"Man," Phoenix began, his voice transparently trying to sound cheerful, "I'm gonna feel really bad for the next person who asks you how your day's going."

"Hmm…" Maya tried to chuckle, but it came out more as a non-committal grunt. She picked up her pen, aimlessly waving it around the blank paper on her desk for a moment.

About five hours ago, her mood had been sitting somewhere around the undesirable but not intolerable range of "I've had better days", but it had made its way along that sliding scale in the negative direction rather steadily ever since.

She sighed. "Good thing that you're the only person who needs to see me for the rest of the night, then." she remarked, dropping the pen again.

Usually, considering the monetary troubles that she and Phoenix seemed unable to ever fully escape from, Maya would have been happy to pick up any case that happened to fall into her lap, but the way her day had gone today, she was glad to have little more to do than hang around her office and banter with her assistant.

She spun around in her chair to look over at the couch, where the young man in question sat with a sketchpad and pencil.

"Hey, Nick?" she asked. He looked up.

"Yeah?"

"Think we ought to just close up shop for the night? We've still got tomorrow to worry about, and I'm still feeling like crap."

Phoenix considered it. "… Alright. Not that I'm doing much over here, anyway…"

"Awesome." Maya said, getting to her feet. She still had a formidable stack of documents to look through, revise, and file away on the desk behind her, but for tonight, the allure of ending her work day early won out. The world wouldn't be too offended, she reasoned.

Her first stop was the bathroom. Maya stood before the mirror, looking over her reflection for a moment.

"Aren't you looking pretty tonight, Ms. Wright…" she grumbled, reaching up to remove the tie holding her hair up in its lazy knot and shaking her lengthy curtain of charcoal black locks out for a moment. On the job, defence lawyer Maya Wright liked to put in the effort to look at least a little professional, even if her sharp suit and neatly styled hair could be undermined by the eccentric outfit of her assistant.

Not to say that she faulted Phoenix for it, of course. At the age of nineteen, he was about the best kind of assistant Maya could imagine having around; smart, eagerly helpful, good for a friendly laugh - the odd looks his favourite set of channeling acolyte's robes frequently drew could be forgiven without issue. The fact that Phoenix was easily Maya's best friend was just a nice way to round things out.

She found Phoenix still reclining on the couch when she finished up.

"Hey," he said, sitting upright, "I finished this one." He held up his worn sketchpad, flipping it around in his hand.

Maya made a surprised little noise, her mouth falling open the slightest bit.

The drawing on the front of the pad was just as well-done as anything else Phoenix had ever drawn, - he was quite the talented artist, on top of his other qualities - but Maya found this one especially striking. It almost made her feel like she was still looking into the mirror.

A detailed portrait of her own face smiled widely back at her surprised expression. Phoenix had the details of her face nearly perfected.

"I don't remember ever sitting down and grinning like I just won the lottery to model for you, Nick." she said. "You honestly drew that from memory?"

She thought she spotted Phoenix's face tinting just the slightest shade of red. "Well, I do get to see your face pretty often…" he said with a little shrug and a smile much like the one in the drawing.

"Yeah?" Maya replied, "Well, if you were about twelve or thirteen years younger, I'd suggest we stick that up on the fridge, considering it's freakin' amazing, but-"

"Aww," Phoenix interjected, clearly getting rather red in the face now, "C'mon, Maya, I've got better ones…"

"You'll have to let me see them again some time." Maya said. She gestured for him to follow her. "Now come on, let's get out of this office for the night."

The arriving pair stepped into the small apartment on the building's second floor, Phoenix switching the lights on as he arrived first. Maya made sure, as ever, to stand just far enough behind him to keep her face clear of the unruly spikes that Phoenix's dark hair seemed to unavoidably shape itself into on the back of his head. The nature of his hair was a mystery, really. It hung down to his shoulder level, and most of it was kept in check quite easily, but as far as Maya knew, Phoenix had never once managed to tame the specific section right on the back of his head.

Whenever Maya mentioned her assistant's rather dangerous-looking hairstyle, Phoenix would respond with his consistent comment of "it's just hair", and it was more out of a desire to keep something handy to tease him about that Maya still gave his head the clearance that she did. She and Phoenix were almost exactly the same height, after all.

Most of the evening going forward was a slow and easygoing affair, owing to Maya's desire to just wind down from her less-than enjoyable day and mentally prepare herself for the one day remaining before the weekend.

She and Phoenix scoured the fridge for a passable dinner, sat down to skim through the TV channels - a very standard sort of night, really.

"Unh…" Maya groaned, easing herself off the couch when at last she began to feel her eyelids drooping without her consent. "I'm gonna go to bed a little early, Nick." she said. "Try not to break anything, OK?"

"It's not even nine." Phoenix remarked. "You're already that worn down?"

"Hey, I'm gettin' old." Maya replied. "Happens to all of us."

"Maya, you're twenty-six."

"And that's seven years longer than you've been around. Come back to me when you hit that same age, and then we'll talk about this."

"Whatever you say." Phoenix replied with a smile. "G'night."

"Night." Maya answered over her shoulder, already leaving the room.

The sun was making its familiar assault on Maya's eyes when her sleep finally abandoned her the next morning.

Her feet hit the floor, locating the set of fuzzy slippers Phoenix had given her at Christmas. She left her room, and was surprised to see Phoenix's own bedroom door looking exactly the same as she remembered it being when she passed it by the previous evening.

"… Nick?" she called out. No answer. "Hmm…"

Maya checked throughout the apartment, but saw no immediate sign of her assistant. Not so much as a single misplaced dish in their little kitchen seemed to suggest that he'd been up here at all. He'd been with her the whole evening up until she went to bed, so where had he disappeared to?

She opted to check downstairs in the office. Making her way down the stairwell, she pushed through the door into the main room of the office.

"Nick-…" she muttered in surprise.

Her assistant was seated in the chair in front of her desk, his arms acting as a makeshift pillow for him as he snored mutedly, still fast asleep. Maya next spotted the fact that her desk was otherwise vacant; not a single page of the stack of documents she'd left behind could be seen. The folders she'd set aside for them were gone, too, and Maya had a sneaking suspicion that she knew where they'd gone.

"Mm… wh-… Maya?"

"Mooorning, sleepyhead."

Maya smirked at her assistant's drowsy expression. He sat upright, groaning.

"I…" he began, glancing around. He was still dressed in his robes from the previous day. "I fell asleep here, huh?"

"Only after you got a whole lot of work done, I'm guessing." Maya remarked, indicating the absence of the papers from her desk.

"Oh-… right." Phoenix said, blinking as he seemed to recall something. "I was about to go to bed when I got to thinking - you had such a crappy day yesterday, I didn't want you to have to sit right back down and work on all that paperwork first thing today."

Maya crossed her arms, smiling brightly at him. "Well, well," she said, "Phoenix Benjamin Fey…"

Phoenix grinned back, although he still looked tired. "Uhh… yeah, my middle name's not Benjamin."

"Oh." Maya glanced aside for a moment. "Michael?"

"Nope."

"Wayne?" she guessed again. "... Allison?"

"Maya," Phoenix laughed.

"Ugh, it was 'Maya' this whole time? Seriously?"

The two broke out laughing, carrying on for several long seconds. Maya was the first to stop, and she successfully cut Phoenix's laughter off as well with one well-placed motion.

Leaning down to his level, she pressed a kiss to his cheek. The effect was instantaneous. Phoenix swallowed his breath so quickly that Maya thought he might choke for a moment. From there, he sputtered briefly as his face erupted into a luminescent blush.

"Thanks, Nick. It was sweet of you to do all that." Maya said, back upright and enjoying the sight of her friend's embarrassment. "Now, I found you down here about twenty minutes ago - I thought I'd come back down to tell you that I made you some breakfast upstairs. C'mon."

This one was fun.