Gold doors.

Wind that isn’t wind.

Something laughing softly behind him.

And D3r not answering when he called his name.

Avery’s eyes snap open in the dark.

For a second he doesn’t move. He just lies there, staring into nothing, his chest tight and his core glowing faintly under his skin—dim, frightened light, like a dying lantern. The room is quiet. Too quiet. No wind outside, no sheep bleating, no creaking wood. Just silence and the sound of his own breathing.

He turns his head.

D3r is there, asleep beside him, one arm loosely draped over Avery’s waist like he fell asleep halfway through pulling him closer.

Avery stares at him for a long time.

He doesn’t touch him yet. He just watches the slow rise and fall of his chest, the way his hair falls across his forehead, the way he looks so normal when he sleeps. Not golden and terrifying and ancient and unknowable. Just D3r. Just the man who makes cocoa too sweet and pretends he doesn’t love baby animals but still adores them.

Avery swallows.

In the dream, the doors had opened.

In the dream, D3r had walked through them and never come back.

And Avery had known—knew in that horrible, certain way dreams sometimes give you—that if those doors closed, he would never see him again.

His hands are shaking a little.

He finally reaches out and presses his palm lightly against D3r’s chest, just to feel the warmth there, just to feel the steady heartbeat under his hand.

Alive.

Here.

Real.

The relief hits him so suddenly it almost hurts.

He scoots closer without really thinking about it, pressing into D3r’s side, forehead resting against his shoulder. His core glows a little brighter, soft blue-white light spilling faintly through the blankets. He tries to calm down, tries to breathe slower, but every time he closes his eyes he sees the doors again.

He makes a small sound before he can stop himself.

D3r wakes instantly.

He doesn’t jerk awake or startle. He just opens his eyes and immediately turns his head toward Avery, like he already knew something was wrong.

“Aves?” he murmurs, voice rough with sleep.

Avery doesn’t answer right away. He just moves closer and wraps both arms around him, pressing his face into his chest like he’s trying to make absolutely sure he’s still there.

D3r goes still for half a second, surprised, and then his arms come around Avery automatically, pulling him in tighter.

“Bad dream,” Avery mutters into his shirt, voice muffled.

D3r’s hand moves slowly up and down his back in a steady rhythm. “Yeah?”

Avery nods against him. He doesn’t want to describe it. He doesn’t want to say the words out loud. Saying things out loud sometimes makes them feel too real.

For a long time they just lie there like that, Avery half on top of him, clinging a little tighter than usual.

D3r eventually presses his lips lightly to the top of Avery’s head. “I’m here,” he says quietly.

Avery’s arms tighten.

“I thought you weren’t,” he admits, voice small in a way he hates but can’t help right now. “In the dream. You walked through those doors and you didn’t come back.”

D3r doesn’t move for a long moment.

He knows what doors Avery means. Avery has never seen them, but somehow he knows. Golden doors in a place that isn’t a place, wind that blows without air, a city that exists where nothing should exist.

Carcosa.

D3r closes his eyes briefly.

Then he tightens his arms around Avery and presses his cheek against his hair. “I’m not going anywhere, ⎓╎∷ᒷ⎓|:॥,” he says.

“You don’t know that,” Avery mutters.

D3r huffs a quiet breath. “I do.”

“You literally don’t,” Avery says, but there’s no bite to it. He just sounds tired. Scared. “You’re like… cosmically weird. You could get sucked into a different dimension or become a god or something and forget I exist.”

“That’s not how that works.”

“You don’t know that either.”

D3r can’t help it—he laughs quietly, just a little. Avery always does this when he’s scared. Talks too much, says ridiculous things, tries to make the fear smaller by turning it into something almost funny.

He cups the back of Avery’s head and gently nudges him so he’ll look up.

Avery does, reluctantly, eyes glowing faintly in the dark.

D3r reaches up and brushes his thumb lightly under Avery’s eye where there’s a tiny smear of dried salt. “You were crying.”

“I was asleep,” Avery mumbles defensively.

“You were crying,” D3r repeats softly.

Avery scowls a little, then immediately gives up and buries his face back into D3r’s shoulder. “It was a really bad dream.”

“I figured.”

Avery is quiet for a long time after that. His breathing slowly evens out, but he doesn’t let go. If anything, he slowly ends up half sprawled on top of D3r, leg thrown over his, arm across his chest, like he’s trying to physically anchor him to the bed.

D3r doesn’t complain.

He just keeps one hand on Avery’s back and the other in his hair, gently combing his fingers through it over and over in slow, repetitive motions.

After a while, Avery speaks again, voice sleepy now. “If you ever disappear into some cosmic horror nonsense, I’m coming after you.”

D3r smiles slightly into his hair. “Good to know.”

“I’m serious.”

“I know ⎓╎∷ᒷ⎓|:॥.”

“I will fight gods.”

“I believe you,” D3r says, completely sincere.

Avery huffs a quiet breath. “You better not leave me.”

D3r tightens his arms around him again, just a little. “I won’t, Aves.”

Avery finally relaxes after that.

His core light dims to a soft, steady glow instead of that frightened flicker from earlier. His grip loosens, but he still stays wrapped around D3r like a blanket, like something that belongs there.

Within a few minutes, he’s asleep again.

This time he doesn’t dream about doors.

D3r stays awake a little longer, though.

He watches the ceiling in the dark, one hand still resting on Avery’s back, feeling the slow, steady movement of his breathing. Feeling the warmth of him, the weight of him, the very real, very human presence curled around him like he’s the most important thing in the universe.

Maybe he is.

After a while, D3r presses a soft kiss to Avery’s hair and closes his eyes again, still holding him.

Now, the first time I watched this episode, I was hollering, "Oh come ON, man, don't be That Guy" at the TV, because at that point I still hated Kallus and his stupid facial hair and his even stupider name and his stupid meanness, picking on my favorite character (hi I was a Zeb simp from ep 1).

But upon my most recent rewatch, I have realized that I had it wrong. This isn't someone considering murder of the man who just saved his life. It's not an Imperial bastard slow-shedding that last of his bastardness (he never sheds that, spoiler alert).

This is a man realizing that the first creature in his entire adult life -- maybe his entire life -- to treat him as an individual, as someone worth saving, is stuck in the monster pit, unarmed, because he prioritized saving Kallus over keeping himself safe. Zeb literally took the weapon from his back -- the only piece of home he had left -- and threw it away to make room for Kallus. For Kallus' salvation.

And I like to think that, in this moment here, Kallus decides that he's not okay with that being the end of Zeb, of the lasat, and spends the rest of the episode -- and his life -- repaying Zeb for it. Life paid for -- and with -- a life.

‘I love you’

‘I know.’

It was meant to show TK that Carlos now understands where TK is coming from but…

I flailed and screamed HE JUST HAN SOLO’D HIM?!!?!?

So is Carlos a secret nerd??

Please give me hot, needs to be in charge, gorgeously sculpted cop is a secret Star Wars nerd!

Can we get Carlos arguing the merits between Star Wars and Star Trek with Marjan and/or Mateo? (I’m thinking Marjan because she seems like she’d appreciate classics and Mateo is totally a prequel trilogy fan!)

To make a very long self indulgent rant short, back on Avery's home server there's a myth about how fireflies were created, a slime loved another so much that they promised to bring them the stars but was only able to come back with little flecks of starlight, those little flecks became the first fireflies :]

Being humanoid took effort. Structure. Coordination. Limbs. And after a particularly exhausting morning involving chicken escape attempts, potion spills, and Steve somehow getting his head stuck in a barrel, Avery had finally groaned, “Nope,” and dissolved directly into a bucket.

Not dead. Not injured. Just slime.

A very content pile of semi-translucent green goo with a softly glowing core suspended somewhere in the middle.

What Avery hadn’t expected was for D3r to simply accept this immediately.

No hesitation. No visible confusion. Just a quiet, “Alright,” before picking the bucket up by the handle and continuing with his day.

Which was how Avery ended up being carried around the base like the world’s strangest emotional support creature.

D3r worked at the forge while Avery sat on a nearby crate in bucket form, warmth from the fire making him pleasantly gooey. D3r talked occasionally—not constant chatter like Avery did, but observations. Thoughts. Small things.

“The sheep escaped again.”

Avery made a bubbly trilling noise in annoyance.

“The new ingot mix is holding together better.”

A pleased little blorp.

At one point D3r picked the bucket up again and carried him outside while checking fences, one hand resting absently against the rim to steady it whenever he walked over uneven ground.

“You seem comfortable like this,” D3r observed.

Avery made a happy chirping noise.

D3r’s mouth twitched faintly. “I will interpret that as agreement.”

And Void help him, Avery thought hazily from inside the bucket, he was falling more and more in love.

Because D3r wasn’t treating him like a burden. Or strange. Or inconvenient.

He’d just looked at Avery reduced to a glowing slime puddle in a bucket and gone, alright then, before continuing to make space for him in every part of the day.

By evening, Avery was still in the bucket, glow warm and syrupy with affection as D3r sat beside the fire sharpening tools.

“You should probably reform eventually,” D3r said quietly.

Avery warbled once in protest.

D3r glanced over at the bucket, eyes soft despite the dry tone of his voice. “You cannot live in there forever, ⎓╎∷ᒷ⎓|:॥.”

Not verbally. He never stands in the center of the room and announces it. It just… happens.

He opens cabinets with growing confidence. Rearranges spices by usefulness instead of height. Judges the state of D3r’s cookware with increasingly dramatic facial expressions. Starts grocery lists unprompted. There are suddenly fresh vegetables in the fridge where previously there had been condiments, smoothies, and three separate microwave meals with nearly identical branding.

D3r, for his part, takes this with surprising grace.

Mostly because he knows his limitations.

He can survive. He can feed himself in the strictest biological sense. He knows how to heat frozen meals, boil water, make toast, and once managed to assemble a sandwich so structurally unsound it collapsed before reaching the plate. But cooking-cooking? Timing things? Seasoning? Using more than one pan without entering a fugue state?

No.

Avery discovered this the first morning when D3r offered to make breakfast and produced something that could only be described as apologetic eggs.

Avery had stared at the plate, then at D3r, then back at the plate.

This was probably the most concerned he'd ever seen Avery before but Avery still ate the eggs without complaint.

Now, standing in front of the stove with an apron he absolutely did not bring but somehow found in a drawer, Avery moves like he belongs there. Confident. Efficient. A little bossy in the most attractive way possible.

D3r leans against the counter, trying to be helpful.

Trying.

“What if I chop something?” he offers.

“No.”

“I can stir.”

“No.”

“I can supervise.”

Avery turns, wooden spoon in hand, and points it at him. “You can get out of my kitchen.”

D3r blinks. “My kitchen.”

“Not currently.”

There’s no real heat in it, only amusement. Avery crosses the room, places both hands lightly on D3r’s shoulders, and gently steers him backward out of the kitchen threshold.

“Shoo,” Avery says.

“I pay rent here.”

“Go be pretty somewhere else Derek.”

D3r’s face goes blank for a second, like his brain has momentarily lost connection to the server. Then he quietly retreats to the couch.

That should have been warning enough.

The second incident happens two days later.

Avery is making dinner—something that smells incredible and involves a level of pan confidence D3r finds vaguely intimidating. D3r has made the tactical error of wandering in to refill his water and then lingering.

He watches Avery work. Watches the easy strength in his forearms as he stirs, the quick precision of his hands, the way he moves through the small kitchen without wasted motion.

“You know,” D3r says, “I can hand you things.”

“I know.”

“I’m capable of opening containers.”

“I know.”

“I feel excluded.”

Avery glances over his shoulder. “You are in the way.”

“I’m standing still.”

“You’re standing exactly where I need to be.”

D3r looks around the tiny kitchen. “There is plenty of room.”

Avery gives him a long look.

Then he sets the spatula down.

D3r immediately senses something has shifted in the atmosphere. “Aves.”

“Mm?”

“What are you doing?”

“Problem solving.”

Before D3r can process that answer, Avery steps forward, slides an arm behind his knees and the other around his back, and simply picks him the fuck up.

Effortlessly.

Like D3r weighs nothing.

There’s no grunt. No dramatic wind-up. Just a smooth, decisive lift that leaves D3r staring down at the kitchen from several inches higher than he was expecting.

His brain fully crashes.

“Aves,” he says again, except this time it comes out much less authoritative.

Avery carries him two steps backward, deposits him just outside the kitchen entrance, and sets him down with absurd care.

“There,” Avery says cheerfully. “Better.”

Then he turns around and resumes cooking like he didn’t just entirely change how D3r saw him.

D3r remains where he was placed.

Motionless.

Blinking.

His face is warm.

Warm enough, in fact, that he touches one cheek just to confirm it. Yes. Blushing. Great. Excellent. Fantastic development.

From the stove, Avery glances back and immediately notices.

“…Are you blushing?”

“No.”

“You are.”

“I’m experiencing things.”

Avery snorts and turns back to the stove, clearly pleased with himself.

D3r retreats to the table this time, choosing a safer observational distance. He watches Avery move through the kitchen that absolutely used to be his, listens to the sounds of sizzling and chopping and casual humming, and tries not to think too hard about being picked up.

He fails immediately.

A few minutes later, Avery sets a plate in front of him.

D3r looks up. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

A beat passes

Then D3r says, very carefully, “If I stand in the kitchen tomorrow, are you going to do that again?”

Avery’s smile turns wicked.

“Depends,” he says. “Are you going to be in the way again, Derek?”

D3r has gotten used to the weight of him. Or at least, he’s stopped freezing every time Avery shifts closer. His arm rests along the back of the couch, not quite around Avery but close enough that it could be if either of them decided it should be.

Avery is talking.

He’s been talking for a while, actually—rambling in that easy, unfiltered way he falls into when he’s comfortable. Stories overlapping, tangents stacking on top of each other like he’s just pulling memories out at random and handing them over.

“…so my uncle thought it’d be a great idea to let me try his dirt bike,” Avery is saying, gesturing vaguely with one hand. “Which, in hindsight, was a terrible decision because I was, like, twelve and had zero self-preservation instincts.”

D3r glances down at him. “Had?”

Avery grins. “Okay, less zero self-preservation instincts now.”

“Debatable.”

“Rude.”

Avery shifts a little closer as he talks, like the story itself is pulling him in, his shoulder pressing more firmly into D3r’s side. D3r doesn’t move away. He just listens, quiet, eyes flicking between Avery’s face and the TV he’s not actually watching.

“I got really into it after that,” Avery continues. “Like, obsessed. Trails, fields, anywhere I could ride without getting yelled at. I ate shit constantly, but that’s part of it, you know? You learn.”

D3r hums. “That sounds… dangerous.”

“It was great,” Avery says cheerfully. “I got pretty good, though. Like, actually good. There was this one stretch of road near where I lived—”

He pauses just long enough to take a breath, then continues, completely offhand:

“—and one time this car didn’t see me coming out of a side trail and just clipped me. Took me clean off the bike.”

D3r goes still.

“…What.”

Avery doesn’t notice. Or maybe he does and doesn’t realize how bad it sounds.

“Yeah,” he says, like he’s talking about scraping his knee. “Sent me flying. Bike went one way, I went the other. It wasn’t even my fault, the guy just wasn’t paying attention.”

D3r is staring at him now.

“Aves, you got hit by a car,” he says slowly.

“Mm-hm.”

“And you’re saying this like it’s—what—fun trivia?”

Avery finally looks up at him, blinking at the tone. “I mean, it wasn’t fun at the time. But it’s kind of funny now?”

D3r’s expression does not agree.

“Aves,” he says, voice tightening just a fraction, “you got hit by a car.”

“I was fine,” Avery insists immediately. “Mostly. Bruised ribs, scraped up pretty bad, but nothing broken. I walked it off.”

“You—” D3r cuts himself off, dragging a hand down his face. “Did you go to a hospital?”

Avery winces a little. “No.”

“…Of course you didn’t.”

“I couldn’t,” Avery says, like this is obvious. “If my parents found out, they would’ve taken the bike away. Permanently. I wasn’t risking that.”

D3r turns his head fully to look at him now, disbelief written plainly across his face. “So your solution was to just… not tell anyone you got hit by a car.”

Avery shrugs, a little sheepish but still smiling. “I mean, I cleaned myself up. Slept it off. I was fine.”

There’s a long pause.

D3r stares at him like he’s trying to reconcile this information with the person currently leaning against him like a very affectionate cat.

“…You’re unbelievable,” D3r says finally.

Avery grins, pleased. “I get that a lot.”

“That’s not a compliment.”

“It is in my heart.”

D3r exhales sharply, somewhere between a laugh and a groan, and leans back against the couch like he needs the support.

“You got hit by a car,” he repeats, quieter this time, like saying it again might make it make more sense. “And your main concern was your bike.”

“It was a good bike,” Avery says defensively.

D3r looks at him again.

Avery holds his gaze for about two seconds before cracking, laughter bubbling up. “Okay, okay, yeah, it sounds bad when you say it like that.”

“It is bad,” D3r says.

“But I’m okay,” Avery says, softer now. “See Derek? Still here.”

There’s something about the way he says it—light, but not dismissive—that takes some of the edge off D3r’s concern, even if it doesn’t erase it.

D3r studies him for a moment longer, then—hesitantly, like he’s still getting used to the permission—lets his arm drop around Avery’s shoulders, pulling him just a little closer.

Avery goes willingly, settling into him without a second thought.

“You’re ridiculous,” D3r mutters.

Avery smiles against his shoulder. “Yeah. But you like me.”