Less-Late-Night Phone Call
Less-Late-Night Phone Call
The sound of the door opening could be heard clearly through what little space made up the inside of this shanty, sparsely-furnished living space, as was the sound of it closing.
Sunset Shimmer didn’t so much walk into her room as she did shamble into it. She stepped out of her shoes in the doorway, leaving them where they lay on the floor, then took a few more steps forward before she fell face first into the mattress, barely managing to roll her shoulders enough to let slip her leather jacket, which was blearily peeled from her back and haphazardly shoved off of herself. It didn’t even make it all the way off the bed; gravity had to finish what she started, signifying that it had completed its task about a minute later to the sound of a muffled plop on the floor.
Today sucked. Today massively sucked. It hadn’t even sucked for a particularly good reason, either. And the best part was: it wasn’t over yet. There was still an entire night ahead of her, one in which she still had to find it in her to both get through and also end up sleeping at the correct time, something which she had not done an especially good job with so far.
She didn’t want to be in this house right now. She really didn’t. It wasn’t a charming place - really, calling it a house was an honor it didn’t deserve, more like a shack with delusions of grandeur. It didn’t even smell nice. At least there were ways to fix that…
Sunset heaved a sigh into the sheets below her, reaching stiffly into one pocket, fumbling slightly with it at the awkward angle and having to push past the weight of her thigh pressing the pocket closed. She hated the feeling of this pocket. She hated the feeling of these pants. She hated clothes. She hated how humans forced you to wear these things. She hated not having fur, so that she had to feel everything rubbing on her skin. She hated feeling everything, all the time, all over her body. Too much, it was too much to do all the time. She wanted to find this lighter and light all these damn clothes on fire so she could be free.
She found something hard in her pocket, and this pleased her. Then it started vibrating. This pleased her less. It was a double whammy: not only was that not her lighter, but someone was calling her.
Growling in frustration, Sunset rolled into her back and rammed her hand the rest of the way into her pocket so she could actually retrieve this object, then yanked it back out to examine the screen. She read the screen for a second, and her expression lifted. Answering it was a bit easier than it had seemed a moment ago. “Hey Rarity.”
“Hello, darling,” came the fashionista’s chipper voice. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything terribly important right now.”
“No, not at all,” Sunset said through a sigh, letting her gaze find the ceiling again. “I just got home.”
“You sound exhausted.”
“Kind of am,” Sunset admitted. “I made it to bed, and, uh…didn’t really plan on going much further than that.”
“I see…” A tinge of concern entered Rarity’s voice. “Would you rather I call back, darling?”
“I mean, I haven’t even heard why you called in the first place. What’s up?”
“Oh, nothing,” Rarity replied, casually. “I just wanted to check up on you and see how you were feeling today, make sure you were adequately socialized, lest we end up with yet another situation like we were in two days ago.”
Sunset winced. She could tell Rarity hadn’t meant it as such, but the phrasing evoked a ping of guilt. “Yeah, I’m…yeah. Sorry about that, again.”
“Pah.” The hand wave was not seen, but heard. “Nonsense, don’t apologize for such a thing, Sunset. If anything, I should be thanking you for feeling like I was someone you could trust with that.”
“What, waking you up at 4 AM?” Sunset deadpanned. “Sure, I’ve got you covered if you ever want to lose sleep.”
“Oh you stop that, you know that’s not it. I meant more…” There was a squeak of a mattress on the other end of the line. “Oh, heavens, what’s the phrase I’m looking for, erm…” Sunset had no idea what she was getting at, so she wasn’t sure how to help here. “Like…feeling like I’m someone you could reach out to, for that sort of thing. You know? It felt like high praise.”
Sunset shrugged as though Rarity might see, raising the lighter she had fished from her pocket in this time with her free hand, turning it over idly as she talked. “It was kind of stupid of me to do that, to be honest. I expected you to be mad about it.”
“Whatever for?”
“The part where I woke you up at 4 AM.”
“…I suppose there’s some merit to that concern,” Rarity admitted. “I was a pinch frustrated, but I figured it was for a good reason. And it was. Or at least, I think so. Water under the bridge, darling, as I said. If you need to do that again…well, you know my number.”
Sunset didn’t say anything to that, though a smile made its way to her lips. She looked up at the lighter in her hand, suddenly remembering why she had fished it out, and heaved herself stiffly back up into the sitting position, then eventually pushed her legs back under her so she could make her way to her scented candle. Lavender sounded vastly preferable to dust and sweat.
“Are you lifting weights or something?” came the wry voice in her ear.
“Just my own dead weight.” Sunset clicked the lighter several times, each resulting in a shower of sparks until a tongue of flame was finally summoned. She would prefer magic for this, but, circumstances.
“That was an awful lot of sound effects for just that.”
“Like I sa- ow.” Sunset shook her hand sharply where the heat of the flame scorched her finger - reached in too deep. She rolled her eyes and reignited it, lifting the candle instead. Definitely preferred magic for this. “Like I said, I’m tired.”
“And pinching yourself, apparently.”
“Burning myself, actually.”
“Well don’t do that. There’s a fine line between well-done and overdone, darling, and I’m afraid you’re crossing it.”
“It’s just so hard to get that nice crispy brown, you know?” Sunset set the lit candle back down on the folding table, where it would eventually do it’s job, once the wax melted enough. “I get a little too enthusiastic.”
“Patience is a virtue, as they say. I’m sure ‘Don’t cook yourself’ is also said somewhere.”
“Don’t tell me how to live my life.”
Rarity laughed for a moment. “Let’s compromise with, if you’re going to cook yourself, at least season well. How’s that?”
“Sounds almost like you intend to eat me.”
“Well if you’re going to keep aspiring to be delicious, there’s only so much I can do, darling.”
Sunset flopped back onto her bed, smirking. “Just can’t help yourself, huh?”
“A lady always bears in mind what her vices are,” Rarity said, tone picking up a suggestive quality. “We’ve all got our guilty pleasures.”
“Like?”
“Ohh…you know,” came the teasing response. “This and that.”
“Would I happen to be this or that?”
“Possibly.” The half-lidded, conspiratorial smile was practically audible. “Possibly not…who’s to say?”
“I’m interested in finding out, myself. Always looking to learn new things... Any advice?”
“Like I said, darling: patience is a virtue.”
Sunset tsk’d coyly. “Well, that’s a problem for me. Everyone’s got their vices, you know? I’m pretty impatient.”
“A problem indeed…perhaps we’ll have to work something out together sometime, figure out a little something that will work for the both of us.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“As am I, darling…though only if you get that crispy brown texture down pat for me.”
Sunset chuckled. “I’ll aspire to be as delicious as I can be, just for you.”
The sound that came through the speaker was equal parts giggle and purr. “I await our meal with baited breath.”
A silence came over the two of them, for a time. Sunset only just then realized she was smiling - a big, wide smile, directed at nothing in particular, save perhaps these rosy vibes that once again danced in her chest. A feeling of deja-vu came over Sunset, and she glanced at the phone in her hand, noting how the number under Rarity’s name had grown dramatically. “…man.”
“Woman, actually. It was a coin flip chance, you tried.”
Sunset snorted involuntarily, rolling her eyes. “Look at the time elapsed.”
There was a pause. “Oh,” said Rarity, sounding a bit more distant for a moment. “Well that’s a conspicuously large number, isn’t it?”
“I feel like we just started talking. I swear when we talk, time goes into fast motion.”
“The flirting probably had a lot to do with it,” Rarity stated, like it was the most obvious thing. “I do enjoy a good flirting now and then.”
“Apparently,” Sunset absently replied, feeling a little strange now that it had been pointed out. She wasn’t quite sure when that started, and now that she was made aware that’s what they’d been doing all this time, she wasn’t quite sure how to feel about it. Not that she was new to flirting, it’s just she was typically aware of it when it happened. It was a conscious decision, usually to mess with someone. This was…not that.
Apparently Rarity was that easy to flirt with, not just talk to. Or they just bounced off one another really well? Sunset wasn’t sure. She decided she didn’t want to think about it right now. Today had sucked, and this was too nice a talk to sully with thoughts about such real topics.
The conversation had lapsed again, and Sunset took this opportunity to glance about herself. Speaking of today sucking: the discomfort of the day likewise took this opportunity to re-introduce itself to Sunset’s awareness. She was unbuckling her belt before she even thought to say anything. “Gimme one minute, I’m gonna get undressed.”
“We discussed this on Monday, darling,” came the drawling response, as lofty as it was wry. “We’re supposed to work up to that, or there’s no point.”
“Well, uh…” The tank top was plucked from her person, and unceremoniously tossed away. “Sorry? But I feel like I’m covered in sandpaper right now, and I am really, really over it.”
“Mm…”
Something else was said, though Sunset didn’t hear it clearly, too busy expressing grunts of sheer, unadulterated relief as article after article of chafing, suffocating fabric was all but flung across the room, replaced with the sweet sensation of open air. She let loose a heartfelt sigh when she had shed her cloth prison, then picked the phone back up off the pillow it had been placed on. “Sorry, what was that?”
“I said, do you have some sensory thing or another, darling?” Rarity repeated, with a hint of concern. “Or do we need to go clothing shopping even more direly than I thought?”
“Oh- no, no. Uh…I think.” Did she? No, probably not. “Wearing clothes constantly just really gets to me. I don’t know how you do it.”
The frown was felt as much as heard. “You need to work on that one, there’s far more elegant ways to try and get me to strip.”
”No,” Sunset groaned. “Harmony’s sake. Does it seriously not bother you? To like, always be covered up like that?”
There was several seconds of silence following this. “Ah,” Rarity said suddenly, as though something had clicked. “Pony.”
“Yes. Pony. We don’t like, do that in Equestria. I guess some people do, but like…eugh.” Sunset itched her neck, where she could still faintly feel the ghost of a shirt’s collar nagging at her. “Seriously, it messes with me really bad some days. How do you manage it?”
“How do…” The uncertainty in Rarity’s voice was palpable. “Well…erm…I mean, it’s…it’s not really a problem for me, I suppose?”
Sunset frowned at this reaction. “Weird question?”
“…a pinch,” Rarity admitted. “It’s not really something I’ve ever thought about, if I can be truthful. It’s just…” A brief pause. “It just is? I don’t like wearing socks to bed, but, I’m not…really…certain, about the rest? It’s clothing. I guess there’s powders or something you could use, if it’s causing you so much discomfort…”
“Like what?”
“Baby powder, perhaps? If you don’t mind being gently dusted with flour.” A beat, followed by a chuckle. “Though, you do seem to be aspiring to be delicious…”
“Just call me shake-and-bake.”
There was an extremely loud burst of static as Rarity sputtered directly into the speaker of her phone.
Sunset grinned. “What, too good?”
“You’re awful,” Rarity managed through quiet laughter. “Oh you’re awful, Sunset.”
The wide grin did not indicate that she felt especially awful about it. “Bad girl at heart, what can I say? Assigned shake-and-bake at birth.”
Rarity couldn’t even berate her, unable to push it through the laughter her end of the line was momentarily consumed by. Sunset soon found herself chuckling along as well, listening happily to the joyous sounds flowing through the speaker.
Rarity really did have a nice voice. Her laughter was especially fun. Everything she said sounded almost melodic in the way she strung her sentences together, and her laugh was much like that as well, though much of the structure was lost, replaced with joyous chords that bounced about, like a bouncy ball that had been dropped and was being gleefully chased after.
Sunset didn’t recall rolling onto her belly, nor resting her chin on her hand as she listened along. Rarity’s pleasant sigh into her ear brought her back into focus. A moment later, a decidedly less pleasant muttering was faintly heard: “Oh damn it.”
Sunset’s dreamy smile faded a little. “What?”
“Oh, nothing…I just looked at the time.”
Sunset glanced at the phone’s screen for a second. 9:42. “Time folded up on itself again.”
“Indeed…” A wistful sigh. “We do need to consider going to bed at a reasonable hour this time, darling.”
“We’ve got plenty of time still.” Sunset did feel some fatigue, but was not feeling any inclination to submit to it. Not yet.
“I still need to take a shower.”
“Ah.”
A few seconds passed. From Rarity’s end came a consternated growl, then a scoff. “Oh to hell with it.” Faintly there was the noise of drawers being opened, then closed, one after the other. “Hope you don’t mind being put on speaker for a while, darling.”
Sunset arched an eyebrow at this. “Why?”
“Because you’re coming to the shower with me.”
Sunset bit back a snort. “Uhh, Rarity? I don’t think phones work super well in the water.”
“Well it’s not going in the shower,” Rarity huffed. “Just by it.”
“You sure? I don’t want to be the reason you bricked your phone.”
“Oh please, I think I can manage.”
Sunset shrugged, as though Rarity might see it. She really needed to quit doing that. “If you say so.”
“And I do.” The audio quality shifted, suddenly sounding a bit more echoey than it did previously. The sounds were all a bit more flat, less focused on Rarity - the sound of a door opening was heard with much more clarity than it otherwise would, as did the footsteps that Rarity took as she went down what sounded like a long, empty hallway in a massive warehouse. “It’s not my first rodeo with this, I’ll have you know.”
“Oh I’m sure.” Sunset rolled back onto her side, taking the opportunity to swap hands to hold the phone against her other ear; sitting on her stomach with her arm up was causing the limb to start to tingle from poor circulation. “I always figured you were the sort to like, walk around the house and talk.”
“And you’d be right! Well, more right in the past.” There was another sound of a door opening, and then closing, followed by a faint sound of fabric being dropped. “It’s a bit more troublesome when you have a nosy little sister living with you, always shadowing your steps and trying to figure out who you’re talking to and what you’re discussing.” The muttered, “Thank you, mom and dad,” was barely audible with the sound quality the way it was.
Sunset wasn’t sure what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. She rolled onto her back, and listened to the faint sounds of movement on the other end. For the better part of a minute or two, there was no further dialogue.
“If the water is unbearable, just let me know, would you, darling?”
“Sure thing.” Sunset wasn’t sure what to expect, though when the droning noise filtered through the speaker into her ear, she figured that was it. “Eh.”
“Tolerable?”
“Eh,” she repeated. “Might be kind of hard, I don’t know.”
“We did get a new…hm.” A few beats of silence, then the sound of water got a lot closer. There was a rattling sound, and something bumping against the microphone, and while the water was a lot louder now than it was before, so too did Rarity sound clear, if significantly more echoey. “How’s that sound?”
“Sounds like you did that thing I said was a terrible idea and put the phone in the shower.”
“I can neither confirm nor deny at this time.” A curtain rustled.
Sunset rolled her eyes. “Just don’t drop it.”
“Oh, hush, it’ll be fine.” There was the sound of splattering, and the sound of the water would occasionally shift as the thing it was striking against moved about some.
Another lapse in conversation happened. Sunset didn’t really mind it, though admittedly the sound of the water through the less-than-stellar quality audio filling her ear was not quite as engaging as Rarity had been up till this point. Taking this as a chance to multitask, Sunset got up off of her bed with a grunt to get something to eat. She realized she’d missed dinner and should probably not go to bed without eating again.
“You know,” said an echoey Rarity down her rain tunnel, “it’s really easy to forget you aren’t human.”
“Oh yeah?” A cupboard was opened…there was only one box to choose from, so pick it she did. The sight of it wasn’t exactly thrilling, and a bowl was fished for out of another nearby cupboard.
“I find it a little strange to think about, if I may be quite honest.” Something clattered on the other end; Rarity didn’t acknowledge it. “I’ve known about you and you’ve been living among us here for several years now, and only recently has it come to light that you’re not even from earth, and it’s expressly because we were told as much. I mean, even with some of your…erm…”
“Weird-ass questions?” Sunset dryly offered, pouring a bowl of cornflakes for herself. No milk because no refrigerator, so she popped a handful of them into her mouth like chips.
“To be fair darling, you don’t ask many of those. And your-“ A pause, presumably washing-related. “-and your little quirks could be excused as just that. I would never in a hundred years have guessed that you were a pony in a human body, even after having gotten to know you better.”
“Probably a good thing,” Sunset said past a mouthful of dry cornflakes. She swallowed a bit too hard, and grimaced at the pain. “Walking around wondering whether or not any of the people you meet on the street is secretly a technicolor horse wearing a human body seems a little unhealthy. That’s pretty firmly in tinfoil hat territory.”
There was a faint, echoey snort. “I suppose you’re right about that. Even still, it’s strange to consider. I would have thought someone from another world would feel very stilted, and…unnatural. I never really got that sense from you or Twilight.”
“Twilight was a lot more obvious.”
Silence.
“Rarity, she ran on all fours through the hallways,” Sunset said flatly. “She was trying to type on a computer like a gorilla. I know I made the drool in those videos pretty clear, I specifically edited it to be.”
Rarity gave a loud, resigned sigh. “I’m just trying to be charitable to the poor dear. Lord knows how stressful it must have been to be dealing with all that at once.”
“It is stressful.” Sunset paused for a more reasonably-sized handful of cornflakes, taking a second to admire the alien appendage while the topic was on her mind. “It’s…cool. It’s really cool. But it’s a lot. Especially when you’re trying to figure out stuff like…you know, like, survival, and figuring out how the world around you works, never mind your anatomy.”
“For what it’s worth, I think you’ve adapted fantastically, darling.”
Sunset curled her fingers into a light fist, and a smile made its way across her face. “Thanks.” The praise did indeed mean something to her, but she was also keenly aware of how she looked right now. Eating plain cereal like potato chips while stark naked in a horrible little house she didn’t even own with no electricity or running water was not exactly the spitting image of ‘fitting in.’ “I think I’ve got a lot of work to do still on this whole ‘human’ thing, though. There’s a lot to it, and I don’t think I’m ever going to be…you know…spot on.”
“Perfection is a noble goal, so long as you never truly expect to achieve it. Besides, I’m quite fond of you the way you are.”
“Yeah?”
“Of course, darling.” Sunset could feel the smile she aimed at the phone, in that moment. “It’s not every day I find someone I can enjoy talking with so much that I never want to stop. You’re wonderful company, oddities all included. If anything I’d say it adds to the charm.”
“Well…geez.” Sunset couldn’t repress the smile, rubbing the back of her neck bashfully. “You’re making me blush over here.”
“Oh my my, what is this? Bad girl Sunset Shimmer can’t take a little compliment?”
Sunset snorted, shaking her head, as though it would be visible through the phone. “Yeah, you’re right, I’m bucked. I’m going to get my bad girl card revoked at this rate.”
“Quite a predicament indeed…I’ll tell you what, I’ll make a deal with you.” The sound of water suddenly stopped, and Rarity’s voice came through much clearer. “I’ll refrain from reporting this little incident to the proper authorities, and you will never refer to yourself as ‘shake-and-bake’ again. Deal?”
Sunset let let out a long, windy sigh, which slowly transformed into a stream of throaty chuckles. “Well I guess they don’t call me shake-and-bake. End of an era…”
“I’m quite confident you will find a way to endure in these trying times.” Rarity almost managed to sound like she was trying to not laugh herself. Almost. “Shake-and-bake…honestly.”
“It’s not a phase, mom, this is how I really am.”
This tipped Rarity over the edge into giggling laughter, which in turn set Sunset off as well. Once again, the two laughed together, words set aside to enjoy a moment of mirth.
As Sunset let out a sigh at the end of her chuckling, she glanced at her phone, and made a painful discovery. “Oh buck. My phone’s at two percent.”
“Sunseeet!” Rarity whined. The echoing effect of the shower made it seem significantly louder than it was. “Did I not just get done saying that I didn’t want to stop talking to you?”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry.” Sunset dragged a hand down her face as she let out an irritated breath. “I charged it yesterday, but I didn’t expect to be having another call like this again, so I didn’t charge it at school.”
“Oh this is worst thing. Worst! Possible! Thing! I’m ruined, Sunset!”
“Well look, we can do this again, right? We’ll just…reschedule for tomorrow, I guess.”
“Oho, we’re doing appointments now,” Rarity said with a curl of intrigue, her life sounding suddenly a lot less ruined than it did a moment ago. There was a sound of bumping and jostling on Rarity’s end, then the audio quality suddenly spiked as the phone was taken off speaker. “I suppose I can make do with that…same time tomorrow?”
“Same-ish time, yeah.” Sunset flicked another glance at her phone. “One percent…gotta call it here.”
“Sunset?” Rarity’s voice was suddenly quite soft, and sincere.
“Yeah?”
“I really enjoy talking to you.”
Sunset opened her mouth, and found no words came out of it immediately. She emitted a combination of a breath and a single chuckle, smiling down at her bed as she tried to process the feeling that this simple statement had caused to leap through her chest like lightning. “I…I do too. I’m…yeah. Yeah.”
The silence that closed in over them was rosy, and embracing. Though nothing was said for a time after this, Sunset really, really did not want to hang up…so, she didn’t. Sunset remained on the line, listening to the barely audible hiss of the phone in her ear letting her know that they were still connected, content with the knowledge that Rarity was there, smiling that same smile, just as happy to be there in that moment as she was. Their shared quiet felt like a hug.
One minute and twelve seconds later, the phone died, and only then did the call end.
Author's Note
Had a lot more fun with the first one than I expected to, so just for the hell of it, I decided to make a sequel. Sunset and Rarity continue to be very fun to work with together.