Banging a Pornstar

~ III ~

Princess and Friend

Silence lingered in the air and that had caught the dragon's attention. Nothing really changed in the air. No window left open nor air condition turned on. Not a spray of perfume or anything at all to change the quality of the nearby oxygen. Rather it was the two changing what they breathed. What they felt now affected their perceptions of the qualities around them.

Rarity was on the other side of the counter and staring into her cup. Her reflection must have been on the surface as she struggled with her current expression. Sorrow that was bittersweet like the flavour of the tea.

“It's funny how the fate you speak of works out in the end.” Rarity's muzzle kept lowered and above the cup and, for the first time in her life, it seemed to shy to raise. Memories of Fluttershy fizzled in Spike's mind. “I've always been something of an empty mare. Maybe we're all empty in a particular way. But I was so, overall, drained with bits of dead.”

Spike opened his mouth to crack a joke but... once more the damned air hadn't felt right. His head turned and his eyes focused out the window. Down and gone was the sun as the orange glow bathing the streets ceased into darkness. His eyes burned, a subtle shade of green, the quality of kindness being their fuel. “It's because you're always either giving or investing yourself in something. All those dresses and concepts for events. You merge the natural beauty of someone, accentuating and maybe sometimes compensating, with your interpretation on how it all comes out.”

Rarity's smile reached an inch, but to Spike, it was always a mile. “You were always above the baseless compliments, weren't you? That reason you said. Was that the reason for my periods of emptiness?”

Spike turned back to the counter and laid his forearms across it, crossing them as he sunk onto their support, fully looking at the mare. Rarity's head turned too, away at first but, sensing his presence, beating her shyness and gazing to him as well.

“Maybe a reason,” he replied with a dip of his chin, “but not the reason. But I was there during those days. You were always infusing yourself into everything you did. You're inside all of the work you did. What you were feeling and thinking without maybe being conscious of them.”

He sighed. “So please don't say you were an empty mare.” His claw reached across the table and opened itself, a shadow of a hoof appearing over it, the digits twitching, waiting, as the hoof kept uncertain. It then dropped, held at once, a supporting squeeze to give the empty mare what she needed. “Anyone would be after that.”

“You always knew the right things to say... didn't you?” Rarity was looking straight into his eyes, she's blue and softly glowing too, the curls of her mane a pronounced beauty to the whole of a mare. Her coat was like snow as she as a whole was a natural wonder as well. “It's funny how we all change. In the moment and overall. Even you right now. I don't think you know what you've done right now.”

Spike blinked. His gaze trailed down to his arm. In his palm was Rarity's hoof, resting there, warm and soft and fuzzy, a contact beyond pleasant he wanted to hold onto forever. But that was Rarity's hoof. Perfection had dropped into his imperfection. And that threatened everything for everyone.

He tried to pull back, but.

“Nu-uh-ah! You forgot about your fears to comfort me—and I am still not fully comfortable just yet.” Her hoof pressed into his palm and locked it there, twisting slightly, twitching the digits to clamp around it again. “Countless stallions would have held me and told me I was so full of passion or other such vagueness. But not you dear. You knew me well enough, cared to see deeply enough to know the truth of me.”

She smiled. “Those words of yours freed me in a sense that, even if I knew of that aspect of myself, I could never claim it. Sometimes parts of us have to be accepted and spoke for by others. But enough of that.”

Spike's heart kept beating faster as his chest clenched and stomach cramped. Rarity was holding his hoof as her other foreleg raised over the table. It brushed across the side of his wrist, a massage to hopefully relax it—doing anything but.

“In those days I prayed for a prince to take me away,” Rarity continued as her eyes were set on the claw she had captured, still stroking it, brought into mediation by it. “He would say all those things to me. So beautiful and full of passion. All of the things on the surface that are so easy to speak of. Yet I ascribed so much complexity to them.”

Spike kept his head up but his eyes went down. “And I could never be all that complex, could I?”

“That is anything but the truth.” Rarity kept her eyes lowered as well, the two looking at the connection, hoof in claw, claw holding hoof, one of those unable to move, the other comforting the former out from that state. “Back in those days, I would have set you for being a kid indulging in the crass and primitive. You were no such prince. Never could you compare my beauty to a season with the legality of a poetic royal.”

“Tried and failed in that regard.”

“But then you would say things as you did before, the reason for my feelings of emptiness, that none else were privy to. Perhaps you said things in a goofy way. But you were always so genuine. The words you spoke were real. And soon they got me through the hardest of times.”

Spike couldn't help but smile and exhale. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. The burden of years had been released. “My thoughts and feelings weren't creepy then?”

“I wiped those kinds from you long ago.”

“Always my tutor on the way of mares.”

“Ladies, Spike.” He felt the narrowing of her eyes. “And don't you dare say same difference. There is a pronounced difference. Lacking to respect that—“

“Mean you fail to see the deeper intricacies some live their life within, and that lack of acknowledgement is a deep insult flung at another.” Spike dropped his head to look at her again. “Always paid attention. Just don't always show it on the surface.”

“Good boy.”

Spike broke out into a chuckle after that, a giggle coming from the mare, the air around them... thinning by the mirth. The duo joined together in looking out the window, seeing that night was here, and a mare keeping the same could imply an awful lot of things.

“In those days of emptiness,” Rarity began as their attention was still fixated outside of the glass, seeing the moon in the horizon, rising and casting its glow over the top of buildings. “It was those girls who filled me. Those girls and you. I work and strove to become worthy enough to have that fabled prince. But... it didn't work out.”

Spike turned his head to look further away, the weight of the reveal too much to keep up, feeling his body compress into himself. Sadness was his expression and the glow of his eyes became faint. What was all of this about? Where was all of this leading to?

“Oh Spike... if only you could know of the emptiness that came over me... when all of you went away...” Something stirred in his claw and, by the time he glanced back, the hoof pulled out from his palm. His digits closed over it at once, squeezing at nothing, already missing her. “The stores that opened and the majesty of the grand reveal. Days of dopamine to months of horrible solitude.”

Rarity had copied him in crossing her forelegs on the counter, sinking into them as her muzzle buried itself into the niche created, hiding away from something. “Standing beside a ribbon being cut to waves of ponies clapping. Power and status and wealth, nobility and the refined standing at my sides. None of it compared to a picnic on a hill with some friends. No date came close to the lazy summer afternoons I had with you.”

Then came the whimper. “I thought of those days as the buffer to reach where I am now, and yet, they are where I craved to be all along. No prince could ever compare to your goofy speeches about something so very true about me. Perhaps I'm making all of this about me. Such a selfish mare that I am.”

Her head shook within her crossed forelegs, frizzling her mane over so slightly, the start of everything becoming undone. “Oh Spike. How could you have ever fallen in love with a mare like me? The perfect was always on the surface. It was all I had to tease and have over you.”

Spike looked down at himself. His claw laid on his lap, shaking, unable to process the anxiety of his plan. In looking over to the mare, however, all that sat was an angel. Still she was perfect even in her moments of imperfections. No matter what way she did her mane, it would be gorgeous in his eyes.

The sigh that comes before courage was the price to pay in standing up. He came around the counter and, not knowing how to engage, wrapped his arms around the mare. Hugging her, he waited for the first struggle. Yet she snuggled into his arms like warm snow melting across his scales.

He hated himself for a dragon like him was undeserving to feel such perfection.

For he had prayed for a perfect prince to complete the fantasy he dreamed of for the mare.