, more prepared.
He had allowed himself to be selfish, and now here he is one whole year later (to the day, even), probably ruining Apollo’s life, pathetic and messy as he is, wanting little more than to hold Apollo close and let HIMSELF be close to somebody else.
The dam breaks at the thought, and the water gathered around his lashes slips past his defenses, drawing a line down his cheek.
“I don’t want to be alone, schatz,” he whispers before he’s able to stop the confession at the gate, not trusting himself to speak any louder. “Ich habe angst, what if I can’t be enough for you?”
Apollo’s face falls.
He drops his hands at his sides, and his face falls. His eyes grow impossibly wider. Klavier can see Apollo swallow thick, the way his throat bobs and catches, his lips turned down and a crinkle forming in between his eyes that frightens Klavier beyond all reasonable belief. ‘Troubled’ isn’t word enough for how his boyfriend looks, but there’s something else buried underneath that that Klavier isn’t able to identify. The apartment is deathly quiet, deathly still, and if he didnt know any better, he would think it was the ground shaking beneath his feet rather than the weakness in his knees threatening to take him out cold.
First he thinks, of course, the worst. Now he’s done it. Apollo hates him. Apollo is offended. Ashamed. Baffled and betrayed by Klavier’s lack of confidence in himself. He’s affronted that his boyfriend could possibly be so insecure, so piteous and sad that he can’t even manage to keep himself together on their very first anniversary.
Klavier squeezes his eyes shut, tears rolling down his cheeks now in waves enough to drench his skin, shaking his head minutely, balling his hands into fists. Like he might be able to shrink down small enough to disappear, so that Apollo doesn’t need to see him like this when he deserves so much BETTER and he can only hope, that when he opens his eyes again, Apollo will finally be angry with him so that Klavier can at least KNOW that he’s being stupid, that maybe there is something inside of him worth offering that SOMEBODY (Apollo, Apollo, Apollo) wants badly enough to be upset with him for suggesting that there isn’t-
And then there are cold, calloused fingers pressing gently against his jaw, cupping his face on both sides, and Klavier knows those hands ANYWHERE, because they are ALWAYS cold, and one single, terrible, wonderful sob wrenches itself from his throat in a short burst of relief he had tried so hard to choke back.
“Klavier,” Apollo murmurs, brushing his thumbs against Klavier’s cheeks, collecting the tears in the crooks between his fingers. His breath brushes Klavier’s chin. “Can you please look at me?”
Who is Klavier to deny him?
When he opens his eyes again, Apollo’s chest is less than an inch away from his own, their faces practically, properly touching, this time. Bright brown eyes shine with something so incredibly soft that Klavier thinks he could crawl inside of them and fall asleep forever.
“Do you know how much I love you?” Apollo says plainly. Like it’s no big deal.
Klavier’s brain goes fry. He hiccups.
“Because I love you, a lot. A whole lot,” Apollo continues, not really waiting for Klavier to answer him. “More than a whole lot, actually. So much that they’ve never even invented a word for how much I love you. And I wish they would, because sometimes I worry that I’m not able to TELL you how much I actually really love you, and if you don’t KNOW how much I love you, then I worry that you might not love yourself if you don’t know that I don’t love you so much it makes my head spin.”
If Apollo is trying to blame himself for Klavier’s shortcomings, when he is nothing short of Klavier’s entire world, well then, Klavier has to force himself to speak so that Apollo KNOWS.
He finds enough strength to raise shaky hands to Apollo’s wrists, gripping them gently between his fingers, bracelet and all. Whether for Apollo’s sake or his, he can’t really differentiate the two. “Schatz you have NEVER done ANYTHING to make me think-“
Apollo leans up then, pressing a chaste, quick kiss, a brush of his lips, to Klavier’s jaw just below where his palm is stilly holding Klavier’s face. Just shy of Klavier’s own mouth.
That’s enough to shut him up, in any case.
“I know that. And I know that if I did, I could trust you to tell me,” Apollo smiles, watery and sweet and soft and BEAUTIFUL. “But sometimes I don’t think that YOU know that about yourself. I just told you how much I love you, right?”
“Yes,” Klavier murmurs, the words already seared across the front of his brain forever, a prayer meant only for him. The most purely selfish part of him wishes he could hear Apollo say it over and over again for the rest of his life.
Apollo takes the step that pushes their chests flush together. “Okay. And you know that I don’t lie to you, and you can’t lie to me, so you know that I don’t say things I don’t mean,” he presses on, tilting Klavier’s face down further to nose at HIS nose, lightly, barely, gently, and all THERE. “I love you because you are thoughtful, and reliable, and not everyone in the world might see that but I do, and I feel so lucky that you let me, you know that?” His breath is ghosting again Klavier’s lips, warm. He laughs, quietly and carefully, and that’s even better yet. “Because I love every part of you, the flashy, outgoing, glimmerous fop-y part of you that the whole world gets to see, that writes sappy love songs and puts on a big show because you love the spotlight and I love that you are confident enough to love any of that in the first place.”
“I try,” Klavier says genuinely, a little less than a whisper this time because, well, he can’t help himself if Apollo is going to be so honest with him.
Apollo chuckles again, nearly grinning from what Klavier is able to make out of his gorgeous boyfriend’s face through his eyelashes and the pitiable blur of tears still streaming down his face. “I know you do. And I love how much you try. But I also love who you are when it’s just us, and I think that’s the part that I love the best, ya know?” Klavier doesn’t even bother with the heat of a blush crawling up the back of his neck. “I love that you take forever in the shower because you use like, fifty different hair products, and that you don’t like your eggs scrambled because they look a little like vomit, and I love that you wear sunglasses inside, and you pull on my hair when you think I’m asleep just to watch the rest of the gel come undone.”
“That’s-“ Klavier breathes, and it evolves into a breathless sort of laugh. “I thought- You were awake?”
“I’m a very light sleeper,” Apollo replies, running one hand up the side of Klavier’s face to tuck frizz and loose bangs and the slack remnants of Klavier’s ponytail for the day behind his ear. Klavier cannot help himself when he leans unconsciously into the touch, and Apollo’s hand stays there, holding his head in his palm, pleasantly cool against Klavier’s darker, warmer skin.
He doesn’t know what to possibly say.
What DO you say, when some days you wake up and you hate yourself for it? What do you do, when you resent yourself for all of the people you couldn’t reach, the friends you couldn’t hold onto, the lives you couldn’t save, when that was all you were ever meant to do, - to HELP people - only for the most beautiful and incredible and selfless man in the entire world to hold you in his hands, as though you might fall apart - and Klavier WILL fall apart, if Apollo ever lets go - for the simple purpose of telling you that he loves you like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever said?
How is it that Klavier is able to believe him, so unyieldingly, unquestionably, to believe IN him, when he can hardly believe in himself? Apollo makes him feel as though the world has stopped turning, like time is frozen, running in place, and they are the only two living, thinking beings in the universe. Maybe they are. Maybe that’s all that matters, because above all else, it makes him realize (and certainly not for the first time, mind) that Apollo is holding onto him just as tightly as Klavier clings to Apollo’s every breath. It is one year ago all over again, the heart-pounding acknowledgment of the fact that Apollo could ever stand to love him back.
It is fully and utterly impossible for anyone to love anyone as much as Klavier loves Apollo, but when Apollo LOOKS at him like he is now, he is able to believe that Apollo loves him almost, nearly, perfectly, as much.
“Güte, ach, I don’t deserve you, Apollo,” he hiccups again, some distorted sort of a less wretched sob, a smile pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Ich liebe dich, I-I love you-“
Yet another sob too strong for him to argue cuts off the myriad of ‘I love you’s that Klavier finds overwhelming his consciousness.
Apollo gazes up at him, smiling, smiling, smiling, and that underbelly of emotion shines with a new sort of clarity in his eyes that Klavier realizes can only be love. Pure, unadulterated, untainted and unassailable love. The kind of love that Klavier feels in his own chest right in this exact moment, and every single other time Apollo Justice is in his thoughts. Every hour of every day since Wocky Kitaki was brought to trial and Klavier had to contend with feelings for the so-called opposition.
And so as words continue to fail him, eloquent as he may try so hard to be, Klavier does the only thing that he believes could ever, possibly, realistically, come close to telling Apollo just how MUCH he loves him, how BADLY he needs him.
He leans down the rest of the way and captures Apollo’s mouth beneath his own. He kisses Apollo and their lips fit so perfectly together. Just like they always do. Klavier’s hands find the small of his back, pulling him as deeply into it all as humanly possible, and Apollo returns the favor in record time, a hand in his hair, a hand on his cheek, and his lips are chapped and warm and salty, because he probably had Eldoon’s for lunch again, and Klavier savors the familiarity of it. The apartment is quiet and Klavier is too lost in Apollo to care about how lonely the quiet can feel, his eyes closed, breathing in that stupid wonderful cheap shampoo that he loves to hate and relishing the feeling of someone, HIS someone, under his fingers. The whole world is Apollo, and Klavier could live forever on that notion alone.
The break for air only comes when Apollo threads his hands down Klavier’s increasingly messy ponytail, back to his jaw, and nudges a thumb between their lips enough to allow them both the moment to breathe. Klavier opens his eyes just enough to be able to see him, his beautiful face, his big brown eyes born of a perpetual slew of nervous ticks, the softness etched into his features outlined by adoration, and everything suddenly feels LESS; Klavier feels weightless and numb and it is everything, EVERYTHING, to be able to feel that way in the presence of Apollo’s blessedly gentle touch.
“You’re the only one in the world I want, Klav,” Apollo tells him. “You’re the only person in the world who deserves me.”
And Klavier believes him, and Klavier loves him.