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Poker had long since been outlawed in The Wright Anything Agency. When your entire staff is made up of people who make their living reading the tics and expressions of others, it’s kind of a moot point.
Hearts, however, is still very much on the table.
In fact it is, literally, as Phoenix surveys the three cards that Miles has just passed to him. They’re not bad, all things considered. A nine of diamonds, an eight of spades and an eight of clubs. The ones he passes to Apollo, however, are dismal. An ace of diamonds, a king of hearts and a jack of clubs.
The glare he gets from his protégé is fierce, but Phoenix just shrugs with a lazy grin as Trucy tosses out a king of diamonds to start.
They’re several rounds in when Miles does it.
Apollo plays the jack of clubs that Phoenix gave him and Miles throws the queen of spades onto the pile in the middle with not even the slightest show of emotion. It’s a cold move, but one that Miles can pull off with such grace and dignity that Phoenix can’t help but feel his heart stutter at the private smirk his husband throws him as Apollo groans.
“How can you do that?” he gripes, swiping the stack and setting it off to the side.
Miles shrugs nonchalantly. “It is how one plays the game is it not?”
Apollo narrows his eyes and mumbles a bit but doesn’t take it further. If it were Phoenix that threw the card, there would have been a decent scuffle over it. But, even after several years, Apollo still has a bit of lingering nervousness around the chief prosecutor that Phoenix will always find endearing.
“I suppose,” Apollo adds, throwing his next card, a seven of diamonds.
Trucy, all smiles and poorly suppressed giggles, breaks hearts with the most insincere, “Sorry, Polly,” Phoenix has ever heard.
Apollo slumps dramatically in his chair. “I don’t believe this.”
It takes two more turns with several more hearts going to Apollo when Phoenix gets a niggling suspicion in the back of his mind. The gleam in Apollo’s eyes confirms it, he’s trying to shoot the moon.
Next to him, Miles makes a delicate sound at the back of his throat. To the unfamiliar, he’s clearing his throat. But after over two decades of acquaintance, with three of those years being spent happily married, Phoenix recognizes it as the call for attention it clearly is.
What happens next is something Phoenix will never get tired of. With just small gestures and pointed glances, the two of them manage to have an entire conversation.
It goes, more or less, something like this …
“He’s going to go for all of the points,” Miles raises an eyebrow.
“He definitely is,” Phoenix tilts his head down slightly.
“If someone plays hearts, I have a high card,” Miles glances down at his hand and taps a finger against the back of one card.
“You’ve already got a lot of points as it is,” Phoenix’s hand falls meaningfully on the score pad.
“That’s fine,” Miles shrugs.
“You’re so sacrificial and noble and I love you so much and I am absolutely going to kiss you senseless when this game is done,” Phoenix smiles a love-struck smile that hasn’t lost its intensity even after all this time.
“You’d better,” Miles gives a small grin of his own.
“What are you plotting?” Apollo asks, out loud, jerking them back to the game.
“What? Us? Nothing,” Phoenix says, leaning back casually in his chair.
“Oh yes you are,” Apollo accuses, narrowing his eyes. “You guys are doing that husband telepathy thing,” he says with a wiggle of his fingers.
“Preposterous,” Miles says, voice all haughty and not meaning it in the slightest. “Lay your card, Justice.”
Apollo continues to look at them shrewdly as he lays the king of hearts down. Trucy tosses in the three, Phoenix the four and Miles, with an air of dignity befitting royalty, lays the ace.
“NO!” Apollo shouts as Miles picks up the cards. “Ugh, how did you do that? I was going for the points!”
“They totally knew you were,” Trucy says laughing.
“We did,” Phoenix agrees before leaning over to plant an overly dramatic kiss on his husband’s cheek. Miles must be in a good mood because he doesn’t even push him jokingly away. “Sweetheart did you really not pass that shit card off to me from the beginning?”
Miles hums. “It’s always good to have an ace up your sleeve,” he says with a wicked grin.
It’s such a bad joke that Phoenix can’t help but stare dumbfounded before kissing him again, smacking him proudly on the lips this time.
“Oh my god,” Apollo rolls his eyes as Trucy continues to cackle.
“What can I say? Teamwork and bad puns do it for me,” Phoenix grins sappily at Miles who does shove him playfully away this time.
“Enough, here,” he tosses down his last card and the rest of them throw in the last of their hands.
Phoenix makes a great show of adding up the points for the round with Apollo getting all of them but those precious few which go to Miles.
“We’re still playing to a hundred right?” Apollo asks as he looks at the score pad.
“I’m game if you all are,” Phoenix shrugs and Miles nods.
“Good, because I’m shooting the moon before the night is over if it kills me,” Apollo says with grim determination.
Trucey snatches up the deck and starts to masterfully shuffle, dealing out the next game.