Work Text:
You come limping home with a hand pressed to your middle and a really nice shirt ruined. "Ros," you're whining as you get the door open, "Ros, my stitches."
You hear her sigh before you see her come breezing down the stairs, fluttery and gothic as shit and even now when you're pretty seriously distracted there's still a bit of you that goes stupid over her. All that cool elegance and composure, damn.
Then she says, "So what did you do this time?"
"Wwhat makes you so sure it wwas my fault?" you demand, trying to give her a good pout. You're distracted, though. This really is pretty uncomfortable.
Rose cups your face in her soft human hands and gives you that little pitying smile she does, the one where her eyebrows alone are saying you poor stupid wreck, how do you do this to yourself, and that's how you know you're really home. "It's always your fault, you arrogant brat," she says, and paps your cheek so gently you could die all over again.
You sniff. "I ain't concedin the point," you say, "but I guess I could not argue it just at the moment."
"On account of you need a hand?" Rose asks, soft smile turning all teasing.
"On account a I need your inestimable expertise," you say, because two can play at the mocking-each-other's-speech-tics thing, and you award yourself a few extra points for doing it when you're hurt.
She sighs. There's something sort of comforting about how she refuses to make a big deal out of it when something goes wrong. You get to do all the big-deal-making yourself, which is generally how you like it. "All right, let's see how bad it is," she says, and starts in on the buttons of your shirt.
"Complete fuckin loss is how bad it is," you complain. "It's fuckin impossible to get blood out a silk, Ros, as wwell you know."
"Tell me you won," she says, without bothering to double-check that it was another fight (it's always another fight), "and I do not have to go stalking the streets in search of your assailant."
When trolls claim that humans can never understand how serious moirallegiance is, you think to yourself, there's a troll that nevver met rose lalonde. You lean your head on her shoulder as she strips off your utterly destroyed champagne silk button-down. "A course I wwon," you tell her. "I been through wworse an come out in one piece." You look down. "Evventually."
"If only it didn't take such work to keep you that way," Rose says. "Here, sit down while I fetch my supplies."
You sit, on one of the smooth kitchen chairs that can be wiped clean later, and hold your guts in while your moirail goes to get her needle and thread. You bleed really fucking slow now you're dead, but you're still oozing a little purple out between your fingers. The punk who jumped you tonight only got one good hit in, but it was enough to split a bunch of the stitches that hold your two halves together. You hate it when this happens. It's uncomfortable and looks a mess and really gets in the way of pretending like being dead hasn't changed anything.
Rose comes back before you can work yourself up into a good sulk, though. "Stop making that face," she says as she kneels beside your chair. "You're going to be fine." She brushes your hands out of the way and takes a good look. Your stitches have torn out for the space of about six inches, and there's a loop of intestine trying to sneak out the gap. Rose makes hmmm noises and pulls a set of gloves on.
"I just hate this," you tell her. "Feels all gross, havvin this ugly mess across my middle." Rose tucks your guts back in and picks up her needle, and you chew on your lip because you don't care for this part at all.
"Would you take better care of yourself if you didn't find it so ugly?" she asks. She's a quick hand with the needle, closing you back up with tight, even stitches.
"Maybe," you say through gritted teeth. Her gloves have little purple smears on them when you glance down. "You got somethin in mind?"
"Embroidery," Rose says crisply. She traces a little filigree along your raw edges in blood. "We can come up with a design you like, and I can give you some stitches that are decorative as well as functional."
You picture that, your own design stitched across your skin in fine fancy thread, the message that would send: fuck you, I ain't ashamed a wwhat I am. "Yeah, I guess maybe I wwould havve to be more careful wwith 'em then," you admit. "Sounds pretty swwag." She's fucking clever, is Rose.
"Indeed," she says, looking all pleased with herself. "It's a date."