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English
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Part 29 of Three Hundred And Sixty Five Ficlets About Homestuck
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Published:
2021-01-29
Words:
699
Chapters:
1/1
Kudos:
25
Hits:
106

Tavros Gets Into Bed

Summary:

Did you know that getting into bed as a disabled person was surprisingly hard? This was a pretty true fact across most disabilities, but it was especially true when you had a wheelchair and that was about the extent of the accommodations your parental unit could afford. Still, if you were Tavros Nitram, and a dog named Horsearoni, you made things work the best you could. Life was already hard enough to worry about things like "Being pessimistic" - you could approach this sort of existence with only the sort of excited optimism that a 13 year old without any of their confidence destroyed yet could.

29/365

Notes:

(See the end of the work for notes.)

Work Text:

Did you know that getting into bed as a disabled person was surprisingly hard? This was a pretty true fact across most disabilities, but it was especially true when you had a wheelchair and that was about the extent of the accommodations your parental unit could afford. Still, if you were Tavros Nitram, and a dog named Horsearoni, you made things work the best you could. Life was already hard enough to worry about things like "Being pessimistic" - you could approach this sort of existence with only the sort of excited optimism that a 13 year old without any of their confidence destroyed yet could.

It was sort of a complicated process, and yet, startlingly simple. Instead of doing it in the way that a person with functioning legs did it - i.e, just climb onto bed, he had to roll his wheelchair over to the side of while also avoiding bumping into his borzoi who was busy excitedly prancing around him. Up on the bed, and then down onto the floor, and then up on the bed, and then down on the floor, making Tavros dizzy whenever he tried to watch. Okay, so you parked your wheelchair up against the side of the bed, closest to the pillows.

Then, if you were Tavros, and afraid of falling off your wheelchair, you reached down to unbuckle your feet straps and also the strap you jury-rigged around your waist. Then, it was the long, involved process of wiggling your feet out from over top of their foot-stand-thingies that prevented them from scraping against the floor, and pushing those aside so you'd have enough room to maneuver. Then, the fun, fun part of "hoisting yourself onto the bed". Contrary to what some of his internet friends may have thought, Tavros was not really ripped, although wheeling himself around everywhere definitely did help him from not being too weak and flimsy in the upper body. That, plus atrophying legs meant it was surprisingly easy to do this part, although only "surprisingly easy" for a given value of "it was still hard".

Seriously, you try pulling yourself onto your bed from a sitting position slightly below it while only using your arms and not your legs. It's not really all that easy! So many little factors to consider that could get in your way - you had to brush the blanket aside because, surprise, if you tried to grab on it you'd probably just pull it down and then onto the floor with you with it. Same story with pillows, although they were a little easier to grab hold of, so you could theoretically pull yourself up by them if you wiggled onto your belly. Hell, even just grabbing onto the sheets sometimes caused them to come ripping out from beneath the bed, especially if you had a worked up borzoi spinning zoomies around the room.

Still, though, with some effort, eventually Tavros managed to pull himself into bed, scooting sideways and grabbing his switch and pulling himself up into a huge mound of stuffed animals as tall as he was, if not taller. Horsearoni continued to jump around wildly, over the bed, onto the floor, around the front of the bed, and then onto the bed.

Eventually, the rowdy pup settled in, squeezing its long face underneath Tavros's arm and wiggling itself up to his side and giving him lots of rough, scratchy licks on the face, which Tavros tolerated as well as he could so long as it didn't disrupt the Pokemonning.

An hour later, a parental figure walked in, slowly, quietly tiptoeing across all the creaky spots in the wood that they had memorized. They pulled the Switch out of the snoring boys hands, clicked it into the charging dock, and adjusted the stuffed animal pile so that Tavros's back wasn't quite so vertical. Didn't want the boy sleeping in a way that would hurt their spine any more than it already was. A tired, snoozy little borzoi pulled one eye open to look, but then remained quiet, only protectively curling around Tavros while his parent kissed them both on the foreheads, walked out the room, and switched the light off.

Notes:

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