After US dried off, I allowed him to sit at the table with me. We sat in the room together silently. I worked on sewing the many gashes in his shirt closed and he just looked around the room, his face displaying his boredom. Suddenly, the lad spoke up and broke the calm silence of the room.

"So, uh," He started, unsure of his decision to start talking, "I appreciate you helping me out, mending my clothes and such."

"No need to thank me," I said, with little emotion in my voice, "it's dangerous to go around with clothes torn like these. You're putting yourself in danger by not caring for yourself, though I believe I mentioned that before." Grabbing a small pair of scissors of the table, I snipped the thread and tied the ends off. Sticking the needle in the small pin cushion I had I held the partially mended shirt up to check my work. The bright red sleeves had been fixed. Before, they were hidden under his jacket, so I hadn't seen their state of disrepair. The red cloth was more shreds then sleeves. While the boy had washed up and then dried off, I had managed to sew them back together.

US waited until I set the shirt back down to pick up the conversation again. I hadn't expected him to continue speaking. "Yea, but uh... are you by any chance done fixing my jeans? It'd at least like to wear something more than just my underwear."

How had I been such an idiot? I forgot that I'd taken the American's clothes, I was even fixing one of his garments right in front of him. Mentally I hit myself on the head for my stupidity. "R-Right right." My voice came out stuttering, as I just realized my house guest was practically naked sitting across from me. I felt a familiar heat rise to my cheeks as well. It was understandable to be a bit flustered. "Sorry about that. Wait right here, I'll go get them for you."

"No no!" He said standing up from the table, trying to interrupt me. I did my best to avoid my sight drifting downwards to his star spangled bottoms, still a tad bit wet they were melded to his body. I mentally hit myself once more, this time because I was letting my emotions get the best of me. US must've noticed my failed attempt as self restraint as his face flushed a warm pink spreading across his face. Though he made no attempt to sit back down. "I... uh..." The boy was having a hard time getting out a comprehensible sentence. "You've done enough, I-I want to do something, I want to help."

"I-If you want to help you can sit back down." I tore my view away from the lad, my voice holding a slight bite. Thankfully, he obeyed and sat back down, the warm pink changing to a bright red like the sleeves on his shirt. His eyes glued to the table, the color spreading to his ears. "J-Just, stay there, please. I'll go get your trousers." US just responded in a slight nod to show he had heard.

Getting up from the table once more, I made my way out of the room and through the house. I turned into the room I had set up for the American and grabbed his jeans. The torn knees were beyond repair as I didn't have any denim patches with me. I had added that to the list of supplies I needed to find. The frayed edge was only repairable by raising the hem which shortened them by a centimeter or two. "By around half an inch!" The left leg had been fixed, the long slashes in the cloth had been sewn together by me. US should be grateful I had needles capable of sewing through thicker fabric.

I grabbed the mended clothes and went back to the room where I found boy. He had managed to shake himself of his stiffness, but now had a new reason to be immobilized. During my absence, he managed to tangle himself up in the red thread I had left on the table. When he heard me enter the room he moved his focus from the self-afflicted handcuffs to me. With a pleading look in his eyes and a shy and weak smile on his face paired with the bright red on his cheeks and ears he looked to me for help.

"Uh, hey," He started weakly, "you're back."

"Yes I'm back, what were you doing while I was gone? I thought I told you to stay put." I tried not to sound too upset. Yes the American got on my nerves, but if I were to get mad at every little thing he does wrong, it would be bad for my health.

"Well, you were taking a while, and, well, I uh... got a bit tangled."

I sighed, that too was another thing I was doing more often with the boy around, I'd barely been with him for a day and he was already taking a toll on me. "Yes I can see that."

"Do you think you could, uh, cut me free?"

"Now that I can't do." I stated firmly. "Thread is hard to find and, thus, a valuable resource, I can't waste it by cutting you out of it."

"So you're just going to leave me here all knotted up?" The teen sounded alarmed.

"No course not, if I intended to do that I would've left you knotted to a tree. No what I'm going to do is simply untangle you." Putting the boy's jeans down I motioned for the boy to turn away from table. With him not facing inwards I pulled up a chair to sit across from him and sat down in it. "Come on now hold out your hands or I'll never be able to get them undone." The American shyly held out his arms giving me full view of the mess he had gotten himself into. I looked over the web of string carefully, if you start pulling at random the knot will only get worse. I glanced up at the boy, his head was turned away, his face and ears even darker than before. The look on his face gave away that he was uncomfortable with the situation. Doing my best to ignore how close I was to the boy, I set to untangle him. Thankfully, I hadn't been gone for too long, so the knot wasn't all that complex. God knows what would've happened if I had been gone longer. I grabbed the spool from the table and I started moving it through the loops of thread, rolling it up as I went. However, every now and then I made a mistake and only made things a tad bit worse, sometimes even tangling my own digits in the strands. In but a few moments, I had most of it undone, save for one piece of strange thread. Somehow after I had unknotted all the string, one piece remained, even after all the rest was back on the spool. It was wound onto the American's right pinky finger, and also around mine. Like it had never been connected to the spool, but that shouldn't be possible, it hadn't been attached to me before.

"US?" I tried to get the boy's attention, he turned his head to me slowly, as if he were afraid of what he might see. "Do you have any idea what this is?" I calmly asked, lifting my left hand showing the string that connected the two of us.

When he saw the red thread, his eyes widened in recognition, and disbelief. The previous heat had left his face, leaving only a light pink dust, but upon seeing the cord attaching us to each other, the full strength of his blush rapidly came back. He moved back in his seat tugging me forward with him, pulling me off my seat and yanking me onto his chest, heat rushed to my cheeks quickly, the sudden contact startling me, and embarrassing me.

My thoughts were interrupted when US shoved me off of him, pushing me back onto my chair. The jolt reeled me back into reality. The blue eyed American tried to say something, but everything that came out just sounded like jibberish, stuttering and stammering.

One more deep breath before I spoke. "Shh shh, just stop talking, or at least, attempting to talk." I tried to sound as calm. "Take a moment to just calm down, we can talk later." I didn't want him to feel bad. No, what was I thinking?! This was the American teen who got so easily got on my nerves. He follows every childish whim he has. It hasn't even been a day and yet, somehow he's knocked down all but one barrier that I had used to protect myself. As much as I try to deny it, he boy was growing on me. This is why I think teaming up during extreme situations is dangerous. The only barrier I had left what that the kid didn't know my real name, my last defence. That's what I thought then, while I sat in the chair opposite of the teen waiting for him to calm down, my left arm held out a bit giving him some space to move.

It took a bit, maybe five minutes, but US finally calmed down. Using his free hand he wiped his eyes. "You finally calmed down?" I asked, doing my best to keep the lad at ease. He nodded in response. "So do you think you can tell me what this string is without panicking this time?"

"Y-Yea, I can, sorry about earlier."

"Well judging from your previous actions this thread is a big deal."

"I-I guess so, you could say that.." He trailed off his voice dropping.

"Are you going to tell me or not?" I was starting to get a bit irritated again, it showed.

"I-I'm not sure you really want to know."

"Listen," by this point I sounded plenty angry to get my point across. "whatever this is it's obviously not going away anytime soon. I need to know what it is. You were able to yank me down when you pulled back, so the cord is obviously strong, I doubt cutting it is going to do anything. So if you really want to do any good in this situation you'll tell me what you know about the binding."

"A-Alright OK I'll tell you!" His voice raised in volume, he held up his arms defensively. I would've slumped back into my seat but I wasn't able to move without pulling US with me. "I-It's..."

"Come on man speak up, I can't hear you."

"I-It's... I-It's,"


A/N: Oooh, cliffie! Sorry for not uploading this yesterday, I've been busy with finals and stuff. I hope I didn't make you guys wait to much. Please let me know if you like it or have any suggestions! Until I write again!