How the Other Half Lives

by Adda le Blue


Two

Fae had practically given him permission.

Alpha slammed the door to his dormitory shut behind him, ignoring the cries of his flatmate and his guests as their little tower of wooden blocks trembled. “I'm taking a sleeping potion at nine,” he said gruffly as he passed behind their navy eyesore of a couch. “Think you can keep it down until then?”

Three sets of eyes stared at him as he passed, with varying expressions of irritation or empathy. “What's wrong, Alpha?” a friend of a friend asked, his short teal wings carrying him closer.

“Nothing,” Alpha assured him.

It wasn't nothing, though, if his pink and puffy eyes were any indication. “Why've you been cryi—”

“It's nothing, okay?” Alpha said harshly. He turned his gaze to the window and sighed through his nose. “Don't worry about it, Hornpipe. I'm already over it.”

“Then why are you shaking?”

Alpha frowned at him and looked down at his trembling hooves. “I ran the whole way here,” he muttered. “I'm tired. Good night, everypony.” A half-hearted chorus of replies followed him into his bedroom and the door clicked shut just a touch more firmly than usual.

Hornpipe threw his hooves up, his bewildered expression asking the question on everypony's mind. He and Heartthrob, the pinkish-red earth pony who had hunched protectively over their Jenga tower, turned to the one pony among them who had a chance of understanding.

Bootsy peered over his amber shades to make sure Alpha wasn't watching them through a crack in the door, and he held up a hoof beside his muzzle for good measure. “Fairy Lights,” he mouthed. Hornpipe's eyes softened and the pair smiled and nodded. The tension melted away and Heartthrob lifted a hoof to poke at part of a sturdy-looking level of the tower.

The tension in the air on his side of the door was increasing with each breath he took. Alpha walked through the maze of cardboard boxes and the things that were to be stored in them to reach his writing desk, or more specifically the boxes underneath. One slid free and was pried open to reveal glassware nestled in a thick bed of hay: he pulled free from beneath the warm bottles of soda a vial of lavender liquid labeled by hoof with masking tape and marker. With the vial in his magical grasp, he replaced the lid of the box with his mouth and slid it back into place, making sure the corners were aligned just so.

A glance at the moon told him that it was still too early to begin, and the new clock hanging above his door confirmed it. It was only a quarter past eight; if he knew Fae—which he certainly did, after so many years—she would soon be in the bath and preparing for a good night's sleep. He took a deep breath, clambered onto the bed, pulled a dog-eared novel from the shelves on the far wall and tried to get comfortable.

Forty minutes and six discarded books later he'd worked his way down the shelves to the yearbook his parents had bought him at the end of his last year of secondary school. They'd said it was important to have pictures and stories of who he used to be. They'd said it would be fun to look back someday. They'd never seen the little doodles and alterations he'd made one day in red and blue ink, or the single word he left on the half-dozen photos of him the school photographers had taken.

He slammed the book shut and threw it atop the boxes beneath his desk.

His left hindleg was trembling in anxiety. With a muted growl he rolled off of the bed, his hooves loud on the hard wood floor, and walked over to the window. It was nearly time. The clock above the door was holding fast at five minutes to nine, each second a minute, each minute an hour.

Alpha paced up and down the length of his bed, his eyes glued to a little lump on his vanity desk. She said she'd be okay with it for one night, he reminded himself. She drank the potion with me. She ate her half of the reactant. All I have to do is...

That gummy candy was staring at him.

All I have to do is take my half, he continued, and the process should begin within a few minutes.

Then what was stopping him?

He fell onto the bed with a groan and clapped his forehooves over his eyes. I should have just asked her! he thought angrily. I should have told her outright. I can't...

That potion wouldn't stay in Fae's bloodstream forever.

I can't miss my chance.

I can't take the chance! She'll never trust me again if she finds out. She'll never even speak to me! Our friendship would be o—

The university's famous clock tower struck the hour and without thinking he lashed out with his magic. The gummy candy was crushed between his teeth, releasing its sweet and sour juices against his tongue and the back of his throat.

Alpha chewed slowly as the first gush was swallowed down. He couldn't taste the reactant; the tartness of the fruit juice trapped within the candy masked the flavor perfectly. He fell against the side of the bed and blinked a few times. No going back, he told himself firmly. Princess guide me...

He clambered onto the bed, arranged himself comfortably, and reached to his right for the potion he'd retrieved an hour before. 'Sleeping Potion', the label proclaimed. Alpha popped the cork and drained it in one gulp; the chill of menthol burned his tongue and throat. He curled up on his side as a sudden wave of lethargy swept over him in an instant. “It's time...” Patches of pink and white seemed to dance before his eyes and the sleeping potion blurred the edges of his vision. “Pink, eh?” he smiled. “Should've known you'd have a pink bedroom.”

Reality began to fizz and hiss as his mind left his drowsing body...