A Dance Amongst the Stars

“Like I said, she’d already been pulling sixteen hours by the time I came back to the office after checking up on that grant. So for the sake of her sanity, I decided to play a bit of keep away with the cake I’d gotten her.”

Twilight’s relief at Matthias having gone along with her shift in topic without further harassment was quickly replaced by a look of pure incredulity.

“Let me see your fingers,” she demanded.

“I’m telling you Twi, they’re looking a helluva lot better than they did when I first got back.”

“On both hands May.”

Matthias studied Twilight’s face, looking for any hint or sign as to what she may be planning, but after staring at the mare for a few more seconds, he simply shrugged his shoulders. Unable to suss out what her goal was, and held his hands up for her to see, wiggling both sets of digits in front of her muzzle.

Twilight moved forward on her end, her face coming within inches of his splayed out fingers, relatively speaking of course. Though the warm air bending around the concentration of mana did give the impression that it was her breath, rather than convection, blowing against his hands as she continued her scrutinizing.

“Huh, that’s strange.”

“What is.”

“You claimed to have spent some time tonight withholding cake from Celestia, but clearly you’ve still got all your fingers attached.” Twilight mused with a smirk as she reclaimed her previous position at her desk.

“Well, I made sure to only show her the box during my little demonstration and not the cake itself. So when she finally saw the genocide by chocolate I’d gotten her, I was banking on her tearing into it rather than tearing into me.”

“Demonstration? I thought you were playing kee-”

“I’ll explain when you’re older Twilight.”

“You know I’m only a year and a half younger than you right?”

“And on the day that you’re not a year and a half younger than me, I’ll teach you the sacred art of the shell game.”

“That’s not how the till you’re older excuse works!”

“I know, you just look so goddamned adorable when you give me that is he being serious face.”

“Rgggh just you wait May, you can't hide what a Frizzle, Google, and Nye are from me forever!” she promised with an angry snort and flare of her nostrils.

“I’m not hiding anything. Like I said, I’ll tell you when you’re ol-”

“So, was it Celestia pressing herself against you while naked as a flame that led to your little disagreement with the deployment artery?” Twilight interjected, realizing she was once again getting swept up in his pace and was progressively moving further and further from the topic at hand.

“That’s a negative there Ghost Rider. Celestia unintentionally molesting me happened somewhere in the neighborhood of 9:00 and 9:30, and this was about thirty minutes ago,” he said while drumming the fingers on his right hand atop his desk slowly. “Though it was responsible for fucking my face up more than it already is and probably helped loosen me up so the rest could run a train on me.”

“It’s not that bad… How many we talking?”

“Rounding down, about seven?”

“Seriously?!”

“Eeyup.”

“Sweet Celestia we haven't seen those numbers since-

“The collar came off, I know.”

“So how many of those episodes would you attribute to Celestia’s actions?”

“Two definitely. There was one right after locking up at the office, followed by another one as I was making my way towards Night Court. The maybe happened in the lavatory outside the Great Hall, but I was able to snuff it out before any real damage could occur.”

“How did you-”

“Hot water.”

Twilight winced at just how nonchalant Matthias was being about harming himself but chose to merely nod and write down what he’d confided in her, wanting to remain as objective as possible while he was still being so open with her.

“So after pulling yourself back together, you then made your way over to Night Court to meet with Luna, correct?”

“Yep.”

“Any significant deviations from the norm?”

“Yeah, we actually had to do our jobs.”

“You mean…”

“Uh-huh, we had a pair of ponies show up well past their bedtime.”

“What happened?”

“Their daughter didn’t make it home from school.”

“Oh no! Is she alright?! Were the guards notified? How did Luna-”

“Woah, easy there Twi! Deep breathes, alright? Luna and I were able to put together a search parameter which Starry and the gang then used to find her and bring her home.”

“Thank the stars for little miracles!” Twilight exclaimed with a relieved sigh, slumping back into her chair once the flash of adrenaline flooding her veins had burnt up, “What in Celestia’s name was she doing out so late?”

“New bakery opened in the city. She and her friends thought that if they got there around closing time they’d be able to get in and out quick. But you know what they say about the best-laid plans of mice and men.”

“No, I don't actually.”

“Damn… guess it’s just as easy to forget that you aren’t human either,” he said sheepishly, his hand reaching behind his neck to scratch at some nonexistent itch.

“Well... I'm glad I’m finally starting to look human in your eyes.”

Do what now?

But before Matthias could question what she had meant by any of that, Twilight continued to press on with her investigation:

“So did the reactions of the ponies beseeching Luna play any role in unhinging you?”

“Nah, just your standard looks of, ‘holy shit, what is that?’ and some defensive body language, but once Luna and I set about finding their kid, they became quite the amiable lot.”

“How long was she missing?”

“About seven hours give or take.”

“I can't imagine how happy her parents must have been she was finally brought home.”

“Couldn’t have been less than what Luna felt.”

“Speaking of Luna, how was she holding up through all of that?”

“She was a little tense at first, but once we got into a rhythm, everybody started loosening up some.”

“Uh, May-”

“Heard it as soon as it left my mouth, yep. Really the only sour patch we had was when we were going over some forms Celestia needed Luna to sign and she started going through her am I doing enough blues.”

“Please tell me you were able to talk her out of doing anything desperate?”

“Eh, it was nothing a bit of Terran colloquialism and an invite for the Combined Court’s Planning Committee couldn't fix.”

“Does that mean...!?”

“Yep! Turns out Celestia’s been downplaying how close we were with the votes and has set up a meeting for laying down the groundwork in two weeks.”

“Oh yes yes yes, Luna must’ve been so happy to finally get her present. You and Celestia have been kissing flank for months to get this set up!”

“Yeah, my lips are still chapped from all the puckering. But don't sell yourself short, having the support of the Princess of Friendship and the Elements of Harmony certainly helped grease the wheels.”

“Just… just please never use the words puckering and grease that close together again and we’ll call it even,” she said, trying a little too hard to hide her blush behind another joke.

“Heh, I make no promises.”

“So, have you gotten your invitation yet?”

“How’d you know I’d be getting one?”

Now it was Twilight's turn to stop and stare as if he was the one speaking complete and utter nonsense, “Because it was you who set all this in motion, May!”

“Look, just because I had a rare moment of clarity, doesn’t mean I'm suddenly qualified to restructure a civic institution.”

“You’re also a scholar of both your world’s history and governments.”

“Yeah, my world’s history and governments!”

“So that means you have an expertise in civic institutions wholly alien to our own, whose aspects could then be incorporated into the layout of the Combined Court.”

“Expertise is pushing it a bit. I only got that endorsement to make myself more marketable. It’s not like I got a Bachelor's or Master’s in that field.”

“Even so, you’ll be there offering a unique perspective nopony else will be able to bring because you’re not… I mean because you don’t approach things from a pony frame of mind.”

“Well, when you put it like that-”

“Also because Celestia told me you were going to attend and asked me in the postscript of my invite to convince you that you were qualified!” she said with honest to god smug in her voice. Which would’ve made Matthias' subsequent deadpan shatter the mirror had it still been made of glass.

“You know, you could've saved us a couple of minutes if you had just started with that point.”

“I know, but you’re just so cute when you’re irritated.” She shot back at him with a shit eating grin that looked so much like his own, it bordered on copyright infringement.

Note to self: lay off Celestia for two weeks.

“So we’ve accounted for approximately two of your outbursts so far. Can you think of any other situations you were in tonight that may have upset you further?” Twilight asked after giving Matthias a few seconds to fume for a bit.

“Well, between actually accomplishing something at Night Court and her gift going off without a hitch, Luna wound up jumping me, in the literal sense. Then when we got to the garden, we shot the shit for a bit before I somehow asked her out to this Winter Wind carnival thing-”

“You what!?”

“Hey, don't look at me like that. We’d been discussing the finer points of carnival culture when she let it slip that she was never able to go to any pre-lunar banishment, so I offered to take her with me. She was the one who went and called it a date after kissing me!”

“She ki-”

“On the cheek, Twilight. Just breathe, inhale blue, exhale red.”

“Sorry, got a bit excited there,” she begged while fanning herself with a stack of spreadsheets. “So was this what pushed you over the edge.”

“Couldn’t rightly say. Before I could get a word in edgewise on the subject I had to keep Luna from going full Nightmare Moon on Celestia after she found out what she said to me when I wouldn't give her her cake.”

“Which was…”

“A thinly veiled threat to throw me in Tartarus.”

“WHAT! Why would she say something like that?!”

“Please refer to earlier points about sixteen-hour shifts with legislative deadlines fast approaching.”

“Still, to think she could say something so… so insensitive, considering where she found you and all.”

“Well, like I told our favorite Solar Diarch when she realized she dun goofed, despite all the glitz and glam surrounding her she’s still just a regular mare beneath the raiments, so she’s entitled to the standard rate of fuck-ups allotted to the rest of us.”

Twilight's visage softened a bit, remembering how often and emphatically Celestia would insist she drop the titles while they were among friends. And how whenever she did treat her like she was just one of the girls, those shining amethyst eyes which had captivated her since she was a little filly, would light up even brighter than her charge.

“So… what happened after you kept Luna from going all pre-equestrian on Celestia?”

“Heh, well, somehow she got it in her head that me living here for these past eight months was something worth celebrating so-”

“Of course it is, May!” Twilight snapped, refusing to let Matthias belittle his time in Equestria any further. “Ever since you came into our lives, it feels like the world’s become that much... bigger of a place! I mean, in those eight months you’ve been with us I’ve lost track of how many times you’ve taken something I’ve held as irrefutable fact and turned it into something new and… well, magical for me again! All while being one of the most open, kind and caring souls I’ve ever met. And I know it’s not just me who feels this way. Whenever you and Luna have a class together, I’m half tempted to remind her that I’m the teacher as much as her gaze is on you. And though I don’t have the necessary equipment to measure the lumens, I swear I can pinpoint the exact time you’ve come back from your lunch break because the day actually gets brighter whenever you’re near Celestia. And that’s not even counting what you did for Dinky and the girls, or how you helped Zephyr and Marble through that nightmare. Heck, even Maud didn’t think she’d have been able to make it out of there if it hadn’t been for you. So please, I know it might seem selfish considering what you lost and what you had to go through, but I really am glad that you’ve become a part of our lives!” She finished with nary a trace of teasing or jest. Just simple and honest affection that forced Matthias to turn away from the mare lest the mist forming in his eyes turn to rain.

“Yeah… well, I still don’t feel like my existence in and of itself is cause for blowing up the sky and redecorating it just to give me back a piece of my home.”

“Lunadidwhatnow?!” she blurted out, porting off in a flash of purple before Matthias could tell her to go look out the window.

For a good pregnant pause, there was nothing but the contents of Twilight’s desk, and the backdrop of her bedroom filling the mirror until a slightly frazzled and hyperventilating Twilight materialized back in her seat a few seconds later.

“Did you see the… How’d she even… When in the... Pillars and… Fingers and… and-”

“Yeah, I pretty much had the same reaction,” he chuckled, glad that this tizzy of Twilight’s was more of the omigosh this is amazing variety rather than the typical what the buck am I supposed to do/what could possibly go wrong types she was prone to.

“I… I never thought feeling so small would be so… so exhilarating!” She managed to say between progressively deeper and manageable breaths. “I mean, this is so far beyond the scope of anything that’s been recorded in the Tower of High Astrology, and the sheer intensity of the mana radiating off the formation is making my horn buzz.”

“Who’da thought a little Walk the Moon and some swing could be so potent?”

“There is nothing about that sentence that makes any kind of sense, May.”

“What? Luna said we needed to sync ourselves up or something for her magic to work, so she picked out a beat on my phone and asked me to dance.”

“Did she now?” Twilight asked, her tone caught somewhere between teasing and accusatory as she shot him a playful smirk, her cheek resting on her hand as she propped herself up atop her desk.

“Hey, you were the one just explaining how the Mare in the Moon helped you gather rocks from, said moon to coat in quicksilver so you could make a voodoo doll out of a ruby, so forgive me if I didn’t look too deep into the metaphysics of it.”

“Heheh… Well, I'm half tempted to wake up everypony so they can see it before Celestia and Luna have to erase it in a few hours.”

“Yeah… as much fun as it is imagining the repercussions of you running through the streets of Ponyville at… 3:30 in the morning banging on everybody’s door while screaming to look up at the sky, I’d hold off lest you either get yourself lynched or freak out some more poor ponies.”

“What do you mean, more?”

Matthias let out a tired sigh as he once again found himself treading down some dark corners. Trying to piece together a narrative of the remainder of tonight's festivities that wouldn't worry Twilight into another fit, or make him come off as damaged goods she shouldn’t be wasting her time on:

“After we danced the new night in, I was beside myself. Nobody’s ever done something like that for me before; never gone out of their way like that just to make me feel like I’m worth a damn,” he tried explaining, noting curiously how her ears seemed to flatten a bit while she cast a nervous glance at the white oak box she had pulled out earlier.

“But as you said, nobody outside of you, me, or the princesses have ever seen something like the Pillars before, so while we were in the middle of admiring our handiwork, some poor sod must have lost his shit and dropped something and you know how bad this place can echo.”

Twilight gasped in dawning horror as she realized where Matthias was going with this, “H-how bad was it?”

“F-for a few seconds, I… I was back in the caves,” he confessed as he cradled his head in his arms, trying and failing to will away the scrapes and snarls buzzing around the periphery of his hearing as his body began to shake. All while hoping against hope that the gem Twilight had spent so much of her time and effort on would blow up like the majority of her projects so she couldn’t see him looking so crippled.

“May… look at me, please.”

Twilight’s voice held no fear, nor was it pleading in any way. In fact, there was a strength behind it, a gentle yet commanding authority, that Matthias often heard in Luna, and always found in Celestia, compelling him to lift his head and face the mare in the mirror.

And who he saw staring back at him wasn’t the dorky little archmage who had two left hooves, and couldn’t find a beat with a GPS and the directions tattooed on her forearm. No, this was Twilight Sparkle, the Princess of freakin’ Friendship. The pony who always fought her hardest to see the very best in everybody, and no matter how sick or damaged their soul may be, was always willing to extend them her hand and offer them the friendship and companionship she believed everyone deserved.

Granted the visage was marred a bit by the trail of tears carving a path down her cheek and the small dribble of snot hanging from her nostril. But her eyes were the very picture of compassion and understanding, while her smile radiated a warmth that froze his shivers solid.

“Thank you May,” she said while wiping her face off, pressing her hand against the screen once finished, “Thank you… for being so strong for me.”

Matthias' mind seized, unable to process why Twilight hadn’t run off screaming yet, or how she could possibly view him recounting his progressively escalating episodes as anything less than ceaseless bitching, let alone strong. But that damnable smile of hers; it was like each time he tried to convince himself that his bullshit was going to push somebody else away, it assured him that she was right here and that she wasn’t going anywhere. Told him that it didn't matter how far he had fallen because she would always be there to pull him out from whatever black thoughts were eating away at him.

And it was that confidence, that certainty radiating off of Twilight that Matthias desperately clung to, using it as an anchor to pull himself out of his doldrums, and off of his desk, so he could face his friend once again.

“Heh, strong’s pushing it a bit, but I appreciate the sentiment,” he said shyly, returning her smile with a grin of his own, albeit one much more timid than the one she was sporting as he brought a hand up to press it against hers.

“You’re the strongest stallion I’ve ever met,” she declared softly as she leaned forward, resting her forehead resting against the enchanted glass. A motion Matthias mirrored as he settled himself atop his desk, wanting to be that much closer to Twilight, at least in spirit.

“Clearly you’ve never seen Maud on the job site.”

“Like I said, the strongest stallion I’ve ever met,” Twilight affirmed with a cute giggle that caused Matthias to blush so hot and bright that he swore he could see both him and Twilight turning red.

At least until a burst of crimson static arced from the mirror and onto his desk, burning a small hole in the corner of the notes he’d been taking.

Looking up in a panic, Matthias saw that it really wasn’t just him turning rosy. Twilight, his desk, as well as a good portion of his study were all now glowing a deep molten red, errant sparks shooting off in every direction out and across his room from both the ruby and the mirror as his lectern began to tremble slightly.

“AND HERE WE GO!” Matthias shouted in a panic, making ready to duck and cover for a third time this evening before Twilight’s impassioned words caused him to freeze:

“IT’S OKAY IT’S OKAY I GOT THIS!” she asserted quickly and confidently as she shot up from her chair and lit up her horn. The sudden shift upwards forcing her shirt to ride up a bit and expose her midriff for the briefest of seconds before falling back into place over her bright purple leggings.

Well, at least she’s wearing pants tonight! Matthias mused wistfully as he took a few tentative steps away from his desk, blushing as he wondered why, with another Code Sparkle playing out right in front of him, he seemed more interested with her choice in evening wear, rather than the fireball his desk was about to become.

That was until Twilight started dancing.

Starting with a few subtle motions of her hands and arms, and with some barely audible whispers that Matthias couldn’t quite make out over the increasing intensity of his desk’s shaking, Twilight began to sway back and forth ever so slightly.

Each of her movements were precise yet fluid as purple hands struck out like violet bolts of lightning to pluck the escaping energies out of the sky, guiding them back into her horn before gliding back down the rest of her body in an almost sensual manner. Her fingers trailing tiny bursts of violet static across the silken surface of her purple PJs as they traced along the delicate curves of her chest and waist. The seamlessly embroidered renditions of her cutie mark glowing brighter and brighter with each pass.

And with every errant spark of stray magic she caught and dispersed, it seemed as if the sway to her hips became more and more pronounced, the flow of her hands across her body more purposeful, while a faint glow began to burn beneath her coat. Causing her sparkling lochs to shimmer and sway in time with the unheard beat she was dancing to, and send beads of sweat and droplets of water from her previous shower cascading through the air, each shining in shades matching that of her dual toned indigo and magenta mane.

But all that paled before the ever-widening grin spreading across Twilight’s muzzle. It had started off as some tiny little thing at first, barely a nervous quiver at the corner of her lip as she went through the motions of her silent waltz. But as she progressed through each of her steps, Twilight’s smile began to splinter and crack, blooming and beaming in time with the blush spreading down her cheeks and into her neck and chest, until the little alicorn’s toothy grin had damn near split her face open.

Tries to learn the Cupid Shuffle and she nearly breaks my foot. Tries to disarm an out of control magical gemstone and she turns into Jenna Dewan Tatum!? Matthias thought as he he watched her turnabout. Finding himself unable to even blink in the presence of Twilight’s subtle grace, much less turn and run, despite the fact he was standing less than a foot away from a hundred and ten pounds of flaming shrapnel in potentia.

Twilight continued to carry on with her little shimmy for another minute or so, focusing on containing and redistributing the runaway magic she’d been siphoning off of the charms rather than damage control, though a few wild arcs still required some artful blocking on hers and Matthias' part to keep their respective rooms from combusting. But eventually, their rattling studies began to settle as the red staining their feeds was seemingly soaked into Twilight. Leaving nothing but a panting, sweating mare in the mirror grinning like a fiend back at Matthias, her chest heaving as she tried propping herself up against her desk. At least, until her legs finally gave out and she fell full spread straight back onto the floor, causing the contents of her study to jump as she hit the ground with a barely cushioned thump.

“All good over there Twily?” Matthias asked after giving her a minute to collect herself, ready to run down a guard in case she’d gone and blown another gasket, but relaxed when a fuzzy purple hand rose from the floor, middle finger raised proudly.

“All good here May,” she slurred excitedly, some drunken sounding giggles escaping from her lips as she pulled herself back into her chair and flopped onto her desk. Her wings flaring out and twitching at random intervals.

“You sure? 'Cause I seem to recall teaching you that thumbs up is the sign for everything being alright.”

“Oh I know, I’m just telling you to go buck yourself for calling me Twily again,” she explained while attempting to shoot him a wink but found she hadn't the motivation, nor desire, to open her eyes back up once she had closed them. The temporary loss of her sight allowing her to revel in the currents of mana buzzing beneath her skin, as a satisfied hum slipped past the sleepy smile that had settled on her lips.

“Rrrrreeeowwww someone’s in top form tonight. What happened today? Did those temporary visas you requested for the summer abroad in the Dragon Lands get approved or something?”

“Heehee Not yet! Just heehee just Rarity going full tilt diva and you and me becoming closer is all,” she lazily explained as she nuzzled her cheek into her workspace.

“Hey hey hey, I know you’re a little drunk on power at the moment, but I need you to stay with me for a bit.”

“Hee hee you need me,” Twilight tittered, little tremors racking her body as she tried, and failed, to stifle her giggles.

“That’s right Twi; I need you to focus. Otherwise, that mana buzz you’re riding is gonna turn into one mother of a hangover. So for the sake of keeping you conscious for another couple minutes, could you tell me what it was that set little miss Rarity off this time? Was it Sweetie Belle? Did she wrap the cinnamon-colored thread around the burgundy spools again?”

Twilight shrugged before rolling her head up to look at May with a bit of a pout. “Not sure, after Sweetie came bursting through the gates screaming about Rarity being broken again, Spike and I hauled flank over to the boutique to see if she was alright. But between the spoonfuls of rocky road and the cries of, Oh woe is me, the stars have aligned against me!” She decried in an overly exaggerated manner, putting on the posh accent she would often use when mimicking her fashionista friend’s more eccentric outbursts, “All we could really get out of her was that somepony must’ve done something truly bucked up to one her ensembles.”

“This… this all wouldn’t have happened around 9:00, would it?”

“N-now that I think about it, yes!” Twilight realized as she started to sober up once again, the influx of arcane energy coursing through her body having finally distributed itself evenly across the various pathways and reservoirs of mana littered about her nervous system. “But how did you-”

“And was there a second and third one about fifteen and thirty minutes later respectively?”

Twilight’s jaw dropped, though it could only go so far given how she was still cradling her head in her arms, but the look of pure shock and awe in her eyes more than made up for her muzzle’s lack of motion.

“May… you’re starting to scare me. There’s just no way you could’ve put all that together all on your own! How in the unholy buck could have you possibly know that?”

“Now now Twilight,” Matthias tsked with a wave of his finger, “if I just went and shared everything I knew with you, what reason would you have to keep coming back to see me?”

“W-what?! N-no, why would I… May, you’re one of the best friends I’ve ever made! Yes, you're smart and possess a knowledge base and perspective unlike anything we’ve ever seen before. But you're also so much fun just to talk to! Not to mention nice and sweet and caring and… and you're just messing with me aren't you?”

“Guilty as charged, though it is nice to know that there's at least one pony out there that sees me as more than just a pretty face,” he teased as he turned his head somewhat to the right, hoping he could hide the blush from Twilight’s honest appraisal of him beneath his discolored scarring.

But Twilight, being the ever observant mare that she was, saw how much of an effect her words were having upon him and decided now would be as good a time as any to see if what Luna had told her about Matthias' colors evening out was really true or not:

“Just pretty? D-don’t sell yourself short, May. Between your alien countenance and your subtle predatory features, you’d make for quite the piece of exotic eye candy for some lucky mare out there,” she said, causing Matthias to snap to and redden further.

“R-really now? And… and here I thought shipping was your sister-in-law’s end all be all.” Matthias snarked, quickly realizing from how badly she was blushing, and how poorly she was trying to stifle both her stutter and giggles, that Twilight was just in the mood for a little verbal sparring.

Though he did find it somewhat strange; out of all the times, he’d stood in as a crash-test dummy for her to practice some impromptu shit-talk on, rarely, if ever, did his looks or potential love-life on Equus come up. So he decided, if she was willing to step up and push a few boundaries, he might as well not discourage her, but not without giving it back to her in full:

“Alright then, humor me oh Princess of Just Friends, what have I got going for me that supposedly makes the mares’ hearts go all aflutter?”

“I-I don’t even know where to begin,” she stammered slightly, not expecting to find the ball back in her court so quickly.

“Begin at the beginning… and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

“Then I’ll start with that insufferable wit of yours. It’s like, no matter how shitty a day somepony could be having, or how completely daunting a problem or task might seem to her, you always have some quip or quote from your world you can pull out your ass that makes everything seem that much more manageable.”

“To be fair, I butcher half those sayings, and really only use them in the context of the majority of the words in this quote sound like what you were just fretting over, so I hope this somehow makes you feel better. And I would be remiss not to mention how if it weren’t for one special purple pony, I’d still be carrying twenty pounds of steel around my neck and writing out everything I had to say. So, you know, thanks... again. I… I’ll … There’s just no way I’ll ever be able to pay you back for that.” He said with a forlorn sigh, unable to find any words that could convey to Twilight just how much her efforts in bringing him back from the brink had meant to him.

“Just keep being you, May. That’s all any of us want,” she told him honestly, marveling at how quickly the human could switch from talking smack, to pouring his heart out. All the while a primal sense of satisfaction began to bubble up from within her at how her words were actually dyeing him red on all sides.

“Us? You pulling the royal plural on me or are you suggesting there’s somebody other than you that wants to hitch a ride on the human?”

“W-well considering what I’ve seen whenever we’ve had to perform an *ahem* emergency disrobing, you’re definitely well enough equipped to be able to handle us,” she asserted boldly, causing them both to color further.

“I fucking knew it!” he exclaimed with equal parts triumph and fury, causing Twilight to jump slightly from his unexpected outburst. “I fucking knew that that ‘magical cross-contamination between materials’ bit was just some bullshit you cooked up so you could sneak a peek!”

“N-no it’s not! When dealing with a chemical spill or fire of any kind, you have to be thorough in its containment, or else you risk subjecting yourself and others to the effects of secondary or tertiary exposure. Doubly so if the materials involved were laced with any kind of magic!” she desperately tried to explain to Matthias, only to regain her composure when she saw the small smile worming its way into the corner of his lips as he tried holding back another round of cackles.

“Ahem, And yes, well… While I’ll admit you’re much more fun to unwrap than the past twenty-six winter’s worth of birthday and Hearth's Warming presents combined. I’d much rather give you a show as well, rather than deal with your shirt becoming a literal lightning rod, or my skirt turning into a colony of fire ants again!” Twilight laid out with a deadly seriousness that made both of them shudder, given some of the more extravagant bangs in which their projects have ended.

“Those are all well thought out and cogent arguments to try and justify your position…”

“Thank you, May! That’s really-”

“That would only hold water if you:

A). Hadn’t waited until the tenth lab explosion before equipping us with something better than gloves and lab coats.

B). Had used your magic to try and strip me rather than your bare hands.

And

C). Weren’t only wearing fucking neglige beneath your protective gear!”

"Sh-shut up! It took me weeks to figure out that stray motes of your skin were disrupting the arcane synthesis between spell components! A-and I've already explained that underwire bras and panties itch and scratch like a sonofabitch! So I need underwear that isn’t going to be poking and prodding at me whenever I need to adjust the density of my barriers on the fly or calculate a dirty teleport that isn’t going put me halfway into a wall or tree. And no matter how much I beg and plead, Rarity will never accept function without form, whether she’s designing hazmat suits or lingerie! And it’s not like I haven’t been trying to connect to you with my magic! It's going on eight months, and I can still barely get a mote of my magic to stick to you!” she hissed out, drenching that last point with enough venom to poison a steel-type. Her inability to touch him with her magic having been a constant sore spot in their friendship from day one, so Matthias knew not to push those particular buttons.

“Hey, Twi, it’s alright. All I’m saying is that there are plenty of easier ways to get me naked that don’t involve chemical fires or safety protocols. I mean, a nice eggplant parmesan with a good champagne followed by a night on the town and an exciting book to cap off the evening would probably get me out my pants before we even hit the bed.”

“Well, if a certain stallion weren’t thicker than Pinkie’s thighs I’d’ve taken you up on that months ago!”

“What was that?”

“I SAID YOU HAVE THE NICEST FLANKS THIS SIDE OF THE FOAL MOUNTAINS!” she screamed in a panic in an attempt to cover her ass, only to clamp her hands over her muzzle after realizing what she had just admitted to. Causing Matthias to nearly keel over from how hard he found himself laughing.

“Hah hah hah, Sweet… sweet Christ above Twi,” he choked out after spending several seconds trying to piece himself together, “m-maybe tone it down a little. Any louder and I think my mom would’ve been able to hear how much you appreciate my ass back on Earth.”

Twilight was beyond mortified. Here she was hoping to mess with May a bit and brighten up his very early morning after having an obviously stressful evening on his end, but instead of playful banter and ribbing, she was coming off more like a construction mare catcalling stallions as they walked by. It was demeaning, rude, and went against everything she had been raised to believe about how a mare should treat her stallion.

However, before the image of her mother twisting her ear off for even thinking about talking to a stallion in such a disrespectful manner could become too vivid, she just so happened to spy how red Matthias 'ears had gotten. And try as he might to make it seem like the color spreading up and down his two-toned face was from his laughter and not from his embarrassment at her "compliment”, Twilight knew she just wasn’t that funny.

Finding her courage once again bolstered by the impact her flattery, no matter how derogatory it might sound to any sane pony, was having on her human, she continued to press her attack against Matthias:

“I wish she could hear me! That way I could thank her for raising such a wonderful stallion, both inside and out! And let her know that ever since he’s come into life, I wake up with a new reason to smile every morning, and get to see that same smile on my friends’ faces whenever they’re out with their families because of how brave he was!”

“Oh-ho-ho, haven't even taken me out on our first date yet and she already wants to get the parent's blessing. Well, you won’t have too much trouble with my dad. He trusts me enough not to get myself into trouble with women, pony or otherwise, though I’d bring him an oatmeal cream pie if you want to earn some serious brownie points with him. My mom, on the other hand, she’ll be a tougher nut to crack. Me being her baby boy and all, and not wanting some cruel mare to sweep me off my feet only to then lay me out when she’s gotten everything she can from me. But considering you’re the reason I'm able to talk today, and that you're one of the few ponies I’ll come out of my hobbit hole for, I’m sure you’ll win her over eventually. Fair warning though, you break my heart, she will break her foot off in your ass!”

“If I ever did do something so stupid or cruel, I’d gladly bend over and give her what little flank I've got to tan.”

“Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well! Looks like somepony really is a closet masochist between the sheets.”

“W-what can I say, I’ve been spending so much time working with you these past few months that I must’ve picked up a kink or two along the way.”

“Heh, sorry I'm such an awful student. Otherwise, you’d have been able to set me straight long before developing a faux-leather fetish.”

“Hey, I never said it was a bad thing! You’d be surprised how stimulating it is to nuzzle up to bare skin after spending a lifetime rubbing cheeks on coats and scales,” she suggested playfully as she started absentmindedly rubbing her cheek into her palm, shooting Matthias a half-lidded stare that made the man fidget in his seat slightly.

“Heheheh well then, it's… it’s good to know that I’ve got at least three things going in my favor for when that special mare with a terrible taste in stallions comes into my life.”

“That and more May, that and more,” Twilight softly spoke, no longer nuzzling into the hand she’d been propping herself up with but still giving him that heated look that on any other mare would scream, ‘bend me over and rut a dent in my desk.’

But this is Twilight of all ponies, Matthias thought as he felt his face begin to burn beneath her sultry gaze. This little dork’s been my best friend and study buddy ever since they started letting me walk around on my own. I mean, surely she’d have said something these past few months if she was interested, right?

“Hee hee got something on your mind May?” she teased with a nervous smirk, looking down at her desk for a second before locking eyes with Matthias again, her gaze holding an untold amount of heat and anticipation behind her lavender eyes.

“Y-you,” he said honestly as he kept trying to figure out just what in the unholy fuck Twilight was thinking, causing her subsequent blush to turn her even more mauve and her eyes to lid even further.

And that was when Matthias finally recognized the look she had in her eye. That subtle blend of gentle trepidation mixed with heated hope that seemed to hold back so many weeks worth of accumulated admiration and affection for him that it looked like she was actually hurting herself trying to rein it all in.

That’s what Luna looked like just before she kissed me!

All of a sudden, Matthias found himself pouring over every little word Twilight had said and each subtle motion she’d made this evening. Questioning whether or not their earlier displays of platonic affection had really been all that platonic, or if the friendly bout of ball/ovary busting they’d been engaging in had really been all that friendly:

Frustrated she can’t talk with me as much.

Spends months cobbling together a major magical breakthrough just so she can spend more time with me.

Doesn’t freak out in the face of me being a perv.

Actually makes an attempt at a dirty joke… two if we’re being technical about it.

Literally glows when I compliment her.

Only gets upset when she thinks she’s treating me like all I’m good for is talking nerdy to her.

Fights through her own squeamishness to try and help me.

Way more affection and emphasis on how grateful she is to have met me than seen previously.

Freaks out at the mention of Luna asking me on a date and kissing me.

Substantial shift in the subject of standard shit talk from personality quirks to physical and personal traits we find charming or attractive.

Keeps referring to me as a stall- OH DEAR GOD!

And it didn’t stop there either. With the possibility of Twilight having feelings for him quickly taking root, he couldn’t help but begin reevaluating every little hug and nuzzle she’d ever given him. Each and every lunch and dinner date she'd taken him on to try and establish a social presence for him within the city, and all the times he’d woken up after a marathon reading and research session with Twilight wrapped up in his arms, tangled in a cocoon of legs and wings while she clung to him almost desperately.

*Pffft*

Fortunately, before Matthias could fall too far down that particular rabbit-hole, Twilight’s waning composure finally cracked, with what felt like seven decade’s worth of generic sitcom laugh tracks trying to force their way out her mouth at once. The sound bringing the shaken human back from the brink as she collapsed atop her desk, unable to hold herself up amidst the waves of uproarious laughter surging forth from her heaving chest.

“HAHAHAHA SW-SWEET CELESTIA ABOVE YOUR FACE!” She somehow managed to bark out between her fits of manic cackling, warm tears streaming down her face unbidden. “I CAN’T HEHE I CAN’T BELIEVE L-LUNA WAS RIGHT! PFFFT HAHAHA!”

Oh thank God, Matthias mused tiredly, letting loose a relaxed yet dejected sigh as he hung his head in defeat, trying his best not to let Twilight see how much her teasing had shaken him, lest she either keep pressing her victory or start to worry for him.

Yes, while he was relieved and all to have Twilight opening up to him more and finally start dropping some of the formalities. He was barely holding himself together as it was having to wrestle with the fact that Luna may or not have feelings for him and how, should he choose to reciprocate those hypothetical feelings, it may impact their friendship moving forward without the idea that Twilight might also be pining for him banging around in his head as well.

Granted while most men would probably find the idea of having two of the most attractive and powerful women the world over clamoring for their attention appealing beyond compare. Matthias would’ve gladly taken an extra day of PT with Starry rather than deal with any of the shoehorned in, plot-padding, who’s he gonna choose love-triangle bullshit writers are so often forced to add to their stories in order to hold reader/viewer interest.

Plus, when you’ve had a girlfriend go full yandere on you for simply helping a classmate marshal her thoughts for her end of the unit project in AP English, you quickly learn how… extreme some people can take the concept of making you love them. So he was grateful that Twilight had been merely twisting his nuts rather than adding more to his plate.

However, it still stung him somewhat. Having a mare, he found gorgeous, both inside and out, leading him on just for a laugh, dredging up some somewhat painful memories of exes two through four. But with Twilight, he could at least be sure that she wasn’t trying to take advantage of him or be purposefully malicious about it, and as such, he let her genuinely know how he felt about her stringing him along:

“Pardon me if this comes off as a bit plagiaristic, but please get bucked Twily, hard!” he tiredly declared as he started rubbing small circles into his temples.

“Heheh Gl-gladly, you *snort* you free for the next few hours?”

“Sorry, as alliteratively appealing as pounding into purple pony plot sounds, I’m going to have to give you a rain check. Luna’s cooked up some scheme she thinks is gonna get me through the night without running the risk of growing a cap colony on my tonsils, and apparently, it’s gonna involve us being in bed together for the next six to eight hours.”

“R-really now?” Twilight stammered slightly, her face a flash of several competing emotions before playful curiosity finally settled on her muzzle, “And what, pray tell, has prompted our dear Lunar Princess to take such initiative?”

“C-can’t say for sure. After attack number three I was pretty much running on empty, so Lulu tried scooting me off to bed before heading off to a debrief she’d scheduled with Starry.”

“How big was the blast radius and how high was the body count?”

Matthias shuddered as he felt a phantom knuckle dig into his side, “So many tickles. So. Many. Tickles!”

“Hee hee That bad, huh?”

“The bards will sing of our struggle until the sun goes out.”

“And I take it Luna came out on top, seeing as you’re here with me and not at the debrief with her.”

“Position in 3-Dimensional space is relative to that of the observer.”

“And what does that have to do with the price of tea in Trottingham?”

“That yes, while she was able to convince me to go to bed, it was only after she had worn me out enough to have passed out on top of her.”

“Getting a little forward with the Diarchy aren’t we May?”

“Hey, when I realized the pillows I was rubbing my face into were of the pony variety, I tried to move, but before I even got an inch off her, Luna pulled me back down on top of her. Which wouldn't have been so bad, if she hadn’t done it while shooting me those same bedroom eyes you were giving me earlier. Which, by the way, could bed you any poor mare or stallion you turn it towards, so please be careful the next time you drop by the palace lest you unwittingly make Celestia into your royal consort.”

“*Snort* Hee hee You… you don’t have to worry about that May, I’ve got no plans to consolidate that particular half of the Equestrian Diarchy under the Sparkle household just yet. Besides,” her eyes suddenly turned a bit downcast as a wistful sigh escaped her lips, “I’m under no such delusion that she’ll ever see me as anything more than her student and friend. Plus, I’ve had my eye on a certain stallion for the past few months that I hope will get his head out of his flanks soon and notice that I’ve been trying to court him.”

“Awww, and here I thought I was the only stallion you had in your life,” he joked heartily as he felt a familiar, cold tightness begin to work its way through his gut. Though, it was mitigated somewhat by the warm blush beginning to work its way across Twilight’s muzzle. “But in all seriousness, I’m glad you finally found a stallion who can drag you out into the sun without there needing to be an incursion from the Everfree or a national crisis happening first.”

“I-It’s… it’s nothing serious! J-just a couple lunch and dinner dates on the weekend,” she excitedly defended, though there was an undertone of slight annoyance and frustration reinforcing her blush.

“But it’s serious to you isn't it?” He teased, causing her cheeks to darken even more as she nodded her head. “So, spill, what’s he like? Is he a massive dork who can recite the works of Summer Sonnet by heart? Or are you sticking with the cliche and longing for the outlandish adventurer who refuses to be tied down by either mare or familial institution?”

“*Snort* S-six of one, half a dozen of the other. Though if we were to look at it like a baker’s dozen, he’d be more seven of one, half a dozen of the other.”

“So less treasure hunting adventurer and more professor out in the field, got it!”

“Yeah he... he’s the smartest stallion I’ve ever met, not counting Starswirl, of course, but that’s only in regards to sorcery and magical theory, which he’s had little to no grounding in growing up. Though the experiential knowledge and the perspective he’s gained from his time before settling in Canterlot is enough to put anything Starswirl has ever come up with to shame!

“Although, let’s just say that there are days I'm grateful my ascension gifted me with earth pony strength, otherwise I doubt I could get him to leave his room whenever I pay him a visit. He can also be just the teensiest bit dense when it comes to picking up on the more subtle cues a mare gives a stallion to show she’s interested.”

“So on a scale of generic harem romance protagonist to Celestia’s flanks, how dense we talkin’?”

“Heh, I remember having to light my horn up one evening when we were walking home from dinner and I swear I saw the glow bending around his head.”

“Ooh, looks like we’re dealing with a Greg Sestero from The Room then. Well, you’re in luck then Twilight! As despite their seemingly willful ignorance to the advances of those around them, these poor saps are just, more often than not, not expecting such affections to be thrown their way in the first place, and aren’t really sure how they should react once made cognizant of them.”

“Tell me about it. We once had a picnic together out on the Western Battery, and I remember giving him every sign I could think of to maybe get a snuggle out of him. *Sigh* But all I got was a scratch behind the ears and a hug at best.”

Okay, there’s being oblivious, then there’s just being willfully negligent, Matthias mused as he listened to Twilight prattle on about her prospective suitor, hoping to offer her whatever insight he might have that could help her snag this inattentive stallion. In spite of the growing unease and dwindling self-confidence he felt whenever somebody he was attracted to came asking him for relationship advice, and the subtle fluttering of some warning flags waving off in the distance.

He muscled through it, however, reminding himself that he had no control over what Twilight or others found attractive. That she wasn’t the kind of pony who’d up and forget about him once she found somebody who’d be able to do right by her. And if helping her find her special somepony could give her back even a tenth of a thousandth of a percent of the light and love she’d brought back to his life. Then he’d gladly offer her what little insight he had when it came to catching your crush’s eye.

“Well, forgive me if this comes off as a bit culturally insensitive, but have you tried just asking him to be your special somepony? I know you’ve all got your rites and rituals when it comes to courting a mare or stallion you fancy, but if he’s really as slow on the uptake as you're letting on. It might be best just to be upfront about it and let him know how you feel about him, rather than risk losing him by sticking to tradition.”

“M-maybe. It’s just…*sigh* Harmony hasn’t been very kind to him over the past year or so. In that short amount of time, he’s lost his mom and dad, his sister; even his closest friends were all snuffed out in a flash of prismatic fire. And yet despite him losing so much, and suffering on his own for Celestia knows how long, he still… smiles,” Twilight tried explaining to him, that look of longing she had shot him before teasingly now gently boring into him, causing Matthias to begin fiddling with the neck of his t-shirt uncomfortably.

“He's trying so hard to stay strong for everypony around him and goes out of his way to try and share his smile with somepony else. Even though there are days it looks like he’s about to buckle beneath the weight of every cruel and awful thing ever done to him, he keeps fighting through it for the sake of the new friends he’s made.

“I just… I just want to be there for him, you know? Show him how much he’s inspired me to be a better pony and do something… anything to see that smile on his face forever and ever. But… but I can’t help feeling that he deserves so much bucking better than me!

“Especially when you stack me up against the some of the other mares I've seen making moves for him. I mean, they're some of kindest, sweetest, and most drop-dead gorgeous ponies I've ever met, and they’re there for him every day and night trying to help him get back on his f-hooves!

“And then there’s me. Some short stacked little bookworm who can barely give him a couple hours of my time a week and the occasional weekend. And even when I can spend time with, I just wind up talking his ear off about some spell I just learned or a new book I found rather than asking how he’s doing or if there’s anything he’d like to do together.

“A-and I *gulp* I don’t think I could live with myself if I wound up hurting him because of some stupid crush! And I don't want to lose him as a friend after all he’s done for me and the ponies I care about the most,” she screamed almost desperately, her eyes begging Matthias for any sort of help or reprieve as she crumbled atop her desk. “And I just know if I try to broach this topic with him he’s gonna freak, and I’ll just wind up being one more bad dream that keeps him up at night.”

Alrighty then, 80% sure you’re talking about me again Twilight, Matthias couldn’t help but think as she continued looking up at him with those big, pleading eyes of hers. The sheer amount of longing and desperation burning beneath her violet gaze causing what little calm he’d been able to stitch back together to spark like a fuse. Ready to ignite the powder kegs full of black doubt and airy hope he’d been fighting all night to keep from going off again.

Oh, sure, while it was entirely within the realm of possibility for Twilight to have met a stallion on one of her many jaunts across the kingdom who had suffered similarly to how he had. Matthias couldn’t help but recall the night Twilight had taken him out on the town for a little curry and some stargazing in the park. And how while they had been making their way back to the castle, Twilight had pulled him close and wrapped her arms around his own, pouring out light from her horn as she fell in next to him. Claiming she was taking him down a less crowded street so as not to overwhelm him after having done so well out in public.

Or the picnic breakfast they had shared together on the west wall of the castle after pulling another all-nighter mapping out the commonalities and divergences in the development of gothic fiction between their worlds. Where Twilight seemed almost desperate for his affection as they watched Celestia raise the sun over the city together.

Then there were the subtler cues that Matthias had picked up on as well. Like how her eyes had stayed locked on to his the entire time she had been pouring her heart out him. Or how with each little quirk and quality she had listed off about what had attracted her to this mystery stallion, the gentle glow glimmering beneath her cheeks would burn that much hotter and shine that much brighter. And how despite her feeling like she wasn’t worth this guy’s time, the shimmer in her eyes had begun to flare up once more, mirroring the look she had been giving him earlier in an attempt to get a rise out of him.

But rather than cracking up again or trying to stifle another one of her nerdy little snorts, she just kept looking up at him from her desk; her ears splayed against the back of her skull while her bottom lip began to quiver uncontrollably. This little mare who was smart enough to have extrapolated the missing half of a thousand-year-old unfinished magical formula requiring both arithmetic and phonetic sequencing. And brave enough to have faced down two mad gods, three separate foreign invasions, and five goddam kaiju without the slightest hesitation was just simply at a loss for how she should approach the stallion she had a crush on.

And the sight of his friend’s frigid and forlorn form was all it took to settle Matthias back down. Forcing him to focus on the ragged state Twilight had been reduced to and how he could possibly unwind his distressed princess, rather than on the signs and tells confirming the biases she had unwittingly planted into him, no matter how appealing he had begun to find such prospects to be.

“W-well first off, don't call your feelings for him stupid,” he assured her softly but sternly, causing her ears to perk back up, and her frame to stop trembling. “Clearly from what you’ve told me, what you’re feeling for him isn’t some school yard crush that you haven’t thought through. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be tearing your mane out over how he might react to your feelings rather than just whether or not he’ll return them.

“Secondly, quit with this whole, ‘he deserves better than me slash I’m not good enough for him’ business. I know that half the kingdom tends to forget it for the sake of convenience or as part of some running gag. But for Cthulhu’s sake, you are the Princess of Fucking Friendship! Trust me when I say, that’s not the kind of title you get as a prize from a box of crackerjacks or by sending in box tops. No, you earned that crown by wanting to connect with others, by wanting to bring the same light into to their lives that your friends brought into yours. And, from what Luna and Tia have told me, by being the same kind and caring little dork that you’ve been since long before you sprouted feathers or grew a castle. Not to mention smart and brave, seeing as Equestria hasn’t been burned to the ground seven times over thanks to you and your friends. So if any little pony deserves a little TLC, it’s you!”

By this point Twilight had managed to pull herself off of her desk, a deep blush two or three shades darker than her coat working its way down from her cheeks and into her neck. And while she had been able to cease in her shaking, her head was still hanging in such a way that it kept her eyes hidden behind her violet bangs, and her recently returned smile was still barely a quiver at the corner of her muzzle.

But Matthias wouldn’t be satisfied until Twilight was beaming again, so he decided to go for broke and add a little heartfelt to the mix, hoping to finally get this mare he cared to bits for back to her usual excitable self:

“And thirdly, while I might not know the exact kind of shit your friend has been put through, I do know that he needs you to be there for him and that the time you spend together with him is more precious to him than you really know.”

“A-and… and how would you know that?” Twilight whispered, still keeping her head hung low enough for her to hide her eyes from him, but Matthias could see that her smile was beginning to worm its way across more and more of her muzzle.”

“Because he’ll have days where he’ll wake up and forget what it’s like to have people who care about him, and he’ll hate himself for it. He’ll hate himself because he knows that there are ponies in his life who want to be there for him, who’ve wasted days, upon weeks, upon months trying to prove to him over and over again that he’s both welcomed and loved. That they’re his friends and all that they want is for him to be happy.

“But it won’t matter to him! He’ll still feel lost and alone and overwhelmed by every fucked up thing he’s had to go through in order to get here, unable to appreciate what he still has or what he’s gained. Which’ll just confirm for him over and over again what he’s already come to fear and dread:

"’That he’s weak.’

“‘That he doesn’t matter.’

"’That he’s simply broken beyond repair.’

"And that sooner or later one of those few ponies that have stuck by him are gonna see just how hopeless trying to fix him really is, and move on with their lives.”

Twilight’s breathing hitched in a startled gasp, but Matthias pressed on, unsure if she had cottoned on to who he was really talking about. Finding himself both unable and unwilling to hold back the tide of near-ecstatic deliverance washing over him as he carried on with his pseudo confessional.

“So he’s going to need somebody like you Twilight! Somebody who treats him like a friend and not something to be pitied. Somebody who’ll waste what little free time she has between being a princess and running a school just to try and help him adjust to a life where it’s okay for him to smile again. Who’ll spend her precious weekends doing nothing but reading with him, talking with him, and scouring the city with him looking for books, pancakes, or some little hole in the wall shop that you know he’s just going to love. So that when you have to go back home, and he’s left all on his own, he’ll have those memories that you two made together to hold him up whenever he starts to forget again, and he starts considering doing something incredibly stupid.”

“M-May?”

“Shit! Sorry, Twi,” he lamented, having gotten too caught up in relieving the fermenting guilt and shame that had been distilling within him for these past few months, if only slightly. Remembering that this was all to help Twilight and not to push his problems on somebody else.

“Now, as to whether or not he feels the same way about you as you do him. You’re going to have to keep in mind that change can be scary for him, considering he’s already lost so much. You’re one of his pillars now Twilight. You’re supporting him through the most trying times in his life, and he’s terrified of doing anything that could hurt you or push you away from him. So I doubt he’d be the one to make the first move should he share the same feelings as you. Hell, as ashamed as he probably is about how… wrong he still feels, even after all you’ve done to try and piece him back together, it wouldn’t surprise me if he feels he isn’t worth your time.”

“H-how could y- he…”

“So considering the high regard in which he holds you, combined with his unstable and often fluctuating sense of self-worth, I see little to no chance of your feelings or affections hurting or pushing him away. Sure, he might be initially shocked at having somepony as… well, as wonderful as you pining for him. And wonder why, with your pick of the stallions, you’d want to go after somepony as... defective as him. But trust me when I say, that if you can somehow convince him that he’s worth it, and can show him that your feelings are genuine, then you will literally make him the happiest stallion alive, and quite possibly fix what’s been broken in him for so long.”

“But… but what if he…?”

“Doesn't feel the same way?” Matthias finished for her, garnering a slow but rigid nod from Twilight.

“It is a possibility,” he warned her gently, causing her to shrink in on herself once again. “However, if he were to turn you down, I doubt it would be because of any perceived flaw you feel you have on your end.”

“Then why wouldn’t he want to… you know?”

Matthias gave her a simple shrug, “Could be he feels he isn’t in a place where he could give you the love and commitment he thinks you deserve. Maybe he’s been so preoccupied balancing whatever it is he does for a living with keeping himself together that he hasn’t put any thought into starting a relationship with somepony and needs time to consider whether or not he’s ready for such a commitment. And then there’s always the possibility that he’s never been in a stable, long-term relationship, and has no idea what he’s supposed to do. Given how oblivious he seems to be to your advances and how a wife or marefriend wasn’t on the list of people you said he’s lost.”

Twilight uncurled herself slightly, though she still kept her arms wrapped snugly around her smaller frame. The warm little hug she was giving herself looking like it was the only thing keeping her from collapsing back on top of her desk. And while it seemed to be working wonders stifling any further shivers trying to rattle her teeth loose. The way her ears fell flat against her mane, and the way her wings had all but sagged to the floor, belied just how much her confidence had begun to wane once again.

“And do you know what all those scenarios have in common?” He asked playfully, hoping to reassure the purple princess as she shook her head slowly.

“They don’t intrinsically exclude the possibility that there may be a time in the future where he is comfortable reciprocating your feelings. Nor do they bank on the fallacious reasoning so many of the romance novels you've given me fall victim to. Seriously, it's like every time a mare tries to court a yak, dragon, or griffon in those stories, it seems like the only reason she refuses to act on her feelings is because she’s working under the, ‘if he doesn't love me then he must hate me,’ dichotomy. When in fact, if one or the other were to admit to the other what they truly felt, then they could both work a good way towards eliminating the sense of cultural isolation and alienation that underpins most interspecies romance narratives.”

Once again Matthias' words seemed to ease Twilight up a bit, having released herself from the hug she’d been holding herself up with about halfway through his explanation. Though she did continue to fiddle about with the sleeve of her purple pajama top, and she still hadn’t been able to bring herself to fully look Matthias in the eye, having to turn her head to the side in an attempt to hide both her blush and her ever widening smile.

“So… realistically speaking, what kind of chances am I looking at here?” she was finally able to ask after several seconds of silence and a few quick run-throughs of the breathing exercise her sister-in-law had taught her.

“If you were to come right out and say it, 5:1 in your favor, if you continue on your current trajectory and keep pussyhoofing around the subject, 5:4, and if you just stay holed up in your room talking to me about it instead of him, no chance in hell.”

“*snort* P-pussyhoofing, seriously?!”

“What can I say? The metaphor was originally made with feet in mind, and there are only so many ways I can adapt human slang into Equestrian before something gets lost in translation,” he explained, only to freeze up when Twilight started shaking violently.

However, his worries were short lived as Twilight all but exploded in a fit of raucous laughter, throwing her head back with such reckless abandon that she damn near fell out of her chair once again. Fortunately, she was able to catch herself before she spilled back onto the floor, though the effort she needed to both keep herself upright and keep belting out her peels of almost bray-like laughter unwittingly put her modest mounds on full display for Matthias as they continued to heave sporadically beneath her top.

But as tantalizing a sight as her now pronounced chest bouncing about without the slightest hint of shame or modesty was, Matthias couldn’t help but be drawn back to Twilight’s flushed and florid face. Watching as streams of hot and happy tears ran rivulets down her cheeks and chin, melting away any remaining tenseness still frosting her muzzle over, the merry visage of his friend having left all her fucks to die in a ditch warming Matthias to his core. Burying whatever conflicting feelings were still stirring within him at having possibly friend-zoned himself in a shallow grave beneath a snug layer of relief and satisfaction at giving this mare he cared to bits for her smile back.

“Hee th- *snort* thanks May. You hee hee you really know just what to say to help pull my head out of my flank.”

“From dating advice to institutional overhauls, I’m your one-stop shop for whenever you need an outsider-looking-in-perspective. But all joking aside, you’ve got this, Twilight. Just be yourself and let him know how you truly feel about him, and hey, even if things don’t turn out as you expect them too. You know I’ve always got a spare shoulder to cry on and a few quarts of salted caramel gelato we can go to town on,” he assured her jovially, reeling back in pure terror when he saw Twilight rush the mirror. Her face seemingly doubling in size as she pressed her plush, purple cheek against the glowing glass, rubbing it in fast, tight circles as if she were trying to push her muzzle through the feed.

It took Matthias a second to work out just what in the actual hell the little madmare was up to, but once the initial shock of her actions had worn off, and he had taken into account how images behave in relation to distance from the mirror. He couldn't help but blush as he realized what Twilight was doing:

She was trying to nuzzle him through the mirror.

It had become his favorite display of affection between him and his friends. Sure it was just a simple rubbing of cheek to cheek or muzzle to neck, but the inherent closeness needed to initiate such an act of intimacy, as well as the feeling of their silken coats and warm breath brushing against his skin was well beyond anything he had ever received or experienced back on Earth. And it never failed to nearly set his face on fire whenever he somehow earned one from the princesses.

Yes, while the effect was somewhat mitigated by the fact that it was his reflection Twilight was nuzzling and not himself. The sentiments behind her actions were in no way diluted by either the distance between them or the medium through which she was trying to communicate her feelings for him.

So with an amused chuckle and a dopey grin spreading across his mug, Matthias moved in to reciprocate the gesture. Pressing the right half of his face against the mirror and closing his eyes, letting the ambient magic flowing off of the glass play across cheek as he tried to reflect Twilight’s motions back onto her.

However, he couldn’t revel in the warm glow radiating from the vanity for too long, seeing as the feed quickly began to take on the same crimson hue from before, followed by a subtle shaking that caused them both to jump away from the glass.

Matthias once again took up the defensive stance that had been drilled into him by both his MANDT training and Starry, ready to literally smack away any more stray bolts of magic that could set his room aflame, before an irritated growl from Twilight caused him to tense up for an entirely different reason altogether.

“Rrrrrrrgh Cunt stunting piece of-!” Twilight snarled out in an annoyed huff as she pressed her horn right onto the glass, channeling the runaway magics directly into her horn before things could get any more out of hand. All but instantly clearing the feed of any excess motion or color. And while Matthias was relieved not to be on fire again, he grew worried when he saw how tightly Twilight had screwed her eyes shut and how hard she was gritting her teeth:

“You alright, Twi? Kinda looks like you pulled something.”

“Y-yeah, I’m… I’m good. Sorry about all that May,” she lamented as she slumped back into her seat, gingerly rubbing at her temples in wide, sweeping circles to try and douse the fires sparking behind her eyes. “I… I didn’t want to risk the structural integrity of the gem or burning away what little mane you’ve still got, and I didn't think I had enough left in me for another dispelling canter.”

“Speaking of which, what iron-hoofed pony was finally able to drum a beat into your skull and which of your friends was generous enough to donate their right hoof to help them do it?”

“Th-That wasn't dancing! It’s a modified meditation ritual Celestia taught me when I was a filly to help me better distribute my magic across my mana centers! And... and... and Luna showed me how, in theory, it could be applied to potentially absorb any projected magic cast in my direction. Then I asked Starlight if she could help me develop and finalize a practical application for the ritual, and she likes having music playing in the background during our weekly spell training regiments.”

“So does this mean I'm gonna have to find somepony to hurl magic your way if I ever hope to get a dance out of you at the Masquerade?”

“T-that depends, are… are you seriously asking me to dance with you?.”

“Of course I am! What kind of sick degenerate gets invited to a soiree and doesn't even offer the girls who brought him a dance?” he answered with barely a trace of doubt or hesitation, shooting her a warm and genuine smile that caused her cheeks to burn slightly, and the mirror to start glowing red once again.

“Ok... why does that keep happening and how is it my fault?”

“Oh for the love of Celestia,” she bemoaned before standing and pressing her horn against the gem on her end. “Bare with me for a second here May. The *grunt* the individual matrices I've woven for the spells that make up the charm’s base enchantments use my connection and feelings towards you as a foundation, and they've been in flux all bucking night.”

“M-meaning what exactly?” Matthias asked cautiously. Unsure where exactly Twilight was going with this.

“*Eep* W-w-well, my *gulp* my feelings towards you have shifted dramatically since I grafted the initial enchantments, and as such, they no longer require as many jewels in order to maintain their effect.” She explained while fidgeting with her sleeve once again, beginning to use her magic to fiddle with whatever was left of the broth that had been boiling in her alembic.

“And… and is that a good thing?”

“A very good thing, they’ve gotten stronger,” she nervously mumbled, the blush on her face nearly matching Matthias' in its intensity.

The silence that settled between the two wasn't really so much awkward as it was necessary. Seeing as the two seemed to have way too much that they wanted to say to one another at the moment but simply lacked the proper means to communicate what it was eating away at them.

“S-so, do you have anything else you want to get off your chest?” Matthias probed after another minute or two of quiet, biting the bullet as it were to try and get Twilight to either confirm or kill the growing suspicions that had been festering within him for the past ten minutes or so.

“C-could we talk about it later? I’ve got some… some things to mull over, and I need to have a talk with a mutual friend of ours to get our houses in order. Plus we still haven’t sussed out what it was that triggered episodes four through seven and how it led to your hand looking like you tried performing a root canal on a timberwolf.”

It can never be a simple yes or no in these stories, Matthias fumed internally. Hoping to get some kind of closure for at least one of the riddles running rampant around the inside of his skull. But he had just gotten Twilight back to baseline, and he wasn't going to pressure her into admitting something based off a hunch and a few degenerate butterflies fluttering about in his stomach.

“*sigh* Well four is easy. After laying on Luna for about ten minutes, I let it slip that I was still spilling spores down my throat.”

Twilight cringed a bit and nodded, remembering a couple heated debates between her and Luna about the risks and benefits to dreamless sleep that had nearly gotten her thrown off the mountain when Luna raised her Royal Canterlot Voice.

“Did she say anything specific that triggered your episode?”

“N-not really. She was just pushing harder than usual to try and get me off the swill and I kinda lost it.”

“How’d you get her to back off?”

“By curling up in the fetal position and shaking like a field of beaten corn.”

“Oh, uh sorry. How bad was it?”

“Like I said, just a minute or two of shaking. Between my first three attacks and the possibility of having to come clean about why it’s so hard for me to sleep at night I… I just got a bit overwhelmed is all.”

“How’d she take it?”

“Heh she felt worse than me afterwards, but it wasn't anything a couple nuzzles and some cuddles couldn't cure.”

“Hee hee You know you're too good to us, right?” Twilight told him between bouts of little warm giggles. Barely able to hold back the small smile forcing its way back onto her muzzle as she remembered how understanding and forgiving her human friend could be when it came to putting up with some of her or Luna’s more eccentric character quirks.

“Hey, as much as you three put up with me, it's the least I can do.”

“We’re your friends May, that means we love each and every part of you. Even the bits that make us worry the nights away and question how far our patience can bend.”

“Love or accept?”

“Yes!” She answered playfully, nearly bursting out laughing again as Matthias turned his darkest shade of red yet, but she managed to keep herself together. Seeing the strained look in his eyes before he turned away in an embarrassed *huff* were all the clues Twilight needed to drop this particular tangent.

"Alright, so Luna freaked out at you for not sleeping naturally and pushed you too hard, which caused you to freak out for fear of divulging something you weren't comfortable sharing with her at the time. Which in turn made her freak out, since she’s so afraid of doing anything that could potentially push you away. Does that just about sum up episode four?”

“Mhmm,” he affirmed with a nod and a small smile, remembering the feel of the downy follicles lining Luna’s cheek caressing his own as they sought to comfort one another after their mutual fuck up. Though Matthias found the thought of Luna being terrified of possibly doing something that could make him not want to be friends with her anymore to be equal parts shocking and understandable given all she’s been through.

“And how much time would you say had passed between that and your previous attack?”

“Had to have been at least two hours.”

“And the time between your fourth and fifth episodes?”

"Forty-five minutes give or take, and you might as well lump numbers five through seven together since as soon I thought I'd settled one; another one would sneak up and pull a Rocky on me,” he drolled dejectedly, once again finding himself barely able to meet Twilight’s lavender gaze.

“Stars above, May!” she exclaimed almost frantically, that kind of time frame and frequency clearly not aligning with whatever theory she’d been patching together. “What could've possibly happened to you in the span of forty-five minutes to unhinge you so badly?”

“...sed me.”

“What was that?”

“She kissed me!”

“May, you're gonna have to speak up so I can-"

“LUNA KISSED ME!”

Twilight jumped a bit from his sudden outburst but settled surprisingly quickly all things considered. “Is that all? But didn't she alre-"

“ON THE LIPS, TWILIGHT!”

“Oh… well, could she have been aiming for your cheek and mi-"

“TWICE!”

Any further attempts at either downplaying or rationalizing their friend’s behavior found themselves lined up against a wall and promptly executed. Seeing as she could find no other way to justify or spin Luna’s actions into something more innocent than it sounded. And as much as she hated herself for making Matthias feel uncomfortable, and for finding his blushing, impassioned stammering absolutely adorable, she knew she needed to keep pressing if she was going to get to the heart of what was disturbing him.

“C-could you give me some more details?”

Matthias was quiet for several seconds; his head hung similarly to how Twilight’s had been while a small shiver ran up and down his larger frame. But before Twilight had a chance to prompt him again, Matthias seemed to find his voice and tried to convey to her what had happened to him:

“I… I had just about passed out again. You know how… how fucking useless I can get after one of my little bitch fits. So Luna lays me down and tucks me in on her lap like I'm a kid who needs his mommy because it’s thundering outside.

“Then she gets it in her head that I'm somehow ‘real’ asleep when I'm laying next to her, so I half-heartedly suggested she come to bed with me and she says yes! Next thing I know I'm hoisting her to her hooves and giving her shit for being able to dish out the parental affection but is unable to take it, and then she plants a big wet one square on my lips!”

“(Go Luna!) And what about the second one?”

“Well after she’d finished having her way with my mouth, she told me to head off to bed and made me promise not to partake in my nightcap. Sure it tastes like I’m pouring dehydrated sweatsocks down my throat and leaves me with a bit of temporal whiplash come morning, but it sure as hell beats waking up in the middle of the night playing in a puddle of my own piss, so I wasn't entirely enthused by the idea. But before I could voice my opinion on the matter, she kisses me again, and… and… thanks me for it! Then she goes all Moon Goddess on me and goes dancing away on a moonbeam before I could say anything!”

“Was it… was it really so awful May?” Twilight asked, the slightest hints of guilt and worry causing her voice to crack.

“N-n-n-n-no, it was… it was *sigh* it was everything I could’ve hoped for,” he admitted with a shy smile and a fierce flush. “Hell, if I weren’t so morally opposed to cliches, hearts would’ve started dancing around my head.”

“Then what's the problem, May?” she said letting out a sigh of relief that did nothing to assuage the guilt still tying knots in her chest.

“I… I can't tell if she's being serious or not!”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that between you constantly taking your clothes off in front of me, Luna’s complete disregard for personal space, and Tia pulling my face into her chest, it’s getting harder and harder for me to tell if you all are teasing me or not!”

“May…”

“Look, I get that it’s fun bringing the human down a peg or two and even I think it’s neat seeing how the colors on my face work now. And… and I know you all mean well by it. And it’s nice knowing there’re at least three mares who don’t find me utterly repulsive and are comfortable enough around me to want to touch me.

“But… but dammit, a lot of what you guys pull on me could be mistaken for some major fucking passes back on Earth. And every time I feel like I’ve finally made peace with the fact that I’m never going to share a bed with somebody again, Celestia nuzzles me in just the right way. Or Luna pulls me in and pecks me on the cheek when I’m freaking out. Or I wake up with you cuddled up in my arms half buried in books, and I start to… hope again.

“And I don’t know if I should act on it or not! You guys are so much more… physical compared to humans when it comes to showing friendly affection, and I don’t want to feel something towards one of you when I know it’s not going to be reciprocated. And yet, a-after everything you’ve all done for me, g-giving me a home, your time, even my stupid fucking dream! I-I just can’t help feeling this way towards you guys!”

“What… what makes you think it’s wrong to have feelings for m- somepony?”

“Because I haven’t earned those feelings from you in return. Because I’ve got nothing to offer you that’s worthwhile. And because what right does an overcooked freak like me have to give or be loved?”

“W-what kind of flankhole told you that nonsense!?” she screamed with an angry flare of her wings, bringing her fists down on her desk hard, but neither noise seemed to have any effect on the downtrodden human.

“...Romulus.”

Twilight’s eyes flashed white at the sound of that infernal name, violet streaks of lighting beginning to arc their way across her body furiously, looking for something, anything, to lash out at as her body began to shake violently. How dare that… that… monster make itself known to Matthias in any way shape or form. Had it not gotten its fill pulling her friend apart and stitching him back together however it liked when he was its prisoner? Now it has the gall to haunt Matthias when he’s finally beginning to break out of his shell.

However, before Twilight could calculate the most efficient means of collapsing 350 acres of the Northern Mountains onto the damned dog’s den and turning the subsequent pile of rubble to glass, she steadied herself. Seeing that Matthias had gone scarily quiet and had somehow shrunk in on himself to the point that Twilight looked positively bulky compared to him, she realized that he needed a friend right now more than Harmonic Retribution:

“He was in the tunnel tonight, wasn’t he?”

Matthias gave her a shaky nod, unable to build a bridge between his mouth and his brain.

“And you fought him?”

Once more he nodded, his right hand beginning to throb painfully as he tried to push back against the guttural laughter echoing in the back of his skull.

“Could you take a step back?”

This request finally caused Matthias to pick his head back up. It’s inherent strangeness and seeming irrelevance to the current flow of the discussion causing him to cock his only eyebrow up at her. But Twilight gave no hint as to her intentions, choosing instead to magic away the various odds and ends she’d piled up on her desk while emptying the now purified solution from her alembic into a vial.

Sure, while in most instances he could piece together what Twilight was on about with just a couple of context clues and a bit of scaffolding from his world’s math and sciences. All he could really suss out from, “step back,” was that the explosion she’d been teasing him with all night was finally on its way. So he pushed away from the desk, the wheels of his souped-up office chair digging into the carpet slightly, making sure to bring any combustible or flammable material with him.

“Thanks, May, I’ll see you in a sec (hopefully),” she promised, the tiniest hints of fear weaving its way into her words as she lit up her horn for the umpteenth time this evening. Though this time around, she seemed far more focused in her efforts. Condensing and molding her magic to the point where the fluted bone sticking out of her mane had turned into a blazing six-inch ethereal spear of pure purple power, the sheer amount of raw jewels she was forcing into her horn seemingly warping the space around her.

However, before Matthias could fully grasp what Twilight was trying to pull off, her image became obscured by a violet opaqueness spreading its way across the enchanted glass in smoky billows mirroring the shades and hues of the light burning atop her head. Wiping away her reflection and leaving nothing but a static pool of seemingly inert arcane energy where his friend had once been. But not for long as the mirror's surface suddenly began to ripple, small waves rolling out from its center as if a stone had been chucked into it, followed by a purple point piercing its way through its liquid-like surface, and the rest of Twilight’s head a couple seconds later.

Matthias could only sit and stare as he watched the Princess of Friendship pull her best Sayako. Pushing and pressing her way through the small 3’x4’ vanity until eventually, one of her purple hands broke through the shimmering surface as well, desperately scrambling to try and find some kind of purchase atop his desk.

Fortunately for Twilight, it didn’t take Matthias long to figure out what it was he was seeing and immediately ran over to try and help her, grabbing her by the hand and bracing his foot against one of his desk drawers. Wanting to pull her out of there before she went the way of Kowalski from the SG-1 premiere.

Unfortunately, Twilight must have been further along than he had initially guessed, so when he gave her a hearty tug to try and get her the rest of the way through, the sudden shift in momentum all but rocketed her out of the mirror, and straight into his diaphragm. His vision going spotted as he made to cushion the fuzzy purple missile as they fell back onto the floor.

“*cough* Ow. You… you alright, Twi?” he asked, slightly winded. Adjusting himself a bit beneath her to keep the little black satchel she had hanging off her hip from digging into his side.

“Y-yeah,” Twilight said with a strained and frustrated grunt, “Sun- uggh, Sunburst and I have been working on retooling Golden Glow’s Gateway to allow for a much broader transmission range. We just… rggh we still haven’t sussed out why we’re losing all our momentum mid journey only for it to then come kick us in the flank once we’re more than halfway through the other side,” she explained, muttering out a quick series of barely audible equations concerning conversion rates as she made herself more comfortable on top of him.

Matthias breathed out a relaxed and relieved sigh. Figuring that if Twilight was well enough to be working out the metaphysics behind why she had nearly eaten shit, then he had no cause for concern.

Though that didn't stop him from wrapping her up in his arms and tucking her head under his chin. Effectively blanketing Twilight in his upper body as he pulled her tightly against him, wanting to be absolutely certain that she was here in his arms and not liberally splattered across the miles of countryside separating Canterlot from Ponyville. Her gentle weight and the bursts of minty breath brushing against his nose melting away at the sudden, though no less intense, fear of having almost lost this mare.

Twilight stiffened some from the unexpected manhandling, but she let out a giddy giggle and a contented sigh when she felt Matthias begin nuzzling the top of her head. Relaxing more and more as she felt his hot breath blow against her horn in longer, more controlled bursts.

But rather than just lay there and let him carry on with pampering her, Twilight chose to scooch herself up his broad frame instead, nuzzling into the crook of his neck while pressing her chest into his, her cheeks turning rosy as she felt his heart rate pick up.

“T-Twilight? What… what are you… why are you-” but whatever he was about to ask died a cold and lonely death on his lips as Twilight snaked her arms around the back of his head and started dragging her fuzzy face further up his cheek. Beginning to run her lips over his ear and bury her snout in his hair once she had fully settled into him:

“Because you’ve earned it,” she told him as she started planting soft kisses atop his head, breathing deeply between each playful peck and giggling each time his rusty red hair brushed against her nostrils.

“Because you give me a new reason to smile each and every time I come to visit you.” She said as she switched over to the right side of his face and began nibbling along the rim of his ear, causing Matthias' breathing to hitch as bolts of pure explosive pleasure shot up and down his body with each errant graze of her teeth.

“And because whenever you hold me close, and I get a chance to touch you, I'm reminded of how much of a strong, caring stallion you are,” she explained before she dipped her face down and latched her lips over his throat. Her tongue lapping away at the worn and scarred skin left by the shackle he had been forced to wear before it glided down a poorly healed crosshatch of cuts and gashes that carved a grisly trail down to his right shoulder. Where she began showering the rows upon rows of rough, jagged tears hidden beneath the loose fabric of his t-shirt with little kisses, swirls of her tongue, and soft loving nibbles.

Somewhere in a distant, less ripped up and on fire corner of Matthias Martin’s mind, a small black and brown Campbell’s Russian Hamster wobbled his way back to his wheel, an ice-pack pressed gingerly against a comically sized lump on his head. The poor dear had clearly seen better days, what with his fur being all matted and stained with coffee (cappuccino because he had a sweet tooth and thought the regular stuff tasted like burnt water) all while looking like he hadn’t gotten a decent night’s rest in over a year.

Still, he was a trooper if nothing else. Having kept Matthias up and running through 357 separate parent-teacher conferences, three different Praxis II exams, and five years of trying to explain to his uncle that grandma really doesn’t remember having that conversation with you five minutes ago so please stop yelling at her goddammit!

However, the tiny ball of manic, Muscovite fury was getting sick and tired of this slamming on the breaks bullshit. Having already been flung headfirst into the wall of the little abstract visual metaphor he called home twice this evening. Swearing under his breath that he was going to take the chew proof water bottle he had full of Grey Goose and break it off in the responsible party’s ass once the Leave Committee approved his personal time.

But until such a time as they could hire a temp to cover his shift, he still had a job to do. So with a bracing *huff* and an extra long swig of his fermented potato water he hefted himself back up into the rusty, lopsided wheel that kept Matthias’ OS spinning and started running. Booting up Martin.EXE and allowing Matthias to register that his best friend and study-buddy was currently grinding herself all over him and lapping him up like he was a bowl of milk.

In the ten seconds it had taken for Matthias to come fully back online, the purple dork had switched from lavishing his shoulder with her tongue and teeth to peppering up and down the side of his neck and chin with flurries of soft kisses and gentle caresses. Alternating between short bursts of downy nuzzles, and long drags and swirls of her tongue. All the while making sure to keep all four foot ten of her pressed against him at all times, using her hands, legs, even her tail to ensure that there wasn't a millimeter of space separating the two.

Meanwhile, Matthias was trying his best not to pass out on the spot, barely able to process what was happening to him under the constant bombardment of Twilight’s tender, loving assault. Partly because he just couldn’t wrap his head around whatever it was he had done to earn this kind of attention from Twilight of all ponies. And because each time he felt like he’d acclimated to whatever affection Twilight was lavishing him with, she’d change tactics or start focusing her efforts somewhere she hadn’t been teasing. Giving his circulatory system no rest or reprieve as it shifted his blood flow from one head to the other each time she’d switch it up.

Fortunately, before Matthias could commit to which of those heads he was willing to let burst in front of Twilight, she finally showed him mercy, but only after she had given him a few more loving nuzzles and two more long licks up and down both of his cheeks.

Picking herself off of him and straddling his chest, she peered down at him with a face so heated and flushed that it looked as if she’d had a bottle of cabernet broken over her head. The light burning behind her striking violet eyes still shining brightly in spite of the all-consuming black spreading out from her dilating pupils. Like the flames of a violet sun bending around the well of a moon crossing its path.

And Matthias couldn’t help but fall into them, the scorching heat staining his face and the near painful hardness threatening to rip right through his boxers and sweatpants temporarily forgotten as he stared up at the flushing, panting mare sitting on top of him.

“*pant* *pant* F-feeling *pant* better, May?” she asked between short, shallow breaths, her tail swishing happily between his legs while her wings began to flex and quiver excitedly.

And as crazy as it sounded, he did feel a hell of a lot better.

As Matthias felt his heart rate finally start to settle and the fire burning beneath his face die down to a smolder, he couldn't help but notice how much more relaxed he now felt. How any lingering feelings of dread and self-loathing had seemingly been flash-fried in the wake of Twilight's little display of affection. Even the soft pressure from her plump thighs squeezing around his ribs and her hands pressing down on his chest acted almost like a thunder vest to further squash his remaining anxiety.

And yes, while somewhere deep within the Danielewski-esque labyrinth hidden inside his skull, Matthias could still hear the faint echoes of his left brain’s hollow, derisive voice screaming at him not to hope for something beyond his reach. While the fleeting whispers of his right brain’s more excitable and shrill ones couldn't help but question if what Twilight had just done to him could be considered friendly, even by pony standards. They were becoming more and more muted against the subtle symphony of burning blood surging between his ears, and his thundering heartbeat slowly rolling off into the distance. It's cadence dropping lower and lower as his breathing slowed to match that of the giggling mare currently sitting on top of him, beaming him a warm, expectant smile.

A smile he couldn’t help but return as he reached a hand up to cup her cheek, his thumb parting the plush fur in gentle strokes that Twilight simply melted into.

“Mhmm,” he affirmed softly and with a faint nod, still unable to fully find his voice as he pulled his friend back down on top of him, wrapping his other arm around her in a warm embrace.

“Good,” she said as she shimmied her way back down onto him, tucking her head back below his chin before rubbing the tip of her muzzle along the crook of his neck in long slow circles.

But rather than riling up Matthias or causing his face to flush further, the motions seemed to unwind and soothe him even more, the heat flaring up beneath his face diffusing with each lazy turn of Twilight’s muzzle. Allowing him the time he needed to collect and compose himself as they continued to bask in the shared warmth their interwoven bodies offered. His hands beginning to trail gently through her mane and across her back.

“Hey… Twi?”

“Yeah?”

“T-thanks.”

“For what?”

“For tearing a hole in space-time just to remind my dumb ass that I've got friends.”

“Hee hee well, you know what the say? Friendship is ma-”

“Don’t ruin the moment dammit,” he pleaded tiredly, clamping his hand over her muzzle. Only for him to jerk it away when he felt her velvety tongue slip out from between her lips and wet his palm.

“Hee hee alright, but I just want you to promise me that if you're ever feeling low again and need somepony to talk to, don't be afraid to call me. After all, I am good for more than just espousing magical theory,” she assured playfully, lifting her head back up to flick her tongue across his lips before rubbing her nose against his.

And while normally Matthias would be doing his best impersonation of a stoplight by this point. He couldn't help but remember the desolate look Twilight had given him earlier while recounting how starved she was for a little affection from the stallion she was pursuing.

So, after considering all that she had just lavished him with, Matthias figured he’d been given the green light to be a bit more physical with his platonic displays of affection towards her. Startling Twilight to no end when instead of blushing or squirming beneath her, he planted a kiss on the tip of her muzzle and then blushed something so fierce it looked like he’d face planted into the side of a freshly painted barn. A barely audible “okay” escaping his lips before turning his head away in shame.

After several seconds of unsettling quiet that made Matthias question if he had upset her, he heard Twilight make a sound she usually only reserved for the times she could convince him to hit the town with her or when he showed her a new app on his phone:

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

But it wasn’t the, “over the top, no fuck’s given, I’m so excited I can’t even deal with this bucking shit right now!" kind of squee he was used to hearing from the purple princess. Instead, it was throttled, as if it were too big to escape out her mouth all at once. Her inability to fully release the joyful noise causing her body to rattle about like fall’s last leaf clinging desperately to its branch.

“M-More, please?!”

And if the saccharine sound of Twilight barely able to contain herself hadn’t thoroughly burnt through the little bit of insulin Matthias had left. Those two words, combined with the gigantic, pleading, purple puppy dog eyes she shot him as she began pawing at his chest all but gave him type-2 diabetes.

Finding his confidence somehow bolstered by her nervous fidgeting, Matthias gave her a small smile before placing another quick kiss on her muzzle, her subsequent *eep* devolving into a breathy moan when she felt the hand combing through her mane begin gently massaging along the base of her scalp and ears.

With her head held firmly in place, Matthias started peppering her face with a flurry of soft, feather-light kisses. Tickling the bridge of her muzzle with brief brushes of his lips till he reached her forehead, planting an extra long peck where her violet coat peeked through her indigo and magenta bangs. Smiling as he felt her nuzzle into his lips to try and possibly milk more out of him before he moved on.

Twilight let out a despondent whine when she felt Matthias pull his lips away from her, only for her breath to hitch and turn somewhat ragged when he brought them back to her cheek. Though this time around, he took a cue from how she had pampered him earlier by adding a swirl of his tongue to the kiss, matting a small circle in the thin coat covering her face before smoothing it out with a nuzzle, causing the mare snuggling on top of him to grunt and pant uncontrollably.

But since Twilight had given him no quarter when she was settling him back down, Matthias wasn’t going to show her any mercy either. Repeating the process of kissing, swirling, and nuzzling across the rest of her cheek before switching over to the right half of her face, but not without licking her across her lips as she’d done to him.

Though he nearly gave himself a stroke from the sheer amount of nerve he had to work up in order to pull it off. And the honest to Cthulhu whinny of joy Twilight made once her shock had worn off, and the warm, teary-eyed smile she gave him before rubbing her cheek into his lips didn’t help either.

Because as often as the princesses would glomp, snuggle, or nibble on him whenever they were excited, happy, or just in the mood; rare was the day where Matthias would initiate the casual contact. Always afraid his affections could be misinterpreted as an advance, and possibly disgust one of the few friends he still had with the thought that their hairless burn victim of a pet had feelings for them. So he tended to fall back on the one kernel of wisdom that seemed to remain consistent across his haphazard love life whenever he needed to feel another’s touch:

Let the girl, or in this case, mare, make the first move.

Which was why in spite of how much Matthias was reveling in the feel of her velvety coat and silken skin playing against his lips and tongue, he kept his ministrations zeroed in and around her neck and face. Mirroring the spots and techniques Twilight had used and focused on rather than explore or experiment, lest Twilight misinterpret this impromptu cuddle puddle as anything more than platonic.

Or at least, that was the plan, until Twilight pulled the collar of his shirt down and buried her muzzle back into his chest. Tickling Matthias with her tongue and teeth as she started suckling on his skin and joining in on the fun again, causing him to chuckle lightly both out of reflex and amusement. Patting the mare on the head and combing through her mane lightly to encourage her.

Though he was a bit disappointed he couldn't keep caressing her cheek, their current positioning making it difficult for him to reciprocate her in any way to match the ardor she was currently showering him with. But before he could mope about it for too long, something big, purple, and floppy bopped Matthias across his nose, causing his face to scrunch involuntarily.

The culprit? One of Twilight’s big fluffy, ears twitching excitedly in front of him.

And he got an idea. An awful idea. Matthias Martin got a wonderful, terrible, awful idea. An idea so wonderful, terrible, and awful that there was no stopping the deep dark chuckles that were bubbling up in his chest from slipping between his lips. Causing Twilight to grow concerned:

“M-May, what’s… what’s wrong? Did I-aaaahhhhh!”

That concern of hers devolving into a drawn-out moan of pleasure when Matthias slipped the tip of her ear into his mouth and gently grasped it in his teeth, nibbling on it so softly and gingerly that it was more of an embrace than a bite. The soft grinding of his teeth across her satin skin racking Twilight’s body in bouts of pure, white-hot pleasure that shot straight into her brain as she continued to shake on top of him.

Wanting to give him more room to work, Twilight tilted her head down, taking in long, deep breaths full of Matthias' scent before beginning to lap at his chest once again. His subsequent blush from the sudden intimacy relatively tame by comparison though he nearly turned as purple as she was when he felt Twilight not only slide her soft palm up and under his shirt but use her magic to lift the back of her shirt up as well. Giving him all the go-ahead he needed to run his hand up and down her bare back.

For the next several minutes the pair just lay there, sinking slowly into the cloud-soft carpet as they continued to caress each other with their lips and cheeks, utterly oblivious to the rather large and comfortable looking bed not two feet away from them, as caught up in the other as they were. They were neither forceful in their explorations, nor was there any urgency behind their movements. Just a mutual and straightforward declaration of the care and affection that they shared for one another. With Twilight spending most of her time on his chest and neck, while Matthias continued to focus his efforts on her lower back and ear. Trailing nips and licks along its edge before he’d bury his nose in her mane and nuzzle her, giving them both a chance to cool off and catch their breath before starting up again.

Noticing how with each of those languid breaths, his nostrils would be flooded in the scent of the lavender body wash Twilight had used while in the shower mixed with the spicy sweat she had worked up from her little dance. And though it was more subdued than the others, he could still pick up the lingering aromas of drying ink and musty parchment that always seemed to cling to Twilight.

A fragrance Matthias had come to associate with the purple nerd over the many months they’d worked together. One he had begun to feel safer and safer around as the days and weeks continued to roll on by, and found himself missing more and more whenever her duties as both a princess and headmistress kept her in Ponyville.

And no matter how hard he tried to convince himself that all this licking, kissing, and cuddling was merely how ponies expressed affection for their closest friends. And that there was probably only a one and a billion chance of Luna or Twilight seeing him as anything more than just a friend and/or novelty.

With each drag of Twilight's tongue and cheek across his chest, and with every subtle shift of her soft breasts as she molded herself on top of him. Matthias couldn't help but be swept away in the upswell of all the lost hopes and feelings he feared he’d never know again:

Assurance...

Acceptance...

...Love

Hell, just entertaining the idea that the mare on top of him might really have feelings for him, and that he could return and reciprocate those feelings without fear of retaliation, was enough to set his heart ablaze. Its incandescent beats drawing in droves of those damnable butterflies to his chest, the collective flurry of their fiery wings promptly searing him to the bone.

Oh sure, the fact that Twilight was after a stallion, and that these budding feelings of his were mostly his own wishful thinking, went a long way towards keeping either of his heads from getting too big. But dammit if the little fires she'd been setting with her kind words and soft touches weren't lighting him up from the inside out.

And when you combined all that with the tender heat still clinging to Twilight's coat from both her shower and her deepening blush, it left Matthias feeling rather warm and toasty lying beneath her. Like he’d been wrapped up in the snuggliest, most adorkable little electric blanket ever made. One he swore kept getting warmer and warmer the more he pet and loved on her, causing him to idly wonder how much more she could take before her coat caught fire as he chuckled to himself lightly.

And that was when a stray spark of her magic hit him upside the nose.

Matthias' eyes snapped open at the strange, fizzing sensation now pouring across his skin and the subtle smell of smoke beginning to fill the air. Panicking slightly at the thought of his idle musings suddenly becoming a reality, but he relaxed when he saw that Twilight had simply begun enveloping them both in her magic’s magenta glow.

It had just become another one of the little rituals and routines they had fallen into over the many months they’d been working and hanging out together. Whenever Twilight would come to visit him, whether it was to teach his and Luna’s biweekly Life in Modern Equestria seminar or just to pal around with him on the weekend. The first thing she would do after hugging and nuzzling the ever-loving shit out of him was try and touch him with her magic.

He wasn't exactly sure why she kept at it though. Sure, once upon a time she claimed it was to help her get a better understanding of his metaphysical makeup and study the behavior of mana when it came into contact with matter exotic to this reality. But after the seventh or so attempt deflected off of him and nearly broke her muzzle, she must have taken it personally. As ever since then there wouldn't be a lesson, play date, or research session that wouldn't start off with her pouring every bit of power she had into him.

Granted she'd come a long way from her first few attempts; now she was at least able to keep her magic from dissipating when it touched his skin, but not once had she ever been able to get a spell to stick to him.

Something Matthias was secretly grateful for at first, not having fully grasped the concept of ‘magic’ as the ponies defined it at the time, and having seen her do things with her horn that demonstrated handily how the laws of physics were her bitch. However, as the weeks and months went on by, and her determination and frustration mounted, he found himself cheering Twilight on more and more. Finding her stubborn tenacity and drive absolutely endearing, and the pitiful state she’d be reduced to each time she failed heartbreaking to no end.

So Matthias made ready to move out from beneath her, believing she’d want to sit in his lap and have him hold her hands like he always did whenever she performed one of her little magical check-ups. But as soon as he tried to shift out from under her, he felt Twilight tighten her grip on him, her tail and wings wrapping around him while she balled her fists into his shirt, forcing him to stay in place:

“N-no, please, don't… don't move! I *grunt* I'm almost there, I just… just don't let me go, okay?! We’ve *rgggh* we've never been this close before, and… and I never want to be so far from you again! So… so just for tonight, could *gulp* could you hold me like I was Luna, please?!” she pleaded, looking up at him with a strained, teary-eyed smile.

A smile which left Matthias at a complete loss for words. Of course, that didn't stop an entire regiment’s worth of red flags from being raised, “WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?!” emblazoned in big, bold letters that fluttered on the winds whipped up from the thousands of new questions swirling around inside his head. Chief among them, “What does she mean ‘hold me like I was Luna?’” and “how can she think we’re not close?”

Sure, when it came to all the hugging and the kissing and the nibbling he’d come to expect from the princesses, Twilight was a lot more reserved compared to Luna or Celestia. And she also tended to be a bit more… professional with him, even when it was just the two of them in his room reading or talking together.

But could he really blame her? After all, he was only one sunburn away from looking like Gregor Clegane and had all the mental stability of Jessie Spano on caffeine pills, so he understood why she’d want to keep him at arm's length. Which was why he’d been so caught off guard by all the faux-dirty talk and borderline foreplay they’d been engaging in for the last half hour or so.

So… so by closer, does she mean that she wants me to what? Drop a couple of the formalities and open up to her more? Hug her first and maybe not hesitate as much on the return nuzzle?

Prospects Matthias would normally be all for, given how cute he found Twilight, both inside and out. Plus, he was always looking for fresh new ways he could make her smile, but it was how she had phrased that desire for greater intimacy with him which was causing Matthias to pause:

Hold me like I was Luna

She wasn’t just asking him to trust her more, nor was she asking him not to be so touch-shy with her. No, this was Twilight asking Matthias to treat her like he treated Luna.

Which, while on paper, didn’t seem like too strange a request. Twilight seeing the dynamic he had with Luna and wanting her relationship with him to be more like that.

But he had nearly broken his hand trying to figure out what exactly his relationship with the Princess of the Night was now, and there was a particular charge to Twilight’s plea that once again evoked how Luna pleaded with him to forswear his draught and let her join him in his bed.

Seriously Twilight, are you after a stallion or not?

Now, he didn't want to think of himself as a narcissist, that every hug or nuzzle a mare or stallion gave him was them making a pass at him. But what else was he supposed to think after ten minutes of heavy petting and cuddling brought about by pouring his heart out to Twilight about his fears concerning the implications of Luna kissing him? It also didn't help that said petting and cuddling had left him harder than Give Me God of War mode, so he found it almost impossible to keep certain kinds of questions from popping up inside his head:

Is she really interested in me or am I a fallback if the stallion doesn't go for her?

Is she making a move on me because she doesn't think Luna’s interested or does she not care?

How can I possibly give Twilight what she wants without hurting Lu-

“...Please?!”

Fortunately, before that train of thought could pick up too much momentum, it got derailed by Twilight's labored beseeching.

Looking down at his friend, Matthias saw that her smile had begun to falter. Whether it was from the strain of maintaining her current mana output, or the silence that had fallen between them, he wasn’t quite sure. But when he saw the tears that had been pooling in her eyes begin to run down her cheeks, he was definitely sure of one thing:

He had to nut up and fix this.

Scooping Twilight up in his arms, he pulled her further up onto him so that their faces were mere millimeters apart. Their hot breaths mingling momentarily before he started nuzzling up and down her cheeks, wiping away the trails of tears falling from her eyes and replacing them with trails of little kisses that led down to the corners of her mouth. Causing Twilight to giggle and coo adorably with each pass of his lips across her muzzle, until she felt Matthias cup her cheeks and guide her face up so that she was looking him right in the eye. The feel of his thumbs gently massaging below her eyes almost enough for her to lose her hold on her magic.

“Y-you know, it *gulp* it doesn’t just have to be for tonight, right?” he managed to choke out, causing Twilight to blink in confusion before she realized what it was he was saying, her smile and blush returning in full as she started nuzzling into his hand:

“Thank you, May,” she sighed happily, planting a few wet kisses into his palm before laying herself back on him, rubbing her cheek into his before refocusing her efforts back on her magic.

Once again Matthias could feel Twilight’s power pouring over him, like he was being submerged in a tub full of hot, carbonated water. Laughing airily as he felt streams of her aura dip under his shirt and break against his skin, only for each shattered wave to be immediately replaced by another surge of her magic, but he kept his chuckles and movements to a minimum. Not wanting to break Twilight's concentration, seeing as her contented smile had already been replaced by a pained grimace as she desperately tried to push her magic into him.

Of course, that didn't mean he was going to forget his promise to be more affectionate with her either as he slid a hand beneath her shirt. Once again beginning to trace his nails across her back while the other moved up to scratch along the back of her scalp and ears, occasionally massaging and fiddling with the one he couldn't kiss or nibble on. All while taking care so as not to accidentally brush against her horn or wings, lest he really distract her.

And between each loving nuzzle and nibble Matthias would whisper little words of encouragement to her. Assuring Twilight whenever he’d hear her start to whimper, praising her each time she’d push through the pain. And holding her that much tighter whenever he felt her begin to shake from both the strain of her efforts and the pleasure from his ministrations. Her shaky breath tickling the rim of his unmelted ear.

-zzz-ease... -zzzzz-rk!

And then he heard somebody new start talking in his head:

Ple-zzzzz... zzzzz nev-zzzz -zzen so op-zzzzzz me, you even ki-zzzzz me! So, why zzzzzz wor-zzzz?

The voice reminded Matthias vaguely of Twilight’s, vaguely because it sounded like she was trying to talk to him through a radio that was going through a tunnel. But surely it couldn’t have been hers. After all, the mare in question had her muzzle all but shoved into his ear, and all he could hear passing through her lips was her labored breathing.

Cozzzz zn! Work for zzzzzz’s zzzzake!

But at the same time, it wasn’t like the usual cavalcade of lost loved ones and bad dreams that started storming the gates whenever his emotions ran too high. As the words he could make out seemed to be more pleading than taunting, and they had that subtle sprinkling of Sparkle salt that no amount of anxiety or mania could ever hope to replicate.

Co-zzzzzzzzzzzz-me on. I can zzzzzz, I have to zzzzzzz!

And with each burst of static blaring inside his skull, spikes of pure desperation and longing would stab straight into his brain. Tearing meaty gashes into the thin membrane of calm and composure he’d managed to scrape back together, giving his mounting panic and confusion plenty of holes to bleed out of.

Why zzzzzzzzzzz-el you May? Why can’t I ma-zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz letting me in, you’re not afraid to touch zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz being so brave for me zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-ucking ovaries zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz how I feel?

And then the Twilight on top of him started planting nuzzles and kisses along his ear and neck again, her arms worming their way around his back and pulling him into a fierce hug, the desperation and longing saturating him burning away in a molten flood of pure joy and compassion, and… and...

And Matthias finally got it; Twilight had done it! She had connected to him! These were her thoughts he was hearing, her feelings he was feeling. But it seemed to be a one-way street, as her garbled words and continued affections indicated she hadn't cottoned on to how disorienting or how uncomfortable the whole ordeal was making him.

You're zzzzzzzzzzzzing! You're the kind- zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzring stallion I've ever zzzzzzzzzzzz flying buck about zzzzzzzzzzz -cess and aren’t zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz much of a spaz I can be. You just zzzzzzzz… me! And you help me zzzzzzzzzzzzz And zzzzzzzzzzzzzzserve somepony who’ll zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz feel every second of every day. So please, ju- zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz you can hear me!

And yet somehow, someway, amidst the flood of foreign feelings accelerating his growing unease and terror, Matthias was still able to process and contextualize Twilight’s mangled words:

Twilight was desperate for this to work.

And that whatever feelings were pushing her to nearly fracture her horn went well beyond scientific inquiry.

Putting his gentle petting and caressing on hold, Matthias started hugging her back just as fiercely as she'd been holding onto him. The sudden intensity of the pressure now enveloping her causing Twilight to pause in her efforts.

And in that moment of clarity, where Matthias could only recognize his own feelings whirling around inside his head, he focused his thoughts on the silvery sparks of anticipation he’d feel whenever he knew Twilight was coming to see him. The welcoming warmth from every little hug and nuzzle she’d ever given him. The airy excitement that would burn within him when she proposed a joint project for them to work on together. The fireworks of sheer pride and joy that would explode in his chest whenever their experiments or discussions bore fruit. And the simple calming stillness that fell upon him when he was in the presence of one who was not just his friend, but one who was cut from the same manic cloth as he was.

Refining and crystallizing this upswell of feelings that Twilight evoked in him around one simple word:

Yes

And Twilight screamed.

Twilight screamed a long, horrible, throat-tearing shriek that bore straight into Matthias' soul, and right into his ear. Fire and agony scorched every nerve down from the soles of his feet all the way up to his scalp as her magic lashed out uncontrollably and struck him across the eyes. The pain only mitigating when Twilight desperately flung herself off of him, though it was a short-lived reprieve, as she landed on his mangled right hand in her escape.

Forcing an agonized shout out of Matthias as he lost what little bearings he’d found amidst the searing echoes still burning throughout his nervous system and her near deafening scream still ringing in his ears.

But as the dull throbbing blooming in his hand finally began to die down, and the dots and squiggles blinding him finally started to settle. Matthias was greeted with a sight that wounded him far deeper than anything his coping or a botched spell could ever hope to come close to.

That being Twilight clutching frantically at her horn as she curled herself up in a ball next to him. Pathetically shaking as pained tears poured from her eyes as she whimpered uncontrollably on the ground. Instantly quenching whatever confusion and fury he felt from having his emotions wrenched from him as he scooched over to try and help her.

“Twi, talk to me, what happened?!” he asked her as he scooped her up and sat her on his lap, rocking her back and forth gently.

“Em… empathetic f-f-f-feedback. Don't *grunt* don't worry; it'll pass in a sec.” she managed to choke out through gritted teeth, offering him a strained smile as she rubbed her cheek into his chest.

“Anything I can do to help?” he offered, relieved that it wasn’t his attempt at answering her that had brought her to this state, but at the same time, he was disappointed that she hadn’t been able to feel him like he had felt her.

“Just… just hold onto me, okay?”

Matthias nodded, planting a couple more kisses on her forehead before trailing them up to her crown, hoping to offer her some modicum of comfort as her breathing became less labored and more controlled. Though she still felt a bit too warm for his liking and he wondered if he should maybe take her out onto the balcony for a spell so she could cool off.

Fortunately, he wouldn’t have to go too far to help her with that. As from his now upright position he could see that his impromptu ice-pack had landed within arm’s length of him after Twilight’s dynamic entry; promptly picking it up so he could start dabbing it across her forehead. Causing Twilight to shiver and sigh happily as layers upon layers of pain and tension seemed to be wiped away with each soft stroke of the chilled cloth.

“Hmmmmmm Thanks May, that feels wonderful,” she sleepily whispered as she wrapped a wing around Matthias' back and pulled them closer to each other.

“Can’t have my favorite egghead cracking on me here now can I?” he joked softly before picking up her hand and planting a quick kiss between each of her fingers. Blushing warmly when he felt those fingers wrap around his in return.

“Hehe, You really are too good to me.”

“If that were the case, you wouldn't have had to nearly blow your horn off trying to make me realize how much me holding back was hurting you,” he sighed dejectedly, only to perk back up when he felt a purple palm cup his cheek.

“Don’t be like that, May. As equine as you appear and act, I constantly need to remind myself that you are your own unique entity who has views and feelings towards friendship and intimacy that can vary greatly from our own.” She assured him with a soft kiss and a nuzzle on his cheek.

“I mean, it’s no wonder Luna’s got you so shaken up when you haven't the grounding to tell when a mare’s being friendly with you or flirting with you. *sigh* And here I was freaking out because I was equating our lack of physical contact as you seeing me as less of a friend than Luna or Celestia,” she confessed, suddenly turning downcast. But as much as Matthias would've liked some answers concerning Luna’s antics, he had worked too hard tonight getting Twilight’s smile back to let her start beating herself up again.

“Hey, I'm just as guilty of it too," he assured her with a tussle of her mane, "I can't just assume that every mare who cuddles me is telling me to come hither. Nor should I expect ponies to react the same way to acts of friendly affection as humans would. I was just… scared, you know? I’ve… I’ve lost a lot of friends who thought I was coming onto them and viceversa, and I didn’t want to risk the same happening to you or the others.”

“Because we’re your pillars right?” she said shooting him a knowing, yet gentle smile before pulling him into another hug, her arms wrapping around his neck as she began nuzzling under his chin.

“Heh was I that obvious?” he downplayed sheepishly, causing Twilight to chuckle.

“You may be many things May: kind, smart, a righteous pain in the flank, but subtle is not one of them,” Twilight teased, shivering when she felt his tongue trail up her cheek.

“Yeah, well I'm sorry I put you through that, and I promise to start showing you a little more love from now on,” he swore as he began drying her cheek with his, turning Twilight into a giddy puddle of pony as she felt his hand comb through her mane.

But her delight petered out quickly upon spying the state of the hand he was using to caress her. The sight of the inflammation painting the skin across his knuckles and the torn scabbing from where she had landed on him causing her to wince as bundles of mirror neurons began exploding throughout her right hand.

Almost by instinct, mana began coalescing in her horn, forming around the matrix of a basic first-aid and pain dampening spell. But as was the case with most of her magic, as soon as she tried projecting it onto Matthias, it unraveled like a roll of wet toilet paper, the rebound of the failed spell flicking her across her nose.

“Ow, dammit!”

“You know, one of the definitions of insanity back on Earth is doing the same thing over and over again expecting a different result.”

Twilight shot him a challenging glare before wiggling out of his arms and sitting herself up on the floor in front of him. Gingerly grasping his mangled hand in hers, the fire behind her eyes dying down to cinders as she once again took in the damage his anxieties had wreaked upon him.

“Like I said Twi, it’s okay, it looks a lot worse than it fe-AHHAHH!?”

Whatever assurances Matthias was trying to give to Twilight were cut off when the mare began pampering the split running along his fingers with her lips and muzzle. Planting kiss after kiss between and across each of his knuckles before dragging her tongue back along the gash. Repeating the process several times over until the site of the injury shone with a warm sheen that sparkled in the flickering candlelight.

And all the while, Twilight made sure to keep her eyes trained on his. Her gaze never wavering with each pass of her tongue, care and regret flaring up with each wince and gasp that she tore out of him.

Yet in spite of the spikes of dull pain shooting through his hand with each flick of her tongue, Matthias found the stinging heat diffusing into balmy chill utterly soothing and calming. Like his mother kissing his skinned knees and elbows every time he fell while she was teaching him to ride a bike on his own.

“Even so, as your teacher, I should have better prepared you for this eventuality,” Twilight told him between licks and kisses, hints of guilt still marring her muzzle. “I should have given you more to go on other than just what not to touch on a pony.”

Raising his hand up into the light, she gave the wound one last once-over and kiss before reaching down into her bag, pulling out the vial of brew she’d been boiling on her end of the mirror and a roll of silver cloth bandage. Using her magic to meet out the fabric, she tore off enough to fashion a proper wrap for his hand, making sure to evenly douse the length of cloth with the medicine she had made before tying it around his hand. Ensuring that it was not only tight enough to not come undone but loose enough to give his hand room to breathe and flex comfortably.

“How does that feel?”

“Like a second skin, thanks,” he told her, wiggling his fingers in front of her, marveling at how he could barely feel either the bandage or the pain. “What was in that stuff?”

“Hee hee just a little White Convulsana, no better naturally-occurring anti-inflammatory out there.”

“And pony spit. Lots and lots of purple pony spit,” Matthias teased while beginning to scratch behind her ear, causing Twilight to simultaneously puff up and deflate before leaning into his hand.

“You wouldn’t have needed it if Luna had stuck to the bucking schedule!”

“What was that?”

“I said Luna was right! Your interactions with the base magics of the realm have become less discordant, so she might actually be able to enter your dreams tonight. Though given how much time you two spend together, I shouldn’t be surprised.” Twilight blurted out quickly, going from excitable to forlorn in a near instant as she brought a hand up to her horn and began running her fingers along the fluted spire.

“But why now? What’s changed so that yours and Luna’s magic can now touch me?” he asked, hoping a dip in some academia would brighten her back up.

“I can’t know for certain without running the specific tests. I mean, it could be something as simple as a subtle shift in your chromosomal alignment, or as abstract as your quamanun signature better ma… Wait!? What do you mean ‘yours?!’”

“Heh You really couldn’t hear me, could you?”

“H-hear what?”

“Me trying to tell you ‘yes,’ when you ‘asked’ if I could hear you,” he explained, throwing up some air quotes around asked.

“Wait wait wait wait wait. You… you felt me?! You heard me?!”

“Would be kinda hard for me to admit to not having the ovaries to do something… Actually, it would be kinda easy considering -ACK!

Matthias' teasing tangent was promptly interrupted when he felt Twilight smush his cheeks together, effectively shutting him up and holding his head in place as she began scrutinizing his face. Looking for any hint that he may be funning her or that he was just yanking her chain.

“What… what did you hear?” she cautiously asked, the realization that she had succeeded slowly crashing into her.

“It was a bit of a jumbled mess, but I could hear stuff about me kissing you, how you needed the spell to work, *cough* a bunch of really nice things about me, and then you asked me to let you know if I could hear you.”

“An… anything else?”

“Yeah, it was like... it was like every time the words would pour into me, the feelings behind them would pour in as well.”

“And what did you feel?”

“Frustration, want, and… and something a lot more intense,” he confessed with a blush, unwilling to put a name to that particular feeling, as he was unsure where Twilight’s sentiments ended, and his began. “And then when that feedback thing hit you, it felt like somebody was fracking my bones with molten lead.”

The blush and wonder that had been creeping across Twilight’s muzzle suddenly paled as she realized what it was he was describing. “No... no no no no, an empathy link is a two-way street! It literally allows ponies to experience what the other is feeling, so I should have been able to connect with you too! But, the sensations and sentiments you described are most certainly what was going through my head at the time, and the likelihood of our individual thoughts and feelings aligning to such a degree naturally would be as statistically improbable as the stars falling into their scheduled formations every night for a week without Luna’s guidance! So why’d the loop happen? Empathic feedback should only occur when one, or more ponies in the link is either emotionally distressed or being for-”

Some kind of black realization must have smacked Twilight across the muzzle hard as her diatribe came to a screeching halt. Her head dropping into her hand as she slowly shook her head back and forth, a few wry chuckles slipping from her lips, “Heh, so… so not only did I botch the spell completely, but I was so caught up in making it work that I couldn’t even see that I was hurting you again.”

Wait, again? Matthias thought, the sudden shift from metaphysical inquiry to perceived offense nearly throwing the hamster off his wheel for a fourth time as he tried desperately to piece together the when and the how of this other supposed injury:

Not asking me how my day was?

Making me talk about my freakouts?

The mirror almost blowing up?

The mirror almost blowing up again?

Not telling me abo-

“And once again, instead of asking you if you’re hurt or alright, I’m more concerned about why the link didn’t fully establish as per bucking usual! Seriously, some Princess of Friendship I am, right?” Twilight snarked with a bleak chuckle, pulling Matthias out of his head and bringing him back to the here and now.

And in the here and now, Twilight had once again begun working herself into a tizzy.

Fortunately, she wasn’t at the full-blown hyperventilating phase just yet, and he could neither confirm nor deny that the little shivers he saw shooting up and down her body were from the open patio door or not. But in a way, that could be just as scary, if not more. Because as frantic as the mare could get when overworked or overwhelmed, she could fall just as hard and far if her best-laid plans went astray, or if she believed she’d fucked up something beyond salvaging. Often times reducing her to a tiny purple ball of despondent self-loathing that no amount of encouragement or pep from her friends could uncurl or pull out from under the covers.

Of course, he couldn’t really fault Twilight for feeling so distraught. After all, this particular fuck up played into a deep-seeded hang-up of hers that seemed to have been haunting her since the early days of their friendship, and not something erroneous like the topic for the third Wednesday of next month’s study session.

But really, in the grand scheme of things, the only lasting injury he’d accrued from her tonight was when she rolled onto his hand, and even then the treatment she’d given him afterward had left him feeling calmer and more collected than he’d been all evening.

More importantly, however, and what Twilight failed to realize in her current state of self-pity, was that she’d finally done it. She had successfully managed to get a spell to stick to him. Through her antics and affections, Twilight had bridged a gap he hadn’t even known existed between them, and he’d be damned if he was just going to let her run back across that gap and burn the bridge down because she thought she’d hurt him.

So with that simple goal in mind, Matthias slowly pushed himself back onto his feet and began tiptoeing his way over to her. Making sure not to come at her too suddenly lest he startle her in the wrong way. But lucky for him, Twilight was too preoccupied with her wallowing to notice his approach. Only stirring when she felt the lights dim from his massive shadow falling over her.

“M-May? What… what are doing?” Twilight asked somewhat tremulously as all five foot six of Matthias bore down on her. His face, which was barely readable by pony standards as it was, bearing all the expressiveness of a worn away granite shelf ready to collapse onto her.

Though not even the most socially inept little horse man could mistake the impish smirk cracking at the corner of his lips as he lunged at her, one arm hooking under her legs while the other swung around her back just below where her wings slid through her pajama top. Once secured in his arms, Matthias promptly plucked Twilight up off the floor and hoisted her up bridal style, the sudden shift in her center of gravity pulling a surprised squeak out of the Princess of Friendship as she wrapped her arms around his neck for support.

"Pulling your head out of your ass again,” he said matter of factly before he started tickling the ever loving fuck out of her.

Peels of high pitched laughter exploded from Twilight’s chest as she felt his fingers dig in behind her knee and below her ribs. All thoughts of how she had bucked up jumping ship as she tried to wriggle out from his grasp. But between the angle he was holding her at, and the fact that she weighed all of 90 pounds soaking wet, there was little she could do besides squirm uselessly within his grasp.

Oh sure, it was entirely within the realm of reason for her to call upon her reserves of Earth Pony constitution and wrest herself free from him. However, she chose to hold back, since calling upon it bore the risk of actually hurting him, given the rate at which her muscles were already spasming beneath his attack. And if she was being 100% honest with herself, she really didn’t want him to stop. Much preferring the silvery shocks of childish glee shooting through her body and the giddy lightheadedness she was now swimming in to the feelings of crushing guilt and disgust that she’d been drowning in not even a minute ago.

Doubly so when she felt Matthias bring his lips back down to her and start planting kisses up and down her muzzle; adding in an additional layer of heat to the blush already burning beneath her face as she let herself simply get lost in the waves of airy mirth tossing her about like a ship in a storm. The dance of his fingers running across her body and the contractions of her diaphragm with each burst of foalish laughter the only things she allowed herself to feel.

In fact, she was so caught up in how expertly Matthias was playing her that she didn't even notice that he had moved them over to his bed and had sat them both down until well after he had begun to let up on his attack. Finally able to recognize the feel of the plush, navy blue comforter he slept under brushing against her tail and wings now that he had given her a chance to catch her breath and gain her bearings.

“You feeling better now, Twi?” she heard Matthias whisper happily down to her in a tone mirroring the one she had used while helping him earlier. The barest hints of caramel and cinnamon tickling against her nose as she felt his warm breath fall over her, and a soft hand begin wiping away at the hot tears staining her face. Revealing her friend smiling down at her with a grin equal parts heartfelt and shit-eating once he had finished drying her eyes.

A smile that any other night would’ve gotten him a playful punch in the pec for whatever smart-ass comment had proceeded it. Although tonight, all it succeeded in doing was fucktupling the depth of Twilight’s blush, dyeing the violet alicorn nearly as dark as her mane as she gave him a shaky nod. Her turn to lose track of her voice now as she tried to turn away in an attempt to save face, only for the hand that had been caressing her cheek to block her escape.

“Good,” he said while leaning down and licking Twilight across her lips again. Effectively double-tapping any lingering thoughts of dread or guilt still eating at her before he began rubbing small circles across her belly. His blush returning full force when the mare in his lap gripped his hand and guided it below her shirt and across her taut tummy, her thin coat the only thing separating them now.

“Hmmmmm I could get used to this cuddlier side of you May,” Twilight cooed contently beneath his tender touch as she rubbed her cheek lazily into his lower abdomen.

“Hey, I've always been willing to cuddle. I just wasn't sure what was off limits, or if you even wanted me to touch you more,” Matthias tried explaining. The colors on his face evening out as he started twirling a finger around her fuzzy little navel. “But after you literally bore your fucking soul to me like that, I’d have to be brain dead not to give you what we both want.”

“Hee hee I'm just heh I’m just so happy that you felt me,” she softly cheered between the little chuckles his ticklish touches were pulling from her. “I just wish I could have felt you too, and that you didn’t have to suffer through the feedback loop with me.”

“Meh, once we finish clearing Cliff of everything he's got, we can spend the rest of the weekend trying to make it stick properly if you want.”

“R-really?! You’d really risk going through all that again?!” Twilight asked incredulously while trying to sit back up. Only for Matthias to prod a finger into her muzzle and push her back down.

“Yes, really! Like I said, it shouldn’t have taken you nearly flash-frying our nerves for me to realize how important this was for you. And hey, now that I know what's going on and what to expect, maybe I’ll be able to actually help you with it, instead of mucking it up.”

“And… and if it still doesn’t work, or if I hurt you again?”

“Then I’ll just hold you close and remind you over and over again how you’re one of the best friends I’ve ever had across two worlds, and do whatever it takes to show you what you mean to me,” he detailed with a shrug of his shoulder and another kiss on her cheek.

“You… you promise?” she asked shyly and with her darkest blush yet.

“I… I think I can manage that, so long as you promise to help me with a little side project I’ve been working on for the past month or so.”

“Of course I will!” she affirmed excitedly as she rolled off his lap, being careful not to brush against his hand again as she sat up to face him, her tail swishing back and forth excitedly in anticipation. “So, what did you have in mind? Is it strictly research this time or did you find another gaping hole in the Equestrian Education system that could be filled in with another bit of Terran ingenuity?”

“Heheh, sorry, still haven’t quite recovered from the Dewey Decimal debacle for anything too earth-shattering just yet. No, I was just thinking about getting a few of the books in my library transcribed and distributed. You know, maybe give you and some of your more literarily inclined students a chance to read something they would’ve never had a chance to read before.”

“Oh, uh that shouldn’t be too much of a hassle,” she said, deflating somewhat at the sound of such a simple venture, though she couldn't help but smile as she saw the teacher in him start to shine through. “Most of the books we’ve collected so far are still widely available through various anthologies and omnibuses. But there's been a push by the EEA over the last decade or so to emphasize a more Post-Unification, Heliocentric narrative within the classroom, which has led to a dearth in publishers willing to distribute materials which don't align with their standards. So we’ll probably want to focus on literature and histories that predate both Celestia’s first raising and the founding of the Trinitatis so we can highlight the individual accomplishments and contributions each tribe has brou… W-what’s so funny May?”

“It’s… heheh… it’s... heh... it’s just fucking fantastic!” He managed to choke out between chuckles as he slung an arm around her shoulder. “Here I am trying to set up the big reveal for your present, and in all of 30 seconds, you’ve not only managed to use it to shit all over the EEA, but you're already developing it into a system to scaffold the core foundations of your students’ cultural and societal identities!”

“Well, if I don’t insult those jingoistic flanks at least three times a day, I risk dulling my newly honed trash talking skills. And as headmistress, I always need to find ways to maximize the learning opportunities for my students. But how exactly is donating your books to the school a present to me? I mean, I appreciate you giving the kids the opportunity to study stories and philosophies that have been lost to time and politics, but I’ve probably read, re-read, and written compendiums and criticisms on at least 95% of the books in your library. And I can always come visit you should I need to examine them again, so why would I need my own copy of your collection?”

“Hehe, trust me Twi, I can personally guarantee that these are books the likes of which you nor anypony in Equestria has ever seen before!” He assured her while pulling his phone out of his pocket. Fiddling with a small flap Twilight had never noticed before on the top of the device before pulling out a small… something and holding it up between his thumb and index finger.

“Think fast!” he warned Twilight before softly underhanding the little whatever it was at her, forcing Twilight to reel back a bit as the tiny object bounced off her chest and dropped into her cupped hands.

Once the initial shock of being pelted with terran tech had worn off, and after shooting Matthias a bemused glare, she was finally able to take stock of the little black… thing that had fallen into her hands.

And sweet Celestia above was it tiny. Like, barely bigger than her pinky nail tiny, and made of a material similar to the outer shell of Matthias' phone, which made Twilight question if there might be something hidden inside it as well. Given the thin strips of what looked like gold sticking out of one end of it and the little 256GB seemingly etched into its side. But try as Twilight might, she just couldn’t picture what purpose or function something so light and delicate could serve within the marvel that was Matthias' smartphone, and how it related to this mystery library of his.

“So what is this thing, May?” she asked, finally giving up the ghost after another minute of pondering and only drawing a blank.

With the biggest shit eating grin he could muster, Matthias plucked the little oddity out of her hand, and slid it back into his phone. The normal clutter of apps and shortcuts covering the background image of his old dog shifting to that of a silhouetted boy reading beneath a tree under a starry sky and a small white bar that was slowly filling with gray.

“This, dear Twily, is the one and only repository of human literature on all of Equus!” he exclaimed as he handed her his phone, snickering as he saw her jaw nearly hit his bed upon the app beginning to boot up.

“W-w-w-w-what?!” she screamed, her hands shaking as she saw dozens of thumb-sized book covers begin popping up on the screen. Some emblazoned with fantastical looking characters and vehicles while others bore the faces of distinguished looking human mares and stallions. But just as quickly as the titles would appear on the screen, they would almost instantly be replaced by another, and another, and another, until there was a literal blur of books zooming in and out of view across the surface of the mechanized marvel she held in her hands. The torrent of tomes only beginning to slow once the little loading bar at the bottom of the screen had filled up completely.

With trembling fingers, Twilight began dragging her thumb up and down the glowing glass as Matthias had taught her many months ago. Complete shock and awe burning onto her muzzle as rows upon rows of different covers and titles scrolled across the glass.

“Th-this is… How…EEP!” she squealed as her thumb lingered too long on a book, accidentally opening it. A picture of a spiral galaxy flashing on the glass briefly before jumping to a bright white screen littered with the collection’s various titles and chapters.

“How to turn the page? How the books are stored?”

“Yes,” was all she could muster as she continued to study the names of the various novels and short stories contained within the omnibus she had stumbled upon. Her eyes going wide as saucers when the screen shifted to the title page of the book her thumb had been brushing against.

“Hehe well the first is easy, just swipe left and right to move between pages one at a time, tap on the page to skim through multiple pages or find a specific one, and hit the back arrow to return to the table of contents.”

Twilight’s eyes never tore from Matthias' phone, but her ears had swiveled in such a way as to pick up everything he had to say. Her fingers gently gliding along the glass to follow his instructions. An incredulous smile beaming on her face when she saw the page animate like it was a piece of paper flipping in response to her motions.

“As for the second, well, you're going to have to imagine a very, very very thin strip of a semi-conductive element which has been treated to hold one type of charge, sandwiched between two just as thin strips of the same element but treated to hold the opposite charge. And what this allows for is a controlled flow of electrons between each point of contact, and depending on the percentage of electrons held at these points, a binary value of either 1 or 0 is assigned which can then be run through a specified algorithm to translate into words. And given that the memory card I showed you has the capacity to hold 256 gigabytes of data or 256 billion individual letters, let's just say it has the potential to hold many a tome of my people’s forgotten lore.”

“H-how many exactly?”

“Let's see; last I checked there were 271 novels, 1043 short stories, 1214 poems, 52 plays, 327 essays, the assorted mythologies of 6 different cultures, as well as various nonfiction texts including letters, biographies, and literary criticism, and that's not even going into the comics and graph… uh, Twilight, you alright in there?”

Twilight had gone scarily stiff while Matthias was detailing the contents of his library, her sparkling, violet eyes shaking sporadically as they danced between him and his phone. Brief whispers that sounded oddly like, “two-thousand nine-hundred and seven stories” falling from her lips over and over again like some little prayer.

“Twiiiiilyyyy?” Matthias asked trying to provoke her, snapping his fingers in front of her face a few times hoping to get some response from her. But neither the abhorred pet name nor the somatic reflex test could goad any sort of reaction out of Twilight.

“Congratulations May, you’ve finally broken her,” he sighed with a wry chuckle and one last wave of his hand in front of her face. “Well if the prospect of reading and analyzing the contents of an entire alien library seems too daunting a task for you,” he teased while gingerly placing a hand on his phone, “maybe I should go ask Key Stroke down in archives if he’d like to-”

“DON’T YOU BUCKING DARE! Twilight suddenly screamed as she tackled him to the bed. Tossing the phone softly to the side so she could resume hugging and nuzzling the fuck out of him. Throwing her arms, legs, even her wings, and tail around him with such intensity, that Matthias swore he could hear his bones begin to break.

But the look of borderline bliss, beaming across Twilight's face was well worth the feeling of his ribs cracking and his lung being drilled full of holes. Doubly so when he felt her start rubbing her nose against his and the happiest tears he had ever seen spill down the bridge of her muzzle and onto his face.

“Thank you! Oh, thank you thank you thank you, May! Thank you for sharing this with me! Thank you for giving me this opportunity! Oh… just... just, thank you for coming into my life and letting me be your friend!” She cried almost hysterically, nuzzling his cheek so furiously that if it hadn’t already been wet with tears, it would have caught fire.

“Thank you for not giving up on me,” he calmly whispered to her as he started petting her mane, “Thank you, for giving me my dream back and for letting me share it with you.”

“Can… can we start now? You know, with the sharing?” she softly begged, her desire to hold onto Matthias at war with her need to analyze every word, sentence, and paragraph of every short story, essay, and novel hidden within his phone.

“You sure? Luna did say her meeting with Starry would only be about an hour or two. So that gives us what, twenty... eighty minutes at most to read?” he warned her in a teasingly non-committal way.

Because even though Matthias found the idea of exploring the nuances and intricacies of his homeworld’s literature with Twilight endlessly enticing, he knew that Luna would be here any minute now. And no matter how much fun he had whenever they were all together merely talking, studying, or following Twilight into Canterlot for one of her little socialization experiments. He needed to have a frank and awkward conversation with the Princess of the Night, and he didn’t need Twilight spazzing out about his Kindle app to her or have Luna freaking out about what Twilight was doing in his bed.

But the irked glare Twilight shot him told him that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon:

“Now look here buster, you did not just spend the better part of thirty minutes working me up just to back out on me!”

“Uhhh Twi?”

“HEARD IT AS SOON AS IT LEFT MY MOUTH, YES!” she screamed, her face darkening again, but out of embarrassment or from frustration, Matthias could not tell. “Now, are you just gonna sit there, or are we gonna hit the bucking books!?”

And then she gave him the look. That patented wide-eyed, lip quivering puppy-dog pout that never failed to turn Matthias into a blushing, sputtering puddle of compliance whenever she turned it on him.

“Urggh Fine, just don't get upset when Luna comes in and breaks up our little story circle mid-chapter. I do have to get to bed eventually and… and I think I’m going to need to have a little chat with Luna about what we want from each other.”

“EEEHEEEHEEEE Oh thank you thank you thank you May,” she cheered before wrapping him up in another hug and unceremoniously kissing him on the lips. Causing Matthias to let out a muffled gasp as he felt her fuzzy muzzle mold against his mouth and her warm, wet tongue play against his lips.

But before Matthias could muster any form of protest or approval, Twilight released her hold on him so she could begin rummaging through her bag:

“And don't you worry, I promise to give you and Luna all the time you two need to clear the air. Ooooh, I just can’t wait, Luna’s going to be so happy!”

Matthias probably heard about half of that assurance, seeing as his mind was currently somersaulting from the fact that Twilight had just kissed him. Granted, it was nowhere near as intense as the ones Luna had smacked him with back in the garden. Hell, it was practically chaste compared to all the licking, suckling, and nibbling Twilight had been lavishing him with earlier.

But dammit, a kiss on the lips was still a kiss on the fucking lips! That wasn’t the kind of affection you just parsed out at random to friends unless you were either very, very, very drunk or were hoping to convey something to that friend that you weren’t confident your words could do justice to.

And yes, while the former could certainly explain Twilight’s sudden spike in both boldness and courage, Matthias had woken up half-naked next to her covered in books and paper cuts enough times to recognize whether or not she had been hitting the bubbly. Not to mention the only thing he had tasted on her lips when his and Twilight's were joined was the spearmint mouthwash she had used while getting ready for bed.

So for the third time this evening Matthias began running through her words and actions, desperately trying to make sense of the nerdy little mare who was currently pulling out wells of different colored inks and quills from her purse while humming some happy, peppy tune. Oblivious to the state of the poor hamster in his head who had begun filling out his workman’s comp claim for the broken nose and concussion he was now nursing. Finding no way to square the circle of mouth to mouth kissing as anything other than a display of romantic affection.

Then Matthias saw Twilight start pulling a typewriter out of her purse.

Which wouldn't have been too strange a sight, if her purse had been some high-end designer travel bag or something. But there she was struggling to yank what looked like some old-school Remington model out of what could pass for a little twelve by six clutch back on Earth. The zipper crying as Twilight struggled to wiggle the typewriter’s girth free from the confines of the enchanted satchel Matthias affectionately referred to as her ‘tessersack.’

And strangely, that helped to put things back into perspective for him.

Reminding Matthias gently that no matter how much things in Equestria worked as they did back home, that no matter how much Twilight’s affections and words mirrored those of a woman who was showing interest in him. That he was, in fact, in a magical fantasy land where not only the laws of physics as he knew them were subject to change but where the rules of courtship and interpersonal relations varied just as significantly.

Where a kiss or a nuzzle wasn’t necessarily an advance, and where even something as simple as a pat on the back could be seen as an act of molestation given the race of pony. So the idea of something like a kiss, even on the lips, shouldn’t be held to the same standards of intimacy that act of affection would have back home. Heck, Twilight herself had even mentioned how all this stemmed from a culture clash between their societal views on intimacy, so why would Twilight initiate an act with him that she knew he was misinterpreting as an advance.

So with a jerky shake of his head to try and get the hamster off his ass, Matthias leaned over and grabbed the bottom of her purse and began pulling. Hoping he could lend her a hand before the BBC bots broke through the dimensional barriers and smacked her with a copyright strike.

“You know, you should rgggh you should probably invest in a bigger bag of holding!”

“I’ve got three more bags from Rarity I’ve enchanted with Primrose’s Pocket!”

“Then why didn’t you grab one of those?!”

“Because you needed a cuddle and it was the first one I saw!”

“Well rgggh as much as I appreciate your willingness to drop everything to come help my whiny ass, maybe you should make one of those other bags your designated ‘May’s Being a Bitch Pouch’ and save yourself some hassle for the next time?”

“You’re not being a bi-”

“GOT IT!” Matthias cheered as the typewriter shimmied loose from the screaming seams of her purse’s mouth. Rocketing the forty-five-pound hunk of steel and ink into Twilight’s chest, and throwing Matthias flat on his back, because apparently, Sir Isaac Newton is still the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in the multiverse.

Which really shouldn’t have shocked him so much, given one of his preferred fields of study and academia. He just wasn’t really expecting the subsequent eruption of papers, notebooks, and folders to nearly blow him off his bed like Odysseus’ bag of winds. Nor was he planning on having to roll out of the way when the clutch on his chest belched up one last box that ricocheted off the canopy held up by his bedposts and nearly caved in what was left of his face.

“Omigosh, May! Are you alright!?” Twilight shrieked, having born witness to the bit of metaphysical vaudeville from her end of the bed. Hurriedly shoving the arcane word processor off of her so she could check on her friend, only to settle when he shot her a prone thumbs up.

“Y-yeah, wouldn’t be the first time I’ve had to play Don’t Get Your Head Bashed In with you Twi,” Matthias assured her as he picked himself back up, grabbing the wooden package that had nearly put another dent in his skull along the way. Recognizing it as the one that had been on her desk while they had been talking through their mirrors after examining it for a second. Pausing when he spied Twilight's flowing purple cursive emblazoned along its side:

For the teacher who made me fall in love with magic all over again!

Love,

Twilight Sparkle

“Heh, so what’s the occasion?” he asked Twilight, holding the package up when she quirked her head to the side in confusion. Her blush burning bright as she twiddled with her fingers nervously.

“Oh, uh, heheh well, you know? H-happy eight months in Equestria May!”

Matthias chuckled at Twilight's anxious fidgeting before sliding the lid off of the wooden case. Revealing, surprise, a new book for his ever-growing collection hidden behind a protective layer of enchanted glass. Though unlike the usual bound and jacketed volumes she was known to gift him with, this one appeared to be little more than a well worn manuscript. With faded Cryillic script, reminiscent of the brochure Twilight had been teasing him with earlier, penned across the page.

“This is awesome Twi!” he exclaimed, beaming her an unabashedly toothy grin that held naught but genuine gratitude and appreciation for the mare glowing across from him. “So what rare and exoctic tale have you managed to procure for me this time?”

“Yes, well, while I was looking into which Equestrian city or territory best correlated to the setting of your favorite book, I also happened to come across a rather interesting story about a certain author in Stalliongrad.”

Matthias' eyes shot up from the manuscript’s increasingly familiar looking title structure and bored straight into Twilight’s. “You… you didn’t.”

“Hee hee, A certain author who wrote during a time when if a pony made public any views that didn’t align with those of the ruling party’s pony-centric stance on Nature and Harmony. They and their loved ones would find themselves loaded onto the first train out of Stalliongrad and shipped off to the coldest depths of the Winter Wastes.”

Matthias' hands were trembling. It was just too much; there was just no way she could have found it.

“Yet in spite of those risks, she still found herself unable to keep quill from parchment. Risking her life, and the lives of her friends and loved ones each time she espoused the true nature of ponies as the shepherds of Equus, not its masters. Needing to burn her masterpiece five different times lest the authorities discover her.” Twilight explained as she sifted through the sheets of papers littering his bed until she found another book buried beneath the mess and held it up for him to see. Its cover, a silhouetted image of a blonde-maned unicorn wearing a witch’s hat laying seductively atop a broomstick as it flew across a starlit city. The Patriarch and Persephone printed along the bottom in leafed gold that shone in the low candlelight of Matthias' room as she handed it over to him.

Matthias' hands trembled as his fingers traced along the covers of both books, needing to confirm that this was real and not some sleep addled hallucination. Gingerly flipping through their pages after taking a few steadying breaths lest he tear them in his excitement. Though as he continued to study through the texts, he began noticing some discrepancies in the manuscript’s construction and layout.

“Twi?”

“Yeah.”

“Why doesn’t this copy have any publication dates, page numbers, or headers?” He asked holding up the unbound copy carefully, “Is it a promotional copy or something?”

“Nope, what you’ve got there is Proper Prose’s original draft!”

“But, but you said she burned it... five times!”

“That she did, but Discord just so happens to play a prominent role across the majority of the novel’s acts, despite him having been locked way in stone some three-hundred years prior. So I figured that in his own… Discordy way, he might have had some hand in the book’s history and development. But when I went to ask him about it during my weekly tea-time with Fluttershy, all he did was pull the rug up from under the table and go off on a tangent about the, and I quote, ‘wibbly-wobbly’ nature of that space-time continuum thing you theorized. He then proceeded to animate an entire army of dust-bunnies and shed fur to reenact his critical scenes in the story while Fluttershy and I enjoyed our tea. But just as I was getting ready to leave, and possibly ask Celestia where I might find an early printing, Discord yanked me aside and took me into the kitchen where he used a fishing pole to cast himself into the sink and reel this out." She explained while running her hand along the manuscript's old, worn cover, occassionally trailing her fingers across Matthias' as well.

“And… and how did he get his mismatched hands on this?”

“All he did was wink and tell me that-”

“Manuscripts don’t burn,” they said at the same time, a nostalgic smile worming its way onto Matthias' face as Twilight’s eyes widened. “Hehe, Discord as Woland, this I gotta fucking read now!”

“Hee hee, I know it’s not much, but I’m glad you like it,” Twilight said with a weak chuckle and blush, one that pulled Matthias out of his revelry.

“What do you mean, ‘it’s not much?!’ You spent an entire afternoon sipping tea with a guy who runs off cartoon logic to get me the Equestrian equivalent of my favorite book! What part of that is not much!?”

“I know, it’s just… when you compare it to something like that,” she said pointing out the window to the Pillars still burning off in the early morning sky, her demeanor sinking somewhat as she brought up his phone, “or this, it’s not really much to write home about.”

Yeah, that’s bullshit! He thought as he scooched closer to her, desperately wanting to convey to her how much he not only loved and appreciated his present but her as well. Recognizing that he still hadn’t entirely quashed this ridiculous notion in her that she somehow wasn’t as close a friend to him as Celestia and Luna were.

So with a steadiness and surety that betrayed the nervous pit hollowing out his stomach, Matthias placed his hands on her shoulders, rubbing and massaging them gently, causing Twilight to loosen up and coo slightly. Those coos devolving into pleasured shudders as she felt his hands start trailing up her neck and cup her cheeks, his thumbs brushing through the thin coat covering her muzzle in soft, soothing motions. Washing away her sudden bout of insecurity with each tender touch he trailed across her face, her eyes fluttering shut as she let herself get lost in his gentle ministrations.

Only for them to shoot open when she felt Matthias press his lips against hers.

The kiss was brief, very brief, barely even a brush against her lips, but there was no mistaking the feel of his hairless lips molding against hers, and his warm, shaky breath mingling with hers. Forcing a happy mewl out of her as she started to push back against him, only for it to dissolve into a needy whine when she felt him break away from her. A nervous fire flickering behind his eyes as his whole head turned a deep crimson.

“S-sorry, I just… I just needed to show you how much I value you and your friendship. I...I’d be lost if I didn’t have you in my life,” he confessed with a lowered head, unable to bring himself to face Twilight, even though she had just kissed him the same way not five minutes ago. Unable to shake off those feelings and associations he had come to pair with the simple act of affection and how Twilight might react to it.

But then Matthias felt Twilight pick his face and cup his cheeks, a hot, happy blush staining her muzzle, her eyes sparkling like the shimmer of her magic.

“Hey, it’s okay, you don’t have to push yourself for me,” she assured him warmly, wrapping her arms around him and pressing her forehead against his. “This… this is something I need to work out on my own and shouldn’t be forcing on you as well.”

And Matthias simply melted into Twilight’s embrace. Her words, her touch, it was everything he needed to hear and feel to settle the dissonance from the conflicting thoughts and feelings that had been threatening to rip him apart. Sure, it was still confusing as all hell for him to have a girl kiss him and not think it an advance and vice-versa. But he trusted Twilight enough not to steer him wrong or take advantage of his naivete.

Rewarding that trust with another quick kiss on her lips, causing Twilight to squeak in surprise and her wings to ruffle against his arms.

“Then it’s a good thing I’m here willing to help you through it,” he reassured her, running his hands up and down her back, laughing as she started nuzzling furiously into the crook of his neck, a happy squeal muffling against his skin.

“I… I… I can’t even with you right now!” she shrieked happily, pulling him into another bone-breaking hug, one he returned just as fiercely in hopes of containing the excitable alicorn. Holding her tightly in place until he could feel her heartbeat begin dropping to more manageable levels.

As the mare in his arms continued to settle herself down, Matthias decided to check on the time, lest Luna arrive before Twilight got the chance to really look through his library. Spying his phone on the bed face up next to him, the display showed that it was teetering on four, giving them an hour at most if Luna’s estimation was correct. So, as much as he enjoyed being wrapped up in a blanket of Twilight, he had to let her go so he could let her enjoy her present.

“Alright Twi, we’ve maybe got an hour to ourselves before Luna’s finished with her meeting, how do you wanna spend it?”

“Can… can we not just stay like this?” she said with a cute little pout, sticking her lip out and shooting him another needy stare.

“I don’t know, would be kinda hard for us to read together if we’re not facing the same direction,” he teased while holding up his phone, his library full of ebooks displayed on the screen.

Twilight started looking between him and his phone rapidly, the gears in her head turning as she tried to work out the logistics of achieving the maximum amount of cuddles while still being able to read with him. But after mulling it over for a few more seconds, a light bulb seemed to go off in her head as her ears perked straight up and her tail began to wag excitedly.

Shooting Matthias a mischievous smirk that made him sweat for a second, Twilight suddenly tightened her grip on him. Latching her arms and legs around his midsection before giving her wings a mighty flap that lifted them both a good five feet in the air. Once at the apex of their ascent, Twilight twirled them around and gently dropped him in the direction of his bed’s headboard, where Matthias tended to keep the majority of his pillows stacked. Their soft, cloud-like stuffing cushioning the impact of his negligible descent, though not enough to keep the few papers that were still strewn across his bed from taking flight.

However, before Matthias could complain about either the rough handling or the mess she was making, Twilight ever so softly landed in his lap with his phone in hand. Her magic’s magenta glow having already begun snatching up the displaced parchments now littering his room and organizing them into their proper stacks and alignments.

“Couldn’t you have just asked me to scoot over?” Matthias questioned as Twilight shifted about atop his waist, excitedly pouring over his collection to decide which book they should read first. Her motions threatening to undo all the hard work he’d put in to keeping his less than cooperative head from making itself known.

“Oh, I could’ve! But I figured it be easier just to show you what I had in mind rather than tell you,” she teased playfully, blocking his attempts at sitting back up by placing her hand on his chest and gently pushing him back.

Taking this as a hint that she didn't want him to move, Matthias let her guide him down so that he was lying fully on his back. His head propped up slightly by the pile of royal blue pillows he liked to bury himself in whenever he decided to finally get some sleep.

With his positioning to her liking, Twilight seal rolled off of him and began nestling herself under his right arm. Resting her head against his chest, her arms snaked their way over and around his stomach and lower back, her hands causing Matthias to fidget some as they slid up and down his side. The feel of her plush chest and tummy as she molded herself against him causing blooms of heat to cascade throughout his body.

“Y-You know that isn't what they typically mean by show don’t tell, right?” he stuttered softly as he tried to reposition himself so as not alert Twilight to the fact that the South had risen again.

“Just shut up and snuggle dammit,” Twilight scolded playfully, rubbing her cheek into his chest as she wrapped her leg around his, draping him with her wing and tail once she felt she had him secured.

“Yes, Ms. Sparkle,” Matthias huffed out in equal parts frustration and amusement, dipping his hand beneath the collar of her shirt so he could run his fingers up and down her bare arm and shoulder. Chuckling as he felt the breath brushing against his neck hitch before melting into a drawn-out sigh of contentment. Her grip on him only growing tighter with each subtle shift against her.

“So, as comfortable as all this is,” Matthias spoke up after another minute or two of simply reveling in her touch and proximity, “how exactly do you plan on reading without letting go of me?”

Twilight tilted her head up at him, that same look of playful smugness from earlier carved into her muzzle, before simply sparking her horn to life and lifting up his phone so that it hung in the air slightly above them.

“Cheater,” he affirmed with a side of salt, though he couldn't help but smirk at how quickly she had found a workaround so she could keep herself glued to his side. “So, did you decide on which book we’re going to be reading tonight or are we just gonna cuddle until Luna kicks you out?”

Twilight let out a very girly sounding giggle before pressing her snout into his neck, peppering his neck and jawline with sweet, little licks and kisses. “Thanks again for doing this for me May, you really are the best stallion to have ever come into my life,” she affirmed with nothing but the most profound sincerity and certainty in her voice. The raw feelings behind her words causing his heart to skip a couple of beats.

But before Matthias could become too flustered from her diabetes inducing antics, he was distracted by the sensation of his phone bopping him in the nose, its bright white screen and navy blue font revealing Twilight’s choice for their first foray into the field of human literature.

“Of course you'd pick The Time Machine, you little nerd,” he chided her mockingly, causing Twilight to shrink a little against him and let out a timid chuckle.

“W-w-well, temporal displacement magic is still a highly dangerous and morally questionable field of the arcane. So I was curious about the views humans might potentially have on the consequences of altering the past or reshaping the future.”

“Eh, fair enough, now let’s see…” Matthias tried to pick his hand up to swipe the screen and start reading, but was stopped by Twilight gripping his hand and moving it back beneath her wing and holding it there. Turning to try and ask what she was doing, he was met with her smiling face shaking back and forth and a tiny glow shining from tip of her horn. That tiny glow breaking away from her and forming a facsimile of her hand which swiped the screen in his place.

Matthias shot her an amused smile as he laced his fingers with hers, planting one last kiss on the tip of her muzzle before diving into the tale of the Time Traveller and his wondrous device, feeling Twilight shift beside him excitedly as he began narrating the first human novella ever to be read aloud on Equus. The way her chest was pressing into his allowing him to feel each and every little thump and quiver of her heart.

Noticing that for the first time since the Princess of the Night had kissed him under her pale moonlight, that he was fully at ease. That there was no longer any dread about what might or might not happen when Luna was finished with her meeting, nor were there any more worries about what direction his relationship with her might take. His whole world now was just this nerdy little mare who needed to be reminded every now and again that friendship wasn’t measured in time or touch, but in action and deed. Who had spent months upon months helping him to not only learn about his new home but make him feel like he was at home as well. Whose boundless drive and passion had slowly but surely whittled away at the shell he had wrapped around himself, making him almost excited to venture forth and see the world Twilight had described to him with such love and excitement.

Sure there were still the moments of abject terror and utter confusion; one does not simply forget a mob of formerly angry nobles turning tail at the sight of their princess becoming a tiny purple super Saiyan. And visions of the little bookworm coming at him half-naked and with her mane on fire as she desperately tried to rip his clothes off continued to haunt his dreams in all the best ways.

But with every walk into the city he took with her, with every meal they shared together both inside and outside of the castle, and with every failed and successful experiment that left them covered in soot and grinning like idiots, he found that bewilderment and fear was shifting more and more towards excitement and anticipation. Like he was on some mighty rollercoaster cresting its first hill now, rather than being lost on some alien world without ever a hope of finding his way back home.

And more so than any book Twilight had ever given him, Hell, even more so than the voice and laughter she had returned to him, it was this overall shift in the outlook he had for his future that Matthias held most dearly. Because even with the care and protection Celestia had offered him, and the companionship and understanding he shared with Luna, Twilight was the first pony to give him a sense that there just may be a way for him to live a normal life here on Equestria. Well, as normal a life as possible for spatially displaced teacher with half his face melted off.

And if all she wanted in return was for him to hold her close and be more open with her, then that was fine by him. It was the least he could do for her, after all from second one of their friendship, that was all she had been with him.