Chapter 1

A little snow generally never stopped anyone in the Midwest, but when Colin opened the door to let Edward in, what was coming down outside was more than a little.

“Looks like the weather forecast’s wrong. Again,” said Colin.

Edward stomped his boots and shrugged off his coat. Huge flakes melted in the warmth of Colin’s little apartment, glistening as they warmed and evaporated. Colin watched Edward pull off his hat and pat his hair back into place, then looked out the window, feeling guilty. He definitely had a bit of a crush on Edward. He peered out the window through the flakes and graying sky down to the street, traffic churning up slush on the pavement, while Edward took off his boots in the old wooden chair Colin kept by the door for that purpose.

“PJ says he has to work overtime tonight,” said Edward.

“What?” Colin turned back, frowning. “Hailey texted me and said she’s not coming because she’s sick. Tim still wasn’t sure if he wanted to go without her.”

“They don’t have to do everything together.”

“Yeah, I think they actually like each other.”

Edward stood and shrugged.

“Whatever,” he said, and walked into the main living area.

Colin followed and flicked on the lights. He wondered if Edward was jealous of them. Colin certainly was. He was having a rough winter; his girlfriend had dumped him on New Year’s Eve and he was still recovering.

“More loot for us,” said Colin. He sat in the chair across from where he’d tossed his dice on the coffee table, wishing things were less awkward between him and Edward. He didn’t even know why they were awkward; Edward didn’t hate him, as far as he knew, and Colin felt something strikingly opposite from hatred for Edward.

“Anything new with you?” asked Edward. He added his bag of dice to the table and leaned back.

“Nope. Work’s same as always. You?”

Edward shook his head and pulled out his phone.

“Anything to drink?”

“Maybe later,” said Edward. He snorted. “It still says we’re only supposed to get a dusting of snow.”

“Well, I stocked up on frozen pizzas so we won’t have to go out for food.”

“Walking home is going to be shit.”

Edward lived a few blocks away and almost never drove, mostly because it was the only exercise he got. Somehow he was still average—Colin envied him. He had to learn to get over his fear and go to the gym a couple times a week to make sure he kept his shape as close to where he wanted as possible. When he didn’t, his dysphoria got bad fast.

“You can crash here if you want. The couch isn’t a mimic.”

Meg’s text came through then, to both Edward’s and Colin’s phones. Colin stared down at the words with a mixture of disappointment and thrill. He was going to miss his other friends, of course, but he and Edward hadn’t spent any time alone together since before Lexi dumped him.

“Oh come on, Meg, Iwalked through it,” said Edward.

“She’s probably right. Even if she is DM, it doesn’t seem worth it with so many people gone, and she has to drive a ways. Roads’ll be bad by the time we’re done.”

“What do you want to do now? Movie?”

Colin hesitated.

“I wanted to play.”

“Yeah, well, Meg’s not here.”

“But our character sheets are.” Everyone left their papers at Colin’s, and he pulled them out from under the manuals he had stacked on the corner of the coffee table. He dug out Edward’s human fighter, Samson, and shoved the sheet over. “We won’t change anything.”

“I did get a look at some of Meg’s maps last time, and it has been a while since I ran anything…” Edward took the sheet and selected dice. “Sure, let’s fuck around for a while.”

All of Colin’s disappointment turned to thrill.

He bit back the urge to say he did want to fuck around and pulled out his character sheet instead. It was going to be fun playing one-on-one with Edward, who had the kind of play style where he went along with most things and was slightly more character focused than battle driven. Colin liked that—while the stats and cool fights were fun, sometimes he just wanted weird situations and banter.

“Okay, so last time we fought our way into the castle through the underground dungeon. We came up a trapdoor into a room with no doors and a window that kept showing different views.”

“And we argued about what to do for forty minutes until Meg called it,” said Colin, remembering. She was pissed by the end. Colin’s half-elf thief, Elm, hadn’t been able to find any secret ways in or out, and the trapdoor had disappeared behind them, so their party’s suggestions were all along a spectrum of where exactly to try to explode the castle wall.