Cross Stitch

Summary: Jackson ponders the surreal idea of an undead and human coming together over a few threads.

Characters: Jackson Jekyll/Frankie Stein

Warnings: Some deviousness

Is it weird to hope that your girlfriend's hand comes off during practice?

Or that maybe she loses her leg?

Perhaps to someone on the outside the idea seems a bit morbid or unwelcomed. However he'd have to say he's come to enjoy the spontaneous dismemberment of the girl- no ghoul, Frankie Stein. She's stitched together with an assortment of cords and threads and knots and lines. But something always falls off.

In class, in the halls, during fear practice. She loses a hand, a leg, her foot, an entire arm. It's occasionally funny, very rarely serious, and sometimes intentional, but it always requires a quick fix. And at some point in time during their days up and down the gothic purple and grey halls and the green splatter colored classrooms stitching up her loose limbs had become a joint activity.

No pun intended, for once.

So at today's fearleading practice, when her rouge left hand carried itself from the top of the fearamid and into the captain Cleo De Nile's face, it was no surprise that within second she was seated on the bleachers ready to stitch herself back together.

"You don't have to come to every fearleading practice, you know that, Jackson?" The ghoul made from an assortment of reanimated parts spoke up as he rifled around in her case for the proper thread. It was such a common occurrence that they carried around a small sewing case with everything Frankie needed for when she lost a part.

"Ah, no, I don't mind…" He pulled out a spool with a thin silver twine spun around it. With his head down his black framed glasses were steadily sliding down the edge of his nose. "It gives me time to do all my Biteology homework before I get home. As soon as I hit the door Mom insist I let Holt work on his Monster Music Theory homework so he's not keeping the neighbors up late into the night with the noise."

He lifted his head and pulled out a needle that was slightly curved. Helping the teenage mad science project stich up her body had helped him learn a few things about sewing he'd never thought he'd ever have to apply. It did come in handy outside of putting body parts back together. If any of his sweaters tore, he now had the skills to fix them. Jackson raised the needle with a smile and grabbed the end of the thread, he held it up at eye level and slipped the end of the thread through the eye in one go.

"Oh," Frankie leaned forward, black and white dangling over her right eye, "You're getting faster." She extended her left arm, presenting the stub that was her wrist, and held out her left hand with her right.

"Well, I've had a few cardigans that tore, and a sweater vest that snagged on Manny's horns, and-"

"Again with Manny?" She asked as he lined up her wrist and arm.

"He was just charging, and I was just lucky enough to be exiting the Creepeteria at the time." Frankie continued to stare at him, her eyes scrunching a bit at the story. It caused the stitching in her cheeks to swell just a bit but he only chuckled at her and set to work reattaching her hand.

Jackson pierced the needle through Frankie's soft green skin and pulled the thread. Over and under, across and back.

By all means, Frankie could do it herself. A hand stitch was a quick and easy repair. She could do it one handed, blindfolded and in the dark with how often she was separated at the wrist. Yet somewhere along the line, stitching her up had gone from a solo to a duo activity. Maybe because Jackson insisted he wanted to help. And at the times when the lining on the back of her neck popped or the underside of her elbow, it was useful to have a second pair of hands.

After so many patch ups here and there, he started to patch her up everywhere when they were together. And make no mistake, at first it was strange. Putting a body back together; closing a cut or a tearing hole, and there was no blood. There was no warmth. Inside the cross sections of Frankie Stein there were things, body parts essential to movement and support. But they weren't all so similar to his own.

Over and under. Across and back.

Parts of a skeleton, recovered and artificial muscles, a nervous system made up of undead nerve bundles and thin copper wires to charge electricity through the girl, and platelets of metal here and there. To hold her hand, often resulted in a shock, and if she rubbed her hand across his usually wool covered shoulders just so there was a jolt.

Skin on skin contact left that tingling feeling like static filled his every nerve or a kiss left his face numb for minutes.

But there was no warmth.

Over. Under.

There was feeling and excitement, and his heart would race faster. But there was no pulse when he held Frankie's wrist. Her eyes light up and sparked, literally sparked, with delight, and her voice was electrified with laughter. But there wasn't a heartbeat. When she put her head on his shoulder in the silent theater, there wasn't the sound of her breathing, if she coiled herself around his arm while they walked, there was no thumping in her chest. Even if there was one in his.

The blood she made boil in him, wasn't there in her. A cut or a break of her body that would put him in the hospital was as simple as to fix for her as digging around in a little sewing box.

It was the strangest thing. The strangest, most curious, most troubling thing.

Across.

He had started to worry, as time had gone on, that his life and her unlife were too different to come together. Even for Holt, wouldn't it eventually come to a halt? He wasn't a member of the undead, he was fire elemental. He'd never bothered to ask his brother what he thought about the fact that the ghoul's body was what it was. Holt would never bother to think so deeply on a subject.

All he ever knew was that Frankie was fine. And he wanted her.

Back.

Perhaps it was the fault of being the 'normie' between the three of them. That he thought about mortality. That he thought about the blood in his body and the heart in his chest. He couldn't ignore them when Frankie was around. And he feared that the very things that alerted him to just how dear she was to him would be the things that ultimately kept them apart.

Over.

Maybe that's why he started out so eagerly wanting to help her with her body. There was something to it, to getting this close together, a strange awkward intimacy to it that didn't matter if he was alive and she technically wasn't. It was at times as embarrassingly nerve wracking for her as it was for him. Though he still didn't know how her cheeks turned a darker green with the absence of blood.

Under.

But sitting together, tight and close, while one held a limb in place and the other sewed kept the thought of their differences far from his mind. The repair was something they shared in. The threads pulling her electrified skin together, pulled them together and stitched them into one. His mind didn't question the lack there of, only focused on parts that were there.

Across.

The parts that consisted of she and he. The color of her skin contrasted to his, despite having no fluid to it, it was just as vibrant as 'alive' as his own. The current of electricity that pulsated under her skin had a rhythm that almost matched his heartbeat. The way her fingers curled and stretched anxiously while she waited matched his own internal apprehension about their affairs.

Back.

For everything about Frankie that was far removed from Jackson, there were just as many things about her that paralleled in him. Things he sometimes over looked in his hesitant worry that a ghoul and a human were a strange match. Hesitant worries that faded away when he got the opportunity to sit close and think easy, only thinking about the thread and needle in his hands and what best stitch would suit his ghoulfriend for the situation at hand.

Over and under. Across and, "Done." He let go of her wrist and watched as Frankie shook her hand.

The reanimated ghoul grinned at him and brought her hand close for inspection. "Hey! I know this stitch; I demonstrated it in Home Ick."

"Well," Jackson put her repair thread and needle away, "I figured what would work better than your own techniques?" The human teenager adjusted his glasses, they'd reached the end of his nose by now.

"You know, if you're getting this good at stitching, perhaps we can try to make a friend for Watzit for our Mad Science Fair Project? I'm thinking something big enough to ride on." The ghoul raised her hands in the air in a wide arch and looked up. "And wings. Oh! And hooves for the back legs. And a second head on its tail…"

Jackson rubbed the side of his neck. That idea sounded like it would probably land them in Headless Headmistress Bloodgood's office.

"Frankie!" The electrified ghoul was snapped out of describing her monster pet project, which was now up to three heads, by the calls of her fear captain. The Egyptian princess, stood with her arms crossed and foot tapping. Her long black hair was pulled forward in a ponytail over her left shoulder. "If you're done, falling apart, then get back up at the top of the fearamid . That Monster High Spirit Sparkler display isn't going to light itself! So get up there, and give it some juice. I want the crowd the see that fearamid lighting up from space!" She uncrossed her arms and pointed over to the rest of the fearsquad.

"Oh, right, Cleo!" Frankie stood up balling her right hand into a fist and swinging it in front of her chest with her usual 'can do' attitude. "Don't worry, I'll make our routine the most voltageous in the monster world."

Jackson watched as Cleo rolled her eyes and turned her back to the bleachers, "Just get back in line, Frankie."

The human boy waved to her as Frankie darted off form their seat back over to join her friends while Captain De Nile began delegating out orders. Jackson set the sewing kit aside and dug into his own bag to pull out his Mad Science text book. He started thumbing through looking for ideas on what kinds of creatures they could use for Frankie's project idea. He slightly glanced up over the top of the book as the ghouls started their next round of practice and smirked.

He did think that between the two of them her idea would be easy to carry out. Frankie had the skill for planning such things and he had proven he'd gained the skills for assisting in constructing them. After all, he'd gotten so good at his stitching that she hadn't even noticed he purposely left a quarter of an inch gap between the final stitch and the start of the line ensuring it give way again before they parted ways today.

He looked back down at his text book and started to flip through it.

Is it strange to hope that your ghoulfriend's hand falls off before you have to go home at the end of the day?