Perfect Snapshots: Episode Twenty-one: Played

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Episode Twenty-one: Played

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I couldn't relax, so I made the excuse of work, my mind swirling with anxiety. I tried to force it out of my mind, keeping myself busy with the happiness that I saw on the screen. Bella worked on the couch quietly, letting me have the time that I needed without a single complaint. I worked too late, getting lost in my thoughts.  

When we got into bed, Bella soothingly ran her fingers through my hair as if I was the one that needed to be comforted. What did I have to be comforted over? She had gone through a thousand terrible things in her life, and she acted as if it was nothing. I had suffered no great tragedy, and sometimes I found it hard to leave the house or talk to people because of my anxiety. All I wanted to do was make her life better. I wanted to take away her pain. Someone should have been taking better care of her! She was too precious to have such awful things happen to her. Why did they have to happen to her? I wanted to take care of her. I had to.  

“It makes me very upset that so much has happened to you,” I blurted out. 

“So much happens to everyone,” she answered calmly. “I'm fine. I'm worried I have too much baggage for you, to be honest, though. I didn’t mean to throw that out there tonight. I didn’t mean to overshare.”

“It's not your fault. None of that is your fault,” I answered quickly. None of those things should have happened to her. 

“I didn't say it was,” Bella replied in an even tone. “Doesn’t mean I want to throw it out there.” Why was she worried about that? I wanted to know everything that had happened to her in life. 

"Is it normal to be this angry at someone you don't even know?" I hid my face in her hair. I needed its calming effects. "Someone I didn't even know existed until hours before?" 

She kept stroking my hair, her fingers moving along my ear and down the side of my neck very lightly. It was so gentle. 

“Hm, it's not that unusual. You don't need to be angry for my sake, though. I can do that very well all on my own.”

“I want to protect you,” I told her honestly. 

She smiled slightly. “That's sweet. And I'm sure you are very capable of protecting me from certain things. But you can't protect anyone constantly against everything, though.”

She was right. I sighed as I traced her arm. "I know. You seem delicate, but you're not at all, Bella. I was mugged once, and I just cried instantly and handed over my wallet. To be fair, I was sloshed and like nineteen," I overshared. 

“Oh, no,” she giggled. 

“He didn't even threaten me. 'Oi, mate, I'll be needing your wallet.' Said 'cheers' and ran off. He gave my phone back because it was shit, too. It was downright depressing,” I shared the shameful memory. 

She laughed again, placing her hand on her heart as she did. “No way.”

"I had a hand-me-down cell from my sister at the time. It was one of those flippy types. Real thin and fucking hot pink. I was terrible with phones, so I got what I got. The screen was cracked. This was when I was still living off my parents pretty much. I called my mum sobbing and still drunk. ‘Mum, he didn’t want my phone!’”

That night was the last time that my mother had ever slapped me. She was furious at me for waiting for a taxi in front of a pub and getting mugged. She got one good crack in before I finally stood up to her. I never asked my parents for help after that. It was bloody fucking terrible. 

“I bet that was a fun night,” she teased. 

“Talk about a hangover. Damn,” I laughed humorlessly at the memory of the pain. I actually slept on my bathroom floor that evening. Irina helped nurse me back to health. The fallout of that night lasted weeks.

She laid her head on my shoulder as I brought my arm around her. 

“I don't know how much protection I can be, but I would shank someone for you. If I had to,” she replied. 

“Aw, how romantic,” I teased her back with a chuckle. 

“Do you not believe me?” She asked as her hand smoothed over my stomach lightly. 

"No, I do. You're kind of scary," I smirked. She giggled wickedly before giving me a kiss. She rolled herself around and wiggled her ass until I spooned her back. It was the perfect way to get to sleep, but it wasn't enough by any stretch.  

I almost fell asleep during the watch shoot, standing up. I downed so much coffee to be perky for filming the shopping for kitchen supplies. Bella was very hesitant about what to buy. I had to encourage her at every pass. She didn't like it when we checked out. I held her tightly to my side, all of us teasing her about her discomfort. She obviously hammed it up a little, but the way her fingers curled around my shirt was real. I could feel her anxiety in my body.  

It took two trips. We stopped at the house to drop off our goods and to have leftover chicken for lunch. It was delicious, and the conversation was far more cheerful than the day before. After, we went to Target for the rest of the supplies. It took ages to get everything inside. We were both tired from not getting enough sleep the night before.  

“Pizza?” I offered as I came to stand behind her when we were finally done, my chin on her shoulder. “I know a couple of good places.”

“Mm, what kind of crust?” Bella asked as she pressed against me, pulling both of my arms around her. 

“What would you prefer?”

“I love all kinds of pizza, to be honest. But my favorite would be New York style, then hand-tossed, Chicago style, regular pan, and crispy. I just like cheese and bread,” she giggled. 

“A girl after my own heart,” I commented as I nibbled on her ear very gently. My girl hummed, tilting her head to the side to give me better access. “What is your very favorite pizza?”

"My very favorite is a New York-Style with triple pepperoni and extra cheese. But I'm not picky about toppings. I like any meat and anything but bell peppers. I don't like olives either, but I can just pick those off." 

“I don’t like bell peppers on pizza either,” I agreed quietly. “I like all the meat too. No onions or bell peppers. I don’t care about olives either. I do like mushrooms, though. And pineapple.”

“I like pineapple with ham and pepperoni on a New York-style crust,” she said as she bit her bottom lip. “With extra cheese. Actually, I’ve added mushroom to that before.”

"Okay, so I'll look up best New York-style crusts, and we'll get a triple pepperoni with extra cheese, and a pepperoni, ham, pineapple, mushroom, with extra cheese. Anything else?" 

“Lots of red pepper.”

“Mm, yeah. I have noticed that you might like spicy stuff,” I joked. She giggled again, twisting in my arms. “How is that spicy honey?”

"I like it. It's a nice combination with the cheese and pepperoni. I like trying new and weird pizzas, and I had it in Brooklyn at a hipster place. I keep meaning to pick some up to try at home on other stuff, but it's expensive, and I don't want to waste it on Alice. She's an uncultured swine." 

I chuckled. “What’s the last interesting pizza you ate?”

"Mm. I had a chicken caesar salad pizza, and when I ordered it, I thought it was going to be maybe a caesar dressing sauce with chicken. But no, it was a hot pepperoni pizza with a cold crisp chicken caesar salad on top. And it was shockingly delicious, to the point that when I have frozen pizza at home now, I almost always put a salad on it." 

"You live in the pizza capital of the world, and you're making frozen pizza?"

"Oh, I have a special cooking stone in my oven that gives them a nice crust, and we put extra cheese and stuff on it. We eat it at least once a month," she said, smirking up at me. "Frozen pizza is easy to make nice at two in the morning, and it's lazy." 

“Do I have this special cooking stone now to make the better frozen pizza?” I asked curiously. She nodded, resting her chin on my chest as she smirked a little. 

“You could make a video where you improve store-bought stuff,” Bella commented thoughtfully. “Pizza is an easy one.”

“You’ll have to show me.” She rolled her eyes at my answer. “Hey, I am only good at ordering it.”

“I believe you,” she purred before kissing me. “Now go look those places up. I’m hungry.”

We sat outside on the loveseat, Bella between my legs, while we smoked and waited for our dinner. She lounged against me, one of my arms around her waist. I couldn't get close enough. When we made love that night, she whimpered my name, begging for me to take her as her nails dug deep into my shoulders.  

The next day, I finally had to do real work that I was getting paid to do, and Bella couldn't help me with most of it. She didn't seem to mind, though. I tried to hurry through everything, but it took forever. I filmed like six videos worth of content during that time. When I came out of my office, I realized that I wasn't the only one that had been working.  

Bella had unboxed everything and cleaned it before putting it away neatly. My kitchen looked amazing. It was packed with the stuff that it deserved to be filled with. It was too nice to be wasted on my takeout addiction.

“Wow. Would you look at that? You did that in what... Three hours?” I looked at my watch. “I don't even know what most of it does!” 

“I can show you,” she replied with a smile.

We wouldn’t have time this visit and next time, I was going to her. But she was thinking about the future, just like I was. I knew she wanted to be with me and really did want to show me. 

"I'm looking forward to it," I breathed before I pulled her into a kiss, my hands on her soft cheeks. When I broke away, I brushed my nose against hers. "Thank you." 

“You're welcome. I enjoyed doing it for you,” she answered in an airy voice. 

“Surely not the cleaning part. Or the part where I paid,” I chuckled. She pressed herself into me, a grin spread across her lips still. 

“I meant the shopping, but the cleaning wasn't bad. I listened to a podcast.”

“Oh, what about?” I asked curiously. 

“True crime comedy.”

“How is that possible?”

Bella looked a little embarrassed. “It's a thing. It's weird. It's hard to explain. I listen to a few of them. It's basically comedians talking about true crime. It's so niche it hurts.”

“Maybe I'll have a listen someday,” I said as I pushed some of her hair away from her face. 

“It's good for things like road trips when you don't want to fall asleep,” she jokingly explained. “I'm listening to a five-part series on Jack the Ripper right now.”

“Oh well, lots of people like Jack the Ripper stories. Wasn't he the Queen's doctor or something?” I said as I went to the fridge to get something to drink. Bella looked at me like I was stupid. 

“No,” she laughed. “That's a dumb rumor. One of many. It probably wasn't a single person but a couple of people, most likely local because people kill where they live for some stupid reason. Or the neighborhood over. The area was filled with butchers with the ability to do what he did. A Queen's doctor wouldn't go to the worst neighborhood to kill. He could kill the finest quality sex workers if he so pleased. He was rich as fuck after all.”

I had a feeling that I was very soundly corrected, but at least she did it funnily. I laughed a little. 

"I guess you're right. I don't know a lot about crime. My mum is a retired criminal judge, so I think she tried to keep that away from us kids growing up." 

She nodded thoughtfully. “Also, Australia has less of it. Only a few big things, really. I remember seeing all of this terrible stuff all the time on the World News because my grandma watched it every single day.”

“No wonder you like true crime.”

“No,” she laughed again as a wistful look came across her face. “I like true crime because she recorded every single Forty-Eight Hours, Law and Order, 20/20, and Unsolved Mysteries and watched them over and over again on VHS. I remember laying on the floor, watching the big wooden television set behind my grandma's recliner, in a corner. My little fort. Watch for hours on rainy Saturday afternoons. Or after mass on Sunday. Then we'd play dominoes and make dinner together.”

“That sounds nice, actually. The dinner and dominoes part. But a wooden television?” I couldn’t envision what she was talking about. She flushed, looking embarrassed by my question. 

“You've never seen a TV from the eighties in the big wooden box with the black chunky knobs that clunked every time you tried to turn to one of maybe ten channels?”

Oh, like a really old television… Of course. Sometimes, I was a bit dim. I decided to quickly change the subject back to the original reason that I had come out to discuss with her before I got distracted. I had finished my work, and I could have some fun.  

“Oh, I guess. I just didn't think about it like that. I was thinking-” I shook my head quickly. “Nevermind, I'm an idiot. Anyway, I came in here to see if you want to come to play with me.”

She considered me for just a second as her face got somewhat serious. “I'm not that easy. I do need a little more foreplay than that.” I had to suck in my giggles. If she could be funny, so could I. I slapped her ass hard, making it jiggle with my face blank as well. She nodded her head, still being sober. “That seems fair.”

I finally broke and laughed. “Do you want to come to play video games with me for a capture?”

“What are you doing exactly?”

“I'm going into the playground mode of the game I'm trying to make a sponsored video for and doing dumb shit for said video. It's for the battleground mode release for Mega-Annum. I’m making a few videos for it,” I explained in a quick rush that obviously went over her head. 
I expected her to tell me ‘no’. 

“I've never played before,” she stated instead. 

“That's okay. We're going to be in playground mode like I said, and you can learn to do the controls while I piss about,” I said hopefully. 

“I don't think my laptop could handle the game. It's a few years old.”

I had indeed seen her scuffed up little computer and was prepared for that. My backup desktop was only a year and a half old and was still amazing. The only reason that I upgraded was that a sponsor gave it to me for free. 

“I set my other computer up for you already.”

She shrugged. “Sure, I guess. I'm not very good at video games, even if I like them. Especially shooters. And I don't know if I've ever played one like this on a computer. Just consoles.”

"Don't worry about it," I told her with a smile as I led her back into my office where everything was waiting for us. "I upgraded right after I moved here, but I still have my other as a backup." 

Bella sat down slowly in the chair. I gave her a set of gaming headphones, and she put them on carefully. They looked huge on her. It was too fucking cute.  

“So, what is the goal of this game exactly?”

“The main part of the game is a battle royale, ninety-nine against one. Last man standing wins. You gather clothes, materials, medicines, weapons, or whatever to help you survive as long as possible. There is a barrier that pushes in to bring the players closer together until it closes completely. People behind the barrier die. You don't need to worry about that though because it's just going to be you and me and you can't permanently kill me because there are respawns in this mode,” I babbled excitedly. I was just happy that she had agreed to play with me.

“How do I move?”

I swiftly showed her the buttons, and she copied my movements. I could smell her lovely scent in my nose as I did.  

“But they have the key above each item if you forget and if you want to change anything, I can in the menu.”

“I'll try it like this first,” she answered almost nervously. 

My girl played around while I actually built a board game for us to play. She destroyed everything on the map, making it very easy to get materials and find a clear space to work. 

“Okay, so, the game I want to do is the first to get three matching guns in the same color wins. Everyone starts with full health. Some tiles have meds while others offer death,” I explained in a stupid voice. Bella rolled her eyes but scrunched up her nose. 

For as timid as she seemed at the beginning, she wasn't once we got started. She would talk back and shoot at me. Several times, she caught me off guard. It was hilarious to see her expression as she ‘killed me' so that I had to come floating down from the sky with my parachute. She won the first and third rounds of my made-up game. It was simply luck. I was having a blast just watching her laugh, even if I pretended to be annoyed. Everything Bella did was perfect for the capture that I needed for the sponsored video. I had to do a bunch for them, but this was by far the most fun.  

When we were done, she came to sit on my lap. My tiny girlfriend looked at all the junk that I had won or bought for the game. Bella smirked to herself as she glanced through. I decided to entertain myself by kissing her neck.  

“Do you want to play a game together? A real one? You weren't a terrible shot.” 

She looked back at me inquisitively. “When you were standing still. You let me kill you.” Probably not as much as she thought. Sometimes she genuinely got me. 

I shrugged. I just wanted to see what she could do, even if it weren't a perfect match. "We could play in pairs, and I could carry you to a victory." 

“You're rather confident,” she said with a slight smirk on her face.

“Well, I'm not terrible at the game. I bet I could get you an easy win at least.” I was talking out of my ass. I was pretty good. Okayish. I was going to do my damnedest to win in front of her, though. 

Her grin was mischievous. “Think you could do it on the first try?”

I smiled in return. “Are you challenging me, Isabella?”

Suddenly she leaned in, taking my face in both of her hands so that she could pull me into a remarkable kiss. Placing mine lightly onto her shoulder, I just held on as she ravished me. With my lip between her teeth, Bella pulled away. 

I so badly wanted to fuck her right then. 

"If you win the game for us, I will do whatever you want, and if I win, or rather lose, you have to do a video of my own design,” she suggested in a seductive purr that made my brain melt. 

“Okay,” I answered before she kissed me again. “Wait. What if it's dirty? The things I want to do?” 
She looked at me like I was being kind of stupid, but I was all about the fine print. “I was kind of counting on it to be? I’m only doing this because I think it’s going to be easy for me,” she responded as she shook her head and rolled her eyes. “But both of us have to be alive at the very end. I mean, obviously you. But it won't count if I die in the middle like that guy at the charity show and you win. Full escort mission style, baby.” 

“Sure, sure. But what if I want to do something really kinky?” 

“Do you want to spank me again?” She sensually questioned against my ear before trailing her plush lips down my chin. She looked up at me innocently. “I hope so.”

Fuck yeah. 

“Shall I take you over my knee?” I questioned as I moved my fingers into her luscious hair. 

“Yes, sir,” she whispered against my skin before lightly kissing my cheek. 

Then Bella got up, bent over, and kissed me as she had done before, but this time at an even better angle. Her breasts were practically swinging in my face.  

“I hope you win,” she insisted as she walked over to the other computer, her hips swaying. 

Holy fuck, she was doing it on purpose. Jasper was right. I was easy. I kind of liked it, though, and it annoyed me that I did.  

"I... I-" I began, pouting. But I didn't know what I was going to say. I adjusted myself, and Bella watched with a knowing smirk.  

Yeah, she was going to be very good at playing me when she wanted to. Hopefully, she only abused her powers in fun ways like this. 

I tried to start off strong. Instead, I almost died. Bella actually saved me, though she would have had to be truly terrible at the game not to. But it is her first game. After that, I played more cautiously. My girlfriend was far more helpful than that guy I played with at the charity match. She did say she liked video games, though. She even killed two more people on her own while they tried to get me. But she seemed to accept her primary role as mule and healer with grace.  

I had been hoping for a smoother final battle. I was not given that. They were both pretty good, unfortunately. Desperate not to lose, I put Bella in a wooden box filled with protective traps. I almost got one of the other team members when the other player joined in their assault. I finished one down just as I was knocked out myself as well. Bella leaned over the edge of her protective crate and fired several times with a shotgun from above. It hit him a few times, surprisingly killing him and winning us the game.  

“We won!” I literally jumped up and down like an idiot. 

“Yes, but you were knocked out, my dear,” she said as she pointed at the screen. I stopped. 
“Oh,” I breathed. “Well... Damn." She was right. I had been K.O.ed, and she did say that both of us had to be alive. I didn't win the game, either. Bella did. The win counted towards her stats. My girlfriend had accidentally, on purpose, won her very first game that I had been practicing for years.  
I was a little dumbfounded.

Bella looked over at me with an impish grin. "Don't worry. I'll still let you spank me tonight." 

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