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When he wakes up in the morning, the sun bright in his eyes, Apollo already knows it's going to be a bad day. He's been coming down with something for a few days now, trying to ward it off with a lot of orange juice and sleep, but none of that seems to have worked because he is now capital-S sick. His head is pounding, his throat feels like he's been gargling ground glass, and while it's hard to tell without a thermometer he's probably running a fever.
“Ugh,” he says. He immediately wishes he hadn't, because trying to produce sound has triggered a coughing fit. Time to go drink a bunch of water. And probably some DayQuil. He gets out of bed and staggers to the kitchen. Breakfast is out of the question right now, so he just drinks that water and takes a swig of medicine and goes about his morning routine.
Showering and brushing his teeth takes some of the edge off his haggard appearance, but Apollo still mostly looks like death warmed over. The severity of his hair and his bright suit do not help matters. But hey, he's got a job to get to. Clients to defend, houseplants to water. He goes downstairs, clutching the railing the entire way, and unlocks his bicycle.
Apollo nearly steers into several cars on the way to the office, which gets him yelled at by their drivers. Not being able to turn on the Chords of Steel for once, he settles for some obscene hand gestures that they're probably not looking at in the rearview mirror. Whatever.
He practically falls off the bike once in front of the Agency's building, but still makes sure to lock it to the stand. Step one accomplished, he thinks, noting that he's dragged himself out of the house and to work in one piece.
“Morning, Polly!” Trucy says as soon as he opens the door. “Wow, how fast did you ride your bike here? Your face is really red! You must have really been putting the pedal to the metal.”
“Yeah, something like that,” he rasps, putting his bag down on his desk.
“And he overdid it on the Chords today, too,” Athena says, getting up from behind her own desk to stand next to Trucy. “Better give yourself a day off if you want to be able to yell at Prosecutor Gavin tomorrow.”
“I always want to yell at Prosecutor Gavin,” he says, or tries to. His voice is kind of dropping in and out while he talks.
Athena seems to have caught most of it, either through superior hearing or because that's the kind of answer she expected him to give, and grins. “Then no yelling at the crime scene today. I'll do it for you.”
“I don't think you'll need to,” Trucy says. “If this is Mr. Gavin's case, then Ema's the detective, and all you have to do to get into one of her crime scenes is talk about science or give her a bag of Snackoos.”
Athena fiddles with her earring. “What's a Snackoo?”
“In Ema's hands? Ammunition, mostly,” says Mr. Wright, coming into the room with a stack of files in one hand and coffee in the other. “Are you guys going down to the scene to get pelted?”
“Yeah. We were just getting some shots in at Apollo while he can't yell at us for it first,” Athena says, smiling again. Apollo gives her a dirty look.
“Too much shouting practice, huh?” Mr. Wright says. The statement is teasing, but when he actually joins the girls in front of Apollo he immediately looks concerned. “Woah, you don't look so good.”
“I'm fine,” Apollo says, lacking its usual conviction.
Mr. Wright puts a hand on his forehead and frowns. “I don't think so. Feels like you're running a fever, Apollo.”
“I'm fine,” he says again, batting the hand off his head. “I can investigate without talking and my voice will come back tomorrow for the trial.”
“Considering that fever and the way you're swaying on the spot I can honestly say that your voice is the least of my concerns. Leave the investigation to Athena and Trucy, at least.”
“I can do it,” he protests. “This is my case and I can't slack off just because I caught a cold.”
“It's not a cold, and I give you sick days for a reason.”
“We have sick days?” Athena says. Trucy shushes her.
“I can't just take the day off, Mr. Wright! There's work to --” He breaks off to cough some more. Trying to argue right now was a bad idea.
“As your boss, I'm telling you to take the day off. How would I look to the legal community if my subordinates start collapsing in court?” He gives a small smile again, so that Apollo knows the last part is a joke.
“I bet Mr. Edgeworth would try to prosecute you for it,” Trucy says, grinning way too widely for insinuating that the Chief Prosecutor would raise criminal charges against her father.
“Probably,” Mr. Wright says, off-handedly. “The point is, Apollo, that you're going to sit on the couch, drink the probably-expired tea I'm going to make, and let these two go to the crime scene. And that's an order.”
He considers trying to object again, but he also gets the feeling that continued resistance is only going to end with three people physically picking him up and carrying him to the couch. Athena's got the look in her eye that she only gets when she's about to fling someone through the air. “Fine,” he grumbles, making a show of sitting down. “But I'm still going to court tomorrow.”
“Yay!” says Trucy. He hopes it's out of concern for his health and not excitement that he's not going with them to investigate.
“We should get going, then,” Athena says to her, picking up Apollo's files on the case. “Ooh, we should race there!”
“The scene's way too far for that,” Mr. Wright says. “Get some bus fare from the jar. Oh, and Trucy, grab the fingerprinting kit for Ema. It's still under your spare hat.”
“Or is it?” she says, pulling a small plastic container and what looks like a pom-pom on a stick out of the magic panties.
Mr. Wright rolls his eyes. “Just go.”
Trucy cackles in delight. “Okay. See you later, Daddy! Get well soon, Polly!”
“Bye, Boss!” Athena adds, and then the two of them are out the door with Apollo's case.
Mr. Wright comes back a few minutes later, holding a mug. “Turns out the tea wasn't expired. Guess somebody's been buying it,” he says, handing it to Apollo. He makes a vague noise of acknowledgement and takes it.
“Jeez, what are you so worked up about? I know you like sticking it to Klavier Gavin in court, but when you're this sick you should probably just stay home.” He sits down next to Apollo, drinking his own coffee.
“I've got stuff to do. Can't just stay in bed all day.”
“Why not? You're the only one with a case right now; you could have just called and asked Athena or me to take it, at least for the first day or two.” He looks at Apollo and smiles again. “Only you would be stubborn enough to ride a bicycle to work and try to stand in court with the flu. Trucy just takes it as an excuse to do nothing and get sympathy.”
Apollo makes another non-committal noise and drinks some of the tea. It's awful, despite its alleged freshness.
“But I guess that's kind of the only upside of being sick,” Mr. Wright continues. “Especially when you're a kid.”
Apollo, however, has never experienced this phenomenon, and just shrugs.
“What, you never had one of those sick days where y--” Mr. Wright cuts himself off, apparently having realized that what he was about to ask probably didn't apply. He looks equal parts horrified and like he's just had a minor epiphany. “I kind of forgot that you didn't, uh, have a typical childhood.”
He shrugs again. It is what it is. But the fact remains that he didn't work his way up from “unwanted foster kid” to “undefeated defense attorney” by taking sick days. Mr. Wright's still looking at him, though.
“Well, it's not too late,” he says, after a minute. “I think you've earned at least one real sick day.”
“What does that even mean,” Apollo says, flatly.
“It means you're going to take your shoes off and take a nap, and I'll pour you drinks and make a can of soup at some point.”
“Wha—I can't sleep in the office,” he says.
“Why not? I do it all the time.”
“What if a client comes in and sees me?”
“Then they can make their request very quietly.”
Sometimes, there is no point to arguing with Phoenix Wright. Apollo suddenly feels a wave of empathy for all the prosecutors who have had to face him.
So he takes his shoes off, adding his tie and belt for good measure, and leans over until he's mostly lying down. His legs are still hanging over the edge where he was sitting, but he'd feel silly putting them up.
Mr. Wright gives a small laugh when he sees him, flopped over with his arms still crossed, but doesn't offer any criticism of his sub-par relaxation. He just walks behind the couch, pulls the blanket off the back, and puts it over the parts of Apollo that are sufficiently horizontal.
“Night,” he says, going to sit at his desk and do god-knows-what. Probably play solitaire or read stupid articles on Wikipedia or something – that's the kind of stuff Apollo does when he doesn't have a case. The lying down seems to be easing his headache a little, and the office couch is surprisingly comfortable. Has it always been this nice? He pulls his feet up.
He wakes up still feeling terrible, to be honest, but there's a bowl of soup and a can of ginger ale on the table in front of him now. Apparently he slept through both Mr. Wright making it and him cleaning the table off sufficiently to put it down. Apollo throws a glance his way, but he's still quietly typing away as if he never moved. He eats some of the soup and drinks half of his beverage, then goes to take the dishes to the kitchen. Mr. Wright lowers him back onto the couch with a hand on the shoulder.
“Nice try,” he says. “But having other people do things for you is an important part of the experience.”
Apollo gives a slightly mutinous grumble as he lies back down. How did he even see that?
The second time he wakes up is in the mid-afternoon, when Athena and Trucy return from the crime scene. He tries to get up to ask them how it went, what they found, but they're already hovering over him.
“How are you feeling, Polly?” Trucy asks, looking genuinely concerned.
“Eh,” he says, because he's not about to tell them that he still feels awful, but saying he's fine will probably make Mr. Wright swoop in with some other gesture that's skirting the edge of propriety with an employee. “How was the scene?”
“Good!” Athena says. “We found a bunch of footprints that prove somebody else was there. Ema let us use her fancy plaster kit thing to take them. It was really fun! Oh, and she sent us back with these and said 'get well soon'.” She drops a bag of Snackoos onto the table. Apollo cough-laughs at the sight. Of course.
“We also saw Prosecutor Gavin there,” Trucy says. “I think he was kind of disappointed it wasn't you. He was all 'ach, Frauleins, where is my Herr Forehead' when we got there and when we told him you were sick he looked like he was about to come over here to make sure you were okay.”
Apollo hacks up another laugh at Trucy's impression of Klavier's accent. “I don't think he would have come over here for that, though.”
“He might have! You're his rival, he has to make sure you're okay! And he only backed off once we told him Daddy was looking after you and you weren't, like, going to die of starvation alone in your apartment.”
“It's been less than a day, I wasn't going to starve even if Da—Mr. Wright wasn't around.” I must be running one hell of a fever if I'm about to start calling Mr. Wright “Dad”.
“She's right, though. Prosecutor Gavin's voice was nothing but real concern when he asked how you were.” Athena claps her hands together and smiles, Widget lighting up green. “It was so cute.”
He decides not to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. “Tell me about the footprints you found,” he says instead, though the look Trucy and Athena share clearly says he hasn't heard the last of Klavier Gavin's apparent interest in his well-being.
At about seven o'clock he tries to get up to go home. The work day is over, Athena's gone home, and it's probably time he left too. “Woah, where are you going?” Mr. Wright says, suddenly appearing in front of him.
“Home?”
“You can't go home,” Trucy says. “You're still sick! And then what would we tell Mr. Gavin?”
He knew that was coming up again. “I have to go home at some point, Trucy. And I'm already feeling better, so I might wake up in the morning well enough to try the case and I'm not going to do it in the clothes I slept on your couch in.”
“You can borrow some of Daddy's. He wouldn't mind!”
He wouldn't mind, but he's also six inches taller than me. Besides, blue is not my colour. “I --”
“You might as well just stay here, Apollo,” Mr. Wright says, feeling his forehead again. “The substitution of attorney petition's already been filed for tomorrow and I don't like the idea of you having to bike home when you're still running a fever.”
“Ugh, fine,” he says, slumping back onto the couch. Both of the Wrights look like they're trying not to laugh.
“Sounds like your voice is starting to come back, though.”
“Good, I'll need that to tell everyone they're being ridiculous about me being sick.”
Mr. Wright lets out his suppressed laughter and ruffles Apollo's hair, the way he sometimes does with Trucy when she's not wearing her top hat, but like when he was talking earlier he seems to realize he's doing something he probably shouldn't and quickly pulls his hand back. “Well, give it another couple of days and you'll be able to yell at whoever you want. But you're taking it easy tomorrow.”
“Yeah, you haven't gotten to the part of being sick where you lie around and watch a bunch of really bad soap operas because there's nothing else on TV,” Trucy agrees.
“That sounds horrible,” he says.
“Well, it's that or Daddy's Steel Samurai DVDs.”
“Don't phrase it like that. It makes it sound like I actually wanted those,” Mr. Wright protests.
“But if Polly watches them he can write that report Aunt Maya asked for.”
“You know I just outsource those to Edgeworth anyway. He was so excited that someone actually wanted to hear his thoughts about character development that he didn't even try to tell me he doesn't 'watch something so juvenile, Wright'.” He does a startlingly good impression of Prosecutor Edgeworth's voice.
“I don't understand anything about your family,” Apollo mumbles, letting himself tip over so that he's mostly lying down again.
Trucy's the one who tosses the blanket onto him this time, which probably explains why it's covering his face. He pushes it down. “Too late, you're already one of us,” she says brightly.