Work Text:
Phoenix is thinking about it again.
Okay. Fine. That's a lie, because 'again' implies that she's stopped thinking about it at some point. This is entirely untrue. She'd thought about it all last night — while leaving the courthouse, while taking the bus, while stumbling clumsily up into her apartment. She'd thought about it for most of the morning, too; she'd wondered for a moment if it had all been a dream, but then she'd reached to prod at her back and had felt the dull sting of the scratches Edgeworth had left there sure as day. Maya had noticed her distraction and she'd asked, sly as anything, What's up with you today? and Phoenix had had to mutter something about not getting enough sleep. She cannot shake the memory from her mind.
(The way the prosecutor's cheeks had gone all red, the way she'd tentatively put her hands to the flesh of Phoenix's back, the way she'd been—)
Now this is a very dangerous line of thought. She scrubs her hands across her face and then leaves them there, blotting out the afternoon sunshine streaming in through the window. She's sitting at her desk, parsing through the myriad scam emails in her inbox and hoping against hope that maybe a new case will materialize in there somewhere. Here's the thing they don't tell you: It doesn't matter how crazy the odds you beat are, because it's not going to change the fact that no one really wants to hire a rookie attorney to defend them in court. It's not a good look. Doesn't exactly inspire reams of confidence.
(And the way Edgeworth's eyes had gone all wide, the erratic rocking of her hips, the way she'd turned her head so she wouldn't see—)
"Maya?"
Maya Fey pokes her head into the door of the office. "You called?"
"Would you mind running to the store and getting some milk and eggs? We're nearly out."
Maya puts a hand to her chin in thought. "You're letting me take your credit card?"
Oh no. "Yes."
"Just like that?"
"Well— hey, don't go and buy, like, an Xbox or something, but— actually, maybe this was a mistake—"
"Nope!" Maya chirps. "Too late!" She sticks a hand into the pocket of Phoenix's jacket, which is hanging on the edge of the door, and produces her wallet before she can move to get out of her chair and maneuver it out of reach. "You said milk and eggs?"
"Yes," Phoenix says, feeling like she has made a great mistake. "Some green beans, too, if they have. Make sure they're good."
The mischievous smile on Maya's face is corroborating that 'great mistake' feeling. She snaps a playful salute on top of it. "Be back in a bit!"
Phoenix waits until she hears the front door slam shut before she picks up the office's loyal cord phone and dials the number, and then what she hopes is the right extension. She thinks for a few seconds that maybe no one will pick up, but at the third ring, the phone connects. "Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office. How may I help you?"
"Hey," Phoenix says. "Can you connect me to, er, to Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth?"
She hears the secretary clack something into a keyboard. "Who is this? I don't have anyone pencilled in at this time."
"Phoenix, Phoenix Wright. I worked a case with her recently. There's some paperwork that needs smoothing over."
The secretary hums noncommittedly. "And do you have an appointment?"
Oh. Stupid of her to forget that Edgeworth probably had actual cases to work on, unlike herself. "No."
The secretary hums again, but there's a judgey edge to it this time around. "I'll ask if she's available. If not, we can squeeze you into the schedule sometime this week. Hold on just a sec." The line switches over to the light tunes of elevator music. Phoenix waits super duper patiently, crossing her ankles and drumming her fingers on the edge of her desk. A few minutes pass and she considers hanging up altogether, admitting this was a horrible idea and getting on with her day, and just when she's about to, the music abruptly cuts off.
Silence. A whole second of silence.
Finally: "Wright. What paperwork issue? I was under the impression the Powers case was over and done with."
Phoenix cannot help the way her face breaks into a smile at the voice. The voice of reason in the back of her head tells her this isn't her most brilliant idea. Edgeworth is going to sue her for sexual harassment or something. "Hey, Edgeworth. There's no paperwork, sorry. I lied."
Edgeworth makes a noise that sounds suspiciously like a sigh. "Then stop wasting my time. Good day." She doesn't hang up. Phoenix listens intently. She can hear the faint rustle of papers as Edgeworth flips through a document, maybe, and the smooth glide of what she has to assume is a computer mouse.
"Aren't you going to ask me what it is about?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"This is my work line," Edgeworth says meaningfully. There's a specifically-cultivated frostiness to the bite of her short sentences. "I know that you are not calling me about work. You are wasting my time. That is all there is."
"Hey, you don't know that. It could be about work. Maybe I found something out about Vasquez. Maybe I have enough evidence to implicate Manella on a second, different murder."
"And do you?"
"...No. Okay, fine, you caught me." She reaches up to loosen her tie, feeling like the room is way too hot despite the fact that it's November. Every time Edgeworth says anything, she thinks of the Edgeworth of last night, open, half-guarded, confessing that she'd gotten off thinking about her. "It's not about work at all. It's about last night."
The line goes dead. Phoenix scowls. Well, it was worth a shot. Awkward. Really, really awkward. She drops the phone back into its cradle, and then startles when her cellphone buzzes in her pocket. She fishes it out and is greeted with an unknown number. She accepts the call. "Hello?"
"Wright." The sweet taste of victory floods Phoenix's mouth. "What were you thinking, bringing that up on my work number? Those calls are recorded, don't you know?"
"Oh," Phoenix says stupidly, ears going a bit warm with embarrassment. The victory taste dulls a bit. "I didn't."
"Clearly. And," Edgeworth continues, unmoved, "I told you that last night was nothing. There is no conflict of interest as it stands, but there will be if you keep letting it hang over our heads. It was a one-time thing, and a mistake. One I will not be repeating."
"That's a shame," Phoenix says easily. "I had a good time." Edgeworth says nothing in answer. "I was thinking about you, you know."
Another pause, and Phoenix worries briefly that she's going to hang up on her again. Instead, she does the worse, more exciting thing: "Were you now?"
"Yeah." She leans back in her office chair, holds the phone closer to her mouth. It feels more private this way, like a secret the two of them share — that is, technically, what it is, but this makes it feel more intentional. Like they're on even grounds, when it comes to their seasick wanting. "I had a really good time."
More silence from Edgeworth's end, and then the faintest of exhalations. "I will admit that I was not expecting things to play out as they did."
Phoenix grins. Gotcha. Gotcha, Ms. Prosecutor. "Neither was I. I thought I was dead after I pushed you," she confesses.
"You would have been. You might still be." There is little to no conviction behind the threat, despite it being fully viable, despite it being fully within her rights to press that case. "If you ask me, the only, ah, what was it that you said — that's right, the only public service that could be done in this situation is having you dragged into court by the ear for assault."
"You wound me," Phoenix says, heart thrilling and thrilling again. It's the same feeling she used to get when she'd have a big show, back when she was a part of Ivy U's improv club. "I've been thinking about you all morning. You left me a few mementos to remember you by."
"As if you didn't do the same," Edgeworth fires back, and she can practically see the rosy redness blooming on her cheeks at the memory. "You are an awful show-off."
"Had to make my girl's first time memorable."
"I am not," Edgeworth hisses, "your anything."
Phoenix hums easily. "Walk around without the ascot on. See how you feel about that statement after a little while of it."
"You talk a lot of big game, don't you?" Something dangerous has slipped into her voice, threading through the syllables, the same danger as last night, right before the kiss. This is a different Miles Edgeworth from the evening, an Edgeworth with all her wits about her and marshalled, her pawns lined up on the board, poised to strike. Maybe Phoenix has made a different kind of mistake, the mistake of underestimation. She's been too cocky, has taken her three victories too pridefully. "I suppose it's the same thing that keeps you afloat so long during trials. It doesn't fool me. I am not ignorant of any developments. You let things slip far too easily, Madame Counselor, things that are perhaps best left buried and forgotten in the soil of your subconscious."
Phoenix's cheeks go ruddy with heat. She feels as if Edgeworth's words aren't coming from inside of her beat-up old Nokia but rather from right behind her, as if the prosecutor is leaning over the back of her chair, hands on her shoulders, speaking into her ear with her breath hot against the crease of her auricle. There is an irregularity to her heartbeat, a lightness about her head. An unaccountable tumescence.
"Go on," she says, and keeps her voice nice and steady, almost conversational. Tacks on, spitefully, because she's not just going to roll over, "You forget that you were just as good for it."
"Ha." The laugh is frank, humourless. "I've heard plenty worse than this." She has the single sexiest voice anyone has ever had. Phoenix remembers thinking it even when she'd clicked on YouTube videos of her interviews on the news. As always, buried beneath the want to bring Edgeworth back into the light, there was also the want of, well, pure and simple want. It wasn't as if she could be blamed for it, not when Edgeworth spoke like this: "Of course I have. I have listened to first-hand accounts of bodies bisected, of hands melted off in acid, of hostage negotiations gone gory and wrong, of all manner of hurt and death. You are nothing to me, Phoenix Wright. What should I care for some foolish defense attorney who has decided that she wants to talk her way into my pants without even a modicum of skill?"
"I could be doing that." Phoenix lets her hand drift downwards to her belt buckle. "I don't see you stopping me, anyway."
"Is there any point to it at all? You've conceded my point; you didn't even deny my accusation. In flagrente delecto." Something about the way Edgeworth's tongue folds around the Latin is truly filthy, makes desire twist knife-sharp in her abdomen. It suggests that Edgeworth could read aloud from her old 1L textbooks and make it sound like erotica: An amicus curiae refers to someone who is not a party in a particular legal case but who assists the court by offering their information... She is embarrassed at the way her breathing is already coming quick, and Edgeworth must hear it despite their distance because she quips, "Really, Wright? You won't even pretend for the sake of whatever dignity you might have remaining?"
"What can I say? I'm shameless." The metal of the buckle is warming beneath her hand.
Edgeworth says lowly, "As if I didn't know that already. You liked acting all superior about it last night, didn't you, drawing all of my confessions out of me; but the truth of the matter is that while I was caught up in some dispassionate throe of sexual frustration, you, Wright, remain downright obsessed with me. You mentioned the marks on my neck, inconvenient as they are, but you brought up the ones I left on your back, too, and I know that you derived pleasure from the action. I saw your face, Wright, I know how badly you wanted more of it. You say that I was just as good for it? But, oh, Phoenix Wright, if only you'd seen the look on your own face when I let you play at having your way with me. Any other woman might have let her eyes drift southward, but you kept yours pinned studiously on my face, begging, perhaps, for just one little morsel of my attention."
"Can't help it," Phoenix gasps, and her tongue feels too big for her mouth, and her head feels hot and loopy with desire, desire so strong that it is practically a spell. "Jesus, have you seen yourself? That's really fucking presumptuous, besides."
"Is it? Is it presumptuous? Deny it right now." Phoenix says nothing. "Practically a confession."
"I thought you were a good prosecutor. A real smart cookie. Since when is withholding a statement a confession?"
"In matters concerning you, it might as well be; but we can do a round of your game, if that is what you wish. What would you do for me right now, Wright?"
"Anything." It might as well be the truth. Anything if it means she'll extend her that same vulnerable look as yesterday, the look that said, We could be better than we are right now. The look that suggested, We could be good to each other, if we cross this divide.
"You are," Edgeworth comments, "pathetic."
"Maybe," Phoenix says, and she can't keep herself from it anymore; she unbuckles her belt, and she knows Edgeworth hears because she takes in a breath through her teeth, audible even through the less-than-stellar quality of her speaker. "But if I am, why are you sparing me your voice?"
"It's only charitable." Edgeworth shifts, and Phoenix knows she's not going to be jerking off in her office any time soon, and isn't that just delicious, imagining Edgeworth in her stuffy workplace clothes, thrumming with energy, stumbling through her day, going home and— "You thought, didn't you, that perhaps getting to be the one in charge would afford you some measure of dignity, some control meted out, spooled into your waiting hands. Perhaps you have never felt it so in all your life; perhaps it was a first time for you, as well, in that sense."
Phoenix slips her hand into her pants, forgoes everything just to rub at her clit, and bites back a groan. Edgeworth, impossibly, picks up on this as well and Phoenix imagines her again in her office, phone pressed to her ear, acting aloof when she is in true fact hanging onto her every movement, every little shift in the air that battles its way through her speaker. "You are so, so self-obsessed," she grits out, circling the organ with a finger.
"I wish, I truly wish, that I could be half as obsessed with me as you are with me. Did you like what you did last night, Phoenix Wright? Did it make you feel good about yourself, putting yourself to the task of unraveling your courtroom rival? Did you go home to your sad, sad little life thinking of me?"
"Yes," Phoenix gasps, "yes, yes. All night. All fucking night." Her clit is hard beneath her fingers, and she can feel the wetness further below; she touches at it and then comes back to her clit, rubs faster. "Fuck— you're all I thought about."
"How shocking," Edgeworth drawls coolly. "Honestly, I am so very surprised by this news. It's sad. You are sad. And you are very, very easy for it, Wright. I was wondering if you would bring it up, had guessed you might in a week, a few days, minimally, had begun to prepare a retort or two to have you settle down about it, so I am sure you can imagine what I thought when I picked up the phone and heard you had an oh-so very pressing matter to discuss with me. Paperwork. A pathetic excuse, and one you didn't even hide behind that long; your voice was dripping with your true intentions from the moment you said your greeting. It's a shame, really; I would have liked to do a number on you as well. Would have liked to see you looking up at me from between my legs, would have liked to see you crying with too-much and too-long."
Jesus. "I would. I would, whatever you wanted."
"Don't I know it. Curia advisari vult: Perhaps you are as a dog to its master, heeling when asked to heel, chasing after the geese when given a free leash. You liked it well enough when I had you by yours, didn't you?"
This time, there's no biting it back; a moan tumbles out of her, muffled and unintended.
"That is what I thought. What a good girl you are. Consider this a treat, then. An eye for an eye. I do not like being indebted to people, Wright, though I fear perhaps you got what you wanted just fine out of me last night, closed-loop circuit that you are. Exempli gratia: Here you are, single-minded in your pleasure, and from what? A few cruel words out of the phone? If I didn't make it my business to operate within at least a passably-good veneer of ethics, I'd be recording this, and you'd truly be my lapdog."
"So you admit it," Phoenix says, and oh, it's all too much.
"I admit nothing," Edgeworth snaps, "for there is nothing to admit. If you had been listening with half a mind of sense, you'd have noted that I said I do not make it my business to operate as such, all the happy good fortune for you. Go faster."
"Okay. Okay, okay," and it's more, it's a lot, it's a total uncoiling. She might forget to draw breath if she were to think about it consciously; she's so wet that it is driving her mad. If Edgeworth were here, she'd be gone for it already; all it would take would be a dismissive touch to her heat for her to shudder through orgasm, all it would take would be the slate-grey and dispassionate assessment of Edgeworth's gaze, all it would take would be a memory, a pat on the head, a whiff of linen-light perfume, her laugh like a bell in her ear. Connections, conciliations, analogies; who needs them? The filth falling fastidiously from Edgeworth's lipstick-red lips is more than enough. "I am."
"Very good," Edgeworth says. "Are you close? I do not have all day. Perhaps you have time immeasurable to spend loafing around your office, making passion-calls to productive members of society, but I have a meeting to attend to in five minutes. Be better, and be quick."
"Right, sure," Phoenix stammers, quickening her pace. It feels so good, rolling through her in waves, hot and heady, heavy. A tide, pulling up and back down again. Things are fine one moment, and the next, the desire is so strong that it leaves her panting into the mic, and Edgeworth is making these little comments, these scornful, uncaring noises, and Phoenix cannot get her hand to do what she wants it to, and maybe that's because it's her hand and not Edgeworth's.
Fuck, has Edgeworth ruined jerking off for her?
Edgeworth has nice hands; her fingers are not slim but there is an elegance about them, and she keeps them very still outside of court, deliberately so; and she keeps her nails clean and short, a thin line of white distal edge at the end of each one, and it would feel good, she things, for those same fingers to touch her, for those nails to draw soft and insistent across her clit, the motions making electricity shoot through her — she tries emulating that here and it makes her moan again, and she wishes she could cover her mouth to muffle the noise, but at the same time, she likes it, likes knowing that Edgeworth is listening, her very own audience. She wants Edgeworth to do all that stuff for her, wants to be at her absolute beck and call; if Edgeworth asked her right now to take the bus over, come into her office just to eat her out, she would, would do it so diligently that Edgeworth might dissolve like spun-sugar on her tongue with the force of her passion for the task. "Edgeworth, I— I—"
"You what?" Edgeworth all but teases. "You were so very good at it earlier, weren't you? Give sweet-talking me a try."
"I'm going to come," she gasps, "keep going and I'm going to come."
"You haven't done anything in particular to deserve it, have you? No, nothing except for a whole lot of barking."
"Please," Phoenix pleads. Edgeworth might be above silly things like begging, but in this situation, Phoenix sure isn't. This is the single most awful thing that has ever been done to her, including that one time she ate glass. She hasn't learned her lesson; she'd do it for Edgeworth, too, if she asked it of her, if it meant she'd turn a smile onto her afterwards, dazzling and beautiful. Edgeworth, her war-torn country, her soldier-at-sea.
"Please what?" Edgeworth asks. She exhales, and it comes out of the speaker all grainy. "I haven't done much of anything, if that is your meaning, other than, of course, insult you some; perhaps you recognize that it is your place, to take it from me. It explains the fantasies — what had you said? That you wished to bend me over the bench, that you wanted me on your strap? Base and animal. A desperate attempt to prove yourself better. Even then, you'll notice that it is me who gets the pleasure, me who comes undone with the bucking of your hips. It's painfully obvious. Wright," and Phoenix squeezes her eyes shut, "keep going. Show me what an obedient dog you can be."
That does it. She considers, for the briefest of seconds, half-seconds, even, milliseconds, possibly, putting up a fight, and then neatly defenestrates the concept; she's not above any of it, and she'll prove it. "You're so fucking hot," she says, or tries to say; it comes out a lot more of a whine than intended. Edgeworth gives this little, dismissive laugh, and it sends her over the edge at last; her toes curl, her hand shakes, and the orgasm shudders through her like lightning through a rod, and she hears herself babbling through it, lots of Edgeworth, lots of please, please. And then it's done.
Silence descends over them like a shroud. It lingers. Phoenix comes off the high's peak, pulls her hand out of her pants. Tentatively, she asks, "Edgeworth?"
"Wright." Now her voice sounds a bit strangled. Phoenix smiles privately to herself, at this indication that she is not quite so unaffected as she would like to make it seem. "I see you've made a fool of yourself again."
"Do you still think we don't have a conflict of interest?"
"Oh, Wright," Edgeworth says, sly and smooth as silk, almost cloying. "It was just a bit of harmless fun. It might have meant more than that to you, but certainly not to me. Do try not to orgasm the next time we have a trial together. And I will win, next time, mind you that. Good day." She hangs up before Phoenix can get anything in edgewise, the pompous brat.
She drops her phone on the desk. Her head is all fuzzy with post-orgasm, the edge taken off the world momentarily. She wonders if she has time enough to jerk off again, and then she remembers that Maya's probably on her way back. The wet on her fingers suddenly feels immeasurably filthy. She feels like Charley is judging her as she gets up and trips over to the bathroom.
No one, she thinks, could ever accuse her of knowing what's best for her; but then again, the same could be said of Edgeworth. And as she cleans herself up she thinks again of what Edgeworth will most likely be doing tonight, and counts it as a win. Heaven knows she needs a few more on her tally roster for now.
Maya comes back just as she exits the bathroom, fixing her hair. "Oh Ni-i-ick," she singsongs. "Guess what I bought!"
A new kick to her abdomen; not lust, but pure, financially-inspired terror. "Maya! I am never letting you take my card anywhere ever again! What did you do?"
"Nothing," Maya grins, and then frowns a little as she finally catches sight of Phoenix's face. "What's wrong with you? You look sick."
Phoenix coughs discreetly into her fist. "Allergies," she says lamely. "Let me see how you've bankrupted me today, you little menace."
Maya lets it slide. Bless her heart.