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CET.
It’s Miles Edgeworth who teaches Phoenix Wright to play the piano, and it’s a fact that will always strike the both of them as funny, in retrospect.
Phoenix is sitting in Miles’ latest fancy living room, weighted down by fourteen hours of transatlantic commuting and the subdued loneliness that always accompanies him, even here, even now; Trucy is already fast asleep in her bedroom, the eight-hour time difference finally having caught up to her.
Miles invited them here — here, in this case, means Amsterdam, which in turn means not Los Angeles. In his post-disbarment grand European escape plan, Germany in winter has never even been a suggestion. Miles keeps stepping around it, carefully, as if to give in to the need of scratching a scar without ever touching the actual wound.
(At first, when it had all started, Phoenix had been content to consider Europe a blank state. A hazy space where he and Edgeworth could exist without any of their previous baggage following them, where they could begin their relationship from the start, and forget everything that had come before.
That had worked, for some time. And then, two months deep into the lockdown, Edgeworth had called him Phoenix, with a voice coming from another decade, and everything had been smashed to pieces.)
Amsterdam is his current haunt, and then he will be moving to Brussels in less than six months, and then to Copenhagen. Phoenix recognizes the pattern, now, as he’d recognized it before — this is Miles, trying to escape, trying to find a home in every crease he can find, in any place that will accept him.
Miles, who has always been much more skilled at running away than at staying.
Edgeworth’s apartment is, as always, sleek, fancy, terribly impersonal, all high windows and whitewashed brick walls. Miles matches it perfectly, sitting down in a chair overlooking a canal, wearing a maroon turtleneck and new glasses that make him look unfairly handsome.
It all feels like a dream. Maybe he will wake up in his shitty apartment, halfway across the world, with his heart split open in half. Phoenix does not feel delicate enough to exist in this place, as if by a simple wrong movement he would break the illusion, and wake up in LA.
Phoenix stares at the grand piano in the middle of the room, which probably cost more than his yearly rent; Miles must catch him looking. He asks, “Do you know how to play?”
Something ugly and a lot like shame pulls loose in his heart and exits his chest with the raw force of a bullet. He was a fool for thinking that the ghost of the Borscht bowl wouldn't follow him here.
“I mean…? If you count my dubious piano playing at the Borscht Bowl as playing, then… I guess so, yeah.”
Miles looks at him as if to say, yes, this is exactly what I was talking about. Something about his eyes, all big and liquid gray in the soft glow of the lampshade, would have hurt Phoenix, before, earlier, back when he wasn’t hurt. He wonders how much has changed, wonders how he missed all these years while leaving right in the middle of them, wonders how he didn’t see the changes. The way Miles no longer carries himself like a man with a bullet still stuck in his heart, how he seems lighter, happier. Further away than ever.
It's still deeply strange to exist with him on the other side of the Atlantic, in a space where nothing has happened between them; it is terrifying, somehow. A big blank white sheet they have yet to write on.
In the morning, Trucy will wake up, and they will go out of the house to Albert Heijn to eat cheese while strolling around the city, and Phoenix will be able to close his eyes and pretend they are an average, happy family, or old friends meeting one another in better circumstances. He will be feeling exceptionally good, which means he’ll be feeling exceptionally bad when this fleeting moment of joy will be all over, and will subsequently be spending the next two days in bed feeling too sad to even move.
"I could teach you. A few chords – if you’re interested." Miles’ voice reaches him through layers of fog.
"You would?" Phoenix says, surprised.
Miles scoffs. “This is a one time opportunity, Wright. Don’t miss it.”
“You know I’ve never been able to refuse you anything. And, don’t take it the wrong way, but I’m too tired tonight… but, please, play something for me?”
Miles goes tense. Phoenix goes tense, belatedly realizing his mistake. His thoughts go frantic. How could he forget where Miles had learned to play the piano? How could he be as selfish as to ask him for this, when the ghost of von Karma still hangs heavy over them?
“Alright,” Miles says, sitting down on the piano bench and abruptly ending his derailing train of thought. He looks at him.
“How about you sit here and watch me play?”
Phoenix obeys. Miles stays silent for a while, his posture impeccable, even though they're stuck next to each other on this small piano bench. Edgeworth adjusts his cuffs/fiddles with his cuffs, before hovering his fingers over the keys, hesitant.
Phoenix knows he is done for the moment Miles’ fingers press the keys. Miles plays the piano like he prosecutes, deliberate, purposeful, perfect, meant to puncture his heart, and for a moment Phoenix misses their court banter so much that it almost threatens to swallow him.
It’s a simple song, yet beautiful. It makes Phoenix ache, to see this side of him — one he never got to witness when they were still more colleagues than friends, and one he still cannot see enough with the open, bleeding wound of the Atlantic, forever gaping open between them. A temporary grief, a quiet sorrow, only ever mended twice a year at best, when Phoenix comes to visit, and during Miles' rare trips back to L.A.
Miles' hands are confident over the keys, his slender fingers going up and down with the music. Phoenix’s own hands itch for a sketchpad and a pencil and the feeling of smooth paper under his fingers. This — this is what he wants. This quiet domesticity, and Miles next to him, talking about legal facts.
Almost on impulse, Phoenix says, “You could move back.” Conversationally. Casually. Miles doesn’t have to know that he has rehearsed this conversation in every plane flight to and from LAX, in every train ride; that he’s written and rewritten this speech over and over.
He’s proud of himself for successfully learning how to keep the desperation at bay, for locking it in a room praying it won’t escape. It’s only taken him five years.
“Where,” Miles asks, his voice politely flat, his tone purposely oblivious.
He always avoids the conversation, and Phoenix tries not to take it personally. He's probably already thinking about the next country he'll stay; they both know it always approximately takes six months for the ghosts to come back and really settle down, and then it's another house in another capital with another therapist.
“Come back to L.A.” With me is only implied.
Miles doesn't stop playing. He never stops playing, never stops thinking, never, ever stops leaving. His long bangs are hiding his face. Phoenix resists the overwhelming impulse to tuck them back behind his ear.
“Because… I’ve been thinking,” Phoenix says, taking a breath; there will be no coming back from this once it is out. “About changing things.”
There's a dull and discordant sound when Miles' hand accidentally presses over the piano keyboard. The music stops. “You really do mean that,” he says, eventually, his eyes darting to scrutinize Phoenix’s face.
“Of course I do. I’ve been doing some research –”
“You have?" Miles says, and there’s a hint of awe in his voice, one that Phoenix wants to pluck out and keep wrapped around his heart, forever.
“But,” Phoenix says, looking straight into Miles’ eyes, “I'm going to need some help,”
Something shifts in them, fearful, dark.
“Come back, Miles. Come back and help me.”
Miles looks away.
“You – you know I cannot do this.”
“Why not?” Phoenix asks. “You could change things. You could help me make the system better. If there’s anyone here who could help, it’s you.”
"This is,” Miles says, clutching his arm. He sounds so distressed. “I’m afraid that this is not possible.”
“Why not? How can you possibly believe you’re not the best person suited for this task? Your — your thesis on the jury system, and your visits to Europe — I know you’ve been working so hard for this!”
"That's not — that's not the problem."
“Then what is? What is, Edgeworth?” He can't keep the desperation out of the room anymore; his grip tightens on Miles' hand. Silence stretches out between them, thick, dull. Miles won’t look at him.
“Phoenix…” he says, his voice raw. He gets up from the piano bench, and walks up to the tall window overlooking the canal below. The reflection of the moonlight on water shifts over his glasses. “I am not ready to come back, not yet… I’m sure you understand why I cannot.”
Phoenix braces himself to unearth the deeper truth hidden there. I don't believe in your nightmares, Edgeworth. I still don't understand you. The only way out is through, and this is his exit wound. He will remove this bullet with his fucking teeth if he has to.
“I don't get it.”
The fleeting betrayal and fear in Miles' eyes hurt more than anything else. And then, they part to give way to tiredness. Years of tiredness.
“Because I –” Miles starts. He removes his glasses to rub at his eyes. There are dark smudges under them. He looks so tired. Another kindness Phoenix is taking for granted – he didn’t know that Miles Edgeworth could find time in his schedule for him, to play the piano and discuss old sorrows.
There is a door which is always open for Phoenix, but that door is on the other side of the Atlantic.
“Because I – !” Miles starts again, still looking outside. Even his voice sounds tired, and Phoenix hasn’t heard him this exhausted since State v Engarde. Phoenix walks closer to him. “I mean – you’ve seen it yourself,” Miles says, his eyes lowered. His hand twitches, as if he were trying to restrain himself from grabbing his arm. “Because I participated in this system! Because it hurt you! Because I — I hurt you. It allowed me to deal such great damage”.
This is it, then, the reason why; a reason Phoenix had always suspected but never spoken out loud.
“You’re a smart man, Phoenix Wright. I'm sure you must have guessed it, by now. All this work I've been doing here, for the past five years… it’s all—” he sighs, closes his eyes briefly, “it’s all me, escaping again. Waiting for a time I would be able to call a right moment, even though that might as well never happen.”
All of Miles’ defenses are scraped thin. His hand is tightly clenched around his arm, his fingers digging holes into his sleeve. His glasses are low on his nose; he makes no movement to readjust them.
Vulnerable. Straying, again, at sea.
Phoenix places a hand atop Miles’ own, and rubs his thumb over the soft skin. There are still faint scars there, healed but not yet quite invisible.
“I trust you,” he says, with stronger faith than he used to muster for his clients.
Miles stays silent for a long while. The damp gray of his pupils seem washed-out. His smile is a thin line turned upside down, making it look like it goes against all of his better instincts.
“This is a very kind thing to say,” he breathes out, and swallows, slowly, as if it were hurting him. “But I need you to understand that I am not trusting myself.”
Phoenix looks at him, still rubbing his hand.
“Is this about Gant?” he asks. Memories wash over him — of State v Skye, of abrupt departures disguised at deaths, and of Chief Gant telling Miles that he would eventually understand.
“You are too trusting and willing to believe I’ve changed. I would like to believe I’ve changed. But we both remember what he said, and if I were in charge of reforming the judiciary… Don't you realize what I could do, given so much power?”
Miles stares at their joined hands, and exhales. “And, lastly, because I am not brave,” Miles exhales.
“You — Edgeworth, what?” Phoenix says, and leans forward to take Miles’ face in his hands. He pushes his long bangs away from his face, and looks at him carefully. "You’re one of the bravest people I know. Scratch that, you’re the bravest man I know.”
Miles stares at him. His ragged eyes, worn tired by the jetlag, look stone gray in the warm light. He takes a breath, grounding himself.
“How? How can you even say this when you are here?” he chokes out.
Their faces are close, their foreheads almost touching, neither of them trying to move away. Phoenix’s fingers are still covering Miles’ cheeks.
Miles closes his eyes as he takes one of his hands in both of his, and kisses the inside of Phoenix’s wrist. His lips linger on the soft skin there. Phoenix’s breath gets stuck in his throat. It's everything he's ever wanted. It’s terrible. Miles kisses the back of Phoenix’s hand next, and then presses his palm over his own heart, and for one second Phoenix forgets everything, forgets where he is, forgets why they really, really shouldn’t be doing this.
And then Miles opens his eyes to stare right into his, and, oh, oh, and four years worth of fear slice through him like a knife.
“Miles,” he exhales. He’s forgotten how to breathe. His nails are buried into the wool covering Miles' heart. He can feel it beating under his fingers. Did you know? Have you known, from the start? This, more than anything else, feels devastating. What if you'd told me about it earlier? Would we have escaped this pain?
“I’m sorry,” Miles says.
“Whatever for,” Phoenix breathes out. Miles' fingers are soft over his own.
“I'm sorry I wasn’t here earlier. I'm sorry I wasn’t able to do more.”
Phoenix leans forward and buries his head into the crook of Miles' neck, partly because the situation is already so disastrous, partly because he needs to hide his tears.
“Oh, Miles. I would have waited for you for decades. I would have waited for you forever. I will — I will wait for you.”
"You haven't changed," Miles says, his voice shaky. “You're still — you've been disbarred, and still you fight.”
“We fight. Together. I won't — I won't be scared, Miles, not if you are here"
“Together,” Miles repeats, and for the first time in a long time Phoenix feels a fragile sense of hope.
Miles Edgeworth goes. He leaves Los Angeles, and says goodbye to one Phoenix Wright, oldest friend and defense attorney, occasional savior of corrupt prosecutors. Their relationship that has never been a relationship becomes once more a thing of the past, left to exist only in printed phone receipts scattered around the world.
Phoenix Wright gambles a badge, wins a daughter, and takes everything up — his hope and his love and his case files and his cards and his smiles — and folds.
PACIFIC, I.
It takes Phoenix eight days, five cups of coffee, and what feels like four hours of sleep, to finally go back to the Wright & Co. Law Offices.
Lawyer's honor, or so to speak, he'd wanted to pick up some files, and at least tidy up his (former?) office a bit. It wasn’t his workplace anymore, but it was still a place he could work in, and he had work to do. There was some hope left, and a lost little girl to help; but then he had opened the door and the memory of Mia’s death had come back forcefully enough to crush him.
So he lies there. On his back, with his chest split in half, staring at the ceiling. Coffee-splattered sneakers on the couch.
Funny, how fate works. He’d laid there, on this exact same couch, not even two months prior, cradling an attorney's badge that had just been unpinned from Miles Edgeworth's chest.
He can almost feel the hollow shape of his own ghost, haunting himself, creasing the mattress, its invisible weight a reminder of his past self. If he reached out he could hold his hand, his own hand, not yet beaten down by life, and —
The doorbell rings, startling him.
He is not sure who to expect, so late into the night; the sight of Edgeworth in his hallway still takes him aback.
"Good evening, Wright," he says.
"Edgeworth," Phoenix replies. He's too tired to be polite.
In actuality, Phoenix had not informed him of what he could only bring himself to call as The Situation. He hadn't informed anyone — at first due to his involuntary, if necessary, self-isolation — he was fighting an uphill battle against time, investigating the forged paper, and looking into Trucy Gramarye’s family.
And then this isolation had turned into guilt, and this guilt into shame, and picking up his phone to send word to his acquaintances had started to feel more and more like the most stressful trial of his entire life.
And, so, now: a scene almost comical, where Miles Edgeworth, looking perfect as always, if a bit tired, is standing in front of the door of the late Wright & Co. Law Offices, spiritual grave to the late Mia Fey, in an already advanced stage of decay.
“Wright,” Edgeworth says, with a determination Phoenix hasn’t seen since that one, terrible night, when Edgeworth had flown halfway across the world. “What happened?”
Phoenix is afraid. Of Edgeworth not believing him, of Edgeworth believing in him. Of the fact that, from the moment Edgeworth heard about it onwards, there had been no taking back.
He knew, and it had made it all real.
“What, haven’t you heard everything about it by now?” Phoenix sneers. “Your sophisticated German newspapers haven’t covered this situation extensively already?”
“I don’t care about distorted information, Wright! I wanted to hear about it from you.”
“So you can laugh about it? So you can realize how stupid I was, how right you were about me being inexperienced all along? Here’s the thing, Edgeworth,” Phoenix spits out, and the venom in his voice surprises even himself. “Maybe I don’t want you to hear about it! Maybe I just want to be left alone, okay, have you — have you thought about that?”
“Wright,” Edgeworth says, again. A warning, a plea, Phoenix isn’t sure.
“I presented the wrong evidence. I got disbarred. The end.”
“Why didn’t you call me?” Edgeworth asks, and the concern in his voice makes Phoenix want to reel back into a wall. It would have been so much easier, somehow, if he’d been angry. If he’d looked smug like he’d once had, after showing up during the Corrida affair. If he’d slammed the door closed and left him alone.
Because you weren’t here! Phoenix wants to say. Because you left me once more, even when I thought we were finally becoming friends again. Because when Kristoph Gavin had unpinned the badge from his suit, and had asked him if he had anyone left in L.A. to help, any kind of support, Phoenix hadn’t been able to answer. Because when Edgeworth had called, and he had called, so often, too many times, it had been much simpler to ignore his calls and pretend he would wake up in the morning, and nothing would have changed.
Because Phoenix had been terrified that, if Edgeworth heard about it, it would make the whole situation real.
“Please,” Phoenix says, as he goes to grab the door handle, and wishes for Edgeworth to just leave him alone, leave, leave — “I don’t want you to be involved in this.”
Before he manages to close the door, however, Edgeworth's hand shoots through the air, and catches him by the wrist. Phoenix’s pulse goes rabbit-quick beneath his fingers. He notices, very distantly, that he’s shaking.
He prepares himself for the last blow. The final argument with Miles Edgeworth, and maybe that has been it all along; three years of courtroom battles, three years of arguing against each other, all leading up to this moment.
And so this is how they end, after all, Phoenix realizes, bittersweet. At 11:39 pm on a weekday, facing each other in Phoenix’s dingy corridor.
He has no idea what to do in this kind of situation. Does Edgeworth? Does anyone?
Edgeworth's eyes are sharp and focused as he rummages through his pockets with his other hand, and, never breaking eye contact with Phoenix, drops his prosecutor’s badge into his open palm. Phoenix’s breath unfolds and dies in his throat.
“What happened, Phoenix?” Edgeworth repeats, his voice tenuous, his face held high, almost defiantly. The strain in his breathing is clear, the anxiety apparent, and, for the first time in his life, Phoenix can see the fleeting image of defense-attorney-to-be Miles, flickering underneath the now familiar veneer of Prosecutor Edgeworth.
Had Miles — 9-year-old Miles, his childhood best friend Miles, once-his-favorite-person-in-the-world Miles — known, all along and even then, how much of a lasting impact the class trial would have on Phoenix, all throughout his life? Had Miles realized that he had, single-handedly, changed the course of Phoenix’s life?
Does Edgeworth understand this, even now? With his hand still over his own, and his badge between them, trying to help him with something greater than himself?
The memory hits him, at once, murderous: Edgeworth’s face, rendered sickeningly pale by the harsh light of the detention center. His own badge, pressed flat against the plexiglass. His badge. The truth, the one bond between them, forever.
Something in Phoenix breaks, then, something he had no idea was even there to be broken. He takes a step, and everything, back. All the assumptions he’s ever made about Edgeworth, the betrayal he’d felt after the note, the sadness after every departure. Miles Edgeworth standing in his hallway. Kristoph Gavin looking at him over the rim of his glasses, flipping through case files. Where is your colleague, you know, the European one? He lost his own badge a few weeks back, I hear. A shame the system is so flawed, hmm? But I am here, now, if you need anyone. Edgeworth in his hallway. Kristoph bringing him back to his office —
Miles’ lovely gray eyes, sad and terribly understanding, flickering over his face with unfathomable concern.
“I lost my trial.”
Miles steps closer. Phoenix loses all of the energy he has left.
“Miles, I — I lost my trial.”
Miles holds him close, and Phoenix cries for the first time since Mia’s funeral.
“Was it the same, for you?” Phoenix asks, finally, one night. An inevitable question, one they both have seen coming, and yet one that still hits them both with all the grace and delicacy of a freight train.
They're lying together on Phoenix’s sofa bed, during one of Miles’ rare visits back to L.A. His hand rests close to Miles' face. The bright strokes of color of the Steel Samurai are being reflected on Miles' glasses.
“When you…?” Seven years. Seven years, and he still can't say it.
“I don't know,” Miles says, rubbing a hand over his face, as he turns over to lie on his side and look at Phoenix. “I mean — would it make you feel better if I said yes?”
It both would and really wouldn't.
I’m sorry. It feels like it’s the only thing Phoenix can say, these days. I’m sorry I got so angry at you. I’m sorry I didn’t understand, at the time.
Miles gently threads his fingers through his. “The only thing I can say is — it gets easier. Dealing with this pain.”
He's so gentle. Phoenix feels sick. Why did it take him so long to see this new side of Miles? Miles Edgeworth, who keeps chartering private jets back to a city that was never kind to him, who, apparently, always hangs up first except when neck-deep in tragedy, who is kinder than Phoenix could ever have known. Who holds Phoenix’s hand as they drift off to sleep, as if they were still nine and tragedy was something they'd only ever known from inside Gregory Edgeworth’s old television screen.
“Does it, really?”
“It will. I promise. I'll do everything I can to make it better,” and he says it with such kindness, such sincerity and conviction, that Phoenix wants to believe him.
Later, they fall asleep still tangled together, and wake up in each other’s arms, and again, and again, on every morning until Miles’ next flight away from L.A.
I love you, he thinks, but cannot say, I love you love you love you; it plays on repeat at the back of his mind, always and forever.
“I’ll miss you,” he says, instead. “Have a safe flight.”
PACIFIC, II
Maya had been the first to hear about it, of course.
Phoenix would never have been able to lie that well, anyway, especially not to her. Her bright laughter had died when she'd asked when the next trial would be and Phoenix hadn't been able to reply.
"Nick?" she’d asked. "What's wrong?"
He couldn't let Mia's old office become her tomb. So he'd moved in. Canceled the lease for his old apartment, and turned his former office into a home.
Phoenix had explained it to her, then. "I couldn't let go of it. I couldn't do that to you. It's — it's the last thing from Mia you still have left."
"That's not true," Maya had said, after a brief pause. "You're still here."
The aftermath of State v Iris had been trying for everyone. They’d all shared a hug, him and Maya with Edgeworth and Larry and Gumshoe at the end of that trial, but it hadn’t made the separation any easier — Edgeworth had given him his badge back, getting ready to leave for Europe again, Larry had plans to go back to art school, and Maya was going back to Kurain, saying she’d needed a break.
"To ensure that this kind of misunderstanding does not happen again," Edgeworth had said, handing him a piece of paper with an European phone number scribbled down on it, "you can call me directly. If you — ever need help."
Phoenix had needed help. Phoenix had never called.
Instead, with no one else to turn to, Phoenix had gone and knocked on the broad, wide door of defense attorney Kristoph Gavin.
This is what Kristoph had said (the first time).
It has been five days of running around. Phoenix won't let this investigation be the last of his life. But he's tired. He's already so tired, with the anxiety catching up on him; it’s nice to be here, invited by Kristoph Gavin and sitting next to him at a terrasse under the sun, even if for a while.
“Where is your colleague, you know, the European one?” Kristoph asks.
“Oh, huh, do you mean Edgeworth? We're not —” Phoenix stays silent for a while, staring at the ground. He has no idea what they are. “He's not here.”
“Are you saying he left you?” Kristoph asks, pouring him more wine, voicing what Phoenix has not yet once dared to say out loud.
“He's busy. In Europe.”
“Has he called you, at least?” he asks, with what Phoenix wants to call genuine concern.
He has. He has. I'm the one who's never replied.
"Not yet."
“Are you afraid of him hearing about this… Phoenix?”
Good evening, Wright… I've been keeping an eye on the news… The European Commission recommended a temporary travel restriction… I'm sorry. I'm sorry I cannot be here for you. But everything happened so quickly, and I won't be able to move back to Los Angeles, now… I wish I could be here to help you and Trucy m— No! No, Wright, it's my fault, not yours, for not seeing it coming… I'm sorry for leaving again. But you did receive your Microsoft Teams password, didn’t you? It's nothing, really… And Mr. Gavin said he would help you? I'm glad you have someone to support you, at least… You can call me anytime, if you need, of course. I — I miss you. Please let me know if there's anything I can do for you, or for Miss Trucy, all right? Take care, Phoenix…
This is what Kristoph had said (the second time).
“Have you heard?” Kristoph asks. He’s invited Phoenix over to his own apartment, a great, white place towering over the L.A. skyline. Trucy is away, in Kurain. Phoenix doesn’t like her being near Kristoph. "They're starting to close the borders, in Europe."
Miles. All alone, in Europe, once more.
One year. It's been almost one year. Miles had had to leave again, seven months later, of course he'd had to leave again, but this time Phoenix had understood. They had hugged, still and always trying to let the moment last, and Miles had only left after Phoenix had promised he'd call him.
And then — the pandemic. Everything on the news. Borders being closed. Miles Edgeworth feeling further away than ever. Kristoph Gavin, overwhelmingly present.
Kristoph, who is currently looking at him from his sofa, impeccably tailored, calm and suffocating.
“I guess this means he's not going to come back, you know,” he is saying, his voice smooth. “Isn't it sad, how he left you behind once more? Especially after trusting him with your badge? That must hurt so much.”
Phoenix’s head snaps up to look at him. Kristoph stares back, leaning on the sofa, deliberate as a cat.
So. He got drunk, with Kristoph, only whenever trucy was safely away in Kurain. Could he have — somehow — revealed something. He suddenly feels violently sick. He got drunk. Kristoph comforted him. It had been some time after The Trial, when Edgeworth had left him behind again. Kristoph had poured him the wine himself, and had held his hand while he cried, and —
Kristoph’s gaze, in the present time, is dissecting. “What happened, in that trial, when Mr. Edgeworth found himself in possession of an attorney's badge?”
Phoenix’s chest tightens. Maybe Kristoph is only talking about the defending-Edgeworth-in-court part. (They both know he is not talking about this part.)
“Haah, haha,” Phoenix says. “I’m not really sure I know what you’re talking about?”
What can he even say? He knows his rights, of course, but what a small relief in the storm that is Kristoph Gavin cross-examining him. You have the right to remain silent. He stares at his hands.
Kristoph gets up, and walks behind Phoenix’s own chair. “Really, Phoenix?” he starts. “I must say — I’m disappointed — I really trusted you, during your trial! I put my own reputation at risk to help you! My own brother would not speak to me for two weeks afterwards! And you — you lied to me?”
You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.
“I really thought to myself: a man like Phoenix Wright has integrity. A man like Phoenix Wright would not withhold such important information from a fellow trusted defense attorney. He would not lie; but, maybe — maybe you're not better than some of the people you defeated in court, after all.”
Phoenix whips around, looking straight at him.
"I trusted him. Like I trusted my clients."
“You're not denying it, then?” Kristoph says. Phoenix digs himself deeper into the sofa.
"Trust isn't infinite. But," Kristoph says, as he walks closer to him. "I will do you another favor. I will help you again."
“Help me? You know what I need help with.”
Kristoph starts laughing. It's not a nice laugh. “Your — ideas,” he sneers, “to ‘change the system’? You, Phoenix, really? A disgraced, disbarred attorney, reforming a judicial system? Do you want to make matters worse.”
"I'm just trying to help, is all," Phoenix says, forcing himself to look into Kristoph's deep blue eyes. "I can't just sit here and do nothing."
“Help?” Kristoph asks. All pretenses of warmth have long since left his voice. "Like you tried to help Zak Gramarye? Don’t you think you have dealt enough damage already? You tried to help him, and look at what you’ve done.”
Phoenix physically flinches back from that one. He wonders, distantly, if Kristoph punching him in the face would maybe have hurt less.
"Besides, who would want to help you?"
He would want to help me, Phoenix thinks. But he's so far away, and I'm so terrified. He cannot reply.
“That’s what I thought,” Kristoph says, smiling and tilting his head, as he puts a hand over Phoenix’s shoulder.
Phoenix doesn't open his books for a while, after that, and tries to forget everything about the jurist system.
Hey, Miles… Yes, I have received the plane tickets, as I’ve told you a thousand times already… Thank you… Trucy has been talking about her first international flight for days!... We missed you. A lot. Things have been — yeah, well. You know how things have been… Mr. Gavin? I — he’s — I think there’s? — nevermind. I won't bother you with this right now… At least we'll see each other soon!... Thank you, Miles, really. I can't thank you enough.
He holds Trucy’s hand as they go through customs and cross the border. The language shifts into French. Miles Edgeworth is waiting for them at arrivals, looking both different and still fundamentally and always the same. Miles tries to wave at them, realizes he must be looking foolish (he is, after all, holding a stupidly fancy sign and wearing his cravat and a maroon facemask), and takes a surprised step back when Trucy screeches and runs into his arms. Phoenix grins.
Who fucking cares what Kristoph had said.
CEST.
Now that he has nothing but free time on his hands, Phoenix picks up drawing again.
It feels strange, at first, to reconnect with someone he hasn’t been in ten years.
He finds his old sketchbooks, still intact under all of the dust, in some cardboard boxes at the recently renamed Wright Talent Agency.
He wipes away the grime, lifts the cover, and finds himself facing a perfect rendition of Miles Edgeworth, age 20, complete with a newspaper clipping reading: New suspicions of forgery from the Demon Prosecutor?
He sinks to the floor, his breath shaky, swallowing back a sob that feels close to his entire world being rebuilt. He puts a hand over his eyes, and when he takes it away again, sketch-Edgeworth is still frowning at him.
Just like that, it feels as if he'd just opened a door straight to 20-year-old Phoenix's heart.
Have you ever been hopeful? Remember how it had felt?
His hope is so worn out its almost frayed, but he can still identify it, somewhere under all the rubble. He wants to laugh. He wants to cry, yell, kick his fist in the air, all at once.
He sits, cross-legged and against the cold surface of the wall, and thinks, unspeakably grateful, Mia, did you know? Did you know you would save me once more?
Mia, who had insisted he keeps his notebooks, no matter how much his past self had protested against it. He remembers showing them off to her, as he'd just been enlisted into the ranks of the Fey & Co Law Offices.
"I'll be a lawyer! I'll help people!"
She had smiled, and nodded, and handed him the California penal code, telling it to read it, for yesterday.
“Watcha doing, Daddy-O?" Trucy’s voice pierces through his memories, her feet playfully dangling above her face. She’s trying out her new trick of walking through the entire apartment on her hands. Her tone shifts, after she's seen the look on his face. “Are you okay?”
"Hey, Truce,” he says, trying to hide the mess of emotions on his face, probably failing. “How does a trip to Uncle Miles sound?"
There will be time, later, to tell her about his former dreams of an art career. There will be time to talk about Mia Fey, and Miles Edgeworth, and lives being shifted for love.
For the time being, he picks up his sketchbooks, and follows Trucy back to their kitchen.
It feels strange to pick something he’d once loved and then hated. Once loved and then hated — but maybe art isn't the only thing that can fit the description.
Phoenix and Trucy find Miles in Paris, once the borders are reopened.
His apartment, this time, is eggshell-white, airy, and with a magnificent view on the buildings on the other side of the street. Trucy has her own bedroom, as he does, complete with a fireplace, Maya, in real marble!
He makes a habit of calling Maya, at what must be terribly early morning for her. He never checks the time difference; she always replies.
“You know he was going to,” Maya says. Her voice is soft and static in the air.
“He was not,” Phoenix says.
“He was.” And then, softer: “ask him about it, Nick.”
See, okay, Edgeworth had had a whole confession planned and everything, right after that bridge trial. A grand speech, a dinner date, the whole deal. Phoenix had only read the message after losing his badge, had flipped his phone on the wrong side so he wouldn’t see its screen, and cried.
Silence, again. He can hear the downstairs neighbors talking in rapid French. A door slams. The heat sticks to his skin.
“I mean, Phoenix,” full name, she means business, “I mean — yeah? Technically? You've always been a bit in love with Edgeworth, like, who goes to law school for their best friend?”
And she’s right, of course she’s right. even though he’d realized that he'd always been in love only last week. It’s just that —
When he was 19, and still full of dreams, he’d believed in true love. In grand speeches, dinner dates, and the whole deal. When he was 21, and 24, and 25, he still believed in it, a higher thing that would eventually be enough to save long lost childhood friends. By 27, he’d gotten so used to it no longer felt like love but more like a constant chronic background pain, always present, forever hurting, sometimes flaring up. He’d learned to ignore it, and live with it, for his own sanity.
So, yeah. He's always been kinda in love with Edgeworth.
“I don't even want it, anyway. I don't want him, not like — not like that."
He doesn't want him in the way he doesn't want to get back to the law; in a way that feels like ripping his own skin off.
His sketchbook now follows him everywhere – on the plane, on the métro to their Airbnb, and now, placed atop the mantlepiece of the non-functional, but not less impressive, fireplace.
One day he’ll tell Miles about it, one day, one day, one day…
Sometimes, when it is very late and the burn scars on his hands start itching, he lays down and stares at his ceiling, palms in the air. In these moments, he can scarcely believe that these hands are the same ones that got him through law school. The ones that made him file court papers, that made him sign everything. Hands powerful enough to save someone from a death sentence. Hands good for nothing, now.
Worse, even – hands for hurting people.
Him, a lawyer? When he hadn’t been able to save Dahlia, to save Doug Swallow, to save Miles until way too late, and in all the wrong ways? When he hadn’t even been able to finish his art degree, flimsy creature that he’d been. Him! A lawyer! And suddenly he understands it all – Mia’s flabbergasted face when he’d asked him for an internship, both von Karmas’ looks of contempt, Edgeworth’s utter disbelief.
What had he been thinking? Laughter bubbles in his throat until it turns into tears.
The lights go out, exit stage left, thank you for the performance!
The courtroom had been a stage. All of it an illusion.
When Miles is not here — and he often is not, running away on errands for fancy named courthouses — Phoenix explores, and his summer soon transforms into the blur of lived daydreams.
Miles explains to him what he's doing here, one green-skied morning. Phoenix finds him sitting on the balcony, half-hidden under the pile of red French legal codes. The uppermost one reads Code de procédure pénale.
"You're awake early," Miles observes, as Phoenix stretches and yawns.
Miles — at Trucy's insistence — has started holding back his long gray bangs with brightly colored hair clips. It's not a bad look on him. Phoenix could get used to this, if he's not careful. He so really could.
"Can't sleep," Phoenix replies. "With all the —" he waves his hand in the air, "jet-lag, and everything."
Miles does not point out that Phoenix has been here for almost a month, that he knows Phoenix has nightmares and trouble sleeping. Phoenix knows he knows, because for weeks he’s been able to hear Miles working late into the night.
Instead, Miles hums. He looks tired. Phoenix has to stop himself from rubbing a finger over the bluish marks stretching under his eyes.
Parisian sketchbook trips mean — obviously — Parisian museum visits, which give Phoenix a great opportunity to mock Miles’ art knowledge, or lack thereof. The man’s ideal of great artistic merit is The Steel Samurai, which never fails to make him laugh, and, for once, make him feel smuggly more knowledgeable.
Still, visiting museums with Miles Edgeworth is life-bending. What a strange trio they must make, Miles, complete with his cravat, Trucy sitting on his knees and Phoenix next to them.
Then Phoenix sees the painting, by accident, or maybe even by chance. Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, orange in its glory, calling to him like a beacon. He takes a step back, breathless, his heart beating in his chest, and stands, where Vincent van Gogh had stood, too, right before this canvas.
Phoenix had dreamt of seeing it, when he was still in college. He reaches deeper into himself, and the memories split his skin open, bursting out of him, and it’s been so long since he felt like this. It’s been so long since he’s cared about anything this much.
He feels trucy slipping her hand in his own, her small fingers closing around his palm. “Daddy, are you okay?”
He’s not sure how to reply, where to even begin. He walks out of the Musée d’Orsay with a new key to his own heart.
July withers and fades away, and Phoenix feels more and more jittery for no exact reason he can pinpoint. It's anxiety, he realizes, at once, when Miles hands him his and Trucy's plane tickets back to L.A.
I forgot. I forgot about going back.
“I'll drive you to the airport,” Miles says, not meeting his gaze. Phoenix remembers waking up hours later, his eyes bleary, tracing patterns on the fogged-up window of the plane, gliding over the Atlantic, mind full with unlocked secrets of forgotten teenagehoods.
GMT.
“See you,” Phoenix says, from where he's leaning against the doorway.
They’re in London, this time. The city looks lovely covered in frost. It’s Christmas, because it's always the problem, isn't it? Fucking Christmas. But he gets it, now. He gets it so well, this spatio-temporal problem (see: the way April feels like a physical ache, how coming back to L.A. seems nearly impossible, the dates, the problem with Christmas, spring, new years happening again. The need to run away, everything.)
He gets it too well.
Here is what Kristoph had said (the third time) had not said.
He is making tea. He is making tea in Phoenix's kitchen, appropriating the space and spilling all over it. Phoenix does not feel he is in his own home at all. He has long since learned that whenever Kristoph makes tea it is only for himself.
It is strange to feel like a foreigner in his own kitchen. Phoenix has no idea where it all went so wrong.
There are some papers spread out on the table between them, scrawled over with scrapped ideas and half-finished diagrams. Phoenix tries to focus on them.
“Phoenix, you know I’m only doing that for your own good,” Kristoph is smiling, his head tilted. The light is dim enough to cover his eyes.
There’s the faintest sound as psyche-locks appear. Phoenix tries not to start. It’s been so long, he forgot how much it tugged at his heart.
Stay calm. Stay calm. You've done this before.
Do you remember?
He stares at the five psyche-locks surrounding Kristoph.
He feels as terrified as he feels relieved. Here, finally, is a start. He takes a breath, slowly, and turns to face Kristoph.
The defense may begin his cross-examination.
So. London. Naruhodo Ryunosuke’s legacy, and Kazuma Asougi’s own saving.
Phoenix told Franziska about his ancestry, and Franziska had insisted on them visiting London; Miles had ended up renting a townhouse in the middle of the city, complete with a small garden and a bedroom for him and Trucy; and Miles had flown Phoenix in, which is how he finds himself, once again, sitting in his tracker sweatpants in Miles Edgeworth's grand living room.
Kay got back to them, about MASON, and it had felt good for a while to sink himself back into research. Then the wound had reopened itself, while Phoenix was standing in Miles’ library. Miles had understood.
Phoenix spends his days idly sketching, overwhelmed with how casual this feels. He could get used to this. He cannot let himself get used to this.
Miles is pouring over a small mountain of legal documents, about jury systems and judicial findings and summation examinations.
"Did you know that your great-great-grandfather invoked his right to a summation examination of a jury, for the first time in 50 years?" Miles asks, looking up at him with an easy smile. "I see that the audacity still runs in the family."
It had something to do with Miles' tone, Phoenix will think, later, when all will have calmed down. It had a lot to do with how Miles’ had been half-smirking, and he'd looked so uniquely like the man Phoenix had once known in court that Phoenix wanted to cry. Some night Phoenix will explain it, voice crooked, and Miles will hold his hand, the one where gold rings true on his finger, and hug him close.
He'd thought his scars were almost closed, but this is rubbing salt into an open wound.
"Good for you, then!" Phoenix says, trying to keep his tone lighthearted, just as Miles’ joke had been. The grip on his pencil becomes tighter. Miles' concerned eyes snap to his. "Because you're not seeing any of this insanity anymore! At least you get to work with — wait, how did you put it — sophisticated lawyers, now."
Miles stands up from his desk, and sits down next to Phoenix on his huge sofa. Close enough to mean something.
"Phoenix," Miles says, overly serious. He reaches out for his hand, hesitates, and stops himself halfway; something about it makes Phoenix want to tear his hair off. How are they so horrifically bad at this? He has the insane, fleeting image of him leaning forward, and kissing Miles, and his want is so strong it nearly cleaves him in half, before Miles' hand clutches around his arm and ruins everything.
"I don't care about other defense attorneys!" he says, his voice distressed. "I care about you! Do you seriously think that I'd prefer working with Kristoph Gavin?"
Phoenix doesn’t mean for it to happen. He doesn't want it to happen. but his vision blurs, and he starts shaking. Kristoph. There is something about Kristoph.
"-nix? Phoenix?" Miles' hand is clutching over his shoulder. Teetering him to this place. Phoenix leans down against the crook of his neck. Safe. He breathes in, breathes out.
Kristoph! His heart, once again, feels cleaved in half. There's something about Kristoph —
"I'm so tired," Phoenix says. It’s true.
"I'm sorry," Miles says, holding him in his arms. He means it.
Phoenix takes a shaky breath. There’s something he’s been keeping inside himself for far too long.
“Do you remember,” he starts, “what happened after that class trial? How no one would trust me anymore, and the rumors never really faded out? I don’t — I dont want that to happen again. I’m not sure I should be a lawyer anymore.”
Ask him again: did you know I never learned how to leave?
"What if I —"
"No," Miles interrupts him. His eyes are sharp, serious, heavy with the knowledge of what has come before.
"You don't even know what I was going to —"
Miles reaches out for his hand, and threads their fingers together.
"What if you can never trust yourself again?” he says. “What if you spend your whole life thinking about what could have gone better? What if you keep mourning the time you lost? The time you won't ever be able to get back?”
Miles’ grip tightens around his hand, in silent acknowledgement.
“You helped. I'm not sure you even realize how much you helped. Come back, for your past and future defendants. For Maya,” he says, quietly. After a moment of hesitation: “For me.”
“You both could have gotten better defense attorneys. I mean, you said it yourself. You never needed me."
It feels shameful to reveal that. His stomach spins with anxiety.
“Oh, really? Do you remember how half of L.A. attorneys wanted to come for my throat? I don’t think anyone else would have accepted. You were the only person who could have helped me then, Phoenix.”
Miles’ face becomes dangerously close, and Phoenix sees it, in a flash, right under his eyelids: him, kissing Miles, finally putting an end to twenty years of yearning!
He drops his forehead against Miles’. Their breathing intermingles.
"I can't," he says, outloud, more to himself than anything.
Miles' hand finds its way to his arm, holds it. "I know."
The truth is that he misses it, terribly. He misses the court, misses Maya, Pearls, every defendant he hadn't been able to say goodbye to; he misses his office, the evenings with Larry, the bus rides to Kurain, and Mia even more. Hell, he would give anything to go back to his first trial to see Payne again.
Most importantly, he misses Miles, and everything that comes with him — their pointless arguments, the petty things, the thrill of their trials.
Still, there is a constant, stark and deep emptiness at the thought of having to go back to court without Miles, when Miles is the reason why he had gone to court in the first place.
Phoenix’s voice comes out fragmented, stained glass noises in the air.
“I did it all for you, you know?” His forehead is still resting against Miles’. “Law school, and the trials, and these trips to Europe. I’m doing it all for you. Maybe — The Law, and the courts, I never loved them like I loved you.”
Miles stiffens. He does not pull away.
“Phoenix,” he says, after a beat. You were the one who made me learn to love the law. After… after my father. You were the one who made me believe in it again.”
The heavy midnight stillness hangs over them. Phoenix takes a shaky breath, tears threatening to spill out of him. He doesn't trust himself to speak, so he nods instead.
Miles moves back, just enough to allow them some breathing space, though his hand never leaves Phoenix's arm. His eyes are liquid gray in the half-light.
“You've changed,” he says. “I've changed, too. But maybe… maybe that's not such a terrible thing. It doesn't have to be the same as it was before.”
Phoenix swallows hard. “I'm tired of running, Miles.” His voice is barely audible.
“I know, Phoenix. Then stop. Stay here and help me.”
Phoenix has no idea what the future holds. Miles is looking at him, with a smile that is half sadness and half hope.
“I'll try to,” Phoenix says, his voice heavy with promise, and for now, it’s enough.
PACIFIC, III.
Miles Edgeworth is back to Los Angeles for Christmas. Miles. Here, for Christmas.
For Phoenix is only implied, this time, albeit barely.
“I didn’t know you would be back,” Phoenix tells him. “I would have tidied stuff up.”
They’re both standing in the middle of Phoenix’s hallway, cluttered with Trucy’s props and dusty cardboard boxes filled with some of Mia’s outdated legal codes which he’d never really had the heart to throw away. Miles is still wearing his new travel overcoat, which makes him look older in a way Phoenix can’t really explain, before he remembers when and where he’s last seen the exact same coat, and he can’t bring himself to talk about dead fathers, not at this time of the year.
Miles is looking more tired than ever, yet he apparently still has enough energy to try to give Phoenix The Glare; but The Glare stopped working on Phoenix circa June 2022 and it took Miles three more years to notice it, so the only thing he can do nowadays is pinch the bridge of his nose, and sigh.
“As I recall, you asked me to, Wright,” he says.
Phoenix laughs and walks even closer to him.
“Thank you,” Phoenix says, as he opens his arms wide enough to hug him, and buries his face into the rough fabric of his coat. “Thank you for coming here.”
Miles hugs him back with a desperation that has been escalating for nearly a decade.
Phoenix hadn’t really planned on inviting anyone for Christmas, but Trucy had invited Pearls who’d called Maya who’d brought in Franziska, and Ema and Eustace had been told about it by Kay, who had in turn heard about it from, in her own words, “an insider source”, and Larry had showed up with a pile of gifts taller than himself, and Phoenix hadn’t been able to refuse any of them.
And so here they all are now, ten people in a tiny office-turned-apartment, and they must be breaching at least half a dozen safety measures but no one really seems to mind.
Kay had suggested climbing up the Christmas tree, and Phoenix had been too tired to argue; her and Trucy’s mingled laughter rings bright in the room under Franziska’s watchful stare.
Miles catches his eyes, and tilts his head towards the kitchen. Phoenix follows him, blinking away the sparkling lights of the tree, its afterimages still anchored to his eyelids.
“Do you want —” Phoenix starts, at the same time Miles says, “we need to talk.”
Phoenix shuts up immediately. He grabs his own mug in silence, and what has eventually become to be known as Miles’ cup — an atrociously red one that Maya had bought him, complete with tiny steel samurais printed around the border — and hands them to Miles, with the practiced regularity of years of habit.
Miles looks into the cupboard, pinching his mouth in a thin line when he sees there’s nothing but supermarket-brand tea in it.
Phoenix sits himself against the kitchen island, and can’t help but think back on the image of Kristoph. haunting, now defeated and locked behind bars.
“You had something to say, I think,” Phoenix tells him.
Miles looks at him from above his glasses, gray eyes staring straight into his. He takes a breath, as if to steel himself. The ping of the boiler resonates. Miles busies himself with the mugs, somehow looking glad for the distraction.
“Here, Wright,” Miles says, pushing the cup toward him.
Black, with two sugar cubes.
Miles — Miles remembered. Phoenix’s heart folds on itself.
“I’m moving again,” Miles begins, once Phoenix has started drinking. “In two months.”
The familiar pang in bitterness in Phoenix’s rears its ugly head back. He knew it would happen, as it always does.
“Oh?” Phoenix says, raising an eyebrow. His tea is, of course, perfectly made, and just as he likes it. He looks down at the floor to avoid getting pulled into Miles’ eyes. “Which new fancy European capital will have the honor of housing the great Prosecutor Edgeworth next?”
“Downtown Los Angeles,” he replies; Phoenix, by some miracle, does not drop his mug.
“You — what!” he exclaims, momentarily unable to think. “You! But your thesis, and your work in London? You said you loved that job!"
"Well. I believe you got to witness the more practical side of my thesis. And… I realized there were — more important matters to attend to. Here." He keeps staring at Phoenix as he says it.
"So you are moving back?”
“Is that really so surprising?” Miles asks, clearly trying not to clutch at his arm.
“No! It’s just that —” I had lost all hope of ever seeing you living here again — “I thought you hated this city.”
“That is not true, it’s got you and Trucy in it,” Miles volleys back immediately, and looks away, awkwardly, when he realizes what he’s just said.
Phoenix can’t help the disbelieving smile on his face. “‘More important matters,’ huh,” he says, and grins when Miles' cheeks become red.
"I said what I said. Lastly…” he says, still unable to meet his gaze. “I got offered the position of Chief Prosecutor.”
“Miles! That’s – that’s incredible!”
Miles flushes even more. “I wouldn’t have been able to do it without you.”
Phoenix shuffles on his feet. “I’m glad. I’m so happy you decided to come back.”
“And what about you? You never told me why you wanted me to move back, you know?” Miles asks, quietly, his eyes piercing and true.
“Ah. Well —” Phoenix starts. I couldn’t bear spending more time away from you. I couldn’t imagine going back to court without you there.
In truth: something else had also died, after his rehabilitation trial. For seven years he’d felt as if a rope was tied tight as a noose around him, making it hard to breathe, to move, to exist, and now — he was free.
The rope has now been unspooled, coiling around his feet. The question stays unvoiced, floating between them in the air.
What happens now?
He’d been so sharply focused on the trial, on the jurist system, on finding a way out, he’d never even thought of the after. it is once again terrifying, not to have a set purpose
Phoenix has no idea. He stares at Miles Edgeworth, future Chief Prosecutor of Los Angeles, and he thinks of himself, still scared to leave the same place that had comforted him at 21 years old, and at 24, and at 27, and then he thinks about them, and the seven long years they’ve just escaped from, now lying dead and cold at their feet.
“I don't know what's supposed to happen now, Miles," Phoenix blurts out. "I think that maybe I’m just a coward," he starts. "Sometimes I can barely stand how scared I am, and I thought it’d get better once my name had been cleared, but I — All these years, and I still —”
“You were in danger,” Miles cuts him off. “You had Kristoph Gavin to deal with, Phoenix,” and he says Gavin’s name the same way he would say Dahlia’s. “I won’t blame you for not knowing yet.”
“I wasn’t – I wasn’t only talking about that,” Phoenix says, reaching out to lay his hand on top of Miles’.
For a while, the only noises in the kitchen are the low hum of electricity from the kitchen appliances, and the soft, distant sounds of the city. Miles keeps looking at him the whole time.
“What were you talking about, Phoenix?” he asks, eventually. It's very quiet.
This time, Phoenix does it slowly. It’s funny, almost, how he’d always thought it would feel desperate. Rushed. This is anything but. He lets the moment stretch out as he steps closer to Miles, removes his glasses, folds them up, and carefully sets them over the kitchen counter. Miles' eyes are tentatively hopeful, and very soft, when he blinks up at him.
Phoenix places his left hand over Miles' cheek, and, with the other, gently brushes his long hair away from his face, and tucks it behind his ear.
"Hey, Miles," he says. He can hear the smile in his own voice; his intentions are clear, his cards laid on the table.
"Good evening, Phoenix,'' Miles says, smiling back like it’s impossible not to. Phoenix can see the light creases spreading around his eyes, this close, the almost invisible freckles high on his cheeks, the way Miles' cheeks darken; the feeling of Miles' warm breath over Phoenix’s own mouth is — nice. It's so nice, and is something Phoenix has been thinking about ever since their first almost-kiss in Amsterdam, ever since he almost kissed Miles in London. Phoenix could absolutely get used to this. Oh, he so could.
He leans forward, slowly, to give Miles all the time he needs to draw back if he wants to, just in case; Miles meets him halfway, smiling into the kiss, and puts his hand over Phoenix’s jaw, delicate and soft.
His lips are chapped, and he tastes like the generic tea brand Phoenix buys whenever Miles comes to visit that annoys him to no end, and it’s the most perfect thing that has ever happened in Phoenix’s entire life.
When they finally pull back, Phoenix rubs his thumb over the corner of Miles’ mouth, something he’s been wanting to do ever since he was twenty-one and already in love, even if he didn’t know it at the time. He’s older, now, and still in love, and it’s funny how not terrifying being in love with Miles feels, in the end, when there's no ocean or murderer trying to keep them apart. He loves Miles Edgeworth. It's that easy. It can be that easy.
“There’s something else you need to know,” Phoenix starts, as if Miles hasn’t guessed already, as if Phoenix hasn't made it abundantly clear. He's still running his fingers through Miles' hair, ready to pronounce the words he's been waiting to say for years, when there's a noise from the living room, and a high pitched scream, and then a loud crash.
“Oh, god,” Phoenix says, as he buries his face into the soft wool of Miles’ shoulder, “please don’t tell me they tried to climb up the tree. Having to call the fire department on Christmas eve would be awful.”
“Phoenix,” Miles says back. His hands find their way to the small of Phoenix’s back, and they rest there, warm and reassuring. “You and I both know it wouldn’t be the worst thing to ever happen to us on Christmas.”
Phoenix can't help it. He laughs against his neck, lightheaded, trying to fight back tears which for once would not be sad. Miles hugs him tightly once more. It took him decades to finally be able to hold Miles without being scared, and he doesn’t think he’s going to let go of him ever again.
“You’re right. All this time and I still — I love you, you know that? I love you so much.”
"I love you too, Phoenix," Miles says, leaning forward to kiss his cheek. "Thank you for being here."
When they draw back, Phoenix holds his hand out. “Come with me, let’s see if they didn’t start a small fire?”
Miles takes it. “Yes, together.”