Dear Princess Celestia...
“Spike!”
Twilight Sparkle's voice echoed up the library's stairs to where Spike sat at a desk, trying to make a... thing for his crush, Rarity. He hadn't quite decided what to call the project yet, as it had yet to really take any sort of corporeal form. Ignoring his adoptive older sister, he put his tongue between his teeth and leaned closer to the unformed mass of crafting material in front of him. Pipecleaners stuck haphazardly out of it, all the same violet shade as Rarity's hair. Maybe if he made a doll of her? Nah, that would be too creepy. Oh, what if he made like a little figure of Rarity as some sort of animal? It'd be cute and fun, and also not seem as stalker-esque. But what to make? A dog? A cat? A pony? He snorted at the last one. That'd be ridiculous.
“SPIKE! GET DOWN HERE, NOW! IT'S A MATTER OF LIFE AND DEATH!”
Spike sighed and thudded his forehead against the desk. He went ahead and rounded it up to a half dozen smacks for good measure. He had had peace and quiet for almost an hour straight, unheard of for the past few weeks. Of course it couldn't last. He groaned angrily as he lifted himself off the chair and dragged his feet to the door.
“SPIIIIIIKE!”
“I'm coming already!” Spike yelled back down the stairs. “Jeez, I heard you the first time,” he muttered under his breath.
“WHAT WAS THAT?!?”
“I said, 'I just heard you for the first time!” he replied quickly. He shook his head as he mounted the stairs and went down them very slowly, deliberately making each step last as long as it could without seeming like he was doing it on purpose. It seemed he needn't have bothered, though, as Twilight's back was turned to him, sitting at a writing desk. Her indigo hair, accented with magenta and purple streaks, cascaded loosely down her back. She was wearing her ubiquitous lavender sweater-vest with a long-sleeved pink undershirt. This was complemented with a black skirt and beige stockings, and a pair of brown moccasins completed the ensemble. The last laid abandoned under the desk, Spike noted, with Twilight instead choosing to rest with one foot tucked under herself and the other swinging freely, almost but not quite touching the ground.
Her head turned, eyes squinting, and he preemptively winced as she shouted again. “SPIKE!”
“Yes?” he asked flatly as he made a show of rubbing one ear in mock pain. Her eyes opened and she turned a little further to see him standing at the base of the stairs, watching her boredly.
“Ah, there you are, Spike,” she said hurriedly. “Quick, I need you to do something very important for me! There could be dire consequences if this problem isn't fixed, and fast!” The last was said quite earnestly.
“What,” he replied in the same monotonous voice. Twi wasn't above exaggerating – she did it all the time, for that matter – and this time was sure not to be any different.
“I need you to find another set of quills for me, and more ink!” She said, turning back to her work. Naturally. She took the quill she had been using up in her hand, and twisted around again to gesture madly with it. “See? This quill is wearing out! The tip isn't good anymore! The letter to Celestia will look sloppy, and then she'll probably renounce her tutelage of me, and then-”
“Uh-huh,” Spike cut her off. “Quills and ink, got it.” He pivoted on his heels to fetch the items requested, risking one last look backwards. Twilight had lapsed to angry muttering about schedules and wasted time as she attempted to scrawl words with the dull quill. Sighing and shaking his head, Spike went back upstairs, this time to the storeroom. He opened the door, stepping inside, and scanned the inventory. Parchment, parchment, more parchment, some miscellaneous lab equipment, still more parchment-
“There it is,” he said triumphantly as his eyes fell on the shelf covered with writing materials. He hurried forward, grabbing a handful of quills and a jar of ink, and hurried back to the top of the stairs. He paused then, though, deep in thought. What if... a nasty smile played across the teenager's face. He once again began going down the stairs slowly, but this time because he was straining to be as silent as possible. He had decided that he was going to try to jump-scare Twilight, even though he knew he would catch hell for it later. Totally worth it.
His head bobbed forward naturally as he attempted to see if Twilight was still busy. She was, he observed happily, and he tiptoed onto the main floor of the library, biting his lip nervously. He watched her carefully, and she at least seemed not to have realized he was there. He set the materials down on a table nearby as quietly as he could, watching her with one eye. Still no reaction. He pumped his fist in silent victory and began inching forward before coming to a halt. This was mean. Twi had been under so much stress lately, it wasn't fair for him to do something like that. He began to release a sigh, but clamped his hand over his mouth suddenly at the last moment. Scaring her is mean, he thought in an epiphany, but what if…
Spike’s head slowly turned as he stared back at the desk littered with quills and an inkpot behind him. Just as slowly, his head went back to Twilight, who was now sitting with her head in her hands, shaking it silently. His eyes tracked downward. She was still sitting as she had been before, one foot just sort of kicking idly, the other folded underneath, almost totally exposed to him.
Target acquired, he thought as a devious smirk played across his face. He slowly crept back to the table, reaching out for one of the quills. Oh, sure, scaring her would be mean, but there were other ways to shock her without being a total prick about it. Now properly armed, he began to inch forward to where Twilight sat, breathing as quietly as he could and eyes screwed up in concentration. Worst case scenario, she noticed him sneaking around, he just said he was trying not to bother her, no harm, no foul. Best case scenario, he got his kicks pissing off Twi while still managing to improve her mood. Win-win situation.
He held his breath as he closed the last few meters of distance between himself and Twilight. She had resumed trying to write her letter, the dull scritching of the quill loud enough to cover up what little noise he was making. Risking a deep breath, he placed first one foot, then the other, willing gravity to be just a little generous to him this one time. He closed the gap until he was immediately behind Twilight, and he found himself suddenly pausing, at a loss. What exactly should he do, here?
He had a general mission in mind -- Tickle Twilight. Easy enough. He had a means of accomplishing that mission -- Poke her in the foot with the quill. Okay, good to go. But he found himself thinking a bit too hard about the how of it. Just poke her? Go for a little bit of penmanship of his own, at the risk of her jumping dramatically enough to escape his range? Maybe even try to grab her ankle and -- nah, that was way too much work. He settled on a plan to run the keen tip of the new quill right across her arch, to try to get as much of a reaction out of it as he could. This was probably going to be a one-off thing.
He reached out with the quill slowly, gaze shifting from the back of Twilight’s head to her scrunched-up foot. He realized that the stockings she was wearing might cause the quill to be diverted a bit from its ultimate task, but he had discovered over the years that Twilight was an astoundingly ticklish girl -- what else could you expect from a person that sat around indoors, in a library no less, for most every day? This wasn’t going to be his first rodeo, but nonetheless the thrilling thought of cheering up his erstwhile big sis while having a bit of fun of his own was as fresh in his mind as it ever was.
He was mere inches from contact. The quill shivered a bit as he shook a little bit with tension. She just needed to stay distracted for a few more moments-
Her head began to turn, undoubtedly to find out where he was with her precious ink and quills. Fortunately, though, her eyes were all scrunched up like they tended to be when she was summoning a big yell, so she didn’t see him. He darted forward for the kill.
“SpiiiiiiiiIIIAAAGHH!” Her lilting call for him turned into a surprised shriek as he drove the quill into her foot and dragged it across. As he anticipated, she jumped up quickly, giggling a bit as she did so. She knocked the chair back in the process and it slammed into Spike’s knuckles, bringing a grimace of pain. Totally worth it.
“What are you doing, Spike?” Twilight asked angrily, glaring at him. “That wasn’t called for!” She crossed her arms and stared down at him with a pout on her face. “I was in the middle of a very important letter!”
Spike shrugged nonchalantly. “I figured I’d lighten the mood a little bit,” he said with the slightest bit of apology in his voice. “Sorry if you’re so jumpy about it.”
“Spike, you know how tickli- URRGH!” she grunted. “We’re not talking about this. Go get my quills and ink, and then just go away!”
“Fine, Miss Sassypants,” Spike muttered darkly, tossing the quill haphazardly onto her writing desk. He went to grab the other items, hesitating as his hands closed on the quills. He looked back over his shoulder. Twilight was looking at the quill he had brought her with a sharp eye, trying to locate deficiencies that weren’t there. Sure she was distracted, he slipped a quill deftly up his sleeve. Not talking about it, eh?, he thought maliciously. Well, I’ll make sure it stays fresh in your mind. He was gonna have fun tonight.
He carried the armload back, dumping it unceremoniously on the desk. “There,” he snapped. “You’ve got your precious writing utensils.”
Twilight looked at the pile and glared at him, but then a sweet, innocent grin played across her face. “Thanks so much, Spikey-Wikey,” she said in a childish voice.
“Don’t call me that!” Spike said angrily. Only Rarity could call him that.
“There, we’re even,” she said as she took her seat again, this time crossing both legs. “Now go away, I’ve got a letter to write.”
“Fine,” Spike said to her back, but she was already scrambling to catch up with the time she had ‘lost’. His eyes fell to a bored, lidded position as he wrinkled his nose. So quickly did she forget. Unsheathing his blade of justice, he stepped forward, this time looking to get her other foot. She wasn’t gonna forget him that easily.
“SPI-HI-HI-HIKE!” she giggled as she jumped up again from the quill scraping the bottom of her sensitive feet. She rounded on him and gestured furiously with her arms. “Go away, you annoying little... dork!” Despite the sound of her voice and the immensity of her movements, she couldn’t keep the grin off her face.
“Twi, why would I do that?” he said innocently. “I got you smiling. This is the happiest I’ve seen you all week!”
She fought to wipe the grin from her face. “There’s a time for work,” she stated in a lecturing tone, “and a time for play. This,” she pointed definitively at the letter. “is work. That,” her finger leveled at the quill in Spike’s hand, “is play. And now is work time, according to the schedule!” With a groan of frustration she flopped back down on the chair, this time leaving her legs both hanging down.
Spike shook his head. She wasn’t quick to pick up, was she? He dropped to his belly and crawled, now not even trying to hide the noise he was making. He knew he had her now; she wasn’t going to admit defeat, which just upped the ante considerably.
“Spiiiiike,”, she said in a upwardly-pitched growl, the warning clear in her voice, “don’t think about it.”
“About what?” he said boredly as he reached his position. He paused, waiting for the right moment.
“You know what, you creep. Tickling me-he-he-HE!” Once more, her words were broken by a spat of laughter. He so loved interrupting her like that, maybe out of an unconscious dislike of being lectured. Hell, it wasn’t unconscious; she really would drone for hours on end about the stupidest stuff. She didn’t rise, though, to her credit, instead just shifting her feet forward to avoid him. “Knock it off, Spike,” she muttered.
He was playing a game with her, now, and she was reciprocating. Try too much, too quickly, and she would just take the ball away, metaphorically speaking. But not doing anything at all, well, that wasn’t much of a game, was it? No, instead, he bided his time, waiting for her to return to a position where he’d easily be able to attack. He distracted himself with staring at her feet. Pretty little things, he admitted to himself, although it was kind of creepy to think of them like that -- it was his sister, by Celestia. Nonetheless, he had grown up with her as his sister, almost like a surrogate mother, and as he went from toddler to child to young man, their relationship had grown far more fluid, so that he was as likely to pick on her in good fun as she was to him.
The nylon gathered around the ridges on the bottom of her feet as they rested, toes folded towards Spike, on the floor. He watched with fascination as she unconsciously rubbed them against each other, scratched an itch, flexed and wriggled every once in a while… and as they slowly fell back towards him with each maneuver as she forgot about his presence and naturally returned to a more comfortable positioning…
He rested one hand on his chin as the other twirled the quill around. It was remarkable, really, how extremely ticklish Twi was. Oh, sure, as a little kid he had had his own share of being tickled almost until he peed himself, but that was then; nowadays, he was far more likely to be the tickler, exacting his revenge on her. It wasn’t quite an obsession, not really, just one of the established facts of the status quo: Twilight got moody. Spike tickled her. She got happy (and usually socked him with a pillow in retribution, but that was beside the point). He wasn’t going to break a good formula out of any concern for what others might think, and besides, it was just some sibling bonding.
Right. Keep telling yourself that, weirdo.
He repositioned himself as he got ready to once again give Twilight a quick little love-peck on her tender feet with his feather. He accidentally dropped the quill, though, arm having fallen asleep, and she cleared her throat.
“Spike, this is too important,” she said earnestly. “I’m really not interested in doing this right now.” It was left unspoken that this was merely a temporary request. Maybe it was just that she was into some really kinky stuff or something, but Spike noticed that Twilight was all too eager to let him tickle her whenever she felt down, sometimes going so far as to come up with reasons to put her feet within his reach and making a show of being irritated, such that his natural reaction was to give her a few good pokes. To be honest, it sort of creeped him out sometimes. No matter what, though, he knew he would be expected to continue this later. But he felt like doubling down, this time; it was just too rich an opportunity.
“Then you won’t mind if I just do a little writing of my own, huh?” he said casually, tapping the floor absentmindedly with his fingers. The reply was a shuddering sigh, followed by a deep breath.
“I’m telling you, Spike,” she said resolutely, “not this time. You won’t get a reaction from me, anyways, so do whatever you want, I guess," she ended with false bravado.
Oh, Twilight, Twilight, Twilight, when will you learn? She should have known, by now, that reverse psychology had no effect on him; likewise, he also knew that she was lying through her teeth. The girl could get into a pretty intense state of focus, it was true, but her feet were her weak point. She’d crack a smile within the first pass, and be breaking down with laughter within 30 seconds, tops. She was the one that wanted to play hardball, though, so Spike took her up on the offer.
“Well, okay then,” he said back politely. “Let’s see here… Dear Princess Celestia,” he said in a mock-posh accent, and reached forward. He got as far as writing the first D before she started fidgeting.
“Spi-hi-hi-hike,” she moaned with a slight chuckle behind the words, “come on.”
“You said I wouldn’t get a reaction, Twi,” he said nonchalantly. “Looks like you were lying to me.”
She groaned in frustration again. “That was because you surprised me, that's all. I’m not gonna break this time.”
Spike shook with his own, albeit silent, laughter. Oh, she wanted to play this game badly. Well, she had been in that crappy mood, but still… This was glorious. “All riiiight,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Guess I’ll keep going…”
“I guess you will,” she said, trying to sound calm but failing to restrict the nervousness creeping into her tone.
Spike positioned the quill. Okay, time for ‘e’. He put the quill right on the instep of her foot, where he knew she was most sensitive, and began writing the character. He heard muffled giggling as he completed the first swirl, directly on the most ticklish part of her foot, and it wriggled a bit to escape the torment. Two letters, Spike thought as he brought the bottom of the 'e' down towards the ball of her foot, and she’s already breaking.
He continued writing the rest of ‘Dear’, the foot he was writing on jumping a bit from the sensations and Twilight shaking with laughter but refusing to give him the pleasure of laughing out loud. He wasn’t a fan of being denied feedback. He moved on to the next word. 'P'… 'r'… he reached ‘i’ and decided to dot the letter on one of her delicate little toes rather than the grammatically-correct place of on the heel.
She squawked as he wriggled the pen around to simulate making the dot big enough to be legible, and her feet shot forward, rubbing against each other. “Hey, what gives?” Spike asked in pretend anger. “I can’t write without parchment!”
“Spike, you worm,” Twilight said, and he could hear the wide smile that must be stretching across her face. “Why are you doing this? Come on, just leave me in peace.” The last was practically begging.
“Can’t do that, Twi,” he replied. “You said you wouldn’t react. You’ve reacted.”
“Okay, so I lost. Game over, you win. Go away.”
Spike shook his head as if he were having a face-to-face conversation with her rather than being underneath her chair. “No-can-do, Twi. We’re increasing the stakes.”
“Spike. No.”
“Oh, yes,” he said evilly. “Get your feetsies back down here, let me finish writing ‘Dear Princess Celestia’, and I’ll clean the library, by myself, for a week.”
Her feet lowered themselves incrementally. “And if I can’t do it?”
“You give me a week’s worth of foot massages, on demand. Only fitting, considering, right?”
She groaned with frustration. “Spike, that’ll throw off my schedule so much…”
“Ah, but wouldn’t me singlehandedly cleaning the library give you extra time? For more, like, whatever, letter writing or something?”
“I’m not sure that’s such a good gamble,” she said nervously, but the stockinged feet kept moving slowly towards him. “How much time would I be wasting rubbing your nasty feet?”
“I’ll have you know I have very clean feet,” he said indignantly. He thought a moment about it, though. He had just said the first thing that came to mind, he wasn’t really all that into people touching his feet, but it was the first thing that had popped into his head, given what they were doing. “Maybe… 30 minutes a day?”
She sighed. The feet came down a bit lower. “I suppose I could work that in,” she said resignedly. “How do I know you’ll keep up your end of the bargain, though?”
“The question goes both ways, doesn’t it, Twi?” he replied rhetorically, but he knew that he wouldn’t need to hold up his end. There was no way she would last. “Just assume I’m a man of my word, and I’ll take your word for it. Fair?”
“You’re like a little lizard sometimes. A fire-breathing, scale-covered lizard,” she muttered angrily, but her feet came to a rest in front of Spike once more. The toes wiggled a bit. “Okay, fine, go nuts, but I’m -- hey hold on a second," she said suspiciously, shifting her feet away one more time, "how will I know you’ve written the whole thing?”
Spike snorted. “With how sensitive your feet are, can’t you just feel for it?”
“I get a little distracted with laughing, usually,” she admitted.
“Fine, I’ll just say each letter as I write it, then. Oh, yeah, and so that you don’t just get the chance to recover your composure, I write the whole thing out, one go, no pauses, no jerking away, none of that. Got it?”
She sighed, legs slowly coming back again. “Fine.”
“And I start from the beginning again.”
The feet shot up. “WHAT?” she said angrily. “That’s not fair! You’re already almost halfway done!”
“Yeah,” Spike said to her like explaining it to a child, “but you’ve also had a few minutes to get your feet all rested, so to speak. And last I checked, seven is not half of twenty."
“You little sneak,” she murmured, but nonetheless returned to position. “Fine,” she snapped, “But you call out EVERY letter, got it?”
“Yep,” he said happily. The feet repositioned themselves, one tucked behind the other, toes of one foot wrapped around the others. The ‘rear’ foot clenched and unclenched, clearly in anticipation of ‘bracing’ the other from the shock of being tickled. He watched this ritual for a few seconds, as the two feet traded places, rubbing over one another as they did so, the nylon making a sibilant noise as it brushed past itself.
“Well?” Twilight’s voice broke into his reverie. “Are you gonna do it, or not?”
“Right, right, keep your skirt on,” he muttered. He moved in. “Ready?”
The toes curled desperately one last time. “Ready,” she breathed.
“Here we go, then,” he said as he placed the quill; the foot jumped as soon as it landed. This was gonna be a snap.
“D,” he said, as he began writing the first letter directly onto the inside of her arch. The foot twitched, and he heard her giggle a little. Easy frickin’ day.
“E,” the reaction wasn’t as dramatic for this one, despite the lingering strike onto her sensitive instep. “A,” and he took care to write it in a ‘fancy’ manner, with a nice little curlicue rolling up onto her heel. The foot wiggled a bit at the quill traveling to the new territory, but she stayed still otherwise. The 'r' wasn’t that much more intense of a reaction. “P,” he said, taking especial care to put the loop all the way up on her heel, and she snorted at the sensation… but didn’t withdraw. Damn, this wasn’t going well. Fortunately, his ace-in-the-whole was on its way.
“R,” he said, stretching out the single syllable as he drew the letter, knowing the next letter would probably be the one that broke her, “i…” Once again he put the dot on her big toe, and she squawked, feet writhing and Twilight herself squirming, but the foot he was writing on was prevented from retreating by its sidekick immediately behind.
“The dot goes above the i!” Twilight all but screamed. “You’re cheating!”
“Fine!”, he said back angrily. He redrew the letter, dotting it on her heel. As revenge, he started the bottom of the n on the ball of her foot, as-yet untouched flesh, and she gasped a bit… but that little trick of hers with keeping both feet together kept her from escaping. He sighed quietly, realizing she was more determined to win this than he thought. “C” got little reaction, as did ‘e’, but the 'S's…
He chose a spot right where the foot rose to form the ball, as that contour wasn’t yet touched. He took as much time as he reasonably could without ‘cheating’, and she chuckled and wiggled her foot back and forth… but still didn’t give up. He had one more word to go, and he was starting to get desperate.
The “C”, predictably, didn’t do much, even though it rolled along her outstep for a good while, yielding another round of giggling. The ‘e’ ‘l’ ‘e’ combination, despite him traveling around from location to location to attempt to find a sweet spot, didn’t get much either. “S”... little more than a slight twitch. She was adapting, too quickly for comfort. He wasn’t going to win this… not fairly, anyways. He wrote the “t”, giving no hint of what he was about to do, but then paused. He took a breath, hoping he could bluff her.
“It’s, uh, ‘z’ next, right?” He began drawing it out, gliding across the sole, hoping she stayed just naive a little bit longer.
“What?” she asked indignantly. “No, doofus, it’s eyehe-HE-HE-HE-HE-HE!” The biggest laugh yet escaped her lips, a full-blown fit, as he pushed the quill deep into the material to reach the junction between toes and sole, an area he hadn’t quite had the opportunity to reach previously. She jerked away instinctively, still shaking with laughter. She clutched herself with her arms, as if trying to hold herself from falling apart as she rocked in the chair.
“Wellp,” Spike said triumphantly, rising to his feet, “Looks like I won!” He stretched his arms over his head, exaggerating the stretch, as he pretended to yawn. “Oh, man, would you look at the time? Gotta go to bed, I guess. Good night, Twi-” He was cut off by the ball of parchment smacking into his temple, and his hand jumped to the injury. “Oh, come on, Twi!” he pleaded.
“No, you cheated!” she hissed at him despite the ear-splitting grin. “You lose by default!”
“You said that you wouldn’t move as I wrote-”
“As you wrote ‘Dear Princess Celestia’,!” she corrected him angrily. “You explicitly stated this! I have it here in writing!”
You’ve gotta be kidding me, Spike thought to himself, but sure enough, there was the details of their little bet, all down in ink and parchment, neatly bulleted and sub-pointed:
1.) The dork writes ‘Dear Princess Celestia’ on bottom of foot
1a.) Can’t withdraw
1b.) Can’t take break
2.) Conditions of victory:
2a.) Me: Remove cleaning from schedule for period of 1 week
2b.) The dork: Makes me touch his nasty feet for 30 minutes per day
“Are you serious,” Spike said, eyes narrowed, as he looked at the ‘contract’. She smacked it with her free hand.
“I don’t kid around with these sorts of things, Spike!” she responded earnestly. “So, are you going to keep up your end?”
Spike sighed, shrugging his shoulders. “Yeah,” he muttered, tossing the quill on the desk. “I guess.”
“Good,” she said happily, and sat back down. “Now, I can get back to work.”
Spike shook his head as he went to turn, but Twilight’s desk caught his eye. He walked up to it, ignored now that he had expended his allotment of time out of her precious schedule, and scanned the letter in front of her. “Hang on,” he said quietly, “You’re in the exact same place you were when I first got here! I thought you were going to keep writing and ignore me?”
She turned her head, resting her cheek on her shoulder, and grinned at him. “I told you, Spike,” she said victoriously, “I don’t kid around with these sorts of thing!” She turned back to her work.
Author's Note
I began punching this out at 5:30PM of what is now yesterday, and was finished within 2 hours. This isn't to brag, in fact quite the opposite: any sloppy writing or poor word choice I attribute to my hastiness.
