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They meet in the diner on the end of town after school lets out that afternoon. Quackity slides into the booth seat across from Karl. It’s the farthest they can get from the windows, tucked back against the far wall and nearly out of sight. As safe as the three of them can manage now.
Sapnap sits besides Quackity. His knee knocks against Quackity’s, an easy gesture, something that could almost be an accident if Quackity didn’t know better. The tiny amount of contact sends a tiny thrill through Quackity’s veins. For a moment he freezes, and then, he gently bumps his knee against Sapnap’s again. Another accident.
Sapnap doesn’t react, but he smiles, just a little.
Karl clears his throat. Right. Quackity draws his attention away from the budding butterflies in his stomach and focuses on the real reason they’re all here at all. Karl’s already ordered something, likely to keep the waiter away so they can talk. And, Quackity realizes, the table he’s picked is perfect not just for the distance from the windows, but also because of the noise. They’re right in the center of the overlap of dining room conversation and kitchen clatter. If Karl talks under his breath, the words are so muffled that no one but the two of them leaning in close will ever hear.
“You guys probably have a lot of questions,” Karl says.
Sapnap grabs one of the french fries off of the platter in the center of the table. “No shit. I don’t even understand what’s going on. I’m just here for Quackity.”
“I’ll explain everything.” Karl glances towards Quackity, irises that swirl a color Quackity has learned to only call gray, and his gaze feels like it’s pressing pins into him. Laying him open like an insect specimen against a framed board. But then Karl smiles, and the feeling eases, ever so slightly. It isn’t Karl who looks at him like that, he reminds himself.
Quackity reaches for one of the three milkshakes on the table and wraps his hands around it, focusing on the cold chill against his fingers. “Are you sure he isn’t watching?”
“Reasonably sure,” Karl says, but he averts his eyes when he says it. Karl’s never been one for maintaining eye contact, but it suddenly dawns on Quackity what that’s meant all this time. “We’re indoors. He only has me to look through when we’re not–you know. Out under the sky. And it’s loud and bright and busy in here, so ideally, he’ll be, uh, a little too distracted to notice if he does check in.”
“So your goal is to give the–what, alien space demon that lives in your head–sensory overload to keep him from spying on us?” Sapnap takes another fry. Quackity slides the platter closer to him for easier reach. He’s not hungry anyway.
“He doesn’t live in my head,” Karl corrects. “He just pops in sometimes.”
“Okay, so the alien space demon that uses your head as a vacation home,” Sapnap says dryly. “Jesus Christ.”
“No, he’s probably a different alien space demon thing,” Quackity quips. Sapnap snorts. Quackity feels that familiar giddy rush from the validation of Sapnap laughing at one dumb joke. God, George is right. He really is hopeless, isn’t he? Not even learning that he might actually be cosmically cursed and also a harbinger of the end of the world is enough to curb his dumb crush on the cute guy who sits across from him in chemistry.
“I think I still need something explained to me.” Sapnap leans back in his seat. His face goes serious, lips falling into a downturned frown and eyebrows knitting together. “I get the space demon thing. He, like, wants to end the world or something, right?”
“Sort of. He’s probably going for a kind of hivemind fearscape sort of situation,” Karl supplies.
“Right. So like, bad. His whole goal is bad stuff happening.”
“Yes.”
“So to get all that to happen, he uses some people’s heads to spy on all of humanity and look through their eyes and whatnot. And that’s why your connected to him.” He looks up at Karl for confirmation, who nods. “Okay. Yeah. That’s what I get. What I don’t understand is how that involves Quackity.”
Quackity spins the straw in his milkshake. “I would also really like to know that, actually. Why me?”
“And how Quackity,” Sapnap adds. “I don’t even know how you realized this was going on. You guys have explained, like, absolutely nothing to me.”
Quackity feels a bubble of anxiety well up in his stomach. It pops with a sickening sort of tension. “It’s kind of a long story.”
Sapnap drawls, “I’d say I have time, but apparently the apocalypse is looming over us.”
He laughs quietly. Sapnap smiles back. With a deep breath, he tries to summarize the weirdness that has been the last… well. Most of his life, actually. “You know the color gray?”
Warily, Sapnap nods.
“It’s not really gray. When the sky is that in-between shade of blue and grey? I’ve always–well, for awhile at least, I’ve, uh. I’ve seen different colors in it.”
Sapnap blinks. To his credit, he does not react too much more than that. With the tone of someone who has already had a very long day and has accepted that nothing is going to make sense for him ever again, Sapnap says, “Okay. Like what colors?”
“I don’t know. I can’t figure out exactly what they are, I just know they’re there. Like, shapes and lines and stuff. But it moves. It’s never the same.”
“Quackity’s right,” Karl adds in. “That’s how I see him too. A little different, because I see other things take those colors when he’s around, but the way he interacts with Quackity is different than anything else he does, so that makes sense that it would look different too.”
“So–” Sapnap cuts off. He rubs his face with both hands. “So you can see colors that don’t exist anywhere else–”
“Like shrimp colors,” Karl supplies helpfully.
“You can see shrimp colors,” Sapnap echoes. “In the sky. And now you’re cursed?”
Quackity… understands how that might be hard to believe. “Uh, yeah. That basically sums it up.”
“He’s like a dimension all his own,” Karl says. “There’s this whole new… layer on things that you didn’t ever see before until he was there. When he’s looking through my eyes, I can see that extra dimension, and it makes everything look so–so weird. I thought I was losing it when it first happened. Locked myself in a bathroom and cried because I kept seeing things I didn’t have words for move around in the mirror.”
“Shit,” Sapnap says. Quackity’s chest tinges in sympathy. He’d felt something similar the first time he’d really noticed the way stormclouds sometimes shimmered. The way it sometimes looked like someone was looking down and watching him.
“That’s the difference between me and Quackity.” Karl leans across the table now. His voice lowers even further, and his eyes flutter shut. Like he’s doing every last thing in his power to keep this moment a secret between the three of them. “I can see everything the way he does. But Quackity can see him.”
And that is the moment that something Quackity should have noticed a long time ago finally dawns. “Oh.”
“Oh,” Sapnap breathes at the same time, a stifled gasp. “Oh, fuck. So–”
“I don’t know how to stop him. But Quackity can find him whenever we figure out how to do that.”
Silence settles over the three of them. Karl sits back upright. His eyes open again. Grey irises swirl with colors Quackity will never have names for.
Shit.
“How are we supposed to stop a giant space demon who only exists in–in shrimp colors?” Sapnap asks. He sounds hushed now. He sounds the closest to scared that Quackity has ever heard him.
“We don’t,” Quackity says. He says it carefully, and he meets Karl’s eyes. Sapnap shifts beside him, as if he’s about to speak, and in a moment of apocalypse-fueled bravery, Quackity reaches out and grabs his hand under the table.
He clasps his fingers between Sapnap’s and he tries to ignore the giddy anxiety tumbling around in his chest at the motion. Sapnap goes utterly still. But he doesn’t pull his hand away.
“I’m hungry,” Karl blurts out suddenly. “You guys want burgers?”
“Burgers sound great to me,” Quackity says. “And more fries. Sapnap ate all of ours already.”
There’s a moment of tangible confusion radiating off of Sapnap, but Quackity squeezes his hand silently. He hopes that’s enough of an answer. Across the table, Karl gives him a barely perceptible nod.
They’ll find a way to stop this. Quackity feels the weight of the universe on his shoulders, but he also has Sapnap’s fingers between his. And that’s strength enough to decide that he is going to do this. For the first time in his life, this thing that’s haunted him is going to save all of them. And he’s going to do it with Sapnap’s hand in his.
Just as soon as Karl’s eyes go back to real grey.