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kazoosandfannypacks · 3 months ago

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Summary: When Gandra needs help creating a virtual laboratory, she enlists the help of fellow misunderstood scientist Fenton Crackshell Cabrera, who agrees to help with only one stipulation: that their partnership remain strictly professional this time. How hard can that be? (Set somewhere between The Dangerous Chemistry of Gandra Dee! and Beaks in the Shell! missing moment; canon compliant.) Word Count: 4234 a/n: I decided to post this as a oneshot here on tumblr, but it's posted as multiple chapters on ao3, so if you'd like to read it that way, that's an option as well! Taglist: I don't currently have a taglist for DuckTales or Fendra fics! if you'd like to be added to one, let me know!

Strictly Professional

"It's now or never," Gandra muttered to herself, opening up her phone for the millionth time and typing in the contact name SUIT.

Before she had a chance to talk herself out of it again, she hit the call button, almost hoping he wouldn't pick up.

"Hello?" the voice on the other line came back, confused but not entirely appalled, which was a good sign.

"It's me, Gandra."

"Uh, yeah," he said, "I've got this great new invention that they call 'Caller ID.' Let's you know pretty quickly when a crook is on the line."

"Really?" Gandra asked, trying to hide her surprise and offense with a calculated sarcasm, "and here I assumed that you'd deleted my number by now."

"I never got around to it," he replied, "I've been pretty busy these past few weeks."

"Too busy to help with a project?" Gandra asked, and after a moment of silence, she let her feigned confidence fall. "Listen, Suit, you've got every reason to say no to me, but I'm working on something bigger than me, and I need someone like you to help me out. No one else understands what I'm doing."

After another moment of silence, a strained reply came back.

"You're right that I have every reason to say no," he grumbled.

"This was a mistake," Gandra thought, but before she could stumble through an apology and hang up, he continued:

"But, in the name of scientific curiosity, what is it?"

"A major coding project that's going to revolutionize indie tech," she said, "one that I can't work on alone."

"That's not very specific."

"It's not something I can tell you," she said, "it's something I have to show you. Does the Gizmoduck helmet have VR capacity?"

"Oh, you'd love to know that," he huffed.

Right. He also had every reason to be protective of the Gizmosuit around her.

"Well, if you have a VR headset," she backtracked, "and you want to be part of the next scientific revolution, just follow the link I'm about to text you."

"That sounds awful fishy."

"It's legitimate," she said, "you can run a triple spyware check on it— you won't find anything."

"I'll be the judge of that."

"And once you've judged it correctly and your natural 'scientific curiosity' gets the better of you," she said, "I'll be waiting."

With that, she hung up, sent him the link, and then put on her own virtual reality headset.

***

It always took a few seconds to adjust from the dark corridors of FOWL to the well-lit virtual laboratory she'd programmed. She blinked a couple times as her surroundings flickered into view— in the distance, a crashtest chamber and a large worktable, as well as an enormous whiteboard scribbled with calculations and a lab table covered in beakers and test tubes that had multiple tubes and coils connecting them. In front of her was a disorganized desk, and she got up and took a seat on the edge of it.

The lab was the only thing that made joining FOWL worth it, her one sanctuary from all the small-minded voices calling her a freak. This had been her safe space the past few months, a place all her own, and she had taken a big risk in inviting someone else to invade it.

She'd started out this project starry-eyed and ambitious, but the longer she worked, the longer she knew it would take her, and the more she realized she'd bitten off more than she could chew. If FOWL found out what she was doing before she got it finished, everything would be lost. As much as she hated admitting it, she needed help.

It wasn't long before her virtual solitude was interrupted by a rift in the system, followed by the entry of a familiar face sitting across from her at her desk chair.

"Blathering blather…." he began, but his trademark phrase trailed off when he saw her.

"Didn't think you'd actually show up," Gandra said, not entirely untruthfully.

"Where are we?" he asked, looking around with astonishment.

"This?" Gandra asked, gesturing around the room with her hand. "My lab."

"Remarkable," he said, touching the handles of his chair with astonishment at their solidity, "a virtual laboratory."

"And check this," Gandra said. She waved a hand and a beaker appeared in each of her hands, "chromic acid and acetic acid."

She watched the fear on his face as she poured the two chemicals together. Predictably, they exploded in her hand, sending virtual shards of glass around the room. She then held her hand up, unscathed, showing there'd been no cause for concern.

"Perfectly safe," she said.

"No real elements, no real danger!" he smiled.

"Exactly," Gandra said, "once we get this server up and running, the scientific community will be able to perform any experiments we want, without all the big shots calling us crackpots."

"We?" he asked, the wonder on his face replaced with apprehension.

"I can't do this alone," Gandra said, her calm airs wavering. "I need your help, Fenton. For the name of science?"

She held a hand out for him to shake, and for a second, the look in his eyes said he was considering it— but he then closed his eyes and shook his head.

"Don't you work for FOWL now?" he asked.

"I work for myself," Gandra clarified, "and as soon as I've finished pirating FOWL tech for this, I'm leaving them for good."

"But that doesn't change now, Gandra," he said. "You're running an entire server right under FOWL's nose and putting everything shared here at risk."

Gandra took a deep breath. This conversation was still going a lot better than she'd realistically expected, but nowhere near as great as she'd hoped it would. Without his help, she'd never get the cloud up and running before FOWL found out.

"As a proud McDuck Enterprises employee," he said, "well, technically, two McDuck Enterprises employees, if you count Gizmoduck, either way, as a McDuck Enterprises employee, I can't support this project."

"I figured," Gandra said. She started to put her hand back down, but he quickly took it and shook it firmly.

"But from one scientist to another," he said, "you've got yourself a partner."

She smiled. "Partner?"

"Professional work partner," he said, quickly letting go of her hand. His tone shifted from lighthearted to serious, "strictly professional."

Gandra nodded. After what she'd done, that was only fair for him to request as well.

"You've got a deal," she smiled, "partner."

Fenton's touch on the lab was revolutionary. With a fresh set of eyes, he pointed out things that she had grown a little too accustomed to to notice.

"Why do scientists always have to work in these cramped lab spaces, anyway?" he had asked, early on.

"It's a controlled environment," she'd replied.

"This whole world is a controlled environment," Fenton said, "can't you just imagine being able to work on even the most delicate of experiments outside, with no spacial limits or threat to public safety? Why work inside a box for ideas that think outside of it?"

It wasn't a bad suggestion at all, and they'd spent the next two weeks creating plants, trees, and multiple different environmental backdrops.

"We need quick-access lab tables," Fenton said, sometime later after the third daily digital trek to the labspace from their current outdoor work area, "all the essentials from privately built laboratories right at your fingertips."

It was a great idea, and Gandra set to work on it immediately.

"This place needs some kind of time function," he said, a few weeks later.

"What do you mean?" Gandra asked.

"Optional day and night cycles, or built in alarms after extended sessions," he said, "it's easy enough to get lost in your work in the real world, and it's proven easier now that we're up in the clouds. The amount of times I've gotten out of the cloud late and M'ma had dinner waiting a little too long…."

Gandra couldn't remember much more of what Fenton said in the rest of that sentence, only that it continued for at least a minute or two before Gandra could get a word in edgewise, and that, while it wasn't the first time she'd been party to one of his rambles, and it wouldn't be the last either. Though she could see how others might be annoyed by his constant rambling, she was almost endeared by it. Too long she'd worked in silence, and she didn't mind him filling it.

What surprised Gandra the most about their whole operation, though, was how well she and Fenton worked together. She'd expected some awkward tension, arguments over the best way to do something, a struggle for power over who gets the final say.

Instead, they made a great team. Fenton's big ideas paired perfectly with her recklessness, especially with no real threat of danger to hold them back. His tendency to stay on task helped her stay focused, and once she realized how easily time crept away from him, she started reminding him to take more frequent breaks. Somehow they both made up for the areas the other lacked in knowledge. Despite her fears about this joint project, she almost wished she'd enlisted his help sooner.

"Blatherskites, Gandra!" Fenton said one morning as he signed onto the server, "Are you still at it?"

Gandra didn't look up from her microscope.

"Good morning to you too, Suit," she grumbled.

"Did you manage to figure out the bug in the system?" Fenton asked.

"I think so," she said, pulling a glitching object spawn out from underneath the scope, "turns out, the bug was an actual bug." She pulled up the task manager with a pinch of her thumb and her index finger. "If I restart the program, that should fix the whole thing."

She watched as the bug in her hand curled into a ball, then popped back to life and crawled away across the table, not a single pixel popping out of place.

"That's incredible," Fenton said.

Gandra looked up at him for half a second, half a second too long.

"It's no big deal," Gandra smiled, and the mere fact that she was smiling at Suit told her more than she was willing to listen to.

"Sure," he said, though he shook his head as he did, and it took conscious effort not to watch as he walked away to begin the day's work.

Moments like these kept happening, despite her best efforts. A little too much appreciation here, a touch too much eye contact there, a growing acknowledgement of admiration for each other— all of this was adding up into something she couldn't let happen, not again.

Later that day came the first of the worst of them all. Fenton had this awful habit, one that only grew over his time spent in the cloud, where whenever he was lost in his own little bubble, as though he were the only one who could hear himself, he would start singing.

This would've been an annoying habit if he was moderately alright at it. It would've been irritating if he was horrible. But, unfortunately for Gandra, he was the worst thing of all: really, really really good at it. The first time she'd heard him, she'd almost thought he was just testing out the cloud's mp3 capability, and it took her a second to realize that no, that was Fenton's singing voice, and even more startling was that she enjoyed hearing it.

Today was no exception, as he absentmindedly started singing some showtune that carried from his workstation across the way to her. For reasons she wouldn't bring herself to admit out loud, she stopped her work and just listened, and watched the look on his face as he sat at his desk, fully engrossed in his work and lost in the melody he was singing.

What washed over her next was a wonderful feeling, and the horrible realization that came with it.

She was falling for him.

"Hey, Suit," Gandra said, leaning over the edge of his desk.

"Hey, Gandra," he said.

"I think I finally got the day/night cycles worked out," she said.

"That's great," Fenton smiled.

"I might need a second pair of eyes to monitor them with me," she said, "just to make sure I didn't miss anything. Know anyone who can help?"

"I'm your man," he said.

"I wish," Gandra thought.

"Besides," Fenton said, minimizing his desk, "I needed a break from the physics coding."

"I think the optimal spot is right over here," Gandra said, generating a blanket on the ground in front of them, and reclining on it, "that way we can best get a visual on the sunset, and then get a check on the constellations and make sure those aren't funky either."

"Sounds great," Fenton said, and he took a seat on the blanket as well, just about as far from her as he could be while still sitting on it.

"Note to self," Gandra thought, "next time, program a smaller blanket."

No, this wasn't her best idea, not by a long shot, but in the past week and a half, her falling for Fenton had only exponentially increased in acceleration. She'd agreed to maintain a strictly professional relationship with him, and she wouldn't risk the project to ask him out on a date or anything like that— no, not at all. Surely, though, there was nothing more professional than getting a second opinion on your contribution to a shared project, right? And if it happened that they were watching a beautifully programmed sunset together and spending a few hours stargazing afterwards, that wasn't really her fault, was it?

***

"Suit," Gandra said, hurriedly, trying to play it cool as Fenton logged into the server, "I finally finished that project of mine."

"Does that mean I finally get to find out what it is?" Fenton asked.

"Yeah," Gandra smiled, "remember last week when I fixed the bug where you get thrown out of moving vehicles?"

"The fix we tested with that long drive together down the backroads of the cloud?" Fenton asked.

"Yeah," Gandra sheepishly replied, then regained her confidence, "I thought today we'd really put that to the test. Behold!"

With a wave of her hands, a wrought iron fence with a wide-open gate sprawled before them.

"What's that?" Gandra asked.

"Carnival," she said, and she walked through the gate, with him following close behind, "I figure it has everything we need to really put those vehicle mechanics through their paces: drop tower, ferris wheel, carousel, rollercoaster, scrambler, tunnel o' love, bumper cars…"

"Is that really necessary?" Fenton stopped in his tracks.

"Bumper cars?" Gandra asked, "oh sure. The crash testing alone is…."

"The 'tunnel o' love, Gandra?'"

"Don't be ridiculous, Suit," Gandra said, "of course it is. We haven't done any real testing so far on boats, running water, lighting, or realistic sound quality in tunnels, and that way we can kill four birds with one stone."

"Alright then," Fenton smiled, "let's start there."

***

"I just had another thought," Gandra said one afternoon, as if it wasn't something she'd been thinking since at least their carnival experiment last week, "we've put a lot of testing into users interacting with the physical world."

"Indeed," Fenton said.

"But we haven't put much test into users interacting with each other."

"How do you figure?" Fenton asked.

"Well, I know that when I touch something," Gandra said, reaching across her desk to tap a fist on Fenton's desk, "I can feel it. I don't pass through it."

"That's right," Fenton said, "there's a mass effect applied to each individual object, otherwise we'd spend all our time here in the cloud falling through the terrain."

"Right," Gandra said, "but can we interact with other users in the same way? Can we pull them out of the way of a stupid mistake, or high-five them when they get something right?"

"We can find out," Fenton said. He held a hand up in the air, and Gandra high-fived him, letting her hand linger a moment longer than she'd intended.

"Perfectly fine to me," Fenton said, and he turned back to his work.

"But does the system have any issue with sustained contact?" Gandra asked, "and on another note, is there an auditory lag between server accesses?"

"I hadn't considered that," Fenton shrugged, "I suppose we could brainstorm some tests."

"Oh, I have an idea for one," Gandra said, tucking her hair behind her ear, coyly, as though the idea had come on suddenly and not been premeditated before the conversation even began.

"What is it?"

"This is gonna sound silly," Gandra said, "but what about dancing?"

"Dancing?" Fenton looked up at her, a bit nervous.

"Yeah, it was a silly idea."

"No," he quickly interjected, "no, I think it'll work. The musical accompaniment provides auditory testing, and attempts to keep in time with the music and each other should take care of the rest."

"Perfect," Gandra snapped her fingers and cleared away their desks, replacing them instead with a standard jukebox, one that, coincidentally, only played ballroom dance music in three fourths time.

Fenton generated a coin into his hand and dropped it into the slot of the jukebox, then pushed a couple buttons.

"The Blue Danube" Gandra said, recognizing the song as it began playing.

"You hear it too?" Fenton asked, "good."

"So that part of the test is working properly," Gandra nodded, "now…."

"Miss Dee," he asked, holding out a hand to her as the music swelled in the background, "shall we dance?"

Prince Charming in all his glory couldn't've looked better in that moment than Fenton, still with a virtual labcoat over his standard garb, the digitized ballroom music from the jukebox playing in the background.

"For the sake of science," Gandra said, "I suppose I ought to say yes."

She took his hand and tried not to show her delight as his other hand rested on her side, or at the smile on his face as she placed her own hand on his shoulder.

"Have you ever danced the waltz before, Gandra?" he asked.

"Once or twice," Gandra said, hoping she wouldn't have to reveal that all of those times were in the last week, in preparation for this very moment, "have you?"

Fenton sighed, and began moving with the pace of the music, Gandra following suit.

"M'ma enrolled me in dance lessons when I was younger," he said, "I suppose I should thank her for it. A lot of the principles I learned there really come into play for Gizmoduck."

"Really?" Gandra asked.

"Oh, sure," Fenton said, and as the music twirled, so did they, "don't tell your buddies at FOWL, but if they sent a ballroom dance virtuoso against Gizmoduck, they'd win every time."

"My lips are sealed, Suit," she said.

At exactly the right moment, he spun her out, then back towards himself with magnificent flair, and she found herself closer to him than she'd been before. She also noticed that the daylight they'd been in when they started had shifted to another perfect sunset. Had she been a bit more focused, she would've pondered the sudden change in the skies, a change hours ahead of schedule. She might've even begun to wonder who, between the two of them, had the thoughts and ideas that began this change, settling in a new ambiance, replacing what had been with a gentler, almost romantic mood as they danced across their virtual outdoor laboratory. Had she been paying attention, she probably still couldn't've been sure which of them set the early sunset in motion, anyways, so maybe it was for the better that she chose not to think of it and instead focused that attention on her partner.

"And where'd you learn to dance?" he asked.

"I've been taking lessons," she said, "I've gotta keep my skills up and make it at least look like I'm trying next time Gizmoduck gets the jump on me. Word around the street is that he's getting pretty good at what he does."

Febton smiled like an absolute dork, which was fortunately the way Gandra liked him.

"I'll have to tell 'Gizmoduck' later that you said that," he teased, "he has such little self esteem these days."

"I don't see why," Gandra said, with a smile, "I happen to think he's a pretty great guy."

"I am? I mean, he is?" Fenton asked, and though he stumbled over his words, his feet didn't falter.

"Yeah," Gandra smiled.

"I'll take that as a compliment," he said, "you know, you're not so bad yourself, for a FOWL agent."

"Is that all I am to you?" Gandra asked, and though her words maintained the lighthearted tone set by their light footwork, she meant it, having been wondering for weeks why he stuck around so long on this project in the little minimal amounts of free time he had between jobs.

"No, not quite," he said.

Against her better judgment she asked, "then what am I?" and for a terrifying second it seemed he might answer.

But instead, as they followed through the steps of the music, he led her into a dip and held her there, as though frozen in time.

She looked up at him as a star or two began to twinkle into existence in the lavender skies behind him. His arms, wrapped around her, supporting her back, were strong but gentle, and so were his eyes, overpowering, intense, and yet resting on her with the most gentle softness she'd ever known— and all that intensity and passion seemed to be directed at her.

If she could've stayed there forever, her hands around his neck, their beaks inches apart, his eyes washing her in their rich beauty and hers doing the same to him, she would've done it in a heartbeat. As it was, he already held her there a measure longer than the flow of the song necessitated, and then another and another, as though building to some beautiful unspoken climax.

But that climax never came. The song behind them ended, not naturally, but suddenly, so suddenly she expected to hear a record scratch.

In that same moment, Fenton sighed, and averted his gaze from her as he stood her back to her feet and let her go.

They both stood in front of each other for a moment, Fenton still not looking her in the eyes.

"You need to continue the project without me," he said, quickly and quietly.

"What?" Gandra asked, hoping she'd misheard him, "I can't do this without you, Suit."

"You can," he said, coldly, "you're one of the most brilliant minds I know."

"I need you here, Fenton," she restated, and she knew she wasn't just referring to the project they'd started.

"I can't," he said, "not now. Not anymore."

"Why not?" Gandra asked, hoping she could soften the blow and slow the shattering of her suddenly very heavy heart.

"We made an agreement when we started, Gandra," he shook his head and tucked his hands into the pockets of his labcoat, "but I feel I can no longer continue a professional working relationship with you."

"Why not?" Gandra asked, "if it's something I…"

"It's not you," Fenton said.

"Then why can't you stay?"

He closed his eyes and answered quietly, with a shrug of his shoulders. "Because I'm still in love with you."

Her heart stopped and started all over again.

"What?" Gandra asked.

"Do I have to spell it out for you?" He asked, with frustration in his tone that didn't seem to be directed at her. "I never stopped loving you. I fell for you when I first met you, and that never changed. After you betrayed me, and then came back to help me, then left again without a word, you'd think I'd start to like you at least a little bit less! Somehow," he shook his head and took a deep breath, "somehow I like you even more. Why do you think I agreed to work with you again? Why do you think I'm even still here, Gandra?"

"But you said when we started," she said, "'strictly professional.'"

"I needed to remind myself of that," he said. "The first time I trusted you, it almost hurt a lot of people, people I care about. I can't have that happening again. I thought maybe this time I wouldn't get attached," and he stopped just a moment, and he looked her in the eyes for half a second, before shaking his head and turning away, "but even the great Fenton Crackshell Cabrera can't do the impossible. I have to go."

"No," Gandra said, "no, you don't. This time's different."

"Really?" Fenton asked, "what makes this time any different from last time?"

Some feelings had always been natural for Gandra: disappointment, insecurity, regret. But this feeling? It was a totally unfamiliar territory.

But unfamiliar territory was what science was all about. She took a step closer to him, and took his hand in hers, and he looked down at it in surprise, and then back up at her.

"Because this time I like you too, Fenton."

He smiled that same dorky smile again.

"Really?" he asked, but then let his guard back up, "and how do I know I can trust you?"

He'd turned his face away from her again, but she placed her hand on his cheek and tilted his head back towards her.

"Look into my eyes," she said, "I trusted you with the virtual lab, and now look at what it's become— look at what we made together."

"We do make a pretty good team," he said, with a halfhearted chuckle.

"Suit," she said, "I trust you, and I like you. Can you trust me too?"

He smiled, and wrapped his hand around hers as it rested on his cheek.

"I trust you," he said.

She smiled, and though she'd be reluctant to admit it, she may have giggled a little as he kissed her forehead.

"So," she asked, "partners?"

"Strictly professional workplace partners?" Fenton asked, with a raised eyebrow, "or strictly 'only professional when we're in the workplace, otherwise, perchance, daresay, romantic and wholesome and loving partners?'"

Gandra laughed. "That second one sounds about right."

"Then you've got yourself a deal," he said, "partner."

And this deal they sealed not with a handshake, but with a hug and a kiss, the beginning of the most lovely partnership any two scientists had ever begun.

#fendra #gandra dee #fenton crackshell cabrera #ducktales 2017 #dt17 #fanfiction #fanfic #fendra fanfiction #dt17 ff #kazzy writes #every day they're out there writing ducktales

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