Chapter Text
It would be a bit of a stretch to say that Avery feels entirely better, given that he’s awake at 6am with his throat on fire, but he doesn’t feel anywhere near as unwell as he did a few days ago. It would be best for him to just close his eyes and hope that the last two hours of sleep are enough to shake off the sickness and exhaustion, but he can’t, because it’s like Derek knows. Derek – who probably needs much more sleep than he’s getting – wakes the moment Avery lets out a cough.
He shuffles over, gently rubbing Avery’s back. “Still feeling bad?” He asks.
“It’s easing,” Avery murmurs, face buried in the pillow.
“What time is it?”
“Six.”
“Wow,” Derek says. “I don’t feel tired.”
Avery turns his face to see that Derek is smiling at him, blinking slowly like the street cat that his mom always used to feed. It’s a sign that they love you, she’d said. Avery knows that Derek loves him – with so much devotion that it scares him sometimes. But nonetheless, he loves him. It’s a very lovely thing.
They must be well into summer by now. Has he missed his mom’s birthday? He’s long since stopped asking Constance for any information about her – or life on the outside in general. It hurts too much to get let down.
“Do you want to get up?” Avery asks, pushing the thought away.
“Do you want to stay in bed?” Derek responds. He rests his hand against Avery’s forehead. “You’re still a bit warm. Would you like some water? A cup of tea?”
The thought of tea with honey to ease his sore throat does sound wonderful – but it isn’t right. It feels small and selfish to be bothered by a little cold in the grand scheme of things.
Derek gets up anyway.
Avery listens to the sound of him making his way through the apartment, mapping out his route through the walls of the bedroom. Somehow, Avery being sick has made Derek seem much better. It’s probably the same energising feeling of pride that Avery gets whenever he’s the one performing acts of service, but something tells him that nothing here ever turns out to be that kind or that simple. Could Hastur be gaining some kind of strength from Avery’s weakness?
Either way, the fact remains that he does feel weak. Enough to sink into the mattress and close his eyes like a scared child until the whistle of the kettle signals Derek’s quick return. He sits on Avery’s side of the bed, placing a mug on the dresser and holding his hand.
Avery pushes himself up into a seated position and takes the cup of tea. It burns his lips at first, prompting a small gasp from Derek, but the thick coating of honey against his throat immediately soothes him. The softness of Derek pressing his lips to the back of Avery’s hand, combined with the taste-memory of the same tea his mom would make whenever he was sick, feels like home. Nostalgic and unfamiliar, home feels like standing on ground that could fall away at any moment and turning his face to the bright, hot sun anyway.
“We don’t normally get a lazy morning together on a weekday,” Avery says. “I don’t know what to do.”
“You should rest. You need it.”
He shakes his head. “No. No – I can’t waste this time. I want to spend it with you.”
“How about lying down on the sofa?” Derek suggests. “Then you can be close by while I work some more on fixing up our radio?”
“Okay,” Avery smiles.
The sofa is actually better than the bed. As comfortable as the bedroom is, its size makes its emptiness all the more visible and serves only to remind Avery of the clutter that he has grown to miss – the guitar propped up against the wall that he now may never get to learn, the stack of cardboard from online deliveries that he will certainly never get to break down and recycle, the multiple days of dishes that probably grew a significant culture of mould before being thrown out. Thrown out. Of course, he hasn’t paid his rent in months, so his apartment will have been cleaned out and leased to someone else.
Where are his things? Did his mom get any of them?
The living room has less space for these thoughts to exist openly. It’s the room where they spend most of their time, and even just the rhythmic sound of Derek’s cane against the carpet as he moves to the table offers some proof of life. The table itself is perpetually covered with evidence of their hobbies and the beautifully restorative time spent together in silence – Derek’s small electronics and tools, Avery’s quick sketches of the apartment and detailed pencil close-ups of Derek. He settles into the sofa, pulling the blanket around him, as Derek takes a seat and begins to work on the radio.
Derek talks to himself a lot. Avery has learned the difference in tone between his responses to Hastur and his self-contained muttering, the latter of which seems to offer great comfort and advice whenever Derek is concentrating on something. Avery isn’t even sure if he knows that he’s doing it, and he daren’t bring it up in case Derek tries to suppress it.
He likes the sound. Derek’s voice is even more comforting when he isn’t carefully considering his words; the mumbled stream of consciousness through which Avery can pick out a few technical terms is the perfect background noise to close his eyes to. As much as he doesn’t want to drift off, it feels like something stronger than sleep is pulling him down – down somewhere deep, where the curtains of nostalgia fall away and the danger that has always been waiting on the doorstep begins to slowly knock.
Falling,
deeper,
knock – knock – knock –
“Got it!” Derek’s voice jolts Avery back to the waking world, and he grips onto the sofa for stability. “Sorry,” Derek says. “Did I scare you?”
“Nah,” Avery smiles. “You got it?”
“Yeah. I think it’ll work now. Wanna try it with me?”
He holds out the radio with a grin. Avery isn’t sure he’s ever seen him this happy before, and it suits him.
Draping the blanket around his shoulders, Avery stands up and sits at the table with Derek. He watches excitedly as Derek turns over the radio and, holding his breath, twists the dial.
The static crackles to life. There are no discernible words just yet, but the radio seems to be flicking through the stations well enough. When words do come, they’re so garbled that Derek passes them by and has to quickly reverse the direction of the tuning dial, making it so they only catch the end of the broadcast –
“The summer heat continues to rise, reaching highs of 104. Temperatures are expected to drop this afternoon as a storm moves in from the west side of –”
The radio splutters and dies just before the broadcast reveals any specifics of their location. Avery slams his hands on the table in frustration as Derek’s shoulders drop and, with a calm tone, he says, “It’s okay. That just means more fun figuring out what’s wrong with it.”
Avery doesn’t have the heart to tell him that he doesn’t care about the radio anymore. He wants to know how far they’d have to run to get back to somewhere safe, somewhere he knows, somewhere his mom can protect them both.
“God, time flies,” Derek says. He’s right – the clock says 8:45am. It feels like a waste of a morning, but the least Avery can do is keep his feelings inside until the door is closed. He smiles and follows like a lapdog as Derek heads into the bathroom to get ready, unable to offer any real comfort when his brain is screaming at him that Derek doesn’t need it from him right now. When they hug goodbye, it’s Avery who pulls away first.
“I love you,” he says. “Be safe.”
“I love you too,” Derek kisses him. “Be safe too.”
Like Avery has anything to be safe from.
And then the door closes, leaving him alone for eight hours.
He’d never tell Derek this, but the apartment feels a lot like a church during the daytime.
He walks around methodically, keeping the same routine each day. Starting by the front door, circling the bedroom, back out into the living room, through the kitchen, and to the front door to begin again. He keeps a steady pace the whole time, unfocusing his eyes without missing a corner – this is muscle memory by now. It allows him to empty his mind and think at the same time. He doesn’t register the present moment, the passing of time, or the feeling of movement. He floats above himself, captured in his memories.
Fresh laundry in the breeze.
That time he moved back in with his mom for half a year when he lost his job.
Apples and oranges in a basket on the counter.
How she had cried when he dropped out of college, but only when she thought he couldn’t hear.
A screen door, a morning goodbye.
You never get to know, do you? When it’s the last time? Not until later.
His hand reaches mindlessly for the back of the sofa. Up to the half wall of the kitchen, taking the long way round. He contemplates turning the stove on, letting his hand pass through the flame every time he walks by, but that would give Derek one more thing to worry about. And though Derek isn’t here right now, he will be at the end of the day, and everything will be slightly more manageable.
Until it won’t, Avery thinks. Until one day we realise that this is inhumane no matter how much love there is.
He doesn’t have a plan for getting them out of here, but he has to believe that it’s possible. That one day, they will be far away, eating dinner in his mom’s house. She’d like Derek. She’d be proud that her son found someone like him. God, they’d get along so well. Avery can picture it – his mom proudly digging out the old baby photos, Derek charming her with his ability to hold an interesting conversation about anything. She’d parade him round at every dinner party; he’d be her son-in-law long before Avery ever popped the question.
But none of that is going to happen, is it?
Just as he’s seriously considering the stove thing, he hears a knock on the door. He hasn’t requested anything in days, and he’s never had anyone visit during Derek’s work hours otherwise.
The panic that sets in immediately shocks him back to the present moment, the passing of time, and the feeling of rapid movement towards the door. He opens it, panting, and sees Constance.
“What happened?” He near-shouts. “Where’s Derek?”
“Derek is fine,” she reassures. “He’s busy doing a sleep study. I came to talk to you.”
“Me? Why?”
“I realise I’ve been quite unfair to you. Please don’t get your hopes up – it still isn’t possible for you to write to your mother. But I’ve been thinking a lot. May I come in?”
Avery hesitates, though he knows immediately that he doesn’t actually have a choice. Just like this door is never truly locked, he can only stand guard at the threshold for so long. He steps back cautiously and Constance enters.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” she says. “All the plants you requested really bring life to the space. I might have to implement greenery in the apartments as-standard.”
“Sorry, but… what are you here for?”
“Your mother,” Constance sits at the living room table, gesturing for him to join. Her eyes fall onto his drawings and he quickly gathers them up before sitting down. “I’m sure you’re thinking of her around her birthday.”
“Is it today?” Avery asks, taken off guard.
“No, no. But I need to be honest with you for a moment, in a way that I haven’t been before. My son is missing.”
“I thought your son was dead.”
“I lied to you about that. I’m sorry. He’s been declared dead, yes, but that was only a formality after a certain amount of time passed. They never found a body. Why do you think I’m so insistent on accessing an infinity of knowledge, Avery? I’m a mother. There’s nothing we wouldn’t do to get to our children.”
“Is my mom looking for me?”
“Yes,” Constance says. She sounds truthful, but a voice in Avery’s head – that sounds just like Derek – is screaming at him that he cannot be objective when his emotions are in the driver’s seat. “You are legally missing. You haven’t been declared dead yet.”
Oh, god. The idea of putting his mom through losing a child kills him enough, but the idea that she doesn’t even have closure? Avery can imagine her – he can see it – roaming the streets every night, putting up posters, inviting news crew after news crew to speak to his loved ones. She’ll have called in every favour she’s ever been owed – an entire, generous lifetime of favours. She won’t have given up on him. She never will.
Avery feels his face quivering, and he cannot stop the tears that spring to his eyes. He scrambles for something – a joke to lighten the mood – but comes up with nothing. What has he done to his mother? What has he put her through? Why would he do it again, and again, and again – a million times over? She raised him, nurtured him, loved him despite all his flaws, and in every universe he would abandon her to placeless grief for Derek. What will it take for him to abandon Derek next?
Nothing short of death.
“I’m sorry,” Constance puts a hand on his shoulder. “I needed you to understand, I’m not bad. I do bad things. I will always do bad things for my son. And I need you to know that, despite that, we can still be on the same side.”
“Wh… What?”
“I’m so sorry, Avery,” her voice is soft. It’s the voice of someone who has, at some point in their life, sung a child to sleep. “I don’t like lying to you. I had to do it earlier. You had to hear me out first.”
“What do you mean?”
“I needed you to know that this isn’t a trick. Derek isn’t fine. I need your help. Neither of us want him dead.”
Constance can run in heels. That’s the only thought going through Avery’s mind. Constance is running – too scary to think about – click clack against the ground. Sounds different outside the apartment; no carpet. Running fast, breath lost in his lungs, her too? She’s older than him. Click clack click clack. Elevators are always slow in a horror movie. The killer always gets inside too, or runs up and waits with a knife at the next floor. What if the power goes out? Trapped here – how long? What is happening to Derek?
Constance takes his hand as the elevator comes to a stop at the hospital floor. He can’t see Derek, but Avery can feel that he is close. Something pulls him and he runs, dragging Constance behind.
He’s been here before. The first time he saw Derek, he was like this – in this same bed. Tormented by the turbulence of sleep, eyes fighting some unseen battle underneath closed lids, his body twitching as the nightmare rages through it.
“What have you done?” Avery says, though he refuses to turn his gaze from Derek.
“I didn’t do this. We didn’t do this. He won’t wake up.”
Avery reaches down, resting his hand against Derek’s cheek. He still doesn’t wake up. He shakes him, kisses his hands, but… nothing.
“It was supposed to be a normal sleep study. I don’t know what’s going on inside his head,” Constance continues. “But I don’t know how long it will remain stable. The readings from his implant aren’t making any sense. They’re… hardly there at all.”
“So you need me to go back in and pull him out, right?”
“I don’t know if it will work. But it’s the closest thing I have to a theory based on the evidence. And we’ve refined the SomniShift process a lot since the beginning of the year, so we’re certain we can monitor you, even if we can’t monitor him.”
“Okay. What do I need to do?”
“It’s the same device as last time, without all the fiddly bits like heartrate monitors and the like. And we’ve developed a medication based on the one Derek takes at night – it’ll help your body fully adapt to movement within your shared dream. Since we don’t have a reliable connection to Derek’s implant right now, you’ll need full control of your dream avatar if you want to find him. You might have to get creative.”
“I’ll do whatever I can,” Avery says. “How long does he have?”
“I can’t say. But the readings that we are getting… it seems like his brain is deteriorating quickly. If this doesn’t work, we likely won’t have the time to try anything else.”
“Fuck. What are we wasting time for?”
One of the DMS agents approaches, and Avery snatches the paper medication cup from their hand. He dry swallows the two large pills and lies down on the bed next to Derek as Constance places the SomniShift device over his head. The cold, electric memory of it against his temples pierces and bursts the fears that have been swelling in his mind, stripping their armour and spilling out, in every dimension, the fear of losing Derek: the fear of losing him on New Year’s Eve, losing him again when they first met at the DMS, losing him every morning, losing him on the rooftop, losing him to Hastur or Constance or himself.
Avery has to find him. He holds his hand.
Wait.
There weren’t two beds here last time.
Why have they – ?
With a thunderclap, his brain goes dark.
He wakes standing.
He stares at the golden gates.
He cannot move.
His eyes unfocus.
His arms drop.
He goes blank.
He goes –