Chapter Text
It was a delightful Saturday morning, like most Saturday mornings in Miles Edgeworth’s life these days. Rain was pouring outside, but he didn’t care; he was safely inside, sitting at his kitchen table in his comfiest dressing gown, applying a generous layer of butter on a piece of toast. Miles had lived in wealth all his life, still he never got tired of the simple comfort of being shielded in one’s home during a heavy shower. It was especially true when said home was enjoyed in pleasant company.
Phoenix Wright usually slept over at his house on Friday nights. It was a nice way to end the working week. Wright liked to spend the weekend with his daughter, so they would usually spend the night having fantastic sex, have a lazy morning together and Wright would be back to his own home before lunchtime. It was a fine arrangement, one Miles could not be more satisfied with.
Of course, that meant it couldn’t last.
Phoenix took a bite of his own toast and let out an appreciative hum. Then he spoke and, slowly but surely, everything went down the drain.
“Edgeworth?”
“Hm?”
“Can I ask you something?” he asked.
“Sure,” Miles replied, still focusing on his toast.
“Can I have your attention? This is kind of important.”
Miles neatly put down the toast and butter knife on the plate. “Of course. My apologies.”
“I’d like you to meet Trucy,” he declared.
Miles didn’t pay attention to the shyness in his friend’s eyes, or the unusual tentativeness of his words. He simply frowned.
“I’ve already met her,” he said, and his tone was a bit curt, but only because the other man wasn’t making sense. He had known Wright’s daughter since she was a child.
“Of course you have,” Wright hastily rectified. “I meant more as a… formal introduction. I’ve been spending a lot of time with you, after all.”
Miles chortled. “Does Trucy receive a ‘formal introduction’ every time you get a new fuck buddy?”
Phoenix instantly froze. Miles didn’t notice it at the time, but looking back, he knew he should have noticed. He should have noticed, and he should have stopped right there and then. Except he didn’t.
“What did you just say?”
“Fuck buddy?” Miles repeated. “I know the expression is a bit crude, but for lack of a better term… Friends with benefits would apply, perhaps?”
Wright’s discomfort was now obvious in the pained expression on his face. At that moment, Miles definitely knew something was wrong, although he didn’t know what yet.
“Is that what we are to you?” Phoenix asked. “Friends with benefits?”
“Well, we are friends. And we have sex. There’s no need to put a label on it, really.”
Miles wanted that last sentence to sound reassuring. It wasn’t. At all.
Wright abruptly rose from his chair.
“Oh my God. That’s really what you think, isn’t it? Everything we do… It’s just sex to you. All this time, it was just sex.”
“Wright, I’m sorry,” Miles said, incredulous, “I thought we were on the same page, I never...”
“Jesus Christ, Miles!”
And that’s when he knew. The strangled voice, the unusual use of his given name. He knew his perfect arrangement had been burnt to ashes.
"We never made such a commitment, I didn't know you felt that way, or I-"
But he never got the opportunity to finish his sentence as Wright had left the room, and only reappeared five minutes later in the foyer, wearing the suit he wore the previous day. Miles had gotten up and was deliberately standing between him and the front door of his house.
“Are you leaving?” Miles asked, still not quite realizing what was going on.
“What does it look like?”
“Like a misunderstanding. Sit down, Wright, let’s talk.”
“Absolutely not.”
“You can’t leave now! The weather is dreadful, and you don’t even have an umbrella… I’ll drive you home, we’ll talk in the car,” Miles offered.
“Edgeworth, I said no.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I’m not being ridiculous, believe me, I’m being as civil as I can be.” Strangely, it was true. Wright’s movements were jerky and his voice didn’t sound like his own, but he wasn’t losing his temper. The cold rage he was displaying was even more disturbing somehow. “Will you please have the decency to let me go?”
Edgeworth couldn’t think of anything to reply, so he let Wright walk past him, open the door and leave, rushing outside in spite of the rain. He didn’t even slam the door.