Christmas in Florida by Ashily

Title: Christmas in Florida
Author: ash ily
Summary: Christmasy themed, uploaded late, umm, yeah?
A/N: I'm stupid, no? I just realized I spent Christmas in Florida, wow, DUH! Yes, you do now have a liscense to make fun of me.

Christmas in Florida

"Chestnuts roasting on an open fire…"

Iggy moaned and clamped his palm over his ear as their neighbor's radio crackled with sappy Christmas carols and whiny late night talk hosts who talked about ways to "keep yourself warm with or without that special someone." No wonder they only got to work during the late nights when everyone was either asleep or too drunk to listen anyways.

Their neighbor- a lonely college student who seemed to be permanently depressed- had only played "Your One and Only All Holiday Station" since her arrival last week. It seemed she was visiting her parents, or something of the sort, seeing as she traveled alone and was gone for a good percentage of the day. Obviously, she also didn't like her parents very much, or at least it was what Iggy could assume from her constant sobs and sad records. Which didn't really bothered him, people were sad all the time, you see the thing that really irked him was the music. Always Christmas music, always carols, always the same ones too. For some reason- perhaps she found it dull too and it lulled her to sleep- she especially enjoyed playing it late at night. Or maybe it wasn't so much comfort as that she just wanted to drive people insane.

"…Merry Christmas to you."

"Great," Iggy murmured to himself, "Fantastic. Merry fucking Christmas to you too." Not that it really was going to be. At all. For one, it was cold. You think it'd be warm in Florida, but no. At night, and especially tonight, it was freezing. Of course, the hotel they stayed in didn't have the best central heating in the world. Meaning, none. Coupled with an open window? Killer. Even better, they couldn't close said window, because of the smell. The old, moldy disgusting smell that was so strong it was nearly choking. Their only hope for survival- and hypothermia- was that window.

Two, paranoia didn't give much time for celebration. Looking over your shoulder at every turn and inspecting the facial features of everyone around you kind of made you forget the holiday, at least in Max's world. Not that you could forget about it in Orlando, so close to Disney. But she seemed to ignore it, push it back into her mind and pretend that she still had time for shopping. The truth was, they hadn't done any shopping until two days ago. Which was the 22nd. Christmas being on the 25th, this was not wise.

They fixed up a sort of Secret Santa thing, which seemed to fix part of the problem. He got Max, who was easy enough to shop for. He and Fang stopped in a used bookstore and bought her a cheap copy of "The Da Vinci Code" and that was that. He had no idea who anyone else had got, or what they were getting. But he assumed it was along the same line. Cheap trinkets, like they could afford anything more.

He groaned into his pillow, cursing the insomnia that had recently taken over his mind on nights like this. It'd been on and off for as long as he could remember, but lately, it had especially kicked in. No, it hadn't kicked in, it had completely taken over his nights for the past three weeks. Functioning on three hours of sleep was a lot harder than it seemed. Especially when all of it was fleeting naps without any of the dreamful slumbers he'd come to cherish. Gazzy's stink and Nudge's snoring didn't help either.

"Can't sleep?" Fang's voice was husky with sleep as he yawned and wrapped an arm around Iggy's waist, hugging them tightly together. Normally, Iggy would have enjoyed the feeling of closeness the two boyfriends shared, but he'd been hearing Fang's gentle, almost snore like, breath for the past several hours and it was getting rather tiresome.

"No," Iggy's voice hit a bitter note, and he winced at the sound. He didn't mean to take his frustation out on Fang, who obviously didn't do anything wrong besides try to make him feel better. Who was to blame him for that? He was just being, well, nice. Apologetically, Iggy relaxed his muscles, slightly against his own will, and leaned against Fang's chest and found himself a lot more comfortable there.

"I'm sorry…" Fang said softly, pulling back slightly, to Iggy's disappointment, "Is everything... I mean, are you... alright?"

"I'm fine, just can't sleep."

"Oh," Fang's voice faded into the quiet, and Iggy, having nothing to say, let it do so for a long, stretched out moment. Max's quiet murmurs, Nudge's racketing snores, a soft pitter of rain outside and their quiet breaths dominated their ears. Christmas? Really now... Angel couldn't be fooled, and neither could Gazzy. Nudge had never really believed in the first place, so where was the magic, really?

"It's almost Christmas," Fang's voice was so quiet Iggy almost didn't hear it, but he did. And with some thought he even managed to decipher the low rumble.

"Almost Christmas like... how soon?"

"Like ten minutes."

"Exciting," Iggy said flatly.

"Ig," Fang said softly, "Did I do something...?"

"No!" Iggy said perhaps just a bit too sharply, judging by the way he felt Fang's arms tense around him. Scolding himself for being so insulant, Iggy wriggled onto his other side to face Fang properly, "I'm sorry," the words came out slowly and with careful calculation, "It's just... the way things are, you know? Right now, I mean. It's not like... Christmas. Which sounds stupid, believe me, I know. But all those families you hear about, doing all of this stuff for Christmas. You know, trees and wrapping paper and decorations. Stupid shit, really. But... if I stayed with them. You know, I might have that... as weird as it sounds... I want life to be normal. Or at least as normal as it ever was for us."

Iggy felt Fang's fingers against his cheek, "We're doing the best we can, right?"

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Iggy sighed into Fang's chest, "But I can't help wishing..."

Another long pause from Fang, "Do you want your Christmas present now?"

"Wait, what? You're my..."

"Nah," Fang admitted, "I got Angel. But I saw this thing... and it made me think of you."

"Oh," Iggy couldn't stop the suprised sound in his voice. It was so amazingly unlike Fang to be so... not thoughtful, because he always was, considerate at least. But it just... it didn't fit Fang the way Iggy knew him to be so impulsive about something like that. It was more of his type to cafefully consider things, indecisively to say the least, before making any sort of decision. And usually one on a much smaller scale than what he'd originally intended.

"Well, d'you want it now?" Fang offered, his voice seemed to teeter between affection and regret.

"Sure!" Iggy tried to add on a bit of fake cheerfulness to encourage him along, although instead he sounded what could only be described as "vaguely retarded" and rather phony.

"Okay, one second." Briefly, Fang pulled away and seemed to search for something under the bed, twisting the cheets and comforters beneath his feet and around his legs before first untangling himself, then appearing back at the head of the bed.

"It's not wrapped or anything, but, um, I think you'll like it." Iggy held out his hands and found a smooth, sleek object there. Flexible, and with the smell of a library. A book.

"Fang... you know, I can't read or anything..." he said slowly. He couldn't see why Fang would give him something like this, which he couldn't actually use. Books were lovely, from what he'd heard, but what use was it to a blind guy? Especially since it wasn't in braille or anything of the sort. Which wouldn't help either because he had a very basic understanding of braille as it was. Of course, Fang knew all of this, so why would he bother to get him a book? Honestly, it didn't add up together...

"I know, but... well, there's this guy. And his name is John Nash, and I guess he's a genius, because he came up with this formula about modern economics and stuff like that. Well, this book is about him, and math and science and how he sees things that aren't there. Which is werid, I know, but it sounded really, really interesting. And I looked at it... and you're really smart like that... and I know you can't read it, but maybe I could read it to you..." This all came out in one quick, murmured breath.

"Fang..." Iggy opened and closed his mouth blankly, "I don't know what to say." Fang had done things for him, he'd done a lot of things for him, but to be so impulsive and compassionate... all at once, a stark contrast to his usual stoic nature, was rather surprising. It seemed not just for Iggy, but for Fang too, judging by the sound of his voice. He still couldn't wrap his head around the idea that Fang had gone to such trouble, just for him...

"Is that... good?"

"Yeah," Iggy murmured, leaning towards Fang's lips and kissing him lightly, "But now I feel bad..."

"Don't worry about it, I didn't get you the book because I wanted something back. I got it for you."

"I... god, I fucking love you. Like, a lot." Iggy hugged him around the neck, squeezing them together so tightly that they almost couldn't breath.

"Same here. A lot." Fang gently took the book from Iggy's hands and leaned over him, placing it on the bedside table, "Better?"

"Yeah, actually. Better."

A slight beeping noise came from Fang's wrist, and he laughed, "It's Christmas now."

"Angel'll be up soon then, you know how she gets," Iggy commented, thinking of how overwhelming her energy could be when she was excited. And she certainly would be excited when she woke up in the next few hours. She couldn't be like a normal kid and wake up at eight or nine either, she'd wake everyone up during the wee hours of the morning, because she was always super aware of days like this.

Iggy yawned sleepily against Fang's chest, snuggling into his collarbone. Fang in turn lightly squeezed Iggy's shoulders before pulling the comforter up tighter around both of them. It wasn't snowing, but it sure as hell was cold in Florida.