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Avery sits on a bench at the bus stop, kicking his feet and decidedly not thinking about dropping out of school.
He has been not thinking about this for a while. Months. Well, years, sort of, but it wasn't ever a serious thought until recently. More like, well, if worst comes to worst, I can always drop out and work at McDonald's, while not ever actually believing it would come to that. He's too determined to just give up, if nothing else.
Or. Was, rather. He's a lot less determined nowadays.
The bus is late.
He's been waiting for nineteen minutes, and it's raining, and that one song is stuck in his head and the only reason he's not more annoyed is because there's a little shelter over the bus stop for days like this, so he's not getting wet. Which is nice. Still kind of chilly, though.
The bus is seventeen minutes late.
Maybe it was early, actually. Maybe for the first time in recorded history a bus arrived early and Avery just missed it by four minutes. The next one isn't due for another forty-three minutes and he doesn't want to wait that long, but there's no way he's walking the half hour it would take to get back to his dorm in the rain. Waiting will take more time, sure, but it's not worth it to get soaked.
No, he'll just. Keep waiting.
"Give it twenty-two more minutes," someone says, sitting down next to him, and Avery startles.
"What?" he asks, looking up at the stranger. They're maybe a little shorter than him, with long, red-tipped locs pulled back in a ponytail, a red hoodie, and a cane that they lean up against the front of the bench. They're also completely drenched.
"Give it twenty-two more minutes," the stranger repeats, the corner of their mouth twitching in what Avery thinks is probably a smile. "It's just running late today."
A pause, and then, like they're admitting to something, "Extra late."
Avery's startled by the laugh that comes out, tiny but there, and the stranger's smile grows just slightly. "How – how do you even know that?"
It's the stranger's turn to laugh, like Avery just walked into an inside joke without realizing it. Their expressions are quiet, Avery decides, and he's not sure if it's because their emotions are just quiet too, or because there's some sort of disconnect or block, intentional or not, between their heart and their face.
"I have approximate knowledge of many things," the stranger says, still grinning, and taps at their temple twice. It gets another soft laugh from Avery, which, counting the time the cashier said something funny when he was at the store earlier, is officially the most he's laughed in one day since –
Since.
The stranger's smile widens, and despite it still being very small Avery gets the distinct feeling that they're delighted. Just from getting him to laugh? They're a strange one.
"Twenty-two specifically, though?" Avery asks, still curious. "Do you, like, have the bus driver on speed dial or something?"
"Twenty-one now," the stranger corrects. "And no."
They do not elaborate. Avery decides his energy is probably better spent on other topics. Either they're right or they aren't, and he'll find out which in, apparently, twenty-one minutes. "If you know when it's gonna get here then why are you here now? You could've stayed inside for twenty more minutes instead of waiting out here in the cold."
The stranger shrugs. "Maybe I wanted to talk to someone. Maybe you looked like you had something interesting to say, and I wanted to hear it."
Oh.
Something withers and dies within Avery, and he turns away, wrapping his arms around himself. "There's nothing interesting about me. Sorry to disappoint."
"That's not true," the stranger says. And then tilts their head. "How's school going?"
Something uneasy stirs in Avery's gut. How does this person know he's…
"I mean, I'm guessing you're in school," the stranger interrupts his thoughts. "This bus only really goes to Carroll, so."
That – actually makes sense, yeah. Avery nods, relaxing. "Mhm. Do you go there, too?"
"No, I dropped out," the stranger says. "I'm just… visiting a friend."
"Oh. Okay." Avery realizes he never actually answered the stranger's question, and then immediately decides he doesn't want to talk about how school is going, so he turns it around instead. "You dropped out? Why?"
Wait. That's probably really rude to ask a complete stranger. "I mean – you don't have to tell me if you don't want! I just…"
Avery hesitates. It's weird, how willing he feels to talk to this person. He doesn't even know their name, yet he almost told them he's maybe-kind-of thinking about dropping out, too. Maybe it's just the relatability, or something. Like, hey, same boat. I see you. You're not alone.
"No, it's okay." The stranger tips their head back, staring through the shelter roof at the rain pouring down. "Burnout, I guess. I used to be really passionate. About studying, about learning. But at some point, I just… lost the spark. Staying was doing more harm than good. So I left."
Oh. Oh, okay, they're not the same at all, actually. Avery can read between the lines – this guy's good at school. Or they were. They dropped out because college wasn't helping them. Not because –
Well.
Avery's pretty certain the biggest part of his reasoning is entirely unique, something no one's ever experienced before. So maybe they were never really going to be the same anyway.
"Hey," the stranger says, studying Avery. "You're not… Are you thinking of dropping out? Is that why you asked?"
Avery shoves his hands in his pockets, stares at the ground, and shrugs. He doesn't feel… judged, exactly, with their eyes on him. But there's something about the way they look at him, like their full attention is very rare and giving it all to him is a choice they are actively making every single second, that unsettles him just a bit. "I dunno."
"Well, I don't think you should." Okay, Avery didn't ask, but thanks, random stranger. "I mean – you don't have to listen to me. But I think you can get through it. Whatever you're going through right now. I know we just met, but I can already tell, you're special."
They don't say it in the awful singsong raised-eyebrow way of the people who mean it as an insult. They say it like they really believe it. They say it like it's true. They say it like –
"I'm not," Avery says quietly. He doesn't want to think about that anymore. Doesn't want to think about how familiar it feels, the being dragged out of his own head after way too long of nothing but going through the motions of it all. It's not true, and he doesn't want to be dragged out of his own head anyway. Not this time.
"You are," the stranger insists. "It's… I know it can be hard to believe in yourself. That's okay. But if nothing else, know that other people believe in you. I believe in you, for whatever it's worth coming from a total stranger. You're capable of great things."
Avery has read the goodbye letter a thousand and one times. He has it memorized. He could probably recite it in his sleep. So, of course, he has a very reasonable and proportionate reaction to this person unknowingly pulling a word-for-word sentence from it.
He starts crying.
"Oh," says the stranger, in the tone of someone who isn't surprised at all, and they open their arms. Avery pitches forward into them, burying his face in the hoodie and sobbing, and the stranger's breath hitches as their arms come up and around him, clinging just as tight. Avery doesn't make a habit of hugging strangers, but it's been so long since he's hugged anyone and there's something very tight in his stomach that's unwinding slowly the longer he clings on, so he'll make an exception just this once.
"Why would you say that?" Avery asks once he's capable of speech again. His voice is still shaky, but he has to know. He just – he doesn't understand. Why those words, specifically?
The stranger hums, considering, for a few seconds, then says, "You seemed like you needed to hear it. And it's true."
"How can –" The sentence cuts off, choked. Avery tries again. "How can you know if it's true? You don't even know me."
"Were you not listening?" They sound like they're teasing. Avery is pretty sure they're teasing. "I have approximate knowledge of many things."
"That doesn't make any sense," Avery says, sniffling, because it doesn't. And because it's cold, and the stranger's hoodie is soaking wet which means Avery is now soaking wet but he'd still rather die than let go, and also because this is somehow both the sharpest and the most bearable the pain of New Year's Eve has been in months and he doesn't know what to do with that fact besides let it sit like a bird building a nest underneath his ribcage.
"A lot of things don't make sense. You know that," the stranger says, which also doesn't make sense.
Avery decides to just go with it. "What does approximate knowledge even mean? Is it just – random facts? Like, uh, the speed of light?"
"299,792,458 meters per second," recites the stranger without hesitation, and then immediately winces. "… Yes. It's mostly random facts."
"Huh." Something about the way the stranger answered – automatically, like they didn't even need to pull up the memory of the correct response – feels off to Avery. Like it's poking at something on the inside of his brain that he can't quite place. He ignores it, for now, tucks it away to think about later. "Cool. What about the stuff like the bus being late?"
"Buses are always late," the stranger says, which is true. "And I did say mostly random facts. Nine minutes, by the way."
Avery pulls back a bit to squint at them. "Do you just have, like, a clock in your head? How do you do that?"
"I'm very good at keeping track of time."
"And everything else, too, apparently," Avery mutters under his breath. He didn't think it was loud enough for the stranger to hear, but they must have good ears because they huff out a quiet laugh. "Man. Wish that was me."
Unexpectedly, the stranger stiffens at that. Then shudders, then pulls Avery close again. It's weird, because Avery doesn't think he said anything strange. Just that he wishes he was good at things the way this stranger seems to be.
But then again, maybe the process of learning whatever skills and trivia they have was really difficult. Or traumatic, even, Avery doesn't know. It's a stark reminder that even though they've been hugging for like ten minutes by now, this guy is still a total stranger. Avery doesn't even know their name.
That suddenly feels extremely important, for some reason. "What's your name?"
The stranger hums again. They take a minute to answer, like they're deciding if they even want to tell Avery their name or not. Can it really be that big of a deal? Unless it's super unique, it's not like just a first name would be enough for Avery to stalk them, even if he wanted to.
"What do you think my name is?" they ask finally, which is just about the strangest way they could have possibly answered. Does it even count as an answer if they're just shooting another question back?
"What?" Avery says, baffled. Is this some kind of Rumpelstiltskin situation? How the hell is he supposed to guess?
"I said," the stranger says, pulling away from the hug and meeting his eyes. There's something in their expression that Avery can't quite place. Nerves, maybe, or anticipation. And their eyes are – it's a weird thing to focus on, but they're such an odd color, a lovely deep brown ringed with gold. Avery doesn't think he's ever seen eyes like that before in his life. "What do you think my name is, Avery?"
Avery freezes.
There's no way.
All the little oddities he's pushed down into his subconscious start to rise to the surface, the twenty-two minutes and the speed of light and the specific wording and the everything, and he fights it all right back down again because there's – there's just no way.
"I – I don't know," he says, mouth dry. His heart is pounding and he feels like he might pass out any minute.
"Yes, you do," says the stranger – the stranger – a slight smile playing at their lips. Like this is funny, like it's fun.
Suddenly, Avery is furious.
He knows what this is about. What it has to be about. The video got popular, that one YouTuber made another one covering the fifteen hours and the footage in the Google Drive and the fucking goodbye letter that was for him and not for the world, and someone saw it and thought it would be a really cool prank to play on someone who's grieving to pretend to be his dead friend.
Well, it's not.
"Shut the fuck up," he says, jolting to his feet and pointing at the stranger. His voice is shaking, and he tries and tries to keep it even but he can't do it just like he can't do anything, he couldn't even save – "Shut the fuck up. You think you're funny, you think it's funny to pretend to be him but it's not, you're – you think I'll fall for anything just because I'm stupid but I'm not that stupid! I'm – you – I know you're not him because you can't be him, because he's dead."
It's the first time Avery's said it out loud. His voice breaks, and his eyes squeeze shut to fight back the tears that just well up anyway, and he clenches his fists and bites his lip and tries very hard not to scream.
The stranger hums. Quietly, in a way that Avery is starting to recognize – and hates that he's starting to recognize – as a kind of please-hold-I'm-thinking sound.
"After I pushed you off the ledge," they say after a few moments, and Avery flinches without meaning to. "The first thing you did was smash your computer screen in."
Avery stops breathing.
That part wasn't in the videos.
He opens his eyes. The – the other person is blurry through his tears, but he can tell they're looking up at him and he thinks they maybe look a little sad.
"You immediately regretted it," they say. "Because there could've been something on there that would let you find me. But by the time you got it fixed, you thought it was too late."
They pause and tilt their head. "Also your favorite movie as a kid was Wall-E and once you watched it six times in a row when you were stuck in bed recovering from the flu. You fell out of a tree and twisted your ankle when you were twelve, and you tried to hide it so no one would worry but that only lasted eighteen minutes before the pain was too much. You –"
"Stop," Avery says, because he can't – he can't think like this. His mind is racing and he can't sort any of it out into neat and tidy individual thoughts, and it's too much. The only people who would've known about Avery smashing his computer screen in are the repair guy he took it to and, theoretically, someone with infinite knowledge. He didn't even tell his roommate. Not to mention two childhood memories that even Avery had forgotten about until just now, and probably even more than that if he had let the guy continue. It's –
It's too much. It's not possible. Avery knows that this person cannot be Derek, because Derek is dead, and people don't just come back from the dead.
But also, people don't just find doors to whole other realms hidden within their Minecraft worlds, either. People don't just gain infinite knowledge because of an ageless entity they found in a video game. People don't just meet other players on a supposedly single-player server.
It's impossible, but Avery has already experienced so many impossible things. It doesn't make any sense that Derek could be here, alive, in front of him when Avery was so sure he had died. But – and okay, yeah, Avery gets it now – a lot of things about that world already don't make sense. What's one more thing?
The bus pulls up. Twenty-two minutes on the dot, Avery knows without checking, and that seals it.
"Derek?" Avery whispers, and Derek's face breaks into a slow smile like the sun coming out after a storm. It's the most beautiful thing Avery's ever seen.
"Hi, Avery," Derek says, and hearing him say Avery's name like that – like it means something, like it means everything, like it's the most precious word in the world – cuts the strings holding Avery taut and he crumples.
His knees hit the mud, soaking through the hem of his shorts, and it'll be miserable trying to get that out later but right now he literally could not care less. His mind refuses to process any thoughts other than oh my god Derek is alive on repeat into infinity.
"You," Avery says, tongue thick in his mouth. It reminds him a little of those dreams where you're trying to run, chasing after someone, but you can't get anywhere and it feels like you're running through molasses and they just keep getting farther and farther away – yeah. Something like that, just in his mouth instead. "You found me."
Derek's face softens like melted butter, barely visible through the tears. Like it's the first time he's hearing it, even though he had to have already known what Avery was going to say. "That I did."
He reaches down to offer Avery a hand, and Avery takes it and – they'd hugged before, for kind of a ridiculously long time given Avery still thought Derek was a total stranger at that point. But something about feeling Derek's skin against his, warm and real and alive, when Avery had known – thought he'd known – that they would never be able to meet, let alone touch… it breaks him a little. He lets Derek pull him up, back onto the bench, and then he collapses into Derek's arms again and sobs.
"I thought –" Avery chokes out, muffled against Derek's hoodie. "I thought you were dead."
"I know," Derek says, because of course he does. "I'm… I would've come sooner, if I could. I was in a coma for a while. And then I had to recover before they would let me go home. I just got out of the hospital a couple weeks ago."
"Oh," Avery says. It probably shouldn't make him quite as relieved as it does, to know that visiting him is one of the first things Derek did when he had the chance. But still… "Why didn't you – I don't know. Call me? Or text?"
"You wouldn't have believed me. Which is also why I didn't tell you right away when I got here," Derek adds, anticipating Avery's next question. "This will sound awful, but I needed you to be susceptible to the idea before I brought it up. Otherwise there was no future where you were willing to listen."
That… makes sense. Avery hates it, but it makes sense. If someone texted him out of nowhere claiming to be Derek, he would've just blocked them. If Derek had opened with that when he got here, Avery would've socked him in the face and left, rain be damned. He grumbles a little anyway, just out of principle.
And then, all of a sudden, he puts together the fact that Derek knew of possible futures with the fact that he also knew all of those memories and that Avery was thinking of dropping out and that he could rattle off the speed of light without a second thought and that the bus would be there in twenty-two minutes exactly. And he puts together what all of that means, and jolts away from the hug in a panic.
"Wait," he says, gripping Derek's shoulders and searching his face for any sign of being in pain. "Wait, you still have infinite knowledge? Are you gonna be okay? You're not – you're not at a computer, your head, are you –"
"I'm okay," Derek says, letting himself be manhandled. "I wasn't joking about approximate knowledge. It's not really infinite anymore, it's more like… bits and pieces show up randomly if there's a connection. Or sometimes if I look for them. Otherwise it's just kind of static-y in the back of my mind. A little distracting, and I get migraines sometimes, but I've gotten used to it."
Avery sighs in relief and tips forward, letting his forehead land on Derek's shoulder. Migraines aren't great, obviously, but it could be so much worse. "And the King?"
"Dealt with," Derek says, after a slight hesitation. "Don't worry, Avery. He can't hurt anyone else ever again."
"Okay. Okay." It's over. It's really, actually over. Avery brings a hand up to wipe his face, scrubbing at the tear tracks that have dried down his cheeks. After a moment, Derek's arms come up and around him again, hands coming to rest over his shoulder-blades. He exhales, deep and shuddering, like he can't quite believe this is real.
Avery gets it. There's still a part of him that's convinced he's dreaming, that he's going to wake up and he'll still be alone and Derek will still be dead and none of this will have happened. But time hasn't felt the way it usually does in dreams, slow and syrupy and impossible to pin down, so Avery is pretty sure he's awake.
"Please don't drop out," Derek murmurs finally, into Avery's neck. "Not because of…"
Because of me, he doesn't say, but it hangs in the air around them anyway.
"There's – I've –" Derek's voice trembles. Avery doesn't think he's stumbled over his words this much the entire time. "You… you have so much to offer, Avery. So many bright futures. I've seen them all. Please."
"Are you there, too? In any of those futures?" Avery asks before he can talk himself out of it, and is rewarded with the feeling of Derek's smile against his skin.
"Some of them," he says, which is good enough for Avery. He'll make one of those futures real, he swears it, no matter how hard he has to fight for it.
He nods to himself, determination flaring in a way it hasn't since New Year's Eve.
"Okay," he says. "I won't drop out. As long as you stay."
Derek laughs quietly. Avery can feel him tracing something into his back, but he can't quite make out what it is. "Deal. As long as you'll have me."
They're silent for a few more moments, just listening to the sound of the rain against the shelter. It makes Avery feel contained, but not trapped. Like it's forming a little world, just for the two of them, that nothing else can exist in. Just Derek and Avery on a bench in the rain.
"We missed the bus, by the way," Derek says finally, and Avery laughs, sharp and short and joyful. He'd completely forgotten about the bus. It must've been at least half an hour since then, probably more. He wonders how long the driver sat there, waiting, before realizing they weren't going to get on and driving away.
"Don't care," he says, burrowing further into Derek's arms. "We'll get the next one."
"We will," Derek agrees, which means it's true, and that's all Avery needs.