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“Tell me why I shouldn’t kill you where you stand,” Technoblade says, his voice deceptively idle.
“Well,” Quackity says, and swallows as steel whispers against the back of his neck. “There’s kind of this egg.”
He’s pressed up with his face against a boulder, hands raised in surrender, throat tight with panic that he’s far too good at this to let show. Can’t even see the guy who’s got him so afraid, but he knows damn well who it is. He thinks he might forget his own name before the timbre of that voice ever leaves him. “You’re lucky I found you before you made it any further,” says Technoblade, an edge to his voice that Quackity can’t place, because it’s not fury, not really, but the idea of Technoblade ever showing fear is - Well. “If you’d gotten past the fence, you’d be dead already, y’know?”
“I had gathered. Yes.”
“Start talking,” Technoblade says. “You’re good at that.”
It must be the panic setting in, making him hysterical, because Quackity almost says why thank you - good. He works best under pressure. His tongue flies the fastest when it’s properly motivated. “You ever hear about the men of Wu and the men of Yueh, Technoblade?” he asks: he’s heard Technoblade’s fond of that old Sun Tzu book, and he did his research. “Yadda, yadda, crossing a river in the same boat -”
“I know the quote,” Technoblade says stiffly. The sword-tip bites, just a little sting, into the back of Quackity’s neck, and he hisses. “Could you say what you actually mean, please, I don’t - I don’t have all day. Busy man, and all.” This is a habit of Technoblade’s that Quackity has studied, too, and has seen at work first-hand: he stalled that day on the podium, and he stalled that day on the execution block, and he is prevaricating now. It means he is uncertain. It means there’s a weakness there, and Quackity knows precisely how to exploit it -
Not today. Not for now. He’s putting that aside, just this once.
“I’m left-handed,” Quackity lies. “You picking up what I’m putting down here, Technoblade?”
“That’s an incredibly clumsy analogy.”
“Hey, hey, I’m improvising.” He’s not.
“You’re saying we have a common enemy,” Technoblade says. He sounds skeptical. “You do a lot of lying, Quackity.”
Quackity almost snorts at that: really, he wants to say, all shock and wide eyes. But most of the time it isn’t well-received when you mock someone while at the end of their sword point. “Let me away from this stupid rock,” he says, “and maybe I’ll tell you.”
“You’re the one without any leverage here. I wouldn’t be making orders.”
“That’s what you’d like to think, isn’t it,” Quackity says, and smiles against the stone. It’s part of his nature, that he always knows when he’s struck a killing blow.
The pressure vanishes from the back of his neck, and then there’s a trickling sensation there: his own blood, he presumes, very familiar with the feeling. “Move slowly,” Technoblade orders him. But really Quackity’s the one in control here, with nothing but his words and the false sense of security everyone gets when he raises his hands in surrender, and that’s almost an intoxicating feeling. “If you try running -”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it,” Quackity gripes. It’s not even a risk to say it. Technoblade won’t move against him, not now: he’s showed his hand. Quackity shuffles, turning, lifts a hand to wipe the blood away from the back of his neck - ha, kinda fitting, having them red and all, though it’d work better if he had more than his own blood staining his palms - where’s Dream when you need him?
Ahem.
He clears his throat. Looks Technoblade, who is broad-shouldered and whose netherite armour blots out the sun from this angle and whose belt is positively dripping with weaponry, in the eye - he looks that fucker in the eye, and spreads his hands in a way that makes Technoblade flinch, and says, struggling to restrain his glee, “I have a proposition for you, Technoblade. It’s about the vines.”
He is not here to move against Technoblade, not really. This biting bitterness between them is far from a priority - but it’s heady, thrilling, to know he has made the blood god wince. To know he can. Technoblade says, looking distinctly uncomfortable, “Go on, then,” and holds his sword steady where it’s levelled at Quackity’s throat; it’s utterly electrifying that Quackity isn’t afraid of it.
“They will come to each others’ assistance,” Quackity quotes, and grins. He can read this man like an open book, knows just what strings to pull. He learned from the best, after all: it’s amazing what people will tell you as you’re pulling out their teeth.