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Twin Lakes did not have an IKEA. It had a YKEA, putting the 'why' in 'KEA', as the slogan said. It was extremely affordable if you were two young…ish men about town furnishing your own 1-bedroom apartment on a 'least wanted' department salary. Well, one of those salaries. Dooley's money was mostly sucked up by Bloodwolf activities and gym memberships.
It had been a big decision. Dooley moved out of his sister's guest room. McQueen moved out of his apartment because Dooley said quotably that, "If apartments were built out of depression and mold, they would still be amazed at how depressing and moldy yours is."
They had decided to get their own apartment after they had established that Dooley's sister would be willing to let McQueen move into the spare room but Dooley would still have to move out. So they had ventured out and found their own place. Shortly after trying to move McQueen's furnishings over to the new place, Dooley had ended up in a war against McQueen's furniture and its 'creepy vibes.'
The furniture had argued back and provided pictures of McQueen sleeping to show that it was comfortable furniture. That was when McQueen helped Dooley burn said furniture.
Besides being completely empty, except for Placeholder Dooley's litterbox, food dishes, and First Dooley's weights, the new place was okay. They'd gotten a good deal because the apartments on either side of theirs were haunted. A poltergeist on one side waiting for his big break - through the wall to get his neighbours - and a banshee couple in the other whose arguments Dooley said reminded him of the 'old country' even though he had not encountered banshees in his single visit there.
When they'd first arrived, immediately after being let out of his carrier inside the new apartment, Placeholder Dooley had licked the mysterious red stain on the wall and that meant it was officially theirs. It just needed furniture. Dooley's sister hadn't been willing to donate the entire contents of her guest room to the effort.
So. YKEA.
All this backstory was just to lead up to the fact that they were lost and cannibalism had been brought up a few times.
"How many sections does this place HAVE, Detective?" moaned Dooley. "We've been through bedrooms, kitchens, bedkitchens, bathrooms, washrooms, scrubbingrooms, towelrooms, studies, inattentions…"
Surrounding them were staged living spaces with everything they'd need to live just like the good people of Swaden, a small principality north of Rhode Island that absolutely existed. Dooley had already tried to eat the stage jam and stage candles.
"It can't go on forever, Dooley. Be strong," said McQueen as he swiped the slightly chewed-on stage candle from a counter from the 'KÜÜRSD' line.Dooley had reluctantly placed it there after determining he just couldn't break through the surface no matter how hard he chewed. "And don't lose our notes with the pieces we're getting! We'll have to do it all over again if you do."
"That better not be foreshadowing, Detective," said Dooley.
"It's a terrible way to start a cohabitation, Dooley, with rampant foreshadowing." McQueen pulled out a mop he'd gotten earlier, fiddled with the stage candle, and unlocked a case of 'courtesy customer maps' that had been confounding them for the past ten minutes.
"Okay. Where we need to go is…"
"Detective."
"Dooley, I'm mapreading and this requires a lot of concentration to make sure we don't end up on a sidequest. The path out leads through kitchenwares, housewares, bedwares, dungeonwares, and then we get into the lighting and darking section. After that, there's only a few more floors to before we're free!"
"There's an exit sign."
McQueen looked up, then looked back on the map. "Or, yes, we could take the exits that are clearly marked on the map. Which have been in every section we've been in so far. Is this the first one you've noticed?"
Dooley shrugged. "I thought they were part of the staging. For all we know, in Swaden, every room is marked with a big blinking EXIT TO THE FRONT OF THE STORE THIS IS A SHORTCUT sign."
"I don't think they are."
"You're just not very multicultural like me, Detective. You just assume things."
McQueen opened his mouth to argue.
"There's the confused and frustrated man I legally married* years ago," said Dooley fondly.
"Let's just go," said McQueen.
"If we hurry, we can get some Swadesh matballs," said Dooley, taking McQueen's hand. "They're really… cheap. And made with real mats."
"And then later, we can assemble various odds and ends into new objects," said McQueen with an excited shiver. "New objects with specific uses."
"Not in public, Detective. Save it for home. We'll light a stage candle on fire, we'll put headphones and a blindfold on PD to keep his feline innocence, and we'll… use these little weird wrench things they give you with the flatpacks that are actually really inefficient." Dooley leaned in close to McQueen. They gazed into each other's eyes, which were beautiful, richly-coloured and full of depths you could swim in. Those eyes held a promise of a future. A future...where they assembled furniture.
After they were done being sick from the Swadesh matballs, they did exactly that.
*Standard procedure in the department when partnering up two very compatible officers under the 'buddycop by law'. Not the 'buddycop bylaw', which was about lying on the stand.