16. Behind The DM Screen
Chapter sixteen
Behind The DM Screen
Ronan
There are exactly three acceptable reasons to touch something behind my Dungeon Master screen—the house is on fire, someone is actively dying, or I have specifically given you permission.
Dex, apparently, believes there is a fourth.
“I’m just looking,” he says, leaning far enough across the table that his fingers are less than six inches from my notes.
Without looking up, I smack the back of his hand. “You’re touching things.”
“I’m looking with my fingers.”
“That is the definition of touching.”
He pulls his hand back. “Feels ableist toward tactile learners.”
I finally look at him.
He has a Cheshire grin on his face.
“You are not a tactile learner.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I’ve known you for years.”
“Maybe I’ve been masking.”
I stare at him.
There are at least four responses available to me. None would improve his behavior.
Before I can respond, Micah walks past behind him and catches the back of his shirt, pulling him away from the table.
“Leave his shit alone,” Micah tells him.
Dex lets himself be dragged backward without resistance. “You know, I thought there would be more perks to sleeping with the Dungeon master.”
“I’m sure there are,” Micah says. “But you’re not sleeping with him, and cheating isn’t one of them.”
Dex turns his head to look at Micah. “This is why you’re my favorite.”
Micah rolls his eyes, but he’s smiling when he lets go of Dex’s shirt and continues to the kitchen.
I go back to arranging minis and dice.
Really, this is normal.
Or familiar enough that normal seems like an increasingly reasonable word for it.
The party composition hasn’t changed much. Dex remains a chaos variable. Micah remains the person most likely to quietly prevent Dex from dying. Griffin will arrive with beer and make at least one decision so strategically indefensible I’ll question whether he’s ever played this game before.
The only significant difference is how many of us are sleeping together.
Not everyone—obviously. The logistics are more complicated than that.
We have spent a considerable amount of time discussing and defining exactly how complicated.
They are useful and necessary conversations.
Watching Micah follow Dex into the kitchen while threatening to hide his energy drinks if he eats any more of the food before Cami and Griffin get home, however, makes me wonder if we could have accomplished approximately seventy percent of it with a diagram.
Dex would have drawn a dick on the diagram. So perhaps not.
The front door opens a few minutes later, followed almost immediately by Cami’s voice. Griffin responds, but their voices are too low to hear them—then Cami laughs.
I glance at the time on my phone. “Campaign starts in twenty minutes.”
“Hi, Ronan!” Cami calls from the hallway.
“You’re late.”
“We’re not late if it starts in twenty minutes,” she protests.
Griffin comes around the corner first. “I told her you’d say that.”
“Because you understand how time works.”
Cami appears behind him with her laptop bag over one shoulder and her purse hanging off the other.
Most importantly, she’s smiling.
Not the polite smile she uses when she’s trying to convince someone she’s okay. Not the sharper one that precedes her saying something deliberately inappropriate. She looks excited enough that she can’t seem to decide what to do with her hands.
Griffin sets the grocery bags on the counter while Cami drops her things onto one of the empty chairs.
“Okay,” she begins, excitedly. “So Alexis might have offered me a job.”
Dex’s head appears around the kitchen doorway. “Hot, poly Corporate Barbie?”
Cami turns toward him. “First of all, yes. Second, I am absolutely telling her you called her that.”
“Please do.”
“You haven’t even met her.”
“I’ve seen pictures.”
Micah turns to him, one brow raised. “Why have you seen pictures?”
“Instagram exists, Micah.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“It perfectly answers the question.”
Cami laughs and drops into her usual chair. Griffin takes his while Dex and Micah bring the rest of the food in from the kitchen.
“What kind of job?” I ask.
“Contract work with Laugherty, their software company.” Cami pulls her phone from her purse as she talks, apparently wanting to check something while she talks.
“Not like an actual employee job. At least not right now. They have a software launch coming up, and she needs help with some of the organic social strategy stuff. She wants me to look at a brief she sent over and put together a proposal.”
I look at her. That feels considerably more substantial than might have offered me a job.
“She asked to see some of my client work at lunch,” Cami continues. “Which, by the way, was horrifying. Showing your portfolio to an actual corporate marketing director is apparently the professional equivalent of sending nudes.”
Dex smiles. “Depends on the nudes.”
“Can I finish?” she asks with a smile.
“Probably not, but you should keep trying.”
“She went through everything, asked me a bunch of questions about what I charge, and then told me I’m undercharging.”
“You are,” Griffin agrees immediately.
Cami turns to him. “You don’t even know what I charge.”
“I know you work at eleven o’clock at night because a client suddenly decided they need something for an event the next day.”
“That’s just freelancing.”
“I know you’ve redone the same graphic six times for one client because they keep changing their mind.”
“That is also freelancing.”
Griffin gives her a look.
She gives him one back.
I know enough to know Griffin is right, but pointing that out will only redirect the argument toward me.
Unfortunately, Cami notices me watching them.
“Don’t you start,” she warns, pointing a finger at me.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“Your face did.”
“My face is neutral.”
Dex snorts. “You think your face is always neutral, but your face has never been neutral a day in your life.”
I look at him.
He gestures toward me with both hands. “That. Exactly that.”
Micah laughs as he sits down, and I decide there is no productive response.
“So what are the next steps?” I ask Cami instead.
Her attention returns to me, and some of the defensiveness disappears.
“Alexis is sending me the launch information and the requirements. I’m supposed to look at the scope, figure out how much time I think it’ll take, and send her a proposal.”
“Based on what you normally charge?”
Her nose wrinkles.
“No. Apparently based on what I should be charging.”
Griffin smiles into his beer as he takes a sip.
She narrows her eyes at him. “Stop looking smug.”
The conversation moves for a few minutes after that—Griffin asking what the project actually involves, Micah wanting to know whether she’d still keep her existing clients, Dex volunteering to become her “creative director” despite having no qualifications beyond only a laptop and being chronically online.
But through all of it, Cami keeps smiling.
We tell her she’s talented frequently enough that I’m fairly certain she has started categorizing our opinions as biased data.
Alexis looked at something Cami built without any of us and told her it was worth more.
I hadn’t realized until now how badly I wanted someone outside this house to tell her that.
Cami is still talking about the project when she unlocks her phone again.
Third time.
Nothing has changed since the last time. I know because I watched her check then, too.
Her knee has also been bouncing for the last several minutes.
She’s excited, but with a disadvantage on patience.
Dex reaches over and pats her arm. “For what it’s worth, I think your social media shit is very impressive.”
“You ask me how Instagram works at least once a week,” she counters.
Cami is laughing when she looks down at her phone.
“Oh!” Her head comes back up. “And Alexis invited all of us to dinner.”
Dex, halfway through opening a bag of gummy worms, stops. “All of us?”
“Yes.”
“At their house?”
“Yes.”
“With all five of her guys?”
“Yes, Dex.”
Micah slowly lowers the drink he’s about to take a sip of. “That’s eleven people.”
“Thank you, Micah,” Dex deadpans. “I was struggling with the math.”
Micah rolls his eyes. “I was thinking about the logistics.”
“Hopefully, before Christmas,” Cami adds.
I reach for my phone, ready to look at calendars.
Dex immediately points at me. “No.”
I pause. “What?”
“Do not make a spreadsheet of our schedules.”
“I was going to look at my calendar.”
“That’s how it starts,” Dex declares.
Cami slides her phone across the table toward me before I can respond. “Alexis sent three dates that work for them.”
I scan through the shared calendar and suggest a date.
Griffin checks his phone. “Yep, I’m off.”
Micah nods. “I’m good.”
Dex reaches for his phone, stares at it for several seconds, then looks at Micah.
“You’re good, too,” Micah answers for him with a smile.
There are moments when I wonder how he survived before Micah.
“Perfect.” Cami picks her phone back up and starts typing.
I glance at the clock again. “We now have four minutes.”
Cami doesn’t look up from her phone. “Until what?”
“Campaign time.”
“I know I’m fucking with you.”
“I realize that.”
Dex smiles. “Look at you recognizing sarcasm.”
“I recognize your sarcasm. It’s rarely subtle.”
“That feels like a compliment.”
By the time we actually start, we are six minutes late, and I choose not to comment on it.
I wait until everyone settles before opening my notebook.
The shift happens almost immediately.
They can spend twenty minutes arguing about dinner dates and freelance rates, but the second I lower my voice and start describing the gates of Varellon, their attention moves with me.
Mostly.
“Two guards stand at the eastern gate,” I tell them. “The taller one steps forward as you approach and holds up one hand. ‘Travel papers.’”
Dex lifts his hand.
“No.”
“I haven’t said anything. I raised my hand. I was being respectful.”
“That would be a first,” Griffin mutters.
Cami snorts.
Dex puts his hand down. “Fine. I would like to seduce the guard.”
Griffin groans. “Why?”
“Why not?”
“Because we have the travel papers.”