Work Text:
Lucy opened the front door… to no-one. No-one was there. She looked around and sighed. Another prank, perhaps.
Then she looked down.
There, on the doormat, was a duck. It was unlike any duck she had seen before because it’s ambiguous as to whether Oceania even exists in Purple Hyacinth. Its feathers were a rich, dark brown all over, except for the near-white patch on its underbelly. As ducks typically did, it had a wide, stout stance. It had a black bill with a thick white band across it and its eyes were a piercing silver.
“Oh, aren’t you a handsome fellow,” Lucy admired aloud.
“You flatter me, Lucy, but you should know I am already taken,” the duck said.
Ducks, in Lucy’s experience, did not usually inform her whether they were single or taken. They usually went ‘quack’. But that, she was fairly certain, was no quack.
Lucy screamed bloody murder and reached for her broom, but the floors she had just finished cleaning weren’t dry yet and she slipped over. Immediately upon hearing the noise, Tristan ran down the stairs with a gun in his hand.
“What have you done to Lucy?!” Tristan exclaimed, then paused. “Oh… it’s a duck.”
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to! Tristan, please don’t shoot me!” the duck cried in terror.
Tristan’s eyes widened for a moment in surprise before narrowing in a steely glare. “Is Dakan hiding somewhere or is that duck talking… with his voice?”
Lucy had since stood again and grabbed her broom, looking down on the waterbird with disdain. “It’s the duck, sir.” The duck had never, in its entire week of being a duck, found anything as terrifying as looking up an entire length of broom to Tristan’s maid. Its head shrank back into its body. Tristan also approached, gun in hand.
“If you know it’s me, why does it look like you both want to kill me?!” the duck exclaimed. If ducks were physically able to cry, this one would be sobbing. But unfortunately, ducks cannot cry in the same way humans can. Thus, the duck is not only a victim of toxic masculinity but of the cruel biological prison of fowl forms.
Tristan lowered his gun. “Dakan…? Or would you prefer… ‘Duckan’?” both the duck and Lucy shot him a scathing glare.
“I’m not amused,” the duck said stalely.
“Oh! Why hello Not Amused-!” Tristan began, but Lucy put an end to that sentence by whacking the sweeping end of the broom onto her employer’s head twice with a ‘PAF!’. With how many father figures in Lauren’s life, it was part of her job description to stop the dad jokes right at the roots. In fact, she got a bonus for every horrible pun she squandered.
“Thank you, Lucy,” Duckan said, being duly referred to as such because Lucy cannot hit the author of this fic over the head with a broom for the choice of names used outside of dialogue.
Tristan rubbed his head, “Okay, lesson learned. Back to the topic at hand. My dear, why are you a duck? What happened to you?”
“A week ago, Lizbeth cast a spell on me and turned me into a duck and I have no idea how to turn back! I’ve been wandering the streets of Ardhalis trying to find my way here. I’ve committed so many crimes.”
“I’m not going to arrest you. Even then, I can’t exactly arrest a duck, Dakan.”
“Yeah, it’s usually shoot on sight for infractions of the law. I should know. It’s a man-shoot-duck and duck-eat-worm world out there. One of your officers in the 11th district – not Lauren, mind you – almost put me in an early grave.”
“Speaking of an early grave, given how old you are for a duck…”
Duckan looked terrified, “Oh gods, Tristan, how long are ducks meant to live? Am I the same age as before or am I now a single week old? If I ever become human again, what will I look like?”
“You will look as beautiful as you always do. Here, let me get you cleaned up. You must be tired and feral from your journey.”
“I don’t think you should pick me up, dear. I’m a wild bird. What if I have fleas or worms? I could get you sick.”
“Then we will be sick together,” Tristan said with a great air of confidence. Lucy backed away slowly to maintain social distancing. Not noticing her movements, Tristan crouched down to pick up the duck, but Duckan backed away.
“My breath smells like pondwater and I have mud all over my feet! Vaccinations against tetanus don’t exist in this universe yet!”
“Neither do talking ducks. Besides, I’ve experienced worse,” Tristan said, then scooped Duckan up before another word came out of his bill.
“You’re… you’re really strong.”
“Dakan, I know you like flattering me and I know you must be in a lot of shock, but I will remind you in case you have forgotten: You are a duck. You are about one fortieth of your human weight, if that.”
“Oh, right. I was so enamoured by you that I forgot. I think my brain is too small to handle the nuance of human relationships at the moment. Or to remember anything other than traumatic experiences.”
“Well, until your mental state is sorted, let’s get you cleaned up, shall we?”
With his now extremely portable boyfriend tucked under his arm, Tristan headed up to the master bathroom, which had the larger of the two bathtubs in the house. Duckan was plopped down into the ceramic valley, his vision suddenly engulfed by shiny white walls and Tristan looming over the edge.
“I am deeply afraid,” the waterfowl admitted.
“Well, Deeply Afraid, I can assure you that you will be completely fine,” Tristan said as he turned on the tap. There was a storm of rapidly approaching footsteps throughout the house as Lucy leapt into the room and smacked Tristan on the head again with her broom. When Tristan turned to look at her, she had completely disappeared, leaving all but a dull throbbing pain on his head.
Water filled up the tub and began to rise under Duckan’s feet. As it reached his breast, the water picked him up as the level raised and he simply began to float. Then there was some birdly instinct that took over as he dunked his head under the water, raised it up and shook his wings about to clean himself.
“There he is, the love of my life,” Tristan commented as he braced himself from the water splashing everywhere.
Suddenly, Lauren appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. “Hey, I’m home- What the hell is going on here?”
“Lauren?” Duckan said. “I mean… qUaCk?”
Lauren stared at her godfather, then at her uncle, then back at her godfather.
“So,” Tristan started to explain, but there were literally no other words to follow to explain anything.
Lauren stared more. “He’s a duck.”
Tristan nodded. “He is, in fact, a duck, yes.”
“And you don’t know how to fix that?”
“N…o…” Duckan admitted stiltedly.
Lauren clasped her hands together, clearly on the fringe of losing her shit while also trying to not lose her shit. “Uncle, have you tried kissing him?”
“…What?” Both Tristan and Duckan said.
“You know, true love’s kiss. Like in the fairytales you used to read me. It undoes curses. My boyfriend got turned to a cat again last week and when I kiss him, it usually turns him back.”
Realisation dawned on Duckan’s face, as much as human-recognisable realisation could dawn on a duck’s face. He splashed around even more, acting more like an excited duckling that the Right Hand- oh sorry, Right Wing of the King. “Ah, curse my thick skull and hard head! I think I remember now! That must be it! Tristan, kiss me!”
Tristan needed no further incentive. He scooped Duckan out of the water and planted a light kiss on his bill, which I (as a very hypocritical author) probably would not recommend anyone actually do. There was a flash of light and instantly, instead of a duck, there was regular Dakan, in his full castle uniform, sitting knee-deep in the water. He sat back in the tub, a little dazed and shocked.
“Tristan.”
“Yes, dear?”
“How old am I?”
“Your age hasn’t been confirmed in canon, but you’re as old as you were when you were last human.”
Dakan heaved a sigh of relief. “Thank the gods. And thank you both.”
Tristan cupped his lover’s face earnestly. “Dakan, I want you to know that I will always love you, even if you are a duck. Hell, even if you were a worm, you would still be my one and only.”
“The wedding would be a bit awkward, though,” Lauren chimed in, and smiled innocently as both of her godfathers glared at her momentarily before attention turned back to Dakan.
“Funny. Now that I’m human again, I seem to remember everything.” Dakan said, “I even remember the spell Lizbeth used against me. And, well, there is no-one else I know who is as loveless as her…”
/////
Dakan held out the lizard in front of Arthur. She was an unpleasant brown colour, quite wide in stature and covered in saggy scaled skin. The young prince watched as she licked her own eye and moved the other eye back to look at the person holding her.
“Unhand me this instant, Rhysmel,” Lizardbeth seethed.
“Mommy…?” Arthur said.
“Your mother’s appearance now matches her personality, Arthur,” Dakan told him with an insidious smile.
Arthur stared dumbly for a moment before looking up at Dakan with pleading eyes. “Can I keep it?”
“Yes. Be sure to feed her lots of roaches.” The prince was handed the lizard. As she was cradled in her son’s arms, she glared at the Right Hand.
“I hate you,” she grumbled.
“Good,” Dakan smiled.