Beans On Toast And Hot Showers.

by Cackling Moron

Six

Author's Note:

It's not like I'm putting my boot on anyone's neck and forcing them to read this or anything like that.

Although on reading it you may feel that the effect is much the same.

My day was off to a rollicking good start.

The one person I had in my life who was anything even close to a friend was angry with me for reasons I couldn’t fathom but may well have had something to do with me questioning whether or not she was even human.

On top of this the mysterious, hated-by-everyone-in-town-except-for-me girl I inexplicably let stay in my house left in the middle of night without saying goodbye and without closing the door behind her.

Less than ideal.

I’d had grand visions for my day off. Adagio and I would have reached a mutually satisfying compromise that ended with her leaving and going somewhere else happy and safe and comfortable. Following this I’d then meet up with Sunset, we’d have ice cream and thoughtfully discuss whatever it was I’d done that had made her unhappy and we would have resolved it and gone back to being bestest buds.

Everything would have been lovely and simple and by the end of the day things would be back to normal. Just like that.

Only not.

Now the odds of things going comfortably back to normal seemed pretty slim. My good intentions had left me all alone and generally confused. No obvious idea of what I should do next. No-one around to push me in the right direction. Left to my own initiative.

God help me.

I had a sort through of my bedroom, if just for something to do. Stripped the bed - the bed, I noticed, now smelling strongly of someone who was not me - and also gathered together all of the bits that Adagio had not taken with her. I stacked them up in the corner, just because I couldn’t think of anything else to do with them right at that moment.

My main issue and my main problem, I felt, was that I’d actually quite liked Adagio.

Sure, I hadn’t known her very long and the bulk of our interactions had mostly just been me letting her use my stuff while I made her food. But something about her had just struck me as pleasant. I had enjoyed being around her. It had made me feel good. Not any particular kind of good, but just a generic, slightly fuzzy ‘good’.

Which was weird, really. I’m hardly a people-person at the best of times and yet this person I’d literally taken in off the street had filled me with warm feelings and a nagging urge to make sure they were fed and watered and looked after. And now here I was getting morose over the disappearance of a relative stranger.

How did that make sense? Was that even normal? I couldn’t see anyone else doing it in my position, now that I ran it through in my head.

All things considered I was probably thinking about it too much. That sort of thing could only end badly. A person’s thoughts can do unpleasant things to them if left unchecked and unopposed. I needed to do something else before my brain ate itself.

I’d go and have ice cream. Just because things had gone tits-up didn’t mean I had to sit around wallowing in it. Wallowing wouldn’t fix anything. Eating ice cream wouldn’t fix anything either, but at least that way I’d have something delicious, which was some improvement over nothing at all.

That, and it would give me an excuse to get out and away from the flat. This could only be a good thing.

Showering, dressing and swiping my wallet I left the flat at speed, heading off into town doing my best to move quickly enough to leave bad thoughts behind me.

I ended up in going circles for a bit because I arrived in town far too early for anything to actually be open, but that was alright. Time spent walking was time letting my mind wander away from confusing, angry-with-me girls or absconded strangers.

When the ice cream place did eventually open I was starting to actually feel the tiniest bit better about things, if only because no-one had shouted at or hung up on for me a while, and that was liberating.

The staff were surprised to have me coming through the door barely thirty seconds after they’d opened but I didn’t really care. I ordered something large with many scoops and sauces and hundreds and thousands (or ‘sprinkles’ as they insisted on calling them) and sat in a corner in a booth to brood over it.

“At least you understand me,” I said to the ice cream, which had the good grace to not reply.

A delicate hand came to a delicate rest delicately upon my shoulder and I flinched. Twisting in the seat I found Sunset looking down at me. I think my gut twisted too at that point but I couldn’t be sure.

“Hi,” she said. I swallowed my ice cream too quickly and choked. Eyes watering I just about managed to gasp out my own ‘hi’ in return before shuffling over in the booth to give her some room. Amazingly she actually sat down, grinning at my expense.

“You alright there?” She asked. I, spluttering, nodded.

“Fancy seeing you here,” I wheezed.

“Well you did say you were getting ice cream today and it seemed a safe bet you’d still do it even if you thought I wasn’t going and I wanted to see you so…”

I moved to check my watch before remembering I hadn’t worn a watch for at least ten years now.

“Good timing,” I said. She smiled sheepishly and shrugged, running a hand through her hair and tucking it behind her ear.

“Totally,” she said. “Wasn’t just planning on hanging around here until you showed up only you beat me here.”

The conversation stalled out, because my brain couldn’t come up with anything to say to this. Mostly because it was worried about saying the wrong thing and so causing me to put my foot in it again. So I just sat there in silence and the silence stretched as she waited for something - anything - she could work with.

Eventually I had to do something. So I acted on instinct.

“I can get you an ice cream too, if you want,” I said, moving to get up and slide past only to stop as her hand came down onto my arm.

“Maybe - no, no thank you, not right now. We - we need to talk first.”

Her hand was very warm, I noticed, and didn’t leave my arm even once I’d sat back down.

“Is this going to be about Adagio?” I asked.

“No. Well, not really. Kind of. No,” Sunset said, helpfully, brow furrowed. “Mostly it’s about what you asked me last night. On the phone.”

“The magical pony thing?”

She winced, and I felt a little bad for having been so blunt.

“It’s not that you asked, it’s that…”

The sentence hung. She didn’t seem to know where she wanted to go with it. I watched her tap her finger together and chew on her lip as she considered how best to continue. I gave her space and kept my mouth shut.

“You were the only person here who didn’t...know about me. What I did. My friends forgave me but they still know. Everyone at the school knows. Everyone in town. But not you. And I kind of...I kind of liked that. I didn’t always worry about it being there, thinking that behind people being nice was them knowing what I used to be like. What I did.”

This was all very heavy for me. The effort of what she was saying was obvious, written right across her face. Made my guts churn just to see it. At the same time she was being incredibly vague about whatever it was she had apparently done that was so horrible it had marred her reputation this badly. But that was fine. I was sure she’d get around to that part.

“My obliviousness seems to be one of my most attractive traits these days,” I said. She chuckled but still didn’t look me in the face, instead staring down at her hands which she’d started wringing.

“You were - you weren’t worried about me. You weren’t scared. You didn’t act like I was dangerous or couldn’t be trusted. When we talked you just talked to me about normal things that didn’t involve...non-normal stuff. Like I was normal. You just treated me like me. Without anything else.”

I could not for one moment imagine anything Sunset could have done to make anyone, anywhere think she was dangerous. In all the time I’d known her I didn’t think I’d even see her get angry. Properly angry, I mean. Annoyed with me, sure, but that was normal. Everyone did that. It wasn’t like I’d seen her furious. Not even close! She didn’t seem to have it in her. Certainly I couldn’t picture her scaring people. Maybe I was missing something.

Sunset finally looked up from her hands, her eyes onto mine. I was very suddenly pinned in place. Had I ever noticed how big her eyes were before?

“And it just made me sad that we’re not going to have that anymore,” she said.

She was quiet after this, and it was clear she’d said her piece. I cleared my throat and managed to break eye contact. I nudged at my ice cream with the spoon. She’d done a fantastic job of saying a lot while telling me very little, and now I was just quietly terrified without having any solid idea why I should be.

“At some point you’re going to have to explain this to me. I mean, you don’t have to if you don’t want to - that’s fine - I’ll just be very confused. And I just want to, you know, not put my foot in it and make you sad all the time. I don’t like doing that. So anything I can learn to be better is good,” I said. Jumbled, but well-meant, and she seemed to get it because she smiled nervously at me and shifted a little closer.

“I don’t really know where to start.”

“Wherever works for you. Start at the end if that’s easier. Fill in the bits you need as you go. I can probably work it out. Or do my best,” I said.

“This was a little back. Before I met you. There was the Fall Formal…”

Things went from there. I mean they really, really went from there.

She jumped around a bit, filling me in on how she’d divided and conquered the student body for her own benefit. Driven friends apart, played on insecurities and vulnerabilities, created cliques where there had been no cliques and all that. A one-girl wrecking crew turning a harmonious school into a carefully constructed device built from the ground up to serve her own nefarious designs, every component moving the way she intended it to.

Or something like that.

There was also a diversion into her own personal history. About being the top pupil of a divine monarch with control over the sun only fleeing and stealing a magic book for reason she seemed reluctant to get into with me. In a land of ponies, obviously. Of which she’d been one. And still was, technically? Sort of?

There’d been a lot of magic involved. And portals. And escaping through portals. And shapeshifting. And magic fighting magic. And some kind of demonic possession which had also been defeated with more magic. Or maybe it wasn’t demonic? I wasn’t clear on the details.

I felt it best to keep my questions for the end even though by this point there was a ringing in my ears and I was starting to get a bit lightheaded. I just nodded and kept on listening as the story - the truth, I supposed? - poured out of her.

“...and their gems broke and they lost their magic and they ran off. And then, well, I guess you’re pretty much caught up now.”

With that she drew to a close. Things seemed very quiet afterwards.

“Oh,” I said.

“Oh,” she said.

I contemplated my ice cream, now melted.

This town had some stuff going on in it that I probably should have investigated before deciding to move in. It having been so cheap made a touch more sense. Bit late now, though.

“You never run into this sort of thing back home,” I said. Sunset - who had scooched all the way next to me during her spiel - reached out and took my hand in both of hers, for whatever reason. I frowned a little at this but she didn’t appear to notice.

On top of being warm - as I’d already found - her hands were also quite alarmingly soft.

“This is probably a lot for you to take in,” she said, somehow sounding more sorry for me, the unrelated idiot who’d showed up after the fact than for her, the girl who’d actually been heavily involved in the event she’d described.

“It rather lines up with what I’ve already been told, actually. At least the more recent bits. The, ah, stuff about you and the...demonic...episode...that was new to me. But does fit, I guess. Busy place this, eh?”

It was now Sunset’s turn to frown.

“What do you mean what you’ve already been tol- oh. You talked to Adagio, didn’t you?”

“She was a guest,” I said, defensively, before clearing my throat. “She did most of the actual talking. Seemed very insistent I see her side of things.”

“Bet she did…” Sunset growled, her grip on my hand tightening for a moment.

“Said a fair amount that lines up with you said, as I say. Magic and all that. And, ah, about not actually strictly speaking being from around these parts or, you know, human. Which reminds me…”

Another sentence left hanging, though this time by me and this time quite deliberately. I was looking at Sunset’s hands - still holding mine - and no matter how hard I stared they continued to look like regular, human hands. I wasn’t sure what I was expecting to happen. When I looked back up to her face I found her already staring at me, which was a surprise. She blushed and looked away.

“Yeah, about that…”

“Magical pony, huh?”

I saw her start to chew her lip. She nodded.

“Yeah…”

“Presumably not quite ‘pony’ like I’m thinking?”

Dinky little hooves. Vacant eyes. Floppy mane. Beloved by tiny girls for reasons that have ever been beyond my comprehension.

That would have been absurd.

“I’ve seen what hum- you peopl- what a pony is...here…” Sunset said, stumbling noticeably a few times in ways that I hadn’t seen happen before. This sort of thing was plainly difficult, so I was gentle and patient. Or tried to be. Anyone who ever claims they are without reservation should be watched with caution.

“And?” I nudged. I’d put my free hand on top of her two by now. Didn’t know why. Just seemed like the thing to do. There was a ripple of surprise that ran across Sunset’s face when I did but she got over it. Maybe this was a friend-thing I wasn’t aware of?

I’d have asked Sunset about it but, you know, she was the one who I was doing it to.

“And not really, no. Not like that. Maybe some broad similarities if we’re being generous. But not the same thing at all, no. The ones here are just animals, us back home are, well, like you. Kind of. It’s complicated.”

“Sounds it,” I said, without irony. I had to clear my throat again. “So this body is…?”

I really wanted to understand. Desperately. But I didn’t want to come crashing in and upsetting her by pushing too hard.

“I look like this here. Back home I look like what I’m supposed to look like. Which is a pony. Unicorn, actually.”

“...I see.”

Well at least she was being specific.

“I understand if - if you don’t want to be friends with me anymore,” she said. I blinked, fairly certain I must have heard her wrong. A very odd case of hearing her wrong, of course, because what she’d said had been very clear and couldn’t really have been anything else. But it had been so unexpected it made my brain fizz for a moment or two.

“I’m sorry could you run that by me again?”

“I said that it’s okay if you don’t want to be friends with me anymore after this. I’d understand.”

“But why wouldn’t I want to keep being friends with you? You are literally my only friend here.”

“I lied to you,” she said simply, almost plaintively.

“You didn’t really lie to me so much as you deliberately withheld significant information about yourself. Uh, why did I put it like that, that sounds terrible.”

I scratched my head and tried to gather together some better words, giving her hands a pat.

“Look, it’s fine. I can see why you wouldn’t, like, shake my hand and tell me this the first time we met. It’s not a good opener, not a good ice-breaker. And the more it goes on the more awkward it gets to kind of slip into conversation and, really, why would you even need to tell me? I’m just some guy. So no, it’s fine. Really, it’s fine.”

“Not just ‘some guy’...” she mumbled, but I was having none of that.

“Look, point is this doesn’t matter. I believe you about all this. The magic and the portals and the...singing competitions with more magic. So I also believe that you’re not technically a human, I guess? But whatever. That was always the case and you never did wrong by me. This doesn’t change you this is just something about you i didn’t know. And now I do. And I still like you. So no, still friends. Can’t get rid of me that easy.”

Her ears had gone pink. That was new.

“You like me?”

“How could I not? You’re lovely,” I said.

I could not tell if this was the right answer or not, because her face was utterly unreadable. Ears still very pink though.

“Oh, oh you mean like - uh - I mean, that’s great!” She said.

Sunset smiled. I smiled. Everything was so much better. Except for my ice cream, which was a depressing lost cause by now. A puddle in a cup where once a proud sundae had stood. Worse things had happened.

“Would you like to go for a walk or something? It’s a nice day,” she said, bringing me back to the moment. I glanced over to a nearby mirror which showed the front window of the shop. The day beyond was glorious. Stunningly so.

“It is a nice day, yes. Sure, why not. A walk would be lovely.”

Sunset, beaming, shuffled out of the booth and I followed after her, keeping close behind all the way back outside. The day was somehow even more pleasant once I was standing outside and I took a moment to just soak it in, closing my eyes and enjoying the way things had somehow - stunningly - managed to work out a little better without me even having to do anything strenuous.

Something worked its way through my fingers. I opened my eyes and looked down. Sunset was now straight-up holding my hand. I blinked.

“This is a thing we’re doing now? Is this a friend thing? I have to ask.”

She froze for an instant and then smiled maybe just a little too widely and in a way that did not reach her eyes.

“...yes. Totally a friend thing. Uh, Twilight - the one I mentioned? - she taught me about it. Friendship thing. I don’t have to if you don’t want me to.”

I wasn’t going to start questioning extra-dimensional magical princesses of concepts. Or Sunset, for that matter. She tended to know better.

“No, no it’s fine. We’re friends, we can do friend things. New for me, is all.”

Not the worst thing that’d ever happened to me. If I was being completely honest it was actually rather nice. Weird, but then I had no real idea of how friends were meant to work anyway so maybe I was the weird one. I just knew that I was grinning. Sunset was too, I saw, and somehow that just made it harder to stop.

Wait, how did a pony princess without hands know things about - you know what, nevermind. I’m sure there are ways of learning about holdings hands. It’s not that far-fetched.

We took a scenic route, slowly. There was a park not that far away from the ice cream place and we both knew it was the place to go and so didn’t need to discuss it before heading off in that direction. Nice, being in sync.

I was near getting whiplash from how my life was going these days. One moment this, the other that. At least things were going well right at this moment but it did rather make me worry about when the next snapback was going to happen and what it would involve. Could be me saying something dumb. Or an event I had no way of expecting would blindside me.

Probably best not to worry about things beyond my control.

The park was up ahead by then, visible down the road and across the street. We ended up having to wait for the lights. The morning was starting to pick up speed and traffic was increasing. All the more reason to be in a pleasant, quiet park.

“It’d be poor form to draw comparisons between you and Adagio, right?” I asked. Sunset’s eyes narrowed and for maybe the tiniest fraction of an instant I saw how she might be scary. But only for a moment. I plunged on before I could find out properly.

“Hey! I’m just saying. You know, trying to take over the place, drunk with dark power, failing and becoming a pariah in need of forgiveness. Maybe I’m wrong.”

I didn’t think I was, but I’d been wrong in the past so it wouldn’t exactly be a surprise. Certainly the comparison made a kind of sense in my head. Usually that’s a good sign that I am actually wrong but, again, this time I really wasn’t sure.

From the look that passed over Sunset’s face she wasn’t sure either.

“It’s not really the same,” she said, without conviction.

“As you say. You probably know more about it than I do.”

Sunset chewed this over as we walked into the park. The park, at least, was still empty barring us and we were quite alone as we started working our way around.

“You didn’t see what they did to the school. Or what they were planning on doing. They got very close, too. Could have very easily gone the other way. They’re not harmless. Well, they are now, I think. But they weren’t before. They were dangerous. And malevolent. Whatever they’re like now you can’t forget that,” Sunset said once she’d had time enough to think about it. I nodded.

“True, true. I only saw them once they’d been properly defeated and, ah, humbled I suppose. And even then just Adagio. Never did see the others. But then I’m a forgiving sort of fellow anyway, so maybe I’m misguided.”

“I mean, it’s not - I made a choice. I chose to do what I did. To run away and to...do the other things that I did,” she grimaced. “It’s in their nature to do what they did. That’s different.”

“So they’re inherently evil? That’s unfortunate.”

In the real world that sort of thing was rare, which tended to make life confusing. Running into someone - or something - totally, one-hundred percent opposed to you and your wellbeing just on account of how they were put together would be surprisingly refreshing. You could retaliate with a clear conscience! Surely?

Sunset had a look that suggested she was only now realising what it was she’d just said.

“Not evil, just, uh, naturally predisposed towards certain courses of action.”

“Which are?”

This was a leading question. I’d played my hand too obviously. Sunset gave me a very flat look indeed.

“They’re creatures that feed off of emotion. Especially negative emotion. They’re endowed with natural abilities to compel others to act in ways that amplify emotions. Which is to say they can get people to do things for their own benefit. It’s not difficult to see how these things might lead to adverse consequences.”

Couldn’t really argue with that. Especially not having been there to see it, either.

“Well...that’s fair…”

“I’m not an expert, obviously. I wasn’t around when they got banished here. But I was around to see what they did here and I’ve read up on them since then, so it seems pretty obvious. If you’re set up in a way that makes you act a certain way then that’s just what happens.”

I tried to reconcile this idea with what - admittedly little - I knew of Adagio. It didn’t quite fit.

“Does any of this go towards explaining why me, grumpy bastard that I am, decided to let in some random girl?” I asked. Sunset scratched her head.

“Maybe even with their power gone they still project a kind of...low-key entrancing aura. Maybe she’s recovering. Maybe you’re just too nice for your own good.”

“Maybe all three?”

“Anything’s possible.”

“So I’m learning.”

We walked in companionable silence for a bit after this, hand in hand. We came to a stop in the shade of a tree and watched a duck swim in a circle on a pond. The duck seemed to know what it was doing.

“Why’d you get so bent out of shape over her hugging me, anyway? Or was that a, uh, ‘she’s dangerous and you shouldn’t be letting her get that close’ sort of a thing?” I asked, suddenly. I’d remembered.

Sunset went a bit pink again. And not just her ears this time.

“N-not exactly that,”

“Did you, uh - was it something you wanted to do? Or something?”

A dumb question. Didn’t know why I asked it. Just popped out. I’d half meant it as a joke.

Must have been the heat of the day getting to me. I mean, what a ridiculous thing to have asked. What an absolutely ludicrous-

“Yes!” She blurted.

The silence that followed this was not companionable. It was awkward.

The duck quacked. I coughed.

“You know if you’d wanted to - if you want to - you could have just done it. I’m not averse,” I said. Quietly. My voice had gone tiny all of a sudden.

“I thought you didn’t like people touching you,” Sunset said, trying with some obvious effort not to sound sour about it or rattled about the turn the conversation had taken.

“I don’t like strangers touching me. You’re not a stranger. It’s an important distinction.”

I raised our clasped hands.

“See? Important distinction.”

“Well you could have made that clearer,” she said.

Couldn’t say anything to that. She was just right. I could have. Communication never was my strong point.

A thought did occur to me though:

“Why’d you even hold my hand in the first place if you thought I didn’t like people touching me?” I asked. She groaned.

“I didn’t think about that at the time! Leave me alone!”

The duck, perhaps tired of us, flew away. I watched as the ripples from its departure reached the edge of the pond and reflected back. Very zen. I think.

“Want a hug now, then? Is that how this works? Do I just ask or-”

I did not get to finish asking, because she just did it. Kind of. More of half a hug as she lunged and wrapped in under my arm, which was then around her shoulder. There was no elegance in what she did, and it took us both a few second after it to get us both sorted out. But we did it.

I did not know how to feel about what had just happened, so I blocked it out, really. At least she was warm. It was just odd that it had happened. With Sunset of all people. But maybe this was normal. Again, who was I to say?

“Is she still back at your place?” Sunset asked, out of nowhere. It took me a second to figure out what she was talking about, and then who she was talking about. The change of subject and distraction were welcome. I embraced them. More than I was embracing her.

“Oh, Adagio? No, no she split.”

“She’s gone?”

“Skidaddled, yeah. Sometime in the night. She even left the door open behind her.”

“That’s thoughtless.”

“Yeah well, happened now. All worked out for the best, right? She’s gone. I didn’t even have to say anything. So that’s a problem solved, right?”

I said this, but I did not feel this. Adagio had hardly been a problem at the time. It was only what people had told me and then wanted me to do that had made her a problem. Couldn’t quite shake the horrible feeling I’d been party to forcing her out and chasing her away.

Back into the rain for her, I guess. That did not make me feel great.

Clearly this showed, as Sunset leaned in and frowned at whatever looked I had on my face.

“You don’t look happy,” she said.

I made an effort to try and mash my face into a more neutral, unreadable expression. I do not know how well I succeeded in this. Too late anyway.

“This whole thing has been a learning experience. And not a fun one. I have not learned anything that has made me happier. I did what I thought was a good thing and maybe I did it for bad reasons for a person who was bad. And now they’re gone and they just left silently without me even knowing. I don’t know. This is big boy stuff. I’m so confused.”

From her position there wasn’t lot she could pat comfortingly, so she rather poorly decided to pat my belly. Both of us knew this was weird but both of us knew better than to make it worse by drawing attention to it. She meant well.

“It’s okay,” she said. The classic go-to for when you can’t really think of anything else nice to say. Better than nothing.

I watched the now-duckless water. A random stranger in a hoody wandered around the other side before disappearing past a hedge and out of sight. I doubted they were relevant. Life is full of irrelevant detail.

“So. Unicorn, huh?” I asked.

She groaned.

“Do we have to talk about this?”

“It’s not the sort of thing you can just drop in my lap and expect me not to ask at least one question.”

“You already asked me questions. I already answered a lot,” she said, sulking.

“Yeah well, humour me a little at least? Please? It’s not everyday I get to a bonafide unicorn.”

I thought about that for a second.

“I mean, I talk to you pretty much every day anyway and have done for months now so, uh, you know what I mean…”

“Fine, you get one more question. One more! Choose wisely.”

This she said while holding a finger up to my face so close I almost went cross-eyed.

That’s pressure. So many options. How was it adapting from - presumably - hooves to hands? What was it like having a horn? How did the magic she mentioned work? How on earth were the sun and moon supposed to be moved by magic? Were they tiny? Did that mean her world didn’t actually move? Did it rotate? Were the seasons subject to the arbitrary whim of her divine monarch? Since she said the weather was controlled did they even have seasons at all? How little was a little pony?

A lot of these questions were a touch dry and I also realised I was just standing staring and she was staring at me, too, in deep expectation. So I panicked.

“Do you impale those who aren’t virgins? Or is that something you grew out of?”

“...what?”

I knew exactly one unicorn fact. Well, ‘fact’. Apparently not so, judging by her reaction.

“That was a waste of a question,” I said, sighing.

Sunset did not immediately reply and when I looked down at her again she was chewing her lip apprehensively.

“Things aren’t going to change between us, are they? We’re still going to be close?” She asked, eyes flicking up.

“I’d say we were pretty close right now,” I said, and before she could scoff I plunged onwards: “No, things aren’t going to change. I already said that, I thought, and if I didn’t I just did. A lot of strange things have happened recently but you’re still lovely. So worry not.”

The pinkness came back to Sunset then, obvious even as she turned away.

“I’m not lovely…” she muttered. I tightened my arm around her, as it felt the thing to do.

“Shush you, you’re plenty lovely.”

Conversation petered out a little after that, and we wandered. Without really noticing she led the way right back to the ice cream place, her justification being that we hadn’t actually had ice cream, technically speaking, and this needed rectifying. Another giant, daunting, sundae-thing was ordered from the rather bemused staff and Sunset caved on splitting the cost with only a little pressure.

“You already got one today,” she’d said, insistently.

“Shush you. That melted, this is a sharing thing.”

It didn’t take much to convince her, all told.

Ice cream was pretty great. Much better shared than left to sit and melt.

We’d managed to polish off most of the thing between us - which was no mean feat - when Sunset checked her phone. Her brow knitted.

“I, uh, need to go. There’s been some kind of emergency involving a cake?”

She didn’t sound so sure. Stranger things had happened. I shrugged.

“These things are sent to test us. I can cover for you here,” I said, gesturing with my spoon at what remained. “How common are cake-based emergencies, exactly?”

Biting her lip she tapped a finger on her phone.

“More than you’d expect.”

“It probably depends on who you associate with.”

“Yeah…”

Sunset looked thoughtful a moment or two and then slipped the phone back into her pocket.

“Sorry to ditch you,” she said. I waved her off.

“It’s fine, really. It’s cool. We’re cool, right?”

She smiled. Just a little, but certainly enough for me.

“Yeah, we’re cool. Things kinda worked out.”

“That they did. Now off you go. Solve your cake emergency.”

Sliding out from her side of the booth she halfway lent over into mine, hesitated when about a foot away from me, and then dove in for another hug. This was something she did now, it seemed.

“Talk to you later?” She asked once she’d finished. I - already attacking the ice cream again - nodded and gave a thumbs up. Her smile widened and off she went. I watched her go.

“We’re hugging now, apparently,” I said to myself.

What a strange day. Not unpleasant, just full of odd things.

And no sooner had I thought that to myself than the irrelevant stranger in the hoody sat down across from me. I frowned. Very forward of them.

“Hello to you, too,” I said.

The stranger tilted their head back.

It was actually Adagio.

Oh my God. It had been relevant! I should have been looking closer!

To be fair, she’d clearly gone with the hoody ensemble on purpose as it was form-devouring enough to completely obscure whatever shape she had and also completely the wrong colour for her. Certainly, it had worked on me.

A tug back on the hood and her hair appeared. It didn’t so much unfurl as simply occupy space that had been empty before. The effect made my eyes water.

If I’d needed further proof of her mysterious, magical nature then this was it. It hardly seemed possible. How had it even managed to fit?

Probably best not to think about it too much. I let my spoon drop and rested my face in my hands.

“I probably shouldn’t be surprised by this turn of events,” I said into my palms.

“I didn’t have anywhere to go…” I heard her say. Looking up from between my fingers I saw her staring dolefully at the table. She looked so powerfully miserable it actually made me physically flinch

“Then why’d you leave like that?” I asked.

“You were going to throw me out anyway,” she said sourly, shrugging. I jabbed an accusing finger. Though I wasn’t sure what I was going to be accusing her of. If anything.

“Not throw you out, just try and work out what you should do next. You couldn’t just move in with me. You don’t know me. I’m just some guy. And I don’t know you either. You’re just some girl.”

I scratched my head.

“Turns out there was a lot I didn’t know about you, actually.”

“I did explain it all,” Adagio said, pouting. I wasn’t falling for that. I gave her a look, though I didn’t really put as much into it as I could have done.

“Yeah, after other people had explained it. I mean it’s not a race but still, bit late. Horse, bolted, stable.”

“Horse?”

I remember that I was dealing with someone from a magical land with a significant pony population. Was horse a bad word? Why would Adagio care?

Time to quickly change the subject.

“And you left my front door open, too. There was that.”

That got her. Her eyes fell to the table again and she fidgeted, playing with the too-long sleeves of the hoody.

“...that was petty. Sorry.”

I sighed, rubbed my face, lent back.

“It’s fine. Might not have been, but it was, so it’s gravy. Let’s think more about now. Guessing you saw me and Sunset?”

“...yeah.”

“She’s back to being my friend now, which is nice. Thinks that you’ve left, probably for good. If you show up again - if I let you back to mine again - she might be a little bit upset. I don’t really want that. So here we are.”

“‘Back to being friends’?” Adagio said back to me, head tilted.

“What? We are. She was mad at me, we talked, now she’s not. That’s a win in my book. And don’t try to change the subject, that’s my game. We’re talking about you, here. What’s happening now? You find your sisters or anything?”

Were they even really sisters? Technically? It probably didn’t matter.

“No. I don’t even know where to start,” she said.

Of course she didn’t.

I looked up at the clock the ice cream place had. It wasn’t working. I looked outside. From what I could see I’d guess that it was still pretty early. Probably before noon. Waking up early is hellish, that’s not how a day off should be.

And what remained of the ice cream had melted. Again.

“Alright. Well, we can work on that, can’t we? I have a day off, we can go look. Two heads better and all that?”

“Really?”

“Sure. Not like this sort of thing happens every day. And it works for both of us, right? You find your sisters and hopefully get a nice, proper next step, Sunset doesn’t get mad at me for letting you stay at mine again - we all win.”

The last part caught her attention and her eyes widened.

“Would you let me stay again?”She asked quickly. I held up my hands, scooching out of the booth once more.

“One thing at a time, please don’t ask me that. Let’s just do this looking thing first, eh?”

“Oh. Okay. Sure,” she said, grabbing the bag she’d set down beside her and scooching out as well.

We exited, and I was set to keep on walking when I stopped. Adagio bumped into the back of me.

“Can I ask you a question though?” I asked. A question within a question.

She nodded.

“When I first saw you - when you were in the rain and all that - did you do any mojo on me? To make me more sympathetic?”

“No. Not intentionally, not that I know of. I couldn’t do anything. Still can’t…” she sounded bitter, and not a little sad. I thought about that.

“If you could have, would you?”

She thought about that. Her mouth opened, but she stopped, thought again, and then said very quietly:

“...yes.”

I didn’t know how to feel about that.

Comments

[jrock117]

Only caught a couple errors, like the bit with the sprinkles. I'm really enjoying how awkward this guy is.

[Trump]

Glad to see the story progressing!

[Rubahhitam]

Hmm. My curiosity is now piqued.

-Ru

[Backslasherton]

Love this story. Hope you can continue it sometime in the future.

[Cackling Moron]

9353653
It's my old shame! Entirely forgotten where I was meaning to go with it. But who knows? Anything's possible.

[Vaine]

Hi, been reading some of your newer material and I loved it, so I figured I'd read some of your earlier work and was not disappointed. Sad it's unfinished, but I understand sometimes the spark just isn't there. It's better then forcing yourself to write something just for the sake of it.

I like the way your main characters act. Mostly because I am also a shut in who thinks and worries too much. I also liked how these stories have no romance tag, even though there it's an OBVIOUS romantic subplot going on (at least in the ones I've read). I think it's because while there is romance involved it's not the focus of the story so that's why it's not a tag? Regardless I like the choice of excluding the tag, it feels strangely refreshing. It's both hilarious and exasperating how oblivious He is.

That's it. I've done my spiel. I suck at outros.

[Noobly60]

This is getting dramatic. I love it