Harnessing the Sun

“And then they met Barb,” Sunbeam gushed, practically vibrating in his seat on Harness’s couch. “Well, Spike to them, obviously, but they actually met, and talked to her… him, and went to the Dragon Lands and…”

Harness didn’t interrupt Sunbeam, partially because he rambled like this a lot, and mostly because he was getting better at realizing he was rambling and quitting on his own. Sure enough, Sunbeam bit his bottom lip mid-sentence, then flashed her an apologetic grin.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m so… I mean, this is all just…”

“It’s exciting,” Harness told him, daintily pulling one hind leg and then the other up under her haunches so she could lean more luxuriously against the armrest of her easy chair. “And don’t apologize. You’re cute when you’re excited.”

Sunbeam laughed, then blinked, then let out a sound that was mostly another laugh but sort of resembled a cough at the end. Harness fluffed her mane — untied and bouncy, flowing like silk over her shoulders and neck — a bit with her hoof and chewed on the inside of her lip so she wouldn’t grin.

She’d put her plan into action the moment Sunbeam had trotted — or really, bounced — through her door half an hour ago: an indulgent stretch here, an overlong blink there, and her very best “I want you in the unfriendliest way imaginable” eyes every time she glanced or, more often, unabashedly stared his way. Finally, after nearly half an hour, it was starting to bear some big, juicy fruit she was more than ready to sink her proverbial — or hopefully, literal — teeth into.

Or she would have been ready, if Sunbeam had come over to her place for a post-multiversal-summit debrief alone. Which, of course, he characteristically hadn’t.

“Yeah, it was dope, dude,” Ike added, idly scratching at the nest of blue hair he had tucked up under his paint-spotted ballcap. “We gotta figure out how to get ‘em back here. Get, like, a cross-dimensional art collective going…”

“Or alternatively, we could not keep messing with the fabric of the universe,” Zepp sourly replied, sounding as ruffled as his usually-coiffed mane looked. “Just a thought. Throwing it out into the brainstorming session.”

“Would you please relax already, bro?” Pepp grunted, glancing up from his phone only long enough to roll his eyes. “The portal’s closed, we’re all alive here, and we’re all total babes in another universe. Things could not possibly be more chill.”

“I don’t…” Hazy started to say, cerulean cheeks turning pink beneath his glasses and mulberry braids. “I-I mean, that seems a little…”

“Dude,” Pepp said, finally dropping his phone so he could stare across the room at Hazy. “Our chick selves are fully hot. Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m wrong.”

“Don’t encourage him, Hazy,” Zepp grunted before Hazy could mumble a response. “And stop being weird, Pepper.”

“Who’s bein’ weird? You’re bein’ weird. I’m just bein’ honest.”

“You know you’re basically talking about our long-lost siblings here, right? Biologically and socially speaking?”

“Whatever. You’re just pissed your mare self has better muscle tone than you do.”

“Whereas you can’t handle your mare self thinking about things other than muscle tone.”

“Okay, down, boys,” Harness finally interjected, cutting both siblings off mid-retort. “Either take it down a notch or take it outside.” After a moment’s thought, she realized the golden opportunity that the room’s full attention had presented to her. “Actually, take it outside anyway, and then go home. You’re gonna wake Sparkle up.”

Zepp’s eyes narrowed a bit, sweeping over Sunbeam on their way towards Harness, and Pepp lolled his head over with a shit-eating grin pasted onto it. “Awww,” the latter teased. “Way to be a buzzkill, Mo–”

“Call me Mom, and they’ll write a whole new section of the penal code about what I do to you,” Harness shot back. “Seriously, though, it’s late, and it’s been a long and weird day. So vámanos, amigos.”

For a heartstopping moment, Harness thought they might keep arguing anyway. Fun — and, okay, very pleasantly muscle-toned — as Pepp could be, he was also incredibly bad at following directions, and intellect notwithstanding, Zepp was equally bad at letting a conversation die a natural death. But thank Twilight, Ike had already stood up and pulled Hazy to his hooves as well. Ike was a very good listener. Possibly because there wasn’t anything else in his head most of the time to distract him from listening.

And so, the crowd in Harness’ living room dispersed with a minimum of grumbling and even a couple genuine well-wishes. Characteristically again, Sunbeam was the last to leave, and Harness let him chatter with Ike about some art project the latter had planned all the way down the hall towards the front door.

“Hey, Sun?” she called after him at the last possible moment, just as Sunbeam’s forehoof passed over the threshold to the darkened outside world. “Hang back a sec, would ya?”

Sunbeam and Ike shared a perfectly gormless glance, then the latter departed with a shrug and a hooftap. The front door swung shut, and Sunbeam and Harness were finally alone together.

“What’s up?” Sunbeam asked, and then — bless his heart — asked, “Everything all right?”

“Of course,” Harness crooned, shoulders forward and eyelids low. “Don’t I look all right?”

“Y-Yeah, of course. It’s just… earlier it kind of seemed like you, uh…”

She gave him the “none of the things I’m thinking about are in the Friendship Journal” eyes again.

“... w-wanted to talk about something. So… is this that?”

“More or less,” Harness replied. “Just felt a bit crowded for it earlier. This is much better.”

Truth be told, it was hardly an act at all by this point. Once upon a time, she’d known the two of them would get married someday, the way grown-up best friends always did. But then Sunbeam’s mom had passed and Harness’s career had taken off, and the universe had conspired in a million other ways to always keep the two of them a gossamer-thin distance apart.

Maybe it was just a lack of chemistry, maybe some mental block one or both of them hadn’t yet pushed past, maybe some third thing that she hoped to the stars wasn’t Sunbeam batting for the other proverbial team. One way or another, though, she was gonna find out what it was tonight. And dammit, she was gonna have fun doing it.

“C’mon,” she said as she turned in place, glancing past her swishing tail to see Sunbeam pointedly staring only at her face. “Let’s chat.”

She led him back down the hallway as if it were a catwalk, swinging her hips and jiggling everything a fit young mare had to jiggle, and Sunbeam followed a polite distance behind her, taking extremely polite interest in her wall decorations along the way. Instead of veering left back into the sitting room, she went straight into the kitchen and looped around the dining table towards a cabinet behind it, from which she extracted two tumblers and a half-full bottle of vodka.

“Sit down,” she said, nodding first towards an empty chair and then towards one of the glasses she’d just set down on the table. “One fetlock or two?”

“Oh, uh… I-I’m fine. Thank you, though.”

Sunbeam folded his sturdy frame stiffly into his seat, and Harness shrugged as she made a drink for herself. “You’re missing out,” she informed him as she slid onto the chair to his right, scooting in so that her hock almost grazed against his. “Got this flown in from Eurus Peak. Made from cloud potatoes, if you can believe it.”

“I can, actually. Pepp is… a fan of that brand, to put it politely.”

Harness lifted her glass and held it so her voice — low and syrupy-sweet — echoed inside it. “And you’re not?”

“I just, uh… didn’t want to impose?”

Harness cocked an eyebrow. She’d sort of meant to ramp things all the way up to a “bend me over this table and treat me like I charge by the hour” look, but it came out more like “just accept the drink already, you insufferably sweet doofus.” She couldn’t help it. She was only mortal.

“Yeah. Okay. Sorry,” Sunbeam finally said, bashfully scratching at the back of his neck. “One fetlock. Thanks.”

Harness poured, slid the spare glass his way, and watched as he sipped slowly and carefully. He shuddered a bit even from the thimble’s worth of liquor that passed his lips, and for a moment Harness wanted to kiss him in all the wrong ways: slowly and sweetly, on his soft lips and his sedate brow and the little lock of rainbow-striped mane he got from being soulful and sincere and good though every inch of his heart.

She took her own sip — more of a gulp, really — and refocused. She wasn’t here for that. She was a mare, and he was a stallion, and the former in this world could do anything the latter could do in another. The time for chasteness had come and long gone.

“So what did you want to talk about?” Sunbeam asked, looking her in the eyes and sincerely waiting for her response. Stars above, he was making this so much harder than it needed to be. In the wrong sense of the word.

“Uh…” Harness began, because she really hadn’t planned on talking much at this point. “Y’know, just… today was weird, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Sunbeam agreed. “You doing okay?”

“What d’you mean?”

“I mean, just…” With an upturned hoof, he gestured vaguely in her direction. “You’ve seemed off all night. Y’know, the sly comments, and the, uh… not that it’s bad or anything, it’s just really unlike you. Makes me think something might have happened earlier, with you and other-you. So if you wanna talk about it…”

For another moment, Harness wanted to crawl under the table, dig through the floor, and bury herself alive. Was she about to get cockblocked by actual, for-real friendship? Was she really that bad at flirting?

“Wha… n-nothing happened!” she lied — badly. Stars, why couldn’t she be a bad cop instead of a bad temptress, so she could at least be good at lying? “We had a good talk. He’s… I’m doing great over there.”

Oh, fuck him, now Sunbeam was lowering his gaze and reaching out to kindly nudge his hoof against hers. “Great in the same way, or a different way?”

“In a…” She lifted her hoof away from his, and it ended up landing on her temple as she shut her eyes and grimaced. “This isn’t going how I thought it would, for the record,” she informed him.

“How you thought what would…”

Harness looked up, and just caught the tail end of Sunbeam’s eyes going wide. Welcome to the party, pal, she thought. Population: you, me, and a ferry terminal worth of baggage I apparently have to unpack.

“Oh,” he said. “Um… I-I, uh…”

Harness took a breath, and was about to let it out in the form of an apology and an offer to walk Sunbeam home — but then she saw it. Right before Sunbeam set his jaw and softened his gaze and prepared to be the best just-a-friend in the whole wide world, the mask slipped. Just for a moment, just long enough for his eyes to dart down and his hoof to twitch, and for his pupils to grow with something animalistic and raw and years in the making.

He wanted her. But he would never admit it to himself, never be anything to or for her but kind and supportive, and always a gossamer-thin distance away from what a buried-deep part of him had yearned for since they were teenagers. He’d keep it locked away even now, even with her practically throwing herself at him like a cat in heat, because he’d rather do that than take the smallest risk of hurting her — no, of hurting anyone. Because that’s what he thought might happen if he didn’t keep that lock closed. What he thought his baser self — his stallion self — would do if he let it out.

She knew how to handle this now. How to get what both of them needed.

“Listen, I–” he started to say.

“Yeah, no, you’re right,” Harness interrupted, shaking her head and grinning. “I’ve been weird tonight. And it was kinda because of him. Hitch. Other me.”

Sunbeam visibly relaxed, but as he leaned back in his chair, a tiny sigh escaped his snout as well. Most of him was ready to talk things out with a good friend, but the stallion part couldn’t believe the chance he’d just blown. He’d get that part under control and bury it again soon — but only if Harness let him.

“You know what he told me?” Harness went on. “I asked if he’d gotten frisky with any of his friends, cause y’know, stallion surrounded by mares, and you know what he said? ‘Yep. All of ‘em.’ Can you believe that?”

Judging by Sunbeam’s expression, he scarcely could. “Wow. So, all the ponies we met today, he’s…”

“Apparently! Of course, he swore it wasn’t his idea. Just happened, so he said.”

Sunbeam chuckled. “Uh-huh. Sure.”

“Right?” She nudged his shoulder with her own. “So yeah, that was bugging me a little bit. But it also kinda got me thinking. About you.”

“What about me?” Sunbeam replied, his tone playfully trepidatious — or maybe the other way around.

“Well, it’s not the exact same situation, obviously. But a young stallion, handsome, sweet as sugar, saved the world a couple of times… guy like that probably could get more than a few ladies into bed with him. If he wanted to, that is.”

“No,” Sunbeam chuckled — but Harness wasn’t interested in what he said aloud. What he didn’t say was written all over his face: well-practiced denial, stretched taut atop something uncontrollable, primal. “No, I’m… I’m not interested in that.”

“Why not?”

Sunbeam chewed on his lip a bit before answering. “Just… wouldn’t feel right, y’know? Taking advantage of…”

“Of what?” Harness leaned forward. “You flashing your horn and wings on street corners? Going to bars and asking every filly in earshot if they want an alicorn ride?”

“No!”

“Then who are you taking advantage of? Because it’s not the dozens of ponies I could name right now who’d drop everything in their lives to do anything you wanted them to. Mares, stallions, take your pick. You’re a hero, Sun. And on top of that, speaking of course in purely neutral and objective terms: smoking, forest-fire hot.”

With every word, Sunbeam’s blush deepened, rising from his neck through his cheeks all the way to his twitching temples. “Okay, w-well… wait, how did talking to your stallion self get you thinking about this?”

“Because you know what really bugged me about Hitch?” Harness said. “He wanted something, and then he went and got it. He took it, because he deserved it, and ever since we were kids you’ve acted like you don’t deserve anything, because you were too good for your own moondamned good. You never think about what you want, what you deserve, and I just let you do it because I was too wrapped up in…”

She hadn’t really meant to say it like that. Or to say any of that, period. But now Sunbeam was staring at her and she was staring at him, and that shroud of denial pulled over his eyes was bulging — starting, inch by invisible inch, to come loose.

“So instead, I should… what?” Sunbeam murmured, in a tone that almost seemed angry. He didn’t blink. Harness didn’t look away. “Start taking things instead of asking? Be more of a stallion? What do you want me to do, Harness?”

“Whatever you fucking want,” she told him. “Whenever, with whoever, for any reason or no reason at all. Because the world’s treated you like shit your whole life, and you’ve never been anything but good back to it, and you deserve… you’ve earned more than that. And I know you want more than that too.”

Sunbeam wrapped his hoof around his glass, lifted it to his mouth, and threw back what was left of his drink. “You know what I want, Harness?” he said once the glass clacked back down on the table. “I wanna go home.”

Stars, he was so close — and furious at her for pushing her there, and at himself for letting her do it. Against every instinct screaming at her to grab hold of him and never let go, Harness sat back and nodded towards the door at her kitchen’s rear.

“Okay,” she replied. “Get home safe.”

She drained her own drink as Sunbeam stood up and carefully edged past her. He only noticed the extra lock attached to the door when he tried to pull it open and heard the obnoxious clunk of the bolt in its bore.

“Can you…” he said through a throttled sigh.

“Yeah, sorry. Sheriff’s paranoia. Key’s over here.”

Harness heard Sunbeam mutter something like “I’ll get it,” but she beat him to the hook on the far wall anyway. When she turned around, lanyard in hoof, the two of them were chest to chest, nose to nose, his harried breath whirling hotly around her slightly parted lips. She raised the key so he could see it, close enough for him to reach out and grab it — and he didn’t. He just glared, and twitched his nose, and stayed exactly where he was.

He wanted to take it, to be in control, to put his own desires first for once in his life. But he didn’t know how. He’d never learned. He’d had to grow up overnight, a teenaged outcast denied the family and friends he deserved, and solitude had surrounded his heart not as a shield, but as a filter straining out what he couldn’t help seeing as impurities, as any and every reason another pony might chastise or criticize or assume the worst intentions from him with that poor Pathfinder girl who had such a bright future ahead of her.

Because he was a stallion, and she — Harness, his confidant, his will-they-won’t-they that never ever was — was a mare. And so he could never take what he wanted, what he’d earned with his good works and impossibly kind soul, because then all those ponies would be right about him. But they weren’t — never had been, and wouldn’t be now. He had to understand that. She would make him understand that.

“I don’t…” Sunbeam growled, panting like he’d sprinted across the room instead of walked. “It’s not about deserving anything, it’s… I just want…”

Because she wanted him too. She had wanted him, always, for every day they’d whiled away as kids dreaming of a world better than their own, every night after she’d given up on the future and he hadn’t, every morning she’d woken up alone and stretched her hooves across her empty bed and swallowed back an itching, panging need for something other than what she’d let herself become.

“It’s about you,” Harness murmured. “Who you think of yourself as being. What part of you doesn’t fit in that mold you’re so good at filling.”

She’d fantasized about all her friends, daydreamed sinfully, spent nights alone with stretched hooves and itching desire — but in the mornings, when the sun was still low over the world that had become everything she thought she could want, there was still something missing, a need left agonizingly unfulfilled.

“It’s not a mold. It’s who I am,” he insisted. “Who I want to be. I don’t want to be somepony who just…”

“It’s not bad to want.” She lifted her hoof a little further — brushed it over his cheek, letting the little silver key on its lanyard bounce gently off the ridge of his chin. “Or to be wanted. It doesn’t change you.” She leaned in closer — met his eyes and held his face instead of just touching. “Stop letting it change you.”

He didn’t look away. He lifted one hoof towards the key. Their chests brushed together — a silent lightning strike.

“Are you…” Sunbeam murmured. “Is this…”

Slowly, deliberately, Harness pulled her hoof back.

“What do you want it to be?” she whispered.

He blinked — shut his eyes — decided. She shut her eyes too and didn’t see him approach, just felt his lips on hers and a new weight to replace the one inside her that had finally fallen away: his chest, his whole body, him. It only lasted for a moment, a single second at the end of decades, and then they both opened their eyes at once. Despite everything, she couldn’t help smirking.

“There,” she murmured. “Was that so ba–”

He didn’t say a word. There was a rough noise from his throat — a wild, unsuppressed growl — and then she was flat against the wall and the key to her house was clattering on the kitchen floor, because he’d pinned her hooves by her head and shoved her to where he wanted her and kissed her again, over and over, heavy and hungry and burning with desire. She kissed him back, and a noise escaped her throat too — a triumphant, uninhibited moan.

His forehooves fell to her cheeks so he could angle her head into his, then to her sides so he could mold her body against his, then over and under her stifles so he could caress — squeeze — fondle every part of her he wanted. She hooked her own forehooves around his head, groaned as his lips trailed under her chin, squeaked as she felt his teeth and tongue on her neck and a lurch in her belly as he lifted her fully off the ground.

And then, as she wrapped her hind legs around him and felt him stiffening between them, he stopped. They both took a breath. When Harness let hers out, the rainbow lock of Sunbeam’s mane ruffled above his widened eyes.

“Wait,” he said between gasps, glancing down the hall towards a door that had been shut since before he and his friends had arrived earlier. “Are we gonna wake Sparkle up?”

Panting, Harness shook her head. “I was lying earlier. She sleeps like the dead.”

Sunbeam nodded. “Good,” he sighed, and then he pressed his parted lips to hers and slid his tongue boldly between them, and there was no need to say anything else.