Chapter 75: 17. 1 Not Alike
When you have a man who is Captain America levels of superhuman and has to satisfy a sexual demi-goddess on a semi regular basis going up against a normal if moderately fit young woman in a contest of stamina…
"Gotcha bitch!"
"Eek!"
…the results are pretty clear.
"Hope you enjoyed last night with your girl Liam because it's about to be your last!"
"Okay I think the joke has run its course" Kendrick commented whilst going into the room.
"No shit" Kendall deadpanned following along.
Meanwhile Amelia did not seem very fearful of what's to come rather she was surprised at something else she noticed. Despite having both the height and even weight advantage between the two of them for some reason she could not get him to budge from his place on top of her.
"How the hell are you this strong!?"
"I have to be this strong to carry Ezraphel's phat ass across the threshold on the daily!"
"Hey!"
"Phat with a -PH- Ez, calm down."
"Oh, better."
"Yeah that makes sense" Jamie can be heard commenting.
"On both counts" surprisingly Kendall was the one to not-so-silently mutter that one.
"Can someone please get him off of me!?"
Her plea was answered by Liam arresting Stan in a full nelson and pulling him off his fiancée.
"Hey yo, what the fuck!?"
"Sorry man can't let you kill my future wife" Liam grunted.
"My hero~" said future wife purred.
"Fine whatever just put me down!"
Liam shrugged and was about to do that when he felt a tap on his shoulder "actually can you give him to me~"
"No! Nonononono. Do not do that!"
Liam looked between his friend and his girlfriend for a moment for a moment before shrugged "alright he's all yours."
"Oh you mother fucking-OOMPH!" his words were cut off by Ezraphel immediately hugging him into her chest and smothering his face in her cleavage.
"Thank you~" the woman cheered whilst demonstrating her strength by literally manhandling her boyfriend with ease of a little girl holding a teddy bear.
The others watched on in silent amusement with just a dash of awkwardness as their friend's struggling form gradually became more pacified with each passing second. The entire time Ezraphel stood there humming a tune while occasionally rocking on the balls of her feet and twisting her body here and there in idle movement.
Finally the silence was broken by Kendall acting as the voice of reason "should we…help…him?"
"Nah" Amelia chirped "can't you see he's experiencing every man's dream?"
"Dying?"
"Being smothered in a fantastic pair of tits" Amelia answered shamelessly.
"…I feel like a man dying of thirst watching another man drown."
"Careful, we might think you're jealous there Kendrick" Jamie warned to which he scoffed.
"I'm not afraid to admit I'm jealous. I mean have you seen Ezraphel?"
"…point."
This time Liam spoke up seeing how his friend suddenly went limp "I think he's calmed down Ezraphel."
"Not yet" she retorted "he still has some fight in him" and just as she said this his struggles renewed with more frantic energy "see?"
"I'm pretty sure that's him trying to come up for air" Jamie observed.
"Nah, he'll be fine."
Everyone looked amongst themselves in mild bemusement with Amelia speaking up "as much as I think the visual of this is hilarious he's the one driving so let him go."
Fine" she relented and Stanley was dropped on shaky legs taking deep gulps of air.
Kendall had a concerned expression as she asked "are you okay?"
"What do you think!?"
"He's fine" Kendrick dismissed
"FUCK YOU!" Stanley yelled "I was literally dying and you all stood there and watched" his glare swept across the room promising harsh retribution "I will remember this and as for you" he pointed at the Lilim.
"Yes~?"
The eager look she gave him caused him to momentarily pause and he became very aware that they had witnesses so he swallowed what he was about to say and growled.
"We'll have words later."
"I'm looking forward to it~" she winked.
Stanley ignored her to sling his carrying bag over his shoulder "hope you fuckers made peace with your God, got your affairs in order and wrote down your last will and testament because you're all about to get ass blasted in the Thunder Dome."
As they watched him leave in silence Jamie summed up their predicament right then "whelp, we're fucked."
Kendall could only shake her head as she got her stuff but was momentarily distracted by Ezraphel's chipper attitude to which she had to ask "why are you so excited?"
"Because Stanley is extra rough when he's angry~" she swooned with dreamy yet perverse expression.
Kendall shook her head again and walked away "I'm not touching that."
No one is.
After locking the house they all piled into Stanley's car and set off.
Almost immediately everyone sans Stanley and Ezraphel had taken out their phones making for a silent drive. Or at least it would have been had Ezraphel not been present at least.
"So…what do you all do in this Airsoft sport?" she questioned.
That got some confused glances, surprising expressions and raised eyebrows with Kendrick commented "dude, seriously?"
"Not my fault" Stanley grunted keeping his eyes on the road "Ez has made it perfectly clear that she does not like Airsoft. I believe the word she used to describe it was barbaric."
Ezraphel gave a huff at that "well what else do you call running around an arena and shooting each other with those annoying toys?"
That got a round of silence as everyone looked at each other but ultimately shrugged it off with Kendall commenting "you're not wrong."
"There's actually a bunch of reasons why people play Airsoft" Liam spoke up as the voice of reason "mostly it has to do with simulated combat."
"Oh, you mean like 'war games'?"
"War games?"
If Stanley wasn't driving he would be giving her a very pointed look right now.
Still Ezraphel felt such pointed emotions through her bond that she could put it into words which sounded like "what the fuck are you doing?"
Clearing her throat to clear her thoughts she elaborated "in my home there are events staged that re-enact fights with wooden swords and such."
"We call it LARPing Ez" Stanley supplied.
"I've went down the LARPing rabbit hole before" Jamie supplied.
"Really?"
"Oh yeah, extreme LARPing is a thing and it gets really wacky" Jamie commented.
Ezraphel shrugged "it's only a game and safer than this I'd imagine."
"That's debatable" Stanley muttered "what do you think Jamie?"
"As someone who watched multiple videos about accidents in both Airsoft and LARPing I can safely say that Airsoft at its most dangerous has the less hospital turnout."
"I can't believe we're having this conversation" spoke Kendrick as he palmed his face.
Luckily Stanley brought the conversation back on track "also saying that it's just a bunch of people running around and shooting each other is a gross oversimplification."
Ezraphel raise da skeptical eyebrow "is it though?"
"Yes" he stressed "if you'd actually bothered to look up this stuff back home you'd get it."
But she didn't, Ezraphel didn't even try to understand airsoft. He actually checked her browser history and the only airsoft related searches on her timeline were a couple of YouTube videos and a wiki search…about the dangers of airsoft.
Again the disguised Lilim could only shrug "it seemed uninteresting."
'Bullshit'
She just didn't want to learn more out of her principle…or spite.
"There's actually a lot more to airsoft than just shooting people" Amelia spoke up in defense of one of he favorite pastimes.
"Please elaborate."
"Well for one there are different games you make out of it…"
And as Amelia and the others went on to explain airsoft to Ezraphel Stanley was left to his thoughts. Stanley was too much of a pessimist to hold out hope that this little airsoft TED talk was going to pique Ezraphel's interest in airsoft. That is despite the fact that it was something Stanley unabashedly loved. The thought had him thinking how it honestly felt like his and Ezraphel's relationship was a textbook example of that saying opposites attract. With Ezraphel being an outgoing optimist and him being a reclusive pessimist you'd ideally want their clashing personalities to sort of gel with their strengths and weaknesses balancing each other out.
This was definitely happening. Stanley already admitted to himself that Ezraphel was making him a better person and he'd like to think that he was making her more human. Yet these breakthroughs came at a cost as there seemed to be a lot of compromises over which their relationship was built on. Yeah he understood this was a natural thing for relationships but it just didn't sit right with him. Specifically it didn't sit right with him how despite their relationship working well for the most part the two of them don't really have much in common.
Now this does not mean they couldn't find common ground. For example Ezraphel liked cooking good food, Stanley liked eating good food, they both like watching good entertainment and then there's the sex…nuff said. You can't even really count those things as shared interests since they weren't unique shared interests by any stretch of the imagination. Things really start to get fucked up when you look at their other interests.
For Stanley his interest are few and most of them are exclusively solo hobbies developed from his time as a hermit. He isn't the type who would be willing to try something new unless it was guaranteed to be worth his time and out of Stanley's limited list of interests only two are activities that can be a shared experience, videogames and airsoft. On the flipside Ezraphel was the type of person who can develop an interest in almost anything, was willing to try something out so long as it looked fun and she especially liked to do activities with others. It struck him then that for all her adventurous personality and proclamations of love for him that she had little to no interest in his interests that could be shared.
Now contrary to what some might believe Stanley wouldn't mind if Ezraphel developed an interest in Airsoft. Sure the thought of her playing with them was embarrassing off rip but he would actually very much appreciate having the most important person in his life taking a liking to one of his genuine interests. Granted Stanley soured the airsoft experience by using them as weapons to ward off her advances earlier in their relationship but given her aversion to violence she wouldn't have been interested in airsoft anyway.
As for videogames her lack of interest in them was a genuine head scratcher for him. You could make the argument that his preferred styles of games are violent but he has a very diverse catalogue. He's even attempted on multiple occasions to get her interested in them to no avail. Oh sure Ezraphel has watched him play games for hours on end a few times but asking her to join him or take up the controller would almost always get him a polite decline. The one time he did get her to play her reaction was lackluster to say the least.
There was just something about videogames that didn't elicit that expression of awe and wonder as other forms of media did. Stanley had no idea why that is and could only speculate because he felt that if he pressed her for an explanation she would feel compelled to play which he didn't want.
So that mystery was left unsolved.
He would be lying if he said that Ezraphel's lack of interest in airsoft and videogames didn't bother him but what could he do? You can say he could take solace in the fact that Ezraphel had her own interests that he wouldn't be interested in. He didn't know what said interests would be since she wouldn't have told him about it, likely a result of his constantly stressing to her not to bother him with 'useless crap' no doubt.
'Huh…'
Looking back at his rather callous disregard for whatever she might be into that doesn't directly or indirectly involve or affect him caused him to cringe. Indeed some or rather a lot of the things he said to her back then felt like he was reinforcing the idea that her world revolves around him and anything that didn't he had no interest in.
'…I should ask her about the stuff she does when I'm not around.'
For some reason the idea of not knowing what Ezraphel's interest might be outside of him was eliciting a feeling he was all too familiar with, regret.
'Why does it feel like the universe is playing a sick joke on me?'
As they say hindsight is 20/20.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone