Planting her front hoofs in the sod, Applejack ducked her head, leaned forward, cocked her hind legs, and let her spine unroll a bash just a mite harder than she really needed to buck every last apple off the tree into the baskets she'd set out in the noontime shade underneath. She wanted to feel that kick was the thing, wanted the solid thunk of it to jar her bones, rattle her teeth, and set her innards to sloshing.

'Cause it'd been 56 days now since she'd last so much as kissed her fiancée.

Oh, she'd seen Fluttershy sure enough, had rode the express with her and the resta the gals all the way up to the Crystal Empire to help the bid for the Equestria Games—and she just about kicked the tree again thinking how boneheaded that had nearly turned out—had gaped right along with the others through that whole, weird day when she'd woke up trying to live Rarity's life and had gone to bed as a best friend of Equestria's newest princess—AJ still got goose pimples watching Twilight fly around town—had ground her teeth and bit her tongue while Discord had sashayed back into all their lives, pledging friendship one month and then flat-out lying to them the next when those vines of his had tried to—

"Applejack!" an unmistakable, slippery-as-a-rattlesnake voice brayed behind her. "There you are!"

Whirling and flinching at the same time, AJ came around to see Discord himself hovering in the springtime sunlight on his mismatched wings, their backwash making the air smell kinda like rancid peanut butter. "I'm sure you're engaged in something charmingly rustic," he went on, pressing the tips of his eagle and lion claws together, "but I just heard the news, and I simply had to rush over to offer you my congratulations and to make you a proposition!"

Not sure what he was talking about, Applejack chose the shortest response she could think of: "News?"

"About you and Fluttershy!" He batted his eyes, lashes all suddenly thick and bristly as caterpillars wavering from his eyelids. "The two of you will make the most darling couple: I'm absolutely certain of that!" He swooped in, his lion paw curling over her shoulders and his voice dropping to a scratchy whisper. "Of course, now that I also know about Fluttershy's condition, I thought I'd offer you my services. Since we're all such good friends..." His grin curdled across that weird face of his like the swirls in milk going bad.

It took most of AJ's strength not to jump away from him. The way Discord had been lurking around Ponyville, practically living at Fluttershy's place and popping out of odd corners and doorways the past month-and-a-half, Applejack guessed she shouldn't be too surprised that he'd found out about her and her honeycomb. But was he saying he knew about Fluttershy's sweet little wiggler, too?

Swallowing her anger, AJ reached up, pushed his paw off her back, and kept her eyes locked on his. "Don't reckon I know what'cha mean."

He cocked his head, the smell around him crackling into something hotter and crisper, like paper burning. "Oh, do forgive me. Perhaps visual aides will help." He stepped back and straightened to his full height, his antlers just brushing the lowest leaves of the tree. Clapping his front paws together with a flash, he then opened them to reveal—

Applejack blinked. Cradled in his paws sat something round and apple-sized, but it was red on one side, orange on the other. The red part, she quickly saw, actually was an apple, the skin smooth and perfect as the finest her orchard had ever grown. But the orange side was just that: an orange, rough and healthy and smelling sweet as breakfast.

"Our Fluttershy!" Discord announced, his grin more like a rusty saw blade slicing across his face than anything else. "See? Half and half!"

Again, AJ nearly leaped away. Partial Stallionogen Insensitivity Syndrome Twilight had called it when Applejack had insisted that Fluttershy let somepony look into what-all was going on with her body. Fancy words for part-mare and part-stallion, it had turned out, something AJ had already known by then, her heart even now beating faster at the thought. When Fluttershy had shown Applejack her secret, a whole new part of AJ's brain had blossomed to life, and all that palaver about love and sex and lust and romance that Rarity and Rainbow Dash and Pinkie were always going on about, for the first time in Applejack's life, it had suddenly made perfect sense.

Discord gave a little sigh. "I find myself thinking that's why I enjoy her company so, that lovely little chaos feature tucked up inside her lacinia." He blinked. "Do you ponies still use the term 'lacinia'? For that odd little flap between your hind legs, I mean, the one that keeps your naughtier bits discreetly covered when you're not using them? I've no sexual organs myself, of course, and I admit, I've not thought about yours in thousands of years. But still, one hates to be out-of-date..."

Grinding her teeth—she was still a mite uncomfortable with this whole topic, and to be talking about it with Discord of all critters—Applejack forced the words out: "There a point in all this somewhere?"

"Oh, most certainly." He nodded to the half-apple, half-orange he was holding. "Since you're now our Fluttershy's special somepony, I thought you might be interested in this." He closed his paws with another squintingly bright flash, and when he opened them this time—

A full and entire red apple rested in his lion paw. "Or if you like—" He lay his eagle claw over the apple, lifted it upward, and a ripe orange dangled from his talons. "One hundred percent complete and normal in every detail! I will happily transform all the mismatched anatomical bits into those parts our Fluttershy—or Flutterguy should you want to take things in that direction—should have had from the beginning." His head slid into AJ's field of vision, her gaze still riveted on the orange. "Because friends want to help friends. Don't they?"

"You could really—?" Applejack had to clear her throat. "What did Fluttershy say when you told her you could do that?"

"Told her?" Discord's snaky neck jerked back. "She still can't use the word 'bathroom' in my presence! Imagine how she'd react if I brought up the subject of her genitalia! No, no, my dear Applejack." He reached up and took the fruit in his lion paw again, the orange changing back into an apple. "This is a question I'm asking you."

"You mean you—?" Letting her stare sharpen into a glare, AJ stomped a front hoof in the short grass under the tree and jabbed the other at the big jerk. "You got a whole boatloada nerve, Discord! 'Cause maybe you don't know how love works, but it's ev'rything about Fluttershy that I loves, not just one little bit or another! So if'n she wants to take you up on this change-over or whatever, then sure, I'll be right there supporting her however she wants! But to ask me without asking her?? That's crazy and stupid and disrespectful, and I won't have you treating Fluttershy like that!"

"Whoa, cowgirl, whoa!" Discord balanced on his tail, held up his now empty front paws. "That's the right answer! The exact right answer!" He sprang forward like a jumping jack, and Applejack found herself caught up in a mustard-scented hug. "I'm so pleased! After all, I had to make sure you weren't some lothario just using Fluttershy for your own selfish pleasures, didn't I?"

Almost too shocked to breathe, Applejack was just starting to squirm out of his embrace when he let her go and fell back to lean against the tree, his paws behind his head. "Had you taken me up on my ridiculous offer, I'd have known you didn't care about our Fluttershy at all, and I'd've been forced to give you quite a stern look, let me tell you!"

"Ridiculous?" Applejack always felt like she was swimming against a hard current when she dealt with Discord, but she thought maybe she was finally catching up this time. "That's why you didn't ask Fluttershy about making her all one way or the other! 'Cause you couldn't really do it!"

"Couldn't?" He pressed his talons to his chest. "It's not a question of ability but of desire! I mean, why would I want to do such a thing?" He shivered. "Our Fluttershy's just so perfect the way she is, so unique and wonderfully chaotic! Anypony who would change a single sub-atomic particle of her, I tell you, is a pony not to be trusted!"

And for the first time in, well, ever, Applejack felt an actual smile quirk her lips at something Discord had said. "I'm gonna agree with perfect, unique, and wonderful, and ignore the rest, if'n that's all right with you."

"Completely understandable." His lion paw popped off his arm, flapped over like a fruit bat, and patted Applejack's hat. "Leave that sort of thing to us professionals." He leaped up again, shoving his arm out to meet that paw with a squish. "Now that I know your heart is pure and true, however—" He snapped his claws, white light surrounding Applejack; blinking, she found herself looking up the path at Fluttershy's cottage all the way on the other side of town.

Except it weren't the cottage her hungry eyes fixed on: Fluttershy herself stood out front, a watering can in her teeth, her gorgeous hindquarters pushed out just a bit as she bent over the bed of peonies. Her scent wafted down the hill to wrap around Applejack like a blanket on a winter night, and she closed her eyes, leaned forward, drank in draughts of it deeper'n anypony crossing the desert would if she suddenly stumbled into an oasis.

"Oh, Shutterfly!" Discord called, and Applejack startled sideways, her eyes popping open. She'd forgotten all about him. "You have a gentlemare caller!"

Fluttershy giggled, Applejack's heart nearly bursting from the sheer, concentrated cuteness. "Oh, Discord," the pegasus said, setting the watering can down. "Half the time, I don't know what you're talking about, and the other half—" She turned and stopped, her mouth and eyes going wide.

"Now!" Discord said from somewhere behind Applejack, but she wasn't about to turn away from the beauty before her to look at him. "My plan is to mosey on over to the Golden Oaks Library and engage our esteemed local princess in what I expect will become a spirited discussion of imaginary numbers and chaos theory. This discussion will easily last three or four hours, and if upon my return, I do not find two ponies both sated and exhausted from those various and creamy physical relations you mortals seem so fond of, well! I threatened earlier to employ my stern look, and I'm afraid I'm hereby making that threat again!"

His voice was fading, and needing to make sure, Applejack tore her gaze from Fluttershy and glanced back to see Discord traipsing over the bridge toward town. "Good luck, everypony!" he called with a wave of his eagle talons, then he was moving behind the trees and was gone.

Blinking after the vanished Discord, Fluttershy quickly shifted to look at Applejack standing at the bottom of the garden, the earth pony so completely and perfectly beautiful, Fluttershy found her embarrassment at the things Discord had said changing quickly into something else entirely.

Applejack turned, then, those green eyes taking Fluttershy's breath away, and said with a grin, "Well, now. I reckon I wouldn't mind an hour or two for a lunch break. You doing anything, honeycomb?"

The nickname made Fluttershy shiver, desire swirling though her like milk in hot tea. "I— I'm not— I mean, I'm just taking care of some watering!" Applejack's grin widened, and when she started trotting up the hill, Fluttershy lost what little control she'd been able to maintain over the words coming out of her mouth. "Not that watering's nothing, of course!" she heard herself saying, more and more of her brain focusing on the gorgeous sway of Applejack's hips as she got closer and closer, the sunlight dancing in her mane, the smooth flow of the muscles under the sweet cider of her hide. "I mean, not to the plants!" Fluttershy couldn't stop. "Because water's very, very important! Without it, plants wouldn't— They couldn't—"

That was when Applejack reached her, stroked a front hoof along her neck, and slid her into a kiss that made Fluttershy forget she'd ever done anything before in her entire life.

Because she really hadn't, had she? And pressing forward, she brought her own hoofs up to Applejack's mane, let her wings unfurl to brush Applejack's face, poured out every ounce of her love and her longing to make sure Applejack knew just how much she'd missed her during the past—

"Fifty-six days," she heard Applejack mutter, her lips moving against Fluttershy's when she spoke.

"And four hours," Fluttershy added, letting her internal clock reset itself. "And twenty-six minutes."

That wonderful rough chuckle rumbled from Applejack's throat, then the warmth of her was pulling away, Fluttershy almost falling over in the sudden absence of her marefriend. Opening her eyes, she blinked in confusion until she saw Applejack stretching herself out against the trunk of the big oak alongside the cottage. Applejack gave her a grin, patted the shady grass beside her, and Fluttershy leaped at her with a take-off, she felt, that Rainbow Dash would've been proud off.

Sliding into Applejack's embrace, the only place she wanted to be ever again for the rest of her life, she cuddled under Applejack's chin, her whole body humming with joy, and said, "Let's get married right now: head down to city hall and ask the mayor if she could please find the time and just...just be like this together forever! I mean, before things start happening around here and we end up not being able to touch each other for another two months..."

Applejack chuckled again, Fluttershy closing her eyes and pressing herself more closely along Applejack's body so she could feel the vibrations. "A right fine thought, honeycomb." Applejack's hoof started making slow circles over Fluttershy's back, all Fluttershy's nerves singing even louder than before. "'Cept we got family and friends might feel kinda put out if'n we went and got hitched without telling 'em. I mean, you seen them designs Rarity keeps drawing up and throwing away 'cause she says they ain't good enough! And Rainbow Dash! Imagine how that big softie'd complain 'bout not being able to cry at our wedding!"

The image of strong, tough Dashie bawling her eyes out like she was Pinkie Pie made Fluttershy giggle, but snuggling up to Applejack, she couldn't laugh away the yearning that filled her—especially filling her lacinia, but she was trying so very much not to think about that. "Then could we please pick a date at least? So I can circle it on my calendar and see it getting closer and closer and know that I'll be your wife on that day?"

The in-and-out of Applejack's breathing both relaxed and excited Fluttershy, but she did her best to notice only the relaxing part. "Well, to get technical, I reckon I'm the wife in this here arrangement of ours." Her leg brushed ever so slightly against Fluttershy's lacinia, and Fluttershy had to gasp at the glorious sensations that crackled through her.

"Don't," she groaned, wanting to both pull away and press harder at the same time. "Please, Applejack. Don't...don't tease."

"Tease?" Applejack went completely still, and Fluttershy's stomach tightened. She hadn't meant to say that! Because, yes, it had been almost two months since she and Applejack had been able to cuddle like this, but it had been longer since they'd—

"Oh, honeycomb." Applejack's sigh made Fluttershy feel even worse. "I didn't mean to— I didn't even think."

"It's OK." Fluttershy scooted higher up Applejack's chest so she could look her marefriend straight in the eyes. Her beautiful, beautiful eyes... She shook herself, told herself to be strong. "I know exactly what you meant when you said how overwhelming it is when we...when we..." But she'd spent so much time the last two months forcing herself not to think about the whole concept, she found she couldn't even form the two simple syllables that had ended up robbing her of sleep so often during that time.

"Have sex," Applejack finished.

Hearing those words from her beloved's lips pulled a whimper from Fluttershy that felt more like a splinter being dug from her leg. "Yes," she said, having to look away, her poor little wiggler bulging against the inside of her lacinia with its desire to get out. "But I understand." Fluttershy forced herself to continue so Applejack would know for sure. "The most important thing is that we're friends: that has to come first so we don't start hating each other like my parents did and...and like your parents did. So it's OK that we don't...don't—"

A hoof covered her lips, another touching the side of her head and turning her to face Applejack's sweet, smiling eyes once more. "Oh, honeycomb," that gentle voice said. "I done you a powerful wrong."

"No, no, no!" Fluttershy tried to insist, but Applejack was moving underneath her, sliding into another kiss so full and perfect, Fluttershy forgot everything again except how deeply she loved this wonderful pony.

"Yeah, I did," she heard Applejack mutter. "But no more. 'Cause you're right: we're setting the date. End of this month, three weeks from right now, you and me are getting hitched in fronta the sun, the moon, this whole town, and anypony else who wantsta show up and gawk. Which means we're as good as married already. Which means—" Those lips touched Fluttershy's again, and she let the warmth of them flood up and through and around her. Until— "I want'cha inside me, honeycomb." Applejack's whisper tickled Fluttershy's ear. "Right here and right now."

Ice burst over Fluttershy. "What?!" She pushed herself away from Applejack's chest, suddenly hyper-aware of everything in her peripheral vision: the fields and forest where anypony could be walking; the cloudless blue sky where anypony could be flying; the cottage where any of her animal friends could be looking out the windows. "Here?! Now?!"

Applejack's cheeks turned a darker shade of orange. "Well, I reckon I don't mean—"

"Because we can't!" Try as she might, Fluttershy couldn't quite catch her breath. "What if somepony saw?! What if they saw my wiggler?!" Everything around her was blurring. "Then they'd know! And they'd all hate me!"

"Settle down, honeycomb!" Applejack's voice came from behind her somehow, and spinning, Fluttershy realized she was hovering just below the lowest of the oak's branches, her wings beating faster than a hummingbird's. "It's all right!" Applejack was calling up to her. "I mean, Discord knows, and he ain't got a problem with it!"

"Discord's different!" And that was such a silly and obvious thing to say, Fluttershy couldn't help hiccoughing a whole series of little laughs. "And it's not like I told him!" she managed to get out. "I've just been missing you so much and I tried to be quiet every time I got my special blankets out and stroked my wiggler but this morning I thought he was gone but I guess he was here and he must've heard me 'cause he came into my room and then I had to explain everything and that turned out OK 'cause then he brought you here and—"

"And what?!" Applejack sounded so angry, the flood of Fluttershy's words stoppered up like somepony had jammed a cork in her mouth; swallowing, she looked down at her marefriend, Applejack's head tipped up, her hat pushed back, her hoofs planted firmly in the earth and making her look for an instant more like a tree than the tree she was standing next to. "You think Discord's gonna turn out to be a better friend than Rarity? Than Pinkie Pie? Than Rainbow Dash? Is that what you're saying, Fluttershy?!"

The question jabbed her hard as a pin, her frantic muscles going cold and slowing, her wings settling her to the ground, her head so heavy, she could barely keep her chin from drooping all the way down to the grass. "No." She swallowed again. "That's not what I'm saying..."

A rush of warmth, and Applejack was right beside her, her cheek rubbing Fluttershy's. "I know it's gonna be nowhere near easy, honeycomb, but I'll be there right with you, and so will Twilight." The rubbing got slower, more sensual, that wonderful tingling starting through Fluttershy again. "But the thing is, once we get married and start having foals, well, I reckon our friends're like to have a few questions if'n we don't alert 'em ahead of time how that's possible and all."

The giggle this provoked in Fluttershy was a much nicer one, and the soft pecking kisses Applejack was planting along her neck really helped, too, Fluttershy's lacinia starting to feel full once more. "You're so good to me," she murmured.

"How 'bout we make things even better?" Applejack whispered. "And I mean upstairs in your bed this time."

And just the thought that she would finally truly really be able to make love again to her marefriend proved to be more powerful than any of the spells Fluttershy always had running through her mind: her lacinia wrenched open like a window shade pulled too hard, her wiggler jutting out and making her gasp. Rushing for the back door of her cottage, she couldn't stop a blush at the musky odor filling the air around her, and her blush deepened when, spinning into the relative safety of her kitchen, she heard Applejack behind her taking deep, whistling breaths. "Oh, honeycomb," she said, a growl in her voice that got Fluttershy's wiggler twitching and growing some more. "That right there's an aroma I been missing a whole, whole lot..."

Then Applejack was sliding through the door, pressing her side against Fluttershy's. "Reckon I got a bit of my own I can add to it, too," she whispered, and Fluttershy's ears, nose, and wiggler perked at the crinkle of Applejack's own lacinia coming open, the scent of her aroused marefriend sending skyrockets bursting through Fluttershy's mind and body.

How they got upstairs, Fluttershy had no idea, the front room, the stairs and the hallway blurring till she found herself standing on her own bed, her front hoofs resting on either side of Applejack lying on her back, her head resting among Fluttershy's pillows, her eyes half-way closed, both sets of legs spread, her beautiful body open and waiting and ready. "You wanna wear the hat?" she asked.

Almost unable to form words, Fluttershy shook her head. "Please," she managed to say, "no hats. Just you and just me and just love."

Applejack's incredible lips curled in the gentlest smile Fluttershy could imagine, and with one graceful motion, the earth pony tossed her head, her hat flipping out of sight onto the floor and her mane billowing out like sunshine and corn silk over the pillows. "I'm all yours, honeycomb," she said. "One hunnerd per cent."

Hoofs shaking, Fluttershy caressed that hair; bending forward, she touched her lips to those lips; breathing in the warm, damp wonderfulness of Applejack's panting breaths, she shifted her hips, shuddered with pure joy when the bulging tip of her wiggler settled into the embrace of Applejack's vulva.

Fluttershy felt Applejack shudder beneath her. "Mother of Mercy," her fiancée groaned. "Been wanting that!" The whole world rose up under Fluttershy then, purest fire licking along her spine and arching her back as Applejack slid herself around Fluttershy's wiggler, plunging the two of them together and making Fluttershy squeal.

This, this was everything she could ever want: surrounded by beauty, engulfed by beauty. She forced her eyes open a crack, and the sight of the bliss shining across Applejack's face intensified everything Fluttershy was feeling. Because she was giving this pleasure to her friend, her lover, her soon-to-be husband or wife or—

The world flexed again, Applejack's muscles contracting and loosening, starting a rhythmic motion that pushed most rational thought from Fluttershy's mind and filled her with perfect molten sensation. Flaring her wings, Fluttershy wrapped them around herself and Applejack, drew their upper bodies as close together as physically possible while doing her best to synchronize the thrusting of her own hips with those of partner.

The cries of "Oh, yes, honeycomb, yes!" told the tiny remaining part of her mind that she'd done the right thing, and as white-hot streaks of ecstasy began slicing her to ribbons, that tiny part of Fluttershy's mind tried to make the feeling last, tried to slow the body down a bit, tried to moderate and control the mad upward spiral sweeping her along toward the vast flooding tides of orgasm, wanting to hover here on the shores of that glorious sea for as long as possible before—

"Oh, yes! Oh, yes!" Applejack cried again, and everything exploded around Fluttershy, Applejack apparently plunging headlong into that ocean. Which was all it took: pressing her face into Applejack's chest, Fluttershy couldn't keep from following her in, didn't want to hold back, squealing as she tumbled over the edge, the intensity of the bolts blasting through her body shattering that last tiny part of her mind and drowning her fully deep inside Applejack.

She surfaced slowly, languidly, a gentle hoof stroking the hair beneath her right ear. Stirring, she managed to bend the boiled asparagus of her neck and saw Applejack smiling back at her, her wiggler still nestled within Applejack's vulva. The cooling stickiness between them, though, made Fluttershy blink, made her push herself up in alarm. "Oh! I forgot to use my special blankets!"

Applejack's chuckle rumbled around her. "Not to worry, honeycomb. I reckon we can give 'em a proper workout the next couple hours."

The slightly salty scent hovering around the cottage like cotton candy around an eclipse told Discord all had gone well, but drifting silently up the stairs after his ever-so-satisfying mathematical discussion with Twilight, he still pulled his eyeballs out and pushed them through the closed door of Fluttershy's room just to be sure.

And indeed, the two of them lay in bed sweetly entangled, the sheer contentment in the air almost making him sneeze.

A flick of his claws popped his eyes back into their sockets, and he headed downstairs. Uncertainty was still a new enough sensation for him that he hadn't quite decided if he liked it or not—he was, in fact, uncertain about uncertainty, and that alone made him grin all the way through the front room and into the kitchen.

Still, what he'd learned about ponies during his many years of viewing them as playthings and his several months of not doing that told him that things were heading in the right direction for his plan to come to fruition.

He just didn't know that for certain.

Probably best to make some sandwiches, then. His friends would no doubt be hungry when they came downstairs.

Author's Notes:

I'm throwing in the towel:

As they say, on my experimental attempts to write "clop." Yes, there'll still be cute little sex scenes like this one in these "Romance" stories, but I've pretty much decided that that's as far as I'm interested in going...

Mike