Johns

by Cackling Moron

There's time enough for action

Author's Note:

More meandering, repetitive guff. The point of the story is to be big and not to go anywhere.

Also, I still can't get Celestia's internal voice right, I'm entirely aware, and that's because I have precisely one character voice and that is my voice, just shoved into the mouths of others.

Authorial growth is something that happens to other people.

He had, for some reason, taken me to a bowling alley. As in, ten pin bowling.

I’ll admit it was certainly a surprise. Certainly nothing I ever would have considered.

He was very excited about it though. It was rather cute. It was very cute. Kept scampering ahead and beckoning for me to hurry up. I may have kept it slow just to see him do it. May have.

“Imagine my surprise to see a place like this around here! I swear, this world provides me with just about anything I could desire. Benefits of being the hub of the universe, don’t you know,” he said.

“Hmm,” I went. Not sure what he was talking about here, but best to humour him. I’m sure it made perfect sense to him.

The place was a little tucked away, which might explain why I wasn’t familiar with it. A little on the rundown side but cheerful all the same. We entered - John holding the door for him, also cute - and once we’d entered he immediately spread his arms and took in a deep breath. I wouldn’t have done that, myself, but he seemed to be taking a level of enjoyment in the process I probably wasn’t fully able to appreciate.

“Ah! Takes me back! Makes me think of birthday parties and day trips and, uh, at least one kind of lacklustre date I went on one time,” he said, arms dropping and a frown creasing his face.

That last part does catch my attention.

“Date? Oh?” I ask, coming in to stand beside him. He glances sideways at me then glances around then quickly nips in to peck me on the cheek. Have to giggle at that.

“Nothing interesting, I can assure you. Kind of the problem, really. I certainly knew how to show a girl an, ah, dull time, let me tell you. And still do, apparently.”

“Shh. I’m sure it wasn’t that bad.”

“Ah, hmm, less said the better. Come on! We’re wasting precious bowling time.”

And off he trots. I follow. Happily, my appearance does not seem to be causing any particular level of surprise of consternation, beyond a bow or two which I receive as politely as possible. I think this is more to do with how sparsely populated the establishment is, but still. You never can tell how it will go, these things.

I had not bowled nor been in a position where I could have bowled in some considerable time. In fact, I can barely remember the last occasion I might have done it. I have a feeling the event may not have made that much of an impression on me.

“Look at the carpet! Even universes away it looks exactly like how it’s meant to! Now that’s destiny, that is,” John says, hands on his hips, staring straight downward.

“What are you talking about, dear?” I ask, breezily.

“Destiny, obviously, and, uh…”

He’s still staring at the carpet but then he gets a faraway look. It doesn’t last long, but I do see it. He gets those sometimes. I do wish he’d tell me why. In a way I could understand, so I could understand, and maybe help him. If he needed help. Or, if nothing else, just understand him that little bit better.

John blinks.

“And, uh, carpet. Yeah. I’ll go sort us out a lane, you just stand there and look radiant and beautiful and lovely. Shouldn’t be too hard for you.”

I’m grinning and I can’t help myself.

“Flatterer…”

It’s not the most artful or thoughtful or romantic, what he said, at least not if you’d just read about it. There is something in his delivery though, in the look in his eye and the way he looks at me when he says it. Never fails to make me feel very, well, in the moment, I should say. Very present.

And maybe raise a little warmth in my cheeks. I dimly recall it being said it doesn’t do for princesses to blush, though I can’t fathom who’d make such a stuffy rule. Hmm.

Possibly imagining it. The sort of thing someone might have said to me at one point or another. Hmm.

John returns.

“That was easier than I expected. Lane three, lovely, that one there,” he said, pointing, and so over we go.

The lane is a lane. There isn’t much else to note about it. John immediately settles himself down with the scorecards and is flourishing a tiny nub of a pencil. He is, for some reason, dabbing the tip on his tongue. I’m not sure why.

“Allow me to demonstrate my talent with the local language! I shall flawlessly put our names onto the scorecards,” he says.

“Ooh,” I say.

I had wondered how that was progressing for him. Twilight had heaped praise on how well he was doing when I’d asked, but I suspect that may have had more to do with her soft spot for him than any actual spectacular success on his part. Not to do my beloved down, of course, I just like to think I have a more realistic and grounded level of expectation.

Which is infinitely higher than his own opinion of himself, sadly.

After a moment or two of furious scribbling he finishes and sits up straight.

“There you go,” he said, sliding the card across the little table towards me and revealing his handiwork.

He’d written ‘Bottoms’. In comprehensible and reasonably legible Mareain, admittedly, but still. He had written bottoms. When I look up at him again he’s grinning and watching intently for my reaction. I keep it muted. I am not giving him the satisfaction, at least not yet.

“...I have Twilight to thank for this?” I ask, and he nods vigorously.

“Yes, entirely and solely. It’s all her. She’s a bad influence. I was pure and innocent before-”

“I’ll be sure to tell her off the next time I see her, darling. For now though do it nicely and let’s start, shall we? Go on. I’m watching very closely,” I say, stepping in behind him and leaning down to rest my chin on his shoulder, the better to watch what he did next.

“No sense fun at all, some people…”

I bring my mouth to his ear and make sure to whisper:

“I’m having lots of fun.”

It gets a shiver. I do enjoy doing that. Works almost every time, rarely gets old.

I then proceed to watch him write out bottoms again, only this time in much more careful, flowing, overly-elegant script. He knows I’m watching him do this but he does it anyway. When he’s done he pulls the pencil away.

“There,” he says.

“I did say to do it nicely, didn’t I?”

“Exactly.”

“And so that’s your card, then. I think I’ll do my own,” I say, drawing the blank one over and relieving him of the pencil.

“_{Bums are still funny. Height of wit.}”

I had the strong impression that this was a habit of John’s, and that this was not a one-off event. In his defence he wasn’t wrong - bottoms were quite funny. Certainly, his was.

Tee hee.

I filled in my scorecard and set it down beside his. He squinted at mine.

“Is that how you normally write your name?” He asked.

“Yes,” I said with a straight face.

“Are you sure? It looks different.”

“Quite sure.”

“That’s not a rude word, is it?”

John is a bad influence on me. I keep my straight face. All those years of being regal and aloof have to be good for something.

“Of course not. Now, which of us is going first?” I ask.

“Oh, after you, lovely,” he says, gesturing to the balls.

I select one - the closest, as it seems the simplest selection - sight down the lane, visualise, shimmy (largely for John’s benefit, if I’m being honest) and then send the ball downlane. There’s a very satisfying clatter and not a single pin is left standing.

Smiling, holding my head high, I saunter back to mark my score. John is grimacing.

“Well that’s a bad omen,” he says.

“For you perhaps, dear.”

“Har har. Alright, well, here we go,” he says, slapping his thighs and standing up and stretching. “Just to warn you, I’m staggeringly, hilariously bad at this. Just so you’re warned.”

He says this while wagging a finger at me and I can’t help but roll my eyes.

“I’ll consider myself warned. Or maybe you’re attempting to - what is it? - hustle me?”

“I’d never do that in public! I have a little decency,” he says, faux-horrified, moving to the balls. I poke him in the rear with my horn and he yelps.

“Now who isn’t fun?”

Keeping an eye for any other pokes he picks up a ball and turns it over. He seems to be feeling for something and when he can’t find it he turns it over some more. He finally looks at the ball he’s chosen. He then frowns.

“...these don’t have finger holes,” he says.

“Why would they?” I ask.

I can see the wheels in his head turning and can hear them clicking when I very deliberately put both hooves on the table holding the scorecards.

“...that is a very good point. I may be even worse at this than I initially thought.”

He wasn’t that bad, of course. He wasn’t good, but he wasn’t as bad as he said he was. I hadn’t expected him to be. That had just been him doing what he always did, selling himself short, doing himself down. I wish he wouldn’t do that.

A few frames in and I am trouncing him, obviously, though I would have to imagine that lacking those holes-for-fingers he was looking for can’t have helped.

As he returns from another split that he failed to finish up on I ask him:

“What are you thinking about?”

I know this question comes up a lot and I know it very rarely gets results, but I live in hope.

He gives me A Look. Or rather, gives me the look he sometimes gives me whenever I ask him too many times what it is he’s thinking about. In my defence, if he answered the question I might stop asking it.

“Wasn’t the whole point of running off for something to do so that thinking would stop?” He asks me.

“One of the points, maybe. And did it work?”

“Uh…”

I see his shoulders slump and he sags onto the bench seating, scratching his head. I move to sit beside him. The pins can wait for now. The place is hardly heaving as it is.

“So what are you thinking about?”

“...uh…”

He looks around.

“...bowling alleys?”

“Is that right?”

“Well, maybe.”

Hard not to roll my eyes again. I wiggle in closer so there’s no gap between us.

“You know, a more suspicious girlfriend might start to think you were hiding something from her.”

He flinches, which I wasn’t entirely expecting and didn’t entirely enjoy.

“Okay, maybe it’s not just bowling alleys, but it is, ah, related. Sort of. Tangentially. Laterally. It’s, uh…”

He trails off for a second, frowns, squints, and then picks up again:

“This might sound like a, uh, stupid question but do, you know, immortal horses have, uh, parents?”

I give this question a second to sink down properly, like something valuable flung into a fishtank and watched just settling onto the little pebbles at the bottom, there to be gawped at by fish who had no idea what it is they’ve become party to.

…I think John is starting to affect my internal imagery. He really is a bad influence!

“Yes, John,” I say, as flatly as I can manage.

“See, told you it’d sound stupid. Guess it makes sense, now I hear you say it. But, uh, well, thought I’d check first. For, uh, context reasons, I guess. Or something. It’s just - “

He looks around some more. At the carpet again. Am I missing something obvious about the carpet? Or is this a human thing?

“Bowling was something that tended to happen when I was, you know, a younger man, so it makes me a bit nostalgic, makes me think about earlier, simpler times and all that. And all of my earlier, simpler times were, well, you know…” He said, and he didn’t need to finish for me to know what it was he meant.

‘Not here’.

I consider this.

“Do you miss your home?” I ask.

“Pretty sure you’ve asked me that before, lovely, or some version of that. Answer’s the same though: no. Very much no. Not at all. Nostalgic for times gone, maybe sometimes, but those were gone even when I was home, so no, not missing home, no.”

I consider this, too. I put some things together in my head.

“Do you miss anyone you may have left behind at home?”

He seems to consider this.

“...not as such.”

“Not as such?”

He swallows.

“There isn’t - wasn’t - wasn’t really anyone I left behind. Really. So it’s - it’s not really a problem, really. There’s no-one…waiting…for me.”

There were some very deliberate word choices in this sentence.

I think I may be pushing too far. If I keep going, I don’t think I’ll get anything good. No deeper understanding. I think it’ll cause more harm. There’s something here, but it’s not going to be coming out in the middle of a bowling alley. But that’s fine. There’s something.

I put my wing around him. I know he likes that.

“If there’s anything I can do to help, John, anything at all, with anything at all, you know you can always ask me, don’t you?”

I wasn’t sure what I could really help him with if he was missing anything or anyone from home, but I just wanted him to know that I was there for him, was always there for him, would always be there for him. I wanted him to know that, and I wanted him to actually, well, avail himself. Not turn inwards when he didn’t have to. Not when there was plainly something gnawing at him.

Maybe there was always something gnawing at him. How would I know?

“Of course, of course.”

He doesn’t seem to be concentrating. I pull the wing in a bit tighter.

“John? I mean it. You know that?”

He looks at my wingtips, then at me.

“Anything, huh?”

“Anything it would be in my power to do.”

“That’s - that’d be a lot, wouldn’t it?”

“It would, yes.”

Not much sense in denying it.

“Just drop everything to help me out?”

“Well, not drop everything, no, I do have responsibilities, but if there was something that was important to you then it would be important to me as well, and so would get all the time and attention it would deserve.”

I’d have to imagine it would be important to more than just me, but that was by-the-by.

I see John swallow.

“And that’d - that’d be for me, huh?”

“Yes.”

“You’re, ah - you’re very nice to me, you, ah, heh.”

“I love you,” I say, by way of explanation. To me it says all it needs to.

“I love you too. A lot, actually, heh. An awful lot. More than I would have, uh, well, heh. Wish I could - mean, seems kind of a shame I can’t ever, ah, give back even an eighth of what you’ve given me. Just a big hole that everything falls in-”

“No, John, no. Don’t say that, that’s not true. And it doesn’t work like that, anyway. And even if it did, you’ve already given me more than enough, whether you think so or not. And every day you give me even more. I don’t know what to do with it all, frankly, you give me so much.”

I’d say something like ‘If anyone’s the big hole here it’s me’ and I know that John would appreciate that for the dirty joke it was, but now sadly wasn’t the time. Now was the time for being serious.

Maybe later.

John is staring at me.

“...I think I’ve lost track of what we’re talking about.”

“I think I have, too.”

He’s staring at me again. I really, really do wish I knew what went through his head sometimes. I feel like I’m one third of a conversation that is taking place behind a brick wall, and times like this I really, really don’t like it that much.

“...love you,” he says, putting a lot of effort into smiling.

“Love you too.”

Then he kisses me on the nose and another, bigger smile comes down and hides whichever one he had before.

“Let’s bowl. I believe you were annihilating me?”

Comments

[Eternal Samson]

I like it

[Barney]

I quite enjoy reading meandering involving alicorn princesses. Always nice to see an update on this one.
For some reason I've always thought of your human characters as sounding like Stephen Merchant.

[Mare Serenitis]

On the subject of voices...
I've taken to imagining very specific pair of them for the primary characters in this story: Tom and Barbara from The Good Life.

In other news: I'm too old.

[ROBCakeran53]

Repetition be damned, this was cute. I always love their interactions!

[Waiting for Godot]

11329657
God damn it so am I, as I understood the reference

[Alondro]

Alondro suddenly 'Displaces' John...

Celestia, "Is there anyone you miss from your world?"

Alondro, "There's... no one left now..."

Celestia, "Awww, you mean all your loved ones have passed on?"

Alondro rubs the back of his neck sheepishly, "N-no, I mean... there's NO ONE left... at all... See, there was this one show "Doctor Who" where the main character asked a little mutant guy in a mechanical chair a question about what he'd do with a virus that could kill everything if he released it.... and I kinda got curious to know if something like that could actually exist..."

Celestia steps back, eyes widening....

Alondro finished, "... and I kinda sorta found out it could..."

Celestia banishes Alondro to the Sun... where he bumps into Arca... "Hey! We should do magical science together!"

[Jordanis]

Well, I still enjoy the meandering, anyway.

[SIGAWESOME]

11329541

For some reason I've always thought of your human characters as sounding like Stephen Merchant.

Oh wow. Now that you have mentioned it, I just realised that is more or less spot on how I have been imagining their voices too.

[Kevin Lee]

11330705

Celestia banishes Alondro to the Sun... where he bumps into Arca... "Hey! We should do magical science together!"

Arca: "Ooooh! I've got these four bottles full of the local gas! I found if we smash them all togther really, REALLY hard, it makes our voice go weirdly squeaky!! Also, gives us a lot of light and a deep suntan.