“Must you, darling?”
Pinkie Pie looked up from her bowl of cereal. She wasn’t quite sure what she’d done to elicit such a reaction from her breakfast partner, but the great thing about the question posed to her was that it didn’t necessarily mean something negative. Maybe Rarity was just curious.
“Must I what?” Pinkie asked through a mouthful of Ultra Frosted Frosty-O’s. She didn’t even have to look at Rarity’s face to know what expression she wore–although she did anyway, since Rarity’s face was very nice to look at–and quickly covered her mouth, swallowing its contents. “Sorry! I know you don’t like it when I talk with food in my mouth but I didn’t want to be rude and not answer your question! So…I guess I was rude in a different way instead. Oopsie!”
Rarity’s expression softened, and she reached across the table to pat her partner’s hoof. It was hard to stay annoyed at Pinkie.
“It’s okay, dear,” Rarity said. “I’m certain I could have been patient enough to wait until you were done, but I appreciate the desire to not leave me in the lurch.”
“Lurch is a funny word,” Pinkie offered, grinning a tiny little grin as she perked back up.
“Mm, I guess it is,” Rarity responded, almost unconsciously mirroring Pinkie’s grin. “We’ll add it to the list then.”
Pinkie clapped her hooves eagerly as Rarity unrolled their Scroll of Funny Words, sliding out of her chair so she could peer over Rarity’s shoulder as she wrote this newest one down. Funny words were even funnier when written in Rarity’s flawless penmanship. Something about the word “tizzy” displayed in such a flowery font tickled her in one of her favorite ways. Not her most favorite way, though. Only Rarity was allowed to tickle her like that.
“And there we are,” Rarity stated as she rolled the scroll up once more. “Lurch. A lovely addition.”
“Totally!” Pinkie replied, holding one foreleg in the air. She beamed as Rarity immediately picked up her cue and gave her an enthusiastic high hoof. Then it was straight back to her chair, as she had left her breakfast unattended and undevoured for far too long. And as it would turn out, the devouring would have to wait even longer, as a familiar thought swirled up in her little pink head.
“So what must I?” Pinkie asked.
“Pardon?” Rarity asked, before shaking her head quickly. “Oh! I’d completely forgotten.”
“Gosh, Rares, I’m usually the one that forgets things so quickly,” Pinkie teased. “Maybe I’m rubbing off on you more than I thought!”
“Oh, more than you know,” Rarity responded. “I was distracted thinking about something you’d done the other day while I was heading to the spa, and it wasn’t until I noticed the stares from the ponies on the street that I realized I’d been pronking just like you do.”
Pinkie burst into laughter, to the surprise of nopony. The visual was so entertaining that she didn’t even have time to comment on how pronking was also a funny word. Not that it would have mattered if she had; it was already on the list.
“I wish I could have seen that!” Pinkie said between giggles, her mirth only amplified by the combination of a blush and an embarrassed smile on Rarity’s face.
“Well, I suppose I could demonstrate if it would please the lady,” Rarity mused. She didn’t even wait for a response. Waiting was entirely unnecessary when one knew the other well enough to know how she would respond. Her breakfast temporarily forgotten, Rarity rose to her hooves–perfectly primped and polished, almost in spite of what she was about to do–and began to bounce around the room.
“I believe it looked something like this!” Rarity shouted as she rocketed past Pinkie, who was now in hysterics on the floor. “Am I doing it right, darling? Is this a proper pronk?”
Pinkie made a feeble attempt at an answer, but it wasn’t meant to be. Her usual loquaciousness caused words to flow like water from her muzzle, but this laughter was simply impermeable. A quartet of alabaster hooves landed at her side, and Rarity soon joined in the laughter as she hugged her silly pink partner.
“Thank you for the approval, darling,” Rarity said, giving Pinkie a kiss on the cheek. It was salty, but tears of laughter often did that to a cheek. “It means the world to me.” The happy little sigh from Pinkie tugged at Rarity’s heart, and the organ deftly fought off attacks from her brain, which was frantically trying to remind her that she was currently laying on a dirty floor.
“You know I approve of just about everything you do,” Pinkie said, the earlier uproarious laughter calming into a gentle giggle as she nuzzled her recently-kissed cheek against Rarity’s.
“Just about everything?” Rarity asked, a coy grin crossing her face. “What might I have done that you disapproved of, then?”
“You made vanilla cupcakes the other day when I really wanted chocolate,” Pinkie replied matter-of-factly. Rarity raised a brow, giving her partner a bemused smirk.
“Oh really?” Rarity replied. “And you didn’t like the seven of them that you ate?
“I liked them!” Pinkie responded quickly. “I was just hoping for chocolate.”
“Well, it’s good to know that my largest indiscretion against you was a mixing up of cupcake flavors,” Rarity said.
“You also snore,” Pinkie told her.
“Wh…what?” Rarity stammered, quickly rising to her hooves. “Pinkie, you snore as well.”
“I know,” Pinkie said, opting to roll over onto her back rather than stand. “But I snore at a C and yours is more of an E flat, and I guess that would be fine if we also had another pony snoring at a G because that would make a good minor chord but I didn’t really think you’d be okay with inviting a third pony to-“
“You’re annoyed that our snores don’t harmonize?” Rarity exclaimed.
“I never said annoyed, silly!” Pinkie insisted, crossing her forelegs over her chest. “You asked me what I didn’t approve of, but it’s waaaaay too small of a thing for me to get annoyed about!”
“I…suppose that makes sense?” Rarity responded.
“It sure does!” Pinkie said, launching herself up to a standing position in a manner that probably shouldn’t have been physically possible for anypony that wasn’t Pinkie Pie. “I love you too much to get annoyed by something really small that doesn’t mean anything in the long run!”
With that, the pink pony planted her rump back on her chair and munched down another spoonful of cereal, stopping midway to look back at the love of her life. “So what must I?”
Rarity stared back at Pinkie. She was crunching her cereal so loudly yet again, the exact thing that had caused her to pause earlier. For the briefest of moments, she considered bringing it back up. As she stared back into those baby blue eyes and thought about their conversation, though…
“…You know what? It doesn’t mean anything in the long run.”
