School Colours

Chapters

After Class
Up Too Late
The First Morning After
Fluttershy's Bedroom

After Class

"Can you believe this?"

The locker door that slammed in front of Fluttershy's face sent her backwards like a shot had gone off. Her eyes widened as she tucked her body into the smallest ball she could manage and huddled against the far wall of the hallway, waiting for the inevitable march of uniformed griffons that would surely come any minute, rampaging through the halls of the school with full combat regalia.

The voice had gone almost completely unnoticed as it was followed by the door-slam. Rainbow Dash, the pony responsible, leaned with one foreleg against the locker she had dented as she closed it in frustration and sighed.

Rainbow Dash, the perennial tomboy. While her rainbow mane and spunky attitude had gotten more than a few boys interested in her over the years, the rest of her practically screamed 'not interested'. Her body was nice enough; not curvy, like some of the ponies in her class, but trim and slender from the hours of workout practice. Her wings were short and well fitted against her body, with her brilliant blue feathers trained for maximum aerodynamic efficiency. She would have been a catch to any boy (or girl) in school – but right now, the look on her face reminded the few passerby why it was a good idea to avoid her most of the time, especially with the notion of a 'relationship' in hoof; that being, Rainbow Dash had a temper.

If Rainbow Dash was volatile multicoloured ink, Fluttershy was the opposite, a warm yellowy pastel. Even huddled in a quivering pegasus ball she was the picture of demure meekness. Her wings, despite their relative non-use at the academy (it was a mystery to anyone why Fluttershy was attending a school primarily known for flight graduates in the first place) were far larger than anypony would have expected from thoughts of her personality; Fluttershy's wings were larger than life, big enough to wrap around her whole body and then some, shielding her with butter-cream feathers against possible assailants and blocking out the harshness of the world in general.

She hadn't wrapped them around fast enough to avoid Rainbow Dash's shout and subsequent locker smash.

Fluttershy peeked out from a crack between the feathers on her right wing as Rainbow Dash walked up to her, rolling her eyes.

"Come on, Flutters, get up. You're embarassing yourself in front of everyone."

"D-d-din't anypony else hear that awful noise?" Fluttershy asked, nervously taking Rainbow Dash's hoof and allowing herself to be stood up on all fours. Her wings withdrew like a full-body cloak and collected into deceptively small bundles on her back. Despite her sudden astonishment, her hair had kept its composure through her tumble in the air, a perfect arrangement of cotton-candy pink strands cascading over her face like a waterfall of flower-scented beauty.

For the stares Rainbow Dash got, she could count ten times that many in Fluttershy's direction. She was a pony it was hard not to spend too long looking at.

Rainbow Dash sighed.

"That was me, dummy. I slammed the locker by your head? After I asked if you saw what happened after class just now?"

Fluttershy blinked and lowered her head, pressing her chin closer to her chest, as though she could remove her sudden embarassment by making herself smaller. It seemed to work, mostly.

"Oh, um... no, I didn't. Was it something exciting?"

"If you call having one of the worst teachers in the entire school 'exciting'," Rainbow Dash responded sarcastically. As she spoke, she gave a flick of her rainbow tail, twitching it in the air like a whip in her agitation.

"Oh... um?"

It was the best Fluttershy could manage without further context. She had tried to pay attention, but the slam that had sounded like an explosion had taken her out of her head for a moment.

"You tell me how the best flier in the entire school can get suspended from the cloudball team because of doing bad on one stupid weather test," Rainbow Dash mumbled, and kicked one of her hind legs into the air, angrily thrusting her hoof into nothing.

Oh. Was that what had happened?

"Oh, Rainbow Dash, did they really take you off the cloudball team?"

Rainbow Dash gritted her teeth and swung her right foreleg in a wide arc through the air, like she was punching an invisible pony in the mouth.

"Eep!"

Fluttershy was forced to duck her head away from a particularly hearty swing aimed more or less in her direction.

"Yes, they did! And now I have to do a stupid makeup test on Monday to get back in on 'double probation', whatever the flying buck that means." Rainbow Dash walked with her friend closer to another locker in the row through the hall and kicked it, hard. The metal of the compartment groaned as it crumpled inward, yielding a sizable Rainbow Dash hoof-sized dent in the aftermath.

Fluttershy swallowed nervously. She hated to see her friend upset, but she hated conflict even more, and she knew that someone at the school would not be happy if they found out about those lockers.

"Um. Well, maybe you should take the weekend to calm down. I'm sure if you just take a few days to relax, you'll feel much better about the whole thing–"

"Ugh. Don't remind me about this weekend." Rainbow Dash held out a hoof in front of Fluttershy, and the yellow pegasus stopped abruptly. She hadn't even realized she was walking – but here she was, down the hall. Rainbow Dash had gotten her walking away from her dorm into the wild unknown of advanced math classes.

"What's wrong with the weekend?" Fluttershy asked earnestly. She eyed the posters and stickers along the wall of the school she stood silently behind Rainbow Dash's hoof. Everywhere she looked, banners and pennants were plastered along the walls in the school colours; blue and yellow.

"Just this dumb party I have to go to. You're going too, right?" Rainbow Dash brimmed with glee in what looked to be an unprecedented amount. She looked from side to side with shifty eyes before leaning in conspiratorially and whispering to Fluttershy, the only pony around to hear her secret. "I heard... there's gonna be... beer! Isn't that awesome?"

Fluttershy smiled and tried her best to fake an earnest enthusiasm.

"Oh, yeah... awesome."

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes. She wasn't completely oblivious to her friend's dislike of social situations – if anything, she was only interested in bringing her along in the hopes that it might get her to spend her weekend doing something more exciting than rolling in the grass on the surface with squirrels.

"Come on, 'Shy. It's gonna be fun! You don't have to drink. You can just come and have a good time."

Fluttershy tilted her head to one side and grabbed a lock of hair between her forehooves. She began twirling it between them like a braid of twisted anxiety, looping the hair over and over on itself as she tried to look elsewhere.

"I dunno, Rainbow Dash... would there be boys there?"

Dash pressed a hoof against her face and ran it down to her chin with an exasperated sigh.

"Of course there'd be boys; it's a college party! We're not just gonna sit around in dresses drinking tea and playing dolls."

Fluttershy's eyes brightened at Rainbow Dash's imagined scenario, but she turned her gaze back down as she realized the suggestion had been a joke.

"Well... I'm not sure."

"Boys are nothing to be afraid of! Heck, you're in college now. You should be comfortable enough around the opposite sex that they don't scare you out of enjoying your weekend."

Fluttershy lowered the lock of her hair that was now twisted into an anxious looking swirl of pink.

"I don't know... they just always seem so... uncouth. And loud. And you know how I hate loud things."

"Not every boy is loud and obnoxious," Rainbow Dash countered. "Some of them are even fun to be–"

"Hey, Rainbow Crash! How'd you and Klutzersy make it down the hallway without crashing into those lockers?"

"–around." Rainbow Dash let out the last word in a sigh, interrupted by the obnoxious voice from down the hallway. She didn't have to turn around to see who it was.

Fluttershy chanced a peek out from behind her friend to get a proper view of the source of the clumsy taunt.

Standing further away than must have been comfortable to yell from, Fluttershy caught sight of the set of messy bangs hanging over the eyes of a brown-coated pegasus, leering at her from enough of a distance that Fluttershy couldn't even make out his cutie-mark.

"Is that–"

"Isn't it always?" grumbled Rainbow Dash in response. "Just ignore him, and maybe he'll go away."

"What's the matter, couldn't hear me? Did you trip over something this morning and make yourself deaf?"

"If you're going to blow hot air at us you could at least do it close enough that we can hear whatever dumb stuff you're saying!" Rainbow Dash turned and delivered her rebuttal with a glare behind the locks of rainbow mane hanging over her eyes.

Fluttershy gasped at the sudden escalation in conflict and sidled up to Rainbow Dash's side, nestling herself between the blue pegasus and a nearby locker, the door left open by a student in a hurry on the way to class, or maybe by a staff-member who had cleaned it out and left the empty vessel bare.

The colt at the end of the hallway smirked, though his grin was unseen by either pegasus opposite him, and fluttered down the hallway faster than was necessary. His wings threw up the odd piece paper on the ground here and there as he zoomed forward.

"Is this better, Rainbow Cra–"

The sound of the locker door as it hit his head was almost comically loud. It let out an ear-splitting 'twong' that rang down the hallway, a noise loud enough to draw attention to the newly forged dent that arose as a result of the door's impact with a particularly thick skull.

The pegasus colt didn't even have a chance to mumble out the rest of his taunt. His eyes closed behind his messy bangs and he fell to the floor, landing in a heap over his own limbs.

Rainbow Dash's mouth fell agape in shock. She took a moment to turn her head to the side.

"Ohmygoodness, I'm so sorry! I didn't think it would hit him that hard..." Fluttershy held up her forehooves to her mouth and widened her eyes, startled at the after-effects of her impromptu locker-door defense.

"Did you just knock him out with that locker?"

Fluttershy's eyes grew even wider and more distressed looking.

"I guess I did... I'm just so tired of him always needing to come up with something to say to us. I mean... it's not that upsetting anymore, but I don't want to stand here fifteen more minutes while he goes on."

Rainbow Dash blinked at her friend's explanation.

"Do you think we should take him to the nurse?" Fluttershy asked as she prodded the crumpled brown body with one of her forelegs.

"Uh... no, I'm sure he'll be fine. And you're right about us not having to stand around anymore... let's take that to heart and split, shall we?"

Fluttershy gave a nervous look in either direction, but seemed to have quelled the sudden panic that had arisen apparently only as a result of the fear of getting caught red-hooved in her relative self-defense.

"Okay," she said with a nod.

Rainbow Dash grabbed Fluttershy's hoof with her own, and the two of them flapped their wings down the hallway as fast as they could manage without looking suspicious.

On the floor, the colt with the brown fur and untidy bangs let out a low groan.

He'd be sure to feel that one when he woke up.

As they fluttered off, Rainbow Dash spared a backwards look to her and Fluttershy's mutual annoyance. A suddenly perplexed look washed across her face, and she turned back to Fluttershy, still flying.

"Why does a college even have lockers, anyway?"

Fluttershy nodded knowingly.

"Well, it's because it used to be a high-school, and I guess they were too lazy to convert everything."

"Oh."

And with that, the two of them carried on down the hall, on their way to a Friday evening of nothing in particular.

Up Too Late

The movie Fluttershy had picked turned out to be longer than either of them had expected. By the fourth hour even Fluttershy's eyelids were drooping, while Rainbow Dash had been fighting the onset of lethargy since the moment the words Hoof and Heart: an Earth-Pony Love Story had crawled across the screen. She'd fought to stifle a yawn, but Fluttershy hadn't noticed – her eyes had begun to brim with the excitement as soon as the title-card and windswept scenery had graced the TV screen.

Now it was late, and the final words of the credits were rolling across the screen, lazily ushering in the last of the thank-yous for the movie's surprisingly small budget.

Maybe they just had a lot of film, Rainbow Dash mused, yawning and trying to clear the bleariness from her eyes.

"What time is it, Flutters?" Rainbow Dash asked, too tired to even bother turning her head to check. She'd fallen into a poorly-positioned lean as the movie went on, taking up the middle of Fluttershy's bed and arching her back against the wall. She'd tried to grab a spot next to Fluttershy, but the tower of pillows had given her a lumpy and uncomfortable feeling, and every time she tried to shift to see more of the film from behind Fluttershy (mostly out of pure boredom) Fluttershy had squeaked, additionally so when Rainbow Dash's hooves or wings bumped against her.

Fluttershy was nestled in a stretched out position, taking up half the bed down to where her hind hooves rested just in front of Rainbow Dash's arched over body. She looked content and ready to fall asleep but for the blankets being underneath her rather than over her.

"Um... it's almost two AM," she said, taking a minute to puzzle out the clock hands swinging lazily in the darkness. Neither pony had remembered to turn on a light, and the room's brightness had descended with the sun, eventually leaving the only light the faded glow of the TV screen, a slightly less-black-than-black giving them just enough illumination to see their own hooves in front of their faces.

"Two AM?! Sweet Celestia, it is way later than I thought." Rainbow Dash pulled herself away from the wall into a sitting position in the middle of the bed, her hind-legs hanging over the bed-frame, her body planted just next to Fluttershy's outstretched hooves.

"Is it okay if I crash here tonight? I really don't feel like flying home in the dark."

Fluttershy squeaked and drew her hooves closer together, curling herself up a little bit.

"That would be okay, I guess. I can sleep on the floor, I suppose..."

"Pssht. Why would you sleep on the floor? Your bed's plenty big enough for both of us."

Fluttershy took a sudden assessment of her bed's size. Certainly, she was just about perfectly big enough to take up half, and Rainbow Dash had an even smaller and tighter body, which meant that they probably wouldn't even get in each others way if there was no tossing and turning over night.

But... that would mean spending the night in bed next to somepony.

Fluttershy gulped quietly.

"I guess so," she said, turning her head away as though being able to see Rainbow Dash might suddenly make her smaller or intangible.

"Eep!"

Fluttershy let out another squeak as Rainbow Dash was beside her suddenly, yanking up the blankets and tucking herself inside. She pulled the quilt from underneath Fluttershy to help her do the same, and Fluttershy gave a quick flutter of her wings to pull her off the bed to help before lowering herself back down and letting Rainbow Dash throw her collection of delicate blankets overtop.

"Thanks a ton. I promise I'll try my best not to snore." Rainbow Dash grinned over at Fluttershy, who answered her with an embarrassed looking smile.

Just try not to think about it, she told herself, turning over for a moment to find the remote on her bed-side table and cease the incessant off-black glowing of the TV screen.

The moment the screen's light extinguished, the darkness from the cold-overcast night outside bathed the room, coating every inch of bedding and furniture, even the perpetually open eyes of Fluttershy's stuffed animals, lulling them to necessary sleep as it covered everything.

Fluttershy became suddenly aware of how acutely she could hear at that moment. There was only one thing to listen to; the sound of her breathing, and the breathing of the pony next to her.

Shutting her eyes and willing the sound away, Fluttershy shuffled underneath her blankets and gathered the ends up in her hooves, trying to tuck them over her and trying to get comfortable, though the prospect seemed like an impossibility.

She shuffled and turned every other minute for a while, struggling to find a position that would displace the ever-present weight of the body next to her.

Rainbow Dash, for her part, simply tucked her hooves underneath one of the many pillows she had gathered up and lay there as Fluttershy shuffled. She stared up towards the ceiling looking at nothing in particular, in-as-much as she could look at anything given the darkness.

She could feel the throes of night-time questioning overtaking her; the unexplainable urge to think and talk and burble with conversation despite the surroundings of bed-time. It felt like being in a sleep-over back in high-school.

She listened to the quiet, occasionally disrupted pattern of Fluttershy's breathing next to her as the yellow pegasus turned and tossed in the slew of blankets quickly becoming wrapped around her like a sweaty sleeping bag.

"Fluttershy?"

The movement froze instantly, as though Fluttershy had been caught in an illicit attempt to reorganizing her sleeping position and was attempting to find the best way to explain herself.

"...yes?" she asked, settling for a good all-purpose generic response.

"Are you having trouble getting to sleep?"

"...kind of."

Rainbow Dash turned onto her side. Her eyes had adjusted to the dark enough that she could make out the lump of pegasus in front of her, long yellow body and big wrapped around wings and all. Fluttershy stared back at Dash with her eyes wide, a weave of blankets curled over her forelegs, her eyes wide as they stared into the night and attempted to pick out the hues of red and green on Rainbow's head only inches away from her face.

"What's up?"

Fluttershy wiggled under her blankets as she attempted to come up with an explanation.

"...I don't know."

She was even less eloquent at night, it seemed.

"I'm not bugging you by being here am I? I can head home if you're having trouble falling asleep."

As she spoke, Rainbow Dash extended one of her forelegs and placed a hoof on Fluttershy's shoulder reassuringly. To Rainbow's great surprise, the gesture didn't draw a surprised squeak from Fluttershy's lips, which meant the pegasus must not have been completely blind in the dark.

Fluttershy, however, could feel her heart racing.

It was a strange feeling, all of a sudden. She'd been tossing and turning for what felt like hours in a struggle to convince her body that everything was just as normal; that she had the bed to herself without the looming presence of another pony's body lying on the mattress next to her – but every attempt in that regard had been unsuccessful. Of course, the pony next to her was Rainbow Dash, her friend – but her body didn't seem to know the difference. Any body there simply felt out of place, and worrisome.

And now a hoof from that same body was resting on her shoulder.

Rainbow Dash had given Fluttershy many a reassuring nudge or hug in the past. For a pegasus who was perpetually nervous not to expect at least a few touches of sympathy or attempts to calm her down would have been unrealistic. But for some reason, through a haze of confusion she couldn't quite place, Rainbow Dash's hoof felt different this time. It felt strange, and foreign, the same way it felt foreign having her best friend's body nestled so close to her under the blankets that she could feel her wings move against the mattress, and her breathing as her body shifted, and there was a hoof against her hoof and she wanted to pull her leg away but that would seem weird and it felt kind of nice to have something warm to rest her own leg against–

Fluttershy swallowed nervously.

"Um. No, that's okay. I'll be fine."

"You sure?" Rainbow Dash pressed her hoof down a little harder. That was enough to get Fluttershy to squeak, though Rainbow Dash ignored it. She'd listened to enough frightened 'eeps' from her friend to know that they weren't anything to worry about.

Fluttershy's shoulder felt hot for some reason. The hoof against her skin felt different.

Fluttershy nodded, a gesture which was big enough for Rainbow Dash to make out in the lack of light.

"Mhm-hm."

"Well, okay. Then maybe you wanna talk for a bit? I can never fall asleep right away if somepony is over either."

Rainbow Dash withdrew her touch and shuffled just a little ways away from Fluttershy, leaving only a hoof's width between their bodies.

Fluttershy was imminently aware of the proximity. Her heart was still beating heavily in her chest, and she could make out the shape of Rainbow Dash's face at long last, smiling at her so close in the darkness.

"So," started Rainbow Dash, "what do you want to–"

"Have you ever had a boyfriend?" Fluttershy blurted, and subsequently fought every desire in her body urging to her hid her face away in her hooves as best she was able. Why, why had she asked that?

Rainbow Dash didn't drop her jaw in surprise again, but she did bite down on her lower lip a little as she contemplated the question – or rather, the reasoning for the question. Had Flutterhsy been hung up on their earlier conversation this whole time? No wonder she had been so jumpy.

"Yeah," Rainbow Dash answered plainly.

Fluttershy's eyes went even wider in the dark. She forced them smaller and drew her hooves closer in, but her body yelled her back into place, forcing her forward until she could feel her hind legs brush against Rainbow Dash's ever so slightly. The blue fur tickled against hers, and she swallowed an 'eep' as her tongue formed her next question.

"What... um.... what was it like?"

Rainbow Dash scratched the back of her head with a free forehoof. That was a bit of a complicated question. She had to explain the notion of a boyfriend to a pegasus who she was now beginning to very concretely realize had probably never engaged in a relationship more intimate than an exchange at the counter of the local burger joint. And what specifically was Fluttershy asking, anyway? What it was 'like' could constitute anything from the beginnings of the affair to the more specific 'intimate details'...

"It was... alright. Nothing I'm crazy to dive into again, but pretty fun while I had one."

Fluttershy nodded, bobbing her head up and down in an attempt to show her understanding of Rainbow Dash's compact summation.

"Have you ever... had a girlfriend?"

Rainbow Dash was almost aghast again. She hadn't expected Fluttershy to start asking the questions. Maybe there was something special about the electric midnight element of sleepover questions that let the timid yellow pegasus come out of her shell a little more. Rainbow Dash didn't object – honestly, it was nice to see a little bit more of Fluttershy than the meekness she showed every day at school – she just wasn't sure what had brought on the sudden provocative interest in questioning.

"Yes," Rainbow Dash answered. "Had a few more than boyfriends."

Fluttershy gasped, and Rainbow Dash smiled as she caught a glimpse of shock across her face. She had every reason to believe Fluttershy was permanently single by this point, which meant the notion of dating anypony was probably an alien one, not to mention the idea of dating ponies of both genders – and more than one, at that!

"What was that like?" Fluttershy asked. As she questioned, she kicked her hind legs forward a little bit, nudging against Rainbow Dash's feet with her own. Rainbow Dash didn't move other than a brief shuffle underneath the blankets. Fluttershy's hooves were cold; she must just be trying to warm them up.

"Well," began Rainbow Dash, pondering for a moment with her hoof on her chin. Her eyes brightened and she giggled suddenly before continuing. "The kissing was a lot better," she concluded, letting out another set of giggles.

Fluttershy's eyes went to maximum wideness again. She couldn't help but clench her forelegs against her chest this time, and she drew her body into a more compact shape, shifting forward under the blankets subconsciously as she did so.

"Kissing?" she asked. She wasn't completely oblivious to the idea, but the mechanics of the gesture were another thing she had no experience in. And, for some reason, the same part of her brain that had kept her awake at Rainbow Dash's presence and made her rest her hoof just there and gotten her to ask those other questions made her want to inquire further.

"Was it... nice?"

Dash laughed again.

"Yeah, it was really nice," she said, running a hoof through her mane. "Girls are better at it than boys, from my experience. Couldn't tell you why."

Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy shared a moment of silent stares, neither of them knowing where to go in the conversation from there. Fluttershy looked too nervous to ask more.

Rainbow Dash had a thought spring into the back of her head suddenly.

"You've... never kissed anypony before, have you Fluttershy?"

Fluttershy squeaked so brightly and girlishly that Rainbow Dash winced at the high-pitched nature of the sudden nervous squeal. She avoided bringing her hooves to her ears, but did cringe as Fluttershy's face flushed so bright with redness that she could see it through the darkness.

"...no..." Fluttershy finally mumbled after the last vestiges of her squeak faded away.

Rainbow Dash had expected as much.

Still... it was a wonder that Fluttershy hadn't been beset by potential suitors at every corner. She was one of the most talked about ponies in school in terms of attractiveness; something about her demure behaviour and delicate but sizable wings, and the way her lack of flying gave her just the right amount of curves–

Erm. Rainbow Dash caught herself lost in thought for a moment, as well as realizing that one of her hind hooves had stated to rub up and down against Fluttershy's of its own accord.

"You're really missing out," she said, concluding the train of thought her musing had wandered off into.

"I am?" Fluttershy asked back, sounding more surprised than Rainbow Dash had expected.

Rainbow Dash hadn't been able to wait to get her first kiss. Even though, when she was young, she'd thought boys were gross and covered in cooties, she'd pinned down her playground rival at the time, a slender colt named 'Quickfeather', and kissed him right on the lips. He'd struggled the whole time, and cried afterwards, running to his mom, who'd talked to Dash's parents afterwards and gotten her in trouble. But, she'd thought to herself, I got my first kiss that day, and nopony can say otherwise.

From there, she had quickly seen that all the fuss hadn't been for much, but the idea of kissing somepony she liked was still a really nice one.

She'd even... back in flight camp, with her closest friend... they'd practiced with each other.

Rainbow Dash blushed at the thought, trying to clear the mental image of brown and white feathers and claws on her wings as the first practice kiss had turned into two, then three, and then so many more she'd lost count until the doors had swung open and the camp counsellers had found her and a certain griffon together in the same bed, panting and sweaty and ready to die of embarrassment.

"Uh," Rainbow Dash said, trying to pry herself away from her brain's increasing insistence on the nature of her thoughts. "Yeah," she went on lamely. "It's... pretty neat."

Fluttershy didn't say anything. She shut her eyes, as though she was contemplating something particularly arduous, drawing her limbs closer, and in doing so, pressing her hooves up against Dash as a by-product.

Dash felt a nervous tingle run up her body for some reason.

"I'd... like to try it someday," Fluttershy finally said, opening her eyes and turning them back to Rainbow Dash.

Dash stared away as best she could, becoming suddenly fascinated with the nearby wall she couldn't possibly hope to make out the details of through the darkness.

"Well," her tongue started before she could stop it. Don't look over, her brain said as her mouth began to awkwardly carry out the sentence that had sprung from impulse and was barreling on before she could stop it. "Back in the day, I used to practice kissing with G– with one of my friends." Dash caught the one word before it managed to snake off her tongue, and blushed even brighter at the idea of her almost accidental confession.

Another moment of awkward silence passed. Fluttershy's eyes never left Rainbow Dash, but Dash's eyes remained on the wall.

"Um," said Fluttershy. Her hooves shuffled underneath the blankets.

Where was her mind leading her? Why couldn't she just have fallen asleep?

Neither of them spoke, Fluttershy's 'um' hanging in the night air like an awkward fixture of conversational decoration.

"Did you wanna–"

"Would you mind if–"

Both of them spoke at the same time, blurting out half their question and then clamming up as soon as they realized the other pony had done the same. Fluttershy clamped her hooves to her mouth as though she was trying to hold in her embarrassment, and Rainbow Dash blushed and turned her head to the side awkwardly. It was uncharacteristic to see her even mildly embarrassed, which meant that both she and Fluttershy could revel in their combined consternation at the line of questioning they had furrowed down.

Rainbow Dash managed to pick up the pieces of the question where they had been discarded in surprise.

"It doesn't have to be a big deal," she said with more confidence in her words than was in her speech. She hadn't expected this when she asked to come hang out after school, and now she wasn't sure what it meant. Did she want to think about the ramifications of practicing a kiss with Fluttershy?

"I've kissed lots of ponies... it's just a thing you do, you know?"

Fluttershy didn't respond. She drew her hooves down from her mouth and placed them in front of her stomach awkwardly, holding them between her body and Rainbow Dash's so close she could feel the heat emanating from Rainbow Dash's skin, and the slight jostling of the sheets as Rainbow Dash's breath pressed her stomach out, and then drew it back in.

"I mean... we don't have to if you don't want to."

"I... do want to... I mean, if that's okay with–"

"Yeah!" Rainbow Dash nervously interrupted before Fluttershy could continue her oft-uttered request for permission. "Like I said, it doesn't have to be a big deal. You just wanna... I mean, you've never done it before, so I'm sure you're curious what it's like."

Fluttershy nodded enthusiastically, more fervently than she thought she was capable of given the throes of embarrassment overtaking every pore of her skin. She felt so hot under the blankets she was surprised she hadn't burned up. She wanted to throw them off, so the only warmth would be from Rainbow Dash's legs pressed against hers, and then her stomach and chest if she moved forward–

Fluttershy blinked hard. Where had that thought come from?

"So, do you wanna....?" Rainbow Dash let her sentence trail off awkwardly, placing a hoof on Fluttershy's shoulder as she did so. She felt the pegasus' body shiver underneath her touch, but didn't hear the troubled squeak that had come along with her hoof before. Fluttershy's shoulder was soft, and she caught herself running her hoof along Fluttershy's foreleg and side, pressing it lightly down into the warm yellow fur.

Fluttershy's breathing quickened. Rainbow Dash's hoof was on her side, where it had been many a time before to stop her from running over something in the hallway, or just as a way to say 'hey' when words weren't convenient. But now it felt... different.

"Do you...?" Fluttershy asked, unsure of what question she was forming in the first place. She didn't want to look away from Rainbow Dash's face, even though she longed to see what it was the hoof on her side was doing that made her feel so tingly and warm.

"Yeah, I can... because it's your first one, right? So I should probably..."

"Okay..."

Both ponies moved their bodies as they attempted to shuffle into what might be a 'proper' position. They kept on their sides, but sidled closer, Rainbow Dash's hoof falling alongside Fluttershy's neck and pressing down softly into her collarbone. Fluttershy was forced to move her hooves as she wiggled closer, her right leg wedging itself underneath Rainbow Dash's pillow, the left one landing awkwardly on Dash's flank after an awkward moment's hunt of finding nowhere better to be.

Dash felt a jitter through her skin as Fluttershy's hoof touched her cutie mark, Fluttershy made no effort to move her hoof the same way Dash had begun to move hers inadvertently, but Fluttershy's nervousness made her leg shake regardless, and the skittering tickle against her skin made Dash's throat feel tight all of a sudden.

She could make out every detail on Fluttershy's face through the dark. Their noses were almost pressed together already. Dash could see the pink strands of Fluttershy's hair, colourless in the shadowy room, hanging over one half of her face and all the way down her back and side. She could see Fluttershy's great big eyes staring wide back at her. She could see the delicate curves of Fluttershy's face, her always rosy-with-blush cheeks and slender chin, all the way down to her neck where Rainbow Dash's hoof had come to rest.

Feeling it to be right for reasons she couldn't articulate, Rainbow Dash placed her hoof around the back of Fluttershy's neck and felt the perpetual waterfall of bubblegum strands part to allow her touch.

Fluttershy breathed out loudly as Dash's hoof moved into place. As a necessity with her hoof there, Dash pulled Fluttershy's face closer.

Fluttershy could feel Dash's breath on her lips. She was so nervous she felt like her heart was about to explode, but she couldn't look away. Couldn't bring herself to move in any direction other than forward. She managed another gasp as she felt her body press forward into Rainbow Dash's, feeling their chests together, and their stomachs, skin against skin through yellow and blue fur. Fluttershy flicked her tail to one side on the bed, and it came to rest over her haunches, the tip of it landing atop her other foreleg on Rainbow Dash's cutie mark.

To her surprise, Dash jumped a little as the tip of the tail touched her skin.

"Are you going to–"

"Yeah, yeah, of course. I was just uh... getting comfortable. Do you want me to give you any pointers, or–"

"Yes, please!" Fluttershy answered a little too enthusiastically before blushing and quelling her voice. It was three AM, and she'd just shouted loud enough to wake her whole dormitory.

"I mean... you should, because, um. I don't know, really, what I'm doing, and... it would be nice to have someone of your... experience..." Fluttershy squeaked the last word and left her sentence unfinished, her speech becoming more rapid and frantic through her breathlessness as she neared the end of her speech.

Rainbow Dash nodded, and tightened the grip of her hoof on the back of Fluttershy's neck.

"Okay," she said.

And with a start-flag as simple as that, she leaned her face forward and kissed.

Fluttershy's eyes went wide for an instant as she felt Dash's lips on hers. She held them open like that for a second before her body's reaction drew them closed.

She hadn't expected the heat. The feel of Dash's lips, that was one thing. They were softer than she'd imagined. Dash had never struck her as having a particularly delicate touch, which she assumed would extend to her kissing as well – but here, Dash had leaned her head ever so slightly to the side, and let out the tiniest breath as she'd taken Fluttershy's face forward with her hoof, and her lips were heavenly.

But, Fluttershy could have reconciled that. She could have come to terms with the way Dash's lips parted ever so slightly, pressing and massaging against Fluttershy's and drawing what Fluttershy was aghast to find she couldn't stop from between her lips; a soft little moan that Dash swallowed with her caress, and answered by pressing her face forward a little more, bringing the texture of her lips on even stronger and making Fluttershy clench her eyes shut so hard it hurt.

The thing she hadn't expected was how it felt everywhere else. Her whole body felt on fire. Where she had felt nervous before, a little antsy, like a tiny tingle of static was running through her veins the whole time, now she felt like the spark had caught the fuse underneath her skin and lit it ablaze. She ached. She wanted to meet the fire with her movement, and as a result her body thrashed and pivoted of its own accord, swaying from side to side, but mostly forward. Dash's body was there to meet her. It only made things hotter, but for a reason Fluttershy couldn't place, that only made her want more. She let out another soft moan into Dash's lips as she pressed herself forward, rubbing her chest wantonly over Dash's and feeling the transference of heat course through every inch of her fur.

Dash eventually broke the kiss, pulling herself away and leaving a heavily panting Fluttershy in her wake.

Dash felt flushed too. She hadn't at first, but when Fluttershy had started grinding against her like that, it had been hard to keep herself cooled down.

"That was... good," she panted. Her hair was matted against her forehead, strands of green and blue and red and purple dampened from her sudden onset flash-sweat. "No complaints from me... do you want to try another–"

Dash would have gasped if there had been room for her mouth to make a sound. Fluttershy's hoof had moved to Dah's neck in an instant, and suddenly her face was pulled forward, the taste of pretty yellow pegasus once more on her lips.

She hadn't expected that.

Fluttershy flapped her wings on her back underneath the bedding as she kissed Rainbow Dash. She paid no attention to the rustling noise her sudden activity made, only concerned with the thing right in front of her. The second her lips touched against Rainbow Dash's mouth a jolt of electricity seared along her spine, and the fire inside her blazed again, lit twice the strength at the insistence of her own instigation.

To her absolute delight, Rainbow Dash's lips parted this time.

Fluttershy knew what to do only out of instinct. She let her lips do the same, knowing that if it felt right there was no reason to do otherwise.

As Dash had taken the initiative to further the kiss, she did the same by tickling the tip of Fluttershy's tongue with her own.

The moment Fluttershy felt the soft, curious touch of Rainbow Dash's tongue she let out a moan that sounded so wanton it would be a wonder to anypony passing by if she hadn't been doing this for years. She sound so desperate, Rainbow Dash couldn't keep her attention back, and moved her tongue forward, tracing it along Fluttershy's quivering lips and the inside of her mouth. Fluttershy struggled to answer with her own attention, but her tongue was too taken aback by the absolute ecstasy of the kiss – she wiggled it clumsily, but let Rainbow Dash do most of the work. Though she had started the second kiss, she felt herself melting forward as it went on, letting Rainbow Dash take the rest of the gesture under her experienced control.

The second kiss broke with both parties panting, a single strand of saliva hanging between their mouths as they stared into each other's eyes.

"Good," Rainbow Dash managed between breaths. "Really good. Just, uh, try to pay attention with your hooves too, and the rest of you... the biggest part of what makes a good kiss great is what's going on besides the kiss."

Fluttershy nodded to show she understood, and the two ponies dove forward again, burying each other's mouths in the center of their affection.

The third kiss showed Fluttershy's ability to follow direction. Though her touch was clumsy and nervous, she was true to her desire to learn, and ran her hoof awkwardly along Rainbow Dash's back, pressing against the blue, toned wings as best she could. To her surprise, and delight, Rainbow Dash answered her back with a tiny, shockingly girlish sounding moan, and Fluttershy redoubled her efforts, kneading and caressing with her new-found enthusiasm as much as she could.

Rainbow Dash made no more pauses for instruction. The only breaks were to allow breath which parted the duration of each kiss from one to the other. Four. Five.

By the seventh kiss, Fluttershy was properly grinding herself forward. Though she wasn't sure what the source of her body's sudden fire was, she knew that she had never felt anything more pleasant, anything more demanding in her life. And every time she felt Rainbow Dash's body up against her own, the insistence only burned stronger, urging her forward; to press against, to do anything she could to brighten, and perhaps quell the demand of her body's new-found urge.

Fluttershy was the one to stop the kisses, when the yearning of whatever feeling was coursing through her became too much to bear. She struggled to gather breaths through her heart's palpitations, so desperate for cold-air to dampen the burning underneath her skin.

Rainbow Dash was in a similar state, her legs in a tangle around the blankets and whatever part of Fluttershy she could find, her face flushed and her body tingling at Fluttershy's constant wing-massing. Even the tips of her feathers felt tender, so much so that the slightest movement on the bed sent a jolt of electricity up her back. She had to lay still for just a moment, not to touch them, not even to think about them if she wanted her sudden wing-based arousal to go away.

Both ponies spent a moment catching their breath, staring into each others eyes with their tongues hanging out in an attempt to collect as much oxygen as possible.

"Wow," Rainbow Dash finally said, her breathing returning to its normal state before Fluttershy's thanks to the practice of her athletics. "That was, uh." The last word disappeared, lost in the trail from Dash's brain to her tongue. She found it again after several more breaths, lamely announcing it into the darkness of Fluttershy's bedroom.

"Something. That was... something."

Fluttershy didn't speak. Her heart was still beating a mile a minute, and her forelegs were still entwined with the wings on Rainbow Dash's back, lost amongst the well-groomed feathers and sensitive muscles.

Dash felt what Fluttershy felt. That burning sensation that Rainbow Dash was experienced enough to place very squarely in one location.

She couldn't do that tonight.

As out of control as those kisses had gotten, she remembered very distinctly what had happened when things with a friend had gone... too far.

She didn't want to ruin things with another friend.

She could feel the insistence in the way Fluttershy had pulled her forward and pressed against her. Especially, she didn't want to ruin things with Fluttershy, or for her – such a sweet, innocent pegasus deserved a first time with somepony who'd care just about her, and treat her right afterwards, instead of basing any future decisions on how good things felt at the time.

Rainbow needed an out.

"Well, I'm beat," she said suddenly, pulling herself as far across the bed as she could manage. Fluttershy's hoof dislodging itself forcefully from her wings made her cringe as the touch ran along her feathers, but she fought through it to buy herself room. She ignored the shocked look on Fluttershy's face as she turned herself around towards the wall.

"I'm gonna get some shut-eye. See you in the morning, okay Fluttershy?"

Rainbow Dash didn't wait for a response. She started her best impression of her own snoring, though she kept the volume low for believability's sake.

Just close your eyes, and you can deal with the aftermath in the morning, she told herself.

Fluttershy, for her part, was stunned. Part of her was still recovering from the throes of the aftermath of the best thing she'd ever felt in her life.

And now, instead of hating the body next to her as the prospect of sleep loomed, she wanted Rainbow Dash closer than ever.

But... Rainbow Dash was over there. She had pulled herself away, needing sleep.

Fluttershy's eyelids suddenly felt very heavy. She could feel the weight behind her eyes too, the pressure of sadness on her irises as she felt an inexplicable loss of something she couldn't place.

Well... that was fine. She was... she was tired too. Of course it would be best to sleep.

Fluttershy pressed her hoof to her lips as she curled into the blankets that were still slick with sweat of her tossing and turning.

Her brain didn't remind her there was another pony next to her this time. It let her fall into sleep, with no uncertain assurance of the dreams that were to follow.

The First Morning After

Fluttershy took a moment to consider her surrounds as her eyelids jolted open. She was used to the only sound in the morning being the gentle lull of her alarm clock – right now, she could hear the clink of pots and pans from the kitchen. The simple clanging made her panic, not because it was particularly worrying, but because it was new, and unusual. Nopony else was supposed to be there.

With sudden remembrance, before her brain could catch up with her body’s reaction, Fluttershy gasped and turned her head sideways. The indent in the mattress and shuffled off blankets showed her that she was alone in her bed again.

The clanking of pans stopped.

“Fluttershy? Are you awake?”

Rainbow Dash’s voice sounded farther away than it should have from just the next room over, as though it was travelling through a tunnel or narrow tube.

Or inside a cupboard filled with pots and pans.

“Um,” Fluttershy said. She contemplated the question for a moment. She was awake, though still collecting her bearings. She tried to revisit the blurred together happenstance of the previous night, only vaguely remembering why Rainbow Dash had spent the night in her bed and was now in her kitchen.

Why she had spent the night in the bed–or what had happened there.

Fluttershy felt a wave of blush creep across her face as she remembered. She pulled the blanket slowly up to her chin with one hoof, and gently laid the other one on her lips. She pressed down softly, as though she expected something to be there as evidence of what had happened.

Her lips felt just a little tender, but nothing more.

The crashing of pans came again, louder. Rainbow Dash sounded like she was reorganizing the entire kitchen, making every effort to slam the metal containers about as much as possible.

Fluttershy blinked from behind her half-mask of blankets as Rainbow Dash’s multicoloured mane crept into view through the kitchen doorway, followed by the rest of her face. Eventually the top half of her body peeked out at Fluttershy from around the corner.

Rainbow Dash looked unusually frazzled. Fluttershy couldn’t be sure if the displaced strands of hair and bags under Rainbow Dash’s eyes were normal by-products of her sleep before she had a chance to put herself together, but it made her friend look startlingly uncomposed for a pegasus who was usually so cool and collected.

Rainbow Dash balked slightly and grinned in acknowledgement of her dire need of a shower and a hairbrush.

“I hope I didn’t wake you up... I was trying to find where you keep the blender and smoothie stuff.”

“Smoothie... stuff?” Fluttershy asked curiously. She still held the blanket above the bottom of her face like a shield, letting just her eyes and unreasonably well-kept mane into Rainbow’s eyesight from the doorway.

Rainbow looked as though somepony had asked her to explain the concept of walking.

“Yeah... you know. Smoothie stuff. Yogurt, berries, protein mix...”

“I, um... don’t have anything like that,” Fluttershy squeaked. She pulled the blanket further up her face, covering her nose completely.

Dash’s eyebrows crinkled, but her body held back any sort of dejected slump.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, then what do you have around for breakfast? I’m starving.”

Fluttershy considered the contents of her pantry for a moment. As content as she was to miss a meal out of convenience (noting that she could stand to trim a few pounds from her shapely figure, untempered by regular flying), Fluttershy usually settled for a few nibbles of whatever flowers she had picked up at the market a few days before. Somehow, she imagined the idea of a light daffodil breakfast might not be up Rainbow Dash’s alley.

“There, um... there should be some vegetables in the crisper, and, um... eggs?”

Rainbow squinted curiously.

“Eggs?”

Fluttershy eeped and huddled further under her blanket, trying to camouflage herself away from Rainbow Dash’s pending breakfast frustration.

“I could cook them for you if you want...” she murmured through the blanket, quivering an undue amount for the simple matter of a poorly-stocked pantry.

Rainbow Dash shrugged.

“Naw, it’s okay. I can just head to my place and pick up some breakfast. I don’t have anything to do for a few hours anyway.”

Rainbow Dash ducked around the corner, and Fluttershy heard the clanging of pots and pans follow, wincing as she heard what sounded implacably to be her large saucepan, likely hit against the countertop from the sound of the hollow twong that carried over to her bed.

The crashing stopped again for a moment, and Rainbow Dash leaned back around the corner, holding a skillet awkwardly between her hooves.

“Unless... do you want me to make you breakfast?”

The image of a flustered but focused Rainbow Dash popped into Fluttershy’s head, eyes squinted in concentration as she attempted to jostle a frying pan of scrambled eggs. Fluttershy imagined watching the blue pegasus wiggle and dart around the kitchen, frantically searching for ingredients hidden in cupboards, agitated but committed the idea of her breakfast cookery.

For a reason she couldn’t explain, Fluttershy considered the scene a second time, but with Dash dressed in a frilly white skirt and accompanying black maid’s outfit.

Rainbow Dash turned her head in Fluttershy’s imagining and blushed through the Prance-style maid-hat on her rainbow mane.

Fluttershy mimicked the imaginary blush harder than she intended, the yellow of her face quickly being consumed by red.

“Uh, Flutters? You okay? Do you want me to make you breakfast, or...?” Rainbow Dash let the sentence dally off without finishing, leaving Fluttershy a chance to interject.

Fluttershy simply squeaked as Dash spoke, and looked as though she wished we could melt into her blanket and never return.

She managed to pipe up after a few seconds of pregnant silence.

“N-no... that’s okay.” Fluttershy lowered the blanket a bit, and cleared her throat. “I mean... no, that’s fine. I can make something to eat when you’re gone.”

“If you say so,” Dash responded. She darted out of sight and back into the kitchen, giving Fluttershy a final wake up clang before she returned to view.

“Well, I’d better take off then. I have just enough time to eat and make it to the track with a bit of a cool-down for my stomach in-between. No good flying on a full stomach, right?”

Fluttershy blinked as though she had been asked about quantum weather mechanics or fish sociology.

“Um... no?”

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, but spared her friend the exasperated sigh she would normally have tendered at such flight-exercise obliviousness.

“Nevermind. I’ll catch you later, okay?” Rainbow Dash stepped towards the dormitory door as she spoke, pausing on ‘okay’ with her hoof on the door-handle, ready to turn. She looked back at the bed as she waited for Fluttershy’s response.

In her head, Fluttershy was contemplating the events of last night. What had happened. Why it had happened. She and Rainbow Dash had... and then they’d... and she’d wanted to...

And now she was just supposed to let her go without saying anything?

Fluttershy wanted so badly to move her mouth. She wanted to get past the squeak she knew was building in her throat and talk in the loudest volume she could manage (which was barely above a conversational murmur) about how she felt after last night, and how badly she wanted to do it again.

She did want to do it again. Kissing Rainbow Dash had felt better than anything in the whole of her life up until that point. And the tingling she got from each kiss had lingered. She could still feel it with her today, just strong enough that even thought of Rainbow Dash’s name was enough to kick up a tiny spray of somatic sparks underneath Fluttershy’s skin.

More than wanting kisses, she wanted something else.

She wanted Rainbow Dash.

She liked Rainbow Dash.

She had always liked her as a friend, no questions or concerns, ever since that day that Rainbow Dash had stood up for her to her terrible school bullies. She and Rainbow Dash, despite their differences in ambition and personality, had aligned their post-secondary schedules to attend the same university, even if there were no classes they could share. Even now, as Rainbow Dash ventured further into the athletics program and Fluttershy waffled between majors, she was still grateful to have her best friend along for the ride – to help when she was scared, and be there to talk to when she needed a friend.

The thing her brain had cemented very firmly in the ‘want’ center of her desires was neither of those things though. Fluttershy wanted Rainbow Dash in a different way, a way that she could feel burning in the back of her skull. She hadn’t thought about it, really, before... the kisses last night had been the first catalyst.

Now that her lips were still tingling in remembrance of Dash’s expert, enthusiastic attention, and they had shared a bed together... Fluttershy wanted more. She couldn’t remember ever wanting anything more in her life.

But she couldn’t just say that.

What would Dash think? She had been very assertive that the whole thing was noncommittal... ‘I did this with an old friend’, Fluttershy thought she had heard. That had set the expectation meter in her head all over the place; as it stood, Fluttershy was perhaps the worst objective judge of quality of affection, or what that kind of interaction might mean after the fact. She did feel, however, that kissing anypony as enthusiastically as she had kissed Rainbow Dash, and vice versa, had to mean something special.

But she couldn’t bring herself to say it up. It was too awkward. Too terrible. Better to let years go by and Rainbow Dash would never learn of her sudden onset affection, or anything more of the matter of that weekend, destined to fade into the annals of history and perhaps be recalled one night by Fluttershy if she was up quite late and lapsed into the remembrance of old, pointless stories.

So why did she want to say something so bad?

Fluttershy shook her head.

“Okay,” she said at long last.

“Great.” Rainbow Dash turned the door-handle, and the wooden-frame creaked angrily, sounding as grumpy in the morning as Rainbow Dash looked.

“I’ll see you at the party then–or, did you want me to meet you here before so we can fly together?”

“Together!” Fluttershy practically shouted from behind her blanket. The force of her volume was enough to jostle the frilly edges of the pillow she was holding.

Dash nodded. Of course. She should have expected.

“I’ll swing by with about an hour to spare, okay?”

“Okay.” Fluttershy acquiesced with a hoof tracing languidly over her blankets. She wasn’t sure about the party in the first place... but the best way to convince herself to go seemed to be a guarantee that her best friend would be there, likely dressed up enough in her weekend party-wear and looking exquisite.

Fluttershy had always liked to see Rainbow Dash dress up, but she found herself hoping more than anything she would put on a little extra for the party.

Rainbow Dash nodded and was halfway out the door before she stopped. Her body froze as though it had been struck by lightning, suddenly paralyzed by the notion of something else. Something she had forgotten to do.

You can deal with the aftermath in the morning, she had thought.

Of course, past Rainbow had left a big enough mess for present Rainbow to clean up.

She had to say something.

But she didn’t know where to start.

“So... about last night.”

Fluttershy’s eyes brimmed with anticipation about what might be in Dash’s game-plan for consultation, but she struggled hard to keep the aquamarine curiosity of her irises trapped away behind the fabric she had collected to surround her.

“...yes?” Fluttershy squeaked. She could have waited for Dash to start the discussion, but the nagging in the back of her head wanted answers.

“It’s, uh...”

Rainbow Dash left a longer pause than was common when she spoke. The words she wanted to say fell over themselves in her head, struggling to form the sentence she was searching for.

“...you’re not weirded out, are you? I didn’t want things to be awkward afterwards...”

Fluttershy clutched a mouthful of blanket between her teeth, subtle enough behind the wall of fabric that Dash couldn’t see – or couldn’t if she had been looking. Her eyes were ambling around the room in search of something to focus on that wasn’t her friend’s face, peering anxiously out from behind her bedding.

“Like, we’re still cool, right? I wouldn’t want a one time thing”–Fluttershy bit down extra hard on her blanket–”to get in the way of our friendship.”

Rainbow Dash settled her eyes finally, looking towards Fluttershy for assurance of her speculation.

Fluttershy spit out her mouthful of blanket with a tiny ‘pf’, quiet enough to keep it from Rainbow Dash’s ears.

She nodded her head rapidly.

“Mhm-hmm. We’re still... it’s okay. Nothing’s weird.”

Rainbow Dash cocked an eyebrow. She couldn’t tell if Fluttershy was flubbing her words because she was being dishonest, or just normal Fluttershy.

“You sure? You can tell me there’s something on your mind–”

“No! I mean, I’m fine. Really. We’re... um... ‘cool’.”

Dash stood with her hoof on the door for a moment, staring towards Fluttershy in search of something that might give away a hint of dishonesty, or let her know there was something more she needed to talk about.

She wanted to believe her. As amazing as those kisses had been... Fluttershy was still her friend, first and foremost, and she knew from past experience that muddying a friendship with pieces of other types of relationships often ended in disaster. The last thing she wanted was to lose another friend because she couldn’t control herself around Fluttershy’s delicate, adorable, intoxicatingly cute–

Dash shook her head back and forth, squinting her eyes tight in an attempt to clear the thoughts worming their way into her subconscious.

“Right,” she said with finality. “Well... if we’re cool, then that’s awesome. I’m still good to show up later so we can head to the party?”

“Uh-huh.” Fluttershy gave a cursory nod, lowering the blanket further so the whole of her face was visible. Rainbow Dash scanned her face for emotion, but found only the usual perpetual timidness that was always there.

“Rad. I’ll catch you later then.”

“Yeah. Catch you later.”

Rainbow Dash hopped outside and shut the door before her thoughts had a chance to run away again. Fluttershy said things were ‘cool’, and Rainbow Dash wanted them to be cool, so that was that. Nothing had to be uncomfortable or awkward.

And, there was still the party to look forward to. As much as she was loathe to socialize with some of the undesirable elements in her school, a night of socializing and drinking would probably help allay both the worries lurking in the back of her head. First her (hopefully temporary) cloudball suspension, and now this whole Fluttershy business. She’d have to remind herself not to get completely lost in whatever drinks were available.

Steeling herself into a crouch for a moment, Rainbow Dash kicked off and was in the sky in an instant, her wings flapping at their usual metered gait and barrelling her home so fast she didn’t have time to think anymore.

Behind Fluttershy’s door, the yellow pegasus lowered her blanket to her lap and traced another hoof across her mouth.

She wasn’t sure if she could wash away the feeling of Rainbow Dash on her lips... or if she wanted to.

Fluttershy's Bedroom

"I still can't believe you just knocked that kid out! I mean, he was asking for it, but still..."

"Please don't remind me."

Fluttershy straightened one of the pillows that had fallen awry on her bedspread, placing it neatly into the corner as she glossed over Rainbow Dash's potentially misplaced praise.

Much as someone might have expected, Fluttershy's room looked exactly like the pegasus herself – a coat of bright yellow paint, and quiet, subtle decorations everywhere. The room was perpetually girly – pink streamers hung from the fan, and various teddy bears made their homes around the room, tucked onto book-shelves, and one large one Fluttershy's father had won for her at the fair sitting against the far wall and holding a giant heart between its paws.

Fluttershy held one of the room's many occupants, a fluffy little white bunny rabbit plushie, between her hooves, petting and preening it softly as she leaned back into her tower of pillows.

Rainbow Dash looked positively out of place in the girly decor. Her own room was plastered with sport-posters and magazine cut-outs, and the coat of dark blue paint she had selected was starkly opposite the pastel shaded brightness surrounding her currently. She tried not to let the colours get to her, but sometimes the rest of the room was a bit much.

Dash sighed and leaned her head back against the floor, only to find something squishy preventing her from reaching the cloudy carpet. She reached a hoof behind her head and found an errant stuffed piggy, staring at her through its sewn-on monocle and looking more properly dressed than she ever imagined she might; top-hat and suit and all. Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes, and tossed the suit-wearing pig into a random corner of the room.

"So, you are still gonna come to the party, aren't you?" Rainbow Dash asked, turning her head towards Fluttershy who was sitting a few feet away at the end of her bed, with Rainbow Dash resting on the floor at the bed's foot.

Fluttershy nervously stroked her plush rabbit and turned her eyes elsewhere.

"Well..."

"Oh, come on! What is it with you and parties... or boys?"

Fluttershy turned red at Rainbow Dash's latter suggestion, hoping to avoid further questioning about her aversion to the opposite sex.

"Well..." she started, but let her sentence amble off into a quiet murmur that concluded without words.

Rainbow Dash raised herself up from the floor and sat up properly, leaning her back against the wooden bed-frame and tucking her hooves behind her head.

"Boys are nothing to be frightened of. They're just like you or me! Minus the... y'know."

Fluttershy blushed even brighter at the mention of the male particulars Rainbow Dash was alluding to, which drew another not-at-all subtle eye roll from Rainbow Dash.

"You're gonna have to get over this eventually. One fifth of the Equestria population is boys, anyway... and there'll be girls there too! Heck, I'll be there. You can just hang around me all night."

"I can?" Fluttershy nestled the bunny into the crevice between her wall and her array of fanciful pillows, most of them puffed with stuffing and trimmed at the edges with frilly lace.

She didn't mean to sound like a completely sheltered girly-girl; she just hated spending time around anypony, let alone ones with gruff voices and belching contests and that nebulously defined thing swinging between their legs that appeared to have them interested in only one thing...

"Sure. I mean, I'm gonna wanna hang out with some other ponies, but I can check in on you every once a while, or have you tag along.. I'm not gonna invite my best friend to a party and just bail on her."

Best friend. That made Fluttershy relax a little bit. As much as she hated the idea of mingling with a bunch of drunken college students, surrounded by ponies she didn't know who could only be unpleasant and abrasive, at least Rainbow Dash would be there. She'd be like a chromatic safety blanket, one that Fluttershy could scurry too if the stress of social interaction and the proximity of alcohol made her too nervous.

"I mean... I guess it'll be okay. If you're there, I mean."

"It'll be fine. Honestly, I don't get what you're so worried about. Do you just not like the drinking, or...?" Rainbow Dash let her sentence trail off, waiting for Fluttershy to fill in the blanks.

"It's... I don't like... everything. The drinking, the atmosphere, the stress, the hectic mingling... the boys..."

Rainbow Dash rolled her eyes.

"Again with the 'boys' thing. They're not that bad, really. Some of them can even be fun."

Fluttershy gulped nervously, as though Rainbow Dash had suggested the idea of a high-speed cloud-robbery could be 'fun'. She grabbed up the bunny from beside her pillow and clenched it tightly against her chest.

"I don't see what's so 'fun' about them."

"Well, you've never had a boyfriend before, have you?" Rainbow Dash asked, pulling herself off the wooden bed-frame digging into her back and fluttering her wings until she let herself land on the foot of Fluttershy's bed. The abundance of overly soft blankets bounced underneath her as she landed, and she turned her attention in Fluttershy's direction, staring the already nervous pegasus into a flutter of agitation.

"Well... I mean... I haven't, no, but–"

"Exactly. You gotta try it at least once before you can say you don't like it."

Fluttershy gulped and blushed so red her face threatened to blur into a proper orange with the colour combination of her fur.

"Um... 'it'?"

Rainbow Dash pressed her hoof into her face for the second time that day. She dragged it down until her eyes were stretched out half-way down her cheeks, trying desperately to rid herself of the sudden onset of exasperation brought about by Fluttershy's continued refusal to educate herself in the ways of the world.

"Ugh... not 'it'! I mean... you know what I mean. Boys in general!" Rainbow Dash threw her hooves over her head as she desperately tried to communicate her point, then lowered them to her lap where her hind hooves slid into a cross-legged sitting position.

"Though... now that you mention it, maybe some 'it' wouldn't be a bad idea either..." Rainbow Dash's eyes narrowed in a devilish smirk as she posited an idea she knew Fluttershy would be against.

"Eep!" Flutterhshy squeaked and clutched her rabbit closer, squeezing it so tight against her body that if it was a real thing, it would surely have kicked at her and run away out of protest. Fluttershy's pupils narrowed as she stared off into nothing, looking as far away from the present and the idea of 'it' as possible.

Rainbow Dash couldn't help but laugh. She tilted her head back and let out a long bout of chortling laughter at Fluttershy's reaction, finally letting the wave of mirth ebb and wiping a tear away from one eye.

"Come on, Fluttershy," she goaded on, untangling her hind legs and leaning closer to Fluttershy's direction. "They're not scare either. You've... you have seen one, right?"

Fluttershy gave the tiniest, almost imperceptible squeak, and curled her legs together like a ball.

"Like... in sex ed class or something?"

Fluttershy scrunched her face up tight, squeezing her eyes closed and grasping at her stuffed bunny like it was a preservative, holding her aloft in a sea of unpleasant questions and things she didn't want to remember.

"Come on! Fluttershy!" Rainbow Dash shoved her friend's shoulder with a hoof, prodding her to the side in an attempt to shake her out of her oblivious anxiousness. "Would you stop? All I wanna know is if you've seen one. It's not a big deal if you haven't."

Fluttershy dared to open her eyes, her body half-leaned over against the wall where Rainbow Dash has pushed her. She ran a hoof along the fake baby-bunny against her chest, and stared at Rainbow Dash like she was looking from the end of a teetering pier.

"I, um..."

Rainbow Dash leaned closer, so close her nose and Fluttershy's were almost touching. Her eyes widened in anticipation.

"Yes?"

"My..."

"Yes?"

Fluttershy scrunched her face up again, her eyes barely open, staring back into Rainbow Dash's.

"I came home early from school one day and my mom had four stallions in the bedroom with her, and I walked in on all of them."

Rainbow Dash's mouth fell open for the second time that day.

"What?" she asked in a bewildered deadpan.

"My dad was so mad when he got home... but yes, I have seen one before."

Fluttershy let out a tiny squeak of protest before she shuffled herself closer to the wall, pulling away from Rainbow Dash's face that still looked as though it had been hit with a water-balloon of sudden revelation.

Rainbow Dash took a minute to collect the idea of Fluttershy's introduction of the opposite sex.

Four guys? How would the logistics of that even...

"Uh... fair enough then," Rainbow Dash managed. She wasn't sure if she regretted bringing the whole thing up, but she couldn't think of a tangible way to gracefully recover from where the conversation had ended up.

Fluttershy said nothing, hugging her bunny tightly and rocking back and forth slightly. Rainbow Dash couldn't tell if she was traumatized, or just being normal, nervous Fluttershy.

Almost two minutes of uncomfortable silence passed before Rainbow Dash cleared her throat in an attempt to break the awkwardness.

"Uh," she said, "do you want to watch a movie or something?"

Fluttershy broke her thousand-yard stare at last, turning her head from behind her tiny white rabbit and looking to Rainbow Dash, then to the clunky television on a table in the center of her room.

"Okay," she answered, her voice as timid and noncommittal as ever. "What do you want to watch?"

Rainbow Dash was already over at the TV and the bin of movie-tapes before she paused, her hoof hanging in mid-air over her selection of Die Hoof 2.

"Uh... why don't you pick?" she asked, grabbing the tub of movies and procuring it to Fluttershy.

Fluttershy smiled, and lowered her bunny.