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squishmallow36 · 3 years ago

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Fitz Vacker and The Secret Museum

I've watched too much Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum so I inevitably decided to make it into a Fedex fic.

For those of you who don't know, Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum is a show on PBS kids where Xavier, his sister Biana, and their best friend Brad travel back in time and meet various historical figures.

Tw: homophobia

I'm sorry but I needed an inciting incident and Fitz being all Aldeny and horrible was my first instinct.

On ao3 https://archiveofourown.org/works/35409928 or below the cut

Ready for Adventure? 🎵 Who’s that kid who can travel through time? Fitzy Vacker and the Secret Museum Which great heroes will we find? Fitzy Vacker and the Secret Museum Every single boy and girl Has what it takes To change the world Fitzy Vacker and the Secret Museum Dex and Biana and the Secret Museum Mr. Snuggles and the Secret Museum Fitzy Vacker and the Secret Museum🎵 Shh!

“Hi there, and Welcome to the show!” Fitz’s crisply accented voice somewhere between British, Italian, and I didn't even bother to ask rings out. Just another intro. Just like any other.

Except it isn’t. There’s a gigantic projection, courtesy of Keefe, of my number one historical crush on the wall behind us, and that just spells disaster.

“Today we’re meeting a brilliant computer scientist, Alan Turing!” Biana adds.

I recite from my mental script drawn from too-memorized Wikipedia, “He was a codebreaker for the British during World War II, and designed the Turing Machine.”

“That’s basically a model for the computers we all know and love. I’ve been told that enough times for it to finally stick. A little,” Fitz clarifies.

“I’m proud of you,” I say quietly.

Biana explains, “Much of the modern technology we have today, like phones and laptops, wouldn’t be possible without him!”

Fitz glances at me and his mouth forms a different word. “He’s done a bunch of other cool things, but I refuse to make Dex wait any longer. Start the show.”

The big red button appears at Keefe’s command, and I press it excitedly.

I’m sitting in my room, working on my newest comic. My art might not have improved much since ever, but for some reason I keep trying like it’ll magically improve overnight just because I had some dumb idea.

Usually at two or three a.m..

This time is no different, although it might be a dumber idea than usual. Or ever. I still haven’t figured out how bad it’ll be.

I don’t notice Fitz until he scares me by asking, “Whatcha doing?”

I pop an earbud out and turn off my music, immediately defensive. “Just working on a comic,” I try to say nonchalantly.

“Can I see? Is it another issue in the adventures of Bikeman or Dexman?”

I feel my cheeks heating up and I close the drawing app. “Bikeman was discontinued years ago, and, no, he’s not getting resurrected. You can see it when it’s done. And I’m not answering your question.”

“I’m intrigued.”

“That’s a big word for you.”

Fitz shrugs. “Frederick Douglass, what can I say? Are you going to tell me about it or not?”

Frederick Douglass is actually one of the more memorable heroes we’ve visited. Maybe it’s because I’m hearing ‘surreptitious’ all the time, but for some reason his love of learning and humongous words stuck.

“Hmm...not. You can see it when it’s done.”

It takes many more hours than I’d hoped and Fitz leaves to go scavenge for food twice before it’s done and the sky is starting to turn pink.

“Alright. I think it’s ready…” even if I might not be…

“Please don’t tell me we have a Zora Neale Hurston situation.”

A couple months ago, I had to pick a book to do a book report, and a book by her was on there. That reminded me of when I made the comic about how I got my cape and the fact that we had to go back a bajillion years just because Fitz and Biana wanted to see it.

Yeah, everything turned out fine, but I will not be making that same mistake again.

“I learned my lesson last time,” I tell Fitz, handing him my drawing tablet. “I don’t feel like a secret museum trip today either way.”

“Do you ever feel like a secret museum trip?” He asks, not waiting for an answer before his attention shifts to the comic.

He takes a few seconds to read before looking up and the bottom falls out of my stomach. “Does this mean what I think it means?” he whispers.

I can’t form a coherent response, and I feel the hot tears start climbing their way up my throat, and I start running. Down the stairs, out of my room. I normally don’t like the outside but I can’t breathe with these walls around me.

I vaguely see Biana out of the corner of my eye standing in the kitchen and she says something I don’t quite catch as I race past.

I lean against a tree Fitz used to beat with a stick for no good reason when he and I were, like, seven, and slide to the ground.

I hear Biana yelling at Fitz but don’t pay any particular attention to it. I do take note that I don’t hear him arguing back.

It gets quiet for a few seconds, until Biana says, standing just inside the front door, “Stay, Fitzroy.”

It’s a dark day when I can’t even dredge up a smile at ‘Fitzroy.’

Hands on her hips, just out of alignment with the sun so that when I try to look at her I get blinded, Biana asks, “What happened?”

“Not now, Bi. How about you go ask Wonderboy,” I snap.

She says, “Come on,” grabbing my wrist and trying to drag me to who knows where.

“Where are you taking me?” I ask, lying limply on the ground so that she won’t take me wherever she wants me to be.

“To the secret museum. Obviously. That means you too, Fitzipoo. Get over here.”

“You know I can walk, right?” I ask Biana.

She looks at me, and slowly releases my wrist.

It takes longer than I’d like to reach the museum.

And by that I mean it’s a lot of running.

I have to stop halfway through and tell Biana to wait up to catch my breath. I don’t run much. She just keeps going.

Fitz is part of the track team still, so he’s perfectly fine even though track should be for short distances at high speeds, not forever and a half at Biana speed.

Getting up the stairs to the museum is a major challenge, almost as much as when it’s covered in snow and we have to shovel it.

I trail just behind Biana and Fitz, making sure to wave to Verdi the T-Rex, and feel a disproportionate amount of relief when we don’t have to use the tornado to get into the secret museum.

“I wonder who the museum will take us to meet,” Fitz says with none of his usual enthusiasm.

Biana, trying desperately to make up for it, adds, “And where we’ll go!”

“And when,” I finish, voice cracking for no good reason.

Biana isn’t totally insane and lets us use the chair.

Although that’s not as good of a thing as I originally thought.

The last time it fit all three of us comfortably, Fitz and I were maybe ten, while Biana was maybe nine.

And Fitz sits in the middle because that’s how it’s always worked.

I don’t hesitate to press the statue’s tooth to send us down there after noticing the visible distance Fitz is maintaining around me.

Biana says, “Look out below,” like she always does while sliding down the pole.

“Hi Keefe,” Fitz greets, more out of politeness than actually wanting to say hi.

Keefe is a small, spherical red robot with antennae that match Fitz’s translator that he used to always wear. I sometimes wonder what happened to that sweatshirt.

It’s probably around here somewhere.

Biana makes up for it, doubling her usual excitement, when she greets Keefe.

I still haven’t figured out this whole-sliding-down-a-pole thing. I hit the ground ungracefully and say, “Hi Keefe. You couldn’t have installed stairs since last time.”

Biana is still filling in for Fitz, from the excited humming as she runs towards the screen that shows all of the relevant information.

I don’t have much energy left and stand up shakily before starting to walk. There are stairs over there. I don’t understand why the pole is necessary to get down here.

I only get distracted once by Bach’s piano because I almost walk right into it.

“We’re getting something,” Biana says from the dais, in a not-so-subtle attempt to make me hurry up.

I get up there and Fitz says, “It’s...I have no clue what that is.”

I smile because I know exactly what it is. “That is a very rough Turing Machine. Which’ll probably be explained at some point because there’s no cell service down here to check Wikipedia.”

“Well, it belonged to Alan Turing. That’s who we’re going to meet,” Biana says.

“And we’re going back to England in 1928. That’s like a hundred years ago.”

“Don’t give me that tone, Dexter. We’ve gone back to Ancient Egypt.”

“Technically Cleopatra was the last Greek ruler before the Romans took over Egypt, but I get the point.”

“Yeah, well, I hope Alan Turing can help you two figure out whatever happened because this is way out of my league.”

“Only one way to find out...ready for adventure?” Fitz asks flatly.

“Ready!” Biana declares, aggressively excited.

I reply, “Ready,” nowhere near ready.

We start levitating, you know, as you do, and Biana says, “Here we go!”

Automatically, Fitz says, “It’s happening!”

Biana throws Mr. Snuggles onto Fitz’s head as always, saying, “Hang on, Mr, Snuggles!”

I really don’t know how he stays on Fitz’s head but I don’t know how time travel is supposed to work, so, I mean, it just kind of falls under suspension of disbelief.

I don’t understand how to stay upright, like Fitz and Biana can. It’s probably a Vacker thing.

It's their museum after all, both the normal one and the secret one, and I’ve just been dragged into it because I’m their friend.

A library materializes around us, and the smell of old books actually helps with the dizziness inherent to time travel.

Keefe starts scanning people to figure out which one’s Alan Turing. Like it isn’t extraordinarily obvious because there are literally three others in here, two of whom are blond.

“Keefe says he’s that one,” Biana whispers, “he’s cute.”

It’s things like that that convince me that she knows all the secrets anyone has ever tried to hide.

I know he’s cute. Don’t you even make me think about that.

I, unsuccessfully, look at her like she’s gone crazy.

Fitz has wandered off, distracted by some old books. Sometimes I want to bring him back to the library of Alexandria before, you know, it got burned down.

Just to watch his head explode. He’s still mad about that.

I realize that I shouldn’t just be standing around, so I find a book and sit not directly across from Alan Turing, at the same table.

I pretend to read while stealing glances at Alan until he tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling and sighs.

I raise an eyebrow, and he notices me as his head tilts forward again.

“Sorry,” he says. “Just a problem being a bit...never mind.”

I see his scribbles that look sort of like math, and suggest, “Do you want me to take a look? Maybe a fresh set of eyes could catch something.”

“You know what? Have at it,” he replies, shuffling the papers over to me. “I don’t believe I caught your name.”

“Dex Dizznee. And yours?”

“Alan Turing. Pleasure to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Alan.”

Okay, is this level of barely-contained excitement what Biana felt when we met George Washington? Because if that’s the case, I am fully ready to make a fool of myself.

I study the pages Alan’s given me, one of which is the one from the secret museum of a very early Turing Machine sketch and equation scribbles, and it takes a few minutes of Alan holding his head in his hands, massaging his temples to find the issue.

“You’re gonna hate me for this,” I say when I’m certain of the problem in his equations.

“May I ask why?”

I turn the paper towards him and point near the middle of a major step. “You dropped a square in the denominator here.”

“Ah. That’s what I get for working all through the night I guess.”

“I understand. I’ve started a project at a decent hour--let’s say ten--and the next thing I know is that it’s dawn.”

Alan smiles and says, “Speaking of having no sense of time, I’ve just realized that I’m late for class. It was nice meeting you, Dex.”

“You too, Alan.”

He reaches his hand out for a handshake over the table as he stands up, and I have no choice but to take it, trembling hands and all.

He leaves, and before I can even turn back around, Biana is slipping into his seat.

“I still say he’s cute.”

I glare at her, “He plays for the other team, Bi. I don’t think he’d be interested.”

I’m seriously hoping that’s too modern of a metaphor for being gay, but you never know. I read somewhere that ae/aer started being used in like the 1920s but the word gay didn’t take on its current meaning until the 1940s so who knows?

“Wait, really? That’s disappointing.”

Not for all of us, Bi.

“Yes, really.”

“Why do you know this?”

“Wikipedia. How else would I learn things? School?”

Biana shakes her head. “Oh Dexter. Of course you’ve memorized the Wikipedia page of the cute British tech guy from 1928. I should’ve seen this coming.”

“Like you haven’t memorized George Washington’s Wikipedia page. And Abraham Lincoln’s. And maybe even more that I don’t know.”

“Like you don’t have a gigantic crush on Franklin Pierce.”

Why does she know that?

“Have you seen his hair?”

“Okay, that’s fair.”

Fitz appears from behind a bookcase, just to glare at us for arguing and interrupting his quiet reading time.

Biana walks over to him, and pokes his shoulder. “Perk up, Fitzy. You love time travel. Almost as much as you love old books. And mind-numbing documentaries on the History Channel.”

He makes a disgruntled sound in response, and Keefe decides that’s the cutoff point for us, sending us to a different time.

“Keefe says we’re still in 1928, but around a week later,” Biana declares.

Fitz sighs. “So we missed the point. Lovely.”

“Don’t think of it that way,” Biana argues.

“How should I think of it then?” Fitz snaps.

Biana counters, “Dex gets to talk to the smart British guy whose name is eluding me.”

I gasp.

“We’re not all you, Dexter. I thought you knew this.”

I glare at her because how can she have the audacity to both think Alan Turing is cute and forget his name?

Alan interrupts my mental rant by waving me over, saying, “Hi, Dex, was it? If you don’t mind, could you proofread another problem for me? It’s not making sense.”

I smile and slide down into the seat across from him. “How much sleep did you get last night?”

“You have to understand, I have three tests between today and tomorrow. I had to stay up all night reading the Aeneid. I’ll sleep this weekend.”

“Oh I had to read an excerpt from that earlier this year. Literally all I could think while reading was that it was an Iliad and Odyssey fanfic.”

Turing smiles and I add, “Sorry if I ruined it for you.”

“Trust me, that’s not possible.”

I take a second to check squares and negative signs in the calculations before pulling out my phone to check the actual numbers.

“We’re doing Astronomy today? What about your English test?” I ask while fighting with my phone calculator.

“I, uh, I got distracted.”

I glance up and realise that he’s staring at my phone, which is to be expected because technology.

I slide my phone over with the answer. “This the number you want?”

“...yeah,” he replies, choosing not to ask about the fact that I just threw a phone from almost a hundred years in the future at him.

He is, however, pressing buttons to figure out how it works. Honestly, he’s about as comfortable with it as I am. Handheld calculators are vastly superior to phone ones.

My phone buzzes, and I see an airdrop notification from Biana who must’ve discovered some new meme format and sent it to me. She’s done it in the middle of class a few times.

I slide my phone away from Alan before his brain starts melting, and he notices Fitz exploring the library behind me.

“Who’s your friend over there? I saw you talking to him earlier,” Alan asks, pointing his chin towards Fitz.

“Not sure I’d call him a friend. Just came out and now I’m pretty sure he hates me, so, yeah…”

Alan tilts his head. “Came out?”

Just another reminder that most of the gay words we have today aren’t going to make sense in the past. Coming out became a thing in the 60s-70s. And even then, it wasn’t exclusively gay.

“In the most indirect way I could figure out, I maybe told him that I like him. Like like like if you know what I mean.”

Alan glances around, surveying for possible eavesdroppers. “Oh, I certainly do. I wish I could give you some advice, but you’re braver than I, Dex.”

I desperately want to tell him that his childhood best friend that he likes, will die of bovine tuberculosis in 1930 before Alan gets to tell him any of it, so maybe he should go take that chance.

Another not so fun fact: homosexuality was illegal in the UK until 1969. Learned that from a fanfic but that’s an irrelevant detail. (A/n it was actually 1967 for england and wales. this is what I get for not double checking wikipedia)

“Yeah, well, his sister Biana who’s floating around here somewhere dragged us both over here in an attempt to fix it. But she greatly underestimated how stubborn we both are.”

Alan smiles. “Maybe you should try to be a bit less stubborn. Both of you. To placate Biana at the very least.”

He stands up and continues, “Now. I’ve got to go take an English test and hope I don’t fail.”

Alan leaves, and I turn to face Fitz, who is avoiding eye contact at all costs, instead focusing his attention on Keefe.

Keefe’s programming says that we have completed our goal, although I don’t see how that’s possible.

Fitz seems the same and I’m just a giant mess because of Alan Turing and I kind of want to watch The Imitation Game with Buttercup Cucumberpatch even though I know a lot of it is highly inaccurate.

Just from iMDB.

It’s not the first “historical” movie that’s been ruined by learning actual history.

Keefe gets Biana out of earshot with a game of hide and seek, and I turn to Fitz, saying, “Look, I’m sorry. I could’ve handled this better with, I don’t know, words, but--.”

“No 'but' necessary. I should be the one sorry here. I messed up. I could explain, but I really don’t think an explanation would help. It’d just make me place the blame on something else, and I should take the responsibility here.”

Is this really happening? Or is this just a hallucination? Is this the real life? Or is this fantasy? Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality.

I forcefully turn off the Queen song in my head because Fitz is speaking again.

“I’m a giant dirtbag and for some reason it took a gay guy in the 1920s for me to realize that. So I’m sorry. For everything. Please don’t hate me.”

“As long as you promise to not hate me.”

Fitz blushes slightly, mouth forming a different word before closing. He closes his eyes for a second, debating, and I’m just waiting for him to decide this was all a massive waste of time.

“While we’re on the topic...I’m bi. I’ve known since like 7th grade when we visited Oscar Wilde. Just thought I should take this opportunity to tell you that or it’s never gonna happen.”

This cannot be happening right now.

“And...and I just told myself to shut up because everyone thinks their best friend is cute at some point...because there have been so many childhood friends-to-lovers arcs on TV...and here we are…”

“...wait a second. You thought I…”

I can’t finish my sentence out of fear that I’ve missed something.

“That’s when I started to realize. But three years later...nothing’s changed. Please just stop being so cute. I can’t handle much more.”

He’s smiling, but avoiding eye contact.

I take a risk and gently lace my fingers into his, so he can run if he wants.

But he doesn’t.

At least not yet.

And that’s enough for now.

We’re back to standing in front of the giant projection of Alan Turing. Yay.

“Thanks for joining us on an a-mazing adventure to meet Alan Turing,” I say, making sure to add extra emphasis on the first syllable of amazing like Fitz always does.

“Who used to be a kid just like you and me,” Fitz continues.

Biana looks proud of herself because I know she can read minds and says, “So kids like you can change the world!”

“I am Dex.”

“I am Biana.”

“I am Fitz. And I will try to be more accepting of the LGBTQ+ community. Which just so happens to include my bi self. Is that...?”

Biana is smiling from ear to ear. I guess she didn’t have confirmation. Just a ton of suspicion and Fitz just proved her theory correct.

“Yeah. I’m not an expert though--,” I reply.

Fitz, I’m sure, stopped listening after the initial yes, which prompted a small fist pump. “I mean technically he wasn’t bi as far as we know from meeting him and Dex’s mental Wikipedia page, but just like Alan Turing.”

For some unknown reason, he feels the need to add finger guns at the end and I can’t stop myself from laughing.

#kotlc #fedex #dex #fitz x dex #dex x fitz #dex dizznee #fitz vacker #kotlc fanfic

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