“Pinkie, you do realise I can see you.”
Rarity often found Pinkie’s silliness to be one of two types. Normally, it was fun silliness, one that she could all too easily get sucked into. It had led to some of the most enjoyable nights she’d ever had, if not some of the weirdest.
Other times, it was a silliness that made her wonder what she even saw in her. A kind that made her question how Pinkie could ever think what she was doing could work or was even a good idea. This was one of those times.
Rarity was standing in the middle of Pinkie's room, staring at where her lamp would normally be. In its place stood a definite Pinkie-like body with a lampshade on its head, facing away from her.
“I highly doubt that,” replied Pinkie with a sly tone.
Rarity sighed. “Please Pinkie, this is ridiculous.”
“Great, ridiculousality always comes through for me in the end.”
“That’s not even a word.”
Pinkie giggled. “Of course ‘that’s’ a word. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“No, it’s not—”
Rarity paused. After taking a long breath to stop herself from getting too frustrated, she returned to Pinkie with a level head.
“Listen, I know you’re nervous about this, so let’s talk it through. I’m here to listen, and I don’t want to see you worrying.”
There was a moment of pause, but Pinkie eventually said “Okay” and popped out from behind the curtains.
Rarity, suddenly very much confused, exchanged looks between the newly emerged Pinkie and the Pinkie shaped lamp in front of her. “What? But you—”
“Oh yeah, my new lamp. I just got it. What do you think?”
Rarity raised a sceptical, if not slightly twitchy eyebrow at the lamp. “It’s erm… fine”
Rarity, for her part, had grown rather accepting of these kind of situations. Not because she wanted to, but because her own sanity relied on it. She had managed to develop a system of not really questioning them if they were unimportant.
Despite this, the lamp was rather creepy, and she would rather not have to wake up to it in the morning. So, she decided to make a mental note to buy her a new lamp when she got the chance.
“Are you doing alright, dear?” Rarity asked, moving in for a comforting nuzzle. “I understand if you want to take this slow.”
“Slow as in spread out over a long month with plenty of relaxing breaks and party days off? ‘Cause that’s the kind of slow I’m up for.” Pinkie gave her a cheeky yet slightly crooked smile, knowing full well that wasn’t an option and her nervousness would continue.
“I’m afraid not.” Rarity chuckled. “We have already booked the table for all of us. So, it’s as slow as you need, as long as that’s also fast enough to be punctual.”
Pinkie did her best attempt at a giggle while quickly wiping the sweat away from her forehead. It wasn’t a sight that filled Rarity with confidence.
“As for the prospects of party days off,” she continued, “I imagine the gang, upon being told about our relationship, will want to throw us a party right away.”
“Or never want to come to my parties again,” Pinkie muttered.
“Pardon?”
“That sounds about right,” she awkwardly squeaked.
Giving herself a second to consider her options, Rarity decided making sure Pinkie wasn’t going to freak out was definitely worth the prospects of being a little late. And so, she moved in a little closer, lifting Pinkie’s chin to make sure they had eye contact.
“Pinkie, I get that you’re nervous about telling them about us,” she calmly told her, “but there really isn’t any reason to be. I know you had problems on the rock farm with this kind of thing, but this is Ponyville, the most liberal place in equestria.
“We love the gays here more than the gays love themselves. Why else would so many of them move here? It’s certainly not for the housing security you get this close to the Everfree forest. No, Ponyville offers two things: an accepting environment, and regular work for builders.”
Pinkie managed to chuckle at Rarity’s joke, but glanced off to the side slightly, obviously still not completely reassured.
“Even if they don’t accept our relationship,” Rarity continued, “which I insist won’t happen, I don’t care. I’m serious about us, and they’re not going to make me change my feelings for you, no matter what they say.”
Pinkie turned back to face her. “You Pinkie promise you will still want to be with me, no matter what happens?”
Rarity let a warm smile appear on her face. “I Pinkie promise.”
“Okay then.” Pinkie forced herself to give Rarity a look of confidence, one that she couldn’t help but playfully giggle at.
“Again though,” Rarity added as they made their way to the door, “There really isn’t too much to worry about. I’m pretty sure half of our friends are gay anyway.”
“Heh, that’s probably more right than wrong.”
The walk to their destination was a short one. It was a little cafe on the edge of town. Its friendly and calm atmosphere made it the perfect place for long conversations, not to mention the tea’s pretty good as well. Rarity thought it the perfect place to tell them.
On the journey Pinkie did her best to seem confident for Rarity, but she had picked up on the evident lack of bouncing or singing. Despite this, they managed to have a nice bit of small talk, which did wonders for Pinkie’s nerves.
Upon making their way into the cafe, they gave a pony at the till a friendly “hello” and headed straight towards the reserved table.
Twilight was already sitting there patiently. It seemed she was the only one of their friends who had put in as much work into being punctual as them.
Rarity was happy to see Twilight by herself, seeing the potential to bring Pinkie’s nerves under control with the initial approval of a pony she was fairly certain would be supportive. Pinkie, on the other hand, seemed even more nervous when she saw it would be just them and Twilight.
They both sat down at the table, next to each other and opposite Twilight. There was the normal exchange of pleasantries with Pinkie giving a rather uneasy and jumpy version of hers. This did raise some concern from Twilight, but she just assumed it was from whatever they had to tell her.
“So,” Twilight continued, doing her best to ignore Pinkie, “do you want to tell me why you two asked us all to come here, or do we have to wait for everyone else?”
“Well, I was planning on waiting, but for the mental well being of somepony—” She glanced at Pinkie, whose overly wide smile was beginning to twitch. “—I’m thinking we should just go ahead.”
Despite Pinkie, Rarity let a little smile appear on her face, excited at the prospect of her relationship no longer being a secret. “I guess I should just say it out right, seeing as there’s no reason to be subtle about it.”
“I can think of one or two,” Pinkie whispered to her, unintentionally loud enough for Twilight to hear.
“We just wanted to tell you that Pinkie and I are in a relationship now.” Her smile was wide, ready for the expected gasp and happy congratulations, but it quickly faltered when it became evident that Twilight's reaction was nothing if not… hesitant.
More specifically, Twilight was frozen, stuck with an expression somewhere between surprise and confusion. Her mouth was slightly ajar, as if she knew she should probably say something, but couldn’t quite think of anything.
“Oh,” she finally said, doing her best to hide her awkward look.
Rarity stared at her, unable to really believe she would react in such a way.
“I’m not gonna say I told you so,” Pinkie again whispered, “but you do remember the conversations we had going into this.”
“What’s the matter, Twilight?” There was an evident pain in Rarity’s voice. “Aren’t you happy about this?”
“No, no, no, of course I’m happy for you.” Twilight turned to the defensive. “It’s just… you know me and Pinkie dated, right?”
Rarity’s hurt expression immediately turned to one of shock, an expression she quickly turned towards Pinkie. “What?”
“Surprise.” Pinkie took out a party popper but was stopped from pulling it by the sudden, firm grasp of Rarity’s hoof.
“What?” She repeated, anger creeping into her voice.
“You never told her?” Twilight asked, also directing her attention to Pinkie.
“You said we shouldn’t tell anyone.”
“No, you said we shouldn’t tell anyone.”
“We were a couple back then, decisions were made collectively,” Pinkie stated, doing her best to seem confident in her conviction.
“I can’t believe this.” Rarity dug her head into her hooves and let out a little groan, but then snapped her head up again. “Wait, is this why you didn’t want to tell everyone?”
“Surprise.” She again went to lift up her party popper, but was stopped by Rarity’s hoof for the second time.
“When were you planning on telling me?”
“Erm.” She rubbed the back of her neck with her hoof. “I thought that now was as good a time as any.”
“You didn’t even tell me, Twilight did!”
“Things normally sound better when they come from Twilight. She has that calm tone that makes information easy to pick up. It’s why she always says the exposition for the epis—”
“Sup girls.”
The three of them turned to see Rainbow Dash standing by the table, giving them all a confused look. “What’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” Rarity spat, turning her whole body away from Pinkie.
Rainbow exchanged glances between an apologetic looking Pinkie and a rather upset Rarity, before looking to Twilight for some kind of answer.
Twilight sighed. “Rarity’s going out with Pinkie, and she’s upset because she didn’t tell her we were a couple.”
“Wait, you two dated Pinkie as well?”
The attention of the table returned to Rainbow. “‘As well,’” both Twilight and Rarity said in unison.
They all jumped as Pinkie popped her party popper. “Surprise,” she awkwardly stammered.
Rarity gave her a piercing look. “Pinkie!”
“I know meeting your fillyfriend's exs can be difficult, but can’t we just have a nice lunch together?”
“Don’t play dumb with me,” Rarity snapped. “Why didn’t you tell me you went out with either Rainbow or Twilight.”
Pinkie gulped. “It’s as you say, some things in a relationship are better left to the imagination.”
“This isn’t one of those things.”
“Oh, easy mistake to make. Maybe you could write me a list for future reference.”
“A list!”
“Hey Twilight,” Rainbow asked, deciding to leave the couple to their bickering, “when did you go out with Pinkie?”
Twilight thought for a second. “It must have been just over a year ago now, we broke up a few months after I became a princess. We had been going out for about a year.”
Rarity, upon hearing this, stopped her interrogation and turned back to Twilight. “A year! Why didn’t you tell anyone?”
“Yeah,” Rainbow added, “We only went out for, like, two months, and even that I found a bit too long not to tell anyone.”
“Well,” Twilight chuckled sheepishly, “we actually did tell a lot of ponies. A handful of towns ponies knew, there were ponies on a holiday we went on, Maud, Spike knew—although he isn’t exactly a pony, and I even introduced her to my parents.”
Rarity went silent, realising that Twilight's relationship with Pinkie dwarfed their five months together. Not to mention only her sister and the cakes knew. She hadn’t even considered telling her parents or some of the town ponies.
Rainbow’s confusion only grew. “But if you were okay with telling all of them, why not us, your friends?”
“I wanted to, I really did, but Pinkie was always against the idea, so I couldn’t just force her to do it.” She turned back to Rarity. “I’m honestly surprised you got Pinkie’s consent to tell us.”
A shaky smile appeared on Rarity’s face. “Heh, ‘consent’ is a strong word.”
Rainbow frowned. “You forced her into agreeing to tell us?”
“‘Force’ is an even stronger word. I prefer the term ‘one-way diplomacy.’”
“But this doesn’t really make much sense,” Twilight interjected, turning her attention back to Pinkie. “Why would you be so against telling our friends just because you went out with Rainbow? We went out long enough that finding out one of our best friends was your ex wouldn’t have been that big of a deal.”
“Yeah, and there’s no reason to have not told them about us,” Rainbow added.
“Hi y’all.”
Everyone turned to see Applejack standing by the table. There was a pause, followed by everyone slowly turning back to an increasingly worried Pinkie.
“... No,” Rarity finally said.
“... maybe.”
“Oh my Celestia,” Rainbow grimaced, “Aren’t you two related or something?”
Applejack's face went pale. She turned directly to Pinkie. “You told ‘em?”
“... maybe”
Rainbow’s expression only worsened. “That’s nasty.”
“Hey, this was years ago,” Applejack spat, getting rather annoyed by Rainbow’s reaction. “We were both teenagers back then. This was long before we even knew there was a chance we were related.”
“Yeah,” Pinkie chipped in, “and even if we had, it’s a very distant relation. Not to mention Apples aren’t as against inter-relation dating as—”
“Pinkie!” Applejack shot her a firm stare that promptly caused her to stop.
Applejack turned back to the rest of her friends. “So…” she began, not wanting to stay on that topic a second longer, “why are y’all talking about mine and Pinkie’s relationship?”
“Erm…” Twilight said hesitantly, “It’s not your relationship, specifically, that we are talking about. More the ponies who have been in a couple with Pinkie, but never found out about each other. A list that we seem to have all found our way onto.”
“Huh?”
After a couple minutes of explaining and Pinkie sitting awkwardly, Applejack was caught up to speed. Now, her friends had their own questions they needed her to answer.
“So, you went out with Pinkie before the Elements of Harmony thing?” Asked Rainbow.
“Yeah, long before,” Applejack explained. “We were in our early teens. A couple years before you even moved here.”
“Did you tell anyone?” Twilight asked.
“Not really. Only a handful of our friends.”
“Was Pinkie against you two telling ponies?”
Applejack thought for a second. “No more than me I don’t think. We were both very young. Not really sure about ourselves, let alone our relationship. We didn’t want to be premature about telling anyone. I think only our close friends knew”
“You see,” Pinkie said with a smile that was only half nervous now, “I don’t have a problem with telling ponies things. You’re all just overreacting.”
Before Rarity could let out a couple more stern comments, Applejack interrupted her. “Actually there was one friend you refused to let me tell.”
Panic re-emerged on Pinkie’s face. “I can’t think of anyone,” she squeaked.
“There was. Oh darn, who was it.” Applejack stood with a look of intense concentration for a couple of seconds. But then it suddenly went to one of shock. “It was Fluttershy.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” They all turned to see Fluttershy standing by the table. “I was running a bit late, but if you’re all talking about me I can come back later.”
Everyone stared at Fluttershy in complete silence, something that lasted long enough to make her feel uncomfortable, before, again, returning their collective gaze back to Pinkie. Her face seemed to have given up at this point, as it just gave everyone a blank expression.
“Pinkie…” Rarity stammered. “Fluttershy as well?”
Pinkie did nothing but nod her head slowly.
Fluttershy gave everyone an awkward wave, trying to get a little attention. “Sorry, erm, what did I do as well?”
Twilight, who was getting a bit fed up with explaining this to everyone, told her. “Pinkie has just been telling us how she's gone out with all of us at one point or another.”
“Oh… um, oh,” she managed to say.
“I don’t get it,” Rainbow said, thinking out loud, “If Pinkie and Applejack dated when they were early teens, when did she date Fluttershy?”
“We, er, went out when we were very little. It was just after we both moved to Ponyville.” Fluttershy blushed slightly. “I’m not completely sure it can be considered ‘dating’, neither of us really knew what we were doing.”
“Awh.” Twilight couldn’t help but squee at the image. “Little Fluttershy and little Pinkie going out with each other, that sounds so cute!”
“Yes, yes, it all sounds lovely!” Rarity snapped. “This whole thing is lovely. What’s not to love about finding out your fillyfriend has gone out with all your friends and you just happen to be the last on the list.”
Pinkie gave Rarity a hurt look. “You don’t really think that’s how I see it, do you?”
Rarity stayed quiet, keeping her stern look. A silence fell onto Pinkie, and spread onto everyone else at the table.
The atmosphere quickly turned very sour, and stayed that way for a while. It wasn’t until Rainbow asked Twilight a little about her relationship with Pinkie did anyone try to say anything.
Twilight originally gave her short answers, trying her best not to stick out in the harsh silence. But, as Rainbow continued to prod for more info, she found herself explaining anecdotes about her time with Pinkie.
These stories evolved around some of the problems or issues she had when being with Pinkie, and were all rather humorous. Her friends found them especially funny, as they all could relate to them, and even had similar stories of their own.
Before they knew it, they were all sharing and laughing at tales of embarrassment, awkwardness, and Pinkie being Pinkie.
There was, of course, the noticeable exception of Rarity and Pinkie in this. Pinkie found herself defending the rather questionable decisions she made in said stories, normally with an even more questionable explanation. While Rarity still sat silently with an annoyed look plastered on her face.
“Did you ever find she went through a phase of coming up with lots of nicknames for you,” Applejack asked with a chuckle.
“Oh did she ever.” Twilight gave a playful groan. “There were so many I couldn’t even keep up with them. Twily, Twi-twi, Sparks, Twinkles, Twinky, Sparkly, not to mention Twinkly-Sparkly. I think I’ve repressed a couple others.”
Applejack laughed. “That sounds ruff. Luckily, there aren’t too many for Applejack. I think Apple-Pie and Sweet-Apples was the best she could muster, but that didn’t stop her from trying.”
Rainbow leant back a second and thought. “I don’t think that really happened to me. She found ‘Dashy’ before we went out and was happy with that,”
“I don’t think I’m getting the recognition for the time and effort I put into those nicknames,” Pinkie interjected. “And besides, you should have taken them as a sign I cared for you guys.”
Rarity scrunched her face up slightly at that. She had been getting increasingly more annoyed as each story was told, something that Pinkie had picked up on.
Applejack waved her hoof. “Ah know, ah know. What about you Fluttershy?”
“Erm… I’m not sure if Pinkie ever stopped thinking them up for me. She will still every so often call me something I’ve never heard before.”
“I think that’s a consequence of my high levels of creativity, Fluts.”
“That’s a rather common one,” Fluttershy admitted
“And a rather bad one,” Rainbow added.
“Eh, they can’t all be winners. I can’t see Flutters and immediately think of a winner like Squeaks or Flutter-Butter. For every Fluttery there’s a Shy-guy.”
“Those are all kind of on the weak side Pinkie,” Twilight stated.
Rainbow chuckled. “I don’t think we are yet to hear one on the strong side.”
“Bad, or ahead of our time?” Pinkie said confidently. “I guess history will be the judge of that.”
Pinkie wasn’t sure if it was the attention or simply that they had moved on from confusion and questioning, but she was rather enjoying the conversation. She couldn’t help but feel that a weight had been lifted off of her now that she no longer had to lie about her past relationships.
Despite this, she tried not to loosen up too much, as she still had a very angry looking Rarity to make amends with.
Twilight sighed happily. “I do still kinda miss those morning teas in bed though. Did you guys ever get those?”
Rarity’s ear twitched.
“Ah yeah, she makes surprisingly good tea.” Applejack grinned at the memory. “She never needed reminding how ah like it, and always got the milk just right.”
Second Twitch. She raised her head slightly.
Rainbow nodded “Those were great, and she’d always put mine in a flask when I had a morning shift, as well.”
Fluttershy smiled. “We were young so she couldn’t make tea, but she always insisted on giving me her juice box at lunch. It became so common she starting bringing in two so she had a drink.”
“Well if you all loved going out with Pinkie so much, why did you all stop!” Rarity snapped, bringing everyone out of their reminiscing.
There was an awkward pause as no one knew exactly how to respond, or if this was a situation where they instead needed to comfort Rarity.
But despite a silent agreement that she probably wasn’t thinking one-hundred percent properly, they couldn’t help but feel they still had to answer her.
Applejack coughed. “We kind of both knew it wasn’t going to work out,” She admitted. “We still had a lot of growing to do, and eventually it got to the point where we just needed different things. There was no point pretending.”
Fluttershy nodded, signaling a similar reason.
Rarity turned to Rainbow and Twilight expectantly.
Rainbow itched the back of her mane. “Oh jeez, I don’t know. We were going out for a short time, but we just kind of realised we wanted to do different things.
“I wanted to go off and train to be a Wonderbolt, something that would take some years, while Pinkie was content where she was, hoping to settle down long before I would have the time to. So, we ended up cutting our loses early on. It wasn’t that big a deal, and we still remained friends.”
Twilight turned back from Rainbow and towards Rarity. She let out a loud sigh. “It was kind of the same thing for me, I guess. Only it didn’t become evident until much later.
“We had planned to tell everyone, move in together, maybe even start something that resembled a family. But that all got put on hold once I got these.” Her wings flapped.
“Once I had to start dealing with princess issues and realised that I still had to put my responsibilities first for some years to come, we realised that we had an expiration date.” She gave a sad little sniff. “There were a lot of very long talks about it, but eventually we had the talk. In the end we promised each other that we’d stay friends.”
Rainbow nudged in closer to Twilight. “Hey... are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine.” She gave Rainbow a half smile. “It was a long time ago now. We’ve moved on from then. It just isn’t the funnest story to tell, that’s all.”
Rarity stood up slowly. “I’m sorry everyone, but I’m going to head home. I need to do a bit of thinking.”
“I’ll walk you home,” Pinkie said, quickly getting up herself.
“Do you really want to?” She snapped.
Pinkie was taken aback, giving her a confused and saddened look. “Yes, of course I do.”
Rarity paused, realising the harshness of her words. “Sorry, I’m… thankyou.”
They left together without saying another word, and only gave a polite wave to the pony behind the till. Everyone else just watched them leave, unsure if they should say anything or just leave them be.
As they trotted back, Rarity led the way as Pinkie stayed a couple of steps behind her, gazing at Rarity with a somber expression.
“So… does this mean you're mad?” Pinkie finally asked.
“No. I mean maybe. I don’t know, okay?”
“... Okay.”
“Okay, yes, a little. In fact, no, it’s just incredibly frustrating.” Rarity stopped and turned to face Pinkie. “It’s a lot to take in at once. I think I’m entitled to a little bit of frustration.
“This whole event has been ridiculous. Listening to all the cute nicknames you’ve given everyone, all the fun stories, you even made them tea in bed. I wonder if there's anything we have done that you haven’t done with them.”
Pinkie shrunk her posture. She felt terrible for causing Rarity to be in such a state.
“I still just can’t quite believe you have been out with all of our best friends,” She continued. “Some of them for even longer than me! I’m sorry, but can’t help but feel just a little angry about that. Especially because I thought we were always special.” Her anger wavered slightly. “You know, the two who managed to become more than just friends.”
Pinkie’s ears drooped down. “I really messed up with all this, didn’t I?”
Rarity hesitated. “Well… I mean it’s not really your fault you went out with them. I Just don't understand why you didn’t tell me.”
“I don’t really understand either,” she admitted. “The longer I waited, the harder it became to tell anyone. By the time we got together, I had long thought I was in too deep.
“The truth is that none of those relationships ever worked out in the end, no matter how hard I tried to keep them going. I desperately didn’t want to risk that happening again with us, so I… just kind of put it off. But that just made it all worse in the end.”
She stared down at the floor. “Before, when you said you wouldn’t change your feelings for me no matter what happened, did I mess that up?”
Rarity sighed, but allowed a small smile to form on her face despite herself. “Of course not. Granted, I am a little angry right now, but I still love you, and this certainly hasn’t changed that.”
Pinkie suddenly stiffened up. Her face was visibly shocked as it grew a darker shade of Pink.
“What?” Rarity asked.
“It’s, erm, you’ve never actually said ‘I love you’ to me.”
There was a beat of silence. Some of the cranks in Rarity's brain ticked, the realisation hitting her. She also stiffened, turning an even darker shade of red. “Oh, I guess I haven’t."
“So… did you mean it?”
“... Yes.”
“Okay… I love you too.”
“Good.”
“... should I kiss you now or—”
“That’s probably for the best.”
