Work Text:
The thing about Final Cut Pro is that's it's awesome about ninety-five percent of the time. The other five percent, it's either crashing, freezing, or taking years to load—the point is, Michael is no stranger to watching his Mac pinwheel. Usually, he can deal with waiting for the program to get its goddamn act together.
"I am going to lose my fucking shit."
Today, though, he's missed lunch because his video won't render properly, so he's ticked off and out of patience and now he's hungry.
"Michael," Geoff says gently.
"Entire glaciers have fucking melted in the amount of time it's taking this fucking video to render, Geoff, okay? I have aged significantly. I can't be held responsible for my actions right now."
"Take a lunch break," Geoff tells him, practically pushing him out of the office. "Come back in an hour. I don't need you playing demolition derby with the equipment I spent a fortune on."
That's more or less how Michael ends up at the park, sitting by the pond, feeding remnants of his sandwich to the ducks. He comes here during lunch sometimes when he ends up on break by himself for one reason or another--this time of day, it's not too crowded, just old people and moms with their too-young-for-school kids.
It's quiet, for the most part, and by the time he starts heading back to the office, he feels somewhat less murderous towards his computer. At the very least, he probably won't end up actively trying to destroy it with heavy, blunt objects.
At the edge of the park, he pauses, pulling his iPod from his pocket and untangling the cord of his earbuds. As he does, he notices a high-pitched chirping noise about two seconds before something tiny and yellow goes running past him, circles around his feet, and comes to a stop a couple feet in front of him.
It's a duckling.
Michael smiles slightly at it, then glances back at the pond, now a good distance away. The duck must have been following him the whole walk back—that’s some dedication. Tucking his earbuds into place, he steps carefully around it and makes his way towards the street.
He hears the chirping noises following him before he can start the music.
Frowning now, he turns back around. The duckling is scampering after him, and it comes to a stop again right in front of his feet. With a growing sense of dread, he takes a few large steps backwards.
The duck follows.
Michael makes shooing motions with his hand. "No," he says sternly. The duck chirps at him. Michael steps back again.
The duck walks forward.
"No," Michael says again, desperately.
Cheep.
"Jesus Christ, are you serious? Get the hell out of here!" he snaps at it. A passing mother takes her child by the hand and gives him a disapproving look. Michael gestures at the duckling and scowls at her. "I wasn't even talking to you!"
Cheep.
"And you can shut the hell up, nobody asked you."
The duck walks decisively forward, hops onto the toe of his shoe, and settles down on it.
"Yeah, no, that's not happening," Michael says. He tips the duck off his shoe and it tumbles onto the grass. "Your home is literally right over there. Go. Bye-bye."
Cheep!
"God dammit." He looks longingly towards the street. The guys are going to get annoyed if he doesn't get back in time to start the Let's Play recording. He could just make a break for the street and leave the stupid thing behind, but it'd probably keep following him and end up getting run over by a car.
This is bullshit. He's not bringing a duckling back to work with him. He's not.
-----
"Is that a baby duck?" Gavin asks curiously.
Michael sits down heavily and drops the duckling onto his desk. "No." The duck shakes itself, little down feathers ruffling, and turns its head from side to side, taking in the Achievement Hunter office in all its messy, chaotic splendor.
"Uh," says Ray, leaning over, "that's definitely a baby duck."
"No. This is— No," Michael says firmly. "We're not doing this. We're ignoring this. Okay? That's what we're going to do about the fucking duck. The fucking duck that isn't there, because we're ignoring it, because I literally do not have the patience to deal with this right now."
Ryan cranes his neck in their direction. "Where'd the duck come from?"
"Sweet breakdancing Christ," Michael groans. "I was at the park—"
"Did you steal a baby duck from the park?" Geoff asks, standing in the doorway. He sounds more curious and amused than incredulous or disapproving, and Michael's not entirely sure how he feels about that.
"No, I did not steal the duck, and I'm actually a little offended that you seem to think I'm the kind of person who would steal a duck, because what the hell, who even does that? The little fucker followed me out of the park."
"So you brought it all the way here?" Jack asks, wheeling his chair over to get a better look at it.
"No— Well, yeah, but it's not like I had a choice about it. It probably would've gotten run over or something if I tried to leave it behind." Michael scowls at the "isn’t-that-adorable" expression on everybody's face and crosses his arms. "Look, it followed me all the way to the edge of the park, and I had to cross like two busy roads to get back here, and fuck you guys, I'm not living with that kind of blood on my hands, so, yeah, now there's a baby duck in the office." He glances at it and blocks its path towards the edge of his desk with a hand. "And you, what the hell are you doing, you're not nearly as indestructible as you think you are. You are literally three inches tall."
It chirps at him. Somehow, it manages to sound indignant.
"Don't talk back to me. It's not an insult, okay, it's just a fact of life. The sooner you understand that, the better. Quit trying to throw yourself headfirst off the desk. You're worse than Gavin, I swear to god."
"So it just follows you everywhere?" Ryan asks over Gavin's squawk of protest.
Michael scoops up the duckling, sets it carefully on the floor, and then walks across the room. Before he even gets to the door, he hears the guys start laughing, and when he turns around, the duck's chasing after him. "Yeah, that's basically what's happening here."
"That sort of looks like what ducklings do with their mothers," Ryan says thoughtfully.
Michael frowns at him. "No."
"You know, the whole imprinting thing? At the park there's always little lines of baby ducks following their moms."
"No," Michael repeats louder, valiantly, but it sounds pathetic to his own ears.
"So if the duck's following you around..."
"The baby duck's made you its mother!" Gavin says, thrilled.
Michael puts his head in his hands. "You've got to be fucking kidding me."
Cheep!
"Oh!" Gavin coos, kneeling on the floor next to the duck. It stares at him, tiny black eyes unblinking, and then takes a few cautious steps towards him. Gavin beams and scoops it up, heedless of the loud chirping noises that provokes. "Can we keep it, then?"
"What the hell, Gavin? No!"
"We should name it Ferdinand," Ray says decisively.
"Ray."
"Like the Archduke!"
"Oh, no, let's pick something more fun than that," Gavin protests.
"Yeah?" Ray says skeptically. "Like what?"
Gavin's letting the duck walk carefully across his hands. "I was thinking Sir Quackerton the Third."
"Dude."
"What? What's wrong with that?"
Michael turns desperately to the other side of the room, where his other coworkers will obviously be rational and sane about the fact that Michael plans on taking the duckling to the Humane Society or something after they actually record this Let's Play—which is the whole fucking reason he was in such a hurry to get back in the first place.
"What do baby ducks even eat?" Jack asks, brow furrowed.
"Jack," Michael says, and he tries hard not to whine but isn’t entirely sure he hits the mark, "come on."
"You know, I heard you're actually not supposed to feed ducks bread," Ryan says.
"Really?"
"Yeah, something about the lack of nutrition it provides, maybe. I forget where I read it."
"Geoff," Michael says desperately, turning to him as a last-ditch effort.
Geoff's sitting at his computer, scrolling through an article. "Yeah, buddy?"
"Can you please—"
"Just a second, Michael." He glances at Jack and Ryan and gestures to his screen. "Yeah, apparently you're not supposed to feed them bread."
Michael covers his eyes. "Is this seriously what we're doing right now?"
"This website says you give baby ducks something called 'starter pellets' and then graduate them up to normal duck food later," Geoff continues, ignoring him entirely. He scrolls down a little more. "Fruits and vegetables are on the table, too."
"We're not naming him Sir Quackerton," Ray says loudly, making them all turn to look at him and Gavin.
"It's a hell of a lot better than Ferdinand!"
Ray snaps his fingers. "What about Archduck Ferdinand?"
Gavin looks thoughtful. "That's— Actually, yeah, that could work."
"Could we please just record the Let's Play?" Michael explodes.
"Nah," says Geoff, getting to his feet and taking his keys from his pocket. Michael stares at him. "We're gonna go buy duck food."
"For Archduck Ferdinand," Ray chimes in, and fuck it all if the goddamn duck doesn't let out a suspiciously agreeable chirp.
This has somehow become Michael's life.
-----
That's essentially how he ends up at a pet supply store at two in the afternoon with a duckling tucked into the pocket of his hoodie, trailing behind his coworkers, who are getting frankly too invested in feeders.
"I'm telling you, it's too big," Geoff says, exasperated. "It says right here that it's made to hold food for five to ten ducklings."
"And it's fifty bucks," Ryan adds.
"Yeah, but it looks like a spaceship," Gavin says.
"Priorities," Jack reminds him gently.
"Look, I'm just saying, if I was a duck, I'd want my feeder to look like a spaceship."
"This one's made for one to three ducklings," Ray calls out. "And it looks like the DeLorean from Back to the Future."
"Why does that even exist?" Michael demands. Everyone ignores him, the way they've been doing for a majority of this trip. Which is complete bullshit, because it's his duck, and therefore his opinion should—
No. Not his duck. Not anybody's duck.
As if to call bullshit, the duckling—Michael staunchly refuses to call it Archduck Ferdinand—wriggles around in his pocket, making muted chirping noises until Michael sighs and strokes an index finger along its back to calm it down. It pecks at his finger gently.
So, okay. Maybe it's sort of his duck.
He's actually sort of glad that a heated discussion about the Delorean technically being a spaceship ("It can travel through space-time," Ryan argues, to Gavin’s inexplicable, extreme frustration) gets them kicked out of the store before they can do more than grab a few basic supplies.
-----
They all end up sitting on the floor of the Achievement Hunter office, trying to figure out how to put all the plastic and metal bits of the feeder together—Michael's seen IKEA furniture with less complicated instructions—and arguing about it.
"Fuck it," Geoff says, waving a plastic rod around. "This is an extra piece."
Ryan frowns. "It doesn't come with extra pieces."
"Clearly it fucking does, because it doesn't go anywhere!"
"I understand where it goes," Ryan says, a little helplessly, "I just don't understand how it's supposed to fit there."
"Ray, stop trying to put the duck in the DeLorean," Michael sighs.
"He totally fits, though!"
"I think I lost a screw," Gavin says, patting the carpet frantically.
Geoff has his head in his hands. "That's probably an extra piece, too. Don't worry about it."
"Couldn't we just put the food and water in a bowl?" Jack asks diplomatically. Everyone stares at him. He sighs. "Right, obviously not, what was I thinking."
The door swings open. Everyone turns. Miles walks in, camera in hand, clearly in the middle of filming some Behind the Scenes or RT Life segment. "—for the Achievement Hunters," he's saying cheerfully, camera pointed forward into the room, "who are— Playing with a baby duck and a mini DeLorean?" He pauses, brow furrowing, like he’s not sure whether to be amused or deeply concerned.
"It's, uh," Jack starts, but Miles is already turning on his heel and walking back out.
"If my years at Rooster Teeth has taught me anything," he tells the camera conspiratorially, "it's not to question the Achievement Hunters." He shuts the door firmly behind him.
There's a few moments of silence, and then a loud snapping noise. They turn again. Geoff's still holding the plastic rod, but it's now in two pieces. He looks exasperated, but somehow vindicated.
"Well, now it's definitely an extra piece."
Ryan rescues the rest of the parts before he can do anymore damage.
-----
By the time Burnie shows up, they've actually managed to get everything put together correctly, and they're finally getting ready to record the Let's Play. The duck is alternating pecking happily at the food in the feeder next to Michael's desk and pecking at his shoes.
"I thought Miles was kidding," is what Burnie says when he sticks his head into the room.
"Look," Michael says, "it's my fault, I brought it here—"
Burnie waves a hand dismissively. "Hey, as long as I don't have to clean up after it, do whatever the hell you want. Turn the goddamn office into a petting zoo. We've already got cats and dogs in and out of this place as it is. Joel and Adam rented a pony last week. What's a duck or two?"
Michael's surprised by how relieved he is. "Thanks, Burnie."
"But I mean it, I'm not taking care of it."
"Don't worry—"
"Because a pet is a big responsibility."
"It's not really—"
"And it's not going to be small and cute forever."
"Burnie—"
"And I'm definitely not going to be the one to tell Matt about this."
Michael pauses. "Shit."
Geoff starts to laugh. "He's going to have a fucking aneurysm," he says, sounding thrilled about it. The duck ruffles its feathers and starts to cheep happily.
-----
Eventually, they're going to have to figure out a permanent situation for the duckling—Michael still won't call it Archduck Ferdinand, but Ray and Gavin are stubborn, so he has to admit it's probably only a matter of time.
For now, though, they record the Let's Play, bickering and laughing in equal measure. Gavin's browsing bird baths on his phone, trying to be covert about it, and Ryan keeps using his distraction to kill him off in-game.
The duck sleeps on Michael's desk, nested in the soft fabric of his beanie.
It's not a terrible way to end the work day, all things considered.