The only thing that could really compare to the smell of fresh coffee in the morning was the taste of straight, black, fresh coffee.

"Mmm. Liquid caffeine," Adam murmured into his coffee mug on his way out the back door. After practically living out of a Starbucks for the past few years, it was quite a pleasant treat to wake up greeted by a newly brewed pot of coffee. He scratched absently at his t-shirt and padded barefoot onto the porch. Even though he was pretty sure he'd had more than one embarrassing dream involving Matt that night, it was still nice to wake up in his house and walk outside to hear birds chirping, a lawnmower somewhere in the distance, and . . . Soundgarden?

Having already ventured to the bottom step of the porch, fully intending to sit down and enjoy the peaceful morning, Adam continued out into the yard in attempts to follow the music. He stopped just beneath a large oak tree, looked up, and choked on a sip of coffee due to a sudden snort. A small but detailed tree house stood nestled in the branches overhead, wooden blocks nailed to the tree to serve as steps. Matt's shirt was lying in the window, swaying just slightly in the humid breeze.

Adam climbed up into the doorway of the tree house, smirking when he caught sight of his friend. Matt was sitting in the corner with his legs crossed at the ankles, a small notebook open in his lap. His head bent over the paper while he wrote, though dark hair continually fell in his face because of the bobbing motion in time to the headphones he wore.

"Fell on . . . black days," Adam sung along louder than he really needed to. It was enough, though; Matt yanked the headphones off and jumped back against the tree house wall, wide-eyed and breathing heavily. "Hey. You know, those kinda listening habits make people go deaf."

"You son of a bitch!" Matt almost squeaked out, slamming his notebook shut. "You scared the shit outta me!"

"Sorry," Adam replied with something that fell just a bit short of sincerity.

Matt rolled his eyes and slid the notebook behind him, as if trying to pretend it had never been visible at all. "What're you doin' up here?"

"S'funny. I was gonna ask the same thing."

"Hey, it's *my* treehouse."

"Touche," Adam conceded, climbing the rest of the way up the makeshift steps and into the little building itself. As he did, he noticed Matt trying in vain to be as discreet as possible while pushing the notebook out of view. Adam folded his legs Indian style, finished off the coffee, then directed his full attention to Matt. "Whatcha workin' on?"

"Nothin'," Matt blatantly lied, seemingly not bothered in the least by it. Adam, being Adam, refused to back off and went ruthlessly on.

"Don't tell me there's another poetic Hardy. I swear by all I hold holy if I have to read one more poem about being the misunderstood Romeo in a relationship, I'll . . . do something. Yeah."

For all that, Matt could only shake his head. "No, Ah don't do poetry."

Adam's eyebrows raised to an amused peak. "Anyone ever tell you your accent gets a lot thicker when you're defensive? I mean, there's nothing wrong with poetry if you don't go on and on about a girlfriend you never had . . ."

"Look, Ah don't write poetry, okay?"

"Paranoia is an ugly thing, Matthew."

"Go to Hell."

"I told you yesterday: I'm already there," Adam replied easily with a shrug. Not at all willing to let the argument die, he struck with surprising quickness and snatched the notebook away, thumbing through several blank pages before stopping at a page Matt didn't even need to see to recognize by the expression on his companion's face. Mortified, Matt dropped his head to bury his face in his knees.

"Oh. Uh . . ." Adam cleared his throat, staring wide-eyed at the notebook. "I, uh, didn't know you could draw."

Matt let a weak, pitiful whimper escape him but otherwise refused to comment. Met only with obstinate silence, Adam was free to take a closer look at the picture. As evidence of Matt's notorious one-track mind, a frighteningly detailed and well-done drawing was sketched on the page. That in itself was not terribly unsettling - it was the subject matter itself. A figure that bore a remarkable likeness to Adam himself was naked and stretched across a messy bed, the sheets wound about his waist and sparing his decency only through a strategically folded wrinkle in the cloth.

For the first time he could remember, Adam was at a complete loss for words. Unable to say anything remotely intelligent, he stayed quiet and traced his finger along the spiral binding of the notebook. After several tense seconds of unsettling quiet, Matt finally looked up and locked eyes with him.

"You weren't supposed to see that."

"Yeah, I kinda got that impression," Adam agreed with a crooked grin that made Matt want to slap him and then kiss him until he was breathless. "Anyway, I think you've got some serious issues you need to work out. Maybe you should go on Oprah or Dr. Ruth's show or something." He looked back down at the picture, a faint reddish tint rising in his cheeks as he did so. "Or Howard Stern. He'd appreciate this, I'm sure."

Matt's brow narrowed. "Incase y'ain't noticed, I've been tryin' to work through those 'issues' but you haven't exactly been making it easy on me."

"Point." Adam sent his gaze to the floor of the treehouse, deciding his best move might be to change the subject altogether. "I didn't know you wore glasses."

Matt shrugged his bare shoulders carelessly. "I usually don't. Some days, though, I get up an' I just don't feel like poking plastic into my eyes."

Adam nodded knowingly, but Matt was already up and on his feet before anything else could be said on the matter. He stopped at the doorway as if debating over some intense inner struggle. That did not go unnoticed by Adam.

"What're you thinkin' about? I can almost see smoke coming out of your ears."

"Tryin' to figure out if I jumped outta the treehouse how long I'd be in a cast and how much vacation time I'd get."

Adam peered out over the edge of the doorway, then back to Matt. "Nah. Couple days at most. You're Jeff's brother. You'd just, like, bounce or something equally as inhuman. It's a Hardy thing. Maybe it's something in the water 'round these here parts," Adam proceeded in an overblown accent. Matt rolled his eyes and began the slow decent down the steps.

"Can I tell you somethin' without horribly offending you an' your family name?" When greeted only with a set of pursed lips in response, Matt gave a little sideways grin of his own and reclaimed his notebook from Adam's unsuspecting grip. "You do one shitty Southern accent."

"Eh? I don't get it. Eh?"

"Oh, shut UP!" Matt nearly screamed, remembering the last time he, his brother, Adam, and Jay had gotten together and ended up renting movies for a night. One of them was Matt's personal favorite cult classic, Strange Brew. The result was seeing Jay and Adam reenact the hockey-playing-Storm Troopers scene at random intervals throughout the night. And as a result of that, Matt truly wished to never see the movie again. Ever.

"Eh?"

"God, Adam..."

"Same difference."

Matt scowled but kept walking anyway. "Anyone tell you today what a complete an' total asshole you are?"

Adam shook his head, making loose strands of hair fly over his eyes. "Huh uh. But I've only been up for about fifteen minutes an' the day's still young, eh?" The notebook suddenly landed against the back of his head with a satisfying thwak. "Ow! What was that for?"

"It flew there, I swear it."

"You've really got some serious issues, you know that?"

"Yeah. Y'remind me about it on a daily freaking basis." Matt huffed and pulled his shirt back on, then jerked a thumb in the general direction of the woods off to his left. "C'mere. I wanna show you somethin'."

Adam was, to say the very least, suspicious. "You're not gonna tell me you've got a pet bear, are you?"

Matt rolled his eyes and took off walking toward the woods even without his friend.

"It was just a joke!"

Despite the disagreement, both of them eventually ended up heading into the wood entrance, Matt leading the way and dodging around the closely-grown trees and stumps more gracefully than anyone really had a right to. Adam, on the other hand, was doing his best to stay alive, cursing every time he stepped into a pile of leaves and ended up sinking through the soft forest floor up to his ankles. Matt finally stopped dead in his tracks, very nearly stumbling to the ground when Adam plowed into him from behind.

"Matt! For Christ's sake, listen to me about the brake lights!"

Matt turned to make a witty rebuttal, but all hopes of that were dashed and replaced with a sharp laugh when he saw Adam trying desperately to pull a spider web out of his hair. "Adam, buddy, Ah just want ya t'know that if we ever got lost in the woods and only had a certain amount of time to get out, an' Ah had to stop every time you smacked into a tree or whatever . . . well, Ah'd sure have some fun stories t'share at y'funeral."

Adam glared, at long last succeeding in pulling the rest of the web away. "Go take an English lesson, Carolina."

"Ah'm sorry, that was pretty inconsiderate of me, huh?" Without waiting for an answer, he turned and moved his arm in a sweeping arc motion meant to indicate the surroundings to his right. "Welcome to the Hardy Hideout."