“Holey mother of Celestia shouting fus ro dah.” Rainbow tried to let go of life and let the crushing oblivion take her, anything to be rid of this infernal headache. Her mouth tasted like something yellow and distinctly hairy found lying at the back of a disused cupboard. Her head felt like it had been repeatedly bashed with a sledgehammer and then injected with cotton wool. She groaned and wished a pox on Applejack and her cider. She cursed and cursed but it didn’t help.
There was a thunderclap from overhead that sent shooting pains through Rainbow’s skull. Upon reflection, it was actually someone saying something. Rainbow raised a hand and waved it unsteadily. “Shhh, not so loud,” she whined, pitifully.
“I brought you some water and honey.” Fluttershy spoke even quieter than usual, making her the best person in Rainbow Dash’s, rather muzzy, world.
Rainbow managed to push herself in to something like a sitting position. The expected jolt of pain from the light glaring through the windows did not come. Rainbow looked around and saw that Fluttershy had already drawn the blinds. Rainbow thought for a long moment about what to say, considering the most eloquent way she could sum up how she was feeling right at this moment. “Ouch,” she decided.
Fluttershy smiled kindly. She held out a teaspoon with something golden on the end. “Suck on this, it’ll make you feel better.” Rainbow took the spoon and sucked the honey off the end. She handed the spoon back to Fluttershy who took it and handed her a glass of water.
Fluttershy didn’t speak much until Rainbow had polished off several more spoons of honey and another two glasses of water. When she did speak, she spoke hesitantly, as if not sure she should be saying what she was saying, but saying it regardless. “Rainbow… what do you remember of last night?”
“Fluttershy,” Rainbow was still groggy, but felt a bit better now. “It’s a myth that people who get really drunk forget what happened. Mostly people just say that they can’t remember anything that happened the night before because it’s too embarrassing. For example, if I was the dishonest type I might pretend that I don’t remember kissing… you… um… oh fuck.”
Fluttershy blushed a little. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have let you, it’s just, you took me by surprise and, well, it was so nice and I, um, oh goodness.”
“Fluttershy, do me a favour would you?” Rainbow said, wincing as Fluttershy’s voice rose in panic.
Fluttershy nodded.
“Just, shut up for a minute.”
Fluttershy opened her mouth to respond but then closed it and nodded again.
“Good.” Rainbow carefully ordered her thoughts before she spoke again, something wasn’t right here, she was missing something. “Hang on a minute, did you say, ‘It was nice’?”
Fluttershy squeaked.
“Are you saying that you’re actually happy, despite being kissed while you were in a drunken stupor?” Yes, something was definitely wrong.
Fluttershy shook her head. “I wasn’t drunk, Rainbow. Turns out I have a stronger stomach than you thought, besides, it’s not like you gave me anything too strong.” To emphasise the point, Fluttershy knocked hard on her head, causing Rainbow to wince. “See? No hangover.”
Rainbow tried not to reflect on how Fluttershy had drunk an entire bottle of vodka and survived let alone stayed sober. It didn’t work.
“How the hell are you still alive?”
Fluttershy smiled cautiously. “I’m not sure I follow.”
“Never mind. Look, could we talk about this whole thing later, once I’ve decided whether or not to kill myself?”
Fluttershy frowned, trying to believe she had heard sarcasm in Rainbows tone. “So… you’re not mad?”
Rainbow looked a little surprised. “Mad? Why would I be mad? That was the best kiss I’ve had since…” Rainbow flopped back onto her bed, muffling a cry of both frustration and pain. She sat up and sighed, obviously this couldn’t wait. “Could I have more honey please? Also, there should be some pain killers in the top draw in the kitchen, if you wouldn’t mind grabbing them for me. I think if I tried to stand I’d probably pass out.”
Once the second most effective relief from the headache that threatened to blind her had been ministered (the most effective being arsenic) Rainbow took a deep breath and spoke. “You know how me and Pinkie are always flirting?”
Fluttershy looked mostly nervous but there was something else there as well; hopefulness? “I think you mean ‘Pinkie and I,’ but yea?”
Rainbow waved a hand in dismissal of grammar on the whole. “Well, she also kisses me sometimes… quite a lot actually.”
“But I thought you said you haven’t kissed that many girls.”
“Yea, I don’t really count Pinkie. It’s nice and everything…” Rainbow thought for a long moment, staring off in to space. “Always tastes like sugar.” She flushed slightly and cleared her throat. “Anyway, I don’t really count that because she kisses me as a friend, she’d probably kiss the principle if the whim took her. The point is, that it’s just another level of the friendly flirting to her.”
Fluttershy nodded, unsure. “And, what does this have to do with me?”
“Nothing, really, just using an example. Point is; we can just say we got blind drunk and started being a bit too friendly. Nothing else needs to be said. We can effectively remove the last-” she glanced at the clock on the wall, “-fourteen hours from our memory and—” She looked back at the clock. “Shit!” she said, with great feeling. “We should both be at school!” Rainbow stood up and began to bolt around the room, too frantic to remember to be in crippling agony.
Fluttershy stood too. She was thinking hard. It was the logical thing to do of course. She and Rainbow had only been friends for a short while; things could get really uncomfortable if they weren’t careful. It made sense; people could do practically anything under the influence of alcohol and then get away with just saying that they were drunk and didn’t really mean it. Fluttershy disapproved of this mentality when it was applied in the context of ‘My housebound is a good man, really, but he was drunk.’ But in this context she should wholeheartedly approve… then why am I trying to convince myself? Why do I keep coming up with logical reasons why we should forget about this when all I really want to do is kiss her again?
“Come on, move it.” Fluttershy was snapped out of her reveries by Rainbow waving a hand in front of her face and shouting. “We are currently running so late for school that, if you don’t move you’re sorry arse, we run the risk of being early.
Fluttershy resolved to think about this later. Rainbow was right, she needed to move.
“This is way unfair, Pinkie. When I told you how I felt, you said you would help me ask her out, not start going after her yourself! How could you do this?”
“You’re acting like I chose to feel this way! I know how much she means to you, do you think for one moment that I wanted this?”
“You promised to help! What if she likes you back? What then? Are you just going to say yes?”
“Well that hasn’t happened yet, has it?”
“But what if it did? You know how much it would kill me.”
“I can’t stop feeling this way and I’m bloody well sure that if she asked me out, then there is no chance in hell that I would say no.”
“You bitch! I thought you were my friend! You said you would help, not steal her from me!”
“You stop talking about her like she’s some object! I can’t steel her because you don’t own her! If you two were already together that would be a different story, but you’re not. You have no right to stop me from asking her!”
“That’s not what friends do!”
Pinkie opened her mouth, as thought about to speak, but then she closed it and walked away.
Derpy stood in the oval, tears still burning in her eyes and sliding down her cheeks. After a minute, she walked away too, intent on finding someplace where no one would see her cry.
Fluttershy wandered through the oval, on the lookout for her friend. She was thoroughly confused and felt in need of someone to talk to who wasn’t Rainbow Dash.
Fluttershy paused in her searchings when she heard a small sob. Coming from a hollow in a nearby tree. Fluttershy walked over and peered inside to see Derpy, curled up in to a little ball and sobbing hard. Within seconds, Fluttershy was crouched over, cradling the sobbing girl in her arms. “What’s wrong, baby?”
Derpy looked up to see who it was. “H-h-hello F-F-Fluttershy,” she managed between her tears.
“Deep breaths,” said Fluttershy, soothingly. “It’s ok, whatever happened, you can tell me about it.”
“It’s-it’s-it’s-it’s.” She gave a huge sob and gave up.”
“Shh, it’s ok, just take a deep breath.”
Derpy managed to take a shuddering breath and then another. Once her crying had eased off a little, Fluttershy sat back. “Now, tell me what happened.”
Derpy wiped her eyes and sniffed. “P-Pinkie Pie… has a crush on Twilight. She-” Derpy sobbed, “she said that she was going to ask her out. And-and now… who would chose me over Pinkie? Why would she do this to me? I thought we were friends.” Derpy wailed pitifully and began sobbing again.
Fluttershy rubbed Derpy’s back comfortingly. She felt lost for words, what was she supposed to say in a situation like this? “You’re very sweet, Derpy, I’m sure you stand just as much of a chance as Pinkie.” Even to her the words sounded false.
Derpy looked at her with tear filled eyes. “Look at me, F-Fluttershy. I n-n-never stood a chance, I’ve just been kidding myself this entire time.”
Fluttershy cradled the girl in her arms as the sobbing continued. There was nothing else she could say to that. There was no consolation for the truth.
Rainbow was all but running through the halls of Omnas Mannis in search of her salvation. At last she came upon the one person she could always count on to be there.
“Pinkie, we need to talk, come with me. I think I screwed up big.”
Pinkie smiled widely. “I heard Fluttershy went to visit your place last night. Now, Dahsie, what could have possibly gone wrong with a mad crush and a bottle of vodka?”
“Just come with me.”
Once the two were out of earshot of anyone who might wish to listen in, Pinkie piped up. “So what did you two do last night?”
Rainbow blushed. “Um…”
Pinkie gasped and hugged Rainbow tightly. “You two hooked up last night?”
Rainbow blushed even more and said, quickly. “No, no, no nothing like that. I got really drunk, and I maybe sort of kissed her.”
Pinkie frowned. “Wow, Dashie, the drunken kiss? Why were you even drinking when you knew that Fluttershy was coming over? Surely you’ve heard of this concept called drunk people do the things that their sober selves wouldn’t consider for two seconds?”
“I had a hard day and you were all kind enough to give me alcohol, I just… I don’t know, I guess I just didn’t think.” Rainbow rubbed the back of her neck, looking rather sheepish.
“So anyway, you kiss her, fall to a mad passionate make out session and wake up with your mouth tasting like the bottom of a birdcage, what happened then?”
“Well, something kind of strange happened. Fluttershy’s never had alcohol before so I decided to pull a bit of a prank.”
Pinkie was practically grinning from ear to ear. “Dashie… what did you do?”
“I… um… told her that vodka is really weak stuff and she drank a whole bottle.”
Pinkie doubled over laughing. “And you’re feeling guilty for killing you girlfriend?”
“No, that was the strangest part, she didn’t even get drunk. No hangover, no tipsiness, no nothing. I actually wanted to ask you if that was really vodka.”
“Yup, that was the real deal. So let me get this straight: you kissed a sober Fluttershy whilst you were pissed out of your mind… and she isn’t mad at you?”
“Last night is a little fuzzy but I distinctly remember her saying something strange. She-she asked me to kiss her again.”
Pinkie considered this for a moment. When she spoke, her tone was thoughtful. “So you kissed a sober Fluttershy who asked you to kiss her again. What did you say?”
“I realised I was drunk and so I put us both to bed.”
“Well, if I were you right about now, I’d be asking Fluttershy how she felt about me.”
“I can’t just ask her,” said Rainbow, indignantly.
“Well you can hardly ask me how she feels. Look, I’ve got things I need to deal with and you have kissing to do.” Pinkie leaned forward and gave Rainbow a brief kiss. Rainbow couldn’t help but think of what it had felt like to kiss Fluttershy. Pinkie winked. “Go get her.”
Rainbow shoved Pinkie away, playfully. “Oh, and, if you find the time, could you ask Twilight if she might be able to explain why Fluttershy is so alcohol resistant?”
Pinkie waved that away with one hand as she headed off on her own unfathomable mission. “Yea, yea, I’ll do that.
Pinkie Pie was lucky, she supposed, being able to hide her emotions so well. The whole time she had been talking, she had half hoped that Rainbow would see the very definite way in which her friend wasn’t crying. Pinkie knew this wold never happen, though, it never had. She never let anyone see her sad, but every time she put on the mask, she would wish, deep down, that someone would see, and let her cry.