Something with Tiso and #60, 'pay attention to me'. A very tiso thing imo
We’ll do a fun Everyone Lives, Nobody Dies for this AU, for extra Tiso Being A Dork. Thank you for the ask!
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“Cloth.”
“Cloth.”
“Cloth.”
A hand pawed at her face for maybe the fifth time. She hummed a questioning note, though she didn’t put down her knife or the shellwood she was in the middle of carving.
“Pay attention to me.”
She hummed again, this time for acknowledgement. But it was not enough, she knew it would not be enough, and Tiso squawked at the indignation of it all. She couldn’t help it, she snickered, which only made him squawk more.
She would have laughed aloud, if she didn’t know all too well how much it would hurt.
Her memory after the fight with the Traitor Lord was so blurry, she couldn’t say who’d fallen first. Herself, impaled on the mantis’ wicked claw, or him, crushed under a mawlek and then sent tumbling out the Colosseum of Fools. Either way, they’d ended up stuck together while they recovered, a long process full of the best medical attention that could be cobbled together in Hallownest, hot spring trips, and a few painful rounds of Hornet using her Soul silk to bind their wounds.
Neither of them were in fighting shape, far from it, but they’d both gotten better enough to wander around for short periods. It still hurt, though, so they needed to get creative.
For Cloth, that meant taking up carving. For Tiso, that meant complaining.
“All this effort, I almost die, and nobody will listen to me,” he grumbled, shoving the back of his head against her side and crossing his arms with a huff.
She patted his head between his antennae, snickering again. “Maybe say something other than my name?”
“My ideas and blueprints are secret, I cannot go sharing them to anyone who may deign to use my tricks against me.” Another huff, and he rolled onto his side. Truly, the indignity.
“Maybe you need not-secret ideas. For fun,” she said, and shrugged. She held out the piece of wood she was in the middle of carving, rotating it so he could see. “I’m carving a mosscreep. See? No harm in telling you that.”
“But thinking of ideas takes time, and nobody can listen to thinking!” He threw his arms up in protest, and winced. She winced with him, and reached for a nearby glass of water as he curled up.
“Think out loud, then. What do you want to make?”
He sighed, as if she put so much effort upon him, it was a cruelty. So much work, for this poor ant. “Well...”
She had to say, he wasn’t going to ask for attention while they brainstormed.
Maybe this would be fun.
