Taming Rainbow Dash

“Are you kidding?” said Quibble, waving one hoof in front of him as he talked. “The Daring Do novels are loaded with kinky subtext!”

They were now on their second tray of appetizers. The hotel restaurant had decided to honor DaringCon by creating special menu items, each of which had a volcano in the middle that you dipped the food in or cooked the food over: volcano and daisies, volcano and vegetables, volcano n’ chips. The drinks were all fruit drinks with a lot of fruit in them, and they came in statue-shaped glasses with fake gems on the outside. The food might have been sort of meh, and it was really expensive, but at least it had a theme.

“The crops? The whips? The fire play where her coat almost gets singed? Do you know how many times Daring Do gets tied up in Griffin’s Goblet alone?”

Dash knitted her brows as she ran through the book in her head. “Uh, fourteen?”

“Fourtee——yeah, that’s right. Fourteen times,” he said, and shook his head. “You really do know these books, don’t you? The lianas when she’s captured by Caballeron? The ropes in the cave of Ahuizotl? The chains when she’s hanging over the lava? It’s like one outrageous predicament bondage scenario after another! Of course,” he added thoughtfully, “that’s before I knew all of that was real. You think A.K. Yearling embellishes those stories and adds that stuff in just to be interesting? Or does she get into those situations deliberately just because she’s into it? I’m guessing the latter.” He stopped and slurped up more of the themed tropical drink in front of him.

“You just think that because you’re a great big pervert,” Rainbow Dash retorted.

“Why, thank you,” Quibble replied, holding a hoof to his chest. “Likewise, I’m pretty sure.”

“But they’re foaldren’s books!” she protested. “I read ‘em to my almost-kid almost sister!”

“They’re not just for fillies and colts,” he replied, riffling through a copy of the convention program. “Hey, we’re here, and we’re adults. Look.” He turned the program around so she could see the convention rules. “You can’t even get in without having your cutie mark, and even then, young ponies have to have a parent or a guardian and aren’t permitted in to certain events. The books are incredibly smart and well-written, with complex literary references dating back at least to pre-Celestian times. They’re a pop culture phenomenon possibly on a level with Colt of the Rings!

“Yeah, I don’t know,” said Dash, rubbing the back of her head with one hoof. “I started reading them because a friend gave me a copy of the first one.” She looked down and poked the program. “And…and because they’re easy to read. Reading’s kinda ha- I mean, I didn’t used to like reading. Reading was for eggheads.”

When she looked back up, he was staring at something over her head. “A.K. Yearling’s received awards for encouraging literacy, y’know.”

“I just think they’re fun and cool,” she mumbled.

“They are fun and cool!” he agreed, slamming his hoof down on the table and knocking over his drink. She grabbed the program with her teeth and pulled it away just in time. “Oops. And they’re also full of stuff for adult ponies, especially kinky ponies. Daring Do’s always ‘pressing her limits,’” he continued, making air quotes with his hooves, “ ‘pushing herself through the pain’…I mean, ‘another day, another dungeon?’ Heh. Come on,” he said, rolling his eyes.

Their waiter came back, mopped up the small sea of fruit drink, deposited two more drinks and a Volcano N’Veggies, and trotted off to look after other patrons. Dash dropped some carrots and a stalk of celery into the volcano and watched it go “WHOOM.” It looked as though you weren’t supposed to do that.

“So, uh…how do you find out more about this stuff?” she said, scraping the carbonized vegetables out of the crater. “I mean, I’m not saying I wanna, but just in case I wanted to know.”

Quibble chomped on a long stick of volcano-roasted vegetables. “Well,” he said thoughtfully, “you could talk to other ponies about it. Kind of like we’re doing now. Only you want to make sure they’re into it, or at least interested. You can make a lot of embarrassing mistakes that way, and I mean a lot.”

“How do you know if they’re interested?” she asked, her mouth bulging with slightly burned celery.

“You could do it the smart way. There are bookstores and newsletters where you can meet ponies. I mean for dinner,” he added hastily, “or lunch. You just sit and talk and find out that kinky ponies aren’t that weird. Well,” he added, “mostly not that weird. We aren’t all hard-core Daring Do nerds, for a start.”

That didn’t sound too bad. There were other ponies who liked tying and chaining other ponies up, like Quibble, and obviously, there must be other ponies who liked being tied and chained up, like…She put the rest of that thought aside for the moment. Something else was worrying her.

“What if you ran into other ponies you already know? What if my friends were there?” What if Pinkie Pie was bringing the cupcakes and I forgot to tell her not to tell anypony about it?, she thought.

“They won’t tell about you, so you won’t tell about them,” he said reassuringly. “It’d be mutual social suicide. You’re both carrying a dice bag.” At her blank expression, he added, “You know. Like Ogres and Oubliettes.”

“Sorry,” she said, shrugging. “My dorky friend’s even dorkier brother plays that, but I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

That still sounded risky. What would happen if Soarin or Spitfire were to show up and see her with a lot of other ponies who were into whips and crops? That wouldn’t be good. “But what if one of the other Wonderbolts were there? I’m a Wonderbolt, y’know,” she bragged.

“Really,” he said without enthusiasm, his eyes glazing over. “I wouldn’t know. I don’t follow sports.” Her jaw dropped and he went on, “Anyway, it’s the same thing. Everypony agrees that what ponies say there, stays there.”

“So that’s the smart way?” she said, still recovering. Somepony who didn’t know who the Wonderbolts were? Was he kidding? “What’s the stupid way?” Quibble mumbled something around another stick of vegetables. “What?”

“You could,” he muttered, not meeting her eye, “hint. Like I just did. And that’s risky, but sometimes it’s worth the risk, because… I really, really think you’re awesome.”

She couldn’t tell whether it was the glow from the table volcano or the darkness of the restaurant, but his face was beginning to look red. Was he gonna get all mushy? She hated mushy.

“Hey, you’re awesome, too!” she replied, hoofing him hard in the shoulder.

“Ow!” He scowled at her. “If I hadn’t made it clear, I am not into receiving pain, so stop it.”

“Ok,” she agreed. “So, how else would a pony find out more?”

“Um, you could… read about it?” he suggested. “Like Pony BDSM by Neigh Wisepony, or The Ultimate Guide to Pony Kink by Pranstan Palomino. I mean, that last one has some really wild stuff in it and you might want to skip the bit about Griffon puncture art, but at least it gives you an overview of…”

“Ok, ok,” she said, holding up a hoof, “I don’t have the patience for that. No offense, Quibble, but if I wanted to read, I’d be reading Daring Do. I don’t want to learn about things. I’m—my friend Twilight called it—I’m multi….” She furrowed her brow as she thought.

“Multifaceted?” he interjected. “Multilayered? You learn by multiple choice?”

“Multitasking! Twilight says I learn by multitasking. Yeah. So I sorta have to be doing something else while I’m learning about things.”

“Something else? Like what?” Quibble took a long sip at his drink, hardly paying attention to what he was doing.

“Well, flying, mostly, but definitely something physical. And I don’t like waiting around for stuff. I just want to jump in and do it right away.”

A lot of tropical drink went down the wrong way and Quibble had to cough it up. “How physical?” he asked cautiously, eyes still streaming. “How right away?”

“I once flew straight into a huge pile of rocks on purpose because I said I would.”

“Ooo-kay.”

It turned out that if learning about Pony BDSM meant doing a lot of reading, actually doing it meant writing a lot of stuff down. Quibble had gotten hold of a pencil somewhere and was jotting down lists on a paper napkin. It reminded her of the piles and piles of paper the Wonderbolts had made her sign before she even arrived at Wonderbolts Academy.

“What is this, some kind of contract?”

He looked up, momentarily confused. “What? No! Give me a second. I’m still thinking.”

He’d been doing it forever, or what seemed like forever, and she’d started to rock back and forth on her chair and hum the Daring Do theme song. “Do we hafta?” she whined.

“Yes, we have to!” he said, slamming his hoof down on the table. “This is important! This is like a flyer’s checklist. You’ve got ponies doing potentially very dangerous stuff together—you’ve got to go over the guidelines first or somepony could get seriously hurt!”

“You sound like you know a lot more about formation flying than you said you did,” she said, narrowing her eyes.

“Who? Me? No! I never pay attention to anything to do with sports. Anyway, this won’t take all that long.” He glanced down at his list. “We know you like bondage.”

The waiter coughed. “Uh—your dessert?”

“Oh, thanks,” said Quibble, without looking up. “Put it down there. You’re into ropes and chains,” he continued, as though they hadn’t been interrupted, “because we already tried them out this afternoon.” The waiter set down the volcano with chocolate and marshmallows and fled back into the kitchen. “That’s where you are in luck, Rainbow Dash,” he added, smirking, “because I am a rope top, and I am, excuse me, an expert, which is why I really, really hate those stupid, precarious rope bridges. How do you feel about pain?”

“Pain?” she said, throwing out her chest. “I’m great with pain. I can put up with nearly anything!”

“ ‘Put up with’?” he said, his eyebrows disappearing into his bangs. “This isn’t about ‘putting up with’ things. This isn’t like, I don’t know, fighting changelings. You don’t do it because you have to; you do it because you like it. OK,” he said, “no pain,” and he picked up the pencil in his mouth.

“Wait! No!” She grabbed his hoof to get his attention just before he struck it out. “That’s not what I meant! It’s like…I mean…when I fly hard and fast, it’s good, y’know? Even when I slam into a wall or into the ground, it’s a good kind of pain, ‘cause it shows how much I can take and how tough I am. It’s awesome. You know what I mean?” She wasn’t sure he did, because she was doing such a bad job of explaining it, but he grinned.

“Ok, now we’re getting somewhere,” he said around the pencil, and wrote something down. “I like your thinking.”

“What about a safe word?” she said, vaguely remembering something. “Do I need a safe word?”

She knew all about safe words. Well, Rarity and Twilight knew all about them, and she knew about them because both Rarity and Twilight had been reading a book called Fifty Shades of Neigh. They both hated it. Twilight said it was poorly written, and Rarity said it was unrealistic. They talked about it a lot. Like, practically every time they met. It was beginning to get old.

“Huh, good point,” said Quibble, who had put down the pencil and was now holding a marshmallow over the baby volcano. “I mean, you keep fighting back and saying things like, ‘you wait till I get out of this: just wait!’ and ‘cut it out!’ and ‘stop!’ It would probably be a good idea to know whether you meant ‘stop,’ or whether you were just saying ‘stop,’ but really you wanted me to keep doing whatever it was.”

Her brain was racing with the possibilities of what it was that Quibble might be doing that she didn’t want him to stop doing, but instead she said, ‘uh…how about ‘marshmallow?’”

He snorted. “Pfft. You’ll never remember something like ‘marshmallow.’ Too long. Too complicated. Too many syllables. Your brain will be too mushy.”

“Mushy how?”

“Mushy,” he murmured, his voice dropping, “the way you’ll be when I’ve got my hooves on you and really worked you over.”

This was ridiculous. All right, Quibble was a friend and a huge fan of Daring Do, but he didn’t like sports, was a total egghead, wasn’t her physical type at all, and kept trying to boss her around.

“You’re drooling,” he pointed out.

“I was not,” she denied hotly, while wiping away the goo. “I was, uh, I still had marshmallow in my mouth. So if ‘marshmallow’ isn’t any good, what is?”

“Pick something that comes naturally to you,” he suggested. “Something you use all the time that isn’t ‘stop’ or ‘don’t.’ ”

“How about ‘whoa’?”

“Sure,’ he agreed. ‘Whoa’ is good.”

Now she was getting the hang of this! “Maybe ‘easy’ for if I want you to slow down?”

“That’s fine.”

“And what if I want you to do more?”

His eyes went wide. “Ponies don’t…new players don’t usually…”

“Well, I’m not most ponies!” she said, putting both hooves on the table. “I need something for ‘more.’ If I want more, I’ll just say ‘come on.’ How about that?”

“Um…ok?” He picked up the pencil again. “Is there anything you really don’t like?”

“I don’t like ponies touching my hooves.”

“Okay, good to know,” Quibble muttered around the pencil. He glanced up. “Uh—when you say ‘I don’t like ponies touching my hooves,’ do you mean you really don’t like ponies touching your hooves, or do you mean you don’t like it so much that it’s something a play pony should definitely do?”

“Tell you what,” Rainbow Dash said conversationally, her cheek pillowed on one hoof, “why don’t you try touching my hooves sometime and find out?”

“Uh-huh. No touching the hooves. Got it.” He made a note and put the pencil down.

“Oh, just one more thing. I usually don’t sleep with stallions.”

“I see,” said Quibble, after a pause. “Well, I prefer sleeping with mares I tie up and consensually abuse, to be honest, although I suppose I could just tie you up and give you some kind of idea of bondage and maybe some impact play if it turns out you’re into it and it’s not strictly speaking necessary to include genital stimulation, it’s just a bonus from my point of view …”

Dash jammed her hoof over his mouth. “Uh, Quibble?”

“Mwf?”

“I said I usually don’t. I didn’t say I never did.” She dropped her hoof.

There was another pause. “So, uh, so uh… that’s a soft limit?”

“I’m saying,” Dash said, and hesitated, “I’m saying I’d be up for it.”

Quibble met her eye. “Oh! Oh.” He rested his whole foreleg on the table and leaned in until his muzzle was inches away from hers. She could feel his breath on her own muzzle as a whiff of chocolate, marshmallow, and artificial smoke ghosted past her nose and down her cheek. She swallowed.

“Well,” he purred, arching an eyebrow as his blue eyes met hers. “Well, alrighty then.”

There was yet another, even longer pause. “There’s still one marshmallow left,” he said, indicating it with a tilt of his head. “Go ahead and eat it up.”

“I don’t have to—” she protested.

“Eat it up,” he repeated, his eyes still meeting hers

Slowly, half unwillingly, Dash lowered her head and ate the marshmallow directly off the serving plate, as though it were a trough.

“That’s a good filly,” he murmured.