Work Text:
Stacey Winner had just finished setting up her room in Miles Edgeworth’s far too fancy house. He lived basically alone in a single-family right outside city lines. Why alone? He was a weird guy. Sometimes another girl Stacey’s age would break in through a window and crash in the guest room that was set up suspiciously perfectly for a teenage girl. Stacey didn’t even live there full time, she lived with Verity Gavèlle most of the week, getting proper tutoring.
“Stacey, can you check if I left that case dossier on my desk?” Miles’s voice called from the kitchen, he was working on dinner, presumably, or making tea, Stacey didn’t know.
Miles’s home office was surprisingly cluttered for a prim and refined prosecutor. Files strewn across the large desk, a lamp with… vaguely raven-shaped stickers attached to the base (courtesy of one Kay Faraday, the other girl who crashed there.)
Laying right by the chair was the dossier, thick and closed with a rubber band to keep papers from falling apart. That’s clearly what Miles was asking for, it was even labeled ‘CONFIDENTIAL CASE DOSSIER’ right on the front. Stacey’s eyes drifted across the desk, cataloging everything. She’d been practicing investigative skills since being taken in as Miles’s protégé.
There wasn’t too much of note, a cup that held many pens, an inkwell and very fancy pen, old files noted with sticky notes that had little hearts on the signatures. Stacey couldn’t read them from her vantage point, but she didn’t really want to see who was signing notes to her legal guardian with hearts.
The only other interesting item she saw was half shoved under a small organizer. A small, cheap looking plastic lighter. It was garish yellow, mostly full of the lighter fluid, and next to a slightly crumpled box of cigarettes.
Stacey was well aware that Miles smoked. He never did around her, always waited until he was sure she was asleep, and only ever on the tiny balcony attached to the master bedroom. From her (flawed) calculations of the cigarette butts in the ashtray out there, he only ever smoked when particularly stressed on a case. Miles hadn’t had many bad cases lately, simple ones that barely even went to court. Just paperwork, and lots of it.
Maybe he wouldn’t miss the lighter if she borrowed it. Just for a little while.
Miles knew about all of the burns under her gloves, he’d gotten really quiet the first time she opened up about it, and the next day there was a new first aid kit in the bathroom stocked with stuff specifically to help with burns.
But he probably didn’t expect Stacey to swipe his shitty lighter from his desk.
Stacey shoved the lighter into her pocket and grabbed the dossier, heading back into the kitchen and setting it on the counter nearby Miles.
He turned around slightly, smiling. “Thank you, Stacey, food is almost ready.” he paused for a moment, glancing towards the window. “Kay might be joining us, she called earlier saying she was in town for the weekend.”
Stacey just nodded, the lighter was a weight against her thigh, and she couldn’t ignore it. “Mm. Thank you, Mr. Edgeworth.” She muttered, fidgeting with the edges of her gloves. She still wore them, as always, picking things up hurt the burns that laced across her skin.
Dinner was uneventful, Kay didn’t end up showing, which worried Miles more than he showed, he cared a lot about her, and worried. Often. He always worried.
After dinner, Miles retreated back to his own room, but not before wishing Stacey good night and pressing a light kiss to the top of her head. Contact usually made her flinch, but she had gotten used to that motion. Verity did that too sometimes, and she even liked it. Her birth father had never shown that kind of affection, unless he was actively manipulating and-
She didn’t want to think about the other stuff he’d done.
She was already in a funk, she had the lighter, her room was far enough down the hall that Miles wouldn’t hear her crying in the middle of the night if any of the burns hurt too badly.
Sometimes Stacey wished he would notice, but he went to sleep freakishly early when he actually slept. Like an old man.
She shut the door to her room with a gentle click, even locking it. Just to be safe. Again, she was well aware he probably knew. Miles was freakishly observant. It was his job to be observant, obviously. But she didn’t mind the thought that he didn’t know.
It was easier to flick the lighter on and stare blankly at the flickering light. The lighter was different than her birth father’s. His was larger, heavier, far fancier. The flame was bigger too, and Stacey didn’t like how much she was thinking of it.
The memories were bitter, they tasted like gasoline and oil as she tugged off one of her gloves with her teeth, ungracefully setting it on her bed.
Thankfully, fire still stung the same. Her eyes blurred watching the tiny flame from the dinky little yellow lighter lick over her already burnt skin. It didn’t hurt as much as she remembered.
Maybe some of the pain came from the way her birth father’s grip scraped over older burns while he held his lighter to her palms. Doing it herself just didn’t have the same effect.
Miles left that next morning. He was called to help with a case somewhere else, overseas maybe, he had apologized profusely, promising to call every night, asking her to be safe while he was off investigating and that he’d be home in a few days. Stacey knew someone would come visit every day. Probably Gumshoe, he was nice, maybe Kay would stop by too. She usually did when Gumshoe stayed over while he and Miles were working late on cases.
Time passed weird while Stacey was home alone. She was certainly old enough to be doing that, she was nearly eighteen anyways, (Miles was an odd guardian, but he wasn’t neglectful) and she preferred doing her catch-up tutoring work alone without Verity’s hovering.
But the dark crept up again. The yellow lighter was shoved in the back of a drawer, and she tried to forget about it. She really did.
But re-blistering years old burns was still the fastest way to ground herself. She still wasn’t good enough as a prosecutor, she barely knew the material, her birth father had always been right. She was useless.
Sometimes, in painful hazes after Stacey threw the lighter across the room and it hit the wall with a clatter, she imagined (against her will, mind you) that maybe, Miles would snap out of whatever odd daze he had been in for the weeks since taking her in, and suddenly act like her birth father, holding tight to her wrist and burning her palm until the blisters burst and the nerves were so charred she could barely even feel it anymore.
Miles finally came home a day or so later. Stacey had been holed up in her room nearly all day working on her tutoring homework, years of maths and science and history her birth father waved away. But at that moment exactly? She had the damned yellow plastic lighter out again, watching intently at how the little flame flickered when a huff of air escaped her nose as pain finally registered.
She didn’t realize the door was opening until too late. Miles always knocked first, she just didn’t register it in the haze of pain. His face appeared in the corner of her eye, and before either of them could say a word, she flung the lighter at his face, and it hit him squarely in the forehead, falling to the ground, and leaving one very stunned Miles Edgeworth in the doorway.
While Miles crouched down to pick up the lighter, Stacey tugged on her gloves, biting back a whimper of pain from the fabric harshly brushing the blisters. He held up the lighter to her, his head tilted like a confused dog. “Stacey, did you- get this from my desk?” He asked, trying to piece together the facts from what he could observe.
He was jet lagged, probably tired from international work, and had a shiny new pin on the lapel of his suit, some pretty trinket from Zheng Fa that a certain Interpol associate must’ve pinned to his suit before the clingy wolf-like man would’ve let him go. Stacey was very aware of their…relationship, as much as Miles denied it with an embarrassed flush high on his cheeks.
Stacey finally relented under his concerned eye. “Fine, yes, I grabbed it from your study. Days ago.” She refused to meet his gaze, “I’m fine, sir, I was just- looking at it.”
Miles’s line of vision drifted down to her hands, gloved again, trembling, and clearly hurting. Bad. Burnt again. He was smart, he was scary good at logic, and he could just tell she had been messing up her hands. His lips twisted into a grimace, and ducked out of the room.
Stacey’s mind immediately went to the worst assumptions. He was calling up the state to get her put in temporary housing (impossible, she’d just go live with Verity anyways) he was doing any number of horrible things.
He was actually just grabbing the first aid kit from the bathroom. Again, he was trying. Miles was scared. He had been in a very similar position as a teenager. He didn’t want Stacey to try what he had done, and succeed. Miles crouched down to her height at the desk, still about a pace away, his jacket and jabot ditched somewhere between her bedroom and the bathroom. “May I see your hands?” He finally asked, “or, no, if you’d like to do it yourself, you can, I’m sorry.” He held out the kit, a slight attempt at a comforting expression on his face. His lips were all bitten up, either from chewing on them himself on the flight or at the crime scene, or just from his overzealous wolf of an investigation partner. Stacey grimaced at the thought. Ew.
She shook her head though, tugging off her gloves with a pained expression and holding out her freshly burnt up hands to Miles. “I don’t think I can even hold the kit. Go ahead.” It physically pained her to let someone help out. She just really, really hoped to not freak out when he touched her hand.
Miles still had his own gloves on, and he very gently brushed Stacey’s hand with his own, making sure she wouldn’t flinch and accidentally hit him while trying to patch up the burns. “Mm. These are pretty blistered, go get these rinsed off so I can wrap them.” He instructed gently, taking a step back so Stacey had space again.
She rushed out the room, and stayed at the sink for a solid ten minutes running her hands under cool water, biting at her lip as she waited. Just like Miles did.
When Stacey ended up back in her room, Miles was sitting on her floor, the lighter dismantled and broken up, sitting in the waste bin next to her desk, and Miles himself was staring blankly at the wall, wringing his hands absently. Tired. Like always.
She sat down right in front of him, holding out her hands palms up. Miles blinked out of his daze, switching into autopilot as he applied an antibiotic ointment and wrapping some sterile gauze around her palms.
“Burns on hands should require emergency care.” Miles said absently while securing the edge of the bandage. “They aren’t too bad, just some blistering, if they get any worse…” he trailed off, the implication clear: ‘please don’t burn yourself more so neither of us have to deal with the emergency room.’
Stacey flexed her hands slightly once Miles finished with the first aid, and he stood with the case. “Do you need anything else?” He asked, his voice so horribly gentle. She didn’t deserve this gentleness. Her birth father would’ve yelled, called her all sorts of things, useless, stupid, the works. She had already been in pajamas, so she unceremoniously flopped onto her bed and yanked the covers up. “No, thank you.” She replied, voice muffled from the covers.
Miles hummed noncommittally, wandering over to her bedside and leaning down to press a light kiss to the top of her head. “Sleep well, Stacey. Come get me if anything’s wrong, alright?”
Without waiting for a reply, Miles left the room and closed the door behind him, taking the bag from the waste bin with him. The cursed yellow plastic lighter was gone from her room.
The next morning, Stacey stumbled into the kitchen at nearly ten am, walking right in on Miles playing Steel Samurai reruns on the old television while making coffee. Without speaking, he offered her a cup, perfectly prepared with cream and sugar. She had never told him what she liked, he had just deduced it with his crazy logic.
Stacey had to replace her bandages that morning. Miles had already retreated to his office for the day. She could hear whatever conversation he was having on the phone. Probably with that wolf man again. Ew.
When disposing of the bandages in the kitchen trash can, she saw something quite peculiar. The rubble of the dismantled yellow lighter, and Miles’s carton of cigarettes, waterlogged so he couldn’t go dig them out if he got desperate. Not that the great Miles Edgeworth could ever get desperate for something as trivial as a cheap cigarette.
He really did care.
Miles Edgeworth was a far better father to Stacey than Excelsius Winner could ever be.