Surviving You
Chapter Ten

At least Trucy was now safe from any prying eyes, Phoenix told himself. No matter who the cameras had belonged to, he hadn't wanted them watching her. The camera in his bedroom... He considered finding a way to cover it up - maybe move a really tall shelf into the corner, maybe plaster over it. But then again, if he covered up every hidden camera in the place, that would make it too obvious that he knew what was going on. He considered his bedroom privacy an acceptable casualty.

Especially if it really was Kristoph watching him. Kristoph had already seen anything that might happen in his bedroom anyway. In fact, Phoenix was slightly tempted to really give him something to watch.

He was angry. He knew he should be scared, with the implications that were now raised about all the strange things that had been happening in his life in the last year, but he just couldn't manage it. No one could fuck his life up more than it already had been, right?

It was a measure of how angry he was that he was letting four-letter words creep into his inner monologue.

Gumshoe had been busy (for real, for a change) with an investigation when Phoenix had called about the bug sweeper, and hadn't been able to offer much other than the sweeper itself and an encouraging "Good luck, pal". Phoenix needed him, though, for the next part of his plan. Now that a few days had gone by and he had some new observations, he tried again.

"Hey, pal - get any results?" Gumshoe greeted him.

"Yeah... some kind of surprising ones, at that," Phoenix told him. "There are at least three other cameras hidden in my apartment - two of them actually embedded in the walls and the ceiling."

"No kidding?" Gumshoe sounded wary. "And you're talking about it on the phone with the police?"

"...I'm calling from a few blocks away," Phoenix explained. "Listen - I was able to remove the camera that wasn't impossible to move without notice. Are you still busy with the murder investigation? Or stuck witnessing at the courthouse or anything?"

"Naw, it was all tied up yesterday evening - it's been ruled a suicide, so there won't be a trial. Big waste of my time, pal."

"Hmm... so you might have time to run a check on some prints, if I can get them?"

"Sure thing! Should I come pick it up?"

...Hadn't Gumshoe just warned him not to even talk to an officer on the phone in the apartment? "Uhm, no. Actually, I thought I'd bring it down to the precinct for you."

"Sounds like a plan."

Phoenix paused. "Seriously, Gumshoe... I really appreciate you helping me out like this. Especially since it's not officially police business."

"Don't worry about it," Gumshoe assured him. "It's like this, okay? I sort of owe you one, since I kind of messed up things between you and Mr. Edgeworth. And even if he didn't say so last time we talked, I bet he'd still want me looking out for you. Besides, investigating cases with you was always pretty interesting."

Apparently Gumshoe had forgotten that they used to be on opposite sides, Phoenix observed. ...Or maybe it was wishful thinking. "Yeah... likewise," he replied honestly. He really did miss those days. "So I'll see you in about an hour, okay?"

"Yup! You know where to find me."

Phoenix had been considering, ever since he removed that book from the shelf, how to best transport and test the camera without letting it be obvious that it had been discovered, and he thought he had an answer. Back at the apartment, he stuffed a length of thin black cloth in his front pocket (Trucy's hobby was coming in very handy), grabbed the box that he'd put all those extra books in, and started sorting them by subject on the bedroom floor. Or at least stacking them in such a way that it looked like he was sorting them - it was all for show, after all. He left 'The Art of Cross-Examination' right on top when he repacked the box, then picked it up to carry it downstairs. ...His plan hadn't accounted for how heavy a box full of books was, and he decided he was going to take the bus.

Not that it mattered. Either way, once he was en route, he opened the box again and slipped the black cloth over the books, so that the camera would see nothing but darkness as he grasped the front cover through the remainder of the black cloth - his own fingerprints were already on the book, but there was no need to muddy the results further - and flipped it open. Sure enough, the center of the pages had been cut out, and inside was a little cylindrical camera with a red glowing LED and what he assumed to be a transmitter, both attached to a small battery pack. Fortunately, this wasn't exactly rocket science; Phoenix just wrapped a corner of the cloth around the cord leading from the camera to the transmitter, and yanked it out. The red LED went dead - and then for good measure, he removed the batteries, leaving them loose in the cavity of the hollow book. That was that.

He shouldn't have been surprised when his cell phone rang shortly after he'd gotten off the bus, making him set down the box to answer it. "Hey, Kristoph."

"Good morning, Phoenix. Are you still at home?"

He was pretty sure that Kristoph knew damn well he wasn't at home. "Nope - I had some errands to run this morning. What's up?"

"Another slow day... I was thinking I might stop by." A pause. "Will your errands take long?"

"Hard to say," Phoenix admitted. "I've got a box of Mia's old law books that I was going to see about getting rid of, so it depends whether or not the pawn shop wants to do any negotiating."

"I see..."

Kristoph sounded so casual, Phoenix wanted to grind his teeth. "I thought I might just do some wandering around downtown, too," he added. "It's been awhile since I had some time to myself."

"You're not in the mood for another lunchtime rendezvous, then?"

Phoenix made himself chuckle. "It hasn't even been twenty-four hours, Kristoph. Am I really that irresistable? I'm sure you can skip a day - you've skipped an awful lot recently, in fact."

"Then I might be excused for wanting to make up for lost time."

Why did he have to be so smooth about this? Phoenix almost could believe that all of this was no more than coincidence. "Nah, sorry - I'm already downtown. Maybe tomorrow, okay?"

"Perhaps. We'll see how busy I am, here at the office."

Yeah, whatever. "Sounds good," Phoenix told him, trying to sound cheerful. "If you're too busy, though, I'll understand." Oh yes - he would understand, all right.

The black cloth was still partially wrapped around the book when Phoenix pulled it out of the box in the relative privacy of a little cubicle - it was probably best not to let Gumshoe get more fingerprints on anything either. "It's just like I figured," he said, lifting up the cover to show off the little camera. "Nothing's transmitting now, since I unplugged it and took out the batteries, so we don't need to worry about what the person on the other end might be seeing."

"Good call," Gumshoe muttered, looking over the device. "Boy, someone really is out to get you, if they did all this. Guess you want me to check for the Gramaryes again?"

Phoenix hesitated. He'd actually almost forgotten that they were a possibility, let alone the prime suspects, as far as Gumshoe knew. "Yeah, check for the Gramaryes. But..." He didn't want to have to say it, but he did. "...Check for Kristoph Gavin too."

"Mr. Gavin?!" Gumshoe exclaimed. "But aren't you and he, uh, you know..."

"Yes," Phoenix said flatly. "Check it anyway."

"...Whatever you say," Gumshoe agreed, though still visibly puzzled. "Want to wait here, or should I call you when I have results?"

"Call me - I've got some other things to attend to in the neighborhood, though, so if I finish before you do, I'll come on back."

Actually, Phoenix only had one other thing to attend to. "Sorry, Mia," he murmured, glancing up to the sky warily as he approached the used bookstore on the next block. "I know these were probably expensive... but think of it this way - maybe it'll help some poor kid who wants to be a lawyer someday."

That was something Mia would approve of, he was sure. And hey - maybe someday, if he found out who it was that forged that evidence and blamed it on him, he'd get his badge back. And maybe then he'd take on some broke law student with nowhere else to go, like she'd done for him, and start growing the firm just like she'd wanted. Maybe it would even be the same kid who bought some of these books.

It was a wistful, pleasant sort of thought, which left Phoenix with no desire to try to negotiate a better price - the bookstore owner seemed to be giving him a fair deal anyway. He was nearly in a good mood again, especially after he'd gone to muse on thoughts of the future in the park near the precinct. A little overcast, but a nice enough day to sit outside and daydream.

His good mood vanished when his cell phone rang - it was Gumshoe. "Hello?"

"Hey, pal..."

Gumshoe sounded a little odd. "Something wrong?"

"Well, uh... we got some good prints, someone who wasn't you this time... and then we got some results," Gumshoe mumbled.

Phoenix thought he sounded uncertain. He could guess why, since he'd already had a pretty good idea of what they'd reveal. "They were Kristoph's, weren't they?" he sighed.

"Huh? No - Mr. Gavin's fingerprints weren't anywhere on the thing. Or even on the book."

"...Really?" Phoenix was puzzled. Gumshoe wouldn't be so weird if it was anyone else under suspicion, so... "Whose were they, then?"

"Does the name Rick Taylor mean anything to you?"

Phoenix thought about this for a moment. "I don't think I've ever heard that name before, no. Should it mean something to me?"

"I sure hope not, pal. That's the guy whose death wasted three days' worth of my time this week."

"Wha..." Phoenix didn't even know what this was supposed to mean. "But... What you're saying is, the guy who put these cameras in my apartment is dead?"

"Yeah. And it's a good thing we didn't get these results before the guy turned up dead - 'cause if I told you this guy was responsible for bugging your apartment, and then he turned up dead? You'd be suspect number one."

"Huh...? I thought you said it was ruled a suicide, not a murder."

"It was only ruled a suicide because we can't figure out how anyone else would've done it," Gumshoe admitted. "The only possible suspect was his girlfriend, and she was the one who called the police when she found the body. Last night we verified her alibi, and that left us with nothing."

This was just getting too weird. "So this guy I've never heard of planted cameras in my apartment," Phoenix repeated, "and then he killed himself?"

"Looks like it. But maybe it wasn't him that put it in the apartment, now that I'm thinking about it..."

"What do you mean?"

"How about you come back to the station?" Gumshoe suggested. "I'll tell you some more, show you some pictures, see if it'll jog your memory."

"I guess... But Gumshoe?"

"Yeah, pal?"

"...You're not making me suspect number one now, are you?" With Gumshoe, you could never be too careful.

The man in the picture Gumshoe showed him when he got to the station looked like he may have been vaguely familiar. Maybe Phoenix had seen him once, some time ago. And though he didn't remember where, he had a feeling that he might know anyway. "What did he do?"

"You mean, that we have his prints on record? Or what did he do for a living?"

Phoenix shrugged. "A little of both, I guess."

"Let's see... he was basically one of those guys who led sort of a double life," Gumshoe began. "Worked part time at an appliance shop, his boss said he could fix about just about anything people brought in. He wasn't just good at fixing things, either - he was really good at, well... making things do stuff they weren't intended to do."

"Huh?"

"He'd mess with the parts, make things work even when they should have been dead, give them a different function. And that was just the stuff he was doing at his day job - he was really making money doing things like this on a larger scale on the downlow, in the private sector. He'd rig up all kinds of things for whoever had money, and didn't care what they were using them for. There was this arson case a couple years ago... a modified lighter was the source, and we traced some of the parts back to him. So we hauled him in, got his prints, questioned him, found all the components and a whole lot more at his apartment... but he wasn't the one who started the fire. He'd just modified the lighter to work on a remote, at a client's request, and after he got his payment, he didn't think about it again. How was he supposed to know someone was going to use it to set a building on fire, right? And it wasn't like he stole any of the parts, or was using something illegal to make the thing - just standard components. So he wasn't charged with anything in the end, but he was given a warning about the kind of jobs he accepted. Not that he paid any attention, judging from what we found at his place when we arrived this last weekend."

"...I see." Well then, the connection seemed pretty obvious. "So most likely, someone contracted him to find subtle ways to hide a bunch of little cameras in my apartment. ...He might even have been there at some point while the construction was going on, but I was hardly ever there while they were working. Too dusty."

"So it could have been one of the workmen?" Gumshoe pondered. "Or someone disguised as a workman?"

Phoenix didn't reply. It was still possible that it was someone else, but...

"...What's up, pal? You're all quiet suddenly."

"There's no way to trace who contracted these cameras now that he's dead, is there?"

"Probably not," Gumshoe admitted. "He was pretty good at covering his tracks, too. There were invoices, but all the clients were listed by code words, with no contact info. Probably kept it all in his head."

So basically, Phoenix had to go with the most logical assumption. It was just... "No matter how sure I might be about who did this... I can't prove it."

"Hey, no giving up yet," Gumshoe told him. "We can get more info - maybe if we get those other cameras out of your place-"

Phoenix shook his head. There was one other thing. "How did Taylor die?"

"Eh, it was poison. Atroquinine - even a tiny amount will kill someone within minutes. Looks like he took just enough to do the job, because there wasn't any trace of the stuff throughout the rest of his apartment."

"And you ruled out someone else having done the job, and removing any evidence?" Phoenix continued.

"Only his prints and his girlfriend's were on either side of the doorknob - and since they were there, and not smudged, we can be pretty sure no one else came in or out. Unless they used the window, but probably not from the eighth floor."

"But you thought it was a murder at first?"

"Well, yeah - who kills themselves with atroquinine?" Gumshoe offered a shrug. "The guy had plenty of cheap over-the-counter painkillers and stuff in his bathroom cabinet, and atroquinine doesn't exactly pop up all over the place. And his girlfriend said he hadn't shown any signs of depression. Considering she was our only suspect if he had been murdered, she must've really meant it."

"You investigated the case..." Phoenix leaned forward on the desk, fixing his eyes on Gumshoe seriously. "In your honest opinion - do you really think Rick Taylor killed himself?"

Gumshoe leaned back warily, scratching his head. "What is this, pal - a cross-examination?"

...Oh yeah - not a lawyer anymore. Phoenix settled back. "Sorry. But do you?"

Gumshoe reluctantly shook his head. "Something about it all seems really off. We just can't find any evidence it was anything other than suicide, or anyone else to suspect, so..."

His voice trailed off, and Phoenix nodded. He had been getting a really bad feeling about this whole thing, and now he was sure he was justified. "So let's get this straight now, where we're at," he stated. "Someone wanted cameras placed in my apartment. They contracted Taylor to do it. His prints are on the camera." Gumshoe nodded - so far so good. "And now, he's dead. Probably the only person who could have told us who asked for the cameras - and he's dead via poisoning."

"Yeah... that's pretty much exactly what I was thinking," Gumshoe agreed, though he didn't look at all happy about it. "But you know... he looked like he kept himself pretty busy. Even if it was somehow a client of his that did him in, we couldn't know which one. His invoices indicated he'd just ordered a whole bunch of those little cameras - like a dozen of 'em. And they must've been popular, because we didn't find a single one in the place."

That was a disconcerting thought. "...So there could be more in my apartment?" It was possible, Phoenix thought, maybe if they were camouflaged by something else electronic... In the TV, in the phone...

"Nah, I don't think they were all aimed at you," Gumshoe assured him. But then, a second later, he looked uncertain.

"...What?" Phoenix asked, when he didn't explain.

"Huh?"

"What was that look for?"

"Oh, I was just thinking... I might have seen someone else using one of those recently, even. Well... not too recently now, I guess."

"Heh. Matt Engarde?" Phoenix assumed. "That was my first thought."

"No, more recent than that. And Engarde's still locked up good and tight, in case you were wondering. That's not likely to change." Gumshoe leaned back in his desk chair, resting his hands behind his head, swivelling idly. "I wonder if it was a camera like that that took those pictures of you and Mr. Gavin. I was wondering why you'd ask about Mr. Gavin's prints - but maybe whoever's watching you is watching him too..."

Phoenix had to wonder if it was bad of him to be relieved by the idea that both he and Kristoph were in danger from someone who was willing to kill to cover up their activities, if it meant that Kristoph wasn't spying on him for some unknown reason and possibly guilty of murder. He wondered if he was an idiot for hoping it was even possible. "You really think that - wait a second," Phoenix interrupted himself, backpedaling as the earlier part of Gumshoe's statement registered. "What pictures of me and Gavin?"

"The, uh, ones I sent to Mr. Edgeworth." Gumshoe looked rather uncomfortable all of a sudden. "Probably doesn't give us any clues, though - since you were in 'em too."

"Okay, hold on," Phoenix began, sitting up straighter. This didn't make any sense at all. "He said you were watching me on his behalf. Wasn't it you who took the pictures?"

"I took some, yeah," Gumshoe explained, looking even more uncomfortable. "I saw the two of you in the park that one afternoon, and figured he'd like to know at least you had someone to help you through everything, right? So I took a couple pictures of the two of you holding hands and sitting together and stuff. But not, you know... those pictures."

"What pictures?"

"The ones with, well, you and him, uh..." Gumshoe mumbled, and finally shrugged helplessly. "Aw, pal... how am I supposed to say it? Especially here at work..."

Phoenix was pretty sure he got the idea. "...There were pictures of Kristoph and I having sex?"

Gumshoe's face was bright red. "To put it, uh, simply..."

Incredulity trumped embarrassment by far, in Phoenix's case. "And you didn't take them?"

"No way!" Gumshoe exclaimed, then lowered his voice to a whisper, glancing around. "I wouldn't want to stick around and watch something like that! Anybody gets up to anything on my watch, especially two guys - nope, not my business, they can have their privacy-"

"Then where did you get them?" Phoenix asked, lowering his voice as well.

"By email. Got 'em as an attachment from some address I'd never seen before, the message said Mr. Edgeworth would like to see them... And since I was sending him an email with some attachments anyway..."

Phoenix had nearly stopped listening by this time, his mind occupied instead with trying to remember what had happened when. It was months ago now, and his memory was a little foggy, but he thought he remembered something that made this even more absurd. "...I could have sworn Edgeworth mentioned seeing incriminating pictures of Kristoph and I before we did anything heavier than kissing." There had to be an explanation, though. "Did you send him more than one batch of pictures?"

Gumshoe shook his head. "Just sent the one message with pictures. And that was when Mr. Edgeworth told me I wasn't needed anymore..."

Well, it was possible Phoenix was just confused about the order of things... And there was another explanation, too. "Can I see those pictures you sent him?"

"I don't have 'em anymore," Gumshoe said with an apologetic shrug. "Didn't want to keep something like that on my computer, you know - so I just attached the files to the email I sent Mr. Edgeworth, and sent it off."

Phoenix blinked. "...Gumshoe... You do know that when you attach a file to an email, it only attaches a copy of the file and keeps the original file on your hard drive... right?"

Gumshoe just stared at him blankly. "...Serious?"

"It's not like a normal photograph, where it can be in only one place at a time," Phoenix explained. "If you never actually deleted those pictures, they're still on your computer."

"Oh, uh..." Gumshoe laughed sheepishly. "I'm not so good with computers, pal. I guess that's why all my memory keeps getting filled up so fast, huh?"

Gumshoe's ignorance aside... "...So can I have a look?"

"Well, I did delete the email they were attached to..."

Phoenix's heart sank. So much for that idea. ...Unless... "Uhm, did you actually empty your email client's trash folder afterwards?"

Another blank stare from Gumshoe. "You have to do that?"

It was easier, Phoenix decided, to just ask if he could have a look at Gumshoe's computer. Despite Gumshoe's concerns about there being 'top secret police business' in his email folders, all Phoenix saw in the trash folder was spam and a bunch of notifications about department picnics, barbecues, awards ceremonies... and the occasional notice of a pay cut.

It was astonishing how much junk had accumulated, he thought at first as he scrolled back over the subject lines, but he supposed over six months of email added up. He couldn't really recall what day it was that he'd spoken to Miles last - sometime in early July, or maybe late June...

At the same time he was scanning the email subjects for anything out of place, he was thinking back on how things had happened. He was almost positive he remembered - he'd had that almost-breakup conversation with Miles, Kristoph had invited him over for the first time after that, and he'd somehow gotten drunk enough to stupidly hit on Kristoph and then passed out (right, he hardly ate and then he cut his finger and was bleeding). The next day they'd gone to the park for the first time, held hands a little, Kristoph had kissed him briefly. His last phone call with Miles had been after that, because Miles mentioned Gumshoe overhearing their conversation in the park (and Phoenix didn't like thinking about that, it still made his heart hurt). But... how long after that first night at Kristoph's was it when he called Miles? Because Phoenix thought he'd slept with Kristoph the week after. But he thought that came after he'd called Miles...

But then again, someone had already messed up his life by forging things. Maybe someone had forged pictures of the two of them as well.

"That's the one," Gumshoe said abruptly, dragging Phoenix out of his confusing thoughts as he pointed at the screen. "Right there."

Phoenix clicked the subject line, and looked over the header. One of those email addresses that looked like someone just bashed their fingers against the keyboard at random, from a free public provider. No clue as to the sender's identity there, so he scrolled down.

Please pass these files along to Miles Edgeworth. They should clarify the situation for him.

And of course Gumshoe wouldn't know better than to click on random attached files from someone he didn't know, Phoenix thought in exasperation. Even knowing what they contained - especially knowing what they contained - he glanced around for a moment, making sure no one but himself and Gumshoe were near the little cubicle before he clicked the first attachment.

...That certainly looked like Kristoph's hair, at least, and Kristoph's bedroom. It was hard to tell if the person below Kristoph, lying sprawled across the bed, was him, seeing as the person who had Kristoph's hair was on top of him, and the picture seemed to have been taken through the window at the foot of the bed. Actually, it kind of looked like a still from a video, though there was no timestamp like there might have been on a surveillance video. The person in that picture did have on pants that looked like a pair Phoenix owned. And nothing else. Kristoph, on the other hand, seemed to still be mostly dressed, wearing a shirt and pants.

The second shot was zoomed in, and Phoenix could very clearly see his own face beyond the back of Kristoph's head, slightly slackjawed, eyes closed; if it was someone impersonating him, they were sure doing a better job than Furio Tigre had. It was a disturbing sort of thing to see - and to realize that other people had seen - but he tried his best to ignore that and looked over the rest of the picture. The back of Kristoph's head was visible, though what precisely it was doing was unclear. Unless, of course, you knew what that look on Phoenix's face meant, in which case their relative positions made it fairly obvious. Phoenix glanced up at Gumshoe, and found the detective's head turned away, looking grim and very uncomfortable as he stood next to the computer, his thick frame mostly blocking the monitor from the rest of the room. At least he was keeping the area secure, more or less.

The third shot was more or less the same angle, same zoom, though Phoenix's head was tilted back. The fingers of his left hand were entwined in Kristoph's hair, curled around the back of his neck, and Kristoph was on his elbows, holding Phoenix's wrist. If it hadn't been obvious what was going on before... Phoenix couldn't help but be a little turned on - he remembered this, and it had been amazing. He tried to put it aside as he clicked on to the next image.

The fourth was somewhat less zoomed, showing more of the scene. The way Kristoph was positioned at the moment made it possible to see that Phoenix's pants were pulled down past his hips, though the placement of Kristoph's head kept it from being too revealing. Phoenix bit his lip. Maybe he should have looked at these alone...

He wasn't looking at them to get off, he reminded himself. This was an investigation. And what he was really trying to do was figure out if they were authentic. It seemed like there was no reason they wouldn't be - he remembered Kristoph doing that to him, early in their relationship. It was just that the timing seemed wrong... Or maybe he was remembering wrong... The date on the email didn't help, since he couldn't remember exact dates anyway.

"Hey, Gumshoe?" he asked, glancing up from where he was seated. Gumshoe glanced down, but very carefully. "Can I forward a copy of this to my office? So I can look these over more carefully?"

"Good idea," Gumshoe said with a nod, and then a slight grimace. "And after you've done that, can you, uh, maybe make sure they're not on my computer anymore?"

Phoenix considered just emptying the whole trash folder for Gumshoe when he was through, but he wasn't entirely sure there wasn't some important document that Gumshoe had put there by accident. He'd been doing okay bumbling along on his own, Phoenix supposed... He could probably keep on doing so. Which also meant that Phoenix wasn't going to tell him about his suspicions. Not just yet. It was still possible that he'd just somehow leapt to the wrong conclusion, and it was someone out to get both himself and Kristoph.

Later that night, after a shift at the Borscht Bowl that seemed to drag on forever and being entirely distracted during Trucy's show, Phoenix finally got a chance to open the files on his own computer, in a graphics editing program (which was probably a good ten years out of date; that was why he had absolutely no guilt over having pirated it), where he could change the brightness and contrast, zoom in and out, check for anything that seemed off.

He didn't know why he was bothering. He remembered this happening. There was nothing but a possibly faulty memory, addled by frustration and grief, to indicate that they might be a forgery. He wasn't even sure what he was looking for as evidence that it was, and it didn't help that he kept getting distracted by the subject of the photographs.

Finally he gave up, resting his chin in one hand as he leaned on the desk, staring aimlessly at the monitor. Assuming the photos were real, then what did it mean? Maybe someone was spying on both of them. And that someone had contacted Gumshoe, suggested he forward the pictures to Miles... Maybe someone who was particularly interested in making sure his relationship with Miles went down in flames. There were certainly enough people who lusted after the guy... but Phoenix didn't think any of them would go this far. Well, maybe Oldbag... well, maybe not.

But whoever had planted a camera to watch Kristoph's bedroom - and he wouldn't get specific about who he thought that was just yet - had also planted one in his bedroom, and in the rest of his office, which seemed to indicate there was more to it than that. And if they were also the one who switched out Trucy's gun, and killed Rick Taylor, they were dangerous. Following the logic of killing Taylor... this was a person who was willing to enlist help for tasks they couldn't accomplish themselves, but who would turn on that help once they were done, to ensure their silence. So it was also someone who might hire a forger... But then again, Drew Misham was still alive, months later. Maybe it was a different person after all.

While Phoenix was mulling this over, his eyes lingered on the third picture, with his hand curling around the back of Kristoph's neck. He couldn't really help it - it was a pleasant thing for his eyes to linger on, if they were going to be lingering around somewhere.

He suddenly realized that there seemed to be something in that picture that shouldn't have been there, and straightened up to reach for the mouse, to zoom in further.

The photograph was a little bit grainy, sure, but it looked like there was something wrapped around Phoenix's index finger - a slightly paler line where something stood out from his skin. Zooming in made it clear that it wasn't just a little errant static tricking the eyes, or a lock of Kristoph's hair, but a bandage around the finger. Now that he was zoomed in a little, he could even see the dark stain that had spread beneath the surface of the bandage.

Which he'd acquired on the first night he'd stayed over, and had healed by the next weekend.

Which had allegedly been a factor in why he'd passed out.

Which was why he and Kristoph hadn't slept together that night, except...

Phoenix unconsciously drew back a little, his hand going to his mouth.