//------------------------------//
// Whirlwind 
// Story: Larger Than Life 
// by Equimorto 
//------------------------------//

"What are you doing here?"
"Oh, she's with me." Rainbow took a half step between Rarity and Trixie. "I asked her to hang out."
Rainbow's friends looked to her with varying degrees of surprise and confusion, and hints of botherment. So did Trixie herself. "You didn't tell me they were going to be here too."
"They're not." Rainbow walked up to Trixie and turned to look at the others. "I was just hanging around them while waiting for you. I mean, we can hang around with them if you want, but I was thinking we would, you know... I asked it like a thing between us." She swayed back and forth on her feet, looking a bit nervously between Trixie and the other girls.
Sunset put a hand to her mouth and snickered in realisation of something that wasn't clear to Rainbow herself, while Rarity and Applejack looked at each other, trying to understand if they were coming to that same conclusion. Pinkie just smiled.
Trixie cleared her throat. "No, it's fine. I also took it to mean we'd be the two of us, and I'm sure you've got something planned." She glared sideways at Rainbow. "You do have something planned, right?"
Rainbow sheepishly rubbed the back of her head. "I... Yeah, of course I do," she lied unconvincingly.
Trixie rolled her eyes. "Come on. Let's go, I'd rather not waste my time." She turned and began to walk away.
"Have fun you two," Sunset said while waving, as Rainbow was left awkwardly miming a goodbye to her friends before rushing after Trixie.
They caught up with each other a few metres away, far enough to talk normally without being heard by the other group. "I just figured we'd hang out together, do whatever we want. I'm sure we can come up with something. Do you have anything you want to do?"
Trixie's bitter expression mellowed out. "I'll think of something." She had a brief look around the mall, stopping in her tracks. "There is that new ethnic food stand I've been meaning to try."
"Neat." Rainbow looked around absentmindedly as she waited for Trixie to start walking and take the lead again. "I'm always down for food." She looked at the other, and saw her still not moving. She suddenly felt very awkward. "So, huh... Enjoy the show yesterday?"
Trixie quirked an eyebrow momentarily, then let it rest. "It was a good show, yes. You and your friends do make for a fairly decent band, I won't deny that."
"And we're so mediocre you came there to listen to us, huh?" Rainbow walked up to Trixie and nudged her in the side with an elbow.
"I had nothing better to do," Trixie said. "And they had free snacks."
"They did? They didn't tell us." Rainbow frowned in genuine, frivolous disappointment. Trixie looked at her, then snickered. Rainbow pouted and blinked. "Did I say something funny?"
Trixie looked to the side and sighed. "Nothing, nothing." She raised her head. "Right. The food stand. I think it's this way." She began to walk again.
Rainbow followed behind her, at least happy she seemed to be in a better mood again. "So what's this ethnic thing anyway?"
What it turned out to be was closed. After a few wrong turns and unnecessary escalator ramps, that Trixie tried and largely failed to justify as her wishing to check out this or that corner of the mall, they found the specific place they'd been looking for wasn't open that day, with no indication of why that was. Hungry both from thinking about eating there and from the extra wandering, the two girls decided hamburgers from the closest shop were a good enough substitute for the food they had been denied.
They sat on the upper corner of a wide stair ramp, largely empty as clients around them favoured escalators or elevators, Trixie carefully trying not to get herself too dirty with her food while Rainbow seemed to care very little about the issue. This, and the extra time Trixie spent watching Rainbow eat with the kind of morbid fascination typically reserved for a parasitically infected bug's peculiar looking symptoms, meant Rainbow finished her food while the other was still barely halfway through. As a result, she got up by herself to throw away the wrapping paper.
Trixie looked at her go, eye level with her belt, then looked back to her hamburger as Rainbow returned. When she sat down again, Trixie felt and heard her even without looking, and after swallowing the bite in her mouth she spoke. "So, like. What are we?"
Rainbow raised a quizzical eyebrow at that, then realising Trixie wasn't looking at her added in a questioning huh.
Trixie had taken another bite, and she finished munching on it first. "This feels like a date."
Rainbow blinked. "Huh," she said, again, less in confusion and more in realisation. "Yeah. I guess it could be a date." She blinked again, blushing. "No, wait. We could just be friends, hanging out."
"But you don't want me to be with your other friends."
"You don't want to be with my other friends."
"Sunset is fine." Trixie took a small bite to chew through it quickly. "I'm happy to not be around Pinkie though."
Rainbow smiled, a bit too triumphantly given the context. "We're just friends of two different friend groups that happen to intersect at me."
"I didn't know you knew that word." Trixie let her jab linger as she ate some more, then asked, "And this other group is compromised of exactly just me?"
"Yeah."
Trixie looked at Rainbow with the disappointment of an elementary school teacher watching a child fail the same basic task twice in a row after having it explained to them.
Rainbow's smile faltered. "Well... Do you want this to be a date?" Her expression suddenly seized, caught between a few different impulses as she thought things through. "I'll have you know, there are people who'd go to great lengths for a date with me!"
"I'm aware CHS has students who fail their classes, yes." Trixie was halfway through munching when her face went through much the same as Rainbow's had. Her tone suddenly shifting she added, "And I will have you know there are just as many if not more people desperate for a date with the Great and Powerful Trixie."
"And yet you're always on your own." Rainbow blurted it out on instinct, and immediately regretted it.
Trixie glared at her, eyes retorting how the same was true for Rainbow without the need for her mouth to speak it. She crumpled her hamburger's wrapper while swallowing the last of it, and as she did so she frowned as a thought occurred to her. "Well, none of them are good enough." She looked over Rainbow. She pouted and frowned a bit. Talented guitar player, gifted athlete, local hero. "I guess you're good enough." She stood and went to throw her own stuff in the trash while Rainbow sat there, dumbfounded. She came back to Rainbow still sitting like that, though in fairness it had only been less than a minute.
Strangely though it was actually Rainbow herself who broke the silence first, snapping out of her stupor. "So, uh... I mean. Yeah, I'd be- I mean of- I mean..." She had to stop, take a deep breath with her eyes closed, and slowly exhale. "I wouldn't mind this being a date. You're pretty cool too, I guess."
Part of Trixie wanted to ask if Rainbow was saying that because she meant it or because she was desperate. Another part of her wanted to just take the ego boost and roll with it. Realistically speaking, Rainbow was pretty, popular, outgoing, and probably had more than a few advances made on her. She wasn't sticking to Trixie as a last shore, she was most likely genuine in declaring her enjoyment regarding the situation. "So, date then?"
Rainbow looked up awkwardly at Trixie. "I guess. If we want to. I mean, if you want to. If not we can just be friends." She shifted awkwardly in place, then stood up. "But I wouldn't mind being more than that, I think."
Trixie looked her straight in the eyes. "Do you have any idea what you're doing?"
Rainbow put a hand to the back of her neck, smiling awkwardly. Trixie was starting to realise it happened somewhat often. She was starting to realise it was really cute, too. "Not... really. Never been into a proper relationship." Rainbow immediately bit her tongue, realising she didn't actually want to say that.
Trixie would have poked her about that, but knew better than to criticise someone over something when it applied to herself as well. Or at least she pretended to in that moment, acting much unlike her usual self with a veneer of reason to cover for it. She realised after a while that she'd just been standing there, looking at Rainbow. "Cool," she said, the first thing that came to her lips in an attempt to break the silence. She was dating Rainbow Dash then. Sort of. Maybe.
"Cool," Rainbow echoed, seemingly just as lost in her own moment of contemplation over the situation. Silence stretched again as the two girls looked at each other on top of the stairs. "Should we, like, kiss?" Rainbow asked after a bit.
Trixie sputtered herself out of her trance. "Uh... Later. In private." Her heart skipped a beat in realisation. "You can come to my place later. Can you come to my place later?" She caught sight of Rainbow's nod. "You're coming to my place later." A date. The girl she was dating coming to her house. "Ice cream."
Rainbow raised both eyebrows in surprise. "We just ate a burger."
Trixie was already storming off, having grabbed hold of Rainbow's wrist as she marched past the stairs. "I said we're getting ice cream."
Ice cream they did get. The conversation died down for a bit as both were preoccupied with licking through their cones before the heat could send their contents tumbling to the ground. The risk of that was minimal in the artificial just a little too cold to be comfortable climate of the mall, but both girls pretended it was not so so they could push off conversation for a bit and gather their thoughts.
They were mostly positive thoughts. Trixie thought Rainbow was a fun enough girl who she'd found she had more in common with than she'd thought. Rainbow thought Trixie looked pretty, and was good at banter. Trixie thought dating Rainbow would sound nice when she was such a prominent member of anything sports related and generally well looked upon by the other students. Rainbow thought Trixie's antics were probably fun and maybe she'd get to assist her with a stage performance or something. Trixie thought it was weird that Rainbow was licking deep enough into her cone to have it bumping against her nose, and was so focused on that she did not notice the same was true for her as well. The same went for Rainbow.
Until they both realised it. They looked at each other, mouths hidden by their hollowed out cones. They laughed. They finished their ice cream and stayed quiet, unsure of what to say, looking occasionally around the mall.
Rainbow pushed her hand towards Trixie across the space between them on the bench they sat on. Trixie noticed it, and did the same. Then a bit more, both of them. Then their fingers locked together. The two looked up from their hands and into each other's eyes.
Rainbow blushed, shifted her cheeks a couple of times without opening her lips, then finally spoke. "How's the date thing going, then?"
Trixie was unsure of how to answer. "Well enough, I think," she said, sincerely yet without much certainty.
"I'm glad." Rainbow smiled. Trixie smiled back. She was suddenly tempted not to wait until being in private.