//------------------------------// // Bathtime // Story: Rarity's Colt // by Mocha Star //------------------------------// The sun had set, Snickers had cleaned his papers up, and now he sat on the floor beside the bookcase with his eyes closed, enjoying a moment to contemplate his recent choice of designing neckware. What the hell was I thinking? I might have started the ball rolling on bomb collars by just letting that filly see what I’d drawn. Why the hell did I write what it was at the top of the page? How stupid can I be in a single day? Don’t answer that, brain. “Snickers?” Sweetie asked from outside the doorway. He looked at her and his ear flicked in a way ponies used to ask another to continue. “Um, the bath’s ready, so you’ve gotta take one now. Afterwards we can play in my room, Rarity said the door has to stay open, though. I asked her why and she just told me, ‘because I said so.’ Sisters,” she huffed. He got up and stretched his left hind leg. “Alright, I’ll be there in a minute. I’ve gotta, um, you know,” he looked askance and she cocked her head. “Oh, ya gotta pee? No prob, toilet’s in the bathroom by the bathtub!” She turned and he saw her tail sway when she practically pranced away.  “Yeah, that… alright, time to scrub some scum off my nuts,” he took a step and smiled. “I haven’t been this clean and healthy in years, no scum is good scum.” He made his way into the bathroom and looked around, the tub was large and oval standing off the floor with six little feet so in certain climates logs could be put under it to heat the water. He closed the door, and went to the squat toilet. He looked at it and smiled. “Something so simple makes all the difference in the world." He reached back and bit the skirt he’d made, tossing it aside like the rag it was and stood over the porcelain, letting his bladder relieve itself.  “Snickers! Hurry up and come in,” Sweetie said happily, scaring the colt into a panicked run head first into the wall, knocking several bottles of shampoo and a plastic yellow duckie to the floor. “Ouch, are you okay?” He whined and rubbed his head, he whined at the pain in his tail he’d landed on, his head from hitting the wall, and his dignity from being seen peeing so casually. “I think I am,” he stood and his legs trembled. “What’re you doing in my bath? Why’d you have to scare me, there’s pee on the floor! Oh no, Rarity’s gonna kill me and flay my hide!” “Ew! Gross, why would you even say that, Snickers?” Sweetie stuck her tongue out and leaned out of the water, forelegs dangling from the tub. He reached for a towel and dropped it on what he’d missed and leaned onto it to soak it up before tossing the towel aside. “Ya know, it’s not that bad. Fillies make a mess a lot cuz when we gotta go,” she scooped some bubbles in her hoof and blew them away to land on the floor, “we sometimes gotta go and can’t make it all the way. “It really sucks, but nature sucks. Otherwise we’d have our cutie marks and start being adults, right?” He looked at her and shook his head. “I mentioned it hours ago, but there’re so many more important things than a butt mark.” “Whatever, hurry and get in, I need my back washed and can’t reach.” He watched her slide back casually and vanish into the bubbles. “You know, too much soap can lead to a UTI in mares, right?” he said to no one. “True,” Rarity said startling him and he almost lost his footing, barely avoiding a slip, “but medicine and magic cure that right up before it’s an issue. Now, in you go,” she lifted him with her magic and dropped him into the water beside her sister. The water tingled and stung his skin for an instant, then under the water he felt completely relaxed, enough to finish what little he had left of what he’d started before being terrified into a wall. He surfaced and tittered in a girly way. “I haven’t had a hot bath in so long,” he giggled at the heat surrounding him. “Yes, well, I’ll help you both clean up and then you may play for twenty minutes. No more or your hooves with get soft and you’ll slip across the floor.” Sweetie was lifted in her sisters magic to the edge of the tub with her belly and legs in the water as a loofah glowing with a blue aura brushed her coat. “Yeah, that’s because I stayed in for an hour once and slipped and got a bloody nose. It was so cool!” “For you, perhaps. For me it was an effort in futility when I tried to clean it from the towel. I had to throw it away and I liked that towel.” “Cold water,” Snickers said picking bubbles up with his snout. “Gets the blood out with a little scrubbing, easy peasy, blood’s so easy!” He sneezed and scattered bubbles across the tub. He laughed and reached both legs out to gather a bunch and bite at them. “Thank you for the insight, but you really shouldn’t eat the bubbles, darling.” He coughed and started laughing while coughing. “Heh, soapy,” he spat into the tub getting gross looks from the girls, “but tastes like berries! Oh, yum… so much trouble with this choice,” he looked at the suds and then to the others, conceding defeat. “Okay, no bubbles for a snack.” He splashed water at them and ducked under when Rarity scolded him, her voice nothing but high pitched mumbles. He surfaced again and heard the tail end of Sweetie giggling. “Rarity, be gentle! I’m a filly of high society and shan’t be scrubbed like some common ruffian.” Rarity snickered at her sister. “Yes, quite. Now that she’d cleaned up it’s your turn, young stallion. Then it’s your task to clean your manes, I’ll be just outside the door reading a magazine while you have your fun as you do.” Rarity pulled him to the same spot she’d had Sweetie and trembled when the scrubbing started. “Snickers, you must relax or you’ll get a cramp. Hot water cures many an ailment, but you don’t want to ruin your experience by giving Sweetie an unfair advantage, do you?” He looked at the filly wearing a hat and moustache made of bubbles. “Yeah, right. I don’t buy it.” The scrubbing moved to his underbelly and he quickly felt his body responding. He squirmed futilie in her magic as she unknowingly went around his elongated member that was not used to the heat of a hot bath, making it even harder.  The loofah went against his little nuggets and he yelped, flailing his legs and he was dropped into the water with a large splash. He surfaced and was blushing fircely. Rarity apologized. “I’m so sorry, I was distracted and washed you as I’d washed only fillies, I hadn’t thought of your different parts,” she bit her lip and tinted a light pink in embarrassment. He shook his head and held a hoof out to her. “I’ll take care of those areas,” he said and when the loofah was placed on his hoof it sank under the water. Rarity averted her attention to a broken bottle of shampoo that’d leaked into the toilet while Sweetie wasn’t anywhere to be seen. He scrubbed everything that was exposed and then very hesitantly held the loofah towards his foster mother.  She took it and moved it to the sink very quickly. “Yes, well, shampoo… I’ll just,” she lit her horn and a bottle of lavender shampoo floated to him while a strawberry scented one waited for Sweetie to surface. Snickers turned around in the tub, staying low so he’d keep himself hidden until it went back in, then felt the most embarrassed and shame in his life.  He felt himself, his fifth leg, strike something that wasn’t him under the water. Sweetie surfaced and held a hoof to her cheek. “What’s with you slapping me on my face, Snickers?” she asked with a pout, bottom lip out. She looked at him, then to her sister who was now pink from her neck to her ears.  Snickers crossed his forelegs under the water, holding it to his body as it finally receded, just after ruining his life like his mom said it would someday. He sank in the water, Rarity gave both shampoo to Sweetie Belle, then stepped back. “Sweetie, have fun playing and don’t do anything inappropriate.” She backed out of the bathroom and once around the corner she broke and laughter filled the boutique. “What’s she laughing at?” Sweetie asked with her innocence on full display. Snickers blew bubbles under water and Sweetie looked at him in shock. "Did you toot? Gross,” she backed away and lifted a wad of suds in her hoof. “I shall defeat you, stinky monster, and you’ll never trouble my snout again!”  She launched the bubbles with a ferocity of the ages right at the stunned colt. If it were a different scenario he’d certainly have his life flash before his eyes as the end approached. This time, though, the suds scattered across Sweetie’s mane and barely made it past her outstretched leg.  “Darn, misfire,” she fake pouted again getting a laugh from Snickers. Rarity’s laughter had died down and he looked at his aunt with narrowed eyes. “Wait! Manes and tails first, then I show you the error of your ways,” Sweetie exclaimed, tossing him the red bottle and holding a hoof to her lips. He nodded and started washing his mane, dipped under water again, and reached for his tail. He growled as it just eluded his bite and lips because the water went through and around the hair in a way he wasn’t used to at all. He heard Sweetie holding a laugh behind a hoof and glared at her. “What’s so funny?” “You look like a dizzy dog doing that,” she moved closer to him and grabbed his tail by the root and pulled with both hooves in a way that sent chills up his back. “This’ why we don’t bathe alone, we’d never get the hard to reach spots. I’ll do your tail, then you do mine, okay?” He gasped when she tugged again, but managed a nod. It wasn’t a sexual feeling he was having, per se, but it was akin to stretching a foreleg he didn’t know was stiff. Sweetie was expertly tugging and working with his tail’s natural movements to clean it and tug just right. “Apple Bloom has a tail like yours, you know,” she started. “Only it gets really matted and tangled and yours doesn’t. It’s probably from chores on the farm, but it could be from our adventuring, too. Anyway, she gets really stressed and carries it in her tail, so when we take a bath we take turns doing each other’s tails and giving them tugs or twists to loosed them up.” “Loosen, Sweetie Belle,” Rarity called from the hallway. “Everypony’s a dictionary,” Sweetie grumbled. “So, yeah! Now, I know you’ve never done it before, so you don’t have to bother. I’ll be fine without a tail tug until the next time I’m with the other crusaders. We can teach you! It’ll be so much fun, maybe we’ll get our marks in tail massage, or tail tugging, or... washing?” she shook her head. “Nah, I’ll pass on that one.” He dipped under the water again and ran his hooves through his mane, making sure to clean it the best he could. Once back up he looked back and saw Sweetie nod, then pass the bottle of shampoo to him, the picture of a plant he didn’t know, same for the scent. He poured a small dollop onto her lower back getting a squeak and comment about the frigidness, then he let the bottle float in the water while his hooves tried to reach through her tail hairs to the tail itself. He managed to bump against it, brush the edge of his hooves against it, and twice he caught it, only for it to slip away.  Sweetie’s giggling got his attention and she was looking back at him intensively. He gasped and then splashed water at her. “You… booger!” he, proud he covered his swearing for the first time in his life. “You’re just teasing me, aren’t you?” “Maaaaybe,” she replied and quickly lifted her tail out of the water, splashing him when it went up and bringing it down, back into the water with a clap that passed over his head; stinging him like he’d been slapped, because he had been. “That’s for slapping me, twice!” He leapt at her and she screamed, ducking under the water and swimming under him. She popped back up and sprayed water from her mouth directly into his face when he turned around, then laughed at his expression.  “Oh, it… is… on.” ... Rarity sat outside the bathroom, listening to them playing and enjoying the moment sitting with her back against the wall and ears aimed at the room itself. She was loathe to admit it to herself, but she was acting exactly like Fluttershy had accused her of since he’d arrived, not like a caring adult at all.  Tomorrow, however, was a new day for her to bond with him and learn of his past from himself, to help him open up, to introduce him to Rainbow Dash, and start working with everypony to help him start a new life free of the horrors and pain he’d already been through. Whether he was truly an adult reverted to a child, or a child with an imagination to cover himself in a blanket of lies to keep himself from the world, she’d be there for him. A happy scream came from the room and she rocked in a single motion to all four hooves so she could peek around the corner. A smile grew as large as it could on her face seeing them play, and to realize that not only was he acting like a foal his age, but he screamed louder than Sweetie Belle. It was certainly to be denied, but families exist for moments like the one she was watching. Her horn glowed and unnoticed by the splashing two, the water on the floor slid quickly to the toilet so it would be less likely to cause a slip. “Hang on, Snickers, I’ve gotta go pee quick!” “Ew, not in the bath!” he stuck out his tongue at her and she replied the same. “You did when you got in! But fillies are better than colts because colts have something on their heads.” “Oh yeah, what’s that?” he asked in mock anger.  She splashed him with a hoof full of bubbles and water, screaming in laughter when his head was finally covered with suds. She scrambled over the edge and nearly slipped if it weren’t for the rigid padding around the tub to prevent just that. She went to the toilet and Snickers turned away. Sweetie smiled kindly at the back of his head at the respect he’d given her she felt she should have given him earlier. Her tail swayed aside, for what little it meant being soaked and being in the splash zone, as just so happened to be. She braced herself and started to go, losing her hooves from under her legs and falling with her tail under her into the porcelain with all her weight on it.  The shriek was unlike anything he’d wanted to hear ever again and he spun around to look at her and his heart broke seeing the pain in her face. Rarity came around the corner like a smooth arrow and ran to her sister before he could get out of the tub. “Sweetie, what happened? Please, talk to me!” Rarity asked in a rushed panic to the still shrieking and crying filly. Snickers arrived and went around Rarity, shoving Sweetie over and dodging a reactive swipe from Rarity as she tried to push him away from attacking her sister. “Her tail!” he pointed and Rarity looked, bringing her hoof to her mouth. He moved quickly and bit the tip of Sweetie’s tail, jerking it with all his might and getting a clack from her coccyx, where spine met tail. Sweetie groaned and fell to her side, groaning weakly. “What have you done?! Snickers, did you break her tail more than it was?” “Shut it ya…” he clenched his jaw as Rarity picked up Sweetie, not breaking her glare on him. “She dislocated it, badly. We have to get her to the hospital, where’s the hospital? Rarity, we have to go, now!” Rarity snapped out of her stupor and put her sister on her back, galloping from the room with Snickers right behind her.