WHO: Lyra and Avery WHEN: Saturday night, straight after this WHERE: Avery's place WHAT: Curses! WARNINGS: Curses
Straight after a rushed final few minutes of hardcore mopping and even more hardcore speculation about what I'm so fucked meant, Lyra jumped a bus toward Avery's place, found a seat that looked safe enough, and plugged in her headphones so fewer people might bother her (often a totally pointless gesture, especially on a Saturday night.) She sent him a text with a bus emoji, then settled in to give his most recent post a proper read.
She'd been so excited when she'd scrolled quickly through it in her bathroom break. More names! More photographs! And Avery had gone and been brave enough to come clean about the healing and it made tears prick in her eyes, that'd he'd done that.
How ridiculously lucky was she (she'd thought) to have someone like that on her side? She'd spent most of her shift with her heart all aglow, the warmth of it carrying her through. It was the same kind of feeling that had wrapped her up the morning after she talked to Saint Patrick, when she woke up and found he'd gone through and liked so many of her Instagram posts. Just... how lucky was she, to have some kinda relationship with these guys blossoming into existence in her life?
But Avery's last couple of messages were a little alarming, and did a decent job of replacing the mushy feelings with something warier. And that feeling morphed again the minute she started reading what Avery had written. Right from the offset, she could tell something was wrong, though it was hard to put her finger on what. Something about the triumphant tone maybe? Or maybe not that but something was rubbing her the wrong way...
It became a lot clearer when she hit the first of the photos he'd linked. The one of the guy from World War Two couldn't have been Archer; the flat, stern military expression looking little like Archer's animated face, and the portrait? That was stretching credulity even further. Helion Godliman had pretty much always appeared in photographs with a face full of dramatic 80s makeup, you had to really squint to see any resemblance, and Lyra turned her head sideways, and squinted hard, and yeah maybe they had a similar kinda nose, but it wasn't the perfect likenesses that Rosario had found. Had Avery just grabbed a pic of some attractive white guy and called him Archer... but why would he do that?
Also, Alexander Fletcher? Seriously, he'd found a name that kinda linked in with the Archer theme and... there was a line. There was a line and apparently Fletcher crossed it.
She was feeling a whole sorta way when she rode the elevator up to Avery's floor. Confused, mostly, and confused enough that it was making her defensive cuz the confusion was showing signs of morphing into something that hurt. She didn't know what Avery was playing at, but she knew by the discomfort growing in her gut that he was playing at something. And she was still smarting from finding out Archer'd played her, which made her worry that maybe Avery was doing it too. (But why?)
No— she told herself, giving her head a sharp shake as she jogged up the hall toward his door. Why was she jumping straight to the worst conclusion? Just chill. He'd always been on her side before. They'd shared secrets and y'know, he'd been inside her. That kinda bought a guy a lotta leeway. (Maybe too much? It'd definitely bought Archer too much. But it was hard to forget the way Avery kissed her. So.)
Look just— information first, as Rosario would say. Figure out what was going on first, then react. She rapped on his door, leaning her forehead against it as she called out "Hey Aves, 'sme!"