“You know, we don’t have to go out to have fun tonight!” Button reminded Sweetie as they drove around looking for somewhere to park. The streets of Seaddle were packed for blocks down near the university, crowds out on the lawns of frat houses and sororities, ponies spilling out and wandering around in varying states of sobriety. The reek of cheap beer was only overpowered by the roar of bad music.

“No, you don’t have to go out,” Sweetie corrected him, pulling into a parking garage and grabbing a ticket. “We’ll have to walk it. Hopefully we don’t have to park on the roof.”

“So, twenty bucks in parking, a hike, probably another twenty for bad beer after we’ve been to a couple of frats, and all the rohypnol we can drink, yay,” Button muttered. “On the other hand, we could be making money if we went back and streamed for a while.”

Sweetie put the car in park and turned to look at her coltfriend with a downright acidic smile.

“First off, I’m not worried about the money. Second, the only time we start making money on those streams is when I’m on camera, and your ‘audience’ starts donating one-handed. If I’m going to get catcalled, I’d rather not get paid for the privilege.”

“Wha- that’s not true!” Button protested. “I mean, maybe a couple of them were creeps,” he granted, “but I’ve always banned them!”

“And then you started asking your online buddies to watch the chat instead, so you could pay more attention to your games. Like you always do. And that’s when your numbers started going up!” Sweetie rolled her eyes. “Never wondered why?”

“I… why… we’ll talk about this later,” Button frowned, climbing out of the car and looking out at the street, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his jeans and feeling entirely too warm in the dark green hoodie he'd brought home from some convention.

“Sure,” Sweetie sighed and climbed out herself, smoothing out the short black skirt she was wearing with a pink sweater that did nothing to hide the magnitude of her tits. “But we’ll have some actual fun before then. Come on, Button, when’s the last time we went out?”

“It has been a while,” Button admitted. “You should’ve told me about them hassling you, you know I don’t want that to happen.” He took her arm, leaning over to kiss her cheek.

“I know.” She turned to return the gesture, pressing up against his side.

But at least then somepony was paying attention to me, she thought to herself.

The next hour or two weren’t that bad. Button stuck to Sweetie’s side like glue, shooting glares at any stallions who had trouble getting their eyes above her neckline. It meant a lot of glaring, but Sweetie seemed to be happy drinking and chatting with her friends. Right now it was a purple-coated pegasus with a yellow streak in her pink mane, some pony she was working on for some musical project or other.

Unfortunately for Button, Sweetie wasn’t discussing a shared musical project.

“He’s not even looking at us, is he?” Sweetie grumbled, glancing back over her shoulder to confirm it. “I swear, sometimes it’s like I have a roommate instead of a coltfriend!”

“So make him a roommate instead!” Her friend, Blazing Wind, sighed. “We’ve been over this before, Sweetie! He didn’t even show up at our concert when you were singing for us!”

“He doesn’t like metal,” Sweetie murmured. “And he had a qualifi-”

“He had some gaming thing, yeah,” Blaze sighed, shaking her head. “Sweetie, you do those streams for him all the time. You go to tournaments with him. And I know it’s not because you like them. You do shit for that colt all the time, and he can’t even be bothered to come by your show before anybody’s playing!”

“He made up for that, Blaze.” Sweetie frowned at her friend. “He’s a good guy! He’s good about cleaning up, he cooks, he doesn’t treat me like a piece of meat or put up with other ponies doing that. He’s a lot better than half the guys I’ve heard you groaning about! I just… sometimes, I kind of wish I would treat me like one,” she admitted. “Or at least do a better job when he does.”

“Ooooooh,” Blaze chuckled. “I get it now. Only knows how to mash one type of button, huh?”

“More like all he does do is mash it,” Sweetie grumbled. “And not in the good w-hey!" She spun backwards, slapping the grey-furred hand that had just groped her under her skirt.

Ten Hut, the school's quarterback, grinned at her lecherously.

"Sorry, Coach is looking for some good tight ends, so I figured I'd do some recruiting!"

Sweetie rolled her eyes and started to turn away from him. That really should have been the end of it, if you asked her.

Unfortunately, Button didn't ask her.

Instead, the chestnut stallion grabbed Ten's shoulder before he could grope Sweetie again, spinning him around mostly by virtue of the much larger football player being drunk.

"Leave her alone," Button demanded, his nasally voice bringing everyone in the room to a stunned silence.

Ten stared down at Button, who had to glare up at him from chest height. Then Ten laughed.

"What's the matter, Twinky, afraid I'm gonna steal your beard?"

Button growled, and threw the best punch he could.

Now, conventional wisdom said that no amount of fighting games could make you a fighter. Of course, conventional wisdom failed to account for Button Mash, whose thousands of hours of play and split-frame attention had earned him the attention1 of some of the world's top athletes2. The earth pony's fist flew forward, slamming into Ten's chest with a resounding…

‘Pmf.’'

Unfortunately, conventional wisdom did not fail to account for the fact that fighting games were far more forgiving than reality when punching somepony whose muscle mass alone outweighed your entire body.

1. Okay, so maybe attention did mean concerned warnings to get a life, it was still attention!
2. Rainbow Dash and Thunderlane were both Wonderbolts, they counted!

Author's Note

ButtonBelle shippers, I wrote this because my poverty, not my honor, demands it. My honor just demands that I still try to make it fucking hot. Don’t maim me for writing this. Please? :sweetieunsure: