you're so good to me

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/26070985.

Rating: Explicit
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: 逆転裁判 | Gyakuten Saiban | Ace Attorney
Relationship: Mitsurugi Reiji | Miles Edgeworth/Naruhodou Ryuuichi | Phoenix Wright
Character: Mitsurugi Reiji | Miles Edgeworth, Naruhodou Ryuuichi | Phoenix
Wright
Additional Tags: Established Relationship, First Time, Character Study, but its wrapped
in a layer of smut, Praise Kink, Porn with Feelings, so many feelings, in
hindsight probably too many feelings
Stats: Published: 2020-08-23 Completed: 2020-09-02 Chapters: 2/2 Words:
6750

you're so good to me
by awilix

Summary

Phoenix and Miles both have pasts with lasting effects.

Miles hadn't realised the extent to which Phoenix's were physical. Phoenix hadn't realised
the extent to which Miles's still clung to his behaviour.

They both want to make it up to each other.

Notes

so i woke up yesterday morning w the thought of edgeworth seeing phoenix's scars the first
time they get intimate and having to deal w the resulting guilt from that, Miles Edgeworth
style, and now its the next day and. i have this to show for it. ummmm enjoy i guess

edit: i've since written a phoenix pov follow-up!!

See the end of the work for more notes

 phoenix

He’d known seeing Phoenix undressed for the first time would be breath-taking. He’d known,
because their previous encounters had introduced him, through thin veneers of fabric, to Phoenix’s
broad shoulders, his strong arms, his solid middle. They had given Miles a taste for what lay
underneath, and where a taste had hitched his breath, he knew having the full course would steal it
completely.

And his lungs do empty as he watches Phoenix’s arms cross at the hem of his undershirt and
finally peel it off of his frame- but not because of the tanned thick chest underneath, flushed red
with their mutual want, which is just what he’d fantasised of and more, but because of the silver-
pale pulling tight across areas of Phoenix’s skin and catching in the low light of the room.

Strips of it at his neck, creeping down to his shoulder. Two prongs of it, raised like buttons, at the
juncture of his other shoulder. Lashes of it across his chest, cross-hatched over and over and over.

Miles had known Phoenix has scars. Both emotional and physical ones, the latter put on display
whenever he wore a t-shirt or, devastating to Miles’s nerves, rolled up his shirt sleeves. Those ones,
Miles had been told with a dry laugh, were from that time the ridiculous man had tried to take on a
burning bridge. But Miles hadn’t realised they extended this far. He hadn’t realised the severity of
the pain his favourite person had been put through. And that doesn’t just take his breath away; it
clenches a tight fist around both his lungs, and squeezes. Hard.

He reaches out before he can stop himself. His hands first go to the ones repeating themselves in
thin lines over Phoenix’s chest, like someone had taken a marker to the skin and scribbled without
care there.

Phoenix grunts appreciatively, probably assuming that’s where Miles will now paw at when they
inevitably come back together with a kiss, but it tilts upwards into a questioning noise when
Miles’s hands don’t move, and instead remain stilled over the silvery skin.

“How did you get these?...” Miles murmurs.

Phoenix’s head dips down. “Oh.” he says, before a wry laugh escapes him and ghosts across
Miles’s cheeks. “Your sister.”

Miles’s head darts up. “Franziska?...”

“The very same.” Phoenix replies, with a crooked smile.

“When?” Miles asks next, because his own sister had left permanent damage on his own partner,
and he hadn’t even known, and he wants to know how many years of guilt he has to catch up on.

“When you were on your sabbatical.” Phoenix answers, and it’s a soft murmur joined by an even
softer hand stroking Miles's cheek, because even with using an unassuming, neutral term for
Miles’s year long ‘death’, even after ten or so years of apologies, Phoenix is still cautious about
bringing it up- despite him being the most hurt over it. More hurt than Miles had ever thought, he
realises, as his hands lay over such proof, and his guilt kicks up something fierce in his entire
being.

“Don’t worry about it, though. They don’t bother me. And besides, aren’t scars meant to make
people look sexy and rugged?” Phoenix continues, with a bright, teasing laugh, the one that usually
lights Miles’s surroundings up, and then makes its way to do the same to his insides. But this time,
it doesn’t reach anything past the inside of his ears.

“I’m sorry.” he blurts out. It hangs for a few moments in the space between them, heavy. Miles can
feel the way Phoenix is looking at him right now, and it’s with more concern than he deserves.

“Hey," Phoenix says, damnably gentle and with a seriousness he usually lacks. He hooks a careful
finger under Miles's chin to get him to meet his gaze. "This had nothing to do with you."

"It had everything to do with me.” Miles urges. “I was the reason she was angry at you."

"She can be angry at me over you and not use a whip, Miles." Phoenix says, shrewd yet not unkind.
"It's the bailiffs' faults for not taking her whip away before it comes even remotely close to being
your fault. Okay?"

And no, it isn’t okay. It could never be okay, and Miles will always feel a small part of him
kneeling in permanent repentance for his past sins against Phoenix’s heart- but he doesn’t dare
admit this, or press the issue further, because Phoenix doesn’t want him to, and Miles has no right
to argue with that. It would be an insult to the countless times Phoenix has assured Miles they’ve
already reconciled over Miles’s various disappearances. It would be an insult to Phoenix’s honesty,
where he’d admitted to Miles just how much he’d suffered that one year, and hadn’t admitted,
because he didn’t need to, that his suffering extended to all the other instances Miles had been gone
too. It would be an insult to the sheer amount of forgiveness Phoenix held for people that Miles
would deem undeserving, including himself.

But that doesn’t mean Miles can’t pour his remorse into his other actions, until they’re so full with
it that it’s overspilling into the adjacent reservoirs of love and adoration Miles held for the man the
remorse is directed at. Overspilling into Phoenix’s mouth, against his neck, between his thighs.
Miles focuses so fervently on his task that it becomes his duty- a labour of love, to show Phoenix
through actions rather than words, just how much Miles is grateful for his continued presence in
the face of all Miles has put him through, whether they agree on his level of fault or not.

Phoenix, knowing or not of the extra motivation behind Miles’s ministrations, takes it happily in
his stride. They fall into a dance somehow careful yet impatient, which isn’t really surprising,
given their track record thus far. Careful with how they remove more of each other’s layers, with
how they ease themselves back onto the bed. Impatient with how quickly they bring their lips back
against each other after logistics forces them to separate, with how Phoenix scrambles to straddle
Miles’s thighs.

There are more scars on Phoenix’s own strong thighs. They’re stretched taut by the muscles
they’re etched into, but before Miles can decide what to do with this new knowledge, Phoenix is
leaning down to capture Miles’s lips between his own, and his face becomes all Miles can see.

And Miles lets Phoenix take the lead. It’s funny- he usually demands control in everything he does,
and even more-so in situations requiring any semblance of vulnerability. But with this, with
Phoenix, he doesn’t feel that need. It’s probably the remorse from before, since that had been
driving earlier actions, and it’s definitely the two or so decades of trust Miles and Phoenix have
been holding, nurturing between them.

Miles is sure he trusts Phoenix more than he trusts himself.

That’s why, when after a few blissful minutes of kissing and grinding against each other through
their boxers and Phoenix sits up and asks, not without first flushing a delicious shade of pink, if he
can ride Miles- Miles doesn’t waste time with a verbal answer. Instead he leans over into the
bedside table next to them for the supplies needed, and pulls Phoenix and then himself free from
their final pieces of clothing.

He sits Phoenix in his lap and kisses that spot he likes, just under his ear, alternating between keen
teeth and soft tongue, while he reaches round with slicked fingers, pressing in. Phoenix squirms,
and Miles doesn’t fight the shudders that run down his spine when each shift of Phoenix’s hips
provides friction right where he wants it, needs it.

The quiet of the bedroom at the late hour is punctuated by their ragged breaths, by Phoenix’s
babbling, a stream of fuck, yes, god, Miles, please, that gets louder and more insistent every time
Miles curls his fingers a certain way. It’s a lack of a quiet that Miles usually savoured, usually
cultivated, but now he doesn’t know how he could ever think he preferred silence over the sound
of Phoenix letting Miles unravel him, unravelling Miles in return without Phoenix even realising.

“I want- can I please have you now?” Phoenix asks, breathless, after a particularly desperate moan
had been invoked by Miles slotting in his third finger and pushing up and in.

“You’re sure you’ve had enough prep?” Miles asks back, a murmur against the underside of
Phoenix’s jaw, continuing the cycle of scissoring, pushing, stretching.

“Yeah- yes, I- I’m not gonna last, Miles, please-”

Miles smirks, satisfaction bleeding into Phoenix’s heated skin. “Since you asked so nicely,” he
says, and leans back down onto the bed, propping himself up with its pillows, and throws Phoenix
the lube.

Phoenix shuffles himself down the bed, slicks up a hand, and reaches it behind to envelope Miles,
slipping it up and down, the sharp coolness making Miles gasp. And he’s glad the awkward angle
makes Phoenix get on with it and quickly move onto guiding Miles into him, because heat pools
into the base of Miles’s spine so abruptly that he isn’t sure how long he himself will last. Not with
the frissons that spark through him, each one more desperate than the last, with each slow inching
of Phoenix down onto him, not with how Phoenix’s voice melts from a hiss into a tiny, huffed
moan as he crosses the barrier from discomfort to pleasure, not with the vision that is Phoenix,
chest heaving and thighs splayed, sitting on top of him.

Phoenix finally bottoms out, and their hips flush fully against each other, slotting together like two
halves of the same whole. Phoenix careens forward, eyes closed and brows scrunched, hands
bracketing Miles’s head, starting up a slow, agonising rhythm of up and down, up and down.

“Fuck, aah- Miles, you feel- hhhhhh-”

Miles pulls Phoenix down to crash their lips back together, unable to stand the sound of Phoenix
losing himself so beautifully and completely to his pleasure, because the sensation of that against
his cock alone is more than enough to threaten Miles over the edge- something he doesn’t want,
not yet. Not when Phoenix wanted more of this, and Miles wanted to be able to give him more,
because Phoenix deserves every good thing Miles can offer up to him.

When a particularly persistent moan wrenches Phoenix’s mouth apart from his own, Miles diverts
his lips and tongue and teeth to the crook of Phoenix’s neck, a mutter of “You’re so good, Phoenix,
you’re so good to me,” escaping him without first offering him a chance to stop it. It was one of
those funny instances of where the truth simply can’t be held back, he supposes.

And he thought he’d said it quietly enough for it to be lost in the rest of their noise, for it to leave
his lips and immediately dissolve into the hot-heavy air above them- but then Phoenix’s eyes snap
to his own, and there’s a fierce amount of love and want in those two-toned irises, that threatens to
ruin Miles in the split second he’s subjected to them. Ruin him, and then as is Phoenix’s creed,
help rebuild him into something better.

Luckily for him though, Phoenix scrunches those devastating eyes shut and descends his mouth
back onto Miles’s, hips rocking more urgently than before, which maybe isn’t so lucky for him,
because now Miles wants to piston his own hips up, hard, fast, in return- but he knows the second
he does that, it’s over for him. So instead of giving in to that urge, he gives into his other, and-

“God- Just like that.” he mutters, now needing Phoenix to know how much he appreciates him, not
just like this but in every facet of appreciation that could ever exist between two people. “You’re so
gorgeous, Phoenix. Just like that, love, you’re so good,”

“Mmmmiles, please, please, I-”

So Miles gives into that other urge, too, and pushes Phoenix up onto locked arms, grabs Phoenix’s
hips with firm hands, digs his heels into the mattress, and thrusts. Phoenix’s eyes burst open.

“Oh fuck, fuck, fuck!”

It’s immediately too much; the angle, the depth, the faster pace, Phoenix hovering over him and
looking like that, moving like that, everything. “Phoenix- I’m going to- I’m-” he warns.

“Do it, please, I need to feel you,”

And then it is too much, definitely too much, because just like how Miles’s life can be considered a
curve of changing proximity to Phoenix, then and now, far and close, Miles’s back arches away
and into the bed and then his release is spilling deep, deep inside Phoenix.

“Mmmmiiiiiii-” is all Phoenix manages before he jerks fully upright, head thrown back, a strangled
cry filling Miles’s eardrums as Phoenix too is lost to his own release, it spurting onto Miles’s chest
and painting the flushed skin there.

Phoenix shudders through the rest of his orgasm, before collapsing forward, causing Miles to slip
out. Phoenix’s face makes itself at home in the nook of his neck. Their breaths heave in perfect
tandem as they float back down to ground level from the impossibly high heights they were just at,
together, with each other. Eventually, Phoenix stirs, lifting his head a little.

“Mmmmlove you,” he murmurs, before pressing a chaste kiss to Miles’s jawline and lifting himself
off of Miles and the bed, probably to go fetch a much-needed towel.

The admission helps soothe a ragged part of Miles’s mind. A part that will probably stay ragged
for some time, because it became that way over an even longer amount of time- but each ‘I love
you’ from Phoenix, each gesture of such when the words aren’t said but are still felt, helps. Like
sandpaper to a rough door, like waves to a jagged cove. Smoothing out the entrance and inside to
Miles Edgeworth’s soul- the life’s work of Phoenix Wright.

Miles enjoys the view he gets with both Phoenix’s going and returning, his obviously roving gaze
earning him a raised eyebrow.

“Like what you see?” Phoenix asks, swinging the towel like a showgirl.

“As always.”
Phoenix nearly drops the towel. “Oh. As always, ha, yeah,” he parrots, with a wobbly laugh and an
even wobblier approach to the bed.

It’s Miles’s turn to raise a brow, at Phoenix’s sudden shy stumbling. “I thought I’d made that
abundantly clear by now.” he asks, as Phoenix clambers on top of him and begins wiping his chest
down.

“It’s different to hear you say it,” Phoenix mutters, somehow flushing the deepest red he’d flushed
so far that night.

Miles reaches out a hand to Phoenix’s wrist. When the man stops his work and meets his eyes, “Do
you want me to say it more?”

“Um. Only when you mean it.”

“I always mean it.”

Phoenix then makes a noise that can only be described as a badly suppressed whine. As he does
one last wipe, adamantly not looking at Miles’s face, and flings the towel into a dark corner of the
room, Miles thinks he catches the words “damn refractory period,”, and he can’t help the small
snort of laughter that ejects itself from his usually poised mouth.

And Phoenix must’ve caught it, because as he’s flopping down onto the bed next to Miles, he’s
also looking like his trembling lips are fighting back a laugh.

“I’ll file that one away for later, shall I?” Miles asks, voice a drawl.

“Shut up,” Phoenix mutters back, but with a telling fluttery huff, and so Miles’s mental filing
cabinet does some quick reorganising as Phoenix rolls over onto his stomach and flings an arm
across Miles’s chest.

As he positions himself into something comfortable, he grimaces.

Miles narrows his eyes. “Are you dripping out onto the bed,” he asks, voice flat.

Phoenix laughs, breath hot against Miles’s bare skin. “It’s your cum.” he says, and then laughs
harder at how it deepens Miles’s frown into a true scowl. He props himself onto an elbow to press
a kiss to Miles’s forehead crease. “Fine. I’ll go shower.”

Miles goes to say something, but his brain veers him towards a curt nod instead, and Miles lets it.

Phoenix raises an eyebrow. “Do... you want to join me?”

Miles has honestly never wanted anything more. “Sure. If you don’t mind.” he replies, praying he
sounds casual.

“Mind?” Phoenix echoes, grinning. “Miles, I’ve been wanting you to ask ever since I saw you pull
that face when I first asked to use your shower. I thought I’d wait though, until we’d first...” He
shrugs, awkwardly, given his lying position. “Y’know.”

And Miles would comment on the classic eloquence with which his partner always speaks, but he’s
too busy demanding an answer to an earlier statement. “What face?”

Phoenix just smiles at him. “Never you mind. Now, c’mon-” he says, hoisting himself up and
grabbing Miles’s arm. “I’ve got a shower to get, lest I spill my lover’s essence out onto his 9000-
threadcount linens, and he kicketh me out of house and home...”

Miles makes a face, it again eliciting a laugh from Phoenix. Apparently, his face is much more
expressive than he’d thought... Or maybe Phoenix is just good at reading the fine print there.

But just as his feet hit the carpet, ready to heave himself up to standing, he pauses. Some
unshakable question, born from an even more unshakable worry, is worming its way into his
brain.

“I wouldn’t...” he mumbles.

Phoenix stops and turns. “Hm?”

Miles just stares at the carpet. At how there’s a wine stain next to his usual side of the bed, the one
that he couldn’t fully scrub out, after he’d made the mistake of watching the Steel Samurai in bed
with Pess that one time and Pess’s lawless tail had sent his vintage flying from his hand.

“...Miles?” Phoenix presses, his voice gentle, a proverbial hand on a proverbial shoulder.

So maybe he’d been stalling. “I said, I wouldn’t... kick you out.” he says, finding his voice.

Phoenix’s questioning frown melts into one of concern. “Miles. I know, I was joking,” he says,
kindly, and grabs Miles by the hand again.

“You know I know that, right? That I know you wouldn’t push me away again.” he carries on,
getting right to the crux of the matter, because Miles couldn’t. Because Miles never could.

Miles looks up, meeting Phoenix’s gaze. Searching for a hidden truth behind the words, because
how could Phoenix believe that so easily, after what Miles had put him through? But he looks and
he looks, and there’s only a sincerity there. And he’d question his findings, had he not, over many
many years, become well-versed in the language that is Phoenix Wright’s eyes.

“I’m working on it.” Miles finally answers, and where his own worries would tell him that that’s
not enough, the answering smile he gets from Phoenix tells him that it is.
 miles
Chapter Notes

the unexpected and unnecessary chapter 2, babey!! this one's from phoenix's pov and
is supposed to be a vague follow-on from miles's own thoughts

edit: UHHHHH one of my fave nsfw artists tonicswater drew some beautiful and
ridiculously tender art of this chapter and ???? im so incredibly honoured.... u should
go look at it!!!!! now!! RIGHT NOW!!!!!! ok or maybe after the fic if u want,,, either
way im linking it in the post chapter notes too so no one forgets (like i do when
authors only link stuff in the pre-fic notes LMAO)

See the end of the chapter for more notes

Phoenix is sure that if Miles truly wanted rid of him, he would’ve by now. There’s a moat, a
barbed wire fence, and a fortress someone has to get through before they reach the guarded Chief
Prosecutor’s soul, and given their history, it wouldn’t be arrogant for Phoenix to assume he’s one
of the very few people who have made it inside. And the thing about having a fortress for a soul, is
that once you’re allowed in, you’re staying in- so once you’re not only in, but sharing a bed with
the man, sharing a shower with the man? Phoenix is pretty confident Miles is going to be sticking
around.

When he squeezes Miles’s hand as he pulls them both under the shower stream, he gets a squeeze
back. Sometimes, it really is as simple as that.

And there had been times where Phoenix wasn’t sure that Miles was sticking around. Times where
Miles wasn’t ever Miles, but only Edgeworth; times where he couldn’t have an emotionally honest
conversation without looking like he’d rather the floor open him up; times where anything even
remotely heart- or soul-baring was first wrapped in three layers of cryptic riddling that both
confused and exhausted Phoenix to have to answer to. (Not that Phoenix hadn’t had his own fair
share of emotional buffers he used to deploy around Miles.)

And if Phoenix were asked to pinpoint the moment when this had changed, when they’d both
suddenly mellowed out around the other, let their guards down- he doesn’t think he’d be able to.

Because as much as this change was crucial to their relationship, it was also intangible;
inexplicable. There was no single catalyst. There was no single revelation. It was instead a series of
them, tiny little jumps so tiny that neither had realised how far they’d leapt, until one day they’d
looked each other in the eyes and realised they wanted more, but that this longing for more
somehow, strangely, wasn’t new.

When Phoenix opens his eyes in the present moment, head ducked out of the waterflow, Miles
meets them with his own almost simultaneously. And when Miles brushes Phoenix’s wet hair off
of his forehead, agonisingly tender, Phoenix knows there’s nothing more to possibly want.

He smiles. “You look cold, c’mere-” he says, pulling Miles into his chest to better share the hot
stream, even though Miles’s cheeks are flushed red and there’s not a single chill to his skin for
Phoenix to feel under his hands. The movement hadn’t been an excuse to snake his arms around
Miles’s neck and press a kiss to the underside of his jaw, just like it’s still not an excuse when that
kiss lingers and inevitably deepens.

None of that matters, though, when Miles dips his head so that his lips can meet Phoenix’s own.

Phoenix grunts appreciatively when Miles parts their mouths wider and the kiss becomes broad,
lazy movements. It’s a languid warmth helped along by the shower, and it fills Phoenix from the
toes up, because he wonders if past versions of himself ever saw this reality in his future. The
reality where the Miles Edgeworth that used to hide himself behind the armour of a three-piece suit
and a deathly glare would allow himself to be so literally and figuratively naked in front of
Phoenix, where the Miles Edgeworth that used to hold on to his sense of control with a white-
knuckled fist would allow Phoenix to back him up against the tiled wall and keep him bracketed
there with both arms.

But maybe his past selves would see the reality where Miles bites down on his lower lip to
suppress the small moan that wants to make itself heard when Phoenix cants his hips up.

As much as he wanted more of the friction the movement had earned, Phoenix pulls away. “Can I
hear you?” he asks, with a shy smile.

Miles swallows, and then drops his gaze to somewhere behind Phoenix. “I’ll... yes. I’ll try.”

Phoenix laughs, a burst of warm air to act as a salve. “Hey, don’t strain yourself. I mean it more
like, don’t hold back. If you end up making a noise, don’t rein it in.” He brings a hand up to
Miles’s cheek, and strokes his thumb there. “I don’t want you to force anything for me, love. I
know you’re a quiet person.”

“Yes. Well, from what I’ve heard of you so far, it seems that opposites attract.” Miles murmurs,
and then a corner of his mouth twitches upwards.

Phoenix feels his own mouth do the same. “Attract, huh? So you like how loud I am?”

Miles just looks at him for a moment, a glint of something in those eyes. And then Phoenix can feel
a warm, soft hand wrap around him, and a thumb brush along the head.

His knees nearly buckle. “Oh, f-fuck, Miles-” he gasps.

“Mm, there he is,” Miles mutters, the pleased smile on his face making Phoenix ache with a hard
and strong need - he’s still not used to how quickly Miles can bring such a need on - but then Miles
moves his hand away to cup Phoenix’s face, and Phoenix whines from the lack of sensation.

Miles’s smile grows. “My little songbird,” he whispers, and Phoenix could just die right there and
then, but he’s distracted by the lips then moving against his own, and the thigh sliding between his,
blessedly giving his asking hips something to grind into.

And Phoenix could easily rock just like that, losing himself to Miles’s murmured words of praise
and sliding his mouth sloppily against any bit of skin he can reach until he comes, because that’s
enough for him- but he did that last time. This time, he wants to give something back.

This time, he wants to give Miles the opportunity to lose himself.

So he dips his head lower than usual, just below Miles’s neck, and begins a slow, roving cycle of
lips, teeth, tongue, tasting the sheen of sweat beginning to bead through the skin where there was
once only shower water. When he reaches Miles’s chest, he gives into something he’s wanted to do
since he saw it bare for the first time earlier that night- he cups either side up and in, and licks a
long line up in the slight cleavage it creates. Miles’s breath hitches in the beginning of an utterance,
and his back arches forward, seeking out contact where he wants it most.

So naturally, Phoenix does it again.

And he can feel the resulting rumble of pleasure in Miles’s chest, can feel the sounds that would
come out if Miles just let that tiny final part of him go, but for whatever reason, Miles doesn’t quite
let that happen.

In his mental investigation into this, Phoenix remembers the first mutter Miles had made earlier
that night- a quiet, near-silent string of praise that he’d only indulged in properly after seeing the
way Phoenix had practically preened under it. And then it had been more of the same: words of his
own pleasure spoken, but only ones that were wrapped up in encouragement for Phoenix. Even
when Miles had come, it had been a bitten-down cry.

Restrained, like he hadn’t wanted it heard.

Concern worms its way between Phoenix’s ears.

“Phoenix?...” Miles says, his voice quiet and unsure, and Phoenix hadn’t even realised he’d
stopped what he had been doing.

He looks up, and as ever, the worry is written more clearly in Miles’s eyes. “Sorry, I just-” he
starts, without thinking, and then stops. “Did you like that?” he asks.

Miles swallows harshly. “Um. Yes.” he says, but it’s with a reluctance, a discomfort.

So Phoenix gives him the most reassuring smile his face muscles can melt into. “Mmkay. Good,”
he says, and then noses deep into one of Miles’s pecs and sucks at the muscle underneath, grazing
it with his teeth in what he hopes is a reward for Miles admitting what he wants.

This time, Miles is less successful at holding himself back- a stuttered moan manages to slip out,
before he clamps his mouth shut so abruptly that Phoenix hears his teeth clatter together even over
the shower.

Mouth still busy with Miles’s chest, Phoenix blindly brings a hand up to Miles’s jaw, fumbling
with his thumb to gently press it into the clenched muscle there, easing it, as if to say, please don’t
hold yourself back for me. All Phoenix wants is for Miles to let himself go- and when he brings his
tongue’s attention to Miles’s nipple, laving it with a broad tongue, Miles groans, now completely
unhindered. So Phoenix strokes his cheek encouragingly before doing the same thing, but more
sure.

Eventually, the noise Miles is starting to let himself make becomes a force equal to gravity. It
drives Phoenix down to his knees onto the wet floor of the shower tray to move things quickly
along.

The sight he’s met with makes him take a quick mental note about Miles’s foreplay preferences on
the slowly growing list he has stashed carefully in his brain, before he’s wasting no more time and
dragging a flat tongue from base all the way to tip. Phoenix darts his eyes up. He watches as
Miles’s own flutter beautifully closed, as the perma-crease usually at home in the centre of his
forehead dissolves. Listens as a satisfied hum tumbles up from deep inside Miles’s chest to sit in
the clouds of steam surrounding them and tickle at Phoenix’s heated skin. Feels as the muscles
under his hands melt and relax.
And Phoenix continues watching the different ways Miles’s expression shifts as he moves his
tongue around Miles’s cock, seeking out what makes his partner’s face soften with satisfaction
further. As much as they know about each other, there’s also a lot they don’t, but it doesn’t take
long for Phoenix to pick up on a few things. He’s paying close enough attention. For instance-
when he swirls a tongue around the tip, Miles’s jaw slackens further. When he bobs his head as far
down the length as his throat will allow and then drags a firm tongue back up the shaft’s
underside, Miles shoves a hand into his hair and digs his fingernails in. When he tunnels one hand
round the base and laps at the head, over and over and over, Miles gasps, shudders, and finally-

“Oh, God, yes, Phoenix-”

And hearing Miles say yes to anything he offered had always been enough to send Phoenix
scrambling to do just that, so it really isn’t a surprise that this feedback loop is written at such a
profound depth in his psyche that a low, needy moan falls without warning from his tongue and
into the head of Miles’s cock. It isn’t a surprise that Phoenix can’t help the way his hands fly to
Miles’s ass as he envelopes the whole length with his lips and sucks, hard, on the way back up. It
isn’t a surprise that he just wants, and desperately so, to hear more, because that voice in that
register saying those words is enough to set every inch of his skin alight.

As if Miles can sense this, he tugs more firmly at Phoenix’s hair, eliciting another moan from
Phoenix around his dick, and begins to roll his hips in a steady thrusting rhythm, all the while
letting words of affirmation, and more importantly, noises of satisfaction, spill unbidden from his
lips. Soft, reverberating moans, interspersed with mutters of yes, just like that, yes Phoenix, that’s
it, please, and Phoenix’s new favourite, you’re so good, god you’re so good, said with such
sincerity that he feels his knees go weak and his thighs tremble. It’s lucky that Miles is somewhat
holding him up right now.

And where words are a commodity to Phoenix, they’re a luxury to Miles. If Miles didn’t have
anything he deemed worth saying, he simply wouldn’t, and that’s one of the things Phoenix loves
about him- he knows with a certainty that every word that leaves Miles’s mouth is deathly sincere.
Just like he knows that Miles’s words right now are an exact mirror of the pleasure he’s lost to,
finally lost to, and by extension, the pleasure Phoenix is the direct driving force of. It’s a kind of
love that Phoenix used to wonder if he’d ever have the honour of receiving, and it’s more
devastating than his old, late-night fantasies he used to imagine up ever were.

“You look so gorgeous like this,” he hears Miles murmur, breathless after an especially drawn-out
moan, and Phoenix’s eyes dart back up, a homing missile to Miles’s praise.

And he has to immediately shut them again, because the picture of Miles he’s gifted with- face, a
study in desire that the artist in Phoenix could paint over and over again until it was permanently
seared into his cortex, chest, flushed pink, rising and falling with panting, laboured breaths- is too
much to look at. Far too much.

Miles is taking longer to reach his peak than before, unsurprising given it hadn’t been all that long
since he’d come from Phoenix riding him senseless, but this does mean that Phoenix’s jaw begins
to ache past a point he can endure. He pops the head out of his mouth, indulging in the salacious
noise it makes, and indulging and then some in the noise of protest Miles makes that could almost
be described as a whine. Almost.

“Sorry. Jaw hurts.” Phoenix tells him, smirking, but the arrogance of it is offset by how blown his
voice is.

“It’s-” fine, Miles probably goes to say, but he’s cut off by a low, guttural groan when Phoenix
replaces his mouth with a fist, moving faster and firmer than his tongue could.
And Phoenix’s brain is too addled with want to see Miles’s final unravelling to change up his
motions to find what his partner likes best when he has his cock in his hand, and Miles wants it too
fast anyhow, so Phoenix just goes with what he does to himself when he’s on the verge of
finishing- and soon enough, Miles’s hips are canting harder into his hand, Miles’s voice is canting
higher in pitch, and Phoenix descends his mouth back down in just enough time to catch the start of
Miles’s release.

Miles’s final cry is a mesh of a curse and Phoenix’s name. It’s completely unfiltered, unrestrained,
and it splinters pleasure through Phoenix that catches sharply on his own ache for release.

This ache only deepens as he licks Miles clean and savours the sight of him post-orgasm- breaths
heaving, satisfaction relaxing every contour of his handsome face, hair pushed back and sticking to
the wall of the shower in what Phoenix really hopes had been a moment of Miles failing to collect
himself as Phoenix had worked him. And when Phoenix gets to his feet, and his own dick catches
on Miles’s thigh on the way up, this ache becomes a jolt of need cracking through him, whip-like.

A need so urgent that it’s impossible to fight down the ‘hnnfffuck’ he moans out, wavering and
strained.

“Oh?” Miles says, but he doesn’t just say it, it’s a low rumbling purr, and Phoenix knows he’s in
for it.

Miles’s arms reach out for him, pulling him in close, and he feathers a hand along the soft,
sensitive inside of Phoenix’s thigh- a place where Phoenix would normally appreciate such a touch,
would melt under it, if he didn’t want it desperately elsewhere right now.

He feels his legs go weak. He scrunches his eyes shut until he sees stars. He’s so hard it hurts.

“Open your eyes.” comes a murmur right into the shell of his ear. It’s a low, commanding rumble,
and it makes every nerve ending Phoenix has twitch.

Phoenix does as he’s told. The storm he’s met with in Miles’s own eyes immediately parts as he
does, softening the gaze around every harsh edge that he’s used to seeing in that cold, calculating
stare. Miles’s lips part with a whisper-light sigh, seemingly satisfied with what he sees.

“Beautiful...” Miles murmurs, hard to hear over the shower stream, and even harder to hear over
the blood that’s now pounding in Phoenix’s ears. Phoenix is pretty sure he actually whimpers, but,
again, hard to tell.

He definitely whimpers when he feels a hand wrap around him, right where he needs it. He’s so far
gone already that he bucks up into it, barely thinking, when it slides down his shaft.

“Ohhhh god- yes, Miles, fuck-” he groans, dropping his forehead to Miles’s shoulder as Miles
slicks his hand firmly back up, twisting at the top.

From his angle, he watches through tears as strong, pale hands stroke him all but twice before that
coil of pleasure that’s been tightly wound all this time is already jerking taut, and with a warning as
quick as a blink of an eye-

Phoenix is spilling hot white onto both his and Miles’s chests, his voice is lilting up into a wordless
moan, and his nails are dragging themselves down Miles’s back.

Miles makes a low noise of bemusement, and although he slows his motions, he doesn’t quite stop.
The bastard.
“Fuck, fuck! Miles, please-” Phoenix gasps, the overstimulation digging his nails deeper into
muscled skin, and as if Miles liked that, he nips at Phoenix’s neck as he finally pulls his hand
away.

“Sorry,” Miles drawls, sounding not sorry in the slightest.

Phoenix can’t huff even a weak retort back, because his lungs are demanding too much air. His
legs have also clearly had enough, because they’re sliding him to the shower floor before he can
stop them. He drags Miles down with him, definitely not smirking at the tiny yelp he gets into his
shoulder for it.

They sit there for a moment, catching their breaths back. Enjoying the afterglow. As he does,
Phoenix watches the shower stream ricochet off of their outstretched legs, his tumbled clumsily on
top of Miles’s.

“I think your hot water bill has suffered as much as your neighbours have tonight.” he eventually
says. He gets a swat on the thigh and a huff of a laugh in return, and he turns in just enough time to
catch that precious smirk before it melts away.

Miles’s eyelids have slid closed as he breathes deeply. Phoenix watches, a little bit enamoured,
because Miles just looks so unbelievably, blissfully, relaxed.

“Thank you for letting me hear you.” he murmurs.

Miles’s eyes crack back open. He lolls his head to face Phoenix. “I-” he starts, and then blinks.
Confusion is painting the steel grey irises there.

Realisation flickers into Phoenix’s own. He feels a smile pull at his lips. “You didn’t even know
you were doing it, did you.”

“I- Well... that is to say...” Miles tries, commendably, but soon gives up, flopping back against the
tiling. “No. No, I don’t think I did.” he admits, but not unsatisfied.

Phoenix’s smile breaks out into a full grin. “Now that is a compliment. For what it’s worth, you
sounded really hot. I like knowing you’re into it, y’know?”

“So you like having your ego stroked.” Miles says, smirking.

Phoenix droops his eyes into a half-lid, and hums. “Amongst other things. And only by you.”

“So romantic.” Miles mutters, aiming for exasperation, but his glittering eyes betray his
amusement. He starts up a swirling thumb on Phoenix’s thigh. “I think... only you could draw that
out of me.”

Phoenix watches the hypnotic movement from under his lashes. “Really?” he murmurs, sensing
there’s more to that statement than meets the eye. It had the usual weighty quality Miles’s voice
takes on when he’s about to let Phoenix in.

“Mm.” Miles affirms, nodding once and slow. “I... don’t want to discuss it in detail right now, but, I
think you started the slow process the moment you’d gotten... him, out of my life. The rest just took
some time.”

The thumb stops its circling, and when Phoenix looks up from it, Miles’s eyes are searching his.

Phoenix cups one of his cheeks. “And look at you now, huh?” he says, softly.
 Miles’s breath hitches ever so slightly, but before Phoenix can ask if he’s okay, Miles is leaning in.
Phoenix meets him halfway.

The resulting kiss is wonderfully lazy, the kind that features slow, imprecise tongues, enjoyed best
when both parties are already blissed out beyond care. One of Miles’s hands anchors itself at the
back of Phoenix’s neck, the thumb stroking the damp hair there, and Miles hums into their mouths,
completely and utterly content.

When they pull away, there’s a small, soft smile on Miles’s face. It’s unbelievably pretty. Miles
always has had a lovely smile, though, one that Phoenix has chased to see ever since he was nine
years old and helplessly in love with his best friend. One that used to break his heart every time he
saw how Miles nearly always suppressed it, which over the past ten or so years Miles has had, has
been a harrowing amount.

But seeing Miles’s smile now, the way it actually reaches his eyes, the way it softens his entire
face, any worries Phoenix had dissolve under the billowy steam of the bathroom and under the lips
that once more move against his.

Chapter End Notes

reminder to go look at tonicswater amazing art !!!! thank u again adam if ur readin
this,,,

End Notes

since this is my first time posting smut i am feeling exceptionally self consciousé rn but i
hope ppl enjoyed !! and just to REALLY relinquish myself to the terrifying ordeal of being
known, heres my twitter and tumblr
anyways i do normally hc their first time(s??) as something a lot more fumbling than this
but hey i wanted to focus on the character study side of things so the sex ended up pretty
streamlined. consider this a retrospective sorry:(

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