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Louie huffs, resisting the urge to pull his phone out from under his pillow and check the time again. He knows it's late, and he knows no more than five minutes could have passed since the last time he looked.
His body is exhausted, aching and heavy—flying to the lost library of Alexandria, running around catacombs, and fighting an evil dude with a sword for your family's right to keep adventuring will do that, apparently—but his mind is buzzing, replaying every moment, still looking at all the angles, hours after the fact, like it'll help.
He feels, rather than hears, Dewey tossing and turning in the bunk above him, and Huey doing that "sighing a lot" thing.
Looks like none of them are sleeping tonight.
Rolling onto his back, Louie addresses the bottom of Dewey's bunk. "Can't sleep?"
Immediately, Dewey's head pops over the side of his bed, hanging upside down. "It's like my brain won't shut up!" he groans dramatically.
"That must be a first for you."
"Louie," Huey chides tiredly. "I mean, I've had trouble sleeping after an adventure but tonight feels...different."
"I know!" Dewey says, still hanging upside down. "I crashed the freakin' plane today, like—" He pauses a moment before his eyes go wide. "I crashed like Launchpad," he whispers.
Louie shrugs. "That's how you Dewey it."
There's a loud creak from the topmost bunk, like Huey's sitting up, and he says, "Wait, you crashed the plane?"
"Uh, yeah." Dewey's face is slowly turning red due to still being upside down. "You and Webby were taken, and we had to get to the ground to help. Don Karnage just made it a little more difficult."
It's quiet for a moment, then Huey says, in a high-pitched voice, "Oh."
He says it like he's surprised they'd crash a plane for him, even after everything they've been through the last three years—and as if Dewey wouldn't crash a plane just to prove he could without dying. Like he wouldn't do the same thing for them.
"Huey," Louie warns, teasingly, even if his voice is tight. "Don't you start crying. If you start crying, Dewey starts crying, and then I'll start, and we've already done enough of that today."
Huey sniffs loudly and chuckles. "You're right. We won today and everyone's okay, no one's coming after us for once in a long time—"
"All good points," Louie says.
"—so why is it so hard to sleep?" The bunkbed frame shakes as Huey apparently throws himself back on his pillow.
Dewey's brow furrows, clearly in make things better mode. His face brightens suddenly. "You know what we need?" He sits up, his head disappearing quickly from Louie's view. "Whoaaa, head rush."
Louie gives him a minute, not needing to see him to know he's rapidly shaking his head like he's got water in his ears, before asking, "What do we need?"
"A Duck boys sleepover!" Dewey announces.
Louie huffs a laugh. They hadn't done one of those in a while. Not since Mom came home and Uncle Donald had been on what was supposed to his cruise.
It'd been a tradition going back all the way to when they lived on the houseboat. They crowded on one of the narrow beds and usually woke up in a tangled pile of limbs, and Louie'd sooner take a long walk off a short pier than admit he actually liked, or missed, them.
Apparently Huey feels the same way, because there's a smile in his voice when he asks, "Whose bed?"
"Well," Louie muses. "My crazy brother crashed a plane with me in it, so I think it should be my bed."
"Nooo," Dewey whines. "My bed's comfiest, you guys come here."
"His bed is most central," Huey says democratically.
Louie sighs, loud and gusty. "Fine. Dewey's bed."
Standing on the edge of his bed, he braces his elbows on Dewey's bunk. Making grabby hands—and ignoring the fact that it makes him look about two and not twelve—he says, "Dude. Gimme a hand."
Smirking, Dewey doesn't move except to raise his arms above his head in a half-hearted clap.
He scowls, even though he should have expected nothing less. "I will hide your tap shoes. And your camera. And—"
Before he can finish his threat, Dewey's grasping his hand and the back of his shirt and hauling him up onto the bed.
Sprawling face-down on the bed, Louie grumbles in the comforter, "Thank you, Dewford."
Dewey simply pats the top of his head, which is by his pajama-clad feet.
There's a sound like Huey's making an effort to climb down the ladder, while Louie tries to shift himself so his head is on one of Dewey's pillows using as little movements as possible.
Then they hear, "Watch your heads!" and something heavy lands on Dewey's bed with a fwhump!
"Huey! What is this and why can't I move?" Louie demands, attempting to flail his arms, but is unable to because his arms are pinned to his sides under this...thing.
Dewey's in a similar state, wiggling next to him. "This is so much worse that those vine things with Cousin Feathry!"
"Relax." Huey's voice is above them, climbing from the ladder to Dewey's bed. "It's a weighted blanket. Gandra introduced me to them in the Gizmocloud."
Now that he knows what it is, Louie doesn't find the thing as daunting, even if it is crushing him a little, and manages to get his arms out from under it. "Why do we need another blanket, anyways? Dewey's got, like, a thousand."
"It's about maximum coziness," Dewey says authoritatively as Huey slides under the covers on his other side, back to the wall. "More importantly, did we ever figure out how Fenton got a girlfriend way cooler than him?"
Huey looks affronted that anyone would think Fenton isn't cool, but before he can answer, Louie says, "No, but Goldie's cooler than Uncle Scrooge, so it's not that weird."
"And Daisy's pretty cool," Huey admits, to which his brothers both make noises of agreement.
It'd been a little weird when Uncle Donald started dating—none of them could remember him being with anyone, ever—but Daisy had blown into their lives in a whirlwind of dresses and bows and facing Crownus like they'd never seen and making Uncle Donald almost happier than the day Mom came back, so. Yeah. Daisy Duck is pretty cool in their book.
"Does everyone have a girlfriend cooler than they are?" Dewey asks, twisting between them, trying to get comfortable.
"Launchpad doesn't," Huey says, eyes dancing with laughter.
Louie snorts. "Yeah, but Launchpad's dating Drake, and they're both equally nerdy according to Gos," he says.
"Penny's cool—"
"Penny's dating Mom, and no one's cooler than Mom," Dewey says definitively, cutting off Huey, tone borderline defensive.
They lapse into quiet, the dating lives of adults having long passed the point of interest for three twelve-year-olds.
"What do we do now?" Huey asks after a few minutes, voice lost in the dark room.
Louie huffs, having almost finally settled into sleep. "We go to sleep, Hubert."
He huffs in that older brother "that's not what I meant and you know it" sort of way. "Now that F.O.W.L. is defeated, I mean. We don't have anymore Missing Mysteries to find, no more bad guys chasing us—no more than usual, anyways—so...what do we do now?"
The three of them are quiet at that. It feels like the last three years, they've always had an adventure—too much, sometimes, for Louie's taste—but the way Huey says it, it does feel like, for once, they might not have an immediate next adventure.
Louie slides his arm under his pillow. "My vote? Video games, pizza, Pep, and rewatching Ottoman Empire from start to finish."
"There's, like, three seasons of Ottoman Empire," Dewey says, his head rolling to look at him incredulously.
He shrugs. "Exactly, we'll have plenty of time to watch all sixty-nine episodes."
"Doesn't Uncle Donald leave tomorrow?" Huey asks, hat obscuring his already shadowed face, hiding the thousand thoughts and questions behind his eyes.
The mood drops considerably, as it did whenever they remembered Uncle Donald's trip. If anyone deserved a vacation, they knew it was their uncle, who'd been working non-stop for twelve years to raise them, they can admit that, especially after his last vacation ended with him accidentally launched into space.
But it doesn't mean they're exactly thrilled that he's leaving.
"Yeah," Dewey mutters. "With Daisy."
"And May and June," Louie adds, swallowing the bitter taste in his mouth.
He hasn't decided how he feels about the newest addition to the manor, or Uncle Donald's immediate liking to them. He knows Webby is ecstatic to expand her family by two sisters, and that May and June had only acted the way they did because they'd been raised by F.O.W.L. agents.
But he'd only known them for twenty-four hours, and in those twenty-four hours, the sisters had managed to steal from their home, break Webby's heart at least once, and drag their family into the biggest fight Clan McDuck has ever faced.
(He thinks—he'll have to ask Webby to confirm that.)
So sue him if he's a little wary of them. He's never trusted easy and he's not about to start now.
And then there's...
"It's weird, right?" Huey asks, propping himself up on his elbow. "That Uncle Donald and Daisy are taking them on their trip? That's not just me, is it?"
...that.
On the one hand, Louie knows they can't be mad that Uncle Donald isn't taking them—he'd offered to let them come with him and Daisy, and the three of them declined, having spent ten years on the houseboat—but then he'd announced that May and June would be going with them, and Louie and his brothers had gone the kind of still and quiet only they could recognize in each other.
"No, it's weird," Dewey muses. "But not much weirder than June and May being Webby's clones in the first place. Or Webby being Uncle Scrooge's clone."
"Yeah, okay, who saw that coming?" Louie demands. It's supposed to be his thing, seeing all the angles, but no way anyone could've predicted that. "I mean, clone daughters? That's insane!"
"But that's different," Huey insists. "Webby was family way before we knew she was Uncle Scrooge's clone. May and June...aren't."
He's not saying what they're all thinking—maybe they can be, one day. It's not like they thought Webby'd end up being the sister they never had when they met her, but that's just it. They just met May and June, and as much alike as they were to Webby, it didn't feel right to watch their uncle set sail around the world with them.
"I mean, they are basically two Webby's, how bad can they be?" Dewey says it like he's trying to convince them; which, maybe he is, ever the optimist that he is. But his voice wavers ever-so-slightly, like maybe he has the same doubts.
Huey, still sitting up, looks troubled, a wrinkle between his eyes and a thousand more questions in his eyes, faintly illuminated by the soft moonlight bathing their room.
Louie knows how important it is for his oldest brother to have all the answers—he thinks it's his responsibility. If he knows everything, Dewey and Louie don't have to question or worry about anything. He does it all for them.
But this, knowing what their impossible lives would bring them next, with May and June, with Webby and Uncle Scrooge, with Uncle Donald, or their next adventure...there were just too many angles, even for someone as smart as Huey.
So he says, as gently as he can, "Huey, I know this is an impossible thing to ask, but I need you to shut off that big brain of yours, because there's nothing we can do tonight and worrying about it isn't gonna help. Whatever happens, we'll face it together, right?"
He says it mostly to Huey, but it's not until he says it aloud that Louie realizes how much he needed to hear the words himself. Next to him, Dewey visibly relaxes, clearly needing to hear it too. He rolls onto his side to hug Huey.
"Uncle Scrooge's right," Dewey says with a little grin, turning his head to look at Louie over his shoulder. "You're good at the leader-pep-talks."
“Yeah well,” Louie yawns. “Don’t expect anymore for a while, I already gave two today. I think that’s my limit.”
Huey sniffles, hugging Dewey back. “I thought I was supposed to be taking care of you guys,” he says wetly. “I’m the oldest.”
Louie reaches over to poke Huey’s forehead. “What did I say about crying, Hubert?”
Swatting at his hand, Huey tries to give him a stern look that immediately gives way to a smile.
“You’ll get us back tomorrow,” Dewey says easily, relaxing his hold on Huey, but not moving away. “You know we can’t go two days without you.”
“It’s true,” Louie agrees. “So no sneaking onto enemy planes for at least a week.”
Huey laughs, a little less tear-filled now. "Deal."
The atmosphere feels less heavy now—no heavier than Huey's weighted blanket, anyways, which has started to grow more comfortable and less oppressive—and the three of them settle into Dewey's blanket nest.
"You know," Huey says around a yawn after a moment. "Violet says, statistically, we're due to face vampires. So maybe that'll be next."
"Great," Louie grumbles. "More monsters."
"Bring on the monsters," Dewey says, burying his head in Huey's shoulder. "We can take 'em. We're Ducks."
Sighing contentedly, Huey reaches over, draping an arm over Dewey and lays a hand on Louie's arm. He doesn't squeeze, doesn't grip, but his hand is warm and comforting, and Louie finally feels the last of his adrenaline and anxieties slip away and the pull of sleep at last.
Shoving his feet under Dewey's—as goofy as his pajamas were, at least his feet were always warm—Louie wiggles a little closer to his brothers' warmth, accepting the hand that Dewey blindly reaches for him with, hugging the arm to his chest.
They're Ducks. With his brothers, he can handle whatever gets thrown at him.