"Feels great. It'll go away if I respawn, or I can ask Phil for gaps or potions." The smile's genuine, for what it's worth. He giggles a little, even.

Yeah that really doesn't make Q feel better about leaving him alone. "...okay. Come back to the van with me?" 

"Aw, Q. You sound like Tommy. Are you lonely or are you scared of what the big bad Wilbur will do if you leave him alone for a minute? Sure, I'll come back with you. Mind if I place a sign first?"

"If you absolutely have to fucking know, I went through a death arena and now I have a thing about untreated wounds." If he's hyperventilating a little bit, no he fucking is not. "You can place a sign if you want." 

"Apologies. I'm not the best person to be around if you care a lot about untreated wounds. Go hang out with Philza or someone." He's just going to hope his shoe isn't bleeding yet. He steps past Q, considers the signs, takes down the one reading GO BEHIND THIS PLACE THEN ACROSS THE RIVER FOR BETTER BURG, walks back to the crater, and puts it down.

This time it reads:
Wilbur + Ranboo + Q did this together

He considers it for a moment, opens the chest again, and adds two diamonds to it before nodding and laughing to himself, satisfied.

"Let's head back now."

Okay. Okay, this is fine, this is totally fine, he's totally fine with this. He can-- he can come back later and take the sign down--

(He knows already that he's not going to come back later and take the sign down. It's fine. ...it is what it is.) 

He takes Wilbur's hand, and heads back across the river with him. 

Wilbur leans a bit on Q. The water feels good--he laughs when he enters it, spins around, splashes. He's so alive, he feels everything so much, the cold of the water and the heat of the sun and the glass in his shoe and the burns on his arm and Q's hand in his. He twirls Q, just for the sake of it, dips him and pulls him back up.

The van is more built than last they saw it. It's got red and white! Progress! Ranboo waves to them, and Wilbur grins and waves back.

Being spun around and dipped is fun, if he ignores all the context. The water's nice; Wilbur has a nice laugh. This skirt does the twirly thing when Wilbur spins him. He knows exactly why his brain is doing this but that doesn't actually make it not work! 

He waves, cheerily, at Ranboo. He's totally fine. 

Ranboo's making the roof out of stone bricks. The van doesn't look very good but it is mostly complete.

"Hi, Q, hi, Wilbur! I'm just about done with the, uh, the van."

"Nice!" 

Obviously they're not gonna talk about it. Wilbur's right here. But also, holy fucking shit. 

Yeah, it wasn't... great. "I might... go home? Once I finish the van? I'll, uh, try to be around here more often, but like, for today, you know?"

"Sure. You've done a lot today, Ranboo. Go home."

Good for Ranboo. Q doesn't say that, just nods goodbye in his general direction. 

Then, to Wilbur: "Are you planning on going back to Phil's or back with me?" 

"...Well. That depends. I mean-- if you're inviting me. I could be persuaded." Extremely dumb eyebrow waggle that is probably trying to look sexy.

It's cute, says some part of Q's brain, the same part that thinks being spun and dipped is fun, the same part that looked at Karl and decided to find him charming. It's not even wrong, is the thing; he can see what it's doing but it's not wrong. 

"I'm inviting you." He steps closer to exaggerate the height difference, looks up at Wilbur not quite through his eyelashes but closer to it than usual. "I have all this space in my bed, see, and it'd just be a waste to spend the night alone--" 

"Well. In that case. I suppose I must join you." He takes Q's hand, bends down to kiss it. "Lead the way, handsome."

Quackity pulls Wilbur's hand up to his mouth, kisses his knuckles back. He leads the way. 

(Kinoko's quiet; Q can be quite loud. If Wilbur wants to dom him, now's his best chance.) 

Wilbur is definitely interested in that. It's--satisfying, the double vision, Q-who-is-his-loyal-follower, proving that loyalty, wearing the face of Quackity-who-is-his-greatest-rival, kneeling for him, attentive only to him. The skin on his arm is still tender enough to draw ragged breaths from him and Q's lips are soft and taste of skin and Q is almost loud enough to drown out the voices (--he's putting on a show, let them see--) and Wilbur is alive, alive, alive.

Q's alive and okay and in bed with a gorgeous boy who-- who he likes a lot-- and he's okay, and he's okay, and they're okay. 

He also, separately, has fun. He wouldn't have offered if he didn't expect to have fun. He's been noticing on purpose that Wilbur is attractive as hell and Q likes him a lot but Wilbur is, also, genuinely, attractive as hell and Q likes him a lot. He falls asleep with his head on Wilbur's shoulder and his arm across Wilbur's waist, and—

It's a bad night. He knew it was gonna be a bad night the minute the TNT came out but it's a bad fucking night. He doesn't cling or scream in his sleep anymore, he's not sixteen, but it is not exactly subtle from the outside that even by Q's standards it's a really bad night. 

Wilbur mostly gives him space except for occasionally when he instead holds Q's hand or brushes sweaty hair from his forehead. Wilbur is familiar with bad nights, both his own and others'; when Wilbur has a bad night he looks for people to hold tight to, to remind him that he's alive and they're alive, but in Pogtopia, Quackity had wanted space, so he gives Q space here.

In the morning, after Q's woken up, he pets Q's hair and says, "Looks like you and Quackity have one thing in common."

When he's still waking up he curls into Wilbur, lonely and desperate and not quite remembering that this isn't his Wilbur and too sleep-drunk to remember that that's pathetic. 

Then Wilbur actually speaks, and abruptly Q remembers where he is and who he's with and who he isn't with. 

...which isn't enough to get him to lean away from Wilbur or the hand on his hair. "How so?" 

"--The nightmares. I mean--it's been a while, maybe he doesn't anymore, but last time I spent a night in his bed, it was pretty similar, is all."

Oh. 

...he doesn't think he wants to think about this. He doesn't think he's going to be able to stop. 

"Tracks, I guess," he says into Wilbur's shoulder. "...you remind me of my Wil, sometimes. Not, like, all the time, but—" 

"...Oh?" He is trying very hard to seem casual in his interest and kind of failing.

"You— it's not just that you have the same face, you do a bunch of the same things with your face? Or, like, sometimes you'll say a sentence and I'll go oh, that's him, that's a Wilbur sentence, and I'll miss him all over again— the way you're playing with my hair right now, that's the same, and he doesn't really sleep much either and waking up with you is exactly the same, until you said something I'd kind of forgotten where I was— and, like, I know you're different people, I'm not, I'm not expecting that you're gonna be a carbon copy of my best friend, or whatever— but. You know."