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Derek Hutchins and Avery Marlow should not know each other. Sure, they attended the same university, but that's where the similarities ended. Derek is a biomedical engineering major. Avery, a sports science major with a minor in education. Almost worlds apart.
Their paths have never crossed directly, and for good reason.
Avery knew who Derek Hutchins was. Everyone did, even if by word of mouth. Child prodigy that was socially demoted to campus cryptid, well, if campus cryptid was minding his own bees wax and getting a degree he paid for. Obviously, Avery knows who he is, but he's never even talked to the guy.
Probably from the lack of effort. Avery and Derek have technically met, since their friends' friends were close, but there were at least three people between them. By extension, he shouldn't feel anything more than indifference regarding Derek, right?
So, why? Why does he feel burning hot anger consuming every thought in his head when he watches Derek interact with that piece of shit? Avery's annoyed. Usually, he'd heed his therapist's warnings not to let his anger get hold of him.
Memories of his fist colliding with a nose; a high kick to the sternum; a knife to the shoulder; teeth to muscle all came rushing back. The consuming rage pounds the back of his head, demanding to be fed. He pushes it back.
Anyone with a functioning brain could see how Derek's lower right eyelid was twitching, how his fingers were shaking with restrained anger, even if he was smiling politely in that guy's face.
Avery thinks he's been looking for far too long when Ava, his coursemate, tugs on his sleeve to pull him away from the commotion. He waves her off to continue watching from the sideline. Avery hides between a group of students, subtly crowding the two of them. He eavesdrops on a conversation between—from the looks of it—a few first-year students. Apparently, the asshole wasn't looking where he was walking and bumped into Derek, who was on his phone, on the side of the road, minding his own damn business.
Avery has no doubt Derek wanted to punch that guy into next week; hell, he'd volunteer to do it for him. Thomas, if Avery was remembering correctly, was all in Derek's face, spouting fucking nonsense. Thomas's white shirt has a pretty large coffee stain on it, and in his hand, an empty coffee cup. One of those fancy, overpriced coffees, too. A shame.
He's pretty sure someone had a video showing how Thomas bumped into Derek, not the other way around. Student welfare resolved the issue with the administration, and the rich guy's dad actually compensated the university and Derek for his son's behaviour.
Avery could bump this incident into the back of his mind. Continue with his day, his life, ignore the lingering thoughts about Derek Hutchins, and get his degree with little to no hassle.
Easy right?
So why was he standing over a wriggling body in the middle of the forest surrounding their campus, dressed in all black with a surgical scalpel in hand? He had a couple more knives, more suited to butchering, back in the truck. For now? The scalpel would do.
Avery's not smart enough to be a medical student, God forbid, no, but he knows his way around a human body. His undergrad practically demanded it, but that wasn't the only reason.
His father was a doctor and a narcissistic man at heart. He thought that reading child Avery every fucking anatomy book he had would at least make Avery doctor-adjacent.
All Avery got was a prodigious memory of the human anatomy, and anger issues that he keeps steeping in the blackened kettle called his mind. Sometimes it oversteeps, turning the taste bitter and pungent, then someone has to come and tip the kettle over, and it's his fault they end up in the hospital? They shouldn't have provoked him then.
Despite his impulsive nature, he doesn't ambush Thomas, even if he wants to rip the guy apart. Avery watches during the breaks between classes and takes notes of his mundane routine first. Wakes up around seven when he has eight am classes. Somewhat disciplined when he puts his head to it. Classes, then gym, then clubs on weekends. Not a big drinker, prefers to stick to low-alcohol beer rather than actual shots. Not a sports fan either.
Prefers the Lupin club downtown to the high-end ones, probably the taste rather than price; he could afford a Macallan if he wanted. Eugh, trust fund kid. Always goes out for a smoke break during the more raunchy songs to avoid being pulled onto the dance floor with sweaty, inebriated people. That, Avery, could sympathise with.
Avery borrows his cousin's truck, lines the bed of the truck with canvas, and fills it with his good knives and cleavers, old but sturdy ropes and a few packs of heavy-duty garbage bags. He packs a few sets or spare clothes underneath the driver's seat.
Avery waits until Thomas leaves for a smoke break before striking. Thomas was out alone tonight, phone's battery low and location off. It was like the stars had aligned for Avery and he wasn't one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
He had donned a full black outfit, jacket over a compression shirt, and thick cargo pants over thermals. The boots were from his junior military camp—it was more like a breeding area for toxic masculinity than military—his father had forced him to join before college.
A beanie over his hair and a black half-balaclava over the lower portion of his face. Thick latex gloves covered his hands, stretched across his fingers,
Despite his larger stature, it's easy to blend in with the shadows. Avery waits until Thomas is angrily flicking his lighter because it's autumn and the idiot keeps trying to light a cigarette when the wind speed is fast enough to comically send a trash can flying across the open end of the alley. Avery clamps a large hand over Thomas's mouth, the half-lit cigarette and lighter clatter to the ground as Avery drags the kicking man backwards into the dark alley. He nudges the lighter under the dumpster, never to be seen again.
Avery puts him in a chokehold until he— no, it, goes limp in his arms. He holds on for another three minutes, just in case, before dragging the body towards the truck he'd parked outside the back of the building. On the way there, he nods to the working girls and dope heads–the ones with their heads still attached to their shoulders and not off to druggie land just yet.
It's a shady neighbourhood, and Avery, in the best choice of words, is amazing at adaptation. None of them bat an eye at a white man dragging another across a dirty alleyway to God knows where. All of 'em were either too drunk, high, or apathetic to care. Not the first kind of dead body they would see in this alley, and it definitely wouldn't be the last. It helps that Thomas was a known pain in the ass.
Always be respectful to the working girls, even if you don't use their services, and especially if you use them. Beat one of 'em, and you'll get the whole alley on your ass. Honestly, Avery's doing everyone a favour.
He dumps the body into the backseat before covering it with a paper-thin blanket his cousin keeps, just in case. Avery gets into the truck and starts his drive back to campus. The forest surrounding their college was large and dense enough for his little misadventure. Risky? Maybe. But he has his reasons. Avery drives leisurely, not worried about the body waking up anytime, unless it had built up some kind of resistance, it would be lights out for it for a good while.
It's a quiet night, only the hum of the engine and cawing of crows keeping Avery company. He prefers listening to music, but the constant thumping at the back of his head makes even the thought of other sounds excruciating.
Avery reaches the edge of the forest and rounds it a couple of times before using a road that's been abandoned for almost a decade. A good blind spot, and nobody, not even the campus wardens, has set foot here in years.
It's creepy as hell, but the full moon reflects brightly enough that Avery doesn't even need to use his headlights. He pulls into a small clearing and shuts off the engine before pulling the body out of the backseat and slinging it over his shoulder. He grabs a pre-made bag and stalks into the dense forest.
Avery finds an even smaller clearing, barely any bigger than the truck, but big enough, and there's a good patch of dirt not too far to dump the pieces later. He lets the body drop to the ground and ties its hands and feet together with the thick coir rope he had brought along.
He shoves in a rag he found under the seat and wraps rope around the body's lower face, anchoring its jaw open. Once Avery was confident it wouldn't be able to escape—at least without help—he tapped the body's cheek with his gloved palm.
"Wakey, wakey. Can't have you asleep for this, that's just not fun now, is it?" Avery taps its cheek a couple of times, finding a use for the smelling salts he'd found. Avery grins, watching it jolt from the smell and immediately starts thrashing around in its binds like a pathetic little worm. "Won't do much. Wiggling around like that."
Thomas's eyes snap towards the figure clad in black. Then he tries to scream, but the cloth gag stuffing his mouth, along with the rope wrapped around his head, stops that quickly. His jaw is aching, and all he can taste sawdust and cotton on his tongue. It's fucking disgusting. Tears well up in his eyes, and he can feel the drinks from earlier starting to come back up with that acidic tinge of stomach acid.
The figure crouches down, expertly twirling a scalpel between their fingers. The moonlight glints across the blade, the silent promise of pain making him hyperventilate and vomit in his mouth.
Avery grimaces at the watery puke slowly seeping out of the sides of the makeshift gag, smelling the pungent scent of bile mixed with alcohol. He almost gags from it, but reminds himself that the balaclava he was wearing was the only one he had; he can't get it dirty now.
Glancing down at his handiwork—the best ropework he's done in a while, if he's being honest. There were still a few kinks he had to work out, though. The body's knees were unbound—easier for him to carry—and his elbows were too pointy for Avery's taste.
He could mediate those immediately. Avery knelt silently, untying the rope around its ankles, ignoring the sigh of relief. Avery uses the rope to tie a makeshift tourniquet around its left thigh. The sudden high whining from the body is a little annoying, though. He grabs both ankles before it starts to have ideas and kicks him. Avery sits down on the body's right leg, facing the left, only his side profile visible from the body's point of view.
"Shut the fuck up, dude, you sound like a mutt... Pfft, you kinda are, aren't you? An unneutered one… Maybe I should— nah, I don't wanna touch you like that, eugh." Avery chuckles at his own joke while tightening the rope until he's sure there are rope burns under its clothes. He presses a large palm right above the body's left knee, right above the kneecap, and cups the underside of the body's calf with his other hand.
Was it overkill? Maybe. But what if it could run to the police? To Derek? Avery wouldn't be able to live with himself. With a mocking tilt of his head, Avery presses down on the upper leg while the other hand pushes up the body's calf.
It takes a little effort, and he might have needed to slice a few tendons and ligaments underneath and around the knee, but it made his job easier. Some straining and maybe a little smashing of the kneecap—just a little—Avery successfully recreates knee recurvatum, just with a little extra… curve and snap. The tinny whining had stopped, but it was replaced with loud whimpering, and not the sexy kind that Avery preferred.
Sure, Avery could have just sliced its Achilles tendon and be done with it—but where was the fun in that? And let the body crawl away if he left it unattended? Better to nip it in the bud early on, or well, snap its knee early on.
It reminded him of popping a wing off a chicken. Avery hums. He kinda wants wings now. Especially with the blood seeping out of the gruesome wound, it looked like hot sauce in the moonlight. Avery licks his lips, thinking of the 24/7 wing place not too far from their campus.
The lower half of its leg was dislocated and ripped from the knee down, and left to flop on the wrong side of its body. Avery could see the white of the femur, tibia, and fibula poking out of the ripped flesh, and would you look at that, very slow blood flow, his tourniquet was perfect.
He just has to do the other leg now.
Avery might have gotten a little carried away. He had found a few more coils of rope in the truck and thought, 'What if it starts dragging itself when I'm not looking?' like the last one? So he dislocated its elbows too, but didn't snap them off like the lower legs. He learnt his lesson, keep the bloody mutilation to two limbs maximum.
The body might have passed out from pain when Avery did the other leg, but it was up and running—well, not running, it can't do that anymore—by the time Avery dislocated the second elbow.
Avery knows what places he can stab, where he can carve, and what to leave alone. Blood seeps into his pants when he straddles the convulsing body beneath him. It's warm and sticky, and each drop on his skin is a balm to his soul.
It's genuinely a wonder how it hasn't choked to death yet, with the gag soaked with phlegm and throw up, still stuffed into its mouth. Avery feels bad, and he really doesn't want it to die just yet, especially from something as boring as asphyxiation. He cuts the rope holding its jaw open, not caring if he slices the skin across the pale skin, and uses the tips of his fingers to pull the gag out.
"Pl-please, why are you doing this? I don't- I don't deserve this." Its voice was raspy, racking with sobs now that it could take big breaths of air. "My- my legs, you… ripped my legs off- how's that even possible-"
What was this annoying chittering in his ear? Avery digs his pinky into his ear, trying to remove the high-pitched ringing, but it doesn't work.
This is why Avery prefers his bodies gagged and quiet, too many questions. Too many whines and someone can only hear 'you sick bastard' or 'you're a psychopath', so many times.
"Shh, shh, Tommy, I can call you that, right? Tommy, yeah, I'm calling you that. You gotta be quiet, babes, can't have anyone bothering us." Avery grins, the mask covering most of his face, but he knows the body could tell, the increasing terror slowly morphing its face a fine indicator.
Avery grabs a fistful of its hair, pulling it backwards until he has full access to its throat. He presses the sharp edge of the scalpel right above its Adam's Apple until blood wells across the steel. Avery manoeuvres the knife until it reaches the vocal cords before severing them.
"No hard feelings, yeah? Had to make sure you wouldn't start screaming bloody murder, wouldn't be a good look for me." Avery taps the bloody scalpel across its cheek, smearing crimson across its already disgusting face.
Avery uses a large hand to push up the body's jaw, tilting its head backwards and disturbing the grass beneath it. The slash against his throat starts splitting, and blood starts to bubble when it tries to take a breath. Funny, but disgusting, the bubbles burst and stain his skin where his mask doesn't cover.
"You really shouldn't have bothered Derek." Avery's tone is a mix of amused and mocking, watching it struggle to take a simple breath. He lets the head go, and huzzah, it's still alive—such a kicker.
The latex gloves he had on were starting to slick from blood, and his grip on the scalpel was loosening. Looks like he needs to hurry this up, then. It feels cathartic, tracing a blade in between bone, between the dips of skin.
A quick trip later, and knowing that the body was going nowhere, Avery retrieves his favourite cleaver—it cuts through bone like butter—and starts with the legs again. He hacks away at the loose skin from his work earlier and works his way up.
It's dead by the time he reaches into its stomach cavity to shove its intestines back in. The organs were always such a hassle.
Derek was enamoured. He's smart, he knows he is. He knows he needs to stay undiscovered, but the longer he watches how cleanly Avery severs the guy's throat without letting him bleed out, Derek has to clamp a palm over his mouth. The cavity starts filling with saliva, and blood pulsates through his body until he can hear his own fucking heartbeat.
Maybe his father was right; he was a freak of nature that somehow traded his humanity for intellect in the womb. Maybe the six therapists who have tried and failed to pick his brain were right, that he was unfixable. There shouldn't be a reason he should be so… attracted to an actual murderer, who knows how many Avery has killed, how many he'll continue to kill if no one catches him?
Avery Marlow was unremarkable, not his own words, but there was some truth before… this.
His ex-roommate's friends had mentioned Avery in passing. Normal social life, subpar grades, and goes out every so often, but not enough to be stereotyped as your regular college frat.
There was no reason for Avery to be even a blip on Derek's radar. They've never shared any classes, and they were in such different departments that even their on-campus housing was a good 30 minutes away.
And yet, after tonight, that non-existent blip had morphed into a blaring red alarm that consumed his every thought. Derek didn't plan on following Avery into the dense forest, and he definitely didn't plan on watching how easily a human body could be cut and butchered into pieces. It was just a gut instinct when he saw Avery leave his dorm in full black attire. Derek had waited for Avery's truck—Avery was more of a motorcycle guy than a truck one, Derek had noted from observing Avery—to pull into campus before following slowly on foot.
Avery rounds the entrance to the forest before slinking into a path Derek had never seen before. He watches from the shadows as Avery parks the truck in a clearing and hauls his victim to a different expanse to absolutely mutilate him. The guy regurgitates into his own mouth because of the rope, and both he and Avery made the same face, grimacing in disgust.
Avery practically inverts the guy's leg, mangling it beyond repair, and Derek has to hold back a gag and a fucking giggle. He does it to the other leg, and with a moment's hesitation—or was it consideration—he dislocates both of their elbows too.
He watches as Avery straddles the guy, pinning him to the ground using his own body weight—what Derek would do to be in that position—and methodically stabs and slices through fabric and flesh after removing their vocal cords.
At least, other people would see it as methodical if they managed to look past the whole murdering someone thing. Derek could see how careful, how delicate—
"—shouldn't have bothered Derek." Back the fuck up. Did Avery say his name? His? He was already diving headfirst into this obsession called Avery Marlow, but knowing Avery killed this Thomas guy for him? Derek shudders and has the sudden urge to climb Avery like a tree.
He stays silent as Avery treks back to his truck, passing so close to the tree Derek was hiding behind. Derek hears the clashing of knives and watches as Avery carresses the sharp cleaver in his hands.
He wants. He wants to be in that guy's place, under Avery, under piercing eyes and an even sharper blade. Just as Avery starts to dismember the body—a shame that it died so early in—Derek staggers back from the thick trunk hiding him and hatches a simple plan to keep Avery to himself.
Avery groans under his breath, the still crisp autumn leaves crunching under his boots. It was too fucking cold, and the dirt was a bitch to dig. He looks down at his jacket, the moonlight making the blood and dirt blend into the fabric. The smell of dried blood stings the back of his throat, and the only thought in his head is a long, hot, and rewarding shower.
He gathers everything and dumps it into the fake space beneath the truck's actual hull. His cousin had similar hobbies, which is why he was willing to lend him the truck for the night.
Avery shrugs off his jacket and cargo pants, leaving him in the compression shirt and thermal pants, and dumps them into the biohazard bag his cousin usually uses for roadkill. His thermals are mostly fine, a few specks of blood he can brush off as clay or dirt if someone asks. He shrugs on a pair of jeans just in case.
Avery walks back to the driver's side of the truck and tugs the car door open without looking into the passenger seat.
The plastic sheet he covered the driver's seat with crinkled beneath his weight. Avery keeps his eyes closed while his arm reaches over to the passenger seat to grab his phone. He has an early class and, believe it or not, he actually likes that particular subject. Avery rips off the beanie on his head and throws it into the backseat while reaching over.
Instead of the cool glass of his phone underneath his fingers, there's warm flesh. His blood runs cold, and he can feel his stomach drop for a split second. Then he smells him underneath the blood, the scent of espresso and old-timey-wimey cologne that he's only smelt a handful of times. Avery inches his eyes open, slowly, not wanting this to be some hallucination. As if the fleshy thigh under his fingers isn't slowly denting from the pressure of his grip.
"Hello, Avery." Fuck.
"Hello, Hutchins."
Hutchins? That broke his heart.
"Hutchins? I think I deserve to be on a first-name basis, no? You're hurting me, Aves." Derek leans in, the gear shift poking his stomach, the hand on his thigh slowly sliding away. He disregards his comfort for now. Right now, all he wants is to be close, close to those deadly hands that just butchered a man alive for him. Damn it all to hell, he was obsessed. Why would someone like Avery kill a man for him, dangle a life in his hands just to punish someone who annoyed him?
His breathing grew even more erratic. Derek already had trouble breathing when Avery's hand had almost engulfed his thigh. Derek wasn't a small guy, but Avery was admittedly taller than him, a little larger too. It made his mind wander, even with Avery right in front of him. He looks fucking delectable in that shirt, and Derek's fingers are itching to dig into the muscles visible through it.
Derek wants Avery to pin him down, let him drag a knife down his dark skin, to watch how his blood contrasts against it. It has to be a little different, right? He wants to fight back, bite back with his own lust, his own bloodthirst. He wants to sink his teeth into Avery's skin, drag his nails across his back until red welts form across pale skin.
"C'mon, Aves," Derek whispers, crawling even further into Avery's personal bubble, one knee pressed against the driver's seat and the other in the middle console, "you did that for me, right? Just for me?" He gets all into Avery's face, and his attention is pulled towards the few specks of dried blood splattered on his cheek.
He sounds a little whiny; sue him. Derek was a little too preoccupied to care about the less-than-chalant personality he's adopted over the years.
Avery's hair was tied back in a small ponytail, and a few strands were framing his face beautifully even with the beanie hair. Derek slowly reached a finger up to tuck them behind Avery's ear.
The bewilderment in Avery's eyes slowly turns into endearment—at least from their perspective. He grabs Derek's wrist, the bones creaking in his grip, before nuzzling into the palm, eyes still trained on the man slowly sleuthing into his lap.
Derek's fingers tremble where he can finally feel Avery's skin, but it's not enough; he needs to be underneath it. He wants to slice open Avery's chest, run his hands through skin, muscle, and fascia. Burrow into his chest cavity, be held between his heart and lungs. For now, though, he'll accept the hand gripping onto his waist, dragging him fully onto the other man's lap.
He ends up kneeling on the driver's seat, legs spread, his knees on either side of Avery's hips.
"What if it was? Aren't you scared? Mad?" Ridiculous. As if Derek would be mad? He's infatuated. He'd lick the bloodstains off of Avery's face if it weren't someone else's.
Scared? Now that's just insulting.
"Avery, you would do anything for me, wouldn't you?" Derek was smart; he knows that. He's accepted it, and people come to him all the time. Homework help, housework, common sense, but nobody was ever there for him. Was Avery? Would Avery kill for him again? Would he-
"Anything."
A few weeks later, a few students found Thomas's body. Well, parts of it. So far, the police had found his mutilated legs, his arms in two different places about a kilometre apart. His torso was near the entrance of the dilapidated path. The only thing missing was his head, or to be more specific, his skull. Thomas's head was skinned, and the skin mask was left next to a puddle of brain matter stark against the ground. After an initial examination, there was also his eyes and glands in the mess of brain matter.
The college was closed for the time being while they investigated the brutal murder, and the administration sent all of the students back home. If Avery and Derek had found a small apartment for themselves, with a certain skull as a gothic decoration? Who was to question true love?