Chapter Text
A bead of sweat runs down the side of Sapnap’s face. He pauses for a moment to wipe it away with the back of one hand, dropping his axe to the soft dirt under him and pushing his bandanna up against his hair. It’s midday, and the sun beats down relentlessly on them both. “Why are we gathering all this shit, again?”
“Because Sam Nook needs it,” Tommy says, as if that explains everything. He’s sitting on a fresh tree stump, legs swinging over the side. Sapnap tries to remember when Tommy had stopped working, because he hadn’t noticed it. Now, Tommy leans forward and inspects the pile of logs the two of them have gathered. “Looks like we’re over halfway, though! Another stack and a half and we’re all done.”
“With the logs, anyway,” Sapnap says. He picks up his axe again, smooth netherite under his hands. “We need obsidian too, don’t we?”
At least the obsidian part makes sense. The plan is to renovate their base, currently made of very flammable, very choppable wood, into something much sturdier and more secure. A safe house. Tommy’s robot had sent the two of them off with a list of materials to gather for the upgrades, and looking at it, Sapnap has to admit that he still doesn’t get why they’re doing this.
Sapnap may not understand how the robot works, or why he can’t just gather up the materials needed for upgrading the base himself. He says he wants stacks and stacks of wood, despite the fact that he’s building the base out of stone and obsidian, and off Tommy goes to gather it up for him, dragging Sapnap along behind him to do the heavy lifting.
It takes another hour of chopping and stacking before they have enough logs. The last point on the list waits for them.
“Where should we get the obsidian from?” Tommy asks, and Sapnap is thinking about the effort it takes to ferry buckets of lava and water back and forth, not even counting the effort it takes to mine the shit.
“It’ll take way too long to make our own,” Sapnap says. “Let’s just steal from Punz.”
Tommy considers this. “Is that allowed?”
“Why not? Sam Nook will never know. You down for a bit of burglary, Tommy?”
Tommy grins.
One quick theft later, the two of them end up back at their base, unloading materials into a chest for Sam Nook to… do whatever he does with it. Alchemy or some shit.
“Is this good enough?” Tommy asks, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Can you fix up the house now? It needs to be really really strong, Sam, it’s gotta–you know, gotta keep us safe from anybody who might show up.”
And this is just a chest full of very flammable wood, Sapnap is thinking, but he doesn’t say that much aloud.
The big, clanking robot nods as he looks over their work, a string of unintelligible sounds leaving his mouth. Tommy nods along, somehow understanding the words. “Yeah, yeah. Oh, it was easy to get everything, I’m not even tired. Didn’t break a sweat, but you know, Sapnap had a little trouble chopping down all of the trees so I was doing some extra to make up for him–”
“No–what? I did not,” Sapnap says, but another burble of noises cuts him off. Tommy’s face brightens into a wide smile.
“Yes!” Tommy cheers. “Thank you, Sam Nook.”
The robot rewards them both with juice pouches, and Tommy throws himself in the grass just outside the house, somewhere between the foundation that Sam Nook has begun deconstructing, and the trench that Tommy’s dug all around it. Sapnap drops down beside him, legs folded under him.
“That was easy,” Tommy says, hours of work immediately forgotten. Sapnap stabs his straw into the pouch of juice. “Now we just get to lay back and watch Sam Nook work.”
For a long moment, the only sound to be heard is that of Tommy slurping loudly at his juice. Sapnap decides to take it as a challenge, sipping louder, and Tommy rises to the bait.
“You sound so gross,” Tommy says, and then angles his straw to catch just the top of his drink and make the worst gurgling sound Sapnap has ever heard.
It’s disgusting, the two of them trying to outdo one another with horrible sounds, until Tommy is laughing, loud and wheezy, and Sapnap is chuckling along with him. They’re out of juice quickly, and Tommy drops his pouch and lies his head back in the grass, eyes squinted shut against the sun.
“My stomach hurts,” he complains.
“Because you drank that shit too fast.”
“You made me do it!”
“How did I make you drink it? You could’ve stopped, I didn’t hold it up to your lips and force you to–”
“Whatever, whatever!” Tommy shields his eyes with one hand. From inside the house, Sapnap can hear Sam Nook tearing down walls, chopping and and breaking and stone sliding against stone.
They lapse into silence again. It draws out between them, quiet like shades of orange and yellow sky as the sun begins to dip behind the roof of the house. A breeze picks up, finally a shade cooler than it had been the rest of the day. Sapnap closes his eyes and leans back further against the grass, letting the cool air rush over him.
“Do you think we’re actually gonna be able to do this job on our own?”
Tommy’s voice breaks through the quiet. Sapnap pauses before offering an answer, glancing at the teenager sprawled on the ground at his side, gangly limbs and wild hair and eyes fixed somewhere on the sunset-tinged sky above them both. “What, the house?”
“No–I mean, all of this.” He gestures around with both arms. “It’s like, this is–We can’t fuck this up, Sapnap. We have to do it, right? Dream has to… Dream has to die. We need to kill him, and if we don’t, shit’s gonna get even worse than it already is, so we need to be able to get it right the first time.”
Sapnap's stomach lurches a little when he says it. Somewhere in the midst of chopping down trees and gathering resources, he’d forgotten where this was all leading to. The realization is heavy in his gut. “Yeah.”
“So do you think we’re going to really pull it off?”
“Of course,” Sapnap says, and the thing is that he sounds fucking confident. He would believe himself, if he didn’t know any better. He puts on an extra layer of it. “We’re the best, Tommy, we’ve got this.”
“Right, of course, duh.” Tommy waves a hand. “But like, it’s just two of us, you know? And other than everything with Sam Nook, fortifying the base and shit, we don’t really–we don’t have much else going for us.”
“That’s… true,” Sapnap concedes. “So what are you suggesting?”
“Maybe we need more help,” Tommy says. “If there’s anyone else we can trust to–y’know, to help out, with getting supplies and gear and shit, maybe we should ask them.”
Sapnap leans back, braces both hands against the grass and stretches out his back. “Okay. Sure. I’m game. Who do you trust?”
There’s a long silence as Tommy turns this over. “Hm. Um… Tubbo?”
“Okay,” Sapnap says. “Is that the whole list?”
Tommy’s face scrunches up in concentration. “Well, I don’t know. There’s a lot of people I can’t trust, Sapnap. It’s hard to keep them all straight sometimes.”
And Sapnap gets that, he guesses.
“What about Quackity?” Tommy says, finally. “He helped me put up the walls around my base, and he hates Dream as much as I do.”
There’s a moment of memory in Sapnap’s head - Dream, facing him in the vault under Snowchester; “Quackity was torturing me in there,” he’d said, and the lurch in Sapnap’s stomach at the words transcends time to turn there now too. Something like horrified confusion and dawning realization that he doesn’t know either of these people as well as he wants to anymore.
The last time he’d seen Quackity, it had been outside of Kinoko, both of them drenched in the downpour, Quackity scrubbing at his face as if Sapnap wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between rainwater and tears. He and Sapnap were still on speaking terms, though. Or at least, he thinks they are. It had just been Karl who Quackity banned from ever speaking to him again.
“Right,” Sapnap agrees. “Yeah. Yeah, Quackity definitely hates Dream too.”
“Do you talk to Big Q? You know if he’s trustworthy?”
Sapnap pauses there. There’s a ring on his finger that makes him want to say yes, yes, a thousand times yes, he’s trustworthy and good. I’ll go invite him to join us right now, because there’s some little part of his heart that leaps at the idea of spending time with Quackity. Even for something as serious as this. But there’s another part of him that draws back too, the part that had stood in the rain and watched Karl and Quackity scream at one another, the part that heard Dream say the word torture, the part that realized Quackity is maybe not the person that Sapnap exchanged rings with a year ago.
In the end, the part of Sapnap that wants to trust wins. The part of him that wants to believe that the man he loves is still there, the part that clings to this all being a misunderstanding they can fix up, is the loudest thing in his head.
“He’s trustworthy,” Sapnap says. “Yeah. He’s a good guy, Tommy. He’d help.”
Tommy nods. “Okay. Yeah. Let’s ask Big Q, and maybe Tubbo. Later. Sometime.”
He finds Quackity in Las Nevadas.
The man is standing by the fountain in the middle of the city. He looks… He looks different than the last time Sapnap saw him, even if it was only a few weeks ago - a month? A lot has happened. Sapnap's losing track of time. Quackity’s sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and Sapnap sees loose bandages wrapped around his arms, and the tiniest sliver of red peeking out from under them. Quackity’s hair is shorter than it had been, shorter than Sapnap thinks he’s ever seen it, cropped close to his head. No beanie covering it. His wings are out too, a little ruffled, but free in the open air.
Quackity looks incredibly different with just a few small changes. There’s a different set to his shoulders, a firmer line to his mouth.
And then when he turns and catches Sapnap’s eye, the lines melt.
Sapnap hopes he’s not imagining the warmth that floods Quackity’s eyes; he prays the smile that overtakes his face is a genuine one. Sapnap's fiance - are they still fiances? Sapnap is still wearing their rings, even if he doesn’t see Quackity with them - turns to the person at his side and says a few quick words, and then he’s jogging across the street.
“Sapnap!” Quackity calls, arms held towards him. There’s something in Sapnap’s chest, like a magnetic pull towards him. Pulls his own hands out and forward too, reaching out, and it would be so, so easy, to close the distance between them and draw Quackity into his arms.
The word he’d thought earlier - melt, that when Quackity smiles something on him drips away and he looks like a different man entirely - feels accurate here too. As if the thing that’s grown cold and icy between them is thawed here in the desert sun.
If Sapnap were braver, he’d do it. If he were a brave man, and not just a coward who loves a fight, Sapnap would take another step closer. He’d meet him halfway, arms around shoulders, and he’d only pull back long enough to catch Quackity’s eyes and look for wordless permission for a kiss. He’s hardly held his fiance’s hand in the past months, let alone anything further. And this right here, standing in front of him like the most precious thing he can find, opens up a gaping chasm in Sapnap’s chest that just wants more.
But Sapnap is not a brave man.
When Quackity says, “What brings you here? It’s been a bit!” Sapnap takes him by the hand instead, half handshake, half holding onto one another. The thing between them goes cold and awkward again. He remembers that this is business. He remembers that Quackity is not entirely his fiance anymore, he remembers shouting in the rain and the horrified twist of the word torture, and it’s enough to loosen his arms. He takes a step back.
“You,” Sapnap says, in answer to Quackity’s question. “I came here looking for you. Can we go somewhere to talk?”
Quackity brings him to the top of the Needle. The view is magnificent; sparkling water and brightly colored lights stretching out over desert and sand and the trees that blur into the sky in the distance. Quackity’s country is stunning. He knows the amount of work to make it such is nothing shy of tremendous, and he knows the sort of stubborn determination that is so incredibly Quackity that it makes him smile.
Quackity comes up beside him now, a glass in either hand. “Something to drink?”
“Thanks,” Sapnap says, accepting the offered glass. “Think I mentioned it before, but I’ll say it again–your country is beautiful.”
Quackity smiles. “Thanks. Took a fuckton of work to get it this far.”
“I’ll bet.” Sapnap takes a sip of his drink. “You look beautiful too, by the way. The new haircut suits you.”
Quackity’s face goes pink in an instant, self-conscious blush dusting his cheeks as he runs a hand through his newly-short hair. “Oh, shut up.”
“I mean it,” Sapnap presses on, watching the pink deepen to red. “I really like it!”
“Yeah, well.” Quackity shrugs off the compliment, gaze anywhere but Sapnap’s face. “You’re not looking too bad yourself, hotstuff.”
It’s too easy, the way they fall back into a rhythm like this. It’s a familiar sort of dance, give and take, push and pull, ebb and flow. As if nothing has changed. As if they are not completely different people than they were the day that Sapnap slid a ring onto Quackity’s finger.
Quackity’s wearing rings, but none on that finger anymore. Not even one for Sapnap, and he thinks that should be a pretty clear sign. He should take that for what it is.
The silence is cut before it drags on too long. “So. What does bring you out here, Sapnap? You wanted to talk?”
“Yeah.” Sapnap turns the stem of the glass around between his fingers. “You know Dream’s out.”
“Obviously.”
“Right. And you know he went after Tommy as soon as he was alone.”
Quackity breathes out, almost imperceptibly quiet. “Yes. Where is this going? Is Tommy okay?”
“He’s fine,” Sapnap says. “He wants to kill Dream.”
“Good for him. He should.”
“Agreed,” Sapnap says. “I’m helping him.”
And Quackity turns his head at that, fixing Sapnap with an odd look. “You’re helping?”
“I’m not letting Dream hurt people anymore.” He twists the two rings around his finger. “I’m not helping him, and I’m not standing idly by while he does it either. I told him that, and he–he threatened Kinoko, threatened George and Karl. He’s dangerous. Too dangerous to be just out there.”
Quackity nods. “You’re right. It’s terrifying that he’s just out there. He could do anything next, and no one would be able to predict or stop him.”
“Yeah. So we’re trying to get to him first. Take him out before he has a chance to hurt anyone else.”
“I support you,” Quackity says. “Or whatever else it is you’re asking of me.”
“I’m asking you to help us.”
Quackity says, without hesitation, “Done. What do you need?”
“Gear,” Sapnap tells him. “We’re grinding for resources, but… I mean, Tommy’s a kid, and I’m not exactly… rolling in it, you know. We’re setting up a base, Tubbo’s old house. That robot Sam built, Sam Nook, he’s renovating the whole place to be secure. And we need help with a plan. Could always use an extra head and an extra set of hands.”
“Done and done and done,” Quackity repeats. “I’ve got a bunker, Foolish has it stocked with netherite and I’ve got potions and shit. It’s supposed to be for Las Nevadas emergencies, but. I think we can make an exception.”
Sapnap reads the unspoken in it. Don’t need a bunker if the man threatening you is already dead.
There’s another level to it that Sapnap can’t ignore either - that Quackity, careful, calculated, prepared, had known to build himself a bunker, a place of safety and refuge, and stock it with supplies in case he was threatened. He can’t get the word torture out of his head.
There is a target painted on Quackity’s back.
All Sapnap can think is that he’ll fit right in with the rest of them.
<sapnap whispers to you> hey you still at the base?
<you whisper to sapnap> yes ia m why
<sapnap whispers to you> on my way back
They’re working on the stairs when Sapnap gets back. Tommy has a handful of nails, holding them out one at a time as Sam Nook hammers them into place, and then the recently-installed door swings open.
“Hey,” Sapnap says, filling the doorframe as Tommy spins around to face them. “I found a friend.”
He steps to the side, gesturing inwards with one arm, and in steps Quackity. He gives a quick nod to Sapnap, and then looks at Tommy with a grin.
“Big Q!” Tommy cheers, and then dashes across the open floor of the house to skid to a stop in front of the other two. Quackity’s already got his arms out to catch him, and Tommy doesn’t need a second invitation. He flings his own arms out and squeezes, and it draws a laugh out of Q’s mouth. “You said yes!”
“‘Course I said yes,” Quackity says. “You doing all right? You okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” Tommy says, “Yeah, yeah, I’m all good. Hanging out with Sam Nook, building and shit, you know, plotting Dream’s murder, all that.”
“Very justified.” Quackity nods in agreement. “Dream’s very, very justified demise that he has had coming for a long time.”
“Fuck that guy,” Tommy says.
“Fuck that guy.” Quackity’s grinning, one corner of his mouth tugging upwards and crinkling the scar across his cheek and eye.
Sapnap coughs, drawing Tommy’s attention over to him. Arms crossed, Sapnap shifts his weight from foot to foot. “Quackity says he’s happy to help us out with gear and shit. I figured we could fill him in on the plan, you know, kinda catch up on everything–”
“TommyInnit, I need those nails back,” Sam Nook interrupts with a string of warbles. Tommy spins on his heel. The robot, green and tall, stands by the stairs, railing left half-built, hammer in one hand.
“Oh, right! Sorry, Sam.” Tommy passes him another nail, but Sam Nook’s attention is fixed on the newcomer instead now. Tommy rolls the nail between his fingers instead. “Quackity, you’ve met Sam Nook?”
“Only in passing,” Quackity says. “Nice to meet you, Sam Nook.”
The robot takes another step forward, looking up and down at Quackity. “Is this a friend of yours, TommyInnit?”
“Yeah, Sam Nook,” Tommy says. “This is Big Q, Sam, he’s cool.”
“You trust him? He’ll keep you safe?”
“Yeah, yeah, he will.” There are walls in yellow and obsidian around Tommy’s home because of Quackity. He can’t explain that in easy words, though, has fucked it up every time he tries to tell anyone other than Quackity what those walls mean, so he doesn’t try. He just says, “He’s cool, Sam Nook.”
There’s one more moment of pause, as if Sam Nook is turning this over in a brain made up of circuits and wires. Then, the robot reaches out one hand.
“I’ll take the nails, TommyInnit. I’ll work by myself now.”
Tommy smiles and hands over the nails. “Thanks, Sam Nook. I’ll be back later.”
He leads Sapnap and Quackity into the next room that they’ve designated as a meeting room. There’s not much to it at this point, just a table and a couple chairs pushed into a corner, but it’s as good a place as any to talk. As they walk, Quackity speaks up in a somewhat hushed tone, as if worried that someone will overhear him.
“Is it just me,” he says quietly, “or did anyone else have absolutely no idea what that robot was saying?”
“You’re not alone,” Sapnap whispers back. “I think he just talks to Tommy. I’ve gotten used to it.”
“Maybe you should just learn to understand him,” Tommy says, plopping down into a chair at the table.
“Yeah, Sapnap,” Quackity says, mock serious. “Have you considered just knowing what he’s saying?”
“Have you?” Sapnap fires back.
Quackity raises both hands. “Hey, I just got here, man. I’ve had one conversation with the dude. You’ve apparently had way more time, not my fault you haven’t put it together yourself yet.”
“Yeah, Sapnap,” Tommy says, eagerly taking Quackity’s side. “He’s really not that difficult to understand, you know. It’s just words!”
“It’s just words,” Quackity agrees sagely.
Sapnap’s face turns from confusion to something else, and then he shakes his head. “Okay, this is dumb. You’re both dumb. What are we talking about?”
“Sam Nook,” Tommy says.
“Killing Dream,” Quackity interrupts. “No, Sapnap's right, let’s focus. Fill me in. You guys want gear, but what in particular? I’ve got a whole bunker, I was telling Sapnap–”
“Wait, you’ve got a bunker?” Tommy interrupts. “Why don’t we just use that, then? Let’s move. Relocate time!”
Quackity grimaces. “No. It’s… It’s all the way out in Las Nevadas, Tommy. And Dream’s definitely gonna, like, know where that is. If he comes after–It’s safer out here. Trust me.”
“It can be a back-up plan,” Sapnap suggests. “If we need somewhere else to go.”
“Sure,” Quackity relents. “Back-up plan. Anyway, like I was saying, I’ve got some extra gear and shit I can bring over, and I can probably convince Foolish to part with extra. I won’t tell him what it’s for, don’t worry.”
“We could use some gear,” Sapnap says. “I’ve got Dream’s armor, I’ve got Nightmare, so I’m pretty set, but–”
“Potions, weapons, some extra shit,” Tommy rattles off. There’s a list pinned to the table with scrawled handwriting, the outcome of one brainstorming session he and Sapnap had had earlier. “Food, supplies, stuff we can keep stocked here and come back to, just in case.”
Quackity nods. “Got it. What else are you guys building here? Like, a vault to keep gear safe? Safe room? Stasis chambers?”
Sapnap snaps his fingers. “Stasis pearls. That’s a good idea. Tommy, we should do that.”
Quackity raises one eyebrow. “Had you not thought of that before?”
“We just started coming up with ideas,” Sapnap defends. “You’re seeing, like, day two of planning.”
“Okay,” Quackity relents. “Fair enough. What about the rest of the plan?”
Sapnap and Tommy exchange looks. Sapnap turns back to Quackity. “What about it?”
Ever so slightly, Quackity tilts his head. “Like, to kill Dream. What’s your plan?”
“Oh,” Tommy says. “So, we’re gonna find Dream, and then we’re going to kill him.”
One moment of silence. A second. And then, “...That’s it?”
Tommy starts to open his mouth to say they haven’t quite gotten to figuring out the details when Sapnap beats him to it.
“We’re getting to it,” Sapnap says. There’s a note of defense in his voice. “Dream’s like, the most dangerous person on the server, you know, we have to actually think it through to come up with how to stop him.”
“Oh, I get it,” Quackity says, but Tommy detects a clear note of sarcasm in his tone. “You’ve gotta think it through, right, right, I see the problem.”
“What is that supposed to…” It clicks. Sapnap gapes, offended. “Hey! I can think things– I am the smartest person on this server, Quackity, you idiot.”
“Whatever,” Quackity says. “Whatever, whatever, okay, so you haven’t at all thought about how to kill Dream–”
“We’re working on it! I said we’re working on it, we just started planning, so if you have some other brilliant idea you want to share–”
“–I just kind of figured you’d have like, the bare minimum of an idea or something–”
Tommy watches the argument with amusement. “You two going through a divorce arc or something?”
The conversation grinds to an immediate halt. Quackity stops mid-insult, blinking at Tommy with an open mouth for a long moment before he drops his face into his hands and drops back into a chair. Sapnap freezes entirely, glances at Quackity, glances back at Tommy.
The silence feels awkward. “You know,” he rushes to fill it, “Because, like, you’re just–you keep arguing, like you’re a, you’re–it’s a fuckin’ married couple with all the arguing so now they’re getting a divorce because of the argument, right, they were trying to keep it together for the kid but it’s just not working anymore, so divorce arc time, and–”
“We get it,” Quackity interrupts, looking up from his hands. His face has gone flushed and red. “Tommy. We got the joke.”
Tommy laughs, nervous energy rippling out of his throat. “I mean, you were arguing a lot.”
“Sorry,” Quackity says. He eyes Sapnap, and Sapnap is still frozen in place looking right back at Quackity. “We’ll stop arguing now. Won’t we, Sapnap?”
“Right,” Sapnap says, and he sounds - huh. He sounds off too, now. “Yeah, sorry Tommy. Um, anyway. Should we come up with an actual plan?”
“Definitely,” Quackity says. “Uh, we could trap Dream. What if we…”
And with that, the conversation topic moves on. The flush fades from Quackity’s face, and Sapnap sits back in his seat. It’s as if nothing happened.
But Tommy has not forgotten. He noticed. Something is going on.
There is something going on with Sapnap and Quackity. Tommy is absolutely certain of it. Every little bit of strange tension, the weird looks, the way Quackity had gone red - Tommy is certain he’s caught on to something between them. By the end of the meeting, he’s absolutely sure that he’s figured out what’s going on.
Sapnap and Quackity have a crush on one another.
“It’s the only thing that makes sense,” he tells Sam Nook later, when it’s just the two of them in Tubbo’s house making a few adjustments and renovations to the roof together. Sam Nook could definitely do this on his own, but Tommy’s happy to pitch in. It gives him something to do, and he likes talking this out.
(His stomach is doing the funny flip-floppy thing too, whenever he thinks about walking home now that it’s gotten dark. He hasn’t taken down the sign in his house yet. He’s not ready to go back to it.)
“They’re absolutely in love with one another,” Tommy says, “But they just won’t talk about it. They seem like the kind of people who’d be stupid and just not talk about their feelings, don’t they, Sam? Like, like, fucking–a bad romance film, miscommunication as a plot device. You know the thing.”
“If you say so,” Sam Nook says in a warble of chirps and beeps.
“I’m right,” Tommy says. “I’m always right.”
He should do something about this, right? They’ll be distracted by their feelings if they don’t figure this out. Everything needs to be clear between the three of them in order to work efficiently as a team. So Tommy should definitely step in and fix whatever bumpy issues the two are having.
“How do people talk about their feelings?” Tommy asks Sam Nook. “Not that I don’t know, of course, I have–I’ve talked to lots of women about their feelings for me, turned them all away, you know how it is. But I don’t want Sapnap to turn Quackity away, or the other way around, or whatever. So how do I make them talk about it?”
“I believe players go on dates with their romantic interests to discuss their relationship potential,” Sam Nook offers.
Tommy nods sagely. “You’re right. Hm… So if I can get them to go on a date…”
The thought strikes him in a moment of sheer brilliance. The greatest idea ever had occurs to him then and there, like a streak of brilliant lightning striking him right in the head and blooming into a fantastic idea.
“That’s it,” Tommy says, eyes shining. He turns to Sam Nook, hands clapping together. This is perfect. “Do you know how to cook?”
“I’ve watched Gordon Ramsay.”
“Perfect,” Tommy says. He smiles widely. “Sam Nook, we are going to open a restaurant.”