with you [clouis]

[chapter three]

Well, the ring isn't bigger, but it is flatter.

Too flat to possibly fit on Louis' finger.

Well, fuck.

The hammer hits the workbench with a deafening clatter that bounces throughout the basement, causing a startled Willy to drop the tattered, blue tarp in his hands.

Mitch lets out a deep groan, leaning back in his chair while tugging at his hair.

"How bad is it?" asks Willy.

The ring's a piece of shit, Mitch decides. He tried reshaping it, stretching it to be just the tiniest bit bigger, but progress was halted due to the fact that he fucked up.

Maybe it would be easier if he had Louis' measurement- which Clementine has neglected to obtain yet- but right now, it's damn near impossible to get it back to its perfectly circular shape.

"Fucked," Mitch grumbles. He can't give it back to Clementine in this shape. She'll be devastated.

"I don't think it's supposed to look like that," Willy yawns from beside him, rubbing at his eyes.

Turning the ring- if you could even call it that anymore- around in his fingers, concern furrows the young boy's brow as he chews on his bottom lip.

"What are we gonna do?"

That's a great question, one that Mitch doesn't have an answer to yet.

Really, it should've been simple.

He should've been able to stretch it out a bit then reshape it into a perfect circle, into a ring. Now it's just a long, depressing, wobbly, scratched up loop .

All the mornings he woke up early this week to come down here, all the nights he stayed up to work on it... all for nothing!

Fuck.

Clementine's gonna be pissed.

"No clue," Mitch sighs, pressing forward against the desk to step down from his chair. "Don't suppose you got any ideas?"

"Maybe we could melt it back?"

"With what? Fire?" Mitch sighs."No fire we could make would be hot enough to melt this."

"We could just get it hot enough to reshape it, at least?"

"Maybe," Mitch says, unconvincingly. "Then again, it is pretty cheap, whatever it is."

Willy tries stretching the ring with his fingers to no avail, only succeeding his pinching his pointer finger.

The only reason it got into the shape it is now is because Mitch secured it in an old wrench, then used a pair of thick pliers to try and reshape it. No set of fingers are going to be enough to pry it apart.

"If we don't fix this, Clem's gonna be mad at us!" Willy exclaims, slamming the ring back down onto the workbench. "There's gotta be something we can do! Maybe we could find her a new one? A bigger size? "

Mitch perks a brow.

"You got a bunch of wedding rings lying around that I don't know about?" he asks. "Seems like a weird thing to collect."

Not that he'd be all that surprised, though it'd be rather convenient. Willy collects all kinds of strange shit- used stamps off of old envelopes, coins, fun-shaped erasers, probably other stuff. The kid's like a bird collecting random shit for a nest.

"No," Willy grins. "But that doesn't mean we can't find one. What about the headmaster's office? Or the old teacher's lounge? Maybe one of them took their ring off and forgot about it?"