Chapter Text
“The adventuring party - now double in size - presses forth, onward through the thick, murky woods. As you trek through the mud and mist, stray tree branches reach out from the seemingly endless darkness, grasping at your cloaks with crooked fingers-“
“Trees don’t have fingers!”
Mark snapped out of character to cast a quick glare at David and hit the table. He absolutely despised being interrupted. His voice and the pictures he painted with it seemed to be the one thing he really had 100% Control over, anymore. “Silence, you blockhead! It’s figurative! Now, as I was saying… the crooked fingers of the trees snag your-”
Again, he was interrupted, but this time it was one of the new editions to the party: “No, no, I think we should discuss this,” Tabitha said, leaning her elbows on the game table. Mark folded into himself and turned his glare on her, but with much more venom than the look he’d given his friend. “I think we-” he started, but apparently today he wasn’t allowed to finish a sentence.
Tabi slung her feet onto the table, waving her hand around animatedly as she spoke. “No, listen, why do you think trees have fingers? Like, I knew you were weird but I just thought-”
The metal legs of Mark’s folding chair scraped against the ground as he stood up and shoved Tabitha’s heavy boots down off the game table. “I wasn’t being literal!” he shrieked, much too loudly. Courtney, the other newbie, gripped Tabi’s wrist to keep her from tumbling out of her chair. “Hey man,” she hissed, “chill the heck out!”
Mark threw himself back down into his seat, arms crossed defensively over his chest. “I’ll ‘chill out’ when you let me do my job!” he said, glaring indignantly. Tabi and Courtney had only been playing with the Elders Three for a little bit less than a week, and this was how it went, nearly every day. There’d already been a pretty good amount of yelling when it was just Mark, Barry, and David; but now that there were two girls under the rock who took delight in pushing buttons and getting on nerves, it had only gotten worse. And Mark hated it.
He’d already been losing Control. He’d been losing so much of it recently, what with his only friends leaving him behind in favor of growing up and getting jobs and paying taxes and... kissing, or whatever. He squinted at David and Barry, sitting on the opposite side of the table. It’s not like he cared if they were kissing people. Or who they were kissing, or what gender they preferred to kiss, whether or not they liked it, no, he didn’t care about any of that mess. But that’s beside the point. The point was, he didn’t have Control.
But that was before his friends came back. And unfortunately for him, they’d come bearing conditions for their friendship: top of the list being No More Control. It had been hard for Mark to give up his Control - sometimes it felt like giving up everything. But it was what had to be done, because otherwise he’d hurt the people he cared about (again) and he’d be alone (again). He… didn’t want to be alone.
And so he was fine with giving up some of his Control. He still had his other things. He had food, he had sleep, he had his hygiene, he had the G&G campaign, he had the Creek Kids, he had his voice, his thoughts (mostly), and his body; and that was enough.
But then David had brought them along. There was a time when Mark would’ve killed (or at least horribly maimed) with one of his beloved replica samurai swords to get girls beneath Elder Rock. But, to be perfectly frank, Tabitha and Courtney weren’t exactly “his type.” (And, to be even more frank, he wasn’t exactly theirs, either.) Mark, at first, had (reluctantly) been willing to tolerate it - Tabi and Courtney were David’s friends, after all. They couldn’t be too bad.
And hot diggity dog, had he been wrong.
So, here he was, pouting like a child, waiting for someone to give him the go-ahead to keep on narrating. Except it didn’t seem like one would ever come, because apparently his friends (and Tabi and Courtney) found it much more enjoyable to mock him, rather than embark on the epic fantasy quest he’d spent several sleepless nights designing. He watched as everyone except for him joined in on the ‘haha look Mark thinks trees have fingers that’s so stupid and hilarious and let’s keep talking about it forever and ever and ever’ joke, hoping they’d notice him and realize that he was totally pissed and they should stop and let him get back to what he wanted to do.
He also hoped they’d continue to ignore him, so he wouldn’t have to explain all of that to them. After all, he wasn’t allowed to be selfish anymore, and the thoughts he was currently thinking happened to be very selfish indeed.
Thankfully, Barry eventually caught Mark’s eye and seemed to come to the - very accurate - conclusion that his feelings were hurt; he gathered everyone’s attention and got them to settle down. Barry was always good at that: both getting people’s attention, and being able to tell how Mark felt based on a look. Mark was grateful for it, because both skills often came in handy beneath Elder Rock.
Once all eyes were back on him, he cleared his throat and adjusted his glasses. “Alrighty. Back to the game, then.” He put on his Game Master voice. “After long hours of traveling, the party stumbles out of the forest, coated in mud and exhausted from clambering over the unforgiving woodland’s rough terrain. The party takes a quick moment to catch their breath, and soft, warm golden light and the distant din of a rowdy crowd draws your collective attention forwards, where you spot an inn - only a few minutes’ walk ahead of you.” He leaned back in his chair, tapping his fingers together in a slightly maniacal manner. “What do you do?”
Across the table, David hummed and chewed on the eraser of his pencil thoughtfully. Beside him, Barry shuffled through sheets of paper, glancing between them and Mark’s mischievous look. “Is this a trick?” Barry asked, furrowing his brow. Mark just shrugged. David tilted his head slightly and looked up. “What if we-”
“I want to burn down the inn!” Tabitha declared loudly. Interrupting people must’ve been her new favorite hobby or something, based on how freaking often she felt the need to do it. Across from her, David looked like a kicked puppy and stuck his pencil back in his mouth. Mark was too utterly offended to notice.
“Um, no?” he said flatly. David’s kicked puppy looked turned on him, now. Uh oh. Mark deflated like a little red balloon. “You said no more controlling,” David whined, adding on to the whole puppy metaphor and really terribly just egging the author on with it. Tabi nodded, despite having no idea what he was talking about. “Yeah! I’m just trying to play my role, here!” Courtney giggled, playfully slugging Tabitha in the arm. Mark looked to Barry for help. Save me!
But Barry just shrugged. Great, Mark was on his own. Again. Whatever! He was used to it, by now. He turned his attention back to Tabitha, jabbing his finger at her character sheet. “You’re not playing your role! Your character is true neutral! Unprovoked arson is reserved for chaotic evil.” Hah! Nobody could cut through that logic! His inn was saved. Satisfied, he sank back into his chair and gave Tabitha a smug look. She grunted and elbowed David. “Hey, this feels a little controlling, don’t you think, man?” she stage-whispered to him. Alright, that wasn’t fair at all. David would be on his side though, right?
“Umm…” David chewed a little harder on his pencil, looking back and forth between Mark (who looked sweaty and frustrated; so, the usual) and Tabitha (who looked kind of maniacal and possibly insane; again, the usual). “Yeah, Mark,” he said eventually. “Just let her roll for it.” Barry nodded. “It’s just a game, dude.”
Mark melted. Just a game. Yeah, right; because the several hours he spent every day world-building and coming up with intricate puzzles and painting mini-figures and writing plot and creating fun and interesting characters was just a game. Just a game, not his whole life. Not his very identity. He sighed. “Fine,” he snapped, shoving a set of dice in Tabitha’s direction. “Roll.”
She reached for the D6. Which was incorrect. Mark was thrilled. “That’s the wrong die,” he said, leaning forward to lecture her on the different dice and what they were all called and what each one was used for. Unfortunately for him, Barry noticed the obvious glint in his eyes that usually foreshadowed an infodump, so he went ahead and tossed a 20-sided die to Tabitha. “Here’s a D20,” he said. Tabitha caught it with two hands and gave him a thumbs-up. Mark threw himself dramatically back into his seat with a huff.
Tabi shook the die around in her hand, tongue between her teeth. “Come oooon! Mama needs to burn down an inn!” Courtney pumped her fists in the air. “Arson! Arson!” Oh, great, and of course it started a chant. Barry, David, and Tabitha joined in: “Arson! Arson! Arson!” What was it with teenagers and arson?! Mark pinched his nose bridge and sank down into his chair, chin tucked into his chest, arms crossed as tightly as possible. Just roll please just go ahead and roll dear God please just roll the die it’s not that hard roll it and fail and move on let’s all just get back to Mark’s lovely storytelling-
The die with too many sides suddenly flew out of Tabitha’s hands and clattered onto the game table. Mark watched intensely as it spun around the table, over graph paper and between minifigures, and he stared at it as hard as he could, hoping that maybe if he focused hard enough he could make it land a natural one through sheer willpower. The die began to slow down. Mark stared. It gave its final death-flop right at his fingertips. He stared harder.
Natural twenty.
Everybody (besides Mark, of course) cheered. He kept his eyes glued to the D20 and struggled to resist the urge to flip the table. Tabitha grinned at him, reaching across the table to grab her custom minifigure (Mark had begrudgingly 3D printed and painted it himself), which she plopped down in front of the little cardboard inn he’d haphazardly glued together the night before. Mark watched in horror as everyone laughed when Tabi slammed her fist into the fragile little inn, making obnoxious explosion noises as she destroyed the major plot point - and, by extension, Mark’s campaign.
He felt his chest get tight. He felt his throat close up. He felt his eyes get watery. He felt what little Control he had left slip between his fingers. And then they all looked at him - him, who was twisting his cape in his fists, lip quivering, on the verge of tears - and that was the last straw. He sprang up from his metal folding chair and flung himself towards the sliver of sunlight which was the entrance to Elder Rock. Mark scrambled out of it and sprinted off in a random direction, bursting into tears.
—
Barry popped his head over the edge of the hole, watching Mark retreat out into the Creek. Sometimes he forgot how inexperienced the dude was in the whole Emotional Regulation department. He frowned, listening to Mark’s pitiful sobbing and sniveling fade off into the distance. Welp... Barry had better go get him. He looked behind himself, back to David and the Witches, who were still sitting around the game table, watching Barry. He nodded towards the exit. “Well…”
David shrugged.
The girls shared confused glances.
Barry gracelessly clambered out of the hole, trudging off towards the trees to look for his friend.