Author's Note
Sometimes I look at these and think "Maybe this is a little dense and hard to read" and then I realise I don't give a fuck.
Sure, why not
Rain spattered against the windows furiously, but impotently. Wind whipped the branches and rattled the hedges but, since those were the other side of the glass, who cared really? Nasty as it was outside, inside was lovely. Take that, outside.
Making the inside - specifically the inside of Jake’s Equestrian pied-à-terre - even lovelier was the presence, of course, of Rarity. She always brought not only an undeniable touch of class but also an irresistible and general sense of overpowering delight. Or so Jake felt, anyway, and Rarity was hardly one to argue about it when he brought it up to her. Which he did every time she came around.
Loveliness on loveliness!
(Oh, and Rainbow Dash was also there. She was nice too.)
The reason for Jake and Rarity (plus Rainbow Dash) being inside on this particular rainy day was, nominally, the watching of a television programme. A human one, no less. It was one that Jake and Rarity had developed a shared fondness for during her visits to his actual, human-side home, and had formed a little tradition around watching together.
This tradition was not just a transparent excuse to spend time in each other’s company.
In order to carry on the tradition on this side of reality, Jake had sprung for the package that punched programmes from back home on Earth all the way through The Aetheric Veilto Equestria, specifically so he could continue to watch the thing with Rarity. If anyone wanted to read into that they were more than welcome. As said, it wasn’t an excuse for anything. They were just friends. Friend united by the love of a truly awful television programme. And mutual respect and appreciation of one another’s company.
But mostly the programme. Ah yes, the programme.
The programme itself was a nightmare by most anyone’s standards. Going in blind without an explanation of its mechanics would be to court madness. Nothing made sense on its own. Things just seemed to happen, and inexplicably this led to other, seemingly unrelated things happening, and so on until the credits. Hat Trick. Enemdol. Etcetera.
In broad terms, it was a programme about fashion, and some of the processes that might conceivable go into the creation of fashion. This was selling it very, very short though. Sewing and knitting battled for supremacy alongside crochet and the application of sequins. Occasionally the trick was in doing it all quickly. Sometimes it was about doing it the best as judged by a judge (and a notably judgemental one at that). Also once archery had been involved with very little warning at all.
Rainbow Dash liked competition, sure, but this was just nonsensical. Not that Jake or Rarity appeared to mind much. If anything, they relished the chaos. And Rainbow Dash hadn’t really inserted herself to watch the thing anyway, she was just caught in the splash zone, so to speak, baffled.
(The splash zone was the large, squishy chair she had parked herself on to watch the television. The sofa was also the splash zone, but Rarity and Jake had laid bold claim to that. Cuddling was involved.)
“Kwasi’s my man. He’s got this one. He’s all over it. He’s so all over you can’t even see your guy, whoever she is. No chance, who she is,” Jake said emphatically, gesturing at the screen with the arm not presently wrapped around Rarity. She just giggled, then scoffed.
“Please! Kwasi is a solid choice but solid just won’t cut it at this stage of the competition! I should know. This is my area, after all! I can see things you simply can’t!”
“That’s as maybe, but I have greater experience with janky British television! I have a feeling for how these things go. My gut says Kwasi.”
She patted his belly before replying, and so it was his turn to giggle.
“Not to disparage your gut, but it is still obvious that Jennifer will be the one walking away from this with her head held high. You are - and forgive me for saying this darling but it’s the truth - ‘going down’. Did I say that right?” She asked, theatricality toning down at the last minute as the tiniest smidge of doubt crept in.
Jake made up for the dip in theatrics by clapping his free hand to his cheek.
“By George, I think she’s got it! Only took two series. Serieses?”
“Serei, dear,” Rarity said, as though she knew and as though this were the right answer.
“Ah, thank you. Obvious now. Obvious!”
Rainbow Dash looked from one to the other of them as though they’d lost their minds.
“...what are you two talking about?” She asked, deeply afraid of the answer. Rarity batted a hoof at her.
“It’s banter, darling! He’s teaching it to me,” she said.
“...can he stop teaching it to you?” Rainbow Dash asked.
“That’s good banter there, Rainbow Dash, hit me up,” he said, extending a fist her way. A fist she left hanging. “Ooh, sandbagged. She got me,” he said, transferring the fist Rarity’s way and getting a bop (and another giggle at the novelty of it all) from her instead. Rainbow Dash shook her head and sunk further into the squishy chair a moment before wriggling up to lunge for one of the bowls on the coffee table. Cradling it close, she sunk once more. Cheesy balls provided safety and solace.
Jake eyed this, and raised an eyebrow once the eyeing was done.
“If I didn’t know any better I’d think you were only here for the food,” he said. Rainbow was already halfway through the bowl, demolishing cheesy balls (and the safety and solace they provided) at an alarming rate. Becrumbed, she paused long enough to say:
“I am only here for the food.”
“I know more than I thought!” Jake said, delighted.
“And it’s raining. And I was bored. I’m still bored, but at least I’m fed now,” Rainbow added. She didn’t need to justify why she’d inserted herself into their evening, she didn’t think, but she was doing it anyway. If anything, it was to reassure herself this hadn’t been a mistake.
Jake nodded at her point on being fed. She wasn’t wrong.
“That is an improvement,” he said.
The rain was scheduled, so the weather being appalling was as intended. Didn’t make it any more pleasant to go out in, of course, and Rainbow had no food at hers because she was, frankly, lazy. At least when it came to getting food in anyway. Besides, things always taste better when someone else got them. That was just facts.
Things settled into companionable silence for bit after this, with attention mostly televisionwards. It was the final, so Rarity and Jake were a little invested, and were keen to see which of the two remaining contestants would be the one coming out on top.
So keen, in fact, that during a lull Jake piped up with:
“What do you say we make this interesting?”
This caught Rarity’s interest and her ears pricked.
“Interesting, eh?
“What might you say to… a wager?”
“Ooh, that is interesting!”
“I know! When Kwasi wins - when, not if - you shall, as the loser, have to wear this!”
And he reached over down past the arm of the sofa on the side nearest him and pulled up a singularly eye-watering outfit, a welter of clashing colours, angular janglies, bent feathers, and just about anything else that Jake had been able to think up to make it appalling. Rarity’s jaw dropped.
“It’s horrible! But very well made. High stakes indeed! But let it not be said that I do not have the courage of my convictions! I take your bet! And if Jennifer wins - which she will, darling, just so you remember - you’ll have to wear this!”
And with glowing horn she pulled from behind the sofa a human-shaped outfit that was, if anything, even more garish and searingly painful on the eye. Jake was entirely flatfooted by this. He hadn’t seen her bring it in, and he had no idea how she’d got it there. And that really was the least of the questions the thing prompted.
“Why did you have this already made? And with you?” He asked, and she looked at him as though this was a ridiculous question.
“Because I was expecting to win. Obviously,” she said.
“Expecting to win a bet I brought up as a surprise?” He asked.
Rarity blinked. Slowly.
“Yes. Obviously.”
“Ah, obviously.”
A pause.
“Why did you happen to have that in my size?” Rarity then asked, head inclined slightly towards what he was holding.
“Because I knew about the bet and I knew I was going to win. Obviously.”
She cast her expert eye over the thing, excising the unpleasant details and boring down to the fundamentals which were, she saw, sound.
“How did you guess my size? So accurately, too…”
The look of self-assured confidence he’d been working puffed to nothing in an instant and he was left staring into nothingness, wide-eyed, mind working furiously for a reasonable-sounding excuse.
“... luck,” he said.
This did not work.
“Hmm,” went Rarity, brimming with savage satisfaction, only to then have a thought occur: “And where did you get it from? I never made this for you.”
That he could have (or would have) obtained it from some other place or some other pony was plainly so absurd a possibility that it didn’t cross her mind. She did not remember having been asked by him for this one, though, which raised questions for her. He beamed in triumph at her.
“Aha! No! I worked through a proxy!”
“Oh yes, I remember this now! Catspaw Decoy came in and asked for it! I did wonder why she was asking for something that wouldn’t fit her at the time - I thought it was a gift! Oh that is frightfully cunning.”
“I know!”
“Just trying to watch this stupid show over here…” Rainbow Dash mumbled from the side, eyes glued to the television so she wouldn’t have to watch whatever nonsense was happening on the sofa.
It might have been a mumble, but it was enough to remind Jake and Rarity that they weren’t alone, and that they were - on paper at least - meant to be watching something, and so watch something they did. The outcome of the programme was important to them, after all. It would decided which of them was the winner!
And so they watched, still snuggled, still occasionally giggling, not really bothering the snacks and simply allowing Rainbow to make her own way through them, which she did. Systematically.
At length, the programme reached its climax: the final, nailbiting challenge wherein which Kwasi and Jennifer had to both design and make a complete formal dinner outfit while also knee-deep in a babbling brook and answering fiendish fashion trivia questions shouted at them from the riverbank. Rarity and Jake watched with rapt attention, gradually using less and less of the sofa until they were only barely using the edge.
And just when they felt they could take the tension no more the challenge concluded and…
“A draw?” Jake asked, perplexed.
“Has there ever been a draw?” Rarity asked, equally perplexed.
“I don’t know.”
On-screen, everyone else was perplexed, too. From the looks of things the producers were being summoned. This was unprecedented. Not that this helped Jake or Rarity that much. Both had been poised for someone to win and someone to lose that the reality that neither of them had done either left them a bit lost.
“So you didn’t win,” Rarity said.
“And you didn’t win,” Jake pointed out.
“But if neither of us won then neither of us lost, which means that neither of us need to forfeit, do we?” Rarity asked a little forlornly, perhaps hoping this wasn’t the case. It was though.
“I suppose that’s true…” Jake said.
The two of them were sad.
“Or maybe you both lose. Think about that?” Rainbow proposed around a half-finished mouthful of something corn-based, baked, and crunchy. The others both looked at her. Rainbow suppressed a burp behind a hoof.
Rarity and Jake were less sad. They looked at one another, eyebrows ratcheting up.
“She makes a good point,” Jake said.
“The burp?”
“No, before that.”
“She does make a good point…”
The two of them re-hoisted the outfits they’d coincidentally just-so had made and passed them over to each other. They really were truly, truly hideous, and yet neither of them could keep from beaming.
“Looking at you - I mean, looking at what you’ve given me, darling - it might at first-blush appear a little strange and uncomfortable, but I have a feeling that I could get used to it quite easily, and probably even come to like it…” Rarity said, lashes fluttering.
“And as for this? Well, I think about being inside y- inside something you’ve made. Quite a lot.”
Jake swallowed. Rarity fanned herself.
“Oh my.”
This was the final straw. Rainbow’s exasperation finally got the better of her.
“Just kiss already, you weirdos!” She groaned, one hoof pressed against her face while the other groped about for further snacks. Rarity and Jake looked at her a second or two - since it really was quite a sight, watching her blindly cramming chilli-flavoured, corn-based snacks into her mouth - before turning back to look at one another again.
“She makes another good point,” Jake said.
“She does make another good point…”
“Wait, what? I was kidding! Guys! I was- whelp, there they go.”
And go they did. Go they really did, Rarity disappearing underneath Jake barring her tail trailing on the floor and one hindleg, joyously kicking.
It started out awkward with a tinge of cute, if only for how plainly into it both of them were. The cute did not last all that long though, with how plainly into it both of them were, and the awkwardness only increased as it went on. And on. And on. Rainbow’s expression had gone from surprised, through cockily unconcerned and unmoved, into actually a little concerned, and now she just looked aghast.
“Stop kissing! Please, stop kissing! Just - don’t you need to breathe?!”
Apparently they did not, or at least not much. Rainbow continued to stare, too appalled to look away, until the sound of grunting and thwacking from the television dragged her attention away.
“Hey, they’re hitting each other with sticks now,” she said, grabbing another bowl and burrowing back into her now thoroughly-claimed crevice in the squishy chair. “Cool.”
Jake briefly emerged for air.
“The sticks? Ooh, sudden death! They haven’t-” he about managed to say before a hoof grabbed him by the collar.
“You haven’t finished, darling.”
“Mmmphghhg,” said Jake.
Erudite.
Endemol.
