Sapphire

The mineral bath was Fluttershy’s favorite part of the spa. In part because Aloe and Lotus had to do less work setting up the mineral bath than most of the spa’s other services. Fluttershy loved the spa, but she hated to bother Aloe and Lotus. She felt selfish indulging herself at the expense of another’s work. She knew that was the point, and that she was paying Aloe and Lotus to do just that, and that they clearly enjoyed their work, but it still made her uncomfortable. Sometimes Fluttershy wished she could be like Rarity and nonchalantly take advantage of all the spa’s services guilt free.

But she wasn’t Rarity, and so she liked the mineral bath the best, because with the mineral bath all Lotus had to do was set the bath, mix in the salts, place some lit candles or incense nearby, and then close the door and leave Fluttershy and Rarity to soak, and Fluttershy didn’t feel like a bother at all. She and Rarity didn’t use the mineral bath often. Rarity said it wasn’t authentic, because it was just an indoor bath with imported bath salts.

Fluttershy rested on her haunches and leaned back against the smooth bath lining, shoulder deep in water that fizzed when she moved. Steam that smelled vaguely sweet rose up from the water. Humid air left rivulets of water on her face and shoulders, and she felt pleasantly wet and sticky. The bottom of her mane was beneath the water. It dripped and clung to her neck. Fluttershy let herself sink down and liquidy heat enveloped her body. Her every muscle relaxed, Fluttershy smiled and listened to Rarity talk about her latest business meeting with Sapphire Shores.

Fluttershy’s second favorite part of the spa was Rarity. The most time she ever spent with Rarity was spent in the spa. And since Rarity used their spa visits as opportunities to share all of both the Ponyville and Canterlot elites’ latest gossip and news, it was the most Fluttershy ever got to hear of Rarity’s voice, too. Fluttershy had never gone to the spa alone. It would have felt wrong. Without Rarity’s voice, the rooms would have felt unfurnished, hollow, cold. It was Rarity’s voice that filled the spa’s rooms with their tranquil atmosphere.

Rarity sat beside Fluttershy in the bath, their shoulders not quite touching. She gestured her hooves dramatically about while she spoke, occasionally splashing Fluttershy with water. Fluttershy didn’t say anything about it, because saying something about it would mean Rarity would stop talking, if only for moment, and Fluttershy wanted nothing more than to settle down and not worry or feel anxious about anything and drink in Rarity’s voice.

Now, Rarity was recalling something Sapphire Shores had said and she mimicked the showmare’s excited, theatrical voice. Fluttershy giggled and glanced over at Rarity, and saw her friend in profile. Rarity’s mouth was set in a controlled but cheerful smile, and as she went on her dark eyelashes fluttered over her eyes and the curls of her mane bobbed around her head.

Rarity had let her mane down today, something she almost never did in the bath. She usually kept it wrapped in a towel. To protect it from the salts, she said. But not today, and dripping ringlets of her mane, dark with water, lightly caressed her neck and face. Misty steam rose up from the water and hung in the air around Rarity’s head, lending her features a strange dreamlike, ethereal quality. Rarity was really very pretty, Fluttershy thought. Even without makeup or any of her usual theatrical posturing, Rarity was extraordinarily beautiful.

Fluttershy suddenly imagined herself leaning over and kissing Rarity on the neck, and in her mind, Rarity’s supple, soft flesh yielded to the touch of her lips.

A horrible, embarrassing warmth spread through Fluttershy’s face and neck, and she felt all the more uncomfortable for the added heat of the bath. She brought a hoof to her face to cover her blush. She shouldn’t think that way about her friends. It was so rude. If Rarity had any idea of the impulse that had just passed through Fluttershy’s head, she would likely leap right out of the bath, proclaim an unacted but felt defilement of her beauty, and scold Fluttershy for behaving so crudely.

Fluttershy turned away from Rarity and took a keen interest in a grouping of scented candles on the opposite side of the bath instead.

And then a splash of bathwater hit her in the side of her face.

“Oh my word! I’m so sorry, dear!” Rarity cried.

Fluttershy wiped at her face. “Um, it’s fine.”

“I can’t believe I just did that to you.” Rarity stood up out of the water and turned and reached for one of the towels lying by the bath. She stretched forward and her back legs stood taut and firm, water dripping down her glistening backside, her wet tail curled around one of her thighs, her cutie mark mere inches away from Fluttershy’s face.

Fluttershy couldn’t help staring.

This time, Fluttershy imagined herself wrapping her hooves around Rarity’s hindlegs and pulling Rarity’s backside to her and sinking her teeth into Rarity’s cutie mark, and in her mind, Rarity shrieked with pleasure, and Fluttershy’s heartbeat thundered in her ears and she slid her hoof up the inside of Rarity’s thigh—

Fluttershy shook her head to cast aside the unseemly images, and her face burned.

Rarity leaned towards Fluttershy, towel hovering by her head. “I swear, sometimes I have no idea what I’m doing with my hooves.” She dabbed Fluttershys face with the folded towel.

The towel felt soft on her nose and cheeks, but Fluttershy tensed at its touch. She squeaked out some incoherent reply, grateful that the towel blocked her face from Rarity’s view.

“There we are.” Rarity lowered the towel and looked Fluttershy in the face. “Oh, dear, are you all right? You look positively petrified. Did I catch you that much off guard?”

“Um, I—you and—um, yes.”

Rarity watched her for a moment, then seemed to accept her response. She turned and placed the towel back on the floor and then settled back into the water. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. I am sorry.”

“I know,” Fluttershy said, and inwardly she screamed. She almost never thought those kinds of things about her friends. The sudden overwhelming need had been so strong, and that feeling of Rarity’s flesh between her teeth, beneath her hoof, had been so vivid…

Since the conversation at the cafe, these thoughts had crossed her mind all too often. It was suffusing into all her thoughts, even when all she wanted was to relax and not think about it at all. Thoughts of it persisted like an unwanted solicitor knocking on her cottage door all afternoon and trying to sell her new house cleaning products. Except now the solicitor was her own mind, and it was trying to sell her impulses to perform unspeakable but shamefully pleasurable acts on her best friend.

“There is something else I’ve been wanting to speak with you about,” Rarity said.

Fluttershy swallowed and forced herself to talk normally. She couldn’t give Rarity any indication of what she had just imagined herself doing. “Um, okay.”

“Well, I know this makes you uncomfortable, dear, but I do believe it is important,” Rarity said, not sounding like she thought whatever she was about to say next would make Fluttershy uncomfortable, but sounding as nonplussed as if she were about to speak about necklines and hemlines. “I’ve been thinking on what we spoke about yesterday, and I was wondering if you’d mind me asking you a few questions.”

Fluttershy’s throat tightened. “What we spoke about?”

“Your, eh, lack of experience in matters of romantic intimacy.”

“Oh.” Fluttershy sighed.

Rarity smiled, but in an oddly serious, professional sort of way, like Fluttershy was a customer at the Boutique and Rarity thought all her problems could be solved if Rarity found her the right skirt or scarf. “You’ve never had a coltfriend?”

“No.”

“Nothing so much as a passing fling? A single kiss?”

“I, um, kissed a pony once.”

“Only once?”

Fluttershy flinched. “Yes.”

“Did you enjoy it?”

“Um…” Fluttershy ducked her head underneath her mane.

“Think of this as a bit of girl talk.” Rarity’s smile turned more friendly, even a little silly. “I can go first, if you’d prefer. The first pony I ever kissed was a pimply, scrawny little colt named Dire Straits. It was in elementary school. He was nervous and had a stutter and was a little slow, and all the fillies in our class poked fun at him. One Hearts and Hooves Day, he asked a couple of them on dates, but they all laughed at him. So I invited him out to dinner myself, a little for him and a little to get back at those mares. He kissed me goodbye at the end of the night, more at my insistence than any real desire to do so himself. The poor thing was so nervous. His lips were chapped and the whole affair was very abrupt and unextraordinary.”

Fluttershy peaked out from behind her mane. “Did you like him?”

“He was sweet, in his own way.” Rarity laughed at something Fluttershy couldn’t see or know, some memory or feeling brought up by her reminiscing. “But he was an absolute bore to spend any time with. All he talked about were bugs and mud pies. We never really conversed much after that.” Rarity poked Fluttershy playfully in the side. “Your turn.”

Fluttershy looked away. Her wings fidgeted. “Oh, um, no thank you.”

“Oh, come now. I shared mine.”

“I…” Fluttershy bit her lip. “I’m sorry, I’d really rather not.”

Rarity frowned, looking a little hurt. “Well, all right, then.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, it’s fine.” Rarity smiled again. “Perhaps that was a little too invasive. I apologize. I only ask because, well, in all the time I’ve known you, I’ve never heard you even speak about a stallion.”

Fluttershy poked at the bath water and watched it fizz.

“I suppose what I’m trying to ask is, do you ever have any romantic thoughts about other ponies? Have you ever had any intimate interest in anypony? It genuinely seems at times as if you don’t.”

Fluttershy remembered what she had just imagined herself doing with Rarity. “I’m an adult, too,” she said, too sharply.

“Of course you are!” Rarity said quickly. “I never meant to imply otherwise. I’m sorry. It’s difficult to speak about this subject without appearing rude. Actually, you being an adult is precisely my point. You are an adult, yet you’ve never had a special somepony, never had so much as a passing fling.” Rarity frowned at her. “I think Rainbow Dash had a point yesterday, even if she presented it poorly. I don’t say this to mock or harass you, dear. You are my friend, and I only want to help.”

Fluttershy slumped down, sliding further down into the water. It rose up around her chin.

“You are an adult, Fluttershy. You’re older than I, even. Yet, you have either missed or simply ignored one of the most wonderful aspects of being adult. I only want to try and understand why.”

Fluttershy let out a long sigh, and the steam and water rippled away from her.

“Is there some particular reason why speaking about this makes you so uncomfortable, even in privacy with a friend? Is there some reason why you’ve never approached another pony, why you’ve never acted on any of your feelings?”

“I… don’t know. Like what?”

“Well,” Rarity said, gesturing with her hoof and splashing water again, “for example, perhaps your heart has been gripped with the desire for a forbidden love? A seemingly impossible affair that you’ve never dared speak of for fear of heartache? Or perhaps there was some great calamitous heartbreak in your past that you have never recovered from and caused you to swear off love forever?”

Fluttershy frowned. “I, um, don’t think so…”

Rarity frowned, too. “Well, is there some other reason, then? You’re a beautiful mare. I’m absolutely certain you could find love if you’d only make the effort to look for it. But you haven’t. You never have, and I don’t understand why.”

Fluttershy said nothing for a long moment, and then unfolded and refolded her wings against her side. The warm bathwater made doing so clumsy and slow. “I don’t know.”

Rarity sighed. “Let’s try something else. How about we try—” Rarity turned her body towards Fluttershy, grinning and looking as excited as a high school filly with a secret she knew Fluttershy wanted to know but didn’t plan on telling, and her wet mane hung down and rested on the bath’s edge. “—gossip!”

“Um.”

“Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’ll be fun! I’ll share with you some deeply-hidden appetite that I’ve never shared with anypony before, and then you do the same, like a game.”

“Okay…”

“I’ll start,” Rarity said, and leaned forward and smirked. “Rainbow Dash.”

Fluttershy blinked. “What?”

“I would greatly enjoy a bedroom flourish with our neighborhood loud, brazen future-Wonderbolt.”

“Really?”

Rarity grinned. “Absolutely.”

Fluttershy felt strangely disappointed and angry at Rarity’s declaration, vaguely betrayed that, of all their friends, Rarity would want Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy couldn’t even imagine Rarity and Rainbow Dash together. Rarity kissing Rainbow Dash on the cheek, Rainbow Dash bringing Rarity flowers, the two of them in a bedroom together at night—all impossible! “Do you… want to date her?”

“Oh, heavens no!” Rarity laughed, waving her hoof dismissively. “I’m certain we would make each other miserable if we were in a serious relationship together.”

Fluttershy felt relieved, but wasn’t quite sure what she was being relieved of. “But why would you want to do that with her, then?”

“Even you must admit,” Rarity said, smiling coyly, “all that flying about and exercise and practice have blessed her with the most alluring figure, and while her ego can be tedious at times, confidence is attractive in any mare. And the way she runs her mouth all day and night?” Rarity giggled in a most unladylike manner. “Let’s just say I believe I could find much more productive uses for that mouth of hers.”

“Oh my.”

“Indeed,” Rarity said, and then poked Fluttershy in the chest. “Your turn.”

An image of herself biting Rarity’s cutie mark flashed in Fluttershy’s mind again. “I don’t know.”

“Oh, come now. I told you mine.”

“Well, I guess…” Fluttershy blushed and leaned forward, very close to Rarity, so close they nearly touched. Rarity smiled encouragingly, and Fluttershy said in the softest of whispers, “I used to sort of have a crush on Rainbow Dash, too.”

Rarity laughed and slapped the water’s surface, splashing it over the bath’s side. “I knew it!”

“You did?”

“Of course! The foalhood friend, the pegasus in the house next door, the confident, cocksure bragster, the star athlete. It all makes sense! It’s Rainbow Dash. It’s always been Rainbow Dash, hasn’t it?”

“What’s Rainbow Dash?”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “Why play coy now, dear, now that all has been revealed? Rainbow Dash is the pony your heart is set on, the pony you believe you could never be with, the love that seems impossible, a love so strong and and so pure that you have never sought any other pony. I’m right, aren’t I?”

“What? No!” Fluttershy rapidly shook her head. “That was a long time ago, when we were in flight school together.”

“You’re a terrible liar, darling.”

“It’s not Rainbow Dash!”

“Then who could it possibly be?”

“It’s not Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy said again. “Because it’s—” Her eyes widened and she covered her mouth with a hoof. Her stomach somersaulted and her breath caught.

Rarity raised an eyebrow at her.

Fluttershy finally found her voice. “Um, nevermind.”

“You can’t tease me like that and then simply stop! It’s simply cruel. Who is it? I promise not to tell.”

Fluttershy shook her head.

“I think you may have a dramatic misunderstanding of how gossip is supposed to work,” Rarity said with a little huff. “Please tell me?”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Rarity opened her mouth, but then closed it again. “Okay, then,” she said softly. “Okay, if you don’t wish to speak about it, it is not my place to pry. However—” Rarity touched Fluttershy’s shoulder and smiled “—if you ever want to speak about this, I will always be ready to listen. I meant what I said before. You should really consider learning how to act on these feelings.” Rarity prodded her with a hoof. “You will, won’t you?”

Fluttershy nodded absently, mind still a haze at the realization she had just had.

“Besides,” Rarity continued, standing up, water dripping from her coat and tail, “I think it could really help you. There is a kind of power in sexuality. Everypony knows you have difficulty asserting yourself at times, and though it may sound strange, I believe being intimate can bestow upon one a great deal of confidence. It takes a certain amount of courage to wholly open oneself up to another, to allow yourself to be vulnerable.”

Fluttershy looked down at the water.

“But enough of that.” Rarity stepped out of the water, grinning. “I believe it is time for a massage.”