Romance and the Fate of Equestria

Chapter One Hundred and Seventy-Two

Early in the evening, a knock came at the door of Golden Oak Library. Spike, who had been sitting alone for some time, sprang up off the couch and went to answer it, to find Sweetie Belle, scratching her front leg nervously.

"Hey," he said in surprise.

"Hey, Spike," she said glumly.

He scanned the darkening streets behind her curiously.

"Are you not happy to see me?" she said, flinching.

"Oh!" he exclaimed. "Ah, no, it's just… I'm expecting a pizza."

"A pizza?" she said, bewildered.

"Yeah, there's this new place. You send them a message telling them what kind of pizza you want, and they make it and have a guy bring it to your house within the hour."

"Wow," Sweetie Belle breathed. "What a time to be alive."

"I know, right?"

Sweetie managed a small chuckle before clearing her throat. "So, uh… can I come in?"

"Sure, yeah."

She entered the room, crossing over to hop up onto the couch. He joined her there, and they shared an uncomfortable silence for a painfully long time.

"I like the cutie mark," he finally said, nodding his head toward it.

"Thanks," she said. "I like it too, only… now that I've got one and everypony's all excited and looking at it, I'm realizing that they're very awkwardly placed. I can never tell if somepony is admiring my cutie mark or just checking out my butt or what."

"Little bit of both, I'm sure," he said, beaming at her.

"Uh-huh," she said awkwardly. "So… how's Snarl?"

Spike's face fell. "Still unconscious, but… stable, as far as we can tell. Nothing to do but wait for him to recover, to wake up, and then we'll… get some answers about what happened there."

"What a…" Sweetie said shakily, unable to finish before swallowing hard. "That was rough. What a scary experience."

"Yeah," Spike said grimly. "Turned out all right for you, though."

"Um… yeah," she said uneasily.

There was another lengthy silence.

"So, uh, Spike," Sweetie Belle said cautiously. "D'you… you come around here often?"

He blinked at her. "I live here."

"You live around here often?"

He blinked again, several times.

"Ugh, there's no way to ease into this, is there?" she grumbled. "Okay, Spike, here's… so, yeah, so here's my question?"

"Yeah?" he said blankly.

"You wanna… you wanna make out?"

He straightened in shock. "I… what?"

His stunned reaction seemed to invigorate her, and she flashed him a genuinely confident grin. "Do… you want… to make out?" she enunciated, creeping closer to him with every word.

"With… with who?" he stammered.

"Me, I hope."

"I… I just… really?"

"Yeah," she said seriously. "Really." She paused, tilting her head at him. "Is that really so surprising?"

"Well, yeah," he admitted. "I mean, I'd kind of assumed that… that there wasn't any chance anymore."

"Yeah, well, you know what they say about assumption," she said brightly. "It makes an 'ass' out of 'u' and… um… huh. Some guy called 'umption'."

"Heh," Spike chuckled.

"But, yeah, really," she said hurriedly. "I'm… I'm done making stupid decisions that make me miserable. I'm ready to be happy. And, you know, I think that starts with my cutie mark and continues with… with you. Will you be my boyfriend, Spike? Or, you know, you don't have to be my boyfriend, we can just make out, either way I'm fine and happy."

"Can we do both?" he said hopefully.

"Of course we can," she said, a delighted squeak slipping into her voice.

Slowly, carefully, they approached each other. Tentatively, their lips met, and they held the kiss for several seconds before simultaneously seizing each other, kissing open-mouthed and groping at every inch of each other they could reach.

"Eep!" she squealed, pulling away from him.

"What?" he said, alarmed.

She stared at him in shock. "D-do you have a forked tongue?"

"Yeah, you didn't know that?"

"No, I… I didn't," she admitted, embarrassed.

"I'm sorry…"

"No, no, it's good," she said hastily. "I liked it. By which I mean, I liked it… a lot." She leaned toward him, her eyes huge and dewy.

"Oh, wow," he gasped.

"Just didn't expect it, that's all," she said tenderly. "Can you… give me some more of that?"

"O-okay…"

They resumed kissing, more gently this time.

"Mmm," Spike exclaimed. "You're so soft."

"Scootaloo isn't soft?" Sweetie inquired.

"Nah," Spike said fondly. "She's, you know, she roughs it. So she's kind of calloused. In a totally cool way, it's not a… but you…"

They went silent.

"Should we tell Scootaloo about this?" Sweetie Belle said sheepishly. "Before we… proceed?"

"Tell Scootaloo?" he said blankly.

"It just feels like… like we're cheating on her," Sweetie said plaintively.

Spike sighed bitterly. "No we're not," he said. "Scootaloo and I were never a real thing."

"I know, I just… don't you think it should be officially over with you and her? Before it starts with you and I?"

"Meh… it's already over," Spike said dismissively. "She dumped me."

She looked at him skeptically.

"Listen," said Spike, "if we went and told her that we were together before actually doing anything, she'd… I mean, it's great that she wouldn't be mad at me anymore, but I think mostly she'd just wonder what the heck we were doing going to talk to her instead of getting some."

"Getting some?"

"She said it, not me. You know, hypothetically. That's what I think she'd say, anyway."

Sweetie Belle bit her lip. "Mmph. I'm not convinced, but… I'm too turned on to stop kissing you."

"I can honestly say I don't have a problem with that."

They kept kissing, ever more heatedly, pawing at each other ever more frantically, until the door suddenly opened, seeming to them as though it was being kicked in with a bang.

"Back," Twilight called. "Sorry it's late… errands took me longer than expected…"

Hastily, the two of them pulled apart and sat at opposite ends of the couch, looking far too casual. "Hey, Twilight," Spike said smoothly.

"Hi, Spike. Oh… hey, Sweetie Belle." She looked between the two of them as their faces became increasingly awkward and scared. "Ooookay, then. I'll just go on upstairs. Don't stop what you were doing on my account. …Well, I mean, do. Do stop. Because I'm standing right here and I don't need to see that. But… you know… you don't have to lie about it."

Spike chuckled weakly. "Do you… approve?"

"Approve?" Twilight repeated. "Oh, sure. Well, I suppose I should set some boundaries."

"Boundaries?" he peeped.

"You know, the usual. If you go out someplace together, I expect you both back in your own homes by a reasonable hour—Sweetie, you're kind of pushing it already, I think it's best if you're out of here within the hour. And, I guess, keep it all above the waist—or you, my friend, are spending the rest of your life in a birdcage, am I clear?"

"A birdcage?" said Sweetie Belle, alarmed.

"You can't possibly enforce that," Spike said derisively.

Twilight's horn lit up, her telekinesis focused on some item hidden among the branches of the ceiling. She yanked hard, and an iron birdcage, just the right size to hold Spike, came down from the ceiling, hanging from a loud, rattling black chain.

"…How long have you had that?" Spike said blankly.

"Oh, about five years," Twilight said smugly.

"Wow."

"Uh-huh. When Celestia first turned you over to my care, I was informed you were rather 'grabby', so I got the cage in case I ever needed to discourage certain behaviors. See, I, ah… I initially assumed it meant you liked stealing things. When I realized that 'grabby' referred to your precocious fondness for the feminine figure… you'll notice the interior is lined with iron maiden spikes? Yeah, that's when I added those."

"Uh-huh," Spike said uneasily. "Well, I… I guess it's to my credit that I've never seen that before."

"Indeed."

"Why does the engraving say 'I don't know' on it?" Sweetie inquired.

"In preparation for the exact warning I just gave," said Twilight.

"I don't follow."

"Third base."

"Ohhhh."

"Oh, whatever, where the hell's my pizza?" Spike grumbled. "I can't believe you actually have that… don't worry about a thing, okay Twilight? 'Below-waist activity' is the last thing on my mind."

"Really?" Sweetie said flirtatiously, sidling up to him. "The last thing?"

"Well, one of the last things," he said. "We'll work our way up to it."

"Tee hee!"

"Just don't go nuts, you two," said Twilight. "I'm… I'm glad you finally caught her, Spike."

"I didn't catch her," said Spike. "She turned herself in willingly."

Twilight chuckled. "Well, I'm glad either way. Very glad that this finally happened."

"Thanks, Twi. That means the world to me."

She nodded. "I'll leave you to it. I'll be upstairs, don't mind me, just… pace yourselves. Don't go crazy."

"You got it."

Twilight ascended the stairs to her room. At the sound of a door closing, Sweetie Belle hopped backward and lay flat on her back on the couch, pouting at Spike. Laughing, he crawled on top of her and began kissing her again. After only a few more seconds of this, there was another knock at the door.

"Oh, what fresh hell is this?" Spike growled, lifting his head.

"It's probably your pizza, Spike."

"Oh. Right. I'll get it…"

Spike scampered to the door and swung it open. There, Featherweight was waiting for him, with a flat white box and wearing a little blue-and-red uniform.

"Oh, hey Featherweight," Spike said pleasantly. "Wasn't expecting a familiar face. Well, here…"

Featherweight nodded to him graciously as Spike took the pizza and held out some bits.

"Here's the fee," he said. "And your tip… and…"

Featherweight had noticed Sweetie Belle, and had frozen in surprise, oblivious to Spike's money.

"Close the door, Spike," Sweetie Belle commanded. "Really slowly, with a smug expression."

"You got it," said Spike. Making sure all of his bits were securely atop Featherweight's hoof, he swung the door shut, bearing a massive sidelong smirk as he did so. "Haha, that was awesome!" he crowed, hopping back to Sweetie Belle, pizza box in hand.

He set the box on the coffee table, then hesitated, glancing between the box and Sweetie Belle longingly.

"Why don't we give that pizza a few minutes to cool off?" she said gently.

"Sounds good to me!"

He hopped onto the couch and wrapped his arms around her, kissing her passionately, and she responded in kind, placing her hooves gently on the sides of his head. Minutes passed as they continued to kiss, minutes blurring into what may have been seconds or hours, until finally they had to pull apart and take a deep breath.

"Wow," Sweetie Belle said tenderly.

"Yeah," Spike agreed. "Wow. Holy guac, that felt good."

"You've been saying that a lot lately. You know that's a really lame and forced catchphrase, right?"

"Oh, shut up."

He pulled her close, and they kept kissing well into the night.

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Endnotes

So, yeah. Way back in Chapter 9, when Spike said to Sweetie Belle, "Wanna make out?", that was intended to be paid off here, with Sweetie posing the question back to him. But how to get there? Well, at the time, I assumed they'd reconcile after, say, Sweetie saves Spike from Snarl, gaining her cutie mark in the process. So to get there I'd have to find a way to introduce Snarl, and figured Celestia and Luna would find him abroad. So I had to come up with a reason for them to be abroad, which, long story short, led to the creation of the goddesses and, of course, Mitgaeard, being that we needed a main villain for them to pursue. And to get there, well, I had to figure out what Spike and Sweetie and a whole bunch of other characters would be up to in the meantime so they wouldn't disappear from the story altogether.

Yup. All of that came into existence just to create this moment, to pay off a line from Chapter 9. Anybody remember Chapter 9? Of course not. I knew exactly where that setup was leading, but never imagined that it would take 163 chapters—not to mention five years—to get the payoff. Ah, that was deeply satisfying. Certain chunks of dialogue in this scene have been prepared for a long friggin' time.