Archive of Our Own

“This is my list of requests,” Grace practically whispered as he handed Stratt a sheet of paper meticulously folded into quarters. His hands trembled slightly, and he quickly hid them by crossing his arms. “I’ll understand if you have other priorities at the moment, but I’d appreciate it if you could get these for me as a favor.”

A favor. Since when did she owe him favors? Or anyone?

Eva leaned back in her chair, running her fingers over the surface of the folded paper as she considered what Ryland might have requested and, more importantly, what could possibly have embarrassed him this much. Condoms and medication were readily available in the infirmary and distributed freely and discreetly to the entire crew, so there was no reason for Ryland's adorably flushed cheeks; and, of course, as his only sexual partner, there was no reason for him to be this shy about it—if he needed anything of an erotic nature, he would probably find it in Eva's room, where they often experimented with that sort of thing. Grace wasn't exactly modest when it came to sex, just… curious. Dedicated.

He liked learning new ways to please her and, God, he had proven himself far better at it than Stratt had ever expected. He had an ego, too, and was often insufferably smug behind the privacy of the four walls of her cabin, and Eva had never seen him this embarrassed before: avoiding her gaze—his blue eyes looking almost gray beneath the office's harsh artificial lighting, she noticed—whenever Stratt tried to catch his stare.

“What have you written on this?” She asked, rising from her chair to close the office door and give them privacy.

“It's nothing, really.” Grace scratched the back of his neck, turning toward Stratt with a weak laugh. “I just thought about what you said regarding this mission: that if there was anything you could do to make it less stressful for us, you'd do your best to provide it. And, well, there was something I used to do in San Francisco that I miss.”

“Mm, ok?!”

“I've been here for a few years now and, you know, I've never actually made a request for anything.”

Eva nodded to show she was listening, then let her head tilt to the side in a not-so-subtle attempt to check the time on the watch around his wrist.

“Get to the point. I have paperwork to fill out.”

Grace cleared his throat. “I'd like to play Dungeons and Dragons.”

Right. What? Eva leaned her hips against the edge of the desk, gripping the wood as though her rigid posture might, for the first time in her life, actually give way. She was somewhere between surprised and intrigued. The world was freezing to death, and her lead scientist in the field of astrophage research—her second in command and, God help her, her partner—was trembling over a game? A game about dungeons?

“I don't think I understand.”

“Never mind, it's stupid.” Ryland said, looking desperate to bolt from the office. He tried to take the paper back, but Eva stretched out her arm and held the list out of his reach. “Forget it. It's not important. I wouldn't even have anyone to play with.”

“I can arrange that for you.”

“No!” He practically shouted, leaning farther over Eva's body across the desk and reaching for the paper with his fingertips, his chest pressing firmly against her breasts in such a compromising position that she was surprised he didn't notice the moan that escaped her. Did Ryland really care about this game that much? “Everyone's busy, and a D&D campaign would require a lot from them. I wouldn't want to divert their efforts toward something so personal. Or waste government resources.”

Eva laughed.

“Ryland, darling, it's just a game.”

“It's more than that to me.”

“If it's more than that, then let me help you.”

He sighed in defeat, giving up on trying to retrieve the paper. Unable to stop herself from feeling sorry for him, Stratt cupped Grace's face in her hand and stroked his beard.

“Why are you so embarrassed?” She asked, squeezing his cheek so Grace couldn't look away this time. How strange… he was so beautiful when he looked as though he were about to cry.

“Most of these people miss their homes and their families. They bargain and trade resources for a few hours on the phone with their children,” Ryland murmured, resting his cheek against Eva's palm. “But everything I have is on this ship, and apart from my students and Marissa, I don't feel like I left much behind.”

Eva nodded for him to continue.

“You must have figured out that I never had many friends in school or college, and relationships were always difficult for me, but through all of those stages, I had D&D to distract me.” Grace shrugged, and Stratt noticed him trying to suppress a tremor in his lower lip. “Of course, I never had friends to play with, so I DM'd for other people instead, and it was always a lot of fun.”

Stratt wet her lips as she considered Grace's confession—he was extraordinarily vulnerable when talking about Dungeons & Dragons which, despite how silly it might have seemed, was the closest he had ever come to talking about his past. Eva decided she could put his request down in the expense paperwork as a reward or incentive for his work.

She knew Ryland worked better when he was content, and he had been stuck on his astrophage research for two months now—whatever it was he actually did with those alien microorganisms—but, at first, sex had been enough to help him clear his mind and focus on his work. Yet, much like a dog growing accustomed to the taste of its food, Ryland seemed to have grown accustomed to sleeping in Eva Stratt's bed.

It was a little irritating, actually, the way she could no longer manipulate him with it.

Eva unfolded the list to examine his requests, allowing Grace to rest his forehead against hers as he followed along.

“A kiss?”

“If possible, please.” He said, pointing to the words written on the paper. “I emphasized the ‘please.’”

Eva massaged the crease between her eyebrows, letting out a quiet laugh.

“We've been together for two years now. You don't need to ask me for a kiss anymore.”

He didn't look entirely convinced, his lips twisting into a straight line. “How else am I supposed to know you want to kiss me too?”

“We sleep together, Ryland. I can still smell your stupid cologne on my clothes.”

Grace shrugged, completely unfazed.

“Consent comes first.”

“Whatever.” Eva let out a soft sigh, unwilling to argue about the nuances of their relationship with Ryland when she had only a few minutes before a meeting with the leaders of nine countries. “But you have my permission to kiss me whenever you want.”

Before Grace could give her a skeptical look and launch into some ethical argument about respect, Eva cupped his face in both hands and swallowed his surprised gasp beneath the firm press of her lips, kissing him hard enough to make him shift his posture and arch his back, his hips instinctively pushing forward. Eva then traced his lower lip with her tongue and slowly coaxed his mouth open, brushing her nails along the beard at his jaw and guiding his head to the side—to make their faces fit together more naturally as they kissed.

The last thing Stratt heard before the alarm went off was Ryland's breathless breathing dissolving into a low moan when she pushed him back by the chest.

“You can go now.” She said, wiping the lipstick from his lips with her fingers and stepping away from the desk, idly playing with the paper between her fingers. “I'll take care of your list, but I'm busy today.”

Grace nodded, but didn't move.

“Ryland, you have to go. I'm about to join a meeting.”

“I know, I know, I'm sorry… It’ll only take a minute.”

Eva frowned as she sat behind her desk and clicked on the message notification, trying to ignore the man standing there with his hands clasped in front of his hips.

“Are you hard right now?”

“Yeah… a little.”

She laughed.

“Just don't make any noise.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

The first time Stratt and Grace played Dungeons & Dragons, they were lying on her bed; Grace’s face was still between her legs, her fingers stroking his short blond locks—soaked with her juices— plastered to Ryland’s forehead because of the force with which Eva had ground her cunt against his face.

Grace gasped, his gaze still fixed on Stratt’s breasts; almost all the blue of his irises consumed by the darkness of his dilated pupils. His nose was reddened where she’d ridden him and glistened with moisture, but Ryland seemed to be in heaven.

Eva thought they’d take a hot shower, eat (something other than her pussy), and then go to sleep, cuddled up as usual, but Ryland surprised her by saying, “I finished the campaign.”

Eva looked down, watching him between her thighs, as radiant as a child on Christmas morning.

“You don't seriously want to play this now, do you?”

“Please? You made your character sheet, we're both here, and that's literally the entire party.”

She rolled her eyes but didn't protest, getting out of bed to take a shower while Ryland changed the sheets and set up their "table"—which would probably end up being the bed, the only real open space in the ship's tiny cabin.

Eva decided her character would be a dhampir monster hunter who fed primarily on blood and psychic energy. Since Ryland had to adapt a five-player campaign for just one person, she thought it would be interesting if her character's backstory provided an explanation for the unusual situation: Kara didn't travel with other companions because none of them had survived their attempts to get close to her. Dhampirs, Stratt discovered, were remarkably similar to vampires, except they weren't immortal and could walk in sunlight, which was an advantage both for the progression of the game and for Kara's survival. There were many ways to become a dhampir, but Eva chose the most obvious one: the daughter of a human woman and a vampire, with ties to Castle Ravenloft. To help her character, Grace said he would play a rogue “NPC,” whatever that meant, “An aetherian named Caelith who lost his wings after leaving the Veil of Mists and is now condemned to watch the sky and stars from afar.”

They were in their session zero, having dinner in Ryland's laboratory with Carl playing something on his phone when Stratt, holding the two enormous books she'd had to read in order to play Dungeons & Dragons, had to restrain herself from wringing her most valuable scientist's neck with her bare hands.

“You created a new class?”

“Oh, no, no. I just mixed a few things together. Aetherians are homebrews that are pretty popular in the D&D community.”

Eva's eye twitched. She couldn't believe she'd clung to those manuals as though they were the sacred texts of the geeks, only to discover that she apparently had complete freedom to alter the classes whenever necessary for the story.

“What is an aetherian?” Carl asked, holding out his hand for some of Ryland's Skittles.

“An ethereal race of winged beings with a deep connection to the sky and stars.”

“Ah, okay.” Carl answered without the slightest desire to explore the meaning behind those words—completely accustomed to ignoring the things Ryland said.

“I brought snacks.”

Grace brought her back to the present, sitting cross-legged on the perfectly made bed with maps spread across the mattress, dice, papers, and several pens. He was wearing nothing but his boxers and glasses again. The whole scene was so domestic and ridiculous that, for a moment, Eva almost forgot who they were.

“Twizzlers aren't a snack.”

“Oh, no, no, those are for me.” Grace pointed to a plate of sandwiches on her side of the bed. “Those and the diet coke are yours.”

“Um, thank you.”

He smiled, looking up from the notebook in his lap. “Kiss?”

“We just—”

“I know! I know… kiss?”

Eva approached the bed, rubbing her temple with her fingertips, but reluctantly pressed a quick kiss to his lips. It wasn't unusual for Grace to patiently wait for Stratt to be in the mood to kiss him, but the tenderness in his voice and the attentiveness in his eyes surprised her every time.

Eva sat at the farthest edge of the bed, positioning herself so she couldn't peek over the GM scre… Ugh, she could hardly believe the names of Ryland's nerdy things were starting to come naturally to her.

“You awaken seemingly from a dream, inside individual prison cells in the dungeons of a dark, gloomy, and freezing castle. There is no sound except for the soft drops of water falling against the lower bars of your enclosure. Outside, there are four hideous creatures. They don't seem to notice you, but they're patrolling the area as though your presence there is nothing out of the ordinary. What do you do?”

Stratt takes a bite of her sandwich, reading through her character's list of abilities.

“Because Kara is a dhampir, she can see perfectly well in the dim light of the cell. So she approaches the bars and tests the strength of the metal, shaking them in her hands while looking for a way out.”

Ryland nodded, biting his pen. “Roll for perception.”

“Eleven.”

“The prolonged exposure to moisture from the leaking ceiling has left the bars rusty and rough. They cut Kara's hands when she grips them, but they also wobble loosely. You realize that, with enough force, you could knock some of the bars loose. However, the noise caused by your curiosity has drawn the attention of the creatures guarding the cells.”

At first, Eva was embarrassed to act out her character, the voices and mannerisms falling far short of Ryland's performance—with every new discovery and development in the story, he embodied the creatures and their nuances so completely that, eventually, Eva began to see the game as a stage play... Everything happened so quickly, in the blink of an eye, their food was gone, Kara had met Caelith (Grace's character, who served as the castle lord's adviser), Stratt had rolled her first “natural 20,” and she had slaughtered a horde of goblins, freeing Caelith from a mind-control spell.

“That's all for today.” Ryland said with a yawn, closing his notebook. “What did you—”

“No!”

“What?”

“You can't end the session like that! What happened to them? Who was that man?”

He laughed.

“You'll find out next session. That's how it works.”

“Ryland!”

“Yes?”

“You're cruel.”

“I know. I'm sorry.” Eva rubbed the exhaustion from her eyes, feeling the first rays of sunlight finally reach her body stretched out across the bed. Her dice glowed softly in the morning light. “Kiss?”

“I don't kiss people who don't deserve it.”

Ryland sighed, regretting, for the first time, ever creating this campaign.

It took them six months to reach the end of the campaign, and Eva still couldn't say exactly when she'd become genuinely invested in the entire mystical universe of Dungeons & Dragons. Somehow, though, it had become precisely what she and Ryland needed to keep going, because sometimes—or rather, almost always—the weight of their work was too heavy to carry, and sex, messy and dirty and often careless, had stopped being the most effective way to empty their minds. Eva realized, with some unease, that she slept with Ryland because she loved him, and rolled the dice because his body had ceased to be a distraction from reality and instead become a familiar shadow she could reach for with an outstretched hand in the dimness of the room. In a few months, she would be in jail and he would return to his life as a professor in San Francisco, but for now, she has this.

“Oh.” He choked out a strange breath, resting his forehead against his hand and hunching behind the DM screen on the other side of the table. “How much HP do you have left?”

“Six.”

Ryland growled and began flipping desperately through the books beside him as though searching for a way out.

“What’s happening?”

“Give me a second.” It actually took Grace five full minutes before he finally looked up again, a strange determination burning in his eyes. “Bane, the god of tyrannical oppression, terror, and hatred, rises from the ground in a cloud of smoke. The flames tremble, the air grows still, and you feel the full weight of the terrible lord’s presence settle into your very bones. Bane then claims the temple as though everything within it belongs to him; shadows crawl across the walls and floor, and darkness slowly spreads throughout the city. With one fist raised toward you, he prepares to deliver the killing blow.”

“Oh, fuck…”

“Caelith begins crawling toward Kara; every breath leaving his lungs is one of the last his weakened body can manage. He drags himself through the pool of his own blood, trembling hands already cold as they stretch toward her. ‘Kara…’ he whispers, an aetherian of light swallowed by darkness, searching her face for a reason to survive. ‘Take me instead,’ he tells Bane, who regards him with curiosity. ‘Let her live. Take me.’ Bane is not a merciful god, but he is a strategist, and the opportunity unfolding before him proves far more interesting than killing a simple monster hunter. With Caelith at his side, Bane will be able to enter the Shimmering Isles.”

“No, no, what are you doing?”

“Caelith conjures invisible hands to keep Kara from reaching him while Bane, wearing an enormous and terrifying smile, closes his hand around Caelith and disappears with his followers. Leaving Kara alone in her temple… End of campaign.”

Eva stifled a breath behind her hand, staring at the dice scattered across the table, her mind suddenly blank and her ears ringing. A tightness seized her chest, along with a strange urge to cry, despite the fact that Ryland was sitting right in front of her, very much alive and not actually being carried away by some merciless god.

“You… When you rolled your dice, I would have died in the attack from Bane’s followers, wouldn’t I?”

Grace gave her an embarrassed smile. “I couldn't let that happen. Caelith couldn't either.”

“Ryland, he’ll never get his wings back. He’ll never see the stars again. That’s cruel. You should have let Kara die. She doesn’t care if the world is swallowed by darkness!”

“I know, but Caelith cares. It’s okay. He’s not dead yet.”

“I want to save him.”

Grace laughed.

“Next campaign, maybe.”

She rubbed her eyes and closed the notebook in front of her—there would be no next campaign, because they would never see each other again in a few months, and these things took time to prepare, just as all of Eva’s efforts would soon be devoted to the launch of Hail Mary. “Thank you for saving me.”

Ryland leaned across the table with a smile and, for the first time, kissed her without asking. “I’d make that choice every time, you know.”