Chapter Text
Phoenix wasn’t sure at first whether to keep staring at the newspaper or tear it into pieces, but he decided to stare. Miles looked exactly how he expected him to, the lonely guilty nights when he wondered what his first love was up to these days, but the picture couldn’t have been him, not with the article that accompanied it. Miles wanted to be a defense attorney, just like his dad, to defend the innocent and fight for justice, and the kind boy he remembered couldn’t possibly have grown into someone they called a demon. The eyes were the same, though, and he still had those tall bangs. Phoenix wondered if they still fell into his eyes when he ducked his head forward, embarrassed. He wondered if he still had that Signal Samurai keychain, if he watched the spinoff he saw ads for on the bus, if had any friends who would sit and listen to him talk about it for hours just to hear his voice full of joy.
He wondered if Miles’ soulmate wrote back.
He still wrote on his arms sometimes, misspelling things and leaving out punctuation as frequently as he could, because while he never wrote anything of his own, Phoenix’s soulmate always found time to correct the messages he left. It felt nice, sometimes, to know that someone was reading what he wrote, no matter how weirdly personal. His soulmate knew that he was in love with his childhood best friend, that he felt as if he only had one friend left in the entire world who he rarely talked to now that he was at art school, that he wasn’t sure some days why he got out of bed.
Phoenix’s attention drifted back to the paper in his hands, and more specifically the photo on the page. Miles was wearing a very fancy looking suit, colorful and edged with gold thread, and he wondered what kind of fabric it was, what it would feel like under his hands. His right hand drifted down from the paper, ghosting over his boxers, and he remembered with a lurch that his roommate was going to the museum with his class and wouldn’t be back until late. For the first time in weeks, he was completely alone in his room, would continue to be alone for hours, and his dick was filling up.
He looked back to the picture of Miles, the same age as him and definitely not the little kid he last saw, and wondered what he looked like under that fancy suit jacket. He probably stayed in shape, enough to be lean but not so much that he’d be a mass of muscles. He imagined how it would feel to run his hand over Miles’ chest, fingers trailing across smooth skin and moving lower, over his stomach, towards wiry gray hairs and-
Phoenix groaned, pulling hard on his dick as his mind continued to wander. Miles was smirking in the photo, and he imagined him teasing. Miles was always so proper, his vocabulary was leagues beyond a normal kid’s, and Phoenix wondered if that would apply when Miles had his hands down his pants, stroking his dick. He didn’t know how a smart and sophisticated lawyer would do dirty talk, but he thought Miles might ask him if he was truly so hard from a few light touches and a smirk. He’d ask if Phoenix wanted something more, tracing fingers around his lips, and Phoenix looked at the paper in his hands and whined pitifully, wishing he had both hands free but unwilling to stop looking at Miles.
Phoenix then stopped jerking off long enough to smack himself in the face and roll over, laying the newspaper on his pillow and sitting back on his heels to keep going. He stuck the fingers of his newly free hand in his mouth, pressing his tongue down, and moaned. The Miles in his imagination wasn’t smirking anymore, he was panting, mouth open and eyes screwed shut in pleasure, as Phoenix imagined wrapping his lips around Miles’ cock and sucking. He would moan, deep and low, as Phoenix stuffed his mouth full and stayed there, nose buried in the pale hair of his crotch, rolling his tongue over every inch of dick he could reach.
Phoenix tried to imagine the feel of a cock on his tongue as he shoved his fingers further into his mouth, pulling his lips over his teeth to make sure Miles was comfortable while he fucked his face, and moaned harder as his other hand sped up on his dick. He wondered if Miles would grab his hair, pulling at the spikes as he thrust into Phoenix’s mouth, forcing his head down onto-
He gasped around his fingers as he came to the thought of Miles’ hands in his hair and his cock in his mouth, and collapsed bonelessly onto his bed, angled to miss the new wet spot. It took a full minute for his breathing to slow down, and as he calmed he wondered why his first thought in that fantasy was to suck Miles’ dick instead of the other way around. He thought it was normal to imagine yourself being pleasured while masturbating, but in his post-orgasmic haze he didn’t really care if his fantasies were normal or not. When he finally pushed himself up enough to look over at the paper, he groaned to see Miles’ nice suit jacket covered by dripping white, though at least the thick paper had prevented any from getting on his pillowcase. He’d have to sneak a new paper from the stack next to the cafeteria, if he was going to do this again.
When he caught himself thinking that, Phoenix’s stomach lurched, and he flopped over to bury his face in his pillow and groan. What was he doing ? Knowing he had a crush on his childhood friend was one thing, but masturbating to a picture of him was a level of creepy associated with stalkers. Miles wasn’t even his soulmate.
Thinking of his soulmate always made his heart seize, and Phoenix turned his head to look at his bare arm. He hadn’t written anything today, and his soulmate hadn’t done anything but proofread his writing since their conversation on his birthday, but his thoughts always drifted back to them. Even if his soulmate insisted they were platonic, he had a recurring fantasy of them changing their mind and sweeping him off his feet in a dramatic romantic confession. Every time it played in his mental theater, he hated himself for it, because his soulmate was very clear on their thoughts on their relationship, and now he was projecting his ridiculous needy personality onto his memories of Miles too. He was pitiful though, and knew himself well enough to tell he couldn’t stop himself from pining no matter how hard he tried.
Groping off the side of his bed for the nearest box of tissues, Phoenix made a decision. He might not be able to stop pining completely, but he could certainly focus himself. His soulmate was off limits, but Miles was out there somewhere, all alone. The papers were calling him a demon, but Phoenix knew that couldn’t be the case, and he had to find him again to prove it. He was sure that if he could just talk to Miles and find out what happened to him, why he vanished eleven years ago and never answered any of his letters, he could stop being the kind of person that got called a demon, and Phoenix could have his best friend back. Maybe even be more than friends, if Miles’ soulmate was okay with that.
Maybe they could meet if he was in the legal system too...