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gamblepilled · 4 days ago

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Multiverse {Alex/c!q/k!q/ElQ/q!q/Benito} (fluff) 🩷

-Alex x You-

For 🦌 anon

Chapter 1 — c!Quackity

You know before he opens his eyes.

The air tastes like hot sugar and redstone dust. He wakes fast, shoulders tight, jaw set like he expects a countdown. He looks at the window, the door, your hands. His gaze catches on you and the edge in him eases a little.

“Where am I,” he asks, voice rough.

“With me,” you say. “Home. No crowds. No cameras.”

He stares another beat, then nods once, like he’s humoring a kind stranger. You set a mug in his hands. He lifts it, sniffs, and drinks like he could fight the past with coffee.

“Rules?” he asks, trying for light.

“Three,” you say, holding up fingers. “No TNT. We keep the world small. You don’t have to talk unless you want to.”

He huffs a breath that almost becomes a laugh. “Fine. Add one more. If I bolt, you don’t chase.”

“I won’t,” you say. “I’ll wait, door open.”

That lands. His eyes drop to your wrist. He watches your pulse like it’s a metronome he might trust.

You make the morning small on purpose. Ten paces from the couch to the kitchen and back. Toast, fruit, the dumb game show channel. He sits on the floor by the coffee table instead of the couch, like the ground’s safer. You sit too. His knee finds yours and stays there, not quite touching.

A delivery truck slams its gate on the street. He flinches hard. You don’t reach for him. You set your hand on the rug between you, palm up.

“Count with me,” you say, easy. “Five things you see.”

He doesn’t move at first. Then he nods, eyes on yours.

“Your hand,” he says. “The stupid pineapple on your mug. The plant. Your… socks.” His mouth twitches. “My own hands.”

“Four you can touch.”

“The rug. The mug,” he taps it, “the table. Your sleeve.”

“Three you hear.”

“Clock. Cars. You breathing.”

“Two you smell.”

He smiles, small and real. “Coffee. You.”

“One you taste.”

He takes another sip. “Coffee,” he repeats, softer, steadying. The tremor in his shoulders lets go a notch. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

He finishes the toast and then asks to stand. You do it together. Ten paces. Window to kitchen. Kitchen to window. He keeps his hands open at his sides like he’s negotiating with his own ribs. By the third lap, the tension in his mouth loosens.

“You’re stubborn,” he says.

“You’re alive,” you answer.

You offer outside. He shakes his head. You offer balcony. He weighs it, then nods. You both step out. The sun is mild, the street below normal in the way that saves people. He squints at the planters and tips a tilted pot so the water line sits right.

He watches his fingers press the soil. “I built something once,” he says. “Watched it burn twice.”

“I know.”

He glances over. “Do you?”

“I know what ash feels like in your teeth for a week,” you say. “And how quiet gets too loud after.”

He studies your face, then the traffic. “Yeah.”

Inside, he finds your toolbox and fixes the cabinet hinge that’s been complaining for months. He narrates under his breath while he works, like he’s reminding himself he can build in small ways that don’t explode.

“Screw was stripped,” he mutters. “Replace. Hand tight first. Half turn. There.”

The door closes without a squeal. He looks oddly proud, then embarrassed for being proud. You clap once. He rolls his eyes, but the smile sticks.

“Payment accepted in tea,” he says.

“Coming right up.”

Afternoon drifts. You read. He sketches a wiring diagram on the back of a flyer, then trashes it and starts over with simpler lines. When his jaw sets too hard, you ask him about nothing things. He answers with more nothing. The pile of nothing becomes a soft place to sit.

Close to dusk, he goes quiet in that far way again. You don’t push. You shift, shoulder to shoulder on the floor by the couch, and wait. Ten breaths. Twenty. He tips his head to yours.

“It was supposed to work,” he says, voice thin.

“I know.”

“It was supposed to end something I didn’t know how to carry anymore.”

“I know.”

He breathes out. “Then it didn’t.”

You set your hand over his, light. He flips his palm and laces your fingers like he’s done it a thousand times and like it’s brand new.

“I don’t do speeches,” you say. “I make dinner.”

That gets a real huff. “Okay, chef.”

You feed him rice with garlic and a fried egg. He swears it’s the best thing he’s tasted in months and then tries to fight you for the pan so he can do the dishes. You let him win. He dries every plate like they’re important papers.

Night falls easy. You don’t ask him to sleep in the bed. You lay out a blanket on the couch and another on the floor in case the couch feels like a stage. He picks the floor, then eyes the couch, then eyes you. You pat the space in front of you and lie down too, facing him. He hesitates, then moves so your foreheads almost touch.

“Can I…” he starts, then stops.

“Yeah,” you say.

He slides closer until he can rest his face in the crook where your shoulder meets your neck. His hand finds your waist. Yours finds his hair. You both breathe. You keep the room small around that breath.

“Tomorrow,” he murmurs, already drifting, “you can make a rule for me.”

“I already did.”

“What.”

“No leaving without telling me where your feet are going.”

He goes quiet. Then he nods, slow. “Okay.”

You kiss his temple. “Sleep.”

He does. You listen to his breaths even out. You watch the shadows move on the ceiling and think about seeds and cabinets and how sometimes surviving is a series of small, stubborn choices lined up like dominoes that do not fall.

When you wake in the twitchy pale of morning, his fingers are still laced with yours. He blinks at you like he’s not sure what day it is. Then he smiles, shy and a little wrecked.

“Still here,” he says.

“Still here,” you echo.

He looks at your hands and then at the window. He swallows a joke he doesn’t need and says the truth instead.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

He squeezes your fingers once, firm. Outside, a truck door shuts. He flinches less. You both hear it. You both breathe. The day opens.

—

Chapter 2 — ElQuackity

You don’t get a text first. You get a knock, then the door opens on ElQuackity balancing three grocery bags and a tiny speaker clamped between his teeth. He looks criminally pleased with himself.

“Cita en casa. Yo cocino.” (Home date. I’m cooking.)

He nudges the door shut with his heel and kisses your cheek in passing.

“Sin cámaras, sin Federación. Solo tú, yo, y una cocina peligrosa.” (No cameras, no Federation. Just you, me, and a dangerous kitchen.)

“You brought half a market.”

He lines everything on the counter like a show and tell. Limes, cilantro, fresh tortillas, a paper packet of spices he won’t name, and a bag of pan dulce with your favorite peeking out.

“Confía. Hoy eres mi reina.” (Trust me. Today you’re my queen.)

He taps the speaker. A bolero spills out soft.

“Música para cocinar. Regla uno, bailas mientras picas.” (Music for cooking. Rule one, you dance while you chop.)

“I don’t know if I signed that.”

“Lo firmaste cuando abriste la puerta.” (You signed when you opened the door.)

He hands you a knife and the cilantro, then leans over your shoulder, warm and close.

“Corta así, despacito.” (Chop like this, slow.)

He guides your hand, breath at your ear. “Perfecta.” (Perfect.)

He moves like a man who’s learned kitchens keep people alive. Onions hiss. Beans simmer. He salts by feel and taste, then offers you the spoon with a small tilt of his chin.

“Prueba. Dime la verdad.” (Taste. Tell me the truth.)

You hum. “More lime.”

He grins. “Sabía que dirías eso.” (I knew you’d say that.)

He squeezes two more and kisses the back of your hand like payment.

“Así, mejor.” (There, better.)

When the pan gets rowdy he steps between you and the oil without thinking, arm a shield. He looks down at you, caught.

“Costumbre. Protejo a los míos.” (Habit. I protect my people.)

“I’m your people, huh.”

He doesn’t blink. “Sí.” (Yes.)

Dinner turns the counter into a small miracle. Tortillas wrapped in a towel. Beans silky. Carne sizzling with a citrus edge. He builds the first taco and brings it to your mouth with both hands like an offering.

“Abre.” (Open.)

You bite. He watches your face like that’s the plate he’s been trying to get right for years. You nod, helpless.

“Eso.” (That’s it.) He laughs, relieved. “Sabía.” (I knew.)

You eat leaning hip to hip. He keeps tucking napkins under your wrist and stealing little tastes from your fingers. When you swipe a line of salsa off his lip with your thumb, his breath catches.

“Cuidado. Me enamoro cuando me tocas así.” (Careful. I fall in love when you touch me like that.)

“Good. Fall faster.”

He blinks, then smiles like you just handed him a flag to plant. He turns the music up and tugs you into the open strip of floor between the stove and the sink.

“Baila conmigo.” (Dance with me.)

You sway, barefoot on tile. He leads easy, hand at your back, not showing off, just steady. Outside the window the city hums. Inside, the only rhythm that matters is the one he’s matching to your breath.

“A veces finjo que nada me afecta.” (Sometimes I pretend nothing gets to me.) His voice is low against your temple.

“La isla, la gente, las promesas. Pero contigo dejo de fingir.” (The island, the people, the promises. But with you I stop pretending.)

“You don’t have to be cool here.”

He huffs a laugh. “Perfecto, porque contigo soy un desastre feliz.” (Perfect, because with you I’m a happy mess.)

After dishes, you take two mugs to the fire escape. Night air, neon, distant laughter. He sits close, thigh to thigh, and rolls a coin over his knuckles while he looks for the right words.

“Te digo una verdad.” (I’ll tell you a truth.)

He turns the coin into your palm. It’s stamped with a tiny heart.

“Crecí midiendo todo. Favores, riesgos, el tiempo que me quedaba. Contigo no quiero medir. Quiero quedarme.” (I grew up measuring everything. Favors, risks, the time I had left. With you I don’t want to measure. I want to stay.)

You curl your fingers around the coin. “Stay.”

He exhales like the city finally handed him back an answer he could live with. He kisses you there, on a metal step above a street that doesn’t care, and makes it feel like the center of a map.

Later, when the lights are off and the music is a memory, he doesn’t rush. He undresses you like you’re a promise he intends to keep.

“Tú decides el ritmo.” (You choose the pace.)

He follows every cue. When you want slow, he slows. When you want more, he gives more. His hands are sure, but his mouth is reverent. He whispers into your skin like prayer and joke together.

“Mírame, por favor. Quiero verte feliz.” (Look at me, please. I want to see you happy.)

You look. You take. He goes with you, undoing with a rough, grateful sound that he hides in your neck, then decides not to hide at all.

He pads to the kitchen for water, returns with the bag from the panadería, and pulls out the concha he saved for later. He breaks it in half, feeds you a bite, then ties a red ribbon from the bakery box around your wrist.

“Para acordarte.” (So you remember.)

“Of what?”

He kisses your palm. “Que no vuelvo a medir cuando se trata de ti.” (That I’m done measuring when it comes to you.)

You slide the ribbon off and tie it around his wrist too. “Match me.”

“Siempre.” (Always.)

He pulls you in, both ribbons bright against warm skin, and tucks you under his chin. His heartbeat’s slow for once. Before sleep takes him, he murmurs against your hair:

“Mañana preparo desayuno. Sin prisa. Sin nadie más.” (Tomorrow I’ll make breakfast. No rush. No one else.)

“Deal.”

He smiles where you can feel it. “Trato hecho.” (Deal made.)

In the morning, the coin’s still in your palm. The ribbon’s still on both wrists. He’s still there, eyes soft, voice lower than the coffee when he says:

“Renuevo términos. Me quedo.” (I renew the terms. I’m staying.)

—

Chapter 3 — K!Quackity (Karmaland)

“¡MI AMOR, BAJA! ¡ABRE LOS OJOS, MISIÓN ROMÁNTICA!” (MY LOVE, GET DOWN! OPEN YOUR EYES, ROMANTIC MISSION!)

By the time you step into the living room, he’s standing there in a bulletproof vest, sunglasses indoors, and holding two guns like he just kicked down someone else’s door.

“El perímetro está limpio.” (The perimeter is clear.)

You stare at him. “We don’t even have a perimeter.”

“Ahora sí.” (We do now.)

He tucks one pistol into the back of his jeans and digs in his bag, pulling out a bouquet of flowers that’s… crushed under the weight of several grenades.

“Son para ti.” (They’re for you.)

You take them carefully. “You carried these in the same bag as explosives?”

“Así no las olvidas.” (That way you don’t forget them.)

He starts pacing the room like he’s on patrol, occasionally peeking out the blinds.

“Hoy vamos a tener la cita más segura del mundo. Nadie se acerca a ti. Nadie respira cerca. Nadie.” (Today we’re having the safest date in the world. Nobody comes near you. Nobody breathes near you. Nobody.)

“You’re scaring the neighbors.”

“Perfecto.” (Perfect.)

You watch him pull a disassembled rifle from the coffee table drawer, you didn’t even know that drawer could fit one, and start clicking pieces together while humming a love song.

“¿Te conté la vez que defendí un picnic con tres francotiradores?” (Did I tell you about the time I defended a picnic with three snipers?)

“No.”

“Romántico. Como hoy.” (Romantic. Like today.)

When he’s done, he slings the rifle over his shoulder and finally focuses on you. His smile softens, but his hands are still busy checking the safety on his sidearm.

“Contigo, hasta bajo fuego enemigo, estoy tranquilo.” (With you, even under enemy fire, I’m calm.)

“That’s… sweet?”

“Es amor.” (It’s love.)

You set the flowers in a vase while he swaps one magazine for another. He watches you like you’re the mission objective, eyes tracking your every move.

“Te ves hermosa, como una meta cumplida.” (You look beautiful, like a completed mission.)

Then, without warning, he pulls a chair out, spins it toward you, and gestures with a gun.

“Siéntate, por favor.” (Sit down, please.)

You cross your arms. “I don’t take orders.”

He cocks the gun, dramatically, but not pointing it at you, and smirks.

“Ahora sí.” (Now you do.)

You sit, more amused than intimidated, and he immediately kneels in front of you, pulling a small, battered box from his vest pocket. Inside is a heart-shaped pendant made from spent bullet casings, polished to shine.

“La bala que no usé. Te protege.” (The bullet I didn’t use. It protects you.)

You take it carefully. “You made this?”

“Sí. Con amor y pólvora.” (Yes. With love and gunpowder.)

He fastens it around your neck, his hands warm despite the cold metal of the chain.

“Si algún día escuchas disparos, acuérdate: siempre disparo primero por ti.” (If you ever hear gunfire, remember: I always shoot first for you.)

You shake your head, smiling. “You’re ridiculous.”

He leans in, sunglasses sliding down his nose.

“Ridículamente tuyo.” (Ridiculously yours.)

The rest of the night is a mix of romance and mild terrorism. He insists on “clearing” every room before you enter, sets up tripwires at the windows (“por si acaso” (just in case), and carries you bridal style across the kitchen “in case of snipers.”

By the time you’re curled up on the couch with him, guns finally set aside, he’s got one arm around you and one hand resting on a holster. You ask if he can relax for just one night.

He kisses your temple.

“Si te tengo aquí, ya estoy relajado.” (If I have you here, I’m already relaxed.)

—

Chapter 4 — q!Quackity

You hear the knock before you see him, three quick, two slow, one quick. His ridiculous little “secret code” that you never agreed to but he swears is essential for “security purposes.”

The second you open the door, he’s already stepping inside like he owns the place, hoodie pulled low, smelling faintly of rain and concrete. His eyes flick over the room like he’s scanning for cameras, then find you, and all that focus softens in an instant.

“There you are,” he says, voice low like it’s been hours since he’s let himself speak.

You open your mouth to greet him, but he’s already dropping his bag and wrapping himself around you, arms tight, chest pressing you back a step. His face buries into your shoulder, breath warm against your skin.

“I missed you.”

You smile into his hair. “I missed you too.”

“No, no, no… not possible.” He pulls back just enough to smirk at you, eyes glinting like he’s challenging you. “I’m way better at missing people than you are.”

You roll your eyes. “Congratulations?”

“Thank you, I worked hard on it.” He leans in and kisses you, quick and warm, but his hands don’t let go of your sides even after. It’s like he’s worried you’ll slip away if he loosens his grip.

When you move toward the couch, he keeps hold of your hand. Instead of sitting next to you, he drops to the floor in front of it, leaning back against your legs like he’s been doing it for years. “Talk to me. Anything. Just not about the island.”

You tell him about your day, the bakery you walked past that smelled like cinnamon, the old man feeding pigeons in the park, the way the sky went neon pink right before sunset. He hums at all the right moments, thumb rubbing absentmindedly over your ankle, grounding himself there like it’s the only thing keeping him present.

When you stand to make food, he follows instantly, groaning. “I can’t be left alone right now, I might die. Do you want that on your conscience?”

“You’ll survive for five minutes.”

“I will not.” He wedges himself between you and the counter anyway, watching every move like he’s making sure you don’t vanish. He tries to “help” with the instant ramen by shaking in way too much seasoning and snapping the noodles in half. “For efficiency,” he claims.

The kitchen’s a mess by the time you’re done, but he’s grinning at the two steaming bowls like you’ve both just won a cooking show.

You eat on the couch, his knee pressed against yours the whole time. He keeps stealing bites from your bowl, claiming yours tastes better even though they’re literally identical.

Later, he flops onto your bed without asking, shoes kicked off at the last second. He’s scrolling through his phone, muttering in Spanish at something, then bursts out laughing. “Oh my god, look, look.” He shoves the screen toward you, a meme you don’t understand flashing by. “It’s funnier if you imagine it’s Foolish.”

When you climb in beside him, he immediately shifts so his head’s on your chest, ear over your heartbeat. “Don’t move.”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“Good.” He breathes out like he’s settling for the first time in days. “You’re my favorite safe zone.”

It’s quiet for a while, just the hum of the city outside. Then, softer, “You’re the reason I can actually leave the island and not feel… wrong.”

You run your fingers through his hair, thumb brushing his temple. “I’m glad you’re here.”

His smile is small but real. “Me too. But just to be clear, I’m never leaving until you physically kick me out.”

“Noted.”

“You think I’m kidding, but you’ll see.” He tilts his head up and kisses your chin. “Good luck getting rid of me now.”

—

Chapter 5 — Benito Camelo

You smell the cologne before the knock. Two light taps. A pause. One more, timed for drama.

He steps in already moving. Tailored shirt, sleeves rolled, boots too clean for the rain. A canvas satchel clinks at his hip. In his other hand, a bunch of fresh rosemary tied with red thread.

“Good evening, sweetheart,” he says, smile easy and a little dangerous. “Permission to enter, cleanse, and then flirt irresponsibly.”

“You always ask permission after you’re halfway inside.”

“Consent’s sexy. Also legally prudent.” He kisses your cheek, then scans the walls like a pro. “All right. Where do you sleep, where are the mirrors, and which corner has the weird draft you pretend not to notice?”

You point. He nods like you just handed him museum blueprints.

From the satchel: chalk, a worn lighter, a tin of salt, a small brass bell. The bell rings once, bright and clean. He listens to the fade like it’s talking back.

“House sounds good,” he decides. “Still, basics first. I promised your mother nothing eats you on my watch.”

“You met my mother once.”

“I’m very convincing.”

He pours a neat salt line at the threshold, taps chalk at each window and sketches a quick sigil that looks like a flower with teeth, murmuring words you don’t quite catch. He tucks the rosemary above the bedroom door, ties it off with the same red thread, then takes off his watch and sets it on the counter with care.

“What are you doing now?” you ask.

“Taking this seriously.” His voice softens. “I joke when I’m nervous. The rest I mean.” He lights incense and walks it through the rooms, bell in the other hand, smoke trailing like ribbon. “If anything stares at you while you sleep, it stares at me first.”

You follow his circuit, leaning in the doorway while he works. He moves like he’s practiced this alone at three a.m. too many times. When he’s done, he cracks the window and the room breathes.

“Protocol complete,” he says, stowing the bell. “Now we celebrate survival with pasta.”

“You brought warding tools and groceries.”

“I’m a well-rounded man.” He produces tomatoes, garlic, basil, and a wedge of cheese like a magician. “I promised myself when the day’s ugly, dinner’s pretty.”

He cooks like he dances, just showy enough to make you laugh, careful enough to make it perfect. He feeds you from the wooden spoon, watches your face, unclenches when you nod.

“Thank you for your review,” he says. “Five stars, would simmer again.”

After you eat, he clicks a slow song on his phone. He offers his hand. No flourish, just a question.

“May I?”

You step in. His palm finds your back. Warm. Steady. He leads without trying to impress and looks unreasonably pleased when you melt into him.

“You keep the world small,” he says, low. “I like it that way. Easier to guard.”

“You don’t have to guard everything.”

“Maybe not,” he says. “But I like guarding you.”

He spins you once and catches you, forehead to yours. He doesn’t kiss you yet. He checks your eyes for yes. When you give it, the kiss is slow and sure, the kind that pays attention.

He pulls back an inch. “Tell me if you want more.”

“I want more.”

“Good. I brought more.”

Not flowers. From the satchel he takes a small velvet pouch. Inside, a charm he made from an old brass button, polished and engraved with a protective sigil so small you have to squint.

“It’s not pretty because it’s expensive,” he says, suddenly shy. “It’s pretty because I didn’t sleep until the lines were perfect.”

“Put it on me.”

He fastens the chain around your neck and kisses the charm once like a vow, then kisses below it like a promise he intends to keep tonight.

In the bedroom, he’s as careful as he was with chalk and salt. He asks. He listens. He follows. When you say slower, he slows. When you ask for his mouth, he gives it like a gift he loves giving. He laughs once against your skin, not at you but with you, thrilled you’re saying yes to him.

After, he brings water and settles against the headboard with you tucked in. He slides a small notebook from the satchel and opens to a page of neat shorthand.

“What’s that?” you ask.

“Case notes,” he says. “And one poem. Don’t tell my colleagues.”

“You wrote me a poem in your case file.”

“Where else would I hide it?” He reads, simple and earnest in a way he only is with you. “I promise to see you in every light and wait for you in every shadow.”

You’re too soft to tease him, so you kiss him instead. He smiles against your mouth, relieved.

“Small truth,” he says. “Sometimes I make jokes so my hands don’t shake. With you I’m allowed to shake.”

“Shake whenever you need.”

He exhales like something stubborn finally unclenched. He kisses your temple and the charm again, greedy for luck.

Deep night, rain starts. He wakes you gently and points at the window, boyish for a blink. “Listen. Your house is learning to sound like home.”

You fall asleep to rain and his heartbeat under your ear.

Morning brings a paper bag on the nightstand with perfect sweet bread and a note in his dramatic handwriting: breakfast for my favorite reason to come back. In the kitchen he’s already making coffee, hair a mess, cologne softer now.

“Good morning,” he says, looking at you like sunrise doesn’t deserve the credit it gets. “I renewed your wards. I also renewed my decision to annoy you forever.”

“Annoy me forever.”

“Signed,” he says, handing you the mug, “Benito Camelo, gentleman, public menace, your problem.” He kisses your knuckles. “And your solution.”

—

Chapter 6 — Just Alex

The first thing you notice is how quiet it is.

No Spanish muttering, no guns clattering onto the table, no incense smoke curling from the kitchen, no theatrical entrances. Just… Alex.

He’s standing in the doorway, hair messy from travel, hoodie hanging loose, backpack sliding off his shoulder. His eyes find yours immediately, like he’s been looking for you the whole way back.

“Hey,” he says, voice low and real. No accent, no strange swagger. Just him.

You’re moving before you think, crossing the room fast enough to make him drop the bag completely. His arms are open before you even reach him, and when you hit his chest, he pulls you in so tight you swear he’s trying to make sure you’re actually solid.

“God, I missed you,” you breathe into his hoodie. You don’t let go for a long time.

“I missed you too.” He sounds like it’s a relief to say it. Like holding you is making up for whatever the hell you both just went through. “Was it… bad?”

You lean back enough to look at him. “It was… different. Every single day was different. I woke up not knowing which one of you I was getting, c!Quackity, ElQuackity, K!Quackity, q!Quackity, Benito..” you shake your head. “It was exhausting. I mean… they weren’t all bad, but it wasn’t you.”

His brow furrows. “Did they do anything..”

“No.” You cut him off before he can spiral. “They didn’t hurt me. They just… weren’t you. And I’ve been counting down the days until you came back.”

Alex exhales, shoulders dropping like he’s finally allowed to relax. “I’m sorry. I wish I could’ve been here instead of… whatever that was.”

You cup his face, thumb brushing over the curve of his cheek. “You’re here now. That’s all I care about.”

His eyes soften, and then he’s kissing you, slow, grounded, not rushed. The kind of kiss that says I’m not going anywhere. You hold onto the front of his hoodie, just to feel him solid under your hands.

When he finally pulls back, he rests his forehead against yours. “So… no more other versions of me?”

You smile faintly. “No more. Just you. My Alex.”

He grins, a little crooked. “Good. ’Cause I don’t plan on going anywhere again. And if I do, you’re coming with me.”

You don’t even argue. You just nod, because right now you’d agree to anything as long as it means he’s the one you’re waking up to tomorrow.

“Come on,” he says, sliding his arm around your waist. “Let’s get on the couch. I’ve got about a week’s worth of holding you to catch up on.”

You go willingly, curling into him the second you sit down. His arm is heavy around you, his heartbeat steady under your cheek. And for the first time in days, you feel like you can breathe.

“You’re really back,” you murmur.

“I’m really back,” he promises. “And I’m not letting go.”

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gamblepilled · 4 days ago

Text

After the Neon Goes Quiet (fluff/angst/comfort) 🩷💔❤️‍🩹

-c!quackity x You-

For R🍓 anon

Burned wool. Redstone dust cooked to a bitter tang. Sand turned to glass in jagged sheets. The desert is too quiet for a place that used to hum with music and luck and lies, so your boots crunch louder than they should as you cross into Las Nevadas.

The casino is a carcass. Neon letters hang by a wire, flickering. The front sign still spits sparks like it is trying to finish one last sentence. Everything else is rubble and smoke. You stop long enough to press the back of your wrist to your nose and breathe through cloth. You have walked through warzones and weathered blizzards that buried villages in one night, but there is something different about a place that destroys itself. It feels intimate. It feels like a confession.

A low sound reaches you from the far side of the entrance. Not the building settling. Not a creeper. A human sound, small and ugly, like someone tried to swallow a groan and failed.

You climb.

A beam blocks the first stairwell. You go up the side instead, using chunks of cracked quartz as a ladder. Heat licks your palms through your gloves. Your pack clinks, glass against glass, every step a soft chime of potions. You find him in what used to be the lobby, half-buried under a fallen truss and a sheet of corrugated copper. He is curled around himself like a fist.

His hat is nowhere. His glasses are cracked. There is soot on his mouth and a thin line of blood at his temple already turning rusty in the heat. His chest moves. You let out a breath you did not know you were holding.

“Hey,” you say, dropping to your knees. “I’ve got you.”

He flinches like your voice hurts.

“Save it,” he rasps without opening his eyes. “Go loot a slot machine or something.”

You ignore that and slide your pack off. Your hands know the ritual before your head catches up. Check the airway. Check the ribs. Check for the kinds of injuries that will turn fatal while you argue. He hisses when you run gentle fingers along his side.

“Cracked, not broken,” you say, more to yourself than to him. “Lucky.”

He laughs once. It is not a good sound. “Wrong word.”

“Yeah,” you say. “Bad choice. Hold still.”

You lever the copper sheet away enough to wedge a block under it, to give him room to breathe. He tries to shove your hands off with both palms and barely manages a weak pat.

“Don’t,” he says, eyes slitting open. Brown, bloodshot, furious. “I did this. Let me deal with it.”

“You are,” you say. “By breathing.” You reach for your belt knife. “Cover your eyes.”

He stares like he might bite you. Then, with theatrical annoyance that is too shaky to sell, he pulls his arm over his face. You cut the strap of his ruined vest and peel it back. Burns along his shoulder. Shrapnel nicks across his arm. A nasty puncture in his thigh where a rod went in shallow and lodged. You exhale through your teeth.

“This is going to hurt,” you warn, and pour the first potion of Instant Health over a clean bandage before pressing it to the wound.

He swears in Spanish and in English, a fluent strand of venom that would be impressive if he did not sound so tired at the end of it. “Stop.”

“No.”

“I mean it.”

“So do I.”

You work fast. Draw the rod in one firm pull while he clenches his jaw. Flush with water. Powder with sugar to help clotting. Bandage. You feel him watching you from the shadow of his arm.

“You a doctor or a vulture?” he mutters.

“Traveler,” you say. “Healer. I move. I fix what I can. I leave when I should.”

He makes a small disbelieving sound. “Then leave.”

“Sorry,” you say, and mean the opposite. “I’m stubborn.”

You dose him again, this time with a slow Regeneration you brewed two towns back with a rabbit’s foot and a prayer. The wounds knit a little under your hands. His eyelids flutter. For a second, the desert reappears in his face. Young. Human. Then he remembers to scowl.

“Why are you here,” he asks, softer.

“I pass through once a year,” you say. “Trade with the cooks, rest in the shade, listen to losers lie. I saw smoke from the ridge.”

He swallows. His throat works like each muscle decided not to cooperate. “Great. Audience.”

“Not by choice,” you say, and ease the truss off his legs one block at a time. “Can you move your feet?”

He flexes both. Relief goes through you so fast you have to steady your hands on your knees. You sit back and look him over. Soot. Blood. Pride.

“What’s your name,” you ask.

He closes his eyes again like that will end the conversation. “You already know it.”

“Humor me.”

His mouth quirks. “Quackity.”

You nod. “Okay, Quackity. I’m getting you out of here. You can be mad at me about it the whole time.”

He opens one eye to glare. “I’m mad at the world. Don’t make it personal.”

“Too late,” you say, and slide your shoulder under his arm. “On three.”

He comes up with a grunt and then bites it back like he is embarrassed to make noise in front of you. You take his weight, careful of the ribs, careful of the burned skin. He tries to help and fails halfway, knees giving hard. You do not let him fall. You are smaller than him but you are used to this. People are heavier when they are grieving. You have carried your share.

“Take the stairs,” he says, like he still has authority here. “Back wall.”

You look where he is looking. The back wall is a ruin, sure, but the stairs are less clogged. You guide him that way. You think about the way the blast traveled. You think about the choice it takes to build something that costs this much to destroy. You do not ask the question because you already know the answer. He told the desert with TNT. He said it loud.

Outside, the air feels different. The sun hits his face and he squints hard enough to wrinkle the ash on his lashes. You lower him to a sitting sprawl against a chipped pillar, then yank the tarp from your pack and rig a little shade with a broken signpost and a length of cord.

He watches you do it like he wants to hate you for being prepared. The corner of his mouth keeps betraying him.

“Why are you nice,” he asks, flat.

You shrug. “Specialist in healing. If I’m mean I get worse patients.”

He snorts despite himself. Then his expression shutters. “You don’t know me.”

“Not yet,” you say.

“I don’t want to be known.”

“That’s fine,” you say, gentle. “You can be unknown in my bedroll. You’ll still get soup.”

He stares at you like you have spoken blasphemy. “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

You take a sip from your canteen and offer it. He looks at it, looks at you, then takes it and drinks as if admitting need is a defeat he can live with for five seconds. When he hands it back his hands are shaking.

“I’ll walk you to the edge of town,” you say. “If there’s somewhere else you’d rather die, you can point and I’ll say okay.”

He flinches. There it is. The truth, scraped thin and raw.

“Don’t make jokes about that,” he says.

“I won’t,” you say. “But I won’t pretend I didn’t hear what this was.”

Silence stretches between you, bright and hot and fragile as glass. A tumbleweed catches on the skeleton of a lamppost and spins until it tears free. He tips his head back into the pillar and closes his eyes.

“I did it right,” he says, barely audible.

“I know,” you say.

“It should’ve worked.”

“I know.”

He swallows, throat bobbing. “Then why am I here.”

You could say something pretty about fate or stubborn hearts or the way the world sometimes refuses to finish a sentence. You don’t. You fold a clean cloth, wet it, and wipe the soot off his cheek like he is a kid who fell in a campfire.

“Because I walked by,” you say. “And you were breathing. That’s enough for today.”

He watches your face like he is looking for mockery. You do not give him any. Finally he lets his head thunk sideways against the pillar to look past you at the ruin of the casino. It looks back at him like a mirror.

“I can’t go to a hospital,” he says. “Or a town. Or anywhere with headlines.”

“Good,” you say. “I hate paperwork.”

You pack, then help him stand again. He does not fight you this time. He leans like he is not used to leaning, like the act itself is humiliating and somehow a relief. You set an easy pace out of the city bones and toward the ridge where your horse is staked under a half-dead acacia. He squints at the sight of the animal like it is a joke at his expense.

“You’re kidding,” he says.

“She’s sweet,” you say. “You can glare at her all you want.”

You bundle him into the saddle and walk at her head so the jostle stays gentle. He grips the horn with white knuckles until you lay your hand over his and press. He relaxes a fraction. The desert opens, a spill of gold and bone. Wind picks up, carrying the smell of blown-out redstone away.

By the time you hit the canyon, he is listing. You stop at a shallow cave you know from other years, a pocket of shade painted with cool air. Your camp goes up quick. Bedrolls. Kettle. Poultice mortar. He tries to sit up and direct you and you let him fail, then tuck a blanket around his hips like you have all the time in the world.

“Stop fussing,” he mutters.

“Never,” you say, and smear salve over the burns that will scar if you let them. He does not make a sound. His jaw clenches until the muscle jumps. When you meet his eyes to check in, his gaze is a fight between gratitude and shame.

“Soup,” you announce. “Eat or I’ll bore you with stories about the time I got lost in bamboo and learned to hate pandas.”

That gets a small, incredulous breath. “Who hates pandas?”

“I do, when they steal my bed.”

You hand him the bowl. He stares at it like its a trick and then raises it to his mouth. The first swallow almost undoes him. You watch him rebuild himself with a second. He lowers the bowl and tips his head into the rock wall behind him, eyes closed.

“I don’t deserve this,” he says.

You stir the kettle. “That’s not how my work functions.”

“How does it function?”

“You’re hurt. I help. You breathe. We repeat until one of those changes.”

He cracks an eye. “And if I decide not to breathe.”

“Then I sit here and make it very annoying to give up,” you say. “I’m excellent at annoying.”

He huffs a laugh. Real, this time. Tired, but real. He finishes the soup and hands you the empty bowl with both hands like a peace offering. You take it and do not make a ceremony out of it.

He sleeps after that in small ugly fits, jerking awake like his body is arguing with his mind. Every time he startles you are already there with a hand on his shoulder, a quiet you’re safe that seems to confuse him more than it should. He stops protesting after the third time and starts looking for your hand before he even opens his eyes.

At twilight, you rinse the blood from his hair with warm water and gentle fingers. You find the hat in a drift of ash in your memory and pretend it is nothing when his breath stutters at the empty air above his head.

“It’s gone,” he says.

“Then you get to pick a new one,” you answer.

“Some things don’t get replaced.”

“Some don’t,” you agree. “Some get named and buried. Some get planted.”

He stares at the cave ceiling. “You talk like a priest.”

“I talk like someone who has been very tired and then got less tired with help.”

He’s quiet for a long time. Crickets start up in the brush outside like someone spun up a record. Stars push through the roof of the sky one by one.

“Thank you,” he says finally, like he’s forcing each letter through a door. “For not asking for an autograph.”

You snort. “I don’t collect those.”

“What do you collect?”

“People who keep breathing.”

He turns his head to look at you full-on, eyes dark in the low light, something fragile and lethal in them both. His mouth opens. Closes. He swallows whatever he was going to say and replaces it with something safer.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

You tell him.

He repeats it like he wants to see if it tastes good. It does. He relaxes the smallest amount.

“Okay,” he says, whisper-soft. “Okay.”

You check his bandages one more time and smooth the blanket. He reaches out before you can pull your hand back and catches your wrist. His touch is light, afraid to claim.

“Don’t leave,” he says. “Not tonight.”

“I won’t,” you say. “Sleep.”

He nods, eyes already drooping. You settle beside him with your back to the cave wall and your legs stretched out, knife within reach, potions lined like stained glass by your knee. He breathes. You count. Outside, the desert forgets to be cruel for one night.

In the quiet, your mind counts the things you will not say in the morning. You won’t say that he should have died. You won’t say that something in you unclenched when he didn’t. You won’t say that you’ve stayed too long before and paid for it, and that you already know you’ll stay here anyway.

You will say this instead when the sun reaches the lip of the canyon and paints everything gold. You will say good morning. You will say drink. You will say let me change those bandages. You will say I’m not going anywhere until you can walk out of here steady and decide where you want to go. And when he says nowhere, you’ll say then we’ll make a temporary somewhere.

You look at him. He sleeps like someone who forgot how to do it and is relearning in slow, careful breaths. You rest your palm over the blanket where his ribs rise and fall and match your lungs to his until the desert hums and your eyelids finally slip.

Tomorrow, you’ll start again.

Tomorrow, you’ll ask if he wants to plant something where the neon used to be.

—

Morning comes in slices of gold across the cave floor. You wake first. You always do. The kettle hums. The canyon breathes cool air like a blessing. Quackity blinks awake to the sound of a spoon against tin and goes very still, like stillness might keep the day from noticing him.

“Pain level?” you ask.

“Seven,” he says, then grinds his teeth. “Six if I lie.”

“Honesty buys you the good tea.”

“Fine. Seven.”

You set the cup in his hands and watch the steam ghost his face. He drinks, eyes on the cave mouth, jaw tight at first, then looser. You check bandages. The puncture in his thigh is clean and pink at the edges. The burns look angrier than they feel. His ribs complain when you press. He watches your hands like you will take something important if he blinks.

“You’re good at this,” he mutters.

“Practice,” you say. “And stubbornness.”

He huffs. “You keep saying that like it’s a virtue.”

“Depends who you’re saving.”

He looks at his knuckles. Long beat. “Right.”

You hand him a strip of dried fruit. He pretends he doesn’t want it and eats it in four suspicious bites.

—

By noon you have him on his feet with your staff under his palm. He hates the staff on sight.

“I look ridiculous,” he says.

“You look upright.”

He takes two steps and swears. The third step is better. He tries to hand the staff back. You fold his fingers around it again and keep your voice calm.

“Short distance. Cave mouth to the acacia. Back to the bedroll. That’s it.”

He scowls at the tree like the tree started this. “I built a city. I can walk ten blocks.”

“You built a city,” you say. “Today you walk ten paces.”

A muscle jumps in his cheek. He takes the paces. He comes back winded and angry. You pretend not to notice the way his shoulders are shaking. When you ease him down he does not let go of the staff. He stares at it, then at you, something offended shifting into something like grim respect.

“Again,” he says.

“After soup,” you say, and he lets you win.

—

Late afternoon brings company. A skeletal clatter on the rim path. You hear it first and reach for your bow. Quackity hears it second and freezes. He looks at you once, quick, something sharp waking up in his posture.

“Two,” he says under his breath. “Maybe three. Wind from the west.”

“Stay behind me,” you say.

He pushes to his feet and nearly goes down. You catch his elbow. He jerks away like the touch burned. Shame flashes so fast you almost miss it. He hates feeling small more than he hates pain.

“Bow,” he says. “You take the right. I’ll pull the left.”

“You’re not—”

“Give me the crossbow,” he snaps, then swallows. “Please.”

You hand it over with a quarrel. His hands shake once, twice, then steady like a coin coming to rest. He plants his feet and lets out a slow breath that sounds like memory. On the ridge, bone shines. You loose into the right one’s ribs and hear the clatter tumble. Quackity tags the left through the eye socket. The third slips into shade and tries to flank. He tracks the sound, turns with the staff under his armpit, and fires. Three arrows, three drops. He lowers the crossbow and winces when his ribs remind him they exist.

You look at him. He looks at the ridge like he is daring the world to send a fourth.

“Still got it,” you say.

“Don’t sound so surprised,” he mutters, but the corner of his mouth betrays him again. He hands the crossbow back and sits before he falls. You sit with him and feel the canyon cool down around the two of you.

“You did good,” you say.

He shrugs and stares at his knees. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“Who would I tell,” you ask. “The cactus.”

He snorts. Real, low. “Snitch.”

—

At dusk you sew. He watches from the bedroll, elbows on his knees, face in that careful blank that means he is thinking too much.

“What are you mangling,” he asks.

“Leather,” you say. “And pride.”

“Whose pride?”

“Mine, if this turns out ugly.”

You finish the band and hold it up. A simple hat, low crown, wide brim. Nothing fancy. Desert kind. It will not replace what blew away with the ash, but it will keep sun off the burn on his shoulder. He goes very still.

“No,” he says.

“It’s practical.”

“No,” he repeats. His voice is calm, but you feel the refusal like a hook catching skin. “Some things don’t get replaced.”

“I know,” you say. “This isn’t a replacement. It’s shade.”

He looks at the fire until tears gloss his eyes and evaporate before they fall. He nods once, as if he is conceding to weather, not to you. You set the hat beside his bedroll and do not ask again.

Half an hour later, when you pretend to be busy with the kettle, you catch him trying it on. He adjusts the brim like muscle memory woke up before shame could stop it. It fits. He takes it off very gently and sets it down as if it might break.

“Thank you,” he says, so quiet you almost miss it.

“You’re welcome,” you say, like it costs you nothing.

—

The second night he dreams with his eyes open. You see it hit him before he says a word. The cave narrows. The air goes loud. His pulse climbs under your palm when you check his bandage and does not come down. You speak his name. He keeps staring at the dark like it will give him back an answer he can live with.

“Breathe with me,” you say. “In. Hold. Out.”

He shakes his head once. You take his hand. You put it on your ribs. You make your body a metronome.

“In. Hold. Out.”

He tries. The first three breaths skid. The fourth catches. On the fifth his shoulders drop. On the sixth he closes his eyes. On the seventh he lets your rhythm drive his.

When he opens his eyes again, he looks younger. He hates that, and he loves it, and the conflict wears him out more than the walk did.

“I wasn’t supposed to be here,” he says, voice splintered.

“I know.”

“I’m not asking why you pulled me out. I’m asking why I didn’t make it stick.”

You sit beside him and lean your shoulder to his. Not a rescue. A line. “Because something in you wasn’t finished wanting.”

“Wanting what?”

“To try again,” you say. “At something that isn’t an ending.”

He laughs once, ugly. “You really talk like a priest.”

“No. I talk like someone who knows what it is to be so tired you can’t see past it.” You let the truth sit between you without explanation. “You don’t have to prove you deserve soup. You don’t have to be grateful to be alive. You just have to keep breathing while your body remembers how.”

He is quiet for a long time. Crickets tune up. Stars multiply. He clears his throat.

“What are the rules then?” he asks finally.

“For what.”

“For this. For me not making another crater.”

You keep your answer plain. “No TNT. No redstone you can’t name without looking at it twice. No fire unless I am here. If you want to disappear, you tell me, and we make the world small safely. Ten paces. Tea. Sleep.”

“And if I push you away?”

“I will step back,” you say. “I won’t run. I won’t threaten to leave to make you chase me. I will be here when you say come back.”

He studies your face like he is checking for traps. “And if I tell you to go?”

“I’ll go when you are steady enough to stand while you tell me. Not a second sooner, not a second later.”

He breathes out. “I can live with that.”

“Good,” you say. “So can I.”

—

Days collect. He walks to the acacia and back. Then farther. You let him set pace and fail and try again. He learns to laugh before the fall, not after. You teach him how to make a poultice the slow way. He tries to teach you how to cheat at cards and forgets halfway through that the deck you carry is missing clubs. You both laugh for a long time over nothing. He stops flinching when you touch his wrist to count his pulse. He starts asking for water before you offer. He says your name sometimes just to see how it sounds in the quiet.

On the fifth evening he brings you a gift that used to be a button and is now a charm. A small square of copper, scorched and bent, a hole punched in the corner with a nail. He holds it out in his flattened palm like an apology.

“From the sign,” he says. “It fell into my hood when I pulled the lever. I guess that’s funny.”

“It’s something,” you say.

“Tie it to your pack,” he says, then falters. “If you want.”

You take the copper and thread it through the strap with a scrap of cord. It swings once and settles. You do not say anything ceremonial. He does not either. Both of you look at it longer than the object deserves.

“Good,” he says, under his breath. “Good.”

—

When the moon is a thin tooth, he wakes you before dawn with a hand on your shoulder. Not the panicked grip. A careful press.

“Take me to the ridge,” he says. “I need to see it from far away.”

You saddle the horse without speaking and let him mount with the staff braced. You walk beside her and keep your eyes on the ground until the last turn, where the canyon opens to the desert and Las Nevadas sits in the distance like a mirage that forgot how to move.

He looks a long time. Hat brim low. Mouth set. Hands steady on the horn.

“I built that,” he says. “I wrecked it. Both are true.”

“Both are true,” you echo.

He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a single seed. Dark. Small. He crouches with a hiss and uses the staff to dig a shallow hole by the ridge path. He presses the seed in and covers it with a palm of dust. No speech. No promise. He stands and nods at the little mound like he has done a thing he can allow.

“What is it?” you ask.

“Dunno,” he says. “Found it in my vest. Might be a melon. Might be nothing.” He stares at the spot. “If it grows, I guess that means I do too.”

“Then we’ll come back and check.”

He looks at you. Really looks. The canyon light puts honey on his lashes. Wind lifts the brim. He looks like someone choosing a path in a forest with only two steps visible.

“Take me with you,” he says. Not a question. Not a demand. A request with teeth.

“Okay,” you say.

“Not out of pity.”

“Never.”

“Not because you think I’m a project.”

“You’re a person,” you say. “You get a tent half and your own cup. You get to walk away when you want to, and you get to walk back when you want to. You get to be loud. You get to be quiet.”

He swallows. “And if I mess up?”

“You will,” you say. “I will too. We fix what we can. We leave what we should.��

He lets out a breath that sounds like it has been waiting behind his ribs for days. He reaches for your hand. You let him take it. His fingers are warm and a little rough, steady for once.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks, voice low.

“Yes,” you say.

He leans in like he is approaching a skittish animal. His mouth is careful and sure, ash and mint and something that tastes like new coin. He keeps it brief. He pulls back to check your eyes, then returns for a second that lingers. Your hand is in his hair without planning to be. He rests his forehead to yours. You both breathe.

“Okay,” he whispers. “Okay.”

You turn the horse toward the long road. He keeps your hand until the path narrows, then lets go with a last squeeze, as if the pressure itself is a promise. The copper charm taps your pack with a faint, steady clink while you walk.

Behind you, the ridge holds a seed. Ahead of you, the desert opens.

“Tomorrow,” he says, voice lighter, “teach me your soup.”

“Tomorrow,” you say, smiling. “Teach me your cards.”

“Deal.”

You look back once and see the hat brim over his eyes, the set of his shoulders, the staff under his palm. Not a monument. Not a ghost. A man in motion.

You face the road again. The wind tastes different. He nudges your shoulder with the edge of his hand.

“Stay close,” he says.

“I am,” you answer.

You are.

—

You learn each other on the road. That’s the only way to say it. Morning is soup and stretches. Midday is shade and cards. Night is firelight and the small noises people make when they aren’t trying to be brave.

He teaches you a shuffle he swears is legal. You catch three slips and raise an eyebrow. He grins, half proud and half sheepish, and tries again. You teach him your broth, the one that tastes like home even when you’re four countries from any roof you ever knew. He listens hard and pretends he isn’t. When you ask him to repeat the steps, he gets three right and invents two more on purpose so he can keep you near the pot.

By the second week, the limp’s barely a hitch. By the third, the burns are pink and tender and no longer angry. He still sleeps light, one hand finding your wrist in the dark like a compass. The first time he realizes he’s doing it, he jerks back and stares at the ceiling like it owes him an apology. You take his hand and put it where it was.

“Use me,” you say. “If it keeps you here, use me.”

He shuts his eyes and lets his palm settle over your pulse. “Okay.”

You skirt towns. News travels faster than horses where names like his are involved. You trade with shepherds and a caravan that knows you from last winter. He keeps his hat low and his voice low and relaxes when he realizes nobody’s pointing. People with their own problems rarely point.

You camp in a cove of sandstone where blue wildflowers have found a way to live. He sits on a flat rock and fiddles with a bit of redstone dust without building anything dangerous. A tiny lamp blinks in his palm like a heartbeat. He watches it with a face you reserve for sunsets and second chances.

“What is it?” you ask.

“A tick,” he says. “Just a blink. Something you can stare at without wanting to tear it apart.”

He sets the lamp beside your bedroll that night. It pulses slow in the dark. When he startles awake, he looks at it, then at you, then back at it. The pulse sets his breathing. Your breathing follows. Morning comes easier than it did.

He learns to ask. It turns into a habit with weight. Can I sit closer? Can I hold your hand while you clean this? Can I fall asleep with you right here? The first time he says can I kiss you and you say yes, he kisses you like he’s reading. Careful. Curious. Then he kisses you like he’s remembering he has a mouth and you do too.

“Stop me if I go too fast,” he says against the corner of your smile.

“You’ll know,” you say. “I’ll tell you.”

He nods and believes you. That belief feels as sacred as the kiss.

—

You find a river town that’s barely a town. Three houses on stilts. A tiny dock. A woman with flour on her arms who knows what it costs to keep quiet and charges a fair price for it. She rents you a shed that smells like cedar and rain. He looks at the roof, then at you, then at the door. You can see the part of him that wants to run and the part of him that wants to try. You step inside first and open both windows so the air moves.

He stands in the doorway and chews his lip. “Feels like a trick.”

“Only if we make it one,” you say. “We can sleep outside if you want.”

He shakes his head and tests the floor with his boot like the wood might lie. Then he steps in and sets the lamp on the crate that’ll be a table. The shed becomes a room by the simple fact that he puts something of his in it.

The woman gives you eggs and a smile that says nothing you need to decode. You cook. He assembles spoons from a jumble of tin and wire, and holds one up for your inspection like a child who carved a boat that’ll only float in a sink.

“It’s terrible,” you say fondly. “I love it.”

He grins and the light inside him swings closer to the surface.

You spend a week there. You help set a broken finger for a fisherman. He helps a kid fix a trap that keeps scaring off crabs. People look at him the way people look at any traveler who pays with work and keeps his voice soft. He keeps the brim down and thanks them twice when they thank him. The world doesn’t fall in. He starts to believe it might not fall in tomorrow either.

On the eighth day, fireworks crack in the distance. A festival upriver. You don’t get a warning, just the ripple of sound that turns your ribs to glass. He’s at the door. He’s already gone. His eyes go wide and then flat. You can see the blast replay over the bed, over the pot, over your shoulder, over his hands.

“Look at me,” you say.

He doesn’t hear you. His body is one thought. Out.

You step in front of the door and put both palms on his chest. Not force. Weight. You take up space and make the room smaller.

“Ten paces,” you say. “Small world. Right now.”

He blinks. Your voice finds him. He shakes his head like a dog in a storm. “I can’t breathe.”

“Yes, you can,” you say. “In. Hold. Out.”

He stumbles back one step. Then another. You move with him. You count out loud and keep your hands steady. In. Hold. Out. You give him something to push against that won’t break. His shoulders shake. He makes a sound that he probably hates. You don’t hate it. It means he’s here.

On the fourth breath his eyes find your face. On the fifth he grips your wrists. On the sixth he sits hard on the bed and drags you with him like gravity. He folds over and puts his forehead to your shoulder. You feel him fight the urge to vanish. You fight with him until the sound on the river fades to nothing.

When it’s quiet again, he’s quiet too. He’s got your shirt balled in his fist. You smooth a hand over his hair and feel the small tremor where he’s working too hard not to cry. There’s no audience but the two of you. You nod even though he can’t see you.

“I’m here,” you say. “You did it.”

He breathes like someone who just came up from under ice. After a long minute he says, into your collarbone, “I hate that you have to do that for me.”

“I don’t hate it,” you say. “I’m proud of you.”

He lets out a broken laugh that’s as close to a sob as he allows. “You’re impossible.”

“I hear that a lot.”

He lifts his head and looks at you like he’s making a decision that touches the rest of his life. His voice is small and steady.

“Stay,” he says.

“I’m staying,” you answer.

“No,” he says, shaking his head, finding courage with each word. “Stay when I get ugly. Stay when I’m tired of trying. Stay when I say leave and I don’t mean it. Stay when I need you and don’t know how to say it without sounding like a child. Stay if you want me. If you don’t, tell me now. I can survive the truth. I don’t want to survive a lie.”

You cup his jaw. He leans into your palm like the gesture rewires him.

“I want you,” you say. “I want all the real parts. Not a monument. Not a ghost. You.”

He swallows. “Then be with me.”

“I am,” you say. “I’ll be.”

He kisses you then like he believes you. It isn’t careful this time. It isn’t reckless either. It’s a promise you both write with your mouths. He gentles when you tug his shirt and slides one hand to your waist and rests there, asking without words. You nod and pull him closer. The bed creaks. Someone laughs on the dock outside and the sound passes by without sticking. The lamp blinks. Your body answers his, heat meeting heat, hunger making room for tenderness.

“Stop me if I go too fast,” he murmurs again, even now.

“Move with me,” you say. “We’ll go where we both say yes.”

You do. You keep it soft and slow. You keep it honest. When he shakes, you kiss the place in his throat where his pulse lives and feel it even out under your mouth. When you shake, he holds your face like a precious thing and says your name like a key. There’s no need to prove anything. There’s only the fact of two people still here, choosing.

After, he lies on his back with his arm over his eyes and the smallest smile pulling at his mouth like he’s embarrassed to have it. You roll to your side and trace the edge of the bandage that used to be a wound and is now just skin relearning itself. He doesn’t flinch.

He lowers his arm and looks at you like the ceiling finally agreed to stop falling.

“Tell me something true,” he says.

You think for a second, then give him a piece you haven’t named out loud in years. “When I was younger, I wanted to fix everything so I could feel safe. I kept trying until I broke. Then someone sat with me and didn’t try to fix me either. They just made tea and told me to breathe. I got better. Not perfect. Better. I made it my job to repeat the favor.”

He’s quiet. Then he reaches for your hand and presses the copper charm into your palm. It’s warm from his skin.

“Then take this,” he says. “Tie it to your belt. If you ever forget the favor, you look at it and remember that you taught me how to breathe in a room with fireworks.”

You tie the charm on with a scrap of twine. It taps your thigh when you move. He watches it like a prayer answered by something that isn’t a god.

“Deal,” you say.

“Deal,” he echoes, and kisses you once more, quick, like punctuation.

—

You leave the river town when the flour woman needs her shed back for wheat storage. You pay her in copper wire and trade for a sack of dried figs. She hugs you both without asking and says come back if the road spits you out this way. He ducks his head and thanks her like he hasn’t spoken to many people who wanted nothing from him.

You take the ridge path on purpose. The seed sits in the dust where he pressed it weeks ago. It’s got the nerve to be green. Two leaves. Brave and ridiculous and alive.

Quackity crouches and touches the soil with the same care he used on your bandages. He doesn’t speak for a long time. He looks at the tiny plant the way you’ve seen him look at the lamp. Like looking is a choice that changes the thing being seen.

“It’s real,” he says finally, in a voice that belongs to this exact morning.

“It is,” you say.

He straightens, and when he looks at you there’s something steady in his eyes you didn’t see the day you dragged him from the rubble. Not joy, not yet. Not certainty. Something like willingness. He steps in, places both hands on your face, and kisses you like he’s decided to keep learning you for a long time.

“Let’s go,” he says. “Before I get sentimental and start naming the plant after you.”

“You could pick a better name,” you tease.

“Impossible,” he says, and actually rolls his eyes at himself. “I meant a less obvious one.”

You laugh, and the sound carries down the ridge and into the desert that tried to keep both of you. It doesn’t keep you. You keep each other.

The copper charm taps. The lamp blinks in your pack. The road opens.

You walk side by side, and when noon comes he says the line you’ve both been waiting to say again.

“Tomorrow,” he says, light in his voice, “I make the soup.”

“Tomorrow,” you say, “I deal the cards.”

“Deal.”

—

You reach a city that smells like grilled corn, old rain, and hot stone. Not Las Nevadas. This place is crowded and ordinary in the way that saves people. Nobody knows your names. Nobody looks up unless they have to.

Quackity walks close without making a show of it. His hat sits low. His hand finds your elbow whenever the crowd swells, then lets go once the street widens. You rent a small room over a bakery. The window sticks. The mattress squeaks. The ceiling slants in a way that would bother him on a worse day. He runs a palm over the sill and tests the latch. He nods once, like the room passed a test it did not know it was taking.

He sets the little redstone lamp on the bedside crate. It blinks slow, a heartbeat he can see. You watch his shoulders drop one notch as the pulse finds him.

“Work?” you ask, later, with your boots off and the street singing up through the floorboards.

“Work,” he says, and you both go looking.

The clinic sits three streets down, a whitewashed square that takes in anyone who walks through the front door. Light flickers in the hallway every time someone in the back room runs a saw. The nurse at the desk has a tired smile and a list longer than the counter.

“You need reliable lighting,” Quackity says, voice steady and low. “No heat spikes. Manual overrides in each room. Fail-safe that cuts current if anything surges.”

The nurse blinks. “Can you build that without setting us on fire?”

“I can,” he says, then glances at you. “With a partner.”

You take the list. “We’re affordable and annoying. That second part is free.”

The nurse laughs, startled and grateful. She clears a storage closet and calls it an office. You bring in crates and a coil of insulated wire. He sketches a map of the building on kraft paper and takes measurements twice. He says out loud what he’s doing, like you’re both teaching a future version of him to stay calm.

“No TNT,” he says, marking a large X in the corner where the fuse box hums. “Low tick. Isolate the redstone from the mains. Ground each room separate from the hallway. If a breaker trips, it stays in the room. If everything trips, lights still default to low.”

You anchor cable while he builds repeaters with a latency that looks like magic until he explains it three ways. A kid in a school uniform watches from the doorway with round eyes and a pocket full of screws. Quackity hands over a spare switch and shows him how to test for a clean signal with a tiny buzzer.

“Listen for the smooth tone,” he says. “If it wobbles, you check your connections. No shame in wobble. You just tighten and try again.”

The kid nods like he’s been handed a spell. He runs the hallway, hitting switches and cheering every time the lights click clean.

By the end of day two, the clinic breathes. The hall lamps glow steady. The exam rooms hold. The nurse flips a switch and does not flinch. She presses money into your palm that you try to refuse. Quackity takes it and folds a smaller sum back onto the counter.

“For supplies,” he says. “And more bandages.”

She wipes her eyes with her sleeve. “You two eat at my cousin’s place tonight. I’ll send you with a note, and he’ll argue if he wants, but he’ll feed you anyway.”

“You’re very kind,” you say.

“Have to be,” she says. “Cruelty costs more.”

You walk back to the room with takeout boxes that smell like garlic and lime. Quackity balances them and the clinic’s thank you letter on the same arm. The redstone lamp blinks on the bedside crate. For a few hours, that’s the whole world.

The letter from Las Nevadas finds you the next morning.

A courier knocks at the bakery door and asks for you by name. You take the envelope in the alley between bread racks and crates of oranges. The seal is a dull copper coin stamped with an outline you know too well. Quackity sees it, goes very still, then follows you upstairs without a word.

You sit together on the floor across from the window. He watches your hands. You crack the seal and unfold the paper.

It is not a summons. It is not hate mail. It is worse in a quiet way. Someone who used to work the floor writes that people are rebuilding along the strip. There will be a memorial. There are belongings that survived, boxed and tagged. If he wants them, he should come or send a list. If he does neither, they will be donated or melted down for parts. There is a postscript from someone else, a single line that says: You don’t owe us a show. You’re alive. That’s enough.

He stares at the words like they grew teeth. His mouth works. He shakes his head once, sharp, then softer.

“I hate that it’s gentle,” he says. “It would be easier if it was cruel.”

You fold the letter and set it on the floor between you both. “We don’t have to decide today.”

He nods, then winces like the motion hurts. “If I go, it’ll feel like I’m forgiving the blast. If I don’t go, it’ll feel like I’m running.”

“What if it’s neither,” you ask. “What if it’s inventory. One box, not a verdict.”

He sits with that. He fiddles with the copper charm on your belt, the one he gave you on the river. He keeps his eyes on your hands like they’ve got better answers than you do.

“Rules,” he says, voice low. “Say them.”

“No TNT,” you start. “No redstone you can’t name. No fire without me. If the world needs to be small, we make it small. Ten paces. Tea. Sleep. We don’t go alone.”

He breathes out. “We don’t go alone.”

“Also,” you add, “we don’t have to go now. We can write back. Ask for a list. Ask for time. If we go, we go when your feet feel steady.”

He nods again and this time it doesn’t look like pain. “Okay.”

He writes the reply with his hat on the table and the lamp pulsing in the corner of your eye. The words are short and plain. He asks for the list. He thanks them without explaining what the thank you means. He signs his name with a hand that shakes once, then stops.

You take the envelope to the bakery because the courier said he’d pass by again at noon. The baker tucks it under the register like she protects secrets for sport.

“Your friend’s got brave eyes,” she says while she wraps bread. “Not loud brave. The kind that looks at a door and still opens it.”

“He does,” you say.

When you come back upstairs, he’s sitting on the floor with his back to the bed and the letter from Las Nevadas face down beside him. The lamp blinks. The whole room feels like a held breath. You sit with him and lean shoulder to shoulder until the breath lets go.

“Tell me a story,” he says.

“Funny or true?”

“Both.”

You tell him about a mountain pass where goats learned to steal food from the steepest pockets and how you had to bargain with a bell to get your bag back. He laughs in the right place, then in the wrong place, which is better. He tips his head onto your shoulder and stays there until the clock downstairs chimes noon twice in a row because the baker keeps forgetting to wind it at the right time.

The clinic needs a second pass on the labor room that afternoon. He draws a cleaner path and shows the kid with the screws how to build a test rig from scrap. He lets the kid flip the final switch and gives him the credit with a small, proud nod. When the lights hold steady through three saw runs and one slammed door, the nurse hugs Quackity on impulse. He freezes, then pats her shoulder once, careful and sincere.

“Thank you,” she says. “You made it quiet.”

He blinks. “I did what?”

“Quiet,” she repeats, smiling. “The bad kind of buzzing. It’s gone.”

He stands in the hallway for a second after she walks away, like he’s tasting the word. Quiet. He looks at you. The corner of his mouth lifts.

“Maybe that’s the job,” he says. “Make things quiet where it hurts.”

“That’s already how you are,” you say.

He snorts softly and bumps your hip with the back of his hand. “You’re biased.”

“Correct.”

That night, you both sleep like people who worked a full day and earned it. The lamp blinks. His hand finds your wrist and stays there without apology. You wake to rain on the window and the smell of cinnamon from the bakery downstairs.

The list arrives two mornings later. Three boxes. One ledger. A tin of chips that did not melt. A cloak hook in the shape of a star, oddly intact. A photo frame with the glass broken and the picture burned at the edges. A drawer of spare ties. A fuse key you pray no one will ever need. A small notebook with a weather stain across the back. One hatband, scorched but salvageable.

He reads it twice. He circles two items and sets the page down with his fingers steady.

“I want the ledger,” he says. “And the notebook.”

“Not the hatband?” you ask.

He shakes his head, eyes on the lamp. “I’ve got a hat.”

“Then we ask them to ship those two,” you say. “If they won’t, we go for one day, with rules and a plan.”

He nods. “One day.”

“And we stop at the ridge,” you add. “Check the seed.”

“You think it’s still there?”

“I do.”

You write the second letter together. The nurse at the clinic finds a courier you can trust. You pack light without making a ceremony of it. You practice the ten paces again, silly and serious in the room with the squeaky mattress and the stuck window. He times his breathing to your count and grins when you over-count on purpose to make him roll his eyes.

“You’re impossible,” he says.

“Consistent,” you answer.

Before dawn, you saddle the horse and leave the city while it yawns itself awake. The road back to the ridge tastes like old fear and new wind. You walk side by side. Sometimes your hands touch. Sometimes they do not. The silence between you is full of motion.

The ridge is greener than you remember. The seed became a vine that figured out how to climb a cracked post. It has three heart-shaped leaves and a stubborn curl reaching for more. Quackity crouches and rests his fingers near the stem without touching. He breathes once, twice, three times, like he’s syncing to something that is not a lamp this time.

“It’s still here,” he says.

“It is.”

He cups one hand and you pour a little water from your canteen. He lets it soak in and watches the dirt swallow the shine. The corner of his mouth lifts.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s keep going.”

Las Nevadas is smaller when you crest the last hill. What used to scream now mutters. Metal frames cut the sky where neon once shouted. The memorial sits on a square of glass where the fountain used to throw coins back at the sun. The people around it talk in low voices and leave flowers that look out of place in the dust.

He stops at the edge of the square. He does not step on the glass. You stand with him and let the air move through you both. Someone recognizes him and does not point, does not call out, does not demand. They nod once. He nods back.

A volunteer with dust on his sleeves hands over a paper-wrapped ledger and a tied notebook. Quackity thanks him like he is returning a borrowed coat. He does not open either. He tucks them under his arm and looks toward the ridge you left an hour ago.

“One day,” he says quietly.

“One day,” you agree.

You sit together on a broken step where the stairs used to rise to the main floor. He unwraps the ledger and runs a thumb along the inside cover. It is smoke-stained but legible. He turns the first page. Names. Numbers. Little notes. His handwriting argues with itself and still wins.

He closes it and sets it in your bag. He does not touch the notebook. He holds it like a future he is not ready to read.

“Tea,” you suggest.

“Tea,” he echoes.

You boil water on a camp stove under a sun-bleached awning that used to host tourists. You pour two cups. You do not bless anything. You do not say a speech. You both drink and let the quiet be the loudest sound.

When you stand to leave, he looks back once and then not again. He falls into step with you at the exact pace your feet want. He exhale-laughs.

“What?” you ask.

“I was waiting for a sign,” he says. “Trumpets, lightning, something stupid. Turns out signs can be a plant on a post and a clinic that stays lit.”

“Boring miracles,” you say.

“The best kind.”

You head toward the ridge, then the road, then the city that smells like bread and fresh wire. The copper charm taps your belt. The lamp sleeps in your pack until it is needed again.

“Tomorrow,” he says, voice easy, “I’ll teach the kid at the clinic how to run the maintenance checks.”

“Tomorrow,” you say, “I’ll fix the window so it stops sticking.”

“Deal.”

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