Archive of Our Own

The thing about being fine was that it was a skill.

Avery had gotten very good at it. He had been practicing, without knowing he was practicing, for, he thought about it sometimes, in the small hours, in the bathroom with the tap running so the sound covered anything that needed covering, for longer than he'd realized. Before Derek, even. The channel had taught him that. You learned to be fine on camera because the camera needed you to be fine, needed the energy and the ease and the particular warmth of someone who was glad to be there, and after enough years the on-camera fine and the off-camera fine stopped being different things.

He was fine.

He had been fine in the waiting room of the hospital, the blue plastic chairs, the specific smell of it, while Derek was in room 214 and Avery didn't know yet what he'd find. He had been fine in the doorway of that room when he saw Derek, thinner, unsteady in some way that wasn't physical, present in the particular way of someone who had been somewhere else for a long time and hadn't quite finished coming back. He had hugged Derek and cried a little, then, against his shoulder, but that had been relief, that had been you're alive, you're real, and relief was allowed, relief was fine.

After that he had stayed fine.

He had learned, watching Derek, what recovery looked like from the outside. He had learned the chip flavor question and the kitchen floor and the warm milk and the staying close without making it a thing. He had looked up therapists and moved plants and made breakfast and run the channel and filmed videos and monitored comment sections and managed the slow careful business of building a life that could hold two people, and he had been fine through all of it.

The not-fine happened in small pieces, at careful times.

In the shower, sometimes, when the water was loud enough. Very briefly, not for long, just a minute or two of sitting on the floor of the shower tub with his knees up and letting something come through, and then he would stand up and turn off the water and be fine again.

In the editing room occasionally, when a clip came up that he wasn't expecting, a piece of the original footage, a few seconds of something, and suddenly he would be back in that room at 2am watching fifteen hours of someone navigating something impossible and not knowing yet that they were going to be okay. He would stop the clip. He would sit for a moment. He would resume.

In bed, sometimes, in the early weeks, before, before the current arrangement, before the couch stopped being technically Derek's sleeping situation. He would lie in the dark after Derek had said goodnight and gone to the couch and he would look at the ceiling and feel the weight of everything that had happened pressing down on him, the footage and the hospital and the kitchen floor and the grocery run and all of it, the full accumulated mass of the past several months, and he would breathe through it until it passed.

He was very good at waiting for things to pass.

The rule, not a rule he'd made consciously, just one he'd discovered existed, was that the not-fine happened when Derek wasn't looking. In rooms Derek wasn't in, at times Derek wasn't awake, in the spaces between the things Derek could see. It wasn't strategy, exactly. It was just, Derek was in recovery. Derek was building the architecture. Derek was doing so well, measurably, demonstrably, Wednesday after Wednesday, and Avery was the person who made the breakfast and looked up the therapist and stayed close and moved the pothos and held things together while that happened, and there was not room in that role for Avery to also be the person who needed things.

So he didn't need things. At least not where anyone could see.

He was fine.

He was fine.

He was fine.

It was a Tuesday.

Not a bad Tuesday, particularly. Not a Tuesday with any obvious reason attached to it, no anniversary, no trigger, nothing he could have pointed to afterward and said that's why. Just a Tuesday in the third week of April with rain coming down outside and Fies asleep in the corner and Derek in the living room doing something on his laptop and Avery in the bedroom folding laundry.

Folding laundry was, he had found, a good activity for the times when something was pressing. Repetitive. Ordered. You could fold laundry and have your hands occupied and your brain occupied with the small mechanical task of it and let the other thing run in the background without giving it your full attention.

He was folding one of Derek's shirts.

It was a regular shirt. Dark blue, practical, the kind Derek wore because it was appropriate for most situations and required no particular decisions about pairing. Avery had washed it and it smelled like their laundry detergent now, the specific one they'd switched to three months ago because Derek had read the label of the previous one and said the phosphate content is higher than necessary and Avery had let him buy a different one and now that smell was just: home. Just what everything smelled like.

Avery folded the shirt.

He thought about the first time he'd done Derek's laundry. Sometime in the second week, Derek still technically a guest, both of them pretending the arrangement was temporary in the way you pretend things that aren't temporary. Avery had just put it in with his own without mentioning it and Derek had come out of the bathroom to find his shirts folded in a neat stack on the coffee table and had looked at them for a long moment and said you didn't have to and Avery had said I know and that had been that.

He thought about the shirt in his hands.

He thought about the hospital.

Not the after, not the room, not the blue chairs, not Derek's face when the door opened. He had processed those parts, or processed them as much as he was going to, and they had become memories rather than present things. No, what came up now, unpredictably, was the before. The eleven days of the before. The period where Derek's laptop was in a storage locker of a government agency and Avery's video had gone briefly enormous and then stabilized into something sustained and real, and every day he had checked the ARG forums and the comment section and the DMS theories and every day there had been no Derek.

Just: absence. Just: the last thing he had was ?>wdaswadd and then nothing.

He had watched the footage during those eleven days. The Google Drive footage, d3rlord3's POV, all of it. He had watched Derek move through an impossible world with the focused systematic patience of someone who did not know how to stop, and he had thought, he remembered thinking this, sitting alone in his apartment at two in the morning, laptop screen the only light, I don't know if this person is alive.

He had not known.

For eleven days he had not known.

He thought about that now, holding Derek's shirt, and something came loose somewhere inside his chest, some load-bearing thing that had been doing its job quietly for a very long time, and he sat down on the edge of the bed and the shirt was in his lap and his face was wet and he didn't remember deciding to cry.

He wasn't making noise. He was very practiced at not making noise. Just the wet face and the thing in his chest coming loose and the smell of the laundry detergent, their laundry detergent, and outside the rain coming down and Derek in the living room not knowing and Fies asleep in the corner not knowing and everything continuing on its ordinary Tuesday axis while Avery sat on the bed and didn't know, for the first time in months, how to be fine.

He thought: this is fine.

He thought: I'm fine.

He thought: Derek doesn't need-

He thought: eleven days.

He pressed the shirt against his face and breathed into it.

He did not hear the door.

He heard Derek's voice.

"Avery."

Not loud. Not the Avery of something being wrong, not the checking-in voice or the careful voice or the 3am voice. Just: his name, said simply, from the doorway.

Avery pulled the shirt away from his face. He turned toward the window. He was aware that the not-making-noise strategy had apparently stopped working at some point and he hadn't noticed, that there was a quality to the silence in the room that was the quality of someone having heard something.

"I'm fine," he said.

His voice did not cooperate. This was new. His voice was usually cooperative.

"Avery," Derek said again.

"I'm just-” Avery cleared his throat. Kept his face toward the window. "Laundry. I'm doing the laundry. I'm fine."

A pause.

He heard Derek not saying anything.

"It's nothing," Avery said. "You don't have to- I'm good. Go back to what you were doing."

Another pause.

Then footsteps, and Avery braced for the hand on his shoulder, for Derek sitting next to him, for the direct approach. Derek was direct. Derek said the thing he meant and meant the thing he said and Avery was not, right now, sure he could handle Derek being direct at him.

The footsteps went past the bedroom.

To the kitchen.

Avery sat on the bed with the shirt in his lap and heard, distantly, the sound of the microwave, and then the soft sound of a cupboard, and then footsteps returning, and then Derek was in the doorway again.

He came in.

He sat down on the floor.

Not on the bed, not beside Avery, not in any position that required Avery to look at him or acknowledge him or perform being okay. Just: on the floor beside the bed, back against the mattress, legs stretched out, and he held up a mug.

Avery looked at it.

Warm milk. The sunflower mug.

Avery looked at the mug. He looked at Derek's profile, which was calm and not asking anything and not watching him cry, just: present, on the floor, offering something warm.

Something in Avery's chest did something very large.

He took the mug.

Derek looked at the wall across from him and said nothing.

Avery held the mug. It was warm in both hands, the specific warmth of the right temperature, not scalding, not lukewarm, exactly right. He thought about Derek in the kitchen knowing the temperature to make it. He thought about the therapist looked up three weeks in advance. He thought about all the things Derek had been quietly doing while Avery wasn't looking, all the ways Derek had been watching him the way Avery watched Derek, from a slight distance, carefully, ready.

He hadn't known.

He had thought, he had genuinely thought, that he was the one doing the watching. That Derek was the one being watched. That was the arrangement, that was the role he'd given himself, that was the reason he did the not-fine in showers and editing rooms and 2am bedrooms when Derek was asleep on the couch.

He had not considered that Derek had been watching him back.

"Derek," he said. His voice still wasn't cooperating.

"You don't have to say anything," Derek said, to the wall.

"I'm-” Avery stopped. He had the word ready. He had always had the word ready. Fine was the word he reached for and it had never not been there, not once in months, reliable and available and always on hand.

It wasn't there.

"I don't know what I am," Avery said, which was the truest thing he had said in a very long time.

Derek nodded, like this was useful information that he was filing correctly.

"Okay," Derek said.

Avery looked at the mug. "It was eleven days," he said.

"I know," Derek said.

"I didn't know if you were-” he stopped. "The last thing was the ?>wdaswadd and then nothing. For eleven days. And I had the footage and the forums and the comment section and I just kept-” he pressed his lips together, "I kept looking for evidence. That you were okay. That wherever you were there was evidence. And there wasn't."

Derek was quiet.

"I watched all the footage," Avery said. "The Google Drive footage. During the eleven days. Multiple times. I watched you go through all of it and I thought-” he stopped again. He looked at the shirt still in his lap. "I thought you were the most remarkable person I'd never met. And I thought I might never meet you."

A pause.

"I'm here," Derek said. Quietly. Simply.

"I know," Avery said. "I know. That's-” he looked at Derek's profile, at the calm of him, the present particular realness of him on the floor in the bedroom on a Tuesday. "I know you're here. I know that. I think I've been-” he looked for the word- "I think I've been waiting for it to feel as real as it is. And most of the time it does. But sometimes it doesn't and I-”

He stopped.

"And I don't cry where you can see me," he said. "Because I'm supposed to be the one who's okay."

Derek turned to look at him.

It was the full attention, the full, completely focused thing, the attention Derek gave things he had decided mattered, and Avery looked back at it and felt the full weight of being seen.

"Who said that," Derek said.

"Nobody," Avery said. "I just-”

"Who told you that you had to be the one who was okay," Derek said.

Avery opened his mouth. Closed it.

"Because it wasn't me," Derek said. "I never asked you to-”

"I know you didn't," Avery said. "I know. It was just-” he tried to find the mechanism of it, the thing that had made the decision feel obvious. "Someone had to be. And you were dealing with so much, and I had the apartment and the channel and the- I had things to hold, so I held them."

Derek looked at him for a long moment.

"Avery," he said.

"I'm not-” Avery started.

"I know what you're going to say," Derek said.

"I'm not saying I regret it," Avery said. "I don't. I would do all of it again. Every bit of it."

"I know," Derek said.

"I just-” Avery looked at the mug. "I didn't know I was also carrying the other thing. The eleven days thing. I thought I'd- I thought I'd processed it. But I think I was just good at putting it somewhere else."

"You're very good at that," Derek said. Not critically. Just accurately.

"I know," Avery said. "I know I am."

Derek looked at him. He looked at the shirt in Avery's lap. He looked at the mug in Avery's hands. He looked at Avery's face in the way of someone reading something they've been paying attention to for a long time.

"I've been watching you," Derek said.

Avery stilled.

"Not-” Derek paused, "not in a surveillance sense. Just. I notice things. That's not-” he looked for the word, "it's not something I always choose to do. But you make a particular face when something is heavier than you're presenting. And you go to the bathroom when the editing is going badly in a way that's about something other than the editing. And you fold laundry when you're trying to outrun something." He paused. "I wasn't sure whether to say anything."

Avery stared at him.

"You were waiting," Avery said.

"You wait for me," Derek said simply. "When I need to get there myself. It seemed-” he paused, "it seemed like the appropriate response."

Avery looked at Derek on the floor of the bedroom, calm and present and having watched him for months the way Avery had watched Derek, quietly, from a slight distance, ready, and felt something in his chest release in a way that was different from the coming-loose of earlier. Lighter.

"You could have said something," Avery said.

"So could you," Derek said.

A pause.

"Fair," Avery said.

"I didn't want to push," Derek said. "You're- you're very good at the fine. I wasn't sure whether you needed to get there yourself or whether you needed someone to notice."

"Both, probably," Avery said.

"Both," Derek agreed.

Avery looked at the mug. He drank some of the warm milk, which was exactly the right temperature, which it would be, because Derek had made it. "How did you know about the warm milk," he said.

Derek looked at him with the almost-smile. "You gave it to me," he said. "On the kitchen floor. Three in the morning."

"I thought-” Avery stopped. "I thought I was doing that for you."

"You were," Derek said. "I'm doing it for you."

Avery looked at him. He thought about the kitchen floor and chip flavor questions and the specific genius of asking someone something small and specific when something too large was pressing down. He thought about Derek in the kitchen just now knowing exactly what was needed and getting it without making it an event.

I learned from you, he thought.

"Come up here," Avery said, shifting over on the bed.

Derek looked at the floor. He looked at the bed. He stood up with the deliberate movement of someone who has made a decision and is implementing it, and sat on the bed beside Avery, and Avery leaned into him without ceremony, and Derek's arm came around him with the easy certainty of something finding its correct position.

Fies, who had apparently woken up at some point during all of this, jumped onto the bed and walked in a small circle and settled on Avery's feet, small and warm and resolutely present.

Avery looked at her.

"She waited up," he said.

"She heard you," Derek said. "From the living room. She came to the door first."

Avery closed his eyes. He thought about Fies at the bedroom door, small and grey and asymmetrical, standing guard. He thought about Derek in the living room hearing something through the door and making a decision about what was needed and going to the kitchen instead of coming straight in.

"Derek," he said.

"Hm."

"I think I need to talk to someone," Avery said. "About the eleven days. About all of it. Properly."

He felt Derek's arm tighten slightly. "Okay," Derek said.

"Dr. Okafor," Avery said. "Do you think she-”

"She takes referrals," Derek said. "I asked her. A few weeks ago."

Avery lifted his head and looked at him.

Derek looked at the wall across the room. His ears were slightly pink. "Just in case," he said.

Avery stared at him for a long moment.

"You asked her a few weeks ago," Avery said.

"The information seemed potentially relevant," Derek said.

"You looked it up," Avery said. "For me. Just in case."

"She said she has availability on-”

"Derek," Avery said.

“-Thursday mornings, if that-”

"Derek."

Derek looked at him.

"You looked it up," Avery said. "Three weeks ago you looked up the therapist for me and I looked up the therapist for you and neither of us said anything."

Derek considered this. "We're both very bad at asking for things," he said.

"We're both very bad at asking for things," Avery agreed.

"We're getting better," Derek said.

"We're getting better," Avery said.

He leaned back against Derek's shoulder. Derek's arm settled around him again and they sat on the bed in the Tuesday afternoon rain with Fies on Avery's feet and the warm milk cooling slightly in the mug and the laundry half-folded and all of it very ordinary and very real.

"I'm not fine," Avery said.

It came out easily. Easier than he'd expected, like a word he'd been holding in his mouth for a long time that turned out not to be sharp after all.

"I know," Derek said.

"I haven't been fine for a while," Avery said. "I've been good at fine. That's different."

"Yes," Derek said. "It is."

"I'm working on knowing the difference," Avery said.

"Good," Derek said. "I'll help."

Avery looked at the room. At the half-folded laundry. At the shirt in his lap, still. At Fies, who had moved from his feet to the pillow and was watching them both with the amber-eyed attention of something that had conducted its assessment and reached a satisfactory conclusion.

"Derek," he said.

"Hm."

"Can we-” he made the gesture, the one that had started as can I and had evolved into something that meant something larger, something that was about the whole arrangement. "Can we just. Not the couch tonight."

Derek was quiet for a moment.

"I was wondering," he said carefully, "when you were going to ask."

Avery looked at him. "You've been waiting for me to ask."

"It seemed like your call to make," Derek said.

"It's your call too," Avery said.

"I made my call a while ago," Derek said. "I've been on the couch because that's where you put me. I didn't want to-” he paused, "presume."

Avery thought about Derek on the couch for weeks. Months. Derek, who had made him a library and looked up therapists and bought cat beds in exactly the right blue, sleeping on the couch because Avery had said here's the couch and Derek had not wanted to presume.

"I'm an idiot," Avery said.

"You're not," Derek said. "You were being careful."

"You could have said-”

"So could you," Derek said, for the second time, with the same quiet accuracy.

"Fair," Avery said, for the second time.

A pause.

"So," Avery said. "Not the couch."

"Not the couch," Derek agreed.

"Starting tonight," Avery said.

"Starting tonight," Derek said.

Fies moved from the pillow to the space between them and turned in a circle and lay down with the proprietary confidence of something that had already decided where it slept and was informing them both of this decision.

Derek looked at Fies.

"She's going to be in the middle," he said.

"She's going to be in the middle," Avery confirmed.

"We'll need to work around her," Derek said.

"Obviously," Avery said.

Derek looked at Fies. He looked at Avery. He looked at the room, at the laundry and the rain and the afternoon light, and his expression was the open thing, the thing without management, the thing that Avery had first seen the night he brought Fies home and that had been getting easier to see since.

"Okay," Derek said.

"Okay," Avery said.

It was a Tuesday. Nothing particular about it except that Avery had cried into a shirt and Derek had been in the kitchen knowing what to do about it and they had both, finally, said the thing they should have said earlier, which was: I see you. I've been watching. I'm ready.

That was enough.

That was, Avery thought, leaning back against Derek's shoulder with the warm milk in his hands and the rain on the windows and Fies between them both, more than enough.

Derek had known about the shower.

Not immediately, not in the first weeks, when he had been preoccupied with the basic project of being in a body that was still his and a mind that was mostly his and a life that was being rebuilt piece by piece. But somewhere around the third week, when the architecture had started to feel more load-bearing and he'd had processing capacity for things other than his own recovery, he had noticed.

The pattern was: Avery would go to the shower, and the shower would run for longer than necessary, and when Avery came out he would be fine in the particular bright, present way that was his baseline, the YouTuber warmth of him, the ease. He would make a joke or ask about dinner or sit on the couch and be entirely himself, and there would be no evidence of anything.

Derek noticed evidence of things.

He noticed the quality of Avery's voice in the five minutes after the long showers. Not different in any way a person who wasn't paying close attention would clock. Just slightly, deployed. The fine slightly more constructed, slightly more deliberate, in the way of something that had been assembled recently rather than something that was just: present.

He noticed the editing room.

The particular rhythm of the editing room on the days when it went quiet for longer than the project explained. The slightly overcompensating cheerfulness when Avery came out. The way Avery would make tea on those days, automatically, before being asked, and stand in the kitchen for a moment too long while it cooled.

He noticed the laundry.

This one had taken longer to identify. But there was a pattern: Avery folded laundry when something was pressing. He did it systematically, methodically, in the way of someone giving their hands something to do while their brain ran something else in the background. Derek had recognized the strategy because he used a version of it himself, the plant maintenance, the Minecraft building, the small tasks that were not about the task.

He had been watching all of it for months.

The question of what to do with what he was watching had been, he was aware, one he had been slow to answer. He had told himself various things about this delay. That Avery needed to get there himself. That pressing would feel like the wrong kind of watching, the kind with weight attached. That Avery was an adult who would ask for what he needed when he needed it.

All of these things were true.

Also true: Derek found it difficult to say I have noticed you are not okay to the person who had organized his entire recovery. There was something that felt like an imbalance in it, a ledger that was not his to audit, a debt he was conscious of even though Avery had never once implied it existed.

He was working on that in his Wednesday appointments.

Dr. Okafor had said, in her direct and unalarming way: care is not a ledger. it doesn't accumulate in one direction until someone has to pay it back. you are allowed to notice that Avery is struggling without it meaning you failed to be recovered enough. He had sat with this for several weeks. He was still sitting with it.

He had asked, the previous month, quietly, at the end of a session: if someone came to you who had gone through something significant and never processed it because they were focused on someone else, would you have capacity for that. Dr. Okafor had said yes and given him her referral information without asking any further questions, in the way of someone who had put together a picture from available evidence.

He had kept the information. Just in case.

He heard Avery from the living room.

Not loudly. Avery was never loud about it, he had learned, the not-fine happened quietly, at a specific register, in the way of something that had been trained to take up as little space as possible. But Derek's hearing was, it had always been careful, and what the King had not taken it had perhaps sharpened, and the apartment was small, and he knew the quality of Avery's silence well enough to know when it had changed.

He put down his laptop.

He sat for a moment.

He thought about what Avery did. The chip flavors. The kitchen floor. The thing that was small and specific enough that the large thing didn't have room to be overwhelming. He thought about what Avery needed versus what Avery would say he needed, which were, he had come to understand, often different things.

Avery would say: I'm fine.

Avery needed: someone to stay.

He went to the kitchen.

He made the warm milk, which he had made exactly once before, which Avery had made for him on the kitchen floor at 3am, which had worked in the specific way of things that were warm and required no response. He found the sunflower mug without having to look for it.

He went to the bedroom doorway.

Avery was on the bed with a shirt in his lap and his face turned toward the window and his shoulders in the particular set of someone who was hoping not to be seen and was aware the hoping might not be enough. Derek looked at him and felt something that was not one emotion but several in close proximity, the specific distress of seeing Avery in pain, the recognition of the shape of it, the feeling of: this is the thing I have been watching for and now it is here and I have to do the correct thing.

The correct thing was not: make it about Derek.

The correct thing was not: ask questions or prompt disclosure or perform concern.

The correct thing was: warm milk. Floor. Present.

He went to the floor.

He held up the mug.

He watched Avery look at it. Watched Avery's face do several things in quick succession, the surprise, the recognition, the trying to stay controlled, and then something else, something that came through the control and just: arrived. The expression of someone who has been found.

Avery took the mug.

Derek looked at the wall.

He listened to Avery's breathing even out, fractionally, around the mug. He listened to the rain. He listened to the quality of the room, which was the quality of something releasing, slowly, from a long holding.

He waited.

He was, he had discovered, becoming better at waiting. Dr. Okafor said this was the work. That the waiting without filling it was its own skill, one he was learning, one that was easier some weeks than others. He sat on the bedroom floor and did not fill it and listened to Avery breathe.

When Avery spoke, eleven days, Derek felt the words land in a specific place.

He knew about the eleven days from his own side. He knew what it had been to be in that place, the timelessness of it, the way the world had continued outside while inside there was only the realm and the King and the deteriorating mind and the smoothies running out. He knew it from the inside.

He had not fully considered what it had looked like from outside.

Eleven days. Avery, in this apartment, watching footage multiple times, checking forums, monitoring comments, sitting with the absence of evidence. Not knowing. Carrying the not-knowing alone because there was nothing else to do with it.

Derek looked at the wall and felt the weight of that.

He thought about the hospital, about what Avery had told him, I thought you were the most remarkable person I'd never met. And I thought I might never meet you. He thought about Avery arriving at room 214 with a vending machine coffee cup and red eyes, already having made the decision to stay before he even knew if Derek would want him to.

All of that before any of this.

All of that before the kitchen floor and the grocery run and the library and Wif and the Wednesday appointments. Before Avery had any reason to expect anything back.

He said: who told you that you had to be the one who was okay.

Because he needed to know. He needed Avery to hear the question, to look at the thing he had been carrying and see that no one had assigned it to him, that he had picked it up himself and no one was asking him to keep holding it.

When Avery said: I've been watching you too. How you wait. So I waited.

Derek felt something click into place.

He had known Avery was watching. He had known in the way he knew most things about Avery, from evidence, from the accumulated data of months of close proximity, from all the small things that added up to the picture of someone who paid exquisitely careful attention without announcing it. He had known.

He had not known Avery had learned the waiting from him.

He thought: we have been on the floor of our own kitchens, separately, with the warm milk ready, waiting for each other to ask.

He thought: we are both extremely bad at this in complementary ways.

He thought: we are getting better.

When Avery said he wanted to talk to someone, Derek was already reaching for his phone.

"I asked Dr. Okafor," he said. "A few weeks ago. She takes referrals. Thursday mornings."

He watched Avery look at him. The precise moment of the understanding arriving, Avery's face doing the thing it did when something landed in the place it was supposed to land.

"You looked it up," Avery said. "For me."

"The information seemed potentially relevant," Derek said.

He watched Avery press his lips together in the way that meant something large was happening just below the surface. He watched Avery look at the mug and then at Derek and then at the mug again.

"We're both very bad at asking for things," Avery said.

"Yes," Derek said. "But we're getting better."

The smile that came across Avery's face then was the real one, the one that came from somewhere deeper than the YouTube warmth, the one Derek had catalogued specifically as distinct from the performative version. He had forty-seven screenshots of it. He was not going to tell Avery about the forty-seven screenshots. Not yet.

When Avery asked about not-the-couch, Derek felt something settle.

He had made the decision, privately, approximately six weeks ago. He had been on the couch, which was fine, the couch was comfortable and Avery had given it to him and he had taken it, but somewhere around week eight or nine of the current arrangement he had realized that the couch was where he was because neither of them had moved the couch situation forward, and the reason neither of them had moved it was that they were both waiting for the other person to.

He had decided he would wait for Avery.

He had waited.

And now Avery was asking, finally, in the way Avery asked things that were hard, not directly, but as a question built around the real question, can we, can I, is this allowed, and Derek said yes in the way he'd learned to say things, without qualifier, because it was simply true, because it had been true for weeks and he had just been on the couch being patient about it.

Fies settled between them on the bed with the authority of something that had identified the optimal position and claimed it.

Derek looked at her. He looked at Avery. He looked at the half-folded laundry and the shirt on Avery's lap and the rain on the window and all of it very real and very specific and very, precisely, his.

Not his in the possessive sense. His in the sense of: he belonged here. This was the place he belonged. The apartment and the plants and the cat and the person next to him, who had watched fifteen hours of footage of a stranger navigating something impossible and walked into a hospital room and sat on a kitchen floor at 3am and waited and prepared and stayed, and who was, it turned out, also not fine sometimes, and who had just told him so for the first time.

Derek thought: this is the most important thing that has happened today.

He thought: I have to remember to tell Dr. Okafor about the warm milk.

He thought: Avery is very warm and Fies is between us but I can still feel the warmth of him and this is just going to be what falling asleep feels like now and that is-

He tried to find the word.

He thought about the four seconds of this is nice that forty thousand people had clipped and two hundred thousand people had liked, about saying it in a tone of mild surprise about a Minecraft house and a Skywars session and an ordinary Thursday night.

He thought: this is nice was the beginning of the sentence.

The rest of it was: this is the specific shape of what I was hoping for without knowing I was hoping. this is the thing that is mine. this is where I'm supposed to be.

He didn't say any of this.

He said: "Get some sleep."

Avery, who was already listing slightly toward him, made a small sound of agreement.

"We'll call Thursday tomorrow," Derek said. "For the appointment."

"Mm," Avery said.

"And you should probably finish the laundry," Derek said. "At some point. The shirt is still-”

"Tomorrow," Avery said.

"Tomorrow," Derek agreed.

Fies adjusted her position with the slight rearrangement of something that has decided the current configuration is almost correct and is making the final calibration. She settled. She purred.

The rain came down.

Derek sat in the bedroom that was now his bedroom, beside the person who was his person, with the cat who was their cat, and thought about all the ways you could know someone, from footage, from a cipher, from a Google Drive folder, from seventeen things that weren't on the list, from a library with a sign, from warm milk on a kitchen floor, from the particular shape of their not-fine, and how all of those ways together were still only the beginning of it.

He was looking forward to the rest of it.

He thought about saying so.

He thought: tomorrow.

He thought: there is time.

He let Avery lean against him and closed his eyes and let the rain do its ordinary work outside, and inside the apartment everything was exactly where it was supposed to be, and Derek Hutchins, who had survived something impossible and was building something real, thought:

here.

this.

enough.

The Thursday appointment was at nine in the morning. Derek walked with Avery to the building and waited on the bench outside with Fies's carrier, he had brought Fies, on the grounds that Fies had been at the bedroom door and had, in Derek's assessment, earned the information, and when Avery came out an hour later he looked lighter in a way that was small and real, the specific lightness of something having been put down. He sat on the bench beside Derek. He looked at Fies in the carrier. He looked at Derek. He said: "She said I've been doing something called emotional load-bearing for someone else and I need to learn to put it down." Derek said: "Yes." Avery said: "You knew that." Derek said: "I had a working hypothesis." Avery said: "You could have said something." Derek said: "So could you." Avery looked at him. Then he laughed, the real one, and Derek felt it in the specific way he felt Avery's real laugh, like something warm happening in close proximity. "We're very bad at this," Avery said. "We're getting better," Derek said. Avery leaned against his shoulder on the bench outside the therapist's office with the cat between their feet, and Derek put his arm around him, and they sat there in the Thursday morning for a while, getting better, together.