Apartment Above Lukes, Friday Afternoon

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Kathy was prepping for Pride over the weekend. Most of the merchandise she was planning for the booth had already been boxed up at the store, but she was folding pamphlets and making bracelets out of embroidery floss and beads that she'd picked up from Hobby Lobby when she'd taken a trip over there to discuss which store was going to hand out the birth control. The bracelets all corresponded with the various Pride flags; it was like an eighth grade craft project up in here.

But it was fun and relaxing and made for nice breaks between constant pamphlet folding while still letting her feel like she was being productive. Win/win.

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It'd been a little while since they'd gotten in any quality father/daughter type time, so after Eliot swung by the diner to check up on things, he headed up the stairs with some sandwiches. He knocked on the door; lord only knew what 20-ish year old women got up to when they weren't expecting anyone stopping by. And, you know, it was only polite and all.

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Arts and crafts, apparently!

"Come in!" Kathy called, her lap full of various colors of embroidery floss. "It's open!"

Lest anyone think this was entirely too wholesome an image, let it be said her laptop was also playing music really loud. Well, kinda loud. Pretty loud for someone sitting right next to it.

Which she wasn't.

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If Eliot couldn't hear exactly what song it was through the front door before he opened it, it wasn't too loud. Let's be real.

He came in and held up the bag with the sandwiches. "Brought you some lunch. You taking up embroidery over there?"

There were worse ways to spend your time. Maybe she'd decided to get her pain in through stabbing herself in the finger repeatedly with a needle.

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SHE CERTAINLY WASN'T PATROLLING TO KEEP AN EYE OUT FOR DEMONS, WHY? WHO SAID THAT?!

"Oooh, lunch!" Kathy said, brightening at the bag. "And, no. Not really. I don't know how to do any of that stuff, really." Sparkle'd had to take her original uniform away and sew the rainbows on right because she'd been so terrible at it. "Did you ever see people making friendship bracelets back when you were in school?" She held up a finished one, alternating stripes of black, gray, white, and purple. "Making these for Pride this weekend. You gonna be there?"

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OF COURSE NOT THAT'D BE RIDICULOUS.

"Even got me a silly hat for it," Eliot said. He grabbed a seat and took the finished bracelet. "Just usin' a basic forward knot, huh. Nice job keepin' 'em even. What flag's this one for?"

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"Asexual pride," Kathy said, grinning at the praise. "Even if Dite's is primarily a sex shop, I wanna make it clear that we support all people anywhere on the sexual and gender orientation spectrums."

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Eliot nodded. "Nice. Got your work cut out for ya, if you're plannin' on makin' a lot of 'em, though." He set the ace bracelet down and looked over the various supplies she had. "Take it you're not just stickin' to a basic stripe pattern, neither. Gonna try a beaded wrap next? Maybe embellished chevrons?"

He wasn't totally up on his pride flag patterns, but somehow he absolutely knew all sorts of friendship bracelet styles.

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Kathy was looking at him blankly. "Am I trying the what with the what now?" she asked. "I've got some little beads to stick on them to make them pretty?"

Beaded wrap? Chevrons? Look, she just knew how to knot string in patterns!

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Eliot wasn't sure where he'd lost her. She was making friendship bracelets. He was just talking about friendship bracelets. "But what patterns are you gonna use?"

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"This one?" Kathy said, holding up the bracelet she was working on. It was the exact same as the ace pride, but in bisexual colors. "What do you mean, patterns?"

This is the failing of the public school system, obviously.

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"Like . . . patterns." Eliot held up one of the finished bracelets. "Like this is a stripe pattern. But you could also do, like, hearts or zig zags or -- seriously, this is the only kind you know about?"

Poor, uneducated Kathy. Your whole world was about to open up.

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Kathy had never felt inadequate about her friendship bracelets. Good job, Eliot.

"I...didn't know there were other kinds of friendship bracelet patterns."

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Eliot was about to ask 'what about the ones your friends made you?', then remembered that she'd always claimed she didn't have any friends, before Fandom.

"Alright, I'll show you," he said instead. "What's the next set of colors you were gonna work on?"

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She was glad that they didn't have to have that talk again, thank you Eliot. It would have gone over real well with her newfound friendship bracelet inadequacies.

"These here," she said, handing over the strands of pink, white, and blue needed for the transgender flag.

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Eliot nodded, and quickly measured and cut two sets of the strands. "You got the basic knot down cold, no problem. With your stripes, you work from one side to the other, right? Left to right or right to left. With a chevron, you're workin' outside to inside, like this." He propped his knee up on the coffee table and taped the tied threads to his jeans as an anchor, and quickly ran through rows with all three colors. "Double knot on the left side, double knot on the right, then the next one in on the left, next one in on the right, and so on. When you've got your strings next to each other in the middle, you tie the first half of your double knot with the one on the left, then the other with the one on the right, like this, so there's only one double knot in the center." He brought his knee up and towards her a little so she could get a good look. "And they form a nice little point. A chevron."

Eliot could even turn a conversation about friendship bracelets into a teaching moment, yes.

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Kathy just gaped at him. "How do you know all this?" she asked.

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Eliot shrugged and kept working the strings. "Dated a camp counselor." He smirked. "I can do hair wraps and braids, too."

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"Hair wraps?" Kathy asked, perking up. "Oooh, that sounds like fun. I should hire you to do them for my Dite's booth!"

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Eliot paused mid-hitch. "'Dite's is doin' -- you're doing a sex booth for Pride?"

Oh hey, new benefit of the father/daughter dynamic, Kathy could now make Eliot blush and stammer over her sex life, instead of the other way around.

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And didn't she know it!

"Well yeah," Kathy said. "Safer sex supplies are an important part of Pride. And even if they're not exactly a part of the culture, kinky and poly people show up, too." She flushed a bit and smiled. "So I sorta belong, too."

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"Wasn't arguin' that -- I mean of course you --" Kathy should be filming this. "You want me to work at your sex booth?!"

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She should! Parker and Hardison would probably LOVE to see this. "Well..." Kathy was doing her best to not cackle, but it was hard. "More volunteer than, like, real work with a paycheck or anything. But yeah! You can do hair wraps while I offer safer sex advice or suggestions!"

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Eliot was going to end up turning purple by the end of this conversation. "I mean -- if you need me to do it, I can totally . . . you sure?"

He would be sitting right there. While she talked about sex.

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Well, it's not like he'd be right there while she was having sex!

"Why wouldn't I?" she asked. "Hair wraps and things would be cool! And maybe they'll want a guy's point of view instead of a girl's!"

Beat.

"You're sputtering."

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"Screwed up the pattern on this bracelet, too," Eliot grumbled. He took a deep breath and ran a hand through his hair. "Of course I'll help you with your booth. Wouldn't miss it."

He'd just probably end up sputtering at least a few times while he was there.