Jangle of Refraction
"Pinkie?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm not sure this is really working out."
"I have to agree with Rainbow," Fluttershy said, nodding in Pinkie's direction.
"Hmm." Pinkie scrunched her mouth, deep in thought. The half of her face Fluttershy could see was deep in thought at least. The other half was on the other side of the cardboard panel that separated the two thirds of the circular table Pinkie's attention was supposed to be on. The makeshift separator went from the edge of the table to the centre, where it met with the one splitting Rainbow's alloted two thirds and the one doing the same with Fluttershy's. While the pegasi had been juggling their attention between one side and the other, moving their necks left and right, Pinkie had planted herself squarely in the middle, one eye on each side.
"Maybe we could just... I don't know, do it differently?" Rainbow Dash said, waving a wing around. "Two at a time maybe?"
"But that is not efficient!" Pinkie punctuated her words by moving her front legs up and down. "We would have to take turns and one of us would constantly be left out and even if splitting your attention two ways here slows things down to half speed it will still only take two thirds of the time compared to doing it one at a time," she explained, not for the first time.
"I don't think it's slowing us to half speed," Fluttershy said. "I think it's much worse than that. We're just not used to doing two different things together at the same time, and we really aren't making any progress. You can do it, but you know we're not like you."
Pinkie's somewhat grumpy expression mellowed out after only a few seconds. "I guess you're right," she said, pulling out a pencil and a notepad from her mane. "I could always reschedule this for later. Or do it differently. This was mostly a test, I guess it wasn't a successful one."
"How about we do double presents, like last year?" Rainbow said.
Pinkie eyed her from above the notepad. "You remember how last year went, right?"
"Eh, it was fine in the end." Rainbow dismissively waved with a wing. Noticing the other two staring at her, she cleared her throat and sat a little straighter. "But it's probably better if we don't repeat that, yeah."
"We still have time," said Fluttershy. "Hearth's Warming won't be here for a few more days."
"Yeah, and something is going to come up close to it and we'll be busy taking care of that and we won't have the proper time to think about presents," said Pinkie. "Like it always happens."
"It doesn't always happen," Rainbow said. "It didn't happen last year."
"It kind of did happen last year," Fluttershy said.
"It almost always happens," Pinkie said back to Rainbow. "Remember that year where Flim and Flam came here?"
Rainbow Dash blinked and furrowed her brow. "No?"
Pinkie frowned too. "Huh. You don't remember that time Twilight got stuck in the Empire with Celestia for weeks either, right?"
"I'm pretty sure I would remember that," said Rainbow.
"I don't remember that either," said Fluttershy, shaking her head and looking at Pinkie in confusion.
Pinkie shrugged and put her notepad away. "Neither do I. Anyway, this is fine. We'll figure it out properly, no point in wasting even more time now. Chocolate?"
"Chocolate sounds good," Rainbow said, getting up from the table. "Do we like, hide the notes we were working on or...?"
"I won't look at whatever you two were planning." Pinkie began to empty out her two alloted thirds of the table into a bag. "Fluttershy, do you want chocolate as well?"
Fluttershy cheerfully nodded and hummed. She too stood up, and began to flutter towards the other room. Pinkie stashed away her bag and bounced her way behind her, while Rainbow lazily walked there.
While the two pegasi sat down at the table, Pinkie went to the next room over to prepare the hot cocoa. It didn't take long, mostly because she'd actually already prepared it and only needed to heat it up a bit and pour it out, but it still took long enough Rainbow and Fluttershy to start conversing. "Are you sure the vacation would make a good present?" the second asked.
"It's Pinkie," Rainbow whispered back. "Anything she might want she's already bought. She'll love getting to spend time somewhere new."
"I know, but..." Fluttershy softly bit her tongue a couple of times, trying to think of how to phrase things. "It doesn't really feel like a present for her if we're going with her."
"Hey, I don't mind going on a trip too," said Rainbow with a smirk. "And you know she'd drag us along anyway. She'll love being with us." Just that moment, Rainbow spotted Pinkie coming back in the room, balancing three steaming mugs on a tray.
"I know, that's why-" Fluttershy was cut off by Rainbow doing the first thing she'd thought of to silence her so Pinkie didn't accidentally hear them. Rainbow being Rainbow, that meant kissing Fluttershy on the lips.
Pinkie spotted the scene and frowned. "Girls. You're supposed to wait until after the chocolate to do the kissing."
Rainbow released Fluttershy, who sucked in a gasp of air. "You are not going to feed me hot cocoa mouth to mouth," she said to Pinkie. "I'm not a bird."
"I'm okay with you feeding me chocolate from your mouth," Fluttershy said. "I, uhm-" She was cut off again, this time by a kiss from Pinkie, who'd set down the tray on the table. It ended a moment later when Pinkie went to kiss Rainbow's resigned but not particularly resistant lips, before she left her too to go sit at her chair.
"So, got any other plans for the day?" Rainbow wrapped a wing around her mug, immediately regretted it, but still brought it up to take a sip. She regretted that too, but slightly less. The chocolate still tasted good even through the burning.
"We could play some board games," Pinkie said, pulling out her notepad again. "Read some stories. Cuddle together."
"Cuddling sounds nice," said Fluttershy before bringing her mug to her lips with both hooves. She blew softly on it before drinking.
"We already cuddle every day though," Rainbow noted.
"You ask for it, usually," said Pinkie before flipping to another page. "Decorate the house, bake cookies, play around in the snow." She flipped pages again.
"You know this isn't really like a party, right?" Rainbow asked. "The point is mostly just to spend some time together."
"Of course," Pinkie said, looking up from her notes. "We don't have to do everything, I just prepared a list in case we want to do something. It's fine if we just want to spend time with each other though, or if there's something else you'd want to do." She took her mug in a hoof and chugged down at least half the contents at speeds not safe for any regular equine.
Rainbow nodded and drank some more hot cocoa. Suddenly, the doorbell chimed. "I'll see who it is," she said, getting up.
As soon as she'd left the room, Fluttershy set her mug down and looked to Pinkie. "Are you sure about getting her that book? I know she'll like it but I don't know if it's enough."
"We can get her both that and the new shellwear you were thinking of getting her for Tank, if you'd rather," Pinkie said.
Fluttershy furrowed her brow. "But then it just feels like two separate presents. It doesn't really feel like a present from us both if it's-" She was cut off by Pinkie taking her up on her request to be fed chocolate mouth to mouth, just as Rainbow walked back inside.
"It was Starlight," she said. She then stayed silent for a moment, letting the next two kisses she became the target of happen. The need to preserve equality of kissing amounts and all that, not that she was against getting to smooch the two mares for free. "She just wanted to say hi. She said she'll be trying something in a couple of days in preparation for Hearth's Warming, didn't really say what it was though." Rainbow drank some more cocoa. "She looked excited about it."
"Well, there's this year's oncoming holiday catastrophe sorted," Pinkie said. "I told you it was going to happen."
"Don't be mean to Starlight," said Fluttershy. "She knows what she's doing."
"Yeah," said Rainbow. "It'll probably be Trixie's fault."
"Or Sunburst's," Fluttershy said.
"Or Twilight's," proposed Pinkie with a nod. The three of them shared a chuckle.
Finished her hot cocoa, Fluttershy set her mug down. "Can we put on some music?" Seeing Pinkie nod in agreement, she stood up. "I'll go fetch some myself." She slowly fluttered out of the room.
Rainbow took another sip, finishing her own mug. "She's so gonna love the new set of brushes."
"Totally." Pinkie stuck out a hoof and bumped it against Rainbow's own, then finished her chocolate.
After a few silent moments, Fluttershy walked back into the room, holding a vinyl under her wing. Then she stood at the entrance, looking at the other two while they slowly frowned and looked at her. Then she cleared her throat.
"Oh," said Pinkie, her face lighting up. Rainbow Dash, still confused, suddenly found her head gently taken by the mare's hooves and turned to the side, so Pinkie could kiss her.
Fluttershy smiled, a hint of smugness to her expression, and she smiled still as the other two got up from the table and went to kiss her again. The three of them then walked on into the living room, and while Rainbow and Pinkie got comfortable on the couch she set the vinyl into the gramophone and let it play.
A cheerful, bells-led tune filled the room, and Fluttershy sat down on the couch, sandwiching Rainbow between her and Pinkie. The pegasus looked somewhere between uncomfortable and delighted by being pressed against like that, especially given there was more than enough space available on the couch for them to sit apart instead.
"Have you thought about getting a fireplace or a stove here?" Fluttershy asked, looking around the room but leaning even more into Rainbow Dash.
"I have," Pinkie replied, doing the same. "But I think snuggling to warm up is more fun."
Rainbow's face was taking on enough of a blushing tone to effectively camouflage between the other two mares' manes. Finally something seemed to snap inside her, her wings spread out and she used them to pull both of them into a hug. "You two are always doing this," she lamented half-heartedly, her supposed annoyance sounding very unconvincing under the weight of her fluster and the cracking of her voice.
Pinkie and Fluttershy smirked at each other and slid a little closer still, returning the hug. "Anything you girls want to do right now?" the first asked, before nuzzling both ponies in quick succession.
"Not right now," Fluttershy said, then she did the same with Pinkie and Rainbow. "Planning for presents can wait."
Rainbow Dash pursed and wriggled her lips, then she pulled the two mares even closer. "This is fine for now," she said. "Maybe we could bake some cookies later, but... this is fine for now."
All three ponies smiled. They would have huddled closer still, but at that point it was more or less a physical impossibility even for Pinkie. It kept them rather warm though. Fluttershy wiped some left over chocolate from Rainbow's lips with the tip of her wing, then Pinkie licked it off from there, and Rainbow shifted a little lower to have the other two's heads rest on her shoulders.
"Happy not yet Hearth's Warming, girls," Pinkie whispered to the others.
"Thank you," Fluttershy replied. "And to you as well."
Rainbow was content with just sitting there, closing her eyes for a bit and soaking in the warmth of her partners. Snowflakes began to patter against the window, joining the snow already on the ground outside, and Pinkie fetched a blanket from atop the couch and threw it over the three of them. And they laid there a while longer, together, happy to just spend time with each other.