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The call hums softly in his ears, that low, constant Discord noise that never quite goes away even when neither of them is talking, like a held breath that refuses to be released. Avery has his window open despite the cold, because the night air feels cleaner, less cramped, and it makes the room feel less like it’s closing in on him. The curtains stir every so often when the wind slips through, brushing against the desk, against his knuckles where his hands are folded together, thumbs worrying at each other out of habit.
On his monitor, D3r’s Minecraft character stands idle in their world.
Not moving. Not mining. Not building. Just there.
Avery stares at him like the pixels might blink first.
“So,” Avery says eventually, because silence is starting to feel too loud. His voice sounds strange to his own ears—too careful, stretched thin by how much he’s thinking. “I guess… that’s it, huh.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the call. Not lag. Not mic issues. A pause that means D3r is choosing his words.
“The King is gone,” D3r says at last. His voice is calm, as always, but Avery has learned how to hear what’s underneath it. The way the words come out slower now, like each one has weight. “As much as something like that can be gone.”
Avery snorts quietly. “Figures it wouldn’t be simple. Nothing ever is with… that.” He doesn’t say the name. Neither of them does. It feels like saying it out loud might scratch at something that’s only barely healed over.
He swivels in his chair, rolling a little closer to the desk, chin resting on his knees. On-screen, moonlight spills across blocky grass and stone. The world feels… peaceful. Almost offensively so, considering everything that’s happened here.
“What happens next?” Avery asks. “For you, I mean.”
Another pause. Shorter this time.
“I don’t know,” D3r admits. “That’s new.”
Avery smiles despite himself. “Wow. Congratulations. You’re like the rest of us now.”
There’s a soft huff of laughter from D3r’s mic, brief but real, and Avery feels something in his chest loosen just a bit. He stares at the character again, at the familiar skin he’s seen a thousand times, and tries not to imagine what D3r actually looks like on the other side of the screen. Tries and fails, like always.
“I think,” Avery says slowly, “that we should destroy the laptop.”
Silence.
Then, carefully: “You’re serious.”
“Dead serious,” Avery says, grin tugging at his mouth. “It’s cursed. Like. Objectively. Horrifically. You can’t tell me that thing hasn’t been a problem since day one.”
“That is…” D3r trails off, and Avery can practically hear him rubbing at his face. “Not incorrect.”
Avery laughs, sharper this time. “See? We can make a whole thing of it. Very symbolic. Very dramatic. Maybe throw it off a cliff or something.”
“You want to throw my laptop off a cliff.”
“Or smash it. Or set it on fire. Or all three. We can workshop it.”
There’s another quiet laugh, but it doesn’t quite stick the landing. Avery hears the hesitation creeping back in, curling around the edges of D3r’s voice like fog.
“In person,” D3r says, not quite a question.
“Yeah,” Avery says easily, like it doesn’t make his stomach flip. “In person. I wanna meet you.”
The words hang between them.
He watches D3r’s character on screen because it’s easier than imagining D3r’s face doing whatever it’s doing right now. The avatar doesn’t react, of course. Just stands there in the pixelated grass, the moon casting a pale square light over his shoulders. Avery imagines he can see tension in the way the model is angled, which is ridiculous, but he’s very good at projecting onto blockmen at this point.
Avery glances at the window again, at the stars barely visible through light pollution, and lets himself breathe. He’s thought about this more than he’ll ever admit. About what it would be like to exist in the same space as D3r without a screen in between, without text logs or character models or voice-only conversations. About how real that would make everything feel.
“I mean,” Avery adds, softer now, “if you want to. No pressure. We don’t have to, like, immediately. Or ever, if you don’t want to. I just… I think it’d be nice.”
There it is again. That pause.
“I do want to,” D3r says quietly. “That’s not the issue.”
Avery waits.
“I don’t know if you’d still like me,” D3r continues. “As a person.”
Avery blinks, startled enough that he sits up straighter. “What? D3r—”
“I know everything about you,” D3r says, and there’s something raw in that admission now, something exposed. “Or… enough. I’ve seen you at your worst. Your best. Your fear, your anger, the things you don’t say out loud. And you know me as… this.” He trails off again. “A voice. A character. Someone who knows things he shouldn’t.”
Avery watches the avatar on screen, still unmoving. Still patient.
“You’re human,” Avery says, firmly. “I know that.”
“Yes,” D3r agrees. “But not… normally so.”
That gets a soft, breathy laugh out of Avery before he can stop it. “Yeah, okay, you’re a little weird. Congratulations. Join the club.”
“It’s not just that,” D3r says. “I’m not… clean. Not anymore. Knowing what I know doesn’t just go away because the King is gone. It doesn’t turn off. I don’t know how to be normal again.”
Avery’s smile fades, replaced by something gentler. He leans forward, resting his elbows on the desk, eyes never leaving the screen.
“I don’t want normal,” he says. “I want you.”
The words come out before he can overthink them, and his heart stutters in his chest, but he doesn’t take them back.
“I mean,” he rushes on, cheeks warming even though D3r can’t see him, “I don’t want some hypothetical version of you that doesn’t exist. I want the guy who explains things to me at three in the morning and gets weirdly quiet when it rains and pretends he’s not scared when he is.”
There’s no immediate response. Avery swallows, suddenly acutely aware of how loud his own breathing sounds in his ears.
“I’m scared too,” Avery admits. “About meeting. About messing it up. About finding out it’s different when we’re not… like this.” He gestures vaguely at the screen. “But I still want to try.”
On-screen, D3r’s character twitches, turning just slightly, as if looking around.
“I don’t know how to be someone you can touch,” D3r says.
Avery exhales, slow and steady. “You don’t have to know how right away. We can figure it out. Together. That’s kind of been our whole thing.”
Another long pause. The night air brushes against Avery’s skin, cool and grounding. Somewhere outside, a car passes, tires hissing against pavement.
“I’m afraid,” D3r says finally.
“I know,” Avery says. “Me too.”
They sit with that for a moment, fear acknowledged and allowed to exist without trying to swallow everything else.
“I keep thinking,” Avery adds, quieter now, “that if we don’t do this, we’ll just keep circling it forever. And I don’t want that. I want… something real. Even if it’s messy.”
D3r exhales audibly, a sound like letting go of something he’s been holding too tightly.
“Okay,” he says.
Avery’s heart jumps. “Okay?”
“Okay,” D3r repeats. “We can meet. Eventually. Safely. On neutral ground. Somewhere that doesn’t feel… haunted.”
Avery laughs, relief bubbling up in his chest. “Wow, look at us. Making plans like functional adults.”
“Don’t push it.”
They lapse into comfortable silence after that, the kind that doesn’t demand to be filled. Avery watches the pixelated night in their world, listens to the faint sound of D3r’s breathing through his mic, and lets himself imagine a future where the screen isn’t the only thing connecting them.
Avery had always known, vaguely, that D3r used to live somewhere near him. Not close-close, not the kind of near where you might accidentally run into someone at a grocery store or share a bus stop, but close enough that it hadn’t seemed impossible. Close enough that, in hindsight, it explained far too much.
It’s the only reason he’d been able to get the laptop at all.
He remembers the day with uncomfortable clarity now, like the memory has sharpened its edges just to spite him. Late afternoon light slanting through his room, dust motes hanging in the air, his phone warm in his hand as he scrolled through Craigslist half out of boredom and half out of that restless itch he gets when his brain needs a project. He hadn’t even been looking for anything specific. Just cheap electronics, junk tech, things he could take apart and put back together wrong on purpose.
And then there it was.
Laptop. Cheap. Must go. Storage unit pickup.
He’d clicked it without thinking.
The listing had been sparse, almost aggressively casual. A couple blurry photos. An old model, scuffed, ugly in that utilitarian way that makes Avery’s fingers itch. The price was low enough to be suspicious but not so low it screamed haunted object, which, in fairness, is not a category Avery had been screening for at the time.
He remembers messaging the seller. A woman. Friendly. A little too eager to be rid of it.
She’d said it belonged to a family friend. Past tense. Said it had been sitting in a storage container a few towns over ever since. Said she didn’t need it, didn’t want to deal with it, and honestly just wanted it gone. Avery had joked—actually joked—about cursed tech, and she’d sent back a laughing emoji and said something like, God, I hope not.
Idiot.
The drive out had been long but not unreasonable. Long enough for him to put on music, get lost in his own head, enjoy the quiet stretch of road between places that don’t matter much. The storage place itself had been unremarkable: rows of metal doors, sun-bleached signs, the smell of dust and hot asphalt. The woman met him there, handed over the key, barely even looked at the thing when he pulled it out.
He remembers noticing how quick she was to lock the unit back up once it was gone.
At the time, he’d chalked it up to disinterest. Or relief at having made an easy sale.
Now, staring at D3r’s character on his screen in the quiet of his room, Avery understands that relief a little better.
“I didn’t know,” he says into the mic, voice low. Not defensive. Just factual. “About any of it.”
He doesn’t know if D3r needs to hear that, but he needs to say it anyway.
The knowledge that D3r used to live nearby has settled into him strangely—not as shock, exactly, but as a rearranging of things that had already been there. The geography clicks into place. The timing. The fact that something like that laptop hadn’t crossed oceans or borders to get to him, but roads he’s driven a dozen times without thinking.
It had been close. D3r had been close.
When D3r tells him he moved several hours away by plane, Avery isn’t surprised. Not really. There’s a brief sting of disappointment—some foolish, half-formed hope that maybe the distance wouldn’t be that big—but it fades quickly, replaced by something heavier and more understanding.
“I wouldn’t want to be here either,” Avery says quietly. “Not after… everything.”
He doesn’t elaborate. He doesn’t need to. The space where the King in Yellow used to loom over D3r’s life doesn’t need to be named to be felt. Avery can hear it in the way D3r breathes sometimes, in the carefulness of his pauses, in the way he still talks like someone bracing for the world to peel back and reveal teeth.
“I didn’t mean for it to find you,” D3r says.
That makes Avery’s chest tighten.
“I know,” he says immediately. “I know that.”
He swivels in his chair, eyes drifting to the open window again. The night smells like damp earth and distant traffic. Normal things. Human things. It’s grounding.
“I just wanted a new laptop,” Avery continues, a faint, incredulous laugh slipping out. “Something cheap I could mess with. Tinker with. I didn’t think—” He shakes his head, even though D3r can’t see it. “I didn’t know I was picking up a… a cursed object. Or whatever the hell that thing was.”
There’s a pause, then: “That’s one way to put it.”
Avery snorts. “Yeah, well. If I’d known it used to belong to someone like you, I might’ve hesitated.”
“Would you?” D3r asks.
Avery considers it honestly.
“…Probably not,” he admits. “I’m terrible at self-preservation.”
There’s a soft sound on the other end of the call that might be amusement. Might be fondness. Avery hopes it’s both.
He looks back at the screen, at the familiar blocky silhouette standing under a pixelated sky, and feels that strange, aching awareness again: that the person on the other side of this connection has been real for a long time in ways Avery never fully grasped. That the laptop wasn’t just cursed hardware, but a leftover scar. A piece of a life that had already been torn open and stitched back together wrong.
“I’m not mad,” Avery says, like he’s answering a question that hasn’t been asked. “About any of it. I don’t regret it. Even the bad parts.”
“That’s…” D3r trails off. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with it.”
“Maybe,” Avery says. “But I did. And I’m still here.”
He taps a finger against the desk, grounding himself in the sensation. Solid wood. Real weight. His world hasn’t dissolved just because he brushed against something bigger and worse than himself.
“And now,” Avery adds, a little brighter, “we get to decide what happens next. Without… that.”
Without the King. Without the pull of inevitability. Without the sense that everything is already written.
The idea still feels fragile, like glass that might shatter if he presses too hard, but it’s there. Real. Possible.
“You moved away,” Avery says gently. “I stayed. The laptop’s gone. The worst of it is over.”
He smiles at the screen, small and sincere.
“So yeah,” he says. “Meeting up? A plane ride? Smashing a cursed laptop that almost ended the world? That feels… doable. Compared to everything else.”
The night stretches on around him, quiet and patient. The world hasn’t ended. The past hasn’t swallowed them whole.
And somewhere, hours away, a man who knows too much is still breathing, still human, still choosing to talk to Avery anyway.
That feels like a miracle all on its own.
Avery lets the silence sit after that, not because he’s run out of things to say, but because this kind of quiet feels earned. The call hums. His window creaks softly as the wind nudges it again. Somewhere down the street a dog barks once and then stops, like even it has decided not to interrupt whatever fragile thing is happening here.
On the screen, D3r’s character shifts a step, then another, boots crunching softly against pixelated grass. It’s a small movement, meaningless in terms of gameplay, but it draws Avery’s attention immediately. He watches the way the avatar turns, the way it looks up at the blocky stars, and his chest does that tight, aching thing again.
“I keep thinking about that storage unit,” Avery says eventually. His voice is quieter now, more inward. “About how close it all was. Like… if I’d scrolled past that listing. Or if you’d lived one town farther away. Or if she’d just thrown the thing out instead of selling it.”
“Then none of this would’ve happened,” D3r finishes.
“Yeah,” Avery says. “And that’s… weird. Because I don’t like what happened. But I don’t hate that it led to you.”
The admission hangs there, unadorned. Avery doesn’t rush to soften it or laugh it off. He’s tired of pretending things don’t matter when they do.
D3r doesn’t respond right away. When he does, his voice is lower, careful in a way that tells Avery he’s standing on something fragile inside himself.
“I don’t know how to live without being… braced,” D3r says. “For years, everything was a warning sign. Every coincidence meant something. Every quiet moment felt like the calm before something worse.”
Avery nods even though, again, D3r can’t see him. “Yeah. That tracks.”
“And now,” D3r continues, “there isn’t a next catastrophe waiting in the wings. Not like that. And I don’t know what to do with the absence of it.”
Avery leans back in his chair, staring up at the ceiling for a moment, watching shadows from the window fan out across it. “I think,” he says slowly, “you’re allowed to be weird about that.”
A soft, almost incredulous sound leaves D3r’s mic. “Allowed.”
“Yeah,” Avery says. “You went through something that rewired how you see the world. Of course you don’t just snap back to normal. I don’t expect you to.”
He rolls back forward, eyes returning to the screen. “I don’t want you to pretend it didn’t happen. I just don’t want it to be the only thing you are.”
The words feel important. He sits with them, making sure they’re true before he lets them settle.
“I’m not asking you to be… easy,” Avery adds. “Or simple. Or okay all the time. I just want you to be here. As much as you can.”
There’s a long exhale from D3r, the sound crackling faintly through his mic. When he speaks again, there’s something unguarded in it that makes Avery’s throat tighten.
“I’ve never been very good at being wanted for myself.”
Avery swallows. “Well. Congratulations again. You’re doing a lot of firsts lately.”
That earns him a quiet laugh, shaky but real.
They lapse into another stretch of silence, but it’s different now. Heavier in a way that feels shared rather than isolating. Avery absently taps a key, making his own character take a few steps closer to D3r’s in the game. The two avatars stand near each other, shoulder to shoulder, facing the same horizon.
“I should probably tell you,” Avery says after a moment, “that if we do meet up, I’m going to be extremely awkward.”
D3r hums. “I had assumed.”
“I’m serious,” Avery insists. “I don’t know what to do with my hands. Or my face. Or… eye contact.”
“That’s reassuring,” D3r says dryly. “I was worried you’d be unnervingly competent at human interaction.”
Avery laughs, a little too loud, and then presses his lips together to keep it from spilling over again. The sound feels good. Like proof that his chest still knows how to do this.
“But I also think,” Avery continues, voice softening, “that I’d like you anyway. Even if you’re quiet. Or strange. Or you don’t know what to say.”
He glances at the laptop on his desk—the new one, safe and boring and blessedly mundane—and then at the empty space beside it where the cursed one used to sit. The absence feels intentional now. Like a door that’s been closed on purpose instead of slammed shut by force.
“I already like you,” Avery says simply. “This isn’t a hypothetical for me.”
D3r doesn’t answer right away. Avery waits, patient, listening to the faint sounds of a life happening on the other end of the call—fabric rustling, a chair shifting, the quiet thump of someone moving in a space Avery can’t see.
“When I left,” D3r says at last, “I didn’t think I’d ever let anyone get close again. I thought distance was… safer. That if I was far enough away, nothing could follow.”
Avery’s fingers curl slightly against the edge of his desk. “Did it help?”
“For a while,” D3r admits. “But it was lonely.”
Avery nods, eyes stinging just a bit. “Yeah. Distance’ll do that.”
On-screen, D3r’s character turns, facing Avery’s directly now. The blocky faces are expressionless, but Avery still feels seen in a way that makes his chest ache.
“We don’t have to rush,” D3r says. “I don’t want to promise something I can’t handle.”
“I’m not asking for promises,” Avery replies. “Just… intention.”
Another pause. Then: “Okay.”
The word feels solid. Real.
Avery smiles, small and tired and genuine. Outside, the night has deepened, stars steady and indifferent as ever. Inside, his room feels warmer somehow, less like a place he’s hiding in and more like a place he’s choosing to be.
“Hey, D3r?” he says.
“Yes?”
“When we do smash that laptop,” Avery adds, a hint of a grin creeping into his voice, “I’m absolutely filming it.”
There’s a soft huff of laughter on the other end. “Of course you are.”
They stay on the call long after that, talking about nothing and everything—about logistics and fears and stupid hypotheticals—while their characters stand together in a quiet digital world, two humans on opposite sides of distance, choosing, for the first time in a long while, to imagine a future that isn’t defined by dread.
+---+---+
It’s such a weird thing, realizing that today is the day.
Avery wakes up before his alarm, heart already going like he’s late for something even though he very much isn’t. The room is dim and blue with early morning light, the kind that makes everything feel unreal, like the world hasn’t quite finished loading yet. For a few seconds he just lies there, staring at the ceiling, listening to his own breathing, trying to convince himself this isn’t something his brain made up overnight.
Then his phone buzzes on the nightstand.
A message. From D3r.
Morning. I’m still real. Still meeting you. Just so you know.
Avery lets out a noise that is halfway between a laugh and a startled yelp and immediately smothers his face into his pillow so he doesn’t wake the entire neighborhood. His heart feels too big for his chest, like it’s trying to climb out through his ribs and sprint ahead of him to the airport.
“Oh my god,” he mutters into the fabric. “Oh my god, okay.”
He rolls over, grabs his phone, types back with fingers that feel like they’ve forgotten how to work.
Good. Cool. Great. I am vibrating at a frequency that could shatter glass.
The typing bubble appears. Disappears. Appears again.
Please do not shatter the airport.
Avery grins so hard his face hurts.
The rest of the morning passes in a blur of motion and nerves. He showers too fast, nearly forgets deodorant, remembers at the last second and applies way too much because his brain is convinced this is a life-or-death situation. He changes shirts three times, all of them perfectly fine, all of them somehow wrong. He settles on something soft and familiar, something that feels like him, because the thought of pretending to be anyone else today makes his stomach twist.
The backpack by the door is already packed. Phone charger. Wallet. Boarding pass. And, wrapped carefully in an old hoodie at the bottom, the laptop.
The laptop.
Even thinking about it makes his skin prickle.
It’s powered off. Has been for a while now. Harmless, inert, just a chunk of plastic and circuitry like any other. Except Avery knows better. He knows what lived in it. What brushed up against him through it. What ended through it.
The idea of destroying it alone had felt… wrong. Incomplete. Like trying to close a door without fixing the hinge.
Doing it together, though? With D3r? That feels right in a way Avery doesn’t have words for.
The drive to the airport is surreal. Every street looks exactly the same as it always has, and yet everything feels different, like he’s seeing his hometown through glass for the last time before something irrevocably shifts. He parks, shoulders his bag, and checks his phone again, just to reassure himself that this is still happening.
Another message.
I’ll be waiting after baggage claim. I’ll text you where I am.
Avery stares at it for a solid ten seconds, then locks his phone and presses it flat against his chest like that might keep his heart from escaping.
The flight itself is torture.
It’s only a few hours, but every minute stretches. He can’t focus on music. Can’t focus on the view out the window. His brain keeps replaying imagined versions of the moment over and over again, each one slightly different, each one somehow more embarrassing than the last.
What if D3r is taller than him? Shorter? What if he looks nothing like Avery expects? What if Avery looks wrong in person—too much, too little, not what D3r imagined after all this time? What if he trips. What if he says something stupid. What if—
He stops himself with a sharp breath and presses his forehead against the cool airplane window.
He already knows you, Avery reminds himself. He knows your voice. Your pauses. Your worst days. This isn’t starting from nothing.
That helps. A little.
When the plane lands, his pulse jumps so hard it makes him dizzy. By the time he’s shuffling off with everyone else, dragging his bag behind him, it feels like he’s walking through water. Every step closer to baggage claim feels impossibly loud.
His phone buzzes as soon as he gets service.
Red jacket. Near the pillar by carousel four. Take your time.
Avery’s breath catches.
Okay. Okay. Red jacket. Pillar. Carousel four. He can do this. He follows the signs, heart pounding in his ears, eyes scanning faces with an intensity that borders on ridiculous.
And then he sees him.
Not all at once. Not like lightning. It’s subtler than that.
At first it’s just a figure leaning slightly back against a pillar, hands tucked into the pockets of a jacket that really is red, shoulders drawn in a way Avery recognizes immediately. Then it’s the posture—the way he stands like he’s expecting the world to lurch sideways at any moment. Then it’s the face, tired but alert, eyes tracking movement like he’s cataloguing everything without meaning to.
And then D3r looks up.
Their eyes meet.
Avery’s brain short-circuits.
There’s a split second where nothing exists except the fact that he’s real. Solid. Three-dimensional. Standing there breathing the same recycled airport air. The person Avery has talked to for hours and hours, the voice that’s lived in his headphones, the mind that’s brushed up against horrors and come back altered but still human.
He feels a wild, feral urge surge through him—pure instinct, unfiltered joy.
Hug him. Hug him right now. Tackle him. Launch yourself like a missile.
His feet actually twitch forward before his brain catches up.
He stops himself with visible effort, planting his shoes against the tile and gripping the strap of his bag like it’s an anchor. The last thing he wants is to bowl D3r over, to misjudge distance or strength or timing and hurt him after everything he’s already survived.
So instead, Avery just… smiles.
It’s probably too big. Too bright. Uncontained. But he can’t help it.
D3r’s expression shifts when he sees it—something easing in his shoulders, something tentative and soft flickering across his face. He pushes off the pillar, straightens, and takes a few careful steps forward.
They stop an arm’s length apart.
For a second neither of them speaks.
“Hey,” Avery says finally, voice coming out a little breathless.
“Hi,” D3r replies.
The sound of his voice without speakers in between makes Avery’s chest ache in the best possible way.
They stand there, awkward and human and real, the noise of the airport flowing around them like a river while time seems to stall just for them.
Avery rocks on his heels, then blurts, “I really want to hug you.”
D3r blinks—then lets out a quiet laugh, the tension cracking just a bit. “Yeah,” he says. “I figured.”
“I won’t,” Avery rushes to add. “Like, unless you want to. I mean. I want to. But I won’t just—tackle you. I promise. I was considering it. Briefly. Extensively. But I decided against it.”
D3r’s smile widens, small but genuine. “Maybe… not a tackle. But a hug would be okay.”
Avery doesn’t launch himself. He doesn’t grab. He steps forward carefully, giving D3r time to move away if he wants to.
He doesn’t.
When Avery wraps his arms around him, it feels right immediately. Solid. Warm. Human. D3r stiffens for half a second, then exhales and hugs back, tentative at first and then firmer, like he’s grounding himself in the reality of it.
Avery closes his eyes.
He smells like laundry soap and something faintly familiar Avery can’t place. He feels like someone who exists here, not just in stories and servers and late-night calls. Avery’s chest floods with a kind of joy so sharp it almost hurts.
They pull apart after a moment, both a little dazed.
“So,” Avery says, grin creeping back in, “still up for destroying a cursed laptop?”
D3r glances at the bag slung over Avery’s shoulder, then back at him, something resolute settling into his expression.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think I am.”
+---+---+
Avery is absolutely not staring.
He is, at most, glancing. Briefly. Casually. Entirely normal amounts.
Which is to say: he cannot stop sneaking peeks at D3r every five seconds as they walk through the airport, because holy shit, this is real and happening and D3r exists in three dimensions and is right there, matching pace with him like this is the most natural thing in the world.
It’s absurd how quickly his brain latches onto the smallest details. The way D3r’s shoulders move when he walks, a little stiff but not tense, like someone who’s learned to hold himself carefully. The sound of his footsteps. The fact that he keeps one hand hooked through the strap of his own bag like he’s anchoring himself to it. The way his gaze flicks around, cataloguing exits and signs and people without seeming paranoid about it—just observant, habit-deep.
And—unfairly, devastatingly—the fact that he’s handsome.
Avery had known, intellectually, that this was a possibility. He’d seen enough blurry webcam stills and half-joking descriptions to have some idea. But none of that prepared him for the actual effect of standing next to D3r in person, for the way his face settles into expressions that don’t quite translate over voice alone, for how his eyes look when they’re focused on something real instead of imagined.
Avery catches himself looking again and snaps his gaze forward like he’s been caught doing something illegal.
Get a grip. Get an actual grip.
They make it outside, the sliding doors whooshing open to let in a wash of fresh air and traffic noise. The city feels bigger here, louder, unfamiliar in a way that sets Avery’s nerves humming. He adjusts his backpack automatically, fingers brushing the familiar weight inside, and D3r notices immediately.
“You okay?” D3r asks.
“Yeah,” Avery says, a little too fast. Then, more honestly, “Just… processing.”
D3r huffs softly. “Same.”
That makes Avery smile despite himself.
They walk toward the parking structure, the late afternoon light stretching long shadows across the concrete. Avery keeps catching D3r in his peripheral vision—how he squints slightly against the sun, how his jacket shifts when he moves. Every glance comes with a fresh jolt of this is real, like his brain keeps rebooting and finding the same impossible fact each time.
He almost misses what D3r says next.
“You’ll be on the couch,” D3r says, like he’s talking about the weather.
Avery stops walking.
D3r takes two more steps before realizing Avery isn’t beside him anymore and turns back, brows knitting in mild concern. “Hey—did I say something wrong?”
“No,” Avery says immediately. “No, sorry, I just—”
Holy shit I get to stay on his couch.
The thought hits him so hard it nearly knocks the air out of his lungs. Not a hotel. Not a neutral space. His couch. His place. The space D3r lives in, sleeps in, exists in when he’s not being a voice through headphones.
“Oh,” Avery says dumbly. “Right. The couch.”
D3r blinks. “…Yes.”
“That’s—cool,” Avery continues, nodding far too emphatically. “Totally cool. Great, even. Love couches. Big fan of couches. I promise I will not, like. Lurk.”
A corner of D3r’s mouth twitches. “I wasn’t worried about lurking.”
“You should be,” Avery mutters. Then, louder, “I mean! I won’t. Lurk. I’ll be normal.”
“Define normal.”
Avery snorts. “Okay, fair.”
They start walking again, Avery hyper-aware now of the fact that he is about to exist in D3r’s personal space in a way that goes far beyond voice calls and shared worlds. He tries—fails—to imagine what D3r’s apartment looks like. Clean? Messy? Books everywhere? Minimalist? Haunted by vibes alone?
He sneaks another glance and immediately regrets it because D3r catches him this time.
Their eyes meet.
Avery freezes like a deer in headlights.
“…Sorry,” he says, cheeks heating. “I’m not trying to be weird, I just—this is a lot.”
D3r studies him for a moment, expression unreadable, then something softens. “You can look,” he says, quietly. “I don’t mind.”
Avery’s heart stutters.
“Oh,” he says again, because apparently that’s his word for today.
They reach the car, and as D3r unlocks it and tosses his bag into the trunk, Avery stands there for a second, struck by another wave of unreality. A few hours ago he was on a plane. A few weeks ago this had been an idea so fragile he’d barely dared to voice it.
Now he’s here. About to get into D3r’s car. About to go to D3r’s home. About to sit on D3r’s couch and, at some point, destroy a cursed laptop with the person who understands exactly why that matters.
As he climbs into the passenger seat, Avery has to press his lips together to keep from laughing outright.
Holy shit, he thinks again, dizzy and delighted.
This is real.
This is happening.
And somehow—somehow—it feels exactly right.
+---+---+
The drive is… charmingly awkward.
Not bad-awkward. Not uncomfortable. Just two people who have spent an enormous amount of time knowing each other very well through a very specific lens and are now having to renegotiate gravity, proximity, and what to do with their hands in a car.
Avery loves it.
He loves that D3r checks the mirrors a little too often, like he’s hyperaware of the responsibility of having another human in the vehicle. He loves that there’s a moment of fumbling with the radio where D3r turns it on, then off again, then finally settles for something quiet and instrumental like he doesn’t trust music with lyrics not to derail the situation entirely. He loves that they keep almost talking at the same time and then both stopping, laughing softly, trying again.
It’s comforting, in a way Avery hadn’t expected. Proof that D3r doesn’t have some secret script for this. Proof that he isn’t effortlessly smooth or unknowably distant in person.
He’s just… a guy. A guy who went through something awful and survived it and is now sitting at a red light with one hand on the wheel and the other tapping absently against his thigh, like he’s grounding himself.
Avery sneaks another glance and smiles.
When they get to D3r’s place, Avery does his best not to gawk, but he definitely takes it all in—the quiet street, the way D3r unlocks the door with practiced ease, the subtle pause before he steps inside like he’s making sure the space is ready to be shared.
“Uh,” D3r says once they’re both in, keys set down, shoes kicked off. “You can… put your stuff there.”
Avery does, carefully, like he’s been entrusted with something fragile.
The apartment feels lived-in in a way Avery finds immediately reassuring. Not sterile. Not chaotic. Just… real. A throw blanket folded over the arm of the couch. A couple of mugs by the sink. Books stacked slightly askew on a shelf like they’ve been picked up and put down recently.
D3r clears his throat.
“So,” he says, rocking slightly on his heels. “I was thinking maybe… takeout? And a movie? If that’s not too boring.”
Avery’s face lights up instantly. “Are you kidding? That sounds perfect.”
D3r visibly relaxes, shoulders dropping a fraction. “Okay. Good.”
“What kind of movie?” Avery asks, already knowing the answer is about to be complicated.
D3r hesitates. “I should probably… warn you. I don’t really do horror.”
Avery gasps, hand flying to his chest in mock offense. “You wound me.”
“I’m serious,” D3r says, but there’s a hint of amusement creeping in now. “I prefer things where… people don’t suffer horribly and everything ends terribly.”
“Oh,” Avery says, grin turning mischievous. “So you like happy endings.”
“Yes,” D3r says firmly. “I have had enough existential dread for several lifetimes.”
Avery laughs, warm and delighted. “Okay, that’s fair. Very fair.”
They compromise easily—pizza ordered, movie selected after a brief back-and-forth that ends with Avery promising not to traumatize him on the first night. D3r chooses something gentle, something with warmth and low stakes, and Avery doesn’t even mind. Not really.
They settle onto the couch, pizza boxes open on the coffee table, the movie starting with soft music and familiar tropes. Avery sits at one end at first, knees drawn up, trying very hard not to overthink the fact that he is on D3r’s couch. D3r sits a careful distance away, posture a little stiff, like he’s waiting for instructions that don’t exist.
Avery watches him from the corner of his eye.
He wants to lean in. Wants to close that small but meaningful gap. Wants to be affectionate in the quiet, easy way he’s always been—resting against someone, sharing warmth, existing together without words.
But he doesn’t want to assume.
So he starts small.
Halfway through the first slice of pizza, Avery shifts, deliberately casual, and lets his shoulder brush against D3r’s arm.
D3r stills.
Avery freezes internally, already preparing an apology—
But then D3r exhales, slow and steady, and doesn’t move away.
Encouraged, Avery leans just a little more, resting the side of his head lightly against D3r’s shoulder. He waits. Gives him time.
D3r’s arm twitches, uncertain… then lifts, settling awkwardly but gently around Avery’s shoulders like he’s afraid of doing it wrong.
Avery melts.
“Oh,” he murmurs, barely audible over the movie.
“Is this—okay?” D3r asks quietly.
“Yeah,” Avery says immediately, smiling into the fabric of D3r’s shirt. “More than okay.”
They settle like that, the movie playing mostly ignored now, pizza growing cold on the table. Avery can feel D3r’s heartbeat through his arm, steady but a little fast. He can feel the tension gradually easing out of him as the minutes pass, as the world proves—again and again—that nothing terrible is going to happen just because they’re close.
Avery shifts once more, curling slightly, fully leaning into D3r now. D3r adjusts automatically, arm tightening just enough to keep him there.
Avery closes his eyes.
For the first time since the laptop, since the King, since all the horror and knowledge and dread, he feels completely, stupidly safe.
Not because the world is perfect.
But because they’re here. Together. Learning as they go.
He doesn’t remember exactly when the movie stops being something he’s following and starts being background noise.
At some point the pizza boxes get nudged aside, slices abandoned half-eaten, grease soaking into cardboard while the room settles into that late-night quiet that only exists when you’re somewhere unfamiliar but safe. The lights are low. The TV glow washes the walls in soft, shifting color. Outside, the city hums faintly, distant enough to be ignorable.
Avery is warm.
That’s the first thing he really notices.
Warm and comfortable and pressed against something solid in a way that makes his bones want to liquefy. He’s curled in closer than he meant to be, knees tucked up, one leg slung over D3r’s lap without any conscious decision having been made. Somewhere along the line, the careful space they’d started with has completely disappeared.
D3r hasn’t moved away.
In fact, at some point—Avery vaguely remembers it happening between one blink and the next—D3r had tugged the throw blanket off the back of the couch and draped it over both of them with quiet deliberation. He’d done it slowly, like he didn’t want to startle Avery, tucking it around them until the world felt smaller and softer.
Now Avery is… mostly on top of him.
Not aggressively. Not uncomfortably. Just sprawled in that boneless way he gets when he’s exhausted and content, weight settling wherever gravity decides it should. His head is tucked against D3r’s chest, cheek pressed into warm fabric. One arm is thrown across D3r’s torso, hand curled loosely near his side.
Avery is, quite unintentionally, acting like a weighted blanket.
D3r notices.
At first, he goes very still.
He’s half-reclined against the couch, spine supported by cushions, one arm pinned under Avery and the other resting awkwardly along Avery’s back. His brain short-circuits for a moment, cataloguing the situation like it’s a puzzle with no clear solution: Avery’s weight, the heat, the fact that this is happening and nothing terrible has followed.
He waits for Avery to shift away.
He doesn’t.
Instead, Avery sighs—deep, unguarded—and relaxes further, weight settling more fully against D3r like this is exactly where he belongs. His breathing evens out, slow and steady, a soft warmth blooming through D3r’s chest with every exhale.
Oh.
D3r swallows, then very carefully adjusts his grip, sliding his arm more securely around Avery’s back. He doesn’t pull him closer—doesn’t need to—but he does let his hand rest there, fingers lightly curled into the fabric of Avery’s shirt like an anchor.
The movie credits roll unnoticed.
Minutes pass. Maybe more. Time loses its shape.
D3r listens to Avery breathe. Feels the gentle rise and fall of his weight. Feels the blanket trapping their shared warmth, cocooning them in something domestic and unreal. His thoughts slow, the constant background vigilance easing in a way he hadn’t realized was possible.
Avery is asleep.
Out cold. Mouth slightly open, forehead pressed into D3r’s collarbone, entire body slack with trust.
D3r stares at the darkened TV screen, heart doing something strange and tight and almost painful. He’s acutely aware of every point of contact—the heat of Avery’s legs, the solid comfort of his weight, the quiet certainty that Avery chose this without hesitation.
Carefully, slowly, D3r tilts his head just enough to rest it against the back of the couch. He lets himself breathe in sync with Avery, lets the world narrow to this moment.
For the first time in a long time, his body stops bracing for impact.
If someone were to walk in right now, they’d see it clearly: Avery sprawled almost entirely on top of him, limbs tangled, acting as a very enthusiastic human paperweight. D3r pinned beneath him, one arm wrapped protectively around Avery, the other trapped but unmoving. A blanket thrown over the whole ridiculous, tender arrangement like punctuation.
D3r closes his eyes.
The knowledge doesn’t vanish. The past doesn’t undo itself. But here, now, with Avery warm and heavy and real against him, it feels… manageable.
Safe.
He lets sleep take him gently, the weight of another person grounding him to the present, and for once, nothing reaches out of the dark to follow him there.
+---+---+
Morning arrives quietly.
Not all at once, not with alarms or panic or the sharp jolt Avery is used to when he wakes up somewhere unfamiliar. It comes in layers instead—soft light seeping through the curtains, the low hum of the city outside, the distant sound of someone’s neighbor doing something indistinct but domestic. Ordinary. Real.
Avery surfaces from sleep slowly, warm and heavy and deeply, embarrassingly comfortable.
The first thing he registers is heat.
Good, solid heat, the kind that seeps into his bones and makes him want to curl tighter instead of moving. The second thing is pressure—steady, supportive, everywhere. His cheek is pressed into something firm but yielding. His arm is draped over a broad chest. One of his legs is thrown across a thigh.
Oh.
Oh.
Avery’s eyes blink open.
For half a second, his brain offers him nothing but static. Then the memories come rushing back all at once: the airport, the hug, the pizza, the couch, the movie he definitely did not finish watching.
D3r.
Avery goes very still.
He becomes suddenly, acutely aware of the fact that he is entirely on top of another human being. Not partially. Not politely. He is sprawled over D3r like a starfish that has decided this is its territory now. His weight is settled fully across D3r’s torso, his head tucked under D3r’s chin, the blanket still draped over both of them like a deliberate choice rather than an accident.
His first instinct is to panic.
His second instinct—stronger, louder—is to snuggle closer.
He does not act on that one. Yet.
Instead, Avery very carefully tilts his head just enough to see D3r’s face.
D3r is still asleep.
His expression is relaxed in a way Avery hasn’t ever seen before—not guarded, not tense, not braced for something unseen. His mouth is slightly parted, breath slow and even. One arm is still wrapped securely around Avery’s back, hand resting there like it fell into place and decided to stay.
Avery’s chest does something soft and traitorous.
Oh no, he thinks. I like this.
He stays frozen for a long moment, listening to D3r breathe, cataloguing sensations like his brain is afraid this might vanish if he doesn’t pay attention: the faint scratch of fabric against his cheek, the warmth of skin beneath it, the steady rise and fall under him that proves—again—that D3r is real and here and solid.
Eventually, inevitably, D3r stirs.
It starts with a small shift, barely perceptible. A deeper breath. His fingers flex slightly against Avery’s back, like his body is checking its surroundings before his mind catches up.
Avery tenses, ready to roll off instantly if needed.
D3r’s eyes open.
There’s a brief, unfocused moment where he just… blinks. Stares at the ceiling. Takes inventory.
Then his gaze drops.
Directly to Avery’s face.
They lock eyes.
For a heartbeat, neither of them moves.
“…Morning,” Avery says, very softly, because his voice feels like it might shatter something if he raises it too much.
D3r blinks again. Once. Twice.
Then, quietly: “Good morning.”
There’s no alarm in his voice. No panic. Just mild surprise, threaded with something warm and unguarded that makes Avery’s stomach flip.
“I, uh,” Avery begins, then stops. He gestures vaguely with one hand, which only serves to emphasize the fact that he is still very much on top of D3r. “I can move.”
D3r exhales—a slow breath that sounds suspiciously like a laugh he didn’t mean to let out. “You don’t have to. Not immediately.”
Avery’s eyebrows shoot up. “You’re… okay with this?”
D3r considers him for a moment, eyes steady and present in a way that makes Avery feel profoundly seen.
“…Yeah,” he says. “I think I am.”
Avery melts a little where he lies.
He relaxes again without even fully realizing he’s doing it, weight settling back into D3r’s chest. D3r’s arm tightens reflexively, not restraining, just holding, like his body has already decided this is fine, actually, and his brain is simply filing the paperwork.
They stay like that for a minute, the morning stretching lazily around them.
“You’re very warm,” D3r notes.
Avery grins. “I have been told I’m an excellent human blanket.”
“That tracks.”
Avery shifts just enough to prop his chin on D3r’s chest, looking down at him properly now. Up close, D3r looks… softer. Sleep-rumpled. Human in a way that makes Avery’s chest ache with fondness.
“You slept okay?” Avery asks.
D3r nods. “Better than I have in a long time.”
Something quiet and pleased settles into Avery’s bones at that.
“Good,” he says. “Because I definitely drooled on you.”
D3r snorts before he can stop himself. “I’ll survive.”
They lapse into comfortable silence again, sunlight creeping further into the room, the blanket still cocooning them like the world has agreed to give them a moment longer.
Eventually—because reality does insist on continuing—Avery sighs. “Okay. I should probably get up. At least a little.”
“Probably,” D3r agrees, though he makes no move to let go.
Avery hesitates, then carefully shifts his weight, sliding off D3r just enough to sit upright while still staying close. D3r’s arm drops reluctantly but doesn’t pull away entirely, his hand lingering at Avery’s side like it’s not quite ready to leave.
They sit there on the couch, hair rumpled, blanket half-slipped, looking at each other like this is both completely ridiculous and incredibly important.
“So,” Avery says, stretching slightly, “coffee first? Or destroying a cursed laptop?”
D3r smiles—small, real, and undeniably present.
“Coffee,” he says. “Then we destroy the past.”
Avery beams.
Morning, it turns out, feels pretty good like this.
Coffee happens the way most important things in Avery’s life seem to happen: slightly chaotically, with too much enthusiasm, and undercut by the lingering unreality of I woke up on his couch.
D3r disappears into the kitchen first, still half-asleep, hair sticking up in a way that feels criminally unfair. Avery watches him go with the same quiet awe he’s been carrying since the airport, perching on the edge of the couch with the blanket pooled around his waist like he might float away if he stands up too fast.
He can hear cabinets opening. Closing. A pause.
“…Do you take sugar?” D3r calls.
“Yes,” Avery replies instantly. “Aggressively.”
There’s a faint huff of laughter from the kitchen, and something in Avery’s chest loosens again. He stands, stretches, and pads after him, stopping in the doorway to lean against the frame and just—watch.
D3r moves like someone who’s lived alone for a while. Efficient but unguarded. Muscle memory guiding him through the steps: fill the kettle, scoop grounds, rinse a mug that was already clean. Avery clocks all of it, not because it’s extraordinary, but because it’s him. This is what existing looks like when it’s not filtered through a mic.
“You okay?” D3r asks without looking back, like he can feel the weight of Avery’s gaze.
“Yeah,” Avery says. “Just… you’re real.”
D3r pauses, then glances over his shoulder. There’s no deflection in his expression this morning, no carefully neutral mask. Just a quiet acceptance of the statement.
“So are you,” he says.
Coffee is handed over a minute later—hot, fragrant, exactly what Avery needs. He takes a sip and makes an appreciative noise that’s probably excessive.
“Oh yeah,” he says. “That’s the good stuff.”
They drink it leaning against opposite counters, still a little close, still learning the shape of each other in shared space. Avery feels more awake with every sip, nerves settling into something steadier. The plan—the plan—solidifies between them without needing much discussion.
Out of the city. Away from people. Somewhere empty enough that if they need to yell or smash or just… stand there for a while afterward, no one will be watching.
D3r grabs his keys once the mugs are set in the sink.
“There’s a place,” he says. “Old service road. No one really uses it anymore.”
Avery’s grin turns sharp and determined. “Perfect.”
The laptop goes back into Avery’s bag, still wrapped in the hoodie like it’s trying to pretend it’s harmless. Avery shoulders the weight of it and feels the familiar prickle crawl up his spine—not fear, exactly, but anticipation. This isn’t dread anymore. This is closure with intent.
The drive out of the city is quiet but not uncomfortable. Buildings thin into suburbs, suburbs into long stretches of road bordered by scrub and open land. Avery watches the skyline recede in the side mirror and feels like he’s shedding something with every mile.
D3r drives with one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the console, fingers tapping absently in a rhythm Avery recognizes from late-night calls. He looks more relaxed out here, like the distance from crowds and concrete lets his shoulders drop another inch.
“This feels… right,” Avery says after a while.
D3r nods. “Yeah.”
They pull off onto the service road eventually, gravel crunching under the tires, dust puffing up behind them. The world opens up—flat land, big sky, nothing but wind and sun and the faint hum of insects. No houses. No voices. Just space.
D3r cuts the engine.
The silence that follows is deep and deliberate.
Avery gets out first, stretching, breathing in air that feels unclaimed. D3r follows, slamming the car door shut and leaning against it for a moment like he’s bracing himself—not in fear, but in readiness.
Avery unzips his bag.
The laptop comes out slowly, reverently, like an offering or a challenge. He holds it with both hands, feeling its weight, its stubborn normalcy.
“This thing,” Avery mutters. “I cannot believe you ruined my life.”
D3r snorts. “You bought it off Craigslist.”
“Details.”
They stand there together, side by side, staring down at the object that started everything. The wind tugs at Avery’s hair. The sun glints off the laptop’s scratched surface.
Avery looks over at D3r. “You ready?”
D3r meets his gaze, eyes steady, present, entirely here.
“Yes,” he says. “I am.”
Avery’s smile turns fierce and bright.
“Good,” he says, lifting the laptop just a little. “Because I have been waiting months to absolutely obliterate this stupid fucking thing.”
Out here, in the middle of nowhere, with coffee still warm in their systems and the past held firmly in Avery’s hands, it finally feels like the right place to let something end.
Avery is still holding the laptop when he notices the bat.
At first his brain doesn’t quite parse it. He’s busy feeling the weight of the thing in his hands, busy breathing in open air and telling himself that this is really happening, that they’re actually here, that the end of something awful is sitting right in front of him wrapped in a hoodie like it deserves mercy.
Then D3r walks past him toward the trunk.
The trunk opens with a soft thunk.
And inside is an absolutely unhinged amount of preparation.
An aluminum baseball bat, already scuffed like it’s been used before. A sledgehammer that looks heavy enough to dent the earth if dropped wrong. A metal container. A jug Avery is about ninety percent sure is accelerant. Matches. Gloves. Fire extinguisher.
Avery’s brain blue-screens.
He stares.
Then he looks at D3r.
Then he looks back at the bat.
“…Oh,” Avery says faintly.
D3r glances over his shoulder, one eyebrow lifting like he’s bracing for judgment. “I may have… planned for options.”
Avery swallows.
Hard.
Because here’s the thing: Avery has always known D3r is dangerous in a very specific, quiet way. Not violent. Not reckless. But deliberate. Someone who doesn’t do anything halfway once he’s decided it needs to be done. Seeing that translated into physical reality—into tools laid out with intention, into a plan that includes redundancy and escalation—is doing things to Avery’s brain he is not prepared to unpack right now.
“Oh my god,” Avery breathes.
D3r stiffens slightly. “Is that—too much?”
“No,” Avery says immediately, voice coming out too fast. “No, it’s just—”
He gestures helplessly at the trunk.
“You brought a bat and a sledgehammer and fire,” he says, awe-struck. “You came prepared to fight God.”
D3r blinks. Then, after a beat, his mouth quirks. “I didn’t know which would feel… right.”
Avery presses a hand over his face.
He is trying so hard not to swoon. He is failing catastrophically.
“Okay,” Avery says, lowering his hand and looking at D3r with something feral and delighted in his eyes. “First of all, this is incredibly hot behavior.”
D3r chokes. Actually chokes. “I—what?”
“I said what I said,” Avery continues, nodding solemnly. “Second of all, I love that you brought choices. Very considerate. Very respectful of the ritual.”
“The… ritual.”
“Yes,” Avery says. “This is absolutely a ritual.”
D3r exhales, shaking his head, but Avery can see the tension bleeding out of him, replaced with something steadier. Purposeful. He reaches into the trunk and pulls out the aluminum bat, weighing it in his hands like he’s reacquainting himself with it.
“We can start with impact,” D3r says. “Make sure it’s… gone. Then fire.”
Avery’s grip tightens on the laptop.
He looks down at it, really looks. The scratched casing. The dead screen. The thing that once held a door open to something vast and wrong and hungry. It looks so small now. So unimpressive.
“You don’t get to have power anymore,” Avery mutters.
He sets it down on a flat rock a few feet away, stepping back like he’s giving it space out of courtesy, even though it deserves none. The hoodie is peeled away and tossed aside.
D3r steps up beside him, bat resting against his shoulder.
“You want first hit?” D3r asks.
Avery looks at him, then at the bat, then back at the laptop.
“…Can we do it together?”
D3r’s answer is immediate. “Yes.”
They position themselves on either side of the rock. Avery takes the sledgehammer from D3r—because holy shit, being handed a weapon by him is also doing things—and adjusts his grip, feeling the cool metal bite into his palms.
D3r stands close. Not crowding. Just there. Solid. Present.
“Ready?” D3r asks quietly.
Avery nods. “Yeah.”
They swing at the same time.
The sound is incredible.
Metal on plastic, sharp and final, the crack echoing out across empty land. The laptop skids, casing splitting, sparks popping faintly like something protesting too late.
Avery laughs—loud, wild, unrestrained.
“Oh my god,” he says, breathless. “Again.”
They do.
And again.
Each hit feels like peeling something off Avery’s ribs, like shedding layers of tension he didn’t even realize he was still carrying. The bat dents. The screen shatters completely. The hinges scream and give.
By the time Avery steps back, chest heaving, the laptop is nothing but a broken, ruined thing.
D3r swaps the bat for the sledgehammer.
Avery watches him lift it, muscles shifting under his jacket, expression set and focused and utterly done with this object’s existence.
Do not swoon, Avery tells himself.
He swoons anyway.
D3r brings the hammer down once.
Twice.
The remains flatten, crack, surrender.
When it’s finally unrecognizable, D3r sets the hammer aside and reaches for the container and the accelerant. He moves with care now—not fear, but respect for the fact that fire deserves attention.
Avery lights the match.
His hands are steady.
He looks at D3r one more time. D3r nods.
Avery drops the match.
Flames catch quickly, greedily, licking over shattered plastic and exposed guts. Smoke curls upward, dark and ugly, dissipating harmlessly into the open sky.
They stand together, watching it burn.
Avery leans into D3r without thinking this time, shoulder pressing against his side, head tipping just enough to rest there. D3r doesn’t hesitate. He shifts, arm coming around Avery’s back, grounding him like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
When the fire dies down, there’s nothing left that could ever hurt either of them again.
The fire burns itself down quickly once it’s done proving its point.
What’s left is… nothing. Charred plastic warped into shapes that don’t resemble anything useful, metal blackened and twisted, a smear of ash on stone that the wind is already impatient to erase. No hum. No pull. No sense of being watched back. Just the quiet crackle of cooling heat and the enormous, indifferent sky above them.
Avery hadn’t realized how tightly he was holding himself together until it’s over.
The moment it truly sinks in—that this thing is finished, that it cannot follow them anymore—his knees go a little weak. He exhales a breath that feels like it’s been stuck in his lungs for months and leans fully into D3r’s side, forehead dropping briefly against his shoulder like his body knows exactly where to put the weight.
D3r adjusts without comment, arm firm around Avery’s back, hand splayed warm and grounding between his shoulder blades. Not restraining. Not holding him up because he’s about to fall. Just… there. Present. Solid.
They don’t speak for a bit.
The wind moves through dry grass. Somewhere far off, a bird calls. The world continues, utterly unimpressed by how monumental this feels to Avery—and somehow that makes it better.
“I didn’t think,” Avery says eventually, voice quiet, a little rough, “that it would feel like this.”
“Like what?” D3r asks.
Avery searches for the words, gaze fixed on the ash. “Lighter. But not… empty.”
D3r hums, thoughtful. “Yeah. That tracks.”
They stand there together until the last faint curl of smoke disappears. When D3r finally lets his arm fall away, it’s slow, deliberate, like he’s making sure Avery’s steady before he does. Avery is. Mostly. He turns, facing D3r fully now, and really looks at him in the bright, unforgiving daylight.
There’s something different in D3r’s posture.
Not healed. Not magically okay. But uncoiled. Like a spring that’s been allowed to rest at last instead of staying compressed forever.
Avery smiles, soft and a little crooked. “You okay?”
D3r meets his eyes without flinching. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I am.”
That’s when Avery does it.
Not the tackle—he’s still proud of himself for that restraint—but he steps in and wraps his arms around D3r properly this time. No hesitation. No asking. Just a full, deliberate hug, cheek pressed against D3r’s shoulder, hands gripping the back of his jacket like this is something he’s earned.
D3r stiffens for exactly half a second.
Then he hugs back.
It’s different from the airport hug. Deeper. More certain. D3r’s arms come around Avery’s shoulders and waist, pulling him in until there’s no space left for doubt. Avery exhales into it, a sound that might’ve been a laugh or might’ve been something closer to relief finally finding somewhere to land.
They stay like that longer than strictly necessary.
When they pull apart, Avery’s eyes are bright and his grin is back in full force. “Okay,” he says. “That was extremely cathartic.”
D3r snorts. “You enjoyed that far too much.”
“I enjoyed you being prepared far too much,” Avery shoots back, absolutely unrepentant.
D3r rolls his eyes, but there’s color in his cheeks now, and something like quiet pride under the embarrassment. He pulls out the fire extinguisher from the truck, uses it on the fire because even though they wanted the laptop eviscerated, they don't want to accidentally cause a forest fire, carefully puts the laptop in a box so they can properly dispose of it later, closes the trunk, dusts his hands off like he’s just finished a normal chore instead of ritualistic symbolic destruction, and gestures toward the car.
“Food?” he suggests. “I think we’ve earned more food.”
Avery lights up immediately. “Yes. Absolutely. Preferably something greasy.”
They get back in the car, dust trailing behind them as they pull away, leaving nothing behind but scorched earth and a memory that no longer hurts to hold. Avery watches the place disappear in the rearview mirror and feels—really feels—the finality of it.
The past stays where it belongs, and the future is looking better.