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It’s raining down softly in the pine forests just outside of the ruins of L’Manberg. The droplets cut through the foggy grey of the night sky, landing with small tinks against the slightly warped windows of Quackity’s house.
Inside, it’s warm and dry, smelling of clean laundry and of the dirt he’s been relocating all day. Yet another little project to spend the days away working on, another little city and another little home until he wanders onto something else to preoccupy himself with.
Things have quieted down a lot lately , Quackity thinks, fists loosely curled in the soft ivory white sheets of his bed.
It’s almost staggering how much his life has changed over the past few months, he wonders, shifting to a more comfortable position as he stares unseeingly at the spruce ceiling through the dark of night, mind far away.
It had all started going wrong with the election. Picking sides and entering himself into the game of politics of the SMP was the first mistake. War is a game on loop in the SMP, never ending and so, so familiar even as seasons and faces and sides change. No matter how clever your plans, how strong your weapons, how trusted your allies, there’s no total victory. There’s never total victory. Quackity thinks of the hurt, vulnerable looks that flashes across Technoblade’s features at Tommy’s betrayal. He thinks about Dream, locked in a Pandora’s Box of his own creation.
Then, Schlatt. As much as joining the game of War was his first mistake, Schlatt must have been his worst. How can he describe what it felt like to have his whole identity swallowed up by a man who cares nothing for it? Drowning and purging, bleaching and cracking. His life had revolved around the desires of Schlatt and it's only months after the fact that Quackity can see how low his life had gotten. He had given everything he could to the man, offering himself in full and getting nothing in return. Everything he saw he saw through rose-colored glasses, desperate to make things work, to make things better, but unwilling to change and confront the fact that he was miserable at heart.
It had taken the man dying in front of him, mocking Quackity all the while, for Quackity to finally remove himself from under Schlatt’s boot.
But that isn’t exactly correct, now is it? Quackity twists in the sheets again, hugging them close to his chest.
The cigarette smoke lingering in the air, the black brick of his headstone, the chewy, iron-scented meat in his mouth. He ate that motherfucker’s heart and owned him in death the way he never got to in life. The paranoia, the desperate knuckles fisted onto some semblance of control, the frantic search for some way to finally win. The Butcher Army.
His memories of that day are hazy up until the first echoing sound of his boot in that damned stone hallway & the smell of beast in his nose. From there, its HD clarity until Technoblade’s pickaxe turned him into the most fucked up unicorn the server has seen yet.
He shifts, a familiar restlessness settling into his bones before he’s distracted by the sheets rustling beside him with a soft groan.
Shit, he woke up Karl. He turns to watch the taller man slowly wake up, auburn hair a stuck up mess against the cream pillow.
Karl is relatively new. Loyal and kind hearted in a way he’s never had before. He can’t say when exactly this bed-sharing, boyfriend thing happened, only that it happened with Karl around the same time as it happened with Sapnap.
“Hey, what’s up?”
Speak of the devil , Quackity muses, pushing himself up against the headboard to look over at Sapnap, covered in more than his fair share of comforter and blinking wearily.
“It’s nothing, babe, you can go back to sleep.” Quackity replies, reaching his hand out to pat down his equally short boyfriend’s coal black mess of hair. (Sweet, earnest Karl being the tallest out of their relationship is a crime, Sapnap and Quackity had decided before, watching their boyfriend reach up and retrieve a can of cooking oil from the top shelf with ease.)
Sapnap and Karl are… good. They’re straightforward and good in a way that Quackity still struggles to feel like he deserves. Everything with Schlatt, with Technoblade, with the Game exhausted him, scooped him out until he felt like a shell of the man he was before it all happened.
After the final hurrah ending in Dream’s imprisonment, Quackity quietly laid down his weapons and armor and retired. These days, he had nothing more urgent to do than exist, finding little tasks to do and jokes to make in order to pass the day away. It was a lull, yes, and oftentimes boring, but with the rest came Karl, came Sapnap. They too weren’t involved in the going-ons of L’Manberg and betrayal and violence. They were friendly, available, and understanding. Really, it was only a matter of time before the three of them came together and collided so sweetly.
Where in the past Quackity’s relationships were characterized by all give no take, this Thing they have is balanced. In the mornings, Sapnap makes the three of them breakfast while Karl gets the first turn of the shower. During the days, Quackity recalls stories long passed while Sapnap lounges with his head in his lap. At night, Karl shaves Quackity’s face and the three of them curl up in their massive patchwork bed.
“Do you think we could get a dog?” Sapnap croaks, half asleep and curled with his back towards Quackity. Quackity snorts.
“I don’t fucking think so, animal exterminator.” From the wolves of L’Manberg’s destruction to those unfortunate server pets so long ago, everyone knows Sapnap’s record with animals is subpar.
And that’s the thing: they Know each other. Karl and Sapnap know of everything Quackity has done, of everyone he has been, and they still let him lay there in between them. Karl still gently runs his razor around the cavernous scar on the side of Quackity’s face. Sapnap still makes him his special hot chocolate and sliced strawberries in the morning.
“You sure you’re okay?” Karl contributes kindly, if incredibly late. His voice croaky and only one blue eye visible from where he refuses to emerge from the covers. It’s sweet of him to care about me like this , Quackity thinks fondly. There isn’t much about Karl that isn’t sweet. He could stand to lose the random disappearances and the strange, haunted looks he gives people sometimes, but everyone has their secrets. Sapnap thinks neither of them know about the scrapbook filled with pictures of him, George, and Dream hidden at the bottom of his personal chest. He’s wrong.
The thing they have doesn’t come easy, per-se. Nothing comes easy for Quackity anymore, he feels like a chair with one leg too short even on his best days. Teetering, worn, and one good hit away from crumpling like a wet paper bag. It doesn’t come easy, but it comes, and that’s all that Quackity can ask for.
The scarred man thinks he’s found something nice and quiet here. Something he can really dig into and wear like a waterproof cloak, like shoes exactly his size. Without the implication of betrayal or the threat of War, he thinks that this is the place where he can heal.
Maybe one day he’ll grow hungry for the Game, for victory, but he truly can’t see that happening anytime soon. Not when he has Karl and Sapnap and these quiet moments where nothing is said but everything is understood.
Quackity reaches out to ruffle Karl’s hair, eliciting a groan of displeasure.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” and this time… This time, Quackity really believes it.