Chapter Text
Derek couldn't help but have his mind wander while Avery happily chattered about plants as they left class together. Avery didn't ask if Derek wanted company, he just… attached himself to Derek's side as they walked.
Avery.
Derek couldn't help but find him fascinating. And a bit intimidating, but not in the conventional sense. Avery didn't seem like a real person to him. He was too cheery, too friendly, too kind. Too quick to warm up to Derek's dry conversation skills. He was the kind of person you might see in a children's book. Unrealistically good. It should have been unsettling, uncanny, but Avery simply steamrolled through those barriers, forcing those guards back down.
That was all choosing to ignore the experience he felt when he walked into that classroom. And he was going to continue ignoring it, because he really didn't have a logical explanation for it that would let him sleep at night. Avery wasn't logical, but he could unpack that.
“Derek?” Avery asked, frowning. Derek jolted, and fought back a wave of guilt for zoning out. For causing that frown. It felt distinctly out of place on Ball of Sunshine Avery, even if they had only known of each other's existence for a few hours.
“Sorry-” Derek fumbled for an excuse, “in-person classes take a lot out of me.” Avery waved him off, a reassuring smile returning to his face.
“Don't worry about it! I know I talk a lot-”
“I don't mind” Derek cut in abruptly. Like he needed to. It caught both of them off guard.
“Oh,” Avery paused for a moment, blinking, “Ok! Alright! I can do that, no problemo!”
With that prompting, Avery continued to prattle on about plants and video games and really whatever seemed to come to his mind. Derek gave an occasional hum or a nod in response, sometimes a rare sentence, before they reached the steps of his apartment. Avery was mid tangent when Derek stopped at the doors.
“This is my stop” Derek mumbled awkwardly, “I’ll… see you next week?” He was never very good at goodbyes. Avery paused for a moment, as if this was unexpected.
“Right! Yeah, see you next week!” Whatever had caught him off guard, he shrugged off and waved before running off in the direction they’d come. Did they walk past Avery’s apartment and he didn’t say anything? Another thing to add to the list of Things Derek Didn’t Understand About Avery.
—
It only took an hour before Derek regretted parting ways. Or meeting Avery in the first place. Because something in their encounter must have rewired his brain chemistry to make him feel so ungodly lonely. He made one singular friend, if he could even rightfully call Avery that, and suddenly his human brain remembered it’s an inherently social creature and couldn’t stand another moment as a recluse shut in.
He deeply, deeply regretted not asking Avery for his number, but he knew he’d find some way to make that conversation topic as awkward as possible.
Before he could linger on how embarrassingly catastrophic that could go, he shifted his attention back to his computer. He had been attempting to do schoolwork, but found his mouse simply hovering over the Minecraft icon. He hadn’t touched the game since…. Sometime before new years. Thinking too hard about the specifics made his head pound.
Derek double clicked the blocky icon.
Every moment it took to load felt like an eternity. Like the world was praying for him to chicken out, slam the laptop shut before he could see it. Like the world knew something he didn't. When the start screen finally popped up, he let out a breath he didn't realize he was holding. It came out shaky.
He stared at the starting screen for a long time. A pit of dread was building in his stomach for a reason he couldn't place. A quiet part of his subconscious was pleading for him to back out. That some things are better left forgotten.
Unfortunately, curiosity is a bitch.
He couldn't see it. He could see the world's screen, that he had only one single player world. He could understand that something was deeply wrong with it. That the world name had been corrupted into something illegible. But the thumbnail?
His brain refused to comprehend it. It acknowledged that there were shapes and colors there, but he had forgotten all the words used to describe it and what they mean. His mind refused to let the image sink in, fighting with a desperate fervor to keep him in the dark.
He only became aware of the tears streaming down his face when he slammed the laptop shut. Too hard, it rattled against the force. His breathing was quick, too shallow, making him lightheaded until he gasped for breath. Curling in on himself, knees brought to his aching chest. His eyes burned as if they'd been open too long, or he'd been crying for hours.
As he struggled to calm himself, a horrible realization hit him that both of those could be true, as the sun was low on the horizon now, the room engulfed in shadows without the light of his computer screen. He was overwhelmingly alone in the darkness with no explanation as to what was deeply horribly broken in him.
–
When he opened his computer the next day, Minecraft had closed itself out on its own. The relief was too strong to worry about the logistics of how. It made it all the easier to bury himself in school work until he could see Avery again. He didn't want to acknowledge how quickly Avery had rooted himself as a motivator to keep going. It probably wasn't healthy, but it wasn't like he could afford therapy to fix that. That was a secret he'd take to his grave that he'd ideally not be seeing too soon. Thanks Avery.