Complexity. The coffee that sat betwixt his hooves truly did resemble the way he felt inside. As to why he was drinking such a complex drink at 2 am at the only shop who dared to brew such a beverage at such a peculiar hour.
But then again, complexity makes ponies do strange things.
The aroma punched the air, but in light wisps that were barely able to reach the nostril. For a majority of his senses were filled with the pungent scent of wet air, flowing through his mane and temporarily easing the mugginess of the bakery. He was their only customer, looking deep into the pitch black liquid floating around the standard white cup. The owner usually kept the doors open and the barista machine hot whilst he baked his bread at night, ready for the fresh and bright customers in the morning. All with rested heads and delight spread across their faces at the fine array of goods on display.
Big Mac was never much of a good sleeper.
He heard hoofsteps behind him. They had a solid weight to them, obviously a stallion. Could it be? His chest tightened and his grasp of the coffee cup got heavier. He turned his head ever so slightly.
He wondered if it was possible to feel both disappointment and relief at the same time. The owner of the bakery, a pudgy thing donning a white chef outfit and a wooden spoon cutie mark gave him a weak smile, one that held concern. He knew that smile anywhere, ponies willing to help always carried that face. That face of ‘please take my help I’m scared for you’. The ones that said they’d always be willing to listen if you ever wanted to talk about it. ‘It’ nopony was entirely sure of. They saw a pony that looked slightly less than absolutely ecstatic and it discomforted them. Maybe that was it, or maybe they wanted their daily dose of contempt, trying to fill something in themselves by satisfying their friendship fetish. He didn’t hate the help, or the ponies offering it, he just didn’t want it, and they simply couldn’t possibly comprehend that.
He graciously smiled, a gentlecolt in all situations and took the scarf. It looked… feminine. It scared him. Fear was all the same, a pack of timberwolves on his hooves, a speech in front of a 1000 ponies, or the thought of draping knitted pink wool around his neck; It still made his gut lurch. As the round baker trotted off, Big Mac gently placed the loaned garment on the cushioned booth seat next to him, the frilly end reaching out to try to touch his bright red coat.
He frowned again, returning to the coffee in hoof and looking very unhappy. It wasn’t that he didn’t feel happy either, all his life he had felt contempt. Simplicity, it was easy to please. It was easy to be the pony you wanted to be when your impact was a one-way street. To make ponies happy through apples, what an easy life, what a simple route to happiness.
Except, that wasn’t making him happy anymore.
Well, that wasn’t entirely true, he thought to himself, as he sat there and took another long sip from the now slightly cooler liquid, parsing the slight eye droop he was beginning to feel. He was happy, but it was complex. There was a fork in the road except not. He could travel one way, or the other, but he could also travel both if he played his cards right. But that was…
Looking down into his coffee he felt the sadness, the noisy emotion pushing its way through his eye sockets, running wetter than the cool air blowing through the store.
That was nothing more than utterly complex he concluded. Not in a fun kind of complex either. The complex that makes an unproductive day slightly more entertaining. Like a puzzle, or a warm cup of coffee. No amount of fun could satisfy this. He loved puzzles, he loved coffee, he loved complex things despite himself and his disposition for simplicity.
Big Mac didn’t hate much… but he did hate love.
Not the kind of love that saw to spending a snowy day indoors putting puzzles together, or brewing a hot cup of coffee. But that of love that filled your chest with aches and pains and made his head fill with thoughts. Thoughts he very much didn’t wish to think about, yet there they went, bubbling up and bringing fear, anxiety, hurt.
Thoughts that he was very much was in love, and he hated it with unquestioning vehemence.
He didn’t hate the love, he very much loved the love, more so the potential it had, to take away everything. And that was far from simple.
Streetlights shone in the distance, the harsh winds blowing foreign objects at lightning pace through the light, nothing more than black specks in the night. Leaves and small sticks, the odd piece of rubbish or paper. It very much looked like a night utterly unsuitable for any kind of return home. Which suited Big Mac just fine for he had no intention to.
Tears and shock and horror still painted deeply into his head. The hurt that spread prevalently over the ponies he loved so dearly in his head. Countless scenarios buzzed around his mind like flies that would simply resettle, no matter how often you flicked them off.
Expectations.
Big Mac thought about these, as he drained the dregs of his coffee and set the empty cup with a sharp clink. He grabbed the scarf and turned it around in his hooves, admiring the patchwork. It was simply beautiful. handcrafted, thick, warm, and very snug. It looked prepared to go through an ice age. He sighed, bowing his head and placing it on his lap, out of view of anypony who may question why the largest stallion in Ponyville had a neck scarf suited more for Grannie’s weekly book club.
His family had always loved him, granted he became the stallion they wanted. Which always worked well seeing as he was happy to oblige. Big Mac was strong, He was reliable, he was caring, he was supportive.
Big Mac also had the vague disposition of being gay.
The Apples were no homophobes. Big Mac had always remembered the many queer friends and family invited in with open hooves. But expectations were terrible things, and Big Mac was the provider. The most fertile and responsible future father of the Apple family.
And he would never love a mare.
And yet, the closest ponies in his life went without knowing the most complex thing about the stoic workhorse. Or that he was desperately in love.
Half an hour had passed by like lightning. He had barely felt it, his thoughts had encapsulated him. From his family to himself, and that one pesky pony who had started all of this. That amazing, sweet, sensitive little stallion from down the lane.
Big Mac was filled with pragmatism, he was proud of it too. So as his wobbly hooves stood from the cubicle, he, in a very un-Big Mac fashion, took the scarf, looked at it for a moment, and hesitantly placed it around his neck. There was that fear again. Creeping through his body and putting his head in survival mode. But Big Mac was determined to prove… something, anything really. And with a more than firm push he had the door open of the late night bakery open and set out into the gale force winds.
The baker choked out a cough and looked over at Big Mac, causing him to swing his head around from the cold windy night. He furrowed his brow and tilted his head. Big Mac could see the confusion written on his face. He had been coming to this one spot and sitting at this one table at ungodly hours for almost a year now, a Monday here, a Thursday there. But the one rule of the cafe is once he was here, the stallion didn’t haul himself from the both until the first signs of morning began to stir. It was second nature, but not tonight. Of all nights, the angriest was the one that Big Mac thought was time to change things.
He needed a walk. For better or worse. Big Mac took the scarf off his neck and offered it forward, not a single word of utterance needed between the peculiar bond between both ponies. But the baker simply smiled and shook his head. Big Mac could almost hear the words ‘it looks good on you’, come from the baker's mouth. But yet, the bakery remained as quiet as any other still night. Big Mac smiled, and ducked out of the shop, into the tyrannical night winds.
The wind was doing it’s best to weaken his resolve, the new moon darkness making anything outside the pockets of light provided by the streetlights filled with empty void. But still, he ploughed on, feeling the stray leaves bustling by like an angry crowd. Why he deemed it necessary to let his hooves carry him away from the safety of the bakery at 3 am he could never answer that question. Maybe it was the caffeine, or the desire to just not be alone tonight but the iron fortress he kept his emotions inside was beginning to strain, and no amount of late night thinking could cure that.
He walked on for some time, past buildings and shops, right out to the edge of town. Right from his spur of the moment decision to leave the bakery Big Mac had felt… something stir. He wasn’t sure what, but as one kilometre turned to one hundred metres, and as one hundred metres turned to fifty, the feeling was unquestionable. Raw fear, the same as usual fear, the fear of getting chased by timberwolves or putting on frilly scarves. He felt his hoof reach for the scarf, but his mind pushed it away, forcing to get closer to where he was headed. Ten metres, all he wanted to do was turn around and throw the scarf to the wind. But rip it off he did not, his hooves getting shaky as the dark house emerged into view.
At this point of the town, the streetlights had stopped travelling with him, with nothing but the incredibly dull light of a single window, light gently spilling through the curtains. Big Mac smiled.
Caramel wasn’t much of a sleeper either.
The door was now visible, nausea and fear and uncertainty coming in like sets of waves. Those sets having sets of their own, rising and falling with the elegant tide of his very, very complex emotions. But one thing he knew for sure, no matter how complex they get...
He was done experiencing them alone.
His hoof raised to the door, and the wind decided to finally give up, ever so slightly easing, it’s tension lowering, and with that, Big Mac’s chest settled.
Here he was.
All he had to do was knock.
Any minute now.
But as the wind slowed giving him the perfect chance, as the light shone on, and the world waited for him.
Big Mac… couldn’t knock…
He put down his hoof slowly, tears gently streaming from his eyes. Big Mac wasn’t a crier, he was strong, he had expectations. No, this was no good, simplicity wasn’t this hard. Why couldn’t his mind think in simplicity? Why did things have to be so… damn… hard.
He could feel the fork in the road slowly fading, the route in his mind slowly consuming him. But he didn’t know if he wanted this path, all he had to do was knock.
Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this. Maybe it was too hard, and his mind was saying come back, sit by the fire. Enjoy your family, they will be all you’ll ever have.
But family made his heart sink. He loved them more than anything, they would understand. But those Celestia damned expectations. Could he live up to them? Could he be Big Mac the colt cuddler? Could he be Big Mac the brave? Big Mac the hard working simple, caring pony? Could he raise a family? His head was noisy, he couldn’t think, the paths chewing at his mind.
He stumbled from the door, the tears coming more liberally, now he couldn’t stop them, now he couldn’t hold them back. He tripped, the wind grappled him and pushed him right over. He curled into a ball, the leaves and twigs flying by buffeting him and angrily slamming into his shivering, vulnerable body. Big Mac was no cryer, racking sobs that sounded strange and distorted, a stallion who had let his voice go rusty. A stallion who had not cried for so long.
He simply forgot.
Now isn’t that complex?
“STOP!”
Had he said that? Had he said that to himself? Who had he said it to? The wind?
But it wouldn’t stop, nothing would stop, the wind howled, the tears spewed forth and the world spun on.
“Big Mac?”
He almost hadn’t caught it. Like a faint whisper, carried from behind him by the wind. Pushed by a force into his ear. He wasn’t even sure he had heard it.
He looked up, his red eyes straining to see a pony… a stallion in the doorway, light pouring over his cream coat. His deep blue eyes betraying his sheer and utter concern for the pony weeping at the foot of his flower garden.
“Big Mac? Are you okay?”
And just like that, Big Mac felt the fork in the road, once again permeate through his mind. One part of him desperately wanted to yes, to say he tripped, to awkwardly run away, back to the barn. A part of him wanted to run as far as he could down one road.
But another part wanted to say no, to reach out. He wanted to cry some more, to let Caramel hug him. To just… touch, the other road. To test the waters, carefully, and slowly. He wanted somepony to be there for him. No well-wishers, no ponies that could offer him nothing but pats on the shoulders or empty sympathy. He wanted to talk with the stallion he loved.
Complexity isn’t as complex with more sets of eyes to stare upon it.
“Caramel? I... no... I’m not alright...”
And with that, his chest eased, it was pure and utter ecstasy…
Relief.
The wind still howled, making its attempts at biting and gnashing at him. But there was something standing in its way.
“Mac, wanna come inside?” Caramel held out a hoof out for red-eyed fuzzy mass at the doorstep.
There are some times in life when no matter how reliable one is, they find themselves down. Big Mac thought hard, for this decision seem scary. But then he looked at Caramels hoof. That soft, inviting hoof and he thought to himself.
How could he say no?
There was a warmth there, a safety he had never felt before. Something new, something different. Something that offered to change things forever, something that offered what he had truly never had before. Something he never once had the opportunity to experience for he had always been stuck in his mindset of simplicity. That if he followed a one street path he would see everything he needed to see.
But this was never going to go down his one street path. This was new… this was complex. And for the first time that night, or any other night, through teary eyes and a faint, nervous smile, he placed his hoof in Caramels and let the stallion hoist him up.
“Thanks…” He replied simply, smiling down at the stallion. He was still teary, and still very unsure. Fear coursed through him, but he stood ever still.
He had somepony to hold him there. And with the first few shaky steps, Big Mac went inside Caramels house to drink hot chocolate under a blanket and talk. It was new and exciting. Finally did the path stop entering his mind, for all he saw that night was the smiling blue eyes of complexity. Sure, neither of them were sleepers, but neither had much intention to that night.
And that excited him more than simplicity ever could.