Did Looking at My Muscles Help Calm You Down?
B_25
Awful and horrible. Stress unrelenting with a dread never-ending. Douse it! Kerosene drenching every inch of every room of every floor of her pitiful, weak, and only superficially charming boutique. Burn it! Let all her soaked stacks and scrolls and rolls of papers and patterns tear at the gentlest touch, just like the plans and dresses and designs they all bore.
Everything that was, everything that is, and everything that could one day be consumed in the hottest heat of the most blazing fires, sweeping through her office, taking away her home, leaving the poor, stressed, and quite frankly, nearly dead mare homeless and helpless in reclaiming or even regaining all that she had built out of her life.
Her life and her work, all taken away in a single, blazing fire, one she would sit before, smiling and nearly crying, all because it meant a single, undeniable fact.
Rarity would have a good reason for missing her deadlines.
“Insurance would cover it.” Rarity kept her eyes strained and squinted as her hoof slid the fabric underneath the sewing needle, each movement delicate, everything needing to be precise. “One too many candles set late at night. Opalescence and her big, swinging tail. Why should they suspect anything else?” She laughed. It was painful to her ears. “I'm too fortunate to want to set a fire. It just wouldn't make any sense.”
She exhaled. Her lungs burned. Had she stopped breathing while she worked again?
“Fortunate.” Rarity tasted the word while pushing the lavender cloth away from the needle. The buzzing of the machine had started up softly, growing in pitch as it kept on working, nearly blaring and blowing her hearing by the time the task was done.
With a flick of her hoof against the switch on the side, the machine died down and, like a vacuum shutting off, the low humming petered for only a few seconds more. “I am a rather fortunate mare, aren't I? Unlimited time to make all the dresses and designs that I ever wanted to make. So... why am I...”
And then the door flew open.
Rarity shivered. Turning around on her stool, she gazed over her shoulder at the door that had been thrown open and nearly slammed into the wall. With a confused blink, she craned her neck back to look up at the staggering height of the intruder. Towering and bulky and wearing a pink apron.
“I am so, so sorry!” Spike burst into the room in a sprint, each step thunderous and shaking the room, all while his unbalanced feet tried to correct the other. Finally, one leg caught behind another, and the hulking dragon fell forward, his body falling towards the floor. “Sorry, sorry!”
Rarity flicked her gaze to the left, up on the wall, to brown shelf on the wall. Awards and trophies and even a smooth-green urn sat atop the surface, the last item filled with the ashes of a deceased aunt whose memory stirred a low-growl from her throat. The dragon slammed against the floor. The room shook. The jar bounced into the air, knocked off the edge, and in a second, the crash of broken pieces shattering and then scattering filled the air.
Rarity looked back to the fallen dragon. He was like a beautiful but scaly rug at the foot of her bed.
“O-Oh crap crap crap crap!” Spike blinked at every 'crap.' His muzzle laid flatly against the ground, and sweat coursing down his face. He threw his claws to the ground, not caring to check his own body as he lifted himself up, taking toward the vase at once. “It's no big deal! No big deal at all! I-I can fix this! Just... don't sweat a thing, alright?”
Sweating wasn't what Rarity was doing, but a whole lot of blinking was.
Spike walked behind the impact zone, kneeling before it. Picking up a shard with each of his claws, he raised them and held them before his face. “I learned this really cool trick from a book once. It's about how fire can be a binding agent to keep things together.” He glanced at the piece in his right claw, drawing it closer to his puckered lips. “Watch this!”
Spike closed his eyes. From his parted lips he blew a concentrated stream of green flames, which brushed over the cut edge of the shattered pieces, catching to it at once. His eyes reopened to the shards with a smile spreading across his lips. “Aha! See! The fire is... well... ah crap.”
The fire caught along the edges of the piece and slowly consumed the material into its innermost center, the shard rendered into fuel. It began to burn out of control, and with a panicked expression, Spike whipped the shard against the ground, it clicking and shattering into a dozen more pieces, each bearing a tiny, burning flame.
“C'mon!” Spike's shoulders dropped as he rose to his full height, an impressive place somewhere beyond six feet, one that Rarity had been dying to find out with a tape measure and without an inch to spare between them. Down girl. “Give me a break! That was the proper flame!”
Spike's response to the problem, of course, was to raise his foot high into the air, and with a heavy exhale, start stomping the ever-inanimate-life out of the ground. Rarity continued watching from the stool, her confusion turning to amusement but quickly transitioning into concern. She lifted a hoof toward the dragon.
“Spike, maybe that's not the proper way to—“
“Ack! My foot! My foot! Oh, my sweet and precious foot!” Spike's knee jerked into the air and his arms wrapped around it at once, hugging it against the belly of his pink apron. Rarity stifled a breath. The thickness of his protruding abs pressed against the fabric, defining their shape perfectly. “I'm bleeding, aren't I? I'm going to die... I'm going to die!”
Rarity wasn't sure what to make of life at the moment. Just having the dragon break into her bedroom and, well, act like Spike for longer than a minute was enough to swirl her body through a happiness and elation and confusion within that span.
“Spike! Will you calm down? You are not going to die.” Rarity crossed her forehooves over her fuzzy white chest, feeling the beating of her heart climb ever so softly, a silly and certain delight taking over her slender frame. “But you are going to hurt yourself if you keep bouncing around like—“
The crunching of the tiny shards broke through her words, and the resulting scream–the crying of a dragon–broke her ears. She pressed her forehooves against her ears and watched the dragon twirl across the room, falling over onto his back, right on the field of broken and sharp pieces.
Spike rolled left and right, more crunches and cracking as his back crushed down on the pieces. Rarity felt horrible while she watched, but at the same time, she held a hoof to her mouth to repress the tiniest giggle threatening to burst out from her lips.
“It's okay! I'm okay! Everything is going to be okay.” Spike rolled all the way to the right, out from the minefield of the broken vase. He laid there for a moment, panting, catching his breath. Then, rising up on his side, he gazed over the place that had brought him so much pain. “Just... gotta use the right fire is all.”
“Spike! I don't think that's—“
A sweep of flames blew over the scattered pieces and swept them into its gust, lifting up and twirling around slowly, nearly condensing itself out of existence before trailing up through an open window and out into the world.
Spike laid there, horrified, for the next few seconds.
“Spike?”
His body shivered. Clunky, like an old drawbridge rising, he turned his head and looked over at Rarity. She sat on her stool, leaning a cheek into her hoof, a foreleg arched against the table. “Y-Yes?” he stammered.
“Did you just mail the ashes of my dead aunt to Princess Celestia?”
Spike blinked. “Maybe she can bring her back to life?”
Rarity rolled her eyes. Turning away from the table, she pulled her forelegs back and hopped down onto the floor, horn glowing azure blue. From out of her open closet floated a medicine box, wrapped in an identical aura as she floated it over to the injured dragon. “You're lucky my aunt and I didn't see eye to eye on many things. Or else I would be very upset with you right now.”
Spike sat up properly, looking over his shoulder to confirm there was a wall behind him. Letting his back rest against it, his face settled up at her approach, unsure what to do when she laid down on her belly before his feet. “You two didn't like each other? T-Then why...”
“Why do I have her ashes?” The white box settled before her forelegs, the glowing blue unlocking its latch as its top swung up. Rolls of bandages floated upward followed by a pair of tweezers. Rarity then nodded at the instruments. “Honestly, that mare wanted to spite me in every way that was possible.”
The tweezers dove in and plucked shards out from the underside of his foot—aided by Rarity’s magic, of course.
“And even when she had passed on,” Rarity continued, “she still wanted to annoy me with her existence.”
Spike curled his claws against the ground, exhaling heavier out through his snout than he should have. “That, uh, d-doesn't really explain why you have them.”
“There are some ponies in life, Spike, that enjoy tormenting others for what they cannot obtain themselves. My aunt was such a pony, and in a way, is still such a pony.” Rarity plucked out a particularity deep shard, buried in the minuscule slit between two scales. She hummed at the constant clattering of shards pelting against the ground. “She knew about my disdain for her. How the image of her brought out the worst in me. Of course, when one passes away, such… primitive hatred begins to cease.” She coughed. “Unless they find a way to leave their memory on your shelf, of course, so they may continue to bite at your skin from beyond the grave.”
Rarity's muzzle scrunched up. He wasn't getting this at all, was he? She glanced up from between his feet, an impressive distance of even more powerful legs, thick and slender, sleek in a dark shade of purple. A glance up at his face—blank eyes and a blank expression. “Now what was I just going on about? Sorry for that, darling. It would appear... stress has me speaking rather strangely as of late.”
“Or I'm an idiot.”
“Don't say such a thing about yourself.” Rarity’s smile turned into a smirk. “You are only half an idiot. And that makes you a goofball, dear.”
Spike pressed his head against the wall, laughing, though with a strained breath. “Shorten it to just goof, and you got yourself a deal.”
Rarity smiled and resumed work. She liked things like this. Never could she place how things came to be, one moment stressing endlessly about her work, how nothing was going to be okay, how weak and useless and dumb and stunted and blocked she was, to now feeling smart, powerful and wise, helping the happy-go-lucky dragon out from his now rotten luck.
Her work drained her, pleasantly most of the time, but in periods like those, her body was more of a husk than a mare.
But being around Spike... made her feel... something.
“If you two hated each other so much, then how come you were left with the ashes?”
Rarity rose above his foot while smiling, shifting over to the side, and settling before his other foot. She began to work. “My aunt saw it fit for it to be so in her will.”
“And you took them?”
“My aunt also knew I couldn't do something as heartless as rejecting them either.” Rarity froze for a second. Her eyes squinted for shorter than that. All this she had forgotten. When she debated setting the place on fire, she had forgotten about the vase and her aunt, and had they burned, it would have probably stayed that way. It's amazing how we remember things at all. “And that's the story told.”
Spike only sighed. “And I'm still trying to decide if I'm supposed to apologize or say you're welcome.”
“You can say the latter to me.” Rarity removed the final shard from in-between the balls of his foot, leaning away from it afterward. No blood and no marks. Just shattered bits sprinkled over and larger chunks sunken in. The big wuss. “And you can apologize to Princess Celestia later. After she's taken her shower, of course.”
Maybe her second shower.
“Now then, dear. Do you care to explain what the fuss was all about?”
“Well. I kinda heard a thing, or two, about you, and I, y'know, rushed over and...” Rarity floated the kit back into the depths of the closet. Rarity stepped away before the stuttering of words, which froze her in place, causing her to look at Spike from over her shoulder.
“I was making lunch when Twilight had said she ordered a dress, then I remembered the girls talking about the same thing, and more ponies after that.”
Rarity blinked. “So you rushed over.”
“Yes.”
“Right away.”
“Forgot to turn the stove off.”
“Because you thought that I would need the help straight away? That you couldn't have waited to take the apron off?”
Spike glanced down, and his eyes went wide. Seconds later, his claw clapped over his face, like it was his first time seeing the thing on his body. “I'm such a big goof, aren't I?”
“Idiot is more like it.”
When the claw fell from his face, a glare had been hiding underneath it. “You're going back on our deal already?”
Rarity giggled. Once. Twice. Three times, then four. Why were they coming? That stream of laughter that she fought to hold back. She teased the dragon. The big goof. He was a fool in the best sense possible, and teasing him lifted her body up. “Changes with every contract, I'm afraid. But matters like these aren't urgently pressing, Spike.” She exhaled a deep breath. “You didn't have to rush here right away.”
“I know that.” Spike leaned his head further back against the wall, gazing up at the ceiling. A cute look. The expression of a lost and confused boy. He was a good kid—even if he didn't look like one anymore. Thank Celestia for that. “I just... dunno. Come running whenever it feels like you're in trouble.”
“Oh?”
His eyes looked back down and set on her again. They glowed a soft green, lit by an intense flame underneath, small but consistent, burning for her alone. “You know I would do anything for you.”
Rarity smiled at that. Nodded her head and cast her gaze down to her forelegs. She went to say something clever, a witty response draped in her usual eloquence, but nothing came. Stunned and locked in place. The silence was going on longer than it was supposed to. Words, Rarity. Use your words. They're all you have left.
But they didn't come. Because she didn't have any left. All she could do was smile at the dragon, at the goof encased in scale, and just... feel full by him. This was hardly the first time it had happened. Spike had broken in a dash here before. All when she pricked her hoof with a needle in front of Dash who had then dropped it in passing before Spike, and then Spike had come dashing here to check in on her.
Dragons are such silly creatures, are they not?
But Rarity felt drawn. Her hooves walking on their own. She was thankful all of the vase had been swept and burned away because she wouldn't have stopped walking, not when her body had grown tired by the commands of her mind. She came, and she sat herself down next to the dragon, enjoying the subtle, radiating heat that came from his body.
Perhaps a quip about portable furnaces will be my saving grace?
But none of that came. No more words and no more quips and no more of much anything. Her mind was empty, drained, and now blank, trying to invent something out of nothing, and failing in silence.
Spike had watched her sit down. His head seemed so high above. At least a foot or so. Their eyes meant, and his glowing eyes brightened, and his face quickly turned away. Gazing down, he saw his apron. He leaned forward, pulling the thing up and off his body, leaving his deliciously broad chest exposed.
“I'm stressed.”
Spike blinked. He looked over at her within the next second. Rarity couldn't bear to look at him, to feel his total stare upon her. So she gazed forward, looking toward something, but seeing nothing. “I have so much to do, and it doesn't feel like I can do it all.”
Those words. They weren't meant to come out. At least, not yet. Things like that were spoken in the dark, or to a mirror when one was alone. Image was everything; the truth was destructive. And in cases such as these, the truth wasn't necessarily the truth to begin with.
But the words had come out anyway.
“There's just so much to do. Orders with designs already supplied.” Rarity leaned her head against the wall, exhaling, in a release, at something other than her shoulder holding the weight of it. Even if it was a stale kind of feeling. “In the case of the girls, I'll have to improvise again. But there's not much difference between those two kinds of orders.” Rarity let her eyes close for a moment, for a moment was all she could afford. “It's all so clear up inside my mind, darling.”
Spike didn't have anything to say. The poor goof probably had no clue what was even happening. Not even understanding a word she said. That silence, of speaking and not being heard, it wilted away at Rarity's soul.
But then she was surprised. Pleasantly so. The giant had let his arm, with a moment of hesitation, drop over her shoulders. Not at all smooth and clunky with every jerk, but it touched her heart nonetheless. She cooed, rubbing her neck against his smooth scales.
Wouldn't you know it. He does have some idea, after all. Oh, aren't I just the worst for thinking that.
“I guess I can kinda see it.” Spike blinked at his words, his expression grown frustrated with them. It wasn't because he was an actual idiot, Rarity knew, but rather that he lacked in just about everything in her presence. Her presence made him self-conscious. That both delighted and wounded her. “It's like having a whole bunch of chores to do, and even though you see them clearly, and they sound pretty easy, actually doing them... the thought of doing them...”
“Precisely.” Rarity leaned into his side, shivering for a second at his heated scales, sighing, nearly giggling at how pleasant it felt against her coat. How she wiggled slightly, enjoying the feeling of her soft fur brushing over his smooth scales. “The idea of doing it all. Just imagining it. Draining. It's all so very draining.” She then shook her head underneath his arm, nuzzling herself deeper into its crook. “And worst of all is how I'm supposed to be enjoying all this.”
Spike glanced across the room, and she did the same from his side, enjoying being held, close to another. They found themselves like this together a lot more lately. More reasons to touch him, to feel him, a safe thing for her to play with—even if a dangerous game laid beneath her actions.
But when their gazes swept across the room, gathering the cut fabrics littered across the ground, or the random pins and nails dug deep into the wall—even the unmade bed was a dead give away. “But it seems like chaos in here.” He then turned his head and gazed down at her, an aroma of concern exuding from his being. “Chaos for a mare like you, anyway.”
“A mare like me,” Rarity spat out the words, mocking a coughing effect. “I should stitch your lips shut for a comment like that.”
“You can if you like,” Spike was quick to reply, “but I still have two ears you can't close.”
A burning and tingly sensation. White fur deepened into a shade of crimson. Rarity wasn't caught off guard often. Her head turned, the curls of her mane hiding her face away, not letting the dragon see the unconscious effect of his words.
Maybe he has wit of his own after all.
“But that chaos you speak of, dear? The mess that is this room? I know I'm one to slapRainbow's hoof when she leaves her teacup lying around—and we won't be saying anything more on that matter.” Rarity shook her head. Her body felt warm and safe tucked against the side of the dragon. “But this? The messy and sloppy affair that is this room? I-I don't know why, but I'm drawn toward it.”
She looked up at the dragon. Oh, how she had to crane her neck back to look at his face. He was so big, so tall, so warm, and feeling all so powerful to be around. A caring and comfortable presence he just exuded. Those little wisps of warmth draw her body closing, wishing for the weight of his arm to come down upon her. Heaviness, despite her bloated chest, was what she craved most of all.
“It's my chaos, after all.” Rarity smiled. “A sign that I'm working hard... despite the lack of progress.”
Spike blinked. “I think you and Twilight are going to have a difference of opinions on that one.” He then looked back down at her. Confused. Always looking so confused, but also wanting to all so be desperately there for her. “But you definitely do have passion. Nopony can fight you on that.”
Rarity laughed. “It doesn't feel like I have much of that left nowadays.”
But Spike shook his head. “That's not true. Just look at you now! You've been working this whole time, haven't you?”
“Working is not the same as passion.”
“But working hard is.” Spike finally managed to hook his arm around her, letting its weight blanket across her body in the most dangerous moment of all. She didn't shiver and shake him away, and with a subtle gulp, he held her close against him. “How many crunches like these have you done before?”
“For every wrinkle on my face.”
“That's a lie, and you know it.”
“...continue with your point.”
“Point is you could have dropped this at any time.” Spike sighed. “You could have stopped dressmaking. You could have lowered your orders and cut them altogether. Every time this happens, you always act like this is the end, but once everything is done, what ends up happening?”
“Y-You stroking my mane while I eat chocolate ice cream?
“Wrong!” Spike boomed. “I steal chunks of ice-cream when you pass out afterward.”
Rarity blinked. She leaned back and against his hold. “So you're the reason the tins are always empty when I wake up! Why I thought I might be putting on an extra pound or two because of you.” She shook her head, her face and mane brushing against his scales. She hated how much she loved the feel of him, of how she could act like a filly and feel sophisticated about it.
“But in any case,” Spike carried on, “what happens after that?”
Rarity thought about it for a moment. She didn't like where it was going. Because, like always, it went to the same place. “I get inspired. And then I get back to work.”
Spike squeezed her side, a little hug he was too much of a coward to make into a big one. Oh, how his claws were able to touch her body now, but still too afraid to explore it. It took time. And it took building up. All toward... what?
“I've even seen you smile and break into a song while you've worked, even during crunch time.” Spike exhaled a heavy breath. “It's just you don't know how to take a break sometimes. That's all. You need a distraction every now and again to pull you away from it all.”
“I see.” A sister grin. “Is that the reason why you broke my vase, then?”
Spike seized at once, pulling his arm away from her barrel. “I swear none of that was planned.”
“I know.” Rarity nodded her head to the left. “Now put your arm back around me at once. Don't you know it's rude to bring a lady close only then to keep her away.”
“R-Right.”
The arm then laid on her back again, and things were as they should, at least for the time being.
“But I'm still stressed,” Rarity spoken quickly again. “Every breath is heavy and it's hard to keep my mind off from everything. I try not to think only to worry endlessly whenever I begin to do so. It's all so, what's the word? Overwhelming.”
It was Spike's turn to speak. “I think... I may have the distraction for that.”
Rarity blinked. “Oh? Is that so?”
“Mares like... muscles, right?”
Rarity scrunched her face together. Did he seriously just say that? Though she was confused, she was also amused, coming to nod slowly, deciding to go along with it. “I suppose we do like the odd flexed bicep or so. Not exactly something we're conscious off, but the odd glance is rather nice.”
Spike then cleared his throat. “So is it okay, then, if I use my own... to calm you down?”
Rarity never expected to be asked such a phrase in her life. “I-I suppose you may?”
Spike stood up at her approval. The weight of his arm, the wall of purple scales of his side, the warmth of his being rose and pulled away from her. She missed it intently. How alone and hollow she felt sitting by her perfect little self. But she watched, with her mane covering an eye, as the dragon took a few steps away, turned in place, and stood still before her.
What in Equestria is plotting to do next?
Her question was answered when Spike dropped to his knee, turned slightly to his side, and curled both of arms and his claws toward his head, which he dipped slightly, flexing the thick pillar of biceps. The muscle underneath filled out into the open air, encased in the seductive features of his shifting scales.
And then he faced her again, emitting a deep, forced growl out from the depths of his lungs as his arms then swung before the front of his frame. He squeezed his chest out, his pecs defined and protruding, a thick wall of purple sleekness Rarity enjoyed the idea of running a hoof across.
And his abs. That chiseled abdomen. Jiggling and flexed. A hardness that made her softness tingle in response. The stresses of the world, dresses designed in time for a deadline, all those worries and woes suddenly no more.
Rarity ceased to be a dressmaker as she watched Spike flex his body, giving her a show her body so desperately craved. Her soul and her wit and her charm had been wrapped and bound to her work and her passion evoked by her heart.
But now her body was being heated differently, life brought back to it by the goofy but masculine charm of the dragon's body. Growing had made him strong but his time in the gym had shaped him into a fine young male. One set in a childish belief that flexing his muscles to make his mare friends happy was something that everyone did.
And the notion touched her deeply nonetheless.
Much like how other things were.
When Rarity pulled herself off from the wall, coming to stand on her shaky hooves, each unable to bear the full weight of her swirling new passion... she had ceased to be a dressmaker, but rather, coming to be the mare underneath it once more. It all made too much sense. Work drained her of life, and when she had neglected to live for herself in that period, she became like a husk, her passion but embers while she worked and wilted away.
And now, this innocent and not so little dragon had stroked the flames within her again, all the way down to her loins. She laughed as she approached him, and which snapped Spike from his posing. He gazed at her with a fearful expression. “Um. Did looking at my muscles help at all?”
Rarity laughed again. “How about you lean down here so I can tell you?”
Spike looked scared, but nodded nonetheless, leaning down his hulking frame. And Rarity wasted no time. Setting a hoof on the thigh of his right leg, she lifted her own body to meet his own, their snouts brushing together.
Her expression was concentrated in controlled passion.
And Spike just looked scared shitless.
That was, until their lips met, and her other hoof rose and placed itself against her chest. An idea she felt no stress, no worry or fear in exploring, just like how dressmaking at been when she first began. It wasn't that she had ever lost her passion, only that she didn't explore it wherever it then led.
For a mare like Rarity, with all her wit and her eloquence, beauty and being, to lean all of her weight, to trust all her body against the dragon... to feel supported by another. That she wasn't alone. Someone else was here. Another she could touch, someone could feel, and a little bit more than all of that...
Someone she could enjoy.
Author's Note
Sometimes a writer has just to write. The product can be... anything. Whatever drips from the tips of their fingers and fills the page with half-baked thoughts and scattered feelings. The reader is in no way to obligated to read such works, but it does allow them a feeling for a writer when they aren't all there.
And this writer wasn't all there while writing this.
Why was this written? In this way, without a plot, no direction with random happenings? Because there was no goal in all of this. Things were meant to happen and without any build up. If one focused on writing well all the time, then burn out becomes the inevitable result.
This story was written to allow me to take a day off. I am one of the luckiest writers on this site despite my history with others here. Why is this the case? Because I am being paid to write things that I love. That I can justify writing more for the sake of currency, but really, any excuse to write more is a good one for me.
But I still need to write a fic like this every now again to clear my head. To give me a day off without giving myself a day off. For those hoping to write every day, and to hit a daily count of 5K, there will come the need to write a shit!fic or a random fic of just a stream of consciousness every once a while.
For, once you have gotten it out of the system, you are able to dive back into the stream much more easily.
And with that, I return to my usual work and style.
~ Yr. Pal, B
