//------------------------------// // 2 – Loose-Lipped Witness, Sailing Over Denial // Story: Can You See What I See? // by Avery Day //------------------------------// It’s just south of 8 AM, and I am very, very tired. You would think, after being up until almost three in the morning, I’d have slept later than anyone else at the sleepover. You would think, being one sleep cycle short of the amount needed for the average person to function, my body would let me sleep a little more. And you would think, with all of this taken into consideration upon waking up, my mind and body would have agreed they should both shut down again so I could rest up a little more before facing the day. Yet here I am. Holding a coffee pot over a running faucet, gazing out at the morning sky. Watching the sun as it spreads its incandescent influence over the dark colors of the waning night, mixing into a canvas of pastel blues, purples and oranges. I always loved watching the sky in the morning. This morning, I focused on it even more than usual, as it served as a decent, albeit tentative, distraction from how frustrated I felt at my stupid body for not letting me sleep in a little more. As I looked down at the coffee pot for a brief moment to check how much water it had so far, I thought about the morning of my first sleepover. We were at this same house, and I was in this same kitchen at least an hour before everyone else woke up. The first time this happened, I remember wandering around the house awkwardly and aimlessly. I didn’t really know what I was supposed to do while I waited for everyone else to get up. Sure, Pinkie Pie told us to all make ourselves at home, but everyone says that when you stay over at their place. It’s just a courtesy thing. You can’t just act like you live somewhere the first time you stay over. It’s just not right. You can only do that on your fifth or sixth time. It's one of those weird unspoken rules humans have that no one actually says out loud. It was getting close to our final exams of that semester, and the crunch was really bad. I developed a caffeine addiction so advanced I needed at least four cups of coffee throughout the day just to stave off the headaches. I really needed coffee that morning, but I was intimidated by Pinkie’s coffee maker. That sounds really silly, I know, but just hear me out. Appliances are like their own kind of animal. Okay, that sounds even sillier, but I promise this will make sense. There are a lot of different kinds of the same appliance, right? And most of them have individual quirks that you can’t really know about unless you’ve had to deal with them frequently. Different brands have different settings, and the ones that have the same settings don’t function exactly the same across different models, and it takes a varying amount of trial and error to find the best settings for what you’re trying to make with them. The morning of that first sleepover, I decided I’d go without coffee until everyone else woke up. So I made my way to Pinkie’s living room with a pounding headache and sat on the couch waiting for everyone else. It was the most monotonously miserable migraine I’ve ever experienced. Just sitting there, clutching my head and scrolling through the same three apps that weren’t updating because no one posts at 7:30 in the morning on a Sunday. Eventually, Pinkie Pie came downstairs and showed me how to use her coffee maker, which made me feel very stupid considering how straightforward it was. From that day forward, I realized I should probably learn how to use everyone’s coffee maker the night before so that I never run into this situation again. This knowledge turned out to be indispensable, as – aside from one time – there hasn’t been a single sleepover where anyone has awoken before me since. So the duty of coffee making in the morning always falls squarely on my shoulders. As mentioned before, Pinkie Pie’s is the tamest beast out of all of them. Most of the buttons are pretty straightforward, meaning I don’t need to deduce how to work it from an instruction manual in a foreign language like I need to for Rarity’s fancy-pants coffee maker. It's pretty automatic, so I don’t have to do most of the work myself since it’s a machine and not one of those weird, non-electronic, manual pour-over ones like Fluttershy has. And it's pretty new! So it’s not prone to slobbering grainy, black sludge all over the counter if you put in the wrong amount of grounds or water like Applejack’s century-old one does. I was usually relieved when I got to use Pinkie’s coffee maker. I should be happy about the fact that everything works so easily – happy for the fact that I’m not having to work as much, that I don’t have to monitor it in case it explodes. But if you can’t tell from the fact that I’m talking about something as mundane as small kitchen appliances in such detail, I could really use the distraction provided by unnecessary tedium. While it’s true that I always wake up before everyone else, I’m also usually the first one to pass out at the end of the night. There was a period of time after the fateful Fall Formal where that wasn't the case, but I didn't like to think about that. Even at the worst of my caffeine addiction, I always fell and stayed asleep relatively easily. Sure, I had my weird 2 AM craving at Pinkie’s, but that’s never affected how I felt in the morning. That’s because a lot more than getting up, eating whipped cream, and going back to sleep happened last night. Trying to pass out after both me and Twilight settled into our sleeping bags was a challenge I wasn’t ready for. I just couldn’t stop thinking about her. About everything we said, and did. And all those weird feelings I felt. It's been like that since our conversation together a mere four and a half hours ago. I did eventually manage to pass out about an hour after the fact, but the moment I woke up, I knew my mind wasn’t going to let me fall asleep again. The moment my eyes opened was like a gunshot, and the second it went off all my thoughts began racing in an infinity-meter dash. Trying to catch up to any one of them was next to impossible. One moment, I’d be thinking about how upset I felt when Twilight talked down on herself. The next, I’d be reliving the whipped cream embarrassment. Then my heart would start to race as I remembered her asking if she could sleep next to me. Then I would just simply think to myself again: Twilight was cute. In my heart of hearts, I knew why this was happening. But I was so resistant to hearing the answer. I wasn’t going to let myself say what my subconscious mind was practically shouting at me. Besides, there are so many different reasons I might be feeling all these things. All that sugar I had at an hour of the night that no one should be eating anything at all? The fact that I was half asleep when everything went down? And with how exhausted I felt now, there was no way I could expect myself to give a reliable, well-reasoned answer for what I was feeling. Right? Right. A big part of trusting yourself is knowing when not to trust yourself. I sighed as I kept looking out the window, completely lost in thought. “Sunset, darling? I think the pot is full.” My heartrate quintupled as I jumped. I let go of the coffee pot. It made a loud crash as it collided with and spilled water all over the dishes that filled the sink below the faucet. Thankfully, there wasn't that much distance between where I was holding it and the dishes it fell onto, so the pot was completely intact. It took me a few seconds to realize the voice that derailed my speeding train of thought was Rarity’s. At least that meant I had no further to look for a distraction now. She giggled as I tried to regain what semblance of composure I was able to. “Or I guess it was full,” she prodded, punctuated with another laugh. “I left my brain in my sleeping bag,” I joked back, letting out a nervous laugh after the fact. “You must have,” responded Rarity, “It was overflowing for nearly two minutes before I snuck up behind you.” I could feel my face heat up. That was embarrassing. I knew I was frazzled, but I didn’t realize it was that bad. Shaking my head, I filled the pot all the way back up and began to fill the water tank on the coffee maker. “I take it you didn’t sleep all that much?” she asked. I froze for a moment. Even with the sleep deprivation, I could tell when Rarity adopted that ‘I know something I shouldn’t know’ tone, and her voice was absolutely dripping with it. Had she woken up and heard me and Twilight in the middle of the night? Or did she spot our sleeping bags close to one another? I hedged my bets on the latter and proceeded to try and play it cool. “I mean, I did get up in the middle of the night for some whipped cream. But I always do that. Other than that I slept fine,” I lied, “Just having a really slow-to-start morning is all.” I grabbed the jar of coffee from the shelf nearby, scooping some up and putting it into the filter of the machine. I hadn’t turned around to face her yet, but I could tell by the lack of an immediate response that she hadn’t bought my bluff. “I see,” she began, “So on the way back upstairs, did you just decide to pick up Twilight's sleeping bag and move it while she was in it? Because it looked pretty light to me.” I froze again. Rarity was a wonderful friend, and I loved her just as much as the rest of my friends, but at this moment I could not think of a worse person to have picked up on what happened last night than her. At least if it were anyone else, they wouldn’t go out of their way to sound so smarmy. Except maybe Rainbow Dash. Regardless, I sighed. There was no point in trying to hide it now. I would just have to do my best to convey that I was trying to be a good friend to Twilight and that’s it. There was nothing else to it. “Okay, fine. You caught me,” I resigned. She squealed in excitement, “Tell me everything! Everything that happened!” “What do you mean ‘everything that happened’?” I replied, “When I came down to the kitchen last night, Twilight was down here and she was upset by something personal. I stuck around and talked to her for a little bit, and then we both went upstairs. That’s all.” After I finished setting the coffee maker, I turned around and saw the smuggest, most shit-eating grin I’d ever seen on Rarity’s face before. She knew far more than just the fact that our sleeping bags were moved next to each other. “Am I missing something?” I asked. “Well… sometime in the middle of the night, I woke up and saw both your sleeping bags were empty,” she explained, “Then, when I went to use the restroom, I heard you both talking downstairs.” Oh no. “I just couldn’t help myself, so I snuck down the stairs and eavesdropped by the doorway. Just for a little while,” she admitted. I scowled, then rolled my eyes, “I mean this in the nicest way possible, but would it kill you to mind your own business sometime?” She looked at me apologetically. “I know that sounds upsetting, but I’m being honest when I say my intentions were good,” she appealed, “There are only a few kinds of conversations that happen late at night, and if something was wrong with either of you I wanted to be aware.” I sighed again. She sounded sincere, but, knowing her, I wasn’t really buying it. I let her continue on anyway. Her look went smug again. “And I didn’t want to reveal myself in case you two were having a ‘moment’ together.” “What do you mean ‘moment’?” I questioned. She laughed again, “Goodness, I’ve never seen someone in such denial.” I grunted and grit my teeth in response. It was getting hard not to feel frustrated. It was still early in the morning, I was sleepless, hadn’t had my coffee, the caffeine headache was only moments away, and I could feel myself on the verge of getting nasty in a way I would later regret. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. She wasn’t about to make me lose my cool. No one can do that. Sunset Shimmer doesn't lose her cool. Not anymore. For a few moments, the only sound made was from the coffee maker slowly trickling coffee into the pot. Then, after collecting myself, I opened my mouth once more. “Rarity, if this were any other day, at any other time of day, I wouldn’t mind playing these games with you,” I said firmly, “So before I get ugly, I’m going to ask you nicely just this once: can you please just tell me what you heard, what you saw, and what you think?” She slumped and let out a defeated sigh, “You’re no fun, you know that?” I gave her the nastiest glare I could muster. As she saw the intensity of my expression, she recoiled and grinned sheepishly. “Right, sorry,” she apologized. My expression softened, and she looked back at me sympathetically. “I started listening in around the part where you asked her why she wasn’t confident, and kept listening right up until she asked to sleep next to you. I couldn’t really see much of anything in the kitchen, though. I did see you move her stuff across the room, that was really sweet. Impressively stealthy, too.” Relief washed over me. The last thing she mentioned was plenty embarrassing, but it wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as the thing with the whipped cream. I could take comfort in that. The stream of liquid from the coffee maker to the pot petered out. As it finished, I grabbed a mug from one of the cabinets above it and poured myself a cup and quickly took a sip. I usually drank my coffee black, and I liked it best when it was really hot. Nothing truly wakes you up faster than molten dirt water splashing on into your mouth and down your throat. I turned around to face Rarity. “As for what I think,” she began again, “I think it’s adorable that you have a crush on Twilight.” Sometimes I don’t think people appreciate how considerate I am. Because despite how sleep-deprived and irritable I was, I only almost spit the searing hot contents of my mouth and throat all over Rarity’s face. Fortunately for her, at the last moment I turned to the side and spit it all over the counter. As I finished, I could feel some of the coffee that had gone down my throat run down my trachea before I started coughing uncontrollably. Rarity looked on in shock, but was also clearly amused at my clumsy and explosive reaction. “I don’t have a–” I started to shout before another cough interrupted me. Rarity quickly grabbed some nearby paper towels and wiped up the brown fluid off the pink counter before it could stain. After a minute or two more of coughing and gasping, I wiped away the tears that ran down my face from my now bloodshot eyes and my breathing slowly stabilized. If I wasn’t awake before, I certainly was now. I briefly wondered how quickly caffeine absorbs in the lungs as opposed to the digestive system. Then, perhaps foolishly, I had another sip. The warm liquid went a long way toward relieving the pain in my esophagus. Leave it to Rarity to say the one thing I was trying so desperately hard to avoid. I was doing so well! I’d gone an entire night and a little bit of a morning without saying the C word. If I could have ignored it for a little bit longer, I might have been able to push that notion into the deepest recesses of my mind so I’d never have to face it again! But now, it was out in the open. It had been acknowledged. It knew its own name. And it – this crush – would provide a new and entirely unnecessary source of stress for me. But only if I let it. “I don’t have a crush on her,” I nearly choked saying again, “I just want to be a good friend to her. I know what she’s going through, and I want to do everything I can to give her an easier time than I had.” I was both trying to convince her and myself, but had little success, as even I could feel how hollow my words were. Rarity smiled at me as she fetched herself her own mug. She poured herself her own cup and began mixing a little cream and sugar into it. “I know it sounds rather presumptuous, darling, but I’ve seen and heard this before,” she explained, “And have I ever been wrong on a matter such as this?” I frowned, narrowing my eyes at her. Her smile grew a little nervous. “Okay, so maybe once or twice I have. But this time I’m certain I’m right. Besides, I can tell just from how she talks to you that she’s absolutely smitten with you.” My face flushed. Is she really? No, there’s absolutely no way. I don’t even know if she swings that way. Princess Twilight is straight after all, right? I mean, it looked like she was really into Flash Sentry, so it seemed safe to assume she– But wait, why am I thinking about this? What do I care which way Twilight swings? Her sexuality is none of my concern, because I don’t have a crush on her, and she doesn’t have one on me. We’ve only known each other for a few weeks! That’s way too soon to jump to that kind of conclusion, right? Right? “She is not,” I retorted, “Nothing she said yesterday gave me any indication she’d even be into other girls, let alone me.” Rarity chuckled, “Tell me, Sunset. Do you remember when you brought up how Flash Sentry has been pining over her since she transferred?” “Yeah?” I answered, “What about it?” “You remember her answer, do you not?” She followed up. “She said that she suspected he just hadn’t gotten over Princess Twilight.” "Correct! And don't you think it's weird how unenthused she was about such a popular boy wanting her? Something like that would make any girl swoon, even if she didn't like him specifically." she questioned, her tone laden with implications about Twilight's sexuality. "I guess, but that hardly means anything. Maybe he's not her type? There are plenty of other guys at CHS she might be interested in." I argued. "That may be so," Rarity paused before continuing her impromptu round of 20 questions, "but what did she say after that?" “That she got my point?” I answered. Rarity was playing games again, and I could feel my frustration building once more. Rarity groaned, “No! She said something else after that, but she stopped herself, remember?” I thought back to last night again. I was trying to tell her she was more attractive than she gives herself credit for. And for what it’s worth, I did find her pretty cute, but I think all my friends are a certain degree of cute. That doesn’t really mean anything. But that’s not what I told her. She doesn’t know I’m bi. At least I don’t think she does. So I used a different example that wouldn’t sound weird. I told her there’s a popular boy who wants her, which is the truth. And she shifted awkwardly in her seat, and looked off to the side before answering. To be fair, I think Flash is technically yearning over a different version of me. That, and, well… Rarity was right. She didn't seem all that excited about it. But, like I said, that by itself means absolutely nothing. There was something else, though. She began to say something else, but when she decided against it, I just shrugged it off. That, and, well… Well… what? What was she afraid to say? That and what else? What did she mean? What else could she have said after that? I didn’t ask because I didn’t want to be pushy about something that's not really my business, but now that I’m thinking about it, it’s hard to imagine what she would have said after that. I could see the reason behind what Rarity was implying, but my mind was refusing to acknowledge that she had a point. As I sat there grappling with this revelation, Rarity returned to her smug smile. “It’s okay, darling. Take your time. I’ll tell you the answer when you’re ready.” I glared at her again, “She could have said literally anything after that. Plus, it was really late, she was clearly shaken up by her nightmares, and hadn’t been sleeping very well up to that point. Maybe she just started saying something and realized she didn’t have anything else to say.” “Sunset, darling, please,” Rarity appealed, “Before I was being playful, but now I really want you to listen to yourself.” “I am listening to myself! You’re just not making any sense!” I nearly shouted. “You’re rationalizing! Let me explain in full and I promise I will!” she argued. I furrowed my brow. The anger was certainly building, and the longer this conversation went on, the more I was beginning to crack. I even tried to open my mouth to argue once more, but instead I stopped myself and took another sip of coffee. Maybe if she fully gets it out of her system, I can refute it and we can be done. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. “If you look at that comment in a vacuum, it’s incredibly easy to reason what she said away for any number of reasons,” she elaborated, “But put it together with everything else that was said, and everything that happened after, and it’s impossible not to see you two have it bad for one another.” I rolled my eyes, but continued to keep my mouth shut. “You said all those sweet things about someone you’ve only known for a few weeks. You bolstered her confidence by talking up her intelligence and attractiveness, and she sounded completely flattered by everything you said.” “So what?” I asked. “Twilight is the type of girl to shoot down compliments,” explained Rarity, “If any one of us tried to say she was smarter than the Princess, she would have been quick to disagree and say we were just saying that to make her feel better. But because it came from you, she let it in.” I let out a sigh of resignation in response. She was right. If there was anything Twilight was known for, it was modesty. She took a sip from her coffee before continuing. “And then she asked to sleep next to you? In case she has a nightmare again? Darling, it doesn’t get much gayer than that.” I chuckled at that last remark, but I also felt the need to interject. “Okay, I’m going to interrupt you there,” I said. “If you knew the kind of nightmares she was having, it’d make perfect sense.” She shrugged, “That may be true, but don't you recall how she asked? Do you think a timid, jumpy girl like that would ask so shyly and meekly if her only concern was fear?" I pointed at her and opened my mouth to argue again, but, once again, there were no words. My chances of winning this argument were really slim, weren’t they? Once again, Rarity had a point. Between the two of us, she was certainly topping the scoreboard. As I took another sip of my coffee, I noticed how much cooler it had gotten. How long had we been standing here arguing? Rarity finished taking another sip. “And even with all that said, I still haven’t mentioned the whole thing with the whipped cream–” If I hadn’t been through half my cup of coffee, Rarity would have gotten a faceful of it this time. That comment completely threw me off, and I almost spat it at her, but the caffeine I’d had so far gave me just enough mental wherewithal to stop myself mere moments before disaster. “You said you didn’t see anything!” I shouted angrily. “I-I promise I didn’t see much else!” she stammered. “What the hell are y’all down here yellin’ about? It’s way too early for all that,” Applejack’s voice cut in as she walked down the stairs and through the kitchen doorway. Both Rarity and I looked over at her, then back at each other. I was still scowling, and she was smiling at me nervously. “Nothing,” Rarity answered, “I was just talking about an outfit I saw Sunset in not too long ago, and she got offended when I said it didn’t look that great. That’s all!” It was the most unconvincing answer I’d ever heard, but it was better than anything I could have come up with. Applejack didn’t look totally convinced, but she looked too half-asleep to care. Instead of giving a proper response, she just groaned and walked toward the coffee maker. Rarity and I walked to the living room. As we did, I leaned in close to her ear. “We’ll continue this conversation later,” I whispered through gritted teeth. She nodded in response, looking unbothered despite my clearly annoyed tone. “Good. I’m glad you’re ready to acknowledge your feelings,” she whispered back. There was a look of triumph on her face. She was satisfied that, while our conversation may not have had a proper conclusion, she had won when all was said and done. In all honesty, I wasn’t that mad at her. I was just really, really hoping she hadn’t seen that moment specifically. I felt twice the embarrassment I did last night. At least with Twilight, I could count on her not to tell anyone because she barely tells anyone anything as it is. With Rarity, it was only a matter of time before she told everyone else in the group. We both took our seats in the living room. I sat at the end of a couch while Rarity sat in one of the recliners. I drank the last of my cup of coffee and placed it down on a coaster at the end of the coffee table. We both sat silently until Applejack made her way into the room with the two of us. She took her seat on one of the other recliners as she and Rarity began having a conversation. Their words quickly devolved into white noise. My mind was too addled with exhaustion to pay attention to whatever they were saying. At least, that was part of it. When I said I wasn’t mad at Rarity, I meant it. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t mad at all. I was mad. At myself more than anything. Because Rarity was right. I had it for Twilight. And I had it bad. Twilight was cute. Twilight was so cute. She’s as cute as cute gets. As I stated before, I think all of my friends are a certain degree of cute. But as I sat there zoning out, comparing her level of cuteness to all my other friends, I realized she transcends any arbitrary rating scale I could come up with. Twilight is so cute, she gets her own definition of cute separate from everyone and everything else. Maybe I was ready to acknowledge my feelings. That was a terrifying prospect, but it was also somewhat comforting. Part of what was so hard about getting to sleep last night was the weight of what I didn’t want to acknowledge. How I didn’t want to acknowledge that I felt misplaced anger at the fact that she couldn’t see in herself what I saw in her. I didn’t want to acknowledge that I could pull all those genuine compliments from my head so quickly because they were all things I was already thinking. I didn’t want to acknowledge that, while I was tired when it happened, my subconscious mind knew exactly what it was doing when I wiped that whipped cream off of the tip of her nose. I didn’t want to acknowledge that I was so happy to hear she wanted to sleep next to me because that meant that I got to sleep next to her. I got to be that close to her. I didn't want to acknowledge that while I was doing a favor for her, I was getting more out of it than she was. I didn’t want to acknowledge that I wanted to be her fierce protector from the night. That I was secretly fantasizing about her waking up from one of those nightmares and grabbing onto me, burying her face in the crook of my neck. That I wanted to feel the breath from her nightmare-induced hyperventilation against my skin, gradually slowing as I held her close and ran my fingers through her hair. That I wanted to tell her that it’s all okay, that she’s safe, that I’m here and not going anywhere. That as long as I’m here, I won’t let anything bad happen to her. That I wanted to feel her body relax in my arms as her panic finally subsided. And then when she would finally calm down, we’d lock eyes. She’d look at me with tears streaming down her cheeks, the salt from them staining the pillow her head rested on. And then she'd say to me “Morning, Sunset!” Twilight greeted me and set her mug down next to mine. She sat on the couch right next to me and smiled. The whiplash I felt from suddenly being ripped out of the subconscious fantasy I was finally mentally engaged with after hours of violently suppressing stunned me for a few seconds. I shook my head quickly and tried not to act any weirder than I undoubtedly already seemed. “Hi, um, Twilight!” Smooth as silk. Awash on the shore of a sandy beach.