Originally written January 3rd 2012 - Prompted by an anonymous message that left Layton with a box of his most feared thing: buttons. As with all these button fics, Layton has strong feelings about buttons. In this case he has a phobia of them.
He could not believe he had agreed to this.
Professor Layton eyed the box before him wearily. It had not moved from the spot on his desk since the moment his visitor had placed it there weeks ago, but still he eyed it. He knew that leaving the task this long had only perpetuated his troubles, forcing him to think about what exactly was in the box every moment it lay unopened.
He had not even felt comfortable touching it, and so the papers beneath had been left unmarked - something Dean Delmona was beginning to tire over. He couldn't stall forever though, and the guilt of not completing the task he had been set had now begun to override his fear.
He started with the book, it seemed it would be a good way to gradually lead-in to actually opening the box and sorting through the content. Of course, the book itself had been embarrassing enough to track down. The tome was a collection of illustrations and written details of fastenings for fabrics throughout known history. It was, essentially, a concise history of buttons. Attempting to inquire about it to various members of the Gressenheller Library staff had not been the most relaxing afternoon of his life.
Oh. The publisher had decided to have the inside cover pages illustrated with hundreds of buttons. How quaint. He hurriedly skipped straight to the first chapter, bypassing the contents page where each bulletin was replaced with a button. The actual subject matter aside, this was a terribly designed and crass looking book. He could only hope the information it contained was of higher quality than its production.
Finally he began to find useful information to use, and he slowly and carefully opened the box. It was not easy. There were… at least a good hundred buttons at his estimate, and the sight made his stomach turn a little. Drawing a deep breath, he reluctantly reached in and brought out a handful of them. His task was to sort them chronologically, by era, country of origin and material used. Logically he would start with material. Wood and cloth buttons were the most numerous, then metal. After that, there was a select few plastic buttons. His visitor's family must be fashion conscious to have plastic buttons - the medium was a very recent development and hadn't caught on to the masses yet. Metal buttons were also a sign of wealth, along with some woods.
He let out breath he hadn't realised he had been holding. This was not his ideal way of spending his afternoon, but perhaps it would not be too bad. The buttons could be sorted very easily from the beginning, so it was likely that the part of the task that would actually give him real trouble would be to write up a report of what he had found. With renewed determination, he set aside his feelings of discomfort as best as he could, and diligently got to work.
Sooner than he thought, he reached the end of his work and the buttons lay neatly sorted into small individual containers ready to return to his visitor. He carefully placed them all back in the box, tucking the papers detailing his findings in amongst them and closed the lid. He felt rather accomplished for managing to sit through that and all that was left was to return the book to the library archives, and the box to its owner.
All in a day's work.