Tunk. Tunk. Tunk. Tunk.
The empty glass bobbed against the cool wooden table in rhythmic tune. The clock on the wall failed to chime on the hour once more, and it would continue to do so just as it had for the last four years. Cheerilee paid it no mind – she preferred the quiet anyway.
Another shuffle of papers later rendered a heap of them motionless in the next corner, marks and red checks littering each page. It would be weeks at the least before she managed to finish grading each and every one of the semester finals individually, no matter how much effort she put into it, she knew it. Just one weary glance at the enormous wobbling ‘to do’ pile sent a cascade of dread into her belly.
Tunk. Tunk. Tunk. Tunk.
Cheerilee sighed heavily through her nostrils, scratching her itchy and watering eyes with one hoof as she carefully refilled her wine glass with the other.
It’s late, came the familiar little voice in the back of her head, the one that reminded her that her bed was nearby. You could just finish these tomorrow. Tartarus, it’s already tomorrow.
She didn’t even have to look at the broken clock to know that, and she popped her aching back before swilling the last few drops of wine around. The almost bitter, pungent taste of the crushed berries made her throat burn momentarily, but she didn’t particularly care. She needed it.
Cheerilee gave one last forlorn, almost hopeful look at the gigantic stack of papers and manila folders that yearned to be sorted and graded, fixed and edited.
Within the next moment, the lights were out and Cheerilee was gone from the kitchen.
She dragged herself jadedly for a few steps into the darkened living room, cast a single look at her worn sofa, and plopped directly onto it.
It wasn’t her bed, but it was close enough.
Cheerilee’s nose wrinkled at the scent of the cheese, and she absentmindedly brushed a lock of interspersed pale mane from her eyes before returning it to its stand.
It was too pungent, she vaguely insisted to herself. It wasn’t because of the price. Or maybe it was because she hadn’t had any in such a long while that she had become unaccustomed to the smell. Whatever the reason, it most certainly wasn’t related to her budget.
Or the fact that she was already burdened with a number of other things.
The quiet marketplace seemed nearly as sluggish as she felt, which Cheerilee had no qualms with. If by Celestia’s grace the world wanted to simply roll with the punches and not aggravate her dully pounding head, Cheerilee could live with it.
She carried her covered basket with one hoof as she meandered along, knowing full well that she wasn’t going to buy anything else. In all truth she was simply biding her time, the dread growing in her stomach that soon she would have to get straight to work the moment she returned home. The nearly insurmountable pile of paperwork awaiting her made her head pound just a little more painfully, and her stomach churned with it.
“You alright there?”
A quiet, faint voice that she was rather accustomed to sounded off to her left amongst a stack of boxes that some merchant or another had seemingly left unattended at their stall.
“Oh, it’s just you. Good morning, Rumble,” Cheerilee forced a smile down at the grey pegasus.
“It’s almost noon.”
“Enjoying your summer break?”
“Hm? Oh. Yeah,” he shrugged nonchalantly, dusting himself off. Wide violet eyes met her green ones, and her student stared up at her with an odd expression on his face.
“Are you here with your older brother?” Cheerilee asked after a moment of awkward silence, in which she felt oddly as if she were being inspected. Thunderlane didn’t seem to be around, although she quietly searched for him out of the corner of her eye.
“No. I was just running errands for ‘Lane, but I’m done now,” he explained. “I’ve got the whole day to myself. You don’t look so good, Miss Cheerilee.”
She pursed her lips and instantaneously started to frown, her eyebrows furrowing a little.
“Probably just a little under the weather is all,” she lied.
“Oh. If you say so,” Rumble shrugged and started to walk away.
Cheerilee wasn’t quite sure what caused her to do it. Perhaps it was her own curiosity nagging at her, insisting to find out what kind of ‘errands’ the colt had been up to digging around in a vacant merchant’s stall. Perhaps it was because the area seemed so painfully abandoned, so deserted for that time of day. Maybe it was the little prickle of lonesome fear welling up in the back of her mind that reminded her that she would soon be all alone again. Whatever it was, she listened to it.
And she cursed it fervently forever after.
“Wait,” she started to reach out for the colt and nearly dropped her basket. Although Rumble was a distance away from her and her voice came out weakly, he still caught it. Strangely, a sliver of her really hoped that he wouldn’t hear at all, that the colt would just keep on walking, but his ears perked up instantly at her words.
“Yes?” Rumble blinked, turning on the spot.
“Do-do you want to… earn a few extra bits?” Cheerilee struggled, clearing her throat.
“Depends on how much,” he inspected the bottom of his hoof suavely, which irritated her for some reason. “I haven’t got much else to do aside from playing gopher for Thunderlane.”
“Two bits.”
“An hour?”
“A day.”
Rumble stared hard at her for a moment, unblinking for an uncomfortably long amount of time.
Eventually though, his shoulders sank a little and he nodded.
“… I’ll take it.”
It wasn’t the reaction that Cheerilee anticipated. It wasn’t even what she particularly had in mind, but the colt quietly followed her all the way home.
It wasn’t what she expected at all, but it was close enough.
“Huh. I didn’t even know that you lived here,” Rumble rolled his shoulders as he entered Cheerilee’s humble abode. However, ‘humble’ was perhaps being a bit too kind.
Stacks of dishes lay untouched in the sink, a lonely cobweb dangled from just off the edge of a worn clock, and a string of empty bottles lay in haphazard places across the kitchen entrance. A thin layer of dust was found on one side of the clock on the wall, and the spindly paper laden table in the center of the room looked nearly ready to buckle beneath the weight.
“It’s home,” Cheerilee said halfheartedly as she dragged herself into the cool shade, plopping her basket of groceries onto the table. Rumble wordlessly watched a hoofful of papers come cascading to the ground.
“So… what, you want me to help you clean up this place or something?” Rumble warily eyed the dishes, already feeling the bottoms of his hooves itching from the thought.
“Actually,” she snagged the papers from the floor, careful to dust them off before letting them fall back to the table. “I really need somepony to help me grade papers.”
“I can help with that,” Rumble shrugged.
Cheerilee warily dropped into one of her rickety wooden chairs, motioning for Rumble to do the same across from her. He took a place at the small table as his schoolteacher let out a quiet sigh through her nostrils, eyes flittering over a number of untouched papers as one hoof drifted to her grocery basket.
“… Where do we even start?”
“You know, I ask myself that same question day in and day out,” Cheerilee snorted. “I suppose just start with the ones in that left corner there, and we can go counterclockwise.”
“Oh,” Rumble nodded. After a moment of staring at the papers he held, he glanced back up at her. “Wait, is there, like… a cheat sheet, or something?”
“Cheat sheet?” Cheerilee’s eyebrow rose a little as she delved deeper into her basket, finally retrieving her prize. The emerald flask contained a healthy amount of swirling amber liquid that shined in the dim kitchen light.
“Yeah, y’know…” he rolled his shoulders. “To compare answers to so we can make sure the tests are right.”
Cheerilee paused, frantically searching over the table for a few seconds. The wine bottle in her hoof seemed so much heavier than it had a minute ago, and her reasonable side shrieked at her insensibly.
It was muted by the pop! of the wine bottle’s cork.
“I don’t even know anymore,” Cheerilee admitted in defeat, her free hoof sliding between her eyes to massage her head. “I don’t even know, Rumble. It’s probably still buried in there somewhere.”
“Great,” his sarcasm was blatant as the look on his face. “Should I get a shovel and start digging?”
She snorted quietly, swilling the amber liquid around the bottle a couple of times before motioning toward the cabinets. Rumble silently rose from the table and stood on his hind legs to reach, grabbing a fine glass easily and returning it to her.
“Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Cheerilee was halfway through pouring herself a glass of her ‘relaxation juice’ by the time that she finally noticed that Rumble was wordlessly sitting across from her with a glass of his own between his hooves.
“… Pour me some,” he budged his glass forward when she stopped staring at last.
Again, the pounding behind her eyes seemed all too loud; the one that demanded that it be allowed a taste of wine to soothe her head.
It would be wrong.
What you want doesn’t matter. You’re nopony.
You’re making yourself vulnerable. Stop it.
He’s vulnerable too.
Silently fell the rain of wine into his goblet, pooling in a pleasantly golden pick-me-up.
“… We’ll find it eventually,” Cheerilee nodded with forced enthusiasm, downing half her glass in one go. “It’ll just take a bit of effort is all. For now just start passing me those in alphabetical order and I’ll go from memory.”
“Just how many students do you have?” Rumble asked as he passed her a random file from the stack. The taste of his drink was almost overwhelmingly bitter, but it possessed an odd aftertaste that was like a cross between honeysuckle and syrup, and it lulled him into another drink before long.
“You realize that I’m literally the only professional teacher in Ponyville, right?” Cheerilee stared him down. “Not to mention that I also have to take care of the adult’s night classes, some of whom have foals that I see the next morning.”
Rumble nodded thoughtfully after a bit, sipping at his drink here and there as she scribbled on paper after paper with a red pen.
The silence fell over them once more.
Cheerilee began to find it unbearable. Which she considered a little odd, for how much she enjoyed the peace and quiet. Silence was best suited for solitude. Then again, she wasn’t likely to get much more alone than she was already, all she had to do was send Rumble home early. And then she could enjoy the silence properly, even though she knew the only thing to follow would be dropping into her bed and hating the emptiness of her own home again.
“… There’s just too damned much to do!” Cheerilee dropped her pen onto the table angrily. She grabbed the stoppered bottle with both hooves, wondering vaguely when she had finished her second glass.
“It is kind of a lot to do,” Rumble agreed. “We could take a break and just finish later.”
Cheerilee almost disagreed with him, aggravated that they had barely just started. But each look at the enormous amount of work to do put a little more pressure on her chest, and the little crack that had been forming eventually gave way as she caved in.
She hated herself for that, too.
“So, then,” Cheerilee shook her head, grinning. “Then, he just takes this whole thing, right?” she mimed holding up an invisible animal. “He takes the whole goose, and just crams that sucker in there! The-the whole t-train was shut d-down for a week, ha ha ha!”
“How does somepony like that even get on board in the first place?” Rumble sniggered, his cheeks flushed. He kicked this way and that at the grass, the back porch light casting warm shadows over them.
Cheerilee scratched an itch on the back of her head beside him, kicking her hooves in an identical fashion. One particularly long blade of grass continuously tickled at her no matter how she tried to kick it away, but she just couldn’t find it in herself to pull it up from the root or bend the stalk to a breaking point. The croaking of frogs and chirruping of katydids was painfully loud at first, but dulled into a satisfying white noise eventually. It made the place seem a little more alive.
“Ahh, ponies are crazy,” she shrugged, her smile fading slowly as she stared over the wooden picket fence surrounding her small back yard. “Don’t let anypony tell you they’re not, ‘cause… ‘cause they are. All… y’know. Crazy. ‘Course, don’t you go listening to me,” Cheerilee said with a halfhearted smile. “I’m probably crazy, too.”
“I don’t think you’re crazy, Miss Cheerilee,” Rumble shook his head slowly. “Not at all.”
The tone from his voice was hard for her to detect at first, but she caught it regardless. There was just something about his answer that rang in her ears. Not a simple denial, not youthful wide eyed innocence painting his judgment. Rumble truly sounded as if he earnestly meant it.
It brought a mysterious twinge to her chest that she promptly attributed to too much wine, and she cursed herself for even opening the third bottle.
“… You’re alright, bucko,” Cheerilee playfully ran a hoof over her head and behind one ear.
“I could have told ya that,” Rumble squirmed with a half frown, trying not to grin. “It’s ‘cause I was raised right.”
“Eh, you’d be – hic! – oh, excuse me. Amazed at how common the opposite tends to be true,” Cheerilee shook her head sadly, carefully holding onto the porch to keep from falling over. “Ponies becomin’ parents too early, don’t know how to take care of their foals. Breaksh my heart, honesht it-it does.”
“How much have you had again?” he asked with a hint of concern.
“Too much, probably,” she admitted, her cheeks burning. The fact that even he was pointing it out made the weight of the shame seem so much heavier a burden.
“You’re a whole other mare when you drink,” Rumble said after a few seconds of awkward silence, looking away from her. “I mean… normally you’re all reserved and stuff.”
“I’m a regular Doctor Hackle and Mister Hide,” Cheerilee giggled at her own joke. Rumble, however, did not seem to find it anywhere near as amusing as she did.
They sat in silence for a while longer, just looking out over the first few stars that had begun to trickle through the shadows.
“… I have to go home pretty soon,” Rumble said at last, hoof bumping against one of the empty bottles that his schoolteacher had left sitting on the ground.
“Need me t’walk you back?” Cheerilee blinked blearily. For some reason, this of all things was what Rumble found hilarious.
“You can hardly walk on your own,” he fought back his smirk. “Make it to the kitchen without falling down again and maybe I’ll consider it.”
“Smartass,” Cheerilee elbowed him impishly. “You’re s’posed to respect your elders.”
“I hate that word,” Rumble stuck out his tongue with a frown.
Cheerilee was confused momentarily, her brows furrowing.
“Respect?”
“Elders,” his scowl was almost etched onto his face. “Anytime somepony says that all I think is some crotchety old coot.”
“Yeah,” Cheerilee snickered. “Like me.”
“Nah,” Rumble shook his head, almost as if he could remove the flush in his face by such an action. “Nah, no, nope. You’re not old, quit sayin’ stuff like that.”
“I am old though,” she continued. “Just an old hag with no foals of my own.”
Cheerilee reached for the empty bottle out of habit, regardless of the fact that she knew full and well that it was empty. What she did not expect, however, was for a vibrantly blushing Rumble to silently push down the bottle with one of his hooves and take her other in his own.
“You’re not old,” he said skeptically, looking her in the eye. “You’re actually kinda fun to hang out with, Miss Cheerilee. You’re alright… bucko.”
Cheerilee then experienced something that only those tearing themselves apart can experience. A single sublime moment of clarity through her haze that she realized just how badly she was doing, and exactly what it would result in. Her foresight was short lived however, as it faded into obscurity just as swiftly as it had come, leaving her just as conflicted as she was afraid she would be. Back to the frustration, back to the confusion and encumbrance of decision.
And Cheerilee made her decision.
May as well hang for a sheep as a lamb.
Rumble was very still as her wet lips met his. His surprise lasted only a moment, and when her tongue knocked he warmly greeted her. She drew the breath out of him with her need, her caress burning him wherever she touched. She drew him closer to sink into a gloriously warm embrace, ecstatically erasing every inch of separation between them, the closeness that she wanted, that she needed.
And then it was over.
Cheerilee’s mane was disheveled as she quickly pulled away, the singing of katydids suddenly as loud as thunder in her ears.
“It might be time for you to go home,” Cheerilee’s voice was oddly hollow in her ears, and Rumble looked equally dazed.
“R-right,” he nodded, his face feeling as if it were aflame. “Right, um, I-I’ll just… s-see myself out.”
“Good night.” Her curt response wasn’t even really directed at him, but he mimicked it nonetheless.
It was no time at all before Cheerilee was all alone again, the loud latch of the door still ringing in her eardrums.
The floor wobbled and swayed as she tumbled to the living room, thankful to rely on the sofa to catch her.
It did not.
Cheerilee scrabbled against the dark wall for nearly half a minute before finally succumbing to the weariness. She let her head bounce off the cool surface over and over again, internally screaming every single profane thing she could think of at herself. Unsurprisingly, it did no good, and neither did beating her head against the wall. She almost wanted to let out a cry at herself, but something in her that still made sense told her that it was a slippery slope and if she started she would only wind up crying in the corner. Even thinking about it made her eyes burn, and she resumed her actions.
Tunk. Tunk. Tunk. Tunk.
She didn’t stop, though. Not for a long, long time.
Author's Note
Obviously I'm not perfect, and never will be, so I'm always eternally grateful to you guys for pointing out any errors I might have missed!
