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Miles is not surprised that Trucy can read right through him. He has gotten quite used to Phoenix and his uncanny abilities to unravel him entirely, and he would expect no less from a child of his.
It would be disconcerting if she was not doubtlessly charming. He does not necessarily understand children, but he would be hard pressed to not adore the magical Trucy Wright, with her open smiles and boundless joy. Miles is all too pleased to submit to her every whim; she will likely rule the world someday, and deserves to be spoiled with extra desserts and new bikes on her way there.
That is, until Trucy directs said whims in a new direction.
She had turned to him after Miles had proposed taking the three of them out to dinner to celebrate retaking the bar, and Phoenix had gone to change. There was a familiar spark in her eyes that Miles had not seen in a long time— maybe if he had recognized it as the same tell-tale “This Wright is Going to Destroy You!” glint as her father’s, he would have been prepared.
“I’ve been doing some investigating,” she had declared.
Miles nodded obediently. He had long since learned that investigating is a key part of a young girl’s childhood. “Of course,” he agreed, with all the gravity the situation clearly required.
“I think I have a case,” Trucy continued. Miles did not interrupt. She cleared her throat, stood up, and pointed straight at him. “Uncle Miles, everything in my investigation proves that you are in love with Daddy!”
And so began the downfall of Miles Edgeworth.
One thing about the terribly perceptive Wright family is that they are also terribly determined, and once they have perceived a wrong, they must also right it (believe him, the pun is not lost on him). Since her discovery, Trucy has taken it upon herself to repair the concept of Miles Edgeworth as a whole, especially when she witnesses his hour-long blush after he accidentally thinks about holding Phoenix’s hand.
“You’re kinda sad, Uncle Miles,” she comments. She kicks out her legs from where she is sitting on his desk, intent on demolishing her muffin directly above very important paperwork. Like father, like daughter, Miles supposes.
“I do not recall ever inviting you to my workspace to personally torment me,” he replies. It is not a lie, per se. He may have called the Wright Anything Agency and let them know that he specifically had a box of Trucy’s favorite blueberry muffins delivered to his office, but he does not appreciate being bullied by little girls this early in the morning.
Trucy grins, cake stuck between her teeth. Miles scowls.
“Daddy’s pretty sad, too. He bought a kettle just for you, even though he still microwaves his tea,” she says. Her tone is suspiciously casual, and Miles knows exactly what she is trying to do.
“Absolutely not.”
“Aw, you didn’t even hear this one!”
Miles signs his paperwork furiously. “We were trapped on that godforsaken ferris wheel for two hours. Please, do me a favor and never bring this up ever again.”
“Two prime-time hours alone with each other! That should’ve worked,” Trucy pouts.
Her new hobby is coming up with increasingly perilous matchmaking plans, or, as she calls them, “Awesome Stepfather-ing Schemes (A.S.S.).” Notable A.S.S.’s have included: flimsy excuses to force Phoenix and Miles to investigate together, multiple relocated evidence boxes and a guilty-looking Mister Justice, someone’s murderous pet hamster, and the convenient breakdown of a ferris wheel that Trucy had shoved Phoenix and Miles into under the guise of investigating.
(Miles will never admit it to her, but it had been a particularly nice time with Phoenix and Phoenix’s rolled-up sleeves. If he ignored all the police sirens and yelling, of course.)
“I will give you fifty dollars if you do not pursue this line of thought.”
Trucy hums. “I could ask you for way more than that if one of my plans actually works,” she says. Miles needs to find better company. All of his loved ones are extortionists, the lot of them.
He sighs. Winning a battle against a determined Trucy Wright is an impossible task, and he supposes he has managed to survive all of her schemes so far. “Fine. I agree to whatever new scheme you have organized, as long as you do not tell me the contents of it. Every time you pitch me one of those monstrosities, I have to call my therapist about anxiety medication. And I am only agreeing to one.”
Trucy shouts with glee, then stuffs an entire second muffin into her mouth in celebration. “Yay, thank you! I promise, this one will work.”
“Whatever you say, dear,” Miles says, and wrinkles his nose when she plants a disgustingly sticky kiss on his cheek. “Awful. Now, help me locate the new Steel Samurai alternate disc release.”
“Yessir!”
The alternate release is the actual reason he had lured Trucy to the office: he needs a fellow fan’s assistance in securing a limited edition copy before it sells out. They are meant to be revealed in thirty minutes, containing the never-before-seen finale, and Miles will be damned if he does not get his hands on it.
“You can count on me!” Trucy chirps, grabbing at Miles’ laptop. She seems a little too excited for it, but Miles simply chalks it up to teenage enthusiasm, which he prefers to the deranged matchmaking. “Oh, you’re going to love this.”
Something about the statement does not bode well.
“Trucy Wright, you absolute traitor.”
Miles has just received a notification on his cell phone that his Steel Samurai package has been delivered. Specifically, his package has been delivered to the Wright household.
It is a trap, obviously. He will go there to pick up his package, and Trucy will rope him into another romantic evening with Phoenix that will conveniently hinge on Miles being right there, right then, and it will somehow go horribly awry and turn into another survivalist hellscape. He knows he agreed to it blindly, but it feels sacrilegious to get the Steel Samurai involved, and has half a mind to never acknowledge the delivery and live his life with one item missing from his perfect collection for the rest of his life. Trucy will likely raise hell about it, but at least Miles and his stupidly fragile heart will remain safe inside his house.
He takes a deep breath. It is a Saturday, and it’s not like he had anything else planned, especially with Pess at his beloved sister’s house. Might as well get this over with. (If he purposefully forgoes the jabot to undo the top button of his shirt and adjusts his hair in the car mirror before approaching the apartment, no one else has to know.)
The first thing he hears after knocking on the door is a loud curse, followed by Trucy’s loud laughter. The lock undoes with a click, then—
“Edgeworth!” Phoenix greets. He looks vaguely out of breath and devastatingly handsome in a tight gray t-shirt and jeans, and Miles has to force his gaze away from Phoenix’s chest before he is caught ogling. Thankfully, Phoenix seems more occupied with other things, staring rather blatantly back at Miles. “Er. Uhm.” He coughs. “You look casual.”
Miles frowns. “It is quite warm outside. Did you expect me to be sweating all over my formalwear?” He is such a liar, and can only pray that Phoenix does not currently possess his magatama.
Phoenix coughs again. Perhaps he is coming down with something. “No, no. I meant it in a good way. You look good,” he says. He smiles then, a soft, gentle thing that makes Miles rather glad that he sprung for the summer clothing after all. “Trucy told me about the DVDs. Come on, have some tea while you’re here. I got this brand new kettle that I still can’t figure out.”
Phoenix crosses his arms under his chest as he speaks and Miles promptly forgets all plans he had to stop staring at Phoenix and secure his belongings to exit the premises immediately.
“Verily,” he says instead. It makes no sense whatsoever, obviously, and Miles is never going to recover from this experience or Phoenix’s torso and certainly not both together. Curse attractive attorneys and their attractive faces and their attractive cleavage.
Phoenix smiles again, though, and Miles feels vaguely guilty about cursing him a moment ago.
He has barely crossed the threshold (very pointedly not looking at Phoenix’s ass because he is a gentleman and can avoid leering at his best friend) when a chaotic blur of sequins tackles his knees. “Uncle Miles is here!” it shouts. “Look, I got a new stage outfit!”
“Trucy, let the man breathe,” Phoenix chides, leaning down to extract his daughter. “You goddamn monkey.”
She is unfazed by her father’s manhandling, and goes straight back to flaunting her outfit. It is quite the eyesore, to be frank, with its multiple colored disks clashing against the metallic embroidery on the bodice. Miles adores it.
“Daddy thinks it looks terrible. I’m going to wear it to his next case,” Trucy declares proudly.
“And then I’ll lose because I won’t be able to read the files over how awful your cape is, and Uncle Miles will have to cover you in an old blanket to protect the rest of the witnesses from your weaponized sequins. Edgeworth, hold this for a sec.” Phoenix pulls three mugs down from his cabinet as he speaks— one with art of the Evil Magistrate, one with a scrawled on “World’s Most Daddy,” a third with indiscernible paintings all over— and Miles ignores the way his stomach flips at having an assigned mug in the Wright household. “Help me with this thing.”
“Yeah, Uncle Miles, help Daddy with the kettle he’s been trying to practice using for a week,” Trucy snickers.
“Don’t you have school?” Phoenix demands.
“It’s Saturday.”
Phoenix’s ears are suspiciously flushed. Miles aches a little bit more at the domesticity of it again, and smiles. “Take pity on your aging father, Trucy. You should not bully the elderly,” he says.
“Oh, shut up.”
Trucy cackles.
The afternoon passes with unexpected ease, without a single half-baked and dangerous matchmaking attempt in sight. Trucy ends up convincing her father to let them watch the finale right then and there, so they settle on the floor together in front of the small television with a bucket of stale popcorn and refills on their mugs. They chew on the popcorn too loudly and Trucy keeps making comments about the characters as they appear and Phoenix’s elbow is pressed distractingly against Miles’ the whole time—it is quite far from the ideal viewing experience, and Miles has never enjoyed watching something more.
“That. Was. Amazing,” Trucy announces afterwards. Phoenix states that he did not “get it,” so Miles launches into a half-hour long explanation of the duality of the Evil Magistrate and Steel Samurai and why their rivalry is so much more than the black-and-white it seems to be and how the finale explores it as well as it does. Trucy interjects accordingly to clarify Samurai vocabulary for Phoenix, and Phoenix listens to the whole thing with a lopsided smile. Miles decides to order in pizza when Trucy starts declaring that she sure could use something to eat, and it is only Franziska’s text that finally wrenches him away from the Wrights.
“What was the plan meant to be this time?” Miles finally asks when Phoenix ducks into the kitchen. Trucy grins back at him.
“Just this. Daddy likes hanging out with you, you know,” she replies.
“I— Oh.”
Phoenix whistles the Samurai theme in the other room. Miles wonders whether he should be giving Trucy more credit.
It comes to a head about a week later, after Miles has wrapped up his latest case and is considering the consequences of ignoring the stack of work on his desk for another few minutes. The universe makes the decision for him, and a very frazzled Phoenix Wright bursts into his office, wild-eyed and out of breath.
Miles blinks, startled. “Wright, what—”
“We have to hide, right now,” Phoenix pants. There does not seem to be anyone pursuing him at the moment, but he looks frantic enough to put Miles on edge as well. “Right. Now,” Phoenix urges further, eyes darting to the door, and Miles curses.
“Fine, get over here,” he demands. If Miles had more time to assess a proper hiding spot, he would probably have picked something less. . . compromising. As it is, he ends up shoving Phoenix under his desk in a panic, joining him there so that they are both sprawled against each other in the rather cramped space. Desks, as it turns out, are not meant for two grown men to crawl under, and now their faces are barely a foot apart as Miles practically cages Phoenix’s body in with his own.
“This sucks,” Phoenix comments. He seems to have regained his breath. “You’re pretty bad at hiding spots, man.”
Miles glares. “Apologies if this is not to your ideal comfort level. Perhaps next time when I enter your office unprompted and demand shelter from god-knows-what, you can educate me on what a proper one looks like,” he says, and Phoenix grins sheepishly.
“Yeah, about that—” he starts, avoiding eye contact, and Miles gets the faintest feeling that he is not going to enjoy this reasoning.
“Please tell me that I am making an utter fool of myself for a legitimate cause.”
Phoenix pauses. “Uhm. I was running from Trucy.”
Miles takes a deep breath. He mentally counts to ten. He is a dignified, educated man, and he knows better than to strangle his friend to death in his own office, no matter how tempting it seems. “Pray tell, what could she possibly have done that warranted such a severe scare?” Another pause. “Start talking, Wright, or I cannot guarantee my actions for the next five minutes.”
Miles can practically see a pro-and-con list pass behind Phoenix’s expression as he assesses what to say; he assumes Phoenix has the wisdom to include “Murder by Edgeworth’s Own Hands” on the cons. Seemingly having come to a decision, he clears his throat.
“She might’ve been chasing me with cat ears?” He stumbles the words against each other in a single breath, and Miles is certain he misheard.
“Excuse me?”
Phoenix is sweating with nerves now. “I plead the fifth,” he tries. Miles flicks him on his forehead. “Ow!”
“Denied. Keep talking.”
“Edgeworth, I promise it’s not relevant.” Miles flicks his forehead again. “Goddammit!”
“I will aim for something unsavory next time.”
Phoenix scowls. “God, fine! But don’t tell me I didn’t try to warn you.” He rubs at his temple irritably, rightfully angered, but anger is good for a testimony— it means less emotion’s directed towards falsifying their testimony. “Trucy, uhm, has kind of been trying to matchmake us for the past few months and thought that gluing cat ears headband to my scalp would make you want to get gay married to me or whatever.”
Miles feels the world crumble around him.
“WHAT.”
Phoenix has seemingly given up on obscuring further, opting instead to sadly scrape at the grout on the floor as he confesses. “She’s been trying to matchmake us for about five months now. I’ve kind of been in love with you for my whole life and thought about kissing you for even longer and Trucy found that old Demon Prosecutor newspaper clipping of you and she prances around the house with it. She calls them her ‘Awesome Stepfathering Schemes,’ and it’s hilarious but also she needs to stop yelling ‘ass!’ in the office or I’m going to get fired by every client ever for my subpar parenting and even more subpar love life.”
Miles is a man of facts and truth. As such, when faced with emotional distress, he makes a point to turn back to the facts of the case.
The defendant, Phoenix Wright, has been accused of a terrible taste in men and desiring romantic intimacy with one Miles Edgeworth. Wright has just testified supporting this fact, and so has his daughter. The prosecutor and judge (also Miles Edgeworth) is also hopelessly in love with Phoenix Wright, and has been tried for the same crimes as him by the menace of his life, Trucy Wright. All evidence points to Guilty. Phoenix Wright is also currently right under him, with messy hair and a half-askew tie and his stupid, beautiful face. Miles really can only make one decision, then.
“Objection!” he shouts. It does the trick; Phoenix stops rambling about the hamster incident and clamps his mouth closed. “Prosecution would like to see some proof of the defendant’s claims.”
Phoenix blinks. “Huh?”
Lord, he is dense. “The prosecution demands evidence that you would like to kiss him,” Miles explains, then when Phoenix still fails to understand what is asked of him, leans down and does it himself.
It’s quite a terrible kiss, for how earth-shattering it feels. Phoenix knees him in his stomach and Miles hits his elbow on the wood of the desk when they try to pull closer, and it is quite clear neither of them have kissed anyone in a long time.
Miles would not trade it for the world.
“Leading the witness,” Phoenix says after they pull away, “Testimony under coercion.”
“Neither of those are applicable in this situation,” Miles protests.
“I sure hope not.” Phoenix kisses him again. “Not sure how I’d feel if there was a legal term for ‘necking with the opposing counsel.’” Another kiss.
“Conflict of interest,” Miles says smugly. He leans back down to allow Phoenix to give him his trophy for winning their banter, though the attorney seems preoccupied with laughing directly in his face.
“God, it’s so hot that you speak legalese when I’m trying to make out with you.”
Miles cannot tell if he is being made fun of, but better safe than sorry, and kisses Phoenix himself a fourth time. Fifth? He seems to be losing count. Either number seems quite low for how much they really should be aiming for to make up for lost time.
Phoenix, apparently on the same page, shoves his hand in Miles’ hair and does not let go for a while. This is a gross misuse of Miles’ workday; he returns the favor by tugging on Phoenix’s tie.
“Gross!” someone cheerfully announces.
They spring apart like they’ve been burned; Miles hits his head against the top of his desk and has to take a full thirty seconds to recover before he notices a rather upside-down Trucy dangling above them. He should have known, but he excuses his moment of weakness in light of the recent situation. Trucy beams ear-to-ear.
“A.S.S. success! I knew I should’ve pulled out the cat ears earlier.”
Phoenix groans, rubbing his hand over his face. Miles takes delight in how undone he already looks, since he is allowed to do that now. “Trucy, I am going to ground you for seven million years.”
“Nuh-uh. I’d just sneak out while you were kissing your boy-friend.”
“Please don't—”
“Daddy and Mi-les sitting under a desk! K-I-S-S-I-N-G—”
Miles loves these people. He is absolutely doomed.
He receives a small gift box at his office the next day. A note atop it reads “Use with caution!” and it is wrapped with all the finesse of an overeager child, with multiple colors of paper and three separate gift bows.
Miles frowns, confused. He peels the wrapping paper off slowly.
Inside is a singular headband, adorned with fluffy blue cat ears. Ah, Miles thinks.
Phoenix is going to kill him.