Hunker in my bunker
About a month ago, Alan had ordered a potato peeler from the internet. This was because he’d had potatoes that had needed peeling, and he’d dropped his last peeler out the window by accident. Hence.
And since Alan lived in the future he gave no thought whatsoever to ordering a replacement, a replacement that was with him in next to no time at all. What an age to be alive.
Despite the peeler being - as might well be expected - small, the box it arrived in turned out to be rather big. Enormous, in fact. So enormous he could have fitted himself into it quite comfortably should he have so wished, as indeed he had, just to test this out. Even allowing for the voluminous amount of bubble wrap he had room to spare.
Quite cozy, all things considered.
Why the internet had felt this box was the box to use anyone’s guess. Maybe it had been the only one left? Maybe a computer had made the decision? Maybe this was what passed as a joke in this day and age? Who was to say?
That wasn’t a concern though. Peeling potatoes was a concern. So Alan did that, leaving the box in a vaguely out-of-the-way place as a problem for future-Alan. He’d get around to it when he had a moment.
Which was why, weeks later, the box remained exactly where he’d put it, unthrown away.
He’d been meaning to get rid of it, he really had, it was just so hard to find the time what with being stuck at home doing nothing. Every time he thought he might be able to do it he realised he didn’t want to, and so didn’t.
One day though he realised he couldn’t comfortably put it off any longer and resolved to finally break the thing down, tear it up and get it sorted and out of his life. And now that he had both the drive and motivation to do this what should happen?
The box was full again. Of pony. Pearl pink pony princess.
Alan had no idea how or when this had happened, but it had. There she was, sitting pretty in the box, happy as anything, big smile on her face and shiny crown on her head, eyes closed in blissful contentment of the kind only possible in a cardboard box.
The first time he saw this Alan thought perhaps - quite reasonably - that he was losing his mind, but she was still there after he’d gone and had a cup of tea and a sit down so he had to concede that maybe she was real, or that if she wasn’t then she was still something he was going to have to deal with, figment of his imagination or not.
So, girding his loins, he advanced on the box and cleared his throat. When this got no response he cleared his throat again, more loudly, and nudged the box with his foot. This got a response and she opened her eyes in surprise, looking up.
“Oh!” She said, still smiling. “Hello!”
“Hello,” Alan said.
An impasse.
“Are you real?” Alan asked. He felt it best to get this one out of the way.
The pink pony stopped smiling briefly and gave herself a quick pat down from top to bottom before the smile reasserted herself and she gave a decisive nod.
“Yes,” she said.
Alan supposed that she would say that even if she weren’t, but he was going to work with what he had. Certainly, when he’d nudged the box it’d felt full, so unless he was really losing it she probably was there, being pink and a pony.
These things were sent to test us, he knew.
“Can you get out of the box?” He asked.
Another nod.
“I can,” she said cheerfully.
She did not get out of the box. Alan had felt this had been implied, but apparently not strongly enough. Further prodding was clearly required.
“...will you?” He asked.
“No,” she said, equally cheerfully. Alan sighed.
“Why not?” He asked.
“I don’t want to.”
He couldn’t really argue with that.
“Please?” He ventured.
“No, sorry. I like it in here,” she said, wiggling about in place and burrowing herself more deeply into the bubble wrap. She was dug in like a tick. An adorable, crown-wearing, pink, pony-shaped tick.
As much as it wounded Alan to force such an obviously comfortable pony out of her spot, he felt it would reflect poorly on him to back down now.
“It’s just I’ve been meaning to get rid of the box and it is kind of taking up a bit of room and, well, yeah. Mean it’s a good box and all but, uh, well s’just rubbish, isn’t it?” He said, finishing rather lamely because he’d run out of steam.
From the looks of it he’d said quite the wrong thing. The pink pony gasped, horrified, reaching out to try and protect the box from him. Since she was in it this looked a bit odd, but it got the point across - she was putting herself between him and the box, at least as best she could, draped over the lip.
“Rubbish? It’s not rubbish! This is my cuddle bunker,” she said.
That one caught Alan off-guard.
“Your what?” He asked.
“My cuddle bunker,” she repeated, dropping down into the box again only this time deep enough that only the top part of her head was left visible, eyes whipping from side to side. On careful watching for possible threats to the bunker, one assumed. Threats other than Alan, one assumed.
Alan blinked.
“Can it be a cuddle bunker if you’re in there on your own?” He asked.
The pink pony straightened, nose in the air.
“Yes it can. Just because it’s not being used for cuddling right this second doesn’t make it any less of a cuddle bunker. A thing’s purpose remains and the purpose of the box is to be a bunker in which to cuddle. It has the potential for cuddling. It’s my cuddle bunker.”
Alan wasn’t sure he followed this. He’d never been good with that sort of thing.
“...right,” he said.
The pink pony sat up straight again, beaming at him.
“Would you like to enter my cuddle bunker?” She asked, brightly.
Something about the look on her face suggested she’d chosen her words here with deliberate care and great glee. Alan stared at her silently for a few seconds, brain grinding.
“...no thank you,” he said eventually.
As cozy as he remembered the box being from his brief time inside and as - ahem - cuddleable as she looked to be (and she looked considerably cuddleable), he felt it was wiser to demur. Not that it was easy to demur, just wiser.
“Your loss,” she said without malice, sinking back into the bubblewrap with a happy sigh.
This left Alan at something of a loss for what he should do next. This pony princess plainly planned to stay put, and he knew in his bones that if he didn’t get rid of the box today he’d lose the will and it’d be another few weeks before he could scrape together the motivation to see it done.
As far as conundrums went it wasn’t the most terrifying, but for Alan it was more than he’d had to deal with in ages, and he was torn. After standing there in awkward silence for a few moments he stalked off to try and find something that might conceivably serve to dislodge a magical pony from a box.
Fortuitously, Alan had a squirty spray bottle which he had got to water his tomatoes with (the tomatoes he had never got around to planting because he had never bought them) and it was with this he returned to try and coax-stroke-force the pony out of her bunker, and while it seemed initially promising this approach quickly soured when the bottle was magically yanked from his grasp and turned against him.
He was the one who ended up running away.
“Curses,” he said, hiding around a corner to get out of the line of fire and now mildly damp.
Clearly he needed to withdraw and reconsider his options going forward, so he retired to the kitchen and made himself another cup of tea. With this in hand he approached the box again, cautiously. Perhaps a fresh attempt at diplomacy would yield fruit? If nothing else, it would kill time while his tea cooled down.
However, rounding the corner again revealed a fresh development that Alan had not seen coming: there was another pony in the box now.
“Who’s this guy?” Alan asked, pointing to the new pony.
The two ponies in the box had been nuzzling lovingly and, on being interrupted, stopped nuzzling (though remained loving - it came off them in waves).
“‘This guy’ is my husband,” said the pink pony with only mild hints of reproach. The new pony raised a hoof and waved.
“Hi,” he said.
Alan considered this and what it might mean going forward.
“You’re bringing plus-ones now?” He asked, adding: “Hello,” to the other pony and giving him a nod, because it was polite. The pink pony, meanwhile, let out the tiniest, cutest of huffs - so tiny and cute it could have softened stone from twelve paces, and very nearly melted Alan’s knees he was so close to the huff-zone.
“Well you did say this wasn’t a proper cuddle bunker if I was the only one in it, and since you didn’t want to step up…” she said, letting the implications hang, moving back in for another nuzzle with her husband.
But Alan wasn’t going to let her get him to that easily.
“That wasn’t what I said. Also: your husband is your second choice? Ouch,” he said.
“Oh shush, don’t be mean,” she said, not breaking the nuzzle.
“I had to finish something up,” her husband explained.
Sure, why not. Magical ponies probably had a lot of things they needed doing.
“Is that tea?” The pink pony asked, eyes alighting on Alan’s mug for the first time. Alan looked down at his tea. His tea looked back, as only tea can.
“Yes?” He asked, unsure if this was a trick question or not. She beamed all the same.
“Lovely! I’ll have, uh, any fruit tea, really, and Shining will have with black with two sugars,” she said. Alan blinked as this sunk in. What was he, a short-order chef now? Or a barista? Or whatever you called someone who made tea on command? Mother?
“I - I,” he stammered, jaw working. “I don’t have fruit tea,” he said, eventually. The pink pony’s breezy bearing held steady.
“That’s okay! I’ll have it black with two sugars as well, then,” she said.
The two ponies then got back to snuggling, enthusiastically enough that it was immediately obvious to Alan that he wouldn’t be able to interrupt them easily. He stood there like a mug with his mug, mouth hanging open. After some seconds of this he snapped it closed.
“Okay,” he said, trudging off to the kitchen to do as commanded.
Anything for an easy life.
He returned not long after juggling his mug and theirs, wondering to himself how many other people were dealing with similar circumstances across the country. Two, maybe? Possibly three just to be on the safe side. It was hard to know these days.
“Here you go,” he said, holding their mugs out to them after having set his aside. Alan had to admit to a certain curiosity as to how, exactly, they were planning on holding the mugs what with their lack of hands and was slightly disappointed to find that, after using more magical pony magic to levitate them over, they just held them between their hooves without apparent issue.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it had been more than that.
“Thank you,” said the ponies in the box, sipping delicately and blowing on their tea while Alan stood to one side with his own, ruminating.
Some moments of quiet passed.
“So. Nice being magical ponies?” Alan asked, mostly to fill the silence.
“Very,” said the pink pony, her husband mid-sip of his tea and so unable to reply. Alan took this answer in stride, nodding as though he could totally understand.
“Right, cool. Not got cardboard boxes where you’re from?” He asked.
“You mean cuddle bunkers?” The pink pony asked, one eyebrow raising, presumably in search of clarification (which was usually found further up the forehead, apparently). Alan corrected himself:
“Not got cuddle bunkers where you’re from?” He asked.
“Not like this, no. Ours are smaller,” she said, holding her mug to one side with more tinkly-twinkly magic and raising her hooves to indicate what ‘smaller’ meant. Alan knew what smaller meant.
“That explains that, then.”
More moments of quiet.
Alan slurped his tea some more, as did the ponies in between nuzzles, titters and occasional smooches on the cheek. Seemed the bunker was home to more than cuddling, at least going by what Alan could see, but he felt it would be churlish to point this out. They were probably aware, and ‘cuddle bunker’ probably wasn’t especially strict as far as designations went.
He did wonder if he was perhaps giving this too much thought, though.
At length, all tea was slurped, Alan collecting the empty mugs and setting them to one side. With that done they were all left back basically where they’d started. If Alan had had anywhere to be and anything to do he might have been annoyed. As it stood, he was just sleepy.
“You know, there’s still room in the bunker,” the husband said. Indeed, a gap had formed between the pair of them, an approximately Alan-sized gap. He eyed it from a safe distance, his arms folded, his expression unreadable.
Soothing tea had made Alan much more amenable - some would say pliable - to this offer, and he knew from personal experience the cozy combination of bubble wrap and cardboard, and he was, as said, sleepy. It was all adding up to make it a surprisingly tempting offer, though he did still have some reservations.
“Be kind of a tight fit, wouldn’t it?” He said, waving a finger at the gap.
“There’s always room for more in my bunker,” the pink pony said, smiling. This wasn’t really an answer to the question or a solution to his issue. Alan wasn’t really sure what it was, actually.
He chose his next words carefully and then gave up before using all of them.
“That - alright,” he said, shrugging and stepping towards the bo- bunker.
There didn’t seem much point in fighting it any longer.
With care and delicacy he clambered into the box, swinging a leg over and settling himself into his gap. They were, as he had initially, quietly suspected, warm and soft in ways Alan assumed only a magical talking pony could be, and being sandwiched between them tickled some instinctual, hidden part of his brain that had seemingly been waiting for this precise moment in his life to spring into action. The pony part, or the pony appreciation part, perhaps.
Suffused with the comfort and friendliness of the bunker Alan didn’t think twice about putting his arms about the shoulder of his bunker-mates, cuddling them as they in turn pressed in to cuddle him, snuggled up to his sides. Alan sighed.
And for a small, blissful while, all was lovely.
But then the bunker suffered a breach.
It seemed that the combined weight of the three of them was too much for the cardboard. Maybe they displaced too much of the bubble wrap, pressing outwards and causing a rip? Perhaps they were cuddling with too much intensity? Maybe it had been Alan’s clambering in upsetting the corrugation? It was impossible to say.
Whatever the cause, the bunker fell to bits. It happened slowly at first, so slowly and so quietly that the too-comfortable inhabitants didn’t even notice, and when they did it was too late - total collapse occurred, the sides ripping outward, the wrap spilling across the floor and all three of them tumbling into a heap. For some reason.
Pushing himself up on his elbows - white unicorn sprawled across his lap - Alan looked at the ruins of the box. He’d finally managed to break it down, but at what cost?
The husband rolled off of Alan and staggered to his hooves, also looking at the low-level devastation now filling the room, his expression grave.
“You’ve ruined my wife’s cuddle bunker,” he said, more as an observation than an accusation. Alan, who had been watching the pink pony trying to unwind herself from a length of bubble wrap she’d got ensnared in, twitched and looked at the unicorn as though he’d said something obscenely euphemistic.
“I don’t - you do know how that sounds, don’t you?” He asked.
“You’ve smashed my cuddle bunker. Smashed it wide open,” the pink pony said, sadly, though not so sadly that Alan didn’t notice her trying desperately not to corpse. The unicorn, too, was clearly biting his lip to hold a laugh in. Alan looked between them both.
“Oh my God, that’s just - my God. You look cute but you’re filthy. You’re like a pastel-shaded Carry On film, both of you,” he said and the two ponies couldn’t hold it in any longer and both collapsed into helpless giggles. These proved infectious, and soon Alan was giggling too.
Giggling brought them all to tears, and it took longer to taper off than Alan might have expected. He had little giggling experience, had no idea they could be so all-consuming!
“Filthy,” he said, wiping away a tear. “But yeah, we could continue this in the lounge?” He offered. It seemed the logical thing to suggest, and the ponies seemed to agree, sharing a glance and both nodding.
“Survivors of the bunker should fall back and regroup in the lounge,” said the husband definitively, standing up firm and strong and pointing in entirely the wrong direction because this was the only room of Alan’s he’d seen and he had no idea where the lounge was. He meant well, though.
“For more cuddling,” the pink pony said.
“For more cuddling, yes,” her husband said, yelping alongside his wife a second later as Alan knelt and hoisted them both up around the middle, tucking them under his arms and walking off to finish on his sofa what they’d started her bunker.
Not really how he’d seen his day going, but he’d mostly taken care of the box so it wasn’t all bad.