Chapter Text
Miles' phone rings as he’s ascending the steps to the courthouse, and he answers without looking at the caller ID. “Edgeworth.”
“We’re still in recess. Do you have it?”
“I’ll be there in about a minute,” he says, flashing his badge at the security as he heads towards the defendant’s lobby. “See you soon.”
Wright opens the door just as he’s about to reach for the handle. He’s smiling, but the crease between his eyes makes it clear that Edgeworth has not been a moment too early. “Thanks.”
“No need,” Edgeworth replies, and hands him the manila folder without any more unnecessary pleasantries.
Wright’s gaze turns serious as he looks through the report. When he reaches the last page, Edgeworth can tell he’s seen what he needed to. Wright grins at him, slightly abashed but flushed with victory. “Thanks, Edgeworth.”
“Hmph. Did you get everything you needed?”
“I think so.” Wright tucks the report away in his briefcase and turns away, mind clearly on the trial. He looks tired, but triumphant, practically bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walks across the lobby towards the couch. Edgeworth stands awkwardly at the door, forgotten in his friend’s pursuit of justice. He doesn’t mind. He’s been in Wright’s place often enough to know that extraneous things like life and people and sleep are cast away until the truth is revealed. It’s part of what makes Wright such an excellent rival and partner in the courtroom, that laser focus.
Edgeworth watches as the defense attorney sits down carefully next to his client, who is huddled on the couch with their head in their hands. Wright begins talking to them in a low voice. A good lawyer, Edgeworth thinks. A good man. And then: it hits him all of a sudden, a rush of warmth and sudden tightness in his chest and the horrifying, humiliating urge to smile vacuously like a foolish child given a piece of candy or to vomit or to run away, far away, and disappear. It hits him like the heat of a fire-lit room after being in the cold for hours, like the sound of a gunshot, like the way Wright says -
“Sir, the recess is almost over.” The bailiff interrupts, and Edgeworth fights back the urge to snap at the intrusion. Turning on his heels, he exits the defendant's lobby as fast as he can without breaking into a run. Wright doesn’t notice. Hopefully.
Edgeworth doesn’t often indulge in profanity, but at the moment the only word running through his head is the only one that seems right in the moment.
Fuck.
* * *
So, fine. He’s in love with Phoenix Wright. Logically Edgeworth should do something about this. And yet he cannot help feeling that the moment to do something passed long, long ago, when they were both very young and more foolish, when he had noticed the light in Wright’s eyes and very carefully, systematically, disregarded it. Now they are older and there has been so much wasted time, so many years of conversations where they had not said what really mattered. He thinks it is too late and he thinks Wright has moved on and he tries to ignore the new mass of thoughts and feelings squirming around in his skull. He works diligently. He completes his routines. He does not call Wright after the trial, although he notes that Payne is conspicuously glowering at the coffee maker in the break room more than necessary, the way he usually does when he loses a case and wants to complain to anyone unlucky enough to be in earshot.
That night Edgeworth drinks three glasses of wine and indulges in a frankly embarrassing amount of self-pity before wondering: is it too late? Have they missed their chance? How might Wright react if he were to ask? Tentatively, he imagines it: a simple request, a slow move from their comfortable friendship to something - more. The thought haunts him even as the effects of the alcohol slowly fade from his system. It nags at the back of his mind through to the next morning and in his meeting with the senior prosecutors.
How extremely irritating. He resolves to do something about it. After all, he cannot let this affect his work, his life. If Wright rejects him then he will have an answer. Things might be odd between them for a while, but theirs has never been a conventional friendship anyway, and Edgeworth cannot stand unresolved questions.
And if Wright accepts his offer?
Preposterous. Extremely unlikely. And yet…
Well. He will deal with that scenario if it comes. He is used to planning for multiple possibilities anyway. This is not so different from a trial.
* * *
And then it is 4:23 PM on a Tuesday and there is a knock on his office door and Wright is there with a slightly embarrassed smile and he brings the sun into the windows of Edgeworth’s office without seeming to notice he has done so. They talk of nothing, of Trucy’s upcoming magic show and the result of the trial, and he is uncharacteristically nervous but he does not think Wright notices, or perhaps he only hopes.
“I wanted to thank you,” Wright says, sitting on his couch in a way that the younger him would have described as disrespectful but the current him knows as unthinkingly habitual. “For the report you brought me.”
“It was nothing.”
Wright just laughs, as if he had expected this answer. “It saved my client from a wrongful conviction.”
Edgeworth bites back his automatic reply, which is that he has done nothing but act as courier, that it was Wright who had saved his client from a wrongful conviction, just as he has countless times before. The late afternoon light shines golden on the surface of his mahogany desk, warm and disarmingly familiar. He smoothes the surface of the paperwork he had been filing out before looking up. “It was nothing.”
Wright is looking at him, open, easy, and Edgeworth can see a different time, when this silence would be filled with things unspoken and the awkward dance of two people who know each other well enough to offend but not well enough to really forgive. He does not want to look at Wright but he cannot help doing it anyway, a lapse in self-control that should scare him and, terrifyingly, does not. There is trust there, but that is familiar. There is also warmth, but Wright is a hearth fire, and the heat is there even when it comes from burnt-over embers. It is not specific to him.
Edgeworth does not know what makes him sit down on the opposite couch with the book he had been studying, but he does. He is still unused to this feeling, of wanting someone to stay, of being comfortable in their presence, even after so many years. He realizes it has been silent for what is doubtless an unacceptable length of time and clears his throat. Well. Let it not be said that Miles Edgeworth does things halfway.
“Wright,” he begins, and then realizes the absurdity of asking someone on a date using their last name. “Erm - Phoenix, I, well-“
Wright looks - concerned. It is not an ideal start. “Y-yes?”
“Mm. Well. I was wondering if you would like to have dinner with me. Before Trucy’s magic show.”
Wright looks at him and laughs, and before Edgeworth can fully contemplate the logistics of digging a hole in the flower boxes outside and sticking his head in, never to reappear, Wright says “Sure, Edgeworth. What time are you free?”
Edgeworth actually has to think. He isn’t used to improvising like this, and it takes him a moment, to remember what time the magic show actually is and when he normally finishes with work on a given Thursday, before he can answer. “Would six be alright?”
“Six would be great,” Wright says, as relaxed as he was when he was inviting Edgeworth to the show in the first place, and Edgeworth curses himself for not doing this sooner, for not realizing sooner, but who could have known it would be this easy? “Do you have a place in mind?”
“Not particularly,” he admits. All the places he can think of at the moment are either too expensive or too far from the venue Trucy performs at. In all honesty he hadn’t thought this far. Another unusual circumstance for him to be in. The discomfort is alleviated by the speed of Wright’s suggestion.
“How about Pho Ngun?”
“That would be agreeable,” Edgeworth says, faintly. It shouldn’t be this easy. “I can pick you up?”
“That’s okay. It’s really close to the Agency. I used to get takeout there a lot, when we didn’t have a kitchen.”
Edgeworth studies the papers in front of him. There are words on the page, of course, but they seem to be written in some foreign language he is incapable of reading. “I’ll meet you there, then.”
“Sounds good.” Wright rolls his shoulder with a wince, apparently unflustered by this new phase of their relationship.
Has he been unknowingly obvious in his affections before his own self-realization? Wright is very good at reading people, after all. Perhaps he has been expecting this, waiting for it even. It should be embarrassing. Instead Edgeworth feels...happy. Excited, even. The phrase “matrimonial jurisdiction” jumps out at him. He stares at it in angry disbelief at his own inanity before remembering that common-law marriage precedent was relevant to a case Gavin had asked him to review. At least he isn’t completely losing his sanity.
“Hey, do you have any books on proximate cause cases?”
Finally, a question Edgeworth feels confident in answering. “Of course.” He frowns. “You’re not thinking…”
“The Concurrencia case? Yeah, I thought you might figure that out. Apollo thinks-”
“Mr. Justice can think what he likes. The idea that the defendant is a victim of unfortunate circumstance in that case is frankly, absurd.”
“Really? because…” They argue until the sun has set, and when Wright leaves his office (after asserting that his protege's client is innocent based on an increasingly convoluted series of events and circumstances, and if Edgeworth didn’t know better he’d say Wright was making the argument just to annoy him) he stares at the empty couch in front of him for a bit too long before the gravity of what he has done hits him. It should have been more difficult than this, and yet here they are. Here they are.
Edgeworth does not jump up and down with excitement like a child at a Steel Samurai movie premiere. That would be ridiculous and unbefitting of a man of his age and office. If he drives a little faster than advisable on the way home, well, who can blame him? It’s not often that the L.A. traffic thins enough to let him floor the gas and feel the satisfaction of wind whipping in through his window and the painted lines melting away beneath him.
* * *
I asked Phoenix Wright out on a date.
Edgeworth hits send and immediately turns his phone over. A long silence ensues.
Ah, there it is - his ringtone, piercing the peace of his apartment. He nearly lets it go to voicemail against his better judgement, but both his affection for his sister and the knowledge that he would be whipped within an inch of his life if he were to ignore her calls after texting her that sort of message ultimately win out. He picks up the phone.
Miles Edgeworth.” Franziska’s voice is flat. “Please tell me this is not some sort of imbecilic prank.”
Edgeworth sighs. “Is that what you think of me?”
“I think you are a fool,” she says, a little too easily. “And I think it has taken you long enough.”
He starts. “Ngh - Franziska, are you implying -”
"That your infatuation was obvious to all who cared to observe you for more than thirty seconds in that man’s presence? Yes, that is what I am implying.”
“Hmph.” He can’t very well tell her she was wrong now. “I suppose you are right.”
“...” There is the sound of a car horn, and then Franziska, swearing loudly in German. “Arschkeks, verfluchter! Even a monkey could operate machinery better than half of these dummköpfe.”
“Verily,” Edgeworth says dryly. “Is this a bad time?”
“It’s fine.” She snaps. “What did you expect, texting me something like that? That I would ignore it? Text you ‘congratulations’? Send a thumbs-up emoticon?”
“I thought no such thing. I simply thought you should know.”
She does not respond for so long Edgeworth half wonders if she has pulled over to give the offensive driver a taste of her whip. When she finally does reply, it is in German, and her tone is serious. “I...appreciate your notification. And -” another pause. “I wish you luck, little brother.”
“Thank you,” he says, careful not to let his smile mar his serious tone. By the time they hang up it is much later than he usually goes to bed, but he does not retire for at least another half an hour. Instead he sits, thinking, until his phone chimes unexpectedly.
Franziska von Karma: 👍
Franziska von Karma: Glückwunsch, Dummkopf.