Author's Note

Sorry for such a whiffly "nothing" chapter (arent' they all?). This has been a busy, tiresome week and I wanted to have something to post tonight. So, here you have it. I'm pretty sure the 150-200 "regular viewers" know what to expect at this point.

This story started out with a lot of mental internalization, and such will continue... even after potential future banging(s). That's why the story exists, methinks.
-SS&E

Much'a'Dorks About Nuttin'

Flash Sentry's entire life had long been a grand exercise in the word “awkward.” Remaining tiny and frail while all the other boys around him grew up was awkward. Having to get used to an eternal affinity towards cute, pink, and lacy things was awkward. Having to pass himself off as an adult after graduation while all the fellow citizens towering over him insisted that he was actually a "teenage girl" was awkward.

Trips to the DMV were awkward. Moments spent sitting in the library were awkward. Trying to drive a car while sitting on two phonebooks was still awkward. Being carded for everything under the sun was awkward.

Then there were the physicals at the doctor's office or trying to have a conversation with Magnolia Buckler or going to a job interview. In every facet of Flash's existence, he had explored insurmountable corners of cringe. It had come to such a boil that he was certain that he had toughened his metaphorical skin for every anxious, unnerving, unsettling thing that could be experienced in life.

But nothing could possibly have been more awkward than that car-ride home with Sunset Shimmer after the Cadenza Corp debacle.

Flash Sentry's eyes remained locked on the door of the glove compartment in front of him.

Sunset Shimmer's eyes were glued to the road. Or—at least—that's what Flash Sentry hoped. There was no sound, no titter, no inclination that anything was happening... save for the icy glide that the vehicle took down the country highway, gliding downhill and towards the main body of Canterlot City.

Biting his lip, Flash finally braved Sunset a glance.

The amazon did not so much as return a blink. Her expression was neither angry nor happy, but instead a perpetual state of sour deadpan. She looked like a puppy who had scampered twenty miles from home... only then to contemplate whether or not she had made a stain on the carpet, and now she had to return to the scene of the maybe/maybe-not crime while only managing the speed of bubbling molasses. Her every breath was tense, guarded, as if afraid to shatter a massive glass bottle containing all her remaining fears in.

Every single one of these observable details sent pins and needles into Flash's tender heart. He winced, looking back at the dashboard... losing his mind and concentration in the dappled black surface of the car's psuedo-leathery finish.

He had been so... so assholish to Sunset. Barking at her like a mangy hound. Yanking the bracelet out of her grasp. Putting her into a place of sudden and startling vulnerability.

And the worst part of it was—a part of Flash was glad that he had forced her to expose her own weakness. It wasn't that doing so gave him some masochistic catharsis. Much rather, Flash now knew that Sunset could be just as pensive and nervous and fragile as him.

Still—no matter which way he looked at what had just transpired outside of Cadenza Corp—Flash Sentry needed to ascertain the truth behind this current situation. And that truth had been exposed to him... through the fear that had flickered through Sunset's panicked eyes... through the way that she had sweated, trembled, cried.

Maybe the valkyrie of Canterlot High days gone by would have been evil enough... crazy enough to have put on such a wildly convincing act as a farce. But that was doubtful. Nothing about who Sunset was—before or after she-demon-fall—necessitated showing herself as weak. In fact, she was always a strong woman... always a confident spirit. She maintained it not so much for herself, but for her friends. And—for the past few days—she had been maintaining that confidence for Flash's sake.

And he had just shattered it in a single blow by so much as creeping towards her while her bracelet was off. A bracelete that he had snatched off in an impulse of brazen anger—his most detested emotion.

No. Sunset hadn't been faking her panic, and neither was she faking her current malaise. Besides... why would she choose to do so? In fact, why would she fake anything that had come to light in their most recent conversation? It couldn't have been that she was crazy. The e-mails from her friends and the vague words of warning from Cadance all made sense now. They fitted the grand narrative that Sunset had related to Flash, even if that grand narrative scarcely made a bean-flick of sense.

But... to comprehend this situation was simply... too absurd for the poor boi.

Sunset... Twilight Sparkle... all of the rest of the girls...

...they wanted to sex him up?

He was somehow a living magic battery for all seven of them?

This was also inexplicably tied to the very fabric of the pocket universe that he didn't know he lived in all this time?

God was a lecher? And also more than one? And ancient? And a horse?

God was multiple ancient horse lecherous magician pony people thingies?

Flash's toes curled within the straps of his sandals. He looked down at them... at his partially rolled-up jeans... at Apple Bloom's hand-me-down blouse and the burgundy purse in his grasp.

Did Sunset Shimmer dress him up because she knew that a hidden part of Flash secretly enjoyed the notion...?

...or did she simply treat him like a doll because she secretly straightened her "kinks" out of doing so?

Flash propped his chin against his hand and gazed out the window.

And what if...

He tensed his muscles.

What if... ... ...

The boi's jaw clenched.

... ... ... ... ... ...what if both his and her wants had actually come close to meeting in some holy, happy center?

He sucked his breath in.

Had he ruined such a possibility?

Flash looked nervously out the corner of his eyes, over his shoulder.

Or had Sunset?

The young woman took a deep breath. With icy motions, she wordlessly clicked the turn signal on. The car angled its way onto a side road that led towards the heart of town. The traffic appeared, thin and trickling at first, then growing denser with each plaza and gas station that they passed on the way home.

Flash chewed on his bottom lip. He let his eyes wander back out the window. But try as he might to relax, his heart only pulsed harder and colder in his sensitive little chest.

It was over, wasn't it?

It was all over.

Two days...

Two short days of being welcomed into a safe home... being given a warm bed... being immersed in the scent of lilacs and the touch of pink and lace and soft-soft-soft everything...

...and now it was all over.

Flash has reconnected with a dear old friend. True, she had been cruel to him in the past, but all of the many little things she had done in forty-eight short hours easily made up for what she had done to him for fifty-two-odd weeks back in high school.

For the briefest of moments, Flash felt loved. He felt adored. And—even if he protested to some degree like a spoiled brat—there was no deying that he felt respected. Sunset had done nothing but compliment and flatter and encourage him. Hell, she had even gone out of her way to help him embrace the fluffier, girlier, sissier portions of his inner self that he had denied for so... so very long.

And in the end? He had taken a big crap all over that. He couldn't have been arsed to show his gratitude. He couldn't even reach deep enough into himself to summon gratitude.

And why should he have been surprised? All of these years—during high school and in the time following—Flash had drowned himself in the same absence of hope. He never really climbed out of the quagmire that he had carved for himself. Sunset couldn't be blamed for crashing into the wall that was Flash's impenetrable neuroses. If he couldn't help himself... how could anyone else?

So... it was all over. It had to have been. The hospitality... the warm showers... the delightfully large and fluffy bed... he could kiss that all good bye.

It was back to limbo for Flash.

But... even worse than that...

...in ruining all of this, Flash had sliced off the last limb that ever bothered to reach out to him. Sunset Shimmer would never possibly lend him the same grace and mercy that she had attempted to over these past few days. And—by extension—he might as well kiss 'good bye' to Twilight and Rainbow Dash and all of the rest of the Elements of Harmony. Superheroes! He had given up on being absolute best buds with God-blessed Superheroes!

The car rocked.

Sunset had hit a slight bump in the road.

Catching his delicate breath, Flash flung her a desperate look... as if hoping that would shake an emotion out of her stonefaced expression. Any emotion.

But she conveyed nothing. Sunset's calm turquoise eyes reflected the median in strobelike flickers. It was like that one moment from Disney's A Goofy Movie... at least before Reddit and the rest of the Internet ruined the screenshot's geuinely poignant moment through excessive meme-ing.

Stifling a simper, a sighing Flash looked out the window, once more absorbing himself in the passing urbanity.

But...

What would it have meant to be 'best buds' with superheroes? For Flash...?

Would he have been their friends? Or—if Sunset was to believed—would he have been more like a doormat?

The boy's lower muscles tensed. His mind flickered back to a moment spent in Sunset Shimmer's shower. A naughty moment.

And that recollection brought his mind back to countless other “naughty” moments spent at past homes in bed, humping the pillows as he imagined being used, enjoyed, and—yes—even abused by handsome phantoms far more glorious, mature, and sexualized than he. It was always... always a fantasy of Flash to be the source of another person's pleasure, even if it was to his chagrin.

Who was Flash kidding: especially if it was to his “chagrin.”

Flash wouldn't have described himself as a masochist. But there was no denying the fact that in almost every moist fantasy he had ever had—he always imagined himself at the very very bottom of the proverbial barrel, where all of the humours from relieved partners hotly collected. It wasn't entirely because he had low self-esteem, although that was true. But—rather—he had more confidence in himself being a tool... a means to an end in an erotic scenario... as opposed to a strong and capable vehicle for ferrying a partner to bliss.

In some ways—most of them sissy ways—Flash found the role that he desired based on a gross overamplification of objectified hyper-femininity. Passive, submissive, obedient, indebted—these were all qualities that he fantasized exemplifying, with a consistent sprinkle of coquettishness and coyness. And it wasn't that Flash somehow believed that all women were meant to constrain themselves to such a specifically designed nature. But someone like Flash? Hell to the yes.

Nevertheless, Flash never truly imagined—even for a tiny fraction of a second—that he would ever actually find himself in a position to experience anything of this nature. Overwrought as he was with life, academics, and ennui, the young man had long forsaken any and all expectations of losing his virginity (brush handles aside). There was a brief spark of feelings when his high school self went out with Sunset Shimmer—and most of those emotions flavored with fear—but the valkyrie never wanted more from him than status and acclaim. With Princess Twilight Sparkle, it was a different situation altogether. Flash never expected anything from her except to bask in her prettiness, and he beat himself up for months... years after she went silent... mostly for having fallen in love with a feeling and not a flesh-and-blood being whom he'd possibly get to “know” sometime.

All in all, for as romantic and dreamly as the boi's heart could be, Flash had fed it nothing but pipe dreams for the entirety of his life. There was nothing to prepare him for the suddenly real possibility that a living soul might want to jump into his pants—a seven and a half foot tall living soul at that. So it would come as quite the shock that such an eventuality might descend upon him.

And... as it would seem... it more or less had. Through Sunset Shimmer. Even now, in that abominably quiet car ride, after all that Flash had pondered and mulled over, it was just now starting to throttle him. His heart jolted and twitched in tiny, frightened starts, and he was glad that Sunset Shimmer was wearing the... … ...anti-magic bracelet thingies so as not to read his frazzled mind.

Sunset Shimmer wanted to bang him. She needed to bang him.

This wasn't his “conceited male ego” ego mutating the truth to fit some horny narrative. She had spelled it out to the boi in curiously logical detail. Her factual statements were backed up by the rules of magic which—as it turned out—were existentially mind-boggling. According to Sunset, the entire universe was basically created so that she could bang him. And not her alone—but the other members of Harmonic Fountain... the Elements of Harmony.

The universe wanted seven gigantic amazons to bang Flash Sentry.

His toes curled and uncurled again as he tried not to breath hotly against the window of the passenger's side.

Was there ever something so simultaneously daunting and exciting all at once?

Flash may have been a delicate porcelain doll of a virgin, but—if he really put his heart and mind to it—it wasn't too terrible a stretch of the imagination to perceive himself and his ex-girlfriend performing some hot calisthenics between the bedsheets. He didn't particularly understand the how's and why's of Sunset's self-proclaimed “allure” that attracted her enchanted self to him, but that wasn't the crux of the issue. He knew her well enough, admired her well enough, and—even if he might have denied it—trusted her well enough to allow himself to join her in a place of such vulnerability, intimacy, and tenderness.

She was a sexy woman. A dead-sexy woman. Sunset was an accomplished prodigy—intelligent, athletic, nimble, courageous, and loyal. What's more, her forwardness and confidence and outpouring of affection made her irresistible from all angles. She also had nice legs. It's not that Flash loathed breasts, but he had a greater affinity for things he could see better at his height.

If all of... that wanted to share a bed with Flash, then he was supremely flattered. Scared, yes, but ultimately flattered. And while he didn't have a god-damn clue how in the Hell he'd be capable of actually pleasing such a magical tall horse girl woman, his closeness to her made the seemingly incomprehensible act almost... something to look forward to.

Poor Flash had no way... no way whatsoever of imagining how he'd ever possibly.. conceivably find himself in a position to share the same feelings for the other six women in Sunset Shimmer's magically intimate life.

Six women. All of them amazons and—from what Flash could only guess from the kiss of fate bestowed on Sunset—likewise sexy and attractive and mature as Hell. That was like taking someone like Sunset, shoving in a wedge of unfamiliarity, adding a dense five-year-curtain of estrangement, throwing in a physical difference of about three feet—and still somehow expecting a compatible match with the wet napkin of a sissy young man.

It wasn't too much of a stretch to think that most men in Flash's position would be ecstatic at the thought of being the center of seven sexy amazonians' attention.

But the poor boi was terrified. Just thinking about entering the same room as them—being exposed to their eager eyes—made him want to cling to Sunset's thigh. This entire world—this entire erotic revelation of the nature of the Fountain and the Well—was so damned overwhelming and migraine inducing that Flash wanted to turn to the only person he trusted in this world and just... disappear in her loving arms forever.

It was well enough imagining himself with just Sunset. Still a hurdle—yes—but at least he could take some comfort in her gentle-kindness, her protectiveness, and her warm presence—all buffered by the security of familiarity that they both shared, even after five lonesome years apart.

But Flash was having the damnedest time imagining himself arriving at a position to share the same sort of emotional closeness and trust with six other monumental specimens of the female species. And for a sparkling little princess-to-be like Flash: he found it very difficult to separate emotional needs from sexual prowess. Things may have been different in his pillow-humping/brush-invading fantasies, but the tables had turned. The most absurdly fantastical situation had become a reality, and it only made his tiny balls even bluer in fright.

And just like, he felt a wave of guilt overcome his trembling self. Remorse. Shame. The usual self-defeating concoction. Flash's heart and mind and soul were all a tangled not trying in futility to be a pretty pink bow. Every step taken had to be examined and rexamined for the rocks and shoals surrounding the fuchsia island of his dreams. Flash couldn't even allow himself the full realizations of his own kinks and fantasies—and lord knows Sunset tried to help him out.

So... then... how could he ever possibly find himself rising to the occasion to assist Sunset Shimmer with her own needs? Much less her six friends' need?

No wonder she had been taking her sweet time revealing things to him. And no wonder she currently looked and sounded so quietly devastated during that car ride home from Cadenza Corp. Sunset must have suspected all along that this was a lost cause from the start... that because Flash Sentry of all people had turned out to be the Harmonic Well, the Harmonic Fountain would never receive the relief they needed to recharge their starving magics. She had even said it herself: she really wished that he wasn't the Harmonic Well.

If nothing else, Flash should have been grateful to her. She had gone to extreme lengths not only to consider his feelings—but to make it clear that his feelings and self respect were infinitely more important than... what she and the girls were needing out of him. And if her words were to be believed, then he still had the freedom to choose not to give them anything at all.

And the fact that his frightened self was seriously considering that only doubled the guilt rising up like acid in his gut. He wanted to provide for Sunset and her friends. He wished that he could look at the situation directly like a man and just say “yes.”

But he couldn't He was a sissy. He confronted the weight of the matter with the only muscle worth anything in his being—his mind. And because of his inadequacy and cowardice, Sunset Shimmer was going to be starved—her friends included.

What then would become of the Elements of Harmony?

And—by extension—what would become of the world?

Was Flash and his chastity seriously going to be reason for why the entire unprotected world burned in a maelstrom of chaotic Equestian magics?

He already felt the lump in his throat forming. Tears were collecting in his eyes. Choking on the urge to sob, he turned to say something—anything—if only to break the damnable silence and bridge communication with the valkyrie.

But she was getting out of the idling car. And it was then that Flash snapped to reality... realizing that they had pulled into the driveway of her house.

The time for thinking was over. That—or, at least—Flash had run out of excuses for it.

So, squirming, he opened the passenger door and stepped out—purse and all. Any silence at this point would be unbearably cringey. Sure enough, he felt the hairs on the back of his head rising as he and Sunset stepped towards the front door, quiet as gravestones. Perhaps just as gray.

Sunset Shimmer opened the door for him, allowing the boi to walk through first. He accepted her grace with dignity, nevertheless afraid to look her in the face. He stool peek or two out of the corner of his eyes—and what he saw stabbed his weeping heart.

Sunset didn't look sad. She looked sadder than sad. It wasn't the kind of sadness that one might expect from the face of a toddler who had a lollipop stolen from her. Although, all things considered, that's more or less what had happened to her.

But rather, the valkyrie looked like she was avoiding Flash's gaze... out of some painful emotion. Shame? Regret? Disgust?

Did she actually think that she had betrayed Flash somehow? After all that she done for him? After how much she had exposed: her vulnerabilities and her needs and her concerns and everything?

Sunset was a towering amazon, immune to disease and injury, self-efficient outside of the normal boundaries biological metabolism. And yet—with just one conversation—Flash felt like he had pounded her effortlessly to the ground. A slung stone had found its Goliath... Goliathette?

In any case, when they both stepped into the heart of the house, a split was inevitable. Sunset was the first to alter course, and she did so slowly—so as not to convey any spite in how she drifted away from Flash. Flash heard her heavy, sexy footsteps taking her on a sad path to the kitchen. The fridge open, and there was a clattering of glass. He had never seen her drink beer or wine, but the idea was not lost to him—especially then and there.

But he didn't dare look. He didn't dare do anything but walk forward. Walk forward he did... until he couldn't walk anymore. The thing that blocked him was an enormous lilac-scented bed. Sunset's room. Flash wanted nothing more but to fly forward, bury himself in those sweet satin sheets, and sob... sleep... sink for an eternity.

Which is precisely why he didn't do that. His legs were locked in place. He stood—anchored to the sound of Sunset's footsteps against the kitchen tile floor... to the face of frigid cold defeat plastered over her guilty face.

He finally swallowed the lump away. As it dissolved, a shivering resolve welled up inside him—which was both poetic and ironic.

He plopped the purse down on the bed, turned one-hundred-and-eighty degrees, and marched back the way he came.

Entering the front of the house, Flash's gait slowed... if only test the waters of this fresh frozen hell. Flash rounded the corner, pensively touching his fingers together as he looked for Sunset Shimmer's figure.

He found her sitting at the kitchen table, cradling a tall glass bottle of... something. His eyes focused on the label, and part of him almost wanted to giggle when he realized what she was drinking.

Apple cider.

Once a pony, always a pony.

He shuffled slowly... quietly into the room.

At last, her eyes darted to meet him—but it was over as soon as it happened. Her body flinched slightly, and she cradled the bottle closer, staring intently at the table-top.

Flash didn't stop. He approached the opposite end of the table. Using his meager strength, he tugged... yanked... then finally pulled a chair out far enough so that he could sit up in it. This too took some effort, considering it was made for tall buxom women and not tiny, anxious fembois.

At last, he sat across from her, having to squat on his tender little knees in order to approximate something closest to eye contact.

This was it. The two were in the same room, carrying the same breaths that brought them all the way back there from Cadenza Corp. There was no preventing... the future from happening.

Sunset found herself glancing at him again... and again. She looked at the boi, at the table, at the bottle in her grasp. At long last, she let loose a raspy groan, punctuated with a mute curse word. She brought the cider to her mouth and chugged... chugged... chugged. Then—stifling a burp—she dropped the half-empty bottle to the table and exhaled.

“Alright.” The woman sat straight and confident, her hard turquoise narrowing on the boi as she spoke in a real, direct tone: “How about this. You just ask me questions—any questions—and I answer them. Okay?”

Flash took a breath. He nodded. “Okay.”

“So...” Sunset waved a hand... gulped... and waved again. “...what do you want to know first?”

“... … … … … ...do you really find me attractive?”