Chapter Text
Tears stream down Phoenix’s cheeks as he lays on his back, Kristoph’s hand wrapped around his throat. Bruises decorate his neck, hips, thighs, all in varying stages of healing, ranging from mottled yellow-brown to rich purple-black. Kristoph calls it art. Phoenix calls it possessive. The pain in Phoenix’s back worsens every time they do this—Kristoph does this. In morning—afternoon, really, Phoenix works until the early hours, and sleeps until Kristoph gets home from work—a glass of water will sit on the bedside table alongside a bottle of painkillers. Phoenix will ignore both. He doesn’t dare touch either of them. Kristoph must know by now that Phoenix throws it all out.
Maybe that’s why Kristoph is getting rougher on nights like this.
Phoenix’s body trembles as Kristoph forces his legs apart.
Kristoph leans in close, teeth scraping against the skin under Phoenix’s ear. “Beg for it, Wright,” he hisses.
Still shivering—from fear or arousal or both—Phoenix barely manages to shake his head, to deny Kristoph this one thing. Every time, just this one thing. Kristoph will give in anyway. Every time. So, Phoenix holds on to this one scrap of dignity with both hands and a white-knuckled grip.
He gets a backhand for it, right across his cheek, still swollen from a right hook he took the night before. A disgruntled patron at the Borscht Bowl. Kristoph didn’t take it well. By the time Phoenix collapsed in a heap on top of dirty sheets, he’d been suffering from a lot more than a bruised cheek.
Phoenix’s head snaps to the side. He gasps into his arm, straining against the ropes around his wrists, holding them above his head and secured firmly to the headboard. By the time Phoenix has the wherewithal to look back up at Kristoph, his hand is back at the base of his neck, fingers digging into the skin. The anger in Kristoph’s eyes is rarely more apparent than it is on nights like this. Outside of this room, during working hours, in public, Kristoph is the picture of composure. Behind closed doors, though, he’s a nightmare.
Sharp pain in his back brings him back to the present as Kristoph thrusts into him, not bothering to spare a moment for Phoenix to adjust.
Kristoph’s lips are back on Phoenix’s neck, then, teeth carving divots into his skin, calling blood up to the surface where it will settle and stain the skin red and purple and blue. “Beg for me to stop, Phoenix Wright,” Kristoph bites.
And it hurts, the unforgiving pace Kristoph sets, and the bruises and cuts and rashes from nights past. His body aches, trembles, unaccustomed to this kind of strain, this kind of abuse.
Pain has been Phoenix’s frequent companion for years. Through college, through law school, through his few grand years behind the defense’s bench. That pain, emotional more than physical. An aching, lasting grief, ever present and all encompassing.
There was, too, the pain of his throat tearing open, glass cutting through the delicate tissue of his esophagus. There was the pain of recovery, scars down the front of his throat, lining his stomach, his torso, from the extraction. Then, later, the pain of big, gaudy rings cutting into the skin of his cheek. The pain of electric shock, wracking his body, fighting through the spasms for days, weeks after the fact.
There was the pain of Edgeworth’s absence.
Then, the pain of his return.
A dozen other pains in between and after.
Now, a new loss. His badge, his livelihood, everything he ever worked for. The loss of friends, self-inflicted. Somehow, none of that hurts the most. Instead, overshadowing everything that came before, is this pain, this bed. Dirty sheets and dirty skin. Bruises and blood.
And when Kristoph commands him again, commands him to beg, Phoenix cries.
Trapped in his wounded throat are the words Kristoph wants to hear, the ones he asks for every night, without fail. Phoenix tries to swallow back the acid on his tongue, force it down into his stomach like shards of glass. There is poison in the glass of water by the bed, in the bottle of painkillers, in Kristoph’s eyes, his words, his smile.
This last shred of dignity, so fragile, tears apart like esophageal tissue under glass, under scalpel, under hands meant to hurt and to heal.
Phoenix begs.
With sobs shaking up from his lungs, through his throat, settling behind his eyes and pounding in his skull, Phoenix begs. The words bubble up past his lips like blood.
No sooner do the words leave his lips than Kristoph grips his jaw and forces their lips together, swallowing every syllable.
Under the devil’s soft hands, Phoenix’s body is an instrument, played for the enjoyment of no one other than the player. A melody unlike any other, a discordant cacophony to any other ears but those of the four walls bearing witness.
Kristoph’s teeth draw blood from Phoenix’s shoulder as he comes apart. He laps at the wound like a man dying of thirst. He whispers words of praise and degradation indiscriminately, petting Phoenix’s hair at the same time as he tightens his grip on Phoenix’s member. As Kristoph swallows down the last of the blood, he drags his tongue up the side of Phoenix’s neck to his cheeks and starts swallowing Phoenix’s tears.
There is a mess on Phoenix’s stomach, wiped away and forced down Phoenix’s throat.
On the bedside table, a picture frame rests facedown.
As Kristoph lifts himself from the bed, Phoenix stares blankly at its edges.
Kristoph shuffles around the room, picking up clothes and bedding, carelessly tossed aside in their rush. He sets a glass of water and a bottle of painkillers on the bedside table and unties Phoenix's wrists, then turns up the frame. Set within stained wood borders, protected by glass, Phoenix’s almost-daughter stares back at him, smiling from atop Miles Edgeworth’s shoulders, both of them standing outside the courthouse, an adoption certificate in Miles’ hands.
Phoenix rolls onto his side as Kristoph climbs back into bed behind him.
A gentle kiss, barely a brush of Kristoph’s lips, is placed on the nape of Phoenix’s neck.
Kristoph hums. “They’ll be back in the states this weekend, won’t they? Perhaps you’d like to see them while they’re here, hm?”
Phoenix shivers as Kristoph wraps his arms around him.
“You begged so nicely for me, tonight. Maybe I’ll let it happen.”