Chapter Text
The whole arrangement was probably doomed to be a mess from the start.
Phoenix will concede a little sadly to that, and he’ll also concede that it’s on him, for not asking for clarity when it had first become that mess, when it had first got confusing. Which hadn’t taken long.
It had been clear at the start, though. Very clear. Very much just a consensual meeting in a courthouse broom cupboard, two trials into knowing each other again, for them to vent out whatever the hell was otherwise going on between them in court.
“Was this supposed to deter me from showing my face in front of you again?” Phoenix asks, in echo of Edgeworth’s ridiculous, constipated threat after State vs. Powers. He grins as he wipes Edgeworth’s—his rival’s, he supposes Maya is right about that for now—stickiness from his mouth, and gets up from his knees. “Because I might actually start hanging around more often, take more cases, if this is what you do when you see me here.”
He’s not sure where this bravado is coming from. He’s kind of still under the influence of the adrenaline rush he’s been under since his eyes had locked onto Edgeworth’s glaring ones in the courthouse hallway, his mouth had made an irresponsibly snarky comment, and Edgeworth had responded by yanking him by the tie into the tiny closet nearby.
“Don’t get it mistaken, Wright,” Edgeworth mutters, scowling, as Phoenix attaches himself to his neck. “This was a one-off. A one-off, to relieve current frustrations. It won’t take me long to get used to your unfortunate presence around here.”
It stings a little bit. It feels like Edgeworth is moving mountains to act like they really are just strangers-turned-professional rivals and not once-friends, but Phoenix can't allow himself to be too surprised. Not from what he’s seen of his old friend so far.
“Okay. One-off it is, then.”
Edgeworth nods, curt. “Now undo your belt and pants.”
Phoenix looks up. “W-What?”
“Undo your belt and pants,” Edgeworth repeats, and then smirks; that awful, shark-like smirk that is all curling lip and glinting teeth, and that rips Phoenix to pieces in the best worst way possible. “You didn’t think I was going to let you one-up me here, too, did you?”
See? Nice and clear. A little cold and impersonal, Phoenix will admit, but he had no real qualms at the time, because the boundaries were nice and clear, and it was only to be a one-off, venting-of-frustrations thing.
Until it wasn’t.
Because just a few months later, Edgeworth was a prime suspect of a murder, and Phoenix was shoving his nose into Edgeworth’s past, finally figuring out what had made his old friend change so much, what had made him become so angry and guarded, and no one had liked the answer, but Phoenix had pressed and pressed until the whole gruesome thing was out in the open, because it had been the long-covered up truth, and his friend, his old childhood friend Miles, deserved to have it be known, deserved to have the opportunity to live as he once had, fifteen years ago and free.
Free. Not quite as easy as that, in the end.
Because no one had liked the answer, that truth, less than Miles. Phoenix had realised this when they had come together in his apartment the same night Miles had finally been released from holding, and he had been trying to seek something from Phoenix that Phoenix hadn’t been comfortable to give.
“Edgeworth, your hands are shaking—”
“It’s nothing. Don’t mind it.”
“It’s not nothing,” Phoenix urges, as Miles tries to move back in. “I—I don’t think this is a good idea. I’m sorry, I just—don’t want to take advantage of you right now.” The words feel depersonalised, like he’s read them off a pamphlet on consent and regurgitated them back up. It doesn’t cover the awful immensity of the situation.
He places a hand on Miles’s forearm, and drops his voice to a hush. “You went through hell today.”
Miles stills. When he speaks, his voice is also low, but not at all gentle like Phoenix’s was. “How weak-minded do you think I am, Wright?”
“Edgeworth,” Phoenix winces, “c’mon, you know what I mean—”
And then it hadn’t really mattered what Phoenix had meant, because Edgeworth had pulled away of his own accord, had begrudgingly let Phoenix walk him home in a stiff, stifling silence, and then Phoenix hadn't seen him again until State vs. Skye. And then—
Well.
The next time they came together after that, it was Phoenix who wasn’t in the right state of mind. But he’d been a hypocrite. He hadn’t let the previous reason for stopping before apply to him now.
“I’m so glad that you’re al— that you’re back,” Phoenix gasps, head thrown back into Miles’s hotel suite pillows as Miles thrusts into him from above. He can’t remember who had initiated it, can’t even remember his walk to the hotel. The past few days have been a lot of that, and so these things now, they’re things beyond questioning. A lot of things are beyond questioning. They’re not even using a condom.
“God, you’re such an asshole for what you did,” he continues, babbling, “but—” but Miles is hot and flushed under his hands, he is alive, and that counts for more than Phoenix’s enduring hurt, of course that counts for more— “but—ah, fuck! right there, right there!—I’m so glad you’re back. So glad—do you even know fucking heartbroken I was? God, I’m pretty sure I lo—”
“Don’t, Wright,” Miles grits out, cutting into him, and then lurches down to further make good on Phoenix’s silence with an uncoordinated kiss, keeping his pace all the while—
No feelings, that had told him. And Phoenix had been glad of the reminder, because wasn’t that how it had been the past two times? Or past one time, he supposes, since Phoenix hadn’t let the second time carry on. Boundaries might have been crumbling at each subsequent go with neither of them doing anything to stop it, it had gone from clothed, cold and rushed in a closet to naked, hot and rushed but in a different manner entirely in Miles’s hotel bed, and it sure as hell wasn’t a one-off thing anymore, but feelings were to be out of the question. And he was fine with that.
Sometimes he’d let feelings slip out, though. He’s only human.
“I’m gonna miss you.” His words bury into Miles’s neck, matching the rest of him. They’re in one of Miles’s hotel beds again. He’s not sure how they got here, again. He’ll blame it on the head cold he got from the river, the one that Miles, uncharacteristically, doesn’t seem bothered about him probably passing on.
Miles’s fingers dig their crescents harder into his back, hopefully hard enough to leave marks that Phoenix can stare at in his mirror in the days after Miles has gone. Phoenix probably shouldn’t want that. Again, he blames it on the head cold.
“I’m staying in LA for another week. At—ah—at least,” Miles replies.
“Yeah?” Phoenix murmurs. He looks up at Miles and his prettily flushed face. “Okay. Don’t be a stranger, then.” He starts going deeper, harder. Overwhelmed. “God, I’m gonna miss you so much—I always do—fuck, Miles—”
Miles’s eyes screw themselves shut. “Wright, please—”
Miles had been a stranger. But Phoenix had managed to convince himself that it wasn’t a result of the whole feelings making a reappearance thing, and wasn’t of Edgeworth’s own volition—he’d merely been called back to Germany only a day later, back to whatever he had been doing before he’d chartered a literal private jet at the drop of a help, Edgey, Nick might be dying-hat. Which, sidenote, would have been romantic to Phoenix, if he was still a romantic, sickly-saccharine moron—but he’s not; not anymore.
Or he had been trying, is desperately trying not to be.
He had gotten a reprieve from this when they’d next seen each other, when Phoenix was no longer a lawyer, and was instead a newly-made father.
Because they’d seen each other, but they hadn’t met each other, not in the same way they had in nearly every other reunion. Just like they hadn’t when Miles had had his life turned upside down, they don’t when the same happens to Phoenix, and the decision to abstain hadn’t even needed to be a spoken thing that time. Looking back now, Phoenix doesn’t think they would’ve had the time, anyhow. He had been too busy making sure Edgeworth was getting to know Trucy, because that little girl was his life now, and if Edgeworth still wanted to be a part of his life, then he had to know Trucy.
Edgeworth, much to Phoenix’s surprise, has been committing to this.
The time he and Edgeworth had seen each other after that was another few months down the line, and a little different. Their situation was more relaxed by then. Phoenix had settled into his new role, both in his own life and in Edgeworth’s, and in Edgeworth’s life, he’s a friend kept at a distance, a friend occasionally called over to Europe for a legal favour.
It had been Edgeworth who’d first blurred that line. But it’s not like Phoenix had stopped him.
“Is this alright?” Edgeworth whispers. He’s mere millimetres away from Phoenix’s lips. Phoenix can already taste the wine Edgeworth has been slowly sipping that evening, the bottle and his glass making their appearance after Phoenix had come back from tucking Trucy into bed.
“Yeah,” Phoenix replies, smiling. “Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be?”
Miles’s thumb starts a slow up-and-down along Phoenix’s jaw, through Phoenix’s stubble. Phoenix leans minutely into it. “We don’t see each other often.”
“I don’t mind. That hasn’t stopped us before.” He grins. “I can do the occasional fuck in Europe. You’re paying, after all.”
Miles makes a face. “Don’t say it like that."
Phoenix laughs. “Why not? That’s what it is,” he says, and then before Miles can reply, closes the tiny gap between them, mouths becoming open and roaming, them moving to Miles's bed and everything else following soon after—
He’d been lying, then, of course. It wasn’t just a fuck for him, and it still isn’t, and it never has been. Not even during that very first time in the detached, impersonal space of a courthouse broom cupboard, if he’s being honest with himself, because looking back, it had just been him wanting to do anything that would close that distance between him and Miles. And maybe it still is that. He takes what he can.
But he’s an adult; he can keep a lid on his feelings. And maybe one day he’ll tell Miles, but right now, when they see each other twice a year at most, thrice if they’re lucky, he doesn’t see the point. What good would it do? Phoenix has a busy life in LA, and Miles has a busier life in Europe. That’s just how it is. C’est la vino, or whatever pithy phrase the French have for it.
So he relishes those twice, thrice if he’s lucky, encounters a year, and he leaves it at that.
Or tries to. It’s hardly his fault, he tells himself, as he pulls his sweats back on, as Miles shakes his bangs into some form of order, as the evening sun streams in through the window of the Barcelona apartment Miles is currently living out of and sends glittering light skittering across the pale, still-flushed skin of Miles’s back—it’s hardly his fault if he lets himself read into this situation a little deeper than it is; this situation of casual sex he has with the man he’s in love with. Has been in love with.
Because that’s what it is to him, at least. Love. Love, and he leaves it at that.