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A few hours after they've won the election, Quackity is buzzing. He's filled with adrenaline, disbelief, triumph, maybe a little bit of petty victory. He's spinning in the chair at his desk, which is very unprofessional, but he fucking won. He can do so many things now. He can-
"Yeah," Schlatt interrupts, his face alternating between a smirk and a grimace as he leans against the wall, "maybe now you can afford a better wardrobe."
Quackity stops spinning. "What's wrong with my wardrobe?"
"Have you looked in a mirror? You've got a cute face, probably got a cute body too, if you didn't cover it up with whatever shit you grabbed from the discount store."
Quackity is a vice president now. He understands the need to look presentable. He agrees to that statement easily enough.
He refuses to throw his tracksuit out for good, though. It has sentimental value.
"Sentimental value? God, you're soft."
He bunches it up after that, shoves it to the back of his closet.
A few days later, they buy him new suits. They’re nice, tailored, with a list of specifications he can recite well enough to convince people he knows what he’s saying. He looks professional in them. It's pretty nice.
Schlatt looks pleased at that, which is something. Quackity’s not sure what “something” is yet.
That night they celebrate. He’s never tasted champagne before. It’s not sweet enough for his tastes, but he keeps drinking it for some reason. He’s not a pussy. The bubbles are filling him up, floating to his brain and making it pop.
He’s not sure when he ends up in Schlatt’s lap. For some reason the only thing he can think is that his clothes are going to get messed up. He giggles at that.
“What’s so funny,” Schlatt mutters from somewhere above him.
“Nothin’.”
Schlatt sighs and flips him over and Quackity vaguely thinks oh, that’s what this is then.
He doesn’t feel exactly spectacular when he wakes up. It’s not the worst either. He’s warm. He’s hungry. Schlatt wakes up like a volcano.
“Christ, what time is it?”
“Dunno.”
“Did you forget we’ve got a goddamn country to run?”
Despite how much he really doesn’t want to, Quackity gets up. “My back hurts.”
“Imagine how I feel, sweetheart. Are you done bitching?”
“I’m bitching? You’re the one throwing a fucking temper tantrum for no good reason.”
Schlatt rolls his eyes and stomps off.
By the time Quackity enters the kitchen the president of Manberg is already downing whiskey. He starts searching the fridge in vain.
“Fuck are you doing?”
“Looking to make breakfast.”
“What for? You’re not gonna stay skinny with that mentality. We've got coffee."
He makes the coffee. Even with his mediocre palette, he can tell it’s shit coffee.
Being vice president starts going about like this: Quackity wakes up and feels like shit. Quackity overloades his senses with sugar and caffeine for breakfast. Quackity tackles the neverending hell that is paperwork. Quackity considers making a Moltov cocktail with whatever shit Schlatt is chugging. Schlatt pulls him close and kisses his hair for a little. Quackity changes his mind. Every once in a while they go out and do something nice.
The newspapers are obsessed with those moments. They’re obsessed with him in general: the clever young vice president, self-made, rags to riches, boytoy. He pretends he doesn’t read that shit. He keeps a collection in his desk drawer.
He looks strange in the photos they take of him. He’s a sex symbol, allegedly. He looks like a boy in over his head. He’s getting skinnier. Maybe that’s a good thing. It’s positive press overall, so he doesn’t care.
He does wear things other than suits now. It’s all still designer shit. He’s still not sure if he likes it.
It’s not all that bad. He can be confident. He can be sexy. He’s goddamn good at it, in fact. He learns how to smile at the camera, half-smirk. He learns how to lean into Schlatt’s side in public enough to tease people without looking like a total slut. He’s thriving, really.
Well. One day he has something akin to a spiritual epiphany, only half-awake, his mouth sour. His hands don’t quite feel like they belonged to him. He stares at them for a while. They’re clenching the sheets for some reason. The dim morning light makes them look somehow angelic.
He had been dreaming of something. He doesn’t remember the details. He feels hollowed out.
He comes to the realization, blurrily, that he’s going to kill Schlatt. It isn’t an angry thought. It’s resigned. He doesn’t understand it. He doesn’t like it.
He lets himself wake up.
He gives a press interview. He’s supposed to be talking about their new infrastructure policies or something. The reporter clearly doesn’t care about that. He gives her a good enough show.
“You’re such an attention whore,” Schlatt mutters, as they watch him twirl his hair on live television.
Quackity rolls his eyes. “You love me for it. Everyone loves me for it.”
He flops onto his back lazily. He feels disjointed. He’s done too much talking today. He didn’t use to get this tired, he thinks.
For the rest of the night he’s content to be semi-opaque.
In the morning, he’s overcome with a random flash of rage. It’s all so stupid. This shirt cost enough to have bought him food for a month before everything. It’s a few scraps of cloth. He could buy whatever he wants. He could eat whatever he wants.
He doesn’t know what that is. He gets dressed. Schlatt wakes up.
Schlatt chugs whatever chemical shit he claims will make him better now and Quackity has a strawberry shake. It doesn’t get rid of the feeling of his bones inside his skin.
A stack of papers is shoved in his hands.
He’s going to kill Schlatt. It’s still not a concept that excites him.
For the record, he does follow through on that somewhat. He doesn’t take the final life though, so it doesn’t matter quite as much.
Schlatt doesn’t look any more dignified in death than he did in life. He doesn’t move. Maybe he’s peaceful like that, Quackity thinks, maybe he doesn’t have the pain that was always bothering him.
At the same time, he doesn’t give a fuck.
Whatever it is that’s been scratching inside of him is here to collect its debt.
He doesn’t explode, in his eyes. He’s moving in flashes, but at the same time he’s floating down a river. The muscle is chewy until his teeth finally break through. It doesn’t go down easily.
Distantly, he thinks that it’s going to take a lot of work to wash the gore out from beneath his fingernails.
He goes back to their house without any explanation. Schlatt always kept the nicest liquor by his desk. Quackity doesn’t recognize the bottle. He doesn’t particularly care.
It burns his throat. It washes out the taste. By some miracle, he isn’t sick.
That night he stares at himself in the mirror. There’s blood around his mouth. He’s still skinny. He feels bloated. He feels like Schlatt’s heart has somehow pulled itself back together within him. He can feel it pulsing to life. For some reason, it merges with his stomach at that point. He stays there for a while, feeling the angry thing bulging inside.
In the morning he doesn’t think about it. He puts on his tracksuit, for old times’ sake. It feels right.