I could be persuaded to read some cute domestic fluff with Cicero x Listener 🥺
I could also very much be persuaded to read any kind of NSFW about Cicero. Literally doesn't matter what kind, whether he's alone or with Listener or anyone. And bonus point if he's a sub 👀🙈 but honestly anything goes with my funky little jester man, he is so versatile in terms of NSFW, like is it just me?
The common area was hot, the oven full of coals, and Cicero and his Listener were baking boiled cream treats together. He had the jacket of his motley off and draped over a chair, and stood in his undershirt constantly stirring a pot of hot sweetened cream and egg yolks over the fire, sweat glistening on his forehead.
Conversation had fallen into a comfortable lull, but unless he was focused, sneaking, hiding, Cicero could never let silence stretch on too long. “I once met a man, a fair sailor,” he mumbled to himself, half singing half talking, “who thought of his wife as his jailer.” The custard was starting to bubble, it would be done soon. “Well, I took him to bed, left a hole in her head, and we both sailed away feeling haler.” Cicero giggled, and gave the pot a final stir before grabbing it with a thick cloth and removing it from the fire.
“Hmm, is that one true?” asked the Listener, looking up from where they were cutting dough into careful squares. Cicero came up behind them and placed the pot of boiled custard onto the table, where it would probably burn a circle into the unfinished wood.
“Wouldn't you like to know, my jealous Listener?” he asked, standing on the tips of his toes to tuck his face in the crook of their neck, which smelled like spring and powder. He watched them fold in the corners of each of the squares and place them onto a baking sheet, and unhooked himself from around them before grabbing the pot again and dolloping custard into the centers of each folded pastry.
The Listener raised an eyebrow and picked up the full baking sheet; the raw pastries sliding around as they moved. “You’ve never killed my wife,” they scoffed, and slid the sheet onto the grate over the hot coals, “you've never even offered.”
Something sparked in Cicero’s eyes from under the cloth he used to wipe his forehead, and he watched them as they bent, watched the shape of their back, the curve of their ass through their clothes. Accosted by a softness inside of him, like his insides were necrosing, full of a neediness that felt like weakness and was weakness but that he would never be free of, he was sure, even when he was dead and in the void, Cicero realized that he needed them now. Not when they were done cooking, or later after they retired to bed, or even in the couple of moments it would take to bring them to somewhere closed off and private.
By the time they turned back around he was kneeling in front of them, pressing his face into their apron. Crazed, sycophantic, cloying. “Cicero is sorry! He would if you had one! You wouldn’t even have to ask.” Soft lips pressed to the back of the Listener’s hand, and Cicero followed, pivoting on his knees as they readjusted to lean back against the cooking table.
They looked around. Babette was off killing a healer in Markarth, and the rest of their siblings were, well, dammit, they were adults. More significantly, none of them were immediately present, and Cicero was. He was very real and making himself known, two fingers sliding slowly back and forth beneath the waistband of their pants.
“You're insatiable, aren't you?” they said, feigning annoyance, untying the apron and lying it on the table next to them with a puff of flour.
Cicero nodded, looking up at them with wide eyes, like he was about to start salivating. “Oh, I’d do anything for you, kill anyone for you, please, please, please let me make it all better, show you how I need you...” His voice leveled off into a whine, and sent arousal rolling down the Listener's spine.
Face hot already, the Listener played along with their overeager fool, “if the food burns I'll be terribly, terribly upset.”
“Mhm,” he laughed, lusty, stupid, lovesick, unbuttoning the Listener's pants as fast as he could manage, and only pulling them down to their thighs before his face was buried in their cunt. His nose pressed into their clit, tongue laving against their labia before he drew back.
“The Listener has nothing to be jealous of,” said Cicero, pressing his hand up to tease their entrance, “nothing at all.” He jammed two fingers up inside, curling them forward, and his cock throbbed at the choked gasp they made. He dove in, too enthralled for moderation, for buildup, lapping at their clit fast and hard, pushing the Listener’s hips up onto the table so that they could kick off their pants and lock their legs around his shoulders.
“The sailor didn’t moan like you, my sweet Listener,” said Cicero, fingers anchored and thrusting inside, the Listener starting to fall apart around him already. “He didn't taste like you, didn't follow our Lady.”
They were gripping the table with both hands, squeezing hard, occasionally looking around. It was silly. Cicero would not have stopped no matter who walked in; not until his job was done. It wouldn’t take all that long. The Listener had started to rock their hips, and when they breathed out his name, harsh, like a warning, he knew they were nearly there.
“He didn't love Cicero like you do,” he said. Simply, finally. He leaned back in to wrap his lips around the Listener’s clit as they cried out, legs shaking, hand shooting out to grip Cicero by the hair and hold him in place as they rode out their orgasm against his face. They couldn't see it, probably couldn't even feel it, but he was grinning. His cock was so hard it was starting to hurt.
The Listener had to let go of Cicero’s hair to lean back against the table, afraid that if they didn’t prop themselves up they would collapse backwards. “Where did you get so good at that,” they said, and then, “oh, gods, the oven.”
Cicero was able to get to his feet first, and looked over the still baking pastries. “No worries my love, they look perfectly fine,” he said smugly, “Cicero thinks they might even be a little undercooked.”
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hi Silver! o/ because that fanart made me wonder - would you happen to know when/where Dick's stuffed elephant plush Zitka turns up in the comics?
GREETINGS CAM <3333 THAT ART WAS SO CUTE
Yeah, I think your instincts are right - it's a truly adorable bit of transformative fandom, but I'm 95% percent sure it's not comics canon. Barbara has canon plushies, but I don't think anyone else does.
I got kinda invested in the investigation (it's hard to prove a negative!) and I ended up typing out an entire History of Elinore/Zitka, so, uh, if you're curious, meet me below the cut for:
Where does Elinore / Zitka - the animal - appear in comics?
Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?
Where does Elinore / Zitka appear in comics?
We're gonna go in chronological order!
Dick's circus elephant friend was first created for practical reasons: in Batman 436, Marv Wolfman does a big expanded flashback to Dick's circus backstory as a way to subtly show us Tim before officially introducing him (so that we can have a technically-solvable mystery-of-Tim's-identity in LPoD). In this comic, there's an elephant named Elinore who loves Dick:
Aww. Such a cute elephant!
Batman 436 comes out in August 1989. New Titans 60 comes out a few months later, in November, and guess what? When Dick visits the circus, he is suddenly surprised by an unexpected blast from the past! It turns out that even though it's been years, Elinore still remembers him!
Here's the part where Elinore remembers Dick:
SUCH a cute elephant. I love her.
(Guess who else still remembers Dick even though it was so long ago. Guess which other character is about to be an unexpected blast from the past. Guess which character Elinore is directly paralleling guess guess guess sorry everything is about Dick and Tim in my mind but I can focus I swear)
Four years later, in 1993, Batman: The Animated Series retells Dick's origin story. They like and keep Wolfman's elephant, but they change her name to Zitka:
Wolfman doesn't return to the elephant beyond those two appearances, and a few years down the line, New Titans gets cancelled and Wolfman's not writing Dick anymore anyway. So the animal gets abandoned for a while, until Devin Grayson, a fan of both Wolfman and B:tAS, revives the Wolfman-era Titans team in JLA/Titans and then the ongoing series Titans 1999.
Grayson then brings back the elephant in a flashback to Dick's past in Titans 16 (Jun 2000), where she imports the B:tAS name. Sometimes I'm skeptical of TV-to-comics imports, but honestly, I endorse this one. You lose the alliteration, which is a shame, but IMO Zitka is a better elephant name than Elinore.
Here's Dick with the newly-christened Zitka in Titans 16:
Grayson also briefly references the elephant in Gotham Knights 20 and - in a final angsty callback - in Nightwing 88 (Feb 2004), where Zitka tries futilely to comfort Dick in the midst of his trauma conga line:
... And... honestly, I think that's it for comic appearances? The two Wolfman comics plus the three Grayson comics.
Both Wolfman and Grayson are writing multiple titles - Batman, New Titans, Titans, Gotham Knights, and Nightwing between the two of them, spanning a big chunk of Dick's post-Crisis canon - and both writers use the elephant for heartwarming moments of nostalgia, which means if you're doing a post-Crisis readthrough for Dick, Elinore/Zitka feels memorable. But I don't think she actually shows up that much.
For post-2011, I am not as well-informed - throwing this out to the dash? anyone know? - but I feel like Zitka the heartwarming symbol of Dick's heartwarming circus past is, uh, thematically very at odds with the Court of Owls evil!circus vibes, so my instinct is that this story element was almost certainly dropped in the reboot.
Did Dick ever have a stuffed elephant toy in comics?
In WFA, yes; in main comics continuity, no. Technically, I have not read every comic ever published, so I could be wrong!! But I don't think so.
Below, find my rambling reasoning on the tonal vibes of pre-Crisis, post-Crisis, and post-2011, and why this particular story element doesn't seem right to me for the first two.
Pre-Crisis (...okay, mostly the Silver Age): stuffed animal, yes or no?
tl;dr no, requires too much background knowledge on the part of the reader, plus the elephant wasn't a thing until later
Elinore doesn't get created until post-Crisis, but also just generally, pre-Crisis callbacks are more along the lines of this reference in Batman 129 (published in 1960), where, wow, Batman and Robin are hunting jewel thieves - and it turns out Robin recognized this strongman! BUT HOW?!
The comic goes on to recap Dick's entire origin story in flashback, on the assumption that you may not know it.
(BTW, if you'd like to know more about Haly's Circus throughout the years, nightwingology has a great post here summarizing a lot of fun plotlines and characters!)
Basically: Silver Age comics are very self-consciously episodic and kid-friendly; they're not generally gonna do overly-elaborate callbacks because they don't know what comics their kid readers may have randomly picked up or remember.
By the time of post-Crisis, comic books were being written for an adult audience buying from the direct market, i.e. readers who are collecting whole runs & don't need or want Dick's origin story to be recapped to us in full every time it's referenced. That's why in post-Crisis, we get stuff like "hey, neat, this particular soda brand is getting mentioned in several different books!!" or "in order to understand this story arc, buy SIXTEEN DIFFERENT COMICS in FIVE DIFFERENT RUNS and read them ALL ACCORDING TO A NUMBERED ORDER and also you better be following the individual plotlines and recognize these five minor characters who we don't bother to introduce!! Good luck!!" But the elaborate post-Crisis plotlines - and subtler worldbuilding like a stuffed animal callback to Dick's backstory - don't make a lot of story sense UNLESS you're imagining your readers as completionist adult fans.
So IMO a stuffed animal wouldn't be a pre-Crisis thing unless it was The Episodic Story Of the Week, and I don't think a stuffed animal is action-adventure-y enough for the fast-paced storytelling of the Silver Age. (Unless it, like, came to life and tried to eat you or something.)
Post-Crisis: stuffed animals, yes or no?
tl;dr: no, Dick's a manly tough guy, he's not gonna have a stuffed animal, that'd be lame, like something Tim might do
Part of the edgy grimdark adult vibes in 80s/90s comics is that some characters who used to be kinda silly & goofy & lighthearted - like Batman and Robin - get reimagined as Serious and Angsty and Edgy in a Tough Cool Manly Brooding Way. This massively affects characterization for Bruce, Dick, and Bruce and Dick's relationship.
(I obviously love this change & love the tense Bruce-and-Dick interactions, but plenty of fans of the earlier fluffy comics really disliked the edgy retcons of Miller / Wolfman / Starlin / et al.)
The upshot is that post-Crisis is a period when you could have a recurring reference like a stuffed elephant, but you wouldn't have a stuffed elephant, not for Dick. I think a toy like that would be too cutesy / childish / effeminate to give a male character in post-Crisis, unless you were poking fun at him.
Now, you could probably let Tim have a stuffed animal, because Tim is sometimes cool but also sometimes a tryhard loser who is faking being cool and not entirely pulling it off (see e.g. the Robin comic where he practices tough-guy faces in the mirror, or the Teen Titans comic where Conner discovers his cringy Enya CD, or when he's fanboying over Connor and it's awkward, etc etc.). A stuffed animal would be deeply embarrassing, and you'd have to be careful to compensate by having Tim do something cool afterward - but Tim's character concept allows for "he's kind of a loser sometimes."
But Dick isn't!! In post-Crisis, Dick's a tough / impressive / "cool guy" character, the kind of guy anyone would want to be, even in the flashbacks where he's Robin, and even in the stories where he's more lighthearted than angsty. It'd be kinda lame for Dick to have a stuffed elephant, so he wouldn't. I feel like Dick would be more likely to poke fun at it if someone had one, like when he's making fun of Wally for liking the Hardy Boys. Dick could have a Batman action figure, at most, and if he had one he would have it ironically.
Basically: in post-Crisis, a male character hugging a stuffed elephant feels more likely to be a punchline to me, not something poignant. (Even with Tim, Tim could have an embarrassing stuffed animal, but he couldn't hug it when sad - that's too far. Maybe Booster Gold might do this. Probably he wouldn't, but spiritually, he would. Sorry Booster ilu! <3)
Instead, Dick instinctively deals with his inner turmoil like the TORTURED ACTION HERO he is: by punching things and brooding and yelling and joining the mob and sleeping on rooftops and going on obsessive secret missions and acquiring Angsty Stubble!! Just like Batman!
(Technically I don't know if Bruce ever joined the mob but you know he would.)
Anyway as you know this is my favorite continuity and I am poking fun affectionately, but uh, yeah sdfsfdsfs. No stuffed animals.
Post-2011 / Infinite Frontier / Wayne Family Adventures: stuffed animals, yes or no?
tl;dr it's in WFA! Probably not anywhere else, but it could be.
Post-2011 stuff tends to be cutesier overall, most of all in the current Infinite Frontier era. So I don't feel like this would be tonally out-of-line with IF comics. Taylor tends to go for more meme-y references rather than fanfic references, though.
So the obvious best fit is WFA, which is aiming for a rough approximation of Silver Age family-friendly vibes - wholesome, episodic plots, Teaching Good Moral Lessons For The Youth, etc. - plus lots of Easter eggs for fanfic readers and some comic references.
And look, here we are:
Aww.
Whew - that's everything I could find!
Anyway as you can probably tell, I LOVE the elephant, so this was a very entertaining rabbit hole to go down, thank you <3
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I keep thinking about the idea of 'what if Lucy went with Mina to Budapest'. Because I'm the sort of person who just likes aus probably a little too much.
(this is not me writing anything specific or anything but just wondering what that initial thought process would be like. It could be fun to visit in more detail idk.)
Lucy knew something was wrong in Whitby, more than the anxiety she'd already been dealing with. She knew she was feeling tired, that her neck hurt, that she'd had that awful nightmare the night she walked to the bench, and she also knew she'd be going home soon to her house where she should, by all accounts, feel safe.
But Mina was going to be going on a long journey to a foreign country, alone, to meet her fiance that she'd heard nothing of for weeks, who was... well, feeling poorly is a kind way to refer to brain fever. And Lucy wanted to go home and see Arthur, but maybe something in her, be it intuition or survival instinct, made her decide, no, Mina is my dearest friend and she has been helping me and supporting me throughout our time together, it is my turn to do the same for her. Her mother may not understand completely but Arthur, who was so kind, certainly would. It was an impulsive decision to go with Mina, and the nightmares that changed to ones of frustration and anger certainly fueled her on more.
Leaving with Mina would save Lucy's life, but Renfield was already awaiting his master, and while he is not a doctor of medicine, a strange illness cropping up among the ladies in town could compel Seward to reach out to his colleague Van Helsing, particularly if the illness strikes the Westenra household maids (because Seward is still not over it, after all).
And perhaps there would be some sort of recognition of something between Lucy and Jonathan. A story where Lucy lives does not mean that Dracula makes enemies. Maybe the heroes of light would take longer to gather together, but I think they still would. With two survivors of the Count, instead of one.
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