Chapter Text
Just after he'd let his hands of the keys for those final last words, a icy hot bolt scored through his eyesocket, piercing his vision in a daze of sparkling yellow and impossible colors. Pressing a wrist to it as if it were a bleeding hole in his skull needing to be pressured, he squinted at the computer screen, which no longer felt obligated to give him the privilege of relief. Minecraft finally displayed sever disconnection. The King's world no longer existed.
The pain dug into his brain, stretching out like a star, he whined, ducking his head with shaking hands pressing hard onto his temples. He'd done a good thing, he was grateful, really, that he'd gotten the chance to witness it all.
All its beauty, its splendor, its incredible weight. Its horror, its incomprehensible-- yet fully sensible functionality. The way vision spiked and wound apart the shapes and atoms of the world like ribbon, spinning flourish and zipping by. He'd never tried any hard drugs, and he knew what he saw and felt in his own delicately mortal body was more ethereal, more haunting, more breaking than any drug could provide within the whole scope of this miniscule time-restrained cage in all that ever was, could be, and is.
Acutely aware of how close his cells were to one another, how his baseline heart pounded in his ears, him and everyone else's experience with this speck of everything, of reality, converging and finitely spewing in all foreseeable directions. Because not even the universe was permanent, despite the way it stopped and started, the way it folded in on itself like a napkin at a Chinese restaurant, a contained bubble that expanded into nothing, had no end, yet had a limit. The sight of a billion eons, a billion ways to be, more memories that weren't his own and more knowledge of events that felt like memories, and weren't anything but the process of the known universe and all her parallel instances tripping and scrambling in childlike fashion.
And that was only the least of it, not a fraction, not a dust particle, not an atom's worth. So small you could call it nonexistent.
The rest could not be translated into human thought, and it was better if he didn't attempt to. The vagueness of knowing was enough to split him. A hazy daydream with a spike and a hammer.
He tried to stand to ground himself in the physical sensation for some ounce of reprise, but a storm of nausea twisted his stomach and bubbled up his throat. The room was a blur, but the screen stood out. The screen stood out. It did. Pixels in painful detail, every square of them.
Out of all the human lives, of all the lives that weren't of Earth, one stood out as being the most poignant. And it was a certainty that he was biased, biased beyond all reasonable means.
It was so loud, the screeching of everything that was, is, and will be, the sound resonated from outside of himself and deafened him. Between an eye that saw nothing but that sound, and the other that saw no point in computing this lesser form of existence, Derek was heavy handed as he leaned over his laptop and opened up Gmail.
He was... scared. He admitted.
Incredibly terrified no matter how he tried to convince himself that it was okay to die or how morally correct his decision was or that his insignificance was not a substantial loss. It was a part of him that he'd grown alongside, a logical voice that said despite the roaring panic flooding his senses that 'Your feelings are animalistic, they're built to preserve your body not out of genuine love, but out of a repetitive, efficient evolutionary strategy. Mind over matter. Mind over matter.'
A fear response was measurable.
You could hack into your own mind if you had the tools to do so.
Pain can be ignored. Even the kind that can rip you open.
You have the capability to breathe through it.
You have the capacity to accept death without fear, without evolution saying you must persist. The logic of the situation stated overwise: Derek, you cannot persist.
And yet he was still scared.
His fingers were so rattled he had difficulty getting the words down. Misspellings reigned today, and he didn't care. He just wanted to be remembered, and more than that, he mourned.
Before he had put all of his willpower into thumping his fist down on the mouse and shoving the email out to its destination, stress-heavy tears wet his cheeks.
The nausea ramped into his lungs, and then to his sinus, an infinitely rageful warcry reverberated in the marrow of bone. The King.
Elbows hit the floor, spit and liquid gold pooling and choking him, blinding him.
He was alone. Gravity sucked him in.
...
A notification dinged on his beaten laptop. The fireworks outside his window were neutrally silent.
Dragging his eyes back to the screen, feeling cold. The notification popup was listed from Gmail, from a user he wasn't familiar with.
Wasn't familiar with?
A firework exploded a few blocks down form his dorm, in the park where families and cousins and friends got together to scream at the top of their lungs and snap close their lighters as they took a step back. The firework's deep explosion fizzled out bright yellowish white and red, sparking a sharp burst of urgency.
Arms flying to the screen, one yanking hold of the mouse and another gripping the side of the laptop like a lifeline. The wheels on his chair rolled over a cord he was prone to damaging, repeated events of forgetting the wire was there creating a notable dent across it. But it didn't matter, it didn't, it was dispensable, unimportant, so much less important. The email sat at the top of his inbox like a hand extended out from God-- although given recent experiences, God wasn't all that generous.
Untitled. Inside was a mess of scrambled thoughts, a run-on sentence.
' 𝘮𝘴𝘤𝘳𝘥 𝘪𝘮 𝘴𝘰 𝘴𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘥𝘧 𝘢𝘷𝘳𝘺 '
A string of more of the same that dropped Avery's heart, now having absolute confirmation in every worst anxious thought and terrible outcome he'd really tried his best to avoid. This was his fault-- oh my god it was all his fault. If he could've done anything-- anything! To sidestep perverse uselessness and do something of real good. This person was suffering, and he was nowhere near to help, but it was foolish to imagine there was a way he could've helped.
Then, the effort of the email was placed solely on the shoulders of an address, it must've been copied and pasted.
Across the street, the other dorm building, the sidewalks were scattered with students. If he could do anything.
...
"Hi, Wait! Sorry," he was panting, waving his arms at the student heading inside the building, "Hold the door!"
Watching him stumble to lean against the doorframe for a microscopic quiver of a milisecond, the stranger gave a breathy laugh, "You good?"
"Yeah, so sorry I-- I forgot my key," he couldn't manage a friendly smile or even meet the eyes of them, and took off down the hall. Legs senseless like butter, flying him over the plain carpet and up a flight of stairs. Second floor. The florescent lights blared and his lungs strained.
23, 25, 27.
His speed faltered into a flopping gait, chest burning. He swallowed hard but no spit eased his throat, it only tensed a worse pain than before. Do not slow down. Pushing on to the end of the sprint.
Scanning every door, every number.
31, 33, 35.
He had it zipping circles in his memory, and finally he collapsed against the door of 37, the very last door beside the next flight of steel stairs on the left hand side.
He couldn't believe their luck, the both of them, to know that he was only a street away. Was this real? His focus streamlined, the thought floated but had no space to anchor, all thoughts lasered onto the door handle, and the keyhole.
Avery choked on his own sore throat. He kicked the door, rapped it with a clenched fist, then with an open palm.
"Hey! Derek I'm here, I'm here! Open the door, please!"
The cold metal of the handle spiked the ebbing exhaustion swimming in his muscles, the sound it its frantic jangling was too indifferent, too unbothered. The automatic lock was secure as it was made to be, wholly set on fulfilling its purpose by all means necessary, even if it killed someone. The dedication was not admirable. Avery's will was stronger.
At least, his shoulder was. He stepped back, his nails digging into the fist of his right hand as it braced against the palm of his left.
𝙏𝙝𝙢𝙥.
Dull pain crashed into him. He pulled back again.
𝙏𝙝𝙢𝙥.
"Derek!" He screamed, voice hiking up at an uneven tilt.
Again, the door jerked on its hinges, and nothing came of it. He was but a minor inconvenience to it. Wind to be kept out.
𝙏𝙝𝙢𝙥.
No no no no no, please no. He needed to get to him. He needed to. He was needed he was needed immediately, he can't be useless, he can't be stopped. Derek was asking for help and this-- this door, this stupid door-- this stupid building-- this stupid, stupid fucking night. Hot adrenaline. Avery touched the opposite wall with an elbow, huffing through gritted teeth.
He needed to. A pinprick of focus, the hall fell away around him. The door stood against him, squared off, a once passive barrier was now an engaged adversary. A guard with its firm arms crossed, indifferently cruel, heartless. He needed it ruined.
Again, and again, and again.
Dull ache in his shoulder.
Again, and again, and again.
Please, he begged. But this was not a waiting game where it was possible to hold down a button and wait, this was reality, and reality didn't have consideration for such waiting games. It only cared on if you had the strength to, and mental strength didn't count.
His body let up on him despite the fervent fire in his soul, his shoulder made contact with it once more, and then he slid down in a panting, wheezing pile, ever-managing to hold himself up.
The cold, still air raked down his throat as he stared up at the bright white lights above him.
He couldn't stop, if he stopped he'd be abandoning the person on the other side. Leaving him to succumb to a gruesome fate he had so stubbornly resigned himself to. It made no sense why this had to be the end of him, although a solution didn't present itself, this couldn't have been the sole outcome. In another universe, had things gone differently? Was Avery smarter, faster, more? Did he catch Derek's little lie to lead him astray, did he get to him before he made a terrible decision, did he save him.
He didn't know. The still air and the florescent lights, the cruel door is what he knew.
And here it was, the second chance to do some good, to maybe be present at the very least. Unable to be anything. As it has always been, nothing will change, nothing can change.
Gradually, his shortness of breath relaxed its tight grasp. He inhaled deep, filling his chest, like a glass of water on a sunny summer's day he could feel every ounce of its presence in his body. He breathed out.
A moment passed, an awareness spread through him, a warmth in his right palm. When he examined it, beads of blood had been smeared and painted, the tips of his nails were thickest with it. No pain registered, a gentle, easing sensitivity, polite in the declining heights of exertion.
Keep trying, or find a different angle. What else could he do?
Maybe if he figured out how to pick locks, but he didn't have any pins or paperclips on hand.
Standing up, he pressed his ear by the handle and listened. For any sign of anything, coughing, crying, but no sound met his ears, perhaps the frame was too thick, or Derek was already dead. his breaths iced over the central point in his sternum.
The door diagonal from 37 peeked open, from the crack a glint of light reflected off something near the person's hip, held at an angle. Her gaze was wary, and upon noticing him the door pulled almost shut, before nudging open again.
"Hey," he was louder than he expected, "Hey!" pointing, "Call an ambulance, I think he's--" he huffed, a sensation of odd quiet coldness.
"Call an ambulance?" the girl echoed.
"Yes!" he shouted, jangling the handle, "Please he's dying I know it, I forgot my phone-- please!"
She left the comfort of her dorm, and yanked her phone out of a pocket. There was a kitchen knife in her hand that was held alongside the phone as fingers flew a set of numbers in. Momentarily it was made known of how deranged he was, in a set of drawers and a t-shirt. There had been no thought before his head crossed the threshold of his own dorm door, save for a pair of slides.
The girl rapidly fired off what she knew, the dispatcher was on speaker: there was someone in their dorm with an emergency, and the door was locked.
A few clarifying questions, then, "Do you know what's wrong?" she asked.
An illuminating query, Avery could only imagine the agonizing headache, but what other complications would come of sharing headspace with everything that existed? Would the nervous system shut down before the skull popped like a soda can, a ruin of blood and brains.
"I don't," he whimpered.
She listed off the address, and they'd arrive there shortly. Awkwardly she lingered half inside her dorm, then spurred on by voices behind her, looked off and focused on them in a hushed, hurried tone.
Avery planted his hands on either side of the frame. It would take EMT five minutes to arrive, hopefully. Five minutes sounded disastrously long, it all felt too long. There was time wasted in panicking when he could've done the first logical thing the moment he got the email. Useless idiot. So much time wasted for no reason other than the inability to think straight.
Someone stronger would kick open the door and rescue him, but at least he'd be saved at all. If the emotionally-driven string of mistakes hadn't trampled on hope.
Closing his eyes and holding his breath, the waiting game it was. High on possibilities, of what-ifs and the gory sight of something unmanageable if it were forced to be seen the moment the ambulance carried off. There was no knack for ridding thoughts as such, the only thing to do was keep on steady through them.
There was a soft shuffling, and the sound of the twin handle on the opposite side.
𝘛𝘩𝘱, 𝘵𝘩𝘱, the handle was ever neutral.
Did he utter out a word, or was it an internal monologue. Black metal handle, turning downwards with strain, snapping back up, then taken hold of and turned again. Silence punctuated by a click, the immovable barrier weighed open with the hand that tugged it free still latched on. In sheer tunnelvisioned wordless action, Avery shoved it the rest of the way and forced through. The door hit whomever was on the other side. A pitiful noise greeted him to the dark room.
"Shit! Oh shit I'm sorry," he stumbled over a pair of legs.
Light from the hallway backlit the person sprawled out on the ground, hand having dropped back down to clutch at their neck as the owner attempted to tear it off. The lines accentuating a face crossed in indescribable anguish. Again was that pitiful whine, eerily broken off and quiet.
"Oh my god, oh my god," kneeling down he grabbed him by the shoulders, violent pain-wracked shivers coursed through his thin body. Not a pound of insured thickness to keep him immune, alarming it was for his hold to feel so vast and powerful with a thing as starved as this.
"The ambulance is on its way, oh god I'm so sorry. Fuck,"
Hooking under the arms and pulling him up, Derek's feet were limp and yet still tried to find balance in weak little kicks. Hands around his head making it difficult to find a way to support him against Avery's body. Giving up and wrapping an arm around his waist and twisting away one of Derek's arms to forcefully hook around Avery's shoulders, it only seemed to work as it was, but he was uneasy about making him fall or losing grip.
Derek leaned against him, then ducked his head forward to retch and spit up onto the floor. On reflex they both scrambled back.
If he was speaking, it was incomprehensible and amounted only to slick-sounding slurred speech. The vomit on the floor caught the light, like the bring-up from a sickly housepet, it appeared to be nothing but liquid. A darker blackness dripped steadily from his lips, only when it made it to the floor was it revealed to be blood.
"It's okay, it'll be okay, I've got you now."
He steered them to the door, hobbling out into the harsh light. Derek squished a thumb and pointer down on his eyes. Red was gathered between his clenched teeth, and more of it bubbled further back into his mouth. He wore much of the same style of clothing Avery did; sweatpants and a ratty tee, although his was drenched damp from the shoulderblades down to the small of his back.
"Should I get anything from your room?" if there were any complications, which it was certain there were by the way this almost-stranger looked, maybe it'd be helpful to have something familiar with him.
Derek didn't respond conventionally, or at all, and instead his nails curled to bury into Avery's skin as he held on.
He had planned to get him outside so the paramedics could take him faster, but halfway down the hall a pair of first responders jogged up from the staircase and relieved Derek's light, little body from him. He was hardly trouble for the responders, just as he had hardly been a burden on Avery. Seeing him carried down put it into perspective, he wasn't a great deal shorter than him, but his state exacerbated it.
Tracking on after, a small, worried collection of a crowd had gathered a distance from the flashing ambulance truck. The stretcher was there waiting, and he was lain down. Swiftly drawn up past the open doors of the back.
"What happened?" one of the responders asked, their voice startled him out of a daze.
"Oh, he crawled over to open the door. And he threw up too. Is he gunna be okay‽"
The responder hopped up into the back and hooked one door while their coworker handled the second, "I'm sure he will, are you getting in?"
"I can ride?"
"Yup, we've got room enough for just one."
...
It reminded him of the labor scene in 𝘚𝘢𝘷𝘦𝘥! except Avery was subjugated to one of the two proper seating arrangements that bounced along with the twists and turns of the vehicle, while the paramedics buzzed around a flurry of medical devices, frightening clear cords, and snapped on plastic gloves. Necessities for taking vitals. No inspiring tracklist playing over the scene. No red bar at the bottom of the screen at the pause menu telling you a happy ending was in sight.
They tossed a few questions his way, which were answered to the best of his ability that didn't immediately cross him as a theorized crackhead. Yes, he'd been dealing with sudden extreme pain. Yes, he likely hadn't eaten a full meal in days, maybe a week or two. It wasn't dehydration. It wasn't a migraine.
"Has the headache lasted longer than five minutes?" Yes, considering the run he made to the second floor, and all the wasted time spent trying to be a pretend cop.
"And you said he threw up, yeah?"
The paramedics concluded it must be 'TCH'. If anything they were about to do ended up hurting Derek because of their woefully incorrect assumption, Avery didn't know what he'd do. They were commenting on the blood in his mouth now, and a fear seized his throat; was the bleeding from his brain?
One of the responders knocked for the driver to consider bumping the speedometer needle up.
...
A blur, people jogging past, shoving by him. The squeal of rolling wheels from the stretcher. Break-neck paced exchanges of information. Yes that. Not that. I'll get on it. Exciting right? It's been years since a TCH. Good catch. I'm so tired. You, yes you, go sit down over there. Yes, near that room over there. I'll order a CT.
Before the band of nurses and the stretcher turned a corner down another hallway, a glimpse of Derek was snagged. Hands pressing into his temples, feet curling and kicking meekly, the shallow, energy-vapped keening cry that left his bloodied lips snuck around the many sounds of the hospital all the way to Avery.
He was so much more... different, as compared to his Minecraft persona. The imagery conjured held a limited color palette, contained within intelligence and clever humor. The rapid fire set of events jarred this mental picture, rearranging the list of traits that were associated with the few things he knew about this stranger. Scrunching them like wrapping paper, there was an uncanny disconnect from the Derek he was familiar with, and the one who couldn't speak, couldn't walk, and was swept off by the stream of efficient professionality.
The air of the hospital nipped stale at his ankles, the tile radiated with a sterile chill. Stuck froze in the middle of the room, a line of curtained off rooms to his right, and to his left the hallway the nurses had gone down. There was an island strip for desk workers, the two on shift had glanced curiously at the surge of activity, but were soon unbothered and returned to their intermediate conversation. Forwards was a pair of doors leading out to the waiting area, supposedly. The room he was directed to go through.
But the cold tiles clung to the bottoms of his slides, holding him in place.
The analog clock on the wall read 12:18. 18 minutes since the ball dropped, 18 minutes since the world lit up in celebration, 18 minutes since he'd gotten the email. It wasn't half an hour, or a day, or a week, the confirmation that it hadn't been as long as the mind convinced time had extended. Like the nervous creature it was, barking and thrashing and swearing doom. Now things were quiet. Which had to mean things were okay. A good thing had been done, there was no failure on his part now.
His shoulders dropped and he shut his eyes. He'd done it, he'd saved him. Just as he said he would. Derek didn't need to be so insistent, but in the end everything was going to work out okay.
Stress tended to roll off like water on a duck's feathers once the object of attention was out of sight. As if it realized it was no longer a needed component in thrusting the body to behave and act. Although the residue of it stuck to his skin, for now there was peace in the distant beeping of a machine, the chattering of the staff members, the stillness in the air.
"Need anythin' hon?"
"Huh?"
One of the ladies behind the desk raised her eyebrows, "Can I get you anythin'?"
"No, thank you."
His palm prickled, the tiny blood indents tender.
"Maybe a band-aid."
"Of course," she got up from her seat and stuck her hand inside a clear plastic drawer on the countertop, pulling out a thin strip and sliding it across the desk to him.
"Thanks."
When he was a kid, band-aids used to scare him because they'd poke the wound. The paper protectors guarding the sticky sides would haphazardly brush his skin and illicit a sting of pain. His mother would apologize, hold his wrist, and finish applying it on a skinned knee. She would never remove the paper first, always angling it on and peeling the paper off just before it touched him. Sometimes she wasn't as smooth. The fear was long gone, the sting never as prominent. An old relic of his childhood. The band-aid on his palm was a condensed hug.
Wary to be gentle, he rubbed it with a thumb and looked off towards the waiting room, then to the left again. The lady sat back down and shared a wordless moment with her friend.
Maybe it'd be best to sit down for a while. See what happens. They'd come get him if something went wrong, they knew his face and they knew he'd be waiting. At least these women at the desk knew he'd be waiting, the room beyond was mostly glass panes. The door would latch once he left, though, and that was a worry. It wasn't a pleasant thought to be locked out and have no freedom to stay or be there if he was needed.
But, he wasn't the one needed anymore, it was anyone with a degree. It was best if he sat down.
There were four other people in the waiting room, out of the wide selection of uncomfortable plastic chairs he selected the one with a clear view of the patient rooms and workdesk. The moment he reclined against it, a tingling of exhaustion flurried in his body. Eyelashes heavy, stomach odd with the descriptor of what could be said to be a light watercolor blue, washed out and driven to the edges of the paper.
One of the visitors was on call with a distressed relative. Their friend had passed out drunk. They were calmly requesting the opposite end of the call to get a handle on themself.
With that, Avery crossed his arms and slid deeper into the chair, half-lidded and in the vaguist sense paying attention to any living being that passed by.
He could wait.
It would be okay.
He would stay for as long as it took.
...
...
Unimaginable, every fiber of the animated, complex cage on fire. Trapped in dazzling inky darkness and vibrant, unavoidable flashbangs of unparalleled origin.
And no way to release it. Could not feel fingers or toes or if his mouth was open or closed.
A nightmare.
A nightmare.
A nightmare.
𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝗗𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂.
What was it like without it?
𝗔𝗻 𝗨𝗻𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗴𝗶𝘃𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗦𝗶𝗻.
Not a voice. Damning and imbedded. A thousand eyes glaring inwards.
It had been centuries, eons, forever. It had been forever and he knew it. Such a high plane of awareness.
...
Ripped down and thrashed back into that miniscule speck of nonexistent reality. The scent of hand sanitizer. The blinding lights. Somehow, the agony felt worse. There was liquid cruelty in his veins.
Shredding a throat with screams unholy.
The whole world filled with his pain. Too much. It was all too much. Too many hands on him. Too much weight. Too bright. Too wrong.
It was an eternity until the stab of something new in the crux of his arm was administered and mercifully drowned him.
...
...
It was one in the morning when Avery lurked for a bathroom. Pulling his drawers up at the same time that held note of a scream echoed down the halls of the hospital. Striking him like a deer in headlights.
It cut off abruptly.
The bathroom restrained the brunt of the echo, it had come to him like a daydream. Lethargic, he waited a beat before washing his hands. Something was wrong.
Of course, the majority of the situation was very, very wrong. But alas, something was wrong. the nervous teeth of that animal snarled and backed into a corner, raising up its barking worry.
He flicked the water off his hands and left the bathroom. It was situated off to the side down a ways, he jogged back to where he'd been napping before. Peering through the glass panes and at the lady at the desk he'd spoken to earlier.
The screaming started up. The lady set her phone down, scrunching her brow and then turning sharp to her friend.
And again, it was cut off before the scream could complete itself and the owner could catch a gasp of air. Gone again. Avery pressed up against the glass and tried to wave down the attention of the desk ladies when they got up and scurried to leave down that left hall. But they didn't stop to let him in.
He strained to see down that hall as if the room for the screamer was on the cusp outside of his vision. Screaming--silence--screaming--silence. The owner kept passing out and waking up, it seemed. It was pointless to pray that it was someone else when Avery knew deep in his core that no normal human on Earth had the capability to be godlike.
The lady returned and did a routine check on the patients behind the curtained rooms. Her timing was segmented, stifled off. Carrying a notepad and jotting down the needs and wants of those she surveyed. Flipping out of the last room, her and his gazes met.
He banged on the glass. And stepped back when she opened the door.
"What's happening? Is that Derek?"
"Don't be scared, we've got it under control."
"Is it Derek‽" he repeated.
"The patient you came in with?"
"Yes," he yelled, irritated.
"He'll be okay," she began to turn away and close the door after herself, Avery caught the door rough.
"I don't wanna hear if he'll be okay, I wanna know what's happening!"
An officer that had been patrolling up and down the corridor since he arrived crossed on over, his boots thumping the tile. "Ay!" he clipped, "Step away from the nurse, sir."
The lady's expression was hard, she inclined her head, "The patient's havin' seizures. Go sit down and I'll be with you in a moment. I'm busy."
"Seizures?" the officer grabbed his arm and yanked him from the door. The man was a great deal larger than he was, handling him like a sock puppet, gold rimmed sunglasses with a blonde beard and a shiny bald head. He tossed him towards the seat and punctuated his hands on his hips. Avery put his arms up, "Sorry! I'm sorry I'm sorry."
"Sit down, boy."
He obeyed and clumsily plopped down askew. "Sorry," he ensured, "sitting down."
Despite his apology the officer did not move, deciding to hole up and stand guard from the disruptive young adult. This man was near his forties by his self-confident disposition, not threatened by the likes of Avery and making it astoundingly clear in the tough scowl he was given.
Practising a breathing exercise, he sat watching the nurse fulfill the checklist on her notepad. One curtain drawn after the other. Finally she opened the glass pane and pointed her lips at him.
"I can talk to you now. Let him in, McCaliver." she said.
The officer permitted him to pass.
The moment he entered through he checked the hall to the left, although from this angle it was from the right. But to him it marked as Left.
She talked in a lower tone, "Okay hon, I know you're upset. I've been tryin' to keep in the loop." what kind irises, "your buddy back there is havin' a bad time. They ran a CT scan on him and couldn't find anythin'. No blood up there at all."
So the blood in his mouth wasn't from his brain. That was the faintest fragment of relief.
"They ordered an EEG-- scans neural activity," she explained, "We have no idea what's wrong with 'im, the result looked like a Christmas tree," her eyes widened, "Just now they tried to put him under, and he started howlin'."
The king. Derek wasn't passed out when Avery found him, if the level of pain he was at currently was anything like the pain in his dorm why hadn't he been crying out then? What was the difference between being unmedicated and being sedated? That didn't compute, sedatives were supposed to relieve pain.
"It's like nothin' we've seen, hon."
His face fell, and dropped off to study racing thoughts out in the middle distance.
"But," she rubbed his shoulder, "they're going to do their best."
There were no more wails. Derek was quiet.
...
The hospital was mediocre in its comfort ability. Or it was viewed in tinted glasses because of how it grounded him, not telling him how uncomfortable and horrible it truly was, if it were an honest place. From it came a sense of routine; resting to wandering around a fair bit into four in the morning, speaking with the kind lady who was happy to entertain him with stories about her nearly highschool graduates, her 'pet' worms in a garden at her elderly mother's house.
And in turn he told her about his life, fiddling with a pen, spinning it around.
"I'm not even sure if I'm taking the right 𝘮𝘢𝘫𝘰𝘳. Derek seems like he has it all figured out, all the time. I haven't actually known him for that long but... I don't know. Living's just weird, feels unreal sometimes."
"It can feel unreal, especially under these damn lights. You know florescent lights are constantly flickerin'? Messes with some people, they can see the flickerin'."
Avery couldn't, he wasn't one of those people. His stomach coiled tight, and didn't have his wallet on him to utilize for a vending machine break.
"I forgot all my stuff back at home. Is it possible I could leave and come back?"
"Of course, hon. Go go get some sleep. I see you in those chairs, that can't be comfy."
He requested a sticky note directing him to where the bus stop was, and made it back to campus after a tricky half hour of public transportation. The poor thing he was had been awake and active for well over a day now, nineteen hours and counting speeding by as if he hadn't aged a good five years in that time frame. More than anything he wished to collapse into his bed, but that wasn't an option he was content with pursuing. Standing between the two buildings that flanked the street many students and friends of friends had meandered in for the new year was like standing between two worlds.
Be quick. The only thing that was needed was a wallet and a pair of pants.
But when he went to head into the front entrance to the building, he realized. Embarrassingly. That he didn't have the key with him. Avery had nothing on him. Including a key to get to his wallet.
Stupid idiot stupidly impulsively running out without a semblance of a plan about what would come afterwards. Fueled by pure reflex alone. Stupid. What the fuck was he supposed to do now? It'd be hours until he could get a janitor or staff member of the college to open it up for him, and the trip back to the hospital was another damn thirty minutes. A whole wasted hour! You're kidding! If clairvoyance was his talent that shitty plastic chair in the waiting room would have looked like a top-bar hotel bed before the thought of a hungry stomach and exposed shins had even dared cross his mind.
He rested his forehead upon it and let his arms hang limp, giving himself a moment to process the new stressor. It had indeed happened, but you can't blow up about it, that isn't going to get you anywhere. Oh but he really wanted to, it was a physical urge in every joint, he wanted to punch the wall until his knuckles bled.
"This is awful," he spat, "everything about this is so fucking awful."
The world seemed to conspire against him, but it wasn't the world that made him feel this way, it was only himself in all of his piss-poor qualities. If he were a weaker person, claiming the world was at fault was an easy way out. It was him, all him. If for once he had the forethought to check through a mental list he wouldn't keep kicking his future self in the nose so often. So often! He really was just...
And the anger fell out of him in a long sigh. Well, it didn't matter.
The bus to the hospital was generous enough to run all night, the one blessing he could count.
He couldn't re-count getting Derek to the hospital a blessing when now he wasn't even sure if they could do anything to help. It gnawed at him.
Taking himself away from the entrance, he glanced off towards the second building. A few of the windows up on the higher floors were opened, letting in the sounds of the city. One still had lights either because a party was still ongoing, or the people inside had all fallen asleep drunk before thinking to hit the switch. Avery had gotten drunk a few times, it was nice. This year he didn't have anyone to get drunk with though.
Floor by floor, down level with the street, there was a spark of sun. One, two, click click, ignite. A person was smoking by Derek's building and propping the door open with their shoulder. At nigh five in the morning. They stood with a small group of others, all murmuring. A city full of conversations at every corner, at times of night that weren't reasonable, but a city never slept. It was a golden staple of modern humanity, that sense of solidarity in people you don't know up at the same time you were, all with their own thoughts and opinions and troubles.
New Years was supposed to represent new beginnings and shedding old skin to make way for a better person in the flesh one called home. And people spent it outside with weary eyes, smoking cigarettes. As if they recognized how difficult it was to move in a world like this.
Apprehensive, Avery went to approach them. They had heavy bags under their eyes, an unkept beard, and blew a plume as he slipped inside.
They must be waiting for someone too, holding the door open for a person who might never arrive. Like a loved one, or a delivery worker. The reminder of which sent his stomach to growling.
Up a flight of stairs, down a hallway that felt numb under his feet. Quiet, undisturbed, peaceful. Walking to the only other place on the street that he knew, that wasn't the outside amongst the grit and grime and trash. To sit down anywhere clean was mercy, only for a minute or so while the strength to trek back to the bus stop built up brick by brick.
37 was ajar, just for a few minutes he told himself, although a part of him was undeniably curious.
Stepping inside the dark room, he felt around for a light switch and shut the door behind himself. Remember to find a key in Derek's room somewhere, so that he didn't have to ask for it when he was allowed to sleep in his own bed again. Hold onto it until he was feeling better, if he started feeling better. The switch was discovered.
The 'main room' if one was polite enough to call it that, wasn't ostensibly decorated. Dorms were generally quite small and cramped, there wasn't a thing unusual about that. Bland counters, a clean stove, average and normal. To the right was the open bedroom, ominously dark.
He'd better clean up that vomit before he invaded this not-stranger's privacy. There were paper towels on the counter, and under the sink a few basic cleaning supplies. The dorm didn't smell too fantastic.
Cleaned up and a floor so thoroughly sprayed down it glittered, Avery was having trouble keeping his eyes open. Having found no gloves, he washed his hands off and then wandered into the bedroom hoping for somewhere to sit down. Only for a few minutes. The darkness was soothing, hiding away the discrepancies of living in the corners and shadowed area not illuminated by the moonlight drifting in from a window. A small white fridge sat beside the PC setup had been running all night, a faint wurring paired with a single blue light on the monitor, although the monitor itself had shut off in mockery of sleep.
The same monitor Derek had withered at. The signs of deterioration weren't subtle, such as a trash can overflowing with soylant bottles, those that couldn't fit or were tossed haphazardly had rolled under the wheels of the chair like ducklings. It seemed one of them had once been on the desk, but fell through the back and was resting in a meager hammock of wires. Next to the keyboard was a sheet of scratch paper with the work-a-rounds to a cipher that Avery didn't want to pretend he understood.
It was depressing. The rest of the room wasn't too much tidier, but by his standards its mess was polite. Especially compared to his own, the floor by Derek's bed wasn't infested with oddball trinkets and electronics and schoolwork, instead it was populated by a single cable connected to a phone.
Without thinking it through he ducked forwards onto the bed and rolled onto his back, splayed out like a starfish. He kicked his slides off. The sheets were lukewarm, familiar in a fashion of proximity. The same room Derek had slept in, the same room he'd come home to after lectures, had dinner in, lived in. Personal and the closest it were possible to having a continuation of the last time they spoke. The blankets hesitant, the pillow awkward, but nothing about the room titled towards hostility, it all waited on him, a postponed welcoming.
From the window he could see the other building. Had Derek ever risked a peek to look towards Avery's window? Avery would have, even if it burned.
So heavy. With bones made of iron. The staleness in the air pushed him asleep.
...
The sun streamed orange in the little room like gold.
Eyes bleary, he slowly came to like a corpse reanimated. Dear god it felt amazing. In his toes, in his jaw, in his shoulders and skull, all warm and fuzzing away the static of sleep. The golden sunshine like a hand to his face. It was such a pleasant thing to arise to he curled up on his side to relish in it longer. There's a special way the universe curated specific mornings to be as hopelessly addicting as possible. What glory.
Dust particles floated by aimlessly in the air, the ceiling fan the first face to greet him. His eyes drooped closed again.
What glory, a perfect reality had mornings start this way everyday. With the energy returning to form, back from long hours of being dead and unaware that a world existed outside of the comforting stretch of dreamless sleep. Tucked in tight against cozy sheets that felt.. different. Did Avery's sheets always feel different?
Wait.
He jerked up to scan around. The still-on PC. Bottles of soylant. A carpeting of dirty clothes stuffed into a corner by the doorway.
Dumbass Avery had fallen asleep, and now it looked to be late afternoon on the first of January.
He'd fallen asleep in a not-stranger's bed, in their dorm, when he was supposed to really be somewhere else-- he remembered only wanting to sit down for a moment for god's sake. What if something happened at the hospital? He needed to get a move on immediately, there was already so much daylight wasted.
launching up from the bed and flipping back into his slides, he started hunting for that key. The first obvious place to check were the flat surfaces with an appropriate amounts of clutter, for example the dresser on the other side of the room with a half dozen anime figurines standing guard next to an alphabetized row of fat books. The majority of them were clearly bought off of college class requirement lists, but the remaining few held real intrigue to them. He recognized the title of a set of manga, although it wasn't his taste, from what he heard of it the contents were a lot... darker than what he found enjoyable. Dark taste wasn't in his palette, it weighed heavy. The covers of the series looked brand new.
The desk was more lively during the day. A pencil holder he hadn't noticed sat on the edge with a meager selection between two pens and a single mechanical pencil. Down at the bottom of the mesh holder was finally a set of legitimate keys, probably put there because it meant nobody just visiting in the front room was able to see the keys on the counter or near the exit and steal them without Derek knowing. That seemed like something Derek would do; keep his housekeys close to his person so that they didn't get lost or stolen. Although Avery was about to debunk the argument that keeping them on the desk was any safer than in the front room. He snatched them despite not having any pockets to stuff them in. On a last second thought he turned back to grab the phone too, thinking back to when he'd asked delirious, pain-wracked Derek if he wanted anything from his room before leaving. A phone might be nice to have, if he was awake. If he woke up. If he was still alive.
Out out out out. Hurry up.
...
That kind lady from last night had gone off shift while he was sleeping, which was a true shame because now he knew nothing about the person on shift currently. So he had to request to see Derek at the front desk.
They refused him. 'Patient is unresponsive and isn't suitable to accept visitors.'
That was good, right? It meant he wasn't dead? They were fixing him, right?
...
It continued. 'Patient is unresponsive. Come back again later.' for the rest of the week.
On the sixth, he decided to clean Derek's room and at least get all the trash taken care of. He wasn't entirely sure why, the room itself had a compelling quality to it. A ghostish quality. Underneath piles of clothes and the blankets and sheets and the PC that was graced with the luxury of finally being turned off days prior, tidbits of a world snuck through.
The soylant bottles threatened to take up their own black garbage bag all for themselves. How many of these things was a person willing to stomach? Evidently a whole truckload. He'd bent down under the desk and chair to reach the ones in more difficult positions. Empty. Empty. Empty. Toss. Toss. Toss. Oh, this one near the CPU feels full, what flavor is that? Pink flavor. He unscrewed the cap and was instantly hit with the stink of urine.
Screwed up tighter than before and tossed.
There was that hopeless feeling again, the sight of the trash bag standing firm to remind him of how trapped Derek had been. Stuck at his screen for days, maybe a week before Avery came along. Or longer.
He sat under the desk with his back pressed up against the wall. The room was bigger at this angle, a child with their knees to their chest. Drank of all life, the room was hauntingly empty and devoid of the comfort and reassurance he wanted to hear.
It had to be okay. Please let it be okay. This was a person at stake, the universe couldn't take a person, not this one specifically. The universe didn't have the balls, a person like that was too important, he thought it was worthwhile to protect a guy like Avery and so why did a good deed go unrewarded. The universe couldn't be this cruel, so indifferent as to toss aside life that meant more than the collective mass. It would be stupid to let an important person die like that, stupid because the world could not carry on without him. In the trace markers of a life that had lived, in a messy room with so many minute histories that he'd never hear about, the world shivered in a state of neither nonexistent nor fully functional. The Earth was stopped on its axis.
He had been willing to sacrifice the world for this person, please don't let the sentimentality be in vain.
...
Day in and day out he incorporated the hospital into daily routine. Asking over and over again and being met with refusal. On days where he wasn't as strong he'd sit in a plastic chair and hold his head in his hands for the afternoon, not caring about meal prep or schoolwork. Worried out of his goddamn mind.
Winter break was ending in precisely a week. It was the fourteenth of January.
Around 2 o'clock Avery took the bus down.