It had started off as a little game Rarity played. An exercise she employed when she was feeling low or when she thought she needed a little more pep in her step, a little more Queen Bitch energy as Rainbow Dash might put it.
Initially she caught herself in an introspective moment, fretting over her future. Not her career necessarily, though she had plenty of reasons to be anxious there. Instead she worried about her love life, her appearance, the common concerns every pony experienced. Was she enough, she wondered, as she was now? Did she need to work harder, longer, put aside her work and social duties to chase down the perfect appearance.
It was unhealthy, she knew. So was narcissism, but that was easier than depression and destitution, and her friends and clients could write it off as a quirk of her personality.
So instead of poking at her waistline or smoothing out the barely present wrinkles in her face, she opted to embrace herself for who she was. She looked into the mirror, drinking in her visage like an artist would a model before painting. She fluttered her eyes and pouted demurely, she raised a hoof just below her chin and turned her head coyly to the side. She spoke in low, wanting tones.
“I’d fuck me.”
She flashed herself a grin, and then broke down into the most delightful and lady-like giggle. It was such a daft statement, so crass and absurd. It didn’t feel like something she ought to say, aloud or in private.
And yet it made her feel so good, that first time and many times afterward. Sometimes it pulled her out of a dour mood, and sometimes it helped elevate good feelings a little further. The one time she fixed her positively murdered mane she spent a full hour posing for herself, convincing herself she still looked fabulous. She still looked, to fit the theme of the phrase, fuckable.
Of course there were those few times somepony else caught her.
Twilight, the absolute darling, did her best not to draw attention to it when she was visiting for tea. While Rarity encouraged Twilight to head to the kitchen while she packed away some of her materials and tools, she caught her reflection and winked at it.
“I’d fuck me,” she uttered, the phrase that had become a private little mantra, an intoxicating pick me up. She thought she was quiet enough Twilight wouldn’t hear her.
Rarity spun to the sound of a squeak in the doorway to her workshop. Their eyes met for a moment, and then couldn’t look anywhere that wasn’t the floor or a wall or a bolt of cloth or anything that wasn’t each other.
Rarity still enjoyed the tea, and Twilight’s company. They barely said a word for the rest of that afternoon beyond the odd ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ that were as automatic to the both of them as much as breathing or blushing.
Rarity also enjoyed catching Twilight staring at her, for the rest of that day and every day since. The adoration she felt, the heart aching mutual crush that she—both of them were too afraid to truly act on yet.
Rarity could put that off for a little while. She could wait for the feelings to die down even if it had been months since that awkward afternoon.
Then there was the dream. At least, Rarity was certain it was a dream. It felt ever so real, so vivid and true and undeniably a part of reality. Yet it was also so utterly impossible, without explanation or justification.
For reasons Rarity couldn’t explain—she needn’t explain after possibly years of performing the ritual—she was posing before herself, glancing askew with a sultry half-lidded smile. She uttered her drug of choice. “I’d fuck me.”
“Is that just flattery, or do you genuinely mean that?” she asked herself. Only, it wasn’t Rarity that spoke the words. It was her reflection, yet it lacked a mirror, and it moved without her input.
Rarity stammered, her confident grin melting into a nervous, schoolfilly smile. “Oh, well it’s just a figure of speech,” she lied, treating the copy as real as she treated her friends, as her realised self.
Rarity chuckled, closing the space between them. “It’d be a shame if that was really the case, darling,” she said, and Rarity’s heart rose into her throat as the words floated to her. “I was looking forward to consummating the idea.” She lowered her voice, pushing her muzzle past Rarity’s and speaking directly to her ear, to her soul. “To truly, literally fuck me.”
It had to be a dream, but she could smell her perfume. It had to be a dream, but she could feel her presence. It had to be a dream, but she felt that deep, aching need.
The eternity passed in an instant. Rarity wasn’t sure which of herselves made the first move, connecting the kiss. She lost herself in the moment, becoming a tangle of limbs that stumbled and rolled out of her workshop and into her bedroom. Thighs pushed up between thighs, forelegs wrapped around chests and shoulders. The need, the want, the hot as Tartarus desire overwhelmed herselves—
Rarity woke up in a sweat drenched bed. She was bolt upright, her mane sticking to her forehead and cheeks and shoulders. She still ached. She still wanted. She could still feel hooves pressing at her sides, running down her belly to—
She swallowed. The memories of the event were still as vivid as the calm, dead night she found herself in now.
The difference was the lover she imagined wasn’t just herself. She had a coat of gleaming, pure white as much as she did a rich, spring lavender. Her mane was several shades of purple and pink, styled and permed yet simply brushed. She saw Twilight as much as herself.
She realised she had stopped breathing, and reminded herself to do so.
She smiled. She laughed, a little too loud at first until she remembered that Sweetie Belle was asleep the next room over. She moved her sweat dampened mane from her face and got out of her bed, toward the window and opened it.
The cool night breeze was doubly chilling as it evaporated the sweat that stuck to her. But it brought comfort and calm and clarity.
It was hard to see from this window, this street, but Rarity spotted the tallest points of Twilight's castle.
This afternoon, she would stop putting it off.
