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He’s lost track of all the places he’s lived in his 25 years, although some stand out more than othe
There’s the family manor tucked in the hills of Mittenwald, looming cold and austere on the hillside over the almost fairytale-like village. It’s where the “commons” his father was oft to remark lived, and considering Klavier had the best tutors and homeschooling, money could buy Klavier has few memories in the village town.
The manor is cold and impersonal, and despite it being the ancestral seat of his father’s fathers, Klavier never felt he belonged among the severe and proper halls. Staff kept the immense galleries and rooms neat and orderly, everything had to be in its proper place. It wasn’t until he’s older that Klavier realized that while at any point at least four people and a staff of fifteen lived within the house and grounds, the manor never felt lived in. It was more of a museum to showcase his family’s wealth and past achievements. The current occupants left to spend a lifetime hoping to find a place among the walls for the future generations to remember them by.
The manor is cold and chilling, and sometimes he can’t believe he grew up in such a place.
Kristoph however, fit in perfectly.
Themis Academy is the first place he’s lived, after the manor and the first time he’s lived in a foreign country.
It’s a boarding school and he has to share a room- it’s an odd thing to have to share your space when you’re twelve (a whole two years younger than most of your classmates) when you’ve never had to before.
He’s not alone per se, Kristoph is an hour (plane ride) away at Stanford.
His roommate is nice, a foreign student like himself, so they have that to bond over at least. Joo-won will go on to be one of Klavier’s closest friends at Themis, and years later, Joo-won joins the record label and is assigned to The Gavinner’s legal counsel.
Klavier remembers being excited for this new chapter in his life, his first adventure, really. Excited to learn about the Law, eager to explore “LaLa Land” itself and see if he could make his rock-star dreams come true. He’s prepared himself for the homesickness.
In fact, he’s read up on the feeling and ways to treat the melancholy so he won’t waste a second of this new life missing out on his old.
It’s almost three months into his semester when he realizes, that the homesickness never came.
Tour-busses are an experience all to their own. The Label has spared no expense on customizing their small fleet of buses to have every luxury and comfort as they spent hours on the road.
It’s somewhere between the lulling bouncing for hours on an airplane and wonders one gets when they wake up in a new port of call, when on a cruise boat.
It’s a surreal experience- he’s on a bus for hours and days at a time, watching countrysides drift by, but he has a soundproofed room to practice for the next concert and a small state of the art recording booth should the muses deign to visit.
The bands move around too much for Klavier to get attached to any one place. He supposes the bus is his home now, considering the hours he’s racked up in his moving living quarters, but at times Klavier feels the detachedness of the family manor. The bus is always pristine and nice, and despite who is occupying it, never really has a personal touch other than the Record Label’s branding.
The feeling of comradely, however, is nice. When he’d left Themis to return to Germany for his badge, he’d missed having his friends about him while he studied. Now he had his bandmates, his closest and creative kindred spirits.
Jam-sessions that are never recorded and only live in their memories, long-running games of Spades in his bunk, eating and touring across so many cities and countries, that sometimes Klavier has to scroll back through years of Instagram posts (his personal- not the Label’s- they’d scrubbed a majority of the Gavinner’s posts, especially ones that featured Daryan) to specifically remember them all.
It’s a nice adventure filled with the warmth Klavier needs after his disastrous debut and to distract him from his nightmares of that case. But he never feels safe.
Each night when he and Daryan bid each other goodnight and climb into their respective buses, Klavier willingly pushes down the nagging sense of the fragility of the distraction he’s chosen to take him far away from his brother and Phoenix Wright.
After nearly a decade of being on the road, he comes back to Los Angeles as a prosecutor. He’s divested himself from any stipends the Label provides because despite still being a Rock Star, he’s also a public servant. The waters of the “Dark Age of the Law” churn constantly with scandals and public opinion towards their Justice System sinks lower and lower by the day, and Klavier is loath to add any reason for his peers and public to mistrust him.
“Go into court with clean hands and all that jazz,” he thinks, “well, as clean as my hands can be…”
Fortunately, he’s amassed a nice nest egg through being a world-famous rock star and his endorsement deals.
He buys a nice home in the Hollywood Hills…because, well..what else is he to do? He’s Klavier Gavin after all.
It’s a spacious Spanish-style, with rooms for days, a pool as big as his other celebrity neighbors; high-privacy walls so the celebrity tour-buses won’t see him, with a price tag that will certainly give him an amazing tax-break and justifies the home values of the neighborhood.
He doesn’t balk at the price; it’s a good investment for him. Other celebrities blow their money on cars, drugs, women, and gambling. Property no matter what is a good place to put his money (and his guitars) so he doesn’t think it a waste.
What is a waste, is the interior decorator who is tasked to create the space worthy of “Klavier Gavin’s” flare. The decorator and his team do an amazing job of it, Klavier figures.
It’s a shame because between being a world-famous Rock Star and a full-time prosecutor, he barely lives in the home he’s bought in the Hollywood Hills.
At least the “Hollywood Homes” Tours enjoy it.
Two years since coming back to the courts full-time, he’s moved to Century City. It’s a duplex- still luxurious to match his tastes, but fits his needs better than the house in Hollywood Hills ever did. That home he sold and re-invested the money elsewhere, to the frustration of the Hollywood Tourism Board.
He lives in the duplex with Vongole. It’s closer to work, it’s in a section of the city that lets him have the glitz and glamour but also allows him to hit dive bars and be close to the local music scene. Sometimes his colleagues come over to work on cases with him, and he doesn’t have to worry if his living space makes his co-workers feel out of place.
It’s a good place to live and he’s happy. But he can’t shake the feeling that his apartment is more of a means to an end.
The first time he feels it, he’s not at the address of his formally listed residence. He still lives in Century City, but since his and Apollo’s relationship has become more serious, Klavier finds himself more and more at Apollo’s small studio apartment in Atwater Village.
The day’s weather had been so hot he’d soaked through his dress shirt before he’d climbed all the way up the steps of the court. The cases he’d dealt with- hellish as if to match the weather.
And despite winning his cases, Klavier’s mood remained sour. At the office, Edgeworth had given him almost all of Payne’s pending cases, as the man had been suspended (again) by the Chief Prosecutor.
A long day of paperwork, re-filing the cases that his intern had sloppily sorted (because they’d had a hot date that evening and needed to leave early), and the discovery that all of his cases over the rest of the month would take him to courthouses on opposite sides of the city daily, Klavier was thoroughly exhausted by the time he parked his motorcycle at Apollo’s building.
It’s when he steps off the elevator on the third floor that he smells it. Smells the aroma of ground pork and onions; the air spiced with garlic and a feeling that his chasing away his dark mood.
He realizes he knows this smell. The grocery cart parked outside of the apartment door with a box with a few scraps of corn husks, further confirms his suspicion that Apollo’s cooking. Tamales, if Klavier isn’t mistaken.
Sure enough, when he enters, he’s greeted to the sight of Apollo’s back and the ties of the red apron his boyfriend is wearing. He’s busy forming the filling mixture with his hands, and on the small stove of the galley kitchen, the heat is rising in the dutch oven to cook off the stuffed corn husks.
When Apollo turn to smile at him, Klavier is drawn to press up behind him. Wrap his arms about the smaller frame and kiss Apollo’s warm cheek. Apollo smiles and wiggles under the touch; hands are caked in cornmeal and meat and their size difference leaves Apollo with not much else than to say,
“Welcome home.”
It’s such a normal thing to say. Apollo’s said it many times before- but tonight’s the first time that Klavier realizes that this is his home.
It’s not Apollo’s key on his key ring, or that Klaiver didn’t have to announce that he was coming over, nor the place he’s standing in at that very moment. It’s this person, this beautiful human in his arms. Who loves Klavier in all his glimmerousness, whose passion matches Klavier’s own for law and life. This man who smiles at him when he comes through the door and asks him about Klavier’s day, who is cooking dinner for them as if it’s the most normal and expected thing in the world.
He feels warm and safe, and a mixture of so many things at once. That he is feeling them all at the same time confirms to him, that no matter where work or music takes him, his home and heart is here. With Apollo.
Klavier’s response is a deep kiss and a happy sigh. Apollo flusters, squawks and calls him a “sap”, but Klavier can see he’s smiling and so he does it again.
“What’s gotten into you?” Apollo breathless, and still covered in tamale mixture, “are you that happy that we’re having tamales for dinner.”
“Ja, it’s an appropriate response given that I am about to have the best in LA,” Klavier grins and enjoys Apollo’s blush.
“Well if you help me, you’ll be able to eat them sooner-”
Klavier smiles and leans over Apollo to wash his hands in the sink before pulling another apron out of the drawer. Apollo shifts to make room for him at the counter; pushes the bowl of tamale mixture between them for Klavier to access.
May I always have a place beside you, Liebling, he thinks as they proceed to ask each other about their respective days at work while dinner is made.