Work Text:
Conrad Gavin was a man with many, many talents. He picked things up with ease, learning them in an afternoon, mastering them within three months. Despite this, he never flaunted any of them. The intricate melodies composed on his guitar only bounced around inside his home, only the walls and his family privy to his music. Any compliment would be met with silence. No change in his eyes. He made lavish meals, would speak not of it, simply put the plates before his family, and soon they learned not to ask. It was almost as if his aptitudes were a secret, shameful. When people outside the family would ask him to play, he would smile something a little sad, and decline. The man was also incredibly good at woodworking. His family’s home was embellished with lovingly polished wooden boxes, furniture composed deliberately for the recipient, not just constructed but carved as well. It was clear the work involved in each piece. When people asked about the furniture, commenting on how beautiful it was, how intricate, Conrad would not lie, but evade, misdirect his having to do with it at all. He was also quite good at this. He never shared meals outside of the family. The suggestion would earn a cold stare. His youngest son, Klavier Gavin, never really understood this. What Conrad did pride himself on was his practice. Conrad Gavin was a highly esteemed lawyer, with many accolades, which is the only thing he would put his name to in the house. The framed articles were routinely cleaned, the books dusted meticulously. This he would speak about at dinners, to his colleagues and friends, with the high reedy note of pride in his voice that only came when he talked about his career. His eldest son, Kristoph Gavin, understood and silently agreed with the distinction his father showed.
When Klavier asked to learn to play guitar from his father, when the boy was young and eyes wide, he was given all that Conrad knew. Conrad, however, was not a good man. Perhaps he was a good man, but he was not a good father. So Klavier learned to play guitar like a man learned how to fight. It was carved out of him. It felt almost comical to the young Klavier, his father being this rigorous, pedantic with him over something meant for pleasure, songs crafted for joy, but taught with frustrated sighs and angry corrections, fingers hurting and raw for days afterwords, joints stiff. His father would tell him that if he couldn’t apply himself to something as simple as the guitar, then how could he expect to have any worth at all? And that everytime he didn't practice he was letting both him and his father down, that if he didn’t have drive, if he didn’t care, no one would care for him either. The lessons were hard. There were consequences. Klavier supposed this was how one became great, so he listened studiously and took the lashings and came out of it with a sense of pride. He was taught by his father, and it was something he earned. It was more than a trophy, more than a plaque or certificate. It was not a physical thing. It was years layered in his muscles, fingers gliding effortless as he played and played and played, the inability to feel anything with the very tips of his fingers and the permanent smooth callous.
His older son, Kristoph, did not want to learn the guitar. He did not engage in any of his father’s passions. Not that he did not care or couldn’t see the beauty of them, the obvious craftsmanship and amount of effort that permeated them; no, he knew his father was not a good teacher, and so he stayed away from this side of him. As the years came he saw his brother get beaten down and worn to a small stub over his lessons. It meant more to Klavier than anything else, a thing that Kristoph could only partly understand. He could only comfort the frustrated Klavier with blanket statements about his aptitude and the amount of work he put in, not knowing what else he could say. Clearly the both of them were quite skilled. Wouldn’t it be less painful to seek lessons from someone else? Money was no issue, transportation was not either. Kristoph, however, did not need to earn his father’s love. His lessons in law he received from his father looked much different than Klavier’s. He grew older and learned the idea of the emotional conduit.
For whatever reason Klavier and Kristoph stood at two very different heights in this respect. Kristoph, the hardworking student, Klavier, hardworking, but never as good as Kristoph. It was always Klavier clawing his way upwards, Kristoph even and measured, easily making his way up the same ladder that Klavier seemed to fumble on, the top stretching farther and farther away the closer he got. Despite the fact that he did not care for it nor need it, he had his parents' approval in spades. He knew his father was a cruel man. But he was a man Kristoph respected, his was cruelness deserved. His father did not get that apt without fervent work. This was the only thing outside of their shared appearance that he would admit them being similar.
Conrad died when Klavier was eighteen. It was just as he was about to graduate high school, the third to last week of his classes when he heard the news.
Kristoph was in law school when his father died. He had few friends, but very many accolades. He spent most of his time studying joylessly, but fervently. Nothing in him broke at the news. He phoned his mother and told her all the things he knew he should, and drove his car to the family home and held her, his eyes open and staring at the family portrait as her tears stained his crisp shirt. He saw Klavier sitting out on the patio in the dark of the night, figure hunched, blond hair lit by the kitchen light, completely unmoving. Kristoph arranged the funeral, the catering the flowers, all the expenses, not from his mother’s pleading but because that’s what he supposed he should do. The emptiness he felt was not from death or grieving.
Klavier was well known in school, adored. He didn’t attend his graduation, which everyone understood, and the room was silent when his name was called. Klavier was very well liked, always had been, always would be. This was another thing he worked hard for. It was a game of elimination. Yes they like this about me, they responded well to this, so I will keep it. If his father’s death wore on him, he did not show it. He was gone for a week and a half, then showed up on the following thursday for a test, which he did very well on. No one even thought to ask him anything, they simply welcomed him back, and politely avoided the subject. No one came with him to the funeral. He was more relieved then he should have been at their shallowness.
As time passed, when Klavier played his guitar, he could hear his father in his head, still, voice strong and hard. Everytime he picked the set of strings with only his thumb, which only happened when he was exceedingly tired, and had initially been a hard habit for Klavier to break, he heard his father tell him to use his fingers, thumb for the first three and pointer middle and index finger for the last ones respectively. Everytime he left his guitar out of its case he heard his father scold him: did he not care about how the wood would warp in the sun? How the air would dry it?
At some point he got utterly sick of it. Everytime he used his thumb to fingerpick he smiled, everytime his guitar was left out his hand hesitated and relaxed. He played songs his father hated. He played simple, stupid melodies instead of the complicated challenging ones that spread the entire length of the neck, required multiple bar chords back to back and stretched his hand across four frets. He began to write songs this way, simple and fun, and he knew his father would have hated how much people liked them.
Kristoph finished law school with honors. He had many things lined up ahead of him, as his father said he would, as he knew he would have been proud of, in his own way.
Klavier made a career in music, and he was incredibly happy. Kristoph made a career in law, like his father, like his grandfather, and he was satisfied.