AA Siblings Week Day 6: Regrets
I found out about AA siblings week less than 12 hours ago but I still wanted to do something for it, so I made a short Gavin brothers oneshot! Below the cut so as to not clog the dash :]
When Klavier and 5 and Kristoph is 12, the two of them always go to the park together.
It’s across a busy street, but Klavier is old enough to know what to do now. He can wait for the light, he knows when it’s safe to step into the road. Even still, though, he finds himself taking his brother’s hand when it’s offered. Kristoph is his older brother, after all. He knows what’s best, even when the lights say otherwise.
When Klavier is 9 and Kristoph is 16, Klavier gets into the habit of playing with his brother’s hair. Kristoph had always had long hair— so blond it’s almost white, ringlets braided and cascading over his shoulders like a golden waterfall. It’s silky soft and brilliant, so Klavier likes to run his hands through it when he hangs off the back of Kristoph’s office chair, prattling on about his day. Kristoph would sit there in silence, pretending to work on his homework— because Kristoph is very talented and very smart and very, very busy— but Klavier knows he’s listening because of the way he smiles when Klavier trips over a word he picked up from his brother. Klavier would talk until his lungs ran out of air and Kristoph’s braid came undone from all the tussling and Klavier would lean in closer and think to himself how special am I to see my brother with his hair down.
He imagines what would happen if anyone else would have tried. Kristoph would give them an icy stare, he thinks, and say some words that Klavier doesn’t quite understand but that he knows are scary and smart. The perpetrator would slink off, tail between their legs, and Kristoph would look at Klavier with a knowing, downward glance and a smile.
“Only my brother can do that” he imagines him saying. The words would hang in the air, unspoken but obvious.
Kristoph reaches back, ruffling his brother’s hair in turn. It spikes up in every direction, the darker roots now visible. Klavier hangs limply off the chair, not bothering to fix it up, and feels himself spin a little when his brother gets out of the chair to lift him up and away. Klavier is nine years old— he doesn’t need to be carried off to bed anymore— but he’s tired, so instead of protesting he just buries his head in his brother’s shoulder. The shampoo smells so nice. Kristoph cups the back of his head, fingers running through his hair, and Klavier falls asleep.
When Klavier is 12 and Kristoph is 19, Klavier gets Kristoph to braid his hair for the first time. They’re sitting on the floor of the bathroom, Klavier in his brother’s lap and facing the big polished mirror with a smile on his face. He had grown it out for just this purpose, and though it wasn’t half as long as Kristoph’s, it’s enough.
“You can brush your hair by yourself, you know,” Kristoph says. He sighs like he’s exasperated, but Klavier can see the ghost of a smile on his lips. He picks up the hairbrush either way.
Klavier tries his best not to shiver at the feeling of Kristoph’s fingers brushing his scalp. His nails are long and well-manicured and his skin is soft. It’s a wordless affair, and so Klavier talks and talks and tells whatever stories he can think of. He knows Kristoph isn’t listening when his noncommittal hums come at all the wrong times, so he tries to focus on the feeling of hands in his hair and doesn’t think about it too much. His brother is very talented and very smart and very, very busy, so Klavier doesn’t blame him for being too tired to pay attention.
“Can you braid my hair?” Klavier asks. Kristoph pauses, and Klavier suddenly thinks about how cold his brother’s hands are.
“Fine,” Kristoph says, and the tension that had been in the room evaporates like it was never there in the first place. Klavier fills the silence and Kristoph’s hands expertly twist his hair and they sit there on the bathroom floor in a blissful kind of rhythm for a while. When Kristoph is done, Klavier looks back up at the mirror. The braid is elegant, the ends barely coming to rest on his shoulder. He grins at the mirror, eyes sparkling, and squeezes Kristoph’s hand as he thanks him. They really look like brothers now, Klavier thinks, and he says as much with a giggle.
When he remembers the moment years later, he realizes his brother wasn’t smiling.
When Klavier is 14 and Kristoph is 22, Klavier cuts his hair.
It’s jagged at the edges and too short to braid, some unruly golden mess. Kristoph makes a face that tells Klavier he hates it, but he insists it suits his little brother just fine.
When Klavier is 17 and Kristoph is 25, Klavier decides he needs to change his look. The morning of his first ever trial, he’s in the middle of doing his hair when Kristoph comes in, eyes dark and expression pinched. Klavier says something snarky that his brother does not respond to. Kristoph holds up a piece of paper.
Klavier had yelled at him when he heard the news about the defense attorney, the feelings twisting like a nest of rats in his gut. All of it felt like some kind of horrific joke. He doesn’t remember what he said, only the heat in his chest and the hair gel dripping from his fingertips. He doesn’t remember what his brother said back to him, other than that they fought, and that his brother left the paper on the table. When Klavier accuses Phoenix Wright of forgery, his hair isn’t done and the paper is folded neatly in his pocket.
He had seen a lot of witnesses break down before, seen people plead and beg and get violent, but it feels a little different from behind the bench. The man across from him puts his head in his hands, threads his fingers through his hair, and cries. It’s quiet, and Klavier wants to do nothing more than fill up that silence that’s weighing uncomfortably on his chest.
He never imagined he would see Phoenix Wright with his nails digging into his scalp, shoulders trembling, hunched over and pulling in tiny, gasping breaths. A cold breeze drafts through the room when the door opens and tickles the back of Klavier’s neck.
It makes him feel small, like the prosecutor’s bench is nothing more than a fancy office chair and he’s hanging off the back, looking over his brother’s shoulder at things he has no way of understanding. They walk the defamed defense attorney out the door without protest, Kristoph not sparing him a passing glance as he comes to stand at Klavier’s side. He puts a hand on his shoulder. It’s cold.
“I think I’m going to grow my hair out,” Klavier says, and Kristoph squeezes his shoulder. Klavier’s hair may not be as soft and his braid may lay a little differently, but he thinks he can be proud of it all the same.
Klavier keeps his promise, and the spikes soften into ringlets that fall pristine down his shoulders as the months go by. He can no longer feel the cold on the bare skin of his neck. His hair gets softer. So does he.
The next time Kristoph smiles and hands him a piece of evidence, he does not hesitate to take it.
When Klavier is 23 and Kristoph is 29, Klavier almost drowns.
He’s sitting in the bathtub of his parents house, an earlier interaction with his brother still buzzing in his mind. His brother had said something about one of Klavier’s cases offhandedly and Klavier doesn’t quite understand how Kristoph had known anything about it. It reminds him of his first trial, when Kristoph knew about the forgery, and his seventh, when Kristoph knew about a hidden piece of evidence, and his twenty third, when Kristoph knew about the witness’ secret before anyone else, and the twenty ninth, and the thirty second, and the forty fourth. Kristoph knows things that he shouldn’t. Klavier never thought to question it. His brother is very talented, and very smart, and very, very busy, but…
Daryan had told him these were for the times when he wanted to forget. Klavier doesn’t quite know what’s in them, so he takes only two and sinks deeper into the water. It’s warm and soothing and the cacophony of questions that had filled his head not a moment earlier begin to dissolve into the bath. The sound of the faucet fades. Klavier’s braid comes undone, his long, golden hair looking ethereal as it floats in the bathwater. He closes his eyes and tries not to think about anything.
When Klavier wakes up, he can’t move. The water has gone cold. Long strands of golden hair drift lazily and block his view of the ceiling. He wants to scream, but his whole body is slack. Helplessly, he lies there, his lungs on fire as the ringing in his ears get louder and louder. Almost numbly, he wonders if this is how he dies.
Klavier Gavin feels cold hands on his scalp, claw-like nails raking down the skin as someone grabs a fistful of his hair and pulls.
The world bursts into color. His lungs fill with air. It’s loud again, and he can hear the faucet running, the sloshing of water. Klavier stares at a face that looks just like his own and wonders if he looks just as horrified.
His brother is screaming at him, angrier than Klavier had ever seen him. Kristoph’s face is twisted into an expression that Klavier can’t quite place, his voice pitching and entire body trembling. Klavier can’t hear a word he says through the ringing in his ears, feeling like he’s still underwater. His brother cups Klavier’s head in his hands, threading his fingers through the wet curtains of Klavier’s hair. Through the haze, it almost looks like Kristoph is crying.
When Klavier is 25 and Kristoph is 32, Klavier is told he looks like the devil.
He bites back a retort, unsure whether he wants to argue that his brother cannot be the devil she means or that they don’t look anything alike. He ends up saying neither.
When Klavier is 26 and Kristoph is 33, Klavier finds himself staring in mirrors a lot.
People say they look the same, but Kristoph braided their hair when they were kids. It was perfect, and no matter how many times Klavier practices, it’s not perfect. He can’t get it to lie the same way.
Sometimes, Apollo tenses reflexively when he sees Klavier. It’s almost imperceptible, and it makes Klavier’s heart pound hot and angry in his chest. Kristoph was always softer than Klavier could be, a bit more put together. His hair was a little lighter, his gaze a little clearer. Kristoph had an elegance to his features that you couldn’t just copy. That’s why when Klavier looks into the mirror, even with his glasses on and his hair down, he doesn’t see Kristoph Gavin. He isn’t sure how anyone else could either.
There is a pale imitation of the man staring back– someone with none of the charisma and all of the regret. Klavier remembers the feeling of the paper folded in his back pocket. He remembers words he parroted and the ruffling of his hair, the evidence he did not question when Kristoph smiled down at him and the feeling of his brother’s hand on the back of his neck. His hands were always cold, his hair silky soft.
Klavier would never be as effortless as Kristoph. They look nothing alike. They have the same hair, but on Klavier it’s different. He was not a copy of his brother– he couldn’t be, because it isn’t even the same. He couldn’t get it the same.
The gap between them bothers Klavier more than the forged evidence. It’s stupid, and selfish, in the grand scheme of things, but has to know if everything he thought he knew was as manufactured as Kristoph’s court record. He has to know what was real and what was some twisted kind of insurance. He has to know if his brother loved him as family or an accomplice.
No one will answer those questions honestly. The feeling he’s trying to capture eludes him, and when Klavier clenches his fist and yanks on his hair, he wonders if those feelings he remembered never existed at all.
When Klavier is 27 and Kristoph is 34, Klavier visits his brother.
He sees sunken eyes, a braid undone. Kristoph stares desperately from the other side of the glass, and Klavier wonders with a sinking feeling if this is the reflection that will stare back at him when he is 34.
Do they have the same curse? The same inherent fakeness? Do the miniscule differences of a forgery make a difference at first glance?
Klavier leaves without a word.
When Klavier is 28 and Kristoph would be 35, Klavier sits alone on the floor of his bathroom with a pair of scissors.
He waits for the other shoe to drop, for a voice to cut through the quiet with a bite behind the sweet words. He’s alone now, scissors in his hand and twirling blond strands littering the white tile. There is no fanfare, no resounding applause. He cannot hear the echoes of his guitar or the ache of a crescendo in his throat. For once in his life, he doesn’t feel the need to fill the silence.
He pulls another handful of loose strands free, tangles of gold slipping through his fingertips. It feels like the cutting of dead branches. When he goes to look, a stranger’s face stares back at him on the scissor’s polished blade. The scissors close with a snip, but the toned skin and choppy hair is no more familiar.
It’s hollow symbolism. He presses the blades closer to his scalp and cuts away the last of Kristoph in silence.
