Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - One Day, One Trial - Phoenix/Miles
Wow. I haven't updated this journal in... over a year? ^^; Oops?
Title: One Day, One Trial
Fandom: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Pairing/Characters: Phoenix/Miles
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Does not belong to me.
So... he was kissing Miles Edgeworth.
A perfect way to end this completely nonsensical day, really. From the moment Phoenix had woken up that morning (or, rather, woken up again. Lousy neighbors) he'd had a feeling that today was going to be anything but normal. Maybe he'd picked up something from being around the Fey's.
And it wasn't just kissing. There was fumbling - hands and fingers and his knee slipping between Miles' thighs. Miles wasn't the best kisser he'd ever been with, but there was something to be said for his passion. Miles' teeth raked across his tongue, his hand at the base of Phoenix's tie, pulling.
.
The trial had been set for 1:30. Phoenix had spent the last week learning every last detail of the case, and, like so many others, it was an impossible one. His client was accused of murdering her husband and a knife bearing her fingerprints, an eye witness (a customer at her husband's flower shop), and a recording from the security camera (of her, hiding the knife among the roses, then plunging it into his throat) were what he was up against.
But she'd sworn to Phoenix that she didn't do it, and that was enough for him.
Edgeworth had called him soft, like Phoenix didn't know the odds. It was just classic Edgeworth, trying to rile the defense. He may have even been good at it sometimes, but just before a trial, Phoenix always stilled whatever was shaking inside of him somehow.
.
Untying a cravat, Phoenix discovered, was an adventure all to itself. And not in a good way, but in an oh god just get this stupid thing off already kind of way.
"...I'll do it," Miles had finally offered, taking it off from around his neck.
Phoenix undid the buttons of Miles' shirt while the cravat fell somewhere behind the couch and moved to suck on Miles' exposed neck as soon as the opportunity arose.
"Nnng," Miles breathed. It wasn't a word, but it had so many meanings.
.
Just before walking into the courtroom, Miles had smirked at him. Too confident, but this was a guaranteed victory.
"Just quit while you're ahead, Wright," He'd said, picking up his briefcase. Phoenix wasn't jarred, but the muscles of his shoulders tightened enough to make him a little uncomfortable.
"Do you really think we can win?" Maya had said, just loud enough to make the defendant cringe.
"Of course we can," He'd lied.
Then just as the eye witness was taking the stand and recounting all of the gory details - the knife, the roses, the blood, the last thing he saw before passing out - the defendant's sister broke into a fit of hysterics.
She confessed everything. Drugging her sister and tying her up in the back of the store, dressing up like her for the camera, planting the knife with the fingerprints, then using a different one to kill her husband who was "no good for her".
"He was never any good for you!" the sister had sobbed. "You were different before you met him, but he took you away from me. From us. When our family needed you, you gave everything to him. So I had to take him away from you. Maybe I did it, but you're still guilty."
She'd kept on even while the handcuffs closed around her wrists. The case was dismissed and justice may have been served, but the knot in Phoenix's throat didn't loosen even while the gavel echoed through the courtroom and everyone filed out the door.
It was probably why he'd had a drink with his dinner.
.
...The alcohol, yes. It could have everything to do with his jacket and shirt coming off and pooling somewhere around his feet. Miles was getting more aggressive and somehow they'd moved to where the arm of the couch was pressed, uncomfortably, against Phoenix's back. He hooked two fingers into the waist of Miles' slacks and Miles' hips moved along with them.
"C-can I?" When Phoenix said it, it came out much more nervous than he'd anticipated.
"Do it."
.
They'd had dinner with Maya and Detective Gumshoe at a small Mexican restaurant near the courthouse. It was downtown where everything was too close, so they'd walked even though it was cool outside with the beginning of fall. Edgeworth looked slightly wounded, but a dismissal didn't have any bearing on his personal record and Gumshoe had all but begged him to at least come and eat.
Phoenix knew all about Edgeworth's habit of getting too involved in his case and not eating for days. Phoenix knew a lot of things about Edgeworth's daily habits simply because Gumshoe usually realized that he was saying too much at some point after it was too late.
Phoenix had two beers with his dinner, still trying to release the tension inside of him - angry and confused with himself for even feeling it. The guilty woman had gone to jail and his innocent client had been freed, but he was prepared for a three day battle and all of the energy from the preparation still burned underneath his skin.
It made him a little sick to think that when faced with it, the battle itself was almost as important to him as watching his innocent client released. But even he knew it wasn't that simple, and given a choice, wouldn't he take the confession over a possible injustice? Was he getting jaded? Mia would be disappointed in him. The third beer made his stomach warm and made the knot in his throat start to give.
.
It occurred to him, somewhere around when Miles was removing his belt, that, aside from a regrettable college party so many years ago, he'd never done anything like this with a man. And even then, it had never gone this far, and he started to wonder if Miles knew what he was doing, because Phoenix sure as hell didn't.
Suddenly, he felt like they were teenagers, fooling around on a couch, maybe knowing what they wanted, but not certain of how to get there. And then there was a pause - a hesitation washing over both of them. Phoenix couldn't quite look up a Miles, and the uneasy consequences entered his mind. How far could they take this before they couldn't go back to being what they were before? Whatever that was.
A flush painted the skin of his shoulders and neck, and seeing Miles this way - lips parted, breath quick, sweat moving in beads down the lines of his collarbone - it already had gone too far.
.
Maya had come down from Kurain to help with the trial, but given the events, she had no reason to stay in the city for the next few days like she had planned. Detective Gumshoe lived just outside of the city, so he'd offered to drive her home.
Maya seemed disappointed only in the sense that she'd been training vigorously and was ready to call Mia for the duration of the trial.
"I stood under a cold waterfall for seven hours!" She'd complained, "But it's okay. I'll just be even stronger for the next one." Her determination had been especially contagious then.
They parted ways in front of the restaurant, and Phoenix turned down the offer of a ride home from Miles after his chiding about how if Phoenix tried to get home on his own, he might stumble out in front of the bus.
It's not like he was drunk, but maybe too buzzed to be walking through the city alone. Miles had said something about using his red nose to guide him, then almost as if by divine intervention, Miles caught his foot in a crack on the sidewalk. Not quite enough to throw him off balance, but the sentiment was there. And since Phoenix would no longer be getting mocked on the way home, he accepted the ride.
Maybe he'd looked more weary than he'd imagined, but Miles wanted to see him up to his apartment and then when they arrived at the door, Miles hovered there. Did he want to be invited in? Phoenix contemplated the state of his apartment - it was cluttered, the way it usually was just before a trial.
"Do you want some coffee?" Phoenix asked.
"Yes," Miles said, gravely, as if there was something heavier on his mind.
.
The next logical step would be to move into the bedroom. They were two grown men and the couch was a bit small. But something made Phoenix afraid of what might happen if they did. Phoenix thought about Miles, face up on his bed, and thought about straddling the sides of his waist until any doubt was gone, and then they were standing up from the couch, fumbling through the hallway without breaking contact.
It wasn't easy, and Miles nearly tripped over the file boxes near the door, but once they were there, Phoenix couldn't help but push Miles backwards so that he could climb on top of him, holding his wrists above his head and kissing him, hard.
.
"Did you know it was her sister?" Miles had asked, sipping on his coffee, once they both had cups and were seated at the dining table.
"It doesn't matter," Phoenix said, taken aback by the question.
"I know it doesn't, but, " The coffee cup made a ding when it touched the glass table top, "I just want to know."
"Maybe we can talk about this some other time but right now, I really don't want to talk about this case."
Miles stood and walked across the living room so that he was facing the window. It was already dark outside and the city lights were beginning to punctuate the view. Phoenix knew his apartment was humble, but this view was most of the reason he rented it in the first place. Sometimes it was loud with car horns and the other sounds of traffic, but the hum of the city was something he could no longer picture himself living without.
"I'd heard rumors about this," Miles said, running a finger along the bookshelf near the window. "That you'd studied Shakespeare in college."
Phoenix had many old books packed onto the shelves. Just because he didn't decide to go through with that major didn't make it any less of a hobby.
"I did," Phoenix made his way over to the bookshelf, coffee cup in tow. "But, well, you know what happened."
"I wonder if you would have made a good scholar?"
"I think I make a pretty decent attorney."
The top of the bookshelf was filled with Shakespeare's works, then somewhere around halfway it devolved into mystery novels. And not Agatha Christie, but the kinds of books you'd see at the checkout of the grocery store on a rack next to the tabloids.
To Phoenix's surprise, Miles pulled a book off of the lower half of the shelf.
"'Murder on the Range'" Miles read aloud, "A dairy farmer finds his quiet farm life turned upside down when two of his farm hands turn up missing. When the bodies are found, he becomes the main suspect. Can the innocent farmer find the real murderer before the killer comes after him? Or do the cows have a more sinister plan."
Phoenix grinned sheepishly "I thought that one was pretty good."
"Really, Wright. How can you lump Shakespeare in with the rest of this garbag--" Miles stopped. "...This book."
"Hm?"
"I love this book. I read it when I was a child."
It was another murder novel, but this one was about a man who had killed his wife using secret kung fu techniques taught to him by her father. He'd framed the father for her murder, as no one else knew that he'd taught the techniques to anyone outside of the family. It was a particularly violent story.
"You read... that... when you were a child?"
"Yes. Something wrong with that?"
"Um... no." Phoenix quirked an eyebrow. "You can borrow it if you want."
"Thank you," Miles said. "I should be going. Maybe tomorrow we can talk about the case."
"Tomorrow is my day off," Phoenix grinned. He always took one of those after a trial was completed.
"Then we'll have plenty of time to talk about it," Miles said, seriously.
Phoenix became aggravated. Why did he want to talk about this so badly? It was done, finished. Justice had been served. What was more important than that?
"What is it that you want to know, Miles?" Phoenix said, curtly.
Silence hung between them for a few moments. Miles took in a deep breath.
"Did you know that her sister had done it?"
What was he trying to do? Back Phoenix into a corner? Of course he hadn't known, but how could he say that? All he knew was that his client had told him that she wasn't guilty. It was all he had to base her innocence on.
"Did you?" Phoenix asked.
"Of course not, if I'd known that, the sister would have been the one on trial."
"Then none of this matters. The truth was revealed, and that's more important than anything else."
"I just want to understand why you would take a case like that. It was the perfect crime. You had to have known it was her."
"No crime is perfect. The truth would have come out in the end."
But would it have? Or would he have been powerless while the innocent sister went to jail. He'd made more from less. He knew that. But something about the way the trial concluded left a bitter taste in his mouth.
"I should be going," Miles said. He seemed angry, but Phoenix didn't understand why.
"No. Wait. You asked me. Now I want to ask you a question."
"What is it," Miles scowled.
"Why did you take that case in the first place?"
"Because it's my job."
"But it was an easy case. Any prosecutor could have handled it."
"Against you?" Miles took one step closer.
A silence hung between them while Phoenix bit down his lip.
So he was kissing Miles Edgeworth. And it didn't make perfect sense, but not everything in this world did. Miles had been the one to step forward with conviction in his eyes and cup his hand around the back of Phoenix's neck while the other one pulled at his tie. And Phoenix found that nothing inside of him tried to resist.
It was clumsy and a little desperate. Miles tasted like coffee.
And then there was the knot tightening in his throat again.
.
The bedsheets were a mess and Miles was sitting on the edge of the matress when Phoenix came out of the bathroom.
"Well, then," Miles said. "I should... be going."
"You said than hour ago. Why don't you stay the night?"
"I couldn't," Miles said. Probably because if he stayed, then they'd have to admit this to themselves in the morning.
Phoenix could live with that.
But it was Miles, the next morning, who said "Are your neighbors always this noisy?" to the booming sounds of mariachi music through the thin apartment walls.
Title: One Day, One Trial
Fandom: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
Pairing/Characters: Phoenix/Miles
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Does not belong to me.
So... he was kissing Miles Edgeworth.
A perfect way to end this completely nonsensical day, really. From the moment Phoenix had woken up that morning (or, rather, woken up again. Lousy neighbors) he'd had a feeling that today was going to be anything but normal. Maybe he'd picked up something from being around the Fey's.
And it wasn't just kissing. There was fumbling - hands and fingers and his knee slipping between Miles' thighs. Miles wasn't the best kisser he'd ever been with, but there was something to be said for his passion. Miles' teeth raked across his tongue, his hand at the base of Phoenix's tie, pulling.
.
The trial had been set for 1:30. Phoenix had spent the last week learning every last detail of the case, and, like so many others, it was an impossible one. His client was accused of murdering her husband and a knife bearing her fingerprints, an eye witness (a customer at her husband's flower shop), and a recording from the security camera (of her, hiding the knife among the roses, then plunging it into his throat) were what he was up against.
But she'd sworn to Phoenix that she didn't do it, and that was enough for him.
Edgeworth had called him soft, like Phoenix didn't know the odds. It was just classic Edgeworth, trying to rile the defense. He may have even been good at it sometimes, but just before a trial, Phoenix always stilled whatever was shaking inside of him somehow.
.
Untying a cravat, Phoenix discovered, was an adventure all to itself. And not in a good way, but in an oh god just get this stupid thing off already kind of way.
"...I'll do it," Miles had finally offered, taking it off from around his neck.
Phoenix undid the buttons of Miles' shirt while the cravat fell somewhere behind the couch and moved to suck on Miles' exposed neck as soon as the opportunity arose.
"Nnng," Miles breathed. It wasn't a word, but it had so many meanings.
.
Just before walking into the courtroom, Miles had smirked at him. Too confident, but this was a guaranteed victory.
"Just quit while you're ahead, Wright," He'd said, picking up his briefcase. Phoenix wasn't jarred, but the muscles of his shoulders tightened enough to make him a little uncomfortable.
"Do you really think we can win?" Maya had said, just loud enough to make the defendant cringe.
"Of course we can," He'd lied.
Then just as the eye witness was taking the stand and recounting all of the gory details - the knife, the roses, the blood, the last thing he saw before passing out - the defendant's sister broke into a fit of hysterics.
She confessed everything. Drugging her sister and tying her up in the back of the store, dressing up like her for the camera, planting the knife with the fingerprints, then using a different one to kill her husband who was "no good for her".
"He was never any good for you!" the sister had sobbed. "You were different before you met him, but he took you away from me. From us. When our family needed you, you gave everything to him. So I had to take him away from you. Maybe I did it, but you're still guilty."
She'd kept on even while the handcuffs closed around her wrists. The case was dismissed and justice may have been served, but the knot in Phoenix's throat didn't loosen even while the gavel echoed through the courtroom and everyone filed out the door.
It was probably why he'd had a drink with his dinner.
.
...The alcohol, yes. It could have everything to do with his jacket and shirt coming off and pooling somewhere around his feet. Miles was getting more aggressive and somehow they'd moved to where the arm of the couch was pressed, uncomfortably, against Phoenix's back. He hooked two fingers into the waist of Miles' slacks and Miles' hips moved along with them.
"C-can I?" When Phoenix said it, it came out much more nervous than he'd anticipated.
"Do it."
.
They'd had dinner with Maya and Detective Gumshoe at a small Mexican restaurant near the courthouse. It was downtown where everything was too close, so they'd walked even though it was cool outside with the beginning of fall. Edgeworth looked slightly wounded, but a dismissal didn't have any bearing on his personal record and Gumshoe had all but begged him to at least come and eat.
Phoenix knew all about Edgeworth's habit of getting too involved in his case and not eating for days. Phoenix knew a lot of things about Edgeworth's daily habits simply because Gumshoe usually realized that he was saying too much at some point after it was too late.
Phoenix had two beers with his dinner, still trying to release the tension inside of him - angry and confused with himself for even feeling it. The guilty woman had gone to jail and his innocent client had been freed, but he was prepared for a three day battle and all of the energy from the preparation still burned underneath his skin.
It made him a little sick to think that when faced with it, the battle itself was almost as important to him as watching his innocent client released. But even he knew it wasn't that simple, and given a choice, wouldn't he take the confession over a possible injustice? Was he getting jaded? Mia would be disappointed in him. The third beer made his stomach warm and made the knot in his throat start to give.
.
It occurred to him, somewhere around when Miles was removing his belt, that, aside from a regrettable college party so many years ago, he'd never done anything like this with a man. And even then, it had never gone this far, and he started to wonder if Miles knew what he was doing, because Phoenix sure as hell didn't.
Suddenly, he felt like they were teenagers, fooling around on a couch, maybe knowing what they wanted, but not certain of how to get there. And then there was a pause - a hesitation washing over both of them. Phoenix couldn't quite look up a Miles, and the uneasy consequences entered his mind. How far could they take this before they couldn't go back to being what they were before? Whatever that was.
A flush painted the skin of his shoulders and neck, and seeing Miles this way - lips parted, breath quick, sweat moving in beads down the lines of his collarbone - it already had gone too far.
.
Maya had come down from Kurain to help with the trial, but given the events, she had no reason to stay in the city for the next few days like she had planned. Detective Gumshoe lived just outside of the city, so he'd offered to drive her home.
Maya seemed disappointed only in the sense that she'd been training vigorously and was ready to call Mia for the duration of the trial.
"I stood under a cold waterfall for seven hours!" She'd complained, "But it's okay. I'll just be even stronger for the next one." Her determination had been especially contagious then.
They parted ways in front of the restaurant, and Phoenix turned down the offer of a ride home from Miles after his chiding about how if Phoenix tried to get home on his own, he might stumble out in front of the bus.
It's not like he was drunk, but maybe too buzzed to be walking through the city alone. Miles had said something about using his red nose to guide him, then almost as if by divine intervention, Miles caught his foot in a crack on the sidewalk. Not quite enough to throw him off balance, but the sentiment was there. And since Phoenix would no longer be getting mocked on the way home, he accepted the ride.
Maybe he'd looked more weary than he'd imagined, but Miles wanted to see him up to his apartment and then when they arrived at the door, Miles hovered there. Did he want to be invited in? Phoenix contemplated the state of his apartment - it was cluttered, the way it usually was just before a trial.
"Do you want some coffee?" Phoenix asked.
"Yes," Miles said, gravely, as if there was something heavier on his mind.
.
The next logical step would be to move into the bedroom. They were two grown men and the couch was a bit small. But something made Phoenix afraid of what might happen if they did. Phoenix thought about Miles, face up on his bed, and thought about straddling the sides of his waist until any doubt was gone, and then they were standing up from the couch, fumbling through the hallway without breaking contact.
It wasn't easy, and Miles nearly tripped over the file boxes near the door, but once they were there, Phoenix couldn't help but push Miles backwards so that he could climb on top of him, holding his wrists above his head and kissing him, hard.
.
"Did you know it was her sister?" Miles had asked, sipping on his coffee, once they both had cups and were seated at the dining table.
"It doesn't matter," Phoenix said, taken aback by the question.
"I know it doesn't, but, " The coffee cup made a ding when it touched the glass table top, "I just want to know."
"Maybe we can talk about this some other time but right now, I really don't want to talk about this case."
Miles stood and walked across the living room so that he was facing the window. It was already dark outside and the city lights were beginning to punctuate the view. Phoenix knew his apartment was humble, but this view was most of the reason he rented it in the first place. Sometimes it was loud with car horns and the other sounds of traffic, but the hum of the city was something he could no longer picture himself living without.
"I'd heard rumors about this," Miles said, running a finger along the bookshelf near the window. "That you'd studied Shakespeare in college."
Phoenix had many old books packed onto the shelves. Just because he didn't decide to go through with that major didn't make it any less of a hobby.
"I did," Phoenix made his way over to the bookshelf, coffee cup in tow. "But, well, you know what happened."
"I wonder if you would have made a good scholar?"
"I think I make a pretty decent attorney."
The top of the bookshelf was filled with Shakespeare's works, then somewhere around halfway it devolved into mystery novels. And not Agatha Christie, but the kinds of books you'd see at the checkout of the grocery store on a rack next to the tabloids.
To Phoenix's surprise, Miles pulled a book off of the lower half of the shelf.
"'Murder on the Range'" Miles read aloud, "A dairy farmer finds his quiet farm life turned upside down when two of his farm hands turn up missing. When the bodies are found, he becomes the main suspect. Can the innocent farmer find the real murderer before the killer comes after him? Or do the cows have a more sinister plan."
Phoenix grinned sheepishly "I thought that one was pretty good."
"Really, Wright. How can you lump Shakespeare in with the rest of this garbag--" Miles stopped. "...This book."
"Hm?"
"I love this book. I read it when I was a child."
It was another murder novel, but this one was about a man who had killed his wife using secret kung fu techniques taught to him by her father. He'd framed the father for her murder, as no one else knew that he'd taught the techniques to anyone outside of the family. It was a particularly violent story.
"You read... that... when you were a child?"
"Yes. Something wrong with that?"
"Um... no." Phoenix quirked an eyebrow. "You can borrow it if you want."
"Thank you," Miles said. "I should be going. Maybe tomorrow we can talk about the case."
"Tomorrow is my day off," Phoenix grinned. He always took one of those after a trial was completed.
"Then we'll have plenty of time to talk about it," Miles said, seriously.
Phoenix became aggravated. Why did he want to talk about this so badly? It was done, finished. Justice had been served. What was more important than that?
"What is it that you want to know, Miles?" Phoenix said, curtly.
Silence hung between them for a few moments. Miles took in a deep breath.
"Did you know that her sister had done it?"
What was he trying to do? Back Phoenix into a corner? Of course he hadn't known, but how could he say that? All he knew was that his client had told him that she wasn't guilty. It was all he had to base her innocence on.
"Did you?" Phoenix asked.
"Of course not, if I'd known that, the sister would have been the one on trial."
"Then none of this matters. The truth was revealed, and that's more important than anything else."
"I just want to understand why you would take a case like that. It was the perfect crime. You had to have known it was her."
"No crime is perfect. The truth would have come out in the end."
But would it have? Or would he have been powerless while the innocent sister went to jail. He'd made more from less. He knew that. But something about the way the trial concluded left a bitter taste in his mouth.
"I should be going," Miles said. He seemed angry, but Phoenix didn't understand why.
"No. Wait. You asked me. Now I want to ask you a question."
"What is it," Miles scowled.
"Why did you take that case in the first place?"
"Because it's my job."
"But it was an easy case. Any prosecutor could have handled it."
"Against you?" Miles took one step closer.
A silence hung between them while Phoenix bit down his lip.
So he was kissing Miles Edgeworth. And it didn't make perfect sense, but not everything in this world did. Miles had been the one to step forward with conviction in his eyes and cup his hand around the back of Phoenix's neck while the other one pulled at his tie. And Phoenix found that nothing inside of him tried to resist.
It was clumsy and a little desperate. Miles tasted like coffee.
And then there was the knot tightening in his throat again.
.
The bedsheets were a mess and Miles was sitting on the edge of the matress when Phoenix came out of the bathroom.
"Well, then," Miles said. "I should... be going."
"You said than hour ago. Why don't you stay the night?"
"I couldn't," Miles said. Probably because if he stayed, then they'd have to admit this to themselves in the morning.
Phoenix could live with that.
But it was Miles, the next morning, who said "Are your neighbors always this noisy?" to the booming sounds of mariachi music through the thin apartment walls.