#threads;avery

The spring season was turning on its hinges, readily casting off chilly gusts and muted colors to welcome the first summer day in an outburst of golden sunbeams, verdant roadside bushes and muffled complaints about the heat. All in all, though, it was business as usual for Avery, and though the sun had been proving a persistent presence, warming his back slightly, he was still stuck in a park without much chance to bask in this afternoon. To nosy tourists, he belonged to the city’s numerous live attractions: a despondent survival artist, putting his artistic prowess to use in order to earn some pocket money. Of course, this was a bullshit assumption.

He tilted his head curiously, though, when somebody came closer, towards his easel and example portrait-lined mini exhibition.

With a colossal gap in his CV and little of a traditional education to boot, Avery had to resort to dicey means to make ends meet. Sometimes this came in the form of palm or tarot card readings to con spiritual idiots out of their money. More often than he preferred, it meant trudging through shady neighorboods to supply junkies with their death sentences. Rarely did it entail a spontaneous ring from nearby bars. But if he could sing, he would. It was one of the very few talents without any harm to it, and his conscience thanked him for it. Most nights, at least.

Covered in a slight coat of perspiration after another show, Avery collapsed into a bar stool, bent over his cool glass of coke. Tomorrow, his body would ache, every muscle a sore scream; but it would  all  have been worth it. Singing had a cathartic quality, a soothing salve to his shitty cubby hole existence. Avery had some inkling that he was good enough to be booked here and there, however, he was too much of a realist to believe his whisky voice with its rough, deep overlay could be uncharted gold for the recording studio.

All his mediocrity aside, though, he seemed to have drawn in a devilishly hot stranger who had stood out among the crowd for a few nights now, and his attractiveness was enough reason for him to find out about the mystery stranger. When Avery glimpsed the blond man in in between a bustling mass of people, he grabbed his coke and tipped him on the shoulder.

A love confession in the aftermath of wooden splinters, broken glass and decorous violence, perforce, suggested neither Avery nor James were functional human beings in the dull, office man sense, with children and wives waiting at home. Their psyches had long since plummeted to precariously faulty wiring; but Avery was no technician.

He didn’t know how to fix it.

So he relied on the coward way in lieu of playing the courageous bloke eagerly admitting his fucking feelings to then venture into sweet domesticity. He memorized James’ work schedule and routines, each and every activity committed to memory, before cramming out the spare key he had been holding onto all these years to sneak into his flat.

At first, even being inside had pooled panic into him, every boisterous whisper from outside turning his head towards the hallway and then the door. But James hadn’t stumbled into his trespasser for all the weeks Avery had been doing his laundry and prepping meals for the upcoming week so the poor idiot wouldn’t die of heart disease aged forty-four because of all the unhealthy takeout.

Until now.

Avery, with the kitchen door closed in lieu of left ajar as per usual, was standing in the rising heat of sizzling beacon and eggs, winced at the even tread of a man in asleep-or-awake limbo. By the sound of it, James was heading straight for the kitchen. In swift, practiced motions, Avery turned off the stove, hurled a plate along with cutlery onto the table and grabbed his boots. He always left them in the kitchen.

Ripping the door open, he was presented by none other than a sleepy James towering over him. Avery gulped; stared. In his head, a choir of profanities was serenading. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Pairing: Avery x James

Setting: Regular bar fight gone wrong, so James has been in the habit of patching up Avery since the two have known each other since childhood and used to be close; but they have grown somewhat distant compared to their boyhood days.

Partner: @crime-scened

“I could’ve fed ‘em their teeth!” Avery protested for the umpteenth time, shifting incessantly on the leftover bar stool in the break room where James had dragged him off to after the third brawl this week. A scowl had contorted his soft features into sharp edges, his blue eyes narrowed to convey his own exasperation. By now, the bloke should’ve memorized his maladaptive patterns – or at least realized those pissed ghouls at the bar didn’t play by normal rules. Sometimes pain was the only routine those people knew, and it was a sanctioned one, a bloody minuet only blokes with bullet-biting rage and a filled in rap sheet honoured.

“That bull wouldn’t leave the girl alone,” Avery went on, tolerating the ongoing bandaging and subsequent nursing without so much as a wince. “Was anybody else doin’ anything ‘cept starin’ – were ya doin’ anythin’?” He huffed.

“Didn’t think so.” There was a moment’s pause swirling in, then, permeated only by the muffled hubbub in the front. His glance wandered, restlessly, and he leaned back farther on the stool. “So, why don’t ya quit this nice guy act already and tell me what you want?”

Avery didn’t know why he lingered outside by the yet turned off streetlights lined like dark, towering statues on every side. But he was, a cigarette poised in his hands, and a frown on his features. This pub didn’t belong to broken men or the unsavoury outskirts where bastards downed their watered down grog. It was safe, he knew, or at least as much as it could be in an ever volatile town. A cool breeze swept by unannounced, sending a shiver down his spine as he zipped up his leather jacket. The soft orange glow was receding behind mountains, the last specks of sunlight no longer a warm reprieve. Enough, he decided, shaking his head, and throwing away his cigarette stump.

In he went, reluctantly, his gaze flitting across the relatively empty room until his blue eyes settled on a familiar face behind the bar. Some tensile pressure dissolved when all the men present did was to acknowledge his presence with barely a curt nod. Mustering up an affable smile for Tris, Avery claimed the bar stool farthest from the other customers, raising a hand by way of greeting. If it had been any other bloke, Avery wouldn’t have bothered to hop onto the train. The bartender, though, had been tolerable enough for a guy, and Avery didn’t mind his presence.

The clouds were sagging towards the house-lined grounds – already heavy with raindrops -, the cross-blown sky too broken a frame to hold them together, and Avery wanted to puke. Customers had that effect. The bilious aftertaste in his mouth had sharpened considerably when his ringtone had wrenched him out of an artistic fit, causing his shocked body to wince and ruin the drawing he had been poring over for the last few weeks with one black, horizontal stroke.

It turned out some lazy arse had cancelled their scheduled shift last minute because of one seasonal germ wave or another. Short-handed as they were, he would have to take over for the time being. Two monster shifts this week, new supplies from the Morrisons, desperate fucks blowing up his phone – his Rockstar stack wasn’t nearly enough to drag him through to this weekend. Fuckin hell.

Here he was now, after copious amounts of free coffee, a sleep-deprived ghoul dressed in an embarrassing uniform with his hair tied into a messy bun, and bat wing-like, black circles under his eyes. At least there was an outlet for his incendiary annoyance: wiping tables with renewed vigour. Much better than interacting with stressed suits because he wasn’t taking their orders fast enough. A café on the main street, and one so close to the nearest train station at that, was bound to become a fulcrum for underpaid commuters.

Looking up, Avery was unfortunate enough to catch the cook’s reproachful glare, and he presented him his inked, silver-ringed middle finger by way of reply before trudging off to serve the customer who had just barged in – along with a swirl of hot air from outside. Wonderful.

“Welcome at ‘Die Kaffeestube.’ What can I…,” but his memorized litany trailed off, stuck in his throat, and Avery’s neutral customer look had dwindled rapidly. “What the fuck are ya doin’ here?” His voice rang out in his usual rancorous undercurrent, every syllable laced with tremulous annoyance. “Didn’t I tell ya to leave me the fuck alone?” His blue eyes had narrowed, his mouth a white, bloodless line. To calm himself, Avery tapped on his notepad; incessant, loud, angry.