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“You’re wasting everyone’s time, Wright,” Edgeworth grits out from behind the bench.
He is, in fact, wasting everyone’s time. That’s the whole point of this cross-examination: to buy Maya enough time to retrieve the final, crucial piece of evidence. He glanced at his watch. For all Phoenix can bullshit, he can’t bullshit for too much longer.
Phoenix leans on the witness stand, conversational. Hopefully, he doesn’t look as sleazy as he feels. “Can you clarify for the court what, exactly, ‘sometime in the afternoon’ means?”
The witness, trying to decide whether to be baffled or appalled: “Well— like I said, I can’t be certain, I was rather distracted by the burning building—“
“Give it up, Wright,” Edgeworth pipes up again, great, just what he needs.
“I have the right to a thorough cross examination,” Phoenix spits. Please, Maya. Back to the witness— what was their name again— “Certainly, but it’s important for the record to show—“
Bang, go the doors, and bang goes Phoenix’s heart, as Maya, sweet, angelic, perfect Maya traipses in, unhurried, brandishing a pair of scarlet panties in a Ziploc bag.
The only person in the courtroom who doesn’t look shocked is furiously-resigned Edgeworth.
“Took your sweet time,” Phoenix mutters through his smile as he collects the bag from her.
“It’s so I can watch back the trial footage later and make fun of the stupid questions you came up with,” says her smile.
Meanwhile, Edgeworth has discovered an entirely new shade of red to turn, which paints a festive contrast with the snow white of his knuckles on the desk. Phoenix is sure his smile could only be described as Cheshire as he approaches the judge, thinking, eat my entire ass, Miles, as hard as he possibly can.
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” Phoenix can finally begin, and the taut breath being released from his lungs is a relief like no other. He spreads his arms as if to suggest this has been part of the show all along. “The prosecution was kind enough to point out earlier that an unsubstantiated alibi is about as worthless as— what were his words, Marjorie?”
The hunched stenographer barely looks up. “‘As worthless as your own ludicrous theories, Wright,’” she quotes.
Phoenix beams. This day could not get any better. “Thank you! Now, Mx.—“ a glance at his witness file— “Andrews, do these undergarments, by any chance, belong to you? A quick reminder that you’re still under oath.”
Andrews goes from pale to paler. Whiter still they go when they catch sight of Edgeworth’s patented death glare. “I— I don’t know. They could be anyone’s.”
Phoenix nods sagely, stroking his chin, honing in on his prey. He lives for this. This is his bread and butter. “Mm, yes, right you are, they could be anyone’s. It’s important that we have context. Maya, kindly inform the court where these were found.”
“In Dean Keaton’s car,” Maya announces from the defense bench, and Phoenix is ninety-percent sure he hears Edgeworth snap a pencil. Or maybe a blood vessel. Everyone in the room arrives at the same conclusion at the same time, but Phoenix spells it out for them anyway. It’s his favorite part.
“Fascinating!” Phoenix nearly shouts and begins to pace. “But we’ve already established that the Dean had his car detailed on Monday, and it was then impounded on Tuesday.” A moment for the jury to consider. “So these undergarments must have… arrived in the car in that twelve-hour span.” He feigns confusion. Looks to Maya: “Whatever could that mean?”
Maya’s mouth is half-full of a granola bar now. “Sho they couldn’ve sheen Inna at the sheen ov the crime,” she supplies.
“So they couldn’t have seen Inna at the scene of the crime.” There it is. It's over. Check and mate. Phoenix relishes every word. “But given her proximity to the Dean, she would have potentially have access to student records in order to know that—“
Miles, on an hair trigger even on a slow day, shoots out of his seat: “Objection! Speculation!”
“Fair, that’s fair,” Phoenix concedes as the judge rules it sustained. “My point,” he finishes, “is that here upon the witness stand—“ Andrews looks like they’re about ready to melt into the floor— “sits someone with the motive, means, and opportunity to frame another student for this crime. They are the only purported witness to support this accusation, and as my associate and I have just proved, there is no way they could possibly have been there when it occurred as they claim to have been. I have the utmost faith in your judgement on this matter.” A final glance at Edgeworth: take that, you smug bastard. “Thank you for your time.”
The trial is far from over, procedurally, but Phoenix has just ended things, and everybody knows it. The hall is alight with murmurs from the jury. The judge calls a recess. Maya gives Phoenix a surreptitious fist bump. Phoenix is going to either start levitating off the ground or throw up.
“We’re out of the woods,” he promises his client, trying to seem calm and reassuring instead of as giddy as he feels. “I’m going to step outside for a few.”
He tries (fails) not to preen as he walks out between the rows of stunned onlookers. Just one little closing statement and the case is a done deal. Another win for Wright and Co. Booyah.
“Wright!” He hears, and his hopes of a smooth win flutter out the window.
“Prosecutor Edgeworth,” he replies coolly, or attempts to reply, and is dragged by one sleeve into the nearest stairwell. Down a flight of stairs they go, Edgeworth not paying Phoenix a lick of attention besides the fist in his coat (Very firm. Definitely wrinkling it) and muttering to himself all the while. Phoenix can only parse snatches of it, including such sweet nothings as “embarrassment,” “ridicule,” and “sardonic imbecile.”
“I respond to emails, you know,” he says drily as the stairwell spits them out onto the nigh-forgotten basement floor. Edgeworth replies with nothing but an acrid glare before hauling him finally into a room that may have been storage at one point but is now just a graveyard of file cabinets and empty boxes.
Miles turns, guns blazing. “You,” he says through his teeth, and his voice shakes with rage.
Phoenix would put his life in this man’s hands, but maybe not today “Me,” he agrees.
“You fucking—“ Miles spits— “you fucking affront to the justice system—“ distraught with the effort to fit all his rage into one sentence, a bottleneck of vitriol that just can’t all come out at once— “I cannot believe—“ finger in his face, oh, isn’t that pleasant— “this is precisely why we have evidence law, and just because the district judge has a hard-on for you and your asinine, harebrained, incorrect methods—“
“I win by my own merit, and I don’t appreciate the insinuation otherwise.” Annoyance twinges in Phoenix.
“How?” Miles demands, anger turned to desperation in his eyes, pleading, searching, very, very close. “It shouldn’t be possible! You shouldn’t be able to! But every time— every goddamn time!” Runs a hand through his hair with a deranged laugh, “You come up with the most outlandish explanations I’ve ever heard and you keep being right! No matter how witless—“ Phoenix is losing patience. This is his trial, too, for fuck’s sake. “Farcical—“
“Careful, Miles.” Wright puts a hand around the wrist that’s still fisted in his jacket (definitely wrinkled now, perhaps beyond repair), because it’s been a long ass day and he has fought tooth and nail for this client, twenty-plus hours a day for nearly a week now, and he is no longer in the mood to be called an idiot by the man who’s losing to him in court. “Leave it.” He’s being condescending, as if instructing a dog, and it’s not entirely unintentional.
Miles is not listening. “It’s honestly like you have a dartboard over there to decide which piece evidence to bring up next—“
“Miles.“ before he knows what he’s doing, Phoenix’s own fists are in Edgeworth’s lapels, pushing him against the wall, to— what, shake some sense into him? Make him shut up? Just get his attention, because why else does he do anything he does (Art school, law school, law firm)? None of it matters, because Miles’ breath leaves his lungs in a little rush, and Phoenix thinks he hears him say, “finally,” before Miles is kissing him, fierce and unyielding. Phoenix only knows one way to respond to that, which is to return it with everything he has, the world narrowed to one point. Art school, law school, law firm, and now kissing Miles Edgeworth, all with the single-mindedness that has somehow over the course of it all become his trademark.
The hands he had just used to push the demon prosecutor into the wall are now pulling him closer as they kiss, messily, with a clacking of teeth, like Miles would actually take a bite out of him if he could. Miles’ hands are everywhere now, over his jacket, under his jacket, up and down his arms, two fingers tugging him in closer by the belt, and Phoenix should be stopping him, should be bringing up how they have nine minutes left of the recess, make that eight, but somehow that all seems much less important when Miles is undoing his shirt buttons one by one and Phoenix can’t tear himself away from his lips to stop and help.
There are hands up Phoenix’s undershirt and a mouth on his neck, then teeth on his neck, ouch, so he shoves again and sets to work on Edgeworth’s belt, which has a sleek, modern, ineffable buckle. Miles eventually has to slap Phoenix’s hands away to undo it himself, shaking his head, and that won’t do, because Phoenix can’t stand to lose. So he pinches through Edgeworth’s shirt (unbuttoned now, when did that happen?) and strikes home, or he thinks he does given the shudder he elicits. He sticks two fingers into Miles’ mouth, and that shuts him up, but leaves Phoenix only one hand left to de-pants Miles. There’s an awkward collaborative effort which ends up, finally, with Edgeworth’s flushed penis out in the open.
There's a distant, logical Phoenix somewhere who marvels at what's about to happen while Present Phoenix takes a knee. Time slows back down to normal (seven minutes left now, his watch says, don’t forget). He takes his hand from Edgeworth’s mouth and cups him with it. Miles, who has apparently somewhere in this process regained his sense of self-consciousness (how convenient, Miles), looks pointedly away, lets out a metered breath, which is plenty of cause for Phoenix to take him in his mouth, because fuck you, Miles, you started this, there's no getting shy now. He weighs Edgeworth on his tongue, takes a moment to assess the feel of it there, before starting in earnest, because Phoenix is nothing if not earnest, for better or for worse. There’s a stifled groan from above him, and if they were anywhere else, Phoenix would pull that hand away from that mouth, tell him he wants to hear it all, but pragmatic Edgeworth is probably in the right here and now. \
It’s been a while— Phoenix is out of practice— but he can still hold his own. Dick is salty, and not entirely pleasant, but hey, so is Miles himself, and that hasn't stopped Phoenix from being down horrendous for him yet. He closes his eyes and tries to form a rhythm, cataloguing tastes and smells and the shape of things in the back of his throat. When he grabs the back of Miles’ knees for leverage, they’re shaking, which he takes to mean he’s not doing too bad of a job.
“Fuck, Wright,” Miles says from above him soon enough, cragged, broken, hands tugging at Phoenix’s hair to get him off, but Phoenix ignores him. Not on my suit, god damnit, he thinks, and holds on tight while Miles spills into his mouth. There’s a mostly-clean tissue in his pocket, and he spits into it while Edgeworth returns from the astral plane. Three minutes. And he hasn’t even started on a closing statement. When he looks up, Miles is looking straight back, eyes wide with— horror? Disgust? Regret? Something else, something unthinkable? Who knows what’s ever going on in that deeply, deeply fucked-up brain of his. In the time before he returns to the trial, Phoenix will probably have thought of something really cool and suave to say.
Phoenix stands (hello, knees). Edgeworth opens his mouth, and then closes it again, so Phoenix takes the opportunity to kiss him. Miles still kisses like a starving man, but Phoenix pulls away before he can get in too deep.
He points an accusatory finger in Miles’ face. “You owe me one,” he says before darting back up the stairs.
Phoenix wins the trial.