The Flamingo, located at the corner of Halter Avenue and Second Street in what out-of-towners charitably called “downtown” Ponyville, was not a gay bar. It was also not a lesbian bar, or a trans bar, or even a bisexual-but-leaning-towards-whatever-makes-their-parents-not-look-at-them-like-that bar — not because any creature of any identity was not welcome there, but simply because it was all of those bars at once.
The fact was, Ponyville was a properly small town even with a Princess-in-residence, and there just wasn’t a market for multiple iterations of the same core concept — a lesson which The Riding Crop, The Lumbermill, and sWitch had all harshly learned in unfortuitous years prior. And so rose The Flamingo, unanalogously phoenix-like, from the ashes of economic despair, along with its informal motto: “If you’re queer, you’re here.”
Frankly, Applejack would’ve rather been anywhere else at the moment — under a riding crop being beaten black and blue, for instance, or being run through a literal sawmill. But instead, she was in a half-moon booth at The Flamingo, both hooves throttling a largely untouched Old Fashioned, sitting next to two of her closest platonic friends and staring pointedly across the table at her dear cousin Braeburn, instead of at the stallion next to him who he’d introduced earlier that day as his new boyfriend.
“So,” Rarity said, distractedly swirling the stem of the cherry in her Tom Coltlins, “how did you two meet?”
“Oh, it’s just the cutest story!” Braeburn crooned, voice rising from tenor to treble as he threw a foreleg across the broad barrel chest of his beau. That beau, of course, being a hulking, red-horned, midnight-black warhorse self-styled as “King Sombra,” whose hoof alone was the size of an imaginary baby and who Applejack had last seen chaining up an actual living baby. “There I was, carrying a load of apples down the road, and I just stumbled right into him! He was lost, didn’t have a place to stay, so I took ‘im home, got ‘im fed and watered, and… oh, it was love at first sight, wasn’t it, my little stray puppydog?”
Sombra said nothing. Applejack glared at him. Braeburn stared lustily at Sombra’s bulging pecs, his hoof slowly creeping underneath them. “And now ‘stead of apples, I’m more often carrying his–”
“Oh, how precious,” Rarity interrupted in a loud monotone. “And descriptive.”
“What?” Applejack snapped, her glower briefly changing targets to the other unicorn at the table. “Gay stallions have sex sometimes. Just like straight ones. You got a problem with that?”
“We’re all friends here, Applejack,” was Rarity’s even-toned reply, punctuated with a sip of her beverage and a sizzling stare. “Do try to keep that in mind. Rainbow, you had a question for our guest, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Rainbow Dash said. Squinting, she raised a questioning hoof towards Sombra. “Didn’t you die?”
“Rainbow Dash!”
“Sorry! Just, um… thought we killed you.”
Rarity shut her eyes, sighed, and took another sip. The unicorn’s attention thus diverted, Applejack went back to glaring daggers, swords, and claymores at her cousin’s nonplussed partner.
“You did,” Sombra said plainly, in a gravelly bass that sent an appropriate shudder down Applejack’s spine and, from the looks of it, an entirely inappropriate one down Braeburn’s. “Twice.”
“Huh.” Rainbow Dash gestured vaguely with her still-extended hoof. “Sooooo… you got better. That’s cool.”
“Much better…” Braeburn lustily added.
Before Applejack could get her objection out, an interjection interrupted her — an excited squeal from the sixth and final member of their bar-going crew. “Oh my gosh, this place is so much fun!” Twilight gushed, fluttering up over the table so she could land bodily in the empty booth seat between Rarity and Applejack, a colorful and umbrella-bedecked cocktail held tightly in her magical aura. “Pinkie and Fluttershy are really missing out!”
“Miss Pie is expecting, darling,” Rarity gently reminded her. As a tittering pair who were more pleather than stallion passed their table, her voice dropped a register into something more like a mutter. “And I imagine living with Discord makes this place seem rather quaint.”
“Well, I think they’re missing out,” Twilight declared. “I sure feel like I have been. I didn’t even know Ponyville had a gay bar!”
“We know you didn’t, Twilight,” Applejack said quickly, and sort of accidentally through her teeth. She meant to say the next bit that way, though. “Braeburn, can we speak privately for a moment?”
“Sure thing, sugarcube!” Braeburn replied, ignoring Applejack’s grimace as he craned his neck up and planted a smooch on Sombra’s chin. Rainbow Dash and Twilight stared after the two family members as they slid out of the booth and headed towards the bar. Once they had gone, the former returned to staring at Sombra, and the latter looked at Rarity.
“You know I… wait, what does that mean?” Twilight asked.
“Don’t worry about it, Twilight,” Rarity gamely replied.
“Was I supposed to know about it?”
“Drink your Mai Tai, Twilight.”
Twilight did, and immediately forgot she had been worried at all. “Oh, it’s good. Rarity, it’s so good.”
===
“What’s up, cuz?” Braeburn asked once they stopped, practically preening as he propped himself up against the bar. The bouncy club music pumping through the overhead speakers wasn’t that much louder here than it had been at their table, but Applejack shouted her response anyway.
“You know good and well what’s up, Braeburn!”
“Well, your hackles, for one,” came Braeburn’s catty reply. “You are in dire need of a stronger beverage, sweetheart. Yoo-hoo, bartender!” He raised a hoof and gave a dainty wave, leaning towards Applejack and whispering through his toothy grin. “What’s the bartender’s name?”
“Candy Corn,” Applejack said, before she could think better of it. “Don’t look at her, she’s an ex. Focus on me.”
Braeburn’s gasp could’ve kept him alive in Seaquestria for a fortnight. “She’s your ex?” he trilled. “Well, now I have to meet her…”
“Braeburn!”
“Whaaaat?” He followed Applejack’s glare — or with the “nc, nc, nc” of the music, maybe it could’ve just been a glance — back over towards Sombra. “Ugh, AJ, relaaaaax! You’ll love him once you get to know him!”
“Braeburn,” Applejack said, each syllable enunciated with surgical precision, “I do know him. He’s a monster.”
“Oh, tell me about it…”
“I mean a literal monster! The warlordin’, genocidal kind!”
“Pfft, come on, it was hardly a genocide. Not by the international definition, anyway.”
“Oh, stars above…” Applejack groaned — for more than one reason. The bartender had finally reached them, and regarded Applejack with a look that needed no poetic embellishment.
“Hey, Applejack,” Candy Corn muttered.
“Howdy, Candy…” Applejack answered, doing her best to hide beneath her hat.
Candy’s attention turned to the stallion who’d summoned her. “What can I do you for?”
“Martini, darlin’,” Braeburn said. “Up and dry as my cousin here, if you please.”
“Tell me about it…” Candy said under her breath.
“ThankyouCandythat’llbeall,” Applejack calmly informed her.
Candy departed, grabbing a bottle of gin from the nearest well as she went, and Braeburn watched her go with obnoxious fascination. “Oh, I like her,” he said. “Why’d you break up?”
“I made bad choices in high school, we’re not talkin’ about it,” Applejack quickly replied, before bracing herself with a sigh and a foreleg against the bartop. “Braeburn, I love and support you. Always. No matter what.”
“And yet I’m sensin’ a smolderin’ cigarette ‘but’ in that statement.”
“But… I just have some concerns, that’s all. About… things. Stuff. Your stuff.”
Braeburn rolled his eyes, his head, and practically his whole body. “Oh, Element of Honesty, my frog,” he said, daintily bumping Applejack’s shoulder with a just-so-angled hoof. “Just say what you feel, cousin. Promise I won’t be upset.”
“Okay, then,” Applejack said through a tight nod. “Your boyfriend’s a psychopath and I think you should break up with him before we have to kill him a third time.”
Despite the locale, a pregnant pause followed. “You understand that when ponies tell you to ‘say what you feel,’ it’s usually rhetorical,” Braeburn intoned.
“Braeburn, I’m serious!” Applejack insisted. “Sombra’s dangerous. He should be on trial for war crimes, not stringin’ you along until…”
“Until what?” Braeburn’s tone remained smooth and level, but his gaze took on an unsubtle pointed tilt. “Who’s being strung along, cousin?”
Applejack sighed and backed down. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I just… I worry about you, Braeburn. I want you to be happy. And–”
“And I am, darlin’,” Braeburn said, throwing a foreleg around Applejack’s stiff shoulders as he giggled. “Gosh, I love that word. Your friend’s Rarity a visionary.”
“Sure, but–” Applejack tried to say.
“Dry martini,” Candy Corn interrupted, sliding a stemmed glass her way. Applejack sighed again, took the glass, and raised it to her lips.
“Thank you, Candy–”
Candy’s eyes widened, Applejack felt a towering presence behind her, and her mouthful of gin nearly splattered all over Sombra’s chest.
“–Consarnit, don’t do that!” Applejack snarled once she’d finished coughing.
“Do what?” Sombra rumbled.
“Sneak up on ponies! It’s rude.”
“I addressed you three times in the last several seconds.” His gaze rose languidly to the bartender. “I wanted to know where the restroom was.”
Candy Corn’s brow rose, but she stood her ground. “Down the hall there, on the left.”
“You’re a doll,” Braeburn told her, before his own eyes landed — or rather, descended — on Sombra. “And you could use some company, I think.”
“Oh, for–” Applejack started.
“Don’t wait upppp!” Braeburn sang over her.
As her cousin dragged Sombra away, Applejack sank down onto the bar, face in her forelegs and hat feeling a thousand pounds heavier on her head. In the blackness around her, she heard somepony click their tongue.
“Well, no accounting for taste,” Candy Corn murmured.
“Thank you for your input, Candy,” Applejack growled without looking up.
There was an uncomfortable-trip-to-the-convenience-store pause.
“You still have one of my scarves, by the w–”
“Stop talkin’, Candy.”