Chapter Text
He watches the lights lining the iconic bridge over the bay as they zoom past. Drake drives a plain, practical car but drives like a demon. Launchpad is content to let him take the wheel. His head still hurts a bit when he concentrates too long, so driving is probably not on the table for him right now.
They drive in silence, mostly, with the radio playing softly between them. For some reason, his gaze is drawn up to the towers of the Audubon Bay Bridge, he feels a sharp pang in his chest (or maybe that's the rib injury) and he feels like he should say something right about now.
He can’t for the life of him think of what that might be.
They pass the bridge, her looming towers disappearing as they finally enter St. Canard. Their home, Drake had said. Launchpad wishes he felt any kind of familiarity or comfort. He doesn’t, really. He keeps searching himself for it.
He leans against the window, pressing his battered beak tightly shut. Luckily Drake breaks the silence, then, before he can become truly sad.
“Listen, Launchpad…” Drake hesitates over his name, stutters around it oddly. “There’s things you don’t know about me, yet. Our life together. I don’t want to shock you but sometimes I feel like you need to know, and I just don’t...I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing by telling you stuff like this.”
Launchpad whips around without a thought to the pain, eyes alight with the threat of new knowledge.
“Are you going to tell me more about you?” Launchpad prods carefully as he can with his heart thudding in his chest.
Drake draws his shoulders up a little as they slow with the new St. Canardian traffic, beak set in a tight clench.
“I...maybe.” He hesitates, fingers grip the wheel. “But it's something we already discussed, uh, sort of, at the hospital, so I don't know if I should-”
Drake smacks the heel of his palm against the wheel, clearly distressed, and Launchpad doesn’t like the gesture. It’s so full of anxiety, and it’s pouring off Drake at the moment. He doesn't remember most of what they talked about when he first met Drake, but surely he'd remember something that was causing him this much stress, right?
“I have a daughter!” Drake blurts.
Launchpad is surprised by this, sure, but he’s not sure why Drake’s bracing himself like that. The relief that floods his own veins nearly makes him pass out.
“Aw, I love kids,” He says, raking his good hand through the feathers at the nape of his neck. “What’s her name?”
“Gosalyn. Uh- Mallard.”
“How old is she?”
“Unfortunately, she’s hit her teenage years,” Drake shakes his head, smile twisting on his face. “Fourteen.”
Drake doesn’t really look old enough to have a daughter in high school and Launchpad nearly asks about it before realizing it wasn’t a question he could just ask a stranger.
I mean, basically a stranger. A stranger to him, which...didn’t change Drake’s perspective, possibly, but still really rude either way, right?
“She lives with us?” He questions, and Drake nods.
Phew.
“You sure know how to give a guy a heart attack,” He jokes, laughing lightly. “I thought something was wrong.”
“...No.”
Drake hesitates again, and Launchpad can see this getting a little frustrating. While there’s a part of him that melts at how careful Drake is with him, how caring he is about his mental health, he feels lost and sad and he’s dying for answers and he’s not that fragile.
So he prods Drake again, literally, pokes him right in his shoulder.
When the mallard looks over, he gets to see Launchpad’s leveling a look at him that’s meant to break the ironest of wills. Not through malice, but the threat of genuine, heartfelt disappointment.
Shockingly, this actually works.
“Don’t,” Drake groans. “It’s-it’s a long story. She’s had a really...rough time before I managed to take guardianship of her.”
Launchpad hangs onto every word with furrowed brows, obsessive attention, and even the pain in his arm and the abrasions all over his right side seem to dull as he focuses entirely on the other duck and the new story unfolding before him.
“She’s staying at our friends’ house.” Drake says quietly. “But she’ll want to come home. She’s really worried about you.”
Oh.
Launchpad’s eyes water a little, then, and he shifts his gaze out the dark window to hide it.
He loves kids, has been like…waiting for Loopey to get hitched to some nice girl and have a brood of her own to be the Awesome Uncle to, but more than that he’s also always wanted to be a dad.
But you need a stable life for that. A comfortable place to live- (why’s he picturing a garage?) a stable relationship (why’s he picturing a stage fire of all things?). At least stable enough for him to have most of the custody… He’d want a little McQuack to be happy and have a comfortable home and always be able to talk to their dad and not be a traveling latchkey kid like he and Loopey had been most of their years.
Those dreams had followed him all through life but seemed so far away sometimes. Nothing ever worked out, he wasn’t in the place for it so he stopped thinking about it entirely.
Having a partner with a kid of their own, one that he clearly had an attachment to, struck him hard.
“She’s worried, but she might be a little...uh, distant at first. She’s not a trusting person around strangers.”
“I’m not a stranger to her, though,” Launchpad comments, surprised, and catches Drake’s deer-in-the-headlights expression as he swings his head back towards the driver.
“You sort of are,” Drake blurts, tensing up after. “I mean- uh- You don’t act different I guess, I’m not really sure, this is a weird situation and it’ll be weird for her and don’t worry, it’s nothing you’re doing wrong, I just want you to-”
“I’m not mad.”
Launchpad says this staring at Drake, trying to understand why the other is so nervous.
“It’s okay.” He reaches for Drake, across the console, and the swiftness in which the other’s hand finds his is warming. “I’m not gonna be upset with either of you. It’s weird, right?”
“It’s weird,” Drake repeats softly, eyes on the road and expression wistful. “I don’t know how to help you.”
“Well, takin’ me home oughta help,” Launchpad drawls gently, thumb rubbing over Drake’s hand. “At least I’ll get to actually shower. And sleep.”
Drake snorts at that.
“You’re in luck,” The other comments lightly. “Our home’s the next street over. I’ve got everything ready for you.”
His pulse picks up again, and he finds himself frantically eyeing every house they pass for that spark of familiarity. Something to kindle the muddled, dull mess inside him and make it all light again. One of these is his house. One of them.
Launchpad looks over each brick, each panel of siding, every ramshackle lawn ornament and perfect picket fence. None of them call to him, not even when Drake pulls into a modestly-sized house with 537 slapped on the curb and nailed into the pale siding.
“Home sweet home,” Drake says as Launchpad peers forward through the windshield. “Now, uh- I haven’t gotten to clean or anything, so it’s sort of a mess and has been for a couple weeks while… while…”
Launchpad’s already unbuckled his seat belt and is gone.
He steps out onto the driveway and he can vaguely hear Drake squawk something behind him. He stares up at the home, a single-floor and tidy-looking thing. There’s a fence leading to the back, he can see it from here.
Drake appears at his elbow, resting a hand on his arm as he passes.
“So…Uh, so Gos is at- no, I already said that. Uh…if you’re hungry, I can order something in, let me just unlock- Here we go.”
Drake steps through the door, holding it open for Launchpad, who steps through after, a silent shadow.
The lights get snapped on as Drake drops his bag by the door and heads towards the kitchen.
It’s a living room. It’s a lived-in living room, and while Launchpad understands why Drake might have stammered on about cleaning a little, some clutter never bothered him any.
He eyes the hockey sticks in the corner, sparkling water cans on the coffee table that has coasters and rings of glass stains. There’s two fabric couches, they look incredibly inviting, and Launchpad’s reminded of just how achy and tired he is.
There’s a decent sized tv, a Switch charging on a lamp/table combo, but what makes him reel is what’s sitting above the ashen fireplace.
It’s a Darkwing Duck poster, with Jim Starling’s face, framed and hanging like a prized memento.
It’s not a rare poster or anything, he’d be able to tell if it was. But scrawled in neat, cursive handwriting is a name that makes him pause.
“Drake Mallard?” Launchpad says, aloud, and said duck pops into the living room so quickly it makes him jolt.
Why he’s looking around like he’s assessing for danger, Launchpad doesn’t know. He waits for Drake’s eyes to light on him again, then gently touches the poster.
“Oh!” There’s the hesitation again, that wince that Launchpad is starting to really dislike seeing. “Yeah. Uh…”
Launchpad doesn’t scowl often, but he knows he’s frowning, he’s too tired to try and keep it off his face. His ribs ache, he’s exhausted, the burns on his arm are grating against the tshirt he’s wearing, and he wants to remember this place and the ducks who live within it so badly and he doesn’t.
“There was a movie-” Drake begins, hesitantly, and Launchpad gasps so loudly he starts coughing.
“A Darkwing Duck movie?!” He blurts, tiredness lifting right off his shoulders. Okay, so if he can experience that for the first time again, he’ll stop complaining right now. Queue up the movie, get the popcorn, let’s get dangerous!
“Sadly, no,” Drake sighs, staring up at the poster with crossed arms. “It was…well, there was an accident on set and the whole thing got canceled. Not that it was a great script anyway. Damn Boorswan.”
He had something to say but he’s lost it now. He’s staring at Drake, feeling like he’s just at the edge of putting something together.
He thought Drake a decent-looking, if plain duck, when he first saw him. Now, not dwelling on the edge of unconsciousness or scrambling to remember his own name, he can appreciate Drake’s incredibly fit physique, his broad chest and strong forearms, a compact but very capable-looking drake.
He’s got a flash of it, then, of dark-purple sleeves and…and…being held? So wet, water, heat, pain-
LP? Launchpad!
-And then it’s gone. Fleeting enough that he can’t quite grasp it, but enough that certain images stay in his mind now, sitting there staring him in the eyes.
Golden buttons and purple-clad forearms.
“Darkwing.”
Drake’s gaze swivels so quickly that he knows he’s right before he even asks.
“No way,” He said, heart beating wildly in his chest. “Were you Darkwing?”
Drake’s dark eyes widen, beak opening for a split second before snapping shut and spreading into a smile that makes him look years younger.
“Sure was, Buddy,” He says, rolling his shoulders a little. “Yours truly got picked to portray the plucky, prepossessing protagonist himself!”
He can see it. The sudden cockiness invading Drake’s tired and worn figure does have an air of Darkwing’s quality to it. It makes his heart skip a beat.
He applauds, lightly, and watches Drake preen a bit. It’s cute, honestly, and lights a warmth in him that chases some of the gloom away.
“It’s a truly magnificent story- full of deadly danger, a rising hero, a tender romance-”
“Buh?” Launchpad utters. Kathleen Ornis had been an incredible Morgana before the series was canceled, she was well retired now and he can’t imagine anyone else taking her place. Although, he would have been hesitant to recast Jim, too. “Romance?”
“Well, sure,” Drake drops the smirk and the tight hold of his shoulders, melting back into the 30-something year old father he’d introduced himself as. “It’s how we met.”
Oh.
Launchpad feels his cheeks heat as his brain screeches to a halt. It’s been working overtime the past week and it’s decided it’s done. It might be on fire, a little, trying to process his Darkwing-Actor-Boyfriend who views his cancellation as romantic because it’s how they met.
Drake doesn’t seem to catch onto how smooth that was, how Launchpad is now blushing madly and staring at him like he’s from space, and is instead checking his Waddle Watch for the time.
“Hey, Big Guy,” Drake says, in a tone that says the nickname is a casual thing. “I’m going to order pizza before it gets too late. You probably want to shower before bed.”
Drake’s throwing too many things at him at once and he’s getting overwhelmed. Not necessarily in a bad way, but it…it’s a lot.
He likes Darkwing Duck. He was Darkwing Duck, for a minute, and he has a kid and he loves Launchpad and they live together in a house where everything is unfamiliar but homey and welcoming.
He doesn’t understand why he wouldn’t remember something so incredible. Surely that would be burned into his brain no matter how you rattled it around.
“Oh. You don’t know where the bathroom is.” Drake smacks his own forehead, patting Launchpad on the arm. “C’mere, LP.”
He follows, padding down the carpeted hall, between paneled walls that look older than both of them combined.
“Gos has her own bathroom and we share- it’s at the end of the hall, next to my bedroom- oh, which, this is yours-”
Drake reaches into the middle room, snaps on the light, and Launchpad stares blankly at the little room. It has things in it he knows, but the chest of drawers and the bed are different. His pictures- the ones of all his family and friends- cover the walls along with posters and unfamiliar shelving holding very familiar figurines.
The closet is half-open, showing him sleeves of shirts he can remember buying. The duck next to him is still unfamiliar, and Launchpad is now burning with a new question.
“We don’t share a room?” He blurts.
Drake turns brilliantly red, coughing loudly and trying to discreetly tilt his face to the side.
“Uh, no,” The poor duck stammers, “I mean, I like my space, really- not that, not that I don’t like it when you decide to, uh, sleep in mine, or vice versa, I just do better with my own…with my own space. Sometimes. But usually we end up…uh…”
Launchpad watches him stutter all over the place, mystified. Drake said they’d been dating a while, and here he’s acting like a nervous teen drake.
Did he always act like this? No, he’d just been real smooth with the romance thing a second ago. It was frustrating not to remember, to feel everything just scraping the depths of his memory, unable to be brought forth.
“Huh.” Launchpad says, and the Darkwing-Actor valiantly pushes on.
“Anyway! Here are towels… This is the bathroom… I’ll be right here if you need anything at all, okay, LP?”
He nods. And Drake makes his escape, darting noiselessly down the hall with a fluid grace that picks at his brain.
It’s with methodical, detached movements that he collects clothes from the chest of drawers, picking out a shirt he’s worn since he was a high schooler flying prop planes with his parents. He plods into the bathroom with a full brain, thoughts and feeling swimming around trying to find their place.
They said he’ll remember with time. To take it easy, be patient with himself, but it’s frustrating.
What about Drake’s daughter? If he thinks hard enough he can taste cold air and ice, hear clacking in the echoing caverns of his memory. Like Drake seems to be associated with some kind of fire, she’s associated with ice. It’s not enough.
What does she look like? What does she like to do? What does she call him?
Exactly how close are he and Drake- it seems close, he’s got a permanent room and Drake dotes on him like he’s a central part of his life. They have a shared love of Darkwing Duck and what has to be a fantastic first meeting story.
But he can’t remember anything, nothing at all.
Launchpad looks up into the mirror above the sink and winces. The bruises under his eyes are still purplish, making him look even more tired than he already is. The uneven feathering on his face makes him look strange, the bandages clean but strapped too tight. His hair is greasy and stringy, he looks a mess.
The duck in the mirror looks gaunt and tired, nothing like how he should look. This duck has a long-suffering gaze, holds too many secrets to be himself.
Launchpad sighs and turns on the water, leaving the forlorn duck in the mirror where he doesn’t have to look at him anymore.