Chapter 10

I Saw the Sign (and It Opened Up my Eyes)

Rolling over with a little squeak of a yawn, Glacier faced his colt-friend, his eyes half-lidded with sleep still. The two of them laid in bed together, Style opening his eyes as well, the sleep just as prevalent in his own. He rose a hoof and removed the sleep from them slowly and Glacier did the same with a wing, bunching up the covers and tossing them down the bed some. Style giggled and pecked his colt-friend on the nose with the slightest of kisses before pulling back and looking into his deep, blue eyes as a smile began to grow on his muzzle. The way the corners of his lips wrinkled every time he smiled always made Glacier smile back. It was just impossible to keep from smiling when you have the cutest stallion in all of Equestria smiling at you, and Style felt the same about his colt-friend. Well, supposed colt-friend. After the events of yesterday, Style was still in the “friends” stage of his relation with Glacier. Though he wouldn’t disagree that his feelings were far more than just friends. Style would do anything for Glacier.

Laying there still, the two stallions continued to smile. Glacier wrapped a wing around Style’s midsection and pulled him closer until their muzzles booped together causing Glacier to giggled aloud. Style just kissed him back on his boopable snoot and placed his head on top of Glacier’s as the smaller stallion snuggled his head into his lager companion’s chest floof. Sure Style didn’t have as much chest floof as Glacier did, but there was still a little bit there—and Glacier loved it. He relished every moment he could spend in it, just snuggling like the big ball of feathery floof that was the chubby pegasus pony. And Style loved it too. It was different being with a stallion that would rather have you hold onto them and snuggle them close than them snuggle you in that way. Though Style did still love to get held like that and would ask Glacier to hold him like that a lot as well. Style was just new to being more “manly” in the relationship. Not to say being snuggled like a ball of fluff isn’t manly. It’s very manly, dang-it!

Finally rolling over to look at the digital alarm clock that was on his side of the bed, Glacier realised it to be far too late to be in bed: two in the afternoon. But it didn’t phase the pegasus none. What was considered to be far too late to be in bed by the many was absolutely normal for him; and he glossed over the fact that most would find it odd with a miasma of confidence. He liked staying up late and sleeping in late. It was his thing, and if any-pony had anything to say about it...he was lazy. Plain and simple. Nothing wrong with being lazy when you make an honest days pay by working a job. Right?

Sighing to himself, Glacier looked to Style with a wavy smile. “I guess that we should probably get up now, eh?”

With a little kiss, Style said, “That sounds great, my little goose.”

Glacier rolled his eyes and snickered giddily, sticking his tongue out thereafter. The two rolled opposite of one another and practically launched themselves out of the bed in unison, hooves touching the plush carpet of the bedroom with a slight thud. Looking back over his withers Glacier smirked at Style and stretched his wings outward in a circular motion to work them out from his night’s rest.

Walking over to the other side of the bed, Style pecked Glacier on the cheek before stepping over towards the door. In doing so, there was a knock which emanated with the thundering of uneven hooves. Taken back a bit, Style stepped back a beat before proceeding forward and opening the door rather quickly. On the other side of the door was Amethyst, whom jumped back at the abrupt notion in which Style had opened the door. He was slightly hunched over now and bore the face of a stallion whom was scared half to death.

“Hey, hey,” Amethyst stuttered out before clearing his throat and straightening himself out as if nothing had happened to begin with. “I heard the loud thud and just, uh, wanted to make sure that you were both okay. Yeah, okay...” The stallion chuckled nervously, shifting his eyes side to side as if to try and find something to take the focus off of him.

“Right...” Style said, his statement drifting off into the stratosphere as soon as it had left his lips. The stallion just took this as Amethyst being Amethyst, if his limited experience with him was anything to go off of. Perhaps he should have a little talk with Glacier about Amethyst later.

“Well we’re okay, silly goose,” Glacier said looking to his brother with a kindness behind his eyes. His brother’s warmness helped Amethyst regain his composure completely. He then walked out of the room, wrapping a wing around his back as they began to walk out into the hallway proper. Style followed them, closing the door, sealing the disaster that was Glacier’s bed off from the world.

As the trio walked the hallway, the drab veneer of the white walls was evident. They were sparse in decoration with only a few scenery paintings hung up with some sign of care. There was a little table in the hall, next to the bathroom door which bore a photo of Amethyst and Glacier when Amethyst was about 10 years old out in the backyard of their foal-hood home. They had been caught in scene—what looked to be Amethyst climbing over a young Glacier about to fall into a rather generously-sized puddle of mud. What had happened after the was taken was sure to have been a messy and hectic mess to have dealt with, especially for their mother.

Making it to the stairs and traversing them rather quickly, they all made there way into the common-room proper. The sweet sound of lightly playing music hit Glacier’s ears and caused the stallion to perk them up. He looked to his brother with a wry grin of a smile and snickered slightly. “New Colts on the Block, really?” The stallion then snickered, “I thought I was the gay one.”

“Hey,” Amethyst said, looking over to his brother with a smirk of his own. “I am pretty gay, if you don’t remember. Nothing like a big cock waving around between another stallion’s legs to turn my crank in the right direction.” He waggled his eyebrows in the other two stallions’ directions. Glacier rolled his eyes and huffed out in typical annoyance of his older sibling, while Style just kind of gazed off in the other direction, trying to avoid eye contact all together.

Glacier hoofed his brother in the arm “lovingly” and then motioned at Style for him to join his side. The two stallions walked over to the sofa in the middle of the room before Amethyst finally decided to join them. Amethyst sat on the armchair off to the side of Glacier’s right stereo speaker and Glacier and Style both sat on the sofa, snuggled up to one another as they were. Style was still trying to avoid eye contact with Glacier’s brother however, the mentioning of sexual activities and organs in any way clearly embarrassing the stallion some. Glacier didn’t take any notice of it, but Amethyst did. And, in typical Amethyst fashion, the stallion thought it funny to push the envelope a little further. What could it possibly do, right?

“So,” Amethyst started, straightening himself in his seat, “I assume that you and Glacier are...active with one another?” He smirked at his brother as Glacier shot up in his seat and smacked Style in his stomach hard, causing the other stallion to fold over in pain. Glacier attended to Style as Amethyst snickered to himself jovially. Nothing like being an ass’ ass to really liven up the room.

“And,” he began once more, “I assume that Glacier is quite noisy.” The stallion slapped his leg with a hoof as his brother’s face went beet red now. The reactions from Style were just icing on the cake: the stallion was trying his hardest to not go a form of red himself as he continued to crane himself away from Glacier all together. “He always was when he was ‘playing’ with his colt-friends long past—all while Mah and Pop were out, of course.”

“Amethyst Pen!” Glacier all but wailed out. He was trying to hide his face from Amethyst as well as his colt-friend, though Style wasn’t looking at him at all. Glacier didn’t notice that however, as he was far too busy being embarrassed beyond his wits end.

“Fine,” Amethyst said, raising his hooves up. “I’ll stop. Just teasing you.” He was grinning still and giggled a slight cackle of a laugh. Good ol’ Amethyst being himself was the best way to put it, and Style was beginning to like Glacier’s weird brother, in some twisted kind of way. As unlikable as he may seem to ponies on the outside, he really was a goodhearted pony and Style could see this. It warmed his heart knowing that Glacier had somepony there, no matter how awkwardly annoying as they might seem, to help him all these years. What is family for, if not to help each other?

Glacier looked back to his brother, the smirk still present on his muzzle. Glacier smiled himself before grabbing a fluffy, black couch pillow and throwing it right into his brother’s face in a playful manner. “You’re a total jerk sometimes, you know that, Amethyst?” he said. He then looked back to his colt-friend and nuzzled the bottom of his chin with a slight purr. “I hope that Amethyst didn’t make you feel too uncomfortable.”

Style looked down to Glacier with a slight smile and he giggled. There was a slight cock to the smile; it was crooked at the left corner. “Nope. Not at all, Hun. I’m quite okay with talking like that. Growing up in a family where the stallions always talk about mares in a rather...perverse light helps, I suppose. It is a little different to be talking like this with another stallion present in the room; I’ve never been able to do that before. Usually I keep quiet and pretend with other stallions that I am head over hooves for mares. Truth be told, I have never found one single mare attractive—I just think of them as really good friends.”

“Makes sense,” Amethyst started up before Glacier had a chance to. “I can totally understand where you are coming from.” The stallion sighed a little but it wasn’t an unhappy sigh, it was a sigh of content and knowing. “A little easier to deal with all this if you actually still find mares a little attractive now and again, like myself.”

“Oh?” Style questioned back. Glacier just sat there and watched his colt-friend and brother converse, letting the event unfold without interruption.

“Yeah, Glacier hadn’t told you?” Style looked down to Glacier whom just smiled to him, and then looked back to Amethyst. “I’m actually bisexual...” The stallion blushed a little bit himself now, the grey of his coat becoming noticeably darker. “Though I do find stallions to be a might bit more attractive than mares, I still can admire a mare in a more intimate manner.”

“So have you ever been with a mare...?” Style quirked his brow. “Sexually, I mean?”

“Oh, I have. It was alright, and the sex was good, but there was something missing. I can’t really put my hoof on it, but—“

“A spark?” Style asked quizzically.

“What?” Amethyst questioned back, not sure he had heard Style correctly.

“A ‘spark’?” Style said again. “You know, a deeper connection with the mare other than being pulled in by their body alone.”

“You...could say that, I suppose.” Amethyst sat there for a moment, just looking off into the distance, his stare piercing directly through Style and anything else in its path. He sat in a moment of contemplation, mulling over the real reason he did not ‘click’ with the mares of his past. He was sucked into a past world of self-hate, not knowing whether or not he really did like stallions more than mares.

“You okay?” Style asked, but Glacier hushed him.

“Just give him a moment. Got to let it sink in for a second. My brother is a hard-ass and needs time to take in things sometimes.” Sticking out his tongue for a moment, Glacier kissed his stallion’s chin and giggled. “I know Amethyst better than any-pony, just watch.”

And sure enough, it happened. The stallion looked to his hooves, his eyes pinpricks in appearance. “Yeah, about that. I’ll be okay, trust me.”

2...

Some time had passed, Style, Glacier, and Amethyst all deciding that the best thing to would to go out for a day on the town. Glacier was excited to go into town again after his slight absence to check out a new store that had just opened on the thoroughfare of Ponyville proper. The store attracted a new kind of clientele to the town centre, most of whom wore spectacles and had vests with little pockets, adorn with pocket protectors and pens.

The town centre was lacking the bustling nature that Ponyville was known for at it’s epicentre, but what it lacked in occupation it very much made up for it with the tranquility that the quiet brought. It was welcoming for Amethyst but less so for Glacier as he loved the busy thoroughfare. Style was indifferent on it when Glacier pressed a response on the matter, showing that the stallion was comfortable regardless of circumstance. The trio walked the dusted dirt trail and made their way about centre the main street. There, a dimly-lit, blue neon sign read: ‘Equestrian Word Processors and Personal Computation’. The door that sat beneath is was a standard affair of oak, painted in a blue to match the sign. The walls of the building were a white-wash, bushes of green plastered around the base and up along the sidewalk leading up to the door of the establishment.

“Fancy...” Amethyst deadpanned. He looked over the boring, comic sans text with a groan of disapproval and a role of his eyes. “They could have picked anything, any fucking thing.”

Glacier and Style looked at Amethyst in unison, confusion prominently plastered across their faces. The couple quirked their brows as the stallion looked over to them both, a pang of anger evident in his eyes. There was a fire that burned behind them, an unmatched unbridled rage coming from something about this sign. Glacier and Style were both dumbfounded.

“Can you believe that?!” Amethyst half yelled, throwing his front hooves around in various motions, marking him a crazy pony to any passersby. “Can you actually believe they did that?”

“...Did what?” Glacier said slowly and methodically. He pointed to the sign, to the door, and to just about anything else that his brother could have been upset about. “What the heck are you on about, Amethyst? What is wrong about all this?” he finished, placing his hoof back down on the ground.

“You don’t understand!” Amethyst said, approaching his brother. He grabbed his fur coat and pulled him close, their noses booping in the process. Glacier smiled and laughed somewhat nervously, looking from side-to-side as if praying for a way out. It was then that Amethyst removed one hoof from his brother and threw it behind him in reckless abandon, rapidly pointing to the sign. “The sign, Glacier! The damn sign!”

Looking at the sign, the pegasus looked for just what it was that his brother was freaking out about. “What about the...” Glacier stopped, a moment of realisation hitting him rather hard. He looked at his brother, his eyes slits now from the immense irritation that was rising beneath the stallion’s fur. “You gotta be—let go of me!” the stallion exclaimed.

Amethyst let go of his brother and Glacier fell back on his hind legs, his butt tossing up some dust as he hit the ground lightly. Amethyst leaned down and looked his brother dead in the eyes and said, “They have comic sans on the sign!”

The inside of the computer store was a proverbial breath of fresh air, the tiled floor of white covered in a sheen of light, which shone brightly across the entirety of the building. The floor was lined with approximately 12 rows of shelves, split perfectly down the middle, and each self was covered in various computation devices. Word processors, to full on personal computers, to a prototype of something called a “Pip-Buck”, this shop had it all. And it was everything that Glacier was hoping for. They even had a little section in the back that was reserved just for typewriters and other forms of a more “archaic” form of writing and personal living.

Walking the short aisles of the store, the trio stayed together for all of three minutes before Amethyst was off and doing his own thing for no good reason. And when Glacier and Style finally realised he wasn’t with them anymore, he was already talking to a short, white, pegasus mare at the cash register, chattering her ears off like a little colt. Her mane was a short, dirty blonde coloured thing, up in a slight bun at the back. With a role of his eyes, Glacier motioned for Style to follow him through the narrow aisles as they perused for something new and exciting. Glacier had been reading several computer magazines for the past few months, reading up on anything that might be able to push his writing capabilities to a whole new level. Perhaps something more, since the stallion did enjoy his fair share of interactive video entertainment in the form of the Neightendo Entertainment System.

Glancing over the few models of word processors that they had there, they had finally made their way into the section of the store completely dedicated to personal computers. Style had suggested they head over in that direction considering that Glacier was unable to find anything that peeked his interest in the strictly writing section. And as they looked over the few few models, there was something that Glacier seen that really caught his attention. So much so, as he practically zoomed over to it with an audible noise. He clearly almost broke the sound barrier in the process.

The computer in question that he stopped at was something out of a nerds wet dream and about a dozen of the computer magazines that Glacier kept on his bedside table. Strictly only for reading material, of course. That bottle of hoof lotion and Kleenex means nothing... He just gets stuffy when it’s cold in there and he likes to make sure his hooves are well moisturised. Yeah, that’s it.

Wood grain glory in all its beauty is what sat before Glacier, and the stallion began to drool. A stirring in his loins could be felt, though he would deny it. Style was poking his side and it was barely registering for the stallion before him. Glacier was completely enraptured by the device before. For the computer that sat before him was a modification of the critically acclaimed Celestial 128 personal computer. This was something else far more glorious and beautiful to behold. This was the Amiga, adorn in glorious wood grain panelling. The computer came stock with a 7megahertz processing chip, 256kilobytes of system memory (random access memory), and 128kilobytes of dedicated video memory along side a video controller chip designed for backwards compatibility with the previous model.

“You like this one, huh?” Style said with a slight smirk. He watched as the stallion acted like a colt in a candy store over the piece of equipment. It was quite the piece if Style was honest with himself and even if he didn’t know what it was that drew Glacier’s eye to it so intently, he could still see why the stallion liked it. It was part of him—part of something he really liked. The only issue that the stallion could see was that of the price tag for the entire unit all together.

Over one-thousand three-hundred bits just for the computing unit itself and another three-hundred bits just for the display unit. Style quirked his brow rather than freak out about the price. “Is this in your budget, Glacy?”

That was enough to snap Glacier out of his reverie as he jostled his head back and forth in rapid succession before looking to Style with slight confusion on his face. “What do you mean?” Glacier asked before looking to the price take Style was holding in his glowing magical influence. It was in that moment that Glacier’s eyes nearly bulged out of his head, and he almost passed out from the sheer, immense force of the shock. It hit him like a six ton anvil.

Style caught Glacier in his hoof as the stallion slid back where he sat slightly. He watched Glacier as he processed the price of the machine still, a slight smirk adorning the stallion’s face. It wasn’t every day that he could get to see Glacier make such a face, let alone one from something so little as a retail price-tag. Now, a scantily dressed stallion, wearing nothing but mare’s lingerie and maybe thigh-high stockings would be worthy of that. Something Glacier could possibly wear for him later in their relationship. Hey, there is always hope.

Trying to not think about Glacier in any kind of...compromising situations later on, Style poked the slightly pudgy pone in the side to try and pull him from his slight daze. Glacier looked to him, his eyes slightly bulging from his head still, but that subsided quickly as Style smirked to the shorter pone and it caused Glacier to smile with a crimson blush. “Heh,” was all he could muster as the taller stud looked down upon him at a slightly awkward angle. They were sitting almost directly next to each other, so close that they could have booped snoots if they had been the same height.

“So, you like this one?” Style reiterated, his emerald eyes seeming to twinkle as he spoke. He motioned over towards the computer in question and watched as Glacier glanced back over to it for a second before looking back to him rather quickly. He nodded his head rather slowly, almost foal-like. He was clearly infatuated with this machine.

“It’s really awesome, one of the best models they have on the market right now. I’ve read about it in all the magazines I have. Manufactured by the Celestial Company, the Amiga is one of the most technologically advanced computing units made to date... But you didn’t need to have the sales mare tell me that, I already knew.” The stallion giggled and blushed harder, his tongue sticking out between his lips slightly as he did so.

Style thought to himself rather hard in that moment, the gears turning around in his head evident to Glacier as he looked the stallion over where he sat. He stared off into the distance, nothing in particular his target. A cool expression he wore and a slight cock to his smile he bore. Waving a hoof before the stallion’s muzzle, Glacier attempted to get Style’s attention; much to his dismay it did not work.

“Hey, what’s up with him?” A familiar voice sounded out, causing both Glacier and Style to look over, effectively snapping him out of his trance-like state. Both Glacier and Style seen Amethyst on approach, the sales mare effectively at the front of the store, still letting the stallion’s browse for it looked as if they knew just what they were after in here in the first place. No need to go around bugging ponies that had just walked into your establishment when they indeed look like they are educated on what they want.

Amethyst walked around Style and sat to Glacier’s right, glancing at the computer that the other two seemed to be so absorbed in at this very moment. He seemed slightly confused and somewhat concerned all at the same time. Poking Glacier in the shoulder accidentally as he attempted to place his foreleg over his withers, he was finally able to pull the stallion close to him in a familial embrace. “This the one, bud?” Amethyst asked, knowing how his brother was when he had his eyes on the prize.

“Yeah,” Glacier started, “this is the one.” He picked up the price-tag in his hooves and rolled it around in them for a second. This was a lot of money to be throwing down on something that the stallion didn’t fully need. Truth be told, his trusty typewriters had been his second best pals for as long as he could remember. He wrote his first successful story on them and there was just something about the way the hammers thwacked against the paper as he made love to the words he wrote. It really was some sort of symphony and the stallion felt a melancholic pang in his soul as he even thought about all the memories on that he would be throwing to the wind in just purchasing the device. But there was the future he looked forward to as well, and he didn’t have to stop writing on his typewriters altogether—no-pony was making him do such a thing. He could always keep them as little show pieces to decorate his bookshelves, they were already lined with enough other sentimental doodads for the stallion’s past and present that it wouldn’t be too far-fetched an idea. The stallion put the price-tag back down on the counter next to the computer and stood with his brother and colt-friend.

3...

“Well, thank you for your business, Mister Wind!” The chipper mare sounded out as Glacier threw a weighty bag full of bits onto the counter. The bits clinked in the bag and it almost sagged off the opposite side of the counter, it was so full. However, it wasn’t the full payment for the machine. Glacier would have to come back tomorrow to pay the rest of the machine off. He certainly wasn’t expecting to spend this sort of money, and on such sort notice too. But whenever is the opportunity going to show itself again?

“You’re very welcome, Miss,” Glacier pipped back, smiling widely as he did so. Style stood to his left, a smile of his own on his face. Amethyst was about the usual one would come to expect from him. He was just really happy that his brother was going to be happy.

“We’ll have a delivery stallion deliver the computer to your home tomorrow, once you have come and paid the rest of your fees for it.” The mare then handed Glacier a paper with some questionable hoof-writing scribbled across it, but the gist of it was that a partial payment for the machine had been made and that the stallion would return tomorrow to make a finalising payment, and would then be taking the unit home. The paper was more a formality than anything from the looks of it.

“Thank you very much, Miss—“Glacier glanced down at the signature on the sheet before peering back up to the mare. “Thank you Miss Syntax. I will be seeing you tomorrow, then” And with that, Glacier, his brother, and his colt-friend departed, waving back to the mare as they made themselves scarce of the store.

Author's Note

Finally got around to writing out another chapter. Yay!