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“You have the autopsy report?”
“Yes.”
“The crime scene photos?”
“Check.”
“The updated autopsy report?”
“Maya. This isn’t my first trial. I figured you would know that better than anyone else.” Phoenix arches a brow at the woman in question, who stands hovering over the briefcase open on his desk, scanning its contents while she twists the ties of her obi between her hands.
“I know that.” She concedes, dropping her hands to lay flat on the desk, though she still won’t tear her eyes from the heap of manila folders in front of her and opt to meet Phoenix's gaze. “It’s just, this will be the first trial that I haven’t been beside you . . . at least, when I wasn’t kidnapped, or, you know, the defendant.”
Phoenix’s eyes soften, having found the source for his assistant's fidgety behavior. “It will be fine, Maya. I can survive one day alone in court. When did you start worrying about me so much, anyway? I thought I was the one who was supposed to worry about you.” He teases, reaching across the desk to snap closed the latches on his briefcase. She punches him in the arm playfully when he’s near enough, to which he staggers back with an exaggerated stutter, clapping his hand over his bicep in mock agony.
“I always worry about you, Nick. I just don’t say it.” Maya retorts, rising to his tone of flippancy, though her eyes narrow when she speaks, and flicker away from his when he turns to her with a question pitched in his brow. He wishes to tell her that her worry is misplaced, but he’d be pressed to deny the stab of unease that had woken him this morning. His client, Zak Gramarye, had requested specifically that Phoenix stand counsel alone, before he even had the chance to introduce Maya to the man. It was unusual, but then again, so was his client. Perhaps he simply wasn’t up to a second round of cards.
“Hey, I know you’ll be bored hanging out here by yourself, but I can tell you all about the trial later. I’ll bring home burgers, alright?” He would have thought she’d perk right up at the mention of food, despite the fact that they’d just finished their breakfast, but she doesn’t seem to want to budge from her stance of crossed arms and downturned eyes.
“I just have a bad feeling.” She mutters, raising a hand to trace the magatama resting against her neck. “I don’t know why, it’s just there. In my gut. Like a bad omen or something.”
“Are you sure you’re not just nervous about your training?” Phoenix asks, his tone softening.
Maya was a step closer to becoming Master of Kurain village, getting closer each day, in fact, though the final stretch was proving to be the hardest. They’ve discussed her upcoming move overseas, and while there’s still some time before he’d be seeing her off to the kingdom of Khura’in, a feeling like a coiled snake lingered in his stomach, tightening at the thought. The advancement for Maya was amazing, one step closer to fulfilling the legacy her mother built for her and restoring the village to Ami Fey’s image. Yet, the selfish tug of his heart retains the wish that she should stay, the hope that some miracle may happen to keep them side by side.
Their lives are so closely wound around each other, that merely imagining the shift to his daily routine seems like some far off projected fantasy, not the reality that was soon to collide into his orbit. No more getting burgers with Maya, or Eldoon’s after a victorious case, grease smearing their fingers as they exchange conversation about the trial as if the other hadn’t been there, and the frustrations and triumphs were in need of immediate review. No more lazy Saturdays spent on the couch with Maya, his fingers carding through her hair, which she left free from its violet baubles on days they didn’t go out. No lingering scent of her shampoo on the cushions when she got up to fetch a snack from the kitchen, returning to sit an inch closer to him than she had before. No longer would she be around to clutch his arm when she was startled, or tired, or cold, and no longer would he hear her nickname for him chirped in her sing-song voice when she had something to share with him.
A life without Maya seems devoid of senses, of taste and touch and smell, as if his life’s experiences rely on the woman who had become somewhat of a permanent staple to his side. He was an adult when they met, some years of feeling and wanting under his belt, of knowing how to cope with those butterflies, yet that all seemed to reverse after they met, in that darkened room of shattered glass. That lurch in his heart at the sight of her had been the start of it.
When she smiles at him, all hope and dimples, he could swear it was the first smile he’s ever seen.
She isn’t smiling now. She’s just watching him, eyes spanning the chasm distance that exists in the space between opposite ends of his desk. Maya retreats to the couch, her legs shooting up in front of her and she pitches herself backward against the cushions. This ‘gut feeling’ gets to her sometimes, and it takes some meditation or some food to get her to come around to her usual self. Since they just ate, Phoenix guesses she’s in need of the former, and decides to leave her to it.
“Well, I might as well get to the courthouse early.” He says after checking his watch, more out of means to fidget than anything else. He doesn’t have enough time to be much more productive in the office, and who knows what curveball will be thrown his way before the start of the trial. It might be better to allow himself the time to absorb any impending shock.
“Nick, wait.” Maya bursts out, grabbing his wrist with both hands when he passes her place on the couch. He allows himself to be lowered to the spot on the couch beside her. He tilts his head, urging her to finish what she means to say, though her mouth simply hangs open, and he’s left with no other choice than to wait for more words to tumble out. Her hands tighten around his wrist, not releasing, flexing around her grip as though she doesn’t know how to remove them.
It takes only a moment more that Maya seems to make up her mind. Releasing his wrist, she claps her hands on either of his shoulders before pushing herself, pulling him, to close the distance gap between them. Her lips find his in a burst blossom of skin to skin, a clap of lightning, hot, then over. Their first kiss is a hard press, still chaste, and over all too soon.
“For luck.” Maya whispers, though she does not move her hands from where they’ve slid along his shoulders to grip his collar. Then, as if by some unseen magnetism, she draws him close once more and seals their lips with more force this time, urging him to open up to her. She shudders when she feels his breath curl beneath her lip, as his mind catches up to the moment and it registers. She’s kissing him. She kissed him once, and she’s kissing him now, but her eyes are open, and they’re asking, begging, him to say something.
Phoenix swallows, breaking their lip lock but allowing only a hair’s distance to separate them.
“Was that one for luck, too?” He whispers. She shudders at the warmth from his breath rolling against her skin.
“No.” She breathes, shaking her head minutely. “That was because I wanted to do that again.”
“Well, I want to do that again too.” He responds, in the same moment wrapping both arms around her waist and slanting his mouth over her. Again, again, and again, every shift of lips and tilt and angle is felt to the core of what they believe themselves to be made of, of skin and want and need and love. Maya raises her hands to tangle themselves in his hair, which he opens his mouth to object to, as he does have a trial in an hour, but when she uses the opportunity to slide her tongue alongside his own he no longer finds the room to complain. He leans forward into her until they’re lying flat on the couch, Maya’s leg thrown over the side, close to slipping off onto the floor if Phoenix didn’t have her pinned by the hips.
Her fingers wind themselves tighter in his hair, nearly painful, as desperate as she is to hold him to her. Likewise, Phoenix forgoes a light caress to her sides in exchange for a pining hold. How long has she been smothering a blush when they were close to each other, swallowing every pull of her heartstrings that have been telling her to draw nearer when they were riding the train, watching a movie, brushing their teeth over the same sink? And how long had he fought to flip his thoughts away from his young assistant whom he has no place in having feelings for that go beyond the bond of friendship headlong into a schoolboy’s crush? He’s been swarmed with guilt to find himself leaning into her innocent touches, having been mesmerized by each squirrelly movement that often had her ducking into his arm. Close, but not close enough. Never before like this, not even in a dream.
Phoenix blearily peels open his eyes and slides to gaze to his watch. Thirty minutes to opening statements. He pulls away from Maya, at least attempts to, which results in a series of quick peppered kisses to her lips, her cheeks, her eyelids, until he manages to untangle himself entirely.
Maya watches his run his fingers through his hair and straighten his shirtfront through a half lidded gaze. “That,” She admits, her cheeks warming. “Is something I’ve wanted to do for a while.”
“Why didn’t you?” He asks quietly, trailing his hand over the loosened ties of her obi.
“I didn’t want you to hate me if you didn’t feel the same way.” She says, drawing herself up to sit beside him, tucking herself to his side.
“Well I don’t, and I do.” He assures her. Even if it never quite struck him just how much he felt until this moment. “Do you still have a bad feeling about today? Because I’m starting to feel that this is the best day of my life.” He laughs, ducking towards her neck, one arm tightening around her waist.
“Mm. There is still a feeling in my gut but it is much, much different.” She sighs.
“Well, we can take care of that once I get back.” He returns with a grin she’s never seen before, hazy with want like an animal uncaged. He presses one last lingering kiss to her neck before standing from the couch and grabbing his briefcase from the desk.
Maya smiles up at him, though it doesn’t quite meet her eyes. “Call me as soon as the trial’s over. I want to heat all about your most ridiculous bluff and craziest save.”
“I would think those won’t be necessary when I don’t have a certain someone there to distract me. I’ll have to think of a few just to keep from being bored. See you later, Maya.”
“Goodbye, Nick.”
With one last affectionate look in her direction, he’s gone.
He should have told her her loved her. The thought occupies his mind on the walk to the courthouse, and even though he hasn’t said it out loud yet, he’s filled with an exuberant loss of breath by the realization, and he knows he’ll have to wipe the sappy grin off his face before entering the courtroom. But for now, he can’t help himself. The best day of his life, and it isn’t even noon.
Phoenix is not thinking about Maya when he leaves the courtroom.
The trial is over, but not over. It has merely ended, like a puff of smoke in the clear air. The defendant has disappeared, the defense attorney is no longer an attorney, and the court record is tainted with the blood of deceit.
Phoenix lowers himself to the bottom of the courthouse step, running his palms over the rough concrete before withdrawing his cell phone from his pocket. He’d silenced the ringer before the trial began, and finds now that he has several missed calls and messages. The names all seem to blur together, bar one. The ringer lilts for one vibrato beat before she answers.
“Hey, what gives? I told you to call me right after.” She all but yells into the receiver. She’s more than a bit irate, though her tone shifts to something more unsure at his silence. “You’re not . . . mad about earlier, are you? Was I- did I do something wrong?”
“What? Earlier?” He shakes his head, finding he’s already lapsed into a flashback of what occured mere hours before. He cannot seem to recall much from this morning, other than the fact that he’d walked into the courthouse with an attorney’s badge, and left, without.
“I- we kissed, Nick. What’s gotten into you? What happened?” The same measure of anxious dread seeps into her voice, spreading throughout her chest like diseased vines. The worry that this day has been cursed dredges itself from the recess of where she pushed it from her mind, fresh and sharp.
“It’s over, Maya.” Phoenix’s voice fades against the walls of his throat. He no longer sounds like himself.
“What, the trial? It’s getting late, of course it would be-”
“No.” His voice breaks from a hollow spot in his chest. “Everything. It’s all over.
“Maya, I . . . ” The three words that absorbed his thoughts that morning sift at the recessed bottom of his stomach. He should have told her he loved her, that morning. He could have made one less thing he stood to lose. The words are gone, now. She would be too, in a matter of weeks. Her voice begins to fade out on the other end of the phone.
She will appeal to him when he returns home, soft pleading that turns to shouting, arms around his shoulders that turn to fists against his chest, but he does not hear, feel, any of it. He falls into bed, and does not wake until the following day. Hours later, but still too early. The worst day of his life, and it isn’t even noon.