Hold Me Tight and Say It's Alright
A Cold Heart in a Warm Bed
B_25
The rain was cold, and it poured from the darkness above. It pelted the grass as winds froze the area. The boutique toweringly loomed. Something impersonal that scared Applejack's very psyche. There was no reason she should be here. Outside in the storm. All alone before her friend's door.
But, try as she might, she couldn't go home. Couldn't wait around in her room, unable to sleep, forced to deal with the feelings and thoughts that kept her awake. They haunted the farmhouse. Lurked in the walls and loomed in the ceiling. A pervading sense that pressed all around it. Nothing good could come from staying there. She had to leave.
It was better the storm than absolute silence.
Applejack knocked on the door, and then she did so in a slow, odd rhythm, like a tired traveller searching for lodgings. The knocks provided different sounds from the winds and rain. Shuffling came from a couch. A clopping of hooves. The sliding of a lock. The squeaking of hinges on wood.
"Now whoever could it…" Rarity's form appeared behind the door, at first blocking the way but as recognition lit on the sapphire eyes, the mare opened the door, fully exposed. "Applejack? Whatever are you doing out there?"
Applejack's mouth opened.
But Rarity shook her head.
"No, no." Rarity cleared the way and nudged into the darkness of the boutique. "Inside. I'll put on some tea."
A few orange candles warmed the interior of the boutique. Rarity had floated over a towel and set another on the couch, leaving to put the kettle on, wanting to warm her friend up, who dried herself off. Applejack nervously sat on the cushion afterward while leaning back.
A book and a glass of wine had been set on the table before the couch, another way of surviving the night. The cover was a mare reaching out to a stallion half-submerged into a shadow. Applejack rolled her eyes, scoffing. But something inside couldn't be as harsh.
The clicking of cups on plates rattled into the room. Applejack looked afar to see Rarity walking over, a smile with two drinks floating beside her, each set on the table, before Rarity took a seat as well. She gave a smile that held back the confusion behind it.
"A delight to see you, my dear," Rarity said with an awkward air. "Though you're fortunate that I was awake. Don't you know the time?"
Applejack nodded with a swallow, a little mouth kept open, unsure of itself. "R-Reckon' it's past the sensible hours you'd expect any knocking." She rubbed her neck and looked around. "Nearly worried myself that you wouldn't be awake." Applejack looked back. "Though I can leave if need be. Wouldn't hurt me now."
"Applejack." Rarity stretched out the name in a sing-song voice. "Sensible hours are for sensible ponies. I'm sure that you and I have shown ourselves to be quite the opposite of that from time to time." A giggle. Something self-amused but lightened the air. "I would have rolled out of bed for you. Stay awake the whole night should you need it."
Rarity's forelegs crossed over the middle of the couch as she leaned over, sinking into the cushion, lowering beneath Applejack's muzzle. The alabaster unicorn grinned with a glint in her eyes. "I am yours, after all." She rose like a white, determined snake, an adorable, predator-like expression. "Just like how you are mine."
Applejack stiffened but didn't fight it, the delicate lips ascending and tapping and then sealing against her own, a merging softness that rolled her eyes up before sealing them tight. She immersed herself inside the kiss. Drowned in its delights.
"Mm." Rarity's lips pulled back. Applejack's eyes opened to see her marefriend's annoyed, concerned expression. "Something's bothering you. Something critical." She leaned back, licking her lips, wincing. "I can taste it in your kiss."
Applejack shivered and turned. "S-Sorry."
Hooves touched her shoulders and turned Applejack back around. White forelegs curved around her neck as the fashionista held her close. Rarity's face was an inch away. Narrowed in love. "Don't be. That which is troubling you will be the thing that is truly sorry."
That had been the reason why Applejack had fallen in love. Why she had confessed in a daze and found herself delighted when she came awake. It was the dramatics of the other mare that gave her life. That made things feel like more than what they really were. How the smallest things could be ballooned. How Applejack could be allowed her own dramatics, her own right to feel things to whatever extent her feelings demanded.
"But I can understand if you have no desire to talk." Rarity fell into her friend with a hug, nuzzling the back of Applejack's neck. "We can just sit here and rest in each other's company." She hummed. "Or any number of other activities that appeal to you."
That's not what Applejack wanted. Not in the slightest. Something else gripped her.
A matter that she'd been too afraid to confess to another.
"I-I'm…" Applejack sounded the word but could not feel the rest supposed to go with it, the coming syllables deprived of oxygen. Sinking into her love's neck, she laid all of her weight on the other mare. Rarity held without shudder or complaint. "I'm afraid."
"You? Afraid?" The comment had hurt. Rarity felt the shiver that rocked against her. White forelegs clutched Applejack's frame tighter. "Sorry. Don't you mind that comment. There is nothing wrong with being afraid. It's just something unexpected from one usually so strong."
The side of Applejack's face fell into the cushioning of Rarity's frame. "I ain't all that strong. Not underneath it all."
"Lies." Rarity's hooves massaged across her back, alighting the nerves beneath the muscle, the softness beneath the firmness. "But tell yourself what you must. You are strong to me—no matter what. Though, in the end, we cannot stop ourselves from feeling that which we'd rather not feel."
Rarity sank into her a moment. "What has you afraid, Applejack?"
How does one answer a question like that? How does one explain everything in their existence to this very second? Everything that influenced Applejack and the world around her. The seconds in a day that dictate the coming years? How could Applejack say all of that in a single conversation?
Or even hope to explain all of that well?
"Everything." Applejack collapsed into herself. "Everything's always got me. Always at the back of my head… just waitin' to come out." Her head shook. "Some days, I don't mind it much. Other times, it eats me alive. None of the family are back home. Even when they are there, it just…"
This wasn't making sense. It wasn't a problem with an answer that could be given, a symptom that selected the correct remedy. It was just a piece of existence that troubled one's soul. A state of affairs that, if it could be changed, would have already done so.
"I'm just worried this is it," Applejack finally confessed. "Gettin' up. Goin' out there. Workin' in sun and snow. Seeing the land beyond change day by day. Ponyville's changed. Granny's gone. Bloom too. Mac's always out. It's just me there. I don't mind, but…"
Rarity pulled back into Applejack's view.
She was smiling.
"It's not just the loneliness…" Rarity softly mused. "Is it?"
Applejack's head shook with eyes that never left her love. "N-No. It… ain't."
Rarity turned without leaving the embrace. A blue glow surrounded her horn as it did their cups. Both floated to their mouths and, touching their lips, allowed themselves to be sipped. Applejack smiled at the little pampering. She hadn't let herself be consoled like this before. Not made to feel the things beneath her inner shield.
"I just worry this is it." Applejack's muzzle pulled from the cup, which levitated back to the table. "That everything great has come and gone. Can't tell you the last time I saw Twilight outside the castle. Or when Rainbow ain't knockin' out a nap in her office. She used to lounge by the farm every dang day. Now she's always away. And it's just…"
"Yourself?"
Applejack shuddered. "N-Not that you—"
A white hoof sealed against her lips. "Shh. I'm not accusing you." Rarity's hoof retracted. "Just trying to learn more."
Applejack nodded—but missed the touch. "I just… worry for myself. Never used to do that. I was pretty alright with my lot in life." Applejack looked down at the orange fluffiness of her chest. Seeing white forelegs wrapped around it made Applejack smile. "Could be strong because everyone needed me to be. But now everyone's gone. And I've got none to be strong for."
She looked at Rarity. "Except you. I thought you were the one I'd be strong for." She chuckled with a shaking head. "But then you cracked me open, and everything came pouring out. Now, I'm just a deflated mess. Somethin' that don't even know itself."
The hooves continued to stroke her coat regardless of her words.
"There ain't much excitement in life anymore," Applejack went on in looking at the cup. It magically raised again, keeping its distance, waiting to be summoned. "The farm is all I have left. I'll work it the same way 'till I die. And then that'll be it."
Her throat choked. "But I'm… I'm not okay with that." Wetness stung the corners of Applejack's eyes. "I don't want that to be me, anymore. I don't want every day to be the same. To have to go through the same torment day in and day out. I'm gettin' tired. And I have nopony to be strong for."
The cup floated over, and Applejack took a drink, struggling to do so, a pain in her throat.
The finished tea was pulled away seconds later.
Applejack sat in the silence.
The troubled mare turned to her love. Held by the pony she once declared overly dramatic and sentimental, who felt and whined too much, who, now, had lived life more fully than Applejack. Faced her fully without hiding the tears.
"You're the only worth I have anymore," Applejack admitted. Her hooves slipped out of Rarity's hug and wrapped around the mare, sealing around the white pudge. "The only thing that has any development. That might lead to somethin' better than this. But you could leave me. Go on to do better."
Rarity shook her head and finally spoke. "But how could I do better than perfection?"
Applejack's mouth wordlessly opened.
"But I understand your terror."
Applejack nearly scoffed. "H-How can you?"
"Because of all the little times you've shared them with me throughout the years." It wasn't preaching. Or admittance that she knew everything. But it was confidence meant to reassure. A wisdom Rarity had acquired over the years. "What you've told me after work over a bottle of wine. Or the time you spent in my room after the funeral. Or our nights on the farm after we waved Applebloom from the train."
Rarity wiped Applejack's tears. She then kissed where they had been. It was the action, the gesture, that could cure the pain. Her lips remained inches from the orange fur. The breathing behind her words washed across Applejack's cheek. "One cannot explain the terror of their existence in a single conversation. But another can come to understand it… to assuage it, in little moments throughout the years."
Another set of tears came, already rubbed away, from the one always there.
Applejack chuckled in defeat. "I suppose… I've felt better about life with you around."
"For which part of me?"
"Heh."
Silence passed before Rarity embraced her love again. The two hugged tightly and cared not for the seconds. Content to be in another's embrace. The warmth of the other, the brushing of furs, the caressing of skin. The merging of consciousness allowed them to experience the state of another's life.
"I cannot tell you that life will get better," Rarity confessed from the side of Applejack's neck. "But there are things we can do to improve it." She nodded into Applejack's coat. "All I can attest is that I will be there for you. In every terrifying little second that passes. And that, no matter what happens, I'll ensure everything will be okay."
Applejack smiled. "Rarity?"
"Yes, my dear?"
"Could I… stay here tonight?"
"I wouldn't dare cast you to the storm."
"Could we…"
"Yes."
The two went upstairs after that, into the bedroom and shuffling beneath the sheets, coming to embrace the other, a tight hold softening the darkness, a promise that, no matter what came tomorrow, they would awake to it together.
