13. Party Roles #4
Dex breaks it first. “So, to summarize.”
Ronan visibly braces himself. “We have two primary relationships.”
Dex smiles. “Griffin and Cami. Me and Micah. Ronan is our beloved non-primary emotional support Dungeon Daddy—”
“Dexter,” Ronan interrupts with a warning.
“—and everyone else is somewhere on the world’s sluttiest org chart.”
Cami folds over laughing.
Griffin rubs both hands over his face.
I lose whatever battle I was fighting with myself and laugh too.
Ronan waits until the noise dies down.
He checks to make sure we’re all okay with it.
We all say we are, but Cami adds, “As long as we keep checking.”
“Checking what?” Dex asks.
“That nobody starts feeling optional,” she answers.
Ronan nods. “Agreed.”
Griffin reaches for her hand. “Nobody here is optional.”
Dex’s voice is quieter when he says, “That’s the rule I care about.”
Ronan nods and sits back. “There’s one other thing.”
Dex groans. “We were so close.”
“This one is important.”
Something in Ronan’s tone or words makes Dex straighten.
Ronan looks at Griffin.
“Back when we had the initial boundary discussion, I suggested something that I don’t think I explained very well at the time.”
Griffin’s brow furrows.
“I told you that because you weren’t part of the power hierarchy, but you were Cami’s husband, you could safeword for her if something happening in a scene made you uncomfortable.”
Griffin nods. “I remember.”
“So do I,” Cami agrees.
Ronan’s mouth tightens slightly. “I’ve thought about how I phrased it since then, and I don’t like it.”
That catches everyone’s attention.
“It sounded like I was giving you special authority over Cami’s consent because you’re her husband.”
Cami’s eyebrows rise.
“And that wasn’t exactly what I meant,” Ronan continues. “But intent doesn’t make the explanation better. I should have been clearer.”
Griffin watches him for a moment. “What did you mean?”
“That anyone in a scene has the right to safeword. Dominant, submissive, switch, observer, whatever role they’re in.”
Griffin nods slowly.
“If you’re in the room and something feels wrong, you can call red. You don’t need permission, and you don’t need to be the person something is being done to.”
Cami glances between them. “But he’s not actually safewording for me.”
“Right.” Ronan smiles. “That’s the distinction I should have made. I chose my words wrong.”
He leans forward, forearms resting against his thighs.
“If Griffin calls red because he’s worried about you, he’s not overriding your green. He’s saying I need this scene to stop. Then it stops, because one of the people in the room withdrew their consent for it to continue as it was.”
“So if I were watching something with Dex and Micah and it started freaking me out,” Cami says slowly, “even if Dex was perfectly happy—”
“You can safeword,” Ronan says.
Dex nods. “Because you’re allowed to not be okay.”
“And then everybody checks in,” I add. “Including Dex. Nobody decides he wasn’t consenting because you got uncomfortable.”
Ronan looks at me. “Exactly.”
Griffin leans back. “So why single me out back then?”
Ronan doesn’t dodge it. “Because I was trying to make you in particular more comfortable.”
Griffin stays quiet.
“You were walking into something completely outside your experience,” Ronan continues.
“You trusted Cami, but you didn’t know whether you trusted us yet.
Not with this. And I knew asking you to sit there and watch something that might be difficult for you without feeling like you had any ability to stop it was going to make that worse. ”
“Yeah,” Griffin admits. “It would’ve.”
“I just should have told you that everyone had that same exit.”
Cami squeezes Griffin’s hand. “I actually like that better.”
“So do I,” Griffin agrees.
Dex raises his hand.
Ronan takes a deep breath. “What?”
“So hypothetically, if I’m observing a scene and become deeply distressed because nobody has paid attention to me for seventeen seconds—”
“You may safeword,” Ronan says flatly.
Dex beams. “Excellent.”
Ronan shakes his head, but he is trying not to smile.
“Seriously,” he says. “Nobody in this house ever has to justify stopping a scene in the moment. We can talk about it in the moment and afterward. We can decide whether anything needs to change before we try again. But in the moment, if someone says, ‘red,’ we stop.”
Everyone nods or verbalizes agreement.
“Then I think we’re where we need to be,” I say.
Ronan reaches for the notebook again.
Dex groans. “Meeting adjourned.”
Cami laughs.
Griffin stands. “I’m with Dex.”
“See?” Dex points after him. “Metamour solidarity.”
“Stop calling me that.”
“Never.”
And somehow that’s how we end yet another complicated relationship conversation…
With Dex chasing Griffin toward the kitchen while repeatedly calling him his metamour just to piss him off, Cami laughing hard enough she has to wipe tears from her face, and Ronan muttering that none of us take anything seriously.
I look at him. “We took the important parts seriously.”
His expression softens.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “We did.”