John woke up content.
Despite the events of the day before, it had been the first time in years he had gotten a full night’s sleep, he opened his eyes to findthe young purple mare sleeping at his side, bringing a smile to his face.
He simply laid there, just looking at her sleeping shape noticing the details on her face; the rounded snout that stood for her mouth, her slow and even breathing, her lavender mane and the part of her mane he once thought was just highlights, which he soon realized were actually part of her mane.
“How much longer are you going to be staring?” asked Twilight with her eyes still closed.
“As long as you stay here on bed, Twily,.” John replied with a mocking tone.
Twilight tried to break the embrace they were currently in, only to find out John was keeping a tight grip on her.
“Let me go, Johnny,” she asked with a smile on her face.
“I didn’t hear a please,” John once again mocked
Twilight laid there with her brow furrowed and reluctantly gave a comeback.
“I could just kiss you right now, you know?" she finished with a slight blush, obviously regretting what she had just said..
The understanding, followed by horror on John’s face did enough, and he broke the hug and pushed himself to the opposite edge of the bed, the look of terror still on his face.
“John?” Twilight began once enough time had passed.
“Yeah?”
“We are to never speak of this.”
“Speak of what?” added John, doing a zipping motion across his lips.
Both of them did an instant double-take before busting into a long winded laugh, it quickly came to a stop as a realization came to John's mind.
“I got paid yesterday.” he realized that in his rage, he had forgotten his paycheck.
“Will you be okay getting it?” Twilight asked with concern.
“Yeah, I will. They can't really do much more to get to me... Besides, I have you to cheer me up if it were to happen, right?" he gave Twilight a quick glance but he felt uncertainty in his gut, mistrusting his own words, he shook the feeling away and made his way to his old job, hopefully for the last time.
“Very well, good luck ‘Johnny-boy’.” Twilight giggled at the nickname flustering John at the mention of the awkward choice of a nickname, but he couldn’t be mad at her, he couldn’t anymore, especially at something this silly.
“Alright Twily, don’t break anything, you hear?” Twilight was about to argue but John dashed out before she could start."If I'm not here, I win!"
"Come back, you coward!" she called from the room, a small gasp of surprise still audible from outside the room.
“I am such a bad influence on her.” John spoke out loud giving a quick chuckle as he got out of the house. Such a great day!
...
It was pouring outside.
“Nice try, 'Mother Nature', too bad that my perfect climate involves rain,” John called out to the skies, mocking nature itself, not even the the planet’s constant climate changes would sour his mood.
Not too long after, he made his way into the restaurant and directly to the main office, but stopped once he noticed Michael, his head popping into the small cubicle office, talking loudly.
“… Come on, Dad, I need the money bad, I need to go to Isaac’s.”
'Dad? Did he just call his own boss Dad?' John waited there for a while, until Michael went back inside and John made his move to pick up his check, he ignored his boss and simply did what he had to do. 'No need to do more than I have to' He thought annoyed.
As he was about to make his way out, everything fell into place.
'I was fired because of Michael… Since I didn’t introduce him to Twilight, he told his ‘daddy’ to fire me,' the ridiculeosness of it all made him falter, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made.
"You son of a..." he cursed, retracing his steps but this time made his way to the kitchen where Michael was cooking.
“You got me fired, you made you daddy fire me,” John started, not wanting to beat around the bush.
“Heh, I don’t know what you are talking about, get out of here, punk,” Michael half-laughed.
“She didn’t want to meet you, what do you want me to say?” At this, Michael turned and simply replied.
“I don’t give a shit about your bitch.”
John stood in shock, but that shock was quickly replaced by anger, Michael simply turned his back to him while John went through a mass of emotions on the spot. He took a deep breath, and relaxed.
"Hey, Michael?" he called.
“Now what do you wa-” his words were interrupted by John’s fist connecting with his jaw, and Michael fell to the floor thanks to the force of the punch, he stared at John dumbfounded not believing what had just happened.
“You can call insult me, you can hurt me, you can even get me fired!” he felt the clichéd words come out of his mouth, but he felt they fit the situation nicely. “But you never, EVER, insult her!"
Michael just sat there taking everything, not expecting the sad excuse of a man to fight back in any way, and for the first time in his 'great' life, he felt fear at the person towering over him.
“Keep your fucking job,” and with this, John walked out of the restaurant for the last time, he was never going back there anyway.
As soon as he made his way outside, someone followed and stopped him on his tracks.
“John?” a voice called. He knew that voice.
“What is it, Dana?” he replied, his partially forgotten feelings resurfacing once again, his crush quickly catching up to him. Odd, I have never called her directly by her name, he'd realized, mostly referring to her as 'Miss'.
“I saw what you did, and honestly, it wasn’t okay,” she told him with obvious disapproval in her voice.
“I know.” He didn’t have an excuse for it, but he wasn’t going to apologize either.
“I can forgive you in one condition,” John turned to look at her and saw she was fidgeting , that was unusual enough to gain John’s attention, not that anything she did before hadn’t done that.
“Shoot," he said confident, he was gonna play along.
“You take me out to dinner this Sunday!” she replied with a coy smile.
'Maybe I was being too harsh, I can visit this place from time to time,' John thought as her words sank in.
~~~~~
“…Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle.”
Twilight finished the report as she finished most of her letters to the Princess, it was a long report as she took notice of the over forty packs of scroll, she imagined having to cut it down to avoid Spike the displeasure of sending that many scrolls.
'Or maybe I will let that be his punishment,' she thought amusingly, oddly enough, she was okay with it. 'John really is a bad influence in me.'
She moved to her satchel and inserted the scrolls, but she got that guilty feeling as soon as she did, she knew she had told him on the first day, he had obviously forgotten, but they had gotten so close that she didn’t want to remind him of it.
She fell her ears droop as her sadness took hold, but she quickly subdued herself, she needed to be strong for the both of them, she knew this had to happen, John probably knew about it to a certain extent as well.
“Tomorrow, I will make it a fun day for both of us,” she thought this and felt a knot in her stomach, she was having troble accepting the fact.
“That I will have to say goodbye…”