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“It’s not going to work, David.”
“You need to trust me, Stevie. Let me do this.”
Stevie looks at him from across the table, his dark eyes serious, his brows pointed downwards, his mouth set in a straight line. He’s spinning the gold ring around the base of his middle finger, and his knee is bouncing. He can feel the tension stretching between them, can feel the other sets of eyes in the room trained on him. He nods at her a little, and she shrugs and sighs, sinking back against the dark navy microfiber of the living room couch.
David bites the inside of his lip to keep from smiling and pivots in his seat, loudly announcing, “I’m going to use one of my Wild Shape points to summon my wildfire spirit, instead of taking beast form. You need to make a dex saving throw, as do all your other little creatures within a 30 foot radius.”
He waggles his fingers over the gridded dry-erase board in front of them, the motley crew of battleships and Monopoly game pieces representing a hoard of at least fifteen various undead creatures currently insistent on attacking the much-beleaguered, semi-exhausted con-artists-nee-theatre-troupe David’s been leading for the last eighteen months, since Alexis left town and Stevie showed up on his door with a quarter of kush and the newest edition of the Dungeons and Dragons Player's Guide.
Across from him, he hears Ronnie whistle, low and long, sitting forward and bracing her elbows on her knees. She runs a hand along her jaw, her eyes darting to various figures on the board, doing an array of mental math David couldn’t guess at. Her half-gnomish fighter stands on the outskirts of the horde, separated from her party, and if David can pull off what he’s trying, her odds of beating her way through and back to the group increase exponentially.
At the same time, Twyla sort of bounces in her seat, her eyes wide, the same face she makes every time one of them is about to do something particularly cool — especially if it’s David, and especially if it’s David and fire.
David tries to school his face into something less smug as he crosses his arms and waits for Patrick to respond.
Patrick, who currently has one ankle crossed over his knee, legal pad in front of him flipped several pages deep, his pen still scratching away in a doodle David won’t get to see until the game is done, and he’s peeking through their after-session paperwork in the kitchen to make sure everyone is leveling up properly. A few seconds pass, and then a few more, and then a few more, until David is shifting in his seat, the dramatic effect of his incredibly cool move left hanging, deflating slowly in the air like a sad balloon.
“Did — did you hear what I said,” he asks after counting to ten one more time in his head. He’s not annoyed — he’s not. It's only the second time Patrick has done this, stepping in to DM because Jocelyn and Roland are on vacation.
Patrick looks up and nods. “Yeah. I’m just waiting for you to make an actual playable move.”
David blanches, Stevie sits back and presses her lips together, her eyes bright in that blood-in-the-water predatory way she gets when she thinks David is about to flip his shit. Twyla starts to chew on her lip, and Ronnie chuckles, low and dark, her eyes flying back and forth between David and Patrick.
“What do you mean?” David’s voice is thin, and sounds high in his ears.
“I mean...that’s not a thing, David. I’ve spent the last week reading every word of that manual, and there’s not a single mention of the Circle of Wildfire, or their druids.” He gestures to the corner of the coffee table, where the Player’s Guide, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide are stacked neatly, tiny page flags sticking out at random intervals, primarily in the Monster Manual and Dungeon Master’s Guide . “I spent all weekend reading about spell slots, armor classes, and summoning abilities, but not a word about...whatever it is you’re trying to do.”
Usually it warms David’s heart in the nerdiest of ways to see those little page flags, bright pieces of paper that mark the points Patrick feels most important. They’re guideposts, intellectual mile markers on Patrick’s hikes through store projections, or thick tomes on the history of the compass that make David tired just looking at them.
Today, David hates those taunting little scraps. A reminder that the man David married is the exact kind of man to read the entire collection of D&D materials, just to make sure he can get the upper hand in situations exactly like this.
“It’s playtest content!”
“Which means…?”
“Which means, I mean —” David sputters, and waves his hand over the board again, far less confident in the movement this time. “Which means they just haven’t added it to the handbook yet!” His voice pitches up intensely, his hands cutting through the air in a little circle he must’ve borrowed from Alexis, his eyes rolling.
Patrick nods and makes a little ‘ah’ sound in the back of his throat. “So it’s not in the rulebook.” He leans back a litle and crosses his arms, his eyebrows dropping at the corner and his eyes going wide, an attempt at innocence that makes him look beyond guilty. David hates that look almost as much as he loves it.
“Not yet ,” David emphasizes, and Patrick’s lips press together and his eyes drop to the table and for the smallest second David thinks maybe he’s won.
He’s been with Patrick long enough that he should know better.
Patrick looks back up at him from underneath his eyelashes, his eyes wide, and, David can feel his stomach sink. “But, until that happens, those sounds a lot like…”
He trails off and David grits his teeth and he’s not going to say it, he’s not . Only Patrick is just staring at him, his cheeks pink and his eyes shining. Around the table, Ronnie, Twyla, and Stevie are all staring at him with a combination of kind resigned certainty, confused affection, and aggressive glee.
After all, Ronnie had tried to tell him to play one of his other, less-powerful-although-officially-in-the-rule-book characters until Jocelyn came back. ‘ It’ll be fine’ , he said. ‘Patrick and I are married now, and it’s not like he really plays’, he’d said.
So David forces the words through his teeth — “House. Rules.”
And Patrick, the smug bastard, grins at David like it’s their wedding day and he’s getting everything he ever wanted all over again.
“I’m sorry, what was that, I couldn’t quite make it out,” Stevie says, and David snaps his head in her direction so fast it hurts a little. He hisses at her like she’s an actual cat, and she shrugs, sitting on her hands. “What? You’re doing that tight-jaw rage talk thing and you sorta mumble, it makes you hard to hear sometimes.”
Patrick snorts, and he spins in his seat again, feeling unfairly cornered by his best friend and his husband. “Fine. Fine! They’re house rules. Are you happy? The fire druid is playtest content, so until the next manual comes out, it is technically a house rules character.” He points a finger through the air at nothing with every word he says, and Patrick cocks his head to the side, a near-deadly move that’s already got David groaning internally.
“House rules are as good as no rules when it comes to proper game night conduct,’”Patrick says in his best David voice, the one that always burrows immediate under his skin, quoting his husband's Official Game Night Stance back at him. David wants to take his fire druid and burn the handbook to ashes right in front of Patrick's smug face, especially when he smiles ruefully but doesn’t say anything else. House rules in things like Yahtzee and Sorry and even The Game of Life were one thing, but he wasn’t about to go admitting any of that to Patrick. Not when Ronnie was looking at him with her teeth pinched between her lip and Stevie was practically vibrating with silent laughter.
David meets Patrick’s eyes and narrows his own, shaking his head slowly. He’s not going to push - he’s not he’s not he’s not — because it’s only going to be one more week before Jocelyn gets back and he can keep being Áhedán, the tortured but emotionally growing half-elf fire druid he’s been diligently leveling and falling in love with through his motley crew’s series of misadventures.
“What’s the matter, David?” Patrick’s eyebrows are raised and his eyes look innocent, but there’s a lilt to his voice that sounds like Patrick knows he’s going to win. “That’s not, like...a problem, is it? I just figured, since it was technically your game night policy and all —”
“It’s fine,” David bites out, and his smile feels sharp on his face, and Patrick just sort of purses his lips while he nods, eyes playful, a blush high and pink on the apple of his cheeks.
“If it’s fine, let’s go ahead and make another move, yeah? It’s already been a long game, and I’m sure Ronnie has to get back to Dulce, and Twyla has to get back to...whoever it is Twyla has to get back to.”
“Oh, I don’t have to get back to anyone!” Twyla says at the same time Stevie chimes in with an injured-sounding “What about the people I’ve got to get back to, huh?”
“Jake only has whiskey nights on Thursdays,” David snaps at her, and she grins, practically feral.
“Sounds like someone needs a drink,” she says, popping the final ‘k’ with her lips in a way that makes David’s skin prickle under the collar of his sweater, and he doesn’t miss the way Patrick’s eyes flame a little, darting to David with a heat that pools low in David’s belly. He scoffs at her, but doesn’t say anything, and he hates that she knows she’s won that particular exchange.
David picks his wine glass up off the table with a pointed look and focuses back on the board, changing his plan and casting a third-level Call Lightening instead. He feels slightly vindicated that he’s able to roll super high on his damage roll, and probably ends up killing more of the undead minions than he probably would have if he’d actually been allowed to call forth his fire demon, but. It still just doesn’t play as cool, and David knows that D&D is nothing if not about the story, the mood, the aesthetics of it all.
They escape the undead horde and continue on, and the game comes to an end when Twyla manages to save them all with a particularly well-played use the Shroud of Secrety, which the rest of them had forgotten they had buried deep in the bag of holding. Patrick rolls a natural one, completely failing to defeat the Shroud, forced to tell them the true way to safety. The entire table devolves into a fit of cheers and laughter as Twyla beams and they manage to get all their characters to the place of a long rest until the next encounter. David can tell from the way Patrick’s shoulders slump and he closes his notebook with a little sigh that whatever run-in Twyla managed to out-maneuver was going to be really, really cool.
*
Later that night, David asks Patrick about it, wrapping his arms around him as they stand next to each other at the bathroom’s double-sinks, the first install during the renovation of the cottage. He presses his forehead to the nape of Patrick’s neck and breathes, murmuring the words into the soft white cotton of Patrick’s undershirt. “What was it gonna be?”
“What was what going to be?” The pads of Patrick’s fingers are pressing moisturizer into his own skin — the third of three steps to his skin care routine that David has finally impressed upon him — and David takes a second to breath in the cedar-y, sharp smell that he’ll never be able to untwine from the memory of Patrick’s body underneath his.
“The encounter. With the firbolg demigod in the mountain pass. If Twyla hadn’t managed to remember the Shroud of Secrecy, what would you have done?”
Patrick spins and wraps his arms around David’s neck, shaking his head with fondness in his eyes and the smallest kiss waiting to be pressed to the corner of David’s mouth. “Well, David.” kiss. “I could tell you.” kiss “But then I’d have to kill you.” kiss “Or, at least, I wouldn’t be able to pass it on to Jocelyn for next time.”
“You wouldn’t.” Patrick shrugs and pulls back to look at him, the same innocent look on his face as when he’d once asked David if it was possible to be jealous of both him and Ted after that now-infamous game of spin the bottle.
“I am. I already texted Jocelyn. Someone should get to use it.”
“But your encounters are so much more…methodical than hers.” He means ruthless, and they both know it, and Patrick can’t help the flush of pride that creeps up his neck, mottled and stark against the white of his shirt.
“I’ll take that as a compliment and subtle reminder you don’t want me dungeon mastering your games anymore,” Patrick says, his hands landing on David’s hips, pressing backwards until they’re both taking slow, measured steps towards the bed.
“Not the kind of dungeon I’d like to see you master again, no,” David says, flicking off the bathroom light as they pass, smile creeping onto his face as Patrick laughs, bright and sharp and fading into something the rumbles like the promise of thunder.
“Mm,” Patrick presses a kiss to the edge of David’s jaw, hums his way to the soft skin under his ear. “Last I checked, you still hadn’t called the manager of that Vancouver club to apologize.”
“Who wants to drive all the way to fucking Vancuver anyway,” David says, dragging his nails up Patrick’s back, across the back of his shoulders, digging half-moons into the sensitive skin along his triceps.
Patrick shivers. “We do, until they open a club in any one of the Glens.”
David’s thighs hit the bed and he sits, scooting back and pulling Patrick down with him. “Well, hey, there’s a business venture worth discussing. You did once say I was an oracle for the sex lives of single people.”
Patrick slots a thigh between David’s and let’s his breath dust warm and damp across David’s collarbone, tangles a hand into David’s hair enough to tug his head back, exposing the line of his neck. “Sounds good, should I get the spreadsheets now, or...?”
David groans and presses up against Patrick. “I’ll mood board it in the morning,” he growls, pulling Patrick’s mouth to his, finally ending one game for the night and starting another one.”