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It started with the kiss. It wasn’t a bad kiss, not even Avery could admit that. Grayson was an attractive man, and Avery would admit at one point, that she had been interested in him.
It was the fact that there was something behind the kiss that she couldn’t place. It was like Grayson knew how, but didn’t want to. Like he was used to someone else being on the other end. Of course, Avery had her suspicions.
What if it had been Emily Laughlin? It could have easily been that Grayson was trying to imagine that Avery was Emily, and that was why it had felt weird.
What if it had been that Avery just didn’t want to kiss him either? No, it wasn’t like that, even with the kisses iniated by Jameson, who had caught her by surprise. It had to be something else.
She was still grateful, suspicions aside, for his interference in that singular moment of trouble. Her phone was going off nonstop, people going crazy over the interview kiss, #teamgrayson and #averyson trending, some people waiting for Grayson’s nemesis to reply.
Avery paused with her pacing, rewinding her thoughts.
Grayson had kissed her. Simple fact one.
Grayson had done it out of necessity, something being off in the kiss. Simple fact two.
Grayson had a rival, who he was frankly obsessed with, and spent a lot of time with in points of “Upshowing him”. Simple fact three.
Grayson had (supposedly) been searching for someone else in the kiss, and it wasn’t Avery or Emily. Simple fact four.
Conclusion.
Grayson Hawthorne had been kissing Artemis Fowl.
Or he wanted to. That part was up to debate.
All of the pieces slid into place. It was wrong to say there had always been something off about Grayson, because there wasn’t, but he was very weird. In the weeks Avery had been at the Hawthorne House, the year older man had come up several times.
Granted, most of it was in arguements where Xander or Jameson had threatened to switch to Team Artemis, to which Grayson had yelled back, but he came up nonetheless.
All three of the other Hawthorne brothers had mentioned the second eldest’s concerning obsession too.
Avery moved to sit on the bed, running over the information again and again and again to see if she was wrong, not because there was anything wrong with Grayson kissing Artemis, it wasn’t any of her business, it was just a shock.
Halfway to sitting down, the door banged open.
“You know now, don’t you?” Xander said, out of breath and panting as he held the door open.
She hadn’t seen him in a fair minute, and fell back in shock at the loud noise, but recovered quickly. Xander shut the door behind him, checking nobody had followed him.
“Know… what?” She said, playing it safe. She wasn’t sure if they were on the same page just yet.
Xander paused, like he wasn’t sure either. But it was completly against Xander Hawthorne’s moral compass to ever stop doing something just because he wasn’t sure if someone else had caught up, and continued anyway.
“Grayson is a bit… like a friend of Dorothy.” He named, waving his hand.
Avery connected the reference to the WWII story of how gay men in the army would say they were friends of Dorothy to seek each other out, and knew they were thinking of the same thing.
“So I’m not on that page alone then.” She said, and Xander broke out in a big smile, grabbing a computer Avery hadn’t seen him bring in, and flopping down next to her, but she still had more to say. “Does he know?”
Xander laughed, heartily and full of character, looking at Avery with excitement, like he had been repressing this for too long and needed to talk about it.
“Goldberg, No. He’s so emotionally repressed he can’t figure out what emotions he feels on a good day.” He said, flipping open the computer and typing something in. “Wanna know something funnier?” He asked, and Avery knew what he was going to say before he said it.
“Does it have to do with Artemis Fowl? The second one?” She asked, and Xander laughed again clapping his hands and tilting his head back, joyfully delighted.
“You really are smart, MG.” He snickers, pulling open a tab hidden behind multiple firewalls and passwords, like nobody should ever see it. “Everyone knows about the teams, of course they do.” He starts, pulling open a subreddit.
He continues.
“Only a select few know about what’s really going on. I am one of those select few. You are now too.”
The computer turns.
“R/Graytemis.” Avery reads outloud, trying to process what she is seeing. The account that reddit is registered under is named “machinetruths” like it’s the name of a conspiracy theory, but it makes sense. The user is also a moderator of the subreddit.
“I figured it out before anyone else. Nash might have a small inkling, but nothing to confirm, and Jameson is as blind to it as a mouse.” Avery scrolls down on the page. There’s images of them shot from crowds at a distance, arguing, but too close together to be considered normal, from the people in here.
There’s only 348 members in the group, 100 or so online, all freaking out about Avery and Grayson’s kiss, and pyschoanalysing the way Grayson looked, some of them wondering how Artemis Fowl was going to respond.
“Xander, these people aren’t sane.” She says, in a small amount of disbelief mixed with confusion and amusement.
“Oh, they totally aren’t. But they made me a moderator after I gave them details that Grayson would slit my throat over if he knew I had shared, and so they’re like my peasants now, and I am their king.” A pause. “Also they are mostly right.”
Avery hated how she couldn’t really disagree.
She leans back on the pillows behind her, away from the computer as Xander types something out.
“Do you think he’s going to figure it out?” She asked him. “He seemed like he was interested in me, for a while.”
Xander made a humming noise.
“It was mostly to piss off Jameson, I think. They’re not on the best buddy term at the moment.” All of his words added more to the puzzle, clicking into place. “Me personally, I don’t think Gray’s been interested in women at all, since Emily died. I don’t say it anywhere, not my place to decide if he is or isn’t, but he’s become so rapidly obsessed with Mr. Fowl the Second that I could compile enough evidence to believe it.”
It felt like a mosaic, each word a crack of the glass coming together to make a window, shining through to see what Grayson had been internally trying to hide.
“Do we do anything about it, or just like… let it explode?”
“I’ve been fanning the fire, to be honest. If I find out Artemis does something, I tell him. He flips out. Does this weird thing with his eyes and then figures out how to one-up him. It’s easy to play off as trying to encourage rivalry, but every time he gets closer to snapping and realizing he’s not even head over heels at this point. I’d describe it more as ‘I tripped and fell into a pit and I’m stuck in a position where my heels have come around again and I’m stood up.’”
Avery laughed.
“Is it bad I want in?”
“Absolutely not. We can gossip together! This is so exciting. You have no idea how long and hard it’s been to know this and not tell anyone. I’ve never been more glad my boykisser brother kissed a girl.”
There’s a pounding on the wall, coming from the fireplace.
Avery’s first thought goes to Jameson, but as she gets up to open it, Thea Calligras stumbles out.
She looks at Xander and Avery, and at the open computer, before blurting out.
“I have never been more disappointed in myself for not using my ‘gaydar’ more effiecently.”
Avery smiles and Xander laughs again.
And suddenly, the gossiping group has become three.
(R/Graytemis has 350 members by the end of the day.)