Chapter Text
The first feeling of comfort came from a simple cloth robe.
Really it was nothing special or unique, but the fibers that made it felt safer and warmer than anything Rudo had ever experienced before. Cold, rigid, and solid metals and stones were what he was usually used to. It was nothing like this.
Regto’s coat was a barrier from anything bad.
When he first adopted him, all Rudo did was hide under his robe while he cooked or walked around. He refused to leave the safety of being wrapped in such loved and worn clothes.
The coat was old, had stray fibers, and was rough to the touch in places from where it was pilling even with ample care, but Rudo didn’t mind it.
Rudo didn’t really leave his coat until Regto got him his own clothes that had to be similar. They were adult sized, far too big for him, and thrifted from a second hand store. Rudo loved them whole heartedly and wore them all of the time.
Regto taught him how to take care of clothes as well as other things from the floor that needed to be swept and mopped to the dirty dishes.
Since he felt safe bundled up in his own safety clothing, Rudo found that other textures could be nice too.
Ceramic bowls were cold and hard, but not unwelcoming like the harsh metal floors he was used to before. Lots of everyday objects were far less stressful to handle for him now since he wasn’t worried that those metallic objects would be harmful to him.
Rudo liked paper even though it was dry to the touch and crumplied easily; he loved the way paper was different from sheets to newspapers and books. Fresh books were too stiff and lacked a soul while Regto’s books were flexible, smelled of dust, and were well worn with age and love.
He loved to explore the world with his hands, even if they were cursed.
His own skin was different to anything he has felt.
Black, scarred, warped and taught skin that felt like burnt leather. His fingertips amplified everything he felt because of how raw it was.
To dampen it before it got overwhelming, Regto bandaged his arms. It was also to keep them from getting dirty, like a wound.
The bandages felt like a mix of cloth and paper, stretchy but somewhat dry, yet warm.
He couldn’t feel well with them on.
One of Rudo’s favorite textures was hair. It was impossibly soft and gentle, as if wind was physical. His own was fluffy while his dads was dense yet a bit silky.
Rudo knew it was weird to find comfort in running his hands along everything. Brick walls, pots and dishes, and clothes, but it brought him a lot of contentment.
He liked rough textures that didn’t hurt the most. Dried clay, some cloth, burlap, and his fathers beard were some of them.
Regto always teased him lightly whenever he’d take off his bandages and start to smooth out some paper, or run his hands over that old ball they found that was fraying and peeling.
Rudo was used to his dads teasing because he meant it in a loving way, but he never did when Rudo clearly needed to calm down.
Sometimes things got too much. The stares from people, the mocking, even if he glared and defended himself it was constant no matter where he went, what he did, or who they were.
He’d come home and shut down, just standing and hiding under Regto’s robe even if he was getting too big to do this. He’d always press his head into his back and cling to his shirt that was half cloth and half burlap.
Surrounded by texture, warmth, and his dad, Rudo could always feel the overwhelming stresses melt away until he was alright enough to handle it himself without having to cling to his clothing like a koala.
Rudo found comfort in all textures now, and if anyone asked, he wouldn’t be able to name one he dislikes.
His second feeling of comfort came from those leather gloves.
Regto had offered them to him after one really bad flare up, and despite Rudo not wanting to feel anything at all, he took them.
Most leather he felt before was smooth and waxy. This was not that at all. This leather was old. It was soft to the touch, flexible but held its shape, and had lots of subtle patterns along the surface.
Inside the glove was dense and velvety soft leather that instantly soothed his deep rooted pain. He could feel where certain places were worn out compared to others, and even how it was cleaned prior with some sort of brush.
They felt perfect.
Rudo held up his hands, watching the gloves sag awkwardly around his smaller hands that were not made for this size at all. His fingers hardly fit and the wrist part went down to his elbow even with it tucked in.
But it was still perfect.
He brought his hands together and felt his fingers on top of one another, tracing the stitching gently, then the cool metal ring bound to each glove by three bands. Everything about these gloves were perfect to him.
Rudo moved down and touched the couch under him. He could still feel where it was coarse and peeling, yet smooth from where they sat on it often.
The gloves didn’t hinder his ability to feel.
He felt wrapped up in warmth just like how he did with Regto’s coat, even if it was completely different. He felt safe and cozy in these, and Rudo knew he never wanted to take them off.
His new favorite texture was leather.
Rudo was sitting on the couch reading a book per Regto’s insistence. He often gave him homework and study sessions that sucked, but if he wanted to go trash picking soon he had to get this done first.
He heard something clatter to the ground and looked up to see Regto had dropped his pen and was picking it back up. He points it at Rudo with a grin. “You’re getting distracted.”
Rudo flips him off and scoffs. “Did you drop your pen on purpose, asshole?”
“Maybe, maybe not.” Regto’s smirk just grows. “You need help studying?” He taps his pen against the old book he is reading from.
Rudo glares at him and turns back to his own book that Regto is going to quiz him on soon. He’s not really great at studying and retaining information like this, but like hell he was going to ask Regto to read to him right now.
When he sees Regto’s busy again he looks up and stares at his book.
Rudo’s held it many times. Hell, he’s even used it like a pillow and napped on it before. Its cover was similar to his gloves and he loved the feel of the paper on that book because it was like no other.
Rudo ran his hand across the pages he was reading in but they weren’t textured enough for him so he started to mindlessly run his hands along the couch as he read the paragraphs and hoped some of the knowledge stuck in his head.
He felt the couch dip down and looked over to see Regto sitting beside him now. His dad reached up and teasingly ruffled his hair. “I was incentivizing you to ask for help. You need to learn to reach out more.”
“Shut up.” Rudo snaps but doesn’t pull away. He likes Regto’s boney hands and chipped nails. Imperfect things were the most interesting things to Rudo.
He has never understood the rich part of the city’s obsession with keeping everything uniform and perfect. The textures there felt wrong. Not gross to touch, but artificial.
“Awe, but you seem like you wanna learn from my book instead.” Regto holds it up and waggles it in front of his face.
Alright, maybe it was true that Rudo retained information better with Regto’s book, but not when he’s teasing him about it!
“Asshole! Jerkface! Turd–”
Rudo is cut off with his own hiss of pain when Regto lightly whacks his book directly on top of his skull.
“Hm, that actually seemed to work. Maybe you’ll learn manners if I whack them into you.” Regto lifts the book and taps it a few times against his head. “The book only opens if you say please anyways.”
Rudo shoots him a murderous glare and snatches the book from him and huffs. “No it doesn’t, asshole.” He has opened it plenty of times when Regto was asleep just fine. Almost randomly, he couldn’t open it on occasion though.
He curls his fingers under the cover and lifts, then scoffs when the book doesn’t open.
“Oh, you’re so funny Regto.” Rudo snarkily mocks towards him.
“If only you’d say the magic word..” Regto feigns innocence, standing up and going to the kitchen a few feet away. He starts going through the cupboards and grabbing a few ingredients to make dinner for the both of them. He glances back to see Rudo quietly muttering a ‘please’ to his book.
He smiles to himself when he watches Rudo open it up and start reading.
He’d do anything to protect his son, but even he had limitations.
As much as he wanted to, it was not possible to make everyone stop hating Rudo for something he did not do. The sins of his birth father fell on a child's shoulders, and Regto truly hated cruel and unfair justice.
So he was going to do his best for his son any way he can, and that started with education of any kind, even if Rudo didn’t really like it.
When he is done making dinner he walks back over to Rudo and leans over the couch, playfully smothering him and grinning when he hears his kid complain that he’s heavy.
He doesn’t get a lot of positive social interactions, so Regto tries to be that for him. He gets up and ruffles Rudo’s hair again. “I made chicken dumpling soup. Come on, let's eat.” He reaches over and plucks his book from his kids hands and puts it in his pocket.
“With rice?” Rudo asks as he sits down at the small table they had, rough wood but no splinters since it was so worn.
“Your bowl will have rice, yes.” Regto says as he makes them both their portions; his own being without rice.
It was not surprising Rudo enjoyed textures of all kinds, especially when eating, so it was rather easy for Regto to find out what Rudo preferred. Usually if it was small and in abundance or had lots of texture, Rudo liked it. This included rice, noodles, meat sauce, beans, peas, corn, chips, and bacon.
He did also learn Rudo did not enjoy messy or sticky foods, and that seemed to amplify when he got the gloves as an added precaution to keeping them clean.
Regto set Rudo’s bowl down first and sat across from him. He let them eat about half of the food before speaking up again. “Quiz time.”
Rudo tenses up and freezes mid bite, his eyes landing on Regto’s book that’s hiding under his coat, far out of reach from where he could possibly cheat.
Rudo swallows his bite down and glares at him. “I don’t need to know how to tie ropes.”
“Maybe, but you may run into a situation where you have to. Remember I had to teach you how to sew because you thought you’d never need to learn it until one of the seams in your gloves got loose?” Regto argues lightly.
“Stop making good points.” Rudo growls.
Regto reaches into his pocket and pulls out a rope, sliding it over to Rudo. “Can you do a half hitch knot?”
Rudo shoots him another glare and picks up the small rope. He tries to remember the steps, so mimics what he remembers, but the rope uncurls. He tries to make a slip knot next and it’s too loose to hold onto itself.
“Reading about it isn’t gonna help me, asshole.” Rudo growls lowly at his dad who’s patiently watching.
Regto rests his head on the back of his hand. “Well, I did want you to learn that lesson.”
What?
Rudo throws the rope at him and it hits his arm lightly then halfway lands in his soup. “You’re an asshole! You knew I wasn’t going to–”
Regto’s stare makes him shut up.
It isn’t too often he uses a dad stare on him. Usually when he lashes out at people in public, but they were always dicks to him first! He bites his tongue to keep himself from saying something stupid and making this worse.
Regto gets a napkin and pats the rope dry. “I wanted you to learn that sometimes books can teach us things, but we won’t have the practical knowledge to actually use it.” He twists the rope smoothly, then slides it over.
Rudo is staring at a perfect slip knot. He picks it up and feels the fibers of the rope all woven and taught. He runs his fingers over it, then undoes the rope. “..sorry for bein’ a dick.”
“Apology accepted, brat.”
He snaps up to cuss him out but sees Regto grinning at him and stifling some laughter.
Rudo feels his ears heat up from embarrassment as he tries to do the knot a few times, his frustration growing each time.
After a few more tries, Regto moves to sit beside him and takes the rope. “Watch.” A simple command, so Rudo shuts up and observes how his dad’s fingers twirl the rope around, looping it, and making it catch on itself.
Rudo takes it back and stares at it, replaying his dads motions in his head, then undoes the knot. Rudo mimics what he saw almost exactly and shows Regto.
While it isn’t perfect, it was far better and would hold up if he really used it.
“See? I knew you could do it. Sometimes we just have to learn from others and the world around us.” Regto pokes the rope, smiling when it keeps its shape.
“Sounds like someone told you to get your nose out of the book one too many times.” Rudo mutters under his breath.
“What was that?” Regto said.
Both of them damn well know he heard that.
“Nothing!” Rudo picks up his spoon and starts eating again.
Regto doesn’t know what his son has been planning for weeks, but he was almost scarily good at hiding it from him.
It took him a while to realize anything was amiss in the first place, but Regto wasn’t stupid. He knew his kid’s mannerisms and habits, so when that shifted, he knew something was going on.
He at least knew it wasn’t bad, so for now he observed without calling Rudo out on it while he tried to figure out himself what Rudo was doing.
Every time he came back from work Rudo was cleaning up and hiding evidence of something. He never mentioned it, and when Rudo was busy or asleep snooped around to see if he could learn anything.
The most he found was some scraps of cloth, but that could be anything. His kid always brought home things to fix up which included stuffed animals.
He kept waking up in the middle of the night to Rudo checking to see if he was asleep then sneaking out to go work on this secret project in the other room.
As much as he wanted to get up and see what it was, he didn’t.
It was a good thing too, because a few days later Rudo was sitting him down and looked super serious and nervous.
Regto already knew it had to be whatever his kid has been hiding. He was just worried it was serious. He stared at Rudo, really expecting him to talk.
Instead, Rudo pulled out a bag and put it in Regto’s hands.
It was too light to have anything inside of it right now. Looking at it closely, he could see this was hand sewn. It was a bit lopsided and imperfect but it seemed like it would hold something quite well.
He opened it up and ran his hand down the strap that was made up of a rope. The entire thing was made of leather, burlap, and cloth. It had a few pockets inside, a latch on the outside, but it was the shape that interested him.
“This is for my book, isn’t it?” Regto looks up at Rudo. He knows he guessed correctly by how Rudo fidgets, running his hands along his gloves. A soothing action he always does for himself whether he realizes it or not.
“No shit.” Rudo grumbles under his breath with no real anger behind his words.
Regto reaches up and pulls Rudo down, hugging him a bit too tight, but he learned that’s just how typical dads hug sometimes. He chuckles, feeling Rudo try to escape and fail, giving up.
“It’s perfect, kid.” He lets go of Rudo and takes his book from out of his coat and puts it in the bag. It fits well with extra space for other things if he needs, especially like pens or money.
Rudo is staring at the bag and visibly relaxes when it seems to fit well. He sits back on the couch and turns away. “I used some things you taught me to make it.”
“I see that.” Regto boasts, noting how the rope is tied to the bag or some sewing patterns. “Thank you Rudo, really.” He should really get his kid a gift too. “I got an idea.” Regto stands up and slides the bag under his coat where it rests nicely. “How about we go trash diving together?”
Rudo looks up at him with both hope and worry. “You’re too old and fickle for that! One cut and you’ll die!”
“Oh, I’m not that fragile.” Regto waves a hand dismissively. “I always teach you things. Show me how to look for the gems in the discarded piles! I want to learn from you.”
Rudo stands up and crosses his arms. “Then I expect you to listen to me because I’m the teacher now.” He then glares at Regto. “Which means no backtalk.”
Regto rolls his eyes but nods. He likes being a bit childish around his son. Sure he shouldn’t roll his eyes or bicker with him, but it was never really fighting. “Yes Mr. Rudo.”
“I’m classifying that as sass, don’t call me that.” Rudo went to the door and opened it. “And don’t be slow! We have to loot fast because despite people not giving a shit about trash, they care a lot if someone is looking through their shit.”
The hypocrisy is loud there.
Regto follows his son down a lot of winding roads. At least he doesn’t loot near home which is rather smart of him. He had tried in the beginning to get him to stop since it’s so risky, but it’s truly one of the only things Rudo enjoys, so who was he to tell him he couldn’t as long as he was being safe and careful?
He watches Rudo duck into a back alleyway and follows him. This area was less cared about with puddles and debris everywhere, so trash piled up easily in places like this. Regto could see his kid was already halfway in a random dumpster and mentally sighs as this explains how often he gets dirty and needs to wash his clothes.
At least he is diligent about keeping things clean.
He walks over and looks into the metal can. It’s hot, stuffy, and smells worse than rotting food, but Rudo hardly seems to react.
“So.. what made you pick this garbage can?” Regto asks, backing away from it so he could breathe air that wasn’t actively harming his lungs. He watches Rudo pick up an old can opener that’s clearly broken.
Rudo gets out of the trash and brushes it off then looks up at him. “A gut feeling, but also I look for signs things have been dumped recently. This is full and overflowing into the street, and the smell is really pungent.” He shrugs. “You don’t really have to get dirty just because you wanted to spend time with me.”
Regto is proud Rudo knows why he wanted to do this, but he is actually curious about his process to his trash finding. “I’ll try at least once, but you pick the can. And please don’t choose a smelly one.”
Rudo sticks his tongue out at him. “Maybe I wanna watch you suffer for all the studying you make me do.”
“Hey! I do that so you learn, not to punish!” Regto bickers, following him around.
It takes them half an hour before Rudo finally finds one he deems ‘Regto safe’, and it isn’t a container of trash but a pile. Regto hasn’t really touched anything, nor does he have gloves, so he uses a wooden plank he found earlier to push the trash around while Rudo does his own searching nearby.
A glint catches his eye.
Regto crouches down and carefully picks up something a bit red and rusted, turning it over in his hands. It’s a swiss army knife; quite versatile with how many tools it has. He’s sure if Rudo gets this cleaned up he’d use it all the time.
Regto walks over to Rudo and waves it in his face. “Look at what I found.” Red eyes widen in shock at what he is seeing, then it’s snatched out of his hands as Rudo cradles it like it’s precious. “Holy shit, are you serious? This is amazing.”
Regto likes hearing Rudo sound excited. It’s close enough to happy. He’s never seen his son smile, so he knows this is his version of it.
“I may be talented at this trash picking stuff after all.” Regto grins and looks around again. He then instantly steps into a puddle of unknown grime, slips, and lands on his ass, soiling about half his coat.
Regto’s actually annoyed at himself, but that melts away when he hears Rudo double over laughing. It’s a strange noise, not exactly a laugh, but it’s Rudo’s version of it.
“You brat!” Regto grins and grabs Rudo, teasingly trying to pull him down too. He wasn’t actually going to because that’d mean more laundry.
“I knew you were fickle!” Rudo isn’t grinning but he looks very amused. He pushes Regto off of him then grabs his hands and hauls him to stand up. “Be more careful dumbass.”
“Yes sir teacher sir.” Regto looks himself over and groans. The back of his coat is dirty in what he hopes is just dirt and water.
They spend the next half an hour gathering items before returning home. When they do, Regto gets a bucket of hot water going and sets his coat in it. He glances over to Rudo and sees him organizing the items they got. Unsurprisingly the kid is already cleaning the army knife by removing its rust.
He smiles to himself seeing Rudo truly look content.
It’s rare for that to happen, so he’s happy his son is alright. He hopes he can continue to be a better father.
Maybe one day he can get Rudo to smile.