Notes – Done for the polyship Advent Challenge under the prompt "First Christmas With…" Set in the December directly post-AJ. Contains spoilers for the third and fourth cases, specifically the murderers of those cases.

"So you invited him here?" Phoenix asked, looking up at Apollo from the sofa, a half consumed bottle of his usual grape juice in hand.

"Not so much as he invited himself," Apollo assured, "You know what Prosecutor Gavin's like. But I do sort of feel bad for him."

"Oh?" Phoenix prompted.

"Do I really need to explain why? He seems to have no other family in this country besides his brother, who we got arrested, and he's lost his best friend, who we, um, also got arrested. We're the next closest thing to friends that he's got," Apollo reasoned, feeling that he should defend Klavier at least a little.

Staring off into space, Phoenix concluded, "In future we should try to stop noticing the people close to him are murderers, shouldn't we? I'm joking, Apollo, but I am surprised that he doesn't have legions of fans and friends to spend the day with. What with being famous and all."

"That's what I thought too. But for whatever reason he seems to want to spend it with us, and Trucy would never let me forget it if I lost the chance to have her favourite rock star in the house," Apollo said.

"Because you've certainly never brought him here before," Phoenix teased, knowing the answer to that.

Turning almost as red as his own suit, Apollo furiously said, "Mr. Wright! I won't even dignify that with a response."

"You're too easy to wind up Apollo," the older man laughed, ruffling the disgruntled lawyer's hair.

So that had been how he arranged it and Apollo spent the days approaching Christmas feeling a lot more paranoid than he probably should. Klavier was clearly rich and if he was anything like his older brother he would expect high standards. The Wright household was… well, they weren't poor per say, but they could easily fall into the category of 'just scraping by with the bills each month'. They wouldn't be what Klavier was used to for Christmas. But surely Klavier must have known that before he invited himself over.

Regardless, when the day came he was there to answer the door, welcoming the prosecutor into the house and ushering him through to what was sometimes an office and sometimes a living room. At this time it was acting as the latter.

"Hey Gavin, good to see you found the place," Phoenix called over, from where him and Trucy were playing a game of Scrabble on the floor.

"Very funny, Herr Wright, but you know I've been here before," Klavier replied, crouching down with them as if he belonged there and this was nothing out of the ordinary.

The comment pricked Apollo's interest. Had Klavier spoken to Phoenix about Apollo inviting him here before? They didn't seem to talk very much together. Or maybe Phoenix had invited Klavier here himself in the past…

He knew he'd never get answers out of either of them though. Both men were quite cryptic in their separate ways and Apollo often found himself struggling to get straight answers out of either of them.

So instead he made do with taking to the floor and pointing out, "I don't think Usopp is a word, Mr. Wright."

"It is, don't you know anything about pirates, Apollo?" Phoenix insisted.

"You know Polly's always behind with everything, daddy," Trucy chimed in, laughing.

"I am not! And hey, I'm trying to help you out here," Apollo replied indiginantly.

Leaning a little closer to Apollo than he would have liked, Klavier said, "Perhaps you should let them play by their rules, Herr Forehead. If you like you and I could have a little game later…"

"Oh no, I'm not letting you have any games with Apollo by yourself," Phoenix cut in hurriedly.

Looking from one to the other, Apollo raised an eyebrow. Somehow when he put them in a room together and the subject of him came up they both seemed to get suddenly defensive. Though he had no idea why.

"I vote that all of us have a game together next," he said, wanting to keep the peace.

"You guys can, but I have to finish up with wrapping Mr. Hat's surprise present before dinner," Trucy said, getting up.

"But we weren't finished with this game yet," Phoenix protested light heartedly.

"We can carry on another time, daddy, but I think you need to spend time with your friends now," she teased, heading off.

"They're not my friends, they're far too young for me," Phoenix called after her.

Moving to where she'd sat before, Klavier commented, "She said 'friends', not 'boyfriends'. I'm sure in this situation age does not matter, ja?"

"Ja… I mean yes," Phoenix retorted, clearing the board to start a new game.

"Not that age would matter too much in the other circumstance either," Apollo commented. Deep down he had not quite gotten over his boyish attraction to Phoenix from back in law school.

"Nein, I would not think it would." To his surprise it was Klavier who responded to that, not Phoenix.

"Well," Phoenix said, coughing with embarrassment, "Let's get started, shall we?"

Once the game was done Apollo vowed never to play Scrabble with either of them again. It was bad enough that Phoenix insisted on using the names of characters from popular TV shows then scolded Apollo for not being up to date with the current Steel Samurai cast, but Klavier kept insisting on using German words that neither of them could understand. Towards the end of the round he was sure Klavier was starting to make them up.

Throughout the whole day, however, he noticed how naturally Klavier seemed to fit in with them. He didn't act like a celebrity who was used to the highest quality gifts, nor did he complain about the store's own brand food they had at the dinner. Maybe because he was just being polite about it, but Apollo did feel that he'd succeeded in giving him a good Christmas.

He felt oddly proud about that.

Perhaps the combination of that satisfaction, the long day and the grape juice Phoenix had insisted they all had with the food came into play later on when Apollo felt himself dozing off to sleep during the annual Christmas rerun movie. He didn't really care about where he was, his head just hit the cushion and he was out for the night.

Pity he wasn't to know that the 'cushion' had turned out to be Phoenix's lap, and he'd fallen across Klavier's lap to get there.

With half an Apollo on each of them neither knew what to do with the situation. So they ended up just laughing.

"It looks like Herr Forehead had a bit too much to drink today," Klavier said quietly, not wanting to wake him.

"Yeah, Apollo never handles his drinks well. If it wasn't for me then I don't think he'd touch the stuff at all to be honest," Phoenix agreed, stroking one of the self-styled horns in Apollo hair. After a moment of content silence he ventured, "I still don't get why you came here of all places, you know."

For a moment Klavier looked distant, as if he wouldn't respond, then he said, "You three are like a real family. Though I'm not sure what impression mein bruder gave off about us, we were never particularly close since moving here, and Christmas had always been a very formal affair for us. And Daryan… he had quite a large family of his own. They are probably suffering without him this year and I wouldn't want to impose on them. Maybe I just wanted to see what Christmas was like for you all."

"Well maybe I wouldn't mind so much if you decided to gate crash again next year," Phoenix replied, "Just tell Apollo that you're inviting yourself, I don't want him to think that I'm getting fond of you or anything."

"Danke, it's much appreciated," Klavier said, happy to have got that load off his chest.

"Now stop talking, this is the bit where the Pink Princess defends the city from the giant robot reindeer. I love this part," Phoenix said.

"Only if you stop talking as well," Klavier said, leaning to rest his head on Phoenix.

Looking down at him, Phoenix asked, "What are you doing?"

"No talking, remember?"

Smirking to himself, Phoenix thought he could get used to having another guy around to backtalk him.

By the time Trucy called back in the three of them were already fast asleep, illuminated by the dim light of the TV screen.

Maybe she wouldn't get that new mummy for Christmas this year, but as long as daddy was happy she didn't mind.