Two Martyrs Fall for Each Other

Chapters

The Equestrian Night [Explicit]
The Terrestrial Night [Explicit]
The Equestrian Date
The Terrestrial Date

The Equestrian Night [Explicit]

Author's Note

Content warning: Knife... play(?)

The Equestrian Night [Explicit]

Dash lay spread-eagle in the middle of the bed, with Rarity stalking the edge of it trying to look for her best opening. The approach was somewhere between a hungry jungle cat waiting for the pounce, and the CEO of the company coming down to your desk to check how good your work is. That combination of a hunger looking for a vulnerability, and that ruthless assessment if you’re even good enough to be here.

Dash hoped she was worth eating. She thought she was, but it wasn’t her decision now.

Nothing tied her down but the order she’d been given. Still, ropes and chains she could strain against, that would be fun. But Rarity was planning this like a seamstress, tailoring it for her. It wasn’t just that she was passing inspection, she’d be messing up Rarity’s planning on stuff to do to her.

“So uh, magic right?” Dash asked. “You said you were excited about magic?”

“Mm. I am.” Rarity paced the foot of the bed, focusing on Rainbow’s wings. “I am desperately looking forward to showing you how good I can be with it. I felt like I had both hands tied behind my back in your world.”

“So why not do a strong open?” Dash stretched her wings out more, straining the feathers, before Rarity could ask her to. That got a thin smile out of her.

“Good girl,” she murmured. “No. My problem is that you cannot do magic, and I would like to teach you all the wonderful ways to appreciate my body here, as well. Otherwise this might be a little one-sided.” Rarity thought about that. “Yes, as much fun as it would be to just treat you like a pinata I can ruin, that might get boring after the first six months or so.”

Rainbow gulped. “Yeah, uh, I kind of picked up on that last time. You really seem to enjoy uh…” Topping her wasn’t really it, was the wrong word, because it wasn’t even that it felt like Rarity enjoyed having control over Dash. “Being good at this.”

“Yes. Inside of you there is trapped all my favourite sounds, and I enjoy learning what I need to do to bring them all out of you. You’re a musician, you must understand what I mean, that feeling of concentration when you get very into a practice session. Over and over, that feeling of mastery over a bar and learning the next little bit of the piece you’re trying to grasp, until you can play it by muscle memory.”

Dash shivered. She fucking loved that feeling, just, she’d never thought she’d want to be the instrument. “Actually that was kind of crazy, since we’re talking instruments. How’d you get so good at fingering if you’ve never had fingers?”

“You were meant to be playing for me tonight. Maybe if you’d had your guitar on you, you could feel for yourself what… carries over.” Rarity stalked to Dash’s left side and pulled at a pinion and Dash wriggled at how sensitive it was. It was like that feeling of having your hair pulled at, like, painful rather than fun except the hair was huge. Rarity let go immediately, and Dash flexed it…

Well. Like she had control over it, like it was a finger and not a feather.

“Flip onto your front.” Rarity said. Dash flipped over and shuffled until she was in the middle of the bed again, wings spread wide again. “You’re very good at anticipating what I actually want you to be doing, from what I’m asking.”

“Yeah, that’s me.” Dash grinned back. “Anticipating you.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere.” Rarity hopped onto her bed and stood over Dash, looking down. “All good things come with patience, dear heart.”

“Am I a good thing?” Dash tipped her head back until she could Rarity over her back. “You’re going to make me cum if I’m patient?”

Rarity dropped down, suddenly, thighs straddling Dash’s back. Two hooves pressed down into the joints of her wings, right where they met her spine. “Please. Did you not hear what I said about mastering my instrument? You, dearest, will be cumming for my satisfaction and I will not be letting you cheat me out of my fun. If you are a good girl for me, you can share your opinion in what music you enjoy making, how you enjoy being played. If you are a bad girl, well…” A hoof pressed hard against the back of Dash’s head, and Rarity leaned down to nibble her ear.

Dash shivered, and waited, and waited without interrupting. She felt Rarity’s lips curl into a smile around the ear she was biting.

“I’m glad you’ve decided to be a good girl for me.” Rarity kissed the ear. “Because if you misbehave, then this ceases to be a collaboration where I cared about your input, and one where I play you for your output. Wouldn’t you rather do the duet with me?”

Dash’s breathing got heavy and her brain went foggy. LIke Rarity had just crammed her skull full of cotton wool. “Yeah. I’ll be good.”

“I know you will.” Rarity kissed her cheek.

It was… Weird. There were about thirty different landmines in her head that Rarity had just danced around, skipped over. She’d made ‘misbehaving’ sound like its own kind of fun, not just a threat.

Normally Dash was a way bigger brat, and the threat would have made her fighty, resist, push back. And she liked being forced back down, but she had to lose in the right way or she felt genuinely unsafe, in actual real danger, and then she got violent. She’d seriously hurt guys trying to dom her before when they’d fucked up (they deserved it).

Except Dash didn’t want to give control over either, and she hated losing. She wanted to have already lost, and skip all those middle steps, and she had no idea how to get there. Just, that’s Rarity did, with her it felt like she’d lost before they’d even met, and every time Rarity flexed that power over her like this it was like trying to push back against a steel wall.

So Dash felt safe to just…

Sink.

Down.

Into nothing.

Rarity began to knead the tension under Dash’s wing joints and she groaned. “All that weight, and such a delicate place to put it.” Rarity clicked her tongue. “I don’t know what having wings like these is like, but I can feel what it’s like when I press down like this. Did you have fun, while you were waiting for me?”

Dash groaned. So, maybe she’d flown a few laps around Ponyville before making it to the Boutique. He could she not, right? “Bit.”

“A bit? Good.” Rarity kneaded it out more. Hooves were interesting, the even and rounded edge on the front of them rolled each press out in a way that fingers just couldn’t. Usually you’d use the bottom of your palm or your knuckles to roll tense muscles out like this, but it was trying to get your hands to try to be hooves. Hooves were just way better than hands could pretend to be.

Dash melted deep into the mattress. “Ffffuck.”

“Good, mmm?” Rarity pressed harder and Dash had to bite a pillow. It was way too much which made it exactly perfect. “You keep talking about how good fingers are. Yes, the dexterity is nice, but they’re so weak, with all those joints and bends in them. Isn’t this so much better?”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe?” Rarity asked incredulously. “Well.” And then her hooves went down to Dash’s lower back and up, up in kneading circles that rolled all her tension in one broken chain up to her neck and out. Dash buried her face in a too-soft pillow and held it tight, it was so much that she couldn’t even get a breath back in.

She took in a ragged gasp as Rarity’s hooves finally came off her shoulders - withers, now - and she remembered how badly she needed it.

“How about now?”

Dash lifted Rarity from the effort of her heavy breathing, each full breath in her lungs pushing the unicorn higher off the bed. She could feel how hard she’d just won that. “Yep. Yeah, okay.”

“Mmhm.” Rarity crooned. “Now, what else? Skin, you said. And fingernails. I do remember how much you like those.”

Dash braced herself, nodding into the pillow hoping Rarity saw it from behind her.

“It is nice how sensitive it is, and I do like that bit of sharp.” Rarity agreed, and she began to knead the tense muscles in Rainbow’s back as she talked. Not so much this time, just enough to keep herself from getting bored, just for something to do. Just casually obliterating Dash and making it impossible to think as an afterthought, even before she’d gone anywhere near her pussy or anything. She just didn’t need to. “How did I think it felt again?”

“I think it felt like… sitting next to a warm campfire, but all brought down to just a fine little point. Just all that intense warm sharpness, like sparks, dragged along your body. A warm glow that radiates out from it. Yes, that was very nice, and I’m not sure I have anything quite like it unless… How much do you trust me?”

Terrifying question. “Uh.”

“Would you trust me with your life?” Rarity asked as if she were asking what they should have for breakfast in the morning.

“I guess?”

Rarity stopped and leaned forward, tapping Dash’s head to look at her. Her eyebrows were furrowed and she was quite serious about this. “You do not guess. You know or you do not. If you do not know, then that is no, which is fine. Honestly, I’m not sure you should trust me that much, I am merely asking if you do.”

Rainbow looked back at the sudden intensity of it, and nodded. “Yeah. I think I do.”

“You think?”

“I trust you.”

Rarity nodded, and her horn flared. Somewhere behind Dash a drawer opened in one of Rarity’s desks, and she floated a letter opener in front of Dash’s eyes on the pillow. Dash startled at it first, then took a breath - yeah, Rarity had warned her. She wasn’t getting murdered yet.

The letter opener had blunted edges and a sharp point, meant for cleanly tearing the tops off envelopes but little else. It was more than enough to kill, that point was razor sharp even if it was just the point. Rarity gave it a few testing swishes in her magic in front of Dash’s eyes then moved it away.

“Good. Then if, after everything, you still crave that feeling so much, that would be the way to do it.” Her voice turned somber. “I would be absolutely beside myself if I did anything to hurt you. It would be more than I could take if it happened doing something you weren’t completely sure about.”

Dash’s heart thumped in her chest, and a fresh storm of butterflies in her stomach, and she groaned and buried her head in the pillow. “Why am I like this?”

Rarity blinked. “How do you mean?”

“Why was that so friggin’ hot?” She whined into the pillow. “You’re like, ‘Hey there’s a chance I might actually stab you doing this, you okay with that?’ and I’m like, why is that better than if you’d told me I was safe? It’s not ‘cause I wanna get stabbed, please don’t stab me.”

“Despite what some of my colleagues might tell you, I am most definitely not a sadist.” Rarity considered that. “Am I? I must admit, bruising on human skin was very, very pretty.”

“Skin’s better then?”

“Ah!” Rarity hummed, “Yes, that.”

Then she dragged the edge of her hoof down Rainbow’s back, pressing across instead of down, pulling at her fur instead of pushing at her muscle.

Rainbow learned something very, very quickly.

She loved, more than anything else in the world, having her hair pulled. As a human? Like, she thought of having a ponytail as having a ‘grab-me-fuck-me’ handle.

All over.

Everywhere.

She could have her hair pulled everywhere now.

Rarity was pulling her hair everywhere.

“Dear, are you alright?” Rarity stopped, genuinely concerned. “Is that good screaming or bad screaming?”

“Don’t you dare fucking stop!” Dash turned her head to snap.

“Ah!” Rarity pressed her hoof back down again. “Wonderful.”

And as Dash pulled the pillow so tight against her face she tore its seams, she thought about vegetarian food.

It was something you learned when you started practicing. The wrong thing to do was to try and find something to replace meat. Instead it was way better to find stuff that was good without meat. Since she’d started dating - seeing, seeing Rarity she’d switched to vege pizzas for practice and found she really didn’t miss much because all the flavour was in the sauce.

The fur pulling was like that.

She didn’t need something to replace fingers. Or fingernails. Or-

She needed this.

“You really, really like that, don’t you?” Rarity marvelled.

Her favourite feeling of tight pressure and dull sharpness too spread out to be pain but force, just force on her just pulling her body just fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Fuck.

“Yep.” Is all Dash said. Her forelimbs shook under her face, her knees shivered, she was so turned on she was, fuck she was wet, she burned from this. She felt empty all the way from between her legs to the top of her stomach, where all the eruptions of butterflies had left her starving, like actually starving even though she’d just eaten.

“Would you like to keep going?”

“Yep.” Dash nodded fiercely into her pillow, and Rarity hummed.

“Well.” Rarity picked her up with her magic this time and flipped her onto her back. And then she straddled Dash’s hips, sitting over her skirt. “Now I know what you like. Let’s teach you what I like, hm?”

Dash noted with a thrill that Rarity left a sticky-soaked patch on the skirt when she shifted her hips to get more comfortable too, so at least she was having fun too even if she was the one doing everything. “So what do you want me to do?”

“Listen.” Rarity tapped Dash’s nose, then chased it up with a kiss that left her hormone-drunk and breathless again. “While I teach by example. Ready?”

Dash nodded.

“Good. Now.” Rarity traced a circle around Dash’s stomach and Dash squirmed. “Like humans, these are quite sensitive. For some it’s pleasant. You?”

“Kind of nice. I’m not really ticklish though. You?”

“For me it just makes me need to pee.” Rarity stuck her tongue out, bleugh. “Profoundly unsexy.”

“Got it.” Dash nodded, watching the passes of Rarity’s hooves and trying to figure out where the danger zones were going to be. “Uh. Next?”

Rarity nodded, moving up to Dash’s breast. That was weird. She was used to having her tits there, she was braced for that feeling. The tingling, the building of pressure, the feeling her body was a temple and church was about to be in session. It was hard to describe it better, but her human tits were really sensitive, some parts of the month she could almost cum just from that.

Here, it felt more like her ribs ran all the way to her neck without anything in between. And having your ribs stroked was nice, she still loved the feeling of Rarity’s touch all the way up to her neck… but that was it.

“Huh.” Dash murmured, and Rarity grinned.

“You were expecting anything else?”

“No, but, I mean…” Dash trailed off. “Huh.”

“I hate where human breasts are.” Rarity said, and Dash raised an eyebrow at that. “Well, yes, the shape of them is quite nice,” she conceded, “But for cuddling? Afterwards, when I just want to lie with our foreheads pressed together, lips a breath apart, and feel your heartbeat with a touch… what do I do?” She said this and flicked her mane out of her eyes with a huff. “Over there, I put my hand on your breast and it’s a signal that it’s time to go again. Honestly. While here…”

Rarity lay her hoof against Dash’s heart and held it there. And that was it, nothing got in the way of it. She pressed down firmly, and felt Dash’s pulse slow down, her heat beats getting heavy but relaxed. Then, with a satisfied smile, she leaned down and drew Dash into another long, deep kiss.

The entire kiss the hoof stayed pressed against Dash’s heart, counting the beats, feeling for her reaction.

When Rarity finally broke the kiss, her lips lingered against Dash’s for a while, and she pulled away so slowly it was like it broke her heart that it was time to move on. “You’re getting better at that.”

No she wasn’t. “Thanks.”

Rarity disappeared down Dash’s body in a flurry of little kisses, until she reached where her breasts actually were now. Dash squeaked, and Rarity looked up again in surprise, before her face twisted into something positively evil, narrowed eyes and a far-too-wide twist of her lips. “Some things don’t change, then.”

“Yeah, I get it, flat in every universe.” Dash rolled her eyes.

“No. Sensitive.” Rarity kissed again and Dash yipped like a kicked puppy. It wasn’t that the feeling was more intense than she was used to, it was that the feeling was in entirely the wrong place.

Wrong place, because when those little touches excited her, they were way, way closer to where she actually wanted the attention most. She felt how empty she was just directly underneath where Rarity was still sending fluttering little kisses.

“Mm. See?” Rarity teased. “Much better here, isn’t it.”

“Yeah, but…” Dash trailed off. It was still weird.

“Mine are far less sensitive than yours, so I can’t really demonstrate, alas.” Rarity sighed, and lay a kiss directly on Dash’s nipple that made all the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “Just remember, no teeth. All else is fair game.”

Dash nodded because she was incapable of speech right now, too much was making her throat seize up and too little was in her head. She sank right back down into the back of her head as Rarity’s mouth covered one of her breasts entirely, warm tongue spiraled closer to the nipple and then over it, and then just flicking the hard tip and just…

Just, cotton wool and bliss.

“Moving on.” Rarity sang, and Dash’s eyes shot open and she stared at Rarity incredulously. “You’re supposed to be learning about what to do for me right now. I think we’ve learned all we can here, for now.”

Then, Rarity flipped Dash’s skirt up and kissed the inside of her thigh, and Dash sank back down into the mattress without further complaint.

“I really like my thighs being kissed, actually.” Rarity told her. “If there’s anywhere you would be using teeth, it should be here. Well. Here.” Rarity bit hard on Rainbow’s thigh, and Dash yipped, but Rarity was right about fur. It didn’t hurt in the way she expected it to, it was just that she hadn’t been expecting it.

Another bite, in another place, and Dash felt Rarity’s teeth pull at the tendons just under the skin that ran from her crotch to her knee, and just that pressure tugging down at her hips made her feel tighter. Her knees buckled towards each other, but Rarity got between them to keep the pressure going up, just where she wanted it to be.

“F-fuck.” Dash groaned.

“Mmhm.” Rarity agreed. “So do try to find that one, if you can. There’s one on each side. Ah, yes. Here.”

Dash pulled a pillow off her eyes and looked down the length of her body and found that… she was pretty okay that the body she looked down was bright blue, the head she was looking at was a unicorn’s. She had the same eyes.

The same eyes looked back as her from between her legs, and she tipped her head curiously, and it was still… her?

Something just kind of clicked for her. Trying to ignore they were ponies was like trying not to think about purple unicorns. But now that she didn’t care enough to try to ignore it, she could see past it again.

And Rarity - like, Rarity? - was hot.

Just, a little switch moved a bit further from finding her hot in spite of the body, to finding the body hot because it was Rarity’s.

Just the realization she actually enjoyed watching this, not just the feeling of it. It was one thing to know it was Rarity’s touch on her but it was another to see her do it. The thoughtfulness, the curiosity, the interest…

She had the same eyes.

“You are very worked up all of a sudden.” Rarity complimented. “Have I kept you in suspense long enough?”

Dash couldn’t shake the cotton from her head, just chewed her bottom lip and tried to nod.

Rarity lay herself between Dash’s legs and, muzzle just an inch away, Dash feeling hot breath against her clit, she stopped again and sighed happily.

“What?”

“I cannot tell you how much I hate human vaginas.” Rarity said. “Why must they be so fucking labyrinthine?”

Dash blinked, stunned. It was genuinely the most sincere hatred he’d heard out of her. “Seriously?”

“This comparative marvel of anatomy is not some hideous balloon-knot passage. It is a long, straight cylinder with a wonderful mix of tightness, flexibility and musculature for, mmm, squeezing the entire way through. At yours it took fifteen bloody minutes for each of us just to figure out each other’s bits.” Rarity came down from the peak of her anger to add. “Though, a wonderful fifteen minutes it still was.”

“What?” Dash asked. “I mean, that’s just what they’re like, right?”

“No, it is not.” Rarity hissed, and Rainbow watched her close her eyes to plant a kiss on her clit and she kind of saw stars a moment, it was a lot. “About the same?”

“Y-yeah.” Dash nodded.

“Yes, this seems to be equivalent on both sides. We’ve already worked out each other’s preferences here, then.” Rarity complimented. “You were very good at that, I must say.”

“Thanks.” You were life-destroyingly good, she didn’t say back.

Rarity snickered. “Don’t bother, you made your feelings quite clear last time. I will just say, if anything comes to you, I should remind you…” She drew her tongue all the way up Dash’s slit. “Flattery would get you everywhere with me.”

That tongue stroke was way longer than last time, there was just… more. The outside of her folds wasn’t as sensitive, but the insides more than made up for it, so Rarity’s tongue had pressed firmly inside to part them, her tongue curling up as she moved like she was sealing an envelope. Just. Dash had to remember that. How she did that.

She nodded. “Is that what you like?”

Rarity froze. She recovered immediately, if Dash hadn’t been able to watch her so intently now she’d have missed it entirely. She only noticed it because she couldn’t stop staring, now. Rarity wiped her lips on the back of a hoof. “Yes. I quite like everything here, actually.”

“Why’d you flinch?” Dash propped herself up on an elbow.

Rarity smiled awkwardly. “Well, I just… tend to prefer men and magic, you see. No fault of yours.”

Dash rolled her eyes. “You want me to fuck you with a strap?”

Rarity’s eyes widened and she lowered her head. “You know about… them?”

“What, yeah? They’re-” Dash thought. “Huh, you don’t have the internet here, do you?”

“No. How do you mean?” Rarity was burning bright pink, which Dash thought was very cute. Even the steel wall had some bend to it.

“It’s anonymous. You don’t have to ask people about stuff like that face to face, or have to walk into sex shops and stuff, so.” Dash shrugged. “Nobody even thinks strap-ons are kinky anymore, unless you use them on a guy. Which,” Dash grinned way, way too wide. “I’m just saying.”

“Truly?” Rarity blinked, and she raised her head from between Dash’s legs to glance at her wardrobe - Dash’s eyes followed where she was looking. “Well. I see.”

“So you do have one.” Dash leaned forward and stroked Rarity’s horn, which got a gasp out of her. Rarity pulled away with an annoyed look, blushing even harder. She had said she’d liked that. “I got a few back home too.”

“A few.” Rarity balked.

“Well, one kind-of harness, a few different attachments. You can switch it out. You know, since our vaginas are so labyrinthine.” Dash loved that she knew how to really watch Rarity’s face now, because she got to enjoy the look on it when she added; “The harnesses used to suck, like these really annoying straps and buckles-” and Rarity glanced at her wardrobe nervously just like Dash suspected she would, “but the one I’ve got now is more like, just, tight panties. And you can feel every thrust you make with them press, like, it really feels like fucking someone.”

“An elasticated harness…” Rarity murmured, fidgeting her hooves against Dash’s thighs. “What a marvelous idea.”

“Cool. So let’s do this.” Dash pushed herself further up, and nudged Rarity off the bed with a back leg to send her towards the wardrobe. “Go on. You so obviously want this.”

Rarity moved to the edge of the bed but lingered, glaring at Dash. She was still flushed. “I feel like I may have lost control of the situation a little.”

“I tried to fuck you with a bunny vibe last time and that didn’t get you nearly this subby, what is it about a strap that makes it different?”

“I don’t-” Rarity started, clenched her jaw and looked away, and glanced at Dash only out of the corner of an eye. “I don’t know. There is a big difference between having something ‘inside me’ and getting properly fucked, and for whatever reason…”

“Why are you mad about this?” Dash asked, scooting across the bed until they were close again and hugging Rarity from behind, relieved when Rarity leaned into the hug. “You seemed really into it a second ago.”

“Because it is very embarrassing you know about this, and the effect it has on me.” Rarity laughed. “I will have to clean this accursed thing of dust because it has never once been used… well, except for a very lucky dress mannequin who shall not be named, but that was an experiment too hideously embarrassing to attempt twice.”

“Hot.”

“Rainbow, please.” But she laughed at that anyway, and that was what mattered. It was hard to be angry and laugh.

“I think I just got it.” Dash blinked, looking at Rarity. “This is the first time you’ve felt, like, actually vulnerable about me isn’t it?”

Rarity bit her bottom lip. “I’m not sure what that has to do with anything.”

“So, yes.” Dash translated. “Like this whole time you were on top it was all about if I trusted you or not, you never had to trust me with anything. So…” Dash tilted her head. “You don’t, do you?”

Rarity was so still she didn’t even breathe.

“Getting the strap out makes you feel subby, and you don’t feel safe about me topping you?” Dash asked.

“No, that part-” Rarity started out of her stillness. “Well. Maybe. Would it make you feel better if I said that the idea excites me more than it frightens me?”

“Yeah, actually.” Dash took an easier breath. “I just don’t get what you’re scared of.”

“I don’t either.” Rarity barked a self conscious laugh and swung her legs off the edge of the bed, and Dash sat next to her, shoulder to shoulder. The vibes were dead for the moment, but the embers of everything that Rarity had already stirred up still lingered, it was frustrating her to not just shake Rarity and make out and have that fix everything.

It just, it wouldn’t. Knowing it wouldn’t didn’t stop her wanting to.

“You think I’d tell everyone about it?” Dash asked, and scored a direct hit. Rarity leaned against her side.

“I think I’m scared of giving you ammunition you could hurt me with once we break up.” Rarity said. “If I do something so terrible to you that you’d want to hurt me.”

“But you won’t.” Dash said. “I… Wow, this is so stupid.”

“What?” Rarity blinked.

“You don’t trust me because you don’t trust you.” Dash rolled her eyes. “Like, do you actually think I’d do something like that, or do you just think you’d deserve it?”

“I-” Rarity’s eyebrows knotted. “You might have a point, but you are also quite hot-headed and impulsive.”

Dash looked inward, and worked out how pissed she’d be about getting dumped and what she’d do about it. “Actually, honestly, kind of, yeah.”

Rarity snorted. “Well, there we are, then.”

“So all you got to do is not hurt me that bad. Even if we stop doing this, we can be chill about that much, right?” Dash asked. “I already told you how much I trust you.”

“Yes,” Rarity grimaced. “You did.”

Dash rolled her eyes again and stood up from the bed, looking around the room until she found where Rarity had put the letter opener from before - not hard, she’d left it on the writing desk, outside the drawer. She took it back over and dropped it onto the bed behind her, then sat back down next to her. “There. Do what you gotta do.”

Rarity grabbed the letter opener with her magic and narrowed her eyes first at it, and then at Rainbow for giving it to her. “I don’t understand.”

“Go hard.” Dash shrugged. “Until you figure out why I trust you not to hurt me. Sooner you figure it out, the sooner I can fuck you.”

Rarity hovered the blade and, frustrated, swished it right to Dash’s throat and held the edge pressed close enough to shift her fur, not enough to touch the skin underneath. Dash didn’t even flinch, just held eye contact with Rarity.

After a second she leaned her throat against the dull edge, and it was Rarity who pulled the letter opener back. “If you were trying to scare me, you should have used the sharp bit.” Dash suggested.

“No. I wouldn’t dare risk that even to prove the point-” Rarity started, and Dash grinned like an idiot.

“Yeah exactly.”

“I feel like this might have been your actual point.”

“I’m kind of great sometimes.”

Rarity tilted her head, staring at Dash with something approaching wonder. “You really didn’t even flinch when I pulled it on you like that? I knew the edge wasn’t sharp, but you could not have been relying on that.”

“Well I mean I clenched my thighs so hard trying to keep still I almost pulled my knee.” Dash laughed, rubbing the back of her neck. “But nah.”

“What if I had actually been trying to hurt you, and was relying on you flinching to prove the point?” Rarity asked, acidly. “You could have been very hurt.”

“That would have been so funny it’s still kind of worth it.” Dash snickered. “Like, the look of surprise on my face, you trying to explain you hadn’t meant to do that, but you’d meant to do that, but you hadn’t meant it to work.” Rarity wasn’t laughing. “Seriously, that’s not funny to you?”

“No.”

“Yeah well, I guess it’s funnier if you know you wouldn’t.” Dash shrugged, and Rarity pulled the knife again and held it between them.

“But I could have.” Rarity insisted.

“But you didn’t.”

“But I might have.”

“But you wouldn’t.”

“But if I had-”

“But you couldn’t.” Dash cut her off this time, and Rarity glared in frustration and aimed the point at Dash desperately trying to prove… something.

Dash grabbed the letter opener in Rarity’s levitation and pressed it into her heart, and Rarity held it there. Then Dash leaned forward into it, and Rarity pulled the letter opener away. “See.” Dash said. “You’re not even going to let me hurt myself on you. You could have done nothing.”

“Then you would have-!” Rarity started, sincerely furious, then breathed. “You have a truly insane way of making your point.”

“Yeah well, gotta fight fire with fire, right?” Dash asked. “Cause I think you’re insane for being scared about this. So I gotta be insane to convince you.”

“I don’t…”

“You think you’re going to hurt me?” Dash asked. “Prove it. I’ll take it seriously if you can cut me.” She held out a foreleg. “Just on the arm-leg thing. Just… Show me I should take you hurting me as seriously as you do.”

Rarity aimed the point of the letter opener and held the sharp tip against Dash’s forearm.

“Do it!” Dash barked, and Rarity’s eyes bounced nervously between the blade and Dash’s frustrated face.

“I don’t want to.”

“I believe you, but do you?” Dash shot back. “Do it anyway! Prove it!”

“I don’t want to hurt you.” Rarity whispered, pale and sweating.

“Coward.” Dash snarled. “Just do it!”

“No!” Rarity hurled the knife across the room where it embedded in the wooden floorboards under the writing desk with a twang. “Dash I’m not going to hurt you!”

And then Dash grabbed her full around the neck and kissed her hard. “I know.” She said, and then kissed Rarity harder.

They went down like that back onto the bed, Rainbow’s mouth tight against Rarity’s, Rarity holding her tight, one hoof pressed into the small of her back and the other against the back of her neck.

“You’ve got to admit that was pretty fucking hot, right?” Dash grinned.

“You’re a maniac.” Rarity breathed underneath her, but it definitely wasn’t a no.

“So missionary, or doggy, or what?” Dash asked.

Rarity bit her lip and glanced at the wardrobe. “Your choice.”

Turned out in a fight between Dash bashing her head against a steel wall, sometimes the wall lost. She grinned. “I think over the edge of the bed’s going to be pretty hot. Just, bring that mirror over. Actually, the floor mirror put next to the bed, and the makeup table mirror put facing us, I want both angles.”

“Getting a little bit more curious about your body, are you?” Rarity hummed delighted as she moved the mirrors into position, adjusting her pose for lighting. She got off the bed and leaned onto it, spreading her legs and shuffling the mirrors to find the most flattering angle.

“Nah, it’s just that if we’re doing this from behind, I don’t want to miss out on seeing your face.” She kissed Rarity’s neck, but Rarity pushed her away and adjusted her pose again.

“That explains one mirrors, not two.” Rarity teased, and Dash had no rebuttal because she was just right. She was curious.

Dash made for the wardrobe but Rarity was already opening it with her magic, dropping the harness in her waiting hooves. The attached dildo was huge by human standards, a long fleshy tube with a flared tip, but it was probably pretty modest for pony anatomy. She was at once grateful it wasn’t going in her, but desperately curious to know what it would feel like if it did.

Dash attached the harness and moved herself into position behind Rarity and…

Everything flipped back again.

Pony body, pony cock, pony girlfriend, pony position. This was how ponies fucked. Animals in stables fucked like this this was sick this was wrong this was

Bad
Bad
Bad
gross
Bad
gross

Rarity sat next to Dash on the floor as she held her head in her hooves, not hands. “You were doing so well, too.” Rarity complimented her, sliding a bowl of long-forgotten Tastry Treats in front of her, and Dash inhaled it. It was anchoring, grounding, something physical to bring her back into the body she was rejecting again.

“Sorry.” She muttered.

“No, no, I understand. I was very impressed asking for the mirrors, but I did wonder.”

“I was, when you were eating me out-”

“Barely.” Rarity scoffed, and Dash smiled.

“And I looked down at you and I thought how pretty you are, I thought I was over it.”

“You did?” Rarity fluttered her eyelashes and kissed Dash’s cheeks. “And still, now?”

Dash looked at Rarity next to her and… “Yeah, honestly, actually.”

“Good. So it’s not regression.” Rarity hummed. “Should I move the mirrors?”

“No,” Dash shook her head. “No, I need to deal with this.”

“You don’t.” Rarity corrected. “We were having plenty of fun in what we’ve established as a comfort level for you. We don’t need to push things further than that.”

“And you wonder why I trusted you so much with the knife?” Dash inhaled the rest of the bowl, even at room temperature it was fantastic, the clarified butter in the sauce just started to congeal and bring all the spices out in big flavourful clumps, and she kind of loved that.

Rarity kissed her, and she kissed Rarity back, and the mood was still there through this, they both still wanted this. The room still smelled like the sex they were promised but hadn’t had yet, Dash’s heart still beat way too hard in her chest.

Just.

“One piece at a time.” Rarity suggested, gently pushing Dash’s bowl out from in front of her to remind her she was still wearing the harness, and the huge pony cock on it. She gulped, but Rarity kissed her again as she stroked the toy on it, stroked Dash.

“What do you mean?”

“We are not alien. We are not animals. We are us.” Rarity whispered, and Dash’s eyes watched each up and down stroke of her cock. “This is us.”

“I mean, I know.” Dash murmured, eyes locked on each stroke, up and down. Rarity kissed the tip of it, and Rainbow made a frightened sound that surprised her.

“Shh, shh, I have you, it’s fine.” Rarity went back to stroking, rolling a long lick up the bottom and peppering the tip of Dash’s cock with kisses. “See? Isn’t this nice?”

It was. Actually.

Rarity turned, still focused on the toy, but presenting herself to Dash, moving her tail away so Dash was face to face with… pony bits.

Well, Rarity’s pussy. That was a better way to think of it, right?

A long gray teardrop shape of darker flesh, a clit that winked with each heady flash of Rarity’s arousal. A kind of crimped edge to the inside edges of vaginal folds like pastry which fascinated Dash. She leaned forward and tried to run her tongue along how she’d remembered it feeling when Rarity had done it, and found those ridges and bumps were surprisingly firm under her tongue - still soft flesh, but with less give than she was expecting.

Rarity moaned, and it clicked. The sound, the voice, connected what she was tasting, what she was doing, with who she was doing it to. Who this belonged to.

She tasted like a virgin mint julep from a salted glass.

Dash stood up, suddenly, Rarity looking back at her in surprise. “Did I push too- Ah!”

Too late, Dash was pushing her towards the bed again, and pressed Rarity in position to mount her. With one last delirious, hungry look back at Dash’s face, she pressed the cock into the pussy she’d just wetted with her tongue - not that it needed more help.

Rarity gasped and muscles in her neck went slack, her head hanging low as she let out a delighted purr. Dash shuffled her rear hooves forward to get the position she needed to hilt it, feeling just what Rarity meant by how much more there was to clench from the resistance she was capable of giving.

Dash leaned forward and bit a huge hunk of Rarity’s mane, yanking it back and exposing the full length of her throat to the front mirror. She twisted her bite and turned her head to the side mirror, forcing them both to watch as she withdrew from the first thrust and prepared for the next.

She saw them both, her with the long pony cock hidden between Rarity’s legs where half of it still disappeared inside her, the slight bulge visible in her white stomach. She gave a testing push to watch the change, confirm she wasn’t just imagining it. No, it was subtle but the signs of just how filled Rarity was were there.

That was kind of hot.

And Rarity was long, and white, and slender, and soft with huge beautiful eyes and solid muscle and a gorgeous voice and her head was yanked back by Dash’s teeth and she looked captivated by this, by Rainbow’s hungry staring. She shivered under the weight of the attention she was being given - she loved to be seen like this, and Dash was finally capable of seeing her the way she needed to be.

And Dash was…

Blue. And furry. Not ideal. Not her punk rock human body, not the aesthetic she’d spent a decade cultivating to perfection, but…

This was her. She wasn’t trapped in this. It was just another way for her to be.

“I’m waiting?” Rarity teased, and Dash flared her nostrils and pushed against her hard, and Rarity yelped in delight and fell forward more against the bed when she couldn’t hold her weight up again, and Dash started to rail her, just fucking rail her.

The bed shook and squeaked from the force, and Dash held her weight up entirely on Rarity’s back, holding her hips, forcing her more and more underneath her weight. “Like that?”

Rarity tried to cover her mouth so she didn’t scream, but Dash fucked her hard enough she couldn’t keep her hoof off the bed without falling over. So Rarity kept her mouth shut and the scream leaked entirely out her nose instead when she couldn't hold it back.

“You know it’s good if you can’t even tell me ‘go harder’.” Dash pulled hard on Rarity’s mane and she gasped, and that gasp meant the last of the muffled scream actually came out her lips. “Why are you trying to be quiet?”

“Neighbours.” Rarity choked out.

“Screw ‘em.” Dash huffed for breath, and just listened to the sound of hips slap against hips. It wasn’t as loud or as satisfying with all the fur to muffle it, but it made it easier to hear the slick grip of the toy sliding in and out of Rarity’s pussy, the friction against the juices, and that was kind of its own joy too. “I worked hard to get screams like this out of you, I earned them.”

Rarity’s laugh came out in a strange vibrato as it was jostled by the shaking that was shooting through her body, both the ones from Dash’s impacts and the shockwaves of pleasure each caused. “Should have- F-uck.”

“Should have?” Dash let go of her head to make it easier for her to speak.

“Should have stabbed you when I had the chance.” Rarity finished, still laughing.

Dash bit her hard on the back of the neck to grip her while she fucked her as hard as she could, until Rarity was a liquid mass against the bed that she was simply fucking into, using like a cocksleeve. Rarity let out a long, low and rolling moan as her head fell flat on its side against the bed, tongue lolling out.

She tapped the bed hard, time out, and Dash pulled out of her and stopped, breathing hard.

“You came?” Dash asked, and Rarity stared at her in disbelief.

“Darling what did you think all that screaming was about?”

“What? But like, you kept-” Dash started, blinked. “Oh. Ah, shit. Got it.”

Rarity rolled her eyes and tapped the bed. “Come closer a second.” Dash climbed onto the bed and Rarity grabbed her cock. It was thick and creamy with her juices, clinging to the synthetic veins of it in thick white streaks.

Immediately her head bobbed onto the cock and then down, down the rest of the way. She let out a cough, and a snort as she rocked her head back and forth as she took it at its deepest. The toy was so big that just watching her throat, Dash could see the shape shift as Rarity swirled her tongue around it. Then with a pop, and a gasp, Rarity pulled it out again, clean.

She held her tongue out to Dash for inspection proudly, and winked.

“Ladies never leave a mess.” She said.

Dash snorted, and felt her knees pull tight together again. “I mean you made a mess out of me, so I guess you can’t be a lady after that.”

Rarity raised an eyebrow and Dash felt the hit at the back of the head from the pillow she never saw coming. “Give me a moment, I’m not done with you yet.”

“What?” Dash blinked. “I mean that was great, I’m good if-”

Rarity’s horn glowed and she narrowed her eyes. “I am going to show you magic, because now this is a competition and I refuse to let you win it.”

“I’m-” Dash started. “Okay.”

“For now.” Rarity’s horn went out, and she flopped bonelessly into the mattress. “How ironic. The few minutes of survival you’ve bought yourself have only guaranteed your ultimate demise.”

“You mean I made you cum so much that the revenge is going to kill me, but I made you cum so much you can’t kill me right now?” Dash translated.

“In so many words, yes.” Rarity agreed, closed-eyes staring sightlessly up at the ceiling.

“So you’re saying I should run.”

Rarity opened one eye, still too sore to lift her head. “Yes, you should. But then you would miss out on such a fabulous death.”

“Yeah, I really need to do the smart thing here.” Dash crawled over to Rarity and cuddled into her, kissing the side of her ear as she drew as much of the white boneless mass into her to squeeze and hold together. Rarity purred appreciatively.

Then Rainbow held a hoof against Rarity’s chest and felt her heartbeat for a while. She’d been right. That was nice. Even after a minute of lying limp on the mattress it still raced like she’d run a marathon.

“This is the smart thing?” Rarity raised an eyebrow.

“Yeah, this is how I want to die, duh.”

“This does present a problem for me.” Rarity muttered. “If I make you cum to death, then I shan’t be getting cuddles after, and this is far too lovely to miss.”

“Guess I have to live, then.” Dash said and managed to sound disappointed about it.

“Alas.” Rarity agreed and, with a wicked smile she closed her eyes and added; “We should at least see how close we can get, though. You’re going to get what you deserve, you brute.”

“Awesome.” Dash leaned over and licked Rarity’s horn, and she shivered again and tried to push Dash away, which Dash took as a cue to put the whole thing in her mouth and suck on it. Rarity’s hips rocked up and down on the bed and she squeaked as Dash’s tongue coiled down the flutes and spirals of it, and she used her tongue to press it firm against the roof of her mouth as she lifted her head one last time and-

Rarity bit down on a foreleg as she tried not to scream again and her back arched off the mattress one last time, other foreleg between her legs furious mashing her clit as she came. Dash let the horn pop out of her mouth, just pressing her tongue firm against its side to not overstimulate the poor girl as she rode it out.

“You are,” Rarity wheezed, “so dead.”

“It really is that sensitive huh?”

“Not usually.” Rarity hissed. “Except everything is right now.”

“So I should be doing this to everything, right?” Dash let her head fall back down into Rarity’s shoulder instead. She thought about going for her tits and using everything but her teeth, but, that seemed a bit too mean right now even for her.

“Do not.” Rarity said firmly, and Dash shrugged.

“You said it’s a competition.” She kissed Rarity’s cheek - just her cheek. “I’ve got to think about what I’m doing to you if I live. Round 2, you know?”

“If you live, then I will have already failed.” Rarity heaved a shivering breath as she continued to recover from one last orgasm after far too many. “I will not.”

“I’m banking on you missing me too much.”

Rarity’s head didn’t move as her eyes darted towards the writing desk across the room, the letter opener still embedded in the floorboards there. “Do you still trust me to use the knife?”

“What, after talking about how much you’re going to kill me?” Dash looked from the knife back to Rarity. “Yeah, absolutely.”

“Good.” Rarity sighed happily. “I haven’t forgotten how much you liked fingernails, and I’m trying to work out what it would do to you to have your fur pulled at the same time.”

Dash made peace with her imminent and inevitable death.

The Terrestrial Night [Explicit]

Author's Note

It feels like a mistake not to have a content warning here, but I can't think of any.

The Terrestrial Night [Explicit]

“See?” Dash ran her hand up Rarity’s thigh, all the way up until her thumb brushed against her wet slit. “Easy access.”

“It has its charm.” Rarity tried to sound casual and dismissive, though she’d had to such in her breath to do it. “Though there has to be something said for wet fabric, the way it clings to things. That holds an appeal all its own.”

“Yeah, but,” Dash’s thumb parted the sticky folds of Rarity’s lips and trailed up to her clit, brushing up underneath it. Rarity couldn’t hold her breath any more and let it out in a ragged gasp. “Can’t do that, can you?”

“No.” Rarity agreed, and narrowed her eyes. “How did I let you get on top of me, like this?”

“You ‘let’ me?” Dash kept her fingers slow and teasing, keeping the pressure on Rarity, trying to encourage her to sink back down into it instead of winding her up. The problem was Rarity knew that’s what she was doing.

“Yes, let.” Rarity ran her fingers up the back of Rainbow’s neck until she had her fingers entirely tangled in it and pulled, back, until the tilt of Rainbow’s chin was a straight line up. She smiled as Dash’s fingers twitched and went still. “There’s a good girl. Keep going.”

Dash’s head relaxed a little, though Rarity kept her hand where it was. She looked back down with foggy, unfocused eyes. “I can stay?”

“I like you where you are.” Rarity settled further into the couch so she could spread her knees a little wider apart for those wonderful fingers. “I just didn’t want you to get any ideas about it.”

“No thinking.” Dash nodded, yanking her own hair against Rarity’s hand with each bob. “Just do.”

Rarity pulled her down again into the kiss. “What a good girlfriend you are.”

She was still amazed at what an effect the word had on her, even like this. Dash’s foggy eyes closed in a sleepy blink and she shuddered with a dopey grin. Still, she managed to slip two fingers inside and curl them in the most wonderful way, skipping to find all the places she remembered from last time.

Just one of the reasons one-night stands couldn’t compete with relationships. There was no level of skill that ever bridged the gap of already knowing your partner’s body, of remembering what has already been found and explored.

Something bonked the back of Rarity’s head and, much to her frustration, it was enough for Dash to pull her hand away and for the clarity to return to her red-purple eyes.

“What was it?”

“Scroll.”

Rarity reached onto the floor beside them and opened it. It simply said: Check your phone, please. I didn’t think our little prank was that mean, but Twilight feels really bad about it.

Love you both
The Princess

“Eugh.” Rainbow pushed herself off the couch and Rarity sat up, trying to find where she’d tossed her phone. “Did Twilight really just message the Princess to message us to check my phone so she could say sorry?”

“It would appear so.” Rarity brushed her skirt back down and sat up straight as Rainbow stared at the screen. “Well?”

Rainbow tossed the phone over to Rarity, speechless and flushed. Flushed? What apology- Ah. The message was from Pinkie Pie as well.

It was a phone picture of them both in the bathroom, Twilight bottomless and Pinkie topless. Goodness she had a healthy endowment, didn’t she? The threads in those tight shirts of hers must have been rated for suspension bridge cabling. And Twilight, deeply embarrassed, holding up a V with her fingers for the camera and an awkward smile that couldn’t rival the high beams of Pinkie’s enthusiastic white-toothed grin.

Pinkie: Just so we’re even!
Twilight: Sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Dash knelt beside Rarity when the phone stayed in her hand, and she’d made no motion to pass it back. “What’re you thinking?”

“You went bright pink when you saw it.” Rarity said. “I’m trying to work out whether it was over Twilight or Pinkie.”

“Both.” Dash admitted. “But also Pinkie. But also kind of Twilight? Except it was mostly Pinkie, but I think also definitely Twilight.”

“Right.” Rarity agreed. “Therein lies my problem.”

Dash’s finger traced Twilight on the phone screen. “I wanna destroy you.” Her finger moved to Pinkie. “I wanna get destroyed by you.”

“Right.” Rarity considered. “So what you’re saying is right now they’re winning.”

Dash’s eyes narrowed. “We gotta send them back something better than this. Say it’s just our way of accepting the apology?”

“Yes.” Rarity clicked her tongue sympathetically. “For Twilight too, poor dear must have been terrified sending this and then having it linger unseen. We really should make it up to her.”

Rainbow took the phone back to switch its camera into selfie mode, but Rarity flicked her ear and snatched it back. “No, horrendous, for such a picture? Are you absurd? I wouldn’t be caught dead at a focal length so unflattering, a 50mm range or nothing.”

“I don’t know what half that means.” Rainbow admitted.

“It means-” Rarity found Dash’s bookshelf, propped the camera onto it at around chest height and considered the lighting in the room. She opened one curtain in the kitchen, closed another near the television, lit the entrance hall light behind her and finally, finally she was ready.

“Two times zoom, is that all? Best we’ll do.” Rarity fiddled with it. “Is a five second timer long enough?”

“Long enough for what?”

“Long enough.” Rarity agreed, physically pulling Rainbow onto the piece of floor she needed to stand. She considered, then meticulously stripped them of the last of what little clothes they were wearing. “Just a little chilly for it, but it’ll look better that way.” She hummed.

“Uh?” Dash kicked the last few shed clothes across the floor and under the glass coffee table where they wouldn’t get stepped on, and Rarity went to start the timer.

She came back and grabbed Dash’s butt for a deep kiss, twisting them both so they faced the camera slightly, Dash’s hand reflexively reaching up to grab Rarity’s breast closer to the camera. A little saucier and more explicit than Rarity intended, but she could hardly complain.

The camera clicked as the timer ended, and Rarity grinned as she kissed Rainbow one last time and took the phone back. The picture was perfect, a beautifully lit shot of the both of them leaning forward to kiss, their stomachs unobstructed, and Dash just a bit on tiptoe to get more of her butt into Rarity’s grip.

Rainbow: We really appreciate it, and as a gesture that no harm was done, we would like to confirm - Rainbow does shave a little lightning bolt. ~ Rarity

Rainbow grinned at the text. “Okay, so we know we’re trying to kick their asses, but they’re just going to think it’s a sign of how not mad we are?” She pulled the picture they’d just taken and kept it full screen, chewing her bottom lip. “‘Cause this is definitely professional amateur porn quality, if they think we’re trying to kick their asses Twilight might think it’s because we’re mad at her.”

“You’re free to add whatever you wish.”

Rainbow: Sorry for taking so long I had my phone off we felt bad about leaving you both hanging.

“You’re not going to sign your name?”

Dash put the phone back on the bookcase with a shrug. “My name’s already on it, you just have to tell them when it’s not me.”

Rarity opened her mouth, closed it. “I can’t argue with that.” She said in the way of someone who obviously wants to.

Dash’s phone buzzed, and Rarity felt like she was about to unwrap birthday presents. The giddy thrill of it - Equestria had no equivalent to what she was doing right now, this was all an exciting first for her. “What did they say?”

“Twilight gave it a ‘wow’ react, Pinkie loved it. Ah.”

Pinkie: THAT’S SO PRETTY! YOU’RE BOTH SO PRETTY!
Twilight: How do you even do that, with a razor? Like, physically.
Rainbow: I make a line with my finger like when you use the gutter rails at bowling
Twilight: Wow that is… really obvious when you say it, I would never have thought of it
Pinkie: SO PRETTY!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
Twilight: She actually screamed when she saw like
Twilight: Loud
Pinkie: Twilight keeps scrolling up to look at it again
Twilight: Tattle-tale!
Twilight: Dibber-dobber!

“Dibber-dobber?” Rarity raised an eyebrow, heart hammering in her chest.

Dash smirked, taking the phone back. “Yeah, they’ve really rubbed off on each other.”

“That’s a bit cute.” Rarity tilted her head. “I would joke about having rubbed off on each other, but they both seem far too…”

“Sweet and innocent?” Dash finished for her.

“I didn’t want to sound mean since they’re your friends but, I suppose so, yes.” Rarity smiled. “And here we are, playing the roles of wicked temptresses, corrupting that innocence…”

“You’re getting really into this.” Dash snickered. “It’s actually kind of hot.”

The phone buzzed again, and Dash’s eyes widened and she flushed deeper still. Rarity didn’t even bother to ask for the phone, Dash’s grip on it was so tight she wasn’t sure she’d hear a question if it was asked, so she stepped behind her again and leaned over her shoulder to see…

A selfie taken in the shower, Pinkie crouching at Twilight’s naked hips with the camera held at arm’s length, and Twilight standing uncovered with elbows bent. The picture didn’t capture above her naked chest, but Rarity would have put any amount of money on it she was nervously chewing the joints of her knuckles when this was taken.

And there was Pinkie with an electric razor in the other hand. She’d done her absolute best to draw three little balloons on Twilight, little purple tufts of hair, but the thin strings underneath them had been too much to manage for a first try and were gone completely. Still. Pinkie was obviously proud, and giving the camera a huge wink.

Pinkie: What do you think? Looks cute right?
Twilight: It’s hers not mine because she’s the one that’s going to be looking at it, before you even ask.
Pinkie: That’s what I told her but the real answer is because she’s mine HA HA HA HA

Rarity stared at the message in shock. “We’re losing?” She asked Dash, incredulously.

“I thought you said the selfie angle was unflattering!”

“It is, that’s the worst part.” Rarity muttered. “They’re just far too flattering for it to even matter.”

“You totally know they’re going to forget they did this later, then Pinkie’s going to pull Twilight’s pants off and see it and remember again for the first time and she’s going to smile like… like…”

Rarity imagined the smile. It was heartrendingly sweet. “You know what gets me? Here she makes a gesture of being possessive over Twilight, and then she’s so joyful about sharing it. Twilight so nervous, but doing it because she’s been asked. The amount of trust between them, the absolute security…”

“It’s so fucking hot, right?”.

“I’m trembling with both arousal and jealousy.” Rarity growled. “We have to reply. Do you have another phone?”

Dash threw the phone into the air and Rarity caught it. The girl was gone in a flash of colour and then back with a much older phone she’d gotten from her bedroom. “The battery’s only got like an hour in it but I keep it as a backup in case that one breaks.”

“This would definitely constitute an emergency. How do we respond?”

Both of them love-reacted the picture in mutual agreement, Rainbow with a rainbow heart and Rarity with a purple one. That was simply good sportsmanship.

Rainbow: this is actually the hottest thing ive ever seen
Rainbow: And she’s seen me ~ Rarity
Rainbow: yeah but theres only one of you at once
Pinkie: Aww thanks <3
Twilight: You really think it looks okay?
Rainbow: Darling it looks wonderful, and more than that it is a very lovely gesture. Dash and I were just talking about what a lovely little reminder it will be for Pinkie when she sees this later. ~Rarity

“You didn’t actually need to sign that one, they’d have known.” Rainbow glanced up from her phone, and Rarity rolled her eyes back.

“Even so.”

Pinkie: I LOVE HER SO MUCH
Twilight: She really does
Pinkie: Thank you thank you so much for the idea!

“Woah.” Dash said and Rarity saw she was flushed again. She’d had time to get over the picture, hadn’t she? “Zoom in on Twilight’s thighs. Open the picture and do a kind of like, this with your thumbs.” Dash mimed pulling them away.

Rarity did, and saw what Dash meant. A thin glistening bead hung from Twilight’s lips down to the side of her leg, catching the light, both a sign that Pinkie’s camera had remarkable resolution and a testament to just how much fun Twilight was having.

“Fuck.” Rarity said with a breath in. It was having about as much an effect on her as it was on Rainbow.

“What do we send back?” Dash said immediately. “We got to send something back, right? Like this means they’re enjoying this too, it’s cool.”

“Move the couch into the light better. Do you have butcher’s paper and masking tape in the kitchen by any chance?”

“Yeah, above the microwave and under the sink.” Dash started dragging the coffee table out to make room to pull the couch more into the middle of the room, out of the shadows of the wall behind it and more into the natural light. Perfect. Even Dash could immediately see what she was doing from such an obvious change, and began fiddling with the placement as best she could.

Meanwhile Rarity went around the apartment until she found Sunset’s old room, converted into a music space, and a standing lamp there. She dragged that back behind the couch and taped the butcher’s paper over the lampshade to act as a softener. As good as they could do in these circumstances.

Rarity grabbed a pillow from Dash’s bed to prop herself up on it and lay down. She switched to the camera and checked down the line of her body and found it good, as long as she held the camera just a bit past the bridge of her nose it looked like it was coming from eyeline. “Right. Now, lick me.”

Dash hesitated but obeyed, crawling between Rarity’s legs. “You sure? It’s kind of a jump, isn’t it?”

“Please, you could turn that shower on and Twilight wouldn’t have gotten appreciably wetter.”

Dash snickered, and grinned, and went pink as she realized what she was going to do. “Ah. This one’s just going to be me… I don’t know. I’m not going to look weird, right?”

“Sweetling, I am trying to win right now. I would not be using the sight of you in rapture between my legs as my means of doing so unless I thought it was one of the most wonderful, incredible sights I have ever had the pleasure to see. If we get this shot, I promise you I shall not need a second.”

Dash shivered, and sank lower, the warmth of her breath hot against the wet. “I really look that good, huh?”

“You can see for yourself, in a moment.” Rarity watched Dash’s nervous smile through the camera screen.

Dash pressed her mouth down and took a long lick, eyes on the camera the whole time, watching for the click of the shutter. It felt incredible, and it looked good, Rarity thought, but no.

This was not the essence she was trying to capture. This was merely her girlfriend getting stagefright performing cunnilingus. Where was the rapture? Where was her prize?

Ah, yes, of course.

Rarity reached her free hand down to push Rainbow’s fringe out of her eyes. Dash’s eyes went wide when she realized what was happening as Rarity’s hand kept going, kept going… there.

With a bunch of her hair and a twist of her fingers she pulled Rainbow’s hair back and pulled her down until her head was flush against her. No room to lick her folds anymore, Dash’s tongue explored deep inside her as she sucked, the top of her mouth covering her mound and her clit entirely.

Her eyes were entirely fogged over again, half-closed and drunk-looking in rapture, as Rarity held her tight and wouldn’t let her up to breath, flooding the girls senses with haze and hormones. Wonderful.

That, that was the shot.

It was everything Rarity could do to keep her hand still enough to take the shot. She held in her breath, kept her thumb as steady as possible, made the click-

“Ah!” She gasped as she pulled Rainbow’s head back. “Ha, ah. Ah! Fuck.”

“I did good?” Dash asked, waking up again, shaking her head slightly. “Do I look okay?”

Rainbow: I must say, the tragedy is that we cannot send a picture like that back, as Dash has already shaped hers and mine is, well, as you very well know
Rainbow: It can’t be helped. So why not show the advantage of having nothing to get in the way, instead?

“You should tell me how you think you look,” Rarity uploaded the picture to their little impromptu group chat, “When you see for yourself?”

Dash pulled her phone out and squeaked, turning red as a tomato. So red that the tips of her ears actually twitched ever-so-slightly with her pulse from all the extra blood rushing to them. An undeniable, unmatchable victory. “Oh my gosh.” Dash whispered. “That’s really me?”

“It is.”

“That’s so fucking hot.” Dash’s fingers reflexively shot down between her legs as she stared at the picture. “I didn’t know my eyes could look like that.”

They stared at the chat. Pinkie and Twilight still hadn’t replied yet, but they’d been typing and deleting messages the entire time.

Twilight: what the fuck
Pinkie: You knocked the punctuation outta her!
Twilight: you didn’t have to send this like
Twilight: it’s cool you know you didn’t owe us anything right
Pinkie: They obviously had fun taking it
Twilight: I can see *that*!

Rarity and Rainbow glanced at each other.

“What’s the play here?” Dash asked.

“She liked it, that much is clear. They’re looking for permission to.” Rarity began typing, “Pinkie is clearly telling her the right things, we just need to let her know she can believe them.”

Rainbow nodded and rested her head against Rarity’s thigh like a pillow as she followed along. “Got it.”

Rainbow: Rainbow noticed how excited you were in the last picture, and we thought it might be fun to tease you a little bit ~ Rarity
Twilight: ohmygosh you SAW that?!
Pinkie: Saw what?
Twilight: Uh
Pinkie: Saw what???
Twilight: UHH
Pinkie: Okay I just saw it wow she’s having fun isn’t she
Pinkie: I mean I was having fun too but
Pinkie: hehhhehehehehehehehehehehe
Pinkie: Wow Dash even I didn’t notice that and I was the one shaving her what were you doing zooming in that far?

Rainbow and Rarity locked eyes, and Rarity shrugged. “I’d go with honesty, honestly.”

Rainbow: your girlfriends hot
Pinkie: Thanks! So’s yours!

“Dang.” Dash muttered. “Good call.”

“Thank you, thank you.”

Twilight: Well in that case
Twilight: It’s a really good picture
Twilight: Rarity your body is incredible, if this is what I saw every time I looked down like this I’d spend the rest of my life as a nudist bumping into walls
Twilight: Dash this is my favorite picture of you, ever. You look perfectly in your place, exactly where you belong. I have no idea what Rarity did with the lighting so her legs aren’t casting a shadow on you but
Twilight: Whatever she did thank you for the effort, I appreciate it. I’ve never seen you look so beautiful and I would have hated to miss any of it.

Rarity and Dash stared at each other, both burning bright red.

Dash held the phone at arm’s length. “What the fuck, Twilight?!”

“That was agonizingly sincere.” Rarity agreed, looking down at herself. “I was hoping she wouldn’t notice the effort I put into the lights, I thought that would be embarrassing if she did. No. She noticed and she thanked me for taking that extra effort to make the picture the best it could be for her.”

“Fuck!”

Both of them attached heart reacts to everything Twilight had said in silent agreement.

Pinkie: I LOVE HER
Pinkie: SO MUCH <3 <3 <3

That cut the tension, Dash and Rarity both laughed at that one as they read it at the same time.

“Of course Pinkie is more proud of her bravery and her kindness than she is jealous.” Rarity looked up at Dash on her thigh, feeling jealous in her own way.

“You’re cool with this too, right, it’s not getting to you or anything?” Dash asked.

“No, not so long as I am winning.”

Dash kissed Rarity’s opposite thigh and shuffled up to use her hip as a pillow instead, and Rarity’s free hand casually went down to scratch her behind the ear for it. “Yeah, you are.”

“You?”

“I’m just worried you’ll see how much I’m still a bisexual disaster and get worried I want to cheat on you.” Dash closed her eyes and leaned into the scratches, and Rarity redoubled her reassurance with long, stiff strokes of her fingers.

“Ah yes, because you are my girlfriend now, and girlfriends have such commitments.” Rarity emphasized the words and they still, even now, had the same effect. “No. You are right, if we are girlfriends then you are mine, yes?”

Rainbow shivered. “Yes, please.”

“I do not have fear of a wandering eye you are honest about - it’s when you start to hide it I get nervous.” Rarity thought about that. “That being said, if you are to proposition anyone just make sure I’m included in all of it.”

Dash’s eyes opened and she stared up at Rarity from the hip, understanding what Rarity had just said but not believing it. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, this has been the most fun I’ve had in years, this little game with Twilight and Pinkie.” Rarity gestured at the long-silent phone. “It is not cheating if we are both in on it.”

“Yeah, I know, so-” Dash started. “You’d be cool with having three-ways and stuff?”

“Maybe.” Rarity scratched. “I did end up meaning that joke about the Princess, didn’t I?”

“I know, but…” Dash squinted. “Seriously?”

“How could I prove I am the best girlfriend, otherwise?” Rarity narrowed her eyes and Rainbow gulped.

“I know that’s a red flag,” she said, “but it’s so hot I don’t care.”

Rarity stared at the group chat on the phone. “I don’t like how long they’re taking.”

“You think they’re sending something back?”

“They are.” Rarity grimaced. “We’ve given them permission, now. The gloves are off.”

Dash flipped onto her back, head on Rarity’s stomach, and watched her phone too. “Hey, so-”

Whatever she was about to say, they were both silenced by the bouncing dots telling them that Pinkie was uploading a picture. There was no reason Dash had to stop talking for it, except that it made her incapable.

“What the fuck?!” Dash shouted as the picture loaded, almost dropping her phone. Even Rarity felt her heart race and her stomach drop for this one.

There was Twilight on their bedroom floor, walls covered in gigantic plush animals and bookshelves. In the middle was Twilight, kneeling with her knees spread wider than her shoulders, hands clasped behind her back. She was completely naked, but for a sleeping mask covering her eyes. Her mouth hung slack and open.

Every inch of her body was covered in huge sharpie letters. An arrow saying ‘Fuck me!’ pointing to her crotch, ‘Bite me!’ written on her tits, ‘Squeeze me!’ written on both sides of her ribcage. ‘Love me!’ in big letters over her heart, ‘Kiss me!’ over her neck. And then, inside a wide love heart frame covering her right hip, Property of Pinkie Pie.

Pinkie Pie was visible in a full length dressing mirror in the background, giving a wink and a thumbs up to the camera with a triumphant pose. She was clearly very proud of her handiwork.

“They’re winning again.” Rarity admitted with a growl, and both of them attacked heart and ‘wow’ reacts to the picture. “How do we beat this?”

“We can’t let them win.” Dash leaned back and looked up at Rarity upside down. “Like, I don’t know how we top this, but we have to.”

“It’s strange to see a Twilight that’s so submissive. The Princess is… quite the opposite.” Rarity zoomed in on the picture to read all of Pinkie’s little love notes to her girlfriend.

“She’s not, normally. It’s just, I don’t think she knows how to say ‘no’ to Pinkie.”

“Clearly.”

Rainbow held up her copy of the picture. “See, they don’t have a real mask for this, they’re improvising. We’re corrupting them, like you wanted.”

“They’re very much in love, are they?” Rarity sighed. If you zoomed in on the corners of the sleep mask you could see the crinkle of joy in the eyes that were hidden behind it. “That makes them so much harder to beat than I’d hoped.”

“You aren’t quitting on me, are you?” Dash gave Rarity a suspicious look, a look that actually made Rarity a little concerned.

“Of course not.”

“Cool, because it sounded like you were bummed out about getting a real challenge for a second there.” She sat up, and glared down at Rarity still lying on the couch beside her. “Ideas.”

“We could-” Rarity started, stopped. “Wait.”

“What?”

“We’re being extremely rude right now.”

Dash looked at Rarity then down to her phone. “We haven’t said anything have we.”

“Worse still, we reacted immediately. They’ll know why.” Rarity started typing, but Pinkie sniped the chat notification.

Pinkie: Still speechless, huh?

Rarity flinched and deleted what she was typing. “Damn her.”

Rainbow: your girlfriend is realy really really hot.

Rarity’s eyes flicked up to Rainbow, who shrugged. “I think we just need to give them the point.”

“After what she said about our last one, it’s hard to hold this against her.” Rarity agreed. “We may be in competition, but they are clearly just showing their appreciation for us and each other.”

“You think if they know how much this is a fight, it’ll be less fun for them and they might drop out?” Rainbow asked, and Rarity nodded.

“Yes, but as well…” Rarity scrolled back up to the bathroom photo of Twilight and Pinkie. “They’re so sweet, I think they deserve if we try to keep our toxicity to ourselves.”

“We’re not being-” Rainbow looked at Rarity’s raised eyebrow and stopped, and sank her back into the couch instead. “Yeah, we kind of are, aren’t we.”

“I didn’t say it was a bad thing.” Rarity said firmly. “I just said it was a bad thing if they know.”

They locked eyes for a few long seconds.

Dash threw herself over the couch and the resulting kiss was deep, primal, hungry. From Rarity, too, no thought put into it, just need. When their tongues connected there was none of the attempt at delicate flicks or licks, just a mashed attempt to press the advantage back into the other’s mouth, to win, as their hands held each other’s faces locked into the kiss with the desperate need of grabbing at a life preserver.

They broke the kiss only when they ran out of air, and even then they’d held on for as long as they could after that.

“We are,” Dash wiped her lips, “so fucking bad for each other.”

“And you’re making me feel like it’s a good thing.” Rarity let her head fall back against the couch and heaved for breath. “It’s-”

Their phones buzzed. Dash reached for hers while Rarity kept trying to get her breath back, she always had more stamina. Then Dash stood up off the couch and paced back and forth from the living room to the kitchen. “Pinkie! Pinkie you whore!”

Rarity’s eyes went wide. “Dash! Whatever she’s done she’s still your friend. We do not use such words.” She managed to find her own phone and hold it over her head.

It was a closeup of Twilight’s ‘Fuck me!’ area, upside-down arrow pointing up at her stuffed pussy, it and her asshole had both been filled to bursting with sharpie pens. From the angle, Twilight had been pushed onto her back, knees against her ears to hold this pose. Rarity shrieked. “You whore!”

“Nine!” Dash shouted from the kitchen. “I counted! Six in the front, three in the back, that cupholder holds nine!”

Pinkie: You guys were taking too long and my hand got cramped
Pinkie: So Twilight volunteered to be my cupholder
Pinkie: But she wouldn’t be a good cupholder with just one, right?
Pinkie: She says hi, by the way
Pinkie: Heheheheh she’s so embarrassed it’s so cute you should see it
Pinkie: Oh wait

Then she uploaded a photo of Twilight’s face. The sleeping mask had been pulled off, and her awkward, innocent face gave its best smile as she waved at the camera. It was hard to tell if the deep pink blush was arousal or embarrassment - it had to be both, but in what ratio?

Pinkie: Isn’t she the prettiest?

“We couldn’t figure out how to beat the last one!” Dash threw her hands up. “Now she’s just styling on us!”

The picture got reacted to with fire emojis, blush emojis, wows and a jaw-drop. Tsk.

Rainbow: We’re not going to lie, we were discussing between us how we could possibly beat how lovely the last one you sent was, and we were found wanting.
Rainbow: And it seems in our delay we gave you an opening to top yourselves in even that. ~ Rarity
Rainbow: well an opening to top twilight anyway
Pinkie: hehehhe yeah
Rainbow: its actually insanely hot the ‘fuck me’ arrow is still in shot for this i wasn’t really one for body writing but youre really selling me on it
Pinkie: Well when she gets nervous books help calm her down so I thought maybe she’d have fun being one for this
Twilight: Sorry it’s hard to type right now but Pinkie wouldn’t transcribe this
Twilight: I really like it but not because it makes me a book
Twilight: It’s just hot
Pinkie: Because you’re a book?
Twilight: You like it though?

Rarity sighed. “There’s no getting around it. We must show humility where it is owed.”

Rainbow nodded. “Okay, full permission to thirst post in front of my girlfriend, got it.”

Rainbow: pinkie can I hit on your girlfriend in front of you?
Pinkie: Sure!
Rainbow: twilight you’re always hot but i’m always like, dont make the friendship weird, dont tell her how cute she is you know?
Rainbow: no I literally can’t i wanna lick all those pens cleans in front of you and then stick them back in deeper
Rainbow: god im actually shaking thinking about the sounds you must have made having them put in there and i hate that i cant hear it from a picture
Rainbow: She actually is. ~ Rarity
Rainbow: just insanely hot
Pinkie: What about me?
Rainbow: you’re not in the picture
Pinkie: he he oh yeah right
Pinkie: Whoops

“You think that was a bad call?” Dash looked up and asked, and Rarity smirked as she re-read Pinkie’s last two messages. “I got kind of an annoyed edge to that.”

“It means Twilight will be holding the camera for the next one.”

Dash reread back. “Oh, shit.”

Pinkie: She says ‘thanks’
Pinkie: She can’t type because she can’t pull her hands off her face to hold the phone she’s so embarrassed but she liked what you said
Pinkie: …
Pinkie: This is just fun like this right we’re not like doing swapsies or anything right?

Rarity and Dash locked eyes to confirm with each other, no, neither had been considering this. Much to Rarity’s surprise there was no hidden edge of ‘Unless…?’ in Dash’s face, but instead a serious warning from her to Rarity against considering it. Rarity smiled.

“Ah. And here I was wondering if you were ever going to understand why I was so afraid of the consequences of a relationship.”

“Collateral damage between us stayed on our sides of the portal.” Dash said firmly. “I’m not fucking up any friendships just to fuck them.”

“I love you.” Rarity said, surprising herself, and Dash stared.

“... What?”

“Yes. That…” Rarity stared unblinkingly forward. “Why did that do it for me, I wonder?”

Rainbow: no this ones mine and im not sharing
Rainbow: but i love showing off how great she is so you can appreciate that too
Pinkie: same same same same same same same same same
Pinkie: okay you get it
Rainbow: I understand, but yours is much better at giving compliments in a respectful manner, while mine is not quite so well-behaved.
Rainbow: She is trying to match the loveliness of your Twilight’s words in the language available to her. ~ Rarity
Pinkie: Well Twilight definitely really appreciated it so it worked thank you so much
Rainbow: For what it’s worth, as deeply erotic as this is
Rainbow: What shines through for me in each one is every little tell and hint about how deeply and utterly you love and trust each other
Rainbow: And that has, to me, inspired more jealousy and yearning than the sights presented by the very beautiful women themselves.

“Say it again.” Dash said so sharply that Rarity remembered there was a world outside the phone screen again.

Dash stood looming over the couch, wild-eyed, desperate. Rarity’s phone buzzed.

Pinkie: Twilight just screamed HOW IS SHE MAKING GETTING MY HOLES STUFFED FULL OF PENS SOUND SO ROMANTIC?!
Pinkie: I just told her it’s because she wouldn’t let anyone else do it but me and that’s cute
Pinkie: heheheheheh

“Why are you jealous of them?” Dash demanded. “Say it again.”

“I love you.” Rarity told her.

Dash took a step closer. Her pupils were dilated, she was trembling, she looked like she couldn’t decide whether to tear Rarity to shreds or jump out a window. “Why? What happened? What, what made you know?”

“Isn’t it enough?”

“Any other time but watching me hit on Twilight, maybe!” Dash said. “Just, you’re not saying it just to keep up with them are you? Don’t say it unless it’s me, don’t say it unless you mean it.”

Rarity… actually didn’t know. She hadn’t even meant to say it, the feeling had just so overwhelmed her she’d said it before she’d had a chance to stop herself. That answer… would not be good enough.

“You knew this was a bad idea from the start.” Rarity murmured, playing her own mental tape back of the last minute. “I wasn’t a risk you didn’t care about. You’d have never tried this if I were… Simply your Rarity, but older.”

“I… I don’t know about that.” Dash’s eyes widened and she took a step backwards, towards the window and flight, but Rarity shook her head. “You’d still be you.”

“No, you wouldn’t have, I understand that about you now.” Rarity finished, and looked at what used to be a liquor cabinet, now filled with model spaceships. “I wasn’t just an impulsive bad decision to you. You knew the same things about how bad we are for each other, and wanted me anyway. I was a calculated risk, I was… And even then, you were never going to accept having me as anything less than your girlfriend from the start, were you?.”

“Ha!” Dash barked a laugh. “Yeah, you made me work to convince you, and everything, even though I knew you were right about us. I just had to pretend I didn’t or you wouldn’t have…” she trailed off. “I was pretending, though.”

“I know.” Rarity whispered. “You were manipulating me, just so you could have me longer.”

“I-”

“I love you so much.” Rarity said again.

They stared at each other. The same primal need for each other within them, but something else steeled them through it.

“Picture ideas.” Rarity said, firmly.

“Dominate the shit out of me, ruin me.” Dash replied. “If you owning me is how we own them, then I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Good.” Rarity answered. “Get a hairbrush.”

Dash ran to her bedroom again and picked a long, cylindrical curling brush - the kind with spokes all the away around. Rarity considered it and put it on the couch beside her.

“No. Wide, flat. I want to properly hit you with it, the wider the better.”

Dash shuddered as she saluted. “Yes ma’am!” She made to reach for the hairbrush she’d given, but Rarity stopped her.

“No. This as well.”

Dash knew better than to ask as she came back from the bathroom with the widest brush she could, and Rarity tapped her knee for Rainbow to lie across it. Again that reassuring hand ran through her hair as she kneeled, and Rarity held the brush over Rainbow’s kneeling bottom.

“Ready?” Rarity asked, and Dash shook her head.

“Say it again, first.”

“I love you.” She said it and Dash melted and went liquid against her knee and made a happy giggle. “So what are we doing here?”

“I’m going to leave some very pretty marks on you.” Rarity said. “Not so many that our audience gets concerned, but enough they’d consider if they’d be willing to do it for each other. Enough to make them jealous of your commitment.”

Dash nodded. “Fuck that’s so hot, do it.”

“I will ask again. Ready?” Rainbow nodded this time. “Good.”

The first brush stroke came down and Rainbow didn’t even flinch. Of course, after everything, she’d have a decent pain tolerance. Rarity snorted, and Dash looked up at her in frustration. “Just how fragile do you think I am?”

Rarity brought the next one down harder, and that one got a proper gasp out of Rainbow and she grabbed Rarity’s calf. The next one was even harder, and Dash dug her fingernails instead - it hurt, but Rarity would be too much of a hypocrite to call it out.

“Next one?” She asked, and Rainbow nodded, and Rarity brought it down again and actually got the sharpest gasp out of Rainbow for it. She was easing off the throttle, now, as new stikes came down over old.

It was rapidly becoming clear that the pain and the hits didn’t do anything for Rainbow, weren’t something she’d have done in another circumstance. The fact that she didn’t just made the moans that came between strikes so much louder though, the squirms, the wriggling of her thighs against each other.

The fact that this was something she had to endure just made it that much hotter that it was something she was doing to prove her commitment. That proof, that validation? That was driving her wilder than anything else.

It was very touching, actually. It made Rarity hesitate to hit her, but Dash always called her a coward when she felt her holding back.

The bruises were mostly pink from the top of the curve of her hind down to where her thigh became her knee, glowing like a sunburn. But the meat, the flesh around her soaked lips, those were the deep dark red of angry blood vessels bursing beneath the skin, with a few darker splotches of purple like deep night. Rarity ran a finger up Rainbow’s slit and giggled.

“What?” Dash groaned, foggy but happy. Happy in part because it was done. “What’s funny?”

“You’ll read it in a moment.” Rarity said. “Let’s just get a picture of you over my knee like this.”

Rainbow: I am sorry for the feral and vulgar nature of my girlfriend
Rainbow: We’ve been trying to teach her more discipline

She attached the picture, and looked to Dash. “This is what I was thinking, a moment ago.”

Rainbow: Isn’t it lovely, when her ass matches her eyes? ~Rarity
Twilight: Woah
Pinkie: ohmygosh
Twilight: Is she okay?
Rainbow: im good
Rainbow: im a good girl <3
Pinkie: that is so fucking hot
Twilight: Pinkie!
Pinkie: Don’t believe her she read Rainbow’s message and started touching herself
Twilight: You only noticed because my hand got in the way of yours!
Pinkie: Shhhhh
Pinkie: Pencup Twilight’s still winning though

“She’s right isn’t she?” Rainbow asked, and Rarity’s eyes shined in that dangerous way of hers.

“That’s why I had you keep both brushes.”

“What?” Rainbow’s eyes went wide. “Wait, where’d you get that lube from?”

Resistance was completely non-existent. A moment later Dash was filled, the wide brimmed brush as deep in her pussy as Rarity could slide in, the curling brush in her ass above it, slid down to the bristles. She took the picture as Rainbow shuddered.

“Too much,” she squeaked, “way too tight.”

“Just a second longer. Which one out first?”

“First one.” Dash’s head lolled down and she shook, tapping Rarity’s calf. “Oh fuck, fuck, fuck fuck. Fuck.”

“Not the curling brush? Really?” Rarity teased. “Do you like that one, do you?”

Dash, much to Rarity’s surprise, nodded. “Actually you could probably leave that in a little bit if you just took the other one out. It’s what’s making it hurt. The… they’re rubbing up against each other, fuck.”

“Ah.” Rarity angled the wide-handled brush down as she pulled it out to keep the friction light there, and Rainbow let out a throaty groan as she was stretched wider for the new angle. After it slipped out, Rarity leaned over and gave her clit a little kiss as a treat for her excellent work putting up with all this, and Rainbow shivered again underneath her.

She uploaded the picture and Rainbow tapped her thigh. Somehow Rarity understood she meant for her to lean back into the couch so Rainbow could stay on her lap while lying down like this. A lot of information to be understood from a simple tap on the leg but it felt like they were so much on the same wavelength…

Rainbow: Good girls get treats too, remember. No stick without a carrot. ~Rarity
Pinkie: I still think we’re- Twilight are we winning?
Twilight: This isn’t a competition
Pinkie: I know but they think it is
Twilight: Oh.
Twilight: Then I think we’re at a tie?
Twilight: I don’t know how anyone would be supposed to judge this.
Pinkie: Glad you’re having fun though!

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Rainbow shifted underneath her, hairbrush still inside her.

“Pinkie thinks I can’t have fun at anything unless it’s a competition.” Dash said.

Rarity tried to remember a counter example and couldn’t. “Can you?”

“No, but I hate that she knows it.”

Rainbow: For what it’s worth, we have been struggling to keep up with you while knowing you’re not even trying.
Rainbow: We didn’t want this to be less fun for you, if you knew that’s how we were taking it
Rainbow: ~Rarity
Twilight: Yeah they’re both like this huh
Pinkie: They’re so both like this
Twilight: I was kind of hoping Rarity would be the good influence but quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Pinkie: Who dommes the dommes?
Pinkie: Also can you believe she just typed that without having to look it up
Pinkie: Nerd
Pinkie: Oh wait she’s looking it up now to make sure she spelled it right lol
Twilight: I did go me
Twilight: “Quis” always feels like i should be “Quid”
Pinkie: The point is!

Rarity and Rainbow stared at their phones for the next message, which didn’t come. “Ah,” Rarity said, “They’re uploading something.”

It was an audio clip, and Rarity nodded. “You asked for sound, didn’t you?”

“You play it, your phone has a better speaker.”

They did, and it was… Pinkie’s hot breath as Twilight built her up, then an endless of patiently whispering how close she was, how beautiful Twilight was, what a good job she was doing, how wonderful Twilight’s tongue and fingers were.

Then begging, a lot of begging that devolved to whining and pleading as she got closer, and closer, rising in volume and pitch until she was screaming Twilight’s name into the microphone as she came. Her voice caught in her throat and gave out to choked spasms - and just before the recording ended, softly whispered ‘I love you’s were given to each other, and the sound of a kiss.

Pinkie: The point is we’re still having tons of fun even if you’re both an insane toxic disaster doomspiral with each other
Twilight: You did kind of drag us into this we’re not normally like this
Pinkie: It’s great!
Twilight: It turns out we both really like planning things out?
Pinkie: And I really, really, really, really, really
Pinkie: reallyreallyreallyreallyreally
Pinkie: Like that my friends are listening <3
Twilight: That one still kind of makes me nervous honestly
Twilight: Thanks for being so cool about it
Twilight: I mean… you fooled me? About being cool about it?

“We have exceptional friends, don’t we?” Rarity muttered. “These two are such sweethearts together.”

“The Princess seems kind of cooler still but,” Dash glanced out the window in the direction she remembered her highschool. “Your Celestia is a living goddess and ours is a highschool principal. I don’t think it’s their fault our Twilight never could be like yours.”

“Were you thinking it might have been Pinkie holding her back?”

“No, I just didn’t want you thinking it.” Dash shrugged, and groaned. Every big movement like that which moved her hips reminded her just how big the brush still inside her was. “Don’t you dare take it out.” She warned as Rarity’s hands hovered lower. She brought them back to play with Dash’s back instead.

Rainbow: Do you mind if we try to top this?
Rainbow: Since we have been outed for our competitive streak
Pinkie: Duh go nuts we’re just teasing you because we think it’s hilarious
Twilight: If you win, we get something hot
Twilight: If you lose, it’s fun
Pinkie: I’m more worked up than anything
Twilight: And I haven’t finished once yet
Rainbow: pinkie needs to do better then
Twilight: Pfffft no she’s amazing like actually incredible
Twilight: We just don’t want to finish before you do
Twilight: This was supposed to be my apology to you, remember?
Pinkie: Wait it was I actually forgot that’s so funny

“Well we know what beats audio, don’t we?” Rarity asked.

“Video.” Dash agreed. “What do we do?”

They thought about that.

“Okay they joked about who tops you?” Rainbow asked, and finally - with a long, satisfied groan - pulled the brush from her butt. “Yeah, it’s me, that’s what we do on video.”

“No you don’t.” Rarity snickered. “Very cute, but no.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” Dash pushed herself up off the couch and disappeared into her bedroom. Rarity watched after her curiously and then…

“Oh my word.” She gasped.

Dash was wearing the strapon harness she’d mentioned, the ones that just fit like underwear. Just, she’d also brought options, which she dumped onto the glass coffee table they’d pushed aside.

“So here’s the deal. I’m fucking you against the kitchen counter like this because there’s good lighting in there, and there’s some places we can put the phone propped up.” She said. “And you’re going to be so beautiful doing it you’ll make them surrender. Last decision you make that isn’t one I’m making for you, pick a toy.”

Rarity looked at the options on the table. Dragon, horse, some twisted tentacle. She snorted. “You’re trying to make me feel more at home, are you?”

“Guilty.” Dash raised an eyebrow. “So?”

Rarity looked at the stallion toy on the table with interest, but decided against it. “As homesick as I am, I think that looks too much like trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.”

“Yeah, same.” Dash agreed. “Tentacle’s fun though. That’s the only one I already had for me.”

“Is it now?” Rarity asked curiously, and bit her lip. “Very well, then, that one.”

Dash started switching out the human dildo in the harness for it, and noticed Rarity’s eyes never came off it. “You’re that curious about it?”

“No, I just think I’m that excited by the idea it was in you, first.” She looked Dash dead in the eye when she said it, just to see the reaction she had to it. Dash looked back, stone-faced, like her brain was so overloaded it didn’t have the room left to control the outside pieces anymore.

“You’ve got thirty seconds to get the camera recording how you like.” She said. “Then I’m fucking you ‘til you can’t stand up anymore.”

Rarity snorted at that, but as she looked at Dash’s face she realized that wasn’t hyperbole. She was deadly serious with every syllable, and she really was going to do it. She nodded. “Yes, my love.”

“Ten seconds.” Dash corrected herself.

Rarity barely made it, she didn’t even have time to check the lighting of where she planned to stand against Dash’s induction stove cooktop - the black would frame her skin nicest, she thought - before Dash had a hand wrapped around her throat and squeezed, pushing her forwards and over the bench so hard she barely had a chance to reach out and catch herself.

The tentacle, it turned out, was decadent. Just a spiral of bumps and ridges that pushed the corkscrewing tentacle up and down and all around as it slid in, and out again.

She was grateful it was such a gentle curve to the twist, or the force with which Rainbow fucked her might have made it more like getting drilled with a screwbit.

“Fuck!” Rarity squeaked out as much as she could, hand tight around her throat preventing her getting enough air to scream. Already she felt wonderful hot tears in her eyes start ruining her mascara.

“Mine.” Dash growled. “Whose?”

“Yours!” Rarity gasped, and Dash’s hips pushed her painfully hard against the countertop. “Fuck!”

“Mmm.” Dash bit her neck hard from behind to grip her better and pulled at her hips, pulling Rarity up off the countertop even as she tried to lean against it for balance. Dash was so much shorter than her how was she so able to lift her up like this? More of her weight fell back against the thrusts, falling more onto Dash than the countertop.

All her weight were coming down with each hard thrust now.

“Dash!” She screamed.

“Mm?”

“F-fuck!” She hissed as she came again, and Dash’s strokes didn’t slow down an inch, and then the second one started before the first had finished and her mascara was running down her cheeks.

Rarity collapsed forwards against the stovetop trying to catch ragged breaths, but Dash took a grip hard against her throat again and pulled her until they were cheek to soggy cheek, and Rarity’s legs gave out as she came a third time and Dash lifted her by the hips and pulled her down onto the tentacle cock again and again, picking her up entirely, Rarity barely managing to balance on tip toe at the peak of each strike.

Her fourth orgasm she’d run out of breath to scream, just holding on to Dash for dear life with clenched fists and gurgling low in her throat trying to breath.

Her fifth orgasm she was a babbling, twitching, flimsy mess, her legs entirel limp and swinging beneath her as Dash continued to fuck her limp body, now the sole musculature supporting it. Out of the corner of her eye, Rarity saw the veins bulging in those forearms from the effort.

The sixth orgasm was just pure cruelty. It was just starting to hurt now, to get too tight, too much. The edges of Rarity’s vision were going completely black and tunneled, vignetted. Colour faded from in front of her eyes even as fireworks filled everything behind them. She became incapable of rational thought, just the word yes uttered over and over and over and over again, unsure if the words left her mouth or if she was incapable of it.

The seventh just hurt, and that was wonderful.

Dash let out a gasp, then, and let Rarity crumple slowly to the floor at her feet as both their arms and legs gave out from the exertion. She pulled Rarity’s head to the cock on the strap, and even only half-aware Rarity had enough presence of mind to lick it clean, right down to the back of her throat.

Only then did Dash walk over to the phone and hit ‘stop’ on the recording.

Then, gently, she came back to the counter and scooped Rarity up from the floor in a princess carry, and kissed her on the cheek. Dash’s lips came back stained with black mascara.

She carried them both to her bedroom, her bed, where she fell against it dumping Rarity on the other side to her as they both caught their breath, groaning and twitching from everything. Everything, everything hurt. Everything hurt so beautifully.

“I already sent the video.” Dash said, between ragged panting. “We can take a break while they watch it.”

“I hadn’t considered that, that it’d take as much time to watch as it did to film.” Rarity breathed. “That is to our advantage. Do you think they can beat it?”

“No. No way.” Dash laughed, even though it hurt ot laugh. “I don’t think we could beat that.”

“It would destroy us to try.” Rarity agreed. “More than usual, even.”

Rarity squirmed closer, and Dash wriggled back until they were as close to each other as their too-hot sweaty bodies could stand. They could stand to be apart even less, though, especially after that.

They fell into a trance-like state like that, half-cuddling, staring unseeing up at the ceiling, just recovering together. On the edge of something like sleep but not tired in the right way to fall there, just a sort of standby mode where time has no meaning. The feeling of having gotten enough sleep just to wake up in the morning, but before you work up the willpower to make coffee.

At the other side of the trance, ending it, was Rarity’s phone buzzing.

Pinkie: Uh
Twilight: So
Pinkie: We can’t
Twilight: Beat that?
Pinkie: Is it okay if we save this though? Like forever?
Rainbow: you better we worked hard on that
Twilight: No kidding
Pinkie: Is Rarity okay?
Rainbow: Hi
Rainbow: Alive
Rainbow: Good
Twilight: Oh wow she didn’t even sign off she actually had her brains fucked out
Pinkie: I was joking
Rainbow: Hiiiiiii~
Twilight: I guess you weren’t
Rainbow: you know most people get weirded out knowing stuff like this about their friends
Twilight: Yeah it’s going to be hard to look you in the eye after this but like
Twilight: To be tbh with you?
Twilight: I’m going to be thinking how easily you could pick me up
Pinkie: THIS ONE IS MINE DO NOT GET IDEAS
Pinkie: but keep giving her ideas
Pinkie: and me ideas
Pinkie: Ideas
Twilight: So you already dropped the big L huh? Dash I expected she’s an idiot
Twilight: Didn’t expect to hear Rarity calling her ‘my love’ on the second date though.
Rainbow: Third
Twilight: Oh that’s okay then
Pinkie: Is it?
Twilight: I think I was being sarcastic but I’m not sure
Rainbow: I love her I love her I love her I love her I love her ~ Rarity
Twilight: Yeah you actually needed to sign that one thanks
Pinkie: Honestly after seeing you get fucked like that I can kind of see why ngl

Dash grinned blankly up at the ceiling, still too sore to turn her neck to look at Rarity, but squeezing the hand she held tighter.

Pinkie: So Twilight had an idea on how to win though
Twilight: I haven’t told Pinkie yet but I need to go get something
Twilight: You two are the fucking worst by the way I need to say that first.

A few seconds later, their phones rang for a video call. Dash looked to Rarity. “Answer with yours.”

Rarity did, and limply held the phone up over herself and Dash on the bed. Twilight and Pinkie waved back cheerfully from their screen, somewhere in Pinkie’s bedroom and then…

And then Twilight got off the bed and down on one knee. And Pinkie spread her legs a little expecting that, but then she realized Twilight was on only one knee, and she realized what was happening a split second after Dash and Rarity did.

“No way.” Dash whispered. “No fucking way.”

“So I’ve had this for a while.” Twilight pulled the small jewelry box hidden in the palm of her hand. “But I’ve been way too nervous to ask. Actually, I can’t believe you haven’t found it this has been in our-”

“YES!” Pinkie screamed, bowling Twilight back onto the floor from the tackle and the kiss. “Yes! Yes! Marry yes you!”

“Sock drawer. Three weeks” Twilight finished when she could breathe, laughing. “Anyway. We win.”

“HA!” Dash whooped, sitting up suddenly. “No you don’t! Rarity proposed to me before this conversation started, suckers! We fucking beat you!”

There was dead silence.

“You WHAT?!” Pinkie screamed, halfway between panic and a hideous laugh, and Twilight looked very pale as Dash’s thumb slammed to turn the call off.

“Shouldn’t have said that.” Dash muttered, Rarity now sitting up and looking at her wide eyed.

“Dash?” Rarity asked nervously.

Dash’s phone started to ring and, in a panic, she threw it hard across the room like it was a spider that had crawled into her hand, cracking the screen.

Dash’s emergency phone started to ring. This one Rarity gently took out of Dash’s reach and held the power button down for, until it turned off.

“Dash.” Rarity repeated. “You told them.”

“Ah.” Dash nodded. “Guess so.”

“Dash.”

“I was already planning on crashing at your place for a while, right?” Dash tried to remember where she put her motorcycle keys. “So. What is the absolute. Minimum amount of clothes you’re cool with for riding that bike. So we can be in Equestria before the rest of my friends are over here to kill me with murder?”

“I will literally wear only the jacket if I need to.”

Dash opened and closed her mouth. “Fuck, even chafed out like this that’s still kind of hot.”

Rarity took a deep, shuddering sigh as she tried to stand up, but her legs literally couldn’t move or take her weight. Which had been the whole point, hadn’t it. “Do you think you could carry me again? And before you complain, at every level it is your fault that I need to ask.”

“Fuck.” Dash pressed the heel of her palm deep against her forehead. “Fuck.”

“You know what’s incredible?” Rarity smiled up at the ceiling. “I think It is because of things like this, and not in spite of them, that I love you.”

The Equestrian Date

The first problem with visiting Equestria was there was already a Rainbow Dash here, a married one, so the younger Dash couldn’t just be seen with Rarity without it causing problems. Checking her hair in the Carousel Boutique window, she had to check that her disguise was good and that she looked good in her disguise.

Not a great start, she already knew Rarity could be embarrassed being seen with her and the date hadn’t even started yet.

Still, she had to admit she liked the look. She still had trouble gauging what made a pony look cool or not, she still wasn’t used to that whole deal yet, but the one looking back at her in the store window didn’t look half bad. Tousled flaming red mane and tail, both with streaking white accents that popped - it still felt like her style. It just would have felt better if she was trying something new, and not trying to work out if it hid her well enough.

She flinched when Rarity opened the door to the boutique and stared, and Dash pretended she was doing literally anything else but check herself out. “Hey!”

“What caught your eye?” Rarity came up beside her, and of course Dash had picked an empty spot of window. Rarity snorted. “Ah, just you. Yes, that one caught my eye as well.” She gave Dash a knowing look out of the corner of her eye. “They’re mirrored like this for a reason. It helps to see yourself in the dress, that way. Which we ought to get you in soon.”

“I don’t mind, nobody else is wearing anything, right?” Dash started, and Rarity coughed into a hoof while looking at Dash’s cutie mark. She deflated. “Right. That.”

“I didn’t need an excuse to dress you up,” Rarity turned and flicked Dash’s nose with her tail. “I won’t complain about having one. Come in, I’m with a client right now but—

“Sure, I can take a walk around the block first, it’s cool.”

“I meant,” Rarity held the door open wider. “You’re more than welcome to wait inside, I’ll just be with you in a minute.”

“Awesome.” Dash covered her cutie mark with her wing as she moved past. The store was massive, filled with intricate dresses for strange anatomies. Not just stuff for ponies, either, but dragons and changelings and other stuff she didn’t recognize. Yaks? Did yaks even wear dresses?

She milled about, fidgeting. She wasn’t bored, just, she didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing. Everything she ended up trying felt like it could be wrong, and she needed to keep moving from thing to thing until she found which thing sucked the least. Mostly that meant moving through the dresses, studying them carefully, and pointedly ignoring the pony in the other room that Rarity was holding measuring tape to and showing design sketches.

“Your assistant’s just the cutest thing, isn’t she?” the client crooned, and Rarity’s hair bristled on the back of her neck as she kept looking at the displays, pretending not to hear. “Where’d you find her?”

“She’s not my assistant, no,” Rarity corrected professionally. “I’m entertaining, tonight.”

“I do beg your pardon,” the client said. “I just thought, well. I thought you liked your fruit a little riper before you bit into it.”

“Never you pay any mind to who I bite into. She’s actually quite the accomplished musician herself, Ms Sapphire.” Rarity said it playfully, but Dash caught a sincere bit of venom in the way Rarity emphasized the ‘Ms’. “Shocking though it may be given how handsome she is, she’s more than just looks.”

“Don’t think I didn’t hear you Ms me. Girl, you are far too young to be having that kind of a mid-life crisis.” Sapphire Shores laughed. “I can just tell if you had clothespins in your magic right now I’d be getting stuck all over. Did I hit a nerve, Ms Rarity?” she pronounced it Rare-rah-tee, Dash noticed.

“Only that you think I’m old enough to have any kind of mid-life crisis at all.” Rarity clicked her tongue. “Yes, that should do it. It’ll be ready for you by Friday evening. Dear? I put your outfit for the evening in the first changing room, do help yourself.”

Dash bit her tongue and found the changing room, and found a thick, black leather jacket with an old schoolgirl skirt waiting for her. The jacket on its own was almost threatening, the skirt on its own too formal and girly for her taste - but paired together? It was classic rock, AC/DC and Aerosmith, and it covered her cutie mark. She kept eavesdropping on the conversation Rarity was having while she got changed.

“I’m looking forward to it as always. You know I still keep that first dress you made for me? Hasn’t fit me in yea-ahs.” Sapphire laughed. “My assistant was asking me if you couldn’t just use my old measurements, and you would not believe how hard I laughed, darling. My sides! Ah.”

Rarity snickered. “I think you’ve done very well for yourself. All that dancing seems to be keeping you in lycra and spandex just fine.”

“Please!” Sapphire clicked her tongue. “I look in the mirror with these costumes on, and I see a wrinkle that needs to be ironed out, and the wrinkle’s always on me!” Rarity laughed. “It’s a gen-u-ine tragedy!”

“I can forgive you for thinking about mid-life crises then, if that’s why they’re on your mind.”

Sapphire giggled. “I’ve got my little boy-toys, don’t you worry about that. I just like mine with abs you can grate cheese with. ”

Dash poked out of the changing room, and Rarity absently shifted the jacket on her back until her wings popped free from the holes she hadn’t even noticed. She flared them, that felt way better. “Rarity, you got any cheese in the fridge? I wanna test something.”

“I am plenty impressed with your stomach without needing to waste a block of parmesan on it.” Rarity made eye contact with Rainbow before she could be a smart-alec about it. “Yes, it may still go in it.”

“Well aren’t you just the thing.” Sapphire covered her mouth as she giggled. “I didn’t get your name.”

“Red Delta.” Dash lied. “Hey, it’s cool. It’s kind of funny though, you’re making it sound like you’d respect Rarity more if she was just using me to get laid. Like, it’d be way worse if she was actually dating me or something.”

The giggle died in Sapphire’s throat, and she looked at Rarity nervously. “Yes, it did sound like that, didn’t it?”

“We’re not dating, so who cares.” Rainbow said, and Rarity let out a little sigh of relief. As soon as Sapphire looked away from her and back to Dash, Rarity glared burning holes in the back of her head - a furious look that disappeared whenever Sapphire looked back again. “Just, it wouldn’t be that embarrassing, would it?”

“I am late! Just look at that.” Sapphire coughed. “By Friday you said? Wonderful. Wonderful! I’ll have to see you then, and tell me everything. Pleasure to meet you, Miss Red Delta.”

“Sure, whatever. Thanks for saying I’m cute.”

Sapphire gave an outrageous wink over her shoulder as Rarity all but pushed her out of the store, closing the ‘Open!’ sign over behind her and leaning against it with an exhausted breath out.

“I’m not embarrassing though, right?” Dash asked Rarity, now that they were alone together.

“To me? No.” Rarity’s eyes went hard as flint as she glared out the front door. “Which is why I did not once deny who or what you are to me. You bit your tongue a bit. That can’t have been easy for you.”

“Yeah, well, she’s right though, right?” Dash asked, trying to sound cool. “Like, you don’t got to be mad at her for saying the same thing we’re thinking.” She said it to try and make Rarity less mad, but instead it looked like she’d stabbed her by saying it. “What? We said the same thing about keeping it casual.”

“You are more than just—” Rarity started, stopped. “It’s not because—” Stopped again.

“You want someone you can pay taxes and a mortgage with, and I’m not that yet, right?” Rainbow prodded. “Cause I know I’m not ready for that stuff, and I don’t want to have to be.”

Rarity looked… inwardly angry, like a volcano that had its vent entirely clogged up and nowhere to burst. Rainbow watched as every time she tried to disagree, to say why it was wrong, she couldn’t. It just made her try harder.

“Hold still.” Rarity instructed, in an icy tone.

“What?”

Rarity pulled a razor blade from her dressmaking supplies and held it up. Then, with a bloodcurdling, frustrated scream she tore at Rainbow’s skirt with it, shredding the fabric into ribbons - but never cutting all the way through, or cutting a piece entirely out. Dash flinched twice, first from the scream and second from the razor tugging at her skirt.

At the end of it though, the skirt looked… awesome. Way more punk rock, it made the outfit feel a lot more her.

“There, better.” Rarity said, relaxed as she put the razor away. “You’re a horrid martyr.”

“No I’m not.” Dash blinked. “Am I?”

“You find ways to make everything your fault, so it’s something you can fix.” Rarity glared at her. “I am struggling to find a way to say that you are more than just an attractive lay to me, and that I am not simply taking advantage of you, without confronting the fact that I am refusing to put my money where my mouth is.”

Dash shook her head. “Sorry, still don’t get it?”

Rarity groaned and pushed her face into a hoof like she had a stress headache. “I am an emotionally guarded pony-pleaser, selfless to the point of selfishness, and I’ve spread myself far too thin. I am not capable of being what you need, and it is no fault of yours that you have needs.” Rarity let her hoof fall away to glare at Rainbow again in warning. “It is agony to think that anyone could make you feel like the reason I would keep you at an arm’s length is any fault of yours.”

Rainbow kind of swayed on her hooves while she took that in. Maybe it was that martyrdom thing in her head, but what it sounded like Rarity was saying was that Dash wasn’t too immature for her, she was too much messed up for Dash. Which was basically the same problem, except Rainbow had no power to fix it from the other end.

Which meant Rarity had to be wrong or this sucked. She needed to buy time to work out how she was wrong, though.

“You’re not good enough for me, is what you’re saying?” Rainbow teased, and Rarity didn’t stop glaring, but she did crack a smile in spite of it.

“Yes, that is exactly what I’m saying.”

“I dunno about that, I think you’re cool.” Rainbow shrugged. “I haven’t stopped wanting to have dinner with you, anyway.”

Rarity snorted. “You know what I find most interesting about that?”

“What?”

Rarity leaned close and nipped the tip of Rainbow’s ear, and Dash’s knees locked like a fainting goat. When she felt hot breath right after, she almost went over on her side. “You’re still not used to the pony side of things, are you?”

“Uh, no?” Dash answered honestly because suddenly she was too stupid to figure out how to lie.

“You have almost no physical attraction to me right now, do you?” Rarity asked.

“Uh.” Dash tried to be less stupid and failed. Rarity was still right in her ear, their cheeks pressed together. “You’re really pretty for a pony?”

“I thought so.” Rarity grinned and leaned back, kissing Dash’s cheek again on the way through. “I must have done something right, to give you a crush large enough to make up the difference.”

“I’m kind of a disaster,” Dash agreed, eyes half lidded, smiling like a dope.

“Thank you for coming, for me.” Rarity held the back of Rainbow’s head as she pressed their foreheads together, held their faces close. “It does mean a lot, to me, that you’d make the effort.”

“Hey, if I have to choose between being with you in this body, and having nobody in my body….” Rainbow’s eyes fluttered close, her brain was so overloaded it couldn’t handle light anymore. “Obvious choice, right?”

And then, because her eyes were closed, she wasn’t ready when Rarity just… tilted her head a little and closed the distance to kiss her. A light flick of a tongue against her lips invited her to open her mouth, so she did.

It made her hyper aware of how different her mouth was. It was longer, and narrow. Her tongue, too. Rainbow wasn’t the best kisser at the best of times, mostly she made out like a hungry vacuum cleaner, but now she had even less idea what to do with anything than usual.

And Rarity was… perfect. She teasingly bit Rainbow’s bottom lip and pulled it, stretched it out and let it snap back, and Rainbow groaned at the hurt of it. Rarity was way rougher than she expected her to be, but it wasn’t a bad thing, just… When she was aggressive at slipping her tongue into Rainbow’s mouth, she had no idea what to do about it back except appreciate that Rarity was doing it. She was just kind of letting her flex, show off how good she was, but it gave her nothing to work against.

Rainbow felt hormone drunk, totally out of her depth, like she was losing at kissing.

Rarity drew back looking like she’d pulled off a prank on her. Rainbow had forgotten they were both ponies for a second. “Was the choice really so obvious?” she asked, catching her breath.

Dash couldn’t keep her eyes off Rarity’s mouth. “You kiss so much better as a pony.”

“I had my reasons to be eager to drag you over here.” Rarity grinned. “I wasn’t just testing to see if you would. Not too strange for you?”

“Nah, I just had no idea what I was doing. It’s like… Weird. I’ve got too much face like this, and I can’t figure out what I’m supposed to do with it.”

“I’m sure it’ll come to you with practice.” Rarity smiled at her one last time and, when Rainbow leaned for the kiss again, instead she turned and trotted back into the boutique. “Let me get my coat for the evening. Before we get too ahead of ourselves and spoil our appetites.”

Rainbow watched her go, and wondered how many chances she’d get to kiss Rarity back before the skill difference stopped being cute and started being frustrating. Problem was, there wasn’t anyone else she wanted to practice on to make up the difference, which meant spending those chances figuring her out…

Which meant trying to figure out how to do better while Rarity was absolutely ruining her.

Rarity had picked a really nice, expensive restaurant that you needed reservations to get into. Even she needed reservations, she said, clearly impressed. And it was a really cool gesture, really nice, because what Rarity was basically saying was; See, I do see you as being mature enough to handle this stuff, this is the kind of place I feel like I can take us to.

The problem was Rainbow was absolutely friggin’ miserable, but she had to pretend she wasn’t or else Sapphire Shores and Twilight and everyone was going to be right about her. And the point was Rarity was trying really hard to give her that chance, so she had to take it, right?

Still, Rarity looked fantastic in her glittering dark blue dress with meticulously hand-stitched sequins. The shade of the sequins was almost the same, but lighter and darker in ripples and curls like the reflections on the surface of a lake as it gets deeper from a shoreline.

Rainbow looked at the menu. “The caramelized pear gravy sounds nice, with the… What is it?”

Rarity looked for it on the menu. “Kasespatzle? What an interesting combination. It’s a gryphon dish, it’s like a… a gnocchi hash brown?”

That… didn’t sound great. “Is Sizzlefruit any good? I’ve never even heard of it.”

“It’s a Southlands delicacy, a bit of an acquired taste to my mind that I never acquired the taste for. Spicy and sour, very peppery, I’ve had one brilliant marmalade of it but I would avoid it as a main, to start.”

“Gotcha.” Rainbow grimaced. “See, normally what I’d do at this point is take the easy way out and just ask for a steak, but—” Rarity gave her a warning look and held a hoof to her lips, and Dash noticed a curious look from a pony a table over. “Yeah, see?”

Rainbow wondered about this place. You needed a reservation to get in, which made her think that it was going to be crowded, but there were only about eight other people in the whole restaurant sitting around the candlelit tables. There were more ponies in the kitchen than were eating. The red wallpaper and wood paneling made her feel like she was sitting in a Prime Minister’s office or something - definitely not a President’s, too European.

“I’ll be having the umeboshi, fermented yoghurt whey, and kelp, I think.” Rarity grinned at the look Dash gave her. “It’s better than it sounds, I promise. You like sour flavours, don’t you? It’s not as acidic as an energy drink, at least, much more… rounded.”

“I wasn’t drinking them for the taste but, yeah, actually.” Dash stared at Rarity’s order on the menu like it was a seeing eye puzzle, like it was something that’d make sense to her if she just read the words enough. “It’s more like, you say something’s fermented and I give up on trying to guess what it’s going to taste like. I remember drinking Calpis in Japan, and it’s just this drink that tastes kind of fruity, but you’ve got no idea what fruit it tastes like? Sweet but not sugary? Kind of chalky, almost.”

“So, what is it?” Rarity asked.

“It’s just fermented milk.” Dash shrugged. “No idea how. I thought fermenting stuff just made it more bitter or something, but then I had kimchi and I have no idea how they get from cabbage to that.”

“I’m sure Twilight might have a better explanation for you.” Rarity thought. “Pinkie Pie’s actually very good at this. She is a pastry chef, which is not nearly so easy as she makes it look.”

“That’s right, the Princess and Pinkie aren’t dating on this side, are they?” Dash grinned, letting her eyes wander away from Rarity’s choice and trying to choose between the other five menu options - she felt like she was playing Russian roulette for her stomach, honestly. “Pinkie tried to get Twilight into cooking because it’s just chemistry, right? It kind of worked, Twilight got really into brewing her own coffee. Like, roasting, grinding, getting all the temperatures exactly right.”

“Strange. She always asks for tea, when she visits?”

“Yeah, because now everyone else’s coffee is ruined for her.” Dash laughed. “She’s the only one that can make it how she likes it now.”

“Milk, three sugars, if I remember correctly.” Rarity leaned across the table, chin on a hoof.

“Huh? No, that’s how I take it, I think Twilight—” Rainbow started, stopped. Again, Rarity’s eyes twinkled in that way she did when she was waiting for Dash to catch up to her. “Right, you meant me.”

“I didn’t get a chance to offer before. I like my little chances to show I’ve been paying attention.”

Dash did not want to admit how much ‘attention’ did it for her, but it was pretty obvious from the way Rarity was looking at her that she knew she’d scored a direct hit. “I really wish I’d been paying attention to more than just your butt right now.”

Rarity stopped still as she processed that, made absolutely sure she’d heard Dash say it. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean, your human butt is like, one of the best I’ve ever seen? Soft and firm at the same time? Like, you spank it and there’s a solid thwack to it, but you rest your hand on it and it’s all give.” Dash nodded thoughtfully at the memory.

“Dash,” Rarity hissed, trying to sound annoyed. “We’re in a very nice place right now.”

“Whereas pony butts,” Dash gestured to Rarity’s with her wing, “kind of go all the way up, right?” Dash continued. “It’s leg all the way up to the tail. So I’m like, okay so this has to be what a perfect pony butt looks like. What makes it that? Is it good enough I can kind of appreciate it as its own thing?”

Rarity hunched forward a little, wishing her dress had a collar she could pull up and hide behind, opting to pull her chin off her hoof and shield her face with it instead. “Well?” she asked. “Can you?”

It was the worst possible moment for the waiter to show up, and the look he gave Dash made it clear he’d done it on purpose. Rarity sat back up straight in her chair and went bright red, and Dash pulled up the menu again and picked something blindly.

“The umeboshi, thank you.”

“I’ll have the uh, salamagundi with hucklemon?” Dash asked. There was no way she pronounced it right, she pronounced every syllable separately like she was chewing paper

“Excellent choices, ma’ams.” The waiter took their menus. “And for drinks?”

“Yes, we’ll need a minute to discuss that.” Rarity slipped the drinks menu across to Dash. “I was thinking a wine flight for tasting. Would you be interested?”

Dash looked at the flight. It was five glasses of very expensive wine you were kind of supposed to drink in order, but still, it was five glasses of expensive wine. Rarity looked excited to explain all the flavours and types to her, and Rainbow’s stomach knotted. “I’ll just have a water, thanks?” she said to the waiter.

Rarity gave Dash a confused look. “Just the house red for tonight then, I’ll trust the sommelier.”

“Of course.” The waiter made for the kitchen and left them again. Rarity was still trying to stare through Dash, trying to work out what had happened.

“It was all just going to taste the same to me anyway,” Dash said. “Would have been a waste.”

“There were red and white wines on there. Surely you can tell that much of a difference?”

Dash shrugged. “I can taste that it’s different, yeah. It still would have just tasted like wine, though.”

Rarity wondered about that. “Are you more of a gin girl, then? You’d look quite handsome with an old whiskey glass but it doesn’t seem your palette-” Rarity stopped, because Dash was looking sweaty and seasick. “You will openly talk about my butt without lowering your voice, why is this what gets to you?”

“I kind of talked to the other Rainbow about this.” Dash started, stopped. “You know how she gets about cider, around cider season?”

“Yes?”

Dash glanced away. “Yeah, uh. Cider’s alcoholic on Earth. More alcoholic than beer, even.” She wasn’t even just looking sick from the embarrassment about it, just thinking about specific drinks had too many associative memories now. Just bringing up ‘gin’ reminded her of all the times she brought gin back up on herself. One of the better aftertastes, honestly, but it made the back of her throat taste blunt. “We still drank it about the same, though.”

Rarity’s eyes widened. “I’m sorry, I had no idea.”

“Yeah, and I’m kind of proud of that, honestly.” Dash rubbed the back of her neck. “Sunset helped me a lot, with everything. She was really good about keeping it private. It’s kind of a sign of how much you lost control, how many people you couldn’t hide it from, so it’s cool that one didn’t travel.”

“I can switch to a lemonade, if it’d make things easier for you?”

“Nah, you’re cool.” Dash waved it off. Honestly, it really would make it easier for her, she just didn’t want to put her problems on other people. It wasn’t fair to ask. “It’s really not a big deal.”

“No, no,” Rarity thought. “I won’t trouble you to ask more, though if you want to talk about it, I’m interested in hearing about it.”

Dash stared at Rarity like she’d grown a second head. “Why? It’s just, I made a lot of mistakes, I made my friends sad, it was way harder to stop making them sad than I thought it’d be, the end. There’s nothing interesting there, it just sucks.”

“I deal with a lot of rich ponies,” Rarity glanced around the room and lowered her voice, “and they have the most boring stories. You need conflict to drive a story, see, and so many of them have other ponies to solve their problems. Something goes wrong, and money makes it go away. Now, not all of them. I find surgeons wonderful company no matter how successful they get, and the Princess has the wealth of Equestria under her and she has no less conflict in her life for it.”

“So what?”

Rarity reached across the table, an offer to take Dash’s hoof, and Dash found herself pulling her hooves away from fidgeting under the table to meet it. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. Experience doesn’t come with age, age merely provides more opportunities for it. In time you’ll no longer think of yourself as the person who made those mistakes, but forevermore will you be the person who overcame them. That is already who I see, and that will always be interesting to me.”

Dash tried to pull away from Rarity’s hoof, flinched out of it, but Rarity held tight and stared her down. “Thanks,” she said, instead.

“You don’t mean that.” Rarity squeezed Dash’s hoof harder. “Why not?”

“Because you’re saying it was basically worth it just to get over it, right? Like, I’m more interesting now.” Dash tried to pull away again, and this time Rarity let her. “And it wasn’t, it was just, bad. I messed up and I hurt people who didn’t deserve it.”

“That is not what I said,” Rarity said, and to Rainbow it sounded cold and angry - but when she managed to look at Rarity’s face there was no sign of it there. “I am saying that you will get to live the rest of your life as better for it. Whether or not the price was worth it, it has already been paid. That is something to look forward to, not back on.”

Rainbow balked. She almost wanted to run, and it was only how calm and proud that Rarity was acting that was keeping her pinned to her seat. “Listen, I’m better now, but this is something that’s never going away, right? Like, I still, I don’t… Is relapse a thing, in Equestria, or is that a thing that doesn’t happen here?”

“It is, but you won’t.” Rarity said so confidently that Rainbow kind of… it was like someone rung her soul like a gong. Rarity wasn’t placating or reassuring, it was just like she’d looked into Rainbow’s heart, did a risk assessment, and came back with a result as objective as an engineer checking bridge foundations. It was the kind of belief in her that Rainbow couldn’t doubt. “And if you did,” Rarity continued, “then it would be something you could learn from, to make it easier to never happen again.”

The waiter arrived with their drinks. Rarity held her wine glass off the table the second the waiter let go of it. “Excuse me, I’ve changed my mind, could I have the lemonade instead?”

The waiter took the wine. “As long as the madam is aware that once it has been poured, it cannot be returned.”

“Then it will make a lovely gift for the kitchen.” Rarity smiled at the waiter.

“Of course.”

Rainbow pulled her leather jacket’s collar up around her face. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

“No, I didn’t,” Rarity agreed. “It was enough that I wanted to.”

“Is this just, part of dating someone younger than you?” Dash asked nervously, trying to break her own sense of tension. “Just, unloading life advice like that?”

“Absolutely.” Rarity rolled her eyes. “It’s the next closest thing I can get to yelling at my younger self everything she took too long to learn.”

“But… You’ve got a younger self you can yell at?”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “Yes, but she won’t listen to me.”

Rainbow snorted hard at that. “Wait, really?”

“She’s gotten it into her head that if I learned it, then she can learn it on her own. The rest she ignores because she thinks she can do better.” Rarity scoffed at that, as the waiter quietly put a lemonade in front of her. “I knew she’d be like that, obviously, that’s half of what I was trying to yell at her about.”

Rainbow snickered, and thought about asking advice from her older self and… empathized with the younger Rarity a lot, actually. She wanted to treat that Rainbow as her floor, not her ceiling, which meant trying to take different advice. If she wanted to talk to that Rainbow, it was going to be because ‘different’ ended up way worse and she knew she had a safety net to fall back into.

Rarity felt more like going for the next swing of the trapeze act.

Their plates were slipped in front of them. Rarity’s looked like a weird yellow liquid with green and orange jelly lumps in it, while Dash’s looked like the fancy folded napkin spikes you get at weddings, made out of grilled vegetables. There were two of them, not that big.

“Lovely. Yours looks interesting.” Rarity eyed Dash’s napkin-spike vegetables across the table.

“I have no idea what this is going to taste like.” Dash took a bite. It was an explosion of flavour, like, good, like, really good. She could see why Rarity liked this place so much. She took another bite, finishing the first of her spikes. “Wow. This is insane.”

“The menu can be a bit intimidating. Even for locals the ingredients here can be a bit strange and unfamiliar.” Rarity took a spoonful of hers and made a look of complete and utter bliss. “It’s a matter of trust, I find. Things I’d normally be too intimidated to try, I try here. This is a restaurant I know that if it’s on the menu, it’s there for a reason.”

“Which is why you took me here, right?” Dash asked, taking a bite of her second spike and having her head explode with flavour again. She thought her tastebuds would be numb by now, it felt like they should be. “To show I can trust you with the unfamiliar?”

“That would have been clever,” Rarity grumbled, clearly annoyed she hadn’t thought of it. “This was just the nicest place in Ponyville I could think of.”

Rainbow took her last bite of the dish, and the last bit of sauce off her plate with the edge of a fork. “So when’s the next course?”

Rarity looked up and blinked. “Ah, dear. That was it, actually, you’re meant to take smaller bites. After this would just be dessert.”

“What?” Dash blinked. “No way. That was like…” She looked at the other diners. “What do I do if I’m still hungry?”

Rarity sighed. “That is the other side of the unfamiliar, of course. Sometimes you need to learn some things just aren’t for you.” She raised a hoof and the waiter was beside them. “Excuse me, can I have this to-go?”

“To-go?” the waiter asked, somewhat incredulously. He shook his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Thank you.”

The waiter disappeared and came back with a plastic container, which Rarity poured her meal into, and a bill which he immediately gave to Rarity instead of putting in the middle of the table, which frustrated Rainbow. “Hey, uh, we could be splitting it, you know?”

“Excuse me.” The waiter bobbed his head without taking the bill back from Rarity, who shook her head. Like, it was just that assumed that Rarity had to be paying for both of them.

“I’ll be paying by cheque, if that’s alright?” Rarity asked, and the waiter nodded, so Rarity pulled out a pocketbook and wrote a way-too-big number with an immaculate flourish. “Perfect as always, I hope the chef accepts the glass of wine as a token of apology for not staying for dessert.”

“He will be happy to hear that, madame Rarity.”

The waiter slipped away again, and Rarity gave an awkward smile to Dash. “They’re artists, as much as anything. They really will be disappointed they didn’t get a reaction to dessert. Your record finish will have to be a show of appreciation enough.”

Rainbow looked at Rarity’s tupperware. “If you wanted to stay for dessert—”

But Rarity was already waving it off. “I’ve made a mistake,” she explained. “I wasn’t thinking, when I picked this place. I just chose where I would take someone I am taking seriously, and in doing so I have treated you like you are anyone else. Which is a very stupid thing to have done because I am quite attracted to who you actually are, and this has done nothing but imply otherwise.” She sounded genuinely disgusted with herself; Dash was actually taken aback by the force of it.

First she tried to work out how she messed up at pretending she wasn’t miserable, found all the little gestures through the conversation she’d let that leak out, had totally gotten wrong enjoying the food too much - was that a mistake? That was the first time she really got this place. Except Rarity was already out of her chair, offering to help Dash out of hers to leave.

Not Dash’s fault, then. Rarity was just… scarily socially aware. Worse than a mindreader, someone who worked out what you’d think before you even thought it. Dash stood up. “I took it as a compliment that you thought this was the kind of place you could take me.”

“Which is why you were never going to tell me, were you?” Rarity said low, so the other diners didn’t hear her bitter hiss as they made for the exit side-by-side.

“Sorry.”

“What?” Rarity looked surprised. “No, that was at myself, I’m realizing the position I put you in, how unfair it was. I would desperately like to make it up to you?”

Rainbow had no idea what to say to that, so she said, “Sure, that sounds cool,” without really thinking about it.

Rarity practically threw Rainbow into her bedroom like an airplane baggage handler tossing luggage onto a plane. It was pretty clear it was just because it was the best private entertaining space in the boutique - the bedroom was huge, the giant four-poster bed was comfier than any couch in the place, and it wasn’t like ponies had TVs to build their living rooms around.

No, Rarity was too driven to make up for her mistake same-for-same.

“I’m going to be honest, when you dragged me upstairs I kind of thought you might be planning a sexy way to make it up to me.” Dash lay back on Rarity’s bed and laughed. She sank into it, it felt like a cloud - she actually knew what those felt like for real, now, too.

Rarity shook her head. “Please, bad precedent. You’ve seen how the younger me is with Applejack about that. No, when I ravish you later, stars willing you will know my motives are pure. For now it would do nothing to show you I understand my mistake.”

“No, you pretty much nailed it while we were walking out.” Rainbow nodded. “Hey, so, did you say you’re going to ravish me?”

“Later, yes.” Rarity tutted, pulling a scroll out of her writing desk. “Here we are.”

“I was kind of noticing you didn’t give me underwear with this.” Dash flicked her skirt with a wing, and Rarity turned from her writing desk across the room to watch.

“Nobody wears it, darling, it’s actually more of a, a statement if you do wear any.”

“Right but like, before I was naked.” Rainbow flicked her skirt up again. “Now I’m not wearing underwear with a skirt. That’s different.”

“Is it?” Rarity’s eyes sparkled, and she turned back to her envelope. “I’ll have to remember that for the human side of things. What makes it different?”

“It’s just….” Rainbow flicked the skirt up again and watched it catch the air as it fell back down. “It just kind of means easy access. It’s like, I don’t want anything getting between you and me later, because the skirt’s open, right? Like, you can—”

“Oh!” Rarity exclaimed, flushing. “Oh, and you thought—so this whole time—” Rainbow nodded, and Rarity shook her head back. “And you didn’t say a word about it until now.”

“Yeah, I thought we were thinking the same thing, so no point in saying it.”

“Well, if you had said something earlier, we would have been.” Rarity said, still flushed red, as she finished her letter with a flourish. “There. Sound good?”

Rarity used her magic to float the letter to Rainbow, who leaned up off a pillow to read it. “Never heard of this stuff. The Tasty Treat? You have delivery in Equestria? I mean, I can grab it, but I kind of got comfortable already.”

The letter floated back, and Rarity looked absolutely devious. “No, ‘we’ don’t have delivery in Equestria. We share a very good friend, though.” Rarity burned the letter in green flame. “You’re in for a real treat, I promise you.”

“Woah, what was that. Was that magic?” Rainbow watched the smoke pour out the window and zip off into the distance. “Where’s the smoke going?”

“I’d rather not spoil the surprise.” Rarity grinned, shutting the window tight. “I’m surprised, actually. Getting more used to Equestria, then?”

Rainbow mostly thought about how Rarity was still Rarity if she closed her eyes when they kissed, before. Since then she just thought of doing everything with her eyes closed, focusing on the feeling of Rarity doing things to her instead of getting caught up on… fur, hooves, horns, wings. “I’m getting better at not thinking about it, anyway.”

“You say that, and I never did get an answer to whether you appreciated my butt ‘as its own thing’,” Rarity teased, turning and flicking her tail before crawling into bed next to Dash. She stayed propped up on an elbow, not getting too comfortable. “Well?”

“Lemme see it again?” Dash asked, and Rarity turned and gave a look over her shoulder as Rainbow studied it. “Definitely still like your human side better,” Dash admitted, “but I do like how much it shows off your legs, like this.”

“I must admit, I do see your point.” Rarity said wistfully, rolling back to face Dash again. “I love my silky-soft fur too much to give it up – right up until the moment it gets wet and sticky, and then I am so jealous of skin I could scream.” Dash grinned at that, and Rarity tapped her nose with a hoof. “Yes, it’s funny now, but just you wait until everyone else can see what we’ve been doing because there’s a damp spot that just won’t come out, and see how funny you find it then.”

“I kind of like how steady everything feels, here,” Dash admitted, wiggling her front legs. “Never have to worry about tripping or falling over or anything here. Feels way harder to get taken out by a banana peel.”

“Much stronger, too.” Rarity poked Dash in the ribs. “Can’t forget that.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that? Stuff that should kill me just gives me a scuffed knee here, and apparently it only takes weeks for broken bones to heal up?”

“I’m not sure if we’re durable or you’re just fragile,” Rarity wondered. “We’d need a third universe to compare, I think.”

“Gee, thanks,” Rainbow muttered. “What else do you miss?”

“Necks,” Rarity answered, immediately. “We’re spoiled in riches and wonders here, but human necks are hardly there at all. I tried to bite you properly, and I swear I could barely fit my mouth between your jaw and your shoulder, and even then I had to push your head out of the way a bit.” She thought about that a bit more, and tapped her chin. “Now, doing that was devastatingly attractive, I will say, I just resent that I needed to do it.”

Rainbow looked at Rarity’s neck, and took in all at once just how long it was - where a human neck might be as tall as a fist, here they were more like a foreleg. Dash reached up to touch her own and wondered if the whole thing was as sensitive, but she couldn’t tell, it was like trying to tickle herself. Because if it was… Yeah she could definitely see missing that. “Isn’t there a problem trying to do anything with it though?” she asked. “I mean, what with the fur and all, everything’s gotta be impossible to…” She tried to think of the least weird way to say it, failed, and shrugged. “You can’t suck on anything.”

“What?” Rarity blinked. “That’s something I find so frustrating about your side, you can’t bite anything properly.”

“I thought you bit great, actually.” Dash grinned. “Totally worth the bruises.”

“I did well enough, given the circumstances, but I was hardly satisfied with that performance.” Rarity brushed her mane out of her eyes – eyes now focused on Dash’s neck. “Perhaps a demonstration would be easier?”

Rainbow offered her neck, but even that enthusiasm wasn’t enough. Rarity reached across the bed to twirl a hank of Rainbow’s dyed-red mane around her hoof and pull her head back, smiling wide when she got that sharp little gasp out of Rainbow she did from the last time they’d done this in very different bodies - and then she bit hard underneath Dash’s jaw, along the side, where the sinew ran down from the back of her ears, and Dash was swimming through stars.

The slight layer of fur took the sharpest edge of the teeth off, so Rarity could bite down way harder than last time before it started to cross the bad-pain threshold. Rarity squeezed as she flicked a tongue below the furline and directly against Dash’s skin underneath, and then when the pressure was enough to make a seal she suckled properly, and Dash’s ankles crossed over as she squeaked.

Rarity leaned back and wiped her lips. “See? I suppose bare skin is nice once you’ve had some experience, but for me it just feels too much like holding back.”

Dash pulled a pillow over her face while she recovered. “I hate this.”

“What?”

“It’s weird finding out I like anything about these bodies like that.”

“I should hope not.” Rarity tutted. “This is my real body, after all, at least to me. I would prefer you be open to the idea you might like it.”

Before Dash could say anything to that, or think anything about that, there was a grinding sound as Rarity’s second-story window was pulled open, and an absolutely incredible smelling paper bag hurtled through it. Rarity grabbed it with her magic before it could hit the far wall and brought it back over to the bed.

“Thank you, Twilight.” Rarity sang out happily, and the window slammed shut.

“You didn’t.” Dash stared at the bag, bursting out laughing. “You totally did!”

“Listen, she can teleport here from Canterlot and I cannot.” Rarity rummaged through the bag and spread the little plastic containers across the bed. “Drat. I’ll need to go get bowls. And forks. Don’t go anywhere.” Rarity pushed herself off the bed, much to Dash’s disappointment, and turned back thoughtfully. “Normally she just leaves it at the front door and knocks. Do you think she’s upset we didn’t invite her in?”

“You think she saw…” Dash pointed to her neck, and Rarity hovered beside the bed thinking about it.

“She most definitely did.” Rarity tapped her chin. “She’s likely more annoyed about that than anything. Maybe inviting her in would have just made things worse.” She gave Dash one last wicked look before making for the doorway. “Heavens, she might have thought I was joking, that would be a disaster.”

“Wait.” Dash sat up in bed, trying not to tip any of the containers over. “What do you mean you weren’t joking.”

But Rarity did not turn back, giving Dash no read on her as she closed the bedroom door behind herself. Dash fell back against the bed.

“I mean, I wouldn’t be into that though, right?” she asked herself. “Like, Rarity’s one thing, ‘cause I already like her. But the Princess is like, huge, and she’s got all that wing, and she’s—” Rainbow flushed, and glared at nothing. “She’s way more pony than most ponies are! Relax.” She was definitely still flushed.

Dash pulled the pillow back over her head and punched her face through it. “Nope. Nope. Don’t want pony threesomes. I got one exception. One! Exception. Two makes it a thing.” She thought about how long Twilight’s muzzle was, even longer than Rarity’s, and wondered… did she kiss it from the front and figure it out, or if she went around the sides… Not it hinged way back, right? She’d be able to fit all of Rainbow’s muzzle in hers, and then if Rainbow opened her mouth to kiss back-

She jumped halfway off the bed like a startled cat when Rarity came back with the bowls and plates. “You were thinking about Twilight that entire time, weren’t you?”

“And you!” Rainbow shot back. “I mean, no.”

“Mm.” Rarity crawled back into her spot on the far side of the bed, and her magic neatly distributed everything into serving bowls. One of them ended up on Rainbow’s lap. “On the one hoof, the romantic in me is charmed that you find me attractive enough to not care what body I’m in. On the other, I would like to know I’m desirable to you in every universe.” There was a competitive edge to her smile, a challenge she was going to win.

Dash sat up more, and Rarity pulled her leather jacket off her, pulling a spare coathanger from a wardrobe across the room and hanging it off the bedroom door handle for her. She kept the skirt on, though, the torn skirt that was just a bit too girly for her on its own. “I do, though.”

“Yes, you find me attractive.” Rarity sat back up on the bed, propping herself up against her pillows, and stabbed at a bowl of rice with a heavy green sauce Rainbow didn’t recognize, but smelled incredible. “That’s not the same thing. It’d be nice if you found the appeal in this species, just so you could appreciate what a truly exemplary specimen of it I am.”

Rainbow narrowed her eyes. She took a dark red bowl instead that smelled like cumin and fried onions and a bunch of other stuff she didn’t recognize. “Basically, you want me to find the Princess hot too, just so I can tell you you’re hotter?”

“Yes, obviously.” Rarity stabbed another bite of her food and gave Dash an expecting look.

“What if I think she’s hotter?” Dash took another bite of hers too to make it easier to keep a straight face. “As a pony, anyway.”

“I… well.” Rarity hesitated. There was a far-away look in her eyes as she stared straight ahead. “Really, I’ve done this to myself. She’s become unfair competition, since she replaced Celestia. She’s so tall now…”

“I was kidding, Rares.”

“You know how her mane ripples all the time, even in an airtight room?” Rarity continued, shaking. “Solar wind! Honestly.”

Rainbow balanced her food on her lap so she could lean over and kiss Rarity’s cheek. “Does it help that you’re the only two I could maybe think of as hot, even when you’re ponies?”

Rarity’s eyes cleared, and she snapped back to herself again. “I think I can work with that, yes.” She gave Rainbow a narrowed-eyed look. “Maybe?”

“Maybe,” Dash repeated, shoveling another mouthful so she didn’t have to say more. Except Rarity just started waiting for her to finish, so Dash had to start chewing slower and slower to get out of it. She was lucky it tasted so good. Rarity broke first.

“I was joking about inviting Twilight in,” she said. “Thinking about it more, though…”

Dash choked on her bite so hard bits of rice went up the back of her nose. Rarity had to thump her back to help her splutter it the rest of the way out. “You’re not really thinking about it, are you?”

“Only because I’m surprised at how much you did.” Rarity leaned across and stole a bite of Rainbow’s choice of dark red stuff, and hummed happily. “Well picked.” Rainbow held a fork in a wingtip and tried to steal some of Rarity’s back, but she used her own to deflect Rainbow’s with a fencing parry. “Ah-ah.”

Rainbow went for another strike, and Rarity deflected expertly again. Rainbow flicked her wingtip up, but when Rarity rose to meet it, she brought it down faster than Rarity could change course and manage to get a scoop around Rarity’s shrieked protest. “Hey! That’s mine!” Dash sprayed sticky rice over the top layer of bedsheets, which Rarity started picking up with her magic while Rainbow stole a bite.

Spinach! That’s what made it so green, there was spinach and—wow, it was really good too.

“It’s not just that it’s Twilight,” Dash finally admitted. “I mean, seeing her be good with Pinkie kind of makes me a bit jealous, but it’s not that. It’s more like, it’s thinking about the two of you together? Like—” Then Dash realized what she was saying, and her mouth clamped shut.

Rarity put her food down to crawl closer to her on the bed, eyes wide and shining. “Go on,” she demanded, face inches from Dash’s. Dash gulped.

“It’s just, you know what you two are like as a team, right?” Dash nervously stirred what was left of her food without eating it, toying with it. “It’d be like, both of you giving each other advice, suggestions, trying to one up each other. Like she’s being smart and you’re being creative and you’re both…” Dash tried to think of how to say it, and flushed right to the tips of her ears. “Really good at sharing.”

Rarity’s eyes sparkled. “Ah,” she said, at last. “I have never felt so profoundly flattered by someone explaining why they’d want to sleep with someone else.”

Dash snort-laughed at that. “Well, why were you thinking about it?”

Rarity grinned. “I was thinking how fun it would be to win.”

Rainbow almost choked on her rice again, but she was ready for it that time. “What if we ganged up on you, though?”

Rarity considered it. “No, I don’t think you have a chance at that.”

“What do you mean?” Rainbow sat up straighter, suddenly serious. “Maybe I can’t take you on my own, but with the both of us—”

But Rarity was already shaking her head. “No, you’d need to convince Twilight to change sides. You’d have an easier time convincing me to gang up on Twilight with you,” Rarity licked her lips. “It would be fun to make her beg… But you and her against me? Hardly.”

Rainbow glared, but she looked within herself and wondered. No matter how the math played out in her head, though, she could work out ways Rarity could take both of them, or Twilight could take both of them, but none where she could take out either of them. She had no bargaining power, except… “I think Twilight would totally side with me,” Rainbow said, “if she thought you needed to be knocked down a peg.”

“Moi?” Rarity sat up straight, her ears pricked high and an indignant hoof to her chest. “I will have you know that while I have a very healthy self-esteem, it’s only because I really am as good as I say.”

Dash started to move, stopped, and gave Rarity a meaningful look. Rarity used her magic to clear all the food off the bed and move their bowls to side tables so Rainbow could pounce on her, pinning Rarity’s wrists beside her head and climbing on top of her. Rarity squealed in surprise and indignant outrage: the pounce had been a complete ambush she had no way to know was coming.

That was kind of the best thing with Rarity: there were pro-wrestlers that couldn’t match her for kayfabe. They were the only two of their friends that understood it didn’t matter if an act was believable or not, the only thing that mattered was how hard you were willing to commit to it anyway.

Rainbow looked down at Rarity. “Maybe it’s not about you needing to be taken down a peg,” She peppered Rarity’s neck with kisses. “Maybe it’s just that it’d be fun to see it.”

“No! You brute!” Rarity struggled against Rainbow’s hooves. “You savage. You dare remove me from my rightful place?”

“You’re looking great where you are,” Rainbow kissed the other side of Rarity’s neck and appreciated what she meant by just how much more of it there was than usual. She could work her way up or down the length of it and just keep going if she paced herself. “Looking pretty rightful to me.”

“You think?” Rarity batted her eyelashes, and Rainbow stopped kissing so she could lean back and show Rarity she was looking her up and down, taking her seriously.

“Yeah, looks rightful from here.”

“Hmm.” Rarity gave a doe-eyed look up at Dash, holding her forelegs up together in a pleading, innocent way. “What would you say looks most rightful about me?”

Dash froze and looked down. “Ah, it’s got to be your…” She thought about it. She couldn’t get over that she was looking at a pony. Like, did she find Rarity hot? Yes. Obviously. Still, trying to think of reasons why still broke her brain. If it was a human body she could say stuff like hips, or curves, or stuff about her chest, or all sorts of things. But trying to break Rarity down into pieces she liked, removing them from the whole? The whole was what was giving her permission to like the pieces! Just saying she liked Rarity’s legs was too much like saying she liked pony legs.

“Tsk.” Rarity’s forelegs dropped away, and her eyes sparkled in that way they did when she was doing something mean. “Too late.”

Rarity pulled Rainbow up with her magic, flipped upside down, and slammed her back down into the mattress like a meteorite. Then she crawled next to her and traced the tip of her hoof in lovehearts around Rainbow’s chest. It felt very, very nice actually.

Rainbow kept waiting for Rarity to climb on top of her, like she’d done, but she seemed to be too happy to just sit by Rainbow’s side, holding her down with magic and drinking in the sight of her. Climbing on top would ruin her view, it seemed.

“You were doing so well, too.” Rarity pressed down on Rainbow’s ribs a bit harder. “If you’d thought a little quicker, I would have accepted ‘how you look beneath me’.”

Rainbow kicked herself. That would have been a good answer. “I was being way too literal with it.”

“I could tell.” Rarity went back to her languid trace of love-hearts against Dash’s chest. “It’s actually gotten quite funny, now.”

“What?” Dash asked, putting up a token resistance against her bindings. “What has?”

“The denial.” Rarity stopped her tracing again, and Dash was starting to get so used to the touch she felt empty when it was pulled away. “It would be one thing if you were just trying to spare my feelings, but every time we get a bit more intimate I catch you staring. Now the problem is no longer getting you to see the appeal, it’s getting you to say it.”

Dash’s resistance against her bindings became a lot more sincere, but Rarity held. “No! You’ll never get it out of me alive! Hang me, draw me, quarter me, I’ll never admit I’m into ponies!”

“Admit it,” Rarity echoed, and her touch returned to Rainbow’s chest, and her hoof was warm. “Even in your denial, you confess.”

“Twist my words, twist my arm, see where any of it gets you, you… twisted witch!” Rainbow snapped, and Rarity gave a happy click of her tongue.

“Inspired, aren’t we?” The tip of her hoof trailed up, up Rainbow’s neck and under her jaw, tilting her chin up to force her to look Rarity in the eye. “Why must you make this so much harder on yourself than it needs to be?”

“I dunno.” Dash shrugged, and her bindings went slack. “Just, what’s in it for me, I guess? It’s kind of weird, and everyone back home’s going to laugh at me. It’s bad enough everyone’s going to make fun of me for liking ponies, it’d be worse if it’s true.”

“What’s in it for….” Rarity shook her head in disbelief of the question, then leaned closer to Dash and fluttered her eyelashes with a lazy, languid smile. “Why, you get me, of course.”

Dash considered this for less than a second before kicking away every conviction and ounce of self preservation out of her body, like ballast over the side rail of a sinking ship.

“I love your legs. I want to bury my face in your fur and just rub all over it. Pony ears are way, way better than human ears and I can’t stop thinking about how awesome that’d feel to nibble on. The muzzle stuff is still super weird to me for kissing but I think of, like, how good it might feel other places and my whole brain fogs over. Also my wings are super sensitive, it’s like having three backs and two of them explode when you touch them. I kind of want to lick your horn like it’s an ice cream cone? Also the magic is, it’s as cool as you made it out to be and you haven’t even done anything yet. Hooves are still weirding me out and the like, crotch tits stuff is a huge turn off but I’m kind of big into doing stuff with my mouth anyway if you hadn’t noticed, I mean, I kind of make it obvious? And the fact that it’s way, way better at doing stuff now makes it way easier to forgive the lack of fingers, even before the wing stuff. Also the range of motion is way better than I thought it’d be, like, our ponies just of just-” Rarity released the magic on Dash’s limbs so she could mime a Frankenstein walk over the bed, and then bound her again, “Like that, right? I can still just splay out like this, and it’s fantastic. I feel like I’ve got way less bones than I’m used to, but way more muscle, so I’m just super stretchy, and I want to know if you feel like that too-”

“I do.” Rarity agreed, making a ‘go on’ gesture, trying to interject without interrupting.

“Awesome,” Dash nodded, “That’s so cool. And like… What? Why’re you looking at me like that?”

“I’m just thinking about how pure my motivations for ravishing you are, right now.” Rarity kissed Rainbow on the lips. Close-lipped, short and tender. “I think I have proven, beyond a shadow of any doubt, that I know exactly who I am attracted to.” She kissed Rainbow again, and this time Rainbow’s lips followed after until the back of her head was lifted off the bed. “And I shall not make the mistake again of treating her otherwise.”

The Terrestrial Date

Rarity was wearing the navy suit jacket again, this time just with a simple pencil skirt and a tight black shirt. Not quite as powerful or striking as the full suit ensemble she’d visited with last time, but she suspected if she dressed up so much as that it might leave Dash too much of a smoldering ruin for them to hold a conversation.

No, better save that for someone’s birthday.

Of course, of course Dash pulled over to pick her up on a horrible beast of a motorcycle.

“Surely you’re joking.” Rarity stared, and Dash kicked the beast and it guttered out its dreadful noise in response. She swung a leg off the bike and tossed Rarity a heavy leather jacket that weighed as much as a small child, and a white helmet with her cutiemark on it.

“The helmet’s a present from our Rarity. Applejack takes her dirtbiking, she said you’d love this.”

“Collusion was involved, then.” Rarity donned the protective wear despite her complaints. Dash had braved fancy restaraunts for her, turnabout was fair play. “They know we’re still seeing each other, then?”

“Yeah, well, yeah.” Dash shrugged. “I’m doing a lot better when I can talk to people about it.”

Rarity sighed. She felt indescribably uncomfortable about that, which she wished she could just take as wishing to keep this small thing private and between them. Mostly she wanted to minimize the collateral damage in the case of an explosion, when Dash was perfectly within her rights to minimize the chances of the explosion ever happening instead. No, her way was better. “What have you told them?” Dash flinched. “I’m not mad at you, I just want to prepare myself for what jokes they’re capable of making.”

“A lot.” Dash said, and left it at that. “What about the Princess, she knows about us, right?”

“Hardly.” Rarity rolled her eyes as she finally got the helmet on. She had a bigger head than her younger self, that seemed appropriate. “She-” Goodness, this thing muffled the voice, didn’t it? She raised her voice to a shout. “She didn’t recognize you!”

“What, really?” Dash looked over her shoulder and pulled Rarity’s arms around her waist to keep steady as Rarity tried to settle on the bike. Rarity’s grip was gentle at first, but she squeezed Dash like a vice the second the bike moved underneath them. Judging by Dash’s demonic laughter, it was the correct thing to do.

It wasn’t until they were at a stop light that all was quiet enough Dash could finish her thought.

“Dyed mane, I still had the skirt covering the cutie mark. I could see it. So she just, what, thinks you’re a slut for pegasus now that I’ve given you a taste?”

Rarity flushed under her helmet. “Younger pegasus, yes.”

Dash snickered. “Cougars are just big cats. They like to pounce things with wings. Checks out.”

“How dare y-” Rarity started but then the light had turned green and she screamed and hugged Dash even tighter again. It took a while until Dash cruised them to another red light.

“Huh. You really haven’t talked to anyone about me then? Not even like, the older me?” Dash asked with a tone Rarity couldn’t read behind the helmet.

“Well, no. Fluttershy knows, of course. She’s less than pleased about it.”

There was no tell of Dash’s feeling but for the rumble of the huge bike beneath them. “You’re that embarrassed about me?”

Rarity spluttered. “What? No!” Then, quieter. “It’s just, I am looking for something quite serious, and sleeping with someone so much younger has… connotations, that I am simply promiscuous. Someone unserious, having a good time.”

“But-” Dash started.

“Yes.” Rarity finished. “The fact that it is true makes it worse, yes. And I am having a good time, thank you very much.”

“So you’re not embarrassed ‘cause you’re dating me.” Dash said. “You’re embarrassed because you’re not dating me.”

Rarity saw too many traps in the question to know which to avoid, which made it pointless to dodge. “Yes, that’s a good way to put it.”

“Well, that’s great then.” Dash flicked her wrists which made the machine under them growl with excitement, and the vibrations from it shook Rarity from her toes to her teeth. “Not dating me should be embarrassing for you.”

She whooped as she gunned the bike out of the intersection as fast as she could make it go. Rarity knew it was just to make her squeeze Dash as tight as she possibly could, but it was so fun she found it hard to care.

Dash dropped Rarity off at the front stoop of her apartment before heading for the underground garage, taking the borrowed helmet and heavy jacket with her. Rarity missed the jacket the second she took it off, it felt like a wonderfully secure hug.

A minute later Dash came back up spinning her keys. She looked mad.

“Something wrong?” Rarity asked.

“Yeah, no, it’s cool.” Dash spun her keys and headed for the glass doors in, stopped. “Actually, it’s not. I was joking when I said you should be embarrassed about not dating me, but I thought I want to bring my girlfriend up here, not just the girl that wants to fuck me, right?” Dash glared at the keys in her hands, not at Rarity. “I don’t think I’m cool with that anymore.”

“Is the label so important?” Rarity crossed her arms and stood on the sidewalk at the curb. She hadn’t moved since Dash had dropped her off the bike. “You’d be taking me up there with you, either way. Is that not enough?”

“The only people who insist upon not putting labels on relationships are trying to lie to, use or manipulate you.” Rainbow said in a bad but uncomfortably recognizing imitation of Rarity’s own voice.

“I told you that, did I?”

“The other you did, yeah. About you.”

Rarity stood outside the entrance to Rainbow’s apartment building, and got the distinct realization her answer determined if she was allowed up tonight or not. “What do you want me to say, then?”

“I don’t know,” Dash leaned against the black iron row of letterboxes set into the industrial-chic cinderblock wall of the building’s facade. “I was cool just being friends with benefits, and stuff, back when it didn’t feel like shit all the time. But I like you, okay? LIke, a lot. You know how much it makes me feel like shit, that me not being good enough is such a problem for you?”

“You are-”

“So say we’re girlfriends then!” Rainbow didn’t shout it, she barely raised her voice, but the sheer level of heat in her voice made it amount to the same. It felt like being yelled at. Dash said it while slumped with both hands in the pockets of her leather jacket and a pissed off kick at the air in front of her.

Rarity was silent.

Rainbow shook her head and looked at her in disbelief. “That’s all it is, isn’t it. You like me enough to fuck me, but I’m not-”

“Don’t you dare say you’re not good enough.” Rarity cut over her, and her own simmering anger was enough that Dash looked back up from her feet to Rarity’s face in shock. “That is not the problem.”

“You keep saying that, but you never say what yours is.” Dash looked away again. “So I don’t know if you’re lying, or scared, or what. I just know it sucks, and it hurts, and I’m done.”

Rarity curled her fingers into a fist and found that most cathartic. It was a thing she couldn’t do with hooves, but the tightness of balling a fist was… sublime in a situation like this. She let it go just to do it again and dig her nails into her palm. “This, this is why I said one night. Just one night. This is where it has gotten us.”

That hurt Dash, it cut her. She kicked off the wall and squared herself to throw a punch. “You said you wanted more too! Don’t make this my fault! You wanted-!”

“And still want!” Rarity took a step closer, into the range of any strike Dash would throw at her. “If I told you my honest answer, that I would like to think of you as my girlfriend, then that would make us girlfriends. Dating, in a relationship with each other. And all the entitlements and expectations that come with that. Is that what you want?”

“Yes!” Dash threw her arms up, more confused than angry. “Obviously!”

“If we are merely fucking-” Rarity paused as a nervous woman passed between their argument on the narrow strip of sidewalk, giving Rarity an annoyed look as she did. “Excuse me ma’am, this is between me and my girlfriend and you can sod off. If we are merely fucking, then not making time for each other, being too busy, all are merely disappointing. The same things from a partner, though, are grounds for tension, conflict and resentment. Why, why can’t I just have all the good in you, without any of the expectations? Why must you want more from me, when the bottom of the barrel keeps the dregs?”

“You really just told that lady I’m your girlfriend?” Rainbow grabbed Rarity’s arm and pulled her closer to the entrance alcove up to her apartment - at least, off the sidewalk.

“Of course I did. Do you think ‘friends with benefits’ have fights like this? No, one only fights like this in relationships worth the fight. That’s the entire problem.” Rarity sighed. “This is what it means to commit.”

Rainbow tugged Rarity’s arm again. “So you’re cool with telling people we’re girlfriends?”

“I will, apparently, literally yell it in the streets.” Rarity made a face like she’d bit into something sour.

Rainbow nodded and made eyes like an excited puppy. “So, just to be real clear. You’re my girlfriend now?”

“If I’m being honest, it was everything I had in me not to unilaterally declare it when Sapphire Shores insinuated, what was it you said? That she made it seem like it would be more shameful if I were dating you.” Rarity sucked on the inside of her cheek and looked away, even as Dash leaned closer into her personal space. “But I thought that as much as the both of you ought to know that I thought you deserving of it, I still thought you as worth deserving more than the relationship we’re capable of having.”

“Seriously, you’re still hung up on that?” Rainbow rolled her eyes. “You’ve already bit that bullet, we’re dating now, get over it.”

Rarity blinked. “The problems are still real, Dash. My confession only makes them moreso.”

“This is everything I wanted.” Dash shrugged. “Problems solved to me.”

“Right.” Rarity muttered. “Well. Might you let me upstairs to explain the rest, then? Might be better than the street.”

“Right! Yeah, okay so-” Dash fumbled for the key in her pocket as fast as she could, and Rarity sighed in relief. She looked down at her hands and found them shaking, even, which was most curious. Little shivers ran down her fingertips, she couldn’t hold them steady. She’d have to ask someone - not Dash, not now - what that meant.

She knew what caused it, at least. It was the moment Dash reached for her keys and she knew that it meant she was still being invited up after all, still being let in. She thought about how long the walk home to the portal would have been. She wouldn’t have cried. She would have ripped a trash can from the sidewalk and thrown it into a wall, maybe, or broken a street sign, or screamed from the top of her lungs once she was a block away. And then screamed again.

She would find anything she could break, and she would break it. She would find things to stomp and smash and grind beneath her heel, and safe things to punch and hit and hit. She would have been too angry at herself to do anything else. She would have been too angry at how badly she’d hurt Dash being too scared to hurt her, and how irresponsible she’d been to say yes to her just because of how desperately she wanted her, and how much of a coward she’d been to lose her.

She didn’t know if she’d have cried then, or not. If she was too old, or too tired. If she’d have simply collapsed from self-loathing rage, exhausted and sick. Or if it was that very same self-loathing deluding herself into thinking she couldn’t anymore, wouldn’t over this.

All she knew is that being invited upstairs meant she’d never have to find out.

Because the truth was, in the bottom of her heart, she couldn’t see a future with Dash. For the girl, clearly, she would lead an incredible life more than she already did. But with? That-

“Hey Rares?” Dash asked as she put the keys in the lock. “You know that soulread thing you do, where you know me better than I’m saying?”

“Yes?”

“Yeah, well, I think I know you better enough now to be able to do it back to you, at least a little.” Click, the door opened, and Rarity’s head tilted to confirm that ‘inside’ was still there for her. “So here’s the thing. You know how we’re girlfriends now, right?”

“Yes, my girlfriend Rainbow Dash, who is my girlfriend.” Rarity said flatly, but Rainbow grinned dopily both times she said it.

“Yeah, so. That means you’re not allowed to decide stuff about us in your head anymore, that’s something we talk about together.” She snorted. “Like, I love you- Oh shit I shouldn’t have said that, pretend I didn’t. Uh, I like you, but you do this thing where you kind of act like you’re in a relationship and I’m in it, and not like I’m the other half of it. You know what I mean? Stop thinking stuff if you’re not going to say it.”

The inside of Rarity’s head shut up like it had been slapped as Rainbow took her hand and pulled her to the elevator.

It was funny, Rarity thought, that Dash had money but clearly had no idea what to do with it.

She still lived in the same apartment she’d first moved out to, with Sunset Shimmer, back when they played together. But then Sunset had wanted to go back into college while Dash stayed full time, and just absorbed the space that Sunset had previously taken. So long ago there was no trace anyone else had ever been here, but still all the signs of a still-younger Dash like a nest made from a molted skin.

In the living room was a television that sat upon a cabinet. The cabinet was second-hand, left out on the street for garbage pickup before Sunset and Dash had liberated it from a premature demise. The television that sat upon it cost about $15,000. Inconsistencies like that.

A shelf of albums that Dash had to block, and pull selections from, because she didn’t want to give Rarity a wrong impression from the older stuff she just hadn’t thrown away yet. A bookshelf, which was quite charming. Rarity ran her fingers along the spines and smiled.

“You’ve expanded your tastes a bit.” She said. “It’s not just adventure books anymore. Spy thrillers, noir. I do love a good noir. No fantasy?”

Dash stuck her tongue out. “That feels too kiddy stuff to me, honestly.”

Rarity tastefully decided not to mention that this was a very teenager selection of books regardless. Besides, she didn’t much care for fantasy herself. “No science fiction, either. Not that I expected any, I’m just open to you defying my expectations.”

“They’re all huge bummers.” Dash snorted. “Twilight says they’re social criticism and it’s hard to be critical and have a happy ending, but that’s boring. Seriously, why can’t you do social criticism by making me want something good, show me how you think the world could get better? Give me something to fight for, not just fight against… Also most of the authors write like if you met them they’d be assholes.”

Rarity opened her mouth, closed it again. “I must admit, I did not expect you to have such a robust take on the genre. Just once, when I thought you had met my expectations after all.”

“Just because I’m an idiot doesn’t mean I’m stupid..” Dash said.

“So that means you’ve read enough to have made that opinion on it?” Rarity pressed. “Anything in particular?”

“Ah, hey,” Dash immediately seemed nervous, and Rarity felt the warm and fuzzy feeling of having found a button she could push, “Couch. I made charcutier… charcuttery… Charcuterie?”

“Charcuterie.”

“Knew I’d get it eventually.” Dash disappeared into her kitchen. Brand new microwave, stolen fridge. Literally stolen, it was a long story that Dash was unwilling to tell, and unclear who or where it was stolen from. Twenty year old countertops in hideous 90s style, and an awful oven whose numbers had entirely worn off the knobs. A brand new sink with a filtered tap and a voracious disposal unit. An ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ attitude, but if it was broken it was replaced without any consideration for expense.

Dash had actually wiped her glass-surface coffee table before Rarity visited this time, had clearly made an effort. She lay out a plate covered in small cubes of awkwardly cut cheeses, melon, grapes, strawberries, two kinds of salted cracker, and some… Rarity poked at the last several items on the plate, in various hues of reds and pinks. She peeled some to take an experimental bite, and Dash slapped it out of her hand in panic before she could.

“Shit. Sorry, uh. Fuck, I forgot. That’s meat.”

Rarity felt quite sick, all of a sudden. “This is meat? But it’s so…” She looked at the slice lying on the glass surface of the table. It was so thin as to be translucent. “I didn’t know it could be cut like that.”

“Yeah it’s… Prosciutto.” Dash rubbed the back of her neck, grabbing the piece off the table and popping it in her mouth to get rid of it. Fortunately the table was obviously clean or Rarity would have found it even more revolting than she already did. “Ah, look, I was just trying to make the plate look like it did on the magazine cover I was copying, I wasn’t thinking.”

“May I?” Rarity asked, hesitantly, looking at another slice.

“Ah. Are you sure?” Dash asked.

“I don’t know what a prosciutto is, we don’t have any of those in Equestria.” Rarity picked the meat up again. “It makes it a little easier to stomach, not knowing.”

Before Dash could say what she was thinking, Rarity tried to copy the way she’d watched Dash pop it into her mouth. It made a wonderful little scroll on her tongue, and was very pleasantly salty and fatty. It was lighter than cheese, milder than olives, but actually quite nice for it. Just a very simple, mellow note of flavour.

“I can see the appeal.” She admitted, rotating the serving plate so the meat was entirely on Dash’s side. “Not so much as to be worth what it takes to get it, it’s not worth killing for. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stand seeing a prosciutto without feeling horribly guilty about it, now.”

Rainbow bit her tongue so hard Rarity watched it happen. “Yeah, it’s… I’m not defending it. It’s just, since everyone grew up with it here, it’s just there. Not eating it isn’t going to bring the prosciutto back.”

“Which is why I’m merely turning the plate towards you.” Rarity took a cube of cheese and a strawberry and ate them together. “I’ve been a cultural attache for Equestria to far stranger cultures. I remember a few years ago, the Princess invited me with her to meet with the Kudukudzu. Large, bipedal feral boars with feathered arms, an island culture. They practiced cannabalism as a funerary right, and I was asked if I was interested in partaking of the prior chieftain.”

Dash took a slice of ham and wrapped a cube of cheese in it, but kept it in her hands. “So, did you?”

“No,” Rarity took a different cheese cube from the plate. “Twilight did though. I always admired her for that. I told them it felt wrong for me to be a part of such an intimate ceremony, but I would be honoured to join them as witness. That was the important thing, that they knew I wasn’t disgusted by the practice, but just that I took the offer so seriously. It was intimate, as well. Profound. The flesh returns to the flesh, the ancestors a part of them always.”

Rainbow put her meat-wrapped cheese back on the plate and held her face in her hands. “Why are you like this.”

“What?” Rarity blinked. “Did I say something wrong?”

“It’s just, I’m like, I’m out here trying to put a spread out, and you take a bite and go yeah this reminds me when I was the national ambassador to a tribe of cannibals, it was a really spiritual experience for me. Now I have to be like, yeah that’s cool, anyway how’s the cheese though?”

She pulled Rainbow over onto her, so that Rainbow’s head was on her lap and she could brush the back of her fingers against Dash’s face. “Does it really upset you so much?”

“Where’s my cool stories!” Dash rolled onto her back, face up at Rarity, and threw her arms as wide as she could in exasperation. The couch mostly got in the way of the right one. “How do I compete with that?” The truth was Dash had very interesting stories, she just needed to stumble into remembering them. Rarity didn’t say that, though.

“You don’t.” She took Rainbow’s meat-cheese piece she’d put down and fed it to her, enjoying the feeling of Rainbow’s lips brush her fingertips as she pulled her hand away again. “Now you get to say, to other people, ‘So this reminds me of a story my girlfriend told me’, and now my experiences are yours. Such is the miracle of dating.”

That cheered her up immeasurably. “I’m going to be so annoying about this.” Yes, she would be an indescribable menace, now.

“Well, now that I’ve sold you on the appeal.” Rarity tapped Dash’s shoulder where it lay against her lap. “The conversation.”

“Ah, really? Fine. Where do you want to start with the heavy stuff?”

“Would you like to get married some day?” Rarity asked. “Not to me, specifically but-”

“Sure.” Dash shrugged. “I’d marry you.”

A moment of silence.

Rarity coughed into a fist. “That almost sounded like a proposal.”

“Fuck it, why not. You wanna get married, sometime?”

Impossibly, hideously, Rarity found herself blushing. Dash was not meant to ask that, because it forced her into a position where she had to consider yes. She wasn’t going to, stars above, but she had to know that she could. Who’d wear the dress? Actually. “That rather brings me to my next point. Say that I said yes-”

Dash sat bolt upright from Rarity’s lap. “Woah, hold on, what?” Rarity grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back down again.

“Would we hold the wedding on your side of the portal, or mine?”

Dash thought about it. “Both.”

“And the honeymoon?” Rarity raised an eyebrow.

“Also both, but mostly mine.” Dash decided immediately. “The sex is better, here.”

“No it isn’t.” Rarity bit her lip. “But… Yes, fine. I could see that working. Living together then? I’m unwilling to budge on Equestria for this.”

“Whyyyyy.” Dash whined. “Then I’d have to be a pony all the time.”

"Because my universe has a perfect immortal princess I personally know who governs justly and brings me pizza if I ask her nicely. As for yours, I have watched the news. I’m rather uncomfortable living in a place that invented slurs, let alone one that uses them"

Dash flipped onto her side, facing Rarity’s stomach, and pouted. “Fine, I can do Equestria then. Just as long as I get to keep my place here, I still need to do tours and stuff, and I still want to hang out with the girls as much as I can. I don’t think you’d want more of me anyway.”

“What do you mean?”

Dash twisted her neck to look up at Rarity in disbelief. “What? Seriously?”

“What?”

Dash pressed her face into Rarity’s stomach, grabbing the black shirt for a handle grip to pull herself closer. “You’re the one talking about wanting something serious, but you don’t. I actually want this, this is what wanting stuff looks like.” She flipped Rarity’s shirt up, untucking it from her pants, to kiss her bare stomach for emphasis.

“No, I…” Rarity hesitated. “Well, yes, you have made it very clear how much you want this.”

“Awesome, I wasn’t sure how I could make it more obvious. I thought literally proposing might be hard to top.”

“You are anything but hard to top.” Rarity countered, flicking Rainbow’s ear. Rainbow blew a raspberry into her stomach for revenge.

“Seriously though. You like what we have right now, right”

“Of course I do, that’s why I wanted to keep it so badly.”

“Yeah, and,” Rainbow twisted to look up again, “Would you be happier if I asked you to spend more time off work, do less of the other stuff you're doing, give you less free space, wake up together every morning-"

“No.” Rarity said before realizing how deeply she’d started digging her fingernails into her knees.

“But the problem isn’t me? Like, it’s not because it’d be me you’d be doing that with?”

“Never,” Rarity’s hands flew back to Rainbow’s hair, her face, stroking tenderly. “Not because of you at all, no.”

"So that means you don’t actually want any of that stuff.” Rainbow snickered. “You say you’re looking for a right person to do that stuff with, but then you never find anyone because it’s the stuff you hate, and nobody’s going to make you hate it less.”

Rarity stared straight forward, unblinking, unseeing.

Dash flipped onto her back again, and reached up to touch Rarity’s face. "You're so fucking stupid about this it's hilarious."

“Physician, heal thyself.” Rarity muttered. “Well then, oh wise old soul, insight beyond her years. What is your proposed solution?”

“You know, I still think I like it better when you just call me your girlfriend.” Dash let her hands drop to her chest, clasped over her heart. “We can be girlfriends without doing any of that stuff, it’s cool.”

“It is starting to sound like calling each other ‘girlfriend’ is literally the only important part to you about this.” Rarity stared, and Dash grinned, and Rarity narrowed her eyes. “You cannot be serious.”

“You’re so my girlfriend, though.” Dash winked. Winked! And then, just in case Rarity didn’t catch the first one, she did it again. “Yeah, that’s the whole enchilada. And if stuff changes we just talk about it while it happens. But you know. I’d pretty much tear down my whole life for you right now if you asked me to, or marry you tomorrow or whatever.”

“That is…” Rarity considered an entire dictionary of potential words and her gut twisted that she had to pick only one. “Terrifying.” She settled on. A part of her wanted to see it as some kind of clinginess or overcommitment that she should scold her for, but no. She was being so damned casual about it. Things that should be heavy decisions were made as if they were weightless.

“Yeah but that’s who you’re stuck with.” Dash shrugged.

Rarity closed her eyes and felt the internal architecture of her brain shift around this information, adjust to it. She could have as much or as little as she wanted, as long as she knew what that was. Her plan for the future was to do whatever she liked. There was no plan, no destination.

“Fuck it.” Rarity threw her head back. “Is this our second date, or our third? Do we count that first night as a real date?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Well, to accept a marriage proposal on the second date would be insanity. On a third date, merely ridiculous.”

Dash shot up again, and outright stood up and took a step away from the couch in panic. “Wait, I was… I mean I wasn’t joking, but I wasn’t serious. I mean, okay, I was serious, but you weren’t supposed to say yes.”

“What was it your older self said? You caught me, now get run over, idiot.” Rarity ate another cheese cube, casually. Yes, this was much more fun. Simply treat such matters as weightless, and take what you want if you wanted them. This was much more fun, and what else mattered? “So. Yes, I would marry you. Though, perhaps it might be smarter not to start planning the wedding for a while. At least, not until all our friends yell at us for it.”

Dash shook her head. “I mean, yes, obviously. Fuck. Holy shit. Uh. So does that make you my fiance?”

“Congratulations to you, for that one. You really do move fast, don’t you?” Rarity lobbed a cheese cube as high as she could and tried to see if she could catch it. She could! Well done her, she still had it.

“You haven’t even told me if you love me yet, or not.” Dash protested, as if the whole thing hadn’t been her idea.

“I don’t know that I do. I might, though, I believe I could.” Rarity took a strawberry piece and aimed it at Dash’s mouth instead. Dash caught it with her hand, the spoilsport, but dutifully ate it after. “If you asked me if I’d marry you tomorrow for a chance at finding out? I believe I would, yes.”

Dash’s legs gave out. Rarity watched her go down. It wasn’t a fast fall, it was more… squishy and slow motion, more like her bones were turning to jelly than anything else. “Woah.”

“This is the problem.” Rarity watched her the whole way down. “You keep moving so fast that you never think someone might keep up with you.”

“This is such a bad idea.” Dash sat on the floor, looking drunk and giddy and scared and happy and Rarity took an olive from the plate. “This is such a bad idea.”

“I have kept talking us both out of things for sensible reasons, and being sensible that has been killing the both of us. So let’s just follow your heart and see where it takes us both. We don’t have to do it until we want to. We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do, apparently.” Rarity barked a laugh. “Wonderful, isn’t it?”

“Wait, is this how your brain works all the time?” Dash fell the rest of her way onto her butt, and then onto her back, and then she stared at the ceiling until she covered her hands with her eyes. “Saying stuff makes it this real?”

“Yes, this is what it is like.” It wasn’t that Rarity wondered if she’d gone too far, she knew she had, it’s just that she didn’t know what to do about it now. It wasn’t exactly like she could take it back. “We have imposed no deadlines upon ourselves. We can enjoy being girlfriends for a while, and decide later if we change our minds on it. We don’t need to do anything about it until we want to.”

“RIght, but…” Dash rubbed her face with her hands before covering her eyes again. She must be grateful she’d mopped since the last time Rarity had seen the laminated-wooden floor she was sprawled on. “Cool. Cool, cool, cool. Cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Cool.”

“You started this.”

“Well, yeah, but…” Rainbow sat back up, and then fell back a little because sitting up made her dizzy. “What if this is a mistake? What if we’re not ready for something like that? What am I going to do when you divorce me? Shit, would we even get divorced, do we have to do it on both sides of the portal or what? Wait, does that mean we’d only be legally married in one place. Oh shit, marriage licenses are a thing, shit, I don’t…” Dash fell back to the floor with her hands tight to her face again. “Fuck!”

Rarity considered this, and loaded three different nibbles onto a salted cracker to eat in one bite. It gave her something to chew on and keep her mouth shut with while Dash… learned, she supposed. How much of her weightless decisionmaking was just being unable to grasp the consequences of things before they happened, she wondered. “I don’t plan on getting divorced, do you?”

Dash cracked her fingers to look back at Rarity with an eye poking between the gap in them. “No?”

“Well, then.” Rarity stood up and walked over to Dash on the floor to offer her a hand up. Dash went pale.

“You’re not wearing any underwear with that skirt.” Dash gulped.

“I haven’t had a good chance to mention that, but no, I am not.” Rarity kept her hand offered to Dash, though she did take a bit to adjust how she was standing to give Dash a better view, and the poor girl crossed her legs over when she did.

“I’m going to have to wipe down the bike seat huh.” Dash thought. She reached out for Rarity’s hand, and Rarity pulled her back up.

And there was a moment where they sized each other up again, just took a moment to appreciate what they’d gotten into as they stood in front of each other without the next beat of the conversation to distract them. The reality of being, as ridiculous as it was, fiances now was hitting them both. Time to assess the damage.

The poor girl was terrified. She was shorter than Rarity, yes, and though it was all tight and lean muscle that difference in mass just made her seem frail to her. Almost entirely flat-chested, it made her seem so much more boyish right now - not just masculine, but boyish. It was strange how those traits that came from her strength and fitness just emphasized her immaturity right now, a mix of androgyny that seemed to lack the secondary characteristics of either extreme in the blend.

The same things made her attractive in the extreme, at once beautiful and handsome. Her femininity was all the more beautiful when it was emphasized by the contrast, and her muscularity was endlessly appealing. She’d spent long minutes their last night in these bodies just running her fingers along Dash’s stomach trying not to wake her, fascinated by the tight knotted abdominals like billiard balls just beneath the skin. No, that wasn’t it at all.

She knew Dash wasn’t a child, didn’t believe that about her. What she wasn’t sure about was her own self-delusions. How many things was she okay with only because she wanted them to be okay? Because Dash was insisting they could be, and she didn’t want to refuse her? More than nothing, certainly.

Then Dash took a deep breath with her eyes closed, raising and lifting her hands with the rise and fall of her chest, and she was solid again. The fear was gone. It was her stage fright ritual, the last moment before going out with the guitar to face the crowd.

And then she locked eyes with Rarity, and Rarity froze instead.

That face.

Rarity reached out, and stopped with her hand halfway to Rainbow’s face, and Rainbow lightly took it by the wrist to pull it the rest of the way. “Do you mind if…?”

“Sure.” Dash whispered, not sure what Rarity was doing.

She took a step closer to better see, thumbs trailing near-invisible scars. There were so many stories here. Her thumb pulled at the bags under Dash’s eyes, at the deeper bruises it revealed beneath them - still healing. Not just from a lack of sleep, of staying up long hours practicing and writing, more than that. Her thumb trailed to the skin around her eyes and pulled them tight, and she marvelled at the wrong colours she found hidden there, misty yellows and pinks.

It gave her a suspicion. She reached for the tip of Dash’s knows and wiggled it - too loose for her age by far. Her eyes went wide and she gave a naughty smile. “You’ve worn your septum out.”

“It wasn’t- that wasn’t a problem for me.” Dash stammered, flinching back and getting her nose tweaked for it. “Just, a few times I went a bit too hard.”

“The life of a rock star?” Rarity asked.

“More like trying to fight a monster the night after a gig or something. I burn myself out so much I have trouble staying awake sometimes, when I need to.” Dash admitted.

Rarity nodded and pulled Dash back closer to her with a hand around the back of her neck instead. “So that’s where the energy drinks came into things. So many your heart almost exploded, I believe you said.”

Dash nodded, pushing Rarity’s fingers up into the short shaved hair at the back of her head, which felt lovely. “You keep talking about how you have no stories of your own. Then something like this.”

“Well, it’s just, with anyone else, yeah. But you’ve done all the same stuff but more.”

This close, and looking for it, she finally found what she had hoped she’d find. She plucked a gray hair from Dash’s head - just one of them, hard to find in all the color. But there. “Well now you’ve put it on me to find all the experience you’ve been keeping to yourself. I might have been starting to think you hadn’t done anything with your life yet.”

And there it was. Oh, that was a mean little trick, but it would do her good to be tricked by it. Dash’s eyes flashed with hurt for a moment, but after that they were fire. Burning, passionate, almost vibrating from the speed they were taking in every tiny feature of Rarity’s expression to judge her by.

In time, she knew, that fire would mellow and soften into something warm and wonderful and lovely. She’d seen it happen before. It might even be what she wanted, later, but this is what Rarity craved now.

Dash ducked suddenly and her elbow came into Rarity’s stomach lifting her. Rarity let out her breath in a whoop from the hit as Dash carried her to the couch and dropped her down on it, Rarity’s fall cushioned in a puff of air leaking from the seams of the leather.

“My word.” Rarity giggled, but Dash wasn’t done yet. She slipped her arms underneath her shirt and flung it off, throwing herself on top of Rarity, face to face with those burning eyes, two incredible muscular forearms holding Rainbow’s weight and locking Rarity’s head in place. With each hand just behind her ear she couldn’t turn her head to look away.

“I’m a fucking monster fighting, world saving, magic slinging rockstar.” Dash said from over her. “Fastest girl alive, no convictions despite doing way too much shit to deserve one because they can’t fucking catch me. I’ve broken a guy’s nose only half-conscious after he spiked my drink, I’ve broken my collarbone crowdsurfing an audience of a thousand people, and I am definitely the best sex you ever had.”

“Are you now?” Rarity prodded.

Rainbow hesitated a second, but she skipped it like a stone skipping the surface of water. “I am.”

She wasn’t, though Rarity would sooner cut her own tongue out than let it betray her in this moment. It was more important that she had the potential to be. The fact that she wasn’t yet just made it all the more exciting that one day, one day she would be. Rarity shook herself, that thought had made her blush. “You could be even better, too.”

Dash bit her neck at that, hard enough to leave the shape of her teeth in the bruises, right where her neck joined her shoulder. Rarity kicked her legs out in the shock of it, hands reached out to grab the back of Dash’s hair and knot her fingers in it. This was a thing she was supposed to do to her, not the other way around.

Dash came back up for breath. “See, I’m learning.”

Rarity’s breath couldn’t come back down from ragged panting, her cheeks were far hotter than she was willing to admit to herself. That… that one had got her. “You brute.”

“C’mon, you always seemed jealous when you did it to me, I’d knew that one would get you.” There was a knock at the door, and Dash looked as disappointed as Rarity felt. “Shh. Maybe they’ll go away.”

“I thought they had to be let in, from downstairs?”

“I gave a few keys out.” Dash whispered. “Pretend we’re not here.”

The hammering at the door got louder and more urgent. Dash sighed, rolled eyes and got up, but couldn’t find where she’d thrown her shirt.

“It went behind the TV.” Rarity offered.

“Fuck it.” Dash went straight for the door in just her jeans. “Whatever.”

Rarity heard, but did not see around the entranceway corner, a Twilight Sparkle. “I- uh. You’re not wearing a shirt.”

“Nope.”

Twilight sighed, and popped her head around the corner to wave at Rarity. “The Princess says hi!” She paused and, very nervously, her eyes went from Rarity’s face to her skirt and back again. Then back down to her skirt. “You’re not wearing any underwear.”

Rarity crossed a leg over her knee and raised an eyebrow. “Which makes you the odd one out.”

The Twilight cleared her throat. “Right. The Princess was really insistent I come in at this exact moment to, uh, give you this.” She flicked a square of cardboard at Rarity from across the room, just to stay as close to the exit as possible as Dash stood close behind. “And uh. I’m supposed to do this.” She jumped across the room like a startled deer, just out of Ranbow’s reach, and opened a white cabinet in the dining room that Rarity had assumed would have dishes in them.

It did not. It had little model spaceships instead.

“Uh. Bye.” The Twilight waved, hissing “Sorry,” under her breath as she passed Dash on the way out.

The door clicked softly shut behind her.

Rarity held up the little square of cardboard she’d been flicked, a photograph. “This must be Twilight’s idea of revenge after last time.” She murmured, looking up at the cabinet. “But for the life of me, I can’t imagine how this- Dash?”

“I am,” Dash was very pale. “So sorry.”

“I wonder what gave away it was you, in the end. Probably coming back through the portal.” Rarity held up the cardboard square. “Who’s Patrick Stewart?”

“I don’t- Nope.” Dash shook her head angrily. “We’re making out, I’m not getting into this.”

“I want to see the cabinet though.” Rarity pushed herself off the couch, past Dash stomping up to her, and knelt beside it. “Did you make these.”

“Ha, I wish.” Dash got out before clapping her hands to her mouth. “I am going to murder them. They can’t do this to me.”

“Do what?” Rarity blinked, reaching for the cabinet - pausing. “Do you mind?”

“Yes.” Dash said.

“Ah.” Rarity settled for reading the base instead. “I wouldn’t want to break your Klingon Bird of Prey, seeing how it’s an original show model.”

Dash cringed just behind her shoulder. “Okay you can pick it up from the bottom, just, don’t touch any of the details.”

Rarity did, and inspected the model from all sides. “I thought you said you didn’t like science fiction.”

“I don’t.” Dash just stood behind Rarity having no idea what to do, so she shoved her hands in her pockets. “I just, it’s just this one show. Called Star Trek.”

“Right.”

“And it’s just about how people in the future solve problems with each other, and it feels like how fixing problems with the girls used to feel like, but it’s not a kid’s show. It’s, it’s just about everyone being cool, and being good at what they do, and really liking and respecting each other, and it’s - there’s nothing else like it. So I like this one.”

“I see,” Rarity said slowly. “No conflict? Sounds boring.”

“No! Like, no way, that’s the thing,” Dash reached past the ships and behind them in the cabinet to the only DVDs she owned, and pulled out a Next Generation box set. “I mean, I like Voyager more, but everyone agrees Next Generation is good at least. So there’s this one episode right where… okay so they have universal translators, to understand aliens with. Except there’s this one alien race that speaks in story references, so the translator translates them literally but nobody understands them anyway. And Picard - ah, Captain Picard he’s like, the leader guy = Picard has to try to learn the language while stranded on an alien planet with this alien, and he does. And it’s-” Dash played back the last few seconds in her head and lowered the box set in front of her. “That sounds boring doesn’t it.”

“A little.” Rarity admitted, taking the box set out of Rainbow’s hands in exchange for the Bird of Prey. “This is Picard? He looks just like… Ah, played by Patrick Stewart. So that explains that.”

“Yeah, he’s cool.” Dash brushed off.

“Dash, sweetheart, I have given you have orgasms that made you less excited than you were in that picture.” She considered that, and shrugged a shoulder. “Admittedly, those were not my best work.”

“Can we go back to making out, now?” Dash pleased, putting the Bird of Prey away. Rarity used her height advantage to keep the box easily out of her reach.

“I don’t know, can we?” She raised an eyebrow, and Dash made a spectacular jump to snatch the box. Rarity could have lifted it higher but honestly, Dash had earned that one. “Are you sure you don’t want to explain what a Klingon is, first.”

“No, see, that’s the problem.” Dash groaned, putting the boxset deep in the back of the cabinet and closing it. “I really want to, I mean, I really want to. The only person I’ve got to talk about this with is Twilight, and she actually likes the science stuff. I think this is the Princess’s way of using me to kill the mood.”

“I saw all those spy thrillers on your shelf, so I know what you’ll mean when I say… they have triggered your command phrase, then, to turn you against me?”

“Turn you off, maybe.” Dash snickered, but the laugh died in her throat. “Ah, shit. Kind of.”

Rarity curled a finger around one of Dash’s belt loops, and pulled her all the way back to the couch, pushing her onto it. Dash plopped back, and this time it was Rarity’s turn to loom over her and give her a kiss on the lips. “It really makes you that excited?”

It was a question that Dash would not answer under threat of torture, which made the ‘yes’ all the more obvious. Rarity smiled.

“Well. Does Captain Picard know any Klingons? That Bird of Prey looked very menacing.”

Dash bit her lip hard, practically vibrating from the effort. Her hands gripped the sofa cushions white-knuckled. “Yes.” She forced out. “His head of security is a Klingon named Worf. Well kind of, it’s-” She shut up. “Just, Worf.”

“Strange. You were about to correct yourself there.” Rarity slipped off her jacket and tossed it into the dining room. “Was he kind of the head of security, or kind of a Klingon?”

“He’s half-Klingon half-human, it’s complicated. I mean it’s not that complicated. Please stop asking.” Dash’s nails dug gouges into the couche’s leather facade. Rarity thought how nice they might feel across her back, later.

“So there’s interbreeding with the alien races? Why, the chance at cross-species understanding that comes form that, like the arranged marriages of old…” Rarity unhooked her bra from under her tight black shirt, held it up to Dash for inspection, then tossed it after her jacket. “Were there any other half-human members with stories like that?”

“Wow, you don’t even know about Spock do you. Like, the most famous character in all of science fiction almost he’s like, well he’s half Vulcan, they’re this scientific race that’s kind of emotionless but not really? They’re more emotional than they pretend to be. It’s like, it’s like someone made a really bad joke about a race of Twilight Sparkles before she had any friends really and-” Dash slapped herself, hard. “Stop! I want to make out!”

“We can make out all you want, I’m right here.” Rarity unbuttoned her skirt and unzipped it, let the front hang loose and emphasize she wasn’t wearing underwear beneath it, but no more than that. “All you have to do is stop telling me about Star Trek.”

“I am trying!” Dash pulled her knees up to her chest on the couch and bit down on one of them to stop herself. “This is what being married to you is going to be like, isn’t it?!”

It caught Rarity so off-guard she didn’t even have a chance to figure out how to look sexy while she doubled over gasping from it. “Perhaps.” She admitted.

“Well, I want a divorce.”

Rarity stepped over to the couch, pushed Dash back, tilted her head and gave her a deep kiss that pushed her down, lowered her carefully, onto her back. Her eyes were fogged over and hazy when Rarity pulled back again. “I’m taking half your Star Trek figurines in the settlement.”

“What!” Dash pushed Rarity back off her, eyes suddenly clear again, and kicked her away from the couch. “No way! You don’t even know what any of them are!”

“Well, if you keep telling me about them, then I’ll know how to appreciate them after you divorce me.” Rarity batted her eyelashes. “You wouldn’t want them to go unappreciated, would you? I heard they’re show originals.”

“Why are you being like this!” Rainbow reached behind the couch to find one of the throw pillows she’d lost back there just so she had something to throw at Rarity’s head. “This is so boring to you.”

“You’ve been such a horrid little succubus to me since that night on the roof, talking me into all sorts of things I should have known better than.” Rarity reached under her top and tossed it, too. “I’m enjoying watching you be the one to fail resisting temptation, for once.”

Well, that and passion was the trait that Rarity found most attractive in someone, and watching Dash literally be so consumed by her passion she could not help herself, to the point where not even sex was enough to pry her away from it - well. That, yes. That really did it for her, actually. Quite a bit.

It’d kill her fun to tell Rainbow that, though. She might stop trying to hold herself back, and there had to be tension for there to be struggle… She bit her lip.

“Wait.” Rainbow stared at her. “This isn’t just you teasing me. This is actually turning you on, huh?”

Rarity tried to smile innocently, but forgot to stop biting her lip. Dash breathed in relief.

“One sec, I just got to text the girls something.” Dash wriggled up off the couch and grabbed her phone from her jeans pocket in the process of kicking it off. Cute pink underwear with a little bow on it, Rarity couldn’t wait to pull them off her teeth. “One sec.” The next minute was a flurry of thumb presses and Dash huddling over the screen to prevent Rarity from seeing. Then…

She tossed the phone to Rarity, and Rarity began to read.

Rainbow: its not like id be moving to france or anything its just thru the portal
Fluttershy: But you’d be living as a pegasus? Full time?
Rainbow: only as much as i feel like it besides where else can i go commando in a skirt and nobody complains about it
Applejack: You already do that all the time. Here.
Rainbow: yeah and you complain about it
Rarity: We did not need to know the carpet matches the drapes
Pinkie: THEY DO???
Rarity: Yes. They do.
Rainbow: ha ha yeah

Rarity bumped the screen with a finger and it made a letter. She startled at it, then realized. “Hold on, this is right now?”

Rainbow nodded. “Yeah, I mean… You’re okay with that, right?”

Rarity tapped a message and sent it.

Rainbow: She shaves it into a little lightning bolt.
Applejack: Woah was that her? Hiya, other Rares
Rarity: I saw capital letters, it must be
Pinkie: THERE SHE IS! THE DASH STEALER! GET HER BACK GIRLS!!!
Applejack: Nah
Rarity: She is literally me, but stronger.
Applejack: Don’t want her that bad anyway
Fluttershy: You’re really sure about this?

Rarity looked up at Dash. “You told them, right now, you’re moving to Equestria to be with me.”

“Yeah, wanted to get it out of the way.” Dash looked at the screen. “I didn’t mention we proposed, though, since I think we both want to pretend that’s a joke.”

What an interesting way to put it. Certainly, if the pony Fluttershy found out about it, Rarity would have her head chewed off for it, in Fluttershy’s own quiet way of doing it.

Rainbow: Absolutely not.
Fluttershy: Oh. Good.
Applejack: See that Rares? Still got some of your marbles ten years from now.
Rarity: It’s a good sign I’ve clearly still lost some of them, it’ll make it easier to still be with you after all that time.
Applejack: That is the meanest romantic thing you’ve said. Well done.
Twilight: I didn’t mess anything up?

Rainbow yoinked the phone from Rarity’s hands for that one.

Rainbow: nah you did great helped a lot
Twilight: I’m glad I didn’t interrupt too much
Rainbow: you did it just kind of worked out
Twlight: oh
Pinkie: YOU DID WHAT?!
Twilight: I’ll explain when I get home
Applejack: I’m just gunna ask, is it really a little lightning bolt?
Twilight: I didn’t see that
Twilight: Rarity waxes though
Rarity: What no I don’t
Rarity: Wait
Rarity: Good lord.
Applejack: Yours is fine how it is don’t worry about it.
Pinkie: Twilight how’d you know Rainbow’s not getting any hair in her teeth
Twilight: I am! Five minutes away!

Rarity raised an eyebrow. “Well, if you didn’t need a reason to leave this entire plane of reality, here it is for you.”

Rainbow stared at Twilight’s messages on her phone. “Why did she have to say that?”

“I think she’s asking herself the same thing, for what it’s worth.”

Rainbow poked her shoulder, and Rarity looked up from the phone screen. “Hey, why is it waxed? Like, it’s not like you have a chance to do it before passing through, and I mean… pony body doesn’t… you know?”

Rarity shrugged. “I suppose the same way it knows what outfit I’d like to be wearing, even if I step through bereft. I will admit, I probably just like it this way because I don’t have to do anything for it. If I had to feel it stepping through, it would be a very different story.”

Dash mimed a walk with her fingers, made a ripping sound and giggled. She took her phone, powered it off, and put it on the glass table by the couch.

“So.” Rarity said.

“So.” Rainbow agreed.

The mood was gone, or too different to be recognized. Though Rainbow was down to just her pink underwear, Rarity down to a pencil skirt which they both knew had nothing underneath it, but still they were just sitting on the couch together not knowing what to say.

They both felt like nervous teenagers.

“Things just got really real now, huh?” Rainbow sat straight backed, eyes forward, hands on her knees. Braced for impact.

“They did.” Rarity agreed, pulling Dash back into her side and hugging her with one arm, worrying at the tight knot of muscles between her shoulderblades with a thumb. “This is what you wanted, isn’t it?”

“What?” Dash blinked. “At first I was just saying whatever it took to keep being with you, now that I got it I’m like, shit. I dunno. I just know I want you, I guess, I don’t know what getting it means.”

Rarity thought about that. “Well. Let’s talk about it again, then.” Rainbow groaned, and Rarity squeezed her tighter. “Not the problems. This time just talk about what you want. What’s the perfect idea of being with me like, in your head”

Dash thought about it. “I want a practice room at yours, so I can just work through the day and let you do your thing. Maybe share lunch or just bother each other when work gets slow and we get bored. Some nights I spend in Equestria, others back seeing the girls. Just, if I’m not touring, I always want to sleep in the same bed with you. I sleep way better when I’m cuddling.”

“That’s it?” Rarity tried to push Dash on for more details, but Dash just smiled.

“Yeah, that’s really it.” She said. “I can’t think of anything else, can you?”

Well, there’d have to be… No, Rarity couldn’t. She thought about it, but the more she thought about it the more she thought. “Company for breakfast would be nice. Not even eating together, but starting the day alone has always… It would make it easier to get out of bed, I think, even though you’d be there to draw me back to it.”

“That’s all you’d add?” Dash asked.

“All I can think of.” Rarity said. “Just that would be nice, though.” Something else tugged at her memory, something unresolved. “Why did me liking you talk about the Star Trek thing have that much of an effect on you?” Rarity asked. “Out of everything, why was that what decided it?”

“From the start you keep talking about how you’re looking for something more than you can get with me.” Dash said. “But then I act like the me I have to hide from everyone else, and you want that too. And I thought I’m not just a spot filler for you, I’m everything you didn’t know you wanted. And maybe you still don’t know it, but it’s enough for me.”

Dash pushed Rarity down onto her back on the couch, lay on top of her and kissed her, long and sweetly. A gentle kiss in no rush, taking its time. Rarity stretched an arm up to get more comfortable and Rainbow reached out to grab her hand, holding it tight and locking their fingers together. “Liking you has always been the problem.” Rarity tilted her head down to break the kiss to say it. “You bring out the reckless and impulsive in me, and you shouldn’t like it.”

“Yeah, but I do.” Dash pushed herself up again so she could see all of Rarity’s face from over her. “I love you.”

“I-” Rarity couldn’t say it back because she didn’t know if she did. She did like that Dash loved her, though, and she thought everything she’d said sounded like heaven to her. All there was for it was to kiss her hard, instead. She gripped the back of Dash’s head and pulled her down so hard Dash yelped.

And when Dash kissed her back, she had to kiss her back even more.

They both decided, silently, things were better with the skirt on.