#langnix

Phoenix snorts. “Oh my god, shut up. It was barely a hand.” Though Edgeworth still doesn’t completely trust him to not begin white-knighting the moment he runs into Lang, he leaves it alone. Phoenix scans the room as they step inside, sizing up the crowd with much more readiness than Edgeworth, who would much rather crawl into a bathroom and wait for the whole thing to be over. “Welp,” Phoenix says brightly, “I’m gonna go make the rounds.”

“You’re insane,” Edgeworth says, as a compliment. “I’ll be at the buffet.” He lets Phoenix kiss him on the cheek without his usual we are in public, Phoenix, Phoenix, not now  tirade just this once, and watches him slip off into the crowd.

About twenty minutes later, as he is stacking appetizers on his plate and balancing a glass of champagne, he becomes aware of a malicious presence hovering behind him. No, malicious isn’t quite the right term. Vicious, perhaps. He turns slowly with his precariously piled plate of spring rolls and spanakopita wedges, and makes a great show of arcing his gaze down at Franziska von Karma. She’s wearing tall boots and a navy blazer buttoned closed, which reveals her true nature as nothing more than a very expensively dressed equestrian.

“Franziska,” he says courteously. “Going riding after this?”

She wholly ignores the dig. “Are you planning on telling your husband to stop being a little tart anytime soon, or will I have to club him to death with a vase at some point this evening? I’ve already picked the vase.”

Because the bulk of Edgeworth’s social energy has been put into looking like an irascible cunt so no one will speak to him, he has nothing more intelligent to say than, “What.”

Franziska, who doesn’t need to put any conscious effort whatsoever into making that expression, points into the crowd. Edgeworth seeks out the blue of Phoenix’s suit and has to stare at it for a long time before he fully accepts that the situation before him is real. Phoenix is holding a glass of champagne (unfortunate), engaged in conversation with Agent Shi-Long Lang (horrific), and he is leaning all his weight on one leg and giggling like a girl at a frat party (downright agonizing). Lang, who is at the very least wearing a two-piece suit and not some sort of insane fur coat for once, looks very much like a wolf batting around a little woodland creature for amusement (Edgeworth despises himself at once for this mental turn of phrase). A gaggle of suited interpol agents stand behind him in silent embarrassment, gazes averted. Phoenix giggles again. It’s audible across the room.

“Oh, god,” Edgeworth says slowly, feeling around the table for his drink. When he finds it, he drains it in one quick pull.

“I do not protest when you’re given a plus one for this event.” Franziska says, mostly speaking to herself, “I do not protest when you inevitably use it on that oaf. I do not even caution him as many times as I should to not make a fool of himself in public–and now I’m watching a repeat performance of one of the most deeply embarrassing men in my life making an ass of himself in front of my colleagues.” She raises her voice to address Edgeworth, whom she apparently considers to be one of the deeply embarrassing men in her life. “Do you not feel threatened by this?”

Edgeworth has never felt threatened by anyone expressing interest in Phoenix, and he never will. Phoenix has no game, for one, and Edgeworth has woken up to him watching him in his sleep enough times to be assured that he’s never going to be rid of the freak. No: the prevailing emotion he feels as he watches Phoenix flirt with Lang like he’s trying to get him to buy him shots isn’t jealousy. It’s secondhand embarrassment.

“Threatened, no,” he mutters to Franziska. “But the thought that I never want to be seen in public with him again has crossed my mind.”

Both of them watch in horror as Lang removes his suit jacket and presents his arm. Phoenix leans in and squeezes his bicep, laughing at an even more sickeningly high pitch. “Oh,” Edgeworth and Franziska say together in varying degrees of dismay and disgust, like audience members watching a particularly grisly knockout at a boxing match.

“I can’t bear to watch anymore,” Franziska says, turning around to stare directly at the wall, pretending to admire a horrible oil painting of a landscape and doing a piss-poor job of it. “Are you just going to stand there?”

Edgeworth reluctantly un-freezes from the stiff spectator’s pose he’d assumed. “I’ll go get him,” he says, with the grim air of someone about to drag their compatriot out of live combat. He puts down his glass on the edge of the snack table, but there’s no way in hell he’s abandoning his hors d'oeuvres. He’s going to need them.

He makes his way through the crowd, some of which parts for him willingly when they see the irascible cunt expression that he is no longer having to take pains to put on. Eventually, he reaches the gaggle of Interpol agents and threads himself into their number. “Phoenix,” he says at a higher volume than he needs to.

Phoenix startles and slowly turns to him with the look of a guilty dog. He doesn’t look particularly drunk save for the flush high in his cheeks. Edgeworth goes to stand beside him, putting a hand on his back in what he hopes looks like a show of spousal affection to anyone who doesn’t see him grabbing the back of Phoenix’s jacket in a death grip. Phoenix makes a minute, stifled choking noise and goes very still.

“Agent Lang,” Edgeworth says, stiffly but professionally.

“Heyy,” Lang drawls, highly unprofessionally. With his suit jacket slung over one shoulder, it’s visible that he’s undone about four more buttons of his shirt than Edgeworth thinks is acceptable to wear in public, which would still be two too many buttons to the average person. His shirt is silk and patterned horrifically with gold chains, and Edgeworth stews at the fact that he can pull it off without looking as if he’s about to leave the function to go blow all of his savings in slot machines. He shakes himself into the realization that he’s spent more than enough time starting at Lang’s cleavage and raises his gaze. He’s dismayed to see that Lang is grinning in that familiar way that says you’ve embarrassed yourself horribly and I’m going to tell everyone I know about it. He’s not sure which one of them he’s pointing it at.

“Would you. Please. Excuse us,” Edgeworth says through gritted teeth. Phoenix gives Lang the big, sheepish grin of a man who knows that his bad back is saving him from having to sleep on the couch tonight.

“Sure,” says Lang, with the easy smile of a man who is not afraid of Miles Edgeworth and knows that this will have no consequences on him whatsoever.

Hefting Phoenix like he’s carrying a disobedient dog by the scruff of its neck, Edgeworth begins to walk him away at an unreasonable pace. “He was nice,” Phoenix says in a rush, stumbling after him. Edgeworth decides that it’s best to ignore him, lest he get on his nerves enough to cause him to scream in the middle of a crowded venue. Somehow managing to balance his plate as they weave through the crowd, he tugs Phoenix behind the corner that leads to the bathrooms. He restrains himself from shaking him by the back of his jacket and reluctantly uncurls his fingers from its fabric.

“Franziska came to tell me that you were acting like a whore,” he informs him curtly.

Phoenix, who had been straightening his jacket and dusting himself off, stops and blinks up at him with innocent surprise that Edgeworth has trouble believing is genuine. “For–for talking to Lang? Did she really use the word ‘whore’, or was it ‘harlot’? Be honest.”

“The exact term she used was ‘little tart’.”

“Eh heh heh heh.” Edgeworth hates it when Phoenix goes eh heh heh heh, even if it’s now lucky to rank higher on the list of Phoenix’s laughs than the bimbo giggle he unleashed tonight. “Of course it was,” he says, grinning with more good humor than he deserves to have at this moment.

“So this is funny to you,” Edgeworth says, crossing his arms as best he can with his plate of appetizers, which he still staunchly refuses to leave on some table for the vultures of the event to pick at.

The smile immediately drops off of Phoenix’s face, replaced with a mockery of a studiously serious expression, lips pressed together and brows scrunched. “Nooooo. I’m sorry.”

“Are you really sorry? Because I’m going to be very sure that you are by the end of this conversation. First of all, why are you drinking? Second of all, what are you drinking and where did you get it? Because I would sure as hell like to wipe that entire interaction from my conscious mind by the time the night is though.”

“Um,” Phoenix says, very quickly turning small and embarrassed. He profers his glass like a peace offering, “It’s sparkling apple juice. I got it from the kids’ table.”

That is possibly the worst answer he could’ve given him. Edgeworth gives him a look, takes the glass and sniffs its contents: artificial apple flavor and an obscene amount of sugar. “My god,” he says, handing it back, recontextualizing the flush of Phoenix’s cheeks from drunken glow to a deeply embarrassing way for a thirty-five year old man to react to being flirted with. “You aren’t even drunk. You were being a tart.”

“Eh heh heh heh.” 

“Will you please be serious?” Now that he’s reasonably assured that Phoenix isn’t drunk–only an idiot–he figures that he can handle a harsher dose of reality. “Does it really take you two minutes of looking at a man’s tits to change your opinion of him from being ‘kind of an asshole’ to–whatever that was?”

“I mean, isn’t that basically how we started dating?” Phoenix ventures sheepishly, a joke that Edgeworth does not outwardly allow to land.

“You’re skipping over some very vital context. Don’t change the subject. You were embarrassing yourself. Franziska was about two minutes from killing you, and she’d already picked the murder weapon.” He raises his voice slightly, hopefully not enough for the people milling about outside the hallway to hear. “Do I have to remind you who you were embarrassing yourself in front–”

“I know, I know, I know! I’m sorry. I really am, I promise.” Phoenix smooths his hair back, beginning to look truly nervous. “I swear I wasn’t–I didn’t mean to get all–he just–he was really–” 

“I know,” Edgeworth admits begrudgingly. “He’s really very…”

“He’s, um… He’s just… damn.”

“Very much so.”

“Mm.” The flush is back in Phoenix’s cheeks.

Edgeworth releases the bulk of his hostility, shoulders dropping, sighing deeply. “Listen… I’m not upset with you. Lang is very… forward, and to say that he was wearing a shirt tonight would be an overstatement. I understand the urge to…” He waves generally. “That is to say, I know what it’s like for him to be the first man to ever pay attention to you. Well… second for you, I suppose.”

They share a silent look of solidarity, which quickly turns awkward as they both remember which of the three people in this situation have and haven’t known each other biblically. 

“I’m so, so sorry,” Phoenix says, deeply horrified, raising a fist to his mouth. Edgeworth does believe that he means it this time. 

Edgeworth unfolds his arms to gently touch his shoulder. “I’m not upset,” he reminds him. “I know you didn't mean anything by it. It’s only that I’m embarrassed to be seen with you after all that. If you’re going to ogle him, can you at least be less mortifying about it?”