Feather Bangs and the TiSoFa
“So…” said Swoon Song, doing her best to flutter her eyelashes at the stallion across the restaurant table. “What advice did those three fillies give you for our date?”
“Yes, do tell us!” exclaimed Fond Feather, seated next to her. “Was it to serenade us with a ballad?”
“Gift us with a bouquet of flowers?” said Dear Darling, with a wink.
“What did they tell you to doooooo?” they said in unison.
(“Wait, I thought we weren’t doing the creepy unison voice thing?”, whispered one of them.)
“Oh, you know, girls!” Feather Bangs flipped his mane and gave the mares a confident smile, which only held for a second.
“I mean, just being honest with myself and you all with my feelings, and not being afraid to talk about them? About as good advice as you could expect from literal children.”
“Aww, that’s so cute!” squee-ed Fond Feather, squeezing her own cheeks with her hooves. “Though, I mean, yeah, that is kind of surprising, seeing how their advice to that Big Mac guy turned out!”
“Yeah!” said Dear Darling, pouting. “I mean, he kissed her while she was asleep! Only a literal child would think that was anything other than weird and creepy.“
“And she chose him over you?” fumed Swoon Song. “Ugh, I just do not understand that mare’s taste in stallions.”
“She has the worst taste!” exclaimed Fond Feather.
“The worst!” Dear Darling agreed.
“Well, I mean…” Feather Bangs rubbed the back of his neck nervously. “Isn’t what they all did not all that different from what we were doing?”
“Oh.” Dear Darling blinked. “Oh, we overdid it, didn’t we? With the swooning.”
“I told you it was too much!” said Swoon Song. “We should’ve been more subtle!”
“No, that’s exactly what I’m talking about, babe!” said Feather Bangs. “I mean, Swoon Song! I mean, mare I don’t know? Ugh, no, see? This is too confusing! What am I even doing here?”
“Well.” Swoon Song said. “You’re on a date, right? With the three of us? The three enchanting young mares that have been swooning over you all over town all day? And you already know our names, so we don’t have to introduce ourselves, that’s convenient!” She fluttered her eyelashes for good measure.
“No! I mean, what am I doing with all this?” Feather Bangs sighed. “What did I even do today? A bunch of romantic gestures for a mare I barely knew, for what? So she could be annoyed at me as a stallion? And I even roped you three into this!”
The three of them were looking at him with fallen smiles. Feather Bangs slumped over the table, his face against its surface.
“You know, girls, there might be such a thing as being too supportive as ex-marefriends. ”
“Oh, no, babe!” cooed Fond Feather, instinctively reaching out a hoof to stroke the side of his face before suddenly drawing it back.
“I mean, you didn’t rope us into this! We insisted, remember? Because we really wanted this to happen for you!”
“But what would have happened for me? I barely know this mare!” Feather Bangs did not move from his position face-down on the table. “It was just playacting, just a game of seducing a mare as a stallion! And I was terrible at it!”
“Well.” Dear Darling spoke, placing a caressing hoof on Feather Bangs’s cheek until he looked up at her smile with tears in his eyes.
“I don’t think you were.”
Feather Bangs did not smile.
“Would you think that if you didn’t already know me?” He looked at her as well as Fond Feather and Swoon Song. “If I’d met you all those years ago as a… as Feather Bangs, would we have had that life together? Would we have gotten to know each other the way we did?”
“Why not? We could have still formed a band and toured Equestria.”
“But it would’ve been different. We wouldn’t have been a filly quartet. Not four notes on a scale, together.”
He bit his lip.
“And I miss what we had. It’s exactly what I don’t want to go back to, but I miss it, you know?”
Dear Darling’s hoof touched his own, and his other hoof found those of Fond Feather and Swoon Song.
“We don’t have to go back to that,” said Swoon Song softly. “It was a nice story, but that relationship is over.”
Feather Bangs snorted. “Yeah, I know, I ended it!”
“Really?” said Dear Darling. “I don’t think that’s right at all! After all, this is our first date, right?”
“Yeah!” chimed in Fond Feather. “I mean, I think we’d remember if we’d ever dated a charming, dreamy, romantic stallion named Feather Bangs like you before, and since this is our first date together, we surely couldn’t be able to remember such a thing!“
“Yeah!” said Swoon Song, stroking his cheek softly again and fluttering her eyelashes. ”All we know is that we saw you across the absurdly tiny village that was the former site of a brainwashing pony cult, and we like your vibe.”
Feather Bangs saw on their faces the looks that they had been giving him all day. The looks that he had filed away in his head as all part of the act, to increase his value in Sugar Belle’s eyes. But he didn’t see them as an act now. And rationally, they may have even been the same looks from his life before. But he couldn’t deny that in some indescribable way they felt different now. And the three of them looking at him in that way, those sultry looks hitting him all at once, that did break his brain a little.
“Oh, good!” he managed to squeak out.
“You know, girls, I don’t think we should be looking at this part!” declared Apple Bloom, as the Cutie Mark Crusaders lowered their binoculars.
“Yeah…” Scootaloo agreed, a shell-shocked look on her face.
“Wow!” Sweetie Belle exclaimed. “We’re really good at giving advice!”
