"It’s never been my thing, though of course neither is murdering Danes."

"...Apparently all the rolls in it were real.  Like, she wrote it in order, and actually randomized the outcome of each game.  Which is I guess cool as a gimmick even though I think I'd prefer to read a completely different story in this same setting if there was one."

"Isn’t there? The fanfic engine has failed you?"

"It's pretty niche.  There's fanfic but it's all, you know, of the characters.  At least that I've found."

"Gotcha."

"Do you - maybe I shouldn't ask.  Uh.  For media recommendations."

"I have an unambiguous favorite media but it is not a book, if you want a book you have to narrow it down."

"Well, I was thinking - Hamlet is much less niche, but I don't know whether I expect there to be - oh.  Stoppard, actually.  Never mind.  Uh, what's your unambiguous favorite?"

"Demon aerial ballet called Atriama. It's been performed by angels and fairies too if that helps."

"...Some."

"The fairies have to do more mechanical stage effects but that is arguably an improvement from, like, a craft perspective."

"Arguably."  He looks at his hands again.  This time Cam can see that they're shaking.  Clement extends and clenches his fingers a few times, maybe to try and steady them or maybe in an attempt to cover for the checking.

"Is that like. Symptoms of something that perhaps in a happier timeline I could try to diagnose for you. Or just a thing that happens when you're stressed."

"- It's a thing that happens when I'm stressed.  Which, um, makes it weird that I wasn't having it happen earlier in this conversation, but maybe it doesn't track perfectly.  Probably it wouldn't.  Doesn't."

"I don't believe I've ever been credited with a soothing manner."

"You can sort of imagine a world where bodies - human bodies - are unambiguously good at things, and so even as much as shaking is - real, it - you don't want to be doing it during the very highest stakes part; you'd want yourself to be more collected then, and you can - you're allowed fall apart a little bit after..."

"Sounds familiar as a theory, I'm not up to date on whether it's fact."

He doesn't have a response to that other than breathing heavily and looking like he's trying not to have a panic attack.

...Cam goes back to Hamlet.

"Have you read Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead?  Or seen it?" he gasps after a while.

"I've seen it, the original movie."

"Which one is that?  From - from maybe 2000 or so?  Or was there an earlier one?"

"It would have been around then but I can't look it up right now."

"I can."  He does.  "1990 looks like the earliest one, yeah."

"That's the one. It wasn't the year it came out but it was within, oh, a couple decades."