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It was cold.
The hotel room wasn't minimalistic in any form of the word—of course not—but no amount of silk, satin, nor sweets could fill the void where another should have been. In America, Miles had grown too used to the warmth of that man—his lover—beside him.
In a country a thousand miles away, there was a Phoenix.
In Germany, there was nothing of the sort.
He was so cold.
Miles clutches his blanket closer to his chest, curls further into the plush mattress of the hotel room's bed—with its modern headboard and sleek design and sweeping sheets. All of which had looked like qualities on his phone screen, all of which paled in comparison to his lover's rickety couch with its conspicuous springiness and poorly patched holes, all because of the man that occupied it.
He was so, so cold.
Blinking, he flexes his frozen fingers and finishes typing out his email. With stiff joints, he clicks send. With a sigh that he swears becomes visible in the freezing air, he closes his laptop and sifts it off the bed and onto the nightstand. He stares at the ceiling above—cast in ink, in spots of shadow, in white moonlight slanting through the cracks in his curtains he couldn't correct no matter how much he shuffled them around—and reorders his yet-to-dos for the next day while attempting to lure sleep.
His nightly contemplation is interrupted by the ring of his phone, shining like a beacon in the dark. Miles reaches for it and can't stop the stupid hope that lifts his mood when he sees the caller's name.
"Phoenix," he greets. "Good afternoon."
"Mhm," Phoenix agrees, languid. "Is that what it is for you?"
"No," he admits.
"I know, just checkin'."
Miles shifts underneath his cold blankets and huddles around his phone—like if he could get close enough to it, the man's warmth could transmit through the thing's circuit boards right into his heart.
"How's Germany?" Phoenix asks, like the day before and the day before that and every time before that.
"Just as it was yesterday," Miles responds, like every time—every time except the first—that Phoenix had asked. That day, he had told him, 'just as I remembered.'
Phoenix hums like he had never heard that before.
A beat of silence swings between them and Miles pretends that this had never happened before.
Phoenix says, "That's good," and Miles pretends that Phoenix had never said that, either.
He couldn't shake the feeling that this call was already going wrong. Every call felt a little like that—like the look in Phoenix's eyes that screamed wrong. Like the look Phoenix always had when he wasn't saying something. Like the look in Phoenix's eyes that day—a month ago, now—when Phoenix had arrived at his office with empty eyes and an empty face and an empty kiss.
"I miss you," Phoenix blurts—just like he usually did, when times were tense—his voice shaky and fragile. His voice was hazy over the phone and the ocean between them, and Miles wanted nothing more than to feel that voice nearer, mouthed into his cold skin. He wondered if it would calm his goosebumps or raise more.
He'd never wanted anything so strongly, ever.
"Me, too," he promises. "I… wish I was there, instead."
"Do you?" Phoenix muses, dryly—then quickly backtracks. "No, no. I meant… I didn't mean… I'm sorry. That wasn't… I know that you…"
He trails off, and then laughs without mirth. Miles' heart breaks a little in his chest.
"Fuck. I'm sorry. I… I didn't mean that. I don't blame you, I promise, I'm just…"
The silence stretches on and Miles wonders if he should speak, before realizing he has nothing to say.
"...thinking."
"About?"
"Well. I don't know. Bad things."
"Phoenix…"
"No… it's stupid."
"Uh-huh."
"…I, er. Probably should have asked this a lot earlier in our… relationship." Miles decides that he had absolutely no idea where this was going. "Do you—sorry. This really—" Phoenix sighs. Then, "Do you love me?"
The suddenness of it all froze him solid.
Phoenix Wright. His lover. Asking if he loved him.
It was all so… sudden and unexpected and the answer was so entirely obvious that he forgot to say anything at all.
"Or…?"
Phoenix didn't finish his sentence. By the Gods, Miles didn't want him to.
"What? Do you expect me to say 'no'? Phoenix. Of course I love you. I'm in love with you. I dare say, there isn't any sequence of events that could ever make me fall out of love with you."
"Oh." Phoenix whispers, as if this was new information. Quickly, he recovers. "What if… I was a worm?"
The laugh startles him. It bubbles out of him, breaking the tension instantly.
"No, I don't think so, then. But I… well, I don't believe that will happen."
"Miles," the sincerity in his tone makes him pause. "You're breaking up with me?"
The sincerity crumbles.
"I cannot believe you—" Phoenix breaks into gleeful laughter, and it rushes through him with such honey warmth that he forgets all about his cold hotel room, "—how would that even work? How in God's name is a worm meant to be you?"
Phoenix is still laughing, too full of joy to answer.
The conversation continues, and he loses track of the time just like every other conversation he'd had with Phoenix—just like every debate, every argument, every word he'd ever shared with the other man, paid and refunded through time.
"It's past eleven."
"Yeah," Phoenix replies, in a knowing way.
Neither wanted to say goodbye.
The silence is almost suffocating.
"I miss you," Phoenix whispers.
"I know."
"I really miss you."
"I know," he says, more resigned. He exhales and he feels some of his soul escape, too.
"I wish you were here."
"Me too."
"I…"
"I love you," Miles says, because he might actually suffocate if he didn't.
"I love you, too," Phoenix replies. And the graininess of his voice stabs him and it hurts, it actually hurts, to be this far away.
Miles misses everything about him. He misses his smile, his laugh, his joy. His eyes—the way he thought Miles didn't know he hated them and the way they lit up whenever he told him they were beautiful. His hair—his frankly outrageous spikes that the man seemed to style just to spite him, the same spikes that softened into genuine, rather messy, hair that was just so soft and so easy to run his fingers through.
He missed just him—the way he made three-in-one smell homey and familiar and nice—the way he made Miles warm all over, as if he were directly underneath the sun—and, most shockingly…
…the way he saw blue anything and he couldn't stop thinking of him. The way Phoenix made Miles miss him whenever he left his sight in a way he hadn't ever missed anyone before. The way the man made him miss a color in the same heart-aching way he missed the man himself.
"Good night, Miles."
"Have a nice day, Phoenix," Miles replies—so, so tired, and so, so cold, and hoping that he sounded genuine and happy and as light as he could without sounding plain pitiful.
The line goes dark.
Somehow, he's only colder.