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anonymous-dentist · 2 years

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Part three of the semi-annual series of oneshots set in @casinoarc's mall au! I heavily recommend reading the previous parts first. (1, 2)

Five months. Five fucking months, and rumor has it that Sapnap and Karl fucking Jacobs were spotted making out in the photo booth beneath the escalators across from the FYE.

Quackity, for whatever reason, feels the sudden urge to slam his face into his keyboard until it breaks.

“Yeah, and it was weird, right, ‘cause they were making some weird noises, too,” Tommy continues, because of course Tommy was the one to spot them. Of course it was Tommy, the mall’s number one nuisance, and Quackity’s favorite prospective employee. When he's older and legally allowed to work, then maybe Quackity will hire him.

Quackity is doing payroll. Or. Well. He’s supposed to be doing payroll. But then Tommy barged into his office and sat down in the chair on the other side of Quackity’s desk (it’s a lawn chair, green and plastic and stolen from a Lowe’s he worked at three years ago) slurping on a large cup of Mountain Dew from the Burger King Tubbo is working at today.

But Quackity is doing payroll, and his Google spreadsheet hasn’t been touched in fifteen minutes, and he’s going through just a bit of a crisis.

“Noises?” he asks, voice cracking just slightly. Just a little. “You mean like…?”

Tommy nods, sage and more serious than he’s been in his entire life. “Yes, Big Q. They were having se-”

Quackity lunges across his desk and claps a hand over Tommy’s mouth, knocking over his pencil cup and a desk calendar that’s been stuck on Schlatt’s birthday for one and a half years. Tommy’s eyes widen, but they quickly crinkle up in a smile.

“Don’t,” Quackity lowly says. “I do not want to hear the end of that sentence, do you hear me?”

“What sentence?” Tommy innocently asks. He bats his eyelashes like an idiot. “Me saying that they were having se-”

“Tommy!”

“SEX!”

Quackity groans and collapses back into his own chair (it’s also a lawn chair, blue and plastic and stolen from the Lowe’s he met Schlatt at three years ago.)

“I didn’t want to hear that,” Quackity groans, putting his head in his hands, and then promptly slamming his face into the desk. He is acting so mature about this. “Tommy, what the hell, man?”

“What? I thought you’d be happier about this.”

“Why,” Quackity stresses, voice so muffled by his desk that it’s barely audible, “in the world would I be happy about this?”

“Because you ‘n Sapnap are friends, aren’t you?”

Friends. Hah. That’s fucking hilarious.

Friends wouldn’t ghost you for five fucking months because they got hired at the fucking Disney Store and they became best fucking friends with their manager who they also apparently seduced enough for them both to have sex in a fucking photo booth. God. Quackity is going to throw up.

Quackity sniffs, unwilling to acknowledge literally any of the thoughts swirling around in his head at the moment. Most of them are sad. Sappy, even, just like Sapnap, because Sapnap is Sappy, that’s what his name can be shortened to, god-damnit. A couple thoughts are angry. Jealous. One inexplicably has flashes of Post Malone in the background as he imagines Sapnap and Karl on a sickeningly-sweet ice cream date to the Coldstone across the street.

“Uuuuh, you good there, man?” Tommy hesitantly asks. Quackity feels a hand on his back as Tommy pats it awkwardly. “You’re kind of vibrating.”

“I am not,” says Quackity, practically vibrating in place out of… anger? Anger.

“Uh, yeah, right, sure, look, I’m just saying- alright, so maybe they weren’t? You know…?”

“Tommy?”

“Yes, Big Q?”

“Tell Wilbur to unblock me.”

So Quackity hates Wilbur Soot. He also considers Wilbur to be one of his better friends, especially now that Sapnap is basically completely out of the picture.

Wilbur works at the Hot Topic directly across from the Spencer’s. He’s manager, actually, and he and Quackity both spend half their monthly budgets on improving their storefront displays to steal customers from each other. They block and unblock each other on social media once a week or so (it always depends on the social media in question; Instagram takes two days max to complete the cycle, meanwhile Wilbur has been blocked on Twitter since he and Quackity first met.) Half the time they spend shifts glaring at each other and flipping each other off when their customers aren’t looking.

Wilbur clambers into Quackity’s 2008 Toyota Prius and bangs his head on the ceiling just as he always does, and Quackity has to hold back a snicker as Wilbur then proceeds to bang his knees against the dashboard. This car is not made for tall people, especially not lanky motherfuckers built like telephone poles.

Rubbing his head with one hand, Wilbur grumbles his way into pulling his seatbelt on and even manages to fold his legs into a tangle that doesn’t look that uncomfortable.

“Get a better car,” Wilbur huffs. “Fucker. I know you can afford it.”

“Can I?” Quackity lightly asks. He flicks the air conditioning on, smirking as it hits Wilbur at full force, already preset and pre-prepared to blast Wilbur like an Arctic wind. “Hey, what do you think, conch or snakebites?”

“Snakebites, are you kidding me? Also, hello? Tommy said you were crying earlier?”

“Tommy’s hobby is making fun of people behind their backs,” Quackity grumbles, both hands firmly on the wheel, definitely not looking like he wants to cry. Again.

He carefully backs out of his parking space, mindful not to make sure that Batshit “Bad Boy” Halo isn’t on the road doing donuts in his Bugatti, and then he tears his way out of the mall parking lot and onto the highway.

Wilbur instinctively grabs onto the ‘oh, shit’ bar above the window, says, “That’s our hobby, excuse you.”

“True!”

“But,” Wilbur continues, because he sucks and Quackity hates him, “you never ask me to get piercings with you if you aren’t going through some kind of emotional trauma.”

“It isn’t trauma,” Quackity protests. He merges left between two semis, always living life on the edge. “I just wanted to hang out with you, God, not everything is trauma, Wilbur. We all can’t be you, you know.”

He remembers when he and Wilbur had one of their more infamous showdowns over by the PetCo. Poor Ranboo ended up with a broken arm. Wilbur considers it equivalent to murder and lets Ranboo and Tubbo both steal pins from the counter to this day.

“Fuck you, Quackity,” Wilbur sniffs. “My psyche is delicate.”

“Ooooh, it’s delicate.”

“Mock me again and I’ll jump out of this car literally right now.”

“Fucking do it then, I don’t care.”

They both know Quackity has the child safety locks on, though not for Wilbur. (Before Quackity was allowed to drive again, this car was Sam’s, and he drove Quackity to work, and Quackity hasn’t bothered changing the locks in the year or so he’s had the car.)

Wilbur mindlessly slings an arm across the gap between the seats. It settles on Quackity’s shoulders, loose enough for Quackity to easily be able to shrug it off if he wanted to. (Because Wilbur knew Schlatt before Quackity did, and he’s not that much of an asshole.)

“So there’s no trauma,” Wilbur says. “Alright. You’re just getting snakebites done after years of saying you’d never get snakebites done coincidentally the afternoon after Tommy went around saying that Sapnap and the Disney guy made out in the photo booth.”

Quackity prides himself in not steering into traffic.

“There is no direct correlation between these two events,” he calmly says.

“Oh, sure, sure.” Wilbur nods, clearly sarcastic. “They didn’t have sex, though. Tommy was making that up.”

“And how would you know?”

“Who do you think was with him? Phil’s birthday’s coming up and I wanted to get him a picture of me ‘n Tommy hanging out when we aren’t causing grievous bodily harm to someone.”

Aw, that’s sweet.

“So, wait, you let Tommy come to me to tell me they had sex when they didn’t? What the fuck, Wilbur?”

“I needed you to follow me back on Instagram!” Wilbur exclaims. “It is imperative that you see my latest post, Quackity. It is vitally important.”

Quackity sighs, “What is it?”

“Aww, c’mon, I’m not just going to tell you! Look for yourself!”

With another sigh, Quackity plucks his phone out of the cupholder and tosses it into Wilbur’s lap. Wilbur, of course, knows the password (it’s Tubbo’s birthday) and unlocks it easily, scrolling to Instagram and presumably opening his profile. Eventually, he turns the phone so Quackity can see the screen.

Quackity glances over. It’s a picture of Technoblade passed out asleep on a pink donut pool floatie with one hell of a sunburn coming on.

“Know what?” Quackity says. “Worth it. Like that for me.”

And Wilbur does.

Quackity walks into the piercing shop with Wilbur draped across his back like an annoying, British cape, stumbling under his weight. Asshole.

“Get. Off,” he grunts, wiggling his shoulders fruitlessly.

“I can’t walk!” Wilbur whines. “Your driving is terrifying, man! We could’ve died!”

Quackity rolls his eyes. “But we didn’t. It was just three red lights, jeez, calm down.”

“Three red lights! That’s fucking criminal!”

“You’re fucking criminal.” Quackity manages to shrug Wilbur off and smiles politely at the confused and mildly-terrified employee at the desk. “Hey, hi, yeah, I’ve got an appointment for eight?”

The employee nods and looks him up in the computer after getting his last name. Once that’s settled, Wilbur confirms his appointment for 8:30, and they both take a seat in the waiting area. It’s only 7:30, but it always takes twenty-odd minutes for Quackity to calm himself down for an appointment. He likes having piercings, but they take a bit of work to work himself up to.

Wilbur pulls out a collection of Eliot poems from his coat pocket (literally how did that fit in there?) and starts reading, foot tapping on the floor to the beat of the music playing on the overhead. Fallout Boy, unfortunately, and not the good shit, either. He probably breathes the lyrics, the motherfucker.

Quackity, much cooler than Wilbur could ever be, swaps his sunglasses out for his reading glasses and does a crossword on his phone.

Somewhere around fifteen minutes later, the door to the shop rings open. Quackity doesn’t bother looking up, genuinely not giving a shit, but Wilbur apparently does because he chokes on his breath and elbows Quackity in the arm. Without thinking, Quackity elbows him back twice as hard. Wilbur elbows him again.

Quackity is about to elbow him back when he hears an unfortunately-familiar voice say, “Uuuh, Jacobs? Karl? I have an appointment for, uh, 8:15?”

Quackity looks up from his phone to see Karl fucking Jacobs leaned against the counter in a sweater that fits him very fucking well, unfortunately.

It takes Quackity half a second to realize that Karl is wearing Sapnap’s sweater. That is Sapnap’s sweater. It’s a weed sweater. Sapnap bought it at Spencer’s for his birthday and Quackity let him use an employee discount even though he didn’t even work there.

It takes Karl half a second after that to glance over, make eye contact, and burst into a wide grin that makes Quackity contemplate murder.

He snaps his gaze back down to his phone. 9 across, a four letter word for something that lives in the soul. What the fuck?

It has to be fate that the only seat left in the waiting area is right next to Quackity. It has to be fate. Cruel, cruel fate.

Karl sits down, because of course he does, and he immediately strikes up conversation, because of course he does.

“Hey, you’re Quackity, right?” he asks, and he sounds so earnest about it that Quackity wants to punch him.

“Yep,” Quackity politely- so politely- replies.

‘Worm’ doesn’t work with 4 down and 12 down. Fuck. He backspaces and decides to come back to that one.

“Cool! I’m Karl!”

He extends a hand that Quackity pointedly ignores.

“Cool,” Quackity says, hoping that’s the end of the conversation.

It isn’t.

“You’re Sapnap’s friend, right?”

“Uh, no.”

“That’s weird. He doesn’t ever really stop talking about you.”

Quackity curses his fragile romantic heart for skipping a beat over that. He also curses Wilbur for snickering quietly to himself, for Wilbur is all too aware of Quackity’s… problem with Sapnap by now.

Blushing a little, but only a little, Quackity types in a quick ‘panda’ into 5 down (bear-like animal native to China) and says, “Uh, that’s weird.”

“I dunno. I can kinda see why he does.”

Now. Now what does that mean?

Wilbur laughs again, louder. Quackity stomps his heel onto his foot to try and get him to shut up.

“I mean, we used to talk,” Quackity coolly says, desperately pretending that he isn’t vibrating at the thought of Sapnap talking about him. “But he doesn’t really come around anymore. Not since you hired him.”

“Oh, really? That sucks,” Karl says, and he sounds so genuine. He sounds actually upset about it like it isn’t his fault that Sapnap left in the first place.

“Yeah. It does.”

“Do you not, like, have his number or anything?”

No, because that was one of the many lines that Quackity refused to let himself cross. If he got Sapnap’s number, then that meant that he liked Sapnap enough to get his number. Same goes for a Snapchat, an Instagram, a Twitter. Fuck, Quackity was even a little flustered looking at Sapnap’s LinkedIn back when he was going to hire him.

“No,” he stiffly answers.

“Oh! Here, I can give it to you!”

And before Quackity can really even protest, Karl has his phone in his hand and is tugging Quackity to the side to yoink the phone out of his hands and go to his contacts.

Quackity looks to Wilbur helplessly. Wilbur just looks amused, the fucker. He’s probably having a great time. For all Quackity knows, Wilbur recommended that Karl fucking Jacobs come get what’s probably going to be his first piercing at this particular store at this particular time immediately after Quackity messaged him telling him that this was happneing in the first place. Why are they friends, again?

Karl hands Quackity’s phone back over with a fresh smile. His nails are painted, Quackity idly notices. They kinda look like the little aliens from Toy Story. Ugly colors, but he’s somehow making them work.

“There,” he says. “I put Sap’s in, and, uh… mine.”

He’s blushing, just a little, and isn’t that bizarre? Maybe he’s just a bit flustered after seeing Quackity’s home screen (shirtless Joe Biden; he lost a dare.)

“Uh,” Quackity intelligently says. His phone is still on, and he can see Karl!!! pulled up in his contacts list. With a kissy emoji next to his name. Quackity should… fix that. “Cool?”

He awkwardly switches back to his crossword. The only one left open is 9 across. There’s an ‘L’ and an ‘E’, but what…?

It hits him just as Karl comments, “Oh, yeah, I got a look at your crossword. It’s ‘love’, by the way.”

Just then, Quackity hears his name called and stands up in a rush, unwilling to acknowledge literally anything about the past fifteen or so minutes.

“It’s ‘love’, by the way.”

No way. No fucking way.

#karlnapity #c!karlnapity #mall au #a.d.'s fics i suppose.#a.d.'s fics i suppose #i pride these fics on not being the Best but still being a good time anyway #this is me writing a romcom

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