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The day Avery left wasn’t special.
It wasn’t some special holiday or regal celebration. He hadn’t stormed away after a palace-shaking argument nor some plan to marry him off to a foreign kingdom. He had woken up that morning with the knowledge that another Skywars tournament was in two days time and chose to leave and never look back.
For almost two years, he had been slipping gold to the guard stationed outside his door for him to look away as he escaped the palace. He would enter the Skywars tournaments under his alias, “Themo Stmayo”, and win or lose come back to the palace before his father realized he was missing.
For a supposedly “all-knowing” King, his father never noticed his outings. Strange, considering the man always felt the need to be in charge of everything. His father had always kept him isolated, controlling every aspect of his life without even being present for it. Who he conversed with, what books he was allowed to read, the exact contents and portions of his meals to keep his body in an ideal neutral state. Not curvy, not skinny, not built, not pudgy, not even a slim athletic build. Only what his father considered the perfect form.
It wasn’t just the shape of his body, however. It was everything about his physical form. He was supposed to be smooth, boxy, featureless. No molding his slime to mimic hair, no giving himself extra features just for fun, for the Nethers sake he had to fight his entire childhood just to be able to have an actual face.
“If I allowed you to grow any sort of desirable features, others may try to pursue you. I’m protecting you from those perverted scoundrels who would rob you of your purity.”
Bullshit.
Bullshit which led to Avery waking up two days ago with the intent to never again step foot in the palace.
He had handed the guard double the usual gold and told him to go and retire. He knew the man would be the first to receive his father’s wrath once he found him missing and he didn’t want yet another innocent caught in the cross-fire. He had packed only gold with him, anything else he brought would cause suspicion. He could still feel everything he did that day; the fear of being caught, the excitement of freedom, the relief of making it outside the palace walls.
His first course of action was buying normal clothing, camping and survival gear, and as many green grapes as he could carry in a sack. His stomach hated him once he had consumed them all, but it had turned his body a greenish color everywhere besides the ends of his limbs, so he told his stomach to go suck it.
As soon as he had disguised himself, he stared into a nearby river and began to mold himself. He didn’t change his body much, though the thought of experimenting with gendered forms was something he would keep for a later date. For his first time choosing how he appeared, Avery only gave himself tendril-looking hair that he had seen on the shop-keeper. After hesitating for a moment, he also molded himself a small tail, purely to piss off his father.
No one cared that the Slime-kin from the Skywars tournaments was now living in the forest. No one questioned when his ombré changed mid-fight. No one cared that the name he gave was obviously imagined on the spot. No one cared about Avery, and it was paradise.
Until a golden knight had to come and ruin to his peace.
A groan pulled Avery out of his head and back in the present. Right. He had taken the injured knight to his camp despite knowing his freedom was on the line. He wanted freedom, but his empathy for the knight who was obviously a pawn for his father won out in the end. He had set the knight on the bedroll beside the campfire, lifting his helmet only enough to clean and bandage his neck. The urge to take a peek at his face was strong, but he resisted and focused instead on his own “injuries”.
Despite the composition of their bodies, Slime-kin like him are a very durable species. They don’t have flesh, bone, muscle, or organs, so physical attacks are ineffective against them. Slime-kin are more vulnerable to magic than anything else, especially spells that could destabilize their bodies. Luckily none of the thugs they fought knew magic or enchanted their weapons, so his only ‘injury’ was the slime missing from his stomach, which easy to fix by eating and letting his body fill the missing area. He could still feel the cold arm of the Enderman breaching his form, his claws gripping into the deepest regions of his body no one should be able to touch-
“Thank you.” Avery snapped his head towards the knight, surprised to hear him say anything that wasn’t a threat to comply or else. “For saving me. I owe you a debt.” The knight wasn’t looking his way, staring at the tent instead of his face. Ashamed he needed help, or maybe embarrassed to thank him? It didn’t mater. Avery saw an opportunity and he wasn’t going to squander it.
“You can pay me back by leaving and not telling anyone where I am.” Avery offered sternly. He didn’t receive a response, which he considered a rejection. Damn. “In any case, neither of us are going anywhere for a while. I can’t be seen for a few days in case those guys wanna go for round two, and you can’t go far with that busted rib of yours.” The knight finally turned to face him, most likely to argue, but stayed quiet aside for a painful gasp.
“I don’t wanna say I told you so but-“
“What are you cooking?”
Avery moved his gaze back to the pot above the fire. “Stew. I still had some dried rabbit meat and leftover vegetables.” If the knight wanted to play twenty questions, he’d happily participate. “What did my father offer you for bringing me back, Goldie?”
The knight hesitated, something Avery expected. He didn’t care much if he gave an answer, but his curiosity was hoping for one. This knight seemed, in a weird way, more like a person than the other armored men he had been around.
“Reinstatement of my titles, as well as elevating my family to Noble status.” The knight tried to keep calm, but Avery could hear a twinge of excitement in his voice. Pity wormed its way into his heart despite everything.
Avery turned to look the knight where he believed the eyes would be under the helmet. “Did he say that? Or did he give you some vague mention of ‘redemption’ or ‘honor’ without actually promising anything in return?” He waited patiently for a response, rolling his eyes and turning back to stir the pot.
They sat in silence until the stew was ready. Avery poured one bowl and handed it to the knight, making sure he had a steady grip before releasing it. The knight (he really should learn his name) lifted his helmet enough to swallow the soup. Avery looked at his own bowl and took a sip to give him privacy. It wasn’t the best tasting meal, but he preferred it to the stingy diets his father kept his on.
“Is your side okay?” The knight asked him between sips. Avery hadn’t realized he noticed, but he pushed down his surprise and showed him the previously missing area.
“Good as new. Slimes can’t really be hurt by anything that isn’t magical.” He shrugged the concern off of his shoulders like dust. “Wanna tell me your name, Goldie?” The knight stared at him (at least, he looked in his direction) for a long minute, silence once again brewing between them. Just as he was about to give up, a loud thunk rang through the campsite.
“Sir Derek Hutchins, Your Highness.”
Avery was so fucked.
The knight was handsome, even by slime standards. Brown eyes that spoke nothing about him but invited you closer. Twisted black hair tied in a ponytail. Dark human skin with black and white-tipped feathers on his cheeks and ears and probably elsewhere on his body. A gold lined scar cut through his right eye, probably from the same incident that damaged his wing. His voice, gods his voice, he could hear it unfiltered with the helmet off and he wanted him to whisper things in his ear-
“Avery- shit- you know that already-“ Avery silenced himself with another slurp from his bowl, the tips of his slime turning magenta. How could the knight- Derek respect him if he tripped over his words the moment he got a look at that unfairly handsome face. To his credit, Derek didn’t laugh, choosing to return to silence while they ate.
By the time they had finished their bowls, the sun was barely peeking over the horizon. Avery kept his gaze away when he heard the knight begin to remove his armor, even if he desperately wanted to take the quickest look. He was more respectful than that.
“You can have the tent. You’re injured.” It made the most sense in Avery’s mind. If he was covered while he was at his most vulnerable, there was a lesser chance of him being attacked. It wouldn’t be the first night Avery would stay up to act as a watchman.
The knight didn’t like that idea if the clicking noise he heard was correct. “It’s your campsite. That would be most rude. I am perfectly content with a bedroll.”
Avery could feel his slime bubbling up in frustration. Stupid knights and their need to self-sacrifice. “I insist.” He paired the command with a glare, slipping into a more regal tone that meant “I need to be polite with you but let it be known I absolutely despise you”. Still, Derek didn’t agree, so Avery turned to look him in the eye with a determined face.
“We’ll both sleep in the tent! There, everyone’s happy?” It wasn’t a genuine offer (though he wouldn’t mind sharing a tent with Sir Hutchins all things considered). His plan was to make the knight see that the best option was having the tent to himself. No one would want to share a bed with a Slime if they had overheard even half the rumors about his kind.
He should’ve known that things were never that simple, because Derek only nodded and made his way towards the tent. He wordlessly opened the flap before looking back at Avery expectedly. Shit, he really wanted to do this? Stupid knights. Avery sighed and crawled in behind him. Sharing a tent with the man who tried to bring him back to the palace was better than sleeping out in the open.
The tent was smaller than either of them expected, so they ended up with their backs against each other. It was somehow the least awkward position they could manage in the space they had. Avery closed his eyes and commanded his body to fall asleep, barely giving the man beside him a thought.
-
The next day Derek almost slit his throat.
Obviously it was from shock and not some secret plan to kill him while he was asleep, but that didn’t mean Avery wouldn’t act bitter about it for the rest of the morning.
It wasn’t as hard to settle into a routine as he thought it would be. He did have to force the knight to not do strenuous tasks at first, which quickly became frustrating.
“I don’t want to sit around all day,” the knight had complained after Avery pulled him away from his sword for the third time.
“Do you wanna heal or not?” Avery didn’t know much about solid human biology, but what he did know was that if a human stressed an injury during the healing process it could worsen greatly. He wasn’t going to let that happen, not to him.
He didn’t dare question why he cared so much about Derek.
Knowing that he wouldn’t relent (knights never did with their endless loyalty and what not), he shoved a bucket of potatoes into his lap. “There! You can peel potatoes.” Avery had stormed away to hunt before he responded, but he heard the sound of potato-skin peeling off as he trekked into the forest.
Avery had never hunted before his escape, a very obvious fact anyone could see. In those two days, he hadn’t killed anything bigger than a rabbit, and even that took hours in the woods. He was going to stick to a diet of vegetables from town and whatever he could forage in the woods until a solid had to come along and require protein to survive. How rude. Still, Avery was a gracious host, and he wouldn’t let the knight starve.
His thoughts began to turn to the knight yet again. Derek Hutchins. In the back of his mind the name was familiar, but his father always kept him away from politics and other royal affairs (which made no sense if he was going to rule the Kingdom one day, but the last time he questioned it his lower half took four days to regenerate). Derek was odd to him. He carried himself like a proper royal guard with all the proper speech and altruism, but there was something more to him. Even if he had originally been sent to capture him and bring him to his father, Derek was in his care for the time being and he was too curious to let him go.
Avery heard rustling from his left and whipped around, seeing a wild boar grazing in a patch of grass. The slime inhaled the wet air of the forest and aimed his crossbow at the boars neck. He only had one arrow. He only needed one arrow. He would only kill clean and swift and not leave an ounce of suffering for the poor animal. He would not hold it down and press the tip slowly into its flesh while it snarled- no the arrow would go through the back of its neck and kill it within seconds it wouldn’t suffer it wouldn’t suffer it was a child animal it didn’t deserve-
The arrow ripped through the flesh of the boars neck. It didn’t suffer. It didn’t get the chance to squeal before it collapsed on the ground. It didn’t suffer. A merciful kill. It didn’t suffer. Avery hung the crossbow across his back and picked up the lower body of the boar to drag it back to the campsite.
By the time he retraced his steps, it was almost sundown and Derek had already started a fire. Beside him there was an entire bucket of peeled potatoes, and Avery barely resisted the urge to say ‘I told you so’. It was pork and potato stew that night, Avery keeping the fire stoked while Derek skinned and cut the boar. Neither of them brought up that his hands were still shaking.
“What’d you do? You know, before you enlisted in the guard.” The question left his mouth before he could stop it. The sounds of a blade cutting through fat stopped for a moment but resumed soon after.
“Nothing, unless you count fixing doors and silos for the neighbors. I enlisted for the Academy as soon as I was old enough. I was a scrawny kid, not much use before that.” He stated it like it was a fact, but Avery heard the undertone of pain as if it was shouted right in his ear. He didn’t know how to have emotional conversations, but something inside him wanted Derek to know I’m here. His body moved to squeeze his shoulder before he could stop it. Derek froze at the touch at first but relaxed soon after as they went back to their respective jobs.
Later that night in their tent, Derek whispered a soft ‘thank you’ between them.
They didn’t talk about it in the morning.
-
Another three days pass.
There was still a nights worth of meat from the boar, maybe two if they made it last, but Derek wanted to move as much as he could since the initial pain was almost gone. Avery didn’t want to go hunting (only because of Derek not being able to hold a sword properly not anything having to do with the boar) so he crafted a second fishing rod and taught the knight the basics of fishing.
Compared to hunting, Avery was extraordinary at fishing. When there still were multiple ruling families in Carcosa (a time Avery was barely old enough to remember), he had “cousins” close in age who would chase him around the palace gardens. They weren’t his cousins by ‘blood’ (slime), nor were they related to his father (his father had no family as far as he knew), they were simply to children of the other noble families who called each other “cousin” to show unity. Something along those lines anyways.
One such “cousin” of his was named Alex, son of the Orange King. Alex was a golem made from copper, though on a much bigger scale then the ones put to work in the palace. Alex usually sat to the side when they played outside, fishing in the garden pond and making Avery swear not to tell his father where his imported fish were going. He had asked him once why he enjoyed fishing so much, after all who could find waiting and struggling enjoyable in any way?
“The water is nice. The fresh air is nice. The surface is just… nice.” Alex had responded, right before needing Avery to help him reel in a huge catch.
When his father slaughtered dethroned the other royal houses, Alex had been shipped North to the mining colonies.
Avery sometimes wondered how long it had been since he saw the surface.
The day before he left the palace, he received a letter by someone named “Crafty” that Alex had escaped after six years of imprisonment and was safely in a kingdom his father didn’t consider worthy of his attention. He was physically weak, but he was alive and recovering.
Avery started to regret suggesting fishing. Once again his hands were shaking the pole in his hands, and once again neither of them brought it to light. The slime of his hands stiffened as he focused on maintaining his grip. He needed a distraction.
“Do you have a family, Derek?”
Not that distraction!
Still, it was much too late to take it back now. The knight was already considering how to answer while his hands slid new bait onto his hook. “Yes. I have a mother and four sisters. My mother owns a bakery in Carcosa Square, Mamān’s Pastries.” He sounded proud as he talked about his mother, taking Avery’s silence as a cue to rant about his family.
Avery didn’t mind at all. He needed the outside noise to mute his own thoughts. Plus, he was learning more about Derek, who had somehow mesmerized him in a way he hadn’t felt before.
Derek’s eldest sister was a Drider Racer living part-time in the Nether, a boisterous woman who didn’t take nonsense from anyone. His other older sister was Head Judge of the court two kingdoms over. According to Derek her authority was never questioned. Both of his younger sisters worked in the palace of the Hypxil kingdom; one was a Lady-in-Waiting for the Princess and the other worked as a stable-girl. The way he talked about them was so warm. Like he cared about the people themselves and not about the blood-ties.
“What about you? Do you have anyone else? Other family, friends?” Derek paused almost sheepishly. “Lovers?”
“Nobody.” His mouth moved before he could think of a response. Even when giving it more thought, he couldn’t give a more accurate statement than that. “Any “family” I have is dead or was sent away, I never had friends, and do you really think my father would let me have relations with anyone he didn’t approve?” It was harsh, harsher than he meant it to be, but for Builders sake it was the truth.
Derek didn’t say anything in response. Avery didn’t feel like prompting him for one. The only sounds were lines being cast and fish flopping in the basket.
Derek took charge of dinner, crafting a makeshift spit over the campfire and roasting a fish to split between them. There was no chatter during this meal, no questions or gentle prodding. Avery found himself missing the knights voice, but Derek hadn’t said a word and neither would he.
When Avery attempted to sleep, Derek has turned to face his back, his chin tucked into the crevice of his shoulder. “You have someone now. A friend.” The whisper carried something with it. Affection? Avery didn’t respond regardless, but he kept Derek from turning around again, sighing contently when the knight wrapped his arms around his waist.
Something changed that night. The energy in the tent wasn’t awkward or tense. It was… warm. Gentle. Soft. It was everything Avery had dreamed about and more. The concept of someone being there, of wanting to stay with him, made his ‘heart’ beat in double-time.
It had absolutely nothing to do with the man beside him whatsoever.
-
It was still dark out when Avery opened his eyes. He hadn’t been able to sleep at all, not since he first closed his eyes.
The warmth pressed against him was comfortable, soothing, but still unfamiliar. It was a sensation he was growing to crave but it still unsettled his core. He knew deep down he’d get used to it, but it upset him to know that something genuinely good could make him feel so terrible. There was nothing he could do but to wait for his body to accept the feeling but that was torturous.
Well… there is one thing.
Without a reason for it, he turned so that he and Derek were chest to chest. He made sure to be slow so he didn’t wake him up. He’d rather not have to explain himself. He softly pressed his face into space between Derek’s neck and shoulder, inhaling deeply. Just as he thought, the scent and warmth helped him to relax. Derek smelled like honey and morning dew, a combination Avery was very quickly growing to love. He was already beginning to doze off.
In the morning, he would still wake up before Derek, take one look at their positions, and internally scream.
He was in love.
Fuck.