Give and Take

Rarity didn’t even hear the bell ring, nor her classmates making a commotion to get out of the math lab, over the voice in her head. Her eyes were locked on a certain friend of hers instead of the clock that struck eleven forty-five. She couldn’t get enough of the energy that Sunset brought with her presence. It’d been like this for a week now.

On Monday, she’d been asked to perform a favor for Sunset: dig up the name of a certain boy that she’d been keeping an eye on. A bewildered Rarity obviously agreed to help her friend extract the information. It was easy, especially since he was afflicted with the usual Monday blues that nearly every student felt around the holidays. After school was the perfect time as well since she saw him approaching a white sedan with what looked like his mother in the driver’s seat. The look on his face was the best part: simply priceless. She was lucky to get his name before his jaw hit the floor.

Right now, she wasn’t so sure that she should’ve agreed to it.

Over the course of the week, she’d seen Sunset set into a different light, one that she herself had yet to tread. Sure, she could get any guy or girl she ever wanted. Maybe even Applejack’s brother if she played her cards right. But she never had the real nerve to actually get to know someone beyond their name, phone number and meeting place for a little “fun.” Sunset was different that way now. Maybe she wanted to change her ways after what she did to Flash, but that wasn’t the point. Sunset was willing to get to know a person beyond the front, and that’s what she wanted…

“Are... you okay, Rarity?”

Rarity shook her head and rubbed her eyes. Sunset was in front of her now, a concerned look on her face.

“Of course, darling! I-I was just thinking is all…” Rarity nodded, putting on her best smile. “I’ve got that guy’s name for you.” She shrugged her backpack onto the desk and opened the main pouch. She was smart enough to put the note in a hidden compartment so the beauty supplies at the bottom of her bag wouldn’t crumple it, or worse, actually cover it in nail polish and eyeliner.

“Was it hard?” Sunset chuckled. Rarity shook her head as she handed her the paper with his name on it.

“Do you remember who I am, sweetie?” She chuckled in reply, masking her scoff.

He couldn’t be more easier. Probably one of the type that goes commando on the first date…

“I knew you were the right person to come to for this,” Sunset complimented. Rarity blushed, remembering that Sunset did say that this kind of thing would suit her “particular talents,” as she put it.

“I’d do it for any of you gals,” she waved it off. Even now, she could feel her cheeks burning beyond control. She needed to say something sooner or later, or regret losing the girl of her dreams forever. “But Sunset, I, uh-”

“Time to go, kiddos. It’s lunch.” Their professor came out of his personal office with his laptop bag slung over his shoulder. This was the universal sign that meant the room was going to be locked up from this point until the next teacher were to host their class in there.

“Sorry!” Sunset and Rarity apologized in tandem. Rarity felt a bit less embarrassed since Sunset waited for her to get her belongings together. After that, they quickly shuffled out of the room.

“So, what were you going to say?” Sunset asked, pulling Rarity to the side of the hallway.

Rarity froze up for a moment, but she knew she needed to say it before her chance was gone. But what if her words would get in the way of Sunset being happy? She simply couldn’t live with Sunset being lonely again, and her being at fault for it. That just wasn’t how she did things with her friends. But her happiness was on the line too. If Sunset would just give her a chance to prove to her that she could be the one…

“Sunset, I want you to consider me as a potential candidate for your love and affection!”

Rarity smothered her lips, but it was too late. She’d done what she needed to do, but… she was sure she could’ve been a bit less sharp and dramatic than her usual self. She closed her eyes, hoping that this was just a daydream and that she would wake up to the sound of the professor dismissing them for lunch. Instead of the stereotypical sigh she’d braced herself for, she got a chuckle and a hand grasping her shoulder.

“Tell you what, Rares. If things don’t go so well, I…” Sunset stopped a moment, a look of ponder on her features, “I’ll give you a chance, okay?” Sunset’s awkward smile only served to stoke the fire in Rarity’s chest.

“Deal!” Rarity squealed, hugging Sunset to only pull herself back and brush off her arms. “Err... sorry, dear.”

“It’s okay. I think I needed that…” Sunset chuckled, returning the hug. “I’ll text you later today.”

“Thank you, Sunset. See you after school!” With that, Rarity ran off to the cafeteria to join their clique, leaving Sunset to her own devices. It was almost a relief.

“Phew.” Sunset closed the library door behind her, silencing any of the hubbub coming from the adjacent hallway. She immediately set her sights to the far side of the establishment where the private study rooms were. If she were lucky, she wouldn’t stumble upon a horny couple screwing around behind the desk. It was a one-in-three chance.

Sunset cautiously opened the door. “Coming in!” She warned, only to be greeted with the ticking of a wall-mounted clock. She sighed with relief as she quickly shut the door and locked it. She didn’t need anyone stumbling in on her while she did her research.

She quickly set out her supplies: her laptop, the note Rarity gave her, and her mouse and mousepad. Her laptop spooled up to a screensaver of herself and Rarity with their friends at a party following the Friendship Games. While there were a lot of questions that followed her around, it didn’t stop it from being a wild night with her and the girls.

She seated herself and punched in her login credentials, bringing her to the desktop. She didn’t have tons of icons like some of the students she knew, but she only needed a certain one for this project. The clock was ticking to get the information she needed.

While Sunset waited for FlareOn to load up its home page, she opened up the note from Rarity. She appreciated her help in getting this guy’s name. There was a reason to it after all.

When she was at her lowest, she had her friends, sure. But everyone else around either resented her or wanted nothing to do with at all. A student like this guy was hard to come by, no matter how little his actions were. There we so many things that this guy didn’t have:

Looks.

A job.

A real life outside of whatever it was that he did.

But she didn’t care for that, really. The fact that he always greeted her with a warm smile and a “H-hello” every morning made it all better. Of course she wanted him to actually grow up and be a real man come their senior year, but that was still three semesters away; a year and a half. Plenty of time to get his act together, and plenty of time to hopefully fill the void that’d been left in her heart from clawing her way back out of the hole she’d dug herself before.

The homepage finally loaded up, and she clicked on her link to Teehee. Once she landed on her own profile, she typed Tico Lead into the search bar. She didn’t really regard her notifications or private messages since this was just a spy session and not a browsing one.

The standard entry of Tico Lead brought up zero results. After realizing that she didn’t include the atmark at the beginning of his name, she fixed her mistake and loaded up the query one more time.

“Lucent Lead?” Sunset asked herself, perplexed by the search result she got. Then she remembered that some of her peers tended to be… different. There’d always been those kind of kids that ended up resenting their name. Not that she could blame some of them, but a lot of them didn’t need to be so vocal about it outside of social media. At least Tico made his blurb a funny one, which eased her nerves a bit.

If I were a Royal Guard, my nickname would be Major Wood.

“Hah!” Sunset kidded herself. After confirming it was actually who she was looking for, she clicked onto his profile. Instead of being greeted with a portrait image of him, she got a textured crescent moon against a dark blue background. It was simple, but it was unique… Right?

Sunset dismissed it nevertheless. At least he made his name into an alliteration and had a snarky blurb to boot. She began snooping around the page, looking for anything that could clue her in about Tico. She scrolled down the board of status updates and shared links he had plastered about it, not finding much that could sway her to like or dislike him. That was, until she came upon a link to what she thought was a blog site. She clicked it and was brought to WritePress.net. Upon a closer observation, she could tell that it was a kind of writing site akin to something that new Twilight and Rainbow Dash used to write a collaborative fanfiction together. Sunset smirked and shook her head.

They could live off of Daring Do and her coonie for all we know.

Sunset turned her full attention to the first thing on Tico’s page, which was a full-on banner of his TeeHee avatar with his pseudonym written in one corner. She had to compliment his ability to cut out an image and paste it against a color gradient, as well as putting his name in big bold letters that looked like they would make for crappy party balloons. Pinkie wouldn’t be happy with that. Not at all.

She also noticed the same blurb and avatar he used for TeeHee making an appearance as his WritePress avatar and biography. Not that she really cared. She wanted to see what he wrote in his free time. It must’ve been a lot of free time because on top of having almost eighty-five stories, he’d written over a thousand blog posts.

“Wow.” Sunset gawked, amazed by Tico’s site statistics. She wasn’t surprised that he had a big following either with how the ratings of his work seemed to be overall good. But what piqued her interest was the amount of comments that each story and blog had on top of favorites and upvotes. Sunset decided to bite.

She randomly picked a story entitled “Just Between Us.” While the name was somewhat simple, the fact that it was a collection of explicit and suggestive short stories wasn’t. She was also surprised to learn that some of these stories included students she knew from the school, and even herself.Really, it was just characters with their features under a different name. He even had the token black guy in there.

… She was more curious than she was scared. If he tried anything on her, all she had to do was revert to her demon form and scare the living daylights out of him.

Upon skimming over the first chapter, she was actually surprised that he had any type of writing skill to begin with. The smut-talking blended with the actual plot of the story, albeit not as seamlessly as it should have. There was a reference that only kids born before ten years to her arrival seemed to get in there as well. To be honest, the ham-fisted attempt at it was alright, but it could’ve been less… forced. Overall, Sunset would’ve gave it a six or seven out of ten since the way he wrote about sex made it seem like he’d never been laid. She guessed that he hadn’t stumbled upon a good porno or found a lewd mag. That also seemed to be the rating that most of the people that commented on his story gave.

These people actually have a mind and won’t just mindly give it a ten for having cartoon references and talk of sex.

Then there was the people that had that mindset.

One person actually applauded Lead’s ability to create a story, but pointed out that the implied sex and dirty-talking could’ve been toned down in areas and allowed for more addition to the story itself. There was also the fact that the two guys in the story were alpha to the point of the story being a living stereotype.

On top of that, they also pointed out that another of Tico’s story had the same glaring issue as this one: his blatant example of what rape was. Sunset looked back quickly and discovered that he’d indeed written a rape scene in a way that made it sound like rape was okay.

She was disappointed that he was making the same mistake, especially over something as heated as rape. Well, she could see why Tico wrote it like so when he replied to the otherwise-decent review.

Less smut? What are you, beta male cis scum?! You should want sex!

“Uh, no thanks.” Sunset deadpanned, closing out the site and shutting her laptop. While she didn’t mind a little fun on the side, this was not what she had in mind. At least with Rarity, she knew she would be treated like a lady.

You know what? I would like that.

She didn’t skip a beat when she pulled her phone out and looked for Rarity’s number in her directory. A few dial tones later and Rarity picked up the phone, as well as the rest of Canterlot High’s students in the cafeteria.

“H-hello?”

“Rares? It’s Sunny.” Sunset sighed as she leaned back in the chair rested her feet on the desk.

“Sunset! Is something wrong, dear?” Rarity’s concern oozed from the receiving end. Sunset quipped a smile.

“I’m fine, but I just wanted to tell you to wait for me after school,” Sunset said, twirling her hair up her finger, “It’s kind of important.”

“O-of course! I’ll be waiting out front for you.” She could see the blush all the way from here.

“Thank you.” With that, she hung up her phone and tossed it on the desk.

I should’ve never doubted you, Rarity.

Rarity stood amidst the sea of students flowing out into the streets surrounding the school. She would’ve gone with Dash and Pinkie to get a free milkshake at Sugar Cube Corner, but Sunset’s request kept her waiting patiently.

While looking about the school’s main entrance, she spotted Tico walking to his ride home. He was also looking around, presumably for Sunset too.

Don’t you dare think you’re going to get Sunset that easily, Rarity silently harrumphed.

“There you are!”

Rarity’s cheeks flushed a deep red when she felt Sunset grab her hand. She couldn’t even get her legs to move in a awkwardly normal fashion when she tried pulling her toward wherever she was trying to take them.

I must be dreaming!

“Stop dreaming and come on before Psycho Lead sees us!”

Rarity simply nodded and began walking with Sunset. Now that she wasn’t seeing straight red, she realized that they were going towards the football field. More importantly, it was towards the opposing team’s bleachers. “Sunset, darling… What in heaven’s name are you doing bringing us out here?”

“You’ll see.” Sunset chirped back, squeezing her hand a bit tighter. Rarity couldn’t even squeak. Once they were safe from the prying eyes of the Friday evening flock, Sunset dropped her bag and turned to face her.

“You’re awfully… how should I say this… close, Sunset.” Rarity peeped as her crush’s light blue eyes came closer to her.

“It’s hard to get away from… how do you say… a gem like you,” Sunset chuckled, grasping her other hand and bringing them up to their chests. Rarity was now at her mercy. As if she wanted to deflect the peck that came next.

“Does this mean-” She was interrupted by another peck from Sunset.

“Does that answer your question now?” She whispered.

Her cheeks turned rosy with glee. While she wouldn’t admit it outright, she could get used to the teasing. It was Sunset after all, and that’s all that mattered to her.

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