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Amazingly—and after all this time, Miles isn’t sure why he still finds Wright’s stubborn will to remain alive no matter the circumstances amazing—he’s alright. A graze or two on his face and a few more on his arms, an IV drip in the back of a hand for good measure, but he's alright. Boredly flicking through some TV magazine, pen in hand to circle anything that looks remotely interesting; today’s paper on his lap below, already well-leafed through. A can of carbonated grape juice on his bedside table and a get well card, featuring a little yellow duck character wincing in pain and holding a bandaged head, from Trucy no doubt. Miles, yet to provide anything, not even his presence, prolongs doing so just a moment longer, to wonder just how badly, if Wright looks like this, the car on the other side of the altercation came off. It was an SUV, for christ’s sake.
Biting down on bare air, he knocks once and opens the door.
“Wright?”
Wright looks up, surprise already breaking his face wide open.
“Edgeworth! What the hell are you doing here? Oh, god—Trucy didn’t ring you, did she? She literally just left like ten minutes ago and I told her not to ring you because I’m totally fine and I didn’t want her to bug you, but it looks like she did anyways—”
“I’m your emergency contact.” Miles interrupts. Wright’s mouth stutters. Miles smiles awkwardly at him. “Remember?”
Wright’s face clenches shut in a grimace. “Oh, jeez. No. No, I clearly didn’t remember.” He groans, hiding his face in his hands. Miles watches with not a little discomfort, growing like a balloon inside his chest and feeling like a lead one, as the tips of Wright’s ears go bright pink. This is the second time Miles has been called by a nurse from the hospital receiving Wright to inform him of the accident the man has gotten himself into, asking him if he’d please be able to make an appearance at the ward and what, if any, Mr. Wright’s allergies are.
(Yes, he’ll be there as soon as traffic permits. And penicillin, he’s allergic to penicillin—)
This is also the second time Wright has forgotten he’d designated such a role to Miles. It’s only this latter point that holds any form of embarrassment for him; he’s relieved, glad to be Wright’s emergency contact, would be under normal circumstances but is especially so given the knowledge that thanks to his designation, he’ll never have to face an awful repeat of Dusky Bridge and only having Larry—Larry, a man with a complete lack of grip on both sanity and reality—to inform him of what state Wright is in, or more accurately, is not in. Miles really hopes this sole cause for embarrassment is the case for Wright, too, and that he doesn’t have an issue with Miles being the designee itself. But Miles has never been a naïve optimist. It looks unlikely. Wright’s ears have gone from pink to red, and then the following leaves his mouth as he looks up, overly apologetic:
“Christ, I’m so sorry, Edgeworth, I told myself to change it as soon as Trucy got her license but it must’ve just slipped my mind—I haven’t pulled you from something important, have I? It’s like,” he goes to check his wrist for a watch where there currently is none and valiantly takes it in stride, “it’s like the middle of the workday—”
Miles is glad to finally be able to wave him off. “You’re fine. Just—paperwork. Nothing that can’t wait.”
Wright stares at him for a second, before inexplicably breaking out into a grin. “Oh, it’s a cold day in hell.”
“...Pardon?”
“Miles Edgeworth, saying work can wait. Maybe you need to be hooked up to this thing instead of me,” he says, shaking his bandaged hand, sending the IV line flailing with it. “Well, I appreciate you showing. Seriously. But I’ll let you go now, since I’m not on my deathbed, or anything remotely close to that.” He shoots Miles a smile. “And sorry, again, for this—and thank you, again, too.”
As Wright picks his magazine back up, Miles stays his feet. The stiff card and the probably melting chocolate bar feel all too inconspicuous where they’re sitting heavy in his coat pocket, but he knows it’s not just that that’s keeping him planted.
“How did it happen exactly?” he asks. And it’s not just that, either. He’s being a coward through bravery, like a drop of poison slicing through an otherwise fine glass of wine.
Wright’s head jerks back up again. He tries to hide his perplexity from showing in his expression, but the amount of times he blinks before talking gives it away. “You mean the accident?”
“Yes.”
He smiles a little. “Well—what do you know already?”
Miles narrows his eyes. “I’d rather you didn’t turn this into one of your silly little games, Wright.”
Wright laughs. “Aw, c’mon. I’ve got to have my fun somehow, I’m stuck in this place for at least another few hours only because they insisted on a CT scan since I wasn’t wearing a helmet, and the technician isn’t on shift yet, can you fucking believe. What happened to the patient having a say in these things? Like, they literally insisted—I’m betting they just want to bump up my damn medical bill—”
Wright pads out his sentences with so much information that sometimes it takes Miles a second to pinpoint the bit that matters most, which is, coincidentally, usually the bit Wright doesn’t want him to pinpoint.
“You weren’t wearing a helmet?!” he cuts in.
Wright’s mouth clacks shut with a grating theatricality. “Oops,” he says. “Ruined my own game.”
Miles scowls. “Enough with the levity. You are not a stupid man, so I don’t understand why you wouldn’t—”
“I know, I know, it was dumb, and I don’t know why I did it. I usually wear one, promise.” He’d started his sentence with a bleeding exasperation, but the look Wright is sending Miles now is both cowed and sincere. So Miles forces his hackles to lower.
“Right. Well. I should hope so, too.”
Wright hums. “D’you want to pull up a seat?”
“Oh—” Miles has been standing this whole time, making barely a step or two into the room. Ridiculous. “Yes, thank you,” he mutters, and moves towards the empty chair at Wright’s bedside; one of those uncomfortable plastic ones in that shade of orangey-red that is as seemingly omnipresent in healthcare facilities as it is ugly.
As he’s a few strides away from his target, Wright’s voice pipes up, harsher and a tad more stilting than before. “That’s if—if you feel like staying. You really don’t have to, Edgeworth. Really.”
Miles takes a tiny, imperceptible, bracing breath. He doesn’t have to stay, no. Wright is absolutely fine, and if what he’s said is the case, will even be discharged in a few hours, or at least as soon as he’s had his scan. So Miles has two options: tell a white lie and say he’d like to stay long enough to complete his full duty as emergency contact by speaking to a doctor or nurse to get the full medical picture, or tell the truth. And the truth involves less words, less explanation, but is entirely all the more revealing for that. No overcomplicating, camouflage layers to cover things up, to hide parts with. Truth is a naked body.
To make matters worse, Miles has also left it too late to pass off as an easy, breezy response, the only palliative available when it comes to telling a searing truth. If anything Miles does can ever be described as easy nor breezy.
“Uh, Edgeworth—?”
He bites the bullet and feels it bite back. “I’d like to stay with you.”
Wright first looks surprised, and Miles is sent cold, but then Wright smiles, and it’s overwarm. Miles is glad the act of sitting down and smoothing out his clothes, which he does promptly, provides him with both the reason to look away and with meditative respite, brief as it is. When he does raise his eyes once more, it’s to the small collection—duo, more reasonably—of well-wishing paraphernalia on Wright’s bedside table.
“Trucy?” he asks, nodding to the card with the little yellow duck character and, if he’s correct, the can of grape soda too.
Wright’s smile, still inexplicably present in a way that is dangerous to Miles’s sensibilities, shifts sideways and bursts into a different kind of warmth. “Yeah. Look what she wrote in it, the little punk.”
Miles picks up the card, opens it, and reads.
Daddy!!!
Not again! :( Maybe this time I’ll leave you at the hospital. They say third time lucky, but you’ve been lucky so far so I dunno, maybe it’s third time UNlucky for you... Can’t risk letting you back out there!!
Lots of love,
Trucy, your darling dearest daughter, who doesn’t wanna be orphaned <3
Miles smiles at the looping, confident cursive. Of all things, and of few things, so unlike her father’s. “She has a point,” he says.
Wright groans. “Don’t you start, too. Both my next-of-kin and my emergency contact... Should be ashamed of yourselves, the pair of you.”
And it emboldens Miles, to be thrown so casually up to the lofty leagues where Trucy—Wright’s own daughter and, as revealed by a late-night, too-close conversation they shared many years back, his main reason for getting out of bed in the morning—sits, and to be thrown there by Wright himself. An honour he doesn’t deserve, so will do his utmost everything to make up for it. “Perhaps you’ll feel different about that in just a second,” he says, and braves reaching into his pockets to extract the two pieces of proverbial lead from inside.
When he offers both the enveloped card and the chocolate bar out, Wright’s eyebrows are raised and he’s smiling, bemused.
“Okay. Now this, you really didn’t have to.”
Miles feels his face heat. “It’s only a card and a bar of chocolate, Wright. Honestly.”
“Honestly, Edgeworth,” Wright clucks, shaking his head, “trust you to try take the magic out of it for me.”
He takes the proffered gifts. Any bravery or boldness Miles had is knocked clean out of him as Wright makes a beeline for the card, tucking a thumb under the envelope’s seal, because what’s inside is a message nowhere near as good as Trucy’s, no; but Miles still took a ill-advised stab at writing one of his own on his way into the hospital that included sentimentality, and worse, humour. At this point and in this state, with the bland, pastel, and vaguely floral front of the card flashing at him like a warning light with its colour bled out as Wright opens up the card, Miles can’t remember what he ended up penning inside. Perhaps he simply left it as default as he could; just dear and from. It would be the preferable option right now. Either way, he doesn’t need nor want to know. He’s more than happy to leave that knowledge solely in the blackbox that is Wright’s mind.
And then, of course, Wright decides to read it aloud, smiling all the while.
“ ‘Wright, I cannot believe you’—believe underlined about three times—‘Yours, M.E.’ ” Wright laughs. “That’s so you that it hurts. Holy shit. And chocolate too...” He looks up, directing the full force of his unmistakable, glittering delight right at Miles. “Thank you. You’re great, you know that?”
Miles makes a strange, all-too conspicuous noise in the back of his throat. The cough he attempts to cover it up with probably fails. “Yes,” he mutters. “Well.”
Luckily, Wright moves onto the chocolate without saying anything else. Once he’s split the wrapper open along its back seam, purple revealing gold revealing rich, creamy brown, he offers out the opened bar.
“Want some?”
“No, thank you,” Miles says, barely restraining a wrinkled nose. “It’s half-melted.”
“Yeah? All the more reason to.” Wright breaks off a piece, tips of his fingers instantly smeared. “Chocolate should be eaten either teeth-shatteringly cold or half-melted, like so. No in-betweens, not if I can help it.”
“Disgusting, and slightly incomprehensible of you,” Miles mutters, and Wright happily ignores him, popping the piece into his mouth.
Miles lets him eat in peace for a moment, settling back into his chair, and crossing a leg over the other. It’s unlike him to survey his surroundings at such an egregious delay, but he only just decides to take in the room beyond the little island of Wright’s bed he’s moored himself to—like the only other bed in the room, thankfully empty, one rolling screen down from Wright’s, its blue and white sheets tucked in with a severity that could win awards; the window beyond that letting in a gush of sunlight that does wonders to alleviate the pervasive clinical starkness of the room. Because there’s little else present—just another bedside table exactly like Wright’s except devoid of gifts, and another ugly, omnipresent, orangey-red chair. Some overly-cheery posters advising patients on their bodily functions and what it could all mean—dehydration or constipation usually, from what Miles can see at a glance. His attention soon returns to their little island.
The silence that is spinning itself between him and Wright is comfortable. He fishes for the newspaper tucked between the TV magazine and Wright’s lap, Wright wordlessly lifting his elbows up, marionette-ish, to allow Miles to do so, and scans its front page. The latest in LA’s current worst political catfight for the lead story, with a sidebar on an arrest made for a recent, more-grisly-than-usual-murder. Miles knows of both already. He’d read the former on his news app over his tea that morning, and had an urgent email from Gumshoe about the latter the night before.
Miles rests the paper back on Wright’s lap and recrosses his legs. Wright is about one and a half rows of chocolate down.
“So... an SUV.”
Wright wiggles his brows at Miles and then throws another half-molten globule into his grinning mouth. Miles glares at him, and he laughs, nearly choking on his mouthful; or so Miles hopes.
“An SUV, Wright. You legitimately could’ve gotten yourself killed.”
“Yup, an SUV...” He swallows, and then looks contemplative. “Now there is an argument—‘sports utility vehicle’, right? And god I hate that I know that, non-driver that I am, but—how on earth can something of that size be considered a sports utility vehicle, especially in LA of all places? What is either sporty, or utilitarian, about that? If anything, my bike should be called an SUV.” He whips out a hand, and starts counting on his seemingly licked-clean fingers. “Is sporty because, duh, obviously. Is utilitarian because it’s small, easy to use, takes up next to no road or parking space—I mean, when you compare it to those hulking things? I’m totally right.”
Miles is furious at the inane segue. “And yet, somehow, you still manage to be run over,” he hisses.
“No, listen,” Wright says, muffling a laugh, “the driver—some older, WASP-y lady who did not instill a whole lot of hope in me when I saw her and her bouffant climb out the driver’s seat, and was probably what made me pass out, now that I think about it—she was genuinely apologetic about the whole thing. She drove me here, even! Much better than the last time, which was a literal hit and run, if you’ll so kindly remember.”
Miles throws his hands up. “Oh, I feel so much better now. She said she was sorry, and she drove you here.”
Wright flops his head back against the pillow, chocolate abandoned atop the reading material in his lap. He was already smiling at Miles, far too fondly, and now he’s gazing up at him, far too fondly, too. His big brown eyes, semicircled by gleaming whites, circled by thick dark lashes. He’s always had gorgeous eyes.
He says, “Edgeworth, you’re being dramatic.”
“Hardly.”
“And I was not run over.”
“Semantics,” Miles mutters, crossing his arms.
“Mmm. Just how worried about me were you?”
To go with everything else about him that is quickly overwhelming Miles, Wright drops his voice low and light, like a feather. Giving Miles, without realising it, the choice between telling a white-lie and the truth once again. Miles knows which one he wants to do. He reasons with it—and if hospitals are places where you are opened up, flushed out of things festering, no secrets to be had if someone wielding a scalpel and a probing eye is to have anything to do with it, then perhaps to do the same with his long-standing feelings in this place is not so strange; at least not so strange as his overworked conscience is trying to sway him so.
The same overworked conscience that has been telling Miles, all this time, to wait. Wait for an indefinite, undefined point of time to sit Wright down, and tell him. Tell him some awful, rote confession, a confession that will only serve to make the both of them uncomfortable in the forced formality of it all. It made no sense then, and it’s making less and less sense as the milliseconds tick slowly by.
Miles inhales, exhales. He says, “More than you’d ever know.” And then, so the admission can’t be misconstrued nor taken too lightly, he looks Wright in the eyes, and holds it there.
Wright’s gaze dances about his face for what feels like an age. Miles holds their gaze even still, because there’s something there—in the light coming, as nonsensical as it sounds, from deep behind Wright’s irises and shining out, in the slight crinkling of his crow’s feet. In both of those things and none of those things. In something Miles has yet to pick up on. He’ll never stop trying.
“Yeah?” Wright says eventually.
Miles nods, still holding.
“Maybe you should tell me.” Wright’s smile is soft. “I’m not on any drugs, by the way. Not even a drop of codeine. And I’m not even mad about it.”
Miles is briefly bamboozled. “And of what relevance is that?”
“Well, now you know everything that comes out my mouth has some coherent thought put into it. So.”
“...Some?”
If Miles is stalling, Wright doesn’t seem to mind.
“All,” he clarifies.
“I see. That’s rather a lot of thought for you, isn’t it.”
Wright only smiles harder under the insult, seeing it for what it is; yet another stall. “Mm. I think you should tell me. Tell me just how much I don’t know.”
Miles swallows, mutters an internal fuck it, never quite needing the crass motivator as much as he does now, and reaches out for Wright’s hand. It’s warm; so warm, and tanned against Miles’s pale, and a little bit clammy and more than a little bit grazed, especially the palms from where they must have rudely met asphalt, and after a sharp intake of breath from Wright, it wraps tight around Miles’s. Fingers threading where they can, making it as many degrees removed from their usual touches—handshakes, knuckle raps; friendly and always, always detached—as possible.
Miles swallows again. “I’m—I’m not sure I’d know where to start.”
“Try for me,” Wright whispers. “Please.”
“Wright. Phoenix—”
Wright’s eyes go wide. “God, or don’t. Maybe I did bang my head way harder than I thought. Maybe I do need that CT scan, and they’re not just rinsing my wallet clean. You’re actually here, right? You’re actually holding my hand? My gross, busted up hand?”
Miles nods. Answering questions; this he can do. Simple admissions of objective fact in response to a cross-examination. He doesn’t like the fact that he has to resort to the comfort of legalese, but he has a feeling Phoenix wouldn’t mind, would perhaps even anticipate it. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, I am.”
“And—” Phoenix’s gaze drops down to their joined hands, and then back up to Miles’s overheating face. Small miracle Phoenix’s is vividly flushed too, Miles thinks. “You’re actually about to say you have feelings for me? Or something to that extent?”
“Yes. Something to that extent.” A harder admission, but the same set-up regardless: “Perhaps—perhaps quite a bit more.”
Phoenix stares, eyes still wide. “Wow. Wow,” he says, or more like breathes, or more like says without any voice at all. “Wow.”
“I wish you hadn’t said it for me,” Miles complains.
“You were taking too long.”
“I was getting there.”
Phoenix grins. “Were you?” He’s shuffled himself right to the edge of his bed, shoulder pressed into the pillow.
Miles considers him for a moment.
“Sit up,” he says.
Phoenix complies. He moves like he’s gliding; his eyes on Miles the whole time. The bed runners are down, so he drops his legs over the side, where they hang between Miles’s. When he’s sat, Miles throws the chocolate, newspaper, magazine from his lap onto the bed, and then unthreads their fingers, sliding his hand up to Phoenix’s wrist. He finds a pulse there, rabbiting away like this is everything and more and just as much to him as it is to Miles. Miles tugs towards him, just gently, and watches with delight as Phoenix instantly responds, his body tipping and his lips parting and his eyelids lowering. Miles pauses and Wright is suspended there for a second, halfway between finishing the movement and growing confused as to why Miles isn’t leaning in fully to match; maybe even skipping confusion and going right to uncertainty, which would be a cruel thing to do to him.
Miles leans up, and when Phoenix dips down, they kiss.
What had Miles been expecting? He’s not sure. He’d never dared to expect anything, never even got far enough to deny himself any such daring, instead cutting the thought off at the base of its stem and leaving its roots—unsuccessfully—to die. But what he gets is Phoenix’s warm mouth, yielding and pliant. The complete opposite of what Miles is used to from him; otherwise whip-smart and stubborn against any weight Miles would throw against him. The contrast is intriguing, exciting. Miles pushes it as much as he dares to (and he does dare, this time) in a hospital room with a wall of windows looking out onto a busy hall filled with foot-fall, and he’s vindicated when Phoenix makes a small, urgent noise of content, and then vindicated some more when Phoenix cups the hand not still clinging to Miles’s wrist round his cheek and he feels fingers digging in behind his ear.
There’s a tickle of carbonisation and cream, sweet and sugary, on Wright’s lips and tongue. Grape soda and chocolate. A strange combination for a strange occurrence Miles will never have again—a first kiss with Phoenix Wright in a hospital room, while the man is recovering, with his usual absurd ease, from an altercation with an SUV. Miles is still savouring all this strangeness when they pull away.
Phoenix has managed to sink his weight down until he can sink no further without falling off his bed, butt perched right on the edge and legs outstretched in front of him going underneath Miles’s chair. He’s looking at Miles in a way Miles can’t describe. Miles is not the right man to.
“If this CT scans shows up I have a really bad brain bleed and I end up dying,” Phoenix says, stroking a thumb across Miles’s cheekbone, “I’m gonna be so pissed.”
“I doubt it. You’ll be dead.”
“Mm. Try me. You’re gorgeous, by the way. I’ve never told you that before, have I? I’ve called you smart, a good man, funny—but never gorgeous.”
Miles is far too light-headed to be embarrassed about any of this. “You’re very handsome yourself, you know.”
Phoenix’s brows shoot up. “Very handsome? Jeez. I’m so glad you have bad taste in men. Can I kiss you again?”
Miles rolls his eyes, mutters, “Don’t even bother asking next time,” and leans back in.
It’s lighter this time. Sweeter, if he wanted to use the word. More exploratory, and open-ended—Phoenix kisses the corner of Miles’s mouth, and then begins to move along his jawline, and Miles fails to suppress a shudder, and then there’s a knock at the door and Miles is jumping them apart though not enough to let go of Phoenix’s hand (mostly because Phoenix clamps his round it and Miles could not be one to fight such a thing right now) as a nurse in baby blue scrubs and a blonde ponytail pops her head round the door, clipboard pinned to her side by an arm.
“Mr. Wright? We’re ready to take you for your CT scan.”
“Oh,” Phoenix says. Miles doesn’t think he’s being naïvely optimistic in wondering if that’s a streak of disappointment in Phoenix’s voice. Miles himself is tempering his own frustration at the interruption, as it mires and becomes turbid with the still-vivid mortification. “I thought we were waiting for the technician to start their shift?”
“We were, Mr. Wright,” the nurse says gently. “She’s arrived now. It’s 5 o’clock?”
“Jeez, is it really? Huh. Well, time flies, as they say,” he says, throwing Miles a too-telling glance, and making Miles flush even harder. “Do I need to bring anything?”
“Just yourself, with any metals taken out. Your partner will have to wait here for you, unfortunately. Sir,” she addresses Miles, “Mr. Wright won’t be long. Half an hour, tops.”
Annoyingly, Miles is incapable of speech. Fixated on partner. Partner.
“He’ll cope. He’s got today’s paper to keep him out of trouble.”
Phoenix’s voice and then his hand squeezing round Miles’s bicep knocks Miles loose. He jerks his head over to the nurse. “Yes—sorry. That’ll be fine. Thank you.”
She smiles at him. “Sure thing. You okay to come now, Mr. Wright? The sooner we get you in, the sooner you can be discharged.”
“Yeah, uh—” He looks over to Miles, and then back. “Can you give me two seconds? I just need to use the toilet. Nervous leak. Me and scans don’t get along.”
“No problem. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
When she’s gone, ponytail swinging behind her, Phoenix turns to him.
“You don’t have to stay, by the way. I just said that because you were frozen up. You’ve probably got shit to get back to, right?”
“No, it’s fine. I’ll stay,” Miles says. He feels a tickle of déjà vu; he brushes it off with ease. Things are quicker and easier in their repetition. “I can drive you back home afterwards, save Trucy a journey up at such an awful time for traffic.”
Phoenix smiles. “You’ll stay?”
Miles smiles back. And now he’s getting fanciful notions—ranging from the immediate, of dinner tonight, in or out, and then perhaps a walk and even maybe staying until late at Phoenix’s; to the longer-term, more permanent. Like Phoenix hopefully never removing him as his emergency contact, but this time not through lack of remembering to.
“I’ll stay,” Miles says.