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“I want to ask her to marry me.”
Ema hadn’t been expecting fanfare. Maybe a smile of congratulations, a pat on the shoulder, or a good-natured, “Aww, good for you.” Basic stuff.
Instead, what she got was a mist of spittle spraying her face as Apollo Justice choked on his coffee and snorted it all across the table.
He doubled forward, clutching and pounding at his chest with one hand and rubbing at his dribbling nose with the other. Tears welled at the corners of his eyes, and his face flushed bright. Nothing was more humbling than shooting scalding liquid out your nostrils, Ema supposed.
“Oh,” Apollo said through his teeth, lips peeled around the most pathetic attempt at a smile Ema had ever witnessed.
She raised an eyebrow as she leaned back in her chair. She could feel every pair of eyes in the café staring at them, their motives ranging from curiosity, to concern, to annoyance. And here she had been trying to avoid making a scene. Yeah, ask Apollo Justice—The Man Who Screams Literally Every Other Word He Says—to keep it on the down-low. Smart move, Skye.
“I take it you don’t like the idea,” she said, lifting her frothy mug to her lips: caramel mocha, with extra caramel, extra sugar, and extra-extra whipped cream. Less coffee, more milkshake. Definitely not her regular she drank every morning, nope.
“No, no! It’s not that! It just, uh, took me by surprise—that’s all!” Apollo grabbed the handful of napkins he had dumped earlier on the table and furiously dabbed at his now-sweaty face. He was swaddled in what had to be at least eight layers of jackets, each one a different shade of red. His arms, thrice their usual size, moved gawkily and had trouble bending at the elbows. Ema hypothesized that, if she were to shove him off his chair, he wouldn’t be able to get up—he’d just roll around on his back, like that one scene from A Christmas Story. (It was 50 degrees outside. Freezing, by LA standards.)
Ema snorted out a laugh at her own inner dialogue and said, “Sure. I believe you.” Her lips coiled on the latter utterance into a quick, catty grin—one that fell just as easily as it had been conjured. “It… might be kinda fast, huh. But… damn it, Apollo, I really, really like her.”
Apollo crumpled the napkins into a wad. He frowned at them, then frowned down at the table, and then finally frowned up at Ema.
“I’m not exactly, uh, a good person to give advice on this sort of stuff,” he admitted, scratching at his hair. His nose and cheeks rosied red as raspberries.
“You’re right, you’re not good—you’re the best person to talk to about this sort of stuff,” Ema said, matter-of-factly. “Because you’re frank and say what’s on your mind. So hurry up and cut to the chase, before I have to beat it out of you.” She lifted her bag of Snackoos off the table and waved it threateningly in Apollo’s direction.
Apollo gulped and held up his hands in surrender. “It’s just—you know, marriage is… it’s kind of. Big. Have you thought about—I don’t know, maybe—”
---
“—You could ask her to move in with you, first?”
Ah, Miles Edgeworth. Always the realist. Always the downer.
Kay groaned as she melted over the coffee shop table, pounding her head in an incomprehensible rhythm against the warped wood.
“Of course I’ve thought about it,” she muttered, words muffled by the surface. She had thought about it countless times. She thought about it every time she squeezed Ema’s hand, every time she kissed away Ema’s cloudy-caramel breath, and every time she watched sleep ease the furrow in Ema’s brow as she stroked her tousled brown hair and murmured into the sheets that she never wanted this moment to end, that Ema was her everything, that she loved her with every softness in her soul.
Yeah, Kay had thought about it a lot.
And that’s why she wanted Ema to marry her.
Miles cleared his throat. He stirred a small spoon around in his tea, his eyes fixed on the spiral he made. He was thinking, Kay knew—puzzling out the logical advice to offer your best friend with her romantic plights.
“Why not start with that?” he asked his teacup.
Kay leered at him from behind her forest of flyaways. “Because I know what I want. And—and when you know you want something, you gotta act on it fast.”
“She’s not going anywhere,” Miles reminded, gently. “There is no need to rush.”
Kay’s hands balled into fists, knuckles whitening. “You never know where the wind will take you, nor what it’ll take away.”
She knew that Miles understood that fear. He was the only person she had who did.
Miles finally met her eyes. His gaze was steely, cerebral. He hummed from deep within his chest.
“So said Lang Zi,” he murmured.
Kay bristled, hair in her pores prickling like quills. All right, maybe he wasn’t the only person—but he was one of, and right now, Kay needed that shrewd logic and careful frankness Miles Edgeworth was so very famous for.
“I understand your anxiety, Kay,” Miles carried on, voice even, “but anxiety cannot be the driving force behind your decisions when it comes to relationships.”
Kay whipped her head up off the table. “It’s not the driving force! The driving force is love! I’ve been in love with her for—for—!”
---
“Years,” whispered Ema. The steam of her coffee mingled with her voice, swallowing its pitiful volume.
Apollo was hanging his head and rubbing circles into his temples. The poor kid was strung tight with tension. What the heck— she was supposed to be the one having the crisis, here, not him.
“I mean, we didn’t start dating until recently, yeah,” she continued, candor returning on each step of syllable. “But I’ve been in love with her for years.”
What had started as respect (and worry, mostly, for the little bird with the bandages and broken wings) had stumbled into something warmer—something that burned Ema’s heart like acid on her fingertips and citrus on her palette. Wherever Ema Skye went, Kay Faraday followed. They had studied at the same school, pursuing similar degrees in similar fields—Ema in forensics, Kay in criminal justice. She might have been inclined to say something cheesy, like how their strings of fate were knotted at their thumbs, that the stars themselves ached for their love—but that would sound far too foppish.
“I’ve never been more sure about anything in my entire life.” Ema ran her fingers through the end of her ponytail, wincing as her nails snagged snarls. “I hate when I’m not with her. I think about her every minute. I can’t stop thinking about how much I’d rather be having coffee with her—”
“Hey,” Apollo piped up with a hurt look.
“—Rather than focusing on my job, for example.” Ema sneered at him. “Lemme finish before you get all pouty, Justice.”
Apollo’s puffed cheeks glowed with an even brighter blush. He took an exaggeratedly long sip from his cup, before clearing his throat and saying, “I mean, It’s obvious that you really like her. I’m not questioning that—just, you know… usually things go in a certain order, and usually for a reason.”
“It’s not like moving in together would change much of anything,” Ema pointed out. They practically lived together already. Ema’s apartment didn’t feel like home unless Kay was there. (Really, she didn’t know how many justifications she had to make. She wanted to—wasn’t that enough?)
Apollo’s back slouched. “You sound like your mind’s made up. Once again, I have to wonder why you’re asking me for advice.”
“You keep using the word advice. I just wanted to talk to you about it. You don’t have to, like, poke holes in my reasoning.”
Apollo’s lips pulled back in a wince, and his fingers worried the smooth, ceramic sides of his cup. At the tic, Ema briefly wondered where his bracelet was. Maybe it was too far buried beneath his jackets. “S-sorry. It’s—my job, you know.”
Ema regarded him carefully. Her face burned, and her leg jiggled impatiently under the table—but she kept her expression stoic. She knew that the second she softened—the second she let her voice betray her moxie, let her hopes streak down her cheeks—she wouldn’t be strong enough to keep it together.
She wasn’t sure why it mattered. She knew, along the needling edges of her mind, that Apollo would understand. They were so similar: both scarred by the claws of careless kin, left alone to lick their wounds and sharpen their scales over years of anguish, of failure, of loneliness.
(Things were better, now. Ema had Kay. Ema had Apollo, Mr. Edgeworth, Mr. Wright, and countless others. But—for a while there, things were, patently, Not Good.)
“Ema,” Apollo said—whispered, even, in a baffling display of restraint Ema wasn’t aware he was capable of. He leaned across the table, eyes blazing with heavenfire.
In response, Ema sniffed and rubbed under her nose. God, was she bad at playing it cool.
“You should follow your heart.” He offered her a smile—a nervous, twitchy thing, but loving nonetheless. “If this is what you want—if she is what you want, and you’re what she wants, too—then do whatever you feel is right.”
Ema’s heart bellied big enough to fill her throat. Classic Justice, she thought—bumbling his way blindly onto the truth, just like his predecessor before him.
Ema tilted her head forward, letting her bangs fall loose and wild over her eyes. It wasn’t a lot of privacy, but against Apollo’s keen eyes, any little bit helped.
“But what if she—doesn’t?” Ema asked quietly. Her breath came short, fast. “What if she—doesn’t feel the same, or thinks it’s going too quickly, or mentioning it is just going to make things weird and mess everything we have up—”
“Ema.” Apollo spoke firmly. His hands clenched into fists against the table. “This is Kay. Your Kay. If you love her, and you want to be with her—you’re going to have this conversation eventually, right?”
“My Kay,” Ema murmured. Her tongue was fuzzy in her mouth.
“Ema, you’re fine. You’ll be fine, and Kay will be, too—no matter what. I know you will be.”
It wasn’t a blithe promise, Ema’s inner pessimist noted. He wasn’t promising her affirmation, happiness, or truth—just hope. It was a practiced promise, sighed like a prayer Apollo had uttered to himself hundreds of times.
And yet, she felt lighter.
“It’s going to be hard,” Apollo said with that same bold, bright grin, “but—if you love her, and this is what you want—”
---
“—Then you shouldn’t wait.”
Miles reached out to hand Kay yet another napkin. She snatched it out of his hands, wiped under her eyes, and then trumpeted out a load of tear-induced snot. Miles wrinkled his nose at her, a lecture on the tip of his tongue, but he reigned himself in.
“Is it—did you—?” Kay sucked down a breath, trying to collect her confidence. Kay felt things like fire, loud and bright and all-consuming—each laugh racked her ribs, each tear shook with sobs. A part of her had hoped she would have mellowed with age, but she hadn’t. She was the same now as she was when she was seventeen and thieving, ten-years-old and dreaming. “I mean, for you, was it—how did—”
“Breathe, Kay,” Miles soothed. His jaw was tight. He looked like he was contemplating something—if Kay had to guess, probably about whether or not he should stand up and offer her comfort. A hug didn’t sound too bad, actually—she’d have to nab at least one before they left.
Kay wiped the wetness off her cheeks and, at last, managed to string together a sentence: “Is it normal to feel so… nervous? About these kinda things? I love her with all my heart, and I want her to know that, but part of me is so scared that—that something bad’ll happen, like it always seems to around me—that I’m no good for her, that I’m just trouble—”
“Kay Faraday,” Miles said, tone sharp enough to stopper Kay’s sniffles, “you must not speak that way about yourself. You are the cleverest, kindest woman I know. You are not trouble, not for anyone—and certainly not for Ema Skye. She adores you. She’s told me many, many times.”
Kay’s mind wandered off with the thought of Ema in her exact position, hunched over a cup of caramel mocha as she waxed on and on about Kay to an increasingly flustered Miles. She sniffed, then giggled.
“That’s—yeah, I guess you’re right. I am pretty great.” She pushed her black locks out of her face. One of them caught around her finger, and she gave it a thoughtful tug. “But… the question still stands. When you, Miles—did you…?” She pulled a little harsher. “Do you? Even now?”
Miles blinked at her. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“Ugh, you’re gonna make me say it? Embarrassing.” Kay looked at him and asked, “I mean, with you and Mr. Wright—did you feel this nervous, too? Do you still feel nervous?”
A blush claimed Miles’s face. “Ah. Yes. Right.”
“Wright!” She grinned at him, mist finally lifting from her vision. She gave the scarf slung around her neck a mischievous tug. “I need me some advice from a married man, man!” That, and she’d take every opportunity she could to get Miles to open up. He was so clammy when it came to Phoenix, even after all the embarrassingly obvious pining and “down-low” (ha) relationshipping.
Miles’s gaze fell from hers. Staring at his tea again, Kay wondered, or at the band on his finger?
“My relationship with Phoenix did not develop… optimally, and shouldn’t be used as an example,” he said.
“I’m not asking about how it developed—I wanna know how you felt.” Kay craned across the table, while Miles squirmed farther back into his chair. “Were you nervous, popping the question? Or—did he ask you? Were you scared to take the leap, or did you feel in your heart that it was right? That you needed to?”
“I—” Miles’s eyes were beginning to bulge out of his head in that silly way they did whenever Kay managed to wiggle under a nerve. “It—it wasn’t… it wasn’t a simple choice, no. Nothing involving that man has ever been simple.”
“That man, that man,” Kay parroted in a higher pitch. “Gee, Miles, I thought you would’ve evolved beyond that by now. That man is your friggin’ husband.”
Miles flushed even darker—his dignity, stolen from right under his nose. Get better security, dude.
“I… was nervous, yes.” Despite his blush and his constant wriggling, Miles managed to answer the question. “Phoenix and I have a—complicated history, as you know. Falling in love was an arduous process.”
“Falling in love is the easy part,” Kay chirped. “The difficulty’s in the details.”
Miles crossed his arms over his chest. His finger tapped a tune on his forearm. “Astute, and very true. I, admittedly, am not exactly the most—emotionally-adept person. I cannot read people well, nor is it easy for me to reflect upon my own feelings. That hamartia of mine has not made my life easy, especially when it came to Phoenix. I had incredible anxiety throughout the beginning of our relationship. I am the sole reason why it—it was not….” Miles voice quieted and splintered apart along the blink of his breath. “...Why it was not sooner.”
Kay was certain that wasn’t true. She didn’t know Phoenix Wright very well, beyond the fables Miles and Ema had weaved of him—but surely that man had his own darknesses, too.
“Even now, I feel similar anxiety.” Before Kay could give voice to her thought, Miles continued. “There is a prodding at the back of my mind—a worm, of sorts, that occasionally whittles into my active thoughts. It voices my fears: that my sins outweigh my redemption, and that I do not deserve him. It heckles that he will eventually realize this, and he will discard me, and I will once again be alone—and I will have deserved it.”
Kay felt her blood simmer in her veins. The sudden glimpse into Miles’s heart had blinded her, and nerves bubbled hot in her gut. She had gazed into the pit, only to find herself staring back at her.
“When thoughts like those eat away at me,” Miles said, “I remind myself thusly: that such thoughts are illogical. They aren’t worth entertaining, even for an instant. Darkness deceives the eye and the mind alike—but, even a single spark of light will reveal the truth.”
Kay pursed her lips. “Beautiful,” she said, “but, in layman’s terms, you’re just saying to… be positive, right?”
“Positive and honest, yes. Phoenix loves me, and I—him. I can say that with utmost confidence, as surely as I can say the sky is blue. He is an honest man, frank to a fault, and I trust him.” His eyes glinted like gunmetal. “You trust Ema, yes?”
Kay sat up straight, her feathers rustled. “Of course I do! What kinda question is that—?”
“Then you should be having this conversation with her, not me.”
“Ugh, Miles—”
“Your partner should be your most trusted ally—your closest friend. If something worries you, you should be able to confide in them, because you trust them. You love them. And—you love Ema, yes?”
“Of course I do!” Kay said, much louder that time.
Miles smirked at her. Dang it, she thought—what a splendid deduction. “Then what are you waiting for?”
“For lunch to be over,” she snapped, tongue as sharp as talons.
“And what will you say?”
She’d confess the truth, she thought. No tricks and gimmicks, no lying coldly. Speak the truth, lest fear burgle it blind.
So she breathed a sigh, spread her wings, and claimed to the night—
---
“I love you and trust you, more than any other person in the world. And I—I want to spend all the time with you that I can. And I want to let everyone know how much I care about you. Show you off to literally everyone I meet. So, uh, how do you like the idea of making things… official? Like, official official? Like. Marriage, official?”
Kay nearly spilled her hot cocoa over Ema’s already-stained couch. Her jaw dropped slack.
Ema flushed deeply, and she brought her oversized mug, topped with a six-inch-high mountain of whipped cream, up to hide her lips. “S-sorry if this is kinda—outta the blue, you know? I just—I wanted to bring it up, ’cuz—y’know—this time of year always makes me so mushy, jeez, and I can’t stop thinking about it—about you—”
“Oh my gosh, Ema!” Kay’s fingers began to tremble so badly, she forced herself to set her cup down on the coffee table before she winded up spilling it. She tucked her legs up underneath her, sliding her entire body onto the couch as she turned to face Ema properly. The sudden movement made Ema shrink back and sputter into her drink.
“Umm, it—it doesn’t—if you don’t—you can pretend I didn’t—”
“You beat me to the punch!” Kay slapped her hands to her face and pulled her cheeks back with a groan. “Dang it, I should’ve led with it! I had such an awesome speech thought up! It was gonna make you cry!”
Ema blinked at her. Her lashes were so silky, so gentle. Kay wanted to be drowned in her butterfly kisses.
“You’re, umm?” Ema cleared her throat and set her cup on the coffee table beside Kay’s. Kay could see her expression clearly, now: a peach-pink blush was dusted over her nose, and her bottom lip had been kneaded tender by her worrying teeth. “You… like the idea?”
“Yes! Ema, of course! Absolutely!”
“R-really? I know it’s kinda—”
Kay cut her off with a kiss. Her lips tasted sugar-sweet. Ema made a quiet noise against her, so Kay dragged her lips to kiss each corner of her mouth, then each cheek, then her forehead, the top of her head. By the end of it, the tension she felt knotting under Ema’s skin uncoiled with a giggled sigh.
“Oh my god, I’m so… god, I’m so happy. Holy crap. I’ve been working myself into a tizzy about this.” Her giggles came scattered and soft. “I, uh, aha—didn’t want to do anything big without talking to you about it first, y’know? I—I should’ve hidden a ring in your cocoa. There’s no ring in your cocoa. Damn it.”
“Aww, Ema, don’t even.” Kay crawled across the couch and batted her lashes up at Ema. Ema spread her legs apart, giving Kay ample room to settle herself between them and nestle against her. She leaned back and planted a chaste kiss on the underside of Ema’s jaw. “I’ve been driving myself crazy, thinking about this same thing.”
“Maybe we’re synched. Or maybe—the stars themselves wanted us to…?” Ema trailed off, and her smile fell into a frustrated frown. “Ugh, no—I can’t pull that line off. I’m too dorky.”
“Your dorkiness is your best charm, babe,” Kay said.
Ema sucked in a scandalized gasp. “I just asked you to marry me, and you’re calling me a dork? I can’t believe this.”
“Huge dork,” Kay amended. “The biggest dork that I know. That’s why I love you.”
Ema’s pink cheeks deepened into a brilliant crimson—like robin tuft, like cardinal wings. “You’re a dork too, y’know.”
“Oh, trust me, I know.”
“Then you also know,” Ema murmured as she leaned forward, steamy breath breezing over the shell of Kay’s ear, so hot and damp and sweet, “that I love you—with my everything.”
Kay pressed her face against Ema’s neck and whispered, “I know. I love you, too.”
And as they clung to each other—despite the chilly wind stirring the branches against the window, despite the snow on the television screen and the cooling cocoa on the coffee table—Kay had never felt such warmth.
(Perhaps it was the same warmth Miles felt as he nudged Phoenix awake from his spot slumped over his desk, and Phoenix’s first instinct was—even groggy and slobbery from sleep—to pull him down into a kiss that lasted until the sky shed its cloak of night.)
(And perhaps, it was a cousin of the warmth Apollo felt as Trucy opened her holiday gift [a set of puzzle boxes he knew would only fool her for an instant, but would trick others for years to come], squealed, and wrapped him up in a tight hug—a warmth that reminded him that, no matter how lonely he felt or aimlessly he wandered, he had found a family who loved him.)
Perhaps, perhaps. Though Kay and Ema both would claim, with a smirk and a smile alike, that theirs was all the sweeter.