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“There is one thing I’m curious about,” I said, “and that is where the ray of sunlight came from.”
“It looked like a sunbeam true enough,” he said. “I don’t know, it always comes when I immerse any living thing. Perhaps,” he continued, smiling, “perhaps it is the vital spark of the creature escaping to the source from whence it came.”
— Robert W Chambers, "The Mask"
The sun is warm and gold on Derek's skin. Overhead, cottonwood leaves rustle and whisper in a soft breeze, a drowsy gossipy sound. There's not a cloud in sight in the blue sky when Derek opens his eyes just a little to look.
Underneath him the grass—Kentucky bluegrass and perennial ryegrass, the same seed mixture used in several major league baseball stadiums, invasive to North American grasslands, difficult to control by fire, and Derek makes himself stop thinking about this before he dissociates completely—is cool and smells fresh. He's acutely aware of the tiny black ants scouting their way under the rhizomes of the grass, the bright blooms of dandelions growing from deep roots, the fungal spores dormant on leaves and stems, the parasitic wasp nest buried three feet away with hungry wasp larvae about to hatch into a caterpillar's paralyzed body, the roots of the cottonwood spreading like a cradle under the soil.
Derek pushes his thoughts away from all that. He focuses, instead, on the solidity of Avery's hip where his forehead presses to the bone. Iliac crest under layers of muscle and fat and skin and cotton and denim, pulse beating slow and relaxed. Avery is humming the Animal Crossing theme, occasionally making what Derek can only think of as Blathers noises. He's playing on his Switch, sound turned off so he can hear the birds. Literally touching grass is all well and good, but Avery isn't very good with books or looking at clouds.
"What's with the letters?" Avery asks, breaking into Derek's thoughts.
He's aware very suddenly that he's rattling off a string of letters under his breath, almost inaudible. A, T, C, G, over and over in different patterns. "Uh," Derek says, "it's the black cottonwood tree genome. DNA."
Adenine, thymine, cytosine, guanine: chemicals all bonding in pairs on twin polymer backbones to make a double-stranded helix. At least, that's how humans put it. Cells don't call it that. There's a language at once infinitesimally small and incomprehensibly vast that they speak to each other and to themselves. Derek can't speak it with his very human voice, so if he ends up reciting DNA he has to use the human terms.
Avery doesn't know where Derek’s thoughts are, of course. Derek has no idea how he’d even begin to explain the concept of cellular language. So he sets it aside and listens to Avery’s voice. "Is that the tree we're sitting under?"
"Yeah."
Avery puts down the Switch. He rests a hand on Derek's head. The light pressure pushes away the ongoing headache a bit. "Any really goated facts about it?"
"It shares seven unique transmembrane receptor genes with fungi and also has the genes for two mycorrhizal-specific phosphate transporters, which—" Derek stops and takes a deep breath. Avery is looking down at him with a besotted, slightly confused smile. So patient. Always so patient. Derek tries again. "The tree can talk to mushrooms."
"Deadass!?"
"It shares small pieces of unique DNA, which means the fungi have shared their DNA with the tree," Derek says. "The roots under us, the fungi in the soil...it's all communication."
"That's awesome," Avery says. "I know the whole infinite knowledge thing kinda sucks—uh, more than sucks, actually, sorry—but the facts are cool."
"They are," Derek says. He closes his eyes again. Avery doesn't move his hand away. His thumb keeps brushing back and forth over Derek's temple.
This is a good day. A forearm-crutches-instead-of-wheelchair day. A one-ibuprofen-instead-of-sumatriptan day. A go-touch-grass-for-real day.
A year and a half after the Crossroads, days like this are getting more and more common.
"How's the island?"
Avery makes a face. "Perfect except the tarantulas."
Derek has literally never played Animal Crossing. It's only been since meeting Avery that he's learned anything meaningful about the game. While he could recite from memory the binary code that makes Tom Nook exist, there's a special charm to meeting the islanders for real.
"Did a tarantula kill you?"
"You don't die in Animal Crossing, we've been over this."
"So...did it?"
"...Yeah."
Derek pats Avery's knee comfortingly. "Better luck next time."
The really good practical luck: somehow, their collective finances are in decent shape in spite of...everything. Derek doesn't have to fight with office politics to get recovery time. His frequent commission clients are happy to accept a slower pace, and he's just stopped taking on any new major work. Derek’s savings and Avery's paycheck are enough to handle things, especially when he and Avery are splitting rent and bills. Anything better than the current off-the-shelf transport wheelchair is way out of reach right now, but they can eat something nicer than ramen every night and keep up a Netflix subscription.
It's the little things.
"Um, so, my mom and dad want to meet you," Avery says.
Derek just barely manages not to start talking about Avery's parents' favorite colors and the particular way their genes combined to produce the ideal vessel of the King in Yellow, and why Avery's mother and father are the only two beings on Earth who could have pulled it off, but there are three beings on the distant planet humanity calls TOI-715b that could do it if the circumstances were right. They never will be, mostly because the King in Yellow is unavailable for comment.
"In person?" Derek asks. He suspects he was silent for way too long, but Avery doesn't comment.
"Nah, video call," Avery says. "I told them I'd ask you?”
"I'd like that," Derek says.
He can hear the smile in Avery's voice. "I'll tell them."
Avery hasn't met Derek's mom. Derek loves her, she loves him, but they live on opposite sides of a continent. Video calls aren't her thing and long-distance travel isn't his. They've drifted, the way two adults separated by so much distance and time sometimes do. Money's a factor: she couldn't afford to fly out to him for that brief period before he dropped out of college, and even now she couldn't fly when he was in the hospital. Derek doesn't blame her. But it does mean he hasn't really thought of introducing Avery to her. And Avery hasn't asked.
Sunbeams dance through the cottonwood leaves. Avery pushes Derek off and scoots to lie down on his back. Derek lifts his head to watch the production. Avery drags his backpack over to put under his head for a pillow, wriggling around to get comfortable. There are going to be grass stains on his shirt again, though he won't care. Then he sits up to stick his Switch in its case and shove that into his backpack. Finally, he flops back down and holds out one arm, grinning. “Cmon.”
It's easier for Derek not to get lost in his own head when he’s close to Avery. The smell of him—sweat, Tostitos lime tortilla chip dust on his shirt collar, the faint vanilla of androstenone, Head And Shoulders shampoo, something uniquely Avery—is at this point something of a pheromonal aphrodisiac. Smelling it keeps Derek very firmly in his own body. This is not a fact Derek has shared with Avery yet. It feels like it might be crossing the line into too weird.
Maybe someday.
In the meantime he rests his hand on Avery’s chest. Palm pressing over heart. Fingertips resting on sternum. The big IKEA logo printed on the shirt is smooth to the touch, warming in the sun. Avery's hand is a solid weight between his shoulder blades.
Off on the playground there are kids yelling. Far enough away that the sounds of the leaves overhead almost drown them out.
He matches his breathing to Avery’s, slow and steady. Even good days like this are exhausting. Lying here in the sun, on the grass, pressed against Avery…Derek could very easily just fall asleep.
Soft lips press to Derek’s forehead. “I get surprised every time I remember you're real,” Avery mumbles.
“So do I,” Derek says softly, ruefully.
“Thanks for being real.”
An ant scurries up on Avery’s shirt, tiny antennae waving. Derek rests his finger in front of the ant. It holds still for a moment, then climbs up onto Derek’s finger. The tiny feet—tarsi, each ending in a tiny claw, and that's enough ant anatomy—tickle gently.
“That's cute,” Avery says. His breath ruffles Derek’s hair a little.
“They like sweet things,” Derek says. He turns his hand, letting the ant run a circle around his fingers. “Probably why it climbed up you.”
There's a beat of silence. Then Avery makes a flustered noise and Derek grins. “Hey! You can't just—you can't just say things like that!”
Derek laughs. He lets the ant down into the grass. “Yeah, I can.”
Kites sail up in the sky. A classic red diamond with a rainbow of bows on its tail, a yellow butterfly with yellow streamers trailing from the wing tips, a blue fish with a tail of glittering silver. Derek watches them twist and dance in the wind.
The butterfly dips low, down toward the ground with streamers flapping, as if to look at them. For a second it seems so vivid and close it might land on Derek’s nose, light as a living insect. And then the wind catches it, buoys it up, up, and the optical illusion breaks.
“There's a song about kites,” Avery says. “From an old movie, Mary Poppins, um, I really liked it when I was a kid, her flying umbrella slapped. They fly kites at the end of the movie, with this song, let's go fly a kite or something like that?”
Without a thought Derek sings the first couple of lines. Pitch-perfect, except for the way his voice cracks, because of fucking course he just knows every note. He winces, snapping his mouth shut to stop the singing. His teeth clack together, loud.
Avery’s arm tightens around Derek. “It’s okay,” Avery says. “I mean, it's not okay, uh, not for you, but it’s okay with me, I don’t mind. Still think it's lowkey cool you can just know that kind of stuff.”
Derek takes a deep breath. His head aches a little more and his vision is buzzing around the edges. This might be turning into a sumatriptan day after all, if a migraine kicks in.
“We should watch it tonight,” he says into Avery's neck.
“Only if you promise to sing along,” Avery says.
“No.”
“Yes!”
“...Fine,” Derek says with a sigh.
He kisses Avery right on his pulse point. They're in public so Derek doesn't do anything more than an otherwise chaste kiss. Even though the slight catch in Avery’s breath makes Derek want to go a lot further.
Later. That can happen later.
“’kay,” Avery says softly, “you’re, uh, you're getting weird, should we take you home?”
Derek pushes himself up on one elbow to look at Avery. “This is weird, but reciting the genome of a tree isn't?”
“You do things like that all the time,” Avery points out. “But you don't turn into a vampire in public all the time!”
That’s true.
“It’s still nice out,” Derek says. He ignores the tremor in his muscles from holding himself up like this. This is a good angle to see Avery. A little wobbliness is worth it.
Avery shrugs. “It’s nice inside too.”
Overhead the kites twist and turn together. The butterfly goes into another dive, yellow wings waving like banners in the brilliant sun. Beneath the soil, the roots of bluegrass and ryegrass and dandelions and cottonwood touch the hyphae of a thousand species of fungi, carrying on a silent dialogue that has been going on for more than four hundred million years since the first plants developed true roots and met their fungal neighbors. Pressure builds behind Derek’s eyes as he remembers being one of those plants. Under an alien sky with the Moon orbiting too close and the Earth spinning too fast and bizarre living towers looming twenty feet above the two-inch-tall moss jungle. The early flickers of chemical touch, new life making first contact—
“—come back,” Avery is saying. “Hey. Fuck, Derek, hey, look at me, come on—”
“Prototaxites,” Derek says. That’s the name modern science has given to those living towers, part of a kingdom of life neither plant nor fungus nor animal, long since extinct. The King knew them very well.
“Okay,” Avery says. He's sitting up now. Both of them are, actually, and he’s clutching Derek gently by the shoulders. His face is crumpled with worry that hurts Derek’s heart to see. “You can, um, you can tell me what that means later, okay? I’ve gotta get you home.”
Derek lets Avery help him up and get his forearm crutches situated. He’s half lost in the Paleozoic memories, trying to reconcile the sensations of being a two-inch-tall plant with standing on two very human legs. But he’s with it enough to say, “I’m so fucking sorry.”
“Don't be,” Avery says. He hitches on his backpack and squeezes Derek’s shoulder. In spite of the clear worry on his face, he smiles. “We touched grass for hours! That's a win, right?”
“Yeah,” Derek says. He can't help but smile back. It’s weak, but it's real, and Avery’s smile turns warm and relieved. Avery hugs him, careful of the crutches, and Derek leans into him. “That's a win.”