#….. you know. I could make one with fabric scraps and sew patches onto it……… | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

wastelesscrafts · 3 years

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Hello! Your post on Visible Mending just crossed my Dash and I'm very interested in it! I can only really do basic hand sewing (Haven't tried to get fancy) and I ended up buying a pair of pants with manufactured holes in the knees. I don't like them but the pants are comfortable (And were decently expensive) Which might be the best way to mend away these holes with one of those tecniques?

I'm happy to hear my post on visible mending has inspired you!

Mending knee holes in pants:

There are multiple methods you could use to fix holes in the knees of pants, depending on the type of hole.

Simple rips:

If it's a simple rip (no missing fabric or damaged edges), you could use a ladder stitch to close the rip. You'll still see a line where the rip sat, but at least it'll be closed. If the look bothers you, you can always add some embroidery to hide the seam. You don't need amazing embroidery skills to do this: there's a lot you can do with a basic straight stitch or running stitch.

If you have a sewing machine and some fusible interfacing handy, you could also try this invisible denim repair method by Goheen Designs.

(Image source) [ID: a diagram showing how to do the ladder stitch. A threaded needle connects eight parallel points on two separate pieces of fabric. Text reads "Ladder Stitch. Squishicutedesigns.com.]

Holes:

If we're talking actual holes, as in missing or damaged fabric, a ladder stitch won't suffice. You'll need to add extra fabric to replace that's been lost.

Take a look at this tutorial by Wren Bird Arts on how to patch up a hole from the inside of your garment. She explains how to do this both by hand and by machine.

The only stitch you need to know to follow this tutorial by hand is the running stitch, although I would also recommend a blanket stitch or whipstitch to finish off your raw edges. By reinforcing these edges, you'll prevent the fabric from unravelling. This will make your mend last longer.

If you decide to use this method, you'll need to find fabric that matches your pants if you don't want to draw attention to your fix. You could also go the opposite route and use a contrasting fabric or even a bit of lace to make your mend a design element rather than just a fix.

(Image source) [ID: close-up of the crotch of a pair of blue jeans. Each side has a hole that's been mended: one by hand and one by sewing machine, as indicated by text and arrows.]

Sashiko, a type of traditional Japanese embroidery, is another method you could try. Check out this sashiko tutorial by Soluna Collective, or take a look at the links on sashiko in my visible mending post.

(Image source) [ID: close-up of a hole in a pair of blue jeans that's been mended with sashiko: a geometric pattern of crosses sewn with white thread holds a patch of fabric in place.]

If you want to get really creative with patching, you could also make custom patches in any shape or fabric you want. Sew them on with a backstitch and finish off the edges with a whipstitch or blanket stitch.

(Image source) [ID: close-up of a green fabric patch shaped like the Pokémon Oddish sewn onto a blue pants leg with the use of a backstitch and a blanket stitch.]

You also could try darning, which means weaving extra fabric over the hole. Tumblr-user Delicatefury does a great job at explaining how to do this. You'll need an embroidery hoop and embroidery floss (or something similar) for this. Darning can be tricky, so if you've never done it before, practice on fabric scraps first to get the hang of it before you start working on your pants.

(Image source) [ID: six photo's show the progress of a hole in a red piece of knitted fabric being darned with green thread. A needle first sews new warp threads across the hole with yarn, then weaves new weft threads over and under these warp threads.]

Conclusion:

There are plenty of ways to fix up holes at the knees of a pair of pants. Have fun with it!

If you're scared of putting that first stitch into your pants, remember that you probably won't really wear them anyway until you've fixed the thing that bothers you about them. So even if you mess up, you won't have lost much. Plus, most mends can be undone or covered up if you don't like the final result, so you can always start over. :)

If you're looking for inspiration, check out Pinterest or take a look at the following fixes:

(Image source) [ID: a patch of colourful darning on a piece of black denim fabric.]

(Image source) [ID: close-up of a hole in a pair of gray jeans that has been patched up and embroidered to look like a night sky with a dark cloud, white stars, and a crescent moon.]

(Image source) [ID: monster patches: holes in the knees of a pair of jeans have been patched up to look like monsters. The hole forms the mouth of the monster, with white felt teeth poking out. Two embroidered white crosses form the eyes of the monster.]

(Image source) [ID: a close-up of a hole in a pair of light blue jeans that has been patched up with a blue floral fabric. Blue flowers have been embroidered around the patch.]

(Image source) [ID: a pair of jeans that has been mended and embroidered at the knees with geometrical patterns in gold thread.]

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rainbowvamp · 2 years

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Hello Friends. I thought this was a sweet little ficlet. Enjoy. We are so close to the end. Count down with me.

——

Bard had actually been the one to teach Sigrid how to sew. Yes, Mina has started her lessons, but had barely gotten through teaching her how to make doll’s clothes with some of their scrap fabric before she’d taken ill during her pregnancy with Tilda.

Bard had been the one to show Sigrid, and then Bain, and then Tilda, how to mend and sew. It was Bard’s personal belief that anyone who couldn’t mend their own clothes was doomed in this world.

It surprises him that this surprises Thranduil.

“You’ve never ripped a hole in something and had to sew it back together?” Bard asked, incredulous. Sure Thranduil was a king, but this seemed like basic survival skills to Bard, like knowing how to tie your laces or comb your hair.

Thranduil doesn’t answer because he’s watching Tilda carefully stitch a flower onto one of her own gowns with silk thread Thranduil had gifted her before Winter truly settled in.

“Da, he’s been a King for ages. Kings don’t mend their clothes.” Bain says this with a luxurious roll of his eyes, then goes back to mending the rip in his best fitting work pants, patching from. From behind to try and make it less visible.

“No.” Bard says, smiling at Thranduil’s utter fascination as he looks as Tilda’s stitches, running a careful finger of the cloth she hands him. “I suppose they don’t.”

—-

Later that evening, Bard asks Thranduil if he’s ever seen embroidery before, as a joke, and Thranduil rolls his eyes. Bain had picked up a few things from Thranduil about how to make his eye rolls so dramatic, and Bard could really see the resemblance of technique at times like these.

“Bowman, you know I have seen embroidery. My marvel is at her age. She is very young to already have such skill. Her teacher must be excellent.”

Bard smiled. “I like to think so. Then again, I was her teacher, so my perspective may be skewed.”

“You.” This seems to catch Thranduil off guard, which Bard had not been expecting. “You taught your children to sew.”

“Well, my wife is dead. Someone had to do it.”

Thranduil reaches across the small table they always share during their evening drink and squeezes his hand. It makes Bard feel better to have the contact, and he squeezes Thran’s hand back.

“You’re such an excellent teacher. Why don’t you show me as well.”

“A thousand year old elf doesn’t know how to sew.”

“I’m older than a thousand years.” Thranduil corrects him, and Bard rolls his eyes.

“When you do that you look like your son.” Thranduil continues, and this sets Bard laughing, much to Thranduil’s distaste.

He teaches Thranduil to sew the next evening.

#solsticecountdown2021 #barduil #bard #thranduil #Bardlings

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chasseurdeloup-retired · 3 years

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Something Seams Off || Irene and Kaden

TIMING: Current LOCATION: Sew La Ti Do PARTIES: @threadofheart and @chasseurdeloup SUMMARY: Kaden goes to Irene to repair his jacket and they have a snicker-snacker of a time. CONTENT WARNINGS: None

Kaden ran his hands along the leather jacket as he watched the signs of the stores along the street. He didn’t want to miss the repair shop. Clothing wasn’t usually precious to him. It couldn’t be, not as a hunter. Sure, he had to scrounge and save for new clothing back in the day, but any shirt or pants could get destroyed in the wrong monster fight. The best thing to do was usually patch it best as he could for as long as he could before tossing it aside for something else decent. But the leather jacket in his grip was different. This was a gift. Kaden had precious few gifts in his life that he held onto, at least not prior to coming to White Crest. Either way, if anything was worth taking care of, it was the jacket Blanche had given him. To the point he was careful not to wear it on hunts, at least not often. Sometimes it was hard to avoid. Still, he couldn't figure out where some of the holes in the piece were coming from. It didn’t make sense. Definitely beyond his skills to repair. Time to try a professional for once. He gulped before swinging the door open. He had to remember whatever the price, he was fine, he could afford it. Old habits were hard to break. “Hello?” he called out. “Uh, got a jacket that needs fixing. This is the place, right?”

After the online interaction with the owner of the leather shop, Irene was quick to research some tips on how to better mend leatherwork. Since it wasn’t her typical area of expertise, she wanted to improve on it in the event she had customers seeking that specific service. Scattered across her table were scrap pieces of leather she had practiced her stitching. Several of her poor needles already set aside and bent at odd angles. Just then, the jingle of the door chimes caused her to look up at the customer entering her shop. With a warm smile, she got up from her table and walked over to the counter. “Welcome, I’m Irene, and you’re in the right place. What sort of fixing does this jacket need?” she asked, her hands gently patting on the counter indicating for him to set down the piece. Upon brief examination, it certainly appeared to be well-worn, well-appreciated.

“Hi, nice to meet you,” Kaden said, awkwardly and a little stilted as he walked towards the counter. He had no idea what the protocol was in this whole exchange, it wasn’t like he’d ever done it before. Thankfully she took the lead and indicated where to place the jacket so after giving her a slightly startled look, he did just that. Right. Made sense, she had to look at it after all. “Uh, there are some holes in it. Weird spots. I don’t think I made them.” Then again, he got so many injuries and brushed up against so many various fangs, claws, and pincers it was hard to keep track of the damage after a while. “Not that I-- I mean, I work in animal control. With the WCPD. Uh, Officer Langley.” Which probably didn't matter. Why the fuck was he introducing himself? And why was he nervous about a damn jacket repair? “You probably didn’t need to know that or care. Just, yeah. Weird holes. Does it… You think you can fix this? Not to-- I just don’t know what can and can’t be saved. Usually don’t try.”

Irene’s expert hands were quick to search typical areas where jackets typically formed holes. The seams didn’t seem to be split but with some of the holes, she likely would have to reline a couple of spots so that any fixing wouldn’t look like a patch job. Her eyes narrowed as she continued to study the jacket. “Overall, this looks like it’s in good condition, but the holes are… a little strange,” she noted aloud. “Like you said, definitely in some strange places. If this were a weather or cotton piece, I’d say maybe moths or something, but I’m a bit at a loss as to the cause.” Straightening up, she let out a small sigh and another smile. After all, her job wasn’t to determine what caused this but rather how she would fix it. “Well, Officer Langley, this probably will take me about a week. I think I have similar thread and fabric to fix this up, though once I’m done, it’ll look brand new.” It was clear this jacket meant a lot to him; the stress emanating from him was hitting Irene like a wall of bricks, so she hoped her words could offer some relief. “And I could offer you a rough estimate as well if you’re interested.”

Kaden rubbed the back of his neck as he watched the woman work through what was going on with his jacket. Putain, he wasn’t normally this nervous about simple human interactions. Something about it being new, unknown, it left him unsure. “Yeah I didn’t think moths would go for leather, but a brow--” Merde. He caught himself before he started talking about fae and monsters. Barely. “I mean, yeah probably not moths.” He felt his stupid heart pounding in his chest over a stupid conversation with a seamstress. The fuck was wrong with him? Maybe he shouldn’t quit hunting. He clearly couldn’t handle normalcy. “A week? Is that-- I mean, sounds good. I’m not sure how long this would normally take. I’ve never had anything repaired before. I normally just throw away things once they get damaged but I guess if I did that you wouldn’t have any business so anyway this is, uh, new. For me.” He was certain she could tell without him saying shit. Her next assurance had him even more wide eyed. Shit, was he really that obvious? He didn’t think he looked poor. He didn’t right? Fuck, maybe he did. “A rough estimate? Oh. Yeah. That’d be good. To know. If you--” His brow furrowed as he cut his sentence short once more. This time it wasn’t just him not knowing how to speak like a normal person. Something was moving. His brows knit together as he looked closer at the jacket. “You’re not…” His eyes darted back up to her. Her hands were in fact not underneath the jacket. And yet it was wiggling. “That’s not you moving it, is it?”

Irene could feel the intensity of his emotions grow despite her telling him that the jacket could be fixed. Was something else worrying him? In the past, she had worked with clients who held incredible sentimental value to their clothing articles. Perhaps this was one of those instances. With a warm smile, she looked across the counter at the man. “This jacket must mean a lot to you if you’re bringing this in for extra care. I assure you that your jacket is in great hands with me, officer. You’re doing great,” she added lightly with a small chuckle. Grabbing a notepad and a pen, she scribbled a few quick notes about the current condition of the leather jacket and the exact fixes the officer was requesting. That helped her approximate the cost. Just as she was about to write out an estimate, his question caught her by surprise. “Hm? N-no, what do you mean?” she asked, her eyes instantly darting to the jacket to see brief movement. Shoot, did her shop have mice or rodents? “Oh goodness!” Without thinking, she lifted the jacket up, expecting to find some sort of critter there only to spot something… not quite exactly that or anything she had seen before. “What--” she jumped back in surprise, her eyes wide after she immediately dropped the jacket back down.

Kaden nodded a little along with her words. “I mean, sure it, uh, I like it and all. But it’s not that important.” Putain, why did he say that? What if that meant she was less careful with it now that she thought he didn’t care? “Not that-- I mean. Yes. Thank you.” Fuck, what if she was fae? And he just thanked her. And why did she have to reassure him that he was doing fine with a basic social interaction. Sadly, his ineptitude wasn’t the biggest disaster in the room. When she moved the jacket, out hopped a small rodent looking creature. Only it wasn’t a mouse or rat, no no. That was a snicker-snacker. No missing it. “Putain,” he grumbled to himself. “No wonder there were holes.” Out of instinct, Kaden reached for his knife in his back pocket, but his hand hovered and hesitated. Just long enough for the supernatural rodent to scutter off. Shit. But he couldn’t just stab the snicker-snacker right in front of her in her shop. He wasn’t the most experienced with social norms, but he was pretty fucking sure destroying shops with knives was frowned upon. He twisted and turned looking to see if he could find the creature. “Must have been in the jacket. Not sure how I missed that.” Had to have crawled in one night when he was hunting. At least he hoped that was the case. If he had an infestation in his apartment, well, he didn’t want to think about the destruction waiting for him at home. “Did you see where it-- there!” he shouted as he leapt towards a corner of the store, diving onto the floor, trying to clasp the rodent with his bare hands. It skittered just out of reach, running to the other side. Shit. He had to get it or else it could be bad news for her shop. It had definitely gone to the left. Only, when he glanced to the right, he saw it there, too. No, not the original one. There were two. “Uh. Think you’ve got a problem here,” he told her, trying to pick himself up off the floor.

If the rodent-looking creature scared Irene, the man pulling out a knife immediately caused the seamstress to shriek out of surprise and fear. But her attention was quickly drawn back to the thing that jumped off her counter and was not running around her shop. With wide eyes, she pulled her gaze back to the man as she tried to process just what had happened. Irene wasn’t normally one for any sort of judgment, but yes, how had this man conveniently not realize that something like that was burrowing his jacket? Before she could even respond, Irene toward the floor as the creature skittered across her feet to the man’s left. Another yelp escaped her lips as she jumped back in surprise. It was one thing for rodents to be scampering around, but she will not have them messing up her shop. Trying to think quickly, Irene grabbed a broom from the corner and glanced to the right and saw… another one. Confusion etched across her face. “Oh no…” she muttered quietly as she slowly raised her broom. Was this her weapon now or a poor decision of a shield? Who knew. “What are those?” she asked in a soft voice, hoping not to startle these creatures with any sudden noise.

This was a problem. One snicker-snacker was bad news. Two were exponentially worse. And for all they knew, there were more than even that. Kaden started to listen and look for any more signs of them, trying to keep his steps quiet as he ducked down to look at any and every corner. “Snicker--” He paused before finishing his answer. Saying “snicker-snackers” was going to make him sound like he was out of his mind, wasn’t it? And it wasn’t exactly keeping the supernatural a secret at that point either. Putain. “Uh, rodents. Mutated mice. I think.” That worked, right? “They’ll eat through just about anything so be careful.” This whole shop would be in bad shape if an infestation broke out. All the clothes and fabric would never last. He glanced over to see how she was holding up. Broom wasn’t a bad idea on her part. Shit, if only he had his work kit. No nets or cages on him now, unfortunately. “Got anything to trap them with? A basket. A bowl. Anything?” He saw a jar full of pins. This was a terrible idea. “Putain,” he grumbled to himself as he dumped the pins as carefully as he could manage onto the table he picked the jar up off of. “Sorry about that. I, uh, I mean looks like it’ll work.” He caught a blur of motion out of the corner of his eyes and leapt towards it, jar in hand. “Sweep it towards me! Corner it”

Irene watched the man move around expertly ready to attack. She clutched the broom tighter against her chest as her heart pounded loudly in her ears. “Snicker? Like--what, like the candy?” she asked incredulously. Her brow knitted tightly as she tried to keep an eye on even just one of these creatures. “Mutated mice. Wonderful. Thank you evolution,” she muttered under her breath as she took slow, quiet steps through her shop. Rodents weren’t something she was scared of; hell, she’d seen her fair share of very brave rats in New York. This? This should be a piece of cake, though she had no idea what sort of advantages these mutations gave these rodents. Her eyes quickly scanned the room in response to his request. “Uh… how’s this? Wait!” she called out, unable to find a suitable container before the pins were spilled out. Great. But she had little time to process that before she also caught sight of a dashing blur past her. Instinctively, she swept broadly with the broom, the bristles making contact with something, and a loud squeak seemed to indicate she must have caught the rodent. “Coming your way!” she called out as she made one swift broom push toward the man. “Well, that has to be one, right? Is that it?”

“Uh, sort of,” Kaden started. With how often he ran into the supernatural in this town, it was hard to remember how few of the residents actually were in the know. Code said to keep shit secret, he needed to try a little harder. As he dove, he slammed the lar over top of where he’d seen the blur. Only to catch something just to the left of him. Shit. He reached out with the jar again as she swept the lump towards him, capturing the creature underneath. “Got it!” he shouted, keeping both hands on top of the small jar, just in case. There was a sound of something splitting behind him. Putain. He kept one hand on the jar as he twisted to try and look behind him. A table leg had snapped in two and he was certain if they didn’t hurry, there might be less than three legs there. “Shit, shit, shit.” He was making a real fucking great impression here. He had to let go of the jar to get over to the other one. “Uh, do you have a book? Or a weight? Or something? And one more--” He paused. “Maybe two more jars. Just in case.”

Irene's stress levels increased, both from wanting these creatures out of her shop and from the fact that this whole instance was creating a giant mess of her shop. Had these things always been around this entire time? A hazard of her work she never considered before? As the man dove down, Irene held her breath until she saw that he had managed to catch something. “B-book? Um, goodness, I have uh I have a couple of binders of fabric swatches,” she said, frantically reaching for these from the desk in the back. And jars. Her eyes looked for a few more of those, all filled with things like thread scraps or buttons. The priorities now though was definitely in capturing these creatures, so she poured the contents out into an empty box and quickly returned to the man. And then she saw the cracked leg on her table. Oh goodness why was this happening. “I hate to bombard a customer with orders, but please get these things out of here before the rest of my shop is destroyed,” she pleaded.

This was not the first impression Kaden had planned to make. Granted, he didn’t start off on the best foot so guess he didn’t have much to lose. He’d shifted and let his foot rest on the jar while she went to grab more supplies to trap the creatures, untrusting of what would happen if he left it unweighted. He didn’t want to find out if the snicker-snacker could topple over the glass. At least it couldn’t eat it. Well, it shouldn’t at least. It wasn’t exactly wood or fiber. He looked down. Floors should be safe, too. Right, better get them out quickly. “Thanks,” he said, taking the book and the jars from her. He dumped the book on top of the makeshift snicker-snacker trap and hoped like hell it was enough to keep it there. Out of the corner of his eyes, he saw the little pest run up and back towards his jacket. “Oh no you don’t,” he said, diving towards it and yanking it away off the counter. The mutant mouse went spinning and flying in the air as the rug was pulled out from under it, but landed on its feet and scurried off. Merde. He’d have to be more careful.

Jars in hand and ready to pounce, Kaden tried to move quietly around to the back of the counter to see if it had landed back there. A flash of fur and horns darted out, squealing towards the table with three legs. “Not today, you little bastard,” Kaden said as he threw himself at the table, crashing into it, causing all sorts of odds and ends to go flying and clattering to the floor as he wrestled to get the jar on top of the creature. All he got was a spool of thread. Good thing she’d handed him two jars. He reached out with his left hand and slammed the glass down, praying he didn’t break it with his hunter strength and heard a squeal as the tail wriggled out from underneath the lip. If it were a mouse or a rat, he might feel a ping of remorse. But a snicker-snacker? He dug the jar down to the floor a little harder before the tail snaked its way back under the container with another squeal. “Got it,” he said, breathing heavily as he pushed himself off the floor.

Irene watched with astonishment as the man moved so expertly. Her eyes darted back and forth between the now-occupied jar and the precarious situation of her table. “Sure…” was all she managed to respond. With her hands now empty and the man chasing after the other “mutant rodents,” Irene’s attention honed onto the jar. She could hear the skittering of the creature, sounds of tiny claws scraping against the glass in an attempt to escape. Leaning down onto her hands and knees, Irene took a peek at the rodent inside, this snicker thing, and let out a small gasp. It looked like a mouse or a hamster but with horns. What the heck was in the White Crest water that mutated the rodents into something like this? Her thoughts were quickly interrupted by the sudden slam from the man, the sound of another jar crashing onto the ground and securing another creature in its confines. “O-okay, what do we do now? I mean, are we supposed to let these go out in the wild? Is there animal control for something like this?” And how dangerous were these things? So many questions ran through her head. Then her face paled lightly at the next thought. Did these need to be exterminated? Despite the trouble they brought, the idea soured her stomach.

Kaden brushed off his pants and arms after standing and taking a look at the chaos around the room. Putain. Not how he intended this to go. Couldn’t even have a simple interaction in a store in this goddamn town. “Lucky for you, I am animal control. Obviously not on duty right this second. Or else, you know, I’d be prepared.” He sighed and pushed his hair back into place. “They’re pretty destructive, as you can see,” he said, gesturing to the poor table. Shit. “Uh, I can, pay for that, by the way. I sorta brought them here.” No clue how he was affording that but tables couldn’t cost that much, right? Shit. “Reproduce exceptionally fast, too.” He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck. This was the worst part. People already had bad takes on animal control half the time. He’d been called an animal killer too many times for his liking. And it’s not like he could tell her these were clearly monsters and out himself. No one liked to hear about dead animals and he couldn’t blame them. But these weren’t sweet little mice, these were pests. Abominations. Capable of destroying full houses if left to their own devices. “For now, I’ll take them out of here. They’re definitely not adoptable, though. I’ll do a relocation out in the woods, though.” He hoped she would buy it. There was no way he was going to chance a snicker-snacker infestation in town.

It was the sudden calmness that stressed Irene out even more. Was this it? Were all of them caught in her jars? “You? You’re animal control?” Had he said that earlier before all of this happened? She couldn’t recall. A hand ran through her hair, the other hand almost resting against her damaged table before she spotted the broken leg. She quickly pulled back and sighed. At least that table was a hand-me-down from the previous tenant of the shop, and Irene had been hoping to upgrade to a more customized work surface. “Um, yea, th-thanks, I think,” she said mindlessly, unable to fully assess the severity of these creatures. “Like rabbits. Or rats. And I thought New York rats were damaging,” she muttered to herself. How did those things even scurry onto him and into her shop? “Right, your jacket though. If uh if you still wanted that mended, I can still take that on but I might need more time now because…” her voice trailed as she gestured to her mess of a space.

“Officer Langley, yeah. That’s me. Animal control.” Kaden almost felt like he should apologize for that fact. Almost. He did catch them, after all. “But yeah, like rabbits or rats. Only they’ll eat through your table legs. Uh, anyway, if you don’t mind, I’ll go get something more appropriate to transport them and come back.” He’d make sure to bring a knife with him, too. Maybe a few extra cages in case more of them showed up in the interim. He was about to turn and walk out when his eyes shot back to the jacket, brows raised. Right. He almost forgot. “Oh, yeah. If you can. No rush. At all. Um, thanks, and,” he paused to look around the room, “sorry. I’ll be back soon.”

#writing #wickedswriting #chatzy #threadofheart #irene #something seams off

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clotpolesonly · 4 years

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Curtain Up (Thank You, Five)

some cheesy af theater AU nonsense because based loosely on the teenwolfdrabbles prompts of “act,” “patch,” and “knowledge”, which @tiniestawoo put into a theater context and then it would not stay drabble-length XD

(also on AO3)

~~~

“Patch! I need a patch!”

Stiles careened through backstage, dodging set pieces and actors getting to their places, trying not to make a gigantic ruckus in his tap shoes. Of course this would happen the one night their costumer couldn't be there to oversee things. That was when Allison would drop her curling iron onto Stiles' shirt for the opening of act two and burn a hole straight through it.

"It's eight til places!” Stiles whisper-shouted, as loudly as he dared backstage. “For the love of god, does anyone know how to sew a patch?"

"I do."

Derek, already dressed for his own entrance, was leaning up against the back wall and eyeing Stiles' bare chest with a raised eyebrow. Thank god for the low lighting, because Stiles did not think he could’ve handled it if Derek had been able to see the way his face—and probably the rest of him too—flushed.

“You what?” he asked, because he was an idiot.

Derek obviously agreed. His eyebrow hiked up even higher and he nodded at the shirt clutched in Stiles’ hands.

“I know how to sew a patch,” he said. “Do you have something to patch it with?”

Wordlessly, Stiles held up a scrap of fabric that Scott had hastily fished out of some bin from a distant corner of the dressing room. It was nowhere near the same color as the shirt, but it was a similar fabric and it fit in with the general color scheme of the number. The hole was dead center in the back too, so they figured that it could maybe look like it was sort of on purpose.

Derek took the scrap and the shirt without comment—not without more eyebrow judging, though, because who would he be without his judgmental eyebrows?—and slid past Stiles in the direction of the stage manager’s podium on stage left.

Mason wasn’t there, but Stiles could hear him back in the dressing room, announcing five til curtain up. He joined in the chorus of “thank you, five” by reflex, and Derek snorted into the little box of detritus that he was digging around in. Stiles would’ve snarked at him for it, but then Derek was pulling out a needle and thread and he couldn’t be anything but relieved.

“It’s not gonna be pretty,” Derek warned him, spreading the shirt out on top of the podium under the blue-tinted working light and positioning the patch where it needed to be.

“It just needs to not fall apart before the number’s over,” Stiles said, muffled around the thumbnail in his mouth. “Peter can pull me something else from the closet tomorrow.”

“He’s gonna bitch at you so much for this.”

Derek had the audacity to laugh at the idea, as if Peter hadn’t reduced poor Sydney to tears the time she had accidentally gotten red lipstick on her white dry-clean-only dress during a quick change. Stiles was not looking forward to informing Peter that his perfectly realized vision was irreparably tarnished and he needed to find a new costume for his lead dancer before tomorrow’s matinee.

“It’s not like it was my curling iron,” Stiles muttered.

He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling weirdly exposed even with Derek’s focus entirely on the task before him. The needle looked impossibly small in his large hand, but it dipped in and out of the fabric easily, leaving a line of tidy stitches in its wake.

Stiles tried not to find this newfound skill of Derek’s attractive, but, frankly, everything about Derek was attractive to him. The fact that he had been able to keep his crush on Derek more or less subtle and under wraps for the whole rehearsal process was a feat for which Stiles deserved a fucking award. Every time Derek laughed at one of his jokes, he was caught between looking for the Candid Camera guy and drafting their wedding vows.

And yet, despite his innate awkwardness, he had somehow managed to become friends with Derek. Derek, with the pretty eyes and the smooth voice and the perfect smile that he sometimes deigned to grace Stiles with. Derek who could sight-read a song note-perfect on the first try and match Stiles’ sarcasm quip for quip. The guy was literally perfect, and now he could sew too? It was just downright unfair.

Stiles dragged his taps across the floor with a metallic shhhnk and asked, “So, uh, where’d you learn to do this?”

Derek paused in his sewing just to send Stiles a flat look. “My uncle is a costumer,” he pointed out. “And my grandmother was too. She wouldn’t let any of her grandchildren get away with not knowing how to take care of their own clothes.”

“And everybody else’s, apparently.”

“Nothing is worse than a performer who does nothing but perform,” Derek said. It sounded like a mantra, a pearl of wisdom his grandmother had passed on to him. “That’s how you get entitled shitbags like Jackson who make demands of the crew without knowing what it takes to make those demands happen.”

Stiles snorted, remembering the fit Jackson had thrown over not getting a spot for his feature. One verse of a song was clearly not enough to showcase his talents properly, especially not if he wasn’t dead center with a white hot spotlight on him. He and Derek had had a grand time roasting Jackson for that one. Not that Jackson had noticed; he was arrogant enough to have actually taken their sarcastic compliments as genuine ones. Which was exactly what Stiles had bet that he would do. Derek had bought him a milkshake as his prize.

“I work set design,” Stiles found himself volunteering.

Derek glanced up at him again.

Stiles suddenly remembered that he was shirtless. He crossed his arms a little tighter and cleared his throat.

“When I’m not performing,” he clarified. “I help build the sets. And I’ve done lighting a few times! I know how to work the light boards and everything. Tried stage managing, but that one’s really super stressful, so I’ll leave it Mason. I’m not—”

Not one of the entitled shitbags, he wanted to say. Because Derek was still looking at him, eyebrows slightly less judgemental than usual. Because Stiles cared what Derek thought of him. Because Derek was the kind of performer that Stiles wanted to be when he grew up.

Not that Stiles was not already grown up, or that Derek was even that much older than him. Stiles was just a disaster bi with a huge crush and a major talent boner for their leading man, which apparently left him unable to control his mouth. Damn it, he had been doing so well at not making a fool of himself in front of Derek. And now here he was, shirtless and scrambling because he didn’t know how to fucking sew. Everybody should know how to sew! Fuck, maybe he was an entitled shitbag.

Except that Derek was smiling. It set Stiles’ stomach to fluttering more than any case of stage fright ever had. Every time.

“I suck at stage managing,” Derek admitted. “I happily leave that to my sister. It’s sets, sound design, and costumes for me. Though I would love to direct someday.”

With that, he leaned down to bite the thread, since the one thing the stage manager’s box of wonders did not seem to have was scissors. He shook out the shirt and held it up with a proud flourish for Stiles to inspect. It was still pretty obviously a last minute patch job, considering it was just a random splotch of blue on the back of an otherwise normal white shirt, but it was relatively neat and it would be a hell of a lot better than showing skin.

“You’re a prince among men,” Stiles declared. “Truly, Derek, I owe you my life. Or maybe just a favor or something, I dunno, a life debt seems a little dramatic. A favor is probably reasonable, though. So if there’s something you want, you can have it, anything you w—”

“How about a kiss?”

Stiles stuttered to a stop, hand already tangled in the shirt that Derek wasn’t letting go of yet. “W-what?”

Derek grinned, unrepentant, and gave the shirt a little shake. “For payment,” he said. “Or for luck. Or maybe just because you want to.”

Stiles gaped at him, running the words over and over in his head until he was absolutely certain that they were, in fact, the words that his ears had thought they’d heard. Even once that had been determined, the only thing he could think to say was, “Do you want me to?”

Derek opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly Mason was right there, headset on and clipboard in hand.

“Will you two quit flirting!” he snapped. “I called places two minutes ago. And Stiles, why aren’t you dressed? Don’t make us hold. I want to get out of here sometime before midnight.”

Stiles snatched his shirt out of Derek’s hand and hastily pulled it on. It was not graceful to tuck a shirt into trousers while running, but desperate times and whatnot. Ignoring Mason’s hissed “Quiet feet backstage, Stiles, for the love of—”, he slid into place in the right wing more or less stage-ready and with Derek right behind him.

He devoted ten seconds to making sure that his hair wasn’t too fucked up, then rounded on Derek.

“Were you serious?” he whispered. “Like, actually serious? About the kissing thing? You want me to kiss you?”

Derek rolled his eyes. “Well, I did ask you to kiss me. I figure that can probably be construed as me wanting you to, yes.”

“Since when?”

The judgmental eyebrows returned in full force, accompanied by the swell of the entr'acte from the orchestra out front. “Stiles, I have been flirting with you for the last two months. You can’t possibly have missed that memo.”

Stiles gaped a bit more. Squished into the wall behind him, Scott was laughing, and he did not stop when Stiles turned to demand, “Wait a minute, did you know about this? Has Derek really been flirting with me this whole time?”

“Dude, literally the whole time.”

“Dude! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I thought you knew!” Scott was laughing so hard, he almost couldn’t get the words out. “You’ve already been on a date and everything!”

“No, we haven’t!” Stiles insisted. Then, to Derek, “Wait, have we?”

Derek shrugged. “The milkshakes were sort of a date.”

“Oh my god,” Stiles said faintly. “My whole life is a lie. A good lie! Don’t get me wrong, this is absolutely a good thing, like, seriously the best thing on the planet, but also I’m an idiot and I’m having an existential crisis right now and I—”

“You have to be on stage in two eight counts,” Derek said. “Are you gonna kiss me or not?”

Stiles did not waste any time. He had already wasted the last two months being oblivious, apparently, and smudged lipstick and a late entrance were a price he was willing to pay for the noise Derek made into his mouth. He didn’t let up until Scott started slapping at his arm in a panic, and even then, it took all his will power to manage it.

“We’re coming back to this later,” he murmured against Derek’s lips.

Derek said, “It’s a date,” and then shoved him out onto the stage.

The patch held up through the number. Late entrance aside, it was the best Stiles had ever danced, and the milkshake Derek bought him after the show was the most delicious he had ever had.

#fics by me #Sterek #Stiles Stilinski #Derek Hale #Teen Wolf #yes Stiles is a tap dancer because i say so and i love it #also no this is not beta-ed #and it's almost 1am so take that as you will adlfkjgh

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heartslogos · 3 years

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newfragile yellows [1102]

Once, a very long time ago, someone swallowed a mouthful of raw Wolf flesh and now, a very long time later, Ellana carries that same Wolf flesh woven with hers. Even a sliver of divinity is enough to make the rest divine. It does not dilute. It only transforms.

“And what does the god in you think about the color yellow?” The Iron Bull asks as he flips through scraps of fabric.

“There are worse colors in this world,” Ellana replies with all the sage solemnity she can muster before cracking a smile. In all honesty, the Wolf that sleeps in her bones and curls in her guts and nips at her blood rarely comes up at all. Ellana doesn’t think the Wolf has ever risen to consciousness within her. Not once. Ellana can barely recall what it was like when the Wolf last stretched their spine. “I doubt we’re going to have much use for it though. Just let it be used for cleaning or blotting a wound.”

“My other options are somehow worse,” Bull says.

“Maybe you should take that as as sign.”

“Of what?”

“To be more careful with your clothes otherwise you’ll end up walking about like a child’s patchwork doll. Or some court jester.” Ellana clicks her tongue. “How is it that you can spot traps from yards off but you can’t dodge an arrow?”

“I’d like to see you try it, Lavellan,” Bull replies. “Let’s send you out there with the two hander and get you surrounded by heavily armored soldiers and get someone to fire a volley of arrows at you and see how well your clothes make it out of it.”

Ellana takes the fabric from the Iron Bull’s hands and goes through them quickly until she pulls out a dull brown-gray swatch of cotton. She holds it to his hip, comparing the color. It’s entirely possible that the shade of brown-gray the cotton has taken on is just dirt and wear, but it’s much better than the yellow.

“Why do we have these?” Ellana asks, waving the handful of colorful patterned scrap cloth towards him.

“Ask Aclassi.” Bull takes the scraps from her and then tosses them to the side. They land on the corner of a crate before flopping off and onto the ground. Bull sits, angling his torso towards the open side of the tent and holds his hand out towards her.

Ellana sighs and goes to fetch a needle.

“It would be easier if you took your trousers off. What if you sew yourself into them?” Ellana asks, threading the needle and placing it into his waiting hand.

“The rest are covered in blood. These are the only ones I have left,” Bull answers as he begins to sew the cotton patch onto the side of his leg. “What does your god have to say about the fact that you’re being followed?”

“I’m what?” Ellana blinks, startled as she turns her eyes from his hands to his face. “Well. Aren’t I always?”

“This one is different. You’ve got the Chantry trying to find you.”

“Again, aren't they always? The Chantry has been hunting down the bearers of god-flesh since the beginning. So has the Qun, for that matter.”

“Apparently,” Bull continues, “It’s the hands of the Divine herself that are looking for you. For help. Supposedly.”

“Help? From me? Really?” Ellana squawks. “Whatever for?”

Ellana’s never run afoul of the Chantry. And from what Ellana knows those who carry the Wolf flesh haven’t either. Maybe past bearers have caused trouble for local Chantry leaders now and again — but what Dalish descendant in general hasn’t? Their very existence is trouble for the humans.

“Dunno. I guess you’d have to talk to to find out. Which is my next question for you. Do you want to find out? We can stick around for a while. Let them catch up. Or maybe send some of ours out and intercept, see what information they can get. Or we can split up, lead them on a chase and see if they get tired. It’s your call.”

“How did you find out about this?” There’s always people looking for the more prominent gods buried like needles among a haystack of elves. Keeping track of who’s looking for who is madness and futile. Ellana knows from experience. It can be dizzying.

“Why do you ask questions you already know the answers to? Do you like hearing me talk that much?” Bull hums. “The Qun keeps close tabs on any rumors about the higher ranked gods. And they keep an even closer watch on the Chantry. Especially now with the whole Circle-Templar schism going on. They sent me a report a few days ago. The hands of the Divine are moving. They even tracked down Warden Commander Surana to ask.”

Ellana frowns. “Why?”

Bull shrugs. “Maybe they thought she was it?”

“It’s common knowledge she isn’t. She’s got zephyr blood in her.” Ellana runs the pad of her thumb over her nails. “What did you tell the Qun I was, again?”

“Hearth spirit,” Bull replies. “Do you want me to take you to ground? I can have you in Rivain in about three weeks if you want.”

“No. It’s fine.” Ellana shakes her head. “If they find me they find me. And if I don’t like what they have to say you can whisk me away, right?”

Bull’s lips twitch upwards. “I’m a mercenary, not some knight in shining armor. You’d have to pay me for that. Should I reduce your wages?”

“If you reduce my wages how will I get you that dandelion wine you like so much?” Ellana teases back. “Or that mint bruise balm? Go ahead and let them find me. There isn’t much they’d be able to get from me anyway. The Wolf is a lazy god after all. Not once have they woken up in all the time I’ve carried them with me. What’s the worst that could happen?”

#heartsfic #gather your party and venture forth

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thepickpocketofdreams · 4 years

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See That Girl, Watch That Cat

Hey! So I know it’s been forever, but my friend @schemingweasel and I have teamed up to write/illustrate a couple things for Marichat May 2020 <3

Summary: Chat is on patrol, when he comes across a crying Marinette and resolves to cheer her up. Forsooth, hijinks ensue.

Day 29: Pyjamas

WORD COUNT: 1429

It was late. Later than his normal patrols. Paris glittered darkly as Chat Noir leapt from roof to roof, outrunning the challenges of the day. It wasn’t that he was upset, not exactly. He just needed to let off the excess steam. Tensions in the Agreste household had been running high, and the need to get out had overwhelmed him – hence the midnight sprint across the skyline.

Panting, Chat spotted a familiar balcony and grinned. Since the first time he’d appeared a few months ago, both he and Marinette had gotten used to his habit of dropping in. Though, it was usually a lot earlier than this – she was probably asleep right now. He smiled as he landed and leaned against the railing anyway, enjoying the breeze on his face.

It’s always here for you, Chaton, Marinette had told him, and somehow, he’d taken her up on it. It was safe up here. A tiny haven nestled in among the rooftops of Paris. Everything around him was quiet, but for the occasional car passing by on the streets below.

His ears caught another sound this time though, quiet enough that his normal hearing would have missed it. Chat straightened, tilted his head – there it was again. A quiet, muffled sound, strangely like a…sob?

Crouching next to Marinette’s window, he listened again and – yep, definitely crying. Had she been upset at school? He racked his brain, but nothing sprang to mind. No fights, no stressful akumatizations, no tests for another two weeks. Just an average day, right?

Chat hesitated. Should he leave? No, he couldn’t, not is Marinette was upset. But maybe she wouldn’t want him to know? A louder sob echoed from below, making the decision for him. He tapped on the window.

No response.

He tapped again.

This time, Marinette’s faced appeared. Red blotches surrounded her eyes, and she swiped at them furiously when she saw him, pushing the window open.

“What do you want, Chat?”

“I, uh…” He scratched the back of his neck. “Well I sort of…heard you. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“Oh.” The annoyance vanished from her expression, replaced by tiredness. She picked at the hem of her pyjamas. “I’m fine.”

“Why aren’t you asleep?” He asked.

“I could ask you the same question.”

Chat shrugged. “Late patrol. I had too much energy to get to sleep.” Somewhere below them, a bike whirred past. A bird chirped. Marinette sighed, scrubbing at her eyes, then dropped down as she gestured at him to follow.

Once they were in Marinette’s room, Chat understood. Fabric littered every surface; scraps of black and purple covered the desk, the floor, even the walls.

“Mari, what happened?”

“Jagged Stone happened.” Marinette sank onto the bed, the only patch clear from the tornado of fashion, and put her head in her hands. “I had so much to do that I completely forgot I said I’d design a jacket for him, but I’m just so tired, and I haven’t been sleeping and everything’s going wrong and I-”

“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Chat picked his way across the room to sit next to her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “Do your parents know you’re still up?”

“No, they’re visiting my Grandma and I didn’t want to worry them or anything so I’ve just kind of been here stressing by myself.”

A pang of love for his friend hit Chat as he tugged her closer. She’d been struggling with this, all alone? “It’s okay, Princess. We can fix this.”

“The deadline is tomorrow, Chat. I’ve barely started pinning the pieces together and even when the sewing is done, those rhinestones need sticking on, then the fabric needs distressing and-”

“You need de-stressing.”

“Chat.” Marinette sat up and glared at him.

“I’m being serious! We won’t get anything done in this state. Hey,” an idea occurred to him. “Where’s your iPod?”

“Now is not the time for your music, Chaton.”

“No time for music?” He feigned offence. “There is always time for music. Come on.” He sprang up and launched himself at the desk, rummaging around in the mess of patterns and ribbons. It had to be here somewhere. Behind him, he heard Marinette sigh in defeat.

“It’s in the top drawer.”

“Aha!” He pounced on it and swiped the screen. Immediately, a playlist of Marinette’s recently played songs came up – Jagged Stone’s new album, naturally. Chat glanced over at his friend (who had flopped back onto the bed), then typed into the search bar and plugged the iPod into a speaker.

When the first few notes filled the room, Marinette covered her face with her hands and groaned.

“Chat. Why.”

“C’mon, Princess.” Chat struck a ridiculous pose. “You know you want to join in.”

“I really don’t.” Her voice was muffled by her hands.

“Of course you do.” He strutted – yes, strutted – across the room, avoiding piles of half-finished clothing, to pull a feather boa from her clothes hook. “There’s no way you can resist the power of ABBA.”

Marinette responded by letting out a sound somewhere between a moan and a scream of frustration.

“That’s not even close to the lyrics.” He wiggled his hips in time to the music. “Friday night and the lights are low-”

“Chaton-” Marinette sat up, the rest of her sentence vanishing as she saw him attempt to do a slut drop. “CHAT OH MY GOD.”

“What? It said the lights are low!” He caught her eye and grinned upon seeing the amusement behind her eyes, though she tried to hide it. “Come on, you know you want to – ooh, anybody could be that guy-”

“You look ridiculous.”

Chat didn’t reply – he was busy passionately mouthing lyrics into the boa. He danced his way over to Marinette and pulled a scarf from the bedpost, waving it in her direction.

“Absolutely not.”

“I won’t tell a soul. Cat’s honour.”

It must have been his charming smile, because Marinette relented and took the scarf from him. “I’m not dancing though.”

“DANCING QUEEN, YOUNG AND SWEET, ONLY SEVENTEEN.”

Within just two minutes, the dancing had proven contagious; Marinette was on the bed, dancing along to ABBA. At midnight. In her pajamas.

“DANCING QUEEN, FEEL THE BEAT FROM THE TAMBOURINE – OH YEAHH.” Chat was having the time of his life – Marinette had thrown him a frilly dressing gown to wear as a robe and he was owning it.

“YOU CAN DANCE.” Marinette struck a pose.

“YOU CAN JIVE.” Chat joined her on the bed.

“HAVING THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE, OOO, SEE THAT GIRL!” Marinette shimmied like no one had ever shimmied before.

“WATCH THAT SCENE.” She pointed at Chat, as he did quite possibly the greatest air-guitar solo in his career.

“DIGGING THE DANCING QUEEEEEEEEEN.”

Together, they struck the most powerful ending pose Marinette’s bedroom had ever seen, before catching each other’s eyes and promptly collapsing onto the bed in a fit of hysterical laughter.

Once they’d lain there together for half an hour, and Chat had deemed her sufficiently de-stressed, Marinette had continued with her sewing. He’d stayed, of course – he was determined to keep her company through the night.

She bit a piece of thread to break it, turning to where he was still curled up in her dressing gown on the bed. “Okay Chaton, I’m nearly there.”

He made a tired cheering noise in response, cut off halfway by a yawn. Her lamp was bathing the room in a warm glow and it was proving difficult to stay awake.

Marinette laughed. “I promise I’ll go to sleep the second I’m done. You don’t have to stay.”

“I wanted to. You don’t deserve to be stressed out all on your own. Besides,” he grinned, “who else would let me play dress up in their pyjamas?”

They both chuckled, then lapsed into a companionable silence. Marinette brushed dust from the shoulder of the jacket and cleared her throat. “Thank you for all this, by the way. You didn’t have to – well, for checking up on me, and cheering me up and-” a blush tinged her cheeks. “Thank you for everything.”

“Anytime, Princess.”

Fifteen minutes later, she was done. “Oh, thank God.” Marinette stretched, cracking her shoulders. “Okay Chaton, time for you to go home and sleep yourself.”

When there was no response, she turned around in surprise - and smiled. Curled up and passed out on the bed (still wearing her dressing gown), was Chat Noir. With a suppressed giggle, Marinette snuggled down next to him and pulled a cover over them both.

“Sleep well, mon petit chaton.”

Credit to @schemingweasel for the artwork <3

#marichatmay2020 #marichat #marinette dupain cheng #chat noir #miraculous ladybug #fluff #my writing #chat noir/marinette fluff #no one can resist the power of abba #including me apparently #day 29: pajamas #funny #miraculous ladybug funny #marichat fluff #miraculous ladybug fluff #adrien agreste #ladybug

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snowdice · 4 years

Text

Things You’ll Never Do (Part 4 of the Series “Is There Anything Left of Patton?”)

Fandom: Sanders Sides

Relationships: Virgil & Logan, Logan/Patton(?), Virgil & Patton (?)

Characters: Logan, Virgil, Patton(?)

Summary: Season change. Life changes. Patton doesn’t.

Notes: Zombie Apocalypse AU, Past major character death(?), Look it’s a zombie AU so you can probably guess why there’s a question mark after everything involving Patton. Angst.

The fourth part of a series of one-shots called Is There Anything Left of Patton?

Previous parts:

“Something Left”

“Someone You’ll Never Meet”

Food You’ll Never Eat

Logan glanced up as Virgil shifted on the couch next to him to pull the blanket he was wearing more securely around his shoulders. He was working on patching his hoody once more and seemed even more anxious without its normal weight around his shoulders than he had been in the past week. Logan tried to ignore him but couldn’t help but grit his teeth just a bit as he squirmed around a bit more, jostling Logan with the movement.

“It’s getting colder,” Virgil commented.

“It is,” Logan agreed, hoping that would be the end of it.

“Yeah…” The other man started to tap his foot and stopped sewing altogether in lieu of fiddling with the fabric in his hands.

Logan closed his eyes and took a breath. “We will be fine, Virgil,” he assured. He knew, of course, why Virgil’s anxiety rose as the temperature dropped. He hadn’t gone into detail, but Logan had pieced together from what he had said that his last winter had not gone well. There had been a reason why he’d been alone when Logan had found him last spring, and it was not anything like the reason Logan himself had been “alone.”

“I know,” Virgil replied.

Logan nodded and went back to his book.

“But what if…”

Logan snapped his book closed. “Virgil,” he said, and it was a good thing Patton was currently tied to the rocking chair out of reaching distance because the sharpness of his tone drew the man’s attention instantly. “As I have explained multiple times before, we have plenty of supplies for the winter.”

“But what if there’s a big snowstorm and the solar panels break, and we freeze?”

“We have stored battery power as well as gasoline for the backup generator. If all else fails, we have a fireplace and wood.”

“But then we wouldn’t be able to cool the food and we’d starve…”

“If it is cold enough that we could freeze to death, we can simply put the food in the freezers outside in the snow instead. Besides, all of the canning you insisted on doing this fall would easily get us through the winter twice over.”

“What if…?”

“Then we die Virgil,” he snapped. “What do you want from me?!” The other man slammed his jaw shut. Logan sighed. “I will go on one more hunting trip for the season if that will assuage your anxiety. You can make jerky out of whatever I bring back. However, you will need to find some activity to amuse yourself during the winter months other than overpreparing supplies else we will surely drive each other mad.”

“…Fine.”

“Very well. I will go tomorrow,” Logan said and then paused. “Do you want me to put Patton downstairs while I’m gone?” Recently Logan had simply… stopped putting Patton downstairs during the night and Virgil had yet to protest. It was likely not a rational decision, but he… didn’t like putting Patton downstairs. Logan knew logically that the distress he expressed when he realized he was being put in the cage was not true human suffering, but it still always left a bad taste in Logan’s mouth.

“Nah,” Virgil said glancing at the mentioned man still pulling at his leash. “It’s cool. Patton and I’ll just hang out.”

Logan tried not to show his relief on his face. “Very well.” Hopefully by the time he got back, Virgil will have calmed down some, or at very least, Logan would have more patience to deal with him.

Virgil glanced through the inventory Logan had carefully written out and marked off the one can of peaches that he’d eaten for breakfast. There were still enough cans for four cans of those per week until next April, but the numbers only partially calmed his anxiety over the situation. He sighed and tried to forget it, walking into the living room and hoping to find something productive to do.

He paused in the doorframe. “Patton? What are you doing buddy?” Virgil asked. Patton was standing in the corner of the living room trapped between a potted plant and the wall like a video game character clipping. He stared at the plant blankly. “Pat,” Virgil said a little more sharply to attract his attention. He turned at the sound to start toward Virgil and promptly walked right into the potted plant, tumbling it and himself over. “Patton!” he exclaimed, rushing over to him.

He realized his mistake a moment too late. He must have moved in the wrong way or spoke with just a bit too high of a pitch because Patton suddenly went from his must-investigate-weird-object mode to attack mode. Virgil tried to hop out of range of the leash, but felt a hand grab his ankle with surprising strength considering how the zombie was usually easily pushed and pulled with the lightest of touches. Virgil’s leg was pulled out from under him and he fell. “No!” Virgil said as he was yanked backwards. He tried to find purchase on something, but all he could do was dig his fingers into the carpet. They often forgot with how docile Patton was 95% of the time, that Patton had all the strength of an adult man and perhaps a bit extra from the turning. “Patton please! I hate it when you do this!” Virgil groaned. He was pulled inexorably back by the hold on his ankles, his fingernails scrapping against the ground uselessly like a scene in an old horror movie.

Weight flopped down on top of him, a knee digging into his back. Cool breath brushed against the back of his neck and too cold fingers grabbed at one of his ears. A chill went up his spine.

Virgil flopped his forehead onto the floor in defeat. “You know,” he grumbled. “If you’re not going to eat me then WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS?” Patton’s fingers tried to find the source of the sound, but Virgil was luckily on his stomach and could easily press his mouth against the floor. That didn’t stop the fingers from scraping against his neck though. “I fucking hate you sometimes Patton,” Virgil hissed. Patton just patted at his cheeks. “Logan!” he called. “You didn’t possibly get back from your hunting trip and just not tell me, did you?!” There was no answer. Figured. Virgil pushed against Patton’s hold and was shoved firmly back down, fingers digging into his hair with renewed vigor.

Unfortunately, when Patton got like this, there wasn’t much you could do without help besides waiting and hoping. He had to lose interest in you before you could get away from him. The problem was that even if he did get bored, when you tried to wiggle away, there was every likelihood he’d just get more intrigued by you and the cycle would repeat again and again.

They went through the process a couple of times before Virgil was finally able to get away from the weird forced cuddling. He shoved back suddenly, and Patton toppled off him. Virgil scrambled away and out of the leash’s reach before he could get grabbed again. Patton rolled, confused at the sudden exodus of his pillow and got caught up in the leash. He promptly started fighting with it.

“Ugh,” Virgil said flopping on his back on the floor. After a few more moments, he stood up and surveyed the damage. The poor plant was likely unsalvageable, the pot it had been in now broken into three big pieces and a few smaller ones (he’s glad they didn’t roll onto that), and wet dirt was everywhere.

Virgil sighed. “We both have mud all over us now Patton.” He was careful to pitch his voice low. Patton barely even spared him a glance. Instead he just continued to claw at the leash.

Well, Virgil couldn’t just leave him there no matter how much he wanted to after that trauma. He edged carefully around the writhing mass on the floor and grabbed the edge of the leash, quickly untying it from the armchair he’d been attached to. Next came the game of untangling Patton from the leash while said zombie did everything he could to resist Virgil’s efforts.

Eventually, Virgil managed to get him untangled and gave a non-so-gentle tug on the handle. He stumbled forward, made a hissing noise, and tried to pull himself back the other way. Virgil dug in his heels and tugged, whistling a couple of times to get his attention.

It took probably 20 minutes to drag him upstairs to Logan’s bedroom. He tied him to the headboard of the bed. “Stay,” Virgil commanded, uselessly he knew. He dashed into his bedroom and quickly changed into a different outfit before returning.

Patton had sat on the floor while Virgil had been gone. “You got mud all over the rug,” he moaned. Well, that would be a problem for later. First… he ran down to the kitchen where the water supply was and wetted a washrag.

He did his best to wipe the mud off of Patton’s face and arms despite the way he fought back like Virgil was pouring acid onto his skin. “It’s just water, you asshole,” Virgil hissed, throwing down the rag once he’d gotten the worst of it off.

He turned toward the dresser and started rooting through the drawers a bit roughly, trying to find something in them that would be easy to wrestle Patton into. He dug through the clothing, growing more and more frustrated by the moment. He pulled out something that looked promising: a pair of sweats with some university logo on them, but as soon as he held them up, he could tell they were too small for Patton’s waist. He tossed them over his shoulder.

They made a clanking noise when they hit the floor. He paused, blinking over at the pants. There weren’t any buttons or metal on them to make that noise. Now that he was paying attention, he noticed when he reached over to pick them up that they had an unusual weight to them. He dug his hand into the pocket and pulled out an engagement ring.

Oh.

It was easy to forget sometimes that Patton wasn’t in fact some really stupid dog he had to deal with. He’d been a full person once who liked to cook and garden; in fact, the peaches he’d eaten this morning were grown and canned by his hand. He’d kept a closet full of stuffed animals despite being a fully-grown adult, and, by what Logan had said, had no shame about that fact. The truly horrendous 100-pound armchair they tied Patton to in the living room was picked out and somehow dragged into Logan’s home without his knowledge or consent by that man.

Patton had been someone who was loved so much that Logan couldn’t let him go even now, still looked at him with all of that love even now. He was a man who’d bought a ring and made plans for a future that would never come.

All of Virgil’s agitation at Patton drained from him in a moment.

“I…” Virgil said, drawing Patton’s attention to him, though he could never reach him from where he was tied up. “This is a really nice ring Pat. Nice and simple. He would have loved it.” He would have loved anything Patton gave to him. “Would you want him to have it, I wonder.” He looked over at the man, searching for an answer on his vacant face. “I think…” Virgil concluded. “I think that would be cruel, and I think that you didn’t like to do cruel things.” Virgil nodded to himself and carefully placed the ring back into the old sweats’ pocket, folded them up, and put them back where they had been in the drawer.

He much more calmly picked out a pair of pants and a shirt. “Okay Patton,” Virgil said and turned to him. “Let’s get you into something clean.”

Thanks for reading!

Ah and we finally have foreshadowing for the plot. Gee this AU moves slowly...

...

What plot you ask? Well.

Want to read more? The next part of this series is...

There are Things You Have Lost

#sanders sides #virgil sanders #patton sanders #logan sanders #logicality ?#adriana writes #zombie au #past major character death #angst #italop #platonic analogical #platonic moxiety (sorta?)

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sserpente · 5 years

Text

As a last resort

A/N & Synopsis: Based on a prompt sent to me by @imboredsueme:

The hero shows up at the villain’s doorstep one night. They’re shivering, bleeding, scared. There’s also a slightly dazed look in their eyes--they were drugged. They look like they were assaulted. Looking up at the villain, swaying slightly as they’re close to passing out, they mumble: “...didn’t know where else to go...”, then collapse into the villain’s arms.

Sometimes, inspiration strikes you and when it does, you have to strike back. Featuring one of my favourite AU’s. 😉

Words: 2542 Warnings: Loki wins AU, mentions of drug use, drink spiking and attempted rape, fluff

Things were different around New York City ever since the Chitauri attack. Ever since the Avengers, hope of civilisation, society and humanity, had lost Earth to a man as beautiful as he was dangerous and the disappointment and anger the people had met you with on the streets had driven you further into living a hazardous life in the shadows.

Loki had announced a hefty bounty for your capture. Yours, and that of his adoptive brother Thor, Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff. Heavens knew whether Tony Stark, Bruce Banner and Clint Barton were still alive after they had disappeared in the Avengers’… Loki’s tower around six months after the alien invasion. But the remaining Avengers were out there somewhere, hiding and planning to overthrow his ruling.

You had long given up on them trying to find you. Perhaps they thought you were dead—that you, a young woman with mere combat skills and two failed assassination attempts before you were recruited by the man you had been assigned to kill and became part of the Avengers only a few days after the God of Mischief had arrived on Earth to claim it, could not possibly survive this long in a realm ruled by chaos and malice.

They had left you and given up on you, choking you with all the hope that had swelled up in your chest every night before you curled up in a dirty rain barrel you had found to sleep in. Realisation had hit you after almost two years hiding among the homeless. You were alone in this world. You always had been. You had just been naïve enough to believe that the Avengers would finally change that.

Sure. The word, in the truest sense of its meaning, had sealed your fate tonight. You had shaken the devil’s hand, unsuspecting of the fatal deal you had struck. He was supposed to be an ally. Henry lived near the eerie scrap yard in the suburbs. He made money by stealing cars and selling the parts to shady dealers and they paid him enough to afford a flat he shared with friends. You had never asked but according to their looks, they were both drug dealers.

You had agreed to join them for a drink in a bar they knew would be safe for you to stroll in. Your face was all over the news, after all, the sum announced on your head making most people around New York City dizzy. It was high. Not as high as the bounty promised for the capture of Thor but higher than the bounty placed onto Captain America and Black Widow. Loki and you had fought in the past, regardless of you getting overwhelmed by the much stronger Asgardian, numerous times. He had offered you a way out to join him and you had refused. Now, self-preservation and the will to survive this hellhole New York City had become urging you on, you wished you hadn’t. Loki was a cunning and arrogant man. Something about you had fascinated him enough not to kill you when he brought you to his feet, disarmed and breathing heavily. But he had sworn revenge for your denial and rejection, for attempting to foil his plans.

When you realised that Henry’s friends, having asked for his consent prior to their actions, had spiked your drink, it was already too late. Whatever drug it was that now attacked your blood so aggressively and messed with your mind and thoughts, it burned like liquid fire in your stomach.

They had underestimated your combat skills when they dragged your weakened form outside through the back door to tear your clothes off your body which resulted in ugly holes revealing your skin on your thighs, stomach and chest. And you had fought back, striking with all your might and reaching for every body part that might hurt upon being hit as they had almost taken from you what you protected and cherished so dearly. Blood was streaming from your nose and the throbbing cut on your lip as well as a wound on your forehead. There were more injuries, for sure. The adrenaline cursing through your blood merely shut out the agony.

Bruises already formed on your stomach, one of the straps of your bra broken and revealing another cut right above your breast. A knife. Henry’s knife had done that. You would kill him for that and this time your assassination would not fail… if your survived this.

You moaned in pain when you heaved yourself into a dark alley to shield yourself from unwanted gazes. This was bad. This was really bad. You needed help but a hospital was out of the question. They would not help you without costs you could never cover without any insurance and if they recognised you…

Tears spilled from your eyes when another wave of sharp pain tore through your body, numbing your senses. You knew what fainting felt like… and you would lose consciousness soon if you didn’t act now and wanted to die in this alley. Your threw your head back, taking a deep breath which turned into a desperate sob.

Your sight blurred when you looked up into the cold night to see Loki’s tower protruding from the other buildings like an active volcano.

There was no need for Loki to guard the lobby downstairs, his Chitauri had made sure of that. He had made sure of that. People who walked into his tower usually did not make it back out unless they worked for him.

Sighing, he ran his fingers over his lower lip and tore his blue gaze away from the blond man who, only weeks after his victory over the Avengers, had volunteered to operate as his personal assistant and spy. He was a decommissioned politician, his motives questionable even to him—but thus far, he had proven to be useful.

His daily reports were beyond tiring and Loki could certainly think of more interesting activities to spend his evening. It was dark out already, thousands of artificial lights illuminating the nightly skyline of New York City and turning the many buildings beneath him into a murky sea.

He could use some distraction right about now. An attack, perhaps. Thor paying him a visit and starting yet another futile and brainless attempt to overthrow him with the sheer strength of his beloved hammer… sighing once more, he dismissed his lackey mid-sentence and leaned back in his cosy armchair, enjoying how silence spread in his living room and for once, letting his guard down.

That’s why the silent pling of the elevator caught him off guard, surprise and confusion rumbling inside of him as he stood to face the metal doors open to reveal… you. Loki closed the distance between the armchair and the elevator so fast any other human would have been intimidated but in your current state, you did not even notice.

What in the nine realms had happened to you? What were you doing here? If the Chitauri had caught you, one of their leaders would have been with you. If a bounty hunter had dragged you up, they would be demanding their reward right now.

Narrowing his blue eyes at you hostilely, he only took the time now to inspect your pathetic form. You were bleeding from several wounds, your clothes torn, skin covered in bruises and even cuts. Angry handprints and marks staining your flesh. Finally, you gathered the physical strength to look up at him shivering and scared, your eyes glazed and somewhat… abstracted. It was obvious you had been drugged by someone. What had happened?

“…I didn’t know where else to go…” You croaked out. Then, your eyelids flattered close and you collapsed into Loki’s arms.

The room you woke up in was not familiar. It was huge and spacious, neatly filled with dark brown furniture accentuated by golden engravings and green fabrics. The bed sheets covering your almost naked body were green too. Swallowing, you bit your lower lip to help ignore the pain and sat up a little to study your foreign surroundings.

A hot wave passed through you when your memories returned and hammered against your brain like Thor’s mjolnir, the amount of green and gold in the room a mocking reminder. Loki.

“You are awake.” Flinching hurt when his voiced pulled you back to the present. Next to him, the entire room appeared meagre and tiny, like his mere presence shrunk it all down. Your eyes locked with his, a scrutinising glare boring into you. Another memory. You had passed out in his arms. Your lips parted to respond but Loki cut you off before you could utter a single word.

“Tell me what happened to you.” It was not a question, it was a demand. But an explanation for why you had showed up at the very man’s doorstep who had suspended a bounty of a million dollars on you was the least you owed him.

I didn’t know where else to go, you had mumbled half-unconscious. Loki doubted you remembered your words and yet they had been echoing in his head ever since he had called for some nurses and a doctor. They had patched you up quickly, sewing the laceration on your forehead and tending to the wounds on the rest of your body. They had taken a sample of your blood, too, quickly finding the right antidote to fight the drug in your blood. You would recover.

What had you meant by “I didn’t know where else to go”? Surely, whoever was left of the Avengers would have come to your help nobly sooner or later. Loki wondered, genuinely, why they hadn’t. But even more important was the question why he had helped you.

He could have let you die and bleed out on his green carpet then and there, saving the bounty and announcing yet another victory to the already terrified people living under his reign in New York City. To decide against it had been impetuous and he had spent hours watching your sleeping form in his own bed attempting to figure out his motives.

And he had come to a conclusion. No matter whose side you had fought on two years ago, the moment you had stepped into that elevator, you were an innocent and likely assaulted woman in the need of help. You had come to him, of all people, knowing there was a chance he would bury his pointy sceptre deep in your stomach as soon as you stepped over the threshold. You had laid your life in his hands, presenting your head to him on a silver platter… and despite everything that had happened, you had trusted him enough to save you.

His question stirred up memories you did not want to harbour. Squeezing your eyes shut, you took a deep and painful breath.

“They tricked me. My drink… it was spiked. Outside, they tried to…” Your voice broke, tears worsening your sight. “They tried to rape me.”

Loki’s poignant expression darkened. “Who?” He growled. Would it make any difference to him if he knew? He could send for the Chitauri to kill whoever had dared to lay a hand on you and ravish you against your will. He clenched his fists. But why, by the Norns, would he care?

“Henry… his friends… I should have known better, I considered him a friend! He… he shared his food with me.” Out on the streets of New York City, starvation was one of the most common causes of death, right after death from exposure, drug use and alcohol poisoning and murder. Sharing food was a big deal.

Another look into Loki’s blue and nearly unreadable eyes made you burst out crying. You had no power to stop it, nor to hold it in until he had left. It must have been some kind of delayed shock that made you shake and sob uncontrollably with a start, hugging your knees to your chest for some sort of comfort.

Loki began pacing up and down his bedroom, unsure of how to deal with the situation in the most calculated way possible.

“You came to me fully aware of the consequences.” He stated bluntly, his voice surprisingly quiet. Another sob of yours tore through the air before you looked up at him so helplessly Loki felt a strange sting in his heart.

“You… treated my wounds. You won’t kill me now, w-will you? I know you are not that cruel, Loki.” Loki demanded respect and he demanded being addressed properly. As of right now, he was the king of this realm—he was your king. The provocative undertone in your voice when you spoke his name, despite your devastation, did not go unnoticed. It suited you and intrigued him. You had not lost your fire then.

“I just… I’m all alone. I didn’t know where else to go and you…” You did not finish your sentence as you did not know how. But there it was again. I didn’t know where else to go. You were right, of course. He would never kill you. You might have been an Avenger but you had not been so with all your heart. You acted out of desperation and the need of recognition, affection and praise—in which aspect, when he had first met and fought you, he had seen himself.

He had approached you before he knew himself, his feet taking control of his actions. You leaned back intimidated when he came to a halt right in front of you. Your fear of him was palpable. Loki was right. You had come to him knowing the consequences. Without probing you knew that he would not let you out of this tower again—and only Heaven knew if you would live long enough to deal with the gravity of your actions.

Yet, at the very same time, you felt an overwhelming gratefulness washing over your mangled body when your eyes locked with his once more. Loki could have let you die pathetically. He could have killed you the moment the elevator doors opened to reveal your weakened form… and he did not.

“Thank you. For saving me.”

What he did next surprised you both. Loki lifted his arm, his hand coming up to stroke your cheek. Long and soft fingers caressing your wet skin. It was a light, gentle and hesitant touch as if he was trying to figure out what to do with you—and the odd sensations in his chest ever since you had collapsed in his arms.

Your lower lip was shaking as your eyes fell shut upon his tender touch. You did not realise you began sobbing again and wrapped your arms around his middle until you were already holding onto him, desperate to forget your assault. Loki… held you. Hesitantly and rather maladroitly, he pressed you against him almost possessively. In any other situation, you would have snorted at your stupidity. You were hugging the villain. Why… did this feel so right?

He would positively kill Henry and his friends, slowly and intimately, to avenge you. But first, he would have to thank them for driving you into his arms.

A/N: If you enjoyed this story, I would appreciate so much if you supported me on Kofi! kofi.com/sserpente ♥

Additional disclaimer: The original prompt that inspired this story seemed to have originally been posted by @one-lonely-whumperfly.

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sophiexwrites · 4 years

Text

A Gift from the Ghost King

Inspired by this awesome headcanon from @give-nico-a-gun, thanks a ton for the inspo! It’s come to be a long-ish one, 2.2k words.

Trigger Warning: Mentions of Christianity and needles, but not in the medical context... it’s really just harmless and sweet.

Setting: General Riordanverse/PJOVerse with canon/established Solangelo.

Mentioned couples Christmas sweaters from the shop (link).

Note: because most people recognise American-English more than normal English, I’ve decided to go American this time, like dropping the u when I have to and using ‘sweater’ instead of jumper so that no-one gets confused (fingers crossed I do it properly).

Nico and Will, for all their opposites, had one major thing in common: they were raised Christian. Neither were quite sure why, since their mothers were well aware of the Greek pantheon of gods rather than a monotheistic one, but they supposed their childhood communities wouldn’t have taken sweetly to the change.

Which meant the emo teen wasn’t focusing on Halloween this October, but on Christmas. Already. What do you get someone who claims to have it all?

Talking to his friends didn’t help much. Most of them suggested medical equipment or a simple day off; there were even a few jokes about sunscreen that Nico didn’t quite understand. Those of them who knew Will better said they were buying him new arrows, notebooks or trinkets to fit his sunny-surfer-dude aesthetic - those were great ideas but Nico couldn’t copy them. Will knew him well enough to tell whether it was Nico’s idea or not. The pale teen scowled, wondering why he even asked. He was completely stumped.

Until early November, that is, when Will began to drop hints. Nico only realised it when when his boyfriend convinced him into a store just to look at their collection of couples Christmas sweaters, covered with sickeningly sweet messages and nicknames.

"Aww. look Neeks - this one says ‘Don't go bacon my heart’!" Will laughed a laugh that turned Nico's cheeks to bright red, pointing at the sweater closest to them. It was attached to another one, reading ‘I couldn’t if I fried’, along with a drawing of a fried egg reaching out toward the other’s bacon.

The hints came a few more times before Nico swallowed his pride and decided to learn how to make one from scratch. Why DIY? Because everything Will did for Nico was done himself: from writing and playing his own music (nevermind how Will’s voice was definitely not winning X-Factor material), to the fake Mythomagic set full of realistic depictions of the gods, or the admittedly adorable summertime picnics with more food and baked goods than Nico could ever eat. Nico felt it was time to return the favor, and step one was learning how to knit.

It started clumsy and full of holes. Nico seemed to have a talent for dropping stitches. The section he was working on started too tight, then so loose that it was almost falling apart. After two weeks of constant secret practice, however, along with more YouTube tutorials and undone rows than he was willing to admit, Nico made something basically shaped like clothing.

But it was just regular, boring clothing. Of course, Nico knew Will would be overjoyed at just that, but this was the first Christmas the couple planned to spend together, at camp. It was time to go big or go home.

Long story short, Nico swallowed his pride again: this time, to ask his step-mother how to embroider. He was met with suspicious glances and wary questions before Persephone began cooing in delight.

“Oh, that’s the cutest thing! Who knew you could be so soft?” She giggled, already rushing around for threads, test fabrics and needles. “Though I suppose you take after your father, he’s secretly a big softie, y’know - now, are we doing patches, appliques, or diving in the deep end and sewing right onto the yarn?” Nico had a rule not to dive into anything, but with Christmas soon approaching he had to learn fast. Somehow, too, he had to keep it a secret from Will. By December 10th, he’d pretended the wide-eyed needles poking out of his cabin floorboards were totally a prank from Cecile, and Hazel definitely left behind the scrap of paper filled with wobbly cursive last time she visited... Will simply hadn’t noticed. Nico was just glad his boyfriend didn’t have time to read what was on the paper before he snatched it away; that would have ruined it all.

Christmas came quickly, fronted by sleepless nights of embroidery and fingers full of pinpricks for Nico. But he was glad to have it done by Christmas Eve, all wrapped and stashed under the black tree in the Hades Cabin. Usually, he would be spending the night alone, but tonight a warm Will-shaped bundle of joy hugged him while they slept. Nico could only hope he would be as happy the next morning.

“Is this one from you?” Will asked, voice quiet with hidden excitement. Nico nodded, too nervous to speak, pulling at his plain hoodie. The wrapping fell away as Will teared and tugged, soon left left cradling a lump of fabric. “This is... beautiful, Nico!” The nervous boy’s chest sagged in relief, smile stealing onto his face as Will threw off the sweater he was wearing and donned the new creation, spinning around in his rush to the nearest mirror.

“Do you like it?”

“Oh Gods, Nico, of course! Did you make this? Thank you so much!” Will held it up before putting it on, gifting Nico with a laugh like soft rain pattering down on a warm summers day as he read the words out loud. “Significant Annoyance? That’s perfect!” Nico laughed with him, glad the nickname was still well-received, as the teen slipped it on.

He was the greatest model Nico could have asked for. A narrow frame showed off the fabric well: a stunning blue, deep and bright at the same time. Nico thought he’d chosen it because it was cheap, but when Will put it on he realised it’s because it matched the doctor's eyes perfectly. The body of it fit well, even if the arms were a little loose, which made Nico glad he hadn’t painstakingly added rows upon rows of purled stitching for a cute pattern or edge. It wouldn’t have been worth the struggle - the embroidered words were centerpiece enough. They spilled across Will’s chest in a haze of silver, grey and white; threads mixed and blended in the way Persephone had learn from Athena herself. The 20 letters had taken ages to get right, but to see them coupled with Will’s pure joy and excitement as he studied them in his reflection made all the effort worth it.

Needless to say, it beat Will’s gift to Nico that Christmas... which may or may not have been a good thing, because Will’s competitive nature soon swarmed up, and he was already making a gift of his own by the New Year.

“Kayla!” He rushed, panting, into the Apollo cabin from the infirmary. “Please tell me you know where I left my other needle?” Will held a lonely knitting needle in his right hand, pointing it at his half-sister.

“Laundry pile.” She replied, waving behind her towards said pile. It was mainly full of denim and orange cotton, but Will managed to extract the pale wooden tool after some digging. “Why, are you making something again?” It had been years since Will had done any knitting, having been taught by Malcolm Pace of the Athena Cabin during Will’s first few weeks at camp, so Kayla had every reason to be curious.

“Yep.” Will fell onto his bed, after fishing out a ball of yarn from under it. “You know the sweater Nico made me?”

Kayla laughed, sitting up straight. “The one you’ve been wearing almost every day since?”

“Yeah, I want to make him one too.”

“What, for Christmas next year or something? Are you just going to hand it to him now?” His head was bent too far over his busy fingers to see as she raised an eyebrow at him, but he knew her sass too well.

“Oh, totally. You know me, just can’t wait to be organised and do everything in advance.” He grinned down at his work, shaking his head slightly with concentration. He didn’t want to drop a stitch, after all. “It’s his birthday on the 28th, I’m going to give it to him then.”

His sister aww-ed in delight, deciding (for once) to leave him be so that he could get it done on time. Will appreciated that, because he had a lot of work to do in the coming month - or, rather, 27 days.

Will certainly worked hard in those four weeks. Between shifts at the infirmary, general camp stuff and counselor responsibilities, he barely had time to himself let alone keep spending enough time with his boyfriend to make everything seem normal and knit him a sweater. Much like Nico had, he considered just buying one ready-made or getting someone else to help him, but he was eager to do it properly. So, it was a relief after sleepless nights and busy days that Will was finally finished with the sweater three days early; only the embroidery left. But Will was tired and had already misspelt half the terms on his latest patient file, so he had to keep it simple.

GHOST KING 👻 He finished, snipping the end of the silver-white thread. Will held it up to Kayla and the light, dusting off any last threads. “What do you think?”

“Ghost King...” Kayla read, a small smile on her face. “With a tiny ghost, too! That’s adorable, Will.” She wandered a little closer, inspecting the gift in the light cast from the sunrise. “You used a template, right? Because you can’t draw, and your handwriting has never been that good.”

“Geez, Kayla, no need to be so harsh.” Will smiled, clearly joking. “Of course I did, it’s got to be perfect for tonight.” It was already Nico’s birthday; Will stayed up all night to finish on time. Kayla knew this and sighed, deciding to make her brother get some rest.

“I’m covering your shift today, you need to sleep before you have your date tonight.” She decided, swinging Will’s bag over her own shoulder and giving his weary face a last look. “Seriously, sleep. I’ll make up some worthy excuse and tell Nico, he’ll understand.” Will protested for only a moment before yawning, and flopping down onto his bunk. A sleep couldn’t hurt...

He woke up near sunset that day, almost time to meet Nico. It was a rush for him to get ready and properly awake, but he made it to the woods just as the sun disappeared below the horizon.

“Will!” Nico waved from the edge, a small look of worry on his face. “I was, um... beginning to think you wouldn’t come.” He admitted, and Will felt his face burn in shame for making his boyfriend worry, even a little.

“Of course I’d come, I just slept in all day. Sorry.” He said, and they wandered a little deeper into the woods, searching for the clearing. Nico insisted it was no problem, which made Will feel more at ease. He was still excited, however, to show Nico what he made (the gift was hidden in his bag, with food for the birthday picnic).

The two made their way into the clearing in content silence, Will secretly itching to see Nico’s reaction to his gift. But he remained as patient as he could, happy to enjoy Nico’s smiles, quiet laughs and stories, enjoying his birthday together in the peaceful way Nico loved. In fact, Will (and Kayla, but she was sworn to secrecy) was the only demigod at camp who knew it was the Italian boy’s birthday - all Nico’s other friends were off in New Rome or the mortal world, after all. It made for far less stress on Nico’s half: he didn’t want random people wishing him a happy birthday all day. No, Nico di Angelo was perfectly joyful to spend the night with his Significant Annoyance under the stars, especially when he surprised him with a gift.

“Here you go.” Will said, presenting a soft package wrapped in black paper with tiny ghosts. The Son of Apollo bought it specially for that, and the remaining roll would stay unused in his cabin except from wrapping Nico’s other gifts: so he was relived to see the other boy smile ever so slightly.

“Thanks, Will.”

“Don’t thank me yet, you haven’t opened it!”

“Okay, okay!” He almost laughed, ripping the paper to reveal an equally dark sweater. “Wow, did you make this?” Will hummed in excited agreement, watching Nico unfold and hold it up to the moonlight.

“Oh my Gods.” He read the words and for a moment Will thought he was going to hate it. But then Nico laughed - no, giggled - a clear, pure sound cutting through the crisp air like a knife through cake. “It’s pretty cool, thanks Will.” The compliment wouldn’t seem like much to an outsider, but Will knew it meant a lot. Nico turned to look at the blond with his dark brown eyes, plain and simple in a way Will could get lost in forever. They were creased at the sides as he smiled, a true smile with his eyes that Will enjoyed so much. He looked good, too, with the well-fitting black sweater on, small letters and tiny illustration embroidered on the neckline.

“Stop staring.” Nico suppressed a smile, going red as his boyfriend shook his head slightly before looking Nico in the eye again.

“Aww, but you look so cute!”

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wastelesscrafts · 3 years

Note

Question for you! I got a new job as an admin and they gave me this long sleeve polo that has our company name embroidered in gold. It's a Tommy Hilfiger and it's Old. Since I'm very fond of a well made well worn thrift find, I instantly love this and even though it's optional to wear it, I definitely will be. However, since it's been worn by many admins before, the sleeves at the wrist, where we rest them against the keyboard have worn out.

I could do a simple fix, but I think it would be cool to do something nice, that will hold up, and gives it a little flair. I was thinking maybe a leaf pattern because the boss like plants. I have a bit of leeway since they aren't mandatory, and our collection of shirts is just a variety of colors and styles and sizes from many years ago. So it doesn't have to match, it's not a uniform just a company polo.

How do I make it such that it's comfortable to rest my wrists and make it last for the next person who gets it?

Thank you for your time in reading this!

[ID: a person showing off two worn-out sleeve cuffs on a green polo. Three big holes have formed at the seam between the cuff and the sleeve while smaller holes sit at the edges of the cuffs.]

Sleeve cuffs and wrist rests

Sounds like your sleeves are getting a lot of friction! It's cool you get to customise your work attire, though. :)

Mending sleeve cuffs:

I've written a post on how to mend ribbed sleeve cuffs a while back that might interest you.

Before you can start thinking about the aesthetic part of the project, you'll first have to figure out your foundation. This means picking a technique to close the holes in your cuffs. You've got a lot of options here, just to name a few:

Close the big holes with a ladder stitch and the small holes at the edges with a blanket stitch or a whipstitch, using matching thread. This'll result in an invisible mend and turn your cuff into a blank canvas for further customisation.

Once the holes at the base of the cuffs are closed, you could sew a scrap of fabric over your mend (inside for extra comfort, outside as decorative element) to make it extra strong. This might be useful as this spot gets a lot of friction.

Get some embroidery thread and sew across the holes at the edges of the cuffs. Use contrasting thread to create fun details.

Sew scraps of fabric across the holes at the edges of the cuffs to both close them up and add a decorative detail.

Replace the entire cuff with a new one, either with a matching or a contrasting fabric, depending on what look you're going for. If your boss likes plants, you could use a plant-themed print for example.

Replace the entire cuff, making it longer than before and adding a thumb hole. This will turn your cuff into a built-in sleeveless glove. I don't know what the temperature's like at your office, but this is a nice touch when you have to do a lot of typing in a cold room, or when you have circulation issues.

Remove the cuff, finish off the raw edge, then pick up stitches along the edge and knit/crochet a new cuff.

Some ideas:

(Image source) [ID: a hand poking out of a gray knit sleeve. The frayed edge of the sleeve has been mended with light gray, blue, dark gray and black embroidery thread.]

(Image source) [ID: a gray sleeve with a ribbed cuff covered in embroidered red roses with green vines and leaves.]

(Image source) [ID: a white sweatshirt with a print showing sunflowers and bees. A yellow flower with green leaves has been embroidered on the sleeve cuff to cover up a hole.]

(Image source) [ID: a gray cuff with a black round patch sewn onto it with blue thread.]

(Image source) [ID: close-up on a pair of gray sleeves ending in red cuffs with a geometric square print. The cuffs have holes for the thumbs and are essentially sleeveless gloves.]

Wrist rests:

It looks like your wrists are getting a lot of friction when using your keyboard, so I figured I'd add in some DIY wrist rests, too. These are quite easy to make out of scrap fabric and a good filling (like rice, or even more scrap fabric).

Updates from the Copper State has a tutorial for a simple, no-nonsense wrist rest set.

(Image source) [ID: a set of wrist rests made out of colourful geometric fabric. A long keyboard wrist rest lies behind a short square mouse rest on top of a wooden surface.]

Sparkle of Sunshine shows how to make two separate wrist rests.

(Image source) [ID: a single rounded, padded wrist rest made out of red fabric with white polkadots lies in front of a black wireless mouse. Text: "www.sparklesofsunshine.com".]

If you'd like something with a bit more personality, this cat-shaped wrist rest is pretty cute. You don't have to make a cat, of course. Pick out any animal head and tail you like.

(Image source) [ID: three pictures showing different angles of a white cat-shaped wrist rest lying in front of a black keyboard. The cat is wearing squared glasses and has the words "I'm Adorkable" embroidered on its rear end.]

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averykedavra · 4 years

Note

Your Sanders sides swap au is SO cool!!! Do you have any other head canons?

Logan really likes stars and when he gets stressed out he makes a little planetarium and hangs out there.

Roman listens to Halsey 24/7

Janus is king of Monopoly.

Virgil has an annual funeral ceremony for Vine, mentioning its death is the only time he exhibits emotions other than chaotic excitement

Patton silences anyone when they’re about to swear. Except for Virgil. Virgil gets to swear and he abuses this privelige constantly.

Movie nights consist of Logan and Roman pointing out all the flaws together.

Logan: “But...but what about his character arc? Are they just going to shelve all the development that--”

Roman: “Are you dense? Don’t go in there! Don’t! Why are everyone in these movies stupid?”

Virgil taught Roman how to do his makeup. Roman immediately changed the makeup after Virgil and him stopped talking, but it doesn’t look as good as it used to.

Roman has a million patches on his hoodie. He freaking hoards bits of fabric to sew onto it. He has a piece of Remus’ shirt, a stolen scrap of Logan’s lab coat, and a bit of one of Janus’ ties.

Janus has a rotating chair so anytime someone wants to talk to him he can spin around and say “So...you thought you could escape, but look where you have found yourself. Back at my mercy.”

Remus: “I brought you dinner!”

Janus: “...I suppose that is an acceptable offering.”

Remus has a million pet animals. Except for cats, he’s allergic. He lets them sit on his shoulders while he bakes or draws.

Roman is lowkey terrified of half the animals. Tries to hide it, but he’s not a great liar.

Patton still calls everyone kiddo. Roman hates it.

Logan is kind of disappointed that Thomas became a YouTuber and not a chemical engineer, but he doesn’t let it get him down too much.

Virgil likes to pop up and blast random songs in peoples’ ears. All meme songs. He also screams along to Welcome to the Black Parade at every possible opportunity. Play a G note and he will arrive within a millisecond, eyes wide.

Remus changes the dinner bell every week or so to keep everyone on their toes. It’s been a duck quack, a whale song, an elephant trumpet, and a very loud fart noise.

Patton has six arms. He uses them for hugs. Like, only hugs.

C!Thomas in this verse probably has severe anxiety, likes to build stuff, and has a ton of repression issues.

And I have more than headcanons, friend! I have a general idea of how the episodes would go. (If anyone asked, I’d gladly share. Just...just let me know...if anyone wants to hear what I have to say...)

From this AU.

#sanders sides swap au #i'm actually considering making this an ask blog or smth #if i don't get bored of it #i can't draw but i can still write #asks and answers #anon

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brokentoasterrr · 4 years

Text

i try to never show vulnerability on this blog because i am simply Like That, but i wrote piece of creative writing (ish) about my best friend and i want to share it so here we go

tw for death, implied smoking and drinking and a bunch of other shit. read at your own risk, essentially.

He hates onions. Onions and mushrooms. Still, he eats the noodle stir-fry I make him, with onions and scallions. And the pasta Carbonara with chickpeas instead of bacon, because I'm vegetarian and I like to cook. He eats it despite the uneven pieces of onion speckled throughout creamy sauce that clings to the pasta.

He loves liquorice. I hate it. He buys a bar of liquorice with a caramel center, urges me to try it, so I do. And I like it. But I never eat it again.

He buys a chocolate bar. I'm terrified of germs so when he asks me if I want a bite, I shake my head. The next time he buys a chocolate bar, he lets me break away a piece myself before he does, so I can eat without the anxiety.

I'm terrified of germs, I'm terrified of becoming ill. I use hand sanitizer until my hands dry out and the skin cracks, wash my hands until my cuticles break apart. He buys me a medium fry from McDonald's, and when I use my hand sanitizer, he doesn't even look at me twice. He stretches his hand out and asks for some. When I don't eat the piece of the fry that my fingers touched, when I put them on a napkin and ignore how anxious it makes me, both to eat and to waste, he nods towards them and says, "Can I eat that?"

When my hands start to shake because I forgot to eat before I left the house, he drags me to the supermarket. He pays for a chocolate bar, says, "It's better than nothing."

He loves orange and chocolate ice cream. Buys a five litre tub and pays £5 to share with all of us. Ten people. He ends up eating most of it, because no one wanted more than a spoonful or two. I am supposed to go vegan, but I eat some anyway.

He walks around with a lizard made out of fabric and sand in his pocket. Says it's there to keep him company. There's a homeless man at McDonald's. He gives the man the sand filled lizard, and says, "Keep it. So you won't be alone anymore."

I'm angry with my mum. She's left me and my older brother alone again. There's no food in the house and I've eaten pasta with frozen peas and ketchup for three days in a row and I'm angry. I feel neglected and alone. He offers me cigarettes, and acts like a drain in which I can pour all of my problems. He says my feelings are valid, says that love doesn't cancel out the neglect. He puts on some music and makes me laugh.

He never says hello. He says, "Good morning." He never says goodbye. He says, "Good luck."

I'm homeless. Well, not quite. I live in the spare room in my grandma's house, young with no money other than the weekly allowance that I spend on cigarettes. He lets me stay at his house for five days, lets me roll cigarettes with loose tobacco because I can't afford another packet this week. He says, "Do you want to start a business? Two pounds per packet. You get a pound if you help me roll." It sounds borderline illegal, but it's just cigarettes, isn't it? I nod.

He owns an ATV. It's started snowing but the air is still warm enough that it doesn't lay as a loose powder over the streets, but packs together. The perfect texture for sledding. He ties a sled to the back of his ATV, gives me a helmet. I sit on the sled, he drives. It's the best thing I've ever done in my entire life.

I'm struggling in school. He says that he'll hopefully get a job in another town. The town where I want to go to highschool. He says he'll get a flat, says that maybe we should move in together. One room each, I can cook and do the dishes, and he'll clean and do laundry. He helps me with my homework. He helps me see the end of studying, and gives me something to work towards. A home with my best friend, a school I'll enjoy.

My body doesn't feel like my own. My head says he and him, my body says otherwise. He's the same. My body feels wrong and I want to crawl out of my skin. He knows exactly how it feels. I haven't showered in a week. He tells me to try to shower with the lights off. I don't smell sweaty and my hair isn't greasy anymore.

He loves orange juice. If he could, he'd probably stop eating and only live of off orange juice. I buy him a litre for his birthday, and he grins and laughs. Empty cartons stands around his room, and his fridge is filled with it. I don't like orange juice, but I like apple juice. So I buy the same brand, different fruit.

He likes to sew his own clothes. Scrap bits of fabric, floss and some free time, and he's patched up a pair of trousers that he decorates with more patches, writes on them, sticks chains and random items onto them. I've never seen anyone sew with floss before, but he does.

He loves dogs. Walks around with dog treats in his pocket in case he runs into a good boy or girl to love for a few moments.

He loves punk. Listens to it loudly on a Bluetooth speaker and screams along. He dances. I dance and I scream with him and I don't care who watches. When we listen to our song, we stand face to face, jump forward and backwards and scream the lyrics in our faces until we can't breathe. I hear the intro and I slap my thighs in excitement, stand up immediately. "It's our song! Come on!"

I love to ride the bike. He does too. We ride our bikes all over town, listen to our music and feel the wind hit our faces. Mine is pink and purple. Because it's not mine, it's my sister's. His is red, rusty and old. It's his mother's.

He wears his hair in a mohawk. It's either blue or black, standing straight up, tall and stiff. My hair is green but still boring. He helps me comb it up to liberty spikes. We wear patched trousers with loud chains and soda caps that hit against one another with the tell-tale metallic jangle. People stare and take photos when they think we can't see. We stand up taller, laugh louder.

He feels alone. He's sad, and angry, and alone. It's my turn to act like the drain. So he talks and talks, smokes cigarette after cigarette and I nod as he speaks. Smoke my own cigarette and says that he's valid. What he's feeling is valid.

I move into a group home. My ceiling lamp hangs too low and I'm only 5"4 yet I bump my head against it. He helps me hang it up properly. Jokes and talks about nothing and everything as he hoists it up until I don't bump my head against it anymore.

We make chocolate truffles. Butter and oats and sugar and cocoa powder. A Swedish thing. We cover them in more chocolate and they taste better than anything we've made before.

He hates Christmas. But he buys battery driven fairy lights and sticks them into his mohawk, down to his trousers. He walks around like a goddamn Christmas tree. Because he hates Christmas but other people love it and he wants to make them happy.

He's drunk. It's Christmas Eve and he's so drunk that he has to hold onto the wall to stand upright. I'm on the balcony and he's on the ground and he looks up at me. "I'm so happy," he tells me. "Kevin, I'm so happy. I always want to be like this." I tell him to go home, drink some water and to sleep it off. He goes.

It's New Year's Eve and I'm at my girlfriend's. We drink non-alcoholic wine and cider, kiss when the clock strikes twelve. We're both tired and we go to bed before one in the morning. He calls me, he says that we're going to start a band. Our friend's new partner has a studio and it's one town over but it's okay because we're moving there anyway. "I love you," he tells me. And I tell him, "I love you too."

Our friend texts me the next day. She asks if I had seen him, if I had heard from him. I tell her no. And I send him a text. I hope you're alive, I write, call me. He never does.

Instead it's our friend, the next day. I've just showered and I'm eating breakfast with my girlfriend and her dad. My phone rings. Our friend. My friend. "Axel's dead," she tells me. "They found him in the attic." I scream. I cry. I tell her no. No, he's not dead. It's not true. She's playing a stupid fucking prank with me, she's lying. But when she says that it's true the third time, I believe her. And I break down.

I cry in the car ride home. I make a promise to myself that I'm going to live for the both of us. For three hours, I cry. I listen to music and audiobooks and nothing works to stop the he's dead, he's dead, he's gone. And I cry some more.

I cry when I wake up the next morning because I don't want to wake up in a world without him.

I stop eating. I stop drinking. I'm nauseous all the time and the ache in my stomach consumes me and I can't eat anything because I am terrified of throwing up.

I cry so much that after three days, I get skin rashes by my eyes from scrubbing my eyes too much. Crying hurts but not crying hurts more. Every breath I take rattles and shakes and I only leave my bedroom to smoke. The staff at the group home tells me to let some light in. I pull my duvet up to my nose.

Axel means shoulder in Swedish. Every time he met someone new, he said, "Hi, my name is Axel and I'm always by your side." He never said that to me. And he never said goodbye, he said "Good luck."

I get a tattoo. It says good luck on my wrist in his hand writing. And he remains by my side.

#creative writing #tw suidice #tw implied suicide #smoking #drinking #implied smoking #implied drinking

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the-fixation-zone · 4 years

Text

Here it is! Chapter 4 of The Boys Crack Open a Cold One and It’s an Underground Crime Organization! Art, as always, by @queenspinoodle, by courageous co-writer. Like, reblogs, and comments appreciated :)

Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Three days later and Zucchini is still pissed off. How dare Sock walk away from him! Zucchini had stormed around the city for a long while after Sock had disappeared, fighting against burning the whole place to the ground. All he’d wanted was a little clarity, and Sock had flown off the handle! That’s Zucchini’s job, dammit! Now Zucchini is sitting in his tent, fuming. For the past three days, he’d been off during rehearsal, to the point that yesterday Pepper had told him to go home early.

“We’ll try again tomorrow and hopefully your head will be screwed on better,” Pepper had said with a disappointed head shake.

Zucchini hates disappointing Pepper. So now he is in his room, trying to do as asked. It’s not going well. The latest attempt finds Zucchini trying to study new runes, hoping to use them to further enhance his bending, but after an hour gives it up and tosses the book aside. His mind is still on Sock, replaying their conversation over and over.

Was he in the wrong? Did he say something out of line? He’d apologized! His uncle had always told him that the first step to forgiveness was a good apology, but maybe his hadn’t been good enough.

He sighs. Zucchini is still angry, but he thinks maybe he should look for Sock to try to talk to him again. He hates to even think it but he’s starting to miss him. He leaves his tent, determined to find Sock and work this out.

For his part, Sock is gloomily stitching up a torn decoration on his circus costume. He hasn’t bothered going inside his tent to do it, instead opting to sit outside under the cloudy sky. No one else is around to see him sew and, honestly, the weather fits his mood.

He still feels attacked by Zucchini's comments, but his anger has long faded. He’d spent the last few days being plagued by memories of the hard times, fighting to keep his overcast disposition from Katt and Baaang during rehearsals. He’s not sure how well he did. He’s found himself roaming around the circus encampment at night, ruminating. Even now, stitching up his costume, his mind is a million miles away. His hands are on autopilot, which is why before long he pricks his finger on the needle.

"Ow!" He sticks the tip of his finger in his mouth and sets his costume to the side. Firmly back in the present, Sock glares down at the needle. It’s his own fault, but it feels good to lay the blame elsewhere.

Zucchini is wandering around outside, thinking about where Sock could be, when he hears an exclamation that he’s sure belongs to Sock. Not knowing if he’s in trouble or not, Zucchini rushes over to the source of the sound.

“Sock? Sock! Are you okay?” Zucchini sees him, sitting outside his tent with his costume and a needle and thread in hand. By the time he realizes Sock isn’t being attacked it’s too late and he can’t take back his question.

Sock looks up wide-eyed, with his finger still in his mouth. He quickly pulls it out, realizing he probably looks silly.

"Uh, yeah. I'm fine." Sock grabs his stuff and moves to get up. He's sure Zucchini is still mad at him, and isn’t in the mood for another fight.

“Hey, wait! Don’t--don’t go. I, uh, was looking for you.” Zucchini looks at the ground, feeling awkward now that he’s actually in front of Sock. He kicks a stray pebble.

"...Oh. What do you need?"

“Well, I, uh, um. I wanted to. To apologize, again. I’m not sure what I said to make you so angry, but I wanted to try and make it right. If you’ll let me?” Zucchini doesn’t mean for the last part to come out like a question, but his nerves tilt his voice up anyway.

Sock sighs. "It's not your fault."

“Okay… Are we good then?” Zucchini desperately wants to know what was up, but he also doesn’t want to pry. He feels like if he asks Sock will get angry again, and he’d rather that not happen.

"Yeah, sure," Sock’s voice still lacks enthusiasm. "We're good."

Zucchini picks up on Sock’s mood but doesn’t know what to do about it. He’s never been good with...feelings, and it doesn’t seem like he’ll pick up the skill any time soon. Instead, he tries out a different skill: changing the subject. “Um...so! How’s sewing up your costume going?”

Sock flops back onto his seat and puts his head in his hands. How is sewing going? He’d stabbed himself because he can’t do anything right, that's how it's going! He definitely can’t tell Zucchini that, so he chooses to say nothing.

“Sock? You okay over there?” Zucchini suddenly realizes this may, perhaps, be a sore subject. “It looks good so far!”

"Thanks," Sock mumbles into his hands. He lifts his face enough to look at Zucchini.

“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t know shit about sewing. This is miles better than anything I could ever do.” Zucchini grins sheepishly. “The best I’ve ever done with needles is a crappy patch job on some old trousers. My sister laughed at me over it for weeks.”

"I didn't know you had a sister." Sock brings his hands back down.

“Oh, yeah. Younger sister. We’re not what you would call...close.” Zucchini makes a face.

"Ah." Sock nods. An uncomfortable silence soon falls over them. Sock taps his foot, unable to sit still with the awkward tension.

“Your sister seems nice, though! Katt, right?” Zucchini remembers her name just barely. “What’s she like?”

"She is pretty nice, at least most of the time. She does tend to think she knows better than everyone else, though. It's pretty annoying."

“Huh. She sounds...pretty normal, actually. Lucky you.” Zucchini grins, trying his damndest to break the tension.

"I'd say she's the luckier one,” Sock says promptly. Then, realizing how that sounds, quickly adds, “not that I’m saying I'm the better sibling, that's not what I'm saying! Well… I am the better sibling, but that's not the point…"

Zucchini laughs. “Uh huh, no, please, go on.” He raises his eyebrows in expectation, grin now firmly plastered across his face.

"I'm just saying that because I'm here, she doesn't have to worry about so many things while she's still young. That's all."

“Oh. That’s, uh, good.” Zucchini has no idea what he’s talking about. “I don’t think my younger sister has worried about anything, ever. She causes the worry if anything.”

Sock hums softly in response. "I hope Katt never does have to worry. I hope I can be here for her, at least until Baaang can take care of her." He stares off into the distance.

Zucchini, trying to parse through Sock’s meaning, says the first thing that pops into his head. “She can’t take care of herself?” He then realizes that maybe that’s a rude thing to say and tries to backtrack. “I mean--! Um, that’s not what I meant. I’m...not sure what I meant but I’m sure it wasn’t how that sounded.”

Sock chuckles. "I understand what you mean. Katt can take care of herself, I know that, but she should never have to."

“I...see. Fair enough, I guess. You’re really protective of her, aren’t you?”

"Of course! She's my baby sister! It’s been my job to protect and provide for her since I was 13."

Zucchini, continuing his streak of speaking without thinking, asks, “What about your parents?”

Sock looks down. "Our mother died."

“Oh. I’m...I’m sorry.” Zucchini almost doesn’t want to ask, but he’s come this far. “And...your dad?”

"...I don't know."

“You don’t know? Did he run off somewhere?”

Sock throws his hands in the air. "I don't know!"

“Got it, got it! Sorry I asked. So, you’ve been raising Katt on your own then, huh.”

"Basically."

“Wow. That must’ve been hard.”

"Yeah. It was."

Zucchini can hear the conversation taking a turn and tries to steer it somewhere better. “It...it looks like you did a good job, though, even with the tough circumstances.”

Sock smiles sadly at Zucchini. "Thanks."

Zucchini sits on the ground next to Sock, thinking about what to say next. “So, uh, you sew? I don’t think I knew that about you.”

"Oh. Yeah, I can. It’s whatever." Sock picks up his costume again, but doesn't start working on it. He’s ready for whatever Zucchini will throw at him next. If he has to get up and walk away again, he will.

“That’s really cool! I can’t do anything like that. Seems my hands are made for destruction, mostly.” Zucchini laughs a bit. “Could you...teach me? I think the circus’ seamstress is getting tired of seeing me all the time.”

Sock stares wide-eyed at Zucchini. He thinks sewing is cool AND he wants to learn? He waits a beat for the punchline but, when none comes, he scrambles to his feet, heading for his tent. "Oh, um, sure. One sec…" Sock enters his tent, emerging a few moments later with another needle and a piece of scrap fabric.

“Great, thanks.” Zucchini eyes the fabric. “So, what do I do first?”

Sock instructs Zucchini on how to thread the needle. This takes some doing, especially since it seems Zucchini’s depth perception is off. Sock tries a few methods of teaching, finally landing on something that works for Zucchini, with plenty of words of encouragement. After he gets the hang of it, Sock starts showing him how to stitch. He grabs his costume to demonstrate, sewing a neat line of stitches from one end of the other.

Zucchini isn’t very good at this. He follows along with Sock, trying to get the hang of it, but his hands fumble over the tiny needle and he sticks himself a few times. Maybe more than a few times. With quite a bit of cursing thrown in. Not to mention, by the time he finishes up his line it’s nowhere near as neat as Sock’s. “You make it look so easy!”

"Sorry?" Sock says with a laugh.

Zucchini sighs loudly. “Argh! Okay, show me how you did that again.”

Sock holds the needle carefully between his thumb and forefinger. He pushes it into the edge of his costume's neckline, pulling it through the other end. With the same precision, he takes the needle back around and pushes it in again, just next to the first stitch, doing that a few more times until a seam starts to take shape. He makes sure to keep himself calm, focusing on the needle’s path.

Zucchini tries again, attempting to mimic Sock’s demeanor. Unfortunately, calm and collected isn’t Zucchini’s style, and he stitches another crooked line through his fabric. “At least it can be recognized as a line this time…” He shakes his head. He tries again and again, his lines zigzagging across his fabric.

Sock recognizes Zucchini’s struggle and reaches out to rest a hand on his shoulder. "It takes a while. Don't force yourself to learn faster than you're able to."

“Yeah, alright.” Zucchini snorts and puts the fabric down. “It’ll take me years at this rate, I can feel it.”

"Here, let’s try this a different way." Sock disappears into his tent, coming out with another scrap of fabric. He threads the needle and brings the fabric down to where Zucchini can easily see it. He holds out the needle for Zucchini to grab hold of, but doesn’t let go.

Zucchini, blinking in surprise, puts his hand on Sock’s holding the needle. He’s not sure what Sock’s plan is but is willing to trust him.

Sock, with Zucchini’s hand on his, pushes the needle through the fabric and grabs the other side of it, waiting for Zucchini to do so as well before pulling it through. He takes his time, going slower than he normally would to make sure Zucchini doesn’t rush. Zucchini still fumbles with the small needle at first but, eventually, they find a rhythm.

Zucchini stares at the neat line of stitches they’ve made together. “Oh, you were right. This is much easier. Thanks.”

Sock smiles brightly. "You’re very welcome!"

Zucchini realizes he’s still effectively holding Sock’s hand and pulls his own back quickly. “I, uh, I think I’ll try again now.” And he grabs his fabric and starts another line, eyes very focused on his task. He tries to go as slowly as Sock had, taking deep breaths when he feels his agitation growing. While he’s doing that, Sock finishes up the seam on his costume, and neatly folds it.

Zucchini finishes his stitches and puts the fabric down. They’re not perfect, but certainly better than what he’d made before. Proud of his work, he pulls out his pocket sundial and checks the time, shooting up once he reads it.

“Oh, shit! I’m about to be late for rehearsal, Pepper’s going to kill me! Sorry Sock, gotta run, but thank you for this!” He jogs away, taking the scrap of fabric with him and heading for the practice tent.

Sock watches him run, tilting his head as his eyes follow him. "Huh. Not bad."

#the boys crack open a cold one and it's an underground crime organization #atla au #zukka au #the zukka is coming along!#zuko #sokka #prince zuko #sokka of the southern water tribe #fix writes with friends #fanfic

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