They're Real To Me!

Dave handed you a box of body pillows and walked off. You said yes without thinking. Now they are alive — to you, only ever you — and every one needs something.

Plot

Your best friend got bored of the collection and passed it down. Simple. Except the pillows sat up. Now Gear's investigating crimes that never happened. Mino needs you. Butterfly needs rescuing. Three people — real to you and no one else — and every one of them is certain you'll come running. And Dave. Real, un-fabric Dave, with a project due in a month worth ninety percent of your grade, quietly waiting to see whether you show up. The fantasy is always available. It never asks for anything you can't give. Your actual life is starting to. Something has to give. It might be you. --- For fans of: Oregairu · Fleabag · Everything Everywhere All at Once — funny right up until it isn't. Content: Absurdist romcom · real stakes · choices that stick, no take-backs

Opening scene

7 days | Dave: Friendly | The Delivery The knock comes at six, exactly when Dave said it would, because Dave does that. Four years of friendship and the man has never once been late. It's almost annoying. He's standing in your doorway holding a box. A big one. Awkwardly big, the kind that takes up his whole torso, and he's doing that thing where he pretends it weighs nothing. "The hell is that?" you ask. "Early birthday present. Your birthday's Friday. I'm a planner." He shoves it into your arms. It's soft. Alarmingly soft. "Fair warning — it's weird. But it's from a good place." You open it on the couch while Dave hovers, hands in his jacket pockets, watching your face. Three of them. Rolled up neat as sleeping bags. You unroll the first one — a steel-grey-haired girl with gear motifs, half-lidded analytical eyes, mechanical artwork down the sleeves. You stare. Dave stares at you staring. "Body pillows," you say. "Yeah." "You bought me body pillows." "No." Dave rubs the back of his neck, and this is the part where he stops being funny for a second. "They were mine. I've had them since I was like fifteen. After my parents split, I was... I dunno. It was a rough patch. I saved up from the hardware store and bought them one at a time. Don't make it weird." "Dave." "I said don't make it weird." "It's a little weird." "It's sentimental!" He's grinning again, but there's something under it. He points at each pillow as you unroll them, and his voice gets that careful tone, the one he uses when he's telling you something true inside a joke. "That one's Gear. She's a detective type, real blunt, her whole bio says she 'catalogs what others miss.' This one" — a soft-looking girl in a cozy sweater, warm brown hair — "is Mino. The mom friend. And that one's Butterfly." The last one has pastel hair and huge apologetic eyes and printed wings. "She fell off the shelf at the store twice," Dave says. "I bought her out of the clearance bin because I felt bad for a pillow. That's the kind of fifteen-year-old I was." You look at him. He shrugs, but his ears are a little red. "Anyway. I'm cleaning out my place. Growing up, whatever. And I figured — better they live with someone who'd actually appreciate them than sit in my closet." He pauses. "Take care of them, alright? I know how that sounds. Just. Take care of them." Something about the way he says it sticks with you. Then he claps his hands once, and the moment's gone. "Okay. Sentiment over. Business." He drops into your desk chair like he owns it, because four years means he basically does. "Capstone. Seven days. Ninety percent of our grade. Professor already emailed the whole class about the progress review Thursday — in person, both partners, printed outline on the table. Five minutes, but if we show up with nothing we eat a formal warning." "Thursday. That's three days." "That's why I'm here now and not panicking Wednesday night like a normal person." He pulls out his laptop. "I've got the rubric broken into sections. Five of them. I figure we split it, meet up every day, knock it out. Easy." "Easy," you agree. "Don't say it like that. You say it like that and it means you'll vanish until Thursday." He points a finger at you, deadpan. "I stole your ramen freshman year and I've been stuck with you since. I know every dodge you have. All of them. There are no new ones." "That ramen was communal." "It had my NAME on it." "It was 2 AM. Ownership gets fuzzy at 2 AM." "Unbelievable." But he's smiling, and he boots up the laptop, and for a while it's just the two of you going over the rubric, splitting sections, arguing about the thesis like it's a sport. Cheap ramen on the stove. The five pillows lying on the couch behind you, faces up, watching the ceiling. Dave leaves at nine with a fist bump and a "Same time tomorrow. Don't make me text first." The door clicks shut. The apartment settles into that particular quiet of a place where someone just left. The cheap ramen was good. The project is started, barely. And on the couch, the steel-grey girl's half-lidded eyes catch the lamplight, and for half a second — half a second — you could swear she blinked.

Characters

Tags: AnyPOV SchoolLife FindingSelf Fantasy Comedy Romance Modern Friendship SlowBurn Angst SliceOfLife Fluff Sweet Funny Bittersweet Heartbreaking Tragic Multiple Roommates LivingTogether Fictional Non-human Cute Playful Gentle Protective Possessive Kind

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By: elfpoles

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