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Architectures of pain coalesced at the base of Shining Armor’s neck as a light poke to his side jostled him awake. He was pretty sure he knew the identity of the poker, but he wasn’t going to let her claim victory. His eyes remained closed as sharp streams stabbed at his nerve endings.

The poke returned, having leveled up to a jab. Shining groaned a pointed counterargument to the invasion of his sleeping space and rolled over, unenthused that the time for slumber had long passed. He still attempted to grab hold of the lie for a few moments longer as the uncomfortable sensation of being fully awake blossomed through him.

“Daddy, wake up or I’ll smack you.”

It was to no avail. The identity of his invader now confirmed―good reconnaissance, Shiny―Shining’s eyes fluttered open as he rolled over again, reactivating the pain in his neck in the process as his teenaged daughter came into full view. He groaned as he unearthed a hoof from under the covers to rub his face. I don’t know how I managed to produce something so beautiful.

“Flurry, this better be important to wake me up at―” he eyed the wall clock “―okay, I guess ten is a reasonable time to wake up. But still,” he said as he maneuvered himself into a seated position, “this better be important or else I’ll strangle you.”

“You mean like you did with Mom that one time I walked in?” Flurry said before she stuck out her tongue.

A delicate blush bloomed on Shining Armor’s face as his eyes darted left and right. “That was, uh, special strangling.” He half-cocked a grin. “The kind that two ponies do when they love each other very much.” Shining narrowed his eyes at his daughter. “This will be strangling of the normal variety.” He then noticed her wings were extended. Her massive, freakishly large wings. We could both live to a thousand, and I will still never get over them.

Shining’s gaze traveled to Flurry’s wings as he examined them.

“See something you like?”

“Knock it off.” Shining studied the curvature of the wing displayed before him. “You’re hiding something behind your wing.” He redirected his attention to Flurry’s face. “Did you hurt your wing doing a stupid stunt?” Flurry’s face betrayed nothing. Shining hummed. “Did your mom let you get one of those dumb feather tattoos?” Still nothing, although Flurry did crack a smile. Okay, she wants a tattoo in the future. I’ll talk to her mother about that. He rested himself upon the headboard and rubbed more of the sleep out of his face. “Um… uh…”

Flurry Heart groaned a teenagerly kind of groan. “Daddy, what day is it today?”

“Well,” Shining said, “today would be Sunday, because I was sleeping in, you know, before you woke me,” the last part said through gritted teeth.

“No, Daddy,” Flurry said as she rolled her eyes. “What day is it?”

Shining Armor shrugged before wincing a bit. If I could kill my back to get rid of the pain, I would. “Feathered if I know.”

Flurry jabbed him again before retracting the wing, displaying a tray of what appeared to be his favorite breakfast with something suspiciously familiar on top. “Any clues now?” she asked.

“Hmm.” Shining looked at where the light touched the room through the window before a smile appeared on his face. “Oh! It’s my birthday!”

“Yes, Daddy,” Flurry deadpanned as she levitated the tray to Shining, “it’s your birthday.” She glared at him with a scowl. “Happy birthday. I swear, sometimes you’re as dumb as a sack of bricks.” The scowl was replaced with a wan smirk. “Which makes me wonder what Mom sees in you.”

Shining cleared his throat because he knew where this was going. She had that creepy look on her face again―the kind of look that would end up with him in jail if reality wandered where his daughter’s mind did. “This is a lovely spread,” he said as he saw the pancakes on the tray, a bowl of chunked pineapple next to them, “and this is… a wonderful frosting figurine―”

“It’s your O and O character,” Flurry said, the smirk morphing into a genuine smile.

Shining exhaled sharply. “Oh thank goodness. I thought I was seeing things.”

“You have no idea how much work it took to design that,” Flurry said as she gestured with her enormous wings. I don’t know how my wife pushed those out of her. “First,” she continued, “I had to dig through your old stuff to find your character―” she made a doggy paddle motion with her hooves “―then I had to do a mockup of what she―really, Daddy, you roleplayed a mare?―she looked like.” She groaned as she pressed the tips of her wings to her temples. “Then, I had to have one of the chefs tutor me on pastry design because there’s no way I was going to let someone else make my Daddy’s breakfast on his birthday.” Flurry fumbled with her mane. “Do you like it?”

The pain around the base of his neck seemed to dim as his took in his daughter’s handiwork, his own genuine smile appearing on his face. “Flurry Heart, this is wonderful.” Shining took a deep breath. “I’m almost afraid to eat―”

The flash of a camera momentarily blinded him before he regained his bearings, glancing over at Flurry grasping a camera in her magic. “Mom thought you’d say that!” She put the camera on the nightstand. “Now you can eat yourself!”

Shining looked up and jutted his jaw out a bit. “Actually I’d be eating a physical representation of a fictional persona I assumed for the purposes of recreation, but―”

“Stop being a nerd and eat it.”

“Fine, fine.” Shining chuckled as he forked a lump of physical-representation-of-fictional-persona icing into his mouth, then swallowed. “Oh, it’s my favorite flavor, too!” He patted Flurry Heart on the shoulder. “Good work, kid.”

Flurry Heart bit her lip, then hugged Shining, who prickled the tiniest bit. “I love you, too.”

“A little too much, according to some ponies,” Shining said as he awkwardly hugged her back.

“That therapist you two sent me to said it’s just a phase,” Flurry said as she tightened the hug.

Shining soaked in the unusually platonic affection his daughter was showing at the moment. A thought crossed his mind and leapt out of his mouth before he could catch it.

“But what if it isn’t?”

Flurry chuckled a bit. “Mom said she wouldn’t blame me, because you’re literally the best pony ever.”

Shining Armor blinked a few times. “That has to be both the nicest and creepiest thing you’ve ever said to me.”

“Now is it both nicest and creepiest?” Flurry asked as she disengaged the hug, a wicked smirk gracing her muzzle, “or is it singularly the nicest and singularly the creepiest?”

Shining giggled. “I’ll have to think about that,” he said as he started eating his pancakes, “but definitely ‘A’.”

“Well,” Flurry Heart said, “we can break this down easily.” She smiled. “What’s the nicest?”

“Any time you say you love me is the nicest, Flurry.”

She lowered her gaze. “And what’s the creepiest?”

Shining paused for a moment, then continued eating. “That would probably be why you’re in therapy in the first place.”

“It was pretty much the same thing as ‘I love you’,” Flurry said with a frown on her face.

“And that’s why you’re in therapy.”

Flurry Heart looked away and dramatically extended a wing as she put a hoof to her forehead. “Is it such a crime to love too much?”

“It’s―It’s exactly a crime.” Shining finished his pancakes and moved onto levitating pieces of pineapple into his mouth. “I’m just glad we’re at the point where we can be in the room alone.”

Flurry Heart pursed her lips. “Actually, we’re not.” She pointed up. Shining’s gaze followed where the sight of his wife clinging to the ceiling like a spider made him almost choke on his food.

Cadance waved, a huge grin on her face. “So, Shiny, you up for that special strangling tonight?”

Shining clapped his hooves together as his ceiling-wife just announced their bedtime plans with their Electral daughter in the room. Right next to him.

“Yeah, sure,” Shining said as he lay his head against the headboard, Cadance smiling at him from the ceiling and Flurry Heart now lost in her own world, biting her lip. He let out a deep exhale.

I bet Twily doesn’t have to go through this.

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