Chapter Text
The thing about time is that it’s entirely relative. Imagine you have two clocks; one on a train and one outside in the train station. And imagine that the train is moving at the speed of light and imagine that the train station is made of bricks and the bricks are made of a thousand years of dust and dirt and stone melding into clay and imagine that that clay was dried with the energy of an ancient star. And imagine that the clock in the train station is you, and it is frozen in place helplessly as its friend dies alone and catatonic and in pain somewhere across the globe. And imagine that clock in the train is you, a year before. Time does not move the same for these clocks. One, you will find, moves slower. That is the clock on the train in motion. That clock is you, and you remember (in a strange way, because remembering is for the past and this is the future but there really is no such thing as either) looking in the luminous yellow pupil of an eye twice your size; of an array of eyes staring at you through you into you from a computer screen; you remember them slipping into your mind.
Imagine knowing everything. Now, imagine knowing one billionth of everything, and also you’re a clock, and also you’re really fucking afraid.
That’s what it feels like when Avery wakes up with a piece of the King in Yellow in his mind, a year before he loses his best friend.
Avery jolts up from his bed and presses a hand to the wall. It’s shitty plywood, roughed-up off-white paint from a litany of college freshmen. It’s also #FAF9F6 in hex code, and the plywood of the wall itself was manufactured in a factory in Chesapeake, Virginia, and his best friend’s address is 3408 Franklin Boulevard, Ann Arbor, 48107, Michigan, USA.
And it’s tragic, really, that his best friend is somebody he knew for maybe a day, and it’s tragic that he knows any of this, but it’s even more tragic that he’s not here, and that Avery can feel the grief boiling off his skin like dry ice.
“Uh oh,” he says. It doesn’t really encapsulate all of the emotions in his head. Doesn’t really get across the sheer impossible agony of knowing one one billionth of everything there is to know or how it felt to stare at a “Game over!” screen and hyperventilate. How it… will feel?
He’s not sure. Time feels weird. He feels weird. He feels like he needs to get to Ann Arbor immediately.
Theoretically, Avery still has class. It’s not easy being a first-year education major; however, he no longer needs to educate anyone or be educated ever again on account of knowing the exact date and time of his own death and also the next two years’ worth of winning lottery numbers (past that, unfortunately, is not included in his one-one billionth of omniscience) so he’s just gonna skip. Call out sick. Or call out grieving. Or call out deification.
One of those things.
Avery has no roommate. He has no friends, either, except for the one that is dead in the future but alive right now. He has family, but that family lives in California and he lives in Massachusetts, so he doesn’t really have family. There is no-one who will miss him. Except Derek, who is missing/will miss/has missed him. Something like that.
Except Derek, who is about to buy a laptop with a pre-installed world.
He doesn’t even bother getting dressed. Avery stumbles out of his apartment in his pajamas, with his phone in the pocket of his sweatpants, and he gets in an Uber with money he doesn’t have, tells the Uber driver—a nice older dude—the exact time and date of his granddaughter’s birth, buys an airplane ticket on his phone with money that he doesn’t have, and barely manages to convince TSA that he isn’t insane. It doesn’t help that he starts identifying the make, model, and manufacturer of the scanner as they’re scanning him for weapons, and by the time that Avery gets actually in the plane he decides he’s just never going to talk to anybody ever again.
Except for his best friend. Who exists.
He did have the slightest doubt that this may be the world’s most creative psychotic break. That doubt was summarily vanquished when he looked in the airplane bathroom mirror and saw something unknowable staring back at him. Avery promptly decided it would be much better to not know it, so he didn’t.
Then, of course, they’re touching down. Theoretically, there was time in between when the plane took off and when the plane landed but time, in Avery’s head, is stretching and sloughing off of itself like taffy or like melted skin. Very different things. They move the same.
People give him weird looks when he sprints out of the airport and flags down a taxi and pays for it with more money he doesn’t have and—
And all in all, it takes him approximately four hours to be standing outside of d3rlord’s—Derek’s—home. In his pajamas, which are sweatpants covered in designs of cats and a plain white undershirt and a pink bonnet that he still hasn’t taken off. With a baseball bat. He had just found that lying around.
Or, to be precise, he knew that Derek’s neighbors have a ten-year-old son who likes to practice in the yard and leaves his stuff lying around all over the place.
And so he rings the doorbell.
…
And rings the doorbell.
…
And, well—Avery’s really not the most patient person in the world. And Derek left his window open. That’s his own damn fault.
He climbs through the window. He doesn’t even bother to check if anybody is watching because he knows that nobody is because he knows everything everywhere and it’s still only one-one billionth of what poor fucking Derek had forced into his mind.
The inside of Derek’s house is… a house. It’s stupidly neat; everything in its right place. It’s a rental. He lives alone. Avery doesn’t need to be observant to know that, he just does. Just like how he just knows that his friend plays Minecraft on a laptop in his bedroom, usually, which is the room to—
Oh, ironic. It’s the room to his left.
There’s definitely a diplomatic way to do this. Avery, however, doesn’t give a shit, and his heart is actively breaking in his chest and has been for hours and so when he slams open his friend’s bedroom door and sees a silhouette at a desk and a laptop open to Minecraft and a strange set of yellow doors on the screen, Avery jumps across the room, snatches his friend’s laptop off his desk, and genuinely throws it on the ground.
He sorta loses time for a second there as he smashes Derek’s laptop with his baseball bat, and by the time he’s done the stupid thing is in precisely one hundred and fifteen pieces of varying sizes and totally irreparable.
Derek is staring at him like he’s trying to figure out whether or not he’s going to call the police. Avery is staring at him right back, but for other reasons.
Because this is d3rlord, this is his friend, this was the man he was prepared to die next to—in real life, not the stupid game avatar. He’s white, a little scrawny, his age, about, with messy black hair. He looks like a total nerd. He’s alive, and—and—and the gates were on the screen.
Avery gasps, and he crosses the space in between them in an instant, resting one knee on Derek’s chair so he can get up all in his personal space, cupping his friend’s face in his hands, tilting his head to the side slightly to check if he’s okay. And, strangely enough—Derek lets him.
“It’s you,” Avery gasps. “I found you. Are you okay? I saw the gates. Did you see it? Tell me you didn’t see it.”
“Um,” says Derek. “Who, um, who—?”
“Avery,” he replies, and because he’s capable of speech and confused and not screaming in pain and catatonic and dead, Avery takes this to mean that he did it, and that everything’s gonna be okay, and he wraps the real life real warm real living version of his best friend up in his arms; buries his face in the crook of his neck and feels whole again. “I’m Avery. And you’re Derek. And I—I’m not leaving you.”
“Uh,” says Derek. “Okay. Um, could you, just—”
“I’m not leaving,” he mumbles, too out-of-it to really care. “You can’t make me.”
“No,” says his friend-who-is-a-stranger, and it surprises Avery enough to let go, a little. “I just wanna… um. Can I see your, um, face, again? Avery?”
He carefully leans back. Avery is very aware that he’s crying like a baby, but there’s really nothing to be done about that. He’s aware of many other things but that won’t stop him from having this hug.
Derek stares at him, strangely, like he’s a puzzle he’s trying to figure out. His eyes are solid black, and his bushy eyebrows furrow a bit.
“Avery,” he says, again, and he sorta chews the word in between his teeth a little. “Avery. Avery, Avery, Avery… we… have we met before?”
It shocks a laugh out of him, and the wave of adoration and of joy and of relief is so strong that Avery just presses a kiss to his stupid alive forehead. “Nope! Well, sorta. Yes and no.”
“Right,” Derek mumbles, still staring, wide-eyed at him, now less like a puzzle and more like a star. “That feels right. Yes and no. Um. Out of curiosity—why’d you do that to my laptop?”
“Out of curiosity,” Avery repeats, and he giggles a little, to himself. It only sounds a little hysterical. “You’re too damn curious. You don’t wanna know what was behind that door. Demons and shit.”
“Is whatever was behind that door the reason a stranger's here in my room hugging me?” Derek asks. Look at him, being so clever.
“Yeah,” says Avery. He runs his thumb over smooth dry skin; Derek's skin, Derek's cheekbone. Adoringly, obsessively, but he doesn't seem to particularly care, so maybe it's okay. “But we’re not really strangers.”
“No,” murmurs Derek. He looks satisfied. Like he’s figured it all out. A puzzle, solved. “We aren’t, are we?”
And then he reaches up and he cups Avery’s cheek in one palm and he leans up to kiss him.
There’s a moment where Avery gasps, and a moment where he chokes back half a sob, and a moment where he just fades into it; settles into his friend's lap, into Derek’s hands and his mouth and the luminous melting soft heat of him and the rhythmic sway of moving his lips against somebody else’s and when they break Avery’s breathing like he just ran a marathon and Derek’s already pressing adoring kisses to his cheek and jaw and the corner of his lips.
It’s that same feeling he got when he saw d3rlord for the first time in that library.
Euphoria. Elation. Ease. Like the world was falling into place. Like everything was exactly where it ought to be.
“What—” Avery starts, a little dazed. That’s a hell of a first kiss. “What… are you—?”
“I don’t know. Felt right,” Derek mumbles. He seems similarly lost in it. “This feels right. You’re—you’re special,” he mutters, his gaze sliding into something more distant. “You’re real.”
“Remember who you are,” Avery finishes, his voice thick. “I told you I wouldn't forget again.”
“I don’t really…” Derek starts. He looks confused; vaguely wounded. “I don’t think I understand, really, but it’s… this is… I’ve never felt like this before. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know,” Avery murmurs, and he laughs a little. It’s a good laugh, a free laugh, a grieving laugh. “Like you’re alive, right? Like everything makes sense, right? Like you’re safe, right? I know. And I won’t ever let you die. Never, dude, holy shit, never.”
“I’ll take you up on that,” Derek says, and he smiles a crooked little smile. “Um. Can I get to know you, now? And can I ask about the future or will that cause a paradox?”
“How—” Avery starts, and then gives up. “Whatever. Time is like, light, but not light, and not real. But I can’t tell you anything about it cause it’d destroy your mind. It’s destroying my mind, a little, but it’s worth it and not so bad. And it’s all gonna be fine from here on out. I’m sure.”
His best friend—maybe more?? Uncertain--he did just kiss him on the mouth but maybe it was in a friend way—furrows his eyebrows in concern and gives Avery a strange look.
“Are you okay?” he asks, softly.
“Fine,” says Avery. “I’m so fine. Never been more fine. You’re alive.”
And he is—it’s Derek, d3rlord, whoever, in his arms and alive and not catatonic, drooling on his desk, braindead and destroyed. Right here, right here, right here.
“And so are you,” Derek mumbles, a little under his breath. It’s almost like he’s saying it to himself, and when he does the whole frame of his body relaxes. “Hi, Avery.”
“Hi, Derek,” he laughs back, and after years or after seconds maybe--after an eternity or maybe no time at all--finally, finally, finally, everything is okay.