You are the Royal Advisor to the Ruler of Equestria, after all.
One only expects the highest standards of beauty and upkeep from a young, 20-something, debonair dragon like you.
Long gone are the awkward days of boyhood and adolescence and being bullied by the older dragons. You have grown into a 6-foot-tall, 300-pound, hunk-of-a grown dragon. You’ve grown out of Power Ponies (although you occasionally attend conventions), and now read magazines like Esquire and GQ (Gentlecolt’s Quarterly). You work out weekly with a personal trainer. You also do 90 minutes a day of Barre, Pilates, and hot yoga, and you’ve been seeing remarkable results.
After your workout, you simply cannot live without a juice cleanse of fresh-squeezed kale, beet, and spirulina juice, garnished with a refreshing emerald-green gem.
Your muscles got so pumped from your workout yesterday that you could practically hear the fibers strengthening—so you claimed. As you had your juice cleanse, you recalled that dragon that used to pick on you when you were younger—Garble, that was his name. “Heh, who’s the pansy now, Garble?” you said aloud, smugly.
You took another sip of your juice while lounging on a plush divan, under the shade of a jacaranda tree (whose flowers are hypoallergic to dragons, of course).
Since your 21st birthday, you’ve gotten a weekly massage, body mask, and claw manicure at La Porte d’Argent, the most prestigious and exclusive spa in all of Canterlot.
Yesterday, coming out of the spa treatment room alone, you complained (not whined, complained) that they had run out of your favorite sandalwood oil dragon scale conditioner. Rarity was the first to introduce you to the sandalwood scale conditioner, and nothing could compare to how buttery soft yet lightweight it felt against your skin. When you were still living in Ponyville, Rarity made sure the Ponyville Spa always carried it.
The spa ponies at La Porte d’Argent offered you a new sandalwood-scented micro-bead conditioner as a substitute. You knocked it out of the spa pony’s hoof and snorted at them.
“I love that sandalwood conditioner,” you said to the spa ponies, tears in your eyes. “I love that conditioner, and nothing else—and I won’t take any other conditioner. I won’t settle for anything less!”
You stormed out of the tony Canterlot spa, the other patrons staring at you and muttering to themselves things like “snooty” and “Canterlot upper-class screwhead” and “first world problem rant.”
On your way back from the spa, you passed by a Bath & Pony Works shop on the High Street and could not resist stopping in to browse. They had a few bottles left of your favorite sandalwood scale conditioner, which you bought for 30 Bits a bottle. You then spent thirty minutes racking your brain as to what decorative pillowcases to buy to adorn the bed in your royal apartment. Those plain white 1000-thread-count pillowcases Twilight gave you were simply not to par. They were so rough on your allegedly “delicate” dragon scales.
Your royal canopy feather bed was uncomfortable, you insisted. It was uncomfortable going to bed alone every night.
You admittedly learned a great deal about fabric and stitching during your childhood years when you were infatuated with Rarity. The annular lace trim on the Somnambulan cotton pillowcase, you insisted, was absolutely horrid, and the hoof stitching lacked refinement. And the dull beige color failed to inspire.
The Mistmane silk pillowcase, on the other hand—oh, the fractal floral pattern in lace was an epitome of pillowcase craftsmanship! And the softness of the rose-pink fabric was like butter against your scales.
You instinctively turned to your right—only to see no one. Standing about 20 feet away from you, a snow-white female changeling with a violet exoskeleton and gem-blue eyes and a store badge asked you, “Is there anything I can help you with?”
You said, “no thanks, but…” and she didn’t hear the last word, so she went back to stocking shelves.
You suppressed your enthusiasm for the quality of the stitching in the Mistmane silk pillowcase, and spent 50 Bits on a set of two.
You returned to your apartment in the Royal Castle. Princess Twilight was lounging in your apartment when you arrived. You eagerly talked to the violet-haired pony about your latest purchase. You emphasized to her the delicate stitching, the softness of the fabric.
She gave you a funny look. “It’s a pillowcase. What’s the big deal?” she commented, as she read her Royal Daily Brief while dipping a quarter-pounder hayburger with extra cheese in a dish of ketchup.
“The big deal!?” you protested, as if this were the first time Twilight failed to take notice of the more refined things in life. “Can you even see this impeccable workmanship!?”
You regaled Twilight with the whole backstory of how the pillowcases were made exclusively by a cloister of female kirin living in the foothills of Mount Everhoof, who spent thirty years of their lives devoted to perfecting the art of the fractal lacing.
“Mmm-hmm” was the only response you got from Twilight. She was sitting on an old, yellow-green recliner chair with multi-colored pastel stripes on it. When the two of you moved into the Royal Castle in Canterlot, Twilight insisted on moving the chair from her childhood home into your royal apartment. “I want to have someplace comfortable to sit on while I’m visiting you,” she said.
You lamented how the chair clashed with your carefully coordinated décor, how there was a lingering smell from when Twilight was still in diapers (or rather, not in diapers) and, as you pointed out to Twilight, “There’s a hole in the seatback!”
“Oh, I’ll just put some duct tape over it,” she said, to your utter horror.
Your eyes quivered in terror as you watched the Princess, in all her Imperal Regalia, pick up a piece of generic-brand silver duct tape with her unicorn magic and tape it over the gaping hole. Such dexterity at magic, and she won’t even try to sew it properly!
Oh, the horror, you were whispering to yourself! You searched your apartment for a sewing kit—you insisted that you had one lying somewhere, a gold plated one given to you by Rarity as a present before you moved away from Ponyville.
You watched as Twilight made herself comfortable in her…chair. She opened up a can of cheap soda, which she promptly spilled onto your antique rug.
“Whoops,” the Princess said, seemingly unfazed.
Oh, and you just had it shampooed by High Pile, the best, most exclusive rug shampooing pony in all of Canterlot! Why, she’s so exclusive, that the Royal Advisor to Equestria himself—oh wait.
You fainted after Twilight rushed to clean up the mess with the lavender-scented hand towels in your powder room.
Your head hurt as it hit the marble floor. If only you had a fainting couch like Rarity did.
You frequently lament why the ladies pay you no attention—you seem oblivious to what your behaviors and daily habits suggest to most creatures.
Your old friend Gabby was coming to Canterlot for a visit that evening, and you were planning on having dinner together. She mentioned before she came that she had a “surprise” for you.
You were excited to see her. Even though the two of you had drifted apart after you moved to Cantelot, you still felt a subtle fondness for the griffon. You wondered why the two of you never actually hooked up. Although you never asked Gabby upfront, she always seemed quite interested in you.
Like when she arrived that evening at your royal apartment, and you complimented on how well her scarf matched her messenger bag, and she couldn’t stop giggling. “Ehehe…thanks, Spike. Oh, before I forget…the surprise.”
She left the room for a minute and then returned. “Spike, I’d like you to meet Geraldo,” she said, introducing you to a brightly-colored male griffon, with well-preened feathers and the smell of what you recognized as Fleur-de-Lys brand feather conditioner.
“Geraldo works in the Griffinstone embassy here in Canterlot. He likes working out, too—hot yoga, am I right?”
“Yep,” Geraldo said.
“Oh that’s great, I do hot yoga too!” you said, seemingly oblivious that this was a set-up. “Maybe we could go to a class together some time. Mind you, I like to turn up the heat on the sauna.”
“Oh, don’t worry sweetheart, I like it hot as well,” the male griffon replied with a sleazy chuckle and a wink.
You frowned at Geraldo. “I, erm…that’s good…?”
“I know you two guys will be just perfect together,” she whispered, giving the both of you a wink.
It was then that you caught a whiff of the sandalwood conditioner you had applied on your scales after your steam shower that afternoon. And you caught a glimpse of the pink lace hand towels in the powder room. And your recently shampooed antique rug.
Then you realized. “Gabby, listen…I’m sorry if you got the wrong idea, but I’m not…”
“Oh, I get it, Spike you’re not totally ‘open’ about it yet, you’re kinda ‘in the closet’ about it—isn’t that what you gays refer to it as? Well, don’t worry, I’m your friend, I get it.” Gabby winked at you again.
Three winks in one day was enough to make you sick to the stomach.
“Listen, Gabby, I appreciate the gesture, I really do, but I’m not…”
“Aww, I was just like you back in high school,” Geraldo cut you off. “It’s okay. Times have changed—it’s totally cool.”
“But I’m not…”
“C’mon, Spike,” Gabby said. “When I first met you, you were always hanging out with that fashion unicorn…what was her name? Rarity. Yeah. You always helped her pick jewelry at the shop. And when we hung out together, you always talked about going clothes and makeup shopping with her. I mean, it doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together, I mean—”
You finally snapped. “I’M NOT GAY! YOU HEAR ME!? I’M ONE! HUNDRED! PERCENT! STRAIGHT!” you screamed at the top of your lungs. “THE REASON I WENT SHOPPING WITH RARITY WAS BECAUSE I HAD A HUGE CRUSH ON HER FOR TEN YEARS!”
It fell so silent that you heard a pin drop. Geraldo turned his face away in embarrassment.
And after all that, Gabby still had the audacity to ask, “So…you’re not gay?”
“What, do I need to spell it out in blood!?”
There was a pause. Gabby looked around your royal apartment. “Well, for a straight guy, you sure do have ahem…‘refined tastes.’”
You rolled your eyes. “Since when did ‘refined tastes’ have anything to do with being gay?”
“I…guess you’re right. I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions like that,” Gabby apologized.
But something still made you queasy in your stomach. It wasn’t that you were mistaken as gay, no—but your ornate furniture, your sandalwood scale conditioner, your juice cleanses, your weekly spa treatments—
…oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
Oh sweet Celestia, what more did you need, a mirror!? All those years you had spent with Rarity…
…you had become Rarity herself!
“I’m sorry for the misunderstanding, Spike,” Gabby said. “What d’you say we all go out to dinner at Donut Joe, the three of us, as friends? (Most don’t know this, but, besides donuts, they also serve the BEST tossed salads and scrambled eggs.) We’ll even split the bill if that makes you feel better.”
All you could muster was a quiet “sure.” You were in a daze for the rest of the evening.
The voice of Garble calling you a “namby-pamby pony dragon” tormented you as it kept playing in your head in an infinite loop.
“And that, Spike, is why you are the quintessential metrosexual,” the Princess of Love concluded.
Spike sighed as he took a sip of sherry in front of the marble fireplace of his royal apartment. The Canterlot Royal Opera's performance of Aida was playing on the gramophone.
“I just can’t believe I didn’t realize how much I’ve become like Rarity," Spike said. "I guess I’ve just become so spoiled living as a royal advisor.”
Princess Cadence, sitting opposite from Spike, helped herself to another glass of sherry. She suddenly had a thought. “Well…perhaps I've been looking at it the wrong way.”
“Oh?”
“How long has it been since you last saw Rarity?”
Spike took a while to answer. “Last month, at the Council of Friendship.”
The two of them chatted for a few minutes, he about the latest goings-on in the Royal Palace, she about her recent trip to Yakyakistan. They had a few drinks together at the after-party, but that was it.
“You don’t see her as often,” Princess Cadence said. “Maybe you started seeing Gabby as you got older, but you still had that assurance that Rarity would still be there, so long as you lived in Ponyville. But then you moved away. And so did she. Perhaps you subconsciously adapted her lifestyle, her fashion sense, her behaviors…so that you could sort of…have a piece of her with you.”
Spike chuckled it off. “Aww, c’mon, you’re pulling my leg.”
“Well, you got pretty upset when La Porte d'Argent ran out of your favorite sandalwood conditioner.”
“Well, I had every right to upset. I always use the sandalwood conditioner. They’d run out of Rarity’s conditioner, and I wasn’t going to—”
Cadence cut him off. She smirked. “Did you hear what you just said?”
“What?”
“You said ‘Rarity’s conditioner.’ As if…it’s a symbol of her that had been taken away from you.”
It hurt worse than when he thought he’d turned into Rarity Jr.
“You really do miss her, don’t you, Spike?” Cadence said.
Spike stood silent and wide-eyed. The color drained from Spike’s sandalwood-oil-conditioned face.
Princess Cadence stopped herself from saying something that might hurt Spike’s feelings even more.
“I…I miss her” were the only words that managed to come of Spike’s mouth, before he started crying. The 300-pound full grown dragon, drenched in sandalwood scale conditioner and wearing a soft pink Somanbulan cotton bathrobe, burst into boyish tears.
There was still that little boy inside. That little boy dragon that still missed his lovely lady Rarity.
After some consoling, Princess Cadence left Spike’s apartment because she had to wake up early the next day. She was in town for the Crystal Empire trade symposium. It was almost midnight. Spike extinguished the fireplace. He hovered a few feet in the air, then sank into his empty feather bed.
Lying in bed, he took out a quill and ink, and a piece of parchment. He tore off the royal letterhead at the top.
He began writing.
Dearest Rarity,
Author's Note
Metrosexual (noun):
- a young, urban, heterosexual male with liberal political views, an interest in fashion, and a refined sense of taste.
- essentially, Frasier Crane.
(Comment if you found the subtle Frasier references in this story.)
(I originally wanted this to be a comedic shit-post-style sort of story, but it sort of morphed into this semi-tragic story. Go figure.)
