Somehow, Velvet and I had fallen into a companionable routine.
I would wake up and start to make breakfast. I'd gotten pretty good at making scrambled eggs flavorful and fluffy, and she'd gotten pretty good at not laughing at me in an apron. Hey, if it wasn't meant to be worn, then she shouldn't have had it hanging next to the stove.
As soon as I set a plate on the dining table, Velvet would stumble out of her bedroom, summoned by the prospect of food. Sometimes she would have her mane all a mess, other times it would be wrapped in a towel. There were mornings when she'd be smeared in coat glitter and reeking of alcohol.
Occasionally, there was no Velvet at all, and I ended up eating both of our breakfasts by myself. I didn't ask where she went, she didn't offer, and I didn't want to know. It was better for our relationship that way. A respectable distance between our personal lives made for a healthy living situation.
One particular morning, I stepped out of my bedroom to find Velvet already awake. She was in the middle of her stretches and I spied two plates of toast sitting on the table with a spread of strawberry, peach, and starberry jams.
"Hey," she said, in the middle of a particularly limber stretch that involved her hindleg curled back and her spine arched so that her hoof touched the top of her head. She always made it look so easy. "I forgot to mention. My practice is cancelled for today, so I thought we could go grocery shopping and stuff."
I trotted past her to take a seat at the table, smearing strawberry jam onto one of the toast slices. "Sure, if that's what you want to do. I don't have any plans."
She looked at me with what might have been a sultry expression... if she weren't contorted into a painful-looking pretzel. "What do you want to do?"
Carefully, I chewed over my response options—literally. Velvet enjoyed innuendos, sass, and snark. I stalled for time by feigning choking on my toast so I could take a long sip of orange juice.
The rule was to not fall in love with her. That didn't preclude sexual jokes, especially not when she made them all the time, right?
"If it were up to me," I said slowly as I licked my lips and tried not to grin when her eyes flickered down to watch. "Well, I think I'd like to get my hooves on something and really work at it."
Her brow arched and she slipped out of her stretch to sit upright. "Like what?"
I hummed and leaned back in my seat, allowing my hindlegs to spread apart in the worst way possible. "Something long and hard. I mean, I've got all day to just jerk around, after all."
Okay, okay. It wasn't the best attempt at sexual humor, but it was the first thing in the morning, so cut me some slack and stop making that face. She made one just like it before she started laughing.
And laughing.
And laughing.
If I had been serious, my male pride would have been seriously wounded. Instead, I just felt stupid and stuffed toast in my mouth while I waited for her to remember how to breathe without cackling and wheezing. It took longer than I thought necessary for a dumb joke.
"Silv," she gasped out. "Silv, please, please tell me you can flirt better than that. Please!"
I rolled my eyes. "Flirt? Sure. But that wasn't flirting. I was just being stupid."
Velvet choked on an attempt at saying, "You can say that again."
Once she'd wiped the tears from her eyes and found a sense of composure, she joined me at the table to start on her own breakfast. "So, in seriousness, groceries? Yes, no?"
"Sure," I muttered, still feeling petulant. The feathers of my wings were ruffled for emphasis.
She just grinned at me between bites of toast.
When I say that we fell into a companionable routine, I'm not just kicking clouds. We ran errands almost like an old married couple, with dumb jokes that nopony else around us got. I'd bat my eyelids over a box of cookies and she'd proclaim that her favorite brand of chips was missing because of me. At one point during our grocery shopping trip, she asked me to get a cantaloupe. I came back with what was apparently a honeydew melon.
"Not honeydew," she drawled and waved a hoof at the fruit held in my hooves. "Cantaloupe."
I looked down at it, frowned in an exaggerated way, then shoved it out toward her. "Well, sorry, honey. Dew it yourself."
Velvet sputtered into laughter and probably would have swatted it out of my grip if that wouldn't have resulted in a mess on the floor. "You're so lame."
I've learned over the years that when a mare like Velvet calls you lame, it's actually a compliment. I was still figuring her out at the time, though, so my ears drooped and I muttered a vague apology as I turned to exchange the fruit for the right one.
There was a weird, bitter gratefulness over how she didn't remark that I should have known the difference since I was from Ponyville, like a farm pony. It probably wasn't a thought that crossed her mind. I wasn't anything to her but Silver Script, her roommate under somewhat peculiar circumstances. The lack of strings or expectations was a comfort with Parasol's voice still lurking in my mind's ear.
When we were in the frozen aisle, however, something weird happened. Velvet stopped and looked through the glass at some boxes with what I struggled to recognize as a sad smile. It just wasn't a face she made often. I stepped closer to take a look and saw rows of Hungry Mare meals.
"'Because filly food isn't filling food,'" I read aloud.
She glanced at me with an oddly open expression of apprehension. "Huh?" She blinked and looked back at the boxes. "Oh, yeah. That's the slogan. They were okay." A smile tugged at her lips. "When my best friend and I first moved in together, neither of us had a real income. Not enough for, like, this stuff." She gestured at our cart without looking at it, gaze still locked on the Hungry Mares. "We kept going between instant noodle cups and these."
I tried to imagine it. Velvet took great care of her body and, as far as I could tell, that included what she ate. I hadn't yet seen her dig into a cake or bury herself in chocolate. Maybe she did that when I wasn't around, but, no—I had a feeling that wasn't her style. A balanced diet seemed to better fit the ballerina who spent almost all of her downtime keeping her body fit, limber, and ready for anything anytime anywhere. Because ballet is something that sneaks up on you, obviously.
Velvet turned away from the frozen meals and trotted down the aisle, leaving the half-spoken memory behind with a suspiciously cheerful hum. The sound was at complete odds with the face she had been making. But I didn't know any better, so I didn't pry.
After we got home and put away the groceries, I took up residence on one of the large sitting pillows. Velvet was pacing the condo with tension clear in her muscles. She didn't handle practice being cancelled well. Velvet loves to dance, and being kept from it was as close to torture as I can imagine for her.
"Do you do any other kind of dancing?" I blurted out into the awkward silence.
Velvet stopped and looked at me, blinking a few times before she broke into a lopsided grin. "Tons. Why? You wanna show some moves?"
"Me?" I put a hoof to my chest. "Oh, uh, no. I don't dance. Four left hooves, grace of a newborn foal, and all that stuff. But I'll watch if you want to show some moves."
She didn't need to be asked twice. Not because she was eager to strut her stuff, but because a knock on the door interrupted before I could try to badger her into it. Both of us looked at each other with the same unspoken question: 'Are you expecting somepony?'
When I shook my head, she moved over to the door and greeted the unexpected guest with a casual, "Yeah?" I saw her back tense up and a name slipped past her lips with a mix of surprise and, strangely, something like reverence. "Crystal?"
A long pause held Velvet and the mare I could barely see around her until a pair of creamy white forelegs and a long blonde mane came into view when Velvet was embraced in a sudden hug.
"I'm sorry—" the mare sobbed out. I felt like I should have recognized her, but I couldn't put a hoof on it. "Miss—I just—please—!"
I watched in stillness and silence. Was she one of Velvet's mysterious late-night excursions? Jilted lover, perhaps? She seemed distraught. Had Velvet broken her poor heart? And where had I seen her before?
Velvet sputtered through a response. "Oh, uh, okay, okay. Shh, okay." She dropped down to sit on her haunches and awkwardly tried to return the strangling hold the mare had on her. "What happened?"
The mare was pretty, her sobs notwithstanding. She had a long blonde mane with a few streaks of pink running through it. Velvet whispered something and she jerked her head up, and that was when I got a good look of her face.
She was Crystal Wishes, the mare whom I had worked with a little under a year ago on a film script. My gaze flickered over to the bookcase where a copy of all of her books rested, unread but proudly displayed.
Velvet wasn't just a fan of C.W. Step. They were friends, or something close enough to result in tearful sudden visits. A chill ran through me at the thought that, apparently, Velvet knew another mare in my life.
"Why don't you, uh, I guess you can come inside," Velvet said through the haze of confusion and paranoia running through my head.
Crystal sniffled as she startle to detangle herself from Velvet, but our eyes met and she froze. Why was she freezing? Was it surprise? Guilt? What was she hiding? Why was she here?
I couldn't put together a coherent thought long enough to say something to her. I wanted to accuse her and Velvet and let them know I was on to them. Whatever their scheme was, I knew about it. They couldn't hide from me. What could I say to make that clear?
"I know who C.W. Step is," I heard myself say and then cursed under my breath.
Velvet shot me an odd look, which I thoroughly deserved. "What?" She broke into a laugh and shook her head. "Silv, you are weird sometimes."
"'Silv'?" Crystal repeated with completely believable confusion. "You know him?"
"Yeah. Wait—" Velvet's tone was also believably confused as she looked at Crystal. "You know him, too?"
It was possible that this was yet another coincidence, so I tried to play along until I had more concrete information. "You two know each other?" I raised my forehooves in an innocent gesture. "I don't know what's going on, but I have nothing to do with this. I just live here."
That was, apparently, the wrong thing to say, because Crystal's expression turned into shock. Earnest shock. Definitely not faking that kind of a look. And at her side, Velvet practically wilted as if I'd just revealed some major secret.
"He lives with you?" Crystal asked Velvet with the incredulity of a mother interrogating her foal over where they were last night.
Velvet shifted and rubbed her leg, not quite meeting Crystal's questioning gaze. "Uh, yeah. He's been living here a, uh, a couple weeks? Not long."
Crystal legitimately had no idea I was living here. It was evident in her eyes, but I just couldn't shake the feeling that there were too many coincidences going on.
Velvet's ears flattened to the sides as she glanced between us. "How do you know each other?"
"He's the script writer that worked with me on Desert Rose." Crystal's hoof raised to point at me like I was the guilty party here, eyes narrowed just slightly. "How do you know each other?"
I didn't want to go into it. Especially not right now, and not with her. "It's complicated."
And that was, obviously, the wrong thing to say... again. Velvet glared at me before she sighed and dragged Crystal inside so she could shut the door. Crystal didn't stop staring at me, though. It was like staring at an overprotective mother on prom night.
"Listen, Silver," Velvet said, dropping down onto an unoccupied pillow, "Crystal and I have some talking to do."
Silver. Not Silv or, when she was teasing me, Silvy. Was it because I kept saying stupid things, or because now that they had acted perfectly innocent to throw me off the trail, they were going to discuss me? I held Velvet's gaze, pausing only to glance at Crystal, and raised my brow.
"Does she know Horsey, too?" I asked in a hushed, private voice.
"What?" Velvet rolled her eyes. "No, this isn't part of your conspiracy theory. Crystal, Horsey, and I were fillies together. It's a coincidence." Her hooves waggled at me. "Jeeze, just give us some space, okay?"
As I stood up, I groused, "There are whole lot of coincidences with you."
Velvet, the epitome of all that was mature and eloquent, blew a raspberry.
I shot a glance at Crystal as I walked to my bedroom; her expression was still skeptical. Well, two could play that game. I didn't drop my guard until I shut the door behind me and slumped against it.
Now that I had a moment to think about it, there was a picture on the top shelf of the bookcase that had three fillies in it. Velvet, Horsey, and a little blonde unicorn. Her mane was shorter and not as full, and the lack of makeup made it hard to recognize her as the high society Canterlot lady I knew.
Turning my head, I pressed an ear to the door to try to hear what was going on. Their voices were hushed and I couldn't make out full sentences, but I could hear the emotions behind the words.
"—You and I—" Crystal said, softly and full with pain.
Mumbling. Pauses. Sniffling.
"—What do you want me to do?" Velvet's tone was gentle, but a little guarded, too.
More mumbling, then a stark exclamation from Velvet.
"Oh sweet Celestia, don't make that face, I didn't mean it like that!"
I frowned. I couldn't make out enough of what was going on. Their words became tender again and I heard the sounds of movement. I slid down, trying to peer underneath the door, but all I saw was some dust and the vague figures of furniture.
My ear twitched, however, when it heard Velvet say the strangest thing clear as a bell.
"I might be trying the foal thing again. I'm not ready to give up, not just yet."
Foal? I recoiled away from the door to stare at it. Did Velvet have a steady coltfriend? My head whirled and I just had to look. I had to see if things would make more sense if I snuck a peek.
The door was mercifully silent as I pushed it open just a hair and tugged it back shut when I realized what I was seeing: Velvet and Crystal, together, snuggling on a pillow. Like lovers.
What? What! Yes, Crystal was married. I knew that. I also knew she didn't seem like the kind of mare to have an affair, but a second peek out into the living room definitely confirmed what I saw wasn't an illusion. Velvet even had a foreleg draped across her in a loose but intimate embrace.
I didn't know what to think. I didn't know either of them nearly well enough to understand why you're rolling your eyes. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable conclusion at the time with the sobbing embrace, the odd reaction to my presence, and the hushed conversation about foals.
What I did know—or very much believed I knew—was that this revelation meant something big, especially for me and where I fit in Velvet's life. I was their cover. I was the stallion to be seen in her home so that nopony would think twice about her and Crystal.
"Hey!" Velvet's voice called and my ears perked. "Silv! I'm heading out! Bye!"
I wasn't sure if I was supposed to respond, but the sound of the door closing confirmed it didn't matter. The moment Crystal had entered the room, I might as well not have existed. I should have been grateful Velvet had spared the thought to say goodbye.
A grin started to spread across my lips as I mulled over all this new information. Finally, I understood Velvet Step. I knew her secret, and it explained everything.
She was in love with Crystal Wishes.