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Avery stares at his screen. He stares at the regular old Minecraft death-screen—one without a respawn button. It only taunts him, you died! you died! you died!
TheMostMayo was doomed to fall by d3rlord3.
He failed. d3rlord—Derek is somewhere out there, dying as his mind is shredded by that awful… thing. And Avery can’t stop it. Somewhere outside his slatted blinds, he can catch a glimpse of fireworks going off in a miasma of colours, but the sound is muted to his ears.
It’s… over. Avery isn’t smart enough to stop this, even though from what Derek said, he’ll probably still be alive for the next few hours. He’s probably only a dozen minutes away by Avery’s shitty car, considering the storage unit company connects them in the real world.
Somewhere, in Avery’s town, his saviour is falling to pieces.
He closes his laptop, and hugs it to his chest. The soft sounds of its internal fans slowly die away, and then there’s nothing to distract him from his own ragged breathing.
His phone pings.
Avery flips it over from where it lies face down on his desk, and as the screen lights up he realises tears are blurring his vision.
It’s one of his friends, wishing him a happy new year.
And then a stupid idea comes to mind.
Avery frantically unlocks his phone, and scrolls down his contact list until he finds the one he’s looking for. When that guy had contacted him, asking about the footage he posted to his YouTube channel, he had thought he was going to get scammed, or there was some sort of MrBeast style competition he was going to get roped into.
Instead, Wifies had simply asked permission to post a video analysing Avery’s own footage. Avery had said yes—Wifies was a big YouTuber, and he had offered to give Avery a cut of whatever the video had made. That cut had bought him a new phone, a better gaming setup and had put a decent dent in his college fund.
He pulls up Wifies contact, and texts him.
Avery: hey can you find me someone’s address if i have their Minecraft account?
Wifies replies within a minute.
Wifies: Dude. WTF?
Avery: I need to save him we don’t have much time okay
Wifies: are you okay Avery? What’s happening
How in the ever loving fuck does he explain what’s happening.
Avery: it’s to do with that world I explored and d3rlord.
Avery: please Wifies I need to get to him
Wifies: …
Wifies: I’ll send the account to a friend of mine and see what he can do.
Avery: thank you please hurry
The next hour is absolute torture. Avery paces around his room, falls back onto his bed and stares at the beige ceiling of his room, turned yellow by his crappy lights.
He hates that colour.
After a minute of lying limp on his bed, Avery notices how dry his mouth is— and how much he needs to pee. Fuck. He spent twelve hours in his chair, wandering around that weird courtyard.
Avery pees first, phone in hand as he waits for a text to come up on screen. Then, he sits down at his kitchen counter and drinks a glass of water. Then another. No notification comes through.
He throws some pizza rolls in the microwave, and scoffs them down, still piping hot. Still no notification.
Avery paces around his kitchen, and after another ten minutes of that he leans against the wall, slowly sliding down it until he’s sitting with his legs straight out in front of him.
There’s still fireworks going off outside. They’ll probably continue into the morning.
Avery cries. He’s not proud of it, but he cries as he pictures himself stuck to his computer, drowning himself in that church’s pond and then planting flowers at the graves, removing them, replanting, over and over again. And that— that final moment with Derek, on that golden platform surrounded by floating eyeballs, where he said he would let Avery help, where he promised they would face the horrors of it all together—
And then Derek killed him. His throat closes up as more tears drip down his cheeks. What else would a knight do, but make a noble sacrifice?
After what seems like a century, Avery’s phone finally, finally pings.
He scrambles to open it, and what he sees sends him flying towards his front door, struggling to shove his feet into his beat-up crocs as he goes, snatching his keys off the hook by the door.
Wifies: 48 Saint Jude street. Stay safe, man.
Avery doesn’t bother with a reply, instead, he jumps into his car and careens out his driveway. Saint Jude street— it’s halfway across town, about ten minutes away in daytime.
Avery makes it in six.
His car screeches to a halt infront of a dark house. There’s mail sticking out from the mailbox and a few packages on the front-step. As Avery jumps out of his car, he takes in what is, supposedly, Derek’s house. He’s driven down this street a few times before, and barely a stone’s throw away, his friend was fighting the good fight against his own mind.
Avery tries the door-handle. It’s locked, of course. He jogs around the side of the house, head on a swivel, trying to find any way he can get in.
There. A window on the second story is ajar. There’s a drainage pipe alongside it, and so Avery kicks off his crocs and starts to climb.
God. He wishes he had payed more attention when his stupid tenth-grade PE teacher made them climb a rope.
He slips after he makes it about five feet up, tumbling back to the ground and hitting it hard. He gasps in pain, and has to shake out his wrist before he tries again.
He has to do this. He has to make it. Derek is counting on him.
It takes him three more tries to climb the rainwater pipe. He feels like the itsy-bitsy spider, and the absurdness of the thought causes him to laugh.
Avery shoves the window, but it doesn’t budge. He grimaces, and shimmies up the pipe until he can hang from the roof. The edge of it creaks concerningly when he shifts to hanging from his hands. Avery swings, gaining momentum, before he kicks the window with both of his heels at the same time.
The stubborn thing moves and cracks at the same time. Luckily for Avery, it doesn’t shatter, so he won’t have to go digging glass out of his feet later.
Manoeuvring back down the pipe is hard enough, and then Avery has to push himself through the tiny gap he’s managed to make. It’s awful, it sucks, he’s going to have bruises forever, but he does make it inside.
He falls down from the window, sprawling across a tiled floor with a yelp of pain as he hits the ground shoulder-first. Avery scrambles to his feet, and wrenches open the door of the bathroom he had stumbled into.
It opens out into a hallway, with another door at the end of it, sitting ajar with a faint light somewhere in the room beyond.
Avery creeps forwards, suddenly afraid. What if he’s in the wrong house? What— what if Derek is already—
Avery pushes the door fully open.
“Derek?” He whispers, and the person in the desk-chair spins around, startled. Immediately, their hands go to their head, expression contorting in pain.
“Avery.” Derek groans, stumbling out of the chair, and in Avery’s general direction. His voice is raspy, and it sounds wrong, like two different audio-tracks half a second offset.
Avery catches him, and hugs him with all his might. Derek freezes, and then frantically tries to push Avery away. “You can’t— you can’t be here, he’s here and he wants you for the vessel I have to keep him away—“
Avery only squeezes Derek tighter. “Remember who you are, you are real, you are important, isn’t that what you told me?”
Derek makes a wounded sound. “Please.”
“I can’t let you face this alone.” Avery steels his expression, and pulls back from the hug to get his first proper look at d3rlord3.
Derek is dishevelled. His hair sticks out in random clumps, and the shadows under his eyes are so dark and deep they look like twin bruises. His expression is the worst part— his face is twisted in some sort of incomprehensible mix of fear and acceptance and anger and fear.
The worst part is that golden rings in the centre of his irises. Avery almost didn’t notice it, but now he sees it, it’s impossible to look away.
“You need to go. I’m taking him down with me.” Derek gasps, voice tight with pain.
“When will you understand that I’m not leaving you.” Avery hisses back.
The problem Avery has with all these infuriating puzzles is that he’s not a logical, knowledgeable thinker. He’s quick, yes, but he can’t solve triple-stacked cyphers in fifteen minutes. He can’t deduce if he’s being followed based off a grass block. He can’t calculate coordinates off of fucking signs.
But when Avery wants something, he’ll do everything he can to get it.
And when he’s desperate, he gets stupid, irrational ideas.
Avery grabs Derek’s face with both hands, and kisses him square on the lips.
Derek stiffens, but Avery doesn’t back off, and after a few moments, Derek wraps both of his, surprisingly beefy, arms around Avery’s back, pulling the two of them impossibly close.
When they break apart for air, Avery restates his point. “I’m not leaving you. I’m staying with you, even if— I’m staying.”
It might be his imagination, but he hopes that the gold ring in Derek’s dark eyes is fainter. Weaker.
They end up on Derek’s bed, face to face, legs and arms tangled to hold the other close. To reassure each other that this is real.
They kiss. A lot. Every time Derek starts to tremble, or his hands come up to block his ears of imaginary sounds, Avery presses closer and softly kisses the brunette’s lips. Derek slowly calms down each time, and tightens his grip on Avery.
Eventually, the two of them fall asleep.
When the sun rises on the new year, spilling beautiful shades of purple and red over the horizon, Avery and Derek are both still there on that thread-bare bed. As sunlight fills the room through the gap in the curtains, Derek speaks, his voice barely a whisper, as if he is afraid to talk.
“I’m. Still here?”
“You’re here.” Avery whispers back, kissing him yet again, this time, once on each eyelid. “I’m here. We fucking won.”
Derek nods slowly, and Avery can feel his chest shaking with barely contained sobs. “I.. I thought… I saw that I died.”
“Well, I see that you and I live and we go to California and go surfing and get super tan. And then I have to drive us home because you fall asleep in the car and when we get home we have three cats and a frog.”
Derek laughs, a dry, weak laugh, but a laugh all the same. “Why a frog?”
“They’re underrated pets, and we can build it a super cool terrarium.” Avery smiles softly.
Derek’s eyes unfocus for a moment, and Avery taps his cheek, suddenly concerned he’s losing him again. There were a few times throughout the night that he had jerked awake to Derek’s trembling.
“What? What’s up?”
Derek smiles at him, tears filling his waterline. “I can see it, Avery.”
“You can?” Avery grins so wide his cheeks hurt. “What should we name the frog, then?”
“Mayonnaise.” Derek manages to hold his expression together for a full second, before breaking into a weak laugh.
Avery laughs with him, chest full of warmth.