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Language:
English
Series:
Part 14 of racehorse: get married!
Stats:
Published:
2022-04-13
Words:
382
Chapters:
1/1
Comments:
16
Kudos:
57
Bookmarks:
7
Hits:
673

and semaphores

Summary:

“Do you have a cigarette?” Wilbur starts.

“I don't smoke,” says Quackity, like the rails they grip are fragile, and will break. He shouldn’t let Wilbur sit on them like this when he knows he’s scared of falling.

“Yes, you do.”

“I quit."

Wilbur smiles, looks at him. A beat, and he turns away. Another beat, and he lights a cigarette up against the lip of the horizon. 

“I thought you were out of cigarettes.”

“Found some in my pocket,” Wilbur explains. He pulls a breath. The wind fights against him, clothes half damp from the snow Quackity could not pay attention to. His posture hangs heavy, like the cloud of smoke is barring through his bangs. “Would you like one?”

Quackity has sworn at the sun, “I’ll die with my country,”
:an admittance and a prayer, in more ways than one.

Notes:

alt titles: anthropocene, all this debris

cw: it's TNT duo so they're both sitting on the ledge of a death drop smoking

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Wilbur is sitting next to him, absorbed, still-life.

By now, he's part of the pavilion. Part of the bushes. Part of the wedding venue, the apse.

Quackity might as well be talking to his own hand, his hand talking back.

“Do you have a cigarette?” Wilbur starts.

“I don't smoke,” says Quackity, like the rails they grip are fragile, and will break. He shouldn’t let Wilbur sit on them like this when he knows he’s scared of falling.

“Yes, you do.”

“I quit."

Wilbur smiles, looks at him. A beat, and he turns away. Another beat, and he lights a cigarette up against the lip of the horizon. 

“I thought you were out of cigarettes.”

“Found some in my pocket,” Wilbur explains. He pulls a breath. The wind fights against him, clothes half damp from the snow Quackity could not pay attention to. His posture hangs heavy, like the cloud of smoke is barring through his bangs. “Would you like one?”

Quackity scratches his knee buggishly, the world peeking through his fingers as he sucks a slow breath in.

He's picked up a couple of constellations, between Karl and Sapnap. He stares down his country and maps out the lights that make up Cepheus as his legs dangle.

It’s almost sweet, as the smoke swirls through the stars and desaturates them — they really look like stars if he squints his eyes. Kaleidoscopic, blurry, far away stars from below, and Quackity was one of them. He was certain he could fly.

“I told you, I quit,” Quackity says.

The cityscape tells the history of him in stars, from neon led to retro-reflective street signs, and Quackity is most of it. He is his city, his country — and his dust.

He searches for Orion and keeps forgetting the shape of his torso, forgetting the three stars of the hunter's belt, but, mostly, Quackity is forgetting he’s a dead star too, burning through fuel so fast toward what’s already cavitized within him, toward how he was born.

When Wilbur turns to him with smoke spilling from his lungs and two fingers pointed up, there is a star burning between his teeth.

“It won't last.”

Quackity has sworn at the sun, “I’ll die with my country,”

:an admittance and a prayer, in more ways than one.

Notes:

me whenever I read tnt duo smoking and wilbur is British and I'm like 😏

impulse posting I just wanted to break the radio silence bcus I was suspended for a month from engaging at all because I got majorly clowned

I do have a lot of bullshit that's postable and not <1k after I edit and submit them as homework on turnitin which is an actual goddamn joke.... didn't even change most of their names so it just looks like rpf..... 100 pages of that into my grades damn

talk to me about your day or just say hello or something o77 just wanna converse

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