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Maybe seventeen is a little old to be this excited, but Klavier doesn’t care. “You promised,” he says. He’s bouncing with each step; Kristoph bites back a smile into a reserved quirk of his lips, but Klavier knows it’s there. “You promised you’d show me after I passed the bar.”
“I did.” Kristoph tilts his head just a little, that one habit of his that Klavier’s never been able to adopt without it looking ridiculous against the breadth of the way he moves. “Though I’m not sure why you wanted to know.”
“I’ve always wondered! You know that.” He really has. Since Kristoph started growing his hair out, brushed-sleek at first, then falling in that distinctive single spiral, he’s wondered. His own hair gets fluffy and a little unruly the moment he lets it get past his ears; somehow Kristoph, with the same hair, has managed to bypass that altogether. To wrangle it entirely, perfectly into control. It isn’t wax or gel — he knows what that looks like — but it’s just another Kristoph mystery, the ways he keeps everything about himself so contained. And it’s one that Klavier might actually be able to master.
“You have. It’s really not that interesting.”
“You wouldn’t break a promise,” Klavier says. He knows he’s dangerously close to pouting. “Not to me.”
“Not to you, and not even one as frivolous as this.” Kristoph smiles, then, really smiles. It’s the one he directs at his most anxious defendants in court, the one Klavier’s hardly seen since their parents died. Warmth swells in Klavier’s chest. “Come on, then. My tools are in my bedroom.”
Tools is an oddly utilitarian word, for Kristoph. Everything is a tool, really; everyone can be a tool. It’s not as precise as he prefers to be. Klavier follows him down the hallway and wonders what that means.
He hasn’t seen the inside of Kristoph’s bedroom in years. He probably won’t again, ever, since he’d also made his own promise in turn to move out once he’d passed the bar. Klavier takes a moment to survey it — exactly as expected, crisp and orderly to the extreme — then turns to Kristoph, arranging a couple of things on his dresser.
There’s no secret weapon. No curler, electric or otherwise; nothing Klavier hasn’t seen before. A spray bottle; a couple of hair products; a brush, plastic-toothed. It’s Kristoph, though, so they’re all brands Klavier doesn’t recognize, expensive-looking with elegant, minimalist packaging.
“It’s called curl training,” Kristoph says.
“What?”
“This process.” Kristoph wets his hair, head bent a little to get all of it with the spray bottle. “Our hair isn’t that curly, but any hair that isn’t straight has a memory, the theory goes. It wants to fall a certain way, but circumstances — weather, brushing it dry, the list goes on — prevent it. You can retrain it into remembering.”
Klavier takes a moment to process that. “I don’t think your hair wants to fall like that.” He doesn’t think anyone’s hair does, not in one ringlet over one shoulder.
“No? Perhaps not. Perhaps hair is inanimate, and doesn't want anything.” Kristoph takes the brush to it next, brushing it out a couple of times, smoothing on what appears to be some kind of mousse or leave-in, then aligning the brush with it at an angle precise with practised ease. “That’s why I say it’s a theory. Curl memory isn’t something I take seriously. I don’t want natural hair, unruly and free.”
“You want to… train it.”
“Precisely.” He’s wrapping his hair around the handle of the brush, looping it over and over. “The women who think this process merely enhances natural beauty are naïve. They called it training, after all. Training turns a person into something new. Something better.” A quick twist of his hand, and what unspools from the brush’s smooth handle is flat, glossy, and springs up into shape when Kristoph squeezes it gently.
“I think I understand,” Klavier says.
“Do you?”
He doesn’t, but Kristoph knows that. It’s always been like this, Kristoph moving a little too fast for Klavier to follow. But Klavier’s an adult now, and he’s passed the bar, and he’ll read everything he can about… curl training, or whatever it is, and he’ll figure out how to make it work. “I will,” he says, instead.
He knows it’s the right thing to say because Kristoph smiles. “I know you will. Congratulations, by the way.”
“You can congratulate me after I beat you in court,” Klavier announces. “I’ll grow my hair out, and I’ll wear it like this, and it’ll be funny, facing each other as brothers, you know? Me in my —” he gestures to himself, leather jacket creased with heavy wear. Kristoph is in the white linen he prefers on days off; even like this, shirt buttoned all the way up to the neck, it’s still more relaxed than anyone else gets to see him. Klavier gets to see him this way. “Me in black, and the way I am, I know you’ve always hated it but you know it suits me. You in your white shirt all angelic at the defense bench. Darkness and light, ja? Not twins, but mirrors.”
“Darkness and light,” Kristoph says, amused. “Me as an angel. You’re casting yourself as the devil? I don’t think justice is that simple.”
“Maybe not.” Klavier has to concede that. You don’t get through even the first week of law school without learning to look the abyss of injustice in the eye. “Let me dream, hm? You know I’ve always been a romantic. I like the contrast.”
He likes the idea of it. Kristoph, as collected and calm as he’s always been, never a superfluous movement; Klavier, across from him, his hyperactive shadow. His dark side, impulsive and oversharing and — as Kristoph says — dangerously emotional. Someone’s got to do all the feeling for the two of them, if Kristoph won’t show it. Klavier’s happy for it to be him.
“Your hair won’t be long enough for years,” Kristoph says. “You don’t intend to beat me until then? You might be assigned a case next week, you know. I might pick up defense, just to get to face you first.”
He’s not looking at Klavier. He’s smoothing a couple of flyaway strands back into shape with some gel, eyes fixed on the mirror. Still, perhaps it’s looking away that lets Kristoph be honest about this. Them, brothers, Klavier finally grown enough to be a peer and not a burden. Someone to challenge. Someone to meet in court — a new promise, and one not extracted through childish wheedling. One Kristoph wants to make.
“I’ll look forward to it,” Klavier says. He’s excited already. He can taste how sweet it’ll be, the two of them meeting on an even playing field. He wants to win — of course he does — but more than that, he wants to be able to shake Kristoph’s hand at the end of it, and say, that was well fought, and hear it in turn.
“I’m sure you will,” Kristoph says.