Late the same day, a kitchen timer rang in an apartment in one of the humbler, yet still basically respectable, parts of Canterlot. A middle-aged unicorn mare stood up from the couch where she’d been reading a magazine and walked to the desk, shutting it off.

She looked at the clock: a few minutes past five. The bin marked 17:00 in the elaborate filing rack on the wall behind the desk held a single work slip. She pulled it down, but she already knew what it said; she had read it before setting the timer. Sitting down and picking up the phone, she dialed a number.

“Finey? This is your favorite boss speaking. How soon can you be in Ponyville?”

“Really? Are you sure about that? You’re the only pegasus I have available right now –”

“Oh, alright. Sorry to hear that – anything serious?”

“Well, have a speedy recovery then, and let me know when you get better. Need me to find somepony to cover for you tomorrow?”

“Okay. I’ll manage. Bye.”

The mare hung up and double-checked her lists and schedules once again. But no luck. She counted to ten, then counted to ten once more and called the Ponyville agent.

“Hi there, this is Hissy Fit from the Rescue Service calling –”

“Congratulations! You’ve just got yourself your first solo job. I’d have sent Affine Scheme, but he called in sick and there’s nopony else –”

“No, nothing serious, and of course I trust you. Now you have until eight to be there, but they’ll undoubtedly be grateful if you’re quicker. It’s somewhere called Sweet Apple Acres –”

“Ah, excellent. It says you should go to the small barn in the back next to the henhouse. It’s supposed to be unlocked already –”

“Apple.”

“That’s all it says in the name field, Apple. But if you already know the place, you don’t really need the client’s name, do you?”

“That’s about it. Now remember your training, good luck, and be sure to call me back when you’re done.”

“Bye.”

* * *

Big Macintosh was eleven when he discovered the stack of magazines deep in the back of one of the toolsheds. They must have belonged to either his father or to Gramps Smith – he never found out which – and were full of pictures of mares, wearing things that he knew meant the mares were pretty. The pictures were nice to look at, but he also sensed they were somehow wrong, so he quietly moved the magazines to a safer place and told nopony about them.

He liked all of them, but the best ones were the dozen or so that contained pictures of bound mares. Some of them had stallions with them that did things to them, but most were alone in the pictures, looking very sad and scared. Over the years he spent lots of time imagining who had tied those mares up, and how horrid it must be for them, and how all they needed was a big brave colt to come and rescue them. A colt like Big Macintosh. The thought gave him funny feelings between his hind legs.

Later on he learned what those funny feelings were for, and later yet he got to try them out in practice when he dated Cheerilee in senior year. He found himself thinking of the bound mares from the magazines while he did the things he’d learned about with her, and sometimes he imagined Cheerilee was tied up and sad and scared when he mounted her. But he never dared to talk to her about anything like that. When spring came, they decided they were not very good at being special someponies, at least not to each other, and broke up.

He found a specialty bookshop three towns over that sold this kind of magazines. A few times a year he managed to make a detour there from his pie delivery route without getting suspiciously late, and the tattered old issues from the toolshed began to get fresher companions. The new ones were all of the kind with bound mares in them.

Then one time he bought a different kind of magazine by mistake. It looked like the usual ones on the outside, but instead of pictures of scared mares in basements and dungeons, it contained step-by-step instructions for how ponies could tie each other up safely, without excessive pain and lasting damage. There were pictures too, but they were better lit and had little arrows and numbers in them.

In the back there was an article about how a pony could tie up himself and not be able to get free until a certain amount of time had passed.

The thought knocked Big Macintosh speechless. Instead of having to imagine how it would be for those mares to be bound and helpless – and, frankly, he was beginning to doubt the realism of his fantasies – he could get to experience it firsthand, and know how it was! It was an intriguing idea at first; then planning it became a guilty pleasure, and eventually an obsession.

It took a long time to assemble all of the materials. But finally all that remained was a point the article insisted was extremely important: a safety net, somepony to rescue him if something unexpected went wrong. Big Macintosh didn’t know anyone he could tell what he was up to – certainly not Granny or his sisters! – but the article contained a phone number in Canterlot that he could call and pay for rescuers to turn up at a certain time if he didn’t call later to cancel.

Still, it was difficult to bring himself to call, and he almost dropped the entire plan. One weekend the perfect occasion was coming up, though. Apple Bloom would be away on a school trip, and Applejack and Granny were going to a pastry conference presenting Granny’s zap apple plaits. He would have the farm to himself for more than a day and a half, so it was now or never, and he called the number. The mare who answered was friendly and soothing, talked him through everything, and even agreed to write his bill as if it was for repair of farm equipment so he could pay it at the post office without anypony knowing.

Saturday morning he set everything up in the barn and double-checked that it worked as it should. Just after noon he wedged himself in between the barn’s rear centerpost and a column of hay bales, upside down like the mare in one of his favorite pictures, lying on his back with his hind legs running straight up the post. He lashed them securely to it with many turns of rope round his cannonbones. Then he tied each branch of a master rope around one of his forehooves, took a deep breath, and yanked the pull cord.

On the loft above him, the cord swept a sandbag down from the shelf it rested on, and the rope tied to the sandbag started running through a pulley-and-ratchet arrangement. As the bag hung in mid-air, it pulled the ropes attached to his forehooves taut – but not hard; he didn’t have to raise his hooves. Yet every inch he did raise them was another click of the ratchet, preventing him from lowering them again. Even if he tried to back out now, just wiggling his hooves would be enough to pull them out of reach faster than he could untie the knots.

Another deep breath, and he thrust his hooves upwards and backwards, on either side of the stack of hay bales. The ratchet rattled. The sandbag hit the floor. And then Big Macintosh was helplessly trapped. It should be about three hours before the ice weld between two sections of the master rope would melt, freeing him to lower his hooves again.

The hay bales behind his head kept it pinned between his forelegs, so he lay looking at his dick, which had come out during the preparations and was now stiff and throbbing. He wanted to rub it, to give himself some well-deserved relief after a perfectly executed plan. But his hooves were tied back, and he had nothing else to rub against. That was a problem he hadn’t anticipated. Trying to will himself into coming, he thought about all the mares in his magazine pictures and all the things somepony could be doing to them – and finally, in desperation, even about Cheerilee – but to no avail.

How long time has passed yet? He had brought his bedside clock down to the barn so he could keep track of time, but now he found he had forgotten to put it where he could actually see it before he tied himself up. He could hear it ticking somewhere behind his head. Well, since that was the only thing that had gone wrong, he couldn’t really complain.

The afternoon went by slowly. A wasp floated in through the half-open door and buzzed around the barn for some time before settling somewhere in the rafters. Eventually his penis lost some of its stiffness and came to rest on top of his belly, itching quietly. A few times it rose up again when something sounded like hoofsteps in the courtyard and he thought somepony was about to walk in on him and discover him in this position. He didn’t understand why it would do that – being found out would be embarrassing and awkward, not something to look forward to.

He must have been dozing off when none other than Pinkie Pie did walk in on him.

She stood by the door at the other end of the barn, blinking against the darkness inside. Big Macintosh tried desperately to melt into the floor so she wouldn’t see him. Perhaps she –

“HI, BIG MACINTOSH!” She bounced happily over towards him.

“Nope!” was the first thing he could think of saying. “Ah mean, AJ’s not here.”

“I know! She’s gone to Whinnyapolis with Mr. Cake. I helped him carry his stuff to the train because he said Mrs. Cake had been up late and deserved to sleep in, and there was Applejack, going to Whinnyapolis too. Isn’t that crazy?”

She didn’t appear to take note of Big Macintosh’s situation – or even of his erection, inexplicably at full mast again and bobbing about only a muzzle length or so in front of his face – and he allowed himself a small sigh of relief. Sometimes Pinkie’s flightiness could work in one’s favor.

“Hey, you look a bit tied up there. Need any help with that?”

“Nope.”

She regarded him skeptically. “Really? How d’you plan on getting free of all that, then?”

“Uh. What’s the time now?” he asked, stalling for time while trying to think of a Pinkie-proof way to explain away everything. It couldn’t be long until the three hours were up.

“Going on six, I think,” said Pinkie. “That’s not bad, is it?”

Bad? It meant something had gone horribly wrong and he had been here for twice as long as planned. He groaned in dismay, even while quietly praising himself for having made the safety-net arrangement with those ponies in Canterlot.

“Um, ah’ve got some ponies comin’ to help me out. Should be here by eight, maybe earlier. Would be best if yer not here by then.”

“By eight?” She looked like this had some profound significance. “Oh, I better run then. Places to go, ponies to do. Byye!”

She skipped out of the barn, slamming the door shut behind her, and Big Macintosh lay left behind, wondering how it could it be so late. That ice weld should have melted long ago; the magazine article had praised it as one of the few completely reliable timed-release mechanisms. It had worked perfectly when he timed it a few weeks ago, too. Today was a bit cooler than then, but that shouldn’t make the ice take twice as long to melt, should it? He had even wrapped today’s ice block in warm blankets to help make up for the temperature difference.

He didn’t have time to solve that mystery before the barn door opened again, and Pinkie Pie came marching towards him with rather more dignity than her usual happy bounce.

“Good evening, sir!” she declaimed. “I’m from the Rescue Service. Looks like you need a hoof here?”

“Um. Ya . . . you’re the Rescue Service?” Big Macintosh wondered if ‘discreet’ meant something different in the Canterlot dialect. It wasn’t a quality Pinkie was famous for around Ponyville.

“Right in one!” said Pinkie. “Usually I go together with Mr. Cake, but he’s away, and the pegasus they’d have sent from headquarters fell ill, so you get only me. That’s okay, right? Of course if you really want me to wait until eight, I can do that too. Except then Mrs. Cake has to go take Pound to his pre-flight playgroup, so I can’t leave the shop. So it really has to be now.”

“Eeyup.”

She looked over him from end to end. “Hey, do you want a quick lick first? You look like you’re bursting.” She poked his erect penis with a hoof. It began throbbing worse than before, and a small drop of sticky fluid detached from its head and landed on his belly.

It took Big Macintosh a few seconds to figure out what she meant by that. “Nope!”

“Aw, are you sure? Come on, it’ll be fun!”

“Nope. Ah mean, eeyup. Ah’m sure.”

“Aw, why not? Don’t all stallions like that? Once I had one who said –”

He wouldn’t be able to take much more. “If ah let you do it, will you Pinkie promise never to tell anypony about . . . all this?”

“Sure,” Pinkie responded happily. “Are you ready?”

He sighed and nodded, and then he had to shut his eyes to avoid getting them full of pink curly mane when Pinkie stuck her head in front of his dick. He couldn’t decide what was hardest to believe: that there was a mare taking his penis into her mouth (what if she bit down?), or that she was doing it while he was tied up and couldn’t even move (what if she bit down?), or that the mare in question was Pinkie Pie (what if she BIT DOWN?).

His whole body tensed up when her lips closed around the sensitive outer end of his penis and she began running her warm, wet, alive tongue around and across it, painting saliva all over it. He was vaguely aware of her mane brushing across his face when she changed her angle, smelling of cotton candy, and of her hooves massaging his shaft, but for the most part his consciousness had shrunk to a small point at his tip. He was inside Pinkie’s mouth, being poked and hugged and tickled by her tongue.

Then she did bite down – but gently, just squeezing ever so slightly – and he shivered all over and felt his loins contract and start pumping, going on and on for quite some time. Oh wow, this was a big one; he’d have to clean up jizz from all over the barn once he got free and managed to lose Pinkie.

But when he opened his eyes and looked, there were no gooey streamers everywhere, just Pinkie Pie licking her lips contentedly.

“Did ya . . . eat it?” he asked, incredulously. He’d read about mares doing that.

“Sure did. Say, you’ve been eating a lot of apples lately, have you?” She winked at him.

“Ah, eeyup.” He didn’t see what that had to do with anything. But this was Pinkie Pie after all. “Now promise.”

“Promise what?”

“You said you would promise not to tell anybody if ah let you, um, lick.”

“Oh, right. I already promised that when I took the job. Not allowed to tell anypony who the clients are. My lips are sealed.” She did an elaborate little pantomime that he didn’t feel like questioning. “Really, you won’t believe who’s using our service and for what!”

“. . . Nope?”

“Because I’m not allowed to tell you. That’s why you won’t believe it. You can’t believe what you don’t know, see?”

By the standards of Pinkie logic, this was relatively straightforward. “Ah see.”

She began untying the rope he had lashed his hind legs to the post with. “Gee, Big Mac, whoever tied you up like this and then just up and left?”

“. . . Ah don’t wanna talk about it.”

“Huh.” She looked at him. “You didn’t do it yourself, did you?”

He didn’t answer, which was a kind of answer too.

“I have to say you’ve been thorough. Went horribly right, didn’t it?” She rose up on her hind legs so she could reach his forehooves, planting one hoof by each of his shoulders so her crotch rested against his face.

He grunted in response and folded his hind legs down to his body. Rewarded by a sudden prickling sensation in his hooves, he kicked at the air to get it to go away.

“You know,” said Pinkie while she untied the rope around his right hoof, “you could get into a lot more interesting positions if you had somepony to help you. I could set you up with a list of mares who would love having a big stallion like you at their mercy.”

“Um . . .”

His right foreleg was free and dropped to the floor. It felt numb and heavy. Pinkie shifted over towards his other side, dragging her tail across his belly.

“Oh, silly me, of course I can’t do that ’cause it’s supposed to be a secret who they were. Then how about I tell them you’re looking for someone to tie you up?”

“NOPE!” he shouted into her crotch.

Once his last hoof was free, he laboriously got himself back on all fours. She stood by watching him while he did an unsteady trot in place to bring circulation back into his limbs.

She bent down on her forelegs, looking up at him from below. “Oh wow, you’re ready to go again already!”

He did have an erection again, which didn’t become any smaller by being pointed out like it was a particularly impressive school project brought for show-and-tell. Hello Equestria, meet Pinkie Pie, master of tact and discretion.

“If you don’t have any other plans for that, I could give you a thing to do with it.”

“A thing?”

“You know, the naughty stuff. Do the double-decker. Humpy-humpy.” She turned her hind end to him and swished her tail provocatively to the side, so he got a view of her marehood. Her glistening and swelling marehood . . .

“Ah don’t know, Pinkie –”

“Oh, come on! It can’t be as if there’s another mare if you have to do your tying-up yourself. And I did lick you, right? Can’t I have some fun too?”

It wasn’t every day mares practically shoved their behinds into his face, and it felt as if she was making a pretty good case. He gave up on resisting – who stood up to Pinkie Pie when she’d gotten something into her head, anyway? – and put his forehooves up on her rump, taking aim.

“Hey, now. Ever heard about foreplay?”

“Ah, eeyup.” He got back on the ground, a bit sheepishly, and began softly nuzzling her cutie mark while he tried to remember how this went. There’d been something Cheerilee liked in particular, wasn’t there? Ah yes. He left the cutie mark behind, planting a series of kisses on Pinkie’s side and up her neck, until he ended up licking the inside of her ear while scratching her breast with a forehoof.

“Uh, that tickles . . . no, keep doing it!”

That sounded good. He licked until he had to pause for breath.

“Try nibbling at the back of my neck – yes, there . . . Mmmm . . .”

He followed the hint, sticking his muzzle into her mane and tugging gently on the little hairs at its root as close to the skin as he could get. They really did taste like cotton candy. He wrapped a hoof around her back and stroked her other side while he kept nuzzling.

“Now mount me, big wonderful stallion you!”

He didn’t even have to raise himself up to hit her opening. She gave a sudden yawp as he entered her, and the sound segued into something that sounded like guffaws. He hoped that meant things were going well, what with her being the element of laughter and all. If it didn’t, it was too late to care. He thrust into her again and again, until he came, hard, and she kept giggling while he pumped and pumped.

He reached down and gave a small farewell tug on the part of her mane he had been nibbling at previously before he backed out of her and took some time to find his footing again.

Pinkie was still chuckling quietly to herself.

“Um, ya alright?”

She looked up at him, smiling. “Yes, silly colt, it was perfect. But I think I need to be getting back to the store now.” She started walking towards the door.

“Pinkie?” he called after her. She stopped and looked towards him. “Does this mean we’re, um, special someponies now?”

Her expression became concerned and a little sad. She walked back to him and hugged him.

“It means we’ve had some fun together, you and me. And I do think it was fun, honest.” She smiled briefly and gave a short wiggle of her butt that probably meant something. “Perhaps we can do it another time, if the occasion pops up. One where you won’t have to pay three hundred bits for a call-out rescue.

“But, you know, I’m really not much for tying up stallions.” The way she said it sounded like it might have been different if he was a mare. But you never really knew with Pinkie. “You deserve somepony who can make you happy, too. She’s out there somewhere; I’m sure of it. Okay?”

He didn’t even know which answer he had been hoping for.

“Eeyup,” he finally said.

He stood in the doorway of the barn and watched Pinkie bounce away toward Ponyville, happy and carefree as ever. He stayed there some time after she disappeared out of sight, trying to decide whether to be sad or relieved that he didn’t have to be special somepony to her. Eventually he settled for relieved. It wasn’t as if it mattered anyway.

Shaking his head with a wistful smile, he went into the barn to pack away the self-bondage gear for now.

Author's Note

Big thanks to Taialin for copyediting help and useful comments on this chapter.