Prompt: A misfire fill for someone who accidentally submitted "When e" to the kinkmeme, then followed up with the message: "I uh. Didn't mean to post this."

[When e]

Miles blinked down at his phone suspiciously. It probably didn't say great things about the life he led that his first thought was of a code to be deciphered. Or maybe a distress call, cut short? The sender was Wright, who usually had decent grammar and spelling when texting (unlike Kay, who'd actually gone to the trouble to turn off automatic capitalization and spellcheck. Why she'd bother to expend effort to make her chats-talk even more incomprehensible than all the initialisms she used already did, was beyond him). Still, it might just be an accident. No need to panic yet.

He was halfway through composing a response when his phone buzzed as a second message came in.

[I uh. Didn't mean to post this.]
[Ignore that, sorry.]

Miles came to a complete halt, eyes narrowing. Now that was suspicious indeed. It was of course possible for Phoenix's finger to have slipped, or for him to accidentally send a message ("butt-dialing", he still called it, despite no dialing being involved), but if that were the case he would have explained himself as he always did. Miles could think of several such occasions off the top of his head, the most recent being last weekend during Trucy's show. Miles had answered his phone despite it being rude, as he was waiting for some very time-sensitive case information. Phoenix, who'd been sitting right next to him, somehow thought the best course of action would be to actually follow up his nonsense string of letters with a second text announcing it'd been an accidental buttdial. It was very lucky for them both that Trucy was used to her father filming her with his phone's camera despite her performances often being professionally recorded by actual videocameras, and that Miles had made sure to keep his own cell on vibrate. If she'd known they'd spent any time at all texting during her show she would be horribly offended and express her feelings via vicious pranking. It'd happened to Apollo before, and had been terrible to watch.

So a pocket text could be ruled out. Likewise, if Phoenix had sent his text early, his second text would have simply finished whatever message he wanted to convey. If this were a distress call, however, the change in tone might be explained by someone else picking up the phone after taking it away from his friend.

[Who is this?] he sent back.

"Detective," Miles said slowly, voice deliberately steady. "We may have a hostage situation on our hands. I think Wright has been kidnapped."

Gumshoe, who had been leading the way back to Miles' office to consult him on some files, jerked his head around in concern - just as his own phone beeped. He pulled it out automatically, glancing down rapidly then doing a double take and reading it over again.

"U-um, what makes you think that, pal?" he asked slowly. He began tapping away at a response.

"Detective!" Miles said. "Don't get distracted, this is a serious situation! I just got a very suspicious text from him!"

"R-right, right, but - um..." Gumshoe's brows knit together. He tried to look back at his cellphone, but flinched under the force of Miles' glare. "I just, I thought he was at. Um. At work! Yeah, he's probably working."

"It's already past six, he's always out the door by 4:30 unless he has a case!" Miles snapped. "And you say that as if there hasn't already been a murder in that office!"

"I think you should calm down," Gumshoe began, but Miles' phone beeped again and he held a hand up to halt the detective mid-sentence. Another message from Wright.

[Its me silly who else would it be lol]

Phoenix would never call him 'silly'. There was no apostrophe in 'its'. He always ended his sentences with punctuation and used commas where appropriate. He never used chats-talk shortcuts, instead typing out "haha" whenever he wanted to indicate laughter.

Phoenix Wright was no longer on the other end.

"He's been taken by someone, Detective, there's no doubt about that anymore." Miles swallowed hard. "We need to get in contact with Trucy, we need to... send someone to his office, look into what new case he might've picked up. I'm going to call his captor, see what they want, we can set up a trace to locate his phone - "

He started walking towards his office again, faster now. Gumshoe followed haplessly, still trying to interject, but Miles talked over him. "I've still got the equipment in here from last month, we can just call from my desk phone. Detective, get on the line with your team, we have to act quickly..."

He flung the door open, barreling into the room before he even processed that it hadn't been locked. The light was already on as well, he realized - there was a loud BANG -

"SURPRISE!" yelled a chorus of voices, as people leapt up from behind all his furniture. There was... a cake, on his desk. Presents piled up on the coffee table. Confetti drifting down from multiple party poppers. A banner on his window reading 'Happy Birthday' in Gumshoe's handwriting, with cartoons in Larry's style drawn on the corners. Phoenix Wright, directly under said banner.

Miles couldn't breathe.

"We thought it sucked that you had to work on your birthday, so we decided to set up a surprise for you!" Kay announced cheerily, climbing over the back of the couch to sit crosslegged in the middle of it. "We gotcha good, didn't we!"

"Oh, definitely. Look at his face, he had no idea." Trucy, just as gleeful. At least she went around the couch, but she promptly negated this courtesy by sitting on the arm instead of the seat.

Franziska crossed her arms over her chest and lifted her chin challengingly as his eyes met hers. Maya blew a kazoo at him. Klavier perked up, lifting his own noisemaker to his lips, only for it to be snatched out of his hand by Taka, who flew back across the room to Simon and Athena. He smirked at his fellow prosecutor; she waved cheerily at Miles.

Miles stared around the room, blinked hard, then lifted his cell phone to his ear and called Phoenix. The Steel Samurai theme rang tinnily out into the room, coming from... Pearl's hand. She jumped, then sheepishly answered the call.

"Hello?" she said. "Um, happy birthday?"

Miles hung up.

The first few texts probably had been from Phoenix. He was behind the desk, with a step-ladder visible just past him. He'd probably been in charge of putting up the banner, and must have handed his phone off to her to answer any further messages while he finished.

Gumshoe had received a text only moments after Miles. He could picture it: 'When Edgeworth gets here, don't forget to warn us you're on the way.' Or something like that, anyway. He'd... truly jumped to the wrong conclusion. That was embarrassing.

"Um, you all right?" Phoenix asked.

Miles glanced over his shoulder, trying not to blush. Gumshoe didn't mention what he'd thought, just smiling and winking once. It was very thoughtful of him.

...Of them all.

He'd forgotten it was his birthday, in all honesty. It wasn't even what would normally be called a milestone year, and he was past the age where every year older was a big deal. He hadn't expected presents at all, let alone for all of his friends and family to go to the effort of throwing him a surprise party. And... they probably shouldn't have. If it weren't for his fear over Phoenix's potential kidnapping, the party poppers going off probably would have made him assume another gunman was in his office. He'd just had too many bad experiences with surprises for something like this to be a good idea.

Still, bad idea or no, it was sweet. It was really very kind of them, and they were all watching him now with apprehensive faces, like they thought he was going to disapprove. He probably should, because otherwise they'd get ideas about doing something like this again in the future, and he'd really rather it never happen again.

He looked around the room again, and just couldn't do it. He couldn't scold them, not when this totally unexpected show of love was having such an effect on him that he had to blink tears away from forming. It felt hard to speak, not because of worry anymore, but because he worried his voice would crack.

He cleared his throat. They all waited for him to react.

"I'm fine," Miles said, voice a little rough. He thought about thanking them, but somehow couldn't quite manage that either. "What flavor is that cake?"

In an instant, the room filled again with noise and movement. Trucy and Pearl started describing the cake they'd apparently slaved over all day (Athena chimed in that they'd messed up so badly they had to start over three times). Several others began pointing out what they'd contributed to the party, and several other snacks and some drinks were retrieved from various hiding places about the room and passed around. Gumshoe came up to give Miles a big pat on the back, which somehow started a chain of individual well-wishings and hugs, ending with Miles sitting awkwardly in the middle of his couch with a paper plate of cake in his lap, Larry complaining that Franziska wouldn't let him put candles on it because of some stupid fire safety rule. Miles felt no less overwhelmed by all the chaos in the room than he had by the fact of this party before it began (and now he had several new stresses: how many candles Larry would undoubtedly have used; someone was definitely going to spill cake on his velvet couch; and there was confetti everywhere that would take ages to vacuum up, just to start) - but it was still a good sort of overwhelmed. The kind he wanted to just sink into, for a while, let all of this keep happening around him.

Klavier led half the room in singing 'Happy Birthday'; someone else blinded Miles with a bright camera flash. He blinked his way out of it and looked up to see Phoenix grinning behind an old Polaroid. He took the picture that printed out and immediately began shaking it vigorously, likely ruining it. Miles watched him a moment longer, fully soaking in that he was safe. This day wasn't the nightmare he'd thought he was descending into, for those few panicky minutes in the hallway; instead, it would live on in his memory for a far better reason.

"Open my present first!" Kay shouted, shoving a poorly wrapped parcel at him before Miles had even taken his first bite of cake. This prompted an argument with the bakers, of course, Trucy in particular insisting she had a special magic trick prepared that had to happen before presents anyway. The present was dropped unceremoniously in his unprepared arms anyway, and Franziska had to snatch his plate out of his hands before it fell completely, nearly fulfilling one of his fears in the first five minutes.

But Miles found himself grinning, wide and undignified and with no urge to bite it back to something smaller. He felt a sort of warmth all over, unrelated to the coat he still hadn't gotten the chance to remove or the three others crammed onto the couch with him. He felt happy, really, it was that simple. And he'd still have to scold them later, of course, still have to make them clean up all the inevitable mess and promise never to try something like this again... But that was for later.

Right now, he joined in the merriment.