“I could get used to this!” Ember yelled jubilantly, slamming her mug of cider down and grabbing at a basket of rubies on the table.
“You might wanna get used to slowin’ down, sugarcube!” Applejack bellowed back, words ever so slightly slurred, and took another healthy swig from her own cider mug. “Wouldn’t want you to get the good batch all over yourself.”
“Heh! An’ that’d be…what would the problem with that be?” Ember replied, words similarly slurred and cheeks similarly tinted. “You’d…you’d get to see me all wettish. On the front. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
“Guilty as charged!” Applejack crowed, spreading her forelegs like her favorite buckball team had just won a championship game. “Though that ain’t true’n spirit.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ember pointed a talon at Applejack. “So what’s the truth, then?”
“I like lookin’ at you aaaaaaaall the time!” Applejack replied.
The two of them managed to hold in their laughter.
For two seconds.
Then the room exploded into the ugliest laughter the cabin had seen since its conception. Loud guffaws degenerated into hacking coughs and phlegmy snorts before kicking right back up again, hooves and limbs were slammed into the table with all the regularity of an inebriated judge, and the couple at the table keeled forward and leaned back in jerky shudders as fresh spasms of mirth gushed out of their gaping maws. It was as if both of them had borne witness to the world’s greatest joke, and were the most inarticulate audience in the world to express their appreciation for it.
At one point in time, Ember’s empty mug got knocked over and clattered loudly across the wooden floor. At a different point, Applejack’s hat wound up on Ember’s head, and Ember’s claws wound up in Applejack’s mane. By the time both of them came to their senses, or the closest approximation of such that two intoxicated individuals could reach, Applejack’s head was in Ember’s lap, humming a tune that Ember couldn’t recognize.
Being responsible adults, both of them decided that more cider was in order.
Clarity returned to Ember in the abrupt, unsettling realization that she was no longer sitting at a dinner table. She, and Applejack, were sprawled out on a red couch on the far side of the room. The soft strumming of a guitar poured out of a radio sitting on a counter near the refrigerator, backed by the slightly softer sound of Applejack’s slow, even breathing.
Shaking her head a little, Ember stretched and looked around at the havoc the two had undoubtedly wrecked. She glanced back at Applejack, then at the dinner table again. Then back at Applejack one last time, before—with a stretch and a yawn—standing up, walking back towards the table and picking up a mug
By the time Applejack stirred, sat up, stretched and looked around, Ember had already picked up all the utensils and both the mugs off of the floor and was washing her hands in the kitchen sink, right next to a stack of freshly-cleaned dishes and tableware.
“...Huh.”
Ember looked back. “Oh, hey, you’re awake.”
“Never…never slept. Jes’...closed my eyes for a little. You know how it gets.” Applejack rubbed her face with her hoof, then peered at the dishes. “Aw, criminy, Ember, you ain’t gotta do those.”
“Well, yeah, I don’t have to. But I am.” Ember stuck her tongue out at Applejack. “Bleh.”
“But you’re the guest! Guests ain’t—”
“Yeah, I’m a guest. Not a total freeloader. Honestly, I’m just kind of sad you woke up before I had a chance to do the dishes.” Ember chuckled. “Figured you’d have thought it was a nice surprise.”
“I wasn’t sleepin’—”
“Resting your eyes, right, I getcha.” Ember raised her claws placatingly. “Still, though. I’m allowed to do nice things for you too, right?”
“...Yeah. I guess you ain’t wrong about that.” Applejack stood up off of the couch, arching her back slightly.
“Aww, really?” Ember quirked a slightly exasperated eyebrow. “You’re using that tone again. Do you really want to just wait claw-on-foot for me?”
“Not all the time, no.” Applejack dipped her eyes groundward for a moment or two as she trotted towards Ember. “Jes’ figured…jes’ figured that if you had to do the dishes an’ help out with stuff, it wouldn’t be…”
“Wouldn’t be…what?”
Applejack’s face went red. “Well, shucks, now it’d just sound stupid to say.”
Ember snorted in amusement. “You’re gonna say it anyway, aren’t you.”
“Wh-”
“Because you know that I’ll make fun of you regardless of what you say, but I won’t judge you for it. And because I’ll badger you incessently until you tell me, because…” Ember leaned forward and booped Applejack’s snout. “You’re cute when you get flustered.”
Applejack tried to cover her face with a foreleg and almost unbalanced herself in the process, teetering around for a couple moments before righting herself. “Aw, Ember!”
“Yeees?” Ember grinned impishly. “So are you gonna tell me and get it over with, or—”
“Storybook.”
Ember paused. “...Uh. What?”
“Wanted things for you to be perfect. Princess-like, or queen-like, or what have you. Like one of them fancy romance novels Rarity loves so much.”
Ember snorted in amusement, body spasming for a brief second as if trying, and failing, to disgorge a wellspring of laughter that had already been tapped. Shaking her head slightly, she shook her hands dry, walked over to Applejack and cupped her cheek with her claw. “Fire in the skies, AJ, I swear you’re getting more like your curly-maned friend every time I see you.”
“It weren’t—”
Ember reached up and scritched Applejack affectionately behind her ear. Almost immediately, Applejack’s body relaxed, head reflexively tilting to allow Ember to scritch her more easily.
“I know. You weren’t gonna rent some huge, frou-frou castle and have us dress up like royalty and put roses and candles everywhere while we slow dance in the middle of some grand ballroom and all that other ridiculous junk. But I think you forgot that I like the practical part of you too, okay? It’s like…like in the pony world, everydra…everypony’s sugary and cutesy and unwilling to ever risk getting so much as singed by a spark, and then in the dragon world everydragon’s unwilling to work together to build so much as a single smelter or forge and they all burn their bridges like bridges were meant to be torched. And then there’s you.”
Applejack remained silent.
“You’re sweet, but not sugary. Cute, but not cutesy. You put in the work to build cabins when nodragon asked nor expected you to, and you’d probably chop the head off of any dragon that deigned to even singe your bridge. And you take risks.”
“Do I, now?”
Ember chuckled. “You keep company with a dragon. The queen of the dragons, no less. But I suppose if you wanted to settle down with some nice, fresh-faced rock farmer…”
“I ain’t ever gonna mix apples an’ rocks together. That’s how you get bad cider made by a couple’a conponies.” Applejack’s ear twitched in amusement. “Heck, why would I want to date a farmer, anyway?”
“What, you ponies don’t all think alike?”
“Heck no!” Applejack arched an eyebrow. “Besides, even if it was an apple farmer from some other family, why would I want more of the same in my life? Kin should stick together an’ cherish the same things together, but love…you can’t love a mirror. It wouldn’t feel right if there weren’t some kinda difference between me an’ my special somepony.”
Ember scritched Applejack behind the ear a little more, causing Applejack to thrum with contentment. “Pretty sure you got your wish there. No offense, but the day I give up ruling and help plow fields all day is the day I give away my scales.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Ember returned to scritching behind Applejack’s ear in silence, punctuated only by the ticking of a nearby clock. Eventually, Ember checked the time. “Ugh.”
“Somethin’ wrong?”
“Not to bring things down, but I’m gonna assume that you’re the kind of pony who loves getting up early in the morning.” Ember looked pointedly over at the clock. “And it’s pretty close to midnight.”
Applejack tilted her head up towards the clock and frowned. “Shucks. How’d it get so late?”
“That’s the sort of question that’s probably got an answer similar to ‘what happened to all the cider?’ ” Ember replied, pulling her claw away and stretching. “Mmm. So you never did point out where your bedroom is.”
“Guest bedroom’s the second door on the left.” Applejack stretched. “Should have everything set up for—”
“I was asking where your bedroom was, silly.”
Applejack froze.
Ember reached over and ruffled her mane. “Look, I have scales. That obviously means I’m cold-blooded, regardless of any actual research done on dragon physiology. Which means that if I don’t get as much body heat as possible, I’ll freeze.” Ember’s lips curled into a smile. “So…”
Without another word, Applejack grabbed Ember by the wrist and tugged her down towards the room at the end of the hall.