Spike waited on bended knee, for the answer he desperately wanted to hear.
The mare sitting across the table from him, sadly, did not look like she was going to give it to him. “I’m... sorry, Spike,” Rarity replied, “It’s… that’s, uhhh, not the sort of relationship we have.”
“Not… not the kind of relationship we have?” Spike asked, still kneeling before her, frozen, diamond ring box in claw. “I… what do you mean?”
“Oh, Spikey,” Rarity tittered. “Spikey-wikey, we’re just friends, you know that.”
“Just… friends?”
By this time, other ponies had stopped eating their food and had started surreptitiously looking on. Rarity gave a polite cough.
“Yes, Spikey, just friends,” she said quietly, lifting her chin to look at him directly in the eye. “I treasure you dearly, but you have to know that… surely you have to know what we have is just friendship.”
“Just… friendship?” Spike sneered, his voice rising. “Just friendship?”
By now, most of the ponies in the restaurant, kitchen and waitstaff included, had forgone all decorum and had stared on, slack-jawed, at the trainwreck that was about about to happen. Rarity started to sweat under the intense gazes her fellow ponies were levelling their way.
“Spikey, sweetie, let’s not make a scene,” she giggled nervously. “We don’t want to interrupt the meal of any of these fine ponies, do we.”
“To hell with these ponies,” Spike yelled. “What do you mean ‘what we have is just friendship’?”
“Exactly that,” Rarity snapped, her own anger boiling over. “I’m sorry if you thought it was anything else, and I did not mean to lead you on, but it is the truth. We. Are. Just. Friends.”
“Then why have we been fucking for the past six months‽”
Rarity responded with a very feminine “gzrk”, as silence echoed after Spike’s very loud outburst.
“Hah! Told yah!” Applejack shouted from another table. “That’s fifty bits yah owe me, Dash!”
Rarity took a deep quaff of cabernet from her wine glass. At least, she told herself it was a quaff, rather than a guzzle… and technically the bottle is made of glass, and holds wine. So yes, she was able to convince herself that it was a very ladylike and refined quaff.
“Keep it down,” she slurred at the dragon. Then she turned (very gracefully, she might add) to the rest of the restaurant and shouted, “And everypony else can go back to minding their own business!”
Nervous clinks of cutlery and whispered conversation resumed, though most eyes still remained on the white unicorn and her dinner-date.
“Now, are you going to put that ridiculous thing away so we can resume our meal?”
Spike shoved the ring box back in his coat jacket and growled.
“Now, I think you might have gotten the wrong—” Rarity paused, her cheeks flushing as she suppressed the gas deigning to exit her muzzle. “—excuse me, the wine seems to have gotten to me. As I was saying, you seem to be under the mistaken assumption that the arrangement we had was anything more than friendship—”
“Friendship? Friendship‽” Spike growled. “What we’ve been doing isn’t exactly what I’d call friendship. You don’t see our other friends doing what we do.”
“Puh-lease,” Rarity groaned, rolling her eyes. “Of course not, and Rainbow Dash and Applejack are just here at a fancy Prench restaurant because Applejack is tired of eating apples.”
Spike quickly stole a glance towards Rainbow Dash and Applejack, who themselves had rapidly shifted their attention back to their meals.
“What I am saying is that all you and I have ever had has been a friendship. A special friendship, but a friendship nonetheless. I mean, you remember what I said our… first time, right?”
“‘Buck Soarin, I am sick of stallions. Won’t somepony just rut me?’”
Rarity paled. “I didn’t actually ask you to say it outloud. And I am pretty certain I said something with more decorum than that.”
“Nope. You came to my room in the castle, drunk out of your gourd and asked me to rut you until you couldn’t walk straight.”
“And that you did, Spike,” Rarity said, a grin creeping across her muzzle. “But at any point did I say I wanted more?”
“Yes! Repeatedly. Over the last six months,” Spike said, throwing his arms up in the air. “Almost every night you have been begging for more!”
“Got—daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaymn,” a voice called out from the crowd of the restaurant, though nopony owned up to it.
“Well, yes, I was asking for more of that,” she responded. “But not, well, nothing else.”
A look of confusion crossed Spike’s face. “But wait, Twilight told me that only ponies that are in love have sex.”
“Oh yes, and she’s the most reliable source of information on sexual relationships,” Rarity scoffed. “What Twilight Sparkle doesn’t know about sex could fill the entire Crystal Empire library.”
“Hey!” Twilight called out from another table in the room. “I know a lot about sex, I’ve read many books!”
“Is there anyone who isn’t at this restaurant tonight?”
“Discord and Fluttershy,” Pinkie Pie called out. “They’re at home tonight, making like rabbits.”
“So what, that’s all this was?” Spike growled, jabbing at his rocket and ruby salad with a fork. “Just you using me to get your rocks off?”
“Watch your language, please,” a monotone voice called out. “Boulder is in heat.”
“Seriously, you too?” Spike groaned.
“She’s a fan-favourite,” Pinkie replied, before returning to her meal with her sister.
Rarity turned a soft eye towards the sulking drake. “Spike, I thought you grew out of that little crush on me as a child.”
“I had,” Spike admitted. “It’s just… well, what’s been happening has kind of brought it up again. I thought… I don’t know, I guess. I don’t know what I thought.”
“Well, for what it is worth, I am sorry. I didn’t realise,” Rarity sighed. “Had I known… well…”
“And you don’t think you could ever see me that way?” Spike pleaded.
“No, Spike, I couldn’t. I—” Rarity sighed. “What we had was special, and a lot of fun, but that was all it ever was, all it ever could be.”
“But couldn’t—”
“No, Spike,” she interjected. “I am too busy to dedicate my time to somepony, not when I have six boutiques to handle. If I am to focus on my business, I don’t have time to—”
“Okay, I am going to call horse-shit on that one,” Spike said, holding his claw up to interrupt. “You almost threw an entire festival just to get into the pants of Trenderhoof.”
“That doesn’t count…” Rarity coughed.
“And you cancelled the opening night of your Vanhoover store opening just to spend time with Fancy Pants.”
“Fleur had just divorced him, and I couldn’t bear to see a friend in pain—”
“And speaking of divorces… I suppose all the time you spent in the Crystal Empire shop just happened to coincide with the months Shining Armor and Cadence were going through a trial separation—”
“Wait, what‽”
“It was the spring season,” Rarity replied. “And, uhhh, crystals were very in that year… and who knows crystals more than crystal ponies?”
“I know a lot about crystals,” Maud said.
“And she’s really into fashion!” Pinkie added.
“Anyway, whatever I do with whatever stallion I want is my own business, Spike,” Rarity growled. “And I would appreciate it if you wouldn’t share with other ponies what I told you in confidence, especially to ponies whose brothers may-or-may-not have been involved.”
“Speaking of brothers,” Spike said, turning his gaze towards Applejack and Rainbow’s table.
“Don’t. You. Dare.”
Spike sat in silence, slumping in his chair and glowering at the mare across from him.
“Look, it is true that I may go a little stallion-wild every now and then… but I am not looking for a long-term partner. And if you can’t respect that, then—”
“Yeah, I get it. Trust me, I get it.” Spike stood, his large stature knocking the table. “Here, this should cover my half of the meal, I gotta go.”
The dragon tossed the diamond ring onto the table and stormed out the door, followed closely by an overbearing alicorn.
The doors to the restaurant closed behind them, and Rarity sat alone as everypony went back to their meals.
-
Seconds later, a shout echoed through the windows. “No, Twilight, you don’t need to call the guards! She never did anything with me while I was a hatchling!”