Chapter Text
Sometimes 11:25 pm hits hard in the space between his eyes and it leaves Klavier limp and loose under the bedsheets with his hair coiled messily across his face. Sometimes his only response to Apollo’s questioning pokes is an occasional, muted, “Hm?” and a sigh. Sometimes it's like he doesn’t hear Apollo and Apollo withholds a sigh.
“Let me see.”
“Mm?”
“Let me see, Klav.”
Klavier rolls onto his back and doesn’t lift his hand from over his stomach to stop Apollo from brushing back his bangs. His fingers dust over soft, brown skin. They brush the tip of his nose.
“That bad, huh?” Apollo murmurs.
“It’ll pass.” It always does. Eventually.
A cling against the nightstand and a small glimmer of refracted lamplight draws Klavier’s muddled attention to Apollo’s bracelet sliding back on his wrist. He makes a questioning hum. Apollo shakes his head and leans forward. He presses a soft kiss to Klavier’s forehead.
“I’ve got this.”
“Got what?”
Apollo runs a hand down the side of Klavier’s face. He stops at a point just at the side of his eye and presses gently to turn him just enough for a kiss. Somehow, the back-and-forth motion of Apollo’s thumb across his cheek feels more intimate. “Apollo—“
“Let me do this, Klav.” Apollo’s voice has always been strong; it holds voracity in it now, tempered by affection. “Believe it or not, you don’t actually have to hate yourself.”
Klavier opens his eyes. He watches the kaleidoscope effect of Apollo’s shifting in the yellow light—that trick of his; yes, I remember—and he thinks he understands how maps and atlases must feel, spread out before a cartographer defining the ridge and form of mountains and rivers and at what points they feed into the ocean.
“It feels so very easy to,” he confesses to the ceiling as Apollo presses a kiss to the tremble in the underside of his jaw.
“And that’s why I’m here.”
Klavier sighs and blinks slowly and he supposes he shouldn’t be surprised when the world starts to blur. There is a burn behind his blues and as if summoned, Apollo rises and kisses each eyelid. Softly. Tenderly.
He takes the small of Apollo’s back in his hand and fists his fingers in his faded blue tee.
“It’s okay, Klav. You’re right. It’ll pass,” Apollo whispers. “But it doesn’t have to be so bad until it does. You’re not as bad as you tell yourself you are.”
“…mm.”
Apollo says nothing but combs his fingers through Klavier’s hair as the first drops of tears finally shake the width of his shoulders.