That works on a few levels

===8 Spring 1386==========

“I don’t follow, he thinks the green string means what, again?” I asked Curry, puzzled, then drew in a sharp gasp when I accidentally drove the needle I was using to resew a button on my cloak straight into my thumb. A bright spot of blood beaded up immediately, and I dropped the needle and put the tip of my thumb in my mouth, wincing.

“I swear to Lytie, Fuzzy—” Curry set his own mending aside on the end table and reached over to pluck the needle up from where I’d dropped it, then held out his hand for me to give him my cloak.

“Don’t be shitty, I’m actually getting halfway decent at this,” I protested around my thumb. “It’s just you distracted me with this thing about how Bag has a new string theory. Not to mention, I’m a little surprised he didn’t tell me any of it when I was the one who laid out the last one. It feels very behind-my-back.”

He raised his brows at me, pointedly not lowering his hand.

“Fine,” I grumbled, relinquishing the garment. “But so you know, I really am getting better at sewing. Nan said so.”

“Nan has a ludicrous soft spot for you,” Curry told me, “which is why she’s being so charitable as to give you credit for improvement when the truth is you can manage—let’s call it, nominally successful—mending, so long as you can work in total silence, with perfect lighting, and no interruption or distraction whatsoever.”

“Your critique is not helpful,” I informed him, removing my thumb for inspection. It was still bleeding a little, so I put it back in my mouth.

“Everybody sticks themselves sometimes,” Curry said, clearing his throat and finishing off his whiskey. “It takes a special talent to jab yourself so bad it’s still bleeding now.”

“It’s only been a few seconds,” I said petulantly, then fell silent, watching him hold the button deftly in place with his large fingers, then confidently plunge the needle upward through all layers, without even missing the hole in the button.

“You can keep talking,” Curry informed me sweetly. “I’m not the one who can’t stand a distraction.”

“Well, now I haven’t anything to do,” I complained.

“Go get us another whiskey then.”

I stuck my tongue out at him after checking that my thumb was no longer bleeding. “You’re being an ass.”

“Spit in my drink then, if you think it evens the score.”

“Shut up,” I said, half-assedly, not bothering not to flounce out.

When I came back with our refilled glasses Curry was already done with my button. I examined it closely, but unsurprisingly, his work was flawless as usual. “Let me do the next one myself,” I said. “If we ever get our own places I’ve got to be able to do it by myself, haven’t I?”

“Solution to that problem: never get our own places.” He coughed into his fist, then picked up his whiskey.

I stretched out lengthwise on my back, slouching down against the settee arm until I was almost reclined, and resting my stocking-clad feet on his thigh. “You were clearing your throat all day,” I said, resting my whiskey glass on my chest. “Are you getting sick?”

“I never get sick,” Curry said, picking up the trousers he was mending before commandeering my work. “You’re the one gets fever every year and whinges endlessly while Nan fusses over you.”

I rolled my eyes. “Fine. Then tell me about Bag's thing.”

“He wasn’t sure yet,” Curry said, slipping the needle smoothly through the material. “But he read through any where the names on the pub menus had actual cases, and he thinks maybe the blue strings are the small handful of names who disappeared and were later found dead and have Watch Guard homicide cases attached to them.”

I considered this, compared it against what I remembered from the blue cases, and nodded. “All right. Sure. That fits. But when did he tell you this? We were both around all day!”

“Fuzzy. He would never admit it, obviously. But you have to know how much Baggett cares about your opinion. He wanted to see what I thought first since your string theory is the currently reigning one.”

I laughed and wiggled my feet against his leg. “Good one, Mag. But what’s the real reason he didn’t tell me?”

“Wow. Asshole, much?” He swatted good-naturedly at my foot. “I’m serious. Bag just wanted to think aloud to somebody. He didn’t tell me a ton. Just that he thought green could be something like people whose bodies never turned up and were never heard from again, and red might be—” Curry broke off to cough into the crook of his elbow again. “I’m sure he’ll tell us more in the morning than he told me today.”

I frowned. “Tomorrow is starting to sound like you ought to stay home sick and I find out his red-string ideas another day,” I told him. “You don’t sound good.”

“I’m fine. Little tired. Maybe I’ll go to bed early. Whatever it is won’t stick.”

I sat up and put my whiskey glass on the end table. “I’m going to make you some hot lemon and honey,” I told him, swinging my feet down from his lap. “You’ve been scratchy all day.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Curry said.

With him seated and me standing I could actually reach to pat him on the head as he frequently did to me when it was only us. “I owe you for sewing on my button after I stabbed myself,” I said, when he wrinkled his nose at me.

The kitchen stove was still hot from tonight’s dinner, and the fire hadn’t died too badly, so it didn’t take long before I had hot water, into which I squeezed the juice from a lemon, and gave the whole thing a generous gob of honey before stirring and tasting it and adding a little pinch of salt.

I could hear Curry coughing again from the other room, and as an afterthought, I fished into the cookie jar and pulled out two of the oatmeal cookies Nan had made this morning to stock us up while she was away visiting. I stuck one in my mouth and held it there in my teeth while I concentrated on walking and not spilling Curry’s hot lemon.

I set down his cup, and the cookie next to it, then collapsed back onto my side of the settee without removing the cookie from my mouth.

“Thanks,” he said, eyeing me doubtfully. “Don’t **** on that thing, you little savage. My hands are too full to save you.”

“Mmphmmphm,” I said, because my hands were occupied recovering my whiskey tumbler, and when he shook his head at me with a gesture that meant, how the hells was he supposed to know what that meant, I pulled the cookie out of my mouth long enough to say, “I said I won’t,” then jammed it back in, then removed it so I could add, “and you really accuse me of being a choker a _lot, _considering it was only the one time!” I stuck the cookie back in my mouth.

Curry rolled his eyes and took a sip of his hot lemon. “This is pretty good even if it was prepared by an extremely irresponsible eater.”

“Fuck you, and thanks,” I said, chewing happily—Nan made such excellent cookies. “I made it with love. And my very own spit.”

“Only the best for your boy Magnus,” Curry said, making me giggle with the resigned mock enthusiasm of his body language.