A Brutal Yarn

By: CrystallicSky

Disclaimer: I don't own Metalocalypse or any of its characters, nor do I make any profit or attempt to with the writing of this or any of my other pieces.

Warnings: Language, homosexuality, etc.

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"Fuck this," Nathan snarled. The sound of metal being thrown against the stone floor was only mildly cushioned by the material wrapped around it and still made a substantial clinking sound.

"Nathan," a long-suffering voice sighed, "don't be like this." So saying, Charles bent down and plucked that which had been cast down from the floor.

"This is stupid!" Nathan protested. "I shouldn't have to do this, so…so why the fuck should I?!"

"Because your mother asked you to, Nathan," Charles succinctly reminded, placing the yarn and knitting needles back into the frontman's large hands. "She told you she wanted a scarf for Christmas and she told you she didn't want you to buy one. That's why you're doing this."

Nathan glared at the clumsily-begun project handed to him. Charles had really done his best to make the act of knitting somewhat bearable with black needles topped with custom-made Facebones baubles and probably sharp enough to disembowel somebody if you were trying along with even blacker yarn, rough as opposed to soft, but even that was not enough.

Knitting was just not brutal.

Learning to knit for the first time, however, was incredibly brutal and Nathan loathed every second of it. None of the 'how-to's he'd looked up on the internet had made any sense to him and resulted in a confused tangle of yarn and enough frustration to send him out golfing in the rain

On the bright side, Charles knew how. His mother had supposedly been hoping for a girl and the bold, 'Male' on her child's birth certificate had not deterred her from teaching him all kinds of typically feminine skills. Regardless, Charles had agreed to teach Nathan how to knit, too, which was awesome as it spared him the embarrassment of seeking out a private instructor outside of Mordhaus.

"Alright, Nathan," Charles began for what was probably the fifth time that day, "I want you to try casting on, again. You remember how I showed you to do it, right?"

Frowning, Nathan pulled the yarn already on his needles off and formed a slipknot towards the end of the thread, looping it onto one of the black metal sticks. Taking it into his right hand, he draped some of the remaining yarn over the middle and ring fingers of his left. He pulled it under and over his index finger so that the needle now faced his palm before directing it under the string on his two middle fingers and then under the black streak of yarn laid across the middle of his hand. Removing said hand from the equation altogether, the yarn easily tied itself around the needle in the form of a stitch.

Casting on was easy with the little trick Charles had taught him. Casting on, he could do.

Nathan repeated the action several more times until there were ten stitches in total. It was a small number of stitches and would've made a fairly thin scarf, but this was only practice, so it was enough to work with.

"Okay…" Nathan began, "now what?"

Charles came up behind him and grasped his hands with his own. It was somewhat awkward with the size-difference, but it was managed and the lawyer began guiding Nathan's hands in the proper motion, knowing his lover learned better by seeing and doing than by being talked through it.

Green eyes watched as the second, empty needle was slipped beneath the yarn of the first stitch and held behind the first needle. The yarn was looped counterclockwise around it, which was then dipped under what had been the original stitch and pulled off the first needle entirely.

"There," Charles declared, releasing Nathan's hands. "You have a stitch. Think you can do one on your own?"

Slowly, Nathan nodded and endeavored to repeat the action without Charles's guidance. The attempt did not go as quickly but it was done twice as carefully. The last time he'd tried to move past this part, his hands had proved too big for the needles and yarn to be anything but clumsy. Bigger needles and thicker yarn had already been promised for the actual scarf, but this would be okay for practice.

"Good," he heard when he'd finished, "that's perfect. Eight more and you've got a row."

Obediently, Nathan began knitting the remaining length of yarn, committing the action to memory more and more with each stitch. Within minutes, he was finished and he held the project out to Charles for critique.

"Excellent," Charles complimented as he looked the row of black yarn over. "No dropped stitches like last time…" He smiled. "See, Nathan? You're getting better at this."

Nathan was proud that he was doing it right; that he was no longer making a bunch of beginner's mistakes, but he was also deeply, deeply ashamed. He was getting better…

…at knitting.

He sighed morosely, opining, "God, this is so not brutal…"

Charles snorted. "Actually, Nathan, I'd have to disagree with you on that."

Nathan raised an eyebrow in response. "Oh, yeah?" he challenged. "How's knitting brutal? Seriously, I want to know."

"Hundreds of people every year are stabbed with their own knitting needles," Charles informed. "In fact, there's recently been a case where a woman was impaled in the heart with one of her needles, was rushed to the hospital, and ended up diagnosed with breast cancer a few days later."

"……" Nathan simply stared for a few moments. "……seriously?"

"I wouldn't lie to you, Nathan," Charles offered. Well…at least not about anything important… "Knitting starts to rub off your fingerprints, too, if you do it long enough."

"No way," the frontman exclaimed, only to pause as he was offered the index finger of Charles's left hand. True to form, there was only smooth, unmarked flesh amidst the slight ridges upon the rest of the fingertip. It'd leave a print, but it would be a partial at best.

"That's awesome," Nathan muttered, head already starting to fabricate a song about some inconspicuous old lady who started stabbing people to death with her knitting needles but never got caught 'cause she didn't have any fingerprints.

"Yes, well…it's not difficult to make even the most non-metal things metal with a bit of effort." Charles grinned as he continued, "I've had practice doing that for you boys."

"Yeah?"

"You'd be surprised at how sweet and fluffy you can be when you think no one's looking," Charles said. "Did you know that Skwisgaar has a closet-passion for flower-arrangement? Or that Toki volunteers at an animal shelter every weekend?"

Nathan snorted in amusement. "Dude…really?"

"Yes, really," the manager assured. "It's my job to have flowers discretely brought in on request and provide a nondescript car to the shelter."

"What about Murderface?" Nathan prompted. "Does he do stuff, too?"

"He puts together care-packages for children in need," Charles said. "Even Pickles visits a retirement home once a month to cheer up the elderly."

"They probably share drugs," Nathan happily suggested.

"It certainly would explain why he keeps coming back to Mordhaus with prescriptions our doctor swears he didn't prescribe."

Nathan laughed. "So…I can blackmail them, right? If they ever catch me knitting?"

"I would say it's fair game," Charles agreed. "They'd likely do the same if the situation were reversed."

Nathan grinned broadly and wordlessly turned back to his practicing.

It was funny how well this knitting lesson had gone. He was learning how to do it properly, the resulting scarf would be enough to shut his mom up for a good long time, and it'd certainly gotten him some excellent dirt on his bandmates.

Maybe knitting was brutal, after all.

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A/N: Get it? 'A Brutal Yarn'? 'cause a yarn is a story AND the story is about knitting? XD

Anywho, this is just a little something I thought to write and so I did. :)

Thanks for reading and I hope you liked it! :D