"Flam, where's the clop!"

"YOU GET TO EAT A BAG OF DICKS CALLED 'CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT.' THERE'S YER CLOP!"

As per our discussion via a blogpost, this portion was taken out from the original chapter 13. Chapter 14, thusly, will be released as the rest of this enormous chapter.

Fredrick had always been partial to cooler nights, ever appreciative of when the sleeping hours warranted the wreathing of some thick covers over his body…

…Which would provide the necessary warmth for him to sleep without more than a single pair of boxers.

No ulterior motive at all.

He was a man of equilibrium, and this extended to the environment. He favored more temperate climates as opposed to extreme hot or cold weather. Vacations to the tropics or to the snow were met with equal disdain and constant derision on his part.

But perhaps more specifically, Fred longed for when the night was cool enough to outright snuggle with someone else. If this wasn’t the case though, the aforementioned covers would do just splendidly.

Thankfully, to his great enjoyment, this was exactly the case with the weather and was somewhat the norm in Thestralshire.

Because the location geographically, in conjunction with the rather… unique structure and sublocation within a goddamn mountain, the air was generally a little more biting at night. This supplemented the more humid and rainy climate that produced the lushness he so adored.

Paradise.

And to him, it was the perfect way to unwind and cool off after he and Stella’s steamy evening together.

To sweeten the deal even more, it began to rain again… and the perpetual, soothing petrichor smell became much more pervasive through the open window.

Thankfully, Stella's bed was easily able to accommodate the two of them, even without cuddling. Stella had opted to sleep on her side, facing towards her door while Fredrick was afforded the luxury of being able to lean against the cool stone wall.

Windows with nice views or airflow were an odd thing he enjoyed. Even though there were no planes in this universe, he still insisted upon window seats or positions always.

He was a little more than content that this pattern continued outside of Earth.

Despite a distinct lack of snuggles due to Stella's insistence before they retired for the night, all was perfectly well and good for the human.

Well, at least until the pitter-patter of the rain had gingerly feathered Fred awake from his beautiful, first slumber of his week-long vacation.

His eyes, heavy with travel fatigue, strained open just a tad to confirm that it was indeed still sleeping time.

A clock by the room entrance that held soft blue, glow-in-the-dark hands did well to inform him that they had about another five hours to sleep.

Perfect.

Lying on his back, Fred formed a weak smirk as his roused mind returned to peace… a peace that held great weight upon hearing the white noise he would fall asleep to as a child.

All the light crystals had been dimmed to their lowest levels once he and Stella had given one another their goodnight kisses. Fred was one who preferred pitch-blackness when he fell asleep, but even he had to admit that there was an odd, comforting charm to the soft, lavender glow at its lowest level. Stella’s possessions cast their imposing, yet protective shadows towards the firmament of the ceiling—unmoving, unwavering even with the occasional breeze that would waltz inside.

With that odd, child-like image in his forethought, the human felt more at peace than he had in a good while… not to say that he wasn’t content with his life.

So, Fred was more than keen to turn over to the cold, stone wall and fall right back asleep.

But alas, some jerky movement from Stella’s side of the bed piqued his sleepy interest.

And a further gentle series of murmurs and subtle whimpers made it clear that Fredrick did not awaken merely on account of the rain.

A smidge more awake than he had been mere seconds ago, Fred confirmed that Stella was indeed the source of the soft disturbances that would lightly jar the bed.

Fredrick supported his torso up with the help of his right hand and felt around for Stella's side through the comforter.

He found her waist, and her intelligible sleep-talking did not wane at his first, preliminary touch.

“Stella?” Fredrick whispered, then began to stroke side in a first attempt at rousing her.

He scooted up right next to her.

“Babe?”

No acknowledgement.

She slept like a corpse most of the time. This was likely no different an occurrence.

“Nnnnyuh… mmmph…” Stella continued to sound in her less than peaceful slumber.

“Hey… come on, you. Wake up, beautiful,” Fred cooed right into her ear.

He felt said ear flick against his nose, but Stella’s antics were undeterred by his voice, nor were initial comforting graces of his hands at all effective in his campaign.

But as her twitching under his touch became more pronounced, so did her words.

“No… don't do that…”

Fredrick scooted up flush behind her and began squeezing her shoulder firmly. He noted any words of hers that he could make out through her incomprehensible garble, but did not give them much credence in the moment.

“Stella? Fuck’s sake, wake up!”

“Not you too.” She growled. “… not you too mate. Don't do it…

“Ugh… damnit, don't go…

“Please?”

Fredrick had had enough of Stella sounding genuinely hurt and distressed. His heart simply could not take it any further.

Thus, his words accompanying a violent shake of her upper body were much more forceful.

“STELLA!”

To which she hissed her retort:

“DON’T FUCKIN’... LEAVE ME HERE GODDAMNIT!”

Fredrick decided to go nuclear.

“WAKE. UP. YOU SLACK, WEAK-HOOFED LEATHERY-WINGED PISSER!” Fred commanded after patting her cheek repeatedly.

That's all it took, apparently.

Stella's writhing and whimpering abruptly ceased, and the ensuing silence was bloated with a natural confusion from the awakened batpony.

Said silence was instantly replaced with hyperventilating as the mare came to, fully.

She blinked the remnants of her nightmare out of her eyes, wiped the crust on the back of her hands, and sought to ascertain her whereabouts in the bout of post-dream rousing.

“Wha… huh?” she questioned, then acknowledged to the two hands that had found their way on her.

Glancing back and seeing Fredrick casting a concerned, protective look, brought her back to reality.

And just like that, Stella’s features sagged and sunk. She then shook her head as she wiped her face off from the fresh tear and sweat stains.

Her golden, predatorial eyes fraught with the remnants of a benign, yet primal fear did not suit her style.

“Fuck’s sake…” she muttered.

“Stel’, you alright?” Fredrick asked.

His usually foul-mouthed marefriend locked eyes with him again, nodding, while uttering her reply in a tone most apt for the silent night.

“Aye… I’m good, love. Thanks fer gettin’ me outta that shit,” she spoke, taking one of Fred’s cool hands in hers.

They were a nice remedy to the heat that coursed its way through her body against her will. Their fingers interlocked with one another like roots of trees—a small symbol that characterized their exponentiating, yet fledgling romanticism.

Stella sniffled once, then shook her head once more.

Fredrick was quick to insert his next question with a forlorn, knowing obligation.

“Guessing it was the nightmare again?” he inquired, and ran his fingers through her mane for some good, comforting measure.

Stella let her heavy-as-steel eyelids flutter shut under his touch, and she leaned further into his hand as she sighed.

Fredrick got the message, and cupped his palm on around her cheek.

Stella nodded in response to his question.

“Yep. Shit’s gettin’ old real fast, lemme fuckin’ tell ye.”

Fredrick glanced away for a moment to collect his thoughts, then turned back to Stella ready to ask another question that he already knew the answer to.

Even so, as Stella’s boyfriend, it was his duty to at least attempt to help her in any way he both could, and knew how:

“Anything you wanna talk about?”

Through a calculated, complex defense mechanism that Stella employed with very specific subjects in her life, her knee-jerk response came with a little more snark than she had consciously intended:

“There’s nothin’ tae talk about,” she replied tersely.

“Just retarded shit that went down in the Badlands Border Region a million years ago. That’s it, mate. Case closed.”

Fredrick rolled his eyes as he formulated his response.

The human was more than aware that Stella was, at the very least, a ‘big girl.’ As such, she was more than capable of taking care of herself.

A nightmare was not necessarily seen as an… ‘obstacle’ to her daily routine of ‘eating bubble-gum and chewing ass.’

The thing was, she was having these with a bit more frequency over the past few months. And to Fredrick’s knowledge, it appeared to be the same nightmare, perhaps with minor nuances based on what little info he could extract through Stella’s resistance or lack thereof.

He still was not sure why she was so defensive over it, considering Stella would take any chance she could get to run her mouth about worse topics…

...or perhaps, Fredrick was just being ignorant, and his naivety was shining through like the afternoon sun through a screen-door.

What Stella experienced out there… was it bad enough to warrant a somewhat recurring nightmare?

He sighed, concern still evident over his visage.

“Yeah, I know Stel’, but don't you think there's something you could do to help remedy this? If you don't want to talk to me you can talk to someone else, you know,” Fredrick suggested.

It was Stella’s turn to roll her eyes.

She followed that up with a shake of her head as she lay back down.

“I'm not gettin’ into this with you, Fred… again.”

Fred raised an eyebrow.

“So. You're just gonna live with it? You’re the one that just said it was getting old. I’ve never once known you to take shit lying down… I mean, come on.

“You're better than that!”

Stella sat up ramrod, negating her previous action with a vengeance.

“Look love,” she began, her tone of ‘I'm way too tired for this shit’ loud and clear.

She raised an index finger.

“It's shit that happened back then. And from before we met, me past isn't exactly yer business, innit?

“Wanna ask me how many stallion’s I’ve fucked, while yer at it, mate?”

That certainly woke him up. He physically drew back and blinked at the weight her response carried, as if the quantifiable harshness impacted his chest.

Whether they were intentional or not had no bearing on attempting to feel unhurt, even if it was mild.

Stella still noticed. Regret instantly ran rivulets through her bloodstream.

“Wow… y-you know what?!” Fred began to rise to counter, evident by his rising tone through his whisper…

…but he ultimately decided against it. His will to escalate this argument waiting to happen fizzled into the cool air of Thestralshire.

Stella still noticed his reaction—darkness was never an obstacle for a batpony.

She flinched the moment the last of her words left her mouth without the quality-control nor filter she never had.

As for Fredrick, he acknowledged that Stella was letting past be past. He had to concede that whatever the topic of this dream, it was only really causing her a minor inconvenience; it wasn't ruining her life in the slightest.

Maybe aggravating her occasionally, but that was about it. What didn’t aggravate this mare to some degree?

Fredrick huffed, then scaled back his posture. To him, Stella was right in the end, and he did not want what would be an explosive argument over something miniscule in the grand scheme of things.

He was proud of the fact that Stella and he had not truly had an argument over the course of their aggregate relationship.

Disagreements and lambastings aside, of course… this was the first time that they ever raised their voices both defensively and accusatively at one another. Ultimately, the precipice of his irritation was marred by images of his parents grotesquely screaming at one another over nothing—a proverbial world war over spilled milk.

While standing ground was important, he would never allow himself to come to that. Ever.

As a result, his next words were much more restrained than he had initially intended:

“You’re right. It isn’t any of my business.

“I just don’t like seeing you like this, no matter how often it doesn’t happen,” he admitted.

Stella’s defensiveness had receded back into nothing, and despite she being as tired as she was, her brief musings of a snarl elastically sprung back to one of her usual smirks.

One that held a semblance of blush, courtesy of a fluttering heart at Fredrick’s words…

In her most scholarly opinion, it was an excellent windfall that Fredrick could not see that well in the dark as a human. This did little to stem the remorse that had built up greatly within her, paining her like an ethereal, upset stomach.

Stella knew he didn’t deserve her words in the slightest. Through her interrupted sleep cycle and her nightmare, her emotions were running on a temporary overdrive. To her, as someone who valued discipline, this was no excuse for her to snap at Fredrick like that. At all.

In fact, it was embarrassing.

Even if it was nowhere near the level of furor she had unleashed on others when she had truly snapped, it was still much more than Fredrick ever once deserved.

“Hey…” she began uneasily.

She drew her gaze away from his for a few moments. Though succinct, her first sentence came with a barely noticeably shakiness. Uncharacteristic apprehensiveness was bundled with each syllable.

“I’m sorry fer gettin’ a bit uppity there… it wasn’t fair to you, and I own it completely.”

Stella reached forward and took Fredrick’s cool hand back in hers, running her thumbs over his knuckles and veins—cartographing his features.

She was a degenerate who enjoyed hand-holding.

“But please trust me when I say this, Fred: I'm okay. It was nothing huge. I wasn’t wounded, nopony died, and I wasn’t assaulted. I can take care of it m’self, aye?”

Her volume petered out into barely a measurable whisper as she drew herself in closer to him.

“There’s no need to make waves where there’s no current. Hmm?”

Stella flashed him her pearly whites, which were much more visible in the dark along with her eyes. She also fluttered those eyes invitingly for a single second.

It gave her, in Fred’s likening, almost a Cheshire Cat look.

Well, if he ever wanted to fuck the Cheshire Cat.

He didn’t.

And despite his initial reservations when they had just woken up, Fredrick was simply never able to say ‘no’ to that beautiful face.

With great care showing through his own eyes, Fredrick smirked back and nodded.

He then planted a kiss on the back of Stella's hand for good measure before he delivered his final acquiescence:

“Okay, cutie.”

Both parties breathed internal sighs of relief. DEFCON 5 was restored.

Stella suddenly looked unsure at his words, but Fred's fears proved unfounded in that regard.

“Eeeehhhhh… not so sure how I feel about that pet name.”

A smug grin overtook her features. Normalcy had finally made its grand return.

“I personally prefer when ye call me ‘beautiful.’

“...or ‘fuckin so hot you melt me heart and milk me dick,’” Stella presented a more feasible alternative.

Fredrick could not help but giggle at that, and that in turn earned shushed, albeit jovial laughter out of Stella.

Once that died down, Stella beckoned Fred’s face forth in the darkness.

“C’mere, you,” she whispered, and she reacquainted Fredrick’s lips with hers in a chaste, tired kiss.

T’was not long, nor deep… but it was the final token of appreciation to one another that manifested as a silent measure of perfect content—they were cool.

They separated with a soundless smack, and Fredrick uttered:

“Okay fiiiiiine. You’re lame. I'll find better names than ‘cutie.’”

“Fuckin’ right you will!”

Stella then lay back down on her right side and, after tossing off the covers to reveal her in basic bra and panties, she peeked over her own shoulder.

“Spoon me?”

Fred’s eyes lit up in the darkness at Stella’s invitation, as a barely-willing ear would a Jehovah’s Witness.

“Fuck yeah, of course!”

As if Fred needed any extra beckoning, Stella slapped her left asscheek twice—the guided flightpath to the aircraft that was his crotch.

Having already been divested of his shirt and pants, Fred scooted up right behind Stella and nestled his boxers-clad crotch into Stella's rear.

Then, he wrapped his left arm around her tummy whilst leaving his right to drape around the mare’s head.

He gripped through the small layer of fat, and felt up the firmness of her steel abs he found so pleasing and erotic.

However, as would expected of her, Stella had a tweak to the game plan.

Grinning devilishly and grasped Frederick’s wrist, she led it on a small journey to her covered left breast.

“That's better,” Stella cooed.

Fredrick had learned well from his recent past and decided not to question the action. He instead opted to just idly squeeze and fondle Stella’s half-bosom; not enough to arouse but to… relax.

Fred called upon some of his strategic reserves of confidence, and slipped his left hand under the cup of her bra.

The web of his middle digits found her small, tender, soft nipple and encased it in its own embrace as his fingers went back to idly groping.

And the batpony’s rhythmic purring through her easing breathing told him all he needed to know regarding his performance.

He pressed his face into the back of her mane.

“This is nice…” he whispered.

Stella nodded, and Fredrick used the small bout of silence to relish in the feeling.

The ingress of the mountainous night air served to cool their burning skin off, while their bodies mingled as intimately as they were did well to heat them back up. The perfect temperature was achieved with the small, sensual act of snuggling and tender fondling.

Equilibrium was restored.

“Sure is, mate…” Stella replied, scooting herself further into Fredrick’s hold.

Sometimes, no matter the personality, Stella had to internally admit that there was no substitute for getting coddled and pampered.

Fredrick, though his eyes had long shut by then, had little ability to contain the ever-expansive smile that chiseled its way onto his face.

“Good,” he whispered, taking a whiff of Stella’s clean mane in his face.

“As long as you’re happy Stel’, I’m thrilled.”

Though Fredrick couldn’t see nor feel it, Stella herself had little choice in the matter of the ‘smiles’ department at those words, either.

Tartarus be damned, she tried to retreat further into Fredrick’s hold but to little avail—they were already completely flushed. Thankfully, Fredrick got the message, and he lay his left leg over hers, which was a suitable alternative.

Stella exhaled audibly, her eyes also closed.

“At the risk of pukin’ due tae sap…

“I love the way you treat me, Fredrick.”

Fredrick had to stop himself cold from letting instinct take over and utter ‘And I love you…’

In a quick mental quarrel, he knew for a fact that he’d catch feelings quickly for this girl. It was like flies and honey, if the honey were also made with double-stuffed Oreos and molasses.

A mental block rightfully and responsibly played the role of Professor Oak, and reprimanded him for this moment ‘not being the time to use that.’

A compromised response between his heart and logical reasoning was thusly reached:

“And I, you. Besides, I get a kick out of it when you get all emotional like this…”

Stella gripped Fredrick’s calf in her legs and clamped down on him like a hydraulic press. He hissed in playful pain.

She then remarked with little weight:

“Shut up, fuckwit. Fukkin’ rip yer bollocks off an’ use ‘em as bolos.”

“Hah!” he chuckled.

“Goodnight to you, too, babe.”

Soon enough though, Fredrick’s fondling and Stella’s purring had died out into silence as the two of them let their eyes fully shutter for the remainder of the night. They drifted back off to Luna’s realm in each other’s hold with perhaps a little more understanding about their relationship.

And in the end, Fredrick figured that despite his earlier pride, this technically counted as their first quarrel as a couple?

Or maybe it didn’t.

Regardless of the fact, the two decided to drop it and fall asleep with each other.

All things considered, that was probably the best option available for now.