48. Proficiency Bonus
Chapter forty-eight
Proficiency Bonus
Micah
There is a stuffed dragon in Ronan's basement that has been tied up more times than Cami.
Which is saying something.
Clay bought it for her in the hospital gift shop after the DKA thing—bright green, stupid smile, wings that won't stay flat. It spent maybe two weeks on her dresser before Ronan stole it for rope practice.
Technically, he borrowed it.
Cami has not requested it back.
The dragon has endured chest harnesses, hip harnesses, failed transitions, successful transitions, one particularly ugly attempt at symmetry that Ronan cut apart after staring at it in disgust for six straight minutes, and a night where Dex drew a face on one of the throw pillows and named it Gerald so we'd have “multiple body types.”
Griffin walked downstairs, saw Ronan tying Gerald to the dragon, and turned around without asking a single question.
That's growth.
We've practiced on actual people too.
Mostly Cami. Dex volunteers for anything if you phrase it like a challenge, which has made him both useful and deeply fucking irritating. Griffin even let me put rope on him once, although he spent the entire time insisting it was “for educational purposes,” which nobody believed.
Sometimes practice becomes a sexual scene afterward.
Sometimes it doesn't.
More often than not, we're fully dressed in the basement at ten at night, Ronan arguing with me about line placement while Dex eats chips somewhere he has been explicitly told not to eat chips.
Tonight is different.
Tonight we're back at the studio for our eighth actual lesson, and for the first time, I don't feel like I'm waiting for someone to tell me what my hands are doing wrong.
That doesn't mean they aren't.
It means I know enough now to notice first.
“Too much tension on that side,” Ronan says it at the same moment I feel it beneath my fingers.
I look up.
He's crouched on the other side of Cami, green eyes fixed on the line crossing her torso.
“I know.”
His mouth moves. “Then fix it.”
“I was.”
Cami looks down between us. “You two know I can hear you, right?”
“Yes,” we answer together.
Across the room, Carter laughs.
The first time I met her, she described him like a man who could build a house, run a company, properly use a sex toy, and make dinner while talking the entire time. Turns out that translates pretty well to rope.
I loosen the section that bothered me, feed it back through, then smooth my thumb beneath the line to feel how it settles against Cami's skin.
She watches my face.
“Better?”
“Yeah.”
“You made the squinty artist face.”
“I don't have a squinty artist face.”
Ronan looks at me. “You do.”
I ignore him.
Cami smiles.
She's gotten better too.
That part doesn't get talked about as much when people discuss learning rope. Everybody focuses on whoever is doing the tying, but being tied is a skill of its own.
At the beginning, Cami answered every check with fine or green because she didn't always have better language for what she was feeling.
Now she catches differences before I do sometimes.
She knows pressure from pulling, knows when something changes because of the rope and when it's the way she's holding herself.
More importantly, she doesn't treat asking for an adjustment like she failed at being tied correctly.
“How's your left hand?” Ronan asks.
Cami flexes her fingers. “Normal.”
“Any tingling?”
“No.”
“Temperature?”
“Also normal.”
He nods.
I glance toward Drake.
He's standing a few feet away with his arms folded, close enough to step in and far enough that I don't feel him over my shoulder.
That might be the biggest difference between lesson one and lesson eight.
The first few nights, he watched every pass closely enough that I could feel his attention on my hands.
Tonight he lets us find things ourselves.
Which is somehow more stressful.
“You two done arguing with each other?” he asks.
“We weren't arguing,” Ronan says.
I look at him.
He looks at me.
Cami snorts.
Drake sighs. “Good. Then load it.”
The room doesn't go silent, but my attention narrows anyway.
This is the part we've been working toward.
Not full suspension. Cami isn't about to end up hanging from the ceiling because we survived eight lessons and abused a stuffed dragon in the name of education.
Tonight is partial load—enough weight transferred into the rope that the shape we've built has to work differently than it did when she was standing comfortably inside it.
We've done smaller versions before. This one adds movement.
Ronan catches my eyes before either of us starts. “You take her left.”
I nod.
A few months ago, we would have talked through why.
Tonight I see it as soon as he does. If I stay to one side and Ronan to the other, neither of us has to reach across Cami or interrupt the other's line.
Our hands can work independently without the structure becoming a four-handed traffic accident.
Cami breathes in slowly.
“You good?” I ask.
“Yep.”
“That wasn't a color.”
“Green, bossy.”
“Thank you.”
Her smile flicks toward me, then Ronan.
We begin shifting her weight.
The first movement is small enough that someone watching from across the room might miss it, but I feel the change immediately in the rope beneath my hand. Cami's body settles into it differently, her hip drifting as gravity takes more of the decision away from her muscles.
Months ago, this was the point where Ronan and I irritated the shit out of each other.
He thinks in sequence. What has to happen first, what still needs to be reachable afterward, how one adjustment affects the next.
I don't see it that way.
I see the whole shape first.
The angle of a shoulder. The way the rope crosses a line of muscle. Where Cami's weight is trying to pull the structure away from what we intended. Sometimes something can be technically right and still look wrong enough that I know I need to find out why.
At first, we'd stop each other constantly.
Now I know when Ronan is halfway through a thought with his hands, and he knows when I'm not fussing with something because I want it prettier.
Usually.
I shift Cami slightly.
Ronan pauses without asking.
The line at her hip settles into a cleaner angle.
He studies it for a second. “Better?”
“Yeah.”
Drake says nothing.
That feels better than praise.
More of Cami's weight settles into the rope, one foot still planted firmly beneath her while the other barely carries anything. The change pulls the lines into sharper definition across her body, and my brain does what it always does when something moves from theory into shape.
It starts drawing.
Not on paper—obviously.
Just there, behind my eyes.
Her body through the center of the pattern. The rope following curves, redirecting weight, creating lines that are beautiful because they're functional instead of despite it.
It scratches the same part of my brain as tattooing.
People sometimes think tattooing is drawing on skin.
It isn't.
Skin moves. Bodies curve. Muscles shift under you. A design that looks perfect flat can turn into something awful the second it wraps around a shoulder or hip.
Rope is different, but not as different as I expected.
Cami exhales, and the right side of her torso shifts almost imperceptibly.
Ronan sees it at the same time I do. “Color?”
“Green.”
“Anything pulling?”
“Right side of my ribs feels tighter now.”
My eyes follow the line automatically.
Ronan's hand moves toward it, then stops.
“Not the rope,” he says.
I look at Cami's shoulder.
Her posture changed.
“She's rotating.”
“Yeah.”
I take more of her weight while Ronan adjusts her position rather than the rope itself.
The difference is immediate.
Cami lets out a breath. “Oh. Better.”
Ronan looks at me.
I nod.
That's it.
No discussion about who caught it first. No explanation of why the other one was right.
We both know what changed.
Across the room, Alexis laughs softly.
I glance over.
She is in a similar supported position, Carter beside her while Jeremiah watches the structure from the other side.
“You okay?” Cami calls.
Alexis turns her head. “Oh, I'm fantastic.”
Cami grins. “Show-off.”
“Jealousy is ugly on you.”
“Girls,” Jeremiah says.
Alexis looks toward him with a sweet smile. “Yes?”
He stares at her.
Carter loses it.
Even Ronan laughs.
Drake rubs a hand over his face. “Every class.”
“You keep having us back,” Carter points out.
“Because you pay me.”
“See? Healthy boundaries.”
The laughter breaks the tension without breaking anyone's focus.
That's changed too.
During the first few lessons, we treated every correction like we were defusing something explosive.
Now we know where the lines actually are.
Carter can make Alexis laugh while keeping one hand steady.
Cami can give me shit and still tell me immediately when something feels different.
Ronan can roll his eyes at me without losing track of what he is doing.
We can stop, reset, and try something again without anybody treating the mistake as a failure.
The second transition goes better than the first.
The third feels almost easy.
Not because it is. Because my hands no longer have to pause while my brain translates every step.
I know what comes next.
Ronan does too.
When Drake finally steps closer, he looks over the entire structure before asking Cami, “How does it feel?”
“Secure.”
“Specific.”
Cami thinks for a moment instead of giving him the first answer available. “Weight feels spread out. Nothing sharp. There's more pressure on one side, but it doesn't feel bad.”
She gestures as much as her position allows.
He turns toward us. “Why?”
“Body asymmetry,” Ronan says.
I study the way Cami is sitting inside the structure. “And she's rotating her hip again.”
“I am not.”
I look at her.
She looks down at herself. “Okay, maybe I am.”
The instructor nods. “Fix the rotation, not the rope.”
I adjust her position.
The pressure evens out almost immediately.
“Oh.”
I can't help smiling.
Cami's eyes meet mine, softening for just a second.
Then Ronan asks about her hand again, and we keep moving.