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Here is Karl Jacobs’ secret; he never looked good in red.
Now, he isn’t going to object to the wedding, Bad did enough of that before Sapnap had to pull him to the side and talk to him about the Egg. Tell him that he respected the trauma and the healing his father needed to do. But the wedding had taken too long to plan and get everything together, and he wasn’t going to change anything. Sapnap looked brave, even as he sweated and almost melted the rings after the ring box caught on fire in his anxious hands. Sapnap is brave, standing with his tie that had to be retied multiple times before Quackity told him that this was the last time, Sapnap Halo, I tie this and you don’t touch it, got it? Sapnap had nodded and Quackity had kissed him and Sapnap always blushed when kissing or being kissed, Karl had watched from the stairs and tried to memorise the moment. The smell of their house, the cool wood of the stair railing pressed against his neck, the muffled sound of surprise from Sapnap.
He never looked good in red, but he thinks he looks pretty damn good now as he tries to adjust his hair, hands brushing over freckles. Shaky breaths, but there isn’t any need for reassurance (he can hear both Quackity and Sapnap talking out their fears in the rooms between, and he is glad they are not alone for this), just focusing on the moment. There is a tint of silver in his eyes, a slight hint of petrichor in the air and as soon as it gets any stronger he will be going over to one of his lovely fiance’s rooms, thank you very much. Magic was not going to ruin his wedding night. He tried to run through the details, but they slipped from his brain like a train going off the tracks and he bit the inside of his mouth, trying to breathe. It was okay. Things were going to work out. Breathe. Memory is generally fallible. You’re only 3 seconds away from someone willing to tell you it's okay. But you know that already. Breathe.
Here is the more open secret of Karl Jacobs, through some contrived magic, he could both time travel and dimension travel, and it had taken 9 months to learn how to do it, an additional three to keep track of his memory. Somewhere along the way, Sapnap loses another life, shows up at Quackity’s base. Somewhere along the way, they find him asleep in a pile of rubble. Somewhere along the way, he got better and closer to people, more grounded. Things got better.
He has seen both Sapnap and Quackity cry, under various awful circumstances. They’ve seen him do the same. There are these constant confessions and pangs of guilt, but every time the voice in his head asks whether it is worth it; when the petrichor smell makes him sick and he doesn’t remember his own name, let alone where he is, when Quackity’s wings start to bleed from disrepair and neglect, when Sapnap’s body is cauterising his own wounds, getting into fights and coming home upset, when the voice asks whether it is worth it, Karl Jacobs can always, always respond with yes.
Karl Jacobs is a man in love, and the disabling nature of his magic will not steal that from him. The struggles of the cruel and ridiculous world around him will not. The itchy texture of the original dress pants he had for today would not. Karl Jacobs was a man in love.
For every, forgive me, forgive me, forgive me that Karl had in his chest, there was a I forgive you, I forgive you, I love you from his finances. For every moment that he needed a pause there was patience, for every time he asked for someone’s name it was given. It wasn’t that it was easy- (but this love came to him like breathing, affection blooming in his chest despite it all like a particularly resistant weed. Tommy told him something about weeds being important to the ecosystem, and the classification only really applied to outside disruption like farming or invasive species), but it wasn’t that it was hard either. It had taken time, and talking about feelings and having to relearn that Quackity was in fact allergic to lemons 3 times before it stuck… then having to apologise because Karl giving Quackity things with lemons so often had made him genuinely start to believe that Karl was trying to kill him, or at the very least didn’t want him around-
They had toughed out those conversations and been vulnerable. Karl Jacobs would do it all again for these men. Sapnap would burn the eggs and Quackity would walk into a wall while talking to someone over his communicator and he would go over to help and just think, god, I love you. Every time the voice in his head would start, he was starting to build this rich trove of memories to look back on, a litany of, god, I love you. I’m glad we made it.
Sapnap, lying next to him in the grass, telling him that he never wants to miss him again. Quackity accidentally dying his white socks pink from putting them in the wash and wearing them to work with pride. Baking with George and Tina. They made it work. They could make it work. He loved them so much. Sapnap’s inability to cook without burning something accidentally. Slime making up with Quackity, something about being human never trumping being real and being alive. The photo of their faces covered in flour that Quackity printed and put in a frame, kept it in his desk. Nightmares and thunderstorms and sheets on fire, crying and laughing and fighting and it was all worth it.
Karl liked peppermint tea and cranberries. Quackity liked a specific type of coffee liquor and hated most brands of milk. Sapnap would eat almost anything but really only drank water and occasionally apple juice, he had ditched caffeine at some point last year in favour of sleeping more and tried to avoid getting wasted. Quackity kept his clothes in the cupboard on the other side of the room. (Partially because he felt more comfortable with somethings being in his own space and partially because he had hesitated and procrastinated enough with unpacking his clothes that when Sapnap finally coaxed him into moving his clothes from 4 cardboard boxes to cupboards, both of the other ones had been filled already.) Sapnap wears socks to bed, (Karl would personally prefer to die), and finally got a new bandanna, a gift from Quackity and Karl at the end of last year at their anniversary. (The last one had been threadbare enough that one of the three had accidentally put it in the wash after a particularly drunken night, and Sapnap had run around the house before Quackity finally found it, fallen into pieces in the wash. At first, Sapnap had been quiet and seemingly okay before coming back home with ash on his hands and no bandanna. Karl and Quackity held him as he cried, mourning things lost and things stolen, people and places and love now lost.)
It’s things like that, that he is remembering as he breathes, the petrichor fading into the evening. Time is firm in his fingers, his magic is calm and the only thought running through his mind is, I love you, I love you, I love you, thinking of Quackity’s laugh and Sapnap’s smile, the smell of smoke and expensive ink. His tie is red and there is a rose in his pocket and a pendant around his neck from Utah. He is Karl Jacobs, a man in love, who has never looked good in red but does today because he’s getting married to the best men in the world.
I love you, I love you, I love you and I am so glad that we are getting married.
***
George is on his communicator and Sapnap is almost 100% sure he’s- oh, he’s totally chewing gum. Meanwhile, Sapnap is having a crisis. He almost untied his tie (he does not trust George to be able to do it back up and the feeling of Quackity, hands pulling the tie together is comforting in some phantom sense), but he didn’t, instead pacing and spilling water on the ankle of his dress pants and someone will make a dumb joke about him pissing himself in a few years when they go through these photos and everyone is going to be looking at him and he’s going to fuck this up, how do you fuck up getting married? Sapnap doesn’t know but it feels like he’s about to find out, how about going into cardiac arrest during the-
“Dude, chill.” George says, and his gum smells like peppermint and Karl likes peppermint tea and when he screws this up, he’ll be making everyone disappointed and he almost already did that when he was holding the ring box on thursday and-
“I mean it, chill. Drink some water. Sit down. Think happy thoughts or whatever.” George leveled him a stare that could be read as frustrated, but Sapnap knew- hoped, really- it was more concern, and begrudgingly, sat back down, taking a sip of his water, hoping that there would be no more spills from his dumb, shaky hands. He puts the bottle down, trying to breathe, trying to be rational about this all. George put down his communicator, put the gum in the bin and eyed Sapnap up and down. The atmosphere felt tense. Sapnap swore he could smell that stupid post-rain smell that used to tell him that Karl was around but now just felt like Karl getting further away and resisted the urge to bust into the room next door and see whether his fiance- soon to be husband, was alright. Instead he stares into the distance, wondering whether Foolish and Tina have made the kitchen in Kinoko Town Hall explode yet.
“You look great, I have not lost the rings, apparently Quackity also looks great, and Tina said that the reception was pretty much ready after all this is done.” George goes through the list, almost like he’s uninterested, but Sapnap is glad his friend figured out what he’s anxious about particularly. George patted him on the back, shrugging. “Things will work themselves out, besides, both you and Quackity organised this event. If someone goes astray, heads will roll, therefore, things are going to be fine.”
Sapnap smiles, and it’s fragile and tender and full of fear and love, he hums and fidgets at his tie before pulling his hand away, “Yeah… yeah, you’re right, thanks George.” The clock is too loud on the wall. “I just… it’s been a hard year… for everyone, not- not just me so-” Sapnap cut himself off with a sigh. “Yeah. I just… I don’t want to fuck it up.”
There’s a muffled language! as Sapnap remembers that his father is standing outside of this room. He laughs a little bit, drinking a bit more water. “Save your fears of screwing up for the reception. Your alcohol tolerance is nothing, you’ll be wasted and embarrass yourself more than whatever you think’ll happen here.” George says, pulling another piece of gum out of the pack and putting it in his mouth. “Remember the last time you got drunk?” George asked, grinning as Sapnap cringed at the memory.
“Besides,” George said, “These dumbasses love you so much, you couldn’t do anything at this altar that would change that. Somehow you guys revived your relationship, which, don’t tell the other two I said this, but I really did think that you were like everyone else on this godforsaken server who couldn’t make a good thing last. But you did it.” George picked back up his comm, “This wedding won’t change shit.” He said bluntly, leaving Sapnap to sit with his thoughts. He peeked through the crack in the door, seeing most of the seats filled out, even Wilbur had made it there… somehow… he was pretty sure Karl had something to do with that but really he just wanted to let it be.
The week leading up to the wedding had felt like a disaster, from Sapnap literally lighting the sheets on fire from a nightmare, something had hadn’t done since he was just a kid, to Karl having a panic attack in the bathroom about not being able to put a name to Fundy and Tubbo, (the next day, people inexplicably had little name tags made of masking tape and permanent marker), to Quackity passing out in his office after filing paperwork which meant really, nothing. It had felt like a disaster, but every time someone would be there to go through the rubble and they made it out, jokes about sheets and Quackity taking Sapnap out to the store where they bought all the masking tape and a day where they mainly just stayed inside and rested. They had made it, they would continue to make it.
Sapnap drank a bit more water, the bottle practically empty, someone testing the microphones outside and making them absolutely screech, but people seemed to take it ood naturedly. George left the room with the new ring box Tommy had made, while complaining about the finicky stitches every second of the way, going to stand up in front of the crowd. People were whispering, but the space filled up with the
Marry You, by Bruno Mars started blasting out of the speakers before a rushed squeak of sorry as it was turned down to a slightly more reasonable volume. They had set it up, Karl would come from the left, Sapnap would come from the right and Quackity was coming right through the middle. Pushing through the back, fingers grasping at the curtains, palms sweaty, he got a glimpse of Karl, positioned across the room, who smiles at him, giving a little wave like Sapnap is still a spectator at the duel between Dream and Techno, and Karl is standing there with his camera, smiling shyly from across the room, nothing but acquaintances. There is a flash of red as Quackity is still bustling around in the back.
Hey baby, Sapnap mouths along to the song, Karl is looking at him like he hung the moon, and every second is worth it, I think I wanna marry you.
He is Sapnap Halo and he is a man in love.
***
Quackity was wearing a dress and he hoped it looked good.
Wings preened by Wilbur, who had made it back here via the in-between, Karl had looked a little tired but neither of them said a word, and despite the worrying implications of Karl and in the in between, Quackity was glad that he had made it back for the wedding. Micheal had thrown glitter on them accidentally and instead of trying to clean it, Quackity had made sure that there was enough glitter that if anyone in that goddamn crowd had sensitive eyes, they would go fucking blind. He knew it was going to be an absolute bitch to clean later, but judging by the awed little gasp from Slime, it looked pretty good.
The anxiety in his chest about all this was nothing compared to the feeling of love in his chest, soft and filling and gentle. It was a little bit scary, to have such a vulnerability to his heart, but Quackity wouldn’t give up the little sparks of joy for when Karl came home with carrot cake and it was slightly less dry than last time and he was so proud of himself and Tina, or the affection in Sapnap’s yawn when he woke up, mumbling a “good morning” and sleepily trying to kiss his forehead, sometimes missing and hitting other parts of his face. It was a little bit scary, but Quackity wouldn’t give it up for anything. There was static coming from the microphone. He had his anxious conversation with Slime before, and now it was the final details, taking off his left shoe and trying to make it sit right on his foot, he swore it fit properly just a few minutes ago, looking at the slightly pink lanterns that had an orangey light in them after Skeppy told him about Bad’s… less than positive reaction to them. Vows in his little bag, bottle of water long empty.
Marry Me, the song added to the playlist a few days ago, Sapnap sitting on the balcony after the sheets incident and crying, anxious and happy and hopeful, humming the tune and looking out in the crisp morning air. The paint had been flaking off the railing and there were spiderwebs Karl had forgotten to clean clinging to the edges of the walls, and they sat there together on the dusty couch, letting the song play through. They had said their apologies and forgiveness, their love and grievances. Sapnap once explained that he needed his time and sometimes space, but often that time was better spent with another. So they let the song play on repeat as the sun really started to rise, going from lingering midsky to truly risen, declaring a new day. Quackity had added it to the playlist. Sapnap had embraced him for a few, vulnerable seconds before going back inside, leaving Quackity to bask with the phantom arms of his fiance still holding him. Just say “I do”, the song told him, just say “I do”.
Thinking Out Loud. Sapnap made a joke about Canadians and Karl had walked them both through a slow dance to the tempo of the song in the living room, pushing the coffee table against the wall, Quackity holding Sapnap as Karl adjusted where their hands were, and walked them through it, step by step. He said it was from work, and the smell of petrichor was still thick in the kitchen from an incident previously that week, but in that moment they were willing to let the detail slide, a gentle arrangement of steps and patience. Allowing himself to get swept up in the moment, doing the routine shakily and almost with his eyes closed the entire time, entranced by the feeling of closeness and the vulnerability like a crack in his chest, kissing Sapnap at the end hands grasping at his cheeks, positioning be damned. Forgetting the context and being only awoken from his fragile little lovedrunk trance by Karl cooing at them, commenting on just how cute they were. Kiss me under the light of a thousand stars, the song instructed, still playing as Karl made them hot chocolates and Sapnap, place your head on my beating heart.
The next song starts playing, and for some reason, everyone seems to take it as the cue to quiet down. He can’t make it out before realising it’s A Thousand Years and, oh, people are quiet because Sapnap and Karl have pulled back the curtains. Someone pulled back the curtains in front of him as well. Everything is hitting him all at once, the soft lighting, the piano coming out of the speakers that Fundy made, (Fundy had shrugged, looking up from the wool he was buying at the markets, telling Quackity that he did enough for Dream that anything was possible), the lyrics, something about bravery (Karl had added the song to the playlist and Quackity recognised it immediately, going to mention the… origins of the song before he noticed Karl, with teary eyes, rocking back and forward on his heels, humming along to it), the faces staring out, excited, expecting, bored, people he knew and people he didn’t. The third chair in the front row had been reserved by Sapnap and no one was going to fill it. Wilbur was stretched out in a strange position over two chairs. The music played on, time ticked forward. Quackity was going to get married. (It is the exact same as Schlatt, something in his head remarks bitterly before something else shushes it and motions at the lights, the spark in Sapnap’s eye, Karl’s slightly shocked stare at the sight of his dress, blushing slightly at the sight, the song playing away in the background. He is loved.)
Karl, surprisingly takes the first steps forward, stunning in his blazer and stunning in his confidence, taking deliberate breaths and Sapnap joins him, slightly damp ankle and tie that Quackity had done up eleven times this morning, walking from his side to the middle. It’s just Quackity now. Karl extends a hand and he is flung back into the past, Karl inviting him to join the relationship after a little while of dating. The walk to the front happens too fast and too slow, Wilbur is taking photos with a weird kind of communicator, there are flashes going off and George is counting the rings over in the corner. They’re getting married.
One step closer, the song coaxes, and Quackity is in a trance, Quackity is in love, he feels like he could be floating. One step closer.
The music gets turned off and he is standing next to his fiances. This feels like a dream. Things are being said, I do, I do, and there is a pause and he echoes the same, I do, feeling like the dam of emotion in his head was about to burst. Petrichor and ash hang faintly in the air and he is a man in love, finally getting to kiss his husbands, messy and full of passion and apprehension. George gets the rings over there and they are put onto fingers and his is slightly too big but that’s okay, that’s okay and…
The music comes back on and they have to do photos, but he’s crying, body shaking with the pure feeling flooding his brain, someone asks if he’s okay and he nods wildly, smiling and holding onto Sapnap and Karl as he cries, as Sapnap, a man in love, sings along to the song, holding him tight, “I have died everyday waiting for you.” It’s shaky and unpolished and he’s probably holding a few tears of his own back, voice cracking at the end, they are finally married. “Darling, don’t be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years.” Karl, a man in love, catches on at the end as Sapnap buries his face in Quackity’s shoulder, slightly more smooth and there is a sense that he’s sung this before, god, they’re finally married. “I will love you for a thousand more.” Quackity, a man in love finishes, still crying, happy and whole. They finally got married. He wouldn’t take a second of it back.
And all along I believed, I would find you
Time has brought your heart to me, I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more…