Work Text:
Cavendish wanted to go for a walk downtown. Dakota wasn't the biggest fan of walking in cold weather, but he didn't really mind. The day was chilly but not shivery, with just a light dusting of snow to prove that the temperature was below freezing, and he enjoyed looking at the Christmas displays in the store windows.
"Check it out," he said as they passed a bakery showing a two-story gingerbread house with Santa's sled on the roof. "Way to get you in a festive mood, am I right?"
Cavendish barely turned his head. "Actually I think we ought to give Christmas a miss this year."
He walked on as if he hadn't just dropped a bombshell into the conversation. "But you love Christmas!" Dakota blurted. "The decorations, the food, the gifts, the food. . ."
His partner waved aside all those things. "We need a break from the crass commercialism of it all."
Dakota mulled this over. "What I hear you saying is that we're too broke to afford Christmas."
Cavendish deflated. "I was trying to put a brave face on it, but yes."
The news wasn't totally unexpected. Call them garbagemen or trash engineers, the upshot was that they got paid a lot less than time travelers.
"This month's bills played havoc with our entertainment budget," Cavendish explained glumly. "Until we get paid in January we'll have to skip all nonessentials. No tree, no turkey, no seasonal tat."
"What about presents?"
"I'm afraid not."
Dakota was groping for a positive spin to put on all this. "It's fine. We'll just have our Christmas dinner somewhere cheap. Like that all you can eat place three blocks from here due north, remember?"
Cavendish raised his brows. "Vividly. Their taco salad gave us both food poisoning. Why would you ever touch their food again?"
Weird question. "It tasted great going down."
Cavendish was a hard no on the all you can eat place, but Dakota didn't let that faze him. He was a problem solver. Just because they didn't have any fun money was no reason to cancel Christmas entirely, and he was going to prove it to Cavendish.
The next day he came home with a big carryall trailing strands of Christmas lights. "Before you ask, I didn't break our budget. They're borrowed."
"Not from the Murphys, I hope," Cavendish said, as if inanimate objects could carry Murphy's Law.
"Nope, they're Doof's. He had a bunch of spares."
Dakota stood on their sturdy chair to put up hooks and hangers. In short order he'd festooned the room with strings of lights in a spectrum of bright, cheery colors. He jumped off the chair feeling pleased with himself.
Cavendish glanced around. "I must say, this looks very jolly."
"Wait 'til you see 'em light up," Dakota said proudly. He plugged in the power adapter and switched on the power strip. The lights didn't so much as flicker. He pressed a big red button on the power adapter that looked like it might be the on button. It was not. One second they had pretty strings of lights all around, the next they had soot on their faces, a roomful of stinky smoke and lightbulb fragments all over the floor.
Dakota rubbed his sooty cheek. "Note to self: When Doof says 'kill the lights' he's being literal."
Cavendish sneezed like a cat. Dakota went to open the front door to let the smoke out. There was a ball of tree lights left at the bottom of the carryall. "The extension cord's fried, and we don't have a tree, but we could make a model of a tree," he suggested. "Not to scale, but..."
"Absolutely not," Cavendish said between sneezes. "No more fairy lights."
"Now you're just being a grunge," Dakota said.
Cavendish blew his nose. "That's 'grinch'. And if preferring my holiday decorations not to blow up in my face makes me one, then I embrace the label."
Dakota zipped up the carryall. He knew a lost cause when he heard one.
*********************
Dakota was by no means ready to give up on Christmas. Decorating may be a no-go, but he had a few bucks in his emergency fund and a great idea for an inexpensive gift. A furniture store clerk let him have a sixty-by-thirty inch shipping box when he heard it was for a Christmas present. Dakota didn't reveal that the present was in a four-inch case. Cavendish needed a new watch chain, and also a prank gift. Tiny object in a supersized box? A classic.
He took the cardboard box home and set it up in the middle of the room. It reminded him of playing with empty boxes as a kid. They'd doubled as so many things. Hovercars, fighter jets, time machines. . . Dakota climbed inside the box. If he hunkered down it was the right size and shape for a race car. Boy, he could've used one of these 118 years from now.
Maybe he could still use it. He'd always wanted to try an isolation tank. If this thing could sub for one he'd tell Cavendish it counted as his second Christmas present. A do-it-yourself sensory deprivation experience, copyright V. Dakota.
He lay down and closed the flaps above him. The box wasn't long enough for him to stretch out, so he turned on his side and drew up his legs a little. Perfect. Very dark, totally quiet, no distractions. The cardboard wasn't super comfortable to lie on, but you get what you pay for. He'd just close his eyes for a minute and test it thoroughly.
Dakota fell asleep.
Cavendish closed the front door behind him, brushed a few snowflakes from his hat and nearly dropped it at the sight of the enormous cardboard container smack in the middle of the room. Its side was marked with the logo of a local furniture store.
"What in the world? Dakota! What is this?" Dakota didn't answer. Clearly he wasn't at home. Cavendish got out his phone and speed-dialed him.
The box had been a substantial surprise. Hearing Dakota's phone ringing inside it was a bigger one.
Dakota hadn't slept very well. When his phone rang he bolted upright. Seeing Cavendish's face as he burst through the flaps he realized that he'd accidentally achieved a much better prank than the big box/small gift gag. His lower back told him ultimately the joke was on him. "Ow, ow, ow."
Cavendish was still bug-eyed. "Dakota, what. . .?"
Problem-solving was Dakota's thing. Explanations at short notice, not so much. "This is, uh. Your Christmas present?"
Cavendish's face was doing something funny. The bemused, annoyed look softened. "You. . . you wanted to give yourself to me?"
Dakota knew Cavendish had no idea how that sounded, but he felt himself blush anyway. "Look," he began, "I wanted to --" He couldn't go on. Not with Cavendish looking at him like that, touched and yet pained.
"I've got nothing to offer you in return," Cavendish said sadly.
"You don't have to offer me anything," Dakota said. "I just want to spend Christmas with you." Inspiration struck. "And I think I know how to make it happen. You said there's no fun money, but we've got a little bit of regular money, yeah? So how about a themed Christmas?"
He'd caught Cavendish's interest. "What kind of theme?"
"Minimalism. If we downsize everything it'll keep the costs down."
"Go on," Cavendish said, intent.
"Uh, that's as far as I got."
Cavendish smacked his fist into his palm. "Then let's get cracking! We've got brainstorming to do."
Cavendish volunteered to tidy up and set the table while Dakota went to get the ingredients for their scaled-down Christmas dinner. He bought a minimalist turkey, otherwise known as a rotisserie chicken, with a side of hash browns and three cupcakes for dessert. Then, some ready to use gingerbread dough and icing for a special purpose.
His errands took him about two hours. When he got back the office smelled of cleaning products and the table was set, or rather the cardboard box they'd decided to use for a table. Cavendish had covered it with a tablecloth and set it with ceramic dinner plates, wine glasses, a candle (in a glass jar for safety) and even napkins. Seeing all this Dakota was happy that he'd thought of the gingerbread.
"I got a surprise," he said. "Close your eyes and count to a hundred."
Counting, Cavendish heard drawers being pulled out, the scrape of a chair and a lot of banging and thumping. Something fell to the floor. "'M gonna need more hundreds!"
Cavendish was getting suspicious. "What for?"
"Just keep counting!"
At a hundred and eighty-seven he opened his eyes. "Well?" Dakota turned him around with eager hands. "Ta-da! Meet our mini tree!"
A twenty-inch gingerbread Christmas tree hung on the wall over the couch, decorated with icing. "I only paid for the ingredients. The pizza place around the corner let me borrow their oven. And it's multipurpose. When Christmas is over it goes here." Dakota patted his stomach.
"Good thinking," Cavendish praised him. "But why did you take until a hundred and eighty-seven to knock in a nail?"
Dakota ducked his head, suddenly bashful. "We'll talk about it later. Let's eat."
Seating himself at the box Dakota found an envelope with his name on it next to his plate. Inside was a handwritten coupon for one (1) visit to the Danville multiplex after the holidays, all expenses paid, to see a movie of his choosing with a friend. Signed by the friend. Dakota read it twice. Then he told Cavendish to look away for a second and put the case with the watch chain on top of his knife and fork.
Cavendish was pleased. "Just what I needed! The gold plating's nearly worn off the old chain. How did you know?"
Because I look at you, Dakota thought. I look at you and I notice.
Instead of answering he tore a drumstick off of the mini turkey and chowed down. Cavendish looked like he wanted to say something, but decided not to.
The meal was over quickly. As Dakota was finishing off the second cupcake Cavendish said, "Now then, you were going to tell me what took you so long while I was counting."
Dakota swallowed a mouthful of crumbs. "Yeah, okay. It was that." He pointed to the door, where a sprig of mistletoe dangled from the ceiling.
"I can't make it out from here," Cavendish said, squinting. "It's not a Christmas stocking, is it?"
"No, it's not," Dakota said. "It's mistletoe."
There was a loaded pause. Cavendish dabbed his mustache with his napkin. He got up, crossed the room and very deliberately positioned himself right under the mistletoe.
"Right," he said briskly. "Mustn't let it go to waste."
Dakota stared at him long enough that he began to look uncertain, at which point Dakota mentally smacked himself and ran to him.
"You know what it means?" he said a little breathlessly. "You sure?"
Cavendish was.
"I wonder," he said afterwards. "What do they do with the rest of the mistle?"
Dakota winked at him. "Maybe we'll find out."