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Deep down, Derek knew it was inevitable.
The physical closeness, the sparring to get him moving again, the adrenaline of fighting. Every time he felt he got a leg up, he was reminded Avey had years more experience in inter-player combat than he did, and was going easy on him.
Every time he was shot, stabbed, cut, kicked, punched, he came back. He improved, even if in pitiful scraps. It felt good to learn, to fight, to dig his heels into seconds of precious advantage. He’d never been one for massive multiplayer servers, but when Avery began dragging him into skywars games, he began to understand why Avery was at home there.
The movement, the split-second timing—yes, this took skill. There was a time he understood how to fight best, but that information was gone now, a gaping void that had him constantly second-guessing his movement. He was constantly doing something wrong, or doing something inefficiently, his mind screamed at his body to act faster, to move a slightly different way it no longer remembered how to pull off. But he was learning. Like Avery taught him, from both direct advice and being an excellent subject for observation.
When Derek pulled an arrow back until the bowstring went taut, and fired and missed by a fraction of a block over a player’s head, he got that rush of knowing improvement could happen. As long as he kept moving, didn’t break line of sight, notched the arrow again, readjusted his angle—there, sent through a player’s head, a slip of the foot and a fall into nothing.
Through the rush, the dodging and firing, he saw Avery doing the same. The man moved fast when in his element. Sure, Derek knew he wasn’t at home solving riddles crafted by the devil. He’d have known that even without all the knowledge in the world. He moved, here, like he was built for the exact environment. Laser focused. Watching that engagement was intoxicating, even if from afar, from islands away on this map. He sought close combat, using a weaponized fishing rod to yank a player off their bridge and atop of his awaiting blade.
Another player drove their blade into his unprotected side. Right. This was PvP, and he had to focus on his surroundings. What a thrill it was, to not know, to be surprised! He reeled, raising his sword—iron, less than ideal—and sending it across their midsection. The blade stayed wedged in his side, its chipped blade caught on the seams of the gambeson. PvP servers like this kept their blades polished, so this player must’ve fought sloppily to chip it themself.
He slashed the blade into their middle in return, earning a shriek and falter and their reflex to step back won over battle-sense. A good kick and he sent them careening off the floating island’s edge. He just barely saved his own blade, and yanked out the one still left in his side. Great. Two swords. Lightning struck into the void, prickling his quills. One more player down.
Another lightning struck in the distance behind him. Pausing was not an action rewarded in PvP, so he sprang away before anyone could notice his lingering. He let the chipped sword drop. These were not weapons meant to be dual-wielded.
It took seconds for twelve players to become nine, and minutes for nine to become six, then four, then—
<[GAME]>There are two players remaining!
His head shot up at the sky on reflex; he’d never adjust to the personalized visual overlay these servers offered. When did that happen? No wonder he wasn’t dead from pausing for a few precious seconds to get his bearings and admire Avery fighting from afar—there was nobody to kill him. Just him and… Avery.
Fuck, he just had eyes on him, where’d he go? Derek backed up, closer to the center of the center island. This was a terrible place to be. Out in the open, completely visible, far too vulnerable.
<TheMostMayo> come here often?
He knew what he was doing. He felt hot under his armor, from all the movement and adrenaline. Just him and Avery, just like in their private world. Except instead of the open fields outside their house, or the oak and birch forests behind it, this was an open, artificial terrain, all artisan floating islands with faux-ruins. The game-builders left plenty of jagged outcrops and nooks in stone walls to hide within or behind.
<d3rlord3> COME OUT AND FIGHT ME
(In hindsight, Derek wasn’t surprised. In the moment, his whole body felt aflame with a high-strung anticipation.)
Days, weeks, months of sparring conditioned him to love the thrill of a good fight with Avery. He wiped his ichor-stained blade clean with his cloak, looking around at the orbiting islands and bridges of wood and wool for signs of his target. His armor clinked where an early attack chipped one of the clasps of his pauldron.
Where was he? He needed to find him, to engage, to satiate the monster in his veins that wanted to clash blade-to-blade with such a worthy opponent. He needed to be ready for whenever he was hit.
A distant click-click-click, a fishing rod unwinding and throwing. It caught him by the cloak and snagged back sharply, forcing his attention to turn precariously quickly. By some miracle, he kept his footing.
Avery greeted him with a crossbow bolt directly through his visor.
He’d gotten really good at that lately. It irked Derek just as much as it impressed him. Avery was truly excellent at adapting for combat, and finding his weak points, especially. Gaps in armor, places to wedge a blade or arrow, blind spots in his periphery. And he’d had months to hone this specific skill, the skill to fight Derek best out of anyone else, all to culminate in this singular shot that made his vision white out.
His head jerked back by reflex and an animal cry tore from his throat. He ripped the arrow out, and his sight came back halved. Black blood spilled from one eye and over his cheek. Inconvenient. He liked having depth perception.
That was what Avery had on his side: Swiftness. He thrived off skipping around his opponents, outpacing them with sheer speed and experience. That meant all Derek had to do was hold his ground, dig his heels in, and let Avery come to him. Unstoppable force versus immovable object.
And come he did, diving at him like a phantom, crossbow hooked to his side, fishing rod pulled back and reeling in.
He threw the rod over the edge with gathered momentum, making his cloak pull taut as gravity took hold, inconveniencing Derek more than anything else. He yanked back and the rod caught on the rocks, and he pulled until the fabric tore and the hook fell away, skidding along the grass until it caught on the earth. A distraction.
Avery lunged at him, sword pointed to hit true in his gut unprotected by his chestplate. Derek raised his own blade to block the strike.
Contrary to grand tales of lengthy battles, actual PvP fights were over quickly once players engaged. One slip-up, and you were dead. For his credit, Derek had the privilege of putting more physical weight behind his attacks, forcing Avery to dance around him and go on the defensive, rather than his preferred offensive.
Using his sword to guard, Avery raised his loaded crossbow. Derek moved to block with his armored forearm—he’d rather not tank another bolt. It’d only slow him down. It was harder to guess where he aimed with half his sight muddied to near-black.
Avery’s hand twitched a few degrees off, and fired close-range, hitting him in the gap in his armor at his wrist. It punched through integument and bone. He flinched and dropped his blade. Good aim.
(He ought to consider using such a disarming strategy to use in the future.)
He wrenched the bolt out from where it’d skewered right through his wrist. That hand was useless now. Great.
He dove to the side to recover his blade, but Avery was faster. Unfeeling steel slashed low, cutting through his gambeson once, then twice, ripping the material and an inch of meat below. If he got stabbed directly it’d go through clean. Adrenaline burned, delighted, every time metal met flesh. Every strike in either direction moved them closer to the end. (It excited him greatly to think about. His body felt aflame.)
The next sweep sent him off-balance. Then another blow, low to the space where his skirt ended and his poleyns began and there was only well-worn leather to protect him. His pulse lurched. Black ichor stuck to the wounds in his armor.
Another quick jab, hitting closer to his inner leg, and something important below his knee (saphenous nerve, his mind helpfully filled in a split-second later) was severed, and his leg gave out.
He reflexively shot a hand out to catch himself—bad hand, bad reflex. He crumpled hard onto his side and immediately twisted to protect himself. Avery went for the weakness like a shark out for blood.
Derek yanked his only other weapon from his inventory: An iron axe, unwieldy, something he wasn’t used to using for combat. Let alone combat with one good hand. He raised it and blocked the first strike.
Then Avery hooked his blade under the heel and wrenched it out of his inexperienced grip, sending it flying into the grass far away. Such a clean, almost effortless maneuver was honorable to witness, to be at the receiving end of.
Avery slammed his heel on his good hand. By reflex he tried to pull away, but then he pointed his blade at his throat.
It was here, in their traditional sparring matches, that decided the winner. This had been such a wonderful fight. Anticipatory heat pooled low in his gut.
Avery always fought well, but today especially he was in his element. He looked so good in the sun, all breathless from the exertion. Being matted in red blood was new, but it was well-fought and he decided he liked how it marred his armor and clothes underneath and dyed his bare hands.
He stopped struggling. He lost, Avery won, which meant… well.
Avery hesitated, and Derek’s fried brain failed to piece together why. He felt debased enough; maybe Avery thought he still had some fight left in him? Maybe another day, but now he was happy to lose. The pressure on his wrist burned and his midsection throbbed from the wounds, pain made pleasurable because Avery was the one inflicting it. He need not have tried any harder—Derek wasn’t going anywhere, content to lay limp and pliant on the grass. In fact, Avery could do with pressing his heel elsewhere just to make him squirm. Maybe if he let his legs fall open a few more degrees, he’d get the hint and coax a different kind of heat in his belly.
Breathing hard, he let his head fall back and bared his throat to the victor, in the way he knew flustered him. At his next shaky breath he let it out in a long, satisfied sigh.
Avery made a little noise. He raised his blade above his head, and that broke through the pleased fog in his mind, because that wasn’t part of their sparring.
The grass under him didn’t feel like the grass back home. The sun hung perfectly still in the sky behind Avery, making a work of art with the subsurface scattering of light through his dermis. And in his peripherals, information ticked by: Map name, players left, time…
Oh. Oh, right. Oh, fuck. What the hell had gotten into him? This was a game server, there’d been other players (hence the red blood), there were spectators, this wasn’t a spar—
Avery sent his blade into him one last time, and the world went dark.
And then he jerked awake in the win-stage, and suddenly found himself upright. Vertigo knocked him flat down, startling the player he’d spawned beside. The impact vibrated through his helmet and a fresh headache bloomed in his skull. His whole body throbbed with unsatiated want.
His vision blurred from phantom pain through his… everything, ow. Wow. He really wasn’t used to being stabbed so much. How did Avery do this so frequently? Sitting up sent hot pain through his gut. Ow.
As if summoned, Avery’s silhouette stepped over him. He knelt and hoisted Derek up to his feet. Phantom pain laced through his wrist and middle. He pointedly avoided eye contact with Avery, and focused on straightening his cloak and running a hand through his helmet’s plume.
Avery patted him on the shoulder in the least awkward way he could manage. “Good fight?”
“Good fight,” he croaked, still refusing to look at him.
“Yep.” Avery nodded once, and then stepped back. Apparently one of the other participants he’d killed wanted to talk with him about their skirmish. Derek took this as his cue to slink away to a less-cluttered corner of the terrain and remove himself from the queue for the next round.
<You whispered to TheMostMayo> Done fighting for today. Going to head home.
He prepared to tack on another message. An assurance Avery could stay, combined with an offer to make dinner. Because he maybe really, really needed to go lay in the dirt until his body stopped burning with want. Or maybe he could rub one out really quickly before Avery got his fill of combat.
However, he looked back and caught Avery’s eye. The man was instantly laser focused on him, and stepped away from a conversation, perhaps rudely so, given the slightly confused look on the other person’s face. Wow, Avery looked like he hadn’t just been mauled by half a dozen players and won.
He placed a heavy hand on Derek’s unarmored shoulder. His expression was almost unreadable, save for the slight squint at the corners of his eyes suggesting a smile. Scratch that, he absolutely looked like a person who got mauled by half a dozen players and won it all. He was smug.
<TheMostMayo whispered to you> I think we’re going home together.
<TheMostMayo whispered to you> I mean, since you lost, and all.
He opened his mouth to protest aloud he’d lost plenty of times in other rounds of the day. But not to Avery’s hand. Not under his heel and blade. But nothing came out.
Avery squeezed his shoulder like that decided it, nodded, and locked their arms together. He waved goodbye to a lobby now half-emptied as players left the queue or dispersed to wait for the next round to start.
They left.
They barely spawned into their world when Avery jumped him.
Derek crumpled like a house of cards, and to great shame, braced himself on his knees. He didn’t even pretend to be dignified about it—he already lost that fight. He wanted to keep losing.
In the tangle of limbs and grabbing he ended up with the side of his helmet pressed into the grass. Desperate hands pushed his pteruges up and grappled the hem of his pants. He couldn’t stop the unbecoming little noise he made when Avery pulled that worn fabric down.
“So, um—when did you forget we were on a public server?” Avery asked breathlessly, like he genuinely really wanted to know but was also very preoccupied with other activities at the moment. Hearing his belt unbuckle stirred the heat in the pit of his stomach.
“When we were the last two players,” he rasped. His vision flickered and sparked white. He was hard. And wet. “I, I—”
Avery touched him and he forgot how to speak. What a wonderful feeling, to not know what would happen next. Maybe he could guess if he wanted to think about it, which he didn’t. Cool hands pressed into his inner thighs, explorative.
Avery always lingered, no matter how many times they did this. Sparring or not, no matter how smug or out of his mind, he always paused that same way. He traced his body. One hand pushed his skirt up further to rest on his hip, and the other slipped inwards to his core. His breath caught.
“Keep talking?” Avery asked. His thumb traced circles on his hip. On reflex, his exposed integument prickled in the cool, open air, and his quills stood on-end. It was the most basal of reflexes of living armor, like human goosebumps, or an avian flaring feathers. Tactile static, sharpening into touch, to startle, to protest contact against a thing not meant to be bared to the world. There was a time it almost hurt, and it perhaps would in other contexts, but he trusted Avery. Avery could look at him in a way nobody else could.
What had he been saying? Fingers ghosted the edges of his slit and he nearly lost his train of thought. Combat. Nearly making a fool of himself in front of a lobby of spectators. Right. “It reminded me of our sparring,” he managed to sound vaguely put-together.
Two fingers pushed into him and a shudder wracked through him. His body was ready, had been ready, to be fucked like this. Slick pooled over his fingers.
Those fingers curled slightly. He was obscenely wet on the inside. Too many weeks and months of this, of being fucked into the ground whenever he lost, or fucking Avery into the ground when he didn’t, have ruined him.
“You looked beautiful. You always do when you’re focused like that.”
The hands upon him hesitated. Avery made a little noise, maybe flustered. Cute. Even like this he was easy to dig into. “You’re just flattering me,” he said weakly, but he pushed his digits down to the knuckle anyway.
He groaned into the grass and tensed around him. “You know it’s true, you…” A slight movement, a drag along his walls, and he sucked in a breath. “You’re the one toying with me.”
“Is it working?” he asked, a little laugh in his voice. He wasn’t very good at being teasing or domineering, but that only added to his charm. Always so earnest.
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t know, is it?” Then Avery shifted closer and curled his fingers just right and grazed that hot bundle of nerves on his insides.
He let out a long, soft moan as Avery worked him open. Careful movements against his walls, lingering almost too long, enough for him to press back into his hand for more. He kept talking, rambling blindly, in hopes for more. “You are… an excellent opponent. You hold back when your opponent is…” A shuddering breath. “...isn’t on your skill level. And…”
The fingers slipped out and he devolved into an unbecoming whine. It caught in his throat when something else pressed up against him, harder and thicker. It somewhat curled over the shape of his body, slightly prehensile, tapered at the end, dripping at the end. Oh, yes, he was absolutely ruined, ruined by his favorite person, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
“Yeah?” Avery asked, trying to feign innocence, but his voice was tight.
He opened his tongue to… maybe snark, or something, but the thought fled when he slipped his tip in. He started talking again, tongue loosened. “I… I enjoy when you get to—get to show off your—ah…”
A shift in his hips, pushing deeper, and he trailed into a wanton moan. Above him, his breathing hitched. He liked this.
“Avery…”
Their hips met and a hand splayed out on the grass beside him as Avery bent over him. It was getting harder to think around how pleasingly full he was. His eyes rolled up a little when Avery shifted closer, urging his knees just that bit wider to grind into him. Above him, Avery whined.
“I—Watching you think on the fly is… is incredible, you are—very resourceful a-and… and when…” He was no longer fully thinking about his words. The train of thought slipped. He had to keep talking. Avery shivered wonderfully when he kept talking, when he kept telling him how he felt. It was all true. “You’re beautiful,” he mumbled.
Avery’s hand reached around to grip his twitching phallus. Derek dug his fingers into the grass. His legs felt weak. “Did you lose on purpose?” Avery asked, a little teasing, a little shaky. He twitched inside of him.
By some divine miracle, he had the presence of mind to get defensive. He tried to laugh at the mere thought and nearly choked on it. “I didn’t let myself lose, I…”
A slight twist of Avery’s wrist sent lightning up his spine. Oh, fuck. He throbbed against his palm. Avery stroked him slowly, from root to tip, forcing all his attention onto every little action. He gasped and arched and pushed his hips into the contact and Avery followed, rocking with him.
Avery started moving, slowly. He let out a little whine above him. “Derek,” he sighed, and his grip on him tightened just a little. He laughed a little, lightheaded, and picked up the pace. “I can’t take you anywhere.”
The noise of their bodies together was obscene. He was drooling onto the grass, zero filter between his brain and his mouth. Every syllable out of him was punctuated with a little hitch or mental stumble. “No thanks to you, I have become very used to a particular conclusion to our.. our… sparring… ‘thought I was… home…” He was home now.
Words became meaningless. Avery bent over him and mumbled into his cloak, little giggling remarks at what’d become of him, broken up by unsteady bucks into him. “If you say so,” he mumbled, affectionate and joking and heady all at once. It went straight to his core. “I thought I was losing it when you stopped putting up a fight.”
He always did his damnedest, it was a miracle he ever won against Avery with the skill imbalance and Derek’s own mending health but he loved the challenge, he loved getting his blood pumping—
He lost track of what words were coming out of his mouth. One of his hands managed to find Avery’s beside his head and wrapped around his wrist like a lifeline. With every little movement he felt his thoughts melting out of him. It felt good.
“Please,” he whimpered. Avery rewarded him with extra attention against the oversensitive head of his cock, smearing pre across him, making each movement slipperier.
Praise. Avery fit in him wonderfully. The words left him in jumbles, syllable by broken syllable, between little gasps fucked out of him. Please, keep moving. Please. Please. Please. I love losing to you because it means we get to do this. Please. I love the sounds you make.
Avery tucked his head against his back, panting softly, speeding up. He felt him shift in the grass, trying to push himself impossibly deeper. He whined his name against him so handsomely. A hitch and whine and he twitched inside of him and it felt so good—
His back arched and his chest hit the ground, giving Avery more leverage over him, hitting all the perfect places inside of him. He panted and pushed his hips back to meet Avery’s movements.
“Harder, fuck, Avery, please—!”
Thought fizzled out into a blissed-out euphoria. He clenched around Avery, shamefully vocal, stuck between rocking back into him and trying to fuck himself into his soft palm. His whole body trembled, alight with heat, only intensifying when Avery did as he asked and fucked him harder—
The heat in him reached its apex and he was cumming so hard his vision went spotty. He dimly felt his body lock up and shudder violently, all hot and tingly. Avery jerked him off through it, panting hard, still—still in him. (Derek would never get over that he could have this closeness with such a wonderful person.) He kept babbling praise like it was the only thing he knew how to do and it was of utmost importance Avery knew all of it. Keep going, keep going, fuck, I need more. More, please, more. I love you.
Avery trembled over him. He felt a tug at his cloak of desperate hands pulling at it, trying to expose neck to kiss or bite. It never quite worked smoothly with all his armor on but that never stopped him from trying to get more skin-to-skin contact. He twitched inside of him, and his breathing was going ragged, exhausted after all the physical strain of the day.
He kept jerking him off, smearing his own seed over his shaft, making each movement more blissfully filthy than the last. He pawed blindly at the grass. His helm dug into the side of his head.
“Please, Avery, Avery, Avery—” They were the only words he knew. His knees scraped against the grass from how hard Avery was going and he was tightening up again and he was going to make him cum again at this rate and—and—
Avery twitched in him and he whimpered something incoherent into his back. One hand pulled back to grip his hips, keeping him steady. He was close.
“Yes, please, please! Please Avery please—!”
He clamped down hard around Avery as another orgasm crashed down on him. After the fact, he’d be horrifically flustered at how quickly he came apart under him, but in the moment he saw stars. He spasmed and cried and dug his claws into the dirt in a vain attempt to ground himself.
Avery was saying—whining—his name. The hand digging into his hip tightened and his pacing stuttered as he chased his own climax. There was a faint pressure at his rim, one that made his eyes roll back in incredible overstimulation as he was tugged at.
Having eggs laid in him still felt strange. But it was Avery, and he couldn’t get enough of Avery. They were small and many, accompanied by viscous seminal fluid. Avery made the sweetest noise. Sticky drool tickled his throat.
The hand around his cock kept pumping him even though he had nothing else to give and was going soft but he kept mumbling jumbled words. If the sounds coming out of him could still be called words at that point. Mumbling incoherent praise and thanks and pleading for Avery to keep going, please, he was wonderful, please fill him with everything he had (verbally communicated far less elegantly and with less syllables). Please fuck him full of his clutch please please please.
He needed his hands to stay on him. Nothing else existed other than them and the sweet contact between. Avery whined and ground his hips down as if it were possible to get any closer. He might’ve been saying Derek’s name. He was too gone to make sense of anything.
He felt so full. The faint weight settling deep into him at his current angle, hips up and chest down, back arched like a harlot, felt so good.
He couldn’t think anymore. The hand around his oversensitive cock let go. His weary legs unlocked and he started to slide down onto his front, knees somewhat under him to spare himself from friction.
Avery sagged limp on top of him. He slipped half out and left it at that. He mumbled something incoherent into the scratchy fabric of his cloak and wrapped his arms loosely around him and squeezed.
Under him, Derek panted softly. A low soreness settled in his shoulders from holding himself steady. He tasted grass. When he tried to turn his neck, the joints stung. This coaxed a low, broken noise from him.
“Five more minutes,” Avery mumbled into him. He sighed softly, content, and the breath made him shift inside Derek, sinking back into him. They both jolted. Avery made a little noise that sounded almost like a sob.
He pulled out. Derek felt obscene, with legs still spread and his everything exposed. Something threatened to leak out of him. He tried to close his legs and flinched when his thighs brushed against his half-sheathed cock. Avery slumped beside him, hand on his back, rubbing circles into it as he breathed.
His joints cracked when he began pushing himself up. Barely halfway upright, pelvis righted, cum started to leak out, and he quickly skipped the stages of grief right to acceptance when realizing the eggs were absolutely soon to follow. He felt so… debased. Open. He shuffled his knees closer together. It didn’t help.
Avery’s hand drifted under one arm. “Need help getting up?” he asked.
“...yes.” His voice was shot. How loud had he been? He didn’t want to know, actually.
Avery helped him sit up. His whole body burned at how… full he was. It felt good. Really good. It pressed softly but deeply against him, a comfort that made him want to lay down and sleep with that fullness. And he did not want to move lest any of it… drip. More than it already was. But there was no getting around it.
He locked his arms with Avery’s and stood on shaky legs. His quills all prickled and he shuddered involuntarily. With little grace, he pulled his pants back up, straightened his gambeson, and smoothed down his pteruges.
Avery plucked a leaf out of his helmet’s plume and flicked it at him, smiling. The smugness was returning, though warmer. Derek leaned against him, and his expression softened further to a gentle worry. “Um. I didn’t, uh, hurt you by accident, did I?” he asked, looking him up and down, unsteady legs and all. “Didn’t pull a muscle?”
“No.” He paused, considering the current state of his body. Sore, sticky… satisfied. “I feel good. ...help me walk, though.”
“Okay,” he sang, leaning up to peck him on the lips. It was brief, soft, spreading comforting warmth through him. He leaned down to kiss him again, just as soft; he just wanted to do it again. Avery smiled into it.
Eventually they parted. Derek leaned into him, wrapping an arm over his sturdy shoulders. He walked slowly, carefully, in the direction of their home. It wasn’t far—it was plenty visible from spawn, small and cozy and inviting. His inner thighs were sticky and he felt every bit of it. Mildly uncomfortable if he tried not to think about it, and moderately when he did.
Avery lolled his head against him as they walked. He matched his pace without comment, slow and slightly unsteady as it was. “I can run you a hot bath when we get home,” he murmured, drumming a hand against his middle.
He turned his head to press a kiss to his temple. “I would appreciate that.”