//------------------------------// // When It Rains... // Story: We're Gonna Get There Soon // by Cranberry Muffin //------------------------------// With the storm situated and in full swing, it was time to call it a day. Exhausted, coat rain-slicked, Thunderlane flew home, thoughts of warm blankets, feather pillows and sleep flickering through his mind. It was pouring; the storm wasn’t scheduled to end until early the next morning. The prep team had worked hard –it was a big storm- and he was incredibly tired, his hoofsteps leaden as he trudged up the stairs. He nudged open the door to his room wearily, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the semi-darkness. A searching glance around revealed a fluffy towel tossed over the arm of his shabby recliner. It just sort of hung there, almost as if left by accident, though Thunderlane knew the towel’s presence was nothing short of deliberate. He smiled, trotting over to snatch the towel and dry himself. It was things like this that made him even more certain that no matter what his friends said, Derpy was one of the most thoughtful, sweetest mares he’d ever met. Even before they had started dating, she had been leaving him towels after he had storm prep assignments – She just did things like that, sometimes; things that in the past had made him stop and think about how others didn’t really know her. Things that now made his heart flutter. A quiet rustle of sheets caught his attention, and it was then that he realized she’d left not only the towel but herself in his room as well. Still in the process of drying his mane, he turned, noticing for the first time the lump curled in the middle of his bed. She was asleep, scrunched up in a little ball, his down blanket pulled up under her chin. It wasn’t unusual for her to sleep in his room; they did spend nights together sometimes. Not every night, but often enough that his parents had stopped looking uncomfortable on mornings the young couple trotted downstairs together – They didn’t cause a commotion and Rumble hadn’t seen anything he shouldn’t yet. Derpy still maintained quarters in the attic, though his parents had stopped charging her rent a few months back, and they sometimes slept in his room, sometimes in hers, sometimes separately. But it was unusual for her to be squirreled away in his room, sleeping, when a major storm was raging outside. Something was up. Finished with his mane, he almost dropped the towel on the floor, then remembered, no, her towels were important to her, and took an extra few precious seconds to hang it carefully back over the arm of the chair. It wasn’t the best place for the towel to dry, but he would hang it in the bathroom later. In any case, it was better than leaving it on the floor and he knew she would appreciate the gesture. She stirred slightly when he flopped down on the bed, mumbling something incoherent, and he smiled again, reaching over to push a lock of straw-blonde hair from her face. For a moment, Thunderlane just watched her sleep. He had never found her to be breathtakingly beautiful, nor was she smoking hot like some of the other mares around town. But she had a sort of prettiness that was impossible to put into words – When his friends questioned it, he always just told them she was cute. He had no idea how to even begin explaining what exactly it was about her... But it was something about the sweep of pale lashes across her cheeks or the sweet way she smiled when feeling shy or the way her messy mane always fell in her eyes... Or maybe it was just that she was so different from everypony else. But whatever it was, he very rarely looked at her these days and saw the clumsy, awkward mare that the rest of Ponyville saw. “Wake up, sleeping beauty.” His voice was a teasing whisper as he nudged her gently with his muzzle, trying to coax her back from whatever dreamland she’d entered. At first, she curled up a little tighter, burying her muzzle in a foreleg, not quite ready to surrender to the conscious world. In her dreams, she was everything she would never be awake – Graceful, majestic, capable. Nopony laughed at her and everypony was her friend. But her dreams weren’t something warm she could reach out and touch and there was nopony there that nuzzled her as sweetly as Thunderlane, or told her silly lies about how she was pretty and that she could do anything she set her mind to. And that was why she reluctantly cracked an eye, peering at him from beneath a curtain of her own hair. “I am not.” She mumbled in regards to his fairytale reference, rubbing one hoof against her eye and yawning. The half-hearted protest wasn’t unusual; this exchange occurred between them often. It was typically followed up with a sleepy kiss or a nuzzle or even just a warm smile, however, not this sort of quiet withdrawal. Thunderlane nudged her again, attempting to draw her out of her blanket cocoon and figure out what was wrong. They’d known each other long enough for him to know that while she was usually upbeat and cheerful no matter what, she sometimes had these moments where everything seemed bleak and dreary. Nopony could remain happy all the time, and though Derpy tried her best to always stay positive, certain things brought her down. And one of those things must have happened that day, because she looked as gloomy as he’d ever seen her. She rolled over –still tangled in the comforter- and promptly fell off the bed, landing on the floor with an audible “oof” and a muffled sniffle. Thunderlane edged his way along the mattress, peering over the side at the sorry lump of blanket and grey mare on the floor. “Hey…” His voice was gentle, eyes lit with concern, “what’s going on?” She looked up, one eye focused on him, the other lowered to the floor, and as she caught his gaze, so caring, her lower lip began to quiver and her golden eyes brimmed with tears. She opened her mouth to speak, but no sound came out save for a teeny whimper. Any thoughts of sleep still lingering in his mind fled at the look on her face and he slid off the edge of the bed to sit beside her, helping her from the tangle of fabric and pulling her close. She fell heavily against him, knocking him off balance and into the side of the bed, her forelegs creeping around him in a clingy hug, muzzle pressed into his neck. “Rumble invited me to school.” She finally whispered, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears still threatening to overflow, “For Family Appreciation Day.” Thunderlane drew back slightly at that in order to look down at the disheveled mare in his lap. “That’s…good.” He replied uncertainly, blinking amber eyes in confusion, “…Isn’t it?” There was a long silence, broken only by a rumble of thunder from somewhere outside. Derpy took a shuddering breath and relaxed her grip on the stallion, shoulders sagging. “It’s good, except I’m not part of your…f-family.” Her voice caught on the last word, trembling, and she sank further to the floor, burying her face in her forelegs. And that was it; it suddenly all made sense. Derpy didn’t speak often of her family, but he knew they were a very sore spot for the disheartened mare. Something had happened -something between her and her parents- that had driven her from her former home and into the streets of Ponyville with only a handful of bits in her saddlebag, looking for a job, a home, a meal, a fresh start. Thunderlane still wasn’t quite sure what had happened, just that it was bad. She didn’t often even hint at the fact that she so much as had any existing family. Most ponies in town assumed she was an orphan and she let them believe it, though Thunderlane had learned from both Raindrops and Derpy’s own vague comments that her parents were alive and kicking somewhere in the ritzy section of Cloudsdale. Whatever had transpired leading up to her flight to Ponyville must’ve been horrible for her to pretend her parents were dead. He had never pressed her to talk about it before and, though he was curious, he wasn’t about to start now, not with her looking like she wanted to crawl under the bed and hide. “Derpy…” He knew he needed to say something, but, well…Words had never really been Thunderlane’s strong suit. Taking a quick moment to think on what would be the right thing, he hunched down next to her, resting his cheek on his own forelegs as he peered at her. “I’m glad you’re not part a my family.” Her muffled sob was a very clear indication that that was decidedly not what she wanted to hear and he rushed to explain. “I mean…If you were foaled into my family, I wouldn’t, you know, like you the way I do. You’d just be a sister or a cousin or an aunt or something, ya know?” He stammered, hoping what he said made sense, “And I like it way better with you as that special somepony who listens to me and waits for me to fly home together after work and leaves me towels when I have rain duty.” He paused, letting her just digest those words and hoping they helped. She peeped up at him, still sniffling, the fur around her muzzle damp with tears, though her eyes had brightened a little. Encouraged, he edged a little closer, nuzzling one of her ears, and she offered him a shaky smile. “Besides…” She was looking at him fully now, her eyes still shimmering with tears. He leaned in, resting his forehead against hers and rubbing their muzzles together in her favorite form of ‘kiss’. “You’re the family that I picked for myself, not the family I’m stuck with. Believe it or not, I want you by my side, not some other mare.” “Yeah?” She whispered, returning the gentle nuzzle, her heart skipping a beat. She closed her eyes, just listening to Thunderlane’s rumbly voice, and soaking up the nice things he was saying. Not many other ponies were aware, but she knew his big secret -- he was a big softy. And what she didn’t know? It was her that made him soft and mushy. “Yeah.” He grinned, giving her a quick kiss before nudging her in the direction of the window, “Now can you take a look at the wicked storm I made and at least pretend to be scared so I can act all macho and protect you?” She giggled, dragging herself up off the floor and trotting behind him to the window, where she brushed aside the pale blue curtain and gazed out at the darkened sky. Though the steady beat of the rain against the windowpane obscured her view of Ponyville, she was still able to catch a glimpse of a brilliant flash of lightning. A delighted shiver ran down her spine and she sank back down on her haunches and snuggled against the solid warmth of his chest. “Thunderlane?” Nestled in his warm embrace, she knew she was safe. Not from the storm, no, the weather never frightened her, but rather from her own insecurities. He would protect her always, from herself and the sometimes dark thoughts that chased away more pleasant dreams of soap bubbles, plush towels, and freshly baked muffins. “Yeah?” He mumbled, distracted by the faint scent of clover that clung to her mane. She always smelled springtime fresh and despite her usually tousled appearance, her mane and tail were silk-soft. I love you. The words flashed through her head as bright as the lightning outside, scaring her more than the storm ever possibly could. She didn’t voice them, however; neither of them had ever spoken those three small-yet-powerful words out loud. She had turned them over in her mind many times in the past couple months and had come to the conclusion that there was nopony else she could ever imagine saying them to. Now would have been the perfect time; now, after he had basically implied that he wanted to marry her someday. But still, she couldn’t quite manage to get them out, settling instead on a safe, far-less-personal “thanks.”