Screwing her eyes shut, Spitfire lifted a hand to cover her yawn. Her temples throbbed with her pulse, a constant hammering that seemed amplified by the motion of the train around her. But if a hangover, a dry mouth and exhaustion were the only price of her night with Adagio, then she’d escaped a lot more lightly than she’d feared.
And the train, for all it didn’t help her headache, gave her exactly the feeling she needed, of being whisked away from Canterlot as fast as she could go. With her eyes closed, she could imagine it carrying her to the far side of the world – one of those Nipponese bullet trains, taking her from its capital right the way to the Equestrian west coast. Would even that be far enough?
In practice, the actual distance didn’t matter. She wasn’t sure how Adagio would react to waking alone, but couldn’t see her following. All that Spitfire needed from the train, at that point, was to feel that she was leaving Adagio behind her. Far behind.
“Really?” Soarin’s incredulity was thankfully the quiet kind. “You just left her a note to wake up to?”
Yawn over, Spitfire’s nice, cool hand found its way to her forehead. From beneath it, she stared across the carriage compartment at him, sprawled at the door end of one long seat with his feet up beside him, just as she was in the one opposite.
From where she reclined against the window, Fleetfoot cut in. “Of course she did. What did you expect?”
Fleet’s legs lay straight along the seat in front of her, feet almost touching Spitfire’s own. The press seemed to think Wonderbolts travelled in tuxedos and evening gowns on tour, never without champagne. The truth was more like a slumber party in its lack of formality, going without any pretense of class when not in the public eye.
Soarin ran a hand through his hair as he frowned, glancing at Fleet before looking back to Spitfire. “Well, you made it sound pretty life-changing…”
Without waiting or asking permission, Spitfire’s traitorous, sleep-deprived brain bombarded her with psychedelic memories of heat and hair and hands, bodies writhing together like nothing else in the world existed. Maybe it hadn’t, in those moments. She didn’t think she’d have noticed either way.
Clearing her throat, Spitfire was briefly grateful for the heat, hiding any clues her body might have made to give away her thoughts. “I’d be glad for just a flash in the pan,” she said, resisting the desire to reach for her water bottle. “I like my life as it is.”
Soarin’s eyebrows became a little less disbelieving, but only a little. “Ok, but –” he broke off and chewed his lip, then continued more tentatively “– if it freaked you out that much, it must have been quite a big deal.”
“Someone’s got a point there,” Fleetfoot grinned, eyes dancing over everything in the compartment except at Spitfire.
A withering look at Fleet only prompted a bigger grin, so Spitfire rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to Soarin. She studied him a moment, noting the sincere concern on his face, before shrugging and sagging back into the headrest of her seat. “I mean, it seems like a whole hurricane of argh at the moment, but it might be just a storm in a teacup when I look back on it by the end of the tour.”
Her eyes wandered over to the window, watching the green fields speed by. Time was all she needed. Time for the shockwaves Adagio left behind to die away, for Spitfire’s world to get back to normal.
No such luck with Soarin on the case, naturally. “And what if it doesn’t?” He gave her a sad smile, but he kept arguing. “What if a dozen other pretty faces go by, and she’s still the one you’re thinking about?”
“It’s done,” Spitfire said, shutting the debate down. “Couldn’t find her again if I tried.”
She turned her hands up apologetically, because she did appreciate Soarin was looking out for her, and added, “One girl in a city the size of Canterlot?” She glanced to Fleet, who shook her head. “Needle in a haystack.” Although with Adagio’s hair, she’s probably closer to the haystack than the needle.
Soarin didn’t really seem to be looking at anything when he answered, “In that case, I don’t even know what I want to be true.”
No one said anything for a couple of minutes after that, leaving Spitfire alone with her thoughts. Mostly with her headache. She could drink and party with the best of them, but staying up half the night wondering if she was losing her mind over a girl, writing a note in the early hours rather than returning to bed, and then sneaking out – that left her worse for wear, when she needed sleep.
She was gazing out of the window when she felt Soarin’s eyes on her again, and meeting them found him watching her with his head tilted on one side. “So what was she,” he asked, “if not the girl that changed your life?”
That was an interesting question, she had to admit. Adagio had felt special. Different. And yet, they’d talked at length about Spitfire’s lifestyle, and how she wanted to keep it that way until she retired, and the conversation had always been in the present tense, and as if her ways would continue unaltered. Adagio had understood, but never tried to change it. And Spitfire hadn’t suggested doing so. Or wanted to, when discussing it.
And if she hadn’t wanted to change her habits when talking about them with the girl in question, to stay with her for more than one night, then had she really been that unique?
“I don’t know. Just the same as all the others, really. A prize to be won for the night.”
Where Soarin reluctantly nodded, Fleet snorted. “Someone who hadn’t realised what living was until they were raised up for a night with Spitfire.” She looked at Soarin while she spoke, of course. “Only to then be set back down knowing they’d never truly live again.”
Spitfire gave Fleetfoot the customary flat look, holding it for two seconds. “Something like that.” Then she looked away, but a moment later her head whipped around to face Fleet again. “Wait, you’re saying I only sleep with dead girls?”
“Goodness, no!” Fleet said, hands flying to her mouth. Spitfire only half paid attention, the other half regretting turning her head so fast. Once Spitfire was all there again, Fleetfoot added, “Dead men, too.”
All Spitfire could do was roll her eyes.
Then Soarin decided he needed to chip in, as well. “Although she did say you raise them to the land of the living while they’re with you, so I guess they’re not dead at the time?”
Spitfire looked at Soarin across the compartment with dull eyes, letting the silence stretch as he waited on her answer. “Thanks, Soarin.”
He waved it away as nothing, after which she tipped her head back against the wall, closing her eyes.
The heat really was insufferable. Her grey wifebeater was already plastered to her stomach, and Soarin’s had looked similarly drenched.
“She might be hard to track down,” came Fleet’s voice, “but you’re not. She could find you easily enough.”
Only once Fleet was done talking did Spitfire open her eyes and look in that direction, her brain grateful for the break from daylight. “You really think she’d want to?” She quirked an eyebrow. “After how I left it?”
“Stranger things have happened when a romantic liason doesn’t go as expected,” Fleet said. Even with the cool window behind her, her forehead was still shiny with sweat. “If she’s as hot as you said, she probably doesn’t get turned down often.”
Stranger things. Like me running away.
But then, what would have been the alternative? She’d never considered it to be running before, when parting ways the next morning. This way had just skipped the final chat.
And if she’d stayed for that, what would have been different? Would she really have given up the pattern of a lifetime and not kicked Adagio out? And, if there’d been a risk of that, then hadn’t she been better to act when she had the courage to do so, rather than waiting until later when it might slip away from her?
If someone escaped a prison, they’d never be called a coward for not finishing their sentence. Sometimes running was the bravest choice available, when the alternative was sitting tight.
“I don’t think she’s one who’d chase,” Spitfire said. Adagio was too cool and collected, she wouldn’t drop everything just to follow a woman she’d met once.
Just thinking about the idea of chasing, though, reinforced the one about her fleeing, and she grimaced.
“Can’t have the catch doing the chasing,” Fleetfoot chuckled, “it just isn’t right.”
Even Soarin nodded to himself at that, though he then snorted and asked, “When was the last time any of us really had to chase, though? It’s not like we have to work hard to pick people up.”
Spitfire exchanged a wry smile with Fleet before she said, “It’s more like looking down on the counter in a jewellery store.”
Fleet turned her nose up, since precious stones really weren’t her thing. “Do we really need the metaphor? Can we not just say it’s like looking down on a room full of attractive people and picking which one to sleep with?”
Soarin looked at Fleet with very familiar disdain, and received two fingers raised in his direction in return. Spitfire didn’t have the energy to argue, when the whole thing would be forgotten in two minutes. “Yeah, them being there to be chosen was the important part, anyway.”
And Adagio had definitely been the finest jewel Spitfire had ever seen in a nightclub. No denying that.
“Look, maybe you’re right, Soarin,” Spitfire sighed. “Maybe I’ll never find someone like her again.” She gave him a smile, and not an unhappy one. “But I get to look myself in the eye each morning. I didn’t sell out. I didn’t give up. And I’m in control of my life, not hormones or fear of missing my chance.”
As she spoke, Soarin watched her with soft eyes. He was nodding by the end of it, lips curving upwards. Sometimes his warmth was far too open amid the general aloof demeanour of Wonderbolts, but Spitfire did occasionally get the feeling it was the secret glue holding the team together.
“Yeah. I get you,” he said, breathy voiced. Then he was climbing to his feet and stretching, arms brushing the compartment ceiling above his head. “This place feels like a furnace,” he said, the statement reinforced by how his skin shone all over with moisture. “Wanna go get some air?”
Gingerly, Spitfire sat forward, but then regretted it. “I’m not ready to be upright and mobile just yet.” She let herself collapse backwards into the seat again, rubbing a hand over her eyes.
“Fleet?” Spitfire heard Soarin ask.
“I’ll sit tight for a while,” came the reply. “Grab me something cold from the buffet car?”
“Will do.” A moment later, Spitfire felt a hand clap her on the shoulder, amiably and with great care for her recovering state. She blearily looked up at Soarin, finding kind eyes, and felt a squeeze on the shoulder where his hand still rested. One of those ‘I’d hug you but you’re sitting down and we both smell like the back end of rhinoceroses’ things.
Then he was off, sliding open the door, slipping out, and shutting it behind him. The air from the corridor beyond that wafted through in the process was no cooler.
A furnace, Soarin had described the place as. Not incorrectly. But the stuffy train compartment had nothing on the hotel suite the night before, when the tangled mass of limbs she’d become with Adagio had turned the air sweltering. That had been a furnace.
Furnaces are for forging things. So what was I making?
A mess? ...A mistake?
No, not a mistake. She certainly didn’t regret anything; on that front everything was normal.
An image sprang to mind of Adagio panting for breath but forcing herself to keep going, unwilling to bow out before Spitfire did. And, earlier that evening, of using her own legs to get somewhere instead of calling a cab.
A man, Spitfire grinned to herself, recalling her advice at the time. I was making a man out of her, forged in this blistering heat.
“What do you do,” she asked Fleet, noticing how soft her voice came out sounding, “when someone leaves an impression?”
Fleet pursed her lips at the question, sitting in silence for a few seconds. Then came a wan smile and a quiet snort. “There’s no magic answer. Sometimes things just take time.” Then she brightened. “Or someone new!”
In Spitfire’s case, one of those was just business as usual. And maybe the other would take care of Soarin’s concern, that new faces alone might not be enough.
“The thing that really helps,” Fleet continued, more mischievously, “is if there’s a loving best friend who wakes you up with a bacon sandwich every morning you’re crashing at her place.”
“Is that so?” Spitfire narrowed her eyes, recalling the struggle of frying things in oil in a cramped little off-campus college apartment without the noise prematurely waking the occupant of the couch in the next room. “I think I only cooked you bacon once or twice.”
“Well yeah, but if you’re taking notes for next time…”
For a whole two seconds, Spitfire managed to keep herself from snickering and descending into laughter, Fleet quickly following.
“And yeah,” Fleet added, sobering a little but hardly dropping her upbeat tone, “there will totally be a next time. And that’s ok – a relationship that ends isn’t necessarily one that’s failed.”
Spitfire grunted in agreement. “Or one you should regret.”
“Exactly.” Fleet reached her arms up and stretched languidly, fingers interlinked above her head. A yawn followed, which Spitfire immediately found herself copying. “You’ll be alright. You’ll feel better when you get to the training ground and can sweat it out of your system.”
“Sweat it out?” She didn’t recall Fleetfoot training any harder after breakups, as a general pattern.
“Sweat it all out, yeah.” Fleet bit her lower lip before resuming. “I mean, it’s you, isn’t it? Nothing can stand between you and the dream, and that’s why you didn’t try extending things with her. So throwing yourself into training, and pushing even harder than usual, will help it feel like a worthy sacrifice. And that you’re moving in the right direction.”
For a good few seconds, Spitfire wasn’t sure what to say, just staring at Fleet, mostly stunned.
“Wow, you… I think you just outshone every therapist in history.”
“Yes,” Fleet said, inspecting her nails and buffing them on her top, even though she’d never been the sort to have any or care about them in the slightest, “it’s almost like these past fifteen years of knowing you haven’t been totally wasted.”
Snapshots from half a lifetime with Fleet ran through her mind, making her break out in a grin. “Not totally, but we tried to be quite often.”
“We did,” Fleet laughed. Then she leaned her head back against the window, held Spitfire’s gaze and said, “So trust me, sweat it out, and you’ll feel better about the whole thing,” before closing her eyes.
Sweat it out. Spitfire mirrored Fleet’s pose, head back and eyes drifting shut. She could see herself on the training ground in the noonday sun and, in her head, the rest of the place was empty. Just her running laps, counting pushups, lifting weights and becoming more.
She saw Adagio’s half-lidded, inviting eyes in her mind, and the exhausting number of stomach crunches they drove her to. Pictured Adagio giving one of her mock pouts as she was ignored – the kind she’d pulled out when Spitfire had denied adoration as a motivator – and inspiring more crunches still.
The sun would be beating down on her, and the air so thick she half-expected to see lightning split the sky, as it had when Canterlot felt the same way last night, when she and Adagio had had a headstart on racing the storm back to the hotel. The way she saw it in her head, each memory of her time with Adagio made the sun hotter and the air more oppressive, so she sweated all the more, like reality itself was helping her purge Adagio from her body.
Up flew flashes of all the moments when being with Adagio had made her feel off-balance, the same ones which had haunted her on the balcony the night before. The way Adagio laughed away her hypnotic composure once they started talking properly, or how she changed in the space of a few minutes from the confidence of leading Spitfire out through the crowd to the vulnerability of worrying about her hair in the rain. It all made Spitfire feel like sands were shifting under her feet, like she had to fight to stay upright.
And, yeah, that exit from the club…!
Every eye that had seen them go had known exactly what they were leaving for; the promised passion they’d be delivering on as soon as they were alone. Not that such a thing was considered bad or forbidden, but still, she couldn’t shake the feeling they’d been caught sticky-fingered near the cookie jar.
‘Sweat it all out’ became a mantra, repeated at the top of every pushup.
“Yeah,” she said out loud, back in the train carriage, still with her eyes closed. “That sounds like just what I need.”
After a few more seconds, she heard Fleet’s voice. “What would you say to her, if you saw her again?”
Is this one of those psychologist exercises? Opening her eyes, Spitfire found Fleet not particularly looking at her, like it was more an idle question in innocent conversation. And I suppose I did just say she was really good at the therapist thing.
“I already wrote her a letter,” Spitfire muttered, but made sure it was loud enough for Fleet to hear.
Raising an eyebrow, Fleet tried again. “Well, you said it’s unlikely, but there’s still a chance she might appear at a show sometime.” She looked at Spitfire more pointedly. “What would you say to her if she did?”
If Adagio turned up at Spitfire’s workplace, uninvited, despite the letter making it clear about wanting a clean break? Her voice became hard. “I meant every word I wrote you. Don’t go forgetting them.”
There had been a few she’d taken to bed over the years who’d tried not to honour the whole idea of a one-night stand and its fixed end point, but if Adagio proved to be one of them then Spitfire would have to call into question all the common ground she’d thought they’d had. Of all the things she’d expected better on…
“And remember what I told you that night,” she continued, unprompted, “that winning matters more to me than being worshipped does. I meant to win.” Hadn’t she been open about that from the start? Hunter and prey, and Adagio had been competing for Spitfire’s role. “This was never going to end any other way.”
Fleet looked kind of impressed. “Anything else?”
If Adagio thought, what, that Spitfire would just look the other way on her popping up out of the blue? Welcome her back with open legs?
“Yeah,” she bit off. “Coming back for more, after how you were last time? Don’t forget your inhaler.”
Wide-eyed and staring, Fleet blinked twice before replying. “Ouch.”
A fresh wave of sweat breaking out sent a shiver through Spitfire as warmth crashed into her cheeks, and she rubbed her neck as she thought back on what she’d said. “Yeah, that was fairly harsh, wasn’t it?”
Rather than appearing to pass judgement, Fleet tilted her head to one side, considering. “Was it called for?”
Spitfire shook her head. “Only if she does turn up uninvited.” And she really couldn’t see that happening. Anyone could get into the VIP area backstage at a show if they were cunning enough, and, if anyone could talk their way past security, it was Adagio. But Spitfire just couldn’t see her stooping to something as demeaning and desperate as pursuing where she’d been told she wasn’t wanted. So, with that in mind… “Until then, I’ll think nothing but good thoughts of her.”
The heat must have been getting to Fleet, because she gave what looked very much to be a sincere, honest smile, one that wasn’t at all devious, debauched, patronising or smug. “You do that,” she said, then returned to her earlier pose, resting, eyes closed and head back.
For a few moments, Spitfire just watched Fleet, feeling the corners of her lips pulling upwards as she thought of a drunken night in a hotel corridor, so long ago. ‘I’m so glad I met you, and, this life we share… I want it to last forever.’
Then she settled back into her seat, trying to get comfortable, and closed her own eyes. The dull ache in her temples reasserted itself, staying with her whichever way she turned.
Accompanying that came glimpses of memories. Adagio laughing during their exchanges in the club, leaning over the table while sharing her wisdom. Listening with interest to Spitfire go on about her family life on the walk back to the hotel. Making the rest of the world population jealous with the things the two of them did between the sheets. Or lit by a flash of lightning while asleep, beautiful face twisted into a grimace at her nightmare.
Spitfire drifted off towards sleep with those thoughts, all wrapped up in the dream of the bullet train to the far side of the world, carrying her away from it all.