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For worse and for better, Karl’s memory is not what it used to be. An example: some days, he wakes up and forgets that he is old.
His bladder pinches him awake. He pries his eyes open: through the window across the room is a square of sky, lightening but not yet light. A bit of a surprise, neither good nor bad. Annoying, mostly. He’s always been a heavy sleeper. Last to wake of the three of them. The best kind of morning is an afternoon, all saturated sky and heavy sun, with one bedmate keeping him warm and the other making brunch.
Every now and then, though, his body likes to keep him on his toes. He tries to shut his eyes but it insists, so he sighs and rolls over to press sloppy, cotton-mouthed kisses to whatever scraps of skin he can reach. A scruffy jaw and the fine curling hair at the nape of a neck. One fiance snuffles; the other sighs. Without him they curl into each other like kittens, or otters, or spoons.
Gosh, he’s lucky. He can’t wait to marry them. Maybe he can sweettalk XD into letting him hop forward to the big day.
His knees protest as he springs to his feet. Weird. Did he tweak something yesterday? He rinses watery memories through his fingers while he hobbles to the bathroom, relieving himself and washing his hands and peering crusty-eyed at his face in the mirror. He has to lean close; it’s early-dark, and he doesn’t want to wake his fiancés by turning the light on. His face is puffy with sleep, creased on one side where his cheek pressed into the pillow and drool dried on his chin. A bluebird could live comfortably in the nest of his hair.
It’s just his face. He doesn’t know why he expected any different.
Maybe his tweaky knees are from training yesterday. Broad hands, warm and rough, folding gentle over his hips and taking him through sword forms. Audience of one, wolf whistling from the sidelines. Could account for his achy shoulders and stiff neck too.
He shrugs, winces, and goes to brush his teeth. This goes to plan until it’s time to rinse, at which point he tries to put down his toothbrush and his fingers won’t unlock.
He stares at them. Wills them to open. In protest, the knuckles smart something fierce.
“Karl?”
His fiancé stands in the doorway, one lean shoulder against the frame. Wings askew, beanie mashed clumsily over his hair. He’s probably wearing shorts or boxers but it’s impossible to tell beneath the shirt he’s wearing about five times too big for him. Dipping over one shoulder and showing off one pretty, scandalous collarbone, oohlala.
“Hi,” Karl says, in love all over again. “What are you doing up, lovely?”
“Bed’s too hot without you.”
Karl grins. “I’m not exactly running cold right now. One look at you and I start sweatin’.”
“God, really? Before the sun’s even up?” He shuffles in like a little old man, looping his arms around Karl’s waist and pressing his face into his shoulder. “Finish brushing your teeth and come back.”
Finish—oh right. “I would, beautiful, but I can’t put down the toothbrush. I think I might be dying.”
He jiggles the toothbrush in his gargoyle-claw, and gets a snort in response.
“Last I checked arthritis wasn’t a death sentence.”
“Arthritis?” Karl wrinkles his nose at the beanie resting on his shoulder. He’s dearly acquainted with carpal tunnel, not arthritis. “But that’s for old people.”
A pause. A kiss is printed along the peak of his shoulderblade. “You are old, mi amor."
“What? No I’m not.” But even as he says it, he touches his hand to the rosy apple of his cheek. He can feel it. The skin as youthful as ever. The flesh aging beneath it. Aged, already. “Oh. That’s kind of a bummer.”
“I don’t know. You know I’m into silver foxes.” A chin hooks over his shoulder, and yes, there in the mirror: his fiance, distinguished. Crow’s feet. Silver streaks. Still painfully beautiful with one corner of his mouth lifted in a tired smile. “Forgetful morning, huh?”
Light and easy, like this is nothing to worry about. Karl realizes, belatedly, that it isn’t. His tortoise-slow memories will catch up. Until then his husbands will hold his hands and wait with him.
Oh. His husbands. Not fiances. His breath catches in his throat, and suddenly he feels delicate with joy. How wonderful.
“I love you,” he says. “You, um…you.”
His husband laughs. He reaches for Karl’s hand, massaging the stiffness from the joints. “You can do it. Starts with a Q.”
“Q…” Their temples tip together. Karl closes his eyes. It’s there, he can feel it, miles down beneath cool, dark water. It rises so slowly. “Big Q.”
“Mm-hmm.” Another kiss to the slope of his neck. Karl wonders if maybe he should be afraid, but he isn’t. They stand together, and his husband presses and soothes each of his knuckles, and the thumb of his other hand rubs circles over his hipbone, and they are unhurried, content. Drowsy in the runny-egg morning. Karl’s hand eases open.
“Quackity.” He says it on a sigh.
“That’s right.” Quackity noses beneath Karl’s ear. A ticklish tenderness. “Gold star, baby.”
“Quackity. Big Q. Duckling. Angel.”
“Laying it on a little thick. Relax, we’re already married.”
“Married,” says Karl. “You, me, and…”
It’s right there. Just at his fingertips, sweet like candlesmoke. Sleeping, right now, in their bed. The thought of him alone there makes Karl ache.
“I can give you a hint,” Quackity mumbles. Karl can feel him nodding off in the curve of his neck and shoulder. Quackity is good at that, he remembers suddenly and with delight. Like magic, he can doze off right in the middle of conversations, a talent he only acquired within the last ten years. “Think pandas.”
Pandas. Like a word puzzle. Flip it around, backwards, upside down…
“Sapnap,” he says.
Like a summoning, there he is, hunched and squinting in the doorway.
“Party in the bathroom,” Sapnap croaks. He sounds like a bullfrog. “Woo. Fuckin. Rave, I guess.”
“Morning, baby,” Karl says, only a little guilty for waking them both, and not nearly enough to stop him from opening his arms for Sapnap to scoot into. He has to duck through the doorway, capturing Karl’s hands and massaging the knuckles, much like Quackity did. They’re big, Sapnap’s hands. Karl doesn’t remember them being so big, or so volcanic rock-y. Sharp, glassy and black. Veins of magma running up the backs and the wrists. Kinda hot. Really hot. Literally but also in attractiveness. They cradle his hands so, so gently, and that makes it even hotter. Heat sinking in and soothing out the last of the ache. Does being old mean he’s not supposed to find his husbands hot anymore? If so he thinks he’s doing it wrong.
“Heard Q say something about arthritis,” Sapnap says. His voice is a rumble in his chest. Karl can almost feel the vibrations in the air. He sways closer like siren song, Quackity swaying with him. “Better?”
“Oodles and noodles,” Karl says, rocking forward another inch, until Sapnap obligingly pulls them both into his chest. It’s like being embraced by hearthfire. He doesn’t think he could ever forget that.
“If we’re not gonna go back to sleep we should have breakfast instead of cuddling in the bathroom,” Quackity says, practically a purr.
“I’ll go get it started,” Sapnap murmurs. But he holds them for a minute more, and then another minute after that.
-
Things he starts to remember, in bits and pieces:
He can no longer hold his liquor. Neither can Sapnap. Quackity is better, and smug as hell about it.
Karl needs glasses to read now. So does Sapnap, so he doesn’t feel alone in it.
Sapnap is the most self-conscious of his appearance in their soon-to-be-golden years. It might have been Karl, had his exploits in youth not frozen him in time, while he continued to age beneath the skin. But Sapnap never stopped growing; he’s now a hulking seven feet tall, the blue of his eyes often eclipsed by burning white, limbs crackling to black, shadows lengthening over his face. Karl and Quackity think it makes him look smoky and mysterious. Sapnap laments that he looks like his dad.
Contrary to popular belief, age has not curbed their libidos at all. Tangentially related: shame, a commodity they collectively had precious little of to begin with, has gone out the window.
They got married someplace secret and young and green, that Karl wouldn’t be able to point to on a map. No one there but the three of them. No frills, no officiant, no witnesses.
They didn’t have kids. They talked about it. Still do, sometimes.
Karl stays, now. Karl stays.
-
Karl forgets again as they head downstairs for breakfast. He flounces behind Sapnap and ahead of Quackity, enjoying the creaks and squeaks of the stairs, and on the second to last step his knee decides not to catch him.
Sapnap, like some golden-age movie knockout, catches him in a dip. He is absolutely the only one of them who can still do that. Though if Karl’s being honest, he was probably the only one of them who could ever do that.
“Whoops,” Karl says. “No bones today.”
“That’s very common in men your age,” Quackity says over Sapnap’s shoulder. He shimmies past them and out of sight.
Sapnap snorts. “You still have bones, baby. Just shitty, middle-aged, old man bones. Take it slow. Smell the flowers.”
“You can’t be middle-aged and an old man, dumbass,” Quackity calls back.
“I think twenty-year-old us would beg to differ,” Karl says. He’s still caught in the dip. He luxuriates, noodles out. “A fifty-year-old to a twenty-year-old? Disgusting. Ancient. The literal crypt keeper.”
“Speak for yourself!” shouts Quackity. Sounds like he’s in another room. “As the one who’s been into older men the longest, I obviously have the authority to say that middle-aged and old are two different things, and also twenty year old Sapnap and Karl were idiots, actually.”
Karl can tell that Sapnap can tell that Karl is enjoying the display of strength, just like Sapnap can tell that Karl can tell that Sapnap is enjoying having his strength admired. With both of them fully aware, Karl lounges his whole weight into Sapnap’s arms, and Sapnap flexes while calling to Quackity, “Okay, expert, how old is old?”
There’s a thoughtful pause. “Seventy,” he says. “Asterisk. If you’re dead, they’ll still say you died pretty young, but if you’re alive, you’re old.”
“You said I’m old this morning, and I’m not seventy yet, I don’t think,” Karl says.
“You’re the exception that proves the rule.” A beat. “Are you two being sexy in there without me? Quit it! Incorrigible fuckers.”
“It’s like he has a sixth sense,” Karl says into Sapnap’s mouth. Sapnap rumbles, half laughter and half purr. This time Karl can feel it. He practically melts.
Sapnap sets him on his feet, a warm arm bracing his waist, steady at his hip until he’s seated at the table.
“Stairs are a young man’s game, I guess,” Karl says.
He watches Sapnap set about fixing breakfast. Sapnap used to clatter around the kitchen. He knows what he’s doing now, reaches into cabinets without looking, doesn’t slam the pantry door because it drifts shut on its own, both hands moving with independent expertise. In record time Karl’s heart is swelling with the smells of coffee and butter and syrup and grease.
“You okay, baby?” Sapnap asks, splashing something spicy and Nether-sourced into the saucepan. His eyes are sympathy-soft, white as a nova. “You’re quiet this morning.”
Karl hums. “Just thinking. When we met your diet was cereal and chicken wings and instant noodles. Don’t remember when you became such a master chef.”
“Okay, first of all, cereal and chicken wings and instant noodles are the shit. Second, you were eating all that right along with me.” But he’s laughing, a low rumble. “You still would be, if I didn’t grace you with my gourmet talents.”
“I wouldn’t, because I’d get Quackity to cook for me instead.”
“The abuse,” Sapnap grouses. He noses a kiss to Karl’s temple. Karl’s eyes flutter, so he misses it when the mug is placed in front of him. Sapnap goes back to the stove. The sizzling kicks up and then dies down as he plates their food, and Karl wraps his fingers around his coffee. Takes a small sip. A little too sweet, just like he likes it.
“Quackity said I was having a forgetful morning,” he says.
“Yeah, I heard that,” Sapnap says. He sets a plate in front of Karl next, then another in front of Quackity’s chair and a third in front of his. Piled high with eggs, sausage, thick-sliced bacon, grits drowning in butter. His brow is creased, but there’s no panic. Just like Quackity. “How are you feeling?”
The impulse to lie is the whisper of a phantom limb. He hasn’t lied to Sapnap in years, he remembers. That’s good. Sapnap deserves honesty, after everything.
“I’m okay,” Karl says, and he means it. “A little sad, maybe. I don’t think everything’s back yet.”
“And that’s why Big Q has come to the rescue.” Quackity reenters the room with two books in hand. The sight of them does funny acrobatics to Karl’s stomach. A nervous and unhappy flip flop, and then a settling. These are not books like his old books. These are something kinder.
Quackity sets them in front of him and busses a kiss to his temple, the opposite of Sapnap, balancing him out. He takes his seat on Sapnap’s other side, tucking in immediately and with fervor. Sapnap does the same. Almost absently their free hands gravitate together, their fingers latticed. Karl scoops a spoonful of grits—creamy, coarse, nutty—and opens the first book.
Hello, gorgeous!
Welcome to your Forgetful Morning Book, where I’ll take you on a tour of the must-see stops through the life and times of Karl Jacobs (that’s you!). But first let’s put your mind to rest:
You are happy. You are safe. You are loved. You have two smokin’ hot husbands. Even if you remember nothing else, I’d say you made out like a bandit.
Like I said, this book only covers the highlights! If you want to take the scenic route, take a gander at your daily journals. Enjoy them—I always do—then add an entry if you feel up to it.
But hey, don’t let me order you around. Take your time, skim through it, read this book or don’t. There’s no path to follow. Do whatever you want.
Your friends and family love you, Karl, and so do I.
Muah muah muah,
Karl Jacobs
Karl reads through breakfast. It really is a highlight reel of his life, concise bullet-point lists with the occasional flourish that makes him giggle. Sapnap and Quackity clear the plates and wash the dishes.
At the sink Quackity stage whispers, “I bet fifty emeralds he just got to the hardly know ’er footnote.”
“Stop trying to grift me, Q, of course he’s at the hardly know ’er footnote. He always cracks himself up at the hardly know ’er footnote, what kind of bet is that.”
Out of the corner of his eye Karl sees Quackity bump Sapnap’s hip. “You know me too well. The costs of this long-con have officially outweighed the benefits. Time to move on and fleece another dilf out of his wealth. How’s your dad doing?”
“Oh my god, that joke was old twenty years ago, it’s necrotic now. Give it a rest.”
“Never. I’ll never give it a rest. I’m going to beat this joke into an undead skeleton horse, and it will ride like the fucking wind.”
“RIP, Boner,” Karl says, proud of himself for remembering. Quackity nods solemnly.
“RIP, Boner.”
Sapnap rolls his eyes and bumps Quackity’s hip back. “RIP Boner, I guess."
Karl watches them grin at each other, laugh-lines pulling into their faces. The sight hurts him very sweetly. He shuts his book. Quackity notices.
“You’re a fast reader, but you’re not that fast,” he says. He dries his hands off on a hand towel while Sapnap uses his shirt. “Remember something?”
“Not really.” Karl holds out his hand, and Quackity doesn’t hesitate to take it. A paradox of age that Karl only gets to appreciate in Quackity: how skin turns rough, at the same time that skin turns soft. “Will you tell me the rest?”
“But you wrote these for you. You wrote them well, too, I read them. We’re not going to tell it as well, especially not Sapnap.”
Sapnap’s arms come around Quackity’s shoulders with a squeeze and a growl. Quackity grins, and then he yelps. “Cold hands! Fuck off, why didn’t you dry them?”
Karl lets them play for a minute. When he has their attention again, he says, “I don’t want to hear it from me.” He reels Quackity closer, until he can tip his head against his hip. “I want to hear it from you.”
Quackity cards his rough-soft fingers through Karl’s hair. He works out a tangle. “Okay.”
-
Quackity was right, though: they tell it all out of order.
They know he was a time traveler. That’s the most important thing to get out of the way, Quackity says. Karl told them years ago, before they married. There was a whole multiversal war about it. Something about defying fate and saving reality from god, blah blah, big damn hero shit.
Quackity has taken up pottery. Sapnap gardens. Karl journals. He’s trying his hand at poetry.
Throughout the year they spend five months in Kinoko, five in a penthouse in Las Nevadas, and two roaming the server, sating Karl’s wanderlust.
There’s lots of treaties and trade charters between Las Nevadas and Kinoko now. Flowers are one of Kinoko’s major exports.
Over the years Karl tumbled into the position of Kinoko’s ambassador, which at this point mostly means fancy dinners and vacations disguised as diplomatic missions. Sapnap’s role as Kinoko’s Protector phased into a figurehead position, though a seven foot tall fire demon makes for a pretty effective figurehead.
George is also a figurehead, though Karl doubts that was never not the case. He joins Karl on most of his diplomatic trips.
There was that thing with the Egg, too. Tried to take over the world one more time, big brouhaha. The last server wide conflict. It was years ago and there are no hard feelings. Bad and Skeppy live off-server in a mansion in Ohio. They get dinner with the in-laws whenever they visit.
Quackity gave up being Las Nevadas’s president. Mayor. CEO. Quackity and Sapnap bicker over the proper title. It was a difficult transition, but Quackity was determined to make it. Not because he’d grown tired of it, or because it had grown tired of him. It was important to show his nation that a peaceful transition could be made. That not every community had to live and die by its founder.
Oh, but before the Egg thing, Puffy and Niki got married. Karl was in the wedding party. The reception was held in Las Nevadas, and Quackity didn’t even try to kill Technoblade. Puffy and Niki are at sea now, visiting other servers, but they come by for Niki’s book club. Karl is a member.
Back to the important shit. Sapnap’s militia is now mostly elementary schoolers with sticks whose parents need a sitter after school. Why does he need to know that, Quackity?
The kids aren’t kids anymore, obviously. Purpled is off-server somewhere with Punz and Hannah, making bank. Tommy’s up in the cold with Tubbo and Ranboo. They’re doing good. Oh, Ranboo got resurrected at some point, yeah.
XD is gone. Dream is gone. Sapnap doesn’t sound as sad as he used to. Just a little wistful. Quackity’s eyes on his face are fixed with intense devotion.
“Any of this ringing any bells?” Quackity passes a thumb over Karl’s knuckles. They’ve migrated to the library. It’s nothing like Karl remembers. There’s so much light. Benches and loveseats big enough for three. No secret hiding places, unless a cozy nook in the corner counts.
Karl leans back into Sapnap, who is squinting through comically tiny spectacles at Karl’s journals for anything they’ve missed. Karl isn’t used to having them in here. He thought it would terrify him.
“Mm. Not really. But it makes a good story.” He squeezes Quackity’s fingers. “Even if you are shit at telling it.”
“Yeah, well, you’re old and a prick and an idiot, how about that. You’re lucky you’re cute.”
“Found it,” Sapnap crows. He taps the open book with a thick claw. “I think this is your most recent entry about Sam and Ponk’s on-again-off-again thing. Currently they’re off again and making it everyone’s problem.”
Karl smacks a big wet kiss to his cheek. “Thank you, baby. I may not remember my life or my husbands, but at least I know the status of the server’s messiest situationship.”
“Priorities.” Quackity kisses the back of Karl’s hand, considerably less wet. “Nice weather for a tour. Come on. Let’s go see the country you built.”
-
Kinoko is beautiful. Is there anything else to say?
Maybe this: what Karl remembers are beautiful pastoral builds and paranoid refugees. Half a dozen families desperate for sanctuary. Neighbors who avoided each other’s eyes and kept the curtains drawn tight, and never attended any of Karl’s community-building potlucks.
Kinoko now: beautiful pastoral builds, lived in. Vines and flowers trellising lovingly up brick facades. Kids hopping fences, picking flowers and mushrooms. Three of them beeline to Sapnap. The tallest is no taller than his hip. They rope him into training exercises that Karl very diplomatically does not call tag. Karl and Quackity walk on.
The dragon burned down. It was rebuilt more resplendently than ever. The fountain is overflowing with copper wishes. The road to the harbor was redone a decade ago. Quackity points out the flowers, the trees. They’re coming into themselves, he says. Karl laces their fingers together.
“You made this place a home. For all these people. Figured it out long before I did,” Quackity says.
Karl brushes his lips to the corner of Quackity’s eye. He holds himself there, nose to temple. A rush of breath tumbles against his throat. It feels warm and content.
Karl pulls back to look at him. The crows feet, the grays. “These suit you.”
Quackity’s smile is so roguish and self-assured that Karl is tempted to pull him down into a quiet flower field to have his way with him. “I know,” he says.
-
At night they pile back into their bed, sleigh frame and goose down, king size, handmade quilt. Karl doesn’t remember quilting it, but he’s sure he will soon.
“I can’t believe we go to sleep at nine pm,” he grouses, unable to even pretend not to smile. “Just because we’re old doesn’t mean we have to be boring.”
The left side of the bed calls to him. He jumps in, ignoring the twinge of his hip. Sapnap and Quackity collapse into the middle and right side respectively.
“You’ll eat your words on Saturday night. We go wild. Sometimes we stay up until ten,” says Sapnap.
Karl tucks into his chest. Sapnap folds around him, nuzzling into his hair with soft canine whuffs. Karl can barely sling an arm around him, grasping for the curve of Quackity’s waist. Quackity still sleeps in nothing but boxers, thank Prime. Karl kneads at the wonderful softness of his hip and belly.
“Mm. Let’s have sex,” Karl murmurs.
“Dude, you’re about to pass out. Go to sleep,” says Quackity. Karl’s whole body vibrates with Sapnap’s silent laughter. It’s perfect.
“Mmfine. Only because I can’t wait to wake up and remember our life and history and all the crazy awesome sex we have.”
Quackity’s hand, rough and soft and cool, reaches over Sapnap’s ribs to scratch at the base of Karl’s scalp.
“Give it time. It doesn’t always come back right away,” Quackity says.
Karl kisses the inside of his wrist. A trace whiff of cologne slams him into sense memory. Karl’s nose in Quackity’s throat. Quackity’s panting breaths on his ear. Sapnap at his back, a blanket of heat, braced over them.
Their wedding night, he thinks. It’s barely a scrap. Less a memory than a still frame image impressed into his brain. He reaches for more and finds it foggy, just out of reach.
“No, I’ll remember tomorrow. I can feel it,” he whispers.
He sleeps like that, with Sapnap’s mouth at his crown and Quackity’s nails at his nape, as though they’re both coaxing out the memories.
-
What Karl remembers, in the morning, is this:
They got married in Kinoko. George officiating. Bad and Skeppy walking their son down the aisle. Bad bursting into tears.
Nothing else. Not even their names. Not even when they give him hints. Not even when he reads their names in his Forgetful Morning book. He says them, over and over, and they never stop feeling foreign on his tongue.
Forgetting that he’s old is an inconvenience. Forgetting their names is a shame bordering on sorrow, a thumbprint bruise to his heart threatening to bloom.
There are worse things to forget. He knows that. It just doesn’t feel like it.
“It’s worse than yesterday,” Karl says at the breakfast table. His demonic husband peppers their mushroom and cheese omelets at the stove, while his avian husband sits beside him and holds his hand. “Does this happen a lot?”
“It happens,” says the man holding Karl’s hand, with heart-sinking diplomacy. “You have good days and not so good days. But the good days always follow the bad.”
“And the bad ones follow that,” Karl says.
It’s a little maudlin even for him. His husband frowns. Karl’s heart lifts, a little, to see all the new ways his face creases and folds. He’s so beautiful. Karl reaches out and thumbs the wrinkles beside his mouth. Watches them disappear as the corners turn up.
“Well, hey, that hasn’t changed. You’re almost as into dilfs as I am,” his husband says.
“I think I’m just into you,” Karl says.
“And a smoothtalker. See? Some things are forever.”
That threatens to move Karl. Luckily premature waterworks are circumvented by the seven-foot-tall hottie serving them breakfast. Each plate is accompanied by coffee, juice, and a kiss on the cheek.
“It’ll come back,” he says. “You just gotta be patient, babe. We know that doesn’t come naturally to you.”
Karl doesn’t understand how they’re not more worried, or disappointed. He flops across the table and ignores the twinge in his back. “I’m old. Being patient could literally kill me.”
“Not on my watch.” The demon rubs Karl’s shoulders encouragingly. Karl is sure his name begins with an S. Or a P. “Eat up. I let you skip leg day yesterday, you’re not getting away with it twice.”
-
They bundle up into workout clothes while watery memories trickle through Karl’s fingers: Ponk said Karl needs to stay limber for the arthritis, and needs exercise for everything else. After the requisite eyebrow-wiggling jokes they worked that into their daily routine. One husband leads him through sword movements for an hour almost every morning, while the other cheers suggestively from the sidelines. Afterward they take a leisurely run through Kinoko. Remembering anything is encouraging; remembering his doctor’s name instead of his husbands’ is fucking bogus.
The sword training is fun. It’s a pleasant surprise to find how much his body remembers, even when his mind doesn’t. It’s spring in Kinoko; the air is bracing. And no one could complain about the enormous hands closed over his hips and the firm chest against his back.
The running is a fucking nightmare. At least the route is remote enough that only his husbands bear witness to Karl’s wheezing, hacking, balloon-man-in-the-wind shame.
“I hope I forget this,” Karl cough-gasps.
“I won’t,” says his avian husband. His breath is labored, but nowhere near as much as Karl’s. Probably the wings propelling him forward, or the hollow bird bones. He’s wearing a full tracksuit. The sight is so familiar that Karl remembers his name in a burst of nostalgia, but as soon as he turns his head it slips away.
The other husband leads the pack. He jogs backwards, calling back insults guised as encouragement, and refuses to even pretend to be out of breath. Near the end he drops the humble act entirely and just does a whole entire backflip.
“If that didn’t make me so horny I’d kill you,” Karl seethes.
His giant gorgeous bastard of a husband laughs, then jogs back to catch him up in a smothering kiss. It’s a little swoonworthy, Karl will admit. He’s breathless and starry-eyed afterward, and only half because he’s having an asthma attack on top of a coronary. Whoa, when did he pick him up?
His second husband demands, “I’m old too, where’s my princess carry?”
“Try being a fragile little princess and we’ll talk,” says his first husband. Karl doesn’t even mind that he’s talking shit. He’s too busy preening over princess.
His charmingly pint-sized husband wheedles until he gets scooped up too. They return to society with Karl cradled like a bug in a rug and Husband 2 perched like a hawk on Husband 1’s shoulder.
He sets them down at a farmers market. No less than a dozen people Karl call Karl by name. Karl holds court, sidestepping any awkward questions he can’t recall the answers to with warm hugs and compliments on the dress, the pie, the kids, the brownies, you mind if I nab one? Behind his back, he picks his cuticles raw.
Back home with pies for lunch. The demon catches up on housework. The avian works on some gaming agreements in the library, and Karl takes the opportunity to peruse his journals. None of the shadows in his head illuminate, so he switches to a book of poetry. He’s filled about six books’ worth.
“How long did you say I’ve been trying this?” Karl asks.
“Four, five years,” says his husband. He doesn’t need glasses to read his contracts. It’s a shame. Karl is sure he’d look good in them.
“And I never showed you any of it?”
His husband grins down at his work. “Not a word.”
“Lame.”
“Hey, you said it.”
Karl cracks one book open. He grimaces with his whole body. “Yikes. I can see why.”
His husband laughs, sharply and rudely. It makes Karl feel all noodly inside.
He fortifies his ego and reads on. This poetry isn’t subtle, or original. It certainly isn’t good. It’s nothing but sentimental, freeform, first-open-mic-night schmaltz. In his old age he must have embraced the cringe. He would admire that if he’d embraced it enough to share it with his husbands, but embarrassment won out. No wonder—almost all of it is about them.
He reads. He writes. When his joints get too stiff, he gets up and gives his other husband a hand around the house. That’s nice, domestic, even when he develops a cramp or nearly throws out his back. Even when he tries to put away laundry or food in the wrong closet, again and again.
He’s achy and sore by dinner, and he’s achy and sore by bed. He flops face-first into the pillow and laments, “My knees are trying to kill me.”
His husband chuckles deep in his chest. “Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” Karl kicks out a leg. “And my ankles.”
His husband rolls his eyes, but takes Karl’s leg in his doting hands. “Least I can do after all your help.”
“I’m very helpful,” Karl says smugly. Their husband strips down to his boxers and stretches his wings. He crawls under the covers and clings to Karl like a barnacle.
“Oh yeah. You would never watch us bust our asses from the sidelines.”
“Supervising is helping.”
He snorts. He grabs Karl’s hand and shoves it gracelessly into his wings. Karl gets the message. He strokes through glossy brown feathers. His husband is asleep in minutes flat, complete with open-mouthed snoring. Karl keeps up half-asleep conversation with the wonderful man kneading at his feet. There’s a name just at the edges of his grasp. That’s where it stays until he drifts off.
-
His bladder wakes him in the morning. He never wakes up first, which makes this morning an outlier.
“You have been,” a man corrects, shuffling into the bathroom, where Karl is staring at himself in the mirror. “For the past few years, actually. You’re a little old man with a little old bladder.”
“Sapnap,” Karl says. His voice comes out like quicksand, slow and thick. “My husband.”
Sapnap beams. “Got it in one, darlin’.”
Karl stares at him in the mirror. Sapnap’s smile fades.
“Hey.” He steps close, lifts his hands slow. “Hey. You’re okay. You’re okay, Karl.”
Karl tries to blink. He can’t.
“You’re okay, darling. Listen to me, yeah?” He has to bend to look Karl in the eye. “Your name is Karl Jacobs. You’re home, you’re safe. Everything’s okay.”
His hands on Karl’s face, sliding down the peaks of his shoulders and the slopes of his arms, catching his hands in a cradle. He lifts them to his lips. He’s so warm that the hairs on Karl’s arms lift.
He turns his head and calls for Quackity, then he’s right back with his forehead pressed to Karl’s, his eyes glowing white like a beacon home. “I know it’s scary, I know.”
“Am I really here?” Karl whispers. Everything around him feels two-dimensional. Paper thin. He feels so far from himself. He feels far from this man holding him. Karl should love him—he does, but he can’t tether the dangling thread of his affection to any memory at all. “This doesn’t feel—am I really now?”
“You are. You’re right here, in the present.”
Another man stumbles in, feathers and hair askew. Quackity. Karl sees him and flinches. Quackity freezes in place.
“I’ll, uh—I’ll make some tea. Be right back.”
He vanishes. Karl’s heart breaks, and he can’t remember why.
Sapnap's hands on his face again. “It’s okay. This happens, baby. Give it time, it’ll come back.”
“I don’t want to go,” Karl says, his voice a stranger’s, rough and urgent. “I don’t want to leave you. Don’t make me.”
“You won’t. That’s all over now, okay? It’s all over. It’s okay.”
Sapnap pulls him into his arms, engulfs him in heat, and slowly it sinks into his skin, beneath it. The air shudders out of him. The colors of the world are solid and bright. He is rooted in his body. He is not going anywhere.
He hiccups. He hiccups again. Sapnap makes an aching sound, and his arms tighten around him, but Karl wrestles free. He crawls across the bathroom—when did they hit the floor?—and his knees protest sharply, because he’s old, and fragile, and with his husbands. His husbands.
“Quackity,” Karl croaks. He claws at the doorframe and drags himself up. One of his nails crack. Sapnap behind him, his steadying hands. “Quackity? Q?”
There’s a moment of awful silence. It builds in Karl’s chest like a stormhead ready to burst. Then the thunder of footsteps, a crash—“fuck,”—and then Quackity is there, wheezing like crossing the house was an exertion.
“Look at you,” Karl says, shaky. “All out of breath like an old man.”
“We are old men,” Quackity coughs.
“Oh yeah,” says Karl.
And then he’s laughing, and Quackity is laughing, and Sapnap is gathering them both into his arms and maybe they’re not laughing at all.
-
Sapnap carries him down to the first floor. Quackity should be ahead or behind, but Karl refuses to let go of his hand. They make a tripping hazard of old bones, stumbling down the stairs as one.
“We should get one of those redstone chairs that go up and down the stairs,” Karl says. “Or a bubblevator.”
“Fuck no,” says Quackity, standing tiptoe to kiss him. They all wobble precariously.
Sapnap and Quackity make breakfast together—more like brunch, now—while Karl clings to Quackity’s back like a limpet. He kisses the nape of Quackity’s neck instead of saying I hate forgetting you. Quackity turns his head and catches the corner of his lips instead of saying I know.
Sapnap butts his forehead against Quackity’s, then Karl’s. Then he nudges them with a hip. “Sit and read. I’ll finish up.”
They waddle past the table and into the living room, to the over-cushioned window seat overlooking the garden. Karl tucks in close, and Quackity helps him swing his legs up and over his lap.
He flips through his forgetful morning book. Memory returns like a developing photograph, all ghostly silhouettes, terrifyingly delicate. Like he could ruin them forever if he exposed them to light.
He remembers: They got married on Party Island, too old to be so high on shrooms. Foolish, agonizingly sober, officiating. Sapnap calling up his dad and shouting into the communicator, I just got married! Bad bursting into tears.
And he remembers: They got married in a chapel built brick by brick by Quackity’s own hands. Sam officiating. Bad in the pew, bursting into tears.
“That’s pretty,” Karl mutters, watching the flowers nod their heads with rain.
“Sap’s got a gift,” says Quackity.
“For real? Dang. I thought I was paying myself a compliment.”
“You kept forgetting to water them. Sap took them off your hands, thank god.”
Karl nibbles his throat. He keeps hiding there, even after the nibbling is done.
“It’ll get better. Not every day is like this,” Quackity says.
“I know,” Karl says, and he repeats it to himself, it’ll get better, it’ll get better, it’ll get better. “Just kinda sucks.”
Quackity sighs through his nose. “Yeah.”
Melancholy hangs like a cloud when Sapnap comes in with a full steak and eggs breakfast. He drops the plates on the bench beside them. He kneels down.
“Hey.” He folds their hands into his. “Wanna get married?”
Karl bursts out laughing. Quackity pulls Sapnap into a searing kiss, even as he mutters against his mouth, “Idiot. You can’t fix every problem by marrying us again.”
“Tell me that when it doesn’t work,” Sapnap says.
Karl’s turn to drag him into a searing kiss. Breakfast cools.
-
They give Karl final choice on location.
“We always talked about getting hitched in L’Manhole,” Sapnap suggests, picking ribbons of steak from his fangs with a claw. “You thought the new growth was pretty. And we’d really get to say fuck it to all the ghosts.”
Quackity is grinning ear to ear. It lifts five years from his face. “Let’s do it in Kinoko. We haven’t gotten married in the flower forests yet. We can get drunk after, fool around in the poppies. I’ll pick you fuckers a bouquet.”
“That used to be illegal,” Karl remembers.
“Still is. But we’re old now,” Quackity says cheekily. “The main perk is that we can do whatever the fuck we want.”
Karl can picture either, almost as though they’ve already happened. If he were still spinning through time, he’d think that they had.
He says, “I want to do it in Las Nevadas.”
Sapnap smiles slow. Quackity’s jaw drops. He squeaks, “Really?”
Karl smacks a pointed kiss to Quackity’s cheek. He licks his lips after and tastes yolk. “Really, dummy. Show me the country you built.”
Quackity kisses him with all the sloppy eagerness of a twenty-year-old.
-
What was once a rowboat is now a ferry, and what was once a city is a country. Karl can’t see the borders as they approach the dock. It’s beautiful, and it sprawls, and it reaches for the sky, glittering in the light. He runs to the bow and suffers a face full of saltspray the better to see it.
Thoroughly soaked, he screams to the water: “I’m getting married!” The ferrygoers applaud politely. Sapnap pins him to the railing and kisses him until the ferrygoers stop applauding and start clearing their throats. Quackity turns up his nose, until Karl reels him between them and they all three devolving into kisses, and laughter, and more kisses, flat on the deck of the boat.
-
Quackity may not be the president-mayor-owner-whatever of Las Nevadas any longer, but he still owns the casino, and he still has a good relationship with every business owner in town. Flowershop; barber; nail salon; tailor. The tour of Las Nevadas doubles as a wedding checklist. Quackity even buys cigars, the first puff of which nearly makes Karl vomit.
“There there, you fucking square,” Quackity says, with a patronizing pat on the back. Sapnap makes an equally faux-sympathetic noise, all speech hampered by his cigar tucked into one corner of his mouth and Karl’s tucked into the other.
“You suck so bad, Q, did you know that? You’re basically a vacuum cleaner? Give me a doobie and I’ll smoke you under the table,” Karl says, around teary eyes and a sour burp. “It’s—it’s beautiful, by the way.”
Quackity snorts. “The cigar you hated?”
“No, nimrod, the sidewalk I almost yakked on. This whole place, from the fountains to the garbage cans. It’s beautiful. You made it beautiful.”
Sapnap dumps their shopping bags and spits out both cigars to beam with secondhand pride. “It really is.”
Quackity rolls his eyes. “You always say that.”
If it gets him to smile like that, he’ll never stop.
-
Bad and Skeppy are on holiday in Ohio. George is holding things down in Kinoko. The next obvious choice of officiant is Foolish, who, of course, is as put out as ever. That’s half the fun of it. The ledgers say they’ve made some headway into repaying their debts, but the goal has obviously become Zeno's dichotomy paradox, so they put it on their tab.
Foolish meets them at the venue and he is in every way how Karl remembers him, from the broad smile down to the metallic six pack and up the incredulous emerald eyes.
“And you’re sure you want to do this at the strip club?”
They landed on the strip club with barely any debate, half for the efficiency and half for the bit. Start with the bachelor party, end with the ceremony. Two birds with one stone.
Quackity slings an arm around Foolish’s shoulders. He boosts onto his tiptoes to do it, wings fluttering behind him. “Foolish, babe, you know I love you, but we are not fucking paying you to question us, are we? We’re paying you to get us hitched.”
Foolish, a true pal, rolls with it. “Whatever you say, boss.”
The strip club is classy, in Karl’s opinion. Like a true-blue gentleman’s club. Quackity has reserved them a semi-private stage, in view of the rest of the club but roped off by red velvet. He claps his hands and rubs them together, his smile a knife skating down Karl’s spine.
“All right, who’s up first?”
Karl is too eager not to. He nearly throws out his back attempting the worm. Quackity and Sapnap throw dollar bills. Karl managed to pressure Foolish into a hefty tip without removing a stitch of clothing.
Quackity has to stretch and go slow, but that only makes his dance more sensual. He’s the only one of them with any skill, Karl’s not ashamed to say it. Sapnap, a darling, is just as shitty at dancing as he ever was. He twerks, hits a clumsy griddy, and closes out by inviting Quackity back on stage, dragging a crafting table over and miming salacious acts. Quackity throws his head back laughing.
They’re beautiful. Karl could cry watching them.
That emotion remains clogged in his throat as the dances end, as they part to separate rooms to change into their suits, as they reconvene on the stage, walking backwards, hands over their eyes.
“We’re going to fall off this stage and fucking die,” Quackity says.
“It’s bad luck to see each other before the wedding, Q.”
“We have been married half a dozen times at least.”
“It’s tradition, you buzzkill!”
“Bullshit. Hazardous bullshit—”
Under Foolish’s careful guidance, they do not fall off the stage. Karl still jumps when his shoulders meet theirs. A thrill of giddiness escapes his throat. He seizes their hands in his.
Quackity has paid the dancers for the night, so they’ve stepped off the stage to watch. Most of the patrons have left, but some remain with glasses of champagne.
Foolish tells them to turn around, and the whole club disappears. Like magic.
In his velvet burgundy suit, Quackity is giving Daniel Craig James Bond. He looks so entirely himself, confident and sexy and dangerous, with his bad eye bared to the world. Even Sapnap, done up in silky black and white with curling orange embroidery, is clearly excited to wear something tailor-made.
“You’re beautiful,” Karl tries to say. His voice fails him.
Sapnap presses his knuckles. Quackity kisses them.
Foolish says, “We are gathered here today—”
“Wait,” says Karl.
The club blinks back into existence. Every set of eyes is on him. He really only cares about two of them.
“I think I want it to be just us,” he says. “Is that okay with you two?”
Quackity laughs so hard he bends double. Sapnap is not far behind.
“Yeah yeah yeah, hell yeah,” says Quackity. He turns to the club. “I’m going to get married to my gorgeous fucking husbands somewhere more private. Drinks are on me!” Amid the cheers, he adds, “Sorry, Foolish.”
Foolish, to his credit, seems more weary than surprised.
-
At the very top of the Eiffel Tower, Karl sits down and swings his legs through the bars in the railing. He leans into Sapnap’s side, a perfect engulfing heat. On Sapnap’s other shoulder Quackity rests his chin. He’s flicking Sapnap’s ring over his knuckles. Sapnap has Karl’s, safe and small in his palm. Karl has Quackity’s. He turns it over and over in his hand until it’s warm.
“Who goes first?” Karl whispers.
“Whoever we want,” says Quackity.
Sapnap says, “I’ll go. We are gathered here today to marry the shit out of each other.”
Quackity noses into his throat. “Yeah, baby.”
“I’m no good with words, and it’s hard to come up with new things to say every time we do this, but uh. I want to marry you when I’m sad and I want to marry you when I’m happy and I want to marry you when I’m pissed or tired or, like, hungry.” He nuzzles into Quackity’s hair, then Karl’s. Breathes deep and slow. “I want to marry you all the time. I want to marry you when you’re on top of the world, and when you—when you think you’re not worth marrying, or when I do. Thanks for letting me marry you again.”
Karl crawls into Sapnap’s lap and kisses him, and kisses him, and kisses him until Sapnap is flat on his back and Karl is flat on top of Sapnap. Quackity goes down with them, watches them steadily. A breeze rolls through—they’re high up—and Sapnap’s arms wrap around them and gather them close. Karl imagines it must be cold. He feels nothing but Sapnap’s heat.
“No good with words,” he smears into Sapnap’s lips. “No good with words.”
“Is that a yes?” Sapnap’s slick, lazy grin demands to be kissed again.
“My turn,” Quackity says. His cheeks are pink. “I used to wake up thinking everything came with an expiration date. The first time we got engaged, I still thought that. Marrying you was some desperate bid to prove myself wrong. Took me a while to admit that.
“But then we put in the work. We put in the time. We changed, and grew together. We earned it. And by the time we actually tied the knot, my mind had changed. I changed. You said forever and I believed you. I still do. I don’t know if I’ve ever received a greater gift than that.”
Karl stares at him, the smile on his face and the crinkles at his eyes, the tips of their noses brushing. Sapnap grazes his lips down the apple of Karl’s cheek.
“Marriage is a contradiction,” Quackity says. “You love me as I am, but you make me my best self. I believe you when you say forever, so there’s no need to get married and say it again—but, god, I love marrying you. Love grows, and changes, and if you do it right you grow and change with it, through the hard times and the good. Every time we grow and change together, I want to marry you. I want to do it as many times as we fucking can. I want to keep saying it. I love you forever. I want you to love me forever. I do.”
“I do,” Sapnap says.
“I do,” Karl says.
Beneath him, Sapnap turns his head just as Karl tips forward. He remembers: this used to be awkward, trying to kiss two people at once. It still is, a little. It’s perfect.
They don’t pull away to exchange rings, which makes it a fumbling, giggly mess. Their fingers get tangled. Sapnap’s ends up on the wrong one. Karl nearly drops Quackity’s.
“If you drop my ring off the Eiffel Tower, Karl, I want a divorce,” he says.
“Do it, coward, I’ll marry you even harder,” Karl says. He doesn’t drop the ring.
They lay together, sharing lazy kisses and swigs from a bottle of champagne. The bubbles go from Karl’s lips right into his bloodstream. He feels hot, outside in and inside out. Quackity’s cheeks are still pink. Sapnap’s mouth is red.
Karl hums against Sapnap’s throat. “You married me before I got to say my vows. Rude.”
“Should have been faster,” Quackity says, grinning. “Sucks to suck.”
“Save it for the honeymoon?” Sapnap suggests.
Karl does just that.