Those Stripes

by JeremyStorm


Lunch Break

Mornings at the Ponyville Day Spa never see many customers outside of our diehard regulars; especially early on in the week. As such, Mondays tend to give me plenty of time to crack open a good book and zone out for a while. I had even taken to leaving one at the front desk for just such occasions.

After restocking the massage rooms and the saunas and getting them both ready for the day, I sat myself down behind the counter. I still had ten minutes until I was due to unlock the door when I heard a knock. Before I could even stand up, Aloe popped out of her office and trotted over.

Aloe and her twin sister Lotus were both earth ponies, and by some strange quirk of birth had ended up with inverted color schemes. Where Aloe had a vivid pink coat and a bright blue mane, Lotus had a bright blue coat and a vivid pink mane. They both had a noticeable accent; something if I had to define I’d say was vaguely European, though I’d never asked them where they’d grown up. It was undeniably sexy, though.

Perhaps I shouldn’t say that. I mean, they are my bosses and I am married.

Doesn’t make it not true, though. And it’s come around to bite them on the ass a few times.

Between looking and sounding so attractive, and work that involved rubbing your hooves all over ponies all day, there were a number of… unflattering rumors about them around town. Rumors about their relationship with each other, if you know what I mean. I’d heard more than a few of them myself, and it all pissed me off to no end. Maybe it was that I felt like I owed them so much for being the first ponies willing to give me a job, maybe it was because I genuinely thought of them as friends even though they were my employers, or maybe it was just that I hate gossip. Either way, most ponies know not to talk about them around me.

After unlocking the door, Aloe stepped aside, allowing a pink earth pony filly somewhere in her teens, I think, to walk inside. I’d seen her in here a few times before, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember her name or anything about her, really. Her purple and white mane was pulled back with a jade clip and two chopsticks, and she wore a small amount of pale blue eye shadow, though not much else. Lastly, her cutie mark was… a silver crown?

“Matthew,” Aloe said, walking the filly around the counter, “thees is Diamond Tiara.” Oh, a tiara then, not a crown. So sue me. “She’s going to be taking over ze afternoon sheeft for you.”

…She was? That was news to me.

“Uh… nice to meet you,” I said, extending my hand to the filly. She seemed reluctant to do anything, staring at my hand as though expecting it to strike her. Deciding I was safe, apparently, she reached out with a hoof which I gently shook. She got more into it when she noticed I wasn’t going to hurt her.

I couldn’t really hold it against her. Most ponies were wary of me at first.

“Aloe, could I have a word with you?” I asked. She looked at me in confusion, but followed me into the side room she had come out of earlier. It was a little office she and her sister used to store old paperwork and manage their finances and whatnot. There wasn’t much in there besides several filing cabinets and a rickety old desk. It was a small room, so with the two of us in there it was a little more cramped than I preferred. I bent down on one knee so that I wasn’t towering over her.

“You aren’t cutting my shifts, are you? I really need the hours, Aloe,” I said. She gasped and slapped a hoof to her forehead.

“I didn’t tell you, deed I? My seester and I are not cutting your hours, we are promoting you! We want you to be masseur,” she said, clapping a hoof to my shoulder.

I stared at her in shock for a moment. It took me that long to process.

Then I grabbed her, wrapping her in a bone-crushing hug and wooping with laughter. I couldn’t help myself. I was so suddenly overcome with excitement and I had to let it out somehow. The squeak she let out was muffled by the huff of breath I squeezed out of her.

“Thankyouthankyou!” I said as she began laughing herself. I can’t begin to describe how excited I was. Even if the pay increase didn’t turn out to be much, at least it meant I wasn’t just sitting behind a desk all day.

She began tapping on my shoulder and I realized I should let her go before she started turning blue. I felt my face heat up. I scratched the back of my neck as Aloe straightened her headband and necklace… thingy.

“You are quite welcome, Matthew. My seester and I are excited to have another helping hoof… or, hand as it were. We will begin your training next week. I want you to show Diamond how things work at the counter, yes?” she asked.

“Sure thing, Aloe,” I said, giving a mock salute. She laughed and batted my knee lightly with a hoof.

“Well, go on then. Go and unlock the door, I have some work in here thees morning. Let me know if you need anything, yes?” With that, she slipped around the side of the desk and began pulling out paperwork. I let myself out so that she could focus.

I took a peek at the counter as I unlocked the door. Diamond was still standing where we had left her, peering over everything behind the desk. I wasn’t exactly sure what to make of her expression. She didn’t quite seem excited, but she certainly didn’t look nervous, either. The closest I could guess was she was bored, but there was still something I wasn’t seeing.

I was already dreading what was to come. Between her bored disinterest and carefully maintained good looks, she struck me as somewhat of a snob, and I wasn’t looking forward to working with her in the slightest.

She looked up as I stepped back behind the counter. I pulled up another chair, gesturing her towards it as I took my own. She took a seat and wheeled the chair forward so that she was sitting next to me as I dragged out our schedule book.

“Sorry about disappearing like that. Just had a bit of a misunderstanding,” I said.

“It’s… no problem. Don’t worry about it, uh… Matthew, right?” she asked.

“Yeah, but you can call me Matt.”

“Diamond.”

I nodded as I turned back to the spa’s schedule book. I gave her a basic rundown of how to set up new appointments, check ponies in, accept payments, yadda-yadda. It was a pretty simple system, but it did involve going back and forth between a couple of different books for each service and as such was somewhat time-consuming.

I really missed computers.

After going over it with her a few times, she seemed to understand well enough. I decided to let her handle the majority of the clients that came in that morning to give her a little practice, and by the time noon rolled around, she had picked it up.

As we worked together and with plenty of downtime between clients, we had plenty of time to chat and get to know each other. I was really glad to find out that my first impression of her was wrong. She wasn’t stuck up, or at least not unbearably so, and she had a quick wit and a sharp tongue that made it fun to trade jokes. I also learned she had only graduated the last semester and this was her first real job.

Ponies don’t have elementary and high school like I had growing up. They instead have primary education, which lasts from ages five or six to fifteen. After that, a young pony either goes on to secondary education, which is like college or an apprenticeship, or they just get a job. Whatever fits their cutie mark and their needs the best.

At one point, while we were both exceptionally bored, I asked her what her cutie mark meant. It was a pretty standard introductory question ponies asked, I’d found. Diamond, though, seemed… reluctant to say anything. She said she didn’t want to talk about it, so I let it drop. Far be it from me to pry into matters that don’t concern me. It was weird, though. Most ponies seem like they’re just waiting for someone to ask so they can go on all day about their special talents. I’d never met one that didn’t like talking about it.

Oh well, it wasn’t my place to press and I let the issue drop.

Around noon, a very familiar Pegasus entered. Thunderlane was a charcoal-black stallion with a turquoise mane styled up into a windswept mohawk. The windswept part isn’t manufactured, I should add, as I’m fairly certain he spends more time in the air than he does on the ground. He isn’t a Wonderbolt Trainee for nothing, after all.

I met him only about a month after I began living here in Ponyville. Believe it or not, he literally bumped into me. Or more like crashed into me, if I were to be honest. He works as part of the Ponyville Weather Team when not off at the Wonderbolts Academy, and on this particular day he was wrangling a storm cloud that decided to show him who’s boss.

He came barreling out of the air faster than I could even blink and plowed right into my head. Luckily neither of us were hurt, and we each checked to make sure the other was okay, he offered to treat me to lunch to say he was sorry. Next thing I knew, we were fast friends, and I couldn’t ask for a better one. He and his little brother Rumble have looked out for me over my time here, and adjusting to life in Equestria would have been infinitely more difficult without them.

He spared Diamond only a cursory glance as he turned to me.

“Yo, Matt! How’s it hanging?” He held out a hoof to me and I bumped it with a fist. “You on your lunch break yet?”

“Hey, Thunderlane. I am now that your lazy flank is finally here.” I turned to Diamond. “I’m off to my lunch break; if you need anything, let Aloe or Lotus know.” She nodded and I moved to the door, Thunderlane in tow. With my hand on the handle, a thought struck me and I turned back to her.

“I didn’t think to ask; did you want me to bring you anything back? My treat!” She cocked an eyebrow at me.

“A rosehip sandwhich?” she asked. I nodded, and she mumbled her thanks. She sounded unsure, like she didn’t really believe I’d bring anything back for her. Maybe she didn’t trust me.

Or maybe I’m overthinking things, and she’s just nervous on her first day at a new job. Either way, it wasn’t my problem. I gave her a wave as Thunderlane and I walked out the door.


We decided to get lunch at a local café called Haute Cuisine’s, named after the stallion that owned it. They had a lot of outdoor tables which suited me better than the booths inside. The benches inside were a tad too small to fit my large frame, as were a lot of things in Ponyville, but there was more room outside. We both ordered dandelion sandwiches, something I had been amazed to find I liked, and bottles of apple cider to go with it.

After the waiter left, Thunderlane looked me up and down.

“You feeling alright?” he asked.

“Yeah, why?”

“You look like shit. Amiti keep you up all night, huh? Getting yourself some fine tail?” he asked, elbowing me suggestively.

“More like the other way around.” I shoved him off me. “But I’m sure ‘Miti would be very flattered you think his tail is fine.”

He let out a barking laugh. “Nah, I’ll leave the stallions to you. But seriously, did you not sleep well?”

I shook my head.

“The nightmares again?” he asked.

I nodded.

“That sucks. Need to talk about it?” he asked, not sounding terribly enthused. He was a great friend, and he really did care, but he wasn’t great at talking about serious stuff. I knew he’d try if I asked, but I wasn’t really in the mood.

“Not much to talk about. I don’t remember any of it. Thanks for the concern, but I’m fine,” I said, flashing him a smile. It wasn’t a lie. Sure, the nightmares sucked, but they only happened once or twice a month. I could deal with that without whining to my friends like a baby.

We fell silent after that, both of us unsure what to say next. Thankfully, our food arrived and we set about eating.

“So, Rumble’s got himself a date tomorrow night!” Thunderlane said suddenly. Rumble may be his little brother, but Thunderlane had taken care of the colt since he was barely out of diapers. Their parents were pretty neglectful he told me, though he never went into much detail, but it got so bad that foal services had to be called. Rumble was removed from their custody, and Thunderlane was able to adopt him. Thunderlane was only eighteen at the time, and Rumble, being four, had very few memories of it all.

Just a few months ago, Rumble had graduated from primary school and now worked alongside his brother on the Weather Team. Living and working together tended to keep them in each other’s business pretty often.

“Yeah? Anypony I know?” I asked.

“You know Derpy, the mailmare right? Yeah, it’s her daughter, Dinky. They were in the same class, and he’s been sweet on that filly for ages! I finally told him to stallion up and ask her. No surprise she said yes!”

“He can be pretty suave when he wants to.” I said.

“Hey, don’t be hitting on my little bro!” he said with mock severity, pointing a hoof at me. I batted it aside.

“Yeah right. I don’t think ‘Miti would be too thrilled with that,” I said. Then I remembered something. “But what about you? Didn’t you have a date last weekend? How’d that go?”

His gaze briefly flicked to the table and his shoulders tensed. His voice was deliberately even when he said, “Yeah, it went pretty great.”

“…right. So it went horribly then?” I asked.

His wings snapped to attention as he scowled. “No! Like I said, it went great. I took Cloudchaser to a DJ Pon-3 concert up in Cloudsdale! How a unicorn can throw a concert up in the clouds I have no clue, but it was a hell of a show. We danced, we hit the bar; it was fun. We had a great time and we made plans to get together again this weekend, too.”

I scanned his face as he ranted. Despite his continued carefully measured tone, he was telling the truth, I was sure. I knew him long enough to know when he was lying, mainly because he was terrible at it. He’d stutter, and could never look you in the eye. Yet despite that, I knew there was more than what he was telling me.

“Thunderlane, if it had really gone that well, you’d have burst into the spa already boasting like you were the biggest stud in the world. I wouldn’t be able to shut you up about how hot she is, or how ‘all over you’ she was. So what happened? How’d you screw it up?”

His ears and wings drooped dejectedly, but his scowl turned mutinous. “Why would you assume that I messed it up? Maybe I just wanted to spare you the details, huh? You know, since you’re into stallions and whatever…”

“Okay, first: that’s never stopped you before. Second: you know I’m into mares just as much as stallions. Third: even if I weren’t, I’m pretty sure I could handle you talking about your date. You know, the more you deny it, the more I believe that something didn’t go as you intended. So come on, man, what happened? You can tell me.”

He stared me down for almost a minute before the fight melted out of him and his entire body deflated. He propped his head up with a hoof on the table, rolling about a few of his hay fries with the other.

“Alright, you’re right. It didn’t quite go like I had in mind,” he said, sighing. “We did go to a concert in Cloudsdale, and it was really fun. We had a great time, all things considered. And she really did want to go out again this weekend.”

“Then what happened?” I asked.

“It wasn’t just the two of us. Cloudchaser insisted Flitter come with us.”

“That’s… her sister, right?” I asked, trying to picture the mare in question. He nodded, sighing again. “Huh. I mean, she did realize it was a date, right? Not just two friends hanging out?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said. “I mean, she knows I like her. I’ve asked her out enough times by now. She told me once before that she wasn’t interested in a relationship at the time, and when she said yes this time, I thought she’d changed her mind. Now I don’t know anymore.”

“Well, I really hate to say it, but…” I started, scratching my head. I wasn’t sure how to say what was on my mind without potentially pissing him off. He perked up, giving me his full attention. “Maybe she only went along for the chance to see DJ Pon3 live. If she’s turned you down before…”

“No!” he shouted, slamming a hoof down on the table hard enough to draw the attention of everypony sitting nearby. For half a second, I actually wondered if he was going to hit me. “Ceecee’s not like that. She’s cool! We’ve been friends for ages. She’d never lead somepony on like that; not even me.”

“’Not even you?’ What do you mean?” I asked. I tried to phrase it casually, afraid of upsetting him more. Thankfully, he did seem to calm quite a bit, even smiling a little as he relaxed back onto his seat.

“She’s always loved teasing me. We both like poking fun at each other, and she’s always great about taking it, too. It’s kinda like you, in a way,” he said, chuckling. “I never have to worry about going too far and pissing her off. She just laughs it all off.”

“Did you just compare your prospective marefriend to me? Why Thunderlane, I never knew you cared so much!” I said, playfully batting his hoof, which he yanked away like I’d burned it.

He stared at me, his entire body rigid and lifeless. He was silent, eyes wide save for the subtle twitching of his right eyelid. A few moments passed with neither of us saying anything. Finally, he shook his head like he was coming out of a trance and forced his gaze towards the table and hilariously he was blushing slightly.

“I never, ever want to think about that again,” he said, shaking again.

I got a delicious laugh out of his misery. It was so tasty. Thunderlane may be my best friend in all of Equestria, but that only made it all the more fun to make fun of him. He continued to glower the whole time like someone pissed in his cereal until my mirth wore out. Figuring he’d had enough mocking for one day, I tried to get back to less awkward (for him) conversation.

“So, you and Cloudchaser. And Flitter. You know, you could say you’re the luckiest stallion in the world.”

That got his attention. “How do you figure that?”

“Well, what guy hasn’t dreamed of dating twins?” I asked. He responded by kicking me under the table. The hard edge of his hoof caught right on my knee, and I hissed in pain as I rubbed at it. “Ow! That hurt, dick!”

“Meh,” he said. Despite his outburst, he was at least smiling again, and went back to his plate, finishing up what was left. He pointed a hoof towards my plate, and I let him take my hay fries. It’s not like I can eat them, so there was no point in letting them go to waste. Even if some petty part of me wanted to spit on them just to pay him back for hitting me.

“Anyway… Is Flitter going to be there next weekend, too? Think you’re going to go?” I asked.

He shrugged. “Yeah, she’ll be tagging along to whatever we’re going to do. Haven’t decided yet. I mean, I really want to spend more time with Ceecee, but do you realize how awkward it is trying to hit on a mare while her sister’s literally standing right there?”

“Yeah, I hear ya. I still feel a little weird with ‘Miti when Zecora’s over,” I said before sighing. “I don’t know what to tell you, man. If you really think she’s serious about it, then you should probably go. Maybe she just wants a more casual environment for the first few dates. Maybe she’s had some bad experiences?”

“I don’t know. She seemed really into it. There’s just something I can’t put my hoof on… Oh well, let’s face it. I’m going to go. I can’t pass up the chance to see her again, you know?”

“Well, good luck. And hey, if things don’t work out, we can always grab ‘Miti and Rumble, go to a bar and talk about how lame fillies are!”

He rolled his eyes but couldn’t hold back a smirk. “Oh sure, like that’ll help. Amiti drinks more than a cider’s worth of alcohol and he’s all over you. It’s sickening, really.” He stuck his tongue out to punctuate his point.

He paused for a moment, looking up and out to the sky. “Well, I think it’s about time we both head back to work. I still have some more clouds to bust up.”

Judging by the clock over town hall, which I could just see over the top of his head, he was right. I grabbed some bits out of my bag and tossed them down on the table, making sure to leave several extra for a tip. Across from me, Thunderlane did the same.

Together, we got up and made our way back away from the crowded tables, me on my way back to the spa and Thunderlane to find room to take off. Before he did, he held up short.

“Thanks, Matt. About the bar thing, I mean. If this goes south, I might just take you up on it,” he said, looking anywhere but at me.

“Yeah, anytime. My treat even. Good luck, though. I’m sure things will work out.”

He nodded and, without a word, took off. I had to blink through the rush of air that buffeted me, and by the time I could see again, he was little more than a black speck among the clouds. As I turned and began to make my way back towards the spa, I felt a little bad for him.

Saddled with raising his little brother, all on his own, at his age. Working hard to provide and care for Rumble, sacrificing so much time and energy he shouldn’t have had to while he was so young. And now, when he finally gets a shot at something he wants, it doesn’t go his way.

Celestia, I thought, cut the guy a break, will ya?

Knowing that even if she could somehow hear me, Celestia couldn’t actually control anything happening to him, it still made me feel a little better as I walked the familiar path back to work. My mind ran through a million thoughts along the way, ranging from Thunderlane, to my new promotion, and even to what we could splurge on with a few extra bits coming in. I thought maybe we should do something nice, something we could all enjoy as a family.

It wasn’t until I turned the corner and saw the spa that I realized I’d forgotten something.

Diamond’s rosehip sandwich.

I ended up being a few minutes late back to work that day.