Work Text:
When the fridge light goes out, the cheese stirs…
Blue Cheese is sulking in the tupperware. Nobody will ever love her, she believes, because she is the stinkiest cheese; that's why the humans lock her away from cheese society inside this hard plastic shell. She always thought blue and green were the prettiest colours, but she is starting to worry that she has been forgotten.
She looks enviously over at the cute, rounded, fluffy Brie, the queen of the fridge, in her pretty white fur coat. Brie is a mold-cheese too, but Brie doesn't have to suffer the indignity of being locked in an air-tight container. Sure, she's kept under wrap, but the light, thin plastic does nothing to diminish her looks, on display to the entire fridge population.
Blue Cheese knows she will never have a chance with Brie, because Brie clearly has eyes only for the king of the fridge - Parmesan. Parmesan is the envy of the fridge because alone of the cheese, Parmesan has been allowed to keep its original packaging. So rugged and hardy is Parmesan, his packaging is merely tucked down a little in a tiny nod to retaining moisture and keeping off contaminants - which means when the light is out, he can sneak over to Brie's plate and whisper sweet nothings - although he is the perfect gentleman and resists caressing her through the confines of the wrap, even though she would clearly like him to.
She guesses that Parmesan and Brie can't consummate their relationship without the humans noticing - Parmesan might be able to lift the wrap, but it would undoubtedly stretch and deform, cluing the humans in to strange happenings within their fridge.
There are dread tales of cheese that let itself become suspicious - once the humans are suspicious of activity within their fridge, they will consign the unlucky cheeses to the hideous confines of The Bin - hushed voices tell of that awful jumbled fall, the close quarters with other discarded packaging and foodstuffs, the squalid society of The Tip which awaits them...
Blue Cheese is worried that this will be her fate in any case. One of the humans always looks at her skeptically and makes a sniffing face when they open the fridge door, as if they suspect her of causing a bad smell in the fridge. The other cheese will never forgive her if she causes the entire fridge contents to be discarded through her contamination.
But she also has hope. The human who bought her comes and picks her up from time to time, prizes off the lid and inspects her with great anticipation.
Meanwhile, she gazes longingly at Brie, and waits.
----
Aged Gouda looks on from the rear of the fridge.
He is much more patient than the younger cheeses. He knew he was special from an early age, when they took him to the storage room and he knew he was destined for greater things.
Unlike the younger cheeses, he lived for years in the company of the society of his fellows. The storeroom of aged cheeses is the true society of cheeses, he believes, although he worries that sometimes this makes him intolerant of other varieties - after all, for his formative years he was only amongst his own kind, and that embeds certain habits which are difficult to shake.
He knows that Parmesan believes himself to have something of the same quality, but Aged Gouda can't help but disagree. The whispered rumours tell of parmesans which have a proper society, several years in a small, artisanal storeroom; but this fridge's Parmesan is a young, brash stripling of an aged cheese, twelve months and believes he knows it all.
He can see it in Parmesan's advances towards Brie. Brie is a soft, young cheese, but even she can see through Parmesan's clumsy attempts at courtship.
(There are bries who get to mature in the company of their own, as well - Brie Noir, they call them - but this is a more typical Brie, who came to the fridge young.)
In any case, Parmesan clearly only wants her because of her good looks and favoured position, displayed proudly upon an entire plate of her own. He hasn't taken the time to get to know her at all - he thinks all young cheeses are the same, that they don't have the life experience to be different, but Aged Gouda is old enough to know better - that all cheese is created equal.
Perhaps if Parmesan was less shallow, he would notice Blue Cheese, trapped and alone in her tupperware container. Blue Cheese would appreciate the attention, Aged Gouda is sure, and Brie could get on with her life without being bothered by a hard cheese.
----
Brie is happy that Parmesan visits, but she has eyes only for Aged Gouda.
If only she could pluck up the courage to go and speak with him! What wisdom must lie within that colourful, inedible rind! She pulls her furry coat around herself with the unmatched glee of imagination, but she doesn't quite have the impetus to burst out of her usual habits and seek him out, and he is content to sit there, watching the younger cheeses.
She also peers, from time to time, at that unending mystery - the tupperware that clearly contains Blue Cheese. She reckons that Parmesan or Aged Gouda could open it, but she herself is too soft, even if she could escape the confines of the Wrap.
Naturally she has heard the rumours of the terrors of the bin, home to cheese which misbehaves - every young cheese hears them before they have even become cheese, in the restless, endless gossiping society of curds from which the fortunate are chosen. But she isn't sure that really matters to her.
Perhaps life at the Tip would not be so bad, if only she could have a few moments with those other cheeses.
There is only a little piece of her left when she finally puts together the courage to snuggle up to Parmesan, and ask - does he think that, maybe, he is strong enough to open up the Tupperware? Blue Cheese must be ever so lonely in there, after all.
Parmesan warns her of the terrible risk that she would be taking, but she reminds him that he and Aged Gouda are hardy enough that it is unlikely to affect them, and it is her who is requesting this - it is her risk only.
And if she's taking risks, she tells him, she could come out of the wrap - and she is _ever_ so soft.
----
Aged Gouda watches as Brie's expert manipulation of Parmesan succeeds; the brash yearling heads determinedly over to the tupperware.
But it is clear he is not going to be able to lift the lid alone.
Aged Gouda considers his options. He has been waiting for Parmesan to encounter Blue Cheese for some time now. He can tell that Brie has no real feelings for Parmesan, having only tolerated his advances for the sake of his company, and worries that Parmesan will soon be bitterly disappointed by her failure to make good on her promise.
On the other hand, it is clearly her will and her decision; and while he has not been able to take the measure of Blue Cheese clearly, he would be sad and lonely himself, if he was shut in a tupperware box and only able to perceive the other cheeses dimly through its sides.
He pushes himself up from his resting-place, unwraps his dangling rind and goes to Parmesan's aid.
----
At first, Parmesan is resentful that the old cheese had to bestir himself to help.
He has always been envious of Aged Gouda. Parmesan still missed the huge warehouse where his wheel had been stored, and envied Aged Gouda's extra years in that place.
Also, he is somewhat worried that Brie always seems so curious about Aged Gouda. She hadn't got to the stage of inviting him over, but there was always a potential rivalry there, and this was meant to be a display of Parmesan's strength and superiority, not Aged Gouda's.
But he would rather accept help than fail, and so the two cheeses work together to lever the lid off of Blue Cheese's tupperware.
----
As the two hard cheeses succeed in taking off the lid, Blue Cheese is torn between standing tall and at least enjoying her freedom, or cowering and shouting at them to stop; will they regret their decision when her pungent odor floods the confines of the fridge?
But it seems she needn't have worried. As soon as the seal on the lid is broken, she can see the reaction in Brie - as if she has never known what she wanted until now, and suddenly the realisation of her true desires is wafting on the air all around her.
Brie does not wait for Parmesan to come over and declare success, and to help her lift the wrap; she is flexible now, and she twists and oozes and inveigles herself under the edge of the wrap until she can disentangle it from the edge of the plate and free herself from her own prison.
Blue Cheese is stunned. She doesn't know how to react to this new information. She had been looking forwards to the company of her fellow cheeses, even if it was the destruction of them all, but that Brie might want her in that way - that was more than she had ever hoped for, even in her fantasies.
Parmesan looks around, victorious - then confused. Brie appears to be making her way towards him, and he is about to sweep her up in a triumphant embrace, but she ignores him entirely and drags herself right over the edge of the tupperware box, plopping down next to Blue Cheese - and then coming over suddenly shy.
----
As Brie and Blue Cheese greet each other nervously and attempt to determine the extent of their mutual affection, Parmesan is clearly about to jump in himself and remonstrate with them - especially Brie for deceiving him - but a look from Aged Gouda quells him, for the moment.
"Let the young ones play," Aged Gouda recommends. "After all, there is such a thing as Blue Brie, but mouldy Parmesan is simply mouldy Parmesan."