“When I said I wasn’t going out like this, I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Cheerilee mumbled, breathless. Twilight smiled willingly, a slight blush on her face. Cheerilee laid back as comfortably as a pony could as Twilight worked her magic. “You do know what you’re doing, right?”
“Of course I do!” Twilight defended, her lips drawn thin as she scrutinized Cheerilee’s fur from where she couldn’t see her. “I think. It’s not like I don’t do this with Spike,” she defended, her voice shaking. “Although, it is a little different.”
Cheerilee nodded. She wasn’t entirely surprised Twilight had experience doing this with Spike. They spent so much time around each other, it seemed like something that would come up. “Yes, I do imagine the scales—”
“And he moves so much! He gets so jittery that by the end of it he really makes a mess.” Twilight sighed, rolling her eyes as her hooves went to work. “It gets all over the floor and I make him clean it up.”
Cheerilee smiled. “Boys will be bo–Ouch! Careful Twilight!”
“Sorry! Sorry. I guess I really am used to working with scales. I’ll be gentler, I promise,” Twilight promised, looking over to Cheerilee’s eyes. “I guess this is my first time with another mare.” Putting a hoof up to her mouth, Cheerilee snickered. Confused, Twilight stopped what she was doing and faced Cheerilee. “What? What’s so funny?”
“Oh, nothing!” Cheerilee lied, taking no care to cover up that something was quite funny to her. “It’s just, I’m sure if somepony heard you said that, they’d think you were talking about something completely different!” Perhaps it was the years of teaching schoolchildren before, during, and after their cutie mark phase, but Cheerilee was quite apt at catching innuendo. Of course, she’d be lying if she said it was the children at all– it was her mother’s doing, plain and simple.
Twilight squirted more of a bubbly concoction unto her hooves as she worked it into Cheerilee’s mane, splashing water from the tub to help let the mixture sit in. “I’m really glad I picked up this mixture from Zecora for getting ink out of fur and manes, it’s been really useful whenever Spike bumps into the table while I’m working.”
“Mmhuh...” Cheerilee murmured from her relaxed position in the tub. She was more content with the feeling of Twilight lathering her mane and giving her an impromptu massage than the story behind the pleasant smelling shampoo. To be honest, Cheerilee thought Twilight had something completely different in mind when she suggested a bath, but she wasn’t about to argue the far more innocent results. Twilight was a different kind of mare than she was used to, and she didn’t mind it one bit. Perhaps she was finally growing up, emotionally, from that fast and furious mare she was in her youth, attending college at Canterlot U, touring the region with her glam rock band, never having to worry about her—
“So why don’t you want me to meet your mother so much?” Twilight asked. And there went the mood. Cheerilee would have groaned aloud, but Twilight’s hoof was rubbing around her ear. Under the cover of bubbles, Cheerilee’s leg started to twitch and kick. “So she sleeps around with other mares. It’s not like I didn’t see the same thing growing up in Canterlot.”
“Ssssss’not like thaaaat,” Cheerilee mumbled, her head leaning into the sensation of having her ear played with. “Mmm....” Her mother wasn’t to be trusted with her marefriends. Not ever. “Can’t let her do it.”
Twilight smiled, shaking her head softly. Cheerilee was being increasingly vague about her mother, but she had her ways of extracting information from an unwilling target. All she had to do was be a little unfair. Tickling the back of Cheerilee’s neck with her horn, Twilight knew she had an excellent representation for being able to provide the best scratchies. Where her hoof had been before, Twilight nudged her head gently against the back of Cheerilee’s ear. Instinctually, Cheerilee let out a guttural moan as her leg spasmed under the water as she leaned into Twilight’s horn. Smirking, Twilight pulled back, Cheerilee letting out an unhappy whine. “I can take care of myself, ‘Leelee,” she cooed.
With the loss of sensation from Twilight’s massage, Cheerilee tried in vain to lean back into her marefriend, mildly intoxicated from the sensation and pet name. Teasingly, Twilight’s hooves went back to scrubbing the ink out of Cheerilee’s coat instead. Grunting in frustration, Cheerilee opened her eyes to the slight sting of shampoo. “You don’t know what she can do, Twilight!”
“And I don’t plan to, either,” Twilight said, resolute. “You act as if I’m just gonna trot into bed with her first chance I get,” she said jokingly, leaning in to inspect Cheerilee’s mane for any hidden ink. However, the steady silence after her joke still hung in the air. After an entirely too long silence, Twilight turned Cheerilee’s head to face her with her hoof. “‘Leelee...? You don’t really think I’d do that? I was joking when I said your mother was a Succubus. I don’t really think she is!”
Cheerilee wouldn’t meet with Twilight’s eyes. Looking down into the water, she sighed wistfully, “She may as well be. It’s not like you’d have a choice. She does things to mares that... They can’t help themselves,” Cheerilee started.
“Of course there’s a choice. There is always a choice, ‘Leelee,” Twilight said. Shaking her head, Twilight let her hooves fall to the floor as she picked herself up. “I thought you’d be able to trust me by now.”
“I do trust you, Twilight!” Cheerilee blurted, spinning around in the tub and facing Twilight. Her leg slipped a little on the porcelain surface, causing her back end to slip out and create a hefty splash, coating the floor with water. “But I don’t trust her!”
Twilight kept her back turned. For a moment, her hoof picked up as it strode forward out the door. Then, she withheld it, lowering her head and sighing. “Then why won’t you let me meet her? For real this time.”
Cheerilee bit her lip, her legs slipping lazily into the tub. “Because she’s taken them before. My other marefriends. Past marefriends. Girlfriends. She practically turned it into an art.” Cheerilee exhaled hard and fast, her neck coming to rest on the bathtub’s edge. Rolling over, she put her head back, letting her sopping yet very clean mane hang over the edge. “Three of them. One when I started college, once when I came home with my degree. And my last one.”
Twilight raised an eyebrow, turning slowly back to the bathtub. “Wow, why?” Twilight would silently berate herself for her lack of tact later, but for now, she was too close to the knowledge she was craving to care. Trotting back toward the voice, Twilight found the bubbles that the ink removing shampoo were slowly starting to cover Cheerilee entirely. In an effort not to lose her to the oncoming wave of soapy debris, Twilight reached in and returned to massaging her marefriend, Cheerilee once again starting to kick her legs from the sensations. “That seems kinda seedy for a mom.”
The tub splashed and groaned. “I don’t know,” it said. “Maybe she likes the challenge. Nngh, right there, please.”
“You’ve never asked? I mean, she slept with your very special someponies,” Twilight began, “I’d probably ask my own mother why she felt compelled to do that.” Mental images crossed her mind of her own mother and Cheerilee in the throes of a sloppy makeout, and she reacted violently, shaking her head hard enough to cause a headache. Meanwhile, the bubbles had taken over whatever remained of her marefriend, and Twilight faced an ever-growing swarm foam that crawled up her forehooves.
From beyond the porcelain fence and rolling hills of soap, the rising bubbles called out their response. “She just–Oh sweet Celestia don’t stop– She called it ‘protecting me.’” The voice sounded defeated under all the lather, the bubbles releasing a silent cheer as they created a froth over the pony they had consumed.
“Protecting,” Twilight deadpanned, her hooves stopping. Cheerilee released an instinctual whine as her hooves stopped kicking about. The water in the tub came to rest, a shock of bubbles erupting out from where Cheerilee’s face was last seen as she sighed heavily. The foam screamed as their seemingly assured victory had been torn asunder, Cheerilee’s head breaking the surface once more.
Twilight pulled her mouth to one side, contemplating this new information. Her eyes danced over to her book, Asking the Difficult Questions to Your Significant Others that You Want to Make More Significant: For Eggheads (Ninth Edition). Smiling as her plan went off without a hitch, Twilight nodded in affirmation. Drawing her hooves out of the bath, she aimed herself toward the door once more. “I’m going to give that mare a piece of my mind.” Behind her, a scrambling of hooves a tidal wave of water came crashing down as Cheerilee rushed to get on her hooves. The froth roared with victory as it quickly invaded the bathroom floor, searching for new land to establish in the name of their god, Shahm Puuh.
“Twilight, no!” Cheerilee pleaded, her forehooves dangling over the edge of the water. Below her, the bubbles expanded its crusade against the floormats, making it very difficult for her to find a landing spot. A large number of household accidents stemmed from the bathroom. “She’s my mother!”
Twilight stopped, if only for a moment. “Well, I need to tell her that I am off limits.”
“But, but—”
Twilight turned back, not with malice but with a smile. “I’m your mare, Cheerilee, for as long as you’ll have me. She just needs to understand that.” Turning back around, Twilight made for the door, tracking wet hoofprints as she went. “Be careful about getting out! You’ve made a big mess and I’m not asking Spike to clean up after you!”
Cheerilee gulped audibly. “C-come back! Twilight!” she called. There was no response. “Your mane is still full of ink too!”
“I know a spell!”
An empty silence followed.
Cheerilee blinked. Nearby, the ninth edition of Asking the Difficult Questions to Your Significant Others that You Want to Make More Significant: For Eggheads lay open. Using the skills brought on from years of teaching, she read the title of the chapter from her position in the bathtub. Chapter 11: How to Get Your Somepony to Spill the Beans and Reveal Embarrassing Secrets. Her mouth tasted like copper as she slinked back into the tub. “They didn’t cover that in the Eighth Edition,” she murmured. She chastised the fact that her funding these days didn’t always allow her to keep up with the newest editions due to budget cuts.
Seeing that there was no way she was going to chase Twilight Sparkle through Ponyville, sopping wet and screaming, Cheerilee retreated into the warmth of the bath. As the water came up to her chin, Cheerilee’s eyebrows furrowed as she gave the inky water a hard glare. “What does she mean she has a spell!?”