Work Text:
Nightmares were bad enough. But when you"d been having them as consistently throughout your life as Miles Edgeworth had, falling asleep became just as painful as the nightmares themselves. Some nights, just lying in bed waiting for sleep to take him felt like sitting in front of a massive restaurant meal while coming down with a stomach virus. Even the sensations associated with sleep had become enough to set him off; the highest quality sheets could feel like jagged claws scraping at his skin, the same way that the mere scent of food could make his stomach turn. However exhausted he was, the moment his head hit the pillow his mind would kick into overdrive and it would become impossible to fall asleep.
He"d tried a weighted blanket. The sensation was pleasant enough while he was awake, but as soon as he drifted off the pressure on his chest would feel like suffocating and he"d wake up drenched in sweat, the weighted blanket kicked fully across the room. Aromatherapy did absolutely nothing. Meditation only made the problem worse.
Sound, though— sound could help. After waking up the Von Karma estate for the umpteenth time in his childhood, someone— he couldn"t remember whether it was Manfred now, and knowing what he knew at this point he doubted it— gifted him a white noise generator. The plastic contraption had a speaker that would play the sound of a babbling brook, or waves on a beach, or rain in a forest, and it helped to have something he could focus on, outside of himself. The old thing was either sitting in an attic or a landfill at this point. Listening to CDs at a low volume gave similar results, and he took full advantage of his musical library in the hopes of getting a good night"s sleep. Opera, predictably, based on how he felt about it when he wasn"t lying in bed, was the most effective in this regard.
He didn"t remember exactly when he"d found out about sleep stories, but it must have been some time before he decided to actually try listening to them. But as silly as he felt listening to bedtime stories as a grown adult, he couldn"t let his embarrassment get in the way of utilizing them, because they helped more than anything he"d ever tried.
He was choosy with the narrators, of course. He"d listen to them during the daytime so he could ensure his sleep wasn"t thrown off by an unexpectedly shabby performance, a tendency to mispronounce uncommon words or an over-exaggerated "sleepy" affectation. The Steel Samurai reading was no exception— if anything, he expected to hold it to a higher standard.
But, as he discovered, the narrator had a nice voice. A very nice voice. So much so, that for a time his readings were about the only thing Miles listened to at night.
It was one such night, shortly after his official prosecutorial debut. The trial had gone perfectly, as expected, but he still felt unsettled, shaky. Trying to sleep in such a state was a recipe for disaster, but his body had needs. He sighed, settling himself in bed, and hit play.
The voice that poured from his headphones was deep and pleasantly husky, with a touch of an American accent Miles couldn"t place. It ran through the introduction to the piece, a good induction for his busy mind to slow, as the wording was just about the same in every recording. Then the story began.
It had been a long day of travel for the Steel Samurai and his companions. The sun was just touching the horizon beyond the mountain pass, throwing brilliant reds and golds into the clear sky. The next day"s journey would be a difficult one, as they still needed to cross over the craggy mountain paths to make it to the castle of the Silver Shogun...
Perhaps plodding was the word for it: the reader spoke slowly, steadily, though it didn"t feel like he was artificially slowing himself down. Perhaps he just naturally read at that pace. Either way, Miles felt himself relax, a cool sense of calm seeping through his body, and it didn"t take long before the words in his headphones began to blur as he drifted off to sleep.
"Sir, I see a carriage approaching. They"re flying the banner of the Shogunate," the scout reported. The Steel Samurai drew himself up from his seat at the bonfire...
Miles stirred, sluggishly. He"d awoken suddenly, and he opened and closed his hand to confirm this wasn"t a night terror. He hadn"t awoken for any bad reason, he realized; his skin wasn"t clammy and his heart wasn"t racing. As he rolled over in bed, he already felt himself sinking back into slumber.
The voice in his headphones had just felt very familiar for a second.
But it was probably nothing.
"Hey, look, sir!"
Edgeworth attempted to focus his attention back on the crime scene. His mind was unusually foggy today; perhaps he hadn"t slept as well as he"d thought. Detective Gumshoe was looking out the window, and Edgeworth joined him, wondering what evidence he"d discovered.
"You can see all the way over to the Prosecutors" Office from here!"
"...Wonderful. Now, would you like to focus on the investigation?"
The murder of a major publishing company"s CEO was destined to be a high-profile case, and Von Karma had called in some considerable favors to land the still-inexperienced Edgeworth at its head. It was a shame that he was still stuck with a detective who couldn"t be more unsuited to the task.
"You think the killer"s the one who messed up all these papers?" Gumshoe asked, stepping over pieces of manuscripts that had been strewn around the floor. Most of them had probably come from the upturned filing cabinet lying nearby.
"It seems likely. The killer might have been looking to remove something from the scene of the crime," Edgeworth said, "But we can wait to see what they find on Chance"s computer before we start sorting through this mess page-by-page. If he kept a digital record of what was supposed to be in the filing cabinet, it will become a simple task to determine whether anything"s missing."
Gumshoe leaned over the body, slumped over his desk and still waiting to be carted off for the autopsy. "Hey, I think there"s somethin" under him!"
"Something he was reading immediately before he was killed… Let"s have a look, then."
Detective Gumshoe straightened out the wrinkled papers with gloved hands, squinting through the bloodstains.
"Lessee… "The association with his old mentor, and the uncertain circumstances surrounding the fires, would lead the case to haunt his career long after he was officially cleared of any wrongdoing...""
Hold it.
It was in the cadence, in the way he slowed down to read and his tone shifted. Detective Gumshoe"s regular speaking voice was just different enough that Edgeworth hadn"t noticed, but suddenly the resemblance to that voice had become unmistakable.
He was so surprised for a minute, the moment of recognition so intense, that he almost interrupted Detective Gumshoe. But his mind caught up with his mouth just in time— what in the world was he going to do? Ask Gumshoe if he recorded bedtime stories in his spare time? For one thing, it was none of his business what the detective got up to outside of work hours. But more importantly, there was no way he could ask that question without confirming that he had listened to them, and it was even less of the detective"s business what Edgeworth got up to outside of work hours.
Instead, when he went home for the night, he opened up one of the audio files and sat there listening to it, listening for a tiny detail in the delivery that would somehow disprove his revelation, then looking for any detail on the website that could identify the speaker beyond a username. He couldn"t find the silver bullet, the piece of conclusive evidence that would disprove what he knew, deep down, to be true. He kept searching, as the evening light faded outside and his bedroom grew darker and darker, until finally he was faced with the unpleasant matter of going to bed, and the even more unpleasant question of what he would be listening to tonight.
Dick"s voice was calm and quiet in the headphone speakers. "Did that help, honey?"
Edgeworth made a noncommittal noise as he wiped himself off and hiked his pajamas back up his hips.
"It doesn"t seem like it helped."
Edgeworth glanced at the screen and felt a pang of guilt. The view of Dick"s apartment was bright, straining his eyes even with the brightness turned as low as it would go. It was mid-afternoon in Los Angeles, but Dick"s eyelids were drooping like he was the insomniac. He"d called past midnight local time to catch Edgeworth on his lunch break after he"d missed their usual morning check-in; he was trying so damned hard when none of this was his responsibility and, honestly, there was almost nothing he could do.
Edgeworth had been sleeping unusually well since he"d started dating Dick, contrary to everything he thought he knew about his sleep cycles. Dick snored like a chainsaw, he tossed and turned, he cuddled in his sleep, but somehow none of it got to Miles. He just felt safe when he was in bed with Dick. Now he couldn"t be, and simple as that, everything had come back. He shouldn"t have been so naive to think that it was actually him that had changed.
"There"s gotta be something else we can try..."
"It"s fine, dear," Edgeworth interrupted, "you"ve done enough."
"No, it"s not, and I haven"t! "Cause you"re still not getting enough sleep, and I can"t stand knowing you"re lyin" awake over in Berlin." Dick paused, and while Edgeworth had closed his eyes, trying to make some concession to his boyfriend"s peace of mind (or perhaps in some misplaced hope that sleep would magically come upon him as soon as he stopped trying to attain it), he knew exactly what face Dick was making as he did. "If I could clear some time off..."
"That won"t be necessary," Edgeworth groaned. "Not that I don"t want you here, but..."
He trailed off, helpless. But this is something I have to figure out myself, was what he wanted to say, but he knew he wouldn"t mean it. God, but it would be easy to give up, to cancel his engagements here and fly back home, into a pair of loving arms and comfort and warmth he"d been too stupid to realize he would miss this much.
"...if you want."
Edgeworth cracked an eye open. Somehow he"d completely missed what Dick had just said.
"Hm?"
"Yeah, sorry, never mind. Stupid idea."
"Richard. What did you say."
"Oh. Uhh..." He scratched the back of his neck. "Well, I did this thing for a while, years back, where I, uh...read bedtime stories, basically. But, y"know, for adults. I recorded "em."
"I know."
"Y...wait, huh? What? You do? Did I ever tell you that?"
"No...but I listened to them."
It made him flush slightly to admit, but he felt strangely relieved when Dick sputtered wordlessly into the microphone upon hearing it. At least he wasn"t being embarrassed alone. Then Dick abruptly fell silent.
"...So...Did they help? Because...I could do that. For you. Again."
Oh god. He"d painted himself into a corner on this one. "Well...well, yes. I found them very...helpful." He took a deep, steadying breath. "I didn"t know how to tell you...as we were only coworkers at the time. But I did keep listening to them. They worked so well, even though it felt like a breach of privacy I couldn"t stop— "
"I mean, I put "em on the internet so people could listen to "em," Dick said with a shrug. "I"m just surprised, is all, but it"s not like you did anything bad."
Edgeworth sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "See, when you put it like that, it makes it sound like I was just overthinking things."
"You? Never." Gumshoe chuckled. "I"m glad I can be here to stop you sometimes."
Edgeworth heard the tapping of keys through his speaker. "I think I still got the stories saved somewhere… Don"t remember getting rid of "em, at least. Man, I hate doing searches, always takes forever to load… Oh! There we go! What do you wanna listen to?"
"Er, choose whichever you think I"ll like."
"Let"s seeeeee… We"ve got "Recovering after the Battle", "Winding Roads", "The Wishing Festival"..."
"It...doesn"t need to be Steel Samurai themed," Edgeworth began, and then paused. "What was that last one? I don"t think I"ve ever heard that one."
"Oh yeah, could be I never posted it. I remember there were a couple I had in the works when I kinda dropped the whole thing… Should we do that one?"
"...I suppose it"s a fine choice..."
"Yeah, it"s a good one," Dick said, with a smile in his voice.
Edgeworth drew his covers around himself and sank back into bed. It wasn"t the same as being wrapped in a pair of strong arms and pulled toward a warm chest, but it would have to do, for now. With his boyfriend"s voice in his ears, narrating in that lovely voice about the streets of Neo Olde Tokyo under the summer stars, he felt something that was almost as good. It didn"t even diminish the experience that he didn"t hear the end of the story, nor Dick"s quiet "love ya, hon," before the call ended and the screen went dark.