Berrybog Boys (BxB)

Chapter I: The House

"Somebody moved into the Berrybog Cottage!"

In Edenderry, this sort of thing was the news of the month. Last time the village was so excited was when Connolly's youngest daughter came home from college with a baby bump.

Perhaps, if it was any other house, people wouldn't be so excited, but the Berrybog Cottage was quite infamous. Its last inhabitant was a grouchy man called Mr. Stanton, who moved away in 1995, soon after his wife died. Although he left the house, he refused to sell it for over a dozen years, leaving it for his inheritors in absolute disrepair. What was once a picturesque cottage, a perfect fit for the Irish hills it was built on, became not much more than a safety hazard.

After Staton's death, his grandchildren tried to sell the house, but not many people were interested in a falling apart building in the middle of nowhere. And so the house stood empty for years, only occasionally visited by one of the young Statons, when a sudden influx of unfounded optimism or a new debt led them to take more photos and post them on real estate websites.

Until yesterday.

Bernadette barely opened the door to Sinead's store, before shouting these news to the older woman, "Someone moved in, for real! Fionn mentioned seeing lights there in the evening, so this morning I decided to drive next to it. To make sure it wasn't vandals or robbers, of course."

Knowing Bernadette's love for rumors, Sinead highly doubted that statement, but she just raised one eyebrow at her.

"Of course."

"At first I thought it might be, you know? There was a car in front and it was, like, real beat up, but it sounded like somebody was drilling inside, so either there's an actual person living there now, or somebody broke in and was so outraged that they decided to fix it."

Bernadette laughed at her own joke. Sinead didn't find it that funny, but she was polite enough to give her a light chuckle. "Unless they are using a sledgehammer, I doubt they could make it any worse."

"Exactly! Anyway, who do you think was stupd enough to buy that place?"

***

Nils let out a long string of curse words, trying to pick this goddamn piece of cobweb out of his goddamn hair. He started to suspect he might have made a horrible mistake.

Was he lured in by the eerie vibe of an old, overgrown cottage?

Yes.

Was he aware that outside of the aesthetic, it would be a huge pain in the ass?

Absolutely.

Did he expect a colony of spiders to fall out of a cabinet as soon as he opened it?

Hell no.

Looking at the condition of the house, perhaps he shouldn't have been surprised. Determined to not make the same mistake again, Nils would only barely open any containers, and then immediately jump back. So far, the only thing it got him was a bruised elbow, but he was not about to stop. Fool him once and so on.

After all, there was nobody here to witness this humiliating display. Which was good, when it came to not having to choose between being embarrassed and spiders, but also bad, when it came to actually dealing with this whole mess. It's going to take him forever just to clean the main building! And then there's other parts of the estate! And the garden! Not to mention the lack of usable furniture, which seemed like a fun little challenge - he always wanted to try building some - but it's going to take him days or weeks to even get to that part!

Nils groaned loudly and leaned his head on the mirror. Then he remembered how dirty it was, abruptly pulled himself back, bumped into a shelf, hit his elbow again and toppled over a bunch of cleaning supplies.