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Miles is locking the door behind them when he hears an audible gasp come from the hallway, where Wright had apparently stopped dead halfway on his way into the belly of the apartment.
“You have a piano?”
He turns around, and Wright has indeed stopped dead halfway- only one foot loose from his sandals, and his suitcase abandoned behind him, still rolling slightly thanks to its wonky wheel- to stare at the upright piano that was against the far wall of the apartment’s living space.
“Yes. But I didn’t expressly ask for it, it just happened to come as part of the fully-furnished apartment deal.”
“Yeah, but- there’s fully-furnished, and then there’s fully-furnished with a piano.” Phoenix gawks at him. His eyes dart around the rest of the apartment then, taking in everything else for the first time. “And a wine rack. And a persian rug. And an aga- do you even cook enough to appreciate an aga, or-”
“Yes, thank you, Wright- the apartment is fully-furnished and then some, I get your point.” Miles cuts in, pushing past the man, who is apparently planning on standing in the hallway all evening.
“Hey, I’m not complaining about it. Means I get to live how the other half does for a week.” Phoenix says, following after Miles. But instead of making his way over to one the couches Miles was leaning against the back of, he sidles up to the piano on the opposite wall, and runs a tentative finger along the lid.
“You make it sound like you live in poverty.” Miles replies, crossing his arms.
Phoenix looks up from his fiddling to shoot him a flat look. “If we’re comparing it to von Karma money, I do. I wonder how he’d feel about you using your inheritance to house a disbarred defense attorney, though...”
“When it’s the same one who uncovered his crimes in court? He’s probably rolled enough times in his grave by now that his coffin is on the other side of the graveyard.”
“Aw.” Wright pouts. “That means you don’t know which spot to dance on anymore.”
“Yes, well, I think my not going to prison for his murder is sufficient celebration of his downfall.” Miles mutters. Wright is still hovering over the piano lid. “You have permission to play that, by the way. It doesn’t bite.”
The man jumps slightly, as if he wasn’t aware Miles could see what he was doing, despite them being five feet away and facing each other. “Oh- heh. I’m not sure you want me to play, to be honest.”
Miles sinks further, more languid, into his leaning against the back of the couch. “No, go on. I want to see just what the Borscht Bowl clientele are exposed to when you’re not doing your actual job.” he drawls.
“Piano playing is my actual job!” Phoenix says, the sarcasm shining brightly through his grin. Miles just pushes himself off the sofa to stand next to the piano, resting one arm on its hood, and nods expectantly at the still-closed lid. The other man’s smile falters.
“Okay- I guess I do sorta have to follow through after I say something like that... fair enough. I’ll give you what I’m working on right now.” he continues, and then lifts the piano lid, finally kicks his other sandal off nowhere near where the shoes are supposed to go, and plonks himself down on the stool.
He gets about five notes in before he messes up with an “Ah, shit,”.
And this happens again, about eight or nine more times, Phoenix shamelessly going back to the start each time, before Miles decides he can’t take any more of the man violently butchering whatever song he was trying to play. He’s too scared to ask what it’s actually supposed to be, but it sounds dangerously like Clair de Lune, if it was being played while wearing oven gloves.
“Budge.”
Wright’s hands freeze where they were about to start the next attempt, and he looks up to blink dumbly at Miles. “H- what?”
“I said, budge. Shift. Move.”
But Wright is still blinking, so Miles rolls his eyes and flaps both his hands like he’s herding some lost goose. Phoenix finally realises what is being so graciously asked of him, and scoots over on the stool with a jolt to make room for Miles, his face still highly confused.
Miles sits, trying to ignore how closely their bodies line up, and takes a moment to wiggle his fingers and stretch his wrists, before jumping straight into it- left hand repeating the rising and falling phrase and right hand playing the high-pitched, haunting melody of Midna’s Lament. It’s one of Miles’s favourites to play, the song beautiful in the desperate sense, evoking the feeling you get when you’re rushing to save someone- though maybe that’s helped along by the scene the song is the theme of. Not even seconds in, there’s a small, surprised intake of breath coming from the man next to him.
He takes a few more seconds before he braves a glance at Wright, and catches the man staring at him. “What’s this from?” he’s asked, and Miles is glad he’s good enough at playing to be able to multitask.
His smirk softens into a fond smile. “Legend of Zelda.”
And as he keeps playing, feeling his fingers slowly loosen up and fall more effortlessly into their dancing across the keys, he wonders if the same memories are flashing in Phoenix’s mind as the one’s are in his- old memories of their 9-year old selves huddled together in front of Phoenix’s battered GameCube and TV set, playing video games together until late into the evening, swathed in blankets on the end of the boy’s single bed, with a quickly-emptied plate of whatever baked good Phoenix’s mom had made for them both on the floor in front of them. Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was one of the more vividly-remembered games for Miles personally, because they’d spent a whole spring break completing it together, to the point where Miles ended up seeing more of Phoenix than he did his textbooks. He’d gotten his first ever C when term had started back up, and Phoenix had nearly cried from his guilt over it, because it was apparently all his fault that Miles had gotten his worst grade yet.
“Not the one we used to play on my GameCube?” Wright asks, his voice gently tugging Miles up from where he was lying in the pillowy brain sulci of his reverie.
“No... this one’s from Twilight Princess, one of the Wii games. I think it was released for the GameCube later, though.”
“The Wii? But that came out when we were- when we were teenagers. Don’t tell me von Karma let you play on a Wii?...”
Miles snorts a laugh at the suggestion. “Of course not. When...” he starts, but the thought that goes into picking his next words slows both his tongue and his playing down. “When Manfred finally went to prison, I might have, uh. Taken some time out to revisit all the things I was stopped from doing when I moved into the von Karma household.” He clears his throat. “Video games were, perhaps, one of them, and... I always did like the Legend of Zelda series, when we used to play it as children.”
He flicks Phoenix a cautious look to gauge how that small opening up to him had landed- and the man’s face is stretched wide in a wondrous, disbelieving grin. “No fucking way. Miles Edgeworth went on a video game bender after he was finally freed of his ass of a mentor... And I’ve only just found out about it?”
Miles just huffs a single breath through his nose. “Yes, you only just found out about it, and yes, you will take this secret to the grave.”
“Like hell I will. Trucy’s hearing about this as soon as she can. And Maya. I’d threaten to tell Franziska too, but... I don’t think she likes me enough yet.”
“Franziska already knows.” Miles says casually. “We... might have had our own belated video game bender together, when we were finally on better terms.”
When there’s a long silence on the other end, Miles deigns himself a look up from his playing hands to the man next to him. Said man has his mouth hanging open, catching flies.
“Okay, I definitely need to call Truce and Maya now. What the fuck- Franziska plays video g- what the fuck?”
“On your own head be it, Wright.” Miles chuckles. And probably on his head too, if word that Miles was Phoenix’s source for such a hallowed secret reached Franziska’s ears.
As Miles goes for another round of the same song, Phoenix is quiet, listening. There’s not a whole lot of room on the shared stool, so they’re bumping elbows, arms, shoulders, the whole lot, as Miles’s hands span the piano keys, but he doesn’t shy from the contact, and neither does Wright. If anything, they’ve leaned in closer together than they were when Miles had first sat down. Miles didn’t think it’d be, but... it’s nice.
After a while, Phoenix speaks up again, his voice hushed. “I didn’t even know you could play, let alone this well...”
“Ah, now that I do have von Karma to thank for.”
“Really? I always assumed music was one of the many things he had a stick up his ass about.”
“One of the many? What else falls under that list, dare I ask?”
Wright chuckles a little awkwardly, and Miles can feel its rumble, ever so faintly, between where their arms are flushed against each other. “Uh... to be honest? Anything that’s not law related. And even then, some law things, because the dude had awful practices. There’s no way you were ever taught ethical principles 101.”
Miles makes a face. “There’s no such thing as that class.” he mutters, avoiding the real truth, that Phoenix was right in implying there was a complete absence of ethics in the curriculum von Karma had taught Miles and Franziska. “But no- von Karma actually enrolled me and ‘Ziska in a lot of non-law related things. Piano was one of them.”
“Who was better? You or Fran. Be honest.” Wright asks, and from his periphery Miles can see a hand delve into a hoodie pocket, probably to hold that damn lie detector rock the man carries around with him everywhere he goes.
Miles shoots him a quick look that he hopes says ‘you better not be calling her that to anyone except me’, before turning back to the piano, his face twitching into a smug smirk. “Me. ‘Ziska was, and still is, useless at music.”
“You’ve definitely never held that one over her head, have you.” Phoenix deadpans.
“I can’t say I know what you mean, Wright.” Miles mutters airily, and it pulls a snort of a laugh from the other man. “I’m nearing the end of the second run through of this one. Any requests?”
“Hmm... do you know any from the Zelda game we used to play?”
“Ocarina of Time?”
“That’s the one! Yeah. Know any from that?”
Miles pulls his lips up into a smirk, and replies with going into a different theme- a bright, jumpy song, reminiscent of a sea shanty. It takes about three seconds before Phoenix recognises it, and groans dramatically.
“Ugh, of course you went with this one. You know I hated it! Why couldn’t you play a nice one, like the pretty fountain one, you asshole.”
Miles laughs, hard enough to the point where he nearly loses track of which keys came next. “It’s a fantastic song, Wright, I never understood why you hated it so much.”
“Because it’s creepy!” Phoenix says, laughing back. “The game forces you into teaching it to that guy, even though you know doing it will cause him to go insane years later, because you can’t progress any further if you don’t! And then- then there’s that whole thing of it being weird... time travel... paradox shit, where you learn the song as old Link from the then-insane dude, and then when you go back as baby Link, he doesn’t know it, so you use your weird nonsensical future knowledge to teach it to him... it’s creepy. Creepy! ”
“Ah, the bootstrap paradox. A wonderful theory.” Miles says, not being able to help the smile at Phoenix so vividly and accurately remembering that part of the game, but seemingly nothing else. Not even its name.
“I’m gonna pretend to know what that is.”
“It’s a causal loop. A theory where one event causes another event, but then in turn, this second event causes the first event. In terms of the game, as you’ve said, older Link learns it from the windmill owner when he complains about a child teaching it to him years ago, and then when we go back in time to play as younger Link, it turns out we’re the ones that taught it to him.” Miles explains, glad of the song’s easy, iterative nature, now that he and Wright had somehow found themselves discussing time travel theories.
“God, that’s confusing.” Phoenix mutters.
Miles hums, a low noise of agreement, as he goes into a fourth repeat of the song. “Indeed. The problem seems to create itself, without a discernible origin point.”
They’re both quiet for a moment, pondering the intricacies of time and space at seven in the evening in an apartment in Berlin.
Phoenix must have gotten bored of that quicker than Miles does, because he asks, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
Miles flicks him a side-long look from where he was watching the keys. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He does.
“How many repeats is this now. Go on. ‘Fess up.”
“Fourth, entering the fifth. Don’t tell me you can’t stomach any more already? Think of the poor windmill owner, Wright- he had to endure this for seven long, arduous, painful years.”
“Yeah, well, he was a necessary casualty to save Hyrule. We didn’t have a choice. You do.”
“Fine, fine.” Miles relents, lifting his fingers off the keys, and turning to face Wright a bit more head on. And they’re very close now, and the back of his neck suddenly gets inexplicably hotter. “What- uh, what was that pretty one you wanted to hear again?”
Phoenix’s face melts into a warm smile, and Miles finds his gaze dropping down to the piano keys. “The one that used to play when you visited the fountains.”
Miles scoffs. “That one’s just as repetitive as Song of Storms, the one I just played.”
“Yeah, but it’s peaceful! Doesn’t make you feel like you’re suffering an aneurysm. C’mon, humour me-” Wright says, and gently nudges their arms together. “Just once through.”
Miles huffs, and just gets to obliging his friend’s request. He can’t look up often, given his focus on where to place his fingers, but every time he shoots Phoenix a look, he’s wearing a smile that softens his entire face, and looks more and more at home there with each subsequent look. It’s rare, seeing him so unguarded and relaxed these days.
“Wow. I didn’t realise until now, but I really miss that game.” Phoenix says, once Miles lifts his hands away from the keys. “Even though it could be fucking terrifying, sometimes.”
“Oh, please- it wasn’t scary at all, you were just a huge wuss.”
“Okay, there’s maybe some truth to that second point, but the first? Nah. Nope. Do you not remember those massive black hands that would just-” Wright says, making his hands into claws and shaking them in front of him, “grab you randomly?”
“Wallmasters?” Miles supplies helpfully, not bothering to hide the amusement in his voice over Wright’s demonstration.
“They could be called fuzzy bunnies for all I care, they’re still terrifying.” Wright mutters, shoving his hands back into his hoodie pockets. “And they weren’t the only nightmare fuel in that game- they’re just the only ones I can remember right now.”
“Hm. Yes, I do recall you screaming bloody murder and shoving the controller in my hands more often than not.” Miles hums. “And you say you miss playing it? Are you sure? ”
Phoenix shrugs. “Well... Yeah. Okay- maybe it’s more that I miss playing it with-” He falters, dropping his head down and staring intently at his socks. “with you, I guess. I dunno.”
There’s a small burst of something fizzling in Miles’s chest at that, in the same place he normally feels anxiety, but without the needling pain. “I miss it too.” he finds himself saying, which gets Phoenix to meet his gaze. He gets a small smile in return. “They re-released it as a HD version, you know. On the 3DS.”
“Hmm. Truce doesn’t have one of those.” Phoenix says, frowning.
“I do.”
Phoenix’s eyes snap up at him. “You do? Not with you?...”
Miles just smiles at him. “Wait here.”
The introduction he had been planning on getting them to read through this evening, the one on basic preliminary measures for the introduction of a novel judicial system, can be postponed until tomorrow morning, he supposes.