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Apollo liked to think she could recognize when someone flirted with her. Okay, so she ended up going to Prom with Clay after snubbing one of their classmates (accidentally!) and never quite understood why Clay would suddenly get protective when one of their drunken college buddies started hanging around her… What was so wrong in thinking they just wanted someone to have a drunken—at least on their side—conversation with? Or in accepting an innocent compliment? They were just being friendly. Not all college aged guys only wanted sex.
… Thinking back on it, maybe those compliments had not been so innocent. Never mind.
Still, this time was different. This time Apollo was aware that she might, for once, be on the receiving end of someone’s affections—and not weeks after the fact. Keyword: Might. She didn’t want to assume, after all, and the signals were pretty mixed.
“Fräulein, are you listening?”
“Huh? O-oh, yeah…” Embarrassed, she ran her hand over her hair, smoothing her spikes back. “Sorry.”
Then again, this was Klavier Gavin she was dealing with.
Klavier laughed, warm and rich and light, and waved the apology away. “Nein, no apologies. I just thought you spaced out on me, is all. Is there something bothering you in that pretty forehead of yours, Forehead?”
There he went. First calling her pretty (or at least her forehead) and then… that. Scowling, Apollo turned her head and huffed at him. “No. Nothing.”
“Ah, ah, ah. I’m a prosecutor, remember? If you are going to lie to me, at least lie better.”
“Uhuh, right.” No way I’m telling you what I’m thinking, Gavin. “What are you doing here, again?”
“Had you been listening you would know. I stopped in here to grab a drink, then I saw you, and here I am.” Klavier gestured to his coffee mug, too smart to wave it around when it was still full and steaming hot. Apollo sipped at her tea—lukewarm, good to accompany her sandwich on the way down. Or it would be if Klavier would just leave.
“Not hungry, Fräulein?”
“Stop calling me that. And no, I—” She stopped herself, frowning. “You don’t have anything to eat.”
He tilted his head, confused. So she explained.
“You don’t—I mean… Yeah.” She tried to explain, anyways. It only made things worse. Klavier’s eyes narrowed and he opened his mouth to say something. “It’s fine, really.”
“I can leave,” he offered. “I do not wish to make you uncomfortable.”
“No, don’t. Unless you want to.” Way to go, Apollo. Nice quirks. Apollo took a large swig of her tea. Putting something in her mouth might keep something stupid from coming out.
The concern remained, however, in Klavier’s expression, though buried it was beneath a mask of calm. Apollo wondered how long it took Klavier to train himself to mask his emotions like that. And he was one of the more touchy feely guys anyone ever met, or at least that’s what he wanted them to think. Not hard to guess there were things even Klavier Gavin didn’t want to share.
She thought the conversation would end there. Devolve into awkward silence—when did they ever talk outside of cases, anyways?—until Klavier politely excused himself.
Instead he switched gears, picked a new line of conversation and ran with it, ditching their old one.
“How are things at the Agency?”
“Good. How are things at the office?”
“Good. Better, actually. Herr Blackquill has proved to be an… interesting addition to the office.”
“What kind of interesting?” Apollo asked, suddenly curious. I should have mentioned Athena. “Interesting as in you actually like him, or interesting as in he threatened to sic Taka on you?”
Klavier glanced around the café first, as if checking to see if the coast were clear, and flashed her a lopsided grin. He leaned in, motioning for her to do the same. Entranced, Apollo did.
“… Interesting as in I witnessed Herr Blackquill’s pet hawk rob Herr Payne—the elder, not the even more insufferable one—of his toupee to make a nest out of it.”
Apollo gasped, hand flying to her mouth. “No! That awful thing?”
Klavier nodded gravely. “Ja. I believe Taka has a second home now—the office’s underground parking lot. I fear for my life whenever I enter or exit my vehicle.”
“Wow.” Apollo shook her head, hand dropping to her lap. “Makes me glad to be a defense attorney. At least we don’t have vicious hawks swooping down on us… at the office.” She winced. “Not so much in court.”
“Oh, yes. I forgot that you have been on the receiving end of Taka’s claws.” He smiled, wryly. “I will just count myself lucky, then, and try to stay on Herr Blackquill’s good side.”
“Good call.”
Klavier picked another topic for them to discuss and Apollo picked at her sandwich. Baby bites.
“Let me drive you home.”
“What?”
“Let me drive you home,” Klavier repeated. They stood outside of the café, having finished their drinks and Apollo half her sandwich. “That’s where you said you were going, yes?”
Apollo visibly hesitated. She pulled her jacket tighter around her, unsure if the uneasiness in her stomach had to do with riding on Klavier Gavin’s motorcycle in a skirt or the ominous gray clouds heading their way.
She shook her head. “That’s okay, it’s not far.”
He insisted once more before relenting.
“Thanks for the company,” she told him before running off in the opposite direction—literally. She wasn’t getting caught in any storm. Klavier walked back to his car.
A week later and they are at the same café again. “I like to come here on my days off,” Apollo explained, “and things have been slow at the Agency. We’re doing fine what with the three of us, four if you count Trucy, but there’s nothing to do right now so… I thought I’d take an extra day off a week.”
“To relax?”
“Something like that.”
“I envy you,” Klavier said, light-hearted, and somehow Apollo knew he was being serious.
“Prosecutor’s office still busy?”
“Very. I’ve been thinking of taking a couple days off, myself. Maybe I will take a vacation.” He smiled and leaned against the table. “Care to join me?”
She sputtered.
He laughed.
“Can I ask you a question?” Apollo asked, one day, when they are sitting at the same table at the same café two weeks later. “Two questions, actually. Or three, if you count the first one—so don’t be a smartass about it, okay? I’ve heard that joke too many times already.”
Klavier stared at her then, mouth full with a bite of sandwich. He chewed, swallowed, then told her, “Go on and ask.”
“When did we start meeting like this?”
“Four weeks ago.”
“Funny.”
“Next question, Fräulein?”
“Do you have any tattoos?”
That time, he almost choked on his tea. He covered it up but not well enough for Apollo to not see. “Excuse me?”
“Do. You have. Any. Tattoos.”
Perplexed, he nodded. “Ja—two. Why?”
Apollo toyed with the hem of her skirt, hands hidden under the table. She bit her lip before deciding to hell with it, she already asked. “I’m thinking of getting one. I want to know what it’s like, and what they look like when they’re done.”
“How it feels varies from person to person, and depends on where you get it. Besides,” he lowered his voice, “I would love to show you my tattoos, Forehead, but it would be a little inappropriate to take off my shirt or remove my pants in public, don’t you think?”
It took Klavier twenty minutes to convince Apollo not to flee from the café and never return. “If you ever say something like that again,” she hissed, face redder than her jacket, “I—I swear, I… I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do something!” She reached across the table and smacked his shoulder for added measure.
Once he stopped laughing he asked her what she wanted to get.
“I was thinking of a sun and a moon.”
Three weeks later Apollo rolled up her sleeve and showed him the tattoo: A simplistic sun and crescent moon on her right arm, outlined simply in black, with stars gathering at the bottom of the moon and venturing southwards until stopping.
“I wanted it to mean something,” she told him, smiling sadly at the ink on her arm. He prodded her into explaining, admiring the art imprinted onto her skin.
“Clay and I planned to get matching tattoos after he returned from space.” Her voice lacked its usual volume. It was too difficult to muster enthusiasm when talking about Clay like that, in past tense, even four months after his death. “He drew it up; I can’t draw for shit. I had the stars added, though. I thought it’d be a nice touch.” She laughed, rolling her sleeve back down and turning to smile at Klavier. “You were mostly right when you said it wouldn’t hurt too badly.”
“’Mostly’?”
She nodded. Self-conscious, her hands came to cover the burn scars on her forearms. Klavier reached over to uncover them. He held her hands in his even after. They were warm. “Those should be a badge of honor. You saved Juniper from getting injured… or worse.
“Besides,” Klavier let go of her right arm, instead turning over her left to run his free hand over the marbled skin, “they healed well. The skin is a little discolored, yes, and… sensitive, too, ja? But it does not look bad.”
You haven’t seen my back, Apollo thought, but said, “Thank you.”
Two weeks passed and Apollo had something else to worry about.
“You’re not sleeping.”
Klavier looked up from his soup with hazy eyes. He squinted, like he couldn’t quite understand what she had said, before shaking his head and sighing. “Is it that obvious?”
“Yes.” There was no room for beating around the bush with her. “Is something the matter?”
His smile was like hers two weeks ago: sad. “Nein, nothing a sleep aid won’t fix.”
One week later, with the skies turned gray once more and thunder booming nearby, Klavier offered again.
“Let me drive you home.”
“On your hog?”
“Nein, my car.”
“Please.”
Klavier’s car was parked a block away. The sky rained down as them just as they reached the vehicle. The two attorneys scrambled into their respective seats, doors slamming shut behind them to shut out Mother Nature’s attempt to dampen their day (and clothes).
Klavier’s car was luxurious to say the least. Clean in contrast to Klavier’s cluttered office, surprising Apollo until one glance to the backseat revealed CD cases, a brief case, and miscellaneous items strewn across the seat and floor. The prosecutor had the decency to blush when Apollo pointed it out.
“I need to clean this thing,” he admitted, pulling out of the parking spot and into the street. It took them a little longer than usual to get to the apartment complex; the roads were slick and other drivers careless. Klavier had to slow down in order to drive safely.
On impulse, Apollo asked Klavier to come up with her.
After a pause, he said yes.
They ran together to the building, all the way up to her apartment on the second floor. It wasn’t much, but it was home. The apartment opened up into the living room, kitchen, and dining room all in one. A short hallway to the right led to the bathroom, closet, and bedroom. “Make yourself comfortable.” He did, taking off his shoes—not out of the blue, Apollo did too—and socks, setting them by the door and following Apollo to the couch.
Mikeko slowly came out of his hiding place after a little bit of cooing on Apollo’s part, which Klavier insisted she do after he heard there was a darling little cat he had yet to meet. The calico found his way to the couch, nestled snugly between Apollo and Klavier, purring loudly—louder, even, when Klavier scratched beneath his chin. “He likes you,” Apollo commented.
“I hope so. He’s a darling little thing. Where did you get him?”
“At a shelter, back in college. They didn’t think he would ever get adopted seeing how abrasive he was. Now look at him. Mikeko opened up the moment I brought him home.”
“A handsome cat for a beautiful woman,” Klavier mused, stroking Mikeko from head to tail, then back again, this time letting his hand brush against Apollo’s bare knee. A jolt of electricity shot through Apollo, the intensity doubled when Klavier smiled at her and kept his hand there.
So he was flirting. Apollo pressed her lips together as hard as she could, determined to keep any expression from showing on her face, and covered Klavier’s hand with her own. “Do you tell that to all the girls?”
“Do you mean, do I call them beautiful or do I flatter their cat first? Because if it is the latter, then nein, I do not.” He brushed his thumb along the outside of her thigh. Apollo didn’t push his hand away, so he continued, lightly stroking the patch of skin there.
It was maddening, unrightfully so, and made it hard to think. Suddenly Mikeko was an obstacle keeping either of them from moving closer. A cute, fuzzy obstacle, but an obstacle nonetheless.
Clearing her throat, Apollo ventured further into… into whatever it was she and Klavier were about to do, not that she didn’t know where that would go. “Maybe I can finally see those tattoos of yours.”
The shock on Klavier’s face was so genuine she couldn’t help but to laugh.
He tasted like coffee, she thought, once they were in the bedroom, door shut and kissing. Apollo had him pinned against the headboard. Was straddling him, her knees digging into the mattress on either side of his hips. Klavier’s shirt buttons were already halfway undone, revealing golden skin beneath, while Apollo’s jacket had been discarded before they ever reached the bed. Her hands were tangled in his hair while his ran along her sides, down her thighs and back up, feeling her out.
Klavier pulled away from the kiss to press several to Apollo’s jaw, making a trail from there to behind her ear. He chuckled when she moaned, breath curling against her neck, that area particularly sensitive. In response Apollo sucked in a breath and rolled her hips against his, relishing in the choked noise it earned from Klavier.
They needed this, she decided, sliding off his shirt before letting him remove her own. After a rough two years for them both and weeks of therapy appointments, of sleepless nights, the two of them didn’t care what it was they got. It just had to be good.
And it was good. So, very, very good when Klavier lavished her with kisses. From her mouth, neck, chest—leaving marks along the way—down to her belly and thighs, Klavier explored her skin with lips and teeth and tongue. She thought she might sob when he kissed between her legs, too, having been abstinent long enough she’d forgotten how wonderful it felt.
Even when her throat went raw and her whole body buzzed with oversensitivity they were not, she told him, done yet, grabbing a condom out of her nightstand. (“Don’t look at me like that; guys aren’t the only ones who should be prepared. Now take off your pants.”) She pushed him so that he was splayed out on the mattress completely naked and exposed, hers for the taking. Apollo used the moment it took to roll the condom on to appreciate the symbol tattooed on his hip.
“It is supposed to symbolize good health and fortune,” he told her, smiling dreamily. "The one on my arm is a g-clef."
“That’s nice,” and she lowered herself onto him.
There was nothing gentle in the way she rode him or in the way his hips snapped up to greet hers. Red crescent-shaped marks on her hips would serve as a reminder, for however little they lasted, of the rainy afternoon. He propped himself up at one point and demanded she touch herself, right this very instant, and without a second thought she did.
They finished shortly after, Klavier collapsing back onto the mattress and Apollo onto him, each red faced and breathless. They layed like that for some moments before Apollo had to get off him. The condom went into the trash can, the comforter to the floor, and the two beneath the unsoiled sheet.
They did not stay there forever or even hours. Only until the rain let up enough so that Klavier could leave, and he did, leaving Apollo with the promise of dinner that Saturday night. He'd pick her up at six.
He'd better not be late.