Chapter Text
“The rain is coming down in thick sheets. It is pouring outside; like cats and dogs. The sky is tinted a dark, deep red. In the distance, around 100 feet away, you see a silhouette of a figure riding horseback. They’re holding a sword in the air. Through the distant roaring of the storm, you can hear a chant. It is Caroline the destroyer, she has come back for you. What do you do?”
“Fuck, Caroline?! I thought she was dead!”
“Yeah, wait, I totally thought we killed her!”
“Please don’t tell me the classmate that you hate is the big bad.”
“I cast Pass Without Trace.”
“Uh, wait, shit, what does that one do?” The man sitting at the head of the table asked, peering to one of his friends.
She grinned and held up one of her notecards. “It gives me and whoever I choose a plus ten to stealth checks. Which means all of us, yes, but also Artemis.” She shrugged, turning to a page in her notes. Another girl made an aww-ing noise and put a hand over her heart. ”Also, the way our last fight ended was pretty ambiguous, so I wrote down that I figured he was saving her for something.”
“Uh, what level spell is that, Charlotte?”
“Second level.”
“Fuck.”
“Druids, man,” Another male said and blew a curl up onto his forehead.
“Yeah, better than a bard!” The girl who awed giggled, slapping his arm playfully.
“Hey, fuck off! It’s hard to be the bard!”
“You know what it’s hard to be?” The last girl said, slapping her hand onto the table. “A kenku! The ‘only being able to use sounds and words you’ve heard and know well’ is a big issue if your character spent most of their life away from others! I love to talk, but I can barely do it...” She then pointed at a plate on the table, “Also, I did make those brownies for you. Please eat them. I’ve been practicing!”
The diligent note-taker of the group took one and bit into it slowly. She winced a little but hid it behind a smile. “They’re amazing, babe. You’re a fantastic cook.”
“Guys,” Mendel, their Dungeon Master and one of Marvin’s best friends, said, “Can we get back on track?”
“Oh, sorry Mendel,” Trina smiled and brushed some hair behind her ears. “Yeah, go ahead!”
“Okay, so, Root you cast this spell. And your silhouettes disappear into the pouring rain. Caroline, though, already knew you were there and had been tipped off beforehand,” The room erupts into chaos as the players at the table wonder who tipped them off. Charlotte desperately flips through her notes. Marvin slams his hands down on the table. Trina sits in shock. Cordelia is trying to get them to revolt against Mendel personally, “So, I want you all to make some stealth checks.”
“Plus ten, right? Because I will seriously take over this campaign.” Cordelia said and crossed her arms.
“Plus ten, promise.”
Trina picked up her light pink dice and rolled them. “I rolled a twenty-five!” She cheers, pumps her fists, laughs, and looks over at Charlotte to mouth a ‘thank you’.
Charlotte gripped her brightly saturated orange set of dice and rolled them. “So, it’s nineteen plus ten, twenty-nine.”
Cordelia glanced at her neat multi-colored d20. “Ok, so I rolled a fifteen. That’s plus the bonus. Charlotte, darling, thank you.”
“Nat one,” Marvin said suddenly. He stared down at his red die, feeling very much like it betrayed him. He would have to get a new set; this one was very obviously cursed. He raised his gaze to meet the looks of his party.
All of their faces were no longer smiling … except Mendel’s. He grinned at his friend. Mendel pulled his binder in front of him and flipped a couple of pages frantically. While the girls at the table glared and wished death on Marvin, Mendel laughed.
“Marvin, sweetie, I’m going to destroy you. Roll for initiative because you’re fighting me.” Trina hissed, cracking her knuckles.
“I can’t believe this. How could you do this to us?” Cordelia cried out, slamming her fist on the table, “Valar, my elf son, died last fight with Caroline!”
“I’m not responsible,” Marvin said quickly, putting his hands up, “I’m not the one who brought her back from the dead. I’m as outraged as you!”
“Guys,” Charlotte said with a small smile, “I’m sure there are other ways to settle this. Maybe since her real beef is with Perkin, she’ll leave William alone?”
Cordelia set her hand on her girlfriend’s shoulder. “Ever the optimist,” She said, shaking her puffy blond curls.
“Okay, so you rolled a nat one. You critically failed. Fantastic. You, not only manage to get the attention of Caroline the destroyer, but you try to alert your friends that she is coming and end up falling on your ass, hard. You take,” Mendel pauses to roll some die behind his big, stupid dungeon master vision blocker, “Eight damage and are made prone. Caroline approaches you and laughs at your sad state. What do you do?”
“Ah, fuck.” Marvin curses. “Okay, I-”
“Do the character voice, Marv!” Trina urges, putting a hand on his arm.
“Okay.” Marvin started slowly, before taking a deep breath slipping into a smooth rock sounding British man, “Well, hello darling. How are you today? It’s been a dreadfully long time.”
Mendel cleared his voice and pitched it as high as he could. “Nice to see you, Will. Except it is terrible to see you. Because last time I saw you, you almost killed me. With vicious mockery- whatever. Would you please tell me where your friend Perkin is? I believe I have some unfinished business with them and Artemis that I can’t just overlook.”
“Oh,” Marvin gave an easy smile, easily falling into character, “I’m afraid I have no clue where Perkin is. I can’t tell you anything about it, sorry.”
“Gonna need you to roll for deception, Marv.”
“Fuck you Mendel,” Marvin said in his regular voice. He picked up his dice and rolled them. The cursed dice. They would probably fuck this up somehow. “A seven, fuck!” It was totally the dice.
Mendel smiled to himself and rolled the dice for himself. “Yeah, no she sees through that completely. So, she glares at you and she’s like,” He stopped to fix his voice into something shrill and a little annoying, “Wow, Will, if you’re going to lie to me, you could at least do it well. I don’t have the time to do this with you or your friends again. I can finish you off just like I did your other friend, Valar.” And then Mendel fixed his voice. The next time he spoke he was filled with so much, insanely unearned pride, joy, and excitement. “And she points her sword at your neck. I’m going to need you to roll initiative, Marv.”
“Oh, shit. Are you guys not going to help me?” Marvin asks, whipping his head around to look at his friends when he makes eye contact with a very tall, very pretty boy, leaning against the closed door of their club room. He had beautiful tan skin and dark brown hair and eyes. He dressed quite fashionably and it looked like he was holding some sort of sports bag beside him. He was beautiful, Marvin realized. Beautiful and wearing a tiny gay pride pin. Marvin’s heart leapt through the roof. His palms began to sweat. He felt his whole face heat up. This beautiful guy was gay? If guys like him were gay, maybe it would be alright if Marvin was … The boy smiled at him and waved after a few seconds of staring. Marvin furrowed his eyebrows at him. He nodded his head toward the blue eyed boys friends. The boy in question opened his mouth to ask something but was cut off.
“If we help,” Trina inquired, looking over to Mendel, “Then Caroline is surprised, right? So she doesn’t get a turn?” She turned to the other girls at the table, and to Marvin, too, but his attention was elsewhere. “Alright, so, hypothetically if we all roll for initiative but one of us comes in after each turn, we could just have three turns of her being surprised?”
Mendel blinked, opening his mouth, “Well, if one of you was hidden, I don’t think it would be much of a stretch for her to expect the other two to be around.” He hummed and tapped the end of his pencil to his lips. “Although, Trina, I will give you some inspiration. Good thinking!”
Charlotte pouted, “So she gets inspiration for that but when I suggested tying Will to the ceiling to drop him on the enemy like a spider, I was told I couldn’t and that it would kill him.” She crossed her arms.
“Hey, I didn’t tell you that you couldn’t do that! That was Marvin!”
“I think it was a wonderful idea, dear.” Cordelia mused and kissed her girlfriend’s cheek tenderly. She grabbed her hand and ran her thumb over the smooth skin over her knuckles. Charlotte giggled and pecked her girlfriend on the lips. The boy at the door smiled at them softly. Marvin sucked in a sharp breath at his face. God, he really was beautiful.
“So, initiative. Marv, did you roll yet?”
They waited.
“Marv, sweetie,” Trina hummed, putting a hand on his arm and squeezing. Noticing his staring, she followed his eyesight. “Oh!” She exclaimed softly. A light pink filled her cheeks and she played nervously with her hair. “Hi! Are you lost?”
The boy shook his head. “No, this is the D&D club, right?” He pushed himself off of the door frame and walked toward the table. He lingered, though, not sitting down and not touching it.
Cordelia nodded, her blond curls bobbing, “Uh, yeah! We’re the D&D club.” She raised an eyebrow skeptically. The hand that gripped Charlotte’s held on a little tighter. “If I may ask, why are you here?”
The boy smiled, bright and full of teeth but not in a way that had any malice. A genuine one. One that radiated through the whole room and entranced Marvin upon seeing it. He was lightheaded. “I was looking to play, but it’s not really something anyone I’m currently friends with is interested in. I think it’s cool, all the fantasy and fighting and stuff.” He looked around the table and skimmed his fingers along it. “Can I sit?”
“Yeah,” Marvin said almost immediately. All of his friends turned to him quickly. Anxious looks passed over their faces. They were never the most popular of kids, the six of them were actually loners before they were all drawn to the club for different reasons. Most of them had no friends before joining this club, so seeing a pretty boy like him flash a big smile at them probably made them scared of potential bullying. “Yeah, have a seat. You’re good.” Marvin assured him and motioned to the open seat directly across from Mendel at the head of the table. “So, you said you wanted to play D&D? Why?” He questioned with a small smile.
The boy took the seat offered to him and hummed. “My brother plays it at college with his friends. He says it’s actually really fun when everyone is there.”
Some of the tension left from Charlotte’s shoulders. “Oh! I thought you were just going to make fun of us for being nerds and playing,” She stopped and made her voice appropriately nerdy, “Dungeons and Dragons. Because only nerds play D&D.” Cordelia giggled at her girlfriend’s silly antics. Charlotte leaned over and kissed her girlfriends cheek gently.
“No, no.” The boy shook his head, his hair bouncing a little with it. Marvin noted how soft it looked. He wondered what it would be like to run his hair through it. “That’s not the case at all! It just … looked fun.” He shrugged a little and looked around the table. “Can I have one of those?” The mysterious pretty boy motioned to the brownies. At Cordelia’s enthusiastic nod, he grabbed one and took a bite. The pretty boy’s eyes widened and he froze almost instantly. Slowly, he swallowed large, set the brownie down, and smiled. “Delicious. Thank you.”
Almost everyone at the table, sans Cordelia, relaxed almost instantly. They all knew at once that he wasn’t someone who wanted to come in there and hurt them, or mock them, or make fun of them. Someone who wanted that wouldn’t have complimented Cordelia’s baking.
“I’m Whizzer, by the way,” He said, extending his hand with a smile, “Nice to meet you.”
Mendel smiled at him hesitantly and shook his hand. “Hi! I’m Mendel, your dungeon master! This is Trina, her boyfriend Marvin,” Marvin winced just a little and hoped no one would notice. Whizzer raised an eyebrow but said nothing to him in response to his reaction, “Those two over there are Charlotte and Cordelia.”
Whizzer waved at all five of them. “It’s nice to meet all of you. I’ve been trying to work up the courage to come in here for months,” He laughed, but it sounded humorless. Nothing at all like the laugh that stunned Marvin so much just moments ago. “So, I don’t really know how to play. Is it okay if I ask some questions while you’re playing?”
“Yeah,” Marvin said, again very quickly, “Yeah, don’t worry about it. We all had to start somewhere, right?” He asked and smiled a shy, genuine smile. He then turned away and quickly dug through his bag. “Here,” He slid a thick book across the table to him, “This the Player’s Handbook. It’s not super mandatory to read, but it is a nice thing to have around.”
Whizzer cracked it open slowly and whistled real low. It made Marvin’s heart race for very unexplainable reasons. “Wow, it’s, uh, kinda intimidating.”
“Don’t worry about reading it right away,” Mendel mused, picking up a set of dice and rattling them in his hand. “You can just watch and observe for right now, okay?” Whizzer nodded, hesitant, and Mendel nodded back at him, so much more sure and firm. “Alrighty then! Guys, roll for initiative.”
“What is initiative?” Whizzer asked quickly.
All four of them realized at once that this would, perhaps be a lot more work than they thought.
“When you fight you have to have an order.” Charlotte explained with a smile. “Whoever rolls the highest goes first. Everyone goes in the order of their roll on a scale of highest to lowest.” She looked around at her friend’s dice on the table. “So, like, Trina goes first, then me, then Marvin, then Cordelia.”
The boy nodded enthusiastically.
As it turns out, Whizzer is quite the attentive listener. He asks many good questions and even takes notes on particular ideas he doesn’t quite understand. During the most dramatic of times, he gasps and awes and listens like it’s the most interesting thing he has ever heard. Marvin finds it adorable and endearing. He wishes that he could have Whizzer there all the time, asking questions and making little words of awe and commentary.
When they start to wrap up, Whizzer looks a little sad, actually. His shoulders drooped when Mendel announced that the session was over. He poked out his bottom lip just a little. Marvin thinks about how soft it probably is. “I was really interested. When are you guys playing next?”
“Next Thursday, after school.” Mendel said with a smile. He wrung his hands together anxiously. “Would you like to come to that one, too? Or maybe even play it yourself? One of us could help you with character creation so you could play next time.”
The tall boy’s whole face lit up like a light. “Wait, really?!” He asked loudly, excitedly. It reminded Marvin of a puppy. “I still don’t understand, like, anything but you’d let me play!”
Cordelia smiled at him in that sugary sweet way she has. “Of course, Whizzer! The more the merrier, right guys?” She asked, turning to her friends. They all nodded emphatically. “Here, we can add you to our group chat so that you can keep in contact with us and make plans to help with your character sheet and stuff.”
Whizzer nodded and took out his phone. He gave Cordelia his contact information, who promptly added him to the group chat.
baking bad has added Whizzer to tight knit dumbasses.
lil marv: wait what
lil marv: also please, please stop changing my name to lil marv i cannot take this discrimination.
“Little Marv?” Whizzer questioned, looking up and into Marvin’s blue eyes. Marvin swears he could drown in the deep brown of Whizzer’s eyes. The edges of his lips quirked up in a questioning smirk. “Whoever they are, they don't seem to be too fond of that name, Marv .” He drawled, purposely emphasizing the Marv. Marvin hoped, desperately that no one else in the room could hear his heart battering against his ribcage like a jackhammer.
Marvin laughed, running a hand through his thick curls and getting scared his hand would get stuck. He withdrew his hand before it could, though. Didn’t want to make a fool of himself in front of this pretty boy right now, after all. “He’s my little brother, Jason. He looks just like me, apparently. So, Trina calls him my mini-me.”
“He acts just like you too,” Trina murmured. At Marvin’s glare, she elbowed him in the ribs. “Cheer up! Your brother takes after you! I don’t think that's a bad thing,” She cooed and leaned in. He quickly averted his gaze and entire face away from Trina’s invasive lips that she always insisted belonged to him. Instead, he took the time to look at Whizzer. Trina sighed and looked at the taller male also. “He used to be part of our group but, uh … he was banned.”
Whizzer blinked. “Why was he banned?”
The whole table sat there in remembrance. Whizzer would swear later that all five of them had glazed over eyes at that moment. What happened on that day … Another reason not to mess with Jason…
“He … well, he is a dangerously good wizard.”
Whizzer laughed uneasily, but nodded all the same. “Okay, I feel like that means only bad things happened with him.” He pulled out his phone and typed a response to Marvin’s brother.
Whizzer: haha ur lil marv. he is already pretty short so i wldnt wanna see a smaller one
linguini: Okay, First Of All, Rude.
lil marv: well, marvin...
Whizzer: why the hell is ur name linguini.
linguini: excuse me do u have a problem with linguini. i love linguini
lil marv: we know
baking bad: we know
simp ceo: we know
the smart one: we know
mom friend: we know
Whizzer: WHO IS SIMP CEO.
simp ceo: THE DM. do they know i can kill them...
linguini: im still waiting for mendel and trina to both die on may 27th at 8.
mom friend: marv quit threatening our deaths.
linguini: no.
When Marvin looked up from his phone, he could swear he saw Whizzer grinning, happy and wide at his phone before pocketing it. He caught Marvin staring at him and laughed a loud, boisterous laugh that could keep a whole room captive and the sound twinkled like bells in his ears. His heart beat to the sound of his laugh. Whizzer being here, in there club … This could be a really, really good idea.
“What’s up, Marv? Like what you see?”
Scratch those former thoughts, this was going to be hell.