Words were the problem, Fluttershy had decided long ago, back before she'd come to Ponyville, back before meeting Rainbow Dash at school, back even before her lacinia had opened up for the first time to reveal her—
Her little wiggler, Applejack had called it, and just having a word that didn't sound sneering and harsh and awful got Fluttershy giggling. Knowing it was in there behind her lacinia had always been horrible, but now every morning when her wiggler came out all big and wanting another session rubbing against her special blankets, it didn't seem as scary as before. Thinking about Applejack, too, and the way she was taking care of everything somehow made the build up feel even better than it always did, and the spurting at the—
"Fluttershy?"
She blinked, turned her head where she'd been resting it along the edge of the spa, the water warm, Rarity in the tub beside her, a few stray strands of purple mane frizzing from the bottom of the towel wrapped around her head. "You seem quieter than usual today." Concern shone in the unicorn's eyes. "Not feeling poorly, I hope?"
"Oh, not at all!" Fluttershy had been debating all week how to—or even if she should—tell Rarity the news. She was fairly sure Rarity would be interested, but she was a lot less sure how to bring the subject up in a way that wouldn't interrupt the conversation. Now that she'd been given the perfect opportunity, though, she had to stop and shiver, had to focus a little more on the spell to keep her lacinia closed. "It's just that I went and talked to Applejack, and...and she said she'd help me talk to Big Macintosh!" Joy bubbling over inside her again, she reached over and took Rarity's hoofs in hers. "I'm actually going to talk to him!"
"Darling!" Every bit of concern vanished from Rarity's face, and if her smile had been any bigger, Fluttershy thought with another giggle, she would've needed more teeth. "That's wonderful! Tell me everything!"
Which dried up the giggle pretty quickly, what with the certain little wiggling parts of the story that Fluttershy would never tell Rarity in a million, billion years. "Ummm, well, I...I mean, Applejack, she said that Big Macintosh liked me and that she'd set up a..." She swallowed at the thought. "A date, I guess you'd call it."
"Where? When?" Rarity gave a giggle of her own. "If you feel you'll need another chaperone, I shall gladly volunteer!"
"Oh, no!" It came out more explosively than Fluttershy had meant, and she pulled her hoofs back, the water suddenly cold. "I...I wouldn't want to impose, and I don't...I don't know any of the details yet. Applejack said she'd come and tell me when she had everything set up, but I haven't so much as seen her since all this happened."
"Ah." The concern came back into Rarity's face. "Well, you might need to wait a bit longer on that, then. Applejack, she—" Rarity puffed out a sigh, and since it wasn't one of her big swooning ones, Fluttershy knew it was real. "She's just had her heart broken, the poor dear."
"What??" Without thinking, Fluttershy sprang to her hoofs, sent the calm and tranquil waters sloshing almost over the rim of the tub.
Rarity was nodding. "She came to me earlier this week distraught in a way I'd never imagined I would ever see her. She refused to give me the details, of course, but from what I could gather, she'd just learned that somepony for whom she had feelings did not return those feelings."
"Impossible!" Wings quivering, stomach tightening, Fluttershy almost stomped the bottom of the tub. "How could anypony not like Applejack?? She's strong and smart and brave and funny and pretty and...and everything!" Fire was building inside her, the same sort of fire she felt whenever the Stare came over her, the same sort of fire she'd let consume her after her first meeting with Iron Will. And even remembering how terrible that had all turned out, Fluttershy fed the fire, wanted it to grow bigger and bigger. "Who was it?" she asked, her voice such a growl, she almost thought somepony else must be speaking. "Who was it that made Applejack sad?"
Eyes wide, Rarity had shrunk back against the wall of the spa. "She...she wouldn't say. Darling, are you—?"
"I'm fine!" Leaping from the water, Fluttershy couldn't keep still, darting back and forth above the tub, her mind racing. "Applejack's never gone on a date, so maybe somepony she's just met? No, Applejack wouldn't lose her head over some stray stallion like that! It must be somepony she works with, somepony she's known for a while, somepony she thought she knew, somepony she thought she could trust! And when she told him how she felt, he just...he didn't...Oh!"
Trying to think, she settled onto the platform above the spa, started pacing. "Could it be Caramel? Grass Cutter? One of the Tinker brothers? But they're not good enough for Applejack! How dare one of them break her heart??" Overwhelmed, she lashed out with a hind hoof and kicked a sponge from the bucket, knocked it out onto the platform, sent it bouncing down the steps.
The sudden violence shocked her back to herself. "Oh! Oh, dear!" She swooped down, took the sponge gently in her front hoofs, and flew it back up to nestle in its place on top of the bucket. "I'm so sorry, Rarity! I...I just—! I mean, Applejack's done so much to help me, I don't...I can't...she shouldn't..." Unable to understand the strength of the feelings that had surged through her, she let her voice trickle away, took refuge in her oldest friend—embarrassed silence—even though she wanted to shout from the rooftops about the injustice of somepony hurting Applejack.
Surprisingly, though, when she glanced over, Fluttershy saw Rarity smiling. "It's quite all right," the unicorn said. "Outrage at a friend's shabby treatment in affairs of the heart is always the correct response. But Fluttershy—" A bit of uneasiness came into her scent. "Stomping out to Sweet Apple Acres and threatening to Stare at any and all stallions who might've jilted our dear Applejack isn't the answer. Remember, she's a very private pony when it comes to her personal life, and we mustn't do anything that might embarrass her."
"You're right, of course." Fluttershy hung her head and vowed once again to keep a tighter rein on her wild, impulsive nature. Still, she had to look back up and ask, "But what can we do, Rarity? We have to help her! She...she's our friend!"
"And we shall." Rarity rose, took the steps from the tub to the platform, her horn flaring to lift a towel and drape it over her back. "We shall be there for her in whatever way she needs us, and whether it's by word or by deed, we shall bring her comfort in this, her hour of need."
A pang twitched Fluttershy's chest. Applejack had looked so peculiar when she'd seen her the other day, and while Fluttershy had blamed her little wiggler for most of that, the more she thought about it, the more it seemed likely that Applejack had been hurting about this even then! "Oh, Rarity! All my talk about being in love with Big Macintosh, it must've been terrible for poor Applejack! Her own heart broken, and me prancing around like a...like a..." She couldn't think of a bad enough word to call herself.
"Now, now." A towel wrapped itself loosely around her, the purple glow of Rarity's magic wavering from it. "You had no way of knowing. From this moment on, however, we must be attentive to Applejack's needs and alert to any signals she might give us regarding how we can help her."
Swallowing her guilt, Fluttershy nodded and made a silent resolution: she would do everything she could to make Applejack feel better.
***
The spell Rarity had taught her, Applejack had to admit, sure did the trick. Soon as she'd started them words running through her head, her lacinia had closed up good and proper, and it hadn't popped back open since.
When she was awake, at least...
And thinking about the dreams she'd been having—opening her window to a soft tapping only to find Fluttershy outside, blushing but erect; or the one where she rescued her friend from some rampaging dragon or other, and in joy and gratitude, Fluttershy stretched out on her bed with her wiggler jutting hard and gorgeous into the air so Applejack could slide herself slow and juicy down over it till she was—
"AJ?"
"Gahh!" Startling up, spinning, almost tripping over her own hoofs, Applejack stared at Big Macintosh, her brother blinking from behind the sprig of hay he always seemed to have going between his teeth. "What'cha mean sneaking up on me like that??" she shouted.
Mac only blinked some more. "Saw you was finished is all." He gestured with his chin, and AJ looked back at the field, the saplings she'd been planting all evenly set in their rows beneath the blue afternoon just like they oughtta be.
Except that, last time she'd checked, she'd only been halfway along...
"You was laying here," Mac was going on, "like you was sleeping. But your eyes was part open and you was smiling like you was eating summa Granny's special peanut butter 'n' chocolate ice cream, so I figured I'd better check if you was having heat stroke or something."
Hearing the word 'stroke' made the fire in her hindquarters flare, and she rattled the spell faster through her brain, her lacinia staying closed but, well, consarned magic didn't do a thing about the awful, luscious melty feeling inside it.
She shook her head, tried to focus. "Yeah, I'm fine," she said, her ears folding at the tightness in her own voice. "Reckon I'll knock off for lunch, head on into town, take care of some...some business I gotta see to. OK?"
He looked at her, his face all big and serious like always, and AJ found herself frozen in place: she wanted to start yelling at him, wanted to throw her arms around his neck and cry like when she was a filly, wanted to tell him ev'rything about Fluttershy's crush, wanted to whirl in place and kick his fool teeth down his throat for being the one Fluttershy was looking at instead of her—
The stalk he was chewing twitched. "If'n you're sure you're all right," he said.
Nodding was about the hardest thing she'd done in months. But hey, pretending she was all right was just another lie to add to the list she'd been running all week, weren't it?
She turned, trotted for the house, not galloping 'cause she was pretty sure she wouldn't be able to stop, would charge over the hills, through the forest, across the mountains, down to the ocean however many months that might take. And maybe not stop even then. After all, hadn't Poppa—?
It took a fair piece of effort to slam that thought back into the part of her brain where she kept things she didn't wanna think about. It was getting plum full up in there was the thing, and strolling into the house, nice and easy through the door and upstairs, she commenced to not thinking about what she was gonna do, just stepped into the bathroom to wash her hoofs, then into her bedroom, closing the door as quiet as she could, flicking the lock she'd only been using since the start of this week, drawing the curtains on the sunny spring day. Only then did she allow herself to let go of the spell she'd had buzzing in her head like a swarm of hornets, let herself breathe a sigh at the half a second of peace before—
Bam! Like a flashflood, like a whirlwind, like a rockslide, the lust thundered over her, her teeth clenching her lower lip so she couldn't cry out. Her lacinia tore open with a force that almost knocked her over, and she threw herself onto the bed, pressed her face into her pillow, fumbled her hoofs down between her hind legs, and let herself picture Fluttershy laying before her, all soft firmness, all ruthless innocence.
Frantic, shivering, Applejack dug into her vulva, found that place she hadn't even known she had till four days ago, and just the first stroke of a touch up inside there twisted her whole body completely around, flopped her onto her back, the crackling, electric pleasure snapping her spine straight and slamming the crown of her hat into the bedstead. The high-pitched keening that whined from her throat made her think of Winona having a nightmare, but then another twitch from her hoof, another imagined thrust from Fluttershy, and ev'ry thought blasted outta her head, her interior muscles clamping as the vast and sudden orgasms blindsided her, the glorious horror wracking through her again and again and again.
Slowly, the crashing waves subsided, and Applejack drifted in sweet, mind-numbing oblivion. Didn't take long, though, for words to start shattering the calm, words like phony and traitor and two-faced. 'Cause who was s'pposed to be setting things up for Fluttershy and Big Macintosh? The same pony who couldn't stop doing this disgraceful thing ev'ry day while dreaming about having Fluttershy all to herself, that's who!
It had to stop. One way or another, it had to, and leaping upright, she whacked the door unlocked, stopped just long enough to wash the shameful stickiness from her hoofs, then charged downstairs, outside to the path, to the road, straight on till she was galloping through the streets of Ponyville and doing her best to ignore the stares from folks she passed on the way to Carousel Boutique. 'Cause if anypony would know how to keep this from happening, it'd be—
Fluttershy's scent caressed her from ahead, made her screech to a halt, her stomach clenching and her mind racing to start the lacinia spell rolling around her thoughts again. Perfect as water sprinkling a mid-July tomato plant, warm as the breeze through a wheat field, deep and still as midnight in springtime with just a hint of something spicy around the edges, Applejack had to wonder how she'd never noticed the way Fluttershy lent a touch to the air that nopony else in the world did.
She could hear her now, too, saying good-bye to Rarity and moving off and away. Leaning into the scent, AJ drank great gusts of it, tried to capture as much as she could before it faded, diluted, ev'rything around Applejack seeming to grow dimmer as the regular smells of Ponyville took over once more.
Her whole body buzzing, she sprang around the last corner, shoved her way panting into the boutique, blurted out to Rarity, blinking in surprise across the room: "How?? How do I stop it, huh?? How do I make it go away??"
"Applejack?"
"The...the yearning!" She'd never used that word before in all her born days, didn't even know where she'd ever heard it, but there weren't no other way to describe what she was feeling. "I can't have what I want: I know that. But my body, it won't...it doesn't...it can't stop wanting it!" Her knees buckled, and she didn't even try to stop herself from slumping forward onto Rarity's floor. "But it's gotta...it's gotta stop!"
A clatter of hoofs, an arm slipping under to support her head, Rarity's voice soft in her ears: "Oh, my poor, dear Applejack! That your first taste of love should prove so bittersweet!"
"It ain't love!" Anger surged her upright, pulled her away from the surprise on Rarity's face. "I told you that! All this...this biology, it ain't got nothing to do with love!"
Rarity's muzzle got a little pinched. "Since you're upset, I won't argue with you, but—"
"Argue nothing!" AJ gave a stomp. "This is just like my folks all over again!"
More blinking. "I'm afraid I don't see how—"
"The one time I talked to Poppa 'bout it after the divorce, he told me him and Mama didn't never really love each other, y'see? It weren't nothing but lust! Her getting on the wrong train from Manehattan and ending up out here 'stead of Canterlot and Poppa locking eyes with her at the depot where he was waiting for his seed order, they didn't have one thing in common 'cept they got each other's flaps flapping, and the marriage and her moving out here and them having the three of us, there weren't nothing like love in any of it!"
"Now, really, Applejack! That can't be—"
"Oh, they tried, the both of 'em! But once her looks started going and his, too, there just...they just didn't have anything else keeping 'em together!" The words poured out of her, pent up for so long, she felt like a dam that had busted a seam. "They was all very civilized, explaining to us kids how they was breaking up, but last I heard, Mama didn't last a month back in Manehattan 'fore she ended up in a sanitarium! And Poppa just plain signed the farm over to us, set off for the coast, shipped out as cook on board a steam freighter, and ain't spent a night on dry land since!"
Shivering, she forced herself to meet Rarity's wide eyes. "So that's what happens when lust takes over! Good folks go crazy and ain't nopony nowhere lives happily ever after!" She managed to take a breath, not sure exactly how long it'd been since she'd last had one. "So you gotta tell how me to get out from under it, Rarity! I ain't had no experience with this sorta...these feelings and such, but it...it—" She couldn't keep her head up, the dang thing way too heavy for her neck to hold all of a sudden. So she let it droop, said into the darkness behind her closed eyelids, "I plain can't take it no more...."
Silence dripped down to fill the room, but after a moment, gentle hoofsteps tapped closer to her through it. "I am so very sorry, Applejack," Rarity murmured. "I remember how devastated you were in school after the divorce, but I never...I never imagined..." A hoof touched her shoulder. "I wish I could teach you a few words that would take the pain away, but, well, there's no magic in Equestria—or anywhere else, I dare say—that can cure a broken heart. Only time can help and the continued living of one's life as truly and fully as one knows how."
"Living?" That made her look up, Rarity's face about as serious as Applejack had ever seen.
"Truly and fully," Rarity said again. "Remember who you are and that you have many friends who love you." Half a smile pulled her muzzle sideways. "And should you find you need a night out on the town to remind you, you know that I and the others are always at your beck and call."
Applejack could only stare while for the first time in days, the right kind of warmth spread over her, not a bit of lust anywhere in it. She even dug up half a smile of her own and pointed it at Rarity. "Might be I'll take you up on that." Even though any sorta get-together would naturally involve Fluttershy: taking a breath, Applejack felt sure that, with the others around, she could find a way to live with that. She just needed to remember who she was.
Blowing the breath out, she reached for Rarity's shoulder. "Thanks. You always knows the right thing to say."
"Of course." Rarity tossed her mane, and Applejack couldn't help laughing.
"I'll see you later, then." AJ turned, started for the door, and Rarity called out behind her:
"Will you be all right, Applejack?"
"I reckon so." She looked back at her friend. "It's just I promised somepony I'd set up a meeting for her, but I ain't been myself enough to do it. Could be I am now." She touched the brim of her hat, gave Rarity a nod, and stepped outside for the road back to Sweet Apple Acres.