Chapter Text
“Avery, you can’t be serious.”
Was Derek’s reply to his great proposal idea, which got a groan out of Avery upon hearing the lack of approval.
He’d given a new recording idea to Derek instead of new random gameplay.
The majority of their recordings had become collabs with each other, and those collabs were mostly boring, popular video games.
Both of them had revealed their faces by now, whether it be by Avery walking in and yelling into his mic, practically forcing his camera on, or Derek coming in with a gift that distracted Avery’s focus and made him pause.
The issue wasn’t the kisses on camera, but how fast the common kisses would derail his videos.
“I’m very serious, actually! Is it not a good idea?” He was beginning to insist upon actually doing it, having higher hopes for this than anything else.
This would’ve made a cute blooper if Derek let him record it. Eugh.
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
Derek went quiet with a sigh, beginning the explanatory for him:
“Look, Avery— for one, I don’t believe in ghosts.”
“But I do!” He interrupted, getting cut off with the least-threatening glare he’d ever seen.
“Mm-mm, hold your tongue. Second, even if I did believe in ghosts, remind me why I’d want to test their patience?”
There was a pause for Avery to answer this time, despite how close that question was to sounding hypothetical.
And his answer wasn’t good.
“Because your loving boyfriend is asking you to?”
It came out more pleading than anything else.
The exhale that got out of Derek explained more than most words would. His brain lit up upon hearing it.
Avery flopped down onto the bed, grumbling to himself before taking a deep breath.
These little fights weren’t as exhausting when he could just lie down and use his pillow.
Derek was clearly still in thought about the whole thing, brows furrowed before he looking back at Avery again. “Out of all the things you can use that reasoning for, you want to use it on making a ghost-hunting video?”
“Pretty much.”
“And sit up, we’re having a serious discussion,” was the chide Derek gave him afterwards, as he started carefully pacing around the room.
Avery gestured loosely with his hands as a comeback to that, attempting to persuade him again.
“Look, you’re thinking too much about it! In the best-case scenario— nothing shows up, and we just edit in a ton of spooky stuff.”
“Uh huh.”
Holy shit, maybe Derek would agree—
“And in the worst-case scenario?”
Avery almost rolled his eyes upon those words, dragging his face with his hands slightly to feign more irritation than what he genuinely felt.
“The worst case scenario doesn’t matter, ‘cause I won’t allow it to happen.” The confidence he said that was all performed, and it showed. His voice cracked like a middle schooler mid-sentence.
“Come on!”
The flat, purse-lipped look he was receiving was a sign his idea ‘lacked’ common sense.
“Let’s say the worst-case scenario, solely for this hypothetical, would be something like the ghost actually becoming violent. Enlighten me on how you want to handle that.”
He looked up at the ceiling with concentration.
Then he got it.
“I’d put salt on my knuckles, see, like right here,” Avery made a fist as he looked over, tracing over his knuckles with his other hand, “And I’d throw hands for you.”
“You’d throw hands for me? Really? That’s the whole plan?”
“I’d do that against normal people anyway, what’s the difference with a ghost?”
“I don’t know, the fact it's already dead, Aves.”
“Quit being a smart aleck,” Avery groused back, grumbling each word, “And don’t use my nickname when you’re trying to degrade me.”
“I’m not trying to insult you, you’re making normal statements offensive.”
Based on the small, almost hidden, chuckle Derek let out after saying that, he knew he was lying.
His expression shifted, becoming a pout.
“Must I remind you that not only are you a grown man, but that this sort of content only appeals to kids?”
Avery’s original expression turned into a full-blown frown at those words.
“Speak.”
He wouldn’t.
“Avery, I’m not completely disregarding the idea. I only need a good reason to do it rather than talk about it with you.”
“I still watch Sam and Colby,” Avery mumbled, and Derek only ruffled his hair afterwards.
By the time he glanced up at him, the way their eyes met made him look away again before carrying on.
“Most of the people who watch my channel instead of yours are at most, maybe twenty. You don’t have to post the video on yours. Just let me have my fun with it.”
“Okay, so that addresses the audience issue.”
So he was finding another?
“And how do you want to pay for all the equipment they usually have?”
Yeah, Derek had found another.
“I have a few sponsorships rotting in my email or something. I’ll make three more videos to get the money for all of it.”
That answer didn’t exactly please Derek. Well, shit. He said it as nicely as he could; what was wrong with that?
“Never mind the money stuff. I’ll cover it.”
Oh.
There was a beat of silence before Avery softly giggled, murmuring more than saying it bluntly, “You’re so gay.”
“Not the point,” Derek retorted, pushing more of Avery's hair away from his forehead. There wasn’t a hint of embarrassment; if anything, he looked like he was calculating everything else.
Next problem up:
“Do you have a goal you want from this? If it’s only because you want to record a scary video, we can do that at home with props.”
He wanted to see what Derek looked like when scared—
But since that wasn’t the normal answer, or morally correct answer, he dumbed it down to:
“I wanna leave the house, and vacations are way too expensive. Even if we were to post vacation vlogs, people would know the house is left alone.”
“We can’t post a date vlog?”
That was good logic. Avery hadn’t even considered it; now he needed to figure out a way to counter it.
Their dates weren’t boring in his eyes, so he couldn’t say that. But they also weren’t anything major enough to post. What could he say?
No, he got it.
“That’s just like our normal videos.”
It worked, seeing how his boyfriend’s eyes softened. He almost patted himself on the back for seeing how quickly Derek gave in to it.
“I suppose.”
“Plus the date might get like, an inappropriate—"
“You don’t need to add more.”
And Avery got him flustered. Easy.
“Still, if that’s all you wanted, I would’ve paid for a vacation.”
Derek was being so genuine about the whole thing. It would’ve made him feel bad if he hadn’t insisted on insulting him earlier.
There was a bout of silence before the next question came:
“Do you have a place in mind? There’s not really a lot of easily accessible, non-public haunted houses here, Aves.”
“I can find one.”
“So now you’re just trespassing.”
“Smartass.”
“I’m being realistic, it’ll only be trespassing if we go into a random abandoned house. What are the odds that a bank, or a real estate company owns it and has cameras inside?”
Derek was monologuing again. Avery would’ve groaned if it weren’t simply paranoia he could get rid of without saying anything.
“You don’t like big companies or banks.”
“Yeah.”
“So what’s the problem with messing something up for them?”
“Shut up,” Derek murmured in a more defeated tone than anything else.
Then Avery opened his mouth again:
“Then you’ll do it?”
Silence.
Man, he did need to shut up.
“Avery, I’ll warn you, this is the one time in a year you’ll get to use that ‘because you love me’ excuse. I’m not falling for it again if you try to use it later.”
Avery heard the same warning last year, and Derek held pretty solid on that. This wasn’t a wasteful situation, though.
It’d be a fun little date that they got to record and post.
“I think it’s not an excuse, but a great reason and explanation of why you should.”
“You’re starting to sound like me.”
“Eugh— ew, don’t say that.” Avery softly laughed; he couldn’t focus with the dream-like scenario playing in his head.
A cute date, with Derek getting scared and relying on or leaning on him, and a high chance of nothing happening.
“Yeah, I’m fine with using it for this.”
“‘Kay then. Don’t use it on me when I’m not doing your chores.”
“I don’t even use it often!”
…
A spirit box, extra batteries, an Ouija board, a big ass bag— Derek had done his big thing, even if it was an abundance of too much. He got a black light, normal flashlights, and even managed to dig up one of their head-mounted cameras somewhere along the way.
“You know we could’ve just chosen, I don’t know— we could’ve made it clickbait,” Avery mumbled, as if he weren’t in utter awe with all the objects. It was almost instinctual to begin messing with the spirit box, tuning it with sparkles in his eyes.
“I have enough money for the real stuff. Why would we fake it that badly?”
The question slipped past Avery’s ears; he was more focused on gently tracing over all of the objects. Where’d Derek get an EMF reader that properly worked?
A disbelieving laugh left him, the shock evident as he absent-mindedly replied, “I don’t know.”
All of it was so intriguing.
Derek hadn’t even made it a big deal that he’d bought the items! When the boxes were delivered, he’d told Avery he was ‘knocking off some parts of his wishlist’.
At no point did he specify it was Avery’s wishlist; no, it almost sounded like his own.
So when he had already laid them out on the living room table as if it were some normal feat—
“Derek, honest to God, if you asked to fuck me right now, I’d let you.”
Avery could hear himself laughing at the silence that he got from Derek, looking over to find him with a flushed look on his face.
“That’s not even- Aves! Jesus. Don’t say stuff like that.”
“I’m serious! This is just all so—” he silenced the natural beeps from the EMF with another stunned chuckle, still admiring everything, “I don’t know how you did this.”
“It’s nothing, it was just money.”
“I know! That’s why it’s all just soo…”
Did he even need to speak?
“Derek, come here, like, actually come here.”
“I’m already standing—”
“No, come here, now.”
The moment he sat down, Avery knew he was oblivious.
“No, Aves, come on, I really didn’t do it for anything.”
But, Derek didn’t bother with moving him.
Actually, he began to accept kisses with open arms, having adjusted his hands to rest on the other’s waist.
Derek was smiling into the kisses, albeit reluctantly.
It took at least two minutes for them to stop, mainly because he had so much joy to let out.
After one last little kiss, Avery accepted the hesitant pushing away being done to his face.
“You can’t intend on doing that every time I buy you a gift.”
“I actually easily can.”
Avery didn’t mind being a prop in the other’s lap momentarily as Derek looked over the items, tentatively touching all of them, then barraging him with questions:
“Does this work properly?”
“Is it the sort of thing you wanted?”
“You promise you’re not saying this just to please me?”
Then again, Avery had figured out the exact pattern he needed to answer, which was only:
“Yeah, looks fine.”
“Pretty much.”
“I promise.”
“Derek, it’s all really good, I swear! I wouldn’t offer myself up if it sucked.”
There was a pause as if to properly gauge whether or not his reaction was the full truth. And once Avery seemed on board with it, Derek’s brain scrambled to the next thing.
“Whatever you say, then. Uhm— Have you picked out a location?”
“One of my friends hooked me up with one! Look, it’s like, all the way out here,” he moved around to grab his phone, entering the address afterwards.
Avery had trailed off, but then it hit him.
Derek wasn’t looking at the map.
Derek was staring directly at him.
“Anyway!” Avery forced himself to start back up, sputtering out gibberish about map details before a proper sentence formed, “There are two floors, and I know there’s a bit of graffiti there.”
“Which means?”
“Which means whoever owns it isn’t there, and so they’re not checking often enough for security to stop it from happening.”
“I didn’t know you were so educated on trespassing.”
“No, I’m not— it was just high school, and common sense.”
“Common sense, my ass.” Avery caught that mumble, and it formally earned Derek a light slap on the shoulder.
“Derek, come on! I’m really not a thug.”
That sentence was followed by a small shrug.
He wasn’t getting taken seriously at all. Well no, he was. It's just that being taken earnestly required some doubt.
At least, when it came to Derek.
“No, no, it’s not a problem that you were one. I’m just curious what your little signature would’ve looked like.”
If he corrected that, he’d only prove a point, don’t prove his point, let him have this one—
“My tag?”
He hated genius trap cards.
He could hear a cough of the word, ‘thug’, before Derek concerned himself with what he’d already asked again.
“Come on, show me your tag.”
“It’s been years now, though, I don’t know if I’d—”
“Avery.”
“There’s not even a sheet of paper near me! If I wanted to show you, I couldn’t, and it’d be one—”
Fuck, he was dating a nerd who carried around pens. It didn’t make sense why he did.
Derek hadn’t even passed him paper, only revealing his palm.
“Come on. I’m only gonna make fun of you if it’s bad.”
As much as Avery protested, he took the pen off and tested it on his own palm first with a quiet, “Friggin’ loser.”
No way of getting out of it now. The pen worked, and the tag itself was muscle memory.
The font was simple, and then he drew the little slime he’d always added next to it as a period.
“Satisfied?”
“I’m assuming you didn’t have permission to put this on buildings, so— I expected something tougher for vandalism.”
“That’s tough as hell!”
“Going to jail over a tag with a Minecraft mob. Sure.”
“You said you’re only gonna make fun of me if it’s bad! Be honest, do you think it’s bad?”
Cue the backtracking.
“No, no, that’s not what I said. I just didn’t expect it to be so— and not in a bad way, alright, I like it for you. But so, cutesy—”
“Derek!”
“It’s fitting and all.”
Avery didn’t bother with throwing any more of a fit, especially with all the items around them. It felt better to laugh at how apologetic the man looked instead of fake sulking.
It only got better when he realized Derek didn’t hear his laughter.
But when it clicked, all Avery got back was a glare.
And he seemingly put Derek back on track.
“Alright, let me figure out the map layout.”
…
Objective #1 : Identify the correct Ghost Type
Objective #2 : Have a member of your team experience a Ghost Event
Objective #3 : Have every member of your team escape the Ghost during a hunt
Objective #4 : Trigger a Hunt using a Cursed Object