Work Text:
Darius arrived at Hunter's "workplace", as Luz would have called it. Eberwolf had decided to stay home, preferring a nice, warm nap as opposed to sitting out in someone else's house trying to thread needles and attach fabrics to various things.
He knocked at Hunter's door, one that belonged to a house he shared with Willow Park. Hunter was ecstatic to see him, a cup of chamomile tea in one hand; holding the door open for Darius with the other. Hunter had grown significantly since Darius had last seen him; Hunter was now almost the same height as him.
Darius took out a bag of the various sewing materials that he had brought with him, some of which included the needle threader, embroidery scissors shaped like herons, various colours of threads, stuffing for plushies, pincushions, etc etc.
He handed Hunter a needle, and gave him a quick tutorial on how the needle and thread worked. He then let Hunter try and thread the needle by himself.
"OW!" Hunter dropped the needle on the rounded wooden dining table that sat like a centrepiece in the central part of his home. This was his day off, and Darius was finally teaching him how to sew. "I keep dropping it. Or pricking myself with it. Darius, how do you get the thread through the eye again?"
Darius sighed. "There's a reason we have these things called needle threaders, little prince." He picked one up and handed it to Hunter.
"But you don't use one," Hunter looked at Darius curiously.
"That's because I know how to sew," Darius replied curtly, not taking his eyes off of his work.
...
A few minutes (or actually, something closer to an hour) later, Hunter managed to pull together a small cushion of sorts, which was, to Darius, extremely simple and easy to make, especially if it was without any specific embroidery on either surfaces of the cushion, which this cushion was. However, Hunter was still inexperienced in sewing, and desperately needed to learn to sew, especially if his girlfriend kept getting into scrapes that would sometimes require a few stitches.
Hunter was a fast learner, and within a few days or a week, Darius could gift him a new sewing machine for Hunter to more efficiently make clothes and such, since Hunter had previously expressed interest in doing so.
Just a few hours later, after a few pastries from the bakery near their home, Hunter was starting to get better at embroidering things on the cushion that he had previously made, which wasn't particularly big, quite a bit smaller than the average cushion.
The fabric that Hunter had chosen was a pale yellow colour, with stripes and flecks of gold and crimson, scattered across the entire surface of the fabric. It reminded Darius of the old emperor's coven uniforms, with the warm colours, and the off-white main colour of the fabric. This fabric, however, was infinitely more lively than the plain bleached white cloaks that Belos' lackeys wore, back then before the Day of Unity. The crimson greatly resembled that of Flapjack's wooden body, red and dark maroon. Maybe that was why Hunter chose it.
Darius had been sewing something absentmindedly: one of Eberwolf's toys for his ratworms, although he had not been paying close attention to it, instead, he was supervising Hunter to make sure he wouldn't give himself too many stab wounds from the needles. The toy was simple to fix: it was only broken because a ratworm had pierced its teeth too deep into the usually tough exterior of the toy, and ripped the "ratworm-proof" fabric.
Hunter held up the cushion, an embroidered forget-me-not, with pale cornflower blue thread for the petals, and a forest green thread for the leaves. Darius smiled. Hunter's skill in sewing would quickly match his predecessor's.