Author's Note
I tried.
Than to receive
Anon was pacing backwards and forwards in his tiny little living area, muttering to himself and tapping a finger against his chin. Rainbow Dash - who he’d invited over - sat and watched him do this. He’d been doing it for maybe five minutes straight at this point.
Not entirely unusual.
“I got a problem, Rainbow,” he said eventually, not stopping pacing.
“Is it that you’re a dork?” She asked, flopping over onto her back in the chair she’d settled in and seeing if watching him pace upside-down was any more interesting. It was not.
Anon frowned and stopped, one hand on his hip the other wagging at her.
“Okay first thing: not your best material. Second, I’m serious, I need some help here.”
“Help with what?” She cried, throwing her hooves out and very nearly sliding out of the chair. “You invited me over here without saying why and then just started doing that thing where you talk to yourself.”
He tried to come up with a response to that but she had him in a box.
“That’s fair. Alright it kind of goes like this: it’s the holiday season, right? Hearth’s Warming or whatever it is you ponies have? The big deal of the year?” He said, waving a hand at the window. Outside, things were snowy and seasonal. Lights twinkled. All very picturesque.
“Uh-huh?”
“And this Hearth’s Warming thing is basically Christmas-”
“It is not!” Rainbow protested. He’d pointed out the similarities before but had been universally shouted down about it and the party line among Rainbow and indeed all the others was that it was a coincidence and they were not the same thing. He remained unconvinced.
“No, shh, it is. At least for practical purposes so shh. Point is there are gifts, yeah?”
This at least she couldn’t argue, folding her hooves over and sliding down lower until her head thunked onto the floor. She remained steadfastedly upside-down.
“Well, yeah. So?”
“So I’m having gift-related issues. Specifically about, uh, well, one person in particular…” he said, glancing away and rubbing his neck. Rainbow groaned.
“Is this about Rarity?”
“No! Wait, yes. It is. It’s entirely about Rarity.”
Rainbow groaned again, a long drawn-out one this time as she finally gave up and just flopped right out of the seat and onto the floor. Anon ignored her theatrics, they held no fear for him.
“Rarity gets me stuff all the time. I mean all the time. Like, from the start of the year onwards. I can’t stop her! She just keeps doing it!” He said.
He wasn’t lying, either. The ratio of stuff in his ill-proportioned house that he’d got himself versus stuff that Rarity had got for him was not a favourable one. Anytime he even so much as thought of something he might liked to get - hell, even a lamp - seemed to be able to read his thoughts and beat him to the punch.
It had got a little ridiculous.
“That doesn’t sound like a problem to me,” Rainbow said, limp on the floor.
“The problem is she never lets me give anything back! Any time I even suggest it she shuts me down! I feel like I’m taking advantage of her and I can’t even stop her! I want to give her something, you know? I feel I kind of have to at this point.”
Kicking her legs Rainbow rolled over and sat up, blowing her mane out of her face. This took a couple of tries to get it to stick.
“So Hearth’s Warming is a good excuse to finally get her one?” She asked. Anon nodded but brandished a finger.
“Yes! Only then there’s another problem!” He said.
Rainbow’s mane fell into her eyes again.
“Great,” she said.
“I’m flat fucking broke, Rainbow. Rarity is a classy lady and she deserves a classy kind of gift - the exact kind of gift I am entirely unable to get her. And she’s got me so much! I have to at least look like I tried, right? Has to be something to properly, you know, suggest that I really like- I mean, that I appreciate her, you know? Can’t just be anything!”
All of Rainbow’s efforts to blow her mane into order failed so she, cursing quietly, had to do it by hoof and once she was done with that she hopped over and onto all fours, leaping back into the chair again and settling in, feeling that while she was listening to Anon kvetch she might as well be comfortable.
“You’re tying yourself in knots over nothing, you know that right? Rarity got you stuff because she likes you - uh, because she likes getting ponies stuff, you know? She doesn’t want anything in return. She doesn’t need anything. She just likes doing that.”
“But I have to get her something, right? I can’t just get her nothing! What would she think if I got her nothing? Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as getting her something not great though. Like, being insulted by the lack of a gift is less than being super-insulted by a bad gift. A bad gift means that someone tried and failed! Did it wrong! Oh this is hard. This is the problem!”
Rainbow was singularly unimpressed with his rising hysteria.
“As long as it’s from you she’ll love it. Don’t sweat it so much, you’ll get a hernia.”
“What do you mean as long as it’s from me?”
She rolled her eyes.
“I mean that no matter what it is as long as she knows it’s from you she’ll love it. That’s the point of a gift. Not what it is, but just that you thought about someone enough to give it to them. Well, okay, it does matter a little what it is - but only so you don’t give her a turd in a box or something. Avoid that and you should be fine.”
“I think a turd in a box might be a little out of my price range, Rainbow,” Anon said, hands wringing.
A little hyperbolic on his part, but still. Rainbow glared.
“Well then make her something! You can make stuff, can’t you? Make food! I know you can cook. Just do that. Show that you thought about her. More than usual...”
The last part of this was delivered more quietly, but certainly not so quietly that Anon wouldn’t have been able to hear it. Instead, he just ignored it.
“What? Cook for her?” Anon asked, the idea so out of left field he was entirely blindsided. His culinary abilities were at least reliable, and often highly appreciated on the occasions they were called upon. He just didn’t think they were especially remarkable. Food was just a thing. Not that big of a deal.
Others had different opinions on the subject.
“Yeah! Why not? Go all out. Just go over sometime soon and offer to cook her up something nice. She’ll love it!”
Anon considered this, scratching his head.
“That’s not really a gift though,” he said and Rainbow growled in disgust, throwing a cushion - a gaudy one, given that Rarity had got it for Anon - at his head. He caught it, worrying that it might knock over something else Rarity had got if he didn’t.
“I think you’re trying to suck right now,” Rainbow said.
“...don’t need to try to suck…” He mumbled.
Not the right thing to have said.
More cushions had been thrown after that, at least until Anon had convinced Rainbow through extensive pleading to please stop throwing the cushions and could they just throw snowballs outside instead, where there was less stuff to break. She agreed and then spent a pleasant hour or two pelting him with impunity as she easily dodged all of his return fire.
A good time was had by all and Anon collapsed into bed a little soggy and exhausted.
He thought about what Rainbow had suggested.
In his head he had pictured that what Rarity should get - what she deserved from him - was something fancy. What that fancy thing was was a mystery, though. He had no idea. He didn’t even know where he could start, even if he could have afforded fancy, which he couldn’t.
Rarity, in his mind, was a lady of singular tastes, and what she liked was what she liked. And what she liked was not something he would probably be able to give her. And that made him sad.
So the idea of coming at the whole thing sideways? Not even trying to give something discreet that he could just hand over but rather putting in time and effort into something that’d happen once and would only be for her? Interesting. Not what he would normally have thought of, not at all, but certainly interesting.
Worrying though. What if it backfired? What if she’d been expecting something tangible?
Anon was riven with doubts but too tired to think about any of them clearly, and fell asleep in a fug of confused misery. He awoke feeling a smidgen better, and with something similar to a plan forming in his head.
There had been prior occasions when, after slapping something together for and her and the others, Rarity had expressed a specific desire to him that he should come over and make her something. Obviously she’d just been being polite at the time - what else would it have been? - but it seemed a very good pretext for the gift, as it were.
Finally making good on it, you see? And at Hearth’s Warming, no less.
It made sense in his head, but it didn’t make him feel wholly confident. It was mainly his completely lack of other options and rapidly dwindling timeframe that pushed him into it.
Snatching up what ingredients he had lying around the house - which proved to be more than he’d remembered - he started concocting what he could make once he arrived. Rarity’s particular culinary leanings were those he’d paid most attention to those times he’d cooked for the bunch of them, so he at least felt semi-confident he’d manage something she’d like.
Hopefully. All things being equal.
Wrapping up warm - again, in stuff that Rarity had got him; made for him, no less! - and popping his ingredients into a bag he stepped outside and was at once buffeted by the wind and snow. Those pegassi did not fuck around, it seemed. But it would take more than a little light blizzard to hold him back. Girding his loins he pushed onwards, only getting a tiny bit lost and going in circles only once before finally arriving.
He knocked on the door. No response. He knocked a little louder, reasoning that perhaps his initial, wimpy knock had just been swallowed up in the howling wind. His second knock was clearly superior, and clearly impossible to not hear.
No response. Anon waited. She was probably just coming, was all.
The longer the wait dragged the more Anon felt certain that this whole thing was doomed to failure before it even started. What had he even been thinking? Making a meal indeed! What a fool. He was about to turn away and slink back through the snow when the door opened.
“I’m terribly sorry but the boutique is closed today and - oh, hello!” Rarity’s face lit up. “I didn’t expect to see you! I would have freshened up if I’d known you were going to be visiting.”
She looked much as he always did, of course, which is to say pretty good, but Anon didn’t really feel the need to point that out. One thing about her did prompt an immediate comment.
“That is a fine jumper, Rarity,” he said. She looked down. Her jumper - purple - was indeed fine. And fluffy and very warm looking.
“This old thing? This is just something I like to throw on! Hardly fine at all.”
“You should see the things I throw on. Wait, you do. You made them,” Anon said, realising too late what he was saying and that it was nonsense. To his immense relief Rarity just giggled off his misstep and stood aside, pulling the door further open as she did so.
“You’ll catch your death out there, come inside.”
Anon needed no encouragement and hustled on in, doing his best to keep the damp he brought with him contained as he stomped off his boots and divested himself of his layers. Rarity stood well back. Before too long he was recognisable again, though still a little flushed in the face from the cold. He grinned nervously as he brandished his bag of ingredients, clinging to it for moral support.
“To what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” Rarity asked.
Crunch time for Anon.
“Well, uh, Rarity, as you know it is the season for goodwill and all that and, well, you’ve always been so generous and lovely to me so I wanted to give you something in return but I couldn’t think of something good enough to really show the depth of my - uh - extent of my appreciation and I remembered that you always said that I should come and cook for you sometime and now kind of seemed like a good sometime for it and, uh…”
He was flagging. The barrage of words he’d unleashed upon Rarity had apparently left her stunned as she was just standing there staring at him, big, pretty eyes sapping what little resolve he’d been able to scrape together and leaving him trailing off.
“I mean I know it’s not really an actual gift or anything like that and I’m sorry I just, uh, yeah…”
He braced himself for imminent failure, averting his eyes so as not to see the horrendous emotional damage his terrible, terrible quote-unquote ‘gift’ had obviously done to Rarity, waiting to hear whatever polite words of disappointment she would use on him.
But there came nothing. Cautiously he peered at her.
“...Rarity?” He risked asking, having just enough time to see her watering eyes and wobbling bottom lip before she crashed into him, hooves wrapping around his middle.
“What a lovely thing to do for me!” Rarity cried, obviously holding back a sniffle. Anon stood, stunned, one hand holding the bag while the other settled gently onto her back.
“...it’s an okay thing I guess…” He mumbled.
“So in-keeping with the holiday spirit!” She said, breaking the hug and dropping back onto all fours, wiping her eyes on the back of a hoof.
Anon took this as a good sign and breathed an internal sigh of relief.
“It’s not going to be, like, a formal meal or anything, just something for the two of us. Or just you, if you want. And I can do formal if you want that I just hadn’t planned for it and-”
“Whatever you’ve planned is more than enough, Anon, stop worrying. You’ll do fine,” she said, shushing him. He was duly shushed.
“Alright. Shall I, then?” He asked, tilting his head towards the kitchen. He knew where it was. He knew his way around quite well, in fact. Not his first time popping over in a personal capacity. Rarity, smiling, nodded and stepped aside to let him pass.
Soon he was in his element, and with his concentration shifted onto the coaxing along of a various pots, pans and so forth his worries diminished. In his apron - well, Rarity’s apron, which did not fit at all - he swept around and about the kitchen, keeping a watchful eye on everything therein.
So to speak. It was all very dramatic.
Rarity then hugged him again, this time from behind, and he yelped in surprise.
“This was very thoughtful of you,” she said, head peeping up at him from under his arm. Recovering from his shock he smiled down at her a little sheepishly, not entirely proud of his yelp and also not entirely able to take full credit.
“Honestly it was Rainbow’s idea. I was getting kind of worried about what to get you because, uh, well presents kind of aren’t my strong suit and I didn’t want to get you the wrong one so she said I just do something for you. So here I am.”
Anon felt that skirting around the ‘flat-fucking broke’ thing was probably wise. Rarity would insist on helping somehow, and he’d feel awful. Times were lean was all. They’d pick up. It was all seasonal anyway.
“You worry too much darling, you know that? As long as it’s something you thought of doing for me then I love it.”
Rainbow had been alarmingly bang on the money. Anon noted this, and also made a note not to tell her. She would be insufferable.
“Well, I have thought of you quite a lot. I mean, thought of doing this for you quite a lot,” Anon said.
He blushed. She blushed. He was quietly relieved he hadn’t managed to mash those together as ‘thought of doing you a lot’ and counted his blessings. She thought of this as well and felt he’d missed a trick.
Neither said anything.
“Just got to, uh, stir this pot, right over here…” Anon said.
“Oh. Oh of course,” Rarity said, letting go of him. “I’ll go and set things out for us, shall I?”
Anon nodded, and so she did.
The meal was served in due course and enjoyed thoroughly. By candlelight no less. Rarity had insisted. She had also been the one to insist on wine, and on sitting beside Anon at the table rather than at either end, which had been his idea. So close beside him, in fact, she was practically squashed into his side.
Not that he was complaining.
“Have you really been thinking about doing this for me?” She asked about midway through after a few minutes of pleasantly companionable silence. Anon, who had been chewing, was in no position to quickly come up with a believable excuse and choked briefly, downing the rest of his wine and hammering a fist to his chest while Rarity lent safely away.
Anon, red in the face for several reasons and transfixed by her eyes, was bedazzled enough to only be able to answer honestly:
“Yes,” he said, dumbly. Then his brain caught up and he added, for safety: “I mean, you did mention it, like I said, and, well, you’re so nice to me and, uh…”
His brain deserted him again, distracted by the smile on her face.
“It’s nice to know I’m on your mind,” she said.
Anon’s face got redder, and he was profoundly glad for the candlelight.
Conversation for the rest of the meal was more tepid and more general. What Rarity was getting for who, what Anon was actually planning on doing on the day in question, a mild argument over who was washing what once the food was done - things like that.
“You simply can’t cook and wash up! What sort of host would I be!” Rarity had protested, interposing herself between Anon and the sink.
“The whole point of this was that it’s a treat,” Anon countered. Rarity was having none of it though, turning around and starting to scrub, continuing to block him. Anon kept his eyes on the back of her head and let them slip no lower even as he swept in and hoisted her up in his arms.
“Anon!” She cried, struggling. “W-what are you doing?”
“Treating you,” he said, wrangling her and keeping her from wriggling free as he carried her away from the kitchen and plopped her down onto a sofa. She attempted to leave but he was quicker, entangling her in blankets until she was too comfortable to want to keep trying to escape.
“I’m not happy with you about this,” she said grumpily as she settled in amongst the cushions, glaring. Anon booped her on the nose.
“You’ll forgive me,” he said, smiling, turning away in time to miss Rarity’s cheeks going a little pink as he returned to the dishes.
Once he’d finished Rarity had all-but nodded off and when he returned he found her curled up, head resting on the arm of the sofa. His heart nearly stopped. Seeing though that the blanket had slipped from her shoulder he tip-toed over and carefully pulled it back over her again.
Snuffling, she stirred, eye opening blearily.
“Mmm, what?” She mumbled.
“Shh, go back to sleep. I washed up, I’ll show myself out. I’m glad you liked it,” he said.
“Mmm, yes, yes…” Rarity said, eye closing again. But then it snapped open.
“No! Wait!”
Anon was caught partway across the room and froze.
Rarity shifted, groaning and still half-asleep, sitting up straight.
“I can’t in good conscience send you out in this dreadful weather! Stay a while, at least,” she said, tossing the blanket back to open up a space on the sofa, fluttering her lashes and suppressing a yawn. “Please?”
Anon was powerless to resist, finding himself snuggling underneath the blanket and pressed up against her before he’d even had the time to really think about it. Cooing in delight Rarity shuffled around to lay across his lap, curling up into his arm and trapping him completely.
“There, isn’t that better?” She asked, pulling the blanket over both of them, nuzzling into his chest. Anon squeaked.
“M-much,” he said. Rarity giggled sleepily and yawned again, trailing off into a happy hum as Anon’s hand - as though with a life of his own - came up to scratch her behind the ear.
“It was okay, wasn’t it? For a gift?” Anon asked quietly.
“It was lovely, darling, you don’t need to worry. It meant a lot to me, to know you think of me enough to worry at all,” she said, head drooping, his hand following her down.
“Rarity?”
“Hmm?”
“I really l- happy Hearth’s Warming,” he said, biting his tongue.
“I love you too, Anon,” Rarity said, voice trailing off.
She fell asleep the moment she finished saying this, trapping Anon in place to stew for a few hours and lose his mind trying to work out if he’d imagined her saying that or not.
