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“Kristoph was a good brother.”
“What?” Apollo hears himself ask, feeling the scant few centimeters between himself and Klavier spool out into a thousand miles in the space it takes him to process the confession. He turns his head to look at him, and is met with a palm to the nose.
“Don’t—don’t look at me. Gott,” he laughs, sounding somewhat frantic, “I can hardly think when you look at me like that, let alone speak.”
Apollo slowly lets his head roll back to its original spot, dutifully staring up at the stars that the newscasters say have been dying in spades for weeks now. End times, they say. Apocalypse. “Flirt,” he accuses.
“It’s the truth.” He feels Klavier’s pinkie stretch out to hook through his own and his stomach drops, gutted. They are so, so young. “If you did not make me so angry in court I don’t think I’d know how to say anything at all. Being speechless is not a good look for the rockstar prosecutor, ja? And yet.”
“If only I’d known earlier. Do you know how often I wish you would just shut the fuck up sometimes?” Klavier huffs out another choked laugh as he grins, feeling unmoored. “Who knew the power was within me all along?”
“Maybe I knew you would use it for evil,” Klavier suggests.
“Maybe you knew you couldn't go longer than a minute without the sound of your own voice,” Apollo retorts.
Maybe we were both too scared to acknowledge it, neither of them say, to make real what’s been there for years. Maybe we were both just waiting for the perfect opportunity. Maybe we knew, deep down, that there never would be one. Does waiting until the end of the world make it mean more? Less?
“What were you saying about Kristoph?” Apollo does say, eventually.
“Ach. I was hoping you would forget.”
Apollo hopes Klavier can feel the vibrations of his expansive eye roll through the gingham picnic blanket they’re both stretched out on. “Did you forget who you’re talking to?”
“Right, right, the Demon Lawyer himself,” Klavier sighs. “I never get a break with you, ja? Always the pressing. Is this what it would’ve been like, if we were to… ah.”
“If we were to…?” Apollo helpfully elbows him in the ribs and uses it as an excuse to fully lace their fingers together, watching a star wink out as he does.
“Halt die Klappe,” Klavier says, exasperated, though he does briefly bring their joined hands to his lips and press a fleeting kiss to Apollo’s knuckles. It feels like a win. “You know what I mean. If we were to have tried it. Us.”
“I don’t know,” Apollo replies honestly, sneaking a glance at him out of the corner of his eye. He looks beautiful and sad and beautifully sad, like a Renaissance portrait of a man in mourning. Mr. Wright had mused once that he’d paint Klavier in purples, and now Apollo sees why. He looks real like this, with cricket song in his hair and dying stars in his eyes. “I think we would have driven each other crazy. Crazier, I mean.”
“Ja. I think so, too.” He takes a beat, two. Then, finally: “My mom died when I was seven. Kristoph was fifteen.”
“…Right.”
“Our father was… not right, after. He used to say that they buried the better part of his soul with her. There was nothing left for us in him.” He says it in a detached, matter-of-fact way, like he’s cross-examining a witness. “We moved from Germany a month later, away from our estate and tutors and family. I went to pieces alongside our father, but Kristoph never let himself falter. And when our father started drinking himself into a stupor on most days ending in ‘y’, Kristoph, he… stepped into the role.”
He pauses, overcome. Apollo gives his hand a firm squeeze and feels him suck in a breath as much as he hears it, the force of the action wracking his entire body.
“He was never kind or perfect, but… ach, I don’t know. I barely even realized our life was falling apart around us, that’s how much he did for me. I would never have gone to Themis without him. I don’t think I’d even be a prosecutor.”
“Sounds like he made a better big brother than defense attorney,” Apollo suggests, feeling the words come out dry with years-old bitterness.
“Ja,” Klavier lets out a strangled sound that Apollo thinks he’s supposed to interpret as a chuckle. “Ja, he did. What about you, Forehead? Any fraught confessions? It’s the end of the world, you might as well make your closing arguments while you still have a captive audience.”
“You mean the captive audience of one that won’t even look at me?”
There’s a barely-there smile in Klavier’s voice. “Ja.”
He scoffs, feeling every bit the reckless citizen of a dying galaxy as he throws his free hand out to the side and grabs a fistful of grass, just to prove it’s still there. “Fine. How’s this: I think German accents are sexy. I’ve wanted to sleep with you since the first day we met and only been able to stand the sight of you for half as long. I’m not in love with you, but I wish I had the time to be. I can’t believe it took the apocalypse to get us together. I think we’re both so, so fucking stupid, and none of this is fair.” He doesn’t know when he started crying. “I don’t think Mr. Wright should have to say goodbye to a daughter he barely knows yet. I don’t think mothers should leave sons and I don’t think fathers have the right to die, spiritually or otherwise. I don’t think the world has the right to end when so many of us have so much life left to live. I’m not in love with you, but I wish I had the time to be.”
“Right,” Klavier whispers, like he’s scared to shake any stars out of orbit prematurely. Three more disappear anyway.
“I wish the stupid fucking stars would just stay in the stupid fucking sky for one more month. One more week, even. I wish I had a million more chances to tell Trucy I love her. I wish there was anything we could do. I wish you’d gotten to meet Clay.” He closes his eyes against the tears brimming in them, feeling a wry smile crack across his face. “He would’ve loved you. Or maybe he wouldn’t have. I wouldn’t have cared either way, just getting to see you two together would’ve been enough.”
“I wish you’d gotten to meet my mother. She would have loved you. No question.” Apollo doesn’t need to look to know that he’s crying too.
“I wish you’d had enough time to write a song about me.”
“I wish you could’ve heard all the songs I did write about you.”
“I wish you had told me.”
“Me too.”
Apollo rolls on his side to face him, keeping their hands firmly clasped between them. “I wish we had enough time to get a dog together. Something big, like a Great Dane.”
Klavier follows suit. They’re looking at each other now, mirror images of grief and exhaustion. “I’m afraid of big dogs.”
“That’s okay. I’m afraid of sharks.”
“I’m afraid of thunder.”
“I’m afraid of heights.”
“I’m afraid of broken mirrors.”
“I’m afraid of dying.”
“Me too.”
Apollo exhales, shuddery, then leans in. Klavier meets him halfway. They kiss like the world is ending (which it is) in a ball of blazing fire (which it isn’t). Klavier curls a hand around his waist, hesitant, and Apollo responds by pressing himself against him full force, squeezing his hand so tightly between them that he’s sure Klavier is well on his way to losing all feeling in his fingers. It’s crumbling and raw and the best last first kiss he’s ever had. He’s still crying as he pulls away, and it doesn’t take a genius to see that Klavier is, too.
“I have to get back to the Agency soon. Trucy wants to have an end of the world party, and Mr. Wright wants Mr. Edgeworth to come and pretend everything’s fine for the next twelve hours.” He squeezes his hand again. “You should come, too. Bring anybody, bring nobody, it doesn’t matter. The world is ending. I want you to come.”
“Ja, I will,” Klavier promises, leaning in for another quick kiss. “Apollo?”
“Yeah?”
He smiles, and this time Apollo sees it. He sees fifty years ahead into the future they deserve and will never get to have. He sees a medium-sized dog, a one-story house far from the ocean, a couple of cute kids that they raise to dance in storms and be careful around mirrors. He sees them each with their own firms, or maybe they’re partners, or maybe they’re not practicing at all. He sees a wedding in the forest fire colors of fall. He sees Trucy and Mr. Wright and Mr. Edgeworth and Athena and Simon and Sebastian and a family, a family that they fought for and won. He sees everything and nothing and knows, feverishly, that Klavier sees it too, momentarily breaking the bind of their palms to cup his face in shaking hands.
“I wish I had the time to be in love with you, too.”
And somewhere, far above them, two stars fade as one.