Dave stumbled into his room feeling as though he was creaking more loudly than the front door. His bookbag dripped a steady trail of old term papers. He sloshed across the carpet, nimbly dodging pizza stains and bending his toes against books lying unlit on the floor. And like Jack Sparrow’s ship coming into port, he collapsed with an airy groan just as he reached a black plastic desk chair.
The room was unlit except a little light leaking in from the hall. But then, there wasn’t much to see. Only Spartan university furnishings and one added couch, lined in a comfy sheath of jackets and hoodies randomly strewn about. Without light for the Star Wars posters, it looked like a surprisingly empty cube.
Dave lolled his head back and took a moment to breathe now that he was home. He rubbed his eyes; he kicked up his feet. What a day. That had come out of left field. There was no predicting the stuff that happened in this world nowadays.
In fact, he was so wiped that it was tempting to just fall asleep right there. But it was only eleven o’clock. Dave was still an undergraduate, so he had multiple assignments guiltily lurking under the surface of his life. He’d need to get a little work done before calling it a day. But he didn’t feel up to digging open the books yet. Instead he fired up the computer for a little relaxation.
Within a couple clicks of browsing, he could feel the stress just peeling off. The human model of reality might be upturned, and Equestria Daily might have turned into the biggest news site on the web. But in some ways, bronydom never died. He could still count on his favorite clop artists to keep turning out their product as if Lyra’s little ‘photoshoot’ escapade had never been leaked onto the net. Tonight, he felt like a little…Applejack? Yes, Applejack. That would hit the spot.
A few minutes into this, he heard someone stomping around outside. That would be Tom. No surprise there. It always took Tom a little longer to reach the room when he insisted on running up all nineteen flights of stairs. Generally this meant he headed straight for the showers with a towel sitting in his duffel bag.
But tonight, without any warning, the pattern broke. The bedroom door exploded open.
“Dave!” Tom shouted far too loudly for the given time of night.
Dave fell backwards in his flimsy chair, hurrying to pull up his gym shorts. The plastic pressed his neck forward against the carpet and forced him to flop like a fish in order to manipulate his limbs. “Dude!” he shrieked. “Knock, like, knock, dude, we’ve been over this!”
Tom strode forward, hurling his unopened duffel onto a couch. As a triangle of light was now pouring in from the hall, he seized Dave’s Rainbow Dash body pillow from the couch and waved it in his face. “What the hell was that?”
“Hey, what I do in here is my—”
“I meant at the gym!” Tom thundered.
Dave finally worked himself into a sitting position. One hand massaging the crick in his neck, and the other was trying to untangle the cords of his ski cap, which had found a way to get tangled in his hair. His eyebrows and his whole face squinted. “Whuh?”
Tom lay about with the body pillow like a morning star, knocking over lamps and piles of books. The room seemed barely big enough to contain, let alone house, the both of them. Yet cramped as it was, it still managed, like all college dorms, to echo like a cave.
Tom flipped on a single light. “Did you even listen to Greta, or did you decide to pull your little fainting stunt right off the bat?”
Dave looked up indignantly from his neck problems. “Hey, that isn't funny, and furthermore…”
“You wrote!” Tom reached for the doorknob once again. “You said—or rather wrote, and I quote—” Pulling the outer door wide, he yanked a dry erase board from the hook on the other side. Tom read off of it. “The first pony who asks me out, I’m gonna’…smoke weed erry day? What’s this? Dave, you didn’t write this part.”
“Oh, yeah.” Still stretching out kinks, Dave got to his feet. “I think Skip came along and scribbled on that. Sorry, dude. Not admissible in court anymore.”
Tom tossed it the way of the duffel bag. “So what more do you want?”
Dave was reaching for his textbooks, and, as an afterthought, shutting down his computer. “She’s a not a pony, man! She’s a—what was it? A mule?”
Tom’s long white fingers clamped his bicep. “That mule has been pining after you for weeks! Hell, she even tried to use me to get to you! I knew about this a long time ago! After the game she used to do nothing but ask me questions about you. She even put together a bouquet tonight, but she threw it out when I told her human guys don’t like flowers.”
Dave frowned. “Well, no one told me—”
“And you know where she is now? Crying her heart out. Lyra doesn’t know shit what to do. They can’t even get her out of the gym. Because she finally worked up the guts to ask you and you didn’t even motherfucking look at her.”
Dave’s breath was shallow. He could feel the oppressive weight of the silence Tom gathered about himself like a majestic cloak. His roommate was drilling into him, breaking him into chunks, but didn’t seem to garner much satisfaction from successfully striking Dave dumbstruck.
At length Dave managed to stir. Quietly this time. By lifting his hands and dropping them into his lap. “If I don’t like her, I don’t like her. What do you want?”
Tom rolled his eyes, his head, his whole body back. “What do I want? Fuck that, Dave, let’s talk about you. Since that’s what it’s all about. Would you like to know what you just passed up? Her name’s Greta, in case you forgot. Do you happen to know what she does in Equestria? She works at the Royal Court of the Night Sky. That’s Princess Luna’s highest tower. The one with the astrolabes and the orrerries. The one in charge of star-mapping that was established after the Nightmare Moon Cataclysm. She’s an astrophysicist. She charts the courses of planets, and she does it with an abacus. But oh, no, she’s not good enough for you, because her ears are too long, pooh-pooh. I would be lucky if I could catch an eye like hers. But you can just consider that advice.”
Dave moaned in a quiet form of agony. His toothbrush was sitting forgotten on the desk. He was thinking about the flap of pale flesh over Greta’s mouth, and the way it moved when she smiled at him. He tried over and over. Every time he brought the image into his mind’s eye it made his skin crawl, and he already felt like a lizard right now. “Look …it’s none of your business, Tom. Just let me go to bed.”
“Dave. Give her a chance.” Tom crouched halfway to his knees, spreading out his arms to grip the desk prevent his friend’s escape.
“No, man, I just want to forget about it.”
“It won’t be hard to do, I promise! One date.” Tom held one finger nearly up Dave’s nose. “One. After that, whatever. You gave her a fair shot.”
“Dude!” Dave slapped the finger away. “You can’t make me.”
“You owe me, Dave. I don’t ask for much. But you gotta’ do this for me.”
“No I don’t.”
Tom crossed his arms. “You want it that way, I can call your mom and tell her what you do up here.”
“You think she gives a f—”
“I’ll put it on Faceboook!.”
“What are you, five?” Dave groaned.
“You’re going to thank me for this.”
“Like hell I am.”
“And so…uh…thanks to Tom, I have a chance to say that I’m really sorry about how I acted last week.”
Dave rocked back and forth on his feet. He squinted under the floodlights, trying to check out the corners of his vision. He hoped nopony was watching this. Celestia only knew why Greta had come to the game at all this week. That had Tom’s handiwork all over it.
Tom had quit looming next to him, but Dave was pretty sure he wasn’t off the hook yet. It sucked. Of all the times to finally get back to Equestria, it had to be scheduled the same week as the sacred football game! Oh, well. If he was going to do this, he might as well do it without trailing off every five seconds. So he straightened and traced a smile in the air. “See, I kind of have a little fainting thing, and you caught me by surprise. But what I wanted to say, if you’ll still have me, is sure. It’d be totally cool to go out this weekend. We could even spend a day in Ponyville if you want. I haven’t been there in forever.”
Greta’s mouth fell open. She dipped her neck ever so slightly, and answered in a velvety tone. “Yes. I mean, if you—I mean, I’d like that.”
“Fantastic!” Tom slapped his roommate’s shoulder. “See, Greta? What did I tell you? Just a misunderstanding. Bet you’ll have a great time.”
He was turning to go, when—
“Hey, Tom?”
Tom spun back, hazel eyes still sparkling.
Greta crossed her forelegs. “There’s someone I wanted to introduce you to.”
“I love meeting new ponies! Introduce away.”
“Okay…now don’t laugh. It’s kind of silly. See, I have a friend who asked me if Dave had a friend, and I asked Dave if he had a friend…she said she vanted to meet you.”
The gym door was thrown slammed back on his hinges.
An off-beat clip-clop followed. There was a booming shadow there, dun white, and looking a touch outrageous, or so Dave thought, in gold earrings and sparsely applied eyeshadow.
“Hey there!” The cow skipped forward. She laid an introductory and only slightly forward nuzzle on Tom’s arm. “I’m Hilda! Greta here says you…like cows?”
She turned her head to one side, pouting her lips.
“Aww yeah he does!” Suddenly Dave was fiercely energetic. He applied a savage nudge to Tom’s ribs and answered for him while his taller roommate gasped. “He would love to join you Friday, darlin'. We’ll make it a double-date.”
Coloring, Hilda exchanged a quick glance with her friend. “Oh. Greta didn’t tell me you two were…”
“We aren’t.” Tom wheezed and held his ribs. But he was smiling again. “Different connotation of double-date. Separate dates. But together. We’ll split the Gate tickets.”