Twilight trotted up to the Carousel Boutique, a blue sky painting atop a typical atmosphere. Biting her lip and squinting, she raised her hoof towards the door of the Boutique, squirmed, and lowered it again. She inhaled, closed her eyes, raised her hoof again, and then squeaked and lower it again.
“Third times the charm,” she muttered to herself. Subconsciously holding her breath, she tapped on the door. Absent an answer, a moment later, she knocked noticeably harder. From within the boutique, there was a CLANG!, prompting to Twilight to cringe at the disaster.
Bang! Boom! Meow! Over the internal cacophony emerged a feminine, sing-song voice. “Just a moment, please!”
A few more booms later and the door swung open. Rarity emerged from the chaos, her mane spotless save for a single misplaced purple strand. She smiled at Twilight.
“Hello, darling! How are you?” she asked cheerfully.
Twilight looked down at the ground awkwardly. “Sorry,” she mumbled to nobody in particular.
“Hmm?”
“No, I wanted to talk to you, but I didn’t mean to distract you from dress making. I’m not– It’s not that important. I’m sorry I interrupted you.” She continued darting the other’s glance. “I should probably go. Bye!”
Rarity waved her hoof. “Oh, pfft. Come in, darling. You have nothing to apologise for.”
The alicorn frowned and entered the Boutique. “If you say so, I guess.”
Rarity led her over to a living room and gestured at a chair. “Come, sit,” she said, and her guest complied, visibly uncomfortable with the hospitality. “What did you want to want to talk about?,” she asked, taking a seat across from the squirming visitor.
Twilight held one of her forelegs with other hoof. “It’s… well, it’s complicated.”
Blink. “Pardon?”
Cough. “It’s… I’m just not sure if you’d still… Um…”
A frown. “Darling, I’m sure whatever it is, I would still accept you.”
A sigh. “I… need to talk to you about something that I’ve been thinking about a lot. It’s… hmm. There are thoughts I know I shouldn’t be thinking about, seeing as I’m a Princess. Thoughts I shouldn’t be sharing with you, seeing as you’re… you.” A gulp. “But I just can’t get these… thoughts out of my head. And… I don’t want to tell you, but I couldn’t bear not to tell you, since you’re, well, you’re you… if that makes sense?”
Rarity pursed her lips into an “o”, and then smiled sympathetically, tilting her head earnestly. “Of course it makes sense. You have nothing to be ashamed of, Twilight. What you’re going through is normal.”
“It is?”
“Of course, dear. Everypony struggles with these feelings; it’s just a bit more… complex, for ponies like us.”
“They do?”
Rarity curled some of her mane behind her ear, at ease. “Yes, they do. Like I said, you have nothing to worry about.”
“Nothing to worry about,” Twilight repeated. “But… how can you possibly say I have nothing to worry about if you don’t even know what it is I’m worrying about? What if you found out my big secret and suddenly decided you never wanted to talk to me again? What if you thought I was some kind of a freak? Or that I… oh, Celestia, what if you thought I wanted to—”
“Dearest, I meant what I said.” A little firmer, Rarity said, “Nothing to worry about.”
Twilight stood up from her chair and began to pace around the little corner of living room left untattered by Rarity’s endless piles of beautiful fabrics and crumpled up sketches of dresses never to be. “But this brings us to a dilemma! I can’t know if you’ll accept me or not if I don’t tell you, but I can’t tell you, since I don’t know if you’ll accept me. Meanwhile, you don’t know if you’ll accept me if you don’t know, but you’ll never know if I don’t tell you! Which means I have to assume you wouldn’t accept me if you did know, and that logically I should never tell you in order to preserve our friendship, which ultimately is really matters. Further, that means that I never should have come to the Boutique this afternoon, and that this entire conversation was a mistake. Therefore, to preserve the status quo –” She paced towards the door – “I’ll just leave. See you at the picnic tomorrow! Bye!”
“Please, wait,” Rarity called, and Twilight complied. Choosing her words carefully, speaking slower than her typical faux Manehattanite personality demanded, she continued, “It is possible to resolve that dilemma, by ignoring one of the premises.” She paused. “For instance, you could choose to tell me your little secret despite the risk that I might not accept you.” She furrowed her eyebrows noticing Twilight cringe. Sighing, she added, “Alternatively, I could tell you my little secret, and then you would know you have nothing to worry about, darling.”
Twilight’s face flushed to white. “Your secret?”
“Yes, while the rest of us can’t be Princesses like you, we too have private lives,” she jested, smiling.
Twilight dropped to a whisper, “But what if I didn’t accept you?” Her eyes grew, and she jumped from whispering to almost shouting. “No, no, no, no, no! If you have a secret, well, that’s just lovely! Now our friendship is twice as likely to crack from the other one finding about the other secret. This conversation was a terrible idea. Control-Alt-Delete!” She forced shut her eyes, rolled back her head, and stuck out her tongue.
Rarity grimaced, as if picking up dirty laundry. “Twilight, dearest, I am quite confident that that won’t happen. I assure you, you will accept me for my”secret“, and you will see you have nothing to worry about with your own. OK?”
Twilight nodded slowly, unassured but trusting in her friend. “OK.”
Rarity smiled, closed her eyes, inhaled, and exhaled, and finally revealed, “As Rainbow Dash regretted speculating last Hearths Warming Eve… I’m gay.”
Twilight cocked her head. “You’re gay? Huh. I didn’t see that one coming.”
The sapphic unicorn beamed. “I told you that you had nothing to worry about with telling me about your… your secret.” She winked.
Twilight’s head remained tilted and her countenance puzzled. “I don’t get it. First, why didn’t you tell me that sooner? More importantly, second, why are you telling me this now?”
Rarity emulated Twilight’s puzzled muzzle. “When I first met you and the girls, I wasn’t sure you would accept me as just another mare if you knew. By the time we were best friends, there was never an opportune time to mention it, and it never came up. As for the second, since you– wait.” Alarmed, she increased her rate of speech. “Twilight, your secret was you coming out of the closet, yes?” The words didn’t seem to register on the other’s face. “Twilight? Hellooo? Equestria to Twilight?” She knocked on the ground with her hoof. “Anypony home?”
After a moment, Twilight replied, “No, I was not going to, er, come out. Not that I have a problem with it! With being gay, I mean. But that’s not what I was going to say.”
“Oh dear. Oh, dear. Twilight, what was it you were going to say before I stole the show?”
Twilight trotted back to the chairs and plopped down in her original seat again. “How do I know you won’t alienate me for it?”
Rarity deadpanned. “I just told you my biggest secret. Try me.”
Twilight relented. “I suppose I can’t argue with that logic. Well, I… I guess you were half-right on the gay thing–”
“–I’m pretty sure I was full-right, the way you squawk when we group hug. Seriously, with you my gaydar is–”
"–Anyway. Well, I keep having these intrusive thoughts of, ‘What if I did like you girls like that?’. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! I think, ‘No, that doesn’t matter, because I don’t like you like that’, yet then I wonder, ’But what if I _did?!‘. Soon enough, every time I saw you, a part of me wondered, ’What if we were together?’, and the rest of me spent the remainder of the visit chastising myself for considering it. At some point it flipped, because now every time I see you, I think, ‘We could be together’, even though no part of me wants to date you. But then there’s a part of me that wonders, ‘But what if we did date? Maybe you do want to do date her and you’re just not letting yourself express your feelings? What if I’m gay after all? What if all those colts taunting in Magic School were right? By all possible logic, I must be gay and madly in love with Rarity!’" Twilight panted, her confession in the air.
“I wouldn’t mind if you were gay and madly in love with me.”
A smile creeped onto Twilight’s lips and a giggle escaped her mouth. “I mean, I can’t say I would mind either.” Her eyes shot open in horror at the thought vocalized. “Not that I am! …Just because you wonder it doesn’t make it true. At least, that’s what all rationality dictates… and the royal therapist, for that matter. On the outside, I can see that. But still.”
Rarity pouted. “Pah. Wait, so, you’re not gay?”
“Nope. Straight as a subspace.”
She raised an eyebrow, oblivious to the linear algebra reference. “Well, I’m more of a… what’s a not-straight thing?”
“A paraboloid?”
Rarity grinned. “Sure, I’m as gay as a paraboloid.”
Twilight frowned. “I don’t think the metaphor works that way.”
“…I don’t think it does either,” Rarity quipped, and the pair giggled.
After she controlled her laughter, Twilight asked, “You don’t think I’m… weird? Or, in this case, gay?”
“You said you weren’t.”
“I’m not.”
“So what’s the problem, love?”
Twilight scrunched up pensively. “These thoughts keep coming back. What if that means there’s some truth to them? What if I am secretly in love with all my best friends after all? And you don’t know the half of it.” Her face flushed in horror, as if she saw a ghost replace Rarity. “What if they find out I’m not the great pony the world likes to think I am?” She pulled herself back from reality. “Or… would be, if those thoughts were real.”
Rarity shook her head and pulled Twilight into a (platonic) hug. “No, Twilight. That’s just how some thoughts are. Your brain isn’t wired like mine or Fluttershy’s. Just remember, for every thought like this you have, you think one-hundred beautiful thoughts.”
Blink. “That’s really cliche.”
Rarity rolled her eyes, releasing the hug. “Anyway.” She smiled anew. “I think sometimes you forget that balance, but listen to me Twilight: your friends will always be here to remind you of that. Promise to listen?”
Twilight closed her eyes and sighed. “Yes, I promise.” She paused. “Thank you, Rarity. For putting up with me, for trusting me even when I couldn’t bring myself to trust you, and for the kind words. There aren’t enough words in the English language to express my gratitude. Uh, merci infiniment. Um… Muchas gracias por todo.” She relaxed her breathing. “Thank you, Rarity.”
Rarity smiled. “That’s what I’m here for, Twilight. That’s what we’re all here for.”
