Work Text:
The grief always hits Avery after work. When he’s clocked in – especially on an open-close like today – there’s always something to distract himself with. If the menial shelf-stacking allows his mind to wander to the memory of chasing Derek’s footsteps through those wide, omniscient worlds, then he can turn his attention to cleaning the self-serve coffee machine. And if the wet hum of the cleaning cycle sounds too much like something is trapped inside, continually drowning just enough not to die, then he can make his way to the counter. And if a customer comes in wearing a red hoodie, he can excuse himself to vomit and scrub the toilet until it shines.
The problem comes when the shutters are closed and he’s faced with the walk home. No music, nor podcast, nor mental game can distract him from the way it hits in waves the moment he clocks off, everything he’s repressed in order to get through the day and pay his bills. Derek is gone – he sacrificed himself to save Avery’s life – gone – he suffered for months before dying – gone – his body is god knows where, confiscated by some dodgy government department who erased the goodbye document that Avery was too stupid stupid stupid to think about saving onto his computer – gone. All gone. All memory that Derek Hutchins ever existed. Gone gone gone.
And Avery doesn’t even know what he looked like.
Knowing that it won’t make a difference, he turns his headphones to their maximum volume and pulls up his hood, yanking the strings to tighten it around his face. Even though it’s a cold night, Avery feels sweaty, uncomfortable in the hoodie that should have been washed at least three wears ago. He hunches into himself, bracing against the empty night, thinking only of his bed and the hope of a dreamless sleep.
Suddenly, there are rough hands on his shoulders. He almost topples backwards from the force but finds himself stabilised by an arm around his middle, clutching on and pulling him off the pavement. He whips his head around, cursing the limited vision he imposed upon himself with his hood, and sees that he’s being manhandled by two – possibly three – people into a large, black van.
Fuck. Whatever this is, it absolutely cannot happen. He doesn’t want to fight for his life but he’s got a horrible feeling that this won’t be a quick or easy death, and everything that’s ever been drilled into him about not going to a secondary location floods his mind with alarm sirens. He kicks backwards and his foot connects with someone’s leg, provoking a hiss of pain and a small sense of pride in his chest, which is soon quashed by a hand over his mouth. All too late, he realises that he probably should have screamed.
Clawing uselessly at the arms around him, Avery hears the whistle-sharp intake of breath right against his ear as a woman whispers, “Do you want to see Derek Hutchins?”
This takes him off guard, causing him to lose his footing. The woman takes advantage of this to pull him backwards into the van, where he falls on top of her and the others slam the side door shut. Avery hears them opening the front door and feels the vibrations as the van starts, but he can’t see the driver or passenger through the blacked-out window separating the front of the vehicle from the back.
It’s just him and the woman who knows Derek’s name.
“Derek Hutchins is dead,” Avery says.
“No, he isn’t,” the woman replies calmly. The interior of the van is dark, so Avery can’t make out her face, but he can see that her lips move almost robotically in the shadows when she talks. Her hand emerges into his vision, holding out a blindfold. “Put this on.”
“No way,” Avery says.
“Would you prefer to be sedated?"
“Fine.”
He takes the blindfold and feels that it has grooves for his eyes, making it quite a comfortable fit when he ties it around the back of his head. With his panicking, useless sense of sight removed, he can think a bit more clearly. The dots start to connect. This must be the same agency responsible for stripping Derek’s existence from the internet; the government department with no publicly available information regarding what they do.
“You’re the DMS,” Avery says.
“Correct,” the woman confirms. “Although it’s probably more accurate to say that I’m with the DMS. It’s an extensive organisation. And you are Avery.”
“Oh, good. At least you kidnapped the right person. How embarrassing if you got it wrong.”
“Your cooperation in this operation is of utmost importance. We couldn’t risk you trying to run if we couldn’t convince you.”
“Is kidnapping often a Plan A for you guys?” Avery tries to lighten the mood and get her on his side.
Surprisingly, she lets out a small chuckle, which emboldens him to push his luck.
“How come you’re taking me to see Derek?”
“We need you,” she says. Something in her tone tells him that he won’t be getting a more comprehensive explanation than this. Whatever they need him for, they probably don’t need him to be aware of it in advance.
Again, fuck. Maybe they’re just going to kill him because he knows too much about the King in Yellow. He feels hot with shame as it dawns on him that all it realistically takes to trick him is for someone to laugh at his bad jokes and tell him that Derek Hutchins is alive.
He’s no less naïve now, even after everything he’s seen, than he was when he first began to pursue D3rlord.
The van has been driving for around ten minutes before Avery realises that he probably should have been making a mental map of the turns they’ve taken. Just because he’s blindfolded, it doesn’t mean that he can’t utilise his other senses – but once again, he’s caught onto the trick just too late for him to be of any use. He just allows his body to move left and right as he is taken mindlessly to an unknown destination.
With his sight cut off, the space between dreams and reality widens. Perhaps Avery truly does sleep, or perhaps he spends anywhere from five minutes to five hours floating in the loose visuals of Derek beckoning him towards a pair of golden gates. Thoughts leave him quicker than they register, rendering him numb and peaceful in the placeless in-between, so unaware of his existence that to make an effort to grab onto a single thought would shatter the atoms holding all things together.
When the van stops, it does so with a shudder that has this exact effect, bursting the bubble and leaving Avery unsure of where he is or his own name. It quickly comes back to him, however, when the woman hoists him up and two others – presumably the driver and passenger – lift him from the back of the van. His feet find ground, but his arms are firmly controlled as he is marched across what feels like an underground parking lot.
“When can I take this thing off?” He asks.
“Soon,” the woman reassures.
They stop walking and stand still for a moment before Avery hears the distinct sound of elevator doors opening. He steps inside before she does, hearing the click of a button and then feeling the lift begin to move upwards. It’s a strange, almost uncanny feeling, doing all of this without sight, allowing his body to travel upwards much faster than humans were ever designed to. How far is this thing going?
Finally, he hears the ding preceding the doors opening, and the hands return to his shoulders to guide him forwards. He’s walked down a hallway and through a door.
At last, his blindfold is removed.
It takes Avery a moment for his eyes to adjust to the harsh white lighting of the room. He’s surrounded by computers, each manned by a scientist in a lab coat. Some turn to greet him; some stay fixated on their work. He gets a good look at the woman who kidnapped him now, seeing that she’s older than he imagined – probably in her 60s – and dressed all in black, presumably to stay stealthy whilst grabbing him from a public street.
Beyond the computers, there’s a window. From the back of the room, Avery can’t see through it, but every impulse inside him is screaming to go and look. He meets no resistance from the DMS agents as he runs forwards, his hands colliding with the glass.
His eyes need no time to adjust to this. They drink it in.
Avery knows instantly that the man in the hospital bed is Derek. He looks sickly, his skin ashy and jaundiced. If Avery squints, he can see the rapid movement of his closed eyelids, occasionally accompanied by a full-body spasm that ends sooner than it has really begun, leaving Derek eerily still again. He’s hooked up to so many different wires and IVs that Avery has a horrible feeling he couldn’t survive without this level of extensive medical intervention.
He feels the cold glass window against his forehead and hates it for separating them.
“Let me see him,” Avery demands.
“You will,” the woman explains, having crossed the room to stand next to him. “You’re going to wake him up.”
“What?”
“Come,” she beckons, leading him over to one of the computers. It’s displaying a medical chart with various numbers and acronyms that Avery doesn’t understand. “See this? These are all the vitals of a perfectly healthy 26-year-old, barring the low blood pressure which is to be expected for his condition.”
She clicks a button and the image on the screen changes to a brain scan. “This, too, seems normal,” she explains. “Certainly not indicative of a coma patient – more like someone in a very deep sleep.”
“That’s Derek’s brain?” Avery asks.
“That’s Derek’s brain now. Watch this.”
She gives a nod to another one of the scientists, who leans over to speak into a small microphone. Her voice comes through much louder on Derek’s side of the glass as she says, “Avery.”
Immediately, the brain scan lights up. On one side, flashes of yellow tear through the defined hemisphere in a hurricane of excitement, whilst the other side pulses red like a heartbeat.
“He shows similar excitation when other topics are brought up, but never as consistently or as extremely as when he hears your name.”
“So let me go in there and wake him up, then!”
“Not so fast,” she chuckles – that slightly condescending laugh again. “He experienced a very severe brain aneurysm in response to his mind essentially merging with the digital consciousness of a God.”
“I know,” Avery says, defensively.
“Of course,” she smirks. “You were there. My point is, Derek’s mind needs to be stabilised in order for his body to wake up. And for that, you’ll need to enter his dreams.”
“You’ve lost me. Enter his dreams?”
“Yes. The DMS are pioneers in the field of metaphysical technology. Do you really want an explanation?”
Avery knows what she’s trying to say. Would you understand an explanation if I gave one to you? and You’re wasting time that could be spent saving Derek.
“I’m good,” he says. “Let’s do it.”
She offers him a smile. “With this cooperation, maybe we didn’t need to kidnap you after all.”
“Nah, you were right. I’d totally have been a runner.”
Willingly – happily – Avery follows as she unlocks the partition door and leads him through to Derek’s hospital room. He can’t stop himself from running to Derek’s side immediately, falling to his knees and grasping onto his hand – his warm hand, his alive hand. He wants to stay here, even just for a moment, committing to memory every scar and wrinkle on Derek’s skin. He wants to pray, to dip his forehead and press it to the back of Derek’s hand, to will him back to life instantly and take him away from these bright lights and beeping machines.
Instead, he stands up when instructed to and tears himself away.
In his blind panic to reach Derek, Avery hadn’t noticed the small pool of water on the other side of Derek’s bed. It’s sunken into the floor, just deep enough for a person to submerge all but their face if they were lying down. In fact, it seems made for this exact purpose in size and shape, with silicone wires leading from underneath the surface to a device resting on top of a faceless white bust.
The device is made to fit on someone’s – Avery’s – head. It’s got small metal circles over the temples and at the base of the skull, connected to a thin copper armature that keeps the half-sphere shape intact.
“What do I have to do?” He asks.
“The SomniShift-” she gestures towards the device, “-is connected to an implant in Derek’s head which was implanted to stabilise and observe his brain following a medically unexplainable aneurysm. You’ll wear it and enter the water, where the SomniShift will activate and you will enter a dream state similar to the one Derek is currently experiencing. From there, the working theory is that you’ll both essentially be experiencing the same dream.”
“The working theory?”
“You’re the guinea pig,” she smiles.
“Great,” Avery sighs. “And what am I supposed to once I’m inside his dreams?”
“Now that, I can’t tell you. You’ll have to come up with something yourself.”
“You didn’t come up with a better plan before kidnapping me off the street?”
“Well,” she laughs again. “If it goes wrong, we’ll either erase your memory or bury you in the desert.”
“Then let’s hope it doesn’t go wrong.”
She instructs him to take his clothes off so as not to interfere with the intricate system of wires that will need to be attached to his body. Thankfully, she turns her back as Avery takes off his hoodie and pants, stripping down to his boxers and sitting in the shallow pool of water. Whilst he’s being fitted with a heartrate monitor and various electrodes, Avery reaches his hand up and briefly gives Derek’s arm a squeeze.
Hold on, he thinks. Just a bit longer. I’m coming for you.
The last thing to be fitted is the SomniShift itself, which slips perfectly over his head. It’s cold against his skin and highlights the layer of nervous sweat against his temples with a low, electrical vibration. He’s instructed to lean back and does so without question. The water is cold – almost freezing – but he can’t figure out if he’s shivering or if his body is just reacting to the electrical pulses that seem to be increasing just enough to lock his limbs into place.
Fear washes over him. People always say you should never leave children unattended even in a shallow bath because they can drown in just a few inches of water. If Avery were to accidentally turn and submerge his mouth, he’s not sure he could turn it back to the surface again.
“Ready?” The DMS agent asks.
“Ready,” Avery breathes out.
A sharp, bright shock ignites the sides of his forehead and, with a thunderclap, the centre of his brain goes dark. Instantly, Avery opens his eyes and finds himself stabilised on his feet without ever standing up. He’s outside, feeling the wind in his hair, surrounded by the vast, cloudless sky.
Or – Derek is dreaming that he’s outside.
Holding his hands up to his face, Avery sees through himself. It’s strange, looking at himself in translucent green, so familiar to him in the form of his Minecraft skin but uncanny and strange when piloted by nerves and impulses inside his brain. He doesn’t have to click a keyboard to move, but he feels his unsteady, near-formless legs wobbling, and he falls onto his hands and knees.
Okay. New body. It’ll take a bit of getting used to.
Avery has to rebalance his weight into his lower legs in order to stand up. He gathers himself, handfuls of slime holding his body together, shifting around until he manages to walk. Here, his antigravity steps are lighter and longer than they are in the physical realm, which – after a moment – he becomes accustomed to, like he’s finally loaded into a dream-game with all of his muscle memory.
He eventually sees that the sky is not cloudless after all. It is if he stares straight up or to his right, but when he looks to his left, he sees a storm gathering. The clouds around the edges are scattered far apart, grey and flashing occasionally in short, bright bursts. As they get closer to the middle, they cluster together, rubbing static against one another and causing violent bolts of lightning. Right in the centre, the lightning is so hot and fast that it appears to be a consistent flood of burning yellow light, accompanied by a resounding crack that multiples upon itself exponentially and infinitely.
This is where Derek will be. The eye of the storm.
Instead of feeling spurred on, Avery feels like he’s grieving again. Is there no universe in which Derek must not suffer so deeply? Even in death, he cannot die. Even in sleep, he cannot rest. With a sickening feeling in the pit of his sloshing stomach, Avery remembers how Derek’s body briefly spasmed in the hospital bed, and he now knows that he was not spared the mental reality of this pain.
With this thought in mind, he runs. His gelatinous legs offer immense capacity when they are pushed to their limit, allowing him to cover significant distances and dodge the lighting bolts when he enters their territory. It’s not so different to playing Minecraft after all, which gives Avery hope in his own capability to pull Derek out of here and return him safely home.
The further into the storm he gets, the louder the world becomes – not just the sound of lightning hitting the ground with an earth-splitting crack, but all the background noises that are not quite drowned out by it. The disembodied scream; the incoherent pleading; the teeth-chattering sobs. They come from every direction, not loud enough to break past the lightning but much more consistent and harder to ignore, because Avery knows that this is the sound of Derek’s mind. The apocalypse is merely what is being done to it. The desperation ricocheting around Avery feels somehow older than all of this. Foundational.
He wishes he could have met Derek earlier and saved him from everything.
In his distraction, he doesn’t manage to dodge one of the lightning bolts in time. It strikes through his body, hitting his right shoulder and ripping downwards to emerge out of his thigh like a bullet. His entire body burns and he feels parts of himself steaming away, but he cannot fall. He loses a butterfly chunk of his shoulder blade and feels the cool air licking at his unprotected lungs. It’s a loss he’s willing to take.
He carries on running.
With each hit, his body splinters and fractures, but the pain is secondary to the thought that this is what Derek feels like everywhere all the time. Avery would bear this forever if it meant that the bolts hitting him are redirected away from Derek. He searches for them, seeks them hungrily, bleeds himself into the eye of the storm without caring about which parts of his body slough off in the process.
Until finally, he reaches them.
How could it be anything else?
Those goddamn gates.
Avery knows that just behind them, he will find Derek. And he will find him alive, in a recoverable state – there is no other possibility that he is willing to even consider. He heaves himself against the doors, pushing them open with the last of his strength and falling to his knees.
Looking up.
At Derek.
Suspended.
Glowing.
Golden.
Smiling.
Screaming.
Derek is twisted and contorted, held in place by impossibly long, pitch-dark fingers. There are so many of them that they branch out like wires; some thin, some thick, all twisted around one another. His helmet is broken; the left side has been ripped off, exposing bloody skin underneath, whilst the right is held together by black vines growing out of the puppet strings keeping him in midair. Avery sees his face, one eye wide in terror and the other drooped and swollen, pulled rapidly against his will through sock-and-buskin expressions.
His legs twitch and Avery sees that he is suspended above a strange lake. The water is still and so clear that it offers barely any distortion, allowing a perfect view of the sunken boats below. It gives the illusion of being shallow, but the boats are so small that they must be miles down, trapped under layers of liquid glass.
“I’m here,” he shouts. “It’s me! It’s Avery!”
At this, Derek’s head jerks up and his body twitches, yanking against the wires and veins holding it in place. He leans forward and is snapped straight back with such a horrible sound that Avery fears his neck has broken, before resuming his sick, wrong-limbed dance with more violent force than before.
The moment Avery decides that he must cut Derek down this instant, a sword appears in his hand, gifted to him by the displaced logic of dreams. Its weight feels familiar and comforts him, offering the strength required for him to haul himself forwards.
Though concentrated in midair around the lake, the general mass of tendrils does branch down to the floor in order to ground itself. It looks like a thick tree trunk but feels much less sturdy underneath Avery’s feet as he finds a foothold and begins to climb up. The sword, now tucked into his belt, bats against his thigh and he bleeds lightly, but he has no attachment to this false body and does not slow down because of it. He grabs onto whatever he can find, even when it writhes under his fingers and tries to wrest from his grip.
All the while, he keeps repeating, “It’s me, it’s Avery, I’m here.”
When he reaches Derek’s suspended body, he’s so far above the lake that he shakes just looking down. He’s holding onto one of the branching vines with both his arms and legs for stability and he inches forwards, reaching out his hand until he can rest it on top of Derek’s arm.
“I’ve got you,” he says. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
Derek’s head turns mechanically, stuttering and stopping before he finally locks eyes with Avery. His eyebrows dip in sorrow. “A…very…?” He whispers.
“Yeah,” Avery smiles. “Avery. Here to take you home.”
“Can’t… go… home…”
“Yes, you can,” Avery puts his hand on Derek’s cheek. He’s cold and shivering. “You’ve suffered enough. You can go home.”
He reaches down to unsheathe his sword, positioning it against one of the puppet strings keeping Derek’s broken wrist bent unnaturally to the side. Decisively, he raises it, so confident that he does not register until the metal has made contact that Derek is trying to say something.
But it’s too late.
The moment the sword hacks halfway through the thick, pulsing vine, Derek lets out an animalistic cry. The vine itself recoils like a slug, widening around the wound before slinking back into itself and shrivelling. Avery’s hands shake, unable to deliver the finishing blow and sever the connection completely. Black blood oozes from the cut and Derek’s scream turns into a small, choked sob.
“I’m sorry,” Avery whispers. “I’m so sorry. I know it hurts. But we have to get you out of here.”
“N-No…” Derek begs, looking him directly in the eyes. His gaze is so desperate and Avery respects him too much to look away. “Please. I can’t.”
Avery grips his sword tighter. “You’re already in pain. Constantly. If you can just get through this, you can get out.”
Derek’s other hand – the one connected to the undamaged mass of marionette fingers, rises and gently lands on Avery’s face. The heavy veins rest on his shoulder as the capillaries controlling Derek’s movements brush his thumb across Avery’s cheek.
It feels so unfair. Avery closes his eyes.
“This is familiar pain,” Derek whispers. “This is where I live. I’m okay here, Avery.”
“You’re lying to me.”
“I wouldn’t do that to you.”
“I came here to get you out, Derek!” Avery opens his eyes, mustering all of his fortitude to tear away from the comfort of Derek’s touch. “And I’m not leaving until I do. I don’t care if you’ve resigned yourself to this fate.”
“You sound like Hastur. Can’t I make my own choices?”
Avery raises his sword. “Not this time,” he says. “I lost you once. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
He hacks off the remainder of the tendril hanging onto Derek’s wrist.
With the connection completely severed, Derek does not immediately scream. His face loses all colour and expression for a moment and he heaves, as though he’s about to vomit. The noise that leaves his mouth is broken, impossible to place even in Avery’s vast knowledge of pain. The guilt is a cold, unforgiving sea that Avery is desperately trying to swallow, gasping for forgiveness. He knows that he cannot do this. How many times would he have to hack at the flesh keeping Derek suspended to free him? Would either of them survive it?
Avery begins to cry. He feels hopeless. Useless.
Derek grasps his hand. “I… forgive you…” he says, his breathing heavy. “Please… no more.”
“No more,” Avery holds Derek’s hand in return. “I promise, no more. But what do we do?”
“Leave me here. At the best of times, it’s like being asleep, Avery. I’m not in pain. You can let me go.”
“No. No – I can’t.”
“I’m asking you to.”
“And I’m refusing.”
At this, Derek winces. Horrified, Avery takes his sword and holds it away from the structures of flesh keeping both him and Derek high above ground. He drops it. As it falls, it turns upside down, hitting the surface of the lake blade-first and disappearing quickly underneath.
“There,” Avery says. “I won’t hurt you. But I won’t leave you, either.”
“You can’t stay here,” Derek says. “It won’t let you.”
“I’m not going back out there alone. I’m just not.”
“You have to.”
Suddenly, it clicks in Avery’s mind how simple the solution has been all along. He either returns with Derek or not at all. And Derek has made his stance on the situation very clear.
“Then I’m sorry, Derek,” he says. He brings Derek’s hand up to his lips and plants a gentle kiss on the palm, folding his fingers over it as if for safekeeping.
Then he lets go and falls backwards.
Falling is different when he hasn’t been pushed. He’s much more aware of what’s happening to him and can look up to see Derek getting smaller in his vision.
Derek – who has torn his other arm free in an attempt to catch him.
Avery hits the lake with his back first, causing a much greater impact than his sword had. The water shoots up around him. He feels his body flatten against the surface like an instant migraine, every part of him making direct contact with what may as well be concrete for how little it cushions his fall. The pain does not discriminate between his legs and his eyes, all of which seem to dissipate into the water as he feels himself losing form and shape.
Somehow, he has always known that he would drown. And this is such a beautiful place to do so.
Because the water is so clear and his body is slowly undergoing osmosis, Avery can see above the surface despite sinking deeper underneath it. The image is slightly wavy, like the air above a flame, but it doesn’t impede his view of Derek struggling like a bird trapped in a wire fence, ripping himself apart in panic. He pulls and claws and scratches at his neck, at his ankles, at his thighs and stomach, breaking the long fingers holding him in place. Though they latch on, fingernails sinking into armour and skin and pulling it away as they fall, Derek continues to break free.
The thick wires holding the living structure above the lake snap, thundering down to the surface of the water. The tightly woven world of web and flesh violently unmaking itself turns the water from a smooth pane of glass into a hurricane. Immediately, everything becomes murky as Avery feels the earthquake-impact push him further down, catching him in a sudden current.
Now it feels like he’s really drowning. The panic sets in as he tries to breathe but has no lungs with which to do so. He thrashes around, getting vague glimpses of a body fading in colour and life, and feels himself being pulled further down. The only thing that remains is to give in, but he fights desperately, some last hopeful spark keeping his heart beating even as his vision gives out.
The last thing he feels is a hand gripping his wrist.
Avery gasps awake but finds no relief in air entering his lungs. He chokes, a mixture of water and bile clogging his throat. His hands rise to his neck as his vision swims in headache-white, his body failing to move beyond the unconscious tensing of his core.
A hand pushes him up into a sitting position and claps him hard on the back. With a violent cough, he spits up water and, in his relief to breathe, forgets how to inhale. He rasps air into his throat and gags on it, coughing again before finally managing to get a good lungful.
Once he’s no longer drowning, his other senses return to him. He can hear the sound of machines beeping and, when he lifts his hands to his face, they’re no longer green. He’s back in the DMS facility.
Shaking, he draws his knees to his chest as the water begins to drain out of the pool through a pipe. The awareness that Derek is right next to him settles in, but Avery cannot turn his head, terrified that he will see the comatose man he failed to save for a second time.
He feels a hand rubbing his back and turns the other way to see the DMS agent from earlier smiling at him. Once the pool is completely empty, she places a towelled robe around his shoulders. “Good job, Avery,” she says. “You did it.”
“Did… what?”
She just points.
And Avery finally turns to look.
At Derek.
Eyes open.
Hand twitching.
Smiling.
Alive.
Two DMS agents enter the room and immediately begin fiddling with the IVs, taking measurements from various machines and conferring excitedly with one another. Derek doesn’t speak, nor does he move, but he looks from Avery to his hand and back again.
Avery grabs it with both of his.
“It’s you,” Avery whispers. He rests his forehead against Derek’s wrist and kisses the back of his hand. “You saved me again.”
“You’ll have to write a witness statement regarding what happened in there,” the DMS agent says.
“Later,” Avery says without raising his head. “Please, later. I’ll do whatever you want, later.”
“I understand,” she says. “I suppose there’s no point in gathering your statement before we process all the data we collected through the SomniShift anyway. I’ll have one of the interns fetch you a chair.”
Derek makes a small noise of protest.
“What?” Avery leans in. “Tell me what you want. I’ll get you anything.”
“Here,” Derek whispers, his voice cracked and small with disuse. He slowly moves his hand to pat the bed. “Close.”
“I’m still soaking wet,” Avery smiles.
“Don’t care,” Derek huffs. “You said anything.”
“Then anything it is.”
Avery stands up slowly, his legs shaking. He holds onto the side of the bed for support, putting most of his weight into his arms as he hauls himself into a sitting position. This movement alone exhausts him, and he has to catch his breath. He feels Derek’s arm slowly coming up around his waist, needy and desperate, and Avery allows himself to sink into the thin mattress. Derek pulls him closer instantly; he tries to bring his other arm up as well, but it’s restricted by the various IVs attached to his hand and the crook of his elbow.
Avery curls into Derek’s side, wrapping himself around him. His nose is pressed against Derek’s shoulder and, underneath the sterile smell, there’s a warmth that draws a shroud of exhaustion out from deep in the marrow of his bones.
Derek slowly turns his head, pressing his lips to Avery’s forehead. “Thank you,” he whispers.
“What for?” Avery mumbles. “You saved me. Again.”
“You made me save myself.”
“What happens now?”
“I don’t know,” Derek says. “Don’t leave?”
“I’m staying,” Avery promises.
“Good. I don’t mind not knowing. I’m so tired.”
Avery brings one arm over Derek to hold him close, using the other to run his fingers through Derek’s long, unbrushed hair. Tomorrow, he’s going to pester every DMS agent he needs to in order to get some official clearance to look after him properly.
“Just sleep,” he says, for now. “I’ve got you.”