#wait I meant slug- it's all the same word in German so I keep getting them mixed up

[ratstuckinamarble]

Introducing you all to my endless well of joy, made possible thanks to the pattern by @itsthebeastpeddler (whose blog you should check out cause she makes some really lovely things ^-^)

It's a slug!!! Fully hand-sewn cause doing so seemed easier than learning how to use our sewing machine... I'll do so eventually XD But it was actually fairly therapeutic.

Oh! Looks like they're friends now.

Camouflage slug... With a "snail" (he's in denial) friend I made some time ago >:) Dang she's making connections left and right :0

He's a big fan of strawberries, can't blame her. And as per the peddler's suggestion, I used a pipe cleaner for the eye stems! Now they're bendyyy

I knew keeping these suckers around for over a decade would be worth it... Also, the single progress photo I took.

This is my first time sewing a plushie, and I had a grand time. Learned a lot along the way, and the ladder stitch that always intimated me is actually super easy XD Wanna know what the best thing about making such a slug is though? The way the eye stalks wiggle about if you shake him sjshsj

A little slug kiss on your forehead for good luck <3

[softschofield]

Can you give some leslie/schofield hcs? Im so interested in that dynamic :) !!

yes please!!!!!

so i’ve said before that it seems an awful lot like that dug-out isn’t the first time scho and leslie have met - scho’s not just rigid and stiff for the entire scene, in a way that he wasn’t even with officers far out-ranking and more worthy of distrust than leslie, he seems like he’s seething, like he’s bitter; leslie gets all up in scho’s face to make a nasty, personal comment about widows when he apparently doesn’t even know scho’s married; he looks scho up and down for an uncomfortably and, quite frankly, inappropriate amount of time before they go over the top - like he’s committing every detail of him to memory in case he doesn’t come back; i could go on. so, naturally, i went well, that’s clearly a result of a fling-gone-wrong, because i have no shame. 

so, headcanons:

they first meet when the yorks are relieving the east surreys at the front. they pass each other in a comms trench, the surreys trudging along in silence, the yorks both restless and quiet with fear; leslie is no more than a junior officer in charge of a platoon, not yet forced into a role he was never meant to have and a little more friendly for it. he’s slugging through the mud with the other officers, listening absently as the major and the captain and the other lieutenants chatter quietly; and the yorks are clean and fed and rested, and the surreys are slugging through with their heads down and their uniforms filthy and blood-dark and their faces tired and drained, and then he sees him - this lance corporal walking by himself, silent and haunted and ignored, and his scarf is neat despite the dirt under his nails, and his face is clean and raw and red from the cold and from where he’s scrubbed away the grime with wool and cotton just to get it off, and his eyes are downcast and blue, and he’s beautiful. 

and leslie’s always been a bit of a poet, more than he lets on - and if he tried to emulate the aesthetic and absorb his favourites books to form his personality inherited a bit (a lot) of his snark from pouring over oscar wilde’s plays when he was a teenager and he could hide them under the covers of his childhood bed without his parents finding that filth, what of it. he’s always been a bit of a poet, in love with loneliness and dust motes and savagery and love, and that boy with the sad, broken eyes is all of that.

he passes scho and lingers for a moment, just looking at him - and inside, he’s shy, but all that anyone’s going to see is the dark, hooded eyes and the sneer and the judgement. he looks at him, and finally scho feels himself being looked at and raises his head, and their eyes meet - and scho’s a bit bewildered, his mind struggling to catch up to the present moment when he’s been lost in his own quiet for so many days, and he just stares back; and leslie lights a cigarette, and smiles, and walks away with a last little look over his shoulder. and scho is left standing there, confused and shaken and hungry, until a soldier behind him pushes him forward and snaps at him to keep moving. 

and they don’t see each other for a little while, while the war rages on and the shells fall, and scho is left to quietly panic mull over what that look meant - because he’d thought any part of him that might once have sought out affection had long since been broken and this has brought up all kinds of unsettling needs that feel like being alive again, and he’s forgotten how to be alive so it just feels like something restless trying to spark to life inside of him when the rest of him is half-decayed. and it’s terrifying. and it’s addictive. 

and then eventually, because a twink is worth facing the hun for, leslie wanders down from the reserve camp to the front line and he finds scho sitting with his back against the mud, curled over himself - and he stops beside him and just stands there smoking like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and scho looks up, shaky and bleary-eyed, and just gapes up at him. 

and while everyone else dozes or murmurs softly around them, leslie stands there and strikes up a conversation like he couldn’t care less about the answers. and scho’s mind is still struggling to catch up, so he answers vaguely and haltingly and with a frown - and eventually he must say something right, because leslie slips down to sit behind him, resting his arms on his knees and offering scho his cigarette. and scho doesn’t smoke but he takes it - because leslie’s pretty, and his eyes are kinder than his voice, and he’s seen men doing this sort of thing before, as a quiet are you like me? he holds leslie’s gaze, and slowly takes the cigarette and puts it between his lips, and he watches leslie’s eyes slip down to his mouth as he inhales - and he exhales the smoke and hands the cigarette back, and their fingers brush, and it’s as much an answer as either of them need. 

and leslie stays there until dark, until pitch black, when the men around them start to wake up and the first of the german flares go up in the sky. and he waits until the verey lights die and night falls around them again, black and cold and just for a moment between flares - and he pulls scho to him, and kisses him in the pitch dark with all those soldiers around them; and they can’t see each other, but they can hear, and feel, and their breaths are warm on each other’s cheeks, and the kiss is desperate, and they both break away starving for more.

ever the tease, leslie half-grins with those dead, dark eyes, and flicks another cigarette at scho, and drags himself to his feet, and leaves without looking back. and scho is left staring after him, trying to catch his breath, rearranging himself against the trench to try and unknot the feeling in his stomach, and because his nerves aren’t used to feeling this alive and it feels like being kicked in the chest. it feels like dying. it feels like being touched for the first time when all your nerve endings are on fire.

and for the next few months, they continue to steal away to see each other. sometimes the yorks and the surreys share the reserve camp, and it’s easy. illicit, and fun, and easy. more often, they’re caught between rotations and it’s harder. but they find a way. and scho opens up and finds that old spark of himself that can babble about something for hours if you find his passion, and that passion is art, and books, and the countryside, and the women’s suffrage movement, and he rambles about john constable and what every one of his brushstrokes meant with his hands waving through the air and his face turned up to the stars and this big, open, excited grin on his face, and leslie just smiles at him, and listens, and thinks i could fall in love with him. 

and you would think it’s scho who catches feelings, because he’s softer, he’s gentler, he’s quiet and lonely and broken - or at least he’s not as good as hiding those things as leslie is. but, no. it’s leslie. he starts to fall for him - and scho’s terrified. he retreats. he thought he could, thought he could love someone else out here, when his wife is so far away and all he has of her is a photograph, but now it’s happening, now the opportunity is looking him cold in the face, and he can’t. 

and leslie is heartbroken. and when leslie’s heartbroken, he shuts down, and he goes quiet, and he pretends not to care. oh, i said i loved you? how nice that must have been for you. he gets this look on his face, bitter and cruel, and he bites before he can be bitten. scho tries to reassure him, tries to comfort him, tries to apologise, with soft, desperate, guilty words and gentle hands and assurances that he still cares about him, it doesn’t have to end, he’s sorry. but leslie’s already looking at him like he hasn’t known him a minute in his life, and it’s over. 

and after that, scho is left lonelier and more broken than ever, and leslie closes his heart off even more, and as much as they both miss each other, as much as scho might daydream about finding him and apologising, as much as leslie might daydream about that very same thing, they don’t. 

and then blake arrives. then they’re sent to find the yorks. then leslie sees schofield with a new, sweet-faced, warm-eyed boy, and schofield can barely look him in the eye - and all he wants to do is hurt him. he brings up his wife - because he knows it isn’t fair to hate the woman, and a part of him loves scho for it, for his stupid devotion, but she did this, she caused this, what happened to you and i, because you couldn’t be disloyal to a memory for one fucking moment and love me. then schofield goes over the top and all leslie wants to do is scream at him to get back down and tell him he forgives him. but he doesn’t. both their lives are just a collection of words neither of them will ever say.

and… basically i’ve just realised i’m a wreck over them!