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Quackity finds it before anyone else.
Little-known fact- he’s observant. The stones here are placed too wide apart for the wall to be natural, the rock formation ends too abruptly for it to be a cave-in. If it wasn’t hidden on the side of a hill, he’s sure everyone and their mother would be wandering in here, poking around in Pogtopia’s secret plans.
Littler-known fact- he has somewhat of a head on his shoulders. Even with Tommy and Tubbo vouching for him, he knows Wilbur and Technoblade aren’t convinced. It wouldn’t be a great look for their newest revolutionary to be sneaking into a clearly hidden room just after defecting from Manburg.
So, Quackity pushes aside burning curiosity, pushes aside the hunger inside him yowling for someone to give him a task. Lights a cigarette, and then another, and then Wilbur’s.
They just sort of... slip into it, the next month or so. Nicotine’s become a tagalong to watching the smoke spill out from between Wilbur’s chapped, rosy lips in little glances that are never quite enough- his real addiction. He could flirt with him, could come onto him in a thousand ways, could give him something worth quitting for- and Wilbur would probably say yes, desperate for an out as he is, but. But.
But out there in the wide-open world, Quackity still has a husband, a husband who only ever gave him scraps, and he’s not sure if he can take anything more right now. Starve a dog and then give it a feast, it’ll be vomiting it all back up within the hour. Bring a man to a cave full of stir-crazy people and push his pre-marriage almost-fling in front of him, well, he won’t quite know what to do with his hands, so he’ll just let himself starve a little longer.
The bruises have faded by the time they end up in bed together for the first time, but Quackity still doesn’t let him pin his wrists or take him facedown. They end up pressed together chest to chest, missionary style, and Quackity would laugh at the vanilla straightness of it all if Wilbur wasn’t red-faced above him, saying his name with all the worshipful adoration of a man at the altar. Funny, that piety and proposals both end up in the same place.
Quackity slides home into a tight ring of muscle, and decides this is much better than his first I do as Wilbur gasps and pulls Quackity’s face up for a kiss that’s half tongue .
After, Wilbur lights both their cigarettes at once, and Quackity does laugh this time, snickering at the way his eyebrows furrow as he grips them both between his teeth. Wilbur levels an unimpressed look at him, hands him one of the smokes. Quackity doesn’t especially want it, but Wilbur’s eyes are hazy and laced with honey in the torchlight, and his eyelashes flutter as his lips purse around the first drag he takes, so it’s alright.
Back to our first fact- Quackity is observant. Though, anyone with eyes could see this, could spot the ugly purple rings around Wilbur’s eyes from a mile away.
It’s not- he isn’t bad. He’s not Schlatt (though that bar is so low that wither skeletons could play limbo with it in the Nether), he’s not power-drunk or greedy, when he touches Quackity it doesn’t leave scratches. Unless Quackity asks, which happens sometimes.
Look, sue him for it, but Wilbur is a nice distraction. Wilbur is handsome and poetic and argumentative and sharp as all hell, with wandering eyes that sharpen to a razor-keenness from moment to moment and it- it’s cliche, or whatever, okay, but he stokes something within Quackity, puts bellows to a flame that’s dying out on its own.
If Wilbur wants to tack another cigarette onto his nightly count, or stay in bed for three days straight, or ask Quackity to bite his neck so hard he bleeds, it’s within rights. Quackity worries, he does, but he can’t let it take him over, can’t misstep, not here. Where’s he gonna go if this all crumbles? What role will take him?
The bruises have faded. Quackity’s ribs still ache at night.
“Big Q, what do you think about the afterlife?”
“Um, I mean… Prime teaches that you-”
“No, what do you think, Quackity.”
“Well if you’d let me talk I’d tell you, man!”
“Don’t get your beanie in a twist, I’m all ears.”
“Whatever. I think… I think we go wherever we deserve, yeah? I think if you die before your time, you’re sent back, and if the- the universe or whatever determines that it’s time, then you can go.”
“Go… where?”
“Huh. Dunno. Maybe you just hang out in the dirt forever, and then you hang out in tree roots or worm stomachs or something, forever.”
“Just resting, huh?”
“Yeah. I mean, dying just- um. In my exp- I dunno, it might’ve been different for you, but it felt like I was just getting really tired, so it’d make sense that being dead is just- yeah, just sleeping.”
(Wilbur’s mouth twitches into a smile at that, the first he’s cracked all day. It falls flat after a moment, but it’s pretty while it lasts.)
Quackity nearly falls on his face as he climbs over the rock pile. What a fucking sight that would be, tripping his way into whatever little hideout Wilbur’s led him to with a busted lip. He opens his comms again, reading over the messages.
WilburSoot whispers to you: quackity
WilburSoot whispers to you: can you come over to me
You whisper to WilburSoot: where, dickbag
WilburSoot whispers to you: it’s a secret
WilburSoot whispers to you: sort of
WilburSoot whispers to you: there’s a tunnel in the hill between manburg and pogtopia
WilburSoot whispers to you: come and see
You whisper to WilburSoot: I’m getting really weird vibes Wilbur
You whisper to WilburSoot: what’s going on
WilburSoot whispers to you: please do come
WilburSoot whispers to you: it’s important
So here he is, ducking his head so he doesn’t concuss himself on the low ceiling. It’s quiet as he ventures further into the earth- Pogtopia echoes like a motherfucker, and there’s always someone doing something, so it’s never quite silent, not like this, like the dirt’s trying to suck the air out of the tunnel.
He does hear something in the dark, maybe forty feet away, and the sound is familiar.
It’s Wilbur, crying so softly that Quackity would miss it if he breathed a little too hard. As he approaches the source, the muffled gasps break into something more like outright sobbing, and there’s a terrible repetitive clanging noise, like Wilbur’s kicking a bucket across the stone floors. Quackity quickens his pace, eventually making it to a turn in the path, and slows again as he enters a room.
The room is terrifying, to put it mildly. Blank stone walls, impersonal, choking, covered in nearly illegible writing, scrawled in coal dust- in soot, he realizes faintly. The scribblings aren’t pressing, though, what is is Wilbur, curled up on himself in his coat, rocking back and forth ever so slightly with his face in his knees. A shovel is laying on the ground next to him- presumably his tool of choice to enter and the source of the loud metallic sound.
He looks up at Quackity, and there’s something there, something drowning in the depths of Wilbur’s murky, tear-blurred eyes.
Even when he’s crumbling, the bastard still has the gall to look good. It’s some awful Byronian talent he has, Quackity thinks, to look his best when he’s at his worst.
Quackity does his best to clear his head, then takes a slow step into the room.
“Hey, Wilbur.”
What else can he say? Hey, Wilbur, your world’s ending and you want to bring us down with you. Hey, Wilbur, I feel like I’m crawling in bed with a loaded gun sometimes. Hey, Wilbur, I think about holding your hand and taking us somewhere better. Hey, Wilbur, let’s play myths, we’ll both be Orpheus and we’ll both be Eurydice and neither of us can ever look up from our feet.
“Quackity.”
Wilbur sniffs, clears his throat, pulls himself upright. Grins through an exhale, and spreads his arms. Ever the show-off.
“You like? I call it my thinking room. Well, it’s really called the button room, but since I’m not using the button juuuust yet, it’s my room where I go to think about the button.”
Wilbur turns on his heel, runs a finger through the black mess on the walls for no apparent reason. Quackity watches him with mounting dread, then, tentatively, places a hand on his shoulder.
Wilbur flinches- like, really flinches with a shout of “Don’t!-”, trips over his own feet in his haste to get away and turn around with still-glazed wide eyes, breathing heavily.
“Just- don’t, okay? Don’t make this harder.”
“Wilbur, man, I- I can’t help if you won’t tell me how! Just. What do you need?”
Wilbur lets out another shaky exhale- something Tommy does when he’s stressed as well, Quackity notes- and runs his fingers through his hair, yanking out tangles and exposing the way his roots are gray with stress in a couple of spots.
“I- Quackity, I need you to help me decide. Pros and cons, just help me be at peace with whatever decision I come to.”
Quackity’s eyes widen as he realizes what Wilbur is asking of him. He sits down against the wall, a little shakily, gestures for Wilbur to sit next to him with his best attempt at a reassuring smile. Wilbur sits, or more like collapses, in the indicated spot, looks at the few bare inches of floor between them with a heavy sigh.
Quackity takes his stone cold hand, and begins to list.
“One-” he folds down a finger, staring at Wilbur’s ragged cuticles, at anything but his blank face. “One, you can’t leave your brothers. Tubbo and Tommy need you-”
“Need me? What the fuck have I ever done for them, Quackity? Tubbo- Tubbo doesn’t even-”
“They need you, Wilbur! I don’t care how much you hate yourself, when someone loves you, you can’t just- just die!”
Wilbur shakes his head, starting to pull his hand back, but Quackity holds fast, folding down a second finger.
“T-two, your friends. Your son, Wilbur, your fucking son. He’d be so lost, and Techno would get angry and take it out on everyone, Niki would completely shut down, Jack would force himself to act fine and-” Quackity presses his forehead against Wilbur’s knuckles.
“And they couldn’t take it.”
Wilbur’s eyes are on him, probably staring at him like he’s- he’s- he doesn’t know. When Wilbur looks at Quackity, there’s something in his stare, something he’s too wrapped up in to see, and it’s terrifying. Wilbur is a mystery that doesn’t want to be solved and an open book begging for pages to be turned at once, and Quackity doesn’t know what to do with it.
Quackity drops his gaze further, clinging to the thin fingers in his grip. There’s one thing he knows how to do, always has, always will, one truth that’s in his very bones.
“Three. Me.”
He folds down Wilbur’s ring finger. The stifling quiet of the cave eats away any little noise Wilbur makes in response, so all Quackity can do is hang on and hope that it’s enough.
“I- I would- who ‘m I supposed to steal cigarettes from if you- if you’re-”
He cuts himself off with a watery half-smile. Shit. Wilbur doesn’t need wavering, doesn’t think in it or speak its language, he needs black-white, yes-no, life-or-death. He loves me, he loves me not.
There’s a certain amount of play-acting to this, like someone’s going to yell ‘cut!’ down the hallway and the camera-glass blankness will fade from Wilbur’s eyes, but it never does, it never leaves. It’s how it feels with him, usually, like you’re watching the actor and the writer and the script and the director coordinate all at once, like you’re audience and supporting role and critic, like you’re everything he says you are.
The heart in Quackity’s chest that may or may not be his own throbs a hymn, and he does his damnedest to recite his own words.
“I know I’m just- set dressing or whatever you want to call it. A spectator, a supporting role, whatever. I’m not the foil, and God knows you aren’t mine, but-”
Quackity hopes his tears aren’t pretty. He hopes the cameras are out of focus and the lights are crashing down.
“Stepping offstage doesn’t mean- mean- that. It doesn’t have to be a- a fucking story, or a show, or anything. It can just be- you. Us, I guess. No roles, no plot devices, no goddamn- Chekhov’s gun or whatever.”
A breath. It doesn’t shake.
“You aren’t my, my love interest. I just love you.”
There are no cameras, when he presses his body to Wilbur’s. There are no highlighted lines to follow, and no directors to yell, and Wilbur is so, so thin under Quackity’s hands as the tension finally bleeds out of him.
The audience files out of the theater. Quackity feels like he’s holding onto nothing but paper.
“I love you,” he whispers into the dead air.