You Look So Defeated, Lying There In Your New Twin Sized Bed
“Oof!”
Rumble tumbled to the cloudy ground of the street. Frowning, he struggled to his feet, the heavy packages on his back making it hard for him to stand straight up. The weight had been what had thrown him to the ground in the first place—he had flown too fast and ended up becoming unbalanced, spiraling downward into the alley between two apartment buildings where he presently resided.
Groaning, he looked around, a small smile gracing his features. These weren’t any two apartment buildings: these were the apartment building he lived in, and the one adjacent to it. Grinning, the young stallion started to walk through the alleyway of the cloudy apartment buildings, not chancing flying again.
Rumble worked for the Cloudsdale Postal Service delivering packages. He hadn’t always—not six months ago, he lived in Ponyville, training to be a part of the weather department with his big brother. However, Rumble wasn’t a pegasus who liked to be grounded; change was needed constantly for him. Once he had saved up enough bits from doing odd jobs, he bid his brother farewell and set off towards the dream city of the sky: Cloudsdale!
The city had been great to him. He had found his job almost right away, and with the experience from Ponyville (delivering packages had been one of his odd jobs that earned his ticket out of the small town), he was able to thrive in his job. Of course, he was only five months in, so he couldn’t expect too much, but he felt like he was doing pretty well.
His apartment was modest, and the building was nice, so there was little room to complain. Rumble chuckled to himself as he walked through the alleyway. He always saved his building for last, so he could send off the delivery forms and jump right up to his apartment. He had a little system all figured out, and it was working wonders for him.
His eyes swept over the contents of the alleyway he was traversing, and Rumble made a mental note of everything that lay before him, almost subconsciously: stacks of unopened newspapers, still all tied up and assembled neatly; a few crushed cartons of juice; a box half-full of burnt, torn, or otherwise damaged books; a queen-sized mattress with a sign on it; and an empty box with cuts all over it.
Rumble stopped when he reached the queen-sized mattress. The note on it wasn’t typed... that was scrawled from the mouth of a pony. Rumble paused for a moment to read what was written.
One queen-sized mattress, lightly used. Free to a good home certesycourtosycourtisie with regards from Scootaloo.
Rumble stared at the note. “Scootaloo?” he whispered out loud, sitting down on the cloud-comprised ground. “There’s no way...”
Looking again at the note, he knew it was her writing. She looped the “l’s” as if it were cursive, and the rest of the letters were scrawled in print. Besides, how many pegasi were named “Scootaloo”? The odds were against him.
Rumble gave the mattress a dark look. “Out of all the ponies from Ponyville, why’d you have to belong to her?” The mattress didn’t answer him, and he rolled his eyes.
Rumble was not fond of reminders from home; he was a stallion who wanted to look forward, not hang on to something behind him. However, this was a particularly sour reminder of home.
“Why was she ditching her mattress?” he found himself wondering aloud. “I mean, there’s not a lot of reasons to be dumping mattresses, and if there was something really wrong with it, she’d have thrown it out instead of pawning it off on the street...”
Rumble reached the end of the alley, and turned the corner. The main entrance to the lobby of the cloudy apartments was only a few short trots away, and he was going to get to the bottom of this mystery. Scootaloo’s living in his apartment building? For how long? How could she have gotten past him?
Rumble giggled internally. He was always up early, and then in his apartment once his shift was done. He wasn’t exactly out and about in his building when other ponies were. Even on Fridays, when he went out drinking with his work buddies (thank Celestia for Cloudsdale’s loose drinking laws), he always got home to his apartment late. It would have been VERY easy to miss Scootaloo, particularly if she had a 9 to 5.
Rumble walked through the open lobby double doors, and trotted to the front desk. Crisp Cirrus, the old stallion who worked the front desk, smiled as Rumble walked towards him, his white mane lifting with his cheeks. “Hey there, Rumble! Light load today?”
“Nope,” Rumble grunted as he walked closer, the reminder from Cirrus causing his back to scream with protest to the heavy packages. He blinked, then added, “Well, actually, I guess the way you meant it, I did have a light load. Just not in terms of weight.”
Crisp Cirrus chuckled. “Well, only one reason’d you be here. Got a package for me?”
Rumble looked back at the two packages he had left, even though he knew the answer. “Actually, no... I came here to ask about one of the tenants.”
Crisp raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yeah,” Rumble said, “Orange mare, about my age. Named Scootaloo. Which apartment is she in?”
Crisp nodded. “Oh yes! Her! She comes by and talks to me quite often. Really a sweetheart.” He smiled almost to himself as he looked down at the book in front of him that contained tenant names. “Floor 3, Apartment B32.” Looking up, his face betrayed some surprise. “Say, isn’t your place...”
Rumble was equally as bewildered. “Apartment A29, yeah, it is! I’ve been across the hall from her this entire time...”
Crisp closed the tenant book and gave Rumble a knowing smile. “Strange how you can never see what’s truly around you, huh? It’s like my father always said... ‘ponies in this city are always living like hermits in their own heads’.”
Rumble was already advancing towards the chute. “No time for the elevator...” he mumbled to himself. “Besides, these packages aren’t really that heavy. I can handle it.”
The chute was essentially an empty elevator shaft, something all high-rise pegasi buildings had situated between the stairs and the elevator lifts. It let pegasi fly straight up to whatever floor they needed if they wanted quick transport and didn’t have anything large or heavy to take with them. Rumble had been confused by them when he first showed up in Cloudsdale, and had likened to them rather quickly.
Flying up the way he knew so well, the 35 feet or so to the third floor flew by quickly. Landing on the chute ledge, he pushed the safety door open, and walked out into the hallway.
Every hallway in the building was arranged the same way: Odds on the right, giving the “A” in front of them, and evens on the left, given an “B”. Keeping his eye on the left, he charged down the hallway, slowing down once he reached the “20’s”.
“B26... B28... B30...” he counted as he walked past the apartment doors. “B32! Here it is!”
Rumble turned his head and glanced back at the other side of the hallway, where the odd-numbered “A’s” resided. Directly across was a31, and next to that was A29. His place. His place that was right next to hers this entire time, without him ever knowing.
Rumble turned his attention away from his own door, and looked at Scootaloo’s. Her apartment door was like all the others: stormy grey, with a peephole on the front. The letter and numbers were tacked on to upper center, like every other door.
Rumble briefly considered not even bothering to knock—just getting up and leaving, delivering the other packages to floors 4 and 11 and then going back to his own apartment.
Sighing, and against his better judgment, Rumble slammed his hoof against Scootaloo’s door three times, hard.
There was only silence for a moment. He was just about to get up and go, assuming Scootaloo wasn’t at home, when he heard hoofbeats advance towards the door. He held his breath as the doorknob turned, and the door opened.
She looked almost the same as she had six months ago, at his going away party that Rumble’s brother Thunderlane had insisted he left Pinkie Pie throw for him. He purple mane was in the same style it had been since she was eleven, her orange coat slightly messy, and her wings a little small for her size. She was the epitome of the past.
“Hey, Scootaloo,” Rumble began, before the air was squeezed out of him by a huge hug from the orange mare. “Gah! N-nice to see you too...”
Scootaloo relinquished her hold on Rumble, and gave him a huge smile. “Rumble! Hey! I didn’t know you lived here!”
“I could have been visiting,” Rumble gasped, attempting to re-inflate his crushed lungs.
“Nah,” Scootaloo stated, sticking her tongue out. “I knew you lived here. Saw you coming out early one morning when I was in the lobby.”
“Oh,” Rumble said dully. “I don’t know how I missed you...”
“I was fixing the lift,” she explained, turning around to give him a better side-view of her flank, where a wrench surrounded by oil was proudly emblazoned. “Did you forget already?”
Rumble swallowed. He had forgotten! She and her friends had been looking for their cutie marks so long that when they actually did get them, ponies still tended to think that they were searching for them.
“Pfft!” Scootaloo bit her lower lip and stifled a laugh. “Come on in, Rumble, we’ve got some catching up to do!”
Rumble obliged, and followed Scootaloo into her apartment. The place was a mess—half of the cushions on the small two cushion-couch were missing, and the other was stained. Take-out food boxes were strewn all over the table and kitchen, and tools were everywhere. Rumble nearly stumbled over a sledgehammer as he followed Scootaloo towards the door near the back of the apartment.
“Um, Scootaloo?” Rumble asked, recovering from his stumble. “Can I ask why you have a sledgehammer out?”
“A fly got in,” Scootaloo answered nonchalantly. Rumble paled slightly as he jumped over an open box of nails, walking through the open door after Scootaloo.
“Got anywhere where I can set these down?” Rumble shifted uncomfortably under the burden of the packages. “They’re killing my back...”
“Yeah, just drop them next to the bed,” Scootaloo said, flopping down on aforementioned bed. Rumble set his packages down, arched his back and sighed in satisfaction as he heard a nice little pop!
Looking around, the stallion finally registered where he was. “Woah! Usually I have to see three movies and go on a few dates before I get into a mare’s bedroom.”
Scootaloo giggled from her place laying on the bed, and Rumble smiled awkwardly in response. “Oh, Rumble,” she said between her laughter, “You never change.”
“Hey, that’s not true,” Rumble said indignantly. “I got up and left to go to Cloudsdale for change! I wear my mane like my brother now instead of the kiddie manecut I had when I was younger, that’s not something I see you—”
“Relax.” Scootaloo rolled her eyes. “No need to get on the defense.” She cocked an eyebrow and smirked. “Not sure the whole mohawk thing’s working for you, though...”
Rumble ran his hoof over his mane, and blushed. “Y-yeah, well... anyway, I think I should talk to you about why I even came to your apartment in the first place.”
“Aw, it wasn’t to check up on an old friend?” Scootaloo stuck her bottom lip out in mock sadness.
“No, it’s not—I mean, I didn’t...” Rumble tripped over his words and tied his tongue trying to think of a better way to word his sentence, but Scootaloo simply grinned and raised a hoof.
“Relax, Rumble,” she said jovially. “Go on, tell me what’s happening with you.”
“Well, I saw your old queen mattress outside, with a sign that says it’s free...” Rumble began.
“What, do you want it? You can take it, you don’t need to talk to me about it,” Scootaloo interrupted.
“Well no, it’s not that,” Rumble explained, sitting down next to a half-disassembled mixer. “I just didn’t know that you were in my building, and this brought it to my attention. Any reason you’re getting rid of it?”
Scootaloo sighed, and Rumble’s eyes widened slightly as her expression dropped. She looked downright upset—or crestfallen, than was the better word for it. “A-are you okay?”
“Yeah,” Scootaloo mumbled, flipping over so that her single pillow was laying underneath her single head. “I... I got rid of it because it had more space than I would ever need. Rumble’s jaw dropped slightly. In just a matter of moments, she had gone from bouncy to... downright defeated.
“Oh...” Rumble said, unable to say anything else for fear of trending to far onto tender ground.
“Yeah, I just...” Scootaloo paused, taking a deep breath. “I just got out of a four-month long relationship with somepony. Figured I wouldn’t need the extra space anymore...”
Rumble said nothing.
“So I got myself a new, twin sized bed.” Scootaloo rolled on her side, looking Rumble right in the eyes. “Never got why they called them twin-sized, they’re just for one pony...”
“Maybe it’s made for small, twin pony foals?” Rumble supplied, beating himself mentally for letting his stupid thoughts leak from his mouth.
Scootaloo chuckled weakly. “Heh, maybe you’re right... who knows!” She sat up. “So, what’s been up with you? I haven’t seen you in months, haven’t talked in longer, this isn’t about my stupid breakup. C’mon, I wanna here you talk!”
Rumble shrugged. “I-I don’t know, really; just been working for the postal service here.” He gestured towards one of his packages. “I deliver packages... always do this building last. I can go right to my apartment right after.”
Scootaloo nodded. “Oh yeah, that’s right! Makes sense. What apartment are you in?”
“A29.”
Scootaloo grinned. “No way! We’re practically right across the hall from each other! How’d we not bump in sooner?”
Rumble shrugged. “I don’t know, I was thinking the same thing when I saw your name on the mattress outside. I guess we were just so preoccupied with our own lives...”
Scootaloo sat up. “Yeah, I guess it does get that way.”
“So...” Rumble traced his hoof along the oil-stained carpet. “Why’d you move on out to Cloudsdale? I thought you wanted to replace Rainbow Dash on the weather team when she went to be in the Wonderbolts.”
“I did,” Scootaloo admitted. “But something else drew me away. I wanted to go somewhere that’d need somepony with their special talent, you know? Seemed like such a waste to work on getting a talent that whole time and then never use it at all.”
Rumble nodded. “Wow, I never thought of it like that. I guess Ponyville’s not huge on mechanical appliance, other than some stuff in the shops.”
“Yeah, we get all sorts of great things here!” Scootaloo’s voice was beginning to bounce again. “Lifts have to be the best, even if they are just pulleys and wheels, mostly. I just love getting in them and seeing the internal workings.”
She looked at Rumble a little harder, and then asked abruptly “You’ve got a special somepony?”
“What?” Rumble exclaimed, startled. “N-no, no... guess that’s something that HASN’T changed...”
Scootaloo shrugged. “You’ll find somepony. I mean, how long’s it been? A year? Two?”
“Six,” Rumble mumbled.
“SIX?” Scootaloo practically yelled. Rumble flinched, as though the words were tiny daggers slicing his head to bits.
“Yeah,” Rumble confirmed. “Six.”
“Well, that must have been...” Scootaloo’s brow furrowed. “Hold up, we were—”
Rumble nodded, and Scootaloo fell silent. “So I was the last?”
“First and only,” Rumble said, nodding.
Scootaloo leaned back. “Huh. No way.”
Rumble shrugged again. “It’s fine. Some ponies just aren’t meant for love. I’m alright the way I am right now.”
“Aw, don’t get like that,” Scootaloo reassured him, hopping down from her twin-sized bed and resting a hoof on his shoulder. “There’ll be one out there! You’ll do fine, who wouldn’t want you?” She smiled. “After all, you hooked me!”
“For a week,” Rumble reminded her.
Scootaloo blushed. “Well, yeah, I guess...”
“You were my first kiss,” Rumble blurted. Immediately, he regretted doing so, as Scootaloo gave him an odd look right after.
“Huh, no way,” she said again, but slower than the first time. Rumble slowly nodded his head, wishing that anything from aliens to spontaneous combustion could whisk him away from the embarrassment of the situation bearing down on him.
After a moment, Scootaloo began to chuckle. “What’s so funny?” Rumble asked, shifting nervously.
“Nothing,” Scootaloo said in an off-hoof type of way, “It’s just that we’re both in the same place now, we haven’t talked properly in years, and...” She smiled at him. “You’re reminding me how much I missed that. You were always awesome to talk to, even after our week-long stint.” She paused, then added as an afterthought, “ESPECIALLY after. We weren’t really friends before that.”
“Yeah...” Rumble muttered. “Guess not.”
“Guess there’s another reason I wanted to ditch the mattress,” Scootaloo said, and Rumble perked up. “I had gotten it just a week before we broke up, me and my special somepony, because he was thinking about moving in. I was getting ready, clearing my room of all my appliances and tools and tinkerings, and I was sleeping on the same side every night, and the day before he was supposed to move in...” Scootaloo stopped, and sighed. “I slept in the bed a few times after that, but the other side never got used... what’s the point in holding on to something that’ll just stay like new for no good reason? Didn’t need it, didn’t want it.”
Rumbled blinked. “Um... that’s more or less the same reason as before, just with more detail.”
Scootaloo punched him playfully on the arm. “Hey, I was trying to be deep! You ruined it.”
Rumbled chuckled. “Hehe, sorry...”
“Nah, it’s all fine,” Scootaloo reassured him. “In fact... I think it’s better than fine. You’re the first pony I actually talked to about it, I’ve been too busy sulking for the past few weeks to actually work that out.” She leaned over, and hugged Rumble, and Rumble, bewildered at first, slowly returned the hug. “Thanks...”
Rumble screamed internally, his insides feeling as though they were being run through a blender. This wasn’t like the spontaneous, friend hug that she had given him when she met him at the door. This was a deeper, more gracious hug, one that felt like...
“What you used to give me...” Rumble whispered.
“What?” Scootaloo pulled back slightly, their hooves still resting on each other’s middles. She wore a befuddled expression, one that Rumble knew and remembered all too well.
Rumble stood up, and walked over to his packages. “It’s been great catching up, Scoots, but I gotta finish this delivery.” What are you doing, idiot?
“Aw...” Scootaloo pouted, making her puppy-dog eyes that Rumble could vividly remember on the second-to last day of their relationship. “Come on, do you gotta? We can get some sodas, go hang out somewhere! I wanna catch up with you, it’s been ages!”
“N-no, I really gotta...” Rumble stuttered, his mind skipping over any logical excuse he could make. “These packages...”
“Did I come on too strong?” Scootaloo asked, earnestly. Rumble felt a part of him die inside.
“Not at all, I know you’re just being friendly,” Rumble said, staggering towards the door. “I just r-really gotta... you know.”
Scootaloo nodded. “Yeah, I understand,” she said, not sounding like she understood it at all. “Come back soon? We’ve barely talked about anything except sad, sappy stuff! I wanna get into some REAL stuff!”
“Yeah,” Rumble said, almost tripping over a power sander as he headed for the front door to the apartment. “I promise.”
“When you’re done delivering—”
Rumble turned away quickly before he could hear the rest of what Scootaloo had to say, and tumbled from her apartment, almost slamming the door shut behind him.
“What were you DOING?” Rumble groaned, screwing his eyes shut as he knocked his head agains the door next to Scootaloo’s apartment. “Idiot, idiot, idiot... do you HAVE some sick desire for self-abuse? Do you WANT to fall back with the only mare who ever crushed your heart after only a week?”
Rumble sat down. “Well... I was young, we both were... 13’s hardly the right age for...”
The pegasus stopped, and looked up. There was a mare, a few years older than him, looking down at him. “Um... that’s my apartment door you’re banging...”
“S-sorry...” Rumble crawled away, the packages hanging heavily off him. He slowly walked down the hallway towards the chute.
“I was terrified back there...” Rumble whispered to himself. “I can’t believe how scared I was of... of giving myself another chance.”
He stared down the chute, the 35-foot drop looking to him as though it were a thousand feet.
“Whatever, I’ll get over it sometime... and then I can give her another chance. R-right?”
He spread his wings and dropped into the chute.
