Work Text:
It started, like most things in Avery's life, with a bit.
The bit was: Avery had, on camera, described himself as a Minecraft veteran. He had said this with confidence, with the easy authority of someone who had been making Minecraft content for years, who had won Skywars games (many of them, actually, he was quite good at Skywars), who had navigated an impossible eldritch realm for fifteen hours and come out the other side with his sanity mostly intact.
What he had not mentioned, on camera, was that his primary Minecraft skill set was combat-focused, and that his base-building capabilities were, charitably, functional, and less charitably, a series of boxes.
He had also not mentioned that he had never played a proper survival world with another person before. Not a real one, not the kind where you had a shared base and divided up tasks and actually built something together over time.
Derek had not played Minecraft since.
Since, being the word that contained eleven days and a hospital and everything after it.
"You don't have to," Avery said, when he brought it up, because he always said that first, because Derek always needed to know the door was open before he'd walk through it.
"I know," Derek said. He was quiet for a moment, in the way that meant he was running calculations. "I think I'd like to. On a new world. Something that's-” a pause, "clean."
"Yeah," Avery said. "Yeah, okay. New world. Our world."
Derek looked at him when he said our world and his expression did the thing that Avery was learning meant Derek was feeling something he hadn't finished processing yet. Avery filed it away and opened his laptop.
They named the world Forward, which was Derek's suggestion and which Avery thought was perfect and did not say so out loud because Derek would do the thing where he got uncomfortable about being told something was perfect, which was the whole problem this fic was named after, but they were getting to that.
The first night, they played side by side on the couch, Avery's laptop on the coffee table, Derek's new laptop (purchased three weeks ago, studiously ordinary, no Google Drive folders, no hidden tunnels, no pre-existing worlds) balanced on his knee. They punched trees in companionable silence and Avery made the dirt hut that he always made first night because it was fast and practical and fine and Derek built a small but structurally coherent wooden shelter with a door that actually closed and a crafting table and two beds placed with what Avery could only describe as intentionality.
"You've played before," Avery said, looking at Derek's screen.
"Not much," Derek said. "The world I had before was-” the pause, "I was mostly exploring. I didn't build much."
"You built that in like ten minutes."
"It's a small structure."
"My first night base has never once had a door that closed correctly."
Derek looked at Avery's screen, at the dirt hut, which was. A dirt hut. It had a gap where the door should be. "Avery," he said, with great gentleness.
"It's practical," Avery said, with great dignity.
"There's a gap."
"For ventilation."
"For creepers," Derek said.
"I'm fast at running," Avery said.
Derek said nothing. He went back to his screen. He placed a window, which Avery's dirt hut did not have, and looked out of it at the blocky night, and Avery watched him do it and thought: there it is, that's the thing, the way he looks at a world and immediately starts thinking about how it should be built.
He would think about this more later. Much more. With feelings attached.
A week into the world, Derek had a house.
Not a base. Not a shelter. A house.
Avery discovered this by logging on one afternoon while Derek was in the shower and loading into the world and standing in front of what had, four days ago, been a moderately sized wooden structure with a closing door and a crafting table, and was now,
Avery's mouth opened.
It was two stories. It had a pitched roof made of spruce that managed, somehow, to look like an actual pitched roof rather than a Minecraft approximation of one. There were windows , multiple windows, with wooden frames, placed at intervals that suggested Derek had thought about light sources as something other than a pure mechanical function. There was a porch. A porch, with steps, and a small fence running along the edge of it, and a lantern hanging from the overhang that Avery was fairly sure Derek had placed at exactly the right height to not look like it was floating.
There were flower pots on the porch.
Avery stood in the game, his slime skin just standing there in front of Derek's house, and then he stood up from the couch and walked to the bathroom door and knocked on it.
"Derek," he said.
The shower continued.
"Derek, when did you build the house?"
"Which part?" Derek called back, over the water.
"Which-” Avery looked at the ceiling. "All of it. All the parts. There are flower pots, Derek."
"I found some poppies," Derek said, in the tone of someone who considered this self-explanatory.
"You found poppies and you put them in flower pots on the porch."
"Is that-” a pause that Avery was learning to read as Derek checking whether he'd done something socially miscalibrated, "is that okay? It's a shared world. I should have-”
"It's great," Avery said. "It's really, genuinely, extremely great."
"Oh," Derek said. A beat. "Thank you."
He said it in the voice he used when he didn't know what to do with a compliment, which was the voice Avery was also learning, which was a flatter, slightly shorter version of his regular voice, the verbal equivalent of looking at his shoes.
Avery went back to the couch. He looked at the house on his screen. He looked at his own base, which was nearby, and which was , fine. It was fine. He'd upgraded from the dirt hut, obviously, he wasn't a disaster, it was a decent wooden structure with a bed and chests and a good defensive position, and it was perfectly functional and had zero flower pots.
He was not jealous of a Minecraft house.
He looked at the flower pots.
He was a little jealous of a Minecraft house.
Two weeks into the world, there was a farm.
Avery had built a farm once. It had been a four by four wheat patch surrounded by a fence and it had worked fine and he had been proud of it.
Derek's farm was , Avery stood at the edge of it and just looked for a while. It was organized into sections, different crops in clearly delineated areas, with water channels running between them at intervals that were, Avery could tell without knowing the exact mechanics, absolutely precisely calculated for maximum efficiency. There were composters. There was a system. It was a farm system.
"Did you plan this out," Avery said, at dinner , real dinner, pasta, the butterfly kind, which had become a staple, "on paper? Before you built it?"
"On paper?" Derek said.
"Did you sketch it out. The farm layout."
Derek cut his pasta. "A little."
"You sketched out a Minecraft farm layout."
"It's more efficient to plan the water channels before you build," Derek said, in the reasonable tone of someone explaining something obvious. "If you place them incorrectly you have to tear up the whole thing."
Avery pointed his fork at him. "You're insane," he said.
"I'm practical."
"Those aren't mutually exclusive." Avery ate a butterfly. "Derek, your farm is bigger than my whole base."
"Your base is good," Derek said.
"My base is a box."
"It's a well-placed box. The defensive position is strong."
"I appreciate you trying," Avery said, "but my base is a box and your base is a house and you have planned water channels and flower pots and I want you to know I'm a little bit in my feelings about this."
Derek looked at him. "You're a Skywars player," he said, not unkindly. "Your skills are combat-optimized. Different specializations."
"That's generous."
"It's accurate."
"You're being very nice about the fact that I made a dirt hut on day one."
"The dirt hut was practical," Derek said, with great sincerity, and Avery couldn't tell if he was being serious or not, and decided it didn't matter, and refilled both their glasses of water, and they ate the rest of dinner talking about something else, and Avery thought about different specializations and the specific way Derek had said it, like Avery's skills were not lesser but just differently shaped, and felt the warm thing in his chest do its complicated work.
Three weeks into the world, Derek started building something big.
Avery noticed it during a session where they were both on at the same time, sitting on the couch the way they usually sat now , close, legs occasionally overlapping, easy with each other in the way that had happened gradually and then all at once. Avery was working on expanding his storage system, which he was doing by adding more chests in a row, which was not the most efficient method but was the fastest, and Derek was,
"What are you building," Avery said, looking at Derek's screen.
"A project," Derek said.
"That's not an answer."
"It's in progress. I'll show you when it's further along."
Avery looked at the structure on Derek's screen, which from this angle appeared to be a large flat platform of smooth stone with some kind of framework going up at the corners. He tried to extrapolate from the pieces. He couldn't quite get there.
"Is it a castle," he said.
"No."
"A tower?"
"Not exactly."
"Derek."
"When it's further along," Derek said, with patience.
Avery looked at his own screen. He looked at Derek's screen. He added another row of chests to his storage system with perhaps slightly more emphasis than was necessary.
"My storage system is very good," he said.
"It is," Derek agreed.
"Very functional."
"Very."
Avery squinted at Derek's screen. Derek was placing smooth stone with the careful, deliberate rhythm of someone who had a clear picture in his head and was simply translating it, block by block, into the world. He didn't hesitate. He didn't second-guess placements. He just built, with the same calm methodical confidence he brought to everything, and Avery watched his hands on the keyboard, and watched the structure grow on Derek's screen, and decided he was definitely not jealous of a Minecraft building and moved on.
It took Derek four more days.
Avery logged on and stood at the edge of the world's small map and looked at what Derek had built and said, out loud, to his empty living room:
"Oh, you're kidding me."
It was a library.
Not a Minecraft library, not just bookshelves arranged in a room. An actual library, the kind that had clearly been designed from the outside in, with the exterior built first so the proportions were right and then the interior filled in. It had a proper facade , stone and wood, with an arched entrance, and windows, and a small tower at one end that was just slightly taller than the rest for architectural interest. Inside, Avery walked his character through it slowly, turning in circles, and there were bookshelves that went all the way to the ceiling with little reading nooks carved into them, and a fireplace in the center with seating around it, and lanterns placed with the same instinctive rightness as every other thing Derek had ever placed in this world.
There was a sign above the fireplace.
Avery walked up to it.
F O R W A R D, it said, in the sign's angular font. for Avery. so we have somewhere to put things we want to keep.
Avery sat for a moment with his hands in his lap, not touching the keyboard.
He heard Derek come in from the kitchen, could track him by the small sounds of him , socks on hardwood, the slight shift of the couch cushions as he sat back down, close, the way he always sat now.
"You saw it," Derek said.
"Yeah," Avery said. His voice came out quieter than he intended.
"Is it-” the shoe-looking pause, "is it okay?"
Avery turned to look at him. Derek was watching his screen with the expression he got when he wasn't sure how something had landed, the careful waiting-for-data expression.
"Derek," Avery said.
"Hm."
"This is the nicest thing anyone has ever built for me."
Derek looked at his screen. His ears went pink. "It's just a building," he said.
"It has reading nooks."
"For functionality-”
"Derek."
"The sign is,I wasn't sure about the sign, I can change-”
"Don't you dare change the sign."
"It's a bit-”
"Don't change the sign," Avery said again, firmly, and Derek stopped talking, and there was a moment where Avery watched Derek's profile, the slightly-pink ears, the almost-smile at the corner of his mouth that Derek was visibly trying to keep contained.
"Thank you," Derek said finally, to his screen, which meant he was saying it to Avery but couldn't quite look at him while saying it, which was , that was just Derek, that was the particular shape of him, the way feeling things sometimes came out sideways.
"Thank you," Avery said back. "For real."
Derek's almost-smile stopped being an almost.
Avery took a breath and said: "Okay, will you teach me how to build something that isn't a box."
"Your base-”
"Derek."
",is a well-placed-”
"Derek, please."
"Yes," Derek said. "Okay. Yes."
The lesson lasted two hours.
This was longer than either of them had anticipated, mostly because teaching Derek Hutchins anything about Minecraft turned out to work differently from how Avery had expected. He'd assumed Derek would be a straightforward teacher , systematic, clear, step by step. And he was those things, but he was also unexpectedly specific about aesthetics in a way that kept catching Avery off guard.
"Not that block," Derek said, when Avery placed a plank.
"Why not?"
"The grain goes the wrong direction. Look-” Derek reached over, his arm crossing in front of Avery to gesture at Avery's screen, and his hand hovered near the keyboard, "can I?"
"Go ahead," Avery said.
Derek reached past him and replaced the plank with a log, oriented differently, and the difference was , Avery wouldn't have noticed it in isolation, but next to everything else it suddenly looked right in a way the plank hadn't. Like the difference between a word spelled correctly and a word spelled close-to-correctly.
"Oh," Avery said.
"It's small," Derek said. "But it adds up."
"How do you see that."
"I don't know," Derek said, with the honesty of someone who had never tried to explain a skill that came naturally. "I just , it looks wrong if it's not right."
"That explains everything and nothing," Avery said.
"Building is like , it's logic," Derek said, still closer than he'd been a minute ago, still looking at Avery's screen. "The eye wants patterns. It wants repetition and deviation from repetition at the right intervals. So you learn what the eye wants and you give it that."
Avery looked at Derek rather than the screen. He was close. He was explaining something he actually cared about, which meant his voice had shifted, become slightly less careful and slightly more itself , the way it got when he was telling Avery about the mountain puzzle or the zombie that stopped burning or any of the other moments in that world where a problem had a solution and Derek had found it.
"You like this," Avery said.
Derek glanced at him. "Building?"
"Yeah."
"I-” he seemed slightly surprised by the question. "Yes. I think so." He looked back at the screen. "It's. I can see what I want it to be, and then I can make it that. It's-” he searched for the word, "satisfying. In a way that's very simple."
"In a way that doesn't hurt," Avery said softly.
Derek was quiet for a moment. "Yes," he said. "In a way that doesn't hurt."
Avery looked at the library on Derek's screen, at for Avery, so we have somewhere to put things we want to keep, and thought about Derek building it over four days, block by careful block, with his particular unhurried patience, thinking about grain direction and window placement and where the light would fall. Something that was just good. Just real. Just a thing he had made that would be there when he looked at it.
"Show me more," Avery said. "About the grain thing."
Derek showed him more about the grain thing.
By the end of the lesson, Avery had built a small additional room onto his base that was, if not beautiful, at least clearly the work of someone who had been told which direction the grain should go.
"Better," Derek said, studying it.
"Better than the dirt hut," Avery said.
"Significantly better than the dirt hut."
"Okay but in my defense," Avery said, "the dirt hut was very fast."
"Speed is a valid design priority," Derek said.
"Thank you."
"It still had a gap where the door should be."
"I said thank you, Derek."
Derek's mouth curved. He was leaning back against the couch, laptop on his knee, in the relaxed posture he'd settled into over the course of the evening, and Avery looked at him , the softness of him in lamplight, the way he was just here, in this apartment, this specific and ordinary Thursday night , and felt the warm thing in his chest doing what it always did, the thing that had no better name than just this, this, this.
He shifted.
"Can I-” he started.
Derek looked at him.
Avery made a vague gesture that communicated his general intention.
Derek looked at the gesture. He looked at Avery. He moved his laptop to the side and opened his arm in a way that was not dramatic about it at all, just practical, just: yes, obviously, here.
Avery settled into the space Derek made. It took a moment to find the configuration , Avery's back against Derek's chest, Derek's arm coming around in front, both of them still facing their respective laptops , and then it settled into something that was just right, comfortable in the way of things that were always going to be comfortable once they finally got there.
"This okay?" Avery said.
"Yes," Derek said.
His voice was a little lower from this angle. Avery could feel the vibration of it.
"You're warm," Avery said, which he hadn't planned to say.
"So I've been told," Derek said.
"Who told you?"
"You did. Three days ago. When you stole my blanket."
"I didn't steal your blanket, there was a blanket deficit and I redistributed-”
"You stole my blanket," Derek said, with great certainty, and Avery could feel him smiling even without seeing it.
They played like that for a while. Or they had the laptops open and the world was running, but neither of them was building much anymore. Avery made a few half-hearted improvements to his storage system. Derek placed some lanterns on a path between the library and the house. The world was quiet the way Minecraft could be quiet, the soft ambient sounds of it, the distant birds and the wind and the occasional faraway cow.
"Derek," Avery said.
"Hm."
"You're really good at building."
Derek was quiet for a moment. "Thank you," he said, in the shoe-looking voice.
"Like actually really good. The library is , genuinely. It's beautiful."
"It's a Minecraft building," Derek said.
"It's beautiful," Avery said again, firmly, because Derek did this , minimized things, deflected, found the most reduced version of a compliment and accepted only that , and Avery had decided some time ago that the solution was simply to repeat the thing until Derek had to receive it. "The reading nooks are beautiful. The fireplace is beautiful. The sign is-”
"The sign is-”
"Beautiful," Avery said.
Derek made a sound that was almost definitely him trying to think of a counterargument and not finding one.
"You made me a library," Avery said. "With a sign that says for Avery. In Minecraft, but still. Derek."
"It took four days," Derek said, like this was a deflection.
"That makes it more, not less," Avery said. "You spent four days building me a library."
"I had time," Derek said.
"Derek."
"The farm was already finished, so-”
"Derek."
"I wanted to," Derek said, quietly, the way he'd said I wanted to about the breakfast, about the toast, about all the small things he did that he then immediately tried to make smaller. "I wanted to make something that was , yours. That you could come back to. In the world."
Avery closed his laptop.
He turned slightly, which took some rearranging, until he could see Derek's face, and Derek's face was doing the thing , not the shoe-looking thing exactly but the version of it that meant he had said something true and was now extremely aware of having said it.
"Hi," Avery said.
"Hi," Derek said.
"You made me a library."
"I know."
"With reading nooks."
"I know, Avery."
"That's very romantic."
Derek's ears went pink. "It's a Minecraft-”
"Derek."
",building, which is-”
"It's very romantic," Avery said, "and you're very good at building, and you should let me say that."
Derek looked at him. His expression was the undone thing, the warm thing, more than usual, and he was close and Avery could feel the warmth of him from here, and the apartment was quiet the way it got late in the evening when the street noise settled down.
"Okay," Derek said.
"Yeah?"
"Okay. I'm letting you say it."
"You're very good at building," Avery said.
"Thank you," Derek said, and this time it came out differently , fuller, less deflected, the words given their actual weight. Like he had practiced receiving it and found the form it was supposed to take.
"Was that so hard," Avery said.
"Yes," Derek said, honestly.
Avery laughed. He turned back around, settling against Derek's chest again, and felt Derek's arm tighten slightly around him, a small deliberate pressure. He picked his laptop back up and looked at the world. The library was visible from here, on Avery's screen, at a slight distance, solid and detailed and there.
"Derek," he said.
"Hm."
"Teach me how to build a reading nook."
Derek leaned slightly forward to look at Avery's screen, which brought his cheek very close to Avery's hair. "Now?" he said.
"Tomorrow," Avery said. "Right now I'm comfortable."
He felt Derek consider this. Then: "Okay."
"Good," Avery said.
"Avery," Derek said.
"Yeah?"
"Your storage system is very functional."
Avery made a noise of deep offense. "That's the most backhanded-”
"The chest organization is clear," Derek said. "The categorization is logical."
"Are you complimenting my Minecraft chests to make me feel better about the building."
"I'm providing an accurate assessment of your organizational skills."
"Derek."
"The chest labels are good," Derek said.
"You are the strangest person I've ever met," Avery said.
"I know," Derek said, without any indication of distress about this.
"I mean it in a good way."
"I know," Derek said again, and this time he sounded like he did know, like he had received it and kept it, filed it somewhere that felt safe. His thumb moved against Avery's arm, a small slow movement.
Avery looked at the library on his screen. At the sign. For Avery, so we have somewhere to put things we want to keep.
He thought: I'm keeping this. I'm keeping all of this.
Outside it was properly dark now, the good dark of late evening, and the lamp in the corner was doing its warm yellow work, and Derek was solid and real at his back, and the world on Avery's screen was quiet and built and theirs.
Avery fell asleep like that.
He didn't mean to. It was a Thursday night and he had things to do , editing, emails, the video he'd been putting off, the thumbnail he'd promised himself he'd finish. He had a list. He had intentions.
He fell asleep against Derek's chest somewhere around ten thirty, laptop still open, cursor drifted away from anything useful.
Derek noticed when Avery's breathing changed. He looked down, at the top of Avery's head, at the slack easy weight of him, and he was quiet for a moment. Then he carefully reached past Avery and closed Avery's laptop, and then his own, and shifted slightly to make the position more sustainable, and Avery stirred but didn't wake.
Derek pulled the blanket from the back of the couch , the blanket that Avery had stolen three days ago and that Derek had simply accepted had changed hands , and got it around both of them, more or less, in the way that was possible given the architecture of the situation.
He looked at the closed laptops on the coffee table. At the small plant on the windowsill , Hastur, sitting in his pot, significantly less threatening. At the crayon slime on the fridge. At the whole specific ordinary shape of this apartment, this life, this Thursday night.
He thought about the library in the world, the sign over the fireplace. He had meant it when he wrote it. He'd stood in the world for a while before placing the sign, knowing what he wanted to say and taking his time getting it right, which was how he did things. For Avery, so we have somewhere to put things we want to keep.
He had been thinking about more than the library when he wrote it.
He was fairly sure Avery knew that. He was also fairly sure Avery had needed to hear it said, needed it made specific and named in the way that Derek needed things named, and that maybe that was something they had in common, that neither of them was very good at letting things exist unnamed in the space between people.
He was getting better at receiving things.
He thought Avery was helping him with that. He thought he was perhaps helping Avery with other things. He thought this was what people meant by person , not that one individual fixed another, but that there was a particular shape that happened when two specific people were in the same space, a configuration that made both of them more themselves than either of them was separately.
Avery shifted in his sleep, some small unconscious adjustment, and his hand found Derek's where it rested on his arm, and held it loosely, the way you hold things when you're not thinking about it, when the body just knows.
Derek looked at their hands.
He looked at the apartment.
He closed his eyes.
Here, he thought. Real. Present. Fine.
He was fine.
He was, in fact, considerably better than fine, in the specific and ordinary way of someone sitting in a lamp-lit apartment on a Thursday night with someone they care about asleep against them, with a world on a laptop that has a library with their name on a sign, with a succulent on the windowsill and a crayoned slime on the fridge and a blanket that had been redistributed without negotiation and eleven things on a grocery list that became twenty-six.
The universe was enormous.
Right here it fit in an apartment.
Derek decided that was enough, and let himself be still, and did not move, and did not think about anything vast, and breathed in and out in the quiet lamplight until he too was asleep.
In the morning Avery would wake up to a crick in his neck and a feeling of deep contentment and Derek asleep beside him on the couch, their positions having shifted at some point in the night into something that was less elegant and more comfortable, tangled slightly, the blanket distributed approximately evenly. He would lie there for a moment without moving, looking at Derek's face in the early morning light, and he would think: I'm going to make breakfast and I'm going to let him sleep and I will not burn the toast, and then he would remember that he didn't know how to not burn toast and would get up and look up a tutorial on his phone standing in the kitchen in his socks, and follow it very carefully, and the toast would come out slightly pale on one side but structurally sound, and Derek would wake up to the smell of it and appear in the kitchen doorway looking very sleepy and extremely himself, and Avery would say good morning and Derek would say good morning and neither of them would mention the falling asleep on the couch because it didn't need mentioning, because it was just what had happened, because it was simply the shape of things now.
Later Derek would look at the toast and say: "you undercooked it slightly." And Avery would say: "I didn't burn it." And Derek would say: "that's true," and eat it, and not complain. Which was, for Derek Hutchins, basically a standing ovation.