A Bet To Lose, Chapter 19 free porn video

Knowing he was dreaming the whole time, Richard was a knight in gleaming, light-pink armor with a bright pink rose on his shield and a large pink feather crest on his head. Susie was behind him, sitting elegantly on her white marble throne, the gossamer threads of her gown scarcely hiding her sex. An army of snake-creatures and one particularly vile slug besieged their castle, swarming into the open gate and trying to transform him and mutilate his mind, magics pouring out in a visible wave. His shield absorbed all of it, and he pointed with his longsword and they simply started dying. The slug burbled out 'not again' before shriveling up as if it were immersed in salt. One snake's brain exploded out its nose, another simply seized and collapsed, others died in even more ways that Richard didn't fully perceive, most of them exceptionally violent. He did use the sword for its normal purpose at some point, but it wasn't clear how or where. Something else, something that looked vaguely like a tyrannosaurus with longer arms and scimitars for fur, was watching him and chuckling in amusement. 'You have done well, my disciple,' it said, and its voice was an irrevocable delete button. Richard woke up taking slow, deep breaths, still feeling the rush, the panoply of emotions, some of them indescribable, as the morning sun illuminated his room. He hadn't had a dream anywhere near that immersive, that intense, since elementary school. He turned to his right, wanting to tell Susie what he had dreamt, but of course he was in his own bed and she wasn't with him. He got out of bed slowly, feeling more alive than he ever had in his life. He reached for his phone, considering whether or not to tell them, before deciding that any kind of embarrassment did not remotely matter with the Squad and he told them everything he remembered. Waiting for replies, he got his morning push-ups and sit-ups in - he really did want to be able to pick Susie up - before throwing on some boxer shorts and going to the bathroom. Crap, locked, Zoe was in there. At least it wasn't the other way around; it hadn't happened recently, but Zoe had tended to get pissed when waiting for her brother. She was out within a couple of minutes. "Her knight in shining armor," she said with a smile. "One pink boy against all the horrors of the world." "Yeah, that's me," Richard admitted with a slight smile. "Wait, were you using your phone on the toilet?" "You know it," Zoe replied, smirking, and Richard laughed in reply before doing bathroom stuff. His mother was waiting for him as he stepped out, his hair still slightly wet from the shower. "Richard, get ready, we're going out. Boy today, please." She said that last part very politely, expecting him to say no even though he had come home last night as one. But he simply did what she told him, going into the back boxes for the boy clothes his mother had bought him. In his opinion, being too hung up on such things was a path that inexorably led to the infamous 'It's MA'AM!' video, which featured a person he had absolutely no desire to emulate. He put them on quickly, as his mother and sister were waiting for him, ready to go. "No breakfast?" he asked. "We're eating out today," Heather said. The last time her children would even want to eat out with her, whenever that had been - and it hadn't been recently - she would have just taken them to the usual place without asking them what they wanted, but something told her that she really shouldn't be doing that anymore. "I'm taking you to McDonald's." "Really, Mom?" Zoe asked in reply, and that was all the confirmation she needed. "You used to love it," she lamented. "No, we tolerated it, because it was all you'd ever take us to," Zoe replied. "I know that Richard liked it," Heather replied firmly. "I liked it before I got used to better stuff, yeah," Richard said. "I don't want to go back to that." Heather picked up the subtext like it had handles. Her son was very much telling her that he had no desire to go back to the life he'd had before. "All right, then," Heather said, slightly exasperated. "Where do you want to go?" "There's an IHOP down the street from the McDonald's," Zoe said. "It's later now." Heather didn't understand. "You know, you always said you'd take us there later?" Heather did remember, then, to her shame. Her children had been in elementary school, and she hadn't expected Zoe to remember a thing like that. "I was going to," she said, "when we got more income in the house. Those places are expensive." The income she had visualized was a husband or long-term boyfriend, and Zoe easily read between those lines. "This time, I'll pay for it," Richard said, trying to end this conversation before it got worse - his mother had spent more money on dumber shit and Zoe was surely going to bring that up if this continued - and Heather briefly turned to look at him before turning her eyes back to the road. "I've still got two-fifty burning a hole in my pocket," he reminded her before she could say anything; he had actually packed all his money in a blue wallet she'd given him a few years ago. Heather almost said that there was no way he could pay for a meal with $2.50 before remembering that he was talking about a hundred times that. There were mask requirements in the lobby, and social distancing that meant half the booths were closed, and Zoe was very convinced that this place must have had a larger menu at some point, but the stacks of blueberry pancakes (which all three of them wanted) arrived in short order and were delicious, particularly with butter and syrup, and the large shakes were excellent. Heather was surprised at her son. Zoe was hungry; Richard was utterly ravenous. When had he gained such an appetite? He paid for the meal the same way Susie did, by handing three twenties for the nearly $50 meal and leaving the change as a tip, as if caring about such piddling sums was beneath him. (Heather deeply hoped, for both her son's sake and her own, that he could afford to keep behaving that way in the future.) "Mom, where are you taking us?" Zoe asked as the scenery outside the car windows started to change from suburban sprawl into more rural woodlands. "We're going to the lake," Heather replied. "Didn't I tell you?" "No, you didn't," Zoe replied, sighing a bit. Heather sighed as well, frustrated with herself. She knew everything was different, it was just hard to break out of the habits she'd formed over the years, in which she'd simply stopped telling them things so they wouldn't gripe about them. They weren't children anymore, they really, really weren't children anymore, and she had to truly get used to that unless she wanted to end up like her own mother. The worst part was that they were nothing like she had been, and she thought of ways to tell them that without completely humiliating herself. There probably weren't any. She'd decided to take them out to the lake for both a refreshing walk and for a heart-to-heart. There were things she wanted to confess, before they grew away from her entirely, things she thought she'd never tell them. They might not even like her when she was done telling them, but at least, hopefully, they would understand her. This wasn't the sort of thing she could tell her children if she wanted to retain any sense of authority over them, but she was no longer fooling herself: she'd lost that even before she came home from that wedding. She waited until they were somewhat down the path that she had walked with Leslie's parents, under the trees, to say what she wanted. "When I was... oh, God. I almost said the words 'when I was your age'." Her children didn't even know why that would be funny. She had never really done the thing of talking about her own childhood, not just because she didn't want to inflict that on them but because she had grown up in a house with two loving parents and they had not. On the other hand, it meant that when she did start talking about the past, they actually listened. "I was awful as a teenager," she said. "Both of you would have hated me, I'm sure. It was all peer pressure and designer clothes and horrible social games." She thought back to the movie Mean Girls, which she had seen in the theater with the other mean girls. They had almost taken notes, flagrantly ignoring whatever moral lesson the movie had to teach; the group had even left the theater before it was fully over. "We would steal things. From other students, from stores, sometimes even from each other. It was a game to us. My mother asked me about it, and every other word out of my mouth was a lie. She didn't want to believe what I was. God, I'm glad I never got arrested." A couple of her friends had, as they'd shoplifted too many large items. "I was even a bitch in World of Warcraft," she said with a small chuckle. Neither Zoe nor Richard had any words for reply. Neither one of them was all that surprised, Heather noted, as she knew they wouldn't be. She briefly imagined what might have happened had Richard been a boy in her class rather than her son and she'd somehow still found out about his crossdressing. She would have probably tried to blackmail him - or at least manipulate him - and then, more likely than not, evidence of all her various wrongdoings would have mysteriously appeared in the hands of both the principal and her parents within a week. She swallowed. There was more she wanted to tell them, about how every friend she'd had was just as fake as her - which is why she never caught up with any of them after high school - but instead she went for the big one. "There was... in senior year, we would make fun of this girl, Jessica. We thought maybe she was... Asperger's, we still called it. We would steal her homework, and try to get her in trouble, and she still hung out with us because we're the only ones who would. And one day we were arguing, we were trying to get her to do something, and I... I cut her bra strap." Something about this story seemed familiar to Zoe, but she couldn't place it. "You cut her bra strap?!" Richard blurted out. "I know, I don't know what I was thinking, it was just..." "No, Mom, you don't get it," Richard said, starting to hyperventilate. "It's not what you did, it's what she did!" "She went to the principal, and after that, it was just punishment after punishment until I graduated high school," Heather replied, but she got the impression that something was wrong, something was very wrong. "No, that wasn't even - Zoe, do you remember that time Caroline was talking about this stuff? That's the exact thing that happened to that girl she was talking about." Zoe suddenly remembered what sounded familiar about this. "Holy shit! Ricky, do you remember exactly what she said, what was it?" "She said she got the other girl's boyfriend or husband hooked on something really addictive, meth, or coke, or something. That something was fucking heroin!" Richard remembered the conversation nearly word for word, as it had dealt with one of his favorite - or perhaps least favorite - subjects. "Mom, seriously, we're not messing with you!" There was no way in hell this could be a coincidence. The similarities were too spot-on. But Heather needed no more convincing. A memory came to her mind, and she saw it in a totally different light. "I thought they were just having a conversation," she said dully, her eyes unfixed. "Just... just a conversation. I saw her, with him. Talking. Just talking. This was... he was running out of pills..." She stood there like a statue. "And then he was... talking to other people. The ones selling it to him. Oh, God..." She started sobbing, trying to hold herself together. Why hadn't she figured it out sooner? Why had she been so stupid as to believe that Jessica had forgiven her? Richard, too, was having his own revelations. Before that moment, a substantial part of him had thought of himself as a teenage lord of revenge and slayer of monsters, a boy with some unusual proclivities and lifelong obedience to his beloved princess but still a fundamentally unstoppable modern mage, able to summon the devil and hack society to ruin nearly anyone who needed ruining. Inviolate by anything but random chance, nearly untouchable by lesser mortals. How was he to know that he had been collateral damage in the use of his own power, long before he had acquired it? That the same dark methods he used had already deprived him of ever knowing his father? He had even complimented the woman in his mind, wanting to emulate her, thinking that she had done a great deed in crushing the person who had hurt her. But he was the one who had already been crushed, a decade before he had even been able to conceive of such things! He didn't know whether to cry or laugh, so he sort of did both, making an incoherent noise there on the path beneath the canopy of trees, and his mother and sister turned to look at him. He didn't think his mother would understand, but how did Zoe not get it either? Richard looked around wildly, making sure that no one else was around. "She did the same shit I do!" he blurted out. It was probably a bad thing to say under any circumstances, but it was all too true. Zoe got it. "It's that thing. Mom, you had that thing done to you. And Dad took the hit." The word 'Dad' always felt weird in Zoe's mouth. Heather put her hand over her eyes to hide her tears. She understood, but her thoughts were a mess. She remembered that one time that Richard had looked at her just like Jessica had looked at her, that hatred, that fury... she was just glad it was over, it was all in the past, everything was, her husband was never coming back but she would never be the target of such ire again. "Let's just keep going. We have to keep going. There's nothing we can do about this now," she said, her eyes red and watery. Richard almost objected that there was something he could do, now that he had a target: he could find this 'Jessica' and show her what revenge really looked like, utterly annihilating everything remotely positive in her life without her even knowing who had done it nor why. But Richard was a very smart boy; it had been a decade, after all, and Jessica might have children of her own. And what then? Would they learn such techniques, find out who had a reason to go after their mother, and come back at him with the same thing when he wasn't expecting it? Or would they forgo all the social manipulation bullshit and just shoot him in the head? Besides, ruining this woman's life - or, hell, actually ending it - might very well take days if not weeks of focused concentration, and would Susie be proud of him for doing such a thing? The instincts that had pushed him to smash the others were quiet. There was nothing to be gained, no threat to end, no one to be saved. He would just be getting innocents caught up in it, the same way he had been. And would he have even wanted a father, considering everything? One parent was bad enough, he didn't need two getting up his ass about things. Surely he would have never had the opportunity to indulge his desires. Maybe he would never have had such desires to begin with. He certainly would never have met Susie. 'Hi, Jessica. Thanks for killing my dad with drugs.' Morose and conflicted, he continued walking with his mother and sister for an unclear period of time. It was a nice day, and it continued to be a nice day. He abruptly remembered that he hadn't put on sunblock, but the trees were providing a lot of shade and there were enough clouds to blunt the sunlight. "Think we should tell them?" Zoe asked him quietly. "Yeah, but... when we get back to somewhere with data." "Oh, yeah, I wasn't going to tell them one at a time, fuck that." "Please don't," Heather said, her sneakers crunching a twig as she plodded along. "Your friends already know I'm not a very good person, and they'll think I'm even worse." "Yeah, you're right, let's just not," Zoe agreed. It felt a lot like kicking her mother when she was down. "Okay," Richard said. It didn't make him look good, either, and it certainly wasn't news they could use. Some things were just better left buried. What he really wanted to do was go home to Susie's house, do whatever chores his princess needed him to do before she made him insensate to the world for a good, long while, then put on his prettiest dress and his high heels and play Starcraft II like a sped-up Korean until his fingers were ready to be put in mittens again. Laughter, dark and sardonic and certainly not his own, was echoing inside his head, and it only shut up when he noticed something as the trail took them along the lakeside. "Wait, Mom, hey, this is that beach Susie's dad showed us." "I don't know what you're talking about," she replied. "It's a beach we cleaned up, there was a bunch of drug shit here," Zoe said. "Ricky, look, that's where we brushed the sand. We were the last people here." "Thank fuck," Richard muttered. He had long surpassed his limit of shit to deal with. Having more evidence of those same losers staring him in the face - or, much worse, meeting the losers themselves - would have been far too much for him that day. "Do either of you want to sit down?" Zoe asked. "That would be nice. I should have brought towels," Heather dully replied. "No, here, these rocks aren't too bad." She checked the area around the rocks before sitting down; yup, Susie's group had definitely been the last people there. Her mother plopped down next to her and her brother took a more careful seat. Zoe was sort of surprised that both of them were so beat up over this. She remembered enough of her father to know that Jessica, whoever she was, obviously hadn't forced heroin into the man's veins. Richard wasn't quite old enough, but Zoe remembered the shouting matches, her mother's desperate crying, her father's equally desperate, ongoing demands for something Zoe couldn't pronounce, which she later realized was some kind of prescription opiate. All Jessica ever needed to do was hook him up with a supplier, a friendly little meet and greet. As revenge went, it was very efficient: maximum long-term pain for minimum personal involvement, a gentle little push to send the precarious boulder down the slope. But her father had remained culpable for his own life, right up until his fatal OD. "Richard, you don't own revenge," she abruptly told her brother, and he just nodded. "And Mom, this was ten years ago, and besides, she didn't make him use that stuff. He chose that." "Your father loved you, Zoe," Heather said, still in a daze. "Not enough, he didn't. If he did, he wouldn't have shoved fucking oxy down his throat before slamming fucking heroin, and you wouldn't've had to bring home random men so we could maybe one day eat at fucking IHOP!" She realized she was halfway screaming. She had noticed how upset her family was but hadn't realized that she was feeling it too, her old, mostly buried anger resurfacing. "Sorry, I just..." "It's all right, Zoe. I understand." She was crying, and Zoe sat with her in sympathy for a while. Richard was staring at the lake. There was no breeze, and the sun had peeked out from a cloud and was bearing down. It really was a beautiful sight, but he could barely perceive it. "Let's get back under the trees before we burn," he said abruptly. "Of course," his mother replied, and the three of them continued walking in general silence all the way around the path and back to the car. They were passed by a couple of joggers going the other way, no one taking notice of anyone else. All three of them severely had to go to the bathroom, and that was not how Richard had imagined a day with his mother would go: sitting on a vault toilet halfway between outraged and depressed. He got into the front seat again when she opened the doors, but there was nothing to say. Was this always what it was like for people on the receiving end? Was this actually what being traumatized felt like? He wasn't sure. He just really wanted to not be where he was just then, and one look at his sister in the back seat showed that she had similar feelings. His mother was basically dead to the world, and Richard seriously worried whether she was in a fit state to drive them home, but she followed the road rules more exactly than usual, her driving skills entirely on autopilot. "Mom, can you drop me off at Susie's?" Richard asked within a few minutes of his data connection coming back. "I'm coming with," Zoe said firmly. She was torn between not wanting her mom to be alone and not wanting to be alone with her mom, but she chose the latter because it was probably better to give the woman some space. "Of course," Heather said. "Richard, Zoe. Listen to me. This isn't your problem. It's mine. You have nothing to do with this." "We know," Richard replied, but that didn't stop the emotions at all. Susie was good at reading emotions through text. The clipped, businesslike way in which Richard had asked if he could come over - like she was going to tell him she was busy! - had made her antsy, and the moment the siblings arrived at her house, their zombielike mother driving away without even saying hello to her, she knew something was seriously up. "What's wrong?" she asked as a greeting, even before they stepped inside. Zoe was getting used to having friends who just knew. Then again, she wasn't hiding it well, and Richard wasn't hiding it at all. "Mom told us about something that happened to her a long time ago. She doesn't want us to tell anyone about it," Richard said. He'd been thinking of exactly how much he wanted to fudge the truth. He intentionally went evasive, hoping that Susie would understand. She did, of course, and she didn't even need to think for two seconds before replying. "Then that's her secret to keep, not yours. I know there's nothing you can do about it now." "How do you know that, though?" Zoe asked. Susie theatrically rolled her eyes. Wasn't it obvious? Especially with someone like him? "If there was something he could do about it, he'd be doing something about it." Zoe shrugged in defeat and Richard nodded in acceptance. Susie was always a few steps ahead, and with such simple logic. "I'm more concerned with the fact that our little sissy here didn't bring any of the clothes he went home with," she continued, her tone imperious. "Sorry, Your Highness," Richard said. "I was just thinking I wanted to be dropped off here, I wasn't thinking about that stuff." He wasn't in a good place, so it just hadn't crossed his mind. He expected her to spank him for it. She wasn't about to, as he was obviously too messed up and it would not have been fun for either of them. This looked even worse than the emo thing that had disturbed her the first time he'd demonstrated his abilities; this looked a lot like depression, and the idea that he could fall into that disturbed her even more. "You've had a bad day, so I'll forgive you this time. Besides, there are some things you still have here." Beckoning him to follow her upstairs, she found one of them in five seconds. It was his mermaid leotard, of course, and he eagerly undressed and let her zip up the back while he was doing up his pigtails. "If it was a long time ago, there's no point in getting upset about it now, so we are going to swim until a smile stays on that face," she told him in a very comforting, very wonderful blend of imperious and motherly, as if he were a small child, and just hearing that tone eased his mood. If Heather would have treated him that way, he would have balked at once; Susie could treat him like that for the rest of his life and he would never complain. "We didn't bring sunblock, either," Zoe said from outside the room. "It's all right, I've got some of that." The SPF was slightly lower, but Susie knew that didn't matter much, and the combination of fins and leotard covered him neck to toe anyway. "I've also got some swimwear that'll fit you, if you want to join us." Susie hadn't cleaned out her closet in a while, and Zoe was just slightly smaller than her. "You know what, that'd be awesome, thanks." It took a little bit, but Susie found what she was looking for, and before long, the three of them were by the pool, Susie in her bikini, Zoe in one of Susie's older one- pieces, and Richard in full mermaid mode. His mood improved dramatically even before his tailfin touched the water. Susie was right, and so was his big sister. He didn't own the concept of revenge. This was something that had happened a long time ago. His father had still been the cause of his own destruction, and Richard would not destroy the innocent nor himself. He would destroy only the people who needed destroying, and he would help the people who needed helping. And, at that moment, the person who really needed helping was him, and the best way he could help himself at that moment was to get a good workout and enjoy his time as a sweet little mermaid-in-training, swimming back and forth in his cute little leotard and fins while his big sister and dominant girlfriend watched over him. "I know you said until a smile stays on my face, but can we keep swimming?" he asked Susie, five minutes later, with a wide grin. "Of course, sweetie. We've got all day," she said, still treating him like a little child even though she planned on doing very grown-up things with him later. She kissed him on the nose, a wide smile on her own face. She'd caught up on most of the stuff she'd planned to do; the rest of it could wait. He and her long-term plan for him were more important, and it was a nice day for a swim anyway. Besides, she absolutely loved seeing the beatific smile on his face and the knowledge that she had put it there, almost entirely by just existing. She luxuriated in the pure power, the pure dominance, she had over him, knowing that only a tiny fraction of the population would ever enjoy what she was feeling right then and there, and she fully intended to make sure that she would never lose this feeling, never lose him. This was on top of the fact that she wasn't dominating some loser simp, she thought to herself in pure blissful supremacy. As he had such scary power and she owned him so completely, what did that make her? His sister was simply good company. It was easy to forget - for all of them - that Susie had known Zoe longer than she'd known her boyfriend. Hours passed, the three of them in the pool together, the girls chatting about semi-normal teenager stuff while they all swam back and forth, until Susie called a halt to it because it was time to eat. Richard snapped out of his self-imposed daze. He hadn't entirely been unaware of the time - his arms and mermaid-tailed legs hurt a little bit from all the exercise - but he was intentionally pushing deeper thoughts aside. His analytical mind was for Starcraft, hacking, and destruction. He had no need of it when he was swimming with his princess. She pulled off his mermaid tail and hand fins but left the swimsuit on. She led him by the hand back into the house, his sister following with a bit of wry amusement, and went straight for the short baby dress. "Put this on, over the swimsuit. You didn't bring anything else, so this is what you will be wearing when you cook," she told him. He looked pretty silly after she zipped up the back - the swimsuit arms didn't match the pink dress at all, and the lower part only covered the inside of his butt cheeks. The girls giggled at the sight. "Now go on, Ricky," Susie instructed him before going to put on her own dress. "Cook us something good." "Yes, Your Highness," he replied automatically, but being told to cook an undefined dish, by himself, was much more startling than just being put in a dress over a swimsuit. He felt like he was being given a surprise final exam, an essay question rather than multiple choice. Just when he thought he'd be able to put away his analytical mind for a while, Susie had told him to bring it back out. Right, he hadn't memorized any recipes and there was no way she had expected him to. He knew the basic principles, he'd just work off those, but he didn't even know what ingredients he had to work with. Okay, rice, he knew she had plenty of that, and spices were always available. Meats, veggies? Her fridge had been freshly stocked; her aunt must have been by recently. Right, he was actually hungry just then and she probably didn't want to wait either, so oven-based dishes were out. Oh, there was a very tempting-looking cut of pork in the front, that one looked like it had been intentionally put there for his use, he could fry that up the same way she'd shown him how to stir-fry beef. Always get the rice started first, then start heating up just enough oil - hopefully it wouldn't be too greasy - before getting out the cutting board and chopping the meat, spring onions, and multicolored peppers. He didn't feel like he knew quite what he was doing, and he was probably hesitating way too much, at least his sister was making the tea and setting the table. He had no idea what it was he was making or if it even had a name, and he wracked his brain trying to remember. Wait, had they even cooked pork before? Was there a defined dish for that? It was only about fifteen minutes later, as he started sprinkling star anise and other spices on their nearly finished plates, that he thought of her father and abruptly realized that of course there wasn't any traditional Persian recipe for pork, at least there hadn't been one for many centuries, her heritage was from an Islamic country! Sighing to himself for being stupid, he served his princess and sister at the same time before returning for his own plate, knowing that Susie's eyes were on his posterior and probably had been several times already. He gave his mostly-exposed butt a little shake and she giggled. (What she found even more amusing was that he was barefoot and in the kitchen, but she had multiple reasons not to say that out loud.) His concerns over the quality of the food were mostly allayed by the fact that both of them were eagerly eating it even before he sat down, the cushion feeling weird on his skin. At least he didn't completely fail the test. It smelled right to his nose and tasted pretty good to his mouth. He was worried that they weren't saying anything - he had actually been expecting them to give him a detailed review and a letter grade - but the fact that they were too busy eating to talk was probably the highest praise he could have gotten. "Ricky," Susie instead asked with a smile (and a single grain of rice) on her lips, "what were you so worried about?" "Disappointing you, Your Highness," he answered immediately, right in front of his sister. He'd already screwed up that day by forgetting his girl clothes and diaper. Messing up on an expressly given task would have been awful, especially after the day he'd had. "And that's a very good thing for you to worry about," she said aristocratically before sipping her tea, smiling on every level. He'd performed exactly as she'd expected. She'd somewhat worried that he was going to overextend himself in trying to make her happy, trying to prepare something too fancy that he didn't actually know how to cook, but that kind of thing wasn't in his nature. What was in his nature was being a good little boy for the one he loved, so once the three of them were done eating, she theatrically retrieved her favorite spatula and took him by the hand again, and Zoe decided to get a head start on the hot tub before it was occupied. Susie thought of giving him a reason, that she was still upset with him for forgetting his pretty clothes, but there was no need for that. It was simply time for his spanking. She pulled upwards on the crotch of his mermaid suit, giving him a very solid wedgie, before she started whapping with precise strokes on each cheek. He couldn't even pretend not to be enjoying it, eagerly wiggling his butt to give her better shots, and she felt his growing erection right through her clothes. A couple of minutes later, those clothes were on the floor of Susie's bedroom, and Richard could well and truly set aside his mind once more. He was having sex with her the way she wanted, but the fact that he was thrusting in and out of her tight, sopping wet vagina was less important than the feel of her body, the smell of her, their arms wrapped around each other, his burning desire to be close to his princess and stay that way for as long as he could. He needed her, in every sense of the word. He needed her to give him commands, to make him her obedient little sissy boyfriend, to keep him by her side forever. But what he really needed just then, what they both needed when they were done, was a hot bath to wash away all the combined sweat and oils (Richard had to go after his own face with a washrag pretty heavily), and Zoe had timed it well, finishing up just a minute before they went in. She was sitting on the couch, napping with anime ready to start playing, when they walked down the stairs, and she was totally unsurprised to see him mostly babified, Susie leading him downstairs with his reins, his clashing swimsuit and pink dress, kneepads, mittens, booties, and pacifier all on. She'd left the headphones off, and it quickly became clear why: at low points in the show, Susie would say gentle, sometimes nonsensical things to him, treating him just like an actual little baby, a role he enjoyed playing very much. It was all right; Zoe had Leslie to talk to, as the girl had just finished an RPG and was gushing over it in their Discord chat. A few episodes later, Zoe got a message that was decisively not the Discord sound, and she sighed. "Mom wants us back home for dinner," Zoe lamented. "We did say Saturday, so..." "It's fine," Susie replied. "C'mon, Ricky, let's get you ready," she said, still treating him like a little kid. She let him out of his baby stuff while giving him explicit and detailed commands for how and when to arrive at her house tomorrow morning, politely asking Zoe to help him, to which she readily agreed. The TV was bigger at Susie's place, she carried her phone everywhere, and she would much rather be chatting in person with Susie - or, better yet, Leslie - than sitting at home on her computer. Their mother picked them up, pleased to know that the two of them were in much better spirits, certainly much better than she was - and she brought them home to eat the dinner she'd already cooked. It was not spam fried rice. Instead, she'd brought home Cornish game hens, and to the teens' complete surprise, their mother actually knew what she was doing with them, alongside corn and cranberry sauce. Thanksgiving come early. There was probably a subtext there, but nobody said it out loud. Richard scarfed it all down, not understanding what was driving his hunger, just knowing that his body needed food. Zoe, still feeling a bit full from her earlier meal, promised to eat everything on her plate later, a promise she kept later that night. Richard played two games of 1v1 Starcraft that night, losing the first - the other guy might as well have been AlphaStar - and winning the second in a long slog of attrition. He went to bed naked and closed his eyes, using his imagination to force himself back into the castle where he had been last night, once more seeing the jagged teeth of the thing that called him its disciple. "Why'd you kill my dad?" he asked Revenge. "Because it was my job," Revenge replied, and the thing sounded like severed heads rolling down a giant cheesegrater. "What sort of answer did you expect? I can't be tamed, only unleashed. If you don't want to see me again, don't give anyone else a reason to choose me," - Richard had a sudden feeling like he was holding a pokeball - "and hope that no one else makes you pull me out of the deck." But these were things that Richard already knew, and he was really just talking to himself anyway, and with that thought, he fell asleep for real.