damned_institute | Nightshift 39: M91-M100 Hallway

Miles moved his hands to Phoenix's shoulders, holding them so tightly his knuckles turned white, and shook him hard. "You're here right now. You're here and you're alive. That's what's important, Phoenix. Don't blame yourself for what that bastard did. Don't think you didn't fight enough, because if I know you, you did something."

He took a long breath, looking away for a moment. "I...I yelled at the bastard doctor. And you know what? It still got me this. It got me a lot more pain in the process, too..." He pulled his right hand away, motioning to his head. "And you know what else?"

He met Phoenix's eyes again, cold steel tempered by the kind of understanding you only got after you'd been strapped to one of those chairs. "The way you're talking about how he went in...if you'd turned your head, you might be blind in one eye. You might be unable to talk, or...God, any of a thousand things." Miles' voice was shaking with a mix of relief and anger. "There's fighting, and there's being an idiot. Not letting the madman do more damage to you than he had to...that counts as fighting to me."

The shake throttled more thoughts of of Phoenix's head than into it, it felt like, but he didn't have any problems understanding the words. He listened in silence, at length nodding a little. Edgeworth was sensible, of course. That was his job. At the same time, knowing that he'd never really know . . .

The next round chased that thought away, too, albeit less completely. It was true - a lot of things could've happened and hadn't, but the vast majority of those were things that he didn't want to think too long about. He was so absorbed in thought, so caught by the words, that it took a few long, silent moments for the shadowed glimmer to register. When it did, he looked at it more closely - two locks, a mass of chains that seemed chaotic but far more benign than the ones that had moved on him, looped and cinched around him as if they'd always been there. The impulse was automatic, but it still took a second to pull his mind the right way, to bring into relief the outline of the lock, the understanding that there was a keyhole somewhere there, just waiting for the right key.

He reached out, fingertips gliding over the smoothness of red enamel and shining gold hanging at eye level, and his heart caught in his throat. Still something. "What else," he murmured, tone boding no argument, knowing that he was tracing something invisible to Miles and not even caring. It was easier than telling him it was there. His eyes flitted up, an eerie, unwavering kind of focus in them that didn't fit at all with how pale and unsteady he still looked. "Even if I didn't have this, I'd still hear that you can't even keep your voice steady. So what else is there."

Edited 2009-03-15 03:57 (UTC)

You see one on me. Maybe more than one... Edgeworth closed his eyes and turned away for a moment, not bothering to hide the surprise and confusion on his face. "I..." He stopped, breath catching in his throat, and swallowed thickly.

"I can't keep my voice steady because...the moment I realized what was going on, I..." He didn't open his eyes, but he turned his face towards Phoenix again. He didn't want to look at those eyes, not when they were focused like that, not when the truth of it all was so intimate.

"I was terrified. I didn't know what they were going to do to you, and I...I honestly thought I might open that door and find you dead on an operating table. Or worse, so close to death that I couldn't do anything about it," he said, in a quiet voice. "And...before that. I...I didn't know what the voice was reacting to soon enough. Dammit, I..."

His voice trembled again, and he had to wait until he was sure the words wouldn't come out with tears. "I didn't get there soon enough. If I had, if I'd listened sooner..."

The lock shattered into nothing, and Phoenix's fingers sunk down to rest just as lightly on Miles' chest, feeling it hitch as he breathed. A wave of guilt washed over him - he never considered that sometimes the only thing a lock could do was hold something together. He looked at the familiar posture - right hand latched onto left arm, as if he'd been hit - and unseated the hand as gently as he could. Then, without hesitating, he wrapped his arms around his waist in a silent gesture of reassurance, turning his head to rest against his chest.

"You could have stopped it before it started - assuming you'd somehow found a way into a room they don't want you in," he finished lowly, continuing before Miles had a chance to reply. "Or you could have startled him while he had a needle in my head. Or you could have stopped it halfway through, and we'd be seeing right now exactly when I act like when only half of my brain sees a lie." His arms tightened a bit. Gratitude still seemed like treachery, but he'd let himself be glad.

"You and your dad both did the best you could. That's all I care about." He looked up, past the shapeless gray fabric and shadows, and felt a thin smile creep onto his face in defiance of the tight heat threatening his throat from way down deep in his chest. Nothing to do but smile and keep going. This wasn't over yet, not by a long shot. "Fight another day, right?"

Hey. Wait. I'm supposed to be the one comforting you, here. We do things backwards. I spring the surprise onto you. You're the steady, stable one. And now? They take you upstairs, put needles into your brain and your eyes, and...you're comforting me when it's all over? I...don't know where to begin pointing out all the ways that's wrong.

"We're doing this wrong," he murmured quietly, pulling Phoenix closer. "But...that doesn't matter. I still wish I could have protected you, and kept you from going through that hell before it even started. I...I'm going through everything I could have changed, from going to your room for a minute first, to immediately going upstairs, to...dammit, I'm still doing this whole comforting thing completely wrong," he said, breaking into a laugh that was dangerously close to a sob.

"But...I do know that you're going to be okay," he said, moving one hand into his hair and stroking it lightly. "You've taken down people that seemed to us to be gods. And...you'll do it again. Because you're here. You're here, and that's what you do. I don't know how you do, but you do."

For all Miles had said that he couldn't comfort, the hand over his hair was soothing in a way Phoenix wouldn't have initially admitted to. He didn't loosen his arms, but he tucked his head down again, letting himself breathe slowly, easily. It was a better reassurance than Miles might have imagined. He was honest, and while that honesty did nothing for niceties, it let statements of faith sink that much deeper. He let the silence of the room fold back in around them, deep and soft, and only realized several endless, still moments later that he still had something left to say.

Phoenix didn't want to do this here - not in the Institute, not in the middle of the night, not with puncture wounds in his head and Edgeworth still quavering so close to the borderline of breaking down. But it all was so open and so human, and that tugged in his chest and moved the silhouette of something that Phoenix had been doing his best to ignore.

He couldn't keep secrets easily now - that much was clear. And that was just the way they were, pushing boundaries, finding where the corners and straight edges were and weren't. It was only a matter of time before there was just the right questioning look, or offhand comment, or heaven forbid some sort of crisis happened, and he was caught trying to explain himself with steel links crawling across him and pinning him in place . . .

He knew that it wasn't an unreasonable fear. This was a person he'd carved wide swaths of his life around, vast detours and uncharted deviations. He'd been a fool before, but never such a fool that he didn't realize that there was a word for that.

The photograph in Phoenix's pocket burned, as if to tell him that this was stupid, stupid, was his memory really so short? He paused for it, then closed his eyes tightly, ignoring the tinny, frightened voice. He'd told himself that he wouldn't give up, and he wouldn't. Not on anything. His throat stuck, and he found the words emerging quieter than he would have liked, though there was nothing shrinking about them. They were easy, even, so long considered that they'd long ago been smoothed of any newness. "God, I love you."

Sure, it could have lasted fine. The Institute might collapse without warning next week, and they'd all go home, and there'd be some sort of perfect love story declaration at the moment of victory. But one of them could be gone by the day after tomorrow, too, released or worse. Waiting until his hand was forced, or waiting so long that he never did what he'd intended to . . . he wasn't going to let either of those happen. If tonight was a night for compromises in the name of safety, he'd just make one more.

Miles blushed just lightly, kissing a place on the top of Phoenix's head first. "I..." The words stuck in his throat, but the actions something like that necessitated didn't. And maybe that would be enough for now, until the words were able to slip out as easily as they had a moment ago. I'll figure all this out. If not now, one day. I promise. The voice faded into silence, and he was grateful for the privacy that afforded.

He moved his hand down from his hair to his cheek, tracing the faint remnants of tear stains with his thumb, then tilted his chin up towards his face as he leaned in close. "I..." He sighed as the words caught again. "I feel the same." Those weren't the same words, and he just hoped the meaning came across. It would take time, and he'd need to stammer and stumble through them a few times before they would come out clearly.

Miles leaned in just that bit further, meeting Phoenix's eyes. "I think I have for a long time," he said, almost inaudibly, and leaned in to softly kiss him.

The lack of surprise had been the first clue, and probably the most telling, that speaking hadn't been so stupid after all. Phoenix knew that he was transparent, but he still flushed, averting his eyes a moment in a gesture that felt only ridiculous now. He'd always thought that it was a relatively small secret - old, harmless, and probably at its heart perfectly deluded. He hadn't anticipated that he'd feel so naked without it.

If his legs hadn't already been so close to jelly, that look would have done it. The words . . . well, words were words, and they barely sunk in until he reached up mid-kiss and found his fingertips pushing folds into hanging lapels, then venturing further, until they were pressing and gliding down a vest. The silk was flawless, and there was something sacred in feeling that revelation for himself.

Breath catching in his throat came as a surprise, and he laughed shakily a second later, leaning back and looking up. It still nagged at something achy and pressured inside his head, pulling the ensuing grin a little crooked. It took a bit for the shining in his eyes to die down, and when it did he released a quiet breath, sliding his hands back up to lace behind Miles' neck. He didn't question the answer, what had or hadn't been said. He knew what had been meant, and that was more important.

"Alright," he whispered. "I think I'm done piling things on you now."

Miles nodded, a grin playing over his face for just a moment before it was replaced by a moment of concern. "You're still shaky," he said. "So just stay where you are a second, all right?"

He gently disentangled himself from their embrace and crawled up onto the bed, kicking off his shoes as he did so. He laid gingerly on his right shoulder, testing first - it would be all right. Once he was sure of that, he motioned for Phoenix to come and lie down. "You need your rest," he said, the order tempered by concern and that emotion he still couldn't say, but knew was probably more than evident in the action. "I won't leave. The others are more than capable of finishing the supply mission. I...I'm just glad they weren't resistant to helping me get you out of there."

He paused for breath and then continued. "I...I think it helped that Javert and I have both been subjects of their work. And I hadn't expected the room to be open, so the fact that it was made it a good opportunity for the two of them to explore the place, see what they're hiding in there."

Miles finally stopped talking business for a minute, motioning to Phoenix again. "I meant that, you know," he grinned.

That was a relief, at least. Phoenix would've felt awkward if he'd disrupted three peoples' nights just because a guy in a funny coat decided it was human lie detector playtime. He almost asked what had been done to Javert, then thought better of it. Another time. He didn't want to go too much deeper into those topics right now.

"Ah- right." Lying down and listening to people talk weren't things Phoenix normally did at the same time, and the latter had completely taken priority over the former. He reached over to turn off the flashlight, then scooted into the spot next to Edgeworth, trying to negotiate the uncertainty of shoulders and legs before settling on pillowing his head on one arm, the other looped around Miles loosely. That was better, he had to admit. He felt like an old man, disproportionately tired for someone who'd walked less than a block in the course of the night.

"I can't believe you're wearing a three-piece suit in bed," he mused, amusement audible as he found the starched border of a cravat-pleat and tugged at it lightly. He hadn't expected him to strip down or anything, but he could've at least taken off his necktie, maybe undone a collar-button or his vest.

Those are all things that normal people do, I guess, he thought, a sort of appreciation below the aggravation.

"Tell me you don't sleep in this, too."

Edited 2009-03-15 18:27 (UTC)

"Phoenix Wright, are you asking me to strip?" Miles said, smirking just a bit at the end of the question. "And, to your last question: I own perfectly good pajamas, thank you very much. I...just don't have them here. They saw fit to give me my suit; I think it's a bit much to turn around and say, 'Oh, powers that be, while I do appreciate looking normal at night, may I have my suit during the day and during the evening, and could you also fetch that pair of pajamas in the third drawer of my dresser while you're at it? Thanks.'" He laughed, then let it fade slowly.

"This place..." he sighed the words out. "It's so strange to think of this, but...would we have ever gotten to this point on the outside? I...I want to think so, but... It's also strange to think that I should feel grateful at all. I mean, look what they've done to us. But if this is the one bit of good that's come from it..."

A minute later, he stopped altogether. "Forgive me. I think I'm rambling on because I'm just relieved."

Phoenix's laughter trailed off, much more gently than the grin that fell abruptly from his face at the question. He nodded dumbly, only half-hearing the apology, caught in those few seconds of grace before the hammer came down.

"It's okay. And I think we could've," he argued, though he knew before he'd spoken that the cool weight would come circling up, insidious and invisible. He managed not to shudder, but his hand tightened in the back of Miles' coat regardless, tensing in synchrony with every muscle between his skull and knees. "I mean-"

Stop it. Stop making me tell him everything, he ordered silently, as if that would change anything. The heavy weight around him didn't retreat, but it didn't draw any tighter, either. He shifted one leg, and found that he could actually move it, though it took a second to work through the paralyzing feeling of shouldn't.

"I- I think that depends," he answered quietly, trying to keep his voice easy and cool and knowing that he was failing to completely banish that strained pitch. "It's complicated."

You liar. You filthy liar. It's not complicated; it's the simplest thing in the world. You don't even let go of him, because you never even try to hold on in the first place. You let him live his life, and you live yours, and you resign yourself to waving goodbye at the airport and telling yourself that everyone feels this way when good friends go away.

"But - no. In two years, it doesn't happen," he continued, almost inaudibly. "And - I mean, it doesn't tear me apart or anything-" He didn't know if that would be an insult or a relief, and forged on before he could find out. He'd felt something break and crumble atop his knee, the weight grow lighter. "You have a really great career, and you're in Europe almost all the time. As far as I can tell, you're happy with where you are. I know that I helped you get there, and . . . " He shrugged an unburdered shoulder, lifting his eyebrows invisibly in the dark. "I never ask more than that."

Miles felt the tension in Phoenix's body, and knew he was going to change the subject before it happened. He listened, feeling the tension ease only slightly as he spoke, and frowned.

"And I...I probably don't, either, because two years in the future, I'm too afraid of commitment or letting people get too close to tell you anything. But...I'm probably hiding it all beneath the surface, burying it so far down that getting on that plane hurts less and less every time." He closed his eyes, sighing. "And we keep on going like that. Years later..."

Miles swallowed hard. That was the last topic he wanted to bring up, and he'd gone wandering straight into it without a second thought. "God, I'm an idiot. Forget I ever said that last part. This isn't the time or the place to discuss it."

He sat up, tossing his jacket towards the end of the bed and undoing a button each on his collar and vest, then settled back in. "You don't need that, not now."

Phoenix was still and perfectly silent, eyes blindly following the sounds of Edgeworth sitting back up, then lying down again. Years later. In a numb kind of way, he didn't begrudge the slip. It was the logical conclusion of that thought, and he'd spent too much of his life following evidence and testimony to its logical conclusion to drop the habit in this one instance. Yeahs later, something happened that didn't put anyone's life on the line - something that couldn't be helped. And that would be that, then. There wasn't anything that brought them together, apart from their jobs, and Miles was in LA less and less each year. So one of them would keep chasing the horizon, and the other one of them would get along and raise a child and do who knew what. And they'd be fine. It would be perfectly fine.

Optimism had never sounded colder or more bitter. Home had never seemed more alien.

In a single movement he found Edgeworth again and wrapped his arms around him tightly, without commentary or preface, and breathed the smell of skin and dry cleaning and industrial soap until he was sure he wasn't going to fall off the face of the earth. "It can't be that simple," he finally replied, quiet and dry-eyed and dogged. He'd never believed in fate, not once. It would have been crazy for him to. There was no point in fighting a decided outcome, and there was no way he'd believe that so much of his life had been pointless. There had to be more to it than that.

"It doesn't have to be that simple." The words were meant to be reassuring. "You could tell me. I...I could change. Or..." Miles paused, swallowing thickly. It would be hard, when he had so little reason to stay there at the point he was from, but if he returned and remembered all this...

"I could stay. Or you could come with me. Or..." He let his voice trail off. "Something. I'm afraid of connections breaking... but if I know they would break otherwise. I could do something to stop it." His voice sounded strained, and there was no hiding it or trying to pretend it wasn't. Miles didn't want to see Phoenix shake like that, point at invisible rocks that weren't there.

I...I could do something like taking the weight of the world on my shoulders again. I could do that; I have before. I can handle that.

He finally settled for holding Phoenix close, listening to the sound of his breathing. There wasn't much else he could say.

Edited 2009-03-15 20:34 (UTC)

It all seemed so inescapable, and it was strange to watch Edgeworth, of all people be the one to rail against the seemingly inevitable, to raise one impossible idea after another. He was right. They were doing this all wrong. They'd know whether this was all preordained when the foretold actually happened, and not a second sooner. In the space until that point, they had a choice.

"We'll make decisions when we have to," he concluded, tone quietly earnest. "Until then-?"

Kissing in the dark took a bit of figuring, and he lifted a hand to bury in Miles' hair before he even tried leaning close. His lips brushed the hollow below his lower lip first, then found their way up another half-inch.

Edited 2009-03-15 20:56 (UTC)

The 'yes' that he was about to say was lost in a kiss that wasn't surprising or unexpected, but nonetheless caught him just a bit off-guard. He moved his hand up just a bit, stroking Phoenix's cheek as he moved closer. Of course...we'll cross those bridges when we get there. We're both fighters, the two of us...and we complement each other. We can do this, if anyone can.

With that, he moved his hand from Phoenix's cheek to the back of his neck, pulling him deeper into that kiss. It was as instinctual as anything else. When he pulled away for breath a moment later, he quietly murmured, "I...I'm glad I didn't lose you," before kissing him again, harder and a little deeper. If he couldn't say everything in words, he could certainly say it with actions.

There wasn't any of Phoenix's usual repertoire in this kiss: the grinning, the restless little movements, the breaks to catch half-breaths and quip, the wrestling for some intangible upper hand. The motions were subtler, fingertips firm to his scalp and elbow pinning him closer. The easiness came by degrees, in the same way that walking and seeing had done, and it was only when he leaned back again what seemed like minutes later, breathing quietly against the yielding silence, that he remembered how relaxation even felt.

He hummed a quiet, satisfied noise, turning his face up under the edge of Miles' jaw and kissing a spare bit of neck lightly. "You're not all bad at the comforting thing," he murmured, smiling a little despite himself.

Miles let out a soft, pleased noise at that kiss. "It doesn't come naturally, but...I try," he said, and meant all of that. "I still don't think I'm doing it justice," he added, almost inaudibly. But did that really matter, when Phoenix was finally relaxing, whatever locks were there fading or shattering? He decided, in the end, that it didn't.

There was also the remaining anxiety; he shifted, trying to work a particularly stubborn bit of residual tension out of his shoulders. It only lessened a little, but...relaxing completely had never come completely naturally, either. Despite that, his lips quirked upward; not quite into a smile, but it was close enough.

"I think I still need more practice," he murmured, giving a low chuckle. He had to bite back a quip about bonding over trauma not being the healthiest relationship pattern in the world, but again, it was part of life here. If every traumatic experience wound up with the two of them in each others' arms - well, he wouldn't take the trauma happily, not ever, but it would be a lot easier.

"Will you give yourself a break?" There was a hapless, aggrieved chuckle on the tail of the words, the weight of a head nestling into his shoulder before coming to rest. The fingers in his hair untangled themselves, finally, following the trail of that short, tense movement. They pressed down through the layers of cloth, at last finding a band of tight, corded muscle and kneading idly.

"You know how I do things. As long as it works, the finesse isn't really that important." Sure, things being polished was nicer than them not being polished. Phoenix wouldn't even think of arguing that. But sometimes, if you wanted a job done, you just had to accept that you were going to have to cross-examine a parrot first.

. . . out of all of the possible relationship metaphors in the world, I come up with that. He didn't know whether to laugh or roll his eyes at himself. This is why poetry is out of my league.

"Phoenix? If I'm ever not hard on myself, please conduct an investigation, because something will have happened to me. Okay?" He laughed a little as he said that, but there was a touch of seriousness towards the end.

That was true, though, as much as his innate perfectionism argued against it. He sighed, feeling that tense muscle relax. "Though it's true. You have a lack of finesse that...has a certain charm to it, when it isn't driving everyone around you around the bend." That time, the laugh wasn't strained. "And it gets stuff done."

Miles sighed, kissing the top of Phoenix's head softly. "So it balances, somehow..."

You're such sweet-talker he didn't say, and he didn't smirk either - not much, at least, and no more than he blushed. For all that he would have liked to poke at the slightly underhanded compliment, he held Edgeworth to a different standard when it came to praise. He fell quiet for several moments, letting the odd thought sift down. He sort of wanted to ask questions about what Edgeworth's mission would have been tonight, what the goal of this club was and how they meant to get there, but it all seemed pretty transparent. Get information. Get assets. Get out.

"Here's a question," he spoke up after a pause. "How much do you really think they control what we see and hear, here?" There was no fatalism in the tone, only straightforward curiosity.

That hadn't been a question he had been expecting, and Miles had to think for a few minutes before answering. He lazily rubbed one hand over Phoenix's back as he mulled it over, the gears clicking and turning in his head. There had been that one interaction, though...the 'therapy' session. That had given him a thought.

"They're not just controlling what the patients see and hear, I don't think. The 'therapy' sessions they have... something unusual happened during mine today," he began. "Dr. House is normally the kind of doctor that - pardon my language - it's not easy to bullshit. The guy's straightforward, more than a little abrasive, full of himself, and cocky. You know the type."

He hummed thoughtfully. "Today he took a blood sample - enough for a standard blood test panel, but also checking for drugs and whatnot. And he seemed surprised when I mentioned the shoulder wound from a few nights ago. I don't think he expected I'd say it was from a patient."

Miles closed his eyes, frowning. "So if they can control the daytime staff that well - altering medical records and the like - I'd say they want us to see a lot of what we do."

They want us to see a lot of what they do. He remembered the question and the photograph, clear as day against the black screen of his eyelids, the way it had erupted in a cacophony of metal, the way-

Stop it. His eyes were already closed, but he pressed then shut harder, wincing as the added pressure goaded the dull throbbing back to the fore and sent phantom blots of light dancing in his vision. He couldn't let his mind keep wandering back up to that room. He wouldn't find anything else up there. Not right now.

The picture wasn't in that room anymore, though - it was in his pocket, and he still couldn't even say why he'd taken it. He'd thought he'd left her behind him once, and he knew she was behind him now. Keeping it now was masochistic. There was no point holding on to a cursed photo of a woman who was unequivocally gone. He could leave it in his pocket and go to sleep. It might be gone by morning.

He ran his hand down Edgeworth's side, corner of his mouth tugging up in something that couldn't exactly be called a smile. "I thought so," he replied, voice hushed. "At least we get this, though." He turned his head up, kissing his cheek before pulling back gradually and pushing himself up. His head reeled and he swallowed thickly, taking a moment to get his balance again. "Stay there. I'll be right back."

"Where are you going?" Miles had to bite back the 'by yourself' part, or the lecture on how he was in no shape to go anywhere alone. There was also the panic about him running straight back upstairs for whatever reason, and that...he couldn't let that happen.

"There's nothing for you in that room that the others won't find," he said, in a stern voice. "They were planning a thorough search. So..."

He sat up, taking Phoenix's right wrist in his hand. "If you're going anywhere...let me come with you. You're in no shape physically or mentally to go anywhere alone."

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