We’d decided to go a bar for some reason. I can’t remember why, but we did. Unfortunately, we didn’t know any good bars around, and neither one of us could work up the courage to ask one of the locals, so we’d spent a while just meandering around Luna Pier looking for a bar.
Finally, we managed to find ourselves a little dive-y place that didn’t seem too rundown, and actually looked quite nice on the inside. Well-maintained, an upbeat atmosphere, colors that weren’t too drab. It smelled of alcohol, but what bar doesn’t? That’s kind of the whole point of a bar: to offer booze. It’d be like walking into a donut shop and not being able to smell any donuts. The place was busy, but it wasn’t packed. Not yet, anyway. The music playing for entertainment was simple, but rhythmic and surprisingly catchy.
“Hey.” Aegis was speaking loudly over the noise. “Want something from the bar? I’ll pay.”
“Just some soda,” I said. “I don’t drink.”
Some ponies look at me like I’m crazy when I say that, but Aegis just said, “Any kind?”
“I don’t care. Surprise me. I’ll meet you in that corner over there.” I pointed towards the back, where an out-of-the-way corner was mostly taken up by a worn (but still functional) pinball machine.
Aegis nodded and disappeared into the crowd. I lightly nudged aside some ponies and walked over to the corner. I took a gander at the pinball machine; it didn’t look like any part was missing or broken. I tried the flipper pedals on the floor. They moved easily enough, but I wouldn’t know if they actually worked until I put some money in and tried it out. I assumed they would, though; if people started complaining about the pinball machine not working and taking their money, management would put up an “out of order” sign, right?
I heard Aegis muttering to ponies in the crowd. “Uh, ‘scuse me… Sorry, sorry… Could you please let me through, thanks…” Finally, he popped out, a bottle of beer and a soda cup floating in front of him. He set the soda down next to me on the pinball machine.
“Thanks,” I said. “What’d you get me?”
“Can’t tell you; that’d ruin the surprise,” he said. He popped the lid off his bottle. “You said you wanted it to be a surprise, right?” He winked at me and started drinking.
I chuckled and took a sip from the straw. The soda that hit my tongue was surprisingly tangy and rich. I pulled back and blinked a few times. “What is this? I’ve never had it before.” I went back to the straw.
“Cherry soda.”
“I always thought I’d hate it.”
Aegis gulped. “You did? I-if you want, I, I can go-”
“Actually, I like it.” Something was up with him. He probably didn’t mean anything by it, but something was definitely up.
“Oh, okay. Okay, good.” I got the feeling that he hid a sigh of relief. “So how come you don’t drink? Family… stuff?”
“Actually, the rest of my family drinks quite a bit. Except for the underage ones, obviously. Me?” Sip. “I just can’t stand the aftertaste of alcohol.”
“Really? That’s it?”
I nodded. “Yeah. It’s just so… bitter, I can barely down a single swallow.”
“Never gotten drunk?”
“Never even gotten buzzed. I know beer and wine are supposed to make you relax, but what’s the point in drinking them if they taste terrible?”
Aegis laughed. “That’s one way to stay sober, I guess.”
“The best way.” Sip. “On another topic, what’s with you and freaking out?”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You freak out over the slightest things,” I said. “On the Marris wheel, you were all calm and casual, then suddenly you get really embarrassed once you realize I might not want to talk to you. You start stuttering a lot once you ask me if I want to stay with you. And when I get a little nauseous on a Tilt-a-Whirl, you act like the apocalypse is upon us.”
Aegis blinked, then looked away from me and folded his ears back. “Oh,” he said quietly. “That. It’s…”
He didn’t want to tell me. That much was obvious. Or at least he was uncomfortable with telling me. Either way, I should give him an out. I owed him that much, considering all the times he told me I could leave. “If you don’t want to tell me,” I said, trying to keep my voice casual, “that’s fine, I und-”
“No, no, you’re fine,” Aegis mumbled, waving a hoof. “It’s just… I’ve never really told anyone this before. It’s not that private, just kinda uncomfortable for me. And besides, after tonight, I’ll never see you again. Gimme a sec.” He took a swig from his beer bottle and breathed deeply. “You’ve seen how I’m the one who’s usually pushing us to do stuff, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, years ago, in high school, I, I was dating this girl.” He pawed lightly at the floor. “And I wasn’t just assertive, I was pushy. I just kept saying we should do this or that, and she’d say no, and I’d keep pushing, and eventually, she’d cave. I was dominating the relationship, but I didn’t see that at the time. And then, one day, she broke up with me. She, she said I was smothering her and making her do things she didn’t want to do.” He took another drink of beer.
“Oh.” Pieces started to fit together. I think I could see where this went.
“A few days later,” Aegis continued, “I was at a party and I happened to notice her. I tried to talk to her, to apologize, to get back together, but…” He groaned a little. “She wouldn’t talk to me or even look at me and just went somewhere else in the party. I tried following her, but I couldn’t find her. She was avoiding me, right? And…” His ears went back and he started staring at the ground. “And then I realized just how much I’d been forcing my own stuff on her.”
He swallowed. “I, I mean, it’s one thing to just, to just be pushy, right? But I went way beyond that. I was so forceful that she didn’t want to see me again at all. She… she just wanted me gone. I, I think she might’ve even been scared of me. And when I realized that was the way she felt about me, it, she, I, it just…” He took a drink from his bottle. “I felt like crap. A horrible person. The kind you talk about behind their backs as people to avoid. It’s terrible, thinking someone thinks of you that way.”
“Wow,” I muttered. I could imagine the feeling. I’d dumped some people and knew how much I wanted them out of my life. I never thought about the other side of that, and Aegis had it even worse. “That would be awful.”
“So now…” Aegis looked back up at me. “Now I’m scared that I’ll do it again. That, that you’ll think I’m too pushy and not want to even look at me. If you don’t want to stick together for some other reason, fine, but, but I don’t want to control you.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it,” I said softly, reaching out and laying a hoof on his shoulder. “You’re not being pushy at all right now.”
“I kinda feel like I am,” he mumbled, turning back to the ground.
“Well, you’re not,” I said, more firmly this time. He was not going to have a bad night tonight because of something that wasn’t even his fault. “Actually, I’d say you’re overreacting a bit.”
“Really?” he said. Or maybe it was, “Really.” It was hard to tell if it was a question or not; it was right on the border of hopeful (“Really?”) and skeptical (“Really.”), and I mean right on the border. Like razor-edge on the border.
“Really really.” I took a long sip of cherry soda. “I don’t know what you were like before, but now, you actually stand to be a bit more assertive.”
Aegis looked up at me and, again, it was hard to tell if his expression was hopeful or skeptical.
“Just a smidgen,” I said. “You haven’t really pushed me into anything. You’ve made suggestions, sure, but you always keep adding, ‘But if you don’t want to, that’s fine’ or whatever. It makes you feel a little wishy-washy. Like, I don’t know, like you don’t actually want me to go along with you.”
“But I do.”
“And I know that. But then why do you keep telling me there’s a way out? You need to just let me say ‘no’ and acknowledge that, not keep pointing at the emergency exit. I know where the exit is, stop telling me that, or I’ll feel like I’ll need to use it, because why else would you keep telling me where it is? Do you want me to light you on fire to make an emergency and force me to use the emergency exit, is that what you want?”
Aegis grinned a little. “You might be getting a bit off-topic there.”
“Maybe. But I don’t want to be reminded of the emergency exit if it isn’t necessary. Just ask me if I want to do something and let me say yes or no. Maybe say please once or twice, but then don’t go beyond that. That’s assertive, but not controlling.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” Aegis took a long drink of his beer. Wiping his mouth off, he asked, “S-so, um, if, if you don’t mind me asking-” He froze and flicked his tail. “Is that being wishy-washy?” he asked nervously.
Man. We’d just talked about this and he was already finding his own flaws in it. “Are you leading into a personal or semi-personal question?”
“Yeah.”
“Then no. Telling someone they don’t have to answer a personal question is a lot different than telling someone they don’t have to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl or something. That’s something I don’t mind being shown the emergency exit for.”
“Okay.” When Aegis started talking again, he sounded a lot more confident. “If you don’t mind me asking, if I’ve been wishy-washy this whole night, what made you stay with me?”
I tilted my head up and pretended to be deep in thought. “Well… there is one thing…” I grinned, leaned close to him, and whispered, “You have excellent taste in mares.”
He broke into a fit of the giggles. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” he said.
I leaned back. “But seriously, if nothing else, you’re a good conversation partner. You know when to talk, when to listen, you’ve got interesting things to talk about… You’re technically a noble! That right there could provide hours of conversation on its own, if that’s the way we went.”
“Maybe not hours, but I get you.” Aegis thought for a few moments, then nodded to himself. “That’s actually a lot more reassuring than I thought it would be. I mean, you hear ‘I like talking to you’ and it doesn’t sound all that great, but then you actually think about it, and it’s something more like, ‘I enjoy your company and you being you’.”
I nodded. “Yeah. That’s it.”
Aegis smiled. “Thanks.”
“And that’s just the first thing I could think of. You’re enjoyable to be around. You’re just so…” It took me a little while to find a good word for what I was thinking of. “…so laidback and… mellow. You go with pretty much everything I talk about, and you’re actually interested, not pretend-interested.”
“What’s so great about that? None of the stuff you’ve wanted to talk about is boring.”
“Yeah, but not everyone would see it that way. I mean, you were hooked when I was talking about rigged carnival games.”
“Eh. I guess,” Aegis said with a shrug.
Leaning back in my chair, I said, “So, I answered your question, you answer mine: why are you sticking with me?”
Aegis grinned. “Besides your excellent taste in stallions?”
“You’re not allowed to steal my lines.”
“Heh. Well, actually, that’s part of the reason I’m still with you: there’s just something about the way you talk that I really like. You’re… you’re witty.”
“Witty? Oh, come on, no I’m not.” Still, I can’t deny that I liked that he thought that. It’s one of those things that everyone kind of wants to be, even if they don’t admit it.
“Okay, maybe you’re not super witty. But you’re sharper than most ponies. Definitely me, at the very least. It’s, it makes you a good conversation partner. I don’t always know what you’re going to say.”
There were worse things to be, I guess. At least he hadn’t said anything like “I think you’re purty.” And, well, going on what he’d said earlier, he enjoyed me for being me, too, so that was a plus. I still didn’t think I was witty, though.
“And you’re…” Aegis waved a hoof helplessly. “I don’t know. Not exactly blunt, but…” His ears suddenly stood up straight and he grinned. “Forward! That’s it! You’re not afraid to speak what’s on your mind, but you’re not overbearing about it. You just say, ‘That mustache is stupid’, you don’t keep quiet, but you also don’t whine about it.”
That was something I’d never been called before, but I wasn’t unpleased. Actually, I liked it quite a bit. There’ve been times when I’ve been worried I’m being too blunt — I want to be sure ponies know what I’m thinking — but if Aegis was telling the truth (and I don’t know why he wouldn’t), that wasn’t a problem; I hadn’t spent the night trying to dial it down at all. And it also meant that Aegis liked that I didn’t always agree with him, which in turn meant that he knew he wasn’t the light of my life. I could get used to a guy who thought of me as my own person, and not just a marefriend.
“So…” Aegis gulped down more of his beer. “Now that we’ve poured our hearts out to each other, now what?”
My gaze fell on the pinball machine off the side. Oh, might as well. I nudged it with a hoof. “You like pinball?”
“Not really, no.”
“You are the worst pony in the world and I hate you.”
Aegis clapped a hoof to his mouth and snickered. “But of course. We like each other for our personalities, but pinball? That’s the primary thing in a relationship.”
“Naturally.”
Aegis scooted to one side to give me better access to the machine. “But if you can talk and play, go ahead. You want to play it, I won’t stop you.”
“Alrighty.” I fished out a bit and popped it into the machine. It sprang to life immediately. I tested the pedals; both flippers worked just fine, and I didn’t see any lights that were burnt out. Guess it was just well-used, not breaking down. Which meant it was probably a good machine.
Aegis looked at the high score on the status screen. His eyes went wide and he gulped. “That’s… that’s a lot of numbers.”
I shrugged. “It’s pinball. You get used to it.” I deployed my first ball.