"Uuugghh..."
Spike awoke from his warm, heavy slumber, stretched his long purple wings, and yawned broadly. He smiled. What a great dream!
As his arm fell back to the pillow beside him from the stretch, something soft and warm met his scales, and a drawn-out tumble of movement occurred beside him, prompting him to look down. "Oh..."
His heart began to pound slightly, and a gentle, heavy warmth rose up into his face.
He wasn't exactly displeased by what he saw. It was the stuff of dreams for the young dragon.
There, upon this now clearly unfamiliar pillow tumbled a shower of gently-curled violet hair, shimmering in the morning light like amethysts. The thought of amethysts made his mouth water a little, and his stomach rumble. But now wasn't time for breakfast. It would take the combined power of Celestia, Luna, Cadence and Twilight to drag him from this bed. From this wondrous, beautiful, sparkling dream he must surely have landed in. There was no way that, after 15 years and countless letters of polite rejection, she would finally have accepted him so readily, so completely!
But this was so real. So very, gorgeously real. His imagination could never do this beautiful gem of a mare the justice she so deserved. He watched her soft white chest rise and fall, and focused on the gentle swaying of the delicate purple hairs of her mane around her delicate mouth. He loved her. Oh, Celestia, how he loved this beautiful, enchanting young mare, this delicate-mannered unicorn. Gently, so as not the wake her, he lightly placed a claw upon her velvety, heavenly white side, and stroked down softly to her flank. He shivered in wonder, and his heart rose to his throat. He was certain that he was in danger of at any moment dropping dead from the sheer over-exertion of his enormous, delicate heart, swollen like a bubble in the breeze of her notice. Oh, how the wait for her, all of these long, painful years of hopeless admiration from afar, were so very, grandly worth it. He melted to think of how he ended up her, lying in the gentle morning sun with none but the lady of his dreams lying sleeping in his arms. The dreamy night, the romantic time spent sitting and watching the stars. This was what he had longed for for well over half of his life.
As her enormous blue eyes delicately fluttered like moths awoken by a dim street-lamp and lay to rest in his own, she smiled. This would be a wondrous day, and a brilliant future for the pair, with Spike already busy listing the many baby names that had occurred to him over the years. Or so he thought.
It all started the following night, after a heady day of young love. They had pranced through flowery fields together (until Rarity began to worry about the fact that there was DIRT under the flowers they walked through). They had sat, smiling stupidly at each other across the table at Sugarcube Corner over a big, two-strawed milkshake (until Rarity fretted that Spike's enthusiastic slurping might splash some of the sugary brown liquid onto her dress). They had strolled, hoof in claw, through the town square and laughed and chatted happily about the stalls and stands they passed (until Rarity had bumped into a particularly greasy store patron, and galloped, crying back to her boutique. It took a while the convince her that she would survive the new grease patch at the front of her dress, but he did convince her, if only just.). Finally, they had sat by her window and gazed out at the shimmering stars outside.
It began after that. When they were lying in her soft velvet bed once more, her gentle velvet muzzle pressed to his shiny purple one. The fire of their newly accepted love burning through them as they rolled and giggled in the ecstasy of the moment. She had cried out a word. Not just any word. A name.
Should it have got to him so deeply? He wasn't sure. Maybe he had misheard. But as he lay in bed, hours later, unable to sleep despite the comfort of his position, the weight on his heavy lids and the beauty at his side, he determined that it had bothered him. Very deeply. It wasn't an exclamation. It wasn't a plea. Not a cheeky askance or a cry of pain, or of joy. It had been a name, and a specific one at that, though not a name which he could place at the moment, though it seemed familiar: TOM. Who was Tom, he longed to cry, and shake her small, soft form, but he feared to hurt her or lose her in some way, so he remained silent. He would get her to tell him one day.
As it turned out, he didn't need to.
"Rarity, precious, I'm home!" He crooned this softly to her as he entered the darkened boutique, earlier than promised. He sighed when there was no answer from his beloved. Maybe she was out getting a manicure, again? She was so sweet, the way she always wanted her little hooves to be so pretty and clean for him. He stopped to place the roses down on the table, and pulled out a little box of unknown contents, placing it beside them. His three-moth anniversary present to her. That was when he heard the sound. a little murmur from upstairs. He froze. It came again, louder this time.
"Oh, Tom, you are SO charming, darling!" Spike stiffened. He choked a little. How could she do this to him? She had said that she loved him, would always love him, forever and ever! But here she was already running off with somepony else only three months into their relationship! Maybe even earlier?
He held himself back from doing anything brash. This was all some huge mistake, surely! She, leave him? For a normal, boring, fur-covered pony? Never. He was her special, her shiny one, and she would never let him go without her. He reassured himself of this as he climbed the stairs, slowly, as calmly as possible, counting to ten to still the ragged breaths in his aching chest. Then he pushed open the door...
She screamed and tried to cover what she had been doing when she saw him. It was too late.
"Spikey-Wikey! Let me explain! Please! It's not what it looks like! It's not what you think it is!" There were tears in her eyes, and Spike felt like crying, too, but he saw through her pathetic lies. He knew what he had seen. And no little fib, white lie or excuse could extract his dearest little pony from the matter that he had just walked in on her engaged in a passionate game of dress ups with an enormous boulder.
"Alright, Tom, or whatever you call yourself, speak up! The lady seems to think something was perfectly appropriate was going on between the two of you, but I ain't buyin' it! So what's the deal?" Tom remained surprisingly silent for the duration of this interrogation progress, stoically braving the intense question without so much as blinking.
"Oh, the silent treatment, is it?" He got a stony expression in return.
"Well, if your motives were so clean, then, tell me what you were doing in this room with MY lady-friend, wearing not a scrap of clothing between you, and several dresses lying around you? Bet you can't explain that away! Can you?" Tom seemed rather lost for words.
"B-but, Spike! ...I... don't... normally... wear any clothes..." Her addition to the conversation trailed off miserably as she realized how pathetic her excuse looked in the eyes of her slightly obsessive draconic partner.
"I was just... trying on my new dresses, and I had this... old...boulder lying around, and I thought, why, I could design a dress for anything, even a rock! I..thought I'd...take...up...the...challenge..." Spike was glaring her down, fuming with her terrible betrayal.
As he stared, harder and longer, something finally broke behind her big, blue eyes, and she snapped, her eyes welling up with large, wobbling tears. She hiccuped slightly, and then stuttered, and then it came; pouring out of her; the confession.
"I'm sorry, Spikey. I'm so, so sorry!" The tears poured down her cheeks in endless rivulets, and she began to wail softly to herself and to the world in typical melodramatic style. Tom fell silent with remorse to see his secret lover so upset. "I-I tried t-to stay a-away from him... I knew he was n-n-no-no good for me, but I couldn't help it! I LOVE my diamond in the rough! I love Tom with all my heart, and.... And what is more, I plan to MARRY him! ....I-I think... I....I think I love you BOTH!"
Tom rolled forward off his pedestal in a smooth movement to bury his rugged edges in her soft chest in a wordless show of love. Spike looked on, and sighed. He wondered how shiny and gem-like the crude boulder could be shined to. Maybe they could make this work...
