Chapter Text
—————
”Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom and intelligence is not putting it in a fruit salad… am I right?”
The knight sitting beside him answers a stupid question Avery had thrown in off-handedly, something he hadn’t expected he’d get an answer to, let alone such a philosophical one. He doesn’t pretend to understand, nor does he mope about how ‘smarts equal farts.’ Avery is nowhere near the age of a child, but his brain refuses to grow up in the way that someone might refuse to believe something because it’s better to live in the lie than face the real world and all its challenges.
“Why ask me if you’re right?” Avery shoots back, crossing his legs and leaning against the bark of the tree behind them. “You already know you’re right.”
A shade falls over the two, where they sit at the top of a hill in a world where the sun never sets, with long grass that flows beneath Avery’s fingers like it’s something tangible. He holds onto the feeling. This place, this feeling, it’s calm and warm and unlike anything he’s faced before. Here, Avery’s skin is a see-through green: slimy. They are humanoid in their appearance, though their physiology makes no sense (not that Avery minds), and Avery really can slip through himself, like you would with slime in real life. He clings onto lies that are within his reach and forms a story for himself that he’d prefer to his reality. Because that’s what he’s done his whole life; lose touch with his reality and live gleefully in the dream. It’s better to be called an idiot and be an idiot, as at the very least, you are content in your own little bubble.
“Touché,” Derek offers, gathering small yellow flowers off the grass and picking at the petals in a twisted game of love-me-not. “Now you’re right.”
Avery considers that for a moment and smiles for the first time that day.
“You really know everything?” Avery murmurs, and he spares a glance at the knight. His voice dies down into a murmur, because the sensitive subject isn’t anything he wants to associate with Derek right now, taking into consideration the weight of everything that was, is and will be pressing in on the knight’s brain.
“Yes. I know I do,” Derek chuckles, crossing his legs and leaning back onto the tree too, his hands comfortably in his lap as he plays with the yellow flowers in his hands. Avery watches for a moment, and he doesn’t ruin the tranquility until he fixes up another question to ask.
“Then, do you know if we had any chance of meeting each other under normal circumstances?” The slime lifts an eyebrow, turning to his side and tucking his head beneath his hand to look at Derek.
Of course, every time he asks these questions, ones he himself doesn’t know the answer to, his lie unfolds. Avery hasn’t figured out the trigger yet, where the line stands between questions he can ask and others he can’t. He reaches out one last time, hoping to grasp the feel of a familiar person he hasn’t even met before. A face shrouded in darkness between a golden helmet, one he wishes he could’ve met.
Avery has fabricated someone’s life from breadcrumbs he has no business searching for, but living in a lie is better than facing his reality, is it not? If he’s an idiot, he wants to be the happy one.
The world has already begun to shake violently, and it begins to dissipate around them faster; this carefully fabricated lie that Avery entertains every time he goes to bed, when his eyes slip shut, and he winds up in this field again. The field and the houses a few hundred feet away, the grass, it’s all so familiar, and yet every time his brain asks a follow-up, tries to understand the origins of this place, where he is, what he’s here… it comes back empty handed.
Avery’s waking up now. Derek senses it, too. The reason he can’t answer these questions is because he only knows as much as Avery knows. Derek is a figment of the collective imagination, of whatever semblance of a person he once was in Avery’s memories. Whatever happened to Derek, whatever place he’s in now, Avery doesn’t know. He just hopes wherever Derek is, he’s satisfied with the way things turned out.
Avery wouldn’t trade these lucid dreams for anything in the world. These shards of a shattered friendship; a friendship formed purely from coincidence.
“Can you find me?” Derek asks, like he’s asked a million times before. And Avery nods, like he’s done a million times before. He reaches out again, his hands passing through solid mass, and he feels like he’s floating. The ground beneath his feet feels nonexistent.
Again, like a million times before, Derek always disappears when Avery wakes up.
—————
It’s been 4 months.
It’s always the first thing on his mind in the morning. The amount of time that’s passed between now and New Years Eve. Avery’s phone has buzzed to life with notifications he doesn’t want to check, but forces himself to, anyway.
It’s nothing special.
Professors are checking in with everyone, offering preparations for the new year and information on the grading system this semester. Avery’s thumb works mechanically, turning on DND and setting the phone face-down on the nightstand.
Avery tries to go back to sleep. He always does when he wakes up, because whatever or, more accurately, whoever awaits him on the other side of exhaustion is decidedly more pleasant than his current reality.
He can’t even get out of bed in the morning on most days, not that it wasn’t a problem before. At least it used to be manageable. Now, he’s chasing something that doesn’t exist anymore, an iconic duo gone solo.
Avery was never depressed. He always woke up joyful in the morning, he just lacked the energy to express himself before his first sip of coffee.
Nowadays, he fails to wake up with that same energy. Every time he goes to brush his teeth, he weighs the pros and cons of getting out of bed and decides maybe it isn’t worth the walk.
Avery can’t sleep anymore. He comes to the painful realization and embraces that reality, at least for now. His fingers dig into his pillow, and he’s reminded that he isn’t really made of slime. That their fabricated world, whatever sense of normalcy was formed within that world, didn't exist. Sometimes, he wishes it were real. At least then, he knows he’d be accompanied by a knight adorned in gold, somebody who gave everything of himself for somebody who he’d never met before. Because Derek had never met him before. They’d never even spoken, outside of the chat logs which he’d committed to the best of his memory. This person, so inconsequential in the real world, had become a martyr to the cause and in the process, he’d given up his own life for the sake of millions he did not know.
Avery doesn’t want to consider this torture. Really, he is torturing himself, but it’s more of a fitting tribute to the promise he’d made on the first day of the year. His New Year’s resolution is to never forget him. Such a painful reminder once a day ought to keep Derek tucked neatly in Avery’s frontal cortex. Or wherever the part of the brain that deals in memories is.
(The hippocampus, his brain skillfully provides. The thought doesn’t feel like Avery’s own, and he’s scared to think there’s someone in his brain, someone that shouldn’t be there. Something that shouldn’t be there. A voice besides his own.)
Avery stares at his desk, peeking out from under his covers, and gravels in terror at the laptop left ajar, untouched for 4 whole months. He can’t build the courage to open the laptop ever again, or unplug it for that matter. Otherwise, the countless chat logs, images, and Google Docs he’d collected in a personal folder will show, hanging like stars over his head and refusing to give his mind any semblance of peace. People his age, young adults, are people that would spend their youth skillfully, looking for fix after fix and attending party after party with no other plans.
Instead, he’s throwing away the best months of his fairly simple university life for someone he’d never even met before.
“God, get a hold of yourself,” Avery says to no one in particular. His dark brown hair is tousled and raised in directions he can’t even name—East is North, West is South?—and his eyes feel just about ready to fall out of his skull. He’s exhausted every ounce of moisture in his body, and he feels like he could just turn to dust right there; in short, he’s dehydrated and he’s hungry. But he can’t get out of bed on the off-chance that he’ll slip back into a deep slumber, enter a world that doesn’t exist, with someone who’s long gone and left little evidence of his existence. Despite his best efforts, it seems like Derek has been forgotten to all but Avery. That has to count for something, no?
Sometimes, he’ll sit awake thinking in the middle of the night. A new habit he formed and didn’t do often before. Avery had considered that maybe he’s just psychotic, that Derek was his fragile mind coping with it’s loneliness. He shakes the thought away, and his curls fall across his freckled face, into his eyes. He puffs, forcing the stray hairs out of his face.
Avery moves through the motions of everyday life. He brushes his teeth and eats a meal, something simple which doesn’t require much thought. He doesn’t pay attention to the shadows in his peripheral vision, stuff that isn’t really there. His mind plays cruel tricks on him whenever he’s preoccupied, hoping he won’t notice. The only thing that scares Avery is the idea that he isn’t alone inside his own head.
He stares at the laptop on his desk and wonders if everything that had led up to this moment was for nothing. The sacrifices, the memories that he can’t let go of, the coincidental friendship that had been formed along the way. It wouldn’t matter if a part of it escaped, somehow. If it slipped into the spaces of Avery’s mind, when he’d dumbly argued against a genius who basically knew the outcome, and understood that what needed to be done, needed to be done. Someone who foresaw what would happen if he didn’t follow through with it.
Derek was so brave.
“For… crying out loud,” Avery slams his knife against the table, the one he’d used to smear jam across a slice of bread in a feeble attempt at making a meal, at stuffing his mouth full of anything, really. Avery doesn’t swear often, religious parents and whatnot, and he supposes it’s just a habit he’s picked up. Abbreviations don’t count, in his mind. “For f’ing’s sake,” Avery adds distastefully, before his face morphs into something regretful. That was cringeworthy.
He can say fuck, shit, ass—all of this isn’t new to him. But apparently, these words are the words of the Devil himself. That’s what he’s been taught ever since he was knee-high to the ground, tucked into his mother’s side. Nowadays, his parents hardly call. Not because he has a particularly strained relationship with his parents: they were supportive but they weren’t present for periods of time during his childhood, and they aren’t a part of the picture right now. He loves his dad and adores his mom, but ever since he rode off into the sun for the highly-acclaimed university life, he hasn’t had much contact with them outside a monthly phone call. But Avery is busy, and they are busy people. Always were.
His phone is always dry, aside from the crazed notifications that hold no importance right now. He obviously doesn’t have classes—new year, new renovations to be done, he thinks—, and he can hear the bulldozers and cranes outside, reworking a part of their university from the bottom up. Avery wills himself into changing out of his PJ’s, tugging on loose, baggy jeans and an oversized sweater. It’s still cold as balls outside; April’s the time of year where the weather would usually take a more dramatic turn, leaning more towards warm weather and a dry environment.
Instead, when Avery leaves his apartment, he’s greeted with cold winds that instantly turn his skin pink. He picks out his bike from where it’s locked against a street pole, unlocking the mechanism with his key and shaking his bike loose.
When he starts to pedal, the wind in his hair and brushing past his face turns into something calming. It gives him the freedom to think for himself for the first time in a while. He doesn’t know what he wants to think about, other than the obvious things on his mind. Avery feels like his shoulders are carrying a weight they shouldn’t be, a thing he can’t name, something he doesn’t want to name.
Finding Derek seems an impossible task. He doesn’t entertain that idea any longer than he has to, pulling into the parking lot of the nearby store and locking his bike securely, giving the chain two experimental tugs as a test. As he backs away, he gives it a third tug just for good measure. In the supermarket, Avery’s mind plays tricks on him, as it does often these days. He’ll hear whispers that nobody else notices, faces he has no business knowing; the woman next to him picking out canned vegetables doesn’t notice the form in the edge of Avery’s peripheral vision.
He doesn’t know who the face belongs to, and he doesn’t bother trying to guess when the answer couldn’t be clearer. Every time he turns to look at it, face this person head-on, they’re gone. Because his brain doesn’t know what Derek looks like. It can’t fill in those blanks, and so it avoids the problem entirely.
“Sir? I asked if you’d like a bag with that?”
The voice of the pubescent boy behind the counter snaps Avery out of whatever trance he was in, when he was chasing his tail in circles around his own brain.
“Oh, yeah. Give me two, actually,” Avery says quickly, stuffing the plastic bags full of food, water and sweets. He scurries out of the supermarket once the cashier helps him with the bags; there’s a split second where the cashier looks nothing like a pubescent boy, in Avery’s peripheral vision. He looks like someone Avery shouldn’t be able to recognize.
Avery ties the grocery bags to his handlebars, making sure the weight is similar on either side so he can actually ride his bike, instead of toppling over the instant he tries to balance the two wheels and pedal away.
He doesn’t acknowledge the fact that it wasn’t a logical thought his own brain had. It was a feeling, or something passive, like word of mouth. Something he could’ve heard from somebody else, though he hasn’t spoken to anybody but the young cashier, and the parking lot is empty. Avery shrugs, deciding to ignore the thoughts that aren’t his, the words that tell him to look at this, or look at that.
So distracting.
Avery locks his bike once he reaches his apartment building and climbs the stairs to his apartment with the plastic bags in either one of his hands. He fumbles with the keys at the door and he sets the groceries on his kitchen table.
Avery’s apartment is small. He doesn’t have the means to move into a better place, but he sort of doesn’t want to, either. His apartment consists of a kitchen, a living room/bedroom/office, (he isn’t proud of the state of things as they are), and a single bathroom. It’s messy, it’s dirty, but it's home.
Avery decides to clean up after himself. He wasn’t particularly prepared to start cleaning, but anything that distracts him from the pounding headache he’s having today will do. He gathers his bedding into a pile and stuffs it into the corner of his bathroom, silently promising to himself that he’ll take care of it later. He removes the countless empty cans that riddle his floor, because he hasn’t had the motivation to do so until now.
It’s when he gathers the courage to approach his desk and start to clean the forms on his desk, the images he’s printed and the notebook he’d used to document his work, that Avery considers curling up in his chair and praying to whatever’s out there that he can find peace, somehow. That he might ever have a quiet day where he doesn’t think about eldritch horror, classic books and stuff that doesn’t exist.
Avery steels himself with a breath in, and a breath out. “Get it over with, just get it over with…” he says, rubbing at his eyes and the visible lines there that he wishes he could literally rub away. He hasn’t slept the night in longer than he wishes to admit, because he’s never met a psycho who called himself one.
While he’s picking up pages consisting of chat logs, timelines and ideas, Avery accidentally presses on the laptop’s touchpad, waking the half-open screen to something he never wanted to see again. Derek’s goodbye document seems untouched for the most part, and Avery has trained himself to not pay attention to the details of this part of his life, to ignore the past and move on as best he can. But the text is decisively longer at the edge of his peripheral vision, and it’s irking him the wrong way. He knows YouTube videos don’t have particularly long links, especially not two to three lines of text he refuses to make out.
When Avery takes an actual look at the screen, his eyes are unfocused and blurred, because the artificial light has always hurt his eyes, especially in the relative darkness of his apartment, where the blinds have been drawn.
“The footage in the folder belonging to ‘Derek Hutchins’ has been temporarily seized for investigation by the U.S Department of Metaphysical Sciences. We thank you for your patience,” Avery echoes the words on the screen, falling silent the moment the last syllables leave his mouth. He doesn’t understand, and he almost can’t believe it.
Avery nearly decides that maybe he’s in over his head. That he really has gone crazy and that he’d suffered some kind of psychotic break. Maybe it was the fact that another human being gave their life for someone they didn’t even know, something that weighed on Avery’s conscience every single day, tortured him in the middle of the night and haunted his dreams. The Department of Metaphysical Sciences? Is that even a real thing?
When he slaps himself a few times, blinking his eyes clear of any blur and refreshing the page for what feels like the 200th time but is realistically about the sixth, does Avery even consider not shutting his laptop and selling it to the first person he sees.
As far as he knows, the D.M.S, whatever it is, isn’t an operating agency or department within the United States, and when Avery opens a new tab and reverse-searches every acronym of the department, from ‘D.M.S’ to ‘Department of Metaphysical Sciences’ to ‘Department of M.S,’ every result is the same. It redirects him to the Department of Homeland Security, specifically a line to call in and give information on threats to national security and the such. It doesn’t really matter how he words it, whatever this is, whatever’s happened to Derek, and whoever is trying to bury what happened; Avery is clearly in deep shit.
Whatever the D.M.S is, it doesn’t show up on any forums or websites at all. The earliest reference to the D.M.S is a 1998 newspaper clipping that mentions them in passing, but other than that, Avery’s reverse-search comes up clean. His head starts to hurt from the artificial light, staring at the laptop and the one Reddit post from 6 years ago discussing the newspaper clipping in short detail.
The Reddit account seems to no longer be in use, as whoever was behind the account hasn’t posted anything in the last 6 years. In fact, his last post spoke about methods to vanish digitally, specifically without a trace, though from what Avery can see, the post had been archived almost immediately after it had been posted. Certainly weird, and Avery knows better than to overlook these details, but this could be a simple case of somebody trying to get off the grid. Though, how likely is that really? That somebody coincidentally vanishes off the face of the Earth in the same way this Department of Metaphysical Sciences had been going about wiping Derek’s documentations of that Minecraft world clean? What is the Department of Metaphysical Sciences is the only question that matters right now.
Instead of doing anything sensible once he discovers a person’s last words are being quietly erased from existence, seized by the government no less, Avery doesn’t even try to acknowledge it. In his mind, if he ignores the problem, it’ll eventually go away or solve itself.
After all, what chances does a student have against the United States government?
Derek Hutchins.
It clicks into place the same way he’d remembered to balance the weight of the groceries on his bike’s handlebars, or how he’d recalled the anatomy of the brain, even though he’d never heard of the hippocampus before. A thought that wasn’t his, and Avery’s given these random occurrences a nickname.
He’s acknowledged his third Derek-moment, where everything clicks into place and suddenly he feels ten times smarter for a few short seconds, and then he’s back down the ranks to the average person. The government couldn’t be this stupid, right?
They gave him more information than Avery started off with. A last name. A family to tie Derek’s name to, a full name he can actually use. Suddenly, finding Derek doesn’t seem so impossible anymore, but he shakes the thought out of his head just as fast as it arrives.
Avery’s scared. He’s terrified out of his mind, at the same intensity as that one time, in the game, when he’d been pursued by something that couldn’t be seen and moved unheard, this horrible, lumping and torturous form that contained the knowledge of all that could be and all that would be. When candles had been blown out all around him and he’d been chased down a hole by whatever it was.
The only thing that puts his worries to rest is that this isn’t some eldritch horror or cosmic entity anymore. It’s a tangible, physical and real form that he can find, see and touch. A department within the United States of America, one that apparently doesn’t exist, that shouldn’texist.
“Isn’t it funny?” A voice in his head provides, and Avery spins around, because it sounded like it was coming from right behind him, like someone was really there. But he’s simply greeted by the quiet hum of his apartment and Avery didn’t really expect anything else.
It is pretty funny that the government managed to do the opposite of what they were trying to do.
Searching for the name in a public records website turns up millions of different ‘Derek Hutchins’. Avery narrows his search area to the United States, because it’s unlikely Derek is from another country, taking into consideration that a U.S department seized the last footage Avery had of his friend, but that’s just a hunch. Still, there are over 30 Derek Hutchins in the United States, and from whatever scraps of public records he can find, Avery deduces that they could be living anywhere from Texas to Mississippi, Michigan, Arizona and Illinois. He doesn’t have that kind of time. Going on a cross-state journey is expensive enough as it stands, but simply hoping that this Derek Hutchins is the right one isn’t a gamble Avery can take.
Avery also can’t really ask anybody to help in the search. What he and Derek have gone through, it sounds insane said out loud. Hell, he probably is insane for even considering a wild goose hunt for a person he hasn’t even met.
“I can’t do this again,” Avery says to his empty apartment. He hopes it isn’t really empty, that there’s someone else there to hear his voice. That he isn’t really alone in the world. “I don't even know where to start.”
His declaration seems to fall on deaf ears. Nothing changes. This isn’t a game, it’s real life. Avery scoffs. He doesn’t know why he thought that would work. What was he expecting? Another crafting table? Some sign pointing out the answer? He doesn’t bother himself anymore with this nonsense. Avery has hit a dead end and he’s as tired as he looks. He only ever got out of bed to be productive for a little.
Even if he entertains this chase, does it for the love of the game, what is he hoping to find? The shell of a ruined mind that was once so brilliant, it had outsmarted a god?
Avery sinks into his bed with a sigh, not changing out of his clothes, he tugs at his blanket and rolls himself up into a burrito. This is the only way he can really sleep, most of the time. It feels safe, like a place of his own making where he can choose to be comfortable, where can choose who to let in and who to turn down.
Avery lets his mind wander, going through a mental checklist of what he has to do when he wakes up. He’ll eat a meal and maybe pop a beer. There’s a football game going on later today. He’s never really liked football, it’s just turned into a way to pass the time, but Avery still likes watching the ball fly across the court and…
When Avery ‘wakes up’, he feels something tickling his arm. The endless grass fields are back, and the sun is shining, and the homes from across the field are still there, still empty. Avery has spent what’s felt like hours just staring at those homes, waiting for something to change, but nothing ever does. They’re the one thing that never changes here, besides the weather. It’s always sunny here, with that warm tint to everything that makes it feel more like a relaxing vacation to some place far, far away.
“You’ve finally woken up,” Derek calls out from a few feet behind him. Avery realizes he’s laying in the grass and stands just as quickly. He stares at the knight, and then back down to his own arms. He’s made of slime, again, wearing the Hawaiian shirt and shorts he always wore in-game, again. He eyes the solid gold armor Derek wears, like it’s the first time he’s seeing all of this. In reality, these dreams are a nightly occurrence. “I was wondering if you ever would.”
“Where are we?” Avery asks, fully aware that what feels like mere minutes here account for hours in the real world. Dreams could span years and it would only realistically be about seven seconds in real life. The question is something even he doesn’t know the answer to, so Avery braces himself. He knows the world should disappear by now, start to collapse in on itself while he stands there, powerless to stop it. All he really wanted to do was take a nap, one where he didn’t face the same reoccurring dream, where any questions he asked never were answered. But it never comes.
There’s no catastrophic shaking, no reality-bending. The world stays just as it is, and Derek looks confused as to why every single muscle in Avery’s body has turned tense. Avery stares between Derek, the houses in the distance, at the countless blades of knee-high grass that sways with the breeze and he doesn’t know how it’s all still here. Unless he somehow knew where they were?
“What’s going on?” Avery demands, turning to d3rlord3, to Derek, to the one person who has to know the answer. Derek doesn’t say anything. This is unusual. He’s had this same dream a hundred different times, and every time Avery’s asked a question that he didn’t know the answer to, his brain freaked out and woke him up in a pool of sweat. “Why hasn’t anything happened yet?”
But the world is stable.
Unlike before, his question doesn’t seem to press upon the fabric of this universe. It doesn’t unravel around him and it doesn’t fall apart when something is unknown. Instead, it’s just as calm as when Avery had first arrived. Derek looks the same, his armor shining against the sun, causing a glare which Avery has to look away from. It all feels too real to be a dream, but Avery knows for sure that it has to be. There is no other explanation.
What’s he supposed to believe? That this is the Afterlife? Or some bridge between the real world and Derek, wherever he is?
Derek suddenly steps forward, and Avery takes half a step back. He doesn’t want to do this tango again, the one that cost him everything, and the memory does shake the world the tiniest bit.
Derek doesn’t shove him, and the world falls back into quiet stability.
Instead, Derek hands Avery pieces of paper the slime wasn’t even aware the knight had been holding. They contain a random string of letters that, for some reason, he can’t forget. They seem drilled into his forehead, and whatever chance he had to somehow forget the string of letters is gone.
“Find me,” Derek says, stuffing the paper into the front pocket of Avery’s shirt, for what reason, Avery does not know. “I am real. Remember who I am. Find me.”
“No, no. You don’t understand. I can’t find you,” Avery begins, moving his hands in the air as he tries to explain. “I don’t know what you want me to do. I’m not smart enough—I can’t do this. Not again.” Avery sighs, and he really hopes Derek can understand. Who is he kidding? This isn’t Derek. This is his imagination, he’s basically talking to himself.
“But if not you, then who?” Derek questions, the only indication that it was a question and not a statement was the tilt of his head. Before Avery can argue, before he can speak again, Derek continues. “You already have all the pieces. All that’s left for you to do is to put them together.”
Avery wants to ask him to elaborate, because all he really has is a piece of torn-up paper, but as the world begins to shake around them and the homes in the distance start to fade away, as Derek starts to fade away, Avery nods. Because if not him, then who? Who will take to the streets to yell about this injustice and try to make it right? Erasing a person’s entire existence off the face of the world isn’t something a government agency should be doing in the first place, and they’re clearly aware of what went down within their Minecraft world. So if Avery has even the smallest chance of winning, he needs to take it.
“I can’t promise anything,” Avery says firmly to the person he believes is truly real, that it’s Derek himself. It’s easier that way, still believing in the lie. “But I’ll do my best.” Avery gives a parting nod to the knight.
“I know you will,” is the last thing Avery hears before he wakes up, Derek’s voice, something he hadn’t paid attention to before, is exactly what Avery imagines he sounds like.
He hopes he’ll get to hear it in person, one day.
Avery wakes up to the sound of his phone, vibrating on his bedside table. He fumbles with the phone in his hand, and the bright light that frames his face causes him to squint at the screen, and what he sees is a number he doesn’t recognize. He instantly sits up, throwing his blanket across the room and standing to his feet. It’s too… well, he can’t use that excuse.
“Give me a break…” Avery rubs his eyes after his second awakening, his thumb working the phone open and swiping on the call, trying to get rid of it first, before finally deciding to pick up the phone.
“What is—“ Avery begins, but his voice doesn’t travel far.
The person on the other end cuts in, “Hey Ave—!” A female voice calls out, and whatever’s happening on the other end, Avery can’t make out, but he knows who this person is. He recognizes her voice though he doesn’t place it immediately. “You busy, dude?” The person he can’t even name asks, as though they’d been friends for such a long time it’s stupid of Avery to not remember their name. And Avery really starts to believe he’s started to forget things, that all of this stress and this whole mess has weighed on his mind more than he could ever admit.
That’s like, the tenth time he’s considered that he’s psychotic today.
“I’m sorry, who am I speaking to?” Avery asks, surprised at the sound of his own voice. It’s deeper than he means for it to be, probably because he’s just woken out of a deep slumber, but he never usually sleeps that well, so what gives? His brain has to play catch-up with the lady on the other end of the call because there’s countless movements, countless noises that make him move the phone a little farther from his ear.
“You don’t recognize me? It’s Mia!” The woman—Mia, identifies herself. The name doesn’t immediately ring any bells, but Avery’s still drunk with sleep, and he can hardly recall what he did yesterday, let alone whatever selfless act he must’ve committed to have his number saved in a girls phone. “Listen, I’m in… a bit of a bind, man. You remember me from your classic literature class, don’t you? You’re the only guy within a mile radius of here who’s available!” She adds, asking a favor of someone who’s basically a stranger. Or, at least, Avery thinks he’s a stranger to this lady. He still hasn’t woken up properly.
“Yeah, I think I remember you… Wait, you said available?” Avery sighs, standing to his feet and picking out a jacket. “So I’m not the first person you’ve asked? I’m just the first one to pick up. What even makes you think I’m available?”
He knows he can’t just leave this lady to whatever problem the world has thrown at her, but he can’t slow his search, either. And yeah, Avery’s come to that decision. He’s going to find Derek, or his family, or any proof that he ever existed, and he’s going to find out what’s happened. It’s what Derek’s asked him to do, yet again. He doesn’t fully understand the forces at play here yet, but Avery is willing to rise up to the challenge. He doesn’t know what compels him to the decision but it doesn’t even feel like he’s the one behind the wheel anymore. Like this is what he’s meant to do, now. Whatever. There are more pressing matters.
There’s silence on the other end and shuffling Mia’s searching for something, maybe looking through a bag, before she speaks again. “Please don’t hang up,” Mia pleads, and her voice seems uncharacteristically soft, and now Avery recognizes it. She’d asked to get a copy of his notes, and Avery had pleasantly agreed, because that was the right thing to do. But that was weeks ago. How is he expected to do her another favor?
“And you want me to do what, exactly?” Avery asks with a sigh, pinching his phone between his shoulder and his ear and shrugging on his coat. If he was a lesser person, he’d probably deny a person who clearly needs his help. Unfortunately, Avery is too kind and too dumb for his own good.
“Could you come to campus?” Mia asks, her voice uncertain and afraid, and Avery knows she’s doing it on purpose, whether to score sympathy points he doesn’t know, he can just tell it’s on purpose, but he really exactly say no either. “I know it’s a big ask, but everyone else is either hungover or getting hungover.” Mia mutters into the phone, and Avery’s already trotting down the stairs of his apartment building. He reaches the ground floor in record time, and the cold air bites his cheeks the moment he steps outside, just in time to hear Mia add: “You’re the only person I can rely on right now. I’m sorry.”
Avery sighs audibly, fishing the small key to his bike lock from his jacket pocket and stuffing it into the keyhole, twisting the bike chain free. He should be getting paid overtime by the angels that made him so tolerant and sympathetic, because he’s on break and any other person would probably ignore such a request from someone they hardly know, because people are often sinful and selfish. But maybe he’s giving humanity a bad rap right now. Whatever the reason, Avery starts peddling.
“I’ll be there soon, just sit tight,” Avery says, adjusting the little strap on his handlebar, where his phone can be adjusted to fit so he can comfortably speak without having to worry about his phone flying away.
“What are you doing on campus during renovations, anyway?” Avery asks.
“N-nothing interesting,” Mia responds just as quickly.
He decides not to push it. Instead, Avery begins to pedal faster. This can’t be good news, because nobody in their right mind would call him, of all people, for help unless they really were in a bind.
—————
“Are you dying?”
“No?”
“What’s wrong, then?” Avery asks the girl in the red dress, standing in front of him. She’s incredibly short, is the first thing that comes to his mind once he lays eyes on her, standing in the hall of their university, near the professors lounge. He really has no interest whatsoever in meeting any of his professors outside of classes, “And why are you in a dress?”
“I told you, I’ll explain later,” Mia says simply, looking behind her and down the hall with paranoia, or maybe she’s expecting someone else. Whatever the case, the words strike Avery harder than expected. The last time someone offered to explain later, they ended up sacrificing themselves to save the world, and Avery’s already faced that challenge once already. He’d rather not deal with it another time. “Just—come here.”
That’s all the warning Avery gets before she links their arms together, spinning him around and forcing him into step as they walk down the hall. Avery feels incredibly underdressed, despite the fact he’s standing in a condensated hallway which reeks of a smell he can’t name. These renovations are definitely taking a toll on the place, as Avery takes a look at the tarp set up in one of the halls and hears the drilling taking place on the other side.
“What’s with this?” Avery asks, nodding toward their interlocking arms as they trot down the hall at the same pace. He only realizes they’re not alone when two gentlemen exit the male restrooms and whisper to each other while staring at Mia, and then at Avery.
Suddenly, the hall feels awkward, and equally as long, like if Avery tried to make a run for it, the entire hall would seem impossibly large. These guys are clearly older, stronger and tougher than Avery could ever aspire to be. After all, he has little to no muscle to himself and he’s out in baggy jeans, a hoodie and a jacket; while these gym-bros are jacked, rocking t-shirts that wrap around their forearms and show just how big their muscles really are.
“I have another question,” Avery begins, leaning down within ear-shot to whisper in the space between them. Mia just shrugs him off and keeps walking, her chin held up high as she walks past these guys. It doesn’t click yet, what Avery’s here to do, but it eventually will, and he sort of doesn’t want to find out if it costs him a fist to the nose.
“Shush! Play along,” is all Mia says in response, tugging him forward at a faster pace, but the guys stop in their tracks, blocking their way. They aren’t impassable by any means, and when Mia leads Avery to pass around them, the biggest of the two steps into their way.
“Mia,” the man says, looking from Avery to Mia, then from Mia to Avery. He sticks up a pointer finger, pointing at Avery with a decidedly offensive finger that could be saying ‘seriously? This is the guy?’ “This is the twerp you’re dating? You left me for…”
The big man trails off, looking Avery up and down, and despite his best efforts, Avery can’t help but puff his chest up a little bit to seem bigger. He isn’t a short guy by any means. Avery’s around six foot, and he knows a lot of people who are taller than he is, but this guy is not only tall, he’s huge.
“Sure. Did you expect me to tell you about him? We’re done, Donald,” Mia argues,
And it all suddenly clicks. Avery’s here to make another man—Donald, jealous. How anybody could ever be jealous of him is beyond his comprehensive ability, but Avery plays along, staring the other individual down with the same amount of effort in his eyes.
The smaller, but equally as impressive, muscular man that stands behind the large man is sizing him up, too. It’s here that Avery slips into his role, because it’s clear these two are probably assholes, here to court Mia back into their circle. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, or why he’s doing it. Neither of them should even be here, this is technically trespassing, but who gives a shit, right?
“Yeah. Is there a problem?” Avery asks, stepping forward, and Mia suddenly looks pale; he can see her face in the corner of his eye. She looks like she’s just seen a ghost, one that is rapidly approaching a boiling point. And Avery is poking the bear with a stick. It’s here that his obsession with old high school rom-coms comes in handy, because he knows every cringy one-liner and weird question he can throw at the man in front of him to push his buttons. If you can’t fight them, annoy them.
“Not unless you want one,” Don eagerly replies, clearly just as much a fan of old high school rom-coms as Avery is. That, or he’s preparing to throw a punch that will knock Avery back in time.
Mia quickly interrupts, standing between them and holding her hands up in surrender, preparing to cover Avery’s ass with a few lies. “Excuse him, Don! He’s just hungover like the rest of us, right?” Mia conjures a convincing lie, because Avery’s sure he can pass as hungover, with the bags under his eyes, and his bags that have their own bags.
Before Donald can shove Mia out of the way and give Avery a piece of his clenched fists, the smaller man who’d been sizing him up earlier steps in, placing a hand on Donald’s shoulder and whispering into his ear, something about ‘not being worth the trouble.’ Avery’s prepared to show him who’s ’not worth the trouble,’ though Donald backs off, seemingly moved by the smaller man’s words, and turns to walk away.
Mia releases a breath she clearly didn’t know she was holding, taking a look at Avery over her shoulder and flashing a scowl.
“That was too convincing! What are you, a film major?” Mia sighs, planting her hands on her hips and leaning forward to inspect Avery’s face. Her long, dark brown hair smells distinctly of strawberry and it’s a similar shade to his own, but he doesn’t pay any more attention to it. “And you,” Mia turns to face the smaller man, “thanks for the assist, Erik!” She beams, hugging the man—Erik— who quickly flushes, sparing a glance over his shoulder for Donald, who has conveniently disappeared.
“I—it was nothing, really,” Erik murmurs, scratching his chin where stubble has begun to take form. He’s taller than Avery by a few inches, and he takes notice of that when he cranes his head a little to take in Avery’s freckled cheeks, his curly brown hair and his decidedly comfortable outfit. The flush is gone from his cheeks now, and Mia backs away, planting a hand on her hip again and leaning on it as she looks between Avery and Erik, who are staring at each other. “This the guy? Is he really a film major?” Erik suddenly asks, similarly to Donald, he sticks a finger in Avery’s direction.
“Actually, I’m in classic literature—“ Avery begins, raising a finger to butt into the conversation, but he quickly closes his mouth, because Mia pops into the conversation, throwing an arm around his neck and tugging his head down into a choke-hold. For someone so short, she’s decisively strong.
“He was the first guy to pick up! Glad he did, too,” Mia says gleefully, releasing her hold on Avery’s neck once he pats her arm thrice, indicating he can no longer breathe and can’t scream ‘uncle’ either. “You put up quite a performance. I’m impressed!”
“Yeah, but I think those comebacks would actually land with some polishing,” Erik decides, placing a finger on his chin as if he were deep in thought. Avery doesn’t even know these people personally, and they’re already acting like they’ve known him for a lifetime.
“What was your problem with that guy?” Avery asks dumbfoundedly, because he doesn’t know why he needed to be here if Mia clearly had a stronger, bigger, actual friend she could’ve used. Erik is certainly big enough to scare away people like Donald, so what gives? “And why’d you need me here? I clearly can’t show any strong arm. Why not just ask… what was your name again?” Avery points at Erik.
“You seriously don’t get it? Come on, man! That was an Oscar-worthy performance,” Mia declares, and Avery suddenly feels dumber than everybody else in the hall. By ‘everybody’ he means Erik and Mia, who shouldn’t be that hard to best in terms of intellect, at least from what he’s seen and heard. Mia even throws her hand around his shoulders this time, standing on her tippy toes to do so. Still, the weight of her arm is firm against his shoulders anyway.
“It’s Erik—and I can’t exactly be his friend and date his ex,” Erik explains—was it with a ‘k’ or a ‘c’? Avery’s brain can’t tell, because it’s basically the same pronunciation, but that’s besides the point.
Avery’s either gone brain-dead from his lack of sleep, or he’s really having the most fun he’s had in a while with two people he’s only just formally met.
“I think this calls for a drink,” Mia says, her heels tapping against the tiled floor of the hall, leading Avery forward. Erik/Eric? falls in step beside them. “Maybe a bite to eat?
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea,” Avery mutters as they approach the exit, the two glass doors filtering in the mid-day sun as they slide open. “Isn’t half the university already hung over?”
“All the more reason for us to have that drink. We can’t have you feeling left out now, right?” Mia continues, her arm pressing firmer against his shoulders as Erik opens the double-doors for them, and once they’re through, he follows them down the steps.
For the first time in a while, Avery feels… content, in a way he can’t explain. Like his mind is finally his own and that he can actually think for once, instead of practicing self-isolation and stuffing his mouth full of ice cream and smoothies every other day. For all intents and purposes, today might’ve been the most productive day he’s had in months.
But he won’t forget about his mission. Not even as he rounds the corner to the parking lot and Erik unlocks an old, barely-working white van, expecting them to huddle into the back.
“…you’ve got to be kidding me. I thought you said you scrapped this thing?” Mia exclaims, and the tensing arm around Avery’s shoulders forces him to crane his neck in an uncomfortable way.
“It was too beautiful to throw away,” Erik explains, opening the sliding door to the van, revealing a bunch of space, alongside some casual supplies like duct tape and cables, huddled into the corner.
Avery’s really being kidnapped. Somehow, he doesn’t mind. This seems like the first semblance of a friendship he’s faced in a while, and it feels like this could really be something.
A turn in the right direction.