School Colours

"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.