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Maya jumps onto the bed feet-first, shocking him awake; Phoenix rolls over, grabbing at his pillow and holding it up in defense. Maya laughs, loud and clear like a siren.
“What, are you going to fend me off with a pillow?!” She tucks her legs under herself mid-jump and lands on her butt, colliding into the mattress in a way that makes Phoenix think the bed is going to collapse. “You look like that vine, you know—” she pulls her arms back into a defensive karate-esque pose before cackling again.
He grumbles, putting his pillow back over his head as he tries to bury himself in his blanket. “It’s Sunday. Can I sleep in?”
“Nope! We got things to do!” Phoenix feels her small fists pounding just past gently into his side. “Eggs, Nick! I like ‘em scrambled! I like ‘em fried! I like ‘em raw!”
Phoenix briefly considers suplexing her off the bed before he pauses, unraveling himself from his cocoon to give her an incredulous look. “You eat them raw?”
She nods, grinning. “Yup! You’ve never had tamago gohan?”
“Can’t say I have.”
“You got rice?”
“Probably?”
“Well, let’s go take a peek!” Maya rolls off the bed, hitting the floor with a thump before scrambling to her feet with a grunt and jogging out of the bedroom. Phoenix puts his head back in the pillow. There’s no use, he knows; but at least the search for rice might let him have a couple more minutes of quiet.
This is not going to work, he thinks to himself. Not if she wakes him up early. Not if she tries to make him eat raw egg.
Phoenix peels back his blankets, not entirely surprised that the lump in the bed is not a large pile of laundry he put in the bed in an effort to force himself to fold it, but a small Kh’urainese girl.
She flinches, immediately reaching for the covers again. “Put that back.”
“I gave you the couch,” he says, deadpan. “You’re going to make my bed smell like burgers.”
“I don’t smell like burgers,” she mumbles. Maya curls in tighter on herself, pulling her knees to her chest. “Smells like Nick in here.”
Phoenix cocks an eyebrow. Mia had mentioned, didn’t she? What to do when Maya seemed overstimulated or on the verge of a meltdown—give her something of Mia’s, give her a familiar scent to hold onto as an anchor. But he doesn’t keep any of Mia’s clothes in the apartment; Maya had those vacuum-sealed and stashed away somewhere in the office.
Something pulls at his stomach, a softness.
“Do you need a hug, Maya?” he asks quietly. She shakes her head, but makes a grabby hand at the blanket. He tucks the blankets back over her head, stifling a laugh at her muffled and exasperated ‘thank you.’
Maya sighs. Loudly and pointedly. For the fifth time in a row.
“What’s wrong?” Phoenix relents, putting the pen his hand down. The trial starts tomorrow, and Maya hasn’t been focusing at all. Some assistant she is.
“I’m hungry!” she whines, digging her feet into his back. She lays upside down, hanging her head off of the bed, her back pressed partially to his and her feet on his shoulders as she thinks out loud, letting her mind wander further and further away from the case.
“Go make something to eat. I’ve got to come up with something coherent by tomorrow.”
Maya is quiet for a moment. “Are you hungry?”
“I’m busy.” He shakes his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I don’t really have time right now.”
She huffs out a laugh. “If I were you and you were Edgeworth, I’d kill you.”
“...you’ve lost me.”
Maya doesn’t respond, but she does use him as leverage to do a somersault, flipping herself up to her feet and padding off to the kitchen. The sounds of plates and utensils in the kitchen makes for a background noise that keeps his mind focused.
A plate of fried rice is shoved in front of his face, still steaming. He has to pull himself back a little to get a look at it. She plucks the pen from his hand and replaces it with a fork.
“Just eat a little. It’ll help you think.” Maya taps her head.
Phoenix smiles at her patiently, but takes the plate. “You didn’t burn down the kitchen this time, good job.”
“One little grease fire and suddenly you’re the talk of the apartment complex,” she harrumphs.
She returns to sitting across from him on the bed, looking over the case file, balancing her plate of rice on her feet. Phoenix takes bites of rice, and listens to her theory.
A weight settling gently on his chest is what wakes him; he starts and almost grabs at what is climbing onto him before his rational mind recognizes the familiar weight of Maya. The living room is dark, quiet save for the hum of the air purifier.
“Oh, no,” he grumbles. “You got the bed. Go sleep in there.”
He hears a small sniffle as she presses her face into his shirt. It makes him pause, putting a hand flat on Maya’s back. “What’s wrong?”
She’s quiet for a long moment, and the only sound she makes is her soft sniffling and the occasional hiccup. He rubs circles on her back until she shifts her head to the side.
“I was dreaming about… uhm…” she says in a squeaky whisper. Her hands clench in the fabric of his shirt. “Finding sis. In the office.”
Phoenix sighs, mostly to himself. The blood still lingers at the edges of his nightmares, too, sometimes. Her limp body. The dent left in the wall from her fall. The sobbing Maya clutching at Mia’s arm.
He shifts and Maya clings harder, choking on a small sob. “Please don’t make me go back alone.”
The sound is like a stab of guilt in his gut. “No, no, just hold on a second.”
He puts an arm around her waist, holding her in place as he tugs his blanket out from under her and onto the floor. Phoenix pulls it back up, draping it over the both of them. She settles down, and he feels her body go slack as she dozes back off, her breathing slightly ragged from crying. All that sobbing must have made her hungry, he thinks for a moment.
He’ll make her tamago gohan in the morning.