Secrets

by bahatumay


Girlfriends and Old Friends

Lyra looked over as the door to her room opened, expecting a technician returning to take her vital signs again.
Instead, she saw a very tired but relieved-looking Bon Bon enter and quietly close the door behind her.

“Bon Bon!” she exclaimed joyfully.  

She smiled. “Hey, Lyra. Great to see you.”

“Yeah, you too.” Her brow furrowed as she took in the sight of Bon Bon's various injuries. “You're hurt.”

“You should see the other mare,” Bon Bon joked. She paused. “Actually, I'd prefer if you didn't,” she corrected herself.

She sniffed. “And you kinda smell like a campfire.”

Bon Bon chuckled at that. It was like a campfire, but those hadn’t been marshmallows in the flames. Suddenly embarrassed, she subconsciously rubbed a little dried blood and ash that had formerly been halfkin off her cheek, but Lyra didn’t need to know that. “The fight got kinda weird,” she said, “but believe me, we don't need to worry about her anymore.”

Lyra let her head fall back against the pillow, feeling that burden lift itself from her shoulders. “That makes me feel a lot better,” she admitted.

Bon Bon neared and took hold of her hoof. “Me too,” she said. “But enough about me. What’d the doctors say? How bad was it?”

Lyra smiled wryly. “Well, I did have a concussion, and they want to keep me overnight for observation, but they're saying it wasn’t as bad as they'd thought, and I should be ready to check out in the morning.”

Bon Bon exhaled, relieved.

Lyra looked down at their hooves, which were still in contact, then back up. “So, did you mean what you said?”

Bon Bon paused. Her last conversation with Lyra felt like it had been a lifetime ago. She licked her lips. “About?”

“You know,” Lyra said, rolling her hoof leadingly. “Are we girlfriends?”

Bon Bon cracked a smile. “I certainly hope so.”

“Alright!” Lyra said excitedly, pumping a hoof. 

Bon Bon nodded, quietly pleased with Lyra’s enthusiasm. “Just remember, I'm still pretty new at this, so go easy on me.”

Lyra giggled excitedly. “That's just fine.” She grinned. Now that the danger was gone, she could be teasing again. “But I've got to say, in the middle of the hospital? Not the most romantic place to ask me out.”

“It was a spur of the moment thing,” Bon Bon said airily.

Lyra frowned. Her ears pinned and her lower lip jutted out. “So did you not really mean it?” she asked, her voice cracking. “Do you… not want to be my girlfriend?”

Bon Bon jumped up, waving her hooves in an X gesture. “No, that’s not what I meant at all!” she said hurriedly. “Lyra, I've wanted you to be my girlfriend for a long time! Really! You've been my best friend for forever, and I swear I meant all of it. You're smart, you're brave, you're unbelievably cute, and… and you're teasing me, aren't you,” Bon Bon realized with a sigh.

“Yep,” Lyra said cheekily. “But that was really nice. You say the nicest things, Bon Bon.”

Bon Bon pulled a pillow from the bed and tossed it at her, but there was no malice in it; and judging by Lyra’s light giggle, she’d taken this all in fun.

And Bon Bon was at peace.


 

Unfortunately, visiting hours weren’t nearly as long as either mare would have liked, and before long, Bon Bon had to leave for the night.

The next morning dawned bright and early, but nowhere near soon enough for Lyra. She was awake and already itching to leave long before the sun had risen. She'd barely slept at all that night, and the recurring thought about how this could very well be her last night sleeping alone didn't help calm her mind, either.

Bon Bon apparently hadn't fared much better. She arrived at the hospital early, wearing Vanilla’s saddlebags, her mane slightly messy, as if she'd woken up early. “Good morning, Lyra,” she said brightly as she let the door close behind her. “Brought you breakfast.” She reached inside the saddlebag and pulled out a very familiar small white box. 

“Chocolate?” Lyra asked skeptically. “For breakfast?”

Bon Bon shrugged. “It's a special occasion.”

Lyra grinned widely. “No complaints here.”

Bon Bon opened the box and lifted out a chocolate, and then placed it on her own tongue.

Lyra was slightly taken aback that Bon Bon would offer chocolate just to eat it in front of her, but Bon Bon didn't pull it into her mouth. Instead, she leaned forward, offering it.

Bon Bon’s heart pounded, but she tried to keep still. She'd seen other couples do this just outside the shop (some ponies seemed to think those windows were just for decoration!), but she wasn't sure how Lyra would respond. Hopefully this wasn't too much!

Lyra giggled.

Oh no! Bon Bon quickly withdrew. “What?” she asked, her cheeks coloring red.

“Nothing. That’s just really cute.”

Bon Bon gave her a sideways look. “Are you teasing me again?”

“Not this time. Come back here.” She reached up with her hooves, wrapped them around Bon Bon’s head, and pulled her close, close enough that Bon Bon could feel her heavy breaths. She extended her tongue and tried to pull the chocolate into her mouth, but Bon Bon curled her tongue protectively around it, pulling it back in and simultaneously pulling Lyra’s tongue into her mouth. 

But now it was a game, and Lyra wasn’t about to give up that easily. She pulled Bon Bon in closer and stuck her tongue in deeper, sweeping the inside of her mouth, pulling the chocolate back.

So pressed between the two mares’ tongues, the chocolate cracked open, and the creamy interior was exposed. With a quick movement, Lyra swept it into her mouth. “Mm, my favorite,” Lyra said, sitting back slightly.

“I know,” Bon Bon said. “Mint’s one of my favorites, too.”

“No, I meant you.” And she pulled Bon Bon down again and slid her tongue back into her mouth, ostensibly trying to get the last bit of that first chocolate out. Bon Bon couldn’t help but let out a soft moan at being thusly penetrated.

Pretty soon, it stopped being about the chocolate, and more about exploring each other. The box, still with all but one of its chocolates, lay abandoned on the side table. Lyra felt like a natural, and Bon Bon let herself be lost in the kiss.

But it wouldn't stay like that for long. Without breaking lip contact, Lyra moved her other hoof to brush gently against Bon Bon’s barrel. She squirmed, but that seemed to be the reaction Lyra was going for. Slowly, she drew her hoof in a circle that wandered progressively lower and lower.

Bon Bon’s chest began to heave. She’d never actually gone this far before. Her flirting classes hadn't explained this. Most usually ended with instructions on where to kick if the mark moved from looking to touching.

But with Lyra, this felt right. She'd let Lyra do anything to her.

And, of course, right then the door opened. “Good morning, Miss Heartst-” She let out a startled gasp and nearly dropped the clipboard, and the two ponies quickly wrenched themselves apart. “How did you get in here? Visitor hours don't start until nine!”

“What?” Bon Bon asked, seemingly shocked. “Oh, I had no idea. My bad. I'll just… wait outside.” Whistling innocently, she sidled out the door and went back to the waiting room. She sat down heavily and huffed. Bon Bon hated waiting. Now, she was annoyed, frustrated, and still fairly aroused, so that made everything worse. She sat uncomfortably in the chair and kept fidgeting with the box. She should have brought some for herself; none of the chocolates she'd brought today were for her.

Well, some might be, but she was really hoping not.


Bon Bon had read all the old magazines, ranked every attendant at the front desk in terms of probable fighting prowess, set up three possible escape plans (four if she counted the idea of shouting there was a CO leak and straight up hucking a chair out the nearest window), and waited for what had felt like an hour and Lyra still hadn’t come out. She pawed irritably at her saddlebag, wondering if she should just go check out her hunch without Lyra, but then deciding against it. If she were right-

The doors opened and Lyra finally came out. “I am good to go!” she proclaimed proudly. 

Bon Bon tackled her in a tight hug before realizing they were very much still in public. But then she realized she didn't really care.

Especially not when Lyra enthusiastically returned it.

Before long, they stood at the admission desk, Lyra with a quill in her magic and another chocolate in her mouth, ready to go home and be done with the hospital and its constant smell of antiseptic. She signed the papers, and she was a free pony. 

The nurse gave her a friendly smile. “Remember to drink plenty of fluids, and take it easy for the next couple weeks or so, no heavy magical lifting.”

“Definitely,” Lyra promised.

“Actually, before we go,” Bon Bon said casually, “there’s a pony we'd like to see. Dewy Dusk, room A25?”

The nurse brightened. “Oh, yes! She hasn't had any visitors, I bet she'd love that. I'll show you to her room.”

Lyra squinted. She didn't know Dewy Dusk, but Bon Bon seemed to. 

And then when the nurse knocked and opened the door with a cheery call of “visitors”, Lyra gasped as she realized that she did know this pony under all those bandages. 

The nurse smiled and closed the door behind her, and Bon Bon exhaled through her nose. “Wow. I can honestly say I never expected to see you again.”

“I could say the same thing about you two,” the mare responded. “How did you know I was here?”

“When I was doing a little recon on patients before I left last night—habit, you know—I saw one of your aliases on the rotations list, and I just had to check it out.” She shook her head. “I can't believe you survived.”

Misty Evening cracked a wry smile, and her teeth showed through the still-healing holes that had been burned through her cheek. “I guess you could call it that,” she said dolefully. “Turns out him straddling me shielded me from most of the explosion on account of him taking it. Most of it, anyway.” She gestured with her right foreleg, now also amputated at the first joint. “So, yay for perverted stallions, I guess.”

“You don’t sound too happy about that,” Lyra said.

Misty Evening snorted. “Would you be?” she challenged. “My cutie mark stands for agility. I used to be the most agile flyer you’ve ever seen. Sure, I wasn’t the fastest; but I could outfly a manticore’s tail, dodge a quarry eel, and catch up to a fleeing hydra. Now I’m laying in a hospital bed, I’m on a constant drip of painkillers, and I can’t even 504 myself.” She closed her eyes and reclined her head until she was facing the ceiling. “Almost wish I hadn’t survived,” she muttered quietly.

Lyra bowed her head in sympathy pain. 

“I brought you something,” Bon Bon said quietly. She pulled another white box out of her saddlebags and slid it onto the bedside table. It took Misty a few moments, but she finally looked up at it. She reached for it with her right hoof… but it didn’t go nearly far enough.

Lyra felt her heart break for the poor mare as she tried to shift her weight over to use her left foreleg. She looked over at Bon Bon, but she almost imperceptibly shook her head. She needed to do this for herself. Even a tiny victory was a victory, and Misty could really use a victory right now.

She managed to flip the lid open, and a real smile crossed her face for the first time in a long time. “My cutie mark,” she said. She chuckled. “Six of my cutie marks.”

“Formed of pure milk chocolate on top of a white chocolate truffle,” Bon Bon confirmed. “I remember those were your favorites.”

“Frankly, I’d eat a rotten apple over what they’re feeding me here,” Misty said, taking a truffle and placing it into her mouth. Her eyes rolled back in her head and she moaned in pleasure. “Oh, that’s good stuff,” she whimpered. “Thanks, Sweetie- Bon Bon, keep forgetting. I owe you one.”

Bon Bon chuckled lightly. “You don't owe me anything. If I can sneak a five hundred arrow battery into the capital of Griffonia, I can definitely sneak in truffles past hospital security.”

“Five hundred arrow…?” Lyra wondered.

“Possible roc sighting and the then-mayor of the city didn’t like us, and close enough to Cloudsdale’s position at the time that we had to act. Turned out to be a false report so he could garner some public support, something he was hoping we wouldn’t figure out.”

“So we told the whole town,” Misty interjected playfully. 

Lyra giggled. “Well, at least it's just chocolate, this…” Her voice trailed off as Misty pulled out a ceramic blade from the box. 

A slow smile crossed Misty's face. “Rule nine,” she said. She seemed to visibly relax as she slid it under her pillow. “Thanks. Haven’t felt so exposed since I had to go undercover protecting that dancer.”

Bon Bon giggled. “Hey, now. The socks and panties were a good look for you.”

Misty raised her right hoof-

Misty raised her left hoof. “The black eye I'm gonna give you is gonna be a good look for you, too,” she threatened. 

Thankfully, before any violence (playful or otherwise) happened, there came a gentle knock at the door. A doctor poked his head in. “Good afternoon. I’d like to speak with Miss Misty Evening, alone, please, if that’s alright with you.”

Bon Bon narrowed her eyes and she shifted her weight. “That’s not the name on the registrar, your lab coat is older and worn and it’s not the same cut as the other doctors’, you’re not carrying a stethoscope, and that's definitely not her medical chart; so no. It’s not alright with me.”

His eyes narrowed… and then his jaw dropped. “You’re Special Agent Sweetie Drops,” he breathed, a strange mix of fear and awe (and possibly horror?) crossing his face.

Bon Bon smiled. “Ah, I see my reputation precedes me.” Her smile turned deadly. “Now tell me who you are, or that might be the last thing you ever say.”

He held out his hoof, a wide smile on his face. “I’m Bolted Sprocket, former agent of SEMHA. You wouldn’t know me, I was in the mechanical division. I got the interdepartmental memos, though, and the agency newsletter. You were Agent of the Month four times in a row one year, so I know you.”

Bon Bon raised an eyebrow.

“I mean… I don’t know you, know you,” Sprocket mumbled and dropped his hoof, looking down as he realized just how awkward that had sounded. “I just… know you, you know? And after that whole bugbear incident, well, everypony… knew… uh…” His voice trailed off as he realized he was only digging himself deeper even faster. “...your team?” he tried.

“Why don’t you tell me what you’re doing here first,” Bon Bon said sweetly, “and I’ll decide on whether I castrate you with a scalpel later.”

This, as can well be imagined, did wonders to improve his concentration. He snapped to attention. “I’ve been tasked with inviting Misty Evening, former agent of SEMHA, to a project codenamed Titanium Pony.”

“Titanium Pony?” Bon Bon repeated flatly.

He held the clipboard out to Misty Evening, but suddenly stopped at the sight of her amputated right foreleg. He seemed trapped in fascination, unable to look away. 

So Bon Bon kicked him in the shin. 

“Ow!” He dropped the clipboard and rubbed his shin. 

“Titanium Pony?” she repeated leadingly.

“It’s… it’s because most of the bone replacement implants are made from titanium,” he said through gritted teeth. “Good, solid metal, it is. Nonreactive, too, not likely to leach out and contaminate your blood.”

Misty raised an eyebrow. “And you want me in as a consultant?”

“A- actually, we want you in as a recipient.”

“For bone replacement?” Misty whispered, opening and looking over the file. “You mean I might get my hooves back?”

“Oh, hooves we can do with very little issue,” Sprocket chuckled proudly. “That was one of the first things we worked on, after ears. You should never underestimate how important aesthetics are, and every pony needs a fine set of ears that work. Previous prosthetics didn't react to the wearer's emotions; our new ones do. Look fine, but you can't scratch behind them very well because of how we have to graft them into the skull; metal rods drilled in, and plastic bracing and such. Hooves we can do, though. Takes a little bit of getting used to—months, at times, honestly—but every one of our test subjects has eventually recovered full range of motion with no issues. Entire legs are a bit more difficult, especially around the joints, but they're doable, just take even more practice to get used to. Final stages of testing. It’s actually wings we’re working on right now. Huge project, really. We're trying to see if we can design our machinations to channel pegasus magic, based on the latent ability to ‘magnetize’ connected items. Small-scale tests have been promising. Someday we even hope to figure out horns.”

This seemed too good to be true. Suspicious, Misty Evening pressed her good hoof against the symbol on the bottom of the paper and closed her eyes in concentration… and then her jaw dropped as the symbol lifted off the paper and rotated in the air in response to her magic. She looked up at Sprocket, and tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

Bon Bon gently and discreetly nudged Lyra towards the door. “We’ll leave you two alone,” she said.

“That's wonderful,” Lyra said as soon as the door closed behind them. “I'm so happy for her.”

“Yeah,” Bon Bon agreed. “I'm excited for her, too.”

She didn't sound very excited. “You ok?”

Bon Bon wearily shook her head. “Everything’s catching up to me now. Frankly, what I want to do is go home and sleep for a week.”

Lyra nuzzled her. “Sounds good to me. Your place or mine?”

Bon Bon paused. “Huh. I guess we do need to figure that out.” She smiled. “How about yours?”

“But your place has more chocolate,” Lyra protested.

“And a dead stallion still in my freezer,” Bon Bon said flatly. “I may be new to this, but I know that's not real romantic.”

“My place it is, then,” Lyra said with a little forced brightness. She bumped her girlfriend with her hips.  “Come on, secret agent mare, let's go home.”