Archive of Our Own

Rebirth was a fickle thing.

One day, it felt as though his body’s loyalties were to the earth and earth alone, every inch of skin itching to return to the cold embrace of the grave. Each limb felt dead and dry as the cracked dirt and sand he laid his hands on, the brush of a finger or a leg against plant or running water serving only to remind him of how truly different he was, a harsh sketch dropped into a watercolour world. The next, he would be bursting and beaming with life, and the stitches keeping his skin together would barely contain his sunlight, and every buzzing sensation was enough, enough, to know he was alive.

Like the life cycle of a flower, Wilbur grew and bloomed and wilted again, his very existence curling the edges of his lips into a grin not unlike the unfurling of petals.

Fitting, then, that he would end up here. In front of life himself.

With a lungful of petals.

The snows of Las Nevadas had long since melted away, replaced by the sweltering heat and fetid airs of the summer, and Wilbur cringed into himself as his woollen sweater and trenchcoat stuck to his skin. He trudged lamely through the sandy hills, groaning and clutching his knee every couple of metres – rebirth hadn’t treated him too kindly, he had come to find – until they gave way to equally scalding bitumen, burning even over his shoes. Wilbur ran cold, dead body and all that, but this was too much for even him, sweat dripping down his collar and making every movement ten times less comfortable. He needed somewhere cooler, now.

So really, it was no surprise that he found himself ducking into the air-conditioned lobby of the city’s grandest apartment complex, the one he knew firsthand Quackity had a penthouse in. The air was crisp when he stepped all too confidently inside, and he resisted the urge to hug his trenchcoat tighter to himself, instead opting to roll his shoulders back and plaster a grin on his face.

The elevator doors opened with a ping! as he strode inside their doors, ignoring the mud tracked in by his workboots now smeared across pristine tiles, and let the trilled sound work its way as electricity into his heart. His smile grew as he ascended, twitching into an excited grin at the thought of what was to come, and when the doors slowly slid open he could hardly contain his giddy giggle.

Quackity’s head snapped up from where he had been signing papers at his grand mahogany desk, glass of brandy turning slowly in his hand. Instead of the rage (gods, that rage, that fire and brimstone and teeth pressing down) that Wilbur was hoping for, no, expecting from that man, his eyes instead averted themselves towards a speck of dust or grain on his desk, and his fingers drummed dully against his glass. Quackity tensed.

“Soot,” he stated plainly, and he used none of his teeth in the word. Wilbur pouted. “I thought I made it clear you were banned from Las Nevadas.”

“Banned!” Wilbur barked out the word as a laugh, because if Quackity wasn’t going to commit to their banter then he would have to up his game to account for both of them. “Whatever have I done to get banned that isn’t decades-old news?”

Quackity huffed quietly, shaking his head moreso at his alcohol than Wilbur.

“A decade for you, sure, but you conveniently forget that for the rest of my citizens,” he conveniently left out ‘and myself’, “it’s been the better part of a year. You won't get any grace from me, Soot, not when you keep trying to sabotage my nation at every turn. Don’t think I haven’t noticed the graffiti on the newest casino walls; you aren’t slick.”

Quackity’s voice caught on the last word, cracking embarrassingly, and he clapped a hand over his mouth as he coughed. His expression turned morose again, features softening where there had been even the slightest sharpness to them.

“How did you even get in here?” On another day, he would have spat it out, and Wilbur would have retaliated some witty quip about the state of his security, but now Quackity’s eyes weren’t on him and the room seemed washed in despair.

Wilbur fished a keycard out from his pocket and held it between two fingers.

“Slipped it out of Purpled’s pocket when he was doing perimeter checks,” he explained, and then, maybe because he just couldn’t help himself, he bit out, “Your security seems lacking these days, Big Q – not just in numbers. Loyalty amiss in your grand nation? Passion? Dedication?”

“Get out, Soot.”

Quackity should have yelled it. Quackity should have yelled it with his eyes meeting Wilbur’s, and both hands on his collar dragging them together, and a gold tooth flashing with promise. Quackity should have been bitter, angry, and yet the world ran a faded storm-cloud blue as the words were nothing but a sigh.

“What?”

“I'm tired. I don’t have time for this. Get out of Las Nevadas.”

“I-”

The small noise prompted the President to look up at him, nothing more than a raised brow to even acknowledge Wilbur’s presence.

“…Okay.”

He backed out of the room and into the elevator, head reeling as it descended. Quackity hadn’t even asked for the keycard back.

The walk back to Paradise was an embarrassing one.

This was a good thing, he reasoned with himself, it meant that Quackity was having an off day. He was fallible, hell, Quackity finally knew he was fallible, rather than thinking every surface of his nation would remain shining and gold forever. This was a great thing, Quackity being the dejected one, looking halfway to dead, and Wilbur striding in there with life in his beam.

…

The sand slid under his feet.

He didn’t feel all that alive now.

Wilbur slammed open the tinny door of the van, Ranboo jolting as it hit the inside wall with a loud banging noise. He barely paid his employee a glance as he moved further into the van, opening the portion not visible to customers, his bedroom and bath staring back at him.

“Go home, Ranboo. Close up shop for today,” he groaned, stumbling over his words as a lump formed in his throat. Ranboo’s eyes furrowed.

“But- Wilbur, it’s only midday, this is meant to be the peak lunch hour. You don’t have to work, I can stay on and-”

“Go home, Ranboo. There’s always tomorrow.” Finally, Wilbur turned back, resting himself against the wall. “You want to go spend time with your, ah- your husband, right? And your kid? Go home to your kid.”

Their face lit up as they nodded, flinging off the apron they were wearing. “Yeah, actually. That’d be nice.” As they exited the van, they flung a simple, “Thanks, Wilbur!” over their shoulder, and Wilbur grumbled something affirmative back.

The second his lone employee was out of his sight, he slammed the front door shut and booked it to the bathroom in the back, hunching over the toilet as nausea overtook him. He heaved, and where he expected to see the remnants of yesterday’s dinner (a single baked potato, if he recalled correctly, food that went down easy was harder to come by after revival), instead there floated lilac and white petals, mocking him with their elegance.

Another bout of coughs wracked his body just as he thought it was over, and his throat burned as he, surprised, turned to cough petals all over the grimy floor. Wilbur picked two up, twirling them between his fingers quickly and watching them spin, eyes wide and mesmerised. The purple one was longer and thinner, darker at the top and fading to very light at its base, where it would assumedly connect to a stem. The other, rounder and thicker, a white, almost heart-shape, the colour of Las Nevadas snow as it falls from the sky, before it hit the sandy ground.

Now, Wilbur wouldn’t consider himself a botany genius by any means, but he liked to think that in all of his years of potion-making, especially back in L’Manberg, he had developed some kind of recognition about the petals in his hands. He recognised the longer ones as autumn crocus, had seen them dotted around the garden of his childhood home, and the others as hydrangeas. Those, he wasn’t as familiar with.

He was, however, all too familiar with the burning sensation in his lungs and the itch in his throat, culminating in the petals in his hands. Not firsthand, thankfully, but when you have a mother who has seen all avenues of death, the more interesting ones tend to make their way to one’s ears.

He even wrote it down, he thought, in a leather-bound notebook tucked away somewhere in this van. Hopefully. There was always the chance it was just sitting in an abandoned or long since blown up house in the crater he used to call his nation or flung into the depths of the caves of Pogtopia. But, he was pretty sure he brought it with him, if only for the fact that he never used it and forgot to ever take it off his person.

Wilbur found it tucked away in one of the many drawers in his cramped “bedroom” (which was the driving room of the van, built only slightly bigger to fit chests at the front and accommodate for his height), flipping through it until he his eyes found a sketch of a wilting rose, and began to read.

Hanahaki Disease

The disease manifests in the growth of flowers within the heart, lungs, and throat of the afflicted, with the primary symptom being coughing up these flower petals, which progress into full blooms as the condition worsens. This is incredibly dangerous to the afflicted’s respiratory health, impacting their ability to breathe and exert themselves, as well as having impacts on speech, eating, drinking. If untreated, the disease will result in death by suffocation.

Death by suffocation? Wilbur felt his throat close up at the mere mention, although whether it was from the condition or from the glimpses of that damn train station that flashed through his mind. Dread creeping up his spine, he read on, hands shaking where they held the worn parchment pages open.

The disease manifests as a physical reaction to unrequited love,

Wait.

Wilbur paused, turning his head to the side in disbelief. He read the line again.

The disease manifests as a physical reaction to unrequited love.

The disease was manifesting as a physical reaction to unrequited love.

But there was no way, no chance on earth that that was right, Wilbur’s love life had been solidly dead and buried since Sally, save the kind of heated rivalry that he had with Quackity that was a little hard to define. Sure, they kissed sometimes… a lot… and the sex was good (Wilbur may have been understating it), but they never wined and dined each other. They never held hands, in fact, Wilbur didn’t think they’d kissed without teeth since L’Manberg days. So feelings were off the table in that regard.

Except… there was something that kept him going back to Las Nevadas whenever he could, making that trudging journey through the desert to his nemesis’ feet, and Wilbur wasn’t all that sure that it was just the idea of ruling.

Fuck. Well, fuck.

Fuck, because now the idea was there and it wasn’t going away, the idea of maybe Quackity wining and dining him and after he was done, groaning “Gods, Wilbur, I fucking love you,” as he sunk his teeth into his neck, and maybe it was completely and utterly over.

It was okay, though. He was Wilbur Soot, and if there’s one thing Wilbur Soot was known for, it was dealing with emotions in a healthy and regulated way. And, by healthy and regulated, he meant two distinct options: ignore them until they fizzled away, or let them burst into brilliant flames right in front of him. Sometimes both in that order.

What was there to blow up about, though, in this case? Surely Quackity knew how devoted he was, showing up at his doorstep every day like a stray drags itself back to the only house on the block that feeds it, desperate for every scrap of life he was willing to muster up, pass from lip to lip.

He could grace Las Nevadas’ shining floors again, the speck of dirt on an otherwise impeccable tile that he was, and touch and turn everything to rot, and proclaim his undying obsession, but what then? What if, instead of burning hatred that Wilbur could dare think to do this, dare think to take the place of his beloved fiancés, dare care, dare love, there was nothing but the dull, tired look in his eyes from this morning? What if it really was hate that drove them together, and nothing underneath?

Wilbur would take hatred any day of the week, he thought, and so he would stay quiet. He didn’t even need to change it up, really, the number of ‘I’m obsessed with you’s and ‘you give me life’s that had fallen from his lips far too many to count. He just needed to not care until he could find some way to get these weeds out of his system.

Like clockwork, he cast his gaze downwards to the page again.

Hanahaki disease is curable through one of two methods. First, the most common and less painful of the two is the reciprocation of romantic feelings by the object of the afflicted’s affections. Upon mutual love being established, the flowers disappear, and symptoms resolve immediately. The second method involves the surgical removal of the flowers, allowing the sufferer to survive, but at the loss of their romantic feelings for their beloved.

Right. So. It was between finding a way for Quackity to reciprocate his love, letting one of the many trigger-happy members of the SMP take a scalpel to his already-gaping chest, or leaving it until he choked on the flower petals and fucking died. How charming.

Wilbur sighed, the sound caught and rippling through loose petals in his throat, and snapped the book shut.

Was it better to have hell on earth, or return to true hell, the limbo with no colour, no senses, hardly a body to his name? Wilbur didn’t know. He couldn’t know. He didn’t want to go back.

…He didn’t want to lose his feelings for Quackity. He didn’t want to lose his life here.

All roads led to death, it seemed, in one way or another. He just had to find out which death was preferable.

Wilbur groaned in annoyance, throat sore, and chucked the book to the side as he went to make himself some tea.

On the other side of the desert, Quackity was having a similar issue.

He had been feeling ill all day, something vaguely in his abdomen churning and making speaking and moving damn near impossible and queasiness race through him at every shift. It had been fine, even bearable, for most of the day, and naturally he hadn’t even thought about taking the day off (a grand nation built on releasing inhibitions didn’t run itself, and despite his citizens’ knack for rash thinking, a great deal of planning and control went into his rule), however this had come to a head when his elevator doors swung open and, barely looking up from his papers, he mentally groaned.

His internal frustration and that sickened feeling doubled when he locked eyes with not Sam or Purpled, come to annoy him over some useless building scheme or person making a fuss in their clubs, but Wilbur, shit-eating grin on his face and freshly banned from Las Nevadas.

Quackity hardly even remembered the conversation that followed, noting only the gnawing feeling of something catching in his throat, building and threatening to choke him at a moment’s notice.

At some point, he muttered, “Get out,” for fear that if he shouted, whatever was unfurling itself would burst out through his mouth. And Wilbur listened, finally, turned on his heel and tucked his tail between his legs and walked out of there.

Who would have thought the great Wilbur Soot would be deterred by a little mundanity? Quackity thought as he tipped his glass of brandy back in a harsh swig, trying to burn the lump in his throat away. The thought was quickly chased out of his mind, though, when instead of soothing him, the feeling became unbearable, and he struggled to dash to his bathroom in time before leaning over the bath and hurling.

What? There was no way he was risking jamming his toilet pipes with vomit and- petals?

Quackity’s arms trembled where they held him up over the bath, and his brow furrowed as he looked down, and where a mass of today’s lunch should have been laid what would remain if a tornado swept through a flower plain. Just plain petals, and from different flowers at that. Some were flatter, wider, a nice purple-blue, and others thinner and longer, a sunshine yellow, and most were mangled by the force at which he coughed them up.

He could do nothing but stare at them for a while as bile – real, gagging bile – raised in his throat and threatened to force him over the tub again. Quackity ran a hand through them as though to check that they were real, and upon the delicate sensation of a petal on his hand, laughed aloud in disbelief. Leave it to him and his luck to get this fucky ass weird ass sickness where you just throw up flowers.

He breathed out something like a cough and what was a short laugh turned quickly into ragged breathing, and then hyperventilating as he turned away from the bath, resting against it and bringing his legs to his chest. His breathing came too fast as he refused to look behind him again, keeping his eyes wide and fixed firmly away from the petals in his bathtub.

What the fuck was going on with him? He hadn’t heard of a potion with this effect, nor an illness, but here he fucking was.

Quackity wondered if this was some divine punishment for- for being too ambitious, for wanting too much, he couldn’t help but rock back and forth and Prime or Exdee or whoever was in the sky was probably having a field day with this.

Quackity didn’t know what the fuck was going on, but he knew someone with higher-than-average knowledge of plants who might.

White and brown curls and flashing maroon eyes flickered to life in his mind, and he banished the thought away before it could properly form. There was no way he was letting Wilbur see this side of him, vulnerable and ignorant, especially not when he was so actively trying to gain the upper hand. He could just sleep it off.

Yeah. He could just sleep it off. It was some cosmic joke, or a weird cold, and everything would be better in the morning.

His mind wandered back to the paperwork on his desk.

This meant he actually had to sleep tonight, instead of being a workaholic into the early hours of the morning. Quackity groaned as he shakily pulled himself to a stand.

He began to murmur to nobody in particular, “You’re lucky I'm…”

Scared? Terrified? In the dark?

“…You’re lucky I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” he muttered to the gods or maybe himself as he dragged himself to bed. It would all be resolved in the morning.

°❀.ೃ࿔*

It was not all better in the morning.

Quackity awoke with a tight throat, scratchy and sore like he fell asleep with a cold and was now reaping the consequences. There was no immediate coughing fit, he didn’t start the day with his head hanging over the side of the bed spewing flowers onto the floor, but it didn’t take long for the blooms to resurface where he thought they had been long gone.

He was having breakfast, and by breakfast he meant half a bagel that he shoved in his mouth on the way to investigate some “incident” or another that occurred in the casino while he had been asleep, when a piece of bread went down the wrong pipe and, doubling over in the street, Quackity coughed up not just what was left of his meal, but ragged yellow and purple petals once more. He straightened up and glared at them like they would jump back out at him, kicking them lightly as he checked around to make sure nobody saw.

Quackity sent a withering stare at any citizen that gave him a second glance before stepping determinedly over the plants and striding confidently – he would like to think – towards the Crown casino.

The incident ended up being nothing more than a misunderstanding, that is, some patron misunderstood that all bets were final and you couldn’t just “ask for your money back” (in their defence, they had been incredibly drunk), which left Quackity with nothing to do but fix his growing problem. He was currently stood outside the casino, leaning against the wall with a lit cigarette and ignoring how the smoke made petals flutter agonisingly in his throat. Gods, he wished Wilbur was here, standing next to him with a smoke of his own, just for some company.

What- the fuck?

Were there flowers growing in his brain too? Absolutely not.

Quackity ditched the cig, grinding it into the pavement with the heel of his boot, and set out towards Paradise, only half-hoping he would find Wilbur there. He regretted wearing dress shoes when he had to transition from smooth sidewalks to sandy dunes, struggling not to slip with every step, and when he arrived at that shitty, rusty van, he didn’t know whether to feel relieved or disappointed when Tommy stepped out instead, pocketing something as he tried to sneakily shut the door and leave.

“Ah- Tommy!” Quackity called before he could regret it, and the blond turned around with wide eyes. He relaxed when he saw who was calling for him.

“Big Q!” he called, rushing over and slapping a hand on Quackity’s back. Quackity barked out a laugh before slapping a hand over his mouth as a cough escaped him. Well, now he knew how it felt to swallow flower petals. Could this technically poison him?

“What’re you doing in Paradise, Quackity? Come to check out my amazing building work, my little artwork?” He flung an arm out sideways, gesturing to where a dick-looking monolith had been built right near the border of Las Nevadas.

He couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, man, the dick statue is great, but I've actually got a question for you.”

“Hit me, Big Q.”

“Do you know of any… strange diseases?”

Tommy blinked and narrowed his eyes as he slowly turned away from his creation and back towards Quackity. He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again, gaping like a fish out of water.

“What the fuck do you mean by that?” he asked incredulously, and Quackity chuckled nervously.

“Just, like…” He trailed off. “Okay. So, there’s this friend I have-”

“Sure, a friend,” Tommy cut him off, and Quackity made an aggressive shh! at him.

“Yes, my friend was having some trouble, because really suddenly yesterday, they were throwing up flower petals! And it was so out of the blue for them, and it hasn’t gone away, and they’re getting a little bit stressed, actually.”

Tommy looked taken aback.

“Might this friend have been overworking themselves and overthinking some things?”

“…This friend might have,” Quackity grumbled.

“What were they thinking about?”

“You’re my yang, Q, I- I need you like I need a beating heart, like I was clawing to get on that train. You have me. You have my attention, I w- hm. I need you.”

“Just. Work stuff.”

Somehow, the teenager didn’t look all too convinced. “…Right. Just work stuff.” He thought for a second, tapping a finger to his chin, before his face lit up again. “Oh! Wilbur was just telling me about this thing, actually, something about coughing flowers and love. I don’t remember the name, though, something-”

“Love?!” Quackity interrupted, screeching. “Tommy, elaborate. Right now.”

“Woah there! Yeah, alright, ‘s like… when the person you love doesn’t love you back, these flowers grow in your lungs or something. Apparently it’s like…” He peered at Quackity, something like worry growing on his face. “It’s, like, fatal, I think. If you don’t cure it.”

“When the person you love doesn’t love you back?” Quackity repeated weakly, shrinking in on himself. His mind flashed to grand Las Nevadas, and then, to a nation much homier than his – not that he’d know – with a group much closer.

“That’s what I said, Big Q- are you crying?”

“No.” And he wasn’t, he wouldn’t. He was past all of that, but still, apparently, finally, the dregs at the bottom of the bottle that was love had finally been spilled, and his fiancés had moved on while he stayed drunk at the bar. “I’m all good, thanks for the info, man. How, uh, how do I fix it?”

“I dunno, man, I'm sorry,” and he genuinely did sound it, “you’d have to ask Wilbur that one.”

Of fucking course. It always led back to that man.

As if on cue, holding an iron pick and a bag of loose ore, Wilbur rounded the corner to where the two were standing, saying, “Ask me what?”

“I- uh- well,” Quackity stammered, jaw twitching as Wilbur snickered.

“Eloquent as always, I see, Big Q.”

“Shut the fuck up, Soot. I was just going to ask about that flower… disease… thing. Tommy was telling me about it, what was it, something like if your love isn’t reciprocated, you spew up flowers? Sounds like a really sadistic god made that one.”

“Or poetic,” Wilbur replied, shrugging, “But, only sort of? At least, that isn’t the whole of it. The universe and gods don’t just magically know if your love is or isn’t reciprocated – I mean, Exdee and Prime and all those probably know more about what’s going on in the average person’s head that we would want, but they’re not mind readers. It’s more if the person themselves believe their love to be unrequited, and how they go about dealing with those emotions.” He was really on a rant now, and he rolled his shoulders back like he was giving more room for his diaphragm, just so he could ramble on for longer. Of course. “The disease progresses relatively steadily, but when you try to repress emotions, it progresses at an even quicker rate than, say, if you were upfront and honest.”

And, instead of responding meaningfully to any of those points, Quackity quipped, “And when have you ever been upfront and honest, Soot?”

Wilbur’s grin was strained as he replied, “Have I ever lied to you, Quackity?”

He had, a long time ago. Decades ago, for him. He was transparent now, though, every feeling broadcast – but was that the same as honest?

“Oh, I don’t know, how about when you promised to be on your best behaviour in an attempt to weasel your way into my country, and then only days later, I catch you rigging a stick of TNT to blow in one of my favourite cafes?”

Wilbur’s face practically lit up with glee, and he clasped his hands in front of him in a sort of devoted showmanship. “They were paying their employees an unfair wage, Big Q, how was I meant to allow that to continue? When you think about it, I was on my best behaviour then, freeing your citizens from capitalism’s dastardly claws!”

“Good fuckin’ one, Wilbur,” Quackity jested, a laugh bubbling in his throat, and then something far more invasive. He cleared his throat, face turning solemn, and watched as Wilbur’s eyes traced the movement of his features and his beam shifted slowly into a frown. “I should probably go, though. Interesting to hear about all of this, but I do have a nation to run.”

He didn’t stay to watch Wilbur’s face fall, fleeing back to the confines of his penthouse-apartment-office-house thing and slumping into his giant desk chair, drawing his legs up to curl in on himself.

Repressed emotions? As far as Quackity knew, he had been pretty damn upfront about his emotions regarding his fiancés – and he did mean upfront, if the hours throwing glasses against the back wall of the bar after closing time were anything to go by. He had, upon further thought, been neglecting thinking about them for months, too busy with work and the like, but was that really the same? Was getting caught up in work and simply forgetting to think about his love life equal to shoving his feelings into a tightly locked box?

Quackity swore on all that was holy, his work-‘til-you-drop lifestyle better not have been actually killing him. Having to face the consequences of his actions was a dickhead move, universe!

He stayed curled up in his chair for only a moment longer before the paperwork in front of him got the best of him. Ironic, he knew, but he just needed something to clear his mind and tell him what to do.

…What was he meant to do?

The very thought of visiting Kinoko Kingdom, hell, even the thought of just messaging the two of them, prompted Quackity to rap his fingers on the desk and bury his head deeper into his work. His breathing quickened at Karl’s betrayed face and Sapnap’s conflicted one invading his mind, and he signed the next paper with far more force than he should have.

He was scared, and he was angry, and was there time for love under all of that? How the fuck can the universe and his own damn body consider that repressing? He was…

He missed them.

Quackity missed them, did he still love them?

The President dropped his head onto the desk with a dull thud, groaning loudly, not unlike trying to get a lawn mower to start.

He still didn’t know what to do.

°❀.ೃ࿔*

Quackity awoke to a throbbing in his head, light streaming abrasively through the windows behind him, and the distinct feeling that something was wrong – a feeling that he, like always, tried to ignore.

He slowly lifted his head up, sighing in annoyance as he attempted to lift its weight, and put a hand to his forehead and rubbed. Quackity’s back screamed at him as he rolled his shoulders, and it was only then that he realised that, instead of taking his friends’, doctor’s, rival’s advice and adopted a healthy sleep schedule, had instead worked until he fell asleep at his desk and was now suffering the consequences.

“Ughhhh,” he drawled out to the empty room, fully about to just rest his head back on his wooden desk and try to go back to sleep when there was a loud noise from near him, like somebody dropped something. Quackity’s eyes shot open, head turning to the source of the noise.

It was Wilbur. More specifically, it was the leather ledger that Wilbur had just dropped onto the floor from about a metre up, and was now having the gall to look sheepish about.

“What the fuck? Wilbur, you can't just break into my house, get the fuck out! What are you doing here?”

“Look, in my defence, you didn’t even take the elevator card from the last time I was here, and I wanted to see you, my darling!” Wilbur stretched his arms out towards Quackity, though the two weren’t close enough to embrace, and then dropped them again as he blinked, grin falling. “Oh, I nearly forgot!”

Wilbur beamed as he took a giant bouquet of flowers from where they had been resting on Quackity’s coffee table. It didn’t look all that professionally made, just blooms strung together with some brown wrapping paper and a white ribbon, but the flowers themselves were beautiful. Bright purple crocuses dotted with hydrangea blooms, all accented with the odd plant that Quackity recognised as growing around Las Nevadas. The flowers certainly didn’t, though, so where he got them from, he had no idea. The flowers, elegant as they were, clashed together horribly, almost as though they were at odds with each other, and Quackity felt his face forming a smirk at the very thought.

“What’s that- that look on your face, Big Q?” Wilbur asked, giggling nervously, to which Quackity just shook his head.

“Nothing, nothing. You said these were for me?”

“Of course!” Wilbur held the bouquet out, watching with fascination as Quackity took it from him, thumbing over some of the petals with curiosity in his eyes. “They’re white hydrangeas and autumn crocus – or meadow saffron, I guess. White hydrangeas represent boasting and bragging.” Wilbur paused to wink at Quackity, whose cheeks reddened as he looked back at the bouquet. “I'm sure you can see the relation. And the crocus… is typically used to mean ‘my best days are past’.” He scoffed. “Not sure why that one’s as relevant, but I suppose the universe works in mysterious ways.”

“The universe?” Quackity said, only mildly paying attention, coming to terms with the realisation that oh, of course the damn flowers had symbolism, that would explain why he hadn’t recognised a single of the blooms he had been coughing up.

“It’s just…” Wilbur fidgeted in his spot before reaching his hands out and continuing. “Quackity, you’re my everything. You see me, you see past this idea that I'm a monster. You see me as a person-”

“I see you as an annoyance,” Quackity muttered, but Wilbur’s grin only grew.

“Exactly! You see me as somebody who’s fucking annoying and aggravating and doesn’t know when to quit, and not an extension of explosives or of L’Manberg or what I did. You know as well as I do that my best days are past, and I had a good run while I was there, but now I have a new dawn in Las Nevadas, in you.”

Quackity felt that damn lump building in his throat again as his hands tightened around the bouquet’s neck, and so he thrust it back within Wilbur’s reach and said, “I don’t want your damn flowers, Soot.”

Wilbur flinched back. “What?”

“You heard me,” Quackity was on the verge of coughing, “I don’t want them. You’re right, you are a nuisance, these will probably be poisonous or something and release toxic spores into my air. Get them out of here.”

“Ha ha, Quackity, very funny,” Wilbur grumbled, swallowing every few words and talking very deliberately, “Do you seriously think I would stoop as low as to try to kill you? With a bouquet, no less?” When Quackity didn’t respond, his gaze snapped to his eyes, incredulous. “Seriously?”

All of the fight died from Quackity’s face as, low and tired, he said, “No, Soot, I don’t think you would try to actually kill me.” He turned the flowers over once more in his hand, and his gaze seemed to soften, if Wilbur would dare to believe it. “Fine, I’ll keep your stupid bouquet of… self-pitying flowers, I guess.”

Wilbur scoffed and crossed his arms. “They aren’t self-pitying, they’re symbolic, and I can't help if some of that symbolism contributes to my tragic backstory.”

“Your tragic backstory! You mean the one where you destroyed everything you ever lived for!”

Wilbur’s jaw tensed, but he winked all the same, smirking. “Not everything, Q, I see you're still alive and well.”

“Oh, shut up. Dickhead. Go live for a job or something, you are very much still banned from Las Nevadas. In fact, I’ll escort you out.”

“Will you now?” Wilbur bit back a smile. “However could I turn down an offer like that?”

“It wasn’t an offer, Soot, now come on, before I have to haul your ass out of my country.”

The taller hummed, rolling his shoulders back and giving Quackity a once-over. “Don’t threaten me with a good time, prick.”

Quackity threw his head back in a loud cackle and, against his will, felt something warm and wanting bloom in his chest and make its way up his throat. Wilbur grinned at him, but it faded as Quackity cut himself off again, breath stuttering as he tried not to cough.

“Alright, you’ve had your fun, let’s go,” Quackity said as he stood from his desk, ignoring how his joints screamed and his normally perfectly tailored suit was wrinkled to an embarrassing degree. He strode past Wilbur and grabbed the lapel of his trenchcoat to pull him alongside, snickering at the older man’s short noise of surprise.

The two walked side by side out of Las Nevadas, and forgoing all sense, Quackity asked, “You got a smoke?”

Wilbur shook his head. “Nah, Tommy keeps hiding mine. Don’t think he likes it too much when I smoke.”

There was silence as Quackity’s steps faltered for just a second, and then, “That’s fair.”

They were ants under the giant Welcome to Las Nevadas! sign now, its shadow acting as some short respite from the blistering summer sun. “Well, I do believe that’s your stop, Wilbur,” Quackity jested, to which Wilbur rolled his eyes and smirked.

“Oh, please, like I won't be back here tomorrow.”

“You better fucking not,” Quackity warned. “Now go flip burgers or something, what happened to healthy competition?”

“Surely even capitalists can see their esteemed rival some time, Q!” Wilbur winked. “And check up on the competition.”

“Keep checking up on me and it won't be much of a competition at all. Now scram, Soot.”

After they farewelled, Quackity rushed to his local library (he was partially surprised Las Nevadas had a library at all, but was glad for it now) and thumbed open giant books on flower properties and meaning and symbolism. Having no idea what exactly he was looking for, the first book on gardening proved to be nearly useless until he found the petals of his flowers sitting on the page, right next to labels that read periwinkle and adonis’ flower. As soon as he had that information (and jotted it down in the notebook he brought with him), he tossed the book aside and opened a far less scientific, more literary one on the uses of flowers in literature. Quackity flipped through his pages expectantly and, thank the gods, it had an index with popular meanings associated with flowers.

His eyes flicked through the table and he tensed in anticipation.

Adonis’ flower was the first one he saw, next to the meaning of painful recollection. That fit, of course, with his fiancés and Kinoko, hell, it fit with every one of his romantic relationships. Periwinkle was far further down, a few pages in, and apparently meant early and genuine friendship and tender recollections.

That one was a bit harder to make work – sure, tender recollections, pretty much the same as painful ones, just with some sentimentality to it, and Quackity was no stranger to feeling tender at any thought of them, and he was friends with them before their… relationship. But, it…

You know what? No. Quackity was trying to twist his relationship with his fiancés, giving himself any reason to not talk to them, think about them. He slammed the book shut, putting it back in the shelf where he found it, and pulled himself back into his penthouse, where he slumped onto his bed and felt tears prick at the corners of his eyes.

He thought about Wilbur’s bouquet.

Quackity knew Paradise didn’t have a garden around it, he was uncertain of whether Wilbur could take care of flowers without them wilting around him, anyways. The smaller ones, the ones that dotted the main attractions and that he hadn’t spouted symbolism for, were the same as the ones that grew in droves through cracks in the sidewalk and patches of grass in his country, so he was pretty sure where Wilbur had sourced those, but the others? The hydrangea and crocus, as he was so eager to point out? Quackity had no idea, but he was sure he wouldn’t have gone to a florist. None would make an arrangement like that.

As if on cue, his own issue flared up again, and he raced to his bathroom again, heaving up the same petals as last night into his bathtub again. His blood ran cold and his stomach dropped as he just saw them all lying there, and if this kept up he’d surely have a bath full of them.

The thought almost pulled a laugh out of him, but Quackity began to sob.

°❀.ೃ࿔*

Wilbur fidgeted with the lace on the ribbon that tied together his newest bouquet, face contorted with conflict. He had bought it (along with some better quality paper) from a craft store of the side of Las Nevadas’ shopping district, and was now convinced that it was far too romantic for all of this.

“Bouquets are supposed to be romantic, anyway,” he reasoned to himself, and every single friend group that gave each other flowers mentally threw something at him. “He won't even notice, I'm sure.”

Even speaking was rough, now, as his voice was ragged and his throat hoarse from coughing this past week. Eating food had been even rougher than it usually was, and every time he tried to force down a shitty Ranvan Wilburger™, it had come right back up alongside the fucking petals, and often in the van, much to Ranboo’s dismay.

“Sorry, Ranbus,” Wilbur chuckled humourlessly for the fifth time that hour, “Reckon I’ll give up on that one and try again later. S’alright.”

He had managed to gather together enough of the petals to make a convincing enough bouquet (that is, the ones that weren’t tangled in a mess of bun and patty), and was dismayed to find that they were different to the ones he had been coughing up for the past week. Different meant that something was progressing. Different meant that he had less time.

Some petals were orange, and he recognised them instantly as rose petals, and some were white, with a similar shape to the crocuses of the week before. These, he wasn’t familiar with, but a quick check told him that they were rainflowers.

Wilbur spun loose petals over in his fingers as an arm held the bouquet tightly to his body.

It was time to go pay Quackity a visit.

Quackity really needed to take that fucking keycard off of him.

Seriously, somehow, he kept forgetting, and now Wilbur was just able to constantly waltz in here with a dazzling smile and arm full of flowers for him, and his security at the border was apparently non-existent!

Quackity’s head was pounding with yesterday’s night spent over his bathtub retching, and he knew his eyes looked dead and tired when Wilbur faltered, handing the bouquet out to him.

He begrudgingly took it, turning it over like spiders might jump out at him and keeping a permanent scowl on his face. When nothing of the sort happened, Quackity sighed and took the last, now wilting, bouquet out from where he had put it in a vase of water, and replaced it with this one. Wilbur looked at it – him? – fondly.

“Fine, I’ll bite,” Quackity said in mock defeat, “What do these ones mean? There are some new ones.”

Wilbur visibly lit up. “Well, the rainflower, or zephyr lily if you want to be fancy about it, is representative of new beginnings, great expectations, and rebirth!”

“Let me stop you right there, Wilbur.” Quackity held a hand out to the taller, whose shoulders dropped in confusion. “My nation isn’t your grand re-beginning, or whatever you want to call it. You're back, and believe me, I'm glad for that, but I don’t want you having any part in it. Full stop.”

“But it is, Quackity! You don’t understand, I- this gives me life, purpose! This so-called healthy competition, this rivalry is…” Wilbur seemed to catch himself, shaking his head with a smile, before pointing loosely at the orange roses in the bouquet. “Those. The roses. They represent desire, fascination. I am fascinated by you, Quackity, by what you’re trying to do here. By everything about you, actually.”

Quackity hummed and turned back to the vase so Wilbur couldn’t see the blush creeping up his cheeks. The zombie still had a way with words.

“Wouldn’t that mean you also desire me?” he asked jokingly, but then there was a presence to his side and Wilbur was turning him around, arms on his shoulders and a burning-hot look in his eyes.

“Yes.”

It was disgustingly honest, something that normally took at least a little convincing and dragging out of him before they ended up in tangled bedsheets, and Quackity’s heart couldn’t help but stutter.

Wilbur’s eyes darted from his lips to looking into his eyes and back again, shit-eating grin on his face as he continued, “You know I do. It’s the reason I keep crawling back here, day after day, even when you send me away.”

Quackity knew it would probably be a mood-breaker even before he said, “I thought it was because you wanted to get into Las Nevadas?”

Wilbur stepped back, smile never dropping. “Can’t it be both?”

“Can it?” When Wilbur’s face fell, he drew back the venom. “Whatever. Come smoke with me, Soot.” He gestured to the balcony.

Wilbur smiled sheepishly. “I’d love to, but I don’t have a cig with me. Tommy’s gotten better at hiding them, normally he just shoves them into the back of the cupboard and prays.”

“Of fuckin’ course,” Quackity huffed, “Fine, then. Use mine.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. I’ve got plenty to spare.”

Quackity didn’t know why he suggested it, to be honest, as he had no intention of taking a drag for himself and risking revealing the reason his throat had itched all day. The two stood on the balcony, so close they were touching shoulders, and each dangling their lit cigarette where their hands rested on the railing. Wilbur wasn’t smoking either, just letting it trail loosely out of his cigarette and away into the night sky.

“You don’t want a smoke?” Quackity asked, and Wilbur chuckled and shook his head.

“Nah. Had this horrible sore throat lately, and I'm starting to think Tommy was right to hide my pack from me. Sorry to disappoint.”

“No disappointment here,” Quackity said, stubbing his out on the railing and watching Wilbur mirror him. “I've been a bit sick lately, too.”

“Oh, so that’s what that was! I thought so!” Wilbur exclaimed. Quackity turned his head, brow furrowed.

“What?” Was it that obvious?

“Yeah, recently, when you weren’t, uh… weren’t as eager in our conversations,” the taller explained. “You seemed really tired, I figured it was because you were either overworking yourself or sick – maybe both. You never take an actual sick day, so it would be on par for you.” Wilbur slung an arm around Quackity’s shoulder. “Good to see you’re back to normal again.”

Quackity wrenched himself out of Wilbur’s grasp. It was obvious. It was so obvious, and Wilbur, prankster that he fucking was, was showing up to his doorstep with flowers to mock him.

He had to know.

“Get the fuck out. Take your flowers and leave, Soot.”

“What the hell? What did I do?”

“You- just- take your damn flowers! I don’t fucking want them, leave!” Quackity picked up the bouquet to do something with, maybe throw it at Wilbur, maybe on the ground, maybe just leave it shaking in his hand and do nothing.

Wilbur wasn’t having any of it. “What, Big Q, you don’t want to see how obsessed I am with you? How devoted? You don’t want to be working at your desk and look over and see a vase of exactly how much I desire you? Come the fuck on!”

“I don’t have time for this; you can't just come in here with flowers from fuck knows where and try to take up my time and- and- and where did you even get these from? I know full well there isn’t a garden anywhere around Paradise, so you either wandered the flower plains for hours or found a florist, and I don’t know which is worse.”

That shut Wilbur up real quick, and he drew in on himself for just a second before any trace of vulnerability was gone and he was standing tall again.

“I… got them from a florist. She works near the outskirts of Las Nevadas, I think her name is Edenne? From Wildthorne Florists?”

Quackity paused, and he dropped the bouquet right on the floor, turning his head towards the other. He took a step forwards.

“Are you talking about.” A step. “Edenne Mayfield.” Another step. “The florist that I mentioned did the arrangements for my fucking wedding hall?”

Quackity was standing all too close to him, and grabbed the lapels of his coat in two hands and yanked them down so that Wilbur was on his eye level.

“Are you serious right now? You went to the one florist in Las Nevadas that has connections to my fiancés, for what? You wanted to- to get her thoughts on them and our relationship? Are you trying to model them or something?”

His chest rose and fell in quick breaths as he spat, “You’re sick. You’re sick and twisted and you’ll never be them.”

Wilbur’s eyes widened, manic, and his grin grew ear-to-ear. “I don’t need to be them at all, Quackity, because look who’s here! I’m here, and they’re not, I'm smoking – kind of – with you, and they’re trying to create a country half as grand as what you’ve made here! I’m willing to say I'm doing it better than they’ve ever done.”

“What is ‘it’, then, Soot?” Quackity growled, and they were rather close to each other now, able to feel each other’s breath on their faces.

Pleasing you. Loving you.

“Whatever you want.”

Hands still gripping his collar, Quackity pulled Wilbur forwards, crashing their lips together. He wasn’t gentle – they never were – as he pushed Wilbur to rest his back against the desk and bit into his lips. Wilbur made a surprised noise as Quackity bit into his lips, smiling devilishly against the kiss and moving his hands to cup Wilbur’s face.

“Oh my gods, more, please,” Wilbur whined, breaking free for just a moment before diving into Quackity’s neck to leave bites along tanned skin.

“More?” Quackity repeated, tone teasing, “But I thought this was about what I wanted?” He pulled Wilbur off his neck by his hair and felt his blush darken at the other’s whine. “Isn’t it?”

Wilbur glared at him and attacked his lips again, pushing forcefully against him as he gripped Quackity’s face desperately. The shorter reciprocated, kissing back and groaning as Wilbur dug his hands into his wings, rubbing and pulling at loose feathers.

It was so easy to just get lost in it all, the feeling of Wilbur’s lips on his and his hands roaming over his body, so easy to just pretend that desire was something more.

But he ruined it.

Quackity felt the itch in his throat, the impending sense of doom before it happened, trying to ignore it, but he started coughing against Wilbur’s lips, disconnecting them and pushing him away. Panicked, his breathing quickened, and he turned to face away from Wilbur.

“You should go.”

“No!”

“Please?”

They didn’t ask like that very often, if at all.

Confused, Wilbur backed out of the penthouse, leaving Quackity alone. He didn’t even move, knowing he wouldn’t make it to the bathroom in time, before he doubled over and loud coughs wracked through his body, petals that he didn’t recognise blooming from his mouth and falling lightly onto the hardwood floor. They caught in his throat and he gagged, far harder to just cough up than the last times, and Quackity felt lightheaded at the effort it took. He sobbed, crouching after his coughing fit was over and leaning against his desk, not daring to look at the mess of flowers around his office.

Eventually, vision blurry with tears, he cracked an eye open to see the carnage, with full blooms and loose petals scattered. Now that they were full flowers (and Quackity didn’t want to, wouldn’t think about the implications of that), they were easier to recognise, red orchids and lavender.

When Quackity visited the library later, he would find that red orchids were symbolic of passion and desire, and lavender for love and distrust, and… oh. Oh.

Well, he could hardly say that he was passionate towards his fiancés recently, especially due to the fact that they, well, hadn’t spoken to each other in months. Love and distrust… yeah. Worked for them, he supposed, but also…

His mind flashed back to dead eyes and slouched figures, and Quackity knew he was fucked.

How do you love a man that’s destroyed everything he’d ever loved?

°❀.ೃ࿔*

It was a few days later, and Quackity hadn’t left his apartment since his so-called big realisation. He hadn’t checked in to work, his communicator was uncharged (surely with a hundred missed messages from his colleagues) and sitting on the edge of his desk, and he was currently running himself a bath with as many products as he had in his bathroom. The room was full of a soothing, fragrant smell, but it did little to calm the churning in his chest.

Quackity’s penthouse was littered with petals. He could hardly take a step without his foot brushing some flower or another.

Wilbur hadn’t visited either, since their last encounter, and the very fact made Quackity nauseous and his head sting. He knew, he had to know what Quackity was afflicted with, with all of the coughing and unsubtly asking about the disease. The bouquets he brought along with him were some cruel joke, taunting him for his love while Wilbur remained unburdened and free to live life to his most annoying degree.

How could he be in love? With Wilbur, no less? How could the two of them, with their bickering and hatred and rivalry, possibly feel anything other than disdain and, occasionally, mild intrigue?

Quackity huffed out a laugh as he settled into the bath, bubbles and petals shifting as he moved. They were his own, mainly the lavender and periwinkle, and the irony of being surrounded in comfort by the very thing that was killing him was so Wilbur that he couldn’t help but curse the man out in the privacy of his own home. The poetic dick was rubbing off on him, it seemed.

He shifted, and sighed semi-contently, ready to let himself relax and determinedly ignoring every sensation telling him that everything was wrong.

Wilbur, meanwhile, was pacing the floor of his van, stopping every few steps to have another coughing fit and throw the petals on the floor to the side.

Quackity had to know.

Wilbur had been so wrapped up in his own problems that he hadn’t even noticed, really, how much Quackity was drawing away from him, but now that he had noticed it wasn’t something he was ever going to forget. It had started almost exactly when Wilbur’s symptoms had appeared, when he became more upfront with his expressions of desire and want. Quackity had turned his head away and been tired and sick, and fuck, how had Wilbur not realised?

Quackity was sick of him.

The thought was unpleasant, more than that, it sent horrid feeling up his spine and through his skin and make his dead body shake, and Wilbur was actually going to die.

There was a knock on his door, a hard, loud fist, and Wilbur’s head shot up.

“Quackity?” he called, swinging the door open – and then he stopped dead.

Where he had hoped Quackity would be standing, there was instead a seven-foot-tall golem of a creature, glaring down at him through emerald eyes.

“…Foolish? What are you doing here?” he asked incredulously, and he swore the shine in his gemstone eyes shifted like he was rolling them.

“Believe me, I don’t want to be here. Have you seen or heard from Q recently?”

“Define ‘recently’.”

“Like, today or yesterday? He hasn’t been showing up for work, and he wasn’t responding to any of my messages, and now they won't even deliver to him – I think he’s either turned his comm off or it’s run out of charge. I’ve tried to get into his penthouse but whoever was at the front desk said he asked not to be disturbed, and I don’t have a key to his floor.”

“…Oh.” Wilbur really didn’t know how to respond to that. “Do you… want me to talk to him?”

“No, Wilbur, I actually do not want you anywhere near him, but desperate times call for desperate measures so I need to put my own feelings aside.”

“Right.” Wilbur stood up straighter. “Right. Lead the way, then.”

As the two stepped inside the apartment building containing Quackity’s penthouse, the assistant at the front desk stood up quickly to stop them.

“Ah, sorry, you two, if you’re going up to visit the President, I'm afraid he’s not accepting visitors right now.”

Wilbur held his keycard between two fingers. “I’ve got this. Besides, he said I could come up, he asked for my company.”

She looked conflicted and picked up a phone near her. “I hope you don’t mind, but I think I’ll just ask him, to double-check.

Shit. Wilbur kept his grin up even as Foolish’s dropped. “Of course. Just tell him Wilbur has something important to tell him, and that it can’t wait.”

After a quick and tired phone conversation, the receptionist placed it down and, with barely a look to the two, said, “Wait here.”

Moments later, the elevator doors opened, and in nothing but a t-shirt, shorts, and with wet hair, Quackity stepped out from within. He looked at the older in disbelief.

“Wilbur? You're here?”

“I- of course, why wouldn’t I be?”

“Because, you don’t- nothing. It’s nothing. I don’t know why you’re here, but whatever it is, I'm not in the mood. You can go.”

“Quackity, I'm sorry.”

That got his attention, gaze snapping up.

“What? What are you sorry for?” His confused expression contorted into something that might have been an attempt at being venomous. “Because I'm assuming it isn’t the property destruction, arson, trespassing, and breaking and entering.”

“Of course not!” Wilbur’s light tone dropped. “I'm sorry for… forcing myself on you.”

“What the fuck!?” Quackity and Foolish squawked at once, and Wilbur scrambled to correct himself.

“Not like that! Gods, fuck, just with the bouquets, and the speeches, and… I never wanted to admit it to myself, but I know you don’t feel the same way.”

“The same way?” Quackity parroted, “What’s the same way?”

Instead of answering, Wilbur put a hand on his shoulder, and ducked his head to cough up a full rose bloom at his feet.

Oh. Oh. OH.

“Oh my fucking gods,” Quackity murmured, ignoring Foolish’s panicked questioning behind them. “Oh my gods.”

“I know,” Wilbur said, “Ironic, right? That one time I was telling you about Hanahaki, I had it even since before then. I'm sorry it had to be like this, but I'm not going to stop being obsessed with you.”

“Wilbur.” Quackity was smiling. Why was he smiling? Did he finally have the leverage he needed to get rid of Wilbur for good. “Come with me?”

Wilbur let out an embarrassing yelp as Quackity pulled him by the arm to the elevator, and they all too slowly made their way up to his penthouse. The doors slid tantalisingly open, and Wilbur’s jaw dropped when he saw the state of it.

There were loose petals all over Quackity’s floor.

“That’s why you asked about it,” Wilbur breathed, and then his stomach sank as he took it all in. “Oh.”

Your fiancés finally stopped loving you, then, he wanted to say, scream into Quackity’s face. I told you, I could do it better.

But he didn’t.

Because it meant Quackity was dying, just like him.

“Oh? That’s all you have to say, oh?” Quackity interrogated, and Wilbur flinched back.

“What do you want me to say, that I'm sorry your fiancés don’t love you anymore? Because I could have fucking told you that, Big Q.”

“My- ah. No, Wilbur.” Quackity smirked. “It seems we’re both fucking idiots.”

“The hell is that supposed to- mmf!”

His remark was cut off as Quackity pulled him into a kiss, and it was sweeter and sappier and disgustingly sugary as Quackity slung his arms around Wilbur’s shoulders to draw him in closer.

“I miss my fiancés.”

“Odd thing to say while we’re kissing, but alright.” Wilbur tried not to sound hurt.

“No, Wilbur, you don’t get it. I miss my fiancés.” Quackity laid kisses down his cheeks to the shell of his ear, where he whispered, “I love you.”

The noise Wilbur made at that was embarrassing, as his arms raised to grip Quackity’s sides in surprise.

“So you mean all that,” he gestured to the mess on the floor, “was for me?”

“I know, I was surprised too,” Quackity muttered, not releasing his mouth’s grasp on Wilbur’s neck.

“Oh, we are stupid,” he finally realised, and Quackity threw his head back in laughter, before burying it in Wilbur’s shoulder.

“No shit, asshole!”

With both arms around each other in a mock embrace, Quackity began to sway from side to side, almost in a dance, laughing lightly in Wilbur’s arms. He peppered kisses up and down Wilbur’s jawline as they rocked, smirking against his skin when Wilbur whined and put a hand in his hair to press him down further.

“Are we- how far are we gonna go?” he asked, panting, and Quackity laughed.

“Slow down, Soot, give me the day. I want to properly show you what it’s like to love me.”

“What, you going to wine and dine me?”

“So what if I am, Soot?”

Wilbur paused, grinning and biting the inside of his cheek.

“I think I’d like that a lot,” he finally said.

Quackity hummed. “That’s good,” he replied, pressing a chaste kiss to his cheek, “because I've got a lot of plans for you.”

“Oh?” Wilbur couldn’t help the shiver that ran up his spine. “It’s a good thing I've got a lot planned too.”

“Darling, you aren’t ever getting rid of me now.”