On one ordinary morning, Phoenix just wakes up with an intrinsic need to paint.
He isn’t very sure why. The last time he felt such a strong surge of that desire was in his art major era. Since then, he has been keeping himself content with doodling little caricatures and shapes on the margins of documents and notes. After so many fiascos, he was under the impression ‘Feenie’ – the naive young man who adored nothing more than to immortalize his loved ones with a brush and a tube of paint – had died to give place to this new version of him.
But, well.
Apparently he hadn’t, if this predicament is any indication.
Maybe, it is the silence. He is used to having someone strutting around, filling the quietness of wherever he may be. Be it Larry, or Mia, or Maya, or Pearls, or Trucy, or Apollo, or Athena, or-
Okay, you get the point.
The thing is, now, when there isn’t anyone dragging him to horrible endeavors, or breathing on his neck to see if he’s doing a good job, or pestering him for burgers, or asking for a new magic prop, or meticulously investigating, he feels… Odd. Not lonely, nor sad, just – like there’s something missing. Solitude isn’t something he really comprehends; what is the meaning of existing if there isn’t anyone to exist by your side?
It may seem overdramatic, especially considering that he isn’t really alone. Everyone he loves is only one phone call away, and he knows that, were he to speak on how he feels, they would cross mountains without thinking twice in the rush to his comfort. But, still, the lack of present company tugs at his heart.
Perhaps, he thinks, indulging in this sudden desire will help.
So, taking advantage of the fact it is a weekend and workload is currently non-existent, he rummaged through his old art supplies for anything that hadn't expired, and was left with a few mostly-usable things. Paint tubes, two brushes which had resisted dust and bugs, and the usual drawing kit; some fancy pencils, erasers and a half-used sketchbook.
He rips off the pages drawn on – Dahlia, Dahlia, all of Dahlia – and throws them in the trash without preamble.
After a bit of consideration, Phoenix makes the quick track to a nearby park, and walks a couple rounds. He traces some children, doing typical children shenanigans; he especially liked to sketch the little boy mounted on a dog two times his size.
He gives each kid their respective illustration, watching with a smile as they marvel at the detail and soon after get off running to show it to their parents.
He takes his time to sketch anything and everything that happens to catch his eyes; a particularly colorful beetle patiently resisting the children’s curious prodding, a flock of sparrows resting on the cables, almost every single flower he finds sprouting from cracks in the pavement, a couple watching the horizon, that was delighted when presented with the drawing.
Phoenix couldn’t quite contain a blush at their praise. He isn’t sure if his art is worthy of sitting on this couple's wall, but, if they wish so, it isn’t Phoenix who’s going to be the one to object.
Some birds, bugs and a whole lot of plants later, Phoenix is back home. But his need hasn't been quelled yet.
The next day, he passes by a store and buys definitely more canvases than he will have use for, as well as an absurd amount of money in new paint and brushes. He pays with closed eyes, and returns to his apartment with his chest puffed in pride at the newfound treasures. He puts up a dusty easel he found hidden behind a cabinet, and it didn’t take more than a few seconds for the round, happy shapes of Trucy to begin appearing on the white background.
For the following couple of days, Phoenix works diligently on a painting of his daughter. He never noticed how much he missed this, the repetitive – but still always slightly different – motions of mixing up the colors and tracing the lines, filling the empty spaces with color and life.
Bit by bit, his style comes back to him. That boring art teacher he had in his sophomore year would be pouring smoke out from her nostrils, and he couldn’t be more satisfied. He leans more on the realistic side, but his art is still kind of blocky; it makes good use of simple straight lines, basic geometric shapes and vibrant, often oversaturated colors.
Early in the night of the second day, he is staring at the depiction he crafted. Trucy was sitting on a stone staircase during a late afternoon, clutching her favorite stuffed bunny that she still insists on carrying around, thick flower beds framing the steps.
Phoenix lets it dry fully and hides it inside his closet. When Trucy comes to visit a week later, he surprises her with the frame, and almost earns a ruptured eardrum in return.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you! Oh my God, Daddy, this is so, so, so, so, so, so cool!” She squeals excitedly into his chest, trapping him in a hug far too tight for a one-armed embrace. Her other arm is carefully cradling the painting away from any potential damage.
Phoenix doesn’t say anything, too busy feeling his heart constricting and bursting. He gives her his best smile, and that seems to be enough as she gives him her best smile back.
Encouraged by Trucy’s reaction and the affirmation that he didn't lose his skills, Phoenix begins painting with increased frequency. He takes the easel to the park to paint the paisaje, to the terrace of his building in attempts at capturing the sunset, to the Agency to illustrate his subordinates he loves like family.
Little by little, all the people around him begin to collect paintings of themselves by the eyes of Phoenix Wright, and for the man, there is nothing more gratifying than to see their looks as they realize Phoenix loves them enough to dedicate so much time and effort to them.
He paints Apollo, passionate behind the defense’s bench when he finally gets a hold of a lead.
The young attorney’s gaze fanned rapidly between Phoenix’s face and the painting presented to him as if he couldn’t quite believe it. He accepted the canvas with shaky hands, and let Phoenix hug him like he rarely did.
He paints Athena, bathed by the green light of the Matrix and concentrated at her task in a way she almost never is.
She cried when he gave it to her, babbling almost-unintelligible cries of ‘I love you Mr. Wright’ and ‘you’re the best boss ever’, or something similar that he couldn’t distinguish between sobs.
He paints Maya, gazing out the train windows at the mountains beyond, her features so mature he couldn’t help but be remembered of someone else.
She stared at the painting, muttered ‘I look so much like her’, and tackled him in a tearful hug.
He paints Pearl, picking up small yellow and white wildflowers over the dull grass of the mountains.
Predictably, but no less sweetly, she began bawling when presented with the picture. She promised vehemently to never, ever let something bad happen to it.
He paints Larry, hunched over a canvas, painting in his messy room.
The man made some joke about metalinguistics that Phoenix couldn’t remember before throwing an arm around his shoulders and prattling on, about how happy he was that the attorney took back art. Phoenix knew it was genuine.
He paints Klavier, gazing wistfully out of a window while strumming on the cords of his favored electric guitar, coated by the purples of dusk.
The prosecutor stared at him with an awe-adjacent emotion. Their turbulent connections made so the best they ever offered each other were simple truces or peace offerings; this now, was a symbol of – not friendship, still, but a companionship that could evolve into a deeper bond.
He paints Franziska, recreating the time he caught her sitting on a stone bench over a flowerbed of silvery-blue delphinium, near the old remnants of what once had been an undoubtedly imposing castle, but now wasn’t more than grey rubble.
She seemed unimpressed as always, but by the careful way in which she picked up the canvas, he could tell she valued it like she did few things in life. He didn’t comment when, during a video call she made with Trucy, the painting was framed and visible, hanging on the wall of her bedroom.
He… tries to paint Edgeworth, and fails spectacularly.
Despite the dozens of blurred sketches and canvases painted over with a layer of white, it somehow never feels really right.
The pose, the expression, the lighting, the colors. It never really looks like him.
Until one supremely un-special day, when both men met for a light coffee during a break from work. Phoenix tells him the daily bad joke, and at the sheer absurdity the burgundy-clad man lets escape a warm laugh.
The moment is fleeting, and in a second it is gone, but Phoenix takes in with rapt attention all the milliseconds he can bargain with God for. He finds himself enthralled by that gentle smile, how the soft yellow afternoon lights bounce off porcelain skin, how it paints his silver hair in a shade that is almost gold, how it accentuates every plane of his face in just the right way, how it softens all his edges until Phoenix wants to squeeze him like a pillow, without any of the fear of cutting himself on a sharp outline in the process.
The meeting ends, the day continues, and people carry on, but Phoenix simply can’t take that image out of his mind.
He rushes through work, and gets home as fast as he possibly can, determined to paint down that incredible instant before it could go fuzzy and uncertain like all memories eventually did.
In a grand total of seven hours and a half, he sits in front of what he is simultaneously proud and ashamed to consider his masterpiece. He stares at it for some long moments, and senses the same emotion he felt earlier in the bistro begin twisting his innards.
It makes his heart beat faster, pulse erratic and trepid thrumming under his skin. It makes his chest swirl into something painful and comforting, longing, for something he knows is there but refuses to admit. It makes his palms sweat, letting everything slip from between his fingers no matter how desperately he tries to clutch at them. It makes his lungs malfunction, all the oxygen around being suddenly replaced with sticky honey.
He stashes the painting into a random drawer before his love can threaten to drown him.
---------------------------------------
It wasn't very effective.
Three weeks later, Maya is out and about, snooping around his stuff as she always does – Phoenix has already long given up on scolding her – and finds the canvas.
Phoenix feels his face go red. As red as Edgeworth's suit jacket in the drawing.
It isn't like the fact he loves Edgeworth is a secret. It seemed like every single person alive on the Earth’s surface – although ‘alive’ isn't necessarily a requirement, Mia can attest to that – was aware of his frankly obvious affections.
Except, of course, the object of said affections himself.
Phoenix isn't sure if he knows and just does not reciprocate or if he doesn't know at all.
But having someone, even if that someone is Maya, physically see how much love Phoenix feels for that man, how he almost worships him, how beautiful Miles is in his eyes…
It is mortifying.
Maya, though, doesn't seem the slightest bit fazed.
“Come on, Nick, just give it to him. What’s the worst that could happen?”
He freezes as hundreds of hypothetical scenarios flash through Phoenix’s mind. Scenarios in which Edgeworth rips the canvas apart, or looks at Phoenix in disgust, or detects the obvious emotions Phoenix let spill – ingrained in every line, every stroke – and cuts him out of his life forever.
It seemed that his terror was evident, because Maya’s face softened and she poked him in the forehead.
“Hey. It’s fine. I’m sure whatever your mind’s creating is fake. Y’know Edgeworth is like, the nicest person ever when it comes to you.”
… Yeah.
She’s right. Totally right. Almost Wright, as his brain stops running for a second just to crack. If Edgeworth didn’t like it, Phoenix is absolutely sure he’d be extremely polite about it.
What could it hurt?
The absolute worst that could happen was receiving a definitive blow to his ego.
The best…
Well, he’d rather not dream about that, lest he starts fostering useless hopes. It is setting himself up for a fall.
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
Maya smiles. He hesitantly smiles back.
Despite his acceptance of Maya’s proposal, it didn’t make it any more easier.
Easier said than done, right?
Only an entire month later does he find the guts to finally do it. That is almost two months after he created the painting.
He wraps the picture in maroon kraft paper, and ties it with black yarn. He throws some strawflowers in, securing them in the knot, because why not? He’s already here, anyway.
Regardless of how much he tries to stall, all the time in the world doesn’t seem to be enough . So, unfortunately, in what seems like the span of a blink he is out of his apartment and firmly stationed in front of the Chief Prosecutor’s door, staring at the silver plaque with Edgeworth’s name engraved – in Times New Roman, seriously? – and his position written under it.
He shifts his weight from foot to foot, rightens his tie, passes the package from one arm to the other, fiddles with his cuffs, wipes imaginary lint off from his jacket, ignoring the weird looks from the eventual prosecutor or detective passerby.
Phoenix has the absurd thought he is like a poorly done card castle. His determination wavers, his breathing wavers, his body wavers, his everything wavers. A mere breath done wrong would cause him to fall apart.
Just when he is almost considering himself the new statue failing to improve the Prosecutor’s Office’s decoration, he raps his knuckles on the door and winces when even that seems to waver.
“Enter.” That rich baritone answers.
Phoenix hesitates. Maybe he should just flee and pretend none of this ever happened. Maybe he could leave this behind and curl up under his blankets and cry because he is going to be a coward forever, but at least he wouldn’t have to do the same routine with the difference he would be nursing a heart that was unknowingly broken instead.
“Is anyone there?”
In an automatic response while his brain is busy, Phoenix throws open the door. His eyes immediately widen as he realizes what he has done.
Welp. There goes that wonderful possibility.
Well, Miles already knows I’m here, he thinks, meeting grey irises that are slightly befuddled. Might as well just do it.
“Wright?”
In a nanosecond, Phoenix is at his desk.
“Hey, Edgeworth.” He gives the prosecutor a shaky grin. “I’ve got something for you.”
He slams the package over mahogany and briefly contemplates running away to bury himself in the nearest available hole.
“For… me?” Edgeworth glances at the gift before looking back up at him.
“Uh, yeah. I mean, unless you’re a very good clone of Chief Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth, which I’m pretty sure you aren’t, this is for you.”
Phoenix innerly congratulates himself when that stupid joke manages to garner a light chuckle from his friend, and that instantly makes the mood infinitely lighter, dissolving the dense cloud of tension away like it was never there in the first place.
Edgeworth takes the wrapping in his hands and glances back up, seeing Phoenix staring expectantly at him.
“Do you want me to open it now?”
Phoenix feels a blush creeping on his cheeks.
“Y-yeah. If it’s not a bother.”
Egeworth’s smile turns unexpectedly softer.
“It never is.”
With these words, he starts untying the knot, taking his sweet time to put the flowers somewhere they weren’t in danger of being squashed by anything, and to carefully unwrap, making sure he wasn’t ripping the paper or the yarn.
Phoenix squirms, verging on uneasiness. He knows Edgeworth isn’t doing it on purpose, but it still annoys him to no end. The entire unnecessary wait makes the anticipation fall into a weird limbo between excitement and dread.
Finally, he removes the packaging, revealing at once every single inch of himself, reflected back by a mirror tainted with Phoenix’s affections.
His eyes widen. Phoenix’s heart freezes alongside Edgeworth’s movements for painfully long moments until the prosecutor swipes his palm lightly over the dried paint with reverence, whispering.
“... Am I really so beautiful?”
It is soft, almost inaudible, and he isn’t sure if it was even meant to be heard in the first place. But Phoenix smiles, and his mouth runs faster than his brain.
“In case you couldn’t notice, at least to me, you are.”
Edgeworth’s grey irises snap up to meet his mismatched ones. There’s something warm and delighted, almost awed brewing under their silvery complexions.
Abruptly, he jolts upright, chair scraping a few inches back, and before Phoenix can properly process whatever is happening there are soft palms holding his face and a pair of eager lips passionately pressing against his.
His mind crashes, repeating a single sentence in a loop like a scratched CD.
Miles Edgeworth is kissing me.
Miles Edgeworth is kissing me.
Miles Edgeworth is kissing me.
Miles Edgeworth is kissing me.
All that happens in only the couple milliseconds it takes for his brain to register this, and he slumps forward into the motion to kiss Miles – Miles. Miles? Miles! Miles… – back.
It is a perfect kiss. Not like fireworks or what you’d expect when you finally kiss the person you’ve been loving for the better part of three decades. No, it is like- like relief, like completion, like coming home to a warm meal after spending a year away venturing in freezing outsides. Or finding the missing piece for a ten-thousand piece puzzle.
Miles reluctantly pulls back, and they stare at each other for a moment, mutually mesmerized by one another, before Phoenix opens his mouth to break the silence and out comes a storm of loopy giggles, thoroughly unbefitting of a man his age.
Unexpectedly, Miles matches his childish laughter, until cackling fills the room and Phoenix is absolutely ecstatic, falling in hysterics, feeling out of breath but utterly unable to stop.
I can’t believe, all this time, it was so simple.
God, I’m an idiot.
“Come- come over here.” The prosecutor squeezes in between frantic wheezing, pulling at Phoenix’s tie as the attorney stumbles around the desk and topples directly in his arms.
Phoenix bunches burgundy fabric in balled fists and tucks himself in what’s exposed of Miles’s neck, between his ear and the ruffles, muffling the choking seagull noises he is involuntarily producing.
He feels Miles’s arms snaking on his back, cradling him close like he was a precious treasure, a fragile jewel, something to be handled with care; and he instantly knows he is ruined forever.
Miles, having been able to regain his breath, speaks up.
“Love-” Pet names. He is using pet names. I am going to die. Someone please bury me near a river in the mountains. “-this is- this is perfect.”
Phoenix isn’t sure to what specifically he is referring to – if it’s the painting, themselves, the whole situation – but he agrees anyway.