Maud and I share a basement office at CGS headquarters in Canterlot. The easiest way to get there is to take the cargo elevator behind the cafeteria and go through the laundry room. If I take the north stairwell, I have to go through the machine shop, which is loud and full of big, grumpy ponies and dangerous machines. The south stairwell has been out of service and partly flooded since the ’98 earthquake. Anyway, if you go through the laundry room, you have to prop the back door, because it locks from inside, and if you let it close you’ll have to go back out through the machine shop.

I found Maud at her desk. She was literally hip-deep in paperwork. “Frazzle,” she said, looking up, “I’m so glad you’re back.” She smiled ever so slightly. I grinned. She really had missed me! It was rare to see her so effusive. I sat in my rolly chair and slid over to sit next to her. Boulder was sitting on top of one of the piles of paper. I gave him a pat.

“Anything interethting happen while I wath gone?” Sitting next to Maud gave me the same fluttery feeling in my chest that it always has. That was a surprise. I hadn’t thought about her all week. I’d expected that Rarity would have driven her out my heart. After all, Rarity was much prettier than Maud, wasn’t she?

“We assisted on a 238B.”

“Counterfeit marble?”

“Yeah. You could take the veins off with a toothbrush. I was there on the collar. Voices were raised. It was pretty intense.”

I shook my head. “There’s tho much evil in the world.”

“Other than that, it was pretty normal.” She glanced at me and lowered her eyelids slightly. “How was your… break?”

I blushed. Maud could be so naughty. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

She pointed up at the poster over her desk — a chart of crypto-geological rock types with ‘I WANT TO BELIEVE’ printed on it in blocky sans-serif letters. “Try me.”

“I’m… I’m in a relationship now.”

“My credulity has not yet been challenged.”

I leaned forward, resting a hoof on Boulder to keep him from getting over-excited. “With Rarity.”

Maud blinked. “Rarity Belle?”

I nodded.

“The fashion pony?”

I nodded.

“Pinkie’s friend?”

I nodded.

“Whoa.”

“I know, right?”

“I’m really happy for you.” She leaned over to hug me. The tower of paperwork Boulder was sitting on fell over.

“Boulder. I told you to be more careful.”

I got up and began picking up the papers. “You want help with these?”

Maud had somehow picked Boulder off the floor and put him in her lap. I hadn’t even noticed her getting out of her chair. “I guess I could use a little help.”

I spent the rest of the afternoon in paperwork mode. Most ponies hated paperwork. I myself couldn’t say I loved it, but I understood it. Most ponies looked at a pile of forms and just saw one huge, undifferentiated mass of confusion and trouble. I knew how to break it down. Categorize. Organize. Perform like tasks together. If I needed names and identification numbers for four ponies on five different forms, I did them all at once and put them in a pile. If I didn’t know something, I put it in a pile with other things I don’t know and looked it up later. By the time my weekly one-on-one with my supervisor rolled around, I’d filled out, had Maud notarize, and filed probably about seventy-five percent of what was on her desk when I came in. I told Maud I’d be back soon, scooped up the guilt present I’d gotten my boss, and headed upstairs.

Someone had closed the door to the laundry room. I sighed, put in my ear plugs, and headed for the machine shop.

———

CGS Director Halloween Jack’s office was on the thirtieth floor. He was a Canterlot-born diamond dog and a decorated veteran of the EUP Corps of Engineers. He’s the one with the hare lip I alluded to earlier, but I really didn’t do him justice with that remark. Sure, he has a big scar under his nose from the surgery he had as a pup to correct his facial deformity. But he cuts quite a figure in his necktie and wire-frame glasses, neatly pressed shirt sleeves rolled up over melon-sized biceps, all stern and can-do and capable. He reminds me of my daddy.

“Agent Rock,” he said, and nodded at the chair in front of his desk. “I’m impressed with your work in Ponyville.”

I placed the bento box on his desk and sat down. “Thorry about the thort notice on my leave. My cycle took me by thurprise.”

Halloween Jack pulled the box over to himself and lifted it open, smiling slightly and raising an eyebrow at the crystalized fish heads inside. “You’re entitled to your estrus leave, Agent Rock,” he said, opening a desk drawer and putting the box carefully inside. “And to a great deal of vacation time that you never take.”

“I’m dedicated to my work, thir.”

“I’d noticed. You’re just a pony, though. You need to rest occasionally.”

“I’ll take it under advisement, thir,” I said, not meaning it.

“The research division is delighted that you’ve secured the Princess’s permission to dig in the Everfree. And Rarity Belle’s mineral-finding abilities will be invaluable.”

I took a deep breath. “Full dithclothure, thir.”

Director Jack raised an eyebrow.

“I’ve… developed a… thpecial relationship with Rarity.”

“Congratulations. She’s a very attractive mare.”

“But if I were to wind up working with her in the field…”

Director Jack shook his head. “She’s a volunteer, not an employee of the CGS. I’d probably avoid placing you together, just to keep you from getting distracted, but if it were unavoidable, there’d be no conflict of interest.”

I nodded, satisfied. I hadn’t expected him to say anything different. But there was another reason I’d brought the issue up. “I athume that when you were considering approaching her, you requested a background check.”

Jack raised an eyebrow again.

“I know, it’s confidential, and I know you wouldn’t tell me even if I asked, but…”

“She keeps her nose clean, which is quite an accomplishment, considering the company she keeps.”

I didn’t know if he meant the Element Bearers, or her fashion friends. Probably both.

“If you’re worried about her having dark secrets, all I can tell you is that if she has any, she’s pretty good at hiding them.”

———

After work, Maud talked me into going down to Buckowski’s. I don’t drink, but there are a lot of things I like about the place. First off, the bar nuts are, like, half cashews, and really salty. It’s amazing. Second, everybody there wears chunky glasses and vintage clothes, so I blend right in without meaning to. If you’re consistent about your personal style no matter what, eventually you’re going to find yourself in a context where that style is in. Anyway, the music’s pretty good, too, and usually so loud that you have to shout right into the ear of anypony you want to talk to. So if you don’t want to talk to somepony, you can just pretend to not hear them.

Buckowski’s is a tiny, dark, and very popular little bar. The décor is strictly bare brick, exposed support beams, and photographs of dead writers. Maud and I couldn’t find a seat, so we stood in the middle of the floor, her with her whiskey sour, and me with my cola. Next to us some ponies with bushy beards — most of them, but not all of them, stallions — were having some sort of discussion about the horrors of Celestia’s expansionist foreign policy. On our other side, two mares dressed like librarians were playing subculture chicken, seeing who could list off the most things they were so totally over without hitting any sacred cows. I tried to focus on the band. They were quieter than was normal for this place — a bunch of rangy, mopey-looking stallions just sort of standing around with their instruments looking lost but busting out some seriously mellow tunes.

I leaned over and yelled into Maud’s ear. “Thih band ith pretty good. Who are they?”

Maud leaned over to yell back at me. One of the other things I liked about going to to this place was having Maud’s nose in my ear all the time. “Band of Horses!”

I narrowed my eyes, confused. She must not have heard me right. “Obviousthly. But what are they called?”

Maud laughed — a single quiet noise that might’ve been mistaken for a cough by someone who didn’t know her. “Do you know what I like about you, Frazzle?”

I blinked. “What?”

“You so totally don’t care how uncool you are.” Then she put her head on my shoulder. I did not know how to respond. Luckily, our theatre pony friends Breka Legg and Light Bright arrived about then.

“Dearest friends!” Breka raised her hooves in the air as she shouldered her way through the crowd, lavender eyes dancing. “I am excellent today, thank you for asking! How are you?”

“Ecstatic,” shouted Maud dryly.

“Confused,” I shouted.

“And so it should always be. Light Bright, be a darling and see if you can look pathetic enough that the bartender will give us drinks for free.” Breka was a little green earth pony mare, but she could fill a room with her presence.

Light Bright sighed. He was one of the big white unicorn stallions you see all over the place in Canterlot, an eternal genetic reminder of Celestia’s reckless youth and prodigious, if long-neglected, foal-bearing capacity. “That never works, Breka. It’s never going to work.”

“Never is a long time, liebchen. We just have to keep trying.”

Maud fished a twenty-bit coin out of her saddle bags, “Here, take this. Get me another whiskey sour while you’re at it.”

Breka snorted indignantly. “We do not need your charity, fräuline Pie.”

“Yes. Yes we do,” shouted Light Bright, levitating the bit out of Maud’s hoof. “You want anything, Fraz?”

I shook my head, and held up my still mostly full glass of cola. “No, thankth.”

Breka watched Light Bright walk over to the bar, then turned back to us. “Light and I are like an old married couple,” she yelled, apropos of nothing. “We adore one another, we bicker constantly, and we hardly ever had sex.”

I snorted. Light Bright was gayer than a room full of earth pony party planners, and Breka might or might not be one of the older lesbian mares I mentioned earlier. I’m not saying. They might well have sex from time to time — this was Canterlot, after all — but they probably didn’t enjoy it much.

“So,” yelled Breka, “are the rumors true?”

I nearly gagged trying not to spit-take. “What… what rumorth?”

Breka stepped up to me, a coy grin on her face. “Rarity is said to have taken a new lover — a rather surprising choice, it’s said. You were not mentioned by name, but the description was unmistakeable.”

I nodded. I suppose I’d have to get used to this.

Breka hugged me, and kissed me on both cheeks. Then she looked me straight in the eyes. “Remember the things that I taught you, and she will be the happiest mare on Equus.”

I choked down the rest of my soda, and pointed a hoof at the back of the bar. “Um, I have to go to the little fillies’ room.”

When I had gotten over my embarrassment enough to sneak back I found Maud, Breka and Light were involved in a debate about about obscure rock, and whether suevite had sold out or not. I, for one, did not care. I glanced over at the bar, and I saw a pony I recognized. She was dressed in a gingham dress and a pair of glasses I knew she didn’t need. But the ginger mane, the blue coat, and the tiny saddle — that last not a common accessory in this place — were very recognizable. It was Sassy Saddles, Rarity’s Canterlot store manager.

I excused myself from my friends’ company, and squirmed and shouldered my way over to Sassy. Against all probability, there was an empty stool next to her. I sat down. I took a deep breath. Sassy had ignored me so far. I could just get another soda and move on. I didn’t need to know anything about Rarity. I didn’t need to know if my new marefriend was for real. I should trust her.

“Excuthe me,” I shouted at Sassy. “Can I buy you a drink?”

She raised an eyebrow without really looking at me. “I’m flattered by the offer, but you’re not my type.”

I blushed. “Um… That wathn’t what I meant. I wanted to talk to you about Rarity.”

Her eyes popped wide open. “Well, bust my buttons! It can’t be!” She narrowed her eyes, clearly struggling for a poker face. “You really are as… unique… as ponies are saying.”

“Are they really talking about us?” I couldn’t believe Rarity was that important. Or her fashion friends that petty, whichever.

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about, am I right?” She fluttered her eyelashes at me. I frowned. For once, I was immune to a beautiful mare’s charms.

My tummy rumbled. I pulled over a bowl of bar nuts. “Tho… what ith it like, working for Rarity?”

Sassy rolled her eyes. “Oh my Faust, she is such a micromanager. I don’t know why she thinks she needs to make every dress herself. That’s what Mexicolt is for! I also don’t know why she’d hire a pony with incredible marketing skills and then ignore everything she says.” She knocked back a shot of something clear. “Now what was that you were saying about buying me a drink?”

I flagged down the bartender, and ordered Sassy another shot of her ridiculously expensive vodka, as well as another soda for myself. Fifteen bits. Fifteen bits for that tiny little drink! How did ponies who drank afford this kind of thing? Though it would have been a lot cheaper if I hadn’t tipped the bartender 35% just because she had a big plot. I didn’t have my heat as an excuse any more. My estrus was over, and I was just an ordinary pervert again.

“I do have to admit,” yelled Sassy, “that she pays very well. And the benefits are excellent.”

I nodded. What was I even hoping to find out? I felt like I was trying to sabotage my relationship with Rarity. Did I really think I didn’t deserve her? It wasn’t like she was perfect. Except that she was. Oh, Rarity! I missed her so much, already. Her voice, her eyes, her clothes, her gentle but commanding tone. Maybe if I left right after work, I could sleep on the train, and grab a few hours with her tomorrow night?

“Is it true that you work for the CGS?”

I blinked. “Yeth. Yeth, I do.”

Sassy smiled a smile that didn’t touch her eyes. “Interesting. In what capacity?” She was clearly just making small talk, at this point.

“I’m a field agent. We do thite evaluation, emergency rethponth, assisting law enforcement with rock-related crimeth, thtuff like that.” We also served as gophers. Or sherpas, if needed.

Sassy seemed to stiffen a little. She threw back her shot. “Well. Rarity certainly has quite a sense of humor.”

I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. Wait, what was this? I laughed nervously. “Ha ha. Yeth, she is pretty funny.”

“I mean, you can’t imagine she’s really interested in you. What do you think she likes about you? Your buck teeth? Your frizzy hair? It can’t be your body — if your plot were any flatter, you could play pool on it. What is that old nag thinking?”

I stared at her in shock. The fangs had come out pretty suddenly. Comeback. I needed a comeback line. Who was she to talk about flat plots? Out loud. I needed to say that out loud, but my mouth wouldn’t work.

“The sagging old nag must need somepony young to stand next to her to make her look better. What is she? Twenty-seven? Twenty-eight? She’s getting too old for a mare in this business, and she knows it.”

The bartender slid my cola over to me. I stopped it with my hoof. “You can thay what you want about me, but you do not talk about Rarity that way!” And I threw my drink in her face.

Sassy leapt up from her barstool, dripping wet, yowling like she’d found a rat in her bed. I wanted to jump on her, kick her, tear at her mane, but… there was, laughter, clapping and cheering all around me. What was happening?

“Oh, I love your new look!” sneered a mare in a truck stop logo T-shirt.

“Yeah, what is that fragrance, eau de caffeine?” said a bushy-faced stallion in a plaid lumberjack’s shirt.

The band had stopped playing.

“Yo, what just happened?” asked the bassist.

“Some mare just threw a drink in Sassy Saddles’ face,” replied the guitarist.

“Dude, go her!” said the drummer. “Is this really the first time someone’s done that to Sassy?”

“She had it coming,” said the ukulele player.

“Maybe that posing poser will go pose somewhere else now,” said the keyboard player.

“Okay, brave vigilante. This song goes out to you.” He launched off into a power ballad about feline optometry. The crowd went wild. Sassy Saddles fled, her cheeks wet with more than just my drink. Hooves were slapping my back. Shots were being pressed into my hooves. It seemed rude to refuse, so I drank them. Two or three, and the room was spinning. I found myself standing on the lumberjack’s back, being paraded around the room as everypony sang along.

During the final chorus, I threw up on the lumberjack’s mane. It muted the mood a little. But only a little. Strong hooves carried me down, and Light and Maud’s faces leaned in.

“Frazzle. You look a little green. Are you all right?” said Maud.

I couldn’t reply for fear of throwing up again. If I looked like I felt, I was greener than Breka. Maud led me to the bathroom, took off my glasses, and held my mane back while I kneeled in front of the toilet.

My puke tasted like bar nuts and cheap whiskey. I started to cry.

“You seem a little upset.” Way to go, Maud, hitting the nail on the head again.

“Ra… Rarity’s friendth think I’m patheti-i-i-c!” I whined.

Maud raised an eyebrow. “You’re starting to sound like her.”

I turned my head towards Maud and stuck out my tongue. The room didn’t stop spinning when my head stopped moving. I gagged, and hurled in the toilet again.

“Why were they thinging?”

“Ponies know you, here. Frazzle. They like you. They also know Sassy. She’s only been coming here since Trenderhoof wrote it up in Chowhound so she can name drop the place and sound edgy. Also she’s kind of a bitch.”

I threw up again.

———

Maud, Breka, and Light Bright walked me to Maud’s place and left me in her care. Maud herded me up the stairs and into her postage stamp studio apartment. Canterlot real estate was extremely expensive, and Maud was lucky to have a place by herself, even if it was a single room with a shared bathroom down the hall. The building was very old and nothing was exactly straight. Normally I didn’t notice, but in my current state it gave me vertigo. I closed my eyes and let Maud install me on her couch.

She gave me a couple glasses of coppery-tasting tap water, and a bit of candied ginger root to chew on. The ginger burned my mouth, but it tasted good and calmed my belly a little. I lay on the couch quietly while she got an extra blanket and pillow.

“You can sleep on my bed. I’ll take the couch,” said Maud, plopping the pile of bedding down on the armrest.

I looked at her in the moonlight. Her short gray fur glowed. Her aqua eyes were so full of concern for me. Or maybe she was just tired; it was hard to tell with Maud. I felt feelings. Hot, naughty, cheating feelings. The drinks I’d had told me that those feelings were totally okay, and that I should share them with Maud. “We could thare your bed,” I whispered, doing my best to sound seductive. It came out sounding hoarse.

Maud raised an eyebrow. “Frazzle, you’re drunk.”

I set down my water and pushed myself up. I leaned over. I pushed my lips against Maud’s, and felt a thrill pass down my spine to explode into a shower of delicious, squirmy feelings at the base of my tail. I felt her lips begin to part. I opened my lips, and stuck out my tongue, slurping Maud across the lips.

I really needed to work on my kissing technique.

Maud pushed me away. “You smell like a hobo died in your mouth. Also you’re still drunk.” She picked up the blanket and draped it over me. “On second thought, you can take the couch. Honestly, it’s more comfortable than my bed.” She patted me on the chest through the blankets. “Get some sleep.”

“But… but…”

“Sleep.”

She got her toiletry bag and went out into the hall. I lay back and thought about everything that had gone wrong that evening, and what a rotten pony I was for trying to kiss Maud. I didn’t get very far before my eyes felt heavy. I closed them.

The next thing I knew, Maud was shaking me awake. The sky out of her window was purple with dawn. I threw a foreleg over my face.

“We’ve got to get ready for work, Frazzle,” said Maud.

“Nooo,” I groaned. But she was right. It would look really bad if I called in sick a day after coming back from a last minute vacation. I opened my eyes and sat up.

“If you want a shower, you’d better hurry up before everyone else on this floor wakes up.”

When I got back, I saw that Maud had been busy. She didn’t seem to own a table, but she’d set a simple breakfast of oatmeal, oven-cooked frozen hay fritters, instant coffee and prairie oysters on a tablecloth on the hardwood floor.

“Have as many hay cakes as you want,” said Maud, sitting down and pulling over her prairie oyster. “I made the whole box.”

I sat up down on the far side of the tablecloth from her. My tongue kept sticking to the roof of my mouth. It felt like someone had driven a railroad spike through my left temple. “Maud, about latht night…”

Maud blinked. “Nothing happened last night.” She sipped her prairie oyster like it was a cup of tea.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “What?”

“I brought you back here, put you on the couch and you fell right asleep,” said Maud. “You certainly didn’t blow puke breath in my face and lick my mouth in what I can only assume was meant to be a sexually provocative manner. If you have any memories like that, then they must be fake.” She took another sip of her prairie oyster. “Fake memories happen all the time.”

I smiled, relieved. “Right. It never happened.”

“What never happened?”

After I’d eaten two bowls of oatmeal, all of the hay cakes, three cups of Maud’s terrible coffee, and had two prairie oysters and six aspirin, I felt like I was ready to face the day. Maud and I took the funicular up to work together, reading side by side in relative silence. Which wasn’t unusual; neither of us are big talkers. Everything was fine until I came back from a meeting around mid-morning to find a telegram on my desk. It was from… Rainbow Dash? I tore it open.

RARITY ON WARPATH. TOOK 8:45 TRAIN TO CANTERLOT. PINKIE SAYS IT’S ABOUT YOU. BE READY. — LT. R. D. DASH, WONDERBOLTS RESERVE

P.S. PROBABLY NOT YOUR FAULT. YOU KNOW HOW SHE GETS. PLEASE WORK THIS OUT. RARITY MUCH LESS ANNOYING WHEN GETTING LAID REGULARLY.

“Oh, buck me.” My headache came back instantly, with a couple of extra spikes. I pushed up my glasses, and rubbed my hoof between my eyes. Whatever this was, I knew it was going to be bad.