Spreading Your Wings and Hers

It has to be said; Rainbow Dash’s house sure is a wonder.

You gaze up at the latest change to Dash’s cloud-crafted home. Due to it being made mostly from clouds, it’s easy for a Pegasus to bend and change the house to his or her will. And this is one heck of a change she’s made! A cosy, five-story tower, complete with a conservatory on the upper level. Her trademark colours (in other words, the whole spectrum) run in bright streams and puddles of rainbow extract around a base cloud the house resides on.

Standing just outside her door, you take a deep breath to calm your nerves. Putting on your most confident face, you raise a hoof and use it to strike the door three times.

Knock-knock-knock.

… … … no answer? Maybe she’s not home now. But then again, she DID say seven. And it’s five-minutes-past by now. You decided to purposefully turn up five minutes later than the agreed time, in an attempt to not seem too eager. Heck, she said seven-ish after all.

For a moment, you wonder if you should knock again. Would that be rude? Perhaps she’s just taking her sweet time to open the door. No, that wouldn’t make sense, not from the fastest pegasus in Equestria.

“Hey, rookie! Up here!”

Your ears twitch when you hear Rainbow Dash’s voice call seemingly from nowhere. You crane your neck upwards to find her leaning out of a window ledge several floors up, waving her fore-hoof to get your attention.

“Just fly up here, pal, no need for the whole ‘door’ shtick at my place!”

Springing yourself off from the cloud-floor, you feel your heart beating in time with your wings as you fly upwards, and rising as high as you are. Man, lucky Dash can’t read your mind, she’d call that all kinds of soppy! When you finally reach the window ledge, she extends her fore-hoof out to help pull you inside. And what kind of guest would reject the kind hoof of a mare like her?

Setting your hooves down on the solid-cloud floor, your eyes take in the contents of the room you’re in. Various posters of flight-teams, athletes and musicians were plastered across the walls, a signed Wonderbolts poster taking the most space. Two mare-shaped mannequins stand next to her remarkable trophy cabinet - one mannequin is wearing a thin, golden crown with wings protruding each side, and a golden neck-accessory with a ruby lightning bolt. The other a carefully crafted, flowing rainbow-themed dress, that looks like it was specifically made for Rainbow Dash herself.

“Sorry I couldn’t answer the door just now,” she casually explains, “I was just cleaning up the place for when you arrived. This room‘s usually a mess, y‘know!” The thought of Rainbow Dash’s room being messy doesn’t surprise you very much - as much of a perfectionist as she was with her flying, she never really focused on her own tidiness. Why look tidy when you can look awesome, after all?

“I’m just glad you invited me over, Dash. I’ve never been inside your house before,” you reply, then, for the sake of conversation, “So how was your little trip to the Everfree Forest?”

“Not too bad. Since I was just breaking some clouds from there, I didn’t have to go into the forest itself.” Rainbow tells you, pulling herself onto the side of her bed, “Which is always a good thing, especially since almost everything in there’s trying to eat you or something.”

“Really? It can’t seriously be that dangerous, can it?” you ask. You’ve never fully explored the forest on the outskirts of Ponyville, and the few times you had visited there, you didn’t go deep enough to tempt any real danger.

“Oh, it’s dangerous all right!” Rainbow Dash pats a free space on the side of her bed, telling you to sit down next to her. “This one time, my friends and I came across a Manticore, and lemme tell ya, it was angry! So, my pal Rarity…”

Before you know it, you’re sharing personal stories and memories with Rainbow Dash as she enthusiastically recounts the strange and hazardous encounters she and her friends had come across, from kicking a dragon in the face to taking on the dreaded Nightmare Moon herself, from saving the lives of countless citizens of Ponyville to overcoming the mind games of a chaotic draconequus. Whether or not she was over-emphasising some of these dangers, you couldn’t tell - you weren’t even around for most of them, after all.

Being so enthralled by her presence, her attitude, her laid-back, cheery voice, you hardly notice the light from outside the window slowly grow dark as you both talk and laugh throughout the evening, and into the night.

“…beat a cockatrice in a staring contest! A cockatrice!” Rainbow Dash laughs, thinking back, “Of course, I wasn’t there to see it myself, but the look on little Scoot’s face when she was telling me all about it? Never saw her so terrified and excited all at once, I wish I could‘ve taken a picture!”

“Heheh, yeah, I can only imagine!” you grin, before a serious thought slipped into your head, “So, Dash, how many more of these crazy adventures do you think you‘re gonna have?”

“I dunno,” she places her fore-hooves behind her head and looks upward in a thoughtful expression, “I’ll just take things as they come, I guess.”

Just take things as they come? Is she joking?

“I’m just wondering, cause all of these things you do with your friends… what with dragons and hydras and bears made from stars…” you can feel Rainbow Dash’s eyes burning as they stare at you, “…it all just seems kind of… dangerous.” Deep down, you were surprised you were able to get that last word out.

Side-glancing towards Dash, your blood freezes when you see the mildly irritated, unimpressed expression on her face.

“I get it now, rookie.” she says flatly, “I see what this is about. You’re obviously worried that one day I’m gonna fly right into a giant monster’s mouth, or forget I have wings when jumping off a cloud, or do something stupid that involves an early retirement from the living. I‘ve already told you, I know what I‘m doing when it comes to flying, even more than you do! I don‘t need somepony to hold my hoof every time a Manticore gets a thorn in its paw!” Her eyebrows are furrowed in a sense of impatience as she gets this off her chest.

“But Dash, maybe being a whiz at flying isn’t gonna get you out of every problem!” you reason, trying your best to disregard the vein that suddenly appeared on her forehead, “You know I wouldn’t be saying this if I didn’t care-”

“And what if I don’t want you to care? Did ya think of that, huh?”

Something inside your chest shatters without warning as she snaps those words at you, causing you to visibly double-take. You suddenly feel a bad-tasting chill stick in your throat, before numbly resting in the pit of your stomach. No amount of energy could get you to so much as move your facial muscles, let alone speak.

“What if I don’t want to spend the rest of my days kicking clouds so some ponies don’t have to complain about the weather? What if I actually want to do stupid, risky things like the Wonderbolts? And what if I don’t want somepony to breathe down my neck every time something… goes… wrong?” her rant trails off when she notices your unmoving, unchanged expression. Well, mostly unchanged, except…

“R- rookie? Are your eyes watering again? Why are they-” her eyes abruptly widen as it dawns on her.

“Oh. Oh my gosh.”

An awkward silence falls over the room like a cold, heavy blanket. It goes on for seconds. Long, painful seconds. You’d talk if you could, but whatever emotion, whatever ailment that struck you still has your vocal chords strangled.

“You’re not worried about me ‘cause you think I can’t handle it.” Rainbow Dash’s voice had never felt so sensitive as she spoke, “You’re worried because you like me, don’t you? Uh, not just like me, but… like me - like me. Am I right?”

Any attempts for you to talk are cut short by your barren throat. If only you could tell her! If only there was some way around this…

“You do like me, don’t you? Don’t you!? Just tell me, rookie! Talk to me!” Of all the things she could have asked you to do - hold me, stroke my mane, take a bullet for me - she asks you to do the one thing you can’t. Talk.

Seeing no other way forward, you let her know the answer the only other way you know how. And no words in the world would be able to say it better.

You throw your fore-hooves around Rainbow Dash, embracing her as tightly as you can, and pushing your mouth right up against hers. Her lips part in a short and sudden gasp of surprise, giving way to the subtle aroma of wild fruits and berries, as wild as Rainbow Dash herself. But you don’t risk pressing any further than her lips. Instead, your wings gently unfurl, wrapping around her like a feathered cocoon, demonstrating how much you care. How much you like her. How much you… like her - like her.

Slowly, you pry your lips away from hers to look into her strong rose coloured eyes. She stares back, mouth still agape in awe of your unanticipated affection. After pulling several lost, quizzical expressions, she decides what would be the most appropriate response to being kissed on the lips like that.

SMACK!

Her right fore-hoof whips through the air with almost no warning and strikes you across your face. The sheer force of it knocks you backward, making you land back-first on her bed. You can feel your left cheek burn red as a hoof-shaped mark blooms upon it.

“Argh! Uh? Wha-?”

“That’s for stealing a kiss from me without asking!” Rainbow Dash asserts with a scowl, before climbing onto the bed, clambering over you. She stops when she is lying directly on top of you, a hoof placed at each side of your head, her face inches away from yours. Her scowl changes in the blink of an eye to a devious smirk as you share the same breath.

“And this is me stealing it right back.”