Bon-Bon loved her job. When she had been cast out from S.M.I.L.E. and left adrift, Bonnie had thought she'd never be satisfied again - what could hold a candle to her duties? The thrill of the hunt, valiantly battling monsters, going home at night knowing Equestria was safer…
And yet.
And yet now every morning was full of the smell of caramelizing sugar and the sound of a taffy puller.
Bon-Bon was happy. It was the thrill of striking the careful balance between speed and heat so the sugar stabilized at the appropriate stages without burning. The joy of handing a foal their first piece of Nightmare Night candy and seeing their face light up. Opening the store each morning to Pinkie Pie's smiling face and her list of what the Cakes would need that day.
Another part of that happiness was not job-related - Lyra Heartstrings.
The Sweetie Drops of three years earlier would have laughed at the idea. Love? A stable relationship? And with somepony outside the agency? It wasn't an impossible dream - mostly because dream implied it was something she would want.
And yet.
And yet now every evening was ended holding Lyra close, breathing the scent of the unicorn's favorite lilac shampoo and feeling the deliciously rough texture of her coat.
There weren't words for Bon-Bon to explain what Lyra had done to her life. First as a friend, then as… well, as something much more. 'Marefriend' was what she defaulted to, but every time Bonnie said it? The word felt wrong. Insufficient. But she didn't have a better one - at least for now.
But just like sometimes a pot of hard-ball candy went a little too far into soft-crack, their relationship wasn't perfect every moment of every day.
Holidays, in particular.
When two ponies love each other very much, they share every part of their life with each other. A healthy, functional relationship requires not just love but also other virtues: understanding; forgiveness; humility. Sharing the load was also essential, for what is difficult for one is easy for two.
Bon-Bon knew this. With all her heart, she knew it and appreciated everything that Lyra did to make their relationship work.
She also wanted to grab her marefriend by the neck and shake her until the meringue that passed for her brain fell out.
As a candy-maker, Bon-Bon's busiest days were holidays. Hearts and Hooves, Hearth's Warming, the Summer Sun Solstice - days where ponies clambered to get their hooves on sweets to give to others. To say nothing of the madness that was Nightmare Night.
Those two words always gave Bon-Bon the shivers.
What it boiled down to, though, was that while everypony else was enjoying holidays? Bonnie was working. She rarely got to indulge and her lack of free time meant that her Hearth's Warming decorations consisted of a miniature plastic tree with three ornaments (one red ball, one golden star, one beautifully painted wooden apple that the Apples gave out to all their customers one year) and a single length of silver garland she would hang around the doorframe.
That's where Lyra came in.
Unlike Bon-Bon, Lyra had free time for the holidays. Even accounting for the occasional gig, she had the freedom to behave like a normal pony rather than a confectionary machine. So now that they were together, preparing for the holidays fell to Lyra. She could do what Bonnie couldn't - set up the decorations, find costumes, sign them up for Wrap-Up roles that didn't involve animal poop.
There was only one problem: Lyra was way too enthusiastic about it.
It was the longest day of the year - or at least it seemed that way to Bon-Bon. Nightmare Night was a challenge every time, as the entire town's need for candy quintupled for twenty-four hours. It didn't help that a number of foals every year thought that the best place to gather candy was straight from the source, cutting out the ponies in the middle by knocking directly on the confectionery's doors. (Bonnie didn't deny them - she couldn't. They always left with her freshest treats. But she grumbled every time.)
At the end of it, she dragged herself home with barely enough energy to move. Her hooves were sore beyond words, she stank of caramel and her tail was knotted around no less than three hard candies that had been caught up in the chaos.
Perhaps the first warning sign should have been the state of the house: when Bon-Bon had left, it had lacked any of the signs of the season. Now artificial cobwebs hung from every corner, the flickering light in the windows cast paper witch cutouts into shadowy relief, and there was a jack-o-lantern on either side of the front door. But tired as she was, Bonnie accepted the sight as just Lyra getting into the spirit of things.
She just wanted to get home. Get inside.
So she opened the door to her house.
And waiting just inside with the glee of a filly, Lyra had two boxes with her and a massive smile on her face.
Bon-Bon sucked in a sharp breath to steady her nerves.
"I got our costumes ready!" Lyra jittered like an excited Pinkie Pie. "After your long, long day, I'm going to take you out to a party. You can relax, have some drinks, talk with all your friends and then we can come home." She said the last part with a waggle of her eyebrows that was, to be utterly frank, exaggerated enough to be unnerving.
It made Bonnie giggle. "Lyra, I'm exhausted." She still leaned in to give her marefriend a kiss on the cheek. "That sounds fun but I'm not sure I could manage to walk over to the party before passing out, let alone make it through the rest of the night."
Lyra's smile widened. "So skipping to the end?"
Bon-Bon laughed and gave Lyra a gentle shove. "You're terrible!"
Lifting the boxes with her magic, Lyra held them up. "Can I at least talk you into trying on the costume? I went to the trouble of getting them, and I think it's really appropriate for us."
With a long-suffering (but still amused) sigh, Bon-Bon nodded. "Fiiiiine." She moved around Lyra as she did - the door closing as she trotted to the kitchen. Packing paper and cardboard rustled behind her as Bonnie grabbed a bottle of cooking oil, sat down, and started to work it into her tail to free the candy stuck there.
"TADA!" Lyra beamed as she held up Bon-Bon's costume.
It was familiar to Bonnie. Hauntingly familiar. A jet black business suit with lines that cut sharp as a razor. Smart, dapper, and professional in the way that was usually accompanied by a silenced sidearm. A starched white shirt under it; a thin black tie; dark sunglasses; and the ensemble was topped off by a wire leading from the breast pocket to an earpiece.
Bon-Bon stared blankly for a few seconds as she tried to wrap her head around it.
"It's a spy costume!" Lyra's joy was undimmed.
"I know." Bonnie's throat was desert-dry. "Lyra, you can't be serious."
Gormlessly, the mint unicorn turned her head to look at the suit. "Why wouldn't I be? What's wrong with it?"
Bon-Bon's eye twitched. "Lyra, I can't dress up as a secret agent. I was a secret agent! The whole point of me moving to Ponyville was to leave that life behind and never look back. Even if I hadn't, I don't want to look like one! That defeats the entire point of being secret!"
"And that's why it works!" Lyra kept smiling. "I put a lot of thought into it. No secret agent would be caught dead going to a party looking like a secret agent. So it's the perfect disguise, because nopony would suspect!"
Bon-Bon lowered her head into her hooves. "Oh my Celestia. I can't even–" Then she froze. And very slowly looked up. "Lyra. What did you get for your costume."
"Well," began the unicorn, "I had to keep it on theme. So…" Her golden magic opened the other box to reveal–
"...I am going to kill you, Lyra."
Lyra kept smiling as she held the bugbear costume higher. "See? It's perfect! It matches with yours and–"
Bonnie took a long, loud breath in through her nose. "You decided to dress up as the monster that escaped, ruining my career and getting me thrown out of S.M.I.L.E."
The grin faltered, though only for a moment. "I was thinking more of later," Lyra admitted. "When the daring and beautiful secret agent finally tracks down her most challenging opponent. They have their final confrontation, ending when the super sexy secret agent ties up the–"
"OH MY CELETSTIA LYRA."
They were both silent for a long, long minute.
Bon-Bon sighed. "Lyra, I'm not sure if I want to strangle you or–"
Lyra helpfully offered an alternative by lifting up a set of hoofcuffs.
She smacked Lyra in the face with the empty cardboard box.
"Lyra." Bon-Bon rubbed her forehead to try and ward off the headache. "I'm not even certain that Arbor Day counts as a real holiday. But leaving that aside for a moment, I have to ask. Just where did you get the costume?"
This one had gone poorly enough that even Lyra knew she'd messed up. Her usual enthusiastic grin was tempered with bashfulness and she couldn't quite meet her marefriend's eyes. The red welts all over her body didn't help, either. "Well, Fluttershy had a spare so the two of us worked together. And I liked being a tree!"
"Until the squirrels came," Bonnie surmised.
"Right up until the squirrels came," Lyra admitted with a sigh of defeat. "I have no idea how Fluttershy was able to handle them climbing over her. It was so creepy!"
With a heavy sigh, Bon-Bon got out the iodine and cotton balls. "At least they only scratched you and didn't try to hide walnuts in your ears. Again."
It was the longest day of the year - literally. The Summer Sun Celebration wasn't a major candy holiday, but there was still enough of an uptick to keep Bon-Bon busy.
And as usual for a holiday, Lyra was eager to help her celebrate after the work day (well, figurative day) was done.
Plans were set: Octavia had invited them over for a small concert leading up to the dramatic dawn. The Flower Trio had promised a plethora of spectacular and tasty arrangements for each table. Berry Punch making custom night and day themed cocktails was an intriguing promise, too.
Friends, music, food and drink. It was going to be a wonderful capstone for the event. And even more so was the joy on Lyra's face - her friends from Canterlot were coming to town for the event, including one Bonnie had never met.
But first - home. Home, a shower, maybe a quick bite to tide her over and not arrive at the party just to immediately stick her face into the nearest pastry…
Halfway through putting together a tomato & hay sandwich with mustard, Lyra burst through the door with a wild grin and a manic look in her eyes.
"THEY ARRIVED."
Terror gripped Bonnie's heart. With great care, she set down the mustard knife before responding. "What arrived, Lyra."
A pair of boxes appeared in Lyra's magic. "Our matching outfits for tonight!"
The dread intensified.
Unveiling the outfits with a shred of cardboard, Lyra proudly held them high: a pair of form-fitting onesies, one white, one navy blue. Each respective one was detailed with flourishes that made it clear that they stood for the Princesses - or at least would be a reasonable facsimile when worn.
"I got us Celestia and Luna kigurumis!" Lyra's smile didn't falter one bit.
Bon-Bon's brain derailed. "Kig-whats?"
"Kigurumis," Lyra explained far too eagerly. "Fluttershy told me they were popular in–"
Bonnie's hoof covered Lyra's mouth to silence her. "I do not want to hear about Fluttershy's weird foreign obsessions. And I thought you learned your lesson about her and costumes with Arbor Day."
A moment of regret soured Lyra's smile. "Okay, for one? Not cool to bring that up. For two, this is totally different!" She brandished the Celestia outfit at Bon-Bon. "I know it's not a costume party, but when's a better time for us to do this? Everypony will love having 'Celestia' and 'Luna' show up at the party! Minimum, we'll get a couple extra drinks from Berry Punch for the laugh."
"The drinks are free." It took considerable effort for Bon-Bon not to yell. "Lyra, you were just talking yesterday about how much you were looking forward to seeing your old school friends again. This is going to be the first time that… " Bonnie trailed off for a moment, forgetting the name.
"Moondancer," Lyra helpfully supplied.
"The first time that you've seen Moondancer since she stopped hiding and decided to be friends again," Bon-Bon continued. "This is maybe the second or third time she's been in public with other ponies in years, and you want to show up dressed in a weird costume because it might get you extra drinks from a pony who we have to actively stop from giving us more drinks."
Frowning, Lyra looked at the kigurumis. "Well… okay, no, Moondancer might think it's kind of weird."
"And," Bon-Bon added, "This is her first time meeting me. This isn't what I want her first impression to be."
With a pensive sigh, Lyra folded the two onesies up and set them on the counter. "Sorry, I guess I just…"
Bon-Bon hugged her. "It's okay. I know you meant well and you just wanted the two of us to have fun. I appreciate it. This just isn't the right time for it."
Against her fur, Bonnie could feel Lyra's smile return. "So you're saying there's a chance."
Bon-Bon let out a long, overly dramatic sigh. "You're lucky I love you."
So it came to Hearth's Warming and a small part of Bon-Bon was afraid. She and Lyra had been together for the holiday before, but not together together. The year before Lyra had spent it with her family, but Bon-Bon hadn't been willing to give up one of her biggest business days of the year to travel. This year, they would be home and together.
Knowing how some of the previous holidays had gone, Bonnie feared what might be waiting for her.
It would be well-intentioned, of course. Lyra meant well. She always meant well. And she accomplished things Bon-Bon knew she never could manage with so little free time. But that didn't change the fact that Lyra's choices were often… ill-advised. When that combined with the grand scope of Hearth's Warming, it spelled trouble.
But there was also no avoiding it. Not without Bon-Bon telling Lyra not to help, and Bonnie couldn't do that. It would crush Lyra's heart to be told that and then they'd be barely celebrating the holiday at all.
The day was busy enough to keep Bon-Bon's mind off of things, at least. Hearth's Warming was full of customers - chocolate flowed like water and the scent of peppermint was thick enough to walk on. Candy canes alone sold by the hundred. Were the ponies of Ponyville not so well behaved, it would have been a war zone. As it was, the shop was merely chaotic enough to put a smile on Discord's face.
And at the end of it? Bon-Bon was tired, sweaty, filthy… and proud. Practically the entire town had passed through the doors of her shop, and every one of them had left with a smile and a cheery "Happy Hearth's Warming!" It was a far different life than she'd once had - and a better one.
Coming home was as bright and cheerful: though the weather was bitingly cold, every house and street corner was brightly lit and decorated for the holiday. And since the chill could be warded off by a thick scarf and a pair of earmuffs (both presents from Lyra), Bon-Bon was free to enjoy the rest with joy in her heart.
Then - she saw it.
Her house. Their house. Modest but sufficient, it had mostly been paid for by S.M.I.L.E.'s severance package. A simple two-story that blended in with the rest of Ponyville like Sweetie Drops had once blended in with the crowd: classical construction, beige outer walls with wooden supports, thatched roof. And at that particular moment, glowing like Celestia's sun.
Bon-Bon froze. As far as she was aware, her Hearth's Warming decorations hadn't changed. (One length silver garland; one miniature artificial tree; one red ball ornament; one golden star; one wooden apple ornament.) Which meant Lyra had spent… way too much.
To the left of the house towered an inflatable reindeer, tall enough that the antler-tips passed above the roofline. Around it lay presents - hopefully empty boxes in bright wrapping paper and shiny bows, each large enough for a pony to fit in. And several were, as the neighborhood foals played among them.
On the house's right was another, smaller house. Most likely actually cardboard, it was dressed to look like gingerbread. Though only reaching up one floor, it came complete with a family of gingerbread ponies (two of which looked unmistakably like Bon-Bon and Lyra) and a dog. Up on the rooftop and standing astride the fake gumdrops was a gingerbread reindeer - one of the Gift Givers, painted pink and with a light-up nose.
Bon-Bon's house itself was aglow with thousands of lights. They ran the border of every window, door and overhang. They dangled like icicles from every eve. The chimney was wrapped tighter than Filthy Rich's pursestrings, and the walkway leading up was covered by a string of lit archways crafted from strong wire. Each arch had a snowpony constructed on either side, rearing up as if they were holding the arches in place.
The front of the house itself was just as overdone - every window had a wreath hanging in it and a planter full of poinsettias below it. The front door sported wrapping like a present, down to an artfully placed bow over the door knocker. And on either side sat speakers that were loudly playing upbeat carols and holiday music.
It was - by a significant margin - the most heavily decorated house on the block. How Lyra had managed it in less than a day was beyond explanation, and this was just the outside.
Bon-Bon smiled her best smile as she walked to her front door. The playing foals laughed and cheered and waved to her, only barely noticing her distress as they frolicked through the decorations. For a brief moment fear overtook Bonnie and she rang the doorbell. To her relief, it was still the same chime and hadn't been replaced by something more seasonal. Then - not waiting for the bell to be answered - she stepped inside.
The house's exterior was an over-decorated winter wonderland. The inside was a madhouse cross between a toy factory and a Hallmark movie set.
Garland - gold and green, save for a single strand of silver over the doorway - ran along as many surfaces as the strings of lights did outside.
Cut-out snowflakes covered in silver glitter hung from the ceiling in every room, creating a blizzard indoors. Occasionally interspersed with them were windigo figures, peeking out from the snow with baleful but merry eyes.
From the kitchen wafted an untold number of scents - cinnamon and peppermint and ginger and a dozen other delicious flavors. More directly, those scents took the form of a pile of windigo cookies on the living room table, sitting on a festive plate beside two large mugs of cinnamon-sprinkled egg nog. (Undoubtedly Berry Punch's.)
What topped it all off was the tree. That tree.
It barely fit in the house - not just vertically but horizontally as well. It reminded Bon-Bon of Rarity when she was going through her corset phase: straining to maintain its shape and threatening to burst at the seams. The ornaments were new, too. While the star at the top was quite familiar, Bonnie had never seen the rest before. Balls and bells, ribbons and lights, stars, garlands, miniature wreaths, and a slowly rotating mobile that had Bon-Bon's cutie mark on one side and Lyra's on the other. Around the base was a pile of brightly wrapped boxes, implying wonders far more than the two of them really needed.
There were more decorations in the house than Bon-Bon had seen in a single place in her life.
And in the middle of the gaudy madness sat Lyra. On their loveseat in that odd sitting position she preferred, the unicorn eagerly waited with a thousand watt smile and a Santa Hooves hat.
"You like it?" Her words glowed like the tree.
Bon-Bon hesitated - and then smiled back. "I do, even if it's a bit much," she half-lied. "How did you manage to pull this off?"
Lyra shrugged. "Pinkie Pie owed me a favor." And that explained everything. "She said she'd been waiting for the chance."
Sitting down beside her marefriend - and noticing that the loveseat had a festive green and red quilt draped over the back that hadn't been there earlier today - Bonnie gave Lyra a side-hug as they looked at the tree. "I guess I just… Lyra, I love you and I know you mean well."
"Buuuuuut?" Lyra knew it was coming, but her smile didn't dim.
"But this is over the top," Bon-Bon completed with a sigh. "At least you didn't do matching costumes for us this year."
Sheepishly, Lyra squirmed. "Yeeeeah. Totally didn't do costumes this time."
Bon-Bon hesitated - then guessed. "They're under the loveseat so you could surprise me with them, aren't they."
"I'm a reindeer and you're a nutcracker," Lyra admitted.
There was silence between them for perhaps a minute.
It was broken by a sigh. "I just don't understand why you're so gung-ho about all of this." Bon-Bon slumped a little. "It's just another day, really."
Again - a brief bout of silence.
"Do you remember," Lyra tentatively offered, "A few months ago? What I said about how every relationship has a crazy pony and a sane pony."
Bon-Bon grimaced, remembering her relatively minor burst of paranoia that S.M.I.L.E. agents were coming to silence her. "I remember you said the green ones were usually the sane ones."
"Every relationship also has a serious pony and a party pony." Lyra touched Bonnie's chest. "You're the serious one of us. You work hard, you stay on top of bills, you keep everything organized." She brought the hoof back to her own chest. "I'm the happy-go-lucky one of us. And part of that is making sure you have the chance to have fun and be happy, too. Holidays are a great chance to cut loose! They give you an excuse to party with friends, dress up, and to eat cookies until you regret it." She leaned in and kissed her marefriend's cheek. "I just want to make sure you have the chance to do all that and don't get caught up in having to be Serious Sweetie all the time."
Bon-bon snorted - but smiled all the same. "Thank you. Is that why you keep taking every holiday over the top?"
Laughing, Lyra shook her head. "Nah, that's because I enjoy it! And if you think this is bad, you should see my parent's house!" She poked Bonnie playfully. "And next year, you're going to. You can spend Hearth's Warming working like you want, but we're heading up to their place the day after. They want to spend some time with you, too."
"I'll consider it." Bon-Bon hugged Lyra closer. "That's still a long way off."
Lyra's face lit up with glee. "I know. You have to see what I've got planned for you at Hearts & Hooves Day, first."