Perhaps inevitably, the pair ended up at Sugarcube Corner.

They had floated the idea of returning to the Castle of Friendship - a name which Jack still could not say with a straight face - for breakfast, but mooted it, as going all the way back only to have to come back out to see Rarity again before too long seemed a bit pointless.

And so it was. Probably for the best.

Pinkie was, unsurprisingly, overjoyed to see them and it was only after she’d nigh-on crushed Twilight to death in a hug and been prised off of Jack’s leg that she calmed down sufficiently for an order to actually be placed.

Jack was not especially hungry, but that wasn’t unusual. He hadn’t been especially hungry at all over the last few days or, indeed, the last week or so. He nibbled, but that mostly just so he was seen to be doing something. The tea he drank - from a frankly enormous, practically barrel-sized mug the origins of which Pinkie seemed to suggest were of some dispute - was much more appreciated.

Twilight was hungry, and she just ate. Enthusiastically.

“Huh, wha?” She asked, noticing that Jack was staring. “Is there something on my face?”

He gestured to all of her.

“Just kind of everywhere,” he said, passing over a napkin, which she took rather bashfully. After cleaning herself up she continued eating, this time with rather more care and self-possession. Jack wished he hadn’t pointed it out. He’d found it rather cute before.

After this it was Twilight’s turn to stare, though her eyes were actually fixed on a point a little above Jack’s head. He frowned.

“Now what?”

“Uh…” Twilight said, pointing. Jack, now perplexed, looked up to see - having somehow missed this, somehow - Pinkie sitting on top of his head.

Curiously, it was not until Jack was aware she was there that he actually felt the weight of her, in much the same way that once his eyes had spotted her it was impossible not to notice that she was very clearly there. How any of this worked was unclear.

“Oh hi. Having fun up there?” He asked.

“Lots!” Pinkie said, nodding happily.

Jack felt no need to question her decisions further than this, and Twilight was still a little taken aback by his casual reaction and added nothing either. It was Pinkie who kept the conversation going:

“Soooooo, what you two up to today?” She asked.

“Twilight has a plan for me to make amends for my time being, uh, something of a public nuisance,” Jack said.

“That’s kind of a simplistic way of putting it…” Twilight said, though not especially loudly.

“Ooh. You were a nuisance?” Pinkie asked, bending over to look Jack in the eye when she asked.

Given that Pinkie had personally assisted Twilight at least once on something that had been directly Jack’s doing - concerning a certain jailbreak, which in retrospect had perhaps been a little melodramatic - Jack wondered what she defined as a nuisance. Perhaps she was simply being obtuse, perhaps she had simply forgotten. Who could say?

He felt it best to just let it slide.

“That’s the common consensus. And my own personal opinion. Got some bad behaviour to make up for. Did I ever do anything bad to you?” He asked, trying to look up at her but not getting very far. Pinkie rolled over onto her back atop his head and thought about this question, maintaining her balance perfectly.

“Hmm,” she said. “Hmmmm.”

This she repeated, rising in pitch and length until it was beyond the range of human hearing.

Pinkie’s head then flopped upside down, her mane hitting Jack in the face.

“Nope, don’t think so,” she said.

“Glad to hear it.”

Jack then reached up and rubbed her belly, instantly reducing Pinkie to a flopping, writhing mass of giggles that still somehow managed to not fall off his head. He even tried tipping her off, just to see what would happen, still she stayed there in defiance of reason itself.

It was only a bell ringing that brought it to a halt, her head snapping up and ears swivelling the moment the door opened.

“Ooh! Customers!” She chirped.

Somehow and in a way that no-one properly saw, Pinkie slid down the back of Jack’s head, disappeared from view and - without seeming to actually cross the room - popped up from behind the till. This passed without comment, though Jack did shake his head as he reached again for his teacup.

“Is it weird that Pinkie can still do all her stuff when I’m around but you guys can’t levitate a spoon if I’m resting a hand even an inch away from you? I think Rarity nearly fell over earlier.”

The full effects, limits and other specifics of Jack’s peculiar effect on magic had not been given a particular or proper examination, because it was something that everyone - himself included - preferred to just sort of pretend wasn’t there.

Apart from those times when it could be leveraged for comedic purposes, of course. Rest of the time - out of sight, out of mind.

“I wouldn’t say weird, I’d just say...Pinkie,” Twilight said, unable to come up with any better explanation.

“So it’s not magic, I take it?”

“No, it’s not magic,” Twilight said with the look and tone of someone who’d gone to dark places to have this confirmed.

“Clearly she simply obeys different rules to the rest of you. Stranger things have happened,” Jack said.

“They’re not meant to though! Rules are rules for a reason!”

Twilight evidently had strong feelings about this. Jack just sipped his tea to block his grinning.

“What about what’s happening to me?” He asked, innocently enough.

This question was not received by Twilight with the same amount of levity and light-heartedness with which Jack had delivered it, and her mood dipped sharply and immediately.

“...I just haven’t figured that out yet. But I will. Trust me, Jack, I’ll figure it out,” she said.

The crestfallen way she said this - along with the look on her face - skewered Jack right in the heart and he hurriedly set his teacup down to reach across the table and take one of her hooves in his hand. Rarely had Twilight looked smaller to him than at that moment. Her hoof basically disappeared in his hand. Not that she minded.

Jack did. He lowered his hand a little so the size difference between them looked a little less egregious. It had made him somewhat uncomfortable.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said.

“I will figure it out, Jack. Trust me,” Twilight said, putting her other hoof onto his hand and looking him in the eye. Very determined she was, too. Jack nodded.

“I know you will. And even if - you know - things don’t work out and it stays a mystery we’ll always have each other, right? Millstones around each other’s necks and all that?”

That put something of a smile back onto her face, albeit a slightly wan one.

“Oh you’ll never get rid of me,” she said. Jack scoffed with a level of theatricality that likely would have made Rarity proud.

“She makes it sound like a bad thing!” He said.

More of a smile from Twilight and less wan to boot. Neither of them said anything after that because they didn’t really need to. They just smiled, because they couldn’t really help it.

Then a hint of movement caught their eyes.

Pinkie rose slowly and smoothly from somewhere indeterminate below the level of their table, wide eyes flicking back and forth between the two of them. She said nothing, but her conspiratorial expression smoke volumes.

Jack pulled his hand away from Twilight and Twilight was suddenly interested in looking anywhere that wasn’t the table.

“Need something, Pinkie?” Jack asked, unable to find anywhere to put his hands and settling on sitting on them. Pinkie shook her head.

“Nuh uh.”

“Just going to kind of stand there being a little creepy?”

“Yuh huh.”

He gave her a pat on the head. She squeaked, beaming ear-to-ear.

“That’s great. You do you.”

“My, look at the time! We should probably go see Rarity,” Twilight said with what might have been a laugh or a choke, pointing to a clock that Jack had singularly failed to notice owing to it being sat right behind him. Craning his neck over his shoulder to look he realised this was the first moment so far he’d actually had any inkling what the time was.

It was earlier than he’d expected it to be.

“Oh, oh yeah, yeah, right,” he said. “Yep, definitely. Stuff to do, places to be.”

“Aww,” Pinkie said, lip wobbling. Jack held his hand up in front of her face so he didn’t have to suffer the sight, it was simply too much to bear. Pinkie just rose so that she was over his hand. How she did this was, as always, something of a mystery.

“Goddamnit woman,” Jack said, averting his eyes. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“You didn’t finish your breakfast!”

Indeed, sitting in front of him was most of a muffin - what he had considered an acceptable choice for breakfast. As with most Equestrian baked goods the thing was of considerable size, being roughly approximate to Pinkie’s head.

“Uh, I wasn’t super-hungry,” he said. This was true, but this was greeted only by more lip wobbling and Jack felt his resolve crumbling. He’d never had a whole lot of resolve to begin with. Grunting he grabbed the thing and started wolfing it down, aware of the time.

“How you guys stay so tiny I have no idea…” He said between bites, doing his best to avoid Pinkie’s scrutiny while he ate. In doing so he noticed Twilight staring again.

“What?” He asked after swallowing.

“And you said I was messy,” she said lightly, smirking.

“I didn’t say it, I just implied it.”

“Well, there you go.”

Jack concentrated on finishing the muffin. He gave serious consideration to eating the plate as well just to really go the distance but imagined - probably correctly - that Twilight would not approve of this. So instead he just held the empty plate up for Pinkie’s inspection.

“Happy now?”

Pinkie turned the plate over in her hooves and looked at it closely, holding the thing barely inches from her eye. She even looked at the underside, as though Jack might have hidden something there. At length she was satisfied, putting the plate onto her back for return and washing and giving Jack a nod.

“Great. Very nice, by the way. Compliments to the baker.”

“That’s me!”

“It is?” Jack said, holding a hand to his mouth in shock. Pinkie giggled and Twilight giggled too, though hers cut off rather quickly and she tugged on the curtain around his waist. Jack got the point, waved goodbye and followed Twilight out the door.

“That didn’t feel like an hour or so,” he said, squinting up at the sun. Doing this told him little and also meant he had to hustle to catch up to Twilight, who hadn’t stopped walking.

“I must have lost track of time,” she said.

Jack couldn’t really argue with that.

They arrived back at Rarity’s early. Despite this, she was still basically done anyway.

What Rarity had made - in record time! - amounted to a fairly loose, fairly short pair of trousers and some style of poncho-thing, both made from a material that might have been linen in another life but was here instead somewhat closer to hessian.

Why she’d had such material to hand (or hoof, Jack supposed) was anyone’s guess.

Still, he thought they were marvellous and leapt into getting changed so quickly both Rarity and Twilight barely had enough time to look away.

“Check me out! I’m modest!” Jack declared upon finishing changing, rushing over to a mirror to give himself a proper checking out.

He didn’t like what he saw because what he saw was himself, but it was a damn sight better than the last time he had to look in a mirror because this time he wasn’t half-naked and wearing a curtain.

“Great stuff, Rarity,” he then said, giving her a boisterous thumbs up.

“You’re very kind. It’s awfully rough, I’m afraid. It was difficult finding sufficient fabric you see, and-”

“Hush with your self-deprecation, lady, these are fantastic. Look at this! Look how casual I look!”

Jack gave the poncho a few swishes. “I’m like Pacha. Only without the hat. Or llama buddy, sadly. This is great.”

“Hat?” Rarity asked, afraid that maybe she’d missed some key component of human clothing that she had been hitherto unaware of.

“Llama?” Twilight asked, wondering why Rarity hadn’t latched onto what she felt was the more important part of what Jack had said.

“Nevermind. Thanks for this, Rarity.”

He reached down to give her a pat, too, but thought better of it and instead just held his fist out to her. Rather daintily she bumped it, seeming to think the gesture novel, at least coming from him.

“Think nothing of it, Jack. As I said this is just for now! The proper finished articles will be much better, I assure you.”

“I’ll be floored, I’m sure. Get one of those couches of yours ready when I come here next, I’ll need it.”

“Oh you!” She said, batting at hoof at him.

“No, you!” He said, batting a hand at her.

“...are you two done?” Twilight asked flatly, watching all of this transpire.

“Oh you, Twilight!” Both Rarity and Jack somehow managed to say in perfect unison. It took Twilight a couple seconds to recover from this.

“Urgh…”

Jack and Twilight did leave after that, however, Jack continuing to revel in his new clothes. He was enjoying them far more than he’d suspected he might, and these were just the stopgaps!

It was the little things, sometimes.

“Okay, I’ll admit this is pretty good, I’m liking this. Your plan is solid, Twilight. Not that I ever doubted it for a moment, obviously,” he said.

“Obviously.”

“So what’s next?”

“Well, it’s still early and I did say to Applejack that we’d go and talk to her today about what she had in mind for you.”

“She has something in mind?” Jack asked.

“She has something in mind,” Twilight repeated. Jack grimaced.

“That’s ominous.”

“It’s nothing bad, I’m sure. I thought you had faith in my plan?”

“I do, I do! Deep and abiding faith. Fret not, Twilight, I’ll do what needs doing. Let’s get to it! This way, right?” Jack asked, pointing and setting off at the same time. Twilight pointed the other direction.

“That way,” she said and Jack deep an abrupt one-eighty as though it wasn’t that big of a deal, walking right past her, arm still out and pointing.

“That way, right, I knew that. Come on Twilight, time’s a-wasting.”

Author's Notes:

What a fucking mess.