An Eclipse Hidden (just under your skin)

It’s been months. Several excruciating months of far too many people trying to persuade him into at least visiting one of those shady, filthy, ill-advised places called ‘gay bars’. ‘I know you’ll never ever get over “that man”’, Kay had said on that fateful day when everything began, ‘but go there, make connections. Maybe even some new friendships! Get to know your people.’

Ultimately, the last push was by his sister. Friendly as ever, she convinced him with her characteristic charm. Faced with Franziska’s genuine however rude words, Miles begrudgingly agreed to attend an establishment of the sort – under the condition the choice would be his. Those reasons explain why he now finds himself in front of the Fae’s Eye, a self-declared ‘queer bar’, though whatever difference the title holds from the old, simple ‘gay bar’ is unknown to him.

A plaque with the business’s name sticks out from above a double door, the only sign the sketchy stairwell actually leads somewhere. A few vases with varied assortments of flowers rest around the door, and Miles crouches to take a fallen purple petal between his fingers. Briefly, he contemplates just turning around and returning home, so the only foreseeable interaction for the night would be between his face and a pillow. The idea is abandoned on the cold pavement alongside the bloom. A promise was made, and he is not one to go back on his word, no matter how undesirable the commitment.

After a steadying breath smelling of dust and smoke, Miles takes the first step. He tries not to clutch the rails too hard through the dim yellow lights that are just bright enough for minimum visibility of the stairs. He might wake up tomorrow in a bathtub full of ice with a new scar on his abdomen.

The further up, the more intense the lights become, though never blinding. In no time at all he is at a door, surprised at the sudden wide space unfurling from this tiny corridor, nearly overwhelmed by the music and chittering after such eerie, anticipatory silence. It’s almost surreal that a naked, dark stairwell – complete with bare cemented walls and a distinct smell of mold – could lead to such a place. Consider his expectations subverted.

An amenable jazz croons in the background. Several wooden booths adorn the walls, alongside stray tables littered throughout the remaining floor. An empty stage tucked in a corner suggests live shows may sometimes take place. Best of all: there are nowhere in his sight the semi-naked, lascivious ruffians Miles envisioned as staples of every gay bar. Not that there is anything wrong with it, of course, provided it’s an adult-only, private location. But it would be a lie to say it’s the kind of environment he enjoys.

Well, in all honesty, that isn’t a certainty, per se. It might just be lingering prejudice from his Von Karma days that he still holds over himself. It’s entirely within the realms of possibility that these notions are inherited rather than built over any solid evidence – he has never frequented one to know for sure, in the end.

Is that a can of worms to be opened today? Absolutely not.

He’s already here, and for now that has to be enough.

Fortunately that is a debacle he can shove to the back of his mind and forget about for the time being, as this, right here, is a match to any other place he would visit on the regular. Miles unsticks himself from his spot at the entrance and dodges the waiters until a cozy booth in a corner to hole himself in. It’s comfortable, more so than many five-star restaurants he has been to. Comfortable upholstery is an opposite to the usual generic synthetic leather from the common bistro – soft and plushy, black and patterned with colorful flowery plants worthy of antique furniture.

A few seconds after he's stationed and comfortable, a waiter summons herself. A red-headed young woman, not older than her late 20s, who quickly fixes her glasses and addresses him in a thick French accent.

“Goodnight. Can I help you with anything?”

Miles notes the peculiar lack of a ‘Sir’ tacked post greeting, but doesn’t question. Instead, he gives the menu a fast once over, not having perused it but a tad embarrassed at the prospect of sending the waiter away, and ends up ordering the first thing that catches his eye; the simple, old, ever-reliable cup of gin.

Not five minutes later, a full glass slides into sight. Miles thanks her, answered with a small smile before she slips off to another waiting table.

His turbid reflection stares at him. He brings the glass to his lips, indulging the herbal flavor as his shoulders untense at the pleasant taste and even more pleasant mood. This is… nice, despite his earlier misgivings. The single thing he doesn’t favor is the absence of windows, although that is understandable – despite times changing and people’s opinions morphing alike, that this community may desire privacy and anonymity is perfectly rational. And it doesn’t affect him that much, since he can only seem to focus on picturing a certain blue-suited man by his side, anyway.

Phoenix would love this place, Miles is sure of it. The atmosphere is as warm as his embrace surely is, with soft lighting rendering everything gold and the crooning words of a singer he can't recognize emanating from hidden speakers. Phoenix would fit in here as the last piece of a puzzle.

The impossible and impossibly desirable hypotheticals refuse to leave him. Miles is not a man of daydreams, ludicrosities and the likes – far too often he is accused of being too much of the contrary – but at times as now he finds it’s stronger than him. So he thinks. He allows himself to imagine what it would be like, to be able to share this moment with that man, lean over the table and give him a quick peck on the lips, chat over innocuous things with the knowledge the conversation would extend all the way till bed. To shamelessly huddle into his warmth, body and soul.

Inside his mind echoes that bright, hearty laugh, sounding like the loveliest melody in the world. The rarest birds and the most finely-tuned instruments are so easily overshadowed, for neither of these can make Miles forget himself so fast, so deeply.

It’s odd; he can hear a much clearer tune than usual, its mellow tones not made fuzzy by the constraints of memory but powerful and reaching his core instead of radiating from it. When his eyes flutter open, Miles startles with such strength he is grateful the cup wasn’t in his hand rather than the steady and decidedly not trembling surface of the table.

There, in a booth almost directly across, sits the exact protagonist of his fantasies. His laugh, he realizes, wasn’t confined to his imagination. It carries over to the real world, as Phoenix chuckles at something one of his companions said.

Partially over the shock of Phoenix’s presence, Miles can spare some of his headspace to register other than it. Such as his appearance. He is… different.

Phoenix is wearing a dress, for starters.

A long, crimson split tube dress that could’ve been sewn directly on him for how perfectly it clings, glimmering like the stars.

Black satin gloves reach his mid-arms, appearing soft as his spiky hair. Stiletto boots that climb up until his thighs. Long teardrop earrings cascade parallel to his neck. Makeup, too; lipstick and eyeshadow, both in tones of wine, making his eyes appear razor-sharp. Eyeliner. Mascara?

Miles jumps to the opposite side of the booth and cranes his neck around the divider wall, trying to catch a curious peek. In this position, it’s easier to hide if Wright happens to look his way.

Phoenix is talking, yarning an inaudible tale to his friends, a small crowd as varied as the flowers lining the establishment’s entrance. Friends, whose faces Miles can’t for his life put a name on. A crease deepens between his eyebrows. Somehow, it never crossed his mind that Wright might harbour companionship outside the little family they had formed throughout the years. He was under the – wrongful, as it’s being displayed – impression his and Phoenix’s lives had become irreparably tangled, and a disturbance in one’s threads would inevitably alert the other.

The realization stings. It hurts, a bit, to think the attorney never spoke a word of this. Didn’t trust him enough to do so, even when Miles trusts him wholeheartedly and with everything in return.

Filthy liar, his deepest thoughts whisper. Past all that fervent denial, he knows it’s right. That is, in fact, a bold-faced lie. Miles wasn’t upfront with his preferences, after all.

He likes to award himself points for not straight up lying about it – if the matter ever came up, he’d choose the blunt route as is habit and speak honestly. But it never did, and regardless of many attempts at gaslighting himself into believing it isn’t fear that manifests at the idea of sharing that piece of him, he can’t claim to have made any considerable efforts to be forthright either.

If Miles is allowed to gloss over what he considers too private, then Phoenix is absolutely entitled to keeping this, as outlandish as it may seem, a secret. Wearing the sash of a good friend, he will simply step back and let Phoenix prioritize whatever makes him the most comfortable. If that means keeping him in the dark, then so be it. Thus, Miles ignores the bitterness – which, though loud, is weak and easy to silence – in favor of refocusing his attention on the man sitting not so far away.

Spying around the corner while absently sipping his drink, it’s easy to find Phoenix among it all. His outfit is as tacky as it’s eye-catching, sticking out in the easy environment as a spot of bright red overlapping in warm lights.

Phoenix is blinding, is the eventual thought he can never quite squash. His suit, his smile, the sparkle in his eyes; everything is like the sun itself shining on Miles’s face, even when they’re into the darkest hours of the night. But like this? Ah, like this, Phoenix is as beautiful as the moon. Shine subdued only so he can be seen and appreciated in full. In stark contrast to Daylight Phoenix that can barely be looked at without causing his eyes to water, this Nighttime Phoenix radiates a gentle glow inviting grey irises to willingly fall into the trap. To raptly observe him with the same mesmerism one would deign to watching the Northern Lights.

Miles sighs. Something crosses his mind, about Apollo 13 and the mere chance of seeing the moon so closely.

One of the people at the table, a blonde girl sitting next to Wright, throws their spectator a sidelong look. The furrow between her brows betrays uneasiness, and he abruptly realizes his relentless staring has been perduring for a socially unacceptable amount of time. To his horror, she pokes Wright once and whispers in his ear.

Miles’s neck pops a painful noise when he jolts back into hiding. The now real, terrifying notion that his cover has been blown and Phoenix, beyond just made aware of his presence, might also come give him a piece of his mind throws him into a panic.

When the world comes back into focus and he doesn’t hear the tell-tale clacking of heels approaching, Miles scurries away.

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It’s been over twelve hours and countless attempts at distracting himself with even the most menial of activities. Yet, mismatched eyes framed by burgundy haunt him everywhere he goes.

Whispers noting the prosecutor’s odd anxiousness trail behind him, their enunciators taking his uncharacteristically frazzled appearance as indicative he is far too distressed by this mysterious affliction to properly hear them. Common mistake – he is excruciatingly alert, to anything and everything. And not without reason.

When he woke up by the morning after a feeble five hours of peaceful, uninterrupted sleep, the illusion of tranquility was soon broken by a couple of text messages from a certain defense attorney sitting in his inbox, like a viper coiled and waiting to strike. Miles opened them with a nervous thrumming under his skin, fearing that he had been found out and unimaginable consequences were coming his way. Subconsciously, he prepared himself for every scenario, from an amicable paragraph informing Phoenix would like to cut contact to being berated by an irascious version of his dear friend.

Mercifully – and as embarrassing as it is, he quite literally collapsed back into bed from relief –, it was but a simple request of meeting up to bestow him with access to some confidential files. So, here is Edgeworth, on a small square, anticipating that man’s arrival with fear and delight squirming between his rips.

Seeing Phoenix is delightful, always. How could it not be? Now, however, he finds himself scared, too.

Scared because he knows. He knows he won’t be able to meet his eyes without seeing the droop so slight that, weren’t it for the makeup doing such a wonderful job emphasizing it, he wouldn’t even have realized was there. He knows he won’t be able to look at him without roaming over those curves that the opportunistic dress took such advantage of. He knows that everything he’ll be able to see from now on is an eclipse. And he is afraid of committing a gross Freudian slip and letting slip out information of the wrong star.

What would happen, if they happened to pass by a clothing store and he absently motioned to a dress on display, saying ‘that would look lovely on you’? If he stared too much, and when inquired, rather than the usual excuse, answered with a comment of ‘you should wear lipstick more often’? If he accidentally voiced a mumbled question of ‘how much taller are you in those heels?’

Miles doesn’t know, can’t predict, will not find out how Wright would react until he embarrassingly trips over his own tongue and discovers in the worst manner.

It is impressive, how a single night was enough to ruin the efforts of an entire decade. All the hard work put into learning to put reins on his thoughts and steer them towards other directions – squandered, thrown into the incinerator because of a cheesy dress and a bit of makeup.

“Edgeworth!” A familiar voice calls, and he whirls around with his eyes ringed by white, wide as they are. The attorney halts; his grin dims and his hand, lifted in greeting, slowly comes down.

“Edgeworth?” He repeats, concerned, prompting Miles to try and get his facial features under control.

“Yes, Wright?”

He hopes the sentence doesn’t ring as shaky as it sounded to him. If it does, Wright doesn’t show any signs it was noticed.

“You looked really spooked just now. Everything okay? Did I-” He looks down, fiddling with his tie. “Did I fuck up the knot again? I swear I tried to make it just like you taught me to.”

“Both you and I are perfectly fine. I simply didn't expect your arrival to happen in time, for once,” Miles waves his moment of weakness away. “As for the case, you mentioned certain files you wanted access to, correct?”

A sheepish expression takes over Wright’s face for a few moments, undoubtedly recalling the many occasions in which his lateness was inexcusable. “Yeah, my client’s son was involved in a crime some time back and I think reading that case might make some sense of the chaos happening now.” Wright offers that tiny synthesis before launching into insane blabbering about an old lady, her teenage son, his obese cat and a frying spatula. The prosecutor soon tunes out his rambling to instead focus on… other, less professional things.

Like how his lips are so full. And still slightly reddened, presumably from last night’s lipstick. 

When he resurfaces, Wright is waving a hand in his face.

“-Edgeworth? Hey, you with me?”

“Hm? Yes, Wright. Of course I am, or did I turn invisible?”

It does not have its intended diverting effect. Wright gives him an odd look, strangely calculating, analyzing with the care he would delegate to a piece of evidence. It vanishes in a matter of milliseconds when a grin stretches his features.

“Ha! It’s always amusing to see Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth try to prove to the world he’s capable of humor,” He teases. Miles feels himself relax, letting escape an amused huff.

“I am not a monolith, as you’re aware,” He turns to follow the path for the precinct with Wright in tow.

“Could’ve fooled me. You’re so stiff sometimes I think someone managed to animate a statue.”

“That’s the kind of hypothesis born from your fertile imagination you should save for your trials. God knows one of these days you’ll find a client framed by an inanimate object brought to life.”

Wright rewards him with a warm chuckle. The rest of the day flies by without any more flukes, the tight leash constant on his consciousness successful in impeding any wayward, unruly thought from running rampant during his entire stay with Wright. That does not stop him from lying awake at night after dreaming of wine marks marring unblemished porcelain.

It’s been two weeks flat since Edgeworth visited the Fae’s Eye. Accordingly, it’s been two weeks flat since he’s visited by heterochromatic eyes on a nightly basis.

In full honesty, past the first couple days after the fact – those were torture, truly –, it isn't all too horrible. Rarely does he remember his dreams when they’re not tormenting nightmares, so these more pleasant ones’ sole effect is causing him to wake up feeling warm and with this vague satisfaction, which is not much of a bother. Most importantly: his relationship with Phoenix, the first and foremost worrying matter, has not been damaged in any way. Rather, if anything, it’s been strengthened. Certain behaviors and word choices that rang as random or cryptic can be explained by these secretive activities; thus, with this added understanding, their connection is as strong as it’s ever been.

Maybe, it stoked the fire of his affections, too.

On a whim, when an astonishing nine at night sees him sign the last warrant, he decides to wrap up and pay the bar a return visit. Military rigor goes into the habitual routine; each file slides into its assigned place in two minutes forty six seconds; one exact minute more to hand the remaining ones to his secretary and bid her goodbye; another five to climb down the twelve sets of stairs. The flow ebbs as always, up until a sharp left turn half a mile early.

There goes his red sports car through what traffic lingers at this hour, for about half an hour till it reaches a more secluded street where Miles can speed to his heart’s content – and the law’s, of course. A quarter hour later sees him stationed in front of those double doors, in much the same spot as a couple weeks ago. Tonight, though, the wariness and gnawing mistrust have been replaced by tranquility. Of his worries, just the possibility he might stumble upon his friend once again.

Or, there is something else. The faint but sour aftertaste insisting that this is an egregious breach of privacy.

Though, he can’t seem to stop, nor can he see himself stopping anytime soon. Furthermore, all this guilt must be misplaced, residual from past transgressions since his subconscious deems any remission irrelevant and every circumstance in which he has hurt Phoenix sticks to his skin like soot.

I am not here for him, in any case, he tells himself. It’s merely an interesting coincidence that the gay bar I happen to favor is frequented by that man.

Miles takes a deep breath and climbs up the stairs. Yellow entryway lights seem to be a Thursday attribute; when he passed by on other days, it varied in color. He should come by on a Saturday, when the purplish blue would be perfect for Phoenix.

Without nerves clogging his system, he can somewhat appreciate the stairwell that had activated so many alarms. Dull, empty walls act as somewhat of a portal, erasing the cold world outside and easing the customer into a dimension of respite. Soon, Miles emerges into the bar itself, glancing around. With his target nowhere in sight, he lodges himself in the same corner booth as last week, a motion he foresees will become habit in no time at all. The waitress approaches and again he orders without perusing the menu, although now intentionally. Both the woman and liquor are the same last time, and the glint in her eyes betrays recognition, though, to his relief, that’s left unaddressed.

While sipping in peace, his wandering thoughts are interrupted by a familiar voice. Were he a dog, his ears would be perked upright at the sound, neck bending around the wall as his pupils flit about as a dizzy fly, seeking a certain perch. There, in what he’s reasonably certain must be their usual booth, settles the group; his interested gaze with it. Phoenix is, of course, the center. He couldn’t be anything else – not when he sticks out so much, at least in Miles’s eyes.

Today, it seems he’s forgone any kind of makeup. Teardrop earrings have been switched by simple flower studs shining in gold, and his nails are painted in blue, a few shades darker than what is customary for him – it’s obvious the loud buffoon would choose almost the same garish color as that of his suit. A tasteful white blouse hides his body, contrary to the previous dress which left no room for imagination. Also in opposition to the ankle-length garb, a blue knife-pleated skirt printed with sunflowers reaches a couple inches above his knee. Stockings and ballet flats finish the look.

Hm. It seems he has surprisingly good taste when he wants to. Miles never thought anything chosen by Phoenix without his input would ever earn his stamp of approval, but it appears that he was wrong. In this attire, with the addition of a blinding smile and constant gesturing, he’s… cute, is the best word – even if the adjective lacks propriety –, as opposed to his prior outfit, that tended more towards refined and… promiscuous, if Miles allows himself to think of his dearest friend in such terms.

He goes for another sip. His brows furrow when no flavor blooms in his tongue. The glass is brought down, revealing there’s not a single trace left of his gin. So he signals a waiter and orders another – which is maybe not the best idea, as he throws a wary look at the glass’ size, but it shouldn’t be anything he wouldn’t be able to handle.

A full cup replaces the empty one and he immediately takes to sipping again. For a brief moment, he lets his eyes slip closed and his imagination run free. What if he wasn’t here, hiding behind a wall thin as cardboard paper? What if he was by Phoenix’s side, surrounded by Phoenix’s friends, in that lively booth no more than a few meters away?

The more dramatic side of him longs, yearns for that. Permission to sink into Phoenix's arms, have Phoenix sink in his own. Is his skin velvety or rough? Is his hair soft like plumes or made stiff by gel? Do his irises spark even more from up close? Does he cuddle in his sleep? How would the bumpy scar on his lower lip feel against Miles’s?

Miles is sure that, whatever the answers, he would already be grateful for the mere opportunity to even find out in the first place.

At these – these insane, utterly enthralling concepts, a tidal wave of warmth engulfs him, drags him under, making his limbs heavy and every nerve tingle with a pleasant shudder. He scoffs; is he this touch-starved? In such a profound, irreparable way that those simple, g-rated thoughts could elicit such reaction?

The steady flow of gin stops. Miles asks for another, distracted, head light and fluttery. He daresay it’s been a while since relaxation came so easily. The change is done once more, and once more he’s left to his whatever his fantasies conjure. Despite them being lovely, so warm Miles struggles to leave their hazy worlds, it doesn’t stop the various scenarios from sliding through and out of his consciousness like butter, leaving him unable to hold onto any thought for long. The one constant is the simplest one, where he is there, by Phoenix’s side, no matter how or when.

During his next order, things go a little differently. He doesn't know if it’s the liquid courage, the opportunity to act on his desires regardless of distance or Franziska’s words resonating inside his brain even weeks after, but as the waitress makes the delivery he addresses her.

“Ma’am,” He slurs, voice heavy with alcohol. His tolerance has never been very high, has it? Franziska always teases him for being a notorious lightweight. “Can I- Am I allowed to place an order for s’meone else?”

“Oh, you mean, to be delivered? Absolutely, but in the case the person refuses we do not offer reimbursements.”

“That’s fine, ‘nd I would prefer for it to be anonymous, if that wouldn’t be a problem.” Miles brushes it off. Even if he’s finicky with direct offers from other people, God knows he would never refuse some free restaurant food. “I would like to order a- a-”

He should probably have put a little bit of thought into it beforehand, instead of stuttering through like a child.

“A Black Russian for Phoenix.”

A corner of her lips twitch up in an attempt at restraining a small smile. She scribbles on her notepad.

“I’m sorry, but I’ll need you to describe the person for me.”

Miles points to the target booth, none too discreetly.

“He has this quite buffoonish yet strangely adorable spiky hair and’s wearing a tasteful skirt.”

She lets out an amused huff, and the prosecutor isn’t sure if ‘adorable’ is a word that should be used out loud for referring to anything Phoenix-related in general, but it’s too late to retract the statement as a great idea forms. Before the waitress can slip out of earshot, a call of ‘wait’ beckons her return. Any sense of embarrassment lost somewhere after the third drink, he asks if it would be alright to borrow a piece of the notepad and write a message to go along with the drink.

Past the momentary surprise, she answers with a yes, of course, while tearing a piece of paper and handing it with a pen. He snatches both and writes a quick message, staring with an intense glare that would lead a common observer to think the paper has offended to the ninth generation of his family. What he’s writing could not be guessed by anyone without intimate knowledge of his life.

Grateful, he hands it all back and watches her retreat. Then, realization dawns that Phoenix might be able to recognize his handwriting. Hindering a full-blown panic attack is the hope drunkenness has rendered the words too sloppy to be identifiable as his.

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“-So, Mac, you were telling us about your new boyfriend?”

Phoenix is pretty sure there are cherries less red than the hue Mac’s face attains. From the corner of their eyes, they catch Sheri coming towards their booth with a tray in hand.

They straighten in their seat as she reaches the table and, with an exaggerated flourish, sets down the glass. The supposedly ceaseless chatter around ceases when everyone notices the translucent brown concoction. No one ordered this. What could this unasked drink possibly mean?

Sheri smiles that mischievous smirk of her, tapping the vertex of her glasses’ cat-eyed rims.

“Phoenix, this drink was bought for you by an anonymous customer,” His lips quirk up as an embarrassed flush adorns his face, only causing the woman’s grin to grow. “There is also a note.”

Prompted, Phoenix retrieves the piece of paper face down on the platter, bringing it close to their face, as their friends crowd over each other in trying to earn a glimpse of the mysterious message.

‘You’re beautiful’, the words read, scrawled in shabby calligraphy that signals whoever the sender is either has terrible handwriting or is at the very least tipsy. ‘As gorgeous as a summer sunset’.

Phoenix can’t help but blush. They’ve received a few compliments here and there, but this gracious, from a faceless person and accompanied by a treat – one of his favorites, how did they know what to pick? – is a puzzling first. In a weird way, the mystery adds to the swell of a growing bubble behind his ribs.

“Hey! Lemme see!” Lindsey reaches for the scrap and Phoenix allows it to be pulled from his hands. The table huddles together, oohing and aahing over the note, and Sheri, with a smile on her face, begins to walk away. Phoenix stops her with a gentle hand to her arm and an intensifying redness.

“Can I answer?” They ask, averting their eyes and atypically coy.

Her grin widens. Phoenix quickly scribbles their message, praying that this enigmatic person won’t find it too cringy. With a quick nod, the waitress slides into the buzzing of her coworkers and out of sight.

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Miles’s pulse quickens as the woman comes closer, the clacking of her heels acting as percussion for the unhealthy flipping of his heart. He saw it all. The delicious red tone Phoenix’s face took – thanks to that godforsaken V-neck he now knows the attorney flushes all the way down to his chest –, his nosy friends flocking like moths to a flame around the note, crowding in clear interest, the attorney penning what seemed a couple short sentences and handing it to their newly-crowned messenger.

Half of him is swirling dread, the other sparkling excitement. Both, of course, under the hegemony of pure, stress-addled anticipation. What in this green Earth could his friend have written? Miles didn’t think there was any room for an answer in his simple and direct letter.

The waitress doesn’t do much more than beam and wait after slipping the paper on the table, with its words kissing wood. Miles stares at its white, slightly cream color, gathering his nerves before ripping the note away as one would a band-aid from an injury.

‘Thank you’, the handwriting that is unmistakably Wright’s says. ‘Why don’t you come say it to me personally?’.

And a winking face.

Miles can’t frankly say he’s well versed on the subject – his obliviousness is a constant source of teasing –, but this? Any moron with half a brain, intoxicated or not, would know this is flirting.

He feels his face heat up to a shade rivaling a tomato. Awkward moments fly by where he doesn’t quite know what to do. Faced with his inaction, the waitress leaves. Several more minutes pass with him in a state of paralysis. Miles has been flirted with a myriad of times, all of which he was either dense enough any interest was lost or more than happy to reject his pretender. He, however, has never been flirted with by the one person he can claim to have captured his affections. While said person is, bizarrely, unaware of his identity. He has not a shred of an idea what should be the proper course of action for this situation he managed to stick himself in.

Caught in what feels like a trap and with his higher executive functions impaired, Miles stuffs the note in his wallet and reverts to his default defense mechanism: he runs.

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The following morning sees him squinting at lights, nursing a nasty hangover and trying to stop his brain from pounding out of his skull, when the Steel Samurai tone batters at his head. Phoenix’s ear-to-ear smile lights up on the screen.

“What is it, Wright?” There’s no effort put into hiding the annoyance in his voice, and Phoenix, attuned to Miles as he always is, has no trouble picking up on it.

“Uh oh, seems like I caught you in a bad time.”

His skull-splitting migraine throbs an agreement.

“Just state your business and I’ll return to you once I’m in a more proper condition.”

Strangely, silence meets him from the other end of the line.

“...Y’know what? Forget it.”

“What-”

The click cuts him short. Rude. But also, strange. The attorney isn’t one for giving up halfway; he either overthinks himself to death or goes through without thinking twice. It’s eight or eighty when he’s involved, and that he went all the way to calling Miles – unusual, in virtue of his irrational contempt for virtual communication – only to backtrack without further explanation is… Odd.

Oh, well. It isn’t like Miles can do anything about it.

His headache thankfully subsides as the day progresses, with the aid of time and a hefty intake of water. When he’s finished signing the last necessary file for Blackquill’s search warrant – mercifully, that’s the only participation he will need to have in the mess this specific case turned out to be. God knows he doesn’t need to deal with a lion gone rogue on top of everything else – his phone buzzes and the current hour sparkles in white, bold numbers.

Lunch break; and, instantly at the suggestion of an hour and a half of empty schedule, an idea – a bad idea – forms. A bit of a fight with himself ensues; there’s something about spending money on it that’s too final, too real. But he eventually abides. Twenty minutes later, he’s lost amid a crowd of excitable children in a stationery shop. Before entering, he thought he’d seen a blue dash leaving, but by the time he tried to find it it’d already disappeared in the midday throng.

Nevertheless, he stalks further inside. The diminishing hangover comes back with a vengeance, flaring up in protest against the chaos of voices and colors inside. It’s too late to turn around and leave, however; he has his mind made up.

Grumbling under his breath, he crosses the hoards of begging kids and uncomfortable teenagers – and would you look at that! He only makes a child cry once! His therapist would be proud – in search of the card aisle. After torturous minutes, he discovers it inconspicuously tucked in a corner with a not-so-varied assortment of products – makes sense, the closest holiday still has some time to wait.

A brief scan doesn’t reveal anything of interest. There are many packages displaying snowmen and reindeers, and other indications they’re leftovers from past Christmas. A few with bunnies dedicated to Easter, and the vast majority proudly printed with clipart of hearts and cheesy lines. While they would technically fit his circumstances, his nose wrinkles at the thought of dedicating to Phoenix something so lacking in class, especially when he proved he’s capable of it.

The sudden bout of determination starts to fizzle out. It’s as he’s turning to leave that his eyes catch on a flash of solid, unadorned red: a notepad obscured between an ugly bunny that was probably a misused internet mascot and what might be a moose holding a rose between its teeth. Gingerly, he pulls it out, fearing the precarious structure would fall. Upon close inspection, he finds it to be some sort of cardbook. For writing invitations, perhaps?

Each page is strong and malleable paper, with a few rows of guidelines. They stick to a spine and can be torn on the spot without much struggle. It has the perfect size for fitting neatly into his wallet while not being so tiny as to make writing troublesome. As a finishing touch, it’s of a becoming shade of red with golden details in the silhouettes of vines snaking on the edges.

Miles will be sure to put it to good use.

Two weeks later, it’s a few hours into another Thursday night. It’s redundant to say where Miles finds himself at.

Despite this only being his third time here, the yellow lights and soft jazz have begun to feel somewhat like home. A place where Chief Prosecutor Edgeworth’s skin can be shed. He’s aware that, following this, he’ll begin to be subject of office gossip; even some of those closer to him have this deeply faulty impression that he is some kind of paragon of Justice, some legal machine. When his bimonthly Thursday night escapades begin to form a recognizable pattern, rumors are bound to spread.

Part of him shudders in trepidation. What of his reputation? He is Chief Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, former Demon Prosecutor; something that exists in function of the truth and the truth only. Yet, he finds himself mostly mildly annoyed at the disrespect for his privacy – besides, this doesn’t represent any threat to his work or status that a well-placed scowl can’t solve. Is it so wrong of him to want to enjoy what Los Angeles has to offer, for once?

It’s with that stance that he leaves the dim environment and emerges inside the cozy bar, heading to his customary booth. For the third time, the redheaded waitress comes to take his order. ‘Sheri’, he, now in a proper headspace, can read on her nametag. She chuckles at Miles’s request for a smaller option of his gin. His fingers drum on the mahogany to the rhythm of the music, throat humming along the vocals, only stopping to thank Sheri when she arrives and delivers. That voice heard just a couple hours ago at the conclusion of their trial makes its way into his ears.

Predictably, Phoenix and his ragtag group sit in the exact same spot. The blonde girl has a shy new someone to chaperone; a young man with similar features and an eye-catching deep red hair.

Miles hadn’t paid much thought to the crowd apart from his friend. On his first visit, he was too confused; the second, far too drunk. It’s a total of eight people; apart from Phoenix and the aforementioned two: an older man with a long beard, whom Miles can hazard a guess is the oldest in the group, defense attorney in second; a young girl wearing the heaviest make-up he has ever seen, eerily doll-like; an androgynous person who seems like someone out of Trucy’s knitting group; a man in all leather with, ludicrously, various stylized fish embroidered; a woman wearing just as many layers of make-up, though hers is aggressive, and appears furious to a frightening degree.

Overall, they make for an eccentric group, disorganized but harmonious and nigh surreal. The air hangs light over the small crowd in this intoxicating cloud that Miles can only wish he could also breathe. And, inevitably, as if he’s but a mere magnet and Phoenix is his own, personal North Pole, his attention veers to him again.

What hooks Miles in this time is the heavier pencil outlining mismatched eyes. That, matched with eyeshadow of the same color and all-black attire, give off the impression of a much paler skin. The band graphic T-shirt and bottom-filled jacket are fairly standard. Nice, yes, but altogether nothing outstanding, albeit for the myriad of signal samurai memorabilia glued, sewn, and otherwise attached, which Miles can appreciate. That, in his defense, is a reasonable excuse for how his eyeballs threaten to pop when the attorney rises to change seats and there is a pleated miniskirt. Former half of the word being the most relevant.

Complemented by fishnets and combat boots, that outfit looks… a bit dangerous. Like Phoenix could beat him up on the backalley, unsatisfied with rendering just his brain defective.

It’s far too difficult to wrench his gaze away. Clearing off the thoughts his rationale rejects, he focuses on the warped, faint reflection looking back at him from the cup. He calls for unappealing images, hoping they’d bury the… doubtlessly more appealing ones. Marvin Grossberg. Incompetent detectives. The Steel Samurai’s terrible spin-off. Witnesses. Oldbag.

In spite of his efforts, Miles can't resist the temptation of stealing one more glance. And if those are the results of constant biking… then maybe Miles agrees when Phoenix says it’d be a waste to get a car. Crackling, a shudder crosses his spine, his signal to bury such perilous ideas. It seems the group has at last achieved a comfortable configuration and no one is standing any time soon. It's as good a moment as ever to start the night.

The menu – a tasteful small book in card paper that had earned the prosecutor’s approval; an establishment that didn’t bow down to the irritating qr code digital options is deserving of his respect – features an immense and frankly impressive list. Priority seems to be sweet pastries, but the full course meals are no laughable matter either. That’s valid, too, to their selection of entries.

He sneaks a glance aside. No worker has been there, so it’s reasonable to assume no order has been made. Miles will do the honors. He flags a waiter, and when she turns – that's Sheri again. She slides towards him in fluid movements, looking like the cat who got the canary.

“Goodnight. How can I help you today?”

The ‘today’ stretches with a teasing lilt. Miles chooses to ignore his doubtless reddening and redirects himself to the menu without providing an answer.

“I’d like… to put an anonymous order again,” The flush lingers. Strengthens, even. “For Phoenix.” Take him to the kitchen at once. God knows he feels warmer than an oven. “Again.” He wonders whether he is going to be able to hear the response due to how high his shoulders have hiked.

“That could certainly be arranged,” She jots down something on her notepad, nevermind that the order hasn’t even been made. “What would it be?”

With that, Miles acquires undeniable evidence Phoenix is a regular. Sheri wouldn’t omit a request for a physical description otherwise.

“Rustic potatoes. A medium serving, please.” Simple, but something Phoenix enjoys – maybe in virtue of its simplicity. Absently, his fingers resume following the song. His eyes slip to them, then to the wood, sliding, sluggish, to his slacks, to his pocket.

A sigh, and his wallet is swiftly opened for a small bundle of pages to be retrieved. He produces a pen from the same pocket and rips out a page.

He taps the pen against his chin once, twice, and writes.

The waiter, who – instead of dismissing herself, and Miles almost wants to scold her for the lack of professionalism – was still standing nearby, takes the note. Her amused smile only grows.

All that’s left is to wait.

---------------------------------------

“Nickie.” Lindsey pokes them on the shoulder, with much more strength than necessary, and Phoenix is reminded of Athena. “Nickie.”

“What.” He says, unhappy. Mac is on one of his typical spiels, nonsensical yet incredibly entertaining, and they’d very much like to keep listening.

“There,” She leans closer to whisper in a conspiratorial tone, stretching her pointer. A complaint rests on the tip of his tongue until he notices Sheri making eye contact. The waitress approaches, and like that night two weeks ago that kept making rounds inside their head, a platter with an unasked order rests on her hand.

Their spine snaps ramrod straight. Lindsey directs them a mischievous look.

“Ooooooooh,” She does not bother to control her volume, and it ends up hoarding the entire group’s attention. Phoenix flushes. Why is everyone always so loud-mouthed? Edgeworth would say it’s my fault, he thinks, and while he would normally huff at the thought he’s currently too busy being embarrassed. “So our secret admirer is back?”

“Ooooooooh,” Mac parrots, and Phoenix feels distinctly betrayed. They cross their arms, throwing him a scowl.

“Mac E. Roehl,” The boy smiles in jest. Phoenix wrests the blush under control and smirks in return, opening his stance and splaying his hands in a gesture they are slow to realize is reminiscent of Edgeworth. “You joke, but on that Tuesday-”

He pales, suddenly gaunt, and begs him to top.

His pleas are cut in half when Sheri drops a portion of rustic potatoes alongside a tiny red paper in front of Phoenix. “Our secret admirer is back.” Lindsey repeats, now as an affirmation. The attorney sits, shock-still, for a long moment, before fishing out from his jacket a small cardbook. They snatch mystery-person’s note, holding it side by side with their newest purchase.

It’s the one other option in that stationary shop, the match to what he chose. While his pick is powder blue with golden flowers, the ‘secret admirer’s is red with vines.

Phoenix doesn’t believe in fate; they’ve been through far too much to fall for these cheap teleologies. But if this isn’t a signal from whatever higher power, they don’t know what is.

‘Goodnight’, a handwriting, now not drunk yet still oddly sloppy, starts. ‘It is my wish to issue an apology. I’m sorry for having left without notice ‘I hope this can earn your forgiveness’.

Mismatched irises travel to the entry, and they smile.

“So?” Sheri asks. They don’t need further words.

Sheri takes a scribbled blue page with her.

---------------------------------------

Phoenix smiled.

A smile that was small, shy, and the key to make the cogs of his heart turn faster.

His astonishment was mirrored on Miles’s face when he retrieved a cardbook from his jacket and compared it with Miles’s note. Sometimes, he likes to believe in fate, and this is an example of such circumstances.

The attorney penned a few words down and gave away the paper. Which was currently being brought to him by a jubilant Sheri. Soon, he has the card in his grasp, but the waitress breaks his spell before he can turn it around.

“I apologize, but as entertaining as this is, I can’t act as a messenger all the time.” Her words are apologetic, and the prosecutor feels a pang of disappointment even if that was expected – it was unreal to anticipate she’d disregard her work for his insane whims. Her smile, however, quirks up.

“Although,” She leans forward a tad, just enough to make him feel as though he’s being told a secret. “I could keep relaying the messages while doing my job.”

With that, she leaves him to the message.

‘I should apologize too’, Phoenix wrote. ‘I was overly forward for a first interaction that wasn’t even in person’.

‘Changing topics, would you be interested in meeting any time soon?’.

What could he answer, and what will be the accompanying treat? Sheri has made it quite clear, he can perpetuate this strange means of communication provided she has an order to deliver as excuse. He finds himself perusing the menu again; an entry has been sent already, so that is off the table. A full course meal and pastries can also be crossed; he doesn’t want to disturb their outing and it’s still too early for sweets. What’s left are drinks and portions. Rustic potatoes count both as entry and portion, so it too can be eliminated. A drink it is, then.

There are many options to choose from, but few if none of them speak of Phoenix. Wine was sworn off after his disbarment was over and done with, there’s this inexplicable and visceral hatred for whisky, a refusal to even acknowledge the existence of tequila, disgust is his reaction at the mere mention of gin and rum, jokes about diabetes are a staple every time he sees a bottle of cider and champagne is sacred for events or special occasions.

A Black Russian is the safe pick where Phoenix is concerned, but that choice has been exhausted. Any other vodka cocktails will feel like a blind guess – nevermind that that’s what he’s doing. There are a few sections left untouched: the liquors, kombuchas, absinthe cocktails, among little else.

Until a particular entry beckons him: Jaboticaba liqueur.

A flip of his stomach accompanies a memory resurfacing. He remembers with sudden clarity that a bottle of it was his first gift for Phoenix after DL-6 – after the man fought tooth and nail to guide him out and far away from the ledge, but, stubborn as a mule, wouldn’t accept payment. Although it’s just another hint to steer him towards Miles’s true identity, this sentimental, mellowed mess time has made the prosecutor into is unable to resist the draw of a symbolic offer.

That settled, his answer is the current matter. It’ll be a firm no, of course. But how can he word it in a manner that expresses his wish for things to stay as they are?

I like you but I don't want you to see me – too juvenile.

I’d prefer to remain anonymous – too present on case reports; this is not a witness statement.

You’d hate me if you saw me – while true, that will raise a thousand red flags.

In the end, Miles opts for a simple half-truth. One that grants him plausible deniability were anything to happen.

When Sheri appears again, he doesn’t even need to grab her attention; she meets his gaze and instantly knows what is to be done.

---------------------------------------

Sheri looks at him, and Phoenix is aware of what to expect.

As expected, she slides a glass of liqueur and another note in front of him.

“What is this?” Phoenix eyes the drink warily. It’s so dark his crisp, somewhat purplish reflection eyes him back.

“Jaboticaba liqueur. Our finest.”

“That’s,” They squint, at the beverage, at the waitress, at the beverage again. “Incredibly specific.”

Sheri doesn’t provide more than an insouciant shrug.

Accepting that’s everything he’ll get out of her, the attorney takes the paper between their fingers. ‘Unfortunately, I’m not fully comfortable appearing publicly’. Phoenix snorts. They remind him so much of Edgeworth it’s almost uncanny. ‘But I’d like to keep this means of communication, if you’d be willing’.

‘P.S.: You look dashing’.

Redness dusts their cheeks.

---------------------------------------

‘That’s alright! I understand if you’re not comfortable, and I’d also like to keep in touch!’.

A sigh charged with relief wheezes past his lips, which soon morph to sustain a smile. Phoenix is so understanding – one of his most endearing character traits. Then, the clock strikes eleven and his phone comes to life. A disappointed swipe on the screen is enough to retain the incessant buzzing, but not his annoyance. Of course the alarm clock had to go off precisely when he’s making some progress.

Whatever. He only has to wait two more weeks.

Only two weeks.

---------------------------------------

“Edgeworth.”

Wright rests his files on the table. He hasn’t been paying attention to them for at least the last half an hour, preferring to gaze out of the window with the wistful look of a maiden instead.

Miles won’t complain. Not when the sunbeams paint the attorney like a master of the craft.

“Yes?”

He hesitates for a moment, meeting Miles’s gaze then avoiding it just as quickly.

“Have you ever received anonymous messages?”

That’s it. That’s it. He’s been found out. Oh, may the Lord have mercy on his soul. The paper in his hands crumples. He couldn’t be more grateful Wright isn’t looking at him, or he would’ve immediately picked up that he’s affected. Don’t panic.

“I’m sure you know I did,” Discreetly, he tries to fix the creases, hoping the ones on his forehead are smoothed in tandem. “Considering the many false identities of Oldbag and my work as Chief Prosecutor handling the most varied assortment of criminals, anonymous messages regarding my person are not lacking.” A possibility occurs to him, transforming his fear into concern. “You’re not being threatened, are you?”

“No!” Wright instantly denies. “No, nothing like that. It’s… the very opposite, actually.”

A pretty shade of pink takes over his features, the same shy smile from a few nights before blossoming again. He takes a sudden interest in a random spot on the floor.

“I think someone likes me.”

Someone likes him.

Not Miles. Not Edgeworth. Someone.

And, by all appearances, as everything currently indicates, like there is a flashing neon arrow pointing directly at it, Phoenix likes someone too.

“I think someone likes me.”

Miles, in the process of fixing the imperfections he had created on the document, ends up irreparably ripping it.

“O-oh? You do?” The paper is burrowed under a pile of its siblings before Wright can catch a glimpse of the tear.

“Yeah, I’m – I’m getting these cute notes, and…” He trails off, and Miles is honestly too frightened to prompt a follow up.

Still, he decides to take a risk.

“Do you have any idea who this mysterious m-” No. Don’t say it, or Wright will notice you know something. You’ve fallen into too many patented Phoenix Wright traps throughout the years for this. “-Person might be?”

Silence reigns. Even the prosecutor’s thoughts, distraughtly turning in on themselves, scrambling to form a coherent excuse, cease their bumbling.

A beat. Two beats. Three beats.

“... No.” Wright admits at last, tone defeated albeit not hopeless. “I don’t know who they could be.”

A breath he didn’t notice had become lodged inside his chest is released. The brambles recede ever so slightly, and breathing comes more freely.

And they soon squeeze again with double the force when that familiar fire lights inside Wright’s eyes.

“But I will find out.” His pupils lock to the depths of Miles’s own, and for that quick, brief millisecond, the prosecutor is sure his friend knows all his secrets and shames, past, present and future.

Then, he relaxes, bashful stance once more taking over. “Sorry. That came out kinda menacing. I’m not going to stalk them or something, just do my best to get them comfortable enough to reveal themselves on their own.” He shifts in his seat, fidgeting with his hands, moving long fingers in rhythmic waves. “They… Seem really nice, y’know. I’d love to actually get to know ‘em.”

Wright has an indelible blush painted on his skin. It didn’t cease nor diminish for one second during this entire interaction.

He’s obviously smitten with whoever he thinks that someone is.

A dark and suffocating sludge rises within Miles.

Edgeworth stares at his suit jacket. Tonight, he gets to go out and wear the vest of someone again. Earn, or, in better words, steal some of those romantic affections that, until recently, he could only wish Phoenix would bestow upon him.

As someone.

Someone, who Phoenix is slowly but surely falling for. Whom, in the process of seducing his dearest friend, is causing the attorney to distance himself from Miles, to be closer to Miles.

Does that make any sense?

He jams his car door closed, and immediately winces. He runs his fingers over the handle as an apology. It is not fair of him to let frustration at his own mistakes damage the vehicle.

Is Miles losing any chance he could’ve had with Phoenix by making the man like another person who he isn’t aware is just Edgeworth?

Is Miles being exchanged for himself?

Is Miles jealous of himself?

He presses the pen too hard and a burgundy blotch forms on the paper. A curse escapes his lips upon realizing what he did. He’ll have to phone Gumshoe and demand new printouts.

Who does Phoenix like, to start with? He likes someone, yes, but someone is Edgeworth. Does it mean that, by proxy, he likes Edgeworth?

Who even is someone?

The logical statement would be: ‘Someone is Miles’. That is the first thing that comes to mind, the conclusion reaped from what appears to be a simple logic problem. But is it true?

He glares at Gumshoe when the detective presents to him the wrong forms. A yelp follows the bumbling man out of the Chief Prosecutor’s office after receiving a rightful scolding for this glaring inattention.

Can someone really be him if the people interacting with someone aren’t aware they are interacting with Edgeworth? Is he still him if his identity is hidden but his actions speak of his personality?

Phoenix likes someone, that much is clear. But he has never once shown interest in Edgeworth. Is that evidence pointing towards the verdict concluding Edgeworth and someone are different entities?

Would Phoenix like him too if he found out who is behind someone? Or would he hate him, for snatching from his reach the man he liked? Would Phoenix be disappointed to find out it’s Edgeworth behind the facade of charming, mysterious someone?

He neatly drops the last file over the sizable stack forming a tower to his side. On an unprecedented occasion, no other paper materializes on the smooth surface of the desk. For today, work is complete and done with.

In the end, this whole existential conundrum, over who is and who isn’t, what makes someone him and else, boils down to one, simple question:

Why does Phoenix like someone and not Edgeworth?

They are the same person, the same mind inhabiting the same body, the same emotions crawling beneath the same skin. So what does someone have that Miles doesn’t?

He doesn't register the weight of his foot above the accelerator and only tunes back to reality when no house can be seen in any of the four directions.

Is it because of his failures? Was Phoenix in love with him, and slowly fell out of it in proportion to the amount of Miles's flaws that was revealed, bit by painful bit, as he realized the prosecutor wasn’t worth his passion?

Was all his work, all his growth, all his maturing not sufficient to repent him in Phoenix’s eyes?

Did Phoenix’s love for him fizzle into nothingness not out of a case against his character or myriad of personality setbacks, but because of his many fiascoes? Because he hasn't been perfect?

He stabs a cube of champignon with far more force than necessary. This is torture, agony, excruciating misery. Why is he doing this to himself? Why does he insist on holding himself hostage to his own mishaps?

Is the fact Phoenix holds affections for any part of him not enough? Is he really this greedy? He told himself he’d be satisfied with the smallest crumbs, so why does he keep wanting more?

Flirty words that aren’t even intended directly for him aren’t what he wishes, longs, yearns for. He wants them whispered in his ear during a family dinner, while the attorney sits by his side with Trucy and Franziska and Maya across the table. He wants them said in the morning before the day commences, as a disguised promise of the endearing shenanigans to come. He wants them to be spoken, by Phoenix, to him, not this facsimile of himself that someone is.

Why isn’t anything ever enough?

---------------------------------------

Phoenix is anxious. In a good way, of course.

‘Secret Admirer’, as they’ve been unanimously dubbed by the group, appears to show up in intervals of two weeks, like a spring tide that bimonthly overturns his tiny camp and sends them spiraling into the comfort of the ocean. And those fifteen calendar boxes have been dutifully ticked with a pink glitter pen since they’ve last marked their presence.

It’s not like he keeps an updated file listing the dates or something – not that the thought never crossed their mind –; but… It’s nice. Having something, someone unpredictable to look forward to, a change in the flow of routine that does not involve lives on the line.

The attorney shifts, glancing around despite being aware that, even if the person is already nearby, they wouldn’t know – but naively hoping some sort of magic would make it obvious if their gazes happened to find each other: a romantic music suddenly playing, popping emoji hearts materializing, a pink fog lifting from between the floorboards, anything. By his side, Lindsey, as attuned to their emotions as ever, smiles and weakly elbows him, snapping them out of their own – not pink, unfortunately – haze.

“Excited for today’s gift?”

A hand goes to scratch behind their neck, a few sheepish chuckles escaping. Are they that easy to read?

“Yeah, like, easier than a children’s book.”

Oops. Seems like he said that out loud.

Blue-brown eyes run over the masses of patrons and workers in another brief scan, but Sheri is still occupied with other orders and no one but Lindsey appears to presently acknowledge him.

They seek any sign someone has an interest in him. A pair of irises looking back through the throng, a gesture done in their direction, Sheri juggling a plate to them. Nothing.

“Phoenix.” Connor calls, and the gravelly rumble captures their attention. “Do you remember that time my younger sisters came down to visit…?”

Phoenix does unfortunately recall, and it shows in the grimace that rapidly forms on their face. Thankfully, for the better or for worse, Mac, who was also present during the events, interjects.

Absorbed in the memory and attentive to Mac’s retelling – God knows someone needs to be there and correct any section he happens to over-exaggerate, which, the majority of times, ends up being the whole story –, the attorney barely notices the passage of time. The ticking of the clock only registers when Sheri appears in his peripheral vision.

They straighten, a smile gracing their features. Finally, Phoenix thinks. I’ve waited all day for this.

It immediately falls when Sheri, in return, flashes one which is charged with sorrowful sympathy instead of the usual tease.

Now, the waitress is closer, and it’s possible to discern the contents of the tray she holds – the precise order made previously by the group; nothing more, nothing less. And disappointment pinches at his heart.

Still, Phoenix does not allow themselves to lose any hope, and raptly watches the plates Sheri unloads on the table, eagerly seeking any sign of a mysterious order buried amongst it all – grin turning more and more strained, tinged with increasing disheartening, when every dish tastes of recognition instead of the enigma they were praying for.

A minute later, the tray is empty, in contrast with the table that’s chock-full. And not one of the items was an order placed by an anonymous third-party.

Phoenix wilts. Lindsey gives them an awkward pat on the shoulder. Mac opens his mouth and immediately closes it. Connor offers a perfunctory ‘They’ll probably come by later, it’s still early’, followed by Fehri nudging a crocheted mushroom plushie towards the attorney.

They stare at it, at the skillful crochet and intricate needlework, and pick it up. “Thanks, Fehri.”

The plush is carefully deposited in their lap while she shoots a thumbs up. It is at that moment that the sisters return from wherever they had disappeared to.

Both women glance at each other, at Phoenix, at each other again, before nodding, and Annabella marches forward, bulky tutu bouncing along her step. “I’m really sorry, Nick.” She squeezes his hand, and slides in the seat to their side. Arabella, still stuck to the same spot, nods, and even under the corpse-adjacent makeup, a bit of sympathy shines across.

He sighs. “Thanks, guys.” When they raise their head, all eyes are on them, every pair swirling with different flavors of the same concern. Phoenix smiles. “Let’s just wait and see how the night goes. I don’t wanna bring you all down because of a silly crush.”

A few hesitant mutters arise, conjoined to uncomfortable squirming from many. Connor, one of the few not superficially affected, prepares to speak some wise sentence that he seems to have an unending supply of – and never gets the opportunity, because Mac lets win the pesky habit of blurting out the first thing summoned by his mind when circumstances aren’t even that awkward.

Still, it’s a welcome distraction.

“So! I was talking to Ma the other day-” He begins, and the entire table groans in unison. “-And she told me that Maxwell, yeah, the guy that tried to steal her dog, he appeared again the other day…”

The story is entertaining, although doubtlessly untrue – a fisherman’s tale, Phoenix huffs internally –; and in true Mac fashion, it bleeds and melds into others regardless of how close or far apart they are related.

By the time he is finished, almost three hours have flown by, the flapping of wings so silent Phoenix didn’t even notice them passing. And, still, there is no note, no order, no teasing smile from Sheri or cute compliment or red paper.

No indication that someone wanted to see them again.

---------------------------------------

When Miles wakes up, he immediately feels like there’s something wrong.

Call it a premonition, a bad omen, a presage, whatever. It is not like he puts any faith in such mystical concepts – even the magatama, which he did not only see working but used himself, was target of alleged falseness for a stretch of time Maya groans at to this day.

Reassuring himself that augury and similar ideas die the moment they’re put under scrutiny, however, is not enough to wipe away the foreboding specter haunting him, turning his surroundings into a strange area wherein the air can coexist as both cold and stifling.

It follows him as, for once, he carefully drives under the speed limit. Continues tailing him while he makes an even bigger contour around the elevator than usual. Keeps on his heels when he asks for the security crew to be extra attentive today, specifically. Marches in tow to watch Miles check the turns of the stairwell before resuming walking. Feigns being locked outside the office for a fleeting moment only to seep inside from under the door and contaminate every surface it touches.

Edgeworth tries to ignore it. Believe him, he tries. He pulls out a vinyl of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 3 and plays it only halfway before swapping it for his limited edition disc of ‘Steel Samurai – The Magistrate’s Malady’ and playing it in a loop. He gives his secretary express orders to not let anyone in unless there’s an earthquake. He brews himself a cup of tea, and delicately cleans his glasses, and silences his phone’s notifications.

But, despite all these measures, he is still restless. His focus is frail and frequently broken by the smallest of sounds, the omen refusing to dispel.

Until, that is, the door to his office is thrown open. The prosecutor’s head snaps up, a glare notched on his face, prepared to bite off the head of whoever this is and of his secretary for ignoring the clear demands to not allow interruptions outside of a natural disaster.

And it is Wright.

Of course it is. That’s why he so easily managed to slip in; the man is an earthquake of his own right, a force of nature in its unstoppable chaotic strength. The scowl slides off as his friend turns the knob behind him and moves to plop himself over the office couch.

The prosecutor wordlessly watches his rival groan, then turn around so his head hangs off the backrest and groan again, and wriggle back down to bury his face on the upholstery and release one more long, suffering, muffled groan.

A few beats go by. Another groan.

A couple more seconds.

“Wright?” Miles finally asks, shattering the silence. “Is something wrong?”

An unintelligible mumble answers him.

“You can't expect me to hear you when you speak directly into my couch.”

The attorney groans again, but lifts his head. Their gazes meet, and Wright arranges himself in a sitting position. Mismatched eyes are directed downwards, and suddenly Miles can see the tired bags hanging from them in stark contrast with warm-colored skin.

“What happened?” Edgeworth inquires, worry making him set down his pen and swipe aside the files to offer the man his undivided attention.

Wright squeezes the plush sofa, twisting the fabric, and Miles can see his resolve straining worse than the strings.

“Do you remember, a week ago, when I told you I thought someone liked me?”

“I do.” His voice wavers towards the middle of the sentence. He can see where this is going and he does not like it.

“So.” Wright pauses. Nibbles his bottom lip until it’s red and raw between white teeth and Edgeworth wants to physically reach with his thumb and tug it free. “They sent these little letters one time, then another two weeks later. And since yesterday was two weeks after that second time, I was waiting for something.”

He lets out a sigh. “It didn’t come.”

Oh.

“And, uh, I know it’s stupid.” Fingers run nervously in his spiky hair, weaving among the strands. “Like, this person just sent me a few nice words these two times. I don’t even know who they are. And I’m reacting like this.” The digits close and begin to tug much too forcefully, pulling his head backwards, and Miles bites back a plea for him to stop hurting himself. “It’s dumb I know, it’s just-” He finally lets his spikes go free, rather preferring to fidget anxiously.

“I feel kinda alone sometimes.” Comes the heavy whisper, weighed down by the ball and chains of a fatigue Wright rarely revealed. “And they seemed nice.”

Oh.

“And I can’t stop thinking, like-” The inquietude returns. “-What did I do wrong? They apologized for not answering a letter I sent them the first time. It doesn’t make sense that someone who’d be sorry over a minor thing like that would just.” Pause. “Disappear again. I had to have done something-”

“Wright.” Miles wedges his voice in before the attorney spirals off control. “Stop.”

He stops.

Now Edgeworth just has to come up with a meaningful sentence, because of course he’d interrupt without an already structured plan in mind. Situations with Wright have a concerning tendency to make him disregard his usual modus operandi.

“As per what you’ve said, there were only two occasions in which you established contact, spaced by an interval of two weeks. Is that right?”

Wright hesitantly nods, more than a little confused but seeming somewhat hopeful.

“You do realize having only two times as sample is barely enough to constitute a coincidence, nevermind a pattern.” A bit of silence, to allow that to sink in. “Perhaps they simply send you a message with random windows of time in-between each instance. There is not enough evidence to reach a sure conclusion, Wright.”

Miles prays that is sufficient to assuage his worries. Prays determinedly, as he stares at Wright, whose unnervingly still frame has yet to manifest a proper reaction.

In an unexpected turn, Wright’s response comes as a strong flush.

“Uh, that’s – that’s actually pretty obvious.” The chuckles escaping him are painted by sheepishness. “Dunno how I didn’t think of that…”

“I’m surprised you think at all. Considering the outrageous theories you come up with in court I would not be surprised if it was a circus rather than a brain in there.”

“Har-har.” Wright deadpans, though the bemused expression lifts quickly, giving place to gratitude. “But, really, Edgeworth. Thank you for putting up with me. It’s – this thing’s been bugging me and I wanted to let it out and see if that would make it stop. Trucy’s coming down next week and I know she’d grill me if she noticed something was wrong, but I do not want to tell her about,” He stands up, hand swiping in an all-encompassing gesture. “This whole mess. She already worries far too much about me.”

Miles won’t deny and say it doesn’t make him warm to know Wright comes to him for help – but that flicker of warmth isn’t nearly sufficient to nullify the glacial frigidity pooling and rapidly rising in the bottom of his stomach, which he is trying his best to tamper down until his friend’s departure. It, however, fights back, and keeps incessantly expanding.

“I see. In that case, please give her my regards and pass along the message she is welcome to visit anytime.”

A bright grin stretches Wright’s face for the first time since he entered the office. “Really, thanks, Edgeworth. And I’m sorry for interrupting your work.”

“I’ve told you not to bother with that.”

“Yeah, yeah. Goodbye! See ya tomorrow.”

The door clicks closed. Footsteps recede, and Wright’s parting words to Miles’s secretary filter, albeit in an incomprehensible, degraded state.

Then, quiet fills the room, and the foreboding cloud that hung uncomfortably over him has now turned into a solid boulder of poignant dread.

The thoughts he has been battling to hinder during the whole conversation break free of their intangible bounds to lunge and rip his heart to pieces. Their claws hurt, hurt, hurt, and still, it most certainly does not even compare to what he caused on his dear friend. Because he hasn’t seen that combination of slumped posture and downcast gaze and general self-loathing since the disbarment was over.

Because he hurt Wright.

And he doesn’t know what to do to stop hurting Wright.

If he stops this charade, he hurts Wright. If he continues, he hurts Wright. If he tells the truth, he hurts Wright.

How on Earth did he do that? Create a situation wherein every path ends in pain? Where all the roads lead to suffering?

How did he manage to unknowingly lay a trap, and then get caught on it?

Edgeworth is currently participating – and losing – in a staring contest against a plushie. A dog plushie, to be more exact, black with a white underbelly, mismatched button eyes gazing unblinkingly at him.

The thing is somewhat generic in shape. Edgeworth can hazard with reasonable confidence it is a dog rather than a wolf or any other canid based on the pattern and heterochromia, aided a bit by the cheek fur and ears. Aside from that, there is no indicator of breed – although, he is aware most of this critique is his persnickety nature in its full glory.

As he finds when his hands circle around the object’s body to bring it up and better examine, it is handsewn, and admittedly, very well made.

It is old, of course – this is an antique store he is in, it would be odd if it wasn’t old –, but isn’t battered as old plushies usually are, black fabric successfully maintaining its fuzzy quality throughout the years and lacking any straining seams. In addition, on a purely aesthetic level, it looks… nice.

The underbelly is not pure white – no, it is patterned with flowers, embroidered in a rococó-esque style. The buttons composing its eyes seem to be made of stone; garnet and dumortierite, according to what the owner’s spouse behind the cash register recounts the original owner told her. It has silver paw pads and nose, as well as a tag of the same material hanging from a blue collar around its neck.

On the collar, there is a yellow sunflower motif, along with a lone one chiseled on the tag.

Miles can almost see God himself, glaring at him, practically screaming for him to go and ask for forgiveness.

Fine, he thinks bitterly, presenting to the cashier the tea set and the plush animal. I’ll apologize.

“So, young man.” The lady begins, while she wraps the set. “Is the little wolfie going to be a gift?”

“Ngh-!”

She looks at him from above the rims of her glasses, an amused expression coloring her face. It doesn’t vanish as Miles conforms himself to his fate and gives up on the attempts at mustering a retort when he can’t even gather enough willpower to deny it, nor as she fetches a nondescript bag to guard the plush within and ties the handles together with a red satin bow in a move so cheesy Edgeworth only does not complain about because he knows Phoenix enjoys the corny and cliche.

A flustered ‘thank you’ later he is back in his car, glaring at the packet.

He really should stop scowling at inanimate objects.

But still. He can envision the stony eyes silently judging him.

They’re not quite the same tones as Phoenix’s. His are much darker and lack almost any saturation, to a point it’s necessary to stop, stare and pay attention in order to properly perceive the difference between hues. Not that Edgeworth has been staring, of course. It’s merely his sharpened observation skills in practice. Of course.

He has always found the attorney’s eyes fascinating. How they turn round and shining as a puppy’s when he’s excited; as sharp as the man’s wit when he finds a breakthrough; half-lidded after a few too many drinks, amidst a reddened face.

How they’d furrow in scorn only at the most sordid kind of liars, the most irredeemable criminals to ever take the stand, those being legally charged or not. How he knows Phoenix would look at him, like the dog does.

The screech of tires frees him from that bizarre stupor. Ignoring the unsettling and idiosyncratic notion a plush possesses any kind of higher state of awareness than that of a stone, and the subsequent mental itch caused by the lingering sensation, he ponders: what should be adequate action to be taken?

Today is Thursday. Two weeks since Phoenix spilled his guts in the Chief Prosecutor’s Office, one month since Miles last stepped into the Fae’s Eye.

Perhaps the solution is to just relent and listen to what his conscience has been prattling on and on for him to do. To suck it up and tell the truth. Sit across from Phoenix, with hot tea in hand and a coffee table roleplaying as a shield between them, to detail everything he knows.

But then, the scenery twists. The amicable talk turns into heated discussion, that then leads to a full blown argument. The coffee table would certainly be more than sufficient to prevent any physical harm to befall him, but it would never be effective against the cutting words and sneers thrown like arrows in his direction the furniture would not be able to deflect

Or, he could do what he has been doing his entire life at the smallest sign of trouble.

He could run.

Not physically – he is aware he isn’t currently in a place where he can suddenly leave without causing unimaginable destruction to everything he holds dear, nor does he wish to do so. But he could continue the admittedly horrendous habit permeating every facet of his personal life and make the choice that is easier in the short term but guaranteed to end in disaster in the long run. To appear in the bar every two weeks on Thursday until he either assembles the necessary bravery to be truthful or the attorney finds out by himself.

And doesn’t that look nice? The fact that Phoenix’s reaction, such an important variable that has the power to categorically pivot the course of his life, is unbeknownst to him is, simply put, terrifying. So why not prolong this period of blissful secrecy and predictable patterns for as long as the universe allows for?

Which leaves his other means of apology: shrouded by secrecy, as it was originally intended. But then, he isn’t sure if Phoenix will attend, seeing as Trucy is still around – the girl didn't hesitate to prance about and make her presence known. Although, coincidently, she has already stated this night and tomorrow will be spent with the Feys and Larry, giving her father an ample enough stretch of time to comfortably fit his routine into.

It is strangely convenient, and makes Miles wonder whether or not she has any knowledge over Phoenix’s hidden side – intention would explain the timely trip – but there isn’t a way of finding out that won’t betray the knowledge he himself possesses and clings so tightly to.

Toc toc.

He nearly jumps onto the passenger seat when knocking sounds against his window. His eyes snap to the glass, and sapphire ones meet him from outside. Speak of the Devil.

The girl gestures with her hand, and he lowers the window as requested. She crosses her arms and perches on the door, almost sticking her head inside.

“Hey, Uncle Miles.” He grunts in response, frustrated with how she doesn’t seem to even acknowledge his glare. “Whatcha doing stopped here?” She cranes her neck and eyes the package resting innocently over the vacant chair. “Ooh, getting someone a gift?”

Then, Trucy turns to him, eyes wide with that all-knowing gaze that makes a shiver unravel throughout his spine at the distinct sensation of having his insides seen and meticulously analyzed. The crisp breeze feels like it has turned a hundred times colder and more punishing.

“Is it for my Daddy?”

Goddamnit. The girl’s too sharp for her own good.

Her gaze doesn’t relent. Nor does Miles’s. The same, though, cannot be said for his resolve, the legs of which buckle under the pressure of her unspoken demands.

“... Yes.”

The admission hangs heavy in the air, only not as heavy as Miles’s heart when realization dawns on what should be the following steps of newly reconvened determination. And he hates himself for what he’ll say next, but regrettably, it makes itself necessary, so the smoke curtain obfuscating his form behind ‘someone’ does not dispel.

Grappling to match the height of watchful blue eyes with a gaze weighed by guilt, he returns Trucy’s look. “But you can’t let him know it was a gift of mine.” Silence, as a dry swallow rasps against his throat. “Please.”

She squints, eyes narrowed by suspicion, and her whole face falls, struck and brought down by a mixture of pity and defeat that frightens the prosecutor.

“Uncle Miles, I’ve already told you. Daddy loves you. I don’t know what you’re doing, but whatever it is, you don’t need to.”

There it is, again. That preposterous allegation, the one that everyone insists on mindlessly repeating, despite all the available evidence pointing to the contrary.

A sigh escapes him, gaze downturning. Huh. Since when is that stain there?

“Really. He does.” Is what she chooses to say, affirming her previous statement in utter disregard to its obvious falseness. Her voice is soft and stern, sympathetic, chastising even, and it only serves to make a bittersweet fluid replace saliva inside his mouth.

The knot of his white-knuckled fingers around the steering wheel tightens. “He doesn’t, Trucy.” Especially not after what I’ve done.

“Urgh.” The annoyed groan is sufficient to retain his attention. Trucy rakes gloved fingers through her hair, tousling the braid, turning the neat rows of skillful weaving into an irreparable mess. “You’re a lost cause, Uncle Miles. Almost as bad as Dad.”

He tries to swallow the lump blocking his airways. “Just don’t speak of it to him. Please?” A rueful smile shows on his face, swiftly directed to her. “It can be our little secret?”

As expected, after a remark of such childish nature, her cheeks puff like a puffer fish's, that feigned glare Miles is so familiar with appearing. “I’m not eight anymore, you know! I’m a grown-” And she halts, takes off her top hat, pulls a jar out of it, flicks a quarter into the container, returns it to its impossible confines, and rearranges the accessory back in its place. “Ass adult! Don't treat me like a little child.”

Pupils locked, they don't deviate from each other, leaving Miles feeling again as a defendant, anxiously waiting for the verdict that will decide whether his life can continue normally or is going to be turned upside down. That horrible, horrible panic travels all the way through time till this very moment, doubled by the fact that Phoenix is not only absent, away from the prosecutor's defense, but by the knowledge that even if he was right here right now, he wouldn't defend him.

He doesn't know what manifests on his face, but it must be a pitiful sight. Trucy's scowl is dropped just as quickly as it was worn, Edgeworth’s heart plummeting along with it. “Okay.” She finally announces, and that word hits him with such strength it unlodges the breath firmly stuck within his lungs.

“I won’t talk about it. But-” And here she extends her index, first to the sky and pink clouds above, then directly at Miles’s nose. “You have to promise me you’ll confess to my Daddy somewhere in this lifetime.”

Ah. He should've expected there would be some kind of condition; Trucy is a smart girl, she never concedes without making the proposition a trade that’ll, in one way or another, benefit her too.

And thanks the Heavens that was her requirement. He won't have his hand forced into a promise he’ll not be able to meet.

Simply because the dredging of his feelings is an inevitable outcome. Be it by his own volition or by Phoenix's luck, sooner or later his trips to the bar are going to be unearthed, and subsequently that will snowball in his true affections being excavated from the depths of his chest and presented to the world at large to see and laugh at. Offered to Phoenix, for him to take Miles's battered and poorly stitched heart in his hands and determine what will be its fate.

And he’ll lose it all.

“Fine, Trucy. I accept your terms.”

A flicker of triumph blooms inside her eyes, and is immediately smothered when realization dawns the prosecutor succumbed way too easily for the proposal to not have backfired. Regardless, the girl puts on a victorious facade that is just as fake as the mask she sometimes wears during shows, smiling a grin wide and straining at the corners. “Alright-o! Have a good evening then, Sir!”

After those last parting words, she leaves, though not before turning around to shout ‘you owe me a milkshake!’. Miles watches her silhouette grow progressively smaller, just a black form under golden light, until she saunters around the corner and out of sight.

Miles hunches forward to rest his forehead on the steering wheel.

An hour later, standing in front of his apartment door, in place of his keys he finds an ace of hearts. He feels more disappointed at himself for not having predicted such an obvious ploy than at the girl for having done it.

Just thirty minutes later, still clad in his work attire, having been unable to change due to a certain Magician’s cunning scheme, the dead, colorful iris of the Fae’s Eye stares judgmentally down at him from its perch in the high plaque. He ignores the feeling, in favor of hurdling himself and the package inside.

The trip up the staircase takes much longer than it should to complete. The paper bag in his hand feels heavy, so, so heavy, and it weighs him, hinders him, almost pins him in place with the sheer weight of his hidden contrition, condensed and safe behind card paper.

Today, the environment is dim. A disco ball projects kaleidoscopic shapes on the wall, colorful and ever-changing, impossible to keep track of, as the only stronger source of light shines on the stage, illuminating the form of a woman singing surprisingly well to a song he is unable to identify.

Karaoke is not something he ever particularly enjoyed, though he attended a few times at the behest of Maya and his sister, but he knows it's generally an uplift on the mood of wherever it might happen.

Despite that, none of his worries are alleviated even the littlest bit.

After trudging to his booth, he drops his bag at the table, his body on the seat and his head in his hands.

What am I even doing?

Trucy's earlier words spin and swirl, prisoners banging against the confines of his mind, begging to be let free from their prison in the hypothetical realm and into reality.

Is this really the best option?

It never is. It never, never is. A lie by omission is still a lie, after all, and lying is immoral, unacceptable, antithetical to his entire hard-earned, polished worldview, that he battled so hard for.

Shouldn't I just-

“Goodnight!”

For the second time that day, Miles jolts so hard he lands a good two feet aside from where he was previously positioned. That french accent stifles a giggle, and offers an ‘apologies’ that is one less drop of remorse away from stepping into teasing territory.

The light rebounding on her glasses isn’t enough to hide how her pupils stray and twinkle at the bag’s sight, and though nothing is verbalized, Miles can clearly hear the comment.

Thankfully, regardless of its noticeable presence it was and still is unspoken, thus he deigns to disregard the fact and proceed normally.

He asks for the bigger glass this time – not to abuse the alcohol like the memories from his second time at the bar recount; it’s just to… Loosen up. Relax. Forget the doubts that refuse to lay down and wither inside their graves.

The waiter leaves just as a group entering the establishment ensnarls his attention. They seem to have an eclectic selection of reactions to the weather, with the older man in a tank top and shorts while the younger one is wrapped in layers upon layers of cotton all around. Though the attorney himself isn’t faring much better. A heavy knit cardigan and a scarf wound firmly on his neck keep the cold out.

Of course he’s dressed for the cold, Miles internally huffs while grey eyes trail down to a kilt and thick wool tights, black even, for maximum heat retention. Any temperature under seventy-five configures as glacial for the idiot.

Regardless of Miles’s judgmental nature, Phoenix seems comfortable – bundled up as he is –, so the prosecutor will let it slide.

Soon, the small crowd makes themselves at home. A buzzing feeling rises from the bottom of his stomach and clambers all the way till his brain, where it seems to impair his cognition for a brief moment, because Sheri appears by his side despite him having no recollection of requesting her presence.

Deciding not to question it, he places an order for a slice of apple pie for Phoenix and, after a second of consideration, a piece of cheesecake for himself – even though that clashes horribly against the chosen drink.

Just a few minutes of wait and he has a gorgeous portion of cheesecake with berry jam overflowing from its top waiting on the table. He sends his gratitude to the waitress, however, following the order, Sheri doesn’t leave. She stays put, pupils flitting between Miles and the package

He blinks, once, and she blinks in return. Sighing, he hauls the bag up from the floor and into her hands, taking some heartbeats to fetch the notepad and write something.

Then, the woman is off.

---------------------------------------

Sheri heads over to their table with that plate in her hand and that smile on her face and Phoenix’s heart jumps and hits their brain.

Every sound becomes muffled and unrecognizable, every shape blurred and distorted, every color desaturated, as everything but the waitress tunes out.

His unrelenting grip on the edge of the table tightens further. Anna throws him a concerned glance before following their gaze, and the worry takes two quick heartbeats to turn into a sweet smile, conveying wordless support.

When the group notices Sheri approaching, conversation fizzles out in favor of attentively observing whatever events will follow. A static-y buzzing increases within his ears, getting just a tad stronger at each click of her heels, until it comes to an abrupt halt in sync with the waitress.

She puts a dish with a piece of steaming apple pie over cherrywood, and Phoenix’s heart sluggishly restarts. She slides over the red note and Phoenix’s heart accelerates way too rapidly for it to possibly be healthy. Lastly and most surprisingly, she shoves a brown paper bag on his lap, and Phoenix’s heart is thumping erratically, trying to beat free from its confines within the cage of their ribs.

“Is- is this-?”

They look at Sheri, desperate for guidance and any kind of confirmation. It comes as a nod.

Slowly, with the utmost care, he undoes the bow holding the package closed and, without looking, fishes what rests inside.

A whistle and few ‘ooooooh’s sound, and they open their eyes, to be met with the sight of a dog plushie, eyes that are similarly colored to theirs returning the shocked gaze.

A… Plushie. Phoenix brings the free hand to join the other in encircling the animal’s body, turning it around, shaking it and hearing the resulting jingle of the inscribed tag. The pattern of its collar is strikingly similar to that of the skirt he remembers wearing when he was first awarded a note, and the white underside greatly resembles the bar’s seats, albeit with its colors reversed.

Gulping in anticipation, they close trembling fingers around the message, and reveal what it says.

‘I’m sorry for my sudden absence. A contretemp struck, and unfortunately, I was not able to get rid of it in time’.

Phoenix could cry.

‘Changing topics, I discovered this in an antique and was reminded of you. Please, accept it as my sincerest apologies’.

Their eyes flit between the apple pie – one of if not his favorite dessert –, the plushie – who does carry such a resemblance to them it would be uncanny if it wasn’t so cute –, and the note – that shows firm mindfulness over their feelings.

Maybe this is it, Phoenix thinks, clutching the plush and biting back tears. Maybe this is who finally makes my stupid heart move on.

Perhaps, this will be the person to occupy the vacant space in Phoenix’s chest that only feels full when he’s in the presence of a certain prosecutor.

He’s perfectly aware they’re getting their hopes too elevated; they haven’t even seen this individual yet – whoever they are, they could very well disappear, or be a criminal, a psychopath, could’ve masterminded a way to find him, and Phoenix would be none the wiser.

But, still, they can’t help but hope for someone that’ll climb their way to the top of the podium inside his heart and knock a particular grey-haired man off the first place, so maybe Phoenix can at last fully enjoy all the amazing things conquered throughout the neverending arena that is his life and stop feeling it was all a waste just because that man does not return their absurd affections.

Don’t cry, Phoenix. You’ve cried with eyeliner on before and you know for a fact it doesn’t look pretty.

And some bigger force pans the camera to the stage, where, under soft pink lights, a man passionately follows the lyrics of an obscure but no less cheesy love song.

It feels like he is the protagonist of a cheap romance movie; everything is way too convenient, perfect, it can’t be anything but a script. Yet, this isn’t filtered by the fuzzy screen of their computer or by the crisper one of their cellphone, or even by the lens of a cinema projector, but by the thin sheen of his corneas.

This is real, as proven by the weight of the plushie on their lap, the delicious smell of the apple pie swirling in the air, the red note that holds so much meaning and the insistent pricking of millions of needles behind their eyes.

“Oh, wow, Nickie. That’s… Actually adorable.” Lindsey speaks up, shattering the fragile silence everyone seemed to have agreed upon maintaining to let Phoenix process everything in peace.

“Have t’agree.” Mac nods sagely, which looks absolutely ridiculous on him. “Whoever this is, bro’s smitten with ya.”

Phoenix can do nothing but channel all his focus into suppressing imminent tears – it wouldn’t do to ruin the makeup when their mysterious suitor is, in all likelihood, watching his reaction.

“Nix.” Fehri suddenly pipes up, and her interruption is enough to distract them from their crybaby tendencies.

“What?” He asks, tucking the plush back inside where it's safe with what he deems an appropriate amount of reverence for such a thoughtful gift. Their voice comes out slightly garbled, the wetness of tears muffling the tenor so it almost sounded like he was underwater.

“Nix.” She repeats, and Phoenix turns to face her fully.

And oh. Oh no. Phoenix knows Fehri Rin and what that gleam in their eyes mean. Whatever they’re about to say, he’ll not like it.

“Why don’t we sing for our secret admirer?”

First of all, regardless of how they worded it, it’s obvious they mean ‘why don’t you sing’. And absolutely no. It’s been far too much time since he’s put their vocal chords to work for anything even remotely acceptable to leave their mouth.

Second. It’s not our secret admirer. It’s Phoenix’s secret admirer.

“I will not sing. And no, you will not convince me.”

They pout. “But Nick,” They whine, stretching the ‘i’, lower lip jutting out. “You have such a pretty voice…”

Their eyes are big and sparkling a thousand little stars, the very definition of ‘puppy-eyes’, and Phoenix has never really been able to refuse a kid looking at them like that, have they?

From Maya more than a decade ago spanning all the way till, more recently, Athena, these bright-eyed kids always have had him irrevocably wrapped around their mischievous little fingers. It’s not a flaw, per se; it just can be sort of detrimental to Phoenix at times.

Well. ‘Detrimental’ is a harsh word – their flair for dramatic acting. But, he digresses. What matters is that sometimes it’s just really annoying being utterly unable to refuse such a heartfelt request from the young.

But, well, it’s not like they are going to die because they embarrassed themselves on the stage once, in front of his enigmatic crush. The same argument could be made for Fehri; she too won’t die because Phoenix didn’t sing, but a glance at those big pupils is sufficient to make them swallow their words and clear their throat.

“Okay.” They agree, albeit begrudgingly. Although, any and all regrets vanish when the younger instantly brightens up, and he realizes Fehri just wanted an excuse to sing with him. She jolts upright and catches Phoenix’s wrist in their grasp, pulling him forward with the strength of someone trying to herd a bull. Regardless if he wanted to or not, Fehri would steer them towards the stage.

“In honor of your cryptic partner,” They tap the mic, humming at the responding buzz that emanates from the speakers, and whirl to fiddle with the karaoke, ignoring Phoenix’s glare. “We’re doing Super Trouper.”

That… Wouldn’t be too bad. It’s nice, and does match up to their current circumstances. In addition, that is a route to respond to that someone without resorting to directly writing. Phoenix knows, that when they hear the song, when they hear the passion the attorney can already feel filling their lungs and ready to spill, they’ll know it’s for them.

And then specific wording on the younger’s part registers. Hold up. “We?”

“Yes. You know the song. You’ll need a second singer for the background vocals.” A bit – honestly, a lot – of a blush creeps up their cheeks, rendering her as red as the mushrooms on her person. “Besides, I just want to sing with you. It doesn’t take a lawyer to make it out.”

Phoenix huffs a small laugh, and Fehri seems to be done with whatever they were doing, handing him a mic while keeping the other for herself.

A couple taps on the wiry case causes synchronized banging noises to erupt from the speakers. A little matching smile forms on both their faces, and Fehri hits play.

---------------------------------------

Shamefully, when the order reaches Phoenix, Miles has already broken his internal vow and progressed to a second glass. But that’s alright, because the pleasant buzz permeating his brain chases out the ungainly thoughts, making his head much lighter and his ability to focus on and enjoy his beloved’s glee that much freer.

That’s why, when he notices Phoenix’s anxiety over the possible gift Sheri was taking to him, the memory of the attorney’s hurt only weighs down his smile for a brief second before his heart threatens to palpitate right out from his chest, at the expression of pure awe that overruns the man’s face as he makes eye contact with the stuffed animal.

Grey eyes curiously follow when, for the first time, instead of scribbling a response, the attorney lets himself be pulled up by a short member of the group – not lacking what appeared to be a healthy dose of bickering – and led to the stage.

He smothers the pang of disappointment, of knowing his wallet wouldn't leave just a little bit heavier with the added – insignificant, but still meaningful – weight of Phoenix’s response. But, curiosity, as always, prevails, and he keeps observing.

It dawns, then, what is about to happen, the possibility that was lurking just around the corner to then saunter onstage, bathed in prismatic lights in all the iridescent glory of a chittering sunbird.

The younger person tinkers around with the machines, striking idle and unfortunately inaudible – not that Miles would try to eavesdrop, of course – conversation with Phoenix while doing so.

Then, microphones are shared, and the music commences.

Miles watches, round eyes steadily increasing in size in a truly incredible example of arithmetic progression, the near professional performance that ensues. He downs the rest of his drink in one go, not willing to distract himself from the spectacle with sipping, no matter how absent and subconscious the action.

Phoenix leads the song, partner on stage not far behind, and a giddy feeling begins its nearly cancerous growth on him at the lyrics. Until it comes to a peak when they reach what seems to be the chorus.

Phoenix sings. And Miles knows it’s for him.

“Tonight the Super Trouper lights are gonna find me

Shining like the Sun

Smiling, having fun

Feeling like a number one.”

During the brief pause, those beautiful, shining, enchanting mismatched jewels scan the grounds, searching for an unidentified target, closing again when the song reconvenes and his darling doesn’t reveal himself.

“Tonight the Super Trouper beams are gonna blind me

But I won’t feel blue

Like I always do

‘Cause somewhere in the crowd there’s you.”

And Phoenix smiles all the while, so beautifully, and he looks so gorgeous, on stage, singing for him, for Miles, just for Miles.

He feels out of his body, soaring so high the clouds are chafing against his face, leaving him red and raw and sensitive like a snake that just shed its skin.

This specific case was shaping itself to be worse than his usual ones.

It is far from the most gruesome he has come across during his long career, but so abhorrently complicated not even his sharpness was able to cut through the thick and intricate web surrounding it.

So, of course, he enlisted Wright’s help.

Although, now, when both lounge in the sofas of the Wright Anything Agency, reading and rereading the same lines, examining and reexamining the same evidence, discussing and rediscussing the same ideas, all in favor of trying to find a stray string they could pull to finally unravel this mess, he isn’t sure that was exactly one of his best ideas.

Because, after an exhausting day and the even more exhausting monotony of this investigation that refuses to reveal any kind of useful lead, he finds his mind wandering, eyes following alike, to the man with whom he shares the space.

It’s been four months since the plush, which he considers the biggest milestone in this story going on parallel to their lives. Four months that, on late Thursdays every two weeks without fail, be it scorching hot or raining ice, he is privy to the one and only piece of his friend’s life he doesn’t have access to, finally allowed to spoil him with sweets and flowers and every other corny, romantic gift that Wright adores and Edgeworth secretly likes.

‘I like your gifts, but you seriously don’t need to keep sending them every time if it’s a bother’, the attorney once wrote, cradling an enormous bouquet in his other arm.

‘Nonsense. I greatly enjoy making you happy. See it as compensation for my reluctance regarding talking directly’, he answered.

His feelings on the matter though, are another story entirely. They are contradictory, like the testimony of witnesses they shred on the stand. The passage of time has, simultaneously, made the guilt strengthen and wane, albeit never fully disappear.

He is now able to enjoy Wright’s presence at the bar without being made to intoxicate himself, if only to stop the lead-heavy shame from sinking his gut and morale alike. No spiral will attempt to suck in his thoughts while they are wholly consumed by the figure of his friend.

On the other hand, that same stone of guilt is now diluted into small doses of daily intake, hence why he can barely look at the attorney anymore – in and out of the bar – without sensing that incurable itch on the back of his mind flaring up.

Sometimes, it hurts so strongly he is tempted to give Wright a call and spill everything. He has come dangerously close to doing so, on one late night when it turned into too much to bear, and he went through the unusually daunting motions of unlocking his phone, searching for Wright’s contact, hitting the call button, and waiting while the rhythmic buzzing didn’t give way to that voice. In the end, as Wright’s groggy ‘Edgeworth?’ filtered, crackled and garbled across the speaker, it succeeded in tamping down the urge, and the prosecutor had to instead fabricate a lie concerning an inexistent nightmare to cover up the actual reason for the atypical call.

Today, mercifully, he has been spared. No dull pain throbs as he idly observes the attorney flip the pages of a behemoth of a file, searching for any information holding a crumb of correlation to their current dilemma. The furrow between his eyebrows and the firm line of his lips and the flexing of muscles on his forearms. Juxtapositioned with a shy smile, dainty eyeliner, soft curves. So strong, yet so delicate, like a diamond you hold with care, afraid it’ll break.

Then, he closes the file, and Edgeworth rushes to direct his focus back to the document at hand. He leaves the couch for the computer, letting himself drop on the spinning chair.

They fall again in comfortable silence, broken only by the intermittent noise of the keyboard, as Wright cross-references the information available with the database Miles so painstakingly taught him to use. Hours pass without neither of them noticing, until the attorney speaks up.

“It’s getting late.” The light buzzing of the clock as it strikes nine agrees. “Whaddya think of takeout?”

“Amenable.”

Typing sounds. The tek tek tek of the keyboard fills the quiet. “That one Thai place?”

Miles looks at him over the files, lifting a sleek eyebrow. “I believe you have already decided that, no?”

Wright chuckles sheepishly, scratching the baby hairs behind his neck. “Yeah… But if you don't want it…”

The prosecutor waves it away, eyes again running over the strings of text on the report. The tek tek tek returns for a while, accompanied by the occasional click of the mouse.

“The usual?”

A hum emanates from him. A few clicks later, and a strange, muffled sound comes from the attorney, quickly followed by a noise of confusion. “Huh?”

Grey eyes find their way to his companion once more. The man, puzzled expression twisting his face, rises from the chair, palming his trousers, up to his torso, and then, when the search doesn't turn up any results, moves to rummage on the chaos he calls a desk.

Miles, curious, observes the whole strange ritual, wondering whether something serious has happened or Wright’s dramatic character is acting up again. He doesn’t have to spend much time pondering, because soon after the man looks at him, his characteristic sheepish stance offering enough evidence that, paired with context clues, already gives the prosecutor an answer.

“Do you really not have your bank information memorized?” The tone betrays the amusement his blank face tries – and fails – to mask. At the responding nod, Edgeworth huffs, a noise that comes sounding dangerously fond. “I swear, you only don’t forget your head somewhere because it’s stuck to your neck. You can take my card.”

Wright throws him an embarrassed grin and a ‘thank you’ while moving to an unusually tidy corner of his desk, where the prosecutor's wallet rests. Miles returns to work, hearing the dull sounds of his friend manipulating imported leather.

And silence.

Complete, utter silence.

He feels a furrow forming between his eyebrows. For the thousandth time that evening, his gaze slips from the end of a paragraph and to the attorney's form.

The man is frozen, paralyzed, eyes wide and shock clear in every square inch of his face. Every muscle in his body tensed, as if whatever he has found is heinous enough to trigger the primal fight-or-flight instinct and he is yet to decide which option to follow. His bewildered sight is directed at the interior of the wallet, pinned at something in its insides, and realization hits Miles with the force of a sledgehammer to the ribs.

He can do nothing more than turn just as stunned and wait.

Slowly, too slowly, far too slowly, Wright’s head swivels to face him with robotic motions, and when their eyes finally meet, their gazes latch to one another with the savagery of a hunting trap so no man can possibly break free.

In the depths of those greyish mismatched irises, Edgeworth watches a storm brewing, consuming what little color they have. They stand still while it takes form, raging inside their confines, and the shadow of what is to come looms over them both.

“Edgeworth?” Wright finally breaks the silence, in a tone so strained the word feels taut as an elastic band and ready to snap; at whom, he doesn’t know.

“I-” Miles speaks. “Well-” He tries again. “We-” Another attempt is made, but immediately cut off when he realizes coherent reasoning evades him.

“Wright.” He settles for, mirroring the attorney’s sentence.

“Edgeworth.” He repeats, just as pinched, though the question is gone. “What is this?”

And, from inside the wallet, he takes the red notepad and the growing collection of blue notes with deliberate lentor, holding the prosecutor’s gaze all the while.

Miles dry swallows, hoping it’ll be able to clear his abruptly closed throat.

“I-” And he was ready to revert to his usual and make a jab, you certainly have enough neurons to deduct, Wright, but in this situation, that would not only be extremely inappropriate as incredibly disrespectful. So his jaw clicks shut.

The attorney moves, slowly straightening his spine, body so tense the movement looks painful. The rage inside his eyes begins to bleed into his face, acid that melts shock away to reveal a sneer hidden underneath. “Edgeworth.” He growls, and this time it’s neither a question nor a demand, it’s a warning. “What is this?” His fist clenches, rendering the papers into a crumpled mess. “What do you know?”

Being faced with the prosecutor’s guilty silence seems to only stoke the flame further.

“Edgeworth. Tell me what you know. Everything.”

Miles complies.

“As you’ve gathered, I am the person who has been exchanging notes with you.” Wright’s expression does appear to harden, and he falters for a moment, but resumes. “I first encountered you at the Fae’s Eye about six months ago. I assure you, that occasion was accidental, and I didn’t send you anything. It was only after two weeks later that I began frequenting the bar with deliberate intent to meet you and establish contact.”

He never should have. He should never have defied his instincts and returned to the place instead of fleeing far, far away.

Maybe in that parallel universe wherein that instinct was followed he wouldn’t be actively watching one of the most important pillars of his life disintegrating in front of him, by his own hands.

“Rest assured I never overheard any conversations, thus I have no information other than what I could see.”

Wright slightly tilts his neck, usual quirks somehow still persisting. However, instead of being endearing as is common – similar to a confused puppy –, in this moment, it is more akin to an owl readying to strike over whatever poor rat it has its sight pinned upon.

“And what exactly did you see?”

Miles sighs, and tries not to wince as the attorney replies with an animalistic hiss. “What you can certainly guess I saw. Your dressing habits, your friends, your reactions…”

The prosecutor’s sentence trails off, but whatever line of thought was running behind Wright’s eyes accelerates. When he speaks again, venom coats and drips from his words.

“And you didn’t tell me?!” His tone was quiet but no less menacing, a snake’s sibilation prefacing an attack. “You just – you intruded in my space, my life, my secrets, and you didn’t even tell me?!”

Miles flinches, and gulps, and struggles not to either revert to cold, unfeeling professionalism in preparation for the incoming onslaught or fold into himself in a sign of remorseful submission. Wright slams the desk, unbothered as to the papers and God knows what else is coating it, and even if they make the sound duller, it still booms inside his head. “Wright, I-”

Another hit to the wood consumes the words. “No. We’ve played by your rules until now, so you listen to me, Edgeworth. Do you have any idea,” He spits. “Of just how hard it was for me to go out that way? To feel safe enough to do so? Of how much time, how much effort, how much support I needed?”

Miles doesn’t. Didn’t have, does not have, will probably never have even if Wright is benevolent enough to deign the efforts of explaining worth it.

“The least you could have done was come to me and tell me you know about it. I would be scared. I would maybe even try to run away. But at least I wouldn’t feel so, so-”

The attorney grapples with finding a suitable descriptor, even though Miles has known it since he first banished the thought of being truthful to his – he hopes Wright still is – friend.

“-So betrayed.”

And, for the briefest millisecond, when he is almost done with enunciating the word, a crack in the facade allows for the real, raw, true pain Wright is really feeling, seep. It, however, is so rapidly contained and mended close the prosecutor doubts even having seen it – although its existence is unquestionable.

The ravenhead continues, undeterred now that he has found a proper label for his emotions.

“Because that's what you did. You- you betrayed me, Edgeworth. You broke my trust. You went behind my back to intrude on something that I- I wasn’t ready to be forward with yet! You know, I was going to tell you and the others about it, on my time, on – on my birthday when I’m comfortable doing so, and you just-! You robbed me of that. And I- I-”

A sob breaks free, interrupting what felt like an unstoppable – and honestly deserved – stream of admonishments. His head drops in his hand, and though the crying is silent, Miles can see his body quaking in time with sobs.

Edgeworth hates that he caused this. Hates himself, for being the cause of this.

After a second of deliberation, he puts pale palms up and facing forward in an appeasing gesture, beginning to slowly creep forward.

“Wright. Phoenix. Please, I’m aware it’s unjust and selfish to ask this of you after what I’ve done, but please, let me explain myself.”

The trembles wracking his form diminish, and a tearful eye appears from between two fingers that moved slightly apart. The prosecutor thanks every God and similar deity he can name – and directs general gratitude to those he can’t.

“I am not asking for your forgiveness, or even for your understanding,” The words burn in his tongue. “Only for you to give me a few moments to relay my thoughts and feelings – and, in your position, you aren’t obliged to concede me even that.”

Surprisingly, it does have a discernible effect, as sniffles replace sobs. Still, he has to tread this with the utmost care. The chances Phoenix would be placated by that were already slim, the bond connecting them frail, and that shining pupil seems to almost scream ‘please don’t hurt me anymore’. A single bad step in a sequence of perfect ones would be enough to render all his labor useless.

“Phoenix. I was – truthfully, still am – afraid of this exact thing happening. When I was confronted by the fact there are pieces of you I still didn’t know, I felt a selfish desire to have it in any way I could. However, being forward with you regarding it frightened me, as I wasn’t able to predict your reaction, and scared by the possibility that could, perhaps, end our friendship.”

Is he saying too much? He feels like he’s saying too much, but, in these circumstances, is there a ‘too much’? He’s supposed to be honest, because honesty leads to the truth and reaching the truth steers them towards the answer. But, even then, his mind itches with the feeling there is still something he is hiding.

He hopes his answer won't be a stern ‘No’.

“So I kept it a secret. I didn’t want our friendship to be any more strained, and I think I’ve failed terribly in expressing just how important it is for me. But, I found that having access to you, every part of you, was-” What? What is the word? What adjective could possibly encompass the sheer scope of his feelings? “-Addicting. Because I-”

The steady stream stutters and comes to a halt.

This is it. This is the moment. Although he knows it isn’t true – his journey is much more than that –, right now, it feels like every moment in his life, every choice he made, every path he walked on, led here. To finally freeing those three words, three syllables, eight letters, that have been plaguing him for much longer than he cares to admit, being a curse, a blessing, an anchor, a lighthouse, a dream and reality, all at once.

How can such a tiny thing feel so big. Two pronouns and one verb sandwiched between them. Something that people seem to have such ease in throwing around. How come, in movies, books, life itself, the words ‘I love you’ are so carelessly offered, as if their full meaning was something easily achievable and easily discarded, that could simply be put aside in case they weren't well received.

It takes Herculean strength and Sisyphean determination, but he manages to cough it out.

“I love you.”

There. At last, it’s out there, hanging over them far heavier than it should, while Phoenix flinches and looks at him, wide-eyed and terrified, as if Miles had just deferred a slap to his face.

Is this how it’s normally like? Should that declaration weigh over them like a burden rather than newly discovered liberation? Is the environment supposed to shrink in size and turn unbearably stifling?

“Hence what I have wished to say since the beginning. Phoenix, this doesn't make you any less. You're still an admirable man-”

Immediately, he knows he didn’t just step wrong, but stepped in the exact center of a mine, because he is forced to watch the chance he carefully cultivated for himself blow up and its scraps slowly fall and swirl in a mocking parody of a swarm of butterflies. The attorney’s stance, lightening up a bit more at every sentence that left Miles’s mouth, falls, and the door he was putting so much effort into forcing open with such fastidiousness slammed closed again.

It’s frankly amazing how quickly things can go South.

Whatever else the grey-haired man would attempt to follow with is grabbed by the neck and choked mercilessly when Phoenix closes his fingers and slams a heavy fist on the table. He stares at Miles with eyes vibrating and simmering in ire, wrath that was reborn from cooling embers, a fury so hot it makes the bicolored leadlight shatter.

“For fuck’s sake Miles, I am not a man!”

The prosecutor wants to say that he's strong, that he holds himself in place and faces Phoenix head on. But reality is as simple and predictable as it is inexorable, his own reaction easy to foresee by anyone who is aware of even a shred of his upbringing, and he can't help but recoil at the pure and uncharacteristic vitriol that drips from Phoenix’s words while he's as tense as a snake that just injected its venom.

Turned to stone under the mismatched eyes of a Gorgon, he has no option but to stare into the depths of those irises, that are both his flame and his downfall. They are wide, crazed, flitting everywhere for a brief moment before stilling back to pin Miles in place with an entomologist’s precision, and then repeating it all again. Gazing at him with shock and sadness and disappointment and fear and panic and a crushing amount of betrayal, like Edgeworth is a precious specimen that escaped enclosure and unexpectedly stung.

There is anger, of course, a veneer of unadulterated rage as thin as it’s strong. At the same time, it's see-through, failing miserably to hide the all-consuming fright, but also seems to be impossible to break, having resisted all of the grey-haired man’s attempts at throwing himself at it without a single visible crack.

“Get out.” Phoenix spits between gritted teeth, wavering, voice shaking but not broken, like green bamboo in a storm.

If Miles was moving, he would be paralyzed. Thankfully he is already dazed, so it has the opposite effect, and shocks his thoughts back in order.

Reassuming the previous pacifying position, he takes another slow, careful step forward, as if Phoenix was a cornered animal ready to lash out. “Phoenix, don’t do that. You know I can-”

“Stop! I don't want to hear your bullshit platitudes-!”

“-I am not trying to appease you-”

“-Or you trying to make yourself feel less guilty-”

“-I beg you to only listen to me-”

“-Just get the fuck out of here, Miles!”

An index finger is thrust in the direction of the door with the same firmness reserved for court. Miles stops talking. The sudden switch to his given name, sneered as if it was something awful and rotten, like merely saying it deeply disgusted Phoenix-!

It's too much.

In that moment, the prosecutor realizes his friend is far too deep in fear and betrayal to even fathom the thought of hearing him out. Despite acting as just enraged on the surface, it’s clear to Miles, possessing a keen eye for Phoenix’s body language, that he is far from being in his right mind. So the grey-haired man retreats, gaze tilted downwards, and heads to the door.

He is acutely aware of Phoenix's eyes boring holes into the back of his skull, watching him and his every movement without missing a mere twitch. Miles absently thinks how wrong he must have gone if he’s the cause for such fear.

When he reaches the door and turns the doorknob, feeling his heart twist in tandem, he stops for a brief moment, halfway out into the hall.

“I am going to leave, and will remain out of your sight. However, please have it in mind that you absolutely can send me a text, a call or ask to meet anytime if you ever wish so. I still have to issue my apologies, and would truthfully appreciate it if you were willing to spare me an hour.”

No response reaches his ears. There is minute rustling, and nothing more.

“Goodbye. Stay well.”

He softly slides the door closed, and descends the stairs, trying and failing to contain the growing wish to trip, roll down and die.

He has ruined everything – again – hasn't he? Disregarding Phoenix's wishes like they weren't worth anything, so callously breaking his trust.

Despite the overwhelming and all consuming fear Phoenix would cut ties as soon as he found out, he finally realizes that there was something else. A reason more sordid and filthy than any other for why he neglected the truth, why, despite the guilt never dispelling, it still wasn’t nearly as gut-wrenching as it should have been. A motive rooted in the flaws permeating the very fundamentals of their history together.

And it is Phoenix’s unrelenting selflessness.

‘Give a second chance.’

‘It wasn’t their fault.’

‘Let them try again, maybe it’ll go better. Who knows?’

Regardless of the shame, the remorse, he kept on fueled by the fear and the – deeply ingrained in his subconscious, to the point he only now notices its presence – notion that, as dictated by every precedent he rummages in his mind to find, Phoenix would always, always forgive him.

When he told the attorney he wasn’t asking for forgiveness, that was a lie, and some distant piece of him recognized it as such. That’s why it felt so wrong to say it. Because he lied.

God, he’s horrible, isn’t he? Selfishly thinking Phoenix would forgive him when he eventually found out. Messing with his friend's most intimate secrets while under the egocentric impression he would welcome Miles with open arms afterwards.

That's when it dawns on him, just how terrible of a friend he is. After watching Phoenix bend himself backwards to protect and cultivate their friendship, no matter how strained the bond, he has begun to take the attorney's forgiveness for granted. On an unconscious level, he thought he was allowed to do anything, because, in the end, Phoenix would always forgive him, wouldn't he?

Now that metaphorical dynamite has exploded in his face and the illusion broke, Miles is at a loss for what to do.

Now, he finds himself in a paradoxical state. So afraid Phoenix won’t ever come back, but knowing in his soul that he will. His mind screams, just as it has – albeit more quietly – done for the past months, that his mistakes are irredeemable. Yet, his heart calmly proclaims that, given time and some effort, the attorney can be lured back into normalcy.

Which one should he trust? Rationality has led to so many positive outcomes, but following it blindly isn’t beneficial, as Phoenix himself taught him. However, his heart, the egotistical, self-centered thing that it is, insists Phoenix will return to him like a lost dog somewhere in the near future. 

It is impressive how, regardless of how noble his objective, he can’t seem to become an objectively better person. Despite his begging wish to trick himself into believing he’s greater now, he keeps hurting the center of his world just as much. Just as badly.

With a chest weighted by guilt and remorse, Miles makes his choice. He’ll give Phoenix a few days to settle down and maybe reach out on his own. If he doesn’t, then the prosecutor will pay him a visit, and hopefully get to at least explain himself.

He prays that when the fire subsides there’ll be anything left to be salvaged.

---------------------------------------

The ground shifts under his feet. It makes them nauseous, pokes a hole in their vestibular system so his sense of balance disappears. By some miracle, they’re still upright, but as the fluid floods his ears, hearing also vanishes.

Why? What’s-?

A baritone sounds, muffled, impossible to discern. It’s guilty, full of remorse, tinged with pity, and acid bubbles inside Phoenix. Before they can properly process they are spitting words back. He can’t hear what escapes his lips, only feeling the blistering burn they leave in their throat, vaguely registering the hurt contorting pale features. His body moves on its own accord.

What is happening? Why does it hurt?

Edgeworth says something – when did he get so far away? It doesn’t quite reach their ears. Phoenix scrambles with his tie, desperate to remove what seems to be a noose, coiled tight around their neck, blocking the airpath. They can’t choke. They can’t choke.

Why? Leave me alone!

The door closes. Soft footsteps recede. The wind blowing is cold, making them feel frosty, painfully aware of Edgeworth’s absence even in this pitiful state. He thought it’d hurt less if they yelled at Edgeworth before Edgeworth could yell at him. So why does it hurt so much?

Maybe they just need to up the ante. Leave Edgeworth of his own volition before Edgeworth can send them away.

They aren't sure if he’ll survive after having to endure hatred from yet another loved one.

Wait- Why are you leaving? Come back!

He tries to call, but nothing comes out of their throat. It’s dry, cracked, hurting, hundreds of scars wrenching themselves open. Everything they manage is a weak, pathetic gargle, voice lost while he chokes on his own blood.

Don’t go!

A face appears in his mind, laughing like a hyena just waiting for their body to fall cold. ‘Look, Feenie! Someone you love, who claims to love you in return, has once more hurt you!’ She sneers and cackles at the same time, in a cursed amalgamation of that sweet voice. ‘Despite your best efforts, a loved one betrayed you yet again! Isn’t it fun? It’s almost like you are the problem!’

Phoenix tries to take a stumbling, unbalanced step forward, but trips over their own feet. He plummets, but his head is intercepted by an edge of the desk on the way down. Their skull makes contact with the floor and, for a single, blissful moment, time seems to stop.

Unbearable pain splits his bones in half when the world suddenly takes back to spinning around its axis, too fast, too fast, and it’s making them want to vomit-

I loved you. Why did you do this to me? Do I deserve it?

They struggle to get on their forearms. His sight is distorted, every object rendered to unrecognizable shapes while black colors most of their sight. In what feels like an Herculean task, he pushes himself up, leaning his weight almost entirely on Mia’s sturdy desk. They need to run. He needs to get as far away from here as possible.

I’m sorry, Mia. I won’t show up to work tomorrow.

Taken over by some mysterious force, he whips a scrap of paper – a note from some case, maybe? Mia will have to excuse them, it’s not like he has time to search for any more appropriate material – and the nearest pen, scrawling on it without any care for legibility. A red blotch materializes over it, thick and hot, but Phoenix doesn’t pay it any mind.

Phoenix runs.

The files he holds resound with a sharp noise as he slams them over mahogany, groaning aloud in frustration. He lifts a palm to block bothersome beams of sunlight that manage to penetrate through the blinds; they hurt.

The truth is, he has been utterly unable to focus on anything for the past day. Every time his pupils reach the end of a paragraph he realizes absolutely nothing of its contents was absorbed, so, once again, tired eyes roam over the same repeating words. He has been isolating himself inside the office after snapping at Gumshoe not a full five minutes following the beginning of the detective’s shift – and still stews in misery at having been so insufferably rude to his secretary earlier; the woman works way too hard to be badly treated on top of it.

Since his fall out with Phoenix several hours ago, his phone has been too much of a recipient of his attention for any substantial amount of work to be completed. Hope feels like a ferris wheel, soaring unimaginable heights when it pings with a notification and crashing at unthinkable levels when it’s just a system warning, or a text from Kay – or literally anything that’s not an attempt at establishing contact from Phoenix.

Just in time, it pings again. Miles’s fingers fly over the keypad, and he curses like he rarely does when the password inserted is thrice wrong before he finally manages to type the correct string of words in. The rush in his veins dwindles when what awaits is not the smiling Phoenix from the attorney’s profile image, but Ms. Cykes’s photo of a small dog.

‘Hey, Mr. Edgeworth.’ The first message reads. ‘Do you happen to know where Boss is?’

Suddenly, Miles feels like something is very, very wrong.

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t, Ms. Cykes.’

He waits with trepidation for a follow up, but is surprised by a call.

“Mr. Edgeworth!” The young attorney’s voice greets him, attempting and not managing to mask panic. “Mr. Wright disappeared!”

Miles’s pulse is abruptly very fast.

“Isn’t he home? Maybe he is simply late.”

“No, besides, Boss is always the first at the Agency-” There’s a commotion on the other side, cutting Athena off. Some noise indicates the phone is traveling hands, and the next words that make their way through the speakers make his rapid blood flow freeze.

“Edgey!” Screams Larry, in his shrill tone of voice and sounding absolutely devastated. “Help us find Nick! He’s hurt and we don’t know where he is!”

The sound could be venom with how sick Miles feels after hearing it.

“I’ll be there in ten.” He doesn’t wait for an answer to hang up. Without bothering with tidiness, he stuffs documents inside his briefcase with uncharacteristic carelessness and takes off.

As he shortens the drive from the Prosecutor’s Office to the Wright Anything Agency approximately three times its usual length, every possibility flits through the eye of his mind. Someone could’ve broken in, a botched robbery, an assassination attempt-!

On the very bottom, lies the hypothesis it might have been his fault.

Once parked, he glides over the steps, storming into the office. Inside, Athena tries to reassure a weeping Larry while very clearly holding back her own fair share of tears.

Miles stalks by them to halt at the same spot he was on not more than twelve hours ago.

A few things differ from when he last saw the place. Namely, papers confidential and not are strewn about, a dirty maroon stain colors one of the desk’s corners, and it continues in a trail of burgundy drops all the way to the door.

It takes him several seconds for it to register that it’s Phoenix’s blood.

He swears under his breath. The two other people observe him so quietly it’s unnerving, especially in the presence of Larry. When he turns, anticipation and hesitant hope coat their expressions, as if they expected him to take one look at the scene and immediately uncover what events took place there.

It immediately dies at the inquiry that leaves his mouth instead.

“Have you tried to follow the trail of…”

They nod, understanding even as the sentence trails off into silence. Athena speaks up.

“Yeah, it was one of the first things we did, actually. It ends at the bus stop in the corner.”

A bus. That makes the already stressful situation a thousand times more complicated. It’s been half a day; Phoenix could be anywhere from California to Colorado. Bleeding, hurt, disoriented – vulnerable, unable to call for help, having stumbled and fallen in a roadside gutter somewhere, somewhere where Miles can’t reach him, not in time, and he is dying -

The prosecutor absently picks a sheet coating the desk. There is a blue scrap of paper underneath. An eerily familiar type of blue paper.

His fingers clutch it before he can think. The scribbled words fail to register in his brain, slippery like a fish that squirms and writhes and refuses to be caught.

‘I’ll be gone. Please don’t search for me’.

Miles isn’t sure what kind of sound he produces, but it surely falls under the umbrella of heart-wrenching, because the others are by his side in an instant. The note is snatched from his trembling hands, and twin gasps preface desperate sobbing from one and muffled crying from the other.

Heartbeats afterwards the grey-haired man is barking orders in the phone for Gumshoe to fetch the data from every bus circulating in LA between the hours of nine at night and eight in the morning and I don’t care that it’s impossible just do it goddamnit-!

Soon enough, every possible person that could offer even the tiniest bit of help is mobilized and running around after information. Athena tries to conjoin assisting the search with supervising Larry, making sure the distraught man doesn’t try to help only to end up disturbing the officials or doing something stupid.

Hours and hours of video footage from cameras in surrounding areas pile up his desk, and each and every one is carefully reviewed by a whole self-assembled team – composed by the in-Office fanbase Phoenix had amassed over the years – to the most minute detail. Transactions from the bus companies are thoroughly examined in search of a familiar bank number until everyone is complaining about numbers appearing scrambled. Miles runs like a dizzy cockroach from the precinct, to the Prosecutor’s Office, to the Wright Anything Agency, and rewind.

Still, despite all that, the clock rings midnight and Miles is crying at his office, cold and alone.

The entire day he has been too busy doing everything in his power to locate his missing friend, and to find dedication for that everything else was pushed into a corner for later. Now, though, when he has exhausted all possible resources and there is nothing left to do but wait, it leaves the basement to come haunt him. What he has done.

The spiral he has been staving off finally finds enough space to grow, and it does so quickly. With a speed only the vines Von Karma left in his heart after the DL-6 retrial could rival.

God, it's all his fault. It's all his fault! They could find Phoenix’s lifeless corpse in a ravine somewhere and it would be all his fault!

Miles feels his breath picking up. This is horrible. He hates this. Is this how Phoenix felt when he ran to Germany leaving only that accursed note behind? For God, if- when they meet he’ll have to apologize yet again. Well, that is, if Phoenix even wants to hear it. He could never give Edgeworth the time of day again and he would be totally in the right to do so.

Despite the growing possibility – one that only increases in chance the more hours pass – that Phoenix might actually never return, for a myriad of reasons, Edgeworth can’t stomach the thought of never seeing those eyes and that smile again. Phoenix and him are defense and prosecution, protector and hunter, two parts of a whole, and who would he be without his counterpart?

Is that healthy? It certainly can’t be. But he refuses to go down that specific path when Phoenix’s disappearance is the subject matter. His increasing perception and qualms over the flaws in their relationship are of little importance when said relationship is in danger of ceasing to exist, for motives ranging from a simple wish of distancing from Miles to the attorney’s actual dea-!

His self-loathing is cut short by a familiar tone. The Steel Samurai tone.

The tone he put specifically for Phoenix's contact.

He practically dives over the desk, thanking the Heavens and all that might be as he stares at that smile that never looked so bright.

“Phoenix! Please, where are you? Are you alright?”

“Uh…” The voice that greets him is odd. High and feminine and decidedly not Phoenix’s. Miles's stomach sinks. “I’m Lindsey, Nickie’s – or, I guess, Phoenix's friend.”

The prosecutor does not recognize the name. She must be one of the attorney's friends whom he frequents the bar with.

“You’re Edgeworth, right?” He hums in assent, feeling nerves crawling under his skin. “So, uh, I need you to come get Nickie.”

She needs me to what-?!

“He's with you?!” The man wheezes into the speaker, all the air punched out of his lungs. Breathless, relieved and worried and a thousand other things, lost and utterly unsure of how to feel.

“Yeah…” She drawls, tone concerned. “I found the- him sitting in an alley just a block away from the nearest bus stop. Brought ‘im home and he’s been here since. But I need you to come fetch him because I’m visiting my parents, so we’re in their home, and I can't keep him here.”

Miles could die right here from the sheer relief that takes over him. Phoenix is alive, and being taken care of by someone of trust. “And his injuries?”

“Ah, he’s as good as he can be outta a hospital bed. Luckily, one of my mom’s friends ‘s a doctor and she agreed to come by after her shift. According to her, it’s a bad concussion, but he won't need stitches and can be nursed back to health at home if you do it right.” A few noises filter across the line, as she presumably moves around. When words replace the buzz again, they’re softer.

“He was really messed up. We kept him awake for some time until it was safe to rest and he kept mumbling to himself and zoning out. A few minutes ago we thought he’s okay enough, so he's sleeping now. I took advantage of his last awake moments to get his password and call someone. Your contact was the most recent one in the call log and Nickie talks a lot about you, so I guessed it was alright to call.”

His feelings collect in a lump inside his throat, making his voice come out garbled and choked while he asks after more information. When the address is known – he's so far away – Miles writes a quick note saying he’ll return by midday, and leaves.

---------------------------------------

Despite the fact he spent four entire hours inside his car, the drive goes by in a blur. For some unfathomable though welcome reason, everything but the strictly necessary for safely driving vanishes from his mind, leaving only a blissful, numb void.

The GPS woman tells him to turn left, so he turns left. The GPS woman says in her mechanical voice that your destination is to your right, so Miles parks on the right side. The GPS woman asks would you like to rate our services-?

Miles jams the mute button. He hurries out and to the sidewalk, in front of a baby blue wooden house with a trimmed front yard and white picket fences, the picture of suburban life. He stalks forward, but as his finger reaches for the bell, the door opens a sliver.

From the other side, that blonde head peeks out – the girl who rarely left Phoenix’s side. After a few seconds of analyzing the frazzled man outside, his arm still hovering awkwardly in the air, she throws the entry all the way and rushes him into the building before he can get a proper greeting in, shotgunning information.

“Great, you're finally here. Nickie is perfectly stable, physically at least. We need to get him to eat and drink, he doesn't want to and I don't think he has for the past half a day. My parents are going to stay the night at a hotel so don't worry about your and Nickie’s privacy. We got him bandages but he’s been refusing to take any medicine. He was whispering your name in his sleep so I think he wants your presence.”

That is way too much for him to process at once, and the result is him, limp body moved around by the young woman deeper into the house.

‘He was whispering your name in his sleep.’

Miles’s heart aches.

She, and, subsequently, him, come to a halt in front of a closed oak door, behind which Phoenix was presumably having some needed rest. The hands on his back leave. She rounds him, pushing the door much more gently than she just did to him.

It drags on the floor, and the noise it produces is loud, but nothing indicating the presence of someone awake comes from within the room. When a sufficient gap is achieved, Miles tires of waiting, and slinks inside.

He shakes off Lindsey’s glare while stalking to the attorney’s bedside, pleased to see him peacefully sleeping, the only signs of having gone through any disturbances being the strips of white around his head and the somewhat tight grip on the blanket.

Without realizing, the grey-haired man moves to delicately pry each of Phoenix’s fingers free, one by one, worried he’d wake up uncomfortably stiff. He only notices the action at its very end, when he has a lax hand between both of his own.

Feeling heat accumulating in his face, Miles gently rests the limb in its previous position. He pulls the duvet around his friend’s shoulders – he must have shaken them off at some point – and makes to leave the room.

His eyes, however, meet pale blue ones, peering into the room with a softness in her irises he finds thoroughly unnerving to be under. Seeming to correctly perceive his intentions, her form, half-obscured by the still not fully open door, completely disappears. Miles sneaks outside to find the hallway empty of any blonde, scanning the nearby areas in an impromptu search while silently closing off the room.

Without any clues as to the girl’s current whereabouts, Miles retraces the path to the living room, where he has the view of Lindsey in the kitchen. Wordlessly, he approaches, and she detects the unspoken question.

“Nickie says you like tea.” She offers as an explanation, removing an ancient tea box from the depths of a cupboard. He talks about me to them.

A nod is thrown her way in acknowledgement, to which she briefly reciprocates, before refocusing her attention at the boiling water.

Edgeworth takes the lack of further commentary as indication to make himself comfortable – although that’s virtually impossible in the present conditions; he can’t and won’t feel better while Phoenix and him haven’t minutely discussed where their relationship stands. Still, he resigns to sitting cross-legged on the couch, beat down by the oppressive ticking of a pendulum clock that seems to mock him, each passing second smugly showcasing the impossibility of going back in time to fix his mistakes.

His glaring at the clock is interrupted by a teacup, accompanied by saucer and napkin, that blocks his view. When he accepts it into his hands, it is a surprise to see it’s an Oolong with cream and a seeming lack of sugar, just the way he likes it.

His eyes meet hers full of yet another non-verbalized inquiry, that she shrugs off with a quick movement of the shoulder and a repeat of her previous sentence. “Nickie says you like tea.”

The grey gaze turns to meet its own translucent reflection on the beverage’s surface. He gulps, and tastes a sip, and hurts a bit more when the flavor is an exact match to those he relishes on every early morning.

Lindsey sits in an opposing armchair, palms down over her knees, posture straight, clearly uneasy behind the stoic front.

Miles takes it upon himself to prompt the conversation.

“So. About Phoe- Wright.”

Thankfully, she picks it up from there.

“Mama’s friend said he’ll be alright with rest and a lotta water. Painkillers will help too. But, just t’ be sure, when you change the bandages – which you should do twice a day – see if the lil’ bump in his temple ‘s the same size. Get him to a hospital if it grows.”

Simple. Straightforward. Efficient. The go-to instructions to care for someone concussed.

Still, Miles wishes she would just keep talking. The silence presses on him from all sides, trying to squeeze something out of him, and it’s torture. It works.

“First, I want to thank you for messaging me regarding Wright. I am immensely grateful.” And she stares at him with a feline gaze, sharp and distrustful. “However, If this place is only a five hour bus trip from California, he must’ve arrived at around two in the morning. Why did you take so long to get in touch?”

She sighs, deflating, and looks at the ceiling with a weary expression like she just came home from a long shift at an industry. “Well, I tried, but Nickie would throw a tantrum every time I even got near his phone. Really, I just got to call you in a very specific moment he was lucid enough to know someone needed to pick him up but still sleepy enough to not look twice at it – because in the beginning I was going to lie, say I was just goint ta’ order pizza or somethin’, but I have sufficient experience with drunken Nickie to know that, no matter how loopy, he will lawyer the truth out of me if I lie.”

A few twin chuckles escape both. That's Phoenix, Miles thinks, with a note of pride. Then, all the joy leaves Lindsey as if sucked out. “But, before all that I did manage a few audio recordings on my phone, since you’d prolly ignore texts from an unknown number, though…”

Her face hardens, pity and sympathy and something adjacent to anguish mixing into cement. “They ended up being so, uh, heart-breaking that I thought it wasn’t worth the effort of seeking your number just to send them.”

“Do you still have any?”

“Yeah. I think they’re still saved. Honestly forgot to get rid of ‘em.”

Accordingly, she opens her recording app to reveal three different instances at around five in the morning, ranging from a little over ten seconds in length until almost a minute.

At Miles's nod, the first one is played.

“Hey, Nickie. Do you want to tell your friends you're okay?”

Unintelligible mumbles the microphone couldn't captate answer.

“Oh, Nickie. Don't say that.”

“I’m not okay.” Comes the broken, silent response. “I’m not okay. I’m not okay. I’m not okay. I’m n-not o-o-”

The rest dissolves into sobbing, phonemes suffused into tears until they were unrecognizable. Heavy crying and Lindsey's soothing ‘shhhh’s backtracking continue for a few moments until the recording cuts off.

Miles does not have words to describe the horribly painful feeling of hearing the tangible results of the suffering he inflicted on his dearest.

That pain is his punishment. He wants to stop, to shirk away, but the consequences of his actions, those tears; they are the only thing that can pave his way to redemption. No matter how terrible, he must accept them – who is he to turn a blind eye to the hurt he caused, himself?

With that in mind, he nods again.

“Hey, Nickie, do you want to tell your friends you're alive?”

“‘Alive’ is a difficult concept. Many people during history have raised curious questions around the word, all of which can generally be divided between the artists and the academia. There are divergences, of course, but the academic consensus for the definition of ‘alive’ in regards to humans is simple. It's characterized by the functioning of physiological systems. If any part of your physiology still functions then you're alive, which, subsequently, can raise even more questions around branching concepts such as ‘brain dead’ and ‘vegetative state’, but in general, that is a safe assumption. Artists, on the other hand, have vastly different ideas on what ‘life’ and, consequently, ‘being alive’ means. Shakespeare in his work Othello, for example, using the character-”

Phoenix’s monologuing is interrupted by the audio’s ending.

The thing Miles finds the most terrifying in the recording is, despite him rambling about subjectivity – a topic he greatly enjoys, and Edgeworth knows from personal experience –, it is done in a complete monotone.

The next begins automatically playing.

“Hey, Nickie, do you want to tell your friends you're safe?”

Quiet. Quiet for so long Miles eyes the play button to be sure it didn't pause.

“Nickie?”

The eerie silence that replies continues for the remaining fifty seconds.

That does not stop the recordings from replaying inside his head.

“So, uh… He’s not really well. And…”

She sighs, gulps, and fixes him with hardened eyes worthy of those magnificent lion statues guarding any important European monument. Like a protector, and Miles hates that she is protecting Phoenix from him.

“I couldn't get a good scope of the situation, as Nickie was so upset, but from what I’ve gathered… You said… some pretty hurtful things.” Oh. So she knows. It hurts, but he'll take it as a good sign that, despite knowing, she not only allowed him near Phoenix as deliberately called him to. “And, uh, while I don’ think you did so in bad faith, I think you should talk to ‘im and apologize as soon as you can.”

Miles nods in agreement, though he can't dispel the impression the agreement is adjacent to a lie.

Because he can't for his life deduct what in his words made Phoenix react so strongly. Whatever it was of so egregious, that somehow penetrated through the barrier of common sense inside his brain, came out undetectable – to himself, at least.

You're an admirable man. His last words before the little Phoenix were willing to give him shattered. He can't see what the problem with ‘admirable’ would be – he has plenty of first-hand experience to say with confidence the attorney enjoys praise like any other person; he is incredible, just humble to a detrimental extent about it. What is left is the affirmation he is a ‘man’, but that couldn't be the mistake. Phoenix is a man. Though he did say…

His musings are interrupted by a low, muffled groan, audible only because of the deathly silence permeating the house. Simultaneously, his and Lindsey's spines straighten, like two guard dogs hearing a breaking twig.

In a second, they are crowding into Phoenix's room, his hands throwing the door open while the woman’s hold pancakes and juice, watching the attorney slowly stir awake. The intruding sunbeams paint a grimace on his face, motivating him to roll aside and attempt at inspecting his surroundings. Miles observes the sluggish process of awareness filtering into him, in the way his greyish eyes start soft and cozy as a warm blanket and widen into the cold Northern seas.

“Hey, sleeping beauty.” Lindsey saunters inside, coming to a stop directly across from the prostrate attorney. His gaze, which must be heavy as a boulder to explain the tremendous effort it takes for Phoenix to turn his head, takes a few good seconds to meet hers.

His lips move, his throat flexes, and the resulting sounds are akin to a punch in Miles's stomach.

“I want him out.”

Suddenly, the floor becomes much more interesting.

While Lindsey is too stunned to further comment, Miles silently shuffles into the hallway with his tail tucked between his legs – not unlike a dog following a scolding –, forlornly walking to his previous spot in the living room’s couch.

He feels the natural rotation of the Earth sway and wobble around him, unsure whether it's an earthquake germinating or rumbling clashing between the relief – that swells inside him – and dread – that compresses everything in its surroundings. 

On second thought, supplemented by the fact none of the nearby small objects appear to rattle, the latter presents as most probable. Because he feels every square inch of his inner spaces, already occupied or not, taken by the battle between these two opposing and equally powerful forces. So he drops on the couch and, for the first time in years, quells the need to investigate, ignores the quiet arguing faintly and enticingly echoing through the hallway, and reaches for that blank inside his mind that allows his sight to go blurry and his hearing feel so far away.

As in any dissociative state, he has no awareness of passing minutes. It could’ve been centuries, with monuments being demolished and rebuilt, uncountable battles fought by humanity, the cycle of seasons out there having being repeated so many times whatever entity was sovereign over this plane tired of them, and flowers ceased to bloom, snow ceased to fall, fruits ceased to grow and golden leaves ceased to swirl in the wind – and Miles sat there through it all, oblivious to the changes around him.

The present – his present, not the dystopian version that ran outside the windows while he swam in the emptiness of his conscious; though, maybe confronting those oceans of fire and air more ash than properly oxygen would be preferable over the fulminating look on Phoenix’s face – restarts to roll, as Phoenix and Lindsey emerge from their alcove.

The attorney, despite his bedraggled appearance, seems much more awake than when Miles last saw him. An opaque haze still blankets his stare, but it’s indiscernible whether it’s a byproduct of the injury, remaining anger, or a miserable combination of both.

Lindsey claps, and it parts the silence in two, somehow making the gap separating him from the ravenhead look even bigger.

“Well. Nickie’s got a bag with a few supplies, like bandages and stuff, and he’s ready to go.”

Phoenix turns a truly magnificent glower on her. Somehow, Miles feels it is – at least partially – directed at him.

Where the Chief Prosecutor would have shrank back, the girl met him head on, repeating a section between her teeth.

“And he’s ready to go.” She throws him a strained smile, body still leaning towards the attorney’s figure, feigning talking to Miles while the words are, in reality, fully meant for Phoenix. “Right, Nickie?”

A huff, clearly displeased, is the answer provided – although, to everyone’s relief but Phoenix’s own, he does step to side with the prosecutor.

Well. ‘Side with’ is a strong expression. He would, more accurately, describe it as standing at a distance vaguely more approximate to his position than that of Lindsey’s.

She offers her farewells, to which Miles politely returns, and Phoenix reigns in his displeasure for long enough to display some of the usual warmth. Then, they enter the red sports car, and the temperature immediately drops to glacial levels.

For an agonizing hour the steady revving of the engine is his one and only comfort. The vibrations travel up his body and generate enough heat so he won’t freeze from such close proximity to the inarticulate, immobile, inanimate block of ice his friend has seemingly turned into.

And the heat has melted enough of his fear of the frosty storm away.

“Wright. Do you want to tell me what happened?”

No answer.

A sigh breaks the quiet, and he takes a second to realize it came from himself.

“Wright. I-” He grips the steering wheel tighter. “I wholly know that this is counterproductive, seeing as I still am attempting to apologize to you. However, I feel it is my duty to make sure you are aware of just how imbecilic this little stunt of yours was.”

That earns him an offended grunt.

“You’re an attorney, Wright. Don’t play dumb. You know you were in a far too vulnerable state to go stumbling around. You know of just how many different ways you could have been taken advantage of, especially considering that you were found in an alleyway.”

Finally, he receives a verbal reply. “Do you think I can’t take care of myself?” A pity that it comes when Miles’s anger at last manages to collect the little pieces scattered throughout other emotions to fully assemble itself.

“In light of recent events, you clearly can’t.” He feels more than hears the growl underlining his voice, littered rasps lurking beneath every phoneme in traps ready to snap. “For God’s sake, Wright, I’m fairly certain you didn’t even know where you were going when you embarked on the first bus to pass your way and fled to a small gathering of people that barely classifies as a proper town five hours away-”

“At least I didn't run off to the other side of the ocean, Miles.”

The sneer brings clear disdain to the surface, the usage of his first name in such a sardonic and scornful tone just a cruel twist of the knife. Miles tenses at the abrupt demise of his own growl, doubly so in an attempt to refrain from flinching at the rawness of Wright's true feelings. His coiling must’ve been noticeable, as in his peripheral vision he can see the attorney's face nearly instantly fall with regret.

“We- I- I’m sorry Edgeworth. That was out of line.”

He lets a barbed half-laugh escape, snarl completely gone, having died as suddenly as it was born. “I appreciate the apology, but at this point, I think you’ve earned the right.”

“I always have the Wright.”

The joke is playful, but its tone is rueful and dry. Miles’s responding chuckle mirrors it.

The hours inside the car following their little squabble weren’t pleasant. They were, however, a vast improvement when compared to the trip’s beginnings. While, as they left Lindsey’s house, Miles felt as if he was stuck, freezing inside a glacier, for the remaining three hours after the fact the sensation had lessened to something akin to being abandoned in the middle of the Patagonian Desert’s plains during winter.

Not good, but certainly much more manageable.

Back in the attorney's home, Phoenix, with complete disregard for any further pleasantries, beelines to the bathroom, leaving Miles alone on the couch.

A buzz echoes, followed by the raining noises of the showerhead, and a distressing lack of any calm whistling.

During the few times Miles flew him to Europe, trying to diminish some of the harrowing weight of his disbarment, he had made himself knowledgeable on a few habits of his friend. Namely, the ravenhead would always whistle or hum under the massaging pressure of the showerhead’s stream – like a songbird in a birdbath fountain, he would think on such occasions, fondly recalling the Von Karma gardens; the single place in that wretched manor where he could find the smallest bit of respite.

Now, though, there is nothing.

An involuntary sigh breezes across his lips. Maybe he should tell everyone that he’s found Phoenix. Disappearing with an ominous note after Phoenix disappeared with an ominous note most likely didn’t exactly quell the others’ anxiety.

As if to prove him right, the moment he unlocks his cellphone he is bombarded by notifications, the most prominent being a few dozen calls from Athena and a single one by his sister.

First, he should inform the young attorney, lest she panics and makes half of Los Angeles aware of their vanishing in a desperate search for information. He composes a long text, not minutely explaining the situation due to worries over his and Phoenix’s privacies, but still containing sufficient details it should be enough to ward her off for a few hours where the two lawyers could talk without further interruptions.

Following is a short paragraph, asking Gumshoe to spread the word Phoenix has been found and retrieved alive and well. Then, he fires a quick message to his secretary, carrying a warning he has made a safe return to Los Angeles.

The last one, he stares at with a not insignificant amount of fear. Just to be sure, he checks his voicemail, and except for the usual spam messages it is empty – that was a useless expectation, Fran never leaves a sign of the sort. She does and has always preferred to shock you on the spot, having learnt from her father about how efficient of a tactic that is to wrest out information from a source that’s most likely unwilling to offer it.

So, fully aware of the trap in front of him, its teeth almost invitingly open, he steps forward and dials her number.

As always, she picks up on the first note of the third ring, perfectly.

“Miles Edgeworth.”

As always, her tone is perfectly steady and unfeeling, devoid of any shred of emotion that could give away the reasons for this call.

“Hello, Franziska. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Unlike always, she only gets a vowel out before seeming to hesitate, resuming after a jarring and atypical stutter while her brother does a double-take at the device. “It is–... I heard that your foolish fool has disappeared.”

“He’s not mine.” Edgeworth huffs, feeling a traitorous blush creeping up his neck. “But yes. Phoenix did indeed go missing for a short while. The matter has been solved, though. We’re currently in his apartment.”

For the curt moments that follow, Franziska appears to mull over his words, as indicated by the silent nothingness of her brain quietly working.

“... ‘Phoenix’. I see…”

Miles is slow to realize the weight her words carry, as well as his mistake. He jolts, and splutters, and ends up choking on the many words battling to cross his throat at once, coughing pathetically when, ironically, none of them manage to succeed in their endeavor, much to the amusement of his fiend of a sister.

“Fix your relationship. Call me again when you’re done.”

Wide grey eyes turn, and a strained ‘What?’ peeking from behind frantic hacking doesn’t have time to make its way through the line before it is swiftly severed. The prosecutor is once again left in silence, though this time, to stare at his phone in bewilderment.

His efforts to mend their bond must’ve gone better than he thought if she’s able to garner such an accurate picture of the whole mess of a situation from the crumbs she was given.

That pathway is broken by the return of a clean, less in pain, but still definitely as pissed Phoenix. If looks could kill Miles would have been exterminated to such a level he’d be little more than cosmic dust at this point.

His steps are heavy while he drags a kitchen chair along. The continuous thudding makes up a tense backtrack to preface the even heavier matter they’ll be discussing in a few. And every atom on Miles’s being stands alert.

The attorney, clad in a well-worn T-shirt printed with a symbol he can’t recognize and sweatpants – at least one of them is marginally comfortable –, positions the chair across from him and sits down. His arms are crossed – protection –, his chest is puffed out – challenge –, his gaze is hard as steel – command – and, most importantly, his leg twitches in restraint – anxiety.

Perhaps there is a chance that Miles can turn this around.

“Well?” He drawls. Edgeworth, realizing his staring, snaps out to watch a minute flicker in posture – Phoenix resisting the pull of relapsing into his disbarment-standard pose, of slumped spines and lazy grins. “I’m waiting.”

Miles, unfortunately, as he is forced to admit inside his own mind – in honor of that compromise his therapist cornered him into about not lying to himself –, is very stupid sometimes. And that is betrayed by the empty look he returns his friend with.

Another flicker passes through the attorney, although as a brief upwards pull of the corner of his mouth. It is quickly subdued by a suffering sigh and frustrated words.

“Alright. You should be beginning this, you know, with apologies and all that?” He waves the idea off with a sardonic chuckle, as if the mere concept of Edgeworth apologizing was so impossible it was laughable, and it hurts Miles a bit to realize that is the impression he gave off. “But alright. I’ll be the bigger person like mom taught me to and be gracious enough to explain myself first. Though I’m not obligated to. I’m doing it because I’m nice. Got it?”

He nods dumbly in agreement, still confused and thrown off by the unexpected attitude. He had fully prepared himself for Phoenix closing off behind a hundred doors and a thousand locking mechanisms. Not for… whatever this is.

Faced with total inaction, a jagged brown climbs up. “Go on. Ask away.”

“Oh.” That one inquiry he made to himself back in Lindsey’s home surges, but he holds it in. Don’t ask that yet. It’s too soon. Skirt around the question or ignore it for now. “Were you planning to return on your own?”

Some heartbeats pass by while the attorney only seems confused, until it dawns on him what Miles is talking about. His first answer is a scoff, and then come the barbed words. “Of course. I can’t just vanish, y’know. I would never put Trucy nor anyone else that I care about through that.”

Way to rub salt in the wound, Wright. Wanting to change topic as quickly as possible to prevent his self-esteem from discovering a path leading directly to the seventh circle of Hell, he blurts the first thing conjured by his brain cells aside from that. “Why dress like that?”

“‘Like that’ what? You mean the feminine outfits?”

Memories of pretty dresses and prettier make-up resurface. “Yes.”

Phoenix’s response is curt and simple: “I like them.”

Huh. “You like them? Just that?”

A shrug. “Yeah. I feel good in them. Do I need to say anything else?”

Miles shakes his head, in lieu of a verbal answer, busy turning the sentence around. He feels good in them…

It's not like he doesn't know about gender non-conforming people. He is, at least marginally, familiar with the concept. But, if he's to be entirely truthful, he has always looked at it as something… far away from himself; disconnected with his reality, subconsciously disregarded in virtue of his lack of personal experience around the topic.

He has met trans and gender non-conforming people. He has talked with advocates of the cause when debating ways in which he could influence the legal system towards a path less marred by the insistent traps of preconceptions. He has extensively questioned the defendants in cases of prejudice on a quest to have all the possible facts in order – something that would usually bleed till their friends, whom would frequently also be knowledgeable of or even part of the community; ‘The gays wander in flocks’, as Kay would often put it, throwing him a look and waggling her eyebrows in a move Miles loathes Phoenix for having taught her. 

But it was that. The trial would be finished. The person would go away. And Miles wouldn't have to think about any more complex facet of gender beyond ‘he’, ‘she’, and the occasional ‘they’ when he didn't know who was the subject of discussion until the next inevitable case of transphobia that would make headlines. In his personal life, when his duties as prosecutor are partially or totally removed, it almost feels… unreal.

Maybe that is a wake-up call to get him more involved in social matters, ones that are so glaring in his profession and he still refused to see. An invitation, a demand, for him to look past the self-imposed walls of prosecutorial work enclosing his surprisingly minute worldview. Maybe that could’ve prevented all this.

Unfortunately, the flow of time cannot be reversed. What lingers is the weak thread he’s desperately clinging to, the last thing tethering them together – the possibility this conversation will go over well, they’ll reach a consensus together, and all will be solved.

“Alright. And…” Miles grasps for whatever topic pops up in his mind that is not that question. “For how long have you been doing this? Going out in that attire, more specifically?”

Heartbeats of only cars and the usual bustle of the streets beneath fill the space while the attorney marinates an answer.

“Well, it’s been going on and off. I stopped for a while sometimes, and then regularly went out again for three straight years. But, in total, since I was a sophomore.” After a beat, he adds. “In theater.”

Ouch. Almost two decades to the present moment and, yet, not a word of it was spoken to him. This is proof that it wasn’t merely a failure on Phoenix’s part to communicate, it was deliberate hiding; seventeen something years of regular outings cannot go unnoticed unless it’s being intentionally obscured. And with fastidiousness, if not even a stray text message, or a photo, or a rumor, or hushed words, or anything else even tangentially related has presented itself to him.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” He asks, and if it comes out as a pitiful, almost whiny plea, displaying much more hurt than he ever intended it to, it is no one but his and Phoenix’s business.

That gives him pause. Mismatched eyes widen, eyebrows changing position alongside the rapid flurry of emotions flitting across his features, until it settles on a combination of hurt and rage – that, strangely, for the first time in a while, the prosecutor feels aren’t directed at him; at least, not entirely.

“Oh?” He spits. “Do I have to tell you everything now? I’m sorry, Mr. Chief Prosecutor, that I wasn’t aware of that particular law.”

In another instance that hadn’t happened recently, Miles doesn’t react with more than a blink to the venomous bite digging into his flesh. His apparent indifference makes Phoenix falter, face flickering between anger and growing amounts of hesitation. He produces a last warning growl, from deep in his chest, and when even that fails to elicit any stronger feedback, fangs are guarded and allow for reluctant words to pass.

“I don’t want to say.” Is the attempt to close the door, and Edgeworth sees an opening to lunge forward and wrench it further open. He reunites all the snippets of sentences he has carefully formulated during the anxious wait for the proper time to come, and stitches them together as cohesively as he can.

“Phoenix.” He calls, invoking all his worries, his care, his love for the attorney to mold the name into its softest, most tender form. “I’m trying to understand you. I promise that, provided you didn’t kill anyone, no negative thoughts will be given space to grow. I could never think less of you; I am only trying to comprehend why you acted the way you did, how I influenced on it and how I could make my influence positive rather than detrimental.”

His mouth falls open for a brief second, before it’s once again shut with such brusque force the click of his teeth resound.

“I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again,” This time, it’s easier. “I love you, Phoenix Wright. With my heart and everything else I have in me. Everything I am made of. If I was reduced to my quintessence I wouldn’t stop loving you. That’s how deep my feelings for you tread; they’ve already taken strong roots in my very nature, and I can’t envision myself escaping from their embrace anytime soon.”

Phoenix’s breath hitches.

“I promise you, Phoenix, that I’ll hear you. I’ll do whatever you need me to do to earn your trust. I’ll swear it on my life, on a stack of bibles, on my Father’s tomb. Just, please, and I beg this of you: talk to me.”

He tenses. He tenses, and now only fear sits where rage and hurt have previously dominated. The overflowing desire to run is evident, but, for some miracle, he doesn’t. His arms around himself tighten, and he speaks in a nearly unintelligible torrent.

“I-” He begins in a moderate tone, which Miles can easily predict will soon spin into madness. “I- I was afraid of losing you, okay? I didn’t exactly have the best experiences coming out and I didn’t want to risk losing what we have because of it!”

By the end, he speaks so quickly the words merge into the previous and the next, to a point the prosecutor has to take long moments after to unravel the sounds and separate each term.

He was… Afraid of losing him?

Miles frowns.

“Phoenix, please, answer honestly. Have I ever done or said something that made you feel uncomfortable or unsafe with me?”

It’s frankly astounding just how quickly their positions reversed. It goes to show Phoenix wasn’t nearly as confident as he made himself to be, that in the moment Miles can weakly grasp at the reins they almost effortlessly slip into his palms. Because, now, the prosecutor leans forward with clasped hands and an attentive gaze while the attorney backs up into the chair and squirms, heterochromatic eyes determined to avoid their grey counterpart.

“I- it’s not you, Miles.”

A haze falls over his irises, leaving them glazed over and with a foggy appearance that couldn’t be caused by tears.

Edgeworth can immediately recognize it for what it is – identify the signs a darkness spreads in his mind and coils tightly around his reasoning. Clearly, Phoenix has scars – the prosecutor has seen them before, the ones on his skin and the ones not –, and Miles is intimately familiar with the unpleasant feeling of having your wounds picked on and prodded, regardless of how old they might be. Thus, he’ll let it go. For now.

“Alright. Then-” Miles dry swallows. This is it. No more ignoring the question, not more turning a blind eye to the elephant in the room. “Would you tell me what element was so heinous in my last sentence before you-”

How could he describe it?

Ran? No, that would be basically the same as saying he’s weak, when that couldn’t possibly be any further from the truth. Phoenix is one of the strongest people he has ever met.

Fled? What is Miles doing? Calling him a coward? There isn’t anything akin to cowardice in the actions the attorney took – they were hasty and ill-thought out, yes, but the man is the last one to accuse someone of cowardice when it comes to being unable to deal with emotionally charged situations.

Abandoned us? That is just him being bitter. Using such an accusatory expression will be wholly counterproductive, not to speak of the layers of untrue it is.

Left? Left. Left is alright. He can work with that.

“-You left that night? I would appreciate knowing what so I can rectify it.”

The fog encircling Phoenix suddenly breaks and sluggishly recedes, leaving confusion and disbelief marring its wake. He frowns, and the prosecutor is relieved to see it’s not at him, but in thought – that expression he makes when he’s trying to make sense of a puzzle missing an important piece, when his eyebrows scrunch up in a way Miles will never admit he finds endearing, as if trying to bring disconnected thoughts together.

Gradually, some kind of realization seems to slowly dawn over him, when his face morphs from that signaling a deep in thought state to something disbelieving, almost amused in a manic way. He claps a hand over his eyes and throws his head back, letting a bark of a laugh escape at the ceiling.

“Oh my God. You don’t know. You actually. Don’t. Know.” A breathless wheeze comes from the bottom of his lungs, and Miles is tempted to bite out a snarky remark regarding what on Earth could be so funny in his question – he hates being made fun of for his lack of knowledge on something; to this day he struggles with the simple concept imperfection and lack of knowledge are acceptable; reactions of the kind decidedly do not help – but he stops himself at last second. He can lecture Phoenix later.

“Okay. Okay.” The volume goes down, until a last breathy giggle dies. “Okay.” He brings his other hand up to point up. “Just to- just to make it clear. I’m not laughing at you. I’m actually laughing at my own monumental stupidity.”

Oh.

Miles was not expecting that.

“It’s-” Phoenix mumbles, nearly inaudibly. “I’ve known you for three decades. I should’ve known you wouldn’t know.”

Edgeworth, feeling like there is some very vital piece of evidence lacking in the information presented to him, refrains from producing any premature comment – it’s not as if he has any; the confounding situation managed to be convoluted to such a level it shut his mind up instead of making it work incessantly on investigating the matter as it would usually would.

Voice raising, this time to address him directly, the attorney removes his palm, allowing those mismatched colors to merge with Miles’s grey once more. “Edgeworth. Okay. I’m totally for the not-assuming-one’s-gender-based-on-appearance thing, but hear me here: if you see a guy, who for your whole life you thought was a guy, in a full femme outfit, it’s only natural that you’ll have second thoughts about their gender. Like, even if you don’t think they are secretly a trans woman, non-binary people are a thing.”

Suddenly, the penny he was holding so tightly onto finally drops, and his whole ego with it.

“My Lord.” Edgeworth whispers, bringing both hands up to hide his face in shame. He must be a truly impressive shade of red, if the sheer heat radiating from his cheeks is a trustworthy gauge. “I’m an imbecile.”

Phoenix snickers, but doesn’t raise an observation, resuming explaining the very obvious thing Miles feels like an utter, irreparable dunce for not having realized sooner. “So, this whole time, I was going with the idea that it at least crossed your mind that I might not be a man, and yet you chose to call me that either way.”

The prosecutor peeks between his fingers to look at him, sympathy and guilt bubbling up inside. “Oh, Phoenix. I’m so sorry.”

The apology is waved off, albeit not in the sardonic and bitter way as before, but being accompanied by an airy, lighthearted chuckle that makes Miles think maybe it’ll all be okay. “Now that I stop to think about it, I can see you would never have done so on purpose – you were just being an idiot.” The worst thing? He can’t even deny. “In my defense, though, I had just found out that the guy I trusted the most was spying on me behind my back and the person I was hoping would get me over you was you yourself, so forgive me for not being rational.”

Finally feeling the environment warm up after getting used to unrelenting frigidness, a playful jab escapes him on reflex. “Wright, I dream to see the day in which you are ratio-”

And then he processes what he just heard.

“-’Get over me’?!”

Phoenix stills. Deathly so. The same shock that stunned Miles washes over him for the few agonizing seconds the room heats to sweltering temperatures and a panicked smile spreads on his face.

“Ahah. Ha. What do you mean ‘get over you’?” The laughs are so strained Edgeworth could almost hear the attorney’s vocal chords snapping. “I-I said, uh, get me through! Y-yeah, get me through, y’know, the year. Because Truce wants a new parent and all that.”

And, perhaps, if this had been any sooner, Miles would let it go. He’d take the golden opportunity to keep whatever it is that now hovers over them both unaddressed, left to seep into the cracks on the walls and become an oppressive presence, all because of his denial of its existence – there is no way Phoenix could ever reciprocate his insanity; he could laugh at the thought.

Yet… Now he is excruciatingly aware of just what consequences guarding themselves from one another can have. And he would take a thousand awkward talks rather than a repeat performance of the last couple days.

“Phoenix.” His false smile shuts down at the prosecutor’s sudden adoption of a no-nonsense tone. “We also need to talk about that.”

He squeaks. And Miles stifles a laugh, before resuming. “Please, Wri- Phoenix. I can’t bear to have any more secrets between us. You have my word and anything else you want to ask of me as a compromise that I’ll be entirely truthful with you.”

And he waits. Waits in silence for a verbal refusal or confirmation from his friend – this can only go forward if both are willing to work through it, together.

Miles watches the attorney’s eyes abruptly spark with an idea, and he swiftly moves, jumping upright and marching into his bedroom.

The lightness vanishes a tad at the unexpected reaction. Despite the sunny turn their conversation took, he knows, that there is a noose around his neck, and whatever just came to Phoenix’s mind is going to decide whether the rope will be cut or if the ground beneath will give way for his suspended body to dangle and die. The anticipation is akin to a drug, heightening his senses, causing his heart and lungs alike to work at a concerning and unnatural speed.

When Phoenix returns, he stands in front of the prosecutor, looming ominously while clutching the ax in one balled fist.

Tanned fingers curl around the green, smooth surface of the stone, its glow shining just as much as the determined flames inside mismatched eyes.

An anvil drops.

“Is there anything else that you are hiding from me?”

The sound it causes is unable to be captured by human ears. It's deafening.

It melds with the frantic pace of his heart, beating so fast the resulting noise is more akin to a constant hum than proper beats.

“There is nothing I’m actively hiding, but I’d like to speak my minute to clear up anything I might not have said or left unclear. We could go through that first and leave the current matter for the end, if it would make you more comfortable.”

And stops completely when Phoenix’s whole countenance drops and relaxes as if the executioner's weapon had been lining and readying to strike over his own neck.

“Thank you, Miles.”

A small smile blooms, hesitant but nonetheless genuine, and Miles does his best to reciprocate it, knowing full well his version would and could never be as beautiful as Phoenix's. The attorney sits – drops, is a more accurate description – on the couch. He leaves the magatama on the coffee table, exactly in its center, on the spot perfectly mediating the space separating them, and gestures at it with his hand at the prosecutor’s quizzical glance.

“Since the conversation didn't end yet, that way both of us can know if the other is lying.”

Good. It’s good the attorney has acknowledged the pressing need for not stopping now. He’d rather have a painful talk that makes things right between them than rush through a poorly thought-out agreement that will only fail to mend the rifts and allow deep ravines to grow from them.

Miles squares his shoulders and nods. Organizes his thoughts as best as he can, and begins – staring at the ground, because in his core, he knows he’s a weak, pathetic man.

“I’d like to preface this by saying that it was never my intention to hurt you. While my actions are inexcusable, please have it in mind that nothing was done in bad faith.”

He glances upwards, somewhat appeased by the brief nod and the thoughtful expression displayed by his friend.

“I see now that the best course of action I could’ve and should’ve taken was bringing up the subject with you. And, to some extent, I’ve known it since that first day. I, however, was foolish enough to ignore the voice of reason. I was afraid, Phoenix, that you’d leave me if you knew I’d been breaking your trust and your privacy.”

Ended the small speech, he allows himself to meet the results head on, be it scorn or acceptance, indifference or disgust.

Surprisingly, it is none of the above. It is, rather, puzzlement.

“Edgeworth. I really appreciate you opening up to me, and I know just how hard that is to you. But, I think I need to address something: that reason you said is only valid after the second time you… went there. Why didn’t you go talk to me after the first time? It wouldn’t feel like a trust problem or privacy breach then, since it was completely coincidental.”

… Wright does raise a good point. “Ngh. I-” Miles tries, and stops midway, because he just now registers the motive for that is also unbeknownst to him.

Why? Why didn’t he reach Phoenix regarding that first instance?

Memories flash in the eye of his mind. That bubbly feeling when the spiky-haired kid was around. Crying, clutching the lone photo of that boy that escaped the fate of hot kisses in the fireplace. Von Karma.

‘It might just be lingering prejudice from his Von Karma days that he still holds over himself.’

“I- I think-”

Having those feelings reignited after battling a more mature version of that boy in court, pouring bucket upon bucket of water over the flame, panicking when it seemed he’d only doused it in gasoline.

“I couldn’t accept it, at first. That I was – am gay. That I felt attracted to men. To you.”

Sleepless nights wondering what was wrong with him, why couldn’t he be like Von Karma wanted – because he’d never be perfect if he didn’t find a woman to marry and produce offspring.

“It was difficult, Phoenix.”

Realizing Von Karma was the one wrong. So completely, utterly, wrong. Maybe, just maybe, he was fine.

“And even more difficult to walk the path of learning, understanding this part of myself.”

‘It’s alright to be attracted to people, Miles, regardless of gender.’ his therapist had said. At first, it felt like a lie. But, repeating that everyday, letting himself look at Phoenix a bit longer, not immediately banishing the terribly sappy thoughts about the man, maybe even losing himself in daydreams at times, made it ring more and more as a truth.

“I did it. Eventually, I came to terms with the fact I’m deeply, irrevocably infatuated with you, Phoenix Wright.”

Allowing himself to love, wholeheartedly.

“And, I think… I think the thought of you not being a man appeared, briefly as it was. But was suppressed before it could take a proper form. If, in the end, you’re not a man, that entire journey I walked, the battles I fought, all so I could admit to myself I loved a man without any residual guilt… was it all for nothing? Conceding you could be anything but a man turned into synonymous with disregarding all I went through to reconcile with my sexuality.”

“That… Does make sense.” Comes the careful reply, an even more careful question in tow. “... Do you still feel that?”

Miles fidgets with his cuffs, a better alternative to the usual tick of making the little moon-like scars on his left arm deeper.

“Somewhat? I’m not entirely certain.”

“If… If we were to date, would that be a problem?”

“No.” He nearly barks. “Phoenix, while that is something that currently bothers me, it is not nearly strong enough to distort my feelings for you.”

The ravenhead eyes him, then the magatama, waiting for something to show up, discernibly relaxing when nothing does. “That’s settled, then. And I’m really sorry you went through all that. I… I know it’s far from easy.” He offers a supportive smile. “I’m really proud of you for managing.”

‘I’m really proud of you.’ Those words kindle something inside his ribcage, because the first thing he knows, inexplicable warmth fills him.

It is another point on the growing mental bullet list he is structuring inside his head of topics to revisit and reflect on later, a matter that will surely lurk on the corners of his mind while he postpones addressing it. Right now, however, the focus is back on Phoenix – or, more precisely, on his earlier statement. “You have my gratitude. Please, proceed on the prior topic.”

One more break, where the attorney searches around for words in the shadowed corners, in the cracks on the wall paint, in the minuscule gaps between fibers in the worn couch, picking them with care. His mouth opens, and closes, and opens again, a single phoneme making its way out before he seems to change ideas. The cycle repeats, and all the while Miles sits, still, calming his nervousness and hoping – praying – his stance successfully conveys support.

“Well,” The discourse commences. “We’ve already established that y-you love me,” Pause, while a blush befalls them both. “As I-I-” A deep, steadying breath. “-Love you too. Because that’s what I’ve been doing for the past two decades, Miles. I’ve been loving you, more and more, until I couldn’t see myself not loving you. And, because I was so sure you’d never love me back, I was searching for someone else to love instead.” The prosecutor has a few thoughts on that, but before he can even think of voicing them, Phoenix barrels on. “So, what do you think of making this-” He points to him and to Miles repeatedly, in a nearly dizzying speed. “-A thing? Like, dating? Do you want to get into a serious, committed relationship? Because I-”

The rambling halts. Halts in the same abrupt way as Miles's heartbeat – and he’ll need to pay a visit to a cardiologist once this is finished, whatever is happening to his heart cannot be healthy  – does when a sudden lump of hope clogs his arteries.

“I want to. I want to kiss you, and go on dates, and watch the stars together, and banter over cereal brands, and sleep in your bed, and see your morning hair, and tolerate your long ass Steel Samurai info dumps whenever we happen to see something even marginally related to the show.”

Quietness.

“But I don't know if I can…” He mumbles, curling into himself.

That jumble blocking his blood flow dissolves, prompting a return of the prosecutor’s functions into regular working – albeit, still slower than usual, delayed by the thick onslaught of world-stopping and world-spinning statements he has just been assaulted by.

“That's what I want too, Phoenix. I am interested in upgrading the status of our current relationship. But what do you mean with the words ‘you don't know if you can’?”

He inhales, deeply, again, pupils flitting about as if he could find a script etched somewhere on the walls, or maybe someone holding a plaque with exactly what words to say in the shadows. Edgeworth can’t criticize him for it – it is something he himself has had to put tremendous effort into refraining from doing since he’s come face to face with the m- the attorney.

“Miles. I-I love you. I love you very much. First and foremost, I need you to know that. But, that doesn’t write off the fact that-” He struggles, the rest becoming stuck in his throat like glass shards, painful and hard to dislodge. “-That you hurt me. Because you did hurt me, deeply so. And I don’t know if I can trust you anymore.”

Well. That was to be expected, considering my shameful conduct until recently. He closes his eyes and lets the words wash over him, peacefully accepting what he knows are the deserved results of being so lackadaisical regarding the feelings of his beloved.

“So,” Phoenix continues, opposite to Edgeworth’s predictions that would be where all would end. And he opens his eyes again, to watch the determination in the attorney, oh so similar to that day months ago when he was in the Chief Prosecutor’s office, proclaiming with such certainty he’d find the identity of someone. “Give me three months. Three months to sort out my feelings and put my thoughts in order, and I’ll come to you with a definitive answer. Meanwhile, we can continue normally, because I don’t know if I could tolerate being away from you for so long when you’re in my reach. But I want to establish a day to put an end to this once and for all. Okay?”

What.

Why – How does – What?!

Phoenix is… giving him a chance?

Miles is – in awe, is the single way he can describe it that can encompass what he feels in its whole.

He was fully expecting to be ultimately rejected. Gently, of course, because Phoenix is incapable of being rude to anyone he’s not angry with, and after their heart-to-heart Edgeworth is sure there is no more red left in either party’s faces from origins beyond embarrassment or love. However, he definitely could not have foreseen that the attorney would be so gracious as to extend him an olive branch.

A piece of his brain whispers that he did know – his heart had told him Phoenix would always come back, after all; and it is obliterated without mercy. The ravenhead didn’t forgive him, he made that quite clear. There is nothing inherent in the attorney that guarantees he will unconditionally grant him pardon. What Phoenix did was weigh all the options, and conclude Miles is worthy of having belief put into.

Belief. Faith. A golden albeit delicate bloom entrusted to him, which Miles will guard with his life.

“Okay.” He says, and a small smile tugs at his lips. “Alright.”

Phoenix smiles too, and it is – it is shy, it is soft, a bit hesitant, and, above all, it is fragile, as if a whisper of breeze would break it and send fragments flying. But it remains there, tethered, intact, unbroken.

“Perfect then.” And it is full of relief. It’s then that the prosecutor realizes – Phoenix is just as afraid of sending him away as he is afraid of being sent away.

He pats his thighs, and rises, stepping forward. In front of him, the ravenhead extends a hand. Miles takes it. “Just to make sure we’re on the same page: my name is Phoenix Wright. I identify as non-binary and go by ‘he’ and ‘they’ – you can choose one, it doesn't bother me, but I personally prefer it if you switch between both.”

Miles indulges in the silly roleplay – which, maybe, can’t even be considered a roleplay. It is, in fact, the first time they are properly introducing themselves to each other.

“Miles Edgeworth. Man – use only ‘he’, please.”

A huff of a laugh escapes Phoenix’s lips, one that the attorney is too late to muffle with a closed fist. “Y’know, Edgeworth, you sound like a caveman talking sometimes. A few more pronouns and connectives wouldn’t hurt you.”

He checks his wrist clock. Almost midday. “A few less wouldn’t hurt you either, Wright. Your habit of rambling is quite frankly distracting.”

“Oh? Are you saying I distract you, Mr. Edgeworth?” They throw back, following the prosecutor while he retrieves his blazer.

Halfway out, Miles answers. “When someone is as loud a buffoon as you, it’s quite frankly impossible not to.”

“Thanks, Miles. That’s very kind of you to say.” Phoenix preens, holding open the door, leaning on the doorframe, perched over the doorstep.

“I-” The retort dies on his lips as Edgeworth looks, properly looks at him, not absentmindedly throwing glances while preparing to leave and bantering.

Phoenix has a shine to them, a radiance he has rarely if not ever seen. It’s an elixir, just enough to calm his erratic blood flow without diverting his focus from the newly acquired responsibilities. He did that. He could quell the attorney’s worries and fears so they beamed, so happy, so carefree, at him again.

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” They complete his aborted sentence, a hopeful lilt to their words, an expectant slant to his grin.

“Yes.” Miles replies. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

From his office, Edgeworth looks outside.

The clouds seem to organize in a way that reminds him too much of a certain defense attorney.

A couple hours have sluggishly crawled by since he left Phoenix’s apartment; hours that were almost entirely spent praying his gratitude to any and all higher beings and, most importantly, to Phoenix themselves.

He sighs almost wistfully, picturing the image of his friend while they loitered in the hallway to watch the prosecutor retreat; that puppy-eyed look, that restless happy energy that invokes the image of a dog wagging its tail.

Phoenix could be unbearably adorable at times.

An abrupt buzzing, amplified by his desk, cuts short his musings – daydreams, really. He hovers above his cell phone, finding the frown of his sister staring back at him from the screen.

Ah. I believe it slipped my mind to update her regarding Phoenix and I. He picks up the call, returning to his spot at the window. A pigeon made itself comfortable on the windowsill, separated from him by the glass.

“Miles Edgeworth!” Franziska screeches from the other side of the line, and the high-pitched shout makes Miles jerk back and the pigeon take off flight, even though the office was supposed to be soundproofed, from the walls to the windows. “I just now received a call from Scruffy telling me you’ve been ‘smiling like you just scored Mr. Wright’! You foolishly forgot to follow my order!”

‘Smiling like you just scored Mr. Wright’?! “-Ngh- I- What?”

“My order, Little Brother, to call me again after you and that fool were finished with your foolish talk!” A crack sounds, followed by a yelp. “The one you agreed to and apparently foolishly forgot?!”

“I don’t remember having agreed with anything-”

Another lash, another yelp. “Doesn’t matter! You heard it and failed to comply! Now, rectify your mistakes and tell me!”

“Alright! Just cease whipping whatever poor soul is around.”

She grumbles. “I am not whipping anyone. I am whipping the ground near someone.” Her annoyed tone conveys.

She has come a long way indeed, hasn’t she? The Chief Prosecutor chuckles, and abides by her request.

“I’ll spare the details – that is for Phoenix to tell you when th- he feels comfortable. What is integral to the context is that he has a secret, one that I intruded in. I firmly believed he’d come to despise me when he realized I’d broken his trust. And he did, for a short while. However, we talked, and-”

He chokes. He still can’t quite believe that Phoenix loves him, that Phoenix chose to believe in him when they had every right to banish him from every aspect of their life.

“... The fool gave you another chance.”

“He said he loves me, Fran.” Miles says, enunciation garbled and wet with tears. Is he really going to cry now?

On the other side, Franziska grunts, displeased by the nickname but nobly refraining from snapping an insult in return.

“He said he loves me- has loved me for so long now. But somehow believed I didn’t reciprocate his feelings.” A single laugh slips from his lips. “Can you believe that, Fran? You, Kay, Maya, Trucy, Lang, all of you made fun of me for how painfully obvious my feelings were, and yet, the single most important person in the matter didn’t notice it.”

“It is quite unbelievable indeed. He must be a bigger fool than I thought. You’ve always fawned over him – I regrettably remember with untasteful clarity the disgusting way in which you drooled over him when he first tried his new suit after overturning the disbarment.” He can practically hear her nose scrunching up. “It’s sickening.”

Miles can’t suppress a smile. A joyful, albeit watery one, stained with the tears that silently run down his cheeks. She will act like watching him around the attorney is akin to being locked in a room filled with garbage, but he knows how glad she is that he found someone that makes him happy, and he can make happy in return.

She herself has admitted to it once, although not without first forcing his hand into an NDA and threatening him with the most varied manner of legal and physical repercussions were a word of it to leave the room.

“Either case, Fran, we talked to each other. He said he’ll need three months to properly ponder on the recent events – and I suspect more than that – and it’s then that he will release a final verdict.”

“On what?”

His grin widens. “On if we will be a couple or not.”

Silence ensues, broken only by the persistent sniffles he honestly can’t be bothered to reel back.

“Ngh. C-c-” A deep breath resonates, and Edgeworth can visualize the deep wrinkles on her forehead. “Congratulations.” She enunciates carefully, choked and strained as if merely saying it inflicted physical pain on her. And that might very well be the case.

The beginnings of a grateful acknowledgement leave him, but are left stranded in nothingness by the distinct clicking of the line being cut. Fran hung up on him. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Still, the brief interaction caused an incessant, restless energy to hum from behind his ribs. Relaying the general picture to Fran made it real, almost tangible, as if he could extend his hands forward and seize the goblet from thin air – drink the pellucid sweetness that has infested every last crevice of his life like he was consuming from the Holy Grail itself.

God, he really is far beyond any salvation, isn’t he?

---------------------------------------

The following day, he finds his fingers trembling above the keypad.

Phoenix said they should keep their dynamic rolling as normal. That means random lunches and long sessions to pore over and cross-reference files.

So why is his body paralyzed, rendered to immobile stone when confronted with something as mundane as texting the attorney? All he wants to offer is the possibility of grabbing lunch together at the bistro a few blocks from the Prosecutor's Office which has turned into a favorite of both. What could have motivated his subconscious to  – without asking input from his rational mind – completely stop his movements?

He tries, putting into it an amount of effort that’d surely be mocked by society, cursing his own body for refusing to comply with his brain and cursing his brain for forgetting the simple language that English is – I can write in German but not in English; how does that make sense? He thinks, glossing over how he has, indeed, attempted to compose the text in German and ignoring even harder that it did, in fact, work.

Agonizingly slowly, one by one, diligent letters are painfully punched onto the message bar. He momentarily wishes he had a typewriter; this would be infinitely more satisfying if he could actually just punch them out in a literal sense.

At last, the invitation has been fully crafted, and he hits ‘send’. Pride for besting his subconscious and conquering the uncertain grounds surges through him for the total of three milliseconds it takes for tiny, moving ellipses to appear.

Phoenix must have been watching comfortably from wherever they were, snickering at his ungainly failure to structure a simple sentence where he is usually so eloquent, this entire time.

Miles briefly contemplates temporarily parodying an ostrich by burying his head underground, but quickly gives up – someone will certainly see, and he has neither the acting abilities to convince them it’s a sorely needed crisis nor the need to have his ego beaten down any lower than it currently is.

Fortunately, a reply as swift as the ellipses that taunted him arrives to distract him from his woes.

‘Yeah! I’d like that. Cya at 12:30 then!’

That is the simple response, and also what swirls around in his head from morning to midday, accompanying him throughout his work, his anxious checking of the hours every five seconds, his commendable speed at leaving the moment his phone buzzes with bright white numbers, and his mind-numbing restraint not to practically run there – it’s unbecoming.

He winds up arriving fifteen minutes earlier than the agreed time, and has just resolved to turn around and wait in the nearest plaza – where there is sufficient naked pavement to pace tracks spelling his dearest’s name on – when spiky hair catches on the edge of his sight.

Phoenix? Early for an arrangement? Impossible. Laughable, even. In his whole life, Phoenix has never once been punctual for anything besides court – never mind early.

Yet, the very same attorney turns around and successfully hooks his gaze, throwing him a wave and a smile, and beckoning him closer with a finger.

Miles does so instantly, as if enthralled, answering to the call and forgetting any earlier reservations. He takes a seat across from them and desperately racks his slowed brain, seeking a topic to break the silence between them only to find a void bigger than Boötes’s where reasoning should be.

“How have you been?” He pushes out, sentence somewhat clipped.

Thankfully, Phoenix seems to take pity on his pathetic offer in much the same way one would politely accept the gift of a rejected date, and Miles couldn’t be more grateful. They slump back on the backrest, a suffering groan filling the air. “Athena and Larry chewed my ass out. I swear I’ve never seen Larry so pissed in my whole life, and you know how wild the guy’s mood swings are. I was lucky they were afraid to tell Trucy I’d vanished, though, ‘cause if she was around…” He tugs at their collar, eyes darting aside while a grimace paints his face. “Yeesh. That would not have been fun.”

The prosecutor shudders at the scenario. A genuinely angry Trucy is truly something to behold, and he absolutely does not wish to have to behold one again. Although, he feels compelled to point out: “Wright, you do know she will come around to it sometime. I advise that you break that news to her yourself.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Comes the defeated agreement. “I know, I know. It’s just that… yesterday was already such an emotional rollercoaster and I feel too exhausted to deal with telling her ‘bout that on top of it all. So I gave myself until the end of the week to stall.”

He wholly concurs. While he is astronomically better at it than he could dream to be a decade ago, Edgeworth still grapples with opening up about his inner workings, even to someone he holds as dear as Phoenix. Saying last night – the last few days , truthfully – put him through the wringer with how emotionally draining they were feels like a tremendous understatement.

Although, he can’t honestly say he regrets what transpired. He does regret not having had the courage to come forward earlier, the fact the trigger to such an important discussion had to be mere happenstance, that the disastrous train of catastrophic episodes even happened in the first place. But it would be a bold-faced lie to affirm he wished things had continued as they were. Because, in the end, despite treading in a situation with the potential to shred their hard-fought relationship into shadows of its former being, they still managed to find a satisfying end.

Hm. Not an end. Then, now, three months from here, an entire decade into the future; it wouldn’t be the end – not if they still had each other, independently if that’s as acquaintances, close friends, or something more.

However, he is deviating too far from the ongoing subject. What Miles means is: if they could work through a shortcoming – a whole sinkhole – together, and towards an amicable agreement, that only goes to show they’ve been the ones underestimating how powerful their bond is.

Phoenix, under the impression Edgeworth would hold any kind of prejudice against them. Miles, foolishly and paradoxically believing the attorney would simultaneously shut him out and forgive him forever. Both had been thoroughly blinded – but, of course, a case can be made, argues the little Phoenix inside his head. Can they really be blamed? A drop of nuance already makes it clear that there’s much more than meets the eye.

Does that really matter, though? Miles is not interested in assigning blame; he wants to find the causes, to be able to pick the stones in the way and use them to build a path forward. Influenced by external factors or not, they’ve both downplayed the strength of the rope tying them to one another, hallucinating it was as fragile as a spider web when, in reality, it was more like a towing chain.

He can see, on the surface of greyish blue and brown, his thoughts mirrored in slightly different colors. 

“But, um…for what it’s worth, Edge – Miles, I’m really glad it's finally out in the open. You don't have any – I mean, actually, you probably have an idea of how much lighter I feel. It's like- like there was this pressure on my chest, and it just… went away. I’m – still hurt, that I couldn't do it on my own terms, and still scared, a bit – a lot to be honest –  but the burden of the secret in itself…”

They trail off, but Miles doesn't require the unsaid piece to be verbalized when it is painted in such vivid detail in every crease of their skin. He can understand, since, while there are obvious divergences, it is… somewhat similar to his own experience from more than a decade ago. A secret buried deep within oneself, believed to irrevocably change people's perspective for the worst if ever revealed, and unwillingly unearthed by a beloved childhood friend.

It is a risky move, a bet he decides to take; Edgeworth extends an arm over the table, leaving his palm facing the ceiling in wordless support. It's an offer, and he fully expects Phoenix to decline – which is the reason for his surprise when they, after warily eyeing the lended hand, hesitantly puts his own above it.

Pale fingers wrap around tan ones, delicately, giving him ample time to retreat if they so wished. But they don't. They choose to stay put, allowing for their palms to slot together.

It’s not a perfect fit, like all the romantic media he consumed dictated as the norm  – far from it, really. Phoenix's hand was big and warm, calloused from a lifetime of fixing plumbing and furniture when money was tight, riding his bike up and down and up and down again, crafting entire stage sets from scratch – because you could take them out of the theater but not the theater out of them –  and his daughter was the perfect scapegoat. Miles's, on the other hand – ha – was thinner and cold, soft from a physically comfortable life and fancy padding on the steering wheel, never having to manage his way around a cupboard with its doors out of the hinges after counting the bills at the table – skin marred by one single imperfection: the small bump over the last joint of his right ring finger, a memento from the jarring amount of paperwork he wades through everyday.

There are gaps, many of them. The places where they fit are fewer than where they don't. Yet, he takes comfort in it. They don't fit; still, they're together.

---------------------------------------

“That day you vanished, Wright, I realized I…”

A dry swallow drags the next words back in to sit right back in the pocket they’ve created inside his chest. He looks up, beyond the mantle of sparse leaves, searching for comfort on the fluffy pink clouds and the warm sea of orange, glinting pearls flickering to life amid – then down, staring into the warped mimicry of those same elements reflected on the small lake.

Pale hands wring anxiously, fidgeting with each other in the absence of anything not fragile nearby. They watch the sun gradually disappear beneath the line of the horizon, framing the tall silhouettes of distant trees into shadows in the view. The bright colors are taken over by the twinkling veil of night, hot hues switched for more muted mid-tones of pink and purple and, eventually, the black and its dustings of white freckles.

Phoenix, leaning onto the old trunk by his side, patiently awaits, observing the day cede space to its counterpart while Miles plays connect the dots with the stars, seeking the contour of the words he should say and finding only the attorney’s in its place.

“I realized I saw us, not as two wholes coming together for something greater, but as two parts of a single whole. I couldn’t see myself without you – you’re part of me. If you leave, you’d take my heart along, and I’m not certain I’d ever have it returned.”

They hum, closing their eyes. The moon steadily climbs her way up the dome above, sharing room with her small confederates. Her mirrored image dances in the small waves of the water’s surface – would she let him turn into one of her companions if he went to her encounter? If he drowned in her visage?

“That’s very unhealthy.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry.” A smile breaks their solemn expression, wry, reflecting every light reaching them. Their eyes open, and they glimmer with the reflection of the moon and the thousands of stars above. A paradoxical twinkle of mirth and melancholy. “I do the exact same thing.”

---------------------------------------

During a casual stroll after a shared breakfast, they pass by a semi-luxury clothing store, and Miles’s eyes can’t resist being drawn past the many heads bustling in the street to a piece in the showcase. A fiery red dress that flows until the ankles, the skirt sporting various ruffles waist-down so it is almost flamenco-adjacent. Like the layered feathers of a phoenix.

A picture is conjured by his brain. Phoenix, in the garment, a carnation of the same tone tucked behind their ear, blushing at an unforeseen compliment.

He halts on the spot. The attorney, having to retreat a couple steps, looks quizzically at him.

Fear rears its head, bringing powerful hesitancy along. He isn’t sure if this is an appropriate moment to test a boundary – if there will ever be one for this in particular. So he stands, unmoving, trying to pick an option between fright and eagerness while Wright apologizes to the eventual passerby that, in a rush, stumbles upon him. Miles can hear in his mind the foreboding ticking of the clock signaling his time is running out.

Eagerness wins, and he points at the garment.

“That would look lovely on you.”

Mismatched eyes join grey ones on where they are focused. The attorney scrutinizes it, and at first, the prosecutor is absolutely terrified that he can’t read anything in their face other than careful attention. Every other form of stimulation filters out to highlight the pregnant silence filling the space between both lawyers, and an apology is just ready to push past his lips before Phoenix takes Miles’s hand in theirs and yanks him inside the store.

They head towards the dress, prosecutor in tow, and stop next to it, drawing out his phone. A few quick photos from a myriad of angles later and Edgeworth is being hauled again, this time outside.

“What was that.” He asks, after he spent an adequate amount of time staring at nothing while regaining balance.

Phoenix shrugs. “These store bought ones rarely fit me. When I see a cool one, I prefer to snap a few pictures and pay Fehri – you don’t know her – to reproduce them. That way they’re my exact measurements and I’m helping a friend’s business.”

Brain cells yet to reconvene and lacking his full reasoning abilities, Edgeworth blurts his one other coherent thought. “Don’t forget the carnation.”

His friend raises an eyebrow, amused smirk tugging at his mouth. “What carnation, Edgeworth?”

The dress pales in comparison to the hue his skin attains.

---------------------------------------

“- Seriously, Edgeworth. You have no idea how furious Apollo was. He looked like he was trying to disintegrate me with the strength of his glare alone. Just because I took up a monkey as a client while he’s here!”

Phoenix throws their arms to the air, a faux-indignant expression coloring his face that rapidly dissolves into childish giggling. The story is so ludicrous and the attorney’s laugh so infectious it garners a few low chuckles from Miles himself. “I cannot blame him, Wright. If one of my subordinates ever even considered bringing a monkey into court, the dismissal papers would be ready before they could dream of turning the idea into reality.”

A louder snicker leaves them, and they turn those teasing eyes on him that make him freeze with an alarming realization.

“Edgeworth. You are aware that if I have a monkey as a client, that means someone has to be prosecuting it, right?”

His face contorts into pure, untouched horror, and Phoenix seems to find it absurdly funny, because he erupts in boisterous laughter. He throws his head back and wheezes, then doubles forward on their stomach, forehead and hand locating a perch on Miles’s shoulder.

The Chief Prosecutor freezes and, not more than half a second later, Phoenix mirrors the reaction. They slowly extricate themselves, and the areas of contact have certainly left red blisters of their shape on Edgeworth’s porcelain skin with how hot they feel, as if Phoenix’s body was burning.

Irises rise to meet his, rings of slightly dissimilar colors entirely visible. Something flickers in them; impatience, regret, a tiny bit of guilt. A suited arm reluctantly starts reaching for him again, but those emotions intensify in a rapid flash, and the ravenhead soon retrieves it.

It stings, a tad, a lot – repeatedly too, like a confused wasp trapped within his chest – but there is nothing he can do aside from waiting, so someday it may be freed.

‘Maybe’, those glorious eyes whisper to him. ‘Maybe’.

---------------------------------------

It is an utterly ordinary day, with cartoonesque white cotton clouds and a royal blue sky, a normal load of paperwork, the usual swarms of citizens clogging the streets, the commonplace sounds of his detectives, forensics and officers exchanging inane chatter while him and Phoenix investigate a tediously generic site.

So, Miles has no idea what compelled him to blurt out something that wasn’t mustered in the depths of even one single brain cell. A spontaneous fluke of his tongue – which is kind of weird, because as far as he knows it was supposed to move according to input from his brain, not by itself.

“You should wear lipstick more often.”

Heat immediately rushes to his face, and he brings a fist up to stifle an embarrassed cough, pointing a shaky finger at them, neurons – annoyed at having to clean up a mess that wasn’t their fault – shuffling for any supplement that might make the statement a little less embarrassing. “... It complements your face well.”

Phoenix grins, a delighted glint sparking in their eyes. “I’ll keep it in mind.”

The next day the attorney makes it clear he has listened to the impromptu advice, as is wordlessly indicated by the indigo tone coloring their upper lip and prohibiting Miles from looking anywhere under their chin or above their nose.

---------------------------------------

“It’s my parents.” Phoenix abruptly pipes up.

Miles had foreseen something was coming; he had been watching the attorney who in turn was people-watching without really seeing anything. His mismatched eyes were glazed over, fixated on a spot forward, without moving to accompany the walking of passersby, the flight of birds, or the rustle of leaves.

They were deep in thought, silently contemplating. It was only a matter of time before he revealed what. Albeit, that was one of the last things he expected to hear – Phoenix rarely if ever talked about his biological family, so little in fact the prosecutor often forgot he had one.

The attorney clarifies, without needing further commentary. “The reason I was so afraid of coming out to you. It was my parents.”

Another pause, and Edgeworth ponders whether he should offer a prompt or stay still and wait. Coming from Phoenix, he could be either expecting encouragement to go forward or just formulating whatever he’d say on the spot.

Before he can pick a course of action, they resume.

“So! Important piece of information: my actual dad died a few months before I was born. My mom remarried some time later – I was five? Six? I don’t remember very well, but around that time. The guy… He was pretty okay. Nice, even. A bit emotionally distant, but he helped my mom with me, which is something not every man would choose to do. You know it’s kinda difficult to find a man willing to date a single mom, even more when she’s still mourning her first husband.”

Phoenix squirms, uncomfortable, and Miles has to resist the urge to reach out with a grounding hand. Instead, he puts it on the space separating them, giving Phoenix the options to welcome the gesture or refuse it. Almost unconsciously, they accept, and return the gesture with a brief squeeze of their own while water begins to gather on the corners of his eyes.

“He loved her. He loved her so, so much. And he loved me as well, even if he wasn’t always present in the way I needed. And I loved him in return. We were a family, weren’t we?”

Their head rolls to the side, eyes wide and pained, bearing painful resemblance to a kicked puppy, looking at Miles like he possessed an answer which could put to rest any and all internal conflict raging inside him. His reply, though, is silence; is the offer to listen should Phoenix want to share any more. So, he sighs, wipes the newborn tears away and picks up where he left.

“And as I grew up, I began taking notice of politics at the dinner table whenever more family members would come over. He leant more to the conservative side, and it put me off all the more the older I got, but, okay, I could roll with that.”

The path Phoenix is laying out is clear and, with all the context clues Miles has fastidiously garnered and compartmentalized over the years and recent months, its destination is as obvious as it is heartbreaking.

“One day, though, I forgot to hide my nail polish before leaving home – I’d usually do those things at home and then just change in the club. I came back to him screaming at me and my mom watching from behind the doorframe. Before I knew it, I was homeless, with just what I already had on me – my clothes, my Nokia, documents and a couple hundred dollar bills – and a letter saying all my belongings would be shipped to Larry.”

His other hand travels up to engulf the tan one he already holds in a sad parody of the comforting hug he can’t currently give.

“The next day, I was putting away my things when I noticed my fem attire was missing. My dresses, my make-up, my earrings… Everything I painstakingly collected, with what money remained from my many, many filler jobs and donations from friends, disappeared – the only articles I still had were the ones in my backpack. That day, I learned they’d been burned.”

Memories, blurred and crisp, tainted with age yet made clear by their indelible nature, flit behind Miles’s eyes like in a tape. Von Karma, throwing Phoenix’s heartfelt letters for yellow and orange to lick and consume, punishing him with a physical demonstration of the death of his past until it was written in the grooves of his brain that those idyllic, foregone days were to be abandoned.

He still has one, though. One that he rescued from the fire at the expense of a small burn mark on his wrist – an imperfection. And Phoenix? Was there anything they could have salvaged?

“I apologize if this is insensitive, Wright, but what about your mother? From the way you described, it seems like she adopted a primarily passive role.”

Miles received confirmation it was a sore spot from the visceral way in which their face twisted, before being hidden under that mask of indifference they slid on whenever the subject carried an inevitable discussion they strongly wished to avoid. “Well.” They say, and it is a tone Miles has never heard before, a concoction of the lazy drawl characteristic from that specific set of armor combined to a genuine timbre that resonates in his bones, one which he’ll need to write a new entry in his mental journal cataloging Phoenix’s behaviors for. “She was certainly adequate. She raised me well – made sure I had food and education, love and whatnot. But, in the end, I don't think she was a good mom.”

Their free hand comes up to their forehead and grasps at nothing. Puzzlement appears for a second, and when he realizes the beanie isn’t there, the palm falls limply on the bench. “When it came down to choosing between me or her husband, she chose him.”

The pronoun comes as a sneer, hissed between bared teeth, as if to ward off some figure in the shadows.

What can Miles even say to that?

That is too complicated for him – as a friend, a partner, something in-between or whatever position he currently occupies in Phoenix’s life – to deal with. The most he could do was aid in pressing charges, but the statute of limitations has already long run out. It's like watching a forest fire while having only a bucket of water in hand, a tide of overwhelming powerlessness when faced with a disaster he has no way of fixing.

He wished he could. He wished that careful touch was sufficient to soothe the tremors. That gifts could do more than just play the role of a temporary distraction. That gentle words had the power to overwrite whatever vile expletives were ingrained in their memory. Alas, Miles was never proficient at comforting – and this runs much deeper than he could ever touch without a specialized degree. The best he can do is recommend someone qualified.

“I'm... Sorry. As much as I’d like to provide you with significant help, I’m afraid I’m ill-equipped to handle this." He gulps."I... can only offer my shoulder for you to cry on, and a promise to listen and be present, or make myself as such as quickly as possible if I'm not.”

A reluctant pause. He clutches harder at the hand ensnared between his. “... Phoenix. Have you ever thought about seeking professional help? I think you could benefit from therapy.”

They huff, sardonically, and he can’t quite gauge what was the reception to his proposal. “Great words coming from the guy who blacklisted me from the Prosecutor's Office for two whole weeks because I dared to bring the same thing up while in there.”

Miles could say that that was ten years ago, that his therapist’s room is a friend of years now, that he has long since relinquished the idea he was able to cope with it on his own – but that would just be acquiescing to Phoenix in honing the spotlights on him. Instead, he is proud to say he takes the jab in stride. “Either way, I advise you to consider it.”

“Hypocrite.”

“I never claimed otherwise.”

---------------------------------------

Phoenix accompanies the prosecutor as the man looks through a vast selection of dress shoes of the most varied materials and prestigious brands, imported and not, a baffling amount of handmade items proudly displayed. He calmly walks throughout the store with the attorney on his heels, who is constantly whining over the numbers on the tags, having more than once moaned about how the majority of prices he has found until now are nearly as or more expensive than the rent of their apartment.

Honestly, it’s not Miles’s fault they cannot appreciate shoes of good quality – if he wants to be uncomfortable and cheap in their scuffed, worn down dress shoes which must be older than Trucy, the prosecutor can’t see how that’s his problem.

And the pattern continues, until he notices an ominous lack of chittering, and turns around to see his companion paralyzed on a corner of the aisle’s hallway. Curious, he joins his friend and peeks around the shelves, to see, tucked more in the back, the establishment’s selection of high heels.

His grey eyes flit, between the longing in Phoenix’s own and the far away display, as he whispers. “Would you like one? I would gladly pay for it.”

The attorney’s face hardens, and they turn around with a furrow in their eyebrows and a snarl on their lips, before he sees something in Miles’s expression that is able to disarm the defensive countenance with the ease a strong gust of wind has to send a castle of cards in pieces.

Phoenix glides over the floor almost like a ghost; silently, rapidly, leaving no trace of their presence behind. In comparison, Edgeworth’s usual stalk as he follows feels like a loose bull inside the shop.

By the time he reaches the showcase, the attorney already cradles a pair in his hands, staring at it with some deep-rooted mesmerism. They notice the prosecutor’s approach, and coyly present their pick.

It’s a pair of stiletto pumps with a dainty ankle strap and a satin bow attached behind it, colored deep blue with a peach underside. What sets it apart, however, are the insides, with a simple black and white chess pattern that should barely peep outside when they’re being worn, but adds special highlight.

His gaze travels up to find a strong red overtaking Phoenix’s features, and with their eyes now locked, they speak.

“These… I had a favorite pair I really liked to wear before… y’know.” An aborted sound escapes them that could be a sob, could be a laugh, could be a distressed hiccup. There is no way to know for certain. “And I think these are the exact same model. It stopped being produced, but..." And they expose the red tag attached to it, a very dusty, very old tag, ‘end of stock’ printed in white, bold letters. “Just my luck, don’t you think?”

Miles reiterates that fate can be sweet on occasion.

He pays, and shuts the cashier up with his strongest glare the moment words make themselves discernible on the tip of his tongue. Already on the sidewalk, Phoenix stops, and they sway from side to side, nervous, to ask him a question.

“You were eyeing them-” The heels, Miles can presume by how his gaze minutely flits to the bag. “-kinda weird earlier. Is something wrong with it?”

“No!” Miles immediately rushes to reassure. “No, I was merely… impressed by their size. How much taller are you in those heels?”

Phoenix side eyes him, and for a moment, Miles is absolutely terrified he crossed a boundary, that he crushed that delicate flower the attorney had entrusted him.

And then they have the audacity to smirk.

“I’m six three in them.” He says, simply, and the prosecutor gapes.

“Those are six inch heels?!”

No response is given, as Phoenix turns around and walks away, leaving him to scramble in their chase after breaking the stun spell.

---------------------------------------

Today is one of the rare days Miles neglects checking his calendar, in virtue of a pressing investigation that forcibly wrests him out of bed at an ungodly hour much earlier than is routine to rush to work with a leg still inside his pajama pants.

For the whole day he runs around, fueled by nothing more than a half-burnt toast – a morning gift by Gumshoe which he looked askance at but took anyway –, and abject vitriol for the utter incompetence of the police force. By late afternoon, the swarming mass of law workers has finally dispelled after a piece of decisive evidence was uncovered by a stray dog of all things – and Miles wants to yell in frustration at the Heavens for it having been missed in the first place. Each employee returns to their respective post in peace now that they’ve been provided with a North to follow. 

Stubbornly refusing his secretary’s advice of ending the workday early, he trudges inside his office to stiffly sit down behind his desk – and immediately melts into the hug of soft velveteen and lumbar support, both of which feel divine for his throbbing spine and legs.

He allows himself a few minutes of soaking in the silence and relaxation, before sluggishly pulling a paper from the stack that had piled over the day during his absence.

Edgeworth is halfway into reading the details of a request for a search warrant when his door slams on the wall once, making him startle and propel the chair a good foot backwards, and then twice, as Phoenix throws it closed without care for the worked mahogany.

Undeterred by the thunderous glower the prosecutor directs at him, they march forward, and the vexation steadily metamorphoses into confusion when they don’t slow down, instead rounding his table and pushing his chair even further back.

He only has time to look up in alarm before Phoenix pulls him upwards by the lapels and latches their mouths together.

Miles feels his mind go fuzzy with static as the attorney steps forward, hauling him onto the low shelves with hands that at some point had traveled to the back of his thighs, cornering him between them and the window, and then pressing him against it – thank God I closed the blinds, is the thought that flits in his brain for a second, and it dissolves into the ocean of feeling just as quickly.

Phoenix kisses with force, climbing up the furniture in pursuit to straddle his lap and plaster to his front, trapping the man between their lips and glass like he would never let go, like he was attempting to defy the very laws of physics themselves and break the principle of impenetrability, only so they both could be one.

Still disoriented – by the sudden action, by his brain yet to cease repeating ‘Phoenix? Phoenix’s lips? On mine?’ in loop like a tape with its black innards spilled, by the soft mouth moving ferociously against his, by the fingers that have returned to creasing his lapels and the feeling of soft spikes and expensive blue fabric beneath his own – he lets himself be swept by the whirlwind that is Phoenix Wright.

He doesn’t know how long they stay in each other’s arms, the specific duration where he welcomes the wind and spins in the eye of the hurricane, dismissing any logic or reason in favor of indulging the thrill of having a moment wherein he’s awarded full permission to love to his heart's content.

And love he does, because few things have accumulated in such quantity within his body, every second passed in Phoenix’s immediate vicinity another drop amounting to the feeling growing in his insides and threatening to spill. He loves when he pulls them impossibly closer, when he tugs at black baby hairs and feels them gasp into his mouth, when his nails leave a red trail behind Phoenix’s neck with the strength he uses to hold them close.

He has this. Finally, after decades with an ocean, proverbial and not, mediating the space between them – keeping them apart –, of years of sailing in treacherous seas and powering through storms, months of longing at the sight of land, he has been allowed to moor his little boat. And with this kiss, he sets fire to it; he won’t need it again any time soon.

Gradually, the fervor subsides, and what once was almost a claim over each other softens into something slow and sweet. He cards through ebony strands and feels the attorney smile into the kiss in response. Tanned hands slide to hold his jaw, gently, as if he were fine china in danger of breaking at the smallest wrong move. He doesn’t want to separate, and chases Phoenix’s lips when they pull back. A chuckle prompts his eyelids – which had slid closed at some point – to reopen, and reattain the connection he feared had been long severed.

Over the attorney’s shoulder, he finally sees the calendar, and smiles at the single, blue dot he remembers putting on today’s date exactly three months ago.

“Hello.” Phoenix says, tenderness suffused in the delicate contour of each letter. That whisper effortlessly regains Miles’s attention, grey eyes roaming to slightly swollen lips, to reddened cheeks, and to mismatched colors he can for the first time – without any guilt or fear – say are full of love.

“Hello.” He parrots, because his brain isn’t currently capable of much more.

“We are dating now.” They announce.

“Yes.” He agrees.

“Is that okay?” They ask.

“‘Course.” He answers.

Nothingness ensues. Although, it is a lie to call it that. Quietude ensues, because it is insulting to name the charged emotions being silently thrown like a tennis ball between them as ‘nothingness’. The office may be quiet, bathed in utter silence other than their breathing, but it is far from empty. There is too much permeating the air in here, now in the present, back in the past, and, most likely, next in the future, for a claim that the space is void ever be anything but a disservice to their history.

And it continues as that, the fog of their affections encircling them, until it is broken by a wayward giggle leaving his partner’s – partner. Not his legal partner, not his ambiguous partner. His romantic partner – form. Another one escapes. Then a few more. And then suddenly, both are giggling like little children, doubling over each other and holding on tight.

It is not unfitting, Miles reasons. The emotions he feels are surely childlike. This bubbly giddiness, this pure, untainted happiness he could almost qualify as innocent weren’t they two fully grown adults.

A small piece of him thinks this is childish, equating the two lovers to a teenage couple having a clandestine meeting behind the gymnasium during class hours. The overwhelming majority that remains swats the former with a firm hand. They haven’t overthrown hurdle after hurdle, reached the mountaintop with Sisyphus’ rock in their possession, built their own bridge every time it caught on fire, only to finally grasp the objective they worked so hard towards and have what connects them both denoted as something as immature and histrionic as teenage love.

When it fizzles, Miles takes one of his lover’s – can he think that? It sounds wrong, but feels so right – hands and presses it against his chest, eyelids slipping closed.

“You can take my heart in your hands, Phoenix. I trust you with it.”

A deeper inhalation breaks the air, and it keeps being the only sound the attorney produced in reply until they lean back a few inches, at a distance Miles thinks would have them looking into his soul were his eyes open. “You can take mine, too.” His lips brush against Miles's, and just from that, the man can confidently ascertain they are still smiling. “We’ll keep each others’.”

He smiles in return. A smile that quickly melds into Phoenix's as the attorney tilts forward, initiating another loving kiss.

A pale hand moves to their left breast, resting over the exact point where steady beating can be felt the strongest; sitting on the throne it has earned after so many battles lost and won.

Tonight is their first proper date, and Miles is an absolute mess.

See, he has no idea what to do, and the shameful amount of magazine articles and WikiHow tutorials he has consulted on proper dating etiquette rang so corny even Phoenix would wrinkle their nose at them. All the knowledge he possesses on how an event of that nature should go was garnered from Magisteel fanfiction, but those more often than not end up in certain situations; while he does want to reach that with his partner soon, it certainly isn’t today. He wants to savor every step of their relationship, even if the current stage isn’t that different from the prior.

His pen slides aside at a particularly strong jolt, a burgundy line now crisscrossing the paragraph. He scowls, more at himself than at the poor paper that’s not that far from turning into ashes.

Why is he so jittery? He could’ve incarnated a rabbit from how jumpy he is, something that was very helpfully pointed out by almost every single person he has come across. He is a fully grown adult, for God’s sake, not a fifteen year old after their crush said ‘hi’.

And it isn’t like this is new, either. It’s been nearly a month since he unexpectedly acquainted himself with Phoenix’s lips in his office. They’ve regularly arranged lunches and dinners after, introduced their newly fledged relationship to their families – even made it public as, in virtue of Miles’s position and Phoenix’s status as his rival in court, it is unfortunately a necessity in order to avoid any further problems with the law.

While they were met with excitement and relief from family and friends – the most prominent reaction to their grand reveal being Apollo running from three rooms over to incredulously scream, Chords of Steel in full glory: ‘you two finally got your shit together?!’ – the media’s irritating spotlights woefully turned to them; two paramount figures of this century’s US law engaging in a romantic relationship is juicy news, after all. Luckily, the Judge, other legal acquaintances and the vast majority of the professional field took it in stride, if not a little satisfied with the outcome. But caution in excess has never killed anyone.

And so, they’ve been patiently waiting for the news’ interest to dwindle before having a bona fide candlelit date.

As previously stated, that date is today.

In five hours, to be precise. And here he is, buzzing out of his own skin with pure anxiety.

He tamps it down – tries to, at least –, using breathing exercises, boring bureaucracy, some work-related calls to keep up the facade of focus, going as far as taking a walk around the block and engaging a few employees in fruitless conversation. They were enough to curb the nervousness, but never for long; in a matter of minutes, he’d find his leg bouncing again, generating sufficient energy to power LA for a couple days.

In the end, he gives up pretending he’ll be able to get anything done, and checks out earlier, four hours away from the agreed time. The next two are spent fretting over what he should wear – an appropriate attire hinges on environment, and the place Phoenix suggested is one he has never heard word of before, leaving him stranded and without direction in the sea of his closet.

Should he use a suit? His regular suit? Business casual? Casual? Would he be overdoing it by wearing his usual jabot? Should he discard neckwear entirely? Are sweaters adequate? Turtlenecks? Vests? Jeans and a polo shirt?! He doesn’t even own those!

He cycles through a dozen pieces and two dozen combinations before begrudgingly settling for a standard waistcoat and ascot – something to show he has put effort in choosing his clothes for the occasion but not too dissimilar from his run of the mill garb, added bonus for being classy but not so much so he’d look too displaced.

Five minutes go by as he stares at the empty in-between space, collecting in the void space the scattered parts of his wits.

The resulting will from piecing together what he amasses isn’t complete, but it’ll have to be enough; he should be meeting the attorney in his apartment in fifteen minutes, and it’d be proactive to leave now, lest he arrives late or breaks a traffic law on the way – not that Phoenix would disapprove of him for either.

Memories of the ravenhead admitting to lesser crimes resurface, bringing along that one instance when they picked a sack of cheese crackers from Target and stuffed it into their briefcase, as if Chief Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth wasn’t two feet away. The picture of their red-faced sheepishness and unwilling promise not to steal again – not in front of Edgeworth, at least – wrests an amused huff out of him, shaking some of the apprehension away.

Reinvigorated, he swiftly maneuvers through the Los Angeles traffic nightmare to locate his partner’s apartment building, partly hidden by bigger edifices. He parks on the curb, climbs the several floors to Phoenix’s apartment and, after a moment’s hesitation, unlocks the door.

The jingling of the keys and the turning of the lock must’ve alerted the attorney of his impending presence. A bit of rustling sounds, and as he crosses the threshold Phoenix welcomes him with a warm hug and a chaste kiss.

He then retreats, heading to the couch to presumably resume their previous activity as Miles secures the door closed. He takes notice of his surroundings – somewhat messy but cozy, in a distinctly Phoenix way, generally tidy but counting with scattered books, pencils and piling dishes in the sink – before joining his partner on the sofa.

Phoenix is sifting through an enormous pile of mail, for whatever reason, and Miles levels him with a disapproving glare for doing so at a time this close to their date.

They don’t take long to notice. “... I promise there’s a good reason.” He explains, smiling sheepishly. “It’s because I think I saw something in here…”

Embarrassment gives way to a frown as their sight hones in on a pinkish corner peeking from beneath a few generic business magazines and an expired water bill. Phoenix retrieves it, exposing the sender information.

‘Helena R. Wright’ it reads, and the prosecutor stiffens.

“I was under the impression you had cut contact with your family.” He tries at. Thankfully, it doesn’t seem like the attorney is any bothered by the curious prodding at boundaries.

“Well, I did.” They absently answer, ripping open the envelope and fishing the letter, holding it with the tips of his fingers as if it was coated in venom. “Mom refuses to. She still sends me letters, three times a year. One on my birthday, one on New Year and one as an invitation a week before the main family gathering.”

Both lawyers lapse into silence, the sound of unfolding paper echoing, and Miles waits for when frustration inevitably spills.

New Year celebrations and Phoenix’s birthday are not in the near future, so the lingering option is the invitation. Due to that, the man is only waiting for their face to morphe to chagrin, the message to crumple in his hands and his mood to sour for the evening – dealing with estranged parental figures can often be… unpleasant.

Mismatched eyes dramatically widen the more rows of words they fly over. The prosecutor's expectations break like fine china, thrown to the ground and stomped by the shock and surprise printed on Phoenix’s expression as he gently presses the letter to the coffee table and turns to face him – with a look that could accompany the dictionary entry for ‘deer in the headlights’.

“She divorced, Miles.” They whisper. Miles only has a fraction of a second to catch them as they topple aside. “She divorced.” They repeat, louder, and a gallon of water spawns in their eyes. The prosecutor arranges him on the cushions as they listlessly stare into the void, doing nothing to contain imminent tears. “She divorced, and sh-she says she w-wants to see me a-again but – but she u-understands if I-I-I don’t and she’s so, so s-so-sorry she didn’t try har-harder to be a-a go-good m-mom f-f-for m-me–”

They collapse into full-on sobbing, babbling unintelligibly about the remainder of the letter’s contents, and Edgeworth’s heart hurts seeing his dearest like this.

Moving closer, in motions careful enough he could be caring for an injured animal, he extends his arms, and gently gathers Phoenix in an embrace. Crying attorney now firmly secure, he rocks back and forth, running his fingers through ebony hair and rubbing patterns on his back, trying to emulate their own procedure for when Miles awakes from a nightmare in their presence.

Hands clutch at his waistcoat, tears soak his meticulously picked ascot as the attorney burrows their face in his neck. He leans to press a kiss on the crown of his head, murmuring gentle words into black hair he hopes ring as soothing rather than perfunctory – he doesn’t know if these tears are a product of anguish or happiness and wracking his brain doesn’t yield any results, leaving him to resort to ever-versatile ‘shhh’s and ‘it’s alright’s.

Eventually, they calm down, and are able to speak coherently again, interrupted only by sniffles instead of persisting hiccuping.

“She- she also says she saw it in the news. About us.” Miles squeezes them tighter. Phoenix chuckles wetly, warm and a comfort to the prosecutor’s frayed nerves after the unanticipated weeping. “She’s glad that I found a boyfriend in that, and I quote, ‘weird little boy you liked as a kid’.”

He huffs in offense. A laugh answers him, followed by a deep sigh.

“I think I’m gonna see her.” Phoenix mumbles. The prosecutor is unsure whether it’s a loud thought or an intentional statement. Gingerly, he replies.

“That’s good. Even if it doesn’t end well, I think there is only benefit to meeting her. Either to rekindle the relationship or to move on once and for all.”

“I’ve already moved on.”

Miles responds with a deep intake of breath. Phoenix’s behavior is an obvious indication he hasn’t, in a plethora of different ways – being petulant cannot hide that. “Love, disregarding your inelegant wailing-”

“Hey!”

“-When I arrived you were rummaging in search of that letter, rather than readying yourself for our date as I’m aware you were excited to do. It’s clearly important to you.”

They shift, quietude growing between them for solid heartbeats, until Phoenix cuts in again. “I should’ve. Moved on, I mean. It’s been almost two decades.”

“And three for me.” A sharp jolt of the other body, as the attorney starts, realizing the implications of his words and rushing to apologize. Miles holds them still, impeding any from coming true. “There are some things we never fully move on from. I’ll be the last to think ill of you for that.”

Miraculously, no retort or annoyed grumble sounds. For him, that was somewhat of an obvious statement; for Phoenix, not so much, if it managed to suppress his defiant nature.

“You know what.” They speak, after a lengthy lull in conversation. “I’m gonna get ready for that date.”

Disentangling themselves from the prosecutor’s grasp, he is stopped midway by fingers around his wrist. Greyish eyes follow from their wrist, to Miles’s arm, to land on his consternated face.

“You don’t have to if you want to stay and rest. We’ve waited this long, it’ll be no major trouble to postpone it for another week.”

They soften.

“I want to.”

“Alright.” The hand loosens its grip and releases entirely. He watches Phoenix disappear into the apartment.

---------------------------------------

A clean pile of dishes later, because Miles feigned ignorance at Phoenix’s yells echoing from the bedroom that he ‘shouldn’t do that’ and something about host etiquette, he sits on the battered couch. Almost in tandem, comes from the hallway the distinct noise of a lock turning open, and the house falls silent.

A heartbeat passes, and rhythmic clicking nips at the silence’s heels to chase it away.

Miles gets up, heart hammering in sync. Nighttime Phoenix will finally leave the backstage and present himself under the spotlights for him to properly love and adore, just how he’s been dreaming of for an inconceivable amount of time.

They emerge, shrouded in shadows for one hesitant beat till they pivot to face him.

And oh. Oh. Miles is sure they’re the most magnificent thing he has seen in his entire lifespan.

The chosen attire reuses a few pieces he has seen before, but the fundamental part is new. It’s a dark blue, nigh purplish dress, front held by a strip of fabric encircling their neck, showing off their broad shoulders. It curls around their midsection in a way that hints at a tantalizingly low back, draping down until their calves, counting with two high slits on the sides.

With it visible past the opening, he steps forward to – gingerly, as if any harsher touch would cause it to rip – skim over a lace garter on their right thigh. His fingers descend to play with the edges of stiletto boots he can recognize as the ones from his first day at the Fae’s Eye, while his eyes climb in the opposite direction to silk sleeves from that same ensemble he saw so long ago.

At last, his gaze reaches their face. Teardrop earrings dangle, inviting Miles to playfully flick at them. Black lipstick colors their upper lip, contrasting beautifully with the naturally rosy flesh below, and more of the tone paints their eyelids, a pair of solid dark strokes stretching along their eyelashes where eyeliner has been masterfully applied.

Stunned by the dazzling sight, Miles is slow to react.

Only after long moments does he lift his hands, to settle both on their cheeks. Before Phoenix can lean on cold palms, though, they slide down, to his neck, shoulders, sides, and come to a halt on his hips, attentive gaze following their path. Tiny shivers erupt on the attorney's skin in their wake, tremors that are nigh imperceptible but a sure indication the action is rocking them to the bone.

Finally, dark blue-brown and grey meet again.

Good God. He has to look up, and he isn’t sure what to make of the stir of heat that fact elicits inside him.

“You look lovely.”

Inexplicably, tears spring to life, beginning to well up in his partner's eyes. Worried, Miles cups his jaw again, putting more emphasis in his assertion.

“Just gorgeous, my love.” In addition, he offers his most tender smile.

Like the haze of city lights cleaning to reveal the stars, they smile in return, staring at him with that wonderstruck expression that makes Miles feel as an Angel bringing divine intervention or something equally as awe-inspiring – when, in reality, the roles are reversed.

Phoenix smiles. And it has never been so beautiful.

It's small, and gentle, and shining anew, as if there was a layer containing its shine, one that Miles never saw but somehow managed to peel away regardless.

“Oh my God, I can’t cry.” They say, strained with the effort of vanquishing tears. “I will ruin my make-up if I do that.”

For the nth time, a pale hand travels to cup their face, thumb softly swiping. “And why would you cry, my dear?”

“It’s just-” He sniffles, and shuts his eyes tightly to rein in the rebellion gathering on their eyelids, resting their own palms over Miles’s as they melt into his touch. “You’re being so nice.”

It momentarily paralyzes him. He is happy, he is, knowing that he makes his partner feel comfortable and loved, that he isn’t tripping over his own feet and dragging Phoenix along to smash their faces on the pavement like he has done as recently as a few months ago – and feared doing again. But it can’t obscure the uneasiness and seeds of anger planted in his stomach at the implications of such a statement.

“Who hurt you?” Miles asks, and, really, he should’ve known the answer.

A derisive grin forms on the attorney’s features. The sign is tell-tale, and just further cemented by the ducked head and sardonic laugh that escapes them. “Dahlia, Miles. Dahlia.”

The space between his eyebrows creases, but so do his sleeves in Phoenix's grip. He lets him talk.

“It's- Iris was nice. Really nice. In fact, so nice my first dress was one of hers, one I had to wear for a bet I had lost.”

How? He glances at Phoenix’s broad chest, then at their strong waist, feeling his face heat up as he remembers their previous postulation about how ‘store bought ones rarely fit’ and can’t imagine anything but straining seams. When his eyes return from their wayward trip, he finds Phoenix’s own, now full of amusement rather than water.

His face breaks into a teasing grin, and he thrusts a finger on Miles’s chest. “You pervert.”

The flush returns with a vengeance. “I am not a pervert-!”

“-Your collection of Magisteel bookmarks begs to differ. Don’t try to deny, Miles. Do you honestly think I didn’t see you practically sizing me up? And-” They grab his cheeks, pulling his face closer in faux-examination while he swallows a sound that’s definitely not a squeak. “-This blush right here doesn’t hide much of anything. You’re really transparent sometimes, you know?”

From the sheer heat radiating from his skin the man can confidently presume a tomato must be of a less saturated hue than he is. He splutters a stream of incohesive, inflamed denials, and Phoenix straightens again with a snort, palm flying up to cover their mouth, a corner of his smile still peeking.

“Okay, okay. Anyways, despite it being indeed very tight,” A playful glance is thrown at him, and he colors again at being made fun of. “It was also very comfortable. I think it goes without saying that I enjoy dresses, y’know; that I feel and look pretty in them. What you need to know is that Iris noticed, and she was a hundred percent there for it.”

It’s perfectly plausible. Iris is sweet, albeit harmfully complaisant, and she’d lend Phoenix her full support in almost any endeavor. The problem here, Miles has been made aware, is the other side of the coin.

“As you can probably predict, Dahlia… Wasn't very thrilled. One of the few times she and Iris switched, at least I presume it was because at the time it felt like her personality had done a complete one-eighty, she…”

Phoenix trails off. Unbidden, Miles wraps his arms around his waist and pulls them close. They turn stiff and frozen for a couple moments, before sagging forward in the comfort of his embrace. Personal experience dictates it's often easier to share these aching pieces of yourself when looking at someone isn’t required.

“Dahlia, she just… Said the worst, nastiest fucking shit.”

Here, he discovers that Phoenix's antics must be rubbing off on him to a worrying degree – his first instinct is to blurt out a joke in a half-hearted try to diffuse the tension.

“Is that appropriate language for a lady to use?”

It’s out of his mouth before he can think twice. A second of blessed quietness ensues, and then the attorney reels back to stare at him, eyes round and owlish and so shocked their incredibly beautiful complexions even out for a beat. Miles panics he ruined everything, fretting over the dull look in Phoenix’s usually lively irises, only for his spiral to be cut by its roots by the ravenhead themselves bursting in a peal of laughter.

He practically wilts in relief.

“Woah, ha, sorry, wasn’t expecting that. Been a minute since someone last called me a ‘lady’. Not complaining, though.” Interesting choice of words. Miles files that for the future. “But, just to finish this up, that really put me off dating – besides, you know, the whole ‘trying to murder me and then framing me for another person’s death’ deal. Shut me in a titanium closet for a while and got me kinda scared to crawl out; to people I care about, at least.”

‘To people I care about’, they say. The fear of rejection and abandonment is strong in that sentence; how frightened he must’ve been, to hide such a thing – something that made him happy, moreover – from their loved ones. 

“Is that why you were so frightened when learning I knew of it?”

They trace absent patterns on his shoulder. He leans into it. “Well, yeah, mostly. I know you’re not Dahlia – you’re nothing like her. But I’m sure you know trauma doesn’t really need to make sense.”

Miles forgoes a verbal answer in favor of chasing their lips, pouring all the feelings and thoughts he can’t put into words – his agreement and sympathy, because he knows, knows in his soul if such a thing exists; his regret that Phoenix went through such predicaments, to put it mildly; and an attempt at providing some sort of comfort.

The ravenhead reciprocates, pulling him closer for just a moment before letting go as a snicker leaves them, and Miles realizes he’s standing on the tips of his toes.

“Will you really leave the kitchenware exposed?” Edgeworth blurts out, grasping for anything to interrupt the makings of whatever playful commentary Phoenix was workshopping.

Thankfully, without further comment, they glance at the kitchen clock and retreat to organize the clean dishes on his sink, a grateful glint in their eyes despite the earlier grievances over the prosecutor doing housework in his status as a guest; a knowing one telling him they’re aware of his scheme and the matter isn’t over just yet, but they'll play along either way.

From his position in the living room, relaxed for the time being, he observes Phoenix’s motions. And, at last, he allows his eyes to freely roam, to take in every inch, every detail, no deathly guilt involved.

Under proper lighting and close by, turn visible the various marks scattered on their body – that usually hide beneath the sure refuge of long sleeved shirts and slacks –, permeating so much of their skin. It does not appear to bother them, however. Even in the course of such a mundane task, Phoenix keeps his chest puffed out, an air or confidence surrounding them as he wears his scars with pride, upcycling their past and their pain into accessories, displaying the pale cuts and burns and tears as tales of healing and perseverance.

Miles absently runs fingers over his thigh. Maybe he could take a page out of their book, and learn to take pride in his own healing, too. He is sure that, were he to speak to Phoenix, they’d lavish him in love and support.

The previous topic is nearly forgotten, buried under the weight of heavier thoughts, when Phoenix throws him a sideways look and a mischievous smirk.

“Finally you’re the short one for a change.”

A withering glare strikes them and their boot clad legs. “You’re aware that without those obscenely high heels you’re shorter than me.”

“What? Sorry, I can’t hear you from up here.” Their hand releases a fork and relocates to behind his ear, false innocence masking a laugh. Miles envies their background as a Theater student – he could greatly benefit from those acting skills.

“Ridiculous.”

“Deal with it, shortie.”

“You’re insufferable.” He scoffs, turning to face the door, hearing the thump of a cupboard door closing. Repeating clicks approach, and he feels hands snaking around his waist.

“So I’ve been told.”

They press a light kiss to his temple, resting his cheek against the spot for a beat. The clock ticks and that touch disappears, as they move to stand by his side.

Miles takes a sleeved palm in his, interlacing their fingers. “Ready?” He asks, and steps forward at the answering nod from above.

Only to jump two steps back when the door slams open.

“Jesus!” Phoenix whispers, having recoiled violently at the unexpected intrusion. In saunters Trucy, Larry in close pursuit.

Ah, yes, the prosecutor recalls requesting that their daughter be brought home before they left – Phoenix and his helicopter parenting, nothing new under the sun. A smile graces his lips, a greeting sits on his tongue-

-Miles freezes, eyes snapping wide, still for a moment and then darting to Phoenix.

Phoenix, who, strangely, only has a hand resting on their hips and shows absolutely zero signs of alarm.

“Hey!” Trucy bounds closer, in their direction- “Nice dress!” -And right past them to the corridor leading until her bedroom.

Edgeworth, thoroughly baffled by the casual behavior, whips around to follow the girl’s path until she disappears behind the door. In the meantime, Larry steps forward, unashamedly giving Phoenix an once over – slow and agonizing for Miles –, chin propped on his thumb and forefinger as if he were analyzing some piece of art.

Not that it is wrong. Phoenix is as gorgeous as artistic work. But Larry being the one to direct him that appraising look feels wrong on a fundamental level.

Then, when his eyes meet the attorney's again, he shoots finger guns at them. “Looking good, Nick!”

The follow-up is directed at Miles, and although it is coated by his usual playful, upbeat tone, there is uncharacteristic seriousness rooted in their bases. “Gonna have a real hard time keeping the vultures away, Edgey.”

The prosecutor is still too stunned by his partner's blasé countenance to properly react. Phoenix is the one to move, and he hooks Miles's arm with theirs and leans closer. “You won’t let them near, will you?”

That snaps him back into reality, to which he replies with a firm ‘No’. Phoenix giggles, while Larry offers an approving thumbs up that, for some esoteric reason, feels oddly good to be graced by. It’s not like, of all people, he needs Larry’s approval.  

“I’m gonna leave you for your date then.” The sing-songy ‘date’ in the man’s grating voice scratches his brain, but before he can protest Phoenix says their goodbyes and the nuisance putters happily out into the hallway.

Steps are audible for some lingering moments. It's only when they vanish that Miles turns to his beloved and verbalizes the question sitting over his tongue since the two barged inside the apartment.

“They knew and not me?”

It comes out small and embarrassingly whiny, something more befitting of a sad puppy than the former Demon Prosecutor. It is not his fault, though, that the fact he was left out harshly tugs at the strings of his heart, nor that the resulting sound managed to travel all the way up to his throat and merged with the sentence.

The attorney's face falls, guilt and regret and other unidentifiable things weighing their expression down.

“Oh, Miles, I’m sorry. It's just… Trucy is my daughter, I couldn't in good faith leave without telling her where to and with whom. Larry is-” And here they wince, gaze sliding to a spot in the floor as a grimace twists his face. “I don't mean this to scold you or whatever – it wasn't your fault. It's simply that you… weren't there.”

That weak attempt at preventing Miles from absorbing the statement as an admonishment fails tremendously. Nothing else, being it actually lecturing or not, could make him feel such miserable remorse gnawing as deep as his bones.

“Larry was there when I was beginning to feel the cracks during my teenage years, having a gender crisis in uni, crying and hurting after Dahlia. I didn't need to tell him – he was there to watch in real time as it all happened.” A rueful, nigh wistful chuckle bridges the gap to the next sentence. “Remember what I said about the Dahlia ordeal shutting me into a titanium closet? It was Larry who dragged me out of it. You know he always had this penchant for going after models and stars, so he’d learn about fashion, make-up and all that and… apply it to me.”

Miles can see it, a mist settling over their gaze, each minuscule droplet mirroring in its facets the happy memories of painful times.

He can understand it, insofar as where nostalgia over anguished periods is concerned. The months – the crazed, madness-filled gap – between the DL-6 retrial and his… ill thought-out trip, at the time felt like living in a fever dream, constantly hapless and lost, trying so hard to grasp a little of reason, a little of sense, and having it cruelly yanked out of his reach, his life bereft of a direction.

However, there are certain moments of reprieve – that when lived through struck him as nuisances and hindrance or nothing at all from how apathetic he remembers being – he looks back fondly at. In hindsight, Gumshoe was certainly a reasonable friend when he urged the prosecutor not to surpass midnight in his office. Larry, maybe, trying to wrest him out to bars and clubs, if only so he had a break. Maya before she left for her training – as strange as it may sound in light of their turbulent previous connections –, swindling him into animated conversations about the Steel Samurai and whatever stupid thing ‘Nick’ was up to.

And Phoenix. Luring him out for lunches, checking in multiple times a day, bringing headache medicine – practically being Miles’s self-nominated errand boy, really –, striking inane small talk, somehow knowing when Miles needed space and when he needed comfort the most even when his own behavior was opposite to his genuine wants. Of course, it wasn’t at quite the same level as today, but the attorney has always had a knack for seeing through his walls, if not outright barreling past them.

It hurts that Phoenix did his best to offer help, and when they were the one in need, Miles was instead prancing about, trouncing defense attorneys undeserving of his vitriolic vanity and being an oblivious idiot while sousing his hands in blood.

To further rub salt in the wound, there is special cruelty on the knowledge a persistently rational section of his mind whispers – that things are better how they played out, because the him from then would have done more harm than good to the young law freshman in their fragilized state.

It is, unfortunately, right.

“Pssst.” The grown up version of that vulnerable student flicks him on the forehead, earning them a surprised ‘Ngho!’ and a glare. Did I zone out? “Earth to Edgeworth? Were you even listening to what I said?”

His silence speaks volumes.

They sigh, as if disappointed, but a smile plays at their lips. “In any case, honey, I don’t blame you. There wasn’t anything you could have done, and I do not resent you for anything, okay?”

“... Yes.”

“Come on.” They thwack him lightly on the head, his glower turning impossibly deeper. “Put some conviction in it and I might be inclined to believe.”

“Yes, Phoenix, I understand.” He begrudgingly repeats, tone dry and flavored with sarcasm, till it softens nigh instantly. “Truly, I am glad someone was present to support you when you most needed it.” He frowns. “Even if that was Larry.”

“Hey! Cut the guy some slack, he is actually a pretty good friend when you’re in a pinch.”

Miles rolls his eyes and locks an arm with Phoenix, steering them out of the apartment. At last, their near-forgotten date.

“A ‘pinch’ indeed. I wonder where he gallivants to during the remaining time.”

“That’s a good question.” Phoenix gesticulates widely, almost pushing the prosecutor down the stairs. They utterly ignore the responding scowl. “I have a theory that Larry is actually some kind of jokester and he randomly jumps out of his pocket dimension to either make our lives living Hell or be really nice and help out.”

“Preposterous.” He scoffs, glancing at the moon that is high over the couple, bathing every surface its light touches in silvery blue. “He leans more towards an imp than anything else.”

“An imp? Sorry, Miles, but ‘imp’ can describe almost everyone in our family.”

He freezes. By his side, Phoenix freezes, too, side-eyeing him with sudden concern.

Small, afraid, as if Phoenix would retract the word and shatter this incredible gift he doesn’t know he just handed to Miles, he whispers.

“‘Our’ family?”

They stare at him for a second, until that light turns on behind their eyes, powered by the connected dots.

“Oh.” And they make their voice so gentle. “Of course, Miles. It’s been 'our' for so long now. Didn’t you know that?”

Five months into their relationship, Miles finds himself in his home office, during the once in a blue moon event of his workload being light enough to allow work at distance. A certain defense attorney, unmotivated to manage their Agency with both their protegés and daughter away, lazes in the prosecutor’s apartment.

Soon, they make their presence known. Edgeworth hears their sauntering into the room, then the slight tremor of mahogany as they situate themselves sitting on an edge of his desk. Regardless, he remains undisturbed, reading over the trial transcript for the Payne brothers’ most recent case together – it would be funny to watch them sputter around and wallow in their own negligence if it wasn’t so rage-inducing; one more stupid mistake and Miles might actually do good on his threats of firing the duo.

Circling in his mind are repeated pleas for Phoenix to call for his attention, or just do something and grant him an excuse to procrastinate on this hellish task – he swears whatever the Paynes’ next objection is, it will give him an aneurysm.

As if hearing his thoughts, divine intervention comes, in the shape of a question.

“Do you think this looks good on me?”

The ‘this’ in question, as Miles finds out when he looks up at them, is a hat. Not any hat; a wide-brimmed cream hat, edwardian-esque albeit a tad less pompous, complete with plumes and fake flowers.

He considers the question. Now, it looks too displaced – Phoenix is in their ‘resting clothes’, a comfortable outfit consisting of a worn t-shirt and either sweatpants or a skirt. Besides, it is, in all honesty, a bit too gaudy, even for Miles’s standards – notorious for their eccentricity.

But… It is somewhat cute – he has to admit –, in the way the large brim has a slight curve to it and hides one of their eyes when his head leans down. Perhaps, if accompanied by the right attire…

“It could, were you in appropriate garments.” He drums his fingers on the wood. “But where did that even come from? Don’t tell me you are the one in possession of a pocket dimension.”

“Nah, nah.” They chuckle, light, and the room feels a bit shinier, airier, despite the half-closed window and the current hour seeing the sunlight kissing the apartment’s opposite side. “It arrived today in the mail. Mom gave it to me. She said it was hers, a gift my dad gave her not long after they married because she has always liked books set around that era.”

Hat now in hands, they smooth the plumes with care, running careful fingers along the brim, caressing it with the reverence reserved for the most precious things in this world. There is a wistful look on his face, a melancholy Miles can relate to, can identify in himself – it’s the same that fills his lungs when his gaze finds his father’s in the old, faded portrait photo kept guarded and safe in his office.

The motions stop. Their head lifts again, fixing the prosecutor with a mischievous grin in place of the still half-present gloom, legs dangling in the air to complete the image of childish deviousness. “It’s to match your neck ruffles.”

No matter how good of a defense attorney, he’d never be able to prove themselves innocent of this brutal murdering of the mood. “You know perfectly well it’s called a jabot.”

“You’re ignoring the fact that now we can be sickly Victorian people together.”

He tries very hard to refocus on the printed words in front of him, even when what they compose could be equated to the screenplay for a criminally bad comedy skit. “The Edwardian and Victorian eras are different time periods, you’re well aware.”

“Potato poh-tah-to. Besides, isn’t that the aesthetic you like?”

A suffering look is directed to the Heavens. He suffers prejudice in his own home. “Contrary to what you may think, I am a man with varied preferences.”

“On what? Because I’ve never once seen you go outside in anything less fancy than an eight hundred turtleneck.”

“If you're referring to the rosewood one it was nine hundred and a half exactly, discount of ten percent applied.” He answers, his automatic drive to correct wrong information stepping in, and the moment it leaves his mouth he curses himself; he just proved Phoenix’s point.

“See what I mean?” They point accusingly at him.

“I’ll have you know that my eclectic tastes are not restricted to fashion.”

“‘Eclectic tastes’.” They parrot, clear sarcasm in the mocking echo of his words. “You’d try to sue anywhere with a rating lower than 4.8 stars for some extremely specific kind of breach no one cares about.”

“I am not that much of a pedant.”

They squint dubiously. “You are.”

“I am not.”

“You’d have a meltdown in the most mild club I know, Miles.”

“I would not.”

“Mhm.” How can Phoenix make a simple hum sound that condescending is a secret he very much wants to unearth – it’d be tremendously useful. Nevertheless, he decides to take this and spin it into a challenge, knowing full well neither backs down from one. Nose high, mustering all his early prosecutor days’ arrogance, he speaks.

“I will prove it.”

Phoenix raises an eyebrow, a wordless sign that Miles has caught their interest and should go ahead.

“Take me to one of those clubs and I’ll provide you irrefutable evidence of my eclectic tastes, Wright.”

They grin, not their usual sunny one, the sheepish version, or even the teasing rendition that drips with playfulness. No, this is sharp, what is visible of Phoenix’s teeth white and almost shark-like, glinting with smugness and something Miles can’t find an apt descriptor for but predatory. And the meaning of it hits him full force. He walked right into their trap, bumbling his way inside it like a hapless little duckling.

He can’t help but feel like he has sealed his fate.

---------------------------------------

Permission from the prosecutor granted, Phoenix scheduled an outing that would also count with the special presence of their friends, so all could be properly introduced to him. At present moment, Miles has only met a handful of them, and the words exchanged were often few, conversations awkward – the majority of instances, that is, because Lindsey is something; Miles would never guess she was so knowledgeable on law, although she veers more towards the special hellscape that is corporate law. And Phoenix would make it necessary to point out his lengthy argument with Mac, a staunch defender of the Jammin’ Ninja.

Nevertheless, the attorney congregated with his confederates to pick out a specific time and place that catered to their needs, and the sheer time and effort that was put into selecting an establishment – which involved nothing more and nothing less than field research and a frankly enormous Excel spreadsheet – was ridiculous, in his opinion. And only after that they arrived at a consensus.

Miles was prohibited from having access to the address – Phoenix will give him the directions when driving, and won't that go well – in order not to ‘spoil the experience’ as they have claimed with vehemence in multiple instances when the prosecutor tried to garner information. Unfortunately, the attorney is- an attorney – and a pretty well accomplished one at that. They were easily able to sniff the attempts, no matter how subtle Miles judged himself to be.

What was left was to stew in anxiety and annoyance at his partner's secrecy for the week until the agreed upon date – and that was precisely what he did.

The day has come after that torturing wait, flavored with the distinct feeling of being left out of a joke. Granted, it is a personal game between them, stringing each other along; but it is not fun when it's Phoenix the one in advantage.

Regardless, the much awaited night chases the remnants of sunlight, and Phoenix flicks the light switch on.

They sit, perched on an edge of Miles’s dresser while the man gives his attire the finishing touches. Despite their earlier insistence that anything above a button-down was too dressy for the chosen establishment, he refuses to be seen in public in less than two layers. The attorney highlights that as another behavior to feature on the mental bullet list they’re apparently keeping of ‘reasons why Miles Edgeworth is a pedant cutie’, in his own words – Miles brushes it off; four months coexisting in close proximity to the rascal have hardened him to such cringeworthy displays.

At one point, Phoenix, bored as if he was watching paint dry, jumps down. They walk around, snooping through his belongings – he doesn’t mind it; he has nothing to hide, after all – as Miles arranges his collar. His grey gaze, however, narrows and strays to the back of Phoenix’s head on the mirror’s reflection when a loud ‘Aha!’ breaks the quietude.

“Should I ask what caused that?”

No verbal reply reaches him; instead, Phoenix triumphantly turns around, carrying one of his prized jabots. And continues, still as a statue of a hero holding his trophy.

“Congratulations. I see you found my neckwear drawer.” Miles deadpans.

They retrieve one hand, motioning to the cloth held by the other, and Miles loathes that expectant expression. A sigh leaves him as he waves the attorney closer.

“Fine.”

“Yay!”

Hopping to his side as one would hop through a flower meadow, Phoenix thrusts the fabric in his direction. Miles takes it, a palm resting against his hips and gently guiding him to stand facing the mirror, to which they comply. Close behind, he winds the garment around their neck, twisting it every which way and smiling at mismatched irises trying to follow his movements in the reflection as if to commit them to memory.

Focus on the actual clothing only seems to return when the prosecutor’s arms snake down to wrap around their waist – they’ve forgone heels today, God bless, so Edgeworth can comfortably look over his shoulder at their mirrored image –; their gaze snaps back up and awareness registers, chagrin manifesting on their face. A strong tug at the jabot makes it tighter, and the grimace worsens.

“How do you wear this all day?” They turn around, fiddling with the portion circling his throat to loosen it. Miles restrains laughter – he looks absolutely ridiculous. “It’s so uncomfortable.”

“I refuse to take judgment on comfort from you, Mx. six-inch-stilettos.”

“I can just stop wearing them if you’re not a fan.”

Red creeps up his cheeks. “I never alleged not to be.”

“Then stop complaining.”

“It wasn’t a complaint.”

At last they locate the main knot and succeed in disentangling himself from the trap, arm stopping mid-air in the motion of throwing it over the bed at the paralyzing scowl pinning them, displeased grumbles following in his wake while he returns to the drawer. Fifteen minutes later, after the man had some good moments of snickering at their grappling with folding the fabric correctly, they leave the room.

“Everything’s in hand?” Phoenix asks, palming his pockets – the prosecutor thinks it’s pockets, at least; to him it just looks like a limb of theirs disappearing between the ruffles of a skirt.

He mirrors the motion. His phone, wallet, house keys, car key and Adderall are all there. “I’m certain.”

“Great. Just one more thing then.”

“Wh-?” Miles begins to say and is impeded from completing by arms manhandling him until he is plastered to a warm body and a warmer mouth. Surprise washes over him; it doesn’t take long to pivot into fond warmth that has him softening into the contact like steel in a furnace.

When they separate, he finds blue-brown intently watching him, a smile highlighting the crinkles at their corners. “I still can’t believe I get to just do that.”

Miles can’t believe he gets to receive that. He looks at them, at that wide beam he can’t possibly deserve, white and shining and absolutely dazzling. At those beautiful mismatched eyes blue like cold seabreeze and brown like the old wood of the pier overlooking that ocean, colors so muted he is proud to say he has stared at them sufficiently to become familiar with the slight tonal shift. Grin that life made diminish in size and increase in intensity. Stubborn cowlick refusing to conform, always in front.

‘Steel in a furnace’ indeed. He can feel the frantic bubbling inside him, the side effect as Phoenix’s warmth molds him into something soft that’ll cool down to be even stronger.

“Whatcha looking at?”

You. “Sometimes I simply cannot fully fathom the thought of just how gorgeous you truly are.”

Phoenix stiffens, liquid ruby spreading underneath honey skin, not only across his face, but seeping down their neck and shoulders. Miles smirks. It's so satisfying to, for once, be the one hitting an unexpected tune and pulling the rug from under the attorney, rather than the other way around.

He can feel a dry swallow, when his partner's face morphs from that embarrassed surprise to something softer, just as soft as the gentle touch the prosecutor feels on his cheeks.

That touch swipes with reverence over his cheekbone to tuck a bang behind his ear in an exceptionally tender move that has Miles melting into their hand.

“You're very pretty, too.” Phoenix mutters, and their voice is low, rumbly, and so soothing Miles could feel his restless mind calming to revel in it. “Just so beautiful.”

Later, he would deny having nuzzled further into Phoenix's neck in a feeble attempt to hide in the warmth; like a kitten, the attorney laughs – not mockingly, tenderly, cradling him close with intangible arms, caressing his skin with invisible hands.

But now, he does exactly that, shamelessly huddling into them as if he could inhabit their body, embarking in a fruitless attempt to meld into one with the person who already holds and guards so much of him.

“We should be leaving now.” Phoenix whispers, but a reluctance underlines it, betraying his wish to not leave the embrace.

Miles makes a sound – that's definitely not a whine – as he is pushed back by firm hands, begrudgingly accepting his current state and contending himself to simple hand-holding. Fingers intertwined, both leave the house to, forty five minutes later, land in front of the agreed upon location.

The prosecutor warily eyes the establishment. He hesitates, but Phoenix tugs him forward, and smiles, and together, they step inside.

---------------------------------------

The following day, Miles wakes up in his bed, feeling dirty, confused, having absolutely no recollection of the night prior, and sporting a miserable headache to top it all off.

He groans, and rolls to the side, coming into contact with the solid weight of his partner; Phoenix, who is sleeping with his cheek mushed against the pillow. Clean, smelling of citrus and pinewood, snoring softly in peace  – overall just looking much more gracious than Miles currently feels.

Despite the filth crusting over his skin and thickening his saliva, he resists the call of the bathroom and doesn't move, instead choosing to spend an unknown amount of time watching the ravenhead. Uncharacteristic, he grants – if there is one thing he abhors is the grimy feel coating his body, so heavy his mind itself becomes sluggish. However, this, right here; this moment of utter repose, beautiful in its simplicity, of his dearest resembling a piece of art – only alive in a way a painting could never be –, is something he’ll happily trade a shower for.

Minutes, maybe a couple hours crawl by. Regardless of the exact amount, it is enough for a stray beam of sunshine, cast on the ground by a gap in the blinds, to travel all the way from its spot on the floor several feet away and illuminate their eyes.

His eyelids flutter, body stirring, twisting and tensing in a lazy, catlike stretch. Phoenix groans, pitch spiking at a pop resonating from their back the attorney somehow enjoys despite how painful the noise sounds, before settling back on the sheets. Mismatched eyes, difference in hues made that more obvious by the bright morning sun, pin his own, and he's sure that even in the future, when they’re years – decades maybe, if he allows himself hope – into this relationship, he’ll never stop thanking the Heavens for being awarded the opportunity to witness such a sight.

And that tranquility is promptly broken by a smirk.

“Good morning, Shakira. Sleep well?”

Miles blinks once, twice, thrice in confusion, and frowns when nothing inside his mind seems to properly connect. “Wright, I don't think I need to say that's not my name.”

“Well, with the performance you put on last night…”

Still quiet, he feels his eyebrows knitting. Last night…?

A light flickers behind Phoenix's eyes. “Oh. Oh.” He says, amused. “You don't remember.”

An ominous chuckle resounds, coming from the depths of the attorney's chest, and Miles doesn't think it is too much to say he fears for his life.

“Oh, Miles. Miles, Miles, Miles…” He tuts, propping himself on his elbows to look down at Miles and crank up the condescension factor. “I promised you an unforgettable night and then you had the gall to forget it?”

The prosecutor retreats inside his brain for a moment, to hunt between the spikes of a migraine for those elusive memories that keep evading his grasp. He can't recall much; he entered the bar and felt immediately overwhelmed, was calmed down by Phoenix and, when given the choice between staying and leaving, chose to complete the experience, striking conversation with his partner's friends while indulging in some alcohol. And… It's that.

After a few glasses, the usually perfectly-filed recordings turn into a blurry mess of colors and feelings. He can vaguely remember rambling ceaselessly about a topic he doesn’t quite recall, being pulled closer to the stage, having something thrust into his hands, more alcohol – whimpering when someone took the umpteenth drink from him.

In the present, he groans. One of his worst glares is leveled at Phoenix.

“Look.” They begin, matter-of-factly. “I told you not to drink – not too much, at least. It is not my fault that, in the five minutes I excused myself to go touch up my make-up, you somehow managed to chug the entire club's worth of alcohol. Believe me, I was mystified when I returned.”

“Ngh.”

“Oh, don't be like that. Drunk you is very sweet, did you know?”

“Ngoh.” Sweet. Never in his life has Edgeworth ever even considered that, someday, someone would use a descriptor such as ‘sweet’ regarding him – to his face, to add insult to the injury.

Oblivious to – perhaps, entirely too aware of – Miles’s internal woes, he refuses to cease their chattering, and the prosecutor wonders if he landed himself with a sadist for a partner. “Yeah. You told everyone how pretty you think I am and entered a super long tangent about how I’m the sun and the moon. You also went around showing off pictures of our family to anyone who would give you a shred of attention, and honestly? I knew you were a sap but I didn't know you had that many photos of us.”

“Nghog.”

“Really. It was so cute.” If only he knew Phoenix thrived on schadenfreude before accepting the relationship, he might’ve spared himself the embarrassment. Worse still is the way different colored irises sparkle with mischief, with that distinct playful anticipation of when there is something he really wants to tease him about but is waiting for a prompt. There is nothing else that Miles can do but relent.

“I did something even more embarrassing, didn't I.”

The attorney grins that devilish grin that couldn't more blatantly spell ‘I’m glad you asked’. They stretch, palming for his cellphone in the nightstand, and Miles stiffens with the realization there exists photographic evidence of whatever it was he did, briefly contemplating how mad Phoenix would be if he burned the device.

They tap the screen and noises that sound suspiciously like shrieking begin being emitted by it. They turn it to Miles, and the prosecutor has a sudden and fervent wish that the blankets were living creatures, only so they could consume him.

There is a video. Of him, clinging to Phoenix while screaming the lyrics of some pop song he can't quite remember the name of – terribly off-key and failing miserably to get into rhythm.

“Nghoooh.” Is everything he can say.

Phoenix, the despicable however endearing devil that they are, snickers, finding joy in his disgrace.

“For what is worth,” They give the blushing Miles a condescending pat in the back, whilst he buries his overheating face in his palms and moans again. “We had a lot of fun.”