Kalinka...
I was born ready.
Spike skidded down the stairs of the castle, almost losing his footing, as he rounded the landing and continued his downward sprint.
Finally, after all this time, I’m finally free.
His feet hitting the landing, Spike’s eyes fixated on the front door of the castle. He was seconds away from freedom.
“SUMMER VACATION!” he cried joyously, bounding forward at full speed.
Not a second later, he ran into something warm, fluffy, and purple. Spike collapsed backward onto the cold, crystalline floor.
“There you are, Spike!” Twilight Sparkle chirped. “Great news, I got you a summer job, and you start today!”
“NOOOOOOOOO!” Spike groaned in lamentation, reaching a single claw upwards from the floor towards the ceiling.
“Come on, Spike. Idle hooves and/or claws are the Devil’s playthings, you know,” Twilight warned. “With the Friendship School out of session for the season, I’m taking on new commitments, too.”
Spike made a low, pitiful whining noise. “But Twiliiiiight...I was going to spend the next three months relaxing!”
“Well, you still can, because your job is at the Ponyville Spa! It’ll be an excellent chance for you to learn some new skills, and Lotus and Aloe jumped right on the idea of somepony with digits instead of hooves working with them.”
Still lying on the floor and looking up at the ceiling, Spike groaned. “Aww man, this sucks.”
Twilight grinned down at him knowingly. “But you’ll make plenty of bits...and I’m sure you’ll see Rarity practically every day. They might even ask you to give her a treatment.”
Spike’s ear frills perked up and he scrambled to his feet. “I will see you tonight, Twilight,” he stated calmly, briskly walking towards the front door and his new job.
It was a pleasant summer day, all things considered. The sun was shining, the birds were doing the same old song and dance, and ponies were out on the town doing normal pony things.
But who had time for all that jazz? Not the dragon with the thumbs, that’s for sure. If he wanted to possible obtain the rights to be Rarity’s personal masseuse for a summer, he would need to set the tone early and often that he was a responsible drake. No, that he was a capable and responsible drake.
“Oh yeah, we got this in the bag,” Spike said, wishing he had a pair of ridiculously cool Hoofly sunglasses to put on. But alas, he did not.
It didn’t take him long to get to the spa, thankfully. He was a busy dragon after all. Well, given his intended workload for the summer, maybe impatient was a better word.
He pushed the door open and strode in, as confident as could be. He looked around the waiting area, ready to lay down the law and how awesome he was but…. There was a slight problem.
“Where is everypony?” Spike darted his eyes around the small room. There were a couple of lounge sofas with nopony on them. There was a magazine rack, as well. Delightful music played in the background, but the desk was unmanned. “Maybe they’re off today?”
There were a set of double doors on the opposite end of the room, and they suddenly swung open, making Spike nearly jump out of his scales.
“Ahh!” he screeched before turning to face the newcomer.
A pink earth pony gently strode out, a warm and welcoming smile on her face. Spike merely stood up as straight as he could in his misguided attempt to look like a professional and waved.
“Hey, there Aloe!” He said. At least he hoped this was Aloe. He always got them confused. He’d just have to go off of her react—”
“Oh, hello there, Spike!” She said with a gentle nod.
Nailed it!
“It is so good to see you today, Spike,” she continued in her alluring accent, trotting a bit closer. “I see that Princess Tvilight must have told you about our job opening, yes?”
“Sure did,” he replied with a thumbs up.
“And I assume you’re interested in de position, yes?”
“Your assumption would be correct.” Spike smiled brightly at her. “I’m the dragon for the job.”
Aloe giddily clopped her hooves together. “Wonderful! Summer is, after all, our busiest season, so the extra hooves, er, claws around vill be quite helpful!”
“Sweet. Well, that’s what I’m here for. Just let me know what needs done and I’ll do it. I’ve got references and all that jazz, too.”
She brought a hoof to her mouth, stifling a giggle. “Oh, that won’t be necessary. I imagine you will be a perfect fit for de job. All you need is a white headband like so!”
She trotted behind the desk and tossed him one of their trademark headbands. He fumbled with it for a moment before finally getting it on.
“Eh, no offense, but isn’t this for the purpose of keeping your mane out of your eyes? I don’t really see this being something I’ll need to worry about.”
“Hehe, perhaps you are right. I don’t suppose you need one.”
Spike took a moment to look himself over in a nearby mirror. “Actually, I don’t look half bad. I can rock it. This way I’ll fit in with all the cool ponies around here, too.” He punctuated the sentence with a wink.
“Very good,” she said. “In that case, let us get started immediately. There is much work to do. I’d like to formally introduce you to my sister first, if you don’t mind.”
Spike cocked his head to the side. “Hold on. Isn’t there any, like, tax documentation I need to fill out or whatever?”
“Oh no, not anymore,” she replied with a shake of her head. “Celestia removed taxation from income this past year.”
Spike shrugged. “Heh, one pothole in her Castle’s courtyard and I bet she’ll be regretting that decision. Anyway, let’s go meet your sister. Lotus, right?”
“Correct.”
This job was not at all what Spike had hoped for.
After only half a day of work, it became exceedingly clear that the glorious visions of rubbing down Rarity that had danced in his head on the walk over to the spa were never to become reality.
Formally meeting the beautiful and charming business owners had been very pleasant, of course. It was the other introductions that had been problematic. Evidently, it was not enough for Lotus and Aloe to be foreign- most of their other employees were from the same homeland as well. Spike had nothing against foreigners, of course (friendship being magic, and all), but the other workers had thicker accents and a much worse command of the Equestrian language than their bosses did.
“Room four,” Spike repeated slowly, punctuating his statement by raising a corresponding set of claws.
The light blue stallion with a rather sloppy manestyle rapidly transferred his attention back and forth between Spike’s limb and his exhausted expression. After a few moments, he lit up his horn and picked up four towels. “Four?” He repeated hopefully.
Spike slapped his own face with a concerning degree of force. “No!” He repeated, gesturing with both of his arms simultaneously. “One towel, room four.”
The stallion blinked a few times. “Four?” He repeated, less optimistically this time.
Spike snorted in frustration. “Nevermind. I’ll do it. Just go and clean the mudbath area.” He waved the worker off condescendingly. “Go.”
“Ok, I vill clean,” the stallion responded, walking out of the room.
Spike breathed a sigh of relief and returned to folding washcloths into little cranes. “I know they’re laughing about me at lunch,” he grumbled to himself. “I just can’t prove it...Thanks a bunch for mucking up my whole summer, Twi.”
After finishing a set of cloths, he picked up a larger body towel and trudged down the corridor to massage room four.
Apparently, being a masseuse was something one had to be certified and trained for, which meant that Spike was all too familiar with the processes of folding, sweeping, scrubbing, butt-kissing and the like. Towel delivery was just one more bullet point on the list.
As he approached the room, Spike let out an exhausted groan. At least it was the end of the first week and he could look forward to getting paid. Then, he could spend his weekend reading some brand new comic books.
Hours later, he trudged painfully up to the front counter where Lotus was seated, working on some paperwork. The waiting room was deserted, casting an unusual calm over the setting.
“Hey Lotus,” Spike huffed, placing his claws on the counter.
“Vhy hello Spike,” Lotus mumbled cheerfully past the pen in her mouth. “Headed home for de day?”
“Yup,” he stated matter-of-factly, drumming his claws on the counter. “Just stopping by to pick up my check for the week.”
Lotus abruptly stopped writing. After a moment, she spat her pen out. “A-ah, yes dahling, of course,” she mumbled nervously. “Uh, let me get sister, yes?” Standing up abruptly, she scurried back into an office room situated behind the desk.
Spike cocked an eyebrow as segments of progressively louder and faster foreign language flew behind the shut door. “That can’t be good,” he mumbled to himself.
After another few shouts and a moment of silence, the twin sisters left the room. Reapproaching the counter, they regarded Spike with a pair of ingratiating smiles.
“You are great employee, Spike,” Aloe cooed. “You have earned every bit from your work!”
Lotus cleared her throat. “Unfortunately, de spa is dealing with, how you say...a liqvidity issue.”
“A liquidity issue?” Spike parroted.
“Yes dahling,” Aloe said. “A cash flow situation.”
Spike narrowed his eyes. “So...you’re not going to pay me?”
“Of course ve vill pay you, dahling,” Aloe gasped. “It’s just that ve cannot pay you now.”
Furrowing his brow, Spike frowned deeply. “I’m not sure I like where this is going.”
The sisters cast a worried glance toward each other. “I-it’s just that ve cannot pay you until next veek,” Lotus explained. “I promise you will get all of your money then! And, in exchange for not telling government of this little mix-up, ve have a special treatment planned for you.”
“A special treatment?” Spike repeated with a degree of skepticism, cocking an eyebrow.
“Yes, of course!” Aloe explained as she opened the door between the office and the lobby and approached Spike. “Vhy don’t you follow us so we can show you? You don’t have to be anywhere, no?”
“Well, Twilight probably wants me home in a few hours for dinner…”
“That is plenty of time,” she reassured, prodding him forward with her muscle. “Давай, let’s go! You could use some relaxation…”
Spike was laying face-down in one of those strange, oriental quick-massage contraptions. He had only seen them a few times before, while carrying Rarity’s shopping bags through a shopping mall in Canterlot, but now that he was in one, he had to admit it was pretty comfortable.
“Блядь, this is the wrong type of oil, урод!” exclaimed Lotus loudly, tearing Spike from his blissful meditation on the past.
Spike could hear Aloe shuffling around in a shelf in an attempt to find the bottle her sister wanted. “Иди в жопу, козёл!” she spat back as she shoved a different container into her sister’s hooves.
Spike sat himself up and glanced around worriedly. “Is, uh, everything alright?”
“Oh, yes dahling,” Lotus reassured him. Firmly, she pressed him back into the cushioned contraption with a hoof. “Relax, please! Ve cannot have you stressed during the treatment.”
Spike ceased his struggling almost immediately and rolled his eyes. Not that anyone could see it, given as his face was squished into the middle of a foam doughnut.
Walking behind Spike, Lotus lathered the bottoms of her hooves in oil and placed them against Spike’s back.
Spike remained quiet and wiggled gently to situate himself better as her hooves slid around his back spines. As Lotus continued to work, Aloe moved in close to him and sat on her haunches, her head positioned immediately below his face.
Aloe reached forward and began gently rubbing his claws. Simultaneously, Lotus began pressing into and kneading Spike’s oily scales with practiced motions. Under the pressure, Spike found his nostrils pressed into Aloe’s pastel blue mane. The floral, fruity scent of her conditioner assaulted Spike’s senses, and he crumpled up his nostrils in response.
“Dahling, you are tensing up!” Lotus exclaimed, halting her hooves’ movement. Lifting her back left leg, she clambered up onto the massage device behind Spike.
Spike reflexively tensed up his back and tail as he felt Lotus’ coat press against his scales. “Lotus! Wh-what are-“
“I said to relaaax,” she cajoled, pressing her hooves into his back again. This time, spike could feel the slight wiggle of her hips just above his tail as she shifted her weight with each stroke.
“Yes dahling, you are so tense!” Aloe gasped, running a hoof softly down his cheek before nuzzling him softly. “Just relax so we can do our job, yes?”
Blushing, Spike choked on his breath. “Okay…” he whispered shakily, doing his best to follow the duo’s instruction.
The weight of Aloe’s body on his back, along with the soft tingling of her coat rubbing against his scales, was enough to cause Spike’s eyes to flutter closed within the space of a few minutes.
“There ve are…” cooed Lotus softly into his ear frill. “Just relax and let us do our work.” Softly, she trailed her hooves up Spike’s arms, sending chills up his spine.
A few minutes of bliss later, the sisters abruptly halted their work, and Aloe clambered off of Spike. “How do you feel, Spike?”
Spike let out a mild groan of annoyance at the sudden lack of what had grown to be very pleasurable contact. Still, he kept his wits and his polite demeanor about him. “Th-that was great. You two really know your stuff.” Groaning again, Spike slowly worked his way up to a sitting position. “Could either one of you grab me a towel so I can wipe the oil off myself?”
Immediately, the two sisters were set off into a tittering laughter. Lotus was the first one to recover, and addressed Spike while Aloe continued to battle her giggles. “Silly dragon, ve are not done yet! You must relax muscles and wash off the oil in ze hot tub!”
Spike’s heart rate leapt upward. “Hot tub?”
Finally recovering from her uncontrollable fit but still smiling broadly, Aloe closed the distance between herself and Spike and took one of his claws in her hoof. “Yes, of course! Don’t worry, ve will come with to take care of you.”
Spike stared down at the steaming waters of the hot tub, his mind blank and his gaze focused far away.
Lotus walked up next to him and leaned against him gently from the size. “Zis part of the treatment is so crucial, dear. Just let us relax you, da?
The waters sprang to life and began roiling, and not a moment later Aloe began nudging Spike forward from behind with her muzzle.
“H-hey,” Spike protested, before one of his feet slapped down under the hot water and onto the first tier of the stone edifice. “Ahhh!” he grunted in moderate discomfort.
The twins tossed their hair bands to the side of the hot tub and trudged in as if the scalding water was no obstacle at all. “Come, come, vhy are you so far away?” Lotus asked, yanking on one of Spike’s claws to pull him further in.
Spike collapsed into a sitting position, the bottom four-fifths of his body suddenly dunked under the misting surface. “Hot-hot-hot-hot-hot!” he cried, wincing and scowling.
The Twins slid to sit next to Spike- Lotus on his left and Aloe on his right- and each wrapped a hoof around his midsection. Lotus leaned in and pressed her muzzle against his ear frill. “Relaaaax, dahling. You are not hurt by a little hot water, are you, амбал? You are big, strong dragon, no?”
Dragon though he was, water seeped between Spike’s scales in a way that lava simply did not. Soon, the painful tingling in his scales subsided; his breathing, however, did not slow down, as now he noticed the twin’s hooves wrapped around him.
“There we go,” Aloe hummed into his other ear frill, removing her hoof momentarily from the water and returning it with a washcloth not much later. She began rubbing it softly across the scales on Spike’s chest, ‘cleaning’ the same area repeatedly. “Doesn’t this feel nice, dahling?”
Slowly and one at a time, Spike allowed his muscles to relax and his eyes to clothes. “Yeah, it does… You guys are great at this.”
“It is our job,” Aloe whispered back, moving the washcloth around to tease the scales and ridges on his back. Gently, she nuzzled little circles into his neck, causing him to shiver in pleasure.
For several minutes, Spike kept his eyes shut and fought to keep from dozing off as the pretty spa mares caressed him under the water, their wet coats leaving sleek sensations across Spike’s arm and torso.
Some time later, Spike’s eyes jolted open as Lotus climbed on top of his lap and sat across it. Her wet mane lying messily around her barrel and framing her face, she wrapped her hooves around Spike’s neck, gently pressed the tip of her muzzle against his nostrils, and gazed into his eyes with a fiery determination. “Spike, dahling, you are such good worker for us that we have one more portion of treatment for you.”
Biting the inside of his lip, Spike steeled himself emotionally for what was to come. “W-what is it?”
“Towels are so overrated...you agree, yes? What if we were to dry off some other way?” Lotus bit her bottom lip teasingly and lifted both of her eyebrows. “Next ve shall take you to...the баня.”
Aloe cleared her throat. “Uhh...sister? Sauna is broken. Applejack is coming to fix on Monday,” she tactfully interjected.
“Again?” Lotus asked, removing her muzzle from in front of Spike’s face. “Блядь! Is the third time this year!”
“Uhm, if I could suggest it, I-I’m alright with staying here a while longer,” offered Spike.
The twins shared a knowing glance and a smile.
“Of course, dahling.”
Rising body temperatures had driven the three out of the hot tub a few minutes later, and after toweling off, Spike followed the proprietors to the front of the spa.
“Did you enjoy your special treatment, Spike?” Lotus asked him in the front lobby.
“Oh yeah,” Spike commented, chuckling. “I’ve never felt so relaxed, and…” he looked down at his feet. “If I’m being honest, I kind of enjoyed the attention and affection. I-I don’t get as much as I’d like, usually.”
“Oh, poor dragon,” Aloe cooed, leaning down to nuzzle his cheek. “Handsome, strong, hardworking...it was our pleasure to relax you. If that includes maybe some snuggling and massaging, so be it.”
Spike smiled. Perhaps this job ain’t so bad after all.
“-And of course, we do not tell Equestrian Labor Commission of zis mix up? We promise, payment is coming as soon as possible!”
Spike rolled his eyes. “Of course.”
Aloe grinned and planted a kiss on his cheek. “See you Monday, dahling!”
Spike blushed and goofily stumbled his way out of the spa.
As soon as the door had shut behind him, Aloe lifted a hoof and smacked her sister on the back of her head. “УРОД!”
Lotus winced and rubbed her head with a hoof. “Ow! Vhat is problem? Did you not like cuddling him? I thought he vas cute, no?”
“That is not ze issue here, сука! The issue is I must waste all of Friday night at work because you lose all our money playing Дурак...Again!”
“I was about to win big against Евгений!”
“Мне похуй!”