Chapter Text
Once, there were happy days, innocent days, recalled in the warm overtones of sepia. Three hearts, three colors — a light for lonely nights. But life is fleeting, fortune fragile, and an upheaval bleeds sepia to rusty grey.
The club's music thrums loudly through Miles Edgeworth's veins, the heavy bass a counterpoint to the beat of his heart. He's used to it though, after all these years, glad the screaming masses can't drown it out, that the blinding lights obscure his features in colors and shadows.
The glaring white lights of the hospital cast funereal black and tombstone grey into stark relief behind his eyelids. There is no one left, and it's all his fault. Mother died in childbirth, and now Father…
That man, that bailiff… he'd shot Father… hadn't he…?
They'd been fighting, fighting in the dark, and he couldn't breathe… What if… Maybe if he hadn't been there, one less person would be competing for the remaining oxygen, they wouldn't have fought, and Father would still be alive.
If only…
Miles has been careful to leave no identifying information —he intends to graduate into a respectable job, after all, and he can't afford to have anything of the sort on the record— but there's always the risk of being recognized. One of the other performers, one among the throng in the audience… anyone could be a future colleague, superior or subordinate, and he hopes to cultivate plausible deniability just in case — he works at the library most days of the week now.
"Tell me." The lady in the emerald dress beside him leans in to be heard above the noise, her expensive perfume covering the stench of sweat and booze around them. "How old are you?"
"Eighteen," he lies, and she laughs, green eyes twinkling.
"Oh, how silly of me. Everyone is; I forgot." Tucking a dark curl behind her ear, she signals to the bartender, who brings her a tumbler of top shelf whiskey. "Let me buy you a drink, angel. To wash away the taste of my indiscretion."
He colors — she knows exactly where he's been. Of course, he reflects — why else would this stranger initiate conversation? Still, he orders a wine spritzer — she's not wrong, and she's clearly bankable.
She turns back to him then, switching the cross of her legs. "Well, now that that's out of the way… do you have a name?"
"Pez." He knows better than to divulge his real name, and people like that one — it makes him sound like a pet, less than a person.
"All right, Pez, honestly… Do you like what you do?"
A customer, making moral judgements? "Don't you?" Hypocrite, he doesn't say. He does know a few people who enjoy some parts of the job, but he's never found any real pleasure in it — a means to an end, that's all it is.
She smiles, fierce, as their drinks arrive. "Heh, that's the spirit. What if I said you didn't have to?"
The music dies down, and the host dramatically announces, "And now, the moment— no, the man you have all been waiting for! The one, the only… Pez Angeles!!"
The lights change as the song he has been rehearsing for the week comes on, and it's showtime.
Miles sashays out to pose with his hat. He's thought to quit, of course, but it pays the rent, and the years of practice have made him good at it. Moving in time with the beat, he trails his hands down his body, then tips his hat before slowly undulating as he shrugs off his trench coat to increasingly loud screams of encouragement. When he was younger and a lesser dancer, it was the private offers that came after that paid for the expensive law books and various fees.
He's at the bookstore again, staring longingly up the tall shelf of legal books. When the social workers came for him after the trial, he'd packed along as many of Father's books as he was allowed, but he needs some of these if he's to fast-track his legal studies, if he's to prevent the injustice that let Yanni Yogi go free from ever befalling anyone else. But each one costs hundreds of dollars that he doesn't have anymore, now that Father's gone. How will he—
"Hey, kid."
He whirls around to look. It's a man, smartly dressed in a dark grey suit, with short black hair slicked back and held by designer shades. Hazel eyes are looking at Miles intently, appraising.
"Am I in your way, sir? I beg your pardon." He steps aside.
"Not at all." The man doesn't move. "You want to be a lawyer when you grow up?"
Goodness knows if he could do that right now, he would, too. "Yes," Miles sighs, wrapping his arms around himself.
"It's good to have dreams, kid. Why the long face?"
He shakes his head. "I can't afford the books I need."
"Well… you could if you wanted to."
He looks up. "What do you mean?"
The man shrugs. "You've got a cute face, a pretty mouth. Some people would pay for that."
Miles straightens, crossing his arms. "That's illegal."
The man holds his hands up in mock surrender. "Just letting you know the option is out there." He turns to leave. "These are tough times, kid. But if you're ever truly desperate, you might meet people downtown at the Red Lantern that can help you."
Now that he's made a name for himself as a feature dancer, he doesn't have to do that anymore, but sometimes, he falls back on it. Sometimes, there are emergencies, and he can't line up a show in time, like when his car broke down, and he had to get a new one just to get to class — none of the apartments closer to campus were affordable.
Tossing the coat aside with a flourish, he pirouettes and twerks, skintight clothes showing off a body sculpted by years of dancing. On a caesura, he stops, taking his hat by the brim. Then the bass drops, and he sends it sailing offstage before backflipping onto the floor to roll his hips on his knees, and the audience goes wild.
"Again."
Miles repeats the maneuver as Lucrezia Danzani circles around, tapping the gymnastic baton she's holding in one hand on the other while eyeing him critically.
"You've learned the technique, but you're still so stiff, angel. You are moving, but you are not dancing."
As head of the Danzani Dance Academy, Lucrezia teaches contemporary dance. Some say she's mafia, but he doesn't dare ask — ignorance is not perjury.
"Do you remember, Pez, what I told you that night?"
"Yes. Some people sell it; some people sell the illusion of it." 'One is harder, but the other has an unsavory aftertaste,' goes the rest of the quote, but he doesn't think that's the part that matters.
"Precisely, and presently, you are a mediocre dancer, but a piss poor illusionist. Listen." She taps his ass with her baton for emphasis. "The best liars are those who can first deceive themselves. So go home. Fantasize. Figure out what gets you going." He jumps as her baton slips between his legs and taps up, gasping. "And when you get back here… You're going to treat every prop and every surface like your ideal lover or a part thereof." The baton tips his chin up to make him look at her. "Do you understand me?"
He all but runs to pack up. "Yes, ma'am."
Miles slides to the rails, digs alternate knees forward as he stands, then swings a leg over to straddle and ride the rail, imagining a partner on either side and throwing his head back, lips parted in a silent moan as he falls back to balance on the narrow rod. Pulling himself into an arch by his red tie, he rips off his sleeveless top to more cheering and hands slipping folded bills into the waistband of his pants. He draws his hands up his body in a sensual slide —the way he'd want to be touched— and more come.
"Fantasize," she said, but he doesn't know what to think of. He can't imagine wanting anyone — it's just a job.
But he tries, he tries… with books and pictures and movies and finally, he finds it — not in fiction, but in his memories, in spiky black hair and bright blue eyes, in exuberant hugs and an easy smile.
Miles finds it, and he feels dirty.
But dirty is what sells, so he runs with it, dances with it the next time he's in the studio, and for the first time, Lucrezia smiles. "That's it," she drawls. "Now we're getting somewhere."
Artfully, he flips off the rail and poses briefly before ducking back under it to tug his waistband down as he gyrates to the beat, exposing peeks of the contrasting thong he's wearing beneath. Then he's sidling up to the pole in centerstage to caress it like a lover's head, hooking a leg around it to wink at the audience as he swings in a circle. He presses himself to it before humping it down in time with the music and pretending to lick it as he slides back up. With the pole between his thighs, he drops back into bridge and thrusts up thrice before pulling off the pants to frenzied screaming, scattering banknotes on the stage.
Pushing up into a handstand and aerial splits, he flips gracefully to his feet and hooks his thumbs in his red thong to tease more as he sways his hips in a figure eight and turns full circle. Then he presses back to the pole, strokes it suggestively with both hands above his head before shimmying down, thighs splayed wide for all to see. Arching off and curling in, he rolls forward to rock his hips as he crawls toward the audience, and they're chanting his name with euphoric longing — good, the song is almost over.
"I thought the rules say no touching." Miles is pretty sure he felt fingers grope the crack of his ass earlier.
"Well, did they pay to feel you up?" Lucrezia sips her martini, unfazed, as he sits down beside her.
The touches often came with banknotes, yes. "Usually."
"Then let it go. You're about to lap dance some wasted men to orgasm. Surely a few handsy tippers can't bother you that much."
He wants to say that's not the point, that rules exist for a reason and not to be broken, but that's the aspiring lawyer in him speaking. He's not a law student tonight — he's Pez Angeles, an up and coming exotic dancer.
"You're right," he concedes at last, sipping his wine spritzer.
Whoever had dipped under the back of his thong had also left a hundred there.
Straightening into plank, he swings his bare legs around to kneel with his back to the audience and roll backwards to his feet at the railing. Looking flirtatiously over his shoulder, he runs one hand through his hair and traces the back of the thong with one finger as he sinks into an open squat, then throws his arms wide to grip the rails on the last beat.
The lights change again, and he holds his finishing pose through rabid cheering as hands tuck cash into his thong and grope his ass while the host tells them all to "give it up again for the amazing and gorgeous Pez Angeles!"
"Why?" he asks at last, at supper after his debut show.
Lucrezia arranged it all — paid the club's stage fees, got the word out and made sure another big name was performing after to draw in the crowds.
"Why me?"
They hadn't even seen each other before that night at the bar, and he hadn't shown the least bit of promise when he started dancing. She'd taught him for free and even honored his choice of temporary lucrative gigs over the rigors of a career in dance. It might have been wise to go respectable, but law was his passion, not dance, and he was unwilling to devote his life to success as a professional dancer.
Green eyes consider him, indecipherable, and Miles thinks she won't tell —'A lady with no secrets has no allure,' she liked to say— but then she reaches into her couture purse and hands him a small piece of laminated paper.
It's a photo — a girl and a boy smiling happily with arms slung around each other. The dark curls are shorter, and the pretty face rounder, but those cat-like green eyes are instantly recognizable. The boy, though… if Miles just dyed his hair black and wore green contacts, no one would know they weren't one and the same.
"My brother, Cassius, before the leukemia," she explains, downing the rest of her wine.
They never speak of him again.
Miles rises and takes a bow before the stage darkens for him to collect his earnings — he estimates he's made rent tonight, meaning he doesn't have to mingle with the audience now or perform again till next month, and he can focus on his studies. It's what keeps him coming back, what makes it worth the risk.
Soon, he tells himself, soon, he'll graduate and pass the bar, and he'll never have to set foot in a club again.
☆☆☆
"So… what did you think? Pretty hot, huh?"
Toby all but drapes himself over them, and Phoenix Wright thinks, of course it would be Toby's idea to have the cast party at a gay strip club. And Tyler, once you take away his director's chair, never could say no.
"Oh man, I think I've found a new idol," Sean gushes, faking a dramatic swoon. "Look at that bod…"
"Y'know, I think I've seen him before. At another club," Jade pipes up, tapping her bottom lip thoughtfully with a manicured nail.
"I thought you said you'd never been to a gay club," Tyler interjects with a raised eyebrow as he signals for another round of drinks.
"Yeah, I mean a club for straight women."
"Whatever pays, huh…" Katie downs her rum and coke. "Can't say I blame him. We'll all be in debt till we retire at this rate."
"Whoa, whoa, whoa," Toby rushes to cut in. "None of that while we're drinking. This is a party, Katie, a paaartaaay!"
"That's right!" Tyler chimes in. "Full house for the whole run. An obscure piece like that, who would have thought?"
"To Nick!" Sean lifts his beer. "Man of the night. For that brilliant improv when the sword broke!"
"Thanks." Phoenix grins as they all clink bottles. "Good thing I didn't really have to kill him, huh?"
Katie's face scrunches up. "You know that's not actually funny, right?"
The others thank and tip their scantily clad waiter for their new drinks, and Phoenix looks toward the stage again, wondering if Pez Angeles will come out to mingle for more income and offers like most performers.
He can't say for sure, but there's… something familiar about him. Something from a long time ago.
It couldn't be, though, right?
Fastidious bookworm, always serious, 'I want to be an attorney just like Father' Miles Edgeworth, a stripper?
And yet, ten years is a long time. He hadn't heard anything about his childhood best friend after Mr. Edgeworth's funeral. Rumor said orphanages and the foster system — who knows where Miles had ended up?
Nah, a stripper still seems too far-fetched.
Still, he lets himself imagine. Miles had been beautiful even back then — Phoenix bets he'd grow up all smoldering hot, just like this Pez Angeles.
He smiles as he downs another beer — it's a good fantasy.