Bedtime Stories

by Incredible Blunderbolt

Flirting

"I wish you wouldn't flirt with her."

Twilight's comment came out of nowhere as we walked down the road to town. Her head was hanging lower than usual, and the space between us was quite a bit larger than it had been on the walk to Sweet Apple Acres, even though the chilling autumn wind was blowing through the fields and the sun had all but vanished over the horizon.

"What do you mean?" I asked. "I wasn't flirting with anypony..."

"Please!" Twilight blurted, shaking her head. "The winks, the tail shakes, the wing flashing, the wrestling and innuendo..." Her voice wavered and cracked as she spoke, and she stopped walking in favor of staring at a rock on the road. "What do you call that, Rainbow?"

My ears drooped a bit. "Um... being friendly?"

"It's flirting!" Twilight accused. She looked up and glared at me through shining eyes. "It's flirting right in front of me!"

The force of her voice alone caused me to take a step back. Twilight's eyes shone almost red, and I sure as heck didn't want to be to close to her if she blew a gasket. She rarely ever got angry, but I'd learned to keep away from her after our first fight ended with her hoisting me up by my tail with her magic and tossing me out the library door.

"I... It's wasn't--"

"Look, I get that you two were marefriends before we were." Twilight blinked hard. "And that you two will probably always feel something toward each other, but it's us now. Not you and Applejack. And... And it scares me when you do that, okay?"

I felt my heart sink. "Twilight?"

"I mean, I know you probably don't even mean anything by it, but I still can't help feeling like--"

"Twilight." I pressed my hoof to her mouth, and she stopped talking. She looked at me, her ears slicked back and nose releasing hot, fast bursts of air onto my hoof. "AJ and I are just friends, okay?" I promised. "We both agreed it wasn't working out, and we ended it. It's not gonna start up again." I wrapped my other leg around her and held her tight. She burrowed her head into my neck and hugged me back. "Especially not when I've got you, okay?"

Twilight nodded. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I just... I was watching you two, and--"

"You don't gotta be sorry, Twi," I said, rubbing her back. Her breathing was still shaky, but it was starting to calm down a bit. "I shoulda known better. I wasn't thinking, and I'm sorry."

The hooves around my back tightened. "I love you..."

I smiled and squeezed her back. "I love you too, Twilight." The wind carried some leaves passed us, and I sighed and closed my eyes. "And that's not about to change."

Author's Note:

No prompt this time; it just came to me.

And this solidifies the fact that I am rusty as all hell after over a year of not writing. I hate that I can't seem to start any sentences without a name or a pronoun, and all my descriptions feel canned. Also, I'm not describing the setting nearly as much as I want to.

...I should get back into reading. I've been neglecting it, and my prose is suffering for it.