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You’re getting him back.
You would absolutely love to say that you’ve had this little scheme in the works for weeks, slowly gathering everything you needed to set the situation up perfectly, but then you’d be lying. You got the idea in a fit of pique while making breakfast early in the morning, so you basically spent all day cooking in the kitchen.
This was a major show of your dedication, because with a rack like yours, spending a lot of time in cramped apartment kitchens requires a lot of focus and constant spatial awareness. Otherwise, shit gets knocked over and you get at least one additional mess to clean up… assuming you don’t make more trying to take care of that mess.
So yeah, your scheme, after putting a delirious amount of effort and time into it, is finally in play, and you’re getting Dave’s ass back.
You watched him from across the table, leaning forward on your elbows, head supported by laced fingers just below a wicked grin. Dave looked down at the new dish in front of him, and for the first time, you think you saw the first signs of hesitance, the first signs of “shit, what did I get myself into?” Your grin grew wider.
“A problem, Dave?” you asked innocently, one brow raised slightly and head tilted a few degrees to the side (which was only accentuated by the sheer horizontalness of your horns).
In response, as if your question snapped him out of whatever thought he was having, he stuck his fork into the grubloaf and shoved a sizeable piece into his mouth. When he swallowed, you noticed every bit of difficulty.
“Hell no. Everything’s going smoothly, Tavbro, don’t you worry your heavy little head. I got this shit.” He took another bite, and you noticed the briefest furrow just above the bridge of his nose.
Oh yes, you were going to win this time.
Humans say hindsight is twenty-twenty, which somehow meant that you can always see things better looking back at them (assumedly). That made sense, because you’ve looked back at a single decision and you deemed it really, really stupid every time you thought about it.
Since becoming hivemates, and subsequently something more, you and Dave had a singular way to decide things: you battled it out. Battling it out included rap battles, fiduspawn battles, and different forms of wrestling. At first, it was a sweet set up. Who did the dishes this week? Let’s have a triple battle and see. Which terrible movie do we watch this weekend? Initiate Epic Rap Battle that will rock all of Paradox Space.
At first, it wasn’t all that bad. Dave, much to your chagrin, pretty much always won the wrap battles. You never had trouble kicking his ass in all fiduspawn formats. Wrestling was a toss up, and most of the time didn’t decide anything because it tended to… devolve into something else (not that either of you complain).
Then at some point, the whole arrangement went to shit… mostly for you.
The result of the epic rap battles ended as expected, but Dave somehow started winning all of the Fiduspawn bouts. It was pretty obvious why; he started using more OU creatures like the tool he is, just ignoring the spirit of the game. As for the wrestling, despite you being noticeably bigger than the human, he had knowledge of all your weak spots, and developed a habit of not playing fair. All of this basically meant you were the one stuck with remedial tasks neither of you like to do and always ended up doing things he’d want to do.
This one-sidedness had to stop, so you offered a challenge that was a little different from the norm… one that required you to cook all day. You both had quite a bit of pride, so you knew better than anyone that this was going to work. Probably.
Dave’s fork clinked against the empty dish, indicating that the grubloaf was done.
“Bring on the next one,” he said, leaning back in his seat. His voice was level, but you knew him long enough to know what to look for. He was getting full, but he had quite a ways to go.
“Alright, I’ll go get it,” you said, getting up and heading into the kitchen. You returned and set a pan in front of him. This was a larva lasagna. It was basically like the human dish, but with the grubs of a popular beetle instead of beef or any other kind of meat. For this little “challenge,” you opted to cook mostly troll foodstuffs because Dave wasn’t exactly fond of a lot of them… something about how eating bugs and shit was weird. Whatever it took to win, you figured.
“You have two more, after this one,” you mentioned smugly. “Give up now and save, yourself the belly ache.” He snorted out of his nose and drove his fork into the pan. The amount of defiance in the movement was kind of hilarious.
The pan itself held enough lasagna to comfortably feed three to four people, so you bet that he’d be finished after this one. After he gives up (or made himself sick) he’ll be doing all the chores for the next month. That was the agreement, and there was no way he could fit all this food in his relatively lithe form.
However, he’s been doing a pretty damn good job so far. On top of the grubloaf he just finished, he had a big bowl of cavernous flora salad (which Dave refers to as monochrome leaves with weird mushrooms), and a stuffed mega grub, which is basically just the grub of some oversized insect that’s often eaten the same way a human thanksgiving fowl is. Taking a closer seat next to him so you could watch better, you saw him swallow the next mouthful with difficulty, his neck node (or adam’s apple they call it) bobbing with the relatively large gulp.
He stopped for a moment, looking down at the lasagna that was only a quarter eaten.
“Done?” you asked expectantly.
He shook his head. “No, just taking a moment… to admire your culinary expertise.”
“Flattery, won’t get you out of this.” You were on to him, but his words were still appreciated… assuming they were sincere. For the sake of your ego, you will assume they were.
He pounded his chest with the side of his fist, jostling a loud belch loose, before continuing on the food in front of him. Your eyes traveled downward, taking in how much all of this eating has done to him. His abdomen was pushing out noticeably against his shirt, and his jeans were looking awful tight at the waist. He was definitely full, but he was trucking on, alternating portions of cheesy larva with swigs of apple juice, pushing his limits and packing his belly tighter with every passing moment.
A groan as Dave leaned back in his seat brought you back to this realm, and he snapped his fingers. “Next,” he said. He followed the demand up with a slow exhale that briefly puffed out his cheeks. You actually didn’t think he’d make it this far, but judging by the way his face was contorting with discomfort around his shades, and the way his shirt began to ride up his rounding stomach, he wasn’t going to last much longer.
While taking the next dish out of the oven where you were keeping it warm, you heard a faint “clip” sound followed by a relieved “Ahh, fuck…” from Dave. You glanced back at him to catch him sliding down in his seat and massaging his bulging belly, which looked a little bigger now that he undid his pants.
You slid the next obstacle for him to consume in front of him, and took your seat beside him. He simply looked down at it, a big, gray sphere with what looked like armor plating, then at you, an eyebrow raised above the rim of his shades.
“What?” you inquired.
He gestured at the thing. “The hell is this?”
You rolled your eyes and tapped the top of it. The thing opened up, not unlike one of the pill bugs you find under a rock, revealing a steaming mush inside the shell that now functioned like a bowl, instantly filling the room with a savory odor.
Dave grimaced at the dish, then repeated, “the hell is this?”
“A thing, that you’re going to eat,” you replied impudently. The concept of this was like a deviled egg: you scoop out all the insides of the bug, mix it up with your choice of ingredients, then put it back in before cooking. “That is, unless you want to give up.”
“Are we in fucking Emperor’s New Groove or some shit? How am I even supposed to eat this?”
“It’s not my problem that your weird long-necked fluffbeast movies took some details from, my culture’s delicacies.” You pointed a finger to the spoon. “You can also use a straw, if you were inclined. Just like in the movie.”
“Ugh,” he groaned, and you had to reel back your amusement a bit as he reached for the spoon. He put a spoonful into his mouth and let it linger, and the way his features softened told you that he didn’t find it as bad as he thought he would have.
The steady pace he kept was impressive, given that he looked like he was about to pop at any moment, but as you hoped, he began to really slow down. He put the spoon to the side and looked at the remaining goop in the shell. There was easily a third of it left. As per usual, you were going to ask if he was done yet, but his next act caught you by surprise.
He lifted the shell up to his lips, tilted his head back, and started gulping it down.
You watched as bug goop trailed down Dave’s chin and dripped on to his chest, its path only halted by the expanse of stomach that arced out in front of him. Ultimately, that’s where your gaze remained, on that orb just below his ribcage that swelled with each gulp, straining against the tightening confines of his shirt and sliding the zipper of his undone jeans down ever so slowly to accommodate its growth. You could feel the strain on your eyes as they widened, because saying you were shocked was an understatement. When he finished, he dropped the shell back onto the plate, and just stared forward, slightly hunched over with a bit of the mush slathered around his mouth.
“Wow, I wasn’t expecting-“ he held up his finger to stop you, which was pretty rude but understandable when you saw him take a deep breath and release a monster of a belch. It lasted several seconds, and you could’ve sworn you heard the windows rattle.
Dave wiped any remainder of the last dish away from his mouth and looked at you from behind his shades. “What… are you waiting for? Bring the last one,” he said with difficulty.
“Uh, you sure about that?”
“No shit, I’m sure. I’m not going to be doing chores for a month. Fuck that-” he interrupted his self with another burp. “Ugh. Noise.”
This guy was something else, and you were genuinely starting to worry that he could finish everything and you’d be stuck with all the chores. Shit.
In either case, you had to bring out the final challenge: a cake that you baked yourself using a recipe you (reluctantly) accepted from John some time ago. You figured you could make one thing that wasn’t, what Dave called “weird bug cuisine,” so you made a cake. You honestly didn’t think he would make it this far, so you were originally planning to eat the cake later and see what all the Crockerbert cake hubbub was all about.
If Dave somehow managed to finish this, that discovery would have to wait.
When you placed it in front of Dave, he was still taking a breather, leaning back in his chair with both hands tending to his swollen stomach in a most likely futile attempt to ease the discomfort. He looked down at the cake and grimaced, not even trying to hide his displeasure at the sight.
“I’ve never been so displeased to see a cake in front of me,” he groaned.
“Perhaps if you get started, it will no longer be in front of you,” you said with a smirk. Dave made a “tch” sound as he adjusted himself in his seat, the contents of his stomach making a barely audible noise as they shifted. He continued to stare down at the pastry, which was a marble sheet cake with a thin layer of frosting, the center decorated with poorly drawn stick figures of you and Dave in chocolate.
“Really, dude?”
You shrugged and smiled bashfully. In your defense, you were bored when you were waiting for Dave to come home and the cake was looking awful plain. The embarrassment was short-lived, however, because holy shit, you really needed Dave to fucking lose.
You did not want to do all the chores for a month, but then again, you’d probably end up doing them for a month anyway if you hadn’t challenged him so… whatever, you guessed.
Dave’s fork was now back in play, slowly beginning the arduous task of maneuvering pieces of cake to Dave’s mouth. He was going painfully slow, which was indicative of his state of fullness, but it made you nervous anyway. Dave was stubborn as a mule, and you could see the determination in his face behind all the sweat and pain. He had all of the determination. All of it.
Oh god, you were going to lose.
When Dave got to about a third done, he paused, his free hand clutching at his painfully distended belly. It growled angrily, and he paled.
“Uh, Tavbro, could you move the cake?”
“Huh? Why?”
“Cuz I’m about… to pass out…”
Oh. Oh.
With speed that even astonished yourself, you picked the remainder of the cake up just as Dave’s head drops right onto the table, his forehead hitting it hard enough to loudly rattle all of the dishes and silverware littering the surface.
“Oh crap,” you muttered to yourself, because you realized you just fucking won.
=====
Dave didn’t come to for another ten or so minutes, but when he did, you had already moved him to the futon and removed his pants. They were already tight as heck (you never understood his penchant for skinny jeans), and his gut was, to put it shortly, really fucking huge after eating all of that food. They had to go. You also had the perfect opportunity to feel just how round and heavy it was when you moved him. He may have lost, but he came pretty damn close. That in itself was pretty admirable.
“FFfwuh? Did… did I win?” he asked groggily when he awoke.
“Haha, no,” you answered with all due smugness. You picked up his shades and handed them to him.
He groaned again, both hands moving to cradle his belly. “Oh my fucking god, I feel like I’m dying.”
“I think, you’ll be okay,” you said, your hands joining his to massage the impressive belly. You had set him up so that you were sitting behind him and he was leaning against your chest so his head was just under your chin, and your hands had free reign to explore his overstuffed gut. It deserved a bit of rubbing for his effort, if not only for the fact you wanted to feel how packed it was. You applied gentle pressure to its sides, and moved your hands to his underbelly, lifting gingerly to feel it’s weight again. It was firm and stretched tight, with probably enough food in there to keep a family of four fed for two days!
“Dude, stop that,” he whined amidst another gaseous release. He was probably going to be pretty burpy for a while.
“Heh, fine.“ He settled into your embrace, and you planted a soft kiss into his pale head of hair while you continued to tend to his tummy. It had a lot of work to do digesting all that crud, but you still took this opportunity to remind him, “hey, today is laundry day.”
“Shut the hell up.”