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The sun is already high and bright in the sky when Klavier Gavin awakens to the sharp smell of coffee.
He turns and snuggles into his pillow, grinning so wide he has half a mind that his face is liable to get stuck that way. He feels like a child on Christmas morning for how quickly his heart is beating, surging bright excitement through his veins. It is only one morning following a long line of many—and even more to come, he is sure. There was once a time when he fantasized about this, pulling every sensory detail from the coffee shop that would possibly fit into a morning at his apartment until the image was full to bursting; it had been all he had to go on, and he had been almost content to leave it at that, until a certain someone had surprised him by boldly kissing him in the rain. How dare he! Klavier cannot stop smiling.
The mattress under him shifts and warm little arms work their way around his middle—his imagination couldn’t possibly have ever invented a dream that properly captured this sensation. If he has his partner fooled into thinking he’s still asleep, then he blows his cover without a second thought when he shoves his pillow aside in favor of greedily scooping up the body next to him.
Apollo looks up at him and blinks as if facing direct sunlight. “Morning,” He murmurs, his words blurring in a way that betrays his lingering sleepiness, despite already getting up once. Nevertheless, Klavier feels Apollo’s hands lock together at his lower back, and his heart bounces in his chest, hard.
“Hello, schatzi,” Klavier greets him with an over-loud and sloppy kiss on the forehead, which makes Apollo wrinkle his nose. He loves that. “Thank you for the coffee.”
“No problem,” Apollo shifts to tuck his head neatly under Klavier’s chin in some attempt at self-preservation against embarrassing kisses, which Klavier happily uses as excuse to give him an even tighter squeeze. Every inch of him is warm and soft; his hair smells perpetually of coffee, and Klavier simply cannot help himself. Apollo speaks easily, evidently unaware of how his lips just lightly, teasingly touch the skin of Klavier’s throat on certain sounds: “There’s a full pot for you. I know you can’t function without borderline-dangerous blood-caffeine content, so I wanted to get it going before I left.” He huffs a laugh, and the sensation makes Klavier’s eyelids flutter.
Much like his favorite drink, Klavier thinks Apollo might just be a little bad for his health.
He cannot indulge long, however, as Apollo’s hands have already moved and are gently pushing Klavier off. Klavier hears himself whine and doesn’t even feel bad about it. “When are you going?”
Apollo props himself on his elbows, close so as to fill Klavier’s field of vision. His eyes slide sideways to the clock on the bedside table, and then fix on Klavier again with a familiar, muted intensity that makes Klavier want to pull him down again. “Soon. I’ll fix breakfast first, but then I have class.”
“Do you work today, too?”
“Evening,” Apollo nods once, “but I’m not closing, so I won’t be home too late. I have to study tonight, but I’ll be here.” His smile slides easily into a smirk. “Unless you’re too distracting, in which case I’ll go park it at the café until I’m finished with everything.”
Klavier gasps, scandalized. “You wouldn’t!”
“Hey, some of us didn’t get to go to some weirdo German school at age twelve—”
“—fifteen—”
“—when-the-fuck-ever, so we have to put ourselves through law school like normal people. It’s not easy. Especially when you’re, you know, on the side that the system hates.” Apollo arches an eyebrow at him before turning about to get to his feet.
Klavier frowns, folding his arms behind his head. “Touché, mein Forehead. But don’t neglect me.”
This gives Apollo pause, and Klavier can see him carefully mulling over his options—make a scathing remark, hit him with a pillow, all courses of action he has experimented with before—but instead, he turns around and leans over Klavier, planting his palms flat on either side of his shoulders.
He’s close, so close, and in these moments Klavier thinks he is almost intimidating but then he is so kind and earnest even if he’s rough at the edges and a little unsure of himself. Klavier feels as if he’s just pitching forward into the depths of his eyes when Apollo whispers, “Stupid,” and kisses him gentle and slow until he’s sure those are stars flickering behind his eyelids.
—and then Apollo is gone, vanishing into the inky-black empty space, and when Klavier finally opens his eyes again the bedroom is empty.
With a groan, he fetches his pillow from behind his head and stuffs his face into it.
Does he even understand? He is ruinous.
Apollo is not sweet or doting; he is neither overly affectionate nor romantic, but in these small moments of bravery, ribbed with sarcastic remarks and his self-conscious offhand kindness, he is perfect. He is sincere and open and passionate, even when he couches it in cynicism. Klavier has always known of his preference for bitter tastes—it only makes sense to have become so hopelessly addicted to the very same thing.
It’s almost like fate, he thinks. Or at the very least, so painfully in-character for him so as to become predictable. Droll.
Klavier drifts in and out of consciousness and trivial daydreams until an audible creak of floorboards announces Apollo’s return. He eagerly throws aside his pillow once again so as to not miss a second. When he lays eyes on Apollo, however, he swears his vision almost goes blurry and his heart skitters to a stop.
There is Apollo, framed in his bedroom doorway with a determined set to his jaw as if breakfast is the most important task he will have all day, wearing only his habitual woven bracelet and an overlarge button-down pajama shirt.
Klavier’s pajama shirt.
Scheiße.
The sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, hiding the obvious difference in stature between the two of them, but it runs long on him, settling lightly around his thighs and floating tantalizingly when he moves. Apollo’s halfway into the room when his footsteps slow, finally taking notice of Klavier’s unabashed stare. He raises an eyebrow, quizzical. “What?”
What? He asks as if he isn’t the very image of every fantasy Klavier has ever conjured up since age thirteen. How dare he.
“Schatzi…” Klavier hears his voice enter a dangerously high register. “You’re going to kill me.”
For a moment, Apollo visibly processes the statement. His lips curve into the smallest of smiles. “I figured you knew that?” He replies mildly, and promptly takes his leave of the room without another word. Klavier hears a door close, and then the sound of running water.
He pictures the loose hold of his shirt over those perpetually-tense shoulders, the neat slide over Apollo’s thighs. He swallows thickly, and he thinks—
Apollo is most certainly, decisively, fatal.