((So this is a thing I wrote and apparently ship. I’ve seen, like, two pieces of fanart and my ridiculous rarepair brain decided it wanted some of that. Also someone came up with the ship name gizmoluck. How cool is that?))
The snakes, Fenton felt, were a little overkill.
Already there were the darts and the jets of flame and the saw blades; were (presumably) venomous snakes falling from the ceiling really necessary? Not that Fenton knew much about booby traps—in fact, this was the first one he’d ever encountered—but it just seemed like a bit much.
He was beginning to regret that he didn’t have the Gizmosuit on hand, and wondered how long it would take the suit to travel from Duckburg to western Asia if he called it. Probably too long.
(That probably would have been a little conspicuous, anyway.)
“Well, this is intimidating,” Gladstone Gander—who, bafflingly, had been by Fenton’s side since the start of this misadventure—commented offhandedly. “Leave it to old Scroogey to pick the ancient world’s most boobytrapped temple to raid.”
Perhaps Mr. McDuck had chosen the destination, but it had been Fenton who set off the boobytraps in the first place; no one had ever made the mistake of calling him graceful. Or particularly coordinated. What he was even doing in an ancient temple in what had once been Mesopotamia was another matter altogether – one involving Mr. McDuck wanting an expert opinion on the potential electrical properties of the artifact they were meant to find there, and Gyro being too busy to come.
And Gladstone – well, Gladstone had been trying to convince Fenton to come to dinner with him. Fenton had been on the edge of accepting when Mr. McDuck had stormed the lab, and Gladstone had only shrugged and decided to tag along. It was more interesting than dinner in any boring, old restaurant, he’d said.
“Bet you’re regretting coming with now,” Fenton said with a bit of a nervous chuckle.
“Not a chance. There’s nowhere in the world I’d rather be than right next to you,” Gladstone winked at Fenton, who blushed.
Fenton had been doing a lot of that lately: blushing and finding himself stuttering and shy in the face of Gladstone’s blatant flirting. He wasn’t at all used to that sort of attention, and told himself not to fall for it—after all, what interest could a guy like Gladstone Gander really have in him?—but it had been an exercise in futility. Fenton had realized he was completely gone on Gladstone when he’d called him a “mad inFentor” and Fenton had laughed instead of groaning at the terrible nickname.
Now they were standing together in some ancient ruins, halfway around the world from where they’d been not even 12 hours ago, separated from Mr. McDuck and the boys by a collapsed corridor, staring down a deathtrap of a hallway, and Gladstone was still insisting he was content in Fenton’s company.
It made it a little harder to deny the idea of Gladstone’s genuine interest.
“All the same,” Gladstone continued, almost conversational as he stepped back in time to avoid a stray jet of flame, “I’d be a lot happier standing next to you somewhere with less fire. And snakes.”
“Yeah,” Fenton nodded, already glancing around for anything to use against the traps. “Yeah, that sounds good.”
“So, got any ideas, guy genius?”
“Just… give me a– there!”
Across the corridor, just visible beyond the motion of the traps, there was a lever standing out from the otherwise smooth, dusty stone wall. “I’ll bet that’s the way to turn the boobytraps off!” Fenton said, pointing to the mechanism.
“Great,” Gladstone cocked an eyebrow. “And so conveniently located on the other side of the things we want to avoid.”
“Well, we can’t exactly go back,” Fenton waved at the rubble blocking the way they’d come. “Just give me a moment, I know there’s a pattern to this. I can figure it out and get across and turn off the traps.”
Gladstone fell quiet, and Fenton took it as acquiescence to his plan; it wasn’t his best plan, but it was the only one he had, and so he turned his concentration on the churning mechanisms in the hallway. The darts and sawblades were easy enough to figure the timing for, and the jets of fire were a little less regular, but not hard to anticipate. It was the snakes, again, that were throwing Fenton off; organic and free-thinking as living things tended to be, the snakes moved at random and wrecked the pattern. But surely there was a way, if only Fenton could– “I can do it.”
“You – sorry, what?” Fenton shook his head, pulled from his concentration to look over at Gladstone.
“I can get across,” Gladstone said. “No sweat.”
Fenton frowned. “How?”
“I’m the luckiest goose in the world, Fentonino,” Gladstone scoffed. “I can just walk across and I’ll be fine.”
That… was a thought, Fenton supposed. He had seen Gladstone waltz through more than a few improbable situations, and had heard stories of many more. All the same – “Are you sure?”
There was a pause, miniscule, but noticeable if you were looking for it. “Yeah.”
“Gladstone…” Fenton began, unconvinced.
“But hey, how about a kiss for luck?” Gladstone interrupted, sly grin back in place.
Again, Fenton could feel his face heating up in a flush. “I – a kiss?”
Gladstone’s eyes glittered with amusement in the irregular firelight. “A kiss. Y’know, I put my bill to yours and we–”
“I know what a kiss is!” Fenton flapped his hands at Gladstone, flustered. “I just don’t see why you would need one from me now. I mean, have you ever needed a token for luck in your life?”
“Well, no,” Gladstone shrugged. “But it couldn’t hurt, could it?”
“I suppose not, but…” Fenton trailed off indecisively.
“I could probably use every little bit of luck I can get,” Gladstone added, nodding his head towards the veritable minefield of traps in front of them.
“Well…” It wasn’t as though Fenton didn’t want to kiss Gladstone; he did (he really did), but he wasn’t entirely sure about the circumstances dictating what would be their first kiss.
Then again, considering said circumstances, it could also be their last, and Fenton had never been one to throw away an opportunity.
“Alright.”
Gladstone grinned, and Fenton couldn’t help but mirror it with a shy smile of his own as Gladstone drew closer.
Fenton wasn’t entirely sure what to expect—just a quick peck for luck, or maybe a passionate, bruising kiss like he’d seen in M’ma’s telanovelas, just before the hero did something reckless—but what he got wasn’t it. With one hand on Fenton’s cheek and the other on his waist, Gladstone pulled him into something that was at once gentle and intense, soft and yet filled with intent. What sort of intent, Fenton couldn’t have said for sure because his brain was too busy blinking out, wiped pleasantly clean of everything but Gladstone’s hands on him, Gladstone’s mouth against his own.
Fenton reached up and placed his hands on Gladstone’s shoulders, letting himself be reeled closer until they were pressed together, and Fenton couldn’t remember having ever been kissed like this – as if Gladstone was putting his entire being into it, as if Fenton really mattered. When Gladstone finally pulled away, it took a moment for Fenton’s mind to kick back online.
“Wow,” he murmured.
“I’m feeling luckier already,” Gladstone said, his beak still brushing Fenton’s.
“You’d better be,” Fenton tried for an admonishing tone, but he got the feeling he still sounded a little dazed. “You can’t kiss me like that and then not survive to do it again.”
At that, Gladstone only laughed, and when he stepped over the first sawblade, it was with barely a twitch of hesitation and a smile on his face that Fenton would almost have called smitten.
