Author's Note
Not the first to touch on this, and probably not even my first.
She's a handful
The day had brightened considerably from how it had started, and what was once grey and drizzly was now blazing blue and bright. This meant, of course, that Rob and Batenberg had to pull the curtains shut as they resolutely stayed inside.
For staying inside had been their plan all along, rain or shine.
Rob did not often have the time to come and visit Equestria for any proper duration, and Batenberg was not often able to host him for those few occasions when he could. This rare set of circumstances - him having the time, and her being able to host - was not to be squandered on anything so mundane as being outside. No, this once-in-a-lifetime (or, more accurately, maybe two or three times a year, tops) week of visiting time was to be spent squatted in front of a television, playing videogames in companionable silence.
As nature intended.
And not just any videogames either, but old videogames specifically. By sheer, overwhelming coincidence the latest generation of pony televisions - the cutting edge of CRT technology, fresh off the presses (or whatever machine it was you used to make a television) - just-so happened to have inputs that would perfectly accept the outputs of a Nintendo Sixty-Four. They’d accept anything else of similar generation, obviously, but Rob did not have anything else of similar generation. He just had the Nintendo Sixty-Four, so that was what he’d brought.
Batenberg had been almost electric with excitement when the possibility of this happening had made itself known to her. She and Rob hadn’t managed to play in such a way for literal years, and even the mere thought sent trembles of nostalgic joy pulsing through her little pony body. It’d be like being kids all over again! Only with bills and responsibilities! But if you hid inside for most of a week those didn’t quite as big of a deal, so it’d be just like being kids all over again! For a week! Mostly.
Yay!
Thus, he had arrived grinning ear-to-ear, bearing the gear and the games, rocking up to Batenberg’s place where she, also grinning ear-to-ear had already prepared the snacks and supplies. Together, they had all the bases covered, and so it had begun.
Midway through the week the novelty had yet to wear off, to their mutual delight, and they were barely halfway through the stack of cartridges that Rob had set up like a looming monolith on Batenberg’s coffee table, the console itself also sitting there and tailing wires from television to players, owing on how they were just too damn short and they both still wanted to sit on the sofa.
“Aaaaand… that’s another one,” Batenberg happily declared, winning. Again. As implied. Rob could only shake his head in admiration. Never had he in his life witnessed such superlative Chameleon Twist gameplay. Such tongue control. She had a gift.
This wasn’t what was nagging at him, however. Well, it was one of the things that was nagging at him because it meant he was being consistently and soundly beaten. But that was a conventional concern, and defeat he was familiar with. Rather, it was something he’d only ever semi-noticed before and had mostly forgotten. But now, now that a controller was involved, it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.
“How do you do that… ?” He asked, eyes straying to her hooves, one still gripping the controls while the other ruffled her mane in a victory flourish.
“Do what? Keep beating you? Remorselessly and efficiently?” She asked.
“No. Well, yes, you can tell me about that afterwards, it’d really help me out. I meant how do you, um, you know…”
He’d trailed off. Thinking the question had been easy. Thinking of a way to make it not-thinking was awkward. She stared, waiting, and then prompted:
“... you’re gonna have to help me out here.”
“How do you press the buttons?!” He asked, the question tearing loose from him at last. Could have probably phrased it better. Batenberg cocked her head, one ear flicking in bewilderment.
“... what do you mean?” She asked.
“You - ! You haven’t got any fingers!” He hissed, quickly glancing about the room as though someone might overhear and get them all in trouble. She gave him a very level look before raising both hooves up in front of her face, looking at them, and then pulling an expression of utter (and exaggerated) horror.
“Oh! Oh Celestia! You’re right! Oh I’m a freak! Oh nooooo!”
Rob’s turn for the level look.
“You know what I mean,” he said. Lowering her hooves again he stuck her tongue out at him and picked up the controller again, again bewildering and confusing him. It wasn’t even as she was holding it pinched between them, it just seemed to cling.
“I really don’t. It just works,” she said. “Can we please get back to playing on the Nintendo Ultra Sixty-Four?”
“Can you please stop calling it that…”
He’d mentioned that once - once! - and she still hadn’t let it go. They did go back to playing it though, and things returned to how they’d been before, with him losing and Batenberg luxuriating in her victories. Rob hoped for better luck on whatever game turned out to come next and did his best not to look at her hooves.
His best was not good enough. She noticed.
“Are you gonna be weird about this?”
“No!”
“That’s a weird thing to say,” she said, then reaching over to gently and reassuringly put a hoof onto his thigh. “I’m here for you if you want to talk about how weird you’re being.”
He could feel her grip. Her grin wasn’t helping things.
“I’m going to go and get a drink, you want one?” He asked, rising physically if not to her bait.
“You know what I like,” she said cooly, lounging back into the comfiness of the sofa as she settled in to wait for his return. Meanwhile, burbly music burbled happily in the background.
He did indeed know what she liked, as she did for him. They’d known each other long enough that it would have been a bit weird if they didn’t. Similarly, they’d known each other long enough (for almost all of their lives, really) that his sudden fixation on her hooves and their capabilities seemed to have come out of nowhere. That was because it had, for him, but since it had it was now a thing in his brain and it refused to go away.
How did it work?
Gritting his teeth and gripping a pair of cans he went back and found Batenberg closely studying a tiny, spindly model, one of several she had arranged on her shelves - collector’s display pieces from some series she was a big fan of but which he had never got into. The tiny little figure appeared to be mostly thin, spider-like, spiky legs and she held it with one hoof, turning it this way and that and peering at it, nodding in appreciation.
“What are you doing?” Rob asked, placing her drink on the table and opening his as he sat. He had a feeling she was up to something. His feeling was correct.
“Don’t mind me, I’m just handling this delicate figurine.”
“Why?”
“I just really like carefully handling delicate figurines. And not dropping them. Would you also like to carefully handle this delicate figurine? Careful, it’s delicate,” she said, proffering it his way and giving him an excellent view of how the thing was simply stuck to the bottom - the pad? - of her hoof. He didn’t take it, putting his hands to use instead holding his face in mild and mounting despair.
“I shouldn’t have said anything…”
Batenberg replaced the delicate figurine alongside its fellows and then scrambled over the arm of the sofa to bounce up right next to him. She was taking an unhealthy amount of delight in his discomfort.
“It’s just so weird! You’ve known me since forever! Why is this a thing now?” She asked.
“I don’t know!” Rob nigh-on wailed into his palms.
“Come on! There must be a reason! Give me the reason! I demand it!” She said, baffing her chest with a hoof and straightening her pose imperiously. Rob peeked at this through his fingers. It was adorable, but not actually very commanding. She was, after all, only a little pony.
“You’re in a position to make demands?” He asked.
“I can be!”
“... what would that look like?”
Blowing slighted air through slighted nostrils, Batenberg put both hooves on his thigh this time and narrowed her eyes. The eye thing only served to make her look even more adorable, but the hooves-on-leg thing just felt uncomfortably ticklish. Together, they proved an irresistible combination and Rob couldn’t help but let out a giggle.
“Don’t laugh at me! I’m the most serious pony here!”
“You’re the only pony here!” Rob pointed out, still talking into his hands and stifling another rising titter that threatened to escape. He was getting the giggles proper, he could feel it. The situation was just getting to him, and he could tell she could tell, and she was pressing it.
“Most serious by default! Also makes me the most important pony here! Now surrender your secrets already, human!” She said, butting her head against his shoulder hard enough to rock him gently. Another giggle.
“What is happening?!”
“I’m getting some answers!” Batenberg declared, balancing with some difficulty on her hindhooves only on the squishy sofa cushions and grabbed his wrists, pulling them away from his face. “The sooner you give it up the better it’ll be for you! I’ll ask if they’ll go easy on you!”
“Who’s they?!”
“Ooh! You don’t want to find out! But they’ll hear about this if you’re not careful!”
Rob could not contain himself any longer and corpsed hard. Batenberg wasn’t far behind him and the look of cast-iron solemnity she had been affecting rippled a moment before she - with some effort! - forced it back down. He keeled over sideways onto the sofa, unable to keep from laughing, and Batenberg followed, clambering atop him.
“Oh God!” Rob cried between laughs.
“Your God can’t help you now, human! Tell me! Tell me why you’re being so weird! I have ways of making you talk, you know!” She said, demonstrating this by pudging her hooves into his sides in the hopes of finding a sensitive spot. She found several, and Rob’s condition worsened as she uselessly curled into a ball to try and save himself.
“How are they soft and hard?!”
“I’m the one asking the questions here!” She said, though this was of course not a question. Batenberg easily fended off the one, feeble arm Rob swiped at her and then took advantage of the opening this presented to tickle him worse. “Foolish!”
Once he’d curled up again she crawled further along him the better the reach over and very, very deliberately (and very delicately) take hold of his ear in one hoof so she could then whisper:
“Psst, hey. You should probably answer some of her questions, I don’t think she’s going to give up. Seems determined.”
Rob shivered top to tail.
“Gah! Don’t do that!”
“Why?” She whispered. He shivered again.
“Gah!”
The shivering had at least punctuated the laughing fits, and with the tickling stopping Rob had a moment to actually try and catch a breath or two, albeit ones punctuated by some final, trailing giggles. Batenberg, delighted she’d got through the whole thing without actually cracking, let him have a moment. It was only fair. When he’d recovered enough he turned his head enough to glare reproachfully at her.
“Totally unfair,” he said. She smiled back at him. Or rather, smiled down at him, since he was still perched atop him.
“Totally fair. In life as in videogames, I am just naturally a winner.”
He couldn’t really argue with this, and his mind wasn’t in the right place to anyway, as that moment he found himself oddly distracted with the sight of her smile. That it was so close didn’t help. All of her was very close, he realised. Again, with the length of their acquaintance this wasn’t exactly the first time, but as with the hooves an idea had snuck into his head somehow, and now it had he couldn’t shift it.
“What is it this time?” Batenberg asked, noticing the weird change in the way he was looking at her. Not faux-reproachful anymore, but something else now. She squeaked in surprise as he rolled from his side onto his back, leaving her sitting plopped on his belly, his hand having come up to steady her as he did so.
“... you…” he about managed to say, though that didn’t say much.
“What?” She breathed.
The expectant moment between them stretched. Rob licked his lips. Batenberg did not notice she was leaning in towards him.
The stack of games on the coffee table collapsed with a deafening clatter, making both of them jump out of their skin.
The moment cracked, and was done.
“See having fingers didn’t help you stack those,” Batenberg said, nodding to the ruins of his once-proud tower o’ games, the hammering of her heart not solely down to the sudden shock of it all.
“No comment,” Rob said, shifting beneath her, sitting up as she hopped aside, and reaching for his drink. All at once he’d become quite parched. “Shall we see what happens next?” He asked. Batenberg’s ears pricked.
“W-what?”
“G-game, I mean. What game happens next. What game we do next. I mean that,” he said, also nodding to the ruins, though with rather more insistence and purpose than she had.
“That’s another weird thing to say.”
“No, it’s a weird way to say something normal. Uh, I’ll just - I’ll just tidy these up first…”
And Rob flung himself to the floor to start gathering the cartridges that had fallen there, with the side benefit of hiding his burning red face.
The drawback of course being that it meant he could not see Batenberg’s own, equally red face.
(And also that it left him wide open for her to put her hoof on his exposed back when his shirt rode up. He may have said ‘gah’ again and this time Batenberg may have been the one to start laughing.)