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Avery flopped down on Derek’s bed, immediately scooting over to him and leaning heavily against his shoulder. Derek tilted his head at him as he looked up from his sketchbook.
“Whatcha workin’ on?” Avery asked playfully. It was mostly a rhetorical question. Derek had been steadily filling this sketchbook with documents of the area surrounding Avery’s base, which was now their shared home. The sudden loss of access to near infinite knowledge was strange to him, and he felt defenseless, as if someone had flipped the sword out of his hands in the middle of a duel. Studying his surroundings helped, made him feel more prepared.
“Drawing the room,” he shrugged. “I don’t know why I haven’t done that yet. You’d think it’d be my first idea.”
“Cool. Can I have paper?” Derek ripped a sheet out and passed him the paper and an extra quill, moving the ink between them. Avery took them, the sound of quills scratching against paper quickly filling the room. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Derek flip the page in his book and turn to face him.
“So secretive,” he smirked. Derek twitched his head to the side, as if he was rolling his eyes. Avery stuck his tongue out and went back to scratching lines into the page.
“Done!” he announced cheerfully. He flipped the paper around to present a stick figure drawing of himself and Derek holding hands with a heart between them.
“Very accurate, I think we’ve posed exactly like that many a time,” Derek responded.
“So I get to see yours, right? If we’re being fair,” Avery replied.
“Sure. I didn’t finish any of these, they’re just sketches.” He held the book up with both hands. The page he had been working on was filled up with drawings of Avery, the large one in the middle being a sketch of him scratching out his own artwork.
“‘Just sketches’ my ass, these are totally awesome,” Avery breathed, eyes tracing the lines with fervor. “How’d you do that so quick?”
“Practice.” He shrugged.
“Can I keep this? Like, can I put it on the wall?”
“Sure,” he said with a quick nod. “You’d have to let me draw you again sometime, though.” He placed the tips of his fingers at the edge of the paper and ripped it gently out of the book. Avery accepted it cautiously, holding it like he was afraid it would tear. He lifted a book laying on the bedside tablet and slipped the page under it.
“So it won’t fly away,” he explained.
“We’re inside,” Derek informed him.
“Yeah, but you never know!”
“Sure. Maybe a fox could take it.”
“Yeah, exactly! Or the big bad wolf could try to blow our house down and your drawings would flutter away,” he said, eyes wide with mock alarm.
“If that happened I think we’d have bigger fish to fry.”
“Nah. I think the drawings would be the biggest loss.”
Derek let out a short laugh, tugging Avery closer to him by the arm and bringing their foreheads together with a small sticky sound as slime hit metal.
“Aww,” Avery smiled. “I like when you do that, it’s like when a cat headbutts people.”
“Cats do that as a sign of affection and trust, and to mark territory,” Derek told him.
“Are you marking me as your territory? That’s kinda weird. Instead of D3rlord3 they should call you Fr3aklord3.”
“Absolutely terrible name,” he answered with a shake of his head.
“It’s great and you love it,” he grinned, pulling Derek closer and putting a hand on his shoulder. Derek grumbled a little, but leaned in. Avery brought his face to the knight’s helmet and started to press gentle kisses to the cool metal.
“Oh yeah, can you even feel that? I dunno a lot about… armor biology,” he asked, interrupting himself. Derek stared for a second, and then pinched him.
“Did you feel that?”
“Ow! You could’ve just said ‘can you feel it when I pinch you’ and your point would’ve been the same,” he complained. He held his arm to his chest defensively.
“I know, but this was funnier.”
“It’s not even St. Patrick’s day. And if it was, you wouldn’t be able to pinch me anyways, because I’m always wearing green. It’s impossible for me to not wear green.”
“Technically, you aren’t really wea-“ Derek began, immediately interrupted with a pillow to the face.
“It COUNTS!” he argued, grabbing another pillow to throw.
“Oh, are you trying to start a fight?” Derek asked. He picked up his pillow. “Because I’ll have you know you don’t stand a chance.”
“Okay, fine, truce,” Avery rolled his eyes.
“That’s what I thought.”
Avery shuffled back to Derek’s side. Derek leaned his head towards him, and he bonked his head against it. He reached his hand up and started running his fingers through the plume of red “hair” attached to the helmet.
“So can you feel it when I mess with your hair?” he asked.
“Like I said, yeah, I can feel most things.”
“Well I don’t know, I don’t really have hair! At least not the same type of hair.”
“I don’t know if I would count those blobs of slime as ‘hair,’” he responded.
“They’re sort of hair. Maybe hair. They look kinda like hair.”
“I can accept that,” he said with a slight nod. Avery shifted, tangling both of his hands in Derek’s hair and separating three strands, then starting to braid them together.
“What are you doing?” he asked. He turned towards Avery.
“You tell me, Mr. Unlimited knowledge. And stop moving, you’re gonna mess it up!” With a sigh, Derek obeyed, sitting still as Avery finished the braid.
“I’m done,” he announced.
“Are you going to tell me what you’re done with?” asked Derek.
“Nope!” he smiled.
“Figures.”
Avery kept messing with Derek’s hair, braiding and unbraiding sections and combing his hand through the strands, until the knight’s breath started to slow and his head dropped dully onto Avery’s shoulder. Avery smiled, kissing the top of his helmet and leaning further into his side, before closing his eyes and eventually falling asleep.