Dan/Val, Dan/Duck, Dan/OMC. Backstory on Dan: who he was and how he came to be the character we know from the movie. This story gives solidity and dimension to Dan’s character, and creates a Val I can believe in and both sympathize with and dislike. The scenario of what could have happened before the movie seems not just plausible but real.
This story is a set of vignettes from various POVs - Sandra, Carol, Emily, Buddy, and Dan, in the days after the events of the movie. Wilby Wonderful is really an ensemble movie, and even though the relationship between Duck and Dan (yay!) is the common thread running through this story, all the little bits of the other characters’ lives - Carol’s slow reconciliation with Buddy and stepping back from the edge of her own personal destruction, Emily and MacKenzie (so funny and so sweet!) - are what really make this one work for me. Just lovely.
The summary is: They fought for the first time sixty-seven days after Dan left the hospital, but the story never explicitly describes the fight. Instead the fight is shown as negative ground, almost, as the hole around which the other events are woven. It’s gentle and in keeping with the feel of the movie, and I especially like that Duck’s capacity for violence and his “dark past” are alluded to, because that doesn’t make it into a lot of Wilby stories.
Duck/Dan. Dan finally makes his own decisions about his life.
Duck/Dan. Mmm sexy.