Fic: Adventures in Duckwatching (2/2)
(Part One)
“I’m just saying, we walked around downtown Indianapolis for over three hours, and I never once saw a man who looked like Chris Traeger?” herbalsmoothie said, huffing a bit. Just regular, boring Americans, which was disappointing. Why did people move to Indiana, if not for Rob Lowe-looking people?
M rested her head on her shoulder, and they clasped hands. All this travelling was wearying. Herbalsmoothie often forgot how big the US was, how the highways stretched on for kilometers and kilometers. She couldn’t remember being in a vehicle for this long in ages, and she wished she had her bike, and freedom, and privacy again.
Not that being with the Pawnee Goddesses was anything less than wonderful. It was just an awful lot of togetherness. And if Amber came after her with another makeup brush she might throw it out the window.
“So, herbalsmoothie, are you going to tell us the story of how you two got together?” Laura asked, twisting around in her seat in front of them to make eye contact. They’d picked up Laura at an airport in Ohio. It seemed, based on the way Emily was twitching, that this wasn’t initially part of the plan. The last- minute flight was probably outrageously expensive, but Laura had brushed off the questions with a strange reference to suing a chair manufacturer. No one quite knew what that meant, but Americans were practically required to make frivolous lawsuits.
“Do you really want to know?” herbalsmoothie asked.
“Does a bus full of fandom ladies like stories about people getting together? I think we do,” Amber said.
“I hope this involves sharing the last bed at the motel. Or maybe spin-the-bottle,” Georgie said.
“Or lots of angsty pining,” Amber suggested.
“I hope at least one person fell down,” Diaphenia said.
They all twisted around till all eyes were on the pair.
Well then.
“So she was tired of Spain, of course, and asked to come live with me. Ever since last year, I’ve had this giant palace and no one to share it with. You know how European universities are- mandatory castles for all incoming foreign students. It was just me, and my butler Thermador, in this big place, and I had friends, but I was alone. So alone.
“And then she moved in. And we’d met before, at European Goddess meetups, but this time, it was different.”
“This time,” M interrupted. “We were drinking a lot.”
“She was very cold here. And one night we were watching our show, naturally, and discussing the inconsistent nature of the Ben and Chris relationship-”
“It’s come up a few times,” M said dryly.
“And she looked cold. So I scooted over and offered her my blanket.” Herbalsmoothie blushed at the memory, because in retrospect, it was so cliche. When- if- she ever got into another relationship, she was going to make sure to not sound like real-life trope bingo.
“She kept looking at my lips, and I knew she was my only chance for housing out here, but I also knew, deep in my heart, that I would watch Borgen for her. So I leaned over and kissed her,” M said, a smile playing on her lips.
“And it was terrible. So we laughed, and tried again.”
“Thermador was quite scandalized when I asked him to move her things into my room, but that might have also had something to do with the fact we were in flagrante delicto at the time.”
“He really should learn to knock,” herbalsmoothie finished with a laugh. M laughed too, and herbalsmoothie thought that they really were going to have to get some privacy soon.
The bar that night was slamming, according to Diaphenia, but the other Emily could practically feel a migraine coming on from the electro-technic beats. Diaphenia was no help anyway, as she was having some sort of drinking contest with Leslie. Amber was over there too, either as a judge or an enabler.
Leslie had ended up coming down on a bus with Allison from Boston. Unfortunately, they were unable to get tickets to Pittsburgh, so they’d gone to Philly instead, which worked out marvelously as Emily could only get last-minute plane tickets to Philly too. Which meant the fandom bus had to go pick them all up. Sadly, this meant that they weren’t going to see ryeloza till the next day, but it did mean group bonding time that night.
Or it had, had the group not split up almost immediately. A faction had taken off in search of desserts, possibly following another round of cheesesteaks. M and herbalsmoothie had gone off, muttering something about scissors, but who knew what that was about. They were both really close now that they were living together, which was cute. And Courtney was currently making out with some hot guy who also, weirdly enough, was an Australian. It seemed unfair, somehow.
Emily, meanwhile, had to get out of this bar, or she was going to go nuts. She was slipping out the front door when she ran into Allison.
“Do you hate the loud noises too?” she asked, and the two agreed to go take a walk by the river instead. They were deep in conversation about Joss Whedon's take on Shakespeare when they heard a commotion.
Emily grabbed Allison and pulled her behind a large tree. When she peeked around it, she saw him.
“Michael Fassbender!” she whispered excitedly.
“Here, at this river?”
“Yeah!”
“Wait, are we talking about the actor or Donna’s car?”
“Would I be this excited about a car?” Emily asked, her whisper getting a little too loud.
Allison paused thoughtfully. “I think you would for a Pawneean vehicle.”
Emily reconsidered. Maybe she would- oh, who cared about that, it was time to stalk Michael Fassbender.
She’d never spied on anyone before, but they’d both watched a lot of tv, and so they took off after him. He was clearly out for a walk, stopping to take pictures with his phone.
Emily leaned over to Allison. “Do think he’s really got a huge-”
“Girls!” they heard, and they saw Michael Fassbender coming towards them.
“Do you think he knew we’re following him?” Allison whispered at the same time Emily whispered “Run!”
Allison panicked and grabbed Emily’s hand right at the same time Emily tried to run the other way. Instead, they twisted arms painfully, and Allison slipped and landed right on her knee.
“Girls,” he said again, and he reached down to help Allison up. “I was just wondering if you would take a picture of me next to this river?”
“Sure, Mr. Fassbender,” Emily said, grabbing his phone. Her fingertips touched his, and she swore she felt a spark, a connection, a-
“I’m actually Christian Bale,” not-Michael Fassbender said, smiling for the camera.
“Oh,” Emily said, handing him has camera back. Just Christian Bale. He could find someone else to take his picture then.
It was around the time both Emilys crashed into each other that Leslie gave up on coaching. The idea of a pickup game of hockey was a good one, but the execution was pathetic. It was like they’d all spent more time online than-
Actually, that was exactly what it was like.
Amber was too busy trying to look good in case a pro-hockey player wandered by, which meant she was barely guarding her net. Which was fine, because the rest of her team were all terrible: Diaphenia was perpetually confused about the rules, missnumbat was shivering, and Bri kept trying to start a brawl.
When Leslie suggested they play a quick game at the local rink rather than getting right on the road, it had seemed like such a good idea. Sure, it had taken some convincing- Emily had sighed while looking at her schedule, and when Leslie had suggested re-game drinks, Emily had started sputtering about how it was still morning, and further, there’d be a few suggestions that the bar crowd had been a bit rowdy when they’d returned last night, which was fair.
Leslie was prepared to call the whole thing off when she heard a scuffle. There was a high-pitched shriek of hot Mormon bartender, and suddenly Diaphenia and Andie were having a shoving match.
And neither of them were gifted on skates, so both were falling over.
“You can just go back to the cold wasteland that is the Midwest,” Andie yelled. “What idiots would choose to live where you can’t wear sandals ten months out of the year?”
At that, Amber jumped in, yelling that Chicago was a valid lifestyle choice, and that the West Coast was hell.
“West Coast best coast!” Andie replied, at which point Allison pointed out that the East Coast was pretty lovely. Laura punched her on the arm, and soon that escalated into the girliest slap fight ever. Leslie was pretty sure kittens hit harder.
M attempted to get off the ice, muttering something about American aggression, when a spare slap hit her in the face. She was entirely uninjured, but herbalsmoothie jumped in anyway, grabbing Courtney on behalf of Europeans former and current to defend her lady’s honor. And Bri was going around with a hockeystick, whacking people in thigh.
Georgie skated gently by. “I’ve seen more violent hockey fights at pee-wee leagues in Canada. Please call me if someone loses a tooth.”
Leslie, meanwhile, had never been more proud. They were, in that moment, no longer a rag-tag group of indoor children, but real hockey players.
Ryeloza could barely move in her bedroom, but she had enough sleeping space for all eight fandom ladies who were scheduled to arrive, between the borrowed air mattresses squeezed into her room, and the couch folded out, and the one blow-up mattress in the kitchen.
She wondered, briefly, if she should tell her sister that everyone was coming, but nah. Her sister wouldn’t even notice.
She was ready for them, and with the exception of Ashley, who’d showed up right when she was supposed to, they were late. Ryeloza sighed, wondering where the hell Emily was with her bus of fangirls. She’d always thought Emily seemed disorganized, and here was proof.
“Can you check tumblr again?” she asked Ashley, who was taking notes on her novel.
“Let’s see... I think someone’s got a broken tooth? I don’t even know what that’s about. I just... Oh! And Elle is in Canada somehow? Did she bring her passport? Does she know where Pennsylvania is?”
Ryeloza was just about to say screw it and go look at the duck herself when she heard a loud honk. She grabbed Ashley’s hand and ran to the street.
Where she was shocked to discover so many fandom ladies spilling out on to the grass. Way more than she was expecting.
“Who here is who?” she asked, wanting to solve that first. There were a bunch of people who were immediately obvious, since they were given to posting their faces online. But she wasn’t entire certain who was who among the rest.
“Wait wait wait,” Amber yelled, signalling the group.
And just like that, everyone pulled out a mask, scotch-taped to a ruler, and they all held them up to their faces.
They’d all made masks of their LJ icons. Ryeloza had to laugh.
“We made them while M was getting her tooth fixed,” Laura said.
“It was an excellent hockey brawl,” Georgie said.
“Huh?” Ashley asked.
“I’m a compass!” Emily said, not pulling down her mask.
Ryeloza pulled out a camera and called her sister out to take pictures. Tumblr had to see this.
And then, she had to figure out where everyone was going to sleep.
Ashley was just really, really excited, ok? This wasn’t quite marry your soulmate and have a quickie before the cake good, but this was meet half your fandom soulmates good. Plus she was pretty sure she was going to get to make out with Diaphenia. Which was going to be the hottest thing ever, really.
They got to the duck at 9am sharp, because it was important to Emily, and because hardly anyone slept, they were all so excited to be all together and compare stories and talk about future plotlines and just everything. Someone had passed around a copy of her halfway-done novel, and there’d just been this huge outpouring of love, and it was just beautiful, having all your friends read your love letter to adolescence.
Plus, they’d played this three-sentence fic game, and it had gotten dirty.
But all the bacon and waffles couldn’t compare to the excitement of sixteen fandom ladies from all over the world gathering to look at a giant-ass duck.
“It’s beautiful,” Courtney breathed. “Truly, my hometown duck was the lesser duck.”
“It was super sad,” Georgie agreed. “Now this? Is love.”
They were all so excited by the duck, they almost missed Roda, standing in front of them waving her sign frantically.
“Guys!” she yelled. “Guys! Pawnee Goddesses! Look over here!” When none of that drew their attention away from what was, to be fair, the coolest giant duck in the world, she yelled “Amy Poehler!” and half of them whipped right around to her.
And if they couldn’t see actual Amy Poehler, Roda was almost just as good.
“How did you find us?” Andie mumbled through her scarf.
“You guys know that when you liveblog everything, people can find you, right?” Roda said. “It’s not hard when you put your itinerary on the internet.”
“And we stuck to the itinerary!” Emily said, her smile huge.
Roda demanded a group hug, and it was just awesome to have so many happy people hugging in front of a duck.
Then everyone pulled out their phones and took about a million pictures, including one big group shot with the masks (and Roda with a phone in front of her face).
Truly, this might almost be better than the wedding, Ashley realized.
Elle was deeply sorry about her friends. The news of the giant duck eating everyone was one of the more horrific news stories to come across her tumblr, made all the sadder since she knew and loved so many of the dead. And that none of them would ever write fic again, that was also pretty sad.
The remaining members of the fandom had come together in an act of remembrance and were currently writing letters to the parents and partners of the dead, with praise for the dead women, and also really vague explanations for how they knew them. There was a lot of gifs reblogged in their memories too, with really out-of-control tags.
Elle had trouble sleeping afterwards, knowing how close she’d come to death. If she’d only known Chicago was in the midwest, she, too, might be dead.
But she really was liking her new place in Georgia. She had no idea how she’d ended up there, trying to get home from North Dakota, but it was pretty awesome. Plus, she got to use the phrase “Hotlanta” so really, this whole thing was mostly a win for her.
