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I
The girl he met at the courthouse, Dahlia, Dollie, touches the mark on Phoenix’s wrist with her flat pad of her thumb. “Miles Edgeworth,” she says. “Huh? So who’s he? Have you found him yet?”
“I know him,” Phoenix says flatly. Why lie? “I met him when we were kids.” Phoenix is reclining on the thin hard bed in his dormroom. Naked. Spent dick draped over his thigh. He takes Dollie’s hand gently off the mark where she’s still stroking it, saying, “Don’t. It feels kinda weird when people touch it.”
“So where is he now?” she says, carefully, like maybe she’s checking out the competition.
“Germany. He doesn’t have a mark though. Or he doesn’t have me. I’m a mismatch.”
“Oh,” Dahlia’s thin eyebrows lift. “He told you he didn’t have your name?”
“I wrote and told him about mine and he didn’t write back. So he can’t, can he? Because you’d write back if you did, right?”
Dahlia thinks then says, “Yeah. Yeah, you would. Your soulmate. Of course you would.”
Dahlia reaches out to touch the mark again, but Phoenix pulls his wrist away. “Really,” says, “It feels weird.”
“You should get a cover for it,” says Dahlia, “if it bothers you. Or get it lasered.”
“Laser! Oh my god, Dollie. Can’t afford that,” says Phoenix. He reaches for Dahlia’s wrist. “So, anyway, do you have one?”
Dahlia turns her wrist over in his hand.
Phoenix looks, “Terry Fawles? Who’s that?”
Dahlia sighs. “You don’t wanna know.”
“Don’t I?”
“He was a lot older than me. And my mark came early.” At that, Phoenix just nods. Everyone knows how that can go. He’s a little glad when Dahlia says, “He’s dead now,” and knows he shouldn’t ask anymore.
A beat of silence, then, quick, Dahlia shoves him backwards, sudden, so his bare back hits the painted wall behind his bed. He oofs at her, but he’s laughing as she climbs into his lap. “You didn’t make me come you know,” she says, big eyes on his.
“What. I did. I heard you.”
“Nope. You didn’t.” She picks up his right hand and kisses the middle joint of his forefinger. “You need to get this to work.”
Phoenix is still smiling. “Dollie, you came.”
Dahlia shrugs. “Only once.”
“I only came once.”
“You’re the boy, Phoenix.” She grins. “Feenie. Don’t tell me you’re not a feminist. Get to work on my clit.” She shoves his hand between her thighs.
Later, they get milkshakes. When he kisses her, she tastes like peppermint and he still tastes like her and he barely feels the dull ache of his mismatched mark.
*
II
Edgeworth walks around behind his desk. He looks pale and shaky, but considering, not really so bad. “How much to I owe you?” he says opening a slim sliver laptop.
Phoenix twitches. “I, I don’t know exactly.
“You don’t know. What do you charge?”
“Well, Mia, Ms Fey, always handled… I didn’t charge Maya, of course and Will Powers gave me eighty thousand dollars.”
Edgeworth raises one eyebrow. “So your fee is either nothing or eighty thousand dollars?”
Phoenix laughs but the laugh sounds wrong. “Look, it’s fine. No charge. Really.”
Edgeworth says, “In that case, might I suggest what I think would be a sensible rate for you to charge, given your age, experience and notoriety.” He types something into the laptop and beckons Phoenix over. He shows him the figure on screen.
Phoenix nods at it. It seems like a lot, but once he factors in, the work he’s done, the cost of running Wright and Co, it makes sense. It feels right.
As he nods, Edgeworth hits return and then, suddenly grabs at Phoenix’s wrist. He turns it over and looks at the name written there. Phoenix gasps, the touch feels intense. Edgeworth isn’t touching the mark, but his fingers being so near it, is…
It’s a lot.
“You should really get that lasered,” Edgeworth says quietly. “It’s a stigma. A mismatch like that. You have the money.”
“I don’t want to,” Phoenix says, starts to say, but the words tangle up in his mouth, knot his tongue as Edgeworth’s thumb brushes over the mark.
Edgeworth is saying, “It’s so strange to see my name on one of these.”
But Phoenix can barely hear him. Blood is rushing in his ears. Edgeworth’s thumb moves over and over the mark. Phoenix’s other hand goes to the desk to hold him up. His knees are liquid. His legs are liquid. His belly flips over.
He moans with desire. Stupid and helpless and Edgeworth turns, kisses him.
—- * —-
The kiss is a press of lips that makes Phoenix’s head swim. His mouth opens. He feels Edgeworth’s tongue slip over the inside of his lower lip. Just for a second. And then Edgeworth pulls away.
“Wright, I… I’m so sorry. I’m not sure why I did that. I’m not feeling myself. Today has been a very strange day.”
“It’s fine.” Phoenix is breathless. “And, and, if you want to do that. I… I don’t mind. It’s okay.”
“You don’t mind?” Edgeworth’s face is very close. Phoenix can smell his breath, his sweat.
“I want to. I mean. Of course I want to.” He shows Edgeworth his wrist, “Obviously I do.”
Edgeworth takes hold of Phoenix’s wrist. “Ah, yes. Your heart on your sleeve.” His fingertips are close enough to the mark to make Phoenix gasp.
“Did you know?” Phoenix manages. “Did you know all along that I had this? That it was you?”
“Of course. I got your letter about it.”
“You didn’t reply to my letter.”
A pause, a breath, before, “I thought it was kinder not to. As I didn’t have a matching mark myself. Being mismatched. Well, it’s a stigma isn’t it? Because of course, as I’m sure you’ve assumed. I don’t have…” Edgeworth pushes back his cuff and shows Phoenix his bare wrist.
Phoenix stares at it. Edgeworth’s wrist. He swallows. There is is. No more mystery. And he knew. Of course he knew. He’d known for years but… Maybe he thought. Maybe somehow… Edgeworth did have his name and had his own reasons for keeping that a secret. But now he knows that’s foolish. Edgeworth’s wrist is bare. Nothing there.
“Does it feel good to have one?” Edgeworth says. “Of course, everyone says they’re wonderful, but, that’s because they bring you to your soulmate. Usually. What’s it like just to have the mark? I’ve read it sometimes feels good if people touch them.”
Phoenix’s voice comes out shaky. He feels light headed and dumb. “Not usually. Not for me. I mean, it’s not like in porn where someone licks a person’s soulmark and they come from it. It’s just feels weird mostly if someone touches it. I thought maybe mismatch marks don’t work like usual soulmarks. In porn they always say they people are soulmatches. But I read that’s hardly ever really true. And they just say it is.” Phoenix knows he’s babbling. “So, no, it just feels weird. Except when you did it. When you touched it, it felt good. It’s never felt good like that before.”
“Really,” that makes Edgeworth smile a sly half-smile as he rubs his thumb over Phoenix’s soulmark. Phoenix quivers. Sparks fill his belly. “I suppose there’s very little research on mismatches. How they work. If the person who is named touches the mark. Of course most people with a mismatch do get lasered. Or a tattoo cover. But they’re always obvious. The tattoos. Don’t you think? Interesting that you don’t want to.”
Edgeworth looks up at Phoenix, like he’s expecting a response. But Phoenix can barely think. “Edgeworth,” he says, moans. “Fuck. Please.”
Edgeworth’s eyes are dark. He likes this. This effect. This control. Undoing. “And that’s just for me? This effect. Only me?”
Phoenix’s head is swimming. He can’t see anything in the room except Edgeworth’s face. Phoenix’s dick is so hard in his pants and Edgeworth’s fingers on his soulmark feel like they’re inside him. He nods. Hopeless.
Edgeworth lifts Phoenix’s wrist and, slowly, eyes on his, licks over the mark.
Phoenix cries out with a shock of sensation. His dick jerks. He feels a spasm of pleasure rock through him like a tiny orgasm. His legs wobble so hard, he drops. Falling onto his knees beside Edgeworth’s desk. Panting. One hand on the carpet. The other, still held up by Edgeworth.
Edgeworth looks down at Phoenix on his knees. “Oh that’s quite a pleasant effect.”
Phoenix is panting on the floor. Rocking on the floor. “Please,” he croaks, “please again. Lick it again.”
And, fuck he’d do anything. Anything.
Nothing has ever felt so…
This. So like this.
Perhaps mismatched marks feel better than normal ones. With the person who doesn’t have your name. Or maybe it’s just him.
Edgeworth presses his lips to the mark. Just a quick dry kiss that makes Phoenix shake with need. “Open my pants, Wright,” he says.
Phoenix reaches up to do it with one shaky hand. He doesn’t expect Edgeworth to return his other wrist anytime soon. He’s all sobs and ragged breath as he gets them open. Get’s Edgeworth’s dick free.
“Do you want it?” Edgeworth says with a tiny jerk of his hips, moving his dick just a little closer.
Phoenix almost cries in response. His mouth feels so empty. Edgeworth’s dick has a tiny clear bead of liquid at the tip and he wants it. He needs to taste it. “Please,” he says.
Edgeworth kisses the soulmark again and says, “Go on. Suck it.”
Phoenix leans forward and wraps one hand and then his mouth around Edgeworth’s dick. It tastes good. It feels good. He likes to suck dick. Edgeworth’s dick does not feel or taste better than other dicks he’s had in his mouth. For a moment, he’s just on his knees sucking dick.
And then Edgeworth moans with pleasure. Right against the soulmark.
That’s something else entirely.
It rocks through Phoenix. That moan is inside him. He gasps and sucks deeper. Taking Edgeworth all the way. Working with his tongue, desperate for another sound of pleasure against his skin. He gets it. He shivers, moans himself, louder than Edgeworth had done. Moans and sobs his pleasure as he feels one of Edgeworth’s hands in his hair, forcing his head down as the other keeps Phoenix’s wrist high, pressed to Edgeworth lips, as Edgeworth begins to lick at the soulmark over and over.
Phoenix is writhing on the floor. A loose, hopeless mess. He’s not sucking dick anymore. He just has his mouth open, letting Edgeworth’s hand in his hair, use him as it pleases. He drools around Edgeworth dick, eyes tight closed. Seeing stars. Wanting nothing, feeling nothing, being nothing, but that tongue, Edgeworth’s tongue licking, licking his soulmark, circling it, teasing at it, flickering over and over, until Phoenix, can’t, can’t.
He comes on the floor, untouched with a dick down his throat and tears in his eyes.
He hears Edgeworth laugh. Feels two hands tight in his hair now. Feels the heavy head of Edgeworth’s dick deep in his throat. Inside him. Feel his face being fucked. Edgeworth moaning as Phoenix writhes, face pushed hard, so deep, he can feel the fabric of Edgeworth’s pants on his skin
Edgeworth comes with a jolt, right down his throat. He barely tastes it.
When he looks up, breathless. Still riding long waves of feeling, he sees Edgeworth’s face. Sees tears in his eyes.
*
III
“Heh,” Maya says from the office couch where she’s eating the biggest sandwich Phoenix has ever seen, “Okay, but, look, if he cried that means something. Soulmates cry when they make love for the first time.”
“We didn’t make love,” Phoenix says, leaning back from his desk, hot in his groin at the thought. “I sucked him off by the filing cabinet. And I’m his soulmate but he's not mine. I’m a mismatch.”
Maya looks incredulous. “He cried. Fuck’s sake Phoenix. He’s your soulmate.”
“He’s not though. I saw his wrist. Nothing.”
“Maybe he got it lasered,” Maya says thickly through a huge bite of possibly ham.,
“Why would he do that though?”
“Er, because he’s fucking insane and a dick?”
“Harsh. Okay. Harsh but fair. But still. It’s an intense dick move. Even for him. But if he had it lasered it would be registered.”
Maya frowns. “Huh?”
“You know. If you have your soulmark lasered that gets registered. Almost every country in world records lasered soulmarks.”
“Yeah. Why is that? I mean. Surely. If you want your mark removed, why can’t you just get it removed. Why does the government need to be involved? It’s such bullshit.”
“You, Maya Fey, have never sat through half a term of soulmark legislature, and it shows. It’s because soulmarks have legal weight. You know like how if you’re married and you meet your soulmate you can use that as grounds for divorce.”
“Yeah. I mean, of course you can. You met your soulmate. But how is that relevant to this?”
“It’s just an example of the legal status of soulmates. Okay, for example, you know being someone’s soulmate means you don’t pay tax on any money they give you or leave you. You must have heard of how people end up in debt because someone proves they’re the soulmate of someone who owes them. And so, there was a precedent, in the 50s.” He pauses a second, fumbling hough his brain for he name of the case. “Sawell v Gaines. Some guy didn’t want his soulmate to inherit his estate so he got his mark lasered off. And when he died she took his family to court and won her case that lasering doesn’t stop someone being your soulmate. So now they keep a register of whether or not…” Phoenix notices Maya nodding at him and tails off from his lecture Seeing her point. “Oh, oh right.”
“They’d record this in Germany, right?”
“I mean. I guess. They must.”
“And can we find out?”
“It might take a while to get access to the record.”Phoenix turns his wrist over and scrapes a fingernail over the mark. He feels a distant sparkle of sensation. Miles’s Edgeworth’s tongue. On this mark. “But legally, yes. Yes we can.”
That night, in bed. Phoenix jerks off with his soulmark in his mouth and his mind full of Miles Edgeworth. Just like always.
*
IV
Maya walks into the office first, Phoenix trailing her as she says, “I cannot believe you didn’t let Max Galatica fuck you.”
“It’s really not that hard to believe.”
“But, fuck. Max Galactica. He wanted it. From you!” Maya is laughing as she sits are her desk. She taps her keyboard and says, tone entirely different, “Fuck. Oh fuck.”
Phoenix turns from where he’s putting the coffee machine on. “What?”
“I got an email. From Germany.” A pause. “From their soulmark registry. Seelen Symbol. German is so weird. Oh wait. Symbol. That’s just like English. Fuck. I feel like I can sort of read German when I look at it. But also. I don’t know what this means.”
“Its in German?”
“Yeah. Hang on. I’m just gonna paste it into Google translate.”
Phoenix is pale. “What does it say though?”
“Gimme a minute.” Maya’s mouse click-clicks. “Oh yeah, sorry. Oh. Oh my god.”
“What?”
“Fuuuuck,” May says on a long breath before finally looking up at Phoenix. “He did. He got his soulmark lasered. He had one and he had it lasered when he was…” Maya’s face scrunches as she does the math. “Seventeen. No sixteen. When he was sixteen.”
“That’s when I wrote to him about mine,” Phoenix says quietly. “Wait. What did it say. What name.”
Maya looks up from her monitor. “Yours. You. Phoenix Wright. He had your name. He was your soulmate.”
Phoenix feels like he can’t breathe. That, that can’t be right. “But he’s dead.”
*
V
Edgeworth comes over to Phoenix by the hotel bar. Phoenix turns away from him. Edgeworth says, “Really? This? Still?”
Phoenix turns back. “Yes. This. Still.”
“We won the case, Wright. Let me buy you a drink.”
“I lost. Technically,” Phoenix moves to turns away from Edgeworth again Edgeworth puts a hand firmly on his shoulder to stop him.
“Please. Don’t be like this. You know, I’m not actually obliged to have your name on my wrist just because you have romantic notions about it.”
“We’re soulmates, Edgeworth. And you had my name lasered off. It’s not a romantic notion. Its a fact.”
“Oh don’t be so childish. Let me send you some papers I’ve read on the subject. It’s really not the way pop songs and movies would have have you believe. Soulmates are a pointless tether. I had my mark lasered because I didn’t want the distraction. It’s not necessary for a satisfying life.”
Phoenix looks at Edgeworth sourly. “It is for me.”
“Well I’m sorry, Wright. But I don’t owe you anything.”
Edgeworth’s hand is still on Phoenix’s shoulder. Phoenix reaches up and takes his wrist. “You saw what happened when we touched. Don’t tell me you don’t want that. Didn’t feel it.”
“When we touched?”
“When you touched my mark. When you licked it.”
Edgeworth moves his hand from Phoenix’s shoulder, takes his wrist and lifts it. He moves it to his lips like he might kiss it again, or lick it. Phoenix’s heart starts to beat faster.
Edgeworth looks at Phoenix then at the mark. He pauses like he’s reading his name and then, he spits on it.
Phoenix gasps. He stumbles back into the bar he’s leaning on. He feels his dick stir. He feels his whole body start to run hotter. “God,” he breathes. “Please. Do that again.”
“This is fucking ridiculous,” Edgeworth says, tone harsh but his voice is rough and breathy. “Fucking stupid.”
Phoenix’s words come out in a stupid rush. His head is full of the notion of Edgeworth and his soulmark. He can’t push it away. “Oh god, look, please. Edgeworth. Please. Of course you don’t owe me. Of course you’re not obliged to have my name but…You don’t have to, you don’t have to want it, or be my soulmate or any of that if you don’t want to of course you don’t. But please. Take me to bed. Please. Just once.”
“Just once.”
“Yes. Just let me see what it’s like. To make love with my soulmate.”
Edgeworth quirks a smile. “It won’t be making love, Wright. I don’t love you. But I’ll fuck you.”
“I don’t care. Whatever. I just want it to be with you. With my soulmate.”
“And you’ll never mention this soulmark nonsense again.”
“Never.”
“Okay. Fine. I’ll get us a room.”
When Edgeworth moves away. Phoenix almost falls over again and has to catch himself on the bar, making the barman look at him like he’s drunk.
In the hotel room, Edgeworth says, “Get on the bed then.”
Phoenix turns. He’s only a few feet into the room but it isn’t a big room. He says, ”Kiss me first.”
Without a second’s pause Edgeworth slams him back into the wall. They’re outside the bathroom. The back of Phoenix’s head hits the light switch and it snaps on with the hum of an extractor fan. Edgeworth’s tongue is inside him.
Edgeworth is moaning into Phoenix’s dumb, open mouth. And Phoenix is moaning back, spreading his legs as Edgeworth shoves a thigh between them. Phoenix can’t help himself. He’s so hard his dick hurts. He grinds down on Edgeworth thigh, a stupid ball of want.
Edgeworth’s hands are pulling his clothes off, jacket and shirt in one, tie, gone, somewhere. Edgeworth is licking his neck and pulling off his pants. Shoes, socks, everything gone in a flurry of movement and fabric and, next moment, he’s on his back naked on the bed, Edgeworth kneeling up between he wide-splayed thighs. Edgeworth is clothed, reaching into the inside pocket of his jacket and saying, “I don’t have… Do you have anything.”
Phoenix is fucking naked, a bitch spread open on a bed. He has nothing. He shakes his head. Then, “It doesn’t matter. Fuck. Just spit on me. I don’t fucking need it.”
Phoenix feels like he’s shaking, like he’s coming up on something. Like he’s strung out on his own adrenaline. Hot and cold at once. Fever. Sunburn.
Edgeworth dips his head between Phoenix’s legs and spits on his hole. Phoenix gasps. Edgeworth works a finger into Phoenix and then looks at him.”God,” he chokes out. Then, “Fuck.”
Phoenix pants out, “Just do it.” He can’t think of anything else. And Edgeworth shoves down his pants, lines himself up and breaches Phoenix’s ass.
He’s half an inch in, just enough that Phoenix can feel the size of it, the burn, when Edgeworth says, sounding half-wrecked already, “I can’t. Fuck, Wright, I cant do this slowly. Fuck. I can’t stand it. I can’t be gentle.”
“Please, don’t,” Phoenix croaks. And Edgeworth moves, slams forward like a fucking hammer between Phoenix’s thighs, forces himself right in, deep in, in one thrust. Phoenix screams. He can see stars at the edge of his vision. He spread his legs even wider for more.
Edgeworth jolts his hips and slams in again. And again. It’s desperate. Animal. Phoenix rolls his head against the pillows and moans, “Please. Harder. Fuck me, Edgeworth. Fucking break me.”
And somehow, Miles obliges, smashing into Phoenix’s body again and again.
Even then, again Phoenix opens wider and asks for it harder. Canting hips up, spreading himself. Wanting to rip himself apart if it made more space for Edgeworth inside his body.
Edgeworth lifts up Phoenix’s hand and kisses the mark once. Phoenix stares up at him, writhing on cock, lost, and gasps, “Spit, spit, spit on it again. Please. Fuck.”
Edgeworth spits. Phoenix screams.
Phoenix screams and squeezes his eyes shut. Edgeworth sucks the soulmark into his mouth and bites down on it. Phoenix can’t feel the bed under him, feels like he’s blacking out. Edgeworth’s teeth are in his flesh, that part of his flesh. He can’t breath. He can’t.
Above him Edgeworth grunts and suddenly comes, with one and then another extra hard thrusts and Phoenix is falling through space and pleasure and gone.
And then, later, when Edgeworth comes out of the shower, he’s dressed. Phoenix rolls over, “You don’t want to stay?”
Edgeworth shakes his head. “I can’t. I have a flight in three hours.”
“Oh. Right.” Phoenix’s whole body hurts. He sucks his lip before he says, “Why did you do it?”
Edgeworth collects his watch from the nightstand and buckles it around his bare wrist. “What?”
“Remove your soulmark. Was it because it was me? Do you hate me?”
“No, Wright. I don’t hate you. I had my reasons. Not everything it about you.”
*
VI
Phoenix passes Edgeworth his badge and their fingers touch. Briefly, but…
It doesn’t matter. Edgeworth takes it and says, “And if I do this, you won’t use it as an excuse. You won’t mention…” He tails off like he thinks maybe he shouldn’t have said anything at all.
“I won’t mention things I promised never to mention again.” Phoenix sees Edgeworth’s eyes flick to the mark on his left wrist. “Never. Unless you want me to.”
Edgeworth stutters over, “What if I do want you to?”
“Then I’d say, it was good wasn’t it? That time in the hotel? It could be good again. It could be good right now.”
Edgeworth smiles but he isn’t amused and he says, “Fuck’s sake, Wright. You’re in a hospital bed.”
“I’m in a bed.” He holds out his wrist and shows the mark to Edgeworth. “And you know I want you. I can’t hide it.
And then Edgeworth does look amused. Or pleased, at least. “You’re a slut, Wright.”
A shrug against pillows. “If you can’t be a slut for your soulmate, what’s the point?”
“I wish you’d stop this nonsense.”
“You brought it up.” Phoenix bites his bottom lip. He’s not sure if he meant to. He says, “Remember Sawell v Gaines. I’m sure you’d appreciate a legal citation. It makes no difference if you have it lasered off. We’re still soulmates. I’m yours, your mine.”
“The lasering is not meant to change the facts. It is merely and expression of how I feel about the status entirely,” Edgeworth says, but his words fade out.
Fade as Phoenix hitches back, lies himself on the pillows and opens his legs a fraction. An offering. An offering, offering. “But do you remember how it felt? To make love to your soulmate? Don’t you want to feel that again?”
Edgeworth looks at Phoenix. Phoenix closes his eyes, pressing himself back, deeper into the pillows. He lets his legs open a little more. He waits. A moment.
The bed dips as Edgeworth climbs onto it. Straddles his waist. Kisses him.
It’s a sudden bright and joyful light and Edgeworth’s weight forcing him down, spreading him more. Edgeworth’s tongue is in his mouth, pushing his lips apart, licking over them, thrusting, twisting deep in his mouth. And Edgeworth’s hand is between his legs, under the sheets. He’s naked below the hospital and gown and he’s hard in Edgeworth’s cool, tight hand.
Edgeworth shifts and kisses down Phoenix’s chest, then pauses, grabs Phoenix’s hand and brings the soulmark to his lips. He kisses there, presses his lips to his own name and then licks slowly over it. Phoenix keens with pleasure, jolts the bed and cries out. Edgeworth moves down the bed to curl between Phoenix’s spread thighs, sheet shed, taking Phoenix’s hand with him so when he moves from licking the soulmark, Edgeworth runs his tongue over Phoenix’s hole.
“Fuck,” Phoenix pushes out on a wild breath.
Edgeworth lifts his head and says, “You want it dry again?”
Phoenix rolls his head agains the pillows. “Lick me open, please, Edgeworth.”
Edgeworth is panting. He straightens up and pulls off his jacket, keeping his fingers stroking Phoenix’s hole. “If you want me to do something so filthy, I’ll clean my mouth off with yours.”
Phoenix moans. “Yes. Fuck. Please. Please.” He can’t keep still on the bed. He’s squirming, cock dripping as Edgeworth ducks back between his legs and licks a long, hot stripe over his hole. And then does it again. And again.
Phoenix brings his left hand to his face. He can’t help it. He bites down on his soulmark to stop himself screaming as Edgeworth licks him wetter and wetter and more and more open and if feels so good. All of it. Edgeworth’s mouth. His own mouth. He licks the mark the way he does sometimes when he jerks off, moaning softly and helpless against his own skin.
Edgeworth moves suddenly, so sudden it takes his breath. He grunts out, “Fuck, Wright, need you now.” And Edgeworth is inside him, fast enough, hard enough to hurt and Phoenix opens his mouth to yell, seeing stars, but as he does. Edgeworth’s mouth crushes itself to his. Hard. Tasting of filth. Ass and old fear sweat. Eagle River.
Edgeworth stops kissing and changes position to fuck into Phoenix harder, so hard, snarling, “Fuck you, Wright. Fuck you.” He looks down at Phoenix and he looks angry. Angry from pleasure. “Fuck. You,” he says again and spits viciously down on Phoenix’s face.
Phoenix sobs with the twisty messy joy of it. Wave after wave. He isn’t coming yet but it feels like he is, in wave after building wave of sensation. He lifts his wrist to Edgeworth’s mouth, pushes it up, shaking and mouths out, “Please.”
Edgeworth snarls and takes Phoenix’s wrists in his mouth like an animal. He bites down so hard that, as Phoenix starts to scream, coming hard, dick jolting against his belly, Phoenix feels his skin break in Edgeworth’s mouth like he’s trying to bite the soulmark off him.
Then, when they’re done. When Edgeworth is dressed again, Phoenix says, still breathy, throat still raw, “After the court case, will you stay? Can you?”
Edgeworth looks at him. He looks so calm and neat. Like it never happened. Like that frantic, screaming fuck on the hospital bed was dream. “Don’t be so childish,” Edgeworth says.
“But we’re soulmates.”
“And what do you think that means, Wright? You want us to declare that we’re soulmates in public? Live together? Get a bond confirmation?”
“Why not,” Phoenix says, squirming. The bed under him, is sticky. The room stinks of sex. “You don’t want it like that every night? You don’t want me like that for you. Screaming. I love you.”
“No you don’t, Wright,” Edgeworth says. “It’s just fatalistic nonsense. A self fulfilling prophecy. You’ve just convinced yourself you love me, because you’re suggestible and you think that’s what that mark means. It’s just a name.”
“Your name. It’s your name.” Phoenix turns his wrist, show Edgeworth his own name written there, bloody from the bite.
“Don’t.” Edgeworth’s voice is ice.
“What if it hadn’t been me? If your mark had been someone else? Would you have still had it lasered?”
Edgeworth says after a pause. “I don’t know.”
“What? Why not?”
“It wasn’t my choice. Someone else decide my mark should be lasered. How am I meant to know what choice they would have made if the name had been different?” Edgeworth looks at Phoenix for a moment, before he turns and leaves. Phoenix listens to the sound of his suitcase wheels, rolling away over lino.
Phoenix rolls over. So much has happened since he defended Edgeworth in court, he’d half forgotten about Manfred von Karma. Who Edgeworth would have been living with, holding in high esteem, even, when that mark had been lasered.
“You could have refused,” Phoenix whispers to the painted wall of his hospital room. His body is still alight with sensation.
*
VII
“I heard what happened.”
Edgeworth sounds distant. So far away. “I’ve been thinking and I could come to LA and file a case, vouching for your future behaviour.” A pause. “As your soulmate. There’s precedent. I’ve applied for the legal documents and the record of my mark being lasered. If we get a bond confirmation recognised you could be back in court in a few weeks.”
Phoenix rolls over on the couch. He takes a cigarette from between his lips and blow a long jet of smoke at the stained ceiling of Wright and Co. “Nah,” he says. “I’m gonna get my mark lasered anyway. You’re right. You were right.”
“No, no, don’t,” Edgeworth talks fast. “I’ve put together a file on this. As your soulmate I can place your conduct under my reputation. You would, in effect, be able to continue your career using my unblemished record.”
“Unblemished?” Phoenix says, “Is it really?”
“Thanks to you, yes.”
“Look, Edgeworth. Really, don’t bother. What did I even want to be lawyer for anyway? Only because you were one and you were my soulmate. It’s all fucking bullshit. Law. That has been made very clear to me.”
“I can be in LA tonight.” Edgeworth sounds frantic. “Please. Wright. Phoenix. Let me go over our case with you.”
“I’m busy tonight. Edgeworth. Sorry. I’ve got to go. My kid’s calling me.”
He hangs up on Edgeworth saying, “What kid? You have a child?”
Trucy’s not calling him. She’s out on a playdate. Made a friend already. At least someone has friends. Phoenix scrolls through the other names in his phone contacts. He doesn’t want to speak to any of them.
Unless. He stops. Thumb hovering over a new name. He looks at it. Then at the dressing on his wrist. The last of his money on a lasering. What a fucking waste of time. He looks back at the name on his phone screen.
Kristoph Gavin.