A/N: Thanks for checking out my one-shots! It was one heck of a busy week when these were written, but I think they turned out okay regardless ;) I'll be posting one every day!

Prompt: Fairy Tales

Notes: I wrote this one in an hour and a half ahaha.

A Different Kind of Magic

"Whatcha readin'?"

Miles looked up from his reading to see the bright blue eyes of his friend peering at him over the top of the book. Phoenix looked bright and cheerful today. Then again, he nearly always looked bright and cheerful.

"It's… it's nothing," he said hastily, putting the book down flat on his desk and then laying his arms over it. His face heated up.

"Aw, come on, Miles, lemme see!" the other boy pleaded. He was doing that expression where his eyebrows were all drawn up in the middle. Miles could never say no to that expression.

Reluctantly, Miles lifted his arms and showed him the cover of the book. He supposed it wasn't that big of a deal, as Phoenix and he were the only ones left in the classroom after the bell had rung.

"Grimm's Fairy Tales," Phoenix read off. "Huh. That's not usually the type of thing you read."

"I know," he said, embarrassed. "It was… recommended to me."

The other boy widened those deep blue eyes of his. "By who?"

You mean 'whom,' Miles thought to himself, but what he said was "Well… Father, actually."

"Mr. Edgeworth recommended you read a bunch of fairy tales?" Phoenix exclaimed, resting his hands on Miles's desk. "That doesn't sound like him at all!"

"What he actually said was 'You ought to read something meant for children your age, Miles,'" he confessed with a sigh. "This was just… the first book I found in the Youth section of the library..." Ordinarily, Miles wouldn't be caught dead in the youth section. He was past such things, thank you very much.

"Hmm," said Phoenix, nodding. "Well?"

Miles blinked at him. "Well what?"

He grinned. "What do you think of the fairy tales?"

"Oh..." Miles frowned down at the little blue book. "They're… unrealistic."

"Well of course they are!" he laughed. "They're fairy tales. That's the point."

"No, I mean… I'm not talking about the magic or the fairies," Miles clarified, shaking his head. "I'm talking about… other things." His face prickled with heat again. He hoped Phoenix wouldn't ask any more.

"What do you mean?" he asked, of course, tilting his head. "What kind of other things?"

He sighed, flipping through the pages idly and resting his chin in one hand. "According to this book, people can meet and fall in love immediately, like it's a foregone conclusion they'll be together. They don't have to question it. They just are." He looked up at Phoenix. "That's not how the real world works at all." At least, not as far as Miles knew.

"Hmmm..." Phoenix looked thoughtful, bringing a hand to his chin. "Well, maybe love is a kind of magic in those stories," he suggested. "You said you didn't question the magic, right? So maybe they know they're in love the same way they know they can do magic."

Miles stared. He hadn't thought of it that way before. But Phoenix Wright often had a way of saying things that left him disarmed. "I suppose..."

"Plus, I dunno," the other boy continued, shrugging and tucking his hands into his pockets. "I think sometimes it can work like that. Like, I knew right when you stood up for me that we'd be friends forever!" He smiled, a smile that was warm like sunlight.

"I… I still say they're silly stories," said Miles, averting his eyes. He didn't know what to think about how that smile of his made him feel.

"Maybe you just need to experience them in a different way," Phoenix said.

"What do you mean?"

And then the other boy was tugging him gently out of his seat. "C'mon, I'll show you!"

"Wh—where are we going?" he sputtered, though he let his friend pull him along, grabbing his book-bag from the back of his chair before Phoenix could get him too far.

Phoenix looked over his shoulder at him and grinned. "Someplace we can see magic happen!"

"Magic happens in your family room?" Miles asked as he took his seat on the pillow Phoenix had laid out for him on the floor.

"Well, not exactly," said Phoenix with a bit of a laugh, pulling up a cushion for himself as well. "It'll happen on the screen." He rose up on his knees to push a video cassette into the VCR, and then flopped back down onto the floor. "Watch closely, Miles," he said, his eyes fixing on the screen reverently.

They sat through the entirety of Sleeping Beauty—all the musical numbers, all the silly dancing woodland creatures, all the plump fairies and the evil queen. Miles looked over at Phoenix occasionally. His face was all lit up, his eyes following the movements on the screen avidly and his mouth twitching into smiles whenever anything good happened. Miles watched the movie as best he could, but really, it was a little difficult when Phoenix kept grabbing his arm to say "Watch this part!" or "Oh, this part's my favorite!" or "Isn't that dragon awesome, Miles?!"

Miles had to admit that the dragon, at least, was pretty awesome. The scene where the prince had fought the villain was definitely the most interesting part of the movie.

But when the prince knelt over and kissed the sleeping Aurora, Phoenix turned to him and grinned, his eyes sparkling, and Miles's heart lurched like he had missed a step going down the stairs. He was glad the family room was not brightly lit—his cheeks felt like they might be blushing. "Wh-What?" he got out. "What's that look for?"

Phoenix nodded at the screen, then looked back at Miles. "See? Magic."

Indeed, the kiss magically solved all the problems in the story. Miles didn't really see how kissing someone while they slept was supposed to prove that you really loved them. Personally, Miles thought that the prince slaying the dragon had been an adequate demonstration of his feelings.

The other boy raised his eyebrows at him eagerly when the credits rolled. "Well?" he prompted. "What did you think?"

"The… the art was good. I liked the dragon," he mumbled weakly.

Phoenix groaned and rolled his eyes. "I'm not asking about the art, Miles. I'm asking if you liked the movie overall."

Miles thought a moment. The movie really hadn't been his cup of tea. He had found the music unnecessary, and some of the characters were clearly only there for comic relief. But when he looked at the smiling face of the boy next to him, remembered his excitement during all the plot developments and how earnestly he had shared this movie with him, all he could blurt out was "I-I had fun."

His blue eyes danced, and he smiled even wider. A smile spread across Miles's face too, before he could even think about it.

"I gotta show you The Little Mermaid sometime," Phoenix said then. Miles sighed.

He wasn't sure why he let Phoenix show him 2 more movies, or how he was able to convince him to call his Father and ask to spend the night.

Maybe some things just couldn't be explained.

Or maybe Phoenix was a kind of magic, too.

"Remember the first time we watched this?" Phoenix asked him 26 years later, as they sat on their couch. Trucy was sprawled between them, her head having lolled onto her father's shoulder while her legs were across Miles's lap.

Miles snorted. "Yes. It's as silly now as it was then."

"What? I thought you liked it back then!" his husband protested. "You said it was fun!"

"It was fun because you were there," he said plainly, shrugging.

"I don't know whether to be disappointed or flattered," Phoenix muttered, though from the sound of his voice he had settled on "disappointed." He sighed and glanced down at his teenage daughter. "All right, then, Mr. I'm-Too-Cool-for-Disney-Even-Though-I-Like-Kids'-Shows," he said. "How are we getting out of this arrangement?"

Miles looked down at the legs in his lap. "Hmm," he said. "I'm afraid I can't think of any solutions that don't involve nudging her awake or carrying her off to her room." Trucy had had a long week, performing every night at a theater, and she was uncharacteristically snappish lately if anyone disturbed her slumber.

"I've got an idea," Phoenix said then, his lips twitching into a smile.

"What's—" His question was cut off as his husband leaned over (gingerly enough to not shake Trucy off his shoulder) to pull the back of Miles's head towards him and kiss him softly on the mouth. A light and feathery sensation that Miles was finally able to identify fluttered in his chest. "What was that for?" he asked when Phoenix pulled back to rest his forehead against Miles's.

In answer, Phoenix held a finger to his lips and then pointed down at Trucy, who was stirring and lifting her head off her father's shoulder, rubbing her eyes and groaning.

"Did I fall asleep?" she mumbled, her eyes bleary and only squinted open.

"Yes," Phoenix answered. "Do you need help getting to bed, sweetheart?"

"Don't be silly, Daddy; I can do it myself," she said with a huge yawn, sitting up and stretching before rising from the couch. She waved at the two of them. "G'night, you two. Love you," she murmured before shuffling off.

"Love you too, Truce," Phoenix called after her. And then he turned his eyes to Miles's again, his own dancing the same way they had all those years ago. "See? Magic," he said, and Miles wondered if he was alluding to the first time he'd said that, back when they were children.

Miles rolled his eyes, but smiled back. When he was a young boy, he'd thought that Phoenix himself was magical. But now he knew how to explain it: this magic was the same kind that had woken the princess; the same kind that didn't really accomplish big, grandiose things in real life but instead slowly changed a person from the inside out; the same kind of magic that Phoenix had been inspiring in him for so long.

He pulled his husband close, and kissed him again. When Phoenix responded by wrapping his arms around him and smiling between kisses, Miles thought perhaps Phoenix and the fairy tales had been right all along, even if the real thing still took much longer than in stories...

Love truly was like magic sometimes.

A/N: Next time: Habits!