Chapter Text
It starts with a morning that tastes of mint and blood.
The school looms as Miles traipses across the empty playground, the other children safely sequestered in classrooms where they’re supposed to be, and the stillness in the air makes something gnaw in the pit of Miles’ stomach. His father called ahead, so he knows he isn’t in trouble, but he’s also never been late for school before. Not once. This feeling shouldn’t be so familiar. As if he could have—should have—realised his tooth was ready to fall out before he started walking to school, and then he wouldn’t have had to hurry home with his handkerchief pressed to his mouth while copper flooded his tongue.
He’s rinsed and spit, and the gap has long-since stopped bleeding, but the taste won’t go away. The enamel set into the rest of his gums feels shaky. Exposed. Grinding it doesn’t help, makes it worse, in fact, yet he keeps catching himself doing it—and he doesn’t know why. It’s just a tooth; he’s lost them before, and he only has one or two more to lose.
(But the blood. Swollen and sticky, it churns in his gut, scrapes at the edges like swallowing teeth instead of losing them.
You’re being a child, he thinks mutinously, disparagingly. There are worse things than this in the world.
All this to say, he isn’t in the best of moods when he walks through the door. Maybe things would have started differently if he had been. Maybe they would have been easier, or softer, or something completely unrecognisable built with warm contrast and everlasting days. Maybe.
Here, we have the blood.)
The secretary is only vaguely familiar to him, though on sight he has the distinct impression it’s been a while since he last saw her on school grounds. She’s fumbling through paperwork, hair hanging limply around her face as she tries to catch the edges of the paper with shaking fingers. Miles waits for her to notice his presence, cataloguing her frazzled movements to see if there’s any evidence of the cause, when, from the corner of his eye, he notices the other boy sitting in the seat outside the principal’s office.
(Looking back, he won’t ever be sure how he missed him at first.)
The boy has the spikiest, blackest hair Miles has ever seen, brushed back, but with stray strands falling across his forehead like they’re not used to being forced into a semblance of order. He’s small and skinny, skin darker than Miles usually sees, his pale blue hoodie zipped to his chin and his trainers practically falling apart on his feet. And his eyes—
Well. That’s the thing, isn’t it?
“Oh! You must be… Miles Edgeworth?” The secretary straightens and adopts a pleasant smile, less forced than Miles thought it would be. “I’ve filled out a pass, and the teacher’s expecting you.” She leans over the desk, indicating the boy. “This is Phoenix, by the way. It looks like he’s going to be joining your class soon.”
There’s this weird thing adults do where they think that because children are the same age and in the same class, they’ll automatically become friends. Miles understands what’s expected of him, albeit reluctantly, and holds out his hand. The boy—Phoenix—takes an odd amount of time to notice it, gaze fixated over Miles’ shoulder on something across the office, pupils drifting left and right as if he’s watching something swing.
“Hello. I’m Miles Edgeworth,” Miles says pointedly. “I’ve never met someone with different coloured eyes before.”
Phoenix flinches and shifts his focus with a strange shade of intensity. He hesitates before offering his own hand. It’s warm, Miles thinks as he curls his fingers over it, immediately wondering thereafter why that would surprise him.
“Heterochromia,” Phoenix says, quietly. “It’s called heterochromia.”
He slips his hand into his pocket after Miles lets go, blue-brown gaze drifting past Miles once more.
Miles looks behind him, but there’s nothing there.
“I look forward to getting to know you,” he says, admittedly not as earnestly as he could, but there’s a strange chill pervading the office, and he wants to get to class so he can concentrate on something other than the taste of blood.
“Mhm, yeah,” Phoenix mumbles. Then he seems to register Miles’ words and sits up, managing an expression that’s almost passably friendly. “I look forward to getting to know you, too.”
Just as Miles turns away, the door to the principal’s office opens, and a man pokes his head out. The father, most likely, his voice brusque and impatient. “Come on, Phoenix. He wants to speak with you.”
Phoenix obeys, head tilted down, and the last Miles sees of him is the moment the father turns away and Phoenix casts a final, unreadable look at the empty spot in the corner. Miles heads to class, tongue prodding at the hole in his gum with morbid fascination, goose bumps rippling up his arms.
What a strange person.
His estimation of the other boy doesn’t change when he’s introduced to the class. Neither does it differ from the rest of his classmates.
As soon as the novelty wears off, the rumours start, and Miles isn’t one for caring about such things, but it’s a small class, and nobody is shy about sharing. Not even when Phoenix is in earshot.
“I heard his dad killed someone.”
“I heard he killed someone.”
“He definitely looks like he could.”
“His eyes, right? They’re so weird.”
“He looks at you like he’s going to eat your soul.”
“Or suck your blood.”
“Obviously he’s not a vampire.”
“Why not?”
“Because he walks in the sun, duh.”
And so on.
It all seems ludicrous to Miles. There’s no such thing as vampires, and if Phoenix was a boy capable of murder he’d be locked up in prison, not sitting at his desk doodling spirals at the edges of his notebook, shoulders hunched around his ears.
But Miles can’t deny that Phoenix is odd. And his eyes are kind of intense. Especially since he hardly looks at anyone, gaze always flicking to empty space and shadowed corners, too direct to merely be a quirk of inward thinking. Miles actually caught Phoenix smiling at thin air once, a crooked, sort of sad little thing that made his chest hurt to look at, and he’d turned away as fast as possible before Phoenix could look at him like that.
(Like he’s gone somewhere no-one will ever be able to bring him home from.)
He’s walking home after classroom duty the first time he spots Phoenix outside of school. It’s raining, thick, fat droplets that thunder unceasingly against Miles’ umbrella, and his shoes are soaked through from the splashback of a pot hole and a careless driver, and he’s wondering what inane question Mr Shields is going to ask with a dollar on offer for the right answer (except there’s never a right answer and he gives Miles the dollar anyway, so who knows what the point of the exercise is) when he sees him.
The other boy has his hood up, his backpack clutched loosely to his chest and his face turned up to the sky as he rocks back and forth on a swing. The old play park is otherwise empty, streaked with mud and sodden sand, somehow bigger that it normally looks with only one small boy to fill it. Every so often, Phoenix scrunches his nose and shakes water away from his eyes, but he makes no effort to leave.
Miles realises he’s stopped walking. Water squelches between his toes. Mr Shields will be insufferable if he’s late home, and Father will worry for nothing.
He isn’t sure what he’d say if he stayed anyway.
It becomes the new normal concerning Phoenix; looking the other way. Bruises appear, belongings go missing, mysterious (insulting and atrociously spelled) messages appear on his desk. Kids stifle giggles and share secret smiles, and the teacher takes it in with weary acceptance, and it’s… not right. There’s no inciting incident, no last straw, no moment Miles is consciously aware of realising it. It’s a slow build of little hurts seen through someone else’s eyes in ordinary grey, and at some point Miles stops thinking how strange and starts asking why.
Because Phoenix hasn’t ever actually done anything wrong. He smiles at thin air (which is creepy) and his eyes are a little strange (even creepier), and he doesn’t speak much, but Miles doesn’t speak much either, and nobody’s ever treated him with such blatant unfairness. And Miles keeps catching sight of Phoenix sitting alone in the park, or wandering through the streets at odd hours, and he might not have any friends but he has to live somewhere—right?
(He comes in one day wearing the same clothes as the day before, the bags beneath his eyes potent and arduous, pupils glazed from maybe sickness, or maybe pain, or maybe a secret touch of desolation. He looks like he hasn’t slept at all. Like he’s spent the whole night fighting demons only to find them still there in the morning.
Miles has seen that look before.
He sees it in his father all the time.)
He passes three of his classmates in the hallway at lunchtime, each of them throwing Miles a gleeful smile, as if there’s a joke he’s supposed to be in on. It’s only when he turns the corner to find the punchline on his knees—trying to collect the scattered pieces of his notebooks while blood drips steadily down his chin—that the gnawing, suspicious ache in his spine makes sense.
He takes a deep breath. He straightens his back.
(“The knowing is the hardest part, Miles. No matter how much you want to, you can’t turn away, because if you do then everyone else will think they have the excuse to turn away, too.”)
“Are you alright?”
Phoenix flinches and jerks his head up, paper crumpling between his spasming fingers. Miles ignores the dry feeling creeping up the back of his throat and forces himself to hold the other boy’s gaze.
“Are you going to hurt me, too?” Phoenix asks. Miles doesn’t think he’s heard anyone speak like that before. Like if Miles said yes Phoenix would lie down and stay still and just hope it would be over quickly.
It reminds Miles of the taste of blood and his tongue prickles with barbs. “Why would I do that when I asked if you’re alright?”
“I don’t know. Does it matter?”
Miles bristles further. “Of course it matters.”
Phoenix shrugs minutely. Swallows. There’s a glittering shine at the corner of his eyes that has nothing to do with their regular weirdness, and he’s trembling, making no move to stop the blood drip drip dripping onto his shirt.
Miles reaches into his pocket and pulls out his handkerchief. “Here,” he says. “Hold this up to your nose. Use your other hand to pinch the bridge of your nose, like this.” He demonstrates briefly, and after a moment of baffled incomprehension, Phoenix accepts the handkerchief and does as he’s told. “Don’t tip your head back, either. It’ll only make the blood go back towards your throat, and you’ll swallow it.”
Without waiting for an invitation, he sets about recompiling Phoenix’s ruined things, checking periodically out the corner of his eye to make sure Phoenix continues to take care of himself. The first couple of times Phoenix is still staring at him, but then he glances over and Phoenix is staring at the wall instead, brow furrowed over a fierce glare as he gives a sharp shake of his head.
Miles looks away. Stares at the torn workbook in his hand. Absently notes most of the sums are incorrect.
“Don’t tell anyone,” Phoenix says softly.
That flash of anger is gone as quickly as it showed itself. Miles peaks down the hallway but, of course, there’s nobody there.
“We have to tell someone about this,” he says slowly, ensuring the words come out steady. “They ruined your things. You need them to do your schoolwork.”
“I can still use them. It’s not like they shoved them down the toilet,” Phoenix replies with such blasé specificity Miles wonders if that’s happened before. “It’ll just make things worse if you tell. It always does.”
“This sort of behaviour is unacceptable.”
“I’m used to it.”
“You’re bleeding. The teachers will have to do something about that.”
“They won’t. They’re scared of me, too.”
“That isn’t—” Miles hesitates, tongue locking itself to the roof of his mouth, and when he finally tears it free the words are too limp and lame to convince anybody, not even himself. “I’m not scared of you.”
“Yeah, you are.” Phoenix looks away again. Not because he’s looking at something only he seems to be able to see. It’s because he really is crying now. “You don’t have to lie. But you helped, anyway, so… thanks.”
Miles packs away the last of Phoenix’s things into the threadbare backpack with shaking hands, hot beneath his collar and fighting the strange prickling sensation running down the back of his neck. Inadequacy is not something he’s used to. This knowing that something needs to be done, but he can’t be the one to carry it all the way.
Start at the beginning. Move each piece one space at a time. There’s a pattern to all things, and every step forward is an answer never reached otherwise.
“Do you want to eat with me from now on?” he asks, offering the backpack. “People like that always wait until you’re alone.”
Phoenix carefully peels the handkerchief from his nose and sniffs, wincing when he does. The skin is swollen and red, edging up to the corner of his right eye (the blue one), but no fresh blood pools from his nostrils, and he uses a clean corner to wipe his eyes (the brown crinkles and flutters shut). “Thanks,” he repeats softly, “But I think that’s a bad idea. They’ll do the same to you if they see you with me.”
Miles clicks his tongue. “That makes absolutely no sense.”
“It really doesn’t, does it?” He finally accepts his bag and gently pulls it onto his back. “I’ll wash your handkerchief and give it back tomorrow. Thanks,” he says for a third time, then heads off in the direction of the bathroom and out of sight just as the bell rings.
When he comes into class ten minutes late, Miles’ voice fails him a second time, and he only watches as Phoenix quietly explains he tripped and fell and didn’t want to bother the nurse. The teacher sighs, tells him to stay after class, and orders him to his seat.
Phoenix doesn’t look at Miles at all.
“Are you alright, Miles?”
Miles hasn’t been eating his dinner. He’s been pushing it around his plate instead, tipping rice into sauce and trying to separate it back out without leaving traces of either behind. It’s illogical, impossible, a fool’s errand. The rice remains stained and the chicken steadily cools, sequestered in an untouched pile at the edge of his plate.
(There’d still been blood around Phoenix’s nostril. His nose and eye were obviously swollen. And yet.
And yet.)
“Have you ever…” He trails off, sets his fork down and risks a glance at his father.
His father peers back over the rim of his glasses, one hand loosely holding the remote as the evening news scrolls by. The crease between his father’s eyebrows deepens and he steps back to the table, turns away from the TV. “Did something happen?”
Miles nods as he works through the question in his head, trying to find the sense in something that has no answer. “Have you ever seen someone doing something wrong, and not done anything to stop it?”
His father’s mouth tightens as he slides into his seat. Flickering images pass by in the reflection of his glasses. “I have,” he says slowly, and Miles blinks, eyes widening after. “Though, I presume there’s a specific reason you’ve chosen to ask. I’ll need a little more context before I can help.”
“There’s a boy at school,” Miles says, lowering his gaze to his thoroughly destroyed dinner. “I’ve mentioned him before. The boy with heterochromia.”
“That does spark a memory,” his father replies, leans back in his chair and mutes the TV. The sudden silence weighs heavily on Miles’ shoulders, but he doesn’t ask for it to be unmade. “You met him the day you lost your tooth on the way to school.”
“Yes, that’s him. Recently… well, no, for quite a while now,” Miles corrects with a wince. “For quite a while, the other kids in class have been bullying him. I found him in the hallway today with a bloody nose and his school things scattered around him. I stopped to help and I wanted to tell a teacher but… but he didn’t want me to. When the teacher asked, he lied about it as well. It was strange.”
“Strange in what way?”
“I’m not sure. I think he might have been bullied at his old school, too. He seemed…” Miles frowns, trying to recreate Phoenix’s tone of voice, the expression beneath the tears. Grim with no anger. Lonely with no sadness. Almost— “Resigned. That’s what it seemed like. That he was resigned to it happening.”
Father sighs through his nose, a hand coming up to rub the thin smattering of stubble that’s grown through the day. “Have there been other incidents?”
“Nothing physical. Nothing I’ve seen, at least. But they call him names and talk about him behind his back. They’ve hidden his things, too, and written on his desk. The teachers hardly ever do anything about it, even when they catch it happening.” His volume steadily lowers as the list grows longer. “It’s ridiculous. He hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“Well, what do they say about him, then?”
“That he’s a monster.” Miles rolls his eyes. He knows he isn’t supposed to, but he thinks the situation calls for it. “Or that he’s weird. That his eyes are weird.”
“They make fun of him because his eyes are different colours?” his father asks, baffled.
“No. It’s…” Miles hesitates, aware that to repeat the things he hears is to admit he understands them, simple self-condemnation, but there’s no other way to explain it.
Phoenix’s eyes glow. Miles is certain of it. Not the way cats’ eyes do in the dark—it’s like a strange inner light curves through the irises into the pupil, the blue and brown a touch too vibrant to be natural, and when he concentrates those eyes on empty air (or when he looks directly at you), Miles can’t help but wonder if there really is something there. Something only Phoenix, with his shining eyes, can see, and the rest of them are just stumbling through the dark.
“It looks like he knows something nobody else does. Like he can see things nobody else can see. I don’t know how to explain it,” he admits, offering a helpless shrug. “It’s just a—a feeling. I know it doesn’t make any sense. And even if his eyes are a little weird, he’s not a bad person. He doesn’t want me to stay with him because he’s scared they’ll turn on me, too. A bad person wouldn’t care about something like that.”
Father rests his elbows on the table so he can steeple his fingers beneath his chin, humming in thought. “Do you think they would? Turn on you?”
“I don’t think it matters. If they did, I would tell someone. And I don’t really care if they say things about me because I know they won’t be true.” He’s long-since decided it’s the truth. Perhaps not an easy one, but he watches the news, he reads the newspapers, knows intimately the vitriol his father is so often on the receiving end of just because he tries to do the right thing.
(Father says knowing is the hardest part, but Miles thinks he’s wrong on that point. It’s not the knowing. It’s the fear. The potential to see the choice, and make the wrong one anyway.)
“It’s not right,” he says quietly.
“No, it very much sounds like it isn’t,” his father agrees. “It seems a simple enough answer, to help people when they’re in need, but we’re complex creatures, and too often that complexity is overthought and overused. Twisted until we convince ourselves otherwise. It’s not something to be proud of.” Bitterness winds through his words. Miles wants to ask, but he doubts his father would answer. “I can’t say I understand what you or your classmates see in this boy, but I know for a fact he would appreciate your company. Even if he says otherwise. Nobody in the world is made to be alone, Miles. It’s far too big for that.”
Miles bites his lip, fidgeting with the sanded edge of the table. His dinner smells sour, and if he concentrates hard enough, he thinks he can still find the taste of blood hidden between his teeth.
“Everyone, at some point in their lives, has had, and will have, a chance to act and not take it,” his father continues, softer. “It’s something to learn from, not to dwell on.”
Mr Shields always asks questions without logical answers. Words aren’t hard for Miles, but putting them in the right order is. Tone and intent, implication and double meaning—and, of course, lies. Skew from the line of logic and nothing begins to mean anything, but this is a question Miles doesn’t know how to answer, and if he asked Mr Shields, he doesn’t think Mr Shields would be able to answer it either. Miles wouldn’t even bother offering a dollar.
But it’s his father sitting across from him and Miles has to ask. He has to know. “Is it supposed to hurt like this?”
Father hesitates. “Like what?”
Like there’s a nail in his throat. Like there’s fire beneath his fingernails. Like his muscles are about to give in and his lungs are about to collapse.
“Like if I don’t do it, it won’t ever stop hurting,” Miles manages.
Father is very, very quiet. Eventually, he reaches across the table and folds his fingers over Miles’ where Miles is gripping his knife so hard it’s made his knuckles turn white. “You don’t have to worry about that. You’ll do the right thing.”
(And those words will come back to haunt Miles. Why wouldn’t they?)
“I will,” he agrees, resolute.
His father smiles, soft with pride, and squeezes his hand once more. Then he grimaces when Miles (thinking of rain and sodden shoes and a voice he can’t hear calling for him to come home) picks up his fork and chews determinedly through his stone-cold dinner.
Phoenix returns the handkerchief the next day, as promised.
More accurately, he somehow catches Miles on the way to school, shoves it into Miles’ hands, and runs off with yet another thanks thrown over his shoulder before Miles has a chance to say anything in response. Spots of faded brown are caught on the deepest parts of the stitching, and the fabric isn’t as soft as it usually is after a wash. It smells like salt and detergent. Miles carefully folds it and slides it into his pocket.
It’s a process, and Miles intends to take it seriously (recompense, his mind whispers, which he studiously ignores). Phoenix, as a rule, reacts to most human interaction with acute wariness at best, silent resignation at worst, and this is going to be impossible if he decides to shut Miles down completely. Miles has a plan. The start of a plan. He’ll most likely need to adjust depending on the other boy’s reaction, so it starts with little things, like picking Phoenix to be his partner (his classmates will most likely be relieved), or lending him stationary (which he now knows will be returned), or keeping an eye on Phoenix’s things so nothing else mysteriously disappears.
Uncomplicate the narrative. Tease it out. Find the points that make sense, and follow them all the way to the end. It’s already a contradiction for Phoenix to think he’s alone. The rest of it is simply the doing.
Except somewhere between running into Miles and running off, Phoenix has produced a face mask, and he spends most of the day dry coughing into it while everyone edges away from him.
It’s an immediate wrench in Miles’ plan. Gym would have been the easiest place to start since Phoenix is surprisingly fast on his feet, so picking him for teams is just competitive advantage. Instead, Phoenix is left alone in the classroom looking like he wants to fall asleep on his work rather than do any of it, and Miles is dragged out into the sun with the rest of the class.
(His reservations creak, rumble, then settle into grudging admiration.)
It’s a beautiful day, clouds racing across the sky as if they have more important places to dull, the breeze close to the ground sweet with summer and children’s happy screams drawing freedom ever closer. The sun meets Miles’ skin with gentle fingers, coaxes his attention away from the empty classroom windows, offers him all the life born from spring. It’s the end of something. It’s the beginning of something else.
It’s such a beautiful day.
(But what child has time for that?
This is just how it starts. And here, we have the blood.)
Miles has been to court a few times to watch his father. He always sits on the balcony behind the defence, inhales the scent of sanded wood and stale floor polish, stares down the prosecutor at the other side and wonders how they can make themselves look so big. He watches the back and forth, the way arguments are laid out, dissected, reformed and dismantled, the way evidence is used to support and refute. How lies are unravelled, and how, piece by piece, the truth can be revealed as long as you’re willing to fight for it.
This is not that. This is a witch trial. A lynch mob. No more hidden hurts in hallways, quiet disappearances or constant prodding. Vitriol is out on full display, and Miles can practically see Phoenix buckling under the onslaught as he pleads not guilty.
“Phoenix, tell the truth,” the teacher says with a sigh. In a courtroom, her voice would echo. Maybe that’s why everything feels so much bigger. In this classroom, it just sounds like a knife splitting against the walls. “You were the only one in the classroom when the money disappeared.”
Miles twitches, aims a frown at the teacher. He already said he doesn’t know when the money went missing. It’s been hours since he left the house with it.
“But I didn’t do it,” Phoenix insists, hands clenched around the hem of his hoodie, shoulders shaking, but voice somehow steady and clear. Bizarrely polite, almost. “I only noticed the envelope had slipped out of Miles’ bag. I didn’t even know what it was. I wouldn’t have—”
“Enough.” She doesn’t say it particularly loudly, but that single word somehow stamps over anything else Phoenix might have tried to argue. “Apologise to Miles. If you don’t return the money, I’ll have to contact your parents. Theft is a serious crime.”
“Lock him up,” someone whispers.
“Yeah, just kick him out!”
“Thief!”
“Enough!” The teacher slams her hands on her desk. Miles can feel the sun on the back of his neck, but he swears the temperature has plummeted, freezing the sweat to his skin. His jaw clicks when he grinds his teeth. The teacher’s eyes flash. “Apologise to Miles. Now.”
And Phoenix’s face crumples. The blank, tired resignation is wiped away, and Miles looks and sees a boy like any other, upset and confused and scared because he’s being hurt, it’s happening again, and he doesn’t understand why. He said that people are afraid of him, and Miles knows what he means, because there is something scary about Phoenix Wright, even if nobody can explain what it is. But Miles also knows that Phoenix bleeds as red as the rest of them, and this has already gone too far.
(Something else decides that, too.)
The light above the teacher explodes.
There’s a flicker, a sudden, intense stench of burning, and the florescent tube shatters with a great bang of fractal sparks. The covering rattles from its frame, falls, shaves by the teacher’s shoulder, and she jerks away as shards of melted glass rain down. Somebody screams. A moment later, all the lights go out.
(Phoenix isn’t looking at the teacher, or the light, or the other students. He’s staring at the corner, the light in his eyes flickering as he frantically shakes his head. The mask is still covering the lower half of his face, but it isn’t hard to work out why his jaw is moving.
Stop. Stop it.
There’s nothing there.
There can’t be anything there.)
“Okay, settle down. Settle down, everyone,” the teacher calls, peering up at the roof in bewilderment. “Watch where you step, stay away from the desk. Is anyone hurt?”
Mumbled denials sweep around the room, swiftly picking up in volume as the panic is replaced by manic curiosity. Questions and theories jumble across each other, too many people talking at once until someone proposes, with a choked giggle, that Phoenix probably did that, too.
(“This is why justice exists the way it does. Without it, we’re nothing but animals.”)
“Objection!”
It doesn’t have the baritone weight of his father, but Miles’ anger lends him force, and Miles allows it to run hot and rampant through his blood as he glares across the class.
“All of you have been shouting that Phoenix is the one who stole my money, but nobody has produced evidence to support the accusation,” he snaps. “If you’re truly going to blame him for a freak power surge on top of it, your credibility isn’t even worth consideration.”
“It was just a joke,” the girl in question mumbles, stricken.
“Who cares?” someone else calls. “We know he stole your money. There’s nobody else who could have.”
“There are nineteen people in this room who are equally suspect,” Miles says and slams his hands down on his desk to make sure the point is fully underlined. “Evidence is everything in a court of law, and this hardly constitutes a trial in the first place. It’s a pretentious farce.”
“Yeah, you tell ‘em!” Of all the people to suddenly join his voice to Miles’, Larry Butz is the last person Miles would have expected. Larry, apparently taking cues, hops on his chair and slams his foot on his desk, finger outstretched. “You lot are always ganging up on Phoenix. Blaming him now seems like an awfully convenient excuse to me.”
That’s… a surprisingly good point. Miles squints, unnerved by the certainty of a boy who has openly admitted in the past he doesn’t know where Europe is on a map. Bad feelings are evidence of nothing, however, and Miles isn’t about to contradict himself when there’s a more important issue at hand.
“Phoenix, did you steal my money?” he asks.
Startled to be addressed, Phoenix flinches, blinking dumbly at Miles. “N-no,” he replies, a beat off kilter and quieter than before. “No, I didn’t steal it. I swear.”
Miles nods, a firm jut of his chin to make sure Phoenix understands that Miles believes him. That he can hear what Phoenix doesn’t say just as clearly. “The defendant has plead not guilty. With no evidence to suggest otherwise, the verdict is clear. Phoenix is innocent.” He folds his arms and glances at the clock. “It’s time this ridiculous excuse for a trial was over with anyway.”
On cue, the final bell rings. Miles stands firm as Larry cackles behind him, and Phoenix just stares and stares and stares.
They’re sent home with the message that class may be cancelled if they don’t find the source of the surge by tomorrow. Amongst the cheers, Phoenix slips unnoticed from the classroom.
Miles follows.
(It’s strange the way it happens, considering the way it ends. Miles walks, and in the distance, he sees a boy standing alone, surrounded by shadows that never conform to quite the right shape, rain falling like sprinkles of melted glass. Years from now, he’ll think he’s long-since left the boy behind, and he’ll look over his shoulder to find nothing waiting behind him. When he faces forward, there will be a man. Standing alone in the rain. Calling for Miles to follow.
These things are not circular. There are only the things you won’t let go of, no matter how much you want to or think you should. These are the things that will keep you alive. These are the things that will kill you.
These are the things that make sure you go on living after.)
He catches up to Phoenix at the school gates, pausing momentarily when he finds the face mask is nowhere to be seen. Phoenix glances at him, hands fisted tightly around the straps of his backpack, a pallor to his skin despite the warm daylight glow.
“I’m not actually sick,” he mumbles.
“I know,” Miles says. “You were pretending so the other students would leave you alone.”
Phoenix cringes a little and sinks deeper into the folds of his hoodie. “That obvious, huh?”
“Not to anyone else.” They’re walking in the direction of Miles’ house, the roar of the rest of the school far behind them as they tread over the most familiar path Miles knows. Relief eases his shoulders as Phoenix continues to keep pace. “It should be obvious by now that deductive reasoning isn’t their strong point.”
Phoenix’s lips twitch. He turns away quickly to hide it. “Thanks for… thanks for that. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I did,” Miles replies simply. “I wasn’t overexaggerating in there. They were being ridiculous and cruel for no reason other than because they could and they wanted to.”
“That’s not the only reason people are cruel. I know they’re afraid of me. Nobody likes being afraid,” Phoenix says. Something catches his attention on the other side of the road, briefly twisting his mouth before the expression is wiped away. “I’m used to it.”
The back of Miles’ neck prickles. His stomach feels oddly hollow. “You said that before. I don’t understand it. You’re no different from anyone else.”
There’s a choked noise and it takes Miles a moment to realise Phoenix is laughing. It bursts out of him like he’s just as surprised by the reaction, like he isn’t used to it at all. “Evidence suggests otherwise,” he says, all dry edges echoing the kind of hurt that never goes away. “Look, just—don’t worry about it. And thanks. Again. I mean it. I really didn’t steal your money.”
“I know.” And he does. Whatever Phoenix is, thief doesn’t exist on the spectrum of concepts that come close to explaining it. “Besides, as I said, there was no evidence, so why would I think it was you?”
For a long time, it seems as if Phoenix has no rebuttal. They walk together, alone together, the quiet between them charged with a sort of anticipation Miles doesn’t know what to do with. He’s said his piece, and for all that Phoenix doodles and dozes through class, he’s clearly no idiot. Giving up is a learned thing. It is a taught thing. All Miles knows how to do is the best he can with what he’s given. It’s up to Phoenix if he can do the same.
“So,” Phoenix finally says, fidgeting with the cuff of his sleeve. “If I show up with a new pair of shoes you’ll be pretty annoyed, right?”
Miles nearly trips face first into the sidewalk and it’s only Phoenix’s steadying grasp on his upper arm that keeps him from stumbling more than a couple of steps.
“Whoa, okay, that was a joke. I won’t do that again.”
Miles can feel his own pulse beating in the shape of Phoenix’s fingers long after they’ve let go of his arm. “No, it’s—it’s fine. I… wasn’t expecting you to say that,” he admits, peering at Phoenix’s abashed expression. “But yes, I will be slightly annoyed.”
Phoenix rubs the back of his head, the ghost of a smile drifting across his mouth. “Better cancel my shopping trip?”
“Is that a genuine question, or another joke?”
“Joke. Sorry. It’s sort of a bad habit.”
Miles slowly raises an eyebrow. He doubts anyone knows that Phoenix can make jokes, let alone does it enough to consider it habit. “I’ll have to get used to that, then.”
“If you want. I’ve never had a friend who was—” Phoenix cuts off, teeth digging into his lip, and he curls so tightly into himself he looks more shadow than child. “I guess… I’ve never really had a friend at all before.”
Oh, Miles thinks, several things slotting into place with such a violent crack it aches all the way down to his chest.
“Well,” he says, rallying as fast as he can, “Now you do.”
“Two of ‘em, even,” says a new voice, and Phoenix isn’t the only one who jumps. Larry pokes his head between their level shoulders, grinning maniacally as they jerk away in tandem. There’s a bulging bag of dog food clutched between his skinny arms and a healthy flush colouring his cheeks. Next to Phoenix, it’s like stepping out to the edge of time and seeing dawn and dusk side by side.
“What are you doing here, Larry?” Miles asks once he’s recovered from his heart attack.
“Aw, don’t be like that. I saw you and Nick walking together and figured I’d say hello,” Larry replies easily, hitching the dog food further up his chest with a huff of exertion. “I live in the same direction, ya know? Just wanted to make sure you were alright.” He directs the last part to Phoenix, who looks so utterly baffled it borders on gormless. “You were a complete wreck in there.”
“I, uh…” Phoenix shakes his head as if he isn’t entirely sure Larry is real. “Sorry, ‘Nick’?”
“Yeah! It’s a nickname, get it?” Larry peers at him closely. “Bet you’ve never had one of them before either. That’s really sad, y’know.”
Phoenix shrinks. “It wasn’t on purpose.”
“Good thing you’ve got me and Edgey now, then!”
“Edgey?” Miles repeats, incensed. Larry winks, smiling with his teeth on full display, and there’s a quiet snort from Miles’ other side. He rounds on Phoenix (ready to threaten the death penalty if he needs to), but Phoenix is smiling, too. A crooked little thing that takes all the anxious, distracted attention and turns it up bright, focussed on Miles like a spotlight.
It makes him look like the sun.
Larry is, admittedly, one of the few who’s abstained from tormenting Phoenix directly. He hasn’t spoken up in Phoenix’s defence before, though, and Miles has spotted the blond snickering at jokes made at the other boy’s expense.
Still, somehow, despite Phoenix’s natural reticence, Larry has a knack for cajoling more and more words from him. Nothing as direct or serious as what Miles has heard so far (if Larry is capable of being serious, Miles will eat his bow tie), but it’s not… bad. Just a different side to the boy—maybe one Miles can believe has a bad habit of making jokes. Especially after they get into a discussion about a kid’s show Miles has never heard of, and Phoenix’s manner transforms into something that most people would call reserved, but for the boy in question is practically giddy.
“I—I like Blue the best,” he admits, pulling down the zipper of his hoodie to reveal a shirt emblazoned with a bright blue… thing. It might be a head, if you squint at it enough. It’s the cheap kind of graphic T-shirt that flakes in the wash, so Miles assumes the character in question usually has more facial structure.
“Good choice,” Larry says, nodding enthusiastically, and he might actually be genuine about it. “He’s super sharp. What about you, Edgey? You watch it, too?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t watch that kind of thing,” Miles says. Immediately realises what he’s done and feels his eye twitch. “Stop calling me ‘Edgey’. My name is Miles.”
Larry sticks his tongue out. “Yah, I know, but ‘Edgey’ is more fun to say. Anyway, point is, you gotta watch the Signal Samurai. You’re missing out on so much.” He immediately launches into a rendition of the latest episode (complete with full scene acting through the medium of legs since his arms are still wrapped around the dog food), and Miles finds himself steadily more confused about the premise of the show than he was when he didn’t know anything about it.
“It really is good,” Phoenix murmurs under the tirade, sidling up to Miles as Larry attempts to jump kick a wall. Their shoulders brush together. “It’s silly, and it doesn’t make much sense if you think about it too much, but it’s… simple. It’s nice to just let something be simple, for once.”
Miles sends Phoenix a look. “It’s for children.”
Phoenix hums his agreement, something wistful breaking the edges of his smile. “It’s nice to be one of those every once in a while, too.”
Ahead, Larry trips over his own feet mid-fight scene (something about helping an old lady cross a road amidst what sounds remarkably similar to a bomb threat) and tumbles into a bush. Phoenix snorts and smacks his hand over his mouth to muffle the sound. Miles resists the remarkably strong urge to tug it away.
“I’m not sure I see the appeal,” he says dryly as Larry spits out wood and leaf matter.
“Don’t know until you try it?” Phoenix offers.
“I’m not shoving my head in a bush.”
“Well, when you say it all derisive like that it’s gonna sound like a bad idea no matter what. Each to their own, I guess,” Phoenix says, trotting off to help Larry climb back to his feet. It means he misses the way Miles’ lips twitch, and Miles certainly isn’t going to admit to it.
It does confirm one very important fact Miles hadn’t thought to consider before now, though. Miles wants to help Phoenix, but more than that, he actually likes Phoenix. He enjoys listening to what Phoenix has to say, picking out the smattering clues that reveal how he actually thinks, and while the answer isn’t particularly flattering to Phoenix himself, that disdain doesn’t appear to extend to the rest of the world.
If the world doesn’t respond in kind, well, that’s its loss. Miles decides to remember that. Remember that it’s good, it’s warm, and it’s bigger than Miles knows what to do with, but it’s sad, too, and it doesn’t make the hurt any better for the wishing.
And for the first time, when Phoenix freezes, shoves his hands into his pockets and stares down the street at something that doesn’t exist, concern overrides Miles’ lingering fear.
Larry doesn’t notice Phoenix’s sudden inexplicable predicament, bent over as he is trying to rid his hair of twigs. He notices something else first. “Oh, there you are little guy!”
Miles is spared the panic of thinking he’s the only person here not mildly insane (still under review where Larry’s concerned), when there’s a high-pitched yip in response, and Larry shifts his weight to reveal a Pomeranian at his feet.
“Thought we were getting close,” Larry says, jumping back to retrieve the pack of battered dog food from the bushes. “Look what I picked up for ya. You must be pretty hungry by now.”
The dog yips again, its tiny pink tongue hanging from its mouth and its tail wagging furiously. Delicate brown fur trails down its back, shifting to white along its underside, infinitely soft and inviting. Miles curls his hands loosely at his side and steps up to Phoenix, bravely ignoring the wide, curious (absolutely adorable) eyes following the movement.
“Are you alright?” he asks softly.
Phoenix jerks, the motion carrying him a step back. “H-Huh? Oh, yeah. I was just, um…” He casts a helpless look around. Miles follows suit, cataloguing everything in their vicinity, searching for whatever Phoenix could have spotted to upset him like this.
“Nick?” Larry finally cottons on at probably the worst possible moment. Phoenix is half a second away from bolting, and one wrong word will make the choice before they can give him room to breathe. “C’mon, he’s just a little guy. You don’t need to be scared of him. He’s the friendliest dog I ever met.”
It is, miraculously, both the right and wrong thing to say. It’s not the dog that’s the problem. Phoenix’s shoulders sag too heavily with relief, expression shuttering beneath a facsimile of the wariness he so often shows to the world as he rubs the back of his head. This isn’t a revelation. This is a secret kept hidden, and Miles, for the life of him, cannot begin to guess what it could be.
(What truth could be so terrible it would make Phoenix look like that?)
The dog, at this point, decides it’s quite done not being the centre of their attention, and rectifies this offence by trying to jump on Miles. Its paw pads are cool against his knee, claws pressing unobtrusively against his skin. It isn’t even big enough to reach his shorts.
Miles swallows down whatever noise is building in his throat with no small amount of effort.
“I, uh, I don’t really… I’ve never had a dog before,” Phoenix stutters out, shifting from foot to foot. His eyes flick to the side, teeth digging into his lip before he forces his attention back to the dog. “He won’t, uh, he won’t bite, right?”
“Nah, not in a million years,” Larry declares with the kind of certainty only a child could have and sets down the dog food so he can lift the ball of fluff right into Phoenix’s face. “Trust me.”
Phoenix blinks. The dog blinks back. Sniffs twice and licks his nose. Phoenix smiles, lips trembling, and gently touches his fingers along its chin.
Miles bites the inside of his cheek so hard he can feel the sting in his jaw.
“Told ya so,” Larry says, rightfully smug, and Miles unwillingly raises his estimation of the other boy for giving Miles the opportunity to see that exchange in person.
“Where did you find him?” Phoenix asks, stroking the back of his hand down its chest. “He’s not yours, right?”
“Nah, just happened across him this morning. I’m not sure what to do about it, to be honest,” Larry says. The dog wiggles in his grip and he sets it down, whereupon it begins circling a spot on the sidewalk, its tail wagging once more. “Somebody just abandoned the poor guy in a box a couple streets over, but my dad would freak out if I brought him home.”
“Why did you buy the dog food, then?” Miles asks.
Larry folds his arms with a huff. “You try ignoring that face. Besides, if I didn’t, all he’d have to eat is trash. I couldn’t leave him like that. It’d be too awful.”
Recognition kindles in Miles’ heart, a whisper to an answer he doesn’t yet know the question to. It’s a simple thing, to see someone in need and reach out to help. All the complexity comes from within, and it’s not wrong, perhaps, to be scared. To understand the thing you want might not be waiting on the other side, but you have to be there first to see it, because while knowing is hard, it’s the not knowing that’ll ruin you. Every time.
Something flashes across Phoenix’s face. Ferrous and disturbingly intent. Flickering like one flame touching another.
“I’m going to do something about this,” Phoenix tells them—doesn’t say, doesn’t ask—his spine straight and his jaw set. Practically daring them to disagree.
Larry stares, open-mouthed. Miles just smirks.
“Naturally,” he agrees.
Miles tries his best. He really, really does. Larry leads them to the box the dog was abandoned in, Miles finds the delivery sticker, and from there it’s a simple matter of logic and deduction. A high-rise apartment building. It’s quite far, but well within walking distance, and Larry has already supplied the perfect means to ensure they find their way home.
It's simple. It’s easy. It’s just how it should be.
Right up until it isn’t.
“Don’t you care?”
Anger rolls off of Phoenix like a taste in the air. He’s shaking from the charge of it, hands clenched at his sides and eyes sparking in the dull tones of the corridor. The dog’s owner blanches, and Miles can see her digging her fingernails into her arms where they cross over her chest.
It's very cold.
“There’s nobody left to look after him, and you’re going to abandon him just because you can’t be bothered to put in the effort? It’s not his fault. It’s not his fault you’re the only thing he has left.”
The women’s face tightens, wound with old tension and creaking sorrow. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know more than enough,” Phoenix snaps and picks the dog up with a gentleness so discordant against his rage it breathes like a miracle. “Forget it. This was a stupid thing to hope for.”
He strides off without another word. Larry and Miles glance at each other, then up at the woman, for once in their lives completely at a loss for words.
“Um…” Miles tries.
The woman slams the door in their faces.
They hurry from the high-rise apartments, breathless and giddy, unjustly pleased as much as they’re worried. Larry hops on the hood of a nearby car despite Miles’ hissed protests, but it’s worth it when Larry grins and points over to the sidewalk entrance of the apartments.
“He didn’t go far, c’mon,” Larry says, landing neatly on the concrete and jogging off, forcing Miles to do the same.
(It’s a beautiful day. The sun dips towards the horizon, casts a golden glow over the blaring lights of the city and makes it shine like the most valuable jewel that never existed. There’s green on the street corners and technicolour bursts beating against windows, pieces of lives never lived and never known echoing in the air around three boys with hearts not fitted for their bodies, with softness not fitted for the world.
Phoenix burns when he smiles and burns when he’s angry. He burns for all the hurt others have to suffer, and keeps his own hurt frozen down deep.
That’s what Miles will remember.)
They find Phoenix crouched against the wall with the dog perched on the sharp angle of his knees, hand rhythmically stroking the dog’s back, the anger gone, leaving him empty and cold. It looks like he’s talking to the dog in soft tones, and when Miles gets close enough to hear, his heart breaks a little more.
“It isn’t fair. I’m sorry, I wish I could do something to help.”
“Yo, Nick,” Larry calls. Phoenix doesn’t react at first, turning and blinking up at them when they reach him like he didn’t hear their approach.
“Hey,” he mumbles, worrying a piece of fur between his fingers. The dog presses its face into his stomach. “Sorry you saw that. I didn’t mean to get so angry.”
“Are you kidding?” Larry demands. “Dude, you were so cool back there. ‘It’s not his fault you’re the only thing he has left’, like, holy crap. I could totally hear that coming from the Signal Samurai.”
Phoenix ducks his head and rocks back onto his heels. Cups his palms around the dog’s ears and presses his fingertips into the spots just behind. “That isn’t… I was just saying what came out. I wasn’t really trying to be cool. Or smart.”
“She accepted the responsibility when she adopted the dog in the first place,” Miles says. He hands the depleted bag of dog food to Larry before squatting down beside Phoenix and sinking his fingers into the dog’s fur. It’s as soft as it looks. “She should’ve understood the consequences of reneging on that responsibility. I don’t think anything you said was wrong.”
“What he said,” Larry agrees. When Miles raises an eyebrow at him, he pouts and scuffs his shoes. “Okay, so I only caught half of it. Still think Nick wasn’t wrong. That woman was totally out of line, especially to you, Edgey.”
“She was rather rude,” Miles says. “And stop calling me ‘Edgey’.”
“It always starts somewhere,” Phoenix murmurs, more like he’s saying it to himself than anything, which is good because Miles has no idea what he’s talking about. “I should—I should go apologise. For yelling at her. Yelling at someone doesn’t make them care about things if they don’t want to.”
He says that, but he looks more like he wants to throw up than follow through.
“You don’t always have to apologise,” Miles says softly. He isn’t talking about the dog owner. Isn’t thinking about her at all, really.
Phoenix shrugs, a wry twist to his mouth as he presses the dog into Miles’ arms. “It’s not as simple as that. You can head home, if you want. I don’t know how long I’ll be.”
“Yeah, let’s just abandon you on your own in the middle of the city with a crazy lady,” Larry deadpans. “Don’t be stupid, Nick. You want us to go with you?”
“Oh. Um, no, I’ll be fine. She isn’t scary, and I don’t think she’s crazy either. Just sad.” Phoenix fidgets with the cuff of his sleeve. Hesitates. Flicks his gaze to the side again and says, “Sorry. Thanks for waiting. I’ll try to be quick.”
The dog whines and tries to follow Phoenix. Miles carefully corrals it with his hands and wrists, mindful of fur getting on his jacket, and attends to its ears the same way Phoenix did. It settles, though only a little, tail drooping and eyes fixed on the other boy’s retreating back. Miles can’t blame it.
“Nick really is kinda weird, isn’t he?” Larry asks.
Miles finally tears his gaze away to consider Larry. He was worried about Larry’s continued presence, at first. Not because of the nickname, and not because of Miles’ suspicions about his behaviour. Larry attracts trouble the way criminals attract guilty verdicts: it’s the law of things. The fire extinguisher incident, for instance, or the time Larry brought a racoon to school and the feral little thing wreaked havoc for half a day before anyone managed to catch it. Nobody knew it was Larry at the time, but a few words overheard by the wrong people, and the truth came out. Eventually, after some older kids bribed Larry into putting dead fish in the ceiling as joke, only for Larry to get caught in the act, the motto of their class (and probably the whole school), came to be.
If something smells, it’s usually the Butz.
The boy before him now has his grubby hands wrapped around the near-empty bag of dog food, nose scrunched up while he thinks, dirt and grass stains all over his shirt and arms, and a leaf sticking out of his blond tufts. He fidgets and he paces, but he holds the dog food without complaint, and he doesn’t take his eyes off the building. Miles doesn’t think he’s been alone with Larry once in the four years they’ve been classmates.
He doesn’t consider it a mistake. Some things need time, and one day isn’t enough to span a childhood. It’s just a start.
“A little,” Miles allows, because anything to the contrary would be a lie. “We don’t know him yet, though. I’m not sure you get to decide if someone’s weird or not until you know them.”
“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” Larry says and scuffs his shoes again. Miles tries not to wince. “Well, okay, there probably isn’t a good way of meaning it. But he’s a good person, ya know? It’s obvious. You just gotta look at him to know that. He just happens to be kinda weird as well.”
Miles wonders if Larry knows what it is he’s really trying to ask. There’s often a disconnect between the way Miles thinks and the way most other people his own age think, and he’s learned to accept that. Or he thought he had. It might have been resignation with extra steps and he didn’t realise it until now.
“I think,” Miles says slowly, “There might be something he doesn’t want other people to know, and it makes him act in ways people don’t expect. Or want. Or know how to react to. And it frightens them, perhaps, that they don’t understand it. People don’t like being frightened. So they take it out on Phoenix and pretend it’s okay because nobody tells them to stop.”
Larry screws up his mouth like he’s chewing the inside of his cheek, then blows out a very long breath before craning his neck back to look at the darkening sky. “That’s stupid,” he says flatly. “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
(Miles might have to eat his bow tie.)
“Yes,” Miles says. “It really is, isn’t it?”
“You think he’s alright up there?”
Fur tickles against Miles’ shin and a pink tongue swipes across his knee. He obediently returns to petting the dog. “I think we’ll be here even if it isn’t.”
Larry tilts his head to grin at Miles, brown eyes flaring gold in the sunset, and it’s like the day Miles found Phoenix bleeding on the floor when he’d been smiled at and expected to get the joke, only this time, Larry expects he’ll stay, and that will be enough. It isn’t a joke, and it’s never been funny.
Not leaving: an act of trust and love, often deciphered by children.
There might be something to that, after all, Miles thinks, turning at just the right moment to watch Phoenix come back to them, shadows clinging to his shoulders and relief lighting his features when he sees them waiting. The dog yips and bounds out of Miles’ hands to greet him.
“How’d it go?” Larry asks, back to his bright, bouncing self.
“Better than it probably should have,” Phoenix replies. He doesn’t look away and he doesn’t hesitate, but he does dim as he crouches down to greet the dog. “I couldn’t convince her to take the dog, though. She’s too… it’s too hard, I think. But I can’t take him, and if you can’t take him, Larry, I don’t really know what to do.”
Miles can’t say he wasn’t expecting this outcome. It’s still nice to think of soft fur and big brown eyes and a heart that loved Phoenix on sight, and know, without question, it’s not simply something he wants, but something also worth having.
“I will take the dog to my house,” he says, rolls his eyes when both boys turn to gape at him. “If neither of you can, it’s the only logical conclusion. I’ll ask my father if I can keep him.”
Larry leans down and smacks him on the back so hard he nearly tumbles into the dirt. “Yes! You’re the coolest, Edgey! Hear that, little guy? You get to go home with Edgey. No more smelly box for you on a street corner.” He drops the bag of food and sweeps the dog into the air, cooing and snuggling his face into its fur. The dog accepts the treatment with wide-eyed bemusement, legs scrabbling against Larry’s shirt as it barks in his ear.
“Thanks, Miles,” Phoenix says softly, grinning wider than Miles has ever seen.
Miles nods, every word he knows momentarily flying from his head. He turns away to hide his burning face, uses the darkening sky as an excuse to get his thoughts back in order. “It’s getting late. We should head home.”
“Great!” Larry wheezes as the dog kicks him in the diaphragm and springs free to circle Phoenix’s ankles. “Does anyone actually know how to do that? Because I have no idea where we are.”
Miles sighs and returns to pick up the dog food since he’s the one who’ll be taking it home. He’ll have to come up with a name for the dog, too, if it’s going to be living in his house. Hopefully. God, his father is going to be so confused.
“It’s this way,” Phoenix says, drifting out the entrance and tilting his head in the correct direction. “Miles wasn’t dropping those dog biscuits all the way here for the fun of it.”
“Oooh, I never woulda thought of that,” Larry says, crosses his arms behind his head again and sends Miles another secret grin. “You’re one hell of a dependable guy, Edgey. Good thing we have you around.”
“Yes, well,” Miles fumbles, the bag crinkling between his arms, “It’s a common method of finding your way home.”
“Pfft, like it’s obvious.”
“That’s because it is.”
“Um, the dog’s going to eat them all if you two don’t hurry up,” Phoenix calls, the dog happily scooping up a biscuit at his feet despite his meagre efforts to pull it away.
Larry squeaks and tears off after them. Miles can’t help it. He chuckles under his breath, and follows.
He somehow ends the day with a dog instead of his lunch money, a promise to watch the Signal Samurai, and two new friends.
His father takes it well, all things considered.
A few weeks later, school breaks for summer, Miles’ father loses another case, and Larry drags Miles and Phoenix to an arcade before proudly presenting them with thirty dollars.
Miles is too exhausted to ask what happened to the other eight. When Father loses a case, he never sleeps. He doesn’t even go to bed. Instead, he sits at the kitchen table and goes through handwritten notes and typed documents, flicks through photographs, strains his eyes over forms, cramps his wrist from writing, gets up to pace around their living room with his phone pressed to his ear and argues and cajoles and waits for a line that will never connect, that probably doesn’t even exist.
Miles doesn’t sleep on those nights, either. Not because it bothers him, nor does it particularly upset him. All Miles knows how to do is the best he can with what he’s given. He’s been raised on hunger, the kind that has nothing to do with food, and everything to do with the clawing, aching need to do something, to be something. It’s his blood and his bones, and it’s what shakes him apart when it isn’t holding him together, and Miles wants to be old enough already so he can understand why. Some things take time, even loving a parent, but Miles loves his father so much there are moments he can hardly breathe around it.
So he listens, and he waits, and he learns. He reads law textbooks beneath his blankets, his flashlight wedged between his chin and chest, and he endures the heat, the ache, the suffocation. Tells himself this is what you have to be, someday, so you may as well start now.
(It might even be what keeps his heart beating when he forgets what it means to live.)
“Are you alright?” Phoenix asks lowly as Larry darts in to collect his prize.
“I didn’t sleep well,” Miles replies, blinking rapidly. His eyes feel too big for his skull. The warmth in the air doesn’t fit on his skin quite right, and the constant jangling tones of the arcade machines is giving him a headache.
Phoenix grimaces in sympathy, in solidarity, and Miles almost feels guilty for a moment, considering the permanently bruised state of Phoenix’s eyes. But Phoenix lightly knocks their shoulders together and softens his mouth into a smile, and it’s just easier to pretend that it doesn’t matter to either of them.
“You want to head home?” he asks.
Before Miles can answer, Larry bursts back outside, talking so fast it all melts into one half-formed pile of nonsense in Miles’ ears. He winces and takes a step back, clumsily running a hand over his eyes. When he feels brave enough to risk his sight and sanity again, he finds Phoenix has slung an arm over Larry’s shoulders and is peering at the prize with sparkling fascination. Miles doesn’t know how to keep up with how quickly it changes sometimes; the dissonance between the world only Phoenix can see, and the world he compacts himself into where the rest of them just live.
Like how his father can spend all night fighting for someone else’s life, then be smiling when Miles comes down for breakfast as if nothing is wrong with their little corner of the world at all. Miles wants to know. He wants to know.
(He’s also terrified he isn’t ready yet.)
“Signal Samurai keychains!” Phoenix exclaims, dragging Miles back into the present with a jolt. “You’re so lucky, Larry.”
“Nah, nah, nah, my learned friend,” Larry says, waggling a finger under Phoenix’s nose. Phoenix goes cross-eyed trying to follow it. Miles regrets ever introducing Larry to that Herlock Sholmes documentary. “I deduce that we’re lucky.”
He pops the casing open and plucks out Blue (Miles was right about the facial structure), then shoves it into Phoenix’s hand. He follows with Red, and offers it to Miles with such a blinding grin Miles takes it without reservation.
It’s surprisingly heavy for being made out of cheap plastic, the key ring solid and cool against Miles’ palm. He rubs a thumb over the thick black cross that represents Red’s immoveable nature. It’s… sort of fun, how well it fits. Childish. Silly. Made for children everywhere, not just three huddled outside an arcade clinging onto simplicity as long as they can let themselves. It’s fun to imagine, though, that there’s a place meant for him where he can be at peace.
“Sense the enemies, I do. So be careful, will you? Signal Yellow!” Larry yells, thrusting himself into Yellow’s pose with the keychain clutched tightly in his fist.
“Kick the enemies to the curb, and sally forth. Signal Blue!” Phoenix continues, slightly manic between self-conscious snickers, and he doesn’t do the pose since he’s still attached to Larry, but he thrusts his other hand out, the keychain spinning wildly from his taped fingers.
Miles’ tongue feels thick and heavy in his mouth. Larry and Phoenix look over, and the abject hope in their faces solidifies something Miles wasn’t entirely aware was in danger of breaking. He doesn’t want to lose this, not the smallest, simplest of things. He wants to believe that loving and being loved isn’t something to be embarrassed about for a little longer. That it isn’t complicated. That it doesn’t need to be hidden away in the middle of the night where only dead things can find you. He just wants to be okay.
“You’re facing me, and I shall stop thee,” Miles mumbles, flushing hotly as he holds up his own keychain. “Signal Red.”
“I knew it,” Larry hisses, delighted. “I knew you’d been watching it!”
“Well, it’s… it’s alright, I suppose,” Miles hedges.
Phoenix just grins at him, eyes glowing blue and brown, blue and brown, blue and brown. Colliding in Miles’ mind to create a colour he’s never seen made of glass and dragon fire. It feels like holding the wind. Like a beautiful day made just for him.
(It feels like this is where it starts.)