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Letho pauses on the front step and reaches up to touch the newest addition to the porch: a set of delicate filigree metal bells, which chime gently as his fingers brush against them.
They’re quite beautiful, but also quite odd. He doesn’t tend to go in for delicate, fragile-looking objects, too afraid that he’ll break them by mistake, and his lover is so used to not having any possessions that he rarely purchases anything without a clear use.
He listens to the bells chime for a long moment before lowering his hand and heading for the door.
Gaetan is curled up on the couch, almost hidden by a pile of blankets. He hates the cold - hasn’t got enough body fat to endure it easily, Letho suspects. His head is covered with an absolutely adorable knit hat with a pompom on its tip, which Letho will never say a single word about lest Gaetan stop wearing it.
“‘S too fucking cold,” he grumbles as Letho closes the door.
“Hello to you too,” Letho says, unable to keep the grin off his face. “I see we’ve got some new decorations?”
What little he can see of Gaetan’s face goes pink, and Gaetan huddles down a little further into his blanket nest. Letho shrugs out of his coat and sits down on the bench by the door to unlace his boots, waiting patiently for Gaetan to explain. It takes a while. Letho’s gotten his boots off and moved into the kitchen to start making some decent hot chocolate before Gaetan finally speaks.
“They’ve got a sort of scale pattern on ‘em,” he mutters, so quietly Letho almost doesn’t catch it. “Reminded me of your tattoo.”
Letho blinks down at his arms. He’s pushed his sleeves up to cook, revealing the elaborate snakes curling down each forearm, their heads resting on the backs of his hands: two exquisitely detailed gaboon vipers, a warning and a joke in one. He may look awkward and a little ungainly, but he’s still very, very dangerous, just like the snakes.
The curves of their scales are a bit similar to the delicate filigree curves of the bells outside.
He grins and pours the hot chocolate into a pair of mugs, topping one with an obscene number of marshmallows before bringing them out into the living room. “If you uncurl, you can have some,” he says. Gaetan makes a grumbly little noise, but a pair of hands in knit gloves with the fingertips cut off emerge from the pile of blankets, making grabby gestures at the mug without the marshmallows.
So Letho likes a little sugar with his sugar, sue him.
He settles on the couch in the scant space left next to Gaetan’s heap of blankets and takes a sip - he used the good chocolate, a bar Auckes sent him from Zerrikania a few years ago, almost overwhelmingly rich. It’s a damn good antidote to the cold outside. Gaetan makes a little happy noise at his own first sip, something close enough to a purr to make Letho grin.
“They do look a bit like scales,” he says, once they’ve both got some hot chocolate inside them, warming them from the belly out. “I like them.”
Some of the tension goes out of the heap of blankets-and-Gaetan. “I wasn’t sure,” he admits quietly. “You don’t decorate, really.”
Letho shrugs. “Got no kids, and I moved a lot before I bought this place. Didn’t see any point in having a bunch of breakables in boxes that I’d have to schlep around. But I don’t plan on moving again any time soon, so…” He shrugs again. “The bells look nice. Wouldn’t mind having some other pretty things around the place.” He gives Gaetan a cheerful leer. “Already got the prettiest thing in my bed.”
Gaetan goes pink again. “Sweet-talking asshole,” he grumbles into his hot chocolate.
Letho leans over to kiss Gaetan on the top of his adorable bobbled hat. “You like my sweet-talking.”
Gaetan grumbles under his breath, still very pink. “You’re awful.”
“Yep,” Letho agrees cheerfully. “Just how you like me.”
“I have terrible taste in men,” Gaetan sighs. “Apart from the bit where you brought me hot chocolate. And you’re a good cook. And you’re strong enough to fuck me against the wall. Wait, what was I saying?”
Letho snickers and finishes off his mug of hot chocolate, savoring the last few bits of marshmallow before he puts the mug down on the table next to the couch. “Dunno. C’mere.”
It takes Gaetan a few minutes to set down his mug and untangle himself from his blankets, but finally he manages to shuffle around until he’s straddling Letho’s lap, one last blanket draped like a cape over his shoulders, adorable bobbled hat still firmly on his head. Letho grins down at him. Gaetan is one of the most dangerous men he’s ever met, swift and vicious and always, always armed. He’s also utterly adorable wrapped up in a blanket-cape and a bobbled hat, flushed pink and failing to scowl, with a little bit of hot chocolate on his upper lip.
Letho leans down to lick that smear away, which of course turns into a proper kiss, deep and tasting of chocolate and marshmallows. Gaetan nips at Letho’s lips, sharp-toothed and mischievous; Letho groans and pulls Gaetan closer, wrapping him up in his arms and deepening the kiss until Gaetan is gasping and clinging to his shoulders.
“Poor cold moggy,” Letho murmurs as their lips part just far enough for them to catch their breaths. “Let me warm you up.”
“You made me get out of my blankets, you’d better warm me up,” Gaetan grumbles, rough words with no real heat behind them.
Letho snickers and shifts, drawing one knee up as he turns until he can lean down and press Gaetan into the heap of blankets on the other end of the couch, pinning the smaller man beneath his own bulk. Gaetan lets out a soft sigh. “Fuck, you’re warm,” he murmurs, and pulls Letho closer.
Usually, Letho would worry about squishing a partner as much smaller as Gaetan is, but Gaetan is a sturdy sort and he likes being a bit squished - says it calms him down, makes him feel grounded in his own body - so Letho lets himself be tugged, resting enough of his weight on his lover that Gaetan can’t move anything but his arms. Gaetan sighs again, relaxing bit by bit until he’s sprawled out on the heap of blankets, blinking dazedly up at Letho with a little grin on his face. It’s absurdly cute.
Letho rubs their noses together. “Hey,” he says softly. “Thanks.”
“Whaffor?” Gaetan asks, blinking at him in obvious confusion.
“Putting up decorations,” Letho says. Because he’s never thought to do so. Because they make the utilitarian house somehow more of a home. Because Gaetan saw them and thought of him. Because they’re a nice thing, and Letho’s allowed to have nice things now. Like pretty little bells strung up on his porch, and hot chocolate with as many marshmallows as he pleases, and Gaetan smiling up at him, pink and pleased and warm and sweet and his.