Devil's Tango (Quackbur)

Chapter 4

TWs for this chapter:
Religious trauma, recollects of trauma, nightmares, distorted memories, a lot of homophobia, violence, brief mention of s/h, general depressing memories
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Quackity was exhausted as he trudged up to his bedroom. He didn't even care that there was a demon downstairs that could potentially wreck his house, he was just so goddamn tired.
At last, he flopped onto the cozy sheets of his bed and fell asleep at once, not even bothering to change his clothes or take them off.
The warmth enveloped him and he closed his eyes and fell asleep.

Quackity woke in a church. Why was he here?
He rubbed his eyes and yawned, wanting more than anything to go back to sleep, but he was curious on why he was here.
A voice came from the back of the dark church.
"You know, I could tell your father."

Quackity whipped round so fast that he cricked his neck.
"Mom? What are you doing here?"

"I could tell your father you were dating a man if you don't do what I tell you to do," she said sternly.
His mother was an ageing woman with silvery hair held back in a tight bun who seemed to wear nothing but dresses.
She was always very Conservative and traditional as well as being a devout Christian, so the news that her son was a 'dirty homo' had come as a massive shock to her.
She'd made passive-aggressive comments about how his sexuality was just a 'phase' and that he'd eventually find the right girl to settle down with, even though Quackity had told her time and time again that he only liked men, and he would never date a woman because he wasn't attracted to them.

His father, however, had taken the news a lot worse.

He was a big, beefy man with an unnaturally red face and a large beard, and his attitude to anything he didn't like was simply 'violence', which hadn't bore well with Quackity's coming out, since he was violently homophobic and didn't think his son would ever turn out to be anything but straight.

He'd marched over to the poor boy's room- no, not marched, stomped- and beaten him within an inch of his life until Quackity made him stop by claiming he was 'just joking' and he wasn't actually gay.
His dad had huffed and walked out of the room without even looking back at his badly bruised, crying son.

Quackity's mother had known that he was definitely still gay and had spared him the injury by not telling Dad when he started to date a man, but she would still make the same passive-aggressive comments towards him, and had threatened him with blackmail many a time to get what she wanted.
Quackity had a miserable life, to be completely honest.
He'd only taken the priest role to make his parents leave him alone and let him have his own life, but apparently even that didn't work, since even his job had been influenced by them.

And now he was panicking.
"Mom? What are you doing here?" Quackity asked, his breath getting rapid and shallow. Beads of sweat rolled down his face.
"Oh, to see my second favourite son, that's all," she answered with a grin.

Oh, yeah, Quackity had a brother.

His name was Clay, but his parents called him Dream, like DreamXD- the god that they worshipped.
He was annoyingly perfect around their parents.
Good grades, good looks, straight, not a disappointment, a good job, he was everything Quackity had failed to be.
He was a year younger than Quackity but Clay's parents had always favourited him.
It was Clay that got the PlayStation for Christmas, not Alex. It was Clay who was constantly told how perfect he was, and how proud his parents were of him.

Not Alex.

At one point in Quackity's life, when Quackity was 10 and Clay was 9, Quackity had genuinely contemplated pushing him in the pond and passing it off as a childish accident.
But he had been too cowardly to do it.
Too worried about what his parents might have thought of it.
So he hadn't, and Clay had grown up to lead a perfectly normal heterosexual life.
Girlfriends, parties, the like.
All while Alex stayed inside in his darkened bedroom and looked out of the window sullenly, wishing that they could swap places, wishing that he could be the popular, attractive hetero guy all the girls were swooning over, and not a black haired, acne-covered, introverted, gay disappointment.

"Shut up!" Quackity screamed at her. "Shut up! I do everything I can to try and please you guys, I got the job you wanted me to get, I- I even faked being straight for Dad, and you still treat me like shit! You never do that with Clay! Ever!"
"Do you mean Dream?" she asked, smirking. She knew she was pressing all of his buttons and was revelling in it.
"Of course you fucking nickname him after a goddamn god. Of course," Quackity muttered darkly.
"Alex, we are just trying to help you-" she said, reaching a hand out, but he slapped it away.
"You aren't helping."

And suddenly Quackity was 15 again, and he was being beaten by his father for coming out as gay.
Suddenly he was at the dinner table while his parents ranted on and on about how amazing Clay was, while ignoring their other son scratching at his skin with his nails, desperately trying to make himself bleed just so he could get the attention he was so desperately craving from them.

Suddenly he was in the same church he'd summoned a demon in, a priest telling him, a 16 year old, how he was destined to go to hell because of his sexuality.
Suddenly he was being punched and kicked around by classmates for being a 'gay ass', with his male classmates heckling him and asking if he had a crush on them.
Suddenly he was back, a spotty teenager, in his bed, crying and contemplating running away.
It was too much for him, he cried out-

He woke with a scream in his bed.

He was shaking violently, drenched in sweat, tears clouding his vision.
He tentatively sat up.
No mother or father to be seen. He was in his small, pathetic bedroom, and he was safe.
He gripped the sheets with a force before he heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
"Hey, you good? I heard screaming?" Wilbur's muffled voice said from outside the door.
"I'm... I'm fine," Quackity said slowly, trying to stop himself from stuttering or crying.
"You don't sound it," Wilbur said, and the handle of the door turned.

"Hey, you're not fine. Look, you've been crying," Wilbur said upon further inspection.
Quackity looked away. "I'm fine."
"You aren't. What's wrong? It's not like I can tell anyone," Wilbur said with a shrug.
"That's true... but what if you tell Schlatt? I mean... he could use that against me."
"I'm not telling him anything," Wilbur said with a laugh. "He's annoying."
Wilbur sat down next to Quackity on the bed with a little bounce.
"That's true."
"So what is it?"
Quackity took a deep breath, and started talking.

Fifteen minutes later, he felt... better, somehow... for telling all that to someone who couldn't snitch.
Like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.
"Wow. That, uh, that's rough, man," Wilbur said. "Honestly, that's why us demons only target Christians. So that they don't go around doing this kind of shit."
"You do?" Quackity asked, wiping his eyes.
"Yeah. I can't bring myself to hurt you, though, I mean, the people who are supposed to be the good guys here have hurt you beyond repair by the sounds of it, so..."
Wilbur smiled and put a hand on Quackity's thigh assuringly, and Quackity tried to ignore the fact that his face had just heated up a little bit.

"Yeah. I mean, Schlatt was bad as well, and he's a Satanist."
"Oh, he was?" Wilbur asked.
"Yeah."
"Not surprised, to be honest. How?"
"Oh, uh," Quackity started, but made a choked sound in his throat and stopped.
"Sorry, um, I mean, he kinda... took advantage of me? If that makes any sense," Quackity said with a shudder.
"Yeah. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense," Wilbur said, and his grip on Quackity's thigh tightened just a little bit more.

"We started dating, and I think he only wanted me cuz I was the only gay guy he could find to make out with and have sex with, so... He said we were 'official' boyfriends, but that was bullshit," he said sadly.
Quackity started tearing up.
"We never went on any dates or anything! Not one! He just wanted a good fuck! That was all I was to him!"
To emphasise how frustrated he was, Quackity threw his arms up in the air and flopped back down on the bed.
Wilbur peered at him with interest.

"I'm sorry that happened to you, mate."
"Sorry for telling you all this," Quackity said, sitting up again. "You aren't like, my emotional support demon, I just needed someone to vent to. I bet you want to go back to Hell or wherever you came from after meeting me, haha."
"Nah. I'm fine here, actually," Wilbur answered casually.
"Really? Why?" Quackity asked with wide eyes.
"Dunno. You interest me, to be honest."
"I... interest you? How?"
"You're just... you know, you've got depth, if you get what I mean, and you're just kinda fun to be around," Wilbur said.

"How am I fun to be around? I just told you about a ton of my trauma!" Quackity exclaimed.
"I'm a demon. We live off that shit," Wilbur said with a grin. "Also, it's interesting. Sad, but interesting."
Quackity took a deep breath.

"I wanna quit being a priest."