I Saw Your Ramblings of Avery Being the Embodiment of Slapstick and Hiding it From D3r, and I Present, D3r Finds Out. Like for Example, They're Exploring a Mountain, and a Goat Headbutts Avery off a Cliff. Hilarity Ensues
D3r had only wanted a quiet ten minutes.
Just a moment on the ridge, high enough that the wind thinned and curled cold fingers against his collar, the snow-dusted edge dropping away into a sweep of pines and powdered stone. Avery loved this spot—said it made his “brain feel smooth.” D3r didn’t entirely understand what that meant, but he had learned to enjoy the strange comfort of Avery’s presence beside him, even when Avery seemed incapable of actually sitting still long enough to admire anything.
Today, though, Avery was trying. Or at least pretending. He’d planted himself a few feet away, hands on his hips, chin high, breathing in the morning air like he was about to proclaim himself king of the mountain.
D3r was just beginning to appreciate the rare, peaceful silence when the universe decided that was unacceptable.
A faint clatter of hooves echoed behind them.
D3r didn’t react at first. Mountain goats were common here, and they usually kept their distance. But then he noticed the way Avery’s posture went stiff—just slightly—and how his head tilted with the wary recognition of someone who had, at some point in his life, been personally victimized by wildlife.
“Avery,” D3r murmured, “don’t make any sudden—”
Avery turned.
The goat stared at him. A squat little thing with malicious yellow eyes, a beard that swayed faintly in the wind, and the unmistakable aura of a creature that woke up this morning choosing violence.
“Aww,” Avery said, smiling like an idiot. “Look at him! He’s cute!”
The goat lowered its head.
D3r opened his mouth to warn him.
He did not get the chance.
The goat launched.
Avery shrieked—not a dignified sound, not a heroic sound, but the high, startled wail of a man learning, too late, that nature has hands. Or hooves. Whatever.
The impact caught Avery square in the stomach. His feet left the ground immediately. His arms pinwheeled. His legs kicked. He made a noise that could only be described as skwhff! as air and pride simultaneously left his body.
D3r watched, frozen, as Avery sailed backward off the ridge, disappearing over the edge with a fading scream.
“Avery!”
He hurried forward, heart jolting, already calculating angles and distances and landing possibilities—only to find Avery clinging to a ledge not even ten feet below, limbs splayed, eyes wide, hair full of snow, looking less injured and more profoundly offended.
D3r exhaled, long and slow. He leaned over the edge.
Avery blinked up at him.
Then, indignantly: “It assaulted me.”
“I noticed,” D3r said.
“It did it on purpose.”
“Yes.”
“It didn’t even hesitate.”
“No.”
Avery adjusted his grip on the ledge, fingers slipping just enough to make D3r reach for him automatically. Their hands met, D3r anchoring him easily with a strength that seemed casual but wasn’t. He dragged Avery back onto solid ground, ignoring the way Avery immediately collapsed into a dramatic sprawl on the snow, wheezing.
The goat was still standing there. Watching them. Judging them.
Like it was debating if it should try and knock one of them off the mountain again, if it'd be more successful this time around.
D3r raised his sword.
The goat thought better of it and trotted away.
Avery slowly pushed himself upright, face flushed, curls full of ice, scarf crooked around his neck like it had tried to strangle him mid-fall.
“That was rude,” he coughed. “I was just—I was appreciating nature! I was being serene!”
“Were you?”
“Yes! And then I was launched off a cliff like a—like a slimeball in a trebuchet!”
D3r couldn’t help the small, silent laugh that pushed at the corner of his mouth. Avery pointed at him accusingly.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me.”
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
“I would never,” D3r said, and that was when the laugh finally slipped out—soft, warm, utterly at odds with the icy air around them.
Avery’s shoulders deflated. “Okay, fine. Maybe it was a little funny.”
“A little,” D3r agreed.
Avery plopped down beside him, leaning back on his palms, boots dangling dangerously close to the drop again. D3r placed a steadying hand on his shoulder without thinking, and Avery didn’t pull away—just leaned into the touch like he always did when he forgot he was supposed to be embarrassed.
“I swear the goats have it out for me,” Avery muttered.
“Maybe,” D3r said. “Or maybe you just… attract chaos.”
Avery paused. Considered that.
Then: “Would you still love me if I got yeeted off a mountain again?”
“I don’t love you,” D3r said automatically, too quickly, too defensively.
Avery smirked. “Uh-huh.”
D3r cleared his throat. “But I would… retrieve you.”
Avery beamed.
