When GameGameGameCon had announced that the team behind Elder Wars 2 would be coming to do a big event – including some sort of exciting news about the game, of which they could of course give no juicy details – America had promptly invited all of his friends that played. Korea had some kind of work commitment which he cheerfully insisted he couldn't blow off (like he always had a work commitment - how did that guy even have time to play all his games, anyway?). Japan had sent his regrets and mentioned that he had already promised his time to another event the same weekend.
Taiwan, however, had texted him back with a ton of those sparkly emojis. He called her so they could be excited at each other, and they had ended up staying awake half the night just speculating on what could be next for Elder Wars 2. Was it a new expansion? Another phase of the Dragons storyline? Maybe they would finally find out what was up with the desert. Could there be new professions on the horizon?
"Hey, you know what," Taiwan had said sometime around 3 am DC time. "I know a great way to keep ourselves busy while we're waiting!"
"Yeah?" America had said around a yawn, wondering if he should get more coffee. More coffee was always more good, right? He got up to wander around while listening, trying to remember the proper way to make coffee.
"Let's make costumes! We could dress up like our characters, I bet it would look great. It's too bad we can't have our whole group, but even two of us would be a lot of fun."
"Sure, sure." Where was his coffeepot? Huh, why had he put it in the freezer? "That sounds great, Taiwan."
"Okay! When do you want to start planning? Would next weekend work? You could come over to my place."
America paused to squint at the calender on his fridge. While it would covered with scribbles, Saturday looked free. "Saturday?"
"Alright, come over whenever you want. Oh, wow, it must be really late over there. Sorry, I'll let you go now. See you on Saturday!" With a final giggle, she hung up.
America stuck his phone back into his pocket, then looked at his coffeepot again. He looked at the machine. He decided that this was too much effort for one night, and went to sleep.
Until Saturday came and he was standing in Taiwan's house, he hadn't realized what he had gotten himself into.
"Here's my sewing room," Taiwan said, opening the door and gesturing him in. Holding his cup of overly-sweetened tea carefully (he'd sworn off coffee for the next month as his latest health project, and so what if he'd already cheated twice, they didn't count), he entered the room and peered around as Taiwan set her laptop down. It was relatively neat, but just messy enough to show that it was actually used. Most of the fabric was piled away on a shelf, but a scrap lay on the ironing board, and buttons were scattered across a small table. Tiny snippets of thread were everywhere.
The thing that caught his attention first was not the colorful arrays of fabric in everything from silk to linen to rayon, or the wigs sitting and staring on foam heads on their own shelf, or the cute ironing board cover, or the petticoats trying to escape their hanging rack. It was a high shelf, not too near the windows, which held several dolls. One was dressed in what he guessed was a kind of traditional outfit, and another was in regular fashionable clothes, while the third was dressed like a fantastical princess. "Did you make those yourself?" he asked, setting his tea down on the ironing board.
"Hm? Oh, those! Not the dolls, but I make all their clothes myself. It's way more fun than buying them." She reached up and took down the doll in traditional clothes so they could look at it better. "Plus, since they're small, it doesn't take as long as making regular clothes."
He reached out to touch the little bangles along the doll's headdress, which shifted and clinked lightly together. "Wow," he said. "Maybe I should try it sometime." DIY was part of the American spirit, after all.
"Do you have dolls?" Taiwan asked as she set hers back on the shelf to sit and gaze at the room.
"Yep! A full collection of American Girl dolls." He picked up his tea and told her about them as she waved at him to sit down and started pulling up reference images on her laptop. Not that he had done much with the dolls lately, but they always hit his nostalgia buttons in the right way. Kirsten and Addy had been his favorites, because of how they reminded him of some real little girls he had known a long time ago, but Felicity's high spirits had made her special to him, too.
"Okay," Taiwan said when the story was over and her screen was filled with images. "I've been doing some research into patterns and so on, and I think I already have some of the fabric we might need, but for some of these we have a few options, and I was wondering what you think about them..."
America hadn't realized that there were so many ways to make a costume. Did he want his vest made of cotton or linen? What ribbon did he want for the trim? Should they go with a deeper brown or a more yellow brown? Did they want brocade on the back of his coat or just the embroidery at the bottom? Did he really want to wear leather pants all day, or should they go with cotton and try to fake it? Which hat should she wear – this one was cuter but this one was easier to make. And was there a good way to give her alchemical flasks that neat glowing effect?
He stumbled out, long after darkness had fallen, in a daze. There were so many choices. He'd either bought costumes before, Star Trek outfits and Darth Vader masks, or else done some funny homemade thing for Halloween, like last year when he had glued some boxes together, added some paint, and become a Minecraft character to delight the neighborhood kids.
Taiwan had asked him to go fabric shopping sometime. He didn't remember when she had suggested it, but there it was, in his phone's calendar, a little misspelled. Maybe he was getting tired. Yeah, that was it, he just needed some coffee before he hopped back to his country. That would give him a boost, maybe even enough to (as had fallen upon him) figure out how to make glowy alchemical flasks that were also filled with colored liquid. How hard could it be?
~!~
Before they even got out of the house next time, Taiwan insisted on measurements. Lots of measurements.
"We might as well get them out of the way now," she said, brandishing a highlighter-yellow measuring tape. "Besides, that way we know exactly how much of each fabric we need. Unless you got yours done recently? I haven't checked mine in a decade or so, and I don't think they've changed much, but you never know."
She was serious about it. She took her time to measure not just the width of his shoulders and around his waist, but she then picked up his hand and had him hold it out so she could measure around his wrist. The brush of her fingers against the inside of his wrist tickled in a pleasant way, but after a few seconds it was gone as she drew back to note the measurement down.
When it came to measuring the pants, however, she wrapped the tape around his hips without any apparent embarrassment, but did hesitate when it came time to do his inseam. "Um, I know what size pants I buy," America said with a nervous laugh. "Can't we just use the number from that?"
"The manufacturers always lie, though," Taiwan said with a pout. "Here, let's just-" She shoved one end of the measuring tape near his crotch and told him to catch it, then immediately started to unfurl the rest of it down the inside of his leg. America laughed again, hoping it would make things less awkward (it didn't) and reminded himself of the other times that he'd been forced to let a tailor measure him. Then again, the tailors had never been as cute as Taiwan.
After a few moments, it was done and over, at least, and Taiwan tossed the measuring tape at him. "Now we have to do me," she said.
"Uh, right."
Her character wore a skirt, so they didn't have to repeat that awkward scenario; he just measured down the outside of her thigh to where she wanted the hem to hit. Trying to get her chest measure proved to be the worst, though, and not because of what area it was (Taiwan was the one fussing with it in front, anyway, and the view from behind wasn't that great). No, it was because the stupid tape kept slipping and Taiwan kept asking if it was straight all the way around and it took five tries to get it to stay long enough to write her numbers down.
In retrospect, America thought as Taiwan stuck the tape away, it was kind of intimate, knowing the exact circumference of someone's waist or the width of their shoulders. Then he looked down at the actual measurements they had scrawled on a piece of paper, and realized he had no idea what they meant. Taiwan had written in Chinese and used centimeters. America barely remembered how to convert from inches when he was standing in the middle of NASA; outside of that or an NIH lab or something, he was hopeless.
The fabric store Taiwan had picked was huge, and the shelves were absolutely stuffed. At least nobody yelled at him when he helped yank the bolts out and jam them back in; he even helped an old lady who was having trouble pulling hard enough. "I can go get the lace and ribbon and the buttons and everything," Taiwan said once they had collected a shopping cart full of the bolts they wanted, all different colors and textures. "How about you go check out the patterns?"
She already had several that they could use in her collection, but they needed a couple more. So America dove into the drawers of patterns crammed into a back corner of the shop. By the time Taiwan had wandered back over (with more lace and ribbons and buttons that their costumes needed in the cart), he had several finds to present.
"This one looks like the right kind of coat! We can make it shorter, right? And here's one with the right vest, we just have to make it look less like a pirate, and this was the kind of dress you wanted, wasn't it? I just looked for the one that seemed the closest. It says it has pockets, too!"
"Pockets!" Taiwan clapped her hands together. "I almost forgot about that. I can't make them too big with such a short skirt, but I need a place to put my phone and camera, at least. What about the hat?"
He handed over three hat patterns, none of which really looked like her character's hat, and she hemmed and hawed over them for a few minutes. "I'll go with this one," she finally said, flipping it over to check the fabric requirements on the back. "I'll probably have to double these to get it puffy enough..."
America tossed the other patterns back on the pile and helped push the laden cart though the aisles as Taiwan trailed behind, doing math out loud. She snapped back to attention at the cutting counter, where she watched over the woman cutting their fabric with a close eye.
"You have a pretty good memory, huh," America said after she had recited the exact meterage needed for each of their many fabrics.
She flashed him a grin. "I guess I do!"
"Well, you have to memorize all of those characters, it would be pretty tough if you couldn't read them."
"And you have to memorize how to spell all of your words. Or have you finally come up with rules that apply all the time? 'I after E except after c or sounding like a like neighbor and weigh and also in weird and science and species and..."
"Aw, shut up, that one's England's fault for coming up with such a crummy language," he said, but that didn't stop her from dissolving into peals of bright laughter.
~!~
America's vague memories were that sewing took forever. He'd played by the fireside for many an hour as a child while England darned socks or took out hems or repaired the many rips in America's clothes. England had even made him learn a little, which hadn't been an easy task with an impatient child who hated to be cooped up behind a window learning how to stitch back and forth. Many years later, America could be a little thankful because it turned out that when you were miles from real civilization and hanging out with cowboys or gold miners, being able to sew your own buttons back on came in handy.
That was about as much as he had ever bothered with, though. England had given up around the time the lessons had progressed to smocking, which still seemed like magic to him.
Taiwan presumably had a sewing machine, and from what America knew, those were a lot better than they were in the days when they had to be pumped by foot pedals – at least, the advertisements said they could do a ton of stitches, so that had to be good. But he was glad that once he had carried all the fabric to Taiwan's place, his main job was to make the props.
His were easy. He bought some plastic guns that looked like his character's, then spent a few hours painting them to look old and bronzed. Once they were finished, he just had to figure out how to jigger them onto a belt.
Taiwan's props were a lot more interesting. First there were the little potion bottles that she had wanted him to make light up. He would have hated to disappoint her, but thankfully, it didn't end up being that hard. He filled a couple of containers with colored resin (and, for an extra touch, he dumped in some glitter he had laying around) and left just enough room to fit a couple of LEDs in there.
The effect was actually rather pleasant to look at. A storm came through a few weeks later, right after he'd watched a horror movie (one that Japan had said 'wasn't that bad' but was actually full of ghosts and violent murders that had good special effects). America was cowering in his bed telling himself that it wasn't ghosts scratching at his window, it was just the tree and he'd planted it himself so there definitely wasn't a skeleton buried underneath it nope, when his eyes fell upon the containers, still sitting on his dresser. He'd meant to take them to Taiwan the day before, but that visit had fallen through.
This was silly. America was a brave hero who had faced down way worse enemies than a few imaginary ghosts.
Still.
He brought them back to his bedside table and turned the lights on. Staring at them, he couldn't think about ghosts; he thought about how pretty they were and how happy Taiwan would be to see them and how good they would look against her dark brown skirt. How was that coming along, anyway? They hadn't talked about the costumes in ages...
Like this, he fell asleep and woke up to a clear morning and dead batteries for the LEDs.
When they did meet up again, America drew the bottles out of their bag with a flourish and tapped the button to turn them on. Taiwan squealed with delight, her hands flying up to her cheeks. "America, they look great! It's perfect, it's just like in the game." She picked them up and turned them about, smiling down at them as she tapped at the sides and watched the light reflecting off her palm.
When she turned that cute grin on him, he reflexively smiled back – then gave a small 'oof' as she jumped up to hug him. "Glad you like it," he laughed, squeezing her back before she pulled away.
"I do! And the progress pictures of the staff that you sent me look great. Are you sure there's no metal on it? It definitely looks like metal."
"Metal would be way too heavy to haul around all day! Besides, it's as tall as you are, it'd overbalance."
"Oh, I guess it would, wouldn't it? Anyway, I want to see it when it's done! But right now, let me show you what I've been working on."
Her dress was done, and her capelet was half-finished, waiting for the ruffles to be pinned on. Taiwan complained about how hard the hat was to make while she showed him what she had accomplished so far; the shape was right, and now it just needed the decorations. He didn't follow all of what she said, but he made noises once in a while and that seemed to satisfy her.
His costume had much fewer fiddly bits. Taiwan shook out the long coat and gave it a last look-over. "It needs ironing," she lamented.
"It does? Can't you just hang it in the shower?" America couldn't even remember the last time he'd ironed clothes, as much as England complained that it made him look sloppy. Who even noticed wrinkles, anyway? And if people did, wasn't that what wash-and-wear was for?
"I'll try it," she sighed. "Or maybe if I can find my steamer... anyway, I want to see how it looks on you."
She left him alone to go make tea while he changed. The pants were more tight-fitting than he had expected from looking at them; maybe it was the fabric. The under-shirt was soft and light, though – Taiwan had instantly demanded the fabric despite its higher price tag when they found it at the store, and now he could understand why. It was much nicer than the vest that fit over it.
In fact, he was still struggling with the vest when Taiwan came back. "Is it too tight?" she asked. "I left plenty of allowance in the seams if it is."
"I think the zipper's just stuck."
"Here, let me." She set her tray down and came over. "Don't pull on it so harshly," she scolded. "Gently. You don't want to break it. Invisible zippers can get caught easily. See? You just have to pull it like this and then gently..." She slid it slowly closed up his chest, then tucked the zipper pull behind a strap and smoothed the whole thing down with her hands.
When she glanced up, their eyes caught for a few moments. Taiwan's hands were still resting on his chest, a light pressure though he couldn't feel their warmth. It was nice. America wondered vaguely if he should put his hand somewhere or leave them hanging at his sides.
Before he could decide, Taiwan broke down into giggles and stepped away. He laughed along with her. "We should get a photo like that when we're in costume," she teased.
"Yeah? We could photoshop it onto a screenshot of Lover's Leap."
She shook her head as she pulled his coat off the ironing board and helped him into it. "How's it feel?"
"This is great, Taiwan."
She clapped her hands as she did a circle around him. "Everything fits perfectly. See, wasn't it worth standing still for all those measurements?"
He glanced at the full-length mirror, sitting dusty on the other side of the room. While Taiwan pulled on his cuffs and his collar, he gave himself a long look. She really had done a good job. The clothes gave him a perfect heroic silhouette, with broad shoulders and a decided flare to the coat. He looked enough like his character that it was almost uncanny.
"What do you think?" Taiwan asked when she was done fussing.
"I love it! You did an excellent job."
She beamed at him. "Your props had better measure up," she said with a laugh. "Oh, but those flasks are so great. I'm sure you'll do a good job. And we have to get pictures after all this hard work."
"How many frames should I buy?"
"Lots!"
~!~
At some point, when the glue was failing and the room was too hot, America got frustrated with the staff and took a break. He made a slide whistle for his Addy doll instead, since he couldn't find her original one. Probably buried in his storage closet somewhere.
He texted Taiwan to ask if her dolls needed any accessories, too. She sent him a few suggestions, and when he brought her staff over, he surprised her with a few carved wood accessories. The traditional doll got the tiny lute, complete with strings made of thin thread. The modern, fashionable doll received a lamp, complete with its own tiny LED to make it light up. And for the princess, there was a mirror stand painted in pearlescent colors for her empty, star-filled eyes to gaze into for forever.
For the whole rest of the week, he couldn't get the look on her face out of his head. She hadn't just brightened up – in fact, she'd been far more excited during their shopping trip – but the smile had gone through her whole face, somehow, from her lips to her eyes, giving her a soft look as she posed the dolls with their new props.
It took her a while to finish adjusting their hands and the exact fall of their clothes, but America hadn't had it in him to be impatient. Sitting with her, in the sewing room with the blinds half-draw against the sunlight, had been cozy and comfortable.
~!~
In the end, the fruits of their labor were magnificent.
Taiwan looked like she had stepped out of the screen. After leaning in to a mirror for a good long while, doing this and that with her brushes, she had managed to make her eyes look twice as big as normal and give her character the young, innocent look with blushing cheeks that she always wore. America took the same amount of time just to get Nantucket to fold down sort of normally, and then she insisted on giving him a coat of make-up, too. When she was finished, he couldn't tell that she had actually done anything, but Taiwan beamed at him and told him that he looked even more handsome than normal.
"Aw, thanks. But surely I can't hope to measure up to a pretty girl like you," he said with a wink, which made her laugh and swat his shoulder.
"Come on, let's go see what's happening! When's the Elder Wars 2 event going on?"
"Not until four. Even if we line up early, we can go play some of the demos first."
The demos were fun this year, even the ones that didn't have huge lines. They got to ooh and ahh over new over videos showing off shiny special effects that would probably never make it into the actual game, and they lingered for several minutes in the Harvest Bloom booth. America got a picture of Taiwan trying to balance one of the stuffed chickens on her head (on top of her hat, even), and she talked him into getting one with him holding as many plush cows as he could squash into his arms.
They kept getting stopped for photographs. America had never experienced this kind of attention before, but Taiwan was wearing one of the most iconic outfits of the game – it was one of the cutest armors available for alchemists, and coincidentally it was also one of the hardest to get – and people kept grinning behind cameras and phones as they struck the poses for their characters' main attacks. (America may or may not have practiced in front of a mirror for a while to make sure it looked right in real life.)
"You two both look so great," one girl gushed after she'd clicked her camera a few times. "I wish I could get my SO to dress up with me. I'd love to do this kind of thing."
"Aw, really? A – Alfred here agreed the first time I asked!"
"It was a pretty cool idea, of course I did! Anyway," he continued, turning back to the young woman, "just keep trying, and I'm sure you'll be able to do a pair costume someday, too."
She nodded, and his heart felt lightened with her new-found hope.
To make sure they got good seats, they ended up waiting for two hours in the line for the Elder Wars 2 panel. Taiwan kept fiddling with her staff as they waited. She rolled it back and forth between her hands as other fans walked by. Some of them were even in costume, but none were as awesome as theirs were – certainly, none of them had light-up flasks shining from their belts. (Okay, the guy who had gone to all of the effort to dress up like one of the game's cat-people had looked pretty good. But did he have a poofy hat and laboriously painted steampunk guns? No, no he did not.)
Finally, they got in, and the panel was fantastic; the developers announced a new expansion with an all-new area and two new professions to go with it, along with lots of cool-sounding PVP opportunities. The screen to Taiwan's phone kept flashing on; she must have been texting Korea and Japan about all of the promises being made up on stage.
Afterward, still high on excitement and chattering about their hopes for this new expansion, they happened to spot a professional photoshoot room, and after all the time they had spent on the costumes, well, why not? It would be better than the photos America had sweet-talked another congoer into taking for them with Taiwan's camera.
The photographer was patient as they kept bursting into laughter with each fancy new pose they struck. It was ridiculous, but the kind of fun ridiculous one could break out on Halloween and in convention halls. "One more," the photographer finally called out.
They had been standing back to back, but now they both half-twisted and looked at each other. The feathers in Taiwan's hat brushed against his cheek, tickling, as she leaned further into him. For balance. Right. "Hey, I've got an idea," America said.
Taiwan's eyes were lovely and dark, and he could see how her eyeshadow was sparkling in the bright studio lights. "Yeah?" She grinned at him with lips painted a bright and shining pink and leaned even closer. "I do, too."
It was hard to tell which of them had actually closed the distance. He could feel the strange texture of her lipstick, the way her shoulder rose under his hand as she breathed in. Click.
They pulled away slowly, before they both burst into giggles again. It was impossible not to when his heart felt so light and happy. The photographer took one extra photo of that moment, too, and when he saw it several days later, America thought that one was actually his favorite. At some point he would have to get a real print of it and take it to that nice framing shop a few streets over, but for the moment he printed it out and stuck it on the fridge, next to his calendar.
A/N: Written for VampirePaladin for Rare Pair fest 2016; apparently I forgot to cross-post after authors were revealed. For bonus internet points, see if you can guess where Taiwan's costume came from! (I based America's off a particular medium armor from Guild Wars 2; hers is from a different game.)