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Over the past month, Avery’s sixth sense has been sharpened like a knife. Long gone are the days when he could sleep through thunderstorms and fire alarms; now, all it takes is a change in the air for him to wake up, frozen in fear.
He’s not scared of Derek. God, he’s not scared of Derek.
But when he wakes up with those wide-open, yellow eyes just inches from his own, it makes his blood run cold, flooding out of his body in preparation for it to become a vessel for something else – something thicker, more acidic. Hastur is staring at him greedily, connecting the dots of Derek’s goosebumps with an uncannily hot hum in the middle of the cold January night.
“God, just leave him alone, will you?” Avery sighs, rolling over. He gets out of bed and sees that Hastur is still crouching on the mattress in a position that must be painful for Derek’s sore bones.
“Gladly,” a deep voice croaks from Derek, so unlike the soft and slightly unsure cadence of his regular voice. “You know the spell.”
Shaking his head, Avery says, “How many times? You’re not going to end the world through me. I promised.”
“He will not know you have broken your promise. He will only know peace.”
“I told you, I’m not giving in. Me and Derek are gonna find a better way to get you out of him.”
Avery walks towards the door of the bedroom, but by the time he reaches out for the handle, Hastur has crossed the room with a loud crash and is blocking him from exiting.
“Me and Derek,” Hastur mocks, his voice a gurgle that is clearly intended to mimic Derek’s voice. He reaches an arm across the doorway. With his other hand, he presses the fingertips right over Avery’s heart, his touch a live wire that keeps Avery frozen on the spot. “I know what you long for. I can give everything to you.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know that you feel responsible for the wellbeing of this pathetic body.”
It’s like the brain pathways responsible for connecting ideas to actions have been severed; Avery can think about moving, but he’s unable to even flinch back as Hastur moves his arm from the doorway and takes his hand. He reminds himself that it’s still Derek’s hand – that the sweaty palm belongs to a person he cares about so very much – and gains a brief swell of bravery, though all he is able to do with it is meet Hastur’s continued gaze.
“I know you long for him,” Hastur continues. “But you don’t really love him. You’re just weak to the comfort you get from knowing that he knows you. I know your worst fear, Avery: the thought of being, one day, completely alone. I watched you every time you lost the breath from your lungs imagining it, in the dark of a night just like this one. How vivid your imagination, how sure you are of the future where everybody walks away and you are left only with yourself. How honest you are, deep down, to know that you could not handle it.”
“Stop it,” Avery grits his teeth.
“I do not blame you, my sweet Vessel. He lies so beautifully to you when he tells you that he has seen all of you and has deemed it good. He cannot see all of you, in the way a human cannot see all of itself or another. Only I – your true companion – can love you for who you are.”
Still maintaining eye contact, Avery shakes his head. “I don’t care. I’ve made my choice, and it’s not you.” He hopes that Derek, trapped inside his own body, can feel it when he rests his other hand on top of Hastur’s sinister hand-hold, turning it into something intentional and brave. “I choose him, and I only have to justify that to myself. Not you.”
“And you can do that?” Hastur cocks his head to the side, his eyes lighting up. “You can justify that you are able to protect him? Heal him? You can convince yourself that you won and you’re simply on the long journey of learning how to ease his pain?”
Thinking back on the past month, Avery can’t deny that Hastur’s depiction of his efforts is scarily accurate. In everything he does – from the hearty meals he cooks to the time he spends inside the house instead of at the skatepark – he’s constantly thinking about how he can make Derek’s life easier. He’s traded afternoons in the snow for ones spent on the sofa, legs tangled around Derek’s, offering words of reassurance and encouragement as Derek tries to relearn how to read. He missed his mom’s birthday for the first time in his life because Derek had a migraine, and he only ever blamed Hastur for it.
Is that not love? Is that not a choice?
He gives Derek’s hand a gentle, faithful squeeze. I know you’re in there, he thinks. I’m not going anywhere.
“There it is again,” Hastur smiles, stretching out the skin around Derek’s mouth. “You give him what you desire most of all. Unflinching, unchanging acceptance. I could kill your mother using his bare hands and you would forgive him. You think protecting him from harm will make you worthy of receiving devotion. There is devotion in abundance waiting for you with me. You will never have to think about whether you are worth it. You will face no impossible trials, no eternal hills to climb.”
“I want to face impossible trials,” Avery protests, though the words sound juvenile coming from his lips. Still, he continues. “I’d rather climb hills forever for Derek than stay still for you.”
“Oh?” Hastur lights up, and Avery gets the horrible feeling that he’s made a mistake only a moment before he feels it.
The crack of Derek’s bone.
It happens so fast that Avery doesn’t actually see his pinky finger break. By the time he looks down, it’s already jutting out of their still-tight grasp at a limp, bent angle, protruding away from the safety of Avery’s hands. He feels the newness of the shape; he has never held a broken bone before, and his brain can’t quite make sense of it. The skin around the fracture is pulsing, already swelling, and Derek is getting hotter and hotter, but without a scream or even a sob it’s hard to connect the fact that the flesh under his own fingers is representative of a common injury. Even in the universality of agony, Hastur has ripped Derek from experience and is forcing Avery to bear it for both of them.
So he will. He loosens his grip on Derek’s hand, supporting the broken finger in his palm.
“You cannot protect him from pain,” Hastur says. There’s a hint of it in his voice, which now sounds closer to Derek’s than it was just a moment ago. The pain must be bringing him back somehow.
Avery refuses the statement, shaking his head. “That doesn’t mean I’m leaving him.”
“Your misplaced devotion will serve you well one day. I was right to choose you.”
This time, Avery feels Derek’s ring finger shaking with the anticipation of breaking. Without even thinking about what he’s doing, he drops to his knees and supports Derek’s hand at eye level, conjuring an old mental image of churches in his childhood and the blessing of bread. “Please,” he begs. “Don’t hurt him. It doesn’t do any good.”
“You are so close to understanding,” Hastur says. He rests Derek’s other hand on the side of Avery’s face.
“Don’t hurt him,” Avery repeats.
“As you are, you have no power to stop me. But together-”
The finger breaks, this time accompanied by a quiet whine from the back of Derek’s throat. Hastur is pushing them both to the edge, further than they’ve gone since New Year’s Eve. Avery is once again in a situation where he is faced, plainly and obviously, with Derek’s pain, and he is unable to ease it. The only way he could would be to give in and allow Hastur to possess his body, brain, and spirit, which would only end up ending Derek’s life along with the less important rest-of-the-world. Avery searches his limited mind for a solution where he can pull Derek out of the prison of sleep without hurting him.
He can think of nothing. Only one idea – which may pull Derek out, but would do so through a cruelty that Avery is desperate to avoid. Then again, sacrifices aren’t supposed to feel comforting. His endless search for purpose in goodness is less important than the simple fact of the situation: that Derek’s body can only experience so much pain before he comes back to himself in order to feel it.
“I’m sorry,” Avery whispers, shaking as he holds Derek’s pinky finger. He’s hesitant and afraid, squeezing down on the pressure point of the wound so lightly that he barely feels the touch at all; however, it’s clear that Derek does. Hastur’s words, a low repetition that Avery cannot protect Derek from pain, are stuttered and punctuated by gurgled gasps. Swallowing the bile in his throat, Avery presses down harder, eliciting a loud and paradoxically reassuring yelp. “Come back to me,” he begs with tears in his eyes.
His lips are still parted on the ending of the final word when Derek drops to his knees, mirroring Avery’s position. Immediately, Avery wants to hold him, but his hands are still reeling from what they have done.
“I-I’m sorry,” Derek hisses, the words displaced amongst themselves by his desperate gasp for breath.
“No, no, I’m sorry,” Avery says. He’s still too afraid to touch him, but he shuffles as close as he possibly can. Though he does not deserve the closeness, he does not move away when Derek half-leans, half-falls forwards, pressing his forehead against Avery’s chest. Ignited by the contact, Avery silently bears his own guilt and brings his arms around Derek’s back.
“I… I need to…” Derek’s upper body heaves with each word like he is about to vomit. “Get… better at…”
Softly rubbing his hand up and down between Derek’s shoulder blades, Avery says, “It’s not your fault. I’ll find a better way to bring you back.”
“I… know… how guilty-”
“It doesn’t matter,” he interrupts, his face flushing with shame.
“It does,” Derek insists. His attempt at reassurance is wasted; Avery does not believe him and only feels worse for being comforted. Derek is the one with two broken fingers and an impossible, omniscient entity inside his head.
“Okay,” he offers no resistance, not wanting Derek to waste any more of his limited effort on this pointless, circular line of thinking. He lies, saying, “If it matters to you, it matters to me. But I think we have more pressing issues right now.”
“What?”
“Your broken bones.”
“Oh. Y-Yeah, I suppose… sorry. Okay.”
Lowering his hand to the small of Derek’s back, Avery assists him to stand. He matches Derek’s pace exactly, leading him slowly out of the dark bedroom, pausing to turn on the hallway light and letting out a small sigh of relief as he does so. It feels like waking up from a horrible, disorienting nightmare, slowly readjusting to the normal way of the world. Derek is alive and himself again, and Avery is in a position where help does not come alongside violence. He takes him all the way through to the kitchen, sitting him down at the table and taking a bag of frozen peas out of the freezer. Derek does not protest, but he does not meet Avery’s gaze either. Avery gently lifts his hand and positions it on top of the makeshift ice pack.
“I think you’ll need to go to hospital,” he says.
Adamant and afraid, Derek shakes his head violently for a brief second and then stops, bracing himself against the table in a way that shows the motion has clearly made him feel sick. Sitting across from him, Avery reaches over and – though he feels certain that his touch is now permanently associated with hopeless misery – holds his uninjured hand. He expects Derek to flinch away, but he doesn’t.
Instead, he leans forwards, pressing his forehead against the back of Avery’s hand. It’s an obvious prayer, and one that Avery has the ability to answer.
“Okay,” he says. “No hospital tonight. But I’ll have to ask again tomorrow.”
“I’ll try and say yes,” Derek replies, his voice shrouded in the quiet of a shame that Avery recognises but cannot place within his own experience. He has never been through anything as bad as what Derek is going through, and does not want to project the limits of his empathy onto someone who needs more than what he can provide. Hastur is not in control right now, but his presence is undeniable – a lingering reminder that Avery is powerless, offering meagre comforts in the face of something he cannot fix.
Still, it must be doing something for Derek, because he stops shaking ever so slightly. The motion is almost imperceptible, but Avery refuses to pay attention to anything else.
“Thank you,” Derek whispers.
Though he cannot internalise the words for what they are, Avery knows that it would bring Derek some reassurance for his thanks to be accepted. So, he leans his head on the table as well, his forehead less than an inch away from Derek’s. And because he cannot lie, and will not protest, he is very quiet, and says nothing at all.