#the ikea trip -> arguing over signage -> we came in this way. no the fuck we didnt. josh put the djungelskog DOWN

[cavsthighs]

i have an ikea desk to build. OR. i could write glukejoshy fic about it instead.

#picture this: moving in together. #im feeling queasy (positive) just thinking about it #the ikea trip -> arguing over signage -> we came in this way. no the fuck we didnt. josh put the djungelskog DOWN #g that bear is as big as you are :) great we're gonna need a quadruple bed #luke voice ANYWAY is anybody going to help me lift this fucking piece of desk.

[stlgeekgirl]

Let me just start by saying: Yes, I originally reblogged the tumblr post thinking it would be cute for some sort of prompt.  Then @mikosarthouse spoke, my bunnies  (who adore her) listened, somehow Tad got involved and well...  2,600 words later, this is what happened.

“Explain to me exactly why you two oddballs want to go to IKEA?”  Rhonda asked, one eyebrow arched up in question. 

The idiots in question; namely Thaddeus Gumblethorpe and his partner in crime, Helga Pataki, were grinning widely. 

“Because,” Tad started as if it were the most obvious answer in the world.  “IKEA is like the Disney Land of home furnishing stores.  “It’s a day trip Rhon.  One Helga and I are planning to partake in.”

Rhonda’s gaze flicked between the two cautiously.  “I don’t trust the two of you together in an IKEA.  Separately, maybe but definitely not together.”

“Then come with us cupcake.”  Tad suggested.  Helga elbowed his side. 

“We’re going to explore,” she stated.  “She won’t let us explore.”

“If by explore you mean get kicked out within twenty minutes of getting in the building, then no, I won’t let you explore.  Neither will I go with both of you without backup.”  She pulled out her phone and began texting.  “I’m calling Arnold for backup.”

She was so focused on texting Arnold in order to forestall any possible problems that she missed Helga and Tad giving each other a subversive low five.

Arnold looked pensively at the ginormous blue and yellow square behemoth of a building. 

“I’m not sure about this.” 

Beside him Helga grinned at the approaching building.  “Did we mention it has a restaurant in it?  A restaurant Arnold!”

Tad spread his arms.  “Swedish meatballs…far as the eye can see.”

“And its own grocery store if you need even more Swedish meatballs.”  Helga added.  Tad nodded. 

“Because on cannot have enough Swedish meatballs.”

“Enough with the Swedish meatballs, you two!”  Rhonda exclaimed as she pulled into the closest parking space, which was still a long walk from the building. 

“They need a tram system.”  Helga remarked as they got of Rhonda’s car. 

“Nah, how would they fit all the packages on the tram system?”

“Take one person and have them come back with the car?”

Tad held up a finger but stopped.  “Hmmm.  You make a compelling point.”

Walking behind them, Arnold glance at Rhonda.  “Why did we agree to this again?”

“The two of them.  Alone.  In an IKEA.  Unsupervised.”

“Ah.  Right.”

They walked the half length of the parking lot to finally reach the front of the building.  As they took the escalator to the main entrance, Rhonda gave both Tad and Helga a hard look. 

“Behave yourselves.  Both of you.” 

The two looked at each other and then at Rhonda and Arnold. 

“It’s just an IKEA.  What could we possibly get into trouble over?”

“I suddenly feel an ominous feeling lingering around us.”  Arnold stated. 

  They reached the top of the second escalator and looked around. 

“Well?  Where to first?”  Arnold asked.  Helga and Tad barely glanced at the restaurant takin gin instead the marked walls and the signage above the entrances directing people in which way to go. 

“Backwards?”  Tad asked.  Helga grinned. 

“Backwards.”

The two headed the complete opposite direction of the arrows, heading towards the end of the store where the stairs that led to more department’s lay.  Arnold and Rhonda, not expecting the sudden change, hurried after them. 

“Wait!” 

They finally caught up with Tad and Helga in the bed area.  Helga was pushing down on mattress pads, fascinated with the slow rise and disappearance of her hand print.  Tad was perusing beds, stopping every once in a while to bounce on one.

“You think my parents would freak if I came home with several large boxes?”  he yelled out to Helga across the room. 

“You have to get one of these mattress pads.”  She yelled back, pushing down on another pad.  “These things are supposed to mold against your body, right?” 

“That’s the idea, yeah.”  Tad bounced on another bed before laying down on it. 

“So…if you have sex on it, does it hold the shape?  Like would anyone know just by looking at your mattress pad what your favorite position is?”

“Oh my God!”  Arnold rushed past a giggling Rhonda to pull Helga away from the mattress pads and more than one family giving her dirty looks.  “Helga!”

“That is a damn good question.”  Tad mused hopping off of one bed and heading towards another.  Rhonda sighed as she followed passing Arnold who was still tugging at Helga.   

“I thought sure mine would’ve been the first one to embarrass us.”

“Lucky me.”

“Hey Helga!”  Tad suddenly poked his head around a corner.  “You totally belong here.  Your name fits in perfectly with the entire store.  You’re like, the ultimate accessory.”

Helga suddenly grinned.  “I’m gonna go look at furniture.”  She said, easily slipping out of Arnold’s grasp and rushing-against the flow of foot traffic- towards the wardrobes.  Arnold gave Rhonda a helpless glance before following her. 

“And…I’m on my own.”  Rhonda muttered as she wandered around the corner in an effort to find Tad.  She turned another corner and stopped. 

He was lounging on one of the king-sized beds, arm propping up his head and giving her the come hither look.  Grinning mischievously, he lightly patted the mattress in front of him. 

“Honey, come join me.”

She huffed, folding her arms. 

“Thaddeus, if you don’t put your shirt on right now, I’m legitimately going to leave you here.”

“That’s not what you said last night.”

“Last night was not in the middle of an IKEA store and no!”  she held up a finger as his eyes brightened at her comment.  “I am not coming here after hours to sleep with you.”

“Has the magic died cupcake?”

“Shirt. On. Now.”  She hissed.  Laughing, he pulled on his tee shirt and laid back down just as a sales person stepped around the corner. 

“Hi.  You two have any questions?”

Tad grinned at the man as Rhonda covered her face with a hand.  “No.  Just testing out the softness of the mattresses, trying to figure out if I could get away with a king-sized bedframe or not in my room.”

“We have several loft sized bed frames that will quite comfortably fit two people but can be fit into a loft sized apartment.”

Tad’s eyes sparkled as he jumped off the bed.  “Lead the way good man!”

  Arnold found Helga in a maze of wardrobes and dressers, muttering under her breath as she checked each tag, sometimes backtracking to look at one she’s just walked away from. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Trying to find the wardrobe that leads to Narnia.”  She said as she passed him for the fifth time.  He sighed, letting his head fall back so he could look at the ceiling.    She opened a wardrobe and stuck the entire top half of her body inside.

“Helga!”  he groaned.  She popped out and shut the door, eyes wide with excitement.  As she passed him this time, she grabbed his arm and tugged him along. 

“Now what are we doing?”  he asked, exasperated. 

“Looking.  Did you know I can’t pronounce a one of these names?”  She lifted the tag on a wardrobe.  “Like this.  Brimnes. Okay…well, that one was easy.  But there’s one around her called a Koppigges.”

“A…what?”

“A kopinhagenshiga.”  She shrugged and pulled him towards a dresser, picking up the tag.  He read it. 

“Helga, it says Koppang.”

“These words.  These are not American words.”

“Possibly because they’re Swedish?”

She wandered around, looking at more tags.  “New plan.  I’m gonna choose a random tag and whatever unfathomable word is on it, I’m gonna name our kid that.”

“Please stop.”  He begged.  She stopped in front of a wardrobe and picked up the tag. 

“Our first child will be named.”  She read the tag.  “Kullen.”

He frowned.  “That…actually isn’t too horrible.”

“Nope.”  Letting go of the tag, she headed back towards the dressers.  “Sounds too much like a Twilight name, I’m not naming my imaginary kid after a Twilight character.”

“Wait.  You’ll name our firstborn after a piece of Swedish made furniture but you won’t name them after a character in a book?”

“I have standards Arnold.  Ah ha!”  She stopped at a white dresser and picked up the tag.  “How about…Trysil.”

“Again.  Not horrible.”

“Kind of Game of Thrones.  I could work with it.  Oh wait.”  Turning, she picked up another tag.  “Dyfjord!  Perfect!”

“No!”

“But Arnold…”

“I am not going to name our imaginary first born Dyfjord!  And why am I even arguing this point with you?”  Grabbing her hand, he pulled her out of the furniture section.  “I’ve half a mind to just lock you in one of the wardrobes…”

“Oh!  Maybe that way the doorway to Narnia will open.  Let’s do it!”

“Helga!”

  She lost him around design room number three.  He took one look at the kitchen area and looked heartbroken, his lower lip wobbling before he rushed out and headed towards one of the design children’s rooms.  She could hear him wailing further down the path and for once was torn between looking at the design rooms, honestly, some of the rooms were just amazing and she’d love to own a kitchen exactly like it or trying to find her darling little madman. 

She did a little of both.  Halfway through the room, she finally found him in the loft living rooms- how to make an entire design plan home out of 700 square feet- sitting on a couch with a book in his hand, looking devastated.    Sighing, she sat on the couch next to him. 

“What?”

He merely looked at her, lower lip stuck out and quivering.  She merely rolled her eyes and shook her head. 

“Tad, you have got to stop crying about all the rooms.”

He sniffed once before wailing.  “I can’t help it!  Most of them don’t have windows and all their books are in Swedish, it’s so tragic!”

He fell onto his side onto the couch, sending a couple of people in the room looking into titters.  Rhonda just sighed again, feeling a headache coming on. 

“Tad, they’re design rooms.”  She said. 

“They never even got the chance to be real rooms!”  he wailed from his spot on the couch, still clutching the book to his chest.  “Maybe they don’t want to be pretend rooms, maybe all they want is to have real people living in them to make them feel whole.”

“I can’t believe I’m feeling bad for a design room.”  One person muttered to his partner as they passed the couch.  Tad stroked the couch beneath his cheek. 

“Don’t worry, you’re a real room to me.”  He said to the couch.  “I’ll make you real, you’ll see.”

“Oh for Godssake!”  Rhonda exclaimed, standing up. 

Tad sniffed again.  “Helga would understand me.”

Rhonda whipped out her phone and began texting.  “And I’m going to get Helga up here right now to sort this out.  This is just getting ridiculous.”

   Somehow they’d made it downstairs.

Arnold had no idea where Tad and Rhonda were, but he currently found himself staring at a college dorm desk set up that he might have been slightly jealous of.  He should really text Rhonda to see where they’d run off too but he really liked this desk.  And Helga had since gone quiet and wasn’t running around like a woman on a mission as she had been upstairs so he was counting it as a temporary win.

However…

It had been really quiet.

Leaving his dream desk set up, he wandered around the other design rooms trying to find Helga.  He finally found her in the middle of six or seven desks, studying each one as if trying to weigh a decision. 

“Hey,” he said, sliding up behind her and dropping a kiss on her cheek.  “What are you doing?”

Her eyes narrowed in thought for a moment before she answered.  “I’m wondering which of them you’d look best pinned aga-“

His eyes widened and he jumped forward, slapping his hand over her mouth before she could finish her sentence.  Her own gaze widened as she stared at him over his hand.  He could feel the blush rising on his cheeks from her words.  The blush deepened when he felt her smile against his hand and suddenly realized that in his haste to shut her up before she could finish that sentence, he’d inadvertently placed himself between her and a desk and had effectively given her an answer to her query.  She moved his hand from her mouth, not letting it go, the smile still on her lips. 

“While you do look good in this position, this is not the desk.”

His phone rang in his pocket, interrupting any further comments and he gratefully pulled it from his pocket, moving away from the desk as he read the text.

 Get over to the loft design rooms!  Tad’s distraught over imaginary rooms!

 “Come on, we have to go save Rhonda from a distraught Tad.”

“But I have six more desks to test.”  Helga protested as he pulled her through the kitchenware section. 

“Later,” he said absently, blushing again when he realized what he’d just agreed to.  Helga chuckled. 

“I’m holding you to that football head.”

 They found Rhonda standing just outside the design room for loft living, looking frustrated. 

“What the…”  Arnold asked as Helga wandered into the design room.   “I have no idea, I found him in here clutching a book and wailing about how these never got a chance to be real rooms.”  She said as they entered in after Helga.  The blonde sat on the couch next to the still sniffling Tad and handed him a melon baller. 

“Here.  I found you something.”

Rhonda and Arnold just looked at each other helplessly.  Tad looked at the silver instrument and took it, sitting up. 

“That’s so sweet.  Where did you find this?”

“Downstairs.”

His eyes widened.  “There’s a downstairs?”

“Yep.  With desks and all sorts of utensils and an entire area with pillows and towels I didn’t even get to.”

“Hey, how about meatballs?’  Rhonda interrupted, not about to allow either of them into an accessories area, especially if there were pillows involved.  They’d managed not to get kicked out so far.  Arnold looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. 

“Would you prefer the two of them in an area with decorative pillows?” she hissed.  His eyes widened and he looked back at them grinning. 

“All the meatballs.  And Lingonberry juice.”

Helga and Tad looked at each other. 

“What about my melon baller?”

“Take it with you.”

“Okay.”

The book was tossed haphazardly onto the couch as Tad stood up, melon baller in hand, following Helga, Rhonda and Arnold towards the restaurant. 

    “Today was the best day ever!”  Helga announced as they headed back to the car.  After several hours inside the story they managed to leave with only one melon baller for Tad and three large bars of Swedish chocolate for Helga.   After eating lunch in the restaurant, Rhonda and Arnold managed to get the other two past the accessories area and only had to go through the lighting area- where they got held up while Helga and Tad played with rope lights- before making it to the checkout and out the door. 

“Sadly, there were a couple of things that caught my eye.”  Rhonda told Arnold quietly while keeping an eye on the two people in front of them who were discussing the practical purposes of a melon baller.  “I wouldn’t mind coming back here…without those two.”

Arnold nodded.  “Truth be told, I kind of covet this entire dorm desk setup they have that I would love to have in my room.  You think maybe we could sneak back here one day?”

“I think that could be arraigned.”  She looked at the Tad and Helga who were now sharing one of Helga’s chocolate bars.  “I’d ask why we bother with these two when they act like children sometimes.”

“Because our lives would be boring without them.”  Arnold answered.  Rhonda smiled. 

“Hey Arnold,”  Helga said as they approached.  “I need to take a look at your desk.”

He could feel the blush come back.  “We’ll talk about it later.”

#Hey arnold #Mouse9 writes #shortaki #Gumblelloyd #all the crack