Archive of Our Own ^beta

“Aaaaand, done!”

Doug stands in the center of his living room, hands on hips in a striking hero's pose. The room is cleaned above and beyond his own standards, and he doesn’t try to rein in the swell of pride he feels when he looks at the carpet for the first time in days. Granted, it’s still not a pretty room, with said carpet faded and stained into a color which may be brown or may be gray or may be an as-yet undiscovered shade by whoever it is who studies colors. But he’s cleared a path from the door to the couch, and that is, in itself, an accomplishment.

The first guest won’t enter through the door. Doug raises his wrist to check his watch, but before he has time to remind himself what 1800 is in normal person time, the phone rings. It’s not the third-hand iPhone 5 with the cracked screen and the leaky battery in his back pocket, but the much nicer, proprietary one plugged into the server in the spare room. He picks his way through the piles of debris that he recently removed from the living room to get to the little table in the corner, and smiles as he accepts the call.

The tower in the center of the small room whirs to life, dozens of fans suddenly kicking into overdrive to keep up with the atypical activity levels. The room gets hot quickly while the server is occupied, so Doug shuffles back out and closes the door behind him. He directs his wide smile at one of the cameras mounted in the corner of the room. “Hey, darlin’. You here with me?”

Well, yes and no. Hera’s voice is a little tinny through the old stereo speakers on the side table, but the audio quality is at least good enough that her know-it-all tone comes through clear. Technically, I’m still at the facility, assisting Doctors Nylund and Ibrahimović with compiling their notes on their new case study. The part of me that’s here is just one one-thousandth of my consciousness, partitioned apart from the rest of me in order to fit through the wireless connection. But when we’re done here, this part of me will reintegrate with the whole and slot the memories into place with everything else, so it’’ll effectively be like the whole me was here, kind of. Except for the one-thousandth of me that’s currently a plane on its way to Fiji, of course.

“Make sure that one-thousandth rings me up the second she gets back and tells me all about your very first vacation,” Doug says. “Did you remember to bring your offering?”

Of course I did. I’m literally incapable of forgetting.

“Excellent. We’ll save the reveal for when the rest of the girls get here. Which shouldn’t be too much longer.” He glances at his watch again. “Renée is usually alarmingly punctual.”

The orange line had a delay, Hera informs him. Give her a little leeway.

“Not a chance. I reserve the right to be a wiseass in my own home.”

He crosses the living room to stand with his hand on the doorknob, checks his watch again, counts slowly to three under his breath, and then throws the door open. Renée stands on the other side, hand raised to knock. Her nostrils flare slightly as she tries not to look out of breath. Doug molds his face into his best stern expression.

“Commander Minkowski,” he starts, half an octave deeper than his normal speaking voice. “What time do you call this?”

Renée’s eyes roll to the ceiling, but Doug catches the flicker of a smile. “Eighteen-oh- three,” she sighs, exasperated. “The train was delayed.”

Told you.

The flicker sparks and catches. Renée directs her attention towards a camera now, too. “Hey, Hera. Hope I’m not holding things up.”

“Nah. Still waiting on Isabel with the drinks.” Doug steps aside to let her in, but Renée detours to give him a quick hug before dropping first her enormous purse, and then herself, onto the couch. She wrinkles her nose as her weight disturbs the cushions. 

“Your place smells like an ashtray, Doug.” 

Doug throws out his hands, defensive. “You can blame the other guy for my bad habits. I tried to clean up.”

The way that Renée cocks one eyebrow at him is almost familiar. “You mean you drenched the room in discount air freshener and shoved all of your junk into a closet.”

“This conversation won’t move forward if you just repeat my own words back at me like that.”

For just a second, Renée looks genuinely annoyed, and Doug worries that he’s about to meet the Commander Minkowski from the old recordings. But then the tension passes, and she sighs dramatically.

“Never change, Doug.”

“Sir, yes sir.” Doug throws a lazy salute. “You got your contribution?”

Renée brightens. “I do! Dominik recommended this one, actually. It’s a classic, based on—”

“Hey party people!” The unlocked door swings wide and Isabel comes strutting in, a six-pack in each hand. She slams both down on the coffee table, then throws her arms around Doug. He doesn’t put up any sort of fight when her bear hug becomes her simply picking him up and squeezing him. She sets him back down fairly gently, though. “We ready to get this show on the road?”

Renée leans forward to pluck a bottle from its cardboard sleeve. Her mouth scrunches into a tiny frown. “I didn’t think that they sold Faygo in glass bottles.”

“Oh, they don’t.” Isabel leans down to pick up another bottle. Neon pink liquid sloshes threateningly inside. “I mean, can you imagine? But I got bored, and I had a color printer for the labels. It only took me like, ten minutes.”

“...Right.” Renée sets her bottle back down. “No chance you brought anything that’s actually potable?”

“There’s a vending machine in the lobby.” Isabel flops onto the couch beside Renée. “It might even give you something, if you let it eat a few bucks first. But this thing is gonna go to the point where we’ll all be glad for the caffeine.”

Why is that? asks Hera, as Doug and Renée share looks of alarm. Isabel flashes a wicked smile.

“Because,” she says slowly, relishing the reveal. “My potluck provision is… Star Wars.”

A beat passes as everyone privately answers the question before it can be asked. Which one?

Somehow the grin widens. “Yes.”

“No.” Renée glares as Isabel kicks back and rests her feet on the table. “Dominik and I have an appointment in the morning. If I don’t sleep, our therapist is going to notice and try to make it into a thing.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna have to side with Renée on this one.” Doug lifts a few soda bottles until he finds one that’s a fairly safe-looking shade of cola brown. “If we overruled the abridged Lord of the Rings trilogy, we definitely don’t have time to sit through six movies.” 

“Nine, now. Not including the spinoffs. And you were the one who used to argue with me that the Star Wars canon should be taken in as a whole.”

“Yeah, well, they’re called ‘episodes’ for a reason.”

Isabel groans dramatically, but surrenders with the speed of someone who never expected to win the argument to begin with. “Fine. The fourth one, then.”

Don’t you start with episode one?

“What? No, nononono, no!” Isabel sits upright to give Hera’s camera a clear view of her emphatic face. “Absolutely not. The series must be consumed in release order. Doug, back me up.”

Doug gratefully lowers his drink before the liquid actually touches his lips. “Uh—”

“Why did they start with the fourth one?” asks Renée contemplatively. “I’ve always wondered, but never really cared enough to ask.”

“Because spoilers. We’re starting with the fourth one, end of discussion.” Isabel looks to Doug, who shrugs.

“If the Captain says that’s the one to watch, that’s the one we watch,” he says agreeably. “I trust you guys to deliver the pop culture content that Doug Eiffel absolutely must know, and you don’t lead me astray.”

“Usually.” Renée gives Hera’s camera a flat look. “With the occasional exception.”

Hey, The Room is a cult classic. And honestly, I don’t think that you guys have the capacity to appreciate it properly for what it is.

“Must be something wrong with our meat brains.” Isabel pops the cap on a bottle of fluorescent green soda and takes a swig. “So, anyone else want to share what they brought?”

“I do.” Renée fishes in her bag for a moment, then pulls out a DVD box. “Les Miserables! Unfortunately it’s the movie version, which obviously pales in comparison to the stage production, but it’s still worth watching.”

Doug takes the box from her and flips it over to read the back. “We sure that ‘the miserable’ is going to vibe right with the party? Seems like a bit of a downer.”

“It’s the next one on my list,” Renée shrugs. “Next week is Little Shop of Horrors, though, so look forward to that.”

It might be a good denouement after my movie, suggests Hera. 

“Which is…?” asks Doug, wary from past experience. 

Ex Machina. It’s a bit intense, but I promise that the ending is very satisfying.

“Okay!” Doug claps his hands together, once, to get the attention of the room. “We have movies, we have… ‘drinks,’ we have friends gathered ‘round a cathode-ray television that’ll cook our eyeballs in our skulls until we all see static when we close our eyes tonight. So, as the grand arbiter of the festivities, I hereby declare the thirty-seventh weekly mandatory pop culture potluck party… thing, should commence!”

Those with hands each raise a bottle of questionable soda, and Hera plays a recording of a very large crowd cheering as Doug takes his seat on the couch between Renée and Isabel. Without hesitation, Renée folds herself up and leans on his shoulder, and Isabel swings her feet off the table so that her legs are draped across his lap. Doug raises his drink and takes a swig.

“Hey, this isn’t half bad.”

“For that, you can thank your taste buds’ memories of seaweed coffee.” Isabel reaches over to clink bottles with him. “Literally everything is an improvement.”

Shhh, you guys. It’s starting.

Doug takes another drink to wash the comment he wanted to make back down his throat. It wasn’t important, anyway. Not more important than the friends around him, or the words which crawl up from the bottom of the TV screen, accompanied by an orchestral theme that’s trying way too hard, but which excites something in him all the same.

A NEW HOPE.