Work Text:
The dorm room was far too quiet for Phoenix’s liking when he returned from his exam, but the light coming from the room at the far end of the main room comforted his nerves from going crazy. He made his way towards it, too awake to imagine going to sleep at the moment.
When he entered the room, Phoenix must have made a noise of some kind, like breathing too loud or stepping on a creaky floorboard, because he barely got 3 steps in before the boy in the chair chucked a book in his direction. He narrowly dodged being right in its trajectory with a yelp, his reflexes on edge from spending 10 hours straight in a quiet art room.
“It’s just me! Don’t throw anything again!” Phoenix yelped out, putting his hands up in front of himself in defence. The other boy stopped mid throw, his arm raised above his head equipped with a thesaurus, blinking slowly at as he identified who the intruder was.
“Wright…?”
“Yes, yes, it’s me, Phoenix!” He sighed, wincing as he moved his arms out of from in front of him to see Miles lower the thesaurus back into his lap. He waved with a tired smile at his friend. “You really need to stop doing that…”
“Apologies…” Miles cleared his throat and ran a hand through his hair, pushing it out of his face and breathing deeply to recover from the shock of being disturbed. “I’m not accustomed to people sneaking up on me at almost midnight.” He turned on his swivel chair to face the table again and sighed.
“You’d think you’d get used to me sneaking up on you at midnight though; I do it so often after all!” Phoenix laughed as he walked up behind Miles and put his hands on his shoulders in a mock attempt to make him jump. He could imagine the scowl his friend had so vividly in his head. He leaned over his shoulder, hands not moving, to glance over at the papers on his desk.
“It’s my sister’s law dissertation. Mr. von Karma won’t buy her a laptop, so she sent it over here for me to read over and type up.” He explained without being asked to.
“Isn’t she… like… twelve?”
“Thirteen, Wright. Do keep up; she had her birthday a few weeks ago.”
“And… she’s writing a law dissertation?”
“Hmm?” Miles was reading over the paper again, scrutinizing it for any spelling or grammatical errors, all while trying to decipher her, almost calligraphic, cursive handwriting. “Yes. Mr. von Karma seems intent on pushing her to excel in the area.” Phoenix blinked his eyes and shook his head as if he’d heard Miles wrong. He gave the other boy a look, but he was focused on the papers in front of him. Was Phoenix being strange? Was there nothing… odd to Miles about the whole thing? He would never understand the von Karma family.
“O…kay.” He yawned, draping himself over Miles, his arms going around him in an unintentional hug as he rested his forehead atop Miles’ head of silver hair.
“If you’re tired, please, sleep in a bed – I do not care which – and not on top of me whilst you are standing up right, Wright.” Miles yanked his head to the side, making Phoenix’s face fall on his shoulder.
“Ouchie ouch, why you gotta be so mean, Edgeworth?” Phoenix pouted, standing up and rubbing at his nose which he’d just fallen on. “I can’t sleep anyway, I’m too antsy from my exam.” He groaned, walking backwards to sit on the edge of Miles’ bed. Miles turned around in his chair to face him.
“Your art exam was today?” Phoenix nodded. “Did it go okay?” Phoenix waved his hand in the air a little as if to say ‘kind of’. “Have you eaten?” Another nod. “Would you like to sleep?”
“I would love to sleep, but hell if I’m getting to sleep with this leftover adrenaline. Painting is hard work, especially with an art invigilator breathing down my neck at random times. Even worse! Dollie wasn’t there to pick me up after it was over so I had to get food all by my lonesome!” Phoenix complained about his day, flopping back on the bed. Miles winced at the mention of Phoenix’s girlfriend and had to consciously stop himself from crumpling up the page of Franziska’s dissertation in his hands.
Not once had he liked that girl with a smile too sugary sweet to be healthy for Phoenix to be around so often. He’d seen her, draping herself all over him, always touching a hand to his shoulder or holding his hand or sitting too close (or maybe it was entirely normal, and it was merely Miles who found it too close for his own liking). Something about her rubbed him entirely the wrong way, but he couldn’t pin down just what it was.
He unclenched his jaw and sighed, not knowing why he was getting so worked up over nothing that had anything to do with him.
“Lie down. I’ll read you Franziska’s essay and perhaps that will send you to sleep.” Phoenix found himself listening to Miles’ words, and crawled into the bed he had been lying on, taking off his jacket and getting comfortable under the covers and facing the wall.
Miles began reading.
“Here the magistrates consider the seriousness of the offence, and this is serious as it will have repercussions on the expected maximum sentence due to the vast difference in sentencing powers between the two courts. Other circumstances will be taken into consideration as are seen fit. In the current case the previous convictions would be taken into account in deciding that the lenient sentencing powers of…” He had barely gotten half way through his little sister’s work, before he heard the gentle snores of his best friend. He stood from his seat and smiled, gently brushing a stray hair from Phoenix’s face. “Sleep well, Phoenix.”
He returned to reading through Franziska’s dissertation.
When he next checked the clock, it read 2:16am and Miles knew he’d stayed up too late again. He rubbed his eyes, a stinging sensation in one of them as he blinked hard than he needed to. He quickly put Franziska’s work all back together, deciding that he wouldn’t get anymore done and it would be better to wait until the next day to get started on typing it up. Getting changed and turning off the desk lamp, he began to crawl into bed, squeaking in surprise as he was greeted by a warm body that mumbled something about Kandinsky and ‘damn yellow paint’.
Ah.
Phoenix. How could he forget about the other boy in his bed? He contemplated whether or not to sleep on the couch. Of course, he could easily sleep in Phoenix’s bed. But that was beyond him; he didn’t know why, but it was beyond him to do such a thing. He just couldn’t bring himself to do so, a blush rising to his cheeks as he even thought of the idea. So he got into the bed back to back with Phoenix, not anticipating how Phoenix would roll over, throw his arms out wide, and cling on to him for dear life in the middle of his sleep.
He couldn’t bring himself to move, since he knew Phoenix had had a tough day and a difficult exam, and he didn’t want to wake him up. So, he opted to stay completely still and accept the affectionate position he found himself in.
The blush from earlier came back twice as strong and Miles could help himself from letting his mind wander through the woods of forbidden thoughts he’d planted and left to die too long ago, only to find they had grown to be stronger than anything else in hid head, crowding it with their vast expansion of branches and leaves, sapping all the sunlight away from the things he should have been focussing on.
He swallowed to parch his dry throat as he whispered his next words.
“Ich glaube…” He began, biting his lip and placing a hand over Phoenix’s. “Ich habe mich in dich verliebt, und das weiß ich schon längst...”
Phoenix made no movement and a sigh of relief left Miles’ body. He had spoken in German just in case the other boy would awaken (or maybe it was because using English would be speaking too plainly and would give his words all the more weight), but it seemed he was safe either way.
He almost felt bad, confessing such a thing to someone already in a relationship, but his emotions were getting the best of him; he couldn’t help it. They were so fervent in his heart that he couldn’t allow them to stay there any longer, lest they begin to hurt him. As long of Phoenix didn’t understand, then they didn’t mean a thing – they were just sounds and shapes formed by his mouth without their meaning.
It wasn’t as if Dahlia knew half the beautiful intricacies that made Phoenix who he was. Not to act superior or anything, but Miles was sure that woman wouldn’t ever understand Phoenix to the extent that he knew him.
But he didn’t need anyone to know. No one needed to know.
So, when he woke up, an hour before Phoenix did, he removed himself from the other boy’s hold and got dressed and decided to act as if the night hadn’t ever happened. His friend didn’t even know it happened, so he could act as if it hadn’t.
That didn’t stop it hurting when Phoenix woke up, midway through the day, yelling about how he was late for his meeting with Dahlia.
“She’s going to get mad at me for making her wait! And my hair’s a total mess, argh, I don’t have time to fix it!” He screeched, rushing to get dressed into clean clothing.
“Für mich bist du schön…” Miles muttered over his tea cup, as he tapped away at his laptop and wrote up his little sister’s essay
“You know I don’t speak your angry language, Edgeworth, don’t be so bitter all the time. Might make he think you’re actually drinking coffee all the time!” Phoenix chuckled as he jumped into a pair of jeans, the god awful pink sweater that Dahlia had made him on his top half already.
“I’m not saying anything bitter, Wright. And German isn’t an angry language, you just so happen to not understand the fine art of it. It’s a wonderful language if you knew what was being said.” He scoffed. Phoenix rolled his eyes and came up behind him, hugging him around the chair.
“Thanks for letting me sleep in your bed, and, uhh, for getting me to sleep in the first place, aha.” Phoenix grinned, squeezing as tight as he could around the chair as well as Miles, not wanting to bother him by getting him to stand up. There was the horrid blush making its way onto his cheeks again and his heart speeding up just that little bit more to make him feel uncomfortable not doing anything about it.
“Hurry up or you’ll be leaving your girlfriend alone for even longer.” He replied as indifferently as he could, a pain in his chest as he turned his head away and shrugged Phoenix’s arms off from around him. How he wished it was just the two of them spending time together, but he knew he shouldn’t be greedy and waited until his friend shut the front door behind himself before he let his emotions show on his face.
Maybe one day…