Ménage à Trois
Chapter One
The world has grown suspicious of anything that looks like a happily married life. –Oscar Wilde
Soft chamber music floated gently through the air, despite the blanket of polite chatter nearly smothering it. The dark polished wood of the table was uncovered save for a narrow white runner crossing the top. Tall beeswax candles burned steadily lower and lower, their flames flickering in the draughty, high-ceilinged dining room. Despite the natural chill of the stone surrounding them, the ponies sitting around the table seemed largely unaffected by the cold; and even if they had felt a draft, they wouldn’t have dared to shiver. After all, one didn’t complain when invited to Hoity Toity’s table for dinner.
An older, handsome stallion who’s thick blue mane was just beginning to be flecked with silver, stood up. “Excuse me, ladies and gentlecolts,” he said, his horn glowing briefly while he held up a goblet of wine, “I would like to propose a toast to our good friend Hoity Toity, who’s been enjoying a rather excellent streak of good luck these past few months. I wish both you and Miss La-Di-Da the greatest happiness,” he finished, glancing at Hoity Toity and his fiancé.
Polite hoofstamping all around and the twelve guests at the table proceeded to take a drink from their chalices. Hoity Toity thanked his friend quietly, and resumed petting his La-Di-Da’s mane, who was lounging over the arm of his chair like a large cat. Fancy Pants sat back down next to his wife, Fleur de Lis. She whispered something in his ear and he nodded once, a resigned expression on his face.
The conversation at the table seemed oddly stilted and awkward, as eternally polite ponies tried to make the best of conversation while not tripping over the invisible lines of etiquette. Hoity Toity cast an unsettlingly superior presence over everypony he met, and dining with him was no different. But there was another line that the guests were straining not to cross (and yet all of them were dying to)—rather awkward rumors about Fancy Pants and his wife had hit the presses recently.
Everypony wanted to know if there was any truth in the rumors. They all knew that Fleur held the reins in their relationship, but not literally. And yet the tabloids insisted that some rather scandalous photographs of Fancy Pants in a rather compromising position (no pun intended) with his wife continued to circulate. Everypony was slavering to ask the couple what they thought of the media’s spin, but nopony quite had the courage to ask. It was difficult to believe that Fancy Pants, the most elegant, kind and generous pony in Canterlot, could have willingly put himself through such an ordeal.
Finally, Busy Bee, a bright yellow Earth Pony who had absolutely no sense of decorum, blurted out, “Fancy Pants, I must ask what you think of the media these days. Have you read those awful articles about the grain prices in Trottingham? Such a scandal.”
Fancy Pants took another sip of his wine and set his goblet down slowly, meeting Busy Bee’s gaze. His expression was knowing and resolute. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I have seen those particular articles. But then again, you simply can’t believe everything you read. Besides, everypony knows the Canterlot newspapers are such rubbish these days.”
It was a careful trading of blows between the two superb vocal fencers. Fancy Pants, however, had the advantage—everypony here wanted to believe him.
“Rubbish, you say? Well, I for one simply cannot believe those grain prices are faked. They looked much too believable!” Busy Bee said perhaps an octave louder, to attract the attention of the rest of the table.
Fancy Pants dabbed his lips with a napkin. Fleur was glaring at Busy Bee with a look of such icy cold hatred that the older mare would have withered in her seat; that is, if Busy Bee had been paying the slightest bit of attention to the slender model.
Despite his natural good looks, Fancy Pants for a moment looked his age, which was rather substantial. More than that, he looked unbelievably tired. “Enough with the double entendres, my dear. Yes, I have seen the articles concerning me and my wife. And I can say with every fiber of my being, that those articles and those atrocious photographs are utterly false.”
The whole table seemed to relax, if only slightly.
“And furthermore,” Fancy Pants said, his strident voice rising, “if a group of ponies that I have had the privilege to call my friends could even believe, for one moment, that any of that was true...then I can honestly say that you have never known me, or my wife.”
Fleur hastily arranged her expression into one of sympathy, hurt, and bewilderment.
Hoity Toity was the first to speak. “Fancy, you can be assured that nopony heard such things from me,” he drawled. “I told them straight out that you could never do such a thing.”
“Thank you, old friend,” Fancy Pants said tiredly. “And now, I am afraid I must be unimaginably rude, and take leave of your presence. This conversation has upset my fragile wife.”
Murmurs of condolences and sympathy echoed up and down the table. Fleur assumed an exhausted composure, and followed her husband out the door, dragging her hooves very slightly. The entire room breathed a collective sigh of relief, both at their presence being gone, and that some of the gossip could abate. Of course, the gossip would rage even more strongly now that Fancy Pants had denied it. It was what Canterlot society did best, after all.
Fancy Pants sat in the darkness of his study and poured himself half a hoof of good hard cider. The blue glow of his horn was the only illumination, and he raised the glass to his lips. A quick, searing burn down his throat, followed by a solid golden warmth in his belly. This cider was like a climax for the palette. 1320, what an excellent year. He sighed, and magically loosened his cravat, removing it from his strong neck and draping it over the edge of his desk. The glow from his magic lit up the office and cast dark shadows over the titles of the books that filled the walls of shelves.
With some disgust, he looked up at the books. He hadn’t read any of these books since he had gotten married. Life kept him so busy. Ah, the days when he could get lost in a book for hours, emerging rumpled and distracted from his study in search only of some tea and biscuits. That was a simpler time. A time that seemed so very long ago...
He heard the scratch of a record being put on, and closed his eyes. The powerful muscles in his back legs tightened involuntarily.
Non, Rien de rien...
It was his wife’s favorite album.
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait...
The one she always played when she wanted to...
“Darling? Could you come here and help me with this zipper for a moment?” she called from down the hall.
Fancy Pants set down his glass and opened the door to his study, obeying her as he always did. Dread filled him with each soft clop of his hooves on the carpeted stairs; dread at forcing pleasure from this, dread at his wife’s insatiable desires. He had tried for years to please her, plumbing the depths of his bank accounts for toys she wanted. Crops, saddles, bridles…such things that a wife shouldn’t be interested in.
Mes chagrins, mes plaisirs…
The bitter taste of shame mingled with his apprehension. He opened the door to their shared bedroom and saw his beautiful, elegant wife standing in front of the mirror, her legs wide apart. She cast him a slant-eyed look over her shoulder, mouth curving into a smirk, as he took in the sight of his wife dressed tantalizingly in black leather. It stretched over her shapely flanks, hiding her cutie mark and tightening along her slender ankles.
“Zip me up, would you?”
Silently, he took her zipper between his teeth and pulled it upwards. He wasn’t allowed to use magic in the bedroom.
“You look so disheartened, my love…why?” Fleur asked, turning and stroking his mane gently. He relaxed into her touch and sighed.
“The dinner party tonight was…stressful,” he said quietly. “They are so eager for gossip, for nasty little tidbits. I suppose it had to happen sometime, when they’d discover I’m not a god among mere mortals. I simply wish it hadn’t happened so soon.”
“They don’t know a thing about it,” Fleur said, still soothing, still petting, “They don’t know what happens here, between us. If they did, they’d understand it was all in good fun. It’s all just play.”
“Is it?” Fancy Pants asked bitterly.
She paused in her grooming. “Of course it is, darling. I’m not forcing you to do anything, we have safe words and everything.”
“Of course, dear,” Fancy Pants said, forcing the resigned tone out of his voice and into his head. “Would you run and fetch me the black saddle? I believe it would look beautiful with your outfit tonight.”
Fleur went off to fetch the saddle with a triumphant little smile on her face, but Fancy Pants knew Fleur was too clever to simply drop the subject like that. No, she’d store it and hide it away until the opportunity came to whip it out and cut him off at the knees with it. There used to be a time when Fleur didn’t merely stroll into museums on the arm of a wealthy patron; she’d sneak into them late at night and a painting or two would be missing the next morning. Fancy Pants knew that Fleur had a colorful and complicated past, one she didn’t like to talk about. However, thanks to some of his better placed, less-dignified friends, he was able to discreetly inquire around Equestria. They didn’t get far, of course, since Fleur had “disappeared” several times in her life—
The saddle thumped heavily onto his back, cutting off his train of thought.
It was a constricting weight, although not an uncomfortable one. His wife cinched the straps around his waist and he took a breath, feeling the saddle restrict his breathing slightly. As it was, the saddle was not an entirely difficult thing to wear, but it was the connotation behind it that held the real barb. Saddles were outlawed in public use, for obvious reasons, though despite being awkward and heavy, it wasn’t actually painful.
No, that was the bit’s job.
Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait,
Ni le mal tout ca m'est bien egal…
Several hours later he dropped into the cushions on his bed. Beside him, Fleur dropped the bridle and lay next to him; she wasn’t breathing nearly as heavily, but then again, she was much younger and hadn’t been on the receiving end of the crop. Fancy Pants shifted and tried to keep the smooth silk of the sheets against his hot, wounded hindquarters. Fleur had not been gentle with the lash tonight, and as a result there were hot red stripes against his flanks.
“That was lovely,” Fleur said, smiling at him in the dark. He could see the smile on her face, and it was the old sweet smile she had wooed and won him with. It was an innocent, satisfied smile, like a filly with a sundae; he had been seeing less and less of that smile until her tastes had run deeper into the more painful side of intimacy. That beautiful smile made a reappearance, then. Somehow, that made up for the aching jaws and sore flanks.
“I’m glad you enjoyed yourself, my dear,” Fancy Pants murmured, settling his head on the pillow.
“You enjoyed yourself nearly as much as I did,” Fleur reminded him coyly, brushing a blue curl away from his lathered forehead.
“Yes, I suppose I did,” Fancy Pants murmured. Talking like this afterwards made it a little easier, but it was rare, and almost always preceded a request of Fleur’s. A new gag, saddle, position, or toy usually topped her list. So Fancy Pants stayed quiet and waited, allowing himself to drift off to sleep. He would really need to tend to his flanks first thing in the morning, they burned now and he would have a miserable sleep unless he got up and put ointment on them…
“Do you ever think of adding another pony into the mix?” Fleur asked sleepily, as if she had only just thought of it.
“Pardon?” Fancy Pants asked, opening his eyes and furrowing his brow.
“A third pony. A…a threesome, I suppose. Maybe a mare. Wouldn’t you like that, two fillies to play with you at night?”
“I’m not quite sure what you mean,” Fancy Pants said slowly, although he did and it horrified him.
“Never mind. I’m rambling. Don’t listen to me, go to bed,” Fleur whispered, and rolled over.
But that wasn’t it. Fancy Pants knew better than that. She would wait, and then bring it up again, this time with a stronger argument. What did she really want? Fancy Pants closed his eyes and tried to ignore the throbbing pain in his hindquarters, and drifted off to sleep.
She had, after all, trained him well.
Fleur brought it up again at breakfast the next morning. Fancy Pants was in a rather irritable mood, since he had run out of ointment for his hindquarters and the waistcoat he had to wear in order to hide the stripes chafed horrendously. Picking up another jar of ointment was essential, and he would have to explain to the nice young mare behind the counter why he was going through jars of healing balm at this rate. He was busily reading the paper and spreading jam over his toast when Fleur asked a question, but he had been immersed in the stock trades in Cloudsdale.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” he asked.
“I said, have you given any thought to my idea?” Fleur asked, looking over the rim of her teacup.
“What idea?”
“The one I told you about last night, about adding another pony into our bedroom,” Fleur continued conversationally, as though she was discussing the weather.
“I think it’s a ridiculous idea,” Fancy Pants said, perhaps more brusquely than was wise. He turned back to his toast and paper.
“Would you think it was so ridiculous if it was Rarity?”
Fancy Pants choked on his toast. “What?”
“You seem very fond of her,” Fleur said with a shrug, “and she is, after all, a very beautiful mare…”
Rarity was a good friend of Fancy Pants; the two of them had met when Rarity accidentally ran into him on the street. She was a dressmaker from Ponyville, devastatingly intelligent and gorgeous to boot, but her thriving business kept her rather busy. Occasionally, Fancy Pants would drop by and visit her, and whenever she was in Canterlot the two of them would go out for lunch.
“How dare you,” Fancy Pants said, aghast. “How dare you attempt to bring Rarity into this!”
“It was only a—“
“No! Don’t say it was only a thought, because I know you, Fleur. It’s never only a thought with you.” He snapped, getting to his hooves and pacing angrily. “For Celestia’s sake, I’ve put up with your experiments, I’ve bought you all of your expensive toys, I’ve tried to make you happy—what more do you want? Must you take my friends as well?”
“Don’t lose your temper,” Fleur said coldly.
“Temper? Temper? You look me in the eye and you dare speak to me about temper?” Fancy Pants thundered.
“I, who must be on the receiving end of your crop and your bit and your saddle, I am the one who is suddenly unable to lose his temper? No, Fleur! This is enough; this has gone on much too long! I will not allow you to injure Rarity in any way, I would not allow anypony to harm her if I controlled her fate! You do what you must to me, do whatever you wish to my body, but for Celestia’s sake, restrain yourself! Must you drag in an innocent bystander, who has done you no wrong? Have you no shame, no common decency?
“And as if my reputation hasn’t sunk low enough, you now wish to bring in another pony? As if I am not already the laughingstock of Canterlot, as if my reputation has not already been sullied simply by marrying you!”
Fleur observed him icily. “Calm down,” she ordered. “You do have feelings for the little chippie, I can see it.”
“Don’t bring her down to your level,” Fancy Pants spat.
“My level?” She tittered and got to her hooves as well. “My darling, you’re down on my level with me. Perhaps even lower. After all, you’re not exactly crying your eyes out at the end of our little sessions, are you?”
She advanced slowly, raising her eyebrows. “You can try to paint me as some sort of demon and yourself as some kind of martyr, but Fancy Pants, let’s face reality. You would love it if I treated her the way I treat you. Then you could be her knight in shining armor, her precious rescuer. You would adore that.”
The kitchen was very quiet. Only the ticking of the clock sounded.
When Fancy Pants spoke, it was in a very quiet, almost gentle voice.
“Do not ever speak of this again.”
She did speak of it again, of course. Only this time, he was much more vulnerable.
“Say it!”
The crop bit into his flanks, reopening the scabs.
“Ah-haah-ah! Yes, yes, whatever you want!”
“Good boy,” she crooned. “Do you think Rarity would like watching you like this?” She leaned in closer, and he felt her warm breath on his neck. “Do you think she would get as hot as I do?”
“No,” he groaned.
The crop slashed against him again.
“Say it!”
“Ah! Yes! Whatever you want, whatever you say!”
She released him, and he climaxed hard. It ripped everything out of him, and he leaned against the bed, breathing hard, covered in lather.
Fleur knelt next to him. “My good boy,” she whispered. “We’re having lunch with Rarity tomorrow.”
Her words were a bite in his ear.
“And you’ll be the one to ask her
Author's Note
A complete reconstruction, with a completely different plotline planned out. This actually has a bit of effort put into it! Huzzah! I hope you enjoy it so far. ;)
The song Fleur plays is Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien. Believe it or not, I knew about it before Inception, and it is a really lovely song in my opinion. :)
