Whiteout

“So yeah, that’s why we have a new trade deal now. Nightclub diplomacy, baby.”

Pound shifted a bit under the covers, freeing a pinion feather that had gotten uncomfortably trapped between his ribs and Flurry’s. In the same moment, he brought his foreleg up from her side and wrapped it around her shoulder, pulling her closer to him and tucking her head more comfortably under his chin.

“That’s wild,” he murmured. “He seriously just yelled out his whole plan for world domination? In the middle of the club?”

“Right?” Flurry replied, barely restrained laughter pushing her voice up an octave. “Like, even if I hadn’t had someone listening in, I could’ve just asked anypony nearby, ‘Yo, did you hear that shit?’ Total amateur. I almost feel bad about it, honestly.”

Pound offered a sympathetic shrug. “He was gonna learn one way or another. Somepony else could’ve done a lot worse to him if they’d wanted to.”

“Yeah,” Flurry went on. She sounded a bit relieved to hear him agree with her. “Statecraft sucks. Might as well rip that bandage off early. Plus, y’know… happy ending anyway. He could hardly complain.”

Pound tilted his chin so he could catch Flurry’s eye. “How about you?” he asked with a smirk and a squeeze of her shoulder. “Could you complain?”

Flurry thought for a moment, then lifted her hoof off Pound’s chest and wiggled it in a “so-so” gesture. “Eh,” she said, “I’ve had better.” A moment later, she kissed Pound under the chin and clarified. “Much better.”

Pound accepted the compliment with a chuckle and another squeeze, then let his head settle back into the mountain of pillows behind him as Flurry made herself comfortable on his chest. For a minute or two, they just lied there in silence, enjoying each other’s warmth, basking in the last vestiges of afterglow from the last round they’d gone together—Flurry braced against the bathroom sink, still dripping from the shower, her protests about how they’d just gotten cleaned up fading into breathless moans for him to go deeper, faster, harder.

By the time they’d finished, they’d needed a second shower. That one, at least, had stuck up to now.

With a yawn, Pound stretched as best he could without dislodging Flurry and glanced at the clock hung on the bedroom’s far wall. The various post-Gala parties and private events around town were probably winding down by now. The Crystallian Royal Couple would be heading for their own lodgings in the Castle pretty soon—maybe planning on using them the same way their daughter had used her own. It wasn’t gossip Pound would bring up around Flurry, but he suspected it had at least some truth to it. Shining Armor did look pretty happy most of the time.

“What time are you leaving town tomorrow?” he asked Flurry, who mumbled her answer without opening her eyes.

“I dunno. Before noon, probably. There’s a summit with the Stalliongrad Ambassador day after next, so we’ve gotta be back in time to be pretty for that.”

“You know what I’m gonna say.”

“That I’m pretty all the time?”

“Well, after noon, at least.”

Flurry snorted and playfully pushed his face away from hers with her free hoof. Once she dropped it back onto his chest, he moved his chin back over her head, and she let out a contented sigh.

“You could come with us, if you want,” she said. “You ever been to a summit before?”

“Haven’t been to the diplomatic kind.”

“Oh, you’d love it. It’s all photo ops and fancy dinners with special cultural delicacies. Their delegation always brings this porridge-y stuff that tastes like woodchips and sadness. Supposed to be good for the skin.”

“You’re really selling me on it, I gotta say.”

Flurry looked up at him and waggled her eyebrows. “Diplomacy. I fuckin’ rock at it.”

Pound responded with a good-natured laugh, but after a long moment’s silence realized he would have to answer her real question. “I don’t think I could get away,” he said, staring at the ceiling. “Sugarcube Corner barely runs at all without me.”

“I’ll make it worth your whiiiiile,” Flurry sang—but in a playful way, eyebrows still twitching.

“I’d like that,” he murmured. And then he was supposed to say, “But I can’t,” but he wasn’t quite sure why he should. So instead, he just let the conversation trail off, and Flurry didn’t pick it back up. She just settled her head back on his chest, and he brushed his hoof over her mane, and they both lied together in silence.

He wanted to go with her. That was what he really hadn’t said. He wanted to follow her wherever she went, go to bed with her each night and wake up next to her each morning, eat breakfast and brush his teeth and deal with the monotony of royal responsibility by her side. But not like this. Not as a consort, but as something else. Something real. Something he knew she felt the same way about.

He’d wanted it for years, since they were occasional playmates whose parents’ friends were friends with each other, since they’d grown a bit into gangly teenagers who didn’t know anything about each other except that they liked coexisting in the same space. Since a Summer Sun Celebration ten years ago, when they’d spent the whole day exploring the woods around Ponyville together and the unexpectedly chilly night huddled under a blanket together, watching fireworks explode overhead, listening to Pound’s sister Pumpkin snore on the grass next to them.

When he’d asked her why she liked Ponyville so much, and she’d said she liked how different it was from home, and they’d talked about places they wanted to see and things they wanted to do, and finally things they hadn’t done yet and didn’t know how to try. When he forgot about the fireworks completely, and met her widened eyes, and realized with a jolt in his chest like an electric shock that he was right next to her, shoulder to shoulder, practically hugging—and delicately, fearfully, on a whim that became a compulsion in a matter of inexplicable moments, kissed her. When she’d kissed him back. When nothing had ever felt more thrilling or terrifying or right in his life before or since.

For a whole year afterwards, he’d spent night after sleepless night reliving that moment, remembering the softness of her lips and the flutter of her eyelashes against his cheek, hypnotized from head to tingling hooves by the thought of seeing her again—doing that again—at the next Celebration. And then the Solstice came, and Pound had waited with his family at the train station, and his heart had leapt when he saw Flurry disembark behind her parents—and then sank, and shuddered, and shattered when he saw the well-kept young colt who followed her off the train, and the hoof he tossed casually around her shoulders, and the guilty lilt in the friendly smile she threw at Pound like a silent, almost insulting apology.

It was years before he forgave her—month after month of dodging questions from his parents, ignoring curious looks from Pumpkin, learning through bungled schoolyard romances and awkward midnight trysts what it took to make a mare happy and keep her coming back for more. He’d gotten good at it, good enough to have a reputation for it, and eventually word of it reached Flurry—fresh out of her latest fling, drunk at a house party after an appearance in Ponyville on her empire’s behalf, looking for new mistakes to make that might flush some old ones from her memory.

He’d given her everything he had that night: every twist of the tongue, every angle and position, every pent-up emotion and unsaid invective he’d wanted to hurl at her for years, since she’d broken his heart in a way that she couldn’t really even be blamed for. After all, what was one kiss with a colt she saw maybe once a year, compared to a thousand others with ponies who were closer, hotter, more interesting and powerful?

His first kiss, that’s what. And hers too. And he couldn’t rationally be angry about it, and that made him fucking furious. And when he finally got a chance to work it all out in a physical way, a real way, it had felt incredible. She’d felt incredible. And when it was over, when she’d lifted her trembling head off his chest and told him that she wished she’d done this with him sooner, his heart had broken all over again.

She had no idea what she meant to him—or maybe she did. She made a point to seek him out every time she came to Ponyville—and maybe it was just because nopony else fucked her like him, made her feel as beautiful and alluring and orgasmic as he did. He’d never asked her, and likely never would, because no matter what her answer was, it would destroy what they had right now. She might want to be his the way he dreamed of being hers, or she might resent him for ruining a perfectly good friendship with benefits, and either way their relationship would change forever. It would become real.

And he wouldn’t do that to himself. Not again. He was too much of a coward. And he was way, way too good at this.

Pound pressed his lips against Flurry’s forehead, seeming to wake her up from a doze again. He kissed her once above her horn, another time on her temple as she turned her head towards him, and finally on the lips as she smiled and hummed, encouraging him not to stop. When she kissed him back, she poked her tongue between his lips, brushing the tip across his teeth and retreating as soon as he stretched his own tongue out to meet it. As always, she wanted him to lead. She preferred it that way—or knew he did. He wasn’t sure which was true. He wasn’t going to ask.

With his hoof still wrapped around her shoulders, he tugged her on top of him, chest to chest, her hind legs straddling her pelvis. He moved both hooves at once—one to the back of her head, pushing her lips harder into this, and the other to her flank, repositioning her, making sure she felt every inch of the stiffness growing in his groin. She cooed into his mouth as his cock rubbed across her folds, as she ground herself against him and smeared her growing arousal from his base to his flaring tip.

He shifted his hips down a bit, freeing his dick from underneath her only to press it back against her entrance and, in one fluid motion, penetrate her. Flurry threw her head back and let her breath escape her in a rush, then looked back down at him with a cocky smirk.

“You can’t get enough of me…” she whispered, sounding extraordinarily pleased about it. Pound smiled up at her and squeezed his hooves around her flanks, savoring the way her perfect pussy molded snugly around his cock.

“Feels like you don’t mind too much,” he whispered back.

Flurry shut her eyes and shook her head. “Mm-mm,” she hummed as he pushed deeper inside her, stretching her as much as he was able. Each roll of his hips shifted her slightly in place, her head rising and falling an inch or two with every motion, and as her muscles loosened and she let herself slip deeper into his embrace, he ran his hoof over her mane, gently stroking in time with every tender thrust inside her.

He’d fucked Flurry Heart plenty of times before. He’d taken her two dozen different ways, in positions that defied gravity and decency in equal parts. But this felt different. This was a slow dance after a rock concert, a lingering glance after a passionate kiss. Of all the things he’d imagined doing—saying—being to Flurry Heart, he’d never tried this. He’d never found the moment. He’d never let himself believe that instead of just fucking, she might want him to make love to her instead.

With a soft sigh, Flurry braced her forehooves against Pound’s chest and pushed herself upright. The bedsheets hung on her shoulders for a few moments, suspended precariously from her flexing wings, and then fell away, leaving her unobscured on top of him—suffused in moonlight, radiant inside and out. The curls of her mane formed a wreath around her face, and each push in and out of her drained more and more built-up tension from her cheeks, until she looked like she’d never known a moment of life as royalty.

Pound let his hips slowly fall still beneath her, and she seamlessly took over for him, flexing her thighs just enough to move slightly up and down his length, never letting him fully leave her and taking him to the base with every indulgent downward stroke. He let his hooves settle behind her, just above the base of her tail, and helped her along with the slightest pressure—up and down, slowly out and rapturously back in. Every part of him buzzed, balls to bones, and he felt like the slightest movement left or right might send them both tumbling off the bed, into a chasm they never had to stop falling deeper, deeper, deeper down.

He lifted his hoof to her face, caressed her cheek. She tilted her head, leaned into his touch. The words bulged in his throat, formed on his lips, begged to be made real: I love you. I want you. I’ve never wanted anyone else.

“I…”

She looked down at him—expectant, hypnotizing, gorgeous.

“You’re incredible,” he said softly.

Flurry closed her eyes again, sighing through a smile. “You’re perfect,” she gushed back.

He was so close. She was too. He could feel it in the way her hooves pressed harder into his chest, the tremors that rippled through her each time he bottomed out inside her. The next time she pushed down into him, he thrust back up, and in the moment she was overwhelmed, he slid his hooves up her back and pulled her down towards him, forcing their chests together, taking the initiative again as she mewled and shuddered and buried her face into his neck.

“Oh, Pou-ah…”

He held her tightly, almost stationary above him, and drove into her with languid, powerful strokes, withdrawing almost completely with each thrust, keeping just the right pace to keep her rocketing towards her peak. She gripped him with every limb, her cries muffled by his coat, her wings fully extended above them both. Pins and needles raced over Pound’s skin, prickled through his cock, pooled at the tip in a growing, blinding, obliterating mass…

They came together. Pound’s cock erupted as Flurry’s inner walls clamped around it, and each rhythmic squeeze from her cunt milked another load out of him, filling every space inside her until his seed had nowhere to go but all over both of them, mixed with her own essence in a frothy mess that coated his balls and soaked into her thighs and flanks.

With each mutual pulse of pleasure, Flurry let out a breathless little whine, half-kissing and half-biting Pound’s neck as she quaked in his unyielding grip. Seconds passed that felt like hours, and then the darkened room snapped back into focus as Pound felt Flurry settle into him, exhausted and content.

The complex magical talent she’d displayed earlier in the night was nowhere to be found. All she could manage now was floating a clean towel over from the neat stack outside the bathroom door, and tossing it haphazardly over her back just as the rest of her went completely limp. Pound cleaned them both up as best he could, then gently slid her off of him and back into the crook of his foreleg. As far as he could tell, she was asleep before her head hit his shoulder.

This couldn’t last forever. Maybe she loved him or maybe she didn’t, but sooner or later she’d find someone who wasn’t afraid to admit they loved her back—who wasn’t terrified that they’d lose her forever just by asking. He could do everything else for her, make her feel as good as any mare possibly could, but someday that wouldn’t be enough anymore, and it would be nobody’s fault but his.

Or maybe it would be enough. Maybe this was truly all she wanted out of a partner: a good lay, and a soft chest to lie on afterwards. Maybe tying a mare like her down would be a crime against her better nature, and maybe she sought him out like this precisely because she trusted him not to read too much into it—not to push for something a little too real. The stories she told about her life outside Ponyville seemed to suggest just that.

Except the serene, soul-stealing expression on her face right now didn’t. Nor did the way she smiled at him when he entered her, or the way she clutched at him when he pleasured her, or the way she’d told him about her life outside Ponyville for hours without either of them noticing how quickly the time had passed.

He sighed, and shut his eyes, and snuggled her closer to him as sleep began to overtake him. He didn’t know. He just didn’t know. And the only thing worse than this journey through the real and unreal was the inevitability that they’d someday reach a destination.