Dirt Lifter | Craig of the Creek High School AU

Dungeons and Dragons is for nerds and gay people

"Can you do me a favor? A paid favor." Kelsey ran to keep up with Craig as he booked it to his next class. She was a good half-foot shorter than him, and needed the speed to keep up with his gait.

In the halls was one of the few times they could actually talk during school, but Craig was a bit preoccupied to have a nice slow chat. "What is it?"

"I'm joining this new Dungeons and Dragons campaign- slow down, man-"

He started to walk, but stayed fast enough to make it to the physics classroom on the other side of the school in time for his test.

"Thank you. Anyway," she continued, staring straight ahead. "New campaign, different group than usual, it's these guys at the library, and it's really prestigious and elitist and to join you need your character sheet drawn up in color and I don't want mine to look like shit because I can't draw. I want to make a good first impression." She turned to him. "Can you draw it?"

Craig was currently reviewing friction forces formulas in his head (he will not let those make him fail another test), so it took a beat to process her words. "Um..."

"I'll pay you!" she blurted out. "Like I said. I have money, it doesn't have to be a friend thing."

He now gave her proposal full attention. Despite probably not having the time, and not having drawn in forever, money would be nice. He needed some funds for his snack-and-expensive-coffee habits that his Dad was starting to get on his case for. His artistic skills probably hadn't waned that much since... whenever he'd last drawn.

Besides, it was Kelsey. He couldn't say no to her. "What's your character?"

"Uh, Roya the orc rogue. They're green, and uh, have a cool belt, and..." she waved her hand, swiping away her thoughts. "Hey, I'll give you my sketch and some notes and you can take it from there. But beware," she said, ominously. "It's really bad. Just a draft, and the sketch is blob people. That's why you're drawing my real one."

He hadn't agreed to it yet, but she must have sensed he would. "I'll see what I can do."

After dinner, he took a good look at the reference sheet.

She gave him the notes after his physics test (which he thought he did pretty well on, but he'll hold his breath until grades came out). The notes, which included physical characteristics, personality traits, and backstory, took up two sides of a sheet of A4 paper, and Kelsey had tiny handwriting. Granted, a portion of that was her sketch, which was nowhere as bad as she made it out to be. Like most things she's made, she went all in for 'just a draft'. Writing was her specialty, but she wasn't a bad artist by any means.

Craig knew she got in her head about things sometimes- Doesn't everybody?- so he'll give her a pass, but he had expected to freestyle the design a little bit. All the notes gave him many possible starting points, though, so he picked out two; the orc was green and fat.

He googled "Shrek" as a reference, shoved the Spanish papers that he'll finish later aside, and picked up a stubby pencil.

His hand was cramping when he glanced at the clock above him.

He had been drawing for two hours straight.

"Crap!" He dropped his pencil and pushed himself away from the desk. "Nononononono-" How did he look track of so much time? He had homework he needed to get done. Those papers that he had put on his desk were supposed to be a reminder, and he just swept them aside.

"Okay, it's okay, you can do the..." But he couldn't even figure out what came after the "the", the fine details kept catching on the snares inside his head, and he was freaking doodling instead of doing the two assignments that were due tomorrow, and he-