let's talk about karl. can we talk about karl?
im going to talk about mau!karl.
Five years ago he met this charming, intimidating law student while getting booked at the station for watch thief things. he tried to ask him out for drinks but the guy was reluctant, said he's "taken, sort of." Karl was enamored, but he'd take being friends in a heartbeat. Two not-dates-but-definitely-actually-dates later and somehow, through messy, half drunk rambling, it turns out "taken, sort of" means he's dating the JSchlatt. The terrifying mob boss who would definitely kill them both if he knew this was happening ("and what exactly is it that's happening?" "I want to fucking kiss you, obviously") and Karl decides. Okay. Cool. This Is Fine. So Schlatt will never find out this is happening. You Can Kiss Me Now. (and when Karl tells Quackity with the same level of solemn weight that he's pretty sure he's asexual, Quackity almost laughs, that this cute, sweet guy who wasn't scared off by him telling him that his other boyfriend would love his hypothetical head on a spike treated coming out as ace as something as damning as his whole deal. and then he kisses him. and Quackity can't remember the last time a kiss felt kind.) And it's only after several dates that he even learns the guy's actual name (he'd introduced himself as Q, for safety's sake, Karl now realizes, and knowing his name is Quackity doesn't stop him from calling him Q, it just means something different now)
and it takes two years of dating and Karl growing numb to the fact that Quackity is scared to be with him as much as he loves him and Quackity is the one who asks if he wants to move in. and they have to go through the almost militaristic process of ensuring that they both stay safe just as they had to when they first started dating, and Quackity still goes to work and then goes to Schlatt because if he tried to leave him that doesn't mean Karl gets more of his boyfriend it means he gets none of him except maybe a body in a gutter so he makes his peace with sharing him with a man who doesn't treat him right and honestly he doesn't care about the risks it puts on him, he doesn't care what Schlatt would do to him if he knew he existed, Karl only cares that Quackity wants him to be safe and Karl thinks Quackity deserves a partner who will do what he wants for a change, so he just supports him through it all. He doesn't like the violence, not from Schlatt, but also not from everything Quackity is involved in. If he had his way, Schlatt would be gone and so would all the rest of it and they would move across the river and Karl would spend the rest of his days poorly shuffling cards or whatever job there is for him to do in a casino. But that's not an option for them. Not now.
But Karl knows his job in all of this, and it's to be steady. Maybe not in the conventional sense, Karl's mind wanders too easily and in many ways he's aimless, but as long as he's still there for Quackity to come home to, that's steady enough. Karl puts up with a lot because he knows Quackity is putting up with more, so when Quackity is gone for odd hours, when he doesn't check in enough, Karl just waits and tries not to think about the sorts of things that could be keeping Quackity away for so long and when he comes home exhausted or hands bloody Karl doesn't ask questions. When Quackity refuses to be touched, not because he doesn't want Karl with him but simply because he needs a place where he can easily refuse, Karl sleeps on the couch without a word of complaint even as his mind wanders to more radical dreams of just packing a bag and the two of them running to some other city in need of a lawyer and a watch thief (they'd discussed it before. Well, discussed as in Karl would beg him on bad nights and Quackity would shut down and Karl would stop trying once Quackity told him "he'd follow me. he doesn't want me getting away, he would come after me. I've tried. he won't stop." and Karl would stop trying.) and Karl is not a violent man but sometimes his mind wanders there too. How hard would it be, to steal Quackity's gun and walk inside that house? Very hard, but it's a nice dream, even if Karl has never hit anyone let alone killed someone, so those thoughts remain only in the dark, and in the morning Quackity would kiss him again and leave for work and Karl would pretend that fixed things.
Karl signed up for this. And he doesn't regret it. But being with the man he loves has been resigning himself to a covert existence. So when Quackity is gone he sells watches on the corner, and some part of him he tries to keep buried wonders what it would be like to date someone without fear being ingrained into their relationship, so he calls out "hey! pretty guy!" to a man wandering the street and briefly wonders if he could sell the guy a watch and ask him on an ordinary, entirely unsecretive date, but he's saved from his own bitter desires by the idiot pulling out a badge. So Karl runs to Quackity, as he had been for the past six years, and Quackity steps up to protect him, as he had been doing all these years, but really, Karl knows it's his job to protect Quackity, to keep him if not safe, at least sane. Whatever the cost.
