Work Text:
March 19, 11:30 PM
High Prosecutors’ Offices
Room 1202
Miles is reclining in his office chair around midnight or so, sipping a glass of red wine and staring at the full moon with lidded eyes, his mind and body exhausted even though the long, brutal day in court still hasn't quite left alone his racing heart, nor his overrun desk. The sun had already set hours ago; he has yet to turn on any lights, but the silver shadows illuminate the darkened room just so he can see the outlines of everything.
Any attempts to work at the moment were futile, anyway; his mind is still busy unraveling the twists and tangles of the past few days, putting every crime and event into a logical timeline, but somewhere in the past hour Miles had simply stopped rationalizing and rather just stared at the moon, observing how dark everything around it seemed in comparison. How weathered it had become through time, yet still it shined as brightly as if the universe was born yesterday, and probably still would tomorrow, a thousand years from now. Time marches on despite the faltering of the drum.
Quercus Alba, admittedly, was a tough man to break even when his crimes were spilled like bloodstains on the linen cloth upon the table of justice. The tenacious ex-ambassador fought him tooth and nail against an incriminating verdict, and God, does Miles have the scars to prove it. But in the end, Alba was just another link in the long chain of villains and murderers. Another bloodstained case file to be stored away and never looked at again, much like most of his bad memories.
On a somewhat different note, Miles's hands still tremble as he recalls all the people gathered to watch the brutal investigations of several days come to fruition. Never before had such a congregation made an appearance in court solely to observe Miles's performance; Kay, Gumshoe, Larry, Franziska, even Agent Lang, all in the gallery watching him pull confession after confession out of Alba as if pulling teeth...
…it was odd, but simply knowing they were nearby encouraging him to succeed gave Miles a certain strength he had not known previously. It made him feel, despite logic naming him the sole man legally capable of bringing Alba to justice, like his friends had his back, somehow.
Even stranger still was that word, 'friends'. After his father's death, Miles never would have thought there would be such people in his life that he felt so strongly about, but now that the word comes to mind, he realizes the truth in it. Those people are his friends. Maybe the world was not quite the dark place he had previously thought.
Miles ruminates over the trial and recalls the finer details. Victory was inevitable; because of this fact, he had planned every single moment in order to keep it that way. The truth was dragged out kicking and screaming, but it was dragged out nonetheless. There were no unexpected turnabouts that made Miles falter, except….
Those moments. Every time that Miles happened to glance at the gallery, a certain man’s yellow eyes would be directly on him without fail. It was nearly distracting to say the least. The prosecutor had to force himself to keep his eyes ahead, lest those eyes draw him in like a magnet.
Many grueling hours later, Miles won, as they all knew he would. Still, all of his friends (with the exception of his sister, who would sooner whip herself than genuinely smile) grinned down at him through the rain of confetti that Gumshoe unleashed in fistfuls, and Lang’s unusually sharp white teeth were noticeable even from a distance, a startling contrast against the rows of men in black uniforms. It is his clearest, most uncertain memory of the trial, but Miles didn't have a single inkling as to why.
Which brings him here, celebrating his victory in his office with the two people that love him best; endless work, and not-so endless wine. The weary prosecutor takes a final sip from the inlaid crystal and peers into the glass, noticing that the red wine appeared grey in the moonlight, and sets it gently upon his desk. He is satisfied, and yet not. Even the taste of victory leaves his tongue dry after a time.
Miles leans farther back in his chair in a horrendous display of posture and drags a hand down his face, wincing at the nearly palpable shadows underneath his eyes.
Involuntarily, his body slumps even further; he is so, so tired… but Miles doesn't even have the energy to get up and go home to his bed as he most certainly should, so he continues staring listlessly out the window. There are no stars above a big city, but he personally finds the moon to be a worthy substitute.
He closes his eyes...
Out in the hallway, the muffled sounds of someone walking on carpet shatter the solitary atmosphere like a bullet.
When Miles hears the door push open and booted footsteps tap the hardwood with soft thumps, he is so deep in a stupor that he doesn't even bother to swivel his chair. Surely a burglar would be quieter, but even as Miles listens, he hears no metal clicking, no rustle of clothing to indicate a gun being drawn.
Still, a touch of cold fear begins to move through his veins like syrup, and a somewhat more alert Miles forcibly relaxes his shoulders to feign sleep, his entire body holding its breath. Perhaps he can take the intruder by surprise, maybe even subdue them until he can call Gumshoe. A half-baked plan at best, but Miles is most tired of thinking.
Damn it, he has really got to invest in a proper locking mechanism for the door. All the prosecutors on his floor were gone for the night, so Miles had left his door ajar on a whim; clearly, he had learned nothing at all from the events of the past few days.
Who would invade his office at this hour? Buddy Faith was dead, and both Portsman and Badd were still awaiting trial somewhere in an equally dark place with no open doors to speak of. To his immediate and crushing sorrow, Miles realizes his (ultimately pointless) hopes of getting any sleep tonight were thoroughly and effectively dashed.
"...Mr. Prosecutor?" A rough voice harshly whispers. Memories of thin leather, sharp teeth, and yellow eyes fill his mind.
Miles exhales softly in relief as his hardwood murmurs that Agent Shi-Long Lang is now a few steps closer, and with amusement entertains the thought of continuing this act. Maybe he can even scare the man by loudly and abruptly jumping 'awake'. Antics aren't his usual style, but Miles feels suddenly giddy and blames the nearly empty glass of wine.
He listens intently for the man to approach him, but Agent Lang seems to be sidetracked as his heavy footsteps carry him to Miles's chess set for examination (...), to his bookcase of files (...), even to Miles's plush couch which Agent Lang flops down upon with a huff. A minute slowly and comfortably passes like that, with silence from Agent Lang and growing indignation from Miles as his feigned resting deepens into something truthful- he’s in great danger of actually falling asleep if he keeps up this charade any longer.
Finally, Lang speaks in a normal volume, startling Miles into a small movement that he prays Lang didn't catch.
"You're a shit actor, Edgeworth. I know you're just pretending to be asleep."
There is an uncomfortable pause as Miles swallows his embarrassment and the indignation of his plan being foiled, and he feels rather like a child caught in the act. Curse you, Lang!
"...on the contrary," Miles softly says to the silver city below, trying not to sound petulant. "I was merely resting until your shrill voice startled me awake."
A barking laugh comes from behind him, but it's a bit more hoarse than usual. Perhaps Miles isn't the only one fatigued by an intense couple of days. Which does beg the question; why isn't Lang in a bed somewhere sleeping instead of stomping around the prosecutors' offices at ungodly hours?
"Don't take this the wrong way or anything," Lang suddenly remarks. "I was just finishing up paperwork downstairs when I decided a nice stroll through the hall of my enemies would be nice. All these windows show the moon so nicely, you understand. But imagine my surprise when I find a certain prosecutor's door still open in the middle of the night. You tryin' to get robbed, pretty boy?"
"What do you mean, 'the wrong way'?" Miles asks, and then bites his tongue. The ambiguous phrase stuck in his mind and rendered the rest of Lang's words to static. Miles has made looking before he leaps (though he often doesn't leap to begin with) practically an art form in utilizing the sharpness and precision of truth and logic, but he's not really thinking straight as he toes uncertain waters before holding his breath and taking a plunge. He doesn't even fully understand what he's asking.
"You- what?" Lang says with confusion, and Miles breathes with relief knowing that Lang probably didn't even hear him.
But then Lang huffs a laugh in a way that has him freeze in his chair. The couch softly creaks as the agent rises to walk with slow, deliberate steps towards his desk in a way that even his ears couldn’t mistake. Miles begins to tremble just the slightest bit, and blames his fatigue. Why is he so nervous? Still, he doesn’t turn around.
When the floor stops creaking, Miles cracks open an eye in order to peer at his surroundings, and his breath catches as he sees a looming shape standing off to the side a few feet away. His gaze travels up the dark figure until he meets the eyes of Agent Lang looking down at him, yellow turned grey in the moonlight. It's too dark to gauge his expression, but even so, Miles doesn't quite like the sudden anticipation in the air.
But then Agent Lang laughs again, and the tension breaks.
"You know, I can sense your uppityness from here. Why so nervous? S'not like I'm gonna bite you or anything."
Miles chews the inside his cheek and ponders the implications of this. His explanation sounds too defensive even to his own ears.
“If you must know, the reason I’m nervous is because of your... unexpected entrance. Y-you could have been an intruder for all I knew.”
“Aha!" Lang snickers, making Miles feel rather like a boiling kettle. "So you were pretending to be asleep, just like a little kid! That’s hilarious because I was actually just guessing. And here I thought you fragile legal types wouldn't be able to handle simple stakeouts!”
Searching for a witty response and failing, Miles only grumbles under his breath at the agent and tries to appear professionally irritated, but the effect is rather ruined by his loosened cravat, his slightly unruly bangs, and the fact that he can’t seem to keep his eyelids from slipping close after a few seconds of straining. He doesn’t have to look at Lang to know that the keen man is picking him apart, every weakness, every hair out of place, so to speak. Bowing his head, Miles waits for Lang to mock him further and already forgives him for it.
However, Lang merely sighs and reaches down to grasp Miles by the arm. In his surprise, the prosecutor only weakly protests through the furrowing of his brow but does nothing to actually stop the agent. Miles has never actually been touched by the agent before, and the sensation is far from unpleasant. His hand is large and firm, and curls around Miles's bicep like a vise.
"C'mon, get up, you look like you're about to fall out of your fancy chair and slip into a coma on the floor," Lang snarks albeit with an air of sympathy Miles didn't think he was capable of. "Not that it wouldn't be funny to watch, but if you're going to pass out, you should at least do it on your ugly satin futon."
"It's velvet, fool," Miles murmurs, and feels Lang's long nails dig into his skin through his suit as the agent pulls him up with unexpected strength. (He wonders briefly if Lang would be strong enough to carry him, but dismisses the thought immediately after it forms.)
His face warms as Lang steadies him with strong hands when Miles sways unsteadily on his feet, the result of being seated for hours on end. The grin Lang shoots him consists entirely of teeth and glints dangerously silver in the moonlight.
"This way, Mr. Prosecutor," Lang announces as he sweeps his arm mockingly, as if Miles is so helpless that he doesn't know the way around his own office.
Still holding his arm, Agent Lang leads Miles (like an invalid!) across the room to his couch, graciously matching Miles's sluggish pace as the exhausted man settles heavily onto it and leans his head back with a sigh. For a few seconds, he simply sits there, the beginnings of sleep warming the corners of his mind.
It takes Miles a few moments to realize that Agent Lang hasn't moved and is still standing there watching him, the grin on his face unusually wide. Feeling put-upon and strangely vulnerable, Miles opens his mouth to question the agent when his face suddenly erupts into a yawn so comically big that it embrasses him. Lang's grin only grows wider.
"Well? Do you plan on standing there all night??" Miles remarks rather defensively, and the agent doesn't need to be asked twice.
With a dramatic flailing of limbs Lang, too, settles down onto the couch, spreading his legs and hanging his arm over the back as if he owned it. Miles is forced to squeeze into a corner in order not to be too close to the man who clearly has no idea what either 'proper posture' or 'personal space' actually means. As he watches, Lang kicks his head back against the wall and closes his eyes, suddenly seeming just as tired as Miles.
The prosecutor's lidded eyes travel downward to linger on Lang's collarbone where his shirt is unbuttoned like usual, and then farther downward as Miles suddenly remembers the injury on Lang's thigh. He peers curiously at the agent's leg, searching for a bandage but sees nothing through the darkness. A bullet wound warranted a hospital visit at the very least, but Lang had treated his injury like nothing more than scrape. Miles hoped at the very least that the bullet was no longer there.
"You're not exactly subtle, you know," Lang says with amusement, startling Miles who only now just realized that the other man had been watching him, and how it might seem to be seen staring so intently at his companion's thighs. His mouth quivers at this terrible blunder.
"I-I was just wondering- the state of your wound," Miles explains lamely. When Lang shoots him a derisive look, he hastens to run at the mouth. "You were shot only twenty-four hours ago! Even a man such as yourself could hardly walk around normally after such an ordeal." It sounds perfectly reasonable, but the queer way Lang is looking at him still hasn’t changed.
"...a man such as myself?" Lang repeats, but in a nasally, exaggerated version of the prosecutor's own accent. However, he does it in such a comical way that he could only be joking. Miles hates the way Lang’s teasing makes him want to ramble like a fool and fail to explain why the words coming out of his mouth didn't actually have the weight Miles was giving them, but blathering is likely to only result in Lang laughing at him even more.
"Don't look pouty at me, Mr. Prosecutor, it ruins your pretty face," Lang grins. "I'm only yanking your chain. I did have a quick op on our way to the Imperial Household. My men are good for more than just standing around and looking pretty, you know!"
"So the bullet is gone," Miles murmurs, frowning. "And the pain?" Lang’s well-being seems vitally important to him, but concern for an injured colleague is hardly out of place. Luckily, Lang seemed to agree.
"To be honest, I barely even felt it," Lang admits. "But then again, it wasn’t hard to ignore. Lang Zi says: 'Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.' I had more important things to worry about at the time, that's all."
Miles looks away from Lang and ponders this, still not quite comprehending how the man could just defy his body and shut off his pain like that. Or maybe Shih-na herself occupied a bigger role than what he'd previously thought. Nevertheless, it must be a useful skill in Lang's line of work, not something a man of Miles’s profession would surely ever have a need for.
Unless, of course, his luck were to run out, but hopefully such a thing would never come to pass.
"Agent Lang, why are you here?" Miles asks softly, a question he most definitely should have voiced the moment Lang set foot in his office, but simply didn't. Lang shifts, the movement stiff, and looks away, looking from a dark place to another slightly darker one. His explanation is too quick and precise, as if he’d rehearsed it; a typical leitmotif of more dishonest witnesses.
"I told you, I saw that one of the doors were open and was curious to see who'd be stupid enough to just leave their den vulnerable like that. I didn’t expect anybody to be in here, least of all you."
You. Lang said it like a bite, but Miles didn't quite feel the teeth.
Even in his fatigued state, Miles would have to be a fool not to see Lang's hesitation, and his heart beats against his chest in a most familiar way. Obviously, there is something contradicting about Lang’s explanation. The agent is lying, but why?
"But you knew this was my office. Someone must have told you," Miles ascertains. "You knew it me in the chair, even though I was facing away from the door. Maybe... you even knew I was here before you arrived."
Maybe Lang wasn't actually completing forms downstairs. Maybe Lang wasn't actually taking a mere stroll through the same hallway that happened to contain Miles's office. It doesn't make sense. Or maybe he just doesn't want it to.
And then, Miles does something he has sworn never to do: he throws away logic and grasps blindly for the truth in the dark. In other words, he bluffs.
"You were looking for me," Miles says, and the moment he says it, the prosecutor realizes what Lang is truly looking for. A moment ago, Miles didn't even know that Lang had been searching. Maybe they both were, in a way.
In the moonlight, Lang's eyes are grey, but they pierce him all the same.
"Yeah, guess I was, heh," Lang admits, as frustratingly casual as ever. "You see through me pretty well, huh? That's what I like about you. People lie and lie and you just see right through em'." And then the agent hesitates, his body language as tense as if he were looking down a cliff.
"By all means…" Miles slurs, his dwindling focus hanging onto the decibels of Agent Lang's throaty voice whispering in the dark.
"Maybe… well, maybe there's something more to the whole 'truth' thing you're so obsessed with after all," Lang begins, but then Miles interrupts this revelation as his body betrays him with another huge yawn that has him blushing all the way down his neck.
Lang has the nerve to bark a laugh until suddenly the agent is also overcome with a yawn that has significantly more volume and fanfare than what is necessary, but it nevertheless makes Miles feel touched at the core. Blast, he really is tired.
The moonlight slowly fades as the clouds drift languidly to hide the moon like a closing eye. The silver shadows recede as the room settles into something darker, until Miles feels rather than sees the imposing shape of the agent's body sitting less than a foot away.
It is always somewhat chilly at night in his high-up office, and as Miles suppresses a shiver he is struck with a brief, tantalizing madness as he wonders what would happen if he moved until their shoulders were touching, if he pressed close enough to feel the heat of Lang’s body against his own.
Despite having lived his life avoiding the touch of other people, Miles has had enough physical contact to know that being close to someone for a time creates a heat stronger than what he can produce alone. Right now, he wants to be warm, with Lang.
...clearly, the wine he'd been drinking would have to be switched out for something weaker post-haste. Besides, that kind of boldness is probably better left to people like Lang, who could grin like a knife and not let it break the skin.
Somehow, somehow, the agent must have been reading the prosecutor's mind, for he says just what Miles could never have had the courage to.
"Miles, get over here," Lang commands, rousing the prosecutor who had been on the verge of sleep. The agent sounds almost... insecure, but through the static of his near-sleep, Miles can't be certain of what he hears.
"Hm? Wha-" Miles questions drowsily, but doesn't draw back when a hand roughly finds its way to his shoulder, and then Lang is pulling him down until his head is resting awkwardly on a firm shoulder, his cheek pressed against a roll of coarse but yielding fur. Probably the gaudy collar of Lang's leather jacket. Regardless, it's unexpectedly comfortable, though Miles certainly hasn't wondered.
Slowly, surely, he relaxes into his new position, but as every second passes he grows more and more aware of Lang's hip just barely against his own, Lang's hot breath exhaling a gentle rhythm next to his face.
Miles wonders, almost, if he is only dreaming, if he fell asleep at his desk and only hallucinated Shi-Long Lang sitting on his couch and touching him like this. Wine and sleep-deprivation were a formidable duo if that were the case.
Eventually, somehow, it all fades pleasantly into the background of sleep.
Had he been more awake, Miles would certainly question sitting so intimately close to a man he had only met a few days ago, a man who so vehemently despised him before and just now called Miles by his first name with such intention some would call recklessness, but he is very tired, and Lang is unexpectedly warm. Whatever truth was now coming to light beneath the moon, Miles could rationalize it in the morning.
When the agent hesitates before wrapping a securing arm around Miles's shoulders and drifting off to sleep himself, well, let's just say that Miles was already too far gone to notice.