Conjugal Visitation

attachments

The first thing Quackity did when he woke up was check his ender chest.

The book was right there. Quackity held it, one hand hovering over the front cover. He was still incredibly tempted.

He flipped the book over and turned to the last entry. He re-read the page, traced his fingers over the doodles.

Quackity then checked his communicator, scrolling through the messages from Sam. It seemed like he had met with Sam at the library, and he had read from the book, so he probably had been right about Karl leaving in the middle of the night.

Or had he? Because the problem with all that being real was that it meant Karl had lied to him.

He'd slept past noon, and both Karl and Sapnap were already awake and out of the house. Karl had left a sweet note for him on the table by the bed. That made him smile, but he wished they were here. He could have shown the book to one of them, just to make sure it was real.

He could have asked Karl what he was doing last night.

Quackity was restless. He strode out of Kinoko Kingdom quickly, its calm atmosphere doing nothing to soothe his agitation. When he stepped through the portal into the familiar sunlight of Las Nevadas, Quackity tilted his head to the sky and sighed in relief, rolling his shoulders.

He began a slow pace around the central fountain, heading toward the hotel. Sam had built most of the exoskeleton, but he had yet to do the interiors. But Sam had a lot on his plate, and Quackity had another builder in mind for the rest of the job.

Sam wasn't there. Quackity scowled. He had energy like an itch under his skin, and he couldn't bear to be still. Maybe he really was just a workaholic. He already felt like he'd taken too much time off from Las Nevadas and the prison -- from Dream. He wanted to see Dream. He wanted to do a lot more than just see him; he itched to run his hands through that long hair and play him like a guitar, touching and pulling and plucking at him in all the ways that made those amazing sounds.

First, though, he wanted to talk to Dream about the journal.

Quackity sent a message to Sam. Meet me at the usual place, need to talk early today.

He was halfway to the prison when the communicator beeped back. Quackity risked stopping in the nether to read the message. This early?

Yes. He strode out the community portal and walked the rest of the way to the prison gates, that restless energy still humming under his skin.

Why did Karl lie? Where was he last night?

The diary was burning a hole in his pocket. He kept running his fingers over the pages, reassuring himself that it was real and almost aching with the desire to snoop. He didn't keep a diary for the exact reason he was now carrying Dream's: what if someone found it? Dream hadn't seemed like the journaling type either, too consumed with his ego and schemes for self-reflection. But he had all the time in the world in that prison. Quackity had seen some introspection mixed in with the paranoia in the small section he'd read; maybe he should give Dream more credit.

Even in his private journal, though, Dream was a man of secrets. Nothing about the revive book or his real relationship with Quackity had made it into the diary. That was a good thing, but Quackity also found it a little depressing. Dream was too paranoid to trust even a diary. Worse, that paranoia had turned out to be completely justified.

Quackity stopped by the prison entrance, leaning against the cool blackstone interior. He hit the button for Sam, not caring how inconvenient it might be for him to teleport to the prison right now.