Work Text:
Miles would have checked his email had his phone had a charge, but court had run long and Phoenix still used a Nokia, so it didn’t and he didn’t. Instead, as the smell of soon-to-be-overcooked tomato sauce filled the apartment and Phoenix shouted from the kitchen “Just ten more minutes, I swear!”, Miles leaned forward over the coffee table and swept a curious hand over the thick strata of paper covering its surface. Among the case files, the report cards, the unfinished crossword puzzles and the crumpled-up arts and entertainment sections, Miles discovered something a bit more substantial.
Freeing it from the confines of Trucy’s biology notes, Miles found himself holding a sketchbook. It was tattered, absolutely covered in coffee stains, and, evidently, Phoenix’s. Miles passed a thumb over the name Sharpied onto the spine and sat back against the couch, thumbing through the pages with interest as Phoenix, by the sounds of it, finally discovered the marinara was burning.
Miles had been to more than a few museums in his life. He couldn’t draw himself, but by now he knew skill when he saw it, and what Phoenix lacked in skill (and he didn’t lack much, honestly) he made up for in care. Many of the pictures were slapdash—quick, gestural sketches of people on the bus or waiting for coffees or bent over tables in what Miles could only assume was the Borscht Bowl. Kristoph appeared a few times, mostly in profile, sometimes brushing at his hair, never in much detail and almost always at the edge of the paper, like Phoenix had been looking for just about anything to draw and Kristoph had happened to be there. Miles would have scowled if he thought the man worth the effort. The larger pictures, the ones that took up two pages apiece and crowded Kristoph and the Borscht Bowl into the margins, those were far more interesting to look at, anyways.
Phoenix’s pencils were rough and his aversion to drawing feet was obvious, but his pictures of Trucy performing and Pearls pouring tea and Maya laughing at some years-old joke, one hand slammed flat on the sketch of a table, were astounding. Miles flipped through the sketchbook in growing disbelief, careful not to smudge the graphite as Apollo began to enter the pages, sometimes reading through files, sometimes conspiring with Trucy, most often seen from behind, gripping that odd bracelet of his, as Phoenix no doubt saw him from the gallery behind the defense. His boyfriend was an artist, and Miles had never known.
Then he turned the page, and found himself. A lot of himself.
When Phoenix laid a hand on his shoulder, saying, “Oh, hey, I was wondering where that went,” Miles nearly jumped out of his skin.
Phoenix laughed as Miles glared, one hand clutched in his shirt as his heart threatened to leap out his throat, and passed down a plate of spaghetti and store-bought sauce, keeping the other for himself as he joined him on the couch. “Trucy pulled that one off the shelf a couple weeks ago,” he explained around a mouthful of pasta, kicking his feet up on the paper piles. “She likes the picture of her and Pearls, but then she put it down somewhere and the apartment just ate it. You know how it is.”
Miles felt within him the soul-deep urge to tell Phoenix that No, he did not know how that was, because he was an adult human being who knew how to use a recycling bin, but the sketchbook was still open to two full pages of Miles reading and sleeping and smirking in a way Miles was sure he’d never smirked in all his life, and it was making it a bit harder to speak.
"You drew me?" he managed, finally, after Phoenix had already plowed through half his spaghetti and popped open the wine.
"Well, yeah," Phoenix said, shrugging. His shoulder glanced Miles’ as he did. "That’s all from when you flew me out to Paris. Pretty sure I drew some pretty French girls on the next page. Honestly, I had a pencil in my hand the whole time we were there, did you not notice that?"
Miles shook his hand, rubbing an absent hand over his mouth. His spaghetti sat, momentarily forgotten, on a carefully-cleared patch of table as he leaned into Phoenix’s side, sketchbook still open in his lap. “Not in the least,” he admitted, subdued. The picture of the man flipping through a guidebook could only be him, same as the man bowing behind the prosecutor's bench, and the man standing hands-in-pockets in the snow. He traced a finger down the line of his own coat. “I didn’t even realize you drew.”
"Wow, you are the worst boyfriend of all time,” Phoenix laughed, filching the sketchbook as Miles finally reached for his plate. “No, no, you don’t get to scowl, I’ve been drawing you for years now and you really never noticed. That’s awful. You owe me like six blowjobs.”
"I’m not repaying your artistic talents with sexual favors."
"But you’re tempted, though. Don’t lie."
Miles made a pointed gesture with a forkful of spaghetti. “Your chances of any sex are quickly approaching zero. Drop it.”
"That’s incredible. You go ten years without discovering my one hobby unrelated to law or my daughter and I’m bad the guy here. Pass me that pen."
Phoenix held out a palm, gaze flicking to a pen half-buried on the table as he raised a prompting eyebrow. Miles handed it over, distrustful but obliging, and Phoenix twisted in his seat, leaning back against the arm of the couch to put his feet in Miles’ lap.
"I was eating, you realize."
"You’ll be fine, I’m not that good a cook."
Phoenix’s toes dug into Miles’ chest as he leaned over, dropping his plate to the table with a side-eye glare Phoenix completely ignored. The cap of the pen was already between Phoenix’s teeth and he flipped to what had to be the last page in the sketchbook as Miles asked, “Running out of space?”
"Ran out of space a year ago," Phoenix said, pen sketching large, loose motions across the paper. "This is an old sketchbook, the new one’s somewhere at the office. Turn on the TV or something, you move too much when you talk."
"You’re drawing me now?" Miles asked, letting one arm settle over Phoenix’s shins.
"Well, if I can’t extract sexual favors I’m going to at least make you sit for a picture."
"With your heels digging into my lap I’d hardly call this a comfortable position to hold."
"I’ll be done in fifteen minutes, you whiner." Phoenix waved the pen in something like a very accusing circle. "Now shut up and pick a direction to face."
Miles obliged, propping one arm over the back of the couch to lean his cheek against his fist, twisted in his seat to watch Phoenix watch him. Phoenix raised an eyebrow at that, obviously expecting slightly more compliance with the spirit of the law there, but returned to his paper without a remark, which was honestly unexpected. Phoenix’s eyes began to flicker between Miles and the paper, wrist moving in short strokes, and Miles wondered how he could have missed this going on for the past however many years. Phoenix’s stare was absolutely nothing like subtle.
Phoenix worked, and Miles watched, and Phoenix watched, too, and in just about fifteen minutes he tucked the pen behind his ear and held out the book. “For the Academy’s consideration,” he said, and Miles slipped the book from his grip with care.
It was him, unmistakably him, down the to the nick in his eyebrow and the line of his chin, but it was also, without a doubt…
"Phoenix, I am not this handsome."
Phoenix had apparently not included this response in his list of Anticipated Edgeworth Replies, and blinked accordingly.
"Wait, what? Of course you’re handsome, waitresses hit on you all the time."
"Oh, don’t get me wrong, I know I am good looking as these things are judged," Miles said, smiling now, almost laughing, incredulity staining his voice. "But honestly. Never in all my life have I looked this good.”
He brandished the sketchbook as if to make his point. Phoenix leaned closer, knees drawing up to his chest, glancing between his own picture and the man himself, now glowing with amusement, searching for a difference.
"So I think you’re handsome!" he said, beginning to flush as an obvious discrepancy failed to materialize and Miles began to lose control of the grin spreading across his face. "I’ve been lusting after you since college, is this really such a surprise?"
"Maybe not," Miles said, and hooked two fingers in the collar of Phoenix’s shirt, pulling him in for a kiss over top their tangled legs. It was slow, and unhurried, and Phoenix pressed his palms to Miles’ jaw as he grinned against his mouth. Miles, and Phoenix felt it against his own lips, grinned back.
"It’s always flattering to be reminded, I suppose," Miles said when they broke apart, Phoenix’s fingers still lingering behind his ear.
"You know," Phoenix said, putting an overly-considering hand to his chin, "If you took your shirt off I could draw you with a six-pack."
"Just my shirt?"
"Eh, we’ll see where the night takes us."