After making his final rounds for the evening, Hitch Trailblazer made his way down Maretime Bay's main street, towards the police department precinct on the corner. A few weeks ago, seeing unicorns and pegasi within city limits would have been cause for panic and alarm, but thanks to the wholehearted efforts of his longtime friend Sunny Starscout, Equestria was currently undergoing a nationwide reunification. The Maretime Bay Tourism Board reported that visitors to the city had doubled, and hotels were frequently booked, leading many citizens with spare rooms to start offering bed and breakfasts in their homes. Even Phyllis Cloverleaf, arguably the spearhead for much of the populace's xenophobia had embraced the rapid changes happening; having hired several pegasi and unicorns who had applied to work at CanterLogic.

Then, there was the issue of what to do with her son, Sprout Cloverleaf, the deputy-turned-dictator that had nearly started a war, when he was very specifically told not to, and wound up causing very considerable structural damage to Sunny's home. The damage would take weeks to repair, and Hitch now had to decide whether or not to let Sprout keep his job. Repentant or not, he wasn't sure it would be a good image for Maretime Bay if Sprout was allowed to stay in a position of authority. He was fairly certain that Phyllis would be able to get him something at CanterLogic if she needed to, but he knew she was hoping he could redeem himself in the eyes of Hitch and the rest of the town.

The sheriff of Maretime Bay wasn't quite sure what to do or decide at the moment, and he figured he'd think better once he got a good night's sleep. Coming up to the front entrance of the precinct, he got a hoof around the handle of the right door, and yanked it open.

Sprout, who had been preoccupied at his desk, was startled something fierce, and fell out of his chair when he heard the door open. He tumbled down to the floor with a panicked scream.

"No no no, go down go down!" Hitch heard him whisper frantically.

Hitch walked into the precinct and began to come around Sprout's desk to see if he was alright. What had he been doing...?

"Sprout? You okay?"

He came around to where his deputy was nearly cowering underneath his desk, and saw his positively throbbing erection between his hind legs. Sprout's eyes became pinpricks as Hitch also felt a wave of embarrassment, quickly followed by anger.

"Really? What, you couldn't wait until we closed up in ten minutes? What could be so urgent that you..." Hitch frustratingly asked him before his words trailed off, as he laid eyes on what Sprout had been looking at on his desk.

It was his calendar; currently on the April page, where he was in a full duty uniform. Dark blue dress shirt, sunglasses, black pants, and hoof cuffs clipped to one of the belt loops.

The sheriff's mind rapidly increased to a million miles a minute as the situation began to solidify in his head. Gritting his teeth, he wasn't going to give him the opportunity to slink his way out. With Sprout's eyes having become pinpricks, Hitch reached down and grabbed him by his sash and pulled him to his hooves, immediately guiding him over to the holding cell in the back corner of the room.

"Alright, in you go," Hitch said, tugging him over to the open cell door.

"Huh? For what?!" Sprout asked, his mind still panicking.

"Well, let's see... Public indecency, conduct unbecoming a police officer, indecency while on duty... Feel free to pick any one of those," Hitch told him as he shoved him into the cell and closed the bars with a clang. As Sprout silently stood there, stunned, Hitch grumbled under his breath as he went over to the deputy's desk and grabbed the calendar off of the desk and walked across to his side of the office to place it back up on the wall. As he flipped it page by page back to the appropriate month, his mind finally started to slow down, and he got an undeniable tingly feeling in his loins.

Sprout... Felt this way about him?

While this calendar had been requested by and sold very well with the middle-aged mares in town, he never knew that they would have that kind of an affect on them. Or... Or maybe they did and they were just worlds better at keeping it behind closed doors. Closed, locked doors, as his deputy had failed to demonstrate.

As soon as he hung it back up on the wall in the correct month, he excused himself to the back storage room, where he took a deep breath as soon as the door closed. The tingling in his loins was unrelenting as he opened the top file cabinet, flipping through the papers to find an official termination notice that would need to be filled out.

'Damnit, don't you start too,' he internally told his lower half. But it was a lost battle, and as his shaft began to poke out, he knew that walking home like this wouldn't be an option. So it would be a waiting game to see if and when this went down on its own, engaging on what he was about to fire Sprout for...

Or...

Fully unsheathed, Hitch slammed the filing cabinet closed and went over to the trunk containing unclaimed confiscated items, fairly certain that it contained just the item he needed, after having stopped a prank-in-progress a few weeks back...

Sprout was taking deep, shaky breaths, trying his best to calm down. Hitch was absolutely right. What had he been thinking? What would have been so agonizing about waiting just a few more minutes until he was at home in his bedroom? That had been one of the quickest patrol rounds Hitch had ever gone on. Was there really so little going on around town? Ponies finally picking up their litter?

Even if he was never able to look Hitch in the eyes again, how was he going to explain this to his mom? How much would he have to beg and grovel to keep this just between the two of them? How long was—

His panicked thought process came screeching to a halt as the door to the back office opened back up, and out came Hitch. He tossed a file folder onto his desk before coming straight for the holding cell, and unlocked the door, stepping inside up to the considerably shorter red stallion.

"H-Hitch... I... I'm—"

"Turn around," Hitch commanded.

Sprout was stunned at the forwardness, and he felt his throat tighten when he realized that Hitch was holding a bottle of lubricant, and was positively unsheathed, if not quite flared.

"I... Huh?" Was all he could manage to say.

Hitch simply pointed back to his desk.

"I've got everything in that folder to make you unemployed in five minutes. If you want the slightest chance of things being normal when you leave this cell, then turn. Around."

Author's Note

I'm such a tease.

More to come!