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Navigating California’s, Los Angeles City’s, and Los Angeles County’s available benefits has been difficult when he has been defamed and publicly disbarred, making him ineligible for many benefits despite being unemployed, not hirable, and a new father. No attorney in the county or any of the surrounding ones would be caught dead assisting him in navigating this chaotic system to get him what he and Trucy need to survive, so Phoenix could only rely on his own knowledge and hope for the best.
Phoenix had stacks and stacks of papers piled up on his desk at the Wright Talent Agency—birth certificates, passports, rental agreements, utility bills, tax forms, adoption papers, bank statements, insurance policies, care receipts for things he’s had to buy Trucy, and more.
It felt like he was drowning in paperwork more than ever before. Signing up for benefits had almost become like a full-time job during the day while working at the Borscht Bowl Club at night.
With the little money he was scraping by with from under the table while swindling people out of their money while playing poker, Phoenix thought for sure he would be able to get some approvals to come through, but rejection after rejection made the bile in his gut rise up and burn his throat.
If Phoenix wasn’t rejected outright, he would get a letter about being on a waitlist, or a request of more documentation that he was certain would inevitably lead to another rejection.
The frustration and sick feeling of defeat kept pulling him down deeper into a pit of depression and self-loathing, but he also felt so much anger and did his best to funnel it all into trying to keep at applying to everything he possibly could.
He had to for Trucy. He could go without, but he refused to fail her when he’s all she has.
But the paper mountains on his desk had become intimidating enough to make Phoenix want to give up, at least for today.
So he pulled his blue beanie off his head and pushed his chair away from the desk so he could lean back, closing his old, slow laptop with a sigh.
When he was still a lawyer, things hadn’t been easy. Phoenix did a lot of work pro bono, so many of his cases didn’t lead to extravagant paydays, but he was able to make it up with consultations and the few cases that did pay livable wages. It was a modest living, but Phoenix lived comfortably enough without needing to wonder if he would starve for the month so he could pay the water bill. Maybe there were more months with a lot of cheap ramen packs for dinner than not, but nothing that was so dire as right now. Not that Maya or Pearl complained. They also had their own money they could live off of, so he wasn’t doing all of the heavy lifting to feed them.
But it was different with a daughter.
Trucy’s a growing child.
He couldn’t just feed her junk. And what would happen if she got sick?
Phoenix ran a hand over his face and closed his eyes.
If this next round of applications went bad, he’d have to look more seriously at viable gig jobs. Maybe he could use his bicycle and do some food delivery service work. Maybe look into somebody hiring him on a food truck?
Right when Phoenix was considering the viability of becoming one of those costumed sign spinners on street corners, his cell phone began to play the Steel Samurai theme.
Miles.
Phoenix pulled his phone out of his pocket and stared at it until the ringing ended.
A call from Miles wasn’t anything new. The man had been in frequent contact with him since he’d been debarred. Recently he had been trying to convince Phoenix to fly to Germany to assist him with consultation work, and as much as Phoenix wanted to say yes, he wasn’t sure he was even ready to step back into the legal world again, even if it was in a different country where his reputation hadn’t been dragged through the mud and turned foul.
After today’s disheartening attempt at completing more applications for social benefits, he wasn’t really in the mood to listen to Miles talk about anything that would remind him of how much of a failure he was, even if that wasn’t Miles’ intent.
Phoenix’s phone rang again, stopped, then rang once more before falling into true silence.
The sick feeling in Phoenix’s stomach rolled again, and while he hated the idea of answering the phone and having to find a new excuse to convince Miles to leave him be, it felt worse to know that Miles had given up his attempt to get Phoenix to answer today after only three phone calls. Usually the prosecutor would call at least a minimum of five times, then call his office phone a few times, but it also had yet to ring.
Maybe Miles was finally getting tired of Phoenix.
It would only be fair.
And it would be for the best. Phoenix had plans—many that required him to walk a darker path than he ever intended. All of the anger and hate he held in his heart had turned him into something vengeful and broken. He couldn’t pull Miles into any of it.
Phoenix sat up in the chair before shifting forward to lay his head on top of his extremely uncomfortable laptop. The disturbingly high piles of paper loomed above his resting head, towering so high that he felt like they would collapse right on top of him if he made any wrong moves.
The former attorney sighed again and looked at his phone. He only had two hours to go until Trucy got out of school, so he considered closing his eyes and taking a quick nap. He set an alarm for an hour and pillowed his head with his arms on top of his clunky laptop. As he slowly drifted, he felt his phone vibrate a few times with text messages, but he had no interest in checking them.
It hadn’t even been ten minutes when suddenly there was a sharp, insistent knock on the door to his office that had Phoenix jumping up in his chair and knocking some of his papers onto the floor.
“Shit,” Phoenix shouted as the papers slid down into utter chaos on the floor and across his desk. “Just great.”
The knocking repeated again.
“God damn it,” Then with a louder tone as Phoenix stood up and carefully stepped around the fallen papers. “Hold on! I’ll be right there!”
When Phoenix got to the door and swung it open, he almost closed it again out of sheer surprise.
“Edgeworth?” Phoenix blinks. “What are you doing here? When did you get in town?”
Miles himself stood in his doorway holding a large reusable bag full of groceries in one hand and a briefcase in the other. His dark gray hair was perfectly parted and styled, the maroon suit he always wore was perfectly pressed, and that ever-present frown was pointed right at Phoenix as he pushed his way into the office without even bothering to answer Phoenix’s question.
Instead, he made a beeline to Phoenix’s kitchen, swinging open the refrigerator that was practically barren outside of a loaf of bread and some eggs. “Tsk, as I expected.”
Phoenix had every intention of going to buy some groceries after picking Trucy up. He wasn’t sure what she would want to eat, so he hadn’t wanted to shop and risk spending money on something she wouldn’t eat.
“Hey, I was going to go shopping today. You didn’t need to stop and get me groceries.” Phoenix crossed his arms as a flush coming to his cheeks as he watched the prosecutor glare at the vegetables he had purchased as though they had wronged him as he unloaded the grocery bag. “And I know you, Edgeworth. You didn’t fly over five-thousand miles just to restock my fridge.”
Miles turned his glare on Phoenix. “And yet it is the fact that I knew I had to do so before appearing at your door that frustrates me. You said you would tell me when you needed help, Wright.”
“And I will,” Phoenix ran a hand through his mussed hair. He’s sure it looked a mess given he hadn’t bothered combing it today and had it under his beanie up until earlier. “I’m fine right now.”
A white lie.
It had become a lot easier to tell those recently, especially to Miles.
Miles had no need to know that Phoenix was barely hanging on, or that he was skipping meals to make sure Trucy had enough to eat.
“If you think I will believe you, you’re more of a fool than I thought,” Miles crossed his own arms and ceased his unpacking. He gave Phoenix a clear look up and down his body which made Phoenix feel exposed despite the baggy hoodie and sweats he had on covering most of his body. He knew Miles could see the unshaven scruff from electing to not even look at himself in the mirror, the dark circles under his eyes from hardly sleeping, the oil buildup in his hair, the more exposed cheekbones from not eating. “You’re much thinner than the last time I saw you, and your office is an absolute mess. You’re a bluffer, Wright, but I’ve never known you to be a liar.”
Maybe all of the frustration and disappointment that had been dragging Phoenix down was bubbling to the surface and Miles wasn’t helping with his pressing. “Maybe I am! All of California thinks I am, so maybe I am a liar. What do you want to hear from me, Miles? That I can barely afford the bills? That I don’t have enough money to afford to feed myself and Trucy both, so I skip meals? That I’ve been trying to apply for every benefit that would help us and keep getting rejected because everybody in this damned state thinks I’ve done something I didn’t do?”
“Yes,” Miles shouts in reply. “That is exactly what I want to hear, Phoenix.”
“Just so you can pity me?”
The other man ran a hand through his hair in a mirror of Phoenix’s action earlier. He looked as tired as Phoenix felt as he stepped out of the kitchen and crossed the room to stand in front Phoenix. “I would never pity you. You make me feel many things—frustration chiefly above all other feelings—but I would never once pity you or your circumstances. I only want to help.”
The anger that had fueled Phoenix all but fizzed out at Miles’ words, and he felt himself deflate as he uncrossed his arms and dropped them to his side. He knew, logically, that Miles wouldn’t pity him. Miles didn’t even pity the dead.
As he looked into the man’s flint-colored eyes, he could see the honesty shining there. Miles, for all of his sharp edges and cold exterior, had no reason to lie to about this. Miles was doing this because he cared. And to think, Phoenix thought Miles might have been starting to give up on him.
“Edgeworth, why are you here?”
Miles sighed and lifted his hand to grip his arm, nervousness coming to his face. “I came because you kept refusing my offer to come to Germany. I figured if I came here to argue my case in person, you would finally come to your senses and agree. Now that I know the truth, though, I believe I need to change my approach,” Miles reached into the inner pocket of his suit’s breast pocket. “Thankfully I was prepared to offer this as a backup to my argument.”
Phoenix wasn’t sure what he expected Miles to pull out of his pocket, but a small ring box was not it. “Uh…”
“Marry me, Wright.”
“Marry you?” All thoughts seemed to escape Phoenix’s head except Miles’ words as he stares down at the simple gold band nestled in the plush velvet blue box that Miles had just opened. “We aren’t even dating.”
“No, we aren’t. I had a ten-year plan for this…” Miles looked away from Phoenix. “Given the current circumstances, it is prudent that I expedite things a bit. I…I was going to confess to you after I convinced you to agree to come to Germany.”
Phoenix considered sitting down. He was feeling light-headed. Maybe all of this was a hallucination from hunger? Or maybe he was still asleep? Did the paper mountain actually crush him and this is his coma dream?
“And you’re proposing now because…?”
“You and Trucy need benefits—support. I want to provide that.”
“Because...you like me?”
“Because I love you.” Miles says as though this was a clear, established fact and Phoenix was an idiot. He probably was. Miles was always smarter than him. Always thinking ten steps ahead. Always planning ten years ahead. He probably already had their wedding planned. A wedding Phoenix didn’t even know he wanted to have with Miles.
Except, he did know—sorta.
He knew he loved Miles. How could he not when he spent a whole lifetime chasing after him? And now Miles was chasing after him as Phoenix started closing himself off out of shame for not being able to provide for himself and his daughter, for not being able to prove his own innocence…
Phoenix stepped back from Miles. “I’m—you can’t love me. I’m not…the me right now is an angry, vengeful mess. I don’t want to pull you into this.”
And even after Phoenix stepped away, Miles stepped forward back into Phoenix’s space. “As if I have not been there before? I’d rather be there to support you and show you the light still exists rather than let you sink into the dark and kill yourself slowly to do so. I have no doubt you could figure out how to support yourself and Trucy without my aid, but it would come at the cost of your own happiness and health. I want to help. I want to walk this path with you. Let me, Phoenix.”
God, how could Miles make an impromptu marriage proposal on the premise of giving Phoenix support sound so romantic? How could he say no in the face of Miles being this earnest and vulnerable.
“I…Okay. Fine. Yes. I’ll marry you.” Phoenix sighed in resignation and yet his heart feels warmer and his shoulders lighter for the first time in months.
A small smile came to Miles’ face then. The man so rarely smiled, so seeing it now made Phoenix’s stomach swoop and flip. “Very well. I brought the papers we need to fill out. We might as well get started before we head out to pick Trucy up. She is out of school in a less than two hours, right?”
Phoenix nodded, too surprised by Miles knowing Trucy’s school schedule. Of course he knew it. Of course. “Or we can wait.”
Miles raised an eyebrow at Phoenix. “Wait? Are you reconsidering?”
“No, not at all,” Phoenix stepped closer to Miles, close enough to feel the warmth rolling off of the man’s body. “I think I’d rather spend the next hour and a half showing you how much I love you rather than look at another form to fill out.”
And then Phoenix shut his eyes as he leaned in and pressed his lips against Miles’. Phoenix heard the ring box drop to the floor as Miles’ hands gripped his hips, pulling them closer to one another.
Any and all paperwork was forgotten as they tugged at articles of clothing and found their way to Phoenix’s couch, and somewhere in between the moment Miles kissed a path down Phoenix’s neck to his chest just above his heart, Phoenix realized he didn’t have to do any of this alone.
Not anymore.