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The list had nine things on it.
Avery had written it on the back of a receipt in the particular handwriting he used when he was being practical, which was different from his normal handwriting in that it was slightly more legible and slightly less enthusiastic. Derek had studied it on the bus ride over with the quiet focus he brought to most things, which Avery had learned meant he was storing information rather than making conversation, and that was fine. The bus was loud anyway.
The list:
oat milk (the blue one not the green one the green one tastes weird) eggs bread cherry tomatoes pasta that sauce avery likes (the one in the glass jar) spinach bananas dish soap
Derek had noted, privately, that five of the nine items were things Avery had identified as foods Derek specifically liked or had eaten without complaint, which was either coincidence or Avery being Avery, and Derek had a strong statistical suspicion it was the latter.
He had not said this out loud. He was getting better at receiving things quietly.
The bus had been fine. The walk from the stop to the store had been fine , cool air, specific smells, the distant sound of traffic that was just traffic and nothing else, nothing following, nothing watching. Derek had kept his breathing even and his stride steady and had felt, overall, reasonably functional.
Then the doors opened.
The thing about supermarkets, Derek thought, standing just inside the entrance with the doors sliding shut behind him, was that they were designed by people who had never once been ambushed by omniscient knowledge.
This was an uncharitable interpretation. He knew that. Most places were not designed with eldritch trauma in mind and it was unreasonable to hold this against them.
But the lights were very bright. They were the specific flat white of fluorescent bulbs that turned everything slightly unreal, slightly overexposed, like a photograph that had been pushed too far in editing. And the sound , he had forgotten about supermarket sound, the cumulative noise of refrigeration units and trolley wheels and a pop song playing from speakers in the ceiling and approximately forty conversations happening at various distances, all of it layering into a wall of input that his brain was trying very hard to process and filing under too much, too much, too much.
And then there were the choices.
This was the part Derek hadn't anticipated. He could see, from where he was standing, at least twelve different varieties of bread. Twelve. He had eaten bread for years without this being a problem but something about standing in front of twelve varieties of bread while a pop song played and the lights pressed down on everything made his brain go very quiet and very blank in the way that meant it had exceeded its current capacity and was temporarily suspending non-essential functions.
Which bread, his brain said, uselessly. Which bread.
"Okay," Avery said.
Derek looked at him.
Avery was already looking at Derek, which meant he had been watching Derek stand very still in front of the bread for however long that had been. His expression was doing the careful thing , taking stock, not making it a big deal, deciding something.
"You know what," Avery said, like they were mid-conversation, like this was natural, "I actually want to start in the snack aisle. We need , I need stuff for filming, like, snack things, for when I do long editing sessions. Come on."
He turned and started walking, basket in hand.
Derek followed.
The snack aisle was not quieter, exactly , the noise of the store was more or less consistent throughout , but it was less fraught. There were no decisions with nutritional weight attached. Avery stopped in front of a wall of crisps and turned to Derek with the expression of someone embarking on something important.
"Okay," he said. "Help me pick."
"Pick what."
"Crisps. For the editing sessions."
"You know what kind you like," Derek said.
"Yeah, but I want a second opinion." Avery gestured at the wall expansively. "Which ones look best."
Derek looked at the wall. He looked at Avery. He understood what was happening, and he was aware that he understood what was happening, and something about being understood that clearly made his chest do the complicated thing.
He looked at the crisps.
"Not prawn cocktail," he said.
"Obviously not prawn cocktail, I have taste-”
"The salt and vinegar."
"Yeah?"
"They're reliable. Consistent flavor delivery. You know what you're getting."
Avery put them in the basket. "Good call. What else."
"Those ones." Derek pointed. "The ridged ones. Higher structural integrity. Better for dipping if you want the option."
"I didn't know I wanted the option but now I feel like I need it." Avery put them in the basket. He tilted his head at the wall. "Okay what about the sweet stuff. For the other side of the editing session, like, late night."
Derek considered the chocolate section seriously. He was aware that his shoulders had come down from somewhere near his ears. He was aware of Avery standing slightly to his left, close enough that the sleeve of his jacket occasionally brushed Derek's arm when he reached for something, and that this was deliberate, and that the deliberateness of it was one of those things Derek was choosing not to examine too closely for reasons that were becoming increasingly difficult to articulate clearly even to himself.
"Those," Derek said, pointing.
"The caramel ones?"
"They're individually wrapped. Easier for when your hands are-” he gestured at an imaginary keyboard, "otherwise occupied."
Avery looked at the caramel chocolates. He looked at Derek. He had that expression again, the warm one. "You thought about my hands," he said.
"I thought about the practical implications of editing session snack consumption," Derek said. "Your hands were a variable."
"Uh huh," Avery said, and put the chocolates in the basket.
They moved through the store in a pattern that Derek realized, gradually, was not the efficient pattern of someone working through a list. Avery kept angling them away from the busiest aisles, away from the areas with the most refrigeration units and therefore the most noise. He moved unhurriedly, stopping frequently, keeping up a low, easy commentary about things on the shelves that required no response but created a thread of sound that Derek could follow , oh they have the fancy pasta shapes, do you think butterfly shaped pasta tastes different from regular pasta, statistically , Derek I know it doesn't taste different statistically, oh look they have those biscuits my mum used to get,
Derek followed the thread. He looked at things when Avery pointed at them. He answered questions when they were asked and stayed quiet when they weren't and gradually, incrementally, the fluorescent lights became just lights and the pop song became just a song and the wall of noise settled into something that was loud but manageable, background rather than assault.
His brain came back online.
He noticed, coming back online, several things.
The first thing he noticed was that they had been in the store for twenty-three minutes and had collected everything on the list plus eleven items that were not on the list, and were currently in the cereal aisle where Avery was making a case for a box of something with a cartoon character on it that was clearly marketed at children.
"It's good," Avery was saying. "I know it looks like it's for eight year olds but it's genuinely good. The chocolate to oat ratio is-”
"We don't need cereal," Derek said. "It wasn't on the list."
"The list is a suggestion."
"You wrote the list."
"And I'm suggesting we deviate from it." Avery put the cereal in the basket. "See, done. Easy."
The second thing Derek noticed was that they were standing close. They had been standing close for most of the trip, Avery's particular habit of gravitational nearness, which Derek had catalogued and filed under things about Avery which was a category that had become very large in recent weeks. They were close enough that if Derek moved his hand , just slightly, just to the left , it would find Avery's.
He had been aware of this for approximately the last nine minutes.
He was also aware of the hand holding on the kitchen floor, three nights ago, which had been , he had thought about it more than was probably analytically necessary , which had been something. He was fairly certain it had been something. The problem was that Derek Hutchins, who had decoded a cipher stack in seventeen minutes and outmaneuvered an entity that existed outside of human comprehension, was finding it very difficult to decode the following: what exactly are we.
They were not nothing. He knew that. There was the hand holding, and the way Avery looked at him sometimes, and the kitchen floor, and the fact that they had spent three weeks existing in very close proximity with a consistency that felt like intention. There was the sunflower hoodie and the soy sauce stain and the warm milk and the caramel chocolates.
But they had not , named anything. And Derek was not someone who did well with unnamed things. And he was also not, he was finding, someone brave enough to name it first, which was a new and inconvenient discovery about himself given that he had voluntarily merged his consciousness with an eldritch horror, but apparently that was easier than saying are we,
"Derek."
He looked up.
Avery was watching him with the look. The careful one.
"You went away for a second," Avery said, mildly.
"I'm here," Derek said. "Sorry. I was thinking."
"About cereal?"
"About." He paused. Adjusted. "About the structural layout of the store. The refrigeration units in the dairy aisle are going to be louder. We could do that last."
Avery looked at him for a moment longer than the sentence required. "Yeah," he said. "Good call. Dry goods first."
He turned and started down the aisle. Derek followed.
His hand stayed at his side.
The biscuit aisle produced an argument about whether chocolate digestives were objectively superior to all other biscuits (Avery's position, defended with passion) or simply the most statistically common choice, which was not the same as objectively superior (Derek's position, delivered with the tone of someone reading from a very boring but accurate document).
"You're describing the entire concept of popularity," Avery said.
"I'm describing the conflation of familiarity with quality," Derek said. "They're different things."
"Okay but if loads of people independently like a thing-”
"Loads of people independently liked prawn cocktail crisps enough to keep manufacturing them."
Avery pointed at him. "You're using the prawn cocktail against me."
"I'm using it as a data point."
"That's so-” Avery laughed, sudden and bright, and the sound of it did what it always did, which was make the store feel smaller and the lights feel less aggressive and Derek feel, specifically, like he was standing in the right place. "Okay fine. What biscuit is objectively superior then, if not chocolate digestives."
Derek considered the shelf. "Hobnobs," he said.
Avery stared at him. "That's the most Derek Hutchins answer you've ever given me."
"They're structurally sound. They have textural variety. The oat base-”
"You said structurally sound about a biscuit."
"Structural integrity matters in biscuits. If it dissolves in tea before you can retrieve it that's a design flaw."
Avery put both the chocolate digestives and the hobnobs in the basket, which Derek suspected had been the plan from the beginning.
They turned the corner into the dairy aisle.
The refrigeration units were, in fact, louder. Derek felt the noise of them more than heard it, a low persistent vibration that sat slightly wrong, and he adjusted , breathed, counted, let the practiced groundedness do its work , but it must have been visible in some small way because Avery drifted slightly closer without comment, his arm a steady, warm pressure against Derek's, and Derek thought: this is the thing, isn't it. this specific thing. this is what I don't know how to name.
He wanted to hold Avery's hand.
This was not a new observation. It had been present for at least a week, possibly longer if he was being honest with the data, and it was a clear and specific want in the way that most of Derek's wants were not clear and specific anymore, not since the King had scrambled the easier certainties. This one had survived whatever the King had done. This one was clear.
The problem was he didn't know if he was allowed.
The hand on the kitchen floor had been , Avery had taken his hand, which was different from Derek initiating. And then the morning after, they had sat at the kitchen table and been warm and easy with each other, and Derek had thought: something has changed, something is different now. But Avery hadn't said anything. And Derek hadn't said anything. And they had continued existing in very close proximity, and Avery looked at him the way he looked at him, and Derek felt things he was not accustomed to feeling, and none of it had a label.
He was aware that the solution was simple. He was aware that the solution was: say something. Ask. Derek Hutchins, who had once talked a cosmic entity into overextending itself through sheer force of logical preparation, could say: I think I want this to be something. Do you want this to be something.
He could not seem to do this.
His hand stayed at his side.
They got the oat milk (the blue one) and the eggs and moved on.
Thirty-eight minutes after they'd arrived, they were in the checkout queue with a basket containing everything on the list and seventeen things that were not on the list, including the cereal, both types of biscuits, three varieties of crisps, the caramel chocolates, a small plant that Avery had spotted near the entrance on the way in and made brief eye contact with and apparently felt a moral obligation toward, a jar of the sauce Avery liked plus a different jar of a sauce neither of them had tried before because Derek had read the label and said the spice blend is interesting with an expression that meant he wanted to try it, and a packet of fancy pasta in the butterfly shape.
"Does butterfly pasta taste different," Derek said, looking at it in the basket.
"Statistically? No," Avery said. "But it's more fun."
Derek looked at the pasta. He thought about fun as a category, how it had been mostly absent for a while and was returning in pieces, in small specific instances , Skywars games and kitchen floor conversations and biscuit arguments in supermarket aisles. He thought about how Avery was the common variable in most of those instances.
"Okay," he said.
Avery glanced at him. "Okay?"
"Butterfly pasta is fine," Derek said. "It's a reasonable choice."
Avery smiled, small and warm, and looked back at the queue.
The checkout took six minutes. Derek paid for half and Avery paid for half and they divided the bags with the pragmatic efficiency of people who had been sharing a living space long enough to have developed systems. The bags were heavy. Derek took the heavier one without discussing it, which Avery noticed and did not comment on, which Derek appreciated.
They went out through the automatic doors into the cool outside air and Derek felt the change immediately , the pressure of the store releasing, the lights going natural, the noise simplifying back into just the city, just ordinary city sounds that didn't require parsing. He took a full breath.
"Good?" Avery asked.
"Good," Derek said. "Better."
They walked toward the bus stop. The bags were heavy and the afternoon was the particular flat grey of an overcast day that was considering rain but hadn't committed yet, and they walked close because the pavement was narrow and also because this was, Derek acknowledged, just how they walked now.
Halfway to the bus stop, Avery shifted his bag to his other hand.
Derek looked at the hand that was now free. He looked at the pavement. He looked at his own hand, which was , right there. Available. He thought about seventeen items that weren't on the list and warm milk and prawn cocktail said with deep offense and Avery sitting down on the couch eleven seconds after the bedroom light clicked on, without being asked.
He thought: I am a person who outwitted an entity that existed outside of time and space.
He thought: I cannot hold someone's hand.
He thought: that's genuinely embarrassing.
Avery's hand was right there.
Derek looked at it. Then he looked at Avery, and Avery was already looking at him, and there was something in Avery's expression that Derek was almost certain was , waiting. Patient. The expression of someone who had been waiting for a specific outcome and was choosing not to rush it.
Derek opened his mouth.
"Avery," he said. "I have to ask you something."
"Yeah?" Avery's voice was very careful.
"Are we-” Derek paused. Found the words, arranged them in the correct order, deployed them: "are we friends."
Avery blinked. "What?"
"Are we-” Derek gestured, slightly, which was not a precise gesture but communicated the general territory, "friends. Currently. As a classification."
There was a silence.
Avery said: "Derek."
"It's a reasonable question."
"We held hands on the kitchen floor."
"Friends can hold hands."
"I-” Avery stopped. Stared at him. "Okay, can I , do you want to just be friends?"
"No," Derek said, immediately and without deliberation, which was more honest than he'd intended to be but there it was.
"Okay," Avery said. "Then we're not just friends."
"Since when."
"Since-” Avery made a face at the sky, the face of someone dealing with something. "Since a while, Derek. Since you told me butterfly pasta was a reasonable choice, at least. Arguably since the kitchen floor. Possibly since you said residual heat finishes the job about eggs and I had to go to a different room for a minute."
Derek processed this. "You had to go to a different room."
"You were being very-” Avery waved a hand, "you. About eggs. It was a lot."
"You never said anything."
"Neither did you!"
"I didn't know what we were," Derek said. "I needed the classification before I could-” he held up his free hand, a small gesture that managed to communicate any of this quite efficiently.
Avery looked at the hand. He looked at Derek. He was trying, Derek noticed, very hard not to smile.
"So now you have the classification," Avery said.
"Yes," Derek said.
"And now you can-”
Derek took his hand.
He did it the same way he did most things , with decision, once the decision was made. His hand found Avery's and held it, not loosely the way it had been on the kitchen floor but properly, their fingers adjusting until it was comfortable, until it made sense.
Avery went very quiet for exactly one second.
Then he said: "You needed a label before you could hold my hand."
"Yes," Derek said.
"That's the most you thing that has ever happened."
"I'm aware."
"I could have just-” Avery gestured with his free hand, "I thought we were already,I was already thinking of you as-”
"You should have said something," Derek said.
"You should have said something-”
"I didn't know what we were-”
"I literally held your hand on the kitchen floor-”
"Friends can-”
"Derek." Avery stopped walking. He turned to face him, which meant Derek stopped walking too, which meant they were standing in the middle of the pavement with heavy shopping bags and their hands held, and the overcast sky doing its considering-rain thing above them. Avery's expression was the warm undone thing but more so, with an edge of something that might have been fond disbelief. "We are not friends," he said, clearly and deliberately, like he was explaining something to someone who needed the words in a specific order. "We are together. I like you a lot. You are my-” he paused, chose the word, "person. Okay?"
Derek looked at him.
Person, his brain said, and filed it somewhere very important.
"Okay," Derek said.
"Good," Avery said. "Great. Wonderful. We've sorted that."
"We have."
"Forty minutes in a supermarket and seventeen impulse purchases and that's what it took."
"I needed the data," Derek said.
"The data," Avery said, and started laughing, and started walking again, still holding Derek's hand, tugging him gently back into motion. "You needed data to hold my hand."
"I needed to know-”
"Next time," Avery said, "just hold my hand. I promise I'll work with it."
Derek considered this. It was, he admitted, a reasonable policy. More efficient than the alternative. He looked at their hands and thought: this is a thing that exists now, this is real, I am holding Avery's hand on a pavement outside a supermarket and we are together, that is the correct classification, this is the specific and ordinary shape of something I didn't know I was hoping for.
"Okay," he said.
"Yeah?"
"Next time I'll just hold your hand."
Avery glanced at him sideways, and his expression was the one that meant he was very happy and was trying to contain it to an appropriate size for the situation, and not quite managing.
"Good," he said.
They walked the rest of the way to the bus stop like that, bags heavy and pavement narrow, and Derek's thumb moved once against Avery's knuckles, deliberate, and Avery's hand tightened briefly around his in response, and neither of them said anything about it because there was nothing to say, because it was simply true, simply something that existed now, simply real.
The bus came. They got on. The bags went on the floor between their feet and their hands stayed together and outside the window the city went past and the sky finally made its decision and started to rain, gently, on everything.
"Seventeen things," Avery said, on the bus, looking at the bags.
"Sixteen," Derek said. "The plant was near the entrance. That's arguably still within list parameters."
"The plant was not on the list."
"The list was a suggestion," Derek said. "You said so yourself."
Avery stared at him. "I created a monster," he said.
"You said the list was a suggestion," Derek said, "and I'm suggesting the plant counts."
"It doesn't count."
"It needed a home. You made eye contact with it."
"I-” Avery pressed his lips together. Looked at the bag containing the plant. Looked at Derek. "You noticed that."
"You slowed down when you saw it," Derek said. "For approximately two seconds. Then you kept walking. Then you went back."
"I didn't know you were watching."
"I'm always watching," Derek said, and then heard how that sounded and amended: "I notice things. It's a habit."
Avery was quiet for a moment, with the expression of someone feeling something they weren't going to put into words right now. Then he said: "What do you think we should name it."
"The plant."
"Yeah."
Derek looked at the bag. "It's a succulent," he said. "They're self-sufficient. They don't require much."
"Okay but that's a description, not a name."
Derek thought about it. "Hastur," he said.
There was a pause.
"You want to name the plant," Avery said slowly, "after the King in Yellow."
"He's contained," Derek said. "In a small pot. Unable to do anything. I think it's funny."
Avery looked at him for a long moment. Then he started laughing, properly, the kind that took over his whole face, and Derek watched it with the specific warm attention of someone cataloguing something they plan to keep.
"Hastur," Avery said, through the laughing. "We're naming the plant Hastur."
"It's appropriate," Derek said. "He's stuck now."
"He's a succulent."
"He is significantly less threatening as a succulent."
The bus went around a corner and rain hit the windows and Avery laughed and Derek held his hand and somewhere in a bag between their feet a small plant sat in its pot, renamed, contained, stripped of power , and it seemed to Derek, looking out at the rain, that this was a reasonable thing. That something that had been enormous and terrible could become small enough to sit on a windowsill. That contained and harmless were not as far apart as they had seemed, eleven days and one lifetime ago.
He looked at Avery's hand in his.
Person, he thought again. That's the classification. That's the word.
He thought he could get used to that.
Later, the plant would live on the windowsill between Avery's other plants, which Avery had named things like Gerald and Professor Leafsworth and The Green One. It would thrive, because succulents do, and occasionally Derek would stand in front of it with a watering can, giving it precisely the correct amount of water, and say things like "you're very manageable now" and "this is better for everyone." Avery would film this exactly once without telling Derek and it would become, arguably, the most-watched video on the channel, surpassing even the cipher video, because sometimes the internet knows what it needs and what it needs is Derek Hutchins quietly winning arguments with a houseplant.