Work Text:
You tap numbers into the keypad in a systematic order, careful not to miss one. The dull beep is the only answer, again and again. Until a different, higher, beep rings out. The vault door opens. A purple smoke billows out, filling your lungs with an intense sweetness. | + Arousal
(1) Enter
You are in the vault in Avery’s mansion, surrounded by metal walls, floor, and ceiling. It’s empty save a purple cushion on a plinth. Resting on the cushion, a white so pale. The wishing stones Landry asked you to swap.
(1) Replace the stones
(2) Leave
You take the wishing stones. An energy rushes through your arm. For a moment, your vision is filled with a pale light, and a sensation of floating, as if underwater. You feel stronger. | + Physique
You leave the fake stones in their place, and step outside the vault.
(1) Next
There’s some ointment on the table. You apply it to your back while waiting for Avery to return. | - Pain
(1) Next (0:30)
As you cover your aching back in ointment, you reflect on what you’ve done.
(1) You just want to save Avery | - Trauma
(2) He deserves it | - Stress
(3) You already regret it | + Stress
You don’t know what his intentions for this skyscraper are. But if Landry and the brown fox are right, and whatever Avery has planned will only hurt him in the end, then you can’t take the risk.
He needs your help, even if he doesn’t know to ask for it. You only hope doing this will actually save him.
(1) Next
You hear the staircase creak. Avery is returning. You rush to the rack, and thread your limbs through the ropes, as if you’d never stepped away.
(1) Next
You hear Avery arrive behind you. “I’d almost forgotten you,” he says. He gives your backside a spank, then runs his hand up your aching back. “Shall I untie you? Will you be a good boy?” | + Pain
(1) Say you’ll be good | + Dominance
(2) Remain silent
(3) Insult Avery
“Don’t hurt me again,” you say. “I promise I’ll be a good boy, I promise!”
Avery seems satisfied. He unties the ropes around your ankles first, and stops to admire your body before untying your wrists. He gestures at the staircase leading to the study. “Shall we?”
(1) Next
Avery follows you up the staircase, away from the dungeon, and the fell light.
As you walk up the stairs, back still pained with each pulse and breath, you tell yourself it will have been worth it in the end. You only want to help.
You continue to tell yourself this as you enter the study.
(1) Next
Generally, Avery doesn’t like to speak about his past. If you were ever to learn about it, it would be on his own terms, and perfectly manicured so that it couldn’t be used against him. Maybe he’d paint himself as the one being wronged, and he could even do so without reproaching his parents—should the story ever reach their ears—and thus avoid any kind of distant backlash.
Even that is distasteful to him, however. Better to simply never speak of it at all, should he have had things his way.
But this ritual—because that’s what it is, what else could it be?—is entirely out of his control. You’re seeing it whether he wants it or not. He’s seeing whether he wants it or not.
Avery has made many mistakes in his life, as anyone does. It is, in a singular sort of way, humiliating to witness them so clearly once more alongside you, of all people. You had meant to be a means to an end. Something to be used for pleasure, stress relief, satisfying his own ego, a pawn in his grand ambitions, and a sacrificial lamb if need be. Something easily disposed of once you’d outgrown your use. Not a witness to one of the more tender points of his life.
You watch alongside him with wide, curious eyes as a flash of his youth pass by the two of you. There’s no judgment in your expression—when he’s able to rip his attention away from the memories he’s watching like an out of body experience—but that doesn’t make him feel any better that you’re seeing it at all.
But then he sees his father again.
“You can’t invite scum like that here as if they’re your equal,” he says again.
It sounds so much clearer now than in his memories.
His father says it as though it didn’t matter that his friend could be seriously hurt. No, what mattered that Avery’s friend dared to presume he could enter the manor at all. Avery’s invitation became him stooping down to elevate a creature that hadn’t earned the right. His father always viewed their name and history and prestige as a reason to do whatever he pleased when it pleased him, and be damned to his son’s feelings on the matter.
Avery’s vision goes red. Even though the first punch goes through his father as though he were punching air, Avery continues swinging away at the figment until he’s panting harshly with the effort. It isn’t satisfying in the slightest.
The scene flickers again, this time to a beautifully cultivated garden. Avery knows what this is even before either his younger self and his father even say anything. And then the yelling starts, going over an argument Avery has repeated in his head more times than he would ever care to count.
(It’s so strange to see his younger self and you near each other like this. He must be around your age in this memory, and seeing this impossibility only paints the difference in age between you and himself that much more vividly.)
“I’ll rise higher than you ever could,” Avery’s younger self proclaims haughtily.
“Out!”
As his younger self storms off, the ritual’s visions finally fades. He’s back in his tower, and risen higher just as he’d sworn he would. He’s only steps away from what he’s been working on for over two decades now. It’s finally his time to prove everyone that doubted him wrong.
And that, of course, is when everything goes wrong.
The hissing, and Harper’s speedy escape. The wishing stones blazing painfully in his hand, then smoking on the floor when he drops them. Remy’s horror as he crouches to examine them and sees the truth of the stones too late.
The split second of unnatural quiet. The detonation.
Being so close to the wishing stones(?), it’s truly a miracle that he’s not in a worse state as the building shakes and shudders with the explosion. It’s difficult to ruminate on one’s good fortune, however, when one is in massive amounts of pain, clutching to the edge of one’s own building from where a massive floor to ceiling window once had been. Perhaps later, when his life isn’t on a knife’s edge, he’ll be able to muse over the fact he might even get to keep all of his limbs and be thankful for his good fortune.
Stop.
Avery forces himself not to panic. If he panics, it’s over. He ignores the shattered glass that has dug into his left arm, he ignores the agonizing pain that ripples through his right, and instead he focuses on staying as calm as he thinks about how to get out of this predicament. Having what must surely be a broken arm isn’t exactly conducive to climbing, and his ability to keep himself from falling to his death is beginning to dwindle along with his stamina.
Is there anyone nearby he can get to help him up?
He squints at the fire that’s blazing through the chamber that would have soon been his office. He doesn’t see many people at all, but that could simply be due to the fire that’s roaring through the place and belching an acrid yet strangely briny scented smoke. But then he sees movement out of the corner of his eye, and makes out a figure through the haze in the room.
It’s you. His little doll.
You seem confused, a touch dazed until you shake your head to clear it. Your mask is gone, as is your top from where he’d sliced it open earlier. But you seem more or less hale and whole, though soot is smudged all over your skin from your belt up.
Good. If you’d been injured, Avery could hardly expect you to help him up.
When Avery calls out your name—now is hardly the time for any ridiculous sobriquets—you look in his direction. “Get the fuck over here,” he manages to say loud enough to be demanding without sounding panicked. Because he isn’t panicking, not even when the building shakes, and he slips another couple inches.
You look to the floor between yourself and Avery, a grim expression on your face. For a cold, horrifying moment, he wonders if you’ll just leave him here. In spite of your usual obedience, in spite of your dedication, in spite of the way he sometimes catches you looking at him with so much naive affection in your eyes. If you leave him, will it be because he’d lost his temper with you, despite his apology, and despite the fact you said there was nothing to forgive? Was it all a lie, or were you simply a coward?
Those panicked thoughts prove to be inconsequential. Going by the careful path you take to reach him, you had simply been charting out the safest approach. The relief that sinks into his spine is dangerous in the way that it risks his grip on the edge of the building.
“I’m going to find out who fucking did this,” he mutters darkly as you reach his side. (Avery doesn’t notice the brief flicker of fear in your eyes.) Then he huffs. “What are you waiting for? Help me up.”
Strangely, as you brace yourself in your position, preparing to help him up, you smile. “Were you looking for lichen?” At his confused look, you continue, “Remember when we first met? You helped me climb the statue in the park. I’m glad I can help you, too.”
“Funny.” He briefly flashes you a poorly mustered smile. Hard to find the coincidence amusing when his life is still in danger.
You lean down, grab him by the waist, and between the two of you, Avery finds himself on more or less solid ground. You stand up, but Avery needs a moment to try and catch his breath despite the fact he’s half breathing in a miasma of incense and brackish smoke. As he stares up at you, he feels somewhat lightheaded with the strain, the effort, the pain, the disbelief, and yes, the panic that is only now finally fading, now that he’s no longer in danger of falling.
You saved him. He had been so close to what he wanted and the ceremony was going just as planned, but then so catastrophically wrong; the skyscraper he’d worked so hard on just went up in flames; he nearly died…but you didn’t. Amongst everything else he’s lost tonight, how did he not lose you, too, fragile as you so usually are? How were you the one to save him? In this nightmarish dream-like unreality, he stares up at you and wonders at this odd sensation he feels that is not unlike awe.
(It reminds him of a dream he once had that tickles the edge of his memory.)
Suddenly a loud crack sounds through the space. More of the building collapses further inside the room, but it lands on top of some of the blaze, quenching enough of it to provide a marginally more safe route towards the stairs. It all snaps Avery out of his brief reverie.
Right. Burning, collapsing building. He shakes his head and lifts his good arm towards you, and you follow on his silent order to help him up.
Time to get out of this deathtrap.
Avery had been quite certain your heroic rescue from before would have been in vain when that flaming debris came rattling and crashing down the stairwell’s railings, headed straight for you.
It wasn’t. But this time it wasn’t you doing the saving.
When he opens his eyes—heart pounding too fast and his breaths coming too shallow between the pain, lack of oxygen, exertion, and existential fear—he realizes there’s arms wrapped around the two of you. He looks down to see a strange figure in a brown fox mask and a green cloak that obscures most of their person. Avery doesn’t know how they did it (let alone where they even came from), but he can piece together that, whatever they did, they were the reason the debris didn’t put an end to all three of you.
When they pull away, they look up at Avery, cocking their head slightly. “You’re a very lucky man, Avery,” they say with a smile. “Someone decided that you’re worth saving.”
The person with the brown fox mask directs their attention from Avery to you, leaving no doubt as to who that “someone” is. Going by the tone in their voice, both fond and amused, Avery suspects they are of some acquaintance to you. (Certainly he doesn’t know who they are.)
It’s not as if he was in denial of his good fortune in getting to live another day. But when it’s put that way—Someone decided that you’re worth saving—it occurs to him that there wasn’t a single attendant of that ceremony that would have risked their necks to save him the way you had.
As he had hung from this monument to his pride, you had come to rescue him from a fate some might say he deserved. You didn’t have to help him. You could have just run, or you even could have sent him off to that fate early, should you have resented him enough (and thank God you didn’t). But you put your own self in jeopardy for him, and even fondly reminisced about your first meeting as you helped him up and onto safer ground.
Avery had always thought that, despite how competent you were in myriad ways, you were always a simple-minded and docile thing, easily manipulated and easily cowed. But perhaps that was him underestimating you, even if only a little. Perhaps one acting foolishly despite knowing better indicated a failing of the heart, rather than a weakness of character. So easily putting yourself back in Avery’s hands even after his temper got the best of him; willingly lying on that altar and giving Avery that too-trusting smile, even as he held a knife to your throat, then over your heart; choosing to save him while fully cognizant of possibility you could also be dooming yourself…
You actually care for him, to put it simply. In spite of everything, and in spite of yourself.
Reaching that conclusion, Avery feels…something. Something different than how he might have in different circumstances; you weren’t the only doll of his to develop real feelings for him, after all. But then again, none of them had saved his life before. No, they tended to try to ruin his life, rather than anything else. (Such as the wretch he’d had sent to the asylum for taking an obsession too far, or the one that had wielded a knife against you in the bowels of this tower.)
Avery doesn’t know what name to put to this feeling, though. One more of a growing collection of odd feelings inspired by the insanity of the night.
One thing he can be certain of, though, is this: if he hadn’t kept you by his side, then right at this moment, he could’ve already been dea—
You try to say something, only to inhale a lungful of smoke. When you start coughing, the corner of Avery’s mouth momentarily twitches up as he reaches over to pat your back.
Now’s not the time to dwell on such things, he tells himself. He’s avoided death twice in this damn building—he doesn’t want to test his luck a third time. He won’t depend on an eighteen year old to save his life again.
(Shortly thereafter, another eighteen year old saves his life. But at that point, Avery’s too relieved to be breathing in the untainted air of the night to think too hard about it.)
Avery should be more glad that his prognosis isn’t all that bad. And, on a certain base level, he is, but…
But as he stares out the window, seeing the smoke that roils from his collapsing tower, he sighs.
It’s all slipped through his fingers once again.
“Do what you need to,” he says to the doctor. He doesn’t bother modulating his tone to sound more dignified. It would almost be worse to, considering his present state: a man who nearly had it all, only to lose it—and to quite a large audience, too. (Bailey included, which stings what’s left of his pride that little bit more.)
When the doctor starts taking care of some of his burns, you pipe up on the other side of him. “I’m sorry about your building. But you haven’t lost everything, Avery. You still have me.” You smile at him, and your voice gentles slightly as you add, “And I’m glad you’re safe.”
You look relieved and fond and quite put together considering your ragged appearance. It’s strange having someone showing him compassion rather than taking the opportunity to mock him for this. Then again, this is the warm sort of reception he’s come to expect from you. He finds himself somewhat relieved all the same. If only a little. If only because you’re still loyal. If only because you didn’t rub salt into the wounds when you were in the prime position to.
…But, comforted or not, he still can’t stand you seeing him like this.
It’s almost offensive how composed you seem to be compared to how he feels. Everything that’s happened is unbearably humbling as it is; having you here at his bedside while his injuries are being treated makes it all rather worse. You, the only one who’d borne witness to some of his most sensitive and powerless moments without his consent. You, the one who had witnessed firsthand the entirety of his great fall from start to finish—from the tower’s infancy, to its foundation, to its completion, to its opening, and finally its destruction—and the one who saved him from it. You, the one he’d bent to his will, the one he demanded to obey his every request, and the one he punished whenever you failed to meet his expectations (and sometimes even without any provocation).
To have you see him so weak and still show him this grace and warmth is too…too something. It’s a horridly unwelcome feeling, whatever it is. It’s nothing like guilt or regret. Closer to vulnerability, which he loathes, though somewhat different in a way he can’t think up the words for.
He doesn’t want to think about anything right now. At least not until the painkillers kick in.
“You should have yourself looked at,” he says, just to get you out of the room. He can’t tolerate you being…you at him right now. “Maybe get some proper clothes. I might be here a while.”
Though you appear reluctant to leave, you obey. You give him one final look as you dither in the doorway, but finally you depart, leaving him alone with the doctor tending to him.
“I won’t want any visitors while I’m staying here,” he says to the doctor wearily. When he gets an affirmative, Avery sighs again and leans back against a mountain of pillows, letting his eyes fall shut.
The excitement of the night is finally over, at least. Now he can relax. …Or, rather, he can simply let go and just drift for a while.
They say “after pride cometh a fall.” As Avery thinks back to that flash of memory during the ritual, where he had to watch his father disown him again, he wonders just how many times he has to fall before he finally learns his lesson. Perhaps if he had ever deigned to listen to Jordan during those dinner parties, he may have avoided all of this. But no, he knows there had never been a world that he would have allowed himself to be stopped when he’d been so close to getting the power and recognition he so coveted.
Not that he’d gotten it in the end this time, either.
What happened back there, ritual aside? He can’t figure it out, still. Surely the wishing stones weren’t meant to explode. Remy had been as caught off guard by them as Avery had. Could it have been Harper? The eccentric doctor had been pretty quick to beat a retreat. Not to mention including you in the ceremony. When Avery had been told about it the first time, you hadn’t been involved. But at the last second you’d been brought into it. There was quite a lot of unexplained behavior from the man tonight…
There’s no proof of Harper’s involvement, and it would be bloody inconvenient for too many reasons if it had been him. But having someone he can temporarily blame for all his misfortunes gives the anger a target, the rage that had begun to rouse and make his injuries pound with his heartbeat. It’s not soothing, having someone to blame, but he’s in no mind to be soothed. Not with the taste of caustic indignation and rancor simmering in the back of his throat, and a resentment for whatever—or whoever—put him in these damned straits again.
Avery had lost it all again, and he’s going to have to start over again, and the thought makes him even more exhausted on top of the post-adrenaline crash he’d already been feeling the moment he’d first gotten into this bed.
He won’t be starting over from nothing, but he’s sure that Remy will find a way to blame him for the stones exploding. (How could it be when they’ve been locked in his vault this entire time, with no hint of anyone breaking in?) And that means he’s going to have to deal with the man’s frigid temper again while trying to restrain his own hot-blooded one, and hope it doesn’t cause yet another, more metaphorical explosion. And even then, he’s going to have to put in just as much work (or more), as he had for the past few months, and…
Fatigue forces Avery’s thoughts to slow to a crawl.
He’s so fucking tired of this. But the idea of letting his parents win after all this time is much worse than reducing himself to a lazy life of leisure and idleness. Bloody-minded ambition will always win out over comfort for him. He’s going to have to climb back up to those dizzying heights yet again, and that’s all there is to it. If he does it kicking and screaming, he’ll just make sure he keeps said kicking and screaming close to home and largely out of sight.
It’s a direction. A heading he can follow once he gets back to the grind. That’s all he can manage for now. He’ll figure out the details after he’s recovered from yet another fall.
At least, he muses, this time you’d been around to save him from falling in a literal and very fatal sense. You’ve always been loyal, even when you’d been given reason not to be. It’s always filled Avery with a smug sort of satisfaction. But you decided he was worth saving, and that give him a different sort of satisfaction. A comforting kind.
New Trait: Avery’s Saviour
Avery has made many mistakes in his life, as anyone does. But, in the end, keeping you by his side hadn’t been one of them. And he has no intention of letting you go now, especially since you’ve seen all his worst sides and have come to care for him anyway.
Fin.