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Warm lips press gently against his neck, dotting his skin with burgundy kisses. Fingers rise up and over his side to interlace with his fingers. Phoenix laughs, slates of yellow and orange drawing across his features as he shifts back into Miles’ arms.
“Good morning,” he murmurs. Miles hums in response. The sound reverberates through his skin, filling him with a pleasant glow. Chest to back, lips to neck, hand in hand. Solidifying against the honeyed hues of sleep and bringing him into their warm bed, their soft sheets and the lazily lit atmosphere of their room.
“Mm.” Phoenix stretches, blinking his eyes open. “Do we have to get up?”
“No, no,” Miles reassures, fitting himself into the nooks and crannies of his form. Phoenix, greedy as ever, sinks deeper into the furnace heat draped lovingly across his back. Cloth shifts. Slides down their shoulders in a soft lethargy. “ You can go back to sleep.”
Phoenix considers that. “You don’t sound very sleepy,” he accuses, twisting around in Miles’ arms until they’re facing each other.
“It’s nearly half ten,” Miles tells him. “I was trapped underneath you all night. I tried to wake you several times, but you kept on snoring away. It’s impressive, really.”
That’s not good. Miles sleeps bad enough as it is—
Miles waves a hand. “Don’t even think about apologizing for something so tedious.”
“I didn’t wake you, did I?”
“It wasn’t you.” There’s a pause. Then a huffy breath Phoenix has begun to identify as Miles’ chuckles. “If anything, it is good that you are sleeping more yourself. Say what you will about my own habits, you’ve hardly any stones to throw in this glass house.”
You helped me, Phoenix wants to say. It comes out instead as, “You wouldn’t last five minutes in a greenhouse. You’d be one steamed prosecutor with all your layers.”
"Reliable sources can confirm that I am quite the hot commodity.”
Laughter bubbles inside him, light and joyful.
It’s a little late for sentimentality and he’s still getting used to verbalizing his thoughts. Letting them metastasize outside of the confines of his own mind, giving them a clear voice—his voice. Instead, he tucks himself underneath Miles’ chin and closes his eyes. The temperature between their bodies starts to equalize again. Fingers slide into his hair, carding through the slack strands in a familiar rhythm.
Miles, over time, had grown used to waking up to breakfast sizzling in the air and a pair of voices muffled through the wall. Used to sharing a table with him and his daughter, plates crammed together on a small surface that will never be replaced because of Will Powers’ signature scrawled into the dark wood. There are three toothbrushes occupying the same cup. Three sets of scuff marks in the entrance and three pairs of slippers neatly lined up in a row.
It’s something he’s still trying to believe in himself.
(Seven years is a long time. Six months is not quite as lengthy, but it’s still enough time to build a foundation and lay out the first bricks.)
Miles is smiling. Phoenix can feel his hair shifting to accommodate the flourishing little curve.
“You’re thinking of me,” Miles says. “You only have that blissed out expression when you’re thinking of something particularly nice.”
Phoenix laughs. “Did your logic tell you that?”
“The only other thing that can bring that smile to your face would be the news of the Paynes’ long overdue retirement. And, knowing you, you would probably be the one who causes it.”
“I’m not a lawyer anymore,” Phoenix mumbles into the bare pocket of skin above Miles’ clavicle. “Apollo’s got that burden, now. If anyone can come close to replicating Mia’s unique method of hair removal, it’d be him.”
“There’s plenty you can do without a badge. Payne has already experienced that himself, did he not?”
Phoenix winces. “That’s not a very shining example of my conduct, is it?”
“No, no it isn’t.”
There’s a pause after that. Charged with too much, but lighter than it has been in years.
“Go back to sleep, Phoenix,” Miles says gently. “There will be time enough for that later.”
The ebb and tide of the pulse underneath his cheek match pace with the fingers in his hair. It’s all too easy to bleed back into that distant dreamland.
It’s hard not to savour this. To push himself to commit every detail to memory until Miles’ handprints have been burned into his mind as they have been pressed into his skin. He lurches after every touch, leaning into every pinpoint of connection and warmth until he’s laid them all out in a tiny mound of scrapbook moments. Touch, love, casual affection—all bundled away and stashed safely underneath the floorboards.
In case of fire. Just in case. Endless variations of the same grey hoodie lined with shallow blue.
I’m not going anywhere, Miles had said forever ago. The curtains had been drawn and they were still shaking off the dust and cobblestone of European streets and asphalt. Not for the first time, Phoenix saw the clouds part and the moon shine.
(He’s destined to be drawn to the colourful flowers and bright sparks of people outlined in sunburst gold. He doesn’t want to imagine a life without them. Without Trucy, without Miles. Not anymore.)
Purple clouds populate his vision, drifting hazily with the amber hum of an I love you. "I know," Phoenix whispers. Closes his eyes and counts his blessings. “I love you too.”