Be Discreet

by alarajrogers

Rating: mature
Tags: Sex, Discord, Princess Celestia, Slice of Life, Original Character, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Romance
Length: 16246

Older teen Celestia has the *most embarrassing ever* conversation with her father the king. Discord/Celestia.

In her late teens, Princess Celestia goes to her father for advice on how to handle the conflict between her duties as a princess and her desires as a young mare. Fortunately or unfortunately for her, King Starfire is wise, understanding, and a bit of a Troll Dad. Celestia, as the Princess Heir, is destined to be Ruling Queen of Equestria, and the Ruling Queen's husband will be King Consort, and for this reason, absolutely must be a suitable pony to be a king. This, of course, completely rules out unstable, radical chaos mages with no family or even species who aren't ponies and really enjoy stirring up trouble. However, according to King Starfire, there are some very good reasons for a Princess Heir or a Ruling Queen to take a lover who cannot be king.

Or, in other words, "If you want Discord, take him, just be discreet about it."

Takes place in the same continuity as "The Last Draconequus", but because that story is rated teen, this piece of it has been taken out of the larger story to stand on its own as a mature fic.

There is now a series page: The Last Draconequus.

Published 2013-12-14 20:30:03 UTC
Last updated 2015-02-22 23:18:28 UTC

The Most Embarrassing Conversation Ever

Celestia was a nervous wreck as she approached her father's study. She was sure she already knew the answer to the question she wanted to ask, and she was sure it wasn't an answer she would like, and it was tearing her apart that she even needed to ask, that she couldn't just accept what she knew to be right and necessary. Why did she have to have these feelings? Why couldn't she simply resign herself to the life she'd always expected to have, the life she'd been trained to have? Since early childhood she had known that the stallion she married eventually would be chosen for her, that he would be a noble unicorn of fine bloodline, or an important pegasus or earth pony with a powerful family, chosen to make a political alliance or because he would be a good and complementary King Consort to a Ruling Queen. She had known that she would never be able to do as she wished for love. Why was she even bothering to ask her father this question?

But the one she loved challenged her to question traditions, to reconsider patterns, to demand to know if the way the world wanted her to live really was the best way or if it was just the only way anypony had thought of. She could be disgusted with herself for desires that were sick and wrong, or she could accept who she was and how she felt, and if she was to do that, then she had to challenge tradition. She didn't have the luxury anymore of believing herself to be a perfect princess, a model of decorum and propriety who would always Do The Right Thing, at least when The Right Thing wasn't defined by protecting the innocent or preventing harm but by what all the other noble unicorns agreed was The Right Thing, in the blatant absence of evidence that doing things any other way would actually do any harm to anypony. She wanted things that noble society said were wrong to want, and she wanted things that everypony agreed a princess could never afford to have, and she wasn't convinced anymore that the things she wanted were really so terrible that she should be denied them her entire life so she could live the life of a proper princess. Or Queen, eventually.

She rapped on the door with a hoof, too nervous to use magic lest she accidentally knock the door down. "Father?"

"Come in, Celestia," her father said.

King Starfire looked up from his books, a gentle smile on his face. He was a sky blue unicorn with a mane as dark as his youngest daughter's coat, and a cutie mark of five white stars, as if they blazed so bright they could be seen even in the daylight. Celestia trembled, trying to nerve herself. Her father had never been anything other than loving and tender with her; even when he was stern, the worst punishment he had ever inflicted on her was the knowledge that he was disappointed. She had no reason to believe he'd be angry with her... except that what she was about to ask him about was not only a violation of propriety, but could accidentally reveal that his oldest daughter and heir was a pervert, if she wasn't careful in how she chose her words. And she simply had no idea how he would react.

But she had to do this. "Father, I... I must speak with you."

The book that was floating in front of him set itself down on the table where his other books were stacked. Like Celestia herself, Starfire was a voracious reader. "Of course, Celestia. You know I'm here for you whenever you need me."

She took a deep breath. "I... I am plagued by a question, lately." And stopped, losing her nerve for a moment.

"A question you wish to ask me, daughter? Ask anything. Don't be afraid."

"Father, is... is love ever wrong?"

He looked at her quizzically. "Wrong? What would you mean by that?"

"I mean... is it possible to feel love, but to have that love be something you should not feel? Something that's wrong to feel?"

"Oh. Oh, my dear daughter. No. Love is never wrong." He got to his feet and walked around his desk. "Love is not always convenient. Sometimes we love the wrong pony, a pony who is bad for us or who doesn't mesh well with us or who doesn't love us in return, and that can be terribly painful. Sometimes we love a pony who is bound by honor or prior ties or their own love not to return our feelings, or we ourselves are bound, and that, too, can hurt. But it is never wrong to love."

That wasn't the answer she'd expected. It was the answer maybe she should have expected, because she knew her father, but she'd been so afraid. Starfire's answer filled her with hope and emboldened her to ask her next question. "So then... is it wrong to want to marry somepony you love? Even if that love wouldn't be considered suitable?"

"That's two questions and they are different matters from your first question. No, it is not wrong to have wants. It's not wrong to want to marry the pony you love. But, Celestia... you are a princess. You will be Ruling Queen when I am dead, and your husband will have power equal to your sister's. You can want to marry the pony you love, but unless you are very fortunate as to fall in love with a stallion entirely suitable for the role of King Consort, you cannot actually do it. What you want is not wrong to want, but understand, your life is not entirely your own, and it never was. You belong to our subjects, and what you do in your life must always be constrained by what is best for them, regardless of what you want."

It was the answer Celestia expected. It was softened by her father's gentle reiteration that her wants weren't wrong, that she wasn't a bad pony for having desires of her own... but it still meant she couldn't have what she wanted. She'd known that, but hearing it confirmed was a blow. Celestia sagged slightly. "I understand, Father."

Her father tugged her bowed head up slightly so he could look down into her eyes. "I don't think you do, Celestia."

"No, I understand. I... I cannot marry for love... it doesn't matter who I love, I can't be with him. Not if he's not suitable to be a King Consort."

"And you had a candidate in mind, I take it."

She blushed. "It doesn't matter, Father."

"It does. Love always matters." He sighed, and then went to his couch and sat on it, four hooves folded under his body. "Celestia, come sit by me."

Obediently she went to her father's couch and knelt on the pillows lying on the floor in front of the couch, folding her own four hooves under. "It's all right, Father, I do understand. I'll do what I must for Equestria."

"I never had any doubt of that. But... I don't think you understand, Celestia, because you are still in many ways still a filly, and sheltered. Your circumstance... is not quite as bleak as you fear." He sighed.

"What do you mean?"

"This is not a conversation a father ever relishes having with his daughter," Starfire said. "By all the gods I wish Imbrium were still with us. She would have been... a better pony for you to have this discussion with, for certain."

Celestia remembered her mother, Imbrium the Queen Consort, but only distantly. She'd been a pegasus, directly descended from Commander Hurricane, married to King Starfire in a political alliance intended to demonstrate that Starfire was sincere in his dedication to harmony between the three tribes. While she'd been the equivalent of pegasus nobility, Imbrium hadn't had the temperament for calm, overly controlled life at court; pegasus leaders were warriors or weatherworkers, ponies of action. She'd died shortly after Luna's birth, giving her life to tame a terrible hurricane that had blown in from the sea in eastern Equestria. "What do you mean, Father?"

"I mean no father ever wants to have this discussion with his daughter. But a Ruling King must make sure his heir has every tool she will need to hold her power and maintain a rightful and harmonious rule... which sometimes must result in a father who is a Ruling King telling his daughter the Princess Heir things no father ever wants to tell a daughter." He sighed again.

"I don't understand."

Starfire looked down at her, his expression managing to be both tender and uncomfortable. "My daughter... it is absolutely true that you must marry a suitable stallion to be King Consort. He must be a politically sensible choice. He must be a generally sensible pony. He must either be a noble unicorn, or a pegasus or earth pony from powerful families within those tribes. He must be stable. Courtly. Mannered. Harmonious. Capable of managing the complex etiquette of court life. While he may have powerful magic, and if he is a unicorn he probably should, he may not live a life dedicated to magic. He must get along with most ponies he meets. He must, above all, be a pony."

Celestia nodded, feeling something crumple inside her. Perhaps it was accidental, or perhaps Father knew, but he had just described the exact antithesis of her love, in every respect.

"But there is no reason a Ruling Queen cannot take a lover, so long as her lover is somepony who cannot possibly be King."

Celestia's head jerked up and she stared at her father. "What...?"

Her father looked away. "This is not... you understand, as a father this is not what I want to tell you," he said. "I want to tell you that love should conquer all and that two hearts should cleave to one another for true and always and that love is above all political considerations. But you are the Princess Heir, destined to be the Ruling Queen, and so I cannot say any of those things to you. What I can say, what I must say, is that many a consort... and particularly, King Consorts, since we stallions do tend to think we should be in charge..." He smiled at that wryly. "Well. The King Consort officially has no more power than your sister the Princess would. Less in a way, since she would take the throne before he would. But many a stallion has thought that his mare belonged to him, that she should share her power or even give it over to him, and when he is a King Consort and she is a Ruling Queen, that can turn very, very unpleasant. Consorts of either gender can manuever to try to supplant and take leadership from their spouse and rightful ruler, of course... but stallions seem to do it more often."

"I don't understand."

"No, of course not." He looked at her again, meeting her eyes, and then away in embarrassment. "Taking a lover who cannot be King puts a consort in his place, without making him genuinely fear for his position or making the nobles fear for the stability of the succession. It gives the Ruling Queen an ally that the King Consort cannot possibly turn against her, because all of the lover's power stems from his place in his Queen's heart. It provides her emotional support should the King try to make a move against her. And it reminds a stallion, deep down inside, that his mare is not his, but that if she is his Ruling Queen then he is hers and serves at her pleasure, not the other way around."

Celestia blinked, and then stood unsteadily. "Father, are you saying... are you suggesting... I should cheat on my husband?"

"No, of course not. If you have a lover when you take a husband, you should make sure your future husband knows the situation and is willing to accept it. You don't take a lover in secret and hide it from him as if you were ashamed. You must be discreet, of course, commoners would never understand and the image of the Ruling Queen might be marred if it were known she had a lover. But your husband must know before he agrees to be your husband, else it's a cruel thing to do to him." Starfire also got to his feet. "So, the stallion you feel yourself to be in love with. Do you trust him?"

"Father, I—I don't—"

"Oh, Celestia, no filly asks such a question of her father out of pure academic interest. I know there's somepony you want. Do you trust him to back you up, to stand up for you against every courtier and political machination possible?"

"Yes. Yes. I know he would support me against any other pony. Ever."

"Does he have a backbone? Will he stand up for himself? If a King Consort attempts to intimidate him, will he back down or will he stand tall?"

She almost giggled at that image. "He very much has a backbone. Yes."

"Does he love you?"

"I—I don't know. I didn't—I never asked him. I needed to know if, if it would even be possible, before..."

"Is he, by any chance, an incredibly powerful mage who happens to be an orphan who was raised in the palace, who lacks not only a family but has lost his entire species, who isn't even a pony in the first place, has ridiculously radical ideas about government that preclude him ever even wanting to be a king, can't stand etiquette and tradition and boredom but is very, very good at noticing political machinations when he wants to, and would probably go start a revolution to overthrow us all if he didn't consider me a father figure, Luna a sister figure, and wasn't madly in love with you?"

Celestia turned bright red. "Father!"

"The answer to the question I asked you, by the way, the one you never asked him, is yes. And it's obvious to everypony but the both of you."

"How did you know?"

"Aside from the fact that it was obvious?" Starfire said dryly. "The fact that he was in here asking more or less the exact same question you just asked me, yesterday."

"He... what?"

"Oh, you know Discord, he didn't come out and say 'would you try to have me burned at the stake if I made love to your daughter,' but from the questions he was asking me supposedly about pony culture and court etiquette and propriety, when I know for a fact that the main reason that colt has ever had the slightest interest in knowing what ponies consider the proper thing to do is so that he can come up with the most spectacular ways possible to do the exact opposite..."

"FATHER!" Celestia shrieked in embarrassment.

Starfire grinned mischieviously, like he had when she was a little filly and he had teased her with silliness. "Celestia. You're a Princess Heir. No stallion but me will ever have the right to tell you what to do, and I don't believe a father should have veto power over his daughter's heart, or what she does with her body. If you want Discord, take him, just be discreet about it. He'll be an excellent ally for you against anypony within the court who tries to subvert your power, and if he ever learns how to use his magic on a battlefield without being as great a danger to his friends as his foes, he'll be an incredible asset if you're forced to go to war to defend Equestria. Also, to be brutally honest, the stronger his ties of love and friendship are to our family, the safer I'd feel; if that colt ever decided to fight for his mad ideals instead of treating life as an elaborate joke, he could be dangerous to our entire way of life. You know he doesn't believe there should be any such thing as a noble class, right? Let alone a monarchy?"

Celestia nodded. She knew all about Discord's ridiculous ideas about government. She'd never been entirely sure if they were jokes or not, given how ridiculous they were, but he was certainly willing to expound on them at length. His latest was the idea that all ponies should be equally in charge of everything and anytime they wanted to get anything done, they should debate it until a majority of ponies agreed that the idea either should or should not be put into practice. When Celestia had pointed out that this would essentially ensure that nothing would get done, that ponies would spend all their time arguing with each other, and that Equestria would descend into total chaos, he had grinned at her delightedly and said that that was the best part, and then she'd remembered who she was talking to. "Discord doesn't hide his ideas from me."

"No, I don't imagine Discord hides his ideas from anypony, honestly. He's a radical with enormously powerful magic that even Starswirl can't counter when Discord puts his mind to it; if he were a pony I'd seriously be afraid of him. As it is, I don't think he'll start a revolution against you when you were the first pony to recognize him as a talking being rather than an animal, particularly when the beneficiaries would be common ponies, most of whom still seem to think he's some kind of terrifying ferocious beast and the rest of whom seem to find him entirely too annoying to want to spend any time near even if they recognize his intelligence. But the more he loves you, the safer we'll all be, Celestia." He was smiling. Celestia couldn't quite tell if he was joking or not.

"Is... is that really how you see him, Father? I thought... I thought you cared about him..."

"Celestia. That colt is the closest thing I will ever have to a son. Of course I care about him. He's also insane. He calls himself the Principle of Chaos and Disharmony. I don't care about the customs of a dead race he hasn't lived among since he was a tiny foal, nopony would adopt that title if they were entirely right in the head. And he's very, very powerful. As his foster father I love him dearly; as the Ruling King I have to identify potential threats to Equestria's peace and harmony, and if perhaps you did not notice, your love self-identifies as an oppositional principle to peace and harmony and is also more powerful than the greatest wizard of our age. So yes, of course I see him as a potential threat. And the pony thing to do with a potential threat is to befriend the potential threat and strengthen your bonds of alliance and friendship to the point where it is not a threat anymore. If you weren't the heir and he wasn't morally opposed to the concept of marriage I'd marry the two of you together just to keep him out of trouble, but he can't be anywhere near the line of succession to the throne – even if there was any hope that the ponies would accept a non-pony as a king, even if the fact that he is quite possibly the strangest looking being in all Equestria wouldn't bother them, his personality and politics are completely unsuitable to leadership."

"Morally opposed to the concept of marriage?"

"Oh, you hadn't heard this? Marriage is a cage, apparently, created by society to constrain the free-flowing chaos of love and shape it into socially acceptable patterns, thus crushing it. Or something. He's a mage anyway, most ponies who dedicate their life to magic don't marry, but I'm fairly sure I've never heard a pony declare that the way to prove the trueness of their love is to refuse to marry their love because the purpose of marriage is to destroy love's freedom and therefore if you really love somepony you won't marry them... Perhaps it's a draconequus thing, or perhaps it's just Discord being Discord. I confess none of it makes any sense so perhaps I'm completely garbling his argument, but I suspect he must be entirely head over heels for you if he managed to restrain himself from telling you all about how horrible he thinks the idea of marriage is."

Well. That did sound like Discord. "I... suppose... if he feels that way... maybe it won't hurt him that I have to get married to somepony else someday?"

"Oh, he'll be incredibly jealous," Starfire said. "Whether or not he believes in marriage for himself, he'll be infuriated when you marry, even though he's known you'll do so someday the entire time he's known you. He's never felt any particular need to place common sense ahead of his own emotions, you may have noticed this. But he'll be incredibly jealous when you marry whether or not you take him as a lover, and if he merely has to share you rather than losing you entirely, he may be willing to refrain from turning your husband's coat polka dotted and making his dinner come to life and run from him on a regular basis. At least most of the time."

Celestia had never really thought about what Discord's reaction would be when she had to marry. She'd assumed sorrow, heartbreak, like she herself would feel. It occurred to her now that Discord was not one to bravely sacrifice his desires for the sake of the right and proper thing to do, and her father was right that odds were, Discord would make the King Consort's life an unholy living hell out of jealousy unless Celestia could talk him out of it. And that this would almost certainly happen whether she took him to her bed now or not. She sagged slightly as the implications of what she wanted, and what her father was telling her to do, sank in.

"My daughter, I don't envy you the path ahead of you. The... well, not the pony... the one you've chosen to love is going to make your life very, very difficult. But few rewards come without risk, and at the least I am sure he will never bore you."

"So you don't think I'm... I'm perverse for loving him?"

Starfire sighed again. "I'm no xenophile myself, nor a stallion-lover, my daughter. I don't see what you see in him, but that would be true whether he was a pony or not. But love is never wrong. If you love him, and he loves you, then why should it matter to me that he isn't a pony? I know that colt's heart. He doesn't understand how to care about ponies he doesn't know and has never met, but nopony is more loyal to the ones that make their way into his heart. He'd tear down the sky for you or Luna, and I half suspect he literally could if he wanted to. You're everything to him. That's... all a father should care about when he looks at the one his daughter loves, honestly. Whether that one loves her and will cherish and protect her, and by that standard, Discord's far better than most of the stallions I've considered as potential candidates for your husband. He can't give you foals, most likely, but the Ruling Queen should never bear children of her lover anyway, so that's in this case a benefit."

Celestia felt as if possibly the Sun she was connected to was going to burst out of her face, embarrassment at this entire conversation and its implications overwhelming her. And then her father said, in a teasing voice, "Well, what are you waiting for, Celestia? You have your answer, you're a hot-blooded teenager full of hormones and you know how to cast a silencing spell on your bedchambers. I'm surprised you haven't run off to find Discord and tell him already."

"FATHER!" Oh, if this got any more embarrassing she would melt into the floor. Right now. Giant pony puddle all over the stone floor of her father's study. Everypony would wonder what had happened to the Princess and her father would have to explain that he accidentally killed her of extreme embarrassment.

"Go on, Celestia," Father said, sighing. "Go find your love and tell him... or don't. Either way, please don't tell me what you chose to do. This is hard enough for both of us already. Oh, and don't forget your contraception spells by any means; a draconequus is a part-pony chimera and Discord's entire power is based in improbability, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility that he could get you pregnant and that would be disastrous."

"Just kill me now, Father. Please. Just stop."

"Someday you may have to have this conversation with your son or daughter, Celestia. And when you do, I hope you remember that this is just as uncomfortable for me as it is for you."

Celestia sincerely doubted that. "I, uh, I thank you for your wisdom, Father. And, I, uh, I'm going to go now goodbye!"

Author's Note

Porn in the next chapter. Probably. Hot blooded teenagers full of hormones, after all.

While I will end up getting into it in a lot more detail in "The Last Draconequus", I wanted to get my vision of what young Discord and Celestia's relationship was like out there before canon decides to joss me. So many have done "Celestia's parents hate Discord and don't want them to have a relationship", so I wanted to do something completely different. I was trying to make Starfire be kind of like the dad you'd expect Celestia to be as a mom: kind, understanding, wise, and more than a little bit of a troll, particularly as a reaction to a situation he finds uncomfortable. :-) The OC tag is for Starfire, I'm not planning on introducing any others.

The characters are approximately the equivalent of human 18 or 19 year olds in this story, so just a little bit younger than the Mane 6 are in canon.

The Trials and Triumphs of Young Love

Author's Note

For those who haven't picked this up from my other fics in this series: at this point in time, Celestia is a unicorn, Luna is a pegasus, and Discord is a weird-looking mixed-up draconequus who wields chaos magic, but he's mortal and not the chaos avatar yet.

Yes, that is Discord's thinking tree. One of several, because it doesn't survive a thousand years, but he knows the recipe to make a new one whenever he wants.

I intended to write this as a comedy of frequent mistakes born from inexperience, but my instincts as a porn writer took over at some point and demanded that I make it hot. Oh well. I suppose hormonal teenagers who want it bad enough will overlook any number of silly inconveniences and missteps.

Lift-etchings: prints to inspire tail-lifting. They're etchings because printing presses in this time period handle artwork by having etched plates of the art so it can be replicated, and the desire to inspire lift should be obvious from pony anatomy. :-)

The Trials and Triumphs of Young Love

She found Discord wiring up a bucket of water and live snails above the door to Starswirl's chambers.

"Discord... what are you doing?"

"Shhh, I've almost got this."

"That... looks like you're trying to dump a bucket of snails on Master Starswirl."

"I wonder how you could possibly have gotten that idea."

Celestia sighed. "Why?"

"Well, because he's almost certainly going to detect the joy buzzer spell on the threshold and dismantle it." Discord grinned. "Though to be honest... actually I put it there so he wouldn't notice the bucket."

"I'm sure this is really, really, vitally important and the kingdom will collapse if you don't dump snails on our magic teacher, but I have some really important news to share with you that I think you'll find more fun than playing pranks." She winked at him seductively.

He didn't notice. "Au contraire, playing pranks is my raison d'etre."

"Can you say that again in Equestrian? Some of us aren't trying to learn 27 languages."

"Well, you should! And it was Prench, I can't believe you don't know Prench. You know, Prance? That country across the ocean that has all the cheese?"

"Come on, Discord, this is important."

"So is this! He caught the one about the lamps that wouldn't blow out and the one about the chocolate shaped like dog poop. And he made all my quills turn into dragonflies when I picked them up. My honor as the Chief Royal Prankster has been besmirched! I must avenge this insult!"

"Discord, come on, this is something you and I really need to talk about." She fluttered her eyelashes. "I promise you won't be disappointed," she said in a voice that was trying for sultry.

"After I get this into place. I can't use any magic because he can detect the chaos magic so I've got to do the whole thing with my paws. Don't try to step through the door, Celestia, there's a joy buzzer spell on it."

She sighed. Why was she putting up with this? He was such a child sometimes, and he was being so completely clueless. Why did she even want this, anyway?

And then she watched as he clung to the doorframe with one dragon foot, his goat hoof braced against the doorjamb and his tail wrapped precariously around it, his body bent backward completely and snaking up to the other side of the door. When she approached and stuck her head through, careful not to set a hoof over the threshold, she saw him studying his work intently, totally focused, as he moved tiny, thin wires into place and wrapped them around tiny, thin screws, with dexterous, long, strong fingers, doing the most delicate part of the work with the talon and the extended claws from his lion paw.

Oh yeah, right. He was funny, creative, smart and sweet... and amazingly flexible, with forepaws that seemed to be specifically engineered for scritches, rubs and... maybe other things. She thought about a talon stroking through her mane, about the fluffy ball of fur at the end of his tail that he normally used to tickle her being employed against certain sensitive parts.

I am a filthy pervert and I've read way too many books of lift-etchings, she thought, blushing. She was fairly sure virginal princesses weren't supposed to have fantasies like the kind she'd been having about Discord. The truly perverse lift-etchings, she'd had to more or less steal out from under the librarian's muzzle, using her magic to pick the lock on the room where the xeno stuff was kept. Nothing depicted draconequui, but she'd found references for what Discord could possibly do with his arms from the etchings of ponies and griffins together, and there was one picture she'd seen of a mare with a snake-like dragon that looked rather like Discord, except more dragony, that she still thought about far too frequently, including at totally inappropriate moments like lessons or when Luna was demanding a game. The way the dragon's body had twined around the mare's barrel, the passion in the kiss depicted, the exotic position of the lovemaking... and the fact that the dragon's body seemed to work more or less the same way Discord's did, meaning that she could imagine Discord doing that with her...

She swallowed. Maybe they would actually do that. Maybe they would actually do that today. The thought was terrifying and arousing at the same time. And if they didn't do anything like that, maybe they would do something else. Her heart thudded in her chest. If she could only get him to stop playing around with that stupid prank and pay attention to her... even though she really liked watching him work with his paws, and the way his body bent like that, oh wow... Instinctively she pressed her tail in close to hide the sudden rush of warmth she felt back there, the sudden throb of a heartbeat in a place where she couldn't usually feel it.

"Okay! I'm done!" Discord leapt free, using his tail to carefully shut the door behind him, his elaborate wire contraption for tipping over a bucket firmly in place on the other side. "What was it you wanted to talk to me about?"

She used her magic to grab his head and pull it close to hers. For a moment she thought about kissing him before she even said anything, but his look of puzzlement made her lose her nerve. Instead she said, half-whispering, "I talked to Father just now."

"You talk to your father fairly frequently. I'm not sure I see what that has to do with—"

"Discord." She pulled him close and nipped at his ear, just hard enough to indicate annoyance, and then licked the inside of it. Her books said that a lot of ponies liked that. Discord's ear flicked up and out of her reach, unless she pulled him closer, but that was all right. "I talked to him about the thing. The, uh, the thing I said I, uh, had to talk to him about?"

"I don't even know what that is."

"You have to!" She took a step backward and stomped with frustration. "He said you talked to him too!"

"What are you talking about? I was talking about pony customs. For science."

"You cannot be this clueless," she said, and then realized what it meant that he'd said "for science." "You're not this clueless! The day you do something 'for science' is the day the sun turns blue! You're messing with me!"

He laughed. "I'm always messing with you. Someday you'll figure that out."

"Yes, well, this is serious."

"You think everything is serious."

"This is serious."

"I don't want to talk about something that's serious."

"Discord, come on! I can't talk about this in the middle of the hallway!"

He looked away. "What makes you think I want to talk about it at all?"

For a moment she was puzzled by his reaction. Then she sighed. "It's not the answer you're thinking, and I think you'll like it, but you're never going to find out if you don't come talk with me, now will you?"

Discord rolled his eyes. "Oh, all right. Where are we going?"

"Um..." Going to her bedroom had implications even more embarrassing for the fact that they were absolutely true. Going outside meant that pegasi flying would be able to see them if things did go in the way Celestia was hoping on tenterhooks for. "Let's, um, let's go... get some cleaning supplies! Right here!" She ducked into a small supply room – larger than a closet, the palace didn't really have closets per se, but not much larger, and the cleaning potions and mops and brooms took up a good bit of space.

"This hardly seems fun," Discord complained as Celestia shut the door. There was no light on in the tiny room – no one would waste a mage light on a supply room, and any torch that might be here when the cleaners were working had guttered out long ago. She lit up her horn, casting a faint yellow glow between them.

"Well, we might need cleaning supplies," Celestia said archly. "Because we might, um... get dirty."

"If your important announcement involves mud pies, I'm leaving."

"You dummy!" She smacked him in the shoulder with a forehoof. "I'm talking about... um... I asked him about whether I could marry you!"

Discord's expression went stiff. "Let me guess, he said it was a wonderful idea and took you down to the seamstress to have a long flowing gown made for you and then he turned into a wedding cake and then you woke up."

"I'm serious. He said no, but—"

"I'm shocked. Really. This is my shocked face."

"—Discord, stop interrupting! He said – he said we could, uh... um... do things... like, um, married ponies do, except we wouldn't be married... and that if we wanted to, um, do those things, we, uh, we could do them even after I get married as long as my husband knows about it, because, because, um, Ruling Queens, can, um..."

Discord stared at her. "Did your father just promise me to you as your concubine?"

"Discord!"

"Because I could live with that." He concentrated, snapped his talon, and the multicolored, eye-stabbing light of chaos magic when he was trying to bend it harder than usual swirled around him for a moment, leaving behind a filmy veil over his muzzle, poofy, silky pants, a turban wrapped around his antler and horn, and trailing scarves around his neck and wrists, drawing attention to the fact that his chest was unclothed. His chest was usually unclothed, but the fact that he was suddenly wearing clothes almost everywhere else made it look sensual rather than just normal. Celestia swallowed.

"Don't make fun of me," she said, shakily.

"Who's making fun?" He leaned back against the wall, knocking over several brooms in the process, which he glared down at and then ignored, putting the back of a bescarved talon arm up across his forehead. "Oh, if 'tis my fate to serve as concubine to the Princess Heir of Equestria, who is this lowly creature to deny it? Only please be gentle with me, Your Highness, I've never been a concubine before!"

"I didn't say concubine," Celestia said. "And take off that silly outfit."

"Slowly? With musical accompaniment? Are you sure you'd rather not take it off me? Your father apparently being so miraculously and impossibly understanding, and all."

He didn't believe her. That was the problem here, Celestia thought. He was so convinced the conversation with her father couldn't have produced any results either of them would like... and he was probably angry that it was confirmed she couldn't marry him, even if it was true what Father said that Discord didn't even want to marry her, or anyone. But what could she possibly do to convince him?

A thought occurred to her. Then she rejected it because it was way too embarrassing. Then she came back to it because she could always pretend it was a joke and the thought of doing it made shocks shoot from between her legs through her whole body. "I could do that," she said, reared up, pinned him against the wall with her body pressed against his and her forehooves planted on the wall where the brooms had been, and bit into the scarf around his neck, tearing the thin, flimsy fabric away from him with her teeth. Discord's eyes went wide, and she felt him shiver.

"Oh. Oh, wow. I – uh. You, um, you're taking this joke pretty far, Celestia. Kudos. Even I'm not usually this hardco—ohhhh." As soon as she got the scarf off his neck she began attacking it with kisses, savoring the feel of the satiny smooth grey coat under her lips and tongue. His tail swished wildly on the floor underneath them, and he moaned, burying the talon in her mane and stroking her neck with his lion paw. "Oh, Celestia, what are you, oh, oh that, ah, please, don't stop, I, oh..."

She grinned, briefly since it interfered with kissing, and then returned to what she'd been doing. They'd kissed before, they'd made out a few times, and she always loved how it made Discord act – how he'd go from sarcastic and cynical and snarky to being completely overwhelmed and incoherent with pleasure, within moments.

Then Discord's swishing tail smacked her leg out from under her. She stumbled, sliding, and since Discord was clinging to her, he slid down as well, which unbalanced her and threw off her weight, forcing her down onto four hooves instead of two, and then to crash to the floor on top of Discord. His somewhat ridiculous costume vanished as he lost all semblance of ability to maintain a spell.

"Ow. Wow, uh, you're serious about this," he said, looking up at her from the floor. "I've never had a mare leap on me and try to ravish me before."

"If you're my concubine, then aren't I supposed to do that?" she asked, teasing.

"Maybe not in a supply room. I mean, if we really do have permission, why are we hiding in here?"

"We're not hiding. I just wanted privacy."

"Your room is private."

"Well, um, we could go to my room now."

"I have a better idea."

He snapped his talon and they were suddenly somewhere else. Celestia whinnied nervously as she felt the surface underneath them suddenly become something far more precarious. Carefully she lifted her head and looked up, only to bury it back in Discord's fur. "Discord, we're lying on top of a tree branch!"

"Yes, I know. I teleported us here."

"But we're just on top of a branch! We could fall!"

He guffawed – which shifted his weight under her enough that she clung to him in sudden fear. "Me? Fall out of a tree? I like nonsense and silliness, but that's just beyond absurd!"

"I might fall," Celestia said, almost whimpering.

"Oh, all right." The branch underneath them vanished and was replaced with a platform, which appeared to have grown out of the tree as if it were a branch, but a very, very flat and wide one. "Luna isn't nearly as big a wuss about trees as you are, though. Aren't you embarrassed to know your little sister is braver than you?"

Celestia rolled her eyes. "Luna's a pegasus."

She got to her feet, carefully. Discord's magic was weird. Things that unicorns found simple and easy, like basic levitation or performing spells from books, were things Discord had struggled with mightily for years, but things that were difficult or sometimes even impossible for unicorns, he did with ease. Celestia could teleport herself without nausea, but it was a tremendous effort for her to perform the spell at all, and when Star Swirl or her father did it, she always wanted to be sick. Discord had been teleporting less than a year after she met him, and before that, he'd been linking doors together, or holes, or windows, a spell that even Father couldn't do. And when Discord teleported her, Celestia couldn't even feel it. It seemed more as if the world had moved around her than that she had moved through the world. So none of the cues that she'd normally use to figure out where she'd been teleported to – the intensity of the magic surge, the strength of the nausea, the weird feeling of almost-motion that gave her a sense of direction in a teleport – applied, meaning they could literally be anywhere. "Discord, where is this?"

"Oh, this? This tree?" He beamed. "Do you like it?"

"Uh... kinda..."

"Feel the leaves!" He reached up and plucked a small branch from above. The tree was purple, and thick, and frighteningly tall, with many wide branches spiraling out from its upper regions. The branches ended in what looked more like tufts than batches of leaves, large clusters of periwinkle leaves that, when Discord handed her the small branch and she had a chance to touch the leaves, felt remarkably like thick, shaggy fur, but silky.

"Did you make this?"

He grinned. "Teach got me the original seed from a tropical palm tree, the kind that make coconuts. But I made some modifications, and I did them in the seed so they stayed that way. It took some experimenting – I had to go through a bunch of seeds to get one that was just right – but now it's just about almost perfect. What do you think?"

"Did Master Starswirl know you were making so many changes to the tree seed he gave you?"

"'Course he did, he watched me do it. He said that chaos isn't just about silly pranks and wrecking things and making things behave like other things, but that the reason all the creatures in nature, all the plants and animals and everything, exist is because of chaos." He flapped his wings and rose up to the branch above her head, which he twined around in a single smooth motion and hung his head down, looking at her. "He thought that if I experimented on seeds with my power, I might be able to make plants become completely different plants, and then their seeds might actually be the new kind of plant, because that's where new plants come from. Random transformation in their seed. Chaos."

"Wow!" She'd never thought of it that way before, but now that he'd pointed it out, she realized he was right. "That's wonderful. Is this the only tree you made?"

"It's the only one I decided to grow into a full-size tree; I think Teach has a few of the others in pots in his lab, but this one's mine. I made it grow faster than trees do normally and I made some other modifications to it. I like to come here and think sometimes."

"And you showed Luna and not me?" she asked archly.

He grinned, blushing slightly with embarrassment. "It's not like I'm worried if Luna thinks the things I make are stupid."

"I don't think the things you make are stupid."

"You do sometimes."

"Okay, but to be fair, the singing eggs were stupid, and a little bit creepy. I mean, eggs that sing and dance and then crack themselves on your plate would have been creepy no matter what, but the fact that they didn't cook, so you'd end up with a plate full of raw eggs..."

"I guess that was pretty dumb," Discord said, and chuckled. Celestia laughed with him, and then pulled the branch he was twined around down abruptly so she could get her hooves around his head.

"So, I thought we were going someplace private for a reason. Not just so you could show me your tree."

"Oh, but you haven't seen the slide yet!" He bounded down off the branch onto the platform and leapt across it, jumping up onto a different branch. "Tia, come on!"

Celestia took a deep breath. "Discord? In case you didn't notice? I'm a pony. I have hooves, not claws like you do. And I don't have wings. So how am I going to follow you?"

"Oh. Right." He looked embarrassed. "Let me try this."

He gestured at the platform she was on, and it began to move, sliding around the trunk of the tree. Celestia squealed and knelt on the platform so she wouldn't fall. "This isn't very fun, Discord," she said shakily.

"Right, right, but this part will be." The platform stopped moving, and Discord landed on it. He pointed to something that was sticking over the edge of it now. "Voila!"

Celestia trotted over carefully. It was the top of a smooth slide made of polished wood, which went down around the tree at an alarming angle, spiraling so she couldn't see where it landed. "Does this go all the way to the bottom?"

"No, it goes to something else I built."

"Another part of the tree?"

"Wanna see?" Discord asked, wiggling his eyebrows.

"Uh, I'd really rather you just told me...."

"But what's the fun in that?" Abruptly Discord lifted her, and before she could do anything more than shriek in surprise, he'd leapt onto the slide with her in front of him and his paws wrapped around her barrel. "Banzai!"

"Wait! Discord, st—"

Before she could get the word out, they were sliding around the tree, terrifyingly fast. Celestia screamed. Discord was yelling too, but his sounded like a cry of excitement and triumph, not sheer terror. And then the slide went out along a long branch, turned, and pivoted in, so they were sliding directly toward a huge dark hole in the tree trunk. Celestia tried to use magic to brake, tried to throw out her hooves to catch on the side of the slide, but the slide was too smooth and she was too scared to focus her magic. And then they pitched off the end of the slide.

Her scream was abruptly broken by something fluffy jamming itself into her mouth, and then the rest of her body fell into a huge pile of the fluffy thing, with Discord falling on top of her.

She levitated Discord off her and rolled over, pinning him underneath her. They appeared to be in a room that had been hollowed out of the center of the tree, with a random pile of books, bizarre stuffed animals, scattered cards and pieces to board games, pillows, blankets, and dirty dishes scattered all around. The giant fluffy pile was made of leaves from the tree they were in, and was directly under the slide. "Never do that again!" she shouted down at him, as he smirked.

"Didn't you like my slide?"

"I might've liked it better if you didn't practically throw me down it!"

"Hey, I was holding onto you the whole way. You know I wouldn't let you get hurt, right?"

She sighed, deflated. "Um... yes... I suppose. But it still frightened me, Discord, and I didn't like that."

"Well, now that you know what to expect we can go to the top again and do it again and this time you'll enjoy it because you know it ends in a fluffy pile and not plunging to your death!"

"No." Celestia pressed her muzzle against his, staring down into his eyes. "We came here for a reason, Discord, remember? Going down a slide can be fun, in a childish way, but we... um... we came here for, uh, other reasons." She'd meant to make some sort of joke about a more grownup kind of fun, but embarrassment took over and she couldn't say it.

"Did we?" he asked.

He was obviously teasing, but the pretense at cluelessness was the last straw. Celestia started kissing his neck again, reaching through the pile of fluffy leaves to wrap her hooves around him. She wanted to watch him melt, wanted to watch his defenses collapse like they had before, and she got what she wanted. He gasped, and moaned, and began running his paws over her body, and then twisted his neck in a way that would have been impossible for a pony so that he could kiss her neck while she was kissing his.

For a while that was all there was, the feel of his warm body underneath her, his thick, soft brown fur against her belly and his paws on her body and his mouth on her neck as she explored the satiny softness of his neck with her own lips and tongue. Eventually she broke away, panting slightly. She wanted more, but she didn't quite know how to get it. He wasn't moving things forward, and in all the stories she read and the etchings she looked at, it was usually the male who did that part, and if she needed to be the one to do it she didn't know how without seeming, well, cheap. Common. She was a princess; could she really afford to actually start doing the dirty things she thought maybe she wanted to do? What if he didn't want to do them and he was grossed out? What if he did want to do them but he thought less of her for being the one to start rather than waiting for him?

Discord let his head loll back into the fluffy leaves. "I could do that forever," he sighed. "Has anyone ever told you how wonderful you smell? Or taste? Or look?"

"You've mentioned my looking nice before," she said. "You're not so bad yourself."

"Tsk, tsk," he said in a high-pitched voice, imitating some old biddy busybody of a noblewoman. "Our princess is a xenophile. Whatever will the commoners think? Dear, dear."

"Don't even joke about that," she said. "Anyway, so are you."

"Yes, but no one is going to get their coat in a lather with indignation that I want a fillyfriend who's a pony."

"I don't care about their coats in a lather. My father said I had his permission and that's all I care about. And he said love is never wrong and that I'm not weird and sick for loving you," she said fiercely, her forelegs tightening around him, pulling him close. "He's my father and my King and I'm bound to obey him, but everypony else in this castle is my vassal because I'm the Princess Heir, and they have to obey me. And my first order is going to be shut the buck up. I'll love who I want."

"What if they hate you for loving me?" he asked quietly.

"Oh, what, are they going to try a coup against my father because they don't approve of my coltfriend? Please. We have to keep it discreet for the sake of the commoners, we can't have them finding out. But if nobles want to gossip about me, fine. I don't care. I'm going to be Queen and you're going to be my court mage like Master Starswirl is for Father and they can buck themselves in the head if they don't like it."

"You are really, really pretty when you're all fired up about something, you know that? Especially when what you're all fired up about is me."

She giggled. "If I'm all fired up, don't you think you ought to be trying to put me out?"

"I could summon a bucket of water." He was straight-faced enough that she couldn't tell if he'd gotten her innuendo or not.

Celestia snorted. "Oh, come on. I'm trying to, like, you know. I didn't mean literally on fire, I meant like... oh, forget it." She sighed. "You're dense sometimes."

He slid out from under her and down off the leaf pile. With a talon snap, the various objects he had scattered around grew tiny legs and ran into the dim corners of the room, clearing the area and making it look superficially clean. He padded over to a pile of pillows and blankets that, while plush and soft-looking, was not nearly as tall as the leaf pile, and he sat down next to it, pony-style with his backside on the floor and his body leaning forward, forelegs on the floor. "I just don't want us rushing into anything you might regret later, that's all."

Celestia slid down the leaf pile and followed him. "Since when were you so worried about my reputation with the busybodies? You've always been proud of annoying them."

His tail swished. "I, um..." Discord looked down at the floor. "I just don't want you to do something you think is a mistake later on."

"Oh, I see how it is," Celestia said, teasingly. "You're scared."

"Am not!"

"Please. You, caring about anypony making a mistake? Not even a mistake, but something they think is a mistake? Nope. You're scared."

"Look, this is important!" he snapped. "Celestia... I care about you, all right? I... I love you. I don't want you to turn around and think our love was a mistake because everyone attacks you for loving me."

"Well, if we think that might happen, maybe we just need to be even discreeter."

"Is that a word?"

"No. I just made it up. I felt like 'more discreet' wasn't strong enough." She nuzzled her face against his. "It's okay, Discord. If you're scared, we don't have to do anything you don't want to do."

"There is nothing I don't want to do with you," he said, fervently enough that she believed him. "Except maybe get in a leaky canoe and paddle over the side of a waterfall, because that's a lot less fun than you might think."

"So relax. Why don't you lay down and I'll preen you?"

"That's not something I'll ever say no to."

Discord lay down on the pillows, belly down, so she could reach his wings. Preening wasn't sexual, but it was intimate, something only family members, close friends, and special someponies did for each other. Celestia had demanded that Luna's pegasus nanny teach her how to preen so she could preen her little sister, back before she'd met Discord, and she'd done it for him many times when he'd first joined their family, because his wings were a nearly ruined wreck. They were healthy now, though not really big enough for his body, and he was agile and dexterous enough to be able to preen himself even more easily than a pegasus could, but he always enjoyed it when she did it for him, and he often returned the favor with backrubs. Technically speaking only one of his wings needed preening; the bat wing responded better to being brushed, with a light, soft-bristled brush and a gentle touch, as the hairs on it were very tiny, fine and sensitive, not even really thick enough to be a coat.

She worked on his feathered wing for a few minutes, as he sighed under her. And then, without preamble, he said, "So, um, this is something you really want to do? With me? Today? I mean, we don't have to rush..."

"I know we don't have to rush," she said. "I just... I want to. I mean, if you don't want to that's okay, we can do it some other time maybe."

"I didn't say I didn't want to," he said.

"But you're scared to."

"I keep telling you I'm not scared! I just... you know, it's not like my uncle or my older brother ever took me aside to explain the birds and the bees, draconequus style. What if I'm like a preying mantis and I have to bite your head off?"

Celestia giggled. "It's the girl preying mantises that do that."

"You know what I mean."

"I read a bunch of stuff about what dragons do, and a bunch of stuff about what griffins do, and mostly you're pony, and dragon, and griffin, so that probably covers it."

"You read books about this?" He turned his head to look at her and arched his eyebrow. "Naughty, naughty."

She blushed. "Well, yes, I mean, it's best to be prepared, right?"

There was no brush here suitable for the bat wing. Celestia bent her head and nuzzled it, using her lips and the side of her head to gently brush the hairs on it into place. Discord shivered under her. "Oh, wow. That... um. That feels great."

"I'm glad," she said, and continued.

When she was done, she flopped down next to him and looked him in the eye. "So, yes or no. Are we doing this today? Because if you don't want to—"

He kissed her, gently, on the lips, and then pulled himself to a sitting position again. "There is no issue with wanting you," he said. "Believe me. If you want to do this, we can do this, I mean, I certainly want to." Despite his words, he didn't draw close to her again or initiate any further contact.

Celestia sat up herself. Regardless of what he said, it was obvious that he was nervous. Maybe she'd have to take the lead after all, but she didn't want to look crude. An idea occurred to her. "So I was reading this book, about what to do on your first time together—"

"You read a book about losing your virginity?" he asked skeptically. "Isn't that rather like sculpting about piano?"

"Hush, you. In this book it said that if you're nervous or uncertain you should explore each other's bodies."

"Oh dear, I am so not dressed for this. What will we need? Mining hats? Jungle gear? Pitons for mountain climbing?"

She sighed. "How about a muzzle for you?"

"Her first time and already she's a kinkster. This is promising!"

Celestia grabbed Discord's head with her telekinesis and pulled him close. "If you keep interrupting me with silly jokes, I'm going to have to presume that that thing we discussed earlier about you being terrified of doing this is actually the truth. Is it?"

Discord leaned his face in closer than she'd pulled it, close enough to kiss. That was actually what she thought he was going for until he said, "Hey, up close like this it looks like you have only one eyeball!"

So she held onto his head tightly with her magic and shut him up by kissing him again.

He wrapped his arms around her in response, his talon claws gently raking through her mane, his soft lion paw stroking her back. She felt slightly envious. Not that she'd want to give up being a pony to be what he was, but she wanted to touch him everywhere and she had nothing as dextrous and sensitive to do it with as he did. Telekinesis didn't give a real tactile feedback; pony hooves, while much softer and more malleable than a goat hoof like Discord's back leg, were still primarily designed for running on and were relatively tough and insensitive; and she couldn't nuzzle his body and kiss him at the same time. She wrapped her forelegs around him again so she could press her whole body against him, rubbing herself in slow, rocking motions against his torso. Discord whimpered slightly against her mouth and pushed his tongue past hers, into her mouth, tangling with her tongue and probing deeper.

And then he went a little bit too deep, and Celestia had to pull away from the kiss, coughing and trying not to gag. "Are you all right?" he asked, eyes wide. "What happened?"

Celestia looked at him with narrowed eyes for a moment. She wouldn't put it past Discord to deliberately do something annoying to mess with her and break the mood right now, but he sounded sincere, and she doubted he'd ever kissed a pony before kissing her. "Your tongue is much too long, Discord," she said, getting her lungs and throat back under control. "If you touch the back of my throat I'm going to either cough or throw up."

"That doesn't sound particularly fun. I'll try to avoid doing that." He leaned back, falling backward onto his pile of pillows, Celestia falling on top of him and then bracing herself so she could look down at him. "Are you sure you want to do this with me?"

"Don't you want to?"

Discord sighed. "Didn't we cover this? I don't want to hurt you, I don't know how your body works, I don't know how my own body works, not in this, and I just... why me? You could have any stallion in Equestria and approximately two thirds of the mares, you know this. Why would you want somepony who isn't even a pony? I could hurt you."

"Don't be insecure, it's really unattractive on you."

"I'm not being insecure, I'm being... oh. Oh my, I was about to say rational. I suppose... if I'm being rational... maybe I am being insecure." Celestia laughed as he said that, and he grinned before continuing. "But I'm pretty sure I'm making sense at the moment, which probably means I have a fever or am possibly deranged with desire, but I just... I'm not being insecure, Celestia, but I'm not stupid either. The fact that I like the way I look doesn't have a lot of bearing on what ponies think."

"The fact that ponies, in general, think something doesn't have a lot of bearing on what I think, Discord," Celestia said. "They thought you belonged in a cage, I knew you belonged with a family. With me. I didn't even have my cutie mark yet. Don't you know I've never wanted anypony else? I mean, I can eat all the bitter kale in Equestria, too, but that doesn't mean I want to."

"But what if I hurt you?"

"And what if the sky rained cheese?"

"I actually know the answer to that! If the sky rains cheese, what happens is ponies scream and run around and then they send an emissary to your father full of strong language about 'that creature the Princess keeps as a pet' and then he has strong words for them about respecting other sentient beings even if they are not ponies and then when they're gone he calls me in and tells me no dessert for a week and Starswirl's gonna enforce that I can't conjure any." Discord grinned.

Celestia sighed. 'What if the sky rained cheese' was supposed to be a saying, a response to worry meaning essentially 'don't worry about what might happen if it's not very likely', but she should have known better than to use a metaphor involving food and rain around Discord. "Okay, well, what happens if you hurt me is I tell you to stop doing that, and then we find something else to do that doesn't hurt me. So don't worry about it. I cast a spell around your fang so you don't accidentally bite me with it, you keep your claws retracted and don't dig in with your talon, and we'll be fine."

He sighed. "Okay. So tell me about this book you were going to tell me about and all the kinky exploring gear we have to wear. Will there be scuba diving? Because you know I hate to get salt water in my mane."

"Last time we went to the beach you told me you always wanted to be a sea serpent and then you pretended to be swept out to sea and Luna took you seriously and tried to swim out to rescue you and she almost drowned. I'm pretty sure if you hated salt water that much, you wouldn't have done any of that."

"Well, it was such a traumatic experience for me that now I hate to get salt water in my mane."

Celestia sat down on Discord's chest. "Look, if you really don't want to do this, it's fine. Just tell me so."

"I want to!"

"Then stop making dumb jokes."

"But making dumb jokes is my entire reason for existing!"

"Do you want me to just, um, do this? Like, I have read books about it, so..."

He turned bright red. "Uh, no, no, I, um... can we take it slow?"

"If that's what you want. I mean, yes, we don't have to rush anything. I just... we're doing this today, right?"

Discord nodded, eyes wide. "We did say so. I just... you know, we're never going to have our first time again, so let's savor the moment! Right?"

He had a point, though she was pretty sure he was still stalling out of nervousness. Well, hay, it wasn't like she was perfectly calm and collected herself, after all. The butterflies in her stomach had mutated into shrieking, swarming bats at the thought that this was really going to happen, that they were really going to make love. She felt needy, hungry for touch in a place only she had ever touched, like the way she felt in estrus except she didn't feel feverish – warm, but not burning up – and it didn't ache so bad it hurt and she didn't feel cranky. She felt excited, and scared, and very tender toward the young draconequus underneath her. "I'm okay with that," she said.

They kissed again. He managed to keep the tongue under control this time, mostly. When she broke away, it wasn't because she had to, but because she was curious about something. She slid herself down his body, kissing her way down his neck until she reached the thick fur on his torso. That wasn't so pleasant to kiss as a satiny coat like a pony's, which was what covered his neck, but she nuzzled him and stroked him with her hoof until she found something, a strange little nub high up on his chest, buried under his fur. "What's this?" she asked. She'd never noticed it before. It looked... well, it looked like a nipple, honestly, but there wasn't a second one lined up across from it and who had nipples on the upper part of their chest? Nipples were down near the rest of the sexy parts of the body.

Experimentally she licked it. Discord moaned. "Oh, Celestia... yes, please touch them..."

"Them?"

"There's... three."

A bit of exploring found the other two, laid out in a kind of irregular triangle on his chest. They probably were nipples, despite the odd location, judging from Discord's reaction when she tried gently sucking on them.

Her hoof moved down his body, continuing to explore, until she found another protrusion that made him gasp when she touched it. Celestia turned her attention there. She'd... wondered, a lot, actually, because she'd never seen Discord with the equipment stallions had, and he said he was male but if so then where was his...? Well, it looked like she'd found it. There was a slit under his fur, between his legs, that looked something like a little filly's undeveloped parts under her tail, and sticking out of it there was the head of... so that answered that question. He had one, and it was shaped like a stallion's, judging from the top of it.

The idea of putting her mouth or face near a place that pee came out of was kind of gross, so she didn't want to nuzzle it or lick it, but for some reason stroking it with her hoof didn't seem gross at all. Discord whimpered. "Be careful, please, Celestia... it feels so good, but it's really sensitive."

"I thought so." That was kind of intimidatingly thick, actually. Could she really fit that inside her? She'd seen etchings of mares taking bigger than that, but she knew porn wasn't necessarily realistic. How big was it actually? She probed with her magic, feeling inside the slit, making Discord gasp. There seemed to be a good bit of it still inside him. "Does the whole thing come out when you, um... when you get turned on?"

"Not... when I get turned on. Or it'd be really embarrassing to walk on two legs anywhere near you." He grinned. "Believe me... I get turned on... a lot around you. It's... you have to touch it to make it hard enough that the whole thing comes out. It doesn't just do it because I'm thinking about your flank. Which is good, because I sort of... think about that. A lot."

"Is this doing it?" She continued to gently stroke the part that stuck out.

"I... honestly, uh... it being you is, um, it's really hot, but... hooves just... aren't really soft." He sighed. "I, uh, probably I need to touch it."

She drew back, feeling stung, and sad, even though she knew he didn't mean to hurt her feelings. "Sorry I don't have paws."

"No, it's okay! It's, um... there was something else I wanted to do anyway." He curled his body away from her slightly, and looked up at her with eager eyes. "Celestia, could I... taste you? Down there?"

She blinked. "Taste me? Um... you are still vegetarian, right?"

Discord laughed. "Well, you do look sweet enough that I could eat you right up... metaphorically. But no, I don't mean anything to do with eating. I just mean tasting. Like... licking you. Below your tail. Can I?"

"That's, um... why would you want to do that?"

His eyes were half-lidded. "Oh, Celestia, if you could smell what I smell, you would never ask that question. I want to. I want to kiss you there the same way you wanted to kiss my neck except probably even more. Can I please?"

"It's not... gross? I mean, I pee with that..."

"You could pee on me right now and I wouldn't care."

"Oh, come on, Discord, don't be gross right now..."

"I'm serious. I don't care, I'm not grossed out, I really really want to. It'll feel really good for you, Celestia, I promise."

He was probably right about that if she could trust that the porn she'd perused had any accuracy whatsoever. She felt the muscles down there tighten rapidly, sending a pulse of pleasure almost like a static shock through her. "I, um, okay, but... I can't do it for you, I'm sorry. It grosses me out."

Discord grinned at her. "I'm not doing this because I want you to do it back to me. I'm doing this because it's what I really want to do."

He pushed her onto her back, caught her back legs in his paws right above the hoof and spread them, then bent his head between her legs. Celestia had touched herself with a hoof, but was nowhere near flexible enough to do so with her mouth and would have found it too nauseating to do if she could, so she'd never felt a mouth down there. She cried out, gasping, head lifting and her entire body trying to lift and double over, as Discord first kissed her nub gently and then sucked on it.

For what seemed like forever and also not nearly long enough, she lay there moaning and occasionally screaming as his mouth worked on her down there. He'd suck on the little nub and flick it with his tongue, then withdraw to kiss her lower lips, tongue probing into her and making her gasp, then gently lick in a place that would gross her out even more if she had the mind to think of it, then repeat the whole thing, except in a different order maybe. His paws had released her legs in favor of letting his arms lie across her inner thighs, continuing to hold her legs down, while his talon squeezed her nipples and rolled them between pinching fingers, and his soft lion paw rubbed her belly. When she could concentrate, she used her magic to stroke him between his legs, and he responded much better to that than he had to her hooves, groaning and getting longer. But she couldn't concentrate often.

Finally, when he lifted his head to get his breath, she said, "Do you... do you want to do it? To, um... be inside?"

He panted. "I don't want to hurt you," he said.

"What if I was on top? Then it would be hard for you to hurt me, wouldn't it?"

"I have no idea, is that how it works? Plainly you've been holding out on me and you need to show me where you found your stash of the good porn."

She laughed. "We'll figure it out. Roll over, let's try this."

It was extremely awkward to try to find the right angle, once she'd climbed on top of him. She couldn't figure out quite where to put her legs, or how to position her rump. Discord was extremely flexible, but in this case that didn't help, because he kept moving when she didn't expect him to so that they didn't match up. She giggled at how stupidly hard this was to manage, because it was either giggle at it or get mad and frustrated, and he laughed with her, except that when she almost had it and then it slipped loose again he made little whines and whimpers, frustration and need making him sound like a puppy dog. That was funny too, but also sort of hot, that he wanted her so badly he couldn't stop himself from making those embarrassing noises.

Finally she managed to get the angle right, and to keep him held in place by magic as she wiggled herself on top of it. It was so big. She was really, really wet, and she wanted this, but she worried that it wasn't going to fit. Discord kept trying to shift his hips, to thrust up, so she had to use her magic to hold his hips down too. "Stop squirming. It isn't even going to work if you push like that."

"I thought – I was supposed – to push."

"Yes, when it's in. But it's – I'm trying to see how it's even going to fit."

"I could use my magic. Make it smaller so it fits better."

"Based on – what I've read – that sounds completely backwards."

"Well, then I could put it back to normal size once it's actually in."

The whole time they were talking, she was rocking back and forth on top of it, pressing the opening of her body against the head, wiggling and trying to work herself down onto it. Abruptly she felt something shift. "Oh!" The top part of it was inside her now. It was uncomfortably wide but not quite painful.

Then Discord tried rocking his hips up again, and since he was inside now, it worked – too well. Sudden pain shot through her as she felt him shove up into her, too deep and fast. "Ow!" Celestia hoisted herself up, pulling away, while using her magic to push his hips back down again. "That hurt!"

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry," he whimpered, trying to curl his body up on itself. She could feel his hips trying to turn sideways, as if he was trying to roll away from her. "I'm sorry."

"Hay, it's all right. I'm not hurt, I mean it hurt but I'm not injured or anything." Celestia laid down on top of him, and placed her hoof lightly against his cheek. "Discord, don't give up. I still want this."

"But I hurt you."

"So maybe I might have to tie your hips down so you can't do that." She grinned at him. "Got any long scarves or something?"

"Oh my, you are kinky."

"Or, you could just promise me that you won't move your hips until I say you can."

"I... um... I'm not exactly famous for self control, you know..."

"Could you try? I mean.. seriously, I'd feel kind of stupid if we had to tie you down just because you can't stop yourself moving."

He took a deep breath. "I – I'll try. I don't want to hurt you."

They tried again. This time it seemed even more difficult. Celestia gritted her teeth in frustration. "This isn't working..."

"Let me try something."

He didn't shift his hips, but he bent his body forward, taking advantage of his extreme flexibility to get his paws firmly secured around the cheeks of her rump, lean his head forward and down, and lick her, right where he'd been licking her before. Celestia made a small noise of surprise before giving in to a half-sigh, half-moan of pleasure. Discord's long tongue stroked between her legs, applied moisture lasciviously to his own tip, and then licked her clitoris, firmly, tiny wet rasps dragging across the sensitive spot and making her want to thrash and scream. When she tried lowering herself back onto him, the contact was as wet and slick as it had been before, and with Discord's tongue playing with her right above the place that their bodies met, the discomfort she'd felt before when she'd gotten him inside was gone. The sensation of being stretched and filled was still there, but it didn't feel uncomfortable anymore – quite the contrary. She kept rocking back and forth on him, working him in deeper, wanting more.

"Hah – uh – is that – comfortable – for you? Feels wonderful but – don't want you – to strain your neck..."

His eyes shifted gaze to look up at her without his moving his head, and he grinned at her without changing what he was doing. His paws squeezed her rump. "Okay. Going to – assume – you're okay," she panted, and started to move on him, pulling herself up and then letting herself back down.

Their movements were awkward, desynchronized. Every so often Discord would try to thrust up, too hard, and she'd push him back down with magic, but when she was trying to manage the rhythm all on her own she couldn't quite get it. As wonderful as Discord's tongue felt, it was distracting her, because her body kept trying to match that rhythm and it didn't work.

Then Discord fell back on the pillows, laying his head back. His tail came up and around her, the fluffy little ball of fur at the end of it stroking her where he'd just had his mouth. Celestia cried out. "Oh, oh, what – why—"

She meant "why does this feel so good", but apparently Discord thought she was asking for his motives. "That was... starting... to hurt my neck," he said, breathing hard. "Is – is this good?"

"It's... it's good. Great. Wonderful. Please. Oh, please, please, I need—" She didn't know what she needed. She was moving faster, harder, not really in conscious control of what she was doing, as if her body just knew what it needed and had taken over for her so it could get it. The light puffball of fur stroking against her nub was maddening, much more frustrating than his tongue had been. She wanted more, and she rocked on him harder and used magic to pull his tail against her, hard, using it to rub herself. "Please, please, Discord, I want – I want—"

And then it was as if something hard and hungry and needing inside her broke and melted, and everything inside her turned to liquid pleasure, flowing through her. She screamed, losing the control she needed to keep Discord pinned down. He thrust up into her wildly, as if spurred by her reaction. Celestia had experienced orgasm from playing with herself before, but when it hit and her magic fell from her control, she couldn't keep stimulating herself, so it always ended then. With Discord holding her by hips and rump and pumping into her frantically, his tail still rubbing her, it didn't stop this time. Her climax washed over her, and then the feeling of him pounding inside her kept sending shocks of pleasure with every thrust, making her feel like it was building up again. "Oh, don't stop, please, Discord, please, please don't stop..."

He growled and rolled over on top of her, his tail still pinned between their bodies, rubbing her clit as he hammered into her. It was too much and it wasn't enough. She wailed, trying to lock her legs around his hips and finally managing it, needing more. "Celestia, Celestia," he was whimpering.

And then he screamed, and she felt him twitching inside her. The stories she'd read had led her to expect that she'd feel some sort of warm liquid explode into her guts, but there was no such sensation; the only way she could tell that he'd just come was from his cries and frantic movements and then the fact that he slowed down and started barely moving, panting heavily. Celestia moaned with a mixture of satisfaction and frustration. They'd really done it. They'd made love, they'd both climaxed, not together like in the stories but at least it had happened for both of them. But she still wanted more. That was unfair and selfish of her, she thought, but it didn't change the fact that she ached inside. When he slipped out of her, and she felt their combined wetness dripping down her thighs and rump, she whimpered and thrust her hips before she could stop herself.

Discord looked down at her, a huge, happy grin on his face. "Oh, wow," he said. "Wow. That was... did you know that would feel so... so... wow, I can't even think of words. They're all stupid clichés."

Celestia squirmed uncomfortably. "Yeah, that was... um... that felt maybe a little... too good?"

He blinked at her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean... um... after I, uh, after I finished, and then you kept going, and... it was really nice, but... I, um, I need... I mean I have to... again."

Discord laughed. "Really? You're serious?"

"Um... sorry. Yes."

"Well. Uh. I... don't think I can do... that again, not real soon, but. Um. Let me think."

"You could... uh, maybe... use your fingers? Not the talon ones, that's... kind of scary. But... the other ones?"

"Maybe," Discord said. He slithered down her body, resting his head on top of her belly, his neck lying maddeningly against her needy places. Involuntarily she pushed her hips against him once before she could get control of herself and stop. She felt soft fur press against her before pushing inside. "Like this?"

"Mmm, yes." A few experimental thrusts from his fingers, and she realized with disappointment that they weren't deep enough. Maybe they could make her climax and ease the discomfort, but they couldn't really satisfy her. Still, she didn't feel like she had the right to make any more demands, so she lay there, feeling increasing frustration as his fingers almost gave her what she needed.

"Or maybe," Discord said, withdrawing his paw from her, "you'd like this better."

He pressed his mouth to her, and she felt his tongue push inside her. At the same time, he used the lion paw, its furry fingers slick with her moisture, to rub her, right above where his mouth was working. She cried out. "Oh yes oh please that's perfect don't stop, Discord, please don't stop, ohhh...."

Discord's tongue wasn't as wide or long as his male anatomy had been, but it was longer than his fingers and more flexible. She felt him pressing against her in different places inside until he found the spots that made her scream, and then he kept pushing against them, over and over, while meanwhile wet soft fur rubbed against her steadily. Her hooves pushed down against the pillows, her whole body tightening and becoming rigid. "Please, Discord, please," she repeated, moaning. She wanted to thrust her hips against him, but this time he was the one holding her down, his talon reaching under a pillow to pull her tail down into the pile so she couldn't shift her hips up.

And then he lifted his head. "Um, I was... kind of wrong about how long it would take me to be able to... again. Would you, uh... would you mind if we did it again? I mean, I could finish you like this if you want, but... I could go again, if you wanted me to."

"Yes. Yes, please. Please, now."

He slid up her body again and was inside her in moments. Celestia whined and pumped her hips against his. "Please, Discord," she repeated.

At first, when he started thrusting, she was surprised that it wasn't quite as good as she'd thought it would be. It did feel nice, but not the kind of maddening marvelousness that made her want to scream. Then he put his tail back where he'd had it the first time they'd done this, and she realized what was missing. "Oh!" She wrapped both sets of hooves around him, pulling him as close as she could, pressing herself up against him, especially that wonderful tail and the thickness inside her. "Please," she said again, and couldn't stop herself from saying it, over and over.

This time when that wonderful melting feeling swept over her, it felt like, the last time, there had still been spots of tension in her somewhere that hadn't melted, and this time, those went as well. It seemed to last forever, Discord thrusting even harder and faster when she began crying out and tightening around him, and she thrashed around the unrelenting pleasure of it, calling out his name.

He still kept going after her climax finally finished, though, and while she felt like a rag doll, limp and completely spent, he was still pounding into her desperately, seeking his own release. Her body was being jerked back and forth by the force of it, and she didn't want to tell him to stop because she felt like he had the right to get a second one after he'd helped her do so, and she wouldn't be able to use her hooves to finish him because he didn't feel hooves were soft enough, but at the same time it was starting to get uncomfortable.

She reached back behind him with her magic, using it to stroke his balls, and below that, and when she touched a place that felt to her magic like a tight cluster of muscle surrounding a very tiny hole, he cried out. "Yes, Celestia, yes, please, please do that," he begged, so she kept up with it. It might have disgusted her to use hooves there, and certainly not her face or mouth, but magic was completely clean. His movements grew even more wild, frantic, as she rubbed him there and finally, slowly, pushed a tendril of magic inside him. That set him off. With a cry, he came inside her again, and held her tightly as aftershocks rippled through his body.

Finally he pulled free of her. This time she felt distinctly sore inside, and wanted to pee, pretty badly, but at the same time she wanted to hold him and snuggle him. "Wow," he said, seeming to be as much at a loss for words as he'd been after the first time.

"Yes. Wow."

He rolled off her, mostly, but left his head pillowed on her chest. "I can hear your heartbeat."

"It probably wouldn't be good for me if you couldn't," she said, and they both giggled.

"'I Lost My Virginity To A Zombie.' A true story!"

"Maybe I'm a vampire. I vant to suck your blood!"

"I would let you suck anything you wanted right now," he said, and they both giggled again at the double entendre.

"Do you have a bathroom in here?"

He sighed. "I just pee out the hole in the tree."

"Discord, that's gross."

"Well, what do you want from me? I'm a guy."

"I'm not."

He snickered. "I noticed. I think a few things would have worked differently if you had been."

Celestia laughed. "But you still would have done it?"

"Celestia, I would have done it with you if you were a one-eyed, two-horned, flying purple pony eater."

"What if I was a draconequus eater?"

"Then you'd have starved to death by now."

She laughed again, and then sobered up before her laughter made her embarrass herself. "Discord, I'd really like to snuggle here with you for hours. But if you don't have a bathroom here then this is going to get really uncomfortable, really fast."

"I don't suppose you'd let me just teleport you to the ground so you can pee in a bush. I mean, there's nopony for miles around but us."

"I also really want to wash up. I don't know about you but I feel all sticky."

His eyes went wide in sudden shock. "Oh dear. I never asked if you were using contraceptive spells, did I?"

"This is a silly time to ask that, don't you think?" She nuzzled his chest. "Don't worry. I use them all the time. They suppress estrus, you know, so I pretty much never want to do without them."

"That's a relief. Because I didn't think of it at all. Not that I think we actually even could, because, well, I'm not a pony and you are. But... just in case."

"Discord?"

"Hmm?"

"I really need to pee."

"Oh, all right," he sighed, and snapped his talon. Nothing visibly changed, but he got to his feet – four of them, the hole in the tree wasn't quite spacious enough for him to go to his full bipedal height. "Let's go," he said, and gestured at a door in the wall.

By her calculations of where the edge of the tree was, there couldn't possibly be so much as a closet's worth of space behind the door – it had to open directly to the outside of the tree – but Celestia knew how Discord's powers worked. Sure enough, when she followed him through the door, they were in her bath chambers, right off her bedroom. She immediately closeted herself in the curtained-off area with the necessary, cast a spell to mask the sound of liquid, and relieved herself. "I'm going to have the servants come draw us a bath," she said, knowing that her spell wouldn't block the sound of her voice, only the sound of her peeing.

"Don't do that. I thought you said we were supposed to be discreet about this."

"Well, yes, but I really want a bath."

"Your wish is my command, Your Highness."

As soon as she was done, she stepped out and discovered that it was raining in her bathtub. Discord was standing in the bathtub, the rain falling on him, using what looked like her shampoo to lather up his mane. The spell she'd cast had been two-way, so she hadn't been able to hear the sound of the rain any more than Discord would have been able to hear her pee. The cloud was dark and stormy looking, and steam roiled off the water that had already fallen in the tub. "What....?"

"It's hot water," he said. "With a little bit of bath oil, the vanilla scented stuff, plus a little aloe. I considered making it fruit juice, but that stuff tastes nasty when it's warm, and it wouldn't exactly make you less sticky."

Celestia stepped into the tub tentatively. The water was hot, but not painfully so, and it rained down on her hard enough to wash away the sweat and stickiness.

She was a bit unnerved at the lack of servants. Celestia wasn't used to washing herself. Not that she couldn't, but... what order was she supposed to put this stuff on in?

And then she felt Discord's paws in her mane, the cool smoothness of shampoo gel and his strong fingers working it through the hair. "Relax, Tia," he said. "Save your magic. Let me do this."

She leaned into him, eyes closed to keep the shampoo and the water out, letting the hot water run over both their bodies and his paws scrub her scalp. "Mmm." She could practically fall asleep like this.

When he'd helped her wash up, she used her magic to help him – he was flexible enough that he could reach his own back, but he enjoyed it more when he lay still and let her use her magic on him – and then she led him over to her bed, both of them wrapped up in towels and bathrobes.

Discord stopped still for a moment. "What, are you insatiable, filly?" he asked, staring at the bed.

She laughed. "Silly. I just want to take a nap with you. I don't know about you but that tired me out."

"Oh. Well, yes, I suppose I could go for a nap."

With a thought, she locked her door, so the servants would not be able to simply stroll in. They'd have to actually knock. She pulled up the covers, waited until Discord climbed in beside her, and cuddled up close to him before draping the blankets back over them both. She'd slept next to Discord before, cuddled up with him on trips of exploration that ran longer than a single day, but usually they'd had Luna with them as well, and they'd been sleeping on the ground, not snuggled up in a bed. This felt so much nicer.

"So. Um. You really liked it?" he asked quietly, his tone almost shy. She wasn't sure she'd ever heard Discord sound shy before.

"Uh-huh. You?"

"Oh yes. Very much. I mean... wow."

She chuckled. "You said that a lot."

"I can't actually think of anything better to say about it. Just... wow."

"I love you, you know."

He hesitated a very long time, before whispering, almost as if he were ashamed of it, "I love you too. You know that, right?"

"Of course I do." Celestia closed her eyes. "I'm tired, Discord. I'm going to get some sleep."

"Sleep well," he said, and then, "You're going to have to show me your collection of pornographic reference material when you wake up, though."

Celestia laughed. "There's a lot of it."

"We can test it all out. For science."

"Sure. We've got all the time in the world, now. Even if I get married, Father says I don't have to give you up." She snuggled closer to him. "We could be together forever."

He went still, almost stiff. Celestia turned her head, surprised. "Discord? Are you okay?"

"Do you promise?" he asked softly.

"Promise what?"

"Promise that you'll never leave me," he said.

Celestia felt suddenly very sad for him, realizing that he was remembering his mother. "I'll never leave you," she said. "Whatever we have to deal with in life, we can face it together, right?"

Discord relaxed against her. His arm slid under her, pulling her close against him in a spoon position. "Right."

"Get some sleep, Discord." She closed her eyes again.

"Okay."