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“If your office actually has a car,” Klavier said as he kicked the tires of the green monstrosity, “why don’t any of you drive it to court?”
Apollo scrubbed the back of his neck as he watched Klavier pace around the green Volkswagen Bug, “Uh, well…Mr. Wright doesn’t drive… Athena and I prefer not to leave a huge carbon footprint…and no one wants to pay for car insurance for a company car?”
“It is insured, ja?”
“Should be…would be dumb for Mr. Wright to just loan it out to people if it wasn’t…”
The blonde raised an eyebrow while he idly picked a bit of rust off the Bug’s once-chrome door handle.
Apollo frowned, “What’s wrong with it? Are you suddenly too good to be seen in this? I mean, you’re the one who didn’t want to take your car out tonight, since the ‘paparazzi have been all over meine tail this week’”, he pinched the bridge of his nose in exasperation,
“This is the best I could do to keep us incognito for date night, unless of course you want to share my bike.”
Klavier shook his head, “Nein. Nein…I’m more concerned about safety…and space?”
Apollo stared at his boyfriend, “Space?”
A wolfish grin appeared across Klavier’s face, “As well as your comfort level about getting up to things in this car…” and the realization suddenly dawned on Apollo.
He felt his cheeks heat, “Umm, I mean….” He looked in the backseat.
Yes, there were strips of duct tape patching the interior upholstery, a few smaller tears here and there, the floor mats were long gone…but so long as there wasn’t a blacklight involved, it was clean enough for Apollo.
Maybe not up to “International Rockstar and OCD Prosecutor levels of clean, but it was as clean as a hand-me-down car that was older than the both of them could be, “Yeah, I’m be down…for whatever…” he said, trying to play it cool.
He ignored Klavier’s huff of laughter as he mulled the other part of the question,
“Athena said that she and Simon were able to get most of his stuff from storage into this, and there was enough room for them to be comfortable as they sat in traffic.”
Apollo babbled, while Klavier’s expression vacillated between confused and amused,
“I mean,” Apollo continued, “ if the two of them- especially ‘Mr. Longlegs Blackquill’, were able to feel comfortable in an overpacked car as it sat on the 404 in the summer heat and traffic, we should be fine taking out for dinner and any other…” he coughed, “excursions”
He wasn’t sure if he had made his case, but Klavier was studying the car with a sort of soft smile, so there was still a slight chance…
As soon as he saw Klavier’s usual smile, Apollo felt a dither of his usual pre-date excitement take over.
“Alright, baby,” Klavier opened the driver’s side door. It swung heavily and dipped low on its hinge with a creak, but it did not dampen Klavier’s grin, “Let’s have an adventure.”
Apollo climbed into the passenger seat, “So where are we going after dinner?”
“I know a place,” Klavier said cryptically, rolling down the window by hand to adjust the cloudy side mirror, “someplace romantic where we can watch the sunset, and most importantly, it’s private.”
With a lurch and a loud cough of tailpipe, Klavier steered them on their way.
***
The gorgeous view of the city while the sun set, Apollo couldn’t help but feel that he was in a movie. It was just so silly when he thought of it…something out of a teenybopper high school movie, and he couldn’t believe that Klavier actually wanted to do something like this.
The radio was tuned to some easy listening station, which didn’t help Apollo’s feeling of being in some teen movie.
"Let’s hope it’s not a horror movie", he thought, while the motor idled on the secluded overlook Klavier had driven them.
As the sun died across the horizon, Klavier exaggeratedly stretched, and pulled Apollo closer to him. The blonde laughed, “You’re tense,” the hand squeezing Apollo’s shoulder, “you’re not having second thoughts, are you?”
Apollo turned to face Klavier, face scrunched in determination,
“N-no!”
Klavier took that opportunity to pull Apollo closer and into a kiss.
Beneath his fingers, Klavier felt Apollo relax, and he deepened the kiss for a few heartbeats.
“Gut,” he purred when they finally broke for a breath, “don’t worry, Herr Forehead,” he placed a kiss to the aforementioned body part, “you’re going to be fine…”
He captured Apollo’s mouth once more before the other man could object to Klavier’s hijacking of his mantra. He lifted the lever to recline Apollo’s seat, climbing bodily onto his lover in one fell swoop.
If Apollo had any second thoughts about what they were doing, Klavier quickly built a strong case against them.
***
It had returned.
It wasn’t a coincidence…it wasn’t another car that happened to be the same make and model of *that* car.
It was *the* car.
On a hot summer night over ten years ago, he had been patrolling these grounds in his shiny new squad car when he had first encountered the Green Bug.
Parked on this overlook. Windows steamed, as the carriage rocked rhythmically; the squeaking of the wheels (Oh gods the squeaking) a perverse siren’s song that disturbed the quiet of the evening.
He was new to the police force then, and perhaps it had been a rookie’s false sense of invincibility to believe he had the gumption to put a stop to the obvious fornication that had been occurring in the ugly car.
How it had all turned out wasn’t fair. He had decided not to give them a ticket. He had just wanted to put the fear of the law in the assumed hormonal teens.
The door had been unlocked.
That was the second mistake- the first being that he should have just rolled his eyes at the bouncing car turned love nest, and moved along with his business.
There probably had been other, more serious crimes to watch out for that night.
Other crimes that would not have resulted in the humiliation he received.
But he hadn’t, and without thinking, he’d grabbed the car's handle and flung open the door.
Perhaps he had been expecting to see a cheerleader and her letterman jock of a boyfriend, or a couple of punk kids?
Young dumb teens who would have immediately fallen in line the moment they saw him and his badge.
But no, instead he’d gotten a pair of adults-
A buxom lady riding her “stallion” (not his words-he’d heard the man beneath her urging her to call him that as he had approached the car).
He had lost his nerve then and tripped over himself, falling on his ass. There was yelling and swearing; the woman suddenly dislodged from her mount to land for too long on the car’s horn. Its loud wail burning itself into his memory for years to come.
In his backwards crab-scuttle of a retreat from the car, he had taken a thermos full of hot liquid to the face.
He had scrambled back to his car to call for backup, tripping over his own feet and flailing as if the sight of the pair had suddenly blinded him.
But by the time his superior and fellow officers had arrived ready to assist him against a pair of “chemical-weilding assailants”, he was alone in his squad car on the overlook.
The smell of dark roast coffee permeated his squad car and uniform.
When he had wanted to press charges against his assailants, his co-workers had laughed at him; had refused to help him gather the evidence.
Most humiliatingly, his boss re-assigned him to walking a beat and servicing the city’s meters.
"Sorry, Pal, can’t have skittish rookies behind the wheel of a police car. I mean, you opened the door without announcing yourself- that is so dangerous, not to mention against protocol!
If two lovebirds spooked ya that badly, I don’t think you’re ready for car patrol duty.”
He’d glumly taken the bullhorn that his superior slid across the desk and went to change into his walking patrol uniform.
From that day, the car that had haunted him. He’d formed an irrational hatred of Green Bugs and found himself ticketing them without mercy when he found them parked at expired meters.
However, it was not enough.
No Green Bug could give him the exact revenge he wanted for the car that had made him a laughing stock in front of the precinct and condemned him to what seemed like a life walking a beat.
Until last month…when The Bug had suddenly reappeared.
In this very spot where he’d seen it years before.
Age had not taken kindly to it: it was rusted, and the squeaking (Oh gods, the squeaking) was louder and wailing with each frantic bounce of the carriage.
He wouldn’t make the same mistake as he had all those years ago, and so he had pulled out his bullhorn and announced that the police had them surrounded (“And any hot beverages thrown would be used against you in the court of law!!”).
There was frantic movement of the car, male and female voices- good, he finally had them.
That is, until a hawk dove at him from the treetops above.
Scratching and squawking, relentlessly chasing him down the hill where he had stumbled head-first into a ditch. The bird swooped and dove, and he barely evaded its talons as he tucked himself into a ball.
He heard the squealing of tires and the groaning of a poor suspension pass his ditch.
He waited a while before he dared to slowly crawl out of the ditch, cursing Green Bugs, horny degenerates, hawks, and himself for fumbling his second chance.
He had pulled himself back into his small Parking Enforcement Trike, convinced that it would be another decade before he saw it again.
But it was back again tonight.
In all its ugly and shit glory, the Bug was back.
Its windows were fogged as usual, and its undercarriage bounced its mocking rhythm.
The squeaking was there…but this time almost drowned out by a man’s enthusiastic sounds of pleasure.
Perhaps the driver was alone tonight? Just a loud pervert out for an evening jerkoff at “Make-Out Point”.
He approached the car, using his flashlight to quickly search the tree tops for any hawks or other potential birds of prey.
Once he was certain that there would be no air-borne attacks, Officer Mike Meekins shone the light into the window as he pounded- a full ten years' worth of rage and hatred of Green Bugs- onto the glass window,
“This is the polic-Ahhh!”
His fist had gone through the glass.
Before his brain could compute that he had punched through a glass window, he was met with a scream that deafened him.
Mike Meekins hit the ground with his hands over his ears, moaning in pain.
There was scuffling from inside the car, as was expected, and some swearing too.
What he didn’t expect was the door to open with a horrific groan to reveal a half-dressed Klavier Gavin who was now approaching him.
“Herr Officer Meekins?” Prosecutor Gavin said with concern.
From inside, Gavin’s partner was frantically throwing the remnants of glass out of the car while shouting at the prosecutor,
“Put your damn pants on! Do you want to get dragged in for indecent exposure, too?!!” along with further moaning about “this being a terrible idea”.
Klavier ignored the other man, 100-watt smile in place as if nothing was amiss,
“Don’t be so harsh- we gave the poor officer a shock!”
The other man groaned in exasperation but continued to clean the best he could while keeping his body obscured in shadow.
Mike didn’t know what happened next. It was a blur between the prosecutor helping him up (Mike kept his gaze above waist-level), checking to see if there was any harm done to his hand (fortunately, he’d been wearing gloves), and escorting Mike back to his sad little meter maid trike.
“Ah, I don’t suppose you could let Herr Justice and me off with just a warning, ja?” the prosecutor had smiled, “you know how it is- summer evenings, alone in a car with your lover and all that…”
He nodded dumbly, still in shock and ears ringing from whatever air siren he had been assailed with…at least he thought it was an air siren.
He diverted his eyes so he didn’t catch the full view of one of his superiors wandering balls-out back to the Green Bug.
From the Bug came a brief argument:
“How are we going to fix this?! Mr. Wright is going to notice, and it needs to be back TONIGHT!”
“I’m sure he won’t notice the window; he didn’t notice the dead squirrel in the tirewell…we’re going to be fi-”
“Don’t you dare, Gavin!!“ before the Bug’s ignition turned over in a defiant roar which soon turned to a wet sputtering down the road and into the night.
Mike Meekins never saw the car at “Make-Out Point” again…and neither could he unsee Prosecutor Gavin’s naked lower half the next time the prosecutor called on him to testify in court.