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“How about this?” Foggy shoves something at his hands.
Matt closes his hand on the offering. A tie. He puts it down on the floor and runs his fingers over it. Absolutely indistinguishable. Smooth. Silky. Not actual silk, not so much something he knows from his senses as he does from his clientele.
There’s a giant garbage bag of clothes in between them, a Christmas gift courtesy of one of their clients, who gave them some of the overstock from his shop as a sort of payment for helping him fight his scum landlord. Luckily, Matt can tell, none of it has been worn, although they do give off the slightly stale, musty, verging on cardboard-y scent by virtue of being kept in storage a little too long.
“No idea,” he says, honestly. He raises the tie and hears Foggy’s heartbeat start to pick up. Matt narrows his eyes. Just to test him, he puts it down, slowly, hearing Foggy's breath catch. He picks it up again. “What’s wrong with this one?” he asks, shaking the tie at Foggy in reproach. It makes a funny flapping sound as he does.
“Nothing,” Foggy lies.
“Uh huh,” says Matt. He sniffs it. It smells plasticky, the way polyester tends to. Nothing gives off any hints of anything unusual. “What’s on it?”
“Nothing,” says Foggy again. “It’s black. Sooooo black. The deepest, most boring black you’ll ever know. Shit, it’s basically Vanta black.”
Matt narrows his eyes again. “Foggy.”
He breaks and starts to giggle. “Okay, okay,” he says. Foggy was never good at lying, between the two of them, anyway. “It has tiny reindeer on it. And snowflakes. But it’s classy. Very classy.” He reaches for Matt to drape the tie over his neck but Matt squirms away. “It’s not fair. You listened to my heartbeat.” Foggy settles for dangling it over his own head, the tie no doubt clashing with what Matt is told is one of the ugliest — “like, Guinness World Record level, bring in that guy with the suit and clipboard because we might have a fighting chance” — Christmas sweaters known to man.
Matt reaches toward the bag for the next item. “Well if you weren’t trying to trick a poor, defenseless blind man I wouldn’t have to. Have you no respect for the disabled?”
They establish new ground rules. Simple. Head to head match ups. Foggy gets to pick two items and Matt has to choose between them. Foggy has to close his eyes when Matt picks so he can’t give away what Matt is choosing. And in exchange, Matt has to wear everything that he picks.
The pizza guy interrupts the start of their game, and then whiskey is involved, but finally they tumble back onto the living room floor and resume the game.
Foggy swears his eyes are closed, in between giggles, and he’s telling the truth.
Matt reaches for the two items by his knees. He picks out one and runs his hands over its outline. A sweater. It’s plush, he’ll give it that. Matt puts it down and picks up the other. Kneads the fabric between his fingers. Also a sweater. Feels nice. He smushes it into his nose and takes a long sniff. He can’t quite place it, but there’s something…
Foggy, beside him, sits patiently, breathing heavily.
Matt gives the sweater another sniff. Then, before his brain has time to catch up to what he’s doing, he licks it. The fibers coat his tongue, he catches the first wallop of the obvious, that slightly bitter, slightly sweet mix that he gets when he chews on the sleeve or the drawstring of his hoodie. But pushing past that, there’s something else. He can’t quite place it.
He lowers the sweater. “This one,” he says, resolutely. He can still taste it on his tongue, there is certainly a chemical-y tone to it, but also something that feels right, and he can’t quite explain it.
Foggy opens his eyes and his heart rate spikes. “Really?”
Matt is already halfway through pulling the sweater on. He stops. “Why?” He glares in Foggy’s direction. Even so, he pulls his arm through. Rules are rules. “What’s wrong with it?” He runs his hand over the front of the sweater, but it feels uniform, and there is no medley of smells either that suggests there is an uncouth logo or design sewn into the front, but he wouldn’t put it past Foggy. “It doesn’t say ‘I’m Daredevil’ on it does it?”
“No, of course not,” says Foggy, and he’s telling the truth. “It says ‘I’m not Daredevil.’” He huffs when he gets a faceful of the other sweater. “Hey!”
“So?” says Matt, smoothing his fingers over the front again. It feels nice. His fingers catch over the slightly wetter patch where he licked it and he twists it in his fingers. “What’s wrong with it?”
Foggy laughs. “It’s red,” he says, and now he can’t stop laughing. “How did you know?”
Matt starts laughing too. “I didn’t,” he says, starting to giggle now. He raises his arm and takes another sniff. He really didn’t. Something about it just felt right.
That’s how they end up, rest of their presents forgotten, sitting on the floor of Matt’s living room, a circle of various pieces of clothing strewn around them like rays of a sun.