Author's Note

No sex in this chapter! Look away if drama and relationships hurt your sensibilities!

Cray Cray

“Why… why do I feel like I’m in trouble?” Lionel asked blankly, sidestepping around the bed.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes narrowed, and a low growl rose in her throat. “Oh, I cannot possibly fathom why you would think that!” she scoffed, tone laced with sarcasm.

Lionel sighed, hanging his head, leaning heavily against the cupboard and reaching over to flick the kettle on. “Look, can you just… be angry at me tomorrow? I’ve had a rather large night and I need some rest.”

“No,” Rainbow Dash replied flatly, glowing at him. “We’re going to discuss this now.”

“Figures,” Lionel muttered, sighing and reaching down into the cupboard underneath the little shelf where the kettle was, pulling out a pair of cups and placing them on the shelf, before pulling out the drawer and producing a spoon, starting to dole spoonfuls of sugar into each cup.

Rainbow Dash watched him, eyes narrowed angrily, prismatic tail flicking back and forth across the bed.

Lionel didn’t say anything, staring at the kettle, waiting for it to boil.

“Well?” Rainbow Dash asked after the silence stretched out too long.

“Well… what?” Lionel asked calmly, leaning against the cupboard.

“You fucked Spitfire!” Rainbow Dash hissed, eyes darkening, wings stiffening in anger.

Lionel nodded carefully. “Yeah, I did. You also both took turns blowing me in the sauna.”

Rainbow Dash spluttered. “That was hardly the same!”

“No, Rainbow, it was the same. It was sex,” Lionel pointed out, pouring a measure of hot water into both of the cups. “It was good, fun, liberating sex. Like you and I have been having for the last few days.”

Rainbow Dash growled softly. “But you did not have permission to fuck her!”

Lionel slowly raised an eyebrow, turning towards her. “...Permission?”

“Permission!” Rainbow Dash snarled, lunging forwards to the edge of the bed, wings stiff and set, looking like she might actually try to bite him.

“I don’t need permission, Rainbow,” Lionel said flippantly, turning away from her and opening the bar fridge, pulling out a carton of milk.

Rainbow Dash spluttered incoherently, apparently too incensed by the response to frame a coherent response.

“So stop fucking me,” Lionel said as he calmly poured a measure of milk into each cup. “That’s the threat, is it not?”

Rainbow Dash stared at him, visibly biting her tongue, shaking with anger.

Lionel shrugged his shoulder, offering her one of the cups of coffee nonchalantly. “Spitfire and I are consenting adults.”

“But you didn’t even ask—”

Lionel placed his free hand on Rainbow Dash’s mouth, silencing her. “I don’t need to ask, Rainbow. In the situation of Spitfire and me screwing each other, the only real argument you have is to appeal to our rather thin friendship or your friendship with Spitfire. We’re adults. We don’t need your permission.”

“But…” Rainbow Dash trailed off, lowering her head, ears splaying back slowly. “You and I…”

“Had sex?” Lionel asked bluntly, eyebrows raising. “We most certainly did. And it was good. But you’ve done the same thing with just about every second Wonderbolt, from what you and Spitfire told me. So the social contract of sex just doesn’t work between you and anyone. That’s like someone having the same name as you. Sure, you can be mad about it, but you can’t really change it, can you?”

Rainbow Dash scowled at him, snatching the coffee from his grasp and nursing it against her chest with a sour scowl. “Well, I guess I’m not going to be screwing you again, then.”

Lionel sighed, shaking his head and picking up his own cup of coffee, sitting on the edge of the bed. “You can’t just try and guilt me into being ‘exclusive’ with you when you’re anything but. That’s a little bit unfair, don’t you agree?”

“But I haven’t had sex with anyone else since you!” Rainbow Dash protested, staring at him sideways.

Lionel raised an eyebrow slowly. “Your cup runneth over with opportunities, too! I’ll bet that if I wasn’t the only male for literally miles around, then you wouldn’t even look at me twice.”

Rainbow Dash scowled at that, sipping her coffee, snorting to herself. After a moment, she rose awkwardly, and then moved to the shelf, dropping another three sugar cubes into her cup and then popping one into her mouth.

“You are just so goddamn clueless,” Lionel said with a shake of his head, sighing faintly.

“Clueless?!” Rainbow Dash growled, rounding on him, lips stained with sugar crumbs. “You’re the one that went and fucked Spitfire when you know I’d hate it!”

“Oh, I knew you’d hate it,” Lionel said flippantly, “I just didn’t particularly care.”

Lionel only had time to turn his head to the side before Rainbow Dash threw her cup of coffee over him. It hit him square in the chest, soaking his shirt immediately in scalding hot coffee, singing the flesh. He screamed in pain, dropping his own cup and then scratching at his chest with both hands, trying to tear his shirt off, flopping back onto the bed and writhing in pain. After several long seconds of thrashing, he managed to work the shirt up over his head and toss it aside. A vivid, angry red mark was already appearing on his chest, the damage already done.

Rainbow Dash just stared, holding her cup lamely in a hoof, a look of mild bewilderment on her face, as though not quite sure what she had done, while Lionel brushed past her and rushed into the bathroom.

The shower door was flung open, and Lionel stood directly under the nozzle, leaning back and holding it for balance as he flicked the cold water on to stream over his now-burning chest wound. Even the water was only a short relief, and he bit back tears, trying to keep the cool spray on the large burn on his chest and the smaller spots of pain that arced down the inside of his right arm and bicep.

Rainbow Dash minced up to the doorway, peering in, ears pinned back, wings drooping. “A-are you alright?’

“Fuck off,” Lionel hissed, squeezing the shower head so hard he was momentarily afraid he was going to snap it off from the wall.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

“FUCK OFF!” Lionel roared, snatching up a bar of soap and throwing it at the pegasus.

Rainbow Dash jerked backwards as the soap shot past her nose, and she recoiled, tears gathering in her eyes. “I-I’m sorry!” she wailed as she turned and bolted out of the room.

Lionel growled slightly to himself, backing into the shower wall and then sliding down onto his butt with a wet splat. He sighed faintly, pulling off his now-wet keychain and tossing it onto the floor of the bathroom, before leaning back and tilting his chin upwards to let the cold water wash over his burns.

Lionel grit his teeth, lips pulled back in a grimace as he rubbed lotion over his bare chest. The contents of a first-aid box were strewn over the cafeteria table in front of him, hastily pulled out of the box in favour of finding the burn cream.

The searing agony on his burns was beginning to fade, and he groaned faintly in relief, slowly relaxing, holding a square of gauze dipped in the lotion against his bare chest. A series of red splotches were blooming spectacularly over his admittedly not-so-great physique.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” Lionel said bluntly.

“Well I want to talk to you,” Spitfire said smartly.

Lionel grunted once, twisting slightly and then lifting his right leg so he could straddle the bench, peering over at the disheveled countenance of the wonderbolt captain. “Sorry, thought you Rainbow Dash.”

“I would like to know—Sweet Celestia what happened to your chest?!” Spitfire asked, brow furrowing and ears splaying back. She stepped over closer, scowling.

“Burnt,” Lionel said unhelpfully, rubbing his thumb though some of the medicated lotion on his burn and transferring it to a smaller spot a little bit higher that was beginning to smart again. “It sucks.”

“Did Dashie do this to you?” Spitfire asked, aghast, inspecting the damage.

“Yup,” Lionel said through clenched teeth. “Threw hot coffee over me.”

“What did you do to her?!” Spitfire suddenly accused, glowering at him, looking torn between berating him and trying to sooth him.

“I explained to her where exactly our relationship stands,” Lionel said with a wave of his hand. “She was waiting for me in my room when I got back. Tried to abuse me for not asking ‘permission’ to screw you.”

“In hindsight, that would have been prudent,” Spitfire said, frowning deeply. She stepped forwards, straddling the chair in front of him, lifting her hooves. “Let me see.”

Lionel grimaced again, removing the gauze so that the pegasus could inspect his wounds.

Spitfire winced slightly. “That looks painful,” she said, reaching over and grabbing up the tube of burn cream and a new square of gauze. “So I’m guessing that you said the wrong thing?”

“No,” Lionel said bluntly. “Rainbow Dash is just a fucking nutcase. ‘Never stick your dick in crazy’. Now I know why.”

“She’s… different,” Spitfire said sympathetically, applying the burn cream to the gauze, and then picking up another bottle. “This is going to sting, so… uh, inhale.”

Lionel inhaled fully, and then bit his tongue as Spitfire washed the burn with a saline solution and then started to clean it.

“What exactly did you say to her?” Spitfire asked bluntly. “What was the argument about?”

“It was about her thinking that she owns me,” Lionel said, strained. “I told her that we’re consenting adults and we can do whatever we want together.”

“You make it sound as though you were perfectly reasonable and Dashie just threw a cup of boiling water over you out of spite,” Spitfire said dryly.

“I may have been… antagonistic,” Lionel admitted with a deep frown. “But she was in the wrong. She can’t just treat me like a fucktoy and then expect me to act like we’re an item or something. She made it pretty clear what our relationship is. I just came right out and said it.”

“So you… basically said that you’re using her for sex?” Spitfire asked carefully, eyebrow raising, applying the gauze to his wound again.

Lionel gave a long sigh of relief as the burn cream kicked back in. “Something something maybe. I don’t know.”

“You can’t be so vague,” Spitfire scoffed, swatting his shoulder with her free hoof as she started to apply medical tape to the edges of the gauze to hold it in place. “Why did you antagonize her in the first place?”

“Because I’m an asshole,” Lionel said with a shrug. “That’s what she told you, at least.”

Spitfire’s eyes narrowed slightly. “All I managed to coax out of her when I found her curled up on the roof, bawling her eyes out, is that you two had a fight.”

Lionel scoffed slightly, working his shoulder and then wincing as it stretched his burnt skin. “I was antagonizing her because for the last few days she’s been screwing my brains out, flirting with me, while making it very clear that we’re not even friends and just basically fuckbuddies, and then goes and gets jealous the instant I’m with someone else. Someone else she took turns blowing me with in a sauna hours beforehand!”

Spitfire rolled her eyes. “You two are just so… boneheaded.”

“I explained my side of the argument quite perfectly,” Lionel said sourly. “She’s a control freak. A… bigot? No… a fucking biased… thing,” he stumbled, looking for the right word. “She’s a liar. A hypocrite is the word I’m looking for!”

“How positively eloquent,” Spitfire said blankly.

“I haven’t slept yet,” Lionel retorted, annoyed.

“You still haven’t said it,” Spitfire said, giving him a long stare.

“Haven’t said what?” Lionel asked with a growl of frustration.

Spitfire rolled her eyes again, shaking her head. “That you like her.”

“Of course I like her. I screwed her like five times this weekend alone,” Lionel said, bewildered.

“And Dashie certainly knows that,” Spitfire said carefully, sitting back on the chair, and then crossing her forehooves, observing him carefully. “That thing she did with me and you… that was her way of bragging.”

Lionel snorted once. “I asked her right to her face, she said, and I quote: ‘It’s just sex’. Acted like I was some kind of idiot for bringing her breakfast in bed. And then said it was good that I wasn’t offended because she didn’t want to be ‘stuck’ with just her toy for the rest of her stay.”

Spitfire sighed, resting her chin on her forehooves. “If you’re looking for Dashie to just come out and say something, she won’t. You have to trick her into giving you any kind of affection at all. Sex is… I think it’s her way of communicating properly, really. It’s a crutch for her. She is so… oblivious in social situations. She catches on, of course, but only after a really long time. I take it the next time she saw you after said event, she screwed you into the floor?”

“That was in the sauna,” Lionel said with a slight shrug. “And you sort of cajoled her into that.”

“Hmmm,” Spitfire trailed off, before shrugging slightly. “Nobody can fathom the workings of such a dense mind. Sometimes Dashie is just…”

“Cray cray?” Lionel offered.

Spitfire snorted with laughter. “Yes. She can be very ‘cray cray’. I do know, however, that the only time I ever saw her cry was when she lost Tank.”

“Tank?” Lionel asked blankly.

“Her pet turtle,” Spitfire explained. “He went missing for a week there one time. She was so distraught.”

“She has a pet turtle?” Lionel asked, incredulous.

“Loves the thing to death,” Spitfire said with a smile.

“That’s like… a dolphin having a pet camel. They just don’t… belong together,” Lionel said, shaking his head.

“I know, I know, but… think it over,” Spitfire said, patting his shoulder gently with a hoof. “She does care. I know you can see that. But you’re going to have to swallow that frankly ugly arrogant streak or she’s going to be gone, y’know. I’d say one of you needs to swallow the arrogant streak, but we both Rainbow will never do it.”

“Right on that account,” Lionel said with a frown.

Spitfire nodded, slipping off the seat and giving a yawn. “I’ll be having hash-browns for breakfast, by the way.”

“Hash-browns,” Lionel said automatically, nodding, and then laying down on his back on the seat, staring at the ceiling light.

Spitfire paused before she left. “Also, if you don’t patch things up with Dashie, you and me are not happening again, understood? I’ll need a signed note if you want under his tail again.”

“Signed note,” Lionel said, waving a hand in understanding. “Good night… or morning, or whatever it is.”

“Good night, Lionel,” Spitfire said, gently closing the door behind her.