The Act

Chapter 12:  The Act

Carrot Cake allowed himself to cry while Pinkie Pie stroked his back.  She gave him time to talk, remaining silent so as not to pressure him to speak.  Seeing him this vulnerable made Pinkie Pie feel special.  It was a side of Carrot Cake she had never seen before, which made the moment all the more personal.  This must be what Cup Cake used to feel like...not like I like him like she does!

Finally, Carrot Cake took a breath, indicating that he had stopped crying and was now ready to speak.  Pinkie Pie stopped stroking his back and faced him in earnest, ears perked up so she could be as attentive a listener as possible.

“I suppose I should’ve seen it coming,” he said.  “In some ways, I let it happen.”  Carrot Cake lowered his eyes and sniffled.

“That’s not true,” Pinkie Pie said, lifting his chin up with her hoof.  “You loved Cup Cake with all of your heart.  Do you still love her?”  Carrot Cake pulled her hoof away from his chin and set it on the bed.

“I still care about her, yes,” he said, “as a business partner and a good friend.  But do I love her as my wife...?  It’s hard to say for sure.  Can you really love somepony else who has betrayed your trust?”  Carrot Cake looked at Pinkie Pie pleadingly, as if her answer would restore his sanity.  You would never leave me...  He no longer flinched at the thought.

Pinkie Pie stared back, gazing into each eye successively.  He looked like a broken pony who desperately needed affection and didn’t know where to find it.  Her mind went back to that kiss, that fleeting moment that she had first balked at but had blossomed inside her mind.  I could do so much to make you smile again...

How could you think that, Pinkie?  You don’t even like him that way.

Don’t I...?  Pinkie Pie suddenly noticed that a long time had passed since either of them spoke.  She tried to answer Carrot Cake’s question.

“I’m not really sure, Mr. Cake‒–”

“Please, call me Carrot.”  Pinkie was befuddled, but went along with it.

“Okay, Carrot...I think that once you love somepony, you love them no matter what.  Even if they do horrible things, you find a way to love them anyway.  Rainbow Dash pulls a mean prank on me sometimes, but I still love her as one of my best friends.”

Leave it to Pinkie to use an example like that, Carrot Cake thought.

“Pinkie, your life view is, dare I say...optimistic.  But real life doesn’t always work like a fairytale.  Sometimes, there is no princess ready to ride away with her prince.  Sometimes, there is no happily ever after, but a happily until...”  Pinkie Pie turned her head away.  It was clear that Carrot Cake’s heart was in a dark place, but that wouldn’t stop her from trying to cheer him up.

“Do you think you could ever forgive Mrs. Cake?”  Carrot Cake blinked.

“Right now?  No.  With time...?  I can’t be sure.  It’s harder to take this knowing I’m the reason why she left.”

“Why would it be you?”  Carrot Cake looked up at Pinkie Pie.

“I was distant with her, always getting into fights.  I didn’t cherish her like a husband should cherish his wife.  I took her for granted.  I allowed the stress of the business to bleed into my intimate life.”

“But it was her choice.  You didn’t make her leave you.  She did that herself.”  Carrot Cake sighed.

“Maybe so, but if I had been a more caring husband, she never would have thought to leave at all.”

“There’s just got to be a way to bring you two back together again,” she said with a stern tone, as if commanding it would make it so.  Carrot Cake shook his head, his shoulders slumping lower.

“That would never work.  She doesn’t even love me.”  Pinkie Pie gasped.

“How could you say that?”

“No wife who loves their husband leaves him for another stallion.  That just doesn’t happen.”

“How did you two leave it, before she left?” Pinkie Pie asked.

“Cup Cake has this habit of saying things she doesn’t mean when she’s angry.  She said I would never see her again, and that probably means the foals, too.  Not like I ever need to see them, as I’m not their father.  I told her I would see her in court, and that seemed to upset her, because she was crying when she left.”

“See?  That’s just it.”  Pinkie Pie straightened up with new conviction.  “If she really didn’t love you, leaving would have been easy.  If I’m at a party and there’s a pony I don’t like, when I leave I don’t feel anything.  Leaving somepony you love is hard.”  Pinkie Pie’s voice gained more excitement, and she spoke with a bouncy cadence.

“And I know being left by somepony you love is hard, too.  When Dashie left us to go to the Wonderbolts Academy, I missed her a lot.  I checked the mailbox constantly waiting for a letter from her, and I was always sad when there was no letter there.  And, well, just look.”  Pinkie Pie grabbed a mirror from the end table and held it in front of Carrot Cake.  He immediately recognized the streams of tears down his face, the bags under his eyes, the pain in his glance.

“If you didn’t love her,” Pinkie Pie said, “you wouldn’t look like this.  You’d be happy that she was gone.”

“I...I love her,” he said, and for a moment he smiled and let the feelings of old warm his heart.  But his thoughts quickly turned to despair, as sad thoughts do.  “But what good does my love do now?  She’s with the father of her foals now.  She has somepony to care for, and who cares about her, sick as that makes me.  But what do I have?  Nopony to love, nopony who loves me...”  Carrot Cake collapsed onto the bed, allowing a wave of depression to smother him.  Pinkie Pie’s heart started to race as ways to cheer him up flew through her head.  I know you love me.  I could be there for you now.

Pinkie Pie lied down next to him, stroking his mane.  Carrot Cake winced at the touch, but his pain gave way to comfort as she ran her hoof through his hair.

“I think I know a way to help make you feel better,” Pinkie Pie said, her tone suddenly throatier.  She cleared her throat, thinking that something might have been caught in it.

“What is that?” Carrot Cake said as he exhaled.

“Oh, but it would be so wrong...”  Pinkie Pie stopped stroking his mane and rolled over, facing away from Carrot Cake.  She began to tremble, her mind racing.  What are you doing?  You can’t really be thinking of doing that...

“What’s wrong about comforting a friend?” Carrot Cake asked.  There had been something deep about her offer, but he couldn’t place what.  Weak as he was feeling, he was willing to accept any help he could get.

Don’t even bring it up, Pinkie Pie thought.  Just let it go.  There are other ways.

“It would mean...cheating on your wife,” she said.  She felt a surge of excitement course through her veins, and an anxiety at having made the suggestion.  Every second Carrot Cake hesitated to answer made Pinkie Pie more tense, more conflicted.  When he finally spoke, it was like she could release her anxiety like a burst of steam from a tea kettle.

“You can’t possibly mean...Pinkie, I know I kissed you, and you know that and that’s why you think I would like to...but I couldn’t.  I would never want to hurt you.”

See?  He’s saying no, he doesn’t even want you to do it.  Now you can think of something else.

“I...”  Pinkie Pie turned around to face Carrot Cake.  Her eyes were shimmering and she was still shaking.  “I think I want you to...”  No! Why would you say that?  You can’t possibly like him that way.

But I do.  This epiphany released all of her tension, all of the confusion that had been born from the kiss and had grown like twisted vines through her mind.  With clarity came a buzzing sensation that heightened her sense of excitement.  Carrot Cake was the one trembling now.

“You...you can’t possibly mean that.  You’re just saying what you think I want to hear to make me feel better.  Oh, Pinkie Pie, you can read me so well.”  His voice took on more heft, strengthening along with his emotional outpouring.  “You know how deeply I am attracted to you.  In fact, I think this attraction was what was keeping me so distant from my wife.  I’ve seen you in my dreams.  I’ve hungered for you.  But now that the offer is laying in front of me, I cannot accept.  You are a young mare with your whole life ahead of you.  I would never want to take away your precious innocence.”

“But Carrot,” she said comfortably, holding his face in her hooves, “that innocence is meant to be taken.  It can’t last forever.  And who better to take it than the stallion who has taken care of me, who offered me a place to stay when nopony else would give me a job, who has recently opened up to me about his life?  Oh, I didn’t think that when you kissed me, but it’s been driving me bonkers ever since, making me all confused.  Only now that I can admit how I feel do I understand.  I love you, Carrot Cake.”  Carrot Cake stared at her in shock.  Her eyes...there was a fire burning within them, a hunger almost.  Those eyes made him believe every word she said.

He remembered talking to his father about Cup Cake, admitting for the first time that he had feelings for her.  His father had given him advice he had never forgotten.

“Son, when you see something or somepony you want in life, reach out and take it in your hoof!  You never know when it will come your way again.”

Carrot Cake placed his hoof on Pinkie Pie’s and gazed into her eyes.

“I love you, too.”  Slowly, delicately, their faces moved closer.  They each felt a thrill in their stomachs at what was about to happen, an anticipation that held them like a drug.  It took an eternity for their lips to connect.

The kiss was electric.  Soon, long-repressed passions took over, and they kissed earnestly.  Pinkie—who, to Carrot’s knowledge, had never done this before—probed his mouth with her tongue.  His tongue eagerly rubbed against it, and he tried to explore her mouth with it.  Pinkie pulled her mouth away, and started to nip at Carrot’s neck, enhancing the sensation with playful bites.

Carrot took a deep breath and exhaled.  Here was the mare of his dreams, confessing her love for him in a way he could never have imagined.  Was this better than a dream?  As Pinkie began to kiss his belly, he knew the answer.

Slowly, but determinedly, Pinkie moved her kisses down his body, until she finally stopped and took in the sight of his engorged member.  The tip was slick, and when she played with it in her hooves, she could feel how rigid it was.

“Now I understand what Rainbow Dash was trying to tell me about an erection,” she said.  Carrot laughed.

“Do you know what to do with it?” he asked.

“Let’s see...”  Pinkie gave the shaft a gentle kiss.  Carrot recoiled a bit and giggled.

“Pinkie, that tickles!”

“Should I stop?”

“Oh, for the love of Celestia, don’t stop.  I love it.”  So Pinkie continued to kiss his shaft.  She stroked it with her hooves as well, liking how hard it felt.  She could already feel moisture gathering between her legs and she knew what this meant.  If there had been any doubts left of how she felt about Carrot Cake, they were dashed now.

Pinkie soon became curious about the tip.  She wrapped her lips around it and licked the shining liquid from the top.

“Salty!” she said.  Carrot’s head was thrown back.

“Keep doing that,” he cried.  Pinkie sucked on his tip more and then soon engulfed more of his penis into her mouth.  The sucking made her feel so good that she increased her pace steadily.

Carrot felt a tension in his loins with which he had all too much experience.  Amidst his ecstasy, he became wary of how Pinkie would react when he came.

“Pinkie, keep going, but listen.”

“Hm?” Pinkie voiced, her mouth currently occupied.

“You’re making me very excited.  Soon, a stream of my semen is going to shoot out into your mouth.  You might want to finish me off with your hoof instead.”

“Hm?”  Pinkie didn’t quite understand, but soon it was too late.  A hot river of Carrot’s gooey seed burst into her mouth, and she recoiled from it and started to cough.  The white fluid leaked out onto her sheets, and Pinkie wiped some of it from her mouth.  What had entered her mouth she finally managed to swallow, and it felt warm trickling down her throat.  When her coughing finally subsided, she scooched up on the bed at eye level with Carrot.

“That was amazing,” he said, kissing her gently on the forehead.  He then started to kiss her tenderly on the neck, which made Pinkie giggle.

“W-what are you doing?” she asked.  Carrot Cake looked up to her and smiled.

“Returning the favor.”