Not for the first time that afternoon Keith cursed under his breath.
It was his own fault, really. He’d known that going for the cheaper flatpack option would have drawbacks, but he thought he might have been able to weather them, work around them. He had not suspected for a moment that the cheaper option would have come sans tools, lacking even the piddliest of Allen keys, leaving him to try and improvise his own from whatever he had to hand.
But that had happened, and what he had to hand was limited.
And so there he was, tightening screws with a butter knife. Like an animal.
“Serves me right, really…” he said to himself, reflecting on his poor life choices. Or, rather, his more recent poor life choices. There were lots to choose from but the older ones weren’t really relevant right then.
The sound of crunching drew his attention and he looked up, finding Chrysalis standing in the doorway watching him, wearing that old cable knit jumper of his she’d stolen, eating from a bag of crisps that he was fairly sure he’d hidden specifically so she wouldn’t eat them before he could share them with her.
Not hidden very well, apparently.
“What are you doing?” She asked, scattering crumbs across his carpet in the process. Not speaking while eating was something it seemed queens didn’t trouble themselves with.
“Putting together the display case. Like you asked me to,” Keith said, squatting amidst the half-finished bits and pieces. Chrysalis stared at him a moment.
“Oh yes,” she then said.
A pause. The crunching resumed briefly.
Then:
“Why are you always building furniture?” She asked.
Given what he’d just said the question seemed a bit redundant to him, but there were worse things in life than redundant questions. Things like, for example, crisp crumbs all over a carpet you hoovered yesterday, say.
Oh well.
“I am not always building furniture, I am occasionally building furniture. And here I’m building it because you said you wanted a place to put your collection of awards for queenly excellence,” he said, gesturing to the awards all neatly set to one side of the room, awaiting their new, loftier place of prominence, far superior to Chrysalis’s dusty windowsill where they had been living previously.
A few of these awards - most of them, if one were forced to be honest - she had made herself out of wire and tinfoil, but that did not reduce their prestige in her eyes one bit. What they lacked in production value they more than made up for in recognition of her immense talents, which was sort of the whole point of an award anyway.
“Oh, good. Yes. Yes, you should be doing that, yes,” she said, nodding happily and telekinetically reaching into the floating crisp packet only to find, to her consternation, that it was now empty. Frowning at this she then turned her frown to Keith, adding: “You haven’t got very far, have you?”
Keith sighed and again reflected on his life choices, this time his attention mostly on those choices that had led to Queen Chrysalis being in a position to stand in his doorway, wear his clothes and eat his crisps.
It was difficult to pick a specific moment in time or specific decision that had resulted in the adventure-filled series of events that led to her living here with him. Really it had been a combination of factors, many of them - in retrospect - outside his control.
So in many ways them ending up like this had been inevitable. Certainly, Chrysalis liked to say so.
(The adventures in question were, of course, a matter of public record for those members of the public of a mind to look for such things and therefore there is no need for the narrative to go into them again here. It’d just be covering old ground.)
These addventures were also the reason Keith no longer had access to his toolbox, as it had been lost in pulse-pounding circumstances. There’d been a precipice involved, and maybe a train or two heading at one another at high speed, one without brakes. There’d been a whole thing. Suffice to say, all very exciting.
Much more exciting than making a display case.
All of which brought Keith’s thoughts back to the problems at hand: fussy screws, a lack of tools to deal with these fussy screws and the pointy, pouting queen pouting pointily at him over his failure to deal with fussy screws (owing to the lack of tools).
“I just need something to put these screws in but…” he said, gesturing to the bits scattered about and meaning to continue but as he looked at her he trailed off.
Chrysalis really was quite pointy. Keith was familiar with her points, so to speak. Intimately familiar, in fact. He had personal experience with many of those ridges and gaps, but prior to this point he hadn’t ever considered their practical value - hadn’t even considered that they might have practical value.
His knife had proven very little use against all the screws he’d been having to deal with, what with so few of them being flathead for a start. He’d been bodging it, basically, working with something ill-suited to the task. Chrysalis, however? With her unique, jagged angles, clefts and crevices?
The more he stared, the most likely it seemed to work, and the less of a bad idea it felt like.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Chrysalis asked. She wasn’t unused to Keith copping an eyeful (he was a man of particular tastes and had never been shy about this) and wasn’t opposed to it when it happened. There was something different about it this time, though.
Keith unfolded from his semi-squat on the floor and up to his full height.
“How would you like to help me finish this?” He asked, taking a step towards her. Chrysalis took a cautious step back.
“...what would I have to do?” She asked.
“Hold very, very still,” Keith said with a smile. The smile really undercut whatever reassurance he might have meant with his words. Chrysalis swallowed.
“...that’s...worrying…”
“Can you hold very, very still?” Keith asked, now looming over her.
“...yes?”
She saw no reason why she couldn’t, should the need arise. Keith’s smile widened, which made nothing better.
“I thought you might, talented lady like you. Now let’s just put the crisps now, this’ll only take a minute,” he said.
“The bag’s empty,” she said feebly.
“Even better then,” he said, plucking it from her magical grasp and setting it to one side before suddenly, manfully taking her in his arms. Chrysalis was quite shocked but bounced back quickly - in Keith’s arms was somewhere she had some experience of, and she typically knew what to expect once in them.
“Oh Keith! Right here?” She asked, fanning herself with a hoof as he juggled her about in his grip. “Next to the unfinished display case? In front of all my awards? How sensual!”
It took her a few moments to realise that what she’d had in mind was not what Keith had in mind. His face was set not in a look of determined lasciviousness (as it sometimes was) but rather in a look of determined DIYmanship. These were two very different looks, and Chrysalis knew which she preferred.
She also knew, in the way one knows the mind of one who you’ve had an adventure with, exactly what it was he had in mind and what it was he was going to do with her.
Her eyes widened and darted from Keith to the bits of the cabinet and then back again.
“Keith! Keith no! I am a queen, not a common tool to be used as you see fit!”
“Just hold still…”
Screwing followed, though not quite in the manner Chrysalis might initially have suspected or hoped for.
Given the lead up - and given the noises Chrysalis made while Keith set about finishing up the display case - anyone listening in without context would have been frightfully confused, possibly even concerned and rightly so. There was more than enough to lead to a few mistaken assumptions.
Lucky, then, that no-one had been listening.
Despite her protests Chrysalis did remain obligingly still throughout, and, true to his word, Keith managed to get the thing done and dusted in the space of a few minutes - amazing what one can achieve with the proper tools, really.
Once done he set Chrysalis back down onto her hooves, stepped back, put his hands on his hips and took a moment to admire the fruits of his labour. Chrysalis stood beside him and glowered.
“Now that is a fine looking display case. Sturdy as anything, too,” he said, giving the thing a mighty slap on the side and eliciting only a minor wobble which, given the cheapness of the thing, was pretty good going.
Chrysalis said nothing. She was too busy glowering at him.
“I cannot believe you did that. To me! With me!” She hissed, a good chunk of her annoyance bleeding away as Keith, without looking, reached and trailed a hand down her neck. He knew the right spots.
“Ours is a relationship built on mutual respect, cooperation, shared experiences and unnatural, sizzling-hot cross-species lust. Now, now that that’s done how about we quote-unquote ‘unwind’ right here, in front of all your awards and this now-finished displayed cabinet?” He asked, glancing down to see how his question might have landed and finding Chrysalis staring into middle-distance with lidded eyes, enjoying his trailing hand perhaps a bit too much.
When she noticed he was looking at her she snapped out of it, huffed, and turned her face away. Fair enough, really. She had just been used as a screwdriver, after all. Who’d be happy after that?
Keith felt it might be best to sweeten the deal.
“We can even do that thing with the holes, if you like,” he said.
She liked that thing with the holes. She remained looking away but those parts of her that could blush were now blushing.
“...make sure all the awards are facing the right way, first,” she said quietly.
Further screwing followed, though this time involving rather a different sort of wood.