The man sitting in front of her was not a person she would have ever expected to find herself being friends with for a very long time, Silver Spoon thought, not unreasonably.
The man's house was a moderate affair of a building, newly built and in a neighborhood of houses with similar lawns and similar looks, two floors and a basement, everything in perfect working order. Just in the living room, there was a full seating arrangement that could fit a dozen people and a large screen television set with speakers, all looking like they were bought within the last year. The stuff in the living room was worth more than half of the appliances in Silver's own house, regardless of the actual man-cave that was set up in the basement.
The man sitting on the couch had a slight 'bad tanning bed session' look to him, being just a shade away from a dark orange, and wore a modest jeans-and-t-shirt outfit that made him look more like a casual guest than the owner of the house the two of them were sitting in. He was lanky and tall, in that nothing had really changed, but the awkward features and slight air of weirdness he had when he was younger had faded when puberty had finished with him, leaving him a lanky man who, for probably the first time in his life, looked like a perfectly passable male. His arms were long and thin, like the rest of him, and with them spread out across the couch it made them look like they needed an extra set of elbows or two to make them more manageable; his legs were the same state, really. His teal-ish hair was grown a bit longer than Silver personably thought looked good on him, but she knew that anything would look better on his head than that dreadlocked monstrosity he passed as a hairstyle when he was going through his stoner phase.
High school had long since passed the two of them, six years, but the memories were still there. Silver, at this point, was glad to be able to look back at that time with only a few regrets. One of those regrets, though, was not making peace with the man in front of her until around sophomore year, but they were still practically kids then, barely away from the single-room classroom they had spent such a long time in.
Really, the reason she and Diamond stopped teasing Snips and Snails was because the jokes about the two of them practically being a couple became a little pointless when the two of them went to junior prom together. Diamond by then had long since mellowed out and didn't press the topic besides the occasional snicker, but Silver took that as the chance to branch off to the two and try and get a social circle of people who were not Diamond or the Crusaders.
Calling Snails a 'man' might have been a misnomer, because they were the same age and being twenty-three isn't that old, but Silver Spoon couldn't help but notice that either some sort of switch went off in him in high school because he started becoming interested in things that Silver wouldn't have expected someone like Snails would care about, like his 'career' and his 'post-high school opportunities'.
Silver Spoon thought the ex-stoner was nuts, and so did Diamond, but now Snails worked as a chef in one of Gustave's restaurants and Snips was apparently was some sort of savant with a pair of scissors, giving that he was the guy Steven Magnet chose to take over his hair salon when he retired a few years back.
Silver Spoon never assumed that she would be going to a guy who had managed to stick a box of crayons up his nose for romantic advice, but that was life, wasn't it?
At least there was coffee involved.
Silver was in the middle of finishing her second cup when Snails spoke up and sounded like he wanted to get down to business. His voice had long since lost that nasally quality it once had, but he still spoke slowly and pointedly, pretty much choreographing what he was going to say with his lips before words ever came from his mouth.
"This is about Diamond, isn't it? She's staying with you, right?"
Silver, if she was a weaker person and this was some sort of comedic narrative, might have spat out her coffee at his blunt questioning. After all, up until this point the two of them had been talking about almost every other topic besides their respective home lives. But, Silver was waiting for Snails to bring up the topic himself, because she didn't want to make it seem like she just wanted to talk about that.
"Yeah, she is." Silver Spoon admitted, before opting to explain further, "After she flunked out of college, her dad decided to keep most of her trust fund out of her hands for a while. She's been with me for two months."
Snails rolled his shoulders. "Does she have a job or anything, or is she just sitting around?"
Silver Spoon pursed her lips. "Close enough. She has some stock in Barnyard Bargains, and she's sold some of it and bought a few stocks in other places. She's making money, enough for rent and stuff."
Diamond Tiara was, if anything, not a fool.
Snails snickered lightly. "She's not leaving your house, is that it?"
Silver Spoon opened her mouth, closed it once, and then opened it again, lips forming a thin smile.
"Do you want to see pictures?"
Snails took his time considering her questions, looking slightly weary of what her words could imply.
"Sure, Spoon. I mean, unless they're like, embarrassing and stuff."
As a friend, Silver Spoon appreciated Snails honesty, but she also had a problem, and there's a old saying that goes along the lines of 'shock and awe' that is otherwise hard to connect with the situation, but was never less on Silver's mind when she took out her phone and flipped through the photos on it to some of the ones with her best friend-slash-roommate on it.
She handed the phone to Snails, who took his time wrapping his knuckly fingers around the little machine. When he saw the image emblazoned on the phone' screen, his eyes widened and his left eyebrow raised slightly. He stared at the picture for a few minutes before slowly, wordlessly, thumbing his way through later photos, which all generally had the same general theme.
That general theme present in all the photos was that Diamond Tiara had taken to pretty much lounging around Silvers condo, usually with a remarkable absence of clothing involved. There came to a point where Silver Spoon wanted Diamond to be able to relax in her house, and there was always been a thin line between what close friends could wear around each other and be comfortable, but lounging around in a pair of booty shorts and a thin cotton t-shirt was pretty close to that line.
More importantly, through, Diamond had something she never had before that were pretty much shamelessly on display; boobs and a butt.
Diamond had always been eager to watch her weight, but that was in high school, when she believed she had appearances to maintain. Now it was becoming apparent that, without any real social life to speak of and without the regular exercise she got from playing soccer, anything she ate pretty much stuck to her like white on rice. While before she was relatively skinny, now Diamond looked like she had a actual figure, as apposed to being stick-thin and mostly flat on both ends.
Now, though, Silver had no choice but to consider the changes in her friend's appearance. Her breasts were now sizable, far larger than the nigh-flat chest she had before, but it seemed like everything she ate went to her ass. In Silver's opinion, this was not hyperbole; Diamond's rear end pretty much stuck out behind her, like two softballs had somehow made it under her skin.
"So, it's finally happened, eh?"
Silver Spoon's thoughts on the subject of her best friends billowing butt was timely interrupted by slightly amused Snails.
"What's happened?"
"Diamond Tiara's now a big bootied bitch." he said, the vulgarity sounding foreign and slightly strange coming from his mouth.
Silver couldn't help but let out a little laugh at that, but only because he, at the least, had the right to make comments like that. If it was anyone else, though, Silver would have told them off.
Before she could reply, though, Snails continued to speak.
"So, do you want her out of the house or something? Does she just think she can crash at your place forever?"
Silver Spoon frowned lightly. She couldn't say that Diamond wasn't trying her hardest to make some money; that would be saying that she wasn't already doing her best with what she had. But she wasn't taking any initiatives in trying to leave her place, either.
"No, it's not like that, really. We're still friends, Snails, but she doesn't do much else but eat and watch television. She doesn't even go out much anymore."
Snails rolled his eyes. "She sounds like a roommate, Silver. I mean, it's not like you two have anything to hide from each other, right? "
Adjusting her glasses, Silver rolled her eyes in turn before taking a quick sip of her drink.
"She's living in my house and she's wearing less clothing than the average stripper, Snails."
He blinked slowly, in a way that reminded Silver of something like a lizard. He scratched the back of his neck, apparently confused.
"Huh? So what. It's not like you're..."
Silver Spoon was suddenly reminded that Snails might have not changed much at all when he paused in the middle of speaking, looking at her almost as if she had suddenly grown another head. He stared at her carefully for a few moments, staring at the bun her hair was in and the little dark blue jacket she was wearing, all the way down to her little grey sneakers, until he finally just leaned back into his seat like a bent tree and let out something that sounded like a choke and a laugh fighting for the same space in his mouth.
"Aw, heh. I always thought you stuck around with her for a reason." Snails drawled, reaching for his cup of joe and taking a swig at it himself. "Does she know? Is she even interested?"
That was a completely legitimate concern, and was the reason she was here.
"I don't know." Silver admitted. Snails raised a eyebrow.
"How do you not know that?" Snails asked, sounding lightly baffled, in the same way people look like if they see something that doesn't make sense, like a bird flying backwards or a fish in a tree. "Don't you two, like, talk about stuff that would pretty much cover that?"
Silver shrugged helplessly. "She doesn't talk about it."
Snails waved a spare hand in the air, interjecting her, "She's dated guys, hasn't she?"
Silver shrugged. "She's gotten guys to go with her to stuff when it looks good, but she never spends time with them or anything. She's just never gone out of her way to get a guy. The only time she tried to get a boyfriend was when Rumble and Twist hooked up, and she couldn't find a guy who would go for it; I paid one of the members of the football team to try and look interested, but she blew him off and called him a wimp."
Snails, silently, raised a eyebrow. Again. For a guy who had such a long face, Silver noted, he emoted with it a lot.
"So, she doesn't date guys, eh? What about girls?"
Silver Spoon would not have thought of that, honestly. The finer points of Diamond Tiara's thought processes were lost, even to her, and might have been known only to her and the therapist she had to see in sophomore year for some reason that even she was kept out of the loop from. Diamond usually either thought of guys as accessories or things to torment, sometimes at the same time. Even when she seemed interested in a person she had hooked up with she almost always seemed reluctant to talk about anything more then the basic details, nothing you wouldn't see in a bad teen movie.
Silver was once under the impression that Diamond's true romantic affections were close enough to her cruelties that trying to pinpoint whether or not she wanted to screw or screw over someone was a folly.
But she was much wiser now, because hindsight is a wonderful thing.
"I think she had a thing for Applebloom once."
Snails blinked. "Huh? Never heard that."
Silver took a breath, trying to bring up any details that could help her case.
"She never did let up on teasing the Crusaders, but she never talked about anyone else besides Applebloom when she wasn't trying to get them mad. She kept talking about how she must be stuffing her bra, or how big her thighs were and stuff. I think she might have had a crush on her or something."
Snails stretched his arms out, cracked his knuckles, and gave Silver Spoon a big, easy grin.
"You don't know if she's just being Diamond or she's teasing you, I guess?"
Those were not the words Silver Spoon would have used, but yes, that was mostly right. She had to admit that the fact that her friend/crush lounging around in her house in booty shorts and sports bras wasn't exactly unpleasant, especially now that Diamond had stuff worth looking at, but Silver was at her wits end and was generally sick of waiting.
"I mean, yeah." Silver mumbled, before clearing her throat and continuing, "I mean, we have been friends for a while and if there's some sort of attraction, that's great. But I don't want to ruin anything between us."
Snails shrugged lightly; a act worth a thousand words. "So you came to me to help you with getting Diamond in your bed."
Silver giggled at his tone. "Oh, come on! I'm not asking you because you're gay. I'm gay too, I didn't think I had to remind you!"
The lanky man let out a good laugh, and Silver felt lightly relieved that he didn't take it differently then Silver intended. She wasn't sure Snails could even get insulted by stuff like that, but she didn't want to test the boundaries.
"I mean, you and Snips are the only one's our age who are pretty much set for life with each other. You two have stuck together since, like, forever, and I just want to know how you did the transition from friends to soul mates."
She never knew that she would use the phrase 'soul mates' non-ironically, but it was the only phrase she knew that would fit the pair.
Snails took the question oddly, cupping his chin with his palm and looked like a splitting image of the Thinker, if the Thinker was made of copper wire with a bit of verdigris here and there.
"You know," he said, finally, "I guess we just kinda figured it out between ourselves."
Silver Spoon's left eyebrow twitched uncontrollably.
"But, I guess that, if you really want to try it out with Diamond, just get to where the both of you are comfortable and try and work it out from there. Something that you both enjoy equally. Something like a friends night out, but also a bit like a date."
Silver Spoon processed that, considered it, and had a wonderful idea.
"Do you think that a movie could work?"
