Chapter Text
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Quackity wants to run again.
Unfortunately they’re low on gas, so he can’t. Quackity would say he’s something of a roadtrip aficionado: his whole adolescence was founded on them, fifteen years old with no plan but entertaining Tubbo in the passenger seat. And as something of a roadtrip aficionado, he has the authority to say that nothing is creepier than an abandoned gas station at 3 AM in the middle of nowhere. Not that he’d ever get himself in that situation. Couldn’t be him.
Obviously this is Sapnap’s fault. If it’s not then Quackity is going to spin it that way. He should be knocked out in the passenger seat, snoozing right through any shady ass o'clock pitstops, but that’s not an option when Sapnap has this misguided habit of driving straight through Quackity’s shifts to let him sleep. Chivalrous motherfucker. Which leaves Quackity no choice but to reverse uno him and drive through his shifts while he’s sprawled out across the backseat, snoring like a busted muffler. The uneven rocking as they pull into the station does nothing to wake him.
It really is in the middle of nowhere. There isn’t a single light on the road, no moon, no stars. Just some podunk regional gas station he’s never heard of tucked away in the relentless wall of trees, on a backroad off the highway.
Quackity intends to get his gas and peel out of there, but the station has a matchbox convenience store attached, and he needs caffeine in his bloodstream more than he needs air. He parks in one of the three spaces and considers dragging Sapnap inside with him. It would be hilariously easy to reach back, open the door and watch him tumble out. Sapnap’s cheek is mashed against the faux leather and his hair is static-clinging to the glass. He’s drooling into the cup holder. Quackity loves him so much he could be sick with it.
He creeps out as quietly as he can, like a sucker, and as soon as the door shuts the oppressive silence of the night closes around him. The goosebumps he’d managed to ward off with Sapnap’s snoring sweep up the back of his neck. He doesn’t like the trees here. Is that a weird thing to think? The elbow joints of their branches are too sharp and too many.
The convenience store is tiny and buzzing with white-noise fluorescents, casting the same greenish-yellow glow that all gas stations have at 3 AM. The cashier isn’t behind the counter, but he can hear shuffling in a back room.
The coffee machine doesn’t work. Figures. He drifts to the humming refrigerators instead, grabbing a six-pack of Monster and turning to the chip aisle. Barbecue for him, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos for Sapnap. He pauses. Tubbo likes salt and vinegar. He grabs one, thinks about it, then grabs another and brings it all to the counter.
The cashier is still moving around in the backroom. Quackity waits a minute, then raps his knuckles on the fake wood. “Hey, man, a little help out here?”
The shuffling stops.
A minute passes in silence. No one emerges. Quackity starts to wish he woke Sapnap up after all.
He knocks on the counter again. “Yo?”
The lights go out.
It can’t take more than one full second, but when they come back on, Quackity’s lungs are too tight to draw full breath.
Yeah, no. Fuck this.
He digs out a twenty from his pocket, tosses it onto the counter, and blows right out of there without looking back. Fresh air doesn’t bring the relief it should. The too-many-jointed trees are pressing in tight and close. Maybe he’ll only fill up the tank halfway, just enough to get them out of here. Hell, maybe they don’t need gas at all, and the fumes they’re running on will last until the next, less haunted gas station. He books it to the little lot, eager to get back to Sapnap and his comforting lawn mower snores.
There’s a man by the car, watching Sapnap sleep.
“Hey!” Quackity barks, fear alchemizing to fury in his throat. The man jumps a full foot in the air. He catches sight of Quackity, and a smile lights up his face.
“Hi,” he says, in a voice so warm it takes the legs of Quackity’s anger right out from under him. He bulls his way between the guy and the car anyway, ripping his mouth into a snarl. He wishes fiercely that he weren’t cradling four bags of chips and a box of energy drinks to his chest. That definitely undercuts some of the viciousness he’s going for, but the scar should make up for it.
The guy pedals back, hands thrown up. “Hi, hey, howdy. Didn’t mean to scare you. I was just checking that he was, y’know, breathing.”
Like that’s a completely non-batshit thing to say. “That’s creepy as fuck, man.”
His smile drops. “Word? Sorry. In my defense, no one comes here. When I saw the car and the body in the backseat I for real thought your boy ODed or something.”
“Well, he didn’t.” A snore vibrates through the door to attest to this. Fucker can sleep through anything.
“I can hear that,” the guy says. He shoves his hands in his pockets, flaps his lips. “So you want some gas?”
Quackity eyes him. “You’re the attendant?”
“Ayup. Karl, at your service. Why, do I not look like one?”
Quackity’s not sure what he looks like. Out of place, mostly. He’s young, tall and willowy, with cuffed jeans and an eyesore of a windbreaker. Also he’s like, probably the single most lovely person Quackity’s ever seen, and that’s with his hot as hell boyfriend passed out right behind him. All honey brown curls and delicate bone structure and big brown eyes bordering on gold. What is Quackity supposed to do with that? The uncanniness of meeting someone so ethereally pretty in this situation is almost creepier than meeting an axe murderer, which would at least be on brand.
Instead of answering, he asks, “Where were you when I pulled in?”
“Bathroom.” He forks his thumb, and indeed, on the other side of the lot is a rickety old outhouse. It stands alone against the treeline, nearly consumed.
“Looks haunted as shit.”
Karl giggles—honest to god giggles, which wasn’t a sound Quackity thought people really made. It’s entirely disarming, and to Quackity’s horror, he starts to relax. As peculiar and misplaced as he is, it’s impossible to clock this guy as a threat. Quackity may be small but he’s scrappy, and Sapnap is built like a brick shithouse. By comparison, Karl looks about as threatening as a wet noodle. A painfully beautiful wet noodle in an awful windbreaker, but a wet noodle all the same.
“It really is,” Karl says. “Zero out of ten, would not recommend. But the shop bathroom is worse, if you can believe that.”
“I do, actually.” With the adrenaline slowly leaking from his pores, Quackity suddenly feels dumb for getting so freaked out by the convenience store, and the trees, and the general rancid vibes of this place. It’s just a creepy 3 AM gas station, just like every other creepy 3 AM gas station. “I think you’ve got an animal in there, by the way.”
For just a second, Karl’s easy expression flickers. It bounces back gamely, with a grin and a long-suffering sigh. “Of course there is. I literally cannot tell you how much this place sucks, dude. Come on, let me fill you up so you can get the heck out of here.”
“That’s what she said,” Quackity says, purely on instinct, and immediately wants to die. But Karl only giggles again.
He pulls the car up to the nearest pump, Karl jogging after him. Quackity leans his head out the window to watch as Karl inserts the nozzle and the numbers rack up.
“I hope you didn’t pay for those,” Karl says. “The snacks, I mean.”
Quackity snorts. “Why?”
“Uh, because this place is the worst? I swear I already said that.”
“You did. You’re never gonna get repeat customers like this.”
“Good. You should get as far away as possible. Better yet, take me with you.”
He’s still smiling, but there’s a note of earnestness that pulls at Quackity’s sympathy. “Why don’t you quit?”
Karl shrugs. “Would if I could, but I can’t, so I won’t. Y’know?”
Quackity does know. He glances away. “Well, I did pay for the snacks, like an idiot.”
“Yeah, that was pretty dumb,” Karl says, grinning at Quackity’s scowl. “Gas is on the house, then. Call it pretty privilege.”
And he winks. It is the cheesiest wink Quackity has ever seen in his life.
“Dude,” he guffaws, “my boyfriend is literally right there.”
“Hey, he’s invited too. Handsome fella, even if he snores like a jet engine.”
“Dude.”
Karl folds his arms over the roof and leans his cheek on them. He looks soft and sweet. Quackity wishes Sapnap were awake to see him, he’d be in love already. “Sorry. I flirt when I’m nervous.”
Bizarrely enough, Quackity totally gets that. He’s exactly the same way, or he was, until it was trained out of him. “I make you nervous?”
“You in a pretty kind of way. This whole place in a freaky Twilight Zone kind of way.”
As if on cue, the lights in the convenience store go out. Quackity expects them to turn on immediately like last time. One long beat, then two. The lights flicker back on, and Quackity’s tongue is sour, palms sweaty.
His throat clicks when he peels it open. “Does that happen a lot?”
Karl doesn’t answer. His entire demeanor has changed: muscles tense, throat flexing, face alert. He scans the trees with golden eyes. Were his eyes always golden?
Are the trees closer?
“Hey,” Quackity says, “Where’d the outhouse go?”
Karl turns back to him. “Okay, I’ve really loved playing normal with you, but it turns out we have like, no time. You’re lost, right?”
“What?” Quackity stares at him. “No, I’m not.”
“No, you are. You really really are. Do you remember how you got here?”
Karl is back to freaking him out. Worse: Quackity can’t answer the question. Karl nods like he expected that.
“But you remember where you’re going. That’s the most important thing, that’ll get you out. Some ground rules: don’t go in the woods. Don’t split up. Don’t lose your car, because if you do, you’re boned. Avoid reflections, and windows. Your car windows are probably fine, but—you get what I mean.”
“I really fucking don’t,” Quackity says. The hair has risen on his arms, his neck. Something falls over in the convenience store but he doesn’t see what. Karl pushes on.
“You can take the highway or the backroads, but they both have their dangers. You cannot stop on the highway, and you can’t look away from the road, not for anything. Okay? You can pull over on the backroads if you need to, but make it fast. Don’t stop at any of the motels or bed-and-breakfasts. If you don’t believe me, just read the signs. Your brain will try not to, but if you focus, you’ll see. Avoid large bodies of water. What else, what else—”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Oh, don’t hit the deer.”
“I wasn’t planning on hitting any deer, you freak—”
The meter dings. All the lights in the station go out.
They come back on after a moment of palpable darkness. The parking lot is gone. The trees are right on top of them.
“What the hell,” Quackity whispers. “What the fuck.”
“Shit,” Karl agrees. “Turn the car on, you’ve gotta go.”
Quackity does, and is almost surprised that the engine turns over. Karl scrambles to pull out the nozzle and shut the gas tank. He pats the roof twice, but Quackity doesn’t drive off. He doesn’t do anything. His heart is pounding in his throat as he stares at Karl, unsure what he’s waiting for. Karl’s urgency softens, just a little.
“I’ll be okay, baby. Go on. All you have to do is drive straight on ‘til morning. Like Peter Pan, right?” He smiles, like they’re sharing a secret. “Tubbo wants to see you, Quackity. He does. Keep that in mind and keep driving, and you’ll be alright. You’ll see me soon, I promise.”
Tubbo.
Quackity’s first impulse, as always, is to run. He follows it.
The car screeches out of the gas station, front wheels bouncing hard on the road just as the lights go out behind him. Sapnap knocks his head on the window and snorts himself awake.
“Ow, the fuck,” he slurs.
Quackity wants to yell at him, or maybe just scream, but his lungs are tight like closed fists in his chest. He reaches back and whacks Sapnap’s leg a couple times instead.
“Ow, the fuck! What’d I do?”
In the rearview, at a distance, the lights of the gas station come back on. The trees stand solitary and watchful. Karl is gone. The big neon sign is last, reversed in the mirror and flickering to life: THE INBETWEEN.
Quackity really can’t remember how he got here.
He remembers texting Tubbo to finalize their plans because he was too chickenshit to call. He remembers joking with Sapnap about roadtrip playlists and Cracker Barrel breaks and giant-ball-of-string detours. He remembers Sapnap tossing and catching the keys as he slid into the driver’s seat, and he remembers standing on the passenger side, unable to open the door for reasons he couldn’t fathom, until Sapnap had to climb back out and pull him into his arms. He tucked his beard-scratchy chin to the crown of Quackity’s head and rocked them back and forth for one silent, patient minute until Quackity could shudder out a breath and force himself into the car.
The first leg of the trip was sweet and fun for how utterly average it was. They sang along to painfully classic road music. Sapnap rolled down all the windows to belt the incorrect lyrics to Born to Run, Life is a Highway, and Sweet Home Alabama while Quackity booed beside him. They were still far enough west that the air whistling through the car was more refreshing than cold. They switched playlists and talked about their various roadtrip rituals. Sapnap playing those cheesy highway games as a kid with his dads and his brother, I Spy and Punch Buggy and the License Plate Game. Quackity and Tubbo, fifteen and eleven, workshopping and refining what they would come to call the Sacred Laws of Road-Tripping. Pull over for every tourist trap you see, always buy snacks at gas stations and postcards at rest stops. If shotgun shouts left turn, you turn left, no questions asked. It was a good way to get lost, which was usually the point. Tubbo bouncing in the passenger seat, distractible, excitable, small for his age. The green shirt he liked that Quackity grew out of, flopping over his wrists and always buttoned up wrong.
He and Sapnap stopped for gas, sharing a pack of jerky and a ring pop that they took turns slurping obscenely in each other’s faces. At lunchtime they pulled into a glittery highway rest stop with mediocre food and wolfed down McDonalds and Cinnabon, and shortly after getting back on the highway they got off again to visit a tiny museum dedicated to a mid-century actress neither of them had ever heard of. It came with a library-turned-theater, playing the same twenty minute biography on loop, where they whispered and made out like teenagers.
Quackity drove until dinner, and when they switched back they kept talking, conversation turning vulnerable and secret the way it does in the small, sleepless hours of the night. He never talked to me like this, Quackity said at one point. I think he tried once, but that was after the scar, and I just left the room. Is that fucked up of me?
Sapnap said no, and he took Quackity’s hand over the console, and drove one-handed for the rest of the night.
Slowly, almost too slow to feel, the landscape changed. The warm weather turned frigid, and Quackity’s beloved red horizons folded in on him, cold and northeast mountainous. Trees rose up on either side, dense and dark and evergreen.
The next morning they had breakfast at a diner, brushing their teeth in the bathroom and nodding off over their pancakes until a waitress had to shake them awake. Embarrassed but refreshed, they hit the road again.
Gas, then lunch. Another recently-renovated rest stop, with workers who were not paid enough to care. A brief stalemate when Sapnap wanted to eat outside at one of the picnic tables while Quackity argued that they should not freeze their balls off. He was surprised, as always, when Sapnap relented, suggesting instead that they take a walk along the tiny hiking trail after their meal. Quackity agreed, and Sapnap beamed at him like he’d delivered him the sun in his hands. Compromise. Who knew.
The trail really was tiny. More of a beaten footpath, looping once with zero incline and in view of the highway the whole time. Sapnap preened in the sunlight like a photosynthesizing plant. They held hands while they strolled, and when Sapnap noticed Quackity’s criminally poor circulation, he stuffed their interlocked fingers into one of his coat pockets. It was so cliche and dumb that Quackity had no choice but to kiss him about it.
They looped again and Quackity decided he was cold enough to shimmy back into Sapnap’s chest. Sapnap opened and closed his jacket around him, while Quackity zipped it up. “Like a turducken,” he said.
“You’re the duck, I’m the turkey,” Sapnap said. “We need a third. Who’s the chicken?”
They waddled through another loop. Quackity took in the sparse trees, the meager trail. “Tubbo and I did something like this on one of our roadtrips.”
“I mean, I kinda hope not. That would be weird.”
“What? Not the turducken thing, dumbass, the hiking trail. It was a way shittier rest stop and a way better trail, like in an actual park. You could wander off and get lost and everything. We made a fort out of sticks, it was awesome.”
“Sounds fun.” Sapnap pressed a kiss into his beanie. “Wanna make a fort?”
“Nah. We should get back on the road. Branches here are too small, anyway.”
Quackity climbed into the driver’s seat. By that point Sapnap was talking through jaw-cracking yawns; he’d taken extra shifts at the repair shop to make up for the days off he was taking for this trip and had barely napped at all the first day. Dinner at Cracker Barrel, one of the few in the state, where they bought each other knick-knacks from the giftshop. Cute duck salt shakers for Quackity. An ugly gnome and mushroom snowglobe for Sapnap. He bemoaned that it reminded him of George, while Quackity batted his lashes and pretended that wasn’t exactly what he was going for. As a last minute impulse-buy he grabbed a spoon rest shaped like a bee for Tubbo. He’ll love it, Sapnap assured him, but Quackity couldn’t help but feel stupid. He doesn’t even know if Tubbo likes bees anymore. What’s he going to use it for, his collection of novelty spoons that he has in real life? He’s seventeen, not a grandma.
They were supposed to switch drivers again, but instead Quackity ushered Sapnap into the backseat, promising to wake him for his next shift. He conked out before the opening of Quackity’s true crime podcast finished. Quackity drove until midnight, and then kept driving because he knew Sapnap would drive through the night if Quackity let him.
And then he was pulling into an abandoned gas station at 3 AM. He doesn’t remember which exit. He doesn’t remember taking an exit at all. He doesn’t even remember what state they’re in.
“You were supposed to wake me,” Sapnap grumbles for the third time.
It’s been twenty minutes since the gas station and they haven’t seen anyone else on the road. Quackity still hasn’t found the onramp back to the highway. And that’s—that’s fine, whatever, except he keeps expecting to roll into civilization and they just—don’t. It’s just trees and trees and more fucking trees. No lights but their headlights, bleaching the branches into ghoulish, groping things. It feels like they’re pressing in tighter and closer but that might just be paranoia.
“Where are the askers, Sapnap? Where are they? I don’t see any on this spooky ass road.”
The adrenaline is finally starting to fade, leaving him in that horrible midway point between painfully alert and more painfully exhausted. His spine aches. His knuckles on the wheel ache. His eyes ache and his teeth ache. Sapnap touches his shoulder and he jumps so hard it jerks every wire-taut muscle in his body.
Sapnap huffs. “You keep saying I’m going to drive through your shift, but I only did that once, and I said I was sorry. You’re literally doing that right now.”
The argument is too logical to refute, so Quackity doesn’t. “GPS?”
Sapnap obediently checks his phone. “Still nothing. We’re way out in the boondocks.”
Quackity suppresses the urge to smack the wheel. He’s not sure why he doesn’t want to let Sapnap drive, which just makes the aimless frustration needle deeper. It might be that he doesn’t want to pull over after Karl’s warnings, or that Sapnap wasn’t awake to hear the warnings himself. Except Quackity has already told himself and Sapnap that it was all just some fucked up prank his sleep-deprived brain was too willing to indulge. Karl was real, because Quackity wouldn’t hallucinate a wholeass person, no matter how strange or fine. The flickering lights were real, probably. The encroaching trees were not.
Quackity hasn’t told him about how Karl knew his name. He hasn’t told him about how he knew Tubbo’s.
In a turn of good luck, finally, the trees give way. No lights still, or houses, or moon or stars, but marshland unspools on either side. It’s cold and damp in that northern way that seeps into the clothes and beneath the skin, but it’s not the woods, so he’ll take it.
“Tell me more about how hot this guy was,” Sapnap says, a peace offering.
“Oh my god, total smokeshow. Ten out of ten, easy. But not in a model way? Like, his ass was flat as a pancake and his fashion sense was worse than yours—”
“Hey—”
“But he was still a ten. It made the whole thing so much creepier.” He shakes his head. “He was totally your type.”
“You’re my type,” says Sapnap, with complete sincerity.
“Cute.” A yawn cracks through his smirk. He glances back at Sapnap in the mirror. He’s frowning, brow knit with concern, and Quackity’s shoulders pull taut. “I’m not crazy.”
“Never said you were, darlin’.” Sapnap’s hand on his shoulder again, kneading and warm. “The whole thing sounds like you fell asleep at the wheel, but if you say evil trees were trying to eat you and the hot gas station attendant, I believe you. Weirder shit has happened.”
“Has it?”
He feels Sapnap’s shrug. “Probably. My dad’s in some cult that thinks an egg is going to hatch and take over the world or something, what the fuck do I know. You saw something weird in a gas station in the middle of nowhere, just like everyone who’s ever stopped at a gas station in the middle of nowhere. You’re a tired, stubborn dumbass, but you’re not crazy.”
Tension unspools from Quackity’s body, painfully slow. Sapnap massages down his bicep and up to his neck. Digs firmly into the vertebrae and the hinge of his jaw. A sigh stutters out of him. He eases on the gas, just a little.
“Now is not the time or place, you degenerate,” he mutters.
“Mind out of the gutter, Big Q.” Sapnap chuckles. “I’m not trying to seduce you, I’m trying to remind you that you need to sleep.”
“Risky move while I’m driving.”
“I live life on the edge, sue me.”
Quackity indulges the rough thumb smoothing circles into the top knob of his spine for a moment more, and then he reaches up. Knits their fingers together, brushes a kiss to the side of Sapnap’s thumb. Lets go, deliberate.
Sapnap sighs, pulling his hand back. “We don’t have to switch if you don’t want to. But you need to sleep. This isn’t healthy, Q.”
“Yeah? And how do you suggest I sleep without switching?”
“We could stop there, smartass.”
Sapnap’s arm in his peripheral, pointing, but Quackity sees it. A neon dot cresting the horizon. He slows the car to a crawl.
Karl said not to stop at motels. Karl was full of shit, because he has to be full of shit.
Karl knew Quackity’s name. He knew Tubbo’s name.
“We don’t have to,” Sapnap says, reading his silence. “But if we don’t, we have to switch.”
“And if I say no?”
“I’m not gonna force you, love,” Sapnap says. Immediately guilt pierces through the bubbling dread, because yeah. That’s exactly what Quackity was testing, wasn’t he?
“Buuut,” Sapnap continues. “I will start singing 99 Bottles to keep you awake.”
Quackity groans. “Fuck you, you won’t. I’m calling your bluff, you won’t get past 90.”
“Bet. 99 bottles of pop on the wall—”
“Pop? Are you five?”
“It was Bad’s favorite and he doesn’t swear. 99 bottles of pop, you take one down, pass it around, 98 bottles of pop on the wall.”
“Just say beer, you son of a bitch.”
“98 bottles of pop on the wall, 98 bottles of pop, you take one down, pass it around, 97 bottles of pop on the wall. You fucked with the wrong man, Q, I grew up on this song and I am immune. 97 bottles of pop—”
“Fine, fine! You win, you sociopath.” But he’s laughing, and in the mirror Sapnap’s smile is flushed and pleased.
The big sign reads MOTEL MIZU in some derivative Mesoamerican stylization. The main building is designed to look like a flat-topped, stair-faced pyramid, elevated on stilts. It’s exactly the kind of kitschy, gimmicky hole in the wall you stumble upon in the middle of nowhere.
“Does this feel kind of racist to you?” Sapnap asks, peering out the window.
“Maybe. Exploitative, for damn sure.” Nevertheless he has to admit it looks inviting.
“They could give us directions, tell us where we are,” Sapnap says. “Or at least let me use the bathroom. I’ve had to piss since I woke up.”
The main building’s lights are on. Some of the rooms are lit up too, but others are vacant, waiting for guests.
Vacant.
Quackity blinks. Looks back up at the sign, and the smaller lettering beneath it. He assumed it just advertised the vacancy. Quackity forces his eyes to focus. It’s harder than it should be. Sapnap opens the door.
In glowing cursive letters:
Come on in! Nobody leaves here!
Quackity’s stomach opens up.
“Oh no. No no no, fuck this.” He turns in his seat. “Sapnap! Get in the car!”
Sapnap jerks to a stop, halfway out the door. “What?”
“Get in the fucking car, I am not playing, get in now.”
Sapnap gets in, eyes wide. Quackity throws the car back in drive.
“Fuck this fuck this fuck this.”
He guns it. Sapnap tosses violently in the back seat. “Ow! Jesus christ, Quackity, what the dick!”
“Put your seatbelt on.”
“We were supposed to switch—”
“Put your fucking seatbelt on.”
Sapnap puts his seatbelt on. Quackity doesn’t let up on the gas until the motel is well behind them. The marshland dries up. The trees close in on all sides once more.
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