Archive of Our Own

In the end, Church blamed Command. He blamed Command for fucking up the shipment, but most of all, he blamed Command for stationing him here in the first place, in the middle of goddamn nowhere with fuck all to do.

Sometime after that, Church found himself scowling at YouTube tutorials and trying his hardest to get this to work.

"Hey, dude, what're you doing?" someone asked.

"Tucker?" Church jumped, surprised. "Fuck!" he exclaimed as he immediately stabbed his thumb with the needle he was holding.

"... Voodoo, apparently," Tucker answered his own question, looming over where Church sat hunched over on the floor.

"I'm needle felting, dispshit," Church muttered. The coffee mug cozy was beginning to take shape in his hands, a swirl of blue and taupe and gentle lavender.

"You look like you're angrily stabbing a piece of multi-colored wool on a block of foam with a needle," Tucker said.

"That's what needle felting – fucking fuck!" Church cut off with curse. The longer Tucker lingered, the more Church had a tendency to accidentally prick his finger instead of the still-too-fluffy wool roving.

"Seems dangerous," Tucker said flatly.

"Oh, I'd like to see you do better!"

"Y'know, I can do embroidery for hours and not even stab myself once. But then, unlike some people, I'm not a masochist."

"I'm not either!"

"Dude, you dated Tex. I really don't want to imagine the details of your sex life, but some things are just obvious."

"Tucker, I was going to make you a mug cozy next, but if you don't fuck off, I'm doing Caboose's," Church said, scowling. "No, wait. I'll still do yours next, but I'll make it pink."

Tucker blanched. "Okay, okay! I'm leaving!" he backed out of the room.

Church turned back to the wool. "Why the fuck is this still so squishy? Haven't I poked it enough times yet? Get hard, you piece of shit!"

A distinct echo of "Bow chicka bow wow!" sounded from somewhere within the base.

Simmons sat on his bed and thought fondly back to the first month of his assignment on Blood Gulch, before he'd had time to realize just how shitty the place was and all of the people he's stuck with here.

"Where did all of my t-shirts go?" Grif had complained one day.

"Did you check the pile of crap in and around your bed?" Simmons had suggested drily.

"Yes! They're not here!" Grif moaned.

That was about when Sarge had burst into the room, a bundle tucked under each arm.

"Alright, ladies!" Sarge barked.

Simmons scrambled out of bed to salute his commanding officer.

Sarge set one bundle on the ground then gave the other one a great flick with his arms. The fabric unrolled with a snap, draping ceremoniously over Simmons' bed.

It was red. A lovely, varying maroon, to be exact. The Red Team logo was represented by a patchwork of shades, a well-pieced-together mosaic of vibrant cotton fabrics.

"This is goin' to be your quilt, Simmons!" Sarge ordered.

"Yes, sir!" Simmons said. "Thank you, sir," he added a little slower, eyes spread wide in wonderment at the gesture.

"And Grif..." Sarge grunted as he lifted the other bundle. He let it unravel to the floor.

"Hey, those are my t-shirts!" Grif yelled.

"Well, Command had a shortage of orange dye for awhile. I had to adapt to new materials. Make do with what little I could find!"

"And my clothes were all that you could find?" Grif sounded almost incredulous. He didn't put the effort into complete disbelief.

"Show your gratitude to your superior, private!" Sarge commanded.

"Thank you, sir," Grif said, his words swimming in sarcasm. "I'll be sure to wear your gift in the unyielding heat of summer."

After Grif had knitted his first afghan, the t-shirt quilt was kicked off of his bed and made into a rug of sorts. Well, it was still partially bunched up and no real attempt was made to actually spread it out over the floor.

One day, Sarge had walked in and discovered it.

Simmons remembered the exact moment Sarge's expression had just changed.

Sarge stared at the Oreo crumbs ground into the seams, at the beer stain that followed the binding for half of the width of the quilt before languorously spilling in large blotches down the middle.

Sarge's eyes narrowed.

The room shook with a quiet, simmering fury. Then Sarge had turned around and simply walked out of the room.

After that, he had never treated Grif quite the same.

Present-day Simmons sniggered, remembering the whole thing. His attention returned to the objects he had in hand, one of which was a crocheted model of 3-CPO. If Simmons were to successfully make a to-scale model of R2D2 to match his 3-CPO, he needed to make sure that the resulting yarn gauge would result in properly-proportioned stitch increases.

Simmons referred to the yarn-gauge-stitch-size-increase algorithm he had perfected for reference.

Confident his figures were correct, he selected the right-sized crochet hook and begun his task.

Tucker knew what they all thought he did behind his rock. He knew, but didn't give a fuck. In all honesty, he was glad that they were wrong, because there were few joys living in Blood Gulch, and gloating over other people being wrong was one of them.

Tucker surveyed the edge of the tablecloth and squinted at the embroidered hydrangea, trying to determine if he had managed to mirror the angle of the stitch on the other side.

He muttered something in frustration, then pushed it aside and sat back. Tucker hated changing colors. He hated measuring out a length of cerulean embroidery floss and re-threading the needle that had previously held aquamarine.

But with an eyesight sharpened by many months of Church withholding the sniper rifle from him, Tucker had no problem sliding the thin floss into the hole of the needle on his first try. Tucker liked to think he was good at finding and entering holes.

After he completed the tablecloth project – stupid tablecloth, taking him three years to finish – Tucker thought he'd finally start on his magnum opus, the project he had been born for, the inspiration for which had been responsible for first gifting him with a needle.

Essentially, it would be a cross-stitched wall hanging depicting lesbian porn.

Tucker had been collecting the right shades of flesh-colored embroidery floss for years. Sienna, and brown ochre, and burnt umber. Sometimes, he dreamed of it. Of sitting beside his rock, needle whispering through fabric, fingers drawing colors behind them in their wake. But Tucker dreamed of doing embroidery kind of a lot, so fucking no surprise there.

"What is stupid Tucker doing?" Caboose's voice asked, breaking Tucker from his reverie.

"Wha–?" Tucker was standing in the halls of Blue Base, tablecloth folded in his hands, box of embroidery floss tucked under his elbow. "What does it look like, dumbass?" Tucker said. "Never mind, don't answer that. I don't want to know."

Caboose was standing in his way, but seemed to have already lost all interest in the conversation. He held a wad of wool in one hand and the hooked top of a wooden dowel in the other. On the wooden dowel was a wooden disc, and beneath the wooden disc was quite a lot of thick, lumpy thread. Caboose spun the drop spindle and watched it, mesmerized, his other hand either letting out too much roving or not enough as it twirled.

"Can you believe that people actually pay money for that?" a familiar voice sputtered from behind Tucker.

"Oh, hey, Church," Tucker said flatly. Fucking great. An impromptu party outside his room in the hall. Everyone on the team was there except for Tex, but fuck if he cared where she'd gone.

"They call it 'fun yarn,'" Church muttered. "Those lumps in the yarn have names, too. They're 'slubs.' And if you buy fun yarn, you are paying extra money for people to purposely put slubs in it."

"Did you get him the spindle?" Tucker asked.

"I didn't want to get him a full-on spinning wheel! Knowing Caboose, he'd prick himself on it and fall into a deep, enchanted sleep, and..." Church trailed off.

"Dude, that actually sounds pretty good," Tucker said as Church reached the same conclusion.

"... I'm going to go add something to our next shipment list," Church said.

Tucker stared again at the overfull drop spindle in Caboose's hand. "What're you even going to do with that thread, Caboose?" he asked.

Startled, Caboose dropped it. The wood clattered on the floor. Loops of thread rolled free and begun to bunch up on themselves in the lack of thread tension.

"I am going to hang it on the doorknob," Caboose said. He bent down and picked it up.

"Dude, you're supposed to use a sock for that."

"How will a sock get it to dry? Socks are not abortant."

"Wait, what?" Tucker took a moment to decipher.

"Tucker, he means absorbent," Church called over his shoulder, walking back through the hallway.

"But... socks are great for – Never mind." Tucker coughed. He was never going to get to his room.

"It is so that it will dry and straighten and not be all twisty," Caboose said. "Then Private Biscuit will knit me a scarf."

"... Donut doesn't knit! He weaves!" Grif yelled. "It's a very important distinction!"

Simmons rolled his eyes. The gesture was wasted as nobody could see it beneath his helmet. "They're both pansy-ass crafts. I don't see why the correct terminology matters."

"Oh, and crochet is so much more sophisticated?" Grif asked.

"Yes! You need to use math to calculate the number and placement of double stitches after each row! It's a complicated question of exponential growth!"

"That's just nerd stuff," Grif said. "And besides, why bother with all of that when the needles can just keep track of all of the stitches for you? Knitting is just so much less needlessly stressful." He yawned.

"But knitting takes longer! It doesn't actually save you any work!" Simmons crossed his arms.

"Really, Simmons. It's the principle of the thing that matters," Grif said, curling up in two or three afghans. "And knitting takes less yarn." He stretched out on his bed, mumbling something unintelligible before saying, "And the texture feels nicer."

"It's not like the texture matters when you're fucking sleeping in your armor," Simmons said.

"Whoa, Simmons, I take sleeping very seriously," Grif said. "And my blankets need to be the right amount of soft and fuzzy. Accept no inferior substitutes." His eyes drifted down to the crumpled-up t-shirt quilt still on the floor beside his bed.

"Crochet is soft and fuzzy! I use the exact same yarn you do!"

"But all of your toys are stiff and rough. The shapes of the stitches are wrong. It's a very important sensory distinction, Simmons."

"Oh my god, are you suddenly, like, the Princess and the Pea now?" Simmons started to mimic a girly voice before it somehow became a bad impression of Donut. "Simmons, I just cannot sleep with this blanket. This crocheted stitch is digging into my delicate thigh through eleven mattresses and also my full-body armor."

Grif ignored him. He had a pair of circular needles in his hands with thick, fluffy stitches dangling from the plastic cord.

Simmons sighed extra audibly for Grif's benefit, then picked up his crochet hook. He was in the process of expanding his crocheted Star Wars collection. This one was a Stromtrooper. It needed to be visibly taller in comparison to the one that was Luke-disguised-as-a-Stormtrooper. Simmons took a moment to review the nature of exponential growth while crocheting round things so that he could adjust the increases and decreases in order to keep the slightly larger shapes proportional.

It finally occurred to Tucker that something was actually, seriously wrong when he couldn't embroider anymore.

He stared at the thread lines, and his eyes just interpreted them as a swimming mess of colors, a headache pounding just out of reach behind his forehead. He only just managed to turn his head aside before he vomited all over the floor and the leftover tufts of roving from someone's wool-based misadventure.

When he went into labor, Tucker had a cross-stitched wall hanging which proclaimed "Tits and Boobies" to read at as a parasitic alien fetus tore its way through his flesh and left a trail of his viscera all over the floor.

The cross-stitched wall hanging was also embellished with peonies and carnations in a vermillion color that Tucker had not at all realized had resembled his own lifeblood until he had the latter all over him and had just spent several hours in intense agony staring off and on at the damned wall hanging.

Upon awakening from his coma, Tucker wished that the cross-stitched wall hanging which read "Fuck You" had been in the room instead, because that at least was a sentiment he could identify with while going into an extraordinarily painful and biologically implausible labor.

"But the real dilemma is what kind of gift do I give him for the baby shower?" Doc wondered.

"Baby shower?" O'Malley scoffed. "Why would we concern ourselves with such a soft, frivolous event? We – "

" – Are close friends of the new mother and should be there to celebrate!" Doc finished.

"No," Church said outright. "There will be no baby shower. It's not – It's not even a baby!"

"Church, please do not voice your prejudice here. It is not welcome," Doc said. "We want to raise a child in a positive, loving environment."

"– Where it can feast unchecked on the blood of innocents!" O'Malley said with a maniacal cackle.

"Yeah, I'm more on our longtime enemy's side, here," Church said. "Besides, couldn't you just... quilt or knit a present or something?"

"But I don't know how to do any of that," Doc said.

"What? Really?" Church said. "I guess I just assumed..."

"I know basket weaving! Muahahaha!" O'Malley burst out. His laugh almost trailed off into uncertainty when his response was only met with shocked silence. "What?" O'Malley said. "Baskets are pure evil!"

" – And great for carrying organic produce home from your local food co-op," Doc added.

"How did you – When did, when did you learn how to do that?" Church sputtered. "I thought the only sort of weaving Tex knew how to do was the kind that involved punching people in the crotch!"

"Wow, I've never heard of that variety of weaving!" Doc said.

"It doesn't exist, fool!" O'Malley snapped. "Now come on, let's make our exit, baskets take a long time to make. Unless you make bad ones... But of course! That would just be plain evil! Why didn't I think of it before! Let's give him a basket... that will collapse immediately upon use! Muahahaha! Genius! Pure Genius!"

Church just stood and watched the purple-armored soldier walk away, the sounds of O'Malley's evil laughter alight on a gentle breeze as his words faded into the distance. Church scowled. There was no way he would make a handmade gift for that hellspawn. Not even one with rigged with built-in obsolescence.

"What is it, Donut?" Simmons asked, annoyed. He hated being interrupted in the middle of a project. He always lost count, and that fucked everything up with crochet.

"Guys, it's really important!" Donut said excitedly, a little out of breath. "Doc just called and – "

"You answered a call from O'Malley?" Simmons squeaked.

"No, it was just Doc! Turns out there's been a birth at Blue Base and they're throwing a baby shower!" Donut said.

"What." Grif did not intone a quesion mark.

"So we all get to make baby gifts!" Donut continued. "The date is set a week from now, so get started! You don't want to finish late~"

"Seriously? Your voice dropped practically an octave, and I could hear the tilde! You don't have to make the double entendre that obvious!" Simmons complained.

To say that Sarge agreed begrudgingly would be an understatement.

"What?" he barked. "You lead me t' understand that we now owe gifts to our mortal enemy for simply exercisin' the God-given miracle of birth?"

"Yes," Grif said. "For the God-knows-how-many-times."

Sarge went silent. He held his shotgun pensively. Then he gave a soft chuckle. "Oh, I'll give 'em a gift, all right. I'll give 'em a gift they won't forget!"

"... You're going to put a bomb in a quilt aren't you, sir," Grif said.

"That's exactly it, private!" Sarge said gleefully. "They'll never see it comin'!"

"No, sir. Not after all of the bombs we planted on them. Nope. They'll never see this one coming," Grif said flatly.

"Quit bein' a negative Nancy, dirtbag!" Sarge ordered.

"Okay, fine." Grif sighed. "They'll definitely see it coming."

"Now that's more like it!"

Caboose sat next to Donut as they worked. Caboose held two cat brushes in hand, the metal bristles thick with wool. He dragged them slowly against each other, feeling the resistance of the fibers.

"You get really quiet when you're carding wool, Caboose," Donut said.

"I do not want to scare them," Caboose whispered.

"Scare what?"

"The bats."

Donut glanced up from his loom where he was setting up the warp. "Oh, you mean the batts of carded wool?"

"Yes."

"Those aren't alive, you know?"

"Yes."

Silence fell over them for a while. Donut enjoyed the calm companionship he felt while weaving in the company of a friend.

"Donut, there you are, Sarge wanted – Wait, Caboose?" Simmons said as he came over the hill. Grif followed a few seconds later, grumbling about something that involved the words "nap" and "lost stitches."

"Hey, Caboose," Grif said flatly. "What're you doing?"

"Pulling off the batt," Caboose said, the square of freshly carded fiber coming off of the bristles in his hands.

Grif instantly panicked. "Bats, where?" he yelped.

"In the wool," Caboose answered.

Grif suddenly stood very still. "There are bats in wool?" A sense of horror dawned in his voice.

"Batt. B-A-T-T, you fucking idiot!" Simmons yelled. "It's what you call a piece of carded wool that's ready to be spun!"

"Oh," Grif said, relieved. "I thought I was going to have to give up knitting and sleeping with blankets forever."

Simmons ignored him and turned towards Donut instead. "Are you making a scarf or a purse strap this time?" he asked.

"Neither. And I weave gun straps, not purse ones! Gun straps!"

"But they always match your bags!" Simmons said.

"Well, duh! Why would you not coordinate your guns so that they matched your bags?" Donut asked.

Church tossed another empty box across the room. "Caboose, what've you done with all of the fucking blue roving!" he yelled.

"I needed it to be all swirly with the white," Caboose said. He held a spindle in one hand, two handfuls of differently colored – and vastly different varieties – of wool clutched tight in his other hand. The two wools combined very unevenly into the thickest, lumpiest yarn Church had ever seen in his life.

"Well, I needed it for felting a bird!" Church said. "Fucking great. I was going to use that to have something to do until I wait for that shitty party thrown in honor of the abomination to happen, but now it looks like I'll have to think of something else!"

Church sulked in the room long after Caboose had vanished to go do something with the yarn. Probably to accidentally strangle Tucker. Church had been betting on that one happening for a long time. Still hadn't happened yet. Church kind of owed Tex twenty bucks. But thinking about that just made him even angrier.

The lights in the room flipped on.

"Whoa, dude!" Tucker said, startled. "How long have you been sitting here alone in the dark?"

"So Caboose hasn't accidentally strangled you yet with the yarn he made for the evil alien sprog, I take it?" Church said. "Fucking figures."

"Wait, that blue-and-white-striped yarn was for Junior?" Tucker asked. Suddenly, he was slightly worried that Caboose would accidentally strangle Junior.

"Yeah. It's his gift for the dumb baby shower they're all throwing for you," Church spoiled with a bit of sour glee.

"What'll my kid do with a ball of shitty yarn?" Tucker asked.

"Who even knows? What does Caboose do with all of the ones he makes?"

"Never thought about it," Tucker said. "Wouldn't be surprised if he, like, eats it." Then Tucker was thinking about Junior eating the yarn, and all of the sudden he wanted the conversation to be over. "Um, I've gotta go check on Junior," Tucker excused himself hastily. He completely forgot to grab the embroidery floss he'd come for in the first place.

Church scowled after him. Then he got to his feet and left the storage room. As he started down the long hallway, he noticed a familiar sight: loops of handspun yarn tied in five places and draped over a doorknob, weighted down by a plush microfiber towel.

Later that day, Church walked through that same hallway again. The doorknob was now bare, the door itself ajar. The sight of it beckoned. Church pushed it open and entered the room.

The contents of Caboose's personal room were largely a mystery, and Church was damned sure he wanted them to remain that way, but one object caught his eye immediately.

It was that fucking yarn. Now tightly balled and situated in the center of Caboose's bed, a slight depression in the blankets drawing one's eye to its presence. Church despised it. In that moment, he hated that single ball of yarn more than anything else.

Church snatched it up. He brought it back to his own room. He fetched a needle from his desk.

His shadow loomed over the yarn as he crouched beside it.

"What'd you make, Donut?" Sarge asked, eyeing the curiously shaped present tucked under Donut's arm.

"It's a surprise!" Donut said cheerfully.

Grif carried his present unwrapped and balled up in his hand as he trudged along with his team, lagging slightly behind.

"Grif, there are more holes in that blanket than there are in some kinds of lace!" Simmons said, incredulous.

"Ooh, are we talking about lace?" Donut turned around. "My favorite kind is chantilly – "

"No!" Simmons said. He turned back towards Grif. "Seriously. Did you knit that while watching a film in subtitles or something?"

"Eh, whatever. Nothing's going to come out and unravel, so it's good enough. It'll hold up," Grif said. "And you know I can't read and watch cool explosions at the same time. I just sleep through subtitled films. Ambivalence makes me drowsy."

"Everything makes you drowsy!"

"But why'd you assume that's why there's so many holes?" Grif realized. "Unless... Simmons?"

"I was watching a production of Hamlet in the original Klingon, okay?" Simmons admitted. "Only, I don't... actually... know any Klingon – " He winced. " – And I was trying to crochet Spock at the same time, except I messed up and accidentally gave him three fleshy tentacles instead of arms."

Grif just shook his head. "That's why you only do one thing at a time, Simmons. So you don't end up doing a half-assed job at three things."

"But then you just end up half-assing the one thing!" Simmons said.

"Exactly. It's a lot less work than half-assing three things. Save yourself the effort, Simmons."

Simmons ignored him. "Are we fucking there yet, sir?"

O'Malley was pacing outside the base as they approached. His steps were punctuated by the occasional outburst of evil laughter.

"This gift, this basket," he was saying to himself. "They'll never expect it when it comes apart in their very hands, muahahaha!"

"That's because it won't come apart, remember?" Doc said.

"Of course!" O'Malley snapped. "That's why it's evil. They'll expect it to break at any second, and they'll quake in fear with every use, and then it will never happen and the fear will never end! The basket is perfectly structurally sound! It's pure evil! Muaha –"

"Oh, hi, guys!" Doc greeted as the Reds approached, abruptly cutting off O'Malley's maniacal cackling. "Are you here for the baby shower?"

"Yep!" Donut answered.

"Well, let's go in! I'm sure they all just can't wait for us to arrive!" Doc said cheerfully.

Church sat in the far side of the room facing the wall. He was felting and muttering dangerously to himself.

"Y'know," Tucker said, "I never noticed just how much fiber-related stuff goes on in this base..." He took in the sight of several cross-stitched wall hangings, a few embroidered decorative pillows, some felted cozies and unused bookmarks, a couple miniature suits of felted armor, a felted rose and a violet in a felted pot, and three discarded friendship bracelets that consisted of loosely braided homemade fun yarn. "... Until now," Tucker finished.

"Well, what else are we supposed to do? Play capture the flag?" Church said.

"Shut up. You're not even here," Tucker said.

"What, were you trying to hold a conversation with Caboose? 'Cause don't let me stop you."

"I was talking to Junior, dipshit," Tucker said.

"Blarg?" The star of the party looked up at the mention of his name. The yarn bow that Caboose had placed on his head looked adorably lopsided.

"Oh, I'm sure that conversation's even more involved," Church said drily.

"Blarg honk," Junior put in.

"Church, Church!" Caboose yelled excitedly, running to traverse the expansive room.

"He's not here, remember, Caboose?" Tucker said.

"Oh, right. Right," Caboose said. "Tucker, can you tell Church that Caboose, I mean me, said that I cannot wait until they arrive?"

"No. Because I don't give a fuck."

" – And that I am unable to wait because they are already here!" Caboose whispered.

Church pointedly refused to check the validity of the statement.

"Is that it?" Grif's voice came from the center of the room. "I thought it'd be, I dunno, humaner."

"You mean, more human," Simmons corrected.

"Wow, Tucker!" Donut said. "He really takes after you! I can see that he inherited the color of your armor in his skin!"

"He's a fine strappin' young abomination, son," Sarge said. "He'll probably end up becomin' a soldier like his daddy and joinin' the war effort at a young but impressionable age on the wrong side, and then dyin' alone and unacknowledged lookin' down the shotgun barrel of the superior rival army." Sarge sighed with nostalgia for the promises of youth.

"Uh..." Tucker started.

"Now it is presents time!" Caboose called out. "And after that it is cake time and then games time! And then it is pants time." His voice quieted to a whisper. "But Junior can not participate in pants time, because he is too young to wear pants."

"Open mine first!" O'Malley snarled at once, thrusting a purple gift box at Tucker.

Tucker promptly handed it to Junior. Who stared at it with a fervor glinting in his sharp teeth and piercing claws.

"Um, is it a... good idea to let him open them?" Simmons asked in a small voice.

"Oh, don't worry, the kid won't hurt a fly!" Doc laughed. "He only drinks blood from living victims when he needs to nurse!"

Junior tore into the box. In a very literal manner. He stopped when his teeth sunk into a very interesting material. He retracted his bite and stared at the object with a curious "Blarg?"

"It's a basket!" Doc said to him. "For sleeping in! For nappy time and bedtime!"

Junior had already moved on to the next present.

Shreds of red wrapping paper were still fluttering in the air when he finished unwrapping the object.

It was a pillow. Brazenly quilted in shades of red, the Red Team logo branded across it, it also inexplicably bore an appliqué image of Andy offset to one side. Sarge had incorporated a bomb into his present after all.

Junior haphazardly stuffed the pillow into the basket (it fit perfectly) and moved on to marooner pastures. Namely, the box Simmons had wrapped. Which he had done in carefully interlocking sheets of paper as to not require ribbons or tape to hold it together.

Simmons winced visibly as Junior's claws made short work of the box.

Junior emerged from the carnage with a crocheted hat on one foot and a sweater on his claws, the sharp points narrowly fitting through the hole for the neck instead of slicing through the tightly crocheted merino superwash yarn stitches. Simmons hadn't wanted to gift a Blue with an overtly red object, so instead he had settled on a kind of puce. It clashed horribly with every color in the room.

Grif just sort of half-heartedly tossed his gift at Junior, who miraculously did not tear it up by reflex. The baby blanket ended up almost immediately on top of the pillow in the basket. Grif had chosen the most awful dirty yellow color for it. Simmons squinted, but couldn't tell if the dye batch had just turned out that shade or if it was dirty yellow because Grif had accidentally dropped it in the dirt a few times.

Finally, Donut approached with his offering, and Junior opened the lightish-red tube and out rolled a fucking masterpiece.

A tapestry. Donut had woven a tapestry. He'd made sure to include everybody from all sides of the canyon, which meant even Sheila and the warthog were there. All of the Reds and the Blues were strung up like a rainbow clothesline, arms lifted from their sides to clasp hands with their neighbors like the whole war was just a goddamn big hippy commune.

Okay. Maybe Church had turned just a little bit around to glance at whatever had just elicited a collective gasp from every soldier present.

Caboose saw the reaction to Donut's present and couldn't wait anymore. "Okay. Okay. My turn now." He went to fetch a blue box from the other side of the room.

"I didn't know you could wrap presents, Caboose," Simmons said, surprised.

"The tooth fairy did it for me," Caboose said. "I left it on my bed, and when I came back, it had shiny paper on it. I did not even have to leave a tooth as payment this time"

Everyone watched as Junior opened it. Even Church, who'd temporarily given up his illusion of complete disinterest.

Junior held it up for all the world of Blood Gulch to see.

"The tooth fairy also made it smooth," Caboose said in wonder.

But Junior's excitement at holding the now-felted yarn ball showed which gift was clearly the winner.

Church's glower was angry enough he was sure it could be sensed through his armor.

Tucker glanced from the formerly-a-yarn-ball to Caboose to Church and started to shake with yet unrealized laughter. "You... fucking... felted it out of spite!" He guffawed.

Church blamed Command. He blamed the Reds as he stood up. He blamed Caboose and Tucker as he walked out of the room. He blamed Tex for good measure as he grabbed a needle, a handful of white roving, and a block of foam. But really, when it came down to it, he still fucking blamed Command for sticking him in this shithole to begin with.

But at least they gave him a needle and encouraged him to stab things with it.