Work Text:
I.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” Puck asks.
“Nothing!” Finn says loudly, scowling at the screen again. Damn Eat.Sleep.Knit. and their damn random Yarnathon Team assignment. Yarnicorns. What kind of a team name is Yarnicorns? Why couldn’t he get on something cool, like Fleecy Foxes?
“Is something out of stock or something? Bank error again?”
“I said it’s nothing,” Finn says. “Seriously. Don’t worry about it.”
Puck snorts. “Are you going to keep scowling like that all night?”
“No. Maybe.” Finn sighs and closes his laptop. “Sorry. Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Okay, if you’re sure,” Puck says, but he looks like he’s considering snooping on Finn’s laptop.
“I’m sure. And don’t go on my laptop!”
“Would I?” Puck says, looking offended. “Even if I did, it would be out of concern.”
“Just don’t,” Finn says.
II.
“Sweet,” Puck says under his breath, admiring the mascot on the side of the screen. Foxes are cool, and the Fleecy Foxes sounds like a good team to be a part of. He grins as he navigates to a different part of the Eat.Sleep.Knit. site; time to order some orange to make fox things. Socks first, he thinks, especially since sock yarn has a higher yardage per skein. Order complete, Puck leans back and looks smugly at his screen. “Perfect.”
Two days later, Puck’s order arrives via Priority Mail, and he carries it into the dorm triumphantly. “Look!” he says to Finn.
“What?” Finn asks. “What’d you get?”
“Orange,” Puck says as he opens the box and turns it upside down, skeins falling out. “Enough for a couple of badges and my welcome packet, too.”
Finn narrows his eyes. “Traitor,” he mutters.
“What? Are you a Woolrus or something?” Puck asks, lining up all the yarn to take a picture.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Finn says.
Puck looks appraisingly at Finn. “Tell me you’re not a Cowlette,” he says with a grin. “I don’t think I can keep a straight face and tell people my boyfriend’s a Cowlette.”
“Dude! We don’t talk about the knitting! That was the deal!”
“That was before you became a Cowlette, and I became a Fleecy Fox. Unless you’re not a Cowlette?” Puck says.
“I’m not a Cowlette,” Finn says.
“Not a Cowlette, probably not a Woolrus…” Puck grins. “Are you a Yarnicorn?” Finn just glares in response. “You’re a Yarnicorn!” Puck laughs. “You know who would be jealous? Brittany. You should look her up on Facebook or something and tell her.”
“Oh, go stuff an orange sock in it.”
“Are you going to make a pair of nice sparkly rainbow socks?”
“Shut up!”
III.
They’re rainbow-colored. They’re on his bed. They appear to be his size.
Finn picks up the socks, and a label flutters to the bed. He picks it up and reads it. Lorna’s Laces, in the colorway “Unicorn Parade.”
“This does not count as a Valentine’s present, Puck!”
IV.
Puck decides that if their evening has to be ruined by Finn getting food poisoning, Puck might as well get something out of it, and when Finn runs to the bathroom yet again, Puck opens Finn’s laptop.
He’s still logged in to his Eat.Sleep.Knit. account, which means Puck can go to Finn’s yarnathon dashboard easily. “Holy shit!” Puck says, looking at Finn’s ten-mile status. “What are you knitting?”
Puck scrolls down to see that Finn’s managed to get all of the quarter’s badges, except for Long Haul, and he wonders why he’s not noticed that much knitting going on. Maybe Finn’s not been logging it on Ravelry or something. When Puck goes to Ravelry on Finn’s computer, though, the name on the right isn’t ‘finnjustfinn’ but ‘manliestyarnicorn’, and Puck frowns at the screen.
“I can’t believe you’ve been hiding these from me!” Puck says to the empty room, feeling offended as he scans Finn’s other list of FOs. “At least I’ve not hidden any fox-related knitting.”
He closes the window, then Finn’s laptop, and goes back over to the bed, flopping down on his back. He’ll just have to do even more knitting.
V.
Finn dreams about knitting. He has perpetual cramps in both hands, right near his thumbs, and everything he owns has those little floaty fiber bits all over them. All he does is knit, it feels like, and somehow, Puck is still almost a thousand yards ahead of him.
Puck—dirty traitor that he is—is sound asleep, probably dreaming happy dreams about free gift certificates and lording his Fleecy Fox false sense of superiority over Finn and his clearly better, duh Yarnicorns. Finn sits up in bed, scowling down at Puck.
“Puck,” Finn whispers, nudging him. “Puck, wake up.”
“Did I miss the alarm?” Puck mumbles, eyes still closed.
“How are you doing it?” Finn hisses.
“You said your hands hurt and you were tired, so I wasn’t doing it,” Puck grumbles, staring up at Finn. “Did you change your mind?”
“How are you a thousand yards ahead of me? Are you cheating? Are you knitting all day long?”
“You woke me up about the Yarnathon? Not sex?” Puck says. “I’m disappointed now. And you did the Colorwork knitalong with the mitts, not the pullover.”
“Yeah, but I did the sweater free-for-all while you were doing that hat!” Finn says.
“Are you sure we can’t do something else while we’re awake?”
“Fine,” Finn says, rolling on top of Puck, “but you’re telling me when you earned Able Cabler after we’re done.”
VI.
Puck moves his chair closer to the window unit and wipes his face. Even knitting with laceweight silk, it’s the middle of July and hot. The lace skeins are the real reason he’s so far ahead of Finn, and with this project, he’ll be able to submit it for the Pi in the Sky badge, since the circumference is so large.
“What the hell is that?” Finn says, from the doorway.
“It’s an Evenstar Shawl,” Puck says. “In Ocean Depth. Silk.”
“Why?”
“Twenty-two hundred yards, because it takes part of a second skein, and Pi in the Sky,” Puck says with a grin. “And I’m giving it to your mom for her birthday. You know she loves Lord of the Rings.”
Finn glares at Puck. “That is low.”
“I’d give it to you, but you wouldn’t wear it!”
“I hate you sometimes. You know that?” Finn turns around and starts to walk back out.
“You only hate the fox part of me!” Puck calls after him.
VII.
By early September, they’ve both run out of money and they’re down to working with Cascade 220, neck and neck in the Yarnathon. Finn mutters to himself about how much he misses the madelinetosh as he finishes the next mitred square in his scarf. It’s kind of big for a scarf, he thinks, but it’ll get him the 650 yards needed for the top-awarded bracket on the mitred square knitalong, plus he’s put off that KAL as long as possible.
Maybe he can give it to Burt for Christmas, along with the hat and the felted slippers. Maybe he can make a tent out of it to live in when he can’t pay for the dorm anymore, because he’s spent all his money on yarn.
“I’m sick of mitred squares,” Puck says as he walks into the dorm. He sits down next to Finn and pulls out a much more brightly-colored version of the same scarf. “Do you think the yellow was too much?”
“Uh, yeah,” Finn says. “Maybe if you’d just stuck with the pink, purple, and magenta, maybe.”
“It’s spite knitting. I never would have made a mitred square scarf, right? And now it’s freaking Cascade 220!”
“Do you remember that baby alpaca silk blend I had that I made that hooded cowl out of?” Finn asks. He looks down at his Cascade 200 and sighs.
“Smooshy,” Puck says sadly. “And Tosh Chunky.”
“And that silk you did the shawl with.”
“Almost made me want to start wearing those weird silk scarves Kurt wears,” Puck says.
“I feel like I never see you anymore,” Finn says. “I hate you being on the Fleecy Foxes.”
“I guess this is what happens when there’s no football or glee club. All of our competitive spirit goes into the Yarnathon,” Puck says.
Finn nods. “Yeah. It sucks competing against you, though. I like it better when we’re on the same side.”
“Maybe next year, we email,” Puck says. “This is your last knitalong too, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Finn says.
“Do you have any badges left? I mean, besides whatever comes out next month?”
“Nope. I was clearing my schedule for the last quarter,” Finn says.
“We should order just enough to finish.”
“We should pick a project we could work on together, too,” Finn says. “Maybe something that’ll use up the little bits leftover from our other projects.”
Puck laughs. “I’ll throw away the extra yellow from this thing.”
“And that’s why I love you,” Finn says.
VIII.
“Finn! Come look at this quarter’s badges!” Puck says, grinning at the screen.
“Is there a ‘knit until you have scars from the blisters’ badge? If so, I earned it,” Finn says, leaning over to peer at the screen, too. “Oh! Team Work!”
“I told you not to buy the Sharps, and yeah. Team Work!”
“It’s the only way I can pick up those little teeny-tiny stitches, though!”
“Our hexipuffs should count for this, right?”
“Yeah, they should,” Finn says. “This is my favorite project all year.”
“You know…” Puck scans the list of new badges, mentally adding up the points. “Once we get credited for these badges, I think we only need about five hundred yards each.”
“What should we make?”
“Maybe a pair of throw blankets. You can knit me one with a fox, and I’ll knit you one with a unicorn.”
“Aww. Yeah, that’s a good idea,” Finn says.
Puck grins at Finn. “One last splurge on something not Cascade.”
IX.
“Oh, hey, it’s a sweater!” Burt says, lifting the cableknit fisherman sweater out of the box. “That’s really nice, Finn. Thank you.”
“What’s that under it, Burt?” Carole asks.
“A hat,” Burt says, picking up the hat. “And some gloves.” He picks up the gloves. “And some socks. And a scarf. Uh, Finn?”
“They all match!” Finn says.
“And it’s superwash, too. Not like the silk,” Puck says.
“It’s all very nice, but are you worried I’m not warm enough or something?” Burt asks.
“Everybody likes socks, Burt,” Finn says.
“Let’s see what’s in my box,” Carole says, unwrapping her gift and starting to pull out a pair of mittens. “Oh, it’s a shawl.” She puts the mittens down and wraps the shawl around her shoulders. “And a hat.”
“I’m sensing a theme,” Kurt says, eying his package warily.
“Go ahead and open it!” Finn says.
Kurt unwraps his box and opens it, lifting the scarf on top. “Oh, this is lovely. Is it cashmere?”
“Baby alpaca,” Finn says. “It’s my favorite.”
“There’s more in there,” Puck says, gesturing to Kurt’s box.
“A hat to match. That’s very nice of you two,” Kurt says. “And is this… is it a knitted necktie?”
“Silk. Handwash only,” Puck says as he nods.
“One more thing!” Finn says.
Kurt lifts the carefully folded throw from the box. “Wow. I didn’t know they sold throws with the Manhattan skyline on them. That’s beautiful!”
“Thanks!” Finn says. “Puck helped.”
“Yeah, getting the stitch counts for knit and purl is really important, or the line of the Chrysler Building could be all wrong, you know?” Puck says.
“Are you trying to tell me you made this?” Kurt asks.
“Hey, that’s a full mile right there!” Puck says. “Plus the Bob Ross badge. You know, knit a picture? Texture?”
“Bob Ross badge?” Kurt repeats. “A mile?”
“Yeah, we take the Yarnathon pretty seriously,” Finn says.
“What’s a Yarnathon?” Burt asks. “You’re seriously saying you knit all of this?”
“Well, me and Puck did,” Finn says. “He made Mom’s shawl. I kind of tear up silk when I work with it if it’s smaller than DK weight.”
“We both finished it! The Yarnathon, I mean,” Puck says. “We don’t know yet which team won. Watch it be the Cowlettes.”
“I hate the Cowlettes,” Finn says.
“I’m stunned,” Kurt says. “You knit. Both of you knit? Both of you knit silk?”
“Only DK weight and heavier,” Finn says. “My hands are kinda rough.”
Puck grins at him. “Good for sex, not good for silk.”
“Puck!” Kurt says.
“Aww,” Finn says. “You’re just trying to get me to give you my extra skein of ShibuiKnits Pebble.”
“That red, and cashmere? Why wouldn’t I want it?”
“Yeah, yeah, Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah to you,” Finn says, leaning over to kiss Puck. “I’ll stick it in your stocking for the morning.”
Puck grins. “I hope that’s not all the things you’ll be sticking in my stocking.”
X.
Puck doesn’t get up early on New Year’s Day 2016, but when he does wake up, the first thing he does is stumble over to their laptops, opening both of them up and then typing in ‘eatsleepknit.com’.
“What are you doing?” Finn asks. “It’s too early.”
“Checking out the 2016 teams, in a second,” Puck says. “We went on a yarn diet for three whole months.”
“Do we have our assignments yet?”
“There’s mine,” Puck says, looking at the ‘Socky Selkies’ logo. “I can’t remember what a selkie is. And…” He trails off as he leans over to Finn’s laptop. “There we go! Selkies!”
“Awesome. Is that the best team?” Finn asks.
“Well, it’s definitely better than Stranda Bears and Hippopurlamus, but probably not as good as Alpacalypse,” Puck says. “You know what this means, right?”
“What?”
“Time to pick our first knitalong!”