Keep It Cool | Ace Attorney (Kristoph x reader)

[26] Victory Smile

[ 6:00 PM - Borscht Bowl Club ]

The tunes of the piano melodically play, somewhat... - It's completely off tune. It doesn't matter since Pheonix stops playing when a man calls him over to talk.

He turns around to see the source and gets up from his seat, tucking his hands in his grey jacket. As usual, his unkept beard makes him look like a hobo but he doubts anyone cares anyway. The pianist makes his way to the person that called him and gestures for him to take a sit together to which he complies.

"Hey, how you doin'?" The man offers his hand. Pheonix accepts it with a lazy smile, "been better. I haven't seen you around lately. What brings you here?"

They both take a seat, "felt like catching up, it's been a while." He sighs. "Haha, of course. I know your band has been really busy lately, Daryan."

---

[ 3:30 PM - The Gavins Residence ]

"Hell no," the voice sounds over the phone. "I'm not getting jumbled up with your biz, I'm only helping with crime scene access. Nothing more than that, I don't like getting my hands dirty."

Klavier sighs, trying to explain to situation to him but to no avail. Daryan refuses to comply until Kristoph, standing beside him, asks, "is something the matter?"

His brother covers the underside of the phone, blocking the mic, "Daryan said he's not going to see Mr. Wright. Too much of a hassle." The elder ponders for a moment, "Pass me his number, I have a solution."

"How so?" He whispers back. "Trust me, Klavier. I always have my ways," he smiles in return. The younger raises his eyebrow in confusion but decides to trust him anyway. He brings up the phone again, "my brother wants to speak with you on his phone. Please, just listen to him even if it's once."

Daryan sighs, "fine, but only this once. Can't believe I'm doing this right now..." And with that, the call ends and Klavier sends the contact list to his brother. After a ding over on the other side, Kristoph texts the number instead.

'Hello, Daryan. Apologies for coming so forth about this. We're in dire need of your help.'

The bubble speech loads, 'sorry, sir. I don't want to get myself too involved in this. I mean, I'm completely irrelevant to the case. I can help with the crime scene access and all but even that is difficult since it's an already closed case.'

Klavier peeks over to read the text and tells his brother it's useless, "he's probably set on not getting himself mixed too much. Let's find another way."

"No, I can guarantee, he will join us," Kristoph replies with full confidence. "You should keep watch of [Y/N] in the meantime." the younger Gavin complies and leaves the living room. 'Perfect, he won't find out now.' The man sits down and crosses his legs.

He replies to the text.

'If I were to pose a deal, would you accept it? Money or otherwise.'

The text is left on seen for a few seconds before buffers of speech bubbles appear, 'are you srsly bribing me rn?'

A smirk grows on his face, 'I wouldn't exactly call it that, just a means to pay you for helping us. Let's say it's a commission fee.'

Kristoph already knows his background. Daryan Crescend isn't exactly clear from the records before he was employed as a detective. His criminal background isn't as extreme but it's there and he's using it to his advantage. In high school, he was suspected of being an accessory to illegal substance dealing but it was dropped due to lack of evidence.

Kristoph Gavin is gambling in this situation, if he turns out to reject the offer, the lawyer can lose his badge immediately. Bribing a detective might be the riskiest thing he has done so far. He's purely dependent on him still being young and naive.