Chapter Seventeen
Az
A few days after we'd all busted down Victoria's bedroom door and Leighton's sudden interest in aftercare the following morning, I woke with a strip of condoms in my hand. Glancing across the room to Joey's bed, I noticed he had been gifted the same thing.
"What the fuck." I grumbled, sitting up and dropping them on the nightstand. "I guess that explains Leighton's little sanitary products trip to town that wasn't actually needed."
"Can you shut the fuck up, Az? I'm trying to sleep." Joey mumbled, completely unaware of Leighton's gift in his hand. He rolled over in his bed and as he did, he managed to smack himself in the face with the strip of unwrapped condoms. "The fuck?"
I snickered as he shot upright in his bed, staring at them for a moment before shooting me a dirty look.
"Thank Leighton," I shrugged. "I would have given them to you like a normal human being."
"At least we're protected from anything you four picked up somewhere." Joey snorted, tossing his strip aside before settling back into his bed. "Pregnancy wasn't really a concern with her IUD."
I considered thumping him on the head for a moment and setting the record straight about how clean I was, but Craig's cursing drew my attention. Not bothering to put on a t-shirt, I padded my way out of our room and found Craig scowling at Leighton.
"You couldn't store them somewhere else? You had to block my workspace?" Craig yelled. "There's fucking closets and the laundry room with plenty of space for your weird ass costco trip."
Leighton poked his bottom lip out in a mock pout. "I thought you all would be happy about my presents."
Craig's yelling had woken everyone and I nearly lost it when I heard Rich muttering to himself about not needing condoms and turned to find a tower of boxes built on either side of his pullout.
"Merry Fuckmas everyone!" Leighton cackled.
Before any of us could respond, the crash from the remaining hinge on Victoria's door giving up when she attempted to open it caused us all to whip around. She stood in the doorway holding a large box of condoms and staring at the door on the floor looking flushed, frustrated… and kind of adorable.
"So… does anyone want to tell me why there are condoms where my tampons are supposed to be, and lined up in little rows on my bathroom counter?" She said, stepping over the door and into the den. "As much as I… appreciate the utility, I don't think anyone would use this many before they expire."
"It's Fuckmas!" Leighton grinned, making jazz hands by his face. "You get a condom, and you get a condom, and everyone gets a condom!"
Victoria rolled her eyes and pitched the box toward Leighton. He ducked, causing it to narrowly miss him before it pelted the side of my head.
"What the fuck?" I asked, raising a brow.
"I'm not in the mood for your shit today, Az-hole. You know I was aiming at Leighton so don't be a dick about it."
"First of all, Your Highness , I did not-a-god-damn-thing. You hit me with a box of condoms, pretty sure ‘what the fuck' is an appropriate response from any sane person." I said, crossing my arms over my chest.
"Oh, like you haven't been stomping around here with a permanent scowl on your face and a pissy ass Az-i-tude ever since you got shitty with me about Benson."
"Ohhh, I need some popcorn. Mom and Dad are gonna fight it out." Leighton cackled.
"Nope, not doing that. Come on, L. You need to unbury my workspace." Craig said, grabbing Leighton by the arm and dragging him into their room.
"Awww, come on Craig! You only get action like this on pay-per-view!" Leighton whined as Craig pulled him into their room and shut the door behind them.
"If you two are going to argue, take it outside." Rich grunted. "I've got nowhere to go."
"Unless Az is ready to apologize for being his usual dickish self, I've got nothing else to say about the matter." Victoria huffed, turning toward the kitchen.
My legs ate up the distance between us as I followed her into the kitchen, reaching her just as she made it to the coffee pot. "Who said you get to decide when we talk about this shit, Princess? " I demanded.
"Me. The person it actually happened to." She deadpanned.
I reared back as if she'd slapped me. When I'd seen the medical records showing what Benson Prescott had done to her, I'd been too angry to think clearly. I wanted nothing more than to storm from the cabin, hunt the bastard down, and inflict every injury he'd given her times two. It was one of the few times I actually agreed with Leighton's stab first ask never attitude. Unfortunately, I hadn't been able to contain my anger enough to speak to Victoria with a clear head.
Sighing heavily, I raked a hand through my hair. "I'm sorry."
"Yo– What?" She said, turning her head to give me a suspicious look. "Who are you and what have you done with Az. An alien imposter right? Because Az doesn't apologize."
"I've apologized to you before, don't be so dramatic, Love." I snorted. "And I am sorry. I wasn't angry at you and the way I handled finding out what that dead bastard did to you wasn't okay."
"I need a lottery ticket." She chuckled, cracking a small smile before turning her attention back to the coffee pot.
"I'm serious. I… I don't mean to lash out when I get angry, but when I've got nothing to do with it then…" I trailed off, trying to make the words come out right.
"I get it, you need therapy. Maybe you should ask Phil to recommend his therapist." Victoria shrugged.
"How the fuck– No, nevermind. Not right now. But, sure, everyone needs therapy, I get it. Are you gonna keep tossing barbs at me or are you going to let me apologize and work things out with you?"
"That depends entirely on whether or not your apology is a good one." She replied, pouring her cup of coffee before turning to lean her backside against the counter.
I stood there for a second wanting to argue further, but then another thought crossed my mind. Strolling over to where she was leaning against the counter, I took her cup from her hands and placed it on the counter before I grabbed her by the hair and put my hand over her mouth.
"Then, hush , Love. Let me get through it." I crooned.
The wet warmth of her tongue against my palm caused me to roll my eyes at her. When she realized I wasn't going to react further to her bratty behavior, she narrowed her eyes at me.
"Proceed." Her voice was muffled by my hand.
"Not sure what you thought that was going to do," I said, amused. "You're not my first brat, Love. I'm not afraid of a little tongue." I licked my lips and gave her a pointed stare before I gave her hair a sharp tug and released her.
She settled back against the counter and picked up her mug, looking so flustered and adorable I had to back away to lean against the opposite wall in the kitchen so I wasn't tempted to further derail the conversation.
"As I was saying, before you so rudely interrupted me," I paused a second, the look on her face telling me she wanted to say something but she didn't. Good girl. "Love, I wasn't angry with you. I was angry for you, and I didn't know what to do with it. There wasn't anything that I was doing that felt like it was working it out of my system knowing that bastard was walking around. He might be breathing borrowed air, but he's still breathing."
She sighed into her coffee mug before turning to sit it back on the counter. "It happened once . Aht," she raised a hand to stop me from speaking. "Joey already gave me the ‘once is once too many' speech, I don't need it from you too. But I do need all of you to understand that when I ended things, there was no fighting. He let me walk without so much as a word, probably because he was afraid that one time would be leaked if he didn't. The why of it doesn't matter so much as that I got out, I am… well I was safe until whoever decided to drop me in the middle of this mess, played their hand."
I fought my urge to tell her that she was safe, because she wasn't. We knew that more than she did because we hadn't filled her in on everything Craig had dug up. I took a deep breath and stared at the floor trying to find my next words. "We're going to do our best to make sure you're safe, and that we teach you whatever we can to keep yourself safe even if we aren't around. None of us can promise that, and we know it, but we're going to do our damndest."
Victoria eyed me carefully as I spoke, but thankfully she was letting me find the words on my own. "Yes, once is once too many, but I'm sure you knew that even without Joey's input. We all know Prudence helped a lot of women escape situations like that. Hell, she even tried with Craig's mom. It… didn't work out the way any of us wanted it to."
"You're going to have to explain that a little more. I'm not quite following what my mother attempting to help Craig's mom has to do with me, or why her work with battered women is even relevant." She frowned, her tone making it clear she was genuinely confused trying to follow my train of thought.
"The whole story… isn't mine to tell, but suffice it to say that Prudence's work with battered women was very relevant to Craig's home life. But she wasn't cooperative when Harrison showed up. It was a shit show… and it left me feeling powerless. Useless. We could only help Craig pick up the pieces as best we were able to when it was over." I trailed off, trying to find my way back to the present from the images of a young Craig's life that flashed in my mind.
"When we saw what was in that report…" I trailed off again, taking a deep breath to steady myself. "It didn't matter that it was just once, and that it was a while ago. It happened, and there's nothing I can do about it from here. Those same feelings from back then came rushing back."
When I looked up, Victoria was looking at the floor. Her brows were drawn together and she looked remorseful and ashamed. I strode across the kitchen and tilted her head upward to make her look at me. I could see the tears pricking at the corners of her beautiful brown eyes and my heart broke for the sight of them.
"Don't do that, Love," I said softly, gathering her up in my arms. "What happened to them, and to you, wasn't anything you should feel guilt for. It's not your fault, so don't you put that on yourself."
I pulled back to look at her and I wiped away a few of the tears that fell on her cheeks when she shook her head.
"It's not that," she sighed. "I know it's not my fault. I'm angry with myself for not considering that you guys would have known how helpless it leaves you when there's nothing you can do to stop it. If the son of a bitch wasn't dead already, I'd have wanted to kill him myself. Even knowing he couldn't hurt them anymore, I was still so angry."
"We don't always get to take care of the bad guys personally." I replied, a little stunned at the realization that Craig had told her about his dad.
"You're right, we can't. But… we have to find a healthier way to deal with these angry outbursts before it leads us to not speaking for days on end." She said, stepping out of my embrace and wiping the remaining tears from her face.
"I can think of a few things we can try…" I smirked. She rolled her eyes in response and slapped my chest hard enough that it stung a little. "You're just making an argument for those things."
"That's not what I meant… and I need a little break anyway. I was thinking something more along the lines of putting our enemies in the ground so we're not trying to kill each other." She said simply.
I raised a brow and stared at her for a long moment. When did our little rich girl start getting so cold-blooded?
"Well, we don't have all of our stuff so we'll have to do it the old fashioned way… but we could always slay dragons and kill bandits in the meantime." I offered. "It's not as viscerally satisfying, but it comes in a close second."
A few hours later we were gathered around the table at a set up that reminded me of how we played the game when we were kids. We used notebook paper for not only character sheets, but to construct quick grids as battle maps. We used things like loose change, a soda can tab, the plastic ring off the milk jug, a bottle cap, paper clip, and a pencil eraser as our miniatures.
Victoria had shown a good deal of interest in the process of running the game, and after giving her a little pep talk and assuring her that she didn't *need* to know much more than she already did to run a game effectively, she decided to give it a shot. Things were slower in a few places since she wasn't as well acquainted with the rules and she didn't have her own systems in place for keeping track of the various things happening between the characters, the npcs, and in combat. But she recovered from her stumbles well when she had to stop and look something up.
It was also nice to take a break from running the game, despite having to bite my tongue a few times to not tell her how I would have called one thing or another. I'd given her the premise of a one-shot I'd run the guys through years ago, and told her to change whatever she wanted about the characters and story, and that if she struggled with anything, I would be happy to help. She knew any of us would, but she did really well for someone new to the game, much less to being behind the screen.
"Good work guys!" Victoria praised us as she cleared away the change from the grid that had represented the group of giant rats we'd been fighting.
"Is anyone in need of any dire healing at the moment, or can we wait for a short rest when we're out of the tunnels?" Craig asked us as a collective, he'd chosen to play a Cleric for this mini game we were running. We didn't have enough tablets to go around to use our usual characters.
"As long as we don't run into anything on our way out, I think I'm good," Joey responded.
"We cleared the tunnels out as we moved through them. Unless we missed something on the way in, there shouldn't be anything left to give us issues." Leighton said, sounding almost like he hoped we had missed something.
"Are you wanting to rest here, or start making your way back?" Victoria asked.
"We'll work our way back. I, for one, look forward to being out of these fucking tunnels." I stated before telling her I was gathering up my things and heading back the way we had come. The guys indicated that their characters fell into step behind me.
"Great. What's everyone's passive perception?" She grumbled, flipping through the papers she'd started to accumulate behind the makeshift screen we'd set up for her with a few of Craig's binders.
".... Why?" Joey asked hesitantly. She flicked her gaze up at him, and let it sweep across us before smirking.
"Don't worry about it," she said simply. I couldn't stop the grin that split my face. Devious little thing .
The boys were tense, and stayed that way as she occasionally rolled a die as we made our way back down the labyrinth of abandoned tunnels. The group let out a collective sigh of relief as the hole we'd entered through came into view.
"As your party emerges from the ancient labyrinthian tunnels below the brewery, the stench of dead rats still clinging to your clothing, you find yourself back in the main aging cellar where you'd started. Gundrik, the stout dwarven owner you'd received the job from appears to be pacing at the foot of the stairs as you approach. The flickering light of lanterns casts dancing shadows on the wooden barrels stacked around the room, and the air is thick with the scent of fermenting ale. Gundrik approaches, his eyes narrowing as he takes in the state of your party. Curiosity and relief mix in his features." Victoria narrates for us. "‘By the beard of Moradin! You did it then, cleared out those filthy rats?' Gundrik asks, eyeing your battered weapons and tattered clothing."
"Aye. And not to be rude, but can we get somewhere that's above ground before we continue this little chat? I'd like to smell something besides stale air and rat stink." Rich grumbled in character, indicating that he started moving upstairs without waiting for anyone to respond.
"‘Oh, aye. Yes, let's get you gents a little more comfortable and we can discuss your reward.'" Victoria responds as Gundrik, trying to make her voice low and gruff. Her effort is adorable, and I'm again struck with just how naturally she seemed to take to the narrative since she'd seemed to find her footing.
There is a bit of banter back and forth as we move the scene along, she shuffles a few papers, looking for other notes she'd made at some point.
"Gundrik gestures toward a large wooden table in the center of the room, laden with parchment, quills, and tankards. ‘Let's talk reward, then. I'm not one to part with my gold easily, but I reckon you've earned something for your troubles.'"
"I'd fucking say. The job we ended up on didn't exactly match the one you gave us." Rich said gruffly, narrating his character flopping down in a chair in irritation.
"I'm going to put my hand on Rich's shoulder, and step just in front of him to address Gundrik. ‘Ah, Gundrik, my good man. What my friend here means to say is that the job turned out to be quite the adventure. Not only did we clear your cellar of those pesky rats as agreed, but beneath your brewery lies a forgotten labyrinth of tunnels filled with ancient dangers!'" I say with flourish. I chose to play a bard this time around, enjoying reprising the role of the party face whenever it's needed.
"Gundrik narrows his eyes at you, you can see concern and surprise on his face, and he motions for you to continue," Victoria notes.
I consider how I want to spin the story. "‘We braved the depths of these long forgotten tunnels, discovering several nests of giant rats that would make even the most seasoned adventurer quiver! They were harrowing battles. But your brewery is now safe and secure. We exterminated every nest we uncovered and made sure there were none left to bother you.' I pause for a moment, taking in the large tasting room around us that showcases all of Gundrik's work. ‘Truly, it was an honor to assist such a talented brewer in preserving his art.'" I finish my little performance, looking to Victoria to see how she'll have her own character react.
She's looking down at what I would assume is his character sheet, and you can almost see her brain working on how to properly proceed.
"‘Well, son, that's quite the tale you've spun for me. And while I appreciate that you've done this, we both know that it's not just out of the kindness of your heart. I assume you'll be wanting more reward than was offered on the job call.' Gundrik crosses his arms and looks at you expectantly." She says.
"‘Straight to the point. I like that in a business relationship. We understand that you may not have been aware of the extra challenge the tunnels and rats posed, but be that as it may, it was an extra challenge. And a little extra compensation would go a long way in showing that you take care of those who take care of you.'" I counter without giving anything specific. She's gotta learn to pivot what she'd expected.
"Make me a… persuasion roll." She asked, a little pause as she remembered which one to ask for.
"Do I get advantage?" I asked, hopefully.
"What makes you think you would?" She asked me flatly, her eyebrows furrowing in confusion.
"I told that story really well!" I explained. I knew it wasn't something I'd get advantage for, but I wanted to keep her on her toes.
"No, I don't think so." She said, rolling her eyes.
"But! We deserve an extra reward!" I argued.
"Keep arguing with me and I'll make you roll with disadvantage because Rich's character was being rude to start with." She returned sternly, pinning me with an authoritative look. It made my dick twitch.
I raised my hands in surrender and clattered the single d20 we had across the table, did some quick math and hissed at the roll. It wasn't the lowest, but it wasn't very good.
"I'm going to give him Guidance." Craig interjected, handing me a d4. I rolled it and added it to my total.
"16," I finally offered.
"‘Alright then, you've proven yourselves in the face of unexpected challenges. Here's what I can offer you,' Gundrik declares, a thoughtful glint in his eyes. He moves to a large bar at one end of the room and rustles around a few things, and his arms are laden down with things as he returns. ‘For a job well done in the face of unforeseen circumstances, here's a purse of 200 gold. Spend it wisely, friends.' He places down a sack, the sounds of clinking coins echoing around you. ‘And a few other tokens of appreciation that you may find useful. You're welcome to enjoy free drinks at my brewery whenever you pass through these parts. Consider it a brewer's boon. The finest ales and meads are yours for the taking, on the house.' He hands you a small parchment with his stamp and the words ‘Gundrik's Boon' on it."
"‘If I'm not working the tasting floor, whoever will be knows what these are. Also, if you ever find yourselves interested in the art of brewing, I'll share some of my expertise with you. ‘Tis not an offer I make to just anyone, and you never know what you might find in the process that may be useful on your travels.'" Victoria narrates animatedly.
"Just one more thing…" I start, trailing off at her withering look.
"Aye?" She says in character.
"You got somewhere we can clean up, dwarf? The wizard stinks of burnt rat and I'd hate to see it permanently stained into your nice furniture." Leighton says with a laugh.
"Oh… right!" Victoria chuckles. "Yeah, he shows you to the upper floors of the brewery, he has a small apartment up there for when his work keeps him over, and he invites you all to clean yourselves up and rest before you head out."
We make small talk and banter for a while longer while our characters are going about their resting activities, before we wrap the game up for the evening. I sat back in my chair looking around the group, and sensing for the first time in a long time the release of some tension that had hung around all of us just like the imaginary stink of burnt rat.