Anon lay stretched across the couch, reading through the book Twilight had loaned him, which had actually turned out to be fairly interesting in its own right. Even more than the book though, he was enjoying the peace and quiet and not having to dodge Sweetie Belles aggressive advances. Keeping up the oblivious act was getting tiring. At first he had just been confused and somewhat flattered. He had done his best to feign ignorance to avoid embarrassing her with a direct refusal. He hoped instead that she would catch a hint that this wasn't going to go anywhere, and would quietly back down with everyone's dignity mostly intact.

Unfortunately, it appeared as if Sweetie's parents hadn't raised a quitter. To be honest, given the cutie mark crusading antics of Sweetie and her friends, this probably should have been expected. It looked like he was just going to have to tough it out to the end of the week, though it seemed his recent counteroffensive at the library had bought him a bit of a reprieve, as he was already overdue for another one of Sweetie's ploys by a fair bit.

Just as he was beginning to raise a faint sliver of hope that she had finally been demoralized enough to give up for good, he heard the muffled patter of determined hooves approaching on the carpet. Face still in his book, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath in preparation, right before it was mostly knocked out of him by Sweetie leaping cat-like from the floor up onto his torso. Allowing one last second to steel himself, he lowered the book to meet Sweetie's intense glare.

"Yes?"

"Fuck me!"

"No."

Sweetie's face scrunched up and her brows furrowed in concentration as the mental gears of her mind spun and she carefully analyzed her next move.

"Fuck me...please?"

"No, thank you."

Anon casually brought the book back up and resumed reading. Sweetie Belle merely stood in shock for a moment before sputtering out a response

"W-What?! Well, why not?!"

"Not interested." Anon replied, face still obscured by the book.

"What do you mean not interested? I mean, look at this!" She gave a brief twirl in place. "This is top quality filly mignon right here! Are you trying to say I'm ugly or something?"

Anon lowered his book with a sigh.

"Look, I'm sure by young pony beauty standards you are a complete 10 out of 10 knockout. You could likely have your pick of all the other school ponies in your age bracket. Great for you. Truly. But it's doing absolutely nothing for me. No fault of yours, it's just a wrong key to the wrong lock situation. Try with a different target audience."

"Bullshit! Don't give me that 'by pony standards' crap. I know you're attracted to ponies. I saw you making eyes at Twilight. And I bet you'd fuck Rarity if she made a pass at you!"

"Oh, absolutely."

"W–What?"

"Yeah, I mean, have you seen her? Talk about a bombshell. I mean, damn! So yeah, absolutely would...and have."

"WHAT?!"

Sweetie Belle's face was frozen in a mask of shock, while a self-satisfied grin cracked across Anon's.

"Yeah, you think she just calls me 'Nonny' for no reason? We've gotten together for some drinks and fun a few times."

"Wh–b–I–sh–"

"Also not the first time I've seen some of the costumes in your little collection, so I'd advise you go ahead and alter them back before she finds out you've been messing with her stuff."

He watched in amusement as Sweetie Belle continued sputtering incoherently while her brain attempted to reboot. Eventually, her train of thought got back on the rails.

"Well then why not me? What does Rarity have that I don't!"

"Seriously?"

"Yes! "

"About 10 to 15 additional years "

"...Seriously? It's just an age thing?"

"Yep. It's kind of a deal breaker."

"But it's not my fault I'm young!"

"Didn't say it was."

"But age is just a number!"

"Yeah, and when one of those numbers gets too low, it gets real gross, and also illegal."

"Illegal? What? I've never heard of that. It sounds like you're making this up."

"I'm definitely not, but that's not even the core issue here. It may be perfectly legal to smash my own hand with a hammer, but that doesn't mean I'm in any hurry to do it. So even if it turns out that Equestrian law, which admittedly I haven't looked into in detail, is ambiguous regarding formal age of consent laws, that isn't really going to change how gross it is."

"But that's...that's so...superficial. And shallow! You're being shallow by being so hung up on age!"

"Eh." Anon replied with a shrug. "It is what it is. You could always try dating some of the ponies your own age. I'm sure you'd have no shortage of takers there."

"First, I'm not looking to 'date'. I'm looking to get railed. Second," Sweetie shook her head in disapproval "No thanks. The school ponies are so...childish and immature. They can't give me what I need. I need someone more mature, who knows what they're doing."

"Exactly! Samesies!"

Sweetie involuntarily facehoofed at running straight into that one.

"But I'm mature for my age!"

"Well, congratulations."

Deciding to retreat on this front, Sweetie decided to return to her prior line of thought. She jumped down to the floor, finally allowing Anon to breathe comfortably again.

"Third, even if I were to give one of them a shot in the future, that doesn't do anything for me in the here and now where I am incredibly horny! Like, cripplingly so! It's bad!"

"Yeah, puberty is a bitch. I don't miss it."

"And here you are, cruelly refusing to help a poor suffering little filly in need like a big jerky jerk face! "

Anon rolled his eyes. "Look, if it's really that horribly bad, you could always just do what everyone has done since the dawn of time and what I did through all of high school. Just handle it yourself."

"You mean...?"

"Yeah"

"But that...It's not the same! And hooves are terrible at that! And I wasn't able to pick the lock on Rarity's special drawer before coming over, mostly because I didn't think I was going to need to!"

Anon simply shrugged again. "Well I don't know what to say. Skill issue? Get good? Sometimes we gotta get creative and make do with the resources at our disposal. Cope for the next few days, after which, whatever happens to Rarity's drawers is frankly none of my business."

He grabbed his book again and resumed reading. A disappointed Sweetie Belle turned and trudged away, grumbling under her breath. She stopped at the end of the hall and turned to shout back.

"Oh yeah? Well I'm gonna think about YOU while I'm doing it, so what do you think about that?"

"Sounds like it's not my problem. I ain't the thought police."

"AAAARRRGGH!"

As the bedroom door slammed shut, Anon let out a long sigh and finally relaxed. With that uncomfortable conversation out of the way, hopefully that would be the end of it and it would be relatively smooth sailing from here on out.

Author's Note

This chapter is a little shorter because it was going to be the first half of a larger chapter, but I decided to break it here. I wanted to write something while I had the window and the drive, but I'm too tired to do the rest right now, and I'm worried if I put off posting something too much longer I'll fall into the really long term procrastination cycle that plagued my longer fics. This wasn't meant to be a really long running series. I've had it all planned out for a while. I just need to force myself to sit down and type it out sometime between procrastinating on writing edits on the research papers I'm actually supposed to be working on.

Next is the penultimate chapter.