“Come on, Bontron. You know you want to~”
In Equestria, there were some that thought they knew what disapproval was. These ponies were of many sorts; diplomats, artisans, laborer, and noble. All of them came from different walks of life, all of them were of different temperament, size, shape, and education. But, to a pony, not a single one of them knew of disapproval more than Bonbon.
You see, throughout her relatively short life, Bonbon had been honing her skill at disapproval since before she had gotten her cutie mark. Thanks to her line of work — both old and new — she had had ample opportunity to become very good at letting creatures of every sort know that she didn’t care very much for what they did, were doing, or were about to do. In the end, there was no doubt about the earth pony’s skill — the way that her eyes narrowed in disgust, the way she furrowed her brow just so, and honing a frown that would make even the greasiest snake oil salesmen feel uncomfortable.
It was this look she was giving to her housemate and alien from another dimension. A young, silly man that went by the name Adonis. In most cases, such a look would have had ponies, gryphons, and even dragons scrambling away, but Adonis was largely unaffected. In fact, there was a small, playful smile on his face as he stared at the mare with half-lidded, tired eyes.
Drawing herself up to her full height — which was rather impressive, even for an earth pony — Bonbon gave him a glare that could curdle milk. “Adonis, get your lazy flank up. You can’t lay in bed all day.”
Bonbon kept her tone level, calm, with just a hint of a growl underneath it. Adonis didn’t even bat an eyelash, lifting his arms from underneath a large, warm-looking blanket so he could reach out to her.
“Come on, Bon-voyage. Let’s snuggle the day away,” he said, opening and closing his hands.
“No. Now get up.”
“But I don’t wanna. It’s nice and comfy here.” Adonis yawned, letting his head flop down onto his pillow. “It’d be a lot more comfortable if a certain little candy mare were to hop in with me though…”
Bonbon’s face scrunched up as her eyes found their way under the human’s bed. There, laying right against the wall that the bed itself sat, was her broom. It was the same broom she had been using for the last two weeks to wake this dumb stallion up, and the very same broom that she had lost just a few minutes ago due to her carelessness.
Now she had no good way of forcing Adonis to get out of his bed. Talking to him like a rational adult would be less than worthless, she knew. She also couldn’t risk jumping into the bed and physically remove him from it. Adonis might not have been as strong as an earth pony, but his bipedal form and long arms would make such a thing tricky. And besides, Bonbon didn’t find the idea of mare handling a stallion — even this stallion — so roughly all that appealing.
But she had been in far more difficult situations than this! If she could figure out how to trap a hydra using nothing but a stick of bubble gum, a hundred feet of bubble wrap, and her gumption, she’d figure this out!
“Adonis, I swear to Celestia if you don’t get out of that bed I’m gonna go get a bucket of ice water and dump it all over you,” Bonbon said.
She took a few steps toward the bed, making sure that her hooves were extra loud against the old wooden floor. It was a tactic that she had learned back at the agency, to scare larger predators.
Adonis clicked his tongue. “Come on, Bon-aparte,” he said, wiggling his fingers with greater intensity. “You can be as grumpy as you want, but we both know you wanna.”
“If you think I want to hop into that bed with you you’re out of your noggin,” Bonbon said, rolling her eyes. As she did that, she took another half-step toward the bed, eyeing the blanket covering the human’s form.
“There’s nothing but sunshine and happiness under these covers, Boninator. We’ll snuggle all day. I’ll run my fingers through your mane, give you all the kisses you could ever want, and tickle that pudgy little belly of yours.”
“Nopony wants you or your weird wigglers touching them—”
“Rude. And also incorrect. Lyra’s an even bigger cuddle bug than you, Count Bonula.”
“—and if you try kissing me I’m kicking you out of the window, stallion or not—”
“Grumpy grump.”
Bonbon snorted. “And I don’t have a pudgy belly. My belly is perfectly—HAH!”
Darting under the human’s arm, Bonbon bit down on his blanket as hard as she could and began to pull. She used all of her earth pony strength, enough raw power to crush steel between her hooves. Even so, the blanket, the bed, and Adonis himself, didn’t move an inch.
Grunting, Bonbon gave the blanket a few savage tugs, digging her hooves into the floor. From above, she could hear Adonis quietly giggle to himself. A moment later, she felt one of his hands brush along her back.
Bonbon’s eyes shot open. Hitting the ground, she attempted to reach under the bed for her broom. When she saw that she’s need to properly crawl under the bed to get it, she rolled away from the bed, just out of reach of the human and his arms.
Without missing a beat, she leapt back to her hooves to give him a nasty glare. “Will you get out of that bucking bed?!” she yelled.
Adonis closed his eyes, letting out a displeased grumble. “But it’s too early, Bonnie.”
“It’s eight in the morning!”
“Exactly. It’s still bedtime.”
“No it’s not! I got up at five!”
“I’m… I’m sorry. That must have been horrible for you.”
Bonbon groaned, covering her face with a hoof. The thought of kicking the infuriating stallion’s bed to pieces so that he stopped this nonsense once and for all came to mind. It would be a simple thing really; just one good kick to where the frame met one of the legs and he’d have to get up. But, as quickly as the thought came to mind, Bonbon discarded the idea with a shake of her head.
Closing her eyes, the earth pony took a few deep breaths. When she had calmed herself to a reasonable level, she opened her eyes and stared back at the human.
“Five minutes,” she said, her voice firm. “If I get in that bed with you for five minutes you’re getting up.”
Adonis rolled his jaw, thinking over her proposal. “Half an hour.”
“Five minutes.”
“Fifteen.”
“Five.”
“Twelve?”
“Five.”
Adonis snapped his fingers. “Ten, and you got yourself a deal, Bon de Bon.”
Bonbon’s nose scrunched up. Her eyes narrowed down to slits, and she could feel a vein in her forehead bulging.
If she wanted, she could probably buck Adonis right out the window at the other end of the room. There was a hedge that would cushion his fall, and if she did it right the blanket wrapped around him would protect the dummy from glass and branches…
Puffing her cheeks out, Bonbon nodded. “Fine. Fine,” she grumbled.
With the resolution of a soldier marching to her doom, Bonbon strode toward the bed. Slapping away Adonis’s hands, she pulled back the covers and climbed in. Her side hadn’t even touched the cotton bedspread when the human’s arms wrapped around her, pulling her against him.
She huffed, glaring up at him. “You start kissing me, I’m biting you, got it?”
Adonis chuckled, nuzzling the top of her head, messing up her mane. “Grumpy,” he murmured, tightening his grip on her.
Letting out a long-suffering sigh, Bonbon threw the blanket over the two of them and turned her attention toward the clock on the wall. “Your time starts now.”.
Adonis said nothing. In fact, Bonbon had noticed that his breathing had already slowed considerably. The human was already dead to the world, fast asleep even as he held her.
Snorting, Bonbon shook her head. “Unbelievable…”
Letting her head fall against the bed, she prepared herself for a very long ten minutes. She was about to wiggle around to make herself more comfortable, only to realize that there was no need.
Though he was a moron of a stallion at the best of times, she was perfectly situated against Adonis. The human’s chest, annoyingly, seemed to be modeled perfectly for a pony’s back. His body heat was quite a bit lower than hers, but even still there was something incredibly soothing about it.
Bonbon gave her head a shake when she realized that her eyes were beginning to slip closed. “Celestia dammit,” she grumbled. “Just a couple of minutes, then I can get up and get some work done.”
She turned her attention back toward the clock on the wall to see that not a minute had passed. Before she could quietly curse under her breath, Adonis let a sleepy hum that caused his chest to vibrate. One of his hands made its way down to her chest to give her chest fur a scratch.
Bonbon blinked. “…Horse apples”
~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~
“Bonbon! Bonnie! Are you home?”
Lyra looked around her best friend’s house as she placed her sunhat on the rack by the door. Today, both her and the candy maker were supposed to go to the market together, but Bonbon hadn’t come to her house at the allotted time. So, curious to what had happened to her friend, she had come to her house to see what was going on.
Silence greeted her call. Lyra perked her ears up, listening very carefully to any signs of life in the house.
“Bonbon?” she called, walking over and poking her head into the living room, then walking over and looking in the kitchen. “Are you home? Did some pony-eating monster get you? Is that pony-eating monster still in the house? Because if you are, Mr. Monster, I taste really terrible so don’t eat me please.”
Lyra made her way throughout the lower part of the house to see it completely empty. She made her way back toward the house’s front door, a small frown on her face.
“Huh… Bonnie said that she wasn’t doing anything today. I wonder where she went off to…”
She was about to make her way back outside so she could go to the market herself, but the upstairs caught her eye. Most ponies, being the respectful and thoughtful type, wouldn’t have dreamed of snooping around their friend’s entire house to see where they were. Lyra, of course, wasn’t most ponies.
“I bet she’s upstairs pooping or something,” she said, making her way toward the stairs. “I’ll go spook her.”
Giggling to herself, the unicorn made her way up the stairs as quickly and quietly as she could. Like the rest of the house, the upstairs seemed just as dead as the rest of it. All of the doors were opened and empty, all except for Adonis’s room.
Lyra’s brow furrowed for several seconds. Trotting over to the door, she opened it and poked her head inside.
Here, fast asleep, were Adonis and Bonbon.
The blanket had fallen down the two’s bodies somewhat, allowing the unicorn to see that Bonbon was face to face with the human, a foreleg wrapped over his shoulder and her muzzle buried in his neck. Adonis, meanwhile, had his face pressed into the earth pony’s mane, his hand placed on her side.
Both Adonis and Bonbon looked perfectly peaceful. Even happy. And, if Lyra didn’t know any better, she’d have said that she could see Bonnie smiling from here.
“Aw…” Lyra murmured, touching both of her cheeks with her hooves.
She was about to close the door when a dastardly idea came to mind.
Grinning, her horn lit up. With a spell, she lifted Bonbon’s hoof and dragged it down to Adonis’s cloth-covered butt. She did the same with Adonis’s hand, bringing it down so that it was touching her friend’s cutiemark.
Giggling childishly, Lyra waved at the two. “Goodnight, sleep tight, don’t let the Breezies bite you two~”
