Chapter Text
I.
“You have a bed, Matt. A bed and silk sheets. And a toaster.”
Matt shrugs. “I don’t really need anything else.”
Foggy huffs, taps Matt’s hand, and then places his hand in the crook of Matt’s arm. They start walking up the stairs. “Well, I need you to have a couch and a coffee table. Besides, what will your girlfriends think if you bring them here? You’re going for bare and industrial, Matty, not empty warehouse at the edge of town.”
“If my lack of furniture bothers you, we could meet at your apartment.”
They go through the door. “I’m not hosting your orgies for you. Do you have your keys?”
They pause while Matt feels his keys to find the right one, and then there’s a small window of time while Matt locks the door. When they start again, Matt puts his hand on Foggy’s arm.
“I don’t, I mean… Have you ever thought about, um, a keypad lock?”
“The only decent ones are hundreds of dollars, Foggy.”
“Right, right, sorry. Forget I asked.”
II.
Christmas trees irritate him. They’re constantly moving their little spikes. Always scraping needles against needles, smelling like drying sap and rotting wood. And, faintly, dirt. If he wanted to smell dirt, he’d go to New Jersey.
Just the worst.
Foggy can’t seem to tell. “What do you think?”
“It’s fine,” Matt says.
“Wow,” Foggy says. “Fine. You must love it. Man. What a review.”
“Well, I don’t have any decorations,” he replies, hoping there’s nothing in the boxes Foggy set down in the hall.
A vain hope. If there’s one thing Franklin Percival Nelson knows, it’s that Matt would not have mismatched Christmas ornaments from goodwill.
“This one’s a redneck reindeer, which you obviously needed.” He places it in Matt's palm. “It says ‘gone fishing’ in a charmingly misspelled way.”
Matt feels it, though he already knows—”Buck teeth?”
“A stereotype and a pun. A bargain at 50 cents.”
“I thought we were going for modern sexy millennial who perhaps has some taste and at least a little money.”
“The other eleven months, sure. But in December, I want everyone to know that I get to decorate your place. It’s a dominance thing, see.”
“Your hands have been all over? That kind of thing?”
“Yep!”
Matt tilts his head, trying to put colors to the shape of Foggy perched on a kitchen chair, reaching to put the tacky thing in a prime position. The other knickknacks twist slowly on their branches. He turns, taking it all in—the candles permeating the air with the smell of sugar cookies, the velour stockings hanging on his oven door, the plastic windsock elf that God should have unmade the moment it was conceived.
He turns back to his friend, only just now satisfied with the ornament’s placement. Foggy’s wobbles as he climbs down, and Matt’s at his elbow before he remembers he’s not supposed to notice, and Foggy leans a little against him, and the slight difference in their height is just enough that Foggy looks up at him, and yeah, okay, this is starting to be a problem.
But hell.
“I like it,” he says. “Feel free to put them anywhere.”
Then steps away and faces the middle distance between the tree and the window with the sign he’ll never be annoyed by.
“Of course,” he continues, “it needs more tinsel.”
Foggy swallows. “Tinsel. Yes.”