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Miles Edgeworth leaves the Powers trial with the weight of the world on him. He feels it with every step he takes. The Prosecutors’ Building is all but empty, his footsteps far too loud in its stately halls. There will be repercussions for what he did, he’s well aware. The perfection he once strove for is nothing but a distant dream, the road in front of him shrouded in darkness. And yet… he cannot bring himself to regret the choice he made. As a prosecutor, he serves the law itself. Anyone who thinks to turn him to their own purposes will find him most difficult to wield.
He stops on the landing of the tenth floor and leans against the wall to catch his breath. His lungs are burning, his calves hot and tight, and he spares a thought for how much easier his life would be if he could bring himself to take the elevator. It isn’t worth dwelling on. He has things to take care of, things to notarize and file, before he can finally put this wearying day behind him. He can’t think much beyond that, beyond his armchair and a glass of wine, perhaps one of the books he’s been meaning to read. Something light. In another time, he might’ve looked forward to an episode of Steel Samurai, but he can’t know, now, if he’ll ever be able to enjoy that show again.
The loss is bitter at the back of his mouth. It’s only small. But there have been so many.
Another thought to box away in the attic of his mind. He has work to do.
He reaches his office door, already running through a list of documents he needs to sign as his body moves on its own. He’ll have to have the evidence from the trial put into storage, too. He should have the boxes ready for Gumshoe when he asks. His hands produce his key and slides it home.
It turns smoothly, without a catch. Unlocked.
He feels sweat bead on the back of his neck as he’s snapped back into the moment and bound there with heavy iron chains. His heart is in his throat. He knows without a doubt who will be waiting for him.
He pushes the door open. Manfred von Karma is sitting behind his desk, occupying Edgeworth’s place in the room and leaving him to feel like an errant student called before the principal.
“Explain yourself,” von Karma snaps, “boy.”
Edgeworth bows stiffly, taking control of his impulse to stare down at his shoes. “I apologize,” he says, but he straightens, and forces himself to lift his head. He has nothing to be ashamed of. “The evidence was undeniable. There was nothing I could have done to change the outcome.”
Von Karma slams his hands on the desk, rising as he does. “Do you take me for a fool?” At his full height, von Karma no longer towers over him. They stand face to face. “Wright had all but lost when you stepped in. You could have buried him. Instead, you handed him a victory!”
Edgeworth’s spine is straight, his resolve firm. “I did nothing of the sort. Wright won because his client was innocent.”
Von Karma gives him a withering look. “You believe that, do you?”
His sneer makes Edgeworth falter. No. No. He made his own choice -
He sees the contempt in his mentor’s face, the insinuation dripping from him. “What did he offer you?”
Edgeworth steps back. “Nothing! I wouldn’t -“
“So you allowed yourself to be humiliated for nothing?” Von Karma advances, his voice dropping to a growl. “This defeat will follow you for the rest of your life, like a wound that will never heal. You were a laughingstock in there. You haven’t just sullied your own reputation. You’ve disgraced me as well.”
Shame rises in his throat, too heavy and greasy to swallow back down. “That wasn’t my intention,” he says, in a voice that barely sounds like his own. “But what else could I have done?” He’s pleading, he realizes. “Are you suggesting I should’ve averted my eyes and allowed that woman to go free?”
There’s no mercy to be found in his mentor’s face. “Who are you to talk about letting killers go free?”
The accusation freezes Edgeworth’s blood. He can’t move. He can barely breathe.
Von Karma steps in close, and Edgeworth flinches, expecting another blow, one that will drive him to his knees. Instead, his mentor reaches out to straighten his collar, quelling fingers on his shoulders and neck. “This isn’t like you, Miles,” he says, adjusting the fall of his cravat, as if all his flaws could be smoothed away so easily. “It’s Wright’s doing, isn’t it? He’s changed you, infected you with his false sense of justice.”
Numbly, “I... I wanted to find the truth.”
“Truth is an illusion. You know that.” His deep voice is lulling, almost hypnotic at this proximity. “Whatever someone convinces themselves of becomes their truth. By chasing that mirage, you only allow yourself to be deceived.” His hands weigh on Edgeworth’s shoulders. “Look at me, Miles.”
He can’t, he can’t. He feels wretched, cornered. He knows it would show on his face. If von Karma looks into his eyes right now, he’ll see everything, all the detestable weakness, all the doubt, all the lies, and everything Edgeworth pretends to be will come crashing down. He’ll be revealed for what he really is, a cowering, sniveling thing, afraid of the light. And it would take so little. His mentor knows him better than anyone and can peel back the layers of him as easily as he’d rifle through a stack of papers. The person he needs to deceive the most, except maybe himself, and there’s no way to hide from him. Except for this, keep his face angled down, his gaze on the floor, his thoughts hidden away behind his eyes.
Von Karma grips his chin and tilts his head up. “I said, look at me.”
Edgeworth struggles, mindless and animal, his heart hammering with old, instinctual fear. Von Karma catches the tail of his gaze, and he’s exposed, the damning evidence laid out -
You’re right. You’re right about me. I’m everything you say I am and worse.
I’ll never be what you want me to be
so you should just
throw me away.
At the last second, he squeezes his eyes shut.
Von Karma huffs in irritation. “If you’re going to behave like a sullen child, there’s no reason I shouldn’t treat you like one.“ He shoves Edgeworth toward his desk. “Bend over.“
“What?”
“You heard me. Bend. Over.”
Edgeworth does as he’s told. It’s almost a relief, an instruction to be followed, clear-cut, safe. At least here, he can do exactly what’s expected of him.
“Good boy,” von Karma breathes into his ear. His hands slide around Edgeworth’s waist, unfastening his belt. “It’s obvious to me that you’ve been led astray,” he says, as he takes down Edgeworth’s slacks, letting them fall around his ankles. Moments later, his undergarments follow. “That makes it my right and my duty to correct you.” He takes hold of Edgeworth’s hip to anchor him, his other hand, his left, stroking the flesh he just exposed. It occurs to Edgeworth that von Karma has only ever struck him with his left hand. A small kindness. A beating with his dominant hand would undoubtably be harsher.
“Tell me why I’m doing this.”
Edgeworth’s voice breaks. “I failed.”
“And why did you fail?” When he doesn’t answer right away, von Karma scoffs. “You don’t know, do you? It’s because you lost sight of who you are. Your purpose must always be clear. Unshakeable.” The grip on Edgeworth’s hip tightens to the point of pain. “If you let him get into your head, that man will ruin you.”
All the fight goes out of him then. “I’m sorry, sir.”
Manfred von Karma isn’t one to waste words, and Edgeworth’s pitiful apology earns him nothing but a sound of disgust and another shove between the shoulder blades. He’s already facedown and unresisting. His mentor’s firm hand on his back makes it more than clear: Edgeworth won’t be getting up until he’s finished.
“Count out.“
Edgeworth wasn’t spanked often as a child, never by his father and only rarely by von Karma, but those incidents, few as they were, are burned into his memory.
“Count the blows,” he said, the first time, with young Miles stretched across his lap. “Clearly, so I can hear you. If you lose track, hesitate, or stammer, I will start from the beginning.”
That day, he experienced the sting of justice at his mentor’s hand. Harsh, but not cruel. Always calculated, with nothing to distract from the lesson. Always through his clothes. He felt precisely what von Karma intended him to feel. Admonition. Shame. Want didn’t come into it. He never got the impression that von Karma wanted to hit him, any more than he wanted to be hit. It was just something that needed to be done, to instruct him, to keep him in line.
Young Miles was a diligent student. He never made the same mistake twice. And so corporal punishment was mostly a specter, a trick stair to be avoided.
Now, it seems, he can’t stop making mistakes.
Von Karma’s hand comes down, a sharp crack against his bare skin. The sound is almost as harsh as the blow itself, echoing off the walls.
“One.”
Edgeworth feels von Karma trace the sore spot, no doubt admiring the mark he left. Then he’s struck again on the other cheek. His thighs tense.
“Two.”
The next blow comes quickly, in the same spot as the last
“Ah! Three!”
followed by two sharp swats on the other side, spreading the pain around.
“Four. Fi-five.”
His mouth is loose and useless, his hard-won elocution falling all to pieces.
“Six.”
He feels himself becoming a flesh-thing, cringing as the next blow falls, an animal response to pain. It won’t be long until he’s struggling under his mentor if he can’t get ahold of himself.
“Seven.”
He forces himself to focus on the details of his surroundings, as if conducting an investigation. Various accoutrements on his desk, clear signs of his profession. They’re disordered. His quill pen has been knocked over, the sharp scent of ink dripping onto the blotter. Wood polish, too - Gumshoe must’ve been here recently. There will be smudges, after this. Stains. Even he may have cause to suspect -
“Eight! Ungh!”
The pain is sharper with the detective’s image clear in his mind, his almost-comical expression of disbelief if he could see them now.
Gumshoe wouldn’t laugh, would he?
“Nine!”
His eyes rove desperately, and he tries to take comfort in his fine things, evidence of taste cultivated from an early age - no, no, he can’t. His jacket in its frame, the one he wore to his prosecutorial debut. Von Karma was the one who bought it for him, and when he told him he looked well in it, Edgeworth burned with pride, his heart so full he thought it might burst, and it was everything, everything -
In the end, he has to close his eyes.
He is unavoidably a creature of flesh and blood. Better to be that than Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, a disappointment and a failure, a foolish boy undeserving of this office, of his title, of the respect those things entail.
He almost welcomes the next blow, a flash of light in darkness.
“Ten.”
He’s falling. Falling away from himself and into sensation, a whole thick sea of it
“Eleven.”
swelling, crashing like a wave, lighting up his nerves. Filling him.
“Twelve.”
He’s drowning, embracing the pain because there’s nothing else
“Thirteen.”
and then his ass is being kneaded, von Karma’s fingers digging into the flesh, drawing his blood up to the surface.
Edgeworth moans.
It’s loud and utterly humiliating.
“Something to tell me, Miles?”
Darkness is no refuge. He’s bent over his desk in the unforgiving light. Exposed. “No, sir.”
Silence stretches between them, tightens, thrumming like a plucked string. Edgeworth thinks he can feel it, humming under his skin, building and building until it’s unbearable. “Sir…”
“What is it?”
“Keep going,” he chokes out, “please.”
“Is that what you want?”
“No.”
“Ah.” He palms Edgeworth’s ass. It’s hot, burning all the way down to his core. “So you understand that you need this?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then I won’t insult you by holding back.”
The pain is abrupt, hard and deep. Edgeworth jolts forward with a strangled shout. A hand fists in his hair, shoving him prone and pinning him. His head is bent at an unnatural angle, his face crushed against the desk. He struggles to get the word out.
“F-fourteen.”
Spots dance in front of his eyes. Every breath comes at a cost. His heart is slamming against his ribs, his body screaming for air -
He’s forced to arch his spine to take the pressure off his neck. His hips push back against von Karma’s, eliciting a growl and a sharp slap that makes his ears ring.
“Ungh! Fifteen!”
His legs are shaking with effort, his muscles drawn tight. He clenches when he’s struck, his body wracked with spasms.
“Si-sixteen!”
Von Karma lets go of his hair and jerks him back roughly, both hands on his hips. Edgeworth goes limp, boneless on the desk as he gulps air gratefully. His mentor holds him there, the fabric of his suit rasping against oversensitive skin, the body underneath all angles, uncompromising. His hand comes down with a dull thunk.
“Oh! Seventeen!”
“Lift your ass,” hissed into his ear, the words filthy in his mentor’s mouth. And Edgeworth does as he’s told, pushing up into the blow.
He’s rewarded with a dizzying flare of pain, like a firework, bursting. His vision goes white. He’s gasping again as he flops back on the desk, afterimages behind his eyes, a thousand falling stars.
A gentle hand on him, stroking, until the shaking stops. His mentor’s palm is hot from impact, and probably starting to hurt.
A whisper: “Eighteen.”
One more cursory smack to each cheek. Edgeworth barely feels them.
“Nineteen. Twenty.”
He feels rather than sees von Karma nod curtly. “That’s enough.” He hauls Edgeworth up, pinning him to his broad chest. Edgeworth sags against him, his knees weak. He’s overwhelmed by an intense desire to be held and comforted, to be told he did well. As if there’s some sort of objective metric for receiving a spanking. How would such a thing even be determined? Would he get higher marks because he executed the count correctly? Because he didn’t cry?
He’s shamefully close to tears now as he lets his head fall back on von Karma’s shoulder, breathing too hard and shaking more than he’d ever admit. His nerves feel raw, and he wants to be told he’s forgiven, for his poor performance earlier, at least. Even if it’s a lie forced out between clenched teeth, he can allow himself to be deceived. The absolution will serve him as a talisman, and the other things, unspeakable things, will be forced back into the dark, to emerge only in his nightmares.
“You’re trembling,” von Karma says. “Was it too much for you?”
“No sir.”
“Ah.” He breathes out against Edgeworth’s ear, a silent laugh. “Could it be that you’re... worked up?” His hand slides down over Edgeworth’s hips, feeling between his legs. Finding him entirely soft doesn’t seem to dissuade him in the slightest. He grabs a handful of Edgeworth’s ass and squeezes. Edgeworth gasps. The room tilts dizzily around them, and he has to struggle to keep his feet. There’s no way his mentor doesn’t feel the shudder that wracks through him.
Von Karma laughs again, soft. “So reactive after taking your punishment.” He caresses the smarting flesh with an open palm. “You’re so enticing like this.” His lips move against Edgeworth’s skin. “I ought to be disgusted.” The words are harsh, but with an underlying heat that makes it hard to breathe. “Such a disgraceful display.” His hands move up Edgeworth’s body, undoing buttons in their wake. “But you make it hard to resist.”
Edgeworth shivers as his mentor’s mouth descends on his neck. His cravat falls away, fluttering to the tabletop. Hands inside his clothes, working them open, and his skin goes hot and cold. Goosebumps race up his arms and down his neck. His nipples tighten. The hard edge of a nail bites into one, shooting sparks up his spine and flooding his face with heat. His mentor’s tongue laves at a sensitive spot just below his ear as his hands move south. “How can I fault you for your failure when you wear it so well?”
Edgeworth lets out a low, inadvertent moan as his weak points are exploited one by one and he gets it up quickly, helplessly in his mentor’s hand.
Von Karma pumps him slowly, testing the weight of him. “Mmm. Look at that.” Edgeworth does, and whimpers at the sight. His mentor’s gnarled old hand, circling his blushing head. A spurt of pre-ejaculate getting on his mentor’s fingers. His filthy need, dirtying him. Edgeworth’s breath comes quick. His legs start to shake. Von Karma’s arm around his waist is the only thing holding him up.
The slightest rasp of stubble as von Karma’s mouth returns to his neck. “You’re such a carnal creature.” Another long, smooth stroke, slicked with his own shameful fluids. “I can’t help but indulge you.” He kisses the corner of Edgeworth’s mouth, almost chaste, as he thumbs his leaking slit. “As long as I’m touching you, you may embarrass yourself to your heart’s content.”
The dam breaks, then, in an ugly gush. Edgeworth’s cheeks are wet. He turns his face to the soft haven of his mentor’s cravat and breathes and breathes the scent of his old-fashioned cologne. Von Karma’s fingers are at the hollow of his hip, smoothing down his thigh, sketching him in tiny points of light. It feels… it feels good. He needs to be held, but if that’s impossible, then being fucked is close enough, isn’t it?
He feels raw and empty and hopelessly immature, and he thinks back to the first time, on the night he passed the bar.
“Look at you,” his mentor had said, as he ran his hands over Edgeworth’s trembling thighs. “Like porcelain.”
Fragile. He didn’t say it, but as Edgeworth felt the unrelenting head of his cock, the meaning was more than clear. He could only hope that made him something to be cherished, not something to be broken.
Now his mentor’s hands are gentle as they guide his face into his shoulder. “There, now,” he murmurs. “Let it out, if you must.” His chest dips under Edgeworth’s cheek as he breathes out a sigh. “Perhaps I should apologize. I’ve been negligent, thinking you could do this on your own. You still need me to take control, don’t you?”
Edgeworth almost sobs. “Yes, sir.”
“Tell me.”
“I need you to rid me of my doubts. Please...“ His breath catches in his throat, and for a moment, he thinks the words won’t come. “Make me yours again.”
“It will hurt,” von Karma cautions.
“That’s fine.”
“Very well. If it’s what you want, I shall burn myself into you like a brand.”
Edgeworth moans at the brief, flickering thought of a VK seared into his flesh, on his hip, perhaps, where the bruises from his mentor’s fingertips will be, or on his ass or thigh. Somewhere intimate, so anyone who saw it would know how completely he is owned.
Fingers slide into his open mouth. “Get them wet.”
Edgeworth obeys, pulling them down as far as they’ll go. He wants to be choked. He wants to gag. He wants his mouth roughly fucked, and for now, this is the closest he’s going to get. So he makes the most of what he’s been given, moving his head like he’s taking a cock, licking and sucking and hollowing his cheeks. As he applies his tongue, everything falls away. He feels light and numb, the jangling of his thoughts quieting. He wants to sink into this feeling and never surface, down and down and down where no light can reach. He moans around his mentor’s hand, his hips working, his cock seeking friction. Von Karma ignores it, stripping him out of the remainder of his clothes. Layers peel back, jacket, vest, shirt, until he’s standing there in just his shoes and socks with his pants around his ankles.
He’s guided down with a hand on the back of his neck, bent at the waist and laid out like an offering. His breath mists the surface of his desk as he sighs. It’s so good to be put in his place, the ability to make the wrong decision taken from him. Fingers work in his hair - that’s a good boy - stroking light and shivery down his spine. A gaze so heated he can feel it, intent on his ass. His mentor handles him with practiced ease, spreading his cheeks with one hand and probing at his hole with the other. One spit-wet fingertip pushes inside.
He cries out, already that far gone. Thank goodness this building’s walls are soundproofed.
“You really are a needy little thing. However could I have thought otherwise?”
Edgeworth can only moan. He feels himself give way, and oh, and yes. His mentor takes him apart as swiftly and tactically as a flimsy legal defense and leaves him unraveled, pliable, aching to be claimed.
“Are you ready for me?”
It doesn’t matter. His answer would be the same even if his mentor intended to take him dry. “Yes sir.”
Von Karma leans down over him, lips brushing the shell of his ear. “To think that, after all the trouble you’ve caused, I’ll still do this for you.” He gets into position, heavy against Edgeworth’s back. “Are you grateful, Miles?”
“Yes sir. Thank you, sir.”
Yes, this is good. This is where he belongs, beneath the man who made him, who shaped him from crude clay into something almost worthwhile. Without him, he would have nothing, certainly nothing to be proud of. That makes it his right to strip that pride away. His pride, his clothes, his dignity, his status as a human being. He was arrogant to think they were ever truly his. Arrogant, unforgivably arrogant, to see himself as anything more than an absence, a walking collection of debts that can never be repaid. It’s only fitting that he‘s reduced to this, a receptacle, a worthless, whimpering hole.
His mentor’s exclusive toy to fill and use as he sees fit.
Von Karma settles inside him, so deep he sees stars. It hurts, stretched like this, with only spit to make it easier. It’s so good, the burn when von Karma starts to move, the sweet sting when his mentor’s hips slap his ass as he thrusts.
It’s perfect. Perfect for him.
His mind whites out. He’s nothing but ache and full and need and his pulsing cock trapped against his stomach. Distantly, he can hear the sounds he’s making. The gasps and groans run together like strains of a half-familiar song. He feels like there’s something he’s forgetting. Something unnameable on the tip of his tongue, and he’s reaching, reaching. His one clear thought: he has been here forever.
“Miles.”
The sound of his name almost tips him over, and his voice breaks around a moan. Miles. Miles. He tightens, warm and shivering, welling, bright -
Something’s wrong. He’s empty. It hurts.
“Answer me, you stupid slut!”
He’s slow to respond. His voice comes out thick and slurred. “Sir?”
“I said, don’t come. You haven’t earned it.”
“Yes sir,” he breathes, “o-of course.” He doesn’t need to come, anyway. That isn’t what he’s for. He’s nothing but a hole, to be hit and hurt and jacked off into, and he should be well past overflowing, his mentor’s issue gushing down his legs, before he lets out so much as a drop from his own pathetic cock.
His mentor drives back in, and he’s whole again. He almost cries with relief. Or something like it. He’s cold. Suddenly aware of the sweat sticking to his skin, the stench of sex. Disgusting. He’s disgusting. He thinks he might be sick. He wants to grab hold of the lightness from before and wrap it around him like a blanket, but it’s just out of reach and he’s cramping up, shaking. He feels like a man wrenched out of a dream.
Von Karma grunts and grips him hard. His thrusts slow, then stop, and he rests, deep inside. Edgeworth imagines he can feel himself being filled. After several long moments, von Karma pulls back. His soft cock slips out, wetness spilling with it.
“Don’t get up. Spread yourself. Show me your hole.”
He doesn’t think twice. Reaching back, he grabs his ass and spreads it as wide as he can, lifting off the desk, going up on tiptoe to show himself off. He wants his mentor to see how well-fucked, how obedient, how useful he is. If he can prove that beyond a shadow of a doubt, it’ll be a thousand times more gratifying than simply getting off.
Click.
Edgeworth’s skin prickles. The sound comes again, an artificial rendering of a shutter snapping shut. Again. Again. His back starts to ache from holding position. Slow heat creeps over him, a dull flush of shame.
Footsteps come around the desk, and a shadow falls on him. “Look, Miles.”
He lifts his head, and a strobe flashes in his face.
When he blinks the spots out of his eyes, his own image swims in front of him, his flushed, dazed, tear-streaked face. His mouth is slack, his pupils wide and dark, not a shred of thought behind his eyes. Anyone who looked would be able to see how utterly wrecked he is.
“Look at yourself.”
Him from above, like a corpse awaiting a chalk outline. Hands splayed on either side of his head and hair in disarray. Him from behind. The mess between his legs. A long shot of the whole room: the familiar furniture of his office, his usually pristine suit pants pooled on the floor, long, pale thighs and a throughly reddened ass.
It couldn’t be more obvious. He doesn’t belong here.
The only other thing that isn’t where it should be is his nameplate, moved to a place of prominence and angled so it can be clearly read, alongside his sloppy, gaping hole.
Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth.