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“Arent you engaged?” Wilbur asks ever so innocently midway through Quackity’s tour around Las Nevada's.
Quackity freezes for a beat. Then two.
It's not enough to alert Tommy that something is wrong and the young man keeps chattering away about all the cool features of Las Nevada's—a conversation Quackity is very willing to have if not for…
Wilbur stares down at him, a ghost of a smile playing at his lips. There's nothing kind about his eyes though, they're dark, so dark that they seep all traces of light that dare try to brighten them. They're almost disgusting to look at.
Wilbur’s smile widens a fraction. He’s waiting for an answer he already knows the answer to, Quackity knows. He wonders how angry Tommy will become at him if he socks the boy’s recently revived brother right here. He wonders why he even cares in the first place.
Why he cares what Tommy thinks of him, why he cares about Wilbur’s fox-like grin, why he still keeps the rings hanging around his neck and pressing into him like a weight. A drowning man clinging to an anchor that lost its purpose eons ago.
He wonders when his lungs, full of saltwater and flowers, will finally burst.
In the end, Quackity laughs and moves on, pretending not to hear the question.
He leads Tommy away and Wilbur trails after them. Yet still, even as the conversation veers away from weddings and love, he can still feel Wilbur’s gaze burning into his skin, leaving a trail of goosebumps in its wake.
“You never answered my question.” Wilbur says later, when it's just the two of them basking in both the setting sun and a temporary truce. Tommy had left them behind at Las Nevada's, muttering about talking to Tubbo or something.
Quackity scoffs, tapping out his cigarette against the wall and watching the ashes flutter gently to the ground. Wilbur does the same and crushes his joint under his boot, leaving a charcoal mark on the concrete, something Quackity knows will be a hassle to clean up.
He blows his last remaining smoke into Wilbur’s face in petty retaliation.
“I don't see how it's any of your business.” He answers eventually. “You don't see me asking about Fundy’s mom.”
“I think I ate her but I'm not sure.” Wilbur smiles, a wry little thing, at Quackity’s expression and taps his head once. “Ghost me was a real fucking trip according to many.”
“You're a monster.” Quackity says it blandly and without feeling. It's not any shocking revelation, he understands. In the same way a lion knows it's a predator and gazelles knowsthey are prey, Wilbur Soot is sure to know that he is a monster wearing human flesh like a three piece suit.
Wilbur chuckles.
“You're not to judge, Q.”
The man leans forward ever so slightly. It's enough to send Quackity’s heart pounding skipping ever so slightly as he stares into those horrible, horrible eyes yet again.
Wilbur reaches out.
And Quackity lets him.
His hands are cold. If it's a side effect from being revived from the dead or something else entirely, Quackity doesn't know. He thinks that Wilbur’s hands used to be warm.
He thinks of another pair of warm, callused hands and then of a softer pair of hands littered with writing blisters.
Then Wilbur brushes his thumbs across Quackity cheekbones and he stops thinking, if only for a second.
“You've always been like this.” Wilbur’s voice turns almost fond as he traces his way down Quackity’s face and to his chin.
Quackity looks down, pulse jumping at his throat.
Wilbur hooks his index finger under the other man’s chin and lifts , forcing him to meet his gaze. His eyes are still too dark but Quackity can't bring himself to tear his own stare away. So he keeps looking back at the man who tore himself ugly, for what else would he be able to do in the face of such tragic beauty?
“You’ve always been such a romantic, through and through.” Wilbur’s fingers continue their journey down, almost of their own accord. “One of your very few faults.”
“I'm not.” Quackity responds. He can feel his voice growing weaker though and curses it.
Wilbur hears it too and he all but beams.
When he feels the other’s touch rest on his Adam’s apple for a beat, Quackity reaches up to...pull them closer? Bat them away? The yearning for both options claw at him and ask him to choose, to finally pick something.
He doesn't find out.
One of Wilbur’s hands stray from their dedicated path and grab at Quackity’s wrists, effectively stopping him in his tracks. The fingers around his wrist are spindley and long—musican’s fingers—and though the grasp is strong, he knows he can break out with barely a sweat. He knows that Wilbur knows that too. He knows.
Yet he stays and lets the damn musician fingers encompass him completely. Lets them act as makeshift bonds so that Wilbur can pull him closer and lean in. He hates himself for it but he hates the way his knees turn weak at the action even more.
“You were always like this too.” Wilbur murmurs into his ear, voice like whiskey and gasoline. “So quick to anger and just as easy to please. Addicting.”
He’s so close Quackity can smell the smoke curling around his tongue, can see the hooded heat clouding his eyes. If any of them were to lean in any further, their noses would brush. Wilbur swallows and the sound reverberates and stays lodged into Quackity's skull.
“Tell me,” Wilbur says, and his tone is almost teasing now. “Do you still have that cute mole on your right hip?”
“Fuck off.” Quackity says, though it lacks heat. “How can a damn mole even disappear anyway?”
When Wilbur exhales amused, it almost sounds like a laugh. Quackity finds himself curling into the sound like a sunflower reaching for the warmth of the sun.
The ex president’s other hand flutters down to rest over his heart. “You ate Schlatt’s heart, didn't you?” At the other’s blank surprise, Wilbur responds. “Word gets around, even in the afterlife.”
“I did.” There's no use denying it.
“Why?”
Quackity thinks.
“It could be poetic justice. It could be metaphorical for me getting over his love. It could be a statement on the bitter, bloody end of tyrants.”
Wilbur looks back at him, steadily. “So why did you do it?”
“Because it was funny and I felt powerful doing it.” Quackity tips his head back to stare into Wilbur's unreadable eyes. Something like defiance sparks in his gut. “I’m not the man you once knew, so don't fucking act like you can read me.”
Wilbur considers him.
“No, you're not.” He says eventually and, oh, that terrible smile is back on his face. Quackity wants to carve it out with a knife and kiss the blood away. His fingers clench around nothing; how he wants and wants and wants—
“You're even better.”
Quackity blinks. “What?” His traitorous heart thuds in interest.
“You ate your partner’s heart, I ate mine completely. I blew up a nation to nothing, you created one out of rubble. We’re an interesting pair of monsters, aren't we?”
The ache in Quackity’s chest fizzles out and he yanks himself away from the taller.
“Don't call me that.” He snaps, anger turning his voice ice cold. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you. “I'm not your pair. I'm not the goddamn yin to your yang or whatever.”
Wilbur looks back at him, unfazed. Somehow it further serves to piss Quackity off.
“I’m leaving.” He mutters and goes to stalk off.
As he passes Wilbur, the man reaches out once more. For a brief second, Quackity wonders if he's chasing after a kiss.
Instead, he only hooks his finger around the chain of Quackity’s necklace and tugs, exposing the rings hanging from it.
The mismatched bands glint in the light. One studded with pretty purple and green jewels, the other a simple silver band with a ruby in the center. Quackity’s heart cracks a bit more at the familiar sight of them—as it always did.
Wilbur gives them a slow once over with an unimpressed look etched on his face.
“Your hamartia is quite irritating.” He says. “Sapnap and Karl rea—”
Quackity sees red.
He twists Wilbur’s hand away from his necklace and crushes his fingers in his grip. He would relish in the sound of the man yelping and the bones cracking but the blood roaring in his ears dulls the joy of the victory. His other hand shakes with the effort to not punch the man in the nose.
Sapnap and Karl. Sapnap and Karl. Karl and Sapnap. Karl and Sapnap.
“Keep their names out of your mouth.” He’s well aware he’s practically spitting out the words, but he can't bring himself to care. “You don't get to talk about them to me.”
He tightens his grip and somewhere in the back of his brain, he’s know he's broken one or more fingers. The joy and disgust from that war with each other.
A tense silence stretched out between them, waned thin, but in the end, Wilbur nods, eyes still unreadable.
Quackity lets go and leaves, thinking not of squeaky laughter, cologne smelling of campfire, nor horrible men who smile like they had nothing to lose.