[Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney] Half and Half - slight KlavierxApollo

[melfice]

Title: Half and Half
Author: melfice
Pairing: Hinted KlavierxApollo
Fandom: Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney
Rating: PG

Summary: Apollo is learning to adapt.



Half and Half

by Melfice

Apollo Justice has always preferred his coffee to have a strong taste, a full body, and to be served without any frills or extravagant extras (two sugars, no cream - please and thank you). When he had worked for the Gavin Law Offices, even as an intern, there had been a coffee maker in the office at all times. Always an Indonesian brew sat in the fancy pot, waiting to be poured into any of the uniform, insulted cups that were arranged neatly beside the appliance. For the longest time he had become accustomed to always having strong, flavorful coffee at his disposal whenever he felt that he needed it. Every day at the office there would be a full pot of strong, flavorful coffee waiting for him and every day he had downed at least two delicious cupfuls.

Moving to the Wright Anything Agency has taken some adapting.

Not to say that these days are really all that different. Phoenix Wright also enjoys a good cup of coffee (although Apollo often wonders if he drinks the beverage for the actual coffee or for the staggering amounts of add-ons that he pours into the cup, with a meager amount of coffee following).

The small coffee maker in the Wright Anything Agency may be older than the first fossilized dinosaur, but it sputters and spurts and makes a perfect pot of coffee every time. The brew is weaker, and often times Apollo is convinced he can see through it, but beggars can’t be choosers.

He had promised himself that he would become used to it in time.

Apollo considers himself someone that adapts to change fairly well, especially in relation to a beverage that many consider some sort of holy artifact. Even when he watches Wright pour container after container of holiday flavored coffee creamer into his cup of coffee, as though he is a mad scientist creating a potion of sorts, he feels that some change is for the better.

“A conundrum,” Klavier says then, suddenly. “That’s what it is.”

An hour underneath the scant awning of the nearly empty patio of a quaint coffee shop and the downpour doesn’t seem to be relenting at all. The cold, metal chairs are becoming more uncomfortable as time wears on and the Styrofoam cup nestled in the defense attorney’s hands, although warming and emitting a delightful aroma, is just as equally an object of discomfort.

Apollo stares at the lidless cup as though it may very well be poisoned. Steam rises slowly off the newly acquired beverage, a tantalizing image to be sure. Yet for as much as the cup of coffee beckons to him, the young man only stares at it warily, never taking a sip.

Some change is not for the better.

“You‘re a conundrum,” Apollo replies, voice flat.

He feels bright eyes watching him, but it doesn’t pull his attention away from the light - not dark - liquid.

“You should try it, Herr Forehead. Just a sip.”

There were a lot of things that Apollo was planning to do today. Organize the disastrous filing cabinet that has taken over his office, water the fichus (that Wright had purchased two months ago and seemingly forgotten about six seconds later), mend the tears in his favorite work shirt…. It was going to be a full day.

None of his plans had involved watching the side street flood, with an expensive cup of coffee and a rock star at his side.

It has been an hour and his clothes (and his hair) are still uncomfortably wet.

He takes a healthy sip…

…and glances up, catching the gaze of the man watching him.

“It‘s okay.”

Curious eyes widen ever so slightly. “Just okay?”

“I told you… I’m a very boring person. I like my coffee very… plain,” he pauses, staring at the nearly full cup of coffee, and then sits it back on the small café table. “Not bad, just not amazing.”

It wasn’t that this couldn’t be considered an enjoyable experience. It was certainly a very relaxing afternoon and most definitely more interesting than organizing a filing cabinet.

Klavier takes a drink from the nearly full cup. “You just prefer simple things, ja? I try too hard when you are so easy to please.”

Apollo snorts derisively, but the tips of his ears tinge pink.

The weather had been cloudy, but not unpleasant, when he had left the courthouse and began to head back to the Wright Anything Agency. He had been perhaps ten minutes into his daily walk when the sky above him had opened up and dropped an angry tsunami right down onto his meticulously styled head.

So, like any other person, Apollo had dug into his briefcase and brought out his umbrella in a futile attempt at saving himself from becoming any more of a drowned rat. Out had come the black umbrella, in the button was pushed, and he had watched in horror as half of his umbrella proceeded to shoot out of it’s shaft and skidded across the wet sidewalk.

Like some sort of comedy routine he had chased after the broken umbrella piece (though he had no idea what he planned on doing if he had actually managed to catch it). The piece had rolled for a few minutes, before it toppled off the sidewalk entirely and slid neatly into the sewer.

“You just have poor taste, Herr Forehead.”

It isn’t something magical that he had managed to run across Klavier either. In Apollo’s life he feels as if there are always two certains. The first is that if something humiliating can happen to him it will. The second is that there will always be someone nearby to witness it.

The fact that that ‘someone’ is almost always Klavier is just icing on the cake of life.

It isn’t as though he can be caught up in a torrent of rain, lose control of an obviously dangerous projectile umbrella, try to catch the escaping piece as it trudged along down the grime-covered street, and not be watched the entire time.

God forbid no one be around to witness such things.

Klavier hadn’t even had the courtesy to laugh at him like anyone else might. Things are never so simple for Apollo.

Instead he had stared down at Apollo, perched on his knees and peering over the sidewalk longingly at the drainage opening, and offered him a hand. Not a biting remark, not a hysterical laugh, just a slightly warm, very strong hand that had pulled him to his feet and temporarily distracted him from sewers and umbrellas.

Apollo takes another sip of the cup of coffee that, between the two of them, they’ve managed to drink nearly half of .

So he is sitting at a café, cold and still damp, sipping overpriced coffee, and watching the rain fall with one equally soggy prosecutor. The same prosecutor that seems to be an ever growing presence in Apollo’s day-to-day life.

It is so much easier to adapt to Wright’s watered down coffee.

“I have poorer taste in friends,” he mutters.

Klavier doesn’t even have the decency to be offended at the remark. Instead he laughs and rubs the top of Apollo’s soaked head affectionately, his grin only widening as Apollo bats his hand away, the bridge of his nose turning red.