Work Text:
Slime re-enters Quackity's life much the same way he barged into it the first time. He doesn't pop out of a wall after observing him from afar, no, but he does seemingly appear out of nowhere for no particular reason at all. One moment Las Nevadas is barren as ever and the next, well, it's still very much barren. There's only one additional body bringing the population to a grand total of two, but it doesn't matter to Quackity because the one at his doorstep could fill an empty room with his presence alone.
The surge of emotions he feels are similar to that day as well. There's the shock, the panic, the wondering if what he's seeing is even real. (Which isn't an unfounded fear to have. Prime knows over the past few years he's seen familiar faces when there have been none. Heard voices of ghosts in the desert breeze.)
"Hello, Quackity from Las Nevadas."
And Quackity tries to keep his composure. He really does. He's imagined how this exact scenario would pan out so many times, running through all the things he would say, apologies he would make, like lines in a play. All of that seems to escape him in the rush of tears that comes flowing out.
As he crumbles to the ground choking over his sobs, a thought whispers in the back of his head that he's hallucinating and when the world stops being a wet blur he'll look around to discover nothing but the same decaying city that's surrounded him for the past three years. But then he feels a pair of arms wrap around him, slightly damp, cool, and familiar even after so long. It makes him cry even harder, his lungs burning with every breath. He's saying something, a lot of things actually, but his mouth is working independent of his brain, which is too scrambled to pick up on much of anything anyways. The only thing he actually hears from himself is the desperate, repeated "I'm sorry."
He isn't sure how long he goes on for, and through it all Slime hardly moves and says nothing. When he does finally manage to calm down he still can't find his words. He's out of practice talking to people in general, let alone the estranged embodiment of the heart he thought he'd never have the privilege to feel beating again. Once more, his voice acts on its own accord, strained and strangled.
"You're back."
"I'm back."
"Why? You— I thought you said—"
Slime shakes his head. "Not now, Quackity from Las Nevadas. Please."
Quackity nods, all questions dissipating. They hardly matter. Why the universe decided to bring Slime back to him is wholly insignificant in comparison to the results.
He leads them into the bar of the main casino, one of the more intact locations left, silently offering Slime some water. He absorbs it slowly, gaze tracing over the cracked quartz floors and up to the corners of the ceiling, littered with spider webs.
“This is…different,” he says finally.
Quackity can’t gauge his tone. He doesn’t sound angry, but the comment still sends a jab through his chest, a mixture of regret and guilt over the state their legacy has fallen to.
“Yeah. I’ve been doing whatever I can to fix the place up, but…”
(But it’s much too big a job for one person—even one person who spends every second of his days working to repair a broken city just to keep himself sane. To try and forget that it doesn’t matter if it does get fixed or not, because no one but him will ever see it.)
“I had Foolish’s help for a while,” he continues, voice catching on the name of his old friend. “He was out getting supplies this one day though, and— Slime there was this horrible accident. I’m not sure how or why it happened, but as far as I know everyone that we knew is—”
“I know,” Slime says.
That’s one of Quackity’s former questions answered. He’d been curious to know what direction Slime had traveled back from. The answer must be anything aside from North if he’d already seen the destruction firsthand.
Another stretch of silence passes over the pair and Quackity realizes that the unnatural, empty space would have once been filled by Slime.
“You can have my room for tonight. Your old one and all the suites haven’t had much upkeep so you probably don’t want to sleep in there. I’ll start fixing them up tomorrow, whichever one you want. Unless you want to stay in the penthouse.”
“I don’t need a room,” Slime says. “I don’t need sleep and I have nothing I need to put anywhere.”
He stands up, turning to the window. The sun hangs low in the sky, partially hidden by the buildings but just visible enough to splay beams of orange-gold light into the casino.
“You go to bed, I’m going to take a walk. It’s been a while since I’ve seen everything.”
He heads to the door and walks out, just like that. Quackity stares until his silhouette becomes too faint to make out in the rapidly dimming light. As he leans back on the counter, he brushes against the empty cup and he wraps his hand around it. He stays there, evidence of Slime’s presence in his palm, until exhaustion causes him to sway on his feet and he makes his way to the elevator.
Quackity hasn’t had a consistent relationship with sleep since he first came to the SMP.
In Manburg, sleep was replaced with the paperwork Schlatt had been too drunk or sick (or both) to finish.
In Pogtopia, even if he’d been able to drift off atop the moldy pile of hay that hardly passed for a bed, the anxiety over Wilbur’s stability, or lack thereof, would have kept him awake.
The anxiety carried over to El Rapids, where the source of his worry was Dream, and then to New L’Manburg where it was Techno.
By the time Las Nevadas went up he was sure the stress had permanently etched itself into some deeper part of him. It didn’t matter how many emergency shelters he built or how many enemies were dead or behind bars. The fear that everything he’d worked for would all be taken away at a moment's notice haunted him at his heels, like a shadow tarnishing any sense of relaxation that dared to try and seek him out.
Slime’s death stole away the little rest he’d managed to get before. All that remains in his memory from that time is a haze of days and nights that meld together where he’d pour over book after book like a mad man, the only thing keeping him going being the need to find a way to bring him back.
When Quackity died for a second time his fears seemed to go with him, but a dull, lamenting ache that always crept up on him in the quiet of his room took their place.
For the past few years, sleep has been coming and going in long, stretching periods. There would be times where he’d focus on a project around the city so hard that the days slipped past without him noticing. Other times he’d stay in bed for so long he lost track, and when he finally gathered the strength to arise again, found he was more tired than ever.
Tonight his body can’t seem to decide whether to sleep or not. He falls in and out of consciousness in increments; dreams of waking up only to truly awaken soon after. It happens so often that he’s no longer sure he can trust himself to tell the difference.
When he can’t take the cycle any longer, he decides to break it. He gets out of bed, nearly floating to the balcony like a ghost. He sees the curtains billowing and is unable to recall when or why he’d cracked the door open. Either way, the frigid night air of the artificial desert beckons him closer, a relief from the sickeningly hot bed sheets.
When he steps out, a wide pair of green eyes turn to meet his own. Soft recognition spreads over Quackity’s face and he goes to stand with the other at the edge, just as he’s done so many nights before. He sighs, leaning his head on Slime’s shoulder. He stiffens but makes no effort to push Quackity away.
“I thought you were asleep.”
“I am,” Quackity says, rubbing a thumb over the other’s hand. “I wish I wasn’t though.”
He doesn’t notice the concerned look Slime gives him.
“Quackity from Las Nevadas, you should go back to bed.”
A gust of wind whips into them and Quackity uses it as an excuse to let his tears fall.
“I will, but please just let me stay a little longer. I’m going to wake up and you’ll be gone.”
At that Slime turns and grabs hold of Quackity’s arms and spins him around, bringing them face to face.
“I’m not going to go anywhere. I’m staying here in Las Nevadas.”
The serious edge to his voice grabs Quackity’s attention, but not in the way it’s intended to. Instead of shaking him out of his stupor, it draws him even further towards Slime. His eyes trail away from the disconcerted gaze of the other and towards his tight-pulled lips. He almost leans in and presses against them with his own. It would be so easy to...
But he fights down the urge. He wouldn’t let himself do it in reality. It would be selfish to use his dreams as an outlet like this.
Instead he gently peels Slime off of him. He whispers goodnight. Or goodbye—he can’t quite hear himself over the wind—and wanders back to his bed in the same trance-like state that brought him out of it. Whatever dream he slips into next has the courtesy to keep him in it for the rest of the night.
When Quackity opens his eyes it’s already late in the day, though he doesn’t realize it at first with the thick curtains pulled tightly together, blocking out the early afternoon sun. He goes to the balcony door on instinct and is surprised when he finds it already closed, and then wonders why he thought it would be open in the first place.
He takes his time preparing for the day, not sure what awaits him with Slime’s return, and heads to the elevator. Upon stepping out onto the ground floor he startles to see Slime already up and about. He’s moved all the stools away from the bar and is sweeping around it. Judging from the large dust pile Quackity nearly walks through, it seems like he's been at it for a while. For a flicker, Quackity is thrown back in time, half expecting Sam to come up to him with a mug of coffee and begin prattling off a to-do list.
He ends up not being too far off.
“Quackity,” Slime says when he turns and takes notice of him.
It’s just his name, there's nothing special about the way it's said, Slime doesn’t even say it that way he used to where it sounded as if the word was coated in a smile—but it still sends a sparking jolt through Quackity. On the few occasions where Slime decided to drop the usual “from Las Nevadas,” it felt as though his regular name came out as a sweet epithet.
He ignores the feeling though, pushes it away as Slime approaches him. He hands off a piece of paper and a plate with the strange assortment of beef jerky, wrinkled berries, and a heel of bread. It looks like the world’s saddest charcuterie board.
“I looked but there isn’t much food around here,” Slime offers as an explanation. “We’re taking care of that later. Eat, and then start wiping down the slot machines.”
It’s such a far cry from the Slime that Quackity has known for so long that all he can do is stand there dumbly as he processes the command. He glances down at the paper. Slime’s handwriting hasn’t improved much in the time they’ve been apart, still loopy and crooked, but the list is clearly organized and well-planned. It maps out a complete schedule for the day of tasks and repairs to be done around the city.
He’s stunned at first, before realizing that his friend was probably always capable of such a feat, but was never given the chance to show it under Quackity’s control. Maybe, he thinks, in another world where he didn’t become so adverse to help and hadn’t created such powerful enemies, Slime would have made the grand opening of Las Nevadas a greater success.
It doesn’t matter now though. He sits and begins to shovel down the odd breakfast. If Slime is going to take the lead, then this time he’s more than willing to follow.
Their day carries on smoothly and within hours the first floor of the casino is in better shape than Quackity thought he’d ever see it in again. By the time they move on to tilling up the overgrown gardens in the greenhouse though, the miniscule amount of words they’ve exchanged starts to wear on him. It’s so awkward and uncomfortable compared to the way they used to be and he can practically see the gap between them. He misses the endless stream of conversation and silly banter from Slime that used to fill the dead air around them, but it shows no sign of coming back.
It causes even more hurt to know the blame for that lies solely on him.
The nothingness quickly becomes unbearable. Every clang of metal against the dry, rocky soil may as well bring the sharp edge of their gardening equipment bashing into Quackity’s skull. He tries to think of anything to say just to make it end, to hear Slime speak to him again.
He blurts out the first thing that comes to mind.
“Where did you go, after everything?”
Slime pauses in the action of hiking down his hoe. “I went to a lot of places, Quackity from Las Nevadas.”
“Tell me about them?”
For a terrifying moment Quackity thinks he made a mistake in asking and that Slime is going to refuse him, or worse, throw the tool down and walk away without saying anything. But then his posture relaxes.
“Well, I wasn’t sure where to go right after I left…”
He spends the rest of the time recounting his journey to Quackity. He tells him of the mesa he went to where gold was practically springing up from the ground, and the week he spent hiding in the barn of a dairy farmer, and the spring where he made temporary stay in a forest of cherry blossom trees.
He picks up where he left off the next day, and the day after that, and so on until there’s nothing more to tell. And so, Quackity asks about his life before they crossed paths. That, Slime warns him, is a harder story to divulge. Millions of years leaves a lot to talk about. Quackity points out that they have a lot of time and Slime obliges him without further objection.
Hearing history from Slime is nothing like reading about it in a textbook. There’s no longer that distance between now and the things of the past when they’re described to him through Slime’s eyes. With each passing day that Slime shares a little more, Quackity’s desire to smack his old self for not thinking to do this sooner grows stronger. He’d been friends with a living relic, yet was so caught up in actually having someone to call a friend that the second part had seemed irrelevant.
At the same time though, he’s glad he saved this for now, because as the weeks go on he feels that broken thing between them steadily stitch itself back together. It’s not quite the same as it once was, like their bond has been re-sewn with a different colored thread, but Quackity finds he doesn’t care at all. Not when it means seeing Slime’s infectious, bright attitude begin to poke out from behind the clouds again, and the two of them no longer reserve each other's company for work alone.
They find themselves standing outside on the top of the Needle one night after completing the day’s projects. It’s snowing, but the heated air coming through the open doors that lead into the lounge inside keeps them warm enough. Slime is finishing telling Quackity about a time he’d ended up living on an archipelago after sneaking by unnoticed onto a pirate ship, when Quackity thinks to ask him something that’s been on his mind since he started detailing these stories.
“You’ve been so many places with so many people, Slime, but when you came here you seemed…I don’t know. I just wouldn’t have guessed you’d have done all of that from the way you acted. Didn’t you ever talk to anyone before I found you?”
Slime drags a finger through the layer of snow that covers the metal railing, making little zig-zag patterns.
“I talked to people,” he says, “but when they talked back I could tell it wasn’t how they usually talked to other humans.”
Quackity cocks his head. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t understand what it was exactly. I just knew that they didn’t see me the way they saw each other, so I stopped trying and started watching them instead. None of them lasted very long anyway. It was hard to get attached to something that turned to dust so quickly.”
His blunt apathy comes as a shock to Quackity. He never would have guessed the wide-eyed, eagerly curious Slime he found stowed away in his restaurant had held such a nihilistic outlook.
“Why did you talk to me then?”
Slime softens a bit.
“You said we were going to be friends. I’d seen humans have friends before, but never had one myself. No one ever offered. I’d watched you for a while, and thought you were interesting, so I figured I would give it a try.”
It’s an unusual compliment, to hear you were deemed interesting after being unknowingly watched for who knows how long, but Quackity is flattered anyway. The memory that resurfaces of the night they met brings about a pleasant feeling. He wants to hold on to it for a while longer, so he presses on with the topic.
"You kissed me when we first met. Do you remember that?"
He can't tell if it’s a trick of the shadows or not, but Slime's cheeks look as though they're turning a shade darker, more akin to forest green.
"I thought it was a form of greeting."
Quackity snorts. "It can be, depending on where you are and who you're with. Did you figure that out while you were gone?"
Slime's nose wrinkles. "I tried. Some of your human customs are very confusing."
The expression is one Quackity remembers well from the dozens of times Slime had listened as he tried to explain certain human habits to him. A fond smile tugs at his lips.
"Oh yeah? How?"
"You'll kiss relatives sometimes," Slime starts. "And you'll kiss non-relatives. For a while I thought that you only kiss people you really like. But then I remembered that you kissed Schlatt from Manberg and Wilbur from Utah. When we met, I kissed you because I thought it was how I was supposed to greet you, but you told me it wasn't, so I stopped for a while. Until we became best friends.”
Quackity’s smile remains, but it shifts into something closer to amusement.
“Why did us being best friends make you kiss me again?”
Slime’s brow furrows as his expression morphs.
“Because you said Sapnap from Kinoko Kingdom and Karl from Everywhere had been your best friends once. You kissed them more than anyone.”
He speaks like the question couldn’t have possibly been serious, like it was as absurd as asking the color of the snow falling from the sky.
Quackity’s heart stops in his chest, and then, just as quickly, it springs back to life, pumping with a rhythm twice as frantic as before.
“Wait, you— you thought we had the same relationship that I had with Karl and Sapnap?”
Slime’s demeanor falters.
“Did we…not?”
Before Quackity can even begin to process this new discovery, let alone answer, Slime’s already babbling on.
“Oh, that's why you never kissed me back or wanted to say—”
Quackity has never so clearly seen a person mentally kick themselves. Slime bows his head, his grip on the railing tightening. And then, as if physically trying to rid himself of the embarrassment, he shakes his head, looking at Quackity without making eye contact.
“Well, I told you human relationships are confusing. I guess I didn’t understand them as well as I thought.”
His tone is chipper but there's an undeniable pang of dejection buried in there.
It all sounds muffled to Quackity, drowned out by the thrumming of his pulse in his ears. He’s feeling more than hearing—feels his heart swell with the knowledge that Slime had felt just as intensely for him as he had for Slime, and subsequently feels it clench with the realization that all of that had already fizzled out long ago in a pool of lava.
He also feels this raw moment between them begin to close, with Slime’s misguided acceptance filling one more gap from their past. His desperation to pry it back open, to let Slime know the truth, bubbles to the surface and bursts out all at once.
“No!”
A combination of the rise in his volume and his wings puffing up and spreading out causes Slime to jump back a step.
“No, no. I felt that way, I wanted that too, I thought you didn’t. And I never said anything because—”
He pauses, unsure how to continue. Because he thought Slime didn’t understand what romantic love was? But he had no problem explaining anything else he didn’t fully comprehend at first, so it wasn’t that. Because he wasn’t ready to trust someone in that way? Another lame excuse considering he had been more open with Slime than he’d ever been with anyone. In truth, he realizes he has no good reason. He could have been happy, could have had the love he so desperately craved since coming to the SMP, but as with every other choice he made, he opted for comfortable misery.
“Because I was a fucking idiot, Slime,” he settles on, defeated. “I’m sorry for that.”
He sighs and looks out at the city, twinkling more than it has in years. He feels a sting of yearning, knowing what could have been, but is satisfied with that chapter between them finally out in the open and complete. Now he can move on and they can write a new one.
“I’m glad you still want to be friends though. Thank you for coming back.”
It's then that he feels a hand on his face, pulling him away. He’s about to ask Slime what he’s doing but it dies in his throat when he sees the weighty look the other wears, eyes boring into him.
“I never stopped wanting to be your best friend, Quackity.”
The implication hangs there. Quackity almost doesn’t want to prod at it lest the energy it’s created shatters—would rather be content to stay here with Slime’s hold enveloping him.
When he does reply, his voice is nothing more than a pitched whisper.
"What?"
“I was angry with you, but I never stopped.”
From the moment he respawned after dying on the asphalt pavement of Las Nevadas, Quackity promised himself that he would learn from his previous mistakes, take note of everything he did wrong and change to make his future better, which is why he breathes out, “I never stopped either.”
He doesn’t even realize they’re moving towards each other until their lips connect and the last missing piece linking them together slides into place. It’s nothing like the quick, one-sided, chaste kisses Slime used to give him. Quackity can feel an eruption of heat spread through his body. He’s warmer than he’s ever been, despite standing in the frosty night.
When they break apart, flushed and breathless and still holding each other, Quackity doesn’t even need to think before he says, “I love you.”
And Prime, if he knew how light doing so would make him feel, like unloading a burden he wasn’t aware he’d been carrying, he would have said it ages ago.
Slime beams at him, a grin Quackity hasn’t seen pointed in his direction in what seems like forever.
“I love you too,” he says, already bringing them together once more.
They stumble through the doors and onto the couch in the lounge, all the while slipping out I love yous with every free breath they get.
They say it so much that it should lose all meaning, like a word repeated until it becomes merely a sound.
Instead, the intensity only seems to grow the more they say it. Their words wrap around each other, pushing them even closer together. Every one of their senses becomes muted and the rest of the world around them fades away, nothing remaining aside from the other’s touch and their echoing voices.
I love you.
I love you.
Quackity is ushered into the morning with the sensation of fingers stroking his hair. His brain goes through the brief state of confusion that comes with waking up under unfamiliar circumstances, and then he peaks his eye open and the fog immediately clears at the sight of Slime laying next to him.
There’s a light draft coming in from the doors they disregarded the previous night. The air outside is no longer cold, just comparatively cooler to the room and each other. Quackity shivers and burrows farther under their shared blanket.
“Did you stay here all night?” he asks.
“Mm hm.”
“You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
The answer causes a flutter to curl in Quackity’s stomach and weave its way through him. It’s a ridiculous sort of happiness that forces him to close his eyes and tuck his head against Slime just to prevent it from spilling out.
If it were up to Quackity they’d never get up from the couch, but after a while Slime nudges him, a reminder of all that they still have to do.
He groans and begrudgingly gets up, at least carrying the reassurance that it's not the last opportunity they'll get.
It takes a long time to get the city fully back up and running, and even longer to begin to spread the word of its existence outside the SMP.
On one of their excursions to outsource their advertisement beyond the border, they come across an area on the outskirts of the destruction left in the wake of the explosion. It’s nowhere near as bad as the center of the SMP where they don’t dare to traverse, just a few chunks of debris and scorched earth in the midst of repairing itself, but it halts Slime in his tracks. His stare is blank and still and endless. The suddenness of it worries Quackity. He’s about to ask what's wrong when Slime speaks up.
“I wanted to come back sooner, Quackity from Las Nevadas.”
It's so unexpected that Quackity isn’t sure how to reply—it doesn’t feel right to. He waits patiently for Slime to continue, if he even plans to do so.
He does.
“I tried to,” he says, “but on my way back I saw that everything was gone. Everyone was dust. I thought you might be too, and I—”
Quackity has heard enough. He throws his arms around Slime, cutting him off.
“But I’m not,” he mumbles.
Slime slowly reaches for his hand. Squeezes it.
“You’re not.”
It’s the last time either one feels the need to mention the subject.
Later, much later, when Las Nevadas is a place on maps from miles away, and a known haven of fun, people flock to it in bunches. They crowd casinos and hotels, some even choosing to make it their permanent residence. There’s rumors and chatter everywhere about it. No one is quite sure of its origin, and it feels like a miracle given the mysterious surrounding wasteland.
The one thing that is known for sure about the city is its two presidents. They make public appearances often. Sometimes it's to unveil a new part of the ever expanding metropolis, and other times it's simply to greet and mingle with visitors. It's obvious to anyone who sees them that the pair share something special; they aren’t exactly subtle with their frequent displays of affection.
It leaks out from wherever they are, surrounding every space they enter. To those that have stayed in Las Nevadas long enough to become well acquainted, it’s obvious that the core of the city’s addictive, bright buzz and memorability lies with them, and their devotion, and love.