“Darling?” That sweet angelic voice gently coaxes you out of your slumber, as you feel a silky smooth hoof gently push against your shoulder, prodding it.
You let loose a throaty groan as your head spins, the world around you slowly sliding into view. The gentle throbbing in the back of your skull is making things difficult, but after a moment or two of gathering your thoughts, you can make out the familiar shapes, sights, and sounds of the boutique. You reach down with a hoof and feel the soft satin cushion of Rarity’s luscious purple couch.
You hear somepony breath a heavy sigh of relief, and you look to your right to see Rarity hovering over you, her cherry-red lips curved upwards into a soft smile as she curls her hoof around your shoulder. The soft touch sends shivers dancing up and down your spine. Rarity’s sweet blue eyes and caring smile easing your troubled mind and thumping heart.
“Hi...” You mumble, grinning at her.
“Hello.” She responds, lightly giggling.
Suddenly the realization that you’d fallen on your apology gifts hits you, and your smile fades. “I got you some gifts...”
“I saw that.” She responds, her horn lighting up as she retrieves a throw pillow at the opposite end of the couch, the small red and blue cushion fluttering above your head for a moment. “Can you sit up for me?”
You do so, grimacing as you crane your head upwards, your achy neck and head making the movement difficult. Once you’re properly supported, you let out a sigh of relief, and remorse, gently closing your eyes as you expel the air from your lungs. “I’m sorry.”
You open your eyes to see Rarity staring down at you sympathetically. “Why, whatever for darling?”
You let out a heavy hearted sigh. “Your gifts... they’re ruined.” You gently fold your front legs together, nervously toying with them. “I wanted to apologize for h-hurting you.” You feel sadness welling up in your chest, carving a pit into your stomach. “B-but all I managed to do was ruin that too...”
Rarity’s soft blue eyes twinkle with sympathy as she curls her hooves around your head, pulling you close. “Now, now honey, let’s not turn on the waterworks just yet.” You rest your head against the soft fur of her chest, her touch comforting. “Your flowers are fine honey, you didn’t fall on them.” Your ear twitches as you perk up in surprise. “The chocolates were a little smooshed, but it’s chocolate, the shape of each piece is hardly an issue, the taste is what’s important.” You can hear her give her red hot cherry lips a delectable smack. “And as far as I can tell… they’re just as good as last time.”
You chuckle, despite your current wreck of an emotional state. Simply being like this with Rarity was calming you down. You can still feel the lingering fear in the back of your mind, and flashes of that twisted creature’s crooked smile keep appearing every time you close your eyes. The nightmares, they’re getting worse…
“I think I’m losing it Rare…” You mumble into her chest, gently pressing your lips against her bare body, kissing at her tenderly, desperately seeking some form of comfort from the unicorn. “I’m gonna wind up a basket case if this keeps up…”
Rarity giggles and gently pushes against your head, signaling for you to stop your incessant kisses. For a moment you worry that she’s still upset with you for hurting her, that the emotional rift you’d created before leaving the boutique was only widening with each pathetic attempt to display your affection. Thankfully, the tender peck on your lips says otherwise.
“Everything will be okay darling, I promise.” Her voice is reassuring, though no matter how much you want to believe it, you don’t think you can.
You let out a single bitter scoff, it makes Rarity’s smile fade, you immediately regret it. “I don’t know about that Rarity… I mean, I’m hallucinating for Celestia’s sake.”
Rarity’s expression morphs into one of surprised concern. “Hallucinating!?”
She sounds worried, maybe she should be, if you’re starting to see ponies that clearly aren’t there there’s no telling what you might do. “Yeah, I could’ve sworn that my dad was here…”
“Um…” Your ear twitches as Rarity’s face scrunches up. “Darling, that wasn’t a hallucination.”
A look of dismay passes over your face, your head grows light, and for a moment you worry that you may pass out again. Your father? Here!? NOW!? You jolt up a little bit, your head swimming from the sudden movement, Rarity quickly thrusts her hooves against your chest, forcing you back down.
“Now don’t you dare!” Rarity’s sudden stern tone demands your attention. “You’ve already fainted once today darling, I won’t have you doing it again.” You feel a displacement of weight on the couch as she hops off, her horn lighting up as she gently fluffs your pillow once again, with a smile she makes a small motion with her hoof. “Go on, lay down.” She points towards the pillow, and you do as you’re told. A soft sigh of satisfaction sliding past your lips once your aching cranium comes into contact with the soft silken pillow.
Rarity smiles at you, pleased to see that you’re doing as she commands with little fuss. “Now, why don’t you just stay right there, collect your thoughts, while I go upstairs and bring down your parents?”
You grimace, parents? As in plural? More than one!? Your mother hadn’t sounded pleased when she’d sent you that letter… you can only imagine the severity of the serious verbal thrashing that’s soon to come.
“Parents… fantastic.”
“Oh do try to be civil darling!” Rarity implores, puffing out her lip in a show of minor annoyance. “They’ve been wondrous guests so far, and meeting them has been very pleasant. Can we try to keep it that way?”
You chuckle a little, you don’t plan on yelling them out of the boutique, it’s true there’s some tension there between you and your father, though it’s far from vitriolic. Of course, all she’s working off of is some minor details she’s managed to glean by you and, undoubtedly, your parents. Who you don’t imagine are too keen on giving up any information, marefriend or no, they likely don’t know Rarity well enough to reveal anything important.
“What’s so funny?” Rarity inquires, genuinely curious, your chuckle having caught her attention.
You grin. “Rarity, they’re my parents, I love them dearly. You don’t have to worry about us having a boxing match in the living room.”
The fashionista rolls her eyes. “I’d certainly hope not, this is a boutique, not a boxing ring.”
You let out another mirthless chuckle. “Really? So I should refund all those tickets I’ve been selling around town?”
Rarity’s tail launches forward and smacks you playfully on your shoulder, the silky smooth hair brushing against your own, tickling you. With nary a word she heads towards the stairs, a touch of a scowl passing over your face as she flinches when her bruised hoof comes into contact with the bottom step, before she shrugs off the pain and keeps trotting. The gentle thumps of her hooves fading away as she makes her way up to the second floor of the boutique.
You sigh and lay your head back down upon the comforting pillow below, an upset sigh slipping past your lips. You still felt guilty about that, even if Rarity seems to have forgiven you. Odds are you’ll never be able to forgive yourself for it.
You take these few moments of isolation to collect your thoughts, you don’t know how you really feel about seeing your parents, part of you is excited, eager to see your family again after spending so many long months away. Yet another part is frightened, you’re worried that they may bring trouble, more than you’re already dealing with. Your life, and not to mention current mental state, has taken a severe turn for the worse. Seeing them again, well, you can’t shake the worry that all they’ll do is heap more trouble onto you. Even if they do it with the misconception of good intentions.
You don’t even really know why they’re here, come to think of it. Though you can fathom a guess, your mother always was a tad worrisome… You can recall one specific instance back when you were a colt, back before you’d even gotten your cutie mark. You’d been out roughhousing with a group of the local boys, nothing too serious, just doing what colts do when they’re young, that is, emulating whatever it is you happened to see on the telivision.
Though you can’t recall all of the specifics, you know by the end of the little play session you’d ended up with a bloody cut across your right leg, nothing serious. You’d tripped over a branch that had come from one of the trees your father had planted in the back yard a few months prior to the incident, he’d had their growth enhanced by magic, which wasn’t too uncommon of a practice for the upper echelon bourgeois society he belonged to. After all, why wait for natural growth when you have money right?
Well, after heading home for the night your mother had spent the better part of the afternoon tending to your cut and fussing over you, cleaning it, disinfecting it, making you promise to be more careful. All things a somewhat overprotective mother does when her child harms him or herself. See, thing is, you can’t necessarily call your mother ‘somewhat’ overprotective, not without it being a massive understatement anyway.
Because, though all that stuff was something reasonable for a ‘somewhat’ overprotective mother to do, cutting down all of your father’s freshly planted trees the next day is something you’d liken to a ‘massively’ overprotective mother.
A chuckle slides pasts your lips as the fond memories flow through your mind, a little spark of happiness that’s brightened your otherwise bleak day. This little spurt of joy quickly dissipates however, when you’re confronted with the fact that this situation could lead to a rather undesirable outcome. Despite your affection for the fashionista, you can’t help but shiver at the thought of being forced to tell her what you’d done.
Rarity, though you’d been quick to dispel her worries, did have a right to them. It’s a pretty well known fact that you and your father, though far from outright hostile to one another, do have your rough patches.
You release a disheartened sigh, stretching out your legs and popping your back, trying to get a bit more comfortable. Your head throbs slightly in response to the movement, and you reach up with your scarred hoof to rub at it softly, trying to soothe the pain, you must have hit your head when you blacked out. You let out another sigh… of course you did.
Up the stairs you can make out the sound of muffled voices, followed by the creaking of the bedroom door. Despite the unintelligible sense of the words being spoken, you have little trouble assigning them to their respective speakers, the familiar gruff yet honeyed tone was that of your mothers, she held a voice that was tough, demanding, and cynical, yet deeply caring and affectionate for all things around her at the same time. You repress the urge to smile at the sound, it had been so long since you’d heard her voice… it was nice… reminded you of significantly less depressing times.
This was of course followed by the cool disinterested tone of your father, remarkable in its unremarkability, you father had the smooth suave voice of a businessman, something that was deep and inviting, yet equally firm and standoffish when it needed to be, which was to be expected of a natural smoothtalker. After all, your father’s special talent was the management and relegation of income, you can’t do that for years on end and be as successful as he is without knowing how to sweet talk your way out of a dire situation or two.
“Well, there you are!” Your ear twitches in response to the sound of rapid pounding hooves, and you sit up just in time to see your flustered mother barreling towards you at a speed Rainbow would be hard pressed to match. Her long golden mane frayed at the ends and her light pink mascara running down her cheeks as her scarred face scrunches up into an expression of remorse, panic, and paternal affection. You open your mouth to say something, but feel your voice stolen away as she rears up and pulls you into the tightest hug you think you’ve ever felt in your entire life.
“Oooh! I missed you so much…”
You sheepishly return your mother’s embrace, forcing out a rough chuckle as you gently pat her back.
loosen up a bit.”
It appears your words don’t necessarily have the desired effect, as her grip only seems to tighten, enough to make your vision blurry.
“Would serve you right!” She practically growls at you. “For worrying your poor mother like you have!”
Your attempt at a heartfelt apology doesn’t get much farther than a gurgly ‘I’, which is followed up by an unsettling ‘ack’ noise.
“Please don’t tell me you drug me all the way out here just to kill the poor boy Spring Petal.” You hear your father speak up, and his burly frame slides into view, obscured slightly by your mother’s golden mane.
After a huff you feel your mother’s grip finally unlatch itself from around your neck, and you suck in a few much needed breaths.
“Not like I’d be able to anyway.” She responds, shooting your father a smirk over her shoulder before shifting her focus back to you. “From what Rarity’s told me you’re pretty hard to kill.”
You shrug, sheepishly rubbing at your now sore neck with a hoof. You couldn’t necessarily deny that claim, in a few short weeks you’d gotten your leg cut open, fallen down a flight of stairs, and been crushed by a bookcase. All of which you’d survived, a few new scars and partial blindness notwithstanding, you’re not really any worse for wear.
“Darling, are you feeling well enough to walk?” You look over to see Rarity approaching, rounding your mother as she lays a gentle hoof on your leg.
Your legs still feel a little heavy, and the ache in your head hasn’t quite dissipated just yet, but those issues become little more than minor annoyances as you stare into Rarity’s hopeful gaze. You’d put her through so much lately, you don’t want to make her worry anymore. It’s true that all you want to do right now is lay back down and collect your shambled thoughts and give your injured body a little time to rest, but you’ll tough it out, just this once, for her.
“Yeah… just give me a little room?” You inquire, Rarity’s cherry red lips curve upwards into a smile as she takes a step back, giving you a little space.
It takes a moment, but after a bit of stumbling and fumbling you manage to ease yourself into an upright position. Your legs wobble a bit from the sudden shift in position, but you manage to regain your balance after a second of stabilizing your body up against the soft velvet cushions of the couch.
You suck in a deep breath, shooting the ponies around you a calming grin as you get used to standing again. Their worried expressions and anxious shifting is doing little to assuade your own worries, but after a second or two of self doubt and temple rubbing, you manage to take a few uneasy steps forward.
Rarity’s face lights up with relief in response to your apparent ability to walk without falling all over yourself and, once you’re close enough, you give her a reassuring peck on the cheek, doing your best to muster up a grin.
“See? Never better!” You say with a tiny chuckle, effectively lying through your teeth.
“Aww, how sweet!” Your mother coos, shifting her mood again at such a speed you begin to wonder if she might have some sort of split personality disorder. You honestly wouldn’t be that surprised… it’d explain a lot actually, now that you think about it.
You feel a red tint color your cheeks and Rarity’s seems to light up the same way. And you feel like a young stallion in high school bringing his first marefriend home to meet the parents, despite having gone through that situation more than once, this feels like the first time for some reason. You don’t know whether or not to attribute that to the fact that you actually care about the marefriend in question, or just because you haven’t been in the presence of your parents for so long that it’s almost jarring.
“Seriously!” Your mother pipes up again, grabbing up your father’s right leg and affectionately rubbing her head into his chest, which makes him flinch a little in surprise. “You two are just adorable. I’m so happy our son finally found a mare as lovely as you are Rarity.” You see Rarity’s blue eyes dart away for a moment out of the corner of your eye, before refocusing your attention back on your mother as she wheels back around on your father, smiling at him. “Aren’t you, Garnet?”
Your father fumbles over his words for a moment, apparently he didn’t expect to be put on the spot like that. He awkwardly clears his throat and throws his eyes around the room, as if thinking of something to say.
“Um, yes.” He states, very matter of factly.
You manage a small chuckle. “Yes?”
He nods, smirking. “Yes.”
Again, you chuckle. Out of the corner of your vision you can see Rarity’s sides deflate ever so slightly, clearly letting loose a pent up sigh of relief. You barely manage to resist giving her an insulted look. You’d hoped your reassurance from earlier would be enough to assuage any worries she might have had concerning you and your father’s rocky relationship, but alas, she still seems to harbor some doubts. Maybe it’d help if you were privy to how much she actually knew about said relationship. You’d assumed that she’d be kept in the dark a little longer, but, that was before you knew your parents had spent the better part of the day keeping her company. Then you begin to wonder if one of them had let something slip… though you doubt it, your parents were a pretty cagey pair, and you doubted either of them were foolish enough to start spilling out all the nasty little details.
You grunt and force those dark thoughts away. You have time to worry about what Rarity does and doesn’t know later, for now, you should deal with the situation at hoof.
“So, son, I’m sure you have your fair share of questions.” Your father states, his large round eyes soft and sympathetic.
You give your head a gentle nod in the affirmative, smirking while you do so. “Yeah, a few.” You reply, you were fairly certain why they’d come to visit. Your mother had likely been scared half to death by your letter, it’s now you realize that skipping over that tidbit of information might have been a wise decision… But she’s here now, and there’s really not much you can do now. Short of going back in time and rewriting history… which you’re pretty sure is impossible. Or at least very, very, hard to do. You might as well just make the most of their visit, after all, you had been feeling a bit homesick lately. And maybe a little time spent with them might help you deal with the recent spikes in... issues.
“Well, your mother and I were talking while you were asleep.” Your father explains, continuing on from where he’d left off. “And we were hoping you and Rarity would be willing to show the pair of us a fine place to eat. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m feeling a bit peckish, and I think a nice dinner might help us all… unwind a bit.”
You open your mouth to speak, only for a small rumbling noise to cut you off. You look to your right to see Rarity placing an embarrassed hoof up to her lips, nervously flicking her sparkling blue eyes back and forth between your parents, who were chuckling lightly in amusement.
“W-well…” The fashionista spoke, voice uncommonly timid. “I’m certainly not going to get any work done today.” She cocks her head to the side, offering a small encouraging smile. “I’d delight in sharing dinner with your parents. Unless, of course, you’re not feeling well.”
You see no reason to decline. And even if you were, you have hte strangest of feelings that, no matter the decision you make, something horrible is likely to befall you either way. And if the wheels of fate are to conspire against you again, well, you’d rather die on a full stomach than a half empty one.
“Nah, the concern’s appreciated but I’ll survive.” A cheeky smile spreads across your face as you lean over and lightly peck Rarity on the cheek. “‘Sides…” You mutter playfully. “Miss the chance to have dinner with you? Not happening.”
Rarity’s face lights up thanks to your sweet display of affection, and she reciprocates by playfully bopping your nose with a hoof.
“Now, now, save the romance and suave charm for later.” She chides, before leaning in and whispering into your ear. “For when your parents aren’t around hm?”
You chuckle and sheepishly nod your head. Right, there’ll be a time for that later. At least she isn’t mad at you, at least, you don’t think she is. You’ll properly apologize for that whole thing later, preferably after dinner.
“So, everything’s squared away then?” Your mother asks, sliding up next to your father and wrapping her tail around his own. “I’m dieing for a nice hot plate of pasta… are there any Istallion places in town Rarity?”
The unicorn smiles and happily nods her head. “Yes, there is. My family and I used to eat there all the time, it’s a decent place though… likely not quite up to your… surely lavish standards.”
Both your father and mother scoff at the same time. “Puhlease Rarity!” Your mother giggles girlishly, as if the fashionista had said something extremely silly. “Garnet and I go out for barbecue every other Sunday, we’re hardly refined when it comes to dining places. I’m sure it’ll have no trouble meeting our ‘lavish’ standards.”
“Don’t worry Rare.” You move to reassure her yourself. “Nopony in our family’s a picky eater. Never really have enough time for big fancy dinners, matter of fact, I’m pretty sure all dad’s eaten for the last five years or so is fast food.”
The older stallion let’s out a hoarse chuckle. “It’s either that or the poison your mother calls food. I’ll take clogged arteries french fries over that any day, thank you very mu-OW!” Your dad’s left leg leaps up off the floor as your mother’s smaller more limber hoof comes crashing down upon it, the pained expression on his face a clear enough explanation for what had transpired.
You shake your head.
Dinner with the family… no way this could go wrong.