You Can Pick Your Friends
Admiral Biscuit
It's a typical Thursday in Ponyville, and you're at the market considering what you want to have for dinner. Sadly, nopony has yet set up a KFC booth, although there's always hope that it might happen one week. Until then, though, you're stuck with a vegetarian diet.
As you're browsing Golden Harvest's selection of carrots, a strange yet familiar feeling assaults you.
There is a booger in your nose.
It's one of the ones that kind of hangs on, which if you breathe hard enough you can just feel it flapping around inside a nostril.
Like most guys, you don't carry around a box of tissues for this sort of occasion.
It could probably wait until you get home—it's by no means an emergency—but now that you've noticed it, it's going to keep annoying you until you do something about it.
You hold a finger up and pinch your left nostril shut, then give a couple of short, snorting exhales in an attempt to blow it out, to no avail. That booger is practically glued in there, and now it's even more annoying than it was before.
You're not about to let a little chunk of snot ruin your day, so when you find a little alleyway off the main road, you duck down it so you can do a little bit of prospecting in private.
Getting a finger on it is easy, but it's a stubborn little bugger and just doesn't want to let go.
You're so busy digging for gold that you don't hear the approaching footsteps of a curious pony.
“Hey, whatcha doing?”
“God!” You almost accidentally lobotomize yourself with your finger, then hastily yank it out and nonchalantly wipe it off on the seat of your jeans. Turns out being surprised not only works to cure hiccups, but also to get stubborn boogers out, too.
“I was just scratching my nose.” That sounds believable, right?
Pinkie narrows her eyes, but nods slowly. “Sometimes my nose gets all itchy and twitchy, and I have to—“ She pauses for a moment to reach a foreleg up and rub at her muzzle for a second, then lowers it again. “But you weren't . . . you. . . .”
You can see the gears in her head turning.
“You had your finger inside your nose!” she announces triumphantly.
“Er, maybe.” A blush starts to creep across your cheeks. Your Mom was right—you shouldn't be picking your nose in public. (She'd never claimed that you'd get caught by a pastel party pony, though.) “I had an itch inside my nose.”
“Oohhhhhh.” Pinkie nods her head wisely. “I guess that makes sense.”
Whew. Crisis averted.
“Sometimes the inside of my nose gets itchy, too,” she tells you.
“I think it happens to everyone.”
“What's it like?”
“Huh?”
Pinkie does a weird little shrug thing, and then brings her foreleg back up to her nose and rubs it again. “I can wiggle the tip of my nose, and sometimes that helps make the itchy go away, but not always.”
“Yeah.” You know exactly what she's talking about.
“Do me,” she says suddenly.
“Do you? Right here? In broad daylight, in a public alley that anypony could come down?”
She rolls her eyes. “Not that. My nose. Itch my nose. With your finger.”
“You want me to stick my finger in your nose and scratch the inside?”
Pinkie nods eagerly. “I bet it feels amazing.”
You'd never really thought that scratching the inside of your nose—or to be fair, picking it—felt that amazing. But then it was something that you could do whenever you wanted to. It was an option that was always open to you, whenever and wherever.
For Pinkie Pie—for any pony—it was forever out of reach. Never mind a pony's freakish flexibility; there was no way a hoof was ever going to fit up there.
“This might be the weirdest thing I've ever done,” you mutter to yourself.
“So you're gonna?” Her face is hopeful.
Curse ponies and their all-hearing ears.
“Sure, fine.” You take one step towards her and then stop. “But you can't tell anypony, okay? This has got to be just between you and me.”
Her ears droop. “Really? 'Cause I bet that everypony would like to have the inside of their nose scratched.”
“That may well be so,” you tell her. “But I don't want to get a reputation.”
You crouch down, and she approaches you, stretching her neck forward until her nose is almost brushing against your hand, leaving you to close the gap.
There's no point in hesitating, so you reach up and touch her between her nostrils, before running your finger around the perimeter of her left nostril. She wrinkles her nose and her nostril flares, which is the strangest feeling ever. “Are you sure?”
“Yuppers.”
“Okay, here goes.” You're not exactly sure what the best way to approach this is, so you slowly push forward, keeping the tip of your finger on the inside of her nostril.
It's weird how hot her breath is. it feels hotter than yours, anyway, although maybe you're just being overly sensitive.
“Ooh, right there,” she says, and so you obligingly rub gently—you're not sure how tough pony noses are, and you saw a picture once of what a horse nosebleed looks like and you want nothing to do with that.
As you carefully increase pressure, Pinkie lets out a moan not unlike a porn star, and it takes all your willpower to not jerk your hand back out. Surely everypony at the market heard her, and they'll be coming to investigate.
Then again, it's Pinkie Pie, so maybe not.
“Oh, that feels so good.” When you pull your finger back out, she shakes her head and then tilts her face back up at you.
You can guess what she wants, so you switch hands and go exploring inside her other nostril. Oddly, now that you've got a bit of experience, you're more confident, and find the sweet spot right away.
She moans in pleasure again, and then once your hand's clear, stretches forward and nuzzles your cheek. “Thanks! That felt amazing.”
“It was good for me, too,” you say.
Pinkie pronks back to market, but you stay in the alleyway for a moment, turning a bit of ancient wisdom over in your head. It turns out that you can pick your friends' nose.
Now that's some sensual booping right there.
It went far better than I would've expected!
Both were good!
What did i just read?
'Snot what I expected.
EDIT: Apparently, the story published immediately before this one is ALSO titled "You Can't Pick Your Friends," and follows a similar plotline and format. (Just an entirely different opening and supporting character.)
You insufferable snot you
This left me feeling awkward in a great way.
Is it just you and Mister Coffee, or can we expect another story with the same title involving sticking fingers into other pony orifices to pop up in the next few minutes?
wut? just wut?
8568442
Just those two.
I've learned to stop asking 'why' at this point.
I think I've been on this site for too long.
8568316
Ponies love scritching, and that's a fact.
8568325
Thanks!
8568349
Well, you know the saying: "You can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you shouldn't pick your friends' nose."
Unless she's a pony, then it's okay.
8568387
Yup, more or less the same setup, but different outcome. And of course, a different rating.
8568394
8568418
Imagine how strange it would feel to have a finger in your nose if you'd never experienced that before.
8568513
8568590
I think I should blame Fuzzyfervert and Majin Syeekoh for this.
This really is a "What did I just read!?" story.
But hell I liked it. Its an interesting slice of life.
I LMAO at the punchline, by the way.
The Monk
Just what else have you been probing Pinkie with?!
As we've seen with Fluttershy trying to get out of her modeling job, ponies can pick their noses with hooves, and are, in fact, extremely cute doing it.
why? why would you do this
I.... well, at least I was wrong about her sneezing confetti all over him
Also, a sequel needs to happen where Rainbow was loitering on a cloud and saw everything
What exactly is the story behind how you and Mr. Coffee posted similar fics with the same title? Was this a collaboration or something?
Anyway, it was scary how much I identified with this guy. (Though I guess that's a good thing, since it means I can take the 2nd person thing to heart.) Many times I have felt the urge to do some good ol' booger farming, but am out in public and thus I can't without the fear of getting judged.
8568387
Do you have a link to this other fic?
8569447
Same title, Vinyl Scratch cover art. It's in the popular column right now.
8569391
Or something is probably the right conclusion. Full knowledge, etc.
Hey, when you've got a booger, you've got to deal with it. That's just a fact.
8569495
Oh, I see it! Thanks!
8568735
Thanks!
8568757
I plead the fifth.
8568964
Why wouldn't you? She asked nicely, and she can't scratch her own nose.
8568940
Hmm, I didn't remember that. Ah well. If they had slightly IRL bone structure and realistic-sized nostrils, they couldn't.
And of course they're cute when they're doing it. They're cute no matter what they're doing.
8569283
Oh, man, that could totally happen.
I wonder what RD would make of that?
I haven't read this, but I kinda wish it were marked Gore.
I also might stop visiting the front page for a while.
So that's why Lyra wants hands.
Um, one of the things Twilight's spell does to Fluttershy during Green Isn't Your Color is that it makes her pick her nose.
I mean Pegasus and gryphons would itch their nose with their wings (probably get a feather stuck too) and unicorns can use their magic so its only a thing earth pony's need to worry about. but i would never do that since i don't wanna go exploring sompony else nose
"Rainbow dash you should really stop picking your nose with your wings."
"why Twilight?"
"Because you keep coming every week because of a feather that got stuck."
It's not out of Pinkie's reach! I feel used, like a cheap tissue!
8569918
So you have seen pictures of horse nosebleeds, then.
I don't see why.
8570219
Well, that's certainly one benefit to having them.
8571020
Okay, fair enough, but Pinkie hasn't got Twilight to cast that spell on herself.
Also, how would that even work? How big are pony nostrils?
8571041
Apparently, some horses like it when you itch inside their nose. Other horses will probably bite you, so pick horse noses at caution.
Also, I'm imagining that having a feather stuck up your nose is probably worse than just a booger.
8572180
Well, that's a fair point.
They call her Deep Snout...
Seriously though, the wet flappy boogers aren't so bad. It's the dry crusty ones with the sharp edges that can make your life miserable.
'Course, being a pony down on the farm, you can just stick your muzzle into the watering trough and let it soak loose while you pretend to take a drink.
Then watch while someone else drinks from the trough. That joke never gets old.
8580804
It kind of depends on how big the flappy ones are, and how stuck they are. But the sharp ones are also annoying.
I could see that being something that ponies might do, too, if they have communal drinking troughs. Probably teenage ponies.
Hahaha that's great. He should totally set up a clinic!
8625594
The nose-scratching clinic . . . well, there's probably worst ways to occupy your time in Equestria. . . .
8630516
Paint Dry-Rate Validator.
8630528
Not the job for Pinkie Pie. I could see Twilight trying her hoof at it, though.
Now I really hate you. XD