C'est la vie

Sam’s apartment had seen better days. The walls were water damaged, and its paint was peeling. Its carpeted floors were worn and bare in some places. There was a tiny bathroom right next to the front door that had a shower two sizes too small for the stallion, and as far as Fleur could tell, the only other room was a small living room with a couch that was far too big to have been able to fit through the front door without the assistance of magic.

Still though, through the wear and tear, Fleur could see that her photographer had done his best to make this place into a home. A small wooden table sat in front of the couch, piled high with empty cups and knick-knacks. A makeshift clothes rack sat next to one of the walls. Posters and an overly large foam finger lined the walls, and a brand new set of curtains sat above the apartment’s one dimmed window. Right next to that window was a tiny stove and the smallest refrigerator that the supermodel had ever seen.

“Sorry about the mess. If I had known that anyone was coming, I would have cleaned up a little bit,” Sam said.

“Oh, there’s no need to worry about that, mon cher,” Fleur said, looking around. “Your home looks… comfortable.”

“It’s not the best place I’ve ever lived, but it’s not that bad,” Sam said, gesturing for her to sit down on the couch as he made his way over to his fridge. “The neighbors are real nice, and the view’s pretty in the mornings if you open up the window.”

“It’s a little chilly in here, no?” Fleur muttered, hopping up onto the couch.

“Yeah, a bit. When I asked the landlady about it, she said that the ventilation in this place is a bit funny. If you’re cold though, you’re more than welcome to use a blanket or two.”

“Merci.”

Reaching behind her, Fleur grabbed the black and gold blanket that was sitting neatly folded on top of the couch. Unfolding it, she wrapped it around herself.

She immediately wiggled into the blanket, her nostrils flaring. Sam’s scent clung to the blanket, as it did with the rest of the room. It was so potent, in fact, that she was surprised that she hadn’t smelled it outside.

“So, what brings you all the way to my little neck of the woods?” Sam asked as he opened up his fridge and reached inside. “Did something bad happen?”

Fleur let out a hum, wiggling around. With every passing moment, she could smell her scent mixing with his. If she continued to do with for a little longer, Sam would be smelling her every time he closed his eyes to sleep.

“Fleur. Hey Fleur. You alright there?” Sam called, breaking the supermodel out of her stupor.

“What? What did you say, Sam?” she asked, blushing.

“I asked why you came all the way down here to see me,” Sam said, looking over his shoulder at her. “Not that I don’t mind. It’s great to see you. Hey… are you alright there? You’re looking a bit red.”

“Red? I’m not red!” Fleur said with a laugh that sounded forced even to her ears. “I’m just a little tired from the walk is all. Nothing to worry about.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. I’m absolutely sure, cher.”

Though Sam obviously didn’t believe her, he turned back toward the fridge. “So, about you being here…”

Discreetly wiggling her hoof out of her blanket, Fleur used it to fan her face. “Well, since the last few days have been no doubt as chaotic for you as they’ve been for me, I decided to come and see if you were alright. As well as… apologize, since all of this is my fault.”

Grabbing something from his fridge, Sam stood up and kicked it closed. He turned around, showing Fleur that he was holding two metal cans in his hands.

“Sorry that I don’t have wine or anything like that,” he said. “The ol’ fridge isn’t big enough for anything other than beer.”

“That’s fine, thank you,” Fleur said, using her magic to levitate the can out of his hands.

She had absolutely no idea what beer was, but she wasn’t going to pass up a drink. Especially if it had some kind of alcohol in it.

“Make sure to use a coaster,” Sam urged. “I don’t want that table gettin’ any watermarks on it.”

“Of course,” Fleur replied, giving the can a once over before taking a ladylike sip.

It was unlike any brew that she had ever tasted. It was almost as if someone had watered hard cider down and filtered it so many times that you could only taste fizzy water. It wasn’t exactly bad, but it was different.
Sam took a great gulp from his can, grimacing as he did so. “The only thing that it has going for it is that it’s not warm,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “After five or six of ‘em they’ll get better. Promise.”

Marching over to his couch, Sam sat down right next to Fleur with a grunt. A bolt of nervousness and want raced up the model’s spine. She tried to wiggle away from the human toward the edge of the couch, only to wiggle back toward him until their sides were touching.

Sam looked over at her, causing her to freeze in place. “So… I’ve been hearing a lot of stuff the last couple of days.”

“I’m guessing you would,” Fleur replied, wishing that she had taken more than a small sip of her drink.

“I almost haven’t been able to go outside because ponies keep running up to me screaming about a whole bunch of nonsense that I don’t have any idea about,” her photographer continued, leaning toward her. “I tried asking what the heck had everybody so riled up about, but no two people’s stories are the same.”

Fleur twitched, her ears folding against her skull. “I apologize for that,” she said, bowing her head. “I shouldn’t have left you like I did. It was lâche.”

“Don’t get me wrong. I’m not mad about it, just a bit confused,” Sam said, taking another sip of his drink. “I mean, when I woke up that day, you were gone, and I really didn’t think it was that big of a deal until I started getting pestered.”

A frown came to the human’s face. “It wasn’t like you took my pants off while I was sleeping, right?”

“Of course not!” Fleur said, reddening further. “I’d never do anything like that in the studio!”

Sam raised an eyebrow. “Oh? So you’d do it other places then?” he asked with a smile. “I better keep an eye on you then, since we’re alone and all.”

Squawking in outrage, Fleur nudged him in the ribs. “You know what I mean, you cul!”

“I know, I know, I’m just teasing,” Sam replied with a chuckle. “But what really did happen then. If you don’t mind me askin’?”

A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold ran up the length of Fleur’s spine. She nuzzled back into her blanket, feeling the anxiety in her belly turning into butterflies.

For a brief moment, she wanted to lie to him, to make up some outlandish story. But, looking into her photographer’s eyes, Fleur found that she couldn’t. Sam deserved to hear the truth, and she was going to tell it to him.

“When the two of us were asleep on that couch I somehow found myself lying on top of you,” she confessed after a brief pause. “And I might have started… nuzzling your face.”

Fleur braced herself for outrage and yelling, looking at her photographer out of the corner of her eye. To her surprise however, she didn’t get either. Instead, a great big smile broke out across Sam’s face.

“Really? Aw, that’s really cute,” he said, almost to himself.

The genuine warmth in his voice caught Fleur off guard. Her butterflies made their way up to the base of her throat, and along with them came the overwhelming urge to hop into her photographer’s lap and do her best to make that smile grow. She resisted the urge though, if only just barely.

“You’re not... upset?” she asked.

“Upset? Why would I be upset about that?” Sam asked. “In fact, why the heck would anyone around here be upset about that? I may not know all that much about pony culture but I know for a fact that you all love your nuzzling and touching.”

Squirming deeper into her blanket, Fleur bit her lip. “I maybe have also given you a kiss or two…”

There was a pause. Not a terribly long one, but it was long enough to be noticeable.

“Kiss?” Sam asked, brow furrowing.

“Oui,” Fleur replied with a nod. “I gave you a few pecks, and while I was doing so, a makeup mare came in and…” She trailed off, letting her confession hang in the air.

Sam took another sip from his can. “So you were smooching me while I was asleep?”

“I was,” Fleur said, forcing herself to look at him. “And I’m sorry. What I did was extremely unprofessional. And if...”

She sighed, looking down at the table. A thousand thoughts buzzed around her skull like angry insects, none of them very reassuring. Taking a deep breath, she looked back up at him with her head held high.

“If you wish to complain to Essence or leave me to shoot with somepony else, don’t hesitate to do so. I won’t hold it against you. What I did was inappropriate, and I should be punished for it.”

Feeling her courage failing her, Fleur looked down at the floor.

“And… If you’d like anything from me, don’t hesitate to ask. I’ll do everything in my power to get it for you.”

For almost a solid minute, Sam was silent, his blue eyes looking her up and down. This felt like an eternity to the supermodel, who had to use every bit of her self-control to keep from leaping off of the couch and racing toward the door. Finally, still eyeing her, Sam took another sip of his drink.

“If I ask you for something, you’ll do everything in your power to make sure that I get it huh?” he asked.

Fleur flinched. “Oui. Anything that you want.”

Nodding, Sam leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees and looking at the can of beer in his hands. “Well, I brought a bunch of this shitty beer from my world, and no matter how much I want to chuck the stuff out the window I was always taught not to waste perfectly good alcohol.”

He lifted the can above his head as if inspecting it. “And unfortunately for me, I must have brought a hundred cans with me, so drinking all of it is gonna take a while.

Pressing the lip of the can to his lips, Sam tilted it all the way back and began chugging. Fleur watched as his throat contract again and again while some of the beer escaped the edges of his mouth and dripped down his chin. The sight made her lick her very dry lips.

Finishing his beer, Sam crushed the can and tossed it in the direction of a small garbage can that was sitting near the window. The crushed can missed, hitting the wall with a dull thud before dropping to the ground.

“Damn, off by a mile…” he said, before looking over at her with a small grin. “I’ll tell you what, Fleur. Photo gave me the next couple days off to let this whole thing blow over. If you sit here with me and finish all of the beer in the fridge, I’ll call us even.”

Fleur’s gaze snapped up to him. “Really?” she asked.

“Wee wee,” Sam replied, reaching over and grabbing her beer. “We can sit here for the next couple of days, order a couple of pizzas, and sit back and relax for a little bit.”

“That’s it? That’s all you want?”

“Well… If you want to fill my fridge up with some better drinks I won’t stop you, but other than that not really.”

Sam offered Fleur her drink. Freeing both hooves from the blanket, she grabbed it, too stunned to do anything other than stare at the can.

She must have looked particularly silly, because Sam let out a chuckle. “Now, how about we go ahead and pick a movie to watch? I know that we didn’t get to finish Wall-E last time, but if you want we could…”

@-@-@-@-@-@-@

“Je suis Sam.”

“Jesus… Sam…”

“No, no, no. Je suis Sam.”

“Je… ses?”

“Suis.”

“Suis. Je suis Sam?”

A smile came to Fleur’s face. “Yes, very… very good! Very good!”

Sam answered her smile with a smile of his own. “Merci.”

Fleur had no idea how many hours had passed since she had finished her first can of beer. She also hadn’t the foggiest idea how much of the drink had passed her lips. All that she knew was the sun had gone down long ago and the garbage can near the wall was half-full of crushed cans. She had also gone from sitting beside Sam to sitting in his lap. Not that she had any qualms with this.

“Fantastique. I’ll have you parlant... speak—speaking fluent Prench in no time, mon cher!” the supermodel said with a giggle.

She nuzzled her cheek into the nape of Sam’s neck. Sam let out a sigh, the hand that he had wrapped around her middle giving her side a scratch. Fleur squirmed at the foreign, yet pleasant, feeling of his fingers dancing across her coat.

“I think I’ll need a couple more dranks… drinks before I can be a French master,” Sam said, the hint of a slur in his voice.

“Then we’ll get you all the beer you need, mon ami!” Fleur said, nearly knocking Sam over as her nuzzles became before more forceful and needy. “Give me… Give me but a moment and I shall get you more!”

Sticking out her tongue in concentration, Fleur let magic flow through the tip of her horn. As carefully as she could, she tried to open Sam’s fridge with a spell. Three times she missed, twice grabbing the window frame and once nearly tearing out a section of the wall, but on the fourth time she managed to grab it.

“Aha! Got you!” she said, grabbing one of Sam’s hands and pushing it toward her stomach.

“Yeah, you… get—got it, Fleur,” the human said with a drunken giggle, giving her belly a scratch.

Fleur’s eyes crossed at the sensation, very nearly causing her magic to dissipate. Her back legs crossed and her grip on his hand tightened as a rush of heat to her extremities made her squirm. Somehow, despite the pleasure, she was able to open the fridge with only a bit of trouble.

“Sweet Celestia above. Your fingers… Your fingers feel wonderful, Sam,” she murmured.

Sam smiled. “Yeah? Well, your coat feels really... really nice. It’s really pretty and soft an’… pretty.”

“You already said pretty, you silly filly.”

“Then it’s double pretty! You’re dribbble—double pretty! And I’m not a silly filly, mon chair! I’m a man! A… A manly man!”

Fleur couldn’t help but laugh. “Oui, you’re a manly… manly man,” she said, using her magic to reach into the fridge. “And a manly man needs a drink, no?”

Sam nodded, an act which would have caused him to fall off the couch if Fleur wasn’t practically pinning him to the couch. “Yeah, I could go for another beer! In fact, bring… bring ‘em all out so we can make a big ol’ pyramid!”

Fleur searched the inside of the fridge, but to her surprise, her magic didn’t come into contact with any of the cans. Frowning, she leaned forward, her brow scrunched in concentration. This time, she carefully searched the fridge, touching every inch of it, but again she didn’t touch anything that resembled a can.

“Sam… I don’t think there’s any beer left,” she said.

Sam blinked. “What? Of course there... there is! I had like a… a billion cans in that fridge! We couldn’t have drank ‘em all!”

“You’re right, there should be plus,” she said.

Letting more magic flow into her horn, Fleur picked up the whole fridge. With a flick of her head, she pulled the power cord out of the wall and floated it over to the two of them. She accidently let it drop to the floor once, as well as use a little too much magic that had it flying to the ceiling, but eventually she managed to levitate it over.

“There! Now we can drink… all of the beer in… in the world!” she said, pushing aside Sam’s long powered down computer and the half-finished cans of beer so she could put the little fridge on the table.

“You’re a gen…. genius, Fleur!” Sam said, leaning forward and throwing open the fridge.

Both the human and unicorn, as drunk as they were, expected the inside of the fridge to be stuffed with beer cans. To their surprise, however, they found that it was completely empty. It took a few moments for this to process for the both of them, but when it did they frowned.

“Hey… Where did all the beer go?” Sam demanded.

“Je ne… I don’t know,” Fleur said, once again searching the inside of the fridge with her magic. “We had so much left…”

“Yeah we did! Like a zillion! We couldn’t have drunk—drank them all!”

The two stared into the empty fridge for a few moments longer. Their minds chugged along, trying to think of the best possible reaction to this travesty.

“Do… Do you want me to jeter it out the... the window, mon amour?” Fleur asked, lifting the fridge from the table.

Sam’s frown deepened. “Just… Just put it back,” he said with a wave of his free hand. “We’ll get more later.”

Fleur nodded. Closing her eyes, she levitated the fridge a few feet away before letting it drop to the floor. A bang echoed throughout the room, but neither the human nor the unicorn seemed to even notice, the two of them staring at the window in front of them.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“I think… I think we drank all of your beer.”

Sam was silent for a few moments before he slowly nodded. “Yeah… I think you’re right.”

The realization that all of the beer was gone hit Fleur much harder than she expected. Now that they were out of the fantastical alien brew, she couldn’t teach Sam to speak Prench, and if he couldn’t do that then he wouldn’t be able to understand anything that she said. He wouldn’t even be able to tell her hello in the mornings.

A sniffle escaped the supermodel. “Je suis désolé… I’m sorry we drunk... drank all of your beer, Sam.”

Before she could break down, tears welling up in her eyes, she felt Sam’s hand untangle itself from her hooves, reaching up and touching her cheek.

“Hey, hey, hey, hey. There’s no need to be sat—sad,” Sam said. “We were supposed… supposed to drink all of that anyway. So don’t cry. There’s no need to be sad. Don’t be sat—sad please.”

“But what are… what are we going to do now?” Fleur asked, rubbing her muzzle against his Adam’s apple.

Sam stared off into space for a second or two, before a proverbial lightbulb lit up above his head. “Hey, did I never tell you how I… how I became a photographer?”

Sniffling again, Fleur shook her head.

A drunken smile worked its way onto the human’s face. “I’ll tell that do—to you then! It’s a really, really okay story. You’ll really get a… a chuckle out of it.”

Letting his fingers wander up to the top of Fleur’s head to play with her scalp, Sam loudly cleared his throat. “A couple years ago it was pretty… pretty bad around my neighborhood. No matter what you did you couldn’t find a job in anything. Fast food, with Penndot, construction, nothin’. Especially if you weren’t going to… to school for medicine or somethin’ like that. See, I saw how… how miserable most people were working at the hospitals and I wasn’t smart enough for college, so after high school I went out and tried to get myself some work.”

A frown came to Fleur’s face, her nostrils flaring. “Connerie. You’re smart. Very smart. And… And you smell good too.”

Sam chuckled. “A lot of other peepers—people didn’t think so, ‘cause no matter where I went no one would hire me.” He threw up a hand, almost accidentally slapping Fleur in the face. “And I went everywhere. I must have gone out fifty miles lookin’ for stuff. But nothing!”

He looked down at her, his smile widening. “For almost a year, I just… just sat around my folk’s house an’ did nothin’. But then I heard that they were lookin’ for a photographer at some… some tiny news place. The help wanted thing said that the place wanted someone with a fancy, smancy degree, but I saw what they were payin’ and I was… was desperate enough to try an’ apply.”

Fleur picked her head off her Sam’s shoulder to look at him. “Did they say yes?”

“They did.”

The supermodel’s nose scrunched up. “But why? I thought you said that they wanted... wanted somepony with a degree and you didn’t go… go to school.”

“I didn’t,” Sam said, lightly flicking her ear. “But some buddies of mine were… really, really, really good at making online websites. So, what I did was put on my application that I had a… a master’s degree in photography to some fake college and had them whip up a website for it.”

The human giggled. “The news place made a couple phone calls, and my buddies made up a bunch of shit, and I somehow managed… do—to land myself the job.”

“So… You got a photographer job without having any experience?” Fleur asked, disbelief working its way into her tone.

“Yep! I didn’t even have a… a camera until the day before I had to go into for work,” Sam said, resting his head on the top of the couch and closing his eyes.

“They didn’t ask for a portfolio?”

“Nope. All they wanted was a… a piece of paper that said I graduated.”

“And you had no expérience… um, experience?”

“Nope. I had to teach myself every… everythin’. Didn’t even know how to work with photoshop.”

“Really?”

“Yep. Really.”

Silence crept into the room as the unicorn and the human looked at each other. The smallest of smiles found its way onto Fleur’s face. Sam let out another giggle, which caused Fleur to giggle as well. These giggles turned into chuckles, which turned into laughter. Soon, before they knew it, both Fleur and Sam had broken into full-fledged belly laughs, holding each other to keep themselves from falling over.

Somehow, in the midst of this laughter, Sam found himself lying on the couch with Fleur on top of him, her muzzle buried in his chest with tears streaming down her face. Their laughter continued for many minutes, before turning back into giggles, then into heavy breathing and smiles, until the two were just lying there in comfortable silence.

“That’s… that’s absolutely incroyable, Sam,” Fleur said, picking her head up to look at him.

“It is pretty… pretty neat huh?” Sam asked with a chuckle as he stared up at the ceiling. “There I was, a jobless bum livin’ with his parents. But now look at me; I’m livin’ in a whole other world takin’ crappy pictures of the… the prettiest pony that I’ve ever seen.”

“Oh, you flatteur,” Fleur said, booping his nose with a hoof even as her blush worked its way down her neck.

“Flatter nothin’,” Sam said, pointing a hand toward the ceiling. “You got all… all of the ponies back home beat by a mile, a lot of the girls too!”

He let his hand flop down onto the small of Fleur’s back. Fleur let out a hum, wiggling herself on top of him.

While she liked to think that she was a humble mare, a bit of vanity couldn’t help but well up inside her at her photographer’s words. “Oh? So, joli... pretty then?” she asked.

“Of course! Pretty eyes, pretty mane and tail, a body that even this…this alien can appreciate! I don’t care what people would say back home; you’re… beautiful!” Sam continued, giving her back a pat. “And I’ll fight any jagoff that says otherwise!”

“Flatteur,” Fleur said again, leaning up and giving him a kiss on the cheek. “And don’t let anypony tell you that your work is “crappy”. You’re a fin… fine photographer, degree or not.”

“Yeah, but I don’t know how… how much longer my luck will… will hold out after I’m done here and I go back home,” Sam murmured, his smile diminishing. “My brother might have managed to get me some… some work over here, but they already got a replacement back at my old job, and nobody else is gonna get fooled by my fake website and fuckin’… degree.”

“Then you don’t… don’t need to go back,” Fleur said without hesitation. “You can stay here with us.”

Sam picked his head up to look at her. “Stay here?”

“Oui,” Fleur replied, nodding. “They always… always need photographers in Canterlot, and since Photo is a… a producer I’m sure she’d be happy to keep you on for as long as you’d like.”

The unicorn wiggled up her photographer’s body until their noses were touching. A small, primeval part of Fleur couldn’t help but enjoy the sight of a male underneath her, but she put aside the feeling to frown.

“And even if she doesn’t, I’d be more than heureux... happy to bring you into my staff.”

“Your staff?”

“Oui! Of course! I wouldn’t want my favorite photographe... photographer to be snatched up by some lucky mare, would I?” Fleur picked her head up and looked around the room, her nose crinkling in disgust. “But before we can have that conversation, we’ll need to get you out of this… this les déchets.”

“The who-what now?” Sam asked.

“There are plenty of empty… empty rooms in my mansion,” Fleur continued with a nod, ignoring her photographer’s question. “Any one of them will be far better for you than this apartment, and we’ll be able to marche… to walk together to the shoots. AND I’ll be there whenever you need me if there’s something… something that you would like to show me or we’d need to reshoot something.”

She looked back down at him, her face as red as an apple. Sam was looking up at her in confusion, his cheeks pinkish.

“B-But what about your… your bosses? Aren’t they already pissy with you about keepin’ me as your photographer?”

“Au Tartare avec eux!” Fleur shouted, pointing a hoof into the air. “They will have to accept my decision!”

Fleur pointed her muzzle to the ceiling as if to drive her words home. This action proved to be less than wise because the moment she did it, the world began spinning and a wave of nausea tore through the supermodel. She groaned, closing her eyes and letting her head drop onto Sam’s chest.

“By morning everypony is going… going to think that we’re a couple anyway,” she mumbled to herself, rubbing her cheek against his chest. “It wouldn’t hurt anything if we were to go along with it…”

Sam was silent for a few moments, staring up at the ceiling with a thoughtful expression. “Well… It’d be a heck of a lot better than... than going back home and working for McDonalds or something like that.”

He lifted both hands up and brought them to Fleur’s head, running his fingers through her mane. Fleur let out a groan, wiggling on top of him. The noise brought a smile to Sam’s face.

“I also couldn’t think of someone… someone better for work for than you, and even though I like the neighbors here it this place is kind of out of the way.”

“Then it’s decided then. When we wake up... up tomorrow, I’ll make the preparations to have your things moved to my estate,” Fleur said with a nod.

Eyes still closed, she picked up her head and leaned forward, lips puckered. Her first kiss was way off the mark, landing on Sam’s cheek. The second and third were on the nose and chin respectively. On the fourth attempt however, she found her intended target.

She hummed as she felt her lips brush against his. Fleur held it for a few seconds before pulling away, only to lean back down and do it again. Sam tensed under her, which made her giggle, pulling away just enough so she could rub her nose against his before wiggling back down and dropping her head onto his shoulder.

“…What was that for?” A now clearly embarrassed Sam asked.

“It was a goodnight kiss,” Fleur replied.

“Oh… Is that something ponies around here do?”

Fleur smiled, making herself comfortable on top of her photographer. “Nope.”