a home that rings with joy and laughter, with the ones that you love inside

[forthsofar]

There was nothing wrong, exactly, with the furniture in their new apartment. Some of it came with the unit, while others were ones Neil planned to bring one floor down from his old, smaller place. All serviceable, even if some of it was a little plain. It’s just that none of it was hers, a realization that only struck Rosie once her few belongings from the Home--all she had in the city, all she had in the world--were packed up in a dismally small amount of boxes in the corner of the dormitory, awaiting transport to Candlewood the next day.

She’d gone out then, intending only to spend an hour or so in the Törgt showroom--just to look around, to get some possible ideas for how to make the best of what they already had. But she’d found one piece, then another, and it had made so much sense to think about getting another bookshelf, and the desk chair in her bedroom wasn’t comfortable at all… Before long, Rosie had a slip of paper scribbled with product code numbers and a growing awareness of two things: she was about to spend a truly breathtaking amount of money, and she hadn’t the slightest idea how she was going to get any of the things she planned to buy home with her on the bus.

“You know, we offer a delivery service,” said one of the salespeople standing nearby; mostly out of helpfulness, Rosie hoped, than a slightly grasping desire to take advantage of her clearly overwhelmed state. Whatever the impetus, though, the suggestion was a good one, and she followed him to the counter, coming away a few minutes (and several hundred dollars) later with all her furniture ordered and a FLÅTTEPÄK delivery scheduled for tomorrow.

The next day, after completing the last of her discharge paperwork with Matron Robin and getting David’s help to move her few boxes from the Home to the apartment, Rosie settled in, listening for the sound of the buzzer as she made space for the things she’d so impulsively purchased. It took less time than she expected. Going to the door, she opened it wide, pausing at the sight that greeted her: not a hallway full of burly movers toting furniture, but one single, slightly weedy-looking deliveryman with a pushcart full of long, flat boxes.

“You Wilson?” he asked, starting to pull the dolly past her into the apartment. “Got your Törgt stuff, where’dya want it?”

“I think there’s been a mistake,” she said, utterly baffled as the man started piling the boxes in the middle of the living room floor. “I ordered...I ordered quite a lot of furniture, what is this? What are you doing?”

“Yeah, you got the FLÅTTEPÄK service, right? That’s this. Instructions should be in each box, hardware, everything you need.” Rosie froze, staring at him in disbelieving, dawning horror, and he snorted--a reaction she found more than a little distasteful even in the midst of everything else. “Most people have fun putting it all together. It’s one of those...like a bonding experience thing. Oh, and I’m gonna need a signature, kid.”

What could she do? She signed. And then, once he had taken his cart and gone, the door shut tightly behind him, Rosie went back to the stack of boxes and burst into hysterical, embarrassed laughter. Taking out her phone, she sat down on the floor, the boxes behind her, and took a selfie, texting it out to all her friends with a brief if frantic message: Does anyone know how to build furniture? Help!!!

Comments

[forthsofar]

In a way, it really is the sort of bonding experience the deliveryman had said it might be--not that Rosie, even now, was inclined to find much to appreciate about the slightly condescending way he'd treated her. But they are having fun, joking and laughing and good-naturedly shooing Beau away from whatever bits of the bookshelf he's decided deserve his attention, until all at once they're nearly finished.

"I doubt this'd do much to help any kind of war effort," she says, giggling at the teasing nickname as she takes the hammer. "Though this has been a bit of a battle already, so...perhaps." Rosie flashes him a grin, then makes sure the thin plywood backing is straight before she starts tapping the nails in, one by one.

[lost_boy]

"How?" I asked, sitting myself down beside one of the boxes and lifting it into my lap. Even though I had just asked Rosie how we might do that, I didn't expect her to give me full directions, because if she knew how to do everything, she likely wouldn't have sent out the message. Besides which, I was excited by the prospect of learning how to put it together.

"Does it come with instructions? Can I open the box?"

It was still Rosie's furniture. It belonged to her, I didn't think it would be fair to simply open it up without her permission.

[forthsofar]

Rosie just barely suppresses a laugh at bonkers, something about the word seeming to both encapsulate and fall short as a description. For both of their situations.

"That makes sense," she says. "Especially for you. I was only in Anterwold for a few hours, only long enough to make a mess of things just before I showed up here, and I still wound up with more questions than anything else. It must be even more confusing when what you're trying to understand is...everything you once thought of as normal."

[shadows_have_offended]

Neil smiles and sits back for a moment, before hauling himself up to go and get them each a drink. Beau follows after him a moment later, as they leave Rosie to finish up the bookcase, and when he returns with two bottles of coke, Beau parks himself on the couch like he belongs there.

Neil smiles a little bit. "It's shaping up," he says happily. "I know it's all still boxes and moving and stuff, but it is, right?" He wants this to work, desperately.

[awickedtime]

"I was raised in the Church of Night," says Nick, shrugging his shoulders a little. "Amalia did her best after my parents died, and then I was at the Academy full time and they sort of...took over. I just never thought to question a lot of it. Because it was the way I'd always been told it was supposed to be."

[forthsofar]

Jamie hauls one of the boxes at random off the pile--from the general size and shape, it looks to Rosie like the other bedside table, but she couldn't be entirely sure--and it's as good a place as any to start again.

"The man who delivered everything says each box should have everything you need to build whatever's inside," she explains, before getting the pair of scissors she'd been using to open everything. "Instructions, all the pieces, the screws and nails and all of that." That should still struck her as a little dubious, a source of slight concern at the back of her mind, but she'd had decent luck with everything so far. She only hopes it'll continue to hold until the last box is opened.

"Here," she says, handing the scissors over to Jamie. "If you want to open the box, I left the tool kit in the other room--I'll go get it."

[forthsofar]

Rosie drives the last nail into the back and sets the hammer aside, inordinately pleased to have managed this much already. With care, she maneuvers the bookshelf upright; empty as it is, it's small and light enough for her to do that on her own, though she knows she'll need help getting it the rest of the way into her bedroom later.

"It's absolutely shaping up," she says, taking one of the bottles from Neil when he comes back. With a grin, she clinks the neck of hers against his in a sort of toast before taking a sip. "There's still a lot to get settled, but...it's already feeling like home." She looks over at him then, feeling at once both grown up and terribly young, sentimental and wholly sincere. "I'm so glad we managed this."

[lost_boy]

I had never built any furniture before, but I didn't think it could be that hard, and so I took the scissors from Rosie and began to open the box, first taking out the instructions, then the bag with the screws, and then pieces of the furniture itself. I was reading the instructions when Rosie returned and I looked up at her.

"I don't think it should be that difficult," I said. "All the pieces are labelled with letters and then it tells you which slot goes in where and even what screws to use. I just think you need more than one pair of hands to get it all done, so it's a good thing I'm here."

I held up pieces A and B, then fit them together, and looked at the screws.

"Can you give me one of those long screws?" I asked Rosie. "And the weird tool that looks like a little curved pipe?"

[forthsofar]

"It was all you knew," Rosie says, with a faint and lopsided smile. "Makes sense you wouldn't think about it, any more than I didn't think about everything my life had been back in Oxford, or Jay and Pamarchon and everyone else I met didn't seem to think anything about Anterwold or that Story they kept quoting."

She looks down and away, laughing softly. "Until, of course, someone for whom it isn't normal comes and starts asking tremendously impertinent questions."

[forthsofar]

"That's a relief," she says, coming back into the living room with the tool kit in hand before settling on the floor next to Jamie. She nods at his request, then opens up the bag and starts sorting through it.

It's harder than she'd first anticipated--why they'd decided this needed two kinds of screws that seemed only a half-inch different from one another in length, she can't possibly fathom--but after checking and re-checking the one in her hand against the illustration in the instruction booklet, she hands it and the little tool over to Jamie. "Here, I'll hold the two pieces steady while you work."

[negative_feedback]

Regan grins and grabs the instructions. They make... almost no sense to her whatsoever, and she gives Rosie a look, like 'what the hell??'

"I thought most places assembled the furniture for people," she notes. "How come these guys didn't?"

[awickedtime]

"That's true," he says, with a grin. "Whether it's Sabrina or you, that definitely does make it easier to start questioning everything." Like Sabrina with the Feast of Feasts, or the whole Top Boy debacle.

[forthsofar]

The look Regan gives her isn't at all dissimilar from the expression Rosie had worn the first time she tried puzzling out the little pictures inside the instruction booklet. She laughs, giving the other girl an exaggerated shrug in agreement--or commiseration.

"Cost, I think?" she answers--though given how much she'd spent in total yesterday, that theory didn't quite hold up. "They can sell it for less money if people are expected to put it together at home."

[negative_feedback]

Regan doesn't now much about how box businesses work. Before the creatures, she hadn't much cared to learn, and after they'd arrived, places went out of business fast. The only thing she really does know is what she's heard other people say: anything to make a buck. So it seems counterproductive to sell something for less and make someone put it together, than to make more money and sell it already assembled.

Then again, if something is cheaper, they sell more of it, right? Maybe that's the idea they're going for.

"Let's see if we can figure it out," she reasons. There are only so many ways something can to together, right?

[forthsofar]

"Thank goodness," she says, grinning back at him. "At least one of my flaws has something beneficial to it."

It's mostly sarcastic, yes, but a little true as well.

[awickedtime]

Nick rolls his eyes elaborately at her, going back to what he was doing.

"Don't be ridiculous," he says, but he's grinning when he says it.

[forthsofar]

"Okay," she agrees, though not without a faint and rueful shake of her head. Figuring it out is exactly what she'd been trying to do all afternoon, and it hadn't gotten her very far at all. Maybe--hopefully--it'll be different with another person in the mix. Especially one as talented as Regan.

Pressing the instructions out flat on the floor in front of them, Rosie bends to study them more closely. "From the picture," she starts, tapping the illustration for the next step in the process, "we screw this piece onto the drawer?" She picks up the metal runner again, trying to align its holes with the pre-drilled dots along one side of the wooden slat that forms the wall of the drawer.

[forthsofar]

"Oh, fine," she says, exaggeratedly put upon, crinkling her nose at him as he rolls his eyes at her.

With a laugh, bright and pleased, she turns to the next page in the instruction manual. The table's nearly built, all thanks to Nick; it won't take very long to finish up at all.

[shadows_have_offended]

Neil grins at her brightly, just happy that they've managed to do it. He's missed living with someone, after the years of it at school, and while he has the occasional guest it's not the same as having a friend and compatriot here. No, that's been fewer and further between, until these past few days of Rosie moving in, and he's excited to make things work with her.

"So am I ever going to meet this boyfriend of yours?" he asks with a bit of a laugh, sitting on the coffee table as he drinks his coke. "I've seen him in passing, but I don't think we've met. Is he going to come help you unpack?"

There's maybe a quiet, teasing innuendo in there.

[negative_feedback]

That makes as much sense as anything, Regan thinks, and she makes a thoughtful face before agreeing with Rosie's assessment. She grabs a screw and the small screwdriver, then tries to get the two pieces screwed together. It takes some doing, but eventually, it fits together.

Now they're onto the next step, which makes about as much sense as the first. Regan huffs a laugh.

"This is crazy. Why are the instructions so hard to follow?"

[forthsofar]

She doesn't miss the teasing and suggestion in his voice, any more than Neil's likely to overlook the pink flush that rises to her cheeks. "Since he has a car, I asked if he'd help move my things over from the Home," she says, trying to make the explanation sound breezy and light. "Earlier today, when you were at work. But I really ought to have you two meet, you're right. It's silly you haven't."

They hadn't taken any more advantage of the empty apartment then they had any of the times they'd been alone together at David's house--though, as always, there was the suggestion that they could, this sense of some decision or choice drawing ever closer. Laughing softly, mostly at her own awkwardness, Rosie takes another sip of her soda.

[forthsofar]

"Wish I knew." Rosie rolls her eyes, a theatrical and slightly exaggerated gesture, before grinning and leaning into Regan a little. "You should've been here earlier, I managed to put the legs on upside down at one point." It had been an easy fix, just a matter of unscrewing and re-attaching, but even that didn't quite take away the sting of having made such a ridiculous error.

"The man who brought everything said it's supposed to be fun," she continues, though the expression on her face doesn't quite match the tone of the explanation she's giving--or maybe compliments it more honestly than if she'd been speaking aloud. "You get friends to help, and you all wind up having a good time."

[negative_feedback]

She glances around at the various people, each working on a different piece of furniture. Then she looks back at Rosie. "Well... he's got part of it right?" She doesn't know if this is fun yet, but it's definitely interesting. And, who knows? Maybe they'll be having lots of fun by the time this is over.

[forthsofar]

Just seeing Regan look around makes Rosie do the same, taking in all the activity around them with fresh eyes. So many people, all so dear to her in different ways, who'd come just because she'd asked; it's something she's never really had before. Sunk in her own frustration, she'd taken that a bit for granted today--how silly a reaction that had been!

"He did," she agrees. "Even if he was kind of rude about it when he delivered everything, he turned out to be a little bit right."

[shadows_have_offended]

"I'm sure I can be a lot to handle," Neil says, sweet and understanding that a new relationship sometimes meant keeping everything to yourself. But Rosie and Neil are living together, and he'd rather like to like David.

He sighs and leans back a little bit. "It's nice to be seeing someone, isn't it?"

Not that he was. Not exactly, anyway. But he does like being someone's beau, and Rosie seems terribly smitten with hers.