But First!! Here are Some Doubts....

"Spike?"

The dragon did not budge nor speak, instead he simply kept his eyes locked on Macintosh. Said stallion stared back, suddenly very worried that he had just traumatized the poor dragon. Noticing that Eiffel's hoof still held onto his "lower organ", the farm pony gave him a light kick as a signal to release his grip.

Upon feeling the hoof release him, Macintosh attempted to turn on his stomach. The movement must have startled the dragon out of his daze.

"Breakfastisready," he cried out in a rushed voice before jumping back down the ladder. Macintosh, feeling fresh, sickening panic surge through him, jumped from the loft and landed on his rump near the door. Using his back hooves he kicked the door to his room closed whilst hiding his still aroused anatomy in his front hooves.

Spike skidded to a halt in front of Macintosh, his hopes of escaping the

eminent confusion and scolding dashed. He turned to look over his shoulder at Eiffel, hoping the colt would somehow save him. However, the blue colt's expression was unreadable as he descended the ladder slowly.

"S-spike you weren't supposed ta see that," Macintosh trailed off, his words failing him. He had planned out an excuse for the chance that Granny or the girls had caught them. But Spike?

"W-what ah mean is....um...." Macintosh's voice failed him again, a voice in the corner of his mind reminding him that his "proud soldier" had yet to retreat. The poor dragon must be disgusted on top of terrified.

"Nonono," the dragon shouted a little louder than he planned, waving his claws dismissively in front of him, "I just came to get you for breakfast ssssooo....."

The dragon made a gesture with his fingers and a mimed stepping motion toward the door. Macintosh frowned and looked up to Eiffel hoping the colt would know what to do.

"What he meant was that there is something you should maybe know," Eiffel sat back on his haunches, keeping his eyes level with Spike's. The dragon cocked his head to the side and was about to form a question before Macintosh blurted out a request.

"Don't tell AJ and Granny. Please." The farm pony had a pleading look on his face, an expression the dragon had never seen on the usually stoic stallion. He gulped and made a X motion across his heart, to which Macintosh breathed a heavy sigh of relief.

"Look, me and Macintosh just....well you know...see we woke up and noticed we were laying on each other and...locker room stuff..." Eiffel scrambled about in his brain looking for a convincing story. Thankfully (or perhaps unfortunately) Macintosh beat him to it.

"Me and Eiffel are a couple,"

Spike's eyes widened and his jaw dropped as the words registered in his head. He turned to look at the stallion who had spoken them. Macintosh held his head low and his eyes closed, a seeming look of pain on his facial features as he forced the words out.

"I was keepin' it a secret cause I didn't know how far it'd go,"

Eiffel let his head drop, knowing full well that a part of Macintosh was ashamed of him. Ashamed of himself.

"But....why?" Spike's mind blistered over attempting to form a good question. Why would two colts be ok with not having mares of their own?

"I'm happy this way," Eiffel's ears perked and he looked up to see Big Macintosh staring down into Spike's wide eyes.

"And if two ponies love each other.....," Thankfully the dragon could not see the blush on the farm pony's face through his already red fur.

Spike looked down at his fidgeting claws, remembering the "special part" Eiffel was servicing. Whenever Applejack had kissed him he had felt something in a similar area. He also remembered (with some disdain) that Rarity had provoked a similar reaction in Thunderlane all those nights ago.

"So...it's ok as long as somepony loves you?" Spike looked up at Macintosh, a long forgotten hope swirling back into his mind.

Eiffel placed a hoof on the dragon's shoulder, his best guess was that the dragon was thinking about the unicorn in town.

"I hope," he said with a bit of sarcasm in his voice, looking down at Spike.

"I'm assuming you're thinking about you and AJ right?" Eiffel asked, hoping to maybe get the dragon's mind back on track. "She coming onto you yet?"

Spike's mouth went dry at the bold question. It was simply "bro talk" in a sense of the phrase, but that didn't stop the heat from rising to his cheeks. Thankfully, Macintosh took notice of the light tinges of red spreading across the dragon's face.

"gardless'," Macintosh waved a hoof dismissively despite the annoyed look on his face, "these things only happen if'n you have a special somepony. And it don't matter none who they are as long as ya love em',"

Spike looked down at his feet, wondering how Macintosh could make it sound so simple; the formula that could have convinced Rarity sounded so natural coming from the stallion's mouth. He wondered why such an issue never occurred to AJ.

'Perhaps Applejack was meant to be your special somepony all along' a voice in his head whispered.

"You still wanna hang out with us right?" Eiffel asked from behind the dragon, worry at the thought of losing his little friend made his ears droop considerably.

"You won't tell nopony will ya?" Macintosh asked a split-second later.

"You're the only guy friends I have to hang out with, and I wouldn't want to lose you," the dragon smiled lightly.

"But I have a question....see I've heard jokes about this before..." Spike twiddled his fingers looking for the right words. He again felt his mouth go dry, his thoughts of Rarity and AJ shoved swiftly to the side in favor of natural curiousity.

"Who's supposed to be the mare?"

"U-...That's...u-uh, hey Eiffel why dontcha go ahead n' eat with Spike? I'll be down inna sec," Macintosh shoved the blue colt by his shoulders towards the door, making sure to keep a halfway convincing smile on his face.

"Yeah, gotta work on not getting caught with my mouth full huh?" Eiffel smiled back at the stallion only to have the door slammed in his face.

An hour later found Spike jogging down the path to Ponyville. On both sides of the road he was met frequently with the groggy but smiling faces of the many inhabitants of Ponyville. Once or twice he swore he saw Derpy sailing about in the skies, no doubt on her morning mail route. Aside from the unbelievable  revelation that morning (it still hadn't completely sunk into the dragon's mind yet) Ponyville seemed at peace.

The mood of that morning held well until he just had his claw hovering over the door latch to the library; before he could close his claws around the latch, the door swung outward jamming his smallest one backward. The dragon stifled the cry of pain and popped the digit into his mouth, hoping the light suckling would ebb the pain away.

"Oh I'm terribly sorry dear, I-I have many things i need to take care of," Rarity hovered over the dragon for a second then bolted away, her tail slapping lightly against his face. Spike nearly answered back, the pain in his claw now forgotten, only to have his voice catch in his throat. The awkward tension was still too great of a weight on his tongue, and his conscience begged him to ignore her.

Still, it wasn't like Rarity to wear such dark makeup, especially in uneven amounts. From the single second Spike had to look into her face, he knew that there was no way the fashionista would have even used an eye shadow that dark or that thick. As a matter of fact, it happened to look more like a bruise.

Pushing the door open with his back with his claw in his mouth, Spike took notice of the lights that were still off. He fumbled about for the switch with his good claw until he found his mark, illuminating several small mountains of books on the floor that had no doubt been read several times over. He sighed heavily and set about picking them up and realphabetizing them, each one just so happening to be at least 800 pages thick with matching weight. Cursing his small stature, Spike hefted each one back into its proper place on the shelves and made his way to the counter, where just underneath sat a broom he had become well acquainted with.

As he approached he spotted a group of books he had missed sitting neatly on top of one another. Before another sigh managed to escape his lips he noticed that he had not seen these particular books in the library before. Eccentricities in her reading habits aside, Twilight would have never let such a book be seen in her possession. And he would know, Twilight had a certain series of novels right under her bed. The poor unicorn was terrible at hiding things.

Tilting his head to the side the young dragon's eyes hovered over the stallion on the cover. His body was thick with muscles, a regal horn atop his head peeking out though the jungle of wild golden hair. In his forehooves he held a mare in a swooning position, her mane covering much of her face except for one bright green eye. Of course, the setting looked about right for the characters; the two sat upon a large bed, red satin sheets billowing about for some unknown reason.

Definitely something Rarity had specifically ordered, no wonder she had been at the library.

Sure enough, inside the covers of the first two books lay long overdue return cards, Twilights hoofmade logo for the Ponyville library penned out at the bottom. Luckily, Twilight had magically copied the logo to each book in the library herself for safety precautions. Fake returns or not, Spike would have rather not had to have made each one himself.

"Guess I can overlook the late fees....," the dragon mumbled under his breath as he crumpled the overdue cards in his claws. As he reached for the expiration card  in the last of the cheap, paperback novels he noticed there was no logo under the cover. Frowning, he turned the book on its back to inspect the cover.

The book depicted another equally built stallion, this time with his fur soaking wet staring of into the distance. He appeared to be bathing under what looked like a waterfall, obviously a setting intended for some romantic date scene in the book.

Cheesey. But surprisingly more believable than the Twilight's vampire pony books. Hopefully the female lead wasn't a self insert.

Sighing, Spike gathered the novel under his arm and jumped down from the stool he had boosted himself upon. Hustling as quietly as he could up the stairs, he nudged open his and Twilight's bedroom door. Inside he could just make out the mare, her head poking out of her blankets and resting on an open book. The page would no doubt be stuck to her face when she awoke.

Closing the door again, Spike crept carefully back down the stairs and stood just in front of the front door. Sighing heavily, the dragon steeled himself for the meeting he knew was fast approaching. As much as he wanted to ignore it, the book under his arm did not belong to the library. And with the simple logic he had learned in few years, he reasoned that not returning it would make him a thief.

Spike stepped out into the bright morning sunlight and made his way to the Carousel just down the street.