Chapter Text
Looking around the enormous hall filled with beds Dunk felt his anxiety growing. There was way too many options to choose from and he had no idea where to start it. Egg, however, had already jumped onto a king-sized one with a padded bedhead and a footboard.
"How about this?" he asked, but Dunk shook his head.
"It has a footboard," he said. “And I don’t want a footboard. I’d be kicking it all the time.”
And we can’t afford it either, he added in thoughts. Technically, they could as Prince Maekar was covering the costs of Egg moving in with him, but Dunk didn’t want to take advantage of that. Not to mention that buying a bed for himself wasn’t even in the plans – not until they played cart race in his room the other night. Playing cart race in itself wasn’t supposed to ruin a bed but jumping on it while playing cart race definitely did.
“Sorry, I forgot that you’re too tall for a footboard,” the kid said. “This is still nice, though,” he added, lying down.
Not just for a footboard, Dunk thought. He could hardly sleep in any bed without having his feet hanging off of them.
“Don’t get yourself too comfortable,” he warned the kid. “We won’t buy that one.”
Egg got up with a sigh and looked around in the showroom. Then his gaze stopped at a single bed with a simple white head and no footboard.
“How about that one?” he asked.
“For you?” Dunk raised a brow.
“No way! For myself, I want that one,” he pointed at a loft bed with metal frames and a ladder.
“Never in a million years,” Dunk said. “You fall off and it’s going to be my fault. No, you’ll be sleeping on the ground level.”
“I meant that one for you,” Egg said, turning back towards the white single bed.
Dunk shook his head.
“I prefer a double one,” he told the boy.
Egg looked at him from his blue hoodie to his grey trainers, and his lips began twitching as he was trying to suppress his laughter.
“Aren’t you a little too optimistic?” he teased him.
Dunk felt his cheeks turning red. He knew he wasn’t too successful with girls, but he wasn’t hopeless… or was he?
“Shut up or I’ll put you in the box under the bed,” he said in a teasing tone.
Considering how tall and well-built he was, he could do it. One of the shopkeepers – a blonde girl with glasses – looked at them so worried that he had to mouth “I won’t” to her. He couldn’t convince her, because despite she offered him a faint smile, she still did not take her eyes off them.
“He’s not your son, is he?” she finally asked.
“Gods, no,” Dunk replied with a chuckle, while Egg started laughing so hard that Dunk had to throw another apologetic glance at the shopkeeper.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I’m very bad at guessing these things. Then is he your brother?”
“Er…”
That was the moment Dunk realized they had never really talked about what they would say to the people who didn’t know Egg’s true identity. Luckily, the kid was thinking faster and answered the question before it could become suspicious.
“Sort of,” Egg said. “I adopted him.”
The shopkeeper started laughing which made the kid sit up a little straighter.
“It’s actually the other way round,” Dunk said.
“I could imagine that,” she nodded.
“His parents live quite far, so he’s staying with me for a while,” he explained.
That was the closest thing to reality that he could share with her.
“So, we need a single bed for him and the double one for me,” he concluded.
“Optimistic, isn’t it?” Egg asked.
“You wanted to say wise, didn’t you?” Dunk said. “Where will you go if you have nightmares?”
“Fair.”
The shopkeeper began to think as she looked around the showroom.
“Oh, and no footboard, please,” the young man added.
“Got it,” she nodded. “Follow me.”
“This is great,” Dunk stated, looking at the enormous tubes running across the showroom’s ceiling.
He and Egg were lying on a double bed long enough for his legs, surrounded by pillows. After testing all the beds without a footboard, he liked this one the most.
“This is the one,” Egg said. “Big and comfortable. Even fit for a king,” he joked.
“Watch your tongue,” Dunk warned him. “You know you can’t reveal yourself.”
“And I won’t. This is just an expression,” the kid explained. “And I didn’t say ‘fit for a prince.’”
“You won’t say it, or I will really have to put you in the box.”
“This one’s boxes are too small for me,” Egg pointed out.
“That’s your only luck,” he said in a teasing tone then he sat up. “Let’s go and find your bed.”
Dunk looked down at Egg, but the boy didn’t move.
“Can we stay for a couple of minutes more?” he asked. “It’s so nice.”
Dunk threw a glance at the shopkeeper who was now attending other customers, then he shrugged his shoulders.
“A few more minutes cannot hurt,” he said as he lay back next to the kid.
Adjusting a pillow under his head, he made a mental note to buy more of them as most of the ones he had at home were old, flat or lumpy. Not only they made the bed more comfortable, but they would work well in a pillow fight, too. Realizing that now he had someone to have pillow fights with, a smile touched his lips.