It rains, on Sunday morning, because of course it rains. Foggy sighs and walks over to his closet, from which he has to take out all of his jackets in order to find his biggest umbrella tucked away in a corner for some reason, despite the fact that it’s the one Foggy uses most often. It’s a disgustingly cute thing, all bright pink with big eyes painted on the designated front and ears attached at the top, that Candace gave him for birthday first year of law school, when Foggy once — by accident — complained in her presence about not having an umbrella big enough to fit both him and Matt under it. Candace — because she’s a jerk, how come they’re even related, no one in his immediate family reaches quite that level of gleeful assholery, she must have taken after someone from a way farther generation — laughed for an hour straight about Foggy being the designated umbrella-carrier in this new relationship, and then gifted him that four months later.
Candace lives under the illusion that she’s just so quirky and funny and charming. She’s none of those things.
The umbrella is big enough to fit both him and Matt, though.
It's a shame that it had to rain, Foggy muses as he walks to Matt's. Matt lives pretty much on the opposite side of Hell's Kitchen from him, but it only makes for a ten-minute-long walk, God bless the size of their neighbourhood. Grams lives further away, in Harlem, half an hour by subway, and absolutely refuses to leave. That was Joy Connor for you, worse yet than her grandson and it was Foggy who was called 'stubborn'. Joy Connor has lived in Harlem since she moved to New York in the 60s, she survived the riots, the crime and even the Hulk, and was not going to leave her home until the day she died, no matter how much worry she caused her daughter. Or at least that's what she claimed.
Foggy didn't complain; with his parents — well, his dad, he was the one who could cook actual food in this family, mum was only good for pastries — holed up in Trenton, the fact that Grams and her splendid cooking skills were a mere trip on the C line away was a blessing, some times. Joy Connor living in Harlem and willing to cook for her only grandson whenever he called were one of the reasons Foggy and Matt didn't starve to death during their second year.
She had them over for dinner a lot during that year. And she adored Matt.
Foggy knocks on Matt's door and waits for him to open. He has a spare key now — insisted that he should, for emergencies, and the next day Matt handed him a complete set, lips pursed, expression tight, no comment — but he's not going to just start letting himself in, hello, he knows what privacy means, not like a certain someone who seems to think that because he can open Foggy's living room window from the fire escape, he should every time a fancy strikes.
"Ready?" Foggy asks cheerfully when Matt cracks the door open.
Matt lets him in. "Yeah," he says. "I just need to grab our present, wait a moment..."
He disappears through the still broken door leading to his bedroom. Foggy looks around, taking in the changes, and realises that he hasn't stepped into Matt's apartment since the day he found out about Matt's after-hours activities. The knowledge that the last time he was here, he did everything he could to hurt his best friend sits ill with him, twists his insides into knots of disgust and shame.
"You alright?" Matt's voice comes from the bedroom. "Your heartbeat spiked."
"I'm fine," Foggy lies and Matt tactfully doesn't call him out on it. "Nice table."
There is indeed a new coffee table, between two armchairs and a sofa that's also new. The old one was probably blood-stained beyond saving. Foggy wonders, for a moment, about how Matt got rid of it. What did he tell the crew that came to pick the old one up? Did he try to claim that it was spilt wine? Matt would.
"Thanks." Matt appears in the bedroom doorway holding his cane in one hand, a slim velvet box in the other. It's bright red. Foggy wonders if the shop assistant informed Matt of that. "Karen helped me pick it."
"That explains why it's nice," Foggy jokes, and the corner of Matt's mouth tugs upwards. "You never told me what happened to the old one."
It immediately falls back down and Matt purses his lips, thins them almost to the point of non-existence. Well then. Foggy's not getting an answer to that today. Instead he extends his hand and takes the box from Matt, puts it into his bag, and gestures at the door. "Shall we? We need to catch the next train unless we want to be late and give Mum another reason to kill me."
"Just you?"
"Please, she loves you too much. Me? Pff. She has Cande as the back-up kid, while you're irreplaceable."
That at least makes Matt smile again.
***
They manage to catch the next C train and settle comfortably — or as comfortably as you can get on public transport — for a half-an-hour-long journey to Harlem. Matt scoops close to Foggy, presses to his side, and puts his head on Foggy's shoulder. That's--he doesn't do that, usually. It's weird.
Foggy lets him.
He's always known about Matt's particular brand of distaste for the subway, but now he had the context for it and knew why. It wasn't claustrophobia, as he assumed initially, though he was fairly certain that was a contributing factor. But with Matt's heightened senses the subway must be hell: the smells, the noise, all those people crammed in one small confined space. Foggy didn't like the subway for those reasons, so it stood to think that Matt would hate it and be overwhelmed by it.
If it helps him to put his head on his friend's shoulder, Foggy wasn't about to deny him that. He rather preferred to think that Matt doing that showed that Matt trusted him to understand.
And he did. Sort of. Tried to, at the very least, and therefore no one should criticise him for it.
He rests his cheek against the top of Matt's mop of damp dark hair, already curling at the end — seriously, Matt's hair is ridiculous, Foggy has witnessed it making a hairdresser cry — and takes Matt's hand in his. Turns it over, so that they're palm to palm. "You don't look well," he murmurs. It's true enough, but has less to do with injuries — Matt doesn't have a lot of those, not in visible places at least, and the ones he has are old and yellowish — and more with the general look of a person who's not well-rested. "Long night?"
He hopes the answer is 'no' and for once someone must love him, because Matt sighs and says "No." Foggy feels good for about three seconds before Matt adds, "just... Couldn't sleep. Yesterday."
Which might have something to do with Foggy reading him all his files and research notes. And fuck, Foggy should have known it was a bad idea. Matt asked him to, so what. Matt didn't have the best instincts when it came to self-care and self-preservation, and was self-destructive enough to ask for something that could possibly fuck with his already crap mental state. It was Foggy's job to know better.
He was really bad at his job.
"Then it's a good thing there will be pie," Foggy tells him. "I have it on good authority that Grams made her famous pecan pie."
There is pie at Grams' house, a fact of which Matt informs him as they stand in front of Grams' door, waiting to be let in.
"It's ridiculous that you can smell that," Foggy murmurs.
"There's also tomato soup and I think there will be your grandmother's cheese and ham pancakes," Matt adds, grinning.
Foggy shakes his head fondly. "You're showing off."
Matt opens his mouth to say something, he's frowning and his fingers tap-tap a rhythm on his cane, but he doesn't, in the end, closes his mouth as Grams' door opens and they're faced with Grams in all her jeans-and-leather-clad glory.
"Frannie!" she exclaims and Foggy winces. She's one of only two people in his whole family that refuses to stop calling him that, and the other person is so irrelevant that it's not even worth remembering. "Oh, and Matthew, I'm so glad that you've made it."
She steps closer to them and throws her arms out, wraps one around the respective necks of each of them, and places one kiss first to Foggy's, then to Matt's temple.
"Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. Connor," Matt says once Grams lets him go. His cheeks are already way past pink. If this trend keeps up with both of Foggy's parents, Matt's going to end up red as a beetroot in seven minutes tops.
"Pff," Grams waves a hand dismissively, "you don't need to be invited, Matthew, you're practically family. You would be if Frannie here--"
"Happy birthday, Grams," Foggy interrupts her with the wishes, delivered perhaps a bit more forcefully than they ought to be. He fishes for the velvet box in his bag and takes it out. "We got something for you."
Grams takes the box. "That's a first time I was given a present in the doorway, but thank you, darlings, still." She finally steps back into the house and lets them in. "I'll open it after dinner, with the rest of the presents."
"Sure thing, Grams," Foggy says at the same time as Matt's "I hope you like this, Mrs. Connor".
Grams pats Matt's cheek. "Someone here has good manners," she says as she walks past them towards the living room, all the while glaring daggers at Foggy. Foggy only rolls his eyes. Grams' death stare stopped having an impact when he was a junior in high school.
"Boys!"
Anna Nelson bursts into the hall from the kitchen and charges at them. She's wearing an apron and her hands look like they're covered in flour — no, they're definitely covered in flour, she has some smudged on her left cheek too — and it still doesn't stop her from attempting to hug them to death. Correction, to hug Matt to death, because it's Matt that Anna envelopes in a tight hug and kisses on the forehead while Foggy stands behind them, tapping his foot like a bored and forgotten third wheel.
"Oh, Matty, hello." Anna smiles and cups Matt's cheeks, smearing the flour on them in the process. "It's so good to see you, sweetheart, it's been so long that I was beginning to worry that Franklin was keeping you away."
Matt stammers and doesn't manage to reply coherently. Beetroot level achieved, and he hasn't even said 'hello' to Foggy's dad yet.
"Hi, mum," Foggy waves at Anna behind Matt's back. "This is your son, Franklin Phillip, remember me? It's lovely to see you too, by the way."
Anna rolls her eyes. "I've seen you last week, Foggy. Matt I haven't seen in more than three months, let me enjoy the moment." She smiles at Matt again, despite knowing that Matt can't see it. But Matt has to somehow sense it, because he smiles back. He always smiles back at Anna, never misses a single smile, and it doesn't happen with anyone else, ever. Foggy's starting to wonder if his mother and Matt have some weird psychic connection going on. It would explain so much.
Anna eventually gets round to pecking Foggy on a cheek. But that's it, that's all Foggy gets. Anna truly does love Matt most. "I wouldn't go to the living room," she tells them when Matt takes Foggy's arm and Foggy starts them towards said room. "Unless you want to get stuck until dinner with Grams' hunting club friends."
They definitely don’t want to get stuck with Grams’ hunting club friends until dinner. Those are all elderly ladies, some of which Grams knows from way back when she used to live in the most Lovecraftian part of Massachusetts. Grams took him there for holiday once, when he was ten; they met up with some of Grams friends and their equally terrified grandkids, and it was hell. Still the creepiest moment of Foggy’s life.
“That’s not a good idea,” Foggy says slowly, thinking about Grams creepy hunting friends and their now grown-up grandkids. Grams and her friends would probably end up trying to either set him and Matt up with some of those grandkids — and they’re mostly really nice people, Foggy is Facebook friends with more than a half of them — or trying to convince them that spending two weeks a year in wilderness, in the middle of nothing, and having to hunt for your own food was good for the soul.
He knows which one Matt would consider worse.
“Candace is hiding upstairs,” Anna says, pointing at the staircase.
“And where’s dad?”
Anna’s lips twitch. “Mrs. Gershwin said there wasn’t enough beer and he volunteered to go and buy more,” she says. “I doubt he’ll be back within the next hour. You know that Grams’ friends creep him out.”
“Him and me both,” Foggy murmurs. He turns to Matt and tugs at his sleeve. “Come on,” he says. “Upstairs. It’s better to suffer Cande than the hunting club.”
They find Candace in the spare bedroom that Grams turned into a mini-library/study. It’s easily the nicest room in the whole house and Foggy loved to hide in here, surrounded by all the books, when he was younger. Even when he was Candace’s age, he’d still hole himself up here with a vacuum flask full of cocoa and go through Grams’ Stephen King collection.
Candace is not a Stephen King fan. She’s sitting with her knees bent on the windowsill, head bent over something that, judging by the cover that Foggy is able to peek at at this angle, is The Big Book of Pain that Grams got her for Christmas two years ago.
“Do you have some sort of a torture kink?” Foggy asks and that snaps Candace out of her little torture world. She raises her head and grins at them both when she notices them standing in the doorway.
“Mere curiosity,” she says, closing the book. “I’m thinking about going for pathology, it might be useful.”
Foggy makes a disgusted face. “Ugh, pathology. Do yourself a favour and choose something else, Cande, I’m saying this as a concerned older brother. Perhaps a fitness instructor? Can’t let all that cheerleading go to waste.”
She gives him the middle finger. Next to Foggy, Matt covers his mouth and coughs awkwardly, and that cough sounds more as if Matt was choking on a hot potato or was desperately trying not to laugh. It occurs to Foggy just then that Matt has just witnessed Foggy’s baby sister flipping him off and could actually see it. Perfect.
“Hi, Matt,” Candace greets Matt warmly. She doesn’t blush nor tugs at her hair with her eyes lowered, so Foggy takes it to mean that she truly is over the crush-on-brother’s-best-friend phase of her teen years. Jesus, they really grow up so fast.
“Hi, Candace.”
“Did you get ambushed by the hunting club ladies?”
“Nah.” Foggy shakes his head and settles down on the floor close to his sister, with his back against the half-wall. He pushes at the nearest chair with his foot and it skids closer to Matt, who nods his thanks and sits down as well. “We escaped before they swarmed us.”
“Lucky you.” Candace closes the book. “They grabbed me before dad told me to go and hide here. Mrs. Palomas’ oldest grandson just got divorced, she handed me six pictures of him and said that he’s a nice boy.”
“Stewie?” Foggy asks, to which Candace nods. “But he’s my age.”
Candace nods again. “That’s what I told her, that it’d be like going on a date with an ancient relic.” Matt laughs again. Traitor. And Cande, the asshole.
“Jerk,” Foggy mutters.
“Doof,” Candace shoots back. “Anyway, I told Mrs. Palomas that I’m currently not interested, and even if I were, it wouldn’t be in Stewie, I still remember that time he and you--“
“Okay, thank you for that,” Foggy interrupts her when he notices that Matt cocked his head in a manner that usually means that he’s interested. Tough luck, Foggy and Stewie’s weird adventures will have to remain a mystery for now. “How’s Tom?”
“Tom who?”
Foggy frowns. Was it Tim? No. He’s pretty sure Cande’s boyfriend was named Tom. “Tom, your boyfriend Tom. That Tom.”
Fill: nothing he can't endure [7/?]
Candace lives under the illusion that she’s just so quirky and funny and charming. She’s none of those things.
The umbrella is big enough to fit both him and Matt, though.
It's a shame that it had to rain, Foggy muses as he walks to Matt's. Matt lives pretty much on the opposite side of Hell's Kitchen from him, but it only makes for a ten-minute-long walk, God bless the size of their neighbourhood. Grams lives further away, in Harlem, half an hour by subway, and absolutely refuses to leave. That was Joy Connor for you, worse yet than her grandson and it was Foggy who was called 'stubborn'. Joy Connor has lived in Harlem since she moved to New York in the 60s, she survived the riots, the crime and even the Hulk, and was not going to leave her home until the day she died, no matter how much worry she caused her daughter. Or at least that's what she claimed.
Foggy didn't complain; with his parents — well, his dad, he was the one who could cook actual food in this family, mum was only good for pastries — holed up in Trenton, the fact that Grams and her splendid cooking skills were a mere trip on the C line away was a blessing, some times. Joy Connor living in Harlem and willing to cook for her only grandson whenever he called were one of the reasons Foggy and Matt didn't starve to death during their second year.
She had them over for dinner a lot during that year. And she adored Matt.
Foggy knocks on Matt's door and waits for him to open. He has a spare key now — insisted that he should, for emergencies, and the next day Matt handed him a complete set, lips pursed, expression tight, no comment — but he's not going to just start letting himself in, hello, he knows what privacy means, not like a certain someone who seems to think that because he can open Foggy's living room window from the fire escape, he should every time a fancy strikes.
"Ready?" Foggy asks cheerfully when Matt cracks the door open.
Matt lets him in. "Yeah," he says. "I just need to grab our present, wait a moment..."
He disappears through the still broken door leading to his bedroom. Foggy looks around, taking in the changes, and realises that he hasn't stepped into Matt's apartment since the day he found out about Matt's after-hours activities. The knowledge that the last time he was here, he did everything he could to hurt his best friend sits ill with him, twists his insides into knots of disgust and shame.
"You alright?" Matt's voice comes from the bedroom. "Your heartbeat spiked."
"I'm fine," Foggy lies and Matt tactfully doesn't call him out on it. "Nice table."
There is indeed a new coffee table, between two armchairs and a sofa that's also new. The old one was probably blood-stained beyond saving. Foggy wonders, for a moment, about how Matt got rid of it. What did he tell the crew that came to pick the old one up? Did he try to claim that it was spilt wine? Matt would.
"Thanks." Matt appears in the bedroom doorway holding his cane in one hand, a slim velvet box in the other. It's bright red. Foggy wonders if the shop assistant informed Matt of that. "Karen helped me pick it."
"That explains why it's nice," Foggy jokes, and the corner of Matt's mouth tugs upwards. "You never told me what happened to the old one."
It immediately falls back down and Matt purses his lips, thins them almost to the point of non-existence. Well then. Foggy's not getting an answer to that today. Instead he extends his hand and takes the box from Matt, puts it into his bag, and gestures at the door. "Shall we? We need to catch the next train unless we want to be late and give Mum another reason to kill me."
"Just you?"
"Please, she loves you too much. Me? Pff. She has Cande as the back-up kid, while you're irreplaceable."
That at least makes Matt smile again.
***
They manage to catch the next C train and settle comfortably — or as comfortably as you can get on public transport — for a half-an-hour-long journey to Harlem. Matt scoops close to Foggy, presses to his side, and puts his head on Foggy's shoulder. That's--he doesn't do that, usually. It's weird.
Foggy lets him.
He's always known about Matt's particular brand of distaste for the subway, but now he had the context for it and knew why. It wasn't claustrophobia, as he assumed initially, though he was fairly certain that was a contributing factor. But with Matt's heightened senses the subway must be hell: the smells, the noise, all those people crammed in one small confined space. Foggy didn't like the subway for those reasons, so it stood to think that Matt would hate it and be overwhelmed by it.
If it helps him to put his head on his friend's shoulder, Foggy wasn't about to deny him that. He rather preferred to think that Matt doing that showed that Matt trusted him to understand.
And he did. Sort of. Tried to, at the very least, and therefore no one should criticise him for it.
He rests his cheek against the top of Matt's mop of damp dark hair, already curling at the end — seriously, Matt's hair is ridiculous, Foggy has witnessed it making a hairdresser cry — and takes Matt's hand in his. Turns it over, so that they're palm to palm. "You don't look well," he murmurs. It's true enough, but has less to do with injuries — Matt doesn't have a lot of those, not in visible places at least, and the ones he has are old and yellowish — and more with the general look of a person who's not well-rested. "Long night?"
He hopes the answer is 'no' and for once someone must love him, because Matt sighs and says "No." Foggy feels good for about three seconds before Matt adds, "just... Couldn't sleep. Yesterday."
Which might have something to do with Foggy reading him all his files and research notes. And fuck, Foggy should have known it was a bad idea. Matt asked him to, so what. Matt didn't have the best instincts when it came to self-care and self-preservation, and was self-destructive enough to ask for something that could possibly fuck with his already crap mental state. It was Foggy's job to know better.
He was really bad at his job.
"Then it's a good thing there will be pie," Foggy tells him. "I have it on good authority that Grams made her famous pecan pie."
There is pie at Grams' house, a fact of which Matt informs him as they stand in front of Grams' door, waiting to be let in.
"It's ridiculous that you can smell that," Foggy murmurs.
"There's also tomato soup and I think there will be your grandmother's cheese and ham pancakes," Matt adds, grinning.
Foggy shakes his head fondly. "You're showing off."
Matt opens his mouth to say something, he's frowning and his fingers tap-tap a rhythm on his cane, but he doesn't, in the end, closes his mouth as Grams' door opens and they're faced with Grams in all her jeans-and-leather-clad glory.
"Frannie!" she exclaims and Foggy winces. She's one of only two people in his whole family that refuses to stop calling him that, and the other person is so irrelevant that it's not even worth remembering. "Oh, and Matthew, I'm so glad that you've made it."
She steps closer to them and throws her arms out, wraps one around the respective necks of each of them, and places one kiss first to Foggy's, then to Matt's temple.
"Thank you for inviting me, Mrs. Connor," Matt says once Grams lets him go. His cheeks are already way past pink. If this trend keeps up with both of Foggy's parents, Matt's going to end up red as a beetroot in seven minutes tops.
"Pff," Grams waves a hand dismissively, "you don't need to be invited, Matthew, you're practically family. You would be if Frannie here--"
"Happy birthday, Grams," Foggy interrupts her with the wishes, delivered perhaps a bit more forcefully than they ought to be. He fishes for the velvet box in his bag and takes it out. "We got something for you."
Grams takes the box. "That's a first time I was given a present in the doorway, but thank you, darlings, still." She finally steps back into the house and lets them in. "I'll open it after dinner, with the rest of the presents."
"Sure thing, Grams," Foggy says at the same time as Matt's "I hope you like this, Mrs. Connor".
Grams pats Matt's cheek. "Someone here has good manners," she says as she walks past them towards the living room, all the while glaring daggers at Foggy. Foggy only rolls his eyes. Grams' death stare stopped having an impact when he was a junior in high school.
"Boys!"
Anna Nelson bursts into the hall from the kitchen and charges at them. She's wearing an apron and her hands look like they're covered in flour — no, they're definitely covered in flour, she has some smudged on her left cheek too — and it still doesn't stop her from attempting to hug them to death. Correction, to hug Matt to death, because it's Matt that Anna envelopes in a tight hug and kisses on the forehead while Foggy stands behind them, tapping his foot like a bored and forgotten third wheel.
"Oh, Matty, hello." Anna smiles and cups Matt's cheeks, smearing the flour on them in the process. "It's so good to see you, sweetheart, it's been so long that I was beginning to worry that Franklin was keeping you away."
Matt stammers and doesn't manage to reply coherently. Beetroot level achieved, and he hasn't even said 'hello' to Foggy's dad yet.
"Hi, mum," Foggy waves at Anna behind Matt's back. "This is your son, Franklin Phillip, remember me? It's lovely to see you too, by the way."
Anna rolls her eyes. "I've seen you last week, Foggy. Matt I haven't seen in more than three months, let me enjoy the moment." She smiles at Matt again, despite knowing that Matt can't see it. But Matt has to somehow sense it, because he smiles back. He always smiles back at Anna, never misses a single smile, and it doesn't happen with anyone else, ever. Foggy's starting to wonder if his mother and Matt have some weird psychic connection going on. It would explain so much.
Anna eventually gets round to pecking Foggy on a cheek. But that's it, that's all Foggy gets. Anna truly does love Matt most. "I wouldn't go to the living room," she tells them when Matt takes Foggy's arm and Foggy starts them towards said room. "Unless you want to get stuck until dinner with Grams' hunting club friends."
They definitely don’t want to get stuck with Grams’ hunting club friends until dinner. Those are all elderly ladies, some of which Grams knows from way back when she used to live in the most Lovecraftian part of Massachusetts. Grams took him there for holiday once, when he was ten; they met up with some of Grams friends and their equally terrified grandkids, and it was hell. Still the creepiest moment of Foggy’s life.
“That’s not a good idea,” Foggy says slowly, thinking about Grams creepy hunting friends and their now grown-up grandkids. Grams and her friends would probably end up trying to either set him and Matt up with some of those grandkids — and they’re mostly really nice people, Foggy is Facebook friends with more than a half of them — or trying to convince them that spending two weeks a year in wilderness, in the middle of nothing, and having to hunt for your own food was good for the soul.
He knows which one Matt would consider worse.
“Candace is hiding upstairs,” Anna says, pointing at the staircase.
“And where’s dad?”
Anna’s lips twitch. “Mrs. Gershwin said there wasn’t enough beer and he volunteered to go and buy more,” she says. “I doubt he’ll be back within the next hour. You know that Grams’ friends creep him out.”
“Him and me both,” Foggy murmurs. He turns to Matt and tugs at his sleeve. “Come on,” he says. “Upstairs. It’s better to suffer Cande than the hunting club.”
They find Candace in the spare bedroom that Grams turned into a mini-library/study. It’s easily the nicest room in the whole house and Foggy loved to hide in here, surrounded by all the books, when he was younger. Even when he was Candace’s age, he’d still hole himself up here with a vacuum flask full of cocoa and go through Grams’ Stephen King collection.
Candace is not a Stephen King fan. She’s sitting with her knees bent on the windowsill, head bent over something that, judging by the cover that Foggy is able to peek at at this angle, is The Big Book of Pain that Grams got her for Christmas two years ago.
“Do you have some sort of a torture kink?” Foggy asks and that snaps Candace out of her little torture world. She raises her head and grins at them both when she notices them standing in the doorway.
“Mere curiosity,” she says, closing the book. “I’m thinking about going for pathology, it might be useful.”
Foggy makes a disgusted face. “Ugh, pathology. Do yourself a favour and choose something else, Cande, I’m saying this as a concerned older brother. Perhaps a fitness instructor? Can’t let all that cheerleading go to waste.”
She gives him the middle finger. Next to Foggy, Matt covers his mouth and coughs awkwardly, and that cough sounds more as if Matt was choking on a hot potato or was desperately trying not to laugh. It occurs to Foggy just then that Matt has just witnessed Foggy’s baby sister flipping him off and could actually see it. Perfect.
“Hi, Matt,” Candace greets Matt warmly. She doesn’t blush nor tugs at her hair with her eyes lowered, so Foggy takes it to mean that she truly is over the crush-on-brother’s-best-friend phase of her teen years. Jesus, they really grow up so fast.
“Hi, Candace.”
“Did you get ambushed by the hunting club ladies?”
“Nah.” Foggy shakes his head and settles down on the floor close to his sister, with his back against the half-wall. He pushes at the nearest chair with his foot and it skids closer to Matt, who nods his thanks and sits down as well. “We escaped before they swarmed us.”
“Lucky you.” Candace closes the book. “They grabbed me before dad told me to go and hide here. Mrs. Palomas’ oldest grandson just got divorced, she handed me six pictures of him and said that he’s a nice boy.”
“Stewie?” Foggy asks, to which Candace nods. “But he’s my age.”
Candace nods again. “That’s what I told her, that it’d be like going on a date with an ancient relic.” Matt laughs again. Traitor. And Cande, the asshole.
“Jerk,” Foggy mutters.
“Doof,” Candace shoots back. “Anyway, I told Mrs. Palomas that I’m currently not interested, and even if I were, it wouldn’t be in Stewie, I still remember that time he and you--“
“Okay, thank you for that,” Foggy interrupts her when he notices that Matt cocked his head in a manner that usually means that he’s interested. Tough luck, Foggy and Stewie’s weird adventures will have to remain a mystery for now. “How’s Tom?”
“Tom who?”
Foggy frowns. Was it Tim? No. He’s pretty sure Cande’s boyfriend was named Tom. “Tom, your boyfriend Tom. That Tom.”