Headbutting
It was a pleasantly chill fall afternoon in Ponyville, many couples taking the opportunity to go out in pairs for an excuse to huddle together. Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie were out taking just that opportunity together.
They hadn’t been dating for long, Pinkie being the one to confess her feelings to Twilight just a few days prior. As such, they were still in the honeymoon phase, greedily snatching any and all opportunities to be physically close to one another. This behavior was started and encouraged by Pinkie, of course, ever the cuddlebug.
The activity of the day was a simple walk through town, carrying a conversation about nothing in particular, commonly interjected by either one of the two spontaneously professing their love for the other with a simple ‘I love you’ or ‘why are you so cute?’.
After some time of walking, Twilight and Pinkie sat down at a bench to take a little break, both mares lying next to the other cat-style, lightly pressed up against one another’s sides.
Twilight sighed as she lay down, silently nudging the still-talking Pinkie to urge her to slow down and enjoy the quiet moment to pony-watch with her. Luckily, she got the hint, scooching ever-so-slightly closer to Twilight as she nodded and zipped her lip.
They sat together silently for a while which, although Twilight knew that Pinkie didn’t constantly talk, still surprised her a little. She had expected Pinkie to do or say something, but she had remained silent and mostly motionless. Curiosity overtook Twilight, so she turned to lock eyes with her partner, who was positively buzzing with anticipation.
Twilight smirked. “What’s got you so energized?” Pinkie simply smiled wider, moving her lowered forehead towards Twilight’s slowly, eliciting a little bit of caution from the prone-to-overthinking unicorn. “W-what are you doing, Pinkie?”
Pinkie’s forehead lingered a few inches away from Twilight’s, seemingly threatening to take action. She said nothing, but smiled wider an unseen amount at Twilight’s question. Twilight looked on worryingly, not expecting anything bad to happen, but expecting something unexpected to happen, which made her overthinking brain swirl with over-the-top theories of what would happen.
Pinkie sensed (literally) that Twilight was in overthinking mode, seizing this moment to strike. She moved her head forward some more, closing the distance between hers and Twilight’s in an instant, resulting in a light headbutt delivered just below Twilight’s horn.
Twilight immediately met Pinkie’s gaze and blushed, the latter sticking out her tongue a little to accentuate her smile in response. Twilight caught something pink moving in her peripheral vision, so she broke eye contact with Pinkie to look, catching an odd (even for Pinkie) bit of behavior taking place.
Pinkie’s tail was wagging, something that Twilight had never seen happen in anypony before. She resisted the urge to jot it down in a notebook, having made a promise months ago not to treat Pinkie like an enigma that needed to be studied, instead opting to just look at her poofy tail energetically flopping back and forth in bewilderment.
Twilight eyes met Pinkie’s again, silently asking for an explanation, but Pinkie just took the opportunity to headbutt Twilight again. Twilight closed her eyes as impact was made, not from pain; Pinkie wasn’t headbutting hard enough to hurt, but solely from surprise. Pinkie had exceeded Twilight’s expectations for being unexpected, and that was saying something.
Twilight opened her mouth to speak, raising a hoof to gesture as she did so, but as she did, she noticed that Pinkie moved her head slightly toward her raised hoof. Twilight held it where it was for a moment before tentatively lowering it, placing it on top of Pinkie’s head, earning an exceedingly unexpected trill of satisfaction from Pinkie.
Twilight took her hoof off of Pinkie’s head, triple the confusion of before bouncing in her head. While Twilight was distracted with her thoughts, Pinkie headbutted her again, though at least that part was expected now.
Pinkie had been softly giggling to herself this whole time, a detail that gave away that she was probably doing all of this on purpose, and not on some kind of impulse that would have only made sense to Pinkie Pie.
Twilight narrowed her eyes in concentration, something she did often when she was thinking hard. She was trying to puzzle out what exactly Pinkie was getting at, a task easier said than done, even for Pinkie’s closest friend, and now girlfriend.
Pinkie headbutted again, this time twice in a row, trying harder to keep Twilight’s attention on her rather than on her own thoughts. It worked, to a degree; Twilight was blushing again, her eyes focused intently on Pinkie’s.
Finally, a lightbulb went off in Twilight’s head. Pinkie was trying to get Twilight to pay attention to her, and she was doing so through a physical manner. She mentally patted herself on the back for figuring it out, then placed a deliberate hoof gently on Pinkie’s head, earning that same confusing yet adorable trill from her.
Twilight pulled Pinkie closer to herself with her magic and leaned on her, causing both of them to start sporting an involuntary but not unwanted blush. She gently stroked Pinkie’s mane in a single repeated motion, eliciting a response from Pinkie that confused Twilight fivefold.
Pinkie started purring! It was twice as difficult for Twilight to resist launching into a tirade of questioning why that was happening, since she had never read anything so much as mentioning a pony purring before. She didn’t just stay silent, however, she had fallen into confused stammering, half-questions executed on her lips for the crime of being useless questions that would get no satisfying answer from Pinkie.
Pinkie giggled at her girlfriend’s stammering, elated that she had once again managed to stump the usually-composed intellectual. She did notice Twilight’s slowly growing case of minor frustration, however, effortlessly curing it with a kiss on her nose. Twilight sighed, returning the gesture thankfully with a kiss on Pinkie’s cheek.
“You know, Pinkie,” Twilight started, the first words spoken between the two in about 10 minutes, the longest stretch of silent time yet when they were together (and not asleep). “You could have just asked for some affection. You know I’m always willing to give it to you.”
Pinkie giggled again. Twilight loved that sound. “Hehe! I could’ve, yeah, but it was way funnier to do it like a little kitty cat asking to be petted!” Twilight blushed.
“Yeah, it was pretty funny.” Pinkie lowered her head down to the bench, Twilight’s hoof following so as not to stop petting her.
“Yeah, and it was pretty cute too, wasn’t it?” Twilight smiled a big, stupid smile, the kind that only came up when Pinkie did something particularly Pinkie-ish; it was the kind of smile that Pinkie loved to see from Twilight.
“Pinkie, love, it was adorable.” Twilight kept petting Pinkie, not caring that it attracted the judging eyes of a few ponies here and there. This was their moment, nopony else’s. Pinkie set a hoof overtop Twilight’s free one, stroking it lightly; she wasn’t just going to sit there and accept affection without giving her girlfriend any of her own.
The two sat there at the bench until sunset, conversation coming and going between them, though their odd physical togetherness was never broken, only reinforced as the time went on. Pinkie had snuggled up completely to Twilight’s side, the two’s tails intertwined lovingly.
Moments like these, the two mares silently agreed, were exactly what being together meant to them.