Chapter Text
He cants his head, trying to read the finer print on the movie poster. Phoenix can read it just fine. Klavier's eyesight must be less than perfect.
"Steel Samurai?" he inquires, tilting his head back now to look at Phoenix over his shoulder. "Are you a fan?"
Phoenix makes a rocking, so-so motion with his hand. "Not as much as some. You?"
Klavier straightens, shrugs. "It must be something you need to grow up with," he says, not so much contemplative as matter of fact.
They are in a poster and collectibles shop, waiting to the side as Miles and Apollo go through the racks. Klavier has his hair bound up and tucked under a baseball cap, collar of his winter coat flipped up. He looks like a punk with all the silver he wears even without the Gavinners symbol everywhere.
"Why aren't you wearing contacts today?"
Klavier blinks, looks back to Phoenix from where his eyes had been tracking Apollo, openly surprised. "Ach, you can tell?"
Phoenix leans back against the wall, uncaring if it annoys the lone employee he can see behind the cash register. "You should have been able to read the poster," he explains even though Klavier did that annoying thing of answering a question with a question. "How bad is your eyesight?"
It makes Klavier laugh a little, his fingers playing with a few locks of his bangs that have escaped the cap idly. "I am only slightly nearsighted. It's the astigmatism that makes it difficult to read things on reflective surfaces," and he grins in a way that suddenly strikes Phoenix as self-conscious. "That is why I never use teleprompters. Even with my contacts, they can be very hard to see with studio lights."
Phoenix remembers Apollo mentioning that Klavier depends heavily on his exceptional memorisation skills to handle both of his careers now that he's back in music as well as law. The hardest details for Klavier to remember are people's names: he will remember their faces and personalities, and that is why he tends to nickname people, covering up for a personal difficulty by cultivating his personality in a very specific way. It's the complete philosophical opposite of his brother, who always tried to mould people to himself instead of the other way around.
It's not a pleasant thought. Phoenix looks back to Miles, who has apparently found the only other person working in the store and is having what is by his standards an intensely animated conversation. He watches Miles turn the album in his hand to the side, pointing at something that Phoenix can't identify from far away.
"How long," Klavier murmurs, a voice like honey still in the comb, "have you watched him like that?"
Klavier's expression is smooth and almost sweet, but bees make honey and keep the hive. Phoenix studies him for a long moment, and Klavier lets him, nothing wavering at all. It is this steady, unnatural stillness of focus that the Gavin brothers share.
Phoenix forces himself to breathe out, resists the urge to bring his hand up to scratch the back of his head. "I don't know. Probably since we met."
A low sound, deep in Klavier's chest. "You're no romantic, Herr Wright, but you must have been one once, ja?"
Against his will, Phoenix finds himself gritting this teeth. That hit home. Klavier lips quirk, but it's not a mocking expression. He looks suddenly much, much older than he has any right to.
"That's just as well," Klavier observes, and the smile lifts further, reaching his eyes as it very rarely does; it's always a very sad look.
Phoenix doesn't say it and he hopes it doesn't show, but this is exactly why he's worried about Apollo being with Klavier. It's not the similarities or differences between Klavier and his brother. Rather, it's these brief, barely there flashes of Klavier himself that peek through on occasion. Phoenix cannot count a single one of those moments when Klavier has appeared to be happy. It reminds Phoenix too much of what Miles used to be like and all the struggles and pains that came from that. At least Miles was aware of his own misery. Phoenix suspects that Klavier doesn't allow himself to feel anything beyond the very surface.
Klavier cants his head, and Phoenix realises he's been staring too long. It's too late to hide it, and he can't blame Klavier's eyesight for this one. He steels himself.
"And what about you and Apollo?"
There's a subtle shift in Klavier's demeanour. It's not like with Kristoph, who, when offended or defensive, always gave off an air that was oppressive and cold. With Klavier, there's an equal sort of intensity, but it feels expansive and almost manic. It makes blood flow rather than stop. It's like watching Klavier unfurl, even with his hair hidden and collar popped up. The silver he's wearing glints in the shop lighting.
"I suppose that is your business," Klavier says.
It's bright and light but anything but friendly. Phoenix remembers this side of Klavier from when he was seventeen and possibly one of the most annoying people Phoenix had ever met. At the time, he'd thought that Klavier was just a cocky upstart with too much in his head, but now he can tell what this really is. This is another of Klavier's masks, the side of him that gets him called a diva occasionally and sometimes much crueller things. It looks arrogant and self-important, but Phoenix is older now and can see the rough edges in the way his shoulders are set, how he consciously moves in the light. He's trying to make himself look bigger than he really is. Klavier isn't a small person, but he's not a thick build either. Phoenix wonders when he became afraid of being overpowered.
"Apollo's not the romantic type," Phoenix says, and he smiles, the way that makes him look more foolish than he actually is.
It doesn't calm Klavier down at all. He studies Phoenix in a manner that would look questioning if Phoenix couldn't also see how he holds his dominant hand, open but definitely not relaxed. It's a practised stance, so much so that Klavier doesn't have to consciously think to fall into it. It isn't threatening, though, like it would have been with Kristoph. Phoenix can't identify what it is.
"He's not," Klavier agrees, like they're talking about the weather, which can be a surprisingly serious topic. "Apollo is twenty-four. If I remember correctly, you were his age when you took your first trial. A murder charge brought against a childhood friend."
Phoenix blinks several times despite himself. "That's right," he says, and it drags a little, cautious.
"I was fourteen," Klavier says, and he smiles, an exact mirror of Kristoph's seemingly pleasant expression; Phoenix is one-hundred percent sure it's on purpose. "When you are fourteen, you feel wise because your bones ache from growing, and you think the pain has taught you something. This is when Daryan and I became such good friends because I could not understand why Kristoph, who had always understood everything, could not understand that I was no longer a child. It is easy to make the excuse that I was young and self-absorbed. It would be a truth on its own. I am sure my brother told you something like this."
The expression shifts from banally pleasant to something else, something harsh and remote if read from one angle and carefully apprehensive if read from another. "My brother was never very good at explaining himself. What he was good at was explaining others. For all that he was, Kristoph was adept at reading and understanding others. This is not a bad quality. What he did with it: that is where judgement comes. We did not understand each other, but we knew each other. He loved his riddles and puzzles, opening them up and picking them apart. When I was fourteen, that was my world."
His voice drops a level, the calm, measured tone coming faster, fraying, as he murmurs: "Recently, I was interviewed on a talk show. The host, after we had filmed, came by the dressing room. Once, we had been familiar, and she is a good person as her profession allows her to be. She told me that I seemed different, and I told her that I was. And she said, 'You sing about a different kind of love now.' She is someone who makes their living by reading people and coaxing them to talk about themselves, but I understood that she wasn't asking me to say anything. She was just making an observation. A year ago, a decade ago, I would have not been able to understand that."
Klavier smiles, that flash of a real expression. He's doing it deliberately, Phoenix knows, but Phoenix also suspects now that it's the only way that Klavier is able to make himself be sincere.
"We are not romantics," Klavier says, and he studies Apollo and Miles across the shop to where they are making their purchases, even though he probably can't see any details at this distance. "I do not regret. I love this as it is."
Miles touches Phoenix's side in the dark, earning a drowsy questioning noise.
"What were you and Gavin talking about this afternoon?"
Phoenix shifts, breathes in. The sheets smell of softener and them.
"The past."
A soft sigh. The shift of bodies, familiar and knowing.
It is warm. And it is nice.